17548	----	LETTERS CONCERNING Poetical Translations, &c. (Price One Shilling.) LETTERS CONCERNING Poetical Translations, AND VIRGIL'S and MILTON'S ARTS of VERSE, &c. _LONDON_: Printed for J. ROBERTS, near the _Oxford-Arms_ in _Warwick-Lane_. MDCCXXXIX. LETTER I. _SIR,_ I am now going to obey your Commands; but you must let me do it in my own way, that is, write as much, or as little at a time as I may have an Inclination to, and just as things offer themselves. After this manner you may receive in a few Letters, all that I have said to you about poetical Translations, and the resemblance there is between _Virgil's_ and _Milton's_ Versification, and some other Matters of the same nature. To begin with the Business of Translation. Whoever sits down to translate a Poet, ought in the first place to consider his Author's peculiar _Stile_; for without this, tho' the Translation may be very good in all other respects, it will hardly deserve the Name of a Translation. The two great Men amongst the Antients differ from each other as much in this particular as in the Subjects they treat of. The Stile of _Homer_, who sings the Anger or Rage of _Achilles_, is _rapid_. The Stile of _Virgil_, who celebrates the Piety of _Æneas_, is _majestick_. But it may be proper to explain in what this Difference consists. The Stile is _rapid_, when several Relatives, each at the head of a separate Sentence, are governed by one Antecedent, or several Verbs by one Nominative Case, to the close of the Period. Thus in _Homer_: "Goddess, sing the pernicious Anger of _Achilles_, which brought infinite Woes to the _Grecians_, and sent many valiant Souls of Heroes to Hell, and gave their Bodies to the Dogs, and to the Fowls of the Air." Here you see it is the Anger of _Achilles_, that does all that is mentioned in three or four Lines. Now if the Translator does not nicely observe _Homer's_ Stile in this Passage, all the Fire of _Homer_ will be lost. For Example: "O Heavenly Goddess, sing the Wrath of the Son of _Peleus_, the fatal Source of all the Woes of the _Grecians_, that Wrath which sent the Souls of many Heroes to _Pluto's_ gloomy Empire, while their Bodies lay upon the Shore, and were torn by devouring Dogs, and hungry Vultures." Here you see the Spirit of _Homer_ evaporates; and in what immediately follows, if the Stile of _Homer_ is not nicely attended to, if any great matter is added or left out, _Homer_ will be fought for in vain in the Translation. He always hurries on as fast as possible, as _Horace_ justly observes, _semper ad eventum festinat_; and that is the reason why he introduces his first Speech without any Connection, by a sudden Transition; and why he so often brings in his [Greek: ton d' apameibomenos]: He has not patience to stay to work his Speeches artfully into the Subject. Here you see what is a _rapid_ Stile. I will now shew you what is quite the contrary, that is, a _majestic one_. To instance in _Virgil_: "Arms and the Man I sing; the first who from the Shores of _Troy_ (the Fugitive of Heav'n) came to _Italy_ and the _Lavinian_ Coast." Here you perceive the Subject-matter is retarded by the _Inversion of the Phrase_, and by that _Parenthesis_, the _Fugitive of Heaven_ all which occasions _Delay_; and _Delay_ (as a learned Writer upon a Passage of this nature in _Tasso_ observes) is the Property of Majesty: For which Reason when _Virgil_ represents _Dido_ in her greatest Pomp, it is, --_Reginam_ cunctantem _ad limina primi_ _Poenorum expectant_.-- For the same Reason he introduces the most solemn and most important Speech in the _Æneid_, with three Monosyllables, which causes great Delay in the Speaker, and gives great Majesty to the Speech. --_O Qui Res_ Hominumq; Deumq;-- These three Syllables occasion three short Pauses. _O--Qui--Res_--How slow and how stately is this Passage! But it happens that I can set the Beginning of the _Æneid_ in a clear Light for my purpose, by two Translations of that Passage, both by the same Hand; one of which is exactly in the manner of _Virgil_, the other in the manner of _Homer_: The two Translations are made by the Reverend Mr. _Pitt_. He published the first among some Miscellany Poems several Years since, the latter in his four Books of the _Æneid_ about two Years ago. I. "Arms and the Man I sing; the first who driv'n From _Trojan_ Shores, the Fugitive of Heav'n, Came to th' _Italian_ and _Lavinian_ Coast;-- II. "Arms and the Man I sing, the first who bore His Course to _Latium_ from the _Trojan_ Shore.-- The first Translation is exact in every respect: You have in it the Suspence and Majesty of _Virgil_. The second is a good Translation, though not at all like _Virgil_, but exactly like _Homer_: There is no Hesitation, but the Verse and the Matter hurry on together as fast as possible. I have now shown you what is a _rapid_, and what is a _majestick Stile_. But a few more Lines of the Beginning both of the _Iliad_ and of the _Æneid_ will make it still more plain. ILIAD. "The Anger of _Achilles_, Goddess, sing; Which to the _Greeks_ did endless Sorrows bring; And sent untimely, to the Realms of Night, The Souls of many Chiefs, renown'd in Fight: And gave their Bodies for the Dogs to tear, And every hungry Fowl that wings the Air. And thus accomplish'd was the Will of _Jove_, Since first _Atrides_ and _Achilles_ strove. What God the fatal Enmity begun? _Latonâ_'s, and great _Jove_'s immortal Son. He through the Camp a dire Contagion spread, The Prince offended, and the People bled: With publick Scorn, _Atrides_ had disgrac'd The Reverend _Chryses_, _Phoebus'_ chosen Priest. He to redeem his Daughter, sought the Shore, Where lay the _Greeks_, and mighty Presents bore: Deckt with the Ensigns of his God, he stands, The Crown, the golden Sceptre in his Hands; To all he su'd, but to the Princes most, Great _Atreus_'s Sons, the Leaders of the Host: Princes! and _Grecian_ Warriors! may the Gods (The Pow'rs that dwell in Heav'ns sublime Abodes) Give you to level _Priam_'s haughty Tow'rs, And safely to regain your native Shores. But my dear Daughter to her Sire restore, These Gifts accept, and dread _Apollo_'s Pow'r; The Son of _Jove_; he bears a mighty Bow, And from afar his Arrows gall the Foe. ÆNEID. Arms and the Man I sing, the first who driv'n From _Trojan_ Shores, the Fugitive of Heav'n, Came to th' _Italian_ and _Lavinian_ Coast; Much o'er the Earth was He, and Ocean tost, By Heavenly Powers, and _Juno_'s lasting Rage; Much too He bore, long Wars compell'd to wage; E'er He the Town could raise, and of his Gods, In _Latium_ settle the secure Abodes; Whence in a long Descent the _Latins_ come, The _Albine_ Fathers, and the Tow'rs of _Rome_. Sept. 6. 1736. _I am_, SIR, _&c._ * * * * * _P.S._ I Should not part with the Passage in _Homer_ above-mentioned without observing that the Speech of _Apollo_'s Priest is wonderfully Peinturesque, and in Character. We plainly see the Priest holding up his Hands, and pointing with his Crown and Sceptre to Heaven. "Princes! and _Grecian_ Warriors! may the Gods (The Pow'rs that dwell in Heav'ns sublime Abodes) It is a Priest that speaks, and his Audience is composed of Soldiers who had liv'd ten Years in a Camp. He does not only put them in mind of the _Gods_, but likewise of the _Place_ where they dwelt, and at the same time points up to it. Neither is the Conclusion of the Speech less remarkable than the Beginning of it: The Priest of _Apollo_ does not end in an humble supplicant manner like a common Suitor; but he frankly offers his Presents, and threatens the Generals and Princes he addresses himself to, with the Vengeance of his God if they refuse his Request: And he very artfully lets them know that his God is not a Deity of inferior Rank, but the Son of _Jove_; and that his Arrows reach from a great Distance. The next Line to those last mentioned I cannot omit taking notice of, because it contains, in my Opinion, one of the most beautiful Expressions in all the poetical Language. _To give to do a thing._ "Princes! and _Grecian_ Warriors! may the Gods (The Pow'rs that dwell in Heav'ns sublime Abodes) _Give you to level Priam_'s haughty Tow'rs, And safely to regain your native Shores. _Virgil_ was so sensible of this charming Expression, that he has used it in the three following Passages, and I believe in one or two others in the very first _Æneid_. "--_Tibi Divum paler atque hominum rex Et mulcere_ dedit _fluctus & tollere vento_.-- "--_Tu_ das _epulis accumbere Divûm_.-- "_O regina, novam cui condere Jupiter urbem Justitiaque_ dedit _gentes frænare superbas_:-- _Salvini_ in his _Italian_ Translation in 1723, dedicated to his late Majesty, is attentive to all the Beauties of the Passage in _Homer_ last mentioned. "--_A voi gl' Iddii, Che l'Olimpie magioni abitan_, dieno _Espugnar ilio e a casa far ritorno_." LETTER II. _SIR_, I Should now go upon the Comparison of _Virgil_'s and _Milton_'s Versification, in which you will meet with that Paradox, as you thought it at first, namely, that the principal Advantage _Virgil_ has over _Milton_ is _Virgil_'s Rhyme. But I beg leave to postpone that matter at present, because I have a mind to make some Remarks upon the second Line in the Translation of the beginning of the _Iliad_ mentioned in my former Letter, in which the auxiliary Verb _did_ (as our Grammarians call it) is made use of. The Line runs thus. "Which to the _Greeks did_ endless Sorrows bring. It is commonly apprehended from a Passage in Mr. _Pope_'s _Essay on Criticism_, that all auxiliary Verbs are mere _Expletives_. "While Expletives their feeble Aid _do_ join, And ten low Words oft creep in one dull Line. But this I believe Mr. _Pope_ never intended to advance. _Milton_ has used them in many Places, where he could have avoided it if he had pleased. I will produce one. --"Him the most High Wrapt in a balmy Cloud with fiery Steeds _Did_, as thou saw'st, receive.-- _Milton_ might have said, "Receiv'd, as thou hast seen.-- But he thought the auxiliary Verb added Strength to the Expression, as indeed it does. I own where the auxiliary Verb is brought close to its principal, and _that_ a thin monosyllable, as in the Line just now referred to, the Verse is very rude and disagreeable. But to prove that the auxiliary Verb may be employed properly, I will produce an Instance in rhym'd Verse, as strong as that of _Milton_ just mentioned. "Then _did_ the roaring Waves their Rage compose, When the great Father of the Flood arose. _Pit's_ 1st Æneid. I believe it will not be disputed, but that this Line is as full, as sonorous, and majestick as if the auxiliary Verb had been left out, and the Author had used _compos'd_ instead of _did compose_. The Expression is certainly more beautiful and more poetical; and the reason of it is, that it occasions suspence, which raises the attention; or in other Words the auxiliary Verb gives notice of something coming, before the principal thing itself appears, which is another Property of Majesty. Mr. _Dryden_'s authority might likewise be added on this occasion; even in his celebrated Lines on _Milton_ it is to be met with. "_Greece_, _Italy_, and _England did_ adorn. In his Translation of the _Æneid_ there are many Instances of the same nature, one of which I will mention; "The Queen of Heav'n _did_ thus her fury vent. The Metre of this Line, as the Words are here rang'd, is not bad, as the Ear can judge; but it would have been extremely so, if he had writ it thus, "The Queen of Heaven her Fury thus _did_ vent.[A] [Footnote A: His Heart, his Mistress and his Friends _did_ share. _Pope_, on _Voiture_.] From whence it appears that the auxiliary Verb is not to be rejected at all times; besides, it is a particular Idiom of the _English_ Language: and has a Majesty in it superior to the _Latin_ or _Greek_ Tongue, and I believe to any other Language whatsoever. Many Instances might be brought to support this Assertion from Great Authorities. I shall produce one from _Shakespear_. --_This to me In dreadful Secrecy impart they_ did. The Auxiliary Verb is here very properly made use of; and it would be a great loss to _English_ Poetry, if it were to be wholly laid aside. In Translations from the _Greek_ and _Latin_, I believe it wou'd sometimes be impossible to do justice to an Author without this Help: I think the Passage in _Homer_ before us, I mean the two first Lines of the _Iliad_, are an Instance of this kind. They have been translated by many Persons of late, _Dryden_, _Manwaring_, Mr. _Tickel_, and by Mr. _Pope_ twice, and not by any one of 'em, as I apprehend, in the Spirit of _Homer_. As to Mr. _Pope_'s two Translations, I don't understand why the latter ought to be preferr'd to the former. Mr. _Pope_'s first Translation stood thus. The Wrath of _Peleus'_ Son, the direful Spring Of all the _Grecian_ Woes, _O_ Goddess sing. Mr. _Pope_ had reason to be dissatisfy'd with the _O_ in the second Line, and to reject it; for _Homer_ has nothing of it. But now let us see how the Vacancy is supplied in Mr. _Pope_'s new Translation. _Achilles'_ Wrath, to _Greece_ the direful Spring Of Woes un-number'd, _Heav'nly_ Goddess, sing. Is not _Heav'nly_ as much an Expletive as _O_, and can either of these Couplets deserve to be plac'd in the Front of the Iliad? I could wish Mr. _Pope_ would return these two Lines once more to the Anvil, and dismiss all Expletives here at least. But enough of Expletives. I shall now say something of _Monosyllables_, which seem to be absolutely condemn'd in the second Line of the two Verses just mention'd from Mr. _Pope's Essay on Criticism_. And ten low Words oft creep in one dull Line. Mr. _Dryden_ indeed has said in several Places, that the vast Number of _Monosyllables_ in our Language makes it barbarous and rough, and unfit for Poetry. I am apt to think Mr. _Pope_ gave into Mr. _Dryden_'s Sentiment a little too hastily. I own _ten low Words_ too frequently _creep on in one dull line_, in a Poet's Works, whom Mr. _Pope_ has formerly celebrated with no mean Encomiums. The following Lines afford an Example in this respect. At the beginning of the third Book of the _Davideis_, this is the Description of _Goliah_'s Sword. "A Sword so great, that _it_ was only _fit_ To take off his great Head, who came with _it_. _Cowley._ Here are ten _dull_ Words most certainly in one _dull_ Line. "To take off his great Head, who came with _it_. And miserable is the Metre in which they creep on. But hundreds of _monosyllable_ Lines are to be found in _Milton_ that are as sublime, as beautiful, and as harmonious as can possibly be written. Look only into the Morning Hymn in the fifth Book. "Speak ye who best can tell, ye Sons of Light. Again, "Thou Sun! of this great World both Eye and Soul. Again, "And when high Noon hast gain'd, and when thou fall'st. Again, "With the fixt Stars, fixt in their Orb that flies. Again, "Breathe soft or loud; and wave your Tops, ye Pines. Again, "Bear on your Wings and in your Notes his Praise. Can it be said that ten dull Words creep on dully in any one of these Lines? But Examples may likewise be given in rhym'd Verse, of the Harmony of _Monosyllables_. Harmony consists in mixing rough and smooth, soft and harsh Sounds. What Words can be rougher than such as these, _Rides_, _Rapt_, _Throws_, _Storms_; or smoother than these, _Wheel_, _Hush_, _Lull_? "Then mounted on his radiant Carr he _rides_, And _wheels_ along the level of the Tides. _Pit_'s 1st Æneid. How rough is the first Line, how soft the latter! As soft as the Original, which is a Masterpiece. "_Rapt_ by his Steeds he flies in open Day, _Throws_ up the Reins, and skims the watry Way. "Has given to thee great _Æolus_ to raise _Storms_ at thy sov'reign Will, and _smooth_ the Seas. "He spake, and speaking chas'd the Clouds away, _Hush'd_ the loud Billows, and restor'd the Day. "Mean time the Goddess on _Ascanius_ throws, A balmy Slumber and a sweet Repose. _Lull'd_ in her Lap to Rest, the Queen of Love, Convey'd him to the soft _Idalian_ Grove. _Pit_'s 1st Æneid. Where can a smoother Line than this be found in our Language? "_Lull'd_ in her Lap to Rest, the Queen of Love. And it may be observed that this Line is all Monosyllables. _Monosyllables_ are likewise of great consequence on another account. The Strength of the _English_ Language is greatly owing to them: For to them it is principally obliged for its Conciseness; and Conciseness is Strength. Now Conciseness is not only to express ourselves in as few Words as we can, but the Excellency of the Language shews itself, if those few Words are composed of few Syllables. And herein upon Examination, the Strength of the _English_ Tongue will be found to lye; and for this reason it may be said to be more concise than the _Latin_; which will appear if _Virgil_ is turned into _English_, I mean even _English_ Verse. For Example: "--_Ubi tot Simois correpta sub undas Scuta virum, Galeasq; & fortia Corpora volvit._ "Where _Simois_ Streams incumber'd with the slain, Roll'd Shields, and Helms, and Heroes to the Main. _Pit_'s 1st Æneid. To discover which of these two Passages is the most concise, it is not sufficient to shew, that there are two whole _English_ Lines, and but one Line and three Parts of another in the _Latin_. _Latin_ and _English_ Lines cannot be compared together, because in a _Latin_ Line there are six Feet, and in an _English_ Line but five. Again, in _Latin_ Verse there must be in every Line one Foot of three Syllables, often three or four, or even five Feet of three Syllables, and sometimes four or five Syllables in one Foot. Whereas in an _English_ Line, there is hardly ever more than two Syllables in a foot. So that an _English_ Verse cannot be compared with the _Latin_ by the Line, or by the Foot, but only by the Syllables of which the Words are composed, which make the Feet in both the Languages. The Business then is to enquire whether we write or pronounce more Syllables in the _Latin_ or _English_ Verses here quoted: Upon Enquiry it appears that there are twenty nine Syllables in the _Latin_, and but twenty one in the _English_; so that the _English_ is almost one third part less than the _Latin_; which certainly shews the former to be much more concise than the latter, there being nothing left out in the _English_, but the whole Thought is rather more fully expressed: And this we see is owing to _Monosyllables_ both Verbs and Nouns, _Streams_, _Slain_, _Shields_, _Roll'd_, _Helms_, _Main_. In short the whole Passage is equal to the Original in Majesty and Harmony, and superior in Conciseness. To give another Example or two of the same nature. "_Urbs antiqua fuit, Tyrii tenuere Coloni, Carthago, Italiam contra, Tyberinaque longe Ostia, dives opum, studiisque Asperrima Belli._ "Against the _Italian_ Coast, of ancient Fame A City rose, and _Carthage_ was the Name; A _Tyrian_ Colony, from _Tyber_ far, Rich, rough, and brave, and exercis'd in war. Mr. _Pit_'s Æneid. "--_Facti de Nomine Byrsam, Sed vos, qui tandem, quibus aut venistis ab oris, Quove tenetis iter?_-- "Hence _Byrsa_ nam'd.--But now ye Strangers, say, Who, whence you are, and whither lies your Way? I have chosen here three Passages of three very different kinds, and in all of them the _English_ appears to be much more concise than the _Latin_; neither is there any thing wanting in the Fulness of the Sense, or in Majesty, or in Harmony of Numbers, any more in the two last Passages than in the former. Another Instance of this kind might be produced out of _Virgil_'s most perfect Work, the _Georgick_, although it wants the Advantage of being translated by such a Hand as Mr. _Pit_'s. "_Si vero Viciamq; seres vitemq; Faselum, Nec Pelusiacoe curam aspernabere lentis._ "But if the Vetch you sow, or meaner Tare, Nor shall disdain th' _Ægyptian_ Lentil's Care. In the _Latin_ there are thirty Syllables in the two Lines, in the _English_ but twenty one. So that the _English_ is almost one third more concise than the _Latin_; and at the same time _Virgil_'s Sense fully expressed. I will conclude this Letter with the Opinion of a Foreigner concerning our Monosyllables: A Person not at all prepossessed in favour of our Language. "The _English_ Language, besides the most significant Words borrowed from the _Latin_, _Greek_, &c. and often shortned, hath a vast Stock of its own, and being for the most part Monosyllables, no Speech is capable of expressing Thought in Sounds so few as the _English_ does: This is easily observed by the Translations of the _English_ into Foreign Languages. "The Strength and Conciseness that Monosyllables (especially in Verbs) produce, are of wonderful Use in Lyrick Poetry, because they Enter into any Foot or Measure of Verses, by different Transpositions; so that I dare venture to assert, there is no _Italian_ or Foreign Song, which _English_ Words will not suit; the Variety of Feet and Metres producing equal Variety of Mode and Movements in Composition. The want of this is what makes the _French_ vocal Musick so confined and uniform; for I cannot recollect above two of their Verbs in use in the infinitive Mood, that are Monosyllables, and not one exact Dactile in all their Polysyllables." _Röner_'s Preface to his _Melopeïa Sacra_. Sept. 13. 1736. _I am_, SIR, _&c._ LETTER III. _SIR,_ In comparing _Virgil_'s and _Milton_'s Versification, I shall begin with _Virgil_; and shew some of the principal Beauties of his Poetry in this respect: And here I must own myself not a little indebted to _La-Cerda_, _Pontanus_ and _Pierius_, but above all to the most excellent _Erythræus_, who has not only considered every Paragraph, every Line, every Foot, every Word, and every Syllable, but even every Letter in _Virgil_; and it is not easy to conceive how much may depend on a single Letter, very often the whole Harmony of a Line; and on this Account we have vast Obligations to _Pierius_; to him we owe this fine Verse, and many others. "_Atq; rotis summas levibus_ pellabitur _undas_.-- All the common Editions read _perlabitur_; which is horrid to the ear. But to go on with the Matter in hand. The principal Excellencies of _Virgil_'s Versification consist of the several following Particulars. 1st, The continual varying of the Pause. 2d, The Inversion of the Phrase. 3d, The adapting of the Sound to the Sense. 4th, The mixing of the singular and plural Numbers. 5th, The giving Majesty and Strength to his Verse with the connecting Particles _Que_ and _Et_. 6th, The _Collocatio Verborum_, or artful way of placing Words. 7th, The changing the common Pronunciation of Words. 8th, Verses contrary to the common Measure. 9th, 10th, and 11th, His _Alliteratio_, _Allusio Verborum_, and _Assonantia Syllabarum_. As these three last Articles arise from Observations perfectly new at the time they were written by _Erythræus_, namely, about 200 Years ago; and as new at this time, having been almost quite lost by I know not what Accident to the World; I must follow my Master, and use his Terms for his Discoveries, except where I differ a little from him. 1st, To begin with the first Article mentioned in this Letter, _The Varying of the Pause_. This Subject I have met with in several Books, but not fully explained in any one of them to my Capacity; for I must confess I should never have thoroughly apprehended the Varying of the Pause in any Language, if I had not thought of an Expedient to discover what is the common Pause in a Verse that each Language naturally stops at, of which I have any Knowledge. To find out this, I consulted the middling sort of Poets, or the first Practicers in this Art: In this Enquiry I observ'd from _Hesiod_ and _Ennius_ among the _Greek_ and _Latin_ Poets, and afterwards from _Ovid_ with relation to the latter, and which I am now to speak of, that the common Pause or Stop in all _Latin_ Heroick Verse (to say nothing of the _Greek_, which agrees with it in this Respect) is upon the 1st Syllable of the 3d Foot. For Example, "_Ante mare & tellus | & quod tegit omnia, cælum, Unus erat toto | Naturæ vultus in orbe, Quem dixêre Chaos | rudis indigestaque moles; Nec quicquam, nisi pondus, iners; | congestaque eodem Non bene junctarum | discordia semina rerum. Nullus adhuc mundo | præbebat lumina Titan; Nec nova crescendo | reparabat cornua Phoebe, Nec circumfuso | pendebat in aëre tellus_-- Here we have eight Lines all paused in the same Place, except one, (the 4th); and in this kind of Measure the _Metamorphosis_ is generally written; from whence I collected the natural Pause in the _Latin_ Language to be as abovementioned: I then consulted the best Poem of the best _Latin_ Poet, which begins with these Lines. "_Quid faciat lætas segetes, | quo Sydere Terram Vertere, | Mæcenas, | ulmisque adjungere Vites Conveniat, | quæ cura Boum, | qui cultus habendo Sit Pecori, | Apibus quanta experientia parcis Hinc canere incipiam |._-- Here I observed that this great Master had artfully avoided the common Pause till he came to the fifth Line; and he takes care to do it as much as possible throughout the whole Work; from whence arises one of the most material Differences in the Versification of _Ovid_ and _Virgil_; and to produce more Examples would be a needless Labour. In this Place let me take Notice that it is on Account of Varying the Pause that _Virgil_ makes his broken Lines in the _Æneid_, which suspend all Pauses, and the Ear is relieved by this Means, and attends with fresh Pleasure. Whoever intends to come up to _Virgil_ in Harmony in Heroick Numbers in any long Work, must not omit this Art. 2d, The next thing to be attended to, is, _The Inversion of the Phrase_. This flings the Stile out of Prose, and occasions that Suspense which is the Life of Poetry. This _builds the lofty Rhyme_ (as _Milton_ expresses it) in such manner as to cause that Majesty in Verse of which I have said so much before, that there is no need of saying any thing more here. 3d. The third thing is, _The adapting the Sound to the Sense_. Most People know such Instances of this Nature, as _Quadrupedante_, &c. and _Illi inter sese_, &c. But few attend to an Infinity of other Examples. How is the Verse drawn out in length, and how does it labour when strong heavy Land is to be ploughed! "--_Ergo, age terræ Pingue solum, primis extemplo a Mensibus Anni Fortes invortant tauri._-- How nimbly does the Verse move when the turning over very light Ground is represented! "--_Sub ipsum Arcturum_, tenui s[=a]t erit _suspendere sulco_.-- How slow does the heavy Waggon proceed in this Line! "_Tardaque Eleusinæ Matris Volventïa Plaustra._-- How does the Boat bound over the _Po_ in these two Hemisticks! "--_Levis innatat alnus Missa Pado._-- See Feathers dancing on the Water in this! "--_In aqua colludere plumas._-- No Stem of the Crab-tree is more rough than this Verse. "_Inseritur vero ex foetu nucis arbutus horrida:_ Water is not more liquid than this. "_Speluncisque lacus Clausos, lucosque sonantis._-- _S. & L. liquescit Carmen instar aquarum_, says _Erythræus_ in his Note on this Line. How gently flow the Streams in this Verse! "_Unde pater Tiberinus, & unde Aniena fluenta._-- What a roaring do the _Hypanis_ and _Caicus_ make in the next! "_Sax[=o]sumque s[=o]nans Hypanis, Mysusque Caïcus._ But now observe how he raises his Song to honour his Favourite _Eridanus_! "_Et gemina_ auratus _taurino cornua vultu_ Eridanus; _quo non_ alius _Per Pinguia culta In mare purpureum v[=i]olent[=i]or [=i]nflu[=i]t amn[=i]s._ The former Line strikes the Ear with _Mysus_ and _Caïcus_; here you have _Auratus_, _Eridanus_, and _Alius_. Then an Alliteration, _Per Pinguia_, and at last the whole Passage rolls on in a Dactyl Line, and rushes into the Sea with an _Assultus_ of the Vowel _i_, repeated five times in three Words. "--_Violentior influit amnis._ The following Line tours into the Skies with the highest Mountain in _Italy_. "--_Gaudetque nivali Vertice se attollens pater Appeninus, ad auras._-- This falls down as low as the deepest Valley. "_Saxa per, & scopulos, & depressas convalles._ In short there is nothing in Nature that _Virgil's_ Verse does not convey to the _Ear_, and the _Eye_; so that this Subject is inexhaustible, and must be left to every one's particular Observation. The learned _Morhophius_ has a Passage relating to this Matter which comes in too properly here to be omitted. "Solent Carminibus suæ esse a Numeris Veneres, & certa quædam Artificia, quæ mirifice ornant versum, quales apud Virgilium, mirum numeri Poetici Observatorem, frequenter occurrunt, e.g. cum versus terminantur Monosyllabis, ut: _procumbit humi bos: nascetur ridiculus mus_. Vel cum Spondæi multi adhibentur, ut; _media agmina circumspexit: Illi inter sese magnâ vi brachia tollunt_. Aut cum Dactyli & Spondæi ita miscentur, ut REI NATURAM EXPRIMANT, ut cum de turri ruente ait: "--_Convellimus altis Sedibus; impulimusq;, ea lapsa repente_ ruinam _Cum sonitu trahit_.-- "Talia infinita apud Virgilium habentur quæ homo in iis non exercitatus contemnat, doctus vero & prudens admiretur. _Polyhist._ There is also a Remark of the judicious _Columna_ on a celebrated Line in _Virgil_, which is very much to the present Purpose. _Unus Homo Nobis Cunctando Restituit Rem._] Virgilius de eodem loquens Æneid l. 6. integrum hoc carmen sumpsit, ita tamen, ut _spondeorum tarditate Fabii moram referret_, --tu Maximus ille es, Unus, qui nobis cunctando restituis rem. _Enn. Frag._ Sept. 21, 1736, _I am_, SIR, _&c._ * * * * * _P.S._ The Passage in the learned _Muhlius_, which I should have inserted at the beginning of this Letter, I send you in a Postscript. You have seen it before, but it is worth reading more than once. You know it belongs principally to the Article that treats of _the varying the Pause_. "Neque potest unus idemque semper tenor in carmine usurpari, sed debet is pro varià periodorum Poeticarum ratione distingui. Et ut insurgat decore & intumescat aliquando, iterumque remittat, ubi opus est, consequimur cæsorum ac periodorum sola inæqualitate. Quod pulcerrime observat _Virgilius_, cujus alia mensura, alia pedum compositio est in narrationibus, descriptionibus, orationibus, & tanta periodorum numerorumque variatio, ut ad eam perfectionem nihil addi possit. Hujus rei quanta negligentia in _Statio_, _Lucano_, _Claudiano_, _Silio Italico_? Ubi admirabilis illa harmonia, suavitas, gravitas ipsorum pedum æqualiter, inæqualiter temperatorum, per clausulas verborum fractorum, ac intra regiones suas aliter aliterq; interceptorum? Ut de junctura illa literarum nihil addam, cum vocales ac consonantes ipsæque syllabæ ita miscentur, ut rei naturam tam apte jucundeque exprimant, ut ea _geri_ potius quam _cani_, _spectari_ magis quam _audiri_ videatur. Talia infinita sunt apud _Virgilium_, quæ captum imperitorum longe excedunt, doctiores vero & prudentiores impense admirantur; quæ nihil tritum, vulgare, hiuclum nihil elumbe ac contortum patiuntur, at nescio quid virile & stupendum plane, ac majus humana voce videntur sonare. _Claudianus_ certe istud fastigium non attingit, & quod in _Maroniana_ dictione, in illa periodorum ac numerorum varietate præclarum putamus, vix est, ut ejus vel levem umbram ostentet. Sic eadem semper oberrat chorda, quod ridiculum existimat magnus iste dicendi magister." LETTER IV. _SIR_, [Sidenote: IV.] The fourth thing to be consider'd is, _Virgil_'s _mixing the Singular and Plural Numbers_. This has a wonderful Effect, and is very diligently attended to by _Virgil_; but I believe never once thought of by _Ovid_, or any other _Roman_ Writer in the Days of _Augustus_. "_Quid faciat lætas_ Segetes, _quo sidere_ terram _Vertere, Mæcenas, ulmisque adjungere_ vites, _Conveniat: quæ cura boum, qui cultus habendo Sit_ pecori, apibus _quanta experientia parcis_. Here you have _segetes_ and _terram_, and then _vites_, and after that _pecori_ and _apibus_. Again, "--_Camposque, & flumina late Curva tenent: ut molle_ siler, _lentæque_ genistæ, Populus, & _glauca canentia fronde_ Salicta. _Pars autem posito surgunt de semine: ut altæ_ Castaneæ; _nemorumq; Jovi quæ maxima frondet_ Esculus, _atque habitæ Graiis oracula_ quercus. Here are _Siler_ and _Genistæ_, _Populus_ and _Salicta_, _Castaneæ_ and _Esculus_, and _Quercus_. Again, "Arma Virumque _cano, Trojæ qui primus ab oris_ Italiam, _fato profugus_, Lavinaque _venit_ Litora. _Multum ille &_ terris _jactatus &_ alto, _Vi_ Superum _sævæ memorem_ Junonis _ob iram. Multa quoq; & bello passus, dum conderet_ urbem, _Inferretque_ Deos _Latio_: genus _unde Latinum Albanique_ patres, _atque altæ moenia Romæ_. These _two first Words_ of the _Æneid_ are an Example of what I am taking notice of; and then we have in this Introduction _Italiam_ and _Litora Lavina_, _Terris_ and _Alto_, _Superum_ and _Junonis_, _Urbem_ and _Deos_, _Genus_ and _Patres_. But the most beautiful Passage of this Nature is in the _Georgics_. Here the thing to be done, and the Instrument with which it is to be done, are varied alternately. "_Quod nisi & assiduis_ terram _insectabere_ rastris, _Et_ sonitu _terrebis_ aves, _& ruris opaci_ Falce _premes_ umbras, votisq; _vocaveris_ imbrem. Terram _rastris_, sonitu _aves_, falce _umbras_, votis _imbrem_. Upon which _La Cerda_ makes this Remark: "_Placet_ Virgilius _semper, sed cur placeat sæpe ignoratur. In rebus quatuor recensendis numquam pluralem cum plurali, neque singularem cum singulari, quod minus ad varietatem: sed semper cum singulari pluralem. Unica terra multis rastris insectanda est, unica pluvia multis votis petenda. Contra, multæ aves terrendæ unico sonitu, multæ umbræ unica falce compescendæ._" Now in _Ovid_ nothing of this Art is to be found. "_Ante_ mare & tellus, _& (quod tegit omnia)_ coelum, _Unus erat toto naturæ_ vultus _in orbe, Quem dixere_ chaos: _rudis indigestáque_ moles, _Nec quicquam nisi_ pondus _iners_. Here are _Mare_, _Tellus_, _Coelum_, _Vultus_, _Chaos_, _Moles_, and _Pondus_, without any one word of the Plural Number amongst them. V. The next Particular to be taken notice of, is _Virgil_'s uncommon Use of the Particles _Et_ and _Que_. "--_Multum ille_ et _terris jactatus_ et _alto_; _Multa quoque_ et _bello passus_-- Et _premere_, et _laxas sciret dare jussus habenas_. And more frequently in his most finish'd Piece. _Quid tibi odorato referam sudantia ligno. Balsama_que, et _Baccas_-- _Quod nisi_ et _assiduis terram insectabere rastris_, Et _sonitu terrebis aves_, et _ruris opaci Falce premes umbras, votis_que _vocaveris imbrem. Si vero viciam_que _seres, vilem_que _Faselum_. This Manner of using these connecting Particles, gives Majesty and Strength to the Verse. It gives Majesty, because it occasions Suspense and raises the Attention. For Example: _Si vero Viciam_que _seres_-- Here the _que_ hinders the Sense from being concluded, till you have read the rest of the Line, --_Vilemque Faselum._ But if the Poet had writ (supposing the Verse would have allowed it) _Si vero Viciam seres_-- the Reader would have understood him without going any farther; and it is easily perceiv'd the Verse would have been very flat to what it is now. This double Use of the Particles gives Strength to the Verse; because, as the Excellent _Erythræus_ observes, the copulative Conjunctions are in Language of the same Use as Nerves in the Body, they serve to connect the Parts together; so that these Sorts of Verses which we are speaking of may be very properly called, Nervous Lines. This Art _Virgil_ most certainly learnt from _Homer_: for there is nothing more remarkable in _Homer_'s Versification, nothing to which the Majesty of it is more owing, than this very thing, and I wonder none of his Commentators (that I have seen) have taken notice of it. There are four in the 23 first Lines of the Iliad, of this Kind. I will put the _Latin_ for the sake of the generality of Readers. _Atrides_que, _rex virorum,_ et _nobilis Achilles. Redempturus_que _filiam, ferens_que _infinitum pretium liberationis, Atridæ_que, et _alii bene ocreati Achivi, Reverendum_que _esse sacerdotem,_ et _splendidum accipiendum pretium_. Clarke's _Translation_. VI. I come now to the _Collocatio Verborum_, of which there is no occasion to give any more than one Instance: "_Vox quoque per lucos vulgo exaudita silentes_ Ingens.-- The Reader cannot but perceive that the Manner of placing _Ingens_ has a wonderful Effect; it makes him hear the melancholy Voice _groan through the Grove_. VII. The _changing the common Pronunciation of Words_, as thus: _"Fluvi[)o]rum Rex Eridanus._-- And _"Strid[)e]re apes utero & ruptis efferv[)e]re costis._ VIII. _Lines contrary to the common Measure_, or rather without any Measure at all, _viz._ "_Quod fieri ferro, liquidove potest electro, Saxa per & scopulos & depressas convalles._ IX, X, XI. These are the three Articles formerly mentioned, namely, the _Alliteratio_, the _Allusio Verborum_, and the _Assonantia Syllabarum_. 1. As to the _Alliteratio_. This is of several Kinds, it is _Initial_, _Single_ and _Double_; sometimes _Treble_, or more frequent. It is likewise _Mix'd_, that is, both in the first Letters of the Words, and in the following Syllables. It is sometimes so often repeated, that it may be term'd _Assultus_, or an Attack upon, or a storming of the Ear. The following are Examples of the _Single Alliteratio_. "_Quid faciat lætas_ segetes, _quo_ sidere _terram_ Vertere, _Mæcenas_, _ulmisque adjungere_ vites, Conveniat: _quæ_ cura _boum_, _qui_ cultus _habendo_. Again, "--_Sed_ viva volare _Sideris in numerum_.-- And, "--_Asia longe_ Pulia palus.-- Of the _Double_ initial _Alliteratio_, this is an Example: "_Totaque thuriferis Panchaia pinguis arenis._ Of the _Treble_ and more frequent initial _Alliteratio_, this is an Instance: "_Et sola in siccâ secum spatiatur arena._ The _Mix'd Alliteratio_, and the _Assultus_ are to be found in these two Lines: "Illas _ducit_ amor trans Gargara, transque sonantem Ascanium: superant _montes_, & flumina tranant. In these two Lines the Vowel _a_ is repeated fourteen times, and what an Effect this has upon the Ear, the Reader cannot but perceive. 2. Of the _Allusio Verborum_, the following are Examples: "_Nec nocturna quidem carpentes pensa puellæ._ Again, "_Hoc metuens; molemque & montes insuper altos._ Again, "_Stat sonipes, ac frena ferox spumantia mandit._ Again, "_Vitavisse vices Danaum._ 3. Of the _Assonantia Syllabarum_ or _Rhyme_, there are in _Virgil_ the several following Sorts. 1. _The plain direct Rhyme_, which is of two Kinds, _Single_ or _Double_. 2. _The intermediate_ or _casual plain Rhyme_. 3. _The scanning conclusive Rhyme_. So called, because it would hardly be perceived by the Generality of Readers, unless they first scann'd the Verse; but when they have done that in three or four Lines, the Ear will afterwards make the necessary Distinction without any farther trouble. I will explain and give Examples of all these several sorts of _Rhyme_ in their Order. 1. To treat of the plain _Single_ direct _Rhyme_. The following Verses are Examples of this sort of Rhyme: But to make them more like our own, I will divide the Verse into two Parts. "_Poculaque inventis Acheloia miscuit uvis._ "_Totaque Thuriferis Panchaia pinguis arenis._ "_Et premere, & laxas Sciret dare, jussus habenas._ "_Atque rotis summas Levibus pellabitur undas._ "_O nimium coelo Et pelago confise sereno._ Many more of these Lines might be produced, but these are sufficient. Of the plain direct _Double_ Rhyme (which is the Sort of Rhyme the _Spectator_ speaks of No. 60, and which the Monks were in Love with) the following are Instances. "_Hic labor extremus, lon_garum _hæc meta vi_arum. Again, "_I nunc & verbis Virtutem illude superbis._ Again, "_Cornua veletarum Obvertimus Antennarum._ 2. _Of the intermediate plain Rhyme_, the following are Examples. "Imposuit, _regemque_ dedit, _qui foedere certo_. And, "_Descendo, ac ducente_ Deo _flammam inter & hostes_. In this Passage _Virgil_ uses _Deus_ in speaking of a _Goddess_, for no other Reason imaginable but to enrich his Verse with Rhyme. 3. Of the _scanning conclusive Rhyme_ the following are Instances. "_Sylvestrem tenui musam medi--taris [=a]--ven[=a]_. "_Nudus in ignota pali--nure j[=a]--cebis [=a]--ren[=a]_. From whence it appears that _Virgil_'s Poetry is almost all Rhyme of one kind or other; and it is evident beyond Dispute that he generally concludes his strong, sounding, majestick Paragraphs with a full Rhyme, for which I refer to that fine Line already more than once mentioned, which sums up the Praises of _Italy_. "_Totaque thuriferis Panchaia pinguis arenis._ And to the Conclusion of his finest work. "_Hic vero subitum, ac dictu mirabile monstrum Aspiciunt: liquefacta boum per viscera toto Stridere apes utero, & ruptis effervere costis, Immensasque trahi nubes; jamque arbore summa Confluere, & lentis uvam demittere ramis._ And to this I will add the last Line of the Epilogue to the _Georgicks_. "_Tytyre te patulæ cecini sub tegmine fagi._ Where the two several Hemisticks or Parts of the Verse Rhyme each to itself. I would observe here that both _Ovid_ and _Lucan_, for want of Judgment, begin with a full Rhyme; the consequence of which is, that the Conclusion of the Paragraph is less sonorous than the Beginning, which must needs have a bad Effect. "_In nova fert animus muta_tas _discere for_mas. Ovid. "_Bella per Æmath_ios _plus quam Civilia Cam_pos. Lucan. But a modern Writer, and a much better Composer of _Latin_ Verses than either _Ovid_ or _Lucan_, has with great Judgment taken care to follow _Virgil_'s Example in this and many other Particulars. I mean _Vanerius_. There are a great Number of Lines in his _Prædium Rusticum_ which are worthy of _Virgil_ himself: I shall entertain you with some of them. In his Kitchen-Garden, the following Passage is a Description of all the numerous Family of Colworts, or the Cabbage-kind. "_Quid dicam quanta jactat se Brassica laude? Sive volubilibus redit in se frondibus, Orbesque Orbibus agglomerans, capitis sub mole laborat; Tornato similes Ebori seu candida Flores Ediderit, seu Coniacas imitata Cupressus, Seque suas plicat in frondes, & acumen in album Desinit, & tenui venit haud ingloria Mensæ. Sive hieme in media cum cætera frigore torpent Loeta viret, Boreamque trucem, Caurosque malignos Despiciens, vacuis ultro Dominatur in hortis._" In his Description of the Farm-yard, he paints the following several Sorts of Fowls in this Manner: "_Se pictæ cervicis_ Anas | _& Garulus_ Anser _Tarda mole movent: | habitu_ Gallina _modesto Progreditur: | Caudam_ Gallus _Cristasque rubentes Erigit, | & motis sibi plaudit Lætior alis_." And I cannot omit this most charming Verse which describes the Courtship of a Pigeon. "_Sæpe solum verrens Pennâ pendente rotatur._" "Oft with his trailing Wing the wanton Dove Brushes the Ground, and wheels about his Love. Such Verse as this must please in all Ages, and in all Countries, where the Readers have any Taste and Delicacy of Ear. All the Beauties of _Virgil_'s Poetry are in these Lines; and you may observe in the four last mentioned, 1. How curiously the _Pause_ is varied. In the first Line it is upon the first Syllable of the fourth Foot. In the second Line it is upon the first Syllable of the third Foot. In the third Line it is upon the first Syllable of the second Foot. In the fourth Line it is upon the last Syllable of the first Foot. 2. Observe the _initial Alliteration_ in the first, second and third Lines. In the first, _Anas_ and _Anser_. In the second, _Mole_, _Movent_, and _Modesto_. In the third, _Caudam_, _Cristasque_. The mixt Alliteration in the first Line where _Garrulus_ is placed betwixt _Anser_ and _Anas_, makes the Verse very sonorous; but the mixt Alliteration in the last Line where the Vowel _i_ is repeated eight times in seven Words, is a very masterly Stroke; "_Er_i_g_i_t, & mot_i_s s_i_b_i _plaud_i_t loet_i_or al_i_s_." --I_lle h_i_nc concentus_ i_n omn_i _Carm_i_ne D_i_v_i_n_i _vat_i_s_.-- Which _extempore_ Remark is itself an Instance of what I am taking notice of as imitated from _Virgil_. 3. You will perceive the _Allusio Verborum_ to have a very good Effect in the second Line. "_Tarda m_o_le m_o_vent, habitu gallina m_o_dest_o." 4. The mixing the singular and plural Numbers in the third Line is very judicious. "_Caudam_ Cristasque _rubentes_. _Ovid_ would have said, "_Caudam_ Cristamque-- Lastly, The full Rhyme in the fourth Line makes the whole Paragraph very harmonious. It is not improper to produce here the Conclusion of the Description of _Æolus_'s Cave, which is one of the finest Passages in the _Æneid_. "_Sed pater omnipotens spelunc_is _abdidit at_ris _Hoc metuens_, mo_lemque &_ mo_ntis insuper altos Imposu_it, _regemque ded_it, _qui foedere certo Et premere, & lax_as _sciret dare jussus haben_as. Would not any body think that _Vanerius_ intended to vie with _Virgil_ in this Place? October 2. 1736. _I am_, SIR, _&c._ * * * * * _P.S._ The Examples I have given in this Letter of _plain direct Rhyme_ are only in _long_ or _heroic_ Verse, but I might have instanc'd in _Lyric Lines_. _Horace_ abounds in Rhyme. In the first Ode we find _Metaque fervidis Evitata rotis Palmaque nobilis Illum si proprio Condidit horreo_ and several others. In two of his finest Odes the following Lines are as full Rhymes as can possibly be made, _Nec venenatis Gravida sagittis Pone me Pigris Ubi nulla campis Arbor æstiva Recreatur Aura Aut in umbrosis Heliconis Oris Aut super Pindo Gelidove in Hæmo._ The two last are doubly rhym'd. LETTER V. _SIR,_ I am now to consider _Milton_'s Versification under the same Heads as I have considered _Virgil_'s, so far as there is Opportunity of doing it. I. To begin with _The Varying of the Pause_, which is the Soul of all Versification in all Languages. Verse is Musick, and Musick is more or less pleasing as the Notes are more or less varied, that is, raised or sunk, prolonged or shortned. In order to judge of the varying of _English_ Versification, I first endeavour'd (as I have already said, with respect to the _Latin_) to find out the common Pause in _English_ Verse, that is, where the Voice naturally makes some sort of Stop when a Verse is read. To this purpose I look'd into Mr. _Cowley_'s _Davideis_ (for it would be of no use to quote such Authors as _Quarles_ and _Ogilby_, who never had any Reputation for Poetry; but this Gentleman has been stil'd, and is at present recorded in _Westminster-Abbey_, as _Anglorum Pindarus_, _Maro_, _Flaccus_) and there I soon found the common Pause to be upon the last Syllable of the second Foot. For Example: "I sing the Man | who _Judah_'s Sceptre bore In that Right-hand, | which held the Crook before; Who from best Poet, | best of Kings _did_ grow: The two chief Gifts | Heav'n could on Man bestow. Much Dangers first, | much Toil did he sustain, Whilst _Saul_ and Hell | crost his strong Fate in vain. Nor did his Crown | less painful Work afford-- Here we have seven Lines, and all of them, except the third, paus'd in the same place. Thus I discovered from _Cowley_ in _English_ what I perceived from _Ovid_ in _Latin_. I then turned to the _Paradise Lost_, and there I found _Milton_ even surpasses _Virgil_ in this particular. _Virgil_ uses the common Pause at the fifth Line of the _Georgicks_, but _Milton_ does not use it till he comes to the sixth Line in his _Paradise Lost_. "Of Man's first Disobedience | and the Fruit Of that forbidden Tree | whose mortal Taste Brought Death into the World | and all our Woe, With Loss of _Eden_ | 'till one greater Man Restore us | and regain the blissful Seat, Sing Heavenly Muse |-- It would be needless to produce more Examples to this purpose; and I believe I may venture to affirm that the Verse is varied at least with as much Skill in the _Paradise Lost_, as even in the _Georgick_ itself: I am inclinable to think with more, because in this respect the _English_ Language surpasses the _Latin_, by reason of its Monosyllables, of which I have said enough for any body at all versed in these Matters, to be able to make out what is here advanc'd. But before I quit this Article, I will observe that it is to the artful and uncommon varying the Pause, that the Harmony is owing in those two celebrated Lines of Sir _John Denham_. "Tho' deep | yet clear; | tho' gentle | yet not dull. Strong | without Rage, | without o'erflowing | full. This is one of those Mysteries in Versification which the late Duke of _Bucks_ would not suffer Mr. _Dryden_ to communicate to the Publick. To the same Art is owing the Delicacy of two of the finest Lines in all the _Latin_ Tongue. "_Te | dulcis conjux | te | solo in littore | secum, Te | veniente die | te | decedente | canebat._ Of the same Nature are many Lines in _Milton_, of which this is one: "Him first | Him last | Him midst | and without End. II. I come now to the second Particular: _The Inversion of the Phrase_. Every Page affords Instances of this Nature. "--Him the Almighty Pow'r Hurl'd headlong flaming from the ethereal Sky. Again, "--Up stood the Corny Reed Embattell'd in her Field.-- Again, "--Him the most High Rapt in a balmy Cloud with winged Steeds Did, as thou saw'st, Receive. And in one of _Milton_'s juvenile Poems we have "Trip the pert Fairies.-- And, "Revels the spruce jocund Spring. _Comus._ III. The third thing to be consider'd, is, _The adapting the Sound to the Sense_. Who does not hear the Warbling of a _Brook_, the Rustling of _Wings_, the rough Sound of _Trumpets_ and _Clarions_, and the soft one of _Flutes_ and _Recorders_ in the following Lines? "Fountains, and ye that warble as ye flow Melodious Murmur warbling, tune his Praise. Again, "--But Chief the spacious Hall Thick swarm'd, both on the Ground and in the Air, _Brush'd with the Hiss of rustling Wings_. Again, "Then strait commands, that at the warlike Sound Of _Trumpets_ loud and _Clarions_, be uprear'd His mighty Standard.-- Again, "--Nor with less Dread, the loud Ethereal Trumpet from on High _'gan blow_. Again, "--Thus they Breathing united Force with fixed Thought Mov'd on _in Silence to soft Pipes_. Who does not see Porpoises and Dolphins tumbling about in the Ocean when he reads this Line? "--On smooth the Seal, And bended Dolphins play: part huge of Bulk, Wallowing unwieldy, enormous in their Gate, Tempest the Ocean.-- How variously the Rivers run in these Verses? "--So the watry Throng Wave rowling after Wave, where way they found, If steep, with Torrent rapture, if through plain Soft Ebbing.-- How is the Verse extended where the Whale lies at length upon the Ocean! "--There Leviathan Hugest of living Creatures, on the Deep Stretch'd like a Promontory sleeps.-- How does the Line labour when the Elephant is working himself through the stiff Clay, whilst the lesser Animals sprout up as it were in an Instant! "--Scarce thro' his Mould _Behemoth_, biggest born of Earth, upheav'd His Vastness.-- And, "--Fleec'd the Flocks and bleating, rose As Plants.-- But I shall have occasion to take notice of this Subject hereafter. IV. The fourth thing to be enquir'd into is, _The mixing of singular and plural Numbers_, in which _Milton_ excels. "--Flowers were the Couch Pansies, and Violets, and _Asphodel_, And _Hyacinth_, Earth's freshest softest Lap. Again, "--Through many a dark and dreary Vale They pass'd, and many a Region dolorous, O'er many a frozen, many a fiery Alp, Rocks, Caves, Lakes, Fens, Bogs, Dens, and Shades of Death. Again, "Sporting the _Lion_ ramp'd, and in his Paw Dandled the _Kid_; Bears, Tigers, Ounces, Pards, Gambol'd before them.-- Again, "--Sweet Interchange Of Hill and Valley, Rivers, Woods and Plains, Now Land, now Sea, and Shores with Forest crown'd Rocks, Dens and Caves. Again, "The glittering Guard he pass'd, and now is come Into the blissful Field, thro' Groves of Myrrh, And flow'ry Odours, _Cassia_, _Nard_, and _Balm_. V. As to the fifth Remark upon _Virgil_, which relates to his using the Particles _Que_ and _Et_ in his Verse, there can be nothing of that nature in _Milton_. So that I proceed to VI. The sixth thing to be observed, which is, _The Collocatio Verborum_. _Milton_ often places the Adjective after the Substantive, which very much raises the Stile. "Strait he commands that at the warlike Sound Of Trumpets _loud_, and Clarions, be uprear'd His mighty Standard. That proud Honour claim'd _Azazel_, as his Right; a Cherub _tall_.-- Again, "Thy Goodness beyond Thought and Pow'r _Divine_.-- And again, "Then from the Mountain hewing Timber _tall_. But the utmost of his Art in this respect consists in his removing the Adjective, the Substantive, and even the Verb, from the Line or Verse in which the Sense is previously contained, and the grammatical Construction inverted, to the Beginning of the next Line. This has a wonderful Effect; especially when the Word is a Monosyllable. "Here finish'd he, and all that he had made _View'd_--and behold all was entirely good. Again, "Over their Heads triumphant Death his Dart _Shook_--But refus'd to strike. This artful Collocation commands the Attention, and makes the Reader feel and see what is offer'd to him. That this Effect is owing to the Collocation will appear by considering any one of the Instances now produc'd. For Example: "Over their Heads triumphant Death his Dart _Shook_.-- This Passage makes the Reader see Death with his Dart in his Hand, making it over the Heads of the unhappy Creatures describ'd in the _Lazar-house_, as plainly as if the whole was painted upon Canvas. But let this Line be alter'd thus: "Over their Heads Death shook his dreadful Dart. How much of the Fire and Spirit of this Passage is lost, will be easily perceiv'd. I was long of Opinion that _Milton_ had invented this Art himself, for I knew he had it not from _Virgil_: The _Latin_ Language is hardly capable of it. But by Accident I found _Milton_ learn'd it from _Homer_, though it is plain what is _Art_ in the former was _Chance_ in the latter; which cannot be disputed when it is considered that in so many thousand Lines that we have of _Homer_'s, there is I believe but one single Instance of this Monosyllable Collocation; but in _Milton_ there are many, both Substantives, Adjectives and Verbs. The single Instance in _Homer_ is in _Odysse_ 9. in the Story of _Polyphemus_. [Greek: Sun de duô marpsas, hôs te phulakas poti gaiê / Kopt'] _Hom._ Odyss. _&c._ "Two of my hapless Friends with all his Pow'r, Like Dogs, the Monster on the rocky Floor DASH'D.-- Can any body be insensible of the Power of this Word, _Dash'd_, as it is here plac'd. I remember an Instance of this Monosyllable Collocation at the Beginning of a Line in rhym'd Verse, which is very well worth inserting here. It is at the Conclusion of Mr. _Pit_'s 4th _Æneid_, when _Juno_ sends _Iris_ from Heaven in haste to relieve _Dido_ from the Agonies of Death. _"Tum Juno Omnipotens, longum miserata dolorem, Difficilesque obitus, Irim_ Demisit Olympo _Quæ luctantem animam, nexosque resolveret artus_. "Then mighty _Juno_ with a melting Eye, Beheld her dreadful Anguish from the Sky; And bade fair _Iris_ from the starry Pole, _Fly_, and enlarge her agonizing Soul. How is the Verse animated by the placing that Monosyllable, _Fly_, at the Beginning of the last Line.--The Reader sees all the Concern of _Juno_, and all the Hurry she is in to get the unhappy Queen released from the Pangs of Death. _Milton_ likewise uses his Monosyllables very artfully in placing them at the Conclusion of a Line, so as to divide the last Foot of the Verse, which has a very extraordinary Effect. "Silence, ye troubled Waves, and thou, _Deep_, Peace. Again he divides the last Foot by making a Monosyllable the Beginning of a new Sentence, which is very pleasing. "--Up flood the Corny Reed Imbattled in his Plain, the humble Furz And Bush with frisled Hair implicit. _Last_ Rose as in Dance the stately Trees. _Milton_ also sometimes places two Monosyllables at the End of the Line, stopping at the 4th Foot, to adapt the Measure of the Verse to the Sense; and then begins the next Line in the same manner, which has a wonderful Effect. "Now at their shady Lodge arriv'd, _both stopt_, _Both turn'd_, and under open Sky ador'd The God who made, _&c._ This artful Manner of writing makes the Reader see them _Stop_ and _Turn_ to worship God before they went into their Bower. If this Manner was alter'd, much of the Effect of the Painting would be lost. "And now arriving at their shady Lodge _Both stopt, both turn'd_, and under open Sky Ador'd the God, _&c._ This falls very short of the Original. So in _Latin_, "_Jamq; domûs ventum est umbrosæ ad limina_: sistunt Ambo, ambo vertunt, & _aperto numen adorant Sub Coelo._-- Alter these Lines, thus, "_Et nunc Arborei ventum est ad limina tecti_; Sistunt Ambo, Ambo vertunt, & _numen Adorant Sub Coelo._-- There is here just the same Difference in the _Latin_ as in the _English_. I cannot omit two other Instances of _Milton_'s wonderful Art in the Collocation of Words, by which the Thoughts are exceedingly heighten'd. "Under his forming Hands a Creature grew Manlike, but different Sex, so lovely fair, That what seem'd fair in all the World, seem'd now _Mean_, or in her summ'd up.-- What a Force has that Word _mean_, as it is plac'd! Again, "I turn'd my Thoughts, and with capacious Mind Considered all Things visible in Heav'n, Or Earth, or Middle, all Things fair and good; But all that Fair and Good, in thy Divine _Semblance_, and in thy Beauty's heav'nly Ray United I beheld-- I presume there is no other Language in which Perfection equal to this is to be found: And I could give many more Instances of the same kind out of the _Paradise Lost_. VII. The seventh Particular in _Virgil_ was his _Varying the Common Pronunciation_, in which _Milton_ has imitated him in several Places; the following is one Instance. "--Thus to his Son au--[=di]--bly spake. For so it must be read, and not after the common manner. Again, "Hoarse Murmur eccho'd to his Words Applause Thro' the in--[=fi]--nite Host-- And the like in many other Places. VIII. _His Verses contrary to the Common Measure._ The following is an Example of this kind. "Drove headlong down to the Bottomless Pit.-- Those who may be apt to find fault with such Arts as these (for Arts they are in _Virgil_ and _Milton_) little think what it is to write 10 or 12 thousand Lines, and to vary the Sound of them in such manner as to entertain the Ear from the Beginning to the End of the Work. IX. I come now to the _Alliteratio_. And 1. To speak of the single _Alliteratio_. This is so common in _Milton_, that you need but begin the Poem, or open any Page of it, and you will meet with it. "Of Man's _first_ Disobedience, and the _Fruit_ Of that forbidden _Tree_, whose mortal _Taste_ Brought Death into the _World_, and all our _Woe_. Again, "_Restore_ us, and _Regain_ the blissful Seat. And "_Sing_ Heav'nly Muse! that on the _Secret_ Top. And a little lower, "That _Shepherd_ who first taught the chosen _Seed_. But I will produce an Example or two of this kind out of our Author's juvenile Poems. His Verses upon the Circumcision are addressed to the Angels that appear'd to the Shepherds, and begin thus, "Ye flaming Pow'rs, and _winged Warriors_ bright, That erst with Musick and triumphant Song Through the _soft Silence_ of the listning Night _So sweetly sung_ your Joy the Clouds along. All the Masters of Verse from _Chaucer_ to _Milton_, and from _Milton_ to this time, were sensible of this Art. _Dryden_ attends to it more than any thing else. "_Beneath_ the Shade which _Beechen Boughs_ diffuse, _You Tityrus_ entertain _your_ Sylvan Muse: _Round_ the _wide World_ in Banishment _we roam_, _Forc'd from_ our pleasing _Fields_ and native Home. Again, _Arms and_ the Man I sing, who _forc'd_ by _Fate_ And _haughty_ Juno's unrelenting _Hate_, _Expell'd_ and _Exil'd_, left the _Trojan_ Shore: _Long Labours_, both by Sea and _Land_ he bore. Mr. _Pope_ begins his Poems with this Delicacy. "_First_ in these _Fields_ I try the _Sylvan Strains_, Nor _blush_ to sport on _Windsor's blissful_ Plains. _Fair_ Thames _flow_ gently _from_ thy _Sacred Spring_, While on thy Banks _Sicilian_ Muses _Sing_; Let Vernal Airs _thro' tre_mbling Osiers play, And _Albion_'s Cliffs _resound_ the _rural_ Lay. You, that too wise for _Pride_, too good for _Pow'r_ Enjoy the _Glory_ to be _great_ no more. Mr. _Pitt_ has the following Lines in his 2d _Æneid_. "So when an _aged Ash_, whose Honours rise From some _steep_ Mountain tow'ring to the _Skies_, With many _an Axe_ by _shouting Swains_ is ply'd, _Fierce_ they repeat the _Strokes from_ every _Side_; _The tall Tree trembling_, as the Blows go round, Bows the _high Head_, and nods to every Wound. Sir _Philip Sidney_, who was very unhappy in Versification, seems to have despised this Beauty in Verse, and even to have thought it an Excellence to fix the Pause always in one Place, namely at the End of the second Foot: So that he must have had no more Ear for Poetry than Mr. _Cowley_. Not but that I am apt to think some Writers in Sir _Philip Sidney_'s time carried this matter to a ridiculous Extreme. Others thought this Beauty a Deformity, and concluded it so from two or three silly _Latin_ Lines of _Ennius_ and _Tully,_ such as, _O Tite, Tute, Tati_, &c. And, _O Fortunatam, natam_, &c. without ever attending to _Virgil_ in the least. _Spencer_ every where abounds in all his Works with _Alliterations_; I will produce but one, which is exceeding beautiful. "The _Lilly, Lady_ of the _Flow'ry Field_. Here is a double initial Alliteration, and a continual mix'd Alliteration of the liquid _L_, which makes the Verse so very musical that there are few such Lines in our, or any other Language. _Fairfax_, who was one of the first curious Versifyers amongst us, embellishes his Lines continually with this Ornament. In his Description of a Troop of fighting Monks, in his first Book of his Translation of _Tasso_, are these Lines. "Their jolly Notes, they _Chanted_ loud and _Clear_: And _horrid Helms high_ on their _Heads_ they bear. Than which Verses nothing can be more truly poetical. But to go farther back than either _Fairfax_ or _Spencer_, those celebrated Lines in our antient Translation of the _Psalms_ owe their greatest Beauty to their _Alliteration_. "The Lord descended from above, And bow'd the _Heavens high_, And underneath his Feet he cast The Darkness of the Sky. "On _Cherubs_ and on _Cherubims_ Full _royally_ he _rode_, And on the _Wings_ of mighty _Winds_ Came flying _all abroad_. A Line of _Chaucer_'s just now offers itself to my Memory, which has almost all the Arts of Poetry in it. "A _Sheffield_ Whittle bare _he_ in _his Hose_. There is a fine Alliteration in the Conclusion of the Line, Bare _he_ in _his Hose_, and a mix'd one at the Beginning of it. The _h_ in the first Syllables of the second and third Words mixes the Sound very agreeably; and lastly, the Inversion of the Phrase (where the Nominative is put immediately after the Verb) is extremely poetical. _Bare he._ _Chaucer_ seems (to me) by the help of a delicate Ear, and a curious Judgment, to have learnt all his Graces from _Virgil_. 1. His Rhyme. 2. His Inversion of the Phrase: And 3. His Alliteratio. The Varying of the Pause he does not seem to have attended to. But to return to _Milton_. Having spoken sufficiently of the _Initial_, I come now to the _mix'd Alliteration_. And this latter is almost as common as the former, and is to be found in all such Lines as these. "--And now is come Into the _blissful Field_.-- Every Ear must perceive how the _f_ and the _l_ are mingled in the two last Words. Again, "--Th[r=]o' G[r=]oves of My[rr=]h.-- Here the rough _r_ predominates as much as the soft _l_ did in the first Part of the Verse. Again, "And _Flow'r_y O_dours_.-- Here the _Allusio Verborum_ is introduc'd. _Flow'r_ at the Beginning of the first Word, and _Dour_ at the End of the second, make a most agreeable Harmony. The Line concludes with what may be call'd the _Assultus_, or the Attack upon the Ear. "--_C[=a]ssi[=a], N[=a]rd [=a]nd B[=a]lm._-- These five _A_'s in four Words at the End of the Line must make themselves perceiv'd if Words can do it. 'Tis of the same kind as _Virgil_'s, "--_Tumid[=a] æquor[=a] pl[=a]c[=a]t._ But it may be proper to add another Instance or two of the _Allusio Verborum_. "So talk'd the _spirited sly Snake_, and _Eve_ Yet more amaz'd.-- Again, "When from the _Boughs_ a savoury Odour _blown_. Again, "Immediately the Mountains huge appear Emergent, and their _broad bare Backs_ upheave Into the Clouds.-- Again, "--Scarce from his Mould _Behemoth, biggest born_ of Earth, upheav'd His Vastness.-- Spirited sly Snake.--Boughs blown.--Broad bare Backs.--_Behemoth_ biggest born. All these Passages are in the same Stile of Sound as _Virgil_'s-- _Metuens_, _Molem_, _Montis_. "_Hoc metuens, molemque & montis insuper altos Imposuit._-- Observe how the _molemque_ & _montis_ labour in the Verse exactly in the same manner as Broad, bare Backs, and _Behemoth_ biggest born. But here let me give you a few more Instances of the _Allusio Verborum_, or the mixing of Sounds of Words in rhym'd Verse. "As o'er th'Aerial _Alps_ sublimely spread Some aged Oak uprears his reverend Head. _Pit_'s Æneid. A Gentleman justly esteemed for his great Learning and excellent Skill in Criticism, but not of so delicate an Ear as Mr. _Pit_, would have had him writ, _As on th'Aerial Alps_. But then the Verse would have wanted much of its Harmony, because _O'er_ mingles in Sound with _A'er_ which _On_ does not; and the same thing would have happen'd in the next Line, if it had stood thus-- _Some aged Oak uplifts his mighty Head_.--Because _uplifts_ and _mighty_ have no Resemblance in Sound to each other, or to _Aged_ and _Head_; but as the Line stands, "Some aged Oak uprears his Reverend Head, the Words all melt into one another, and the Musick dies along the Verse from the Beginning to the End. This is the greatest Delicacy of Poetry, neither are the other Graces wanting in this Verse. The Pause is properly varied, the first Line is entirely suspended. There is in it a double Alliteration, _Aerial Alps, sublimely spread_: And to conclude all, the Rhyme is as perfect as possible. Octob. 11. 1736. _I am_, SIR, _&c._ * * * * * _P.S._ In looking over this Letter I observe a Passage in _Milton_, which merits a very particular Consideration, and which I ought to have taken notice of before, when I was speaking of the Collocation of Words; the Passage I mean is, _For since I first_, &c. The entire Passage runs thus, "_Eve, easily_ may Faith admit that all The Good which we enjoy, from Heav'n descends; _But_, that from _us_ ought should ascend to Heav'n So prevalent as to concern the Mind Of God high-blest, or to incline his Will, Hard to belief may seem; _yet_ this will Prayer, Or one short Sigh of human Breath, up born Ev'n to the Seat of God. For since I sought By Pray'r th' offended Deity to appease; _Kneel'd_ and before him humbled all my Heart, Methought I saw him placable and mild, Bending his Ear, _&c._ How extremely fine is the Poetry of this Passage? How soft is the beginning, occasion'd by the Assonance of the two first Words, _Eve_, _Easily_, and of the five next all alliterated with the same Vowel, _A_ "--_May Faith admit that all._ How solemn is the Pause at the 1st Syllable of the 3d Line! _But_-- And the Cæsure upon the Monosyllable _Us_ that follows immediately, "_But_--that from _us_-- And the same Energy is plainly perceiv'd at the End of the 6th Line, where the Cæsure is plac'd upon the Monosyllable _yet_, "_Yet_--this will Prayer, _&c._ But when we come to that Line, "_Kneel'd_; and before Him humbled all my Heart, such is the Force of the Word _kneel'd_ in that Situation, that we actually see _Adam_ upon his Knees before the offended Deity; and by the Conclusion of this Paragraph,--_Bending his Ear_, Infinite Goodness is visibly as it were represented to our Eyes as inclining to hearken to the Prayers of his penitent Creature. LETTER VI. _SIR,_ [Sidenote: XI.] I am now to proceed to the _Assonantia Syllabarum_ or _Rhyme_. I have shown under this Head how much _Virgil_ abounds in _Rhyme_; from whence I conclude, that it may be reasonably supposed _Rhyme_ had its Original from a nobler Beginning than the Barbarity of _Druids_ and _Monks_. It is very probable that _Chaucer_, _Dante_, and _Petrarch_ learnt it from _Virgil_, and that other Nations follow'd the Example they had set them. To say the _Bards_ rhym'd in the Times of grossest Ignorance, merely by their own Invention, only proves that Rhyme is naturally harmonious. We are told by the Learned that the _Hebrew_ Poetry is in _Rhyme_, and that where-ever any Footsteps of this Art are to be trac'd, _Rhyme_ is always found, whether in _Lapland_ or in _China_. If it should be objected that the _Greek_ Tongue is an Exception to this general Rule; that Matter perhaps may be disputed, or a particular Answer might be given. But that the _Latin_ Language is a Friend to _Rhyme_ is clear beyond all doubt; and the same is as true of all the living Tongues that are distinguished in the learned World. It is no wonder that _Verse_ without _Rhyme_ has so many Advocates amongst the Dealers in Poetry, because of its Facility. _Rhym'd_ Verse, with all its Ornaments, especially the artful Way of varying the Pause, is exceeding difficult; and so are all the curious Productions of Art. Fine Painting, fine Musick or Sculpture, are all very hard to perform; it is the Difficulty that makes those Performances so deserving of Applause when they attain the highest Perfection. As to the Matter before us; _Rhyme_ (as Mr. _Dryden_ justly observes) never was _Milton_'s Talent: This appears from his juvenile Poems. And when he sate down to write the _Paradise lost_, his Imagination was too vigorous, too lofty to be shackled by _Rhyme_. It must be own'd that a thousand Beauties would have been lost, which now shine with amazing Splendor in that Poem, if _Milton_ had writ in the most exquisite _Rhyme_. But then on the other hand, it is as certain that upon the whole it would have been a more agreeable Poem to the Generality of Readers than it is at present. Of this Opinion was the learned Foreigner mentioned in a former Letter, a judicious Critick both in the ancient and modern Languages. "Quicquid tamen ejus sit, ostendunt Miltoni scripta virum vel in ipsâ juventute: quæ enim ille adolescens scripsit carmina Latina, unà cum Anglicis edita, ætatem illam longè superant, quâ ille vir scripsit poëmata Anglica, sed sine rythmis, quos, ut pestes carminum vernaculorum, abesse volebat, _quale illud decem libris constans, The Paradise Lost_, plena ingenii & acuminis sunt, sed insuavia tamen videntur ob _rythmi_ defectum; quem ego abesse à tali carminum genere non posse existimo, quicquid etiam illi, & Italis nonnullis, & nuper Isaaco Vossio in libro _de Poematum cantu_, videatur." _Polyhist._ However, we must take _Paradise Lost_ as it is, and rejoice that we have in it, one of the finest Works that ever the Wit of Man produc'd: But then the Imperfection of this Work must not be pleaded in favour of such other Works as have hardly any thing worthy of Observation in them. Placing _Milton_ with his blank Verse by himself (as indeed he ought to be in many other respects, for he certainly has no Companion) this Dispute about the Excellency of _blank_ Verse, and even the Preference of it to _rhym'd_ Verse, may be determined by comparing two Writers of Note, who have undertaken the same Subject; that is, _Virgil_'s Æneid. Now I will take all the Passages of that Poem mentioned in my Letters to you, and compare them in these two Translations: And if it shall appear by the Comparison that the _rhym'd_ Verses have not only more Harmony and Conciseness, but likewise that they express _Virgil_'s Sense more fully and more perspicuously than the _blank_ Verse, will it not be easy to determine which of these two Sorts ought to be preferr'd? Octob. 22. 1736. _I am_, SIR, _&c._ * * * * * _P.S._ When I was taking notice of _Virgil_'s Arts of Versification, I should not have omitted his sudden varying the Tense of the Verb from the Preterperfect to the Present. "_Non tua te nobis, Genitrix pulcherrima talem_ Promisit, _Graiisque ideo bis_ vindicat _armis_. This is very agreeable both as to the Verse and the Sense; for it makes the thing described more immediately present than it would be otherwise. I cannot just now recollect an Example in _Milton_ of this nature, but I remember one in _Fairfax_, in a Couplet already cited. "Their jolly Notes they _chanted_ loud and clear, And horrid Helms high on their Heads they _bear_. This is much more lively and peinturesque than if he had writ _bore_, and you will easily perceive it. It may be said, perhaps, that _Fairfax_ used _bear_ here for the sake of the Verse; let that be allow'd, but then it must be likewise granted, that _Virgil_ uses _vindicat_ instead of _vindicavit_, for the sake of his Verse, which he would not have done, if it had not been more beautiful than the common Prose way of writing: And as it is an Excellency in _Virgil_, so it is in _Fairfax_. LETTER VII. _SIR,_ I am now to collect the Passages of the _Æneid_, mentioned in my former Letters, and bring them together with the _rhym'd_ and _blank_ Verse Translations. The first Passage is this (not to take notice of the very first Lines, which Mr. _Pit_ has translated in two different manners) "_Sic cunctus pelagi cecidit fragor, æquora postquam Prospiciens genitor, coeloque invectus aperto Flectit equos, curruque volans dat lora secundo._ Dr. _Trapp_, "So all the hurry of the Ocean ceas'd, Soon as its God appear'd above the Waves: Who, managing his Steeds in Air serene, Flies swift with slacken'd Reins and loose Career. Mr. _Pit_, "Then did the roaring Waves their Rage compose, When the great Father of the Flood arose, Rapt by his Steeds he flies in open Day, Throws up the Reins, and skims the watry Way. "_Atque rotis summas levibus pellabitur undas._ Dr. _Trapp_, "And with light Wheels upon the Surface rides, Mr. _Pit_, "Then mounted on his radiant Carr he rides, And wheels along the Level of the Tides. Again, "_Æole (namque tibi divûm pater atque hominum rex Et mulcere dedit fluctus, & tollere vento)_ Dr. _Trapp_, "--O Æolus (for thee The Sire of Gods, and King of Men impow'rs To smooth the Waves, or raise them with the Wind.) Mr. _Pit_, "--Since mighty _Jove_, The King of Men, and Sire of Gods above, Gives thee, great _Æolus_, the Power to raise Storms at thy sovereign Will, and smooth the Seas. Again, "_Sit ait, & dicto citius tumida æquora placat, Collectasque fugat nubes, solemque reducit._ Dr. _Trapp_, "So spake the God, and sooner than he spoke Appeas'd the tossing of the Waves, dispell'd The Clouds collected, and restor'd the Sun. Mr. _Pit_, "He spoke, and speaking chas'd the Clouds away: Hush'd the loud Billows, and restor'd the Day. Again, "--_Fotum Gremio dea tollit in altos Idaliæ lucos._ Dr. _Trapp_, "--And on her Bosom hush'd, Carries him to _Idalia_'s lofty Groves.-- Mr. _Pit_, "Lull'd in her Lap to rest, the Queen of Love Conveys him to the soft _Idalian_ Grove. Again, "--_Ubi tot Simois correpta sub undis Scuta virûm, galeasque, & fortia corpora volvit,_ Dr. _Trapp_, "Where _Simois_ in his rapid Torrent rolls So many Warriour Bodies, Helms and Shields. Mr. _Pit_, "Where _Simois_ Streams incumber'd with the Slain, Roll'd Shields, and Helms, and Heroes to the Main. Again, "_Urbs antiqua fuit, Tyrii tenuere coloni Carthago, Italiam contra, Tiberinaque longe Ostia, dives opum, studiisque asperrima belli,_ Dr. _Trapp_, "Fronting th' _Italian_ Coast, and _Tyber_'s Mouth, Tho' far remote, an ancient City stood. _Carthage_ its Name, a Colony of _Tyre_, Mighty in Wealth, and rough in study'd War, Mr. _Pit_, "Against th' _Italian_ Coast, of ancient Fame, A City rose, and _Carthage_ was the Name; A _Tyrian_ Colony: From _Tyber_ far, Rich, rough, and brave, and exercis'd in War, Again, "_Hoc metuens, molemque & montis insuper altos Imposuit, regemque dedit, qui foedere certo Et premere, & laxas sciret dare jussus habenas,_ Dr. _Trapp_, "But fearing this, the Sovereign of the Gods Pent them in gloomy Caves, and o'er them threw Vast Piles of massy Rocks; impos'd a King, Who should by certain Measures know to curb, Or, when commanded, to indulge their Rage. Mr. _Pit_, "But _Jove_, the mighty Ruin to prevent, In gloomy Caves th'Aereal Captives pent: O'er their wild Rage the pond'rous Rock he spread, And hurl'd huge Heaps of Mountains on their Head; And gave a King commissioned to restrain And curb the Tempest, or to loose the Rein. _Hurl'd_, _huge_, _Heaps_, _Head_, all in the same Line, imitate Virgil's _Metuens_, _Molem_, _Montis_. And again, "--_Facti de nomine_ Byrsam; _Sed vos qui tandem, quibus aut venistis ab oris, Quove tenetis iter?_-- Dr. _Trapp_, "--And the Name of _Byrsa_ gave In Mem'ry of the Deed. But, in your turn, At length inform me, who, and whence you are, _And whither bound_?-- Mr. _Pit_, "Hence _Byrsa_ nam'd: But now ye Strangers, say, Who? Whence you are? And whither lies your way?-- There is no Occasion to make any more Remarks upon these Lines. Nov. 20. 1736. _I am_, SIR, _&c._ LETTER VIII. _SIR,_ It has been said by several Persons, especially by Foreigners, that there is no such thing as Measure or Feet, or long and short Syllables in _English_ Words. This Mistake, I believe, is chiefly owing to _Vossius_, who has advanc'd it in his Treatise _De Poematum Cantu_, &c. As also, that the _French_ Language is more fit for Heroick Verse than the _English_. To examine one or both of these Points will be the Subject of this Letter. That our Language does not abound with Dactyls and Spondees is very true; but that we have Words enough which are perfect Iambick and Trochaick Feet is very certain, and this naturally makes our Verse Iambick. _Divine_, _Attend_, _Directs_, are as perfect Iambicks as any _Latin_ Words of two Syllables, and so are most of our Monosyllable Nouns with their Particles. _The Lord_, _The Man_, _The Rock_. Every one must perceive that in all these Words, the last Syllable strikes the Ear more than the first, or, in other Words, the last is longer than the first, which is all that makes an Iambick _Latin_ Foot. The following Words, _People_, _Substance_, _Angels_, _Chearful_, and the like, are all Trochaick Feet; for it is easily observ'd, that the first Syllable dwells longer on the Ear than the latter. I wonder that _Vossius_, who was a Canon of _Windsor_, did not perceive this in the Metre which he could not but often have heard at Church. "All People that on Earth do dwell Sing to the Lord with chearful Voice. Suppose these two Lines were alter'd thus, "All ye People that on Earth dwell, Sing to the Lord with Voice chearful. Here the natural Sound of the Words _People_ and _Chearful_ is very much alter'd, by their being wrong plac'd; or rather, the Verse is quite destroy'd: But to chuse an Example from _Milton_. "And if our _Substance_ be _indeed Divine_.-- Let this be alter'd, "And indeed Divine if be our Substance.-- Is not the Verse quite destroy'd by this Alteration? And does it not appear to be so, because _Indeed_ and _Divine_, which are Iambick Feet, are plac'd as if they were Trochaick, and _Substance_, which is a Trochaick Foot, is plac'd as if it were an Iambick? But I might have omitted the altering of this Line of _Milton_'s, if I had thought of one in _Cowley's Davideis_, which is as barbarous as it is possible for the Wit of Man to make a Verse. "To Divine Nobé directs then his Flight. _Lib. 3. v. 3._ _Nobé_, Mr. _Cowley_ says in his Notes, he puts instead of _Nob_, because that Word seem'd to him to be _unheroical_. But that is not what I am chiefly to take notice of. _Divine_ and _Directs_ are both Iambicks, but Mr. _Cowley_ has made them both Trochaicks, which makes this Line so terrible to the Ear. It is plain that _Vossius_, who came into _England_ when he was pretty much advanc'd in Years, and in all probability convers'd chiefly in _Latin_ or _French_, knew nothing at all of the Pronunciation of _English_ Words. We have as certainly Feet or Numbers in our Language, as in the _Latin_; and indeed the _Latin_ seems to me to be rather more arbitrary in this respect than the _English_. What Reason can be given why _ma_ in _manus_ is short, and _ma_ in _manes_ long? Why is _a_ in _amens_ long, and _a_ in _amans_ short, and the like of other Words too numerous to relate? That all _English_ Verses are _Iambick_, appears most plainly by considering Monosyllable Lines. For Example: "Arms and the Man I sing, who forc'd by Fate. Here _Arms_, _the_, _I_, _who_, _by_, appear to be shorter in their Sound than _and_, _man_, _sing_, _forc'd_, _fate_. Again, "Breathe soft or loud, and wave your Tops, ye Pines. In this Line the same Difference is perceiv'd between _breathe_, _or_, _your_, _ye_; and _soft_, _loud_, _wave_, _tops_, _pines_. Whence it is evident that these Lines are perfectly Iambick. The Particle _and_, as well as some other Monosyllables, may be said to be common, like many Words in _Latin_; they submit themselves to be alter'd by the Voice in reading, and may be pronounced either long or short: But this is not so in other Words. And here it may be proper to observe, that _Milton_ has a very artful Way of varying his Numbers, by putting a Trochaick Foot at the Beginning of a Verse; and the Reason why he could do it, is, that the Verse is not enough form'd in that place for the Ear to perceive the Want of the proper Measure. The Examples of this kind are very numerous: I will mention but two. "_Angels_, for ye behold him, and with Song. And again, "_Fountains_, and ye that warble as ye flow. Nov. 27. 1736. _I am_, SIR, _&c._ LETTER IX. _SIR,_ To reply to the Opinion that _Vossius_ has given in favour of _French_ Verse compared with _English_, I would observe in the first Place that what the _French_ call Heroick Verse, is the very worst Sort of Verse that can be contriv'd. If the Excellence of Verse consists chiefly in varying the Pause, as I have shewn it does in the _Latin_, and could do the same in the _Greek_ and other Languages; what must be thought of that Sort of Versification in which the Pause is most strictly preserv'd in the same Place in every Line, be it for 10 or 20 thousand together, especially in Verses of 12 Syllables? Perhaps an _Englishman_ may not be a very proper Person to make this Objection to _French_ Verse: I will therefore produce the Opinion of several of their own Writers. _Ronsard_, in the Preface to his _Franciade_, owns that their _Alexandrine_ Lines have too much prattle (_ils ont trop de caquet_) and that it is a Fault in their Poetry that one Line does not run into another, and therefore he wrote his _Franciade_ in Verses of ten Syllables, and broke the Measure. The Author of the History of _French_ Poetry confesses, that the constant Pause in their Lines makes the Poetry tedious; and the judicious and learned Translator of _Quintilian_ says directly, that it is owing to the continual Sameness of Numbers that their Verse cannot please long. In reality, it is a kind of Stanza, and ought to be so writ. _Jeune & vaillant Heros Dont la haute sagesse N'est point le fruit tardif D'une lente vieillesse._ Not to insist upon the _Prattle_ (as _Ronsard_ calls it) of these two celebrated Lines; for what does _Vaillant_ add to _Heros_, or _haute_ to _sagesse_, and what is the Difference between _tardif_ and _lente_? I say to let this pass, the eternal Repetition of the same Pause is the Reverse of Harmony: Three Feet and three Feet for thousands of Lines together, make exactly the same Musick as the ting, tong, tang of the same Number of Bells in a Country-Church. We had this wretched sort of Metre amongst us formerly, and _Chaucer_ is justly stil'd the Father of _English_ Verse, because he was the first that ever wrote in rhym'd Couplets of ten Syllables each Line. He found, by his Judgment, and the Delicacy of his Ear, that Lines of eight Syllables, such as _Gower_ his Cotemporary wrote in, were too short, and the twelve Syllable-Lines too long. He pitch'd upon the other Sort just mentioned, and that is now found, by the Experience of so many Ages, to be the most majestick and most harmonious kind of Verse. Just the same Obligation the _Romans_ had to _Ennius_: He first introduc'd the Hexameter Line, and therefore is properly called the Father of their Poetry; and it is judiciously said, that if they had never had _Ennius_, perhaps they had never had _Virgil_. If the _French_ had taken _Ronsard_'s Advice instead of following _Malherbe_, perhaps they might, and indeed they certainly would have arriv'd at a better Art of Versification than we see now amongst them: But they have miss'd their Way; tho' had it happen'd otherwise, they could never have equall'd the _English_ in Poetry, because their Language is not capable of it, for two Reasons which I shall mention, and many others that I could add to them. _1st_, Their Words do not sound so fully as ours, of which these Nouns are Examples, _God_, _Dieu_. _Man_, _L'Homme_. In both the _English_ Words every Letter is perceiv'd by the Ear. In the _French_ the first Word is of a very confused Sound, and the latter dies away in the _e_ mute. So _Angels_, _Ange_. _Head_, _Tete_. And innumerable others. And in Verbs, _to love_, _to hate_, _Aimer_, _Hayir_. In the _English_ the Sound is clear and strong. In _French_ the last Letter is dropp'd, and the Words don't dwell upon the Ear like the _English_. _2d_, They have too many Particles: To shew how much more their Verse is incumber'd by them than the _English_, I will give you an Example from a Passage in _Milton_. "So spoke, so wish'd much humbled _Eve_, but Fate Subscrib'd not; Nature first gave Signs, imprest On Bird, Beast, Air; Air suddenly eclips'd After short blush of Morn.-- Now to put this Passage into _French_ all the following Particles must be added. _Le_, _La_, _Des_, _Les_, _Les_, _Le_, _Le_, _Un_, _Du_. Of which there is not one in the _English_: And what an Effect this would have in Heroick Verse, you will easily judge. Upon the whole, _Vossius_ was very little acquainted with _English_ Heroic Poetry. _Hudibras_ was the favourite Bard in his time, and therefore he does us the Honour to say, the _English_ is extremely fit for that sort of Poetry which the _Italians_ call _Sdruccioli_, that is, Doggrel Verse. Thus much for _Vossius_, and his _French_ and _English_ Poetry. I will now shew you a very different Opinion of another learned Foreigner, referr'd to more than once already, and I will give it you in his own Words. "_Sane in Epico Carminum genere_; Joh. Miltoni _insigne poema_, The Paradise Lost, _Gallos omnes in epicis inseliciores longo post se intervallo reliquit_. Morhosius Polyhistor. This judicious Critick gave the same Opinion of Mr. _Cowley_ above 50 Years ago, which Mr. _Pope_ has given of him lately in one of his _Horatian_ Epistles. "Abr. Cowley _seu Coulejus poemata scripsit_, &c. _Quæ ad genium Virgiliani Carminis non accedunt: argutiis enim nimium indulget, ut Epigrammaticum potius quod interdum scribat, quam planum carmen: Ac præterea non ubique purus est: quanquam Angli illum omnes veterum Poetarum numeros implevisse sibi persuadeant._ Foreigners, I am apt to think, frequently judge with more Exactness of our Countrymen's Performances than the generality of the Natives. I think the Judgment of another learned Foreigner very sensible, when he says upon reading _Virgilium Dryd[)e]ni_, "That if the Original had been no better than the Copy, _Augustus_ would have done well to have committed it to the Flames." But the Author's own Words are worth perusing. "_Sæpe, Maro, dixi, quantum mutatus ab illo es! Romani quondam qui stupor orbis eras. Si te sic tantum voluisset vivere Cæsar, Quam satius, flammis te periisse foret._ _Vid._ Fabric. Bib. Lat. December 4. 1736, _I am_, SIR, _&c._ LETTER X. _SIR,_ By what I have shewn in the preceding Letters, it sufficiently appears that _Virgil_ and _Milton_ had good reason to begin with _Hinc canere incipiam_. _Nunc te Bacche canam._ _Arma Virumque cano._ _Sing Heavenly Muse._ Their Verse is all _Musick_, and that is the reason why their Poems please, though ever so often read: And all Poetry that is not attended with Harmony, is properly speaking no Poetry at all. Let the Sense be ever so fine, if the _Verse_ is not _melodious_, the Reader will undoubtedly find himself soon overtaken with Drowsiness. But what I chiefly hope I have made out, is, that _Rhyme_ does not owe its Original to _Druids_, or to _dreaming Monks_, since it is certain there is more _Rhyme_ in _Virgil_, than there can be in any _English_ Translation of his Works. _English_ Verse never admits but of two Syllables that Rhyme in two Lines. But in _Virgil_, it is not easy to tell how many Rhymes there are in a single Line; as for Example, "_O nimium Coelo, & pelago confise sereno,_ "_Et sola in siccâ secum spatiatur arenâ._ And the like. But what would you say, if I was to observe to you all that _Erythræus_ has writ of the Rhyme _Cum intervallo, & sine intervallo_ in _Virgil_? Of the Rhyme _sine intervallo_ there are four Examples in the two first Lines of the _Æneid_, namely, in the first, _no_--_tro_, and _qui_--_pri_. In the second, _to_--_pro_, and _que_-- _ve_. "_Arma virumque can[=o], tr[=o]jæ qu[=i] pr[=i]mus ab oris Italiam, fat[=o] pr[=o]fugus, Lavinaqu[=e] v[=e]nit._-- But for this particular, and the other just mentioned, I refer you to _Erythræus_ himself, if you would be fully instructed on this Subject. The Conclusion of this whole Matter is this: Rhyme is certainly one of the chief Ornaments of _Latin_ Verse, even of _Virgil_'s Verse: Most of his wonderful, harmonious Paragraphs are concluded with a full, strong, plain Rhyme: And if this is the Case; if _Virgil_'s Verse would lose one of its chief Ornaments by being stript of Rhyme, What would _English_ Verse do without it? Those learned Persons who in their Writings have treated Rhyme only as a needless _Gingle_, had not fully considered all that could be said on this Subject: _Rhyme_, as I have observed once before, has many Enemies because of its Difficulty, when accompanied with all the other necessary Arts of Versification. It is a particular Talent which very few are blessed with, and ought to be esteemed accordingly: But if we give way to the Disuse of it, and even suffer Blank Verse to be brought in Competition with it, Poetry will in a short time be lost in _England_, as it has been long since in _Italy_, and, if I mistake not, from this very Cause. They have Blank-vers'd _Homer_, _Virgil_, and _Milton_, and I believe all the _Classick Poets_: And if we follow their Example in giving Applause to this kind of Verse, we must expect the same Consequences. We should be the more to blame in this respect, because we have lately had so many excellent Writers of proper Verse amongst us, as _Addison_, _Rowe_, _Prior_, and many others; and have now Mr. _Pope_, Mr. _Pit_, and some whom I do not just now recollect. _Milton_, as I observ'd already, is never to be mention'd as an Example in favour of Blank-Verse: To supply the Want of _Rhyme_ in him, there are so many Arts of Verse, such Variety of Melody, that it would require no small Volume to point them out. I have nothing more to add, but that it is a very surprizing thing, that _Milton_ ever undertook to write in such a _Stile_ as he has made use of, and yet more surprizing that he should be read by all sorts of People, considering that the _Stile_ is more properly _Latin_ or _Greek_ than _English_. I believe both these Things arise from the same Cause, which to me seems to be the _English Bible_; at least, as to the latter, it cannot be from any thing else. That _Milton_ acquir'd his _Stile_ from the _Common Bible_, is not at all improbable, though he understood the Original. It is certain he was entirely conversant with the _Bible_, and, in all Probability frequently made use of the _English_ Translation. Now this Translation is, by Great Providence, (give me leave to call it so) adapted to the _Latin and Greek Collocation_, or Arrangement of Words; that is, the Words are placed in the _English_ as they stand in those Languages, which, perhaps, you may not have so much attended to but that you may be glad to see some Examples of what I am speaking of. Psalm v. 3. _My Voice shalt thou hear in the Morning, O Lord; in the Morning will I direct Prayer unto thee, and will look up._ Matthew xiii. 1. _The same Day went Jesus out of the House, and sat by the Sea-side._ Matthew xxvii. 32. _And as they came out, they found a Man of_ Cyrene, Simon _by Name_: Him _they compelled to bear his Cross_. John ii. 11. _This Beginning of Miracles did_ Jesus _in_ Cana _of_ Galilee. John xii. 16. _These things understood not his Disciples at the first._ John viii. 44. _Ye are of your Father the Devil, and the Lusts of your Father will ye do._ "_Verbo sensum cludere, multo, si compositio patiatur, optimum est. In Verbis enim Sermonis vis inest._" Quintil. By these Passages, and innumerable others that might be produc'd, it appears that the _English Bible_ is translated in such a manner as I have mentioned above: And as we see many Places in the _Paradise Lost_, which are exactly taken from this Translation, Why may we not conclude _Milton_ acquir'd much of his Stile from this Book? I can give an Instance of another very learned Person, who certainly learnt his way of Writing from it. I mean the late Dr. _Clarke_. Nothing can be more clear than his _Stile_, and yet nothing can be more like the _Greek_ or _Latin_, agreeably to the _English Bible_. I beg leave to produce one Instance from his _Exposition of the Church Catechism_. "_Next after the Creed are in natural Order plac'd the Ten Commandments._ Is there any thing in _Demosthenes_ or _Tully_ more inverted than this Passage? And yet the meanest Persons understand it, and are not at all shock'd at it; and this cannot possibly, with respect to them, proceed from any thing else, but their having been from their Childhood accustomed to this Language in the _Bible_, and their still continuing frequently to hear it in the publick Offices of the Church, and elsewhere: From whence I am apt to think Mr. _Pope_'s Opinion is not to be subscrib'd to, when he says, "_And what now_ Chaucer _is, shall_ Dryden _be_." It did not occur to that ingenious Writer, that the State of the _English_ Language is very different at this time from what it was in _Chaucer_'s Days: It was then in its Infancy: And even _the publick Worship of God was in a foreign Tongue_, a thing as fatal to the _Language_ of any Country, as to _Religion_ itself. But now we have all that Service in the vernacular Tongue; and besides that, the _Bible_ in _English_, which may be properly called the _Standard_ of our Language: For this Book contains a Variety of every kind of _Stile_, the _Poetick_, the _Historick_, the _Narrative_, and all framed after the manner of the most learned Tongues. So that whilst this _Book_ continues to be as publickly used among us as it is at present, the _English_ Language cannot receive any great Alteration; but all sorts of learned Men may write, either in Verse or Prose, in the most learned manner in their native Tongue, and at the same time be perfectly understood by the common People. Indeed, if ever we should be so unhappy as to be depriv'd of the _publick Use_ of that _Book_, all that came with it, must go with it; and then Farewel the _English Language_, Farewel _Milton_, Farewel _Learning_, and Farewel all that distinguishes Man from Beasts. Decemb. 9. 1736. _I am_, SIR, _&c._ _FINIS._ [Transcriber's Notes: Several sequential lines of poetry had opening quotes; these have been removed for clarity. Several lines have no closing quotes. These have not been corrected. LETTER I: Superfluous opening quote removed: "Subject-matter LETTER V.: Section numbered '3.' in original; changed to 'III' for consistency. LETTER X.: Corrected typo: 'primns' changed to 'primus'] 
33248	----	MILTON'S TERCENTENARY An address delivered before the Modern Language Club of Yale University on Milton's Three Hundredth Birthday. By HENRY A. BEERS NEW HAVEN Yale University Press 1910 MILTON'S TERCENTENARY It is right that this anniversary should be kept in all English-speaking lands. Milton is as far away from us in time as Dante was from him; destructive criticism has been busy with his great poem; formidable rivals of his fame have arisen--Dryden and Pope, Wordsworth and Byron, Tennyson and Browning, not to speak of lesser names--poets whom we read perhaps oftener and with more pleasure. Yet still his throne remains unshaken. By general--by well-nigh universal--consent, he is still the second poet of our race, the greatest, save one, of all who have used the English speech. The high epics, the Iliad, the Divine Comedy, do not appear to us as they appeared to their contemporaries, nor as they appeared to the Middle Ages or to the men of the Renaissance or of the eighteenth century. These peaks of song we see foreshortened or in changed perspective or from a different angle of observation. Their parallax varies from age to age, yet their stature does not dwindle; they tower forever, "like Teneriffe or Atlas unremoved." _Paradise Lost_ does not mean the same thing to us that it meant to Addison or Johnson or Macaulay, and much that those critics said of it now seems mistaken. Works of art, as of nature, have perishable elements, and suffer a loss from time's transhifting. Homer's gods are childish, Dante's hell grotesque; and the mythology of the one and the scholasticism of the other are scarcely more obsolete to-day than Milton's theology. Yet in the dryest parts of _Paradise Lost_ we feel the touch of the master. Two things in particular, the rhythm and the style, go on victoriously as by their own momentum. God the Father may be a school divine and Adam a member of Parliament, but the verse never flags, the diction never fails. The poem may grow heavy, but not languid, thin or weak. I confess that there are traits of Milton which repel or irritate; that there are poets with whom sympathy is easier. And if I were speaking merely as an impressionist, I might prefer them to him. But this does not affect my estimate of his absolute greatness. All poets, then, and lovers of poetry, all literary critics and students of language must honor in Milton the almost faultless artist, the supreme master of his craft. But there is a reason why, not alone the literary class, but all men of English stock should celebrate Milton's tercentenary. There have been poets whose technique was exquisite, but whose character was contemptible. John Milton was not simply a great poet, but a great man, a heroic soul; and his type was characteristically English, both in its virtues and its shortcomings. Of Shakspere, the man, we know next to nothing. But of Milton personally we know all that we need to know, more than is known of many a modern author. There is abundance of biography and autobiography. Milton had a noble self-esteem, and he was engaged for twenty years in hot controversies. Hence those passages of apologetics scattered through his prose works, from which the lives of their author have been largely compiled. Moreover he was a pamphleteer and journalist, as well as a poet, uttering himself freely on the questions of the day. We know his opinions on government, education, religion, marriage and divorce, the freedom of the press and many other subjects. We know what he thought of eminent contemporaries, Charles I., Cromwell, Vane, Desborough, Overton, Fairfax. It was not then the fashion to write critical essays, literary reviews and book notices. Yet, aside from his own practice, his writings are sown here and there with incidental judgments of books and authors, from which his literary principles may be gathered. He has spoken now and again of Shakspere and Ben Jonson, of Spenser, Chaucer, Euripides, Homer, the book of Job, the psalms of David, the Song of Solomon, the poems of Tasso and Ariosto, the Arthur and Charlemagne romances, of Bacon and Selden, the dramatic unities, blank verse _vs._ rhyme, and similar topics. In some aspects and relations, harsh and unlovely, egotistical and stubborn, the total impression of Milton's personality is singularly imposing. His virtues were manly virtues. Of the four cardinal moral virtues--the so-called Aristotelian virtues--temperance, justice, fortitude, prudence; which Dante symbolizes by the group of stars-- Non viste mai fuor ch' alla prima gente-- Milton had a full share. He was not always, though he was most commonly, just. Prudence, the only virtue, says Carlyle, which gets its reward on earth, prudence he had, yet not a timid prudence. Of temperance--the Puritan virtue--and all that it includes, chastity, self-reverence, self-control, _Comus_ is the beautiful hymn. But, above all, Milton had the heroic virtue, fortitude; not only passively in the proud and sublime endurance of the evil days and evil tongues on which he had fallen; of the darkness, dangers, solitude that compassed him round; but actively in "the unconquerable will * * * and courage never to submit or yield"; the courage which "bates no jot of heart or hope, but still bears up and steers right onward." There is nothing more bracing in English poetry than those passages in the sonnets, in _Paradise Lost_ and in _Samson Agonistes_ where Milton speaks of his blindness. Yet here it is observable that Milton, who is never sentimental, is also never pathetic but when he speaks of himself, in such lines, e.g., as Samson's My race of glory run, and race of shame, And I shall shortly be with them that rest." Dante has this same touching dignity in alluding to his own sorrows; but his hard and rare pity is more often aroused by the sorrows of others: by Ugolino's little starving children, or by the doom of Francesca and her lover. Milton is untender. Yet virtue with him is not always forbidding and austere. As he was a poet, he felt the "beauty of holiness," though in another sense than Archbishop Laud's use of that famous phrase. It was his "natural haughtiness," he tells us, that saved him from sensuality and base descents of mind. His virtue was a kind of good taste, a delicacy almost womanly. It is the "Lady of Christ's" speaking with the lips of the lady in _Comus_, who says --That which is not good is not delicious To a well governed and wise appetite." But there is a special fitness in this commemoration at this place. For Milton is the scholar poet. He is the most learned, the most classical, the most bookish--I was about to say the most academic--of English poets; but I remember that academic, through its use in certain connections, might imply a timid conformity to rules and models, a lack of vital originality which would not be true of Milton. Still, Milton was an academic man in a broad sense of the word. A hard student of books, he injured his eyes in boyhood by too close application, working every day till midnight. He spent seven years at his university. He was a teacher and a writer on education. I need not give the catalog of his acquirements further than to say that he was the best educated Englishman of his generation. Mark Pattison, indeed, who speaks for Oxford, denies that Milton was a regularly learned man, like Usher or Selden. That is, I understand, he had made no exhaustive studies in professional fields of knowledge such as patristic theology or legal antiquities. Of course not: Milton was a poet: he was studying for power, for self-culture and inspiration, and had little regard for a merely retrospective scholarship which would not aid him in the work of creation. Be that as it may, all Milton's writings in prose and verse are so saturated with learning as greatly to limit the range of their appeal. A poem like _Lycidas_, loaded with allusions, can be fully enjoyed only by the classical scholar who is in the tradition of the Greek pastoralists, who "knows the Dorian water's gush divine." I have heard women and young people and unlettered readers who have a natural taste for poetry, and enjoy Burns and Longfellow, object to this classical stiffness in Milton as pedantry. Now pedantry is an ostentation of learning for its own sake, and none has said harder things of it than Milton. "--Who reads Incessantly, and to his reading brings not A spirit and judgment equal or superior * * Uncertain and unsettled still remains, Deep-versed in books and shallow in himself." Cowley was the true pedant: his erudition was crabbed and encumbered the free movement of his mind, while Milton made his the grace and ornament of his verse. How charming is divine philosophy! Not harsh and crabbed, as dull fools suppose, But musical as is Apollo's lute." I think we may attribute Milton's apparent pedantry, not to a wish for display, but to an imagination familiarized with a somewhat special range of associations. This is a note of the Renaissance, and Milton's culture was Renaissance culture. That his mind derived its impetus more directly from books than from life; that his pages swarm with the figures of mythology and the imagery of the ancient poets is true. In his youthful poems he accepted and perfected Elizabethan, that is, Renaissance, forms: the court masque, the Italian sonnet, the artificial pastoral. But as he advanced in art and life, he became classical in a severer sense, discarding the Italianate conceits of his early verse, rejecting rhyme and romance, replacing decoration with construction; and finally, in his epic and tragedy modeled on the pure antique, applying Hellenic form to Hebraic material. His political and social, no less than his literary, ideals were classical. The English church ritual, with its Catholic ceremonies; the universities, with their scholastic curricula; the feudal monarchy, the medieval court and peerage--of all these barbarous survivals of the Middle Ages he would have made a clean sweep, to set up in their stead a commonwealth modeled on the democracies of Greece and Rome, schools of philosophy like the Academy and the Porch, and voluntary congregations of Protestant worshipers without priest, liturgy or symbol, practicing a purely rational and spiritual religion. He says to the Parliament: "How much better I find ye esteem it to imitate the old and elegant humanity of Greece than the barbaric pride of a Hunnish and Norwegian stateliness." And elsewhere: "Those ages to whose polite wisdom and letters we owe that we are not yet Goths and Jutlanders." So in his treatment of public questions Milton had what Bacon calls "the humor of a scholar." He was an idealist and a doctrinaire, with little historic sense and small notion of what is practicable here and now. England is still a monarchy; the English church is still prelatical and has its hireling clergy; Parliament keeps its two chambers, and the bishops sit and vote in the house of peers; ritualism and tractarianism gain apace upon low church and evangelical; the _Areopagitica_ had no effect whatever in hastening the freedom of the press; and, ironically enough, Milton himself, under the protectorate, became an official book licenser. England was not ripe for a republic; she was returning to her idols, "choosing herself a captain back to Egypt." It took a century and a half for English liberty to recover the ground lost at the Restoration. Nevertheless that little group of republican idealists, Vane, Bradshaw, Lambert and the rest, with Milton their literary spokesman, must always interest us as Americans and republicans. Let us, however, not mistake. Milton was no democrat. His political principles were republican, or democratic if you please, but his personal feelings were intensely aristocratic. Even that free commonwealth which he thought he saw so easy and ready a way to establish, and the constitution of which he sketched on the eve of the Restoration, was no democracy, but an aristocratic, senatorial republic like Venice, a government of the _optimates_, not of the populace. For the trappings of royalty, the pomp and pageantry, the servility and flunkeyism of a court, Milton had the contempt of a plain republican: "How poor their outworn coronets Beside one leaf of that plain civic wreath!" But for the people, as a whole, he had an almost equal contempt. They were "the ungrateful multitude," "the inconsiderate multitude," the _profanum vulgus_, "the throng and noises of vulgar and irrational men." There was not a popular drop of blood in him. He had no faith in universal suffrage or majority rule. "More just it is," he wrote, "that a less number compel a greater to retain their liberty, than that a greater number compel a less to be their fellow slaves," i.e. to bring back the king by a _plébescite_. And again: "The best affected and best principled of the people stood not numbering or computing on which side were most voices in Parliament, but on which side appeared to them most reason." Milton was a Puritan; and the Puritans, though socially belonging, for the most part, among the plain people, and though made by accident the champions of popular rights against privilege, were yet a kind of spiritual aristocrats. Calvinistic doctrine made of the elect a chosen few, a congregation of saints, set apart from the world. To this feeling of religious exclusiveness Milton's pride of intellect added a personal intensity. He respects distinction and is always rather scornful of the average man, the _pecus ignavum silentum_, the herd of the obscure and unfamed. "Nor do I name of men the common rout That, wandering loose about, Grow up and perish like the summer fly, Heads without names, no more remembered." Hazlitt insisted that Shakspere's principles were aristocratic, chiefly, I believe, because of his handling of the tribunes and the plebs in _Coriolanus_. Shakspere does treat his mobs with a kindly and amused contempt. They are fickle, ignorant, illogical, thick-headed, easily imposed upon. Still he makes you feel that they are composed of good fellows at bottom, quickly placated and disposed to do the fair thing. I think that Shakspere's is the more democratic nature; that his distrust of the people is much less radical than Milton's. Walt Whitman's obstreperous democracy, his all-embracing _camaraderie_, his liking for the warm, gregarious pressure of the crowd, was a spirit quite alien from his whose "soul was like a star and dwelt apart." Anything vulgar was outside or below the sympathies of this Puritan gentleman. Falstaff must have been merely disgusting to him; and fancy him reading Mark Twain! In Milton's references to popular pastimes there is always a mixture of disapproval, the air of the superior person. "The people on their holidays," says Samson, are "impetuous, insolent, unquenchable." "Methought," says the lady in _Comus_, "--it was the sound Of riot and ill managed merriment, Such as the jocund flute or gamesome pipe Stirs up among the loose, unlettered hinds When, for their teeming flocks and granges full, In wanton dance they praise the bounteous Pan And thank the gods amiss." Milton liked to be in the minority, to bear up against the pressure of hostile opinion. "God intended to prove me," he wrote, "whether I durst take up alone a rightful cause against a world of disesteem, and found I durst." The seraph Abdiel is a piece of self-portraiture; there is no more characteristic passage in all his works: "--The Seraph Abdiel, faithful found Among the faithless, faithful only he * * * Nor number nor example with him wrought To swerve from truth or change his constant mind, Though single. From amidst them forth he past Long way through hostile scorn which he sustained Superior, nor of violence feared aught; And with retorted scorn his back he turned On those proud towers to swift destruction doomed." Milton was no democrat; equality and fraternity were not his trade, though liberty was his passion. Liberty he defended against the tyranny of the mob, as of the king. He preferred a republic to a monarchy, since he thought it less likely to interfere with the independence of the private citizen. Political liberty, liberty of worship and belief, freedom of the press, freedom of divorce, he asserted them all in turn with unsurpassed eloquence. He proposed a scheme of education reformed from the clogs of precedent and authority. Even his choice of blank verse for _Paradise Lost_ he vindicated as a case of "ancient _liberty_ recovered to heroic song from this troublesome and modern bondage of riming." There is yet one reason more why we at Yale should keep this anniversary. Milton was the poet of English Puritanism, and therefore he is our poet. This colony and this college were founded by English Puritans; and here the special faith and manners of the Puritans survived later than at the other great University of New England--survived almost in their integrity down to a time within the memory of living men. When Milton left Cambridge in 1632, "church-outed by the prelates," it was among the possibilities that, instead of settling down at his father's country-house at Horton, he might have come to New England. Winthrop had sailed, with his company, two years before. In 1635 three thousand Puritans emigrated to Massachusetts, among them Sir Henry Vane, the younger,--the "Vane, young in years, but in sage counsels old," of Milton's sonnet--who was made governor of the colony in the following year. Or in 1638, the year of the settlement of New Haven, when Milton went to Italy for culture, it would not have been miraculous had he come instead to America for freedom. It was in that same year that, according to a story long believed though now discredited, Cromwell, Pym, Hampden and Hazelrig, despairing of any improvement in conditions at home, were about to embark for New England when they were stopped by orders in council. Is it too wild a dream that _Paradise Lost_ might have been written in Boston or in New Haven? But it was not upon the cards. The literary class does not willingly emigrate to raw lands, or separate itself from the thick and ripe environment of an old civilization. However, we know that Vane and Roger Williams were friends of Milton; and he must have known and been known to Cromwell's chaplain, Hugh Peters, who had been in New England; and doubtless to others among the colonists. It is, at first sight, therefore rather strange that there is no mention of Milton, so far as I have observed, in any of our earlier colonial writers. It is said, I know not on what authority, that there was not a single copy of Shakspere's plays in New England in the seventeenth century. That is not so strange, considering the Puritan horror of the stage. But one might have expected to meet with mention of Milton, as a controversialist if not as a poet. The French Huguenot poet DuBartas, whose poem _La Semaine_ contributed some items to the account of the creation in _Paradise Lost_, was a favorite author in New England--I take it, in Sylvester's translation, _The Divine Weeks and Works_. It is also said that the _Emblems_ of Milton's contemporary, Francis Quarles, were much read in New England. But Tyler supposes that Nathaniel Ames, in his Almanac for 1725, "pronounced there for the first time the name of Milton, together with chosen passages from his poems." And he thinks it worth noting that Lewis Morris, of Morrisania, ordered an edition of Milton from a London bookseller in 1739.* * Mr. Charles Francis Adams informs me that a letter of inquiry sent by him to the _Evening Post_ has brought out three or four references to Milton in the _Magnalia_, besides other allusions to him in the publications of the period. Mr. Adams adds, however, that there is nothing to show that _Paradise Lost_ was much read in New England prior to 1750. The _Magnalia_ was published in 1702. The failure of our forefathers to recognize the great poet of their cause may be explained partly by the slowness of the growth of Milton's fame in England. His minor poems, issued in 1645, did not reach a second edition till 1673. _Paradise Lost_, printed in 1667, found its fit audience, though few, almost immediately. But the latest literature traveled slowly in those days into a remote and rude province. Moreover the educated class in New England, the ministers, though a learned, were not a literary set, as is abundantly shown by their own experiments in verse. It is not unlikely that Cotton Mather or Michael Wigglesworth would have thought DuBartas and Quarles better poets than Milton if they had read the latter's works. We are proud of being the descendants of the Puritans; perhaps we are glad that we are their descendants only, and not their contemporaries. Which side would you have been on, if you had lived during the English civil war of the seventeenth century? Doubtless it would have depended largely on whether you lived in Middlesex or in Devon, whether your parents were gentry or tradespeople, and on similar accidents. We think that we choose, but really choices are made for us. We inherit our politics and our religion. But if free to choose, I know in which camp I would have been, and it would not have been that in which Milton's friends were found. The New Model army had the discipline--and the prayer meetings. I am afraid that Rupert's troopers plundered, gambled, drank and swore most shockingly. There was good fighting on both sides, but the New Model had the right end of the quarrel and had the victory, and I am glad that it was so. Still there was more fun in the king's army, and it was there that most of the good fellows were. The influence of Milton's religion upon his art has been much discussed. It was owing to his Puritanism that he was the kind of poet that he was, but it was in spite of his Puritanism that he was a poet at all. He was the poet of a cause, a party, a sect whose attitude toward the graces of life and the beautiful arts was notoriously one of distrust and hostility. He was the poet, not only of that Puritanism which is a permanent element in English character, but of much that was merely temporary and local. How sensitive then must his mind have been to all forms of loveliness, how powerful the creative instinct in him, when his genius emerged without a scar from the long struggle of twenty years, during which he had written pamphlet after pamphlet on the angry questions of the day, and nothing at all in verse but a handful of sonnets mostly provoked by public occasions! The fact is, there were all kinds of Puritans. There were dismal precisians, like William Prynne, illiberal and vulgar fanatics, the Tribulation Wholesomes, Hope-on-high Bombys, and Zeal-of-the-land Busys, whose absurdities were the stock in trade of contemporary satirists from Jonson to Butler. But there were also gentlemen and scholars, like Fairfax, Marvell, Colonel Hutchinson, Vane, whose Puritanism was consistent with all elegant tastes and accomplishments. Was Milton's Puritanism hurtful to his art? No and yes. It was in many ways an inspiration; it gave him zeal, a Puritan word much ridiculed by the Royalists; it gave refinement, distinction, selectness, elevation to his picture of the world. But it would be uncritical to deny that it also gave a certain narrowness and rigidity to his view of human life. It is curious how Milton's early poems have changed places in favor with _Paradise Lost_. They were neglected for over a century. Joseph Warton testifies in 1756 that they had only "very lately met with a suitable regard"; had lain "in a sort of obscurity, the private enjoyment of a few curious readers." And Dr. Johnson exclaims: "Surely no man could have fancied that he read _Lycidas_ with pleasure, had he not known its author." There can be little doubt that now-a-days Milton's juvenilia are more read than _Paradise Lost_, and by many--perhaps by a majority of readers--rated higher. In this opinion I do not share. _Paradise Lost_ seems to me not only greater work, more important, than the minor pieces, but better poetry, richer and perfecter. Yet one quality these early poems have which _Paradise Lost_ has not--charm. Milton's epic astonishes, moves, delights, but it does not fascinate. The youthful Milton was sensitive to many attractions which he afterwards came to look upon with stern disapproval. He went to the theatre and praised the comedies of Shakspere and Jonson; he loved the romances of chivalry and fairy tales; he had no objection to dancing, ale drinking, the music of the fiddle and rural sports; he writes to Diodati of the pretty girls on the London streets; he celebrates the Catholic and Gothic elegancies of English church architecture and ritual, the cloister's pale, the organ music and full voiced choir, the high embowed roof, and the storied windows which his military friends were soon to smash at Ely, Salisbury, Canterbury, Lichfield, as popish idolatries. But in _Iconoclastes_ we find him sneering at the king for keeping a copy of Shakspere in his closet. In his treatise _Of Reformation_ he denounces the prelates for "embezzling the treasury of the church on painted and gilded walls of temples, wherein God hath testified to have no delight." Evidently the Anglican service was one of those "gay religions, rich with pomp and gold" to which he alludes in _Paradise Lost_. A chorus commends Samson the Nazarene for drinking nothing but water. Modern tragedies are condemned for "mixing comic stuff with tragic sadness and gravity, or introducing trivial and vulgar persons"--as Shakspere does. In _Paradise Lost_ the poet speaks with contempt of the romances whose "chief mastery" it was --to dissect, With long and tedious havoc, fabled knights In battles feigned." And in _Paradise Regained_ he even disparages his beloved classics, preferring the psalms of David, the Hebrew prophecies and the Mosaic law, to the poets, philosophers and orators of Athens. The Puritans were Old Testament men. Their God was the Hebrew Jehovah, their imaginations were filled with the wars of Israel and the militant theocracy of the Jews. In Milton's somewhat patronizing attitude toward women, there is something Mosaic--something almost Oriental. He always remained susceptible to beauty in women, but he treated it as a weakness, a temptation. The bitterness of his own marriage experience mingles with his words. I need not cite the well-known passages about Dalilah and Eve, where he who reads between the lines can always detect the figure of Mary Powell. There is no gallantry in Milton, but a deal of common sense. The love of the court poets, cavaliers and sonneteers, their hyperboles of passion, their abasement before their ladies he doubtless scorned as the fopperies of chivalry, fantastic and unnatural exaggerations, the insincerities of "vulgar amourists," the fume of "--court amour, Mixt dance, or wanton mask, or midnight ball, Or serenate which the starved lover sings To his proud fair, best quitted with disdain." To the Puritan, woman was at best the helpmate and handmaid of man. Too often she was a snare, or a household foe, "a cleaving mischief far within defensive arms." _L'Allegro_ and _Il Penseroso_ are the only poems of Milton in which he surrenders himself spontaneously to the joy of living, to "unreproved pleasures free," with no _arrière pensée_, or intrusion of the conscience. Even in those pleasant Horatian lines to Lawrence, inviting him to spend a winter day by the fire, drink wine and hear music, he ends with a fine Puritan touch: He who of these delights can judge, yet spare To interpose them oft, is truly wise." "Dost thou think, because thou art virtuous, there shall be no more cakes and ale?" inquires Sir Toby of Shakspere's only Puritan. "Yes," adds the clown, "and ginger shall be hot in the mouth, too." And "wives may be merry and yet honest," asserts Mistress Page. It is not without astonishment that one finds Emerson writing: "To this antique heroism Milton added the genius of the Christian sanctity * * * laying its chief stress on humility." Milton had a zeal for righteousness, a noble purity and noble pride. But if you look for saintly humility, for the spirit of the meek and lowly Jesus, the spirit of charity and forgiveness, look for them in the Anglican Herbert, not in the Puritan Milton. Humility was no fruit of the system which Calvin begot and which begot John Knox. The Puritans were great invokers of the sword of the Lord and of Gideon--the sword of Gideon and the dagger of Ehud. There went a sword out of Milton's mouth against the enemies of Israel, a sword of threatenings, the wrath of God upon the ungodly. The temper of his controversial writings is little short of ferocious. There was not much in him of that "sweet reasonableness" which Matthew Arnold thought the distinctive mark of Christian ethics. He was devout, but not with the Christian devoutness. I would not call him a Christian at all, except, of course, in his formal adherence to the creed of Christianity. Very significant is the inferiority of _Paradise Regained_ to _Paradise Lost_. And in _Paradise Lost_ itself, how weak and faint is the character of the Savior! You feel that he is superfluous, that the poet did not need him. He is simply the second person of the Trinity, the executive arm of the Godhead; and Milton is at pains to invent things for him to do--to drive the rebellious angels out of heaven, to preside over the six days' work of creation, etc. I believe it was Thomas Davidson who said that in _Paradise Lost_ "Christ is God's good boy." We are therefore not unprepared to discover, from Milton's _Treatise of Christian Doctrine_, that he had laid aside the dogma of vicarious sacrifice and was, in his last years, a Unitarian. It was this Latin treatise, translated and published in 1824, which called out Macaulay's essay, so urbanely demolished by Matthew Arnold, and which was triumphantly reviewed by Dr. Channing in the _North American_. It was lucky for Dr. Channing, by the way, that he lived in the nineteenth century and not in the seventeenth. Two Socinians, Leggatt and Wightman, were burned at the stake as late as James the First's reign, one at Lichfield and the other at Smithfield. Milton, then, does not belong with those broadly human, all tolerant, impartial artists, who reflect, with equal sympathy and infinite curiosity, every phase of life: with Shakspere and Goethe or, on a lower level, with Chaucer and Montaigne; but with the intense, austere and lofty souls whose narrowness is likewise their strength. His place is beside Dante, the Catholic Puritan. 
40130	----	[Illustration: Colour plate of book cover] [Illustration: Byron portrait plate] PARADISE LOST. BK. XII. _Painting by S. Meteyard._ "They, hand in hand, with wandering steps and slow, Through Eden took their solitary way." (_Paradise Lost. Bk. XII._) [Illustration: Paradise lost plate] A DAY WITH JOHN MILTON BY MAY BYRON [Illustration: "Angel" plate] HODDER & STOUGHTON _In the same Series._ _Tennyson._ _Browning._ _E. B. Browning._ _Burns._ _Byron._ _Longfellow._ _Whittier._ _Rossetti._ _Shelley._ _Scott._ _Coleridge._ _Morris._ _Wordsworth._ _Whitman._ _Keats._ _Shakespeare._ A DAY WITH JOHN MILTON About four o'clock on a September morning of 1665,--when the sun was not yet shining upon his windows facing the Artillery Fields, and the autumnal dew lay wet upon his garden leaves,--John Milton awoke with his customary punctuality, and, true to his austere and abstemious mode of life, wasted no time over comfortable indolence. He rose and proceeded to dress, with the help of his manservant Greene. For, although he was but fifty-four years in age, his hands were partly crippled with gout and chalkstones, and his eyes, clear, bright and blue as they had always been to outward seeming, were both stone-blind. Milton still retained much of that personal comeliness which had won him, at Cambridge, the nickname of "Lady of Christ's College." His original red and white had now become a uniform pallor; his thick, light brown hair, parted at the top, and curling richly on his shoulders--(no close-cropt Roundhead this!)--was beginning to fade towards grey. But his features were noble and symmetrical; he was well-built and well-proportioned; and he was justified in priding himself upon a personal appearance which he had never neglected or despised. In his own words, he was "neither large nor small: at no time had he been considered ugly; and in youth, with a sword by his side, he had never feared the bravest." Such was the man who now, neatly dressed in black, was led into his study, upon the same floor as his bedroom,--a small chamber hung with rusty green,--and there, seated in a large old elbow-chair, received the morning salutations of his three daughters. One after another they entered the room, and each bestowed a characteristic greeting upon her father. Anne, the eldest, a handsome girl of twenty, was lame, and had a slight impediment in her speech. She bade him good-morning with a stammering carelessness, enquired casually as to his night's rest, and stared out of window, palpably bored at the commencement of another monotonous, irksome day. Mary, the second, --dark, impetuous, and impatient,--was in a state of smouldering rebellion. She addressed him in a tone of almost insolent mock-civility, --he must needs have been deaf as well as blind not to detect the unfilial dislike beneath her words. Ten-year-old Deborah, the most affectionate of the three, ventured to kiss her father, even to stroke his long, beautiful hair, and to re-tie the tassels of his collar. "Mary will read to me this morning," said Milton, gravely inclining his head in acknowledgment of Deborah's attentions. The dark girl, with a mutinous shrug of her shoulders, sat down and began to read aloud, in a hard, uninterested voice, out of the great leather-bound Hebrew Old Testament which lay upon the table. And not one single sentence did she understand--not one word of what she was reading. John Milton's theories of education, which he had expounded at length in pamphlets, were a curious blend of the practical and the ideal. Vastly in advance of his time in his demand for a practical training, he had evolved that "fine definition which has never been improved upon,"--"I call a complete and generous education that which fits a man to perform, justly, skilfully and magnanimously, all the offices, both private and public, of peace and war." But he made no allowances for slowness or stupidity: all his schemes were based upon the existence of scholars equally gifted with himself. And he entirely left out of all calculations, much as a Mahommedan might, that complex organism the female mind. He wished it, one must conjecture, to remain a blank. So his daughters had received no systematic schooling, only some sort of home-instruction from a governess. And he had himself trained them to read aloud in five or six languages,--French, Italian, Latin, Greek, Hebrew and even Syriac,--in total ignorance of the meaning. "One tongue," observed Milton brusquely, almost brutally, "is enough for any woman." Mary read on, steadily, stolidly, sullenly, for a full hour. The others had left the room and were busy upon household tasks. At the conclusion of two chapters, "Leave me," commanded Milton, "I would be alone now for contemplation,"--and Mary willingly escaped to breakfast. The great poet reclined in his chair,--wrapt in such solemn and melancholy meditation as might have served as the model for his own _Penseroso_. A severe composure suffused his fine features, a serious sadness looked out of his unclouded eyes; his entire expression was "that of English intrepidity mixed with unutterable sorrow." For Milton was a bitterly disappointed man. It was not merely his comparative poverty,--because the Restoration, besides depriving him of his post as Latin or Foreign Secretary to the Commonwealth Council of State, had reduced his means from various sources almost to vanishing point. Nor was his melancholy mainly the result of his affliction; that he had deliberately incurred, and was as deliberately enduring. Constant headaches, late study, and perpetual recourse to one nostrum after another, had eventuated in the certainty of total blindness if he persisted in his mode of work. "The choice lay before me between dereliction of a supreme duty and loss of eyesight; ... and I therefore concluded to employ the little remaining eyesight I was to enjoy in doing this, the greatest service to the common weal it was in my power to render." No: it was not a personal matter which could sadden John Milton to the very roots of his stern, ambitious, courageous soul. It was the contravention of all that he held most dear in life,--the frustration, as he conceived it, of that liberty which was his very heart's blood by the Restoration of the Stuart monarchy. He had resolved, in his own words, to transfer into the struggle for liberty "all my genius and all the strength of my industry." It appeared that he had flung away both in vain. The Stuart monarchy, to him, lay monstrously black, overshadowing all the land, like his own conception of Satan. The Restoration was not merely the political defeat of his party, it was the total defeat of the principles, of the religious and social ideals, with which Milton's life was bound up. He had always stood aloof from the other salient men of the time. Of Cromwell he had practically no personal knowledge: with the bulk of the Presbyterians he was openly at enmity. "Shut away behind a barrier of his own ideas," he did not care to associate with men of less lofty intellectual standing. But now he was even more isolated. Since the downfall of the Puritan régime, he of necessity "stood alone, and became the party himself." And he presented, in his _Samson Agonistes_, "the intensest utterance of the most intense of English poets--the agonised cry of the beaten party," condensed into the expression of one unflinching and heroic soul. Upon the mysterious and inscrutable decrees of Providence, which had laid in the dust what seemed to him the very cause of God, Milton sat and pondered, in a despondency so profound, a disappointment so poignant, that his own great lines had sought in vain to voice it: "... I feel my genial spirits droop, My hopes all flat: Nature within me seems In all her functions weary of herself; My race of glory run, and race of shame, And I shall shortly be with them that rest." (_Samson Agonistes_). Yet his indomitable spirit was by no means quenched in despair: and an outlet was now open to him at last, which for eighteen years he had foregone,--the outlet of poetic expression. He was conscious of his capacity to travel and to traverse the regions which none had dared explore save Dante. And with that tremendous chief of pioneers he was measuring himself, man to man. He was able, above the turmoil of faction and the tumult of conflicting troubles, to weigh "... his spread wings, at leisure to behold Far off the empyreal Heaven, extended wide In circuit, undetermined square or round, With opal towers and battlements adorned Of living sapphire, once his native seat." (_Paradise Lost_). That Milton had been silent for so long a period was due, firstly to his preoccupation with political and polemical questions, into which he had thrown the whole weight of his mind; and, secondly, to the effect of his own firm resolve that the great epic, which, he had always secretly intended, should be the outcome of matured and ripened powers: the apotheosis of all that was worthiest in him: the full fruit of his strenuous life. He had long since arrived at that conclusion, never surpassed in its terseness and truth, that true poetry must be "simple, sensuous, impassioned,"--words which might serve as the text and touchstone of art. "And long it was not after" when he "was confirmed in this opinion, that he who would not be frustrate of his hope to write well hereafter in laudable things, ought himself to be a true poem." For poetry, to John Milton, was no sounding brass or tinkling cymbal; in his hand "the thing became a trumpet," apt to seraphic usages and the rallying of celestial cohorts. Therefore, when he ceased to touch the "tender stops of various quills" that trembled into silence in _Lycidas_, it was not as one discomfited of his attainment. Rather it was as one convinced of a mighty purpose, and patiently awaiting the just time of its fulfilment. The "woodnotes wild" of _Comus_, the exquisitely stippled _genre_ painting of _Allegro_ and _Penseroso_, were mere childish attempts compared with that monumental work to which Milton firmly proposed to devote the fruition of his genius. And now, having become a man through mental and physical experience even more than through the passage of years, he had put away childish things. He had resolved at last upon, and had at last undertaken, the one subject most congenial to his taste, and most suitable to his style and diction. _Paradise Lost_ was the triumphant offspring of his brain. It had sprung, like light, from chaos. Out of the darkness of poverty, blindness and defeat arose the poem which was to set him on the pinnacles of Parnassus. "You make many enquiries as to what I am about" he wrote in bygone years to his old schoolfellow, Charles Diodati. "What am I thinking of? Why with God's help, of immortality! Forgive the word, I only whisper it in your ear. Yes, I am pluming my wings for a flight." Nor was this the idle boasting of an egotist, the empty imagination of a dreamer. Consumed by "the desire of honour and repute and universal fame, seated," as he put it, "in the breast of every true scholar," Milton sedulously and assiduously had prepared himself for the achievement of his aims. That he should "strictly meditate the thankless Muse" required a certain self-control. "To scorn delights and live laborious days" is not the customary delight of a handsome young scholar, expert in swordsmanship as in languages. To equip himself for his self-chosen task, still a misty, undefined prospect in the remotest future, required strenuous and disciplined study; and necessitated his forgoing too frequently the scenes of rustic happiness which he had pictured so charmingly in _L'Allegro_,--absenting himself from "The groves and ruins, and the beloved village elms ... where I too, among rural scenes and remote forests, seemed as if I could have grown and vegetated through a hidden eternity." And this, though Milton had neither the eye nor the ear of a born nature-lover, was in itself a sufficient deprivation and sacrifice. For beauty appealed to him with a most earnest insistence,--and the purer, the more abstract form it took, the more urgent was that appeal. "God has instilled into me, at all events," he declared, "a vehement love of the beautiful. Not with so much labour is Ceres said to have sought Proserpine, as I am wont, day and night, to search for the idea of the beautiful through all forms and faces of things, and to follow it leading me on with certain assured traces." Yet not alone among "forms and faces" was he predestined to discover that Absolute Beauty. The passionate love of music, so frequently characteristic of a great linguist, which led him into sound-worlds as well as sight-worlds, was fated to remain with him, an incalculable consolation, when "forms and faces" could be no more seen. And into the vocabulary of _Paradise Lost_, that incomparably rich vocabulary, with its infallible ear for rhythm, for phrase, for magnificent consonantal effects and the magic of great names that reverberate through open vowels,--into this he poured forth his whole sense of beautiful sound, "as the wakeful bird Sings darkling, and in shadiest covert hid, Tunes her nocturnal note." _Paradise Lost_ remains, as has been observed, "The elaborated outcome of all the best words of all antecedent poetry--the language of one who lives in the companionship of the great and the wise of all past time, equally magnificent in verbiage, whether describing man, or God, or the Arch-Enemy visiting" this pendent world, when Thither, full fraught with mischievous revenge, Accursed, and in a cursed hour, he lives. At seven o'clock the body-servant Greene re-entered, followed by Mrs. Milton, the poet's third wife, and by Mary Fisher, their maid-servant, bringing in his breakfast, a light, slight repast. Mrs. Milton, _née_ Elizabeth Minshull, of Nantwich, was a comely, active, capable woman, "of a peaceful and agreeable humour," so far at least as her husband was concerned: for she shared the traditional destiny of a stepmother in not "hitting it off" with the first wife's daughters. Her golden hair and calm commonsense were in striking contrast, alike with the dark beauty and petulant spirit of Mary Powell, and with the fragile sweetness of Catherine Woodcock, Milton's former spouses. If she did not in her heart confirm her husband's celebrated theory of the relative position of man and wife,--"He for God only, she for God in him,"--(which, it has been said, "condenses every fallacy about woman's true relation to her husband and to her Maker"), she managed very adroitly to convey an impression of entire acquiescence in the will of her lord. And at least she was entirely adequate as a housewife. Had Milton ever encountered that "not impossible She" whom he portrayed in his ideal Eve? or was this latter a mere visionary abstract of great qualities, "to show us how divine a thing a woman may be made"? Neither of his three wives, nor yet that "very handsome and witty gentlewoman," Miss Davis, to whom he had at one time paid his addresses, conformed to this description: one cannot even conjecture that it was a _pasticcio_ of their respective fine attributes. Mrs. Milton, third of that name, as she bustled and busied herself about the study, was by no means a new Eve. She regarded her husband's ambitions and achievements with that good natured tolerance so characteristic of the materially-minded. Only genius can appreciate genius; and the man who shut himself away from his _confrères_ in scholarship and literature was not likely to unbosom himself to his housewifely, provincial wife. COMUS. _Painting by S. Meteyard._ Sabrina rises attended by water nymphs, "By the rushy-fringed bank, Where grows the willow and the osier dank," (_Comus_). [Illustration: Comus colour plate] The manservant Greene, breakfast being concluded, read aloud, or wrote to his master's dictation for some hours. This had formerly been the girls' daily office, but they were revolting more and more,--the whole position was becoming untenable, for they resented the presence of their stepmother as much as they disliked the duties which fettered them to their father's side, and forced them to parrot-like, futile drudgery in unknown tongues. To-day, however, Greene was relieved of the task, for which he was manifestly but ill-fitted, by the entrance of Milton's two favourite visitors. No celebrity ever had fewer friends. From all who might have called themselves such, he was separated by hostility of party, rancour of sect or by that almost repellent isolation of character to which reference has already been made. When at the highest of his political fame, he had almost boasted himself of this "splendid isolation,"--"I have very little acquaintance with those in power, inasmuch as I keep very much to my own house, and prefer to do so." At heart a Republican beyond the conception of any Roundhead,--cherishing a form of religion so recondite that it could be classed under no heading, since he ignored both public worship and family prayer,--having given offence to all and sundry by his outspoken theories upon divorce and divine right,--Milton presented to most men a dangerous personality. And most of all now, when the wits of the Restoration roués could be sharpened upon him, and when the heathen, as he considered them, roistered and ruffled it through the city that had "returned to her wallowing in the mire." Yet those who had sat at his feet as pupils, retained a singular affection for their former master. For all such young folk as adopted the disciple's attitude, the stern self-contained man had a very soft spot in his heart. With such, he was not only instructive, but genial, almost cheerful; and they alone could move him to the only utterances which were neither "solemn, serious or sad." Chief among his former pupils were those who now made entrance--Henry Lawrence and Cyriac Skinner. It may be guessed, therefore, with what pleasure the blind poet received these loyal and affectionate men. His pensive face became transformed with interest and animation, as with gentle courtesy and unfeigned delight he turned his sightless eyes from one speaker to another. Upon every subject he had a ready flow of easy, colloquial conversation, seasoned with shrewd satire: his deep and musical voice ran up and down the whole gamut of worthy topics. Sometimes he fell into the stately, almost stilted diction of his great prose pamphlets,--sometimes he spoke in racy English vernacular,--sometimes, warming to his subject, he assumed an almost fiery eloquence. But when, at twelve o'clock, he was escorted downstairs to dinner in the parlour, the metamorphosis was complete. This was no longer the brooding introspective man of the early morning, but one "extreme pleasant in his conversation," almost merry in society so congenial,--the life of the party: abstinent, but not ascetic, having a healthy, human enjoyment of the dishes set before him. "These are the victuals most to my liking," he observed as he ate, "being seasonable and withal of no great cost. For that which is of great rarity or richness, and must be procured with care or toil, hath no temptation for me." "I do always my best, Mr. Milton," replied his wife, "that you shall be well satisfied: and methinks to-day I have hit your taste right fairly." "God ha' mercy, Betty," said Milton, regarding her with an air of kindly tolerance, "I see thou wilt perform according to thy promise in providing me such dishes as I think fit while I live; and when I die, thou knowest I have left thee all." Here Anne, Mary and Deborah sat up very straight, and directed looks of fury and astonishment towards their stepmother. "Talk not o' dying, in God's name, man," responded the embarrassed Betty, "we have enough to do to make shift to live, nowadays," and she hastily pressed her good but simple fare, homely Cheshire dishes well-prepared, upon the two guests. "Such a many learned foreign folk have visited our poor house these latter days,--time hath failed me for my cheese-cakes,--and of the havercakes I made two days agone, why, not a crumb is left. But eat, my masters, eat and drink. Though these be but country victuals, none of your Court kickshaws, I warrant you they are fresh and savoury. I would commend you, now, to this rabbit pie--" "Peace, Betty, peace. The woman prates o' pies like a pie (magpie) herself. What saith the Apostle? _I suffer not a woman to speak_ in presence of the man's authority. Ha' done, good Betty, with thy harping on kitchen matters,--let thy savoury messes be companioned with a sauce of silence." Temporary eclipse of Mrs. Milton: obvious and malevolent satisfaction of Anne and Mary: desperately suppressed inclination to giggle on the part of little Deborah: and a desire to cover up the situation with talk, as regards kindly Lawrence and courtly Skinner. The "foreign folk" were no new thing. Milton's fame, indeed, was European: as a prose-writer and pamphleteer, be it understood, not as a poet. Had he not refuted and put to shame the most erudite scholars of the day? Foreign _savants_ of note, therefore, who might be visiting London, were desirous to acquaint themselves with so powerful a personality: and the little house in the Artillery Walk was the rendezvous for many distinguished persons. They found their host no such recluse as town-talk might have led them to imagine, but one ready and willing to converse with them,--an English gentleman to the backbone, a scholar and artist to the finger-tips. His Continental tours and Italian sojourns had made him less insular than most of his compatriots, and his vast range of reading had imparted a certain cosmopolitanism to his exceedingly individual lines of thought. The visitors found him, moreover, employed upon a work so important, and of a theme so lofty, as might well give them pause, considering the circumstances under which it was being accomplished: and whatever their particular religious tenets might be, they could not fail to admire the magnitude of his aim in composing _Paradise Lost_,--"To justify the ways of God to men." PARADISE LOST. BK. II _Painting by S. Meteyard._ "Satan with less toil, and now with ease, ... Weighs his spread wings, at leisure to behold ... This pendent world in bigness as a star Of smallest magnitude." (_Paradise Lost. Bk. II._) [Illustration: Satan in paradise colour plate] Dinner despatched, the master of the house, led by his devoted friends, went out into the garden. A garden was the desideratum of his existence, and he had never been without one; for in seventeenth-century London every house was fitly furnished in this respect. Here Milton was in the habit of taking that steady exercise which was a _sine quâ non_ to a sedentary and gouty man. He made a point of walking up and down out of doors, in cold weather, for three or four hours at a time,--sometimes composing his majestic lines, sometimes merely meditating. When weary with walking, he would come in and either dictate what he had conceived, or would take further exercise in a swing. In really warm weather, he received his visitors sitting outside his house door, wrapped in a coarse grey overcoat--gazing out upon the fields of the Artillery ground with those "unblemished eyes" that belied their own clear beauty--"the only point," as he said, "in which I am against my will a hypocrite." To-day, being cool and cloudy, allowed but intermittent periods in the open air. Milton, Lawrence and Skinner paced slowly to and fro, deep in enthralling intercourse, until three o'clock: when the rain and Thomas Elwood arrived simultaneously, and the other two men departed to their respective avocations. Thomas Elwood was a young Quaker of twenty-three, who was acting in some degree as honorary secretary to Milton. Himself of a defective education, and having been expelled from his father's house on account of his religious opinions, he was only too glad to take a lodging in the neighbourhood, and, by reading aloud to Milton every afternoon, acquire an amount of information and a variety of learning, which by no other means could he have obtained. And there was also a tacit sympathy between them, insomuch as Milton was, more and more, as life went on, inclining towards the Quaker tenets,--in those days, _bien entendu_, viewed with horror and detestation by the majority of men. Having re-entered the house, "We will not read as yet, Tom," Milton said, "I desire greatly to comfort myself with sweet sounds. Bring me into the withdrawing-room, and place me at the organ. A little bellows-blowing will not hurt thee, Tom. And let my wife attend me, that we may have song withal. She hath a good voice, though a poor ear." Seated at his beloved instrument, the blind man steeped himself in the principal pleasure that was left him. Milton's father, stout Puritan though he might be, was an accomplished musician, and had taught his son to play in early youth. The austerities of a narrow dogma had not been able to crush out the inveterate artistry of either father or son: and now the devotee of "divinest Melancholy" was able to solace himself with such lovely concords, such "anthems clear," "As may with sweetness, through mine ear, Dissolve me into ecstasies, And bring all heaven before mine eyes." Sometimes he sang as he played; sometimes Mrs. Milton, with her clear unemotional notes, sang to his accompaniment. Presently, that Elwood should not be wearied in his blowing, he quitted the organ for the bass-viol, on which he was no mean performer. At the conclusion of his playing he sat with a rapt, transfigured face, such as might well have called forth the Italian's encomium, thirty years before,--"If thy piety were equal to thy understanding, figure, eloquence, beauty and manners, verily thou wouldest not be an Angle but an Angel!" "And, now, good Tom," quoth Milton to the young man, "let us to work: the day moves on apace." They went upstairs to the study. "Before we read, I have some forty lines to set down," continued the poet, "all day they have been knocking for admission, and with that last music they made entrance. Needs must I house them now in ink and paper." "I am instant at thy bidding, friend," and Elwood seated himself with dutiful alacrity at the table. Milton, placing himself obliquely athwart his elbow-chair, with one leg thrown across the arm, dictated forty lines, almost in a breath,--they burst from him, as it would seem, in a stream no longer to be restrained. "Gently, gently, good sir!" exclaimed Elwood, "slow-witted and slow fingered I may be,--but I cannot keep pace with thee!" A grim smile hovered over Milton's full lips, "Out of practice, Tom," he replied indulgently, "it is a long while since I required this service at thy hands. From the autumnal to the vernal equinox, as I have told thee, my muse lies dumb, and silent as the moon, When she deserts the night, Hid in her vacant interlunar cave. But now the winter is overpast, the singing of birds is heard in our land, and she too awakes and sings. With the vernal equinox my thoughts flow free as Helicon." Then, with slow and deliberate diction, he repeated the lines once more: and, having had them read aloud to him, he compressed, condensed, concentrated every thought and phrase, and reduced them to twenty. "There is more to come?" queried Elwood, his quill poised ready to write. "No more. Not one word more at present," replied Milton, sighing as though somewhat exhausted. His inspiration was entirely intermittent: and sometimes he would lie awake all night, trying, but without success, to complete one single line to his liking. "They please me not wholly, these lines," he continued, "much remains to be done before I set them down to be changed no more." "Not every man would say so," replied Elwood, "the learning and erudition whereof these few lines alone give witness, would supply many with just cause for boasting throughout a lifetime." Milton shook his head. "Pomp and ostentation of reading," he remarked, "is admired among the vulgar: but in matters of religion, he is learnedest who is plainest." IL PENSEROSO. _Painting by S. Meteyard._ "And may at last my weary age Find out the peaceful hermitage, The hairy gown and mossy cell, Where I may sit and rightly spell Of every star that heaven doth show." (_Il Penseroso._) [Illustration: Il Penseroso colour plate] "Yet, Mr. Milton, thee hast the reputation of such scope and range of wisdom, as the greatest scholar in Europe might fitly envy. To me, I confess, in my poor unlettered ignorance, it is not conceivable in what manner thee acquired so great and witty powers." "I gathered them not of mine own strength," said Milton, "but they were mine for the asking and endeavour, and any man may obtain them in like fashion. I ceased not, nor will cease, in devout prayer to the Holy Spirit, that can enrich with all utterance and knowledge, and send out his Seraphim with the hallowed fire of His altar, to touch and purify the lips of whom He pleases. To this must be added select reading, and steady observation, and insight into all seemly and generous acts and affairs.... And now, good Tom, to reading." Elwood took up the Latin author which he was at present engaged upon, and proceeded with it. Whenever the preternaturally acute ear of Milton detected, by Elwood's intonation, that he did not quite understand a sentence, he would stop him, examine him, and elucidate the difficult passage. By and by, "You will find a saying very similar to that," he observed, "in Virgil his Fourth Eclogue. Fetch down the book, and let us hear what the Mantuan hath written therein." Elwood searched along the bookshelves, but to no avail. "Friend," said he, "thy Virgil is no longer here. Yesterday I handled it myself,--to-day it is vanished. So is the Lucretius." A frown contracted Milton's splendid brow. "These women-kind," he muttered like rumbling thunder, "they are verily the root of all evil. Bid me hither my wife and daughters, and Mary Fisher the maid moreover." The first and the last, being summoned, arrived in all haste, and disavowed any knowledge of the missing books. Anne and Mary Milton, it appeared, were gone out marketing: but little Deborah, being strictly cross-examined, confessed that she had seen sister Anne carrying books away from the study last night when their father had retired: the wherewithal for "marketing" was easily obtained in this way. Milton groaned in his ineptitude. "How have I deserved this treacherous dealing at their hands? Lord, how long shall I be dark in light exposed To daily fraud, contempt, abuse, and wrong, Within doors and without, still as a fool In power of others, never in my own? (_Samson Agonistes_). Here, by a happy coincidence, there was a sturdy hammering heard at the front door, and Andrew Marvell was ushered in, "I am out of my due time," said he, "for it is not yet gone six,"--(six to eight P.M. being Milton's best time for receiving visitors). "Yet to so old an offender as myself, John, I know thou wilt make an exception." Marvell was the one friend of his own type and standing, the one constant and inalienable comrade, upon whose fidelity the blind man could rely. He had formerly been Milton's colleague under the Cromwellian Government: and was his kindred spirit, so far as anyone could claim such relationship with the frozen heights of the poet's intellect. With him, during the next two hours--the learned physician Paget joining them, and Elwood listening in respectful silence to the converse of these mighty men--Milton forgot the vexations of his ill-assorted household. He assured his friends that he was truly far happier now, in poverty, infirmity and neglect, occupied solely upon his long-projected masterpiece, than during the eighteen years of his manly prime, when his mind and pen were solely employed upon the controversies which he now professed to hate. "Never again," he declared, "shall earthly ambitions interrupt and thwart me: never now shall I endure to leave a calm and pleasing solitariness, fed with cheerful and confident thoughts, to embark in a tumbled sea of noises and hoarse disputes. Cast out of my fool's Paradise of fame not worth the finding, shall, not I and the hope whereunto I am wedded explore some fair and fragrant tract of outer Eden? Even as I have set forth the banishment of our first parents: Some natural tears they dropped, but wiped them soon; The world was all before them, where to choose Their place of rest, and Providence their guide. They, hand in hand, with wandering steps and slow, Through Eden took their solitary way. (_Paradise Lost_). I and my espoused hope indeed do tread through Eden." The four men now, at eight o'clock, went down to supper: a very spare and frugal meal, so far as Milton was concerned: for all he consumed was a little light wine, a piece of bread and a few olives. His flow of speech was still unwearied, his spirits as near vivacity as they could approach it, when his friends rose to take leave. "The night is yet young," said Paget, "but I know that nowadays you seek rest early." "That is so," Milton assented, "since I am no longer able to study o' nights, and since the best of secretaries,"--he smiled towards Elwood--"must needs grow weary of a blind man's whims, I were as well in bed as out of it. Moreover, I can compose my lines to better advantage lying down." "One thing, at least, you are spared," Marvell told him, "darkness cannot discommode your doings, nor doth the eye-weariness of the midnight student afflict you with grievous brow-aches in the morning as of old." Milton answered, "My darkness hitherto, by the singular kindness of God, amid rest and studies, and the voices and greetings of friends, has been much easier to bear than that deathly one. What should prevent me from resting in the belief that eyesight lies not in eyes alone, but enough for all purposes in God's leading and providence? And to you now I bid farewell, with a mind not less brave and steadfast than if I were Lynceus himself for keenness of sight." In a short space of time he was at rest in his darkened room; not as yet drowsy, but revolving great phrases, and deriving a greater joy from these lonely silences of the night-watches than could ever accrue to him by day. Gradually the aisles and bowers of the Paradise which his mental eyes enjoyed took upon them more and more the lovely similitude of rural England. The greennesses and sweetnesses of his childhood's home, the Buckinghamshire village, were fused into the "eternal spring" of the primeval garden. And from the "glassy, cool, translucent wave" of the river that ran through Eden, "by the rushy-fringed bank Where grows the willow and the osier dank," arose "Sabrina, attended by water-nymphs" as once he saw her rise in _Comus_, and sang the sightless bard to sleep with the plashing of water-music. [Illustration: "Rose"] _Printed by Percy Lund, Humphries & Co., Ltd._ _Bradford and London._ _10322_ ==================== Transcriber's Notes: Some illustration's captions have been moved out of the paragraph. The following captions have been added: Illustration: Colour plate of book cover; Illustration: Byron portrait plate; Illustration: Paradise lost plate; Illustration: "Angel" plate; Illustration: Comus colour plate; Illustration: Satan in paradise colour plate; Illustration: Il Penseroso colour plate; Illustration: "Rose". The following noted Illustration was removed: Dropped Cap "A" at start of text - "About ..." Spelling has been made consistent throughout. 
62572	----	Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This book was produced from images made available by the HathiTrust Digital Library.) TRANSCRIBER'S NOTES Italic text is denoted by _underscores_. The original text was not separated in chapters. For the only purpose of facilitating the navigation on the HTML version and hand-held devices chapters were added to the transcribed text. The addition of those chapters was arbitrary and did not follow any particular logic. Consequently, the Table of Contents was also added by the Transcriber. The book cover was modified by the Transcriber and has been added to the public domain. A number of words in this book have both hyphenated and non-hyphenated variants. For the words with both variants present the one more used has been kept. Obvious punctuation and other printing errors have been silently corrected. * * * * * MILTON Thomas Babington Macaulay NEW YORK, H. M. CALDWELL & Co. 1900 TABLE OF CONTENTS Pag. CHAPTER I 1 CHAPTER II 9 CHAPTER III 26 CHAPTER IV 43 CHAPTER V 76 CHAPTER VI 113 CHAPTER VII 149 MILTON[1] CHAPTER I Toward the close of the year 1823, Mr. Lemon, deputy keeper of the state papers, in the course of his researches among the presses of his office, met with a large Latin manuscript. With it were found corrected copies of the foreign despatches written by Milton, while he filled the office of Secretary, and several papers relating to the Popish Trials and the Rye-House Plot. The whole was wrapped up in an envelope, superscribed _To Mr. Skinner, Merchant_. On examination, the large manuscript proved to be the long lost Essay on the Doctrines of Christianity, which, according to Wood and Toland, Milton finished after the Restoration, and deposited with Cyriac Skinner. Skinner, it is well known, held the same political opinions with his illustrious friend. It is therefore probable, as Mr. Lemon conjectures, that he may have fallen under the suspicions of the government during that persecution of the Whigs which followed the dissolution of the Oxford parliament, and that, in consequence of a general seizure of his papers, this work may have been brought to the office in which it has been found. But whatever the adventures of the manuscript may have been, no doubt can exist that it is a genuine relic of the great poet. Mr. Sumner, who was commanded by his Majesty to edit and translate the treatise, has acquitted himself of his task in a manner honourable to his talents and to his character. His version is not indeed very easy or elegant; but it is entitled to the praise of clearness and fidelity. His notes abound with interesting quotations, and have the rare merit of really elucidating the text. The preface is evidently the work of a sensible and candid man, firm in his own religious opinions, and tolerant toward those of others. The book itself will not add much to the fame of Milton. It is, like all his Latin works, well written, though not exactly in the style of the prize essays of Oxford and Cambridge. There is no elaborate imitation of classical antiquity, no scrupulous purity, none of the ceremonial cleanness which characterises the diction of our academical Pharisees. The author does not attempt to polish and brighten his composition into the Ciceronian gloss and brilliancy. He does not in short sacrifice sense and spirit to pedantic refinements. The nature of his subject compelled him to use many words "That would have made Quintilian stare and gasp." But he writes with as much ease and freedom as if Latin were his mother tongue; and, where he is least happy, his failure seems to arise from the carelessness of a native, not from the ignorance of a foreigner. We may apply to him what Denham with great felicity says of Cowley. He wears the garb, but not the clothes of the ancients. Throughout the volume are discernible the traces of a powerful and independent mind, emancipated from the influence of authority, and devoted to the search of truth. Milton professes to form his system from the Bible alone; and his digest of Scriptural texts is certainly among the best that have appeared. But he is not always so happy in his inferences as in his citations. Some of the heterodox doctrines which he avows seemed to have excited considerable amazement, particularly his Arianism, and his theory on the subject of polygamy. Yet we can scarcely conceive that any person could have read the "Paradise Lost" without suspecting him of the former; nor do we think that any reader, acquainted with the history of his life, ought to be much startled at the latter. The opinions which he has expressed respecting the nature of the Deity, the eternity of matter, and the observation of the Sabbath, might, we think, have caused more just surprise. But we will not go into the discussion of these points. The book, were it far more orthodox or far more heretical than it is, would not much edify or corrupt the present generation. The men of our time are not to be converted or perverted by quartos. A few more days, and this essay will follow the _Defensio Populi_, to the dust and silence of the upper shelf. The name of its author, and the remarkable circumstances attending its publication, will secure to it a certain degree of attention. For a month or two it will occupy a few minutes of chat in every drawing-room, and a few columns in every magazine; and it will then, to borrow the elegant language of the play-bills, be withdrawn, to make room for the forthcoming novelties. We wish, however, to avail ourselves of the interest, transient as it may be, which this work has excited. The dexterous Capuchins never choose to preach on the life and miracles of a saint till they have awakened the devotional feelings of their auditors by exhibiting some relic of him, a thread of his garment, a lock of his hair, or a drop of his blood. On the same principle, we intend to take advantage of the late interesting discovery, and, while this memorial of a great and good man is still in the hands of all, to say something of his moral and intellectual qualities. Nor, we are convinced, will the severest of our readers blame us if, on an occasion like the present, we turn for a short time from the topics of the day, to commemorate, in all love and reverence, the genius and virtues of John Milton, the poet, the statesman, the philosopher, the glory of English literature, the champion and the martyr of English liberty. FOOTNOTES: [1] _Jonnis Miltoni Angli, de Doctrinâ Christiana libri duo posthumi._ A Treatise on Christian Doctrine, compiled from the Holy Scriptures alone. By John Milton, translated from the Original by Charles R. Sumner, M. A., etc., 1825. CHAPTER II It is by his poetry that Milton is best known; and it is of his poetry that we wish first to speak. By the general suffrage of the civilised world, his place has been assigned among the greatest masters of the art. His detractors, however, though outvoted, have not been silenced. There are many critics, and some of great name, who contrive in the same breath to extol the poems and to decry the poet. The works they acknowledge, considered in themselves, may be classed among the noblest productions of the human mind. But they will not allow the author to rank with those great men who, born in the infancy of civilisation, supplied, by their own powers, the want of instruction, and, though destitute of models themselves, bequeathed to posterity models which defy imitation. Milton, it is said, inherited what his predecessors created; he lived in an enlightened age; he received a finished education; and we must therefore, if we would form a just estimate of his powers, make large deductions in consideration of these advantages. We venture to say, on the contrary, paradoxical as the remark may appear, that no poet has ever had to struggle with more unfavourable circumstances than Milton. He doubted, as he has himself owned, whether he had not been born "an age too late." For this notion Johnson has thought fit to make him the butt of much clumsy ridicule. The poet, we believe, understood the nature of his art better than the critic. He knew that his poetical genius derived no advantage from the civilisation which surrounded him, or from the learning which he had acquired; and he looked back with something like regret to the ruder age of simple words and vivid impressions. We think that, as civilisation advances, poetry almost necessarily declines. Therefore, though we fervently admire those great works of imagination which have appeared in dark ages, we do not admire them the more because they have appeared in dark ages. On the contrary, we hold that the most wonderful and splendid proof of genius is a great poem produced in a civilised age. We cannot understand why those who believe in that most orthodox article of literary faith, that the earliest poets are generally the best, should wonder at the rule as if it were the exception. Surely the uniformity of the phenomenon indicates a corresponding uniformity in the cause. The fact is, that common observers reason from the progress of the experimental science to that of the imitative arts. The improvement of the former is gradual and slow. Ages are spent in collecting materials, ages more in separating and combining them. Even when a system has been formed, there is still something to add, to alter, or to reject. Every generation enjoys the use of a vast hoard bequeathed to it by antiquity, and transmits that hoard, augmented by fresh acquisitions, to future ages. In these pursuits, therefore, the first speculators lie under great disadvantages, and, even when they fail, are entitled to praise. Their pupils, with far inferior intellectual powers, speedily surpass them in actual attainments. Every girl who has read Mrs. Marcet's little dialogues on Political Economy could teach Montague or Walpole many lessons in finance. Any intelligent man may now, by resolutely applying himself for a few years to mathematics, learn more than the great Newton knew after half a century of study and meditation. But it is not thus with music, with painting, or with sculpture. Still less is it thus with poetry. The progress of refinement rarely supplies these arts with better objects of imitation. It may indeed improve the instruments which are necessary to the mechanical operations of the musician, the sculptor, and the painter. But language, the machine of the poet, is best fitted for his purpose in its rudest state. Nations, like individuals, first perceive, and then abstract. They advance from particular images to general terms. Hence the vocabulary of an enlightened society is philosophical, that of a half-civilised people is poetical. This change in the language of men is partly the cause and partly the effect of a corresponding change in the nature of their intellectual operations, of a change by which science gains and poetry loses. Generalisation is necessary to the advancement of knowledge; but particularly is indispensable to the creations of the imagination. In proportion as men know more and think more, they look less at individuals and more at classes. They therefore make better theories and worse poems. They give us vague phrases instead of images, and personified qualities instead of men. They may be better able to analyse human nature than their predecessors. But analysis is not the business of the poet. His office is to portray, not to dissect. He may believe in a moral sense, like Shaftesbury; he may refer all human actions to self-interest, like Helvetius; or he may never think about the matter at all. His creed on such subjects will no more influence his poetry, properly so called, than the notions which a painter may have conceived respecting the lacrymal glands, or the circulation of the blood, will affect the tears of his Niobe, or the blushes of his Aurora. If Shakespeare had written a book on the motives of human actions, it is by no means certain that it would have been a good one. It is extremely improbable that it would have contained half so much able reasoning on the subject as is to be found in the Fable of the Bees. But could Mandeville have created an Iago? Well as he knew how to resolve characters into their elements, would he have been able to combine those elements in such a manner as to make up a man, a real, living, individual man? Perhaps no person can be a poet, or can even enjoy poetry, without a certain unsoundness of mind, if anything which gives so much pleasure ought to be called unsoundness. By poetry we mean not all writing in verse, nor even all good writing in verse. Our definition excludes many metrical compositions which, on other grounds, deserve the highest praise. By poetry we mean the art of employing words in such a manner as to produce an illusion on the imagination, the art of doing by means of words what the painter does by means of colours. Thus the greatest of poets has described it, in lines universally admired for the vigour and felicity of their diction, and still more valuable on account of the just notion which they convey of the art in which he excelled. "As imagination bodies forth The forms of things unknown, the poet's pen Turns them to shapes, and gives to airy nothing A local habitation and a name." These are the fruits of the "fine frenzy" which he ascribes to the poet,--a fine frenzy doubtless, but still a frenzy. Truth, indeed, is essential to poetry; but it is the truth of madness. The reasonings are just; but the premises are false. After the first suppositions have been made, everything ought to be consistent; but those first suppositions require a degree of credulity which almost amounts to a partial and temporary derangement of the intellect. Hence of all people children are the most imaginative. They abandon themselves without reserve to every illusion. Every image which is strongly presented to their mental eye produces on them the effect of reality. No man, whatever his sensibility may be, is ever affected by Hamlet or Lear, as a little girl is affected by the story of poor Red Riding-hood. She knows that it is all false, that wolves cannot speak, that there are no wolves in England. Yet in spite of her knowledge she believes; she weeps; she trembles; she dares not go into a dark room lest she should feel the teeth of the monster at her throat. Such is the despotism of the imagination over uncultivated minds. In a rude state of society men are children with a greater variety of ideas. It is therefore in such a state of society that we may expect to find the poetical temperament in its highest perfection. In an enlightened age there will be much intelligence, much science, much philosophy, abundance of just classification and subtle analysis, abundance of wit and eloquence, abundance of verses, and even of good ones; but little poetry. Men will judge and compare; but they will not create. They will talk about the old poets, and comment on them, and to a certain degree enjoy them. But they will scarcely be able to conceive the effect which poetry produced on their ruder ancestors, the agony, the ecstasy, the plenitude of belief. The Greek Rhapsodists, according to Plato, could scarce recite Homer without falling into convulsions. The Mohawk hardly feels the scalping knife while he shouts his death-song. The power which the ancient bards of Wales and Germany exercised over their auditors seems to modern readers almost miraculous. Such feelings are very rare in a civilised community, and most rare among those who participate most in its improvements. They linger longest among the peasantry. Poetry produces an illusion on the eye of the mind, as a magic lantern produces an illusion on the eye of the body. And, as the magic lantern acts best in a dark room, poetry effects its purpose most completely in a dark age. As the light of knowledge breaks in upon its exhibitions, as the outlines of certainty become more and more definite, and the shades of probability more and more distinct, the hues and lineaments of the phantoms which the poet calls up grow fainter and fainter. We cannot unite the incompatible advantages of reality and deception, the clear discernment of truth and the exquisite enjoyment of fiction. He who, in an enlightened and literary society, aspires to be a great poet, must first become a little child. He must take to pieces the whole web of his mind. He must unlearn much of that knowledge which has perhaps constituted hitherto his chief title to superiority. His very talents will be a hindrance to him. His difficulties will be proportioned to his proficiency in the pursuits which are fashionable among his contemporaries; and that proficiency will in general be proportioned to the vigour and activity of his mind. And it is well if, after all his sacrifices and exertions, his works do not resemble a lisping man or a modern ruin. We have seen in our own time great talents, intense labour, and long meditation, employed in this struggle against the spirit of the age, and employed, we will not say, absolutely in vain, but with dubious success and feeble applause. If these reasonings be just, no poet has ever triumphed over greater difficulties than Milton. He received a learned education; he was a profound and elegant classical scholar; he had studied all the mysteries of Rabbinical literature; he was intimately acquainted with every language of modern Europe, from which either pleasure or information was then to be derived. He was perhaps the only great poet of later times who has been distinguished by the excellence of his Latin verse. The genius of Petrarch was scarcely of the first order; and his poems in the ancient language, though much praised by those who have never read them, are wretched compositions. Cowley, with all his admirable wit and ingenuity, had little imagination; nor indeed do we think his classical diction comparable to that of Milton. The authority of Johnson is against us on this point. But Johnson had studied the bad writers of the middle ages till he had become utterly insensible to the Augustan elegance, and was as ill qualified to judge between two Latin styles as a habitual drunkard to set up for a wine-taster. Versification in a dead language is an exotic, a far-fetched, costly, sickly, imitation of that which elsewhere may be found in healthful and spontaneous perfection. The soils on which this rarity flourishes are in general as ill-suited to the production of vigorous native poetry as the flower-pots of a hothouse to the growth of oaks. That the author of the Paradise Lost should have written the Epistle to Manso was truly wonderful. Never before were such marked originality and such exquisite mimicry found together. Indeed in all the Latin poems of Milton the artificial manner indispensable to such works is admirably preserved, while, at the same time, his genius gives to them a peculiar charm, an air of nobleness and freedom, which distinguishes them from all other writings of the same class. They remind us of the amusements of those angelic warriors who composed the cohort of Gabriel: "About him exercised heroic games The unarmed youth of heaven. But o'er their heads Celestial armory, shield, helm, and spear, Hung high, with diamond flaming and with gold." CHAPTER III We cannot look upon the sportive exercises for which the genius of Milton ungirds itself without catching a glimpse of the gorgeous and terrible panoply which it is accustomed to wear. The strength of his imagination triumphed over every obstacle. So intense and ardent was the fire of his mind, that it not only was not suffocated beneath the weight of fuel, but penetrated the whole superincumbent mass with its own heart and radiance. It is not our intention to attempt anything like a complete examination of the poetry of Milton. The public has long been agreed as to the merit of the most remarkable passages, the incomparable harmony of the numbers, and the excellence of that style, which no rival has been able to equal, and no parodist to degrade, which displays in their highest perfection the idiomistic powers of the English tongue, and to which every ancient and every modern language has contributed something of grace, of energy, or of music. In the vast field of criticism on which we are entering innumerable reapers have already put their sickles. Yet the harvest is so abundant that the negligent search of a straggling gleaner may be rewarded with a sheaf. The most striking characteristic of the poetry of Milton is the extreme remoteness of the associations by means of which it acts on the reader. Its effect is produced, not so much by what it expresses, as by what it suggests; not so much by the ideas which it directly conveys, as by other ideas which are connected with them. He electrifies the mind through conductors. The most unimaginative man must understand the Iliad. Homer gives him no choice, and requires from him no exertion, but takes the whole upon himself, and sets the images in so clear a light, that it is impossible to be blind to them. The works of Milton cannot be comprehended or enjoyed, unless the mind of the reader coöperate with that of the writer. He does not paint a finished picture, or play for a mere passive listener. He sketches, and leaves others to fill up the outline. He strikes the key-note, and expects his hearer to make out the melody. We often hear of the magical influence of poetry. The expression in general means nothing: but, applied to the writings of Milton, it is most appropriate. His poetry acts like an incantation. Its merit lies less in its obvious meaning than in its occult power. There would seem, at first sight, to be no more in his words than in other words. But they are words of enchantment. No sooner are they pronounced, than the past is present and the distant near. New forms of beauty start at once into existence, and all the burial-places of the memory give up their dead. Change the structure of the sentence; substitute one synonyme for another, and the whole effect is destroyed. The spell loses its power; and he who should then hope to conjure with it would find himself as much mistaken as Cassim in the Arabian tale, when he stood crying, "Open Wheat," "Open Barley," to the door which obeyed no sound but "Open Sesame." The miserable failure of Dryden in his attempt to translate into his own diction some part of the Paradise Lost, is a remarkable instance of this. In support of these observations, we may remark that scarcely any passages in the poems of Milton are more generally known or more frequently repeated than those which are little more than muster-rolls of names. They are not always more appropriate or more melodious than other names. But they are charmed names. Every one of them is the first link in a long chain of associated ideas. Like the dwelling-place of our infancy revisited in manhood, like the song of our country heard in a strange land, they produce upon us an effect wholly independent of their intrinsic value. One transports us back to a remote period of history. Another places us among the novel scenes and manners of a distant region. A third evokes all the dear classical recollections of childhood, the schoolroom, the dogeared Virgil, the holiday, and the prize. A fourth brings before us the splendid phantoms of chivalrous romance, the trophied lists, the embroidered housings, the quaint devices, the haunted forests, the enchanted gardens, the achievements of enamoured knights, and the smiles of rescued princesses. In none of the works of Milton is his peculiar manner more happily displayed than in Allegro and the Penseroso. It is impossible to conceive that the mechanism of language can be brought to a more exquisite degree of perfection. These poems differ from others, as attar of roses differs from ordinary rose water, the close packed essence from the thin diluted mixture. They are, indeed, not so much poems, as collections of hints, from each of which the reader is to make out a poem for himself. Every epithet is a text for a stanza. The Comus and the Samson Agonistes are works which, though of very different merit, offer some marked points of resemblance. Both are lyric poems in the form of plays. There are, perhaps, no two kinds of composition so essentially dissimilar as the drama and the ode. The business of the dramatist is to keep himself out of sight, and to let nothing appear but his characters. As soon as he attracts notice to his personal feelings, the illusion is broken. The effect is as unpleasant as that which is produced on the stage by the voice of a prompter or the entrance of a scene-shifter. Hence it was, that the tragedies of Byron were his least successful performances. They resemble those pasteboard pictures invented by the friend of children, Mr. Newbury, in which a single movable head goes round twenty different bodies, so that the same face looks out upon us successively, from the uniform of a hussar, the furs of a judge, and the rags of a beggar. In all the characters, patriots and tyrants, haters and lovers, the frown and sneer of Harold were discernible in an instant. But this species of egotism, though fatal to the drama, is the inspiration of the ode. It is the part of the lyric poet to abandon himself, without reserve, to his own emotion. Between these hostile elements many great men have endeavoured to effect an amalgamation, but never with complete success. The Greek drama, on the model of which the Samson was written, sprang from the Ode. The dialogue was ingrafted on the chorus, and naturally partook of its character. The genius of the greatest of the Athenian dramatists coöperated with the circumstances under which tragedy made its first appearance. Æschylus was, head and heart, a lyric poet. In his time, the Greeks had far more intercourse with the East than in the days of Homer; and they had not yet acquired that immense superiority in war, in science, and in the arts, which, in the following generation, led them to treat the Asiatics with contempt. From the narrative of Herodotus it should seem that they still looked up, with the disciples, to Egypt and Assyria. At this period, accordingly, it was natural that the literature of Greece should be tinctured with the Oriental style. And that style, we think, is discernible in the works of Pindar and Æschylus. The latter often reminds us of the Hebrew writers. The book of Job, indeed, in conduct and diction, bears a considerable resemblance to some of his dramas. Considered as plays, his works are absurd; considered as choruses, they are above all praise. If, for instance, we examine the address of Clytemnestra to Agamemnon on his return, or the description of the seven Argive chiefs, by the principles of dramatic writing, we shall instantly condemn them as monstrous. But if we forget the characters, and think only of the poetry, we shall admit that it has never been surpassed in energy and magnificence. Sophocles made the Greek drama as dramatic as was consistent with its original form. His portraits of men have a sort of similarity; but it is the similarity not of a painting, but of a bas-relief. It suggests a resemblance; but it does not produce an illusion. Euripides attempted to carry the reform further. But it was a task far beyond his powers, perhaps beyond any powers. Instead of correcting what was bad, he destroyed what was excellent. He substituted crutches for stilts, bad sermons for good odes. Milton, it is well known, admired Euripides highly, much more highly than, in our opinion, Euripides deserved. Indeed the caresses which this partiality leads our countryman to bestow on "sad Electra's poet" sometimes remind us of the beautiful Queen of Fairy-land kissing the long ears of Bottom. At all events, there can be no doubt that this veneration for the Athenian, whether just or not, was injurious to the Samson Agonistes. Had Milton taken Æschylus for his model, he would have given himself up to the lyric inspiration, and poured out profusely all the treasures of his mind, without bestowing a thought on those dramatic proprieties which the nature of the work rendered it impossible to preserve. In the attempt to reconcile things in their own nature inconsistent, he has failed, as every one else must have failed. We cannot identify ourselves with the characters, as in a good play. We cannot identify ourselves with the poet, as in a good ode. The conflicting ingredients, like an acid and an alkali mixed, neutralise each other. We are by no means insensible to the merits of this celebrated piece, to the severe dignity of the style, the graceful and pathetic solemnity of the opening speech, or the wild and barbaric melody which gives so striking an effect to the choral passages. But we think it, we confess, the least successful effort of the genius of Milton. The Comus is framed on the model of the Italian Masque, as the Samson is framed on the model of the Greek Tragedy. It is certainly the noblest performance of the kind which exists in any language. It is as far superior to the Faithful Shepherdess, as the Faithful Shepherdess is to the Aminta, or the Aminta to the Pastor Fido. It was well for Milton that he had here no Euripides to mislead him. He understood and loved the literature of modern Italy. But he did not feel for it the same veneration which he entertained for the remains of Athenian and Roman poetry, consecrated by so many lofty and endearing recollections. The faults, moreover, of his Italian predecessors were of a kind to which his mind had a deadly antipathy. He could stoop to a plain style, sometimes even to a bald style; but false brilliancy was his utter aversion. His muse had no objection to a russet attire; but she turned with disgust from the finery of Guarini, as tawdry and as paltry as the rags of a chimney-sweeper on May-day. Whatever ornaments she wears are of massive gold, not only dazzling to the sight, but capable of standing the severest test of the crucible. Milton attended in the Comus to the distinction which he afterwards neglected in the Samson. He made his Masque what it ought to be, essentially lyrical, and dramatic only in semblance. He has not attempted a fruitless struggle against a defect inherent in the nature of that species of composition; and he has therefore succeeded, wherever success was not impossible. The speeches must be read as majestic soliloquies; and he who so reads them will be enraptured with their eloquence, their sublimity, and their music. The interruptions of the dialogue, however, impose a constraint upon the writer, and break the illusion of the reader. The finest passages are those which are lyric in form as well as in spirit. "I should much commend," says the excellent Sir Henry Wotten in a letter to Milton, "the tragical part if the lyrical did not ravish me with a certain Dorique delicacy in your songs and odes, whereunto, I must plainly confess to you, I have seen yet nothing parallel in our language." The criticism was just. It is when Milton escapes from the shackles of the dialogue, when he is discharged from the labour of uniting two incongruous styles, when he is at liberty to indulge his choral raptures without reserve, that he rises even above himself. Then, like his own good Genius bursting from the earthly form and weeds of Thyrsis, he stands forth in celestial freedom and beauty; he seems to cry exultingly, "Now my task is smoothly done, I can fly or I can run," to skim the earth, to soar above the clouds, to bathe in the Elysian dew of the rainbow, and to inhale the balmy smells of nard and cassia, which the musky winds of the zephyr scatter through the cedared alleys of the Hesperides. CHAPTER IV There are several of the minor poems of Milton on which we would willingly make a few remarks. Still more willingly would we enter into a detailed examination of that admirable poem, the Paradise Regained, which, strangely enough, is scarcely ever mentioned except as an instance of the blindness of the parental affection which men of letters bear toward the offspring of their intellects. That Milton was mistaken in preferring this work, excellent as it is, to the Paradise Lost, we readily admit. But we are sure that the superiority of the Paradise Lost to the Paradise Regained is not more decided than the superiority of the Paradise Regained to every poem which has since made its appearance. Our limits, however, prevent us from discussing the point at length. We hasten on to that extraordinary production which the general suffrage of critics has placed in the highest class of human compositions. The only poem of modern times which can be compared with the Paradise Lost is the Divine Comedy. The subject of Milton, in some points, resembled that of Dante; but he has treated it in a widely different manner. We cannot, we think, better illustrate our opinion respecting our own great poet, than by contrasting him with the father of Tuscan literature. The poetry of Milton differs from that of Dante, as the hieroglyphics of Egypt differed from the picture-writing of Mexico. The images which Dante employs speak for themselves; they stand simply for what they are. Those of Milton have a signification which is often discernible only to the initiated. Their value depends less on what they directly represent than on what they remotely suggest. However strange, however grotesque, may be the appearance which Dante undertakes to describe, he never shrinks from describing it. He gives us the shape, the colour, the sound, the smell, the taste; he counts the numbers; he measures the size. His similes are the illustrations of a traveller. Unlike those of other poets, and especially of Milton, they are introduced in a plain, businesslike manner; not for the sake of any beauty in the objects from which they are drawn; not for the sake of any ornament which they may impart to the poem; but simply in order to make the meaning of the writer as clear to the reader as it is to himself. The ruins of the precipice which led from the sixth to the seventh circle of hell were like those of the rock which fell into the Adige on the south of Trent. The cataract of Phlegethon was like that of Aqua Cheta at the monastery of St. Benedict. The place where the heretics were confined in burning tombs resembled the vast cemetery of Arles. Now let us compare with the exact details of Dante the dim intimations of Milton. We will cite a few examples. The English poet has never thought of taking the measure of Satan. He gives us merely a vague idea of vast bulk. In one passage the fiend lies stretched out huge in length, floating many a rood, equal in size to the earth-born enemies of Jove, or to the sea-monster which the mariner mistakes for an island. When he addresses himself to battle against the guardian angels, he stands like Teneriffe or Atlas: his stature reaches the sky. Contrast with these descriptions the lines in which Dante has described the gigantic spectre of Nimrod. "His face seemed to me as long and as broad as the ball of St. Peter's at Rome; and his other limbs were in proportion; so that the bank, which concealed him from the waist downwards, nevertheless showed so much of him, that three tall Germans would in vain have attempted to reach to his hair." We are sensible that we do no justice to the admirable style of the Florentine poet. But Mr. Cary's translation is not at hand; and our version, however rude, is sufficient to illustrate our meaning. Once more, compare the lazar-house in the eleventh book of the Paradise Lost with the last ward of Malebolge in Dante. Milton avoids the loathsome details, and takes refuge in indistinct but solemn and tremendous imagery. Despair hurrying from couch to couch to mock the wretches with his attendance, Death shaking his dart over them, but, in spite of supplications, delaying to strike. What says Dante? "There was such a moan there as there would be if all the sick who, between July and September, are in the hospitals of Valdichiana, and of the Tuscan swamps, and of Sardinia, were in one pit together; and such a stench was issuing forth as is wont to issue from decayed limbs." We will not take upon ourselves the invidious office of settling precedency between two such writers. Each in his own department is incomparable; and each, we may remark, has wisely, or fortunately, taken a subject adapted to exhibit his peculiar talent to the greatest advantage. The Divine Comedy is a personal narrative. Dante is the eye-witness and ear-witness of that which he relates. He is the very man who has heard the tormented spirits crying out for the second death, who has read the dusky characters on the portal within which there is no hope, who has hidden his face from the terrors of the Gorgon, who has fled from the hooks and the seething pitch of Barbariccia and Draghignazzo. His own hands have grasped the shaggy sides of Lucifer. His own feet have climbed the mountain of expiation. His own brow has been marked by the purifying angel. The reader would throw aside such a tale in incredulous disgust, unless it were told with the strongest air of veracity, with a sobriety even in its horrors, with the greatest precision and multiplicity in its details. The narrative of Milton in this respect differs from that of Dante, as the adventures of Amadis differ from those of Gulliver. The author of Amadis would have made his book ridiculous if he had introduced those minute particulars which give such a charm to the work of Swift, the nautical observations, the affected delicacy about names, the official documents transcribed at full length, and all the unmeaning gossip and scandal of the court, springing out of nothing, and tending to nothing. We are not shocked at being told that a man who lived, nobody knows when, saw many very strange sights, and we can easily abandon ourselves to the illusion of the romance. But when Lemuel Gulliver, surgeon, resident at Rotherhithe, tells us of pygmies and giants, dying islands, and philosophising horses, nothing but such circumstantial touches could produce for a single moment a deception on the imagination. Of all the poets who have introduced into their works the agency of supernatural beings, Milton has succeeded best. Here Dante decidedly yields to him: and as this is a point on which many rash and ill-considered judgments have been pronounced, we feel inclined to dwell on it a little longer. The most fatal error which a poet can possibly commit, in the management of his machinery, is that of attempting to philosophise too much. Milton has been often censured for ascribing to spirits many functions of which spirits must be incapable. But these objections, though sanctioned by eminent names, originate, we venture to say, in profound ignorance of the art of poetry. What is spirit? What are our own minds, the portion of spirit with which we are best acquainted? We observe certain phenomena. We cannot explain them into material causes. We therefore infer that there exists something which is not material. But of this something we have no idea. We can define it only by negatives. We can reason about it only by symbols. We use the word: but we have no image of the thing; and the business of poetry is with images, and not with words. The poet uses words indeed; but they are merely the instruments of his art, not its objects. They are the materials which he is to dispose in such a manner as to present a picture to the mental eye. And if they are not so disposed, they are no more entitled to be called poetry than a bale of canvas and a box of colours to be called a painting. Logicians may reason about abstractions. But the great mass of men must have images. The strong tendency of the multitude in all ages and nations to idolatry can be explained on no other principle. The first inhabitants of Greece, there is reason to believe, worshipped one invisible Deity. But the necessity of having something more definite to adore produced, in a few centuries, the innumerable crowd of gods and goddesses. In like manner the ancient Persians thought it impious to exhibit the Creator under a human form. Yet even these transferred to the Sun the worship which, in speculation, they considered due only to the Supreme Mind. The history of the Jews is the record of a continued struggle between pure Theism, supported by the most terrible sanctions, and the strangely fascinating desire of having some visible and tangible object of adoration. Perhaps none of the secondary causes which Gibbon has assigned for the rapidity with which Christianity spread over the world, while Judaism scarcely ever acquired a proselyte, operated more powerfully than this feeling. God, the uncreated, the incomprehensible, the invisible, attracted few worshippers. A philosopher might admire so noble a conception: but the crowd turned away in disgust from words which presented no image to their minds. It was before Deity embodied in a human form, walking among men, partaking of their infirmities, leaning on their bosoms, weeping over their graves, slumbering in the manger, bleeding on the cross, that the prejudices of the Synagogue, and the doubts of the Academy, and the pride of the portico, and the fasces of the Lictor, and the swords of thirty legions, were humbled in the dust. Soon after Christianity had achieved its triumph, the principle which had assisted it began to corrupt it. It became a new Paganism. Patron saints assumed the offices of household gods. St. George took the place of Mars. St. Elmo consoled the mariner for the loss of Castor and Pollux. The Virgin Mother and Cecilia succeeded to Venus and the Muses. The fascination of sex and loveliness was again joined to that of celestial dignity; and the homage of chivalry was blended with that of religion. Reformers have often made a stand against these feelings; but never with more than apparent and partial success. The men who demolished the images in cathedrals have not always been able to demolish those which were enshrined in their minds. It would not be difficult to show that in politics the same rule holds good. Doctrines, we are afraid, must generally be embodied before they can excite a strong public feeling. The multitude is more easily interested for the most unmeaning badge, or the most insignificant name, than for the most important principle. From these considerations, we infer that no poet, who should affect that metaphysical accuracy for the want of which Milton has been blamed, would escape a disgraceful failure. Still, however, there was another extreme, which, though far less dangerous, was also to be avoided. The imaginations of men are in a great measure under the control of their opinions. The most exquisite art of poetical colouring can produce no illusion, when it is employed to represent that which is at once perceived to be incongruous and absurd. Milton wrote in an age of philosophers and theologians. It was necessary, therefore, for him to abstain from giving such a shock to their understandings as might break the charm which it was his object to throw over their imaginations. This is the real explanation of the indistinctness and inconsistency with which he has often been reproached. Doctor Johnson acknowledges that it was absolutely necessary that the spirit should be clothed with material forms. "But," says he, "the poet should have secured the consistency of his system by keeping immateriality out of sight, and seducing the reader to drop it from his thoughts." This is easily said; but what if Milton could not seduce his readers to drop immateriality from their thoughts? What if the contrary opinion had taken so fully possession of the minds of men as to leave no room even for the half belief which poetry requires? Such we suspect to have been the case. It was impossible for the poet to adopt altogether the material or the immaterial system. He therefore took his stand on the debatable ground. He left the whole in ambiguity. He has, doubtless, by so doing, laid himself open to the charge of inconsistency. But, though philosophically in the wrong, we cannot but believe that he was poetically in the right. This task, which almost any other writer would have found impracticable, was easy to him. The peculiar art which he possessed of communicating his meaning circuitously through a long succession of associated ideas, and of intimating more than he expressed, enabled him to disguise those incongruities which he could not avoid. Poetry which relates to the beings of another world ought to be at once mysterious and picturesque. That of Milton is so. That of Dante is picturesque indeed beyond any that was ever written. Its effect approaches to that produced by the pencil or the chisel. But it is picturesque to the exclusion of all mystery. This is a fault on the right side, a fault inseparable from the plan of Dante's poem, which, as we have already observed, rendered the utmost accuracy of description necessary. Still it is a fault. The supernatural agents excite an interest; but it is not the interest which is proper to supernatural agents. We feel that we could talk to the ghosts and demons without any emotion of unearthly awe. We could, like Don Juan, ask them to supper, and eat heartily in their company. Dante's angels are good men with wings. His devils are spiteful ugly executioners. His dead men are merely living men in strange situations. The scene which passes between the poet and Farinata is justly celebrated. Still, Farinata in the burning tomb is exactly what Farinata would have been at an _auto da fe_. Nothing can be more touching than the first interview of Dante and Beatrice. Yet what is it, but a lovely woman chiding, with sweet austere composure, the lover for whose affection she is grateful, but whose vices she reprobates? The feelings which give the passage its charm would suit the streets of Florence as well as the summit of the Mount of Purgatory. The spirits of Milton are unlike those of almost all other writers. His fiends, in particular, are wonderful creations. They are not metaphysical abstractions. They are not wicked men. They are not ugly beasts. They have no horns, no tails, none of the fee-faw-fum of Tasso and Klopstock. They have just enough in common with human nature to be intelligible to human beings. Their characters are, like their forms, marked by a certain dim resemblance to those of men, but exaggerated to gigantic dimensions, and veiled in mysterious gloom. Perhaps the gods and demons of Æschylus may best bear a comparison with the angels and devils of Milton. The style of the Athenian had, as we have remarked, something of the Oriental character; and the same peculiarity may be traced in his mythology. It has nothing of the amenity and elegance which we generally find in the superstitions of Greece. All is rugged, barbaric, and colossal. The legends of Æschylus seem to harmonise less with the fragrant groves and graceful porticoes in which his countrymen paid their vows to the God of Light and Goddess of Desire, than with those huge and grotesque labyrinths of eternal granite in which Egypt enshrined her mystic Osiris, or in which Hindostan still bows down to her seven-headed idols. His favourite gods are those of the elder generation, the sons of heaven and earth, compared with whom Jupiter himself was a stripling and an upstart, the gigantic Titans, and the inexorable Furies. Foremost among his creations of this class stands Prometheus, half fiend, half redeemer, the friend of man, the sullen and implacable enemy of heaven. Prometheus bears undoubtedly a considerable resemblance to the Satan of Milton. In both we find the same impatience of control, the same ferocity, the same unconquerable pride. In both characters also are mingled, though in very different proportions, some kind and generous feelings. Prometheus, however, is hardly superhuman enough. He talks too much of his chains and his uneasy posture: he is rather too much depressed and agitated. His resolution seems to depend on the knowledge which he possesses that he holds the fate of his torturer in his hands, and that the hour of his release will surely come. But Satan is a creature of another sphere. The might of his intellectual nature is victorious over the extremity of pain. Amidst agonies which cannot be conceived without horror, he deliberates, resolves, and even exults. Against the sword of Michael, against the thunder of Jehovah, against the flaming lake, and the marl burning with solid fire, against the prospect of an eternity of unintermitted misery, his spirit bears up unbroken, resting on its own innate energies, requiring no support from anything external, nor even from hope itself. To return for a moment to the parallel which we have been attempting to draw between Milton and Dante, we would add that the poetry of these great men has in a considerable degree taken its character from their moral qualities. They are not egotists. They rarely obtrude their idiosyncrasies on their readers. They have nothing in common with those modern beggars for fame, who extort a pittance from the compassion of the inexperienced by exposing the nakedness and sores of their minds. Yet it would be difficult to name two writers whose works have been more completely, though undesignedly, coloured by their personal feelings. The character of Milton was peculiarly distinguished by loftiness of spirit; that of Dante by intensity of feeling. In every line of the Divine Comedy we discern the asperity which is produced by pride struggling with misery. There is perhaps no work in the world so deeply and uniformly sorrowful. The melancholy of Dante was no fantastic caprice. It was not, as far as at this distance of time can be judged, the effect of external circumstances. It was from within. Neither love nor glory, neither the conflicts of earth nor the hope of heaven could dispel it. It turned every consolation and every pleasure into its own nature. It resembled that noxious Sardinian soil of which the intense bitterness is said to have been perceptible even in its honey. His mind was, in the noble language of the Hebrew poet, "a land of darkness, as darkness itself, and where the light was as darkness." The gloom of his characters discolours all the passions of men, and all the face of nature, and tinges with its own livid hue the flowers of Paradise and the glories of the eternal throne. All the portraits of him are singularly characteristic. No person can look on the features, noble even to ruggedness, the dark furrows of the cheek, the haggard and woful stare of the eye, the sullen and contemptuous curve of the lip, and doubt that they belong to a man too proud and too sensitive to be happy. Milton was, like Dante, a statesman and a lover; and, like Dante, he had been unfortunate in ambition and in love. He had survived his health and his sight, the comforts of his home, and the prosperity of his party. Of the great men by whom he had been distinguished at his entrance into life, some had been taken away from the evil to come; some had carried into foreign climates their unconquerable hatred of oppression; some were pining in dungeons; and some had poured forth their blood on scaffolds. Venal and licentious scribblers, with just sufficient talent to clothe the thoughts of a pandar in the style of a bellman, were now the favourite writers of the Sovereign and of the public. It was a loathsome herd, which could be compared to nothing so fitly as to the rabble of Comus, grotesque monsters, half bestial, half human, dropping with wine, bloated with gluttony, and reeling in obscene dances. Amidst these that fair Muse was placed, like the chaste lady of the Masque, lofty, spotless, and serene, to be chattered at, and pointed at, and grinned at, by the whole rout of Satyrs and Goblins. If ever despondency and asperity could be excused in any man, they might have been excused in Milton. But the strength of his mind overcame every calamity. Neither blindness, nor gout, nor age, nor penury, nor domestic afflictions, nor political disappointments, nor abuse, nor proscription, nor neglect, had power to disturb his sedate and majestic patience. His spirits do not seem to have been high, but they were singularly equable. His temper was serious, perhaps stern; but it was a temper which no sufferings could render sullen or fretful. Such as it was when, on the eve of great events, he returned from his travels, in the prime of health and manly beauty, loaded with literary distinctions, and glowing with patriotic hopes, such it continued to be when, after having experienced every calamity which is incident to our nature, old, poor, sightless, and disgraced, he retired to his hovel to die. Hence it was that, though he wrote the Paradise Lost at a time of life when images of beauty and tenderness are in general beginning to fade, even from those minds in which they have not been effaced by anxiety and disappointment, he adorned it with all that is most lovely and delightful in the physical and in the moral world. Neither Theocritus nor Ariosto had a finer or a more healthful sense of the pleasantness of external objects, or loved better to luxuriate amidst sunbeams and flowers, the songs of nightingales, the juice of summer fruits, and the coolness of shady fountains. His conception of love unites all the voluptuousness of the Oriental harem, and all the gallantry of the chivalric tournament, with all the pure and quiet affection of an English fireside. His poetry reminds us of the miracles of Alpine scenery. Nooks and dells, beautiful as fairy-land, are embosomed in its most rugged and gigantic elevations. The roses and myrtles bloom unchilled on the verge of the avalanche. Traces, indeed, of the peculiar character of Milton may be found in all his works; but it is most strongly displayed in the Sonnets. Those remarkable poems have been undervalued by critics who have not understood their nature. They have no epigrammatic point. There is none of the ingenuity of Filicaja in the thought, none of the hard and brilliant enamel of Petrarch in the style. They are simple but majestic records of the feelings of the poet; as little tricked out for the public eye as his diary would have been. A victory, an expected attack upon the city, a momentary fit of depression or exultation, a jest thrown out against one of his books, a dream which for a short time restored to him that beautiful face over which the grave had closed for ever, led him to musings, which, without effort, shaped themselves into verse. The unity of sentiment and severity of style which characterise these little pieces remind us of the Greek Anthology, or perhaps still more of the Collects of the English Liturgy. The noble poem on the Massacres of Piedmont is strictly a Collect in verse. The Sonnets are more or less striking according as the occasions which gave birth to them are more or less interesting. But they are, almost without exception, dignified by a sobriety and greatness of mind to which we know not where to look for a parallel. It would, indeed, be scarcely safe to draw any decided inferences as to the character of a writer from passages directly egotistical. But the qualities which we have ascribed to Milton, though perhaps most strongly marked in those parts of his works which treat of his personal feelings, are distinguishable in every page, and impart to all his writings, prose and poetry, English, Latin, and Italian, a strong family likeness. CHAPTER V His public conduct was such as was to be expected from a man of a spirit so high and of an intellect so powerful. He lived at one of the most memorable eras in the history of mankind, at the very crisis of the great conflict between Oromasdes and Arimanes, liberty and despotism, reason and prejudice. That great battle was fought for no single generation, for no single land. The destinies of the human race were staked on the same cast with the freedom of the English people. Then were first proclaimed those mighty principles which have since worked their way into the depths of the American forests, which have roused Greece from the slavery and degradation of two thousand years, and which, from one end of Europe to the other, have kindled an unquenchable fire in the hearts of the oppressed, and loosed the knees of the oppressors with an unwonted fear. Of those principles, then struggling for their infant existence, Milton was the most devoted and eloquent literary champion. We need not say how much we admire his public conduct. But we cannot disguise from ourselves that a large portion of his countrymen still think it unjustifiable. The civil war, indeed, has been more discussed, and is less understood, than any event in English history. The friends of liberty laboured under the disadvantage of which the lion in the fable complained so bitterly. Though they were the conquerors, their enemies were the painters. As a body the Roundheads had done their utmost to decry and ruin literature; and literature was even with them, as, in the long run, it always is with its enemies. The best book on their side of the question is the charming narrative of Mrs. Hutchinson. May's History of the Parliament is good; but it breaks off at the most interesting crisis of the struggle. The performance of Ludlow is foolish and violent; and most of the later writers who have espoused the same cause, Oldmixon for instance, and Catherine Macaulay, have, to say the least, been more distinguished by zeal than either by candour or by skill. On the other side are the most authoritative and the most popular historical works in our language, that of Clarendon, and that of Hume. The former is not only ably written and full of valuable information, but has also an air of dignity and sincerity which makes even the prejudices and errors with which it abounds respectable. Hume, from whose fascinating narrative the great mass of the reading public are still contented to take their opinions, hated religion so much that he hated liberty for having been allied with religion, and has pleaded the cause of tyranny with the dexterity of an advocate while affecting the impartiality of a judge. The public conduct of Milton must be approved or condemned according as the resistance of the people to Charles the First shall appear to be justifiable or criminal. We shall therefore make no apology for dedicating a few pages to the discussion of that interesting and most important question. We shall not argue it on general grounds. We shall not recur to those primary principles from which the claim of any government to the obedience of its subjects is to be deduced. We are entitled to that vantage-ground; but we will relinquish it. We are, on this point, so confident of superiority, that we are not unwilling to imitate the ostentatious generosity of those ancient knights, who vowed to joust without helmet or shield against all enemies, and to give their antagonists the advantage of sun and wind. We will take the naked constitutional question. We confidently affirm, that every reason which can be urged in favour of the Revolution of 1688 may be urged with at least equal force in favour of what is called the Great Rebellion. In one respect only, we think, can the warmest admirers of Charles venture to say that he was a better sovereign than his son. He was not, in name and profession, a Papist; we say in name and profession, because both Charles himself and his creature Laud, while they abjured the innocent badges of Popery, retained all its worst vices, a complete subjection of reason to authority, a weak preference of form to substance, a childish passion for mummeries, an idolatrous veneration for the priestly character, and, above all, a merciless intolerance. This, however, we waive. We will concede that Charles was a good Protestant; but we say that his Protestantism does not make the slightest distinction between his case and that of James. The principles of the Revolution have often been grossly misrepresented, and never more than in the course of the present year. There is a certain class of men who, while they profess to hold in reverence the great names and great actions of former times, never look at them for any other purpose than in order to find in them some excuse for existing abuses. In every venerable precedent they pass by what is essential, and take only what is accidental: they keep out of sight what is beneficial, and hold up to public imitation all that is defective. If, in any part of any great example, there be anything unsound, these flesh-flies detect it with an unerring instinct, and dart upon it with a ravenous delight. If some good end has been attained in spite of them, they feel, with their prototype, that "Their labour must be to pervert that end, And out of good still to find means of evil." To the blessings which England has derived from the Revolution these people are utterly insensible. The expulsion of a tyrant, the solemn recognition of popular rights, liberty, security, toleration, all go for nothing with them. One sect there was, which, from unfortunate temporary causes, it was thought necessary to keep under close restraint. One part of the empire there was so unhappily circumstanced, that at that time its misery was necessary to our happiness, and its slavery to our freedom. These are the parts of the Revolution which the politicians of whom we speak love to contemplate, and which seem to them not indeed to vindicate, but in some degree to palliate, the good which it has produced. Talk to them of Naples, of Spain, or of South America. They stand forth zealots for the doctrine of Divine Right which has now come back to us, like a thief from transportation, under the _alias_ of Legitimacy. But mention the miseries of Ireland. Then William is a hero. Then Somers and Shrewsbury are great men. Then the Revolution is a glorious era. The very same persons who, in this country, never omit an opportunity of reviving every wretched Jacobite slander respecting the Whigs of that period, have no sooner crossed St. George's Channel than they begin to fill their bumpers to the glorious and immortal memory. They may truly boast that they look not at men, but at measures. So that evil be done, they care not who does it; the arbitrary Charles, or the liberal William, Ferdinand the Catholic, or Frederic the Protestant. On such occasions their deadliest opponents may reckon upon their candid construction. The bold assertions of these people have of late impressed a large portion of the public with an opinion that James the Second was expelled simply because he was a Catholic, and that the Revolution was essentially a Protestant Revolution. But this certainly was not the case; nor can any person who has acquired more knowledge of the history of those times than is to be found in Goldsmith's Abridgment believe that, if James had held his own religious opinions without wishing to make proselytes, or if, wishing even to make proselytes, he had contented himself with exerting only his constitutional influence for that purpose, the Prince of Orange would ever have been invited over. Our ancestors, we suppose, knew their own meaning; and, if we may believe them, their hostility was primarily not to popery, but to tyranny. They did not drive out a tyrant because he was a Catholic; but they excluded Catholics from the crown, because they thought them likely to be tyrants. The ground on which they, in their famous resolution, declared the throne vacant, was this, "that James had broken the fundamental laws of the kingdom." Every man, therefore, who approves of the Revolution of 1688 must hold that the breach of fundamental laws on the part of the sovereign justifies resistance. The question, then, is this: Had Charles the First broken the fundamental laws of England? No person can answer in the negative, unless he refuses credit, not merely to all the accusations brought against Charles by his opponents, but to the narratives of the warmest Royalists, and to the confessions of the king himself. If there be any truth in any historian of any party who has related the events of that reign, the conduct of Charles, from his accession to the meeting of the Long Parliament, had been a continued course of oppression and treachery. Let those who applaud the Revolution, and condemn the Rebellion mention one act of James the Second to which a parallel is not to be found in the history of his father. Let them lay their fingers on a single article in the Declaration of Right, presented by the two Houses to William and Mary, which Charles is not acknowledged to have violated. He had, according to the testimony of his own friends, usurped the functions of the legislature, raised taxes without the consent of Parliament, and quartered troops on the people in the most illegal and vexatious manner. Not a single session of Parliament had passed without some unconstitutional attack on the freedom of debate; the right of petition was grossly violated; arbitrary judgments, exorbitant fines, and unwarranted imprisonments were grievances of daily occurrence. If these things do not justify resistance, the Revolution was treason; if they do, the Great Rebellion was laudable. But, it is said, why not adopt milder measures? Why, after the king had consented to so many reforms, and renounced so many oppressive prerogatives, did the Parliament continue to rise in their demands at the risk of provoking a civil war? The ship-money had been given up. The Star Chamber had been abolished. Provision had been made for the frequent convocation and secure deliberation of Parliaments. Why not pursue an end confessedly good by peaceable and regular means? We recur again to the analogy of the Revolution. Why was James driven from the throne? Why was he not retained upon conditions? He too had offered to call a free Parliament, and to submit to its decision all the matters in dispute. Yet we are in the habit of praising our forefathers, who preferred a revolution, a disputed succession, a dynasty of strangers, twenty years of foreign and intestine war, a standing army, and a national debt, to the rule, however restricted, of a tried and proved tyrant. The Long Parliament acted on the same principle, and is entitled to the same praise. They could not trust the king. He had no doubt passed salutary laws; but what assurance was there that he would not break them? He had renounced oppressive prerogatives; but where was the security that he would not resume them? The nation had to deal with a man whom no tie could bind, a man who made and broke promises with equal facility, a man whose honour had been a hundred times pawned, and never redeemed. Here, indeed, the Long Parliament stands on still stronger ground than the Convention of 1688. No action of James can be compared to the conduct of Charles with respect to the Petition of Right. The Lords and Commons present him with a bill in which the constitutional limits of his power are marked out. He hesitates; he evades; at last he bargains to give his assent for five subsidies. The bill receives his solemn assent; the subsidies are voted; but no sooner is the tyrant relieved, than he returns at once to all the arbitrary measures which he had bound himself to abandon, and violates all the clauses of the very Act which he had been paid to pass. For more than ten years the people had seen the rights which were theirs by a double claim, by immemorial inheritance and by recent purchase, infringed by the perfidious king who had recognised them. At length, circumstances compelled Charles to summon another Parliament: another chance was given to our fathers: were they to throw it away as they had thrown away the former? Were they again to be cozened by _le Roi le veut_? Were they again to advance their money on pledges which had been forfeited over and over again? Were they to lay a second Petition of Right at the foot of the throne, to grant another lavish aid in exchange for another unmeaning ceremony, and then to take their departure, till, after ten years more of fraud and oppression, their prince should again require a supply, and again repay it with a perjury? They were compelled to choose whether they would trust a tyrant or conquer him. We think that they chose wisely and nobly. The advocates of Charles, like the advocates of other malefactors against whom overwhelming evidence is produced, generally decline all controversy about the facts, and content themselves with calling testimony to character. He had so many private virtues! And had James the Second no private virtues? Was Oliver Cromwell, his bitterest enemies themselves being judges, destitute of private virtues? And what, after all, are the virtues ascribed to Charles? A religious zeal, not more sincere than that of his son, and fully as weak and narrow-minded, and a few of the ordinary household decencies which half the tombstones in England claim for those who lie beneath them. A good father! A good husband! Ample apologies indeed for fifteen years of persecution, tyranny, and falsehood! We charge him with having broken his coronation oath; and we are told that he kept his marriage vow! We accuse him of having given up his people to the merciless inflictions of the most hot-headed and hard-hearted of prelates; and the defence is, that he took his little son on his knee and kissed him! We censure him for having violated the articles of the Petition of Right, after having, for good and valuable consideration, promised to observe them; and we are informed that he was accustomed to hear prayers at six o'clock in the morning! It is to such considerations as these, together with his Vandyke dress, his handsome face, and his peaked beard, that he owes, we verily believe, most of his popularity with the present generation. For ourselves, we own that we do not understand the common phrase, a good man, but a bad king. We can as easily conceive a good man and an unnatural father, or a good man and a treacherous friend. We cannot, in estimating the character of an individual, leave out of our consideration his conduct in the most important of all human relations; and if in that relation we find him to have been selfish, cruel, and deceitful, we shall take the liberty to call him a bad man, in spite of all his temperance at table, and all his regularity at chapel. We cannot refrain from adding a few words respecting a topic on which the defenders of Charles are fond of dwelling. If, they say, he governed his people ill, he at least governed them after the example of his predecessors. If he violated their privileges, it was because those privileges had not been accurately defined. No act of oppression has ever been imputed to him which has not a parallel in the annals of the Tudors. This point Hume has laboured, with an art which is as discreditable in a historical work as it would be admirable in a forensic address. The answer is short, clear, and decisive. Charles had assented to the Petition of Right. He had renounced the oppressive powers said to have been exercised by his predecessors, and he had renounced them for money. He was not entitled to set up his antiquated claims against his own recent release. These arguments are so obvious, that it may seem superfluous to dwell upon them. But those who have observed how much the events of that time are misrepresented and misunderstood will not blame us for stating the case simply. It is a case of which the simplest statement is the strongest. The enemies of the Parliament, indeed, rarely choose to take issue on the great points of the question. They content themselves with exposing some of the crimes and follies to which public commotions necessarily give birth. They bewail the unmerited fate of Strafford. They execrate the lawless violence of the army. They laugh at the Scriptural names of the preachers. Major-generals fleecing their districts; soldiers revelling on the spoils of a ruined peasantry; upstarts, enriched by the public plunder, taking possession of the hospitable firesides and hereditary trees of the old gentry; boys smashing the beautiful windows of cathedrals; Quakers riding naked through the market-place; Fifth-monarchy men shouting for King Jesus; agitators lecturing from the tops of tubs on the fate of Agag; all these, they tell us, were the offspring of the Great Rebellion. Be it so. We are not careful to answer in this matter. These charges, were they infinitely more important, would not alter our opinion of an event which alone has made us to differ from the slaves who crouch beneath despotic sceptres. Many evils, no doubt, were produced by the civil war. They were the price of our liberty. Has the acquisition been worth the sacrifice? It is the nature of the Devil of tyranny to tear and rend the body which he leaves. Are the miseries of continued possession less horrible than the struggles of the tremendous exorcism? If it were possible that a people brought up under an intolerant and arbitrary system could subvert that system without acts of cruelty and folly, half the objections to despotic power would be removed. We should, in that case, be compelled to acknowledge that it at least produces no pernicious effects on the intellectual and moral character of a nation. We deplore the outrages which accompany revolutions. But the more violent the outrages, the more assured we feel that a revolution was necessary. The violence of those outrages will always be proportioned to the ferocity and ignorance of the people; and the ferocity and ignorance of the people will be proportioned to the oppression and degradation under which they have been accustomed to live. Thus it was in our civil war. The heads of the church and state reaped only that which they had sown. The government had prohibited free discussion: it had done its best to keep the people unacquainted with their duties and their rights. The retribution was just and natural. If our rulers suffered from popular ignorance, it was because they had themselves taken away the key of knowledge. If they were assailed with blind fury, it was because they had exacted an equally blind submission. It is the character of such revolutions that we always see the worst of them at first. Till men have been some time free, they know not how to use their freedom. The natives of wine countries are generally sober. In climates where wine is a rarity intemperance abounds. A newly liberated people may be compared to a northern army encamped on the Rhine or the Xeres. It is said that, when soldiers in such a situation first find themselves able to indulge without restraint in such a rare and expensive luxury, nothing is to be seen but intoxication. Soon, however, plenty teaches discretion; and, after wine has been for a few months their daily fare, they become more temperate than they had ever been in their own country. In the same manner, the final and permanent fruits of liberty are wisdom, moderation, and mercy. Its immediate effects are often atrocious crimes, conflicting errors, skepticism on points the most clear, dogmatism on points the most mysterious. It is just at this crisis that its enemies love to exhibit it. They pull down the scaffolding from the half-finished edifice: they point to the flying dust, the falling bricks, the comfortless rooms, the frightful irregularity of the whole appearance; and then ask in scorn where the promised splendour and comfort is to be found. If such miserable sophisms were to prevail there would never be a good house or a good government in the world. Ariosto tells a pretty story of a fairy, who, by some mysterious law of her nature, was condemned to appear at certain seasons in the form of a foul and poisonous snake. Those who injured her during the period of her disguise were for ever excluded from participation in the blessings which she bestowed. But to those who, in spite of her loathsome aspect, pitied and protected her, she afterward revealed herself in the beautiful and celestial form which was natural to her, accompanied their steps, granted all their wishes, filled their houses with wealth, made them happy in love and victorious in war. Such a spirit is Liberty. At times she takes the form of a hateful reptile. She grovels, she hisses, she stings. But woe to those who in disgust shall venture to crush her! And happy are those who, having dared to receive her in her degraded and frightful shape, shall at length be rewarded by her in the time of her beauty and her glory! There is only one cure for the evils which newly acquired freedom produces; and that cure is freedom. When a prisoner first leaves his cell he cannot bear the light of day: he is unable to discriminate colours, or recognise faces. But the remedy is not to remand him into his dungeon, but to accustom him to the rays of the sun. The blaze of truth and liberty may at first dazzle and bewilder nations which have become half blind in the house of bondage. But let them gaze on, and they will soon be able to bear it. In a few years men learn to reason. The extreme violence of opinions subsides. Hostile theories correct each other. The scattered elements of truth cease to contend, and begin to coalesce. And at length a system of justice and order is educed out of the chaos. Many politicians of our time are in the habit of laying it down as a self-evident proposition, that no people ought to be free till they are fit to use their freedom. The maxim is worthy of the fool in the old story who resolved not to go into the water till he had learnt to swim. If men are to wait for liberty till they become wise and good in slavery, they may indeed wait for ever. Therefore it is that we decidedly approve of the conduct of Milton and the other wise and good men who, in spite of much that was ridiculous and hateful in the conduct of their associates, stood firmly by the cause of Public Liberty. We are not aware that the poet has been charged with personal participation in any of the blamable excesses of that time. The favourite topic of his enemies is the line of conduct which he pursued with regard to the execution of the king. Of that celebrated proceeding we by no means approve. Still we must say, in justice to the many eminent persons who concurred in it, and in justice more particularly to the eminent person who defended it, that nothing can be more absurd than the imputations which, for the last hundred and sixty years, it has been the fashion to cast upon the Regicides. We have, throughout, abstained from appealing to first principles. We will not appeal to them now. We recur again to the parallel case of the Revolution. What essential distinction can be drawn between the execution of the father and the deposition of the son? What constitutional maxim is there which applies to the former and not to the latter? The king can do no wrong. If so, James was as innocent as Charles could have been. The minister only ought to be responsible for the acts of the sovereign. If so, why not impeach Jefferies and retain James? The person of a king is sacred. Was the person of James considered sacred at the Boyne? To discharge cannon against an army in which a king is known to be posted is to approach pretty near to regicide. Charles, too, it should always be remembered, was put to death by men who had been exasperated by the hostilities of several years, and who had never been bound to him by any other tie than that which was common to them with all their fellow citizens. Those who drove James from his throne, who seduced his army, who alienated his friends, who first imprisoned him in his palace, and then turned him out of it, who broke in upon his very slumbers by imperious messages, who pursued him with fire and sword from one part of the empire to another, who hanged, drew, and quartered his adherents, and attainted his innocent heir, were his nephew and his two daughters. When we reflect on all these things, we are at a loss to conceive how the same persons who, on the fifth of November, thank God for wonderfully conducting his servant William, and for making all opposition fall before him until he became our king and governor, can, on the thirtieth of January, contrive to be afraid that the blood of the Royal Martyr may be visited on themselves and their children. We disapprove, we repeat, of the execution of Charles; not because the constitution exempts the king from responsibility, for we know that all such maxims, however excellent, have their exceptions; nor because we feel any peculiar interest in his character, for we think that his sentence describes him with perfect justice as "a tyrant, a traitor, a murderer, and a public enemy;" but because we are convinced that the measure was most injurious to the cause of freedom. He whom it removed was a captive and a hostage: his heir, to whom the allegiance of every Royalist was instantly transferred, was at large. The Presbyterians could never have been perfectly reconciled to the father: they had no such rooted enmity to the son. The great body of the people, also, contemplated that proceeding with feelings which, however unreasonable, no government could safely venture to outrage. But though we think the conduct of the Regicides blamable, that of Milton appears to us in a very different light. The deed was done. It could not be undone. The evil was incurred; and the object was to render it as small as possible. We censure the chiefs of the army for not yielding to the popular opinion; but we cannot censure Milton for wishing to change that opinion. The very feeling which would have restrained us from committing the act would have led us, after it had been committed, to defend it against the ravings of servility and superstition. For the sake of public liberty, we wish that the thing had not been done, while the people disapproved of it. But, for the sake of public liberty, we should also have wished the people to approve of it when it was done. If anything more were wanting to the justification of Milton, the book of Salmasius would furnish it. That miserable performance is now with justice considered only as a beacon to word-catchers, who wish to become statesmen. The celebrity of the man who refuted it, the "Æneæ magni dextra," gives it all its fame with the present generation. In that age the state of things was different. It was not then fully understood how vast an interval separates the more classical scholar from the political philosopher. Nor can it be doubted that a treatise which, bearing the name of so eminent a critic, attacked the fundamental principles of all free governments, must, if suffered to remain unanswered, have produced a most pernicious effect on the public mind. CHAPTER VI We wish to add a few words relative to another subject, on which the enemies of Milton delight to dwell, his conduct during the administration of the Protector. That an enthusiastic votary of liberty should accept office under a military usurper seems, no doubt, at first sight, extraordinary. But all the circumstances in which the country was then placed were extraordinary. The ambition of Oliver was of no vulgar kind. He never seems to have coveted despotic power. He at first fought sincerely and manfully for the Parliament, and never deserted it, till it had deserted its duty. If he dissolved it by force, it was not till he found that the few members who remained after so many deaths, secessions, and expulsions, were desirous to appropriate to themselves a power which they held only in trust, and to inflict upon England the curse of a Venetian oligarchy. But even when thus placed by violence at the head of affairs, he did not assume unlimited power. He gave the country a constitution far more perfect than any which had at that time been known in the world. He reformed the representative system in a manner which has extorted praise even from Lord Clarendon. For himself he demanded indeed the first place in the commonwealth; but with powers scarcely so great as those of a Dutch stadtholder, or an American president. He gave the Parliament a voice in the appointment of ministers, and left to it the whole legislative authority, not even reserving to himself a veto on its enactments; and he did not require that the chief magistracy should be hereditary in his family. Thus far, we think, if the circumstances of the time and the opportunities which he had of aggrandising himself be fairly considered, he will not lose by comparison with Washington or Bolivar. Had his moderation been met with corresponding moderation, there is no reason to think that he would have overstepped the line which he had traced for himself. But when he found that his parliaments questioned the authority under which they met, and that he was in danger of being deprived of the restricted power which was absolutely necessary to his personal safety, then, it must be acknowledged, he adopted a more arbitrary policy. Yet, though we believe that the intentions of Cromwell were at first honest, though we believe that he was driven from the noble course which he had marked out for himself by the almost irresistible force of circumstances, though we admire, in common with all men of all parties, the ability and energy of his splendid administration, we are not pleading for arbitrary and lawless power, even in his hands. We know that a good constitution is infinitely better than the best despot. But we suspect, that at the time of which we speak the violence of religious and political enmities rendered a stable and happy settlement next to impossible. The choice lay, not between Cromwell and liberty, but between Cromwell and the Stuarts. That Milton chose well, no man can doubt who fairly compares the events of the protectorate with those of the thirty years which succeeded it, the darkest and most disgraceful in the English annals. Cromwell was evidently laying, though in an irregular manner, the foundations of an admirable system. Never before had religious liberty and the freedom of discussion been enjoyed in a greater degree. Never had the national honour been better upheld abroad, or the seat of justice better filled at home. And it was rarely that any opposition which stopped short of open rebellion provoked the resentment of the liberal and magnanimous usurper. The institutions which he had established, as set down in the Instrument of Government, and the Humble Petition and Advice, were excellent. His practice, it is true, too often departed from the theory of these institutions. But, had he lived a few years longer, it is probable that his institutions would have survived him, and that his arbitrary practice would have died with him. His power had not been consecrated by ancient prejudices. It was upheld only by his great personal qualities. Little, therefore, was to be dreaded from a second protector, unless he was also a second Oliver Cromwell. The events which followed his decease are the most complete vindication of those who exerted themselves to uphold his authority. His death dissolved the whole frame of society. The army rose against the Parliament, the different corps of the army against each other. Sect raved against sect. Party plotted against party. The Presbyterians, in their eagerness to be revenged on the Independents, sacrificed their own liberty, and deserted all their old principles. Without casting one glance on the past, or requiring one stipulation for the future, they threw down their freedom at the feet of the most frivolous and heartless of tyrants. Then came those days, never to be recalled without a blush, the days of servitude without loyalty and sensuality without love, of dwarfish talents and gigantic vices, the paradise of cold hearts and narrow minds, the golden age of the coward, the bigot, and the slave. The king cringed to his rival that he might trample on his people, sank into a viceroy of France, and pocketed, with complacent infamy, her degrading insults, and her more degrading gold. The caresses of harlots, and the jests of buffoons, regulated the policy of the state. The government had just ability enough to deceive, and just religion enough to persecute. The principles of liberty were the scoff of every grinning courtier, and the Anathema Maranatha of every fawning dean. In every high place, worship was paid to Charles and James, Belial and Moloch; and England propitiated those obscene and cruel idols with the blood of her best and bravest children. Crime succeeded to crime, and disgrace to disgrace, till the race accursed of God and man was a second time driven forth, to wander on the face of the earth, and to be a byword and a shaking of the head to the nations. Most of the remarks which we have hitherto made on the public character of Milton apply to him only as one of a large body. We shall proceed to notice some of the peculiarities which distinguished him from his contemporaries. And, for that purpose, it is necessary to take a short survey of the parties into which the political world was at that time divided. We must premise, that our observations are intended to apply only to those who adhered, from a sincere preference, to one or to the other side. In days of public commotion, every faction, like an Oriental army, is attended by a crowd of camp-followers, an useless and heartless rabble, who prowl around its line of march in the hope of picking up something under its protection, but desert it in the day of battle, and often join to exterminate it after a defeat. England, at the time of which we are treating, abounded with fickle and selfish politicians, who transferred their support to every government as it rose, who kissed the hand of the king in 1640, and spat in his face in 1649, who shouted with equal glee when Cromwell was inaugurated in Westminster Hall, and when he was dug up to be hanged at Tyburn, who dined on calves' heads, or stuck up oak-branches, as circumstances altered, without the slightest shame or repugnance. These we leave out of the account. We take our estimate of parties from those who really deserved to be called partisans. We would speak first of the Puritans, the most remarkable body of men, perhaps, which the world has ever produced. The odious and ridiculous parts of their character lie on the surface. He that runs may read them; nor have there been wanting attentive and malicious observers to point them out. For many years after the Restoration, they were the theme of unmeasured invective and derision. They were exposed to the utmost licentiousness of the press and of the stage, at the time when the press and the stage were most licentious. They were not men of letters; they were as a body, unpopular; they could not defend themselves; and the public would not take them under its protection. They were therefore abandoned, without reserve, to the tender mercies of the satirists and dramatists. The ostentatious simplicity of their dress, their sour aspect, their nasal twang, their stiff posture, their long graces, their Hebrew names, the Scriptural phrases which they introduced on every occasion, their contempt of human learning, their detestation of polite amusements, were indeed fair game for the laughers. But it is not from the laughers alone that the philosophy of history is to be learnt. And he who approaches this subject should carefully guard against the influence of that potent ridicule which has already misled so many excellent writers. "Ecco il fonte del riso, ed ecco il rio Che mortali perigli in se contiene: Hor qui tener a fren nostro desio, Ed esser cauti molto a noi conviene." Those who roused the people to resistance, who directed their measures through a long series of eventful years, who formed, out of the most unpromising materials, the finest army that Europe had ever seen, who trampled down King, Church, and Aristocracy, who, in the short intervals of domestic sedition and rebellion, made the name of England terrible to every nation on the face of the earth, were no vulgar fanatics. Most of their absurdities were mere external badges, like the signs of freemasonry, or the dresses of friars. We regret that these badges were not more attractive. We regret that a body to whose courage and talents mankind has owed inestimable obligations had not the lofty elegance which distinguished some of the adherents of Charles the First, or the easy good-breeding for which the court of Charles the Second was celebrated. But, if we must make our choice, we shall, like Bassanio in the play, turn from the specious caskets which contain only the Death's head and the Fool's head, and fix on the plain leaden chest which conceals the treasure. The Puritans were men whose minds had derived a peculiar character from the daily contemplation of superior beings and eternal interests. Not content with acknowledging, in general terms, an overruling Providence, they habitually ascribed every event to the will of the Great Being, for whose power nothing was too vast, for whose inspection nothing was too minute. To know him, to serve him, to enjoy him, was with them the great end of existence. They rejected with contempt the ceremonious homage which other sects substituted for the pure worship of the soul. Instead of catching occasional glimpses of the Deity through an obscuring veil, they aspired to gaze full on his intolerable brightness, and to commune with him face to face. Hence originated their contempt for terrestrial distinctions. The difference between the greatest and the meanest of mankind seemed to vanish, when compared with the boundless interval which separated the whole race from him on whom their own eyes were constantly fixed. They recognised no title to superiority but his favour; and, confident of that favour, they despised all the accomplishments and all the dignities of the world. If they were unacquainted with the works of philosophers and poets, they were deeply read in the oracles of God. If their names were not found in the registers of heralds, they were recorded in the Book of Life. If their steps were not accompanied by a splendid train of menials, legions of ministering angels had charge over them. Their palaces were houses not made with hands; their diadems crowns of glory which should never fade away. On the rich and the eloquent, on nobles and priests they looked down with contempt: for they esteemed themselves rich in a more precious treasure, and eloquent in a more sublime language, nobles by the right of an earlier creation, and priests by the imposition of a mightier hand. The very meanest of them was a being to whose fate a mysterious and terrible importance belonged, on whose slightest action the spirits of light and darkness looked with anxious interest, who had been destined, before heaven and earth were created, to enjoy a felicity which should continue when heaven and earth should have passed away. Events which short-sighted politicians ascribed to earthly causes, had been ordained on his account. For his sake empires had risen, and flourished, and decayed. For his sake the Almighty had proclaimed his will by the pen of the Evangelist, and the harp of the prophet. He had been wrested by no common deliverer from the grasp of no common foe. He had been ransomed by the sweat of no vulgar agony, by the blood of no earthly sacrifice. It was for him that the sun had been darkened, that the rocks had been rent, that the dead had risen, that all nature had shuddered at the sufferings of her expiring God. Thus the Puritan was made up of two different men, the one all self-abasement, penitence, gratitude, passion, the other proud, calm, inflexible, sagacious. He prostrated himself in the dust before his Maker; but he set his foot on the neck of his king. In his devotional retirement, he prayed with convulsions, and groans, and tears. He was half-maddened by glorious or terrible illusions. He heard the lyres of angels or the tempting whispers of fiends. He caught a gleam of the Beatific Vision, or woke screaming from dreams of everlasting fire. Like Vane, he thought himself intrusted with the sceptre of the millennial year. Like Fleetwood, he cried in the bitterness of his soul that God had hid his face from him. But when he took his seat in the council, or girt on his sword for war, these tempestuous workings of the soul had left no perceptible trace behind them. People who saw nothing of the godly but their uncouth visages, and heard nothing from them but their groans and their whining hymns, might laugh at them. But those had little reason to laugh who encountered them in the hall of debate or in the field of battle. These fanatics brought to civil and military affairs a coolness of judgment and an immutability of purpose which some writers have thought inconsistent with their religious zeal, but which were in fact the necessary effects of it. The intensity of their feelings on one subject made them tranquil on every other. One overpowering sentiment had subjected to itself pity and hatred, ambition and fear. Death had lost its terrors and pleasure its charms. They had their smiles and their tears, their raptures and their sorrows, but not for the things of this world. Enthusiasm had made them Stoics, had cleared their minds from every vulgar passion and prejudice, and raised them above the influence of danger and of corruption. It sometimes might lead them to pursue unwise ends, but never to choose unwise means. They went through the world, like Sir Artegal's iron man Talus with his flail, crushing and trampling down oppressors, mingling with human beings, but having neither part or lot in human infirmities, insensible to fatigue, to pleasure, and to pain, not to be pierced by any weapon, not to be withstood by any barrier. Such we believe to have been the character of the Puritans. We perceive the absurdity of their manners. We dislike the sullen gloom of their domestic habits. We acknowledge that the tone of their minds was often injured by straining after things too high for mortal reach: and we know that, in spite of their hatred of Popery, they too often fell into the worst vices of that bad system, intolerance and extravagant austerity, that they had their anchorites and their crusades, their Dunstans and their De Monforts, their Dominics and their Escobars. Yet, when all circumstances are taken into consideration, we do not hesitate to pronounce them a brave, a wise, an honest, and an useful body. The Puritans espoused the cause of civil liberty mainly because it was the cause of religion. There was another party, by no means numerous, but distinguished by learning and ability, which acted with them on very different principles. We speak of those whom Cromwell was accustomed to call the Heathens, men who were, in the phraseology of that time, doubting Thomases or careless Gallios with regard to religious subjects, but passionate worshippers of freedom. Heated by the study of ancient literature, they set up their country as their idol, and proposed to themselves the heroes of Plutarch as their examples. They seem to have borne some resemblance to the Brissotines of the French Revolution. But it is not very easy to draw the line of distinction between them and their devout associates, whose tone and manner they sometimes found it convenient to affect, and sometimes, it is probable, imperceptibly adopted. We now come to the Royalists. We shall attempt to speak of them, as we have spoken of their antagonists, with perfect candour. We shall not charge upon a whole party the profligacy and baseness of the horse-boys, gamblers, and bravoes, whom the hope of license and plunder attracted from all the dens of Whitefriars to the standard of Charles, and who disgraced their associates by excesses which, under the stricter discipline of the Parliamentary armies, were never tolerated. We will select a more favourable specimen. Thinking as we do that the cause of the king was the cause of bigotry and tyranny, we yet cannot refrain from looking with complacency on the character of the honest old cavaliers. We feel a national pride in comparing them with the instruments which the despots of other countries are compelled to employ, with the mutes who throng their ante-chambers, and the Janissaries who mount guard at their gates. Our royalist countrymen were not heartless, dangling courtiers, bowing at every step, and simpering at every word. They were not mere machines for destruction, dressed up in uniforms, caned into skill, intoxicated into valour, defending without love, destroying without hatred. There was a freedom in their very degradation. The sentiment of individual independence was strong within them. They were indeed misled, but by no base or selfish motive. Compassion and romantic honour, the prejudices of childhood, and the venerable names of history, threw over them a spell potent as that of Duessa; and, like the Red-Cross Knight, they thought that they were doing battle for an injured beauty, while they defended a false and loathsome sorceress. In truth they scarcely entered at all into the merits of the political question. It was not for a treacherous king or an intolerant church that they fought, but for the old banner which had waved in so many battles over the heads of their fathers, and for the altars at which they had received the hands of their brides. Though nothing could be more erroneous than their political opinions, they possessed, in far greater degree than their adversaries, those qualities which are the grace of private life. With many of the vices of the Round Table, they had also many of its virtues, courtesy, generosity, veracity, tenderness, and respect for women. They had far more both of profound and of polite learning than the Puritans. Their manners were more engaging, their tempers more amiable, their tastes more elegant, and their households more cheerful. Milton did not strictly belong to any of the classes which we have described. He was not a Puritan. He was not a freethinker. He was not a Royalist. In his character the noblest qualities of every party were combined in harmonious union. From the Parliament and from the Court, from the conventicle and from the Gothic cloister, from the gloomy and sepulchral circles of the Roundheads, and from the Christmas revel of the hospitable Cavalier, his nature selected and drew to itself whatever was great and good, while it rejected all the base and pernicious ingredients by which those finer elements were defiled. Like the Puritans, he lived "As ever in his great taskmaster's eye." Like them, he kept his mind continually fixed on an Almighty Judge and an eternal reward. And hence he acquired their contempt of external circumstances, their fortitude, their tranquillity, their inflexible resolution. But not the coolest sceptic or the most profane scoffer was more perfectly free from the contagion of their frantic delusions, their savage manners, their ludicrous jargon, their scorn of science, and their aversion to pleasure. Hating tyranny with a perfect hatred, he had nevertheless all the estimable and ornamental qualities which were almost entirely monopolised by the party of the tyrant. There was none who had a stronger sense of the value of literature, a finer relish for every elegant amusement, or a more chivalrous delicacy of honour and love. Though his opinions were democratic, his tastes and his associations were such as harmonise best with monarchy and aristocracy. He was under the influence of all the feelings by which the gallant Cavaliers were misled. But of those feelings he was the master and not the slave. Like the hero of Homer, he enjoyed all the pleasures of fascination; but he was not fascinated. He listened to the song of the Syrens; yet he glided by without being seduced to their fatal shore. He tasted the cup of Circe; but he bore about him a sure antidote against the effects of its bewitching sweetness. The allusions which captivated his imagination never impaired his reasoning powers. The statesman was proof against the splendour, the solemnity, and the romance which enchanted the poet. Any person who will contrast the sentiments expressed in his treatises on Prelacy with the exquisite lines on ecclesiastical architecture and music in the Penseroso, which was published about the same time, will understand our meaning. This is an inconsistency which, more than anything else, raises his character in our estimation, because it shows how many private tastes and feelings he sacrificed, in order to do what he considered his duty to mankind. It is the very struggle of the noble Othello. His heart relents; but his hand is firm. He does nought in hate, but all in honour. He kisses the beautiful deceiver before he destroys her. That from which the public character of Milton derives its great and peculiar splendour still remains to be mentioned. If he exerted himself to overthrow a forsworn king and a persecuting hierarchy, he exerted himself in conjunction with others. But the glory of the battle which he fought for the species of freedom which is the most valuable, and which was then the least understood, the freedom of the human mind, is all his own. Thousands and tens of thousands among his contemporaries raised their voices against Ship-money and the Star-chamber. But there were few indeed who discerned the more fearful evils of moral and intellectual slavery, and the benefits which would result from the liberty of the press and the unfettered exercise of private judgment. These were the objects which Milton justly conceived to be the most important. He was desirous that the people should think for themselves as well as tax themselves, and should be emancipated from the dominion of prejudice as well as from that of Charles. He knew that those who, with the best intentions, overlooked these schemes of reform, and contented themselves with pulling down the king and imprisoning the malignants, acted like the heedless brothers in his own poem, who, in their eagerness to disperse the train of the sorcerer, neglected the means of liberating the captive. They thought only of conquering when they should have thought of disenchanting. "Oh, he mistook! Ye should have snatched his wand And bound him fast. Without the rod reversed, And backward mutters of dissevering power, We cannot free the lady that sits here Bound in strong fetters fixed and motionless." To reverse the rod, to spell the charm backward, to break the ties which bound a stupefied people to the seat of enchantment, was the noble aim of Milton. To this all his public conduct was directed. For this he joined the Presbyterians; for this he forsook them. He fought their perilous battle; but he turned away with disdain from their insolent triumph. He saw that they, like those whom they had vanquished, were hostile to the liberty of thought. He therefore joined the Independents, and called upon Cromwell to break the secular chain, and to save free conscience from the paw of the Presbyterian wolf. With a view to the same great object, he attacked the licensing system in that sublime treatise which every statesman should wear as a sign upon his hand and as frontlets between his eyes. His attacks were, in general, directed less against particular abuses than against those deeply seated errors on which almost all abuses are founded, the servile worship of eminent men and the irrational dread of innovation. That he might shake the foundations of these debasing sentiments more effectually, he always selected for himself the boldest literary services. He never came up in the rear when the outworks had been carried and the breach entered. He pressed into the forlorn hope. At the beginning of the changes, he wrote within comparable energy and eloquence against the bishops. But, when his opinion seemed likely to prevail, he passed on to other subjects, and abandoned prelacy to the crowd of writers who now hastened to insult a falling party. There is no more hazardous enterprise than that of bearing the torch of truth into those dark and infected recesses in which no light has ever shone. But it was the choice and the pleasure of Milton to penetrate the noisome vapours, and to brave the terrible explosion. Those who most disapprove of his opinions must respect the hardihood with which he maintained them. He, in general, left to others the credit of expounding and defending the popular parts of his religious and political creed. He took his own stand upon those which the great body of his countrymen reprobated as criminal, or derided as paradoxical. He stood up for divorce and regicide. He attacked the prevailing systems of education. His radiant and beneficent career resembled that of the god of light and fertility. "Nitor in adversum; nec me, qui cætera, vincit Impetus, et rapido contrarius evehor orbi." CHAPTER VII It is to be regretted that the prose writings of Milton should, in our time, be so little read. As compositions, they deserve the attention of every man who wishes to become acquainted with the full power of the English language. They abound with passages compared with which the finest declamations of Burke sink into insignificance. They are a perfect field of cloth of gold. The style is stiff with gorgeous embroidery. Not even in the earlier books of the Paradise Lost has the great poet ever risen higher than in those parts of his controversial works in which his feelings, excited by conflict, find a vent in bursts of devotional and lyric rapture. It is, to borrow his own majestic language, "a seven-fold chorus of hallelujahs and harping symphonies." We had intended to look more closely at these performances, to analyse the peculiarities of the diction, to dwell at some length on the sublime wisdom of the Areopagitica and the nervous rhetoric of the Iconoclast, and to point out some of those magnificent passages which occur in the Treatise of Reformation and the Animadversions on the Remonstrant. But the length to which our remarks have already extended renders this impossible. We must conclude. And yet we can scarcely tear ourselves away from the subject. The days immediately following the publication of this relic of Milton appear to be peculiarly set apart, and consecrated to his memory. And we shall scarcely be censured if, on this his festival, we be found lingering near his shrine, how worthless soever may be the offering which we bring to it. While this book lies on our table, we seem to be contemporaries of the writer. We are transported a hundred and fifty years back. We can almost fancy that we are visiting him in his small lodging; that we see him sitting at the old organ beneath the faded green hangings; that we can catch the quick twinkle of his eyes, rolling in vain to find the day; that we are reading in the lines of his noble countenance the proud and mournful history of his glory and his affliction. We image to ourselves the breathless silence in which we should listen to his slightest word, the passionate veneration with which we should kneel to kiss his hand and weep upon it, the earnestness with which we should endeavour to console him, if indeed such a spirit could need consolation, for the neglect of an age unworthy of his talents and his virtues, the eagerness with which we should contest with his daughters, or with his Quaker friend Elwood, the privilege of reading Homer to him, or of taking down the immortal accents which flowed from his lips. These are perhaps foolish feelings. Yet we cannot be ashamed of them; nor shall we be sorry if what we have written shall in any degree excite them in other minds. We are not much in the habit of idolising either the living or the dead. And we think that there is no more certain indication of a weak and ill-regulated intellect than that propensity which, for want of a better name, we will venture to christen Boswellism. But there are a few characters which have stood the closest scrutiny and the severest tests, which have been tried in the furnace and have proved pure, which have been weighed in the balance and have not been found wanting, which have been declared sterling by the general consent of mankind, and which are visibly stamped with the image and superscription of the Most High. These great men we trust that we know how to prize; and of these was Milton. The sight of his books, the sound of his name, are pleasant to us. His thoughts resemble those celestial fruits and flowers which the Virgin Martyr of Massinger sent down from the gardens of Paradise to the earth, and which were distinguished from the productions of other soils, not only by superior bloom and sweetness, but by miraculous efficacy to invigorate and to heal. They are powerful, not only to delight, but to elevate and purify. Nor do we envy the man who can study either the life or the writings of the great poet and patriot, without aspiring to emulate, not indeed the sublime works with which his genius has enriched our literature, but the zeal with which he laboured for the public good, the fortitude with which he endured every private calamity, the lofty disdain with which he looked down on temptations and dangers, the deadly hatred which he bore to bigots and tyrants, and the faith which he so sternly kept with his country and with his fame. THE END. 
6929	----	This eBook was produced by Eaon Walkker. POEMATA: LATIN, GREEK AND ITALIAN POEMS BY JOHN MILTON (Translated by William Cowper). Digraphs, accents and italics have been omitted. Spelling has been modernized. Some notes and Titles have been slightly edited without comment. Notes follow the poem to which they refer. CONTENTS Complimentary Pieces Addressed to the Author. 1. Elegies Elegy I -To Charles Diodati. Elegy II -On the Death of the University Beadle at Cambridge. Elegy III-On the Death of the Bishop of Winchester. Elegy IV -To My Tutor, Thomas Young. Elegy V -On the Approach of Spring. Elegy VI -To Charles Diodati. Elegy VII On the Gunpowder Plot. Another on the Same. Another on the Same. Another on the Same. On the Invention of Gunpowder. To Leonora, Singing in Rome. Another to the Same. Another to the Same. The Fable of the Peasant and his Landlord. 2. Poems in Various Metres. On the Death of the Vice-Chancellor, a Physician. On the Fifth of November. On the Death of the Bishop of Ely. That Nature is Not Subject to Decay. On the Platonic Ideal as Understood by Aristotle. To My Father. Psalm CXIV. The Philosopher and the King. On the Engraver of his Portrait. To Giovanni Salzilli. To Giovanni Battista Manso. The Death of Damon. To John Rouse. 3. Translations of the Italian Poems. Appendix: To Christina, Queen of Sweden. Appendix: Translations of Poems in the Latin Prose Works. Appendix: Translation of a Latin Letter. Appendix: Translations of the Italian Poems by George MacDonald (I876). Complimentary Pieces Addressed to the Author. 1Well as the author knows that the following testimonies are not so much about as above him, and that men of great ingenuity, as well as our friends, are apt, through abundant zeal, so to praise us as rather to draw their own likeness than ours, he was yet unwilling that the world should remain always ignorant of compositions that do him so much honour; and especially because he has other friends, who have, with much importunity, solicited their publication. Aware that excessive commendation awakens envy, he would with both hands thrust it from him, preferring just so much of that dangerous tribute as may of right belong to him; but at the same time he cannot deny that he sets the highest value on the suffrages of judicious and distinguished persons. 1 Milton's Preface, Translated. 1 These complimentary pieces have been sufficiently censured by a great authority, but no very candid judge either of Milton or his panegyrists. He, however, must have a heart sadly indifferent to the glory of his country, who is not gratified by the thought that she may exult in a son whom, young as he was, the Learned of Italy thus contended to honour.--W.C. The Neapolitan, Giovanni Battista Manso, Marquis of Villa, to the Englishman, John Milton. What features, form, mien, manners, with a mind Oh how intelligent, and how refined! Were but thy piety from fault as free, Thou wouldst no Angle1 but an Angel be. 1 The reader will perceive that the word "Angle" (i.e. Anglo- Saxon) is essential, because the epigram turns upon it.--W.C. An Epigram Addressed to the Englishman, John Milton, a Poet Worthy of the Three Laurels of Poesy, the Grecian, Latin, and Etruscan, by Giovanni Salzilli of Rome Meles1 and Mincio both your urns depress! Sebetus, boast henceforth thy Tasso less! But let the Thames o'erpeer all floods, since he, For Milton famed, shall, single, match the three. 1 Meles is a river of Ionia, in the neighborhood of Smyrna, whence Homer is called Melesigenes. The Mincio watered the city of Mantua famous as the birthplace of Virgil. Sebetus is now called the Fiume della Maddalena--it runs through Naples.--W.C. To John Milton. Greece sound thy Homer's, Rome thy Virgil's name, But England's Milton equals both in fame. --Selvaggi. To John Milton, English Gentleman. An Ode. Exalt Me, Clio,1 to the skies, That I may form a starry crown, Beyond what Helicon supplies In laureate garlands of renown; To nobler worth be brighter glory given, And to a heavenly mind a recompense from heaven. Time's wasteful hunger cannot prey On everlasting high desert, Nor can Oblivion steal away Its record graven on the heart; Lodge but an arrow, Virtue, on the bow That binds my lyre, and death shall be a vanquished foe. In Ocean's blazing flood enshrined. Whose vassal tide around her swells, Albion. from other realms disjoined, The prowess of the world excels; She teems with heroes that to glory rise, With more than human force in our astonished eyes. To Virtue, driven from other lands, Their bosoms yield a safe retreat; Her law alone their deed commands, Her smiles they feel divinely sweet; Confirm my record, Milton, generous youth! And by true virtue prove thy virtue's praise a truth. Zeuxis, all energy and flaine, Set ardent forth in his career, Urged to his task by Helen's fame, Resounding ever in his ear; To make his image to her beauty true, From the collected fair each sovereign charm he drew.2 The bee, with subtlest skill endued, Thus toils to earn her precious juice, From all the flowery myriads strewed O'er meadow and parterre profuse; Confederate voices one sweet air compound, And various chords consent in one harmonious sound. An artist of celestial aim, Thy genius, caught by moral grace, With ardent emulation's flame The steps of Virtue toiled to trace, Observed in everv land who brightest shone, And blending all their best, make perfect good thy own. Front all in Florence born, or taught Our country's sweetest accent there, Whose works, with learned labor wrought, Immortal honors justly share, Then hast such treasure drawn of purest ore, That not even Tuscan bards can boast a richer store. Babel, confused, and with her towers Unfinished spreading wide and plain, Has served but to evince thy powers, With all hot, tongues confused in vain, Since not alone thy England's purest phrase, But every polished realm thy various speech displays. The secret things of heaven and earth, By nature, too reserved. concealed From other minds of highest worth, To thee ate copiously revealed; Thou knowest them clearly, and thy views attain The utmost bounds prescribed to moral truth's domain. Let Time no snore his wing display, And boast his ruinous career, For Virtue, rescued front his sway. His injuries may cease to fear; Since all events that claim remembrance find A chronicle exact in thy capacious mind. Give me, that I may praise thy song, Thy lyre, by which alone I can, Which, placing thee the stars among, Already proves thee more than man; And Thames shall seem Permessus,3 while his stream Graced with a swan like thee. shall be my favorite theme. I, who beside the Arno, strain To match thy merit with my lays, Learn, after many an effort vain, To admure thee rather than to praise; And that by mute astonishment alone, Not by the fathering tongue, thy worth may best be shown. --Signor Antonio Francini, Gentleman, of Florence. 1 The muse of History. 2 The portrait of Helen was painted at the request of the people of Crotna, who sent to the artist all their lovliest girls for models. Zeuxis selected five, and united their separate beauties in his picture. 3 A river in Boeotia which took its rise in Helicon. See Virgil Ecl. vi.64 To Mr. John Milton of London A youth eminent from his country and his virtues, Who in his travels has made himself acquainted with many nations, and in his studies, with all, that, life another Ulysses, lie might learn all that all could teach him; Skilful in many tongues, on whose lips languages now mute so live again, that the idioms of all are insufficient to his praise; happy acquisition by which he understands the universal admiration and applause his talents trace excited; Whose endowments of mind and person move us to wonder, but at the same time fix us immovable: whose works prompt us to extol him, but by their beauty strike us mute; In whose memory the whole world is treasured; in whose intellect, wisdom; in whose heart, the ardent desire for glory; and in whose mouth, eloquence. Who with Astronomy for his conductor, hears the music of the spheres; with Philosophy for the teacher, deciphers the hand-writing of God, in those wonders of creation which proclaim His greatness; and with the most unwearied literary industry for his associate, examines, restores, penetrates with case the obscurities of antiquity, the desolations of ages, and the labyrinths of learning; "But wherefore toil to reach these arduous heights?" To him, in short, whose virtues the mouths of Fame are too few to celebrate, and whom astonishment forbids us to praise a he deserves, this tribute due to his merits, and the offering of reverence and affection, is paid by Carlo Dati, a patrician Florentine. This great man's servant, and this good man's friend. In Miltonum.1 Tres tria, sed longe distantia, saecula vates Ostentant tribus e gentibus eximios. Graecia sublimem, cum majestate disertum Roma tulit, felix Anglia utrique parem. Partubus ex binis Natura exhausta, coacta est, Tertis ut fieret, consociare duos. --Joannem Dridenum. 1 Translation of Dryden's Lines Printed Under the Engraved Portrait of Milton in Tonson's Folio Edition of "Paradise Lost," I688. Stanzas on the Late Indecent Liberties Taken with the Remains of the Great Milton, by Wm. Cowper, Esq.1 Me too, perchance, in future days, The sculptur'd stone shall show, With Paphian myrtle, or with bays Parnessian, on my brow. But I, before that season come, Escap'd from ev'ry care, Shall reach my refuge in the tomb, And sleep securely there. So sang in Roman tone and style The youthful bard, ere long Ordain'd to grace his native isle With her sublimest song. Who then but must conceive disdain, Hearing the deed unblest Of wretches who have dar'd profane His dread sepulchral rest? Ill fare the hands that heav'd the stones Where Milton's ashes lay! That trembled not to grasp his bones. And steal his dust away! Oh! ill-requited bard! Neglect Thy living worth repaid, And blind idolatrous respect As much affronts thee dead. 1 This shocking outrage took place in I790 whilst the Church of St. Giles, Cripplegate, was repairing. The overseers (for the sake of gain) opened a coffin supposed to be Milton's, found a body, extracted its teeth, cut off its hair, and left the remains to the grave-diggers, who exhibited them for money to the public. Forsitan & nostros ducat de marmore vultus, Nectens aut Paphia myrti aut Parnasside lauri Fronde comas, at ego secura pace quiescam. --Milton. "Mansus" ("Manso") Cowper's translation : To honour me, and with the graceful wreath Or of Parnassus or the Paphian isle Shall bind my brows--but I shall rest the while." POEMATA 1. ELEGIES ELEGY I To Charles Diodati.1 At length, my friend, the far-sent letters come, Charged with thy kindness, to their destin'd home, They come, at length, from Deva's2 Western side, Where prone she seeks the salt Vergivian tide.3 Trust me, my joy is great that thou shouldst be, Though born of foreign race, yet born for me, And that my sprightly friend, now free to roam, Must seek again so soon his wonted home. I well content, where Thames with refluent tide My native city laves, meantime reside, 10 Nor zeal nor duty, now, my steps impell To reedy Cam,4 and my forbidden cell.5 Nor aught of pleasure in those fields have I, That, to the musing bard, all shade deny. Tis time, that I, a pedant's threats6 disdain, And fly from wrongs, my soul will ne'er sustain. If peaceful days, in letter'd leisure spent Beneath my father's roof, be banishment, Then call me banish'd, I will ne'er refuse A name expressive of the lot I chuse. 20 I would that exiled to the Pontic shore, Rome's hapless bard7 had suffer'd nothing more! He then had equall'd even Homer's lays, And, Virgil! thou hadst won but second praise. For here I woo the Muse with no control, And here my books--my life--absorb me whole. Here too I visit, or to smile, or weep, The winding theatre's majestic sweep; The grave or gay colloquial scene recruits My spirits spent in Learning's long pursuits. 30 Whether some Senior shrewd, or spendthrift heir, Wooer, or soldier, now unarm'd, be there, Or some coif'd brooder o'er a ten years' cause Thunder the Norman gibb'rish of the laws. The lacquey, there, oft dupes the wary sire, And, artful, speeds th'enamour'd son's desire. There, virgins oft, unconscious what they prove, What love is, know not, yet, unknowing, love. Or, if impassion'd Tragedy wield high The bloody sceptre, give her locks to fly 40 Wild as the winds, and roll her haggard eye, I gaze, and grieve, still cherishing my grief. At times, e'en bitter tears! yield sweet relief. As when from bliss untasted torn away, Some youth dies, hapless, on his bridal day, Or when the ghost, sent back from shades below, Fills the assassin's heart with vengeful woe, When Troy, or Argos, the dire scene affords, Or Creon's hall8 laments its guilty lords. Nor always city-pent or pent at home 50 I dwell, but when Spring calls me forth to roam Expatiate in our proud suburban shades Of branching elm that never sun pervades. Here many a virgin troop I may descry, Like stars of mildest influence, gliding by, Oh forms divine! Oh looks that might inspire E'en Jove himself, grown old, with young desire! Oft have I gazed on gem-surpassing eyes, Outsparkling every star that gilds the skies. Necks whiter than the iv'ry arm bestow'd 60 By Jove on Pelops, or the Milky Road! Bright locks, Love's golden snares, these falling low, Those playing wanton o'er the graceful brow! Cheeks too, more winning sweet than after show'r, Adonis turn'd to Flora's fav'rite flow'r! Yield, Heroines, yield, and ye who shar'd th'embrace Of Jupiter in ancient times, give place; Give place ye turban'd Fair of Persia's coast, And ye, not less renown'd, Assyria's boast! Submit, ye nymphs of Greece! Ye once the bloom 70 Of Ilion,9 and all ye of haughty Rome, Who swept of old her theatres with trains Redundant, and still live in classic strains! To British damsels beauty's palm is due, Aliens! to follow them is fame for you. Oh city,10 founded by Dardanian hands, Whose towering front the circling realm commands, Too blest abode! no loveliness we see In all the earth, but it abounds in thee. The virgin multitude that daily meets, 80 Radiant with gold and beauty, in thy streets, Outnumbers all her train of starry fires With which Diana gilds thy lofty spires. Fame says, that wafted hither by her doves, With all her host of quiver-bearing Loves, Venus, prefering Paphian scenes no more, Has fix'd her empire on thy nobler shore. But lest the sightless boy inforce my stay, I leave these happy walls, while yet I may. Immortal Moly11 shall secure my heart 90 From all the sorc'ry of Circaean art, And I will e'en repass Cam's reedy pools To face once more the warfare of the Schools. Meantime accept this trifle; Rhymes, though few, Yet such as prove thy friend's remembrance true. 1 Diodati was a schoolfellow of Milton at St. Paul's, of Italian extraction, nephew of Giovanni Diodati, the translator of the Bible into Italian, and son of Theodore Diodati, a physician of eminence, who married and settled in England. charles Diodati's early death formed the subject of The "Epitaphium Damonis" ("The Death of Damon"). 2 The Dee of Chester. 3 The Vergivian Sea, so called by Ptolemy, was the Irish Sea between England and Ireland. 4 Cambridge. 5 Milton had been rusticated (suspended) on account of a quarrel with his tutor, Chappell. 6 Chappell. 7 Ovid. 8 In Thebes--the guilty lords are Eteocles and Polynices the brothers-sons of Oedipus and Jocasta, who fell in their unnatural strife. 9 Troy. 10 London. The Dardanian (i.e. Trojan) hands are those of Brutus, the legendary founder of London. 11 The magical plant by which Odysseus was enabled to escape from Circe. See Homer (Odyssey, x. 370-375). ELEGY II On the Death of the University Beadle at Cambridge.1 Thee, whose refulgent staff and summons clear, Minerva's flock longtime was wont t'obey, Although thyself an herald, famous here, The last of heralds, Death, has snatch'd away. He calls on all alike, nor even deigns To spare the office that himself sustains. Thy locks were whiter than the plumes display'd By Leda's paramour2 in ancient time, But thou wast worthy ne'er to have decay'd, Or, Aeson-like,3 to know a second prime, 10 Worthy for whom some Goddess should have won New life, oft kneeling to Apollo's son.4 Commission'd to convene with hasty call The gowned tribes, how graceful wouldst thou stand! So stood Cyllenius5 erst in Priam's hall, Wing-footed messenger of Jove's command, And so, Eurybates6 when he address'd To Peleus' son Atrides' proud behest. Dread Queen of sepulchres! whose rig'rous laws And watchful eyes, run through the realms below, 20 Oh, oft too adverse to Minerva's cause, Too often to the Muse not less a foe, Chose meaner marks, and with more equal aim Pierce useless drones, earth's burthen and its shame! Flow, therefore, tears for Him from ev'ry eye, All ye disciples of the Muses, weep! Assembling, all, in robes of sable dye, Around his bier, lament his endless sleep, And let complaining Elegy rehearse In every School her sweetest saddest verse. 30 1 Richard Redding of St. John's College, M.A. He died in October, I626. 2 The Swan--Jove had turned himself into that bird. 3 i.e. Jason, who was restored to youth by his daughter Medea. 4 Esculapius, the god of medicine. 5 Hermes. 6 One of the heralds sent to Achilles by Agamemnon. ELEGY III Anno Aetates 17.1 On the Death of the Bishop of Winchester.2 Silent I sat, dejected, and alone, Making in thought the public woes my own, When, first, arose the image in my breast Of England's sufferings by that scourge, the pest.3 How death, his fun'ral torch and scythe in hand, Ent'ring the lordliest mansions of the land, Has laid the gem-illumin'd palace low, And level'd tribes of Nobles at a blow. I, next, deplor'd the famed fraternal pair4 Too soon to ashes turn'd and empty air, 10 The Heroes next, whom snatch'd into the skies All Belgia saw, and follow'd with her sighs; But Thee far most I mourn'd, regretted most, Winton's chief shepherd and her worthiest boast; Pour'd out in tears I thus complaining said-- Death, next in pow'r to Him who rules the Dead! Is't not enough that all the woodlands yield To thy fell force, and ev'ry verdant field, That lilies, at one noisome blast of thine, And ev'n the Cyprian Queen's own roses, pine, 20 That oaks themselves, although the running rill Suckle their roots, must wither at thy will, That all the winged nations, even those Whose heav'n-directed flight the Future shows, And all the beasts that in dark forests stray, And all the herds of Proteus5 are thy prey? Ah envious! arm'd with pow'rs so unconfined Why stain thy hands with blood of Human kind? Why take delight, with darts that never roam, To chase a heav'n-born spirit from her home? 30 While thus I mourn'd, the star of evening stood, Now newly ris'n, above the western flood, And Phoebus from his morning-goal again Had reach'd the gulphs of the Iberian main. I wish'd repose, and, on my couch reclined Took early rest, to night and sleep resign'd, When--Oh for words to paint what I beheld! I seem'd to wander in a spacious field, Where all the champain glow'd with purple light Like that of sun-rise on the mountain height; 40 Flow'rs over all the field, of ev'ry hue That ever Iris wore, luxuriant grew, Nor Chloris,6 with whom amtrous Zephyrs play, E'er dress'd Alcinous' gardens7 half so gay. A silver current, like the Tagus, roll'd O'er golden sands, but sands of purer gold, With dewy airs Favonius fann'd the flow'rs, With airs awaken'd under rosy bow'rs. Such poets feign, irradiated all o'er The sun's abode on India's utmost shore. 50 While I, that splendour and the mingled shade Of fruitful vines, with wonder fixt survey'd, At once, with looks that beam'd celestial grace, The Seer of Winton stood before my face. His snowy vesture's hem descending low His golden sandals swept, and pure as snow New-fallen shone the mitre on his brow. Where'er he trod, a tremulous sweet sound Of gladness shook the flow'ry scene around: Attendant angels clap their starry wings, 60 The trumpet shakes the sky, all aether rings, Each chaunts his welcome, folds him to his breast, And thus a sweeter voice than all the rest. "Ascend, my son! thy Father's kingdom share, My son! henceforth be free'd from ev'ry care." So spake the voice, and at its tender close With psaltry's sound th'Angelic band arose. Then night retired, and chased by dawning day The visionary bliss pass'd all away. I mourn'd my banish'd sleep with fond concern, 70 Frequent, to me may dreams like this return. 1 i.e. "In my seventeeth year," meaning at the age of sixteen. 2 Lancelot Andrewes, Fuller's "peerless prelate." 3 The plague which ravaged England in I626. 4 Prince Christian of Brunswick, and Count Mansfelt. They were brothers in arms and the Protestant champions. They both died in I626. 5 Marine creatures. Proteus was the shepherd of the seas. 6 Flora. 7 See the account of his gardens in the Odyssey. ELEGY IV. Anno Aetates 18. To My Tutor, Thomas Young,1 Chaplain of the English Merchants Resident at Hamburg. Hence, my epistle--skim the Deep--fly o'er Yon smooth expanse to the Teutonic shore! Haste--lest a friend should grieve for thy delay-- And the Gods grant that nothing thwart thy way! I will myself invoke the King2 who binds In his Sicanian ecchoing vault the winds, With Doris3 and her Nymphs, and all the throng Of azure Gods, to speed thee safe along. But rather, to insure thy happier haste, Ascend Medea's chariot,4 if thou may'st, 10 Or that whence young Triptolemus5 of yore Descended welcome on the Scythian shore. The sands that line the German coast descried, To opulent Hamburg turn aside, So call'd, if legendary fame be true, From Hama,6 whom a club-arm'd Cimbrian slew. There lives, deep-learn'd and primitively just, A faithful steward of his Christian trust, My friend, and favorite inmate of my heart-- That now is forced to want its better part! 20 What mountains now, and seas, alas! how wide! From me this other, dearer self divide, Dear, as the sage7 renown'd for moral truth To the prime spirit of the Attic youth! Dear, as the Stagyrite8 to Ammon's son,9 His pupil, who disdain'd the world he won! Nor so did Chiron, or so Phoenix shine10 In young Achilles' eyes, as He in mine. First led by him thro' sweet Aonian11 shade Each sacred haunt of Pindus I survey'd; 30 And favor'd by the muse, whom I implor'd, Thrice on my lip the hallow'd stream I pour'd. But thrice the Sun's resplendent chariot roll'd To Aries, has new ting'd his fleece with gold, And Chloris twice has dress'd the meadows gay, And twice has Summer parch'd their bloom away, Since last delighted on his looks I hung, Or my ear drank the music of his tongue. Fly, therefore, and surpass the tempest's speed! Aware thyself that there is urgent need. 40 Him, ent'ring, thou shalt haply seated see Beside his spouse, his infants on his knee, Or turning page by page with studious look Some bulky Father, or God's Holy Book, Or minist'ring (which is his weightiest care) To Christ's assembled flock their heav'nly fare. Give him, whatever his employment be, Such gratulation as he claims from me, And with a down-cast eye and carriage meek Addressing him, forget not thus to speak. 50 If, compass'd round with arms, thou canst attend To verse, verse greets thee from a distant friend, Long due and late I left the English shore, But make me welcome for that cause the more. Such from Ulysses, his chaste wife to cheer, The slow epistle came, tho' late, sincere. But wherefore This? why palliate I a deed, For which the culprit's self could hardly plead? Self-charged and self-condemn'd, his proper part He feels neglected, with an aching heart; 60 But Thou forgive--Delinquents who confess, And pray forgiveness, merit anger less; From timid foes the lion turns away, Nor yawns upon or rends a crouching prey, Even pike-wielding Thracians learn to spare, Won by soft influence of a suppliant's prayer; And heav'n's dread thunderbolt arrested stands By a cheap victim and uplifted hands. Long had he wish'd to write, but was witheld, And writes at last, by love alone compell'd, 70 For Fame, too often true when she alarms, Reports thy neighbouring-fields a scene of arms;12 Thy city against fierce besiegers barr'd, And all the Saxon Chiefs for fight prepar'd. Enyo13 wastes thy country wide around, And saturates with blood the tainted ground; Mars rests contented in his Thrace no more, But goads his steeds to fields of German gore, The ever-verdant olive fades and dies, And peace, the trumpet-hating goddess, flies, 80 Flies from that earth which justice long had left, And leaves the world of its last guard bereft. Thus horror girds thee round. Meantime alone Thou dwell'st, and helpless in a soil unknown, Poor, and receiving from a foreign hand The aid denied thee in thy native land. Oh, ruthless country, and unfeeling more Than thy own billow-beaten chalky shore! Leav'st Thou to foreign Care the Worthies giv'n By providence, to guide thy steps to Heav'n? 90 His ministers, commission'd to proclaim Eternal blessings in a Saviour's name? Ah then most worthy! with a soul unfed In Stygian night to lie for ever dead. So once the venerable Tishbite stray'd An exil'd fugitive from shade to shade, When, flying Ahab and his Fury wife, In lone Arabian wilds he shelter'd life; So, from Philippi wander'd forth forlorn Cilician Paul, with sounding scourges torn; 100 And Christ himself so left and trod no more The thankless Gergesenes' forbidden shore. But thou take courage, strive against despair, Quake not with dread, nor nourish anxious care. Grim war indeed on ev'ry side appears, And thou art menac'd by a thousand spears, Yet none shall drink thy blood, or shall offend Ev'n the defenceless bosom of my friend; For thee the Aegis of thy God shall hide, Jehova's self shall combat on thy side, 110 The same, who vanquish'd under Sion's tow'rs At silent midnight all Assyria's pow'rs, The same who overthrew in ages past, Damascus' sons that lay'd Samaria waste; Their King he fill'd and them with fatal fears By mimic sounds of clarions in their ears, Of hoofs and wheels and neighings from afar Of clanging armour and the din of war. Thou therefore, (as the most affiicted may) Still hope, and triumph o'er thy evil day, 120 Look forth, expecting happier times to come, And to enjoy once more thy native home! 1 Young was private tutor to Milton before he went to St. Paul's. (Milton's prose letter to Young is included in an appendix below.) 2 Aeolus, god of the east wind. Sicania was a name for Sicily. 3 Mother of the Nereids (sea-nymphs). 4 Drawn by winged dragons. 5 Triptolemus was presented by Ceres with a winged chariot. 6 A Saxon warrior slain by a giant. 7 Socrates. 8 Aristotle. 9 Alexander. 10 Chiron and Phoenix were the tutors of Achilles. 11 Helicon. 12 Alluding to the war between the Protestant League and the Imperialists. 13 The goddess of war. ELEGY V. Anno Aetates 20. On the Approach of Spring. Time, never wand'ring from his annual round, Bids Zephyr breathe the Spring, and thaw the ground; Bleak Winter flies, new verdure clothes the plain, And earth assumes her transient youth again. Dream I, or also to the Spring belong Increase of Genius, and new pow'rs of song? Spring gives them, and, how strange soere it seem, Impels me now to some harmonious theme. Castalia's fountain and the forked hill1 By day, by night, my raptur'd fancy fill, 10 My bosom burns and heaves, I hear within A sacred sound that prompts me to begin, Lo! Phoebus comes, with his bright hair he blends The radiant laurel wreath; Phoebus descends; I mount, and, undepress'd by cumb'rous clay, Through cloudy regions win my easy way; Rapt through poetic shadowy haunts I fly: The shrines all open to my dauntless eye, My spirit searches all the realms of light, And no Tartarean gulphs elude my sight. 20 But this ecstatic trance--this glorious storm Of inspiration--what will it perform? Spring claims the verse that with his influence glows, And shall be paid with what himself bestows. Thou, veil'd with op'ning foliage, lead'st the throng Of feather'd minstrels, Philomel! in song; Let us, in concert, to the season sing, Civic, and sylvan heralds of the spring! With notes triumphant spring's approach declare! To spring, ye Muses, annual tribute bear! 30 The Orient left and Aethiopia's plains The Sun now northward turns his golden reins, Night creeps not now, yet rules with gentle sway, And drives her dusky horrors swift away; Now less fatigued on his aetherial plain Bootes2 follows his celestial wain; And now the radiant centinels above Less num'rous watch around the courts of Jove, For, with the night, Force, Ambush, Slaughter fly, And no gigantic guilt alarms the sky. 40 Now haply says some shepherd, while he views, Recumbent on a rock, the redd'ning dews, This night, this surely, Phoebus miss'd the fair, Who stops his chariot by her am'rous care. Cynthia,3 delighted by the morning's glow, Speeds to the woodland, and resumes her bow; Resigns her beams, and, glad to disappear, Blesses his aid who shortens her career. Come--Phoebus cries--Aurora come--too late Thou linger'st slumb'ring with thy wither'd mate,4 50 Leave Him, and to Hymettus' top repair, Thy darling Cephalus expects thee there. The goddess, with a blush, her love betrays, But mounts, and driving rapidly obeys. Earth now desires thee, Phoebus! and, t'engage Thy warm embrace, casts off the guise of age. Desires thee, and deserves; for who so sweet, When her rich bosom courts thy genial heat? Her breath imparts to ev'ry breeze that blows Arabia's harvest and the Paphian rose. 60 Her lofty front she diadems around With sacred pines, like Ops on Ida crown'd, Her dewy locks with various flow'rs new-blown, She interweaves, various, and all her own, For Proserpine in such a wreath attired Taenarian Dis5 himself with love inspired. Fear not, lest, cold and coy, the Nymph refuse, Herself, with all her sighing Zephyrs sues, Each courts thee fanning soft his scented wing, And all her groves with warbled wishes ring. 70 Nor, unendow'd and indigent, aspires Th'am'rous Earth to engage thy warm desires, But, rich in balmy drugs, assists thy claim Divine Physician! to that glorious name. If splendid recompense, if gifts can move Desire in thee (gifts often purchase love), She offers all the wealth, her mountains hide, And all that rests beneath the boundless tide. How oft, when headlong from the heav'nly steep She sees thee plunging in the Western Deep 80 How oft she cries--Ah Phoebus! why repair Thy wasted force, why seek refreshment there? Can Tethys6 win thee? wherefore should'st thou lave A face so fair in her unpleasant wave? Come, seek my green retreats, and rather chuse To cool thy tresses in my chrystal dews, The grassy turf shall yield thee sweeter rest, Come, lay thy evening glories on my breast, And breathing fresh through many a humid rose, Soft whisp'ring airs shall lull thee to repose. 90 No fears I feel like Semele7 to die, Nor lest thy burning wheels8 approach too nigh, For thou can'st govern them. Here therefore rest, And lay thy evening glories on my breast. Thus breathes the wanton Earth her am'rous flame, And all her countless offspring feel the same; For Cupid now through every region strays Bright'ning his faded fires with solar rays, His new-strung bow sends forth a deadlier sound, And his new-pointed shafts more deeply wound, 100 Nor Dian's self escapes him now untried, Nor even Vesta9 at her altar-side; His mother too repairs her beauty's wane, And seems sprung newly from the Deep again. Exulting youths the Hymenaeal10 sing, With Hymen's name roofs, rocks, and valleys ring; He, new attired and by the season dress'd Proceeds all fragrant in his saffron vest. Now, many a golden-cinctur'd virgin roves To taste the pleasures of the fields and groves, 110 All wish, and each alike, some fav'rite youth Hers in the bonds of Hymenaeal truth. Now pipes the shepherd through his reeds again, Nor Phyllis wants a song that suits the strain, With songs the seaman hails the starry sphere, And dolphins rise from the abyss to hear, Jove feels, himself, the season, sports again With his fair spouse, and banquets all his train. Now too the Satyrs in the dusk of Eve Their mazy dance through flow'ry meadows weave, 120 And neither God nor goat, but both in kind, Sylvanus,11 wreath'd with cypress, skips behind. The Dryads leave the hollow sylvan cells To roam the banks, and solitary dells; Pan riots now; and from his amorous chafe Ceres12 and Cybele seem hardly safe, And Faunus,13 all on fire to reach the prize, In chase of some enticing Oread14 flies; She bounds before, but fears too swift a bound, And hidden lies, but wishes to be found. 130 Our shades entice th'Immortals from above, And some kind Pow'r presides oter ev'ry grove, And long ye Pow'rs o'er ev'ry grove preside, For all is safe and blest where ye abide! Return O Jove! the age of gold restore-- Why chose to dwell where storms and thunders roar? At least, thou, Phoebus! moderate thy speed, Let not the vernal hours too swift proceed, Command rough Winter back, nor yield the pole Too soon to Night's encroaching, long control. 140 1 Helicon. 2 The Great Bear, called also Charles's Wain (wagon). "Bootes" is the constellation called "The Waggoner," who is said to be "less fatigued" because he drives the wain higher in the sky. 3 Diana (the Moon). 4 Tithonus, mortal husband to Aurora (the dawn), granted immortality without eternal youth. See Homer's Hymn to Aphrodite (lines 218-238). Cephalus was her lover, unwillingly taken by her from his beloved wife Procris. See Ovid (Met. vii, 700-708). 5 Hades (Pluto). 6 A water goddess--mother of the river gods and wife of Oceanus. 7 The mother of Dionysus. Juno persuaded her to ask to see Jove in all his divine glory, the vision of which struck her dead. See Ovid (Met. iii, 308-309.) 8 The wheels of Apollo's chariot. See Ovid (Met. ii, I9-328.) 9 The goddess of chastity. 10 Hymn to Hymen, the goddess of marriage. 11 The wood god. 12 The goddess of agriculture. Cybele (Rhea) was called the mother of the gods and of men. See Virgil (Aen. x, 252-253.) 13 The god of shepherds. 14 A wood nymph. ELEGY VI To Charles Diodati, When He Was Visiting in the Country Who sent the Author a poetical epistle, in which he requested that his verses, if not so good as usual, might be excused on account of the many feasts to which his friends invited him, and which would not allow him leisure to finish them as he wished. With no rich viands overcharg'd, I send Health, which perchance you want, my pamper'd friend; But wherefore should thy Muse tempt mine away From what she loves, from darkness into day? Art thou desirous to be told how well I love thee, and in verse? Verse cannot tell. For verse has bounds, and must in measure move; But neither bounds nor measure knows my love. How pleasant in thy lines described appear December's harmless sports and rural cheer! 10 French spirits kindling with caerulean fires, And all such gambols as the time inspires! Think not that Wine against good verse offends; The Muse and Bacchus have been always friends, Nor Phoebus blushes sometimes to be found With Ivy, rather than with Laurel, crown'd. The Nine themselves oftimes have join'd the song And revels of the Bacchanalian throng. Not even Ovid could in Scythian air Sing sweetly--why? no vine would flourish there. 20 What in brief numbers sang Anacreon's1 muse? Wine, and the rose, that sparkling wine bedews. Pindar with Bacchus glows--his every line Breathes the rich fragrance of inspiring wine, While, with loud crash o'erturn'd, the chariot lies And brown with dust the fiery courser flies. The Roman lyrist steep'd in wine his lays So sweet in Glycera's, and Chloe's praise.2 Now too the plenteous feast, and mantling bowl Nourish the vigour of thy sprightly soul; 30 The flowing goblet makes thy numbers flow, And casks not wine alone, but verse, bestow. Thus Phoebus favours, and the arts attend Whom Bacchus, and whom Ceres, both befriend. What wonder then, thy verses are so sweet, In which these triple powers so kindly meet. The lute now also sounds, with gold inwrought, And touch'd with flying Fingers nicely taught, In tap'stried halls high-roof'd the sprightly lyre Directs the dancers of the virgin choir. 40 If dull repletion fright the Muse away, Sights, gay as these, may more invite her stay; And, trust me, while the iv'ry keys resound, Fair damsels sport, and perfumes steam around, Apollo's influence, like ethereal flame Shall animate at once thy glowing frame, And all the Muse shall rush into thy breast, By love and music's blended pow'rs possest. For num'rous pow'rs light Elegy befriend, Hear her sweet voice, and at her call attend; 50 Her, Bacchus, Ceres, Venus, all approve, And with his blushing Mother, gentle Love. Hence, to such bards we grant the copious use Of banquets, and the vine's delicious juice. But they who Demigods and Heroes praise And feats perform'd in Jove's more youthful days, Who now the counsels of high heav'n explore, Now shades, that echo the Cerberean roar,3 Simply let these, like him of Samos4 live, Let herbs to them a bloodless banquet give; 60 In beechen goblets let their bev'rage shine, Cool from the chrystal spring, their sober wine! Their youth should pass, in innocence, secure From stain licentious, and in manners pure, Pure as the priest's, when robed in white he stands The fresh lustration ready in his hands. Thus Linus5 liv'd, and thus, as poets write, Tiresias, wiser for his loss of sight,6 Thus exil'd Chalcas,7 thus the bard of Thrace,8 Melodious tamer of the savage race! 70 Thus train'd by temp'rance, Homer led, of yore, His chief of Ithaca9 from shore to shore, Through magic Circe's monster-peopled reign, And shoals insidious with the siren train; And through the realms, where griesly spectres dwell, Whose tribes he fetter'd in a gory spell; For these are sacred bards, and, from above, Drink large infusions from the mind of Jove. Would'st thou (perhaps 'tis hardly worth thine ear) Would'st thou be told my occupation here? 80 The promised King of peace employs my pen, Th'eternal cov'nant made for guilty men, The new-born Deity with infant cries Filling the sordid hovel, where he lies; The hymning Angels, and the herald star That led the Wise who sought him from afar, And idols on their own unhallow'd floor Dash'd at his birth, to be revered no more! This theme10 on reeds of Albion I rehearse; The dawn of that blest day inspired the verse; 90 Verse that, reserv'd in secret, shall attend Thy candid voice, my Critic and my Friend! 1 A poet native to Teios in Ionia. 2 See Horace's Odes (i, 19-23). 3 Cerberus, the guardian of Hades. 4 Pythagoras. 5 A son of Apollo. 6 Tiresias was gifted by Pallas with the power of understanding the language of birds to atone for his loss of sight. 7 The Grecian soothsayer at the siege of Troy. 8 Orpheus. 9 Odysseus. 10 "The Hymn" from "On the Morning of Christ's Nativity." Elegy VI. Anno Aetates undevigesimo.1 As yet a stranger to the gentle fires That Amathusia's smiling Queen2 inspires, Not seldom I derided Cupid's darts, And scorn'd his claim to rule all human hearts. Go, child, I said, transfix the tim'rous dove, An easy conquest suits an infant Love; Enslave the sparrow, for such prize shall be Sufficient triumph to a Chief like thee; Why aim thy idle arms at human kind? Thy shafts prevail not 'gainst the noble mind. 10 The Cyprian3 heard, and, kindling into ire, (None kindles sooner) burn'd with double fire. It was the Spring, and newly risen day Peep'd o'er the hamlets on the First of May; My eyes too tender for the blaze of light, Still sought the shelter of retiring night, When Love approach'd, in painted plumes arrayed; Th'insidious god his rattling darts betray'd, Nor less his infant features, and the sly Sweet intimations of his threat'ning eye. 20 Such the Sigeian boy4 is seen above, Filling the goblet for imperial Jove; Such he, on whom the nymphs bestow'd their charms, Hylas,5 who perish'd in a Naiad's arms. Angry he seem'd, yet graceful in his ire, And added threats, not destitute of fire. "My power," he said, "by others pain alone, 'Twere best to learn; now learn it by thy own! With those, who feel my power, that pow'r attest! And in thy anguish be my sway confest! 30 I vanquish'd Phoebus, though returning vain From his new triumph o'er the Python slain, And, when he thinks on Daphne,6 even He Will yield the prize of archery to me. A dart less true the Parthian horseman7 sped, Behind him kill'd, and conquer'd as he fled, Less true th'expert Cydonian, and less true The youth, whose shaft his latent Procris slew.8 Vanquish'd by me see huge Orion bend, By me Alcides,9 and Alcides's friend.10 40 At me should Jove himself a bolt design, His bosom first should bleed transfix'd by mine. But all thy doubts this shaft will best explain, Nor shall it teach thee with a trivial pain, Thy Muse, vain youth! shall not thy peace ensure, Nor Phoebus' serpent yield thy wound a cure.11 He spoke, and, waving a bright shaft in air, Sought the warm bosom of the Cyprian fair. That thus a child should bluster in my ear Provok'd my laughter more than mov'd my fear. 50 I shun'd not, therefore, public haunts, but stray'd Careless in city, or suburban shade, And passing and repassing nymphs that mov'd With grace divine, beheld where'er I rov'd. Bright shone the vernal day, with double blaze, As beauty gave new force to Phoebus' rays. By no grave scruples check'd I freely eyed The dang'rous show, rash youth my only guide, And many a look of many a Fair unknown Met full, unable to control my own. 60 But one I mark'd (then peace forsook my breast) One--Oh how far superior to the rest! What lovely features! Such the Cyprian Queen Herself might wish, and Juno wish her mien. The very nymph was she, whom when I dar'd His arrows, Love had even then prepar'd. Nor was himself remote, nor unsupplied With torch well-trimm'd and quiver at his side; Now to her lips he clung, her eye-lids now, Then settled on her cheeks or on her brow. 70 And with a thousand wounds from ev'ry part Pierced and transpierced my undefended heart. A fever, new to me, of fierce desire Now seiz'd my soul, and I was all on fire, But she, the while, whom only I adore, Was gone, and vanish'd to appear no more. In silent sadness I pursue my way, I pause, I turn, proceed, yet wish to stay, And while I follow her in thought, bemoan With tears my soul's delight so quickly flown. 80 When Jove had hurl'd him to the Lemnian coast12 So Vulcan sorrow'd for Olympus lost, And so Oeclides, sinking into night, From the deep gulph look'd up to distant light.13 Wretch that I am, what hopes for me remain Who cannot cease to love, yet love in vain? Oh could I once, once more, behold the Fair, Speak to her, tell her of the pangs I bear, Perhaps she is not adamant, would show Perhaps some pity at my tale of woe. 90 Oh inauspicious flame--'tis mine to prove A matchless instance of disastrous love. Ah spare me, gentle Pow'r!--If such thou be Let not thy deeds, and nature disagree. Now I revere thy fires, thy bow, thy darts: Now own thee sov'reign of all human hearts. Spare me, and I will worship at no shrine With vow and sacrifice, save only thine. Remove! no--grant me still this raging woe! Sweet is the wretchedness, that lovers know: 100 But pierce hereafter (should I chance to see One destined mine) at once both her and me. ___________________________________________________________14 Such were the trophies, that in earlier days, By vanity seduced I toil'd to raise, Studious yet indolent, and urg'd by youth, That worst of teachers, from the ways of Truth; Till learning taught me, in his shady bow'r, To quit love's servile yoke, and spurn his pow'r. Then, on a sudden, the fierce flame supprest, A frost continual settled on my breast, 110 Whence Cupid fears his flames extinct to see, And Venus dreads a Diomede15 in me. 1 i.e. "In my nineteenth year." 2 Venus (Aphrodite), so called from Amethus in Cyprus, where she had a temple. 3 Cupid, called after his mother's title. 4 Ganymede, whom Jove, in the form of an eagle, spirited away to serve as his cup-bearer. See Ovid (Met. x, 155-161) 5 The friend of Hercules, stolen by nymphs who had fallen in love with him. 6 She fled from Apollo, and was transformed into a laurel. 7 The Roman Crassus was defeated in 53 B.C. by the Parthian cavalry when they fired backwards with devastating effect. The Cydonians were also famed for their skill in archery. 8 Cephalus, who shot his wife Procris by mistake. 9 Hercules. 10 Telemon. 11 Esculapius, who came to Rome in the form of a snake. 12 Vulcan (Hephaestus) was cast down from Olympus to the isle of Lemnos. 13 One of the Argonauts. He was swallowed up by the sea. 14 A later retraction by Milton. The line appears in the original to separate it from what came before it. 15 Diomedes wounded Venus (Aphrodite) at Troy. See Homer (Il. v, 335-343) On the Gunpowder Plot.1 Cum simul in regem nuper satrapasque Britannos Ausus es infandum perfide Fauxe nefas, Fallor? an & mitis voluisti ex parte videri, Et pensare mala cum pietate scelus; Scilicet hos alti missurus ad atria caeli, Sulphureo curru flammivolisque rotis. Qualiter ille feris caput inviolabile Parcis Liquit Jordanios turbine raptus agros. 1 The Poems on the subject of the Gunpowder Treason2 I have not translated, both because the matter of them is unpleasant, and because they are written with an asperity, which, however it might be warranted in Milton's day, would be extremely unseasonable now.--W.C. 2 This includes "On the Fifth of November" below. Another on the Same. Siccine tentasti caelo donasse Jacobum Quae septemgemino Bellua monte lates? Ni meliora tuum poterit dare munera numen, Parce precor donis insidiosa tuis. Ille quidem sine te consortia serus adivit Astra, nec inferni pulveris usus ope. Sic potius foedus in caelum pelle cucullos, Et quot habet brutos Roma profana Deos, Namque hac aut alia quemque adjuveris arte, Crede mihi, caeli vix bene scandet iter. 10 Another on the Same. Purgatorem animae derisit Jacobus ignem, Et sine quo superum non adeunda domus. Frenduit hoc trina monstrum Latiale corona Movit & horrificum cornua dena minax. Et nec inultus ait temnes mea sacra Britanne, Supplicium spreta relligione dabis. Et si stelligeras unquam penetraveris arces, Non nisi per flammas triste patebit iter. O quam funesto cecinisti proxima vero, Verbaque ponderibus vix caritura suis! 10 Nam prope Tartareo sublime rotatus ab igni Ibat ad aethereas umbra perusta plagas. Another on the Same. Quem modo Roma suis devoverat impia diris, Et Styge damnarat Taenarioque sinu, Hunc vice mutata jam tollere gestit ad astra, Et cupit ad superos evehere usque Deos. On the Inventor of Gunpowder. Praise in old time the sage Prometheus won, Who stole ethereal radiance from the sun; But greater he, whose bold invention strove To emulate the fiery bolts of Jove. To Leonora,1 Singing in Rome.2 Angelus unicuique suus (sic credite gentes) Obtigit aethereis ales ab ordinibus. Quid mirum? Leonora tibi si gloria major, Nam tua praesentem vox sonat ipsa Deum. Aut Deus, aut vacui certe mens tertia coeli Pertua secreto guttura serpit agens; Serpit agens, facilisque docet mortalia corda Sensim immortali assuescere posse sono. Quod si cuncta quidem Deus est, per cunctaque fusus, In te una loquitur, caetera mutus habet. 10 1 Leonora Baroni, celebrated Neapolitan singer. Milton heard her perform at the palace of Cardinal Barberini in I638. 2 I have translated only two of the three poetical compliments addressed to Leonora, as they appear to me far superior to what I have omitted.--W.C. Another to the Same. Another Leonora1 once inspir'd Tasso, with fatal love to frenzy fir'd, But how much happier, liv'd he now, were he, Pierced with whatever pangs for love of Thee! Since could he hear that heavenly voice of thine, With Adriana's lute2 of sound divine, Fiercer than Pentheus'3 tho' his eye might roll, Or idiot apathy benumb his soul, You still, with medicinal sounds, might cheer His senses wandering in a blind career; 10 And sweetly breathing thro' his wounded breast, Charm, with soul-soothing song, his thoughts to rest. 1 Leonora d'Este, supposed lover of Torquato Tasso. 2 Adriana Baroni, who accompanied her daughter on the lute. 3 A mad Theban king. Another to the Same. Naples, too credulous, ah! boast no more The sweet-voiced Siren buried on thy shore, That, when Parthenope1 deceas'd, she gave Her sacred dust to a Chalcidic2 grave, For still she lives, but has exchanged the hoarse Pausilipo for Tiber's placid course, Where, idol of all Rome, she now in chains, Of magic song both Gods and Men detains. 1 One of the Sirens. 2 From Chalcis, whence the Greek colonies of South Italy came. The Fable of the Peasant and his Landlord.1 A Peasant to his lord yearly court, Presenting pippins of so rich a sort That he, displeased to have a part alone, Removed the tree, that all might be his own. The tree, too old to travel, though before So fruitful, withered, and would yield no more. The squire, perceiving all his labour void, Cursed his own pains, so foolishly employed, And "Oh," he cried, "that I had lived content With tribute, small indeed, but kindly meant! 10 My avarice has expensive proved to me, Has cost me both my pippins and my tree." 1 Added to the Elegies in the I673 edition. 2. POEMS IN VARIOUS METRES On the Death of the Vice-Chancellor, A Physician.1 Learn ye nations of the earth The condition of your birth, Now be taught your feeble state, Know, that all must yield to Fate! If the mournful Rover, Death, Say but once-resign your breath- Vainly of escape you dream, You must pass the Stygian stream. Could the stoutest overcome Death's assault, and baffle Doom, 10 Hercules had both withstood Undiseas'd by Nessus' blood.2 Ne'er had Hector press'd the plain By a trick of Pallas slain, Nor the Chief to Jove allied3 By Achilles' phantom died. Could enchantments life prolong, Circe, saved by magic song, Still had liv'd, and equal skill Had preserv'd Medea still.4 20 Dwelt in herbs and drugs a pow'r To avert Man's destin'd hour, Learn'd Machaon5 should have known Doubtless to avert his own. Chiron had survived the smart Of the Hydra-tainted dart,6 And Jove's bolt had been with ease Foil'd by Asclepiades.7 Thou too, Sage! of whom forlorn Helicon and Cirrha mourn, 30 Still had'st filled thy princely place, Regent of the gowned race, Had'st advanc'd to higher fame Still, thy much-ennobled name, Nor in Charon's skiff explored The Tartarean gulph abhorr'd. But resentful Proserpine, Jealous of thy skill divine, Snapping short thy vital thread Thee too number'd with the Dead. 40 Wise and good! untroubled be The green turf that covers thee, Thence in gay profusion grow All the sweetest flow'rs that blow! Pluto's Consort bid thee rest! Oeacus pronounce thee blest! To her home thy shade consign, Make Elysium ever thine! 1 Dr. John Goslyn, Regius Professor of Medicine at Cambridge. He died on the 21st October, I626. 2 A centaur whom Hercules shot with a poisoned arrow. Hercules was later poisoned by the centaur's blood-stained robe, which he was induced to put on. 3 Sarpedon. See Homer (Il. xvi, 477-491). 4 Circe and Medea were enchantresses. 5 Son of Esculapius. He was a healer to the Greeks during the siege of Troy. See Homer (Il. xi, 514). 6 The centaur Chiron was killed by Hercules's poisoned arrows. 7 Esculapius. He was killed by Jove's lightning for having saved too many from death. On the Fifth of November. Anno Aetates 17. Am pius extrema veniens Jacobus ab arcto Teucrigenas populos, lateque patentia regna Albionum tenuit, jamque inviolabile foedus Sceptra Caledoniis conjunxerat Anglica Scotis: Pacificusque novo felix divesque sedebat In solio, occultique doli securus & hostis: Cum ferus ignifluo regnans Acheronte tyrannus, Eumenidum pater, aethereo vagus exul Olympo, Forte per immensum terrarum erraverat orbem, Dinumerans sceleris socios, vernasque fideles, 10 Participes regni post funera moesta futuros; Hic tempestates medio ciet aere diras, Illic unanimes odium struit inter amicos, Armat & invictas in mutua viscera gentes; Regnaque olivifera vertit florentia pace, Et quoscunque videt purae virtutis amantes, Hos cupit adjicere imperio, fraudumque magister Tentat inaccessum sceleri corrumpere pectus, Insidiasque locat tacitas, cassesque latentes Tendit, ut incautos rapiat, seu Caspia Tigris 20 Insequitur trepidam deserta per avia praedam Nocte sub illuni, & somno nictantibus astris. Talibus infestat populos Summanus & urbes Cinctus caeruleae fumanti turbine flammae. Jamque fluentisonis albentia rupibus arva Apparent, & terra Deo dilecta marino, Cui nomen dederat quondam Neptunia proles Amphitryoniaden qui non dubitavit atrocem Aequore tranato furiali poscere bello, Ante expugnatae crudelia saecula Troiae. 30 At simul hanc opibusque & festa pace beatam Aspicit, & pingues donis Cerealibus agros, Quodque magis doluit, venerantem numina veri Sancta Dei populum, tandem suspiria rupit Tartareos ignes & luridum olentia sulphur. Qualia Trinacria trux ab Jove clausus in Aetna Efflat tabifico monstrosus ab ore Tiphoeus. Ignescunt oculi, stridetque adamantinus ordo Dentis, ut armorum fragor, ictaque cuspide cuspis. Atque pererrato solum hoc lacrymabile mundo 40 Inveni, dixit, gens haec mihi sola rebellis, Contemtrixque jugi, nostraque potentior arte. Illa tamen, mea si quicquam tentamina possunt, Non feret hoc impune diu, non ibit inulta, Hactenus; & piceis liquido natat aere pennis; Qua volat, adversi praecursant agmine venti, Densantur nubes, & crebra tonitrua fulgent. Jamque pruinosas velox superaverat alpes, Et tenet Ausoniae fines, a parte sinistra Nimbifer Appenninus erat, priscique Sabini, 50 Dextra veneficiis infamis Hetruria, nec non Te furtiva Tibris Thetidi videt oscula dantem; Hinc Mavortigenae consistit in arce Quirini. Reddiderant dubiam jam sera crepuscula lucem, Cum circumgreditur totam Tricoronifer urbem, Panificosque Deos portat, scapulisque virorum Evehitur, praeeunt summisso poplite reges, Et mendicantum series longissima fratrum; Cereaque in manibus gestant funalia caeci, Cimmeriis nati in tenebris, vitamque trahentes. 60 Templa dein multis subeunt lucentia taedis (Vesper erat sacer iste Petro) fremitoesque canentum Saepe tholos implet vacuos, & inane locorum. Qualiter exululat Bromius, Bromiique caterva, Orgia cantantes in Echionio Aracyntho, Dum tremit attonitus vitreis Asopus in undis, Et procul ipse cava responsat rupe Cithaeron. His igitur tandem solenni more peractis, Nox senis amplexus Erebi taciturna reliquit, Praecipitesque impellit equos stimulante flagello, 70 Captum oculis Typhlonta, Melanchaetemque ferocem, Atque Acherontaeo prognatam patre Siopen Torpidam, & hirsutis horrentem Phrica capillis. Interea regum domitor, Phlegetontius haeres Ingreditur thalamos (neque enim secretus adulter Producit steriles molli sine pellice noctes) At vix compositos somnus claudebat ocellos, Cum niger umbrarum dominus, rectorque silentum, Praedatorque hominum falsa sub imagine tectus Astitit, assumptis micuerunt tempora canis, 80 Barba sinus promissa tegit, cineracea longo Syrmate verrit humum vestis, pendetque cucullus Vertice de raso, & ne quicquam desit ad artes, Cannabeo lumbos constrinxit fune salaces, Tarda fenestratis figens vestigia calceis. Talis uti fama est, vasta Franciscus eremo Tetra vagabatur solus per lustra ferarum, Sylvestrique tulit genti pia verba salutis Impius, atque lupos domuit, Lybicosque leones. Subdolus at tali Serpens velatus amictu 90 Solvit in has fallax ora execrantia voces; Dormis nate? Etiamne tuos sopor opprimit artus? Immemor O fidei, pecorumque oblite tuorum, Dum cathedram venerande tuam, diadmaque triplex Ridet Hyperboreo gens barbara nata sub axe, Dumque pharetrati spernunt tua jura Britanni; Surge, age, surge piger, Latius quem Caesar adorat, Cui reserata patet convexi janua caeli, Turgentes animos, & fastus frange procaces, Sacrilegique sciant, tua quid maledictio possit, 100 Et quid Apostolicae possit custodia clavis; Et memor Hesperiae disjectam ulciscere classem, Mersaque Iberorum lato vexilla profundo, Sanctorumque cruci tot corpora fixa probrosae, Thermodoontea nuper regnante puella. At tu si tenero mavis torpescere lecto Crescentesque negas hosti contundere vires, Tyrrhenum implebit numeroso milite Pontum, Signaque Aventino ponet fulgentia colle: Relliquias veterum franget, flammisque cremabit, 110 Sacraque calcabit pedibus tua colla profanis, Cujus gaudebant soleis dare basia reges. Nec tamen hunc bellis & aperto Marte lacesses, Irritus ille labor, tu callidus utere fraude, Quaelibet haereticis disponere retia fas est; Jamque ad consilium extremis rex magnus ab oris Patricios vocat, & procerum de stirpe creatos, Grandaevosque patres trabea, canisque verendos; Hos tu membratim poteris conspergere in auras, Atque dare in cineres, nitrati pulveris igne 120 Aedibus injecto, qua convenere, sub imis. Protinus ipse igitur quoscumque habet Anglia fidos Propositi, factique mone, quisquamne tuorum Audebit summi non jussa facessere Papae. Perculsosque metu subito, cas£mque stupentes Invadat vel Gallus atrox, vel saevus Iberus Saecula sic illic tandem Mariana redibunt, Tuque in belligeros iterum dominaberis Anglos. Et nequid timeas, divos divasque secundas Accipe, quotque tuis celebrantur numina fastis. 130 Dixit & adscitos ponens malefidus amictus Fugit ad infandam, regnum illaetabile, Lethen. Jam rosea Eoas pandens Tithonia portas Vestit inauratas redeunti lumine terras; Maestaque adhuc nigri deplorans funera nati Irrigat ambrosiis montana cacumina guttis; Cum somnos pepulit stellatae janitor aulae Nocturnos visus, & somnia grata revolvens. Est locus aeterna septus caligine noctis Vasta ruinosi quondam fundamina tecti, 140 Nunc torvi spelunca Phoni, Prodotaeque bilinguis Effera quos uno peperit Discordia partu. Hic inter caementa jacent praeruptaque saxa, Ossa inhumata virum, & trajecta cadavera ferro; Hic Dolus intortis semper sedet ater ocellis, Jurgiaque, & stimulis armata Calumnia fauces, Et Furor, atque viae moriendi mille videntur Et Timor, exanguisque locum circumvolat Horror, Perpetuoque leves per muta silentia Manes Exululant, tellus & sanguine conscia stagnat. 150 Ipsi etiam pavidi latitant penetralibus antri Et Phonos, & Prodotes, nulloque sequente per antrum Antrum horrens, scopulosum, atrum feralibus umbris Diffugiunt sontes, & retro lumina vortunt, Hos pugiles Romae per saecula longa fideles Evocat antistes Babylonius, atque ita fatur. Finibus occiduis circumfusum incolit aequor Gens exosa mihi, prudens natura negavit Indignam penitus nostro conjungere mundo; Illuc, sic jubeo, celeri contendite gressu, 160 Tartareoque leves difflentur pulvere in auras Et rex & pariter satrapae, scelerata propago Et quotquot fidei caluere cupidine verae Consilii socios adhibete, operisque ministros. Finierat, rigidi cupide paruere gemelli. Interea longo flectens curvamine caelos Despicit aetherea dominus qui fulgurat arce, Vanaque perversae ridet conamina turbae, Atque sui causam populi volet ipse tueri. Esse ferunt spatium, qua distat ab Aside terra 170 Fertilis Europe, & spectat Mareotidas undas; Hic turris posita est Titanidos ardua Famae Aerea, lata, sonans, rutilis vicinior astris Quam superimpositum vel Athos vel Pelion Ossae Mille fores aditusque patent, totidemque fenestrae, Amplaque per tenues translucent atria muros; Excitat hic varios plebs agglomerata susurros; Qualiter instrepitant circum mulctralia bombis Agmina muscarum, aut texto per ovilia junco, Dum Canis aestivum coeli petit ardua culmen 180 Ipsa quidem summa sedet ultrix matris in arce, Auribus innumeris cinctum caput eminet olli, Queis sonitum exiguum trahit, atque levissima captat Murmura, ab extremis patuli confinibus orbis. Nec tot Aristoride servator inique juvencae Isidos, immiti volvebas lumina vultu, Lumina non unquam tacito nutantia somno, Lumina subjectas late spectantia terras. Istis illa solet loca luce carentia saepe Perlustrare, etiam radianti impervia soli. 190 Millenisque loquax auditaque visaque linguis Cuilibet effundit temeraria, veraque mendax Nunc minuit, modo confictis sermonibus auget. Sed tamen a nostro meruisti carmine laudes Fama, bonum quo non aliud veracius ullum, Nobis digna cani, nec te memorasse pigebit Carmine tam longo, servati scilicet Angli Officiis vaga diva tuis, tibi reddimus aequa. Te Deus aeternos motu qui temperat ignes, Fulmine praemisso alloquitur, terraque tremente: 200 Fama siles? an te latet impia Papistarum Conjurata cohors in meque meosque Britannos, Et nova sceptrigero caedes meditata Jacobo: Nec plura, illa statim sensit mandata Tonantis, Et satis ante fugax stridentes induit alas, Induit & variis exilia corpora plumis; Dextra tubam gestat Temesaeo ex aere sonoram. Nec mora jam pennis cedentes remigat auras, Atque parum est cursu celeres praevertere nubes, Jam ventos, jam solis equos post terga reliquit: 210 Et primo Angliacas solito de more per urbes Ambiguas voces, incertaque murmura spargit, Mox arguta dolos, & detestabile vulgat Proditionis opus, nec non facta horrida dictu, Authoresque addit sceleris, nec garrula caecis Insidiis loca structa silet; stupuere relatis, Et pariter juvenes, pariter tremuere puellae, Effaetique senes pariter, tanteaeque ruinae Sensus ad aetatem subito penetraverat omnem Attamen interea populi miserescit ab alto 220 Aethereus pater, & crudelibus obstitit ausis Papicolum; capti poenas raptantur ad acres; At pia thura Deo, & grati solvuntur honores; Compita laeta focis genialibus omnia fumant; Turba choros juvenilis agit: Quintoque Novembris Null Dies toto occurrit celebratior anno. On the Death of the Bishop of Ely.1 Anno Aetates 17. My lids with grief were tumid yet, And still my sullied cheek was wet With briny dews profusely shed For venerable Winton dead,2 When Fame, whose tales of saddest sound Alas! are ever truest found, The news through all our cities spread Of yet another mitred head By ruthless Fate to Death consign'd, Ely, the honour of his kind. 10 At once, a storm of passion heav'd My boiling bosom, much I grieved But more I raged, at ev'ry breath Devoting Death himself to death. With less revenge did Naso3 teem When hated Ibis was his theme; With less, Archilochus,4 denied The lovely Greek, his promis'd bride. But lo! while thus I execrate, Incens'd, the Minister of Fate, 20 Wondrous accents, soft, yet clear, Wafted on the gale I hear. Ah, much deluded! lay aside Thy threats and anger misapplied. Art not afraid with sounds like these T'offend whom thou canst not appease? Death is not (wherefore dream'st thou thus?) The son of Night and Erebus, Nor was of fel1 Erynnis born5 In gulphs, where Chaos rules forlorn, 30 But sent from God, his presence leaves, To gather home his ripen'd sheaves, To call encumber'd souls away From fleshly bonds to boundless day, (As when the winged Hours excite, And summon forth the Morning-light) And each to convoy to her place Before th'Eternal Father's face. But not the wicked-Them, severe Yet just, from all their pleasures here 40 He hurries to the realms below, Terrific realms of penal woe! Myself no sooner heard his call Than, scaping through my prison-wall, I bade adieu to bolts and bars, And soar'd with angels to the stars, Like Him of old, to whom 'twas giv'n To mount, on fiery wheels, to heav'n. Bootes' wagon,6 slow with cold Appall'd me not, nor to behold 50 The sword that vast Orion draws, Or ev'n the Scorpion's horrid claws.7 Beyond the Sun's bright orb I fly, And far beneath my feet descry Night's dread goddess, seen with awe, Whom her winged dragons draw. Thus, ever wond'ring at my speed Augmented still as I proceed, I pass the Planetary sphere, The Milky Way--and now appear 60 Heav'ns crystal battlements, her door Of massy pearl, and em'rald floor. But here I cease. For never can The tongue of once a mortal man In suitable description trace The pleasures of that happy place, Suffice it that those joys divine Are all, and all for ever, mine. 1 Nicholas Felton. 2 Dr. Felton died a few days after Andrewes, Bishop of Winchester. See Milton's Third Elegy. 3 Ovid. 4 A Greek poet. He was refused by Lycambes as a suitor to his daughters, and in revenge lampooned the entire family. Lycambes's daughters hanged themselves. 5 Erebus and Erynnis are Furies. 6 See Milton's Fifth Elegy, line 6, and the note thereto. 7 The constellation Scorpio. That Nature is Not Subject to Decay. Ah, how the Human Mind wearies herself With her own wand'rings, and, involved in gloom Impenetrable, speculates amiss! Measuring, in her folly, things divine By human, laws inscrib'd on adamant By laws of Man's device, and counsels fix'd For ever, by the hours, that pass, and die. How?--shall the face of Nature then be plow'd Into deep wrinkles, and shall years at last On the great Parent fix a sterile curse? 10 Shall even she confess old age, and halt And, palsy-smitten, shake her starry brows? Shall foul Antiquity with rust and drought And famine vex the radiant worlds above? Shall Time's unsated maw crave and engulf The very heav'ns that regulate his flight? And was the Sire of all able to fence His works, and to uphold the circling worlds, But through improvident and heedless haste Let slip th'occasion?--So then--All is lost-- 20 And in some future evil hour, yon arch Shall crumble and come thund'ring down, the poles Jar in collision, the Olympian King Fall with his throne, and Pallas, holding forth The terrors of her Gorgon shield in vain,1 Shall rush to the abyss, like Vulcan hurl'd Down into Lemnos through the gate of heav'n. Thou also, with precipitated wheels Phoebus! thy own son's fall shalt imitate, With hideous ruin shalt impress the Deep 30 Suddenly, and the flood shall reek and hiss At the extinction of the Lamp of Day. Then too, shall Haemus cloven to his base Be shattered, and the huge Ceraunian hills,2 Once weapons of Tartarean Dis, immersed In Erebus, shall fill Himself with fear. No. The Almighty Father surer lay'd His deep foundations, and providing well For the event of all, the scales of Fate Suspended, in just equipoise, and bade 40 His universal works from age to age One tenour hold, perpetual, undisturb'd. Hence the Prime Mover wheels itself about Continual, day by day, and with it bears In social measure swift the heav'ns around. Not tardier now is Saturn than of old, Nor radiant less the burning casque of Mars. Phoebus, his vigour unimpair'd, still shows Th'effulgence of his youth, nor needs the God A downward course that he may warm the vales; 50 But, ever rich in influence, runs his road, Sign after sign, through all the heav'nly zone. Beautiful as at first ascends the star3 From odorif'rous Ind, whose office is To gather home betimes th'ethereal flock, To pour them o'er the skies again at Eve, And to discriminate the Night and Day. Still Cynthia's changeful horn waxes and wanes Alternate, and with arms extended still She welcomes to her breast her brother's beams. 60 Nor have the elements deserted yet Their functions, thunder with as loud a stroke As erst, smites through the rocks and scatters them, The East still howls, still the relentless North Invades the shudd'ring Scythian, still he breathes The Winter, and still rolls the storms along. The King of Ocean with his wonted force Beats on Pelorus,4 o'er the Deep is heard The hoarse alarm of Triton's sounding shell, Nor swim the monsters of th'Aegean sea 70 In shallows, or beneath diminish'd waves. Thou too, thy antient vegetative pow'r Enjoy'st, O Earth! Narcissus still is sweet, And, Phoebus! still thy Favourite, and still Thy Fav'rite, Cytherea!5 both retain Their beauty, nor the mountains, ore-enrich'd For punishment of Man, with purer gold Teem'd ever, or with brighter gems the Deep. Thus, in unbroken series all proceeds And shall, till, wide involving either pole, 80 And the immensity of yonder heav'n, The final flames of destiny absorb The world, consum'd in one enormous pyre! 1 Pallas Athena (Minerva) had the head of the Gorgon Medusa in her shield; it turned all who looked upon it into stone. 2 Phaeton, who fled from the chariot of the Sun while driving it. 3 Venus. 4 The North-east promontory of Sicily. 5 The Hyacinth, favorite of Apollo. The Anemone, favorite of Venus. On the Platonic 'Ideal' as it was Understood by Aristotle. Ye sister Pow'rs who o'er the sacred groves Preside, and, Thou, fair mother of them all Mnemosyne,1 and thou, who in thy grot Immense reclined at leisure, hast in charge The Archives and the ord'nances of Jove, And dost record the festivals of heav'n, Eternity!--Inform us who is He, That great Original by Nature chos'n To be the Archetype of Human-kind, Unchangeable, Immortal, with the poles 10 Themselves coaeval, One, yet ev'rywhere, An image of the god, who gave him Being? Twin-brother of the Goddess born from Jove,2 He dwells not in his Father's mind, but, though Of common nature with ourselves, exists Apart, and occupies a local home. Whether, companion of the stars, he spend Eternal ages, roaming at his will From sphere to sphere the tenfold heav'ns, or dwell On the moon's side that nearest neighbours Earth, Or torpid on the banks of Lethe3 sit 20 Among the multitude of souls ordair'd To flesh and blood, or whether (as may chance) That vast and giant model of our kind In some far-distant region of this globe Sequester'd stalk, with lifted head on high O'ertow'ring Atlas, on whose shoulders rest The stars, terrific even to the Gods. Never the Theban Seer,4 whose blindness proved His best illumination, Him beheld 30 In secret vision; never him the son Of Pleione,5 amid the noiseless night Descending, to the prophet-choir reveal'd; Him never knew th'Assyrian priest,6 who yet The ancestry of Ninus7 chronicles, And Belus, and Osiris far-renown'd; Nor even Thrice-great Hermes,7 although skill'd So deep in myst'ry, to the worshippers Of Isis show'd a prodigy like Him. And thou,8 who hast immortalized the shades 40 Of Academus, if the school received This monster of the Fancy first from Thee, Either recall at once the banish'd bards To thy Republic, or, thyself evinc'd A wilder Fabulist, go also forth. 1 Goddess of Memory and mother of the Muses. 2 Pallas Athena. 3 Waters of oblivion and forgetfulness. 4 Tiresins. See Milton's Sixth Elegy, line 68. 5 Hermes (Mercury). 6 Perhaps the legendary Phoenician sage, Sanchuniathon. 7 A legendary Assyrian king. Belus is the Assyrian god Bel. 7 Hermes Trismegistus, author of Neo-Platonic works must esteemed. 8 Plato. To My Father. Oh that Pieria's spring1 would thro' my breast Pour its inspiring influence, and rush No rill, but rather an o'erflowing flood! That, for my venerable Father's sake All meaner themes renounced, my Muse, on wings Of Duty borne, might reach a loftier strain. For thee, my Father! howsoe'er it please, She frames this slender work, nor know I aught, That may thy gifts more suitably requite; Though to requite them suitably would ask 10 Returns much nobler, and surpassing far The meagre stores of verbal gratitude. But, such as I possess, I send thee all. This page presents thee in their full amount With thy son's treasures, and the sum is nought; Naught, save the riches that from airy dreams In secret grottos and in laurel bow'rs, I have, by golden Clio's2 gift, acquir'd. Verse is a work divine; despise not thou Verse therefore, which evinces (nothing more) 20 Man's heav'nly source, and which, retaining still Some scintillations of Promethean fire, Bespeaks him animated from above. The Gods love verse; the infernal Pow'rs themselves Confess the influence of verse, which stirs The lowest Deep, and binds in triple chains Of adamant both Pluto and the shades. In verse the Delphic priestess, and the pale Tremulous Sybil make the Future known, And He who sacrifices, on the shrine 30 Hangs verse, both when he smites the threat'ning bull, And when he spreads his reeking entrails wide To scrutinize the Fates envelop'd there. We too, ourselves, what time we seek again Our native skies, and one eternal Now Shall be the only measure of our Being, Crown'd all with gold, and chanting to the lyre Harmonious verse, shall range the courts above, And make the starry firmament resound. And, even now, the fiery Spirit pure 40 That wheels yon circling orbs, directs, himself, Their mazy dance with melody of verse Unutt'rable, immortal, hearing which Huge Ophiuchus3 holds his hiss suppress'd, Orion, soften'd, drops his ardent blade, And Atlas stands unconscious of his load. Verse graced of old the feasts of kings, ere yet Luxurious dainties destin'd to the gulph Immense of gluttony were known, and ere Lyaeus4 deluged yet the temp'rate board. 50 Then sat the bard a customary guest To share the banquet, and, his length of locks With beechen honours bound, proposed in verse The characters of Heroes and their deeds To imitation, sang of Chaos old, Of Nature's birth, of Gods that crept in search Of acorns fall'n, and of the thunderbolt Not yet produc'd from Aetna's fiery cave. And what avails, at last, tune without voice, Devoid of matter? Such may suit perhaps 60 The rural dance, but such was ne'er the song Of Orpheus, whom the streams stood still to hear And the oaks follow'd. Not by chords alone Well-touch'd, but by resistless accents more To sympathetic tears the Ghosts themselves He mov'd: these praises to his verse he owes. Nor Thou persist, I pray thee, still to slight The sacred Nine, and to imagine vain And useless, Pow'rs by whom inspir'd, thyself Art skillfill to associate verse with airs 70 Harmonious, and to give the human voice A thousand modulations, heir by right Indisputable of Arion's fame.5 Now say, what wonder is it, if a son Of thine delight in verse, if so conjoin'd In close affinity, we sympathize In social arts and kindred studies sweet? Such distribution of himself to us Was Phoebus' choice; thou hast thy gift, and I Mine also, and between us we receive, 80 Father and son, the whole inspiring God. No. Howsoe'er the semblance thou assume Of hate, thou hatest not the gentle Muse, My Father! for thou never bad'st me tread The beaten path and broad that leads right on To opulence, nor did'st condemn thy son To the insipid clamours of the bar, To laws voluminous and ill observ'd, But, wishing to enrich me more, to fill My mind with treasure, led'st me far away 90 From city-din to deep retreats, to banks And streams Aonian,6 and, with free consent Didst place me happy at Apollo's side. I speak not now, on more important themes Intent, of common benefits, and such As Nature bids, but of thy larger gifts My Father! who, when I had open'd once The stores of Roman rhetoric, and learn'd The full-ton'd language, of the eloquent Greeks, Whose lofty music grac'd the lips of Jove, 100 Thyself did'st counsel me to add the flow'rs That Gallia7 boasts, those too with which the smooth Italian his degentrate speech adorns, That witnesses his mixture with the Goth, And Palestine's prophetic songs divine.8 To sum the whole, whate'er the Heav'n contains, The Earth beneath it, and the Air between, The Rivers and the restless deep, may all Prove intellectual gain to me, my wish Concurring with thy will; Science herself, 110 All cloud removed, inclines her beauteous head And offers me the lip, if, dull of heart, I shrink not and decline her gracious boon. Go now, and gather dross, ye sordid minds That covet it; what could my Father more, What more could Jove himself, unless he gave His own abode, the heav'n in which he reigns? More eligible gifts than these were not Apollo's to his son, had they been safe As they were insecure, who made the boy 120 The world's vice-luminary, bade him rule The radiant chariot of the day, and bind To his young brows his own all dazzling-wreath. I therefore, although last and least, my place Among the Learned in the laurel-grove Will hold, and where the conqu'ror's ivy twines, Henceforth exempt from th'unletter'd throng Profane, nor even to be seen by such. Away then, sleepless Care, Complaint away, And Envy, with thy "jealous leer malign" 130 Nor let the monster Calumny shoot forth Her venom'd tongue at me. Detested foes! Ye all are impotent against my peace, For I am privileged, and bear my breast Safe, and too high, for your viperean wound. But thou my Father! since to render thanks Equivalent, and to requite by deeds Thy liberality, exceeds my power, Sufffice it, that I thus record thy gifts, And bear them treasur'd in a grateful mind! 140 Ye too, the favourite pastime of my youth, My voluntary numbers, if ye dare To hope longevity, and to survive Your master's funeral pile, not soon absorb'd In the oblivious Lethaean gulph Shall to Futurity perhaps convey This theme, and by these praises of my sire Improve the Fathers of a distant age. 1 A fount sacred to the Muses. 2 The Muse of History. 3 The Serpent, a constellation. 4 Bacchus, or Wine. 5 John Milton Sr. was a fine musician. Arion was a lyric poet of Methymna, in Lesbos, who was saved from drowning by dolphins which he charmed with his song. 6 Aonia is a plain in Boeotia. 7 France. 8 The Old Testament Scriptures. Psalm CXIV 1 When Israel by Jehovah call'd From Egypt's hostile plain, Pour'd forth in numbers as the Sand And sought the adjacent main: Then God descended from on high To lead the favour'd Race To rule o'er Jacob, & his Name In Judah's Tribe to place. The Sea at their approach alarm'd In wild amazement fled 10 And Jordan's flood was driven back Within it's fountainhead. The Mountains from their basis shook Confess'd the Parent God! With sudden throws like Rams they skipp'd And broken, fell abroad. The little Hills by the same power Were from their Center torn Like Lambs resistless they gave way In Tumult wild, upborn. 20 Ye Waves what strange amazement, say, Seiz'd on you that you fled? Thou Jordan too! On Israel's march, Why driven to thy Head? Ye Mountains whence this sudden fright That shook you from your base? And whence, ye little Hills, your flight From Israel's chosen Race? Tremble thou Earth! Jehovah leads, And guards the might Host! 30 That God, who by his awful Word, Commands the Stream to flow2 From flinty Rocks; & pouring thence, To form the Lake below. 1 Translated from the Latin, and not Milton's Greek poem. Milton's own English version, presented below, was done, he tells us, "at fifteen years old." 2 See Exodus, chapter I7. Psalm CXIV When the blest seed of Terah's faithful Son,1 After long toil their liberty had won, And past from Pharian2 fields to Canaan Land, Led by the strength of the Almighty's hand, Jehovah's wonders were in Israel shown, His praise and glory was in Israel known. That saw the troubl'd Sea, and shivering fled, And sought to hide his froth-becurled head Low in the earth, Jordan's clear streams recoil, As a faint host that hath receiv'd the foil. 10 The high, huge-bellied Mountains skip like Rams Amongst their Ewes, the little Hills like Lambs. Why fled the Ocean? And why skip'd the Mountains? Why turned Jordan toward his Crystal Fountains? Shake earth, and at the presence be aghast Of him that ever was, and ay shall last, That glassy floods from rugged rocks can crush, And make soft rills from the fiery flint-stones gush. 1 Abraham. 2 Egyptian. The Philosopher and the King. A Philosopher, included in the same sentence of condemnation with several guilty persons among whom he had been apprehended, sent the following lines, composed suddenly in the moment when he was going to death, to a certain King whom had ignorantly condemned him. Know this, O King! that if thou shalt destroy Me, no man's enemy and who have liv'd Obedient to the Laws, thou may'st with ease Strike off a wise man's head, but, taught the truth Hereafter, shalt with vain regret deplore Thy city's loss of One, her chief support. On the Engraver of his Portrait.1 Survey my Features--you will own it clear That little skill has been exerted here. My Friends, who know me not here smile to see How ill the model and the work agree. 1 Greek lines placed by Milton beneath the engraved portrait of himself by William Marshall in the I645 edition of his poems. The handsome Milton disliked Marshall's picture and took revenge with this epigram, which Marshall, ignorant of Greek, engraved beneath the portrait. Another Translation of the Same.2 Look on myself--you will own at once This Copy of me, taken by a Dunce. My Friends, who gaze and guess not whom ye see, Laugh! Would ye think it? He intended me! To Giovanni Salzilli, a Roman Poet, in his Illness. Scazons.1 My halting Muse, that dragg'st by choice along Thy slow, slow step, in melancholy song! And lik'st that pace expressive of thy cares Not less than Diopeia's2 sprightlier airs When in the dance she beats with measur'd tread Heav'n's floor in front of Juno's golden bed, Salute Salsillus, who to verse divine Prefers, with partial love, such lays as mine. Thus writes that Milton then, who wafted o'er From his own nest on Albion's stormy shore 10 Where Eurus, fiercest of th'Aeolian band, Sweeps with ungovern'd rage the blasted land, Of late to more serene Ausonia came To view her cities of illustrious name, To prove, himself a witness of the truth, How wise her elders, and how learn'd her Youth. Much good, Salsillus! and a body free From all disease, that Milton asks for thee, Who now endur'st the languor, and the pains That bile inflicts diffus'd through all thy veins, 20 Relentless malady! not mov'd to spare By thy sweet Roman voice, and Lesbian air! Health, Hebe's sister, sent us from the skies, And thou, Apollo, whom all sickness flies, Pythius, or Paean, or what name divine Soe'er thou chuse, haste, heal a priest of thine! Ye groves of Faunus, and ye hills that melt With vinous dews, where meek Evander3 dwelt! If aught salubrious in your confines grow, Strive which shall soonest heal your poet's woe, 30 That, render'd to the Muse he loves, again He may enchant the meadows with his strain. Numa, reclin'd in everlasting ease Amid the shade of dark embow'ring trees, Viewing with eyes of unabated fire His loved Aegeria, shall that strain admire: So sooth'd, the tumid Tiber shall revere The tombs of kings, nor desolate the year, Shall curb his waters with a friendly rein, And guide them harmless till they meet the main. 40 1 The original is written in a measure called Scazon, which signifies limping, and the measure is so denominated, because, though in other respects Iambic, it terminates with a Spondee, and has consequently a more tardy movement. The reader will immediately see that this property of the Latin verse cannot be imitated in English.--W.C. 2 Diopeia was one of Juno's nymphs. 3 The Aventine hill. Evander, great-grandson of Pallas, King of Arcadia, migrated to Italy about sixty years before the Trojan War. To Giovanni Battista Manso, Marquis of Villa. 1Giovanni Battista Manso, Marquis of Villa, is an Italian Nobleman of the highest estimation among his countrymen, for Genius, Literature,and military accomplishments. To Him Torquato Tasso addressed his "Dialogue on Friendship," for he was much the friend of Tasso, who has also celebrated him among the other princes of his country, in his poem entitled "Jerusalem Conquered" (Book XX). Among cavaliers magnanimous and courteous --Manso is resplendent. During the Author's stay at Naples he received at the hands of the Marquis a thousand kind offices and civilities, and, desirous not to appear ungrateful, sent him this poem a short time before his departure from that city. These verses also to thy praise the Nine2 Oh Manso! happy in that theme design, For, Gallus and Maecenas3 gone, they see None such besides, or whom they love as Thee, And, if my verse may give the meed of fame, Thine too shall prove an everlasting name. Already such, it shines in Tasso's page (For thou wast Tasso's friend) from age to age, And, next, the Muse consign'd, not unaware How high the charge, Marini4 to thy care, 10 Who, singing, to the nymphs, Adonis' praise, Boasts thee the patron of his copious lays. To thee alone the Poet would entrust His latest vows, to thee alone his dust, And Thou with punctual piety hast paid In labour'd brass thy tribute to his shade. Nor this contented thee-but lest the grave Should aught absorb of their's, which thou could'st save, All future ages thou has deign'd to teach The life, lot, genius, character of each, 20 Eloquent as the Carian sage,5 who, true To his great theme, the Life of Homer drew. I, therefore, though a stranger youth, who come Chill'd by rude blasts that freeze my Northern home, Thee dear to Clio confident proclaim, And Thine, for Phoebus' sake, a deathless name. Nor Thou, so kind, wilt view with scornful eye A Muse scarce rear'd beneath our sullen sky, Who fears not, indiscrete as she is young, To seek in Latium hearers of her song. 30 We too, where Thames with his unsullied waves The tresses of the blue-hair'd Ocean laves, Hear oft by night, or, slumb'ring, seem to hear O'er his wide stream, the swan's voice warbling clear, And we could boast a Tityrus6 of yore, Who trod, a welcome guest, your happy shore. Yes, dreary as we own our Northern clime, E'en we to Phoebus raise the polish'd rhyme, We too serve Phoebus; Phoebus has receiv'd, (If legends old may claim to be believ'd) 40 No sordid gifts from us, the golden ear, The burnish'd apple, ruddiest of the year, The fragrant crocus, and, to grace his fane, Fair damsels chosen from the Druid train- Druids, our native bards in ancient time, Who Gods and Heroes prais'd in hallow'd rhyme. Hence, often as the maids of Greece surround Apollo's shrine with hymns of festive sound, They name the virgins who arriv'd of yore With British off'rings on the Delian shore, 50 Loxo, from Giant Corineus sprung, Upis, on whose blest lips the Future hung, And Hecaerge7 with the golden hair, All deck'd with Pic'ish hues, and all with bosoms bare. Thou therefore, happy Sage, whatever clime Shall ring with Tasso's praise in after-time, Or with Marini's, shalt be known their friend, And with an equal flight to fame ascend. The world shall hear how Phoebus and the Nine Were inmates, once, and willing guests of thine. 60 Yet Phoebus, when of old constrain'd to roam The earth, an exile from his heav'nly home, Enter'd, no willing guest, Admetus'8 door, Though Hercules had enter'd there before. But gentle Chiron's9 cave was near, a scene Of rural peace, clothed with perpetual green, And thither, oft as respite he requir'd From rustic clamours loud, the God retir'd. There, many a time, on Peneus' bank reclin'd At some oak's root, with ivy thick entwin'd, 70 Won by his hospitable friend's desire He sooth'd his pains of exile with the lyre. Then shook the hills, then trembled Peneus' shore, Nor Oeta10 felt his load of forests more, The upland elms descended to the plain,11 And soften'd lynxes wonder'd at the strain. Well may we think, O dear to all above! Thy birth distinguish'd by the smile of Jove, And that Apollo shed his kindliest pow'r, And Maia's son,12 on that propitious hour, 80 Since only minds so born can comprehend A poet's worth, or yield that worth a friend. Hence, on thy yet unfaded cheek appears The ling'ring freshness of thy greener years, Hence, in thy front, and features, we admire Nature unwither'd, and a mind entire. Oh might so true a friend to me belong, So skill'd to grace the votaries of song, Should I recall hereafter into rhyme The kings, and heroes of my native clime, 90 Arthur the chief, who even now prepares, In subterraneous being, future wars, With all his martial Knights, to be restor'd Each to his seat around the fed'ral board, And Oh, if spirit fail me not, disperse Our Saxon plund'rers in triumphant verse! Then, after all, when, with the Past content, A life I finish, not in silence spent, Should he, kind mourner, o'er my deathbed bend I shall but need to say--"Be yet my friend!" 100 He, faithful to my dust, with kind concern Shal1 place it gently in a modest urn; He too, perhaps, shall bid the marble breathe To honour me, and with the graceful wreath13 Or of Parnassus or the Paphian isle Shall bind my brows--but I shall rest the while. Then also, if the fruits of Faith endure, And Virtue's promis'd recompense be sure, Borne to those seats, to which the blest aspire By purity of soul, and virtuous fire, These rites, as Fate permits, I shall survey With eyes illumin'd by celestial day, 110 And, ev'ry cloud from my pure spirit driv'n, Joy in the bright beatitude of Heav'n! 1 Milton's Account of Manso, translated. 2 The Muses. 3 Cornelius Gallus, Roman eleist. See Virgil (Eclogue vi, 64-66, and x). Maecenas. Roman patron of letters. See Horace (Odes, i,1), 4 Author of the Adone, a poem on the story of Venus and Adonis. 5 Herodotus, to whom The Life of Homer is attributed. 6 Chaucer, called Tityrus in Spencer's Pastorals. 7 The maidens who brought offerings to Delos. Loxo, descended from the ancient British hero, Corineus; Upis, a prophetess; and Hecaerge. 8 Admetus was King of Thessaly. Apollo was for a year his shepherd. 9 See Homer (Il. xi, 830-831) and Ovid (Met. ii, 630). 10 Mt. Oeta, between Thessaly and Aetolia. 11 See Ovid (Met. x, 87-I06), where the trees crowd the hear Orpheus sing. 12 Hermes. 13 The wreaths of victors, made from the laurel, which grew on Mt. Parnassus, sacred to the Muses, and the myrtle, sacred to Venus, a shrine to whom was at Paphos in Cyprus. The Death of Damon. The Argument. Thyrsis and Damon, shepherds and neighbours, had always pursued the same studies, and had, from their earliest days, been united in the closest friendship. Thyrsis, while traveling for improve- ment, received intelligence of the death of Damon, and, after a time, returning and finding it true, deplores himself and his solitary condition, in this poem. By Damon is to be understood Charles Diodati, connected with the Italian city of Lucca by his Father's side, in other respects an Englishman; a youth of uncommon genius, erudition, and virtue. Ye Nymphs of Himera1 (for ye have shed Erewhile for Daphnis2 and for Hylas dead, And over Bion's long-lamented bier, The fruitless meed of many a sacred tear) Now, through the villas laved by Thames rehearse The woes of Thyrsis in Sicilian verse, What sighs he heav'd, and how with groans profound He made the woods and hollow rocks resound Young Damon dead; nor even ceased to pour His lonely sorrows at the midnight hour. 10 The green wheat twice had nodded in the ear, And golden harvest twice enrich'd the year, Since Damon's lips had gasp'd for vital air The last, last time, nor Thyrsis yet was there; For he, enamour'd of the Muse, remain'd In Tuscan Fiorenza long detain'd, But, stored at length with all he wish'd to learn, For his flock's sake now hasted to return, And when the shepherd had resumed his seat At the elm's root within his old retreat, 20 Then 'twas his lot, then, all his loss to know, And, from his burthen'd heart, he vented thus his woe. Go, seek your home, my lambs; my thoughts are due To other cares than those of feeding you. Alas! what Deities shall I suppose In heav'n or earth concern'd for human woes, Since, Oh my Damon! their severe decree So soon condemns me to regret of Thee! Depart'st thou thus, thy virtues unrepaid With fame and honour, like a vulgar shade? 30 Let him forbid it, whose bright rod controls, And sep'rates sordid from illustrious souls, Drive far the rabble, and to Thee assign A happier lot with spirits worthy thine! Go, seek your home, my lambs; my thoughts are due To other cares than those of feeding you. Whate'er befall, unless by cruel chance The wolf first give me a forbidding glance, Thou shalt not moulder undeplor'd, but long Thy praise shall dwell on ev'ry shepherd's tongue; 40 To Daphnis first they shall delight to pay, And, after Him, to thee the votive lay, While Pales3 shall the flocks and pastures love, Or Faunus to frequent the field or grove, At least if antient piety and truth With all the learned labours of thy youth May serve thee aught, or to have left behind A sorrowing friend, and of the tuneful kind. Go, seek your home, my lambs, my thoughts are due To other cares than those of feeding you. 50 Yes, Damon! such thy sure reward shall be, But ah, what doom awaits unhappy me? Who, now, my pains and perils shall divide, As thou wast wont, for ever at my side, Both when the rugged frost annoy'd our feet, And when the herbage all was parch'd with heat, Whether the grim wolf's ravage to prevent Or the huge lion's, arm'd with darts we went? Whose converse, now, shall calm my stormy day, With charming song who, now, beguile my way? 60 Go, seek your home, my lambs; my thoughts are due To other cares than those of feeding you. In whom shall I confide? Whose counsel find A balmy med'cine for my troubled mind? Or whose discourse with innocent delight Shall fill me now, and cheat the wint'ry night, While hisses on my hearth the pulpy pear, And black'ning chesnuts start and crackle there, While storms abroad the dreary meadows whelm, And the wind thunders thro' the neighb'ring elm? 70 Go, seek your home, my lambs; my thoughts are due To other cares than those of feeding you. Or who, when summer suns their summit reach, And Pan sleeps hidden by the shelt'ring beech, When shepherds disappear, Nymphs seek the sedge, And the stretch'd rustic snores beneath the hedge, Who then shall render me thy pleasant vein Of Attic wit, thy jests, thy smiles again? Go, seek your home, my lambs; my thoughts are due To other cares than those of feeding you. 80 Where glens and vales are thickest overgrown With tangled boughs, I wander now alone Till night descend, while blust'ring wind and show'r Beat on my temples through the shatter'd bow'r. Go, seek your home, my lambs; my thoughts are due To other cares than those of feeding you. Alas, what rampant weeds now shame my fields, And what a mildew'd crop the furrow yields! My rambling vines unwedded to the trees Bear shrivel'd grapes, my myrtles fail to please, 90 Nor please me more my flocks; they, slighted, turn Their unavailing looks on me, and mourn. Go, seek your home, my lambs; my thoughts are due To other cares than those of feeding you. Aegon invites me to the hazel grove, Amyntas, on the river's bank to rove, And young Alphesiboeus to a seat Where branching elms exclude the midday heat-- "Here fountains spring-here mossy hillocks rise--" "Here Zephyr whispers and the stream replies--" 100 Thus each persuades, but deaf to ev'ry call I gain the thickets, and escape them all. Go, seek your home, my lambs; my thoughts are due To other cares than those of feeding you. Then Mopsus said (the same who reads so well The voice of birds, and what the stars foretell, For He by chance had noticed my return) What means thy sullen mood, this deep concern? Ah Thyrsis! thou art either crazed with love, Or some sinister influence from above, 110 Dull Saturn's influence oft the shepherd rue, His leaden shaft oblique has pierced thee through. Go, go, my lambs, unpastur'd as ye are, My thoughts are all now due to other care. The Nymphs amazed my melancholy see, And, Thyrsis! cry--what will become of thee? What would'st thou, Thyrsis? such should not appear The brow of youth, stern, gloomy, and severe, Brisk youth should laugh and love--ah shun the fate Of those twice wretched mopes who love too late! 120 Go, go, my lambs, unpastur'd as ye are, My thoughts are all now due to other care. Aegle with Hyas came, to sooth my pain, And Baucis' daughter, Dryope the vain,4 Fair Dryope, for voice and finger neat Known far and near, and for her self-conceit, Came Chloris too, whose cottage on the lands That skirt the Idumanian current stands; But all in vain they came, and but to see Kind words and comfortable lost on me. 130 Go, go, my lambs, unpastur'd as ye are, My thoughts are all now due to other care. Ah blest indiff'rence of the playful herd, None by his fellow chosen or preferr'd! No bonds of amity the flocks enthrall, But each associates and is pleased with all; So graze the dappled deer in num'rous droves, And all his kind alike the zebra loves' The same law governs where the billows roar And Proteus' shoals o'erspread the desert shore; 140 The sparrow, meanest of the feather'd race, His fit companion finds in ev'ry place, With whom he picks the grain that suits him best, Flits here and there, and late returns to rest, And whom if chance the falcon make his prey, Or Hedger with his well-aim'd arrow slay, For no such loss the gay survivor grieves' New love he seeks, and new delight receives. We only, an obdurate kind, rejoice, Scorning all others, in a single choice, 150 We scarce in thousands meet one kindred mind, And if the long-sought good at last we find, When least we fear it, Death our treasure steals, And gives our heart a wound that nothing heals. Go, go, my lambs, unpastur'd as ye are, My thoughts are all now due to other care. Ah, what delusion lured me from my flocks, To traverse Alpine snows, and rugged rocks! What need so great had I to visit Rome Now sunk in ruins, and herself a tomb? 160 Or, had she flourish'd still as when, of old For her sake Tityrus forsook his fold, What need so great had I t'incur a pause Of thy sweet intercourse for such a cause, For such a cause to place the roaring sea, Rocks, mountains, woods, between my friend and me? Else, I had grasp'd thy feeble hand, composed Thy decent limbs, thy drooping eye-lids closed, And, at the last, had said--Farewell--Ascend-- Nor even in the skies forget thy friend. 170 Go, go, my lambs, untended homeward fare, My thoughts are all now due to other care. Although well-pleas'd, ye tuneful Tuscan swains! My mind the mem'ry of your worth retains, Yet not your worth can teach me less to mourn My Damon lost--He too was Tuscan born, Born in your Lucca, city of renown, And Wit possess'd and Genius like your own. Oh how elate was I, when, stretch'd beside The murm'ring course of Arno's breezy tide, 180 Beneath the poplar-grove I pass'd my hours, Now cropping myrtles, and now vernal flow'rs, And hearing, as I lay at ease along, Your swains contending for the prize of song! I also dared attempt (and, as it seems Not much displeas'd attempting) various themes, For even I can presents boast from you, The shepherd's pipe and osier basket too, And Dati and Francini both have made My name familiar to the beechen shade, 190 And they are learn'd, and each in ev'ry place Renown'd for song, and both of Lydian Race. Go, go, my lambs, untended homeward fare, My thoughts are all now due to other care. While bright the dewy grass with moon-beams shone, And I stood hurdling in my kids alone, How often have I said (but thou had'st found Ere then thy dark cold lodgment under-ground) Now Damon sings, or springes sets for hares, Or wicker-work for various use prepares! 200 How oft, indulging Fancy, have I plann'd New scenes of pleasure, that I hop'd at hand, Call'd thee abroad as I was wont, and cried-- What hoa, my friend--come, lay thy task aside-- Haste, let us forth together, and beguile The heat beneath yon whisp'ring shades awhile, Or on the margin stray of Colne's5 clear flood, Or where Cassivelan's grey turrets stood! There thou shalt cull me simples, and shalt teach Thy friend the name and healing pow'rs of each, 210 From the tall blue-bell to the dwarfish weed, What the dry land and what the marshes breed, For all their kinds alike to thee are known, And the whole art of Galen6 is thy own. Ah, perish Galen's art, and wither'd be The useless herbs that gave not health to thee! Twelve evenings since, as in poetic dream I meditating sat some statelier theme, The reeds no sooner touch'd my lip, though new And unassay'd before, than wide they flew, 220 Bursting their waxen bands, nor could sustain The deep-ton'd music of the solemn strain; And I am vain perhaps, but will tell How proud a theme I choose--ye groves farewell! Go, go, my lambs, untended homeward fare, My thoughts are all now due to other care. Of Brutus, Dardan Chief, my song shall be,7 How with his barks he plough'd the British sea, First from Rutupia's tow'ring headland seen, And of his consort's reign, fair Imogen; 230 Of Brennus and Belinus, brothers bold,8 And of Arviragus, and how of old Our hardy sires th'Armorican controll'd, And the wife of Gorlois, who, surprised By Uther in her husband's form disguised, (Such was the force of Merlin's art) became Pregnant with Arthur of heroic fame.9 These themes I now revolve--and Oh--if Fate Proportion to these themes my lengthen'd date, Adieu my shepherd's-reed--yon pine-tree bough 240 Shall be thy future home, there dangle Thou Forgotten and disus'd, unless ere long Thou change thy Latin for a British song. A British?--even so--the pow'rs of Man Are bounded; little is the most he can, And it shall well suffice me, and shall be Fame and proud recompense enough for me, If Usa10 golden-hair'd my verse may learn, If Alain, bending o'er his chrystal urn, Swift-whirling Abra, Trent's o'ershadow'd stream, 250 Thames, lovelier far than all in my esteem Tamar's ore-tinctur'd flood, and, after these, The wave-worn shores of utmost Orcades Go, go, my lambs, untended homeward fare, My thoughts are all now due to other care. All this I kept in leaves of laurel-rind Enfolded safe, and for thy view design'd, This--and a gift from Manso's hand beside, (Manso, not least his native city's pride) Two cups, that radiant as their giver shone, 260 Adorn'd by sculpture with a double zone. The spring was graven there; here, slowly wind The Red-Sea shores with groves of spices lined; Her plumes of various hues amid the boughs The sacred, solitary Phoenix shows, And, watchful of the dawn, reverts her head To see Aurora11 leave her wat'ry bed. In other part, th'expansive vault above, And there too, even there, the God of love; With quiver arm'd he mounts, his torch displays 270 A vivid light, his gem-tip'd arrows blaze, Around, his bright and fiery eyes he rolls, Nor aims at vulgar minds or little souls Nor deigns one look below, but aiming high Sends every arrow to the lofty sky, Hence, forms divine, and minds immortal learn The pow'r of Cupid, and enamour'd burn. Thou also Damon (neither need I fear That hope delusive) thou art also there; For whither should simplicity like thine 280 Retire, where else such spotless virtue shine? Thou dwell'st not (thought profane) in shades below, Nor tears suit thee--cease then my tears to flow, Away with grief on Damon ill-bestow'd, Who, pure himself, has found a pure abode, Has pass'd the show'ry arch, henceforth resides With saints and heroes, and from flowing tides Quaffs copious immortality and joy With hallow'd lips. Oh! blest without alloy, And now enrich'd with all that faith can claim, 290 Look down entreated by whatever name, If Damon please thee most (that rural sound) Shall oft with ecchoes fill the groves around) Or if Diodatus, by which alone In those ethereal mansions thou art known. Thy blush was maiden, and thy youth the taste Of wedded bliss knew never, pure and chaste, The honours, therefore, by divine decree The lot of virgin worth are giv'n to thee; Thy brows encircled with a radiant band, 300 And the green palm-branch waving in thy hand Thou immortal Nuptials shalt rejoice And join with seraphs thy according voice, Where rapture reigns, and the ecstatic lyre Guides the blest orgies of the blazing quire. 1 A river in Sicily. 2 Subject of Theocritus's Lament for Daphnis (Idyl i) in which Thyrsis is the mourning shepherd. Hylas was taken away by nymphs who admired his beauty and Bion is the subject of Moschus's Epitaph of Bion (Idyl iii). 3 Goddess who was protector of the flocks. Faunus is god of the plains and hills around Rome. 4 Characters in Ovid's Metamorphoses. 5 A river near St. Albans. Cassivellaunus was a British chieftan who opposed Caesar. See Gallic War (v, xi.) 6 Medicine. Diodati took medical training at Cambridge. 7 Milton's planned epic opened with the Dardanian (i.e. Trojan) fleet, under Brutus, approaching England. 8 Brennus and Belinus were kings of Brittany who, according to Spencer's Fairie Queen, "rasackt Greece" and conquered France and Germany. Arviragus led the Britons against Claudius. 9 See Malory's Morte d'Arthur. 10 A river in Oxford. 11 Goddess of the Dawn. To Mr. John Rouse, Librarian of the University of Oxford, An Ode1 on a Lost Volume of my Poems Which He Desired Me to Replace that He Might Add Them to My Other Works Deposited in the Library. Strophe I My two-fold Book! single in show But double in Contents, Neat, but not curiously adorn'd Which in his early youth, A poet gave, no lofty one in truth Although an earnest wooer of the Muse-- Say, while in cool Ausonian2 shades Or British wilds he roam'd, Striking by turns his native lyre, By turns the Daunian lute 10 And stepp'd almost in air,-- Antistrophe Say, little book, what furtive hand Thee from thy fellow books convey'd, What time, at the repeated suit Of my most learned Friend, I sent thee forth an honour'd traveller From our great city to the source of Thames, Caerulean sire! Where rise the fountains and the raptures ring, Of the Aonian choir,3 20 Durable as yonder spheres, And through the endless lapse of years Secure to be admired? Strophe II Now what God or Demigod For Britain's ancient Genius mov'd (If our afflicted land Have expiated at length the guilty sloth Of her degen'rate sons) Shall terminate our impious feuds, And discipline, with hallow'd voice, recall? 30 Recall the Muses too Driv'n from their antient seats In Albion, and well-nigh from Albion's shore, And with keen Phoebean shafts Piercing th'unseemly birds, Whose talons menace us Shall drive the harpy race from Helicon afar? Antistrophe But thou, my book, though thou hast stray'd, Whether by treach'ry lost Or indolent neglect, thy bearer's fault, 40 From all thy kindred books, To some dark cell or cave forlorn, Where thou endur'st, perhaps, The chafing of some hard untutor'd hand, Be comforted-- For lo! again the splendid hope appears That thou may'st yet escape The gulphs of Lethe, and on oary wings Mount to the everlasting courts of Jove, Strophe III Since Rouse desires thee, and complains 50 That, though by promise his, Thou yet appear'st not in thy place Among the literary noble stores Giv'n to his care, But, absent, leav'st his numbers incomplete. He, therefore, guardian vigilant Of that unperishing wealth, Calls thee to the interior shrine, his charge, Where he intends a richer treasure far Than Ion kept--(Ion, Erectheus' son4 60 Illustrious, of the fair Creusa born)-- In the resplendent temple of his God, Tripods of gold and Delphic gifts divine. Antistrophe Haste, then, to the pleasant groves, The Muses' fav'rite haunt; Resume thy station in Apollo's dome, Dearer to him Than Delos, or the fork'd Parnassian hill. Exulting go, Since now a splendid lot is also thine, 70 And thou art sought by my propitious friend; For There thou shalt be read With authors of exalted note, The ancient glorious Lights of Greece and Rome. Epode Ye, then my works, no longer vain And worthless deem'd by me! Whate'er this steril genius has produc'd Expect, at last, the rage of Envy spent, An unmolested happy home, Gift of kind Hermes and my watchful friend, 80 Where never flippant tongue profane Shall entrance find, And whence the coarse unletter'd multitude Shall babble far remote. Perhaps some future distant age Less tinged with prejudice and better taught Shall furnish minds of pow'r To judge more equally. Then, malice silenced in the tomb, Cooler heads and sounder hearts, 90 Thanks to Rouse, if aught of praise I merit, shall with candour weigh the claim. 1 This Ode consists of three strophes and the same of antistrophes, concluding with an epode. Although these units do not perfectly correspond in their number of verses or in divisions which are strictly parallel, nevertheless I have divided them in this fashion with a view to convenience or the reader, rather than conformity with the ancient rules of versification. In other respects a poem of this kind should, perhaps, more correctly be called monostrophic. The metres are in part regularly patterned and in part free. There are two Phaleucian verses which admit a spondee in the third foot, a practice often followed by Catullus in the second foot. [Milton's Note, translated--W.C.] 1 This Ode is rendered without rhyme, that it might more adequately represent the original, which, as Milton himself informs us, is of no certain measure. It may possibly for this reason disappoint the reader, though it cost the writer more labour than the translation of any other piece in the whole collection.--W.C. 2 Italian. 3 The Muses, who dwelt on Mount Helicon in Aonia. 4 See Euripides' Ion. Paradisum Amissam, Lib. II 1 Quales aerii montis de vertice nubes Cum surgunt, et jam Boreae tumida ora quierunt, Caelum hilares abdit spissa caligine vultus, Nimbosumque nives aut imbres cogitat aether: Tum si jucundo tandem sol prodeat ore, 5 Et croceo montes et pascua lumine tingat, Gaudent omnia, aves mulcent concentibus agros, Balatuque ovium colles vallesque resultant. 1 Translation of a simile in Paradise Lost, "As when, from mountaintops, the dusky clouds Ascending, &c.--"(ii. 488)--W.C. 3. TRANSLATIONS OF THE ITALIAN POEMS I Fair Lady, whose harmonious name the Rheno Through all his grassy vale delights to hear, Base were, indeed, the wretch, who could forbear To love a spirit elegant as thine, That manifests a sweetness all divine, 5 Nor knows a thousand winning acts to spare, And graces, which Love's bow and arrows are, Temp'ring thy virtues to a softer shine. When gracefully thou speak'st, or singest gay Such strains as might the senseless forest move, 10 Ah then--turn each his eyes and ears away, Who feels himself unworthy of thy love! Grace can alone preserve him, e'er the dart Of fond desire yet reach his inmost heart. II As on a hill-top rude, when closing day Imbrowns the scene, some past'ral maiden fair Waters a lovely foreign plant with care, That scarcely can its tender bud display Borne from its native genial airs away, 5 So, on my tongue these accents new and rare Are flow'rs exotic, which Love waters there, While thus, o sweetly scornful! I essay Thy praise in verse to British ears unknown, And Thames exchange for Arno's fair domain; 10 So Love has will'd, and oftimes Love has shown That what He wills he never wills in vain. Oh that this hard and steril breast might be To Him who plants from heav'n, a soil as free. III Canzone. They mock my toil--the nymphs and am'rous swains-- And whence this fond attempt to write, they cry, Love-songs in language that thou little know'st? How dar'st thou risque to sing these foreign strains? Say truly. Find'st not oft thy purpose cross'd, 5 And that thy fairest flow'rs, Here, fade and die? Then with pretence of admiration high-- Thee other shores expect, and other tides, Rivers on whose grassy sides Her deathless laurel-leaf with which to bind 10 Thy flowing locks, already Fame provides; Why then this burthen, better far declin'd? Speak, Canzone! for me.--The Fair One said who guides My willing heart, and all my Fancy's flights, "This is the language in which Love delights." 15 IV To Charles Diodati. Charles--and I say it wond'ring--thou must know That I who once assum'd a scornful air, And scoff'd at love, am fallen in his snare (Full many an upright man has fallen so) Yet think me not thus dazzled by the flow 5 Of golden locks, or damask cheek; more rare The heart-felt beauties of my foreign fair; A mien majestic, with dark brows, that show The tranquil lustre of a lofty mind; Words exquisite, of idioms more than one, 10 And song, whose fascinating pow'r might bind, And from her sphere draw down the lab'ring Moon, With such fire-darting eyes, that should I fill My ears with wax, she would enchant me still. V. Lady! It cannot be, but that thine eyes Must be my sun, such radiance they display And strike me ev'n as Phoebus him, whose way Through torrid Libya's sandy desert lies. Meantime, on that side steamy vapours rise 5 Where most I suffer. Of what kind are they, New as to me they are, I cannot say, But deem them, in the Lover's language--sighs. Some, though with pain, my bosom close conceals, Which, if in part escaping thence, they tend 10 To soften thine, they coldness soon congeals. While others to my tearful eyes ascend, Whence my sad nights in show'rs are ever drown'd, 'Till my Aurora comes, her brow with roses bound. VI.1 Enamour'd, artless, young, on foreign ground, Uncertain whither from myself to fly, To thee, dear Lady, with an humble sigh Let me devote my heart, which I have found By certain proofs not few, intrepid, sound, 5 Good, and addicted to conceptions high: When tempests shake the world, and fire the sky, It rests in adamant self-wrapt around, As safe from envy, and from outrage rude, From hopes and fears, that vulgar minds abuse, 10 As fond of genius, and fix'd fortitude, Of the resounding lyre, and every Muse. Weak you will find it in one only part, Now pierc'd by Love's immedicable dart. 1 It has ever been thought difficult for an author to speak gracefully of himself, especially in commendation; but Milton, who was gifted with powers to overcome difficulties, of every kind, is eminently happy in this particular. He has spoken frequently of himself both in verse and prose, and he continually shows that he thought highly of his own endowments; but if he praises himself, he does it with that dignified frankness and simplicity of conscious truth, which renders even egotism respectable and delightful: whether he describes the fervent and tender emotions of his juvenile fancy, or delineates his situation in the decline of life, when he had to struggle with calamity and peril, the more insight he affords us into his own sentiments and feelings, the more reason we find both to love, and revere him.--W.C. Appendix: Cowper's translation of Andrew Marvell's "To Christina, Queen of Sweden," &c. To Christina, Queen of Sweden, with Cromwell's Picture.1 Christina, maiden of heroic mien! Star of the North! of northern stars the queen! Behold, what wrinkles I have earn'd, and how The iron cask still chafes my vet'ran brow, While following fate's dark footsteps, I fulfill The dictates of a hardy people's will. But soften'd, in thy sight, my looks appear, Not to all Queens or Kings alike severe. 1 Written on Cromwell's behalf, this poem was originally attr. to Milton, hence Cowper's inclusion of it. It has since been recognized as the work of Marvell. Appendix: Poems from the Latin Prose Works. Translated by various hands. Epigram From "Pro Populo Anglicano Defensio" (I650). Translated by Joseph Washington (I692). On Salmasius's "Hundreda." Who taught Salmasius, the French chatt'ring Pye,1 To try at English, and "Hundreda"2 cry? The starving Rascal, flush'd with just a Hundred English Jacobusses,3 "Hundreda" blunder'd. An outlaw'd King's last stock.--a hundred more, Would make him pimp for th'Antichristian Whore;4 And in Rome's praise employ his poison'd Breath, Who once threatn'd to stink the Pope to death. 1 i.e. The Magpie. 2 Salmasius attempted to do certain English words in his Latin. a "Hundred" was a division of an English shire. 3 The Jacobus was a gold coin named for James I. 4 Salmasius attacked the Pope in "De Primatu Papae" in I645. Epigrams from the "Defensio Secunda" (I654). Translated by Robert Fellowes (I878?). On Salmasius. Rejoice, ye herrings, and ye ocean fry, Who, in cold winter, shiver in the sea; The knight, Salmasius,1 pitying your hard lot, Bounteous intends your nakedness to clothe, And, lavish of his paper, is preparing Chartaceous jackets to invest you all, Jackets resplendent with his arms and fame, Exultingly parade the fishy mart, And sing his praise with checquered, livery, That well might serve to grace the letter'd store Of those who pick their noses and ne'er read. 1 A play on "Salmon." [Lines Concerning Alexander More.]1 O Pontia, teeming with More's Gallic seed, You have been Mor'd2 enough, and no More need. 1 Wrongly attr. to Milton, who prefaced these lines with, "Ingenii, hoc distochon" [Some ingenious person wrote this distich]. Milton wrongly believed More to be the author of a libel against him. 2 It is impossible to give a literally exact rendering of this. I have played upon the name as well as I could in English.--R.F. Appendix: Translation of a Letter to Thomas Young, Translated by Robert Fellows (I878?). To My Tutor, Thomas Young. Though I had determined, my excellent tutor, to write you an epistle in verse, yet I could not satisfy myself without sending also another in prose, for the emotions of my gratitude, which your services so justly inspire, are too expansive and too warm to be expressed in the confined limits of poetical metre; they demand the unconstrained freedom of prose, or rather the exuberant richness of Asiatic phraseology: thought it would far exceed my power accurately to describe how much I am obliged to you, even if I could drain dry all the sources of eloquence, or exhaust all the topics of discourse which Aristotle or the famed Parisian logician has collected. You complain with truth that my letters have been very few and very short; but I do not grieve at the omission of so pleasurable a duty, so much as I rejoice at having such a place in your regard as makes you anxious often to hear from me. I beseech you not to take it amiss, that I have not now written to you for more than three years; but with you usual benignity to impute it rather to circumstances than to inclination. For Heaven knows that I regard you as a parent, that I have always treated you with the utmost respect, and that I was unwilling to tease you with my compositions. And I was anxious that if my letters had nothing else to recommend them, they might be recommended by their rarity. And lastly, since the ardour of my regard makes me imagine that you are always present, that I hear your voice and contemplate your looks; and as thus... I charm away my grief by the illusion of your presence, I was afraid when I wrote to you the idea of your distant separation should forcibly rush upon my mind; and that the pain of your absence, which was almost soothed into quiescence, should revive and disperse the pleasurable dream. I long since received your desirable present of the Hebrew Bible. I wrote this at my lodgings in the city, not, as usual, surrounded by my books. If, therefore, there be anything in this letter which either fails to give pleasure, or which frustrates expectation, it shall be compensated by a more elaborate composition as soon as I return to the dwelling of the muses.1 --London, March 26, I625. 1 i.e. Cambridge. Appendix: Translations of the Italian Poems By George MacDonald (I876). I. O lady fair, whose honoured name doth grace Green vale and noble ford of Rheno's stream-- Of all worth void the man I surely deem Whom thy fair soul enamoureth not apace, When softly self-revealed in outer space 5 By actions sweet with which thy will doth teem, And gifts--Love's bow and shafts in their esteem Who tend the flowers one day shall crown thy race. When thou dost lightsome talk or gladsome sing,-- A power to draw the hill-trees, rooted hard-- 10 The doors of eyes and ears let that man keep, Who knows himself unworthy thy regard. Grace from above alone him help can bring, That passion in his heart strike not too deep. II. As in the twilight brown, on hillside bare, Useth to go the little shepherd maid, Watering some strange fair plant, poorly displaced, Not thriving in unwonted soil and air, Far from its native springtime's genial care; 5 So on my ready tongue hath Love assayed Of a strange speech to wake new flower and blade, While I of thee, in scorn so debonair, Sing songs whose sense is to my people lost- Yield the fair Thames, and the fair Arno gain. 10 Love willed it so, and I, at others' cost, Already knew Love never willed in vain. Ill would slow mind, hard heart reward the toil Of him who plants from heaven so good a soil, III. Canzone. Ladies, and youths that in their favour bask, With mocking smiles come round me: Prithee, why, Why dost thou with an unknown language cope, Love-riming? Whence the courage for the task? Tell us--so never frustrate be thy hope, 5 And the best thoughts still to thy thinking fly! Thus mocking they: Thee other streams, they cry, Thee other shores, another sea demands, Upon whose verdant strands Are budding, every moment, for thy hair, 10 Immortal guerdon, leaves that will not die; An over-burden on thy back why bear?-- Song,1 I will tell thee; thou for me reply: My lady saith-and her word is my heart-- This is Love's mother-tongue, and fits his part. 15 1 Ital. "Canzone." IV. To Charles Diodati. Diodati--and I muse to tell the tale-- This stubborn I, that Love was wont despise, And made a laughter of his snares, unwise, Am fallen, where honest feet will sometimes fail. Not golden tresses, not a cheek vermeil, 5 Bewitched me thus; but, in a new-world guise, A beauty that the heart beatifies; A mien where high-souled modesty I hail; Eyes softly splendent with a darkness dear; A speech that more than one tongue vassal hath; 10 A voice that in the middle hemisphere Might make the tired moon wander from her path; While from her eyes such potent flashes shoot, That to stop hard my ears would little boot. V. Truly,1 my lady sweet, your blessed eyes-- It cannot be but that they are my sun; As strong they smite me as he smites upon The man whose way o'er Libyan desert lies, The while a vapour hot doth me surprise, 5 From that side springing where my pain doth won; Perchance accustomed lovers--I am none, And know not--in their speech call such things sighs; A part shut in, itself, sore vexed, conceals, And shakes my bosom; part, undisciplined, 10 Breaks forth, and all about in ice congeals; But that which to mine eyes the way doth find, Makes all my nights in silent showers abound, Until my Dawn2 returns, with roses crowned. 1 Correcting MacDonald's "Certes" (Ital. "Per Certo"). 2 [Ital.] "Alba"-I suspect a hint at the lady's name.-G.M. VI. A modest youth, in love a simpleton, When to escape myself I seek and shift, Lady, I of my heart the humble gift Vow unto thee. In trials many a one, True, brave, it has been, firm to things begun, 5 By gracious, prudent, worthy thoughts uplift. When roars the great world, in the thunder-rift, Its own self, armour adamant, it will don, From chance and envy as securely barred, From hopes and fears that still the crowd abuse, 10 As inward gifts and high worth coveting, And the resounding lyre, and every Muse. There only wilt thou find it not so hard Where Love hath fixed his ever cureless sting. 
21431	----	Mary Powell & Deborah's Diary by Anne Manning A tale which holdeth children from play & old men from the chimney corner --Sir Philip Sidney London: published by J. M. Dent & Co. and in New York by E. P. Dutton & Co. 1908 INTRODUCTION In the Valhalla of English literature Anne Manning is sure of a little and safe place. Her studies of great men, in which her imagination fills in the hiatus which history has left, are not only literature in themselves, but they are a service to literature: it is quite conceivable that the ordinary reader with no very keen _flair_ for poetry will realise John Milton and appraise him more highly, having read _Mary Powell_ and its sequel, _Deborah's Diary_, than having read _Paradise Lost_. In _The Household of Sir Thomas More_ she had for hero one of the most charming, whimsical, lovable, heroical men God ever created, by the creation of whose like He puts to shame all that men may accomplish in their literature. In John Milton, whose first wife Mary Powell was, Miss Manning has a hero who, though a supreme poet, was "gey ill to live with," and it is a triumph of her art that she makes us compunctious for the great poet even while we appreciate the difficulties that fell to the lot of his women-kind. John Milton, a Parliament man and a Puritan, married at the age of thirty-four, Mary Powell, a seventeen-year-old girl, the daughter of an Oxfordshire squire, who, with his family, was devoted to the King. It was at one of the bitterest moments of the conflict between King and Parliament, and it was a complication in the affair of the marriage that Mary Powell's father was in debt five hundred pounds to Milton. The marriage took place. Milton and his young wife set up housekeeping in lodgings in Aldersgate Street over against St. Bride's Churchyard, a very different place indeed from Forest Hill, Shotover, by Oxford, Mary Powell's dear country home. They were together barely a month when Mary Powell, on report of her father's illness, had leave to revisit him, being given permission to absent herself from her husband's side from mid-August till Michaelmas. She did not return at Michaelmas; nor for some two years was there a reconciliation between the bride and groom of a month. During those two years Milton published his pamphlet, _On the Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce_, begun while his few-weeks-old bride was still with him. In this pamphlet he states with violence his opinion that a husband should be permitted to put away his wife "for lack of a fit and matchable conversation," which would point to very slender agreement between the girl of seventeen and the poet of thirty-four. This was that Mary Powell, who afterwards bore him four children, who died in childbirth with the youngest, Deborah (of the _Diary)_, and who is consecrated in one of the loveliest and most poignant of English sonnets. Methought I saw my late-espouséd Saint Brought to me like Alkestis from the grave, Whom Jove's great son to her glad husband gave, Rescued from death by force, though pale and faint. Mine, as whom washed from spot of child-bed taint Purification in the Old Law did save; And such, as yet once more, I trust to have Full sight of her in Heaven without restraint, Came vested all in white, pure as her mind: Her face was veiled, yet to my fancied sight Love, sweetness, goodness, in her person shined So clear, as in no face with more delight. But oh! as to embrace me she inclined, I waked; she fled; and Day brought back my Night. It is a far cry from the woman so enshrined to the child of seventeen years who was without "fit and matchable conversation" for her irritable, intolerant poet-husband. A good many serious writers have conjectured and wondered over this little tragedy of Milton's young married life: but since all must needs be conjecture one is obliged to say that Miss Manning, with her gift of delicate imagination and exquisite writing, has conjectured more excellently than the historians. She does not "play the sedulous ape" to Milton or Mary Powell: but if one could imagine a gentle and tender Boswell to these two, then Miss Manning has well proved her aptitude for the place. Of Mary Powell she has made a charming creature. The diary of Mary Powell is full of sweet country smells and sights and sounds. Mary Powell herself is as sweet as her flowers, frank, honest, loving and tender. Her diary catches for us all the enchantment of an old garden; we hear Mary Powell's bees buzz in the mignonette and lavender; we see her pleached garden alleys; we loiter with her on the bowling-green, by the fish ponds, in the still-room, the dairy and the pantry. The smell of aromatic box on a hot summer of long ago is in our nostrils. We realise all the personages--the impulsive, hot-headed father; the domineering, indiscreet mother; the cousin, Rose Agnew, and her parson husband; little Kate and Robin of the Royalist household--as well as John Milton and his father, and the two nephews to whom the poet was tutor--and a hard tutor. Miss Manning's delightful humour comes out in the two pragmatical little boys. But Mary herself dominates the picture. She is so much a thing of the country, of gardens and fields, that perforce one is reminded of Sir Thomas Overbury's _Fair and Happy Milkmaid_:-- "She doth all things with so sweet a grace it seems ignorance will not suffer her to do ill, being her mind is to do well. . . . The garden and bee-hive are all her physic and chirugery, and she lives the longer for it. She dares go alone and unfold sheep in the night and fears no manner of ill because she means none: yet to say truth she is never alone, for she is still accompanied by old songs, honest thoughts and prayers, but short ones. . . . Thus lives she, and all her care is that she may die in the spring-time, to have store of flowers stuck upon her winding-sheet." The last remnants of Forest Hill, Mary Powell's home, were pulled down in 1854. A visitor to it three years before its demolition tells us:-- "Still the rose, the sweet-brier and the eglantine are reddest beneath its casements; the cock at its barn-door may be seen from any of the windows. . . . In the kitchen, with its vast hearth and overhanging chimney, we discovered tokens of the good living for which the old manor-house was famous in its day. . . . The garden, in its massive wall, ornamental gateway and old sun-dial, retains some traces of its manorial dignities." The house indeed is gone, but the sweet country remains, the verdant slopes and the lanes with their hedges full of sweet-brier that stretch out towards Oxford. And there is the church in which Mary Powell prayed. I should have liked to quote another of Miss Manning's biographers, the Rev. Dr. Hutton, who tells us of old walls partly built into the farmhouse that now stands there, and of the old walnut trees in the farmyard, and in a field hard by the spring of which John Milton may have tasted, and the church on the hill, and the distant Chilterns. Milton's cottage at Chalfont St. Giles's is happily still in a good state of preservation, although Chalfont and its neighbourhood have suffered a sea-change even since Dr. Hutton wrote, a decade ago. All that quiet corner of the world, for so long green and secluded,--a "deare secret greennesse"--has now had the light of the world let in upon it. Motor-cars whizz through that Quaker country; money-making Londoners hurry away from it of mornings, trudge home of evenings, bag in hand; the jerry-builder is in the land, and the dust of much traffic lies upon the rose and eglantine wherewith Milton's eyes were delighted. The works of our hands often mock us by their durability. Years and ages and centuries after the busy brain and the feeling heart are dust, the houses built with hands stand up to taunt our mortality. Yet the works of the mind remain. Though Forest Hill be only a party-wall, and Chalfont a suburb of London, the Forest Hill of Mary Powell, the Chalfont of Milton, yet live for us in Anne Manning's delightful pages. Miss Manning did not wish her _Life_ to be written, but we do get some glimpses of her real self from herself in a chance page here and there of her reminiscences. Here is one such glimpse:-- "I must confess I have never been able to write comfortably when music was going on. I think I have always written to most purpose coming in fresh from a morning walk when the larks were singing and lambs bleating and distant cocks in farmyards crowing, and a distant dog barking to an echo which answered his voice, and when the hedges and banks were full of wild flowers with quaint and pretty names. "Next to that, I have found the best time soon after early tea, when my companions were all in the garden, and likely to remain there till moonlight." Not very much by way of a literary portrait, and yet one can fill it in for oneself, can place her in old-world Reigate, fast, alas! becoming over-built and over-populated like all the rest of the country over which falls the ever-lengthening London shadow. As one ponders upon Forest Hill for Mary Powell's sake--is not Shotover as dear a name as Shottery?--and Chalfont for Milton's sake, one thinks on Reigate surrounded by its hills for Anne Manning's sake, and keeps the place in one's heart. _Mary Powell_, with its sequel, _Deborah's Diary_--Deborah was the young thing whom to bring into the world Mary Powell died--is one of the most fragrant books in English literature. One thinks of it side by side with John Evelyn's _Mrs. Godolphin_. Miss Manning had a beautiful style--a style given to her to reconstruct an idyll of old-world sweetness. Limpid as flowing water, with a thought of syllabubs and new-made hay in it, it is a perpetual delight. This mid-Victorian, dark-haired lady, with the aquiline nose and high colour, although she may not have looked it, possessed a charming style, in which tenderness, seriousness, gaiety, humour, poetry, appear in the happiest atmosphere of sweetness and light. KATHARINE TYNAN. _April_ 1908 Bibliography The following is a complete list of her published works:-- The Household of Sir Thomas More, 1851; Queen Phillippa's Golden Booke, 1851; The Colloquies of Edward Osborne, Citizen and Clothworker of London, 1852; The Drawing-room Table Book, 1852; Cherry and Violet, a Tale of the Great Plague, 1853; The Provocations of Madame Palissy, 1853; Chronicles of Merry England, 1854; Claude the Colporteur, 1854; The Hill Side, 1854; Jack and the Tanner of Wymondham, 1854; Adventures of Haroun al Raschid, 1855; Maiden and Married Life of Mary Powell, afterwards Mistress Milton, 1855; Old Chelsea Bun-House, 1855; Some Account of Mrs. Clarinda Singlehart, 1855; A Sabbath at Home, 1855; Tasso and Leonora, 1856; The Week of Darkness, 1856; Lives of Good Servants, 1857; The Good Old Times, 1857; Helen and Olga, a Russian Tale, 1857; The Year Nine: a Tale of the Tyrol, 1858; The Ladies of Bever Hollow, 1858; Poplar House Academy, 1859; Deborah's Diary, 1859; The Story of Italy, 1859; Village Belles, 1859; Town and Forest, 1860; The Day of Small Things, 1860; Family Pictures, 1861; Chronicle of Ethelfled, 1861; A Noble Purpose Nobly Won, 1862; Meadowleigh, 1863; Bessy's Money, 1863; The Duchess of Tragetto, 1863; The Interrupted Wedding: a Hungarian Tale, 1864; Belforest: a Tale, 1865; Selvaggio: a Tale of Italian Country Life, 1865; The Masque at Ludlow, and other Romanesques, 1866; The Lincolnshire Tragedy (Passages in the life of Anne Askewe), 1866; Miss Biddy Frobisher: a Salt-water Story, 1866; The Cottage History of England, 1867; Jacques Bonneval, 1868; Diana's Crescent, 1868; The Spanish Barber, 1869; One Trip More, 1870; Margaret More's Tagebuch, 1870; Compton Friars, 1872; The Lady of Limited Income, 1872; Lord Harry Bellair, 1874; Monk's Norton, 1874; Heroes of the Desert (Moffat, Livingstone, etc.), 1875; An Idyll of the Alps, 1876. LIFE.--C. M. Yonge, Women Novelists of Queen Victoria's Reign, 1897. THE MAIDEN AND MARRIED LIFE OF MARY POWELL AFTERWARDS MISTRESS MILTON JOURNALL _Forest Hill, Oxon, May 1st, 1643_. . . . Seventeenth Birthdaye. A Gypsie Woman at the Gate woulde faine have tolde my Fortune; but _Mother_ chased her away, saying she had doubtlesse harboured in some of the low Houses in _Oxford_, and mighte bring us the Plague. Coulde have cried for Vexation; she had promised to tell me the Colour of my Husband's Eyes; but _Mother_ says she believes I shall never have one, I am soe sillie. _Father_ gave me a gold Piece. Dear _Mother_ is chafed, methinks, touching this Debt of five hundred Pounds, which _Father_ says he knows not how to pay. Indeed, he sayd, overnighte, his whole personal Estate amounts to but five hundred Pounds, his Timber and Wood to four hundred more, or thereabouts; and the Tithes and Messuages of _Whateley_ are no great Matter, being mortgaged for about as much moore, and he hath lent Sights of Money to them that won't pay, so 'tis hard to be thus prest. Poor _Father_! 'twas good of him to give me this gold Piece. _May 2nd, 1643_. Cousin _Rose_ married to Master _Roger Agnew_. Present, _Father, Mother_, and _Brother_ of _Rose_. _Father, Mother, Dick, Bob, Harry_, and I; Squire _Paice_ and his Daughter _Audrey_; an olde Aunt of Master _Roger's_, and one of his Cousins, a stiffe-backed Man with large Eares, and such a long Nose! Cousin _Rose_ looked bewtifulle--pitie so faire a Girl should marry so olde a Man--'tis thoughte he wants not manie Years of fifty. _May 7th, 1643_. New Misfortunes in the Poultrie Yarde. Poor _Mother's_ Loyalty cannot stand the Demands for her best Chickens, Ducklings, etc., for the Use of his Majesty's Officers since the King hath beene in _Oxford_. She accuseth my _Father_ of having beene wonne over by a few faire Speeches to be more of a Royalist than his natural Temper inclineth him to; which, of course, he will not admit. _May 8th, 1643_. Whole Day taken up in a Visit to _Rose_, now a Week married, and growne quite matronlie already. We reached _Sheepscote_ about an Hour before Noone. A long, broade, strait Walke of green Turf, planted with Hollyoaks, Sunflowers, etc., and some earlier Flowers alreadie in Bloom, led up to the rusticall Porch of a truly farm-like House, with low gable Roofs, a long lattice Window on either Side the Doore, and three Casements above. Such, and no more, is _Rose's_ House! But she is happy, for she came running forthe, soe soone as she hearde _Clover's_ Feet, and helped me from my Saddle all smiling, tho' she had not expected to see us. We had Curds and Creame; and she wished it were the Time of Strawberries, for she sayd they had large Beds; and then my _Father_ and the Boys went forthe to looke for Master _Agnew_. Then _Rose_ took me up to her Chamber, singing as she went; and the long, low Room was sweet with Flowers. Sayd I, "_Rose_, to be Mistress of this pretty Cottage, 'twere hardlie amisse to marry a Man as olde as Master _Roger_." "Olde!" quoth she, "deare _Moll_, you must not deeme him olde; why, he is but fortytwo; and am not I twenty-three?" She lookt soe earneste and hurte, that I coulde not but falle a laughing. _May 9th, 1643_. _Mother_ gone to _Sandford_. She hopes to get Uncle _John_ to lend _Father_ this Money. _Father_ says she may _try_. Tis harde to discourage her with an ironicalle Smile, when she is doing alle she can, and more than manie Women woulde, to help _Father_ in his Difficultie; but suche, she sayth somewhat bitterlie, is the lot of our Sex. She bade _Father_ mind that she had brought him three thousand Pounds, and askt what had come of them. Answered; helped to fille the Mouths of nine healthy Children, and stop the Mouth of an easie Husband; soe, with a Kiss, made it up. I have the Keys, and am left Mistresse of alle, to my greate Contentment; but the Children clamour for Sweetmeats, and _Father_ sayth, "Remember, _Moll_, Discretion is the better Part of Valour." After _Mother_ had left, went into the Paddock, to feed the Colts with Bread; and while they were putting their Noses into _Robin's_ Pockets, _Dick_ brought out the two Ponies, and set me on one of them, and we had a mad Scamper through the Meadows and down the Lanes; I leading. Just at the Turne of _Holford's Close_, came shorte upon a Gentleman walking under the Hedge, clad in a sober, genteel Suit, and of most beautifulle Countenance, with Hair like a Woman's, of a lovely pale brown, long and silky, falling over his Shoulders. I nearlie went over him, for _Clover's_ hard Forehead knocked agaynst his Chest; but he stoode it like a Rock; and lookinge firste at me and then at _Dick_, he smiled and spoke to my Brother, who seemed to know him, and turned about and walked by us, sometimes stroaking _Clover's_ shaggy Mane. I felte a little ashamed; for _Dick_ had sett me on the Poney just as I was, my Gown somewhat too shorte for riding: however, I drewe up my Feet and let _Clover_ nibble a little Grasse, and then got rounde to the neare Side, our new Companion stille between us. He offered me some wild Flowers, and askt me theire Names; and when I tolde them, he sayd I knew more than he did, though he accounted himselfe a prettie fayre Botaniste: and we went on thus, talking of the Herbs and Simples in the Hedges; and I sayd how prettie some of theire Names were, and that, methought, though Adam had named alle the Animals in Paradise, perhaps Eve had named alle the Flowers. He lookt earnestlie at me, on this, and muttered "prettie." Then _Dick_ askt of him News from _London_, and he spoke, methought, reservedlie; ever and anon turning his bright, thoughtfulle Eyes on me. At length, we parted at the Turn of the Lane. I askt _Dick_ who he was, and he told me he was one Mr. _John Milton_, the Party to whom _Father_ owed five hundred Pounds. He was the Sonne of a _Buckinghamshire_ Gentleman, he added, well connected, and very scholarlike, but affected towards the Parliament. His Grandsire, a zealous Papiste, formerly lived in _Oxon_, and disinherited the Father of this Gentleman for abjuring the _Romish_ Faith. When I found how faire a Gentleman was _Father's_ Creditor, I became the more interested in deare _Mother's_ Successe. _May 13th, 1643_. _Dick_ began to harpe on another Ride to _Sheepscote_ this Morning, and persuaded _Father_ to let him have the bay Mare, soe he and I started at aboute Ten o' the Clock. Arrived at Master _Agnew's_ Doore, found it open, no one in Parlour or Studdy; soe _Dick_ tooke the Horses rounde, and then we went straite thro' the House, into the Garden behind, which is on a rising Ground, with pleached Alleys and turfen Walks, and a Peep of the Church through the Trees. A Lad tolde us his Mistress was with the Bees, soe we walked towards the Hives; and, from an Arbour hard by, hearde a Murmur, though not of Bees, issuing. In this rusticall Bowre, found _Roger Agnew_ reading to _Rose_ and to Mr. _Milton_. Thereupon ensued manie cheerfulle Salutations, and _Rose_ proposed returning to the House, but Master _Agnew_ sayd it was pleasanter in the Bowre, where was Room for alle; soe then _Rose_ offered to take me to her Chamber to lay aside my Hoode, and promised to send a Junkett into the Arbour; whereon Mr. _Agnew_ smiled at Mr. _Milton_, and sayd somewhat of "neat-handed _Phillis_." As we went alonge, I tolde _Rose_ I had seene her Guest once before, and thought him a comely, pleasant Gentleman. She laught, and sayd, "Pleasant? why, he is one of the greatest Scholars of our Time, and knows more Languages than you or I ever hearde of." I made Answer, "That may be, and yet might not ensure his being pleasant, but rather the contrary, for I cannot reade _Greeke_ and _Latin_, _Rose_, like you." Quoth _Rose_, "But you can reade _English_, and he hath writ some of the loveliest _English_ Verses you ever hearde, and hath brought us a new Composure this Morning, which _Roger_, being his olde College Friend, was discussing with him, to my greate Pleasure, when you came. After we have eaten the Junkett, he shall beginne it again." "By no Means," said I, "for I love Talking more than Reading." However, it was not soe to be, for _Rose_ woulde not be foyled; and as it woulde not have been good Manners to decline the Hearinge in Presence of the Poet, I was constrayned to suppresse a secret Yawne, and feign Attention, though, Truth to say, it soone wandered; and, during the last halfe Hour, I sat in a compleat Dreame, tho' not unpleasant one. _Roger_ having made an End, 'twas diverting to heare him commending the Piece unto the Author, who as gravely accepted it; yet, with nothing fullesome about the one, or misproud about the other. Indeed, there was a sedate Sweetnesse in the Poet's Wordes as well as Lookes; and shortlie, waiving the Discussion of his owne Composures, he beganne to talke of those of other Men, as _Shakspeare, Spenser, Cowley, Ben Jonson_, and of _Tasso_, and _Tasso's_ Friend the Marquis of _Villa_, whome, it appeared, Mr. _Milton_ had Knowledge of in _Italy_. Then he askt me, woulde I not willingly have seene the Country of _Romeo_ and _Juliet_, and prest to know whether I loved Poetry; but finding me loath to tell, sayd he doubted not I preferred Romances, and that he had read manie, and loved them dearly too. I sayd, I loved _Shakspeare's_ Plays better than _Sidney's_ Arcadia; on which he cried "Righte," and drew nearer to me, and woulde have talked at greater length; but, knowing from _Rose_ how learned he was, I feared to shew him I was a sillie Foole; soe, like a sillie Foole, held my Tongue. Dinner; Eggs, Bacon, roast Ribs of Lamb, Spinach, Potatoes, savoury Pie, a _Brentford_ Pudding, and Cheesecakes. What a pretty Housewife _Rose_ is! _Roger's_ plain Hospitalitie and scholarlie Discourse appeared to much Advantage. He askt of News from Paris; and Mr. _Milton_ spoke much of the _Swedish_ Ambassadour, _Dutch_ by Birth; a Man renowned for his Learning, Magnanimity, and Misfortunes, of whome he had seene much. He tolde _Rose_ and me how this Mister _Van der Groote_ had beene unjustlie caste into Prison by his Countrymen; and how his good Wife had shared his Captivitie, and had tried to get his Sentence reversed; failing which, she contrived his Escape in a big Chest, which she pretended to be full of heavie olde Bookes. Mr. _Milton_ concluded with the Exclamation, "Indeede, there never was such a Woman;" on which, deare _Roger_, whome I beginne to love, quoth, "Oh yes, there are manie such,--we have two at Table now." Whereat, Mr. _Milton_ smiled. At Leave-taking pressed Mr. _Agnew_ and _Rose_ to come and see us soone; and _Dick_ askt Mr. _Milton_ to see the Bowling Greene. Ride Home, delightfulle. _May 14th, 1643_. Thought, when I woke this Morning, I had been dreaminge of St. _Paul_ let down the Wall in a Basket; but founde, on more closely examining the Matter, 'twas _Grotius_ carried down the Ladder in a Chest; and methought I was his Wife, leaninge from the Window above, and crying to the Souldiers, "Have a Care, have a Care!" 'Tis certayn I shoulde have betraied him by an Over-anxietie. Resolved to give _Father_ a _Sheepscote_ Dinner, but _Margery_ affirmed the Haunch woulde no longer keepe, so was forced to have it drest, though meaninge to have kept it for Companie. Little _Kate_, who had been out alle the Morning, came in with her Lap full of Butter-burs, the which I was glad to see, as _Mother_ esteemes them a sovereign Remedie 'gainst the Plague, which is like to be rife in _Oxford_ this Summer, the Citie being so overcrowded on account of his Majestie. While laying them out on the Stille-room Floor, in bursts _Robin_ to say Mr. _Agnew_ and Mr. _Milton_ were with _Father_ at the Bowling Greene, and woulde dine here. Soe was glad _Margery_ had put down the Haunch. Twas past One o' the Clock, however, before it coulde be sett on Table; and I had just run up to pin on my Carnation Knots, when I hearde them alle come in discoursing merrilie. At Dinner Mr. _Milton_ askt _Robin_ of his Studdies; and I was in Payne for the deare Boy, knowing him to be better affected to his out-doore Recreations than to his Booke; but he answered boldlie he was in _Ovid_, and I lookt in Mr. _Milton's_ Face to guesse was that goode Scholarship or no; but he turned it towards my _Father_, and sayd he was trying an Experiment on two young Nephews of his owne, whether the reading those Authors that treate of physical Subjects mighte not advantage them more than the Poets; whereat my _Father_ jested with him, he being himselfe one of the Fraternitie he seemed to despise. But he uphelde his Argumente so bravelie, that _Father_ listened in earneste Silence. Meantime, the Cloth being drawne, and I in Feare of remaining over long, was avised to withdrawe myself earlie, _Robin_ following, and begging me to goe downe to the Fish-ponds. Afterwards alle the others joyned us, and we sate on the Steps till the Sun went down, when, the Horses being broughte round, our Guests tooke Leave without returning to the House. _Father_ walked thoughtfullie Home with me, leaning on my Shoulder, and spake little. _May 15th, 1643_. After writing the above last Night, in my Chamber, went to Bed and had a most heavenlie Dreame. Methoughte it was brighte, brighte Moonlighte, and I was walking with Mr. _Milton_ on a Terrace,--not _our_ Terrace, but in some outlandish Place; and it had Flights and Flights of green Marble Steps, descending, I cannot tell how farre, with Stone Figures and Vases on every one. We went downe and downe these Steps, till we came to a faire Piece of Water, still in the Moonlighte; and then, methoughte, he woulde be taking Leave, and sayd much aboute Absence and Sorrowe, as tho' we had knowne eache other some Space; and alle that he sayd was delightfulle to heare. Of a suddain we hearde Cries, as of Distresse, in a Wood that came quite down to the Water's Edge, and Mr. _Milton_ sayd, "Hearken!" and then, "There is some one being slaine in the Woode, I must goe to rescue him;" and soe, drewe his Sword and ran off. Meanwhile, the Cries continued, but I did not seeme to mind them much; and, looking stedfastlie downe into the cleare Water, coulde see to an immeasurable Depth, and beheld, oh, rare! Girls sitting on glistening Rocks, far downe beneathe, combing and braiding their brighte Hair, and talking and laughing, onlie I coulde not heare aboute what. And theire Kirtles were like spun Glass, and theire Bracelets Coral and Pearl; and I thought it the fairest Sight that Eyes coulde see. But, alle at once, the Cries in the Wood affrighted them, for they started, looked upwards and alle aboute, and began swimming thro' the cleare Water so fast, that it became troubled and thick, and I coulde see them noe more. Then I was aware that the Voices in the Wood were of _Dick_ and _Harry_, calling for _me_; and I soughte to answer, "Here!" but my Tongue was heavie. Then I commenced running towards them, through ever so manie greene Paths, in the Wood; but still, we coulde never meet; and I began to see grinning Faces, neither of Man nor Beaste, peeping at me through the Trees; and one and another of them called me by Name; and in greate Feare and Paine I awoke! . . . Strange Things are Dreames. Dear _Mother_ thinks much of them, and sayth they oft portend coming Events. My _Father_ holdeth the Opinion that they are rather made up of what hath alreadie come to passe; but surelie naught like this Dreame of mine hath in anie Part befallen me hithertoe? . . . What strange Fable or Masque were they reading that Day at _Sheepscote_? I mind not. _May 20th, 1643_. Too much busied of late to write, though much hath happened which I woulde fain remember. Dined at _Shotover_ yesterday. Met _Mother_, who is coming Home in a Day or two; but helde short Speech with me aside concerning Housewifery. The _Agnews_ there, of course: alsoe Mr. _Milton_, whom we have seene continuallie, lately; and I know not how it shoulde be, but he seemeth to like me. _Father_ affects him much, but _Mother_ loveth him not. She hath seene little of him: perhaps the less the better. _Ralph Hewlett_, as usuall, forward in his rough endeavours to please; but, though no Scholar, I have yet Sense enough to prefer Mr. _Milton's_ Discourse to his. . . . I wish I were fonder of Studdy; but, since it cannot be, what need to vex? Some are born of one Mind, some of another. _Rose_ was alwaies for her Booke; and, had _Rose_ beene no Scholar, Mr. _Agnew_ woulde, may be, never have given her a second Thoughte: but alle are not of the same Way of thinking. . . . A few Lines received from _Mother's_ "spoilt Boy," as _Father_ hath called Brother _Bill_, ever since he went a soldiering. Blurred and mis-spelt as they are, she will prize them. Trulie, we are none of us grate hands at the Pen; 'tis well I make this my Copie-booke. . . . Oh, strange Event! Can this be Happinesse? Why, then, am I soe feared, soe mazed, soe prone to weeping? I woulde that _Mother_ were here. Lord have Mercie on me a sinfulle, sillie Girl, and guide my Steps arighte. . . . It seemes like a Dreame, (I have done noughte but dreame of late, I think,) my going along the matted Passage, and hearing Voices in my _Father's_ Chamber, just as my Hand was on the Latch; and my withdrawing my Hand, and going softlie away, though I never paused at disturbing him before; and, after I had beene a full Houre in the Stille Room, turning over ever soe manie Trays full of dried Herbs and Flower-leaves, hearing him come forthe and call, "_Moll_, deare _Moll_, where are you?" with I know not what of strange in the Tone of his Voice; and my running to him hastilie, and his drawing me into his Chamber, and closing the Doore. Then he takes me round the Waiste, and remains quite silent awhile; I gazing on him so strangelie! and at length, he says with a Kind of Sigh, "Thou art indeed but young yet! scarce seventeen,--and fresh, as Mr. _Milton_ says, as the earlie May; too tender, forsooth, to leave us yet, sweet Child! But what wilt say, _Moll_, when I tell thee that a well-esteemed Gentleman, whom as yet indeed I know too little of, hath craved of me Access to the House as one that woulde win your Favour?" Thereupon, such a suddain Faintness of the Spiritts overtooke me, (a Thing I am noe way subject to,) as that I fell down in a Swound at _Father's_ Feet; and when I came to myselfe again, my Hands and Feet seemed full of Prickles, and there was a Humming, as of _Rose's_ Bees, in mine Ears. _Lettice_ and _Margery_ were tending of me, and _Father_ watching me full of Care; but soe soone as he saw me open mine Eyes, he bade the Maids stand aside, and sayd, stooping over me, "Enough, dear _Moll_; we will talk noe more of this at present." "Onlie just tell me," quoth I, in a Whisper, "who it is." "Guesse," sayd he. "I cannot," I softlie replied, and, with the Lie, came such a Rush of Blood to my Cheeks as betraied me. "I am sure you have though," sayd deare _Father_, gravelie, "and I neede not say it is Mr. _Milton_, of whome I know little more than you doe, and that is not enough. On the other Hand, _Roger Agnew_ sayth that he is one of whome we can never know too much, and there is somewhat about him which inclines me to believe it." "What will _Mother_ say?" interrupted I. Thereat _Father's_ Countenance changed; and he hastilie answered, "Whatever she likes: I have an Answer for her, and a Question too;" and abruptlie left me, bidding me keepe myselfe quiet. But can I? Oh, no! _Father_ hath sett a Stone rolling, unwitting of its Course. It hath prostrated me in the first Instance, and will, I misdoubt, hurt my _Mother_. _Father_ is bold enow in her Absence, but when she comes back will leave me to face her Anger alone; or else, make such a Stir to shew that he is not governed by a Woman, as wille make Things worse. Meanwhile, how woulde I have them? Am I most pleased or payned? dismayed or flattered? Indeed, I know not. . . . I am soe sorry to have swooned. Needed I have done it, merelie to heare there was one who soughte my Favour? Aye, but one soe wise! so thoughtfulle! so unlike me! Bedtime: same Daye. . . . Who knoweth what a Daye will bring forth? After writing the above, I sate like one stupid, ruminating on I know not what, except on the Unlikelihood that one soe wise woulde trouble himselfe to _seeke_ for aught and yet fail to _win_. After abiding a long Space in mine owne Chamber, alle below seeming still, I began to wonder shoulde we dine alone or not, and to have a hundred hot and cold Fitts of Hope and Feare. Thought I, if Mr. _Milton_ comes, assuredlie I cannot goe down; but yet I must; but yet I will not; but yet the best will be to conduct myselfe as though nothing had happened; and, as he seems to have left the House long ago, maybe he hath returned to _Sheepscote_, or even to _London_. Oh that _London_! Shall I indeede ever see it? and the rare Shops, and the Play-houses, and _Paul's_, and the _Towre_? But what and if that ever comes to pass? Must I leave Home? dear _Forest Hill_? and _Father_ and _Mother_, and the Boys? more especiallie _Robin_? Ah! but _Father_ will give me a long Time to think of it. He will, and must. Then Dinner-time came; and, with Dinner-time, Uncle _Hewlett_ and _Ralph_, Squire _Paice_ and Mr. _Milton_. We had a huge Sirloin, soe no Feare of short Commons. I was not ill pleased to see soe manie: it gave me an Excuse for holding my Peace, but I coulde have wished for another Woman. However, _Father_ never thinks of that, and _Mother_ will soone be Home. After Dinner the elder Men went to the Bowling-greene with _Dick_ and _Ralph_; the Boys to the Fish-ponds; and, or ever I was aware, Mr. _Milton_ was walking with me on the Terrace. My Dreame came soe forcibly to Mind, that my Heart seemed to leap into my Mouth; but he kept away from the Fish-ponds, and from Leave-taking, and from his morning Discourse with my _Father_,--at least for awhile; but some Way he got round to it, and sayd soe much, and soe well, that, after alle my _Father's_ bidding me keepe quiete and take my Time, and mine owne Resolution to think much and long, he never rested till he had changed the whole Appearance of Things, and made me promise to be his, wholly and trulie.--And oh! I feare I have been too quickly wonne! _May 23d, 1643_. _May 23d_. At leaste, so sayeth the Calendar; but with me it hath beene trulie an _April_ Daye, alle Smiles and Teares. And now my Spiritts are soe perturbed and dismaid, as that I know not whether to weepe or no, for methinks crying would relieve me. At first waking this Morning my Mind was elated at the Falsitie of my _Mother's_ Notion, that no Man of Sense woulde think me worth the having; and soe I got up too proude, I think, and came down too vain, for I had spent an unusuall Time at the Glasse. My Spiritts, alsoe, were soe unequall, that the Boys took Notice of it, and it seemed as though I coulde breathe nowhere but out of Doors; so the Children and I had a rare Game of Play in the Home-close; but ever and anon I kept looking towards the Road and listening for Horses' Feet, till _Robin_ sayd, "One would think the King was coming:" but at last came Mr. _Milton_, quite another Way, walking through the Fields with huge Strides. _Kate_ saw him firste, and tolde me; and then sayd, "What makes you look soe pale?" We sate a good Space under the Hawthorn Hedge on the Brow of the Hill, listening to the Mower's Scythe, and the Song of Birds, which seemed enough for him, without talking; and as he spake not, I helde my Peace, till, with the Sun in my Eyes, I was like to drop asleep; which, as his own Face was _from_ me, and towards the Landskip, he noted not. I was just aiming, for Mirthe's Sake, to steale away, when he suddainlie turned about and fell to speaking of rurall Life, Happinesse, Heaven, and such like, in a Kind of Rapture; then, with his Elbow half raising him from the Grass, lay looking at me; then commenced humming or singing I know not what Strayn, but 'twas of '_begli Occhi_' and '_Chioma aurata_;' and he kept smiling the while he sang. After a time we went In-doors; and then came my firste Pang: for _Father_ founde out how I had pledged myselfe overnighte; and for a Moment looked soe grave, that my Heart misgave me for having beene soe hastie. However, it soone passed off; deare _Father's_ Countenance cleared, and he even seemed merrie at Table; and soon after Dinner alle the Party dispersed save Mr. _Milton_, who loitered with me on the Terrace. After a short Silence he exclaimed, "How good is our God to us in alle his Gifts! For Instance, in this Gift of _Love_, whereby had he withdrawn from visible Nature a thousand of its glorious Features and gay Colourings, we shoulde stille possess, _from within_, the Means of throwing over her clouded Face an entirelie different Hue! while as it is, what was pleasing before now pleaseth more than ever! Is it not soe, sweet _Moll_? May I express thy Feelings as well as mine own, unblamed? or am I too adventurous? You are silent; well, then, let me believe that we think alike, and that the Emotions of the few laste Hours have given such an Impulse to alle that is high, and sweete, and deepe, and pure, and holy in our innermoste Hearts, as that we seeme now onlie firste to taste the _Life of Life_, and to perceive how much nearer Earth is to Heaven than we thought! Is it soe? Is it not soe?" and I was constrayned to say, "Yes," at I scarcelie knew what; grudginglie too, for I feared having once alreadie sayd "Yes" too soone. But he saw nought amisse, for he was expecting nought amisse; soe went on, most like Truth and Love that Lookes could speake or Words founde: "Oh, I know it, I feel it:--henceforthe there is a Life reserved for us in which Angels may sympathize. For this most excellent Gift of Love shall enable us to read together the whole Booke of Sanctity and Virtue, and emulate eache other in carrying it into Practice; and as the wise _Magians_ kept theire Eyes steadfastlie fixed on the Star, and followed it righte on, through rough and smoothe, soe we, with this bright Beacon, which indeed is set on Fire of Heaven, shall pass on through the peacefull Studdies, surmounted Adversities, and victorious Agonies of Life, ever looking steadfastlie up!" Alle this, and much more, as tedious to heare as to write, did I listen to, firste with flagging Attention, next with concealed Wearinesse;--and as Wearinesse, if indulged, never _is_ long concealed, it soe chanced, by Ill-luck, that Mr. _Milton_, suddainlie turning his Eyes from Heaven upon poor me, caughte, I can scarcelie expresse how slighte, an Indication of Discomforte in my Face; and instantlie a Cloud crossed his owne, though as thin as that through which the Sun shines while it floats over him. Oh, 'twas not of a Moment! and yet _in that Moment_ we seemed eache to have seene the other, though but at a Glance, under new Circumstances:--as though two Persons at a Masquerade had just removed their Masques and put them on agayn. This gave me my seconde Pang:--I felt I had given him Payn; and though he made as though he forgot it directly, and I tooke Payns to make him forget it, I coulde never be quite sure whether he had. . . . My Spiritts were soe dashed by this, and by learning his Age to be soe much more than I had deemed it, (for he is thirty-five! who coulde have thoughte it?) that I had, thenceforthe, the Aire of being much more discreete and pensive than belongeth to my Nature; whereby he was, perhaps, well pleased. As I became more grave he became more gay; soe that we met eache other, as it were, half-way, and became righte pleasant. If his Countenance were comely before, it is quite heavenlie now; and yet I question whether my Love increaseth as rapidlie as my Feare. Surelie my Folly will prove as distastefull to him, as his overmuch Wisdom to me. The Dread of it hath alarmed me alreadie. What has become, even now, of alle my gay Visions of Marriage, and _London_, and the Play-houses, and the _Touire_? They have faded away thus earlie, and in their Place comes a Foreboding of I can scarce say what. I am as if a Child, receiving frome some olde Fairy the Gift of what seemed a fayre Doll's House, shoulde hastilie open the Doore thereof, and starte back at beholding nought within but a huge Cavern, deepe, high, and vaste; in parte glittering with glorious Chrystals, and the Rest hidden in obscure Darknesse. _May 24th, 1643_. Deare _Rose_ came this Morning. I flew forthe to welcome her, and as I drew near, she lookt upon me with such a Kind of Awe as that I could not forbeare laughing. Mr. _Milton_ having slept at _Sheepscote_, had made her privy to our Engagement; for indeede, he and Mr. _Agnew_ are such Friends, he will keep nothing from him. Thus _Rose_ heares it before my owne Mother, which shoulde not be. When we had entered my Chamber, she embraced me once and agayn, and seemed to think soe much of my uncommon Fortune, that I beganne to think more of it myselfe. To heare her talke of Mr. _Milton_ one would have supposed her more in Love with him than I. Like a Bookworm as she is, she fell to praysing his Composures. "Oh, the leaste I care for in him is his Versing," quoth I; and from that Moment a Spiritt of Mischief tooke Possession of me, to do a thousand heedlesse, ridiculous Things throughoute the Day, to shew _Rose_ how little I set by the Opinion of soe wise a Man. Once or twice Mr. _Milton_ lookt earnestlie and questioninglie at me, but I heeded him not. . . . Discourse at Table graver and less pleasant, methoughte, than heretofore. Mr. _Busire_ having dropt in, was avised to ask Mr. _Milton_ why, having had an university Education, he had not entered the Church. He replied, drylie enough, because he woulde not subscribe himselfe _Slave_ to anie Formularies of Men's making. I saw _Father_ bite his Lip; and _Roger Agnew_ mildly observed, he thought him wrong; for that it was not for an Individual to make Rules for another Individual, but yet that the generall Voice of the Wise and Good, removed from the pettie Prejudices of private Feeling, mighte pronounce authoritativelie wherein an Individual was righte or wrong, and frame Laws to keepe him in the righte Path. Mr. _Milton_ replyed, that manie Fallibles could no more make up an Infallible than manie Finites could make an Infinite. Mr. _Agnew_ rejoyned, that ne'erthelesse, an Individual who opposed himselfe agaynst the generall Current of the Wise and Good, was, leaste of alle, likelie to be in the Right; and that the Limitations of human Intellect which made the Judgment of manie wise Men liable to Question, certainlie made the Judgment of _anie_ wise Man, self-dependent, more questionable still. Mr. _Milton_ shortlie replied that there were Particulars in the required Oaths which made him unable to take them without Perjurie. And soe, an End: but 'twas worth a World to see _Rose_ looking soe anxiouslie from the one Speaker to the other, desirous that eache should be victorious; and I was sorry that it lasted not a little longer. As _Rose_ and I tooke our Way to the Summer-house, she put her Arm round me, saying, "How charming is divine Philosophie!" I coulde not helpe asking if she did not meane how charming was the Philosophie of one particular Divine? Soe then she discoursed with me of Things more seemlie for Women than Philosophie or Divinitie either. Onlie, when Mr. _Agnew_ and Mr. _Milton_ joyned us, she woulde aske them to repeat one Piece of Poetry after another, beginning with _Carew's_-- "He who loves a rosie Cheeke, Or a coral Lip admires,--" And crying at the End of eache, "Is not that lovely? Is not that divine?" I franklie sayd I liked none of them soe much as some Mr. _Agnew_ had recited, concluding with-- "Mortals that would, follow me, Love Virtue: she alone is free." Whereon Mr. _Milton_ surprised me with a suddain Kiss, to the immoderate Mirthe of _Rose_, who sayd I coulde not have looked more discomposed had he pretended he was the Author of those Verses. I afterwards found he _was_; but I think she laught more than there was neede. We have ever been considered a sufficientlie religious Familie: that is, we goe regularly to Church on Sabbaths and Prayer-dayes, and keepe alle the Fasts and Festivalles. But Mr. _Milton's_ Devotion hath attayned a Pitch I can neither imitate nor even comprehende. The spirituall World seemeth to him not onlie reall, but I may almoste say visible. For instance, he told _Rose_, it appears, that on _Tuesday_ Nighte, (that is the same Evening I had promised to be his,) as he went homewards to his Farm-lodging, he fancied the Angels whisperinge in his Eares, and singing over his Head, and that instead of going to his Bed like a reasonable Being, he lay down on the Grass, and gazed on the sweete, pale Moon till she sett, and then on the bright Starres till he seemed to see them moving in a slowe, solemn Dance, to the Words, "_How glorious is our God!_" And alle about him, he said, he _knew_, tho' he coulde not see them, were spirituall Beings repairing the Ravages of the Day on the Flowers, amonge the Trees, and Grasse, and Hedges; and he believed 'twas onlie the Filme that originall Sin had spread over his Eyes, that prevented his seeing them. I am thankful for this same Filme,--I cannot abide Fairies, and Witches, and Ghosts--ugh! I shudder even to write of them; and were it onlie of the more harmlesse Sort, one woulde never have the Comforte of thinkinge to be alone. I feare Churchyardes and dark Corners of alle Kinds; more especiallie Spiritts; and there is onlie one I would even wish to see at my bravest, when deepe Love casteth out Feare; and that is of Sister _Anne_, whome I never associate with the Worme and Winding-sheete. Oh no! I think _she_, at leaste, dwells amonge the Starres, having sprung straite up into Lighte and Blisse the Moment she put off Mortalitie; and if she, why not others? Are _Adam_ and _Abraham_ alle these Yeares in the unconscious Tomb? Theire Bodies, but surelie not their Spiritts? else, why dothe _Christ_ speak of _Lazarus_ lying in _Abraham's_ Bosom, while the Brothers of _Dives_ are yet riotouslie living? Yet what becomes of the Daye of generall Judgment, if some be thus pre-judged? I must aske Mr. _Milton,--_yes, I thinke I can finde it in my Heart to aske him about this in some solemn, stille Hour, and perhaps he will sett at Rest manie Doubts and Misgivings that at sundrie Times trouble me; being soe wise a Man. _Bedtime_. . . . Glad to steale away from the noisie Companie in the Supper-roome, (comprising some of _Father's_ Fellow-magistrates,) I went down with _Robin_ and _Kate_ to the Fish-ponds; it was scarce Sunset: and there, while we threw Crumbs to the Fish and watched them come to the Surface, were followed, or ever we were aware, by Mr. _Milton_, who sate down on the stone Seat, drew _Robin_ between his Knees, stroked his Haire, and askt what we were talking about. _Robin_ sayd I had beene telling them a fairie Story; and Mr. _Milton_ observed that was an infinite Improvement on the jangling, puzzle-headed Prating of Country Justices, and wished I woulde tell it agayn. But I was afrayd. But _Robin_ had no Feares; soe tolde the Tale roundlie; onlie he forgot the End. Soe he found his Way backe to the Middle, and seemed likelie to make it last alle Night; onlie Mr. _Milton_ sayd he seemed to have got into the Labyrinth of _Crete_, and he must for Pitie's Sake give him the Clew. Soe he finished _Robin's_ Story, and then tolde another, a most lovelie one, of Ladies, and Princes, and Enchanters, and a brazen Horse, and he sayd the End of _that_ Tale had been cut off too, by Reason the Writer had died before he finished it. But _Robin_ cryed, "Oh! finish this too," and hugged and kist him; soe he did; and methoughte the End was better than the Beginninge. Then he sayd, "Now, sweet _Moll_, you have onlie spoken this Hour past, by your Eyes; and we must heare your pleasant Voice." "An Hour?" cries _Robin_. "Where are alle the red Clouds gone, then?" quoth Mr. _Milton_, "and what Business hathe the Moon yonder?" "Then we must go Indoors," quoth I. But they cried "No," and _Robin_ helde me fast, and Mr. Milton sayd I might know even by the distant Sounds of ill-governed Merriment that we were winding up the Week's Accounts of Joy and Care more consistentlie where we were than we coulde doe in the House. And indeede just then I hearde my _Father's_ Voice swelling a noisie Chorus; and hoping Mr. _Milton_ did not distinguish it, I askt him if he loved Musick. He answered, soe much that it was Miserie for him to hear anie that was not of the beste. I secretlie resolved he should never heare mine. He added, he was come of a musicalle Familie, and that his Father not onlie sang well, but played finely on the Viol and Organ. Then he spake of the sweet Musick in _Italy_, until I longed to be there; but I tolde him nothing in its Way ever pleased me more than to heare the Choristers of _Magdalen_ College usher in _May_ Day by chaunting a Hymn at the Top of the Church Towre. Discoursing of this and that, we thus sate a good While ere we returned to the House. . . . Coming out of Church he woulde shun the common Field, where the Villagery led up theire Sports, saying, he deemed Quoit-playing and the like to be unsuitable Recreations on a Daye whereupon the _Lord_ had restricted us from speakinge our own Words, and thinking our own (that is, secular) Thoughts: and that he believed the Law of _God_ in this Particular woulde soone be the Law of the Land, for Parliament woulde shortlie put down _Sunday_ Sports. I askt, "What, the _King's_ Parliament at _Oxford_?" He answered, "No; _the Country's_ Parliament at _Westminster_." I sayd, I was sorrie, for manie poore hard-working Men had no other Holiday. He sayd, another Holiday woulde be given them; and that whether or no, we must not connive at Evil, which we doe in permitting an _holy Daye_ to sink into a Holiday. I sayd, but was it not the _Jewish_ Law, which had made such Restrictions? He sayd, yes, but that _Christ_ came not to destroy the moral Law, of which Sabbath-keeping was a Part, and that even its naturall Fitnesse for the bodily Welfare of Man and Beast was such as no wise Legislator would abolish or abuse it, even had he no Consideration for our spiritual and immortal Part: and that 'twas a well-known Fact that Beasts of Burthen, which had not one Daye of Rest in seven, did lesse Worke in the End. As for oure Soules, he sayd, they required theire spiritual Meales as much as our Bodies required theires; and even poore, rusticall Clownes who coulde not reade, mighte nourish their better Parts by an holie Pause, and by looking within them, and around them, and above them. I felt inclined to tell him that long Sermons alwaies seemed to make me love _God_ less insteade of more, but woulde not, fearing he mighte take it that I meant _he_ had been giving me one. _Monday_. _Mother_ hath returned! The Moment I hearde her Voice I fell to trembling. At the same Moment I hearde _Robin_ cry, "Oh, _Mother_, I have broken the greene Beaker!" which betraied Apprehension in another Quarter. However, she quite mildlie replied, "Ah, I knew the Handle was loose," and then kist me with soe great Affection that I felt quite easie. She had beene withhelde by a troublesome Colde from returning at the appointed Time, and cared not to write. 'Twas just Supper-time, and there were the Children to kiss and to give theire Bread and Milk, and _Bill's_ Letter to reade; soe that nothing particular was sayd till the younger Ones were gone to Bed, and _Father_ and _Mother_ were taking some Wine and Toast. Then says _Father_, "Well, Wife, have you got the five hundred Pounds?" "No," she answers, rather carelesslie. "I tolde you how 'twoulde be," says _Father_; "you mighte as well have stayed at Home." "Really, Mr. _Powell,"_ says _Mother_, "soe seldom as I stir from my owne Chimney-corner, you neede not to grudge me, I think, a few Dayes among our mutuall Relatives." "I shall goe to Gaol," says _Father_. "Nonsense," says _Mother_; "to Gaol indeed!" "Well, then, who is to keepe me from it?" says _Father_, laughing. "I will answer for it, Mr. _Milton_ will wait a little longer for his Money," says _Mother_, "he is an honourable Man, I suppose." "I wish he may thinke me one," says _Father_; "and as to a little longer, what is the goode of waiting for what is as unlikelie to come eventuallie as now?" "You must answer that for yourselfe," says _Mother_, looking wearie: "I have done what I can, and can doe no more." "Well, then, 'tis lucky Matters stand as they do," says _Father_. "Mr. _Milton_ has been much here in your Absence, my Dear, and has taken a Liking to our _Moll_; soe, believing him, as you say, to be an honourable Man, I have promised he shall have her." "Nonsense," cries _Mother_, turning red and then pale. "Never farther from Nonsense," says _Father_, "for 'tis to be, and by the Ende of the Month too." "You are bantering me, Mr. _Powell_," says _Mother_. "How can you suppose soe, my Deare?" says _Father_, "you doe me Injustice." "Why, _Moll_!" cries _Mother_, turning sharplie towards me, as I sate mute and fearfulle, "what is alle this, Child? You cannot, you dare not think of wedding this round-headed Puritan." "Not round-headed," sayd I, trembling; "his Haire is as long and curled as mine." "Don't bandy Words with me, Girl," says _Mother_ passionatelie, "see how unfit you are to have a House of your owne, who cannot be left in Charge of your _Father's_ for a Fortnighte, without falling into Mischiefe!" "I won't have _Moll_ chidden in that Way," says _Father_, "she has fallen into noe Mischiefe, and has beene a discreete and dutifull Child." "Then it has beene alle your doing," says _Mother_, "and you have forced the Child into this Match." "Noe Forcing whatever," says _Father_, "they like one another, and I am very glad of it, for it happens to be very convenient." "Convenient, indeed," repeats _Mother_, and falls a weeping. Thereon I must needs weepe too, but she says, "Begone to Bed; there is noe Neede that you shoulde sit by to heare your owne _Father_ confesse what a Fool he has beene." To my Bedroom I have come, but cannot yet seek my Bed; the more as I still heare theire Voices in Contention below. _Tuesday_. This Morninge's Breakfaste was moste uncomfortable, I feeling like a checkt Child, scarce minding to looke up or to eat. _Mother_, with Eyes red and swollen, scarce speaking save to the Children; _Father_ directing his Discourse chieflie to _Dick_, concerning Farm Matters and the Rangership of _Shotover_, tho' 'twas easie to see his Mind was not with them. Soe soone as alle had dispersed to theire customed Taskes, and I was loitering at the Window, _Father_ calls aloud to me from his Studdy. Thither I go, and find him and _Mother_, she sitting with her Back to both. "_Moll_," says _Father_, with great Determination, "you have accepted Mr. _Milton_ to please yourself, you will marry him out of hand to please me." "Spare me, spare me, Mr. _Powell_," interrupts _Mother_, "if the Engagement may not be broken off, at the least precipitate it not with this indecent haste. Postpone it till----" "Till when?" says _Father_. "Till the Child is olde enough to know her owne Mind." "That is, to put off an honourable Man on false Pretences," says _Father_, "she is olde enough to know it alreadie. Speake, _Moll_, are you of your _Mother's_ Mind to give up Mr. _Milton_ altogether?" I trembled, but sayd, "No." "Then, as his Time is precious, and he knows not when he may leave his Home agayn, I save you the Trouble, Child, of naming a Day, for it shall be the _Monday_ before _Whitsuntide_." Thereat _Mother_ gave a Kind of Groan; but as for me, I had like to have fallen on the Ground, for I had had noe Thought of suche Haste. "See what you are doing, Mr. _Powell_," says _Mother_, compassionating me, and raising me up, though somewhat roughlie; "I prophecie Evil of this Match." "Prophets of Evil are sure to find Listeners," says _Father_, "but I am not one of them;" and soe left the Room. Thereon my _Mother_, who alwaies feares him when he has a Fit of Determination, loosed the Bounds of her Passion, and chid me so unkindlie, that, humbled and mortified, I was glad to seeke my Chamber. . . . Entering the Dining-room, however, I uttered a Shriek on seeing _Father_ fallen back in his Chair, as though in a Fit, like unto that which terrified us a Year ago; and _Mother_ hearing me call out, ran in, loosed his Collar, and soone broughte him to himselfe, tho' not without much Alarm to alle. He made light of it himselfe, and sayd 'twas merelie a suddain Rush of Blood to the Head, and woulde not be dissuaded from going out; but _Mother_ was playnly smote at the Heart, and having lookt after him with some anxietie, exclaimed, "I shall neither meddle nor make more in this Businesse: your _Father's_ suddain Seizures shall never be layd at my Doore;" and soe left me, till we met at Dinner. After the Cloth was drawne, enters Mr. _Milton_, who goes up to _Mother_, and with Gracefulnesse kisses her Hand; but she withdrewe it pettishly, and tooke up her Sewing, on the which he lookt at her wonderingly, and then at me; then at her agayne, as though he woulde reade her whole Character in her Face; which having seemed to doe, and to write the same in some private Page of his Heart, he never troubled her or himself with further Comment, but tooke up Matters just where he had left them last. Ere we parted we had some private Conference touching our Marriage, for hastening which he had soe much to say that I coulde not long contend with him, especiallie as I founde he had plainlie made out that _Mother_ loved him not. _Wednesday_. House full of Companie, leaving noe Time to write nor think. _Mother_ sayth, tho' she cannot forbode an happie Marriage, she will provide for a merrie Wedding, and hathe growne more than commonlie tender to me, and given me some Trinkets, a Piece of fine _Holland_ Cloth, and enoughe of green Sattin for a Gown, that will stand on End with its owne Richnesse. She hathe me constantlie with her in the Kitchen, Pastrie, and Store-room, telling me 'tis needfulle I shoulde improve in Housewiferie, seeing I shall soe soone have a Home of my owne. But I think _Mother_ knows not, and I am afeard to tell her, that Mr. _Milton_ hath no House of his owne to carry me to, but onlie Lodgings, which have well suited his Bachelor State, but may not, 'tis likelie, beseeme a Lady to live in. He deems so himself, and sayeth we will look out for an hired House together, at our Leisure. Alle this he hath sayd to me in an Undertone, in _Mother's_ Presence, she sewing at the Table and we sitting in the Window; and 'tis difficult to tell how much she hears, she for will aske no Questions, and make noe Comments, onlie compresses her Lips, which makes me think she knows. The Children are in turbulent Spiritts; but _Robin_ hath done nought but mope and make Moan since he learnt he must soe soone lose me. A Thought hath struck me,--Mr. _Milton_ educates his Sister's Sons; two Lads of about _Robin's_ Age. What if he woulde consent to take my Brother under his Charge? perhaps _Father_ woulde be willing. _Saturday_. Last Visitt to _Sheepscote,--_at leaste, as _Mary Powell_; but kind _Rose_ and _Roger Agnew_ will give us the Use of it for a Week on our Marriage, and spend the Time with dear _Father_ and _Mother_, who will neede their Kindnesse. _Rose_ and I walked long aboute the Garden, her Arm round my Neck; and she was avised to say, "Cloth of Frieze, be not too bold, Tho' thou be matcht with Cloth of Gold,--" And then craved my Pardon for soe unmannerly a Rhyme, which indeede, methoughte, needed an Excuse, but exprest a Feare that I knew not (what she called) my high Destiny, and prayed me not to trifle with Mr. _Milton's_ Feelings nor in his Sighte, as I had done the Daye she dined at _Forest Hill_. I laught, and sayd, he must take me as he found me: he was going to marry _Mary Powell_, not the _Wise Widow of Tekoah_. _Rose_ lookt wistfullie, but I bade her take Heart, for I doubted not we shoulde content eache the other; and for the Rest, her Advice shoulde not be forgotten. Thereat, she was pacyfied. _May 22d, 1643_. Alle Bustle and Confusion,--slaying of Poultrie, making of Pastrie, etc. People coming and going, prest to dine and to sup, and refuse, and then stay, the colde Meats and Wines ever on the Table; and in the Evening, the Rebecks and Recorders sent for that we may dance in the Hall. My Spiritts have been most unequall; and this Evening I was overtaken with a suddain Faintnesse, such as I never but once before experienced. They would let me dance no more; and I was quite tired enoughe to be glad to sit aparte with Mr. _Milton_ neare the Doore, with the Moon shining on us; untill at length he drew me out into the Garden. He spake of Happinesse and Home, and Hearts knit in Love, and of heavenlie Espousals, and of Man being the Head of the Woman, and of our _Lord's_ Marriage with the Church, and of white Robes, and the Bridegroom coming in Clouds of Glory, and of the Voices of singing Men and singing Women, and eternall Spring, and eternall Blisse, and much that I cannot call to Mind, and other-much that I coulde not comprehende, but which was in mine ears as the Song of Birds, or Falling of Waters. _May 23d, 1643_. _Rose_ hath come, and hath kindlie offered to help pack the Trunks, (which are to be sent off by the Waggon to _London_,) that I may have the more Time to devote to Mr. _Milton_. Nay, but he will soon have all my Time devoted to himself, and I would as lief spend what little remains in mine accustomed Haunts, after mine accustomed Fashion. I had purposed a Ride on _Clover_ this Morning, with _Robin_; but the poor Boy must I trow be disappointed. ----And for what? Oh me! I have hearde such a long Sermon on Marriage-duty and Service, that I am faine to sit down and weepe. But no, I must not, for they are waiting for me in the Hall, and the Guests are come and the Musick is tuning, and my Lookes must not betray me.--And now farewell, _Journall_; for _Rose_, who first bade me keepe you (little deeming after what Fashion), will not pack you up, and I will not close you with a heavie Strayn. _Robin_ is calling me beneath the Window,--_Father_ is sitting in the Shade, under the old Pear-tree, seemingly in gay Discourse with Mr. _Milton_. To-morrow the Village-bells will ring for the Marriage of MARY POWELL. _London, Mr. Russell's, Taylor, Bride's Churchyard_. Oh Heaven! is this my new Home? my Heart sinkes alreadie. After the swete fresh Ayre of _Sheepscote_, and the Cleanliness, and the Quiet and the pleasant Smells, Sightes, and Soundes, alle whereof Mr. _Milton_ enjoyed to the Full as keenlie as I, saying they minded him of _Paradise,--_how woulde _Rose_ pitie me, could she view me in this close Chamber, the Floor whereof of dark, uneven Boards, must have beene layd, methinks, three hundred Years ago; the oaken Pannells, utterlie destitute of Polish and with sundrie Chinks; the Bed with dull brown Hangings, lined with as dull a greene, occupying Half the Space; and Half the Remainder being filled with dustie Books, whereof there are Store alsoe in every other Place. This Mirror, I should thinke, belonged to faire _Rosamond_. And this Arm-chair to King _Lew_. Over the Chimnie hangs a ruefull Portrait,--maybe of _Grotius_, but I shoulde sooner deeme it of some Worthie before the Flood. Onlie one Quarter of the Casement will open, and that upon a Prospect, oh dolefulle! of the Churchyarde! Mr. _Milton_ had need be as blythe as he was all the Time we were at _Sheepscote_, or I shall be buried in that same Churchyarde within the Twelvemonth. 'Tis well he has stepped out to see a Friend, that I may in his Absence get ridd of this Fit of the Dismalls. I wish it may be the last. What would _Mother_ say to his bringing me to such a Home as this? I will not think. Soe this is _London_! How diverse from the "towred Citie" of my Husband's versing! and of his Prose too; for as he spake, by the way, of the Disorders of our Time, which extend even into eache domestick Circle, he sayd that alle must, for a While, appear confused to our imperfect View, just as a mightie Citie unto a Stranger who shoulde beholde around him huge, unfinished Fabrics, the Plan whereof he could but imperfectlie make out, amid the Builders' disorderlie Apparatus; but that, _from afar_, we mighte perceive glorious Results from party Contentions,--Freedom springing up from Oppression, Intelligence succeeding Ignorance, Order following Disorder, just as that same Traveller looking at the Citie from a distant Height, should beholde Towres, and Spires glistering with Gold and Marble, Streets stretching in lessening Perspectives, and Bridges flinging their white Arches over noble Rivers. But what of this saw we all along the _Oxford_ Road? Firstlie, there was noe commanding Height; second, there was the Citie obscured by a drizzling Rain; the Ways were foul, the Faces of those we mett spake less of Pleasure than Business, and Bells were tolling, but none ringing. Mr. _Milton's_ Father, a grey-haired, kind old Man, was here to give us welcome: and his firste Words were, "Why, _John_, thou hast stolen a March on us. Soe quickly, too, and soe snug! but she is faire enoughe, Man, to excuse thee, Royalist or noe." And soe, taking me in his Arms, kist me franklie.--But I heare my Husband's Voice, and another with it. _Thursday_. 'Twas a Mr. _Lawrence_ whom my Husband brought Home last Nighte to sup; and the Evening passed righte pleasantlie, with News, Jestes, and a little Musicke. Todaye hath been kindlie devoted by Mr. _Milton_ to shewing me Sights:--and oh! the strange, diverting Cries in the Streets, even from earlie Dawn! "New Milk and Curds from the Dairie!"--"Olde Shoes for some Brooms!"--"Anie Kitchen-stuffe, have you, Maids?"--"Come buy my greene Herbes!"--and then in the Streets, here a Man preaching, there another juggling: here a Boy with an Ape, there a Show of _Nineveh_: next the News from the North; and as for the China Shops and Drapers in the _Strand_, and the Cook's Shops in _Westminster_, with the smoking Ribs of Beef and fresh Salads set out on Tables in the Street, and Men in white Aprons crying out, "Calf's Liver, Tripe, and hot Sheep's Feet"--'twas enoughe to make One untimelie hungrie,--or take One's Appetite away, as the Case might be. Mr. _Milton_ shewed me the noble Minster, with King _Harry_ Seventh's Chapel adjoining; and pointed out the old House where _Ben Jonson_ died. Neare the _Broade Sanctuarie_, we fell in with a slighte, dark-complexioned young Gentleman of two or three and twenty, whome my Husband espying cryed, "What, _Marvell_!" the other comically answering, "What Marvel?" and then, handsomlie saluting me and complimenting Mr. _Milton_, much lighte and pleasant Discourse ensued; and finding we were aboute to take Boat, he volunteered to goe with us on the River. After manie Hours' Exercise, I have come Home fatigued, yet well pleased. Mr. _Marvell_ sups with us. _Friday_. I wish I could note down a Tithe of the pleasant Things that were sayd last Nighte. First, olde Mr. _Milton_ having slept out with his Son,--I called in _Rachael_, the younger of Mr. _Russel's_ Serving-maids, (for we have none of our owne as yet, which tends to much Discomfiture,) and, with her Aide, I dusted the Bookes and sett them up in half the Space they had occupied; then cleared away three large Basketfuls, of the absolutest Rubbish, torn Letters and the like, and sent out for Flowers, (which it seemeth strange enoughe to me to _buy_,) which gave the Chamber a gayer Aire, and soe my Husband sayd when he came in, calling me the fayrest of them alle; and then, sitting down with Gayety to the Organ, drew forthe from it heavenlie Sounds. Afterwards Mr. _Marvell_ came in, and they discoursed about _Italy_, and Mr. _Milton_ promised his Friend some Letters of Introduction to _Jacopo Gaddi, Clementillo_, and others.-- After Supper, they wrote Sentences, Definitions, and the like, after a Fashion of _Catherine de Medici_, some of which I have layd aside for _Rose_. --_To-day_ we have seene St. _Paul's_ faire Cathedral, and the School where Mr. _Milton_ was a Scholar when a Boy; thence, to the Fields of _Finsbury_; where are Trees and Windmills enow: a Place much frequented for practising Archery and other manlie Exercises. _Saturday_. Tho' we rise betimes, olde Mr. _Milton_ is earlier stille; and I always find him sitting at his Table beside the Window (by Reason of the Chamber being soe dark,) sorting I know not how manie Bundles of Papers tied with red Tape; eache so like the other that I marvel how he knows them aparte. This Morning, I found the poore old Gentleman in sad Distress at missing a Manuscript Song of Mr. _Henry Lawes'_, the onlie Copy extant, which he persuaded himselfe that I must have sent down to the Kitchen Fire Yesterday. I am convinced I dismist not a single Paper that was not torne eache Way, as being utterlie uselesse; but as the unluckie Song cannot be founde, he sighs and is certayn of my Delinquence, as is _Hubert_, his owne Man; or, as he more frequentlie calls him, his "odd Man;"--and an odd Man indeede is Mr. _Hubert_, readie to address his Master or Master's Sonne on the merest Occasion, without waiting to be spoken to; tho' he expecteth Others to treat them with far more Deference than he himself payeth. --Dead tired, this Daye, with so much Exercise; but woulde not say soe, because my Husband was thinking to please me by shewing me soe much. Spiritts flagging however. These _London_ Streets wearie my Feet. We have been over the House in _Aldersgate Street_, the Garden whereof disappointed me, having hearde soe much of it; but 'tis far better than none, and the House is large enough for Mr. _Milton's_ Familie and my _Father's_ to boote. Thought how pleasant 'twould be to have them alle aboute me next _Christmasse_; but that holie Time is noe longer kept with Joyfullnesse in _London_. Ventured, therefore, to expresse a Hope, we mighte spend it at _Forest Hill_; but Mr. _Milton_ sayd 'twas unlikelie he should be able to leave Home; and askt, would I go alone?--Constrained, for Shame, to say no; but felt, in my Heart, I woulde jump to see _Forest Hill_ on anie Terms, I soe love alle that dwell there. _Sunday Even_. Private and publick Prayer, Sermons, and Psalm-singing from Morn until Nighte. The onlie Break hath been a Visit to a quaint but pleasing Lady, by Name _Catherine Thompson_, whome my Husband holds in great Reverence. She said manie Things worthy to be remembered; onlie _as_ I remember them, I need not to write them down. Sorrie to be caughte napping by my Husband, in the Midst of the third long Sermon. This comes of over-walking, and of being unable to sleep o' Nights; for whether it be the _London_ Ayre, or the _London_ Methods of making the Beds, or the strange Noises in the Streets, I know not, but I have scarce beene able to close my Eyes before Daybreak since I came to Town. _Monday_. And now beginneth a new Life; for my Husband's Pupils, who were dismist for a Time for my Sake, returne to theire Tasks this Daye, and olde Mr. _Milton_ giveth place to his two Grandsons, his widowed Daughter's Children, _Edward_ and _John Phillips_, whom my Husband led in to me just now. Two plainer Boys I never sett Eyes on; the one weak-eyed and puny, the other prim and puritanicall--no more to be compared to our sweet _Robin_! . . . After a few Words, they retired to theire Books; and my Husband, taking my Hand, sayd in his kindliest Manner,--"And now I leave my sweete _Moll_ to the pleasant Companie of her own goode and innocent Thoughtes; and, if she needs more, here are both stringed and keyed Instruments, and Books both of the older and modern Time, soe that she will not find the Hours hang heavie." Methoughte how much more I should like a Ride upon _Clover_ than all the Books that ever were penned; for the Door no sooner closed upon Mr. _Milton_ than it seemed as tho' he had taken alle the Sunshine with him; and I fell to cleaning the Casement that I mighte look out the better into the Churchyarde, and then altered Tables and Chairs, and then sate downe with my Elbows resting on the Window-seat, and my Chin on the Palms of my Hands, gazing on I knew not what, and feeling like a Butterflie under a Wine-glass. I marvelled why it seemed soe long since I was married, and wondered what they were doing at Home,--coulde fancy I hearde _Mother_ chiding, and see _Charlie_ stealing into the Dairie and dipping his Finger in the Cream, and _Kate_ feeding the Chickens, and _Dick_ taking a Stone out of _Whitestar's_ Shoe. --Methought how dull it was to be passing the best Part of the Summer out of the Reache of fresh Ayre and greene Fields, and wondered, woulde alle my future Summers be soe spent? Thoughte how dull it was to live in Lodgings, where one could not even go into the Kitchen to make a Pudding; and how dull to live in a Town, without some young female Friend with whom one might have ventured into the Streets, and where one could not soe much as feed Colts in a Paddock; how dull to be without a Garden, unable soe much as to gather a Handfulle of ripe Cherries; and how dull to looke into a Churchyarde, where there was a Man digging a Grave! --When I wearied of staring at the Grave-digger, I gazed at an olde Gentleman and a young Lady slowlie walking along, yet scarce as if I noted them; and was thinking mostlie of _Forest Hill_, when I saw them stop at our Doore, and presently they were shewn in, by the Name of Doctor and Mistress _Davies_. I sent for my Husband, and entertayned 'em bothe as well as I could, till he appeared, and they were polite and pleasant to me; the young Lady tall and slender, of a cleare brown Skin, and with Eyes that were fine enough; onlie there was a supprest Smile on her Lips alle the Time, as tho' she had seen me looking out of the Window. She tried me on all Subjects, I think; for she started them more adroitlie than I; and taking up a Book on the Window-seat, which was the _Amadigi_ of _Bernardo Tasso_, printed alle in _Italiques_, she sayd, if I loved Poetry, which she was sure I must, she knew she shoulde love me. I did not tell her whether or noe. Then we were both silent. Then Doctor _Davies_ talked vehementlie to Mr. _Milton_ agaynst the King; and Mr. _Milton_ was not so contrarie to him as I could have wished. Then Mistress _Davies_ tooke the Word from her Father and beganne to talke to Mr. _Milton_ of _Tasso_, and _Dante_, and _Boiardo_, and _Ariosto_; and then Doctor _Davies_ and I were silent. Methoughte, they both talked well, tho' I knew so little of their Subject-matter; onlie they complimented eache other too much. I mean not they were insincere, for eache seemed to think highlie of the other; onlie we neede not say alle we feele. To conclude, we are to sup with them to-morrow. _Wednesday_. _Journall_, I have Nobodie now but you, to whome to tell my little Griefs; indeede, before I married, I know not that I had anie; and even now, they are very small, onlie they are soe new, that sometimes my Heart is like to burst. --I know not whether 'tis safe to put them alle on Paper, onlie it relieves for the Time, and it kills Time, and perhaps, a little While hence I may looke back and see how small they were, and how they mighte have beene shunned, or better borne. 'Tis worth the Triall. --Yesterday Morn, for very Wearinesse, I looked alle over my Linen and Mr. _Milton's_, to see could I finde anie Thing to mend; but there was not a Stitch amiss. I woulde have played on the Spinnette, but was afrayd he should hear my indifferent Musick. Then, as a last Resource, I tooke a Book--_Paul Perrin's Historie of the Waldenses_;--and was, I believe, dozing a little, when I was aware of a continuall Whispering and Crying. I thought 'twas some Child in the Street; and, having some Comfits in my Pocket, I stept softlie out to the House-door and lookt forth, but no Child could I see. Coming back, the Door of my Husband's Studdy being ajar, I was avised to look in; and saw him, with awfulle Brow, raising his Hand in the very Act to strike the youngest _Phillips_. I could never endure to see a Child struck, soe hastilie cryed out "Oh, don't!"--whereon he rose, and, as if not seeing me, gently closed the Door, and, before I reached my Chamber, I hearde soe loud a Crying that I began to cry too. Soon, alle was quiet; and my Husband, coming in, stept gently up to me, and putting his Arm about my Neck, sayd, "My dearest Life, never agayn, I beseech you, interfere between me and the Boys: 'tis as unseemlie as tho' I shoulde interfere between you and your Maids, when you have any,--and will weaken my Hands, dear _Moll_, more than you have anie Suspicion of." I replied, kissing that same offending Member as I spoke, "Poor _Jack_ would have beene glad, just now, if I _had_ weakened them."--"But that is not the Question," he returned, "for we shoulde alle be glad to escape necessary Punishment; whereas, it is the Power, not the Penalty of our bad Habits, that we shoulde seek to be delivered from."--"There may," I sayd, "be necessary, but need not be corporal Punishment." "That is as may be," returned he, "and hath alreadie been settled by an Authoritie to which I submit, and partlie think you will dispute, and that is, the Word of _God_. Pain of Body is in Realitie, or ought to be, sooner over and more safelie borne than Pain of an ingenuous Mind; and, as to the _Shame_,--why, as _Lorenzo de' Medici_ sayd to _Soccini_, 'The Shame is in the Offence rather than in the Punishment.'" I replied, "Our _Robin_ had never beene beaten for his Studdies;" to which he sayd with a Smile, that even I must admit _Robin_ to be noe greate Scholar. And so in good Humour left me; but I was in no good Humour, and hoped Heaven might never make me the Mother of a Son, for if I should see Mr. _Milton_ strike him, I should learn to hate the Father.-- Learning there was like to be Companie at Doctor _Davies'_, I was avised to put on my brave greene Satin Gown; and my Husband sayd it became me well, and that I onlie needed some Primroses and Cowslips in my Lap, to look like _May_;--and somewhat he added about mine Eyes' "clear shining after Rain," which avised me he had perceived I had beene crying in the Morning, which I had hoped he had not. Arriving at the Doctor's House, we were shewn into an emptie Chamber; at least, emptie of Companie, but full of every Thing else; for there were Books, and Globes, and stringed and wind Instruments, and stuffed Birds and Beasts, and Things I know not soe much as the Names of, besides an Easel with a Painting by Mrs. _Mildred_ on it, which she meant to be seene, or she woulde have put it away. Subject, "_Brutus's Judgment:"_ which I thought a strange, unfeeling one for a Woman; and did not wish to be _her_ Son. Soone she came in, drest with studdied and puritanicall Plainnesse; in brown Taffeta, guarded with black Velvet, which became her well enough, but was scarce suited for the Season. She had much to say about limning, in which my Husband could follow her better than I; and then they went to the Globes, and _Copernicus_, and _Galileo Galilei_, whom she called a Martyr, but I do not. For, is a Martyr one who is unwillinglie imprisoned, or who formally recants? even tho' he affected afterwards to say 'twas _but_ a Form, and cries, "_Eppure, si muove_?" The earlier Christians might have sayd 'twas but a Form to burn a Handfull of Incense before _Jove's_ Statua; _Pliny_ woulde have let them goe. Afterwards, when the Doctor came in and engaged my Husband in Discourse, Mistress _Mildred_ devoted herselfe to me, and askt what Progresse I had made with _Bernardo Tasso_. I tolde her, none at alle, for I was equallie faultie at _Italiques_ and _Italian_, and onlie knew his best Work thro' Mr. _Fairfax's_ Translation; whereat she fell laughing, and sayd she begged my Forgivenesse, but I was confounding the Father with the Sonne; then laught agayn, but pretended 'twas not at me but at a Lady I minded her of, who never coulde remember to distinguish betwixt _Lionardo da Vinci_ and _Lorenzo dei Medici_. That last Name brought up the Recollection of my Morning's Debate with my Husband, which made me feel sad; and then, Mrs. _Mildred_, seeminge anxious to make me forget her Unmannerliness, commenced, "Can you paint?"--"Can you sing?"--"Can you play the Lute?"--and, at the last, "What _can_ you do?" I mighte have sayd I coulde comb out my Curls smoother than she coulde hers, but did not. Other Guests came in, and talked so much agaynst Prelacy and the Right divine of Kings that I woulde fain we had remained at Astronomie and Poetry. For Supper there was little Meat, and noe strong Drinks, onlie a thinnish foreign Wine, with Cakes, Candies, Sweetmeats, Fruits, and Confections. Such, I suppose, is Town Fashion. At the laste, came Musick; Mistress _Mildred_ sang and played; then prest me to do the like, but I was soe fearfulle, I coulde not; so my Husband sayd he woulde play for me, and that woulde be alle one, and soe covered my Bashfullenesse handsomlie. Onlie this Morning, just before going to his Studdy, he stept back and sayd, "Sweet _Moll_, I know you can both play and sing--why will you not practise?" I replyed, I loved it not much. He rejoyned, "But you know I love it, and is not that a Motive?" I sayd, I feared to let him hear me, I played so ill. He replyed, "Why, that is the very Reason you shoulde seek to play better, and I am sure you have Plenty of Time. Perhaps, in your whole future Life, you will not have such a Season of Leisure as you have now,--a golden Opportunity, which you will surelie seize."--Then added, "Sir _Thomas More's_ Wife learnt to play the Lute, solely that she mighte please her Husband." I answered, "Nay, what to tell me of Sir _Thomas More's_ Wife, or of _Hugh Grotius's_ Wife, when I was the Wife of _John Milton_?" He looked at me twice, and quicklie, too, at this Saying; then laughing, cried, "You cleaving Mischief! I hardlie know whether to take that Speech amisse or well--however, you shall have the Benefit of the Doubt." And so away laughing; and I, for very Shame, sat down to the Spinnette for two wearie Hours, till soe tired, I coulde cry; and when I desisted, coulde hear _Jack_ wailing over his Task. 'Tis raining fast, I cannot get out, nor should I dare to go alone, nor where to go to if 'twere fine. I fancy ill Smells from the Churchyard--'tis long to Dinner-time, with noe Change, noe Exercise; and oh, I sigh for _Forest Hill_. --A dull Dinner with Mrs. _Phillips_, whom I like not much. _Christopher Milton_ there, who stared hard at me, and put me out of Countenance with his strange Questions. My Husband checked him. He is a Lawyer, and has Wit enoughe. Mrs. _Phillips_ speaking of second Marriages, I unawares hurt her by giving my Voice agaynst them. It seems she is thinking of contracting a second Marriage. --At Supper, wishing to ingratiate myself with the Boys, talked to them of Countrie Sports, etc.: to which the youngest listened greedilie; and at length I was advised to ask them woulde they not like to see _Forest Hill_? to which the elder replyed in his most methodicall Manner, "If Mr. _Powell_ has a good Library." For this Piece of Hypocrisie, at which I heartilie laught, he was commended by his Uncle. Hypocrisie it was, for Master _Ned_ cryeth over his Taskes pretty nearlie as oft as the youngest. _Friday_. To rewarde my zealous Practice to-day on the Spinnette, Mr. _Milton_ produced a Collection of "_Ayres, and Dialogues, for one, two, and three Voices_," by his Friend, Mr. _Harry Lawes_, which he sayd I shoulde find very pleasant Studdy; and then he tolde me alle about theire getting up the Masque of _Comus_ in _Ludlow_ Castle, and how well the Lady's Song was sung by Mr. _Lawes'_ Pupil, the Lady _Alice_, then a sweet, modest Girl, onlie thirteen Yeares of Age,--and he told me of the Singing of a faire _Italian_ young Signora, named _Leonora Barroni_, with her Mother and Sister, whome he had hearde at _Rome_, at the Concerts of Cardinal _Barberini_; and how she was "as gentle and modest as sweet _Moll_," yet not afrayed to open her Mouth, and pronounce everie Syllable distinctlie, and with the proper Emphasis and Passion when she sang. And after this, to my greate Contentment, he tooke me to the _Gray's Inn Walks_, where, the Afternoon being fine, was much Companie. After Supper, I proposed to the Boys that we shoulde tell Stories; and Mr. _Milton_ tolde one charminglie, but then went away to write a _Latin_ Letter. Soe _Ned's_ Turn came next; and I must, if I can, for very Mirthe's Sake, write it down in his exact Words, they were soe pragmaticall. "On a Daye, there was a certain Child wandered forthe, that would play. He met a Bee, and sayd, 'Bee, wilt thou play with me?' The Bee sayd, 'No, I have my Duties to perform, tho' you, it woulde seeme, have none. I must away to make Honey.' Then the Childe, abasht, went to the Ant. He sayd, 'Will you play with me, Ant?' The Ant replied, 'Nay, I must provide against the Winter.' In shorte, he found that everie Bird, Beaste, and Insect he accosted, had a closer Eye to the Purpose of their Creation than himselfe. Then he sayd, 'I will then back, and con my Task.'--_Moral_. The Moral of the foregoing Fable, my deare _Aunt_, is this--We must love Work better than Play." With alle my Interest for Children, how is it possible to take anie Interest in soe formall a little Prigge? _Saturday_. I have just done somewhat for Master _Ned_ which he coulde not doe for himselfe--_viz_. tenderly bound up his Hand, which he had badly cut. Wiping away some few naturall Tears, he must needs say, "I am quite ashamed, _Aunt_, you shoulde see me cry; but the worst of it is, that alle this Payne has beene for noe good; whereas, when my Uncle beateth me for misconstruing my _Latin_, tho' I cry at the Time, all the while I know it is for my Advantage."--If this Boy goes on preaching soe, I shall soon hate him. --Mr. _Milton_ having stepped out before Supper, came back looking soe blythe, that I askt if he had hearde good News. He sayd, yes: that some Friends had long beene persuading him, against his Will, to make publick some of his _Latin_ Poems; and that, having at length consented to theire Wishes, he had beene with _Mosley_ the Publisher in St. _Paul's Churchyard_, who agreed to print them. I sayd, I was sorrie I shoulde be unable to read them. He sayd he was sorry too; he must translate them for me. I thanked him, but observed that Traductions were never soe good as Originalls. He rejoyned, "Nor am I even a good Translator." I askt, "Why not write in your owne Tongue?" He sayd, "_Latin_ is understood all over the Worlde." I sayd, "But there are manie in your owne Country do not understand it." He was silent soe long upon that, that I supposed he did not mean to answer me; but then cried, "You are right, sweet _Moll.--_Our best Writers have written their best Works in _English_, and I will hereafter doe the same,--for I feel that my best Work is still _to come_. Poetry hath hitherto been with me rather the Recreation of a Mind conscious of its Health, than the deliberate Task-work of a Soule that must hereafter give an Account of its Talents. Yet my Mind, in the free Circuit of her Musing, has ranged over a thousand Themes that lie, like the Marble in the Quarry, readie for anie Shape that Fancy and Skill may give. Neither Laziness nor Caprice makes me difficult in my Choice; for, the longer I am in selecting my Tree, and laying my Axe to the Root, the sounder it will be and the riper for Use. Nor is an Undertaking that shall be one of high Duty, to be entered upon without Prayer and Discipline:--it woulde be Presumption indeede, to commence an Enterprise which I meant shoulde delighte and profit every instructed and elevated Mind without so much Paynes-takinge as it should cost a poor Mountebank to balance a Pole on his Chin." _Sunday Even_. In the Clouds agayn. At Dinner, to-daye, Mr. _Milton_ catechised the Boys on the Morning's Sermon, the Heads of which, though amounting to a Dozen_, Ned_ tolde off roundlie. Roguish little _Jack_ looked slylie at me, says, "_Aunt_ coulde not tell off the Sermon." "Why not?" says his Uncle. "Because she was sleeping," says _Jack_. Provoked with the Child, I turned scarlett, and hastilie sayd, "I was not." Nobodie spoke; but I repented the Falsitie the Moment it had escaped me; and there was _Ned_, a folding of his Hands, drawing down his Mouth, and closing his Eyes. . . . My Husband tooke me to taske for it when we were alone, soe tenderlie that I wept. _Monday_. _Jack_ sayd this Morning, "I know Something--I know _Aunt_ keeps a Journall." "And a good Thing if you kept one too, _Jack,"_ sayd his Uncle, "it would shew you how little you doe." _Jack_ was silenced; but _Ned_, pursing up his Mouth, says, "I can't think what _Aunt_ can have to put in a Journall--should not you like, _Uncle_, to see?" "No, _Ned,"_ says his Uncle, "I am upon Honour, and your dear Aunt's Journall is as safe, for me, as the golden Bracelets that King _Alfred_ hung upon the High-way. I am glad she has such a Resource, and, as we know she cannot have much News to put in it, we may the more safely rely that it is a Treasury of sweet, and high, and holy, and profitable Thoughtes." Oh, how deeplie I blusht at this ill-deserved Prayse! How sorrie I was that I had ever registered aught that he woulde grieve to read! I secretly resolved that this Daye's Journalling should be the last, untill I had attained a better Frame of Mind. _Saturday Even_. I have kept Silence, yea, even from good Words, but it has beene a Payn and Griefe unto me. Good Mistress _Catherine Thompson_ called on me a few Dayes back, and spoke so wisely and so wholesomelie concerning my Lot, and the Way to make it happy, (she is the first that hath spoken as it 'twere possible it mighte not be soe alreadie,) that I felt for a Season quite heartened; but it has alle faded away. Because the Source of Cheerfulnesse is not _in_ me, anie more than in a dull Landskip, which the Sun lighteneth for awhile, and when he has set, its Beauty is gone. Oh me! how merry I was at Home!--The Source of Cheerfulnesse seemed in me _then_, and why is it not _now_? Partly because alle that I was there taught to think right is here thought wrong; because much that I there thought harmlesse is here thought sinfulle; because I cannot get at anie of the Things that employed and interested me _there_, and because the Things within my Reach _here_ do not interest me. Then, 'tis no small Thing to be continuallie deemed ignorant and misinformed, and to have one's Errors continuallie covered, however handsomelie, even before Children. To say nothing of the Weight upon the Spiritts at firste, from Change of Ayre, and Diet, and Scene, and Loss of habituall Exercise and Companie and householde Cares. These petty Griefs try me sorelie; and when Cousin _Ralph_ came in unexpectedlie this Morn, tho' I never much cared for him at Home, yet the Sighte of _Rose's_ Brother, fresh from_ Sheepscote_ and _Oxford_ and _Forest Hill_, soe upset me that I sank into Tears. No wonder that Mr. _Milton_, then coming in, shoulde hastilie enquire if _Ralph_ had brought ill Tidings from Home; and, finding alle was well there, shoulde look strangelie. He askt _Ralph_, however, to stay to Dinner; and we had much Talk of Home; but now, I regret having omitted to ask a thousand Questions. _Sunday Even., Aug. 15, 1643_. Mr. _Milton_ in his Closet and I in my Chamber.--For the first Time he seems this Evening to have founde out how dissimilar are our Minds. Meaning to please him, I sayd, "I kept awake bravelie, tonighte, through that long, long Sermon, for your Sake." "And why not for _God's_ Sake?" cried he, "why not for your owne Sake?--Oh, sweet _Wife_, I fear you have yet much to learn of the Depth of Happinesse that is comprised in the Communion between a forgiven Soul and its Creator. It hallows the most secular as well as the most spirituall Employments; it gives Pleasure that has no after Bitternesse; it gives Pleasure to _God_--and oh! thinke of the Depth of Meaning in those Words! think what it is for us to be capable of giving _God_ Pleasure!" --Much more, in the same Vein! to which I could not, with equal Power, respond; soe, he away to his Studdy, to pray perhaps for my Change of Heart, and I to my Bed. _Saturday, Aug. 21, 1643_. Oh Heaven! can it be possible? am I agayn at _Forest Hill_? How strange, how joyfulle an Event, tho' brought about with Teares!--Can it be, that it is onlie a Month since I stoode at this Toilette as a Bride? and lay awake on that Bed, thinking of _London_? How long a Month! and oh! this present one will be alle too short. It seemeth that _Ralph Hewlett_, shocked at my Teares and the Alteration in my Looks, broughte back a dismall Report of me to deare _Father_ and _Mother_, pronouncing me either ill or unhappie. Thereupon, _Richard_, with his usuall Impetuositie, prevayled on _Father_ to let him and _Ralph_ fetch me Home for a While, at leaste till after _Michaelmasse_. How surprised was I to see _Dick_ enter! My Arms were soe fast about his Neck, and my Face prest soe close to his Shoulder, that I did not for a While perceive the grave Looke he had put on. At the last, I was avised to ask what broughte him soe unexpectedlie to _London_; and then he hemmed and looked at _Ralph_, and _Ralph_ looked at _Dick_, and then _Dick_ sayd bluntly, he hoped Mr. _Milton_ woulde spare me to go Home till after _Michaelmasse_, and _Father_ had sent him on Purpose to say soe. Mr. _Milton_ lookt surprised and hurte, and sayd, how could he be expected to part soe soone with me, a Month's Bride? it must be some other Time: he had intended to take me himselfe to _Forest Hill_ the following Spring, but coulde not spare Time now, nor liked me to goe without him, nor thought I should like it myself. But my Eyes said I _shoulde_, and then he gazed earnestlie at me and lookt hurt; and there was a dead Silence. Then _Dick_, hesitating a little, sayd he was sorrie to tell us my _Father_ was ill; on which I clasped my Hands and beganne to weepe; and Mr. _Milton_, changing Countenance, askt sundrie Questions, which _Dick_ answered well enough; and then said he woulde not be soe cruel as to keepe me from a Father I soe dearlie loved, if he were sick, though he liked not my travelling in such unsettled Times with so young a Convoy. _Ralph_ sayd they had brought _Diggory_ with them, who was olde and steddy enough, and had ridden my _Mother's_ Mare for my Use; and _Dick_ was for our getting forward a Stage on our Journey the same Evening, but Mr. _Milton_ insisted on our abiding till the following Morn, and woulde not be overruled. And gave me leave to stay a Month, and gave me Money, and many kind Words, which I coulde mark little, being soe overtaken with Concern about dear _Father_, whose Illness I feared to be worse than _Dick_ sayd, seeing he seemed soe close and dealt in dark Speeches and Parables. After Dinner, they went forth, they sayd, to look after the Horses, but I think to see _London_, and returned not till Supper. We got them Beds in a House hard by, and started at earlie Dawn. Mr. _Milton_ kissed me most tenderlie agayn and agayn at parting, as though he feared to lose me; but it had seemed to me soe hard to brook the Delay of even a few Hours when _Father_, in his Sicknesse, was wanting me, that I took leave of my Husband with less Affection than I mighte have shewn, and onlie began to find my Spiritts lighten when we were fairly quit of _London_, with its vile Sewers and Drains, and to breathe the sweete, pure Morning Ayre, as we rode swiftlie along. _Dick_ called _London_ a vile Place, and spake to _Ralph_ concerning what they had seen of it overnighte, whence it appeared to me, that he had beene pleasure-seeking more than, in _Father's_ state, he ought to have beene. But _Dick_ was always a reckless Lad;--and oh, what Joy, on reaching this deare Place, to find _Father_ had onlie beene suffering under one of his usual Stomach Attacks, which have no Danger in them, and which _Dick_ had exaggerated, fearing Mr. _Milton_ woulde not otherwise part with me;--I was a little shocked, and coulde not help scolding him, though I was the gainer; but he boldlie defended what he called his "Stratagem of War," saying it was quite allowable in dealing with a _Puritan_. As for _Robin_, he was wild with Joy when I arrived; and hath never ceased to hang about me. The other Children are riotous in their Mirth. Little _Joscelyn_ hath returned from his Foster-mother's Farm, and is noe longer a puny Child--'tis thought he will thrive. I have him constantly in my Arms or riding on my Shoulder; and with Delight have revisited alle my olde Haunts, patted _Clover_, etc. Deare _Mother_ is most kind. The Maids as oft call me Mrs. _Molly_ as Mrs. _Milton_, and then smile, and beg Pardon. _Rose_ and _Agnew_ have been here, and have made me promise to visit _Sheepscote_ before I return to _London_. The whole House seems full of Glee. _Monday_. It seemes quite strange to heare _Dick_ and _Harry_ singing loyal Songs and drinking the _King's_ Health after soe recentlie hearing his M. soe continuallie spoken agaynst. Also, to see a Lad of _Robin's_ Age, coming in and out at his Will, doing aniething or nothing; instead of being ever at his Taskes, and looking at Meal-times as if he were repeating them to himselfe. I know which I like best. A most kind Letter from Mr. _Milton_, hoping _Father_ is better, and praying for News of him. How can I write to him without betraying _Dick_? _Robin_ and I rode, this Morning, to _Sheepscote_. Thoughte Mr. _Agnew_ received me with unwonted Gravitie. He tolde me he had received a Letter from my Husband, praying News of my Father, seeing I had sent him none, and that he had writ to him that _Father_ was quite well, never had been better. Then he sayd to me he feared Mr. _Milton_ was labouring under some false Impression. I tolde him trulie, that _Dick_, to get me Home, had exaggerated a trifling Illness of _Father's_, but that I was guiltlesse of it. He sayd _Dick_ was inexcusable, and that noe good End coulde justifie a Man of Honour in overcharging the Truth; and that, since I was innocent, I shoulde write to my Husband to clear myself. I said briefly, I woulde; and I mean to do soe, onlie not to-daye. Oh, sweet countrie Life! I was made for you and none other. This riding and walking at one's owne free Will, in the fresh pure Ayre, coming in to earlie, heartie, wholesome Meals, seasoned with harmlesse Jests,--seeing fresh Faces everie Daye come to the House, knowing everie Face one meets out of Doores,--supping in the Garden, and remaining in the Ayre long after the Moon has risen, talking, laughing, or perhaps dancing,--if this be not Joyfulnesse, what is? For certain, I woulde that Mr. _Milton_ were here; but he woulde call our Sports mistimed, and throw a Damp upon our Mirth by not joining in it. Soe I will enjoy my Holiday while it lasts, for it may be long ere I get another--especiallie if his and _Father's_ Opinions get wider asunder, as I think they are doing alreadie. My promised Spring Holiday may come to nothing. _Monday_. My Husband hath writ to me strangelie, chiding me most unkindlie for what was noe Fault of mine, to wit, _Dick's_ Falsitie; and wondering I can derive anie Pleasure from a Holiday so obtayned, which he will not curtayl, but will on noe Pretence extend. Nay! but methinks Mr. _Milton_ presumeth somewhat too much on his marital Authoritie, writing in this Strayn. I am no mere Child neither, nor a runaway Wife, nor in such bad Companie, in mine own Father's House, where he firste saw me; and, was it anie Fault of mine, indeed, that _Father_ was not ill? or can I wish he had beene? No, truly! This Letter hath sorelie vexed me. Dear _Father_, seeing me soe dulle, askt me if I had had bad News. I sayd I had, for that Mr. _Milton_ wanted me back at the Month's End. He sayd, lightlie, Oh, that must not be, I must at all Events stay over his Birthdaye, he could not spare me sooner; he woulde settle all that. Let it be soe then--I am content enoughe. To change the Current of my Thoughts, he hath renewed the Scheme for our Visit to Lady _Falkland_, which, Weather permitting, is to take Place tomorrow. 'Tis long since I have seene her, soe I am willing to goe; but she is dearer to _Rose_ than to me, though I respect her much. _Wednesday_. The whole of Yesterday occupyde with our Visit. I love Lady _Falkland_ well, yet her religious Mellanchollie and Presages of Evil have left a Weight upon my Spiritts. To-daye, we have a Family Dinner. The _Agnews_ come not, but the _Merediths_ doe, we shall have more Mirthe if less Wit. My Time now draweth soe short, I must crowd into it alle the Pleasure I can; and in this, everie one conspires to help me, saying, "Poor _Moll_ must soon return to _London_." Never was Creature soe petted or spoylt. How was it there was none of this before I married, when they might have me alwaies? ah, therein lies the Secret. Now, we have mutuallie tasted our Losse. _Ralph Hewlett_, going agayn to Town, was avised to ask whether I had anie Commission wherewith to charge him. I bade him tell Mr. _Milton_ that since we should meet soe soone, I need not write, but would keep alle my News for our Fire-side. _Robin_ added, "Say, we cannot spare her yet," and _Father_ echoed the same. But I begin to feel now, that I must not prolong my Stay. At the leaste, not beyond _Father's_ Birthday. My Month is hasting to a Close. _Sept. 21, 1643_. Battle at _Newbury--_Lord _Falkland_ slayn. Oh, fatal Loss! _Father_ and _Mother_ going off to my Lady: but I think she will not see them. Aunt and Uncle _Hewlett_, who brought the News, can talk of nothing else. _Sept. 22, 1643_. Alle Sadnesse and Consternation. I am wearie of bad News, public and private, and feel less and less Love for the Puritans, yet am forced to seem more loyal than I really am, soe high runs party Feeling just now at Home. My Month has passed! _Sept. 28, 1643_. A most displeased Letter from my Husband, minding me that my Leave of Absence hath expired, and that he likes not the Messages he received through _Ralph_, nor the unreasonable and hurtfulle Pastimes which he finds have beene making my quiet Home distastefulle. Asking, are they suitable, under Circumstances of nationall Consternation to _my owne_ Party, or seemlie in soe young a Wife, apart from her Husband? To conclude, insisting, with more Authoritie than Kindnesse, on my immediate Return. With Tears in my Eyes, I have beene to my Father. I have tolde him I must goe. He sayth, Oh no, not yet. I persisted, I must, my Husband was soe very angry. He rejoined, What, angry with my sweet _Moll_? and for spending a few Days with her old Father? Can it be? hath it come to this alreadie? I sayd, my Month had expired. He sayd, Nonsense, he had always askt me to stay over _Michaelmasse_, till his Birthday; he knew _Dick_ had named it to Mr. _Milton_. I sayd, Mr. _Milton_ had taken no Notice thereof, but had onlie granted me a Month. He grew peevish, and said, "Pooh, pooh!" Thereat, after a Silence of a Minute or two, I sayd yet agayn, I must goe. He took me by the two Wrists and sayd, Doe you wish to go? I burst into Teares, but made noe Answer. He sayd, That is Answer enough,--how doth this Puritan carry it with you, my Child? and snatched his Letter. I sayd, Oh, don't read that, and would have drawn it back; but _Father_, when heated, is impossible to controwl; therefore, quite deaf to Entreaty, he would read the Letter, which was unfit for him in his chafed Mood; then, holding it at Arm's Length, and smiting it with his Fist,--Ha! and is it thus he dares address a Daughter of mine? (with Words added, I dare not write)--but be quiet, _Moll_, be at Peace, my Child, for he shall not have you back for awhile, even though he come to fetch you himself. The maddest Thing I ever did was to give you to this Roundhead. He and _Roger Agnew_ talked me over with soe many fine Words.--What possessed me, I know not. Your Mother always said evil woulde come of it. But as long as thy Father has a Roof over his Head, Child, thou hast a Home. As soone as he woulde hear me, I begged him not to take on soe, for that I was not an unhappy Wife; but my Tears, he sayd, belied me; and indeed, with Fear and Agitation, they flowed fast enough. But I sayd, I _must_ goe home, and wished I had gone sooner, and woulde he let _Diggory_ take me! No, he sayd, not a Man Jack on his Land shoulde saddle a Horse for me, nor would he lend me one, to carry me back to Mr. _Milton_; at the leaste not for a While, till he had come to Reason, and protested he was sorry for having writ to me soe harshly. "Soe be content, _Moll_, and make not two Enemies instead of one. Goe, help thy Mother with her clear-starching. Be happy whilst thou art here." But ah! more easily said than done. "Alle Joy is darkened; the Mirthe of the Land is gone!" _Michaelmasse Day_. At Squire _Paice's_ grand Dinner we have been counting on soe many Days; but it gave me not the Pleasure expected. _Oct. 13, 1643_. The Weather is soe foul that I am sure Mr. _Milton_ woulde not like me to be on the Road, even would my Father let me goe. --While writing the above, heard very angrie Voices in the Courtyard, my Father's especiallie, louder than common; and distinguished the Words "Knave," and "Varlet," and "begone." Lookt from my Window and beheld a Man, booted and cloaked, with two Horses, at the Gate, parleying with my Father, who stood in an offensive Attitude, and woulde not let him in. I could catch such Fragments as, "But, Sir?" "What! in such Weather as this?" "Nay, it had not overcast when I started." "'Tis foul enough now, then." "Let me but have speech of my Mistress." "You crosse not my Threshold." "Nay, Sir, if but to give her this Letter:"--and turning his Head, I was avised of its being _Hubert_, old Mr. _Milton's_ Man; doubtless sent by my Husband to fetch me. Seeing my Father raise his Hand in angrie Action (his Riding-whip being in it), I hasted down as fast as I coulde, to prevent Mischiefe, as well as to get my Letter; but, unhappilie, not soe fleetlie as to see more than _Hubert's_ flying Skirts as he gallopped from the Gate, with the led Horse by the Bridle; while my Father flinging downe the torne Letter, walked passionatelie away. I clasped my Hands, and stood mazed for a while,--was then avised to piece the Letter, but could not; onlie making out such Words as "Sweet _Moll_," in my Husband's Writing. _Oct. 14, 1643_. _Rose_ came this Morning, through Rain and Mire, at some Risk as well as much Inconvenience, to intreat of me, even with Teares, not to vex Mr. _Milton_ by anie farther Delays, but to return to him as soon as possible. Kind Soule, her Affection toucht me, and I assured her the more readilie I intended to return Home as soone as I coulde, which was not yet, my Father having taken the Matter into his own Hands, and permitting me noe Escort; but that I questioned not, Mr. _Milton_ was onlie awaiting the Weather to settle, to fetch me himself. That he will doe so, is my firm Persuasion. Meanwhile, I make it my Duty to joyn with some Attempt at Cheerfullenesse in the Amusements of others, to make my Father's Confinement to the House less irksome; and have in some Measure succeeded. _Oct. 23, 1643_. Noe Sighte nor Tidings of Mr. _Milton_.--I am uneasie, frighted at myself, and wish I had never left him, yet hurte at the Neglect. _Hubert_, being a crabbed Temper, made Mischief on his Return, I fancy. _Father_ is vexed, methinks, at his owne Passion, and hath never, directlie, spoken, in my Hearinge, of what passed; but rayleth continuallie agaynst Rebels and Roundheads. As to _Mother_,--ah me! _Oct. 24, 1643_. Thro' dank and miry Lanes and Bye-roads with _Robin_, to _Sheepscote_. Waiting for _Rose_ in Mr. _Agnew's_ small Studdy, where she mostlie sitteth with him, oft acting as his Amanuensis, was avised to take up a printed Sheet of Paper that lay on the Table; but finding it to be of _Latin_ Versing, was about to laye it downe agayn, when _Rose_ came in. She changed Colour, and in a faltering Voice sayd, "Ah, _Cousin_, do you know what that is? One of your Husband's Proofe Sheets. I woulde that it coulde interest you in like manner as it hath me." Made her noe Answer, laying it aside unconcernedlie, but secretlie felt, as I have oft done before, how stupid it is not to know _Latin_, and resolved to get _Robin_ to teach me. He is noe greate Scholar himselfe, soe will not shame me.--I am wearie of hearing of War and Politicks; soe will try Studdy for a while, and see if 'twill cure this dull Payn at my Heart. _Oct. 28, 1643_. _Robin_ and I have shut ourselves up for three Hours dailie, in the small Book-room, and have made fayre Progresse. He liketh his Office of Tutor mightilie. _Oct. 31, 1643_. My Lessons are more crabbed, or I am more dull and inattentive, for I cannot fix my Minde on my Book, and am secretlie wearie, _Robin_ wearies too. But I will not give up as yet; the more soe as in this quiete Studdy I am out of Sighte and Hearinge of sundrie young Officers _Dick_ is continuallie bringing over from _Oxford_, who spend manie Hours with him in Countrie Sports, and then come into the House, hungry, thirstie, noisie, and idle. I know Mr. _Milton_ woulde not like them. --Surelie he will come soone?--I sayd to _Father_ last Night, I wanted to hear from Home. He sayd, "Home! Dost call yon Taylor's Shop your Home?" soe ironicalle that I was shamed to say more. Woulde that I had never married!--then coulde I enjoy my Childhoode's Home. Yet I knew not its Value before I quitted it, and had even a stupid Pleasure in anticipating another. Ah me! had I loved Mr. _Milton_ more, perhaps I might better have endured the Taylor's Shop. _Sheepscote, Nov. 20, 1643_. Annoyed by _Dick's_ Companions, I prayed _Father_ to let me stay awhile with _Rose_; and gaining his Consent, came over here Yester-morn, without thinking it needfulle to send Notice, which was perhaps inconsiderate. But she received me with Kisses and Words of Tendernesse, though less Smiling than usualle, and eagerlie accepted mine offered Visitt. Then she ran off to find _Roger_, and I heard them talking earnestlie in a low Voice before they came in. His Face was grave, even stern, when he entred, but he held out his Hand, and sayd, "Mistress _Milton_, you are welcome! how is it with you? and how was Mr. _Milton_ when he wrote to you last?" I answered brieflie, he was well: then came a Silence, and then _Rose_ took me to my Chamber, which was sweet with Lavender, and its hangings of the whitest. It reminded me too much of my first Week of Marriage, soe I resolved to think not at all lest I shoulde be bad Companie, but cheer up and be gay. Soe I askt _Rose_ a thousand Questions about her Dairie and Bees, laught much at Dinner, and told Mr. _Agnew_ sundrie of the merrie Sayings of _Dick_ and his _Oxford_ Friends. And, for my Reward, when we were afterwards apart, I heard him tell _Rose_ (by Reason of the Walls being thin) that however she might regard me for old Affection's sake, he thought he had never knowne soe unpromising a character. This made me dulle enoughe all the rest of the Evening, and repent having come to _Sheepscote_: however, he liked me the better for being quiete: and _Rose_, being equallie chekt, we sewed in Silence while he read to us the first Division of _Spencer's Legend of Holinesse_, about _Una_ and the Knight, and how they got sundered. This led to much serious, yet not unpleasing, Discourse, which lasted till Supper. For the first Time at _Sheepscote_, I coulde not eat, which Mr. _Agnew_ observing, prest me to take Wine, and _Rose_ woulde start up to fetch some of her Preserves; but I chekt her with a Motion, not being quite able to speak; for their being soe kind made the Teares ready to starte, I knew not why. Family Prayers, after Supper, rather too long; yet though I coulde not keep up my Attention, they seemed to spread a Calm and a Peace alle about, that extended even to me; and though, after I had undressed, I sat a long while in a Maze, and bethought me how piteous a Creature I was, yet, once layed down, I never sank into deeper, more composing Sleep. _Nov. 21,1643_. This Morning, _Rose_ exclaimed, "Dear _Roger_! onlie think! _Moll_ has begun to learn _Latin_ since she returned to _Forest Hill_, thinking to surprise Mr. _Milton_ when they meet." "She will not onlie surprise but _please_ him," returned dear _Roger_, taking my Hand very kindlie; "I can onlie say, I hope they will meet long before she can read his _Poemata_, unless she learnes much faster than most People." I replyed, I learned very slowly, and wearied _Robin's_ Patience; on which _Rose_, kissing me, cried, "You will never wearie mine; soe, if you please, deare _Moll_, we will goe to our Lessons here everie Morning; and it may be that I shall get you through the Grammar faster than _Robin_ can. If we come to anie Difficultie we shall refer it to _Roger_." Now, Mr. _Agnew's_ Looks exprest such Pleasure with both, that it were difficult to tell which felt the most elated; soe calling me deare _Moll_ (he hath hitherto Mistress _Miltoned_ me ever since I sett Foot in his House), he sayed he would not interrupt our Studdies, though he should be within Call, and soe left us. I had not felt soe happy since _Father's_ Birthday; and, though _Rose_ kept me close to my Book for two Hours, I found her a far less irksome Tutor than deare _Robin_. Then she went away, singing, to make _Roger's_ favourite Dish, and afterwards we took a brisk Walke, and came Home hungrie enoughe to Dinner. There is a daily Beauty in _Rose's_ Life, that I not onlie admire, but am readie to envy. Oh! if _Milton_ lived but in the poorest House in the Countrie, methinks I coulde be very happy with him. _Bedtime_. Chancing to make the above Remark to _Rose_, she cried, "And why not be happy with him in _Aldersgate Street_?" I briefly replied that he must get the House first, before it were possible to tell whether I coulde be happy there or not. _Rose_ started, and exclaimed, "Why, where do you suppose him to be now?" "Where but at the Taylor's in _Bride's Churchyard_?" I replied. She claspt her Hands with a Look I shall never forget, and exclaimed in a Sort of vehement Passion, "Oh, _Cousin, Cousin_, how you throw your own Happinesse away! How awfulle a Pause must have taken place in your Intercourse with the Man whom you promised to abide by till Death, since you know not that he has long since taken Possession of his new Home; that he strove to have it ready for you at _Michaelmasse_!" Doubtlesse I lookt noe less surprised than I felt;--a suddain Prick at the Heart prevented Speech; but it shot acrosse my Heart that I had made out the Words "_Aldersgate_" and "new Home," in the Fragments of the Letter my Father had torn. _Rose_, misjudging my Silence, burst forth anew with, "Oh, _Cousin_! _Cousin_! coulde anie Home, however dull and noisesome, drive me from _Roger Agnew_? Onlie think of what you are doing,--of what you are leaving undone!--of what you are preparing against yourself! To put the Wickednesse of a selfish Course out of the Account, onlie think of its Mellancholie, its Miserie,--destitute of alle the sweet, bright, fresh Well-springs of Happinesse;--unblest by _God_!" Here _Rose_ wept passionatelie, and claspt her Arms about me; but, when I began to speak, and to tell her of much that had made me miserable, she hearkened in motionlesse Silence, till I told her that _Father_ had torn the Letter and beaten the Messenger. Then she cried, "Oh, I see now what may and shall be done! _Roger_ shall be Peacemaker," and ran off with Joyfulnesse; I not withholding her. But I can never be joyfulle more--he cannot be Day's-man betwixt us now--'tis alle too late! _Nov. 28, 1643_. Now that I am at _Forest Hill_ agayn, I will essay to continue my Journalling.-- Mr. _Agnew_ was out; and though a keene wintry Wind was blowing, and _Rose_ was suffering from Colde, yet she went out to listen for his Horse's Feet at the Gate, with onlie her Apron cast over her Head. Shortlie, he returned; and I heard him say in a troubled Voice, "Alle are in Arms at _Forest Hill_." I felt soe greatlie shocked as to neede to sit downe instead of running forthe to learn the News. I supposed the parliamentarian Soldiers had advanced, unexpectedlie, upon _Oxford_. His next Words were, "_Dick is_ coming for her at Noone--poor Soul, I know not what she will doe--her Father will trust her noe longer with you and me." Then I saw them both passe the Window, slowlie pacing together, and hastened forth to joyn them; but they had turned into the pleached Alley, their Backs towards me; and both in such earnest and apparentlie private Communication, that I dared not interrupt them till they turned aboute, which was not for some While; for they stood for some Time at the Head of the Alley, still with theire Backs to me, _Rose's_ Hair blowing in the cold Wind; and once or twice she seemed to put her Kerchief to her Eyes. Now, while I stood mazed and uncertain, I hearde a distant Clatter of Horse's Feet, on the hard Road a good Way off, and could descrie _Dick_ coming towards _Sheepscote_. _Rose_ saw him too, and commenced running towards me; Mr. _Agnew_ following with long Strides. _Rose_ drew me back into the House, and sayd, kissing me, "Dearest _Moll_, I am soe sorry; _Roger_ hath seen your Father this Morn, and he will on no Account spare you to us anie longer; and _Dick_ is coming to fetch you even now." I sayd, "Is _Father_ ill?" "Oh no," replied Mr. _Agnew_; then coming up, "He is not ill, but he is perturbed at something which has occurred; and, in Truth, soe am I.--But remember, Mistress _Milton_, remember, dear _Cousin_, that when you married, your _Father's_ Guardianship of you passed into the Hands of your Husband--your Husband's House was thenceforthe your Home; and in quitting it you committed a Fault you may yet repaire, though this offensive Act has made the Difficultie much greater."--"Oh, what has happened?" I impatientlie cried. Just then, _Dick_ comes in with his usual blunt Salutations, and then cries, "Well, _Moll_, are you ready to goe back?" "Why should I be?" I sayd, "when I am soe happy here? unless _Father_ is ill, or Mr. _Agnew_ and _Rose_ are tired of me." They both interrupted, there was nothing they soe much desired, at this present, as that I shoulde prolong my Stay. And you know, _Dick, I_ added, that _Forest Hill_ is not soe pleasant to me just now as it hath commonlie beene, by Reason of your _Oxford_ Companions. He brieflie sayd, I neede not mind that, they were coming no more to the House, _Father_ had decreed it. And you know well enough, _Moll_, that what _Father_ decrees, must be, and he hath decreed that you must come Home now; soe no more Ado, I pray you, but fetch your Cloak and Hood, and the Horses shall come round, for 'twill be late ere we reach Home. "Nay, you must dine here at all Events," sayd _Rose_; "I know, _Dick_, you love roast Pork." Soe _Dick_ relented. Soe _Rose_, turning to me, prayed me to bid _Cicely_ hasten Dinner; the which I did, tho' thinking it strange _Rose_ should not goe herself. But, as I returned, I hearde her say, Not a Word of it, dear _Dick_, at the least, till after Dinner, lest you spoil her Appetite. Soe _Dick_ sayd he shoulde goe and look after the Horses. I sayd then, brisklie, I see somewhat is the Matter--pray tell me what it is. But _Rose_ looked quite dull, and walked to the Window. Then Mr. _Agnew_ sayd, "You seem as dissatisfied to leave us, _Cousin_, as we are to lose you; and yet you are going back to _Forest Hill_--to that Home in which you will doubtlesse be happy to live all your Dayes."--"At _Forest Hill_?" I sayd, "Oh no! I hope not." "And why?" sayd he quicklie. I hung my Head, and muttered, "I hope, some Daye, to goe back to Mr. _Milton_." "And why not at once?" sayd he. I sayd, "_Father_ would not let me." "Nay, that is childish," he answered, "your Father could not hinder you if you wanted not the Mind to goe--it was your first seeming soe loth to return, that made him think you unhappie and refuse to part with you." I sayd, "And what if I were unhappie?" He paused; and knew not at the Moment what Answer to make, but shortlie replyed by another Question, "What Cause had you to be soe?" I sayd, "That was more easily askt than answered, even if there were anie Neede I shoulde answer it, or he had anie Right to ask it." He cried in an Accent of Tendernesse that still wrings my Heart to remember, "Oh, question not the Right! I only wish to make you happy. Were you not happy with Mr. _Milton_ during the Week you spent together here at _Sheepscote_?" Thereat I coulde not refrayn from bursting into Tears. _Rose_ now sprang forward; but Mr. _Agnew_ sayd, "Let her weep, let her weep, it will do her good." Then, alle at once it occurred to me that my Husband was awaiting me at Home, and I cried, "Oh, is Mr. _Milton_ at _Forest Hill_?" and felt my Heart full of Gladness. Mr. _Agnew_ answered, "Not soe, not soe, poor _Moll_:" and, looking up at him, I saw him wiping his Brow, though the Daye was soe chill. "As well tell her now," sayd he to _Rose_; and then taking my Hand, "Oh, Mrs. _Milton_, can you wonder that your Husband should be angry? How can you wonder at anie Evil that may result from the Provocation you have given him? What Marvell, that since you cast him off, all the sweet Fountains of his Affections would be embittered, and that he should retaliate by seeking a Separation, and even a Divorce?"--There I stopt him with an Outcry of "Divorce?" "Even soe," he most mournfully replyd, "and I seeke not to excuse him, since two Wrongs make not a Right." "But," I cried, passionately weeping, "I have given him noe Cause; my Heart has never for a Moment strayed to another, nor does he, I am sure, expect it." "Ne'erthelesse," enjoyned Mr. _Agnew_, "he is soe aggrieved and chafed, that he has followed up what he considers your Breach of the Marriage Contract by writing and publishing a Book on Divorce; the Tenor of which coming to your Father's Ears, has violently incensed him. And now, dear _Cousin_, having, by your Waywardness, kindled this Flame, what remains for you but to--nay, hear me, hear me, _Moll_, for _Dick_ is coming in, and I may not let him hear me urge you to the onlie Course that can regayn your Peace--Mr. _Milton_ is still your Husband; eache of you have now Something to forgive; do you be the firste; nay, seeke _his_ Forgivenesse, and you shall be happier than you have been yet." --But I was weeping without controule; and _Dick_ coming in, and with _Dick_ the Dinner, I askt to be excused, and soe soughte my Chamber, to weep there without Restraynt or Witnesse. Poor _Rose_ came up, as soone as she coulde leave the Table, and told me she had eaten as little as I, and woulde not even presse me to eat. But she carest me and comforted me, and urged in her owne tender Way alle that had beene sayd by Mr. _Agnew_; even protesting that if she were in my Place, she woulde not goe back to _Forest Hill_, but straight to _London_, to entreat with Mr. _Milton_ for his Mercy. But I told her I could not do that, even had I the Means for the Journey; for that my Heart was turned against the Man who coulde, for the venial Offence of a young Wife, in abiding too long with her old Father, not onlie cast her off from his Love, but hold her up to the World's Blame and Scorn, by making their domestic Quarrel the Matter for a printed Attack. _Rose_ sayd, "I admit he is wrong, but indeed, indeed, _Moll_, you are wrong too, and you were wrong _first_:" and she sayd this soe often, that at length we came to crosser Words; when _Dick_, calling to me from below, would have me make haste, which I was glad to doe, and left _Sheepscote_ less regrettfullie than I had expected. _Rose_ kist me with her gravest Face. Mr. _Agnew_ put me on my Horse, and sayd, as he gave me the Rein, "Now think! now think! even yet!" and then, as I silently rode off, "_God_ bless you." I held down my Head; but, at the Turn of the Road, lookt back, and saw him and _Rose_ watching us from the Porch. _Dick_ cried, "I am righte glad we are off at last, for _Father_ is downright crazie aboute this Businesse, and mistrustfulle of _Agnew's_ Influence over you,"--and would have gone on railing, but I bade him for Pitie's Sake be quiete. The Effects of my owne Follie, the Losse of Home, Husband, Name, the Opinion of the _Agnews_, the Opinion of the Worlde, rose up agaynst me, and almost drove me mad. And, just as I was thinking I had better lived out my Dayes and dyed earlie in _Bride's Churchyarde_ than that alle this should have come about, the suddain Recollection of what _Rose_ had that Morning tolde me, which soe manie other Thoughts had driven out of my Head, viz. that Mr. _Milton_ had, in his Desire to please me, while I was onlie bent on pleasing myself, been secretly striving to make readie the _Aldersgate Street_ House agaynst my Return,--soe overcame me, that I wept as I rode along. Nay, at the Corner of a branch Road, had a Mind to beg _Dick_ to let me goe to _London_; but a glance at his dogged Countenance sufficed to foreshow my Answer. Half dead with Fatigue and Griefe when I reached Home, the tender Embraces of my Father and Mother completed the Overthrowe of my Spiritts. I tooke to my Bed; and this is the first Daye I have left it; nor will they let me send for _Rose_, nor even tell her I am ill. _Jan. 1, 1644_. The new Year opens drearilie, on Affairs both publick and private. The Loaf parted at Breakfast this Morning, which, as the Saying goes, is a Sign of Separation; but _Mother_ onlie sayd 'twas because it was badly kneaded, and chid _Margery_. She hath beene telling me, but now, how I mighte have 'scaped all my Troubles, and seene as much as I woulde of her and _Father_, and yet have contented Mr. _Milton_ and beene counted a good Wife. Noe Advice soe ill to bear as that which comes too late. _Jan. 7, 1644_. I am sick of this journalling, soe shall onlie put downe the Date of _Robin's_ leaving Home. _Lord_ have Mercy on him, and keepe him in Safetie. This is a shorte Prayer; therefore, easier to be often repeated. When he kissed me, he whispered, "_Moll_, pray for me." _Jan. 27, 1644_. _Father_ does not seeme to miss _Robin_ much, tho' he dailie drinks his Health after that of the King. Perhaps he did not miss me anie more when I was in _London_, though it was true and naturall enough he should like to see me agayn. We should have beene used to our Separation by this Time; there would have beene nothing corroding in it. . . . I pray for _Robin_ everie Night. Since he went, the House has lost its Sunshine. When I was soe anxious to return to _Forest Hill_, I never counted on his leaving it. _Feb. 1, 1644_. Oh Heaven, what would I give to see the Skirts of Mr. _Milton's_ Garments agayn! My Heart is sick unto Death. I have been reading some of my _Journall_, and tearing out much childish Nonsense at the Beginning; but coulde not destroy the painfulle Records of the last Year. How unhappy a Creature am I!--wearie, wearie of my Life, yet no Ways inclined for Death. _Lord_, have Mercy upon me. _March 27, 1644_. I spend much of my Time, now, in the Book-room, and, though I essay not to pursue the _Latin_, I read much _English_, at the least, more than ever I did in my Life before; but often I fancy I am reading when I am onlie dreaming. _Oxford_ is far too gay a Place for me now ever to goe neare it, but my Brothers are much there, and _Father_ in his Farm, and _Mother_ in her Kitchen; and the Neighbours, when they call, look on me strangelie, so that I have noe Love for them. How different is _Rose's_ holy, secluded, yet cheerefulle Life at _Sheepscote_! She hath a Nurserie now, soe cannot come to me, and _Father_ likes not I should goe to her. _April 5, 1644_. They say their Majestyes' Parting at _Abingdon_ was very sorrowfulle and tender. The _Lord_ send them better Times! The Queen is to my Mind a most charming Lady, and well worthy of his Majesty's Affection; yet it seems to me amisse, that thro' her Influence, last Summer, the Opportunitie of Pacification was lost. But she was elated, and naturallie enoughe, at her personall Successes from the Time of her landing. To me, there seems nothing soe good as Peace. I know, indeede, Mr. _Milton_ holds that there may be such Things as a holy War and a cursed Peace. _April 10, 1644_. _Father_, having a Hoarseness, hath deputed me, of late, to read the Morning and Evening Prayers. How beautifulle is our Liturgie! I grudge at the Puritans for having abolished it; and though I felt not its comprehensive Fullessse [Transcriber's note: Fullnesse?] before I married, nor indeed till now, yet I wearied to Death in _London_ at the puritanicall Ordinances and Conscience-meetings and extempore Prayers, wherein it was soe oft the Speaker's Care to show Men how godly he was. Nay, I think Mr. _Milton_ altogether wrong in the View he takes of praying to _God_ in other Men's Words; for doth he not doe soe, everie Time he followeth the Sense of another Man's extempore Prayer, wherein he is more at his Mercy and Caprice than when he hath a printed Form set down, wherein he sees what is coming? _June 8, 1644_. Walking in the Home-close this Morning, it occurred to me that Mr. _Milton_ intended bringing me to _Forest Hill_ about this Time; and that if I had abided patientlie with him through the Winter, we might now have beene both here happily together; untroubled by that Sting which now poisons everie Enjoyment of mine, and perhaps of his. _Lord_, be merciful to _me a Sinner_. _June 23, 1644_. Just after writing the above, I was in the Garden, gathering a few Coronation Flowers and Sops-in-Wine, and thinking they were of deeper crimson at_ Sheepscote_, and wondering what _Rose_ was just then about, and whether had I beene born in her Place, I shoulde have beene as goode and happy as she,--when _Harry_ came up, looking somewhat grave. I sayd, "What is the Matter?" He gave Answer, "_Rose_ hath lost her Child." Oh!----that we should live but a two Hours' Journey apart, and that she coulde lose a Child three Months olde _whom I had never seene_? I ran to _Father_, and never left off praying him to let me goe to her till he consented. --What, and if I had begged as hard, at the firste, to goe back to Mr. _Milton_? might he not have consented _then_? . . . Soe _Harry_ took me; and as we drew neare _Sheepscote_, I was avised to think how grave, how barely friendlie had beene our last Parting; and to ponder, would _Rose_ make me welcome now? The Infant, _Harry_ tolde me, had beene dead some Dayes; and, as we came in Sight of the little grey old Church, we saw a Knot of People coming out of the Churchyard, and guessed the Baby had just beene buried. Soe it proved--Mr. _Agnew's_ House-door stood ajar; and when we tapped softlie and _Cicely_ admitted us we could see him standing by _Rose_, who was sitting on the Ground and crying as if she would not be comforted. When she hearde my Voice, she started up, flung her Arms about me, crying more bitterlie than before, and I cried too; and Mr. _Agnew_ went away with _Harry_. Then _Rose_ sayd to me, "You must not leave me agayn." . . . . . . In the Cool of the Evening, when _Harry_ had left us, she took me into the Churchyarde, and scattered the little Grave with Flowers; and then continued sitting beside it on the Grasse, quiete, but not comfortlesse. I am avised to think she prayed. Then Mr. _Agnew_ came forthe and sate on a flat Tombstone hard by; and without one Word of Introduction took out his _Psalter_, and commenced reading the Psalms for that Evening's Service; to wit, the 41st, the 42d, the 43de; in a low solemne Voice; and methoughte I never in my Life hearde aniething to equall it in the Way of Consolation. _Rose's_ heavie Eyes graduallie lookt up from the Ground into her Husband's Face, and thence up to Heaven. After this, he read, or rather repeated, the Collect at the end of the Buriall Service, putting this Expression,--"As our Hope is, this our deare Infant doth." Then he went on to say in a soothing Tone, "There hath noe misfortune happened to us, but such as is common to the Lot of alle Men. We are alle Sinners, even to the youngest, fayrest, and seeminglie purest among us; and Death entered the World by Sin, and, constituted as we are, we would not, even if we could, dispense with Death. For, where doth it convey us? From this burthensome, miserable World, into the generall Assemblie of _Christ's_ First-born, to be united with the Spiritts of the Just made perfect, to partake of everie Enjoyment which in this World is unconnected with Sin, together with others that are unknowne and unspeakable. And there, we shall agayn have _Bodies_ as well as Soules; Eyes to see, but not to shed Tears; Voices to speak and sing, not to utter Lamentations; Hands, to doe _God's_ Work; Feet, and it may be, Wings, to carry us on his Errands. Such will be the Blessedness of his glorified Saints; even of those who, having been Servants of Satan till the eleventh Hour, laboured penitentlie and diligentlie for their heavenlie Master one Hour before Sunset; but as for those who, dying in mere Infancie, never committed actuall Sin, they follow the Lamb whithersoever he goeth! 'Oh, think of this, dear _Rose_, and Sorrow not as those without Hope; for be assured, your Child hath more reall Reason to be grieved for you, than you for _him_.'" With this, and like Discourse, that distilled like the Dew, or the small Rain on the tender Grasse, did _Roger Agnew_ comfort his Wife, untill the Moon had risen. Likewise he spake to us of those who lay buried arounde, how one had died of a broken Heart, another of suddain Joy, another had let Patience have her perfect Work through Years of lingering Disease. hen we walked slowlie and composedlie Home, and ate our Supper peacefullie, _Rose_ not refusing to eat, though she took but little. Since that Evening, she hath, at Mr. _Agnew's_ Wish, gone much among the Poor, reading to one, working for another, carrying Food and Medicine to another; and in this I have borne her Companie. I like it well. Methinks how pleasant and seemlie are the Duties of a country Minister's Wife! a God-fearing Woman, that is, who considereth the Poor and Needy, insteade of aiming to be frounced and purfled like her richest Neighbours. Mr. _Agnew_ was reading to us, last Night, of _Bernard Gilpin_--he of whom the _Lord Burleigh_ sayd, "Who can blame that Man for not accepting a Bishopric?" How charmed were we with the Description of the Simplicitie and Hospitalitie of his Method of living at _Houghton_!--There is another Place of nearlie the same Name, in _Buckinghamshire_--not _Houghton_, but _Horton_, . . . where one Mr. _John Milton_ spent five of the best Years of his Life,--and where methinks his Wife could have been happier with him than in _Bride's Churchyarde_.--But it profits not to wish and to will.--What was to be, had Need to be, soe there's an End. _Aug. 1, 1644_. Mr. _Agnew_ sayd to me this Morning, somewhat gravelie, "I observe, _Cousin_, you seem to consider yourselfe the Victim of Circumstances." "And am I not?" I replied. "No," he answered, "Circumstance is a false God, unrecognised by the Christian, who contemns him, though a stubborn yet a profitable Servant."--"That may be alle very grand for a Man to doe," I sayd. "Very grand, but very feasible, for a Woman as well as a Man," rejoined Mr. _Agnew_, "and we shall be driven to the Wall alle our Lives, unless we have this victorious Struggle with Circumstances. I seldom allude, _Cousin_, to yours, which are almoste too delicate for me to meddle with; and yet I hardlie feele justified in letting soe many opportunities escape. Do I offend? or may I go on?--Onlie think, then, how voluntarilie you have placed yourself in your present uncomfortable Situation. The Tree cannot resist the graduall Growth of the Moss upon it; but you might, anie Day, anie Hour, have freed yourself from the equallie graduall Formation of the Net that has enclosed you at last. You entered too hastilie into your firste--nay, let that pass,--you gave too shorte a Triall of your new Home before you became disgusted with it. Admit it to have beene dull, even unhealthfulle, were you justified in forsaking it at a Month's End? But your Husband gave you Leave of Absence, though obtayned on false Pretences.--When you found them to be false, should you not have cleared yourself to him of Knowledge of the Deceit? Then your Leave, soe obtayned, expired--shoulde you not have returned then?--Your Health and Spiritts were recruited; your Husband wrote to reclaim you--shoulde you not have returned then? He provided an Escort, whom your Father beat and drove away.--If you had insisted on going to your Husband, might you not have gone _then_? Oh, _Cousin_, you dare not look up to Heaven and say you have been the Victim of Circumstances." I made no Answer; onlie felt much moven, and very angrie. I sayd, "If I wished to goe back, Mr. _Milton_ woulde not receive me now." "Will you try?" sayd _Roger_. "Will you but let me try? Will you let me write to him?" I had a Mind to say "Yes."--Insteade, I answered "No." "Then there's an End," cried he sharplie. "Had you made but one fayre Triall, whether successfulle or noe, I coulde have been satisfied--no, not satisfied, but I woulde have esteemed you, coulde have taken your Part. As it is, the less I say just now, perhaps, the better. Forgive me for having spoken at alle." ----Afterwards, I hearde him say to _Rose_ of me, "I verilie believe there is Nothing in her on which to make a permanent Impression. I verilie think she loves everie one of those long Curls of hers more than she loves Mr. _Milton_." (Note:--I will cut them two Inches shorter tonight. And they will grow all the faster.) . . . Oh, my sad Heart, _Roger Agnew_ hath pierced you at last! I was moved, more than he thought, by what he had sayd in the Morning; and, in writing down the Heads of his Speech, to kill Time, a kind of Resentment at myselfe came over me, unlike to what I had ever felt before; in spite of my Folly about my Curls. Seeking for some Trifle in a Bag that had not been shaken out since I brought it from _London_, out tumbled a Key with curious Wards--I knew it at once for one that belonged to a certayn Algum-wood Casket Mr. _Milton_ had Recourse to dailie, because he kept small Change in it; and I knew not I had brought it away! 'Twas worked in Grotesque, the Casket, by _Benvenuto_, for _Clement_ the Seventh, who for some Reason woulde not have it; and soe it came somehow to _Clementillo_, who gave it to Mr. _Milton_. Thought I, how uncomfortable the Loss of this Key must have made him! he must have needed it a hundred Times! even if he hath bought a new Casket, I will for it he habituallie goes agayn and agayn to the old one, and then he remembers that he lost the Key the same Day that he lost his Wife. I heartilie wish he had it back. Ah, but he feels not the one Loss as he feels the other. Nay, but it is as well that one of them, tho' the Lesser, should be repaired. 'Twill shew Signe of Grace, my thinking of him, and may open the Way, if _God_ wills, to some Interchange of Kindnesse, however fleeting. Soe I soughte out Mr. _Agnew_, tapping at his Studdy Doore. He sayd, "Come in," drylie enoughe; and there were he and _Rose_ reading a Letter. I sayd, "I want you to write for me to Mr. _Milton_." He gave a sour Look, as much as to say he disliked the Office; which threw me back, as 'twere; he having soe lately proposed it himself. _Rose's_ Eyes, however, dilated with sweete Pleasure, as she lookt from one to the other of us. "Well,--I fear 'tis too late," sayd he at length reluctantlie, I mighte almost say grufflie,--"what am I to write?" "To tell him I have this Key," I made Answer faltering. "That Key!" cried he. "Yes, the Key of his Algum-wood Casket, which I knew not I had, and which I think he must miss dailie." He lookt at me with the utmost Impatience. "And is that alle?" he sayd. "Yes, alle," I sayd trembling. "And have you nothing more to tell him?" sayd he. "No--" after a Pause, I replyed. _Rose's_ Countenance fell. "Then you must ask some one else to write for you, Mrs. _Milton,"_ burste forthe _Roger Agnew_, "unless you choose to write for yourself. I have neither Part nor Lot in it." I burste forthe into Teares. --"No, _Rose_, no," repeated Mr. _Agnew_, putting aside his Wife, who woulde have interceded for me,--"her Teares have noe Effect on me now--they proceed, not from a contrite Heart, they are the Tears of a Child that cannot brook to be chidden for the Waywardnesse in which it persists." "You doe me Wrong everie Way," I sayd; "I came to you willing and desirous to doe what you yourselfe woulde, this Morning, have had me doe." "But in how strange a Way!" cried he. "At a Time when anie Renewal of your Intercourse requires to be conducted with the utmost Delicacy, and even with more Shew of Concession on your Part than, an Hour ago, I should have deemed needfulle,--to propose an abrupt, trivial Communication about an old Key!" "It needed not to have been abrupt," I sayd, "nor yet trivial; for I meant it to have beene exprest kindlie." "You said not that before," answered he. "Because you gave me not Time.--Because you chid me and frightened me." He stood silent, some While, upon this; grave, yet softer, and mechanicallie playing with the Key, which he had taken from my Hand. _Rose_ looking in his Face anxiouslie. At lengthe, to disturbe his Reverie, she playfulle tooke it from him, saying, in School-girl Phrase, "This is the Key of the Kingdom!" "Of the Kingdom of Heaven, it mighte be!" exclaimed _Roger_, "if we knew how to use it arighte! If we knew but how to fit it to the Wards of _Milton's_ Heart!--there's the Difficultie. . . . a greater one, poor _Moll_, than you know; for hitherto, alle the Reluctance has been on your Part. But now . . ." "What now?" I anxiouslie askt. "We were talking of you but as you rejoyned us," sayd Mr. _Agnew_, "and I was telling _Rose_ that hithertoe I had considered the onlie Obstacle to a Reunion arose from a false Impression of your own, that Mr. _Milton_ coulde not make you happy. But now I have beene led to the Conclusion that you cannot make _him_ soe, which increases the Difficultie." After a Pause, I sayd, "What makes you think soe?" "You and he have made me think soe," he replyed. "First for yourself, dear _Moll_, putting aside for a Time the Consideration of your Youth, Beauty, Franknesse, Mirthfullenesse, and a certayn girlish Drollerie and Mischiefe that are all very well in fitting Time and Place,--what remains in you for a Mind like _John Milton's_ to repose upon? what Stabilitie? what Sympathie? what steadfast Principle? You take noe Pains to apprehend and relish his favourite Pursuits; you care not for his wounded Feelings, you consult not his Interests, anie more than your owne Duty. Now, is such the Character to make _Milton_ happy?" "No one can answer that but himself," I replyed, deeplie mortyfide. "Well, he _has_ answered it," sayd Mr. _Agnew_, taking up the Letter he and _Rose_ had beene reading when I interrupted them. . . . "You must know, _Cousin_, that his and my close Friendship hath beene a good deal interrupted by this Matter. 'Twas under my Roof you met. _Rose_ had imparted to me much of her earlie Interest in you. I fancied you had good Dispositions which, under masterlie Trayning, would ripen into noble Principles; and therefore promoted your Marriage as far as my Interest with your Father had Weight. I own I was surprised at his easilie obtayned Consent . . . but, that _you_, once domesticated with such a Man as _John Milton_, shoulde find your Home uninteresting, your Affections free to stray back to your owne Family, was what I had never contemplated." Here I made a Show of taking the Letter, but he held it back. "No, _Moll_, you disappointed us everie Way. And, for a Time, _Rose_ and I were ashamed, _for_ you rather than of you, that we left noe Means neglected of trying to preserve your Place in your Husband's Regard. But you did not bear us out; and then he beganne to take it amisse that we upheld you. Soe then, after some warm and cool Words, our Correspondence languished; and hath but now beene renewed." "He hath written us a most kind Condolence," interrupted _Rose_, "on the Death of our Baby." "Yes, most kindlie, most nobly exprest," sayd Mr. _Agnew_; "but what a Conclusion!" And then, after this long Preamble, he offered me the Letter, the Beginning of which, tho' doubtlesse well enough, I marked not, being impatient to reach the latter Part; wherein I found myself spoken of soe bitterlie, soe harshlie, as that I too plainly saw _Roger Agnew_ had not beene beside the Mark when he decided I could never make Mr. _Milton_ happy. Payned and wounded Feeling made me lay aside the Letter without proffering another Word, and retreat without soe much as a Sigh or a Sob into mine own Chamber; but noe longer could the Restraynt be maintained. I fell to weeping soe passionatelie that _Rose_ prayed to come in, and condoled with me, and advised me, soe as that at length my Weeping bated, and I promised to return below when I shoulde have bathed mine Eyes and smoothed my Hair; but I have not gone down yet. _Bedtime_. I think I shall send to _Father_ to have me Home at the Beginning of next Week. _Rose_ needes me not, now; and it cannot be pleasant to Mr. _Agnew_ to see my sorrowfulle Face about the House. His Reproofe and my Husband's together have riven my Heart; I think I shall never laugh agayn, nor smile but after a piteous Sorte; and soe People will cease to love me, for there is Nothing in me of a graver Kind to draw their Affection; and soe I shall lead a moping Life unto the End of my Dayes. --Luckilie for me, _Rose_ hath much Sewing to doe; for she hath undertaken with great Energie her Labours for the Poore, and consequentlie spends less Time in her Husband's Studdy; and, as I help her to the best of my Means, my Sewing hides my Lack of Talking, and Mr. _Agnew_ reads to us such Books as he deems entertayning; yet, half the Time, I hear not what he reads. Still, I did not deeme so much Amusement could have beene found in Books; and there are some of his, that, if not soe cumbrous, I woulde fain borrow. _Friday_. I have made up my Mind now, that I shall never see Mr. _Milton_ more; and am resolved to submitt to it without another Tear. _Rose_ sayd, this Morning, she was glad to see me more composed; and soe am I; but never was more miserable. _Saturday Night_. Mr. _Agnew's_ religious Services at the End of the Week have alwaies more than usuall Matter and Meaninge in them. They are neither soe drowsy as those I have beene for manie Years accustomed to at Home, nor soe wearisome as to remind me of the _Puritans_. Were there manie such as he in our Church, soe faithfulle, fervent, and thoughtfulle, methinks there would be fewer Schismaticks; but still there woulde be some, because there are alwaies some that like to be the uppermost. . . . To-nighte, Mr. _Agnew's_ Prayers went straight to my Heart; and I privilie turned sundrie of his generall Petitions into particular ones, for myself and _Robin_, and also for Mr. _Milton_. This gave such unwonted Relief, that since I entered into my Closet, I have repeated the same particularlie; one Request seeming to grow out of another, till I remained I know not how long on my Knees, and will bend them yet agayn, ere I go to Bed. How sweetlie the Moon shines through my Casement to-night! I am almoste avised to accede to _Rose's_ Request of staying here to the End of the Month:--everie Thing here is soe peacefulle; and _Forest Hill_ is dull, now _Robin_ is away. _Sunday Evening_. How blessed a Sabbath!--Can it be, that I thought, onlie two Days back, I shoulde never know Peace agayn? Joy I may not, but Peace I can and doe. And yet nought hath amended the unfortunate Condition of mine Affairs; but a different Colouring is caste upon them--the _Lord_ grant that it may last! How hath it come soe, and how may it be preserved? This Morn, when I awoke, 'twas with a Sense of Relief such as we have when we miss some wearying bodilie Payn; a Feeling as though I had beene forgiven, yet not by Mr. _Milton_, for I knew he had not forgiven me. Then, it must be, I was forgiven by _God_; and why? I had done nothing to get his Forgivenesse, only presumed on his Mercy to ask manie Things I had noe Right to expect. And yet I felt I _was_ forgiven. Why then mighte not Mr. _Milton_ some Day forgive me? Should the Debt of ten thousand Talents be cancelled, and not the Debt of a hundred Pence? Then I thought on that same Word, Talents; and considered, had I ten, or even one? Decided to consider it at leisure, more closelie, and to make over to _God_ henceforthe, be they ten, or be it one. Then, dressed with much Composure, and went down to Breakfast. Having marked that Mr. _Agnew_ and _Rose_ affected not Companie on this Day, spent it chieflie by myself, except at Church and Meal-times; partlie in my Chamber, partlie in the Garden Bowre by the Beehives. Made manie Resolutions, which, in Church, I converted into Prayers and Promises. Hence, my holy Peace. _Monday_. _Rose_ proposed, this Morning, we shoulde resume our Studdies. Felt loath to comply, but did soe neverthelesse, and afterwards we walked manie Miles, to visit some poor Folk. This Evening, Mr. _Agnew_ read us the Prologue to the _Canterbury Tales_. How lifelike are the Portraitures! I mind me that Mr. _Milton_ shewed me the _Talbot_ Inn, that Day we crost the River with Mr. _Marvell_. _Tuesday_. How heartilie do I wish I had never read that same Letter!--or rather, that it had never beene written. Thus it is, even with our Wishes. We think ourselves reasonable in wishing some small Thing were otherwise, which it were quite as impossible to alter as some great Thing. Neverthelesse I cannot help fretting over the Remembrance of that Part wherein he spake such bitter Things of my "most ungoverned Passion for Revellings and Junketings." Sure, he would not call my Life too merrie now, could he see me lying wakefulle on my Bed, could he see me preventing the Morning Watch, could he see me at my Prayers, at my Books, at my Needle. . . . He shall find he hath judged too hardlie of poor _Moll_, even yet. _Wednesday_. Took a cold Dinner in a Basket with us to-day, and ate our rusticall Repast on the Skirt of a Wood, where we could see the Squirrels at theire Gambols. Mr. _Agnew_ lay on the Grasse, and _Rose_ took out her Knitting, whereat he laught, and sayd she was like the _Dutch_ Women, that must knit, whether mourning or feasting, and even on the Sabbath. Having laught her out of her Work, he drew forth Mr. _George Herbert's_ Poems, and read us a Strayn which pleased _Rose_ and me soe much, that I shall copy it herein, to have always by me. How fresh, oh Lord: how sweet and clean Are thy Returns! e'en as the Flowers in Spring, To which, beside theire owne Demesne, The late pent Frosts Tributes of Pleasure bring. Grief melts away like Snow in May, As if there were noe such cold Thing. Who would have thought my shrivelled Heart Woulde have recovered greenness? it was gone Quite Underground, as Flowers depart To see their Mother-root, when they have blown, Where they together, alle the hard Weather, Dead to the World, keep House alone. These are thy Wonders, Lord of Power! Killing and quickening, bringing down to Hell And up to Heaven, in an Hour, Making a Chiming of a passing Bell, We say amiss "this or that is:" Thy Word is alle, if we could spell. Oh that I once past changing were! Fast in thy Paradise, where no Flowers can wither; Manie a Spring I shoot up faire, Offering at Heaven, growing and groaning thither, Nor doth my Flower want a Spring Shower, My Sins and I joyning together. But while I grow in a straight Line, Still upwards bent, as if Heaven were my own, Thy Anger comes, and I decline.-- What Frost to that! What Pole is not the Zone Where alle Things burn, when thou dost turn, And the least Frown of thine is shewn? And now, in Age, I bud agayn, After soe manie Deaths, I bud and write, I once more smell the Dew and Rain, And relish Versing! Oh my onlie Light! It cannot be that I am he On whom thy Tempests fell alle Night? These are thy Wonders, Lord of Love, To make us see we are but Flowers that glide, Which, when we once can feel and prove, Thou hast a Garden for us where to bide. Who would be more, swelling their Store, Forfeit their Paradise by theire Pride. _Thursday_. _Father_ sent over _Diggory_ with a Letter for me from deare _Robin_: alsoe, to ask when I was minded to return Home, as _Mother_ wants to goe to _Sandford_. Fixed the Week after next; but _Rose_ says I must be here agayn at the Apple-gathering. Answered _Robin's_ Letter. He looketh not for Choyce of fine Words; nor noteth an Error here and there in the Spelling. _Tuesday_. Life flows away here in such unmarked Tranquilitie, that one hath Nothing whereof to write, or to remember what distinguished one Day from another. I am sad, yet not dulle; methinks I have grown some Yeares older since I came here. I can fancy elder Women feeling much as I doe now. I have Nothing to desire. Nothing to hope, that is likelie to come to pass--Nothing to regret, except I begin soe far back, that my whole Life hath neede, as 'twere, to begin over agayn. . . . Mr. _Agnew_ translates to us Portions of _Thuanus_ his Historie, and the Letters of _Theodore Bexa_, concerning the _French_ Reformed Church; oft prolix, yet interesting, especially with Mr. _Agnew's_ Comments, and Allusions to our own Time. On the other Hand, _Rose_ reads _Davila_, the sworne Apologiste of _Catherine de' Medicis_, whose charming _Italian_ even I can comprehende; but alle is false and plausible. How sad, that the wrong Partie shoulde be victorious! Soe it may befall in this Land; though, indeede, I have hearde soe much bitter Rayling on bothe Sides, that I know not which is right. The Line of Demarcation is not soe distinctly drawn, methinks, as 'twas in _France_. Yet it cannot be right to take up Arms agaynst constituted Authorities?--Yet, and if those same Authorities abuse their Trust? Nay, Women cannot understand these Matters, and I thank Heaven they need not. Onlie, they cannot help siding with those they love; and sometimes those they love are on opposite Sides. Mr. _Agnew_ sayth, the secular Arm shoulde never be employed in spirituall Matters, and that the _Hugenots_ committed a grave Mistake in choosing Princes and Admirals for their Leaders, insteade of simple Preachers with Bibles in their hands; and he askt, "did _Luther_ or _Peter_ the Hermit most manifestlie labour with the Blessing of _God_?" . . . I have noted the Heads of Mr. _Agnew's_ Readings, after a Fashion of _Rose's_, in order to have a shorte, comprehensive Account of the Whole; and this hath abridged my journalling. It is the more profitable to me of the two, changes the sad Current of Thought, and, though an unaccustomed Task, I like it well. _Saturday_. On _Monday_, I return to _Forest Hill_. I am well pleased to have yet another _Sheepscote_ Sabbath. To-day we had the rare Event of a Dinner-guest; soe full of what the Rebels are doing, and alle the Horrors of Strife, that he seemed to us quiete Folks, like the Denizen of another World. _Forest Hill, August 3, 1644_. Home agayn, and _Mother_ hath gone on her long intended Visitt to Uncle _John_, taking with her the two youngest. _Father_ much preoccupide, by reason of the Supplies needed for his Majesty's Service; soe that, sweet _Robin_ being away, I find myselfe lonely. _Harry_ rides with me in the Evening, but the Mornings I have alle to myself; and when I have fulfilled _Mother's_ Behests in the Kitchen and Still-room, I have nought but to read in our somewhat scant Collection of Books, the moste Part whereof are religious. And (not on that Account, but by reason I have read the most of them before), methinks I will write to borrow some of _Rose_; for Change of Reading hath now become a Want. I am minded also, to seek out and minister unto some poore Folk after her Fashion. Now that I am Queen of the Larder, there is manie a wholesome Scrap at my Disposal, and there are likewise sundrie Physiques in my Mother's Closet, which she addeth to Year by Year, and never wants, we are soe seldom ill. _Aug. 5, 1644_. Dear _Father_ sayd this Evening, as we came in from a Walk on the Terrace, "My sweet _Moll_, you were ever the Light of the House; but now, though you are more staid than of former Time, I find you a better Companion than ever. This last Visitt to _Sheepscote_ hath evened your Spiritts." Poor _Father_! he knew not how I lay awake and wept last Night, for one I shall never see agayn, nor how the Terrace Walk minded me of him. My Spiritts may seem even, and I exert myself to please; but, within, all is dark Shade, or at best, grey Twilight; and my Spiritts are, in Fact, worse here than they were at _Sheepscote_, because, here, I am continuallie thinking of one whose Name is never uttered; whereas, there, it was mentioned naturallie and tenderlie, though sadly. . . . I will forthe to see some of the poor Folk. _Same Night_. Resolved to make the Circuit of the Cottages, but onlie reached the first, wherein I found poor _Nell_ in such Grief of Body and Mind, that I was avised to wait with her a long Time. Askt why she had not sent to us for Relief; was answered she had thought of doing soe, but was feared of making too free. After a lengthened Visitt, which seemed to relieve her Mind, and certaynlie relieved mine, I bade her Farewell, and at the Wicket met my Father coming up with a playn-favoured but scholarlike looking reverend Man. He sayd, "_Moll_, I could not think what had become of you." I answered, I hoped I had not kept him waiting for Dinner--poor _Nell_ had entertayned me longer than I wisht, with the Catalogue of her Troubles. The Stranger looking attentively at me, observed that may be the poor Woman had entertayned an Angel unawares; and added, "Doubt not, Madam, we woulde rather await our Dinner than that you should have curtayled your Message of Charity." Hithertoe, my Father had not named this Gentleman to me; but now he sayd, "Child, this is the Reverend Doctor _Jeremy Taylor_, Chaplain in Ordinarie to his Majesty, and whom you know I have heard more than once preach before the King since he abode in _Oxford_." Thereon I made a lowly Reverence, and we walked homewards together. At first, he discoursed chiefly with my Father on the Troubles of the Times, and then he drew me into the Dialogue, in the Course of which I let fall a Saying of Mr. _Agnew's_, which drew from the reverend Gentleman a respectfulle Look I felt I no Way deserved. Soe then I had to explain that the Saying was none of mine, and felt ashamed he shoulde suppose me wiser than I was, especiallie as he commended my Modesty. But we progressed well, and he soon had the Discourse all to himself, for Squire _Paice_ came up, and detained _Father_, while the Doctor and I walked on. I could not help reflecting how odd it was, that I, whom Nature had endowed with such a very ordinarie Capacitie, and scarce anie Taste for Letters, shoulde continuallie be thrown into the Companie of the cleverest of Men,--first, Mr. _Milton_: then Mr. _Agnew_; and now, this Doctor _Jeremy Taylor_. But, like the other two, he is not merely clever, he is Christian and good. How much I learnt in this short Interview! for short it seemed, though it must have extended over a good half Hour. He sayd, "Perhaps, young Lady, the Time may come when you shall find safer Solace in the Exercise of the Charities than of the Affections. Safer: for, not to consider how a successfulle or unsuccessfulle Passion for a human Being of like Infirmities with ourselves, oft stains and darkens and shortens the Current of Life, even the chastened Love of a Mother for her Child, as of _Octavia_, who swooned at '_Tu, Marcellus, eris_,'--or of Wives for their Husbands, as _Artemisia_ and _Laodamia_, sometimes amounting to Idolatry--nay, the Love of Friend for Friend, with alle its sweet Influences and animating Transports, yet exceeding the Reasonableness of that of _David_ for _Jonathan_, or of our blessed _Lord_ for _St. John_ and the Family of _Lazarus_, may procure far more Torment than Profit: even if the Attachment be reciprocal, and well grounded, and equallie matcht, which often it is not. Then interpose human Tempers, and Chills, and Heates, and Slyghtes fancied or intended, which make the vext Soul readie to wish it had never existed. How smalle a Thing is a human Heart! you might grasp it in your little Hand; and yet its Strifes and Agonies are enough to distend a Skin that should cover the whole World! But, in the Charities, what Peace! yea, they distill Sweetnesse even from the Unthankfulle, blessing him that gives more than him that receives; while, in the Main, they are laid out at better Interest than our warmest Affections, and bring in a far richer Harvest of Love and Gratitude. Yet, let our Affections have their fitting Exercise too, staying ourselves with the Reflection, that there is greater Happinesse, after alle Things sayd, in loving than in being loved, save by the _God_ of Love who first loved us, and that they who dwell in Love dwell in _Him_." Then he went on to speak of the manifold Acts and Divisions of Charity; as much, methought, in the Vein of a Poet as a Preacher; and he minded me much of that Scene in the tenth Book of the _Fairie Queene_, soe lately read to us by Mr. _Agnew_, wherein the _Red Cross Knight_ and _Una_ were shown _Mercy_ at her Work. _Aug. 10, 1644_. A Pack-horse from _Sheepscote_ just reported, laden with a goodlie Store of Books, besides sundrie smaller Tokens of _Rose's_ thoughtfulle Kindnesse. I have now methodicallie divided my Time into stated Hours, of Prayer, Exercise, Studdy, Housewiferie, and Acts of Mercy, on however a humble Scale; and find mine owne Peace of Mind thereby increased notwithstanding the Darknesse of publick and Dullnesse of private Affairs. Made out the Meaning of "Cynosure" and "Cimmerian Darknesse." . . . _Aug. 15, 1644_. Full sad am I to learn that Mr. _Milton_ hath published another Book in Advocacy of Divorce. Alas, why will he chafe against the Chain, and widen the cruel Division between us? My Father is outrageous on the Matter, and speaks soe passionatelie of him, that it is worse than not speaking of him at alle, which latelie I was avised to complain of. _Aug. 30, 1644_. _Dick_ beginneth to fancie himself in Love with _Audrey Paice--_an Attachment that will doe him noe good: his Tastes alreadie want raising, and she will onlie lower them, I feare,--a comely, romping, noisie Girl, that, were she but a Farmer's Daughter, woulde be the Life and Soul of alle the Whitsun-ales, Harvest-homes, and Hay-makings in the Country: in short, as fond of idling and merrymaking as I once was myself: onlie I never was soe riotous. I beginne to see Faults in _Dick_ and _Harry_ I never saw before. Is my Taste bettering, or my Temper worsenning? At alle Events, we have noe cross Words, for I expect them not to alter, knowing how hard it is to doe soe by myself. I look forward with Pleasure to my _Sheepscote_ Visitt. Dear _Mother_ returneth to-morrow. Good Dr. _Taylor_ hath twice taken the Trouble to walk over from _Oxford_ to see me, but he hath now left, and we may never meet agayn. His Visitts have beene very precious to me: I think he hath some Glimmering of my sad Case: indeed, who knows it not? At parting he sayd, smiling, he hoped he should yet hear of my making Offerings to _Viriplaca_ on _Mount Palatine_; then added, gravelie, "You know where reall Offerings may be made and alwaies accepted--Offerings of spare Half-hours and Five-minutes, when we shut the Closet Door and commune with our own Hearts and are still." Alsoe he sayd, "There are Sacrifices to make which sometimes wring our very Hearts to offer; but our gracious _God_ accepts them neverthelesse, if our Feet be really in the right Path, even though, like _Chryseis_, we look back, weeping." He sayd . . . But how manie Things as beautifulle and true did I hear my Husband say, which passed by me like the idle Wind that I regarded not! _Sept. 8, 1644_. _Harry_ hath just broughte in the News of his Majesty's Success in the West. Lord _Essex's_ Army hath beene completely surrounded by the royal Troops; himself forct to escape in a Boat to _Plymouth_, and all the Arms, Artillerie, Baggage, etc., of _Skippon's_ Men have fallen into the Hands of the King. _Father_ is soe pleased that he hath mounted the Flag, and given double Allowance of Ale to his Men. I wearie to hear from _Robin_. _Sheepscote, Oct. 10, 1644_. How sweete a Picture of rurall Life did _Sheepscote_ present, when I arrived here this Afternoon! The Water being now much out, the Face of the Countrie presented a new Aspect: there were Men threshing the Walnut Trees, Children and Women putting the Nuts into Osier Baskets, a Bailiff on a white Horse overlooking them, and now and then galloping to another Party, and splashing through the Water. Then we found Mr. _Agnew_ equallie busie with his Apples, mounted half Way up one of the Trees, and throwing Cherry Pippins down into _Rose's_ Apron, and now and then making as though he would pelt her: onlie she dared him, and woulde not be frightened. Her Donkey, chewing Apples in the Corner, with the Cider running out of his Mouth, presented a ludicrous Image of Enjoyment, and 'twas evidently enhanct by _Giles'_ brushing his rough Coat with a Birch Besom, instead of minding his owne Businesse of sweeping the Walk. The Sun, shining with mellow Light on the mown Grass and fresh dipt Hornbeam Hedges, made even the commonest Objects distinct and cheerfulle; and the Air was soe cleare, we coulde hear the Village Childreh afar off at theire Play. _Rose_ had abundance of delicious new Honey in the Comb, and Bread hot from the Oven, for our earlie Supper. _Dick_ was tempted to stay too late; however, he is oft as late, now, returning from _Audrey Paice_, though my Mother likes it not. _Oct. 15, 1644_. _Rose_ is quite in good Spiritts now, and we goe on most harmoniouslie and happilie. Alle our Tastes are now in common; and I never more enjoyed this Union of Seclusion and Society. Besides, Mr. _Agnew_ is more than commonlie kind, and never speaks sternlie or sharplie to me now. Indeed, this Morning, looking thoughtfullie at me, he sayd, "I know not_, Cousin_, what Change has come over you, but you are now alle that a wise Man coulde love and approve." I sayd, It must be owing then to Dr. _Jeremy Taylor_, who had done me more goode, it woulde seeme, in three Lessons, than he or Mr. _Milton_ coulde imparte in thirty or three hundred. He sayd he was inclined to attribute it to a higher Source than that; and yet, there was doubtlesse a great Knack in teaching, and there was a good deal in liking the Teacher. He had alwaies hearde the Doctor spoken of as a good, pious, and clever Man, though rather too high a Prelatist. I sayd, "There were good Men of alle Sorts: there was Mr. _Milton_, who woulde pull the Church down; there was Mr. _Agnew_, who woulde onlie have it mended; and there was Dr. _Jeremy Taylor_, who was content with it as it stoode." Then _Rose_ askt me of the puritanicall Preachers. Then I showed her how they preached, and made her laugh. But Mr. _Agnew_ woulde not laugh. But I made him laugh at last. Then he was angrie with himself and with me; only not very angry; and sayd, I had a Right to a Name which he knew had beene given me, of "cleaving Mischief." I knew not he knew of it, and was checked, though I laught it off. _Oct. 16, 1644_. Walking together, this Morning, _Rose_ was avised to say, "Did Mr. _Milton_ ever tell you the Adventures of the _Italian_ Lady?" "Rely on it he never did," sayd Mr. _Agnew.--"Milton_ is as modest a Man as ever breathed--alle Men of first class Genius are soe." "What was the Adventure?" I askt, curiouslie. "Why, I neede not tell you, _Moll_, that _John Milton_, as a Youth, was extremelie handsome, even beautifull. His Colour came and went soe like a Girl's, that we of _Christ's_ College used to call him 'the Lady,' and thereby annoy him noe little. One summer Afternoone he and I and young _King_ (_Lycidas_, you know) had started on a country Walk, (the Countrie is not pretty, round _Cambridge_) when we met in with an Acquaintance whom Mr. _Milton_ affected not, soe he sayd he would walk on to the first rising Ground and wait us there. On this rising Ground stood a Tree, beneath which our impatient young Gentleman presentlie cast himself, and, having walked fast, and the Weather being warm, soon falls asleep as sound as a Top. Meantime, _King_ and I quit our Friend and saunter forward pretty easilie. Anon comes up with us a Caroche, with something I know not what of outlandish in its Build; and within it, two Ladies, one of them having the fayrest Face I ever set Eyes on, present Companie duly excepted. The Caroche having passed us, _King_ and I mutuallie express our Admiration, and thereupon, preferring Turf to Dust, got on the other Side the Hedge, which was not soe thick but that we could make out the Caroche, and see the Ladies descend from it, to walk up the Hill. Having reached the Tree, they paused in Surprise at seeing _Milton_ asleep beneath it; and in prettie dumb Shew, which we watcht sharplie, exprest their Admiration of his Appearance and Posture, which woulde have suited an _Arcadian_ well enough. The younger Lady, hastilie taking out a Pencil and Paper, wrote something which she laughinglie shewed her Companion, and then put into the Sleeper's Hand. Thereupon, they got into their Caroche, and drove off. _King_ and I, dying with Curiositie to know what she had writ, soon roused our Friend and possest ourselves of the Secret. The Verses ran thus. . . . Occhi, Stelle mortali, Ministre de miei Mali, Se, chiusi, m' uccidete, Aperti, che farete? "_Milton_ coloured, crumpled them up, and yet put them in his Pocket; then askt us what the Lady was like. And herein lay the Pleasantry of the Affair; for I truly told him she had a Pear-shaped Face, lustrous black Eyes, and a Skin that shewed '_il bruno il bel non toglie_;' whereas, _King_, in his Mischief, drew a fancy Portrait, much liker you, _Moll_, than the Incognita, which hit _Milton's_ Taste soe much better, that he was believed for his Payns; and then he declared that I had beene describing the Duenna! . . . Some Time after, when _Milton_ beganne to talk of visiting _Italy_, we bantered him, and sayd he was going to look for the Incognita. He stoode it well, and sayd, 'Laugh on! do you think I mind you? Not a Bit.' I think he did." Just at this Turn, Mr. _Agnew_ stumbled at something in the long Grass. It proved to be an old, rustic Horse-pistol. His Countenance changed at once from gay to grave. "I thought we had noe such Things hereabouts yet," cried he, viewing it askance.--"I suppose I mighte as well think I had found a Corner of the Land where there was noe originall Sin." And soe, flung it over the Hedge. ----First class Geniuses are alwaies modest, are they?--Then I should say that young _Italian_ Lady's Genius was not of the first Class. _Oct. 19, 1644_. Speaking, to-day, of Mr. _Waller_, whom I had once seen at Uncle _John's_, Mr. _Agnew_ sayd he had obtayned the Reputation of being one of our smoothest Versers, and thereupon brought forth one or two of his small Pieces in Manuscript, which he read to _Rose_ and me. They were addrest to the Lady _Dorothy Sydney_; and certainlie for specious Flatterie I doe not suppose they can be matcht; but there is noe Impress of reall Feeling in them. How diverse from my Husband's Versing! He never writ anie mere Love-verses, indeede, soe far as I know; but how much truer a Sence he hath of what is reallie beautifulle and becoming in a Woman than Mr. _Waller_! The Lady _Alice Egerton_ mighte have beene more justlie proud of the fine Things written _for_ her in _Comus_, than the Lady _Dorothea_ of anie of the fine Things written _of_ her by this courtier-like Poet. For, to say that Trees bend down in homage to a Woman when she walks under them, and that the healing Waters of _Tonbridge_ were placed there by Nature to compensate for the fatal Pride of _Sacharissa_, is soe fullesome and untrue as noe Woman, not devoured by Conceite, coulde endure; whereas, the Check that Villanie is sensible of in the Presence of Virtue, is most nobly, not extravagantlie, exprest by _Comus_. And though my Husband be almost too lavish, even in his short Pieces, of classic Allusion and Personation, yet, like antique Statues and Busts well placed in some statelie Pleasaunce, they are alwaies appropriate and gracefulle, which is more than can be sayd of Mr. _Waller's_ overstrayned Figures and Metaphors. _Oct. 20, 1644_. News from Home: alle well. _Audrey Paice_ on a Visitt there. I hope _Mother_ hath not put her into my Chamber, but I know that she hath sett so manie Trays full of Spearmint, Peppermint, Camomiles, and Poppie-heads in the blue Chamber to dry, that she will not care to move them, nor have the Window opened lest they shoulde be blown aboute. I wish I had turned the Key on my ebony Cabinett. _Oct. 24, 1644_. _Richard_ and _Audrey_ rode over here, and spent a noisie Afternoone. _Rose_ had the Goose dressed which I know she meant to have reserved for to-morrow. _Clover_ was in a Heat, which one would have thoughte he needed not to have beene, with carrying a Lady; but _Audrey_ is heavie. She treats _Dick_ like a boy; and, indeede he is not much more; but he is quite taken up with her. I find she lies in the blue Chamber, which she says smells rarelie of Herbs. They returned not till late, after sundrie Hints from Mr. _Agnew_. _Oct. 27, 1644_. Alas, alas, _Robin's_ Silence is too sorrowfullie explained! He hath beene sent Home soe ill that he is like to die. This Report I have from _Diggory_, just come over to fetch me, with whom I start, soe soone as his Horse is bated. _Lord_, have Mercie on _Robin_. The Children are alle sent away to keep the House quiete. _At Robin's Bedside, Saturday Night_. Oh, woefulle Sight! I had not known that pale Face, had I met it unawares. So thin and wan,--and he hath shot up into a tall Stripling during the last few Months. These two Nights of Watching have tried me sorelie, but I would not be witholden from sitting up with him yet agayn--what and if this Night should be his last? how coulde I forgive myself for sleeping on now and taking my Rest? The first Night, he knew me not; yet it was bitter-sweet to hear him chiding at sweet _Moll_ for not coming. Yesternight he knew me for a While, kissed me, and _fell_ into an heavie Sleepe, with his Hand locked in mine. We hoped the Crisis was come; but 'twas not soe. He raved much of a Man alle in red, riding hard after him. I minded me of those Words, "The Enemy sayd, I will overtake, I will pursue,"--and, noe one being by, save the unconscious Sufferer, I kneeled down beside him, and most earnestlie prayed for his Deliverance from all spirituall Adversaries. When I lookt up, his Eyes, larger and darker than ever, were fixt on me with a strange, wistfulle Stare, but he spake not. From that Moment he was quiete. The Doctor thought him rambling this Morning, though I knew he was not, when he spake of an Angel in a long white Garment watching over him and kneeling by him in the Night. _Sunday Evening_. Poor _Nell_ sitteth up with _Mother_ to-night--right thankfulle is she to find that she can be of anie Use: she says it seems soe strange that she should be able to make any Return for my Kindnesse. I must sleep to-night, that I may watch to-morrow. The Servants are nigh spent, and are besides foolishlie afrayd of Infection. I hope _Rose_ prays for me. Soe drowsie and dulle am I, as scarce to be able to pray for myself. _Monday_. _Rose_ and Mr. _Agnew_ come to abide with us for some Days. How thankfulle am I! Tears have relieved me. _Robin_ worse to-day. _Father_ quite subdued. Mr. _Agnew_ will sit up to-night, and insists on my sleeping. _Crab_ howled under my Window yesternight as he did before my Wedding. I hope there is nothing in it. _Harry_ got up and beat him, and at last put him in the Stable. _Tuesday_. After two Nights' Rest, I feel quite strengthened and restored this Morning. Deare _Rose_ read me to sleep in her low, gentle Voice, and then lay down by my Side, twice stepping into _Robin's_ Chamber during the Night, and bringing me News that all was well. Relieved in Mind, I slept heavilie nor woke till late. Then, returned to the sick Chamber, and found _Rose_ bathing dear _Robin's_ Temples with Vinegar, and changing his Pillow--his thin Hand rested on Mr. _Agnew_, on whom he lookt with a composed, collected Gaze. Slowlie turned his Eyes on me, and faintlie smiled, but spake not. Poor dear _Mother_ is ailing now. I sate with her and _Father_ some Time; but it was a true Relief when _Rose_ took my Place and let me return to the sick Room. _Rose_ hath alreadie made several little Changes for the better; improved the Ventilation of _Robin's_ Chamber, and prevented his hearing soe manie Noises. Alsoe, showed me how to make a pleasant cooling Drink, which he likes better than the warm Liquids, and which she assures me he may take with perfect Safetie. _Same Evening_. _Robin_ vext, even to Tears, because the Doctor forbids the use of his cooling Drink, though it hath certainlie abated the Fever. At his Wish I stept down to intercede with the Doctor, then closetted with my Father, to discourse, as I supposed, of _Robin's_ Symptoms. Insteade of which, found them earnestlie engaged on the never-ending Topick of Cavaliers and Roundheads. I was chafed and cut to the Heart, yet what can poor _Father_ do; he is useless in the Sick-room, he is wearie of Suspense, and 'tis well if publick Affairs can divert him for an odd Half-hour. The Doctor would not hear of _Robin_ taking the cooling Beverage, and warned me that his Death woulde be upon my Head if I permitted him to be chilled: soe what could I doe? Poor _Robin_ very impatient in consequence; and raving towards Midnight. _Rose_ insisted in taking the last Half of my Watch. I know not that I was ever more sorelie exercised than during the first Half of this Night. _Robin_, in his crazie Fit, would leave his Bed, and was soe strong as nearlie to master _Nell_ and me, and I feared I must have called _Richard_. The next Minute he fell back as weak as a Child: we covered him up warm, and he was overtaken either with Stupor or Sleep. Earnestlie did I pray it might be the latter, and conduce to his healing. Afterwards, there being writing Implements at Hand, I wrote a Letter to Mr. _Milton_, which, though the Fancy of sending it soon died away, yet eased my Mind. When not in Prayer, I often find myself silently talking to him. _Wednesday_. Waking late after my scant Night's Rest, I found my Breakfaste neatlie layd out in the little Ante-chamber, to prevent the Fatigue of going down Stairs. A Handfulle of Autumn Flowers beside my Plate, left me in noe Doubt it was _Rose's_ doing; and Mr. _Agnew_ writing at the Window, tolde me he had persuaded my Father to goe to _Shotover_ with _Dick_. Then laying aside his Pen, stept into the Sick-chamber for the latest News, which was good: and, sitting next me, talked of the Progress of _Robin's_ Illness in a grave yet hopefulle Manner; leading, as he chieflie does, to high and unearthlie Sources of Consolation. He advised me to take a Turn in the fresh Ayr, though but as far as the two Junipers, before I entered _Robin's_ Chamber, which, somewhat reluctantlie, I did; but the bright Daylight and warm Sun had no good Effect on my Spiritts: on the Contrarie, nothing in blythe Nature seeming in unison with my Sadnesse, Tears flowed without relieving me. ----What a solemne, pompous Prigge is this Doctor! He cries "humph!" and "aye!" and bites his Nails and screws his Lips together, but I don't believe he understands soe much of Physick, after alle, as Mr. _Agnew_. _Father_ came Home fulle of the Rebels' Doings, but as for me, I shoulde hear them thundering at our Gate with Apathie, except insofar as I feared their distressing _Robin_. _Audrey_ rode over with her Father, this Morn, to make Enquiries. She might have come sooner had she meant to be anie reall Use to a Family she has thought of entering. Had _Rose_ come to our Help as late in the Day, we had been poorlie off. _Thursday_. May _Heaven_ in its Mercy save us from the evil Consequence of this new Mischance!--_Richard_, jealous at being allowed so little Share in nursing _Robin_, whom he sayd he loved as well as anie did, would sit up with him last Night, along with _Mother_. Twice I heard him snoring, and stept in to prevail on him to change Places, but coulde not get him to stir. A third Time he fell asleep, and, it seems, _Mother_ slept too; and _Robin_, in his Fever, got out of Bed and drank near a Quart of colde Water, waking _Dick_ by setting down the Pitcher. Of course the Bustle soon reached my listening Ears. _Dick_, to do him Justice, was frightened enough, and stole away to his Bed without a Word of Defence; but poor _Mother_, who had been equallie off her Watch, made more Noise about it than was good for _Robin_; who, neverthelesse, we having warmlie covered up, burst into a profuse Heat, and fell into a sound Sleep, which hath now holden him manie Hours. Mr. _Agnew_ augureth favourablie of his waking, but we await it in prayerfulle Anxietie. ----The Crisis is past! and the Doctor sayeth he alle along expected it last Night, which I cannot believe, but _Father_ and _Mother_ doe. At alle Events, praised be _Heaven_, there is now hope that deare _Robin_ may recover. _Rose_ and I have mingled Tears, Smiles, and Thankgivings; Mr. _Agnew_ hath expressed Gratitude after a more collected Manner, and endeavoured to check the somewhat ill-governed Expression of Joy throughout the House; warning the Servants, but especiallie _Dick_ and _Harry_, that _Robin_ may yet have a Relapse. With what Transport have I sat beside dear _Robin's_ Bed, returning his fixed, earnest, thankfulle Gaze, and answering the feeble Pressure of his Hand!--Going into the Studdy just now, I found _Father_ crying like a Child--the first Time I have known him give Way to Tears during _Robin's_ Ilnesse. Mr. _Agnew_ presentlie came in, and composed him better than I coulde. _Saturday_. _Robin_ better, though still very weak. Had his Bed made, and took a few Spoonfuls of Broth. _Sunday_. A very different Sabbath from the last. Though _Robin's_ Constitution hath received a Shock it may never recover, his comparative Amendment fills us with Thankfulnesse; and our chastened Suspense hath a sweet Solemnitie and Trustfullenesse in it, which pass Understanding. Mr. _Agnew_ conducted our Devotions. This Morning, I found him praying with _Robin_--I question if it were for the first Time. _Robin_ looking on him with eyes of such sedate Affection! _Thursday_. _Robin_ still progressing. Dear _Rose_ and Mr. _Agnew_ leave us to-morrow, but they will soon come agayn. Oh faithful Friends! * * * * * * _April, 1646_. Can Aniething equall the desperate Ingratitude of the human Heart? Testifie of it, Journall, agaynst me. Here did I, throughout the incessant Cares and Anxieties of _Robin's_ Sicknesse, find, or make Time, for almoste dailie Record of my Trouble; since which, whole Months have passed without soe much as a scrawled Ejaculation of Thankfullenesse that the Sick hath beene made whole. Yet, not that that Thankfullenesse hath beene unfelt, nor, though unwritten, unexprest. Nay, O _Lord_, deeplie, deeplie have I thanked thee for thy tender Mercies. And he healed soe slowlie, that Suspense, as 'twere, wore itself out, and gave Place to a dull, mournful Persuasion that an Hydropsia would waste him away, though more slowlie, yet noe less surelie than the Fever. Soe Weeks lengthened into Months, I mighte well say Years, they seemed soe long! and stille he seemed to neede more Care and Tendernesse; till, just as he and I had learnt to say, "Thy Will, O _Lord_, be done," he began to gain Flesh, his craving Appetite moderated, yet his Food nourished him, and by _God's_ Blessing he recovered! During that heavie Season of Probation, our Hearts were unlocked, and we spake oft to one another of Things in Heaven and Things in Earth. Afterwards, our mutuall Reserves returned, and _Robin_, methinks, became shyer than before, but there can never cease to be a dearer Bond between us. Now we are apart, I aim to keep him mindfulle of the high and holie Resolutions he formed in his Sicknesse; and though he never answers these Portions of my Letters, I am avised to think he finds them not displeasing. Now that _Oxford_ is like to be besieged, my Life is more confined than ever; yet I cannot, and will not leave _Father_ and _Mother_, even for the _Agnews_, while they are soe much harassed. This Morning, my Father hath received a Letter from Sir _Thomas Glemham_, requiring a larger Quantitie of winnowed Wheat, than, with alle his Loyaltie, he likes to send. _April 23, 1646_. _Ralph Hewlett_ hath just looked in to say, his Father and Mother have in Safetie reached _London_, where he will shortlie joyn them, and to ask, is there anie Service he can doe me? Ay, truly; one that I dare not name--he can bring me Word of Mr. _Milton_, of his Health, of his Looks, of his Speech, and whether . . . _Ralph_ shall be noe Messenger of mine. _April 24, 1646_. Talking of Money Matters this Morning, _Mother_ sayd Something that brought Tears into mine Eyes. She observed, that though my Husband had never beene a Favourite of hers, there was one Thing wherein she must say he had behaved generously: he had never, to this Day, askt _Father_ for the 500 pounds which had brought him, in the first Instance, to _Forest Hill_, (he having promised old Mr. _Milton_ to try to get the Debt paid,) and the which, on his asking for my Hand, _Father_ tolde him shoulde be made over sooner or later, in lieu of Dower. Did _Rose_ know the Bitter-sweet she was imparting to me, when she gave me, by Stealth as 'twere, the latelie publisht Volume of my Husband's _English_ Versing? It hath beene my Companion ever since; for I had perused the _Comus_ but by Snatches, under the Disadvantage of crabbed Manuscript. This Morning, to use his owne deare Words:-- I sat me down to watch, upon a Bank, With Ivy canopied, and interwove With flaunting Honeysuckle, and beganne, Wrapt in a pleasing Fit of Melancholic, To meditate. The Text of my Meditation was this, drawne from the same loved Source:-- This I hold firm: Virtue may be assayled, but never hurt, Surprised by unjust Force, but not enthralled: Yea, even that which Mischief meant most Harm, Shall, in the happy Trial, prove most Glory. But who hath such Virtue? have I? hath he? No, we have both gone astray, and done amiss, and wrought sinfullie; but I worst, I first, therefore more neede that I humble myself, and pray for both. There is one, more unhappie, perhaps, than either. The _King_, most misfortunate Gentleman! who knoweth not which Way to turn, nor whom to trust. Last Time I saw him, methought never was there a Face soe full of Woe. _May 6, 1646_. The _King_ hath escaped! He gave Orders overnight at alle the Gates, for three Persons to passe; and, accompanied onlie by Mr. _Ashburnham_, and Mr. _Hurd_, rode forthe at Nightfalle, towards _London_. Sure, he will not throw himselfe into the Hands of Parliament? _Mother_ is affrighted beyond Measure at the near Neighbourhood of _Fairfax's_ Army, and entreats _Father_ to leave alle behind, and flee with us into the City. It may yet be done; and we alle share her Feares. _Saturday Even_. Packing up in greate haste, after a confused Family Council, wherein some fresh Accounts of the Rebels' Advances, broughte in by _Diggory_, made my Father the sooner consent to a stolen Flight into _Oxford_, _Diggory_ being left behind in Charge. Time of Flight, to-morrow after Dark, the _Puritans_ being busie at theire Sermons. The better the Day, the better the Deede.--_Heaven_ make it soe! _Tuesday_. _Oxford_; in most most confined and unpleasant Lodgings; but noe Matter, manie better and richer than ourselves fare worse, and our King hath not where to lay his Head. 'Tis sayd he hath turned his Course towards _Scotland_. There are Souldiers in this House, whose Noise distracts us. Alsoe, a poor Widow Lady, whose Husband hath beene slayn in these Wars. The Children have taken a feverish Complaynt, and require incessant tending. Theire Beds are far from cleane, in too little Space, and ill aired. _May 20, 1646_. The Widow Lady goes about visiting the Sick, and woulde faine have my Companie. The Streets have displeased me, being soe fulle of Men; however, in a close Hoode I have accompanied her sundrie Times. 'Tis a good Soul, and full of pious Works and Alms-deedes. _May 27, 1646_. _Diggory_ hath found his Way to us, alle dismaied, and bringing Dismay with him, for the Rebels have taken and ransacked our House, and turned him forthe. "A Plague on these Wars!" as _Father_ says. What are we to doe, or how live, despoyled of alle? _Father_ hath lost, one Way and another, since the Civil War broke out, three thousand Pounds, and is now nearlie beggared. _Mother_ weeps bitterlie, and _Father's_ Countenance hath fallen more than ever I saw it before. "Nine Children!" he exclaimed, just now; "and onlie one provided for!" His Eye fell upon me for a Moment, with less Tendernesse than usuall, as though he wished me in _Aldersgate Street_. I'm sure I wish I were there,--not because _Father_ is in Misfortune; oh, no. _June, 1646_. The Parliament requireth our unfortunate King to issue Orders to this and alle his other Garrisons, commanding theire Surrender; and _Father_, finding this is likelie to take Place forthwith, is busied in having himself comprised within the Articles of Surrender. 'Twill be hard indeed, shoulde this be denied. His Estate lying in the King's Quarters, howe coulde he doe less than adhere to his Majesty's Partie during this unnaturall War? I am sure _Mother_ grudged the Royalists everie Goose and Turkey they had from our Yard. _June 27, 1646_. Praised be _Heaven_, deare _Father_ hath just received Sir _Thomas Fairfax's_ Protection, empowering him quietlie and without let to goe forthe "with Servants, Horses, Arms, Goods, etc." to "_London_ or elsewhere," whithersoever he will. And though the Protection extends but over six Months, at the Expiry of which Time, _Father_ must take Measures to embark for some Place of Refuge beyond Seas, yet who knows what may turn up in those six Months! The King may enjoy his Owne agayn. Meantime, we immediatelie leave _Oxford_. _Forest Hill_. At Home agayn; and what a Home! Everiething to seeke, everiething misplaced, broken, abused, or gone altogether! The Gate off its Hinges; the Stone Balls of the Pillars overthrowne, the great Bell stolen, the clipt Junipers grubbed up, the Sun-diall broken! Not a Hen or Chicken, Duck or Duckling, left! _Crab_ half-starved, and soe glad to see us, that he dragged his Kennel after him. _Daisy_ and _Blanch_ making such piteous Moans at the Paddock Gate, that I coulde not bear it, but helped _Lettice_ to milk them. Within Doors, everie Room smelling of Beer and Tobacco; Cupboards broken upon, etc. On my Chamber Floor, a greasy steeple-crowned Hat! Threw it forthe from the Window with a Pair of Tongs. _Mother_ goes about the House weeping. _Father_ sits in his broken Arm-chair, the Picture of Disconsolateness. I see the _Agnews_, true Friends! riding hither; and with them a Third, who, methinks, is _Rose's_ Brother _Ralph_. _London. St. Martin's le Grand_. Trembling, weeping, hopefulle, dismaied, here I sit in mine Uncle's hired House, alone in a Crowd, scared at mine owne Precipitation, readie to wish myselfe back, unable to resolve, to reflect, to pray . . . _Twelve at Night_. Alle is silent; even in the latelie busie Streets. Why art thou cast down, my Heart? why art thou disquieted within me? Hope thou stille in the _Lord_, for he is the Joy and Light of thy Countenance. Thou hast beene long of learning him to be such. Oh, forget not thy Lesson now! Thy best Friend hath sanctioned, nay, counselled this Step, and overcome alle Obstacles, and provided the Means of this Journey; and to-morrow at Noone, if Events prove not cross, I shall have Speech of him whom my Soul loveth. To-night, let me watch, fast, and pray. _Friday; at Night_. How awfulle it is to beholde a Man weepe! mine owne Tears, when I think thereon, well forthe . . . _Rose_ was a true Friend when she sayd, "Our prompt Affections are oft our wise Counsellors." Soe, she suggested and advised alle; wrung forthe my Father's Consent, and sett me on my Way, even putting Money in my Purse. Well for me, had she beene at my Journey's End as well as its Beginning. 'Stead of which, here was onlie mine Aunt; a slow, timid, uncertayn Soule, who proved but a broken Reed to lean upon. Soe, alle I woulde have done arighte went crosse, the Letter never delivered, the Message delayed till he had left Home, soe that methought I shoulde goe crazie. While the Boy, stammering in his lame Excuses, bore my chafed Reproaches the more humblie because he saw he had done me some grievous Hurt, though he knew not what, a Voice in the adjacent Chamber in Alternation with mine Uncle's, drove the Blood of a suddain from mine Heart, and then sent it back with impetuous Rush, for I knew the Accents right well. Enters mine Aunt, alle flurried, and hushing her Voice. "Oh, _Niece_, he whom you wot of is here, but knoweth not you are at Hand, nor in _London_. Shall I tell him?" But I gasped, and held her back by her Skirts; then, with a suddain secret Prayer, or Cry, or maybe, Wish, as 'twere, darted up unto Heaven for Assistance, I took noe Thought what I shoulde speak when confronted with him, but opening the Door between us, he then standing with his Back towards it, rushed forth and to his Feet--there sank, in a Gush of Tears; for not one Word coulde I proffer, nor soe much as look up. A quick Hand was laid on my Head, on my Shoulder--as quicklie removed . . . and I was aware of the Door being hurriedlie opened and shut, and a Man hasting forthe; but 'twas onlie mine Uncle. Meantime, my Husband, who had at first uttered a suddain Cry or Exclamation, had now left me, sunk on the Ground as I was, and retired a Space, I know not whither, but methinks he walked hastilie to and fro. Thus I remained, agonized in Tears, unable to recal one Word of the humble Appeal I had pondered on my Journey, or to have spoken it, though I had known everie Syllable by Rote; yet not wishing myself, even in that Suspense, Shame, and Anguish, elsewhere than where I was cast, at mine Husband's Feet. Or ever I was aware, he had come up, and caught me to his Breast: then, holding me back soe as to look me in the Face, sayd, in Accents I shall never forget, "Much I coulde say to reproach, but will not! Henceforth, let us onlie recall this darke Passage of our deeplie sinfulle Lives, to quicken us to _God's_ Mercy, in affording us this Re-union. Let it deepen our Penitence, enhance our Gratitude." Then, suddainlie covering up his Face with his Hands, he gave two or three Sobs; and for some few Minutes coulde not refrayn himself; but, when at length he uncovered his Eyes and looked down on me with Goodness and Sweetnesse, 'twas like the Sun's cleare shining after Raine. . . . Shall I now destroy the disgracefulle Records of this blotted Book? I think not; for 'twill quicken me perhaps, as my Husband sayth, to "deeper Penitence and stronger Gratitude," shoulde I henceforthe be in Danger of settling on the Lees, and forgetting the deepe Waters which had nearlie closed over mine Head. At present, I am soe joyfulle, soe light of Heart under the Sense of Forgivenesse, that it seemeth as though Sorrow coulde lay hold of me noe more; and yet we are still, as 'twere, disunited for awhile; for my Husband is agayn shifting House, and preparing to move his increased Establishment into _Barbican_, where he hath taken a goodly Mansion; and, until it is ready, I am to abide here. I might pleasantlie cavill at this; but, in Truth, will cavill at Nothing now. I am, by this, full persuaded that _Ralph's_ Tale concerning Miss _Davies_ was a false Lie; though, at the Time, supposing it to have some Colour, it inflamed my Jealousie noe little. The cross Spight of that Youth led, under his Sister's Management, to an Issue his Malice never forecast; and now, though I might come at the Truth for Inquiry, I will not soe much as even soil my Mind with thinking of it agayn; for there is that Truth in mine Husband's Eyes, which woulde silence the Slanders of a hundred Liars. Chafed, irritated, he has beene, soe as to excite the sarcastic Constructions of those who wish him evill; but his Soul, and his Heart, and his Mind require a Flighte beyond _Ralph's_ Witt to comprehende; and I know and feel that they are _mine_. He hath just led in the two _Phillips's_ to me, and left us together. _Jack_ lookt at me askance, and held aloof; but deare little _Ned_ threw his Arms about me and wept, and I did weep too; seeing the which, _Jack_ advanced, gave me his Hand, and finally his Lips, then lookt at much as to say, "Now, Alle's right." They are grown, and are more comely than heretofore, which, in some Measure, is owing to theire Hair being noe longer cut strait and short after the Puritanicall Fashion I soe hate, but curled like their Uncle's. I have writ, not the Particulars, but the Issue of my Journey, unto _Rose_, whose loving Heart, I know, yearns for Tidings. Alsoe, more brieflie unto my Mother, who loveth not Mr. _Milton_. _Barbican, September, 1646_. In the Night-season, we take noe Rest; we search out our Hearts, and commune with our Spiritts, and checque our Souls' Accounts, before we dare court our Sleep; but in the Day of Happinesse we cut shorte our Reckonings; and here am I, a joyfulle Wife, too proud and busie amid my dailie Cares to have Leisure for more than a brief Note in my _Diarium_, as _Ned_ woulde call it. 'Tis a large House, with more Rooms than we can fill, even with the _Phillips's_ and their Scholar-mates, olde Mr. _Milton_, and my Husband's Books to boot. I feel Pleasure in being housewifelie; and reape the Benefit of alle that I learnt of this Sorte at _Sheepscote_. Mine Husband's Eyes follow me with Delight; and once with a perplexed yet pleased Smile, he sayd to me, "Sweet Wife, thou art strangelie altered; it seems as though I have indeede lost 'sweet _Moll_' after alle!" Yes, I am indeed changed; more than he knows or coulde believe. And he is changed too. With Payn I perceive a more stern, severe Tone occasionallie used by him; doubtlesse the Cloke assumed by his Griefe to hide the Ruin I had made within. Yet a more geniall Influence is fast melting this away. Agayn, I note with Payn that he complayns much of his Eyes. At first, I observed he rubbed them oft, and dared not mention it, believing that his Tears on Account of me, sinfulle Soule! had made them smart. Soe, perhaps, they did in the first Instance, for it appears they have beene ailing ever since the Year I left him; and Overstuddy, which my Presence mighte have prevented, hath conduced to the same ill Effect. Whenever he now looks at a lighted Candle, he sees a Sort of Iris alle about it; and, this Morning, he disturbed me by mentioning that a total Darknesse obscured everie Thing on the left Side of his Eye, and that he even feared, sometimes, he might eventuallie lose the Sight of both. "In which Case," he cheerfully sayd, "you, deare Wife, must become my Lecturer as well as Amanuensis, and content yourself to read to me a World of crabbed Books, in Tongues that are not nor neede ever be yours, seeing that a Woman has ever enough of her own!" Then, more pensivelie, he added, "I discipline and tranquillize my Mind on this Subject, ever remembering, when the Apprehension afflicts me, that, as Man lives not by Bread alone, but by everie Word that proceeds out of the Mouth of _God_, so Man likewise lives not by _Sight_ alone, but by Faith in the Giver of Sight. As long, therefore, as it shall please Him to prolong, however imperfectlie, this precious Gift, soe long will I lay up Store agaynst the Days of Darknesse, which may be many; and whensoever it shall please Him to withdrawe it from me altogether, I will cheerfully bid mine Eyes keep Holiday, and place my Hand trustfullie in His, to be led whithersoever He will, through the Remainder of Life." A Honeymoon cannot for ever last; nor Sense of Danger, when it long hath past;--but one little Difference from out manie greater Differences between my late happie Fortnighte in _St. Martin's-le-Grand_, and my present dailie Course in _Barbican_, hath marked the Distinction between Lover and Husband. There it was "sweet _Moll_," "my Heart's Life of Life," "my dearest cleaving Mischief;" here 'tis onlie "Wife," "Mistress _Milton_," or at most "deare or sweet Wife." This, I know, is masterfulle and seemly. Onlie, this Morning, chancing to quote one of his owne Lines, These Things may startle well, but not astounde,-- he sayd, in a Kind of Wonder, "Why, _Moll_, whence had you that?--Methought you hated Versing, as you used to call it. When learnt you to love it?" I hung my Head in my old foolish Way, and answered, "Since I learnt to love the Verser." "Why, this is the best of Alle!" he hastilie cried, "Can my sweet Wife be indeede Heart of my Heart and Spirit of my Spirit? I lost, or drove away a Child, and have found a Woman." Thereafter, he less often wifed me, and I found I was agayn sweet _Moll_. This Afternoon, _Christopher Milton_ lookt in on us. After saluting me with the usuall Mixture of Malice and Civilitie in his Looks, he fell into easie Conversation; and presentlie says to his Brother quietlie enough, "I saw a curious Pennyworth at a Book-stall as I came along this Morning." "What was that?" says my Husband, brightening up. "It had a long Name," says _Christopher_,--"I think it was called _Tetrachordon_." My Husband cast at me a suddain, quick Look, but I did not soe much as change Colour; and quietlie continued my Sewing. "I wonder," says he, after a Pause, "that you did not invest a small Portion of your Capitall in the Work, as you 'ay 'twas soe greate a Bargain. However, Mr. _Kit_, let me give you one small Hint with alle the goode Humour imaginable; don't take Advantage of our neare and deare Relation to make too frequent Opportunities of saying to me Anything that woulde certainlie procure for another Man a Thrashing!" Then, after a short Silence betweene Alle, he suddainlie burst out laughing, and cried, "I know 'tis on the Stalk, I've seene it, _Kit_, myself! Oh, had you seene, as I did, the Blockheads poring over the Title, and hammering at it while you might have walked to _Mile End_ and back!" "That's Fame, I suppose," says _Christopher_ drylie; and then goes off to talk of some new Exercise of the Press-licenser's Authoritie, which he seemed to approve, but it kindled my Husband in a Minute. "What Folly! what Nonsense!" cried he, smiting the Table; "these _Jacks_ in Office sometimes devise such senselesse Things that I really am ashamed of being of theire Party. Licence, indeed! their Licence! I suppose they will shortlie license the Lengthe of _Moll's_ Curls, and regulate the Colour of her Hoode, and forbid the Larks to sing within Sounde of _Bow Bell_, and the Bees to hum o' _Sundays_. Methoughte I had broken _Mabbot's_ Teeth two Years agone; but I must bring forthe a new Edition of my _Areopagitica_; and I'll put your Name down, _Kit_, for a hundred Copies!" _October, 1646_. Though a rusticall Life hath ever had my Suffrages, Nothing can be more pleasant than our regular Course. We rise at five or sooner: while my Husband combs his Hair, he commonly hums or sings some Psalm or Hymn, versing it, maybe, as he goes on. Being drest, _Ned_ reads him a Chapter in the _Hebrew_ Bible. With _Ned_ stille at his Knee, and me by his Side, he expounds and improves the Same; then, after a shorte, heartie Prayer, releases us both. Before I have finished my Dressing, I hear him below at his Organ, with the two Lads, who sing as well as Choristers, hymning Anthems and _Gregorian_ Chants, now soaring up to the Clouds, as 'twere, and then dying off as though some wide echoing Space lay betweene us. I usuallie find Time to tie on my Hoode and slip away to the Herb-market for a Bunch of fresh Radishes or Cresses, a Sprig of Parsley, or at the leaste a Posy, to lay on his Plate. A good wheaten Loaf, fresh Butter and Eggs, and a large Jug of Milk, compose our simple Breakfast; for he likes not, as my Father, to see Boys hacking a huge Piece of Beef, nor cares for heavie feeding, himself. Onlie, olde Mr. _Milton_ sometimes takes a Rasher of toasted Bacon, but commonly, a Basin of Furmity, which I prepare more to his Minde than the Servants can. After Breakfast, I well know the Boys' Lessons will last till Noone. I therefore goe to my Closett Duties after my _Forest Hill_ Fashion; thence to Market, buy what I neede, come Home, look to my Maids, give forthe needfulle Stores, then to my Needle, my Books, or perchance to my Lute, which I woulde faine play better. From twelve to one is the Boys' Hour of Pastime; and it may generallie be sayd, my Husband's and mine too. He draws aside the green Curtain,--for we sit mostly in a large Chamber shaped like the Letter T, and thus divided while at our separate Duties: my End is the pleasantest, has the Sun most upon it, and hath a Balcony overlooking a Garden. At one, we dine; always on simple, plain Dishes, but drest with Neatnesse and Care. Olde Mr. _Milton_ sits at my right Hand and says Grace; and, though growing a little deaf, enters into alle the livelie Discourse at Table. He loves me to help him to the tenderest, by Reason of his Losse of Teeth. My Husband careth not to sitt over the Wine; and hath noe sooner finished the Cheese and Pippins than he reverts to the Viol or Organ, and not onlie sings himself, but will make me sing too, though he sayth my Voice is better than my Ear. Never was there such a tunefulle Spiritt. He alwaies tears himself away at laste, as with a Kind of Violence, and returns to his Books at six o' the Clock. Meantime, his old Father dozes, and I sew at his Side. From six to eight, we are seldom without Friends, chance Visitants, often scholarlike and witty, who tell us alle the News, and remain to partake a light Supper. The Boys enjoy this Season as much as I doe, though with Books before them, their Hands over their Ears, pretending to con the Morrow's Tasks. If the Guests chance to be musicalle, the Lute and Viol are broughte forthe, to alternate with Roundelay and Madrigal: the old Man beating Time with his feeble Fingers, and now and then joining with his quavering Voice. (By the way, he hath not forgotten, to this Hour, my imputed Crime of losing that Song by _Harry Lawes_: my Husband takes my Part, and sayth it will turn up some Day when leaste expected, like _Justinian's Pandects_.) _Hubert_ brings him his Pipe and a Glass of Water, and then I crave his Blessing and goe to Bed; first, praying ferventlie for alle beneathe this deare Roof, and then for alle at _Sheepscote_ and _Forest Hill_. On Sabbaths, besides the publick Ordinances of Devotion, which I cannot, with alle my striving, bring myself to love like the Services to which I have beene accustomed, we have much Reading, Singing, and Discoursing among ourselves. The Maids sing, the Boys sing, _Hubert_ sings, olde Mr. _Milton_ sings; and trulie with soe much of it, I woulde sometimes as lief have them quiete. The _Sheepscote_ Sundays suited me better. The Sabbath Exercise of the Boys is to read a Chapter in the _Greek_ Testament, heare my Husband expounde the same; and write out a System of Divinitie as he dictates to them, walking to and fro. In listening thereto, I find my Pleasure and Profitt. I have alsoe my owne little Catechising, after a humbler Sorte, in the Kitchen, and some poore Folk to relieve and console, with my Husband's Concurrence and Encouragement. Thus, the Sabbath is devoutlie and happilie passed. My Husband alsoe takes, once in a Fortnighte or soe, what he blythelie calls "a gaudy Day," equallie to his owne Content, the Boys', and mine. On these Occasions, it is my Province to provide colde Fowls or Pigeon Pie, which _Hubert_ carries, with what else we neede, to the Spot selected for our Camp Dinner. Sometimes we take Boat to _Richmond_ or _Greenwich_. Two young Gallants, Mr. _Alphrey_ and Mr. _Miller_, love to joyn our Partie, and toil at the Oar, or scramble up the Hills, as merrilie as the Boys. I must say they deal savagelie with the Pigeon Pie afterwards. They have as wild Spiritts as our _Dick_ and _Harry_, but withal a most wonderfull Reverence for my Husband, whom they courte to read and recite, and provoke to pleasant Argument, never prolonged to Wearinesse, and seasoned with Frolic Jest and Witt. Olde Mr. _Milton_ joyns not these Parties. I leave him alwaies to _Dolly's_ Care, firste providing for him a Sweetbread or some smalle Relish, such as he loves. He is in Bed ere we return, which is oft by Moonlighte. How soone must Smiles give Way to Tears! Here is a Letter from deare _Mother_, taking noe Note of what I write to her, and for good Reason, she is soe distraught at her owne and deare _Father's_ ill Condition. The Rebels (I must call them such,) have soe stript and opprest them, they cannot make theire House tenantable; nor have Aught to feede on, had they e'en a whole Roof over theire Heads. The Neighbourhoode is too hot to holde them; olde Friends cowardlie and suspicious, olde and new Foes in League together. Leave _Oxon_ they must; but where to goe? _Father_, despite his broken Health and Hatred of the Foreigner, must needes depart beyond Seas; at leaste within the six Months; but how, with an emptie Purse, make his Way in a strange Land, with a Wife and seven Children at his Heels? Soe ends _Mother_ with a "_Lord_ have Mercy upon us!" as though her House were as surelie doomed to destruction as if it helde the Plague. Mine Eyes were yet swollen with Tears, when my Husband stept in. He askt, "What ails you, precious Wife?" I coulde but sigh, and give him the Letter. Having read the Same, he says, "But what, my dearest? Have we not ample Room here for them alle? I speak as to Generalls, you must care for Particulars, and stow them as you will. There are plenty of small Rooms for the Boys; but, if your Father, being infirm, needes a Ground-floor Chamber, you and I will mount aloft." I coulde but look my Thankfullenesse and kiss his Hand. "Nay," he added, with increasing Gentlenesse, "think not I have seene your Cares for my owne Father without loving and blessing you. Let Mr. _Powell_ come and see us happie; it may tend to make him soe. Let him and his abide with us, at the leaste, till the Spring; his Lads will studdy and play with mine, your Mother will help you in your Housewiferie, the two olde Men will chirp together beside the _Christmasse_ Hearth; and, if I find thy Weeklie Bills the heavier 'twill be but to write another Book, and make a better Bargain for it than I did for the last. We will use Hospitalitie without grudging; and, as for your owne Increase of Cares, I suppose 'twill be but to order two Legs of Mutton insteade of one!" And soe, with a Laugh, left me, most joyfulle, happy Wife! to drawe Sweete out of Sowre, Delighte out of Sorrowe; and to summon mine owne Kindred aboute me, and wipe away theire Tears, bid them eat, drink, and be merry, and shew myselfe to them, how proud, how cherished a Wife! Surelie my Mother wille learne to love _John Milton_ at last! If she doth not, this will be my secret Crosse, for 'tis hard to love dearlie two Persons who esteeme not one another. But she will, she must, not onlie respect him for his Uprightnesse and Magnanimitie, coupled with what himselfe calls "an honest Haughtinesse and Self-esteeme," but _like_ him for his kind and equall Temper, (_not_ "harsh and crabbed," as I have hearde her call it,) his easie Flow of Mirthe, his Manners, unaffectedlie cheerfulle; his Voice, musicall; his Person, beautifull; his Habitt, gracefull; his Hospitalitie, naturall to him; his Purse, Countenance, Time, Trouble, at his Friend's Service; his Devotion, humble; his Forgivenesse, heavenlie! May it please _God_, that my Mother shall like _John Milton_! . . . DEBORAH'S DIARY A FRAGMENT _Bunhill Fields, Feb. 17, 1665_. . . . Something geniall and soothing beyond ordinarie in the Warmth and fitfulle Lighte of the Fire, made us delaye, I know not how long, to trim the Evening Lamp, and sitt muzing in Idlenesse about the Hearth; _Mary_ revolving her Thumbs and staring at the Embers; _Anne_ quite in the Shadowe, with her Arms behind her Head agaynst the Wall; Father in his tall Arm-chair, quite uprighte, as his Fashion is when very thoughtfulle; I on the Cushion at his Feet, with mine Head on's Knee and mine Eyes on his Shadowe on the Wall, which, as it happened, shewed in colossal Proportions, while ours were like Pigmies. Alle at once he exclaims, "We all seem very comfortable--I think we shoulde reward ourselves with some Egg-flip!" And then offered us Pence for our Thoughts. _Anne_ would not tell hers; _Mary_ owned she had beene trying to account for the Deficiencie of a Groat in her housekeeping Purse; and I contest to such a Medley, that Father sayd I deserved _Anne's_ Penny in addition to mine own, for my Strength of Mind in submitting such a Farrago of Nonsense to the Ridicule of my Friends. Soe then I bade for his Thoughts, and he sayd he had beene questioning the Cricket on the Hearth, upon the Extinction of the Fairies; and I askt, Did anie believe in 'em now? and he made Answer, Oh, yes, he had known a Serving-Wench in Oxon depone she had beene nipped and haled by 'em; and, of Crickets, he sayd he had manie Times seene an old Wife in _Buckinghamshire_, who was soe pestered by one, that she cried, "I can't heare myself talk! I'd as lief heare Nought as heare thee;" soe poured a Kettle of boiling Water into the Cranny wherein the harmlesse Creature lay, and scalded it to Death; and, the next Day, became as deaf as a Stone, and remained soe ever after, a Monument of God's Displeasure, at her destroying one of the most innocent of His Creatures. After this, he woulde tell us of this and that worn-our [Transcriber's note: worn-out?] Superstition, as o' the Friar's Lantern, and of Lob-lie-by-the-Fire, untill _Mary_, who affects not the Unreall, went off to make the Flip. _Anne_ presentlie exclaimed, "Father! when you sayd-- 'The Shepherds on the Lawn, Or e'er the Point of Dawn, Sat simply chatting in a rustic Row, Full little thought they then That the mighty _Pan_ Was kindly come to live with them, below,' whom meant you by _Pan_? Sure, you would not call our Lord by the Name of a heathen Deity?" "Well, Child," returns Father, "you know He calls Himself a Shepherd, and was in truth what _Pan_ was onlie supposed to be, the God of Shepherds; albeit _Lavaterus_, in his Treatise _De Lemuribus_, doth indeede tell us, that by _Pan_ some understoode noe other than the great _Sathanas_, whose Kingdom being overturned at _Christ's_ Coming, his inferior Demons expelled, and his Oracles silenced, he is some sort was himself overthrown. And the Story goes, that, about the Time of our Lord's Passion, certain Persons sailing from _Italy_ to _Cyprus_, and passing by certayn Islands, did heare a Voice calling aloud, _Thamus, Thamus_, which was the Name of the Ship's Pilot, who, making Answer to the unseene Appellant, was bidden, when he came to _Palodas_, to tell that the great God _Pan_ was dead; which he doubting to doe, yet for that when he came to _Palodas_, there suddainlie was such a Calm of Wind that the Ship stoode still in the Sea, he was constrayned to cry aloud that _Pan_ was dead; whereupon there were hearde such piteous Shrieks and Cries of invisible Beings, echoing from haunted Spring and Dale, as ne'er smote human Ears before nor since: Nymphs and Wood-Gods, or they that had passed for such, breaking up House and retreating to their own Place. I warrant you, there was Trouble among the Sylvan People that Day--Satyrs hirsute and cloven-footed Fauns. ". . . Many a Time and oft have _Charles Diodati_ and I discust fond Legends, such as this, over our Winter Hearth; with our Chestnuts blackening and crackling on the Hob, and our o'er-ripe Pears sputtering in the Fire, while the Wind raved without among the creaking Elms. . . ." Father still hammering on old Times, and his owne young Days, I beganne to frame unto myself an Image of what he might then have beene; piecing it out by Help of his Picture on the Wall; but coulde get no cleare Apprehension of my Mother, she dying soe untimelie. Askt him, Was she beautifulle? He sayth, Oh yes, and clouded over o' the suddain; then went over her Height, Size, and Colour, etc.; dwelt on the Generalls of personal Beauty, how it shadowed forthe the Mind, was desirable or dangerous, etc. On dispersing for the Night, he noted, somewhat hurt, _Anne's_ abrupt Departure without kissing his Hand, and sayd, "Is she sulky or unwell?" In our Chamber, found her alreadie half undrest, a reading of her Bible; sayd, "Father tooke your briefe Good-nighte amisse." She made Answer shortlie, "Well, what neede to marvell; he cannot put his Arm about me without being reminded how mis-shapen I am." Poor _Nan_! we had been speaking of faire Proportions, and had thoughtlessly cut her to the Quick; yet Father _knoweth_, though he cannot _see_, that her Face is that of an Angel. About One o' the Clock, was rouzed (though _Anne_ continued sleeping soundly) by hearing Father give his three Signal-taps agaynst the Wall. Half drest, and with bare Feet thrust into Slippers, I hastily ran in to him; he cried, "_Deb_, for the Love of Heaven get Pen and Paper to sett Something down." I replied, "Sure, Father, you gave me quite a Turn; I thought you were ill," and sett to my Task, marvellous ill-conditioned, expecting some Crotchet had taken him concerning his Will. 'Stead of which, out comes a Volley of Poetry he had lain a brewing till his Brain was like to burst; and soe I, in my thin Night Cotes, must needs jot it all down, for Feare it should ooze away before Morning. Sure, I thought he never woulde get to the End, and really feared at firste he was crazing a little, but indeede all Poets doe when the Vein is on 'em. At length, with a Sigh of Relief, he says, "That will doe--Good-night, little Maid." I coulde not help saying, "'Twas a lucky Thing for you, Father, that Step-mother was from Home;" he laught, drew me to him, kissed me, and sayd, "Why, your Face is quite cold--are your Feet unslippered?" "Unstockinged," I replyed. "I am quite concerned I knew it not sooner," he rejoyned, in an Accent of such Kindnesse, that all my Vexation melted away, and I e'en protested I did not mind it a Bit. "Since it is soe," quoth he, "I shall the less mind having Recourse to you agayn; onlie I must insist on your taking Care to wrap yourself up more warmly, since you need not feare my being ill." I bit my Lip, and onlie saying Good-night, stole off to my warm Bed. Returning from Morning Prayers with _Anne_ this Forenoon, I found _Mary_ mending a Pen with the utmost Imperturbabilitie, and Father with a Heat-spot on his Cheek, which betraied some Inquietation. Being presentlie alone with him, "_Mary_ is irretrievably heavy," sighs he, "she would let the finest Thought escape one while she is blowing her Nose or brushing up the Cinders. I am confident she has beene writing Nonsense even now--Do run through it for me, _Deb_, and lett me heare what it is." I went on, enough to his Satisfaction, till coming to "Bring to their Sweetness no Sobriety." "Sobriety?" interrupted he, "Satiety, Satiety! the Blockhead!--and that I should live to call a Woman soe.--Sobriety, indeede! poor _Mary_, her Wits must have been wool-gathering. 'Bring to their Sweetness no Sobriety!' What Meaning coulde she possibly affix to such Folly?" "Sure, Father," sayd I, "here's Enough that she could affix no Meaning to, nor I neither, without your condescending to explayn it--Cycle, Epicycle, nocturnal Rhomb." "Well, well," returned he, beginning to smile, "'twas unlikely she shoulde be with such Discourse delighted. Not capable, alas! poor _Mary's_ Ear, of what is high. And yet, thy Mother, Child, woulde have stretched up towards Truths, though beyond her Reach, yet to the inquiring Mind offering rich Repast. And now write Satiety for Sobriety, if you love me." While erasing the obnoxious Word, I cried, "Dear Father, pray answer me one Question--What is a Rhomb?" "A Rhomb, Child?" repeated he, laughing, "why, a Parallelogram or quadrangular Figure, consisting of parallel Lines, with two acute and two obtuse Angles, and formed by two equal and righte Cones, joyned together at their Base! There, are you anie wiser now? No, little Maid, 'tis best for such as you Not with perplexing Thoughts To interrupt the Sweet of Life, from which God hath bid dwell far off all anxious Cares, And not molest us, unless we ourselves Seek them, with wandering Thoughts and Notions vain.'" _April 19, 1665_. I heartilie wish our Stepmother were back, albeit we are soe comfortable without her! _Mary_, taking the Maids at unawares last Night, found a strange Man in the Kitchen. Words ensued; he slunk off like a Culprit, which lookt not well, while _Betty Fisher_, brazening it out, woulde have at firste that he was her Brother, then her Cousin, and ended by vowing to be revenged on _Mary_ when she lookt not for it. I would have had _Mary_ speak to Father, but she will not; perhaps soe best. _Polly_ is in the Sulks to Daye, as well as _Betty_, saying, "As well live in a Nunnerie." _April 20, 1665_. When the Horse is stolen, shut the Stable Door. _Mary_ locked the lower Doors, and brought up the Keys herselfe, yestereven at Duske. Anon dropped in Doctor _Paget_, Mr. _Skinner_, and Uncle _Dick_, soe that we had quite a merrie Party. Dr. _Paget_ sayd how that another Case of the Plague had occurred in _Long Acre_; howbeit, this onlie makes three, soe that we trust it will not spread, though 'twoulde be unadvised to goe needlesslie into the infected Quarter. Uncle _Dick_ would fayn take us Girls down to _Oxon_, but Father sayd he could not spare us while Mother was at _Stoke_; and that there was noe prevalent Distemper, this bracing Weather, in our Parish. Then felle a musing; and Uncle _Dick_, who loves a Jeste, outs with a large brown Apple from's Pocket, and holds it aneath Father's Nose. Sayth Father, rousing, "How far Phansy goes! thy Voice, _Dick_, carried me back to olde Dayes, and affected, I think, even my Nose; for I could protest I smelled a _Sheepscote_ Apple." And, feeling himselfe touched by its cold Skin, laught merrilie, and ate it with a Relish; saying, noe Sorte ever seemed unto him soe goode--he had received manie a Hamper of 'em about Christmasse. After a Time, alle but he and I went up, and out on the Leads, to see the Comet; and we two sitting quite still, and Father, doubtlesse, supposed to be alone, I saw a great round-shouldered mannish Shadowe glide acrosse the Passage, and hearde the Front-door Latch click. Darted forthe, but too late, and then into the Kitchen; with some Warmth chid _Betty_ for soe soone agayn disobeying Orders, and threatened to tell my Mamma. She cryed pertlie, "Law, Miss _Deb_, I wish to Goodnesse your Mamma was here to heare you, for I'd sooner have one Mistress than three. A Shadowe, indeed! I'm sure you saw no Substance--very like, 'twas a Spirit; or, liker still, onlie the Cat. Here, Puss, Puss!" . . . and soe into the Passage, as though to look for what she was sure not to find. I had noe Patience with her; but, returning to Father, askt him if he had not heard the Latch click? He sayd, No; and, indeede, I think, had been dozing; soe then sate still, and bethoughte me what 'twere best to doe. Three Brains are too little agaynst one that is resolved to cheat. 'Tis noe Goode complayning to a Man; he will not see, even though unafflicted like Father, who cannot. Men's Minds run on greater Things, and soe they are fretted at domestic Appeals, and generallie give Judgment the wrong Way. Thus we founde it before, poor motherlesse Girls, to our Cost; and I reallie believe it was more in Kindnesse for us than himself, that Father listened to the Doctor's Overtures in behalfe of Miss _Minshull_; for what Companion can soe illiterate a Woman be to him? But he believed her gentle, hearde that she was a good Housewife, and apprehended she would be kind to us. . . . Alas the Daye! What Tears we three shed in our Chamber that Night! and wished, too late, we had ne'er referred to him a Grievance, nor let him know we had a Burthen. Soone we founde King _Log_ had been succeeded by King _Stork_; soone made common Cause, tryed our Strength and found it wanting, and soone submitted to our new Yoke, and tried to make the best of it. Yes, that is the onlie Course; we alle feele it; onlie, as Ill-luck will have it, we do not always feel it simultaneouslie. _Anne_, mayhap, has one of her dogged humours; _Mary_ and I see how much better 'twould be, did she overcome it, or shut herself up till in better Temper. _Mary_ is crabbed and exacting; _Anne_ and I cannot put her straight. Well for us when we succeed just soe far as to keep it from the Notice of Father. Thus we rub on; I wonder if we ever shall pull all together? _April 22, 1665_. Like unto a wise Master-builder, who ordereth the Disposition of eache Stone till the whole Building is fitly compacted together, so doth Father build up his noble Poem, which groweth under our Hands. Three Nights have I, without Complaynt, lost my Rest while writing at his Bedside; this hath made me yawnish in the Day-time, or, as Mother will have it, lazy. However, I bethink me of _Damo_, Daughter of _Pythagoras_. Mother came Home yesterday, and _Betty_, the Picture of Neatnesse, tooke goode Heede to be the first to welcome her, with officious Smiles, and Prayses of her Looks. For my Part, I thoughte it fullsome, but knew her Motives better than Mother, who took it alle in goode Part. Indeede, noe one would give this Girl credit for soe false a Heart; she is pretty, modest looking, and for a while before my Father's Marriage was as great a Favourite with _Mary_ as now with my Mother; flattered her the same, and tempted her to idle gossiping Confidences. She was slow to believe herself cheated; and when 'twas as cleare as Day, could not convince Father of it. On _Mary's_ mentioning this Morning (unadvisedlie, I think,) the Kitchen Visitor, Mother made short Answer-- "Tilly-vally! bad Mistresses make bad Maids; there will be noe such Doings now, I warrant. . . . I am sure, my Dear," appealing to Father, "you think well in the main of _Betty_?" "Yes," says he, smiling, "I think well of both my _Betties_." "At any rate," persists _Mary_, "the Man coulde not be at once her Cousin and her Brother." "Why no," replies Father, "therein she worsened her Story, by saying too much, as _Dorothea_ did, when she pretended to have heard of the Knight of _La Mancha's_ Fame, when she landed at _Ossuna_; which even a Madman as he was, knew to be noe Sea-port. It requires more Skill than the General possess, to lie with a Circumstance." Had a Valentine this Morning, though onlie from_ Ned Phillips_, whom Mother is angry with, for filling my Head betimes with such Nonsense. Howbeit, I am close on sixteen. _Mary_ was out of Patience with Father yesterday, who, after keeping her a full Hour at _Thucydides_, sayd, "Well, now we will refresh ourselves with a Canto of _Ariosto_," which was as much a sealed Book to her as t'other. Howbeit, this Morning he sayd, "Child, I have noted your Wearinesse in reading the dead Languages to me; would that I needed not to be beholden unto any, whether bound to me by Blood and Affection or not, for the Food that is as needfulle to me as my daily Bread. Nevertheless, that I be not further wearisome unto thee, I have engaged a young Quaker, named _Ellwood_, to relieve thee of this Portion of thy Task, soe that thou mayst have the more Leisure to enjoy the glad Sunshine and fair Sights I never more shall see." _Mary_ turned red, and dropt a quiet Tear; but alas, he knew it not. "One part of my Children's Burthen, indeed," he continued, "I cannot, for obvious Reasons, relieve them of--they must still be my Secretaries, for in them alone can I confide. Soe now to your healthfulle Exercises and fitting Recreations, dear Maids, and Heaven's Blessing goe with you!" We kissed his Hand and went, but our Walk was not merry. _Ellwood_ is a young Man of seven-and-twenty, of good Parts, but pragmaticalle; Son of an Oxfordshire Justice of the Peace, but not on good Terms with him, by Reason of his religious Opinions, which the Father affects not. _April 23, 1665_. Spring is coming on apace. Father even sits between the wood Fire and the open Casement, enjoying the mild Air, but it is not considered healthfulle. "My Dear," says Mother to him this Morning, after some Hours' Absence, "I have bought me a new Mantle of the most absolute Fancy. 'Tis sad-coloured, which I knew you would approve, but with a Garniture of Orange-tawny; three Plaits at the Waist behind, and a little stuck-up Collar." "You are a comical Woman," says Father, "to spend soe much Money and Mind on a Thing your Husband will never see." "Oh! but it cost no Money at alle," says she; "that is the best of it." "What is the best of it?" rejoyned he. "I suppose you bartered for it, if you did not buy it--you Women are always for cheap Pennyworths. Come, what was the Ransom? One of my old Books, or my new Coat?" "Your last new Coat may be called old too, I'm sure," says Mother; "I believe you married me in it." "Nay," says Father, "and what if I did? 'Twas new then, at any rate; and the Cid _Ruy Diaz_ was married in a black Satin Doublet, which his Father had worn in three or four Battles." "A poor Compliment to the Bride," says Mother. "Well, but, dear _Betty_, what has gone for this copper-coloured Mantle?--_Sylvester's_ 'Du Bartas?'" . . . "Nothing of the sort,--nothing you value or will ever miss. An old Gold Pocket-piece, that hath lain perdue, e'er soe long, in our Dressing-table Drawer." He smote the Table with his Hand. "Woman!" cried he, changing Colour, "'twas a Medal of Honour given to my Father by a Polish Prince! It should have been an Heir-loom. There, say noe more about it now. 'Tis in your Jew's Furnace ere this. 'The Fining-pot for Silver and the Furnace for Gold, but . . . the Lord trieth the Spirits.' Ay me! mine is tried sometimes." Uncle _Kit_ most opportunelie entering at this Moment, instantaneouslie changed his Key-note. "Ha, _Kit_!" he cries, gladly, "here you find me, as usual, maundering among my Women. Welcome, welcome! How is it with you, and what's the News?" "Why, the News is, that the Plague's coming on amain," says my Uncle; "they say it's been smouldering among us all the Winter, and now it's bursting out." "Lord save us!" says Mother, turning pale. "You may say that," says Uncle, "but you must alsoe try to save yourselves. For my Part, I see not what shoulde keep you in Town. Come down to us at _Ipswich_; my Brother and you shall have the haunted Chamber; and we can make plenty of Shakedowns for the Girls in the Atticks. Your Maids can look after Matters here. By the way, you have a Merlin's Head sett up in your Neighbourhood; I saw your black-eyed Maid come forthe of it as I passed." Mother bit her lip; but Father broke forthe with, "What can we expect but that a judiciall Punishment shoulde befall a Land where the Corruption of the Court, more potent and subtile in its Infection than anie Pestilence, hath tainted every open Resorte and bye Corner of the Capital and Country? Our Sins cry aloud; our Pulpits, Counters, and Closetts alike witness against us. 'Tis, as with the People soe with the Priest, as with the Buyer soe with the Seller, as with the Maid soe with the Mistress. Plays, Interludes, Gaming-houses, Sabbath Debauches, Dancing-rooms, Merry-Andrews, Jack Puddings, Quacks, false Prophesyings--" "Ah! we can excuse a little Bitternesse in the losing Party now," says Uncle; "but do you seriously mean to say you think us more deserving of judiciall Punishment under the glorious Restoration than during the unnatural Rebellion? Sure you have had Time to cool upon that." "Certainly I mean to say so," answers Father. "During the unnatural Rebellion, as you please to call it, the Commonwealth, whose Duration was very short--" "Very short, indeed," observes Uncle, coughing. "Only from _Worcester_ Fight, Fifty-one, to _Noll's_ Dissolution of the Long Parliament, Fifty-three; yet quite long enough to see what it was." "I deny that, as well as your Dates," says Father. "We enjoyed a Commonwealth under the Protector, who, had he not assumed that high Office which gave him his Name, would have lacked Opportunity of showing that he was capable of filling the most exalted Station with Vigour and Ability. He secured a wise Peace, obtained the respectfull Concurrence of foreign Powers, filled our domestick Courts with upright Judges, and respected the Rights of Conscience." "Why, suppose I admitted all this, which I am far from doing," says Uncle, "what was he but a King, except by just Title? What had become, meantime, of your Commonwealth?" "Softly, _Kit_," returns Father. "The Commonwealth was progressing, meantime, like a little Rivulet that rises among the Hills, amid Weeds and Moss, and gradually works itself a widening Channel, filtering over Beds of Gravel, and obstructed here and there by Fragments of Rock, that sorely chafe and trouble it, at the very Time that, to the distant Observer, it looks most picturesque and beautiful." "Well, I suppose I was never distant enough to see it in this picturesque Point of View," says Uncle. "Legitimate Monarchy was, to my Mind, the Rock over which the brawling River leaped awhile, and which, in the End, successfully opposed it; and as to your _Oliver_, he was a cunning Fellow, that diverted its Course to turn his own Mill." "They that can see any Virtue or Comeliness in a _Charles Stuart_," says Father, "can hardly be expected to acknowledge the rugged Merits of a plain Republican." "Plain was the very last Thing he was," says Uncle, "either in speaking or dealing. He was as cunning as a Fox, and as rough as a Bear." "We can overlook the Roughness of a good Man," says Father; "and if a Temper subject to hasty Ebullitions is better than one which, by Blows and hard Usage, has been silenced into Sullenness, a Republic is better than an absolute Sovereignty." "Aye; and if a Temper under the Control of Reason and Principle," rejoins Uncle, "is better than one unaccustomed to restrain its hasty Ebullitions, a limited Monarchy is better than a Republic." "But ours is not limited enough," persists Father. "Wait awhile," returns Uncle, "till, as you say, we have filtered over the Gravel a little longer, and then see how clear we shall run." "I don't see much present Chance of it," says Father. "Such a King, and such a Court!" "The King and Court will soon shift Quarters, I understand," says Uncle; "for Fear of this coming Sickness. 'Twould be a rare Thing, indeed, for the King to take the Plague!" "Why not the King, as well as any of his Commons?" says Father. "Tush! I am tired of the Account People make of him. 'Is _Philip_ dead?' 'No; but he is sick.' Pray, what is it to us, whether _Philip_ is sick or not?" "Which of the _Phillipses_, my Dear?" asks Mother. "Did you say _Jack Phillips_ was sick?" "No, dear _Betty_; only a King of _Macedon_, who lived a long Time ago." "Doctor _Brice_ commends you much for your grounding the _Phillipses_ so excellently in the Classicks," says Uncle. "He should think whether his Praise is much worth having," says Father, rather haughtily. "The young Men were indebted to me for a competent Knowledge of the learned Tongues--no more." "Nay, somewhat more," rejoined Uncle; "and the Praise of a worthy Man is surely always worth having." "If he be our Superior in the Thing wherein he praises us," returned Father. "His Praise is then a Medal of Reward; but it should never be a current Coin, bandied from one to another. And the Inferior may never praise the Superior." Uncle was silent a Moment, and then softly uttered, "My Soul, praise the Lord." "There you have me," says Father, instantly softening. "Laud we the Name of the Lord, but let's not laud one another." "Ah! I can't wait to argue the Point," says Uncle. "I must back to the _Temple_." "Stay a Moment, _Kit_. Have you seen 'the Mysterie of Jesuitism?'" "No; have _you_ seen the Proof that _London_, not _Rome_, is the City on seven Hills? _Ludgate Hill, Fishstreet Hill, Dowgate Hill, Garlick Hill, Saffron Hill, Holborn Hill_, and _Tower Hill_. Clear as Day!" "Where's _Snow Hill_? Come, don't go yet. We will fight over some of our old Feuds. There will be a roast Pig on Table at one o'clock, and, I fancy, a Tansy-pudding." "_I_ can't fancy Tansy-pudding," says Uncle, shuddering; "I cannot abide Tansies, even in Lent. Besides, I'm expecting a Reference." "Oh! very well; then drop in again in the Evening, if you will; and very likely you will meet _Cyriack Skinner_. And you shall have cold Pig for Supper, not forgetting the Current-sauce, _Wiltshire_ Cheese, Carraways, and some of your own Wine." "Well, that sounds good. I don't mind if I do," says Uncle; "but don't expect me after nine." "I'm in Bed by nine," says Father. "Oh, oh!" says Uncle; and with a comical Look at us, he went off. Uncle _Kit_ did not come last Night; I did not much expect he woulde; nor Mr. _Skinner_. Insteade, we had Dr. _Paget_, and one or two others, who talked dolefully alle the Evening of Signs of the Times, till they gave me the Horrors. One had seen a Ghost, or at least, seen a Crowd looking at a Ghost, or for a Ghost, in _Bishopgate_ Churchyard, that comes out and points hither and thither at future Graves. Another had seene an Apparition, or Meteor, somewhat of human or angelic Shape in the Air. Father laught at the first, but did not so discredit _in toto_ the other; observing that _Theodore Beza_ believed at one Time in astrologick Signs; and thought that the Appearance of the notable Star in _Cassiopeiea_ betokened the universal End. And as for Angels, he sayd they were, questionless, ministering Spiritts, not onlie sent forth to minister unto the Heirs of Salvation, but sometimes Instruments of God's Wrath, to execute Judgments upon ungodly Men, and convince them of the ill Deeds which they have ungodly committed; as during the Pestilence in _David's_ Time, when the King saw the Destroying Angel standing between Heaven and Earth, having a drawn Sword in his Hand, stretched over Jerusalem. Such Delegates we might, without Fanaticism, suppose to be the generall, though unseen. Instruments of public Chastisements; and, for our particular Comfort, we had equall Reason to repose on the Assurance, that even amid the Pestilence that walked in Darkness, and the Destruction that wasted by Noon-day, the Angels had charge over each particular Believer, to keep them in all their Ways. Adding, that, though he forbore, with _Calvin_, to pronounce that each Man had his own Guardian Spiritt,--a Subject whereon Scripture was silent,--we had the Lord's own Word for it, that little Children were the particular Care of holy Angels. And this, and othermuch to same Purport, had soe soothing and sedative an Effect, that we might have gone to Bed in peacefull Trust, onlie that Dr. _Paget_ must needs bring up, after Supper, the correlative Theme of the great _Florentine_ Plague, and the poisoned Wells, which sett Father off upon the Acts of Mercy of Cardinal _Borromeo,--_not him called St. _Charlest_ but the Cardinal-Archbishop,--and soe, to the Pestilence at _Geneva_, when even the Bars and Locks of Doors were poisoned by a Gang of Wretches, who thought to pillage the Dwellings of the Dead; till we all went to Bed, moped to Death. Howbeit, I had been warmly asleep some Hours, (more by Token I had read the ninety-first Psalm before getting into Bed), when _Anne_, clinging to me, woke me up with a shrill Cry. I whispered fearfullie, "What is't?--a Thief under the Bed?" "No, no," she replies. "Listen!" Soe I did for a While; and was just going to say, "You were dreaming," when a hollow Voice in the Street, beneath our Window, distinctlie proclaimed, "Yet forty Days, and _London_ shall be destroyed! I will overturn, overturn, overturn it! Oh! Woe, Woe, Woe!" I sprang out of Bed, fell over my Shoes, got up again, and ran to the Window. There was Nothing to be seen but long, black Shadows in the Streets. The Moon was behind the House. After looking forthe awhile, with Teeth chattering, I was about to drop the Curtain, when, afar off, whether in or over some distant Quarter of the Town, I heard the same Voice, clearlie enow to recognise the Rhythm, though not the Words. I crept to Bed, chilled and awe-stricken; yet, after cowering awhile, and saying our Prayers, we both fell asleep. The first Sounde this Morning was of Weeping and Wayling. Mother had beene scared by the Night-warning, and wearied Father to have us alle into the Countrie. He thought the Danger not yet imminent, the Expense considerable, and the Outcry that of some crazy Fanatick; ne'erthelesse, consented to employ _Ellwood_ to look us out some country Lodgings; having noe Mind to live upon my Uncle at _Ipswich_. _Mary_, strange to say, had heard noe Noise; nor had the Maids; but Servants always sleep heavily. Some of the Pig having beene sett aside for my Uncle, and Mother fancying it for her Breakfast, was much putt out, on going into the Larder, to find it gone. _Betty_, of course, sayd it was the Cat. Mother made Answer, she never knew a Cat partiall to cold Pig; and the Door having been latched, was suspicious of a Puss in Boots. _Betty_ cries--"Plague take the Cat!" Mother rejoyns--"If the Plague does take him, I shall certainly have him hanged." "Then we shall be overrun with Rats," says _Betty_. "I shall buy Ratsbane for them," says Mother; and soe into the Parlour, where Father, having hearde the whole Dialogue, had been greatlie amused. At Twilight, she went to look at the Pantry Fastenings herselfe, but, suddenlie hearing a dolorous Voyce either within or immediately without, cry, "Oh! Woe, Woe!" she naturallie drew back. However, being a Woman of much Spiritt, she instantlie recovered herselfe, and went forward; but no one was in the Pantry. The Occurrence, therefore, made the more Impression; and she came up somewhat scared, and asked if we had heard it. "My Dear," says Father, "you awoke me in the midst of a very interesting Colloquy between _Sir Thomas More_ and _Erasmus_. However, I think a Dog barked, or rather howled, just now. Are you sure the words were not 'Bow, wow, wow?'" Another Night-larum; but onlie from Father, who wanted me to write for him,--a Task he has much intromitted of late. Mother was hugelie annoyed at it, and sayd,--"My Dear, I am persuaded that if you would not persist in going to Bed soe earlie, you woulde not awake at these untimelie Hours." "That is very well for you to say," returned he, "who can sew and spin the whole Evening through; but I, whose long entire Day is Night, grow soe tired of it by nine o'clock, that I am fit for Nothing but Bed." "Well," says she, "I often find that brushing my Hair wakes me up when I am drowsy. I will brush yours To-morrow Evening, and see if we cannot keep you up a little later, and provide sounder Rest for you when you do turn in." Soe, this Evening, she casts her Apron over his Shoulders, and commences combing his Hair, chatting of this and that, to keep him in good Humour. "What beautiful Hair this is of yours, my Dear!" says she; "soe fine, long, and soft! scarcelie a Silver Thread in it. I warrant there's manie a young Gallant at Court would be proud of such." "Girls, put your Scissars out of your Mother's Way," says Father; "she's a perfect _Dalilah_, and will whip off Half my Curls before I can count Three, unless you look after her. And I," he adds, with a Sigh, "am, in one Sort, a _Samson_." "I'm sure _Dalilah_ never treated _Samson's_ old Coat with such Respect," says Mother, finishing her Task, resuming her Apron, and kissing him. "Soe now, keep your Eyes open--I mean, keep awake, till I bring you a Gossip's Bowl." When she was gone, Father continued sitting bolt upright, _his Eyes_, as she sayd (his beautifull Eyes!), open and wakefull, and his Countenance composed, yet grave, as if his Thoughts were at least as far off as _Tangrolipix_ the _Turk_. All at once, he says, "_Deb_, are my Sleeves white at the Elbow?" "No, Father." "Or am I shiny about the Shoulders?" "No, Father." "Why, then," cries he, gaily, this Coat can't be very old, however long I may have worn it. I'll rub on in it still; and your Mother and you will have the more Money for copper-coloured Clokes. But don't, at any Time, let your Father get shabby, Children. I would never be threadbare nor unclean. Let my Habitt be neat and spotless, my Bands well washed and uncrumpled, as becometh a Gentleman. As for my Sword in the Corner, your Mother may send that after my Medal as soon as she will. The _Cid_ parted with his _Tizona_ in his Life-time; soe a peaceable Man, whose Eyes, like the Prophet _Abijah's_, are set, may well doe the same." _May 12, 1665_. Yesterday being the _Lord's Day_, Mother was hugely scared during Morning Service, by seeing an old Lady put her Kerchief to her Nose, look hither and thither, and, finally, walk out of Church. One whispered another, "A Plague-Smell, perchance." "No Doubt on't;" and soe, one after another left, as, at length, did Mother, who declared she beganne to feel herself ill. On the Cloth being drawn after Dinner, she made a serious Attack on my Father, upon the Subject of Country Lodgings, which he stoutly resisted at first, saying, "If, Wife and Daughters, either the Danger were so immediate, or the Escape from it so facile as to justify these womanish Clamours, Reason would that I should listen to you. But, since that the Lord is about our Bed, and about our Path, in the Capital no less than in the Country, and knoweth them that are his, and hideth them under the Shadowe of his Wings--and since that, if the Fiat be indeed issued agaynst us, no Stronghold, though guarded with triple Walls of Circumvallation, like _Ecbatana_, nor pastoral Valley, that might inspire _Theocritus_ with a new Idyl, can hide us, either by its Strength or its Obscurity, from the Arrow of the Destroying Angel; ye, therefore, seeing these Things cannot be spoken agaynst, ought to be quiet, and do Nothing rashly. Wherefore, I pray you, Wife and Daughters, get you to your Knees, before Him who alone can deliver you from these Terrors; and having cast your Burthen upon Him, eat your Bread in Peacefulness and Cheerfulness of Heart." However, we really are preparing for Country Quarters, for young _Ellwood_ hath this Morning brought us Note of a rustick Abode near his Friends, the _Penningtons_, at _Chalfont_, in _Bucks_, the Charges of which suit my Father's limited Means; and we hope to enter on it by the End of the Week. _Ellwood's_ Head seems full of _Guli Springett_, the Daughter of Master _Pennington's_ Wife by her first Husband. If Half he says of her be true, I shall like to see the young Lady. We part with one Maid, and take the other. _Betty_ was very forward to be left in Charge; and protest herself willing to abide any Risk for the Sake of the Family; more by Token she thoughte there was no Risk at alle, having boughte a sovereign Charm of Mother _Shipton_. Howbeit, on inducing her, much agaynst her Will, to open it, Nought was founde within but a wretched little Print of a Ship, with the Words, scrawled beneath it, "By Virtue of the above Sign." Father called her a silly Baggage, and sayd, he was glad, at any Rate, there was no Profanity in it; but, in Spite of _Betty_, and _Polly_, and Mother too, he is resolved to leave the House under the sole Charge of Nurse _Jellycott_. Indeed, there Will probably be more rather than less Work to do at _Chalfont_; but Mother means to get a little Boy, such as will be glad to come for Threepence a-Week, to fetch the Milk, post the Letters, get Flour from the Mill and Barm from the Brewhouse, carry Pies to the Oven, clean Boots and Shoes, bring in Wood, sweep up the Garden, roll the Grass, turn the Spit, draw the Water, lift Boxes and heavy Weights, chase away Beggars and infectious Persons, and any little odd Matter of the Kind. Mother has drowned the Cats, and poisoned the Rats. The latter have revenged 'emselves by dying behind the Wainscot, which makes the lower Part of the House soe unbearable, 'speciallie to Father, that we are impatient to be off. Mother, intending to turn _Chalfont_ into a besieged Garrison, is laying in Stock of Sope, Candles, Cheese, Butter, Salt, Sugar, Raisins, Pease, and Bacon; besides Resin, Sulphur, and Benjamin, agaynst the Infection; and Pill Ruff, and _Venice_ Treacle, in Case it comes. As to Father, his Thoughts naturallie run more on Food for the Mind; soe he hath layd in goodlie Store of Pens, Paper, and Ink, and sett me to pack his Books. At first, he sayd he should onlie require a few, and good ones. These were all of the biggest; and three or four Folios broke out the Bottom of the Box. So then Mother sayd the onlie Way was to cord 'em up in Sacking; which greatlie relaxed the Bounds of his Self-denial, and ended in his having a Load packed that would break a Horse's Back. Alsoe, hath had his Organ taken to Pieces; but as it must goe in two severall Loads, and we cannot get a bigger Wagon,--everie Cart and Carriage, large or little, being on such hard Duty in these Times,--I'm to be left behind till the Wagon returns, and till I've finished cataloguing the Books; after which _Ned Phillips_ hath promised to take me down on a Pillion. Nurse _Jellycott_, being sent for from _Wapping_, looked in this Forenoon, for Father's Commands. Such Years have passed since we lost Sight of her, that I remembered not her Face in the least, but had an instant Recollection of her chearfulle, gentle Voyce. Spite of her Steeple Hat, and short scarlet Cloke, which gave her an antiquated Ayr, her cleare hazel Eyes and smooth-parted Silver Locks gave her an engaging Appearance. The World having gone ill with her, she thankfullie takes Charge of the Premises; and though her Eyes filled with Tears, 'twas with looking at Father. He, for his Part, spake most kindlie, and gave her his Hand, which she kissed. They are all off. Never was House in such a Pickle! The Carpets rolled up, but the Boards beneath 'em unswept, and black with Dirt; as Nurse gladlie undertook everie Office of that Kind, and sayd 'twould help to amuse her when we were away. But she has tidied up the little Chamber over the House-door she means to occupy, and sett on the Mantell a Beau-pot of fresh Flowers she brought with her. The whole House smells of aromatick Herbs, we have burnt soe many of late for Fumigation; and, though we fear to open the Window, yet, being on the shady Side, we doe not feel the Heat much. Yesterday, while in the Thick of packing, and Nobody being with Father but me, a Messenger arrived, with a few Lines, writ privily by a Friend of poor _Ellwood_, saying he was in _Aylesbury_ Gaol, not for Debt, but for his Opinions, and praying Father to send him twenty or thirty Shillings for immediate Necessaries. Mother having gone to my Lord Mayor for Passports, and Father having long given up to her his Purse, . . . (for us Girls, we rarelie have a Crown,) he was in a Strait, and at length said, "This poor young Fellow must not be denied. . . . A Friend in Need is a Friend indeed. . . . Tie on thy Hood, Child, and step out with the Volume thou hadst in thy Hand but now, to the Stall at the Corner. See _Isaac_ himself; shew him _Tasso's_ Autograph on the Fly-leaf, and ask him for thirty or forty Shillings on it till I come back; but bid him on no Pretence to part with it." I did so, not much liking the Job--there are often such queer People there; for old _Isaac_ deals not onlie in old Books, but old Silver Spoons. Howbeit, I took the Volume to his Shop, and as I went in, _Betty_ came out! What had been _her_ Businesse, I know not; but she lookt at me and my Book as though she should like to know _mine_; but, with her usual demure Curtsey, made Way for me, and walked off. I got the Money with much Waiting, but not much other Dimcultie, and took it to Father, who sent twenty Shillings to _Ellwood_, and gave me five for my Payns. Poor _Ellwood_! he hath good Leisure to muse now on _Guli Springett_. Mother was soe worried by the Odour of the Rats, that they alle started off a Day sooner than was first intended, leaving me merelie a little extra Packing. Consequence was, that this Morning, before Dawn, being earlie at my Task, there taps me at the Window an old Harridan that Mother can't abide, who is always a crying, "Anie Kitchen-stuff have you, Maids?" Quoth I, "We've Nothing for you." "Sure, my deary," answers she, in a cajoling voyce, "there's the Dripping and Candles you promised me this Morning, along with the Pot-liquor." "Dear Heart, Mrs. _Deb_!" says Nurse, laughing, "there is, indeed, a Lot of Kitchen-stuff hid up near the Sink, which I dare say your Maid told her she was to have; and as it will only make the House smell worse, I don't see why she should not have it, and pay for it too." Soe I laught, and gave it her forthe, and she put into my Hand two Shillings; but then says, "Why, where's the Cheese?" "We've no Cheese for you," sayd I. "Well," says she, "it's a dear Bargayn; but . . ." peering towards me, "is t'other Mayd gone, then?" "Oh, yes! both of 'em," says I; "and I'm the Mistress," soe burst out a laughing, and shut the Window, while she stumped off, with Something between a Grunt and a Grone. Of course, I gave the Money to Nurse. We had much Talk overnight of my poor dear Mother. Nurse came to her when _Anne_ was born, and remained in the Family till after the Death of Father's second Wife. _She_ was a fayr and delicate Gentlewoman, by Nurse's Account, soft in Speech, fond of Father, and kind to us and the Servants; but all Nurse's Suffrages were in Favour of mine own loved Mother. I askt Nurse how there came to have beene a Separation betweene Father and Mother, soone after their Marriage. She made Answer, she never could understand the Rights of it, having beene before her Time; but they were both so good, and tenderly affectioned, she never could believe there had beene anie reall Wrong on either Side. She always thought my Grandmother must have promoted the Misunderstanding. Men were seldom fond of their Mothers-in-law. He was very kind to the whole Family the Winter before _Anne_ was born, when, but for him, they would not have had a Roof over their Heads. Old Mr. _Powell_ died in this House, the very Day before _Christmas_, which cast a Gloom over alle, insomuch that my Mother would never after keep _Christmas Eve_; and, as none of the Puritans did, they were alle of a Mind. My other Grandfather dropt off a few Months after; he was very fond of Mother. At this time Grandmother was going to Law for her Widow's Thirds, which was little worth the striving for, except to One soe extreme poor. Yet, spite of Gratitude and Interest, she must quarrel with Father, and remove herself from his House; which even her own Daughter thought very wrong. Howbeit, Mother would have her first Child baptized after her; and sent her alle the little Helps she could from her owne Purse, from Time to Time, with Father's Privity and Concurrence. He woulde have his next Girl called _Mary_, after Mother; though the Name _she_ went by with him was "Sweet _Moll_;"--'tis now always "Poor _Moll_," or "Your Mother." Her health fayled about that Time, and they summered at _Forest Hill_--a Place she was always hankering after; but when she came back she told Nurse she never wished to see it agayn, 'twas soe altered. Father's Sight was, meantime, getting worse and worse. She read to him, and wrote for him often. He had become _Cromwell's_ Secretary, and had received the public Thanks of the Commonwealth. . . . Great as his Reputation was at Home, 'twas greater Abroad; and Foreigners came to see him, as they still occasionally doe, from all Parts. My Mother not onlie loved him, but was proud of him. All her Pleasures were in Home. From my Birth to that of the little Boy who died, her Health and Spiritts were good; after that they failed; but she always tried to be chearfull with Father. She read her _Bible_ much, and was good to the Poor. Nurse says 'twas almost miraculous how much Good she did at how little Cost, except of Forethought and Trouble; and all soe secretlie. She began to have an Impression she was for an early Grave, but did not seem to lament it. One Night, Nurse being beside her, awoke her from what she supposed an uneasie Dream, as she was crying in her Sleep; but as soone as she oped her Eyes, she looked surprised, and said it was a Vision of Peace. She thought the Redeemer of alle Men had been talking with her. Face to Face, as a Man talketh with his Friend, and that she had fallen at his Feet in grateful Joy, and was saying, "Oh! I can't express . . . I can't express--" About a Week after, she dyed, without any particular Warning, except a short Prick or two at the Heart. My Father was by. 'Twas much talked of at the Time, she being soe young. Discoursing of this and that, 'twas Midnight ere we went to Bed. _Chalfont_. ARRIVED at last; after what a Journey! _Ned_ had sent me Word Overnight to expect, this Forenoon, a smart young Cavalier, on a fine prancing Steed, with rich Accoutrements. Howbeit, Cousin is neither smart nor handsome; and, at the Time specifyde, there was brought up to the Door an old white Horse, blind of one Eye, with an aquiline Nose, and, I should think, eight Feet high. The Bridle was diverse from the Pillion, which was finely embroidered, but tarnish, with the Stuffing oozing out in severall Places. Howbeit, 'twas the onlie Equipage to be hired in the Ward, for Love or Money . . . so _Ned_ sayd. . . . And he had a huge Pair of gauntlett Gloves, a Whip, that was the smartest Thing about him, and a kind of Vizard over his Nose and Mouth, which, he sayd, was to prevent his being too alluring; but I know 'twas to ward off Infection. I had meant to be brave; and Nurse and I had brushed up the green camblet Skirt, but the rent Mother had made in it would show; however, Nurse thought that, when I was up she could conceal it with a Corking-pin. Thus appointed, _Ned_ led the Way, saying, the onlie Occasion on which a Gentleman needed not to excuse himself to a Lady for going first, was when they were to ride a Pillion. Noe more jesting when once a-Horseback; for, after pacing through a few deserted Streets, we found ourselves amidst such a Medly of Carts, Coaches, and Wagons, full of People and Goods, all pouring out of Town, that _Ned_ had enough to do to keep cleare of 'em, and of the Horsemen and empty Vehicles coming back for fresh Loads. Dear Heart! what jostling, cursing, and swearing! And how awfull the Cause! Houses padlocked and shuttered wherever we passed, and some with red Crosses on the Doors. At the first Turnpike 'twas worst of all--a complete Stoppage; Men squabbling, Women crying, and much good Daylight wasted. Howbeit, _Ned_ desired me to keep my Mouth shut, my Eyes open, and to trust to his good Care; and, by Dint of some shrewd Pilotage, weathered the Strait; after which, our old Horse, whose Paces, to do him Justice, proved very easie, took longer Steps than anie other on the Road, by which Means we soon got quit of the Throng; onlie, we continuallie gained on fresh Parties,--some dreadfully overloaded, some knocked up alreadie, some baiting at the Roadside, and many of the poorer Sort erecting 'emselves rude Tents and Cabins under the Hedges. Soon I began to rejoyce in the green Fields, and sayd how sweet was the Air; and _Ned_ sayd, "Ah!--a Brick-kiln," and signed at one with his Whip. But I knew the Wind came t'other Way; and e'en Bricks are better than dead Rats. Half-way to _Amersham_ found _Hob Carter's_ Wagon, with Father's Organ in't, sticking in the Hedge, without Man or Horse; and, by-and-by, came upon _Hob_ himself, with a Party, carousing. _Ned_ gave it him well, and sent him back at double-quick Time. 'Twas too bad. He had left Town overnight, and promised to be at _Chalfont_ by Noon. I should have beene fain to keep him in Advance of us; howbeit, we were forct to leave him in the Rear; and, about two Miles beyond _Amersham_, we turned off the high Road into a country Lane, which soon brought us to a small retired Hamlet, shaded with Trees, and surrounded with pleasant Meadows and Orchards, which was no other than _Chalfont_. There was Mother near the Gate, putting some fine Things to bleach on a Sweetbriar-hedge. _Ned_ stopt to chat with her, and learn where he might put his Horse, while I went to seek Father; and soon found him, sitting up in a strait Chair, outside the Garden-door. Sayd, kissing him, "Dear Father, how is't with you? Are you comfortable here?" "Anything but that," replies he, very shortlie. "I am not in any Way at my Ease in this Place. I can get no definite Notion of what 'tis like, and what Notion I have is unfavourable. To finish all, they have stuck me up here, like a Bottle in the Smoke." "But here is a Cushion for you," quoth I, running in and back agayn; "and I will set your Seat in the Sun, and out of the Wind, and put your Staff within Reach." "Thanks, dear _Deb_. And now, look about, Child, and tell me, with Precision, what the Place is like." Soe I told him 'twas an irregular two-storied Tenement, parcel Wood, parcel Brick, with a deep Roof of old Tiles that had lost their Colour, and were curiouslie variegated with green and yellow Moss; and that the Eaves were dentilled, with Birds' Nests built in 'em, and a big Honeysuckle growing to the upper Floor; and there was a great and a little Gable, and a heavy Chimney-stack; a Casement of four Compartments next the Door, and another of two over it; four Lattice-windows at t'other End. In Front, a steep Meadow, enamelled with King-cups and Blue-bells; alongside the Gable-end, a Village Road, with deep Cart-ruts, and Hawthorn Hedges. Onlie one small Dwelling at hand, little better than a crazy Haystack; Sheep in the Field, Bees in the Honeysuckle; and a little rippling Rivulet flowing on continually. "Why, now you have sett me quite at Ease!" cries he, turning his bright Eyes thankfully towards the Sky. "I begin to like the Place, and to bless the warm Sun and pure Air. Ha! so there is a rippling Rivulet, that floweth on continually! . . . Lord, forgive me for my peevish Petulance . . . for forgetting that I could still hear the Lark sing her Morning Hymn, scent the Meadow-sweet and new-mown Hay, detect the Bee at his Industry, and the Woodpecker at his Mischief, discern the Breath of Cows, and hear the Lambs bleat, and the Rivulet ripple continually! Come! let us go and seek _Ned_." And, throwing his Arm about me, draws me to him, saying, "This is my best Walking-stick," and steps forward briskly and fearlessly. Truly, I think _Ned_ loves him as though he were his own Father; and, indeed, he hath scarce known any other. Kissing his Hand reverently, he says,--"Honoured _Nunks_, how fares it with you? Do you like _Chalfont_?" "Indeed I do, _Ned_," responds Father heartily. "'Tis a little _Zoar_, whither I and my fugitive Family have escaped from the wicked City; and, I thank God, my Wife has no Mind to look back." "We may as well go in now," says Mother. "No, no," says Father; "I feel there is an Hour of Summer's Sunset still left. We will abide where we are, and keep as long as we can out of the Smell of your Soapsuds. . . . Let's sit upon the Ground." "And tell strange Stories of the Deaths of Kings," says _Ned_, laughing, "That was the Saying, _Ned_, of one who writ much well, and much amiss." "Let's forgive what he writ amiss, for the Sake of what he writ well," says _Ned_. "That will I never," says Father. "If paltry Wits cannot be holy and witty at the same Time, that does not hold good with nobler Spiritts. . . . If it did, they had best never be witty at all. Thy Brother _Jack_ hath yet to learn that Strength is not Coarseness." _Ned_ softly hummed-- "Sweetest Shakespeare, Fancy's Child!" "Ah! you may quote me against myself," says Father; "you may quote _Beza_ against _Beza_, and _Erasmus_ against _Erasmus_; but that will not shake the eternal Laws of Purity and Truth. But, mind you, _Ned_, never did anie reach a more lofty or tragic Height than this Child of Fancy; never did any represent Nature more purely to the Life; and e'en where the Polishments of Art are most wanting in him, he pleaseth with a certain wild and native Elegance." "And what have you now in Hand, Uncle?" _Ned_ asks. "_Firmianus Chlorus_," says Father. "But I don't find Much in him." "I mean, what of your own?" "Oh!" laughing; "Things in Heaven, _Ned_, and Things on Earth, and Things under the Earth. The old Story, whereof you have alreadie seen many Parcels; but, you know, my Vein ne'er flows so happily as from the autumnal to the vernal Equinox. Howbeit, there is Something in the Quality of this Air would arouse the old Man of _Chios_ himself." "Sure," cries _Ned_, "you have less Need than any blind Man to complayn, since you have but closed your Eyes on Earth to look on Heaven!" Father paused; then, stedfastly, in Words I've since sett down, sayd:-- "When I consider how my Light is spent, Ere half my Days, in this dark World and wide, And that one Talent, which is Death to hide, Lodged with me useless, though my Soul more bent To serve therewith my Maker, and present My true Account, lest He, returning, chide; 'Doth God exact Day-labour, Light denied?' I fondly ask. But Patience, to prevent That Murmur, soon replies,--'God doth not need. Either Man's Work, or his own Gifts. Who best Bear his mild Yoke, they serve him best. His State Is kingly; Thousands at his Bidding speed, And post o'er Land and Ocean without Rest, They also serve who only stand and wait.'" . . . We were all quiet enough for a while after this . . . _Ned_ onlie breathing hard, and squeezing Father's Hand. At length, Mother calls from the House, "Who will come in to Strawberries and Cream?" "Ah!" says Father, "that is not an ill Call. And when we have discussed our neat Repast, thou, _Ned_, shalt touch the Theorbo, and let us hear thy balmy Voice. Time was, when thou didst sing like a young Chorister." . . . Just as we were returning to the House, _Mary_ ran forth, crying, "Oh, _Deb_! you have not seen our Cow. She has just been milked, and is being turned out, even now, to the Pasture. See, there she is; but all the Others have gone out of Sight, over the Hill." Mother observed, "Left to herself, she will go, her own Calf speedily seeking." "My Dear," says Father, "that's a Hexameter: do try to make another." "Indeed, Mr. _Milton_, I know nothing of Hexameters or Hexagons either: 'tis enough for me to keep all straight and tight. Let's to Supper." _Anne_ had crushed his Strawberries, and mixed them with Cream, and now she put his Spoon into his Hand, saying, in jest, "Father, this is Angels' Food, you know. I Have pressed the Meath from many a Berry, and tempered dulcet Creams." "Hush, you Rogue," says he; "_Ned_ will find us out." "Is Uncle still at his great Work?" whispers Cousin to Mother. "Indeed, I know not if you call it such," she replies, in the same Undertone. "He hath given over all those grand Things with hard Names, that used to make him so notable abroad, and so esteemed by his own Party at Home; and now only amuses himself by making the _Bible_ a Peg to hang his Idlenesse upon." Sure what a Look _Ned_ gave her! Fearful lest Father should overhear (for Blindness quickens the other Senses), he runs up to the Bookshelf, and cries, "Why, Uncle, you have brought down Plenty of Entertainment with you! Here are _Plato, Xenophon_, and _Sallust, Homer_ and _Euripides, Dante_ and _Petrarch, Chaucer_ and _Spenser_, . . . and . . . oh, oh! you read Plays sometimes, though you were so hard upon _Shakspeare_. . . . Here's 'La Scena Tragica d' _Adamo_ ed _Eva_,' dedicated to the Duchess of _Mantua_." "Come away from that Corner, _Ned,"_ says Father; "there's a Rat behind the Books; he will bite your Fingers--I hear him scratching now. You had best attack your Strawberries." "I think this Sort will preserve well," says Mother. "_Betty_, in 'lighting from the Coach, must needs sett her Foot on the only Pot of Preserve I had left; which she had stuffed under the Seat, instead of carrying it, as she was bidden, in her Hand." "How fine it is, though," says Father, laughing, "to peacock it in a Coach now and then! _Pavoneggiarsi in un Cocchio_! Only, except for the Bravery of it, I doubt if little _Deb_ were not better off on her Pillion. I remember, on my Road to _Paris_, the Bottom of the Caroche fell out; and there sate I, with _Hubert_, who was my Attendant, with our Feet dangling through. Even the grave _Grotius_ laughed at the Accident." "Was _Grotius_ grave?" says _Ned_. "Believe me, he was," says Father. "He had had Enough to make him so. One feels taller in the Consciousness of having known such a Man. He was great in practical! Things; he was also a profound Scholar, though he made out the fourth Kingdom in _Daniel's_ Prophecy to be the Kingdoms of the _Lagidae_ and the _Seleucidae_; which, you know, _Ned_, could not possibly be." Chatting thus of this and that, we idled over Supper, had some Musick, and went to Bed. And soe much for the only Guest we are like to have for some Months. _Anne_ told me, at Bed-time, of the Journey down. The Coach, she sayd, was most uncomfortable, Mother having so over-stuffed it. For her Share, she had a Knife-box under her Feet, a Plate-basket at her Back, a Bird-cage bobbing over her Head, and a Lapfull of Crockery-ware. Providentially, _Betty_ turned squeamish, and could not ride inside, soe she was put upon the Box, to the great Comfort of all within. Father, at the Outset, was chafed and captious, but soon settled down, improved the Circumstances of the Times, made Jokes on Mother, recalled old Journies to _Buckinghamshire_, and, finally, set himself to silent Self-communion, with a pensive Smile on his Face, which, as _Anne_ said, let her know well enow what he was about. Arrived at _Chalfont_, her first Care was to make him comfortable; while Mother, _Mary_, and _Betty_ were turning the House upside down; and in this her Care, she so well succeeded, that, to her Dismay, he bade her take Pen and Ink, and commenced dictating to her as composedly as if they were in _Bunhill Fields_. This was somewhat inopportune, for every Thing was to seek and to set in Order; and, indeed, Mother soon came in, all of a Heat, and sayd, "I wonder, my Dear, you can keep _Nan_ here, at such idling, when she has her Bed to make, and her Box to unpack." Father let her go without a Word, and sate in peacefull Cogitation all the Rest of the Evening--the only Person at Leisure in the House. Howbeit, the next Time he heard Mother chiding--which was after Supper--at _Anne_, for trying to catch a Bat, which was a Creature she longed to look at narrowly, he sayd, "My Dear, we should be very cautious how we cut off another Person's Pleasures. 'Tis an easy Thing to say to them, 'You are wrong or foolish,' and soe check them in their Pursuit; but what have we to give them that will compensate for it? How many harmless Refreshments and Refuges from sick or tired Thought may thus be destroyed! We may deprive the Spider of his Web, and the Robin of his Nest, but can never repair the Damage to them. Let us live, and let live; leave me to hunt my Butterfly, and _Anne_ to catch her Bat." Our Life here is most pleasant. Father and I pass almost the whole of our Time in the open Air--he dictating, and I writing; while Mother and _Mary_ find 'emselves I know not whether more of Toyl or Pastime, within Doors,--washing, brewing, baking, pickling, and preserving; to say Nought of the Dairy, which supplies us with endless Variety of Country Messes, such as Father's Soul loveth. 'Tis well we have this Resource, or our Bill of Fare would be somewhat meagre; for the Butcher kills nothing but Mutton, except at _Christ-mass_. Then, we make our own Bread, for we now keep strict Quarantine, the Plague having now so much spread, that there have e'en been one or two Cases in _Chalfont_. The only One to seek for Employment has been poor _Anne_, whose great Resources at Home have ever been Church-going and visiting poor Folk. She can do neither here, for we keep close, even on the Sabbath; and she can neither read to Father, take long, lonely Rambles, nor help Mother in her Housewifery. Howbeit, a Resource hath at length turned up; for the lonely Cot (which is the only Dwelling within Sight) has become the Refuge of a poor, pious Widow, whose only Daughter, a Weaver of Gold and Silver Lace, has been thrown out of Employ by the present Stagnation of all Business. _Anne_ picked up an Acquaintance with 'em shortly after our coming; and, being by Nature a Hoarder, in an innocent Way, so as always to have a few Shillings by her for charitable Uses, when _Mary_ and I have none, she hath improved her Commerce with _Joan Elliott_ to that Degree, as to get her to teach her her pretty Business, at the Price of the Contents of her little Purse. So these two sit harmoniously at their Loom, within Earshot of Father and me, while he dictates to me his wondrous Poem. We are nearing the End of it now, and have reached the Reconciliation of _Adam_ and _Eve_, which, I think, affected him a good deal, and abstracted his Mind all the Evening; for why, else, should he have so forgotten himself as to call me sweet _Moll_? . . . _Mary_ lookt up, thinking he meant her; but he never calls her _Moll_ or _Molly_; and, I believe, was quite unaware he had done so to me: but it showed the Course his Mind was taking. This Morning, I was straying down a Blackthorn Lane, when a blue-eyed, fresh-coloured young Lady, in a sad-coloured Skirt, and large-flapped Beaver, without either Feather or Buckle, swept by me on a small white Palfrey. She held a Bunch of Tiger Lilies in her Hand, the gayety of which contrasted strangelie enow with her sober Apparell; and I wondered why a peculiar Classe of Folks should deem they please God by wearing the dullest of Colours, when He hath arrayed the Flowers of the Field in the liveliest of Hues. Somehow, I conceited her to be Mistress _Gulielma Springett_--and so, indeed, she proved; for, on reaching Home after a lengthened Ramble, I saw the Tiger Lilies lying on the Table, and found she had spent a full Hour with Father, who much relished her Talk. Sure, she might have brought a blind Man Flowers that had some Fragrance, however dull of hue. To-day, as we were sitting under the Hedge, we heard a rough Voice shouting, "Hoy! hoy! what are you about there?" To which another Man's Voice, just over against us, deprecatingly replied, "No Harm, I promise you, Master. . . . We have clean Bills of Health; and my Wife and I, Foot-sore and hungry, do but Purpose to set up our little Cabin against the Bank, till the Sabbath is overpast." "But you must set it up Somewhere else," cries the other, who was the _Chalfont_ Constable; "for we _Chalfont_ Folks are very particular, and can't have Strangers come harbouring here in our Highways and Hedges,--dying, and making themselves disagreeable." "But we don't mean to die or be disagreeable," says the other. "We are on our Way to my Wife's Parish; and, sure, you cannot stop us on the King's Highway." "Oh! but we can, though," says the Constable. "And, besides, this is not the King's Highway, but only a Bye-way, which is next to private Property; and the Gentleman at present in Occupation of that private Property will be highly and justly offended if you go to give him the Plague." "That's me," says Father. "Do tell him, _Deb_, not to be so hard on the poor People, but to let them abide where they are till the Sabbath is over. I dare say they have clean Bills of Health, as they state, and the Spot is so lonely, they need not be denied Fire and Water, which is next to Excommunication." So I parleyed with _John Constable_, and he parleyed with the Travellers, who really had Passports, and seemed Honest as well as Sound. So they were permitted, without Let or Hindrance, to erect their little Booth; and in a little while they had collected Sticks enough to light a Fire, the Smoke of which annoyed us not, because we were to Windward. "What have we for Dinner To-day?" says Father. "A cold Shoulder of Mutton," says Mother, who had thrown 'em a couple of Cabbages. "Well," says Father, "'twas to a cold Shoulder of Mutton that _Samuel_ set down _Saul_; and what was good enough for a Prophet may well content a Poet. I propose, that what we leave of ours To-day, should be given to these poor People for their Sabbath's Dinner; and I, for one, shall eat no Meat To-day." In fact, none did but _Mary_ and Mother, who find fasting not good for their Stomachs; soe _Anne_, who is the most fearlesse of us all, handed the Joint over to them, with some broken Bread and Dripping, which was most thankfully received. In Truth, I believe them harmless People, for they are now a singing Psalms. _Ellwood_ has turned up agayn, to the great Pleasure of Father, who delights in his Company, and likes his Reading better than ours, though he _will_ call Pater Payter. Consequence is, I have infinitely more Leisure, and can ramble hither and thither, (always shunning Wayfarers), and bring Home my Lap full of Flowers and Weeds, with rusticall Names, such as _Ragged Robin, Sneezewort, Cream-and-Codlins, Jack-in-the-Hedge_, or _Sauce-alone_. Many of these I knew not before; but I describe them to Father, and he tells me what they are. He hath finished his Poem, and given it _Ellwood_ to read, in the most careless Fashion imaginable, saying, "You can take this Home, and run through it at your Leisure. I should like to hear your Judgment on it some Time or other." Nor do I believe he has ever since given himself an uneasy Thought of what that Judgment may be, nor what the World at large may think of it. His Pleasure is not in Praise but Production; the last makes him now and then a little feverish; the other, or its want, never. Just at last, 'twas hard Work to us both; he was like a Wheel running downhill, that must get to the End before it stopped. Mother scolded him, and made him promise he would leave off for a Week or so; at least, she says he did, and he says he did not, and asks her whether, if the Grass had promised not to grow she would believe it. Poor _Ellwood's_ Love-bonds prove rather more irksome to him than those of his Gaol; he hath renewed his Intercourse with our Friends at the _Grange_, only to find a dangerous Rival stept into his Place, in the Person of one _William Penn_--in fact, I suspect Mistress _Guli_ is engaged to him already. _Ellwood_ hath been closetted with my Father this Morning, pouring out his Woes--methinks he must have been to seek for a Confidant! When he came forth, the poor young Man's Eyes were red. I cannot but pity him, tho' he is such a Formalist. I wish _Anne_ were a little more demonstrative; Father would then be as assured of her Affection as of mine, and treat her with equal Tenderness. But, no, she cannot be; she will sitt and look piteously on his blind Face, but, alas! he cannot see that; and when he pours forth the full Tide of Melody on his Organ, and hymns mellifluous Praise, the Tears rush to her eyes, and she is oft obliged to quit the Chamber; but, alas! he knows not that. So he goes on, deeming her, I fear me, stupid as well as silent, indifferent as well as infirm. I am not avised of her ever having let him feel her Sympathy, save when he was inditing to me his third Book, while she sate at her Sewing. 'Twas at these lines:-- "Thus with the Year, Seasons return; but not to me returns Day, or the sweet Approach of Even or Morn, Or Sight of vernal Bloom or Summer's Rose, Or Flocks or Herds, or human Face divine, But Clouds instead, and over-during Dark Surrounds me; from the cheerful Ways of Men Cut off: and for the Book of Knowledge fair, Presented with an universal Blank." His Brow was a little contracted, but his Face was quite composed; while she, on t'other Hand, with her Work dropped from her Lap, and her Eyes streaming, sate gazing on him, the Image of Woe. At length, timidly stole to his Side, and, after hesitating awhile, kissed both his Eyelids. He caught her to him, quite taken by Surprise, and, for a Moment, both wept bitterly. This was soon put a Stop to, by Mother's coming in, with her Head full of stale Fish; howbeit Father treated _Anne_ with uncommon Tenderness all that Evening, calling her his sweet _Nan_; while she, shrinking back again into her Shell, was shyer than ever. But his Spiritts were soothed rather than dashed by this little Outbreak; and at Bedtime, he said, even cheerfully, "Now, good-night, Girls: . . . may it, indeed, be as good to you as to me. You know, Night brings back my Day--_I am not blind in my Dreams_." I wish I knew the Distinction between Temperament and Genius: how far Father's even Frame is attributable to one or t'other. If to the former, why, we might hope to attain it as well as he;--yet, no; this is equallie the Gift of God's Grace. Our Humours we may controwl, but our Temperament is born with us; and if one should say, "Why are you a Vessel of glorious things, while I am a Vessel of Things weak and vile?"--nay, but oh! Man or Woman, who art thou that questionest the Will of God? His Election is shewn no less in the Gift of Genius or of an equable Temperament than of spirituall Life; and the Thing formed may not say to him that formed it, "Why hast thou made me thus?" Father, indeed, can flame out in political Controversy, and lay about him as with a Flail, right and left, making the Chaff, and sometimes the Wheat too, fly about his Ears. 'Twas while threshing the Wheat by the Wine-press at _Ophrah_, that _Gideon_ was called by the Angel; and methinks Father hath in like Manner been summoned from the Floor of his Threshing, to discourse of Heaven and Earth, and bring forth from his Mind's Storehouse Things new and old. I wonder if the World will ever give heed to his Teaching. Suppose a Spark of Fire should drop some Night on the Manuscript, while _Ettwood_ is dozing over it;--why, there's an end on't. I suppose Father could never do it over again. I wonder how many fine Things have been lost in suchlike Ways; or whether God ever permitts a truly fine Thing to be utterly lost. We may drop a Diamond into the Sea; but there it is, at the Bottom of the Great Deep. _Justinian's Pandects_ turned up again. The Art of making Glass was lost once. The Passage round the _Cape_ was made and forgotten.----If I pore over this, I shall puzzle my Head. Howbeit, were I to round the _Cape_, I should hardly look for stranger and more glorious Scenes than Father hath in his Poem made familiar to me. He hath done more for me than _Columbus_ for Queen _Isabel_--hath revealed to me a far better _New World_. Now, I scarce ever look on the setting Sun, surrounded by Hues more gorgeous than those of the High-priest's Breast-plate, without picturing the Angel of the Sun seated on that bright Beam which bore him, Slope downward, beneath the _Azores_. And, in the less brilliant Hour, I, by Faith or Fancy, discern _Ithuriel_ and _Zephon_ in the Shade; and by their Side a third, of regal Port, but faded Splendour wan. A little later still, can sometimes hear the Voice of God, or, as I suppose, we might say, the Word of God, walking in the Garden. _Pneuma_! His Breath! His Spirit! How hushed and still! Then, the Night cometh, when no Man can work--when the young Lions, in tropical Climes, waking from their Day-sleep, seek their Meat from God. Albeit they may prowl about the Dwellings of his people, they cannot enter, for He that watcheth them neither slumbers nor sleeps. Moreover, heavenly Vigils relieve one another at their Posts, and go their Midnight Rounds; sometimes, singing (Father says), with heavenly Touch of instrumental Sounds, in full harmonic Number joined . . . yes, and Shepherds, once, at least, have heard them. And then . . . and then Mother cries, "How often, _Deb_, shall I bid you lock the Gate at nine o'clock, and bring me in the Key?" _Sept. 2nd, 1665_. Good so! Master _Ellwood_ hath brought back the MS. at last, and delivered his Approbation thereon with the Air of a competent Authority, which Father took in the utmost good part, and chatted with him on the Subject for some Time. Howbeit, he is not much flattered, I fancy, by the Quaker's pragmatick Sanction, qualifyde, too, as it was, to show his own Discernment; and when I consider that the major part of Criticks may be as little fitted to take the Measure of their Subject as _Ellwood_ is of Father, I cannot but see that the gleaning of Father's Grapes is better than the Vintage of the Critick's _Abiezer_. To wind up all, _Ellwood_, primming up his Mouth, says, "Thou hast found much to tell us, Friend _Milton_, on _Paradise Lost_;--now, what hast thou to tell of _Paradise Regained_?" Father said nothing at the Time, but hath since been brooding a good deal, and keeping me much to the Reading of the _New Testament_; and I think my Night-work will soon begin again. _Ellwood's_ Talk was much of _Guli Springett_, whom I have seen sundry times, and think high-flown, in spight of her levelling Principles and demure Carriage. The Youth is bewitched with her, I think; what has a Woman to do with Logique? My Belief is, he might as well hope to marry the Moon as to win Mistress _Springett's_ Hand; however, his Self-opinion is considerable. He chode Father this Morning for Organ-playing, saying he doubted its lawfullness. Oh, the Prigg! I grieve to think _Mary_ can sometimes be a little spightfull as well as unduteous. She is ill at her Pen, and having To-day made some Blunder, for which Father chid her, not overmuch, she rudely made Answer, "I never had a Writing-master." _Betty_, being by, treasured up, as I could see, this ill-natured Speech: and 'twas unfair too; for, if we never had a Writing-master, yet my Aunt _Agar_ taught us; and 'twas our own Fault if we improved no more. Indeed, we have had a scrambling Sort of Education; but, in many respects, our Advantages have exceeded those of many young Women; and among them I reckon, first and foremost, continuall Intercourse with a superior Mind. If a Piece of mere Leather, by frequent Contact with Silver, acquires a certain Portion of the pure and bright Metal; sure, the Children of a gifted Parent must, by the Collision of their Minds, insensibly, as 'twere, imbibe somewhat of his finer Parts. _Ned Phillips_, indeed, sayth we are like People living so close under a big Mountain, as not to know how high it is; but I think we . . . at least, I do. And, whatever be our scant Learnings, Father, despite his limited Means, hath never grutched us the Supply of a reall Want; and is, at this Time, paying _Joan Elliott_ at a good Rate for perfecting _Anne_ in her pretty Work. I am sorry _Mary_ should thus have sneaped him; and I am sorry I ever either hurt him--by uncivil Speech, or wronged him by unkind Thought. Poor _Nan_, with all her Infirmities, is, perhaps, his best Child. Not that I am a bad one, neither. My Night-tasks have recommenced of late; because, as he says-- "I suoi Pensieri in lui Dormir non ponno:" which, being interpreted, means, "His Thoughts would let him and his Daughter take no rest." _12th_. I know not that any one but Father hath ever concerned themselves to imagine the Anxieties of the blessed Virgin during her Son's forty Days' mysterious Absence. No wonder that "Within her Breast, tho' calm, her Breast, tho' pure, Motherly Fears got Head." Father hath touched her with a very tender and reverent Hand, dwelling less on her than he did on _Eve_, whom he with perfect Beauty adorned, onlie to make her Sin appear more Sad. Well, we know not ourselves; but methinks I should not have transgrest as she did, neither, for an Apple. _15th_. And now I have transgrest about a Pin! O me! what weak, wicked Wretches we are! "Behold, how great a Matter a little Fire kindleth!" And the Tongue is a Fire, an unruly Member. Sure, when I was writing, at Father's Dictation, such heavy Charges against _Eve_, I privily thought I was better than she; and, sifting the Doings of _Mary_ and _Anne_ through a somewhat censorious Judgment, maybe I thought I was better than they. Alas! we know not our own selves. And so, dropping a Stitch in my Knitting, I must needs cry out--"Here, any of you . . . oh, Mother! do bring me a Pin." My Sisters, as Ill-luck would have it, not being by, cries she, "Forsooth, Manners have come to a fine Pass in these Days! Bring her a Pin, quotha!" Instead of making answer, "Well, 'twas disrespectful; I ask your Pardon;" I must mutter, "I see what I'm valued at--less than a Pin." "_Deb_, don't be unduteous," says Father to me. "Woulde it not have been better to fetch what you wanted, than strangely ask your Mother to bring it?" "And thereby spoil my Work," answered I; "but 'tis no Matter." "Tis a great Matter to be uncivil," says Father. "Oh! dear Husband, do not concern yourself," interrupts Mother; "the Girl's incivility is no new Matter, I protest." On this, a Battle of Words on both sides, ending in Tears, Bitterness, and my being sent by Father to my Chamber till Dinner. "And, _Deb_," he adds, gravely, but not harshly, "take no Book with you, unless it be your _Bible_." Soe, hither, with swelling Heart, I have come. I never drew on myself such Condemnation before--at least, since childish Days; and could be enraged with Mother, were I not enraged with myself. I'm in no Hurry for Dinner-time; I cannot sober down. My Temples beat, and my Throat has a great Lump in it. Why was _Nan_ out of the Way? Yet, would she have made Things better? I was in no Fault at first, that's certain; Mother took Offence where none was meant; but I meant Offence afterwards. Lord, have mercy upon me! I can ask Thy Forgiveness, though not hers. And I could find it in me to ask Father's too, and say, "I have sinned against Heaven, and in thy . . . thy _Hearing_.'" And now I come to write that Word, I have a Mind to cry; and the Lump goes down, and I feel earnest to look into my _Bible_, and more humbled towards Mother. And . . . what is it Father says?-- "What better can I do, than to the Place Repairing, where he judged me, there confess Humbly my Fault, and Pardon beg, with Tears Of Sorrow unfeign'd, and Humiliation meek?" . . . He met me at the very first Word. "I knew you would," he said; "I knew the kindest Thing was to send you to commune with your own Heart in your Chamber, and be still. 'Tis there we find the Holy Spirit and Holy Saviour in waiting for us; and in the House where they abide, as long as they abide in it, there is no Room for _Satan_ to enter. But let this Morning's Work, _Deb_, be a Warning to you, not thus to transgress again. As long as we are in peaceful Communion among ourselves, there is a fine, invisible Cobweb, too clear for mortal Sight, spun from Mind to Mind, which the least Breath of Discord rudely breaks. You owe to your Mother a Daughter's Reverence; and if you behave like a Child, you must look to be punisht like a Child." "I am not a mere Baby, neither," I said. "No," he replied. "I see you can make Distinction between _Teknia_ and _Paidia_; but a Baby is the more inoffensive and less responsible Agent of the two. If you are content to be a Baby in Grace, you must not contend for a Baby's Immunities. I have heard a Baby cry pretty loudly about a Pin." This shut my Mouth close enough. "You are now," he added gently, "nearly as old as your Mother was when I married her." I said, "I fear I am not much like her." He said nothing, only smiled. I made bold to pursue:--"What was she like?" Again he was silent, at least for a Minute; and then, in quite a changed Tone, with somewhat hurried in it, cried,-- "Like the fresh Sweetbriar and early May! Like the fresh, cool, pure Air of opening Day . . . Like the gay Lark, sprung from the glittering Dew . . . An Angel! yet . . . a very Woman too!" And, kicking back his Chair, he got up, and began to walk hastily about the Chamber, as fearlessly as he always does when he is thinking of something else, I springing up to move one or two Chairs out of his Way. Hearing some high Voices in the Offices, he presently observed, "A contentious Woman is like a continuall Dropping. _Shakspeare_ spoke well when he said that a sweet, low Voice is an excellent Thing in Woman. I wish you good Women would recollect that one Avenue of my Senses being stopt, makes me keener to any Impression on the others. Where Strife is, there is Confusion and every evil Work. Why should not we dwell in Peace, in this quiet little Nest, instead of rendering our Home liker to a Cage of unclean Birds?" _Bunhill Fields, London, Oct. 1666_. People have phansied Appearances of Armies in the Air, flaming Swords, Fields of Battle, and other Images; and, truly, the Evening before we left _Chalfont_, methought I beheld the Glories of the ancient City _Ctesiphon_ in the Sunset Clouds, with gilded Battlements, conspicuous far--Turrets, and Terraces, and glittering Spires. The light-armed _Parthians_ pouring through the Gates, in Coats of Mail, and military Pride. In the far Perspective of the open Plain, two ancient Rivers, the one winding, t'other straight, losing themselves in the glowing Distance, among the Tents of the ten lost Tribes. Such are One's Dreams at Sunset. And, when I cast down my dazed Eyes on the shaded Landskip, all looked in Comparison, so black and bleak, that methought how dull and dreary this lower World must have appeared to _Moses_ when he descended from _Horeb_, and to our Saviour, when he came down from the _Mount of Transfiguration_, and to St. _Paul_, when he dropt from the seventh Heaven. What a Click, Click, the Bricklayers make with their Trowels, thus bringing me down from my Altitudes! Sure, we hardly knew how well off we were at _Chalfont_, till we came back to this unlucky Capital, looking as desolate as _Jerusalem_, when the City was ruinated and the People captivated. Weeds in the Streets--smouldering Piles--blackened, tottering Walls--and inexhaustible Heaps of vile Rubbish. Even with closed Windows, everything gets covered with a Coating of fine Dust. Cousin _Jack_ Yesterday picked up a half-burnt Acceptance for twenty thousand Pounds. There is a fine Time coming for Builders and Architects--_Anne's_ Lover among the Rest. The Way she picked him up was notable. Returning to Town, she falls to her old Practices of daily Prayer, and visiting the Poor. At Church she sits over against a good-looking young Man, recovered from the Plague, whose near Approach to Death's Door had made him more godly in his Walk than the general of his Age and Condition. He notes her beautiful Face--marks not her deformed Shape; and, because that, by Reason of the late Distresses, the Calamities of the Poor have been met by unusuall Charities of the upper Classes, he, on his Errands of Mercy among the Rest, presently falls in with her at a poor sick Man's House, and marvels when the limping Stranger turns about and discovers the beautiful Votaress. After one or two chance Meetings, respectfully accosts her--_Anne_ draws back--he finds a mutuall Friend--the Acquaintance progresses; and at length, by Way of first Introduction to my Father, he steps in to ask him (preamble supposed) to give him his eldest Daughter. Then what a Storm ensues! Father's Objections do not transpire, no one being by but Mother, who is unlikely to soften Matters. But, so soon as _John Herring_ shuts the Door behind him, and walks off quickly, _Anne_ is called down, and I follow, neither bidden nor hindered. Thereupon, Father, with a red Heat-spot on his Cheek, asks _Anne_ what she knows of this young Man. Her answer, "Nothing but good." "How came she to know him at all?" . . . Silent; then makes Answer, "Has seen him at Mrs. _French's_ and elsewhere." "Where else?" "Why, at Church, and other Places." Mother here puts in, "What other Places?" . . . "Sure what can it signify," _Anne_ asks, turning short round upon her; "and especially to you, who would be glad to get quit of me on any Terms?" "_Anne, Anne_!" interrupts Father, "does this Concern of ours for you look like it? You know you are saying what is uncivil and untrue." "Well," resumes _Anne_, her breath coming quick, "but what's the Objection to _John Herring_?" "_John_? is he _John_ with you already?" cries Mother. "Then you must know more of him than you say." "Sure, Mother," cries _Anne_, bursting into Tears, "you are enough to overcome the Patience of _Job_. I know nothing of the young Man, but that he is pious, and steady, and well read, and a good Son of reputable Parents, as well to do in the World as ourselves; and that he likes me, whom few like, and offers me a quiet, happy Home." "How fast some People can talk when they like," observes Mother; at which Allusion to _Anne's_ Impediment, I dart at her a Look of Wrath; but _Nan_ only continues weeping. "Come hither, Child," interposes Father, holding his Hand towards her; "and you, good _Betty_, leave us awhile to talk over this without Interruption." At which, Mother, taking him literally, sweeps up her Work, and quits the Room. "The Address of this young Man," says Father, "has taken me wholly by Surprise, and your Encouragement of it has incontestably had somewhat of clandestine in it; notwithstanding which, I have, and can have, nothing in View, dear _Nan_, but your Well-being. As to his Calling, I take no Exceptions at it, even though, like _Caementarius_, he should say, I am a Bricklayer, and have got my Living by my Labour--" "A Master-builder, not a Bricklayer," interposes _Anne_. Father stopt for a Moment; then resumed. "You talk of his offering you a quiet Home: why should you be dissatisfied with your own, where, in the Main, we are all very happy together? In these evil Times, 'tis something considerable to have, as it were, a little Chamber on the Wall, where your Candle is lighted by the Lord, your Table spread by him, your Bed made by him in your Health and Sickness, and where he stands behind the Door, ready to come in and sup with you. All this you will leave for One you know not. How bitterly may you hereafter look back on your present Lot! You know, I have the Apostle's Word for it, that, if I give you in Marriage, I may do well; but, if I give you not, I shall do better. The unmarried Woman careth for the Things of the Lord, that she may be holy in Body and Spirit, and attend upon him without Distraction. Thus was it with the five wise Maidens, who kept their Lamps ready trimmed until the Coming of their Lord. I wish we only knew of five that were foolish. Time would fail me to tell you of all the godly Women, both of the elder and later Time, who have led single Lives without Superstition, and without Hypocrisy. Howbeit, you may marry if you will; but you will be wiser if you abide as you are, after my Judgment. Let me not to the Marriage of true Minds oppose Impediment; but, in your own Case--" "Father," interrupts _Anne_, "you know I am ill at speaking; but permit me to say, you are now talking wide of the Mark. Without going back to the Beginning of the World, or all through the _Romish Calendar_, I will content me with the more recent Instance of yourself, who have thrice preferred Marriage, with all its concomitant Evils, to the single State you laud so highly. Is it any Reason we should not dwell in a House, because St. _Jerome_ lived in a Cave? The godly Women of whom you speak might neither have had so promising a Home offered to them, nor so ill a Home to quit." "What call you an ill Home?" says Father, his Brow darkening. "I call that an ill Home," returns _Anne_, stoutly, "where there is neither Union nor Sympathy--at least, for my Share,--where there are no Duties of which I can well acquit myself, and where those I have made for myself, and find suitable to my Capacity and Strength, are contemned, let, and hindered,--where my Mother-Church, my Mother's Church, is reviled--my Mother's Family despised,--where the few Friends I have made are never asked, while every Attention I pay them is grudged,--where, for keeping all my hard Usage from my Father's Hearing, all the Reward I get is his thinking I have no hard Usage to bear--" "Hold, ungrateful Girl!" says Father; "I've heard enough, and too much. Tis Time wasted to reason with a Woman. I do believe there never yet was one who would not start aside like a broken Bow, or pierce the Side like a snapt Reed, at the very Moment most Dependance was placed in her. Let her Husband humour her to the Top of her Bent,--she takes French Leave of him, departs to her own Kindred, and makes Affection for her Childhood's Home the Pretext for defying the Laws of God and Man. Let her Father cherish her, pity her, bear with her, and shelter her from even the Knowledge of the Evils of the World without,--her Ingratitude will keep Pace with her Ignorance, and she will forsake him for the Sweetheart of a Week. You think Marriage the supreme Bliss: a good many don't find it so. Lively Passions soon burn out; and then come disappointed Expectancies, vain Repinings, fretful Complainings, wrathful Rejoinings. You fly from Collision with jarring Minds: what Security have you for more Forbearance among your new Connexions? Alas! you will carry your Temper with you--you will carry your bodily Infirmities with you;--your little Stock of Experience, Reason, and Patience will be exhausted before the Year is out, and at the End, perhaps, you will--die--" "As well die," cries _Anne_, bursting into Tears, "as live to hear such a Rebuke as this." And so, passionately wringing her Hands, runs out of the Room. "Follow after her, _Deb_," cries Father; "she is beside herself. Unhappy me! tried every Way! An _Oedipus_ with no _Antigone_!" And, rising from his Seat, he began to pace up and down, while I ran up to _Nan_. But scarce had I reached the Stair-head, when we both heard a heavy Fall in the Chamber below. We cried, "Sure, that is Father!" and ran down quicker than we had run up. He was just rising as we entered, his Foot having caught in a long Coil of Gold Lace, which _Anne_, in her disorderly Exit, had unwittingly dragged after her. I saw at a Glance he was annoyed rather than hurt; but _Nan_, without a Moment's Pause, darts into his Arms, in a Passion of Pity and Repentance, crying, "Oh, Father, Father, forgive me! oh, Father!" "Tis all of a Piece, _Nan_," he replies; "alternate hot and cold; every Thing for Passion, nothing for Reason. Now all for me; a Minute ago, I might go to the Wall for _John Herring_." "No, never, Father!" cries _Anne_; "never, dear Father--" "Dark are the Ways of God," continues he, unheeding her; "not only annulling his first best Gift of Light to me, and leaving me a Prey to daily Contempt, Abuse, and Wrong, but mangling my tenderest, most apprehensive Feelings--" _Anne_ again breaks in with, "Oh! Father, Father!" "Dark, dark, for ever dark!" he went on; "but just are the Ways of God to Man. Who shall say, 'What doest Thou?'" "Father, I promise you," says _Anne_, "that I will never more think of _John Herring_." "Foolish Girl!" he replies sadly; "as ready now to promise too Much, as resolute just now to hear Nothing. How can you promise never to think of him? I never asked it of you." "At least I can promise not to speak of him," says _Anne_. "Therein you will do wisely," rejoins Father. "My Consent having been asked is an Admission that I have a Right to give or withhold it; and, as I have already told _John Herring_, I shall certainly not grant it before you are of Age. Perhaps by that Time you may be your own Mistress, without even such an ill Home as I, while I live, can afford you." "No more of that," says _Anne_, interrupting him; and a Kiss sealed the Compact. All this Time, Mother and _Mary_ were, providentially, out of the Way. Mother had gone off in a Huff, and _Mary_ was busied in making some marbled Veal. The rest of the Day was dull enough: violent Emotions are commonly succeeded by flat Stagnations. _Anne_, however, seemed kept up by some Energy from within, and looked a little flushed. At Bed-time she got the start of me, as usuall; and, on entering our Chamber, I found her quite undrest, sitting at the Table, not reading of her _Bible_, but with her Head resting on it. I should have taken her to be asleep, but for the quick Pulsation of some Nerve or Muscle at the back of the Neck, somewhere under the right Ear. She looks up, commences rubbing her Eyes, and says, "My Eyes are full of Sand, I think. I will give you my new Crown-piece, _Deb_, if you will read me to sleep without another Word." So I say, "A Bargain," though without meaning to take the Crown; and she jumps into Bed in a Minute, and I begin at the Sermon on the Mount, and keep on and on, in more and more of a Monotone; but every Time I lookt up, I saw her Eyes wide open, agaze at the top of the Bed; and so I go on and on, like a Bee humming over a Flower, till she shuts her Eyes; but, at last, when I think her off, having just got to _Matthew_, eleven, twenty-eight, she fetches a deep sigh, and says, "I wish I could hear Him saying so to me . . . 'Come, _Anne_, unto me, and I will give you Rest.' But, in fact, He does so as emphatically in addressing all the weary and heavy-laden, as if I heard Him articulating, 'Come, _Anne_, come!'" POST SCRIPTUM _Spitalfields, 1680_. A generous Mind finds even its just Resentments languish and die away when their Object becomes the unresisting prey of Death. Such is my Experience with regard to _Betty Fisher_, whose ill Life hath now terminated, and from whom, confronted at the Bar of their great Judge, Father will, one Day, hear the Truth. As to my Stepmother, Time and Distance have had their soothing Effect on me even regarding her. She is down in _Cheshire_, among her own People; is a hale, hearty Woman yet, and will very likely outlive me. If she looked in on me this Moment, and saw me in this homely but decent Suit, sitting by my clear Coal-fire, in this little oak-panelled Room, with a clean, though coarse Cloth neatly laid on the Supper Table, with Covers for two, could she sneer at the Spouse of the _Spitalfields_ Weaver? Belike she might, for Spight never wanted Food; but I would have her into the Nursery, shew her the two sleeping Faces, and ask her. Did I need her Pity then? _Betty's_ Death, calling up Memories of old Times, hath made me somewhat cynical, I think. I cannot but call to Mind her many ill Turns. 'Twas shortly after the Rupture of _Anne's_ Match with _John Herring_. Poor _Nan_ had over-reckoned on her own Strength of Mind, when she promised Father to speak of him no more; and, after the first Fervour of Self-denial, became so captious, that Father said he heard _John Herring_ in every Tone. This set them at Variance, to commence with; and then, _Mary_ detecting _Betty_ in certain Malpractices, Mother could no longer keep her, for Decency's Sake; and _Betty_, in revenge, came up to Father before she left, and told him a tissue of Lies concerning us,--how that _Mary_ had wished him dead, and I had made away with his Books and Kitchen-stuff. I, being at _Hackney_ at the Time, on a Visitt to _Rosamond Woodcock_, was not by to refute the infamous Charge, which had Time to rankle in Father's Mind before I returned; and _Mary_ having lost his Opinion by previous Squabbles with Mother and the Maids, I came back only to find the House turned upside down. 'Twas under these misfortunate Circumstances that poor Father commenced his_ Sampson Agonistes_; and, though his Object was, primarily, to divert his Mind, it too often ran upon Things around him, and made his Poem the Shadow and Mirrour of himself. When he got to _Dalilah_, I could not forbear saying, "How hard you are upon Women, Father!" "Hard?" repeated he; "I think I am anything but that. Do you call me hard on _Eve_, and the Lady in _Comus_?" "No, indeed," I returned. "The Lady, like _Una_, makes Sunshine in a shady Place; and, in fact, how should it be otherwise? For Truth and Purity, like Diamonds, shine in the Dark." He smiled, and, passing his Hand across his Brow to re-collect himself, went on in a freer, less biting Spirit, to the Encounter with _Harapha_ of _Gath_, in which he evidently revelled, even to making me laugh, when the big, cowardly Giant excused himself from coming within the blind Man's Reach, by saying of him, that he had need of much washing to be willingly touched. He went on flowingly to "But take good Heed my Hand survey not thee; My Heels are fetter'd, but my Fist is free," and then broke into a merry Laugh himself; adding, a Line or two after, "His Giantship is gone, somewhat crest-fallen; ". . . there, Girl, that will do for To-day." Meantime, his greater Poem had come out, for which he had got an immediate Payment of five Pounds, with a conditional Expectance of fifteen Pounds more on the three following Editions, should the Public ever call for 'em. And truly, when one considers how much Meat and Drink One may buy for Twenty Pounds, and how capricious is the Taste of the critikal World, 'tis no mean Venture of a Bookseller on a Manuscript of which he knows the actual value as little as a Salvage of the Gold-dust he parts with for a Handful of old Nails. At all events, the Sale of the Work gave Father no Reason to suppose he had made an ill Bargain; but, indeed, he gave himself very little Concern about it; and was quite satisfied when, now and then, Mr. _Marvell_ and Mr. _Skinner_, or some other old Crony, having waded through it, looked in on him to talk it over. Money, indeed, a little more of it, would have been often acceptable. Mother now began to pinch us pretty short, and lament the unsaleable Quality of Father's Productions; also to call us a Set of lazy Drones, and wonder what would come of us some future Day; insomuch that Father, turning the Matter sedately in his Mind, did seriously conclude 'twould be well for us to go forth for a While, to learn some Method of Self-support. And this was accelerated by an unhappy Collision 'twixt my Mother and me, which, in a hasty Moment, sent me, with swelling Heart, to take Counsel of Mrs. _Lefroy_, my sometime Playfellow _Rosamond Woodcock_, then on the Point of embarking for _Ireland_; who volunteered to take me with her, and be at my Charges; so I took leave of Father with a bursting Heart, not troubling him with an Inkling of my Ill-usage, which has been a Comfort to me ever since, though he went to the Grave believing I had only sought my own Well-doing. We never met again. Had I foreseen it, I could not have left him. The next Stroke was to get away _Mary_ and _Anne_, and take back _Betty Fisher_. Then the nuncupative Will was hatched up; for I never will believe it authentick--no, never; and Sir _Leoline Jenkins_, that upright and able Judge, set it aside, albeit _Betty Fisher_ would swear through thick and thin. Sure, Things must have come to a pretty Pass, when Father was brought to take his Meals in the Kitchen! a Thing he had never been accustomed to in his Life, save at _Chalfont_, by Reason of the Parlour being so small. And the Words, both as to Sense and Choice, which _Betty_ put into his Mouth, betrayed the Counterfeit, by favouring over-much of the Scullion. "God have Mercy, _Betty_! I see thou wilt perform according to thy Promise, in providing me such Dishes as I think fit whilst I live; and when I die, thou knowest I have left thee all!" Phansy Father talking like that! Were I not so provoked, I could laugh. And he to sell his Children's Birthright for a Mess of Pottage, who, instead of loving savoury Meat, like blind _Isaac_, was, in fact, the most temperate of Men! who cared not what he ate, so 'twas sweet and clean; who might have said with godly Mr. _Ball_ of _Whitmore_, that he had two Dishes of Meat to his Sabbath-dinner,--a Dish of hot Milk, and a Dish of cold Milk; and that was enough and enough. Whose Drink was from the Well;--often have I drawn it for him at _Chalfont!--_and who called Bread-and-butter a lordly Dish;--often have I cut him thick Slices, and brought him Cresses from the Spring! Well placed he his own Principle and Practice in the Chorus's Mouth, where they say, "Oh, Madness! to think Use of strongest Wines And strongest Drinks our chief Support of Health!" So that Story carries its Confutation with it: _Ned Phillips_ says so, too. As to what passed, that _July_ Forenoon, between him and Uncle _Kit_, before the latter left Town in the _Ipswich_ Coach, and with _Betty Fisher_ fidgetting in and out of the Chamber all the Time . . . he may, or may not have called us his unkind Children; for we can never tell what Reasons had been given him to make him think us so. That must stand over. How many human Misapprehensions must do the same! Enough that one Eye sees all, that one Spirit knows all . . . even all our Misdoings; or else, how could we bear to tell Him even the least of them? But it requires great Faith in the greatly wronged, to obtain that Calm of Mind, all Passion spent, which some have arrived at. When we can stand firm on that Pinnacle, _Satan_ falls prone. He sets us on that dizzy Height, as he did our Master; saying, in his taunting Fashion,-- "There stand, if thou canst stand; to stand upright Will ask thee Skill;" but the Moment he sees we can, down he goes himself!--falls whence he stood to see his Victor fall! This is what Man has done, and Man may do,--and Woman too; the Strength, for asking, being promised and given. 
22286	----	MILTON BY JOHN BAILEY AUTHOR OF "THE CLAIMS OF FRENCH POETRY," "DR. JOHNSON AND HIS CIRCLE," ETC. LONDON WILLIAMS AND NORGATE [Transcriber's note: Page numbers in this book are indicated by numbers enclosed in curly braces, e.g. {99}. They have been located where page breaks occurred in the original book, in accordance with Project Gutenberg's FAQ-V-99. For its Index, a page number has been placed only at the start of that section.] First printed Spring 1915 CONTENTS CHAP. I INTRODUCTORY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 II MILTON'S LIFE AND CHARACTER . . . . . . . . . . . 28 III THE EARLIER POEMS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89 IV _PARADISE LOST_ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 143 V _PARADISE REGAINED_ AND _SAMSON AGONISTES_ . . . 190 BIBLIOGRAPHY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 250 INDEX . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 254 Milton! thou shouldst be living at this hour: England hath need of thee; she is a fen Of stagnant waters: altar, sword and pen, Fireside, the heroic wealth of hall and bower, Have forfeited their ancient English dower Of inward happiness. We are selfish men; Oh! raise us up, return to us again; And give us manners, virtue, freedom, power. Thy soul was like a Star, and dwelt apart: Thou hadst a voice whose sound was like the sea; Pure as the naked heavens, majestic, free, So didst thou travel on life's common way, In cheerful godliness; and yet thy heart The lowliest duties on herself did lay. WORDSWORTH. O Mighty-mouth'd inventor of harmonies, O skill'd to sing of Time or Eternity, God-gifted organ-voice of England, Milton, a name to resound for ages; Whose Titan angels, Gabriel, Abdiel, Starr'd from Jehovah's gorgeous armouries, Tower, as the deep-doomed empyrean Rings to the roar of an angel onset-- Me rather all that bowery loneliness, The brooks of Eden mazily murmuring, And bloom profuse and cedar arches Charm, as a wanderer out in ocean, Where some refulgent sunset of India Streams o'er a rich ambrosial ocean isle, And crimson-hued the stately palm-woods Whisper in odorous heights of even. TENNYSON. {7} MILTON CHAPTER I INTRODUCTORY When a man spends a day walking in hilly country he is often astonished at the new shape taken on by a mountain when it is looked at from a new point of view. Sometimes the change is so great as to make it almost unrecognizable. He who has seen Snowdon from Capel-Curig is reluctant to admit that what he sees from Llanberis is the same mountain: he who has seen the Langdale Pikes from Glaramara is amazed at their beauty as he gazes at them from the garden at Low Wood. These are extreme cases. But to a less degree every traveller among the mountains is experiencing the same thing all day. He finds the eternal hills the most plastic of forms. At each change in his own position there is a change in the shape of a mountain under which he is passing. He may keep his eye fixed upon it but insensibly, as he watches, the long {8} chain will become a vertical peak, the jagged precipice a round green slope. Much the same process goes on as the generations of men pass on their way, with their eyes fixed, as they cannot help being, on the great human heights of their own and earlier days. Many of these look great only when you are close to them. At a little distance they are seen to be small and soon they disappear altogether. The true mountains remain but they do not keep the same shape. Each succeeding generation sees the peaks of humanity from a new point of view which cannot be exactly the same as that of its predecessor. Each age reshapes for itself its conception of art, of poetry, of religion, and of human life which includes them all. Of some of the masters in each of these worlds it feels that they belong not to their own generation only but to all time and so to itself. It cannot be satisfied, therefore, with what its predecessors have said about them. It needs to see them again freshly for itself, and put into words so far as it can its own attitude towards them. That is the excuse for the new books which will always be written every few years about Hebrew Religion, or Greek Art, or the French Revolution, or about such men as Plato, {9} St. Paul, Shakspeare, Napoleon. It is the excuse even for a much humbler thing, for the addition of a volume on Milton to the Home University Library. The object of this Library is not, indeed, to say anything startlingly new about the great men with whom it deals. Rather the contrary, in fact: for to say anything startlingly new about Shakspeare or Plato would probably be merely to say what is absurd or false. The main outlines of these great figures have long been settled, and the man who writes a book to prove that Shakspeare was not a great dramatist, or was an exact and lucid writer, is wasting his own time and that of his readers. The mountain may change its aspect from hour to hour, but when once we have ascertained that it is composed of granite, that matter is settled, and there is no use in arguing that it is sandstone or basalt. The object of such volumes as those of this Library is no vain assault on the secure judgment-seat of the world, no hopeless appeal against the recorded and accepted decrees of time. It is rather to re-state those decrees in modern language and from the point of view of our own day: to show, for instance, how Plato, though no longer for us what he was for the Neo-Platonists, is {10} still for us the most moving mind of the race that more than all others has moved the mind of the world; how Milton, though no longer for us a convincing justifier of the ways of God to men, is still a figure of transcendent interest, the most lion-hearted, the loftiest-souled, of Englishmen, the one consummate artist our race has produced, the only English man of letters who in all that is known about him, his life, his character, his poetry, shows something for which the only fit word is sublime. There was much else beside, of course. The sublime is very near the terrible, and the terrible is often not very far removed from the hateful. Dante giving his "daily dreadful line" to the private and public enemies with whom he grimly populates his hell is not exactly an amiable or attractive figure. Still less so is Milton in those prose pamphlets in which he passes so rapidly, and to us so strangely, from the heights of heaven to the gutter mud of scurrilous personalities. This is a disease from which our more amiable age seems at last to have delivered the world. But Milton has at least the excuse of a long and august tradition, from the days of Demosthenes, equally profuse of a patriotism as lofty and of personalities as {11} base as Milton's, to those of a whole line of the scholars of the Renaissance who lived with the noblest literature of the world and wrote of each other in the language of Billingsgate fishwives. So the sublimity of his life is wholly that of an irresistible will, set from the first on achieving great deeds and victoriously achieving them in defiance of adverse men and fates. But this is quite compatible with qualities the reverse of agreeable. It is the business of sublimity to compel amazed admiration, not to be a pleasant companion. Milton rejoicing over the tortures bishops will suffer in hell, Milton insulting Charles I, Milton playing the tyrant to his daughters, none of these are pleasant pictures. But such incidents, if perhaps unusually grim in the case of Milton, are apt to happen with Olympians. Experience shows that it is generally best to listen to their thunder from a certain distance. Such limitations must not be ignored. But neither must they be unduly pressed. The important thing about the sun is not its spots but its light and heat. No great poet in all history, with the possible exception of Dante, has so much heat as Milton. In prose and verse alike he burns and glows with fire. At its worst it is a fire of anger and pride, at {12} its best a fire of faith in liberty, justice, righteousness, God. Of the highest of all fires, the white flame of love, it has indeed little. Milton had no Beatrice to teach him how to show men the loveliness of the divine law, the beauty of holiness. He could describe the loss of Paradise and even its recovery, but its eternal bliss, the bliss of those who live in the presence of l'amor che move il sole e l'altre stelle, he could not describe. To do that required one who had seen the Vita Nuova before he saw the Inferno. _In la sua volontade é nostra pace_. So Dante thought: but not altogether so Milton. It is not a difference of theological opinion: it is a difference of temper. For Dante the "will of God" at once suggested both the apostolic and the apocalyptic love, joy, peace, the supreme and ultimate beatific vision. Bitter as his life on earth had been, no man ever suffering more from evil days and evil tongues, no man ever more bitterly conscious of living in an evil and perverse generation, he had yet within him a perpetual fountain of peace in the thought of God's will, and the faith that he was daily advancing nearer to the light of heaven and the divine presence. Milton, a sincere believer in God {13} if man ever were, must also at times have had his moments of beatific vision in which the invisible peace of God became more real than the storms of earthly life and the vileness of men. Indeed, we see the traces of such moments in the opening of _Comus_, in the concluding lines of _Lycidas_, in the sustained ecstasy of _At a Solemn Music_. But they appear to have been only moments. Milton was a lifelong Crusader who scarcely set foot in the Holy Land. The will of God meant for him not so much peace as war. He is a prophet rather than a psalmist. "Woe is me, my Mother, that thou hast born me a man of strife and contention," he himself complains in the _Reason of Church Government_. He was not much over thirty when he wrote those words: and they remained true of him to the end. For twenty years the strife was active and public; ever, in appearance at least, more and more successful: then for the final fourteen it became the impotent wrath of a caged and wounded lion. Never for a moment did his soul bow to the triumph of the idolaters: but neither could it forget them, nor make any permanent escape into purer air. _Paradise Lost_, _Paradise Regained_ and _Samson_, especially the last, are all plainly the works of a man conscious of {14} having been defeated by a world which he could defy but could not forget. Sublimely certain of the righteousness of his cause, he has no abiding certainty of its victory. He hears too plainly the insulting voices of the sons of Belial, and broods in proud and angry gloom over the ruin of all his hopes, personal, political and ecclesiastical. And as his religion was a thing of intellect and conscience, not a thing of spiritual vision, he cannot make for himself that mystical trans-valuation of all earthly doings in the light of which the struggles of political and ecclesiastical parties are seen as things temporary, trivial and of little account. Such are the limitations of Milton. They are those of a man who lived in the time of a great national struggle, deliberately chose his own side in it, and from thenceforth saw nothing in the other but folly, obstinacy and crime. He has in him nothing whatever of the universal, and universally sympathetic, insight of Shakspeare. And he has paid the price of his narrowness in the open dislike, or at best grudging recognition, of that half of the world which is not Puritan and not Republican, and still looks upon history, custom, law and loyalty with very different eyes from his. But those who exact that {15} penalty do themselves at least as much injustice as they do Milton. To deprive ourselves of Milton because we are neither Puritan moralists nor Old Testament politicians is an act of intellectual suicide. The wise, as the world goes on, may differ more and more from some of Milton's opinions. They can never escape the greatness either of the poet or of the man. Men's appreciation of Milton is almost in proportion to their instinctive understanding of what greatness is. Other poets, perhaps, have things of greater beauty: none in English, none, perhaps, in any language, fills us with a more exalting conviction of the greatness of human life. No man rises from an hour with Milton without feeling ashamed of the triviality of his life and certain that he can, if he will, make it less trivial. It is impossible not to catch from him some sense of the high issues, immediate and eternal, on which human existence ought to be conscious that it hangs. The world will be very old before we can spare a man who can render us this service. We have no one in England who renders it so imperiously as Milton. This part of his permanent claim upon our attention belongs to all that we know of him, to everything in his life so far as it is recorded, {16} even to his prose, where its appearances are occasional, as well as to his verse, where it is continuous and omnipresent. It is, of course, in connection with the last that we are most conscious of it and that it is most important. After all, the rest would have been unknown or forgotten if he had not been a great poet. But it is not merely by his force of mind and character, nor merely by the influence they have upon us through the poetry, that he claims our attention to-day. Altogether independently of that, the study of Milton is of immense and special value to Englishmen. Except in poetry our English contribution to the life of the arts in Europe has been comparatively small. That very Puritanism which had so much to do with the greatness of Milton has also had much to do with the general failure of Englishmen to produce fine art, or even to care about it, or so much as recognize it when they see it. Now Milton, Puritan as he was, was always, and not least in his final Puritan phase, a supreme artist. Poetry has been by far our greatest artistic achievement and he is by far our greatest poetic artist. No artist in any other field, no Inigo Jones or Wren, no Purcell, no Reynolds or Turner, holds such unquestioned eminence in any other art as he in his. If {17} the world asks us where to look for the genius of England, so far as it has ever been expressed on paper, we point, of course, unhesitatingly to Shakspeare. But Shakspeare is as inferior to Milton in art as he is superior in genius. His genius will often, indeed, supply the place of art; but the possession of powers that are above art is not the same thing as being continuously and consciously a great artist. We can all think of many places in his works where for hundreds of lines the most censorious criticism can scarcely wish a word changed; but we can also think of many in which the least watchful cannot fail to wish much changed and much omitted. "Would he had blotted a thousand" is still a true saying, and its truth known and felt by all but the blindest of the idolaters of Shakspeare. No one has ever uttered such a wish about the poetry of Milton. This is not the place to anticipate a discussion of it which must come later. But, in an introductory chapter which aims at insisting upon the present and permanent importance of Milton, it is in place to point out the immense value to the English race of acquaintance with work so conscientiously perfect as Milton's. English writers on the whole have had a tendency to be rather slipshod in {18} expression and rather indifferent to the finer harmonies of human speech, whether as a thing of pure sound or as a thing of sounds which have more than mere meaning, which have associations. Milton as both a lover of music and a scholar is never for a moment unconscious of either. It would scarcely be going too far to say that there is not a word in his verse which owes its place solely to the fact that it expresses his meaning. All the words accepted by his instinctive or deliberate choice were accepted because they provided him with the most he could obtain of three qualities which he desired: the exact expression of the meaning needed for the immediate purpose in hand, the associations fittest to enhance or enrich that meaning, the rhythmical or musical effect required for the verse. The study of his verse is one that never exhausts itself, so that the appreciation of it has been called the last reward of consummate scholarship. But the phrase does Milton some injustice. It is true that the scholar tastes again and again in Milton some flavour of association or suggestion which is not to be perceived by those who are not scholars, and it is also true that he consciously understands what he is enjoying more than they possibly can. But neither Milton's nor any other {19} great art makes its main appeal to learning. What does that is not art at all but pedantry. Those who have never read a line of the Greek and Latin poets certainly miss many pleasures in reading Milton, but, if they have any ear for poetry at all, they do not miss either the mind or the art of Milton. The unconquerable will, the high soaring soul, are everywhere audibly present: and so, even to those who have little reading and no knowledge at all of matters of rhythm or metre, are the grave Dorian music, the stately verses rolling in each after the other like great ocean waves in eternal difference, in eternal sameness. The ignorant ear hears and rejoices, with a delight that passes understanding, as the ignorant eye sees a fine drawing or a piece of Greek sculpture and without understanding enjoys, learns, and unconsciously grows in keenness of sight. To live with Milton is necessarily to learn that the art of poetry is no triviality, no mere amusement, but a high and grave thing, a thing of the choicest discipline of phrase, the finest craftsmanship of structure, the most nobly ordered music of sound. The ordinary reader may not be conscious of any such lessons: but he learns them nevertheless. And from no one else in English can he learn them so well as from Milton. {20} For these reasons, these and others, we must cling to our great epic poet, Shelley's "third among the sons of light." He is not easy reading: the greatest seldom are: but as with all the greatest, each new reading is not only easier than the last but fuller of matter for thought, wonder and delight. At each new reading, too, the things in him that belonged to his own age, the Biblical literalism, the theological prepossessions, the political partisanship, recede more and more into the background and leave us freer to enjoy the things which belong to all time. And to all peoples. Milton is, indeed, intensely English and could not have been anything but an Englishman. His profound conviction of the greatness of moral issues, and his passionate love of liberty, have both been characteristic of the Englishmen of whom England is most proud. Till lately too, at any rate, we should have said that his fierce individualism, intellectual and political, was English too. But his mind and soul, stored with the gathered riches of many languages and of an inward experience far too intense to be confined by national limitations, reach out to a world wider altogether than this island, wider even than Europe. In _Samson Agonistes_ it is hard to say who is more vividly present, the English {21} politician, the Greek tragedian, or the Hebrew prophet. And in one sense _Paradise Lost_ is the most universal of all poems. Indeed, that word may be applied to it in its strictest meaning, for the field of Milton's action is not Greece, or Italy, or England, or even the whole earth; it is the universe itself. That is one of its difficulties: but it is also a source of the uplifting and enlarging quality which is peculiarly Miltonic. With him we are conscious of treading no petty scene. We have in some respects travelled far from Milton's way both of stating and of solving his problem, but nevertheless it is still with us to-day and always: the problem of man's origin and destiny, of the ways of God to men. And though Milton is more hampered by literal belief in a particular theological legend than the authors of the _Book of Job_ and the _Prometheus Vinctus_, yet, like these, he shows that a great mind and soul will leave the imprint of power and truth on the most incredible primitive story. To read his great poem, or indeed any of his poems, is to live for a while in the presence of one of those royal souls, those natural kings of men, whom Plato felt to be born to rule and inspire their fellows: and the heroic temper of the man is in England less rare than the consummate {22} perfection of art which has eternalized its utterance. This is Milton: and, though we may be too weak to read him often, we shall never be able to do without him, never think of him without an added strength and exaltation of spirit. {23} CHAPTER II MILTON'S LIFE AND CHARACTER We know far more about Milton than about any other English poet born so long ago. There are three reasons for this. One is that from his earliest years he was very much interested in himself, was quite aware that he was a man above the stature of ordinary men, and had the most deliberate intention and expectation of doing great things. Consequently he is not only, like most good poets, fond of bringing more or less concealed autobiography into his poetry, but still more in his prose works he inclines often to insert long passages about himself, his studies, travels, projects, friends and character. It is these more than anything else which now keep those works alive: and, coming from a man so proudly truthful as Milton evidently was, they are of the greatest interest and value. The second reason why we know so much about him is that he played an active part in politics, a far more certain way of {24} attracting contemporary attention in England than writing _Hamlet_ or building St. Paul's Cathedral. And the third is that his life has been made the subject of perhaps the most minute and elaborate biography in the language. Mr. Masson's labours enable us to know, if we choose, every fact, however insignificant, which the most laborious investigation can discover, not only about Milton himself but, one may almost say, about everybody who was ever for five minutes in Milton's company. From this mass of material, all that can be touched here is a few of the most salient facts of the life and the most striking features of the character. Milton's life is naturally divided into three periods. The first is that of his education and early poems. It extends from his birth in 1608 to his return from his foreign travels in 1639. The second is that of his political activity, and extends from 1639 to the Restoration. The third is that of _Paradise Lost_, _Paradise Regained_ and _Samson_. It concludes with his death, on November 8, 1674. Milton was born on December 9, 1608, at a house in Bread Street, Cheapside. The house is gone, but the street is a very short one, and it is still pleasant to step out of the {25} roar of Cheapside into its quietness, and think that there, on the left, close by, under the shadow of Bow Church, was born the greatest poet to whom the greatest city of the modern world has given birth. London ought to hold fast to the honour of Milton, for his honour is peculiarly hers. He was not only born a Londoner but lived in London nearly all his life. And his mind is throughout that of the citizen. Neither agriculture nor sport means much to him; and, much as he loves the sights and sounds of the open country, his allusions to them are those of the delighted but still wondering alien, not those of the native. None is more often quoted than the passage in the ninth book of _Paradise Lost_-- "As one who, long in populous city pent, Where houses thick and sewers annoy the air, Forth issuing on a summer's morn, to breathe Among the pleasant villages and farms Adjoined, from each thing met conceives delight-- The smell of grain, or tedded grass, or kine, Or dairy, each rural sight, each rural sound-- If chance with nymph-like step fair virgin pass, What pleasing seemed for her now pleases more, She most, and in her look sums all delight." {26} And the secret of its charm obviously lies partly in the note of a personal experience. Just in that way must Milton, as boy and man, have often issued forth from the weariness of his studies and the noise and confinement of the streets, for a walk among the open fields that then lay so close at hand for the Londoner. And perhaps, as the inhabitants of towns often do, he took a pleasure in the very hedgerows unknown to those who saw them every day. The present Poet Laureate, who has spent most of his life in the country, has asked a question to which it is not easy for the countryman to give the answer he would like-- "Whose spirit leaps more high, Plucking the pale primrose, Than his whose feet must fly The pasture where it grows?" If the town-dweller never attains to that mystical communion with the secret soul of Nature which Wordsworth and such as Wordsworth owe to a life spent in the "temple's inmost shrine," yet his eye, undulled by familiarity, commonly sees more in trees and flowers than the eyes of nearly all those who live every day among them. At its highest familiarity breeds intimacy, but more often what it breeds is indifference. A man who {27} reads the Bible for the first time in middle life will never live inside it as some saints have lived; but he will see much that is hidden from most of those who have been reading it every day since they could read at all. Milton remained in London, so far as we know, for the first sixteen years of his life. He was educated at St. Paul's School by a private tutor, one Thomas Young, who was later a conspicuous Presbyterian figure, and by his father, to whom he owed far more than to any one except himself. The elder John Milton was a remarkable man. He had, to begin with, deserted the religious views of his family and taken a line of his own, a course which may not always indicate wisdom, but always indicates force of character. The poet's grandfather, who lived in the Oxford country, had adhered very definitely to Roman Catholicism and is said to have cast off his son for becoming a Protestant and something of a Puritan. The son went to London, set up in business as a scrivener, that is, as something like a modern solicitor, and prospered so much that by 1632 he was able to retire and live in the country. He had considerable musical talents, and his compositions are found in collections of tunes to which such {28} men as Morley, Dowland and Orlando Gibbons contributed. His house was no doubt full of music, as were, indeed, many others in that most musical of English centuries, and it must have been primarily to him that the poet owed the intense delight in music which appears in all his works. No poet speaks of music so often, and none in his poetry so often suggests that art. The untaught music of lark or nightingale he has not; but no poet has so much of the music which is one of the most consciously elaborate of those arts by which man expresses at once his senses, his mind and his soul. In the spring of 1625, just a month or two after the accession of the king whose tragical fate was to be the original source of Milton's European fame and very nearly the cause of his mounting a scaffold himself, the future author of _Paradise Lost_ went into residence at Cambridge where he remained for seven years. The college that can boast his name among its members is Christ's. Unlike so many poets he had a successful university career, took the ordinary degrees, and evidently made an impression on his contemporaries. No doubt the strong natural bias to a studious life which he had from a child made him apter for university discipline {29} than is usually the case with genius. From the beginning he had the passion of the student. He says of himself that from his twelfth year he scarce ever went to bed before midnight; and Aubrey reports much the same and says that his father "ordered the maid to sit up for him." And his studies were in the main the accepted studies of the time, not, like Shelley's, a defiance of them. All through his life he had a scholar's respect for learning, and for the great tradition of literature which it is the true business of scholarship to maintain. Radical and rebel as he was in politics and theology, contemptuous of law, custom and precedent, he was always the exact opposite in his art. There he never attempted the method of the _tabula rasa_, or clean slate, which made his political pamphlets so barren. The greatest of all proofs of the strength of his individuality is that it so entirely dominates the vast store of learning and association with which his poetry is loaded. Such a man will at least give his university a chance; and, though Milton did not in later life look back on Cambridge with great affection or respect, there can be no doubt that the seven years he spent within the walls of a college were far from useless to the poet who more than any other {30} was to make learning serve the purposes of poetry. So strong, self-reliant and proudly virtuous a nature was not likely to be altogether popular either with the authorities or with his companions. Nor was he, at any rate at first. He had some difference with his tutor, had to leave Cambridge for a time, and is alleged, on very doubtful evidence, to have been flogged. But, whatever his fault was, it was nothing that he was ashamed of, for he publicly alluded to the affair in his Latin poems, and was never afraid to challenge inquiry into his Cambridge career. Nor did it injure him permanently with the authorities. He took his degrees at the earliest possible dates, and ten years after he left Cambridge was able to write publicly and gratefully of "the more than ordinary respect which I found, above many of my equals, at the hands of those courteous and learned men, the Fellows of that college wherein I spent some years: who, at my parting after I had taken two degrees, as the manner is, signified many ways how much better it would content them that I would stay: as by many letters full of kindness and loving respect, both before that time and long after, I was assured of their singular good affection towards me." The {31} Fellows were no doubt clerical dons of the ordinary sort: indeed, we know they were; but they could not have Milton among them for seven years without discovering that he was something above the ordinary undergraduate. Wood, who died in 1695 and therefore writes as a contemporary, says of Milton that while at Cambridge he was "esteemed to be a virtuous and sober person yet not to be ignorant of his own parts." Such young men may not be popular, but if they have the real thing in them they soon compel respect. By the undergraduates Milton was called "The Lady of Christ's." And it is plain, from his own references to this nickname in a Prolusion delivered in the college, that he owed it not only to his fair complexion, short stature and great personal beauty, but also to the purity, delicacy and refinement of his manners. He contemptuously asks the audience who had given him the nickname whether the name of manhood was to be confined to those who could drain great tankards of ale or to peasants whose hands were hard with holding the plough. He disdains the implied charge of prudery, and indeed his language is what could not have been used by an effeminate or a coward. No braver man ever held a pen. Wood says {32} that "his deportment was affable, his gait erect, bespeaking courage and undauntedness," and he himself tells us that "he did not neglect daily practice with his sword," and that "when armed with it, as he generally was, he was in the habit of thinking himself quite a match for any one and of being perfectly at ease as to any injury that any one could offer him." Evidently he owed his title of "Lady" to no weakness, but to a disgust at the coarse and barbarous amusements then common at the universities. He says of himself that he had no faculty for "festivities and jests," as indeed was to be witnessed by all his writings. The witticisms, if such they can be called, which occur in his poetry and oftener in his prose are akin to what are now called practical jokes, that is jokes made by the bodies of those whose minds are not capable of joking. This was partly the common fault of an age whose jests, as may be seen sometimes even in Shakspeare, appear to us to alternate between the merely obvious, the merely verbal, and the merely barbarous; but it was partly also the peculiar temperament of Milton, whose sense of humour, like that of many learned and serious men, was so sluggish that it could only be moved by a very violent stimulus. {33} But in the main with Milton there was no question of jests, good or bad. It is evident from his own proud confessions that he was always intensely serious, at least from his Cambridge days, always conscious of the greatness of life's issues, always uplifted with the noblest sort of ambition. He says of himself that, however he might admire the art of Ovid and poets of Ovid's sort, he soon learnt to dislike their morals and turned from them to the "sublime and pure thoughts" of Petrarch and Dante. And his "reasonings, together with a certain niceness of nature, an honest haughtiness, and self-esteem either of what I was or what I might be (which let envy call pride) . . . kept me still above those low descents of mind beneath which he must deject and plunge himself that can agree to saleable and unlawful prostitutions." And in repudiating an impudently false charge against his own character he boldly announces a doctrine far above his own age, one, indeed, to which ours has not yet attained. "Having had the doctrine of Holy Scripture unfolding these chaste and high mysteries with timeliest care infused that 'the body is for the Lord and the Lord for the body,' thus also I argued to myself,--that, if unchastity in a woman, whom St. Paul terms the glory of man, be {34} such a scandal and dishonour, then certainly in a man, who is both the image and glory of God, it must, though commonly not so thought, be much more deflowering and dishonourable. . . . Thus large I have purposely been that, if I have been justly taxed with this crime, it may come upon me after all this my confession with a tenfold shame." Such was the man from the first, severe with others and with himself, conscious, almost from boyhood, in his own famous words, that "he who would not be frustrate of his hope to write well hereafter in laudable things ought himself to be a true poem"; a somewhat strange figure, no doubt, among the tavern-haunting undergraduates of the seventeenth century, a stranger still to be honoured, a hundred and fifty years later, in the rooms which then and now were remembered as his, by the single act of drunkenness in the long and virtuous life of Wordsworth. When he left the university in 1632 Milton had conquered respect, though probably not popularity. The tone of the sixth of the academic Orations, which he delivered at Cambridge and allowed to be published in his old age, shows that, being still aware that he was not popular, he was surprised and pleased at the applause with which a previous discourse of {35} his had been received and at the large gathering which had crowded to hear the one he was delivering. He says that "nearly the whole flower of the university" was present; and, after allowing for compliments, it is plain that only a man whose name aroused expectations could draw an audience which could be so described without obvious absurdity. We may well then believe that there is no great exaggeration in his nephew's statement, substantially confirmed as it is by other evidence, that when Milton left Cambridge in 1632 he was already "loved and admired by the whole university, particularly by the Fellows and most ingenious persons of his House." He had, as Wood says, "performed the collegiate and academical exercises to the admiration of all." The power of his mind, the grave strength of his character, could not but be plain to all who had come into close contact with him, and even for those who had not he was a man who had distinction plainly written on his face. It is possible, even, that he was already known as a poet. Before he left Cambridge he had written several of the poems which we still read in his works: the beautiful stanzas _On the Death of a Fair Infant_, so like and so unlike the early poems of Shakspeare, the noble _Ode {36} on the Nativity_ begun probably on Christmas Day 1629, though this is not certain; the pretty little _Song on May Morning_ which one likes to fancy having been sung at some such Cambridge greeting of the rising May Day sun as those which are still performed on Magdalen Tower at Oxford; certainly the remarkable lines which are his tribute to Shakspeare: certainly also the beautiful _Epitaph on the Marchioness of Winchester_; and, to mention no more, the autobiographical sonnet on attaining the age of twenty-three. None of these except the lines on Shakspeare are known to have been published before they appeared in the volume of Milton's poems issued in 1645. But the fact that those lines were printed, though without Milton's name, among the commendatory verses prefixed to the 1632 Folio Edition of Shakspeare, may imply that Milton was already known as a young poet. There is also a story that the poem on the death of Lady Winchester was printed in a contemporary Cambridge collection. But whether this were so or not (and no such volume is known to have existed), it seems almost certain that some of Milton's poems would have got known by being passed about in manuscript copies. He himself from the first undervalued nothing he wrote, and was {37} not afraid to say publicly, in his _Reason of Church Government_, that, from his early youth, it had been found that, "whether aught was imposed me by them that had the overlooking, or betaken to of mine own choice in English or other tongue, prosing or versing, but chiefly this latter, the style, by certain signs it had, was likely to live." He published these bold words in 1641, when he had given no public proof at all of their truth. Such a man was not likely to be unwilling that his verses should be seen: and in particular such poems as the epitaph on Lady Winchester, whose death aroused much public interest, or the _Ode on the Nativity_, plainly challenging the greatest of his predecessors by its high theme and noble art, are almost sure to have got about and won him some fame. He had earned distinction, then, and aroused expectation before the end of his university career. But what surprised his contemporaries was that for the next seven or eight years he appeared to do little or nothing to justify the one or fulfil the other. Leaving Cambridge when he was twenty-three, he entered no profession, but lived till he was past twenty-nine in studious retirement at his father's country house at Horton near Windsor. His father, and other friends, very {38} naturally remonstrated at this apparent inactivity. To them all the answer is the same. He cannot now enter the Church, as he had intended, because he would not "subscribe slave" and take oaths that he could not keep. He is not surrendering himself to "the endless delight of speculation," or to the pleasure of "dreaming away his years in the arms of studious retirement." No; he has other things in view than these: but for their performance he demands time for himself and patience from his friends: his own thought is not of being early or late but of being fit. And the work for which he is preparing is in his own mind a settled thing. It is literature, poetry, and, in particular, as will soon appear more definitely, a great poem to take its place among the great poems of the world. The writing of poetry has never been a recognized and seldom a lucrative profession. Most poets, like other artists, have had to face family opposition and the danger of poverty in obeying their inward call. In this matter Milton is one of the great exceptions. Many poets have had fathers as rich as his, but it would not be easy to find one who resigned himself so cheerfully to the prospect of having a poetic son. The elder Milton was, however, as we have seen, no ordinary man. His sense {39} of the value of the things of the mind was almost as great as his faith in his son and far greater than his ambition for his son's visible success in the eyes of the world. He had naturally hoped that that son's evident abilities would be exhibited in the ordinary course in a recognized profession; and he evidently made some protest against the apparently objectless studies which, even after leaving Cambridge, Milton seemed to regard as his sole business in life. The record of this survives in the Latin poem _Ad Patrem_ which is plainly a reply to some such remonstrance. It is an appeal, and one of very confident tone, to his father not to scorn the Muses to whom he himself owes his own great musical gifts. Why should he, a musician, be astonished to find that his son is a poet? Poetry more than any of man's other gifts is the proof of his divine origin: music and poetry rank together; may it not be that he and his father have divided between them the two great gifts of Apollo? "Dividuumque Deum genitorque puerque tenemus." The poem rings with the scorn of wealth, from which one must suppose that the old man of business had pointed out that the {40} scholar's life was not usually lived under the smiles of Fortune. How can you, of all men, replies his son, ask me to care much for that? You trained me from the first for learning, not for the City or the Bar; the father who had his son taught not only Latin, but Greek and Hebrew, French and Italian, astronomy and physical science, cannot ask him to regard money making as the object of life. I have chosen a better part than that: and you were the inspirer of my choice. And I know that at heart you agree with it and share it. The poem is one of the most interesting of Milton's Latin poems, being rather less affected than most of them by that artificiality of classical allusion which is the bane of such productions. So far as we know, it was the last word on its subject. From henceforth no one questioned Milton's right to be a poet and himself. If he ever afterwards deserted his poetic vocation it was at what he believed to be a still higher call. For the present he lived on quietly at Horton, near the Church where his mother's grave may still be seen; walking often, as we may suppose, about that quietly beautiful country washed by the Thames and crowned by Windsor Castle; and sometimes, as we know from his own words, travelling the seventeen or eighteen miles to {41} London to buy books or learn "anything new in Mathematics or in Music, in which sciences I then delighted." Some of these visits to London evidently lasted days or weeks. The interesting thing about these six years at Horton is that they are the only part of his life during which the least rural of our poets lived continuously in the country. And perhaps we may say that they bore their natural fruit; for it was while he was at Horton that Milton wrote _L'Allegro_ and _Il Penseroso_, in which he touched rural life and rural scenes with a freshness and directness which he never again equalled. And the most important of the other poems written during these years, _Arcades_, _Comus_, and above all, _Lycidas_, show the same influence. _Arcades_ and _Comus_ point also to the effect of his visits to London and the musical world: for both of these were written for the music of his friend Henry Lawes, and probably at his suggestion; and, written as they were for entertainments given by members of the noble families of Stanley and Egerton, they show that Milton's plan of life did not involve cutting himself off from the great world, where they must have caused his name to be talked of. His life at Horton was evidently not that of a mere recluse, {42} forgetting the world outside and forgotten by it. _Arcades_ and _Comus_, and still more the wonderful outburst _At a Solemn Music_, are visible links with the cultivated circles of the town, as _Lycidas_, which followed them in 1637 and was printed in 1638 at Cambridge with other poems to the memory of Edward King, is a visible link with his old university. The mention of the poems of these years, the most delightful that Milton was ever to write, show that the six years spent at Horton were not entirely what he calls them, "a complete holiday spent in reading over the Greek and Latin writers." If he had never written another line, he had written enough by the time he left Horton to give him a place among the very greatest men who have practised the art of poetry in England. When he started abroad in 1638 he must have known, and his father too, that his daring choice had already justified itself. "You ask what I am about, what I am thinking of," he writes to his friend Diodati at the end of the Horton time; "why, with God's help, of immortality." It is the voice of a man who knows he has already done great things but counts them as nothing compared with what he is to do later on. Man proposes. In 1637 Milton was "pluming {43} his wings" for the very mightiest of poetic flights, for such a poem as would give full scope to his genius and place him among the great poets of the world. But in the result he actually wrote less poetry in the next twenty years than he had written in the previous five: less in quantity and far less in quality and importance. The first interruption was the completion of his elaborate education by a grand tour. His generous father, who was well-to-do rather than rich, had acquiesced in his not so far earning one penny for himself, and was now prepared to provide him with about a thousand pounds of our present money to enable him to go abroad for a year or two in comfortable style and with the attendance of a servant. Leaving England in the spring of 1638, he spent a few days in Paris, where he was civilly entertained by the famous Grotius, then Swedish Ambassador there, as well as by the English Ambassador, Lord Scudamore, but soon moved south, entering Italy by Nice and Genoa and arriving at Florence in August or September. There he spent two months, and was enthusiastically received by the various academies or clubs of men of letters which then flourished in Florence, one of whose still existing minute {44} books records that at its meeting on September the 16th a certain John Milton, an Englishman, read to the members a Latin hexameter poem showing great learning. There also he paid his famous visit to Galileo, now old and blind, and still a sort of nominal prisoner of the Inquisition, for the sin, as Milton says in the _Areopagitica_, of "thinking in Astronomy otherwise than the Franciscan and Dominican licensers thought." One may be sure that it was not merely the interest of the new theory about the motion of the earth which drew him back so often to that question in _Paradise Lost_. The blind astronomer, whose scientific heresies had placed him in some danger of the thumbscrew, must have been a very near and moving memory to the blind poet whose political and ecclesiastical heresies had so nearly brought him to the gallows. From Florence Milton went on to Rome, where his scholarly tastes gratified themselves for two months in the study of what remained of the ancient city. The famous picture of Rome in _Paradise Regained_ may owe something to these weeks. There, too, he was well received by several of Rome's most distinguished scholars who paid him compliments of Italian extravagance. There, too, he heard the famous Leonora Baroni {45} sing, and was so moved as to write three Latin epigrams in her praise. But it was at Naples, whither he passed on before winter, that he made the acquaintance which, except that of Galileo, is the most interesting his Italian tour brought him. It was that of the Neopolitan patrician, Giovanni Manso, who had been intimate with Tasso and Marini and had been celebrated by Tasso in the _Gerusalemme Conquistata_. His courtesy to a foreigner was soon to procure him a still greater honour; for before leaving Naples Milton addressed to him a Latin poem thanking him for his kindness, speaking openly of his own poetic ambitions and praying that, if he lives to write the great Arthurian Epic which he was then planning, he may find such a friend as Tasso found to welcome his poem, comfort his old age and cherish his fame. The only difficulty which separated Manso and Milton was that of religion, where Milton's unguarded frankness embarrassed his host. So, when he abandoned his intended tour in Greece because he thought it "base" to be "travelling abroad at case for intellectual culture while his fellow-countrymen were fighting at home for liberty," he was warned that the Jesuits at Rome had their eyes on him. But he stayed there two {46} months nevertheless, fearlessly keeping his resolution, not indeed to introduce or invite religious controversy but, if questioned, then, as he says, "whatsoever I should suffer to dissemble nothing." By February he was again in Florence; and after visits to Bologna, Ferrara and Venice, whence he characteristically shipped "a chest or two of choice music books" for England, he crossed the Alps, spent a week or two at Geneva and in France, and was at home by August 1639. The elaborate education was now formally complete; and what ordinary men call practical life was at last to begin for Milton. Now for the first time he had an abode of his own, a lodging in St. Bride's, Fleet Street, and soon afterwards a house in Aldersgate Street where he settled with a young nephew whom he undertook to educate. But the real work which he had in view was that of a poet, not of a schoolmaster. The high expectations which he knew he had excited among Italian men of letters had reinforced those of his English friends; and he was now more than ever inclined to follow that "inward prompting which now grew daily upon me that by labour and intent study (which I take to be my portion in this life), joined with the strong propensity of nature, I might {47} perhaps leave something so written to aftertimes as they should not willingly let it die." So, as his extant notes show, he was weighing a large number of subjects for the great poem, slowly settling on a Biblical one, and indeed on that of the Fall of Man, and perhaps writing some earliest lines of what we now know as _Paradise Lost_. But in November 1640 occurred an event which governed Milton's life for the next twenty years. The Long Parliament met, and, from that time forward till its final meeting in 1660 to dissolve itself and prepare the way for Charles II, politics were the dominant interest of Milton's mind. It is his age of prose; during it he wrote very little verse of any kind, and none of importance except the finer of his eighteen Sonnets which nearly all belong to these years. On the other hand, most of his prose works were written between 1640 and 1660. Of these it is enough to say that they are perhaps the most curious of all illustrations of the great things which a poet alone can bring to prose and of the dangers which he runs in bringing them. A poet of the stature of Milton is ready at all times to catch all kinds of fire, not only the fires of faith and zeal and enthusiasm, but also, as a rule, those of a scorn {48} that knows no limit and a hatred that knows no mercy. Such a man needs a strongly made vessel to control his boiling ardours. Prose is not such a vessel: and they too often overflow from it in extravagance and violence. Poetry in all its severer forms places a restraint upon the poet from which as the mood of art gains upon him he has no desire to escape. Law and limitation, willing obedience to the prescribed conditions, are of the very essence of art. And this is as true of the greatest of the arts as of any other. It is not merely that the poet accepts the bondage of rhymes, or stanzas, or numbered syllables, as the painter accepts those of a flat canvas and the sculptor those of bronze or marble; it is that they all alike submit to the mood of art which is always universal and eternal as well as individual and temporal and therefore disdains such crudities of personal violence as are to be found everywhere in Milton's prose and nowhere in his poetry. But if a poet's prose has its inevitable disadvantages it has also some great qualities which only a poet can supply. In 1640 Milton plunged into a great struggle in which his attitude throughout was that of an angry and contemptuous partisan. And his pamphlets exhibit all the distortion of facts, {49} injustice to opponents, and narrowness of view which are the inevitable if often unconscious vices of the man who writes in the interest of a party. But they also contain flights of noble eloquence, in which, as in the passage about the City of London in the _Areopagitica_, the soul of partisanship has undergone a fiery purification and emerges free of all its grosser elements, a pure essence of zeal and faith and spiritual vision. The first stage of the struggle was largely ecclesiastical, and Milton plunged into it with five pamphlets in 1641 and 1642, fiercely demanding the abolition of Episcopacy and the establishment of a Presbyterian system in England. Fortunately for himself, as he was soon to see, the views he advocated did not in the end prevail. For the next step he took in the way of pamphlet writing would assuredly have got him into difficulties with any possible kind of ecclesiastical jurisdiction, whether after the model of Laud or of Calvin. It grew out of the most important and disastrous event in the whole of his private life. In the spring of 1643 he went into Oxfordshire, from which county his father had originally come, and, to the surprise of his friends, who knew nothing of his intention, returned a married man. His wife was one {50} Mary Powell, the daughter of a Justice of the Peace at Forest Hill, near Oxford. The Powell family owed the Milton family five hundred pounds, which may have been the poet's introduction to them. If so, the marriage to which it led had the results that might be expected from such a beginning. The war had then already begun, the King was at Oxford and the Powells were Cavaliers; so that when Mrs. Milton, who had been accompanied to London by her relations, was to be left alone with a husband of twice her age, and of severe tastes, she shrank from the prospect, got away on a visit to her family and did not return till 1645, by which time the King was ruined and with him the Powells. When Shelley deserted his wife he wrote to her asking her to come and live with him and the lady who had supplanted her. When Milton's wife deserted him he wrote a series of pamphlets advocating divorce at the will of the husband. Such are the extravagances of those whose eyes are so accustomed to a brighter light that when brought into that of common day they see nothing, and make mistakes which are justly ridiculous to the children of this world. It is an old story: Plato's philosopher in the cave, the saint in politics, the modern poet in the world of war, {51} commerce, or industry: the eye that sees heaven often blunders on earth. Milton's divorce pamphlets, like nearly all his controversial writings, have three fatal defects. They are utterly blind to the temper of those to whom they were addressed, to the reasonable arguments of opponents, and to the practical difficulties inherent in their proposals. He argues that, as the law gives relief to a man whose wife disappoints him of the physical end of marriage, it is an outrage that he should have none when deprived of the social and intellectual companionship which is its moral end. But he takes no note of the awkward fact that the dismissed wife is not and cannot be in the same position as she was before her marriage. Nor does he give the wife any corresponding rights to get rid of her husband. These, and a hundred other difficulties all too visible to duller eyes, he utterly ignores as he proceeds on his violent way of deliverance from what he calls "imaginary and scarecrow sins." Nothing is allowed to stand in his path. For instance, the awkward texts in the Bible, whose authority he accepts, are given new interpretations with which it is to be feared his temper had more to do than his knowledge of the meaning of Greek words. But {52} there is not a hint of his own case in all he says, and it is not desertion that he discusses but incompatibility of temper. Masson even sees reason to think that he began the first pamphlet before his wife left him, but when, no doubt, her unfitness to be his wife was only too evident. However all that may be, we can only think with wondering pity of those summer weeks of 1643 and of the two years which followed. Everything in Milton's life and writings shows him a man unusually susceptible to the attraction of women, one whose love was of that strongest sort which is built on a chastity born not of coldness but of purity and self-control. Such a man, in such a plight, with the added misery of knowing that he owed it to his own rash folly, may be pardoned for forgetting the true bearing of his own doctrine that laws are made for the "common lump of men." Cases like his are the real tragedies, the tragedies of life so much more bitter than the more visible ones of death; and no thinking or feeling man will lightly decide that they must remain unrelieved. But neither Milton nor any of his successors must look at the problem from his own point of view alone. Laws are made, and ought to be, as he himself says, for the "lump of men"; and the wisdom or {53} unwisdom of facilities for divorce must be judged, not merely by the relief they afford in unhappy marriages, but also by the danger of disturbance they produce in the far more numerous marriages which, though experiencing their days of doubt or difficulty, are on the whole happy or at least not unhappy. Perhaps Milton himself might have hesitated if he could have foreseen the consequences of an application of his theories. Modern divorce laws have filled our newspapers with just that "clamouring debate of utterless things" which he dreaded and abhorred, while few will argue that they have increased the number of unions which answer to his conception of "the true intent of marriage." After all, Milton's own story illustrates the advantages of putting delays and difficulties in the way of divorce. According to his nephew he had planned to act upon his principles and marry "a very handsome and witty gentlewoman"; but the lady had more regard than he to the world's opinion. And she did Milton a service by her reluctance. For the rumour of her, helped by their own misfortunes, brought the Powells to their senses; and with the help of Milton's friends they managed the well-known scene at a room in St. Martin's the Grand, in which he was {54} surprised by the sight of his wife on her knees before him. "Soon his heart relented Towards her, his life so late, and sole delight, Now at his feet submissive in distress." So he glances back at the scene twenty years later when he was drawing to the close of his great poem. Meanwhile he received back his wife, who bore him three daughters and died in 1653 or 1654. He was to marry again in 1656; but this second wife, the "espoused saint" of his sonnet, lived little more than a year; and in 1663 he married his third wife who long survived him. But to return to the house in the Barbican, to which he removed with his wife in 1645. With him there were also his father, two nephews and other boys whom it was his principal occupation to teach. It is somewhat surprising that he found pupils, as his views on the divorce question had naturally caused scandal in all quarters and received little support in any. He could now see that the Presbyterian Church discipline which he had advocated so eagerly in his first pamphlets might have its inconveniences; the elders of an English kirk would be no more merciful than his detested bishops to such freedom of thought, speech and action as he now demanded. {55} From henceforth he is an Independent and more than an Independent; for he was attached to no congregation, apparently attended no church regularly, and maintained that profoundly religious temper which is even more visible in his last works than in his first without the support of any authority, creed or companionship in prayer. With these views growing upon him it was natural that, when the struggle came between the Presbyterian Parliament and the Independent Army, he had no hesitation in supporting the Army; nor is it surprising that such a man of no compromise as he had shown himself to be was ready to come forward, even before the deed was done, with a defence of the execution of Charles I. It is in connection with that event that his name first became known to all Europe and was soon so famous that foreigners visiting England desired to see two men above all others, Oliver Cromwell and John Milton. This Milton, from henceforth a European celebrity, was not the author of _Paradise Lost_ which was not yet written, nor of his earlier poems which were little known in England and quite unknown elsewhere. He was the apologist of the Regicides, the Foreign Secretary of the world-famed Protector. {56} For the next eleven years, from 1649 to 1660, Milton had a public and official as well as a private life. Charles was executed on January 30, 1649. Within a few days after appeared Milton's _Tenure of Kings and Magistrates_, largely written, of course, before the execution, and justifying it and all the other proceedings of the Army without any hesitation or compromise. It has some breathings of the Miltonic grandeur; but that is all. For the rest it is a mere party polemic written for the moment; and, as is the case with all pamphlets, the very qualities which gave it its contemporary interest make it unreadable to posterity. Part of it is a sweeping assertion of the inalienable right of the whole people to choose, judge and depose their rulers; a democratic doctrine which a few years later, when England had grown tired of the Army and the Puritans, he was to find as inconvenient as he had already found his early advocacy of the Presbyterian system in matters ecclesiastical. For the moment, however, the pamphlet made him a person of importance. Such a man, learned, eloquent, of high character, of visible sincerity, of utter fearlessness, was not an ally to be despised by a Government which had outraged public opinion at home and abroad. Within a few {57} weeks he was appointed Secretary for Foreign Tongues to the Council of State; and from henceforth till after the death of Cromwell he wrote the weightiest of the vindications, remonstrances and authoritative demands which the great Protector addressed to an astonished and overawed Europe. We can read them still. Many are insignificant, dealing with petty personal details; but the best, especially those that deal with the universal cause of Protestantism and freedom, rise on spiritual wings far above the language of diplomacy and officialism, letting us hear the authentic voice of Milton preluding the thunders of Cromwell and Blake. But the first important work required of Milton belonged rather to the man of letters than to the Foreign Secretary. The horror aroused both at home and abroad by the execution of Charles, already great enough in itself to be very inconvenient to the Government, was greatly increased by the publication of a book called _Eikon Basilike_ which purported to be the work of the king himself and appeared immediately after his death. It is a kind of religious portrait of Charles, reporting his spiritual meditations and containing a justification of his life. Its success was prodigious; fifty editions are said {58} to have appeared within a year. It was obviously necessary that some reply should be attempted; and the task was naturally assigned to Milton, who published his _Eikonoklastes_, or Image-Breaker, in October. It is a mere pamphlet, even more violent than the _Tenure of Kings_, not ashamed to rake up such absurdities as the alleged poisoning of James I by Buckingham, with the usual Miltonic inconsistencies, such as that which denounces Charles for the crime of refusing his consent to bills passed by Parliament and forgets that the Government on whose behalf he is writing established itself by a forcible suppression of the Parliamentary majority. It survives now only by the curious passage in it which tells us that William Shakspeare was "the closet companion" of Charles I in the "solitudes" of the end of his life; and by the puritanical allusion to the "vain amatorious poem of Sir Philip Sidney's _Arcadia_" from which, however "full of worth and wit" in its own kind, it was a disgrace to the king to borrow a prayer at so grave an hour. Perhaps as a mark of their approval of _Eikonoklastes_, the Council of State gave Milton lodgings in Whitehall; and soon afterwards, in January 1650, called upon him to reply to another Royalist book which was making a {59} great stir. The result was the beginning of a political and personal controversy which lasted almost as long as it was safe for Milton to write about politics at all. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries great scholars had a position which they are never likely to occupy again. In those cosmopolitan days when an Italian governed France, and regiments and even armies were often commanded by foreigners, the honour of possessing a celebrated scholar was eagerly disputed not only by universities, but by cities, sovereign states, and even kings. Learning had then a market value in the world: for then, as always, especially since the invention of printing, European opinion was worth having on one's side; and in the days before journalism the practice was to hire distinguished scholars to write to a political brief. After the death of Charles I it was obviously the policy of Charles II to secure support by a powerful indictment of the iniquity of the rulers of the English Commonwealth. For this purpose his advisers obtained the services of a certain Claude de Saumaise, or, as he was generally called, Salmasius. This man, forgotten now except for Milton, was then a scholar of such fame that his presence was disputed between Oxford {60} and Venice, the French and the Dutch, between the Pope who wanted him at Rome and Christina of Sweden who was soon to persuade him to go to Stockholm. So it is not altogether surprising that Charles II was advised to pay him, and perhaps paid him, much more than he could afford for writing a book called _Defensio Regia_, which was to be before all Europe the public statement of the case against the new rulers of England. Milton spent a year in preparing his reply, which came out in the beginning of 1651. The _Pro Populo Anglicano Defensio_ is now pleasanter reading for Milton's detractors than for those who honour his name. The unbridled insults which it heaps upon Charles I and still more upon Salmasius, for whom its least offensive titles are such as "blockhead," "liar" and "apostate," exceed even the wide limits of abuse customary in these days. _Corruptio optimi pessima_: such a man as Milton, if he once descends to the bandying of foul language, will beat the very bargemen themselves. But what astonished his contemporaries was not his violence but his courage. An unknown Englishman had dared to meet the giant of learning on his own ground and had at least held his own. It may have been partly as the result of this {61} that Salmasius no longer found Holland a pleasant place of residence and removed to Sweden. A more certain result is that the English David who had stood up to Goliath was from henceforth a European celebrity. With his usual proud courage he had put his own name on the title-page of his book, challenging to himself both the glories and the dangers that might come of it. He was not to be disappointed of either. From henceforth he was in the thick of a violent controversy, which made so much more noise than it deserved in its own day that it need make none here. Replies came out both to his _Eikonoklastes_ and to his _Defensio_: new books grew out of the controversy; Milton's nephew wrote on his behalf, and anonymous friends of Salmasius on his; the adversaries of Milton no more spared his character than he had spared theirs; a _Defensio Secunda_ from his own hand seemed necessary, and appeared in 1654; and so with minor pamphlets and second editions we get on to the end of the weary controversy, in which for contemporaries there was perhaps some fire and light, but for us now little but smoke and darkness of confusion. Such was the work which was Milton's chief occupation during the Commonwealth, to the {62} doing of which he deliberately sacrificed his eyesight. Within a year after the publication of his book against Salmasius its foreseen result was complete. From henceforth Milton was dependent upon the eyes of others. He was only forty-four when overtaken by this calamity. Yet his courage seems never to have failed him. "I argue not," he tells Cyriack Skinner in his sonnet-- "Against Heaven's hand or will, nor bate a jot Of heart or hope, but still bear up and steer Right onward. What supports me, dost thou ask? The conscience, friend, to have lost them overplied In Liberty's defence, my noble task, Of which all Europe rings from side to side." Whoever had begun to have doubts about the course taken in 1649 and since, he had none; and no one had suffered more in defence of it. The other and greater sonnet on his blindness-- "When I consider how my light is spent Ere half my days in this dark world and wide" shows him content if need be to take his place among those whose desire to serve {63} God must find its peace in the thought that "They also serve who only stand and wait." In the same spirit, perhaps, is the motto which he appended to his signature in the album of a learned foreigner in 1651: "I am made perfect in weakness." But nothing of weakness, not even its perfection, could ever come near Milton. He played a greater part in this world without his eyes than ever he had played with them. Without their help he did what prose could do towards justifying the ways of England to Europe, and was very soon to do what verse could do towards justifying the ways of God to men. He cannot, perhaps, be said to have succeeded in either, but one at least of the failures is a whole heaven above what ordinary men call success. A few words may be said of his attitude towards men and measures during this political period of his life. His unqualified and immediate support of the King's execution had, of course, united him with the Cromwellian party who had brought it about. And his anti-Presbyterian views carried him in the same direction. So we are not surprised to find that, when Cromwell got rid of the Parliament by military force and soon {64} afterwards became Protector, Milton approved his action and gladly continued to serve under him. Nor was Milton the man to be disturbed by the Protector's rapid dissolution of his first Parliament, by the period of personal Government which followed, or by his angry breach with his second Parliament. Poets have seldom understood politics, and Milton, the most political of poets, perhaps less than any. No man ever had less of that sense of law and custom, of the need of continuity, which is the very centre and secret of politics. Few great statesmen have been able to maintain perfect consistency; but the least consistent have generally been aware that there was something in inconsistencies that needed explanation. Milton never shows any consciousness of the patent incongruity between his early exaltation of the indefeasible rights of Parliaments and his support of the Cromwellian attitude towards them: between his angry denunciation of Charles I for presuming to retain the ancient right of the kings to refuse their assent to Bills submitted to them and his approval of Cromwell's dismissal of a Parliament for attempting to deny the same right to the Protector: between the extreme doctrine of free printing claimed in the _Areopagitica_ and the fact that its author {65} was afterwards concerned in licensing books under a Government which vigorously suppressed "seditious" publications. But inconsistencies by themselves are of little importance, particularly in revolutionary times; they would be of none, in Milton's case, if he had ever admitted that he had learnt from experience and consequently changed his mind. But he never did. Parliaments remained sacred when they were for pulling down bishops, profane when they were for establishing Presbyterianism, and utterly detestable when they were for restoring Charles II. The fact is, of course, that Milton, like most men of much imagination and no political experience, saw a vision of certain things in the value of which he believed with all his soul, and saw none of the objections to them and none of the difficulties that stood in their way. At the very end, when the bonfires for Charles II were almost lighted in the streets, he could publish _A Ready and Easy Way to Establish a Free Commonwealth_; and the title he chose for that book was typical of his whole attitude in all practical matters. He had to an extreme degree the man of vision's blindness to the all-important fact that the mass of men would not have what he aims at if they {66} could and could not if they would. At least in a free country the statesman knows that he has got to work through stupid people, with their consent, and with regard to the measure of their capacities. For such men as Milton stupid people either do not exist or are to be merely ignored. That is his attitude all through. Alike in the matter of divorce and in the matter of education, in the ecclesiastical problem and in the political, he was always eager to put forward a "ready and easy way" which entirely ignored the nature of the human material which was to walk in it. He simply chose not to see that in all these matters men had for centuries been walking in a way which was not his, a way which had in fact by now diverged many miles from his; and that they could not possibly, even if they would, transport themselves in a moment, at a mere wave of his wand, across the intervening bogs and forests which the lapse of years had rendered impassable. He never appears to have had a single glimpse of the truth that the essential business of the statesman is to be always moving from the past to the future without ever letting the bridge between them break down. The principal food of a political people is custom, and to break the bridge is to cut off the only source {67} of its supply. The greatest proof that Cromwell was really a statesman and not a mere political emergency man of unusual character and ability is that in his last years he was evidently seeing more and more plainly that the right metaphor for a statesman is taken from grafting and not from "root and branch" operations. It is clear that he had seen that political branches may be pruned away but roots can very seldom be safely disturbed; and that among the roots in English politics were a hereditary Monarchy and an established Church. Dynasty and formularies might perhaps be safely changed; but the things themselves were of the root, and the tree would not flourish if they were touched. It is characteristic of Milton that in both these matters he was strongly opposed to the policy towards which Cromwell was feeling his way. Ten years had taught him nothing, and the death of Cromwell found him as blind to political possibilities as the death of Charles I. One would like to know something of the relations between the two greatest men of the Commonwealth. But there is little or nothing to know. It is plain that in most matters they must have been in close agreement; and in a few, as in the business of the {68} Piedmont massacres, the two great hearts must have beaten as one, while the sword of Cromwell stood ready drawn behind the trumpet of Milton's noble prose and nobler verse. The only surviving act of personal contact between them is to be found in Milton's sonnet; and that is a public tribute with no suggestion of private intimacy in it. Indeed, as Masson has pointed out, it may easily be taken to mean more than it really does; for it was not written because Milton could not keep silence about his admiration of Cromwell, but rather, as its full title shows, as a petition or appeal to Cromwell to save the nation from parliamentary proposals for the setting up of a State Church and for limiting the toleration of dissent from it. The sonnet, then, proves less than it has sometimes been made to prove; and in any case it proves no intimacy. Perhaps after all, in the case of Milton as in that of most men who deal with public affairs, we are apt to exaggerate the importance in their daily lives of these visible official activities. The world thinks it knows men who fight battles, or make speeches, or write books; but it knows nothing of their private thoughts or studies and still less of their private loves and joys and sorrows which to themselves {69} and in truth are much the most real part of their lives. So with Milton during these years; his wife and little children may have been, his second wife and such friends as Cyriack Skinner and Henry Lawrence and Lady Ranelagh and the poet Marvell certainly were, much greater realities to him in his daily thoughts than either the hated Salmasius and Morus of the pamphlets or the admired Cromwell of the sonnet. The "weekly table" he is said to have kept, at the expense of the State, for foreign ministers, must have provided interesting talk; but the true Milton cannot have lived in these gatherings so fully at the time or remembered them afterwards so affectionately as those other more intimate parties of which he gives us a picture in the two sonnets to Lawrence and Skinner which, for lovers of poetry, look so pleasantly back to Horace and so pleasantly forward to Cowper and Tennyson. "Lawrence, of virtuous father virtuous son, Now that the fields are dank, and ways are mire, Where shall we sometimes meet, and by the fire Help waste a sullen day, what may be won From the hard season gaining? Time will run {70} On smoother, till Favonius re-inspire The frozen earth, and clothe in fresh attire The lily and rose, that neither sowed nor spun. What neat repast shall feast us, light and choice, Of Attic taste, with wine, whence we may rise To hear the lute well touched, or artful voice Warble immortal notes and Tuscan air? He who of those delights can judge, and spare To interpose them oft, is not unwise." This is his own graver and older parallel to what his nephew tells us of his schoolmastering days when he would turn from "hard study and spare diet" to "drop once a month or so into the society of some young sparks of his acquaintance," and with them "would so far make bold with his body as now and then to keep a gawdy day." The sonnet shows that the poet is still the poet of _L'Allegro_ and _Il Penseroso_, no narrow fanatic, but a lover of company and the arts, and of the richness and fulness of life. Such occasions as that it describes must have been oases in the desert of controversy and public business abroad and of blindness and loneliness at home. He did not live long in Whitehall, {71} moving in 1652 to a house overlooking St. James's Park, near what is now Queen Anne's Gate. There his first wife died in 1653, or 1654, and her short-lived successor too; there he lived during the remaining years of the Commonwealth, working at his pamphlets and State papers, even beginning _Paradise Lost_, with young friends to read to him, write for him, lead their blind great man about in the Park or elsewhere, till the catastrophe of 1660 arrived and it was no longer safe for the defender of Regicide to be seen in the streets. Why Milton was not hanged at the Restoration is still something of a mystery. His name must have been more hatefully known to the returning exiles than that of any one except the dead Cromwell whose death did not save his body from a grim ceremony at Tyburn. He had not only defended Charles I's execution before all Europe, and in a tone almost of exultation, but he had pursued the whole Stuart family with vituperation and contempt. Even in the very last weeks, when the bells were already almost ringing for Charles II, he had dared to raise his voice against the "abjured and detested thraldom of kingship"; declaring that he would not be silent though he should but speak "to trees and stones: and had none to cry to, but {72} with the prophet 'O Earth, Earth, Earth!' to tell the very soil itself what her perverse inhabitants are deaf to,"--a passage, if interpreted by its original context, of awful imprecation upon Charles I. A man so famous, so utterly unrepentant, so defiant to the very end, seemed to challenge to himself the gallows. That his challenge would receive its natural answer was the openly expressed opinion of his enemies. No doubt it was also the fear of his friends, who concealed him in Smithfield from May till August 1660. By the 24th of August the danger was over. The Act of Indemnity, which was a pardon to all political offenders not by name excepted in it, became law on that day; and Milton's was not one of the excepted names. How was that managed? There are various stories; perhaps each has some truth in it; many influences may have combined. One is that he had saved Davenant in his danger some years before and now the Cavalier poet in his turn saved the Puritan. But Davenant was not in Parliament, and the real work must have been done by a group of friends who were. The most important of them seem to have been Annesley (afterwards Lord Anglesey), Sir Thomas Clarges, who was Monk's brother-in-law, Monk's secretary Morrice, and the poet's less powerful but {73} still more devoted friend Andrew Marvell. Between them somehow they saved him, aided no doubt by the general pity for a blind man, the general respect for his learning which found expression even in that moment and even in Royalist pamphlets, and, one may hope, by the knowledge of a few of them that this was a man of genius from whom there might be great things yet to come. The names of those who thus made possible the greatest poem in the English language deserve lasting record; and a word of gratitude may be added to Clarendon and to Charles II for refraining from saying the easy and not unnatural word which would have been instantly fatal to their old enemy. The odd thing is that he was arrested after all. There had been an order of the House of Commons for his arrest and for the burning of his books, possibly, as Masson thinks, obtained by his friends to make it seem unnecessary to except him in the Indemnity Bill. The books were duly burnt, or such copies of them as came to the hands of the hangman; and ultimately, at some uncertain date, Milton himself was got into the custody of the Sergeant-at-Arms. He was soon released, and the story would not be worth relating but for a curious proof it gives of the {74} obstinate courage of the poet. The House ordered his release on December 15; and one would have supposed that he would have been glad to escape into obscurity and safety again on any terms. But no; the Sergeant-at-Arms demanded high fees which Milton thought unreasonable; and even then, when he had almost felt the hangman's rope on his neck, he would not be bullied by any man. He refused to pay: and though the Solicitor-General ominously remarked that he deserved hanging, his friends got the fees referred to a committee and presumably reduced. Before the beginning of 1661 he was definitely a free man to live his final fourteen years of political defeat, isolation and silence, of unparalleled poetic fertility, and, before the end, of acknowledged poetic fame. He did not return any more to the fashionable and therefore dangerous neighbourhood of Whitehall, but lived the rest of his life in a succession of houses in or near the city, ending in Artillery Walk, Bunhill Fields, where he died. His friends must for years have feared that he might be attacked and perhaps murdered by some drunken Cavalier revellers accidentally coming across the old regicide. And in spite of the Act of Indemnity he can hardly have felt absolutely comfortable on {75} the side of the law when so late as 1664 his _Tenure of Kings_ was denounced by the censor as still extant and an unfortunate printer was hanged, drawn and quartered for issuing a sort of new version of it. Misfortunes without and fears within might be the summing up, if not of the poet's, at least of the man's life during these first years after the Restoration. To begin with, he was a much poorer man. His salary as Secretary was, of course, gone. But besides that he had lost 2000 pounds, equal to about 7000 pounds now, which he had invested in Commonwealth Securities, as well as some confiscated property he had bought of the Chapter of Westminster; and he was soon to lose, at least temporarily, the rent he received from his father's house in Bread Street which was destroyed by the Fire of London. Masson calculates that he was left after the Restoration with an income about equal to 700 pounds of our money which his further losses and outlay on his daughters had reduced to 300 pounds or 350 pounds before his death; not quite poverty even at the end, but something very different from what the eldest son of a rich man had been accustomed to. A graver misfortune was the gout which afflicted him for the rest of his life and gave him so much pain that he made little of his blindness in {76} comparison with it. Worst of all was his unhappy relation to his daughters. That is the ugliest thing in the story of his life. How things might have gone with his son, if the baby boy had lived, one does not know; but his oriental views of the moral and intellectual inferiority of women, which doubled the dangers of their fascinations, made him certain to be a despotic father to three motherless girls. And so he was. He had plenty of young men eager for the privilege of reading to him: but of course they could not be always with him, and the result was that dreadful picture which comes to us from his nephew, no unfriendly witness, of the daughters "condemned to the performance of reading and exactly pronouncing of all the languages of whatever book he should at one time or other think fit to peruse; viz. the Hebrew (and, I think, the Syriac), the Greek, the Latin, the Italian, Spanish and French," none of which languages they understood. Nor did he show any desire that they should; saying grimly that one tongue was enough for a woman. History and fiction are alike full of the tragedies that result from the blindness of extraordinary minds to ordinary duties; and Milton's case is one of the saddest. The daughters cheated him and made away with {77} his books; he spoke of them gravely and repeatedly as his "unkind children"; one of them is even reported, on very good evidence, to have said, at his third marriage in 1663, that "that was no news to hear of his wedding but, if she could hear of his death, that was something." At last it was thought better that he and they should part; and they were put out, at considerable expense to their father, to learn embroidery work and other "curious and ingenious manufactures" for their living. It is pleasant to hear that the youngest, Deborah, who was visited by Addison not long before he died, and received fifty guineas from Queen Caroline, was "in a transport" of delight when shown a portrait of her father, crying out "'Tis my father, 'tis my dear father, I see him; 'tis him; 'tis the very man! here, here!" as she pointed to some of the features. So one likes to be told, on her authority, that he was delightful company and "the life of the conversation, full of unaffected cheerfulness and civility" when he had his little parties of friends. And to us, if not to her, it is a pleasant story that she could still repeat many lines from Homer, Euripides and Ovid, though she said she did not understand Greek or Latin. The wife of a Spitalfields weaver must at last have felt {78} some pride in these survivals of her childish drudgery, proof audible to all men, if to her unintelligible, that she was the daughter of Mr. Milton, the great scholar and poet. No more need to be said of sorrow or failure. The rest is a serene and productive old age. _Paradise Lost_ was published in 1667, _Paradise Regained_ and _Samson_ in 1671. Besides these there was, in 1673, a new edition of his earlier poems reprinted, with additions from that of 1645; and many publications of prose works mostly written in earlier years but never printed, such as his _History of Britain_, and little books on Education, Logic and Grammar. He kept up his strenuous life of study and composition apparently to the end. He is said to have got up at four or five in the morning, and, after hearing a chapter or two from the Hebrew Bible and breakfasting, to have passed the five hours before his midday dinner dictating or having some book read to him. In the afternoon he would walk a little in his garden; all his life a garden had been one of the things he would not do without. Then music and more private study carried him on to an Horatian supper of olives or other "light things"; and so to a pipe of tobacco, a glass of water and bed. He drank but little wine, and that only with his meals. {79} Such a way of life deserved a healthful old age, which, but for that healthy man's disease the gout, he had, and a death such as he had, so easy as to be imperceptible to the bystanders. That was on November 8, 1674. Four days later his body was buried in the church of St. Giles, Cripplegate, where his grave may still be seen; the funeral being accompanied by "all his learned and great friends in London, not without a concourse of the vulgar." By that time the battle of his life had been won. The astonishing achievements of his last years had more than fulfilled the high promise and proud words of his long distant youth. Perhaps no seven years in all literary history provide a finer record of poetic genius triumphing over difficulties external and internal than these last seven of Milton's life from 1667 to 1674. They had their reward and not only from posterity. There is a still lingering delusion, based chiefly on the five pounds paid for the first edition of _Paradise Lost_, that Milton's greatness was little recognized in his lifetime. The truth is the exact reverse. He had far more chance of hearing his own praises, if he cared for that, than most of the great English poets: than Keats and Shelley, for instance; than Wordsworth, {80} at least till he was old; nay, in all probability than Shakspeare himself. Which of them heard the most popular poet of their day say of them anything at all like Dryden's famous and generous "This man cuts us all out and the ancients too"? It is not even true that _Paradise Lost_ sold badly. On the contrary, in a year and a half from the day of publication over thirteen hundred copies had been sold, from which the author received 10 pounds and the publisher, it is believed, 50 pounds or 60 pounds. He would be a sanguine publisher to-day who would be quite certain of making in eighteen months the modern equivalent of this sum, say 180 pounds, out of a new epic, even if it were as great as Milton's. But the money question was not of the first importance to Milton and is of none to us. The interesting thing is the almost immediate recognition of the greatness of the poem. Nothing in the world could be more alien to the tone of the society and literature of the London of Charles II than this long Biblical Puritan poem with its scarcely veiled attacks on the revived Monarchy and Episcopacy and its entirely unveiled attacks on the fashionable men of Belial. Yet it was from the very high priests of this society that the most unstinted praise came. Of its professional men of {81} letters Dryden was already rapidly advancing to the unquestioned primacy which was soon to be his, and to remain his for his life; of its amateurs Lord Dorset had perhaps the most brilliant reputation. It was these two men who, more than any others, made the town recognize the greatness of Milton. Both were as unlike Milton as men could be, and Dryden had just committed himself to a strong championship of rhymed verse as against blank. There is nowhere a finer proof of the compelling power of great art upon those who know it when they see it than the unbounded praise with which Dryden at once saluted Milton. The fact that his admiration at first took the absurd form of turning Milton's epic into a "heroic opera" in rhyme does not detract from the significance of his writing publicly within a year of Milton's death that the blind old regicide's poem was "one of the greatest, most noble and sublime which either this age or nation has produced," and to this he was to add, thirteen years later, the still bolder tribute of the well-known epigram about "three poets in three distant ages born" which gives Milton a place above Homer and Virgil. The lines are in detail absurd; but their absurdity does not destroy the fact that the intellectual life of England was never {82} keener, or more eager to welcome talent in art or letters, than in the reign of Charles II; and nothing is clearer proof of it than the honours received by the rebel Milton from a Court composer like Henry Lawes, a Court physician like Samuel Barrow, a statesman and minister like Lord Anglesey, and a poet laureate like Dryden. So we may think of him happily enough in these last years. He had now done the work which from his early manhood he had felt it was his task in life to do. When he was not much over thirty he had boldly written in public of what his mind, "in the spacious circuits of her musing, hath liberty to propose to herself, though of highest hope and hardest attempting; whether that epic form whereof the two poems of Homer, and those other two of Virgil and Tasso, are a diffuse and the book of Job a brief model . . . or whether those dramatic constitutions, wherein Sophocles and Euripides reign, shall be found more doctrinal and exemplary to a nation." For the moment nothing seemed to come of these high words; but before he died not one only, but both of his dreams, the drama as well as the epic, were accomplished facts. _Paradise Lost_, begun as a drama, had become the greatest of modern {83} epics; and the abandoned drama had reappeared in _Samson_, not the greatest of English tragedies, but the one which best recalls the peculiar greatness of the drama of Greece. Self-confident young men have always been common enough, but there are two differences between them and Milton: their performance falls far short of their promise instead of exceeding it; and neither promise nor performance is marked by this exalting and purifying sense of a thing divinely inspired and divinely aided. Such work can wait, as his did, being such as is "not to be raised from the heat of youth or the vapours of wine; like that which flows at waste from the pen of some vulgar amourist, or the trencher fury of a rhyming parasite; nor to be obtained by the invocation of dame memory and her siren daughters, but by devout prayer to that eternal Spirit who can enrich with all utterance and knowledge, and sends out his seraphim, with the hallowed fire of his altar, to touch and purify the lips of whom he pleases." Now the task is done; and he can sit alone in his upstairs room in Artillery Walk and thank God that in spite of blindness, private sorrows and public disappointments, he had been enabled at last to bear the witness of a work of immortal beauty to the high truth {84} that had been in him even from a boy. So it may have been in the graver moments of solitude; while, as we know from several sources, there were other times, when he would enjoy the companionship of friends and the homage of learned strangers by whom we are told he was "much visited, more than he did desire." The picture suggested to us is that of a man who at sixty-five, then a greater age than now, retained all his powers of mind and much of the physical beauty which had been so remarkable in his youth; who was gracious but somewhat reserved and dignified with strangers; a delightful companion to friends and especially to younger men; full of literature, especially of poetry, and with a memory that enabled him to recite long passages from Homer and Virgil; above all, an ardent lover of music, making a practice, so far as possible, of hearing some, whether vocal or instrumental, every afternoon. His ears were eyes to him; and when he heard a lady sing finely he would say: "Now will I swear this lady is handsome." All kinds of music, and not only the severer, were delightful to the "organ-voice of England." That is not the least interesting thing about him. The greatest of England's Puritans {85} was also the greatest of her artists. He had nothing in him of the morbid scrupulosity which is such an inhuman feature in French Jansenism and some of the English sects. His was a large nature which demanded a free expansion of life. Lonely figure as he is in our literary history, with no real predecessors or followers, his mighty arch yet bridges the gulf between Elizabeth and the Revolution, and is of nearer or less distant kin to Shakspeare than to Pope. His prose is the swan song of the old eloquence, as inspired and as confused as an oracle. To read it when it is at its best is to soar on wings through the empyrean and despise Swift and Addison walking in neat politeness on the pavement. There as everywhere, in his verse, in his character, in his mind, in his life, he has the strength and the weakness of an aristocrat. The youth who in his Cambridge days was "esteemed a virtuous person yet not to be ignorant of his parts" did not belie the opinion formed of him in either of those respects. His Republicanism was of the proud Roman sort, and at least as near Coriolanus as Gracchus; a boundless faith in the State and a boundless desire to spend and be spent in its service, a total and scornful indifference to the opinions of all {86} those, though they might be five-sixths of the nation, who did not desire to be served in the way which he had decided to be for their good. The modern way of deciding matters of State by counting heads may very likely be the best of many unsatisfactory ways of accomplishing a very difficult business; but it has always been peculiarly exasperating to men of genius who see their way plainly and cannot understand why a million blind men are to keep them out of it. Milton liked the voice of the majority well enough when he could plead it against Charles I; but when he found it calling for Charles II he treated it as a mere impertinent absurdity; the vain babble of a "misguided and abused multitude" with whom wise men have nothing to do except to keep them in their place. And it is in the latter attitude that he is most really himself. His is, of course, an aristocracy of mind and character, not of birth and wealth; but the self-sufficient scorn which was almost a virtue in Aristotle's eyes, and is in ours the besetting sin of even the noblest of aristocrats, is too frequent a note in all his prose, and even in his poetry; and it is sometimes poured out upon those who are fitter subjects for tenderness than for contempt. One can scarcely imagine a child {87} or an ignorant man being quite at ease in Milton's company. But these are the penalties that greatness has too often to pay for being itself. So long as we remain human beings and not divine, it will be found hard to unite humility, ease of manner, and the glad sufferance of fools with a mind struggling in a storm of sublime thoughts, with powers that are and know themselves to be far above those of ordinary men. It will never be easy for men of supreme genius to behave to their inferiors as if they were their equals. But that is not the side of Milton of which we ought to think most often now. It is more just as well as more merciful to him, and it is of more use to ourselves, to fix our eyes on his strength, and not on the weakness that more or less inevitably accompanied it. The ancients admired strength more than the moderns have, at least until lately. But no one can refuse to admire such strength as Milton's, so continuous, so triumphant over exceptional obstacles, so disdainful of all petty or personal ends. There is a majesty about it to which one scarcely knows any real parallel. Strength implies purpose and art implies unity of conception; the instinct of art was only less strong in Milton than the resolute will; so that it {88} is not surprising that scarcely any life has such unity as his. It is itself a perfect work of art. If we put aside, as we may fairly, the partial political inconsistencies, the rest is absolutely of one piece; a great building, nobly planned from the beginning and nobly executed to the last harmonious detail of the original design. We men are, most of us, weak creatures who accomplish but the tiniest fragments of even such poor designs as we make for our lives. There is something that uplifts us in the spectacle of the triumphant completion of so great a plan as the life of Milton. We are exalted by the thought that, after all, we are of the same flesh and blood, nay, even of the same breed, as this wonderful man. To read the _Paradise Lost_ is to realize, in the highest degree, how the poet's imagination can impose a majestic order on the tumultuous confusion of human speech and knowledge. To read its author's life is to realize, with equally exalting clearness, how a strong man's will can so victoriously mould a world of adverse circumstances that affliction, defeat--nay, even the threatening shadow of death itself--are made the very instruments by which he becomes that which he has, from the beginning of his years, chosen for himself to be. {89} CHAPTER III THE EARLIER POEMS We think to-day of Milton chiefly as the author of _Paradise Lost_, as we think of Wren as the builder of St. Paul's. And we are right. When a man has been the creator of the only very great building in the world which bears upon it from the first stone to the last the mark of a single mind, his other achievements, even though they include Greenwich, Hampton Court, Trinity College Library, and some fifty churches, inevitably fall into the background. So when the world has admitted that a poet has disputed the supreme palm of epic with Homer and Virgil, it hardly cares to remember that he has also challenged all rivals in such forms as the Pastoral Elegy, the Mask, and the Sonnet. _De minimis non curat_ might be applied to such cases without any very violent extravagance. The first thought that must always rise to the mind at the mention of Milton's name must be the stupendous achievement of _Paradise Lost_. Yet if Milton had been hanged at Tyburn {90} in 1660 he would still unquestionably rank with the half-dozen greatest of the English poets. Chaucer and Spenser would then have ranked after Shakspeare as higher names than his: and possibly also Wordsworth, Keats and Shelley. But he could have feared no other rival: for Dryden is too much a mere man of letters, Pope too much a mere wit, Byron too exclusively a rhetorician, Tennyson too exclusively an artist, to rank with a man in whom burned the divine fire of _Lycidas_ and the great Ode. What would Milton's fame have rested upon if he had not lived to write _Paradise Lost_ and its two successors? Upon the volume published in the year 1645, the year of Naseby, when people, one would have supposed, were not thinking much of poetry, and those who were most likely to be doing so were just those least inclined to look for it from John Milton, the Puritan pamphleteer. Yet in that little book was heard for the last time the voice, now raised above itself, of the old poetry which the Cavaliers and courtiers had loved. No single volume has ever contained so much fine English verse by an unknown or almost unknown poet. It is true that _Lycidas_ and _Comus_ had been printed before, but _Comus_ had appeared anonymously and {91} _Lycidas_ had been signed only with initials. So that only friends, or people behind the scenes in the literary world, could know anything of Milton's poetry. Nor does he seem to have been very anxious that they should. The other contributors to the volume in memory of Edward King gave their names: the only signature to _Lycidas_ is J. M. It was Lawes the composer, not Milton the author, who published _Comus_ in 1637. Milton's feelings about it are indicated by the motto on the title page-- "Eheu quid volui misero mihi! floribus Austrum Perditus--" Quotations can often say for us what we cannot say for ourselves. What Virgil says for Milton is "Alas what is this that I have done? poor fool that I am, could not I have kept my tender buds of verse a little longer from the cutting blasts of public criticism?" Yet no one knew better than Milton that _Comus_ was incomparably the greatest of the masks. So in the sonnet on reaching the age of twenty-three he says that his "late spring no bud or blossom shew'th." Yet he had already written the _Ode on the Nativity_, a performance sufficient, one would have {92} thought, to give a young poet reasonable self-satisfaction in what he had done, as well as confidence in what he would be able to do. Nor was Milton in the ordinary sense, or perhaps in any, a humble man. Of that false kind of humility, too often recommended from the pulpit, which consists in a beautiful woman trying to suppose herself plain, or an able man trying to be unaware of his ability, no man ever had less than Milton. Neither from himself nor from others did he ever conceal the fact that he was a man of genius. In his eyes no kind of untruth, however specious, could be a virtue. But of a finer humility, built on truth, he was not without his share. The truly humble man may be a genius and may know it and may never affect to deny it: he may know that he has done great things, far greater than have been done by the men he sees around him: but he is not judging himself by the standard of other men: he has another standard, that of "the perfect witness of all-judging Jove," that of "as ever in my great Taskmaster's eye," and of that he knows how very far he has fallen short. Of this nobler humility Milton had something all his life and in his youth much. It is this which reconciles the apparent inconsistency between his many proud {93} confessions that he knows himself to be a man called to do great things and his reluctance to let the world see what he had already done: between his keeping _L'Allegro_ and _Il Penseroso_ ten years unpublished and his preserving and ultimately publishing almost everything he had ever written, even to scraps of boyish and undergraduate verse. From one point of view his best was nothing: from the other, more than equally true, the humblest line that had come from his pen had received a passport to immortality. What does the famous volume contain? It opens with the noble _Ode on the Nativity_, as if to give the discerning reader invincible proof in the first twenty lines put before him that the proud words of the publisher's preface were amply justified. "Let the event guide itself which way it will, I shall deserve of the age by bringing into the light as true a birth as the Muses have brought forth since our famous Spenser wrote; whose poems in these English ones are as rarely imitated as sweetly excelled. Reader, if thou art eagle-eyed to censure their worth, I am not fearful to expose them to thy exactest perusal." So the preface ends: and then what follows is-- "This is the month, and this the happy morn, Wherein the Son of Heaven's Eternal King, {94} Of wedded maid and virgin mother born, Our great redemption from above did bring; For so the holy sages once did sing, That he our deadly forfeit should release, And with his Father work us a perpetual peace." _Magnus ab integro saeclorum nascitur ordo_. No one had ever written such English verse as this before: no one ever would again. Here was a poet, writing at the age of twenty-one, for whom it was evident that no theme could be so high that he could not find it fit utterance. Fit and also peculiar to himself. The peculiar Miltonic note which none of his innumerable imitators have ever caught for more than a few lines, which he himself never in all his works loses for more than a moment, is instantly struck. As Mr. Mackail has said, "there is not a square inch of his poetry from first to last of which one could not confidently say, 'This is Milton and no one else.'" One may even go further than Mr. Mackail. For he seems to make an exception where certainly none is needed. He is justly insisting that one of the most remarkable things about Milton is that, while English poetry spoke one language in his youth and another in his age, he himself spoke neither. His "accent and speech" alike in _Lycidas_ and in _Paradise Lost_ {95} are his own, and in marked contrast to those of contemporary poets. But here Mr. Mackail adds the qualification "if we exclude a few slight juvenile pieces of his boyhood and those metrical versions of the Psalms in which he elected not to be a poet." He asserts, that is, that neither in the Psalms nor in the "juvenile pieces" is Milton characteristically himself and that in the Psalms he is not a poet at all. And no one will care to deny that many of the versions of the Psalms have little Milton and less poetry in them. But is this true of all? And in particular is it true of the paraphrase of Psalm cxxxvi. which, with its companion version of Psalm cxiv. is the most "juvenile" of all? A boy of fifteen has not usually much power of "electing" to be or not to be a poet. But it can only be inadvertence on Mr. Mackail's part that would deny that the boy Milton at that age, though not a great poet, was already himself and, more than that, was already promising what he was soon to perform. Who, looking back from the _Ode_ and _Comus_ and _Paradise Lost_, does not hear some preluding of the authentic strain of Milton in "Who by his all-commanding might Did fill the new-made world with light"? {96} Is it fanciful to note that we have here, no doubt in their barest primitive form, two of Milton's life-long themes? The Authorized Version speaks of "him that made great lights": how Miltonically transformed those words already are in the two quoted lines! De Quincey said that Milton was "not an author amongst authors, not a poet amongst poets, but a power amongst powers." However that may be, it is certain that he, so occupied all his life with thinking and writing about God, thought of God habitually as a power. For him God is Creator, Sovereign, Judge, much more often than Father: we hear from Milton more of his might than of his love. So at once here, at the age of fifteen, he inserts into the Psalm he is paraphrasing that characteristic phrase, so splendid and potent itself, so gladly speaking of potency and splendour, "Who by his all-commanding might." And, if power be one of the most frequent elements in the Miltonic thought, what is more frequent than light in the Miltonic vision? And is not that substitution of "did fill the new-made world with light" for the bare scientific statement of the original, a foretaste of the Milton who, all his life, blind or seeing, felt {97} the joy and wonder of light as no other man ever did? Do we not rightly hear in it a note that will soon be enriched into the "Light unsufferable" of the _Ode_, the "endless morn of Light" of the _Solemn Music_, the "bosom bright of blazing Majesty and Light" of the _Epitaph on Lady Winchester_, and, not to multiply quotations, of the "Hail, holy Light" which opens the great invocation of the third book of _Paradise Lost_? It may be as well, before discussing the _Ode_ and the other contents of the volume issued in 1645, to mention another poem which is of earlier date than the _Ode_, though it was not printed till 1673: the beautiful Spenserian lines _On the Death of a Fair Infant_. They afford the most real of the exceptions to the rule that Milton is always from the beginning to the end unmistakably and solely himself. In this poem he shows himself at the age of seventeen so soaked in Spenser and Spenser's school that, when his baby niece dies and he sets himself to make her an elegy, what he gives us is these graceful verses conveying as much as a boy of seventeen can catch of the lovely elegiac note of Spenser. "O noble Spirit: live there ever blessed The world's late wonder, and the heaven's new joy; {98} Live ever there, and leave me here distressed With mortal cares and cumbrous world's annoy." So sings Spenser of Sidney: and, though Milton is scarcely yet more the equal of Spenser than his baby niece was of Sidney, it is a beautiful echo of his master that he gives us in his "O fairest flower, no sooner blown but blasted, Soft silken primrose fading timelessly," and in "Yet can I not persuade me thou art dead, Or that thy corse corrupts in earth's dark womb, Or that thy beauties lie in wormy bed, Hid from the world in a low delvèd tomb." The poem is full of the then fashionable conceits, which appear again a little in the _Ode_, after which they are for ever put aside by Milton's imaginative severity and high conception of poetry as a finer sort of truth than prose, not a more ingenious kind of lying. Once, and perhaps once only, one hears in it the voice of the Milton of later years-- "Thereby to set the hearts of men on fire To scorn the sordid world, and unto Heaven aspire." But with the _Ode_ the age of imitation is over for Milton and he stands forward at once {99} as himself. The soft graces, somewhat lacking in outline, of the _Fair Infant_, are forgotten in the sonorous strength of the _Ode_. The half-hesitating whisper has become a strain of mighty music; the uncertain hand has gained self-confidence so that the design now shows the boldness and decision of a master. At once, in the second stanza, he is away to heaven, with a curious anticipation of what was to occupy him so much thirty years later-- "That glorious form, that light unsufferable, And that far-beaming blaze of majesty, Wherewith he wont at Heaven's high council-table To sit the midst of Trinal Unity, He laid aside; and, here with us to be, Forsook the courts of everlasting day, And chose with us a darksome house of mortal clay." Milton's genius was universal, in the strict sense of the word, that is, living in or occupied with the universe. He is as supramundane in his way as Shelley in his. And no part of the universe was more real to him than heaven, the abode of God and angels and spirits, the original and ultimate home of his beloved music and light. It is noticeable that there is hardly a single poem of his--_L'Allegro_ and _Samson_ are the only important ones--in {100} which he does not at one point or other make his escape to heaven. In most of them, as all through this _Ode_ and the _Solemn Music_, in the conclusions of _Lycidas_ and _Il Penseroso_, in the opening of _Comus_, this heavenly flight provides passages of exceptional and peculiarly Miltonic beauty. The fact is that, though little of a mystic, he was from the first entirely of that temper, intellectually descended from Plato, morally from Stoicism and Christianity but more from Stoicism, which cannot be content to be "confined and pestered in this pinfold here," disdains the "low-thoughted cares" of mere bodily and temporal life, and habitually aspires to live the life of the mind and the spirit, "Above the smoke and stir of this dim spot Which men call Earth." So here at once, in his first important poem, what in other hands might have been a mere telling of the old human and earthly story of the first Christmas night becomes in Milton's a vision of all time and all space, with heaven in it, and the stars, and the music of the spheres, and the great timeless scheme of redemption with which he was to have so much to do later, with history, too, and literature, the false gods of the Old Testament and of the Greek and Roman classics already {101} anticipating the parts they were to play in _Paradise Lost_. And note one other thing. Milton is only twenty-one, but he is already an incomparable artist. The stanza had been so far the usual form for lyrics, and he adopts it here for the first and last time. But if he accepts the instrument prescribed by tradition, with what a master's hand this wonderful boy of twenty-one touches it, and to what astonishing music! It seems that the stanza itself is his own. Every one has felt the combination in it, as he manages it, of the romantic movement and suggestion which he loved and renounced with the classical strength which is the chief element in the final impression he made on English poetry. As yet the romantic quality is the stronger, and even one of the mighty closing Alexandrines is dedicated to the lovely Elizabethan fancy of the "yellow skirted fayes" who "Fly after the night-steeds, leaving their moon-loved maze." How such a line as that, or still more plainly the two which end the most romantic stanza of all-- "No nightly trance, or breathèd spell, Inspires the pale-eyed priest from the prophetic cell" {102} found a rejoicing echo in Keats is obvious. This, of course, has often been noticed. But has it ever been remarked that there are also lines in the poem which might have been written by another nineteenth-century poet of equal but very different genius? "The winds, with wonder whist, Smoothly the waters kissed, Whispering new joys to the mild Ocean;"-- should we be surprised to come upon these elemental loves and joys heralding a new reign of justice and peace in the _Prometheus Unbound_? But neither Keats nor Shelley, who both had their affinities to Milton, had it in him to reach the concentrated Miltonic energy of such lines as-- "The wakeful trump of doom must thunder through the deep," or-- "Than his bright throne or burning axletree could bear." Almost every one of these final Alexandrines, it is to be observed, sums up the note of its stanza in a chord of majestic power. They are the most Miltonic lines in the poem; for it is precisely "majesty" {103} which is the unique and essential Miltonic quality; and Dryden in the famous epigram ought to have kept it for him and not given it to Virgil, though by doing so he would have made his splendid compliment impossible. Among the poems that followed in the 1645 edition were the _Passion_, a failure which Milton recognized as a failure and abandoned, but yet, characteristically, did not refuse to publish; the _Epitaph on the Marchioness of Winchester_, which, still youthful as it is and is seen to be by the frigid and false antithesis of Queen and Marchioness with which it ends, has yet very beautiful lines-- "Gentle Lady, may thy grave Peace and quiet ever have! After this thy travail sore, Sweet rest seize thee evermore"; the famous lines on Shakspeare, contributed anonymously to the second Folio; and the noble outburst of heavenly music which begins-- "Blest pair of Sirens, pledges of Heaven's joy Sphere-born harmonious sisters, Voice and Verse." {104} This was written some years later; and even after _Paradise Lost_ it may rank as the most daring and entirely successful of Milton's long-sustained wheelings of musical flight. The stanza no longer provides him with space enough: and here his whole twenty-eight lines are one continuous strain, with no break in them and scarcely any pause, in ten-syllabled lines of boldly varied rhyme and accent. His task here is not so difficult as it was to be in _Paradise Lost_, for he has rhyme to provide him with variety and he admits two verses of six syllables among his twenty-eight; but already he is completely master of the possibilities of the ten-syllable line, and can make it yield as lavish a wealth of variety in unity as was later on to make the great passages of _Paradise Lost_ an eternal amazement to lovers and practisers of the art of verse. "Wed your divine sounds, and mixed power employ, Dead things with inbreathed sense able to pierce; And to our high-raised phantasy present That undisturbèd song of pure concent." They are all the same line, and yet how different. It is difficult to believe that this is the same metre which Waller and Dryden {105} were soon, amid universal applause, to file down into the smooth monotony of-- "Great wits are sure to madness near allied, And thin partitions do their bounds divide; Else why should he, with wealth and honour blest, Refuse his age the needful hours of rest?" For Dryden, as still more for Pope and the school of Pope, the thing to accomplish, so far as possible, is to prevent any of the natural accents falling upon the third, fifth or other odd syllables; there is, for instance, not one which does so in the first fifty lines of _Absalom and Achitophel_ or of the _Epistle to Arbuthnot_. The object of Milton, on the contrary, is to vary the position of his accents to the utmost possible extent compatible with the preservation of the verse. In these four lines his first accent falls on the first syllable in the first two, probably on the fourth in the third, and on the second in the last. And the other accents are similarly varied in place and, it may be added, in number. In Milton's case the listener's wonder is at the number and intricacy of the variations he can play upon the theme of his verse; in Pope's it is at the amazing cleverness with which it can be exactly repeated in {106} different words. Milton's music, too, is continuous, not broken into couplets sharply divided from each other. His verses pass into each other as wave melts into wave on the sea-shore; there is a constant breaking on the beach, but which will break and which will glide imperceptibly into its successor we cannot guess though we sit watching for an hour; the sameness of rise and fall, crash and silence, is unbroken, yet no one wave is exactly like its predecessor, no two successive minutes give either eye or ear exactly the same experience. So with Milton's verse; even the ocean of _Paradise Lost_ has few or no waves of music of more varied unity, of more continuous variety than such lines as-- "As once we did, till disproportioned sin Jarred against Nature's chime and with harsh din Broke the fair music that all creatures made To their great Lord, whose love their motion swayed In perfect diapason whilst they stood In first obedience and their state of good." The chief remaining minor poems of Milton are the _Allegro_ and _Penseroso_, _Comus_, _Lycidas_ and the Sonnets. The two first are written {107} in those rhymed eight-syllable lines which he had already used in part of his _Song on May Morning_. Like that beautiful little poem, they represent him in his simplest mood, the mood of the quiet years at Horton, spent, more than any other part of his life, in the open air, and among plain folk unlettered and unpolitical. It is natural enough, therefore, that they are the most popular as they are the easiest of all his poems. Their two titles, which mean The Cheerful Man and The Thoughtful or Meditative Man, point to the two moods from which they regard life. Both moods are, of course, described as they might actually be experienced by a highly cultivated and serious man like Milton himself. The gravity is the gravity of a man of thought, not of a man of affairs; the pleasures are those of a scholar and a poet, not those of a trifler, a sportsman, or a sensualist. Like all Milton's works they borrow freely from earlier poets, remain entirely original and Miltonic, and are imitated only at the peril of the imitator. Any one who looks at the parallel passages in Marlowe and Fletcher will see how very like they are and how very little the likeness matters. The poems stand alone; there is nothing of quite the same kind in English. {108} The least unlike pair of poems is perhaps the two Spring Odes of the present Poet Laureate, than whom no one has owed more to Milton or repaid the debt with more verse which Milton would have been glad to inspire. But Mr. Bridges has, of course, avoided anything approaching a direct imitation; he has merely used the hint of two contrasted poems on one subject, touching inevitably, as Milton had touched, upon some of the opposite pleasures of town and country, and bringing Milton's mood of cheerful gravity to bear upon them both. It is unnecessary to discuss in detail poems so well known. But a few words may be said. Milton was never again to be so genial as he is here. Never again does he place himself so sympathetically close to the daily tasks and pleasures of ordinary unimportant men and women. After characteristically choosing the West Wind and the Dawn as likelier parents of true mirth than any god of wine or sensual pleasure, he will go on for once to call for the company of-- "Sport that wrinkled Care derides, And Laughter holding both his sides"; he will cast a pleased eye on the birds and flowers and the sunrise--the latter moving {109} him to the characteristic magnificence which in this poem he has elsewhere forgone; he will recognize, with the gratefulness of the tired student, the careless gladness in the voices of ploughman and milkmaid, as he passes them in his early morning walk. Then he will give a glance to beauty which such as they cannot see, or cannot be fully conscious of seeing-- "Mountains on whose barren breast The labouring clouds do often rest"; will touch on the romance of old towers and poetic memories of which they have only dimly heard, and look back at Thyrsis and Corydon and all the pastoral poetry which such scenes recall to the scholar's memory. The next section of the poem is taken from a different world, that of the merry England of the Middle Age with its ale and dances and Faery Mab; while the final one carries us quite away from the rustics to the town and the town's pleasures, pageantry and drama and music--this last, as always, moving the poet to peculiar rapture, and an answering music of verse-- "The melting voice through mazes running, Untwisting all the chains that tie The hidden soul of harmony." {110} _Il Penseroso_ is the praise of Melancholy as _L'Allegro_ of Mirth. But Milton was not a melancholy man in our sense of the word. When Keats declares that-- "in the very temple of Delight Veiled Melancholy has her sovran shrine," he is interpreting a mood into which Milton could not even in imagination enter, that of the intellectual sensualist who dreams his life away and cannot act. Milton was a man of action and character, and his Melancholy, quite unlike this, is that of the Spirit in his own _Comus_, who "began-- "Wrapt in a pleasing fit of melancholy, To meditate my rural minstrelsy." He hails her at once as a "Goddess sage and holy" and as a "Nun devout and pure"; and it is evident from the first that her sorrows, so far as she is sorrowful, are those of aspiring spirit, not those of self-indulging and disappointed flesh. Her life of quiet studies and pleasures is self-chosen; there is a note of will and self-control in the words in which the poet bids her call about her Peace and Quiet and Spare Fast, Retired Leisure and Contemplation and Silence; and the descriptions which follow of his walks {111} and studies and pleasures, in town and country, by night and morning, are those of a man who has deliberately shaped his life, and means so to live it that he shall leave it without regret or shame and with the hope of passing from it to a better. Nor is it any mood of mere melancholy that has given us in this poem such pleasant glimpses of his walks abroad and studies at home in these Horton years. He pays his tribute to Plato, the Greek tragedians and the dramatists of Elizabethan and Jacobean England; and to his own two most famous predecessors, Chaucer and Spenser; and we think of the scholarly hours spent gravely and quietly but far from unhappily. More delightful still, with more beauty and more happiness in them, are the poem's well-known landscapes-- "the wandering moon, Riding near her highest noon, Like one that had been led astray Through the heaven's wide pathless way." Perhaps no one again, till Shelley came, felt the vastness, the pathlessness, of the heaven as Milton did. Or, to come to earth again, where does poetry set the ear more instantly and actively at the work of imaginative {112} creation than in those finely suggestive lines about the curfew-- "Over some wide-watered shore, Swinging slow with sullen roar"? And what of that woodland solitude at noon, with memories in it of so many poets of Greece, Rome, Italy and England, the "shadows brown, that Sylvan loves, Of pine, or monumental oak, Where the rude axe with heavèd stroke Was never heard the Nymphs to daunt Or fright them from their hallowed haunt," which carries us on to perhaps the loveliest lines in all the _Paradise Lost_-- "In shadier bower, More sacred and sequestered, though but feigned, Pan or Sylvanus never slept, nor nymph Nor Faunus haunted." There is in the two passages just the difference between the youth and maturity of genius; but that is all. So _Il Penseroso_ passes on its delightful way, ending, of course, in music and heaven. There, too, "before the starry threshold of Jove's court," the next of these earlier works of Milton, the mask _Comus_, begins. {113} It strikes its high note at once in what an old lover of literature boldly called "the finest opening of any theatrical piece ancient or modern." "Before the starry threshold of Jove's court My mansion is, where those immortal shapes Of bright aerial spirits live insphered In regions mild of calm and serene air, Above the smoke and stir of this dim spot Which men call Earth, and, with low-thoughted care, Confined and pestered in this pinfold here, Strive to keep up a frail and feverish being, Unmindful of the crown that Virtue gives, After this mortal change, to her true servants Amongst the enthroned gods on sainted seats." That looks forward to _Paradise Lost_, not backward to the masks of the previous generation of poets. The "loud uplifted angel-trumpet" is sounded in it, and we know that we have travelled a long way from the trivial, superficial and often coarse entertainments which would have been the models of _Comus_ if Milton had been the man to accept models of any kind, least of all of such a kind. Like them his mask was an aristocratic entertainment, played to a noble {114} audience by the scions of a great house. But the resemblance scarcely goes further. The older masks were mainly spectacles; magnificent spectacles indeed, designed sometimes, as one may see in the Chatsworth Library, by such artists as Inigo Jones and produced at immense expense; but just for that reason addressed to the eye much more than to the ear, and scarcely at all to the mind. Even when written by such a man as Ben Jonson, the words, except in the lyrics, are of almost no importance. The business was to show a number of pretty scenes, and noble ladies, and to give them a chance of exhibiting their clothes, and their voices. The last gave Jonson his chance; the fine Horatian workman that he was could always produce a lyric that would fit any situation and give some dignity to any trivial personage. But the taint of vanity and fashion, pomp and externality, inevitably clung to the whole thing. Too many personages were introduced, probably because in such plays there were always a great many applicants for parts; and the inevitable result was that in a short piece none of them had space to develop any character or life. But Milton knew, as the Greeks knew and Shakspeare did not always, that in the few hours of a {115} stage performance only a very few characters have time to develop themselves in such a way as to interest and convince the hearer's imagination, and that if there are many they never become more than a list of names. So he, who could not touch anything without giving it character, limits his personages to four or five that they may at least be human beings and not mere singers of songs or allegorical abstractions. And, like some of his predecessors, he takes an ethical theme, the praise and power of Chastity. Fletcher in _The Faithful Shepherdess_ had taken the same; as Jonson had taken the praise of Temperance, which is also partly Milton's subject, in _Pleasure Reconciled to Virtue_, in which a grosser Comus is one of the characters. But to get any parallel to the power of conviction with which Milton handles it one has to go behind Jonson, whose mask is an entirely superficial performance, and even behind Fletcher, in whose _Shepherdess_ the many beautiful and moving touches are lost in a crowd of characters and a wilderness of artificial intrigue; one has to go back to the man whom Milton once called his "original," to the author of the _Faerie Queen_. No one but Spenser could have anticipated the scene between Comus and the Lady, where indeed {116} Milton, like Spenser in the bower of Acrasia, has lavished such wealth upon his sinner that he has hardly been able to give a due over-balance to his saint. Yet she is no lay figure, and one is not surprised that Comus should twice show his consciousness that she has within her some holy, some more than mortal power. Milton has given her a song of such astonishing music that one wonders whether the composer Lawes, for whom the whole was written, could touch it without injury-- "Sweet Echo, sweetest Nymph, that liv'st unseen Within thy airy shell By slow Meander's margent green, And in the violet-embroidered vale Where the love-lorn nightingale Nightly to thee her sad song mourneth well; Canst thou not tell me of a gentle pair That likest thy Narcissus are? O, if thou have Hid them in some flowery cave, Tell me but where, Sweet Queen of Parley, Daughter of the Sphere! So mayst thou be translated to the skies, And give resounding grace to all Heaven's harmonies." The lyrics were the chief beauty of the old masks, but the best of them sink into {117} insignificance before such a masterpiece of art as this. Perhaps nothing in a modern language comes nearer to giving the peculiar effect which is the glory of Pindar. Of course there is in it more of the fanciful, and more of the romantic, than there was in Pindar; and its style is tenderer, prettier and perhaps altogether smaller than his. But the elaborate and intricate perfection of its art and language, the way in which the intellect in it serves the imagination, is exactly Pindar. In any case it is certainly one of the most entirely beautiful of English lyrics. One listens with delight to the musician working out his intricately beautiful theme; or is it nearer the impression we get to say that we watch the skilful dancer executing his elaborate figure? In either case we await with sure confidence the triumphant close. The final couplet, by the way, and particularly the great Alexandrine, is a curious anticipation of Dryden's finest manner. But the rest is a music Dryden's ear never heard. No wonder Comus cries-- "Can any mortal mixture of earth's mould Breathe such divine enchanting ravishment? Sure something holy lodges in that breast, And with these raptures moves the vocal air To testify his hidden residence. {118} How sweetly did they float upon the wings Of silence, through the empty-vaulted night, At every fall smoothing the raven down Of darkness till it smiled!" The last lines show that Milton has not yet outgrown the Jacobean taste for conceits. So a little later on we find him writing that-- "Silence Was took ere she was ware, and wished she might Deny her nature, and be never more Still to be so displaced"; a piece of intellectual trickery such as Shakspeare too often played with, and Donne laboured at; and one of a special interest because we see it again later transformed and purified in the famous passage of _Paradise Lost_, in which "Silence was pleased" not only with the stillness of evening, but also with the song of the bird whose "amorous descant" alone interrupts it. Yet even that seemed to Warton, the best of Milton's early critics, a conceit unworthy of the poet. So difficult it is for "rational" criticism to see the distinction between an intellectual extravagance and a flight of the imagination. There are other things in _Comus_ beside conceits which recall Shakspeare. What can {119} be more exactly in his freshest youngest manner than such a line as-- "Love-darting eyes and tresses like the morn"? And what can be closer to the note of the great Histories and Tragedies than the Elder Brother's outburst of faith-- "If this fail, The pillared firmament is rottenness, And earth's base built on stubble"? I see no reason whatever to doubt, in spite of what has lately been said by a modern critic and poet, that these speeches of the Brothers and the Lady, rather than those of Comus, represent Milton's own conception of life. It is true, of course, that _Comus_ was one of several masks performed as an aristocratic counterblast to the attack of Prynne and the Puritans on all stage performances. But that only strengthens the proof of Milton's own leaning to a grave and temperate mode of life. Even when he writes a mask he will insist that it shall be a thing of noble art and serious moral. He was no narrow-minded fanatic and will write a piece for great ladies to perform when asked by his accomplished friend Lawes: but he is already {120} the man who was later to denounce "court amours, Mix'd dance and wanton masque"; and if he writes a mask himself it will be to take the old "high-flown commonplace" of the magic power of chastity and give it an entirely new seriousness and beauty. The notion of Mr. Newbolt that there were two Miltons, one before and the other after the Civil War, and that the one was "sincerely engaged on the side of liberal manners" while the other was an ill-tempered enemy of civilization and the arts of life, is a complete delusion. The "Lady of Christ's" who was unpopular on account of his severe chastity, was already a strict Puritan of the only sort he ever became; and the author of _Paradise Lost_, as all the evidence shows, was no morbid sectary but a lover of learning and music and society. Of course, no man goes unchanged through a great struggle such as that to which Milton gave twenty years of life. There is a development, or a difference, call it what you will, between the Dante who wrote the _Vita Nuova_ and him who wrote the _Divina Commedia_. That could not but be; a body that had gone into exile and a soul that had visited hell must leave their traces on a man. But the essential Dante remains one and the same all the while. And {121} so does Milton. Nothing can be more certain than that the grave boy whose gravity impressed all Cambridge, and had taken immortal shape in the _Nativity Ode_ and the sonnet of the "great Taskmaster's eye" before he was much past twenty, did not mean to hold up a drunken sensualist like Comus as a model for youth. He was not an ascetic, then or later; and he was writing a dramatic poem; and, of course, had no difficulty in giving Comus a fine speech about the follies of total abstinence which, indeed, he loved no better than other monkeries. The Lady, in reply, as she is dramatically bound, over-exalts her "sage and serious doctrine of Virginity" as Comus had overstated the case against it; but what she praises is Temperance, not Abstinence. Her virginity is that of a free maiden, not that of a vowed nun, and there is nothing in it to unfit her to play the part which, when Eve plays it, gives Milton occasion for his well-known apostrophe to true love. Nor is there any inconsistency between his denunciation of "wanton masks" in that passage, and his being the author of _Comus_. His own mask was as different as possible from those others, the common sort, in which he saw the purveyors of "adulterous lust," and with which, now as then, he would have nothing whatever {122} to do. His "Lady" alone, even without her brothers, makes that clear. What she says may not be so poetically attractive as the speech of Comus; but it has just the note of exaltation which is heard in all Milton's great ethical and spiritual outbursts, and plainly utters the other and stronger side of his convictions. The truth is that from the very beginning to the very end of his life Milton had all the intensity of Puritanism, more than all its angry contempt of vice, but nothing whatever of its uncivilized narrow-mindedness. A large part of the peculiar interest of his character lies in the fact that he, almost alone of Englishmen, managed to unite the strength of the Reformation with the breadth of the Renaissance. We have both in the lovely verses which are the Epilogue of _Comus_; and if it begins with-- "the gardens fair Of Hesperus, and his daughters three That sing about the golden tree:" and the-- "Beds of hyacinth and roses Where young Adonis oft reposes, Waxing well of his deep wound In slumber soft, and on the ground Sadly sits the Assyrian queen"; {123} it ends with the Stoic Puritan motto, "Love Virtue, she alone is free." And that these last six lines were no formal compliment to the conventions is proved by the fact that Milton chose the final couplet-- "if Virtue feeble were Heaven itself would stoop to her," as the motto he appended to his signature in the album of an Italian Protestant at Geneva in 1639, adding the significant Latin which claims the sentiment as utterly his own-- "Caelum, non animum, muto dum trans mare curro." These words we, looking back on his whole life, may fitly translate: "I am always the same John Milton, whether in Rome, Geneva, or London, whether I write _Comus_ or _Allegro_ or _Paradise Lost_." For never were unity and continuity of personality more complete than in Milton. There remains _Lycidas_, in which Milton out-distances all previous English elegy almost as easily as in _Comus_ he had out-distanced all the earlier masks. It stands with the great passages of _Paradise Lost_ as the most consummate blending of scholarship and poetry in Milton and therefore in English. All {124} pastoral poetry is in it, Theocritus and Virgil, Spenser and Sidney, Drayton and Drummond, with memories, too, of Ovid and Shakspeare and the Bible; and yet it is pure and undiluted Milton, with the signet of his peculiar mind and temper stamped on its every phrase. It was his contribution to a volume of verses published at Cambridge in 1638 to the memory of Edward King, a younger contemporary of his at Christ's who was drowned off the Welsh coast in August 1637. King was already a Fellow of his college, and one of the most promising young clergymen of his day. Milton had liked and respected him, no doubt, but had certainly not been so intimate with him as with young Charles Diodati who died almost exactly a year later, and was lamented by his great friend in the _Epitaphium Damonis_ which is the finest of the Latin poems. Those who read Latin will enjoy its close parallelism with _Lycidas_ and its touches of a still closer bond of affection, as that in which the poet contrasts the easy friendships of birds and animals, soon won, soon lost and soon replaced by others, with their hard rareness among men who scarcely find one kindred spirit in a thousand, and too often lose that one by premature fate before the fruit of {125} friendship has had time to ripen. But if the death of Diodati aroused the deeper sorrow in Milton, that of King produced unquestionably the greater poem. It is a common mistake to think that to write a great elegy a man must have suffered a great sorrow. That is not the case. Shelley wrote _Adonais_ about Keats whom he knew very little; Spenser _Daphnaïda_ about a lady whom he did not know at all. It is not the actual experience of sorrow that the elegiac poet needs; but the power of heart and imagination to conceive it and the power of language to give it fit expression. Moreover, the poet's real subject is not the death of Keats or King or Mrs. Gorges: it is the death of all who have been or will be loved in all the world, and the sorrow of all the survivors, the tragic destiny of youth and hope and fame, the doom of frailty and transience which has been eternally pronounced on so many of the fairest gifts of Nature and all the noblest works of man. About _Lycidas_ criticism has less to say than to unsay. Johnson's notorious attack upon it is only the extremest instance of the futility of applying to poetry the tests of prose and of the general incapacity of that generation to apply any other. Even {126} Warton, who really loved these early poems of Milton and did so much to recall them to public notice, could speak of him as appearing to have had "a very bad ear"! At such a time it was inevitable that the artificial absurdity of pastoral poetry which is a prose fact should blind all but the finest judges to the poetic fact that living spirit can animate every form it finds prepared for its indwelling. Johnson and the rest were right in perceiving that pastoral elegy had very commonly been an insincere affectation, a mere exercise in writing; the age into which they were born denied them the ear that could hear the amazing music of _Lycidas_, or perceive the sensuous, imaginative, spiritual intensity which drowns its incongruities in a flood of poetic life. There is a still more important truth which that generation could not see. Prose aims at expressing facts directly, and sometimes succeeds. That is what Johnson liked, and practised himself with masterly success. But when he and his asked that poetry should do the same they were asking that she should deny her nature. She knows that her truth can only be expressed or suggested by its imaginative equivalents. It is with poetry as with religion. Religious truth stated directly becomes philosophy or science, {127} conveying other elements of truth, perhaps, but failing to convey the element which is specifically religious; and therefore religion employs parable, ceremony, sacrament, mystery, to express what scientifically exact prose cannot express. So poetry can neither deal directly with King's death or Milton's grief nor be content with a subject which is a mere fact in time and space. If it did, the effect produced would not be a poetic effect; the experience of the reader would not be a poetic experience. The poet must transform or transcend the facts which have set his powers to work; he must escape from them or rather lift them up with him new-created into the world of the imagination; he must impose upon them a new form, invented or accepted by himself, and in any case so heated by his own fire of poetry that it can fuse and reshape the matter submitted to it into that unity of beauty which is a work of art. That is what Milton does in _Lycidas_ by the help of the pastoral fiction; and what he could not have done without it or some imaginative substitute for it. The truest criticism on his pastoralism is really that that mould was too small and fragile to hold all he wanted to put into it. The great outburst of St. Peter, with its {128} scarcely disguised assault upon the Laudian clergy, strains it almost to bursting. Yet no one would wish it away; for it adds a passage of Miltonic fire to what but for Phoebus and St. Peter would be too plaintive to be fully characteristic of Milton whose genius lay rather in strength than in tenderness. Yet perhaps we love _Lycidas_ all the more for giving us our almost solitary glimpse of a Milton in whom the affections are more than the will, and sorrow not sublimated into resolution. Its modesty, too, is astonishing. He had already written the _Nativity Ode_, _Comus_ and _Allegro_ and _Penseroso_, and yet he fancies himself still unripe for poetry and is only forced by the "bitter constraint" of the death of his friend to pluck the berries of his laurel which seem to him still "harsh and crude"; for of course these allusions refer to his own immaturity and not, as Todd thought, to that of his dead friend. And the presence of the same over-mastering emotion which compelled him to begin is felt throughout. There is no poem of his in which he appears to make so complete a surrender to the changing moods of passion. The verses seem to follow his heart and fancy just where they choose to lead. We watch him as he thinks first of his friend's death and then of the {129} duty of paying some poetic tribute to him; and so of his own death and of some other poet of the future who may write of it and-- "bid fair peace be to my sable shroud." How natural it is in all its superficial unnaturalness! The walks and talks and verses made together at Cambridge so inevitably leading to the "heavy change now thou art gone. Now thou art gone and never must return"; and the fancy, partly but not wholly a reminiscence of their classical studies, that the trees and flowers which they had loved together must now be sharing the survivor's grief; the reproach to Nature and Nature's divinities following on the thought of Nature's sympathy, and followed by the first of the two incomparable returns upon himself which are among the chief beauties of the poem-- "Ay me! I fondly dream! 'Had ye been there,' for what could that have done?" And so to the vanity of earthly fame and the thought of another fame which is not vanity. Twice he seems to be going to escape out of the world of pastoral, as he strikes his own trumpet note of confident {130} faith and stern judgment; twice the unfailing instinct of art calls him back and makes a beauty of what might have been a mere incongruity-- "Return, Alpheus; the dread voice is past, That shrunk thy streams: return, Sicilian Muse, And call the vales, and bid them hither cast Their bells and flowerets of a thousand hues." The flowers come, in their amazing beauty, as poetry knows and names them, not altogether after the order of nature; till the fine flight is once more recalled to earth in that second return to the sad reality of things which provides the most beautiful, and as the manuscript shows, one of the most carefully elaborated passages in the whole-- "Bid amaranthus all his beauty shed, And daffadillies fill their cups with tears, To strew the laureate hearse where Lycid lies. For so, to interpose a little ease, Let our frail thoughts dally with false surmise. Ay me! whilst thee the shores and sounding seas Wash far away, where'er thy bones are hurled, Whether beyond the stormy Hebrides, {131} Where thou perhaps under the whelming tide Visit'st the bottom of the monstrous world." The least critical reader, when he is told that the daffodil and amaranthus lines were once in the reverse order, that the "frail thoughts" were at first "sad," and the "shores" "floods," and above all that the "whelming tide" was once a thing so insignificant as the "humming tide," can judge for himself by what a succession of inspirations a work of consummate art is produced. There remain the sonnets, whose sufficient praise is given in an immortal line of Wordsworth, while all that a fine critic had thought or learnt about them is contained in the scholarly edition of Mark Pattison. Technically they are remarkable, like everything else of Milton's, at once for their conservatism and their originality; while their content has all his characteristic sincerity. They occupy a most important place in the history of the English sonnet, which had so far been almost entirely given up to a single theme, that of the poet's unhappy love, which had commonly little existence outside his verses. The shadowy mistresses who emulated the glories of Beatrice and Laura were even less substantial than they; and, though that could {132} not hinder great poets from making fine poetry out of them, it was fatal to the ordinary sonnetteer, and gave the sonnet a tradition of overblown and insincere verbiage. From all this Milton emancipated it and, as Landor said, "gave the notes to glory." To glory and to other things; for not all his sonnets are consecrated to glory. They deal with various subjects; but each, whether its topic be his blindness, the death of his wife, or the fame of Fairfax or Cromwell, is the product of a personal experience of his own. No one can read them through without feeling that he gets from them a true knowledge of the man. At their weakest, as in that _To a Lady_, they convey, in the words of Mark Pattison, "the sense that here is a true utterance of a great soul." The rather commonplace thought and language somehow do not prevent the total effect from being impressive. He entirely fails only when he goes below the level of poetry altogether and repeats in verse the angry scurrility of his divorce pamphlets. And even there some remnant of his artist's sense of the self-restraint of verse preserves him from the worst degradations of his prose. For the rest, they give us his musical and scholarly tastes, his temperate pleasures and his love of that sort of company which Shelley {133} confessed to preferring, "such society as is quiet, wise and good"; they give us the high ideal with which he became a poet, the high patriotism that drew him into politics, and that sense, both for himself and for others, of life as a thing to be lived in the presence and service of God which was the eternally true part of his religion. The four finest are those on the Massacre in Piedmont, On his Blindness, On attaining the age of twenty-three, and that addressed to Cromwell, which perhaps has the finest touch of all in the pause which comes with such tremendous effect after "And Worcester's laureate wreath." But that to the memory of his wife and "Captain or Colonel or Knight in Arms," the one addressed to Lawrence and the first of those addressed to Skinner, come very near the best; and the whole eight would be included by any good judge in a collection of the fifty best English sonnets, to which Milton would make a larger contribution than any one except, perhaps, Wordsworth and Shakspeare. And both of these poets, Shakspeare always and Wordsworth often, sinned as Milton did not against the true genius of the sonnet. No doubt they had nearly all precedent with them, and their successors down to Rossetti {134} and Meredith have followed in the same path. But not even Shakspeare and Petrarch can alter the fact that the genius of the sonnet is solitary and self-contained. A series of sonnets is an artistic contradiction in terms. There may be magnificent individual sonnets in it which can stand alone, without reference to those that precede or follow; and so far so good; but on the bulk of the series there inevitably rests the taint of incompleteness. They do not explain themselves. They are chapters not books, parts of a composition and not the whole. It is scarcely possible to doubt that, fine as they may be, the effect they produce is not that of the finest single sonnets, beginning and ending within their own limits. Milton may never have been under any special temptation to write a set of consecutive sonnets; but it is in any case like his habitual submission of all authority to his own judgment that he wrote sonnets and yet defied the tradition of writing them as a continuous series, as he had also disdained the amorous affectations which had been their established subject. But in this, as in everything else where art was concerned, he was as much a conservative as a revolutionary. And so his scholarly interest in the Italian sonnet, and, we may be sure, his consummate {135} critical judgment, made him set aside the various sonnet forms adopted by Shakspeare, Spenser and other famous English poets, and follow the original model of Petrarch more strictly than it had been followed by any English poet of importance before him; for the Petrarchan sonnets of Sidney, Constable and Drummond all end with the unItalian concluding couplet. But here again Milton's example has not proved decisive. Wordsworth did not always follow it, though he never deserted it with success. Keats began with it and gave it up for the Shakspearean model with the concluding couplet. But of him again, it may be said that, while he only wrote three great sonnets and two of them are Shakspearean, his single masterpiece is Petrarchan or Miltonic. Rossetti, on the other hand, has no Shakspearean sonnets, and his finest are among the best proofs of how much a sonnet gains in unity by the single pause between the eight lines and the six instead of Shakspeare's fourfold division, and especially by the interlocking of the rhymes in the second half of the sonnet as opposed to Shakspeare's isolated and half-epigrammatic final couplet. There can be little doubt, though attempts have been made to deny it, that nothing but {136} the prestige of the greatest of all poetic names has prevented the superiority of the Petrarchan model from being universally recognized. Shakspeare could do anything. But the greatness of his sonnets is due not to their form but simply to their being his; and the fact that he could triumph over the defects of that form ought not to make other people fancy that these defects do not exist. They do; and but for the courage and genius of Milton they might have dominated the history of the English sonnet to this day. That is part of our great debt to Milton. He could not give the sonnet the supple and insinuating sweetness with which Shakspeare often filled it. He had not got that in him, and perhaps it would scarcely have proved tolerable except as part of a sequence in which it could be balanced by sterner matter. Nor, again, could he give it Shakspeare's infinite tenderness, nor his sense of the world's brooding mystery. But he could and did give it his own high spirit of courage, sincerity and strength, and his own masterly cunning of craftsmanship. And no just reader of the greatest sonnets of the nineteenth century forgets Milton's share in their greatness. Mr. Lascelles Abercrombie has lately remarked that it is in the _Prelude_ and _Excursion_ of {137} Wordsworth that "more profoundly than anywhere out of Milton himself Milton's spiritual legacy is employed." The same thing may be as truly said of Wordsworth's sonnets. If, as he said, in Milton's hands "the thing became a trumpet," there is no doubt that it remained one in his own. He is a greater master of the sonnet than Milton; the greatest on the whole that England has known. He used it far more freely than Milton and for more varied purposes. Perhaps it hardly afforded room enough for one the peculiar note of whose genius was vastness. It is seldom possible to do justice to a quotation from _Paradise Lost_ without giving at least twenty lines. The sense, and especially the musical effect, is incomplete with less; for a Miltonic period is a series of intellectual and rhythmical actions and reactions which cannot be detached from each other without loss. It is obvious that a poet whose natural range is so great can hardly be fully himself in the sonnet. But Wordsworth had little of this spacious freedom of poetic energy; to him-- "'twas pastime to be bound Within the sonnet's scanty plot of ground." And so he could use it for everything; for great events and also for very small; not {138} exhausting great or small, but finding in each, whatever it might be, some single aspect or quality which he could touch to new power by that meditative tenderness of his to which Milton was, to his great loss, an entire stranger. The natural mysticism, for instance, of such sonnets as, "It is a beauteous evening, calm and free," or, "Earth has not anything to show more fair," is quite out of Milton's reach. In this and other ways Wordsworth could do much more with the sonnet than Milton could. But without Milton some of his very greatest things would scarcely have been attempted. All the sonnets that utter his magnanimous patriotism, his dauntless passion for English liberty, his burning sympathy with the oppressed, the "holy glee" of his hatred of tyranny, are of the right lineage of Milton himself. One can almost hear Milton crying-- "It is not to be thought of that the Flood Of British freedom, which to the open sea Of the world's praise from dark antiquity Hath flowed 'with pomp of waters unwithstood,' Roused though it be full often to a mood Which spurns the checks of salutary bands, That this most famous Stream in Bogs and Sands Should perish; and to evil and to good Be lost for ever." {139} There and in the "Two Voices" and in the "Inland within a Hollow Vale" and in the Toussaint l'Ouverture sonnet, and others, we cannot fail to catch an echo of the poet who first "gave the sonnet's notes to glory." No one can count up all the things which have united in the making of any poem, but among those which made these sonnets possible must certainly be reckoned the Fairfax and Cromwell sonnets, and above all the still more famous one on the Massacre in Piedmont. The forces which animated England to defy and defeat Napoleon were only partly moral; but so far as they were that they found perfect expression through only one voice, that of Wordsworth. And there is no doubt as to where he caught the note which he struck again to such high purpose. He has told us himself-- "Milton, thou shouldst be living at this hour; England hath need of thee." And, what seems stranger, he has now had in return a kind of reflected influence upon Milton. The total experience of a reader of poetry is a thing of many actions and reactions, co-operating and intermingling with each other. And as we can hardly read Virgil or the Psalms now without thinking of all {140} that has come of them, and reading some of it back into the old words whose first creator could not foresee all that would be found in them, so it is with Milton and Wordsworth. There are many things in Milton which no Wordsworthian can now read exactly as they were read in the seventeenth century. Wordsworth's line "Thy Soul was like a Star and dwelt apart" was strangely true of Milton as he lived in his own day. But it is less true now that his place is among the spiritual company of the English poets and that Wordsworth stands by his side, or sits at his feet. That does not detract from his greatness. Indeed, it adds to it; for it is only the greater poets who thus transcend their own day and cannot be read as if they belonged to it alone. Read the great sonnet on the Massacre-- "Avenge, O Lord, thy slaughtered saints, whose bones Lie scattered on the Alpine mountains cold; Even them who kept thy truth so pure of old, When all our fathers worshiped stocks and stones, {141} Forget not; in thy book record their groans Who were thy sheep, and in their ancient fold Slain by the bloody Piemontese, that rolled Mother with infant down the rocks. Their moans The vales redoubled to the hills, and they To heaven. Their martyred blood and ashes sow O'er all the Italian fields, where still doth sway The triple Tyrant; that from these may grow A hundredfold, who, having learnt thy way, Early may fly the Babylonian woe." Is there not more in it than the Hebrew prophet or psalmist and the English Puritan? Is there not, for us now, something beside the past of which Milton had read, and the present which he knew by experience? Is there not an anticipation of another struggle against another tyrant--nay, the creation of the very spirit in which that struggle was to be faced? So Milton influences Wordsworth and the England of Wordsworth's day; and they in their turn inevitably influence our minds as we read him. There lies one part of the secret of his greatness; a part which is seen at its highest in his sonnets. {142} CHAPTER IV _PARADISE LOST_ _Paradise Lost_ is in several ways one of the most wonderful of the works of man. And not least in the circumstances of its composition. The Restoration found Milton blind, and to blindness it added disappointment, defeat, obscurity, and fear of the public or private revenge of his victorious enemies. Yet out of such a situation as this the most indomitable will that ever inhabited the soul of a poet produced three great poems, every one of which would have been enough to give him a place among the poets who belong to the whole world. The first and greatest of these was, of course, _Paradise Lost_. Unlike many great poems, but like all the great epics of the world, it obtained recognition at once. It sold well for a work of its bulk and seriousness, and it received the highest praise from those whose word was and deserved to be law in questions of literature. Throughout the eighteenth {143} century its fame and popularity increased. Literary people read it because Dryden and Addison and all the established authorities recommended it to them, and also because those of them whose turn for literature was a reality found that these recommendations were confirmed by their own experience. But the poem also appealed to another and a larger public. To the serious world it appeared to be a religious book and as such enjoyed the great advantage of being thought fit to be read on the only day in the week on which many people were accustomed to read at all. This distinction grew in importance with the progress of the Wesleyan revival and with it grew the number of Milton's admirers. When Sunday readers were tired of the Bible they were apt to turn to _Paradise Lost_. How many of them did so is proved by the influence Milton has had on English religious beliefs. To this day if an ordinary man is asked to give his recollections of the story of Adam and Eve he is sure to put Milton as well as Genesis into them. For instance, the Miltonic Satan is almost sure to take the place of the scriptural serpent. The influence Milton has had is unfortunately also seen in less satisfactory ways. He claimed to justify the ways of God to men. Perhaps he did so to his own mind {144} which, in these questions, was curiously matter-of-fact, literal, legal and unmystical. He was determined to explain everything and provide for all contingencies by his legal instrument of the government of the world: and he did so after the cold fashion of a lawyer defining rights on each side, and assuming that the stronger party will exert his strength. So far as his genius made his readers accept his views of the relation between God and man it cannot be denied that he did a great injury to English religious thought. Everybody who stops to reflect now feels that the attitude of his God to the rebel angels and to man is hard and unforgiving, below the standard of any decent human morality, far below the Christian charity of St. Paul. The atmosphere of the poem when it deals with these matters is often suggestive of a tyrant's attorney-general whose business is to find plausible excuses for an arbitrary despot. Milton had his share in creating that bad sort of fear of God which is always appearing as the thorn in the theological rose-bed of the eighteenth century, and, later on, becomes the nightmare of the Evangelical revival. None of these conceptions, the capricious despot, the remorseless creditor, the Judge whose {145} invariable sentence is hell fire, have proved easy to get rid of: and part of their permanence may be laid to the account of _Paradise Lost_. But Milton, who is like the Bible in so many ways, is not least like it in his happy unconsciousness of his own immorality. The writer of the story of Samuel and Agag, or that of Rebekah and Jacob, was perfectly unaware that he was immoral: and so was Milton in _Paradise Lost_: and so also and for that very reason were the majority of their readers. Happily most of us when we read a book that makes for righteousness are like children reading Shakspeare, who simply do not notice the things that make their elders nervous. It is not that we refuse the evil and choose the good: we are quite unaware of the presence of the evil at all. No doubt that sometimes makes its influence the more powerful because unperceived: and for this kind of subtle influence both Milton and the Old Testament have to answer. But with many happy natures an escape is made by the process of selection: and, as they manage to acquire the God-fearing righteousness of the Old Testament without its ferocity, so they manage to receive from Milton his high emotional consciousness of life as the glad and {146} free service of God and to ignore altogether his intellectual description of it as a very one-sided bargain with a very dangerous Potentate. Nor must Milton be made, as he often is, to bear more blame in this matter than he deserves. Divine tyranny with hell as its sanction was no invention of his. The Catholic Church, as all her art shows, had always made full use of it. And the new horror of his own day, the Calvinist predestination, he expressly and frequently repudiates. The free will of man is the very base of his system. In it men may suffer, as it seems to us, out of all proportion to their guilt; but at least they suffer only for deeds done of their own free will. But the true answer to the charge of corrupting English religious thought so often brought against Milton is that while the harm he did must be admitted it was far outweighed by the good. It could not be for nothing that generations of readers, as they turned over Milton's pages, found themselves listening to the voice of a man to whom God's presence was the most constant of realities, the most active of daily and hourly influences: who, from his youth up, visibly glowed with an ardent desire for the service of God and man: who, whatever his faults were, had nothing {147} base or mean about him, habitually thought of life as a thing to be lived on the heights, and by his exalted spirit and unconquerable will enlarges for those who know him the whole conception of what a human being may achieve. It could not be for nothing that on the topmost heights of English poetry stood a man who could scarcely finish a single one of his poems without some soaring ascent to heaven and heavenly things: whose most characteristic utterances for himself are such lines as "Toward which Time leads me, and the will of Heaven"; or-- "As ever in my great Task-Master's eye:" and for others as well as for himself such a hope as that which concludes his _At a Solemn Music_-- "O, may we soon again renew that song, And keep in tune with Heaven, till God ere long To his celestial concert us unite, To live with Him, and sing in endless morn of light!" _Tu habe Deum prae oculis tuis_, says the author of _The Imitation_: "Have thou God {148} before Thine eyes." And so by his poetry and by his life says Milton. The influence of such a man, whatever the faults of his intellectual creed, can hardly on the whole have been anything but a good one, either on those who heard his living voice or on those who for two hundred years have caught what they may of it from the printed pages of his books. So much it seemed worth while to say in defence of Milton whose sins in these matters have always been exaggerated by his ecclesiastical and political opponents. But the effect, good or bad, which a great poem produces on opinion is a mere by-product: its essential business is nothing of that sort but the production in the minds of competent readers of the pleasure proper to a great work of the imagination. And this is the criterion by which the _Paradise Lost_, like every other work of the kind, must primarily be judged. The poem, as we have it, is the long delayed result of an intention formed in Milton's strangely ripe and resolute youth. Before he was thirty he spoke openly to his friends of writing a great poem which was, as he shortly afterwards had no hesitation in telling the public, to be of the sort that the world does not willingly let die. At first the subject was to have been the Arthurian legend which {149} poets of all ages have found so fruitful. But that was soon abandoned, apparently for the reason that a little examination of the authorities convinced the poet that it was not historically true. This fact has a literary as well as a biographical importance. Great artist as Milton was, he seems to have confused truth of art with truth of fact. He preferred a Biblical subject because it was his belief that every statement in the Bible was literally true. This belief, except from the emotional fervour it inspired in him, was a positive disadvantage to him as a poet. It circumscribed his freedom of invention, it compelled him to argue that the action of his drama as he found it was already reasonable and probable instead of letting his imagination work upon it and make it so; it made him aim too often at producing belief instead of delight in his hearers. This, of course, had obvious drawbacks as soon as people ceased to regard the first chapters of Genesis as a literal prose record of events which actually happened. For a hundred and fifty years many people read the _Paradise Lost_ and supposed themselves to be enjoying the poem when what they were really enjoying was simply the pleasure of reading their own beliefs expressed in magnificent verse. In the same way many {150} religious people imagine that they enjoy early Italian art when they in fact enjoy nothing but its religious sentiment. But neither art nor poetry can live permanently on these extraneous supports. So when less interest came to be felt in Adam and Eve there were fewer readers for _Paradise Lost_. But the readers who were lost were not those that matter. For it is a complete mistake to say, as is sometimes said, that the fact that the story of _Paradise Lost_ was once believed and now is so no longer is fatal to the interest of the poem. That is not so for the right reader: or at least, so far as it is so, it is Milton's fault and not that of his subject. The _Aeneid_ loses no more by our disbelief in the historical reality of Aeneas or Dido than _Othello_ loses by our ignorance whether such a person ever existed. The difficulty, so far as there is one, is not that many readers disbelieve the story of Milton's poem: it is that he himself passionately believed it. If he had been content with offering us his poem as an imaginative creation, if he had not again and again insisted on its historical truth and theological importance, no changes in the views of his readers, no merely intellectual or historical criticism, could have touched him more than they can Virgil. As a poet he is {151} perfectly invulnerable by any such attacks: it is only so far as he deserted poetry for the pseudo-scientific matter-of-fact world of prose that he fails and irritates us. All the poetry of _Paradise Lost_ is as true to-day as when it was first written: it is only the science and logic and philosophy, in a word the prose, which has proved liable to decay. There is always that difference between the works of the imagination and those of the intellect. A hundred theories about the Greek legends of the Centaurs or the Amazons may establish themselves, have a vogue, undergo criticism and finally be exploded as absurdities: that is the common fate of intellectual products after they have done their work. But the Centaurs of the Parthenon and the Amazons of the Mausoleum are immortally independent of all changes of opinion. This is the first disadvantage of the subject chosen by Milton, that he believed in it too much. The fact that he did so and thought its prose truth all-important at once limited the freedom of his imagination and diverted him from the single-minded pursuit of the proper end of poetry. He was evidently quite unaware of this drawback and it has been little, if at all, noticed by his critics. {152} On the other hand, he was perfectly aware of what would appear to other people to be the disadvantages involved in the choice of a subject so unlike those of previous epics. He speaks more than once of the novelty of this theme, the best-known allusion being the beautiful introduction to Book IX., in which he describes his subject, that of the human sin and the divine anger "That brought into this World a world of woe, Sin and her shadow Death, and Misery, Death's harbinger:" and contrasts it with those other sins and other angers on which Homer and Virgil built their poems. But he is not afraid of the contrast: he thinks it is all to his own advantage-- "Sad task! yet argument Not less but more heroic than the wrath Of stern Achilles on his foe pursued Thrice fugitive about Troy wall; or rage Of Turnus for Lavinia disespoused; Or Neptune's ire or Juno's, that so long Perplexed the Greek, and Cytherea's son: If answerable style I can obtain Of my celestial Patroness who deigns Her nightly visitation unimplored, And dictates to me slumbering, or inspires Easy my unpremeditated verse, {153} Since first this subject for heroic song Pleased me, long choosing and beginning late, Not sedulous by nature to indite Wars, hitherto the only argument Heroic deemed--" The whole passage is too long for quotation. Indeed, as we have already had occasion to notice, it is one of the difficulties of discussing Milton that quotation is almost always compelled to do him an injury by giving less than the whole of any one of those long-sustained flights of music in which he rises and falls, turns to the left hand or the right, as his imagination leads him, but always on unflagging wings of undoubted and easy security. But enough has been quoted here to illustrate the poet's direct challenge of Homer and Virgil in this matter of subject. He was perfectly well aware that he was making an entirely new departure, not only from the subject of the ancients but also, as is shown by his detailed condemnation of "tilting furniture, emblazoned shields" and the rest, from those of such poets as Ariosto, Tasso and Spenser. He did it deliberately, with open eyes. And there is no doubt that he was at least partly right. To this day he and Dante, in their different ways, enjoy a common advantage {154} over Homer, and still more over a poet mainly of fancy like Tasso, in the fact that their subject, that of the meaning and destiny of human life, is one in itself of profound and absorbing interest to all thinking men and women. Even if their treatment of it be in some parts and for some people unsatisfying or irritating they at least have started with that advantage. A dangerous advantage because, as we have seen in Milton's case and might also see in Dante's, tempting them to go outside the pure business of their art; but still in itself an advantage. Milton was probably also right in feeling that the fighting element in the old poets had been greatly overdone. The most interesting parts of the _Iliad_ for us to-day are not battles, but such things as the parting of Hector and Andromache and the scene between Priam and Achilles. Where the fighting still moves us, as in the case of Hector and Achilles, or Virgil's Turrus and Pallas, it is mainly for the sake of an accompanying human and moral interest altogether above its own. The miscellaneous details of weapons and wounds which evidently once gave so much pleasure are now equally tedious to us whether it is Homer or Malory or Morris who narrates them. They can no longer give interest; they can only receive it {155} from such intrinsic interest as may belong to the combatants. So far Milton had some justification for preferring his own subject to those of Homer and Virgil. But, so far as we can judge, he was entirely unconscious of its disadvantages: as well of those which it shares with the _Iliad_ and _Aeneid_ as of those peculiar to itself. Of the former, the most conspicuous is that inevitably involved in the introduction of divine persons into the action. Everybody feels that Homer's gods constantly spoil the interest and probability of his story, while very rarely enhancing its dignity. One never understands why they can do so much, and yet do no more, to affect the action. Their interference is always irritating, generally immoral, and on the whole ineffective. Their omnipotence is occasional and irrational: they are limited in the use of it by each other, and all alike, even Zeus, are limited by a shadowy Law or Fate in the background. Their interventions only make the struggle seem unfair or unreal, and we are glad to be rid of them. Milton is still more deeply involved in the same difficulty. All his personages except two are superhuman. It is his great disadvantage as compared with Dante that the {156} main lines of his story are all scriptural and therefore outside the influence of his invention, that his actors are divine, angelic, or sinless beings, and therefore such as can provide little of the uncertainty of issue or variety of temper and experience which are the stuff of drama. He is hampered by having constantly to assert the true free will and responsibility of Satan for his rebellion and of Adam for his disobedience, even to the extent of putting argumentative soliloquies confessing it into their own mouths. So far he succeeds: both are felt to be free in their fatal choice. But the war in heaven can arouse no interest because its issue is obviously foregone, and much of the action of the rebel angels necessarily conflicts with the frequent statements that they can do nothing except as permitted by their Conqueror. At one moment they know their powerlessness, at another they hope for revenge and victory. These are grave difficulties which deprive large parts of the poem of that illusion of probability or truth without which poetry cannot do its proper work. A further difficulty, from which ancient poets were free, arises from the purely intellectual and spiritual nature of the Christian God. It is as if Homer had had to deal with the divine unity of Plato instead of {157} with his family of loving, quarrelling, fighting gods and goddesses. A being who is Incomprehensible as well as Almighty and Omniscient can hardly be an actor in a poem written for human readers. The gods in the _Iliad_ shock us because they are too like ourselves: Milton's God may sometimes shock us too: but He is more often in danger of fatiguing us by His utter remoteness from our experience, by His dwelling not merely, not indeed so often as we could wish, in clouds and darkness, but in a world of theological mysteries which necessarily lose more in sublimity than they gain in clearness by being perpetually discussed and explained. Dante's poem is at least as full as Milton's of obscure theological doctrines and attempts at their explanation; but, either by virtue of the plan of the _Divina Commedia_ or by some finer instinct of reserve and reverence in the poet, we never find ourselves in Dante as we do in Milton exercising our critical faculties, whether we will or no, on the very words of God Himself. If we reject an argument as unconvincing or fallacious, it is on Virgil or Statius, Beatrice or Thomas Aquinas, that we sit in judgment. The Divine Mind, intensely and constantly felt as its presence is from the first canto of the poem to the last, is yet felt always as from behind a {158} curtain which can never be raised for the sight of mortal eyes. Still, it must be admitted that, impossible as was the task of making the Infinite and Eternal an actor and speaker in a human poem, Milton's very failure in it is sublime. His prodigious powers are nowhere more wonderfully displayed than in trying to do what no one, not even himself, could do. The second half of his third book, for instance, is far more interesting than the first, but it may well be doubted whether the mere fact of his accomplishing the first at all is not a greater proof of his poetic genius. Nowhere does that unfailing certainty of style, in which he has scarcely an equal among the poets of the whole world, stand him in such astonishing stead as in these difficult dialogues in heaven. "Father, thy word is passed, Man shall find grace; And shall Grace not find means, that finds her way, The speediest of thy wingèd messengers. To visit all thy creatures, and to all Comes unprevented, unimplored, unsought? Happy for Man, so coming;" On the side of invention there is nothing remarkable; but, on the side of art, what a {159} divine graciousness there is in its tone and manner; what incomparable skill in the management of the verse! Note the quiet monosyllabic beginning, taking note, as it were, of the decree of mercy, and then the expansion of it, the loving voice pressing forward in freer movement as it confidently proclaims the happy results that cannot fail to follow. And observe the peculiarly Miltonic interlacing of the whole, line leading to line and word to word: the "grace" of the first line giving the key to the "grace" of the second, the repeated "find" of the second line and the repeated "all" of the fourth, the "comes" of the fifth line leading on to the "coming" of the sixth. To make a list of such details as these is not to explain the effect which they produce; that is the secret of Milton's genius. So is that cunning variety in the rhythm of the verses: three pauses in the first line, two in the second, only one in the third: the principal pause after the sixth syllable in both the first two lines, and yet the words and their accents so artfully varied that not the slightest monotony is felt; the suggestion of easy flight in the smooth unbroken movement of the third line-- "The speediest of thy wingèd messengers." {160} Milton knew that an utterance of this kind, in which the Bible had anticipated him a hundred times, admitted of no novelty in itself; and his reverence forbade him to give his invention free rein in these high matters. But what he could do he did. The matter of the speech he leaves as he found it; what the Son says every reader has heard before: but after this manner he has not heard it. In passing through Milton's hands all has been transformed into a new birth by the consummate craftsmanship of a supreme artist. Thus the poet escapes, as far as it was possible to escape, from the difficulties created for him by his acceptance of divine Persons as actors in his drama. But the escape could only be partial. It is true that as Johnson says, "whatever be done the poet is always great": but greatness of style often struggles in vain against the incongruity of a verbose and argumentative Deity. Such gods as Virgil's Venus and Juno may hurl rhetorical speeches at each other without much ill effect, but we feel that it was a lack of the sense of mystery in Milton that kept him from realizing that the one God, Creator, Father and Judge of all, cannot with fitness debate or argue: He can only decree. "Let thy words be few"; that is even truer, we {161} instinctively feel, of words put into His mouth than of words addressed to Him. Milton's God suffers even more than Shakspeare's Ghosts from a garrulity which destroys the sense of the awe properly belonging to a supernatural being; and the grim laughter of the Miltonic heaven is in its different way even more fatal to that awe than the Jack-in-the-box appearances and disappearances of the dead Hamlet and Banquo. Such are some of the difficulties, in part overcome by the poet and in part unperceived, inherent in the subject of _Paradise Lost_. One more, the greatest of all, remains. Poetry is a human art and its subject is human life. In the story Milton set himself to tell there are only two human figures; and how can they, living as they do in isolated perfection and sinlessness, without children or friends, without learning or art or business, without hopes or fears or memories, without the experience of disease or the expectation of death, and therefore without the joy, as we know it, of life and health, how can they provide material for a poem that can interest beings so utterly unlike them as ourselves? The answer is twofold. It is partly that they do fail to provide that material. The _Paradise Lost_ has in fact far less of ordinary human life in {162} it, far less variety of action, than the _Iliad_ and _Odyssey_. This was probably unavoidable but it was probably also Milton's deliberate intention. It was not his nature to care much about the small doings of ordinary people in everyday life. The line which he most often repeats in _Paradise Lost_ is the very opposite of those which are repeated so often in the _Iliad_, verses of no noticeable poetic quality, just doing their plain duty of linking two speeches or two paragraphs together: such as-- _hos oi men toiauta pros allêlous agoreuon_ What Milton chooses for repetition is, on the other hand, one of his stateliest lines, the magnificent-- "Thrones, Dominations, Princedoms, Virtues, Powers." The choice is characteristic of the man. His "natural port," as Johnson well said, "is gigantic loftiness," and his end to "raise the thoughts above sublunary cares or pleasures." So it may well be that this disadvantage of his subject did not weigh with him as much as it would have done with most poets. But he was not altogether blind to it, and the amazing skill he shows in partly getting over it is the other half of the answer to {163} the question asked just now. His action up to the moment of the Fall is the inhuman one of a few days in hell, heaven, and a small sinless spot of earth: and the Fall does not increase the number of actors. Yet into the mouths of this tiny group of persons Milton may be said to have brought all the history of the world and all its geography, art, science and learning, the Jew, the Christian and the Pagan, Greek philosophy and Roman politics, classical myth, mediaeval romance, and even the contemporary life of his own experience. This is partly done, as Virgil had done it, by the way of a prophecy of future ages: but to a much greater extent by the way of similes which are more elaborate and learned in Milton than in any poet. By their assistance he gives rest to the imagination exhausted by the sublimity of heaven and hell, bringing it home to its own familiar earth, to scenes whose charm, unlike that of Eden or Pandemonium, lies not, in the wonder their strangeness excites but in the old habits, experiences and memories which they recall. So, after the strain of the great debate with which the second book opens, he soothes us with the beautiful simile of the evening after storm-- "Thus they their doubtful consultations dark Ended, rejoicing in their matchless Chief; {164} As, when from mountain-tops the dusky clouds Ascending, while the North-wind sleeps, o'erspread Heaven's cheerful face, the louring element Scowls o'er the darkened landskip snow or shower, If chance the radiant sun, with farewell sweet, Extend his evening beam, the fields revive, The birds their notes renew, and bleating herds Attest their joy, that hill and valley rings." Note how large and general it is. Its method is the classical appeal to universal knowledge and feeling, not the romantic method of strangeness of sentiment and detailed particularity of truth. Matthew Arnold once recommended those who cannot read Greek or Latin to read Milton as a far better key than any translation can be to the secret of the greatness of the ancient poets. This is the truth: and not only for the reason on which Arnold laid just stress--the "sure and flawless perfection of rhythm and diction" in which, as he truly says, Milton is unique among English poets: but also for his classical habit of mind, for his central sanity, for the sureness with which he makes his call on the thoughts and emotions, not of eccentric {165} or exceptional individuals, but of the men and women of all times and all nations. Yet he can use his similes, as we said, to introduce the life of his own day and still generally carry his classical manner with him. So in the following simile he begins with the Homeric wolf and ends with the Roman and Laudian clergy. Satan has leapt over the wall of Paradise: and the simile begins-- "As when a prowling wolf, Whom hunger drives to seek new haunt for prey, Watching where shepherds pen their flocks at eve In hurdled cotes amid the field secure, Leaps o'er the fence with ease into the fold: Or as a thief bent to unhoard the cash Of some rich burgher, whose substantial doors, Cross-barred and bolted fast, fear no assault, In at the window climbs, or o'er the tiles: So clomb this first grand Thief into God's fold: So since into his Church lewd hirelings climb." The last line smacks perhaps more of the angry pamphleteer than fits with classical sanity: but how admirably the London citizen's house gives vivid reality to the beautiful remoteness of the wolf which English shepherds had long forgotten to fear; how the recollection, present to every reader's {166} mind, of that very same simile in the Gospel of St. John, prepares the way for its religious application here: how the attention is seized by that magnificent line of arresting mono-syllables, each heavy with the sense of fate-- "So clomb this first grand Thief into God's fold!" It used to be said that Milton uses mono-syllables to express slowness of action. But that is notably not the case here. And in the main it seems that he uses them, as Shakspeare often did, for expressing the solemnity of grave crisis, or for deep emotion, when anything fanciful, ornate or verbose would be fatal to the simplicity, akin to silence, which all men find fitting at great moments. So Shakspeare makes Kent say at Lear's death-- "Vex not his ghost; O let him pass! he hates him That would upon the rack of this tough world Stretch him out longer." And so Milton uses these tremendous mono-syllables, like a bell tolling into the silence of midnight, to force our attention on the doom of all the world that took its beginning when Satan entered Paradise-- {167} "So clomb this first grand Thief into God's fold." So again, with less solemnity as befitting a less awful person but still with arresting and delaying emphasis, he records the actual eating of the fatal apple-- "she plucked, she eat: Earth felt the wound, and Nature from her seat, Sighing through all her works, gave signs of woe, That all was lost." So he suspends the flow of the richest and most elaborate of his similes by the slow-moving monosyllables of "which cost Ceres all that pain To seek her through the world:" So he strikes the deepest note, beyond all politics, of his debate in hell: "And that must end us; that must be our cure-- To be no more:" So again he closes the first Act of _Paradise Regained_ with a verse of solitary awe-- "And now wild beasts come forth the woods to roam." {168} But to return to the similes. Milton uses them, as we have seen, to introduce things familiar and contemporary into the remote and majestic theme of his poem. But he also uses them to introduce the whole world into Eden, all later history into the beginning of the world, all the varied glories of art and war, poetry and legend, with which his memory was stored, into an action which was only partly human and provided no scope at all for any human activities except of the most primitive order. So the palace of Hell is, he tells us, something far beyond the magnificence of "Babylon, or great Alcairo"; and the army of rebel angels far exceeds those "That fought at Thebes and Ilium, on each side Mixed with auxiliar gods; and what resounds In fable or romance of Uther's son, Begirt with British and Armoric knights; And all who since, baptized or infidel, Jousted in Aspramont or Montalban, Damasco, or Marocco or Trebisond, Or whom Biserta sent from Afric shore, When Charlemain with all his peerage fell By Fontarabbia." So, in another of his returns to those tales and fancies of the Middle Age which, in spite {169} of his intellectual and moral rejection of their falsity, yet always moved him to unusual beauty of verse, he compares the dwarfed rebels of Hell to the "faery elves, Whose midnight revels, by a forest side Or fountain, some belated peasant sees, Or dreams he sees, while overhead the Moon Sits arbitress, and nearer to the Earth Wheels her pale course; they, on their mirth and dance Intent, with jocund music charm his ear; At once with joy and fear his heart rebounds." So Eve at her gardening recalls Pales, or Pomona or "Ceres in her prime, Yet virgin of Proserpina from Jove." And so, in an earlier book, the beauty of Paradise itself, too great to be directly told, is, like the splendour of Pandemonium, conveyed to us by the most perfect of those negative similes which, forced upon Milton by the narrow bounds of his story, are perhaps the most distinctive of all the glories of _Paradise Lost_. It is too long to quote in full: but a few lines may be given: and they must include the first four, one of which has just {170} been quoted, verses of such amazing beauty that, if Milton could be represented by four lines, these might well be the chosen four-- "Not that fair field Of Enna, where Proserpin gathering flowers. Herself a fairer flower, by gloomy Dis Was gathered, which cost Ceres all that pain To seek her through the world; nor that sweet grove Of Daphne by Orontes, and the inspired Castalian spring, might with this Paradise Of Eden strive." But it is time to leave Milton's similes, though similes play a more important part in _Paradise Lost_ than in any other epic. Indeed their necessary absence is a great element in the comparative dulness of the books given over to the discourses of Raphael and Michael. A single chapter in a little book of this kind can only deal with one or two aspects of so great a subject as _Paradise Lost_. That being so, it is best, perhaps, to touch on points in which Milton stands pre-eminent or unique. The similes are one of these. Another is the splendour of the Miltonic speeches. It is one of the defects of _Paradise Lost_ that its actors are seldom soldiers whom all the ages agree to admire, and often theologians whom all fear or dislike, or politicians whom all obey {171} and despise. Yet how magnificently Milton turns this weakness into a strength! His speeches have not the eternal humanity of Homer's: but as oratory, above all as debating oratory, they have no poetic rivals outside the drama. The poet who had lived through the Long Parliament and the trial of Strafford knew the art of speech as Homer could not know it. It may seem strange to us that the political struggle of his day affected him so much more than the military; but the fact is so. Pym and Hampden are felt in _Paradise Lost_ far more than Fairfax or Cromwell. The speeches of the second book could only have been written by the citizen of a free state who had lived through a crisis in its fortunes. Other speeches in the poem--that incomparable one of Eve to Adam in the fourth book, "Sweet is the breath of morn," those that pass between Eve and Adam after the Fall and Adam's Job-like lament in the tenth book--have a purer human beauty about them: but of the oratory of debate no poem in the world provides a more magnificent display than the second book of _Paradise Lost_. The debate is a real debate. The opening of Moloch, "My sentence is for open war," would be instantly effective in any Parliament in the world. It {172} rouses attention by its directness, it compels adherence as only courage can. To undo its effect Belial has to employ the most subtle of all oratorical arts, that of accepting the arguments which he dare not directly combat and then gradually turning them to the confusion of their author. So he and Mammon bring the assembly completely round to the mood of ease and acquiescence. Then follows the tremendous figure of Beelzebub, an aged Chatham or Gladstone, who "in his rising seemed A pillar of state. Deep on his front engraven Deliberation sat and public care; And princely counsel in his face yet shone, Majestic though in ruin. Sage he stood, With Atlantean shoulders fit to bear The weight of mightiest monarchies; his look Drew audience and attention still as night, Or summer's noon-tide air." Yet Milton's consciousness of the situation as it really would be is such that Beelzebub does not dare to revive Moloch's defeated policy of war. To talk of fighting to cowed rebels who have just been taught the too pleasant lesson of the folly of further resistance would have been useless. So he begins by telling them that the ease promised to them is a delusion: they may submit, but submission {173} will never win them peace, or deliver them from their victorious enemy. Peace, then, they cannot have; and must have war: but it need not be open or dangerous: craft has its weapons as well as force: "what if we find Some easier enterprise" than the perilous folly of assaulting heaven? Such a sketch may just serve to show that the great debate is a living thing in which we feel the temper of the audience submitting to the successive orators and in its turn reacting upon them. Another proof of the actuality of Milton's oratory is the way in which it can be quoted. "I give not Heaven for lost;" "Which, if not victory, is yet revenge:" "What though the field be lost? All is not lost; the unconquerable will, And study of revenge, immortal hate, And courage never to submit or yield, And what is else not to be overcome:" "what peace can we return But, to our power, hostility and hate?" "This would surpass Common revenge, and interrupt his joy In our confusion:" {174} "Advise if this be worth Attempting, or to sit in darkness here Hatching vain empires:" "What reinforcement we may gain from hope, If not, what resolution from despair:" "on whom we send The weight of all and our last hope relies:" "This enterprise None shall partake with me." All these have been or could well be hurled by contending Parliamentarians across the table of the House of Commons, often with a fine irony, the Miltonic magnificence emphasizing the pettiness of the ordinary political squabbles. But, of course, the theological questions which are at the root of Milton's debate make many of the arguments inapplicable to politics: indeed, what is probably the most remembered passage in all the speeches has nothing to do with social or political activities but draws its poignant interest from the secret thoughts that visit the hearts of men when they are most alone-- "And that must end us; that must be our cure, To be no more. Sad cure! for who would lose, Though full of pain, this intellectual being, {175} Those thoughts that wander through eternity, To perish rather, swallowed up and lost In the wide womb of uncreated Night, Devoid of sense and motion?" Here we obviously go outside the dramatic probabilities: it is no longer Belial who is speaking: it is the voice of a highly cultivated and intellectual human being with all Greek thought behind him; it is, in short, Milton himself. The whole poem is full of such autobiographical confessional passages, either indirect like this or open and undisguised like the great introductions to the first, third, seventh and ninth books. This constant intervention of the poet in his epic is one of the originalities of _Paradise Lost_, and certainly not the least successful. The passages which are due to it have been criticized as irregularities or superfluities, but, as Johnson justly asked, "superfluities so beautiful who would take away?" Homer may be said never to allow us to do more than guess obscurely at what he himself was or thought or felt: so leaving room for the follies of the criticism which supposes him to be a kind of limited company of poets. Virgil spoke directly to his readers at least once in the _Aeneid_, in the most magnificent, and {176} most magnificently fulfilled, of all the poetic promises of eternal fame-- "Fortunati ambo! Si quid mea carmina possunt Nulla dies unquam memori vos eximet aevo Dum domus Aeneae Capitoli immobile saxum Accolet imperiumque pater Romanus habebit." But it is less in such a direct intervention as this than in the whole tone and temper of his poem that he reveals to us his delicate and beautiful nature. Milton confesses himself in both ways. His high seriousness, his proud and resolute will, his grave sadness at the folly of mankind, are interwoven in the whole of his story. Then in the speeches he will often, as in this of Belial, forget altogether who is speaking and where and when, forget Satan and Adam, Eden and Hell, and make his human escape to his own time and country and to himself. The extreme limitations of his subject made something of this kind almost necessary. When all had been done that simile and prophecy could do to bring in the life of men and women as Milton's readers knew it there still remained the difficulty that Adam and his angel visitors must talk, and that before the Fall there was almost {177} nothing for them to talk about. So they constantly talk as if they had all history behind them and the world's processes were to them, as to us, old and familiar things. "War seemed a civil game To this uproar," says Raphael, as if he were fresh from reading Livy or Gibbon and had all the wars of Europe and Asia in his memory. Often Milton calls attention, as it were, to his own inconsistencies, putting in an apology like that of Michael when he talks to Adam about Hamath and Hermon-- "Things by their names I call though yet unnamed;" but more often he leaves them unexplained, perhaps not even noticing them himself. These difficulties are seen at their worst in the very earthly geography of heaven and its very unheavenly military operations: and, interesting as the passages are, it is difficult to forget the incongruity of Raphael and Adam discussing the Ptolemaic and Copernican theories of the universe, or Adam moralizing on the unhappiness of marriage as if he had studied the divorce reports or gone through a course of modern novels. Yet few and foolish are the readers who can dwell on dramatic improbabilities when Adam {178} is pouring out the bitter cry wrung from Milton by the still unforgotten miseries of his first marriage-- "Oh! why did God, Creator wise, that peopled highest Heaven With Spirits masculine, create at last This novelty on Earth, this fair defect Of Nature, and not fill the World at once With men as Angels, without feminine, Or find some other way to generate Mankind? This mischief had not then befallen, And more that shall befall; innumerable Disturbances on Earth through female snares, And strait conjunction with this sex. For either He never shall find out fit mate, but such As some misfortune brings him, or mistake; Or whom he wishes most shall seldom gain, Through her perverseness, but shall see her gained By a far worse, or, if she love, withheld By parents; or his happiest choice too late Shall meet, already linked and wedlock-bound To a fell adversary, his hate or shame; Which infinite calamity shall cause To human life, and household peace confound." It is obvious that in all this we hear the poet's own voice. But it is scarcely fair to quote it without pointing out that it must {179} not be taken alone. The common notion that Milton's own melancholy experience had made him a purblind misogynist is a complete mistake. No one has praised marriage as he has. The chastest of poets is as little afraid as the Prayer Book of frank acceptance of the physical facts which must commonly be the basis of its spiritual relation. It is the whole union for which he stands, of body, mind, and spirit. He puts into the mouth of this same Adam the most eloquent praise woman ever received, culminating in "All higher Knowledge in her presence falls Degraded. Wisdom in discourse with her Loses discountenanced, and like Folly shows; Authority and Reason on her wait, As one intended first, not after made Occasionally: and, to consummate all, Greatness of mind and nobleness their seat Build in her loveliest, and create an awe About her, as a guard angelic placed." It is true that the reply of the Angel moderating these ardours is more evidently Miltonic-- "what transports thee so? An outside? fair no doubt and worthy well Thy cherishing, thy honouring, and thy love; Not thy subjection. Weigh with her thyself; Then value. Oft-times nothing profits more Than self-esteem, grounded on just and right." {180} But, though in these last words Raphael entirely disappears in Milton, the poet who could conceive the panegyric to which Raphael replies, who could elsewhere make his hero say that he received "access in every virtue" from the looks of Eve, had assuredly no low ideal of what a woman may be. Adam speaks for him when he praises love as "not the lowest end of human life;" and he gives us a true corrective of the over-severe picture of Milton which half-knowledge is apt to draw when he goes on to declare that "not to irksome toil, but to delight, He made us, and delight to reason joined." But this is only one of many subjects on which Milton lets us hear his own voice speaking through his characters. We hear it when Satan cries to Beelzebub-- "Fallen Cherub, to be weak is miserable, Doing or suffering:" when Raphael reports Nisroch as saying of pain and pleasure what may well have been felt by the blind poet who owed his knowledge of pleasure to memory only, while he knew {181} pain by the frequent experience of one of the most painful of diseases-- "sense of pleasure we may well Spare out of life, perhaps, and not repine, But live content, which is the calmest life; But pain is perfect misery, the worst Of evils, and, excessive, overturns All patience:" we hear it when Adam, like a weary scholar, says that "not to know at large of things remote From use, obscure and subtle, but to know That which before us lies in daily life, Is the prime wisdom;" when Raphael asks, like a Platonic philosopher, "what if Earth Be but the shadow of Heaven, and things therein Each to other like, more than on Earth is thought?" when Adam, like a doubting Christian in an age of speculation, hesitates for a moment about the efficacy of prayer-- "that from us aught should ascend to Heaven So prevalent as to concern the mind Of God high-blest, or to incline his will, Hard to belief may seem:" {182} and once more when Adam cries-- "solitude sometimes is best society," as if he, like the blind Milton, was worn out by twenty years of contending voices, and longed for the relief of silent and lonely thought. To the direct interventions of the poet there is less need to call attention as, of course, no reader can miss them. They are probably the most universally admired passages of the poem. Every reader who deserves to read them at all finds himself unable to do so without wishing to get them by heart. They do not rival the daring splendour of the scenes in hell: nor perhaps the suave and gracious perfection of the evening scene in Paradise in the fourth book; nor can they, of course, exhibit the dramatic power of the scene that precedes and still more of those that follow the Fall. But nothing in the whole poem moves us so much. It is not merely that Milton has exerted his whole mastery of his art to make their every line and every word please the ear, awaken the memory, stimulate the imagination, lift the whole mental and emotional nature of the reader up to a height of being unknown to its ordinary experience. This he has {183} done in some other parts of his poem. But, fine as some of his dramatic touches are, the essence of his genius was lyrical and not dramatic or objective at all. And so none of his characters, divine, diabolic or human, will ever move us quite as he moves us himself. Let us hear the most beautiful of all these confessions: and for once let us indulge ourselves with the whole. The themes that make up Milton's great symphony ought in truth always to be given unbroken, if only that were possible. Indeed, there is a sense in which it may be said that nothing less than the whole poem can do justice to a design so majestic as that of _Paradise Lost_. But in any case it is certain that no fragment of a few lines can convey a full impression of the rhythmical, intellectual, imaginative unity of the Miltonic paragraph or section. This is above all conspicuous in the great speeches and in the elaborate introductions that precede the first, third, seventh and ninth books. Here is the greatest of the four; the most famous of Milton's personal interventions in his poem, and one of the most wonderful things he ever wrote. "Hail, holy Light, offspring of Heaven first-born! Or of the Eternal coeternal beam {184} May I express thee unblamed? Since God is light, And never but in unapproached light Dwelt from eternity; dwelt then in thee, Bright effluence of bright essence increate! Or hearest thou rather pure Ethereal stream, Whose fountain who shall tell? Before the Sun, Before the Heavens, thou wert, and at the voice Of God, as with a mantle, didst invest The rising World of waters dark and deep, Won from the void and formless Infinite! Thee I revisit now with bolder wing, Escaped the Stygian pool, though long detained In that obscure sojourn, while in my flight, Through utter and through middle Darkness borne, With other notes than to the Orphean lyre, I sung of Chaos and eternal Night, Taught by the Heavenly Muse to venture down The dark descent, and up to re-ascend, Though hard and rare; thee I revisit safe, And feel thy sovran vital lamp; but thou Revisit'st not these eyes, that roll in vain To find thy piercing ray, and find no dawn; So thick a drop serene hath quenched their orbs, Or dim suffusion veiled. Yet not the more Cease I to wander where the Muses haunt {185} Clear spring, or shady grove, or sunny hill, Smit with the love of sacred song; but chief Thee, Sion, and the flowery brooks beneath, That wash thy hallowed feet, and warbling flow, Nightly I visit; nor sometimes forget Those other two equalled with me in fate, So were I equalled with them in renown, Blind Thamyris and blind Maeonides, And Tiresias and Phineus, prophets old: Then feed on thoughts that voluntary move Harmonious numbers; as the wakeful bird Sings darkling, and, in shadiest covert hid, Tunes her nocturnal note. Thus with the year Seasons return; but not to me returns Day or the sweet approach of even or morn, Or sight of vernal bloom, or summer's rose, Or flocks, or herds, or human face divine; But cloud instead and ever-during dark Surrounds me, from the cheerful ways of men Cut off, and, for the book of knowledge fair, Presented with a universal blank Of Nature's works, to me expunged and rased, And wisdom at one entrance quite shut out. So much the rather thou, Celestial Light, Shine inward, and the mind through all her powers Irradiate; there plant eyes; all mist from thence Purge and disperse, that I may see and tell Of things invisible to mortal sight." {186} Not all the poetry of all the world can produce more than a few passages that equal this in moving power. Tears are not very far from the eye that is passing over its page: tears in which sympathy plays a smaller part than joy at the discovery that human words can be so beautiful. But if Milton moves us more by his own personality than by that of any of his creations, it is still true that he is not so entirely without dramatic power as has sometimes been alleged. No one would claim for him that he was one of the great narrative or dramatic masters. But his weakness on these sides is so obvious that there has been a tendency to exaggerate it. We notice the undramatic speeches of Satan and Adam: we notice such things as Eve's dream in the fifth book which, anticipating, as it does, so many of the details of her temptation, renders her fall much less probable, and goes far to destroy its interest when it occurs. But we are slower to notice the admirable dramatic management of such a scene as that between Eve and the Serpent in the ninth book. And yet how finely imagined it is, in all its successive stages! Satan, at first "stupidly good," overawed at Eve's beauty and innocence; then, recovering his natural malice, and beginning his attempt by appealing to {187} two things, curiosity and the love of flattery, which have always been supposed especially powerful with women; and Eve, taking no direct notice of his compliments and in appearance surrendering only to the other bait of novelty and surprise; "how cam'st thou speakable of mute?" So the scene begins. Flattery has ensured the tempter a favourable reception; curiosity gives him the chance of an apparently telling argument. I ate, he says, of the fruit of a certain tree and received from it speech and reason. But I have found nothing to satisfy my new-won powers till I saw thee, whom I now desire to worship as the sovran of creation. She affects to rebuke the flattery, but naturally asks to be shown the tree on which the wonderful fruit grows. It of course turns out to be the Forbidden Tree: and Eve mentions the prohibition as a thing final and unquestionable. He meets her refusal by giving a sinister and plausible explanation of the prohibition. Why did God forbid her the fruit? "Why, but to keep ye low and ignorant, His worshippers?" God, he suggests, knows too well that as the fruit had raised the serpent from brute to human, so it would raise the woman from human to divine. Noon and hunger come to fortify his {188} arguments; and, after a speech in which she adds one more of her own drawn from the name, the Tree of Knowledge, given to the tree by God Himself, she plucks and eats. In the first ecstasy of pleasure she luxuriates in joy and self-confidence. Then she considers whether she shall use her new powers to make herself the equal and even the superior of Adam. The prospect tempts her: but she is not quite free from fear that the threatened punishment of death may after all descend upon her. And that suggests the picture of "Adam wedded to another Eve," which brings her swiftly to the decision that Adam shall share with her her fate, whichever it be, bliss or woe. In this, as later in her hasty proposal of suicide, Eve is a living and convincing human figure. To the stronger and wiser Adam it was harder to give life. But what could be finer or truer than his instant repudiation of her plausible tale-- "How art thou lost! how on a sudden lost, Defaced, deflowered, and now to death devote!" followed by his immediate resolution to die with her-- "And me with thee hath ruined: for with thee Certain my resolution is to die. How can I live without thee?" {189} The rest follows with equal probability. Once resolved to unite his lot with hers, he soon finds arguments to prove that that lot is not likely after all to be so dreadful. Having talked himself into the surrender of his judgment he eats, and having eaten he goes at once all lengths of extravagance, folly and sin. Then comes the reaction and the inevitable mutual reproaches; with the fine natural touch of Eve upbraiding Adam for his weakness in yielding to her request and granting her the freedom which had proved so fatal. So the ninth book closes. When the story is resumed in the second half of the tenth book we get the tremendous lamentation of Adam, so strangely undramatic in its argumentative justification of his own punishment, so full of true drama as well as of magnificent lyrical power in its cry of human misery and despair. Then follows the bitter attack upon Eve, as the cause of all his woe: and the whole scene is concluded by her humble and beautiful submission-- "While yet we live, scarce one short hour perhaps, Between us two let there be peace:" by their reconciliation, and by their quiet and resigned acceptance of their common fate. {190} It was perhaps worth while to go through one act of Milton's drama in this detail to give some idea of the skill which he has shown in working up a few verses of Genesis into an elaborate story. But no detail, no fragmentary notes of any kind, even when they deal with matters in which Milton was far stronger than he was on the side of narrative or drama, can do much to exhibit the greatness of _Paradise Lost_. For that there is only one way, to read it. And, as we said just now, to read the whole. It is true that you cannot read it for the interest of the story as you can all the _Odyssey_, much of the _Iliad_ and some of the _Aeneid_: but the poem is still a whole and you need the whole to judge and understand it. And even the weaker books, the fifth, the seventh and twelfth, contain episodes, like the scene between Abdiel and Satan and the incomparable conclusion of the whole poem, which are among the last a wise reader would wish to miss. Moreover, where the story is dullest it has things which give, perhaps, the most astonishing proof of Milton's power of style. It is true that he does himself occasionally fall into the empty pomposity which characterized his eighteenth-century imitators who fancied that big words could turn prose into poetry. So he talks of dried fruits as "what by frugal {191} storing firmness gains To nourish, and superfluous moist consumes." But the thing most remarkable about this is its extreme rarity. Taking the poem as a whole, the mighty music scarcely ceases: the majestic flight of the poet continues uninterrupted: no contrary winds disturb it, no weariness brings it flagging down to earth. There is nothing, not even theological disputes, out of which he cannot make fine verse, and occasionally great poetry. There is nothing, however great, that he cannot make his own. Just as Shakspeare took the noble prose of North's _Plutarch_, and hardly altering a word made noble poetry of it, so Milton can take the Bible. "For now," says Job, "I should have lain still and been quiet, I should have slept: then had I been at rest." North could not rise to the height of this. But even this Milton will dare to lay his hand upon: and, if even he cannot lift it any higher, only he could have touched it at all without desecration. "How glad," says Adam-- "how glad would lay me down As in my mother's lap! There I should rest, And sleep secure." Or take a passage like that of the Son of God clothing Adam and Eve after the Fall, where {192} many Biblical suggestions are gathered together-- "As when he washed his servants' feet, so now As father of his family he clad Their nakedness with skins of beasts, or slain, Or, as the snake, with youthful coat repaid; And thought not much to clothe his enemies." The full appreciation of a passage like this, so very simple, so apparently obvious, yet so entirely in the grand style which, whether his subject stoops or soars, very rarely fails Milton, is not a thing of one reading or of two. Milton, the greatest artist of our language, is naturally the most conspicuous instance of the law which applies to all great art. Only natures as rarely endowed with the receptive gift as he was himself with the creative can fully appreciate his work at the first reading. Like all great works of the imagination it has generally to train, sometimes almost to create, the faculties which are to appreciate it aright. This is particularly true in the case of classical art, where the emotional appeal, though just as real, is much less apparent because it is so much more controlled by intellectual sanity. Gothic {193} and Romantic art are commonly far more instantaneous in the impression they make, perhaps because, according to the ingenious suggestion of the Poet Laureate, they admit at once of more daring flights of the imagination and of stronger realism than classical art can bear. But it may well be doubted whether the wonder and delight which every man of the most modest aesthetic capacity owes to them can in the end keep pace with the slower growing appreciation of the universality and sanity of classical work. But this is an old dispute not likely to be settled this year or next. Nor does it affect the fact that all great work, even Romantic or Gothic, gains by time in proportion to its greatness. It is the only absolutely certain test of greatness in art. The instantly popular tune is unendurable in six months, the instantly popular novel or poem is totally forgotten in a year or two. No one perceives the whole greatness of St. Paul's Cathedral, or Sansovino's Library at Venice, or the music of Bach, or the poetry of Milton, at the first sight or hearing. No competent eye, ear or mind fails to perceive more and more of it at each renewed experience. Whatever be the art, a picture, a piece of sculpture, a book, the test is the same: the cheap, the sentimental, {194} the sensational, the merely pretty, lose something, be it little or much, at each renewal of acquaintance: the great work steadily gains. To this test _Paradise Lost_ can fearlessly appeal. It is not meant for idle hours or empty people. It is not amusing in the lower sense of the word. It is not as exciting as it might well have been. It is probably true that, as Johnson said with his usual honesty, "No one ever wished it longer than it is": yet there is equal truth in another remark of his, "I cannot wish Milton's work other than it is," and in the implied answer to his bold question, "What other author ever soared so high or sustained his flight so long?" The difficulty for Milton's readers is that they do not easily soar, and still less easily sustain their soaring. The great gifts which Johnson brought to the criticism of literature lay far more in common sense and in a profound insight into human life than in any real turn for poetry. Of that nearly every one who to-day gives much time to reading poetry will probably have as much as he. Such people are sometimes mistakenly content with a single reading of _Paradise Lost_. They remember a few of its glories and the rest of the poem they acquiesce in forgetting. Let them put it to the test to which lovers of music {195} put the Symphonies of Beethoven and lovers of sculpture the remains of the Parthenon and the temple of the Ephesian Artemis. Let them give the little time required to read it through every year, or every second year. They will find more in it the second time than they did the first, and much more the fifth or the tenth time. It will issue triumphantly from the trial: and before they reach middle age they will know by their own personal experience, what the best authorities have always told them, that this is one of those rare works of human genius whose power and beauty may in sober truth be called inexhaustible. {196} CHAPTER V _PARADISE REGAINED_ AND _SAMSON AGONISTES_ _Paradise Regained_, like the _Odyssey_, the _Aeneid_ and the second part of _Faust_, has been an inevitable victim of the human taste for comparison. It cannot fail to be compared with _Paradise Lost_ and cannot fail to suffer by it. The poets and critics have indeed been kinder to it than the public. Johnson said that if it had not been written by Milton "it would receive universal praise." Wordsworth thought it "the most perfect in execution of anything written by Milton." But the great body of readers finds an epic with only two main actors in it, and hardly anything that can be called a story, too severe a demand upon its poetic taste. And when unprofessional opinion remains constant for several generations, as it has in this case, it is never wise to ignore or defy it. _Paradise Regained_ is a very bare poem. It has none of the splendours of its predecessor: no {197} scenes in which we hear the full voice of that Milton "Whose Titan angels, Gabriel, Abdiel, Starr'd from Jehovah's gorgeous armouries, Tower, as the deep-domed empyrean Rings to the roar of an angel onset;" nor yet any of those others which delighted Tennyson even more, the scenes of Adam's "bowery loneliness, The brooks of Eden mazily murmuring, And bloom profuse and cedar arches." It has no love, no sin, no quarrel, no reconciliation, no central moment of tragic suspense, indeed no human action at all. And Milton has refrained almost absolutely from adorning it with the similes which are among the chief glories of _Paradise Lost_. It is, in fact, as Mark Pattison has said, "probably the most unadorned poem extant in any language." At the very beginning of _Paradise Lost_ Milton had cast his eye on to that second chapter in the Christian history of man without which the first is a mere picture of despair. His subject was to be man's first disobedience and its results; death, woe and loss of Eden "till one greater Man Restore us and regain the blissful seat." {198} Whether he then had any thought of attempting to deal with that restoration we do not know. Nor do we know what motives induced him to choose the story of the Temptation in the Wilderness as the action in which the new order of things was to be manifested. Some critics have been surprised that he did not take the Crucifixion or the Resurrection. And it is obvious that the first, with the Tree of Calvary pointing back to the Tree in the Garden, would have afforded a natural sequence to _Paradise Lost_. Others have wondered that he did not use the Descent into Hell in which the liberation of Satan's captives would have followed on the story of how they fell into his power. And it is obvious that there were great poetic, and especially Miltonic, possibilities in the theme of the victorious Son of God entering the very kingdom in which the Satan of _Paradise Lost_ had exercised such splendid rule, and setting free the saints and prophets and kings of the Old Testament. But it is possible, as Sir Walter Raleigh has suggested, that Milton was no longer in the vein for grandiose themes of external majesty and might such as this story would have afforded. "His interest was now centred rather in the sayings of the wise than in the deeds of the mighty." That {199} may be so: though his _Samson_ which was yet to come is certainly not without its mighty deeds. But, whatever were his reasons for putting aside such subjects as the Descent into Hell, it is not difficult to discover several which he probably found decisive in inducing him to prefer the Temptation to the Passion. To begin with, he must have been conscious of the immensely greater difficulty of handling the story of the Passion in such a way that Christian readers could bear to read it. Then, even more certainly operative on his mind was the fact that the Passion is related to us in great detail, the Temptation in a few words of mysterious import; so that the one leaves almost no freedom of invention to the poet, while the other scarcely binds him at all. Then again there is the close parallelism between the temptation in the Garden and the temptation in the Wilderness; and finally, most important of all, the fact that the Temptation is the only event in the life of Christ in which Satan plays a visible and important part. A poem that was to be a second part of _Paradise Lost_ could not do without Satan; and in fact he is even more prominent in _Paradise Regained_, where he is present throughout, than in its predecessor of which there are several books which scarcely so {200} much as mention him. This was no doubt decisive. So Milton chose the Temptation in the Wilderness as his subject, with Satan once more as one of the two principal actors in his story. But the actor is even more changed than the story. The Satan of the later poem is no longer the splendid rebel of _Paradise Lost_. _Paradise Regained_ has in it no heavenly battles and its council of devils is a mere shadow of the great parliament of hell. It has, therefore, no place either for the general of the infernal armies or for the Prime Minister of the infernal Senate. The magnificent figure who imposes himself on the imagination-- "Like Teneriffe or Atlas unremoved"-- becomes in it something far less impressive, a political theorist instead of a statesman, a student of the balance of power instead of a soldier, a casuistical disputant about culture and morals in place of a devil venturing all for empire and revenge. It is as if Alexander were exchanged for Aristotle: almost as if St. George were replaced by Mr. Worldly Wiseman. The imagination is affected by the inevitable loss of colour, and _Paradise Regained_ is the sufferer in fame and popularity. It also suffers from the old difficulty {201} inherent in supernatural personages which affects it even more than _Paradise Lost_. The whole action is a succession of Temptations. The question how far such attempts by a devil upon a Divine Being can afford any hope to the one or any fear or danger to the other is a mystery of which the Church itself scarcely claims to offer a full explanation. Into the theological difficulty this is not the place to enter. It is only with the corresponding poetic difficulty which we are concerned. Just as in _Paradise Lost_ it is impossible not to feel the unreality of the war in heaven, so in _Paradise Regained_ it is impossible not to feel, in spite of some inconsistency of language on the subject, that Satan commonly knows who it is whom he is assailing and is known by Him in return, and that consequently the whole action has for poetic purposes a certain unreality. He knows that Jesus is the Son of God; with a right to the homage of all nature and the power to take all as His own. He asks-- "Hast thou not right to all created things? Owe not all creatures, by just right, to thee service?" Yet he discusses with Him various very human methods of arriving at power, just as {202} if He were subject to the same conditions as other men who desire to rule or influence the world. The consequence is that, although the speeches contain much interesting thought and much fine poetry, they are seldom or never dramatically convincing. Our Lord, in particular, instead of the gracious and winning figure of the Gospels, becomes a kind of self-sufficient aristocratic moralist. His speeches, as Milton gives them, display rather the defiant virtue of the Stoic, or the self-conscious righteousness of the Pharisee, than the simple and loving charity of the Christian. The weapon of moral and intellectual contempt, so freely employed in them and so natural both to Jew and to Greek, strikes to us a false and jarring note when put into the mouth of Him who taught His disciples that the only way of entry into His kingdom was that of being born again and becoming as little children. These are all serious drawbacks and they are not the only ones. If from one point of view Milton in _Paradise Regained_ is too little of a Christian, from another he is too much. One of the gravest difficulties with which Christian apologists have always had to contend is the entire indifference of the New Testament and, generally speaking, of the {203} Church in all ages, especially the most devout, not only to economic and material progress, but to all elements except the ethical and spiritual in the higher civilization of humanity. At its friendliest the Church has hardly ever been willing to allow to such things any inherent or independent importance of their own. Those who feel that they owe an incalculable debt to art and poetry and philosophy and therefore to the Greeks, have inevitably found this attitude a stumbling-block. And they will always read with exceptional surprise and indignation the narrow obscurantism of the speech which Milton, scholar and artist as he was, is not ashamed to put into the mouth of Christ in the fourth book. He cannot himself have been a victim of the shallow fallacy expressed in line 325 (he who reads gets little benefit unless he brings judgment to his reading "and what he brings what need he elsewhere seek?"); and his lifelong practice shows that he did not think Greek poetry was "Thin-sown with aught of profit or delight." Nor could he have seriously thought that the Hebrew prophets taught "the solid rules of civil government," of which in fact they knew nothing except on the moral side, better than the statesmen and philosophers of Rome and {204} Athens. The explanation is, perhaps, partly that Milton was an Arian, and therefore felt at liberty to emphasize the Jewish limitations of Christ: limitations the possibility of which, as recent controversies have shown, even Athanasian opinion has been forced to face. But, in any case, in the _Paradise Regained_ stress is necessarily, for dramatic purposes, laid on the Hebrew and Messianic character of Christ, and from that point of view it is not unnatural to make Him the spokesman of Hebrew resistance to the intellectual encroachments of Greece and Rome. Another part of the explanation is that the strong Biblical and Hebraic element in Milton's character does seem to have increased in strength during his later years. It was far from getting exclusive possession even then, and all the evidence shows that he was always the very opposite of the narrow-minded Puritan fanatics of his day. But his tendencies in that direction would be exaggerated while he was occupied with a purely Biblical subject. And he may have thought, if he thought about the question at all, that the contemptuous tone adopted about classical culture in the speech of Christ was not only dramatically defensible, but balanced by the far finer passage, evidently written from his {205} heart, in which Satan exalts the glories of Athens. It is, perhaps, the most famous thing in the poem. "Look once more, ere we leave this specular mount, Westward, much nearer by south-west; behold Where on the Aegean shore a city stands, Built nobly, pure the air and light the soil-- Athens, the eye of Greece, mother of arts And eloquence, native to famous wits Or hospitable, in her sweet recess, City or suburban, studious walks and shades. See there the olive-grove of Academe, Plato's retirement, where the Attic bird Trills her thick-warbled notes the summer long; There flow'ry hill Hymettus, with the sound Of bees' industrious murmur, oft invites To studious musing; there Ilissus rolls His whispering stream. Within the walls then view The schools of ancient sages, his who bred Great Alexander to subdue the world, Lyceum there; and painted Stoa next. There thou shalt hear and learn the secret power Of harmony, in tones and numbers hit By voice or hand, and various-measured verse, Aeolian charms and Dorian lyric odes, And his who gave them breath, but higher sung, {206} Blind Melesigenes, thence Homer called, Whose poem Phoebus challenged for his own. Thence what the lofty grave Tragedians taught In chorus or iambic, teachers best Of moral prudence, with delight received In brief sententious precepts, while they treat Of fate, and chance, and change in human life, High actions and high passions best describing." It is plainly the very voice of the poet himself, and he may have felt certain that we should so understand it. But it is difficult not to regret that it is the Devil who is made to pay Milton's great debt to Athens and Christ who is made to repudiate it. Yet, in spite of all this, in spite of its disdain of the obvious attractions open to poetry, in spite of much in it that alienates the sympathies of many, the _Paradise Regained_ has received very high praise from the finest judges of English poetry. Johnson and Wordsworth have already been quoted, and to them may be added Coleridge, who says of it that "in its kind it is the most perfect poem extant," and Mr. Mackail, who has spoken of its "unique poetic qualities." Why have the poets and critics been so much {207} more favourable to it than the public? Perhaps because artists are always inclined to value work in proportion to its difficulties. Indeed, this fallacy seems natural to all classes of men about their own work. Gardeners in England tend to admire a man who grows indifferent oranges more than a man who grows good strawberries. It is like what Johnson said of the preaching lady: "Sir, a woman's preaching is like a dog's walking on his hinder legs. It is not done well; but you are surprised to find it done at all." This tendency to let surprise sit in the seat which belongs to judgment is greatly intensified by professional knowledge. The architect is apt to exaggerate the merit of a building placed on a very awkward site, the artist to think a piece of very difficult foreshortening more beautiful than it really is. The public may not be so good a judge either of the building or of the drawing: but, knowing nothing of the technical difficulties, it at least forms its judgment on the true criterion which is, of course, the value of the product, not the surprisingness of its having been produced or the difficulties overcome in its production. Something of this kind may account for the fact that _Paradise Regained_ has been more appreciated by the poets than by the public. {208} The public finds it rather bare and dry and judges accordingly. The poets know how infinitely hard a task it was that Milton set himself, and find no praise too great for the man who did not fail in it. They see a poem of two thousand lines whose single subject is the attempt of a devil who knows himself doomed to defeat to persuade a divine Person who knows Himself assured of victory to be false to the law of His being. And into this barren theme they see art and nature, ethics and politics, luxury and splendour and empire, cunningly interwoven and "Eden raised in the waste Wilderness." They see a style stripped of almost all ornament especially in the speeches of our Lord: the poet deliberately walking always on the very edge of the gulf of prose and yet always as one perfectly assured that into that gulf his feet can never fall. Here and there, as when we come upon such lines as "I never liked thy talk, thy offers less," we are nervous as we watch: but the poet passes on his way serenely unconscious of our fears, and in the very next speech is on the heights of poetry with the great description {209} of Athens. Once only, perhaps, in the reply to Satan after the storm-- "Me worse than wet thou find'st not," we feel that the cunningly maintained balance has failed and that the limit has been passed which divides the severe from the grotesque. The truth is that, if the narrowness of its subject and the austerity of its style be admitted, _Paradise Regained_ is a poetic achievement as great as it is surprising. It cannot be _Paradise Lost_, of course, and that is the fault for which it has not been forgiven. And its fine things are even less evident, much less evident, at a first reading than those of _Paradise Lost_. But Milton has left nothing more Miltonic. He did greater things but nothing in which he stands so entirely alone. There is no poem in English, perhaps none in any language of the world, which exhibits to the same degree the inherent power of style itself, in its naked essence, unassisted by any of its visible accessories. There are in it, of course, some passages of characteristic splendour, the banquet in the wilderness, the vision of Rome, and others; but a large part of the poem is as bare as the mountains and, to the luxurious and conventional, as bleak and forbidding. Its grave Dorian music, scarcely {210} heard by the sensual ear, is played by the mind to the spirit and by the spirit to the mind. Ever present as its art is, it is an art infinitely removed from that to which all the world at once responds and surrenders. It is not at first seen to be art at all. The verse which in truth dances so cunningly appears to the uninitiated to stumble and halt. The music, which the common ear is so slow to catch, makes us think of those Platonic mysteries of abstract number seen only in their perfection by some godlike mathematician who lives rapt above sense and matter in the contemplation of the Idea of Good. But, if there is much in an art so consummate as Milton's which escapes analysis, there are also elements which can be measured and weighed. Here as in the _Paradise Lost_ students of metre can count and compare his stresses and pauses, and set out some finite portion of the infinite variety of rhythms which, even more needed here than in _Paradise Lost_, sustain the poem in its difficult flight over so apparently barren a country. The art of the poet as distinct from the musician is less difficult to trace. An avowed sequel has to recall its predecessor and yet not to recall it too much. _Paradise Regained_ recalls _Paradise Lost_ by its central action, a {211} temptation, by its council of devils, by its assembly of the heavenly host, by a hundred echoes of phrase and circumstance. But though the heavenly host is itself unchanged, though it is still the old "full frequence bright Of Angels" yet there is now no real council. The Son, the only spokesman who can address the Father, is no longer present, and even the hymn of the angels gets no more than a vague description. A greater change has come over the infernal council: scarcely any longer infernal, for their leader can now open his address to them with "O ancient Powers of Air and this wide World," and the meeting is held in mid air and no longer in hell. Nor is any rivalry attempted with the great debate of _Paradise Lost_: only enough to awaken its memory in the reader and to enable the poet to find a place in the second meeting for the most obvious of temptations which yet reverence forbade him to introduce into the main action. And note how this contains at least one of those small dramatic touches for which, except from Mr. Mackail, Milton has got too little credit. Satan asks how he is to assail the new enemy: and Belial, who stands for the sensualist man of the world, at once offers his suggestion. {212} He is sure, as such men always are, that the lowest motive is invariably the true mainspring and explanation of all human actions: there is no beating about the bush with him: he is frank and cynical, and begins at once without shame, apology or preface-- "Set women in his eye and in his walk." What could be more exactly in the downright manner affected by men of his type in the world of to-day and every day? And there are other similar touches. Then again the sequel recalls its predecessor when we hear Satan strike the very note he struck so often in _Paradise Lost_-- "'Tis true, I am that Spirit unfortunate," and when we see him fall in ruin at the awful end of the long debate-- "Now shew thy progeny; if not to stand Cast thyself down; safely, if Son of God; For it is written: 'He will give command Concerning thee to his Angels: in their hands They shall uplift thee, lest at any time Thou chance to dash thy foot against a stone.' To whom thus Jesus: Also it is written 'Tempt not the Lord thy God.' He said, and stood: But Satan, smitten with amazement, fell." {213} Nor must it be supposed by those who have not read the _Paradise Regained_ that the bareness of its style is invariable. Most conspicuous, for reasons of reverence no doubt, in the speeches of Christ, it is far less marked in those of Satan and disappears altogether in some of the descriptive passages. Take, for instance, the famous temptation of the banquet-- "He spake no dream; for, as his words had end, Our Saviour, lifting up his eyes, beheld In ample space under the broadest shade, A table richly spread in regal mode, With dishes piled, and meats of noblest sort And savour; beasts of chase, or fowl of game, In pastry built, or from the spit, or boiled, Grisamber-steamed; all fish from sea or shore Freshet or purling brook, of shell or fin, And exquisitest name, for which was drained Pontus, and Lucrine bay, and Afric coast. Alas, how simple, to these cates compared, Was that crude apple that diverted Eve! And at a stately sideboard, by the wine, That fragrant smell diffused, in order stood Tall stripling youths rich-clad, of fairer hue Than Ganymed or Hylas; distant more, Under the trees now tripped, now solemn stood, Nymphs of Diana's train, and Naiades With fruits and flowers from Amalthea's horn, {214} And ladies of the Hesperides, that seemed Fairer than feigned of old, or fabled since Of faery damsels met in forest wide By knights of Logres, or of Lyones, Lancelot, or Pelleas, or Pellenore." _Paradise Lost_ itself contains no more intricately beautiful passage than this. It is one of those things that have been the delight and despair of poets ever since. For all his disdain of the follies of the Middle Age Milton can never touch the old romances, as Joseph Warton well noted, without immediately rising into the most exquisite poetry: and this reluctant homage of classical genius is the greatest tribute ever paid to their undying fascination. But of course such a passage as this is not typical of the poem: it is one of its far-shining heights which cannot be altogether missed even by eyes quite blind to the beauties of the lower country through which _Paradise Regained_ takes the most part of its course. Ordinarily the poem is grave, plain and unadorned, engaged in the discussion of moral problems which give little opportunity for the more obvious graces of poetry. The interest of the speeches which constitute the bulk of it is threefold: technical, in the rhythmical or metrical skill by which Milton sustains an {215} abstract discourse expressed in unadorned language and keeps it at the level of high poetry; moral or intellectual, the interest of the subjects discussed; and, the greatest of all for many readers, autobiographical, the interest of the evidence they afford of the poet's own thoughts and character. All may be seen, for instance, in such a confession as that of Satan in the first book-- "Envy, they say, excites me, thus to gain Companions of my misery and woe! At first it may be; but, long since with woe Nearer acquainted, now I feel by proof That fellowship in pain divides not smart, Nor lightens aught each man's peculiar load." There is scarcely a word in it that prose cannot use even to-day. The thought is one that might come from any moralist; there is nothing daring or imaginative about it. Yet out of this what poetry Milton has made! The personal emotion of it, the note of confession and individual experience, has lifted it altogether above the level of the cold maxims of the preacher who gives no sign of having suffered, or sinned, or so much as lived, himself. Then the art of it: so entirely unperceived by the ordinary reader, so invincible in its effect upon him. The whole secret of it defies analysis: but a few ingredients can {216} be detected. There is comparatively little of Milton's favourite alliteration: the tone of the passage is too quiet for the free use of an artistic device so instantly visible. But note the beautiful line-- "Companions of my misery and woe"-- itself free flowing without a pause of any kind, so as to prepare the better for the full pause both of sense and of rhythm which separates it from what follows. Then there is the vivid conversational "At first it may be," and its pause, contrasting so finely with the next line where the pause is also after the fifth syllable, but with a totally different effect. Note again the variety of rhythm which distinguishes the last two lines. Neither has any strong pause in it: and they might so easily have been a monotonous repetition. Is it fanciful to think that, perhaps half unconsciously, Milton has suggested the quick stab of pain or sorrow in the swift movement of the first: and that the long-drawn rhythm of the second is meant to convey something of the dull years of misery which so often follow? Its first six syllables-- "Nor lightens aught each man's," if given their full effect of sound, take perhaps half as long again to read as the first six of the {217} preceding line. In any case, whatever was meant by it, the line is a most beautiful one in itself, as well as full of one of the most moving of human things, a strong man's confession that his strength does not always suffice him. These obviously autobiographical passages are to be found all through the poem. There are the stately Roman embassies coming and going in all their pomp: in which it is surely Cromwell's Foreign Secretary who sees nothing but "tedious waste of time, to sit and hear So many hollow compliments and lies, Outlandish flatteries." There is the old contempt of war and those who in virtue of their victories "swell with pride, and must be titled Gods," and of the mob who praise and admire "they know not what, And know not whom, but as one leads the other; And what delight to be by such extolled, To live upon their tongues and be their talk? Of whom to be dispraised were no small praise, His lot who dares be singularly good." There is the contempt of wealth-- "Extol not riches then, the toil of fools, The wise man's cumbrance, if not snare;" {218} a contempt which Milton shares with nearly all saints and heroes and most philosophers; a little ungratefully, perhaps, as if forgetting that, compared with the mass of men, he had himself always been rich, and that what he owed to the toil of his father had not proved in his case a snare or a cumbrance, but the necessary condition of the learning and the leisure he had used so nobly. Finally, to give no more instances, there is the confession at once so personal and so representative of the feeling of all men who have ever made the smallest effort to live well-- "Hard are the ways of truth, and rough to walk, Smooth on the tongue discoursed, pleasing to the ear, And tunable as sylvan pipe or song." Who knows whether behind such words as these there lies the memory of some rapturous vision of the new world of love as St. Paul saw it, which had been cooled only too soon by humbling experience of the difficulty of "bearing all things" when all things included Salmasius, or an unthankful daughter? This grave introspective note, present from the first in everything written by Milton and far more conspicuous in _Paradise Regained_ than in _Paradise Lost_, is felt still more in the {219} last of his works, the drama _Samson Agonistes_. It is in the Greek form with a Chorus: and is as broodingly full as Aeschylus or Sophocles of the folly of man and the uncertainty and sadness of human life; but Milton has added an angry sternness of judgment on the one hand, and on the other an assured faith in divine deliverance, both of which are rather Hebrew than Greek. Into this strange drama, so alien from all the literature of his day, Milton has poured all the thoughts and emotions with which the spectacle of his own life filled him. All through it we hear a faith that was strong but never blind battling with the spectacle of the wickedness of men and the dark uncertainty of the ways of God. The Philistines have triumphed, lords sit "lordly in their wine" at Whitehall, the Dagon of prelatism is once more enthroned throughout the land, the saints are dispersed and forsaken, and he himself, who had as he thought so signally borne his witness for God, sits blind and sad in his lonely house, "to visitants a gaze Or pitied object," with no hope left of high service to his country and no prospect but that of a "contemptible old age obscure." No doubt he did not always feel like that, for the evidence shows him cheerful and friendly in company: and, of {220} course, the picture has undergone the imaginative heightening of art besides being coloured by the story of Samson, so much sadder than Milton's own. But the lonely hours of a blind man of genius who has fought for a great cause and been utterly defeated must often be full of the hopeless half-resigned and half-rebellious broodings in which throughout _Samson_ we hear so plainly the voice of Milton himself. "God of our fathers! what is Man, That thou towards him with hand so various-- Or might I say contrarious?-- Temper'st thy providence through his short course; Not evenly, as thou rulest The angelic orders and inferior creatures mute, Irrational and brute? Nor do I name of men the common rout, That wandering loose about Grow up and perish as the summer fly, Heads without name, no more remembered; But such as thou hast solemnly elected, With gifts and graces eminently adorned, To some great work, thy glory, And people's safety, which in part they effect: Yet toward these thus dignified thou oft, Amidst their highth of noon, Changest thy countenance and thy hand, with no regard Of highest favours past From thee on them, or them to thee of service." {221} This is Milton undisguised speaking of and for himself. And so is the still sadder outburst in the very first speech of Samson-- "O dark, dark, dark, amid the blaze of noon, Irrecoverably dark, total eclipse Without all hope of day! O first-created beam, and thou great Word, 'Let there be light, and light was over all'; Why am I thus bereaved thy prime decree? The Sun to me is dark And silent as the Moon When she deserts the night, Hid in her vacant interlunar cave. Since light so necessary is to life, And almost life itself, if it be true That light is in the soul, She all in every part, why was the sight To such a tender ball as the eye confined, So obvious and so easy to be quenched, And not, as feeling, through all parts diffused, That she might look at will through every pore? Then had I not been thus exiled from light, As in the land of darkness, yet in light, To live a life half dead, a living death, And buried; but, O yet more miserable! Myself my sepulchre, a moving grave; Buried, yet not exempt, By privilege of death and burial, From worst of other evils, pains, and wrongs, But made hereby obnoxious more {222} To all the miseries of life, Life in captivity Among inhuman foes." This sublime music in which the soul's emotion finds and obeys its own law was scarcely audible to the age which followed Milton's death, when poets had concentrated all their art on the effort to make both language and metre as instantaneously intelligible as possible. They succeeded much better in the second task than in the first: for the truth is that the exact meaning of a verse is much more often difficult to ascertain in the case of Pope than in the case of Milton. But no one has ever doubted how to read aloud a line of Pope or Dryden. And this has obvious advantages and was, of course, at first a great source of pleasure. It made Pope's poetry the most immediately popular we have ever had, as it still is the most effective for public quotation. Almost everybody, as Mr. Bridges has said, "has a natural liking for the common fundamental rhythms" and "it is only after long familiarity with them that the ear grows dissatisfied and wishes them to be broken." But in poetry as in music the more cultivated the ear the sooner it gets tired of being given too little to do: and as soon as every warbler had Pope's {223} tune by heart critical readers began to wish for something less obvious. The ultimate result of that dissatisfaction was the metrical experiments of Coleridge and the rich harvest of varied rhythms and melody with which Shelley and Tennyson and Swinburne enriched the nineteenth century. And all this movement had also, of course, a retrospective effect. It may be true that, as Mr. Bridges says, "there are very few persons indeed who take such a natural delight in rhythm for its own sake that they can follow with pleasure a learned rhythm which is very rich in variety, and the beauty of which is its perpetual freedom to obey the sense and diction;" but it could not fail to be the case that their number was increased by the comparative sensitiveness to the more intricate music of words which was inevitably produced in those who had learnt much Shelley or Tennyson by heart. And such people at once heard things in Milton which were absolutely inaudible to the ears of Dr. Johnson's generation. The comparative subtlety, both in imagination and in form, of the poetry of the nineteenth century made it impossible for poets to compete with journalists for the attention of the big public as Pope had done triumphantly; but as a set off against that loss it gave a far {224} richer delight to those who were capable of that interaction of the natural ear and the spiritual to which all great poetry makes its appeal. This led straight back to Milton who made that double appeal as only a very few poets in all the world have ever made it. And the more poetry is studied and loved as the greatest of the arts, as the medium through which that combination of the vision of genius with the slow trained cunning of the craftsman, which is what great art is, finds its most perfect expression, the more will men, or at least Englishmen, return to Milton. And especially, in some ways, to _Samson_, where his art is at its boldest and freest, and where it suffered longest from the indifference of dull ears. A little book of this kind is not the place for a discussion of English metre, or even, in any detail, of Milton's. Those who wish to go into such studies will find much of what they want in the Poet Laureate's book on _Milton's Prosody_. It is possible to disagree with some of his proposed scansions of doubtful lines, but it is impossible not to learn a great deal from suggestions as to the rhythmical effects intended by Milton which come, as these do, from one who is himself a master of rhythm and has never concealed the fact {225} that Milton's was one of the schools in which he passed his apprenticeship. So his analysis, line by line, of the opening of the first chorus of _Samson_ will be a revelation to many of what they have, perhaps, never felt at all, or felt only unconsciously without understanding anything of what it was which they felt or why. But even without such help no one whose ear has had the smallest training can fail to notice some of the more daring of Milton's metrical effects. In the lines quoted above, for instance, who can miss the triple stab of passionate agony in the thrice repeated, strongly accented "dark, dark, dark"? The most careless reader cannot fail to be arrested by the line, though he may not realize the means employed by Milton to enforce attention, the rare six stresses in a ten-syllabled line, the still rarer effect of three strongly stressed syllables following immediately upon one another, the inversion of three out of the five stresses of the next line, "irrecoverably dark" suggesting the spasmodic disorder of violent grief. These are certainly devices deliberately chosen for producing the required effects. And so, probably, are the more regular rhythm of the words which express the calming aspiration up to the throne of God, and the quiet {226} mono-syllabic simplicity of the divine utterance, "Let there be light," which continues its softening influence over the return in the following lines to his own sad conditions. How smoothly the complaint now goes: "The sun to me is dark And silent as the moon." It is in comparison with the earlier abruptness as if he had gone through something like the process of the psalmist, "until I went into the sanctuary of God: then understood I" what had before been "too painful for me." Then there is the comparatively unmarked rhythm of the intellectual argumentative passage which follows: till emotion begins again to overwhelm reflection, and shows itself in the strong alliteration of "light," "land," "light," "live," "life," "living," and in the strong caesura after "buried," the more marked for coming so early in the verse. Such poor noting of technicalities as this gives, of course, no more of the secret of Milton's wonderful poetry than anatomy gives of the power and beauty of the human body. But it has its interest and even its use: provided that too much importance is not attributed to it and that no one makes the mistake of the lady who, according to the story, hopefully asked the painter what he mixed {227} his paints with, and received the crushing reply, "With my brains, Madam." _Samson Agonistes_ stands in marked contrast to its predecessor, _Paradise Regained_. And not only in being a drama. Its intense omnipresent emotion makes a still more important difference. In passing from one to the other we pass from the least to the most emotional of Milton's works. This would in any case have been a gain for most readers: but the gain is made more important by the extreme severity of Milton's final poetic manner. A style which excludes almost all ornament stands in especial need of the support of a visibly felt emotion. It has been said by a living writer that "when reason is subsidiary to emotion verse is the right means of expression, and, when emotion to reason, prose." This is roughly true, though the poetry of mere emotion is poor stuff. The special faculty of the poet, as Johnson well said, is that of joining music with reason. That is to say that the poet unites thought and feeling and gives them perfect expression. They are not distinct: they become in his hands a new single life, a unity. You cannot separate the emotion from the thought in any great line of poetry. When Wordsworth talks of the "unimaginable touch of time," there is {228} plainly emotion as well as thought and memory in his words: when Shelley cries in his despair-- "Fresh spring, and summer, and winter hoar, Move my faint heart with grief, but with delight No more--O never more!" it is no mere cry of the heart: the mind is in it too: and neither in him nor in Wordsworth can you get the two apart again after the poet has joined them together. Now, though in _Paradise Regained_ the intellect is not allowed, as in much eighteenth-century poetry, to become so dominant as to make us feel that prose and not verse was the proper medium for what the poet had to say, yet it does play a greater part than it can commonly play with safety, perhaps a greater part than it plays in any other English poem of the first rank. It is only Milton's unfailing gift of poetic style which saves the situation. He could do what Wordsworth could not: conduct long discussions on abstract questions without descending from the note of poetry to that of the lecture-room. The gallant explorer who fights his way through the _Prelude_ and the _Excursion_ wins, as he deserves, a great reward, and a greater still if he does it a second time and a third, {229} when he has learnt that they both have marshy valleys into which he need not twice descend. But he has paid a price for the lesson, paid it in the endurance of a great deal of solid and heavy prose. That is partly because Wordsworth often thinks without feeling or imagining: he gives us his thought as it is in itself, as a professor of moral philosophy gives it, without passing it through the transforming processes of the emotions and the imagination. These hardly fail Milton half a dozen times in all his poetry: and the result is the difference between such lines as-- "This is the genuine course, the aim, and end Of prescient reason; all conclusions else Are abject, vain, presumptuous, and perverse:" and such as Milton writes when he is nearest to bare thinking-- "Who therefore seeks in these True wisdom, finds her not, or by delusion Far worse, her false resemblance only meets, An empty cloud." The difference is also partly due to what, indeed, is another side of the same distinction; the fact that Wordsworth has not and Milton has a constant possession of the great or grand style. This is plain in such passages as those just quoted: it is plainer still where the poets come close to each other in {230} descriptive passages; as, for instance, in Wordsworth's-- "Negro ladies in white muslin gowns," and Milton's-- "Dusk faces with white silken turbans wreathed;" between which yawns an obviously impassable gulf. Milton is sometimes harsh, crabbed, grim in expression as in thought: but these things are not at all necessarily fatal to poetry as is the cool and contented obviousness of Wordsworth's weak moments. Milton is occasionally contented in his own lofty fashion, but he is never cool, and never less so than in _Samson_. All through it he is face to face with a tremendous issue in which he himself is supremely interested: he is "enacting hell," to use Goethe's curious phrase, which fits Milton so much better than it fits the serenity of Homer. Twenty years before he had written, in quite another connection, "No man knows hell like him who converses most in heaven": and now in his old age he embodies that tremendous truth in his last poem. All his poems are intensely emotional and personal: but none so much so as _Samson Agonistes_, where he is fixing all eyes on the {231} tragedy of his own life. The parallel between Samson and Milton does not extend, of course, to all the details. But even of them many correspond, such as the blindness, the disastrous marriage with "the daughter of an infidel," the old age of a broken and defeated champion of God become a gazing-stock to triumphant profanity. But more than any special circumstance it is the whole general position of Samson as a man dedicated from his birth to the service of God, and gladly accepting the dedication, yet failing in his task and apparently deserted by his God, which makes of him a type in which Milton can see himself and the Cromwellian saints who lie ground under the heels of the victorious Philistines of the Restoration. To him as to Samson the situation is one that makes questionings on the dark and doubtful ways of God unavoidable: darker to him even than to Samson: for he has no guilty memory of a supreme act of folly to explain the divine desertion. The action of the drama is extremely simple. Samson is found enjoying a brief respite from his punishment. The day is a feast of Dagon, and the Philistine "superstition" allows no work to be done on it. Accordingly an attendant who is a mute person is leading {232} him to a bank where he is accustomed to take what rest he is allowed and enjoy "The breath of heaven fresh blowing, pure and sweet With day-spring born;" that sensation of delicate scents and cool breezes which, as Milton knew only too well, mean so much more to the blind than to those who can see. Then his restless thoughts begin to crowd upon him-- "Why was my breeding ordered and prescribed As of a person separate to God, Designed for great exploits?" The whole passage belongs naturally enough to Samson: but obviously here, as well as in the blindness, the poet is already thinking of himself. So again, when Samson proceeds to speak of being "exposed To daily fraud, contempt, abuse, and wrong," one can scarcely miss a reference to the daughters who purloined and sold the blind father's books. When the soliloquy draws to an end the Chorus, men of his tribe, come to visit Samson. Not even Milton ever made the arrangement and sound of words do more to enforce their meaning than he does in this wonderful opening chorus-- {233} "This, this is he; softly a while; Let us not break in upon him. O change beyond report, thought, or belief!" They chant their inevitable wonder at the contrast between what Samson was and what he is. "O mirror of our fickle state, Since man on earth, unparalleled! The rarer thy example stands, By how much from the top of wondrous glory, Strongest of mortal men, To lowest pitch of abject fortune thou art fallen." No reader of Greek can fail to be reminded of more than one chorus in the _Oedipus_ of Sophocles-- _io geneai broton_ _hôs hymas isa chai to mêden zôsas enarithmô--_ "Alas, ye generations of men, how utterly a thing of nought I count the life ye have to live! For what man is there who wins more of happiness than just the seeming and after the semblance a falling away. With thy fate before mine eyes, unhappy Oedipus, I can call no earthly creature blest." Here and there, as in this passage, the parallel is very close. But Milton's genius is too great and self-reliant for mere imitation. He sometimes recalls the very words of Greek poets as he {234} does those of the Bible: but that is not because he is artificially imitating either, but because he has assimilated the spirit of both and made them a part of himself. The Chorus express their sympathy with Samson and he replies, bitterly reproaching his own folly and that of the rulers of Judah who gave him up to their enemies. But human blindness will not ultimately defeat the ways of God: and the Chorus sing their song of faith, in which rhyme is called in to give its touch of impatient contempt at the folly of the atheist. "Just are the ways of God, And justifiable to men; Unless there be who think not God at all. If any be, they walk obscure; For of such doctrine never was there school, But the heart of the fool, And no man therein doctor but himself." So ends the first act or episode of the drama. The second is the visit of Samson's father Manoah, whose cry is-- "Who would be now a father in my stead?" He is trying to negotiate for his son's ransom: but Samson refuses, not desiring life, desiring rather to pay the full penalty of his sin. He cannot share his father's hopes that God will give him back the sight he so misused-- {235} "All otherwise to me my thoughts portend, That these dark orbs no more shall treat with light, Nor the other light of life continue long, But yield to double darkness nigh at hand: So much I feel my genial spirits droop, My hopes all flat; Nature within me seems In all her functions weary of herself; My race of glory run, and race of shame, And I shall shortly be with them that rest." So Manoah leaves him, and in a noble lyric he laments over his greatest sufferings, which are not those of the body but those of the mind-- "which no cooling herb Or med'cinal liquor can assuage, Nor breath of vernal air from snowy Alp." A choral song on the mysterious dealings of God closes this episode which is followed by the most dramatically effective in the poem, that of the visit of Dalila. The moment the blind man is told that it is "Dalila, thy wife," he cries-- "My wife! my traitress! let her not come near me:" and his reply to her offer of penitence, affection and help, begins with the daringly expressive line-- "Out, out, hyaena! these are thy wonted arts." A long and telling debate follows, in which {236} Dalila makes very good points, one of them recalling the scene in which Eve reproaches Adam for indulging her instead of exercising his right to command and control the weakness of her sex. To this argument Dalila receives the stern, characteristically Miltonic reply-- "All wickedness is weakness: that plea, therefore With God or man will gain thee no remission," He refuses her intercession with the Philistine lords, forbids her even to touch his hand; "Not for thy life, lest fierce remembrance wake My sudden rage to tear thee joint by joint," and drives her to remind him defiantly that, whatever he and his Hebrews may say of her, she appeals to another tribunal of fame-- "In Ecron, Gaza, Asdod, and in Gath, I shall be named among the famousest Of women, sung at solemn festivals, Living and dead recorded." So she goes out, and the Chorus make Miltonic meditations on the unhappiness of marriage and the divinely appointed subjection of women. The next visitor is Harapha, the Philistine giant, who comes to taunt Samson, and is defied by him to mortal combat. This {237} episode is perhaps the least interesting, but it advances the action by exhibiting Samson's returning sense that God is still with him and will yet do some great work through him. It fitly leads to the chorus-- "O, how comely it is, and how reviving To the spirits of just men long oppressed, When God into the hands of their deliverer Puts invincible might, To quell the mighty of the earth, the oppressor, The brute and boisterous force of violent men, Hardy and industrious to support Tyrannic power, but raging to pursue The righteous and all such as honour truth!" In the next scene an officer comes to demand Samson's presence at the feast of Dagon that he may entertain the Philistine lords with feats of strength. He at first dismisses the messenger with a contemptuous refusal: but, with a premonition of the end which recalls Oedipus at Colonus, he suddenly changes his mind-- "I begin to feel Some rousing motions in me, which dispose To something extraordinary my thoughts. If there be aught of presage in the mind, This day will be remarkable in my life By some great act, or of my days the last." {238} "Go, and the Holy One Of Israel be thy guide," sing the Chorus: and he leaves the scene, like Oedipus, to return no more, but to be more felt in his absence than in his presence. Manoah re-enters to utter his further hopes of ransom, in which there is a note of Sophoclean irony recalling the ignorant optimism of Oedipus in the _Tyrannus_; and as he and the Chorus talk they hear at first a loud shouting, apparently of triumph, and then another louder and more terrible-- _Manoah._ "O what noise! Mercy of Heaven! what hideous noise was that? Horribly loud, unlike the former shout." _Chorus._ "Noise call you it, or universal groan, As if the whole inhabitation perished?" They dare not enter the city: and, as they speculate on what this great event can be, a Hebrew spectator of the catastrophe comes up and, after some brief exchange of question and answer exactly in the manner of the Greek tragedians, tells the whole story at length. The end has come. Samson is dead, but death is swallowed up in victory: what has happened is the last and most tremendous {239} triumph of the divinely chosen hero whose death is more fatal to his country's enemies than even his life had been. There is nothing left to do but to close the drama, as most Greek tragedies close, with a brief choral song of submission to the divine governance of the world: "All is best, though we oft doubt What the unsearchable dispose Of Highest Wisdom brings about, And ever best found in the close. Oft He seems to hide his face, But unexpectedly returns, And to his faithful champion hath in place Bore witness gloriously; whence Gaza mourns, And all that band them to resist His uncontrollable intent. His servants He, with new acquist Of true experience from this great event, With peace and consolation hath dismissed, And calm of mind, all passion spent." Such is Milton's drama: a thing worth dwelling on as entirely unique in any modern language. Some good judges have thought it the finest of his works. That will not be admitted if poetry is to be judged either by universality of appeal or by extent and variety of range. _L'Allegro_ and _Il Penseroso_ will always have far more readers: and _Paradise Lost_ embraces an immeasurably {240} greater span of human life. But, if not the greatest, _Samson_ is probably for its own audience the most moving of Milton's works. It is not everybody who has in him the grave emotions to which it appeals: but whoever has will find them stirred by Samson as few other books in all the literature of the world can stir them. It is curious to think of Milton composing such a drama in the midst of the theatrical revival of the Restoration. Did ever poet set himself in such opposition to the literary current of his day? Dryden's unbounded admiration for him is well known: but he understood the genius of _Paradise Lost_ so little as to make an opera out of it, and he must have understood even less of Samson. The drama was then so much the most fashionable form of literature that he may have felt that in writing _The State of Innocence_ and its preface he was taking the best means of directing public attention to _Paradise Lost_. But he would scarcely have tried to do the same for _Samson_. He had wished, perhaps, as Mr. Verrall has suggested, to write an epic and had failed to do so: hence his profound reverence for the man who had not failed. But he had written many dramas and here he had succeeded: he had pleased both his {241} contemporaries and himself. He would feel no need there to take lessons from Milton. Nor is he to be blamed. He and his fellow dramatists are justly criticized for many things, but there is nothing to complain of in their unlikeness to Milton. They wrote for the stage. He avowedly did not. They wrote in the spirit of the theatre of their day, with the object of providing themselves with a little money and "the town" with a few hours of more or less intellectual amusement. He wrote out of his own mind and soul, not for the entertainment of the idle folk of his own or any other day, but for men who in all times and countries should prove capable of knowing a great work when they saw it. Besides, his contemporary dramatists followed, quite legitimately, the theatrical traditions of England or France: he the very different dramatic system of the Greeks. His drama is what Greek tragedies were, an act of religion. It could take its place quite naturally, as they did, as part of a great national religious festival performed on a holy day. It is like them in the solemn music of its utterance: in its deep sense of the gravity of the issues on which human life hangs. It is like them also in technical points such as the use of a Chorus to give expression to the {242} spectator's emotions, the paucity of actors present on the stage at any moment, the curious imitation, to be seen also in _Comus_, of the Greek _stichomuthia_, in which a verbal passage of arms is conducted on the principle of giving each speaker one line for his attack or retort. There are, indeed, some fundamental differences. They are important enough to have led so great a critic as Professor Jebb to argue that Milton's drama is too Hebrew to be Hellenic at all. His point is that Greek tragedy aims at producing an imaginative pleasure by arousing a "sense, on the one hand, of the heroic in man; on the other hand, of a superhuman controlling power"; and he asserts that this is not the method adopted by Milton in _Samson_. Samson is throughout a free man; his misfortunes are the fruit of his own folly. God is still on his side and his death is a patriotic triumph, not, like the death of Heracles, who resembles him in so many ways, merely the final proof of the all-powerful malignity of fate. No one will venture to differ from Jebb on such a question without a sense of great temerity. But perhaps the truth is that one who had lived all his life, as Jebb had, in the closest intimacy with the Greek drama, would be apt to feel small differences from {243} it too much and broad resemblances too little. To the shepherd all his sheep differ from each other: the danger for him is to forget, what the ignorant stranger sees, that they are also all very much alike. So Jebb is no doubt perfectly right in the distinction he makes: but he is surely blinded by his own knowledge when he argues from it that _Samson Agonistes_ "is a great poem and a noble drama; but neither as poem nor as drama is it Hellenic." Of that question comparative ignorance is perhaps a better judge. For it can still see that the broad division which separates the world's drama into two kinds is a real thing, and that Milton's drama belongs in spite of differences unquestionably to the Greek kind and not to the other, both by its method and by its spirit. There can be no real doubt that it is far more like the _Prometheus_ or the _Oedipus_ than it is like _Hamlet_ or _All for Love_. Probably no great tragedy of any sort can be made without that sense of the contrast between man's will and the "superhuman controlling power" of which Jebb speaks as peculiarly Greek. Certainly it is present in the greatest of Shakspeare's tragedies, and not seldom finds open expression. "There's a divinity that shapes our ends." {244} But the point is that in _Samson_, the note of which is always the classical, never the mystical or romantic, this sense is present, not in Shakspeare's way, but substantially in the Greek way. The fact that Samson is free and that his God is his friend does not prevent his feeling just in the Greek way that God's ways are dark and inscrutable, past man's finding out, and far above out of the reach of his control. It does not prevent his being helpless as well as heroic, fully conscious that all his strength leaves him still a weak child at the absolute disposal of incomprehensible Omnipotence. So the whole atmosphere of the play, as well as its formal mould, will always recall the Greek tragedies. And rightly: the likenesses of every kind are far greater than the differences. The distinctions which led Jebb to declare it was not Hellenic at all are far less important than the kinship which made a still greater critic, the poet Goethe, declare that it had "more of the antique spirit than any production of any other modern poet." A more obvious and perhaps more important difference than that on which Jebb lays such stress is, of course, the fundamental one that the Greek plays were written for performance and that many of them have {245} elaborately contrived "plots." No one supposes that _Samson_ would be effective on the stage; but the modern dramatist who could make his play as exciting to the spectator as the _Oedipus Tyrannus_ or _Electra_ of Sophocles, or the _Hippolytus_ or _Medea_ of Euripides, would assuredly be no ordinary playwright. This Milton did not attempt. His drama resembles rather the earlier Greek tragedies where the lyrical element is still the principal thing while the "plot" and the persons who act its story play a comparatively subordinate part. It is, at any rate in form, more like Aeschylus than Sophocles, and more like the _Persae_ and the _Prometheus_ than the Oresteian Trilogy. To the _Prometheus_, indeed, it bears particularly close and obvious resemblances; for instance, both have a heroic and defiant prisoner as their principal figure, and as their minor figures a succession of friends and enemies who visit him. However, literary parallels and precedents of this kind are perhaps rather interesting than important. Milton's greatness is his own. Only the fact remains that, as it was of an order that need not fear to measure itself with the Greeks and as he happened to put its dramatic expression into a Greek form, he has given us something which comes far {246} nearer to producing on us the particular impression of sublimity made by the greatest Greek dramas than anything else in English or perhaps in any modern language. In English nothing worth mentioning of the kind has been attempted, till in our own day the present Poet Laureate wrote his _Prometheus the Fire-Giver_ and _Achilles in Scyros_. But, interesting and beautiful as these are, they make no pretence to rival _Samson Agonistes_. They are altogether on a smaller scale of art, of thought, of emotion. _Samson Agonistes_ is Milton's last word and on the whole his saddest. Yet the final effect of great art is never sad. The sense of greatness transcends all pain. In the preface of _Samson_ Milton alludes to Aristotle's remark that it is the function of tragedy to effect through pity and fear a proper purgation of these emotions. Whatever be the precise meaning of that famous and disputed sentence, there is no doubt that Milton gives part of its general import truly enough when he paraphrases it "to temper and reduce them to just measure with a kind of delight stirred up by reading or seeing those passions well imitated." And its application extends far beyond the mere field of tragedy. So far as other kinds of poetry, or indeed any of the arts, deal with {247} subjects that arouse any of the deeper human emotions, the law of purification by a kind of delight is one by which they stand or fall. A crucifixion which is merely painful, as many primitive crucifixions are, or merely disgusting, as many later ones are, is so far a failure. It has not done the work art has to do. Shakspeare knew this well enough, though he very likely never thought about it. The final word of his great tragedies is one of sorrow overpassed and transformed. "The rest is silence;" "Dost thou not see my baby at my breast That sucks the nurse asleep?" "I have almost forgot the taste of fears;" "My heart doth joy that yet in all my life I found no man but he was true to me!" This is the note always struck before the very end comes. And Milton, so unlike Shakspeare both as man and as artist, is no less conspicuous than he in the strict observance of this practice. All his poems, without exception, end in quietness and confidence. The beauty of the last lines of _Paradise Lost_, to which early critics were so strangely blind, is now universally celebrated-- "Some natural tears they dropped, but wiped them soon; The world was all before them, where to choose {248} Their place of rest, and Providence their guide. They, hand in hand, with wandering steps and slow, Through Eden took their solitary way." The storm and stress of day are over and are followed by the passionless quiet of evening. So in _Paradise Regained_. A modern poet would have been tempted to end at line 635, with a kind of dramatic fall of the curtain-- "on thy glorious work Now enter, and begin to save Mankind." Not so Milton. As after the most aweinspiring death known to literature the _Oedipus Coloneus_ closes on the note of acquiescent peace-- "Come, cease lamentation, lift it up no more; for verily these things stand fast;" so Milton ends the long debate of his poem, not with victory, but with silence-- "He, unobserved, Home to his mother's house private returned." It is indeed just the opposite in one way of the conclusion of _Paradise Lost_. The man and woman who had fallen before the Tempter had no home to return to: they must seek a new "place of rest" elsewhere in the new world that was before them. The Man who {249} had vanquished him could go back quietly to the home of his childhood. But the contrast is external, the likeness essential. For the first man as well as the second there is an appointed place of rest and a Providence to guide: the two poems can both end on the same note of that peace which follows upon the right understanding of all great experiences. This, which is only implied in his earlier poems, is almost expressly set forth in the last of all Milton's words, the already quoted conclusion of Samson-- "His servants He, with new acquist Of true experience from this great event, With peace and consolation hath dismissed, And calm of mind, all passion spent." Milton was a passionate man who lived in passionate times. Neither his passions nor those of the men of his day are of very much matter to us now. But the art in which he "spent" them, in which, that is to say, he embodied, transcended and glorified them, till through it he and we alike attain to consolation and calm, is an eternal possession not only of the English race but of the whole world. {250} BIBLIOGRAPHY The literature that in one way or another deals with Milton is, of course, immense. His name fills more than half of one of the volumes of the great British Museum Catalogue, more than sixteen pages being devoted to the single item of _Paradise Lost_. They afford perhaps the most striking of all proofs of the universality of his genius; for they include translations into no fewer than eighteen languages, many of which possess a large choice of versions. Into more than a very small fraction of such a vast field it is obviously impossible to enter here. Only a few notes can be given, under the four headings of Poetry, Prose, Biography and Criticism. POETRY Of the poetry, it may be worth saying, though MSS. hardly come within the scope of a brief bibliography of this sort, that a manuscript, mainly in the handwriting of Milton himself and containing many of his early poems, is preserved in the Library of Trinity College, Cambridge. The printed copies, of course, begin with those published in his own lifetime. They contain practically the whole of his poetry. The most important are the volume containing his early poems issued in 1645, _Paradise Lost_ which first appeared in 1667, _Paradise Regained_ and _Samson Agonistes_ which followed in 1671, and a re-issue in 1673, with additions, of the volume of his minor poems already printed in 1646. The first complete edition was _The Poetical Works of Mr. John Milton_, issued by Jacob Tonson in 1695. So much for the bare text. Annotation naturally soon followed. The earliest commentator was Patrick Hume who published an edition of the poems with notes on _Paradise Lost_ in 1695. But the most famous, though also least important, of Milton's early critics was the greatest of English scholars, Richard Bentley, who in 1732 issued an edition of _Paradise Lost_ in which whole passages were relegated to the margin as the spurious interpolations of an imaginary editor. Such a book is, of course, merely a curiosity connecting two {251} great names. The real beginning in the work of editing Milton as a classic should be edited was made by Thomas Newton, afterwards Bishop of Bristol, who in 1749 brought out an edition of _Paradise Lost_, "with Notes of Various Authors," and followed it in 1752 with a similar volume including _Paradise Regained_ and the minor poems. Newton's work was often reprinted, and remained the standard edition till it was superseded by that of the Rev. H. J. Todd which first appeared in 1801. The final issue of Todd is that of 1826 in six volumes which, in spite of many notes which are defective, many which are antiquated and some which are superfluous, may still claim to be the best library edition of Milton. Among the best of those which have appeared since are Thomas Keightley's, published in 1859, which contains excellent notes, and Prof. David Masson's, which is the work of the most learned and devoted of all Milton's editors. Both of these have the advantage of Todd in some respects; Keightley in acuteness and penetration, Masson in completeness of knowledge. But no single editor's work can be a perfect substitute for a _variorum_ edition like that of Todd, giving the comments and suggestions of many different minds. The most complete edition of Masson's work is the final library one in three volumes, 1890; there is also a convenient smaller issue, based on this, but omitting some of its editorial matter. It was last printed in three volumes 1893. It contains a Memoir, rather elaborate Introductions to all the poems, an Essay on Milton's English and Versification, and reduced Notes. A text with Critical Notes by W. Aldis Wright was issued by the Cambridge University Press in one volume, 1903. The text of the earliest printed editions of the several poems was reprinted in 1900 in an edition prepared for the Clarendon Press by the Rev. H. C. Beeching. It may be worth while adding that Milton's Latin and Italian poems were translated by the poet Cowper and printed in 1808 by his biographer, Hayley, in a beautiful quarto volume with designs by Flaxman. These translations are reprinted in the "Aldine" edition of Milton, 1826. Masson has also given translations of most of them in his _Life of Milton_ and in his 1890 library edition of the Poems. PROSE The Prose works were, of course, mostly issued as books or pamphlets in Milton's lifetime. They were collected by Toland in three volumes _folio_, 1698. There are several more modern editions; as that published in 1806 in seven volumes {252} with a _Life_ by Charles Symmons; that of Pickering, who included them in his fine eight-volume edition. _The Works of John Milton in Verse and Prose, Edited by John Mitford, 1851_; and that in Bohn's Standard Library, in six volumes, edited, with some notes of a somewhat controversial character, by J. A. St. John, 1848. The first volume of a new edition edited by Sir Sidney Lee appeared in 1905. One of the most curious of the prose works, the _De Doctrina Christiana_ or _Treatise of Christian Doctrine_, was not known till 1823, when it was discovered in the State Paper Office. It was edited, with an English translation, by the Rev. C. R. Sumner in 1825 and is included in Bohn's edition. BIOGRAPHY The earliest sources for the biography of Milton, outside his own works, are the account given in the _Fasti Oxonienses_ of Anthony à Wood, 1691, the _Brief Lives of John Aubrey_, and the Life prefixed by the poet's nephew, Edward Phillips, to an edition of the _Letters of State_, printed in 1694. A very large number of _Lives of Milton_ have been written since, based on these materials and those collected from a few other sources. The most famous and in some ways the best, in spite of its unfairness, is that of Johnson, to be found in his _Lives of the Poets_. The best short modern Life is Mark Pattison's masterly, though occasionally wilful, little book in the English Men of letters Series. For the library and for students all other biographies have been superseded by the great work of David Masson, who spared no labours to investigate every smallest detail of the life of Milton and to place the whole in the setting of an elaborate history of England in Milton's day. The value of the book is somewhat impaired by the very strong Puritan and anti-Cavalier partisanship of the writer; and its style suffers from an imitation of Carlyle. But nothing can seriously detract from the immense debt every student of Milton owes to the author of this monumental biography which appeared in seven volumes, 1859-1894. An interesting critical discussion of the various portraits representing or alleged to represent Milton is prefixed to the Catalogue of the Exhibition held at Christ's College Cambridge during the Milton Tercentenary in 1908. It is by Dr. G. C. Williamson. CRITICISM A poet at once so learned and so great as Milton inevitably invited criticism. The first and most generous of his critics {253} was his great rival Dryden, who, in a few words of the preface to _The State of Innocence_, published the year after Milton's death, led the note of praise, which has been echoed ever since by speaking of _Paradise Lost_ as "one of the greatest, most noble and most sublime poems which either this age or nation has produced." The next great name in the list is that of Addison, who contributed a series of papers on Milton to the _Spectator_ in 1712. Like all criticism except the work of the supreme masters, they are written too exclusively from the point of view of their own day to retain more than a small fraction of their value after two hundred years have passed. But they are of considerable historical interest and may still be read with pleasure, like everything written by Addison. A less sympathetic but finer piece of work is the critical part of Johnson's famous _Life_. It is full of crudities of every sort, such as the notorious remark that "no man could have fancied that he read _Lycidas_ with pleasure had he not known the author"; and perhaps nothing Johnson over wrote displayed more nakedly the narrow limits of his appreciation of poetry. But, in spite of all its defects, it exhibits its writer's great gifts; and its absolute and unshrinking sincerity, its half-reluctant utterance of some of the truest praise ever spoken of Milton, its profound knowledge of the way in which the human mind approaches both literature and life, will always preserve it as one of the most interesting criticisms which Milton has provoked. Johnson's friend, Thomas Warton, in his edition of the minor poems issued in 1785, led the way to an understanding of much in Milton to which Johnson and his school were entirely blind. This movement has continued ever since, and is seen in the immense influence Milton had upon the poets of the nineteenth century, especially upon Wordsworth and Keats; an influence of exactly the opposite sort to that which he exercised with such disastrous effect upon many poets of the century immediately succeeding his own. It is also seen in the finer intelligence of the critical studies of his work. These are far too many to mention here. Among the best are Hazlitt's Lecture on Shakspeare and Milton in his _Lectures on the English Poets_; Matthew Arnold's speech at the unveiling of a Milton memorial, printed in the second series of his _Essays in Criticism_; Sir Walter Raleigh's volume, _Milton_, published in 1900, and _The Epic_, by Lascelles Abercrombie, 1914, which is full of fine and suggestive criticism of Milton. _Milton's Prosody by Robert Bridges, 1901_, is the best study of the metre and scansion of Milton's later poems, especially of _Paradise Lost_. {254} INDEX TO PRINCIPAL PERSONS, PLACES, AND WORKS MENTIONED Abercrombie, L., 136-7, 253 _Absalom and Achitophel_, 105 _Achilles in Scyros_, 246 Addison, Joseph, 77, 253 _Adonais_, 125 _Ad Patrem_, 39-40. _Aeneid, The_, 150, 175, 196 Aeschylus, 245 À Kempis, Thomas, 147 Aldersgate Street, 46 _All for Love_, 243 _Allegro, L'_, 41, 70, 93, 99, 106 _et sqq._, 123, 239 Anglesey, Earl of, 72, 82 Annesley, Arthur, 72 Aquinas, Thomas, 157 _Arbuthnot, Epistle to_, 105 _Arcades_, 41, 42 _Arcadia_, 58 _Areopagitica_, 44, 49, 64 Arianism, 204 Ariosto, 153 Aristotle, 86, 200 Arnold Matthew, 164, 253 Arthurian Epic (planned), 45, 148-9 _At a Solemn Music_, 13, 42, 97, 100, 103, 147 Athens, 205-6, 209 Aubrey, John, 29, 252 Barbican, the, 54 Baroni, Leonora, 44-5 Barrow, Samuel, 82 Beeching, Rev. H. C., 251 Bentley, Richard, 250 Bibliography, 250-3 Blake, Admiral, 57 Bohn's Standard Library, 252 Bow Church, 25 Bread Street, 24, 75 Bridges, Robert, 26, 108, 222, 223, 246, 253 _Brief Lives_, 252 Buckingham, Duke of, 58 Byron, Lord, 90 Cambridge, 28, 29, 30, 31-7, 39, 42, 85, 120, 121, 124, 250, 252 Carlyle, Thomas, 262 Caroline, Queen, 77 Charles I, 11, 28, 58, 59, 60, 63, 64, 67, 71, 72, 86 Charles II, 47, 60, 65, 71, 73, 82, 86 Chaucer, Geoffrey, 90, 111 Christina, Queen of Sweden, 60 Christ's College, Cambridge, 28, 29, 120, 121, 124, 252 Clarendon, Earl of, 73 Clarges, Sir Thomas, 72 Coleridge, S. T., 206 _Comus_, 13, 41, 42, 95, 100, 110, 112-13 _et sqq._, 128, 242 Constable, 135 Coriolanus, 85 Cowper, William, 69, 251 Criticisms, 252-3 Cromwell, Oliver, 55, 57, 63, 64, 67, 68, 69, 71, 133, 139, 176 Dante, 10, 11-12, 33, 120, 153-7 _Daphnaïda_, 125 Davenant, William, 72 _Defensio Regia_, 60, 61 _Defensio Secunda_, 61 De Quincey, Thomas, 96 Diodati, Charles, 42, 124, 125 _Divina Commedia, La_, 120, 157 Divorce pamphlets, 50 _et sqq._ _Doctrina Christiana, De_, 252 Dorset, Earl of, 81 Dowland, Robert, 28 Drayton, Michael, 124 Drummond, William, 124, 135 Dryden, John, 80-2, 90, 103, 104-5, 117, 241, 253 _Eikon Basilike_, the, 57-8 _Eikonoklastes_, 58, 61 _Electra, The_, 245 Elizabeth, Queen, 85 _English Men of Letters Series_, 252 _Epic, The_, 253 Epigrams, Latin, on La Baroni, 45 _Epitaph on the Marchioness of Winchester_, 36, 37, 97, 103 _Epitaphium Damonis_, 124 _Essays in Criticism_, 253 Euripides, 77, 82, 245 _Excursion, The_, 136, 228-9 _Faerie Queen, The_, 115 Fairfax, General, 139, 171 _Faithful Shepherdess, The_, 115 _Fasti Oxonienses_, 252 _Faust_, 196 Fire of London, 75 Flaxman, John, 251 Fletcher, John, 107, 115 Florence, 43, 44, 46 France, 43, 46, 59 Galileo, 44, 45 _Gerusalemme Conquistata_ (Tasso), 45 Gibbons, Orlando, 28 Goethe, J. W. von, 230, 244 Gorges, Mrs., 125 Grotius, Hugo, 43 _Hamlet_, 24, 243 Hampden, John, 171 Hayley, William, 251 Hazlitt, William, 253 _Hippolytus_, 245 _History of Britain_, 78 Homer, 77, 82, 84, 89, 152, 153, 155, 171, 230 Horace, 69 Horton, 37, 40, 41, 42, 111 Hume, Patrick, 250 _Iliad, The_, 154, 155, 157, 162 _Imitation, The, of Christ_, 147-8 Indemnity, Act of, 72, 73, 74 Independent Army, The, 55, 56 Italian travels, 43-6 James I, 58 Jebb, Prof., 242-3, 244 _Job, Book of_, 21, 82 Johnson, Dr. Samuel, 125, 126, 160, 162, 175, 194, 196, 206, 207, 227, 252, 253 Jones, Inigo, 16, 114 Jonson, Ben, 114, 115 Keats, John, 79, 90, 102, 110, 125, 253 Keightley, Thomas, 251 King, Edward, 42, 91, 124, 125, 127, 128-31 Landor, Walter Savage, 132 Lawes, Henry, 41, 82, 91, 116, 119 Lawrence, Henry, 69-70, 133 _Lectures on the English Poets_, 253 Lee, Sir Sidney, 252 _Letters of State_, 252 Lives of Milton, 251, 252, 253 _Lives of the Poets_, 252 London, 25, 49; fire of, 75 Long Parliament, 47, 63, 64, 171 _Lycidas_, 13, 41, 42, 90, 91, 100, 106, 123 _et sqq._ Mackail, J. W., 94-5, 206, 211 Manso, Giovanni, 45 Marini, 45 Marlowe, Christopher, 107 Marvell, Andrew, 69, 73 Massacres in Piedmont, sonnets on, 68, 133, 139, 140-1 Masson, D., 24, 52, 68, 73, 75, 251 _Medea, The_, 245 Meredith, George, 134 _Milton_, 253 _Milton's Prosody_, 224, 253 Milton's relations:-- Daughters, 11, 54, 69, 75-77, 218 Deborah, 77-8 Father, 27, 29, 37, 38-40, 42, 43, 49, 54, 75 Infant son, 76 Mother, 40 Nephews, 46, 54, 61, 70, 252 Wives-- First, _see_ Powell, Mary. Second, 54, 69, 71 Third, 54 Mitford, John, 252 Monk, General, 72 Morley, Thomas, 28 Morrice, --, 72 Morus, 69 Napoleon, 9, 139 Newbolt, Henry, 120 Newton, Thomas, 251 _Ode on the Nativity_, 35-6, 37, 91, 93-4, 97, 98-103 _Odyssey, The_, 162, 196 _Oedipus Coloneus_, 237, 248 _Oedipus Tyrannus_, 233, 238, 243 _On Attaining the Age of Twenty-three_, sonnet, 91, 133 _On His Blindness_, sonnet, 62-3, 133 _On the Death of a Fair Infant_, 35, 97-9 _Orations_, 34-5 _Othello_, 150 Ovid, 33, 77, 124 Pamphlets, 49, 56, 69, 71 _Paradise Lost_, 13, 24, 25, 28, 44, 47, 55, 71, 78, 79, 80, 82, 88, 89, 90, 94, 95, 97, 101, 104, 106, 112, 113, 118, 120, 123, 125, 137, 142 _et sqq._, 196, 197 _et sqq._, 239, 240, 247, 248, 250, 251, 253 _Paradise Regained_, 13, 24, 44, 78, 167, 196 _et sqq._, 227, 248, 250, 251 _Passion, The_, 103 Pattison, Mark, 131, 132, 197, 252 _Penseroso, Il_, 41, 70, 93, 100, 106 _et sqq._, 239 _Persae, The_, 245 Petrarch, 33, 134, 135 Phillips, Edward, 252 Pickering, William, 252 Pindar, 117 Plato, 8, 9-10, 21, 111, 156 _Pleasure Reconciled to Virtue_, 115 _Poems, editions of_, 250-1, 252 _Poetical Works, The, of Mr. John Milton_, 250 Pope, A., 85, 90, 91, 105, 222, 223 Portraits, 252 Powell family, 50, 53 Powell, Mary, 50-4, 69, 71 _Prelude, The_, 136, 228-9 _Pro Populo Anglicano Defensio_, 60, 61 _Prometheus the Fire-Giver_, 246 _Prometheus Unbound_, 102 _Prometheus Vinctus_, 21, 243, 245 Prose Works, 47 _et sqq._, 251-2 Psalms, the, 139-40; paraphrases of, 95 Purcell, Henry, 16 Pym, John, 171 Raleigh, Sir Walter, 198, 253 Ranelagh, Lady, 69 _Ready and Easy Way A, to Establish a Free Commonwealth_, 65 _Reason, The, of Church Government_, 13, 37 Regicides, the, 55, 63, 71, 74 Reynolds, Sir Joshua, 16 Rome, 44, 209 Rossetti, Dante G., 133, 135 St. Brides', Fleet Street, 46 St. Giles' Church, Cripplegate, 79 St. John, J. A., 252 St. Paul, 9, 144, 218 St. Paul's Cathedral, 89, 193 Salmasius, 59-62, 69, 218 _Samson Agonistes_, 13, 20, 24, 78, 83, 99, 199, 219 _et sqq._, 250 Sansovino's Library, Venice, 193 Saumaise, _see_ Salmasius. Scudamore, Lord, 43 Shakspeare, W., 9, 14, 17, 32, 35, 36, 80, 85, 90, 103, 114, 118, 145, 166, 247; sonnets, 133-5, 253 Shelley, P. B., 20, 29, 50, 79, 90, 99, 102, 111, 125, 228 Shelley, Mrs. P. B., 50 Sidney, Sir Philip, 58, 98, 124, 135 Skinner, Cyriack, 62, 133 Smithfield, 72 _Song on May Morning_, 36, 107 _Sonnets_, 47, 54, 62-3, 68, 69, 91, 106, 131 _et sqq._ Sophocles, 82, 233, 245 _Spectator, The_, 253 Spenser, Edmund, 93, 97, 98, 111, 115, 116, 124, 125, 153 _State, The, of Innocence_, 240, 253 Statius, 157 Strafford, Earl of, 171 Sumner, Rev. C. R., 252 Symmons, Charles, 252 Tasso, Torquato, 45, 82, 153, 164 Tennyson, Alfred, 69, 90, 197 _Tenure of Kings and Magistrates_, 56, 58, 75 Theocritus, 124 Todd, Rev. H. J., 251 Toland, John, 251 Tonson, Jacob, 250 _Treatise of Christian Doctrine_, 252 Trinity College Library, 89, 250 Turner, J. W. M., 16 Tyburn, 71, 90 Verrall, A. W., 240 Virgil, 82, 84, 89, 91, 124, 139, 150, 152, 153, 155, 157, 163, 175 _Vita Nuova, La_, 120 Waller, Edmund, 104 Warton, Joseph, 118, 126, 214 Warton, Thomas, 253 Whitehall, 58, 70, 74, 219 Williamson, Dr. G. C., 252 Winchester, Marchioness of, 36 Windsor, 37 Windsor Castle, 40 Wood, Anthony à, 31, 35, 252 Wordsworth, W., 26, 34, 79, 90, 131, 133, 135, 137, 140, 141, 206, 227-30; sonnets, 137-41, 253 _Works, The, of John Milton, in Prose and Verse_, 252 Wren, Sir Christopher, 16, 89 Wright, W. Aldis, 251 Young, Thomas, 27 
16757	----	Produced from page images provided by Internet Archive/Canadian Libraries (http://www.archive.org/details/toronto). "Great Writers." EDITED BY PROFESSOR ERIC S. ROBERTSON, M.A. * * * * * _LIFE OF MILTON._ LIFE OF JOHN MILTON BY RICHARD GARNETT, LL.D. LONDON WALTER SCOTT, 24, WARWICK LANE 1890 (_All rights reserved._) NOTE. The number of miniature "Lives" of Milton is great; great also is the merit of some of them. With one exception, nevertheless, they are all dismissed to the shelf by the publication of Professor Masson's monumental and authoritative biography, without perpetual reference to which no satisfactory memoir can henceforth be composed. One recent biography has enjoyed this advantage. Its author, the late Mark Pattison, wanted neither this nor any other qualification except a keener sense of the importance of the religious and political controversies of Milton's time. His indifference to matters so momentous in Milton's own estimation has, in our opinion, vitiated his conception of his hero, who is represented as persistently yielding to party what was meant for mankind. We think, on the contrary, that such a mere man of letters as Pattison wishes that Milton had been, could never have produced a "Paradise Lost." If this view is well-founded, there is not only room but need for yet another miniature "Life of Milton," notwithstanding the intellectual subtlety and scholarly refinement which render Pattison's memorable. It should be noted that the recent German biography by Stern, if adding little to Professor Masson's facts, contributes much valuable literary illustration; and that Keighley's analysis of Milton's opinions occupies a position of its own, of which no subsequent biographical discoveries can deprive it. The present writer has further to express his deep obligations to Professor Masson for his great kindness in reading and remarking upon the proofs--not thereby rendering himself responsible for anything in these pages; and also to the helpful friend who has provided him with an index. CONTENTS. CHAPTER I. 11 Milton born in Bread Street, Cheapside, December 9, 1608; condition of English literature at his birth; part in its development assigned to him; materials available for his biography; his ancestry; his father; influences that surrounded his boyhood; enters St. Paul's School, 1620; distinguished for compositions in prose and verse; matriculates at Cambridge, 1625; condition of the University at the period; his misunderstandings with his tutor; graduates B.A., 1629, M.A., 1632; his relations with the University; declines to take orders or follow a profession; his first poems; retires to Horton, in Buckinghamshire, where his father had settled, 1632 CHAPTER II. 35 Horton, its scenery and associations with Milton; Milton's studies and poetical aspirations; exceptional nature of his poetical development; his Latin poems; "Arcades" and "Comus" composed and represented at the instance of Henry Lawes, 1633 and 1634; "Comus" printed in 1637; Sir Henry Wootton's opinion of it; "Lycidas" written in the same year, on occasion of the death of Edward King; published in 1638; criticism on "L'Allegro" and "Il Penseroso," "Lycidas" and "Comus"; Milton's departure for Italy, April, 1638. CHAPTER III. 57 State of Italy at the period of Milton's visit; his acquaintance with Italian literati at Florence; visit to Galileo; at Rome and Naples; returns to England, July, 1639; settles in St. Bride's Churchyard, and devotes himself to the education of his nephews; his elegy on his friend Diodati; removes to Aldersgate Street, 1640; his pamphlets on ecclesiastical affairs, 1641 and 1642; his tract on Education his "Areopagitica," November, 1644; attacks the Presbyterians. CHAPTER IV. 83 Milton as a Parliamentarian; his sonnet, "When the Assault was intended to the City," November, 1642; goes on a visit to the Powell family in Oxfordshire, and returns with Mary Powell as his wife, May and June, 1643; his domestic unhappiness; Mary Milton leaves him, and refuses to return, July to September, 1643; publication of his "Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce," August, 1643, and February, 1644; his father comes to live with him; he takes additional pupils; his system of education; he courts the daughter of Dr. Davis; his wife, alarmed, returns, and is reconciled to him, August, 1645; he removes to the Barbican, September, 1645; publication of his collected poems, January, 1646; he receives his wife's relatives under his roof; death of his father, March, 1647; he writes "The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates," February, 1649; becomes Latin Secretary to the Commonwealth, March, 1649. CHAPTER V. 104 Milton's duties as Latin Secretary; he drafts manifesto on the state of Ireland; occasionally employed as licenser of the press; commissioned to answer "Eikon Basilike"; controversy on the authorship of this work; Milton's "Eikonoklastes" published, October, 1649; Salmasius and his "Defensio Regia pro Carolo I."; Milton undertakes to answer Salmasius, February, 1650; publication of his "Pro Populo Anglicano Defensio," March, 1651; character and complete controversial success of this work; Milton becomes totally blind, March, 1652; his wife dies, leaving him three daughters, May, 1652; his controversy with Morus and other defenders of Salmasius, 1652-1655; his characters of the eminent men of the Commonwealth; adheres to Cromwell; his views on politics; general character of his official writings: his marriage to Elizabeth Woodcock, and death of his wife, November, 1656-March, 1658; his nephews; his friends and recreations. CHAPTER VI. 128 Milton's poetical projects after his return from Italy; drafts of "Paradise Lost" among them; the poem originally designed as a masque or miracle-play; commenced as an epic in 1658; its composition speedily interrupted by ecclesiastical and political controversies; Milton's "Treatise of Civil Power in Ecclesiastical Causes," and "Considerations on the likeliest means to remove Hirelings out of the Church"; Royalist reaction in the winter of 1659-60; Milton writes his "Ready and Easy Way to Establish a Free Commonwealth"; conceals himself in anticipation of the Restoration, May 7, 1660; his writings ordered to be burned by the hangman, June 16; escapes proscription, nevertheless; arrested by the Serjeant-at-Arms, but released by order of the Commons, December 15; removes to Holborn; his pecuniary losses and misfortunes; the undutiful behaviour of his daughters; marries Elizabeth Minshull, February, 1663; lives successively in Jewin Street and in Artillery Walk, Bunhill Fields; particulars of his private life; "Paradise Lost" completed in or about 1663; agreement for its publication with Samuel Symmons; difficulties with the licenser; poem published in August, 1667. CHAPTER VII. 152 Place of "Paradise Lost" among the great epics of the world; not rendered obsolete by changes in belief; the inevitable defects of its plan compensated by the poet's vital relation to the religion of his age; Milton's conception of the physical universe; his theology; magnificence of his poetry; his similes; his descriptions of Paradise; inevitable falling off of the later books; minor critical objections mostly groundless; his diction; his indebtedness to other poets for thoughts as well as phrases; this is not plagiarism; his versification; his Satan compared with Calderon's Lucifer; plan of his epic, whether in any way suggested by Andreini, Vondel, or Ochino; his majestic and unique position in English poetry. CHAPTER VIII. 173 Milton's migration to Chalfont St. Giles to escape the plague in London, July, 1665; subject of "Paradise Regained" suggested to him by the Quaker Ellwood; his losses by the Great Fire, 1666; first edition of "Paradise Lost" entirely sold by April, 1669; "Paradise Regained" and "Samson Agonistes" published, 1671; criticism on these poems; Samson partly a personification of Milton himself, partly of the English people; Milton's life in Bunhill Fields; his daughters live apart from him; Dryden adapts "Paradise Lost" as an opera; Milton's "History of Britain," 1670; second editions of his poems, 1673, and of "Paradise Lost," 1674; his "Treatise on Christian Doctrine"; fate of the manuscript; Milton's mature religious opinions; his death and burial, 1674; subsequent history of his widow and descendants; his personal character. INDEX 199 LIFE OF MILTON. CHAPTER I. John Milton was born on December 9, 1608, when Shakespeare had lately produced "Antony and Cleopatra," when Bacon was writing his "Wisdom of the Ancients" and Ralegh his "History of the World," when the English Bible was hastening into print; when, nevertheless, in the opinion of most foreigners and many natives, England was intellectually unpolished, and her literature almost barbarous. The preposterousness of this judgment as a whole must not blind us to the fragment of truth which it included. England's literature was, in many respects, very imperfect and chaotic. Her "singing masons" had already built her "roofs of gold"; Hooker and one or two other great prose-writers stood like towers: but the less exalted portions of the edifice were still half hewn. Some literatures, like the Latin and the French, rise gradually to the crest of their perfection; others, like the Greek and the English, place themselves almost from the first on their loftiest pinnacle, leaving vast gaps to be subsequently filled in. Homer was not less the supreme poet because history was for him literally an old song, because he would have lacked understanding for Plato and relish for Aristophanes. Nor were Shakespeare and the translators of the Bible less at the head of European literature because they must have failed as conspicuously as Homer would have failed in all things save those to which they had a call, which chanced to be the greatest. Literature, however, cannot remain isolated at such altitudes, it must expand or perish. As Homer's epic passed through Pindar and the lyrical poets into drama history and philosophy, continually fitting itself more and more to become an instrument in the ordinary affairs of life, so it was needful that English lettered discourse should become popular and pliant, a power in the State as well as in the study. The magnitude of the change, from the time when the palm of popularity decorated Sidney's "Arcadia" to that when it adorned Defoe and Bunyan, would impress us even more powerfully if the interval were not engrossed by a colossal figure, the last of the old school in the erudite magnificence of his style in prose and verse; the first of the new, inasmuch as English poetry, hitherto romantic, became in his hands classical. This "splendid bridge from the old world to the new," as Gibbon has been called in a different connection, was John Milton: whose character and life-work, carefully analyzed, resolve themselves into pairs of equally vivid contrasts. A stern Puritan, he is none the less a freethinker in the highest and best sense of the term. The recipient of direct poetical inspiration in a measure vouchsafed to few, he notwithstanding studies to make himself a poet; writes little until no other occupation than writing remains to him; and, in general, while exhibiting even more than the usual confidence, shows less than the usual exultation and affluence of conscious genius. Professing to recognize his life's work in poetry, he nevertheless suffers himself to be diverted for many a long year into political and theological controversy, to the scandal and compassion of one of his most competent and attached biographers. Whether this biographer is right or wrong, is a most interesting subject for discussion. We deem him wrong, and shall not cease to reiterate that Milton would not have been Milton if he could have forgotten the citizen in the man of letters. Happy, at all events, it is that this and similar problems occupy in Milton's life the space which too frequently has to be spent upon the removal of misconception, or the refutation of calumny. Little of a sordid sort disturbs the sentiment of solemn reverence with which, more even than Shakespeare's, his life is approached by his countrymen; a feeling doubtless mainly due to the sacred nature of his principal theme, but equally merited by the religious consecration of his whole existence. It is the easier for the biographer to maintain this reverential attitude, inasmuch as the prayer of Agur has been fulfilled in him, he has been given neither poverty nor riches. He is not called upon to deal with an enormous mass of material, too extensive to arrange, yet too important to neglect. Nor is he, like Shakespeare's biographer, reduced to choose between the starvation of nescience and the windy diet of conjecture. If a humbling thought intrudes, it is how largely he is indebted to a devoted diligence he never could have emulated; how painfully Professor Masson's successors must resemble the Turk who builds his cabin out of Grecian or Roman ruins. Milton's genealogy has taxed the zeal and acumen of many investigators. He himself merely claims a respectable ancestry (_ex genere honesto_). His nephew Phillips professed to have come upon the root of the family tree at Great Milton, in Oxfordshire, where tombs attested the residence of the clan, and tradition its proscription and impoverishment in the Wars of the Roses. Monuments, station, and confiscation have vanished before the scrutiny of the Rev. Joseph Hunter; it can only be safely concluded that Milton's ancestors dwelt in or near the village of Holton, by Shotover Forest, in Oxfordshire, and that their rank in life was probably that of yeomen. Notwithstanding Aubrey's statement that Milton's grandfather's name was John, Mr. Hyde Clarke's researches in the registers of the Scriveners' Company have proved that Mr. Hunter and Professor Masson were right in identifying him with Richard Milton, of Stanton St. John, near Holton; and Professor Masson has traced the family a generation further back to Henry Milton, whose will, dated November 21, 1558, attests a condition of plain comfort, nearer poverty than riches. Henry Milton's goods at his death were inventoried at £6 19s.; when his widow's will is proved, two years afterwards, the estimate is £7 4s. 4d. Richard, his son, is stated, but not proved, to have been an under-ranger of Shotover Forest. He appears to have married a widow named Jeffrey, whose maiden name had been Haughton, and who had some connection with a Cheshire family of station. He would also seem to have improved his circumstances by the match, which may account for the superior education of his son John, whose birth is fixed by an affidavit to 1562 or 1563. Aubrey, indeed, next to Phillips and Milton himself, the chief contemporary authority, says that he was for a time at Christ Church, Oxford--a statement in itself improbable, but slightly confirmed by his apparent acquaintance with Latin, and the family tradition that his course of life was diverted by a quarrel with his father. Queen Mary's stakes and faggots had not affected Richard Milton as they affected most Englishmen. Though churchwarden in 1582, he must have continued to adhere to the ancient faith, for he was twice fined for recusancy in 1601, which lends credit to the statement that his son was cast off by him for Protestantism. "Found him reading the Bible in his chamber," says Aubrey, who adds that the younger Milton never was a scrivener's apprentice; but this is shown to be an error by Mr. Hyde Clarke's discovery of his admission to the Scriveners' Company in 1599, where he is stated to have been apprentice to James Colborn. Colborn himself had been only four years in business, instead of the seven which would usually be required for an apprentice to serve out his indenture--which suggests that some formalities may have been dispensed with on account of John Milton's age. A scrivener was a kind of cross between an attorney and a law stationer, whose principal business was the preparation of deeds, "to be well and truly done after my learning, skill, and science," and with due regard to the interests of more exalted personages. "Neither for haste nor covetousness I shall take upon me to make any deed whereof I have not cunning, without good advice and information of counsel." Such a calling offered excellent opportunities for investments; and John Milton, a man of strict integrity and frugality, came to possess a "plentiful estate." Among his possessions was the house in Bread Street destroyed in the Great Fire. The tenement where the poet was born, being a shop, required a sign, for which he chose The Spread Eagle, either from the crest of such among the Miltons as had a right to bear arms, among whom he may have reckoned himself; or as the device of the Scriveners' Company. He had been married about 1600 to a lady whose name has been but lately ascertained to have been Sarah Jeffrey. John Milton the younger was the third of six children, only three of whom survived infancy. He grew up between a sister, Anne, several years older, and a brother, Christopher, seven years younger than himself. Milton's birth and nurture were thus in the centre of London; but the London of that day had not half the population of the Liverpool of ours. Even now the fragrance of the hay in far-off meadows may be inhaled in Bread Street on a balmy summer's night; then the meadows were near the doors, and the undefiled sky was reflected by an unpolluted stream. There seems no reason to conclude that Milton, in his early boyhood, enjoyed any further opportunities of resort to rural scenery than the vicinity of London could afford; but if the city is his native element, natural beauty never appeals to him in vain. Yet the influences which moulded his childhood must have been rather moral and intellectual than merely natural:-- "The starlight smile of children, the sweet looks Of women, the fair breast from which I fed," played a greater part in the education of this poet than "The murmur of the unreposing brooks, And the green light which, shifting overhead, Some tangled bower of vines around me shed, The shells on the sea-sand, and the wild flowers." Paramount to all other influences must have been the character of his father, a "mute" but by no means an "inglorious" Milton, the preface and foreshadowing of the son. His great step in life had set the son the example from which the latter never swerved, and from him the younger Milton derived not only the independence of thought which was to lead him into moral and social heresy, and the fidelity to principle which was to make him the Abdiel of the Commonwealth, but no mean share of his poetical faculty also. His mastery of verbal harmony was but a new phase of his father's mastery of music, which he himself recognizes as the complement of his own poetical gift:-- "Ipse volens Phoebus se dispertire duobus, Altera dona mihi, dedit altera dona parenti." As a composer, the circumspect, and, as many no doubt thought prosaic scrivener, took rank among the best of his day. One of his compositions, now lost, was rewarded with a gold medal by a Polish prince (Aubrey says the Landgrave of Hesse), and he appears among the contributors to _The Triumphs of Oriana_, a set of twenty-five madrigals composed in honour of Queen Elizabeth. "The Teares and Lamentations of a Sorrowful Soule"--dolorous sacred songs, Professor Masson calls them--were, according to their editor, the production of "famous artists," among whom Byrd, Bull, Dowland, Orlando Gibbons, certainly figure, and three of them were composed by the elder Milton. He also harmonized the Norwich and York psalm tunes, which were adapted to six of the Psalms in Ravenscroft's Collection. Such performance bespeaks not only musical accomplishment, but a refined nature; and we may well believe that Milton's love of learning, as well as his love of music, was hereditary in its origin, and fostered by his contact with his father. Aubrey distinctly affirms that Milton's skill on the organ was directly imparted to him by his father, and there would be nothing surprising if the first rudiments of knowledge were also instilled by him. Poetry he may have taught by precept, but the one extant specimen of his Muse is enough to prove that he could never have taught it by example. We have therefore to picture Milton growing up in a narrow street amid a strict Puritan household, but not secluded from the influences of nature or uncheered by melodious recreations; and tenderly watched over by exemplary parents--a mother noted, he tells us, for her charities among her neighbours, and a father who had discerned his promise from the very first. Given this perception in the head of a religious household, it almost followed in that age that the future poet should receive the education of a divine. Happily, the sacerdotal caste had ceased to exist, and the education of a clergyman meant not that of a priest, but that of a scholar. Milton was instructed daily, he says, both at grammar schools and under private masters, "as my age would suffer," he adds, in acknowledgment of his father's considerateness. Like Disraeli two centuries afterwards (perhaps the single point of resemblance), he went for schooling to a Nonconformist in Essex, "who," says Aubrey, "cut his hair short." His own hair? or his pupil's? queries Biography. We boldly reply, Both. Undoubtedly Milton's hair is short in the miniature painted of him at the age of ten by, as is believed, Cornelius Jansen. A thoughtful little face, that of a well-nurtured, towardly boy; lacking the poetry and spirituality of the portrait of eleven years later, where the long hair flows down upon the ruff. After leaving his Essex pedagogue, Milton came under the private tuition of Thomas Young, a Scotchman from St. Andrews, who afterwards rose to be master of Jesus College, Cambridge. It would appear from the elegies subsequently addressed to him by his pupil that he first taught Milton to write Latin verse. This instruction was no doubt intended to be preliminary to the youth's entrance at St. Paul's School, where he must have been admitted by 1620 at the latest. At the time of Milton's entry, St. Paul's stood high among the schools of the metropolis, competing with Merchant Taylors', Westminster, and the now extinct St. Anthony's. The headmaster, Dr. Gill, was an admirable scholar, though, as Aubrey records, "he had his whipping fits." His fitful severity was probably more tolerable than the systematic cruelty of his predecessor Mulcaster (Spenser's schoolmaster when he presided over Merchant Taylors'), of whom Fuller approvingly records: "Atropos might be persuaded to pity as soon as he to pardon where he found just fault. The prayers of cockering mothers prevailed with him as much as the requests of indulgent fathers, rather increasing than mitigating his severity on their offending children." Milton's father, though by no means "cockering," would not have tolerated such discipline, and the passionate ardour with which Milton threw himself into the studious life of the school is the best proof that he was exempt from tyranny. "From the twelfth year of my age," he says, "I scarcely ever went from my lessons to bed before midnight." The ordinary school tasks cannot have exacted so much time from so gifted a boy: he must have read largely outside the regular curriculum, and probably he practised himself diligently in Latin verse. For this he would have the prompting, and perhaps the aid, of the younger Gill, assistant to his father, who, while at the University, had especially distinguished himself by his skill in versification. Gill must also have been a man of letters, affable and communicative, for Milton in after-years reminds him of their "almost constant conversations," and declares that he had never left his company without a manifest accession of literary knowledge. The Latin school exercises have perished, but two English productions of the period, paraphrases of Psalms executed at fifteen, remain to attest the boy's proficiency in contemporary English literature. Some of the unconscious borrowings attributed to him are probably mere coincidences, but there is still enough to evince acquaintance with "Sylvester, Spenser, Drummond, Drayton, Chaucer, Fairfax, and Buchanan." The literary merit of these versions seems to us to have been underrated. There may be no individual phrase beyond the compass of an apt and sensitive boy with a turn for verse-making; but the general tone is masculine and emphatic. There is not much to say, but what is said is delivered with a "large utterance," prophetic of the "os magna soniturum," and justifying his own report of his youthful promise:--"It was found that whether aught was imposed me by them that had the overlooking, or betaken to of mine own choice, in English or other tongue, prosing or versing, but chiefly by this latter, the style, by certain vital signs it had, was likely to live." Among the incidents of Milton's life at St. Paul's School should not be forgotten his friendship with Charles Diodati, the son of a Genevese physician settled in England, whose father had been exiled from Italy for his Protestantism. A friendship memorable not only as Milton's tenderest and his first, but as one which quickened his instinctive love of Italian literature, enhanced the pleasure, if it did not suggest the undertaking, of his Italian pilgrimage, and doubtless helped to inspire the execration which he launched in after years against the slayers of the Vaudois. The Italian language is named by him among three which, about the time of his migration to the University, he had added to the classical and the vernacular, the other two being French and Hebrew. It has been remarked, however, that his use of "Penseroso," incorrect both in orthography and signification, shows that prior to his visit to Italy he was unacquainted with the niceties of the language. He entered as "a lesser pensioner" at Christ's College, Cambridge, on February 12, 1625; the greatest poetic name in an University roll already including Spenser, and destined to include Dryden, Gray, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron, and Tennyson. Why Oxford was not preferred has been much debated. The father may have taken advice from the younger Gill, whose Liberalism had got him into trouble at that University. He may also have been unwilling to place his son in the neighbourhood of his estranged relatives. Shortly before Milton's matriculation his sister had married Mr. Edward Phillips, of the office of the Clerk of the Crown, now abolished, then charged with the issue of Parliamentary and judicial writs. From this marriage were to spring the young men who were to find an instructor in Milton, as he in one of them a biographer. The external aspect of Milton's Cambridge is probably not ill represented by Lyne's coloured map of half a century earlier, now exhibited in the King's Library at the British Museum. Piles of stately architecture, from King's College Chapel downward, tower all about, over narrow, tortuous, pebble-paved streets, bordered with diminutive, white-fronted, red-tiled dwellings, mere dolls' houses in comparison. So modest, however, is the chartographer's standard, that a flowery Latin inscription assures the men of Cambridge they need but divert Trumpington Brook into Clare Ditch to render their town as elegant as any in the universe. Sheep and swine perambulate the environs, and green spaces are interspersed among the colleges, sparsely set with trees, so pollarded as to justify Milton's taunt when in an ill-humour with his university:-- "Nuda nec arva placent, umbrasque negantia molles, Quam male Phoebicolis convenit ille locus!" His own college stands conspicuous at the meeting of three ways, aptly suggestive of Hecate and infernal things. Its spiritual and intellectual physiognomy, and that of the university in general, must be learned from the exhaustive pages of Professor Masson. A book unpublished when he wrote, Ball's life of Dr. John Preston, Master of Emmanuel, vestige of an entire continent of submerged Puritanism, also contributes much to the appreciation of the place and time. We can here but briefly characterize the University as an institution undergoing modification, rather by the decay of the old than by the intrusion of the new. The revolution by which mathematics became the principal instrument of culture was still to be deferred forty years. Milton, who tells us that he delighted in mathematics, might have been nearly ignorant of that subject if he pleased, and hardly could become proficient in it by the help of his Alma Mater. The scholastic philosophy, however, still reigned. But even here tradition was shaky and undermined; and in matters of discipline the rigid code which nominally governed the University was practically much relaxed. The teaching staff was respectable in character and ability, including many future bishops. But while the academical credentials of the tutors were unimpeachable, perhaps not one among them all could show a commission from the Spirit. No one then at Cambridge seems to have been in the least degree capable of arousing enthusiasm. It might not indeed have been easy for a Newman or a Green to captivate the independent soul of Milton, even at this susceptible period of his life; failing any approach to such external influence, he would be likely to leave Cambridge the same man as he entered it. Ere, indeed, he had completed a year's residence, his studies were interrupted by a temporary rupture with the University, probably attributable to his having been at first placed under an uncongenial tutor. William Chappell was an Arminian and a tool of Laud, who afterwards procured him preferment in Ireland, and, as Professor Masson judges from his treatise on homiletics, "a man of dry, meagre nature." His relations with such a pupil could not well be harmonious; and Aubrey charges him with unkindness, a vague accusation rendered tangible by the interlined gloss, "Whipt him." Hence the legend, so dear to Johnson, that Milton was the last man to be flogged at college. But Aubrey can hardly mean anything more than that Chappell on some occasion struck or beat his pupil, and this interpretation is supported by Milton's verses to Diodati, written in the spring of 1626, in which, while acknowledging that he had been directed to withdraw from Cambridge ("_nec dudum vetiti me laris angit amor_") he expresses his intention of speedily returning:-- "Stat quoque juncosas Cami remeare paludes, Atque iterum raucae murmur adire scholae." A short rustication would be just the notice the University would be likely to take of the conduct of a pupil who had been engaged in a scuffle with his tutor, in which the fault was not wholly or chiefly his. Formal corporal punishment would have rendered rustication unnecessary. That Milton was not thought wholly in the wrong appears from his not having been mulcted of a term's residence, his absence notwithstanding, and from the still more significant fact that Chappell lost his pupil. His successor was Nathaniel Tovey, in whom his patroness, the Countess of Bedford, had discerned "excellent talent." What Milton thought of him there is nothing to show. This temporary interruption of the smoothness of Milton's University life occurred, as has been seen, quite early in its course. Had it indeed implied a stigma upon him or the University, the blot would in either case have been effaced by the perfect regularity of his subsequent career. He went steadily through the academic course, which to attain the degree of Master of Arts, then required seven years' residence. He graduated as Bachelor at the proper time, March, 1629, and proceeded Master in July, 1632. His general relations with the University during the period may be gathered partly from his own account in after years, when perhaps he in some degree "confounded the present feelings with the past," partly from a remarkable passage in one of his academical exercises, fortunately preserved to us, the importance of which was first discerned by his editor and biographer Mitford. Professor Masson, however, ascertained the date, which is all important. We must picture Milton "affable, erect, and manly," as Wood describes him, speaking from a low pulpit in the hall of Christ's College, to an audience of various standing, from grave doctors to skittish undergraduates, with most of whom he was in daily intercourse. The term is the summer of 1628, about nine months before his graduation; the words were Latin, but we resort to the version of Professor Masson:-- "Then also there drew and invited me, in no ordinary degree, to undertake this part your very recently discovered graciousness to me. For when, some few months ago, I was about to perform an oratorical office before you, and was under the impression that any lucubrations whatsoever of mine would be the reverse of agreeable to you, and would have more merciful judges in Aeacus and Minos than almost any of you would prove, truly, beyond my fancy, beyond my hope if I had any, they were, as I heard, nay, as I myself felt, received with the not ordinary applause of all--yea, of those who at other times were, on account of disagreements in our studies, altogether of an angry and unfriendly spirit towards me. A generous mode of exercising rivalry this, and not unworthy of a royal breast, if, when friendship itself is wont often to misconstrue much that is blamelessly done, yet then sharp and hostile enmity did not grudge to interpret much that was perchance erroneous, and not a little, doubtless, that was unskilfully said, more clemently than I merited." It is sufficiently manifest from this that after two years' residence Milton had incurred much anger and unpopularity "on account of disagreements in our studies," which can scarcely mean anything else than his disapprobation of the University system. Notwithstanding this he had been received on a former occasion with unexpected favour, and on the present is able to say, "I triumph as one placed among the stars that so many men, eminent for erudition, and nearly the whole University have flocked hither." We have thus a miniature history of Milton's connection with his Alma Mater. We see him giving offence by the freedom of his strictures on the established practices, and misliking them so much as to write in 1642, "Which [University] as in the time of her better health and mine own younger judgment, I never greatly admired, so now much less." But, on the other hand, we see his intellectual revolt overlooked on account of his unimpeachable conduct and his brilliant talents, and himself selected to represent his college on an occasion when an able representative was indispensable. Cambridge had all imaginable complacency in the scholar, it was towards the reformer that she assumed, as afterwards towards Wordsworth, the attitude of "Blind Authority beating with his staff The child that would have led him." The University and Milton made a practical covenant like Frederick the Great and his subjects: she did what she pleased, and he thought what he pleased. In sharp contrast with his failure to influence her educational methods is "that more than ordinary respect which I found above any of my equals at the hands of those courteous and learned men, the Fellows of that College wherein I spent seven years; who, at my parting, after I had taken two degrees, as the manner is, signified many ways how much better it would content them that I would stay; as by many letters full of kindness and loving respect, both before that time and long after, I was assured of their singular good affection toward me." It may be added here that his comeliness and his chastity gained him the appellation of "Lady" from his fellow collegians: and the rooms at Christ's alleged to have been his are still pointed out as deserving the veneration of poets in any event; for whether Milton sacrificed to Apollo in them or not, it is certain that in them Wordsworth sacrificed to Bacchus. For Milton's own sake and ours his departure from the University was the best thing that could have happened to him. It saved him from wasting his time in instructing others when he ought to be instructing himself. From the point of view of advantage to the University, it is perhaps the most signal instance of the mischief of strictly clerical fellowships, now happily things of the past. Only one fellowship at Christ's was tenable by a layman: to continue in academical society, therefore, he must have taken orders. Such had been his intention when he first repaired to Cambridge, but the young man of twenty-three saw many things differently from the boy of sixteen. The service of God was still as much as ever the aim of his existence, but he now thought that not all service was church service. How far he had become consciously alienated from the Church's creed it is difficult to say. He was able, at all events, to subscribe the Articles on taking his degree, and no trace of Arianism appears in his writings for many years. As late as 1641 he speaks of "the tri-personal Deity." Curiously enough, indeed, the ecclesiastical freethought of the day was then almost entirely confined to moderate Royalists, Hales, Chillingworth, Falkland. But he must have disapproved of the Church's discipline, for he disapproved of all discipline. He would not put himself in the position of those Irish clergymen whom Strafford frightened out of their conscientious convictions by reminding them of their canonical obedience. This was undoubtedly what he meant when he afterwards wrote: "Perceiving that he who would take orders must subscribe slave." Speaking of himself a little further on as "Church-outed by the prelates," he implies that he would not have refused orders if he could have had them on his own terms. As regarded Milton personally this attitude was reasonable, he had a right to feel himself above the restraints of mere formularies; but he spoke unadvisedly if he meant to contend that a priest should be invested with the freedom of a Prophet. His words, however, must be taken in connection with the peculiar circumstances of the time. It was an era of High Church reaction, which was fast becoming a shameful persecution. The two moderate prelates, Abbot and Williams, had for years been in disgrace, and the Church was ruled by the well-meaning, but sour, despotic, meddlesome bigot whom wise King James long refused to make a bishop because "he could not see when matters were well." But if Laud was infatuated as a statesman, he was astute as a manager; he had the Church completely under his control, he was fast filling it with his partisans and creatures, he was working it for every end which Milton most abhorred, and was, in particular, allying it with a king who in 1632 had governed three years without a Parliament. The mere thought that he must call this hierarch his Father in God, the mere foresight that he might probably come into collision with him, and that if he did his must be the fate of the earthen vessel, would alone have sufficed to deter Milton from entering the Church. Even so resolute a spirit as Milton's could hardly contemplate the relinquishment of every definite calling in life without misgiving, and his friends could hardly let it pass without remonstrance. There exists in his hand the draft of a letter of reply to the verbal admonition of some well-wisher, to whom he evidently feels that he owes deference. His friend seems to have thought that he was yielding to the allurements of aimless study, neglecting to return as service what he had absorbed as knowledge. Milton pleads that his motive must be higher than the love of lettered ease, for that alone could never overcome the incentives that urge him to action. "Why should not all the hopes that forward youth and vanity are afledge with, together with gain, pride, and ambition, call me forward more powerfully than a poor, regardless, and unprofitable sin of curiosity should be able to withhold?" And what of the "desire of honour and repute and immortal fame seated in the breast of every true scholar?" That his correspondent may the better understand him, he encloses a "Petrarchean sonnet," recently composed, on his twenty-third birthday, not one of his best, but precious as the first of his frequent reckonings with himself:-- "How soon hath Time, the subtle thief of youth, Stolen on his wing my three-and-twentieth year! My hasting days fly on with full career; But my late spring no bud or blossom shew'th. Perhaps my semblance might deceive the truth, That I to manhood am arrived so near; And inward ripeness doth much less appear, Than some more timely-happy spirits indu'th. Yet be it less or more, or soon or slow, It shall be still in strictest measure even To that same lot, however mean or high, Towards which Time leads me, and the Will of Heaven. All is, if I have grace to use it so, As ever in my great Taskmaster's eye." The poetical temperament is especially liable to misgiving and despondency, and from this Milton evidently was not exempt. Yet he is the same Milton who proclaimed a quarter of a century afterwards-- "I argue not Against Heaven's hand or will, nor bate a jot Of heart or hope; but still bear up and steer Right onward." There is something very fine in the steady resolution with which, after so fully admitting to himself that his promise is yet unfulfilled, and that appearances are against him, he recurs to his purpose, frankly owning the while that the gift he craves is Heaven's, and his only the application. He had received a lesson against over-confidence in the failure of his solitary effort up to this time to achieve a work on a large scale. To the eighth and last stanza of his poem, "The Passion of Christ," is appended the note: "This subject the author finding to be above the years he had when he wrote it, and nothing satisfied with what was begun, left it unfinished." It nevertheless begins nobly, but soon deviates into conceits, bespeaking a fatigued imagination. The "Hymn on the Nativity," on the other hand, begins with two stanzas of far-fetched prettiness, and goes on ringing and thundering through strophes of ever-increasing grandeur, until the sweetness of Virgin and Child seem in danger of being swallowed up in the glory of Christianity; when suddenly, by an exquisite turn, the poet sinks back into his original key, and finally harmonizes his strain by the divine repose of concluding picture worthy of Correggio:-- "But see, the Virgin blest Hath laid the Babe to rest; Time is our tedious song should here have ending; Heaven's youngest-teemed star Hath fixed her polished car, Her sleeping Lord with handmaid lamp attending; And all about the courtly stable Bright harnessed Angels sit in order serviceable." In some degree this magnificent composition loses force in our day from its discordance with modern sentiment. We look upon religions as members of the same family, and are more interested in their resemblances than their antagonisms. Moloch and Dagon themselves appear no longer as incarnate fiends, but as the spiritual counterparts of antediluvian monsters; and Milton's treatment of the Olympian deities jars upon us who remember his obligations to them. If the most Hebrew of modern poets, he still owed more to Greece than to Palestine. How living a thing Greek mythology was to him from his earliest years appears from his college vacation exercise of 1628, where there are lines which, if one did not know to be Milton's, one would declare to be Keats's. Among his other compositions by the time of his quitting Cambridge are to be named the superb verses, "At a Solemn Music," perhaps the most perfect expression of his ideal of song; the pretty but over fanciful lines, "On a fair Infant dying of a cough;" and the famous panegyric of Shakespeare, a fancy made impressive by dignity and sonority of utterance. With such earnest of a true vocation, Milton betook himself to retirement at Horton, a village between Colnbrook and Datchet, in the south-eastern corner of Buckinghamshire, county of nightingales, where his father had settled himself on his retirement from business. This retreat of the elder Milton may be supposed to have taken place in 1632, for in that year he took his clerk into partnership, probably devolving the larger part of the business upon him. But it may have been earlier, for in 1626 Milton tells Diodati-- "Nos quoque lucus habet vicina consitus ulmo, Atque suburbani nobilis umbra loci." And in a college declamation, which cannot have been later than 1632, he "calls to witness the groves and rivers, and the beloved village elms, under which in the last past summer I remember having had supreme delight with the Muses, when I too, among rural scenes and remote forests, seemed as if I could have grown and vegetated through a hidden eternity." CHAPTER II. Doctor Johnson deemed "the knowledge of nature half the task of a poet," but not until he had written all his poetry did he repair to the Highlands. Milton allows natural science and the observation of the picturesque no place among the elements of a poetical self-education, and his practice differs entirely from that which would in our day be adopted by an aspirant happy in equal leisure. Such an one would probably have seen no inconsiderable portion of the globe ere he could resolve to bury himself in a tiny hamlet for five years. The poems which Milton composed at Horton owe so much of their beauty to his country residence as to convict him of error in attaching no more importance to the influences of scenery. But this very excellence suggests that the spell of scenery need not be exactly proportioned to its grandeur. The beauties of Horton are characterized by Professor Masson as those of "rich, teeming, verdurous flat, charming by its appearance of plenty, and by the goodly show of wood along the fields and pastures, in the nooks where the houses nestle, and everywhere in all directions to the sky-bound verge of the landscape." He also notices "the canal-like abundance and distribution of water. There are rivulets brimming through the meadows among rushes and water-plants; and by the very sides of the ways, in lieu of ditches, there are slow runnels, in which one can see the minnows swimming." The distant keep of Windsor, "bosomed high in tufted trees," is the only visible object that appeals to the imagination, or speaks of anything outside of rural peace and contentment. Milton's house, as Todd was informed by the vicar of the parish, stood till about 1798. If so, however, it is very remarkable that the writer of an account of Horton in the _Gentleman's Magazine_ for August, 1791, who speaks of Milton with veneration, and transcribes his mother's epitaph, does not allude to the existence of his house. Its site is traditionally identified with that of Berkyn Manor, near the church, and an old pigeon-house is asserted to be a remnant of the original building. The elder Milton was no doubt merely the tenant; his landlord is said to have been the Earl of Bridgewater, but as there is no evidence of the Earl having possessed property in Horton, the statement may be merely an inference from Milton's poetical connection with the family. If not Bridgewater, the landlord was probably Bulstrode, the lord of the manor, and chief personage in the village. The Miltons still kept a footing in the metropolis. Christopher Milton, on his admission to the Inner Temple in September, 1632, is described as second son of John Milton of London, and subsequent legal proceedings disclose that the father, with the aid of his partner, was still doing business as a scrivener in 1637. It may be guessed that the veteran cit would not be sorry to find himself occasionally back in town. What with social exclusiveness, political and religious controversy, and uncongeniality of tastes, the Miltons' country circle of acquaintance was probably narrow. After five years of country life the younger Milton at all events thought seriously of taking refuge in an Inn of Court, "wherever there is a pleasant and shady walk," and tells Diodati, "Where I am now I live obscurely and in a cramped manner." He had only just made the acquaintance of his distinguished neighbour, Sir Henry Wotton, Provost of Eton, by the beginning of 1638, though it appears that he was previously acquainted with John Hales. Milton's five years at Horton were nevertheless the happiest of his life. It must have been an unspeakable relief to him to be at length emancipated from compulsory exercises, and to build up his mind without nod or beck from any quarter. For these blessings he was chiefly indebted to his father, whose industry and prudence had procured his independence and his rural retirement, and whose tender indulgence and noble confidence dispensed him from what most would have deemed the reasonable condition that he should at least earn his own living. "I will not," he exclaims to his father, "praise thee for thy fulfilment of the ordinary duties of a parent, my debt is heavier (_me poscunt majora_). Thou hast neither made me a merchant nor a barrister":-- "Neque enim, pater, ire jubebas Qua via lata patet, qua pronior area lucri, Certaque condendi fulget spes aurea nummi: Nec rapis ad leges, male custoditaque gentis Jura, nec insulsis damnas clamoribus aures." The stroke at the subserviency of the lawyers to the Crown (_male custodita jura gentis_) would be appreciated by the elder Milton, nor can we doubt that the old Puritan fully approved his son's resilience from a church denied by Arminianism and prelacy. He would not so easily understand the dedication of a life to poetry, and the poem from which the above citation is taken seems to have been partly composed to smooth his repugnance away. He was soon to have stronger proofs that his son had not mistaken his vocation: it would be pleasant to be assured that the old man was capable of valuing "Comus" and "Lycidas" at their worth. The circumstances under which "Comus" was produced, and its subsequent publication with the extorted consent of the author, show that Milton did not wholly want encouragement and sympathy. The insertion of his lines on Shakespeare in the Second Folio (1632) also denotes some reputation as a wit. In the main, however, remote from urban circles and literary cliques, with few correspondents and no second self in sweetheart or friend, he must have led a solitary intellectual life, alone with his great ambition, and probably pitied by his acquaintance. "The world," says Emerson to the Poet, "is full of renunciations and apprenticeships, and this is thine; thou must pass for a fool and a churl for a long season. This is the screen and sheath in which Pan has protected his well-beloved flower." The special nature of Milton's studies cannot now be exactly ascertained. Of his manner of studying he informs Diodati, "No delay, no rest, no care or thought almost of anything holds me aside until I reach the end I am making for, and round off, as it were, some great period of my studies." Of his object he says: "God has instilled into me, at all events, a vehement love of the beautiful. Not with so much labour is Ceres said to have sought Proserpine as I am wont day and night to seek for the idea of the beautiful through all the forms and faces of things, and to follow it leading me on as with certain assured traces." We may be sure that he read the classics of all the languages which he understood. His copies of Euripides, Pindar, Aratus, and Lycophron, are, or have been recently, extant, with marginal notes, proving that he weighed what he read. A commonplace book contains copious extracts from historians, and he tells Diodati that he has read Greek history to the fall of Constantinople. He speaks of having occasionally repaired to London for instruction in mathematics and music. His own programme, promulgated eight years later, but without doubt perfectly appropriate to his Horton period, names before all else--"Devout prayer to the Holy Spirit, that can enrich with all utterance and knowledge, and send out His Seraphim with the hallowed fire of His altar, to touch and purify the lips of whom He pleases. To this must be added select reading, steady observation, and insight into all seemly and generous arts and affairs, till which in some measure be compassed, I refuse not to sustain this expectation." This is not the ideal of a mere scholar, as Mark Paulson thinks he at one time was, and would wish him to have remained. "Affairs" are placed fully on a level with "arts." Milton was kept from politics in his youth, not by any notion of their incompatibility with poetry; but by the more cogent arguments at their command "under whose inquisitious and tyrannical duncery no free and splendid wit can flourish." Milton's poetical development is, in many respects, exceptional. Most poets would no doubt, in theory, agree with Landor, "febriculis non indicari vires, impatientiam ab ignorantia non differre," but their faith will not be proved by lack of works, as Landor's precept and example require. He, who like Milton lisps in numbers usually sings freely in adolescence; he who is really visited by a true inspiration generally depends on mood rather than on circumstance. Milton, on the other hand, until fairly embarked on his great epic, was comparatively an unproductive, and literally an occasional poet. Most of his pieces, whether English or Latin, owe their existence to some impulse from without: "Comus" to the solicitation of a patron, "Lycidas" to the death of a friend. The "Allegro" and the "Penseroso" seem almost the only two written at the urgency of an internal impulse; and perhaps, if we knew their history, we should discover that they too were prompted by extraneous suggestion or provoked into being by accident. Such is the way with Court poets like Dryden and Claudian; it is unlike the usual procedure of Milton's spiritual kindred. Byron, Shelley, Tennyson, write incessantly; whatever care they may bestow upon composition, the impulse to produce is never absent. With Milton it is commonly dormant or ineffectual; he is always studying, but the fertility of his mind bears no apparent proportion to the pains devoted to its cultivation. He is not, like Wordsworth, labouring at a great work whose secret progress fills him with a majestic confidence; or, like Coleridge, dreaming of works which he lacks the energy to undertake; or, save once, does he seem to have felt with Keats:-- "Fears that I may cease to be Before my pen has gleaned my teeming brain, Before that books, in high piled charactery, Hold in rich garners the full ripened grain." He neither writes nor wishes to write; he simply studies, piling up the wood on the altar, and conscious of the power to call down fire from Heaven when he will. There is something sublime in this assured confidence; yet its wisdom is less evident than its grandeur. "No man," says Shelley, "can say, 'I will compose poetry.'" If he cannot say this of himself to-day, still less can he say it of himself to-morrow. He cannot tell whether the illusions of youth will forsake him wholly; whether the joy of creation will cease to thrill; what unpropitious blight he may encounter in an enemy or a creditor, or harbour in an uncongenial mate. Milton, no doubt, entirely meant what he said when he told Diodati: "I am letting my wings grow and preparing to fly, but my Pegasus has not yet feathers enough to soar aloft in the fields of air." But the danger of this protracted preparation was shown by his narrow escape from poetical shipwreck when the duty of the patriot became paramount to that of the poet. The Civil War confounded his anticipations of leisurely composition, and but for the disguised blessing of his blindness, the mountain of his attainment might have been Pisgah rather than Parnassus. It is in keeping with the infrequency of Milton's moods of overmastering inspiration, and the strength of will which enabled him to write steadily or abstain from writing at all, that his early compositions should be, in general, so much more correct than those of other English poets of the first rank. The childish bombast of "Titus Andronicus," the commonplace of Wordsworth, the frequent inanity of the youthful Coleridge and the youthful Byron, Shelley's extravagance, Keats's cockneyism, Tennyson's mawkishness, find no counterpart in Milton's early compositions. All these great writers, though the span of some of them was but short, lived long enough to blush for much of what they had in the days of their ignorance taken for poetry. The mature Milton had no cause to be ashamed of anything written by the immature Milton, reasonable allowance being made for the inevitable infection of contemporary false taste. As a general rule, the youthful exuberance of a Shakespeare would be a better sign; faults, no less than beauties, often indicate the richness of the soil. But Milton was born to confute established opinions. Among other divergencies from usage, he was at this time a rare example of an English poet whose faculty was, in large measure, to be estimated by his essays in Latin verse. England had up to this time produced no distinguished Latin poet, though Scotland had: and had Milton's Latin poems been accessible, they would certainly have occupied a larger place in the estimation of his contemporaries than his English compositions. Even now they contribute no trifling addition to his fame, though they cannot, even as exercises, be placed in the highest rank. There are two roads to excellence in Latin verse--to write it as a scholar, or to write it as a Roman. England has once, and only once, produced a poet so entirely imbued with the Roman spirit that Latin seemed to come to him like the language of some prior state of existence, rather remembered than learned. Landor's Latin verse is hence greatly superior to Milton's, not, perhaps, in scholarly elegance, but in absolute vitality. It would be poor praise to commend it for fidelity to the antique, for it is the antique. Milton stands at the head of the numerous class who, not being actually born Romans, have all but made themselves so. "With a great sum obtained I this freedom." His Latin compositions are delightful, but precisely from the qualities least characteristic of his genius as an English poet. Sublimity and imagination are infrequent; what we have most commonly to admire are grace, ease, polish, and felicitous phrases rather concise in expression than weighty with matter. Of these merits the elegies to his friend Diodati, and the lines addressed to his father and to Manso, are admirable examples. The "Epitaphium Damonis" is in a higher strain, and we shall have to recur to it. Except for his formal incorporation with the University of Oxford, by proceeding M.A. there in 1635, and the death of his mother on April 3, 1637, Milton's life during his residence at Horton, as known to us, is entirely in his writings. These comprise the "Sonnet to the Nightingale," "L'Allegro," "Il Penseroso," all probably written in 1633; "Arcades," probably, and "Comus" certainly written in 1634; "Lycidas" in 1637. The first three only are, or seem to be, spontaneous overflowings of the poetic mind: the others are composed in response to external invitations, and in two instances it is these which stand highest in poetic desert. Before entering on any criticism, it will be convenient to state the originating circumstances of each piece. "Arcades" and "Comus" both owe their existence to the musician Henry Lawes, unless the elder Milton's tenancy of his house from the Earl of Bridgewater can be accepted as a fact. Both were written for the Bridgewater family, and if Milton felt no special devotion to this house, his only motive could have been to aid the musical performance of his friend Henry Lawes, whose music is discommended by Burney, but who, Milton declares: "First taught our English music how to span Words with just note and accent." Masques were then the order of the day, especially after the splendid exhibition of the Inns of Court in honour of the King and Queen, February, 1634. Lawes, as a Court musician, took a leading part in this representation, and became in request on similar occasions. The person intended to be honoured by the "Arcades" was the dowager Countess of Derby, mother-in-law of the Earl of Bridgewater, whose father, Lord Keeper Egerton, she had married in 1600. The aged lady, to whom more than forty years before Spenser had dedicated his "Teares of the Muses," and who had ever since been an object of poetic flattery and homage, lived at Harefield, about four miles from Uxbridge; and there the "Arcades" were exhibited, probably in 1634. Milton's melodious verses were only one feature in a more ample entertainment. That they pleased we may be sure, for we find him shortly afterwards engaged on a similar undertaking of much greater importance, commissioned by the Bridgewater family. In those days Milton had no more of the Puritanic aversion to the theatre-- "Then to the well-trod stage anon, If Jonson's learned sock be on, Or sweetest Shakespeare, Fancy's child, Warble his native wood-notes wild," than to the pomps and solemnities of cathedral ritual:-- "But let my due feet never fail To walk the studious cloisters pale, And love the high-embowed roof, With antique pillars massy proof, And storied windows richly dight, Casting a dim religious light: There let the pealing organ blow, To the full-voic'd quire below, In service high and anthems clear, As may with sweetness through mine ear Dissolve me into ecstacies, And bring all heaven before mine eyes." He therefore readily fell in with Lawes's proposal to write a masque to celebrate Lord Bridgewater's assumption of the Lord Presidency of the Welsh Marches. The Earl had entered upon the office in October, 1633, and "Comus" was written some time between this and the following September. Singular coincidences frequently linked Milton's fate with the north-west Midlands, from which his grandmother's family and his brother-in-law and his third wife sprung, whither the latter retired, where his friend Diodati lived, and his friend King died, and where now the greatest of his early works was to be represented in the time-hallowed precincts of Ludlow Castle, where it was performed on Michaelmas night, in 1634. If, as we should like to think, he was himself present, the scene must have enriched his memory and his mind. The castle--in which Prince Arthur had spent with his Spanish bride the six months of life which alone remained to him, in which eighteen years before the performance Charles the First had been installed Prince of Wales with extraordinary magnificence, and which, curiously enough, was to be the residence of the Cavalier poet, Butler--would be a place of resort for English tourists, if it adorned any country but their own. The dismantled keep is still an imposing object, lowering from a steep hill around whose base the curving Teme alternately boils and gushes with tumultuous speed. The scene within must have realized the lines in the "Allegro ": "Pomp, and feast, and revelry, Mask and antique pageantry, Where throngs of knights and barons bold, In weeds of peace high triumphs hold, With store of ladies, whose bright eyes Rain influence." Lawes himself acted the attendant Spirit, the Lady and the Brothers were performed by Lord Bridgewater's youthful children, whose own nocturnal bewilderment in Haywood Forest, could we trust a tradition, doubted by the critics, but supported by the choice of the neighbourhood of Severn as the scene of the drama, had suggested his theme to Milton. He is evidently indebted for many incidents and ideas to Peele's "Old Wives' Tale," and the "Comus" of Erycius Puteanus; but there is little morality in the former production and little fancy in the latter. The peculiar blending of the highest morality with the noblest imagination is as much Milton's own as the incomparable diction. "I," wrote Sir Henry Wootton on receiving a copy of the anonymous edition printed by Lawes in 1637, "should much commend the tragical part if the lyrical did not ravish me with a certain Dorique delicacy in your songs and odes, whereunto I must plainly confess to have seen yet nothing parallel in our language." "Although not openly acknowledged by the author," says Lawes in his apology for printing prefixed to the poem, "it is a legitimate offspring, so lovely and so much desired that the often copying of it hath tired my pen to give my several friends satisfaction, and brought me to a necessity of producing it to the public view." The publication is anonymous, and bears no mark of Milton's participation except a motto, which none but the author could have selected, intimating a fear that publication is premature. The title is simply "A Maske presented at Ludlow Castle," nor did the piece receive the name of "Comus" until after Milton's death. It has been remarked that one of the most characteristic traits of Milton's genius, until he laid hand to "Paradise Lost," is the dependence of his activity upon promptings from without. "Comus" once off his mind, he gives no sign of poetical life for three years, nor would have given any then but for the inaccurate chart or unskilful seamanship which proved fatal to his friend Edward King, August 10, 1637. King, a Fellow of Milton's college, had left Chester, on a voyage to Ireland, in the stillest summer weather:-- "The air was calm, and on the level brine Sleek Panope and all her sisters played." Suddenly the vessel struck on a rock, foundered, and all on board perished except some few who escaped in a boat. Of King it was reported that he refused to save himself, and sank to the abyss with hands folded in prayer. Great sympathy was excited among his friends at Cambridge, enough at least to evoke a volume of thirty-six elegies in various languages, but not enough to inspire any of the contributors, except Milton, with a poetical thought, while many are so ridiculous that quotation would be an affront to King's memory. But the thirty-sixth is "Lycidas." The original manuscript remains, and is dated in November. Of the elegy's relation to Milton's biography it may be said that it sums up the two influences which had been chiefly moulding his mind of late years, the natural influences of which he had been the passive recipient during his residence at Horton, and the political and theological passion with which he was becoming more and more inspired by the circumstances of the time. By 1637 the country had been eight years without a parliament, and the persecution of Puritans had attained its acme. In that year Laud's new Episcopalian service book was forced, or rather was attempted to be forced, upon Scotland; Prynne lost his ears; and Bishop Williams was fined eighteen thousand pounds and ordered to be imprisoned during the King's pleasure. Hence the striking, if incongruous, introduction of "The pilot of the Galilean lake," to bewail, in the character of a shepherd, the drowned swain in conjunction with Triton, Hippotades, and Camus. "The author," wrote Milton afterwards, "by occasion, foretells the ruin of the corrupted clergy, then in their height." It was a Parthian dart, for the volume was printed at the University Press in 1638, probably a little before his departure for Italy. The "Penseroso" and the "Allegro," notwithstanding that each piece is the antithesis of the other, are complementary rather than contrary, and may be, in a sense, regarded as one poem, whose theme is the praise of the reasonable life. It resembles one of those pictures in which the effect is gained by contrasted masses of light and shade, but each is more nicely mellowed and interfused with the qualities of the other than it lies within the resources of pictorial skill to effect. Mirth has an undertone of gravity, and melancholy of cheerfulness. There is no antagonism between the states of mind depicted; and no rational lover, whether of contemplation or of recreation, would find any difficulty in combining the two. The limpidity of the diction is even more striking than its beauty. Never were ideas of such dignity embodied in verse so easy and familiar, and with such apparent absence of effort. The landscape-painting is that of the seventeenth century, absolutely true in broad effects, sometimes ill-defined and even inaccurate in minute details. Some of these blemishes are terrible in nineteenth-century eyes, accustomed to the photography of our Brownings and Patmores. Milton would probably have made light of them, and perhaps we owe him some thanks for thus practically refuting the heresy that inspiration implies infallibility. Yet the poetry of his blindness abounds with proof that he had made excellent use of his eyes while he had them, and no part of his poetry wants instances of subtle and delicate observation worthy of the most scrutinizing modern:-- "Thee, chantress, oft the woods among, I woo, to hear thy evensong; And, missing thee, I walk unseen On the dry, smooth-shaven green." "The song of the nightingale," remarks Peacock, "ceases about the time the grass is mown." The charm, however, is less in such detached beauties, however exquisite, than in the condensed opulence--"every epithet a text for a canto," says Macaulay--and in the general impression of "plain living and high thinking," pursued in the midst of every charm of nature and every refinement of culture, combining the ideal of Horton with the ideal of Cambridge. "Lycidas" is far more boldly conventional, not merely in the treatment of landscape, but in the general conception and machinery. An initial effort of the imagination is required to feel with the poet; it is not wonderful that no such wing bore up the solid Johnson. Talk of Milton and his fellow-collegian as shepherds! "We know that they never drove afield, and that they had no flocks to batten." There is, in fact, according to Johnson, neither nature nor truth nor art nor pathos in the poem, for all these things are inconsistent with the introduction of a shepherd of souls in the character of a shepherd of sheep. A nineteenth-century reader, it may be hoped, finds no more difficulty in idealizing Edward King as a shepherd than in personifying the ocean calm as "sleek Panope and all her sisters," which, to be sure, may have been a trouble to Johnson. If, however, Johnson is deplorably prosaic, neither can we agree with Pattison that "in 'Lycidas' we have reached the high-water mark of English Poesy and of Milton's own production." Its innumerable beauties are rather exquisite than magnificent. It is an elegy, and cannot, therefore, rank as high as an equally consummate example of epic, lyric, or dramatic art. Even as elegy it is surpassed by the other great English masterpiece, "Adonais," in fire and grandeur. There is no incongruity in "Adonais" like the introduction of "the pilot of the Galilean lake"; its invective and indignation pour naturally out of the subject; their expression is not, as in "Lycidas," a splendid excrescence. There is no such example of sustained eloquence in "Lycidas" as the seven concluding stanzas of "Adonais" beginning, "Go thou to Rome." But the balance is redressed by the fact that the beauties of "Adonais" are the inimitable. Shelley's eloquence is even too splendid for elegy. It wants the dainty thrills and tremors of subtle versification, and the witcheries of verbal magic in which "Lycidas" is so rich--"the opening eyelids of the morn;" "smooth-sliding Mincius, crowned with vocal reeds;" Camus's garment, "inwrought with figures dim;" "the great vision of the guarded mount;" "the tender stops of various quills;" "with eager thought warbling his Doric lay." It will be noticed that these exquisite phrases have little to do with Lycidas himself, and it is a fact not to be ignored, that though Milton and Shelley doubtless felt more deeply than Dryden when he composed his scarcely inferior threnody on Anne Killegrew, whom he had never seen, both might have found subjects of grief that touched them more nearly. Shelley tells us frankly that "in another's woe he wept his own." We cannot doubt of whom Milton was thinking when he wrote: "Fame is the spur that the clear spirit doth raise, (That last infirmity of noble mind) To scorn delights, and live laborious days; But the fair guerdon when we hope to find, And think to burst out into sudden blaze, Comes the blind Fury with the abhorred shears, And slits the thin-spun life. 'But not the praise,' Phoebus replied, and touched my trembling ears; 'Fame is no plant that grows on mortal soil, Nor in the glistering foil Set off to the world, nor in broad rumour lies; But lives and spreads aloft by those pure eyes, And perfect witness of all-judging Jove; As he pronounces lastly on each deed, much fame in heaven expect thy meed.'" "Comus," the richest fruit of Milton's early genius, is the epitome of the man at the age at which he wrote it. It bespeaks the scholar and idealist, whose sacred enthusiasm is in some danger of contracting a taint of pedantry for want of acquaintance with men and affairs. The Elder Brother is a prig, and his dialogues with his junior reveal the same solemn insensibility to the humorous which characterizes the kindred genius of Wordsworth, and would have provoked the kindly smile of Shakespeare. It is singular to find the inevitable flaw of "Paradise Lost" prefigured here, and the wicked enchanter made the real hero of the piece. These defects are interesting, because they represent the nature of Milton as it was then, noble and disinterested to the height of imagination, but self-assertive, unmellowed, angular. They disappear entirely when he expatiates in the regions of exalted fancy, as in the introductory discourse of the Spirit, and the invocation to Sabrina. They recur when he moralizes; and his morality is too interwoven with the texture of his piece to be other than obtrusive. He fatigues with virtue, as Lucan fatigues with liberty; in both instances the scarcely avoidable error of a young preacher. What glorious morality it is no one need be told; nor is there any poem in the language where beauties of thought, diction, and description spring up more thickly than in "Comus." No drama out of Shakespeare has furnished such a number of the noblest familiar quotations. It is, indeed, true that many of these jewels are fetched from the mines of other poets: great as Milton's obligations, to Nature were, his obligations to books were greater. But he has made all his own by the alchemy of his genius, and borrows little but to improve. The most remarkable coincidence is with a piece certainly unknown to him--Calderon's "Magico Prodigioso," which was first acted in 1637, the year of the publication of "Comus," a great year in the history of the drama, for the "Cid" appeared in it also. The similarity of the situations of Justina tempted by the Demon, and the Lady in the power of Comus, has naturally begotten a like train of thought in both poets. "_Comus._ Nay, Lady, sit; if I but wave this wand, Your nerves are all chained up in alabaster, And you a statue, or, as Daphne was, Root-bound, that fled Apollo. _Lady._ Fool, do not boast Thou can'st not touch the freedom of my mind With all thy charms, although this corporal rind Thou hast immanacled, while Heaven sees good." "_Justina._ Thought is not in my power, but action is. I will not move my foot to follow thee. _Demon._ But a far mightier wisdom than thine own Exerts itself within thee, with such power Compelling thee to that which it inclines That it shall force thy step; how wilt thou then Resist, Justina? _Justina._ By my free will. _Demon._ I Must force thy will. _Justina._ It is invincible. It were not free if thou had'st power upon it." It must be admitted that where the Spaniard and the Englishman come directly into competition the former excels. The dispute between the Lady and Comus may be, as Johnson says it is, "the most animating and affecting scene in the drama;" but, tried by the dramatic test which Calderon bears so well, it is below the exigencies and the possibilities of the subject. Nor does the poetry here, quite so abundantly as in the other scenes in this unrivalled "suite of speeches," atone for the deficiencies of the play. It is a just remark of Pattison's that "in a mind of the consistent texture of Milton's, motives are secretly influential before they emerge in consciousness." In September, 1637, Milton had complained to Diodati of his cramped situation in the country, and talked of taking chambers in London. Within a few months we find this vague project matured into a settled scheme of foreign travel. One tie to home had been severed by the death of his mother in the preceding April; and his father was to find another prop of his old age in his second son, Christopher, about to marry and reside with him. "Lycidas" had appeared meanwhile, or was to appear, and its bold denunciation of the Romanizing clergy might well offend the ruling powers. The atmosphere at home was, at all events, difficult breathing for an impotent patriot; and Milton may have come to see what we so clearly see in "Comus," that his asperities and limitations needed contact with the world. Why speak of the charms of Italy, in themselves sufficient allurement to a poet and scholar? His father, trustful and unselfish as of old, found the considerable sum requisite for a prolonged foreign tour; and in April, 1638, Milton, provided with excellent introductions from Sir Henry Wootton and others, seeks the enrichment and renovation of his genius in Italy:-- "And tricks his beams, and with new-spangled ore Flames in the forehead of the morning sky." CHAPTER III. Four times has a great English poet taken up his abode in "the paradise of exiles," and remained there until deeply imbued with the spirit of the land. The Italian residence of Byron and Shelley, of Landor and Browning, has infused into English literature a new element which has mingled with its inmost essence. Milton's brief visit could not be of equal moment. Italian letters had already done their utmost for him; and he did not stay long enough to master the secret of Italian life. A real enthusiasm for Italy's classical associations is indicated by his original purpose of extending his travels to Greece, an enterprise at that period requiring no little disdain of hardship and peril. But it would have been an anachronism if he could have contemplated the comprehensive and scientific scheme of self-culture by Italian influences of every kind which, a hundred and fifty years later, was conceived and executed by Goethe. At the time of Milton's visit Italian letters and arts sloped midway in their descent from the Renaissance to the hideous but humorous rococo so graphically described by Vernon Lee. Free thought had perished along with free institutions in the preceding century, and as a consequence, though the physical sciences still numbered successful cultivators, originality of mind was all but extinct. Things, nevertheless, wore a gayer aspect than of late. The very completeness of the triumph of secular and spiritual despotism had made them less suspicious, surly, and austere. Spanish power was visibly decaying. The long line of _zelanti_ Popes had come to an end; and it was thought that if the bosom of the actual incumbent could be scrutinized, no little complacency in Swedish victories over the Faith's defenders would be found. An atmosphere of toleration was diffusing itself, bigotry was imperceptibly getting old-fashioned, the most illustrious victim of the Inquisition was to be well-nigh the last. If the noble and the serious could not be permitted, there was no ban upon the amiable and the frivolous: never had the land been so full of petty rhymesters, antiquarian triflers, and gregarious literati, banded to play at authorship in academies, like the seven Swabians leagued to kill the hare. For the rest, the Italy of Milton's day, its superstition and its scepticism, and the sophistry that strove to make the two as one; its monks and its bravoes; its processions and its pantomimes; its cult of the Passion and its cult of Paganism; the opulence of its past and the impotence of its present; will be found depicted by sympathetic genius in the second volume of "John Inglesant." Milton arrived in Paris about the end of April or beginning of May. Of his short stay there it is only known that he was received with distinction by the English Ambassador, Lord Scudamore, and owed to him an introduction to one of the greatest men in Europe, Hugo Grotius, then residing at Paris as envoy from Christina of Sweden. Travelling by way of Nice, Genoa, Leghorn, and Pisa, he arrived about the beginning of August at Florence; where, probably by the aid of good recommendations, he "immediately contracted the acquaintance of many noble and learned," and doubtless found, with the author of "John Inglesant," that "nothing can be more delightful than the first few days of life in Italy in the company of polished and congenial men." The Florentine academies, he implies answered one of the purposes of modern clubs, and enabled the traveller to multiply one good introduction into many. He especially mentions Gaddi, Dati, Frescobaldi, Coltellini, Bonmattei, Chimentelli, and Francini, of all of whom a full account will be found in Masson. Two of them, Dati and Francini, have linked their names with Milton's by their encomiums on him inserted in his works. The key-note of these surprising productions is struck by Francini when he remarks that the heroes of England are accounted in Italy superhuman. If this is so, Dati may be justified in comparing a young man on his first and last foreign tour to the travelled Ulysses; and Francini in declaring that Thames rivals Helicon in virtue of Milton's Latin poems, which alone the panegyrist could read. Truly, as Smollett says, Italian is the language of compliments. If ludicrous, however, the flattery is not nauseous, for it is not wholly insincere. Amid all conventional exaggerations there is an under-note of genuine feeling, showing that the writers really had received a deep impression from Milton, deeper than they could well explain or understand. The bow drawn at a venture did not miss the mark, but it is a curious reflection that those of his performances which would really have justified their utmost enthusiasm were hieroglyphical to them. Such of his literary exercises as they could understand consisted, he says, of "some trifles which I had in memory composed at under twenty or thereabout; and other things which I had shifted, in scarcity of books and conveniences, to patch up among them." The former class of compositions may no doubt be partly identified with his college declamations and Latin verses. What the "things patched up among them" may have been is unknown. It is curious enough that his acquaintance with the Italian literati should have been the means of preserving one of their own compositions, the "Tina" of Antonio Malatesti, a series of fifty sonnets on a mistress, sent to him in manuscript by the author, with a dedication to the _illustrissimo signore et padrone osservatissimo_. The pieces were not of a kind to be approved by the laureate of chastity, and annoyance at the implied slur upon his morals may account for his omission of Malatesti from the list of his Italian acquaintance. He carried the MS. home, nevertheless, and a copy of it, finding its way back to Italy in the eighteenth century, restored Malatesti's fifty indiscretions to the Italian Parnassus. That his intercourse with men of culture involved freedom of another sort we learn from himself. "I have sate among their learned men," he says, "and been counted happy to be born in such a place of philosophic freedom as they supposed England was, while they themselves did nothing but bemoan the servile condition into which learning amongst them was brought, that this was it which had damped the glory of Italian wits; that nothing had been written there now these many years but flattery and fustian." Italy had never acquiesced in her degradation, though for a century and a half to come she could only protest in such conventicles as those frequented by Milton. The very type and emblem of the free spirit of Italy, crushed but not conquered, then inhabited Florence in the person of "the starry Galileo," lately released from confinement at Arcetri, and allowed to dwell in the city under such severe restraint of the Inquisition that no Protestant should have been able to gain access to him. It may not have been until Milton's second visit in March, 1639, when Galileo had returned to his villa, that the English stranger stood unseen before him. The meeting between the two great blind men of their century is one of the most picturesque in history; it would have been more pathetic still if Galileo could have known that his name would be written in "Paradise Lost," or Milton could have foreseen that within thirteen years he too would see only with the inner eye, but that the calamity which disabled the astronomer would restore inspiration to the poet. How deeply he was impressed appears, not merely from the famous comparison of Satan's shield to the moon enlarged in "the Tuscan artist's optic glass," but by the ventilation in the fourth and eighth books of "Paradise Lost," of the points at issue between Ptolemy and Copernicus:-- "Whether the sun predominant in heaven Rise on the earth, or earth rise on the sun, He from the east his flaming road begin, Or she from west her silent course advance With inoffensive pace, that spinning sleeps On her soft axle, while she paces even, And bears thee soft with the smooth air along." It would be interesting to know if Milton's Florentine acquaintance included that romantic adventurer, Robert Dudley, strange prototype of Shelley in face and fortune, whom Lord Herbert of Cherbury and Dean Bargrave encountered at Florence, but whom Milton does not mention. The next stage in his pilgrimage was the Eternal City, by this time resigned to live upon its past. The revenues of which Protestant revolt had deprived it were compensated by the voluntary contributions of the lovers of antiquity and art; and it had become under Paul V. one of the centres of European finance. Recent Popes had added splendid architectural embellishments, and the tendency to secular display was well represented by Urban VIII., a great gatherer and a great dispenser of wealth, an accomplished amateur in many arts, and surrounded by a tribe of nephews, inordinately enriched by their indulgent uncle. Milton arrived early in October. The most vivid trace of his visit is his presence at a magnificent concert given by Cardinal Barberini, who, "himself waiting at the doors, and seeking me out in so great a crowd, nay, almost laying hold of me by the hand, admitted me within in a truly most honourable manner." There he heard the singer, Leonora Baroni, to whom he inscribed three Latin epigrams, omitted from the fifty-six compositions in honour of her published in the following year. But we may see her as he saw her in the frontispiece, reproduced in Ademollo's monograph upon her. The face is full of sensibility, but not handsome. She lived to be a great lady, and if any one spoke of her artist days she would say, _Chi le ricercava queste memorie?_ Next to hers, the name most entwined with Milton's Roman residence is that of Lucas Holstenius, a librarian of the Vatican. Milton can have had little respect for a man who had changed his religion to become the dependant of Cardinal Barberini, but Holstenius's obliging reception of him extorted his gratitude, expressed in an eloquent letter. Of the venerable ruins and masterpieces of ancient and modern art which have inspired so many immortal compositions, Milton tells us nothing, and but one allusion to them is discoverable in his writings. The study of antiquity, as distinguished from that of classical authors, was not yet a living element in European culture: there is also truth in Coleridge's observation that music always had a greater attraction for Milton than plastic art. After two months' stay in Rome, Milton proceeded to Naples, whence, after two months' residence, he was recalled by tidings of the impending troubles at home, just as he was about to extend his travels to Sicily and Greece. The only name associated with his at Naples is that of the Marquis Manso, then passing his seventy-ninth year with the halo of reverence due to a veteran who fifty years ago had soothed and shielded Tasso, and since had protected Marini. He now entertained Milton with equal kindness, little dreaming that in return for hospitality he was receiving immortality. Milton celebrated his desert as the friend of poets, in a Latin poem of singular elegance, praying for a like guardian of his own fame, in lines which should never be absent from the memory of his biographers. He also unfolded the project which he then cherished of an epic on King Arthur, and assured Manso that Britain was not wholly barbarous, for the Druids were really very considerable poets. He is silent on Chaucer and Shakespeare. Manso requited the eulogium with an epigram and two richly-wrought cups, and told Milton that he would have shown him more observance still if he could have abstained from religious controversy. Milton had not acted on Sir Henry Wootton's advice to him, _il volto sciolto, i pensieri stretti_. "I had made this resolution with myself," he says, "not of my own accord to introduce conversation about religion; but, if interrogated respecting the faith, whatsoever I should suffer, to dissemble nothing." To this resolution he adhered, he says, during his second two months' visit to Rome, notwithstanding threats of Jesuit molestation, which probably were not serious. At Florence his friends received him with no less warmth than if they had been his countrymen, and with them he spent another two months. His way to Venice lay through Bologna and Ferrara, and if his sonnets in the Italian language were written in Italy, and all addressed to the same person, it was probably at Bologna, since the lady is spoken of as an inhabitant of "Reno's grassy vale," and the Reno is a river between Bologna and Ferrara. But there are many difficulties in the way of this theory, and, on the whole, it seems most reasonable to conclude that the sonnets were composed in England, and that their autobiographical character is at least doubtful. That nominally inscribed to Diodati, however, would well suit Leonora Baroni. Diodati had been buried in Blackfriars on August 27, 1638, but Milton certainly did not learn the fact until after his visit to Naples, and possibly not until he came to pass some time at Geneva with Diodati's uncle. He had come to Geneva from Venice, where he had made some stay, shipping off to England a cargo of books collected in Italy, among which were many of "immortal notes and Tuscan air." These, we may assume, he found awaiting him when he again set foot on his native soil, about the end of July, 1639. Milton's conduct on his return justifies Wordsworth's commendation:-- "Thy heart The lowliest duties on herself did lay." Full, as his notebooks of the period attest, of magnificent aspiration for "flights above the Aonian mount," he yet quietly sat down to educate his nephews, and lament his friend. His brother-in-law Phillips had been dead eight years, leaving two boys, Edward and John, now about nine and eight respectively. Mrs. Phillips's second marriage had added two daughters to the family, and from whatever cause, it was thought best that the education of the sons should be conducted by their uncle. So it came to pass that "he took him a lodging in St. Bride's Churchyard, at the house of one Russel, a tailor;" Christopher Milton continuing to live with his father. We may well believe that when the first cares of resettlement were over, Milton found no more urgent duty than the bestowal of a funeral tribute upon his friend Diodati. The "Epitaphium Damonis" is the finest of his Latin poems, marvellously picturesque in expression, and inspired by true manly grief. In Diodati he had lost perhaps the only friend whom, in the most sacred sense of the term, he had ever possessed; lost him when far away and unsuspicious of the already accomplished stroke; lost him when returning to his side with aspirations to be imparted, and intellectual treasures to be shared. _Bis ille miser qui serus amavit._ All this is expressed with earnest emotion in truth and tenderness, surpassing "Lycidas," though void of the varied music and exquisite felicities which could not well be present in the conventionalized idiom of a modern Latin poet. The most pathetic passage is that in which he contrasts the general complacency of animals in their kind with man's dependence for sympathy on a single breast; the most biographically interesting where he speaks of his plans for an epic on the story of Arthur, which he seems about to undertake in earnest. But the impulses from without which generally directed the course of this seemingly autocratic, but really susceptible, nature, urged him in quite a different direction: for some time yet he was to live, not make a poem. The tidings which, arriving at Naples about Christmas, 1638, prevailed upon Milton to abandon his projected visit to Sicily and Greece, were no doubt those of the revolt of Scotland, and Charles's resolution to quell it by force of arms. Ere he had yet quitted Italy, the King's impotence had been sufficiently demonstrated, and about a month ere he stood on English soil the royal army had "disbanded like the break-up of a school." Milton may possibly have regretted his hasty return, but before many months had passed it was plain that the revolution was only beginning. Charles's ineffable infatuation brought on a second Scottish war, ten times more ridiculously disastrous than the first, and its result left him no alternative but the convocation (November, 1640) of the Long Parliament, which sent Laud to the Tower and Strafford to the block, cleared away servile judges and corrupt ministers, and made the persecuted Puritans persecutors in their turn. Not a member of this grave assemblage, perhaps, but would have laughed if told that not its least memorable feat was to have prevented a young schoolmaster from writing an epic. Milton had by this time found the lodgings in St. Bride's Churchyard insufficient for him, and had taken a house in Aldersgate Street, beyond the City wall, and suburban enough to allow him a garden. "This street," writes Howell, in 1657, "resembleth an Italian street more than any other in London, by reason of the spaciousness and uniformity of the buildings and straightness thereof, with the convenient distance of the houses." He did not at this time contemplate mixing actively in political or religious controversy. "I looked about to see if I could get any place that would hold myself and my books, and so I took a house of sufficient size in the city; and there with no small delight I resumed my intermitted studies; cheerfully leaving the event of public affairs, first to God, and then to those to whom the people had committed that task." But this was before the convocation of the Long Parliament. When it had met, "Perceiving that the true way to liberty followed on from these beginnings, inasmuch also as I had so prepared myself from my youth that, above all things, I could not be ignorant what is of Divine and what of human right, I resolved, though I was then meditating certain other matters, to transfer into this struggle all my genius and all the strength of my industry." Milton's note-books, to be referred to in another place, prove that he did not even then cease to meditate themes for poetry, but practically he for eighteen years ceased to be a poet. There is no doubt something grating and unwelcome in the descent of the scholar from regions of serene culture to fierce political and religious broils. But to regret with Pattison that Milton should, at this crisis of the State, have turned aside from poetry to controversy is to regret that "Paradise Lost" should exist. Such a work could not have proceeded from one indifferent to the public weal, and if Milton had been capable of forgetting the citizen in the man of letters we may be sure that "a little grain of conscience" would ere long have "made him sour." It is sheer literary fanaticism to speak with Pattison of "the prostitution of genius to political party." Milton is as much the idealist in his prose as in his verse; and although in his pamphlets he sides entirely with one of the two great parties in the State, it is not as its instrument, but as its prophet and monitor. He himself tells us that controversy is highly repugnant to him. "I trust to make it manifest with what small willingness I endure to interrupt the pursuit of no less hopes than these, and leave a calm and pleasing solitariness, fed with cheerful and confident thoughts, to embark in a troubled sea of noises and hoarse disputes, put from beholding the bright countenance of truth in the quiet and still air of delightful studies, to come in to the dim reflection of hollow antiquities sold by the seeming bulk." But he felt that if he allowed such motives to prevail with him, it would be said to him: "Timorous and ungrateful, the Church of God is now again at the foot of her insulting enemies, and thou bewailest, What matters it for thee or thy bewailing? When time was, thou would'st not find a syllable of all that thou hast read or studied to utter on her behalf. Yet ease and leisure was given thee for thy retired thoughts, but of the sweat of other men. Thou hast the diligence, the parts, the language of a man, if a vain subject were to be adorned or beautified; but when the cause of God and His Church was to be pleaded, for which purpose that tongue was given thee which thou hast, God listened if He could hear thy voice among His zealous servants, but thou wert dumb as a beast; from henceforward be that which thine own brutish silence hath made thee." A man with "Paradise Lost" in him must needs so think and act, and, much as it would have been to have had another "Comus" or "Lycidas," were not even such well exchanged for a hymn like this, the high-water mark of English impassioned prose ere Milton's mantle fell upon Ruskin? "Thou, therefore, that sittest in light and glory unapproachable. Parent of angels and men! next, Thee I implore, Omnipotent King, Redeemer of that lost remnant whose nature Thou didst assume, ineffable and everlasting Love! And Thou, the third subsistence of Divine Infinitude, illuminating Spirit, the joy and solace of created things! one Tri-personal godhead! look upon this Thy poor and almost spent and expiring Church, leave her not thus a prey to these importunate wolves, that wait and think long till they devour Thy tender flock; these wild boars that have broke into Thy vineyard, and left the print of their polluting hoofs on the souls of Thy servants. O let them not bring about their damned designs that stand now at the entrance of the bottomless pit, expecting the watchword to open and let out those dreadful locusts and scorpions to reinvolve us in that pitchy cloud of infernal darkness, where we shall never more see the sun of Thy truth again, never hope for the cheerful dawn, never more hear the bird of morning sing. Be moved with pity at the afflicted state of this our shaken monarchy, that now lies labouring under her throes, and struggling against the grudges of more dreaded calamities. "O Thou, that, after the impetuous rage of five bloody inundations, and the succeeding sword of intestine war, soaking the land in her own gore, didst pity the sad and ceaseless revolution of our swift and thick-coming sorrows; when we were quite breathless of Thy free grace didst motion peace and terms of covenant with us; and, having first well-nigh freed us from anti-Christian thraldom, didst build up this Britannic Empire to a glorious and enviable height, with all her daughter-islands about her; stay us in this felicity, let not the obstinacy of our half-obedience and will-worship bring forth that viper of sedition, that for these fourscore years hath been breeding to eat through the entrails of our peace; but let her cast her abortive spawn without the danger of this travailing and throbbing kingdom: that we may still remember in our solemn thanksgivings, how, for us, the northern ocean, even to the frozen Thule, was scattered with the proud shipwrecks of the Spanish Armada, and the very maw of Hell ransacked, and made to give up her concealed destruction, ere she could vent it in that horrible and damned blast. "O how much more glorious will those former deliverances appear, when we shall know them not only to have saved us from greatest miseries past, but to have reserved us for greatest happiness to come? Hitherto Thou hast but freed us, and that not fully, from the unjust and tyrannous claim of Thy foes, now unite us entirely and appropriate us to Thyself, tie us everlastingly in willing homage to the prerogative of Thy eternal throne. "And now we know, O Thou, our most certain hope and defence, that Thine enemies have been consulting all the sorceries of the great whore, and have joined their plots with that sad, intelligencing tyrant that mischiefs the world with his mines of Ophir, and lies thirsting to revenge his naval ruins that have larded our seas: but let them all take counsel together, and let it come to nought; let them decree, and do Thou cancel it; let them gather themselves, and be scattered; let them embattle themselves, and be broken; let them embattle, and be broken, for Thou art with us. "Then amidst the hymns and hallelujahs of saints, some one may perhaps be heard offering at high strains in new and lofty measures, to sing and celebrate Thy Divine mercies and marvellous judgments in this land throughout all ages; whereby this great and warlike nation, instructed and inured to the fervent and continual practice of truth and righteousness, and casting far from her the rags of her old vices, may press on hard to that high and happy emulation to be found the soberest, wisest, and most Christian people at that day, when Thou, the Eternal and shortly-expected King, shalt open the clouds to judge the several kingdoms of the world, and distributing national honours and rewards to religious and just commonwealths, shall put an end to all earthly tyrannies, proclaiming Thy universal and mild monarchy through heaven and earth; where they undoubtedly, that by their labours, counsels, and prayers, have been earnest for the common good of religion, and their country, shall receive above the inferior orders of the blessed, the regal addition of principalities, legions, and thrones into their glorious titles, and in supereminence of beatific vision, progressing the dateless and irrevoluble circle of eternity, shall clasp inseparable hands with joy and bliss, in over-measure for ever. "But they contrary, that by the impairing and diminution of the true faith, the distresses and servitude of their country, aspire to high dignity, rule and promotion here, after a shameful end in this life (which God grant them), shall be thrown down eternally into the darkest and deepest gulf of Hell, where, under the despiteful control, the trample and spurn of all the other damned, that in the anguish of their torture, shall have no other ease than to exercise a raving and bestial tyranny over them as their slaves and negroes, they shall remain in that plight for ever, the basest, the lowermost, the most dejected, most underfoot, and down-trodden vassals of perdition." The five pamphlets in which Milton enunciated his views on Church Government fall into two well-marked chronological divisions. Three--"Of Reformation touching Church Discipline in England," "Of Prelatical Episcopacy," "Animadversions upon the Remonstrant's Defence against Smectymnuus"--which appeared almost simultaneously, belong to the middle of 1641, when the question of episcopacy was fiercely agitated. Two--"The Reason of Church Government urged against Prelacy," and "The Apology for Smectymnuus,"[1] belong to the early part of 1642, when the bishops had just been excluded from the House of Lords. To be just to Milton we must put ourselves in his position. At the present day forms of church government are usually debated on the ground of expediency, and even those to whom they seem important cannot regard them as they were regarded by Milton's contemporaries. Many may protest against Episcopacy receiving especial recognition from the State, but no one dreams of abolishing it, or of endowing another form of ecclesiastical administration in its room. It is no longer contended that the national religion should be changed, the contention is that no religion should be national, but that all should be placed on an impartial footing. But Milton at this time desired a theocracy, and nothing doubted that he could produce a pattern agreeable in every respect to the Divine will if only Prelacy could be hurled after Popery. The controversy, therefore, assumed far grander proportions than would be possible in our day, when it is three-fourths a protest against the airs of superiority which the alleged successors of the Apostles think it becoming to assume towards teachers whose education and circumstances approach more closely than their own to the Apostolic model. What would seem exaggerated now was then perfectly in place. Milton, in his own estimation, had a theme for which the cloven tongues of Pentecost were none too fiery, or the tongues of angels too melodious. As bursts of impassioned prose-poetry the finest passages in these writings have never been surpassed, nor ever will be equalled so long as short sentences prevail, and the interminable period must not unfold itself in heights and hollows like the incoming tide of ocean, nor peal forth melodious thunder like a mighty organ. But, considered as argumentative compositions, they are exceedingly weak. No masculine head could be affected by them; but a manly heart may easily imbibe the generous contagion of their noble enthusiastic idealism. No man with a single fibre of ideality or enthusiasm can help confessing that Milton has risen to a transcendent height, and he may imagine that it has been attained by the ladder of reason rather than the pinion of poetry. Such an one may easily find reasons for agreeing with Milton in many inspired outbursts of eloquence simulating the logic that is in fact lacking to them. The following splendid passage, for instance, and there are very many like it, merely proves that a seat in the House of Lords is not essential to the episcopal office, which no one ever denied. It would have considerable force if the question involved the nineteenth century one of the Pope's temporal sovereignty:-- "Certainly there is no employment more honourable, more worthy to take up a great spirit, more requiring a generous and free nurture, than to be the messenger and herald of heavenly truth from God to man, and by the faithful work of holy doctrine to procreate a number of faithful men, making a kind of creation like to God's by infusing his spirit and likeness into them, to their salvation, as God did into him; arising to what climate soever he turn him, like that Sun of Righteousness that sent him, with healing in his wings, and new light to break in upon the chill and gloomy hearts of his hearers, raising out of darksome barrenness a delicious and fragrant spring of saving knowledge and good works. Can a man thus employed find himself discontented or dishonoured for want of admittance to have a pragmatical voice at sessions and jail deliveries? or because he may not as a judge sit out the wrangling noise of litigious courts to shrive the purses of unconfessing and unmortified sinners, and not their souls, or be discouraged though men call him not lord, whereas the due performance of his office would gain him, even from lords and princes, the voluntary title of father?" When it was said of Robespierre, _cet homme ira bien loin, car il croit tout ce qu'il dit_, it was probably meant that he would attain the chief place in the State. It might have been said of Milton in the literal sense. The idealist was about to apply his principles of church polity to family life, to the horror of many nominal allies. His treatise on Divorce was the next of his publications in chronological order, but is so entwined with his domestic life that it will be best to postpone it until we again take up the thread of his personal history, and to pass on for the present to his next considerable writings, his tracts on education and on the freedom of the press. Milton's tract on Education, like so many of his performances, was the fruit of an impulse from without. "Though it be one of the greatest and noblest designs that can be thought on, and for want of which this nation perishes, I had not at this time been induced but by your earnest entreaties and serious conjurements." The efficient cause thus referred to existed in the person of Samuel Hartlib, philanthropist and polypragmatist, precursor of the Franklins and Rumfords of the succeeding century. The son of a Polish exile of German extraction, Hartlib had settled in England about 1627. He found the country behindhand both economically and socially, and with benign fervour applied himself to its regeneration. Agriculture was his principal hobby, and he effected much towards its improvement in England, rather however by editing the unpublished treatises of Weston and Child than by any direct contributions of his own. Next among the undertakings to which he devoted himself were two of no less moment than the union of British and foreign Protestants, and the reform of English education by the introduction of the methods of Comenius. This Moravian pastor, the Pestalozzi of his age, had first of men grasped the idea that the ordinary school methods were better adapted to instil a knowledge of words than a knowledge of things. He was, in a word, the inventor of object lessons. He also strove to organize education as a connected whole from the infant school to the last touch of polish from foreign travel. Milton alludes almost scornfully to Comenius in his preface to Hartlib, but his tract is nevertheless imbued with the Moravian's principles. His aim, like Comenius's, is to provide for the instruction of all, "before the years of puberty, in all things belonging to the present and future life." His view is as strictly utilitarian as Comenius's. "Language is but the instrument conveying to us things useful to be known." Of the study of language as intellectual discipline he says nothing, and his whole course of instruction is governed by the desire of imparting useful knowledge. Whatever we may think of the system of teaching which in our day allows a youth to leave school disgracefully ignorant of physical and political geography, of history and foreign languages, it cannot be denied that Milton goes into the opposite extreme, and would overload the young mind with more information than it could possibly digest. His scheme is further vitiated by a fault which we should not have looked for in him, indiscriminate reverence for the classical writers, extending to subjects in which they were but children compared with the moderns. It moves something more than a smile to find ingenuous youth referred to Pliny and Solinus for instruction in physical science; and one wonders what the agricultural Hartlib thought of the proposed course of "Cato, Varro, and Columella," whose precepts are adapted for the climate of Italy. Another error, obvious to any dunce, was concealed from Milton by his own intellectual greatness. He legislates for a college of Miltons. He never suspects that the course he is prescribing would be beyond the abilities of nine hundred and ninety-nine scholars in a thousand, and that the thousandth would die of it. If a difficulty occurs he contemptuously puts it aside. He has not provided for Italian, but can it not "be easily learned at any odd hour"? "Ere this time the Hebrew tongue" (of which we have not hitherto heard a syllable), "might have been gained, whereto it would be no impossibility to add the Chaldee and the Syrian dialect." This sublime confidence in the resources of the human intellect is grand, but it marks out Milton as an idealist, whose mission it was rather to animate mankind by the greatness of his thoughts than to devise practical schemes for human improvement. As an ode or poem on education, Milton's tract, doubtless, has delivered many a teacher and scholar from bondage to routine; and no man's aims are so high or his thoughts so generous that he might not be further profited and stimulated by reading it. As a practical treatise it is only valuable for its emphatic denunciation of the folly of teasing youth, whose element is the concrete, with grammatical abstractions, and the advice to proceed to translation as soon as possible, and to keep it up steadily throughout the whole course. Neglect of this precept is the principal reason why so many youths not wanting in capacity, and assiduously taught, leave school with hardly any knowledge of languages. Milton's scheme is also remarkable for its bold dealing with day schools and universities, which it would have entirely superseded. The next publication of Milton's is another instance of the dependence of his intellectual workings upon the course of events outside him. We owe the "Areopagitica," not to the lonely overflowings of his soul, or even to the disinterested observation of public affairs, but to the real jeopardy he had incurred by his neglect to get his books licensed. The Long Parliament had found itself, in 1643, with respect to the Press, very much in the position of Lord Canning's government in India at the time of the Mutiny. It marks the progress of public opinion that, whereas the Indian Government only ventured to take power to prevent inopportune publication with many apologies, and as a temporary measure, the Parliament assumed it as self-evident that "forged, scandalous, seditious, libellous, and unlicensed papers, pamphlets, and books" had no right to exist, and should be nipped in the bud by the appointment of licensers. Twelve London ministers, therefore, were nominated to license books in divinity, which was equivalent to enacting that nothing contrary to Presbyterian orthodoxy should be published in England.[2] Other departments, not forgetting poetry and fiction, were similarly provided for. The ordinance is dated June 14, 1643. Milton had always contemned the licensing regulations previously existing, and within a month his brain was busy with speculations which no reverend licenser could have been expected to confirm with an imprimatur. About August 1st the "Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce" appeared, with no recognition of or from a licenser; and the second edition, published in the following February, equally infringed the Parliamentary ordinance. No notice appears to have been taken until the election of a new Master of the Stationers' Company, about the middle of 1644. The Company had an interest in the enforcement of the ordinance, which was aimed at piracy as well as sedition and heresy; and whether for this reason, or at the instigation of Milton's adversaries, they (August 24th) petitioned Parliament to call him to account. The matter was referred to a committee, but more urgent business thrust it out of sight. Milton, nevertheless, had received his marching orders, and on November 24, 1644, appeared "Areopagitica; a Speech for the Liberty of Unlicensed Printing": itself unlicensed. The "Areopagitica" is by far the best known of Milton's prose writings, being the only one whose topic is not obsolete. It is also composed with more care and art than the others. Elsewhere he seeks to overwhelm, but here to persuade. He could without insincerity profess veneration for the Lords and Commons to whom his discourse is addressed, and he spares no pains to give them a favourable opinion both of his dutifulness and his reasonableness. More than anywhere else he affects the character of a practical man, pressing home arguments addressed to the understanding rather than to the pure reason. He points out sensibly, and for him calmly, that the censorship is a Papal invention, contrary to the precedents of antiquity; that while it cannot prevent the circulation of bad books, it is a grievous hindrance to good ones; that it destroys the sense of independence and responsibility essential to a manly and fruitful literature. We hear less than might have been expected about first principles, of the sacredness of conscience, of the obligation on every man to manifest the truth as it is within him. He does not dispute that the magistrate may suppress opinions esteemed dangerous to society after they have been published; what he maintains is that publication must not be prevented by a board of licensers. He strikes at the censor, not at the Attorney-General. This judicious caution cramped Milton's eloquence; for while the "Areopagitica" is the best example he has given us of his ability as an advocate, the diction is less magnificent than usual. Yet nothing penned by him in prose is better known than the passage beginning, "Methinks I see in my mind a noble and puissant nation;" and none of his writings contain so many seminal sentences, pithy embodiments of vital truths. "Revolutions of ages do not oft recover the loss of a rejected truth." "A dram of well-doing should be preferred before many times as much the forcible hindrance of evil doing. For God more esteems the growth and completing of one virtuous person than the restraint of ten vicious." "Opinion in good men is but knowledge in the making." "A man maybe a heretic in the truth." Towards the end the argument takes a wider sweep, and Milton, again the poet and the seer, hails with exultation the approach of the time he thinks he discerns when all the Lord's people shall be prophets. "Behold now this vast city, a city of refuge, the mansion house of liberty, encompassed and surrounded with His protection; the shop of war hath not there more anvils and hammers working to fashion out the plates and instruments of armed justice in defence of beleaguered truth, than there be pens and heads there, sitting by their studious lamps, musing, searching, revolving new notions and ideas wherewith to present, as with their homage and their fealty, the approaching reformation." He clearly indicates that he regards the licensing ordinance as not really the offspring of an honest though mistaken concern for religion and morality, but as a device of Presbyterianism to restrain this outpouring of the spirit and silence Independents as well as Royalists. Presbyterianism had indeed been weighed in the balance and found wanting, and Milton's pamphlet was the handwriting on the wall. The fine gold must have become very dim ere a Puritan pen could bring itself to indite that scathing satire on the "factor to whose care and credit the wealthy man may commit the whole managing of his religious affairs; some divine of note and estimation that must be. To him he adheres; resigns the whole warehouse of his religion, with all the locks and keys into his custody; and, indeed, makes the very person of that man his religion--esteems his associating with him a sufficient evidence and commendation of his own piety. So that a man may say his religion is now no more within himself, but is become a dividual movable, and goes and comes near him according as that good man frequents the house. He entertains him, gives him gifts, feasts him, lodges him, his religion comes home at night, prays, is liberally supped and sumptuously laid to sleep, rises, is saluted; and after the malmsey or some well-spiced brewage, and better breakfasted than He whose morning appetite would have gladly fed on green figs between Bethany and Jerusalem, his religion walks abroad at eight, and leaves his kind entertainer in the shop, trading all day without his religion." This is a startling passage. We should have pronounced hitherto that Milton's one hopeless, congenital, irremediable want, alike in literature and in life, was humour. And now, surely as ever Saul was among the prophets, behold Milton among the wits. CHAPTER IV. Ranging with Milton's spirit over the "fresh woods and pastures new," foreshadowed in the closing verse of "Lycidas," we have left his mortal part in its suburban dwelling in Aldersgate Street, which he seems to have first inhabited shortly before the convocation of the Long Parliament in November, 1640. His visible occupations are study and the instruction of his nephews; by and by he becomes involved in the revolutionary tempest that rages around; and, while living like a pedagogue, is writing like a prophet. He is none the less cherishing lofty projects for epic and drama; and we also learn from Phillips that his society included "some young sparks," and may assume that he then, as afterwards-- "Disapproved that care, though wise in show, That with superfluous burden loads the day, And, when God sends a cheerful hour, refrains." There is eloquent testimony of his interest in public affairs in his subscription of four pounds, a large sum in those days, for the relief of the homeless Protestants of Ulster. The progress of events must have filled him with exultation, and when at length civil war broke out in September, 1642, Parliament had no more zealous champion. His zeal, however, did not carry him into the ranks, for which some biographers blame him. But if he thought that he could serve his cause better with a pamphlet than with a musket, surely he had good reason for what he thought. It should seem, moreover, that if Milton detested the enemy's principles, he respected his pikes and guns:-- WHEN THE ASSAULT WAS INTENDED TO THE CITY [NOVEMBER, 1642.] Captain, or Colonel, or Knight in arms, Whose chance on these defenceless doors may seize, If deed of honour did thee ever please, Guard them, and him within protect from harms. He can requite thee, for he knows the charms That call fame on such gentle acts as these, And he can spread thy name o'er lands and seas, Whatever clime the sun's bright circle warms. Lift not thy spear against the Muse's bower: The great Emathian conqueror bid spare The house of Pindarus, when temple and tower Went to the ground; and the repeated air Of sad Electra's poet had the power To save the Athenian walls from ruin bare. If this strain seems deficient in the fierceness befitting a besieged patriot, let it be remembered that Milton's doors were literally defenceless, being outside the rampart of the City. We now approach the most curious episode of Milton's life, and the most irreconcilable with the conventional opinion of him. Up to this time this heroic existence must have seemed dull to many, for it has been a life without love. He has indeed, in his beautiful Sonnet to the Nightingale (about 1632), professed himself a follower of Love: but if so, he has hitherto followed at a most respectful distance. Yet he had not erred, when in the Italian sonnet, so finely rendered in Professor Masson's biography, he declared the heart his vulnerable point:-- "Young, gentle-natured, and a simple wooer, Since from myself I stand in doubt to fly, Lady, to thee my heart's poor gift would I Offer devoutly; and by tokens sure I know it faithful, fearless, constant, pure, In its conceptions graceful, good, and high. When the world roars, and flames the startled sky; In its own adamant it rests secure; As free from chance and malice ever found, And fears and hopes that vulgar minds confuse, As it is loyal to each manly thing And to the sounding lyre and to the Muse. Only in that part is it not so sound Where Love hath set in it his cureless sting." It is highly probable that the very reaction from party strife turned the young man's fancies to thoughts of love in the spring of 1643. Escorted, we must fear, by a chorus of mocking cuckoos, Milton, about May 21st, rode into the country on a mysterious errand. It is a ghoulish and ogreish idea, but it really seems as if the elder Milton quartered his progeny upon his debtors, as the ichneumon fly quarters hers upon caterpillars. Milton had, at all events for the last sixteen years, been regularly drawing interest from an Oxfordshire squire, Richard Powell of Forest Hill, who owed him £500, which must have been originally advanced by the elder Milton. The Civil War had no doubt interfered with Mr. Powell's ability to pay interest, but, on the other hand, must have equally impaired Milton's ability to exact it; for the Powells were Cavaliers, and the Parliament's writ would run but lamely in loyal Oxfordshire. Whether Milton went down on this eventful Whitsuntide in the capacity of a creditor cannot now be known; and a like uncertainty envelops the precise manner of the metamorphosis of Mary Powell into Mary Milton. The maiden of seventeen may have charmed him by her contrast to the damsels of the metropolis, she may have shielded him from some peril, such as might easily beset him within five miles of the Royalist headquarters, she may have won his heart while pleading for her harassed father; he may have fancied hers a mind he could mould to perfect symmetry and deck with every accomplishment, as the Gods fashioned and decorated Pandora. Milton also seems to imply that his, or his bride's, better judgment was partly overcome by "the persuasion of friends, that acquaintance, as it increases, will amend all." It is possible, too, that he had long been intimate with his debtor's family, and that Mary had previously made an impression upon him. If not, his was the most preposterously precipitate of poets' marriages; for a month after leaving home he presented a mistress to his astounded nephews and housekeeper. The newly-wedded pair were accompanied or quickly followed by a bevy of the bride's friends and relatives, who danced and sang and feasted for a week in the quiet Puritan house, then departed--and after a few weeks Milton finds himself moved to compose his tract on the "Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce." How many weeks? The story seemed a straightforward one until Professor Masson remarked what had before escaped attention. According to Phillips, an inmate of the house at the period--"By that time she had for a month, or thereabouts, led a philosophical life (after having been used to a great house, and much company and joviality), her friends, possibly incited by her own desire, made earnest suit by letter to have her company the remaining part of the summer, which was granted, on condition of her return at the time appointed, Michaelmas or thereabout. Michaelmas being come, and no news of his wife's return, he sent for her by letter, and receiving no answer sent several other letters, which were also unanswered, so that at last he dispatched down a foot-messenger; but the messenger came back without an answer. He thought it would be dishonourable ever to receive her again after such a repulse, and accordingly wrote two treatises," &c. Here we are distinctly assured that Mary Milton's desertion of her husband, about Michaelmas, was the occasion of his treatise on divorce. It follows that Milton's tract must have been written after Michaelmas. But the copy in the British Museum belonged to the bookseller Thomason, who always inscribed the date of publication on every tract in his collection, when it was known to him, and his date, as Professor Masson discovered, is August 1. Must we believe that Phillips's account is a misrepresentation? Must we, in Pattison's words, "suppose that Milton was occupying himself with a vehement and impassioned argument in favour of divorce for incompatibility of temper, during the honeymoon"? It would certainly seem so, and if Milton is to be vindicated it can only be by attention to traits in his character, invisible on its surface, but plainly discoverable in his actions. The grandeur of Milton's poetry, and the dignity and austerity of his private life, naturally incline us to regard him as a man of iron will, living by rule and reason, and exempt from the sway of passionate impulse. The incident of his marriage, and not this incident alone, refutes this conception of his character; his nature was as lyrical and mobile as a poet's should be. We have seen "Comus" and "Lycidas" arise at another's bidding, we shall see a casual remark beget "Paradise Regained." He never attempts to utter his deepest religious convictions until caught by the contagious enthusiasm of a revolution. If any incident in his life could ever have compelled him to speak or die it must have been the humiliating issue of his matrimonial adventure. To be cast off after a month's trial like an unsatisfactory servant, to forfeit the hope of sympathy and companionship which had allured him into the married state, to forfeit it, unless the law could be altered, for ever! The feelings of any sensitive man must find some sort of expression in such an emergency. At another period what Milton learned in suffering would no doubt have been taught in song. But pamphlets were then the order of the day, and Milton's "Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce," in its first edition, is as much the outpouring of an overburdened heart as any poem could have been. It bears every mark of a hasty composition, such as may well have been written and printed within the last days of July, following Mary Milton's departure. It is short. It deals with the most obvious aspects of the question. It is meagre in references and citations; two authors only are somewhat vaguely alleged, Grotius and Beza. It does not contain the least allusion to his domestic circumstances, nor anything unless the thesis itself, that could hinder his wife's return. Everything betokens that it was composed in the bitterness of wounded feeling upon the incompatibility becoming manifest; but that he had not yet arrived at the point of demanding the application of his general principle to his own special case. That point would be reached when Mary Milton deliberately refused to return, and the chronology of the greatly enlarged second edition, published in the following February, entirely confirms Phillips's account. In one point only he must be wrong. Mary Milton's return to her father's house cannot have been a voluntary concession on Milton's part, but must have been wrung from him after bitter contentions. Could we look into the household during those weeks of wretchedness, we should probably find Milton exceedingly deficient in consideration for the inexperienced girl of half his age, brought from a gay circle of friends and kindred to a grave, studious house. But it could not well have been otherwise. Milton was constitutionally unfit "to soothe and fondle," and his theories cannot have contributed to correct his practice. His "He for God only, she for God in him," condenses every fallacy about woman's true relation to her husband and her Maker. In his Tractate on Education there is not a word on the education of girls, and yet he wanted an intellectual female companion. Where should the woman be found at once submissive enough and learned enough to meet such inconsistent exigencies? It might have been said to him as afterwards to Byron: "You talk like a Rosicrucian, who will love nothing but a sylph, who does not believe in the existence of a sylph, and who yet quarrels with the whole universe for not containing a sylph." If Milton's first tract on divorce had not been a mere impromptu, extorted by the misery of finding "an image of earth and phlegm" in her "with whom he looked to be the co-partner of a sweet and gladsome society," he would certainly have rendered his argument more cogent and elaborate. The tract, in its inspired portions, is a fine impassioned poem, fitter for the Parliament of Love than the Parliament at Westminster. The second edition is far more satisfactory as regards that class of arguments which alone were likely to impress the men of his generation, those derived from the authority of the Scriptures and of divines. In one of his principal points all Protestants and philosophers will confess him to be right, his reference of the matter to Scripture and reason, and repudiation of the mediæval canon law. It is not here, nevertheless, that Milton is most at home. The strength of his position is his lofty idealism, his magnificent conception of the institution he discusses, and his disdain for whatever degrades it to conventionality or mere expediency. "His ideal of true and perfect marriage," says Mr. Ernest Myers, "appeared to him so sacred that he could not admit that considerations of expediency might justify the law in maintaining sacred any meaner kind, or at least any kind in which the vital element of spiritual harmony was not." Here he is impregnable and above criticism, but his handling of the more sublunary departments of the subject must be unsatisfactory to legislators, who have usually deemed his sublime idealism fitter for the societies of the blest than for the imperfect communities of mankind. When his "doctrine and discipline" shall have been sanctioned by lawgivers, we may be sure that the world is already much better, or much worse. As the girl-wife vanishes from Milton's household her place is taken by the venerable figure of his father. The aged man had removed with his son Christopher to Reading, probably before August, 1641, when the birth of a child of his name--Christopher's offspring as it should seem--appears in the Reading register. Christopher was to exemplify the law of reversion to a primitive type. Though not yet a Roman Catholic like his grandfather, he had retrograded into Royalism, without becoming on that account estranged from his elder brother. The surrender of Reading to the Parliamentary forces in April, 1643, involved his "dissettlement," and the migration of his father to the house of John, with whom he was moreover better in accord in religion and politics. Little external change resulted, "the old gentleman," says Phillips, "being wholly retired to his rest and devotion, with the least trouble imaginable." About the same time the household received other additions in the shape of pupils, admitted, Phillips is careful to assure us, by way of favour, as M. Jourdain selected stuffs for his friends. Milton's pamphlet was perhaps not yet published, or not generally known to be his, or his friends were indifferent to public sentiment. Opinion was unquestionably against Milton, nor can he have profited much by the support, however practical, of a certain Mrs. Attaway, who thought that "she, for her part, would look more into it, for she had an unsanctified husband, that did not walk in the way of Sion, nor speak the language of Canaan," and by and by actually did what Milton only talked of doing. We have already seen that he had incurred danger of prosecution from the Stationers' Company, and in July, 1644, he was denounced by name from the pulpit by a divine of much note, Herbert Palmer, author of a book long attributed to Bacon. But, if criticised, he was read. By 1645 his Divorce tract was in the third edition, and he had added three more pamphlets--one to prove that the revered Martin Bucer had agreed with him; two, the "Tetrachordon" and "Colasterion," directed against his principal opponents, Palmer, Featley, Caryl, Prynne, and an anonymous pamphleteer, who seems to have been a somewhat contemptible person, a serving-man turned attorney, but whose production contains some not unwelcome hints on the personal aspects of Milton's controversy. "We believe you count no woman to due conversation accessible, as to you, except she can speak Hebrew, Greek, Latin, and French, and dispute against the canon law as well as you." Milton's later tracts are not specially interesting, except for the reiteration of his fine and bold idealism on the institution of marriage, qualified only by his no less strenuous insistance on the subjection of woman. He allows, however, that "it is no small glory to man that a creature so like him should be made subject to him," and that "particular exceptions may have place, if she exceed her husband in prudence and dexterity, and he contentedly yield; for then a superior and more natural law comes in, that the wiser should govern the less wise, whether male or female." Milton's seminary, meanwhile, was prospering to such a degree as to compel him to take a more commodious house. Was it necessity or enthusiasm that kept him to a task so little compatible with the repose he must have needed even for such intellectual exercise as the "Areopagitica," much more for the high designs he had not ceased to meditate in verse? Enthusiasm, one would certainly say, only that it is impossible to tell to what extent his father's income, chiefly derived from money out at interest, may have been impaired by the confusion of the times. Whether he had done rightly or wrongly in taking the duties of a preceptor upon himself, his nephew's account attests the self-sacrificing zeal with which he discharged them: we groan as we read of hours which should have been devoted to lonely musing or noble composition passed in "increasing as it were by proxy" his knowledge of "Frontinus his Stratagems, with the two egregious poets Lucretius and Manilius." He might also have been better employed than in dictating "A tractate he thought fit to collect from the ablest of divines who have written on that subject of atheism, Amesius, Wollebius," &c. Here should be comfort for those who fear with Pattison that Milton's addiction to politics deprived us of unnumbered "Comuses." The excerpter of Amesius and Wollebius, as we have so often insisted, needed great stimulus for great achievements. Such stimulus would probably have come superabundantly if he could at this time have had his way, for the most moral of men was bent on assuming a direct antagonism to conventional morality. He had maintained that marriage ought to be dissolved for mere incompatibility; his case must have seemed much stronger now that incompatibility had produced desertion. He was not the man to shrink from acting on his opinion when the fit season seemed to him to have arrived; and in the summer of 1645 he was openly paying his addresses to "a very handsome and witty gentlewoman, one of Dr. Davis's daughters." Considering the consequences to the female partner to the contract, it is clear that Miss Davis could not be expected to entertain Milton's proposals unless her affection for him was very strong indeed. It is equally clear that he cannot be acquitted of selfishness in urging his suit unless he was quite sure of this, and his own heart also was deeply interested. An event was about to occur which seems to prove that these conditions were wanting. Nearly two years have passed since we have heard of Mary Milton, who has been living with her parents in Oxfordshire. Her position as a nominal wife must have been most uncomfortable, but there is no indication of any effort on her part to alter it, until the Civil War was virtually terminated by the Battle of Naseby, June, 1645. Obstinate malignants had then nothing to expect but fine and forfeiture, and their son-in-law's Puritanism may have presented itself to the Powells in the light of a merciful dispensation. Rumours of Milton's suit to Miss Davis may also have reached them; and they would know that an illegal tie would be as fatal to all hopes of reconciliation as a legal one. So, one day in July or August, 1645, Milton, paying his usual call on a kinsman named Blackborough,[3] not otherwise mentioned in his life, who lived in St. Martin's-le-Grand Lane, where the General Post Office now stands, "was surprised to see one whom he thought to have never seen more, making submission and begging pardon on her knees before him." There are two similar scenes in his writings, of which this may have formed the groundwork, Dalila's visit to her betrayed husband in "Samson Agonistes," and Eve's repentance in the tenth book of "Paradise Lost." Samson replies, "Out, out, hyæna!" Eve's "lowly plight" "in Adam wrought Commiseration;... As one disarmed, his anger all he lost, And thus with peaceful words upraised her soon." Phillips appears to intimate that the penitent's reception began like Dalila's and ended like Eve's. "He might probably at first make some show of aversion and rejection; but partly his own generous nature, more inclinable to reconciliation than to perseverance in anger and revenge, and partly the strong intercession of friends on both sides, soon brought him to an act of oblivion, and a firm league of peace for the future." With a man of his magnanimous temper, conscious no doubt that he had himself been far from blameless, such a result was to be expected. But it was certainly well that he had made no deeper impression than he seems to have done upon "the handsome and witty gentlewoman." One would like to know whether she and Mistress Milton ever met, and what they said to and thought of each other. For the present, Mary Milton dwelt with Christopher's mother-in-law, and about September joined her husband in the more commodious house in the Barbican whither he was migrating at the time of the reconciliation. It stood till 1864, when it was destroyed by a railway company. Soon after removing to the Barbican, Milton set his Muse's house in order, by publishing such poems, English and Latin, as he deemed worthy of presentation. It is a remarkable proof both of his habitual cunctativeness and his dependence on the suggestions of others, that he should so long have allowed such pieces to remain uncollected, and should only have collected them at all at the solicitation of the publisher, Humphrey Moseley. The transaction is most honourable to the latter. "It is not any private respect of gain," he affirms; "for the slightest pamphlet is nowadays more vendible than the works of learnedest men, but it is the love I bear to our own language.... I know not thy palate, how it relishes such dainties, nor how harmonious thy soul is: perhaps more trivial airs may please better.... Let the event guide itself which way it will, I shall deserve of the age by bringing forth into the light as true a birth as the Muses have brought forth since our famous Spenser wrote." The volume was published on Jan. 2, 1646. It is divided into two parts, with separate title-pages, the first containing the English poems, the second the Latin. They were probably sold separately. The frontispiece, engraved by Marshall, is unfortunately a sour and silly countenance, passing as Milton's, but against which he protests in four lines of Greek appended, which the worthy Marshall seems to have engraved without understanding them. The British Museum copy in the King's Library contains an additional MS. poem of considerable merit, in a hand which some have thought like Milton's, but few now believe it to have been either written or transcribed by him. It is dated 1647, but for which circumstance one might indulge the fancy that the copy had been a gift from him to some Italian friend, for the binding is Italian, and the book must have seen Italy. Milton was now to learn what he afterwards taught, that "they also serve who only stand and wait." He had challenged obloquy in vindication of what he deemed right: the cross actually laid upon him was to fill his house with inimical and uncongenial dependants on his bounty and protection. The overthrow of the Royalist cause was utterly ruinous to the Powells. All went to wreck on the surrender of Oxford in June, 1646. The family estate was only saved from sequestration by a friendly neighbour taking possession of it under cover of his rights as creditor; the family mansion was occupied by the Parliamentarians, and the household stuff sold to the harpies that followed in their train; the "malignant's" timber went to rebuild the good town of Banbury. It was impossible for the Powells to remain in Oxfordshire, and Milton opened his doors to them as freely as though there had never been any estrangement. Father, mother, several sons and daughters came to dwell in a house already full of pupils, with what inconvenience from want of room and disquiet from clashing opinions may be conjectured. "Those whom the mere necessity of neighbourhood, or something else of a useless kind," he says to Dati, "has closely conjoined with me, whether by accident or the tie of law, they are the persons who sit daily in my company, weary me, nay, by heaven, almost plague me to death whenever they are jointly in the humour for it." Milton's readiness to receive the mother, deemed the chief instigator of her daughter's "frowardness," may have been partly due to the situation of the latter, who gave him a daughter on July 29, 1646. In January, 1647, Mr. Powell died, leaving his affairs in dire confusion. Two months afterwards Milton's father followed him at the age of eighty-four, partly cognisant, we will hope, of the gift he had bestowed on his country in his son. It was probably owing to the consequent improvement in Milton's circumstances that he about this time gave up his pupils, except his nephews, and removed to a smaller house in High Holborn, not since identified; the Powells also removing to another dwelling. "No one," he says of himself at this period, "ever saw me going about, no one ever saw me asking anything among my friends, or stationed at the doors of the Court with a petitioner's face. I kept myself almost entirely at home, managing on my own resources, though in this civil tumult they were often in great part kept from me, and contriving, though burdened with taxes in the main rather oppressive, to lead my frugal life." The traces of his literary activity at this time are few--preparations for a history of England, published long afterwards, an ode, a sonnet, correspondence with Dati, some not very successful versions of the Psalms. He seems to have been partly engaged in preparing the treatise on Christian Doctrine, which was fortunately reserved for a serener day. In undertaking it at this period he was missing a great opportunity. He might have been the apostle of toleration in England, as Roger Williams had been in America. The moment was most favourable. Presbyterianism had got itself established, but could not pretend to represent the majority of the nation. It had been branded by Milton himself in the memorable line: "New Presbyter is but old Priest writ large." The Independents were for toleration, the Episcopalians had been for the time humbled by adversity, the best minds in the nation, including Cromwell, were Seekers or Latitude men, or sceptics. Here was invitation enough for a work as much greater than the "Areopagitica" as the principle of freedom of thought is greater than the most august particular application of it. Milton might have added the better half of Locke's fame to his own, and compelled the French philosophers to sit at the feet of a Bible-loving Englishman. But unfortunately no external impulse stirred him to action, as in the case of the "Areopagitica." Presbyterians growled at him occasionally; they did not fine or imprison him, or put him out of the synagogue. Thus his pen slumbered, and we are in danger of forgetting that he was, in the ordinary sense of that much-abused term, no Puritan, but a most free and independent thinker, the vast sweep of whose thought happened to coincide for a while with the narrow orbit of so-called Puritanism. Impulse to work of another sort was at hand. On January 30, 1649, Charles the First's head rolled on the scaffold. On February 13th was published a pamphlet from Milton's hand, which cannot have been begun before the King's trial, another proof of his feverish impetuosity when possessed by an overmastering idea. The title propounds two theses with very different titles to acceptance. "The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates proving that it is lawful, and hath been held so through all ages, for any who have the power to call to account a tyrant or wicked king, and after due conviction to depose and put him to death: if the ordinary magistrate have neglected or denied to do it." That kings have no more immunity than others from the consequences of evil doing is a proposition which seemed monstrous to many in Milton's day, but which will command general assent in ours. But to lay it down that "any who has the power" may interpose to correct what he chooses to consider the laches of the lawful magistrate is to hand over the administration of the law to Judge Lynch--rather too high a price to pay for the satisfaction of bringing even a bad king to the block. Milton's sneer at "vulgar and irrational men, contesting for privileges, customs, forms, and that old entanglement of iniquity, their gibberish laws," is equivalent to an admission that his party had put itself beyond the pale of the law. The only defence would be to show that it had acted under great and overwhelming necessity; but this he takes for granted, though knowing well that it was denied by more than half the nation. His argument, therefore, is inconclusive, except that portion of it which modern opinion allows to pass without argument. He seems indeed to admit in his "Defensio Secunda" that the tract was written less to vindicate the King's execution than to saddle the protesting Presbyterians with a share of the responsibility. The diction, though robust and spirited, is not his best, and, on the whole, the most admirable feature in his pamphlet is his courage in writing it. He was to speak yet again on this theme as the mouthpiece of the Commonwealth, thus earning honour and reward; it was well to have shown first that he did not need this incentive to expose himself to Royalist vengeance, but had prompting enough in the intensity of his private convictions. He had flung himself into a perilous breach. "Eikon Basilike"--most timely of manifestoes--had been published only four days before the appearance of "The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates." Between its literary seduction and the horror generally excited by the King's execution, the tide of public opinion was turning fast. Milton no doubt felt that no claim upon him could be equal to that which the State had a right to prefer. He accepted the office of "Secretary for Foreign Tongues" to the Committee of Foreign Affairs, a delegation from the Council of State of forty-one members, by which the country was at that time governed. Vane, Whitelocke, and Marten were among the members of the committee. The specified duties of the post were the preparation and translation of despatches from and to foreign governments. These were always in Latin,--the Council, says that sturdy Briton, Edward Phillips, "scorning to carry on their affairs in the wheedling, lisping jargon of the cringing French." But it must have been understood that Milton's pen would also be at the service of the Government outside the narrow range of official correspondence. The salary was handsome for the time--£288, equivalent to about £900 of our money. It was an honourable post, on the manner of whose discharge the credit of England abroad somewhat depended; the foreign chanceries were full of accomplished Latinists, and when Blake's cannon was not to be the mouthpiece, the Commonwealth's message needed a silver trumpet. It was also as likely as any employment to make a scholar a statesman. If in some respects it opposed new obstacles to the fulfilment of Milton's aspirations as a poet, he might still feel that it would help him to the experience which he had declared to be essential: "He who would not be frustrate of his hope to write well hereafter in laudable things, ought himself to be a true poem, that is, a composition and pattern of the best and honourablest things, not presuming to sing high praises of heroic men or famous cities, unless he have within himself the experience and the practice of all that which is praiseworthy." Up to this time Milton's experience of public affairs had been slight; he does not seem to have enjoyed the intimate acquaintance of any man then active in the making of history. In our day he would probably have entered Parliament, but that was impossible under a dispensation which allowed a Parliament to sit till a Protector turned it out of doors. He was, therefore, only acting upon his own theory, and he seems to us to have been acting wisely as well as courageously, when he consented to become a humble but necessary wheel of the machinery of administration, the Orpheus among the Argonauts of the Commonwealth. CHAPTER V. Milton was appointed Secretary for Foreign Tongues on March 15, 1649. He removed from High Holborn to Spring Gardens to be near the scene of his labours, and was soon afterwards provided with an official residence in Whitehall Palace, a huge intricacy of passages and chambers, of which but a fragment now remains. His first performance was in some measure a false start; for the epistle offering amity to the Senate of Hamburg, clothed in his best Latin, was so unamiably regarded by that body that the English envoy never formally delivered it. An epistle to the Dutch on the murder of the Commonwealth's ambassador, Dorislaus, by refugee Cavaliers, had a better reception; and Milton was soon engaged in drafting, not merely translating, a State paper designed for the press--observations on the peace concluded by Ormond, the Royalist commander in Ireland, with the confederated Catholics in that country, and on the protest against the execution of Charles I. volunteered by the Presbytery of Belfast. The commentary was published in May, along with the documents. It is a spirited manifesto, cogent in enforcing the necessity of the campaign about to be undertaken by Cromwell. Ireland had at the moment exactly as many factions as provinces; and never, perhaps, since the days of Strongbow had been in a state of such utter confusion. Employed in work like this, Milton did not cease to be "an eagle towering in his pride of place," but he may seem to have degenerated into the "mousing owl" when he pounced upon newswriters and ferreted unlicensed pamphlets for sedition. True, there was nothing in this occupation formally inconsistent with anything he had written in the "Areopagitica"; yet one wishes that the Council of State had provided otherwise for this particular department of the public service. Nothing but a sense of duty can have reconciled him to a task so invidious; and there is some evidence of what might well have been believed without evidence--that he mitigated the severity of the censorship as far as in him lay. He was not to want for better occupation, for the Council of State was about to devolve upon him the charge of answering the great Royalist manifesto, "Eikon Basilike." The controversy respecting the authorship of the "Eikon Basilike" is a remarkable instance of the degree in which literary judgment may be biassed by political prepossession. In the absence of other testimony one might almost stamp a writer as Royalist or Parliamentarian according as his verdict inclined to Charles I. or Bishop Gauden. In fact, it is no easy matter to balance the respective claims of two entirely different kinds of testimony. The external evidence of Charles's authorship is worth nothing. It is almost confined to the assertions, forty years after the publication, of a few aged Cavaliers, who were all morally certain that Charles wrote the book, and to whom a fiction supplying the accidental lack of external testimony would have seemed laudable and pious. The only wonder is that such legends are not far more numerous. On the other hand, the internal evidence seems at first sight to make for the king. The style is not dissimilar to that of the reputed royal author; the sentiments are such as would have well become him; the assumed character is supported throughout with consistency; and there are none of the slips which a fabricator might have been thought hardly able to avoid. The supposed personator of the King was unquestionably an unprincipled time-server. Is it not an axiom that a worthy book can only proceed from a worthy mind? "If this fail, The pillared firmament is rottenness, And earth's base built on stubble!" Against such considerations we have to set the stubborn facts that Bishop Gauden did actually claim the authorship that he preferred his claim to the very persons who had the strongest interest in exploding it; that he invoked the testimony of those who must have known the truth, and could most easily have crushed the lie; that he convinced not only Clarendon, but Charles's own children, and received a substantial reward. In the face of these undeniable facts, the numerous circumstances used with skill and ingenuity by Dr. Wordsworth to invalidate his claim, are of little weight. The stronger the apparent objections, the more certain that the proofs in Gauden's hands must have been overwhelming, and the greater the presumption that he was merely urging what had always been known to several persons about the late king. When, with this conviction, we recur to the "Eikon," and examine it in connection with Gauden's acknowledged writings, the internal testimony against him no longer seems so absolutely conclusive. Gauden's style is by no means so bad as Hume represents it. Many remarkable parallels between it and the diction of the "Eikon" have been pointed out by Todd, and the most searching modern investigator, Doble. We may also discover one marked intellectual resemblance. Nothing is more characteristic in the "Eikon" than its indirectness. The writer is full of qualifications, limitations, allowances; he fences and guards himself, and seems always on the point of taking back what he has said, but never does; and veers and tacks, tacks and veers, until he has worked himself into port. The like peculiarity is very observable in Gauden, especially in his once-popular "Companion to the Altar." There is also a strong internal argument against Charles's authorship in the preponderance of the theological element. That this should occupy an important place in the writings of a martyr for the Church of England was certainly to be expected, but the theology of the "Eikon" has an unmistakably professional flavour. Let any man read it with an unbiassed mind, and then say whether he has been listening to a king or to a chaplain. "One of _us_," pithily comments Archbishop Herring. "I write rather like a divine than a prince," the assumed author acknowledges, or is made to acknowledge. When to these considerations is added that any scrap of the "Eikon" in the King's handwriting would have been treasured as an inestimable relic, and that no scrap was ever produced, there can be little question as to the verdict of criticism. For all practical purposes, nevertheless, the "Eikon" in Milton's time was the King's book, for everybody thought it so. Milton hints some vague suspicions, but refrains from impugning it seriously, and indeed the defenders of its authenticity will be quite justified in asserting that if Gauden had been dumb, Criticism would have been blind. According to Selden's biographer, Cromwell was at first anxious that the "Eikon" should be answered by that consummate jurist, and it was only on his declining the task that it came into Milton's hands. That he also would have declined it but for his official position may be inferred from his own words: "I take it on me as a work assigned, rather than by me chosen or affected." His distaste may further be gauged by his tardiness; while "The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates" had been written in little more than a week, his "Eikonoklastes," a reply to a book published in February, did not appear until October 6th. His reluctance may be partly explained by his feeling that "to descant on the misfortunes of a person fallen from so high a dignity, who hath also paid his final debt both to nature and his faults, is neither of itself a thing commendable, nor the intention of this discourse." The intention it may not have been, but it was necessarily the performance. The scheme of the "Eikon" required the respondent to take up the case article by article, a thing impossible to be done without abundant "descant" of the kind which Milton deprecates. He is compelled to fight the adversary on the latter's chosen ground, and the eloquence which might have swept all before it in a discussion of general principles is frittered away in tiresome wrangling over a multitude of minutiæ. His vigorous blows avail but little against the impalpable ideal with which he is contending; his arguments might frequently convince a court of justice, but could do nothing to dispel the sorcery which enthralled the popular imagination. Milton's "Eikonoklastes" had only three editions, including a translation, within the year; the "Eikon Basilike" is said to have had fifty. Milton's reputation as a political controversialist, however, was not to rest upon "Eikonoklastes," or to be determined by a merely English public. The Royalists had felt the necessity of appealing to the general verdict of Europe, and had entrusted their cause to the most eminent classical scholar of the age. To us the idea of commissioning a political manifesto from a philologist seems eccentric; but erudition and the erudite were never so highly prized as in the seventeenth century. Men's minds were still enchained by authority, and the precedents of Agis, or Brutus, or Nehemiah, weighed like dicta of Solomon or Justinian. The man of Greek, or Latin, or Hebrew learning was, therefore, a person of much greater consequence than he is now, and so much the more if he enjoyed a high reputation and wrote good Latin. All these qualifications were combined in Claudius Salmasius, a Frenchman, who had laid scholars under an eternal obligation by his discovery of the Palatine MS. of the Anthology at Heidelberg, and who, having embraced Protestantism from conviction, lived in splendid style at Leyden, where the mere light of his countenance--for he did not teach--was valued by the University at three thousand livres a year. It seems marvellous that a man should become dictator of the republic of letters by editing "Solinus" and "The Augustan History," however ably; but an achievement like this, not a "Paradise Lost" or a "Werther" was the _sic itur ad astra_ of the time. On the strength of such Salmasius had pronounced _ex cathedra_ on a multiplicity of topics, from episcopacy to hair-powder, and there was no bishop and no perfumer between the Black Sea and the Irish who would not rather have the scholar for him than against him. A man, too, to be named with respect; no mere annotator, but a most sagacious critic; peevish, it might be, but had he not seven grievous disorders at once? One who had shown such independence and integrity in various transactions of his life, that we may be very sure that Charles II.'s hundred Jacobuses, if ever given or even promised, were the very least of the inducements that called him into the field against the executioners of Charles I. Whether, however, the hundred Jacobuses were forthcoming or not, Salmasius's undertaking was none the less a commission from Charles II., and the circumstance put him into a false position, and increased the difficulty of his task. Human feeling is not easily reconciled to the execution of a bad magistrate, unless he has also been a bad man. Charles I. was by no means a bad man, only a mistaken one. He had been guilty of many usurpations and much perfidy: but he had honestly believed his usurpations within the limits of his prerogative; and his breaches of faith were committed against insurgents whom he regarded as seamen look upon pirates, or shepherds upon wolves. Salmasius, however, pleading by commission from Charles's son, can urge no such mitigating plea. He is compelled to maintain the inviolability even of wicked sovereigns, and spends two-thirds of his treatise in supporting a proposition to state which is to refute it in the nineteenth century. In the latter part he is on stronger ground. Charles had unquestionably been tried and condemned by a tribunal destitute of legal authority, and executed contrary to the wish and will of the great majority of his subjects. But this was a theme for an Englishman to handle. Salmasius cannot think himself into it, nor had he sufficient imagination to be inspired by Charles as Burke (who, nevertheless, has borrowed from him) was to be inspired by Marie Antoinette. His book--entitled "Defensio Regia pro Carolo I."--appeared in October or November, 1649. On January 8, 1650, it was ordered by the Council of State "that Mr. Milton do prepare something in answer to the Book of Salmasius, and when he hath done it bring it to the Council." There were many reasons why he should be entrusted with this commission, and only one why he should not; but one which would have seemed conclusive to most men. His sight had long been failing. He had already lost the use of one eye, and was warned that if he imposed this additional strain upon his sight, that of the other would follow. He had seen the greatest astronomer of the age condemned to inactivity and helplessness, and could measure his own by the misery of Galileo. He calmly accepted his duty along with its penalty, without complaint or reluctance. If he could have performed his task in the spirit with which he undertook it, he would have produced a work more sublime than "Paradise Lost." This, of course, was not possible. The efficiency of a controversialist in the seventeenth century was almost estimated in the ratio of his scurrility, especially when he wrote Latin. From this point of view Milton had got his opponent at a tremendous disadvantage. With the best will in the world, Salmasius had come short in personal abuse, for, as the initiator of the dispute, he had no personal antagonist. In denouncing the general herd of regicides and parricides he had hurt nobody in particular, while concentrating all Milton's lightnings on his own unlucky head. They seared and scathed a literary dictator whom jealous enemies had long sighed to behold insulted and humiliated, while surprise equalled delight at seeing the blow dealt from a quarter so utterly unexpected. There is no comparison between the invective of Milton and of Salmasius; not so much from Milton's superiority as a controversialist, though this is very evident, as because he writes under the inspiration of a true passion. His scorn of the presumptuous intermeddler who has dared to libel the people of England is ten thousand times more real than Salmasius's official indignation at the execution of Charles. His contempt for Salmasius's pedantry is quite genuine; and he revels in ecstasies of savage glee when taunting the apologist of tyranny with his own notorious subjection to a tyrannical wife. But the reviler in Milton is too far ahead of the reasoner. He seems to set more store by his personalities than by his principles. On the question of the legality of Charles's execution he has indeed little argument to offer; and his views on the wider question of the general responsibility of kings, sound and noble in themselves, suffer from the mass of irrelevant quotation with which it was in that age necessary to prop them up. The great success of his reply ("Pro Populo Anglicano Defensio") arose mainly from the general satisfaction that Salmasius should at length have met with his match. The book, published in or about March, 1651, instantly won over European public opinion, so far as the question was a literary one. Every distinguished foreigner then resident in London, Milton says, either called upon him to congratulate him, or took the opportunity of a casual meeting. By May, says Heinsius, five editions were printed or printing in Holland, and two translations. "I had expected nothing of such quality from the Englishman," writes Vossius. The Diet of Ratisbon ordered "that all the books of Miltonius should be searched for and confiscated." Parisian magistrates burned it on their own responsibility. Salmasius himself was then at Stockholm, where Queen Christina, who did not, like Catherine II., recognize the necessity of "standing by her order," could not help letting him see that she regarded Milton as the victor. Vexation, some thought, contributed as much as climate to determine his return to Holland. He died in September, 1653, at Spa, as, remote from books, but making his memory his library, he was penning his answer. This unfinished production, edited by his son, appeared after the Restoration, when the very embers of the controversy had grown cold, and the palm of literary victory had been irrevocably adjudged to Milton. Milton could hear the plaudits, he could not see the wreaths. The total loss of his sight may be dated from March, 1652, a year after the publication of his reply. It was then necessary to provide him with an assistant--that no change should have been made in his position or salary shows either the value attached to his services or the feeling that special consideration was due to one who had voluntarily given his eyes for his country. "The choice lay before me," he writes, "between dereliction of a supreme duty and loss of eyesight; in such a case I could not listen to the physician, not if Æsculapius himself had spoken from his sanctuary; I could not but obey that inward monitor, I know not what, that spoke to me from heaven." In September, 1654, he described the symptoms of his infirmity to his friend, the Greek Philaras, who had flattered him with hopes of cure from the dexterity of the French oculist Thevenot. He tells him how his sight began to fail about ten years before; how in the morning he felt his eyes shrinking from the effort to read anything; how the light of a candle appeared like a spectrum of various colours; how, little by little, darkness crept over the left eye; and objects beheld by the right seemed to waver to and fro; how this was accompanied by a kind of dizziness and heaviness which weighed upon him throughout the afternoon. "Yet the darkness which is perpetually before me seems always nearer to a whitish than to a blackish, and such that, when the eye rolls itself, there is admitted, as through a small chink, a certain little trifle of light." Elsewhere he says that his eyes are not disfigured: "Clear To outward view of blemish or of spot." These symptoms have been pronounced to resemble those of glaucoma. Milton himself, in "Paradise Lost," hesitates between amaurosis ("drop serene") and cataract ("suffusion"). Nothing is said of his having been recommended to use glasses or other precautionary contrivances. Cheselden was not yet, and the oculist's art was probably not well understood. The sufferer himself, while not repining or despairing of medical assistance, evidently has little hope from it. "Whatever ray of hope may be for me from your famous physician, all the same, as in a case quite incurable, I prepare and compose myself accordingly. My darkness hitherto, by the singular kindness of God, amid rest and studies, and the voices and greetings of friends, has been much easier to bear than that deathly one. But if, as is written, 'Man doth not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God,' what should prevent me from resting in the belief that eyesight lies not in eyes alone, but enough for all purposes in God's leading and providence? Verily, while only He looks out for me, and provides for me, as He doth; teaching me and leading me forth with His hand through my whole life, I shall willingly, since it hath seemed good to Him, have given my eyes their long holiday. And to you I now bid farewell, with a mind not less brave and steadfast than if I were Lynceus himself for keenness of sight." Religion and philosophy, of which no brighter example was ever given, did not, in this sore trial, disdain the support of a manly pride:-- "What supports me, dost thou ask? The conscience, friend, to have lost them overplied In liberty's defence, my noble task, O! which all Europe rings from side to side; This thought might lead me through the world's vain mask, Content though blind, had I no better guide." Noble words, and Milton might well triumph in his victory in the field of intellectual combat. But if his pamphlet could have put Charles the First's head on again, then, and then only, could it have been of real political service to his party. Milton's loss of sight was accompanied by domestic sorrow, though perhaps not felt with special acuteness. Since the birth of his eldest daughter in 1646, his wife had given him three more children--a daughter, born in October, 1648; a son, born in March, 1650, who died shortly afterwards; and another daughter, born in May, 1652. The birth of this child may have been connected with the death of the mother in the same or the following month. The household had apparently been peaceful, but it is unlikely that Mary Milton can have been a companion to her husband, or sympathized with such fraction of his mind as it was given her to understand. She must have become considerably emancipated from the creeds of her girlhood if his later writings could have been anything but detestable to her; and, on the whole, much as one pities her probably wasted life, her disappearance from the scene, if tragic in her ignorance to the last of the destiny that might have been hers, is not unaccompanied with a sense of relief. Great, nevertheless, must have been the blind poet's embarrassment as the father of three little daughters. Much evil, it is to be feared, had already been sown; and his temperament, his affliction, and his circumstances alike nurtured the evil yet to come. He was then living in Petty France, Westminster, having been obliged, either by the necessities of his health or of the public service, to give up his apartments in Whitehall. The house stood till 1877, a forlorn tenement in these latter years; far different, probably, when the neighbourhood was fashionable and the back windows looked on St. James's Park. It is associated with other celebrated names, having been owned by Bentham and occupied by Hazlitt. The controversy with Salmasius had an epilogue, chiefly memorable in so far as it occasioned Milton to indulge in autobiography, and to record his estimate of some of the heroes of the Commonwealth. Among various replies to his "Defensio," not deserving of notice here, appeared one of especial acrimony, "Regii Sanguinis Clamor ad Coelum," published about August, 1652. It was a prodigy of scurrilous invective, bettering the bad example which Milton had set (but which hundreds in that age had set him) of ridiculing Salmasius's foibles when he should have been answering his arguments. Having been in Italy, he was taxed with Italian vices: he would have been accused of cannibalism had his path lain towards the Caribee Islands. A fulsome dedication to Salmasius tended to fix the suspicion of authorship upon Alexander Morus, a Frenchman of Scotch extraction, Professor of Sacred History at Amsterdam, and pastor of the Walloon Church, then an inmate of Salmasius's house, who actually had written the dedication and corrected the proof. The real author, however, was Peter Du Moulin, ex-rector of Wheldrake, in Yorkshire. The dedicatory ink was hardly dry ere Morus was involved in a desperate quarrel with Salmasius through the latter's imperious wife, who accused Morus of having been over-attentive to her English waiting-maid, whose patronymic is lost to history under the Latinized form of Bontia. Failing to make Morus marry the damsel, she sought to deprive him of his ecclesiastical and professorial dignities. The correspondence of Heinsius and Vossius shows what intense amusement the affair occasioned to such among the scholars of the period as were unkindly affected towards Salmasius. Morus was ultimately acquitted, but his position in Holland had become uncomfortable, and he was glad to accept an invitation from the congregation at Charenton, celebrated for its lunatics. Understanding, meanwhile, that Milton was preparing a reply, and being naturally unwilling to brave invective in the cause of a book which he had not written, and of a patron who had cast him off, he protested his innocence of the authorship, and sought to ward off the coming storm by every means short of disclosing the writer. Milton, however, esteeming his Latin of much more importance than Morus's character, and justly considering with Voltaire, "que cet Habacuc était capable de tout," persisted in exhibiting himself as the blind Cyclop dealing blows amiss. His reply appeared in May, 1654, and a rejoinder by Morus produced a final retort in August, 1655. Both are full of personalities, including a spirited description of the scratching of Morus's face by the injured Bontia. These may sink into oblivion, while we may be grateful for the occasion which led Milton to express himself with such fortitude and dignity on his affliction and its alleviations:--"Let the calumniators of God's judgments cease to revile me, and to forge their superstitious dreams about me. Let them be assured that I neither regret my lot nor am ashamed of it, that I remain unmoved and fixed in my opinion, that I neither believe nor feel myself an object of God's anger, but actually experience and acknowledge His fatherly mercy and kindness to me in all matters of greatest moment--especially in that I am able, through His consolation and His strengthening of my spirit, to acquiesce in His divine will, thinking oftener of what He has bestowed upon me than of what He has withheld: finally, that I would not exchange the consciousness of what I have done with that of any deed of theirs, however righteous, or part with my always pleasant and tranquil recollection of the same." He adds that his friends cherish him, study his wants, favour him with their society more assiduously even than before, and that the Commonwealth treats him with as much honour as if, according to the customs of the Athenians of old, it had decreed him public support for his life in the Prytaneum. Milton's tract is also interesting for its pen-portraits of some of the worthies of the Commonwealth, and its indications of his own views on the politics of his troubled times. Bradshaw is eulogized with great elegance and equal truth for his manly courage and strict consistency. "Always equal to himself, and like a consul re-elected for another year, so that you would say he not only judged the King from his tribunal, but is judging him all his life." This was matter of notoriety: one may hope that Milton had equal reason for his praise of Bradshaw's affability, munificence, and placability. The comparison of Fairfax to the elder Scipio Africanus is more accurate than is always or often the case with historical parallels, and by a dexterous turn, surprising if we have forgotten the scholar in the controversialist, Fairfax's failure in statesmanship, as Milton deemed it, is not only extenuated, but is made to usher in the more commanding personality of Cromwell. Cæsar, says Johnson, had not more elegant flattery than Cromwell received from Milton: nor Augustus, he might have added, encomiums more heartfelt and sincere. Milton was one of the innumerable proofs that a man may be very much of a Republican without being anything of a Liberal. He was as firm a believer in right divine as any Cavalier, save that in his view such right was vested in the worthiest; that is, practically, the strongest. An admirable doctrine for 1653,--how unfit for 1660 remained to be discovered by him. Under its influence he had successively swallowed Pride's Purge, the execution of Charles I. by a self-constituted tribunal, and Cromwell's expulsion of the scanty remnant of what had once seemed the more than Roman senate of 1641. There is great reason to believe with Professor Masson that a tract vindicating this violence was actually taken down from his lips. It is impossible to say that he was wrong. Cromwell really was standing between England and anarchy. But Milton might have been expected to manifest some compunction at the disappointment of his own brilliant hopes, and some alarm at the condition of the vessel of the State reduced to her last plank. Authority actually had come into the hands of the kingliest man in England, valiant and prudent, magnanimous and merciful. But Cromwell's life was precarious, and what after Cromwell? Was the ancient constitution, with its halo of antiquity, its settled methods, and its substantial safeguards, wisely exchanged for one life, already the mark for a thousand bullets? Milton did not reflect, or he kept his reflections to himself. The one point on which he does seem nervous is lest his hero should call himself what he is. The name of Protector even is a stumbling-block, though one _can_ get over it. "You have, by assuming a title likest that of Father of your Country, allowed yourself to be, one cannot say elevated, but rather brought down so many stages from your real sublimity, and as it were forced into rank for the public convenience." But there must be no question of a higher title:-- "You have, in your far higher majesty, scorned the title of King. And surely with justice: for if in your present greatness you were to be taken with that name which you were able when a private man to reduce and bring to nothing, it would be almost as if, when by the help of the true God you had subdued some idolatrous nation, you were to worship the gods you had yourself overcome." This warning, occurring in the midst of a magnificent panegyric, sufficiently vindicates Milton against the charge of servile flattery. The frank advice which he gives Cromwell on questions of policy is less conclusive evidence: for, except on the point of disestablishment, it was such as Cromwell had already given himself. Professor Masson's excellent summary of it may be further condensed thus--1. Reliance on a council of well-selected associates. 2. Absolute voluntaryism in religion. 3. Legislation not to be meddlesome or over-puritanical. 4. University and scholastic endowments to be made the rewards of approved merit. 5. Entire liberty of publication at the risk of the publisher. 6. Constant inclination towards the generous view of things. The advice of an enthusiastic idealist, Puritan by the accident of his times, but whose true affinities were with Mill and Shelley and Rousseau. An interesting question arises in connection with Milton's official duties: had he any real influence on the counsels of Government? or was he a mere secretary? It would be pleasing to conceive of him as Vizier to the only Englishman of the day whose greatness can be compared with his; to imagine him playing Aristotle to Cromwell's Alexander. We have seen him freely tendering Cromwell what might have been unpalatable advice, and learn from Du Moulin's lampoon that he was accused of having behaved to the Protector with something of dictatorial rudeness. But it seems impossible to point to any direct influence of his mind in the administration; and his own department of Foreign Affairs was neither one which he was peculiarly qualified to direct, nor one in which he was likely to differ from the ruling powers. "A spirited foreign policy" was then the motto of all the leading men of England. Before Milton's loss of sight his duties included attendance upon foreign envoys on State occasions, of which he must afterwards have been to a considerable extent relieved. The collection of his official correspondence published in 1676 is less remarkable for the quantity of work than the quality. The letters are not very numerous, but are mostly written on occasions requiring a choice dignity of expression. "The uniformly Miltonic style of the greater letters," says Professor Masson, "utterly precludes the idea that Milton was only the translator of drafts furnished him." We seem to see him sitting down to dictate, weighing out the fine gold of his Latin sentences to the stately accompaniment, it may be, of his chamber-organ. War is declared against the Dutch; the Spanish ambassador is reproved for his protraction of business; the Grand Duke of Tuscany is warmly thanked for protecting English ships in the harbour of Leghorn; the French king is admonished to indemnify English merchants for wrongful seizure; the Protestant Swiss cantons are encouraged to fight for their religion; the King of Sweden is felicitated on the birth of a son and heir, and on the Treaty of Roeskilde; the King of Portugal is pressed to use more diligence in investigating the attempted assassination of the English minister; an ambassador is accredited to Russia; Mazarin is congratulated on the capture of Dunkirk. Of all his letters, none can have stirred Milton's personal feelings so deeply as the epistle of remonstrance to the Duke of Savoy on the atrocious massacre of the Vaudois Protestants (1655); but the document is dignified and measured in tone. His emotion found relief in his greatest sonnet; blending, as Wordsworth implies, trumpet notes with his habitual organ-music; the most memorable example in our language of the fire and passion which may inspire a poetical form which some have deemed only fit to celebrate a "mistress's eyebrow"[4]:-- "Avenge, O Lord, Thy slaughtered saints, whose bones Lie scattered on the Alpine mountains cold; Even them who kept Thy truth so pure of old, When all our fathers worshipped stocks and stones. Forget not: in Thy book record their groans Who were Thy sheep, and in their ancient fold Slain by the bloody Piemontese that rolled Mother with infant down the rocks. Their moans The vales redoubled to the hills, and they To Heaven. Their martyred blood and ashes sow O'er all the Italian fields, where still doth sway The triple tyrant; that from these may grow A hundredfold, who, having learned Thy way, Early may fly the Babylonian woe." This is what Johnson calls "carving heads upon cherry-stones!" Milton's calamity had, of course, required special assistance. He had first had Weckherlin as coadjutor, then Philip Meadows, finally Andrew Marvell. His emoluments had been reduced, in April, 1655, from £288 to £150 a year, but the diminished allowance was made perpetual instead of annual, and seems to have been intended as a retiring pension. He nevertheless continued to work, drawing salary at the rate of £200 a year, and his pen was never more active than during the last months of Oliver's Protectorate. He continued to serve under Richard, writing eleven letters between September, 1658, and February, 1659. With two letters for the restored Parliament after Richard's abdication, written in May, 1659, Milton, though his formal supersession was yet to come, virtually bade adieu to the Civil Service:-- "God doth not need Either man's work, or his own gifts; who best Bear His mild yoke, they serve Him best: His state Is kingly; thousands at His bidding speed, And post o'er land and ocean without rest; They also serve who only stand and wait." The principal domestic events in Milton's life, meanwhile, had been his marriage with Katherine, daughter of an unidentified Captain Woodcock, in November, 1656; and the successive loss of her and an infant daughter in February and March, 1658. It is probable that Milton literally never saw his wife, whose worth and the consequent happiness of the fifteen months of their too brief union, are sufficiently attested by his sonnet on the dream in which he fancied her restored to him, with the striking conclusion, "Day brought back my night." Of his daughters at the time, much may be conjectured, but nothing is known; his nephews, whose education had cost him such anxious care, though not undutiful in their personal relations with him, were sources of uneasiness from their own misadventures, and might have been even more so as sinister omens of the ways in which the rising generation was to walk. The fruits of their bringing up upon the egregious Lucretius and Manilius were apparently "Satyr against Hypocrites," _i.e._, Puritans; "Mysteries of Love and Eloquence;" "Sportive Wit or Muses' Merriment," which last brought the Council down upon John Phillips as a propagator of immorality. In his nephews Milton might have seen, though we may be sure he did not see, how fatally the austerity of the Commonwealth had alienated those who would soon determine whether the Commonwealth should exist. Unconscious of the "engine at the door," he could spend happy social hours with attached friends--Andrew Marvell, his assistant in the secretaryship and poetical satellite; his old pupil Cyriack Skinner; Lady Ranelagh; Oldenburg, the Bremen envoy, destined to fame as Secretary of the Royal Society and the correspondent of Spinoza; and a choice band of "enthusiastic young men who accounted it a privilege to read to him, or act as his amanuenses, or hear him talk." A sonnet inscribed to one of these, Henry Lawrence, gives a pleasing picture of the British Homer in his Horatian hour:-- "Lawrence, of virtuous father virtuous son, Now that the fields are dank, and ways are mire, Where shall we sometimes meet, and by the fire Help waste a sullen day, what may be won From the hard season gaining? Time will run On smoother, till Favonius re-inspire The frozen earth, and clothe in fresh attire The lily and rose, that neither sowed nor spun. What neat repast shall feast us, light and choice, Of Attic taste, with wine, whence we may rise To hear the lute well touched, or artful voice Warble immortal notes and Tuscan air? He who of those delights can judge, and spare To interpose them oft, is not unwise." CHAPTER VI. "Thought by thought in heaven-defying minds As flake by flake is piled, till some great truth Is loosened, and the nations echo round." These lines, slightly altered from Shelley, are more applicable to the slow growth and sudden apparition of "Paradise Lost" than to most of those births of genius whose maturity has required a long gestation. In most such instances the work, however obstructed, has not seemed asleep. In Milton's case the germ slumbered in the soil seventeen or eighteen years before the appearance of a blade, save one of the minutest. After two or three years he ceased, so far as external indications evince, to consciously occupy himself with the idea of "Paradise Lost." His country might well claim the best part of his energies, but even the intervals of literary leisure were given to Amesius and Wollebius rather than Thamyris and Mæonides. Yet the material of his immortal poem must have gone on accumulating, or inspiration, when it came at last, could not so soon have been transmuted into song. It can hardly be doubted that his cruel affliction was, in truth, the crowning blessing of his life. Remanded thus to solemn meditation, he would gradually rise to the height of his great argument; he would reflect with alarm how little, in comparison with his powers, he had yet done to "sustain the expectation he had not refused:" and he would come little by little to the point when he could unfold his wings upon his own impulse, instead of needing, as always hitherto, the impulse of others. We cannot tell what influence finally launched this high-piled avalanche of thrice-sifted snow. The time is better ascertained. Aubrey refers it to 1658, the last year of Oliver's Protectorate. As Cromwell's death virtually closed Milton's official labours, a Genie, overshadowing land and sea, arose from the shattered vase of the Latin Secretaryship. Nothing is more interesting than to observe the first gropings of genius in pursuit of its aim. Ample insight, as regards Milton, is afforded by the precious manuscripts given to Trinity College, Cambridge, by Sir Henry Newton Puckering (we know not how he got them), and preserved by the pious care of Charles Mason and Sir Thomas Clarke. By the portion of the MSS. relating to Milton's drafts of projected poems, which date about 1640-1642, we see that the form of his work was to have been dramatic, and that, in respect of subject, the swift mind was divided between Scripture and British History. No fewer than ninety-nine possible themes--sixty-one Scriptural, and thirty-eight historical or legendary--are jotted down by him. Four of these relate to "Paradise Lost." Among the most remarkable of the other subjects are "Sodom" (the plan is detailed at considerable length, and, though evidently impracticable, is interesting as a counterpart of "Comus"), "Samson Marrying," "Ahab," "John the Baptist," "Christus Patiens," "Vortigern," "Alfred the Great," "Harold," "Athirco" (a very striking subject from a Scotch legend), and "Macbeth," where Duncan's ghost was to have appeared instead of Banquo's, and seemingly taken a share in the action. "Arthur," so much in his mind when he wrote the "Epitaphium Damonis," does not appear at all. Two of the drafts of "Paradise Lost" are mere lists of _dramatis personæ_, but the others indicate the shape which the conception had then assumed in Milton's mind as the nucleus of a religious drama on the pattern of the mediæval mystery or miracle play. Could he have had any vague knowledge of the autos of Calderon? In the second and more complete draft Gabriel speaks the prologue. Lucifer bemoans his fall and altercates with the Chorus of Angels. Eve's temptation apparently takes place off the stage, an arrangement which Milton would probably have reconsidered. The plan would have given scope for much splendid poetry, especially where, before Adam's expulsion, "the Angel causes to pass before his eyes a masque of all the evils of this life and world," a conception traceable in the eleventh book of "Paradise Lost." But it is grievously cramped in comparison with the freedom of the epic, as Milton must soon have discovered. That he worked upon it appears from the extremely interesting fact, preserved by Phillips, that Satan's address to the Sun is part of a dramatic speech which, according to Milton's plan in 1642 or 1643, would have formed the exordium of his tragedy. Of the literary sources which may have originated or enriched the conception of "Paradise Lost" in Milton's mind we shall speak hereafter. It must suffice for the present to remark that his purpose had from the first been didactic. This is particularly visible in the notes of alternative subjects in his manuscripts, many of which palpably allude to the ecclesiastical and political incidents of his time, while one is strikingly prophetic of his own defence of the execution of Charles I. "The contention between the father of Zimri and Eleazar whether he ought to have slain his son without law; next the ambassadors of the Moabites expostulating about Cosbi, a stranger and a noblewoman, slain by Phineas. It may be argued about reformation and punishment illegal, and, as it were, by tumult. After all arguments driven home, then the word of the Lord may be brought, acquitting and approving Phineas." It was his earnest aim at all events to compose something "doctrinal and exemplary to a nation." "Whatsoever," he says in 1641, "whatsoever in religion is holy and sublime, in virtue amiable or grave, whatsoever hath passion or admiration in all the changes of that which is called fortune from without, or the wily subtleties and refluxes of man's thoughts from within--all these things with a solid and treatable smoothness to paint out and describe; teaching over the whole book of sanctity and virtue, through all the instances of example, with much delight, to those especially of soft and delicious temper who will not so much as look upon Truth herself unless they see her elegantly drest, that, whereas the paths of honesty and good life appear more rugged and difficult, though they be indeed easy and pleasant, they would then appear to all men easy and pleasant though they were rugged and difficult in deed." An easier task than that of "justifying the ways of God to man" by the cosmogony and anthropology of "Paradise Lost." If it is true--and the fact seems well attested--that Milton's poetical vein flowed only from the autumnal equinox to the vernal[5], he cannot well have commenced "Paradise Lost" before the death of Cromwell, or have made very great progress with it ere his conception of his duty called him away to questions of ecclesiastical policy. The one point on which he had irreconcilably differed from Cromwell was that of a State Church; Cromwell, the practical man, perceiving its necessity, and Milton, the idealist, seeing only its want of logic. Unfortunately, this inconsequence existed only for the few thinkers who could in that age rise to the acceptance of Milton's premises. In his "Treatise of Civil Power in Ecclesiastical Causes," published in February, 1659, he emphatically insists that the civil magistrate has neither the right nor the power to interfere in matters of religion, and concludes: "The defence only of the Church belongs to the magistrate. Had he once learnt not further to concern himself with Church affairs, half his labour might be spared and the commonwealth better tended." It is to be regretted that he had not entered upon this great subject at an earlier period. The little tract, addressed to the Republican members of Parliament, is designedly homely in style, and the magnificence of Milton's diction is still further tamed down by the necessity of resorting to dictation. It is nevertheless a powerful piece of argument, in its own sphere of abstract reason unanswerable, and only questionable in that lower sphere of expediency which Milton disdained. In the following August appeared a sequel with the sarcastic title, "Considerations on the likeliest means to remove Hirelings out of the Church." The recipe is simple and efficacious--cease to hire them, and they will cease to be hirelings. Suppress all ecclesiastical endowments, and let the clergyman be supported by free-will offerings. The fact that this would have consigned about half the established clergy to beggary does not trouble him; nor were they likely to be greatly troubled by a proposal so sublimely impracticable. Vested interests can only be over-ridden in times of revolution, and 1659, in outward appearance a year of anarchy, was in truth a year of reaction. For the rest, it is to be remarked that Milton scarcely allowed the ministry to be followed as a profession, and that his views on ecclesiastical organization had come to coincide very nearly with those now held by the Plymouth Brethren. There is much plausibility in Pattison's comparison of the men of the Commonwealth disputing about matters of this sort on the eve of the Restoration, to the Greeks of Constantinople contending about the Azymite controversy while the Turks were breaching their walls. In fact, however, this blindness was not confined to one party. Anthony Wood, a Royalist, writing thirty years afterwards, speaks of the Restoration as an event which no man expected in September, 1659. The Commonwealth was no doubt dead as a Republic. "Pride's Purge," the execution of Charles, and Cromwell's expulsion of the remnant of the Commons, had long ago given it mortal wounds. It was not necessarily defunct as a Protectorate, or a renovated Monarchy: the history of England might have been very different if Oliver had bequeathed his power to Henry instead of to Richard. No such vigorous hand taking the helm, and the vessel of the State drifting more and more into anarchy, the great mass of Englishmen, to the frustration of many generous ideals, but to the credit of their practical good sense, pronounced for the restoration of Charles the Second. It is impossible to think without anger and grief of the declension which was to ensue, from Cromwell enforcing toleration for Protestants to Charles selling himself to France for a pension, from Blake at Tunis to the Dutch at Chatham. But the Restoration was no national apostasy. The people as a body did not decline from Milton's standard, for they had never attained to it; they did not accept the turpitudes of the new government, for they did not anticipate them. So far as sentiment inspired them, it was not love of license, but compassion for the misfortunes of an innocent prince. Common sense, however, had much more to do with prompting their action, and common sense plainly informed them that they had no choice between a restored king and a military despot. They would not have had even that if the leading military chief had not been a man of homely sense and vulgar aims; such an one as Milton afterwards drew in-- "Mammon, the least erected spirit that fell From heaven, for even in heaven his looks and thoughts Were always downward bent, admiring more The riches of heaven's pavement, trodden gold." In the field, or on the quarter-deck, George Monk was the stout soldier, acquitting himself of his military duty most punctually. In his political conduct he laid himself out for titles and money, as little of the ambitious usurper as of the self-denying patriot. Such are they for whom more generous spirits, imprudently forward in revolutions, usually find that they have laboured. "Great things," said Edward Gibbon Wakefield, "are begun by men with great souls and little breeches-pockets, and ended by men with great breeches-pockets and little souls." Milton would not have been Milton if he could have acquiesced in an ever so needful Henry Cromwell or Charles Stuart. Never quick to detect the course of public opinion, he was now still further disabled by his blindness. There is great pathos in the thought of the sightless patriot hungering for tidings, "as the Red Sea for ghosts," and swayed hither and thither by the narratives and comments of passionate or interested reporters. At last something occurred which none could misunderstand or misrepresent. On February 11th, about ten at night, Mr. Samuel Pepys, being in Cheapside, heard "all the bells in all the churches a-ringing. But the common joy that was everywhere to be seen! The number of bonfires, there being fourteen between St. Dunstan's and Temple Bar, and at Strand Bridge I could at one view tell thirty-one fires. In King Street, seven or eight; and all around burning, roasting, and drinking for rumps. There being rumps tied upon sticks and carried up and down. The butchers at the May Pole in the Strand rang a merry peal with their knives when they were going to sacrifice their rump. On Ludgate Hill there was one turning of the spit that had a rump tied upon it, and another basting of it. Indeed, it was past imagination, both the greatness and the suddenness of it. At one end of the street you would think there was a whole lane of fire, and so hot that we were fain to keep on the further side." This burning of the Rump meant that the attempt of a miserable minority to pose as King, Lords, and Commons, had broken down, and that the restoration of Charles, for good or ill, was the decree of the people. A modern Republican might without disgrace have bowed to the gale, for such an one, unless hopelessly fanatical, denies the divine right of republics equally with that of kings, and allows no other title than that of the consent of the majority of citizens. But Milton had never admitted the rights of the majority: and in his supreme effort for the Republic, "The Ready and Easy Way to establish a free Commonwealth," he ignores the Royalist plurality, and assumes that the virtuous part of the nation, to whom alone he allows a voice, is as desirous as himself of the establishment of a Republic, and only needs to be shown the way. As this was by no means the case, the whole pamphlet rests upon sand: though in days when public opinion was guided not from the press but from the rostrum, many might have been won by the eloquence of Milton's invectives against the inhuman pride and hollow ceremonial of kingship, and his encomiums of the simple order when the ruler's main distinction from the ruled is the severity of his toil. "Whereas they who are the greatest are perpetual servants and drudges to the public at their own cost and charges, neglect their own affairs, yet are not elevated above their brethren; live soberly in their families, walk the street as other men, may be spoken to freely, familiarly, friendly without adoration." Whatever generous glow for equality such words might kindle, was only too likely to be quenched when the reader came to learn on what conditions Milton thought it attainable. His panacea was a permanent Parliament or Council of State, self-elected for life, or renewable at most only in definite proportions, at stated times. The whole history of England for the last twelve years was a commentary on the impotence of a Parliament that had outlived its mandate, and every line of the lesson had been lost upon Milton. He does indeed, near the end, betray a suspicion that the people may object to hand over the whole business of legislation to a self-elected and irresponsible body, and is led to make a remarkable suggestion, prefiguring the federal constitution of the United States, and in a measure the Home Rule and Communal agitations of our own day. He would make every county independent in so far as regards the execution of justice between man and man. The districts might make their own laws in this department, subject only to a moderate amount of control from the supreme council. This must have seemed to Milton's contemporaries the official enthronement of anarchy, and, in fact, his proposal, thrown off at a heat with the feverish impetuosity that characterizes the whole pamphlet, is only valuable as an aid to reflection. Yet, in proclaiming the superiority of healthy municipal life to a centralized administration, he has anticipated the judgment of the wisest publicists of our day, and shown a greater insight than was possessed by the more scientific statesmen of the eighteenth century. One quality of Milton's pamphlet claims the highest admiration, its audacious courage. On the very eve of the Restoration, and with full though tardy recognition of its probable imminence, he protests as loudly as ever the righteousness of Charles's execution, and of the perpetual exclusion of his family from the throne. When all was lost, it was no disgrace to quit the field. His pamphlet appeared on March 3, 1660; a second edition, with considerable alterations, was for the time suppressed. On March 28th the publisher was imprisoned for vending treasonable books, among which the pamphlet was no doubt included. Every ensuing day added something to the discomfiture of the Republicans, until on May 1st, "the happiest May-day," says that ardent Royalist _du lendemain_, Pepys, "that hath been many a year to England," Charles II.'s letter was read to a Parliament that none could deny to have been freely chosen, and acclaimed, "without so much as one No." On May 7th, as is conjectured by the date of an assignment made to Cyriack Skinner as security for a loan, Milton quitted his house, and concealed himself in Bartholomew Close, Smithfield. Charles re-entered his kingdom on May 29th, and the hue and cry after regicides and their abettors began. The King had wisely left the business to Parliament, and, when the circumstances of the times, and the sincere horror in which good men held what they called regicide and sacrilege are duly considered, it must be owned that Parliament acted with humanity and moderation. Still, in the nature of things, proscription on a small scale was inevitable. Besides the regicides proper, twenty persons were to be named for imprisonment and permanent incapacitation for office then, and liable to prosecution and possibly capital punishment hereafter. It seemed almost inevitable that Milton should be included. On June 16th his writings against Charles I. were ordered to be burned by the hangman, which sentence was performed on August 27th. A Government proclamation enjoining their destruction had been issued on August 13th, and may now be read in the King's Library at the British Museum. He had not, then, escaped notice, and how he escaped proscription it is hard to say. Interest was certainly made for him. Andrew Marvell, Secretary Morrice, and Sir Thomas Clarges, Monk's brother-in-law, are named as active on his behalf; his brother and his nephew both belonged to the Royalist party, and there is a romantic story of Sir William Davenant having requited a like obligation under which he lay to Milton himself. More to his honour this than to have been the offspring of Shakespeare, but one tale is no better authenticated than the other. The simplest explanation is that twenty people were found more hated than Milton: it may also have seemed invidious to persecute a blind man. It is certainly remarkable that the authorities should have failed to find the hiding-place of so recognizable a person, if they really looked for it. Whether by his own adroitness or their connivance, he avoided arrest until the amnesty resolution of August 29th restored him to the world without even being incapacitated from office. He still had to run the gauntlet of the Serjeant-at-Arms, who at some period unknown arrested him as obnoxious to the resolution of June 16th, and detained him, charging exorbitant fees, until compelled to abate his demands by the Commons' resolution of December 15th. Milton relinquished his house in Westminster, and formed a temporary refuge on the north side of Holborn. His nerves were shaken; he started in his broken sleep with the apprehension and bewilderment natural to one for whom, physically and politically, all had become darkness. His condition, in sooth, was one of well-nigh unmitigated misfortune, and his bearing up against it is not more of a proof of stoic fortitude than of innate cheerfulness. His cause lost, his ideals in the dust, his enemies triumphant, his friends dead on the scaffold, or exiled, or imprisoned, his name infamous, his principles execrated, his property seriously impaired by the vicissitudes of the times. He had been deprived of his appointment and salary as Latin Secretary, even before the Restoration: and he was now fleeced of two thousand pounds, invested in some kind of Government security, which was repudiated in spite of powerful intercession. Another "great sum" is said by Phillips to have been lost "by mismanagement and want of good advice," whether at this precise time is uncertain. The Dean and Chapter of Westminster reclaimed a considerable property which had passed out of their hands in the Civil War. The Serjeant-at-Arms had no doubt made all out of his captive that the Commons would let him. On the whole, Milton appears to have saved about £1500 from the wreck of his fortunes, and to have possessed about £200 income from the interest of this fund and other sources, destined to be yet further reduced within a few years. The value of money being then about three and a half times as great as now, this modest income was still a fair competence for one of his frugal habits, even when burdened with the care of three daughters. The history of his relations with these daughters is the saddest page of his life. "I looked that my vineyard should bring forth grapes, and it brought forth wild grapes." If any lot on earth could have seemed enviable to an imaginative mind and an affectionate heart, it would have been that of an Antigone or a Romola to a Milton. Milton's daughters chose to reject the fair repute that the simple fulfilment of evident duty would have brought them, and to be damned to everlasting fame, not merely as neglectful of their father, but as embittering his existence. The shocking speech attributed to one of them is, we may hope, not a fact; and it may not be true to the letter that they conspired to rob him, and sold his books to the ragpickers. The course of events down to his death, nevertheless, is sufficient evidence of the unhappiness of his household. Writing "Samson Agonistes" in calmer days, he lets us see how deep the iron had entered into his soul: "I dark in light exposed To daily fraud, contempt, abuse, and wrong, Within doors, or without, still as a fool In power of others, never in my own." He probably never understood how greatly he was himself to blame. He had, in the first place, neglected to give his daughters the education which might have qualified them in some measure to appreciate him. The eldest, Anne, could not even write her name; and it is but a poor excuse to say that, though good-looking, she was deformed, and afflicted with an impediment in her speech. The second, Mary, who resembled her mother, and the third, Deborah, the most like her father, were better taught; but still not to the degree that could make them intelligent doers of the work they had to perform for him. They were so drilled in foreign languages, including Greek and Latin (Hebrew and Syriac are also mentioned, but this is difficult of belief), that they could read aloud to him without any comprehension of the meaning of the text. Sixty years afterwards, passages of Homer and Ovid were found lingering as melodious sounds in the memory of the youngest. Such a task, inexpressibly delightful to affection, must have been intolerably repulsive to dislike or indifference: we can scarcely wonder that two of these children (of the youngest we have a better report), abhorred the father who exacted so much and imparted so little. Yet, before visiting any of the parties with inexorable condemnation, we should consider the strong probability that much of the misery grew out of an antecedent state of things, for which none of them were responsible. The infant minds of two of the daughters, and the two chiefly named as undutiful, had been formed by their mother. Mistress Milton cannot have greatly cherished her husband, and what she wanted in love must have been made up in fear. She must have abhorred his principles and his writings, and probably gave free course to her feelings whenever she could have speech with a sympathizer, without caring whether the girls were within hearing. Milton himself, we know, was cheerful in congenial society, but he were no poet if he had not been reserved with the uncongenial. To them the silent, abstracted, often irritable, and finally sightless father would seem awful and forbidding. It is impossible to exaggerate the susceptibility of young minds to first impressions. The probability is that ere Mistress Milton departed this life, she had intentionally or unintentionally avenged all the injuries she could imagine herself to have received from her husband, and furnished him with a stronger argument than any that had found a place in the "Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce." It is something in favour of the Milton girls that they were at least not calculating in their undutifulness. Had they reflected, they must have seen that their behaviour was little to their interest. If they brought a stepmother upon themselves, the blame was theirs. Something must certainly be done to keep Milton's library from the rag-women; and in February, 1663, by the advice of his excellent physician Dr. Paget, he married Elizabeth Minshull, daughter of a yeoman of Wistaston in Cheshire, a distant relation of Dr. Paget's own, and exactly thirty years younger than Milton. "A genteel person, a peaceful and agreeable woman," says Aubrey, who knew her, and refutes by anticipation Richardson's anonymous informant, perhaps Deborah Clarke, who libelled her as "a termagant." She was pretty, and had golden hair, which one connects pleasantly with the late sunshine she brought into Milton's life. She sang to his accompaniment on the organ and bass-viol, but is not recorded to have read or written for him; the only direct testimony we have of her care of him is his verbal acknowledgment of her attention to his creature comforts. Yet Aubrey's memoranda show that she could talk with her husband about Hobbes, and she treasured the letters he had received from distinguished foreigners. At the time of their marriage Milton was living in Jewin Street, Aldersgate, from which he soon afterwards removed to Artillery Walk, Bunhill Fields, his last residence. He lodged in the interim with Millington, the book auctioneer, a man of superior ability, whom an informant of Richardson's had often met in the streets leading his inmate by the hand. It is at this era of Milton's history that we obtain the fullest details of his daily life, as being nearer to the recollection of those from whom information was sought after his death. His household was larger than might have been expected in his reduced circumstances; he had a man-servant, Greene, and a maid, named Fisher. That true hero-worshipper, Aubrey, tells us that he generally rose at four, and was even then attended by his "man" who read to him out of the Hebrew Bible. Such erudition in a serving-man almost surpasses credibility: the English Bible probably sufficed both. It is easier to believe that some one read to him or wrote for him from seven till dinner time: if, however, "the writing was nearly as much as the reading," much that Milton dictated must have been lost. His recreations were walking in his garden, never wanting to any of his residences, where he would continue for three or four hours at a time; swinging in a chair when weather prevented open-air exercise; and music, that blissful resource of blindness. His instrument was usually the organ, the counterpart of the stately harmony of his own verse. To these relaxations must be added the society of faithful friends, among whom Andrew Marvell, Dr. Paget, and Cyriack Skinner are particularly named. Nor did Edward Phillips neglect his uncle, finding him, as Aubrey implies, "most familiar and free in his conversation to those to whom most sour in his way of education." Milton had made him "a songster," and we can imagine the "sober, silent, and most harmless person" (Evelyn) opening his lips to accompany his uncle's music. Of Milton's manner Aubrey says, "Extreme pleasant in his conversation, and at dinner, supper, etc., but satirical." Visitors usually came from six till eight, if at all, and the day concluded with a light supper, sometimes of olives, which we may well imagine fraught for him with Tuscan memories, a pipe, and a glass of water. This picture of plain living and high thinking is confirmed by the testimony of the Quaker Thomas Ellwood, who for a short time read to him, and who describes the kindness of his demeanour, and the pains he took to teach the foreign method of pronouncing Latin. Even more; "having a curious ear, he understood by my tone when I understood what I read and when I did not, and accordingly would stop me, examine me, and open the most difficult passages to me." Milton must have felt a special tenderness for the Quakers, whose religious opinions, divested of the shell of eccentricity which the vulgar have always mistaken for the kernel, had become substantially his own. He had outgrown Independency as formerly Presbyterianism. His blindness served to excuse his absence from public worship; to which, so long at least as Clarendon's intolerance prevailed in the councils of Charles the Second, might be added the difficulty of finding edification in the pulpit, had he needed it. But these reasons, though not imaginary, were not those which really actuated him. He had ceased to value rites and forms of any kind, and, had his religious views been known, he would have been "equalled in fate" with his contemporary Spinoza. Yet he was writing a book which orthodox Protestantism has accepted as but a little lower than the Scriptures. "The kingdom of heaven cometh not with observation." We know but little of the history of the greatest works of genius. That something more than usual should be known of "Paradise Lost" must be ascribed to the author's blindness, and consequent dependence upon amanuenses. When inspiration came upon him any one at hand would be called upon to preserve the precious verses, hence the progress of the poem was known to many, and Phillips can speak of "parcels of ten, twenty, or thirty verses at a time." We have already heard from him that Milton's season of inspiration lasted from the autumnal equinox to the vernal: the remainder of the year doubtless contributed much to the matter of his poem, if nothing to the form. His habits of composition appear to be shadowed forth by himself in the induction to the Third Book:-- "Thee, Sion, and the flowery brooks beneath That wash thy hallowed feet, and warbling flow, Nightly I visit--" "Then feed on thoughts that voluntary move Harmonious numbers; as the wakeful bird Sings darkling, and in shadiest covert hid Tunes her nocturnal note." This is something more precise than a mere poetical allusion to his blindness, and the inference is strengthened by the anecdote that when "his celestial patroness" "Deigned nightly visitation unimplored," his daughters were frequently called at night to take down the verses, not one of which the whole world could have replaced. This was as it should be. Grand indeed is the thought of the unequalled strain poured forth when every other voice was hushed in the mighty city, to no meaner accompaniment than the music of the spheres. Respecting the date of composition, we may trust Aubrey's statement that the poem was commenced in 1658, and when the rapidity of Milton's composition is considered ("Easy my unpremeditated verse") it may, notwithstanding the terrible hindrances of the years 1659 and 1660, have been, as Aubrey thinks, completed by 1663. It would still require mature revision, which we know from Ellwood that it had received by the summer of 1665. Internal evidence of the chronology of the poem is very scanty. Professor Masson thinks that the first two books were probably written before the Restoration. In support of this view it may be urged that lines 500-505 of Book i. wear the appearance of an insertion after the Restoration, and that in the invocation to the Third Book Milton may be thought to allude to the dangers his life and liberty had afterwards encountered, figured by the regions of nether darkness which he had traversed as a poet. "Hail holy Light!... Thee I revisit now with bolder wing, Escaped the Stygian pool, though long detained In that obscure sojourn, while in my flight Through utter and through middle darkness borne." The only other passage important in this respect is the famous one from the invocation to the Seventh Book, manifestly describing the poet's condition under the Restoration:-- "Standing on earth, not rapt above the pole, More safe I sing with mortal voice, unchanged To hoarse or mute, though fallen on evil days, On evil days though fallen and evil tongues; In darkness, and with dangers compassed round, And solitude; yet not alone, while thou Visitest my slumbers nightly, or when morn Purples the east. Still govern thou my song, Urania, and fit audience find, though few. But drive far off the barbarous dissonance Of Bacchus and his revellers, the race Of that wild rout that tore the Thracian bard." This allusion to the licentiousness of the Restoration literature could hardly have been made until its tendencies had been plainly developed. At this time "Paradise Lost" was half finished. ("Half yet remains unsung.") The remark permits us to conclude that Milton conceived and executed his poem as a whole, going steadily through it, and not leaving gaps to be supplied at higher or lower levels of inspiration. There is no evidence of any resort to older material, except in the case of Satan's address to the Sun. The publication of "Paradise Lost" was impeded like the birth of Hercules. In 1665 London was a city of the dying and the dead; in 1666 the better part of it was laid in ashes. One remarkable incident of the calamity was the destruction of the stocks of the booksellers, which had been brought into the vaults of St. Paul's for safety, and perished with the cathedral. "Paradise Lost" might have easily, like its hero-- "In the singing smoke Uplifted spurned the ground." but the negotiations for its publication were not complete until April 27, 1667, on which day John Milton, "in consideration of five pounds to him now paid by Samuel Symmons, and other the considerations herein mentioned," assigned to the said Symmons, "all that book, copy, or manuscript of a poem intituled 'Paradise Lost,' or by whatsoever ether title or name the same is or shall be called or distinguished, now lately licensed to be printed." The other considerations were the payment of the like sum of five pounds upon the entire sale of each of the first three impressions, each impression to consist of thirteen hundred copies. "According to the present value of money," says Professor Masson, "it was as if Milton had received £17 10s. down, and was to expect £70 in all. That was on the supposition of a sale of 3,900 copies." He lived to receive ten pounds altogether; and his widow in 1680 parted with all her interest in the copyright for eight pounds, Symmons shortly afterwards reselling it for twenty-five. He is not, therefore, to be enumerated among those publishers who have fattened upon their authors, and when the size of the book and the unfashionableness of the writer are considered, his enterprise may perhaps appear the most remarkable feature of the transaction. As for Milton, we may almost rejoice that he should have reaped no meaner reward than immortality. It will have been observed that in the contract with Symmons "Paradise Lost" is said to have been "lately licensed to be printed." The censorship named in "Areopagitica" still prevailed, with the difference that prelates now sat in judgment upon Puritans. The Archbishop gave or refused license through his chaplains, and could not be ignored as Milton had ignored the little Presbyterian Popes; Geneva in his person must repair to Lambeth. Chaplain Tomkyns, who took cognisance of "Paradise Lost," was fortunately a broad-minded man, disposed to live and let live, though scrupling somewhat when he found "perplexity" and "fear of change" imputed to "monarchs." His objections were overcome, and on August 20, 1667--three weeks after the death of Cowley, and eight days after Pepys had heard the deceased extolled as the greatest of English poets--John Milton came forth clad as with adamantine mail in the approbation of Thomas Tomkyns. The moment beseemed the event, it was a crisis in English history, when heaven's "golden scales" for weighing evil against good were hung-- "Betwixt Astrea and the Scorpion sign," one weighted with a consuming fleet, the other with a falling minister. The Dutch had just burned the English navy at Chatham; on the other hand, the reign of respectable bigotry was about to pass away with Clarendon. Far less reputable men were to succeed, but men whose laxity of principle at least excluded intolerance. The people were on the move, if not, as Milton would have wished, "a noble and puissant nation rousing herself like a strong man after sleep," at least a faint and weary nation creeping slowly--Tomkyns and all--towards an era of liberty and reason when Tomkyns's imprimatur would be accounted Tomkyns's impertinence. CHAPTER VII. The world's great epics group themselves in two divisions, which may be roughly defined as the natural and the artificial. The spontaneous or self-created epic is a confluence of traditions, reduced to symmetry by the hand of a master. Such are the Iliad, the Odyssey, the great Indian and Persian epics, the Nibelungen Lied. In such instances it may be fairly said that the theme has chosen the poet, rather than the poet the theme. When the epic is a work of reflection, the poet has deliberately selected his subject, and has not, in general, relied so much upon the wealth of pre-existing materials as upon the capabilities of a single circumstance. Such are the epics of Virgil, Camoens, Tasso, Milton; Dante, perhaps, standing alone as the one epic poet (for we cannot rank Ariosto and Spenser in this class) who owes everything but his creed to his own invention. The traditional epic, created by the people and only moulded by the minstrel, is so infinitely the more important for the history of culture, that, since this new field of investigation has become one of paramount interest, the literary epic has been in danger of neglect. Yet it must be allowed that to evolve an epic out of a single incident is a greater intellectual achievement than to weave one out of a host of ballads. We must also admit that, leaving the unique Dante out of account, Milton essayed a more arduous enterprise than any of his predecessors, and in this point of view may claim to stand above them all. We are so accustomed to regard the existence of "Paradise Lost" as an ultimate fact, that we but imperfectly realize the gigantic difficulty and audacity of the undertaking. To paint the bloom of Paradise with the same brush that has depicted the flames and blackness of the nether world; to make the Enemy of Mankind, while preserving this character, an heroic figure, not without claims on sympathy and admiration; to lend fit speech to the father and mother of humanity, to angels and archangels, and even Deity itself;--these achievements required a Michael Angelo shorn of his strength in every other province of art, that all might be concentrated in song. It is easy to represent "Paradise Lost" as obsolete by pointing out that its demonology and angelology have for us become mere mythology. This criticism is more formidable in appearance than in reality. The vital question for the poet is his own belief, not the belief of his readers. If the Iliad has survived not merely the decay of faith in the Olympian divinities, but the criticism which has pulverized Achilles as a historical personage, "Paradise Lost" need not be much affected by general disbelief in the personality of Satan, and universal disbelief in that of Gabriel, Raphael, and Uriel. A far more vulnerable point is the failure of the purpose so ostentatiously proclaimed, "To justify the ways of God to men." This problem was absolutely insoluble on Milton's data, except by denying the divine foreknowledge, a course not open to him. The conduct of the Deity who allows his adversary to ruin his innocent creature from the purely malignant motive "That with reiterated crimes he might Heap on himself damnation," without further interposition than a warning which he foresees will be fruitless, implies a grievous deficiency either in wisdom or in goodness, or at best falsifies the declaration: "Necessity and chance Approach me not, and what I will is fate." The like flaw runs through the entire poem, where Satan alone is resolute and rational. Nothing can exceed the imbecility of the angelic guard to which Man's defence is entrusted. Uriel, after threatening to drag Satan in chains back to Tartarus, and learning by a celestial portent that he actually has the power to fulfil his threat, considerately draws the fiend's attention to the circumstance, and advises him to take himself off, which Satan judiciously does, with the intention of returning as soon as convenient. The angels take all possible pains to prevent his gaining an entrance into Paradise, but omit to keep Adam and Eve themselves in sight, notwithstanding the strong hint they have received by finding the intruder "Squat like a toad, close at the ear of Eve, Assaying by his devilish art to reach The organs of her fancy, and with them forge Illusions as he list, phantasms and dreams." If anything more infatuated can be imagined, it is the simplicity of the All-Wise Himself in entrusting the wardership of the gate of Hell, and consequently the charge of keeping Satan _in_, to the beings in the universe most interested in letting him _out_. The sole but sufficient excuse is that these faults are inherent in the subject. If Milton had not thought that he could justify the ways of Jehovah to man he would not have written at all; common sense on the part of the angels would have paralysed the action of the poem; we should, if conscious of our loss, have lamented the irrefragable criticism that should have stifled the magnificent allegory of Sin and Death. Another critical thrust is equally impossible to parry. It is true that the Evil One is the hero of the epic. Attempts have been made to invest Adam with this character. He is, indeed, a great figure to contemplate, and such as might represent the ideal of humanity till summoned to act and suffer. When, indeed, he partakes of the forbidden fruit in disobedience to his Maker, but in compassion to his mate, he does seem for a moment to fulfil the canon which decrees that the hero shall not always be faultless, but always shall be noble. The moment, however, that he begins to wrangle with Eve about their respective shares of blame, he forfeits his estate of heroism more irretrievably than his estate of holiness--a fact of which Milton cannot have been unaware, but he had no liberty to forsake the Scripture narrative. Satan remains, therefore, the only possible hero, and it is one of the inevitable blemishes of the poem that he should disappear almost entirely from the latter books. These defects, and many more which might be adduced, are abundantly compensated by the poet's vital relation to the religion of his age. No poet whose fame is co-extensive with the civilised world, except Shakespeare and Goethe, has ever been greatly in advance of his times. Had Milton been so, he might have avoided many faults, but he would not have been a representative poet; nor could Shelley have classed him with Homer and Dante, and above Virgil, as "the third epic poet; that is, the third poet the series of whose creations bore a defined and intelligible relation to the knowledge and sentiment and religion of the age in which he lived, and of the ages which followed it, developing itself in correspondence with their development." Hence it is that in the "Adonais," Shelley calls Milton "the third among the sons of light." A clear conception of the universe as Milton's inner eye beheld it, and of his religious and philosophical opinions in so far as they appear in the poem, is indispensable for a correct understanding of "Paradise Lost." The best service to be rendered to the reader within such limits as ours is to direct him to Professor Masson's discussion of Milton's cosmology in his "Life of Milton," and also in his edition of the Poetical Works. Generally speaking, it may be said that Milton's conception of the universe is Ptolemaic, that for him sun and moon and planets revolve around the central earth, rapt by the revolution of the crystal spheres in which, sphere enveloping sphere, they are successively located. But the light which had broken in upon him from the discoveries of Galileo has led him to introduce features not irreconcilable with the solar centre and ethereal infinity of Copernicus; so that "the poet would expect the effective permanence of his work in the imagination of the world, whether Ptolemy or Copernicus should prevail." So Professor Masson, who finely and justly adds that Milton's blindness helped him "by having already converted all external space in his own sensations into an infinite of circumambient blackness through which he could flash brilliance at his pleasure." His inclination as a thinker is evidently towards the Copernican theory, but he saw that the Ptolemaic, however inferior in sublimity, was better adapted to the purpose of a poem requiring a definite theatre of action. For rapturous contemplation of the glory of God in nature, the Copernican system is immeasurably the more stimulating to the spirit, but when made the theatre of an action the universe fatigues with its infinitude-- "Millions have meaning; after this Cyphers forget the integer." An infinite sidereal universe would have stultified the noble description how Satan-- "In the emptier waste, resembling air, Weighs his spread wings, at leisure to behold Far off the empyreal heaven, extended wide In circuit, undetermined square or round, With opal towers and battlements adorned Of living sapphire, once his native seat; And fast by, hanging in a golden chain, This pendant world, in bigness as a star Of smallest magnitude close by the moon." This pendant world, observe, is not the earth, as Addison understood it, but the entire sidereal universe, depicted not as the infinity we now know it to be, but as a definite object, so insulated in the vastness of space as to be perceptible to the distant Fiend as a minute star, and no larger in comparison with the courts of Heaven--themselves not wholly seen--than such a twinkler matched with the full-orbed moon. Such a representation, if it diminishes the grandeur of the universe accessible to sense, exalts that of the supersensual and extramundane regions where the action takes its birth, and where Milton's gigantic imagination is most perfectly at home. There is no such compromise between religious creeds in Milton's mind as he saw good to make between Ptolemy and Copernicus. The matter was, in his estimation, far too serious. Never was there a more unaccountable misstatement than Ruskin's, that "Paradise Lost" is a poem in which every artifice of invention is consciously employed--not a single fact being conceived as tenable by any living faith. Milton undoubtedly believed most fully in the actual existence of all his chief personages, natural and supernatural, and was sure that, however he might have indulged his imagination in the invention of incidents, he had represented character with the fidelity of a conscientious historian. His religious views, moreover, are such as he could never have thought it right to publish if he had not been intimately convinced of their truth. He has strayed far from the creed of Puritanism. He is an Arian; his Son of God, though an unspeakably exalted being, is dependent, inferior, not self-existent, and could be merged in the Father's person or obliterated entirely without the least diminution of Almighty perfection. He is, moreover, no longer a Calvinist: Satan and Adam both possess free will, and neither need have fallen. The reader must accept these views, as well as Milton's conception of the materiality of the spiritual world, if he is to read to good purpose. "If his imagination," says Pattison, pithily, "is not active enough to assist the poet, he must at least not resist him." This is excellent advice as respects the general plan of "Paradise Lost," the materiality of its spiritual personages, and its system of philosophy and theology. Its poetical beauties can only be resisted where they are not perceived. They have repeated the miracles of Orpheus and Amphion, metamorphosing one most bitterly obnoxious, of whom so late as 1687 a royalist wrote that "his fame is gone out like a candle in a snuff, and his memory will always stink," into an object of universal veneration. From the first instant of perusal the imagination is led in captivity, and for the first four books at least stroke upon stroke of sublimity follows with such continuous and undeviating regularity that sublimity seems this Creation's first law, and we feel like pigmies transported to a world of giants. There is nothing forced or affected in this grandeur, no visible effort, no barbaric profusion, everything proceeds with a severe and majestic order, controlled by the strength that called it into being. The similes and other poetical ornaments, though inexpressibly magnificent, seem no more so than the greatness of the general conception demands. Grant that Satan in his fall is not "less than archangel ruined," and it is no exaggeration but the simplest truth to depict his mien-- "As when the sun, new risen, Looks through the horizontal misty air, Shorn of his beams; or from behind the moon, In dim eclipse, disastrous twilight sheds On half the nations." When such a being voyages through space it is no hyperbole to compare him to a whole fleet, judiciously shown at such distance as to suppress every minute detail that could diminish the grandeur of the image-- "As when far off at sea a fleet descried Hangs in the clouds, by equinoctial winds Close sailing from Bengala, or the isles Of Ternate and Tidore, whence merchants bring Their spicy drugs: they on the trading flood, Through the wide Ethiopian to the Cape, Ply stemming nightly towards the pole: so seemed Far off the flying Fiend." These similes, and an infinity of others, are grander than anything in Homer, who would, however, have equalled them with an equal subject. Dante's treatment is altogether different; the microscopic intensity of perception in which he so far surpasses Homer and Milton affords, in our opinion, no adequate compensation for his inferiority in magnificence. That the theme of "Paradise Lost" should have evoked such grandeur is a sufficient compensation for its incurable flaws and the utter breakdown of its ostensible moral purpose. There is yet another department of the poem where Milton writes as he could have written on nothing else. The elements of his under-world are comparatively simple, fire and darkness, fallen angels now huddled thick as leaves in Vallombrosa; anon, "A forest huge of spears and thronging helms," charming their painful steps over the burning marl by "The Dorian mood Of flutes and soft recorders;" the dazzling magnificence of Pandemonium; the ineffable welter of Chaos; proudly eminent over all like a tower, the colossal personality of Satan. The description of Paradise and the story of Creation, if making less demand on the poet's creative power, required greater resources of knowledge, and more consummate skill in combination. Nature must yield up her treasures, whatever of fair and stately the animal and vegetable kingdoms can afford must be brought together, blended in gorgeous masses or marshalled in infinite procession. Here Milton is as profuse as he has hitherto been severe, and with good cause; it is possible to make Hell too repulsive for art, it is not possible to make Eden too enchanting. In his descriptions of the former the effect is produced by a perpetual succession of isolated images of awful majesty; in his Paradise and Creation the universal landscape is bathed in a general atmosphere of lustrous splendour. This portion of his work is accordingly less great in detached passages, but is little inferior in general greatness. No less an authority than Tennyson, indeed, expresses a preference for the "bowery loneliness" of Eden over the "Titan angels" of the "deep-domed Empyrean." If this only means that Milton's Eden is finer than his war in heaven, we must concur; but if a wider application be intended, it does seem to us that his Pandemonium exalts him to a greater height above every other poet than his Paradise exalts him above his predecessor, and in some measure, his exemplar, Spenser. To remain at such an elevation was impossible. Milton compares unfavourably with Homer in this; his epic begins at its zenith, and after a while visibly and continually declines. His genius is unimpaired, but his skill transcends his stuff. The fall of man and its consequences could not by any device be made as interesting as the fall of Satan, of which it is itself but a consequence. It was, moreover, absolutely inevitable that Adam's fall, the proper catastrophe of the poem, should occur some time before the conclusion, otherwise there would have been no space for the unfolding of the scheme of Redemption, equally essential from the point of view of orthodoxy and of art. The effect is the same as in the case of Shakespeare's "Julius Cæsar," which, having proceeded with matchless vigour up to the flight of the conspirators after Antony's speech, becomes comparatively tame and languid, and cannot be revived even by such a masterpiece as the contention between Brutus and Cassius. It is to be regretted that Milton's extreme devotion to the letter of Scripture has not permitted him to enrich his latter books with any corresponding episode. It is not until the very end that he is again truly himself-- "They, looking back, all the eastern side beheld Of Paradise, so late their happy seat, Waved over by that flaming brand; the gate With dreadful faces thronged and fiery arms. Some natural tears they dropped, but wiped them soon. The world was all before them, where to choose Their place of rest, and Providence their guide. They, hand in hand, with wandering steps and slow, Through Eden took their solitary way." Some minor objections may be briefly noticed. The materiality of Milton's celestial warfare has been censured by every one from the days of Sir Samuel Morland,[6] a splenetic critic, who had incurred Milton's contempt by his treachery to Cromwell and Thurloe. Warfare, however, there must be: war cannot be made without weapons; and Milton's only fault is that he has rather exaggerated than minimized the difficulties of his subject. A sense of humour would have spiked his celestial artillery, but a lively perception of the ridiculous is scarcely to be demanded from a Milton. After all, he was borrowing from good poets,[7] whose thought in itself is correct, and even profound; it is only when artillery antedates humanity that the ascription of its invention to the Tempter seems out of place. The metamorphosis of the demons into serpents has been censured as grotesque; but it was imperatively necessary to manifest by some unmistakable outward sign that victory did not after all remain with Satan, and the critics may be challenged to find one more appropriate. The bridge built by Sin and Death is equally essential. Satan's progeny must not be dismissed without some exploit worthy of their parentage. The one passage where Milton's taste seems to us entirely at fault is the description of the Paradise of Fools (iii., 481-497), where his scorn of-- "Reliques, beads, Indulgences, dispenses, pardons, bulls," has tempted him to chequer the sublime with the ludicrous. No subject but a Biblical one would have insured Milton universal popularity among his countrymen, for his style is that of an ancient classic transplanted, like Aladdin's palace set down with all its magnificence in the heart of Africa; and his diction, the delight of the educated, is the despair of the ignorant man. Not that this diction is in any respect affected or pedantic. Milton was the darling poet of our greatest modern master of unadorned Saxon speech, John Bright. But it is freighted with classic allusion--not alone from the ancient classics--and comes to us rich with gathered sweets, like a wind laden with the scent of many flowers. "It is," says Pattison, "the elaborated outcome of all the best words of all antecedent poetry--the language of one who lives in the companionship of the great and the wise of past time." "Words," the same writer reminds us, "over and above their dictionary signification, connote all the feeling which has gathered round them by reason of their employment through a hundred generations of song." So it is, every word seems instinct with its own peculiar beauty, and fraught with its own peculiar association, and yet each detail is strictly subordinate to the general effect. No poet of Milton's rank, probably, has been equally indebted to his predecessors, not only for his vocabulary, but for his thoughts. Reminiscences throng upon him, and he takes all that comes, knowing that he can make it lawfully his own. The comparison of Satan's shield to the moon, for instance, is borrowed from the similar comparison of the shield of Achilles in the Iliad, but what goes in Homer comes out Milton. Homer merely says that the huge and massy shield emitted a lustre like that of the moon in heaven. Milton heightens the resemblance by giving the shield shape, calls in the telescope to endow it with what would seem preternatural dimensions to the naked eye, and enlarges even these by the suggestion of more than the telescope can disclose-- "His ponderous shield, Ethereal temper, massy, large, and round Behind him cast; the broad circumference Hung on his shoulders like the moon, whose orb Through optic glass the Tuscan artist views At evening, from the top of Fesole, Or in Valdarno, to descry new lands, Rivers or mountains in her spotty globe." Thus does Milton appropriate the wealth of past literature, secure of being able to recoin it with his own image and superscription. The accumulated learning which might have choked the native fire of a feebler spirit was but nourishment to his. The polished stones and shining jewels of his superb mosaic are often borrowed, but its plan and pattern are his own. One of the greatest charms of "Paradise Lost" is the incomparable metre, which, after Coleridge and Tennyson have done their utmost, remains without equal in our language for the combination of majesty and music. It is true that this majesty is to a certain extent inherent in the subject, and that the poet who could rival it would scarcely be well advised to exert his power to the full unless his theme also rivalled the magnificence of Milton's. Milton, on his part, would have been quite content to have written such blank verse as Wordsworth's "Yew Trees," or as the exordium of "Alastor," or as most of Coleridge's idylls, had his subject been less than epical. The organ-like solemnity of his verbal music is obtained partly by extreme attention to variety of pause, but chiefly, as Wordsworth told Klopstock, and as Mr. Addington Symonds points out more at length, by the period, not the individual line, being made the metrical unit, "so that each line in a period shall carry its proper burden of sound, but the burden shall be differently distributed in the successive verses." Hence lines which taken singly seem almost unmetrical, in combination with their associates appear indispensable parts of the general harmony. Mr. Symonds gives some striking instances. Milton's versification is that of a learned poet, profound in thought and burdened with the further care of ordering his thoughts: it is therefore only suited to sublimity of a solemn or meditative cast, and most unsuitable to render the unstudied sublimity of Homer. Perhaps no passage is better adapted to display its dignity, complicated artifice, perpetual retarding movement, concerted harmony, and grave but ravishing sweetness than the description of the coming on of Night in the Fourth Book:-- "Now came still evening on, and twilight grey Had in her sober livery all things clad; Silence accompanied; for beast and bird, They to their grassy couch, these to their nests, Were slunk, all but the wakeful nightingale; She all night long her amorous descant sung; Silence was pleased: now glowed the firmament With living sapphires; Hesperus that led The stary host rose brightest, till the moon, Rising in clouded majesty, at length Apparent queen unveiled her peerless light, And o'er the dark her silver mantle threw." How exquisite the indication of the pauseless continuity of the nightingale's song by the transition from short sentences, cut up by commas and semicolons, to the "linked sweetness long drawn out" of "She all night long her amorous descant sung"! The poem is full of similar felicities, none perhaps more noteworthy than the sequence of monosyllables that paints the enormous bulk of the prostrate Satan:-- "So stretched out huge in length the Arch-fiend lay." It is a most interesting subject for inquiry from what sources, other than the Scriptures, Milton drew aid in the composition of "Paradise Lost." The most striking counterpart is Calderon, to whom he owed as little as Calderon can have owed to him. "El Magico Prodigioso," already cited as affording a remarkable parallel to "Comus," though performed in 1637, was not printed until 1663, when "Paradise Lost" was already completed.[8] The two great religious poets have naturally conceived the Evil One much in the same manner, and Calderon's Lucifer, "Like the red outline of beginning Adam," might well have passed as the original draft of Milton's Satan:-- "In myself I am A world of happiness and misery; This I have lost, and that I must lament For ever. In my attributes I stood So high and so heroically great, In lineage so supreme, and with a genius Which penetrated with a glance the world Beneath my feet, that, won by my high merit, A King--whom I may call the King of Kings, Because all others tremble in their pride Before the terrors of his countenance-- In his high palace, roofed with brightest gems Of living light--call them the stars of heaven-- Named me his counsellor. But the high praise Stung me with pride and envy, and I rose In mighty competition, to ascend His seat, and place my foot triumphantly Upon his subject thrones. Chastised, I know The depth to which ambition falls. For mad Was the attempt; and yet more mad were now Repentance of the irrevocable deed. Therefore I chose this ruin with the glory Of not to be subdued, before the shame Of reconciling me with him who reigns By coward cession. Nor was I alone, Nor am I now, nor shall I be, alone. And there was hope, and there may still be hope; For many suffrages among his vassals Hailed me their lord and king, and many still Are mine, and many more perchance shall be." A striking proof that resemblance does not necessarily imply plagiarism. Milton's affinity to Calderon has been overlooked by his commentators; but four luminaries have been named from which he is alleged to have drawn, however sparingly, in his golden urn--Caedmon, the Adamus Exul of Grotius, the Adamo of the Italian dramatist Andreini, and the Lucifer of the Dutch poet Vondel. Caedmon, first printed in 1655, it is but barely possible that he should have known, and ere he could have known him the conception of "Paradise Lost" was firmly implanted in his mind. External evidence proves his acquaintance with Grotius, internal evidence his knowledge of Andreini: and small as are his direct obligations to the Italian drama, we can easily believe with Hayley that "his fancy caught fire from that spirited, though irregular and fantastic composition." Vondel's Lucifer--whose subject is not the fall of Adam, but the fall of Satan--was acted and published in 1654, when Milton is known to have been studying Dutch, but when the plan of "Paradise Lost" must have been substantially formed. There can, nevertheless, be no question of the frequent verbal correspondences, not merely between Vondel's Lucifer and "Paradise Lost," but between his Samson and "Samson Agonistes." Milton's indebtedness, so long ago as 1829, attracted the attention of an English poet of genius, Thomas Lovell Beddoes, who pointed out that his lightning-speech, "Better to reign in hell than serve in heaven," was a thunderbolt condensed from a brace of Vondel's clumsy Alexandrines, which Beddoes renders thus:-- "And rather the first prince at an inferior court Than in the blessed light the second or still less." Mr. Gosse followed up the inquiry, which eventually became the subject of a monograph by Mr. George Edmundson ("Milton and Vondel," 1885). That Milton should have had, as he must have had, Vondel's works translated aloud to him, is a most interesting proof, alike of his ardour in the enrichment of his own mind, and of his esteem for the Dutch poet. Although, however, his obligations to predecessors are not to be overlooked, they are in general only for the most obvious ideas and expressions, lying right in the path of any poet treating the subject. _Je l'aurais bien pris sans toi._ When, as in the instance above quoted, he borrows anything more recondite, he so exalts and transforms it that it passes from the original author to him like an angel the former has entertained unawares. This may not entirely apply to the Italian reformer, Bernardino Ochino, to whom, rather than to Tasso, Milton seems indebted for the conception of his diabolical council. Ochino, in many respects a kindred spirit to Milton, must have been well known to him as the first who had dared to ventilate the perilous question of the lawfulness of polygamy. In Ochino's "Divine Tragedy," which he may have read either in the Latin original or in the nervous translation of Bishop Poynet, Milton would find a hint for his infernal senate. "The introduction to the first dialogue," says Ochino's biographer Benrath, "is highly dramatic, and reminds us of Job and Faust." Ochino's arch-fiend, like Milton's, announces a masterstroke of genius. "God sent His Son into the world, and I will send my son." Antichrist accordingly comes to light in the shape of the Pope, and works infinite havoc until Henry VIII. is divinely commissioned for his discomfiture. It is a token, not only of Milton's, but of Vondel's, indebtedness, that, with Ochino as with them, Beelzebub holds the second place in the council, and even admonishes his leader. "I fear me," he remarks, "lest when Antichrist shall die, and come down hither to hell, that as he passeth us in wickedness, so he will be above us in dignity." Prescience worthy of him who "In his rising seemed A pillar of state; deep on his front engraven Deliberation sat, and public care; And princely counsel in his face yet shone." Milton's borrowings, nevertheless, nowise impair his greatness. The obligation is rather theirs, of whose stores he has condescended to avail himself. He may be compared to his native country, which, fertile originally in little but enterprise, has made the riches of the earth her own. He has given her a national epic, inferior to no other, and unlike most others, founded on no merely local circumstance, but such as must find access to every nation acquainted with the most widely-circulated Book in the world. He has further enriched his native literature with an imperishable monument of majestic diction, an example potent to counteract that wasting agency of familiar usage by which language is reduced to vulgarity, as sea-water wears cliffs to shingle. He has reconciled, as no other poet has ever done, the Hellenic spirit with the Hebraic, the Bible with the Renaissance. And, finally, as we began by saying, his poem is the mighty bridge-- "Bound with Gorgonian rigour not to move," across which the spirit of ancient poetry has travelled to modern times, and by which the continuity of great English literature has remained unbroken. CHAPTER VIII. In recording the publication of "Paradise Lost" in 1667, we have passed over the interval of Milton's life immediately subsequent to the completion of the poem in 1663. The first incident of any importance is his migration to Chalfont St. Giles, near Beaconsfield, in Buckinghamshire, about July, 1665, to escape the plague then devastating London. Ell wood, whose family lived in the neighbourhood of Chalfont, had at his request taken for him "a pretty box" in that village; and we are, says Professor Masson, "to imagine Milton's house in Artillery Walk shuttered up, and a coach and a large waggon brought to the door, and the blind man helped in, and the wife and the three daughters following, with a servant to look after the books and other things they have taken with them, and the whole party driven away towards Giles-Chalfont." According to the same authority, Chalfont well deserves the name of Sleepy Hollow, lying at the bottom of a leafy dell. Milton's cottage, alone of his residences, still exists, though divided into two tenements. It is a two-storey dwelling, with a garden, is built of brick, with wooden beams, musters nine rooms--though a question arises whether some of them ought not rather to be described as closets; the porch in which Milton may have breathed the summer air is gone, but the parlour retains the latticed casement at which he sat, though through it he could not see. His infirmity rendered the confined situation less of a drawback, and there are abundance of pleasant lanes, along which he could be conducted in his sightless strolls:-- "As one who long in populous city pent, Where houses thick and sewers annoy the air, Forth issuing on a summer's morn to breathe Among the pleasant villages and farms Adjoined, from each new thing conceives delight, The smell of grain, or tedded grass, or kine, Or dairy, each rural sight, each rural sound." Milton was probably no stranger to the neighbourhood, having lived within thirteen miles of it when he dwelt at Horton. Ellwood could not welcome him on his arrival, being in prison on account of an affray at what should have been the paragon of decorous solemnities--a Quaker funeral. When released, about the end of August or the beginning of September, he waited upon Milton, who, "after some discourses, called for a manuscript of his; which he delivered to me, bidding me take it home with me and read it at my leisure. When I set myself to read it, I found it was that excellent poem which he entitled 'Paradise Lost.'" Professor Masson justly remarks that Milton would not have trusted the worthy Quaker adolescent with the only copy of his epic; we may be sure, therefore, that other copies existed, and that the poem was at this date virtually completed and ready for press. When the manuscript was returned, Ellwood, after "modestly, but freely, imparting his judgment," observed, "Thou hast said much here of Paradise Lost, but what hast thou to say of Paradise Found? He made no answer, but sat some time in a muse; then brake off that discourse, and fell on another subject." The plague was then at its height, and did not abate sufficiently for Milton to return to town with safety until about February in the following year, leaving, it has been asserted, a record of himself at Chalfont in the shape of a sonnet on the pestilence regarded as a judgment for the sins of the King, written with a diamond on a window-pane--as if the blind poet could write even with a pen! The verses, nevertheless, may not impossibly be genuine: they are almost too Miltonic for an imitator between 1665 and 1738, when they were first published. The public calamity of 1666 affected Milton more nearly than that of 1665. The Great Fire came within a quarter of a mile of his house, and though he happily escaped the fate of Shirley, and did not make one of the helpless crowd of the homeless and destitute, his means were seriously abridged by the destruction of the house in Bread Street where he had first seen the light, and which he had retained through all the vicissitudes of his fortunes. He could not, probably, have published "Paradise Lost" without the co-operation of Samuel Symmons. Symmons's endeavours to push the sale of the book make the bibliographical history of the first edition unusually interesting. There were at least nine different issues, as fresh batches were successively bound up, with frequent alterations of title-page as reasonable cause became apparent to the strategic Symmons. First Milton's name is given in full, then he is reduced to initials, then restored; Symmons's own name, at first suppressed, by and by appears; his agents are frequently changed; and the title is altered to suit the year of issue, that the book may seem a novelty. The most important of all these alterations is one in which the author must have actively participated--the introduction of the Argument which, a hundred and forty years afterwards, was to cause Harriet Martineau to take up "Paradise Lost" at the age of seven, and of the Note on the metre conveying "a reason of that which stumbled many, why this poem rimes not." Partly, perhaps, by help of these devices, certainly without any aid from advertising or reviewing, the impression of thirteen hundred copies was disposed of within twenty months, as attested by Milton's receipt for his second five pounds, April 26, 1669--two years, less one day, since the signature of the original contract. The first printed notice appeared after the edition had been entirely sold. It was by Milton's nephew, Edward Phillips, and was contained in a little Latin essay appended to Buchlerus's "Treasury of Poetical Phrases." "John Milton, in addition to other most elegant writings of his, both in English and Latin, has recently published 'Paradise Lost,' a poem which, whether we regard the sublimity of the subject, or the combined pleasantness and majesty of the style, or the sublimity of the invention, or the beauty of its images and descriptions of nature, will, if I mistake not, receive the name of truly heroic, inasmuch as by the suffrages of many not unqualified to judge, it is reputed to have reached the perfection of this kind of poetry." The "many not unqualified" undoubtedly included the first critic of the age, Dryden. Lord Buckhurst is also named as an admirer--pleasing anecdotes respecting the practical expression of his admiration, and of Sir John Denham's, seem apocryphal. While "Paradise Lost" was thus slowly upbearing its author to the highest heaven of fame, Milton was achieving other titles to renown, one of which he deemed nothing inferior. We shall remember Ellwood's hint that he might find something to say about Paradise Found, and the "muse" into which it cast him. When, says the Quaker, he waited upon Milton after the latter's return to London, Milton "showed me his second poem, called 'Paradise Regained,' and in a pleasant tone said to me, 'This is owing to you; for you put it into my head by the question you put to me at Chalfont; which before I had not thought of.'" Ellwood does not tell us the date of this visit, and Phillips may be right in believing that "Paradise Regained" was entirely composed after the publication of "Paradise Lost"; but it seems unlikely that the conception should have slumbered so long in Milton's mind, and the most probable date is between Michaelmas, 1665, and Lady-day, 1666. Phillips records that Milton could never hear with patience "Paradise Regained" "censured to be much inferior" to "Paradise Lost." "The most judicious," he adds, agreed with him, while allowing that "the subject might not afford such variety of invention," which was probably all that the injudicious meant. There is no external evidence of the date of his next and last poem, "Samson Agonistes," but its development of Miltonic mannerisms would incline us to assign it to the latest period possible. The poems were licensed by Milton's old friend, Thomas Tomkyns, July 2, 1670, but did not appear until 1671. They were published in the same volume, but with distinct title-pages and paginations; the publisher was John Starkey; the printer an anonymous "J.M.," who was far from equalling Symmons in elegance and correctness. "Paradise Regained" is in one point of view the confutation of a celebrated but eccentric definition of poetry as a "criticism of life." If this were true it would be a greater work than "Paradise Lost," which must be violently strained to admit a definition not wholly inapplicable to the minor poem. If, again, Wordsworth and Coleridge are right in pronouncing "Paradise Regained" the most perfect of Milton's works in point of execution, the proof is afforded that perfect execution is not the chief test of poetic excellence. Whatever these great men may have propounded in theory, it cannot be believed that they would not have rather written the first two books of "Paradise Lost" than ten such poems as "Paradise Regained," and yet they affirm that Milton's power is even more advantageously exhibited in the latter work than in the other. There can be no solution except that greatness in poetry depends mainly upon the subject, and that the subject of "Paradise Lost" is infinitely the finer. Perhaps this should not be. Perhaps to "the visual nerve purged with euphrasy and rue" the spectacle of the human soul successfully resisting supernatural temptation would be more impressive than the material sublimities of "Paradise Lost," but ordinary vision sees otherwise. Satan "floating many a rood" on the sulphurous lake, or "up to the fiery concave towering high," or confronting Death at the gate of Hell, kindles the imagination with quite other fire than the sage circumspection and the meek fortitude of the Son of God. "The reason," says Blake, "why Milton wrote in fetters when he wrote of Angels and God, and at liberty when of Devils and Hell, is because he was a true Poet, and of the Devil's party without knowing it." The passages in "Paradise Regained" which most nearly approach the magnificence of "Paradise Lost," are those least closely connected with the proper action of the poem, the episodes with which Milton's consummate art and opulent fancy have veiled the bareness of his subject. The description of the Parthian military expedition; the picture, equally gorgeous and accurate, of the Roman Empire at the zenith of its greatness; the condensation into a single speech of all that has made Greece dear to humanity--these are the shining peaks of the regained "Paradise," marvels of art and eloquence, yet, unlike "Paradise Lost," beautiful rather than awful. The faults inherent in the theme cannot be imputed to the poet. No human skill could make the second Adam as great an object of sympathy as the first: it is enough, and it is wonderful, that spotless virtue should be so entirely exempt from formality and dulness. The baffled Satan, beaten at his own weapons, is necessarily a much less interesting personage than the heroic adventurer of "Paradise Lost." Milton has done what can be done by softening Satan's reprobate mood with exquisite strokes of pathos:-- "Though I have lost Much lustre of my native brightness, lost To be beloved of God, I have not lost To love, at least contemplate and admire What I see excellent in good or fair, Or virtuous; I should so have lost all sense." These words, though spoken with a deceitful intention, express a truth. Milton's Satan is a long way from Goethe's Mephistopheles. Profound, too, is the pathos of-- "I would be at the worst, worst is my best, My harbour, and my ultimate repose." The general sobriety of the style of "Paradise Regained" is a fertile theme for the critics. It is, indeed, carried to the verge of baldness; frigidity, used by Pattison, is too strong a word. This does not seem to be any token of a decay of poetical power. As writers advance in life their characteristics usually grow upon them, and develop into mannerisms. In "Paradise Regained," and yet more markedly in "Samson Agonistes," Milton seems to have prided himself on showing how independent he could be of the ordinary poetical stock-in-trade. Except in his splendid episodical descriptions he seeks to impress by the massy substance of his verse. It is a great proof of the essentially poetical quality of his mind that though he thus often becomes jejune, he is never prosaic. He is ever unmistakably the poet, even when his beauties are rather those of the orator or the moralist. The following sound remark, for instance, would not have been poetry in Pope; it is poetry in Milton:-- "Who reads Incessantly, and to his reading brings not A spirit and judgment equal or superior (And what he brings what need he elsewhere seek?) Uncertain and unsettled still remains? Deep versed in books and shallow in himself." Perhaps, too, the sparse flowers of pure poetry are more exquisite from their contrast with the general austerity:-- "The field, all iron, cast a gleaming brown." "Morning fair Came forth with pilgrim steps in amice gray." Poetic magic these, and Milton is still Milton. "I have lately read his Samson, which has more of the antique spirit than any production of any other modern poet. He is very great." Thus Goethe to Eckermann, in his old age. The period of life is noticeable, for "Samson Agonistes" is an old man's poem as respects author and reader alike. There is much to repel, little to attract a young reader; no wonder that Macaulay, fresh from college, put it so far below "Comus," to which the more mature taste is disposed to equal it. It is related to the earlier work as sculpture is to painting, but sculpture of the severest school, all sinewy strength; studious, above all, of impressive truth. "Beyond these an ancient fisherman and a rock are fashioned, a rugged rock, whereon with might and main the old man drags a great net from his cast, as one that labours stoutly. Thou wouldest say that he is fishing with all the might of his limbs, so big the sinews swell all about his neck, grey-haired though he is, but his strength is as the strength of youth."[9] Behold here the Milton of "Samson Agonistes," a work whose beauty is of metal rather than of marble, hard, bright, and receptive of an ineffaceable die. The great fault is the frequent harshness of the style, principally in the choruses, where some strophes are almost uncouth. In the blank verse speeches perfect grace is often united to perfect dignity: as in the farewell of Dalila:-- "Fame if not double-faced is double-mouthed, And with contrary blast proclaims most deeds; On both his wings, one black, the other white, Bears greatest names in his wild aery flights. My name perhaps among the circumcised, In Dan, in Judah, and the bordering tribes, To all posterity may stand defamed, With malediction mentioned, and the blot Of falsehood most unconjugal traduced. But in my country where I most desire, In Ecron, Gaza, Asdod, and in Gath, I shall be named among the famousest Of women, sung at solemn festivals, Living and dead recorded, who to save Her country from a fierce destroyer, chose Above the faith of wedlock-bands; my tomb With odours visited and annual flowers." The scheme of "Samson Agonistes" is that of the Greek drama, the only one appropriate to an action of such extreme simplicity, admitting so few personages, and these only as foils to the hero. It is, but for its Miltonisms of style and autobiographic and political allusion, just such a drama as Sophocles or Euripides would have written on the subject, and has all that depth of patriotic and religious sentiment which made the Greek drama so inexpressibly significant to Greeks. Consummate art is shown in the invention of the Philistine giant, Harapha, who not only enriches the meagre action, and brings out strong features in the character of Samson, but also prepares the reader for the catastrophe. We must say reader, for though the drama might conceivably be acted with effect on a Court or University stage, the real living theatre has been no place for it since the days of Greece. Milton confesses as much when in his preface he assails "the poet's error of intermixing comic stuff with tragic sadness and gravity; or introducing trivial and vulgar persons, which by all judicious hath been counted absurd; and brought in without discretion, corruptly to gratify the people." In his view tragedy should be eclectic; in Shakespeare's it should be all embracing. Shelley, perhaps, judged more rightly than either when he said: "The modern practice of blending comedy with tragedy is undoubtedly an extension of the dramatic circle; but the comedy should be as in 'King Lear,' universal, ideal, and sublime." On the whole, "Samson Agonistes" is a noble example of a style which we may hope will in no generation be entirely lacking to our literature, but which must always be exotic, from its want of harmony with the more essential characteristics of our tumultous, undisciplined, irrepressible national life. In one point of view, however, "Samson Agonistes" deserves to be esteemed a national poem, pregnant with a deeper allusiveness than has always been recognized. Samson's impersonation of the author himself can escape no one. Old, blind, captive, helpless, mocked, decried, miserable in the failure of all his ideals, upheld only by faith and his own unconquerable spirit, Milton is the counterpart of his hero. Particular references to the circumstances of his life are not wanting: his bitter self-condemnation for having chosen his first wife in the camp of the enemy, and his surprise that near the close of an austere life he should be afflicted by the malady appointed to chastise intemperance. But, as in the Hebrew prophets Israel sometimes denotes a person, sometimes a nation, Samson seems no less the representative of the English people in the age of Charles the Second. His heaviest burden is his remorse, a remorse which could not weigh on Milton:-- "I do acknowledge and confess That I this honour, I this pomp have brought To Dagon, and advanced his praises high Among the heathen round; to God have brought Dishonour, obloquy, and oped the mouths Of idolists and atheists; have brought scandal To Israel, diffidence of God, and doubt In feeble hearts, propense enough before To waver, to fall off, and join with idols; Which is my chief affliction, shame, and sorrow, The anguish of my soul, that suffers not My eye to harbour sleep, or thoughts to rest." Milton might reproach himself for having taken a Philistine wife, but not with having suffered her to shear him. But the same could not be said of the English nation, which had in his view most foully apostatized from its pure creed, and most perfidiously betrayed the high commission it had received from Heaven. "This extolled and magnified nation, regardless both of honour won, or deliverances vouchsafed, to fall back, or rather to creep back, so poorly as it seems the multitude would, to their once abjured and detested thraldom of kingship! To be ourselves the slanderers of our own just and religious deeds! To verify all the bitter predictions of our triumphing enemies, who will now think they wisely discerned and justly censured us and all our actions as rash, rebellious, hypocritical, and impious!" These things, which Milton refused to contemplate as possible when he wrote his "Ready Way to establish a Free Commonwealth," had actually come to pass. The English nation is to him the enslaved and erring Samson--a Samson, however, yet to burst his bonds, and bring down ruin upon Philistia. "Samson Agonistes" is thus a prophetic drama, the English counterpart of the world-drama of "Prometheus Bound." Goethe says that our final impression of any one is derived from the last circumstances in which we have beheld him. Let us, therefore, endeavour to behold Milton as he appeared about the time of the publication of his last poems, to which period of his life the descriptions we possess seem to apply. Richardson heard of his sitting habitually "in a grey coarse cloth coat at the door of his house near Bunhill Fields, in warm sunny weather to enjoy the fresh air"--a suggestive picture. What thoughts must have been travelling through his mind, undisturbed by external things! How many of the passers knew that they flitted past the greatest glory of the age of Newton, Locke, and Wren? For one who would reverence the author of "Paradise Lost," there were probably twenty who would have been ready with a curse for the apologist of the killing of the King. In-doors he was seen by Dr. Wright, in Richardson's time an aged clergyman in Dorsetshire, who found him up one pair of stairs, in a room hung with rusty green "sitting in an elbow chair, black clothes, and neat enough, pale but not cadaverous; his hands and fingers gouty and with chalk-stones." Gout was the enemy of Milton's latter days; we have seen that he had begun to suffer from it before he wrote "Samson Agonistes." Without it, he said, he could find blindness tolerable. Yet even in the fit he would be cheerful, and would sing. It is grievous to write that, about 1670, the departure of his daughters promoted the comfort of his household. They were sent out to learn embroidery as a means of future support--a proper step in itself, and one which would appear to have entailed considerable expense upon Milton. But they might perfectly well have remained inmates of the family, and the inference is that domestic discord had at length grown unbearable to all. Friends, or at least visitors, were, on the other hand, more numerous than of late years. The most interesting were the "subtle, cunning, and reserved" Earl of Anglesey, who must have "coveted Milton's society and converse" very much if, as Phillips reports, he often came all the way to Bunhill Fields to enjoy it; and Dryden, whose generous admiration does not seem to have been affected by Milton's over-hasty sentence upon him as "a good rhymester, but no poet." One of Dryden's visits is famous in literary history, when he came with the modest request that Milton would let him turn his epic into an opera. "Aye," responded Milton, equal to the occasion, "tag my verses if you will"--to tag being to put a shining metal point--compared in Milton's fancy to a rhyme--at the end of a lace or cord. Dryden took him at his word, and in due time "Paradise Lost" had become an opera under the title of "The State of Innocence and Fall of Man," which may also be interpreted as referring to the condition of the poem before Dryden laid hands upon it and afterwards. It is a puzzling performance altogether; one sees not any more than Sir Walter Scott could see how a drama requiring paradisiacal costume could have been acted even in the age of Nell Gwyn; and yet it is even more unlikely that Dryden should have written a play not intended for the stage. The same contradiction prevails in the piece itself; it would not be unfair to call it the most absurd burlesque ever written without burlesque intention; and yet it displays such intellectual resources, such vigour, bustle, adroitness, and bright impudence, that admiration almost counterweighs derision. Dryden could not have made such an exhibition of Milton and himself twenty years afterwards, when he said that, much as he had always admired Milton, he felt that he had not admired him half enough. The reverence which he felt even in 1674 for "one of the greatest, most noble, and most sublime poems which either this age or nation has produced," contrasts finely with the ordinary Restoration estimate of Milton conveyed in the complimentary verses by Lee, prefixed to "The State of Innocence":-- "To the dead bard your fame a little owes, For Milton did the wealthy mine disclose, And rudely cast what you could well dispose. He roughly drew, on an old-fashioned ground, A chaos, for no perfect world was found, Till through the heap your mighty genius shined; He was the golden ore, which you refined." These later years also produced several little publications of Milton's own, mostly of manuscripts long lying by him, now slightly revised and fitted for the press. Such were his miniature Latin grammar, published in 1669; and his "Artis Logicae Plenior Institutio; or The Method of Ramus," 1672. The first is insignificant; and the second even Professor Masson pronounces, "as a digest of logic, disorderly and unedifying." Both apparently belong to his school-keeping days: the little tract, "Of True Religion, Heresy, Schism, Toleration," (1673) is, on the other hand, contemporary with a period of great public excitement, when Parliament (March, 1673) compelled the king to revoke his edict of toleration autocratically promulgated in the preceding year, and to assent to a severe Test Act against Roman Catholics. The good sense and good nature which inclined Charles to toleration were unfortunately alloyed with less creditable motives. Protestants justly suspected him of insidiously aiming at the re-establishment of Roman Catholicism, and even the persecuted Nonconformists patriotically joined with High Churchmen to adjourn their own deliverance until the country should be safe from the common enemy. The wisdom and necessity of this course were abundantly evinced under the next reign, and while we must regret that Milton contributed his superfluous aid to restrictions only defensible on the ground of expediency, we must admit that he could not well avoid making Roman Catholics an exception to the broad tolerance he claims for all denominations of Protestants. And, after all, has not the Roman Catholic Church's notion of tolerance always been that which Macaulay imputes to Southey, that everybody should tolerate her, and that she should tolerate nobody? A more important work, though scarcely worthy of Milton's industry, was his "History of Britain" (1670). This was a comparatively early labour, four of the six books having been written before he entered upon the Latin Secretaryship, and two under the Commonwealth. From its own point of view, this is a meritorious performance, making no pretensions to the character of a philosophical history, but a clear, easy narrative, sometimes interrupted by sententious disquisition, of transactions down to the Conquest. Like Grote, though not precisely for the same reason, Milton hands down picturesque legendary matter as he finds it, and it is to those who would see English history in its romantic aspect that, in these days of exact research, his work is chiefly to be recommended. It is also memorable for what he never saw himself, the engraved portrait, after Faithorne's crayon sketch. "No one," says Professor Masson, "can desire a more impressive and authentic portrait of Milton in his later life. The face is such as has been given to no other human being; it was and is uniquely Milton's. Underneath the broad forehead and arched temples there are the great rings of eye-socket, with the blind, unblemished eyes in them, drawn straight upon you by your voice, and speculating who and what you are; there is a severe composure in the beautiful oval of the whole countenance, disturbed only by the singular pouting of the rich mouth; and the entire expression is that of English intrepidity mixed with unutterable sorrow." Milton's care to set his house in order extended to his poetical writings. In 1673 the poems published in 1645, both English and Latin, appeared in a second edition, disclosing _novas frondes_ in one or two of Milton's earliest unprinted poems, and such of the sonnets as political considerations did not exclude; and _non sua poma_ in the Tractate of Education, curiously grafted on at the end. An even more important publication was the second edition of "Paradise Lost" (1674) with the original ten books for the first time divided into twelve as we now have them. Nor did this exhaust the list of Milton's literary undertakings. He was desirous of giving to the world his correspondence when Latin Secretary, and the "Treatise on Christian Doctrine" which had employed so much of his thoughts at various periods of his life. The Government, though allowing the publication of his familiar Latin correspondence (1674), would not tolerate the letters he had written as secretary to the Commonwealth, and the "Treatise on Christian Doctrine" was still less likely to propitiate the licenser. Holland was in that day the one secure asylum of free thought, and thither, in 1675, the year following Milton's death, the manuscripts were taken or sent by Daniel Skinner, a nephew of Cyriack's, to Daniel Elzevir, who agreed to publish them. Before publication could take place, however, a clandestine but correct edition of the State letters appeared in London, probably by the agency of Edward Phillips. Skinner, in his vexation, appealed to the authorities to suppress this edition: they took the hint, and suppressed his instead. Elzevir delivered up the manuscripts, which the Secretary of State pigeon-holed until their existence was forgotten. At last, in 1823, Mr. Robert Lemon, rummaging in the State Paper Office, came upon the identical parcel addressed by Elzevir to Daniel Skinner's father which contained his son's transcript of the State Letters and the "Treatise on Christian Doctrine." Times had changed, and the heretical work was edited and translated by George the Fourth's favourite chaplain, and published at his Majesty's expense. The "Treatise on Christian Doctrine" is by far the most remarkable of all Milton's later prose publications, and would have exerted a great influence on opinion if it had appeared when the author designed. Milton's name would have been a tower of strength to the liberal eighteenth-century clergy inside and outside the Establishment. It should indeed have been sufficiently manifest that "Paradise Lost" could not have been written by a Trinitarian or a Calvinist; but theological partisanship is even slower than secular partisanship to see what it does not choose to see; and Milton's Arianism was not generally admitted until it was here avouched under his own hand. The general principle of the book is undoubting reliance on the authority of Scripture, with which such an acquaintance is manifested as could only have been gained by years of intense study. It is true that the doctrine of the inward light as the interpreter of Scripture is asserted with equal conviction; but practically this illumination seems seldom to have guided Milton to any sense but the most obvious. Hence, with the intrepid consistency that belongs to him, he is not only an Arian, but a tolerator of polygamy, finding that practice nowhere condemned in Scripture, but even recommended by respectable examples; an Anthropomorphist, who takes the ascription of human passion to the Deity in the sense certainly intended by those who made it; a believer in the materiality and natural mortality of the soul, and in the suspension of consciousness between death and the resurrection. Where less fettered by the literal Word he thinks boldly; unable to conceive creation out of nothing, he regards all existence as an emanation from the Deity, thus entitling himself to the designation of Pantheist. He reiterates his doctrine of divorce; and is as strong an Anti-Sabbatarian as Luther himself. On the Atonement and Original Sin, however, he is entirely Evangelical; and he commends public worship so long as it is not made a substitute for spiritual religion. Liturgies are evil, and tithes abominable. His exposition of social duty tempers Puritan strictness with Cavalier high-breeding, and the urbanity of a man of the world. Of his motives for publication and method of composition he says:-- "It is with a friendly and benignant feeling towards mankind that I give as wide a circulation as possible to what I esteem my best and richest possession.... And whereas the greater part of those who have written most largely on these subjects have been wont to fill whole pages with explanations of their own opinions, thrusting into the margin the texts in support of their doctrines, I have chosen, on the contrary, to fill my pages even to redundance with quotations from Scripture, so that as little space as possible might be left for my own words, even when they arise from the context of revelation itself." There is consequently little scope for eloquence in a treatise consisting to so large an extent of quotations; but it is pervaded by a moral sublimity, more easily felt than expressed. Particular opinions will be diversely judged; but if anything could increase our reverence for Milton it would be that his last years should have been devoted to a labour so manifestly inspired by disinterested benevolence and hazardous love of truth. His life's work was now finished, and finished with entire success as far as depended upon his own will and power. He had left nothing unwritten, nothing undone, nor was he ignorant what manner of monument he had raised for himself, It was only the condition of the State that afflicted him, and this, looking forward, he saw in more gloomy colours than it appears to us who look back. Had he attained his father's age his apprehensions would have been dispelled by the Revolution: but he had evidently for some time past been older in constitution than in years. In July, 1674, he was anticipating death; but about the middle of October, "he was very merry and seemed to be in good health of body." Early in November "the gout struck in," and he died on November 8th, late at night, "with so little pain that the time of his expiring was not perceived by those in the room." On November 12th, "all his learned and great friends in London, not without a concourse of the vulgar, accompanied his body to the church of St. Giles, near Cripplegate, where he was buried in the chancel." In 1864, the church was restored in honour of the great enemy of religious establishments. "The animosities die, but the humanities live for ever." * * * * * Milton's resources had been greatly impaired in his latter years by losses, and the expense of providing for his daughters. He nevertheless left, exclusive of household goods, about £900, which, by a nuncupative will made in July, 1674, he had wholly bequeathed to his wife. His daughters, he told his brother Christopher (now a Roman Catholic, and on the road to become one of James the Second's judges, but always on friendly terms with John), had been undutiful, and he thought that he had done enough for them. They naturally thought otherwise, and threatened litigation. The interrogatories administered on this occasion afford the best clue to the condition of Milton's affairs and household. At length the dispute was compromised, the nuncupative will, a kind of document always regarded with suspicion, was given up, and the widow received two-thirds of the estate instead of the whole, probably the fairest settlement that could have been arrived at. After residing some years in London she retired to Nantwich in her native county, where divers glimpses reveal her as leading the decent existence of a poor but comfortable gentlewoman as late as August or September, 1727. The inventory of her effects, amounting to £38 8s. 4d., is preserved, and includes: "Mr. Milton's pictures and coat of arms, valued at ten guineas;" and "two Books of Paradise," valued at ten shillings. Of the daughters, Anne married "a master-builder," and died in childbirth some time before 1678; Mary was dead when Phillips wrote in 1694; and Deborah survived until August 24, 1727, dying within a few days of her stepmother. She had married Abraham Clarke, a weaver and mercer in Dublin, who took refuge in England during the Irish troubles under James the Second, and carried on his business in Spitalfields. She had several children by him, one of whom lived to receive, in 1750, the proceeds of a theatrical benefit promoted by Bishop Newton and Samuel Johnson. Deborah herself was brought into notice by Addison, and was visited by Professor Ward of Gresham College, who found her "bearing the inconveniences of a low fortune with decency and prudence." Her last days were made comfortable by the generosity of Princess Caroline and others: it is more pleasant still to know that her affection for her father had revived. When shown Faithorne's crayon portrait (not the one engraved in Milton's lifetime, but one exceedingly like it) she exclaimed, "in a transport, ''Tis my dear father, I see him, 'tis him!' and then she put her hands to several parts of her face, ''Tis the very man, here! here!'" * * * * * Milton's character is one of the things which "securus judicat orbis terrarum." On one point only there seems to us, as we have frequently implied, to be room for modification. In the popular conception of Milton the poet and the man are imperfectly combined. We allow his greatness as a poet, but deny him the poetical temperament which alone could have enabled him to attain it. He is looked upon as a great, good, reverend, austere, not very amiable, and not very sensitive man. The author and the book are thus set at variance, and the attempt to conceive the character as a whole results in confusion and inconsistency. To us, on the contrary, Milton, with all his strength of will and regularity of life, seems as perfect a representative as any of his compeers of the sensitiveness and impulsive passion of the poetical temperament. We appeal to his remarkable dependence upon external prompting for his compositions; to the rapidity of his work under excitement, and his long intervals of unproductiveness; to the heat and fury of his polemics; to the simplicity with which, fortunately for us, he inscribes small particulars of his own life side by side with weightiest utterances on Church and State; to the amazing precipitancy of his marriage and its rupture; to his sudden pliability upon appeal to his generosity; to his romantic self-sacrifice when his country demanded his eyes from him; above all, to his splendid ideals of regenerated human life, such as poets alone either conceive or realize. To overlook all this is to affirm that Milton wrote great poetry without being truly a poet. One more remark may be added, though not required by thinking readers. We must beware of confounding the essential with the accidental Milton--the pure vital spirit with the casual vesture of the creeds and circumstances of the era in which it became clothed with mortality:-- "They are still immortal Who, through birth's orient portal And death's dark chasm hurrying to and fro, Clothe their unceasing flight In the brief dust and light Gathered around their chariots as they go. New shapes they still may weave, New gods, new laws, receive." If we knew for certain which of the many causes that have enlisted noble minds in our age would array Milton's spirit "in brief dust and light," supposing it returned to earth in this nineteenth century, we should know which was the noblest of them all, but we should be as far as ever from knowing a final and stereotyped Milton. THE END. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 1: A famous Presbyterian tract of the day, so called from the combined initials of the authors, one of whom was Milton's old instructor, Thomas Young. The "Remonstrant" to whom Milton replied was Bishop Hall.] [Footnote 2: This principle admitted of general application. For example, astrological books were to be licensed by John Booker, who could by no means see his way to pass the prognostications of his rival Lilly without "many impertinent obliterations," which made Lilly exceeding wroth.] [Footnote 3: Two persons of this uncommon name are mentioned in the State Papers of Milton's time--one a merchant who imported a cargo of timber; the other a leatherseller. The name also occurs once in Pepys.] [Footnote 4: Rossetti's sonnet, "On the Refusal of Aid between Nations," is an almost equally remarkable instance.] [Footnote 5: The same is recorded of Friedrich Hebbel, the most original of modern German dramatists.] [Footnote 6: In his "Urim of Conscience," 1695. This curious book contains one of the first English accounts of Buddha, whom the author calls Chacabout (Sakhya Buddha, apparently), and of the "Christians of St. John" at Bassora.] [Footnote 7: Ariosto and Marcellus Palingenius. Both these wrote before Ronsard, to whom the thought is traced by Pattison, and Valvasone, to whom Hayley deems Milton indebted for it.] [Footnote 8: We cannot agree with Mr. Edmundson that Milton was in any respect indebted to Vondel's "Adam's Banishment," published in 1664.] [Footnote 9: Theocritus, Idyll I.; Lang's translation.] INDEX. A. Adam, not the hero of "Paradise Lost," 155 Adonais compared with Lycidas, 51 Aldersgate Street, Milton's home in, 67, 83 "Allegro, L.," 49-50 Andreini, his "Adamo" supposed to have suggested "Paradise Lost," 169 Anglesey, Earl of, visits Milton, 186 "Animadversions upon the Remonstrant," 72 "Apology for Smectymnuus," 72 "Arcades," 44 "Areopagitica, the," 78; argument of, 79-82 Arian opinions of Milton, 159, 191 Ariosto, Milton borrows from, 164 Artillery Walk, Milton's last house, 144 "At a Solemn Music," 33 Aubrey's biographical notices of Milton, 14, 15, 19, 24, 129, 144, 145 B. Ball's Life of Preston, 23 Barbican, Milton's house in the, 96 Baroni, Leonora, admired by Milton, 62 Beddoes, T.L., on Milton and Vondel, 170 Benrath on Ochino's "Divine Tragedy," 171 Blake on Milton, 179 Bradshaw, Milton's praise of, 120 Bread Street, Milton born in, 16 Bridgewater, Lord, "Comus" written in his honour, 45 Bright, John, his admiration for Milton, 164. British Museum, copy of Milton's poems in, 97; proclamation against Milton's books preserved in the, 139 Buckhurst, Lord, his admiration of "Paradise Lost," 177 C. Caedmon, question of Milton's indebtedness to, 169 Calderon's "Magico Prodigioso" compared with "Comus," 54; with "Paradise Lost," 163 Cambridge in Milton's time, 22 Cardinal Barberini receives Milton, 62 Caroline, Princess, her kindness to Milton's daughter, 195 Chalfont St. Giles, Milton's residence at, 173 Chappell, W., Milton's college tutor, 24 Charles I., illegal government of, 30; expedition against the Scots, 67; execution of, 100; alleged authorship of "Eikon Basilike," 105-107; a bad king, but not a bad man, 110 Charles II., restoration of, 138; favour to Roman Catholics, 188 Christ's College, Milton at, 22 "Christian Doctrine," Milton's treatise on, 99, 190-193 "Civil Power in Ecclesiastical Causes," 132 Clarke, Deborah, Milton's youngest daughter; her reminiscences of her father, 195 Clarke, Mr. Hyde, his discoveries respecting Milton's ancestry, 14, 15 Clarke, Sir T., Milton's MSS. preserved by, 129 Coleridge, Milton compared with, 41; on Milton's taste for music, 63; on "Paradise Regained," 178 Comenius, educational method of, 76 Commonwealth, Milton's views of a free, 136 "Comus," production of, 38, 44, 46; criticism on, 53-55 "Considerations on the likeliest means to remove Hirelings out of the Church," 133 Copernican theory only partly adopted in "Paradise Lost," 158 Cosmogony of Milton, 157 Cromwell, Milton's character of, 121; Milton's advice to, 122 D. Dante and Milton compared, 160 Daughters, character of Milton's, 142 Davis, Miss, Milton's suit to, 94 Deity, imperfect conception of, in "Paradise Lost," 154 Denham, Sir J., his admiration of "Paradise Lost," 177 Diodati, Milton's friendship with, 21; verses to, 25; letters to, 39, 41, 55; death of, 65; Milton's elegy on, 43, 67 "Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce," 79, 87-91 Dryden, on "Paradise Lost," 177; visits Milton, 187; dramatizes "Paradise Lost," 187 Du Moulin, Peter, author of "Regii Sanguinis Clamor ad Coelum," 118 E. Edmundson, Mr. G., on Milton and Vondel, 170 Education, Milton's tract on, 75-77 "Eikon Basilike," authorship of, 105-107 "Eikonoklastes," Milton's reply to "Eikon Basilike," 108 Ellwood, Thomas, the Quaker, reads to Milton, 145; suggests "Paradise Regained," 175 Elzevir, Daniel, receives and gives up the MS. of "State Letters" and the "Treatise on Christian Doctrine," 191 F. Fairfax, Milton's character of, 120 Faithorne's portrait of Milton, 189 G. Galileo, Milton's visit to, 61 Gauden, Bishop, author of "Eikon Basilike," 106 _Gentleman's Magazine_, account of Horton in, 36 Goethe on "Samson Agonistes," 181 Gill, Mr., Milton's master at St. Paul's school, 20 Gosse, Mr., on Milton and Vondel, 170 Greek, influence of, on Milton, 33, 39 Grotius, Hugo, Milton introduced to, 59; Milton's study of, 169 H. Hartlib, S., Milton's tract on Education inspired by, 75 "History of Britain" by Milton, 99, 189 Holstenius, Lucas, librarian of the Vatican, 63 Homer and Shakespeare compared, 2; and compared with Milton, 160, 165, 167 Horton, Milton retires to, 33; poems written at, 44 Hunter, Rev. Joseph, on Milton's ancestors, 14 "Hymn on the Nativity," 32 I. Italian sonnets by Milton, 64 Italy, Milton's journey to, 56-65 J. Jansen, Cornelius, paints Milton's portrait, 19 Jeffrey, Sarah, Milton's mother, 16 Jewin Street, Milton's house in, 144 Johnson, Dr., on "Lycidas," 51; benefits Milton's granddaughter, 195 K. Keats, Milton contrasted with, 41 King, Edward, "Lycidas," an elegy on his death, 48 L. Landor, his Latin verse compared with Milton's, 43 Latin grammar by Milton, 188 Latin Secretaryship to the Commonwealth, Milton's appointment to, 102 Laud, Archbishop, Church government of, 30; Milton's veiled attack on, 49 Lawes, Henry, writes music to "Comus" and "Arcades," 44; edits "Comus," 47 Lee, Nathaniel, his verses on Milton, 188 Lemon, Mr. Robert, discovers MS. of "State Letters" and the "Treatise on Christian Doctrine," 191 Letters, Milton's official, 123 Logic, Milton's tract on, 188 Long Parliament, meeting of the, 68; licensing of books by, 78 Lucifer, Vondel's, 170 Ludlow Castle, "Comus" first performed at, 46 "Lycidas," origin of, 40, 48; analysis of, criticism on, 50, 52 M. Manso, Marquis, poem on, 64 Marshall, Milton's portrait engraved by, 97 Marriage, Milton's views on, 94 Martineau, Harriet, reads "Paradise Lost" at seven years of age, 176 Mason, C., Milton's MSS. preserved by, 129 Masson, Prof. David, his monumental biography of Milton, 14; on Milton's ancestors, _ib._; on Milton's college career, 23, 25; on the scenery of Horton, 35; on date of Divorce pamphlet, 87; on date of "Paradise Lost," 147; on money received for "Paradise Lost," 150; on Milton's cosmogony, 156; his description of Chalfont, 173; on Milton's portrait, 189 Milton, Christopher, John Milton's younger brother, birth of, 16; a Royalist, 91; a Roman Catholic, and one of James the Second's judges, 194 Milton, John, the elder, birth, 15; a scrivener by profession, _ib._; musical compositions of, 18; retirement to Horton, 33; his noble confidence in his son, 37, 45; comes to live with his son, 91; dies, 98 Milton, John, birth, 11; genealogy of, 14; birthplace, 16; his father, 17; his education, 18-27; knowledge of Italian, 21; at Cambridge, 22-28; rusticated, 25; his degree, 1629; 25; will not enter the church, 29; early poems, 32; writes "Comus," 38; required incitement to write, 40, 48; correctness of his early poems, 42; his life at Horton, 44-55; his "Comus" and "Arcades," 44-48; his "Lycidas," 48; his mother's death, 55; goes to Italy, 56; his Italian friends, 59; visits Galileo, 61; Italian sonnets, 64; educates his nephews, 65; elegy to Diodati, 67; eighteen years' poetic silence, 68; takes part with the Commonwealth, 68; pamphlets on Church government, 72; tract on Education, 75; "Areopagitica," 79; Italian sonnet, 85; his first marriage, 86; deserted by his wife, his treatise on Divorce, 87; his pupils, 91; return of his wife, 96; his daughter born, 98; becomes Secretary for Foreign Tongues, 102; his State papers, 104; licenses pamphlets, 105; answers "Eikon Basilike," 108; answers Salmasius, 111; loses his sight, 114; death of his wife, 116; reply to Morus, 119; his official duties 122; his retirement and second marriage, 125; projected ninety-nine themes preparatory to "Paradise Lost," 129; wrote chiefly from autumn to spring, 132; his views of a republic, 136; escapes proscription at Restoration, 139; unhappy relations with his daughters, 141; third marriage, 143; writing "Paradise Lost," 147-150; analysis of his work, 152-172; compared with modern poets, 166; his indebtedness to earlier poets, 169; retires to Chalfont to escape the plague, 173; he suffers from the Great Fire, 175; his "Paradise Regained," 177; his "Samson Agonistes," 180-85; his later life, 186; his later tracts, 188, 190; his "History of Britain," 189; his Arian opinions, 192; his death, 193; his will, 194; his widow and daughters, 195; estimate of his character, 196 Milton, Richard, Milton's grandfather, 14, 15 Minshull, Elizabeth, Milton's third wife, 143; Milton's will in favour of, 194; death, _ib._ Monk, General, character of, 135 Morland, Sir Samuel, on "Paradise Lost," 163 Morus, A., his controversy with Milton, 118-119 Myers, Mr. E., on Milton's views of marriage, 91 N. Newton, Bishop, benefits Milton's granddaughter, 195 O. Ochino, B., Milton's indebtedness to, 171 "On a fair Infant," 33 P. Paget, Dr., Milton's physician, 143, 145 Palingenius, Marcellus, Milton borrows from, 164 Pamphlets, Milton's, 72, 75, 78, 79, 87, 99, 100, 108, 113, 132, 133, 136-8 "Paradise Lost," 128; four schemes for, 129; first conceived as drama, 130; manner of composition, 147; dates of, 147-150; critique of, 152-172; successive publications of, 176 "Paradise Regained," 177; criticism on, 178-180 "Passion of Christ," 32 Pattison, Mark, on "Lycidas," 51; on Milton's political career, 68; on fanaticism of Commonwealth, 133; on "Paradise Lost," 159; on Milton's diction, 165 "Penseroso, Il," 40, 49 Pepys, S., on Restoration, 135, 138 Petty France, Westminster, Milton's home in, 117 Philaras, Milton's Greek friend, 114 Phillips, E., Milton's brother-in-law, 22, 65 Phillips, Edward, Milton's nephew, on Milton's ancestry, 14; educated by his uncle, 65; his account of Milton's separation from his first wife, 87; of their reconciliation, 96; becomes a Royalist, 129; his attention to his uncle, 145; on "Paradise Lost," 176; on "Paradise Regained," 177 "Pilot of the Galilean Lake," 49 "Plymouth Brethren," resemblance of Milton's views to, 133 Powell, Mary, Milton marries, 86; she leaves him, 87; returns to him, 95; her family live with Milton, 98; her death, 116; probable bad influence on her daughters, 163 "Prelatical Episcopacy" pamphlet, 72 "Pro Populo" pamphlet, 113 Ptolemaic system followed by Milton in "Paradise Lost," 157 Puckering, Sir H., gave Milton's MSS. to the University of Cambridge, 129 R. Reading, surrender of to Parliamentary army, 91 "Ready way to establish a Commonwealth," 136 "Reason of Church Government" pamphlet, 72 "Reformation touching Church Discipline" pamphlet, 72 Restoration, consequences to Milton of the, 138-141 Richardson, J., on Milton's later life, 186 Rome, Milton in, 62 Rump, burning of the, 136 S. St. Bride's Churchyard, Milton lodges in, 65 St. Giles's Cripplegate, Milton's grave in, 194 St. Paul's school, Milton at, 19 Salmasius, Claudius, his character, 109; author of "Defensio Regia," 111; Milton's controversy with, 112, 114 Samson, Vondel's, 170 "Samson Agonistes," 141, 178; criticism on, 180-185 Satan, the hero of "Paradise Lost," 155 Shakespeare, 2; Milton's panegyric on, 33, 38; his view of tragedy compared with Milton's, 183 Shelley, on poetical inspiration, 41; his estimate of Milton, 156; on tragedy and comedy, 183; quoted, 17, 197 Skinner, Cyriack, his loan to Milton, 138 Skinner, David, endeavours to publish "State Letters" and "Treatise on Christian Doctrine," 191 Sonnet, "When the assault was intended to the City," 84; from the Italian, 85; on Vaudois Protestants, 124; to his second wife, 125; to Henry Lawrence, 126; inscribed on a window-pane, 175 "State Letters," 191 Stationers' Company and Milton, 92 Symmons, S., publisher of "Paradise Lost," 149, 175 Symonds, Mr. J.A., on metre of "Paradise Lost," 166 T. Tennyson, on Milton's Eden, 162 "Tenure of Kings and Magistrates," 100 "Tina," by Antonio Malatesti, 68 Tomkyns, Thomas, licenses "Paradise Lost," 151; and the poems, 178 Tovey, Nathaniel, Milton's college tutor, 25 Treatise on Christian Doctrine, 190 U. Ulster Protestants, Milton's subscription for, 83 V. Vernon Lee, 57 Vondel, Milton's indebtedness to, 170 W. Wakefield, E.G., on the champions of great causes, 135 Wood, Anthony, on Restoration, 133 Woodcock, Katherine, Milton's second wife, her marriage and death, 125 Wootton, Sir H., on "Comus," 47 Wordsworth, quoted, 27, 65; Milton contrasted with, 41; on "Paradise Regained," 178 Wright, Dr., reminiscence of his visit to Milton, 186 Y. Young, Thomas, Milton's private tutor, 14 BIBLIOGRAPHY. BY JOHN P. ANDERSON (_British Museum_). * * * * * I. WORKS. II. POETICAL WORKS. III. PROSE WORKS. IV. SINGLE WORKS. V. SELECTIONS. VI. APPENDIX-- Biography, Criticism, etc. Magazine Articles, etc. VII. CHRONOLOGICAL LIST OF WORKS. * * * * * I. WORKS. The Works of John Milton in verse and prose, printed from the original editions, with a life of the author by J. Mitford. 8 vols. London, 1851, 8vo. II. POETICAL WORKS. Poems of Mr. John Milton, both English and Latin, compos'd at several times. Printed by his true copies. London [January 2], 1645, 8vo. First collective edition, and the first work bearing Milton's name. ---- Poems, etc., upon several occasions, both English and Latin, etc., composed at several times. With a small Tractate of Education to Mr. Hartlib. 2 parts. London, 1673, 8vo. ---- The Poetical Works of John Milton. Containing Paradise Lost, Paradise Regained, Samson Agonistes, and his poems on several occasions. Together with explanatory notes on each book of the Paradise Lost [by P.H., _i.e._, Patrick Hume]. 5 parts. London, 1695, folio. ---- The Poetical Remains of Mr Milton, etc. By C. Gildon. London, 1698, 8vo. ---- The Poetical Works of John Milton. 2 vols. London, 1707, 8vo. ---- The Poetical Works of Mr. John Milton. (Notes upon the twelve books of Paradise Lost, by Mr. Addison. A small Tractate of Education to Mr. Hartlib.) 2 vols. London, 1720, 4to. ---- Another edition. 2 vols. London, 1721, 12mo. ---- Another edition. 2 vols. London, 1727, 8vo. ---- Another edition. 2 vols. London, 1730, 8vo. ---- The Poetical Works of John Milton. 2 vols. London, 1731, 8vo. ---- Another edition. 4 vols. London, 1746, 12mo. ---- Another edition, with notes of various authors, by Thomas Newton, bishop of Bristol. 3 vols. London, 1749-52, 4to. ---- The Poetical Works of Milton, etc. 2 vols. Edinburgh, 1762, 8vo. ---- Another edition, by Newton. 4 vols. London, 1763, 8vo. ---- Another edition. 4 vols. London, 1766, 8vo. ---- The Poetical Works of Milton. With prefatory characters of the several pieces; the life of Milton, a glossary, etc. Edinburgh, 1767, 8vo. ---- Another edition. 4 vols, London, 1770, 8vo. ---- Another edition. 4 vols. London, 1773, 8vo. ---- Poems on several occasions. (_British Poets_, vol. iv.) Edinburgh, 1773, 8vo. ---- Another edition. 3 vols. London, 1775, 4to. ---- The Poetical Works of John Milton. From the text of Dr. Newton. (_Bell's Poets of Great Britain_, vols. 35-38.) Edinburgh, 1776, 12mo. ---- The Poems of Milton. (_Johnson's Works of the English Poets_, vols. 3-5.) London, 1779, 8vo. ---- Poems upon several occasions, English, Italian, and Latin, with translations: viz., Lycidas, L'Allegro, Il Penseroso, Arcades, Comus, Odes, Sonnets, Miscellanies, English Psalms, Elegiarum Liber, Epigrammatum Liber, Sylvarum Liber. With notes critical and explanatory, and other illustrations, by T. Warton. London, 1785, 8vo. ---- Second edition, with many alterations, and large additions. London, 1791, 8vo. ---- Poems. Another edition. (_Johnson's Works of the English Poets_, vols. 10-12.) London, 1790, 8vo. ---- The Poetical Works of John Milton. To which is prefixed the life of the author. (_Anderson's Poets of Great Britain_, vol. v.) Edinburgh, 1792, 8vo. ---- The Poetical Works of John Milton. With a life of the author, by W. Hayley [and engravings after Westall]. 3 vols. London, 1794-97, folio. ---- The Poetical Works of John Milton, from the text of Dr. Newton. With the life of the author, and a critique on Paradise Lost, by J. Addison. Cooke's edition. Embellished with engravings. 2 vols. London, 1795-96, 12mo. ---- The Poetical Works of John Milton. With the principal notes of various commentators. To which are added illustrations, with some account of the life of Milton. By H.J. Todd. (Mr. Addison's criticism on the Paradise Lost. Dr. Johnson's Remarks on Milton's Versification. Dr. C. Burney's observations on the Greek verses of Milton.) 6 vols. London, 1801, 8vo. ---- Second edition, with considerable additions, and with a verbal index to the whole of Milton's poetry, etc. 7 vols. London, 1809, 8vo. ---- Third edition, with other illustrations, etc. 6 vols. London, 1826, 8vo. ---- The Poetical Works of John Milton. With a preface, biographical and critical, by J. Aikin. (Life of Milton by Dr. Johnson.) 3 vols. London, 1805, 8vo. Vols. xii.-xv. of an edition of "The Works of the English Poets. With preface by Dr. Johnson." ---- The Poetical Works of John Milton. With a preface, biographical and critical, by S. Johnson. Re-edited, with new biographical and critical matter, by J. Aikin, M.D. 3 vols. London, 1806, 12mo. ---- The Poetical Works of John Milton. 2 vols. London, 1806, 16mo. ---- The Poetical Works of John Milton. 4 vols. (_Park's Works of the British Poets_, vols. i.-iii.) London, 1808, 16mo. ---- The Poetical Works of John Milton, with the life of the author. By S. Johnson. 3 vols. London, 1809, 16mo. ---- Cowper's Milton. [Edited, with a life of Milton, by W. Hayley. Together with "Adam: a sacred drama, translated from the Italian of G.B. Andreini," by W. Cowper and W. Hayley.] 4 vols. Chichester, 1810, 8vo. The British Museum copy contains MS. notes by J. Mitford. ---- The Poems of John Milton. (_Chalmers' Works of the English Poets_, vol. vii.) London, 1810, 8vo. ---- The Poetical Works of John Milton. With the life of the author, by S. Johnson. (_Select British Poets_.) London, 1810, 8vo. ---- Poems on several occasions. Lycidas, L'Allegro, Il Penseroso. London, 1817, 12mo. ---- Another edition, with Fenton's life and Dr. Johnson's criticism. 2 vols. London, 1817, 8vo. ---- The Poetical Works of John Milton; to which is prefixed the life of the author. London, 1818, 12mo. This forms part of "Walker's British Classics." ---- The Poetical Works of John Milton, with a life of the author, by E. Sanford. (_Works of the British Poets_, vols. vii., viii.) 2 vols. Philadelphia, 1819, 12mo. ---- The Poems of John Milton. (_British Poets_, vols. xvi.-xviii.) Chiswick, 1822, 12mo. ---- The Poetical Works of John Milton, with notes of various authors, principally from the editions of T. Newton, C. Dunster, and T. Warton; to which is prefixed Newton's life of Milton. By E. Hawkins. 4 vols. Oxford, 1824, 8vo. ---- Paradise Lost. A new edition, with notes, critical and explanatory, by J.D. Williams. (Paradise Regained, Samson Agonistes, and Poems.) 2 vols. London, 1824, 12mo. The British Museum copy contains copious MS. notes by the editor. ---- Poetical Works, with Cowper's Translations of the Latin and Italian poems, and life of Milton by his nephew, E. Philips, etc. 3 vols. London, 1826, 8vo. ---- Poems on several occasions. [With Westall's plates.] London, 1827, 16mo. ---- The Poetical Works of John Milton. [Edited by J. Mitford, with life of Milton by the editor.] 3 vols. London, 1832, 8vo. Part of the "Aldine Edition of the British Poets." ---- Another edition. 3 vols. London, 1866, 8vo. ---- The Poetical Works of John Milton. Printed from the text of Todd and others. A new edition. With the poet's life by E. Philips. Leipzig, 1834, 8vo. ---- The Poetical Works of John Milton. Edited by Sir Egerton Brydges, Bart. [With a life of Milton, by Sir E.B.] 6 vols. London, 1835, 8vo. ---- The Complete Poetical Works of John Milton: with explanatory notes and a life of the author, by the Rev. H. Stebbing. To which is prefixed Dr. Channing's essay on the poetical genius of Milton. London, 1839, 12mo. ---- The Poetical Works of John Milton, J. Thomson, and E. Young. Edited by H.F. Cary. With a biographical notice of each author. 3 pts. London, 1841, 8vo. ---- The Poetical Works of John Milton, with a memoir and critical remarks on his genius and writings, by J. Montgomery, and one hundred and twenty engravings from drawings by W. Harvey. 2 vols. London, 1843, 8vo. ---- The Poetical Works of John Milton: with life and notes. Edinburgh [1848], 24mo. ---- The Poetical Works of John Milton. (_Tauchnitz Collection of British Authors_, vol. 194.) Leipzig, 1850, 8vo. ---- Poetical Works. (_Cabinet Edition of the British Poets_, vol. i.) London, 1851, 8vo. ---- The Poetical Works of John Milton, with notes and a life by the Rev. H. Stebbing, etc. London, 1851, 12mo. ---- The Poetical Works of John Milton. (_Universal Library_. _Poetry_, vol. i.) London, 1853, 8vo. ---- Milton's Poetical Works. With life, critical dissertation, and notes by G. Gilfillan. 2 vols. Edinburgh, 1853, 8vo. One of a series entitled, "Library Edition of the British Poets." ---- The Poetical Works of John Milton, with life. London, 1853, 8vo. ---- The Poetical Works of John Milton: with a life of the author, preliminary dissertations on each poem, notes critical and explanatory, and a verbal index. Edited by C.D. Cleveland. Philadelphia, 1853, 12mo. ---- The Complete Poetical Works of John Milton, with life. Edinburgh [1855], 8vo. ---- The Poetical Works of John Milton. With a life by J. Mitford. 3 vols. Boston [U.S.], 1856, 8vo. ---- The Poems of John Milton, with notes by T. Keightley. 2 vols. London, 1859, 8vo. ---- The Poetical Works of John Milton, with a memoir and critical remarks on his genius and writings, by J. Montgomery, and one hundred and twenty engravings. New edition, etc. 2 vols. (_Bohn's Illustrated Library_.) London, 1861, 8vo. ---- The Poetical Works of John Milton. With illustrations by C.H. Corbould and J. Gilbert. London, 1864, 8vo. ---- English Poems by John Milton. Edited, with life, introduction, and selected notes, by R.C. Browne. (_Clarendon Press Series_.) 2 vols. Oxford, 1870, 8vo. ---- The Poetical Works of John Milton. Illustrated by F. Gilbert. [With life of Milton.] London, 1870, 8vo. ---- The Poetical Works of John Milton. Edited, with a critical memoir, by W.M. Rossetti. Illustrated by T. Seccombe. London [1871], 8vo. Reprinted in 1880 and 1881. ---- The Poetical Works of John Milton. With life of the author, and an appendix containing Addison's Critique upon the Paradise Lost, and Dr. Channing's Essay on the poetical genius of Milton. With illustrations. London [1872], 8vo. ---- The Complete Poetical Works of Milton and Young. London [1872], 8vo. Part of "Blackwood's Universal Library of Standard Authors." ---- The Poetical Works of John Milton. Reprinted from the Chandos Poets. With memoir, explanatory notes, etc. (_Chandos Classics_.) London [1872], 8vo. ---- The Poetical Works of John Milton, printed from the original editions, with a life of the author by A. Chalmers. London [1873], 8vo. ---- The Poetical Works of John Milton. With life, critical dissertation, and explanatory notes [by G. Gilfillan], The text edited by C.C. Clarke. 2 vols. London [1874], 8vo. Part of "Cassell's Library Edition of British Poets." ---- The Poetical Works of John Milton: edited, with introductions, notes, and an essay on Milton's English, by D. Masson. [With portraits.] 3 vols. London, 1874, 8vo. ---- The Poetical Works of John Milton. With introductions and notes by D. Masson. 2 vols. London, 1874, 8vo. Forming part of the "Golden Treasury Series." ---- The Poetical Works of John Milton. Edited by Sir E. Brydges, Bart. Illustrated. A new edition. London [1876], 8vo. ---- The Globe edition. The Poetical Works of John Milton. With introductions by D. Masson. London, 1877, 8vo. ---- The Poetical Works of John Milton. London [1878], 8vo. ---- The Poetical Works of John Milton. Edited, with Notes, explanatory and philological, by J. Bradshaw. 2 vols. London, 1878, 8vo. ---- The Poetical Works of Milton and Marvell. With a memoir of each [that of Milton by D. Masson. With notes to the poems of Milton by J. Mitford]. 4 vols. in 2. Boston, 1878, 8vo. ---- The Poetical Works of John Milton. 2 vols. London, 1880, 16mo. ---- The Poetical Works of John Milton. A new edition revised from the text of T. Newton [by T.A.W. Buckley]. London [1880], 8vo. Part of the "Excelsior Series." ---- The Poetical Works of John Milton. With life, etc. Edinburgh [1881], 8vo. Part of "The Landscape Series of Poets." ---- The Poetical Works of John Milton, printed from the original editions. With a life of the author by A. Chalmers. With twelve illustrations by R. Westall. London, 1881, 8vo. ---- The Poetical Works of John Milton; edited, with memoir, introductions, notes, and an essay on Milton's English and Versification, by D. Masson. 3 vols. London, 1882, 8vo. ---- The Poetical Works of John Milton. With biographical notice. New York [1884], 8vo. ---- The Poetical Works of John Milton, edited by J. Bradshaw. Second edition. 2 vols. London, 1885, 8vo. ---- The Poetical Works of John Milton. 2 vols. London [1886], 24mo. ---- The Poetical Works of John Milton, with biographical notice by J. Bradshaw. London, 1887, 12mo. One of the "Canterbury Poets" Series. ---- Poetical Works. 2 vols. London, 1887, 8vo. ---- The Poetical Works of John Milton. Edited by J. Bradshaw. Paradise Regained. Minor Poems. London, 1888, 8vo. One of the "Canterbury Poets" Series. * * * * * Paradise Lost, etc. The life of John Milton. [By E. Fenton.] Paradise Regained.--Poems upon several occasions.--Sonnets.--Of Education. 2 vols. London, 1751, 12mo. The copy in the British Museum Library contains MS. Notes by C. Lamb. Milton's Italian Poems, translated and addressed to a gentleman of Italy. By Dr. Langhorne. London, 1776, 4to. Milton's Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained. With explanatory notes by J. Edmondston. London, 1854, 8vo. ---- Another edition. London, 1855, 16mo. Paradise Lost, etc. (Paradise Regained: and other Poems.--The Life of John Milton [by E. Fenton.]) 2 vols. London, 1855, 32mo. Paradise Regained. To which is added Samson Agonistes: and poems upon several occasions. A new edition. By T. Newton. London, 1777, 4to. Paradise Regained, Samson Agonistes, and the Minor English Poems. London, 1886, 16mo. Part of the "Religious Tract Society Library." Latin and Italian poems of Milton translated into English verse, and a fragment of a commentary on Paradise Lost, by the late W. Cowper, with a preface and notes by the Editor (W. Hayley), and notes of various authors. Chichester, 1808, 4to. The Latin and Italian Poems of Milton. Translated into English verse by J.G. Strutt. London, 1814, 8vo. Milton's Samson Agonistes and Lycidas. With illustrative notes by J. Hunter. London, 1870, 8vo. Milton's Earlier Poems, including the translations by William Cowper of those written in Latin and Italian. (_Cassell's National Library_, vol. xxxiv.) London, 1886, 8vo. Miscellaneous Poems, Sonnets, and Psalms, etc. London [1886], 8vo. Part of "Ward, Lock, & Co.'s Popular Library of Literary Treasures." The Minor Poems of John Milton, Edited, with notes, by W.J. Rolfe. New York, 1887, 8vo. The Sonnets of John Milton. Edited by Mark Pattison. London, 1883, 8vo. Part of the "Parchment Library." L'Allegro, Il Penseroso [revised by C. Jennens], ed il Moderato [by C. Jennens]. Set to musick by Mr. Handel. London, 1740, 4to. The words only. ---- Another edition. London, 1740, 4to. ---- L'Allegro, Il Penseroso as set to musick. [London, 1750], 8vo. ---- L'Allegro ed Il Penseroso. [Arranged for music.] [London, 1779], 8vo. L'Allegro ed Il Penseroso. And a song for St. Cecilia's day, by Dryden. Set to musick by G.F. Handel. London, 1754, 4to. The words without the music. L'Allegro ed Il Penseroso. Another edition. London [1754], 4to. L'Allegro and Il Penseroso. Glasgow, 1751, 4to. L'Allegro and Il Penseroso. With thirty illustrations designed expressly for the Art Union of London [by G. Scharf, H. O'Neil, and others]. [London], 1848, 4to. Milton's L'Allegro and Il Penseroso, illustrated with [Thirty] Etchings on Steel by B. Foster. London, 1855, 8vo. There is a copy in the British Museum Library which contains the autographs and photographs of George Cruikshank and his wife. L'Allegro and Il Penseroso, illustrated by engravings on steel after designs by Birket Foster. London, 1860, 8vo. L'Allegro, Il Penseroso, and other poems. Illustrated. Boston, 1877, 16mo. Milton's L'Allegro and Il Penseroso. With notes by J. Aikin. Poona [1881], 8vo. L'Allegro, Il Penseroso, and the Hymn on the Nativity. Illustrated. London, 1885, 8vo. Milton's Comus, L'Allegro, and Il Penseroso. With numerous illustrative notes adapted for use in training colleges. By John Hunter. London, 1864, 12mo. ---- Revised edition. London [1874], 8vo. Comus, Lycidas, L'Allegro, Il Penseroso, and selected Sonnets. With notes by H.R. Huckin. London, 1871, 16mo. Milton's Arcades and Sonnets. With notes by J. Hunter. London, 1880, 12mo. The Lycidas and Epitaphium Damonis. Edited, with notes and introduction (including a reprint of the rare Latin version of the Lycidas, by W. Hogg, 1694), by C.S. Jarram. London, 1874, 8vo. ---- Second edition, revised. London, 1881, 8vo. III. PROSE WORKS. The Works of Mr. John Milton. [In English Prose.] [London], 1697, fol. Not mentioned by Lowndes or Watt, but a copy is in the British Museum. A Complete Collection of the Historical, Political, and Miscellaneous Works of John Milton, both English and Latin. With some papers never before publish'd. To which is prefixed the life of the author, etc. [By J. Toland]. 3 vols. Amsterdam [London], 1698, fol. A Complete Collection of Historical, Political, and Miscellaneous Works of John Milton, correctly printed from the original editions, with an account of the life and writings of the author (by T. Birch), containing several original papers of his never before published. 2 vols. London, 1738, fol. The Works of John Milton, Historical, Political, and Miscellaneous. Now more correctly printed from the originals than in any former edition, and many passages restored which have been hitherto omitted. To which is prefixed an account of his life and writings (by T. Birch). (Edited by T. Birch and R. Barron?). London, 1753, 8vo. The Prose Works of John Milton; with a life of the author, interspersed with translations and critical remarks, by C. Symmons. 7 vols. London, 1806, 8vo. The Prose Works of John Milton. With an introductory review by R. Fletcher. London, 1833, 8vo. Select Prose Works of Milton. Account of his studies. Apology for his early life and writings. Tractate on Education. Areopagitica. Tenure of Kings. Eikonoclastes. Divisions of the Commonwealth. Delineation of a Commonwealth. Mode of establishing a Commonwealth. Familiar Letters. With a preliminary discourse and notes by J.A. St. John. (_Masterpieces of English Prose Literature._) 2 vols. London, 1836, 8vo. Extracts from the Prose Works of John Milton, containing the whole of his writings on the church question. Now first published separately. Edinburgh, 1836, 12mo. The Prose Works of John Milton. With a biographical introduction by R.W. Griswold. 2 vols. New York, 1847, 8vo. The Prose Works of John Milton, with a preface, preliminary remarks, and notes by J.A. St. John. 5 vols. (_Bohn's Standard Library._) London, 1848-53, 8vo. Areopagitica, Letter on Education, Sonnets and Psalms. (_Cassell's National Library_, vol. cxxi.) London, 1888, 8vo. IV. SINGLE WORKS. Accedence commenc't Grammar, supply'd with sufficient rules, for the use of such as are desirous to attain the Latin tongue with little teaching and their own industry. London, 1669, 12mo. An account of an original autograph sonnet by John Milton, contained in a copy of Mel Heliconium written by Alexander Rosse, 1642, etc. London, 1859, 8vo. L'Allegro, illustrated by the Etching Club. London, 1849, fol. ---- L'Allegro. [With illustrations engraved by W.J. Linton.] London, 1859, 8vo. ---- L'Allegro. [With illustrations.] London [1875], 8vo. Forming part of "The Choice Series." ---- Milton's L'Allegro. Edited, with interpretation, notes, and derivations, by F. Main. London, 1877, 8vo. Animadversions upon the Remonstrant's defence [_i.e._, the defence of J. Hall, Bishop of Norwich?] against Smectymnuus. London, 1641, 4to. Apographum literarum serenissimi protectoris, etc. [Leyden?] 1656, 4to. An apology against a Pamphlet [by J. Hall?] called A Modest Confutation of the Animadversions upon the Remonstrant against Smectymnuus. London, 1641, 4to. Areopagitica; a Speech of Mr. John Milton for the liberty of Unlicenc'd Printing, to the Parliament of England. London, 1644, 4to. ---- Areopagitica Another edition. With a preface by another hand. London, 1738, 8vo. ---- Another edition, with prefatory remarks, copious notes, and excursive illustrations, by T. Holt White, etc. London, 1819, 8vo. ---- Another edition. London, 1772, 8vo. ---- Another edition. London, 1780, 12mo. ---- Another edition, edited by James Losh. London, 1791, 8vo. ---- Areopagitica. (_Occasional Essays_, etc.) London, 1809, 8vo. ---- Another edition. London [1834], 8vo. ---- Areopagitica, etc. London, 1840, 8vo. _Tracts for the People_, No. 10. ---- English Reprints. John Milton. Areopagitica. Carefully edited by Edward Arber. London, 1868, 18mo. ---- English Reprints. John Milton. Areopagitica. Carefully edited by Edward Arber. London, 1869, 8vo. ---- A Modern Version of Milton's Areopagitica: with notes, appendix, and tables. By S. Lobb. Calcutta, 1872, 12mo. ---- Milton, Areopagitica. Edited, with introduction and notes, by J.W. Hales. Oxford, 1874, 8vo. ---- Milton's Areopagitica. (_Morley's Universal Library_, vol. 43.) London, 1886, 8vo. Autobiography of John Milton: or Milton's Life in his own words. Edited by J.J.G. Graham. London, 1872, 8vo. A brief history of Moscovia; and other less known countries lying eastward of Russia as far as Cathay. Gather'd from the writings of several eye-witnesses. London, 1682, 8vo. The Cabinet-Council; containing the Chief Arts of Empire, and Mysteries of State discabineted. By Sir Walter Raleigh, published by John Milton. London, 1658, 8vo. ---- Another edition. The Arts of Empire and Mysteries of State discabineted. By Sir Walter Raleigh, published by John Milton. London, 1692, 8vo. Colasterion, a reply to a nameles [_sic_] answer against "The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce." By the former author, J[ohn] M[ilton]. [London] 1645, 4to. A Common-Place Book of John Milton, and a Latin essay and Latin verses presumed to be by Milton. Edited from the original MSS. in the possession of Sir F.W. Graham, Bart., by A.J. Horwood. London, 1876, 4to. Printed for the Camden Society. ---- Revised edition. London, 1877, 4to. A Maske [Comus] presented at Ludlow Castle, 1634: on Michaelmasse night, before the right honorable John, Earle of Bridgewater, Viscount Brackly, Lord President of Wales. [Edited by H. Lawes.] London, 1637, 4to. The first edition of Comus. ---- Comus: a mask, etc. Glasgow, 1747, 12mo. ---- Comus, a mask presented at Ludlow Castle, 1634, before the Earl of Bridgewater, with notes critical and explanations by various commentators, and with preliminary illustrations; to which is added a copy of the mask from a manuscript belonging to his Grace the Duke of Bridgewater; by H.J. Todd. Canterbury, 1798, 8vo. ---- Comus, a mask; presented at Ludlow Castle, 1634. To which are added, L'Allegro and Il Penseroso; and Mr. Warton's account of the origin of Comus. London, 1799, 8vo. ---- Comus: a mask. With annotations. London, 1808, 8vo. ---- Comus: a masque. (_Cumberland's British Theatre_, vol. 32.) London [1829], 12mo. ---- Comus. A mask with thirty illustrations by Pickersgill, B. Foster, H. Weir, etc. London, 1858, 4to. ---- Milton's Comus. Published under the direction of the Committee appointed by the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge. London [1860], 12mo. ---- Comus: a mask. With explanatory notes. Published under the direction of the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge. London [1861], 12mo. ---- Milton's Comus. With notes [by W. Wallace]. London, 1871, 16mo. ---- The Mask of Comus. Edited, with copious notes, by H.B. Sprague. New York, 1876, 8vo. ---- Milton's "Comus" annotated, with a glossary and notes. With three introductory essays upon the masque proper, and upon the origin and history of the poem. By B.M. Ranking and D.F. Ranking. London, 1878, 8vo. ---- Milton's Comus, with introduction and notes. London, 1884, 8vo. Forming part of "Chambers's Reprints of English Classics." ---- Milton's Comus. Edited, with introduction and notes, by A.M. Williams. London, 1888, 8vo. ---- ---- Songs, Duets, Choruses, etc., in Milton's Comus: a masque in two acts, with additions from the author's poem "L'Allegro," and from Dryden's opera of "King Arthur." London [1842], 8vo. Considerations touching the likeliest means to remove Hirelings out of the Church. Wherein is also discourc'd of Tithes, Church-Fees, Church-Revenues, and whether any maintenance of ministers can be settl'd by law. The author J. M[ilton]. London, 1659, 12mo. ---- Another edition. London, 1717, 12mo. Another edition. London, 1723, 8vo. ---- Another edition. London [1834], 8vo. A Declaration, or Letters Patents of the Election of this present King of Poland, John the Third. Translated [by John Milton]. London, 1674, 4to. The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce restor'd to the good of both sexes from the Bondage of Canon Law and other mistakes to Christian freedom, guided by the rule of charity, etc. London, 1643, 4to. ---- The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce. Now the second time revis'd and much augmented. London, 1644, 4to. ---- Another edition. London, 1645, 4to. Eikonoklastes, in answer to a book intitl'd Eikon Basilike, the Portrature of his Sacred Majesty in his solitudes and sufferings. [By J. Gauden, Bishop of Exeter?] The author J[ohn] M[ilton]. London, 1649, 4to. ---- Eikonoklastes. Published now the second time, and much enlarg'd. London, 1650, 4to. ---- Eikonoklastes in answer to a book entitled Eikon Basilike, the Portraiture of his sacred majesty King Charles the first in his solitudes and sufferings. Amsterdam, 1690, 8vo. ---- Eikonoklastes: in answer to a book intitled Eikon Basilikon, the portraiture of his sacred majesty in his solitudes and sufferings. Now first published from the author's second edition, printed in 1650; with many enlargements, by R. Baron. With a preface shewing the transcendent excellency of Milton's prose works. To which is added an original Letter [from J. Wall] to Milton, never before published. London, 1756, 4to. ---- A new edition, corrected by the late Reverend R. Baron. London, 1770, 8vo. The History of Britain, that part especially now call'd England, from the first traditional beginning, continu'd to the Norman Conquest. Collected out of the antientest and best authors by John Milton. London, 1670, 4to. The History of Britain. Another edition. London, 1677, 8vo. ---- Second edition. London, 1678, 8vo. ---- Another edition. London, 1695, 8vo. Il Penseroso. With designs by J.E.G.; etched by J.E.G. and H.P.G. on India paper. London, 1844, folio. ---- Milton. Il Penseroso. (_Clarendon Press Series_.) Oxford, 1874, 8vo. Joannis Miltoni Angli, Artis Logicæ Plenior Institutio, ad Petri Rami Methodum concinnata. Adjecta est Praxis Analytica and P. Rami vita. Londini, 1672, 12mo. Joannis Miltoni Angli de Doctrina Christiana libri duo posthumi, quos ex schedis manuscriptis deprompsit, et typis mandari primus curavit C.R. Sumner. Cantabrigiæ, 1825, 4to. ---- Another edition. Brunsvigae, 1827, 8vo. ---- A Treatise of Christian Doctrine, compiled from the Holy Scriptures alone. Translated from the original by C.R. Sumner. Cambridge, 1825, 4to. ---- John Milton's last thoughts on the Trinity. Extracted from his Treatise on Christian Doctrine. London, 1828, 12mo. ---- New edition. London, 1859, 8vo. Joannis Miltonii Angli Epistolarum familiarium liber unus: quibus accesserunt ejusdem jam olim in collegio adolescentis prolusiones quædam oratoriæ. Londini, 1674, 12mo. ---- Milton's familiar letters. Translated from the Latin, with notes, by J. Hall. Philadelphia, 1829, 8vo. Joannis Miltoni Angli pro populo Anglicano defensio, contra Claudii Anonymi, aliàs Salmasii, defensionem regiam. Cum indice. Londini, 1651, 12mo. ---- Another edition. Londini, 1651, 4to. ---- Another edition. Londini, 1651, 12mo. ---- Editio emendatior. Londini, 1651, folio. ---- Another edition. Londini, 1652, 12mo. ---- Editio correctior et auctior, ab autore denuo recognita. Londini, 1658, 8vo. ---- A Defense of the People of England in answer to Salmasius's defence of the king. [Translated from the Latin by Mr. Washington, of the Temple.] [London?] 1692, 8vo. Joannis Miltoni pro populo Anglicano defensio secunda. Contra infamem libellum anonymum [by P. Du Moulin] cui titulus, Regii sanguinis clamor ad coelum adversus parricidas Anglicanos. Londini, 1654, 8vo. ---- Another edition. [With preface by G. Crantzius.] 2 parts. Hagæ Comitum, 1654, 12mo. ---- Milton's Second Defence of the People of England [translated by Archdeacon Wrangham]. London, 1816, 8vo. Included in _Scraps_ by the Rev. Francis Wrangham. Joanni Miltoni pro se defensio contra Alexandrum Morum Ecclesiastes [or rather P. Du Moulin] Libelli famosi, cui titulus, Regii sanguinis clamor ad coelum adversus Parricidas Anglicanos, authorem recte dictum. Londini, 1655, 8vo. The judgement of Martin Bucer concerning divorce, now Englisht [by John Milton]. Wherein a late book [by John Milton] restoring the doctrine and discipline of divorce is heer confirm'd, etc. London, 1644, 4to. A Letter written to a Gentleman in the Country, touching the dissolution of the late Parliament, and the reasons thereof. [By John Milton, signed N. Ll.] London [May 26], 1653, 4to. Literæ ab Olivario protectore ad sacram regiam majestem Sueciæ. [Leyden?] 1656, 4to. Literæ Pseudo-Senatus Anglicani, Cromwellii, reliquorumque Perduellium nomine ac jussu conscriptæ a Joanne Miltono. [London] 1676, 12mo. ---- Another edition. Literæ nomine Senatus Anglicani Cromwellii Richardique ad diversos in Europa principes et Respublicas exaratæ a Joanne Miltono, quas nunc primum in Germania recudi fecit J.G. Pritius. Lipsiæ Francofurti, 1690, 12mo. ---- Milton's Republican-Letters, or a collection of such as were written by Comand of the late Commonwealth of England, etc. [Amsterdam?] 1682, 4to. ---- Letters of State written by Mr. John Milton to most of the Sovereign princes and Republicks of Europe, from the year 1649 till 1659. To which is added an Account of his Life [by E. Phillips], together with several of his poems, etc. London, 1694, 12mo. The "several poems" consist of four sonnets only. ---- Oliver Cromwell's Letters to Foreign Princes and States for strengthening and preserving the Protestant Religion, etc. [Translated from the Latin of John Milton.] London, 1700, 4to. Lycidas. [First edition.] (_Justa Edouardo King naufrago, ab Amicis moerentibus_, etc.) 2 pts. Cantabrigiæ, 1638, 4to. Part II., "Obsequies to the Memorie of Mr. Edward King," has a distinct title-page and pagination, and contains the first edition of Lycidas. ---- Milton's Lycidas, with notes, critical, explanatory, and grammatical, by a Graduate. Melbourne, 1869, 8vo. ---- Lycidas. Reprinted from the first edition of 1638, and collated with the autograph copy in the library of Trinity College, Cambridge. With a version in Latin hexameters. By F.A. Paley. London, 1874, 8vo. ---- Milton. Lycidas. With introduction and notes. By T.D. Hall. Manchester [1876], 8vo. ---- Second edition. London [1880], 8vo. ---- Milton's Lycidas. Edited, with interpretation and notes, by F. Main, etc. London, 1876, 8vo. ---- Second edition. London, 1876, 8vo. Mr. John Milton's character of the Long Parliament and Assembly of Divines, in 1641. Omitted in his other works, and never printed. [Edited by J. Tyrrell? or by Arthur, Earl of Anglesey?] London, 1681, 4to. Milton's Ode on the Morning of Christ's Nativity. Illustrated by eminent artists. London, 1868, 8vo. Mr. John Milton's Satyre against hypocrites. Written whilst he was Latin secretary to Oliver Cromwell. [By John Phillips?] London, 1710, 8vo. Milton's unpublished Poem, corrected by J.E. Wall from a defective copy found by Mr. Morley in the British Museum. Epitaph on a Rose Tree confined in a Garden Tub. [London, 1873?] s. sh. 8vo. The original is in the King's Library, British Museum, and is written on the last leaf of a copy of "Poems of Mr. John Milton," 1646. Observations upon the Articles of Peace with the Irish Rebels, on the Letter of Ormond to Col. Jones, and the Representation of the Presbytery at Belfast. (_Articles of Peace made and concluded with the Irish Rebels, by James Earle of Ormond, etc._) London, 1649, 4to. Of Education. To Master S. Hartlib. [London, 1644] 4to. ---- Milton's Tractate on Education. A facsimile reprint from the edition of 1673. Edited by Oscar Browning. (_Pitt Press Series_.) Cambridge, 1883, 8vo. Original Letters and Papers of State, addressed to Oliver Cromwell, concerning the affairs of Great Britain from 1649 to 1658, found among the political collections of John Milton, published from the originals. By John Nickolls. London, 1743, folio. Of Prelatical Episcopacy, and whether it may be deduc'd from the Apostolical times by vertue of those Testimonies which are alledg'd to that purpose in some late Treatises of James, Archbishop of Armagh. London, 1641, 4to. Of Reformation touching Church-Discipline in England: and the causes that hitherto have hindred it. London, 1641, 4to. Of True Religion, Hæresie, Schism, Toleration, and what best means may be used against the growth of Popery. The author J[ohn] M[ilton]. London, 1673, 4to. ---- New edition, with preface by Bp. Burgess. London, 1826, 8vo. Paradise Lost. A poem written in ten books by John Milton. Licensed and entred according to order. London, 1667, 4to. First edition. Without argument or preface. There are nine distinct variations of the title and preliminary pages. ---- Paradise Lost. A poem in ten books. The author J. Milton. (The argument. The verse.) London, 1668, 4to. The same edition as the preceding, with a new title-page, and with the addition of the argument. ---- Paradise Lost. A poem in ten books. The author John Milton. London, 1669, 4to. The same edition as the two preceding, with a new title-page and some slight alterations in the text. There is another copy in the British Museum which differs slightly. It has also the title-page dated 1668, and Marvell's commendatory verses in MS. ---- Paradise Lost. A poem, in twelve books. The author John Milton. Second edition, revised and augmented by the same author. London, 1674, 8vo. To this edition are prefixed the commendatory verses of Barrow and Marvell. In another copy in the British Museum conjectural emendations from the quarto edition, 1749, and the octavo edition, 1674, corrected by the quarto edition, 1668, printed on two leaves, have been inserted. ---- The third edition. Revised and augmented by the same author. London, 1678, 8vo. ---- The fourth edition. Adorn'd with sculptures. London, 1688, folio. The first illustrated edition. ---- Another edition [with cuts]. London, 1692, folio. ---- Another edition. With copious and learned notes by P[atrick] H[ume]. London, 1695, folio. ---- Seventh edition. Adorn'd with sculptures. London, 1705, 8vo. ---- Eighth edition. Adorn'd with sculptures. 2 vols. London, 1707, 8vo. ---- Ninth edition. Adorn'd with sculptures. London, 1711, 12mo. The British Museum copy is said to be the only one on thick paper. ---- Tenth edition. With sculptures. London, 1719, 12mo. ---- Another edition. Dublin, 1724, 8vo. ---- Twelfth edition. To which is prefixed an account of his life [by E. Fenton]. London, 1725, 12mo. ---- Thirteenth edition. To which is prefixed an account of his life [by E. Fenton]. London, 1727, 8vo. ---- Fourteenth edition. To which is prefixed an account of his life [by E. Fenton]. London, 1730, 8vo. ---- New edition [with notes and proposed emendations] by R. Bentley. London, 1732, 4to. One of the copies in the British Museum contains MS. notes by B. Stillingfleet, and another MS. notes by W. Cole. A third copy has inserted plates, a pencil sketch of Milton's house at Chalfont St. Giles, and a cutting from the _Literary Gazette_, May 29th, 1830, relating to Bentley. ---- Another edition. London, 1737, 8vo. ---- Another edition [with life by E. Fenton]. London, 1738, 8vo. ---- Another edition. (The life of John Milton by E. Fenton.) 2 vols. London, 1746, 1747, 12mo. ---- Another edition. Dublin, 1747, 8vo. ---- Another edition. Compared and revised by John Hawkey. Dublin, 1748, 8vo. ---- New edition. With notes of various authors, by T. Newton. (The life of Milton [by the editor]. A critique on Paradise Lost. By Mr. Addison.) 2 vols. London, 1749, 4to. ---- Another edition. According to the author's last edition, in the year 1672. Glasgow, 1750, 8vo. ---- Second edition. With notes of various authors, by T. Newton. 2 vols. London, 1750, 8vo. ---- Third edition. With notes of various authors, by T. Newton. 2 vols. London, 1754, 4to. Paradise Lost. Another edition. With notes, etymological, critical, classical, and explanatory; collected from Dr. Bentley, Dr. Pearce, Richardson and Son, Addison, Paterson, Newton, and other authors. By J. Marchant. London, 1751, 12mo. ---- Another edition. 2 vols. London, 1752, 51, 12mo. Vol. ii. is a duplicate of the corresponding vol. of the previous edition. ---- Another edition. [To which is prefixed the life of Milton, by E. Fenton.] London, 1753, 12mo. ---- Another edition. [With the life of Milton, by E. Fenton, and a glossary.] 2 vols. Paris, 1754, 16mo. ---- Another edition [in prose]. With historical, critical, and explanatory notes. From Raymond de St. Maur. London, 1755, 8vo. ---- Another edition. From the text of T. Newton. Birmingham, 1758, 4to. ---- Another edition. From the text of T. Newton. Birmingham, 1759, 4to. ---- Another edition. (The life of Milton [by T. Newton]). London, 1760, 12mo. ---- Another edition. [With the life of John Milton, by E. Fenton. Illustrated.] London, 1761, 8vo. ---- Sixth edition. With notes of various authors, by T. Newton. 2 vols. London, 1763, 8vo. ---- Seventh edition. With notes of various authors, by T. Newton. 2 vols. London, 1770, 8vo. ---- New edition. To which is added the life of the author, by E. Fenton. Edinburgh, 1765, 12mo. ---- New edition. To which is added historical, philosophical, and explanatory notes, translated from the French of Raymond de St. Maur. [Edited by John Wood, and preceded by a life of Milton by E. Fenton.] Edinburgh, 1765, 12mo. ---- Another edition [in prose]. With historical, philosophical, critical, and explanatory notes, from Raymond de St. Maur. Embellished with fourteen copper-plates. London, 1767, 8vo. ---- Second edition, adorned with copper-plates. London [1770], 8vo. ---- Paradise Lost, a poem. The author, John Milton. Glasgow, 1770, folio. The copy in the British Museum was presented to George III. by the binder, J. Scott. ---- Paradise Lost. (The life of Milton, by Dr. Newton.) London, 1770, 12mo. ---- Paradise Lost, a poem in twelve books. 2 vols. Glasgow, 1771, 12mo. ---- Paradise Lost. (_British Poets_, vols. i.-ii.) Edinburgh, 1773, 8vo. ---- New edition. 2 vols. London, 1775, 12mo. ---- Another edition, from the text of T. Newton. London, 1777, 12mo. ---- Eighth edition, with notes of various authors, by T. Newton. 2 vols. London, 1778, 8vo. ---- Paradise Lost. (The Life of Milton, by Dr. Newton.) London, 1778, 12mo. ---- Paradise Lost. With a biographical and critical account of the author and his writings [by E. Fenton]. Kilmarnock, 1785, 12mo. ---- Another edition, illustrated with texts of Scripture by J. Gillies. [With life by E. Fenton.] London, 1788, 12mo. ---- Ninth edition, with notes of various authors, by T. Newton [and a portrait of Milton], 2 vols. London, 1790, 8vo. ---- Another edition. Printed from the first and second editions collated. The original system of orthography restored, the punctuation corrected and extended. With various readings; and notes, chiefly rythmical. By Capel Lofft. [Book i.] Bury St. Edmunds, 1792, 4to. ---- Paradise Lost. Books i.-iv. [London, 1792-95], 4to. The British Museum copy contains the first four books only. With illustrations after Stothard, engraved by Bartolozzi. Without title-page. ---- Milton's Paradise Lost, illustrated with texts of Scripture by J. Gillies. Second edition. [With life by E. Fenton.] London, 1793, 12mo. ---- Paradise Lost; a poem, in twelve books. [With engravings.] London, 1794, 4to. ---- Milton's Paradise Lost. (The Life of John Milton [by E. Fenton]. Criticism on Paradise Lost by S. Johnson.) London, 1795, 8vo. ---- Paradise Lost. Printed from the text of Tonson's edition of 1711. With notes and the life of the author by T. Newton and others. [Edited by C.M.] 3 vols. London, 1795, 12mo. ---- Paradise Lost, with notes selected from Newton and others. With a critical dissertation on the poetical works of Milton by S. Johnson. 2 vols. London, 1796, 8vo. ---- Milton's Paradise Lost, with a life of the author [by J. Evans]. To which is prefixed the celebrated critique by S. Johnson. London, 1799, 8vo. ---- Milton's Paradise Lost. A new edition. Adorned with plates [engraved chiefly by F. Bartolozzi, from designs by W. Hamilton and H. Fuseli.] 2 vols. London, 1802, 8vo. ---- Paradise Lost, with a life of the author [by E. Fenton], and a critique on the poem [by S. Johnson]. A new edition. London, 1802, 8vo. ---- Paradise Lost. A new edition. London, 1803, 12mo. ---- Milton's Paradise Lost, illustrated with texts of Scripture, by J. Gillies. Third edition, with additions. [Life of Milton, by E. Fenton.] London, 1804, 12mo. ---- Paradise Lost. A poem. Printed from the text of Tonson's correct edition of 1711. London, 1804, 12mo. ---- Paradise Lost. Printed from the text of Tonson's edition of 1711. A new edition, with plates, etc. London, 1808, 8vo. ---- Paradise Lost, a poem, etc. (The life of Milton [by E. Fenton].) London, 1805, 12mo. ---- Paradise Lost, a poem. (The life of Milton [by E. Fenton].) London, 1812, 16mo. ---- Another edition. To which is prefixed the life of the author [by E. Fenton]. London, 1813, 12mo. ---- Paradise Lost, a poem in twelve books. [With the life of John Milton by E. Fenton, and "A critique upon the Paradise Lost" by J. Addison.] Romsey, 1816, 8vo. ---- Paradise Lost. To which are prefixed the life of the author [by E. Fenton]; and a criticism on the poem by S. Johnson. London, 1817, 8vo. ---- Paradise Lost. London, 1817, 12mo. ---- Paradise Lost. [With engravings from the designs of R. Westall.] 2 vols. London, 1817, 12mo. ---- Paradise Lost. To which is prefixed a life of the author [by E. Fenton]. London, 1818, 12mo. ---- Paradise Lost. To which is prefixed the life of the author [by E. Fenton]. London, 1820, 12mo. ---- Paradise Lost. [With a life of the author, by E. Fenton.] Boston, 1820, 12mo. ---- Paradise Lost. To which are prefixed the life of the author by E. Fenton, and a criticism of the poem by Dr. Johnson. London, 1821, 8vo. ---- Paradise Lost, etc. 2 vols. London, 1825, 12mo. ---- The Paradise Lost of Milton, with illustrations designed and engraved by J. Martin. 2 vols. London, 1827, folio. ---- Paradise Lost, etc. [With the life of J. Milton, by E. Fenton.] London [1830], 16mo. ---- Paradise Lost. With a memoir of the author [by E. Fenton]. New edition. London, 1833, 8vo. ---- Paradise Lost: with copious notes, also a memoir of his life by J. Prendeville. London, 1840, 8vo. ---- [Paradise Lost. Edited by A.J. Ellis? Phonetically printed.] [London], 1846, 16mo. ---- The Paradise Lost, with notes explanatory and critical. Edited by J.R. Boyd. New York, 1851, 12mo. ---- Milton's Paradise Lost, with notes, critical and explanatory, original and selected, by J.R. Major. London, 1853, 8vo. ---- Milton's Paradise Lost. Published under the direction of the Committee of General Literature and Education [appointed by the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge]. London [1859], 8vo. ---- Milton's Paradise Lost. In twelve books. London, 1861, 16mo. One of "Bell & Daldy's Pocket Volumes." ---- Paradise Lost. To which is prefixed a life of the author, and Dr. Channing's Essay on the poetical genius of Milton. London, 1862, 12mo. ---- Milton's Paradise Lost. Illustrated by Gustave Doré. Edited, with notes and a life of Milton, by R. Vaughan. London [1866], folio. A re-issue appeared in 1871-72. ---- Paradise Lost, in ten books. The text exactly reproduced from the first edition of 1667. With an appendix containing the additions made in later issues and a monograph on the original publication of the poem. [By R.H.S., _i.e._, R.H. Shepherd?] London, 1873, 4to. ---- Paradise Lost, as originally published, being a fac-simile of the first edition. With an introduction by D. Masson. London, 1877 [1876], 4to. ---- Paradise Lost. Illustrated by thirty-eight designs in outline by F. Thrupp. [Containing only fragments of the text.] London, 1879, obl. folio. ---- Milton's Paradise Lost. Illustrated by Gustave Doré. Edited, with notes and a life of Milton, by R. Vaughan. London, 1882, 4to. Re-issued in 1888. ---- Paradise Lost. The text emended, with notes and preface by M. Hull. London, 1884, 8vo. ---- Paradise Lost. London, 1887, 16 mo. Part of "Routledge's Pocket Library." ---- Paradise Lost. (_Cassell's National Library_, vols. 162, 163.) London, 1889, 8vo. ---- ---- The Story of our first Parents; selected from Milton's Paradise Lost: for the use of young persons. By Mrs. Siddons. London, 1822, 8vo. Paradise Regain'd. A Poem in four books. To which is added Samson Agonistes. The author, J. Milton. 2 pts. London, 1671, 8vo. ---- Paradise Regain'd. To which is added Samson Agonistes. London, 1680, 8vo. ---- Another edition. London, 1688, folio. ---- Paradise Regained. Samson Agonistes, and the smaller poems. Sixth edition. London, 1695, folio. ---- Paradise Regain'd. To which is added Samson Agonistes, and poems upon several occasions, compos'd at several times. Fourth edition. London, 1705, 8vo. ---- Paradise Regain'd. To which is added Samson Agonistes, etc. The fifth edition. London, 1707, 8vo. ---- Paradise Regain'd. To which is added Samson Agonistes, etc. Fifth edition. Adorned with cuts. London, 1713, 12mo. ---- Sixth edition, corrected. London, 1725, 8vo. ---- Seventh edition, corrected. 3 pts. London, 1727, 8vo. ---- Seventh edition, corrected. London, 1730, 12mo. ---- Eighth edition. London, 1743, 8vo. ---- Paradise Regain'd, etc. London, 1747, 12mo. ---- Paradise Regain'd, etc. Glasgow, 1747, 12mo. ---- Paradise Regain'd, etc. A new edition. With notes of various authors, by T. Newton. London, 1752, 4to. ---- Paradise Regain'd, etc. Glasgow, 1752, 12mo. ---- Paradise Regain'd, etc. The second edition, with notes of various authors, by T. Newton. 2 vols. London, 1753, 8vo. ---- Paradise Regain'd, etc. London, 1753, 12mo. ---- Paradise Regain'd, etc. London, 1756, 12mo. ---- Paradise Regained, etc. Birmingham, 1758, 4to. ---- Paradise Regain'd, etc. London, 1760, 12mo. ---- Paradise Regain'd (_British Poets_, vol. iii.). Edinburgh, 1773, 8vo. ---- Paradise Regain'd, etc. 2 vols. Glasgow, 1772, 12mo. ---- A new edition. 2 vols. London, 1773, 8vo. ---- A new edition. By T. Newton. London, 1777, 4to. ---- A new edition, with notes of various authors, by T. Newton. 2 vols. London, 1785, 8vo. ---- Paradise Regain'd, etc. London, 1779, 12mo. ---- Paradise Regain'd, etc. Alnwick, 1793, 12mo. ---- A new edition, with notes of various authors, by C. Dunster. London. 1795. 4to. ---- Another edition. London [1800], 4to. ---- Milton's Paradise Regained; with select notes subjoined: to which is added a complete collection of his Miscellaneous Poems, both English and Latin. London, 1796, 8vo. ---- Paradise Regained. With select notes subjoined, etc. London, 1817, 8vo. ---- Paradise Regained, Samson Agonistes, Comus, and Arcades. London, 1817, 12mo. ---- Paradise Regained, and other poems. London, 1823, 16mo. ---- Paradise Regained, Samson Agonistes, Comus, and Arcades. [With Westall's plates.] London, 1827, 16mo. ---- Paradise Regained; and other poems. London, 1832, 16mo. ---- Milton's Paradise Regained, and other poems. London, 1861, 16mo. One of "Bell & Daldy's Pocket Volumes." The readie and easie way to establish a free Commonwealth, and the excellence thereof, compar'd with the inconveniences and dangers of re-admitting Kingship in this nation. The author J[ohn] M[ilton]. London, 1660, 4to. The Reason of Church-Government urg'd against Prelaty. In two books. London, 1641, 4to. Samson Agonistes. London, 1688, folio. First appeared with the Paradise Regained in 1671. ---- Samson Agonistes. London, 1695, folio. Reprinted from the preceding edition. ---- Samson Agonistes. (_Bell's British Theatre_, vol. 34.) London, 1797, 8vo. ---- Samson Agonistes. London [1869], 8vo. ---- Milton. Samson Agonistes. Edited by John Churton Collins. (_Clarendon Press Series_.) Oxford, 1883, 8vo. Scriptum Dom. Protectoris contra Hispanos. [By John Milton.] Londini, 1655, 4to. ---- A Manifesto of the Lord Protector against the Depredations of the Spaniards. Written in Latin by John Milton. London, 1738, 8vo. ---- A true Copy of Oliver Cromwell's Manifesto against Spain, dated October 26, 1655 [written by John Milton]. London, 1741, 4to. The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates; proving that it is lawfull, and hath been held so through all ages, for any, who have the power, to call to account a tyrant or wicked king, and after due conviction to depose and put him to death, etc. The author J[ohn] M[ilton]. London, 1649, 4to. ---- Another edition, with additions. London, 1650, 4to. Tetrachordon: expositions upon the foure chief places in Scripture which treat of mariage, or nullities in manage, wherein the doctrine and discipline of divorce, as was lately publish'd, is confirm'd. By the former author J. M[ilton]. London, 1645 [1644 O.S.], 4to. The author's name appears in full at the end of the address "To the Parliament." A Treatise on Civil Power in Ecclesiastical Causes; shewing that it is not lawfull for any power on earth to compell in matter of religion. The author J[ohn] M[ilton]. London, 1659, 12mo. ---- A Treatise of Civil Power in Ecclesiastical Causes. First printed anno 1659. London, reprinted 1790, 8vo. ---- A Treatise on Civil Power in Ecclesiastical Causes, etc. London, 1839, 8vo. _Tracts for the People_, No. I. ---- On the Civil Power in Ecclesiastical Causes; and on the likeliest means to remove Hirelings out of the Church. London, 1851, 8vo. Part XI. of "Buried Treasures." V. SELECTIONS. The Beauties of Milton, Thomson, and Young. Dublin, 1783, 12mo. The Beauties of Milton; consisting of selections from his poetry and prose, by A. Howard. London [1834], 12mo. The Poetry of Milton's Prose; selected from his various writings; with notes, and an introductory essay [by C.]. London, 1827, 12mo. Readings from Milton. With an introduction by Bishop H.W. Warren. Boston, 1886, 8vo. Part of the "Chatauqua Library--Garnet Series." Selected Prose Writings of John Milton, with an introductory essay by E. Myers. London, 1883, 8vo. Fifty copies only printed. Selections from the Prose Writings of John Milton. Edited, with memoir, notes, and analyses, by S. Manning. London, 1862, 8vo. Selections from the Prose Works of John Milton. With critical remarks and elucidations. Edited by J.J.G. Graham. London, 1870, 8vo. Shakespeare and Milton Reader; being scenes and other extracts from the writings of Shakespeare and Milton, etc. London [1883], 8vo. VI. APPENDIX. BIOGRAPHY, CRITICISM, ETC. Acton, Rev. Henry.--Religious opinions and examples of Milton, Locke, and Newton. A lecture, with notes. London, 1833, 8vo. Addison, Rt. Hon. Joseph.--Notes upon the twelve books of Paradise Lost. Collected from the _Spectator_. London, 1719, 12mo. Appeared originally in the _Spectator_, Dec. 31, 1711--May 3, 1712. Ademollo, A.--La Leonora di Milton e di Clemente IX. Milano [1886], 8vo. Andrews, Samuel.--Our Great Writers; or, Popular chapters on some leading authors. London, 1884, 8vo. Milton, pp. 84-112. Arnold, Matthew.--Mixed Essays. London, 1879, 8vo. A French Critic on Milton, pp. 237-273. ---- Essays in Criticism. Second Series. London, 1888, 8vo. Milton, pp. 56-68. Bagehot, Walter.--Literary Studies. 2 vols. London, 1879, 8vo. John Milton, vol. i., pp. 173-220. ---- Third edition. 2 vols. London, 1884, 8vo. Balfour, Clara Lucas.--Sketches of English Literature, etc. London, 1852, 8vo. Milton and his Literary Contemporaries, pp. 151-173. Barron, William.--Lectures on Belles Lettres and Logic. 2 vols. London, 1806, 8vo. Milton, vol. ii., pp. 281-300. Baumgarten, Dr.--John Milton und das Verlorene Paradies. Coburg [1875], 4to. Bayne, Peter.--The Chief Actors in the Puritan Revolution. London, 1878, 8vo. Milton, pp. 297-346. Bentley, Richard.--Dr. Bentley's emendations on the twelve books of Milton's Paradise Lost. London, 1732, 12mo. Bickersteth, E.H.--Milton's Paradise Lost. (_The St. James's Lectures, Second Series_.) London, 1876, 8vo. ---- Another edition. London, 1877, 8vo. Birrell, Augustine.--Obiter Dicta. Second series. London, 1887, 8vo. Milton, pp. 1-50. Blackburne, Francis.--Remarks on Johnson's Life of Milton. To which are added Milton's Tractate of Education and Areopagitica. London, 1780, 16mo. Blair, Hugh.--Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres, etc. 2 vols. London, 1783, 4to. Paradise Lost, vol. ii., pp. 471-476. Bodmer, J. Jacob.--J.J. Bodmer's critische Abhandlung, von dem Wunderbaren in der Poesie in einer Vertheidigung des Gedichtes J. Milton's von dem verlohrnen Paradiese, etc. Zürich, 1740, 8vo. Bradburn, Eliza W.--The Story of Paradise Lost, for children. Portland, 1830, 16mo. Brooke, Stopford A.--Milton. [An account of his life and works.] London, 1879, 8vo. Part of the series entitled _Classical Writers_, ed. J.R. Green. Bruce, Archibald.--A critical account of the life, character, and discourses of Mr. Alexander Morus, in which the attack made upon him in the writings of Milton is particularly considered. Edinburgh, 1813, 8vo. Brydges, Sir Samuel Egerton.--The Life of John Milton. London [1835], 8vo. Bulwer Lytton, E.--The Siamese Twins, etc. London, 1831, 8vo. Milton, a poem, pp. 315-362. Burney, Charles.--Remarks on the Greek Verses of Milton. [London, 1790], 8vo. Buckland, Anna.--The Story of English Literature. London, 1882, 8vo. Milton, pp. 230-296. Callander, John.--Letter and Report respecting the Unpublished Commentary on Milton's Paradise Lost, by the late John Callander, of Craigforth, Esq., in the possession of the Society. (_Archæologia Scotica_, vol. iii., 1831, pp. 83-91.) Edinburgh, 1831, 4to. Camerini, Eugenio.--Profili Letterari. Firenze, 1870, 8vo. Milton e l'Italia, pp. 264-274. Cann, Miss Christian.--A scriptural and allegorical glossary to Milton's Paradise Lost. London [1828], 8vo. Carpenter, William.--The Life and Times of John Milton. London [1836], 8vo. Channing, William Ellery.--Remarks on the Character and Writings of John Milton; occasioned by the publication of his lately discovered "Treatise on Christian Doctrine." From the _Christian Examiner_, vol. iii., No. 1. Boston, 1826, 8vo. Charles I.--By the King. A Proclamation for calling in and suppressing of two books written by John Milton: the one Intituled Johannis Miltoni Angli pro Populo Anglicano defensio, etc., and the other, The Pourtraicture of his Sacred Majesty, etc. London, 1660, s. sh. fol. ---- The Life and Reigne of King Charls; or, the Pseudo-Martyr discovered, etc. London, 1651, 8vo. In the Bodleian Catalogue this work is erroneously stated to be by John Milton. Chassang, A., and Marcou, F.L.--Les Chefs-d'Oeuvre Épiques de tous les peuples. Paris, 1879, 8vo. Milton, pp. 279-297. Clarke, Samuel.--Some reflections on that part of a book called Amyntor, or the defence of Milton's life, which relates to the writings of the primitive fathers, etc. (_Letter to Mr. Dodwell_, etc., pp. 451-475.) London, 1781, 8vo. Cleveland, C.D.--A Complete Concordance to the Poetical Works of John Milton. London, 1867, 8vo. Coleridge, Samuel Taylor.--Seven lectures on Shakespeare and Milton, etc. London, 1856, 8vo. Darby, Samuel.--A letter to T. Warton, on his late edition of Milton's Juvenile Poems [entitled "Poems upon several occasions, English, Italian, and Latin."] London, 1785, 8vo. Dawson, George.--Biographical Lectures. London, 1886, 8vo. John Milton, pp. 82-88. De Morgan, J.--John Milton considered as a Politician. (_Men of the Commonwealth_, No. 1.) [London, 1875], 16mo. Dennis, John.--Heroes of Literature. English Poets. London, 1883, 8vo. John Milton, pp. 114-147. De Quincey, T.--Works. 16 vols. London, 1853-60, 8vo. Milton, vol. vi., pp. 311-325; Life of Milton, vol. x., pp. 79-98. Des Essarts, E.--De Veterum poetarum tum Græciæ tum Romæ apud Miltonem imitatione thesim proponebat E. Des Essarts. Parisiis, 1871, 8vo. Diderot, Denis.--An Essay on Blindness, etc. Interspersed with several anecdotes of Sanderson, Milton, and others. Translated from the French. London [1750], 12mo. Dobson, W.T.--The Classic Poets, their lives and their times, etc. London, 1879, 8vo. Milton's Paradise Lost, pp. 394-446; Paradise Regained, pp. 446-452. Donoughue, Edward Jones.--Milton: a lecture. London, 1843, 8vo. Douglas, John.--Milton vindicated from the charge of plagiarism brought against him by Mr. Lauder, etc. London, 1751, 8vo. ---- Milton no plagiary; or, a detection of the forgeries contained in Lauder's essay, etc. Second edition. London, 1756, 8vo. Dowden, Edward.--Transcripts and Studies. London, 1888, 8vo. The Idealism of Milton, pp. 454-473. Dowling, William.--Poets and Statesmen; their homes and haunts in the neighbourhood of Eton and Windsor. London, 1857, 8vo. Milton, pp. 1-39. Dryden, John.--The State of Innocence, and Fall of Man; an opera, etc. London, 1677, 4to. Du Moulin, P.--Regii sanguinis clamor ad coelum adversus parricidas Anglicanos. [A reply to Milton's "Defensio pro populo Anglicano."] Hagæ Comitum, 1652, 4to. ---- Editio secunda. Hagæ Comitum, 1661, 12mo. Dunster, C.--Considerations on Milton's early reading, and the prima stamina of his Paradise Lost, etc. London, 1800, 8vo. Edmonds, Cyrus R.--John Milton; a biography. Especially designed to exhibit the ecclesiastical principles of that illustrious man. London, 1851, 8vo. Edmundson, George.--Milton and Vondel. A curiosity of literature. London, 1885, 8vo. Ellwood, Thomas.--Reflections of [Thomas Ellwood] with John Milton (_Arber's English Garner_, vol. iii., pp. 473-486). London, 1880, 8vo. English Poets.--Cursory remarks on some of the ancient English poets, particularly Milton. [By P. Neve.] London, 1789, 8vo. Epigoniad.--A critical essay on the Epigoniad, wherein the author's abuse of Milton is examined. Edinburgh, 1757, 8vo. Eyre, Charles.--The Fall of Adam, from Milton's Paradise Lost. London [1852], 8vo. Filmer, Sir Robert.--Observations concerning the originall of Government upon Mr. Hobs Leviathan, Mr. Milton against Salmasius, H. Grotius De Jure Belli. London, 1652, 4to. ---- The Free-holders grand inquest, etc. (Reflections concerning the Original of Government upon Mr. Milton against Salmasius.) London, 1679, 8vo. Flatters, J.J.--The Paradise Lost of Milton, translated into fifty-four designs, by J.J. Flatters, sculptor. London, 1843, folio. Without letterpress. Fry, Alfred A.--A lecture on the writings, prose and poetic, and the character, public and personal, of John Milton. London, 1838, 8vo. Geffroy, Mathieu A.--Étude sur les pamphlets politiques et religieux de Milton. Paris, 1848, 8vo. Gilfillan, George.--A Second Gallery of Literary Portraits. London, 1850, 8vo. John Milton, pp. 1-39. ---- Modern Christian Heroes, etc. London, 1869, 8vo. John Milton, pp. 81-118. Giraud, Jane E.--Flowers of Milton. London, 1850, 4to. Godwin, William.--Lives of E. and J. Philips, nephews and pupils of Milton, to which are added: I. Collections for the life of Milton, by J. Aubrey, printed from the manuscript copy in the Ashmolean Museum. II. The Life of Milton, by E. Philips, printed 1694. London, 1815, 4to. Goodwin, Thomas.--The Student's Practical Grammar of the English Language; together with a commentary on the first book of Milton's Paradise Lost. London, 1855, 12mo. Greenwood, F.W.P.--The Miscellaneous Writings of F.W.P. Greenwood. Boston, 1846, 8vo. Milton's Prose Works, pp. 208-226. Grotius, H. de.--The Adamus Exul of Grotius; or, the prototype of Paradise Lost. Translated from the Latin, by Francis Barham. London, 1839, 8vo. Guerle, Edmond de.--Milton, sa vie et ses oeuvres. Paris, 1868, 8vo. Güntzer, C.--Dissertationis ad quaedam loca Miltoni pars posterior. Argentorati, 1657, 4to. Hamilton, W. Douglas.--Original Papers, illustrative of the life and writings of John Milton, including sixteen letters of State written by him, now first published from MSS. in the State Paper Office, etc. London, 1859, 4to. Printed for the Camden Society. Hamilton, Walter.--Parodies of the Works of English and American Authors, collected and annotated by W. Hamilton. London, 1885, 4to. John Milton, vol. ii., pp. 217-236. Hare, Julius Charles.--Essays and Tales. 2 vols. London, 1848, 8vo. Milton, vol. i., pp. 73-86. Harrington, James.--The Censure of the Rota upon Mr. Milton's book, entitled The Ready and Easie Way to Establish a Free Commonwealth. [Signed J. H(arrington); a satire.] London, 1660, 4to. Reprinted in the Harleian Miscellany. Hayley, William.--The Life of Milton; to which are added conjectures on the origin of Paradise Lost. (The second edition enlarged.) London, 1796, 4to. This life appeared originally in 1794 in vol. i. of Milton's Poetical Works. Hillebrand, C.--De sacro apud Christianos carmine epico dissertationem seu Dantis, Miltonis, Klopstockii poetarum collationem proponebat C. Hillebrand, Parisiis, 1861, 8vo. Hodgson, Shadworth H.--Outcast Essays, etc. London, 1881, 8vo. The supernatural in English poetry; Shakespere; Milton; Wordsworth Tennyson, pp. 99-180. Holloway, Laura C.--The Mothers of Great Men and Women, etc. New York, 1884, 8vo. Milton's Wives, pp. 457-478. Hood, Edwin Paxton.--John Milton: the Patriot and Poet. London, 1852, 18mo. Hopkins, J.--Milton's Paradise Lost, imitated in rhyme; in the fourth, sixth, and ninth books, etc. London, 1699, 8vo. Howitt, William.--Homes and Haunts of the most eminent British Poets. Third edition. London, 1857, 8vo. John Milton, pp. 46-68. Huet, C.B.--Litterarische Fantasien en Kritieken. Haarlem [1883], 8vo. Milton, 12th Deel, pp. 150-220. Hunt, Theodore W.--Representative English Prose and Prose Writers. New York, 1887, 8vo. The prose style of John Milton, pp. 246-264. Hutton, Laurence.--Literary Landmarks of London. London, 1885, 8vo. John Milton, pp. 210-216, etc. Ivimey, Joseph.--John Milton; his life and times; religious and political opinions; with an appendix, containing animadversions upon Dr. Johnson's Life of Milton, etc. London, 1833, 8vo. Jackson, W.--Lycidas: a musical entertainment. The words altered from Milton. London, 1767, 8vo. Jane, Joseph.--The Image Unbroaken a perspective of the Impudence, Falshood, Vanitie, and Prophannes, in a Libell entitled Eikonoklastes. [London], 1651, 4to. Johnson, Samuel.--Prefaces to Milton and Butler. (_Prefaces to the Works of the English Poets_, vol. ii.) London, 1779, 8vo. ---- Court and Country: a paraphrase upon Milton. [In a dialogue.] By the author of Hurlothrumbo [_i.e._, Samuel Johnson]. London [1780], 8vo. Jortin, John.--Remarks on Spenser's Poems. London, 1734, 8vo. Remarks on Milton, pp. 171-186. Keightley, Thomas.--An account of the Life, Opinions, and Writings of John Milton. With an introduction to Paradise Lost. London, 1855, 8vo. Keogh, Rt. Hon. William.--Milton's Prose. (_Afternoon Lectures on Literature and Art, delivered in the Theatre of the Museum of Industry, Dublin_, 1865, 3rd Series.) London, 1866, 8vo. Lamartine, M.L.A. de.--Héloïse et Abélard [Biographies]. Paris, 1864, 12mo. Includes a biography of Milton, pp. 113-215. Lauder, William.--An essay on Milton's use and imitation of the moderns in his Paradise Lost. [With a preface by Dr. Johnson.] London, 1750, 8vo. ---- A letter to the reverend Mr. Douglas, occasioned by his vindication of Milton, etc. [Written by Dr. Johnson.] London, 1751, 4to. ---- An apology for Mr. Lauder [written by himself] in a letter most humbly addressed to his grace the Archbishop of Canterbury. London, 1751, 8vo. ---- Delectus auctorum sacrorum, Miltono facem prælucentium. 2 tom. London, 1752, 8vo. ---- King Charles I. vindicated from the charge of plagiarism brought against him by Milton, etc. To the whole is subjoined the Judgment of several learned and impartial authors concerning Milton's political writings. London, 1754, 8vo. L'Estrange, R.--No Blind Guides, in answer to a seditious pamphlet of Milton's, intituled Brief notes upon a late sermon titl'd The fear of God and the King, preach'd and since publish'd. By M. Griffith, etc. London, 1660, 4to. Letters.--Letters concerning poetical translations and Virgil's and Milton's Arts of Verse, etc. London, 1739, 8vo. Liebert, Gustav.--Milton. Studien zur Geschichte des englischen Geistes. Hamburg, 1860, 8vo. Lotheissen, Ferdinand.--Studien über John Milton's poetische Werke. Budingen, 1860, 4to. Lowell, James Russell.--Among my Books. Second series. London, 1876, 8vo. Milton, pp. 252-302. M.J.A.--An introduction to the Study of Shakespeare and Milton. [By J.A.M. With selections from their works.] London [1884], 8vo. Macaulay, Thomas Babington.--Critical and historical essays contributed to the Edinburgh Review. 2 vols. London, 1854, 8vo. Milton, vol. i., pp. 1-28. ---- The Miscellaneous Writings of Lord Macaulay. London, 1860, 8vo. Conversation between Mr. Abraham Cowley and Mr. John Milton touching the great Civil War, vol. i., pp. 101-124. ---- An Essay on the Life and Works of John Milton, together with the imaginary conversation between him and H. Cowley. London, 1868, 8vo. ---- Milton's Essay on Milton. From the Edinburgh Review. With introductory notice and notes. London, 1872, 16mo. ---- John Milton. [A biographical sketch.] Boston, 1877, 16mo. ---- Macaulay's Milton, edited to illustrate the laws of Rhetoric and Composition, by Alexander Mackie. London, 1884, 8vo. Maceuen, Malcolm.--Celebrities of the Past and Present. Philadelphia, 1874, 8vo. Milton and Poetry, pp. 195-202. Mackenzie, Sir George.--Jus Regium: or, the just and solid foundations of monarchy in general maintain'd against Buchanan, Dolman, Milton, etc. Edinburgh, 1684, 8vo. ---- Another edition. London, 1684, 8vo. McNicoll, Thomas.--Essays on English Literature. London, 1861, 8vo. Milton and Pollok, pp. 65-111. Marquis, G.A.--Select Poetical Pieces, with a logical arrangement, or practical commentary on Milton's Paradise Lost. Second edition enlarged. Paris, 1842, 12mo. Marsh, John F.--Papers connected with the affairs of Milton and his family. Edited by J.F. Marsh. Manchester, 1851, 4to. In vol. i. of the Chetham Miscellanies, published by the Chetham Society. ---- Notice of the inventory of the effects of Mrs. Milton, widow of the poet. Liverpool, 1855, 8vo. Extracted from the proceedings of the Historic Society of Lancashire and Cheshire. ---- On the engraved portrait and pretended portraits of Milton. Extracted from the Transactions of the Historic Society of Lancashire and Cheshire. Liverpool, 1860, 8vo. Martyn, W. Carlos.--Life and Times of John Milton. [Published by the "American Tract Society." With portrait.] New York [1866], 12mo. Mason, W.--Musæus; a monody to the memory of Mr. Pope in imitation of Milton's Lycidas. London, 1747, 4to. Massey, William.--Remarks upon Milton's Paradise Lost, etc. London, 1761, 12mo. Masson, David.--Essays biographical and critical: chiefly on English poets. Cambridge, 1856, 8vo. Milton's Youth, pp. 37-52; The Three Devils: Luther's, Milton's, and Goethe's, pp. 53-87. ---- The Three Devils: Luther's, Milton's, and Goethe's. London, 1874, 8vo. ---- The Life of John Milton; narrated in connexion with the political, ecclesiastical, and literary history of his time. 6 vols. Cambridge, 1859-80, 8vo. ---- New and revised edition. London, 1881, etc., 8vo. ---- John Milton. (_Encyclopædia Britannica_, vol. xvi., pp. 324-340.) London, 1883, 4to. Meadowcourt, Richard.--A critique on Milton's Paradise Regained. London, 1732, 4to. ---- A Critical Dissertation, with notes, on Milton's Paradise Regain'd. The second edition corrected. London, 1748, 8vo. Milton, John.--An answer to a book [by John Milton], intituled, The Divorce and Discipline of Divorce, etc. London, 1644, 4to. ---- Carolus I. Britanniarum Rex, a Securi et Calamo Miltonii vindicatus. Dublini, 1652, 12mo. ---- Areopagitica Secunda: or, speech of the shade of John Milton on Mr. Sergeant Talfourd's Copyright Extension Bill. London, 1838, 8vo. ---- Comus, a mask: (now adapted to the stage) as alter'd [by J. Dalton] from Milton's Mask. London, 1738, 8vo. ---- Second edition. London, 1738, 8vo. ---- Third edition. London, 1738, 8vo. ---- Another edition. Dublin, 1738, 8vo. ---- Sixth edition. London, 1741, 8vo. ---- Another edition. London, 1750, 8vo. ---- Another edition. London, 1759, 8vo. ---- Another edition. London, 1760, 8vo. ---- Another edition. London, 1762, 8vo. ---- Another edition. London, 1777, 8vo. ---- Comus, a masque [altered by J. Dalton from John Milton], London, 1791, 8vo. In vol. i. of "Bell's Theatre." ---- Comus [altered from Milton by J. Dalton]. London, 1811, 8vo. In the "Modern British Drama," vol. ii. ---- Comus: a mask, altered from Milton. [By J. Dalton.] London, 1815, 16mo. In vol. x. of Dibdin's "London Theatre." ---- Comus. [Adapted to the stage by J. Dalton.] London, 1826, 8vo. In the "British Drama," vol. ii. ---- Comus: a masque [in two acts]. Altered from Milton [by G. Colman]. As performed at the Theatre-Royal in Covent Garden. The musick composed by Dr. Arne. London, 1772, 8vo. ---- Another edition. London, 1774, 8vo. ---- Comus: a masque. Altered by Mr. Colman. (_Bell's British Theatre_, vol. ix.) London, 1777, 12mo. ---- Comus: a masque. Altered from Milton [by G. Colman]. Edinburgh, 1786, 12mo. Vol. iv. of the "British Stage." ---- Comus. Altered for the stage by Colman. (_Modern British Drama_, vol. v.) London, 1811, 8vo. ---- Comus: a masque. Altered from Milton, by G. Colman. (_Inchbald's Collection of Farces_, vol. vii.) London, 1815, 12mo. ---- Milton's Comus: a masque, in two acts [altered from Milton], as revised at Covent Garden, April 28, 1815. London, 1815, 8vo. There is a copy in the British Museum with the autograph of Sir Henry Bishop. ---- Comus: a masque. Altered from Milton [by G. Colman]. London [1824], 8vo. Vol. ii. of "The London Stage." ---- Comus. Altered from Milton. [By G. Colman, the elder.] London, 1872, 8vo. In the "British Drama," vol. xii. ---- Comus: a masque. Altered from Milton. (_Supplement to Bell's British Theatre_, vol. iv.) London, 1784, 12mo. ---- Miltonis epistola ad Pollionem. Edidit et notis illustravit F.S. Cantabrigiensis. Londini, 1738, folio. ---- Editio altera. Londini, 1738, folio. ---- Milton's Epistle to Pollio. Translated from the Latin, and illustrated with notes. London, 1740, folio. ---- Milton restor'd and Bentley depos'd, containing, I. Some observations on Dr. Bentley's preface. II. His various readings and notes on Paradise Lost and Milton's text, set in opposite columns, with remarks therein. III. Paradise Lost, attempted in rime. Book I., Numb. I. From Dean Swift. London, 1732, 8vo. ---- Paradise Lost: a poem attempted in Rhime. [Altered from Milton.] London, 1740, 8vo. ---- Paradise Lost. An oratorio [in three acts and in verse] altered and adapted to the stage from Milton [by B. Stillingfleet]. London, 1760, 4to. ---- Paradise Lost. An oratorio in four parts. The words selected from the works of Milton by J.L. Ellerton. London [1862], 12mo. ---- Paradise Lost. Oratorio in three parts, from the poem of Milton. English version by J. Pittman. London [1880], 8vo. ---- The State of Innocence and Fall of Man described in Milton's Paradise Lost. Render'd into prose with notes from the French of Raymond [or rather Nicolas Francois Dupré] de St. Maur. By a gentleman of Oxford [George Smith Green?]. London, 1745, 8vo. ---- Another edition. Aberdeen, 1770, 12mo. ---- A verbal Index to Milton's Paradise Lost; adapted to every edition but the first, etc. London, 1741, 12mo. ---- An essay upon Milton's imitations of the Ancients in his Paradise Lost. With some observations on the Paradise Regain'd. London, 1741, 8vo. ---- A new occasional Oratorio [on the suppression of the Rebellion], the words taken from Milton, Spenser, etc., and set to musick by Mr. Handel. London, 1746, 4to. The words only. ---- The Progress of Envy, a poem occasioned by Lauder's attack on the character of Milton. London, 1751, 4to. ---- A familiar explanation of the poetical works of Milton. To which is prefixed Mr. Addison's criticism on Paradise Lost. With a preface by Rev. Mr. Dodd. London, 1672, 12mo. ---- The Recovery of Man: or, Milton's Paradise Regained. In Prose. After the manner of the Archbishop of Cambray. To which is prefixed the life of the author. [London], 1771, 12mo. ---- Samson. An Oratorio [in three acts]. As it is performed at the Theatres-royal. Altered from the Samson Agonistes of Milton [by N. Hamilton]. Set to musick by Mr. Handel. London [1742], 8vo. The words only. ---- Another edition. London [1742], 4to. ---- Another edition. London [1742], 4to. ---- Another edition. London, 1743, 8vo. ---- Another edition. London, 1751, 8vo. ---- Another edition. London, 1759, 4to. ---- Samson: an oratorio [altered and adapted to the stage from the Samson Agonistes by N. Hamilton]. [Oxford], 1749, 8vo. ---- Another edition. London, 1762, 4to. ---- Samson. Set to musick by Mr. Handel. London, 1762, 4to. ---- Samson. An oratorio [altered from the Samson Agonistes, by N. Hamilton]. Salisbury, 1765, 8vo. ---- Handel's oratorio, Samson. The words chiefly from Milton. [Compiled by T. Morell.] London [1840], 4to. ---- The Life of John Milton. Published under the direction of the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge. London [1861], 8vo. ---- A Milton Memorial. A sketch of the life of John Milton, compiled with reference to the proposed restoration of the Church of St. Giles, Cripplegate (where he was buried). By Antiquitatis historicæ studiosus. London, 1862, 8vo. Mirabeau, Count de.--Théorie de la Royauté d'après la Doctrine de Milton. [Translated from the Defence of the People of England. With a preliminary dissertation, "Sur Milton et ses ouvrages"; by H.G. Riquetti, Comte de Mirabeau?] [Paris], 1789, 8vo. Moers, F. Josephus.--De fontibus Paradisi Amissi Miltoniani. Dissertatio philologica, etc. Bonnae [1865], 8vo. Morris, Joseph W.--John Milton: a vindication, specially from the charge of Arianism. London [1862], 8vo. Mortimer, Charles Edward.--An historical memoir of the Political Life of John Milton. London, 1805, 4to. Morus, Alexander.--A. Mori Fides Publica, contra calumnias Joannis Miltoni. Hagæ-Comitum, 1654, 12mo. Mouron, H.--Jean Milton. Conférence. Deuxième édition. Strasbourg, 1875, 8vo. Munkácsy, M.--Opinions of the Continental Press on M. Munkácsy and his latest picture, "Milton dictating Paradise Lost to his daughters." Paris, 1879, 8vo. Neve, Philip.--A narrative of the disinterment of Milton's coffin in the Parish Church of St. Giles, Cripplegate, 4th August 1790; and of the treatment of the corpse during that and the following day. London, 1790, 8vo. Nicoll, Henry J.--Landmarks of English Literature. London, 1883, 8vo. John Milton, pp. 112-125. Paterson, James.--A complete commentary on Milton's Paradise Lost, etc. London, 1744, 8vo. Pattison, Mark.--Milton. [An account of his life and works.] London, 1879, 8vo. One of the "English Men of Letters" series. Pauli, Reinhold.--Aufsätze zur Englischen Geschichte. Leipzig, 1869, 8vo. John Milton, pp. 348-391. Pearce, Z., _Bishop of Rochester_.--A review of the text of Milton's Paradise Lost; in which the chief of Dr. Bentley's Emendations are consider'd; and several other emendations and observations are offer'd to the public. London, 1732, 8vo. ---- Another edition. London, 1733, 8vo. Peck, Francis.--New Memoirs of the Life and Poetical Works of Mr. John Milton, etc. London, 1740, 4to. ---- Memoirs of the life and actions of Oliver Cromwell: as delivered in three panegyrics of him. The first, as said, by Don Juan Rodriguez de Saa Meneses; the second, as affirmed by a certain Jesuit; yet both, it is thought, composed by Mr. John Milton, as was the third, etc. London, 1740, 4to. Penn, John.--Critical, poetical, and dramatic works. 2 vols. London, 1798, 8vo. Samson Agonistes, vol. ii., pp. 213-263. Philips, John.--Poems attempted in the style of Milton, etc. London, 1762, 12mo. Philo-Milton, _pseud._--Milton's Sublimity asserted: in a poem occasion'd by a late piece entituled Cyder, a poem [by J. Philips]. In blank verse. London, 1709, 4to. ---- A vindication of the Paradise Lost from the charge of exculpating Lord Byron's "Cain, a Mystery." London, 1822, 8vo. Plaint.--The Plaint of Freedom. (To the Memory of Milton. In verse.) Newcastle-upon-Tyne, 1852, 4to. Prendergast, G.L.--A complete concordance to the poetical works of Milton. Madras, 1856-57, 4to. Prodromus.--Verax Prodromus in Delirum. [An invective against John Milton.] [Amsterdam? 1656?] 4to. R * *--Lettres critiques à Mr. le comte * * * sur le Paradis perdu, et reconquis, de Milton, par R * * [outh]. Paris, 1731, 8vo. Reed, Henry.--Lectures on the British Poets. 2 vols. Philadelphia, 1858, 8vo. Milton, pp. 199-232. Rice, Allen Thorndike.--Essays from the North American Review. New York, 1879, 8vo. John Milton, by Ralph Waldo Emerson, pp. 99-122. Richardson, Jonathan.--Explanatory notes and remarks on Milton's Paradise Lost. By J. Richardson, father and son. London, 1734, 8vo. Richardson, Jonathan.--Zoilomastix; or, a vindication of Milton from all the invidious charges of W. Lauder. With several new remarks on Paradise Lost. London, 1747, 8vo. Ring, Max.--John Milton und seine Zeit. Historischer Roman. Frankfurt a. Main, 1857, 8vo. ---- John Milton and his times, a historical novel. Translated by J. Jefferson. Manchester, 1889, 8vo. Rolli, P.--Sabrina; an opera [in three acts and in verse. Founded on the "Comus" of Milton]. _Ital._ and _Eng._ London, 1737, 8vo. Rossetti, William Michael.--Lives of Famous Poets. London, 1878, 8vo. John Milton, pp. 65-79. Rowland, J.--Pro Rege et Populo Anglicano apologia, contra Joannis Polypragmatici (alias Miltoni Angli) defensionem destructivam Regis et Populi Anglicani. Antwerpiæ, 1651, 12mo. ---- Another edition. Antwerpiæ, 1652, 12mo. S.G.--The dignity of Kingship asserted: in answer to Mr. Milton's Ready and Easie way to establish a free Commonwealth. By G.S. (George Searle?), a lover of loyalty. London, 1660, 8vo. Saintsbury, George.--A History of Elizabethan Literature. London, 1887, 8vo. Milton, pp. 315-329. Salmasius, Claudius de.--Claudii Salmasii ad Johannem Miltonum Responsio. Opus posthumum. Londini, 1660, 12mo. Say, Samuel.--Poems on several occasions: and two critical Essays--viz., the first on the harmony, variety, and power of numbers, whether in prose or verse; the second, on the numbers of Paradise Lost. [With a portrait of Milton, etched by J. Richardson.] London, 1745, 4to. Scherer, Edmond.--Études sur la Littérature Contemporaine. Paris, 1882, 8vo. Milton et le _Paradis Perdu_, tom. vi., pp. 161-194. Scolari, Filippo.--Saggio di Critica sul Paradiso Perduto, Poema di Giovanni Milton, e sulle annotazioni a quello di Giuseppe Addison. Aggiuntovi l'Adamo sacra rappresentazione di G.B. Andreini, etc. Venezia, 1818, 8vo. Scott, John.--Critical Essays on some of the poems of several English poets, etc. London, 1785, 8vo. On Milton's Lycidas, pp. 37-64. Seeley, J.R.--Lectures and Essays. London, 1870, 8vo. Milton's Political Opinions, pp. 89-119; Milton's Poetry, pp. 120-154. Shenston, J.B.--The Authority of Jehovah asserted, ... with some remarks on the article on Milton's Essay on the Sabbath and the Lord's Day, which appeared in the Evangelical Review, 1826. London, 1826, 8vo. Smectymnuus, _pseud._ [_i.e._, Stephen Marshall, Edmund Calamy etc.]--A modest confutation of a slanderous and scurrilous libell, entituled, Animadversions [by John Milton] upon the remonstrants' defense against Smectymnuus. [London] 1642, 4to. Sotheby, Samuel Leigh.--Ramblings in the elucidation of the Autograph of Milton. [With plates.] London, 1861, 4to. Steel, David.--Elements of Punctuation, and critical observations on some passages in Milton. London, 1786, 8vo. Stern, Alfred.--Milton und seine Zeit. 2 Thle. Leipzig, 1877-79, 8vo. ---- Milton und Cromwell. Berlin, 1875, 8vo. Serie x., Hft. 236 of Virchow and Holtzendorff's "Sammlung gemeinverständlicher wissenschaftlicher Vorträge, etc." Symmons, Charles.--The Life of John Milton, etc. London, 1806, 8vo. ---- Second edition. London, 1810, 8vo. ---- Third edition. London, 1882, 8vo. Taine, H.A.--Histoire de la Littérature Anglaise. 4 tom. Paris, 1863-4, 8vo. Milton, tom, ii., pp. 327-435. ---- History of English Literature. Translated by H. Van Laun. 4 vols. Edinburgh, 1873-4, 8vo. Milton, vol. ii., pp. 239-318. Tasso, Torquato.--Il Tasso, a dialogue. The speakers, John Milton, Torquato Tasso. London, 1762, 8vo. Todd, Henry John.--Some account of the life and writings of John Milton. Second edition, with additions, and with a verbal index to the whole of Milton's poetry. London, 1809, 8vo. This forms vol. i. of the 1809 edition of Todd's Milton; a certain number of copies being printed off with a distinct title-page. ---- Some account of the life and writings of John Milton, derived principally from documents in His Majesty's State-paper Office, now first published. London, 1826, 8vo. Toland, John.--The Life of John Milton, containing, besides the history of his works, several extraordinary characters of men and books, sects, parties, and opinions. [Signed J.T., _i.e._ J. Toland.] London, 1699, 8vo. ---- Amyntor; or, a Defence of Milton's Life, etc. London, 1699, 8vo. ---- The Life of John Milton; with Amyntor; or a Defence of Milton's Life, etc. London, 1761, 8vo. Tomlinson, John.--Three Household Poets--viz., Milton, Cowper, Burns, etc. London, 1869, 8vo. Tulloch, John.--English Puritanism and its leaders, Cromwell, Milton, Baxter, Bunyan. Edinburgh, 1861, 8vo. Vericour, Raymond de.--Milton et la poésie épique, etc. Paris, 1838, 8vo. Ward, Thomas H.--The English Poets; selections, with critical introductions, etc. 4 vols. London, 1880, 8vo. John Milton, by Mark Pattison, vol. ii., pp. 293-379. Warton, Thomas.--A Letter to T. Warton on his editon of Milton's juvenile poems. [By S. Darby?] London, 1785, 8vo. White, Thomas Holt.--A Review of Johnson's criticism on the style of Milton's English Prose, etc. London, 1818, 8vo. Wilson, J.--Vindiciæ Carolinæ; or a defence of Eikon Basilike, etc. London, 1692, 8vo. Yonge, Charles Duke.--Three Centuries of English Literature. London, 1872, 8vo. Milton, pp. 185-210. Zicari da Paola, F.--Sulla scoverta dell' originale Italiano da cui Milton trasse il suo poema del Paradiso Perduto. Napoli, 1844, 12mo. Ziegler, C.--C. Ziegleri circa regicidium Anglorum exercitationes. Accedit Jacobi Schalleri Dissertatio ad loca quædam Miltoni. Lugd. Batavorum, 1653, 12mo. MAGAZINE ARTICLES, ETC. Milton, John.--Edinburgh Review, by T.B. Macaulay, vol. 42, 1825, pp. 304-346. --Christian Examiner, by W.E. Channing, vol. 3, 1826, pp. 29-77; same article, Pamphleteer, vol. 29, pp. 507-547. --United States Literary Gazette, vol. 4, 1826, pp. 278-293. --Quarterly Review, by J.J. Blunt, vol. 36, 1827, pp. 29-61. --American Quarterly Review, vol. 5, 1829, pp. 301-310. --American Quarterly Observer, vol. 1, 1833, pp. 115-125. --Congregational Magazine, vol. 9, 1833, pp. 193-211. --North American Review, by R.W. Emerson, vol. 47, 1838, pp. 56-73. --Blackwood's Magazine, vol. 46, 1839, pp. 775-780. --Penny Magazine, vol. 10, 1841, pp. 97-101. --National Review, vol. 9, 1859, pp. 150-186. --Chambers's Journal, vol. 11, 1859, pp. 117-119. --Radical, by B.W. Wall, vol. 3, 1868, pp. 718-723. --Contemporary Review, by P. Bayne, vol. 22, 1873, pp. 427-460; same article, Eclectic Magazine, vol. 18 N.S., pp. 565-585; Littell's Living Age, vol. 3, 5th ser., pp. 643-662. --New Monthly Magazine, vol. 4 N.S., 1873, pp. 27-35. --Congregationalist, by T.H. Gill, vol. 3, 1874, pp. 705-714. --Macmillan's Magazine, by Mark Pattison, vol. 31, 1875, pp. 380-387; same article, Littell's Living Age, vol. 10, 5th ser., pp. 323-329. --Western, by H.H. Morgan, vol. 5, 1879, pp. 107-138. --Modern Review, by H. New, vol. 2, 1881, pp. 103-128; same article, Littell's Living Age, vol. 148, pp. 515-525. ---- _and the Commonwealth_. British Quarterly Review, vol. 10, 1849, pp. 224-254; same article, Eclectic Magazine, vol. 18, pp. 346-362. ---- _and Dante_. St. James's Magazine, vol. 15, 1866, pp. 243-250. ---- _and Galileo_. Fraser's Magazine, by Sir Richard Owen, vol. 79, 1869, pp. 678-684. ---- _and his daughters_. People's Journal, by Mrs. Leman Gillies, vol. 5, 1848, pp. 227, 228. ---- _and Homer contrasted_. Analectic Magazine, vol. 14, 1819, pp. 224-229. ---- _and Macaulay_. De Bow's Review, by G. Fitzhugh, vol. 28, 1860, pp. 667-679. ---- _and Masenius_. Month, vol. 8, 1868, pp. 542-550. ---- _and the Daughters of Eve_. St. Paul's, vol. 13, 1873, pp. 405-418. ---- _and Vondel_. Academy, by Edmund Gosse and G. Edmundson, vol. 28, 1885, pp. 265, 266, 293, 294, 342; and by J.R. Mac Ilraith, pp. 308, 309. --Athenæum, Nov. 7, 1885, pp. 599, 600. --Nation, vol. 42, 1886, pp. 264, 265. ---- _and Wordsworth_. Temple Bar, vol. 60, 1880, pp. 106-115. ---- _Angels of_. New Englander, by John A. Himes, vol. 43, 1884, pp. 527-543. ---- _Areopagitica_. Retrospective Review, vol. 9, 1824, pp. 1-19. ---- _as a Reformer_. Methodist Quarterly Review, by F.H. Newhall, vol. 39, 1857, pp. 542-559. ---- _At Cambridge_. American Journal of Education, vol. 28, 1878, pp. 383-400. ---- _Bibliographical account of his works_. Retrospective Review, vol. 14, 1826, pp. 282-305. ---- _Blank Verse of_. Fortnightly Review, by J.A. Symonds, vol. 16 N.S., 1874, pp. 767-781. ---- _Blindness of_. Chambers's Journal, vol. 3 N.S., 1845, pp. 392-394. ---- _Byron and Southey_. De Bow's Review, by G. Fitzhugh, vol. 29, 1860, pp. 430-440. ---- _Channing on_. Edinburgh Review, by H. Brougham, vol. 69, 1839, pp. 214-230. --Monthly Review, vol. 7 N.S., 1828, pp. 471-478. --Fraser's Magazine, vol. 17, 1838, pp. 627-635. ---- _Christian Doctrine_. Quarterly Review, vol. 32, 1835, pp. 442-457. --North American Review, by S. Willard, vol. 22, 1826, pp. 364-373. --United States Literary Gazette, vol. 3, 1826, pp. 321-327. --Monthly Review, vol. 107, 1825, pp. 273-294. --Congregational Magazine, vol. 8, 1825, pp. 588-592. --Eclectic Review, vol. 25 N.S., 1826, pp. 1-18, 114-141. ---- _Comus_. New Monthly Magazine, vol. 7, 1823, pp. 222-229. ---- _Comus_, _and Fletcher's Faithful Shepherdess_. Manchester Quarterly, by W.E.A. Axon, vol. 1, 1882, pp. 285-295. ---- _Dante and Æschylus_. Tait's Edinburgh Magazine, vol. 20 N.S., 1853, pp. 513-525, 577-587, 641-650. ---- _De Vericour's Lectures on_. Monthly Review, vol. 2 N.S., 1838, pp. 342-351. ---- _Doctrinal Error of his later life_. Bibliotheca Sacra, by T. Hunt, vol. 42, 1885, pp. 251-269. ---- _Doctrine of Divorce_. Monthly Review, vol. 93, 1820, pp. 144-158. ---- _Early Life_. Methodist Quarterly Review, by P. Church, vol. 48, 1866, pp. 580-595. ---- _Effigies of_. Historical Magazine, vol. 2, 1858, pp. 230-233. ---- _Familiar Letters_. Southern Review, vol. 6, 1830, pp. 198-206. --American Quarterly Review, vol. 5, 1829, pp. 301-310. ---- _French Critic on_. Quarterly Review, vol. 143, 1877, pp. 186-204; same article, Littell's Living Age, vol. 132, pp. 579-589. ---- _Genius of_. Tait's Edinburgh Magazine, by G. Gilfillan, vol. 15 N.S., 1848, pp. 511-522; same article, Eclectic Magazine, vol. 15, pp. 196-212. ---- _History of England_. Retrospective Review, vol. 6, 1822, pp. 87-100. ---- _Hollis' Bust of_. Scribner's Monthly, by C. Cook, vol. 11, 1876, pp. 472-476. ---- _Home, School, and College Training of_. American Journal of Education, vol. 14, 1864, pp. 159-190. ---- _Idealism of_. Contemporary Review, by E. Dowden, vol. 19, 1872, pp. 198-209; same article, Littell's Living Age, vol. 112, 1872, pp. 408-414. ---- _in our Day_. Christian Examiner, by S. Good, vol. 57, 1854, pp. 323-340. ---- _Italian Element in_. Penn Monthly Magazine, by O.H. Kendall, vol. 1, 1870, pp. 388-400. ---- _Keble's Estimate of_. Macmillan's Magazine, by J.C. Shairp, vol. 31, 1875, pp. 554-560. ---- _Keightley's Life of_. North American Review, by H.A. Whitney, vol. 82, 1856, pp. 388-404. Littell's Living Age (from the _Saturday Review_), vol. 63, 1859, pp. 226-229. ---- _Lamartine on_. Littell's Living Age (from the _Literary Gazette_), vol. 44, 1855, pp. 497-499. ---- _Latin Poems of, Cowper's Translations_. Eclectic Review, Sept. 1808, pp. 780-791. ---- _Life of_. North British Review, by D. Masson, vol. 16, 1852, pp. 295-335; same article, Eclectic Magazine, vol. 25, 1852, pp. 433-447. --New Quarterly Review, vol. 8, 1859, pp. 40-54. ---- _Life and Poetry of_. Hogg's Instructor, vol. 1 N.S., 1853, pp. 234-242; same article, Eclectic Magazine, vol. 30, pp. 364-372. ---- _Lycidas_. American Monthly Magazine, vol. 5 N.S., 1838, pp. 341-353. --Quarterly Review, vol. 158, 1884, pp. 162-183. ---- ---- _Language of Lycidas_. Sharpe's London Magazine, vol. 25 N.S., 1864, pp. 293-296. ---- ---- _Notes on Lycidas_. Journal of Speculative Philosophy, by A.C. Brackett, vol. 1, 1867, pp. 87-90. ---- _Masson's Life of_. British Quarterly Review, vol. 29, 1859, pp. 185-214; vol. 59, 1874, pp. 81-100. --North British Review, vol. 30, 1859, pp. 281-308; same article, Littell's Living Age, vol. 61, pp. 731-747. --Dublin University Magazine, vol. 53, 1859, pp. 609-623. --New Monthly Magazine, vol. 115, 1859, pp. 163-172. --Eclectic Review, vol. 1 N.S., 1859, pp. 1-21. --Christian Examiner, by G.E. Ellis, vol. 66, 1859, pp. 401-431. --Old and New, vol. 4, 1871, pp. 704-708. --Nation, by W.F. Allen, vol. 13, 1871, pp. 91, 92; vol. 17, 1873, pp. 165, 166; vol. 31, 1880, pp. 15, 16. --International Review, by H.C. Lodge, vol. 9, 1880, pp. 125-135. --Quarterly Review, vol. 132, 1872, pp. 393-423. --Presbyterian Quarterly, by E.H. Gillett, vol. 1, 1872, pp. 382-394. --North American Review, by J.R. Lowell, vol. 114, 1872, pp. 204-218. --Macmillan's Magazine, by G.B. Smith, vol. 28, 1873, pp. 536-547. --Christian Observer, vol. 73, 1873, pp. 815-834. --International Review, vol. 1, 1874, pp. 131-135. --North American Review, vol. 126, 1878, pp. 537-542. --Nation, by J.L. Dyman, vol. 26, 1878, pp. 342-344. --Westminster Review, vol. 57 N.S., 1880, pp. 365-385. ---- _Minor Poems_. Dublin University Magazine, vol. 63, 1864, pp. 619-625. ---- _Mitford's Life of_. New Monthly Magazine, vol. 34, 1832, pp. 581, 582. ---- _Nephews of_. Edinburgh Review, by Sir J. Mackintosh, vol. 25, 1815, pp. 485-501. ---- _Newly-discovered Prose Writings of_. Hours at Home, by E.H. Gillett, vol. 9, 1869, pp. 532-536. ---- _Ode to_. Harper's New Monthly Magazine, by A.A. Lipscomb, vol. 20, 1860, pp. 771-778. ---- _On the Divinity of Christ_. Christian Examiner, vol. 2, 1825, pp. 423-429. ---- _Paradise Lost_. Journal of Sacred Literature, by F.A. Cox, vol. 1, 1848, pp. 236-257. ---- ---- _Chateaubriand's Translation of Paradise Lost_. Foreign Quarterly Review, vol. 19, 1837, pp. 35-50. ---- ---- _Cosmology of Paradise Lost_. Lutheran Quarterly, by J.A. Himes, vol. 6, p. 187, etc. ---- ---- _De Lille's Translation of Paradise Lost_. Edinburgh Review, vol. 8, 1806, pp. 167-190. ---- ---- _First Edition of Paradise Lost_. Book-Lore, vol. 3, 1886, pp. 72-75. Leisure Hour, April 28, 1877, pp. 269, 270. ---- ---- _Moral Estimate of the Paradise Lost_. Christian Observer, vol. 22, 1822, pp. 211-218, 278-284. ---- ---- _Mull's edition of Paradise Lost_. Spectator, December 6, 1884, pp. 1635, 1636. --Saturday Review, vol. 58, pp. 570, 571. ---- ---- _Origin of the Paradise Lost_. North American Review, by L.E. Dubois, vol. 91, 1860, pp. 539-555. ---- ---- _Plan of Paradise Lost_. New Englander, by Professor Himes, vol. 42, 1883, pp. 196-211. ---- ---- _Prendeville's edition of Paradise Lost_. Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, vol. 47, 1840, pp. 691-716. ---- ---- _Sorelli's Italian Translation of Paradise Lost_. Foreign Quarterly Review, vol. 10, 1832, pp. 508-513. ---- ---- _Theism of the Paradise Lost_. Unitarian Review, by H. Carpenter, vol. 5, pp. 302, etc. ---- _Poetry of_. Edinburgh Review, vol. 42, 1825, pp. 304-324. --Selections from the Edinburgh Review, vol. 2, 1835, pp. 34-64. --Macmillan's Magazine, by J.R. Seeley, vol. 17, 1868, pp. 299-311; vol. 19, pp. 407-421. --Temple Bar, vol. 39, 1873, pp. 458-473. ---- _Political Writings_. Nation, by Goldwin Smith, vol. 30, 1880, pp. 30-32. ---- _Prose Writings of_. New Monthly Magazine, vol. 40, 1834, pp. 39-50. --Congregational Magazine, vol. 10 N.S., 1834, pp. 217-224. --American Monthly Magazine, vol. 1 N.S., 1836, pp. 142-146. --Eclectic Review, vol. 25 N.S., 1849, pp. 507-521. --Spectator, Oct. 3, 1885, pp. 1317, 1318. --Athenæum, Sept. 20, 1884, pp. 359, 360. ---- _Public Conduct of_. Edinburgh Review, vol. 42, 1825, pp. 324-346. --Selections from the Edinburgh Review, vol. 2, 1835, pp. 48-64. ---- _Relics of, at Cambridge_. Chambers's Journal, vol. 8, 1857, pp. 319, 320. ---- _Religious Life and Opinions of_. Bibliotheca Sacra, by A.D. Barber, vol. 16, 1859, pp. 557-603; vol. 17, pp. 1-42. ---- _Rural Scenes of_. Fraser's Magazine, vol. 23, 1841, pp. 519-528. ---- _Satan of._ Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, vol. 1, 1817, pp. 140-142. ---- ---- _and Lucifer of Byron Compared._ Knickerbocker, vol. 30, 1847, pp. 150-155. ---- ---- _Satan of Paradise Lost._ Dublin University Magazine, vol. 88, 1876, pp. 707-714. ---- _Select Prose Works._ Boston Quarterly Review, vol. 5, 1842, pp. 322-342. ---- _Shadow of the Puritan War in._ Catholic Presbyterian, by A. Macleod, vol. 9, 1883, pp. 169-176, 321-330. ---- _Sonnets of, Pattison's edition._ Academy, by J.A. Noble, vol. 24, 1883, pp. 57, 58. --Saturday Review, vol. 56, 1883, pp. 252, 253. --Spectator, Aug. 18, 1883, pp. 1062, 1063. --Athenæum, Sept. 1, 1883, pp. 263-265. ---- _Spenser, and Shakspere._ Victoria Magazine, vol. 25, 1875, pp. 856-868, 1059-1065; vol. 26, pp. 24-31, 108-117. ---- _State Papers relating to._ London Magazine, vol. 6 N.S., 1826, pp. 377-396. ---- _Theology of._ Boston Monthly Magazine, vol. 1, 1825, pp. 489-491. ---- _Todd's Life of._ Quarterly Review, vol. 36, 1827, pp. 29-61. --Monthly Review, vol. 3 N.S., 1826, pp. 258-273. --Museum of Foreign Literature, vol. 10, p. 67, etc.; vol. 11, pp. 114, etc., 385, etc. --Congregational Magazine, vol. 3, 1827, pp. 33-40. ---- _Treatise on Christian Doctrine._ Evangelical Magazine, vol. 4 N.S., 1826, pp. 371-375. ---- _versus Robert Montgomery._ Knickerbocker, vol. 3, 1834, pp. 120-134. ---- _Works of._ American Church Review, by J.H. Hanson, vol. 2, pp. 153, etc. ---- _Youth of_. Edinburgh Review, vol. 111, 1860, pp. 312-347; same article, Littell's Living Age, vol. 65, pp. 579-597. --Argosy, vol. 6, 1868, pp. 267-273. * * * * * VII. CHRONOLOGICAL LIST OF WORKS. A Maske [Comus] 1637 Lycidas 1638 (In _Justa Edouardo King Naufrago_) Of Reformation touching Church-Discipline in England 1641 Of Prelatical Episcopacy 1641 Animadversions upon the Remonstrant's defence against Smectymnuus 1641 The Reason of Church-Government urg'd against Prelaty 1641 Apology against a Pamphlet called A Modest Confutation of the Animadversions, etc. 1641 Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce 1643 Of Education. To Master S. Hartlib 1644 The Judgment of Martin Bucer, now Englisht 1644 Areopagitica 1644 Tetrachordon 1644 Colasterion 1645 Poems 1645 Tenure of Kings and Magistrates 1649 Observations upon the Articles of Peace with the Irish Rebels (_Articles of Peace_, etc.) 1649 Eikonoklastes 1649 Pro populo Anglicano defensio contra Salmasium 1651 A Letter touching the Dissolution of the late Parliament 1653 Pro populo Anglicano defensio secunda 1654 Scriptum Dom-Protectoris contra Hispanos 1655 Pro se defensio contra A. Morum 1655 Treatise on Civil Power in Ecclesiastical Causes 1659 Considerations touching the likeliest means to remove Hirelings out of the Church 1659 Ready and easy way to establish a free Commonwealth 1660 Paradise Lost 1667 Accedence commenc't Grammar 1669 History of Britain 1670 Paradise Regained 1671 Samson Agonistes 1671 (_With preceding work_) Artis Logicæ plenior Institutio 1672 Of true Religion, Heresie, Schism, Toleration, and what best means may be used against the growth of Popery 1673 Epistolarum familiarium liber 1674 Declaration or Letters Patents of the Election of this present King of Poland, John the Third 1674 * * * * * Literæ Pseudo-Senatus Anglicani, Cromwellii, etc. 1676 Character of the Long Parliament and Assembly of Divines in 1641 1681 Brief History of Moscovia 1682 Works [in prose] 1697 Historical, political, and miscellaneous works 1698 Original Letters and Papers of State addressed to Oliver Cromwell 1743 De Doctrina Christiana 1825 Common Place Book 1876 _Printed by _WALTER SCOTT_, Felling, Newcastle-on-Tyne._ _Crown 8vo, Cloth. 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21677	----	MILTON by SIR WALTER RALEIGH Author of 'Style,' 'Wordsworth,' &c. Tenth Impression London Edward Arnold 41 & 43 Maddox Street, Bond Street, W. 1915 TO R. A. M. STEVENSON WHOSE RADIANT AND SOARING INTELLIGENCE ENLIGHTENED AND GUIDED ME DURING THE YEARS OF OUR LOST COMPANIONSHIP THIS UNAVAILING TRIBUTE OF MEMORY AND LOVE CONTENTS INTRODUCTION PAGE "Sciences of conceit"; the difficulties and imperfections of literary criticism; illustrated in the case of Shakespeare; and of Milton; the character and temper of Milton; intensity, simplicity, egotism; his estimate of himself 1 CHAPTER I John Milton His birth, and death; his education; early life in London; ships and shipping; adventurers and players; Milton and the Elizabethan drama; the poetic masters of his youth; state of the Church of England; Baxter's testimony; growing unrest; Milton's early poems; the intrusion of politics; the farewell to mirth; the Restoration, and Milton's attitude; the lost paradise of the early poems; Milton's Puritanism; his melancholy; the political and public preoccupations of the later poems; the drama of Milton's life; his egotism explained; an illustration from _Lycidas_; the lost cause; the ultimate triumph 12 CHAPTER II The Prose Works Poets and politics; practical aim of Milton's prose writings; the reforms advocated by him, with one exception, unachieved; critical mourners over Milton's political writings; the mourners comforted; Milton's classification of his prose tracts; the occasional nature of these tracts; allusions in the early prose works to the story of Samson, and to the theme of _Paradise Lost_; Milton's personal and public motives; his persuasive vein; his political idealism; Johnson's account of his political opinions; the citizen of an antique city; Milton's attitude towards mediæval romance, and towards the mediæval Church; his worship of liberty; and of greatness; his belief in human capacity and virtue; Milton and Cromwell; Milton's clear logic; his tenacity; his scurrility, and its excuse; his fierce and fantastic wit; reappearance of these qualities in _Paradise Lost_; the style of his prose works analysed and illustrated; his rich vocabulary; his use of Saxon; the making of an epic poet 39 CHAPTER III Paradise Lost: The Scheme Vastness of the theme; scenical opportunities; the poetry independent of the creed; Milton's choice of subject; King Arthur; _Paradise Lost_; attractions of the theme: primitive religion, natural beauty, dramatic interest; difficulties of the theme, and forbidden topics; how Milton overcomes these difficulties by his episodes, his similes, and the tradition that he adopts concerning the fallen angels; the cosmography of _Paradise Lost_; its chronology; some difficulties and inconsistencies; Milton's spiritual beings, their physical embodiment; the poem no treasury of wisdom, but a world-drama; its inhumanity, and artificial elevation; the effect of Milton's simpler figures drawn from rural life; De Quincey's explanation of this effect; another explanation; the homelessness of Eden; the enchanted palace and its engineer; the tyranny of Milton's imagination; its effect on his diction 81 CHAPTER IV Paradise Lost: The Actors. The Later Poems Milton's argumentative end; its bearing on the scenes in Heaven; his political bias, and materialism; Milton's Deity; his Satan; the minor devils; Adam; Eve; personal memories; Adam's eulogy of Eve, criticised by Raphael; Milton's philosophy of love and beauty; the opinions of Raphael, of Satan, and of Mrs. Millamant; the comparative merits of Adam and Eve; Milton's great epic effects; his unity and large decorum; morning and evening; architectural effects; the close of _Paradise Lost_; Addison and Bentley; _Paradise Regained;_ the choice of subject; Milton's favourite theme--temptation; other possible subjects; the Harrying of Hell; _Samson Agonistes;_ the riddle of life. 126 CHAPTER V The Style of Milton: Metre and Diction Difficulties of literary genealogy; the ledger school of criticism; Milton's strength and originality; his choice of a sacred subject; earlier attempts in England and France; Boileau's opinion; Milton's choice of metre an innovation; the little influence on Milton of Spenser, and of Donne; Milton a pupil of the dramatists; the history of dramatic blank verse; Milton's handling of the measure; the "elements of musical delight"; Tennyson's blank verse; Milton's metrical licenses; the Choruses of _Samson Agonistes_; Milton's diction a close-wrought mosaic; compared with the diffuser diction of Spenser; conciseness of Virgil, Dryden, Pope, Milton; Homer's repetitions; repetitions and "turns of words and thoughts" rare in Milton; double meanings of words; Milton's puns; extenuating circumstances; his mixed metaphors and violent syntax, due to compression; Milton's poetical style a dangerous model; the spontaneity and license of his prose 170 CHAPTER VI The Style of Milton; and its Influence on English Poetry The relation of Milton's work to the 17th-century "reforms" of verse and prose; the Classicism of Milton, and of the Augustans; Classic and Romantic schools contrasted in their descriptions; Milton's Chaos, Shakespeare's Dover Cliff; Johnson's comments; the besetting sins of the two schools; Milton's physical machinery justified; his use of abstract terms; the splendid use of mean associations by Shakespeare; Milton's wise avoidance of mean associations, and of realism; nature of his similes and figures; his use of proper names; his epic catalogues; his personifications; loftiness of his perfected style; the popularity of _Paradise Last_; imitations, adaptations, and echoes of Milton's style during the 18th century; his enormous influence; the origin of "poetic diction"; Milton's phraseology stolen by Pope, Thomson, and Gray; the degradation of Milton's style by his pupils and parodists 218 EPILOGUE Milton's contemporaries; the poetry of Religion, and of Love; Henry Vaughan; the Court lyrists; Milton's contempt for them; how they surpass him; Sedley; Rochester; the prophet of the Lord and the sons of Belial; unique position of Milton in the history of our literature 256 Index 265 INTRODUCTION Francis Bacon, in one of his prose fragments, draws a memorable distinction between "arts mechanical" and "sciences of conceit." "In arts mechanical," he says, "the first device comes shortest, and time addeth and perfecteth. But in sciences of conceit the first author goeth farthest, and time leeseth and corrupteth.... In the former, many wits and industries contributed in one. In the latter, many men's wits spent to deprave the wit of one." I fear that literary criticism of the kind that I propose to myself in these chapters on Milton must be classified with the "sciences of conceit." Indeed, Bacon puts it out of question that he himself would so have regarded it, for he goes on to explain how, after the deliverances of a master, "then begin men to aspire to the second prizes, to be a profound interpreter and commentor, to be a sharp champion and defender, to be a methodical compounder and abridger. And this is the unfortunate succession of wits which the world hath yet had, whereby the patrimony of all knowledge goeth not on husbanded and improved, but wasted and decayed." The blow is aimed at the scholastic philosophers, but it falls heavy on the critics of literature, on all who "aspire to the second prizes," or who think "that a borrowed light can increase the original light from whom it is taken." It is a searching arraignment of all who set themselves to expound in words the meaning and purpose of a master of verbal expression. Yet the very breadth of the indictment brings comfort and a means of escape. For the chief difficulties of an attempt to understand and judge Milton are difficulties inherent in the nature, not only of all criticism in the large sense, but also of all reading. In this association with great spirits which we call reading we receive but what we give, and take away only what we are fit to carry. Milton himself has stated the doctrine in its most absolute form, and has sought an enhanced authority for it by attributing it to the Christ-- Who reads Incessantly, and to his reading brings not A spirit and judgment equal or superior (And what he brings what needs he elsewhere seek?) Uncertain and unsettled still remains, Deep versed in books and shallow in himself, Crude or intoxicate, collecting toys And trifles for choice matters, worth a spunge, As children gathering pebbles on the shore. Literally taken, this is the negation of all the higher functions of criticism, and the paralysis of all learning. Only his peers, it is argued, can read Shakespeare intelligently; and, as if that did not give him few enough readers, they are further told that they will be wasting their time! But love, unlike this proud Stoicism, is humble, and contented with a little. I would put my apology in the language of love rather than of philosophy. I know that in Shakespeare, or in Milton, or in any rare nature, as in Faire Virtue, the mistress of Philarete-- There is some concealèd thing So each gazer limiting, He can see no more of merit Than beseems his worth and spirit. The appreciation of a great author asks knowledge and industry before it may be attempted, but in the end it is the critic, not the author, who is judged by it, and, where his sympathies have been too narrow, or his sight too dim, condemned without reprieve, and buried without a tombstone. Imperfect sympathy, that eternal vice of criticism, is sometimes irremediable, sometimes caused by imperfect knowledge. It takes forms as various as the authors whom it misjudges. In the case of Shakespeare, when we attempt to estimate him, to gauge him, to see him from all sides, we become almost painfully conscious of his immensity. We can build no watch-tower high enough to give us a bird's-eye view of that "globe of miraculous continents." We are out of breath when we attempt to accompany him on his excursions, where he, through strait, rough, dense, or rare, With head, hands, wings, or feet pursues his way, And swims, or sinks, or wades, or creeps, or flies. He moves so easily and so familiarly among human passions and human emotions, is so completely at home in all societies and all companies, that he makes us feel hide-bound, prejudiced and ill-bred, by the side of him. We have to widen our conception of human nature in order to think of him as a man. How hard a thing it is to conceive of Shakespeare as of a human spirit, embodied and conditioned, whose affections, though higher mounted than ours, yet, when they stooped, stooped with the like wing, is witnessed by all biographies of Shakespeare, and by many thousands of the volumes of criticism and commentary that have been written on his works. One writer is content to botanise with him--to study plant-lore, that is, with a theatrical manager, in his hard-earned leisure, for teacher. Another must needs read the Bible with him, although, when all is said, Shakespeare's study was but little on the Bible. Others elect to keep him to music, astronomy, law, hunting, hawking, fishing. He is a good companion out of doors, and some would fain keep him there, to make a country gentleman of him. His incorrigible preoccupation with humanity, the ruling passion and employment of his life, is beyond the range of their complete sympathy; they like to catch him out of hours, to draw him aside and bespeak his interest, for a few careless minutes, in the trades and pastimes that bulk so largely and so seriously in their own perspective of life. They hardly know what to make of his "unvalued book"; but they know that he was a great man, and to have bought a wool-fell or a quarter of mutton from him, that would have been something! Only the poet-critics attempt to see life, however brokenly, through Shakespeare's eyes, to let their enjoyment keep attendance upon his. And from their grasp, too, he escapes by sheer excess. In the case of Milton the imperfection of our sympathy is due to other causes. In the first place, we know him as we do not know Shakespeare. The history of his life can be, and has been, minutely written. The affairs of his time, political and religious, have been recorded with enormous wealth of detail; and this wealth, falling into fit hands, has given us those learned modern historians to whom the seventeenth century means a period of five thousand two hundred and eighteen weeks. Milton's own attitude towards these affairs is in no way obscure; he has explained it with great fulness and candour in numerous publications, so that it would be easy to draw up a declaration of his chief tenets in politics and religion. The slanders of his adversaries he met again and again with lofty passages of self-revelation. "With me it fares now," he remarks in one of these, "as with him whose outward garment hath been injured and ill-bedighted; for having no other shift, what help but to turn the inside outwards, especially if the lining be of the same, or, as it is sometimes, much better." In his poetry, too, he delights to reveal himself, to take the knowing reader into his confidence, to honour the fit audience with a confession. But the difficulty is there none the less. Few critics have found Milton too wide or too large for them; many have found him too narrow, which is another form of imperfect sympathy. His lack of humour has alienated the interest of thousands. His ardent advocacy of toleration in the noblest of his prose treatises has been belittled by a generation which prides itself on that flaccid form of benevolence, and finds the mere repeal of the Licensing Act the smallest part of it. His pamphlets on divorce and on government have earned him the reputation of a theorist and dreamer. The shrewd practical man finds it easy to despise him. The genial tolerant man, whose geniality of demeanour towards others is a kind of quit-rent paid for his own moral laxity, regards him as a Pharisee. The ready humourist devises a pleasant and cheap entertainment by dressing Adam and Eve in modern garments and discussing their relations in the jargon of modish frivolity. Even the personal history of the poet has been made to contribute to the gaiety of nations, and the flight of Mary Powell, the first Mrs. Milton, from the house in Aldersgate Street, has become something of a stock comic episode in the history of English literature. So heavy is the tax paid, even by a poet, for deficiency in breadth and humour. Almost all men are less humorous than Shakespeare; but most men are more humorous than Milton, and these, it is to be feared, having suffered themselves to be dragooned by the critics into professing a distant admiration for _Paradise Lost_, have paid their last and utmost tribute to the genius of its author. It may be admitted without hesitation that his lonely greatness rather forces admiration on us than attracts us. That unrelenting intensity; that lucidity, as clear as air and as hard as agate; that passion which burns with a consuming heat or with a blinding light in all his writings, have endeared him to none. It is impossible to take one's ease with Milton, to induce him to forget his principles for a moment in the name of social pleasure. The most genial of his personal sonnets is addressed to Henry Lawrence, the son of the President of Cromwell's Council, and is an invitation to dinner. The repast promised is "light and choice"; the guest is apostrophised, somewhat formidably, as "Lawrence, of virtuous father, virtuous son," and is reminded, before he has dined, that He who of these delights can judge, and spare To interpose them oft, is not unwise. But the qualities that make Milton a poor boon-companion are precisely those which combine to raise his style to an unexampled loftiness, a dignity that bears itself easily in society greater than human. To attain to this height it was needful that there should be no aimless expatiation of the intellect, no facile diffusion of the sympathies over the wide field of human activity and human character. All the strength of mind and heart and will that was in Milton went into the process of raising himself. He is like some giant palm-tree; the foliage that sprang from it as it grew has long since withered, the stem rises gaunt and bare; but high up above, outlined against the sky, is a crown of perennial verdure. It is essential for the understanding of Milton that we should take account of the rare simplicity of his character. No subtleties; no tricks of the dramatic intellect, which dresses itself in a hundred masquerading costumes and peeps out of a thousand spy-holes; no development, one might almost say, only training, and that self-imposed. There is but one Milton, and he is throughout one and the same, in his life, in his prose, and in his verse; from those early days, when we find him, an uncouth swain, With eager thought warbling his Doric lay, to the last days when, amid a swarm of disasters, he approved himself like Samson, and earned for himself the loftiest epitaph in the language, his own-- Nothing is here for tears, nothing to wail Or knock the breast; no weakness, no contempt, Dispraise, or blame; nothing but well and fair, And what may quiet us in a death so noble. The world has not wholly misunderstood or failed to appreciate this extraordinary character, as one curious piece of evidence will serve to show. Milton is one of the most egotistic of poets. He makes no secret of the high value he sets upon his gifts--"gifts of God's imparting," as he calls them, "which I boast not, but thankfully acknowledge, and fear also lest at my certain account they be reckoned to me many rather than few." Before he has so much as begun his great poem he covenants with his reader "that for some few years yet I may go on trust with him toward the payment of what I am now indebted, as being a work not to be raised from the heat of youth or the vapours of wine; ... nor to be obtained by the invocation of dame Memory and her siren daughters, but by devout prayer to that eternal Spirit, who can enrich with all utterance and knowledge, and sends out his seraphim, with the hallowed fire of his altar, to touch and purify the lips of whom he pleases; to this must be added industrious and select reading, steady observation, insight into all seemly and generous arts and affairs; till which in some measure be compassed, at mine own peril and cost, I refuse not to sustain this expectation from as many as are not loth to hazard so much credulity upon the best pledges that I can give them." And when he came to redeem his pledge, in the very opening lines of his epic, trusting to the same inspiration, he challenges the supremacy of the ancients by his adventrous song That with no middle flight intends to soar Above the Aonian mount, while it pursues Things unattempted yet in prose or rhyme. "This man cuts us all out, and the Ancients too," Dryden is reported to have said. But this man intended to do no less, and formally announced his intention. It is impossible to outface Milton, or to abash him with praise. His most enthusiastic eulogists are compelled merely to echo the remarks of his earliest and greatest critic, himself. Yet with all this, none of the later critics, not the most cavalier nor the dullest, has dared to call him vain. His estimate of himself, offered as simple fact, has been accepted in the same spirit, and one abyss of ineptitude still yawns for the heroic folly, or the clownish courage, of the New Criticism. CHAPTER I JOHN MILTON John Milton, the son of a middle-aged scrivener, was born on Friday, December the 9th, 1608, at his father's house in Bread Street, Cheapside; and died on Sunday, November the 8th, 1674, in a small house, with but one room on a floor, in Artillery Walk, Bunhill Fields, London. Of his father the records that remain show him to have been a convinced member of the Puritan party in the Church, a man of liberal culture and intelligence, a lover of music (which taste Milton inherited), a wise and generous friend to the son who became a poet. We owe it to his wisdom rather than to his prosperity that Milton was allowed to live at home without any ostensible profession until he was thirty years of age and more. For the first sixteen years of his life Milton was educated partly at home, by a Presbyterian tutor called Thomas Young, partly at St. Paul's School, which he attended for some years as a day-scholar. From his twelfth year onward he was an omnivorous reader, and before he left school had written some boyish verses, void of merit. The next fourteen years of his life, after leaving school, were spent at Cambridge, in Buckinghamshire, and in foreign travel, so that he was thirty years old before he lived continuously in London again. We know pretty well how he spent his time at Cambridge and at Horton, sedulously turning over the Greek and Latin classics, dreaming of immortality. We know less about his early years in London, where there were wider and better opportunities of gaining an insight into "all seemly and generous arts and affairs." London was a great centre of traffic, a motley crowd of adventurers and traders even in those days, and the boy Milton must often have wandered down to the river below London Bridge to see the ships come in. His poems are singularly full of figures drawn from ships and shipping, some of them bookish in their origin, others which may have been suggested by the sight of ships. Now it is Satan, who, after his fateful journey through chaos, nears the world, And like a weather-beaten vessel holds Gladly the port, though shrouds and tackle torn. Now it is Dalila, whom the Chorus behold approaching. Like a stately ship Of Tarsus, bound for the isles Of Javan or Gadire, With all her bravery on, and tackle trim, Sails filled, and streamers waving, Courted by all the winds that hold them play. Or, again, it is Samson reproaching himself, Who, like a foolish pilot, have shipwracked My vessel trusted to me from above, Gloriously rigged. The bulk of Satan is compared to the great sea-beast Leviathan, beheld off the coast of Norway by The pilot of some small night-founder'd skiff. In his approach to the happy garden the Adversary is likened to them who sail Beyond the Cape of Hope, and now are past Mozambic, off at sea north-east winds blow Sabaean odours from the spicy shore Of Araby the Blest, with such delay Well pleased they slack their course, and many a league Cheered with the grateful smell old Ocean smiles; So entertained those odorous sweets the Fiend. And when he draws near to Eve in the rose-thicket, sidelong he works his way, As when a ship, by skilful steersman wrought, Nigh river's mouth, or foreland, where the wind Veers oft, as oft so steers, and shifts her sail. There is nothing here that is not within the reach of any inland reader, but Milton's choice of nautical similitudes may serve to remind us how much of the interest of Old London centred round its port. Here were to be heard those tales of far-sought adventure and peril which gave even to the boisterous life of Elizabethan London an air of triviality and security. Hereby came in "the variety of fashions and foreign stuffs," which Fynes Moryson, writing in Milton's childhood, compares to the stars of heaven and the sands of the sea for number. All sorts of characters, nationalities, and costumes were daily to be seen in Paul's Walk, adjoining Milton's school. One sort interests us pre-eminently. "In the general pride of England," says Fynes Moryson, "there is no fit difference made of degrees; for very Bankrupts, Players, and Cutpurses go apparelled like gentlemen." Shakespeare was alive during the first seven years of Milton's life, and was no doubt sometimes a visitor to the Mermaid, a stone's throw from the scrivener's house. Perhaps his cloak brushed the child Milton in the street. Milton was born in the golden age of the drama, and a score of masterpieces were put upon the London stage while he was in his cradle. But the golden age passed rapidly; the quality of the drama degenerated and the opposition to it grew strong before he was of years to attend a play. Perhaps he never saw a play by the masters during his boyhood, and his visits to the well-trod stage anon, If Jonson's learned sock be on, Or sweetest Shakespeare, Fancy's child, Warble his native woodnotes wild, were either excursions of the imagination or belong to his later occasional sojourns in London. In his _Eikonoklastes_ he quotes certain lines from _Richard III._, and here and there in his prose, as well as in his verse, there are possibly some faint reminiscences of Shakespearian phrases. So, for instance, in _The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce_, he seems to echo a famous speech of Macbeth, while he claims that his remedy of free divorce "hath the virtue to soften and dispel rooted and knotty sorrows, and without enchantment." But these are doubtless the memories of reading. In the _Apology for Smectymnuus_, when he has to reply to the charge that he "haunted playhouses" during his college days, he retorts the charge, it is true, rather than denies it. Yet the retort bespeaks a certain severity and preciseness in judging of plays and their actors, which can hardly have found gratification in the licenses and exuberances of the contemporary drama. It was not difficult, he remarks, to see plays, "when in the Colleges so many of the young divines, and those in next aptitude to divinity, have been seen so often upon the stage, writhing and unboning their clergy limbs to all the antic and dishonest gestures of Trinculoes, buffoons, and bawds." "If it be unlawful," he continues, "to sit and behold a mercenary comedian personating that which is least unseemly for a hireling to do, how much more blameful is it to endure the sight of as vile things acted by persons either entered, or presently to enter into the ministry; and how much more foul and ignominious for them to be the actors!" It was, at least, a happy chance that the first of Milton's verses to appear in print should have been _An Epitaph on the Admirable Dramatick Poet, W. Shakespeare_, contributed to the Second Folio in 1632. The main interests of the household at the Spread Eagle in Bread Street must have been far enough remote from the doings of the companies of players. John Milton the elder would probably have agreed with Sir Thomas Bodley, who called plays "riffe-raffes," and declared that they should never come into his library. The Hampton Court Conference, the Synod of Dort, the ever-widening divisions in the Church, between Arminian and Calvinist, between Prelatist and Puritan, were probably subjects of a nearer interest, even to the poet in his youth, than the production of new or old plays upon the stage. Milton's childhood was spent in the very twilight of the Elizabethan age; it was greatly fortunate for him, and for us, that he caught the after-glow of the sunset upon his face. He read Spenser while Spenser was still the dominant influence in English poetry. "He hath confessed to me," said Dryden, "that Spenser was his original,"--an incredible statement unless we understand "original" in the sense of his earliest admiration, his poetic godfather who first won him to poetry. He read Shakespeare and Jonson in the first editions. He read Sylvester's translation of _Du Bartas, His Divine Weekes and Workes_; and perhaps thence conceived the first vague idea of a poem on a kindred subject. It is necessary to insist on his English masters, because, although the greater part of his time and study was devoted to the classics, the instrument that he was to use was learned in a native school. His metre, his magnificent vocabulary, his unerring phraseology, took learning and practice. He attached a high value to his study of English poetry. When he spoke of "our sage and serious Spenser (whom I dare be known to think a better teacher than Scotus or Aquinas)," he was conscious that he was maintaining what seemed a bold paradox in an age when scholasticism still controlled education. It is pleasant to think of Milton during these early years, whether in London or at Christ's College, in his "calm and pleasing solitariness, fed with cheerful and confident thoughts," before ever he had a hint that he must perforce "embark in a troubled sea of noises and hoarse disputes, put from beholding the bright countenance of truth in the quiet and still air of delightful studies." From the first, we may be sure, he read the poets as one poet reads another, and apprenticed himself to them for their craft. He was never drawn out of the highroad of art by the minuter and more entangling allurements of scholarship. In one of his Divorce pamphlets he tells, with the inevitable touch of pride, how he never could delight in long citations, much less in whole traductions, "whether it be natural disposition or education in me, or that my mother bore me a speaker of what God made mine own, and not a translator." Milton was intended by his family, and by his own early resolves, for the service of the Church. The growing unrest, therefore, in matters ecclesiastical during the early part of the seventeenth century could not but affect him. The various parties and tendencies in the Church of England had never, since the Reformation, attained to a condition of stable equilibrium. But the settlement under Elizabeth was strengthened, and the parties bound together for thirty years, by the ever-present fear of Rome. When that fear was allayed, and the menace that hung over the very existence of the nation removed by the defeat of the Armada, the differences within the Church broke out afresh, and waxed fiercer every year. Shakespeare grew to manhood during the halcyon years between the Marian persecutions and the Marprelate pamphlets--a kind of magic oasis, which gave us our English Renaissance. Milton's youth breathed a very different air. The Church, as it was, pleased hardly any party. Much of the old temple had been hastily pulled down; the new government offices that were to replace it had as yet been but partially built, and commanded no general approval. Considered as a social organisation, moreover, the Church throughout large parts of the country had fallen into a state not unlike decay. Richard Baxter, whose testimony there is no sufficient reason to reject, tells of its state in Shropshire during the years of his youth, from 1615 onwards:--"We lived in a country that had but little preaching at all: In the Village where I was born there was four Readers successively in Six years time, ignorant Men, and two of them immoral in their lives; who were all my School-masters. In the Village where my Father lived, there was a Reader of about Eighty years of Age that never preached, and had two Churches about Twenty miles distant: His Eyesight failing him, he said Common-Prayer without Book; but for the Reading of the Psalms and Chapters he got a Common Thresher and Day-Labourer one year, and a Taylor another year: (for the Clerk could not read well): And at last he had a Kinsman of his own (the excellentest Stage-player in all the Country, and a good Gamester and good Fellow) that got Orders and supplied one of his Places.... After him another Neighbour's Son took Orders, when he had been a while an Attorney's Clerk, and a common Drunkard, and tipled himself into so great Poverty that he had no other way to live.... These were the School-masters of my Youth ... who read Common Prayer on Sundays and Holy Days, and taught School and tipled on the Weekdays, and whipt the Boys when they were drunk, so that we changed them very oft. Within a few miles about us were near a dozen more Ministers that were near Eighty years old apiece, and never preached; poor ignorant Readers, and most of them of Scandalous Lives." Some few there were, Baxter admits, who preached in the neighbourhood, but any one who went to hear them "was made the Derision of the Vulgar Rabble under the odious Name of a _Puritane_." In one of his Latin letters written from Cambridge, Milton himself speaks of the ignorance of those designed for the profession of divinity, how they knew little or nothing of literature and philosophy. The high prelacy and ritualism of Laud on the one hand, the Puritan movement on the other, each in some measure a protest against this state of things, were at fierce variance with each other, and Milton's ear, from his youth upward, was "pealed with noises loud and ruinous." The age of Shakespeare was irrecoverably past, and it was impossible for any but a few imperturbable Cyrenaics, like Herrick, to "fleet the time carelessly, as they did in the golden world." The large indifference of Shakespeare to current politics was impossible for Milton. "I had as lief be a Brownist as a politician," said the folly of Sir Andrew Aguecheek and the wisdom of Shakespeare. But now the Brownists and the politicians had it their own way; and Milton was something of both. His notable early poems, written at College and during his retreat in Buckinghamshire, have therefore a singular interest and pathos. He was not long for the world in which these poems move with so ineffable a native grace. They are the poems of his youth, instinct with the sensibility of youth, and of a delicate and richly nurtured imagination. But they are also the poems of an age that was closing, and they have a touch of the sadness of evening. "I know not," says Dr. Johnson, speaking of _L'Allegro_ and _Il Penseroso_, "whether the characters are kept sufficiently apart. No mirth can indeed be found in his melancholy, but I am afraid that I always meet some melancholy in his mirth." It is true; for both characters are Milton himself, who embodies in separate poems the cheerful and pensive elements of his own nature--and already his choice is made. There is something disinterested and detached about his sketches of the merriment which he takes part in only as a silent onlooker, compared with the profound sincerity of the lines-- And may at last my weary age Find out the peaceful hermitage, The hairy gown and mossy cell, Where I may sit and rightly spell Of every star that heaven doth shew, And every herb that sips the dew, Till old experience do attain To something like prophetic strain. The rising tide of political passion submerged the solemn Arcadia of his early fancies. Like Lycidas, he was carried far from the flowers and the shepherds to visit "the bottom of the monstrous world." Hence there may be made a whole index of themes, touched on by Milton in his early poems, as if in promise, of which no fulfilment is to be found in the greater poems of his maturity. His political career under the Commonwealth is often treated, both by those who applaud and by those who lament it, as if it were the merest interlude between two poetic periods. It was not so; political passion dominates and informs all his later poems, dictating even their subjects. How was it possible for him to choose King Arthur and his Round Table for the subject of his epic, as he had intended in his youthful days; when chivalry and the spirit of chivalry had fought its last fight on English soil, full in the sight of all men, round the forlorn banner of King Charles? The policy of Laud and Stratford kept Milton out of the Church, and sent him into retirement at Horton; the same policy, it may be plausibly conjectured, had something to do with the change in the subject of his long-meditated epic. From the very beginning of the civil troubles contemporary events leave their mark on all his writings. The topical bias (so to call it) is very noticeable in many of the subjects tentatively jotted down by him on the paper that is now in the library of Trinity College, Cambridge. The corrupted clergy, who make so splendid and, as some think, so irrelevant an appearance in _Lycidas_, figure frequently, either directly or by implication, in the long list of themes. Without misgiving or regret, when the time came, Milton shut the gate on the sequestered paradise of his youth, and hastened downward to join the fighters in the plain. Before we follow him we may well "interpose a little ease" by looking at some of the beauties proper to the earlier poems, and listening to some of the simple pastoral melodies that were drowned when the organ began to blow. _L'Allegro_ is full of them-- Sometimes, with secure delight, The upland hamlets will invite, When the merry bells ring round, And the jocund rebecks sound To many a youth and many a maid Dancing in the chequered shade, And young and old come forth to play On a sunshine holiday. That is Merry England of Shakespeare's time. But already the controversy concerning the _Book of Sports_ had begun to darken the air. Already the Maypole, that "great stinking idol," as an Elizabethan Puritan called it, had been doomed to destruction. Some years before _L'Allegro_ was written, a bard, who hailed from Leeds, had lamented its downfall in the country of his nativity-- Happy the age, and harmelesse were the dayes, (For then true love and amity was found) When every village did a May-pole raise, And Whitson Ales and May games did abound; And all the lusty Yonkers in a rout With merry Lasses danced the rod about; Then friendship to their banquets bid the guests, And poor men far'd the better for their feasts. The next verse recalls that scene in _The Winter's Tale_ where Shakespeare draws a vivid picture of Elizabethan country merrymaking-- The Lords of Castles, Manners, Townes, and Towers Rejoyc'd when they beheld the Farmers flourish, And would come down unto the Summer-Bowers To see the Country gallants dance the Morrice, And sometimes with his tenant's handsome daughter Would fall in liking, and espouse her after Unto his Serving-man, and for her portion Bestow on him some farme, without extortion. Alas poore Maypoles, what should be the cause That you were almost banish't from the earth? You never were rebellious to the lawes, Your greatest crime was harmelesse honest mirth; What fell malignant spirit was there found To cast your tall _Piramides_ to ground? * * * * * And you my native towne, which was of old, (When as thy Bon-fires burn'd and May-poles stood, And when thy Wassell-cups were uncontrol'd) The Summer Bower of Peace and neighbourhood, Although since these went down, thou ly'st forlorn, By factious schismes and humours over-borne, Some able hand I hope thy rod will raise, That thou maist see once more thy happy daies. The hopes of the bard of Leeds were fulfilled at the Restoration. Merriment, of a sort, came back to England; but it found no congenial acceptance from Milton. The Court roysterers, the Hectors, Nickers, Scourers, and Mohocks, among whom were numbered Sedley and Rochester, and others of the best poets of the day, are celebrated by him incidentally in those lines, unsurpassable for sombre magnificence, which he appends to his account of Belial-- In courts and palaces he also reigns, And in luxurious cities, where the noise Of riot ascends above their loftiest towers, And injury and outrage; and, when night Darkens the streets, then wander forth the sons Of Belial, flown with insolence and wine. The public festivals of these later days are glanced at in _Samson Agonistes_-- Lords are lordliest in their wine; And the well-feasted priest then soonest fired With zeal, if aught religion seem concerned; No less the people on their holy-days Impetuous, insolent, unquenchable. There is no relaxation, no trace of innocent lightheartedness, in any of the later poems. Even the garden of Paradise, where some gentle mirth might perhaps be permissible, is tenanted by grave livers, majestic, but not sprightly. In _L' Allegro_ the morning song of the milk-maid is "blithe," and the music of the village dance is "jocund." But Eve is described as "jocund" and "blithe" only when she is intoxicated by the mortal fruit of the tree; and the note of gaiety that is heard faintly, like a distant echo, in the earlier poems, is never sounded again by Milton. So it is also with other things. The flowers scattered on the laureate hearse of Lycidas make a brighter, more various, and withal a homelier display than ever meets the eye in the Hesperian wildernesses of Eden. Or take the world of fairy lore that Milton inherited from the Elizabethans--a world to which not only Shakespeare, but also laborious and arrogant poet-scholars like Jonson and Drayton had free right of entry. Milton, too, could write of the fairies--in his youth-- With stories told of many a feat, How Faery Mab the junkets eat. But even in _Comus_ the most exquisite passage of fairy description is put into the mouth of Comus himself, chief of the band of ugly-headed monsters in glistering apparel-- The sounds and seas, with all their finny drove, Now to the moon in wavering morrice move; And on the tawny sands and shelves Trip the pert fairies and the dapper elves. By dimpled brook and fountain-brim, The wood-nymphs decked with daisies trim, Their merry wakes and pastimes keep: What hath night to do with sleep? The song and the dance are broken off, never to be resumed, when the staid footfall of the lady is heard approaching. Milton cannot draw ugliness; it turns into beauty or majesty on his hands. Satan has a large and enthusiastic party among readers of _Paradise Lost_. Comus, we are told, stands for a whole array of ugly vices--riot, intemperance, gluttony, and luxury. But what a delicate monster he is, and what a ravishing lyric strain he is master of! The pleasure that Milton forswore was a young god, the companion of Love and Youth, not an aged Silenus among the wine-skins. He viewed and described one whole realm of pagan loveliness, and then he turned his face the other way, and never looked back. Love is of the valley, and he lifted his eyes to the hills. His guiding star was not Christianity, which in its most characteristic and beautiful aspects had no fascination for him, but rather that severe and self-centred ideal of life and character which is called Puritanism. It is not a creed for weak natures; so that as the nominal religion of a whole populace it has inevitably fallen into some well-merited disrepute. Puritanism for him was not a body of law to be imposed outwardly on a gross and timid people, but an inspiration and a grace that falls from Heaven upon choice and rare natures-- Nor do I name of men the common rout, That, wandering loose about, Grow up and perish as the summer fly, Heads without name, no more remember'd; so sings the Chorus in _Samson Agonistes_-- But such as thou hast solemnly elected, With gifts and graces eminently adorned, To some great work, thy glory, And people's safety, which in part they effect. Under one form or another Puritanism is to be found in almost all religions, and in many systems of philosophy. Milton's Puritanism enabled him to combine his classical and Biblical studies, to reconcile his pagan and Christian admirations, Stoicism, and the Quakers. It was with no sense of incongruity that he gave to the Christ a speech in praise of-- Quintus, Fabricius, Curius, Regulus,... Who could do mighty things, and could contemn Riches, though offered from the hand of Kings. To reject common ambitions, to refuse common enticements, to rule passions, desires, and fears, "neither to change, nor falter, nor repent,"--this was the wisdom and this the virtue that he set before himself. There is no beatific vision to keep his eyes from wandering among the shows of earth. Milton's heaven is colder than his earth, the home of Titans, whose employ is political and martial. When his imagination deals with earthly realities, the noble melancholy of the Greeks lies upon it. His last word on human life might be translated into Greek with no straining and no loss of meaning-- His servants He, with new acquist Of true experience from this great event, With peace and consolation hath dismissed, And calm of mind, all passion spent. He is therefore one of the few English poets (alone in this respect among the greatest) who have not sung of Love. His only English love-poem, the sonnet _To the Nightingale_, is his earliest and poorest sonnet. He elected in his later poems to sing of Marriage, its foundation in reason, its utility, its respectability and antiquity as an institution, and, above all, its amazing dangers. He has thus lost the devotion of the young, who, while they read poetry by the ear and eye for its sonorous suggestions, and its processions of vague shapes, love Milton; but when they come to read it for its matter and sentiment, leave him--in most cases never to return. The atmosphere of his later poems is that of some great public institution. Heaven is an Oriental despotism. Hell is a Secession parliament. In the happy garden itself there is no privacy, no individualism; it is the focus of the action, the central point of the attack and the defence; and a great part of the conversation of its inhabitants turns on the regulations under which they live. They never forget that they are all mankind, and when their psalm goes up in grateful adoration to their Creator, it is like the unanimous voice of all nations and kindreds and people and tongues. "The plan of _Paradise Lost_" says Johnson, "has this inconvenience, that it comprises neither human actions nor human manners. The man and woman who act and suffer are in a state which no other man and woman can ever know. The reader finds no transaction in which he can be engaged; beholds no condition in which he can by any effort of imagination place himself; he has, therefore, little natural curiosity and sympathy." Milton, he goes on to explain, "knew human nature only in the gross, and had never studied the shades of character, nor the combinations of concurring or the perplexity of contending passions." He knew human nature only in the gross. He treated nothing less momentous than the fortunes of the race. It is precisely from this cause that the incomparable grandeur of Milton's characters and situations springs. The conversations that he records are like international parleyings. Eve is the official Mother of mankind. Adam walks forth to meet the angel, in ambassadorial dignity, the accredited representative of the human race-- Without more train Accompanied than with his own complete Perfections; in himself was all his state, More solemn than the tedious pomp that waits On princes, when their rich retinue long Of horses led and grooms besmeared with gold Dazzles the crowd and sets them all agape. And if the other characters of _Paradise Lost_ have this generic stamp, it is because the chief character of all has it--the character of the poet himself. It lends a strange dignity to the story of Milton's life that in all his doings he felt himself to be a "cause," an agent of mighty purposes. This it is that more than excuses, it glorifies, his repeated magniloquent allusions to himself throughout the prose works. Holding himself on trust or on commission, he must needs report himself, not only to his great Taskmaster, but also from time to time to men, his expectant and impatient beneficiaries. Even in _Lycidas_ he is thinking of himself as much as of his dead companion-- So may some gentle Muse With lucky words favour _my_ destined urn, And as he passes turn, And bid fair peace be to my sable shroud. What if he die young himself? Are his dreams and hopes for his own future an illusion? He agonises with the question in the famous digression on poetry and poetic fame. But he consoles himself by appeal to a Court where the success and the fame of this world are as straw in the furnace; and then, having duly performed the obsequies of his friend, with reinvigorated heart he turns once more to the future--"To-morrow to fresh woods and pastures new." A singular ending, no doubt, to an elegy! But it is blind and hasty to conclude that therefore the precedent laments are "not to be considered as the effusion of real passion." A soldier's burial is not the less honoured because his comrades must turn from his grave to give their thought and strength and courage to the cause which was also his. The maimed rites, interrupted by the trumpet calling to action, are a loftier commemoration than the desolating laments of those who "weep the more because they weep in vain." And in this way Milton's fierce tirade against the Church hirelings, and his preoccupation with his own ambitions support and explain each other, and find a fit place in the poem. He is looking to his equipment, if perchance he may live to do that in poetry and politics, which Edward King had died leaving unaccomplished. When his own time came he desired to be lamented in no other way-- Come, come; no time for lamentation now, Nor much more cause. Samson hath quit himself Like Samson, and heroicly hath finished A life heroic, on his enemies Fully revenged. This overmastering sense of the cause breathes through all his numerous references to himself. He stands in the Forum, Disturbed, yet comely, and in act Raised, as of some great matter to begin; and addresses himself, as he boasts in _The Second Defence of the People of England_, to "the whole collective body of people, cities, states, and councils of the wise and eminent, through the wide expanse of anxious and listening Europe." Having sacrificed the use of his eyes to the service of the commonweal, he bates not a jot of heart or hope-- What supports me, dost thou ask? The conscience, friend, to have lost them overplied In Liberty's defence, my noble task, Of which all Europe talks from side to side. And while thus his fighting years are filled with the exaltation of battle, as he plumes and lifts himself upon the cause that is going forward, the story of his closing years has in it much of the pathos of a lost cause. It was remarked by Johnson that there is in the _Paradise Lost_ little opportunity for the pathetic; only one passage, indeed, is allowed by him to be truly deserving of that name. But the description of the remorse and reconcilement of Adam and Eve, which Johnson doubtless intended, will not compare, for moving quality, with the matchless invocation to the Seventh Book-- More safe I sing with mortal voice, unchanged To hoarse or mute, though fallen on evil days, On evil days though fallen, and evil tongues, In darkness, and with dangers compassed round, And solitude; yet not alone, while thou Visit'st my slumbers nightly, or when Morn Purples the East. Still govern thou my song, Urania, and fit audience find, though few. Then the noise that he had heard, in imagination only, thirty years earlier, assails his bodily ears; as evening sets in, the wonted roar is up, not in the wild woods of fancy inhabited by the sensual magician and his crew, but in the unlighted streets of Restoration London, as a chorus of cup-shotten brawlers goes roaring by. The king is enjoying his own again; and the poet, hunted and harassed in his last retreat, raises his petition again to the Muse whom he had invoked at the beginning of his task,--not Clio nor her sisters, but the spirit of heavenly power and heavenly wisdom; his mind reverts to that story of Orpheus which had always had so singular and personal a fascination for him; of Orpheus, who, holding himself aloof from the mad amorists of Thrace, was by them torn to pieces during the orgy of the Dionysia, and sent rolling down the torrent of the Hebrus; and he prays to his goddess and guardian-- But drive far off the barbarous dissonance Of Bacchus and his revellers, the race Of that wild rout that tore the Thracian bard In Rhodope, where woods and rocks had ears To rapture, till the savage clamour drowned Both harp and voice; nor could the Muse defend Her son. So fail not thou, who thee implores; For thou art heavenly, she an empty dream. Disappointed of all his political hopes, living on neglected and poor for fourteen years after the Restoration, and dying a private citizen, passably obscure, Milton yet found and took a magnanimous revenge upon his enemies. They had crippled only his left hand in silencing the politician, but his right hand, which had hung useless by his side for so many years while he served the State, was his own still, and wielded a more Olympian weapon. In prose and politics he was a baffled man, but in poetry and vision he found his triumph. His ideas, which had gone a-begging among the politicians of his time, were stripped by him of the rags of circumstance, and cleansed of its dust, to be enthroned where they might secure a hearing for all time. The surprise that he prepared for the courtiers of the Restoration world was like Samson's revenge, in that it fell on them from above; and, as elsewhere in the poem of _Samson Agonistes_, Milton was thinking not very remotely of his own case when he wrote that jubilant semi-chorus, with the marvellous fugal succession of figures, wherein Samson, and by inference Milton himself, is compared to a smouldering fire revived, to a serpent attacking a hen-roost, to an eagle swooping on his helpless prey, and last, his enemies now silent for ever, to the phoenix, self-begotten and self-perpetuating. The Philistian nobility (or the Restoration notables) are described, with huge scorn, as ranged along the tiers of their theatre, like barnyard fowl blinking on their perch, watching, not without a flutter of apprehension, the vain attempts made on their safety by the reptile grovelling in the dust below-- But he, though blind of sight, Despised, and thought extinguished quite, With inward eyes illuminated, His fiery virtue roused From under ashes into sudden flame, And as an evening dragon came, Assailant on the perchèd roosts And nests in order ranged Of tame villatic fowl, but as an eagle His cloudless thunder bolted on their heads. So Virtue, given for lost, Depressed and overthrown, as seemed, Like that self-begotten bird In the Arabian woods embost, That no second knows nor third, And lay erewhile a holocaust, From out her ashy womb now teemed, Revives, reflourishes, then vigorous most When most unactive deemed; And, though her body die, her fame survives. A secular bird, ages of lives. CHAPTER II THE PROSE WORKS It is customary for the friends of Milton to approach his prose works with a sigh of apology. There is a deep-rooted prejudice among the English people against a poet who concerns himself intimately with politics. Whether this feeling has its origin in solicitude for the poet or for the politics is hard to determine; indeed it is pretty generally maintained that each is detrimental to the other. But seeing that for one man in the modern world who cares for poets there are at least ten who care for politics, it is safe to assume that the poets, when they are deprived of the franchise, are deprived rather to maintain the purity and efficiency of politics than for the good of their own souls. They have been compared to birds of Paradise, which were long believed to have no feet; and the common sense of the English people, with a touch of the municipal logic of Dogberry, has enacted that whereas they have no feet, and have moreover been proved to have no feet, it shall be forbidden them, under the strictest pains and penalties, to alight and walk. Their function is to beautify the distant landscape with the flash of wings. For most men common-sense is the standard, and immediate utility the end, whereby they judge political questions, great and small. Now common-sense judges only the questions that are brought home to it by instant example; and utility is appealed to for a verdict only amid the dense crowd of actual conflicting interests. Neither the one nor the other is far-sighted or imaginative. So it comes about that the political system, in England, at least, is built up piecemeal; it is founded on appetites and compromises, and mortared by immemorial habit. To explain this process, and to transfigure it in the pure light of imagination, was the work of the great poet-politician, Edmund Burke. But the poet usually goes a hastier way to work. Looking at the whole domiciliary structure from outside, he finds it shapeless and ugly, like an ant-heap; and volunteers to play the architect. His design treats the details of individual habit and happiness in strict subordination to the desired whole. What he wants is consistency, symmetry, dignity; and to achieve these he is willing to make a holocaust of human selfishnesses. He may be a deep scholar and thinker, but he is apt to forget one point of ancient wisdom,--that it is the wearer of the shoe, and not the cobbler, who best knows where the shoe wrings him. The speculations of the poet awaken no hostile resentment so long as they are admittedly abstract. He is at liberty to build his Republic, his City of the Sun, his Utopia, or his New Atlantis, amid the indifferent applause of mankind. But when his aim becomes practical and immediate, when he seeks to stir the heap by introducing into it the ruthless discomfort of an idea, a million littlenesses assail him with deadly enmity, and he is found sorrowfully protesting his amazement:-- I did but prompt the age to quit their clogs By the known rules of ancient liberty, When straight a barbarous noise environs me Of owls and cuckoos, asses, apes, and dogs. So he is brought, with great reluctance, to the estimate of men which is expressed by Milton in _The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates_; "being slaves within doors, no wonder that they strive so much to have the public state conformably governed to the inward vicious rule whereby they govern themselves. For indeed none can love freedom heartily but good men." Milton cannot claim the exemption from censure which is allowed to the theorists, the builders of ideal states somewhere in the clouds. On his own behalf he expressly disclaims any such intention. "To sequester out of the world," he says, "into Atlantic and Utopian politics, which never can be drawn into use, will not mend our condition; but to ordain wisely as in this world of evil, in the midst whereof God has placed us unavoidably." Poetry might well have served him, if his object had been to add another to imaginary commonwealths. He took up with politics because he believed that in the disorder of the times his ideas might be made a "programme," and carried into effect. It was in 1641, when already "the vigour of the Parliament had begun to humble the pride of the bishops," that he first intervened. "I saw," he says, "that a way was opening for the establishment of real liberty; that the foundation was laying for the deliverance of mankind from the yoke of slavery and superstition.... I perceived that if I ever wished to be of use, I ought at least not to be wanting to my country, to the church, and to so many of my fellow-Christians, in a crisis of so much danger; I therefore determined to relinquish the other pursuits in which I was engaged, and to transfer the whole force of my talents and my industry to this one important object." So he wrote the treatise in two books, _Of Reformation in England, and the causes that hitherto have hindered it._ His later pamphlets are all similarly occasional in nature, written with a particular and definite object in view. In these he advocates as practicable and much-needed reforms, among other things, the establishment of a perpetual republic on the lines of an oligarchy; the abolition of bishops, religious ceremonials, liturgies, tithes, and, indeed, of all regular payment or salary given to ministers of religion; the supersession of universities and public schools by the erection of new academic institutions, combining the functions of both, "in every City throughout this Land"; the legalisation of free divorce; and the repeal of the ordinances compelling all books to be licensed. If he did not advocate, in any of the works put forth during his lifetime, the legal toleration of polygamy, it was probably only because he perceived that that, at least, did not fall within the scope of practical politics. He defends it in his posthumous treatise, _De Doctrinâ Christianâ_. It will readily be seen that on almost all these questions Milton was not only--to use the foolish modern phrase--"in advance of his time," but also considerably in advance of ours. Twenty years after his death the Licensing Acts were abolished; for the rest, his reforms are yet to accomplish. It is an odd remark of one of his learned biographers that the _Areopagitica_ is the only one of all Milton's prose writings "whose topic is not obsolete." It is the only one of his prose writings whose thesis commands the general assent of modern readers, and is, therefore, from his own practical point of view, obsolete. The mere enumeration of his opinions suffices to show that Milton's is a sad case of the poet in politics. The labours of the twenty prime years of his manhood have been copiously bewailed. To have Pegasus in harness is bad enough; but when the waggon that he draws is immovably stuck in the mud, and he himself bespattered by his efforts, the spectacle is yet more pitiable. Many of his critics have expressed regret that he did not make for himself an artificial seclusion, and continue his purely poetical labours, with the classics for companions. The questions that drew him into politics were burning questions, it is true; but were there not others to deal with them, good, earnest, sensible, homely people? Samuel Butler has enumerated some of those who were dedicating their time and thought to politics at this important crisis:-- The oyster-women locked their fish up, And trudged away to cry "No Bishop": The mouse-trap men laid save-alls by, And 'gainst ev'l counsellors did cry; Botchers left old cloaths in the lurch, And fell to turn and patch the Church; Some cried the Covenant, instead Of pudding-pies and ginger-bread, And some for brooms, old boots and shoes, Bawled out to purge the Common-house: Instead of kitchen-stuff, some cry A gospel-preaching ministry; And some for old shirts, coats or cloak, No surplices nor service-book; A strange harmonious inclination Of all degrees to reformation. But what was Milton doing in this malodorous and noisy assembly? Might he not with all confidence have left the Church to the oyster-women, and the State to the mouse-trap men? The company that he kept with them ruined his manners; he had to speak loud in order to be heard, to speak broad in order to be respected; and so (bitterest thought of all!) he lost something of that sweet reasonableness which is a poet's proper grace. The answer to this strain of criticism is to be found in the study of Milton's works, poetry and prose--and perhaps best in the poetry. We could not have had anything at all like _Paradise Lost_ from a dainty, shy poet-scholar; nor anything half so great. The greatest men hold their power on this tenure, that they shall not husband it because the occasion that presents itself, although worthy of high effort, is not answerable to the refinement of their tastes. Milton, it is too often forgotten, was an Englishman. He held the privilege and the trust not cheap. When God intends some new and great epoch in human history, "what does he then," this poet exultantly asks, "but reveal himself to his servants, and, as his manner is, first to his Englishmen?" To his chief work in poetry he was instigated by patriotic motives. "I applied myself," he says, "to that resolution which Ariosto followed against the persuasions of Bembo, to fix all the industry and art I could unite to the adorning of my native tongue, not to make verbal curiosity the end (that were a toilsome vanity), but to be an interpreter and relater of the best and sagest things among mine own citizens throughout this island in the mother dialect." There is plenty of "verbal curiosity" in Milton's poetry; he is in some respects the finest craftsman who ever handled the English speech: so that this declaration is the more timely to remind us by how wide a chasm he is separated from those modern greenhouse poets who move contentedly in an atmosphere of art ideals and art theories. He had his breeding from the ancient world, where Æschylus fought at Marathon, and he could not think of politics as of a separable part of human life. To sport with Amaryllis in the shade, Or with the tangles of Neæra's hair, is a lyric ideal that may quite well consist with political indifference, but how should an epic inspiration be nourished where the prosperity of the State is lightly esteemed? Even had poetry lost by his political adventures, he would have been content that politics should gain. And politics did gain; for Milton's prose works raise every question they touch, even where they cannot truly be said to advance it. It is as unseemly for the politicians to complain of his choice, as it would be for the herdsmen of King Admetus to complain of the presence among them of a god. The large considerations and high passions imported into the treatment of practical questions by a Milton, or a Burke, have done much to keep even party politics at a high level in England, so that civil servants and journalists may join in the hymn of the herdsmen-- He has been our fellow, the morning of our days, Us he chose for house-mates, and this way went. God, of whom music And song and blood are pure, The day is never darkened That had thee here obscure! In a long autobiographic passage in the _Second Defence of the People of England_ Milton makes a formal classification of his prose works written before that date. All of them, he says, were designed to promote Liberty. By the accidents of the time he was induced to treat first, in his anti-episcopal pamphlets, of religious liberty. Once that controversy was fairly ablaze, in the name of the same goddess he applied his incendiary torch to humbler piles. "I perceived," he says, "that there were three species of liberty which are essential to the happiness of social life--religious, domestic, and civil; and as I had already written concerning the first, and the magistrates were strenuously active in obtaining the third, I determined to turn my attention to the second, or the domestic species." He includes in this division of his work the Divorce pamphlets, the tractate _Of Education_, and the _Areopagitica_, as dealing with the "three material questions" (so he calls them) of domestic liberty, namely, "the conditions of the conjugal tie, the education of the children, and the free publication of the thoughts." It seems a strange conception of domestic liberty which makes it rest on a threefold support--divorce at will, an unrestrained printing-press, and the encyclopædic education of polyglot children. But the truth is that Milton's classification is an after-thought. The pamphlets that he names were all written by him much about the same time, between 1643 and 1645; but the true history of their origin is more interesting and less symmetrical than the later invented scheme of classification. The Divorce pamphlets were written because Milton was unhappily married. The _Areopagitica_ was written because his heterodox views concerning marriage had brought him into collision with the Presbyterian censors of the press. His treatise on education was written because he had undertaken the education of his own nephews, and had become deeply interested in that question. In all three his own experience is the first motive; in all three that experience is concealed beneath a formidable array of general considerations, dogmatically propounded. The case is the same with regard to the pamphlets that treat of religious and civil liberty; they are not only occasional, but intensely personal, even in their origins. The earliest of them, the five ecclesiastical pamphlets of the year 1641, deal with a question which had been of intimate concern to Milton ever since the beginning of his Cambridge days. The celebrated controversy with Salmasius and his abettors, concerning the death of King Charles, is a gladiatorial combat from which every element save the personal is often absent. In these bouts offensive biography and defensive autobiography serve for sword and shield. This personal character of the prose writings, while it has repelled some readers interested mainly in the questions discussed, has attracted others who are interested chiefly in the writer. A rich harvest of personal allusion has been gathered from the controversial treatises, and perhaps, even now, the field has not been gleaned to the last ear. It is worthy of remark, for instance, how Milton's pre-occupation with the themes which he had already pondered, and turned this way and that in his mind, to test their fitness for a monumental work, shows itself in his choice of figure and allusion. Attention has often been called to the elaborate comparison, founded on the history of Samson, in _The Reason of Church Government urged against Prelaty_:-- "I cannot better liken the state and person of a king than to that mighty Nazarite Samson; who being disciplined from his birth in the precepts and the practice of temperance and sobriety, without the strong drink of injurious and excessive desires, grows up to a noble strength and perfection with those his illustrious and sunny locks, the laws, waving and curling about his god-like shoulders. And while he keeps them about him undiminished and unshorn, he may with the jawbone of an ass, that is, with the word of his meanest officer, suppress and put to confusion thousands of those that rise against his just power. But laying down his head among the strumpet flatteries of prelates, while he sleeps and thinks no harm, they, wickedly shaving off all those bright and weighty tresses of his law, and just prerogatives, which were his ornament and strength, deliver him over to indirect and violent counsels, which, as those Philistines, put out the fair and far-sighted eyes of his natural discerning, and make him grind in the prison-house of their sinister ends and practices upon him: till he, knowing this prelatical rasor to have bereft him of his wonted might, nourish again his puissant hair, the golden beams of law and right; and they, sternly shook, thunder with ruin upon the heads of those his evil counsellors, but not without great affliction to himself." This ingenious allegorical application naturally finds no place in the grave poem of Milton's latest years. And yet, in one passage at least, his earlier love for the high-figured style took him captive again. The strong drink from which the Samson of the play abstains is strong drink, not "injurious and excessive desires." There is no hint of prelatical conspiracy in the enticements of Dalila. But perhaps some faint reminiscence of his earlier fable concerning Samson's hair recurred to Milton's mind when he gave to Manoa a speech comparing the locks of the hero to the strength, not of the law, but of a nation in arms:-- And I persuade me God had not permitted His strength again to grow up with his hair, Garrisoned round about him like a camp Of faithful soldiery, were not his purpose To use him further yet in some great service. The theme of _Samson Agonistes_ had thus already taken possession of Milton's imagination when he wrote his first prose tractates. But the same writings furnish even stronger evidence of his early dallyings with the theme of _Paradise Lost_. "It was from out the rind of one apple tasted," he says in the _Areopagitica_, "that the knowledge of good and evil, as two twins cleaving together, leaped forth into the world." And again, in _The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce_:--"The academics and stoics ... knew not what a consummate and most adorned Pandora was bestowed upon Adam, to be the nurse and guide of his arbitrary happiness and perseverance, I mean, his native innocence and perfection, which might have kept him from being our true Epimetheus." Some of these references show the imaginative scheme of the _Paradise Lost_ in the process of building. In one passage, for instance, of the last quoted treatise, Milton expounds the pagan belief that God punishes his enemies most when he throws them furthest from him:--"Which then they held he did, when he blinded, hardened, and stirred up his offenders, to finish and pile up their desperate work since they had undertaken it. To banish for ever into a local hell, whether in the air or in the centre, or in that uttermost and bottomless gulf of chaos, deeper from holy bliss than the world's diameter multiplied, they thought not a punishing so proper and proportionate for God to inflict as to punish sin with sin." It would seem as if the poet had not as yet fixed the situation of his local hell, but remained suspended between rival theories. The other idea, of the Divine permission and impulse given to hardened sinners, finds a conspicuous place in the poem. In one instance, at least, a figure drawn from the story of the Creation is violently handled to serve strange uses. The evolution of the four elements from the chaotic welter of hot, cold, moist, and dry, is adduced as a proof that the laws of God and of nature approve free divorce:--"By his divorcing command the world first rose out of chaos, nor can be renewed again out of confusion, but by the separating of unmeet consorts." Allusions of this kind occur most frequently in the earlier prose writings, while the studies that had been interrupted by controversy were yet fresh in Milton's memory. They would hardly be worth the quotation, were it not that they are another evidence of the transparency of his mind. In looking through his prose works you see traces of all that was engaging his imagination and thought at the time. Poetry is the highest of expressive arts; and poets are the worst dissemblers or economisers of truth in the world. Their knowledge, like their feeling, possesses them, and must find expression as argument, or illustration, or figure, whatever the immediate matter in hand. The prose works of Milton are thus, from first to last, an exposition of himself. The divorce pamphlets, especially, are hot with smothered personal feeling. Long years afterwards, when time and change had softened and blurred it in memory, his early misadventure was reflected in more than one passage of the later poems. The humble plaint of Eve, and the description of her reunion with her alienated lord, in the Tenth Book of _Paradise Lost_, doubtless contains, as has often been said, some reflection of what took place at a similar interview in 1645, when Mistress Mary Milton returned to her offended husband. That one principal cause of the rupture has been rightly divined, by Mr. Mark Pattison and others, is probable from certain remarkable lines in the Eighth Book, where Adam describes how he was presented with his bride:-- On she came, Led by her Heavenly Maker, though unseen, And guided by his voice, nor uninformed Of nuptial sanctity, and marriage rites. Even at so wide a remove of time, the poet's wounded pride finds expression in this singular theory--or, rather, in this more than dubious piece of self-justification. But although the hurt he had suffered, in his most susceptible feelings, gives eloquence and plangency to his divorce pamphlets, it was not merely to voice his sufferings that he wrote those pamphlets. Most men in Milton's position, married to "a nothing, a desertrice, an adversary," would have recognised that theirs was one of those exceptional cases for which the law cannot provide, and would have sat down under their unhappy chance, to bear it or mitigate it as best they might. Some poets of the time of the Romantic Revival would have claimed the privilege of genius to be a law unto itself; the law of the State being designed for the common rout, whose lesser sensibilities and weaker individuality make them amenable to its discipline. Milton did neither the one thing nor the other. The modern idolatry of genius was as yet uninvented; he was a citizen first, a poet and an unhappy man afterwards. He directed his energies to proving, not that he should be exempted from the operation of the law, but that the law itself should be changed. He had entered into marriage, with full ceremonial ushering, by the main door; he would go out the same way, or not at all. Thus even in this most personal matter he pleads, not for himself, but for the commonweal. He cannot conceive of happiness as of a private possession, to be secretly enjoyed; it stands rooted, like justice, in the wise and equal ordinances of the State; and the only freedom that he values is freedom under the law. Like the citizen of some antique state, he discourses of marriage in the market-place. In his efforts to be persuasive, both here and in the _Areopagitica_, he humbles himself to management and the seasonings of flattery. It is a new trade for him, and suits oddly with his pride. But he hoped much, at this time, from the Parliament, that "select assembly," containing so many "worthy senators" and "Christian reformers," "judges and lawgivers." In the enthusiasm of his hopes, he credits them with a desire "to imitate the old and elegant humanity of Greece," with a wisdom greater than that of the Athenian Parliament, with a magnanimous willingness to repeal their own acts at the dictate of the voice of reason. And all this at a time when the Presbyterians were in the ascendant, intent upon establishing a discipline neither old, nor elegant, nor humane, so little acquainted with Greece, that it was one of Selden's amusements to confute their divines by citing a reading from the Greek Testament. Milton was destined to grievous disappointment, and his rage against the Presbyterians, in some of his later pamphlets, was the fiercer. But although his pamphlets are both occasional and personal, and even address themselves at times to conciliation and persuasion, the views that they advocate and the system of thought that underlies them were not the products of time and accident. Milton was an idealist, pure and simple, in politics. Had he lived under the Tudor sovereigns, he would have been reduced, with Sir Thomas More, Montaigne, and John Barclay, the author of _Argenis_, to express himself by way of romance and allegory. It was his fortune to live at a time when the Tudor state system was breaking up with appalling suddenness, and along with it the Tudor compromise in the affairs of the Church, imposed from above upon an unawakened people, was falling into wreckage. Here was an opportunity that has not often, in the world's history, come to a poet, of realising the dream that he had dreamed in his study, of setting up again, for the admiration and comfort of posterity, the model of an ancient Republic. The best of all Milton's critics has left us the worst account of his political opinions. Johnson's censure of _Lycidas_, much as it has been ridiculed and decried, is judicious and discerning compared with his explanation of Milton's political creed:--"Milton's republicanism was, I am afraid, founded in an envious hatred of greatness, and a sullen desire of independence, in petulance impatient of control, and pride disdainful of superiority. He hated monarchs in the State, and prelates in the Church; for he hated all whom he was required to obey. It is to be suspected that his predominant desire was to destroy, rather than establish, and that he felt not so much the love of liberty as repugnance to authority." It may, at least, be credited to Johnson for moderation, that he requires only four of the Seven Deadly Sins, to wit, Pride, Envy, Anger, and Sloth, to explain Milton's political tenets. Had he permitted himself another sentence, an easy place might surely have been made for Gluttony, Luxury, and Covetousness, the three whose absence cannot fail to be remarked by any lover of thorough and detailed treatment in these intricate problems of human character. If, in our more modern fashion, we seek for the origin of Milton's ideas in his education, his habits of thought, and his admirations, we shall be obliged to admit that they are all rooted in his conception of the ancient City State. It was the wish of Thomas Hobbes to abolish the study of Greek and Latin in our schools and colleges, because this study fosters a love of freedom, and unfits men to be the subjects of an absolute monarch. His happiest illustration would have been the case of his contemporary, Milton. Yet in all Milton's writings there is no trace of the modern democratic doctrine of equality. A hearing is all that he claims. So far from hating greatness, he carries his admiration for it, for personal virtue and prowess, almost to excess. The poet who described the infernal conclave in the Second Book of _Paradise Lost_ was not likely to be insensible to the part played in politics by men of eminent and dominating personality. To think of free government as of an engine for depressing unusual merit was impossible for Milton. He lived in an age that had found in Plutarch's men its highest ideals of political character. Never, since their own day, had the "noble Grecians and Romans" exercised so irresistible a fascination on the minds of men, or so real an influence on the affairs of the State, as was theirs at the time of the Renaissance. The mist in which they had long been enveloped was swept away, and these colossal figures of soldiers, patriots, and counsellors loomed large and clear across the ages, their majesty enhanced by distance and by art, which conspire to efface all that is accidental, petty, and distracting. We cannot see these figures as they appeared to the Renaissance world. One of the chief results of modern historical labour and research has been that it has peopled the Middle Ages for us, and interposed a whole society of living men, our ancestors, between us and ancient Rome. But in Milton's time this process was only beginning; the collections and researches that made it possible were largely the work of his contemporaries,--and were despised by him. When he looked back on the world's history, from his own standpoint, he saw, near at hand and stretching away into the distance, a desert, from which a black mass of cloud had just been lifted; and, across the desert, lying fair under the broad sunshine, a city-- With gilded battlements, conspicuous far, Turrets and terrasses, and glittering spires. It was towards this ancient civic life, with its arts and arms and long renown, that he reached forth passionate hands of yearning. The intervening tract, whither his younger feet had wandered, almost ceased to exist for him; the paladins and ladies of mediæval story were the deceitful mirage of the desert; the true life of antiquity lay beyond. In all his allusions to the great themes of romance two things are noticeable: first, how deeply his imagination had been stirred by them, so that they are used as a last crown of decoration in some of the most exalted passages of his great poems; and next, how careful he is to stamp them as fiction. His studies for the early _History of Britain_ had cloyed him with legends conveyed from book to book. Once convinced that no certain historical ground could be found for the feet among the whole mass of these traditions, Milton ceased to regard them as eligible subjects for his greatest poem. But their beauty dwelt with him; the memory of the embattled chivalry of Arthur and Charlemagne recurs to him when he is seeking for the topmost reach of human power and splendour that he may belittle it by the side of Satan's rebel host; and the specious handmaidens who served the Tempter's phantom banquet in the desert are described as lovely beyond what has been Fabled since Of fairy damsels met in forest wide By Knights of Logres, or of Lyones, Lancelot, or Pelleas, or Pellenore. If Milton's attitude to mediæval romance is one of regretful suspicion, his attitude to the greatest of mediæval institutions is one of bitter contempt. He inveighs even against the "antiquitarians," such as Camden, who, he says, "cannot but love bishops as well as old coins and his much lamented monasteries, for antiquity's sake." For near twelve hundred years these same bishops "have been in England to our souls a sad and doleful succession of illiterate and blind guides." It is needless to multiply extracts illustrative of Milton's opinions on the Church; behind the enormous wealth of rhetoric and invective poured forth in his pamphlets, the opinions that he holds are few and simple. When he had been disappointed by the Presbyterians, and had finally turned from them, his beliefs inclined more and more, in two points at least, to the tenets of the newly arisen sect of Quakers--to a pure spiritualism in religion, and the complete separation of Church and State. Their horror of war he never shared. The model of the Church he sought in the earliest records of Christianity, and less and less even there; the model of the State in the ancient republics. All subsequent experience and precedent was to him a hindrance and a mischief. So rapidly and easily does his mind leap from the ancient to the modern world, that even when he speaks of his love for the drama, as in his first Latin elegy or in _Il Penseroso_, it is sometimes difficult to say whether he is thinking of the Elizabethan or of the Attic dramatists. The lodestar of his hopes is liberty, his main end the establishment of "a free commonwealth." He knows as well as Montesquieu that democracy in its pristine dignity can be erected only on a wide foundation of public virtue. "To govern well," he declares in the treatise _Of Reformation in England_, "is to train up a nation in true wisdom and virtue, and that which springs from thence, magnanimity (take heed of that), and that which is our beginning, regeneration, and happiest end, likeness to God, which in one word we call godliness;... other things follow as the shadow does the substance." In the same pamphlet this envious hater of greatness remarks that "to govern a nation piously and justly, which only is to say happily, is for a spirit of the greatest size, and divinest mettle." And men worthy of this description had, as it seemed to him, arisen in his own time. His praise of Cromwell and the leaders associated with him is almost extravagant in its enthusiasm. "While you, O Cromwell, are left among us, he hardly shows a proper confidence in the Supreme, who distrusts the security of England, when he sees that you are in so special a manner the favoured object of the Divine regard." His mind is full of the achievements of Cyrus, Epaminondas, and Scipio; he denies to the Protector no honour that may be drawn from these high comparisons. And then, as in _Lycidas_, so also in _The Second Defence of the People of England_, Milton concludes his celebration of another by a return to himself and his pride in a duty fulfilled. Opportunity, he declares, is offered for great achievements; if it be not seized, posterity will judge "that men only were wanting for the execution; while they were not wanting who could rightly counsel, exhort, inspire, and bind an unfading wreath of praise round the brows of the illustrious actors in so glorious a scene." In the measures that he recommends to Cromwell as necessary for the public welfare, his mistakes are the generous errors of an idealist. He writes as if all were either Cromwells or Miltons, and worthy of the fullest measure of liberty. "Now the time seems come," he exclaims, "wherein Moses, the great prophet, may sit in heaven rejoicing to see that memorable and glorious wish of his fulfilled, when not only our seventy elders, but all the Lord's people, are become prophets." His general propositions on the function of law are unimpeachable. "He who wisely would restrain the reasonable soul of man within due bounds, must first himself know perfectly how far the territory and dominion extends of just and honest liberty. As little must he offer to bind that which God hath loosened as to loosen that which He hath bound. The ignorance and mistake of this high point hath heaped up one huge half of all the misery that hath been since Adam." But with the application to issues of the day it appears that the mistake has been all one way. "Laws are usually worse in proportion as they are more numerous." The free spirit of man can govern him without "a garrison upon his neck of empty and over-dignified precepts." Whether he treat of religion, of education, of divorce, or of civil government, the error is always the same, a confidence too absolute in the capacity and integrity of the reasonable soul of man. A liturgy, for example, is intolerable, because it is a slur upon the extemporary effusions of ministers of the Gospel. "Well may men of eminent gifts set forth as many forms and helps to prayer as they please; but to impose them on ministers lawfully called and sufficiently tried ... is a supercilious tyranny, impropriating the Spirit of God to themselves." Milton, we know, did not habitually attend public worship at any of the conventicles of the sectaries, or perhaps he might have found reason to modify this censure. Some of his impassioned pleadings were possibly not wholly without effect on the politics of the time. It is interesting, at any rate, to find Cromwell, in his letter written in 1650 to the Governor of Edinburgh Castle, adopting one of the main arguments of the _Areopagitica_, and enforcing it against the Presbyterians by a figure which may have been borrowed from that tract. "Your pretended fear," he writes, "lest error should step in, is like the man who would keep all wine out of the country lest men should be drunk. It will be found an unjust and unwise jealousy to deprive a man of his natural liberty upon a supposition that he may abuse it. When he doth abuse it, judge." But Cromwell never applied his logic to the removal of the restraint upon printing, which by this same argument Milton had judged to be "the greatest displeasure and indignity to a free and knowing spirit that can be put upon him." He was too practical a statesman to be frightened into logic by a little paper shot. Logical Milton always was. He learned little or nothing from the political events of his time. He was throughout consistent with himself; prepared to take any risks that his advocacy might bring upon him, not prepared to forego or modify his opinions because of human incompetence or human imbecility. Between the consistent and unflinching Royalists on the one hand, and the consistent and unflinching Republicans on the other, the most of the population of England wavered and hung. But half-measures and half-heartedness were alike unintelligible to Milton. He fell upon the Presbyterians when they showed a disposition to palter with the logical consequences of their own action, and scourged them unmercifully. They had "banded and borne arms against their king, divested him, disanointed him, nay, cursed him all over in their pulpits, and their pamphlets." But when once the king was brought to trial, then "he who but erewhile in the pulpits was a cursed tyrant, an enemy to God and saints, laden with all the innocent blood spilt in three kingdoms, and so to be fought against, is now, though nothing penitent or altered from his first principles, a lawful magistrate, a sovereign lord, the Lord's anointed, not to be touched, though by themselves imprisoned." He prepares for them a similar dilemma, between the horns of which they have since been content to dwell, in his treatment of the question of divorce: "They dare not affirm that marriage is either a sacrament or a mystery ... and yet they invest it with such an awful sanctity, and give it such adamantine chains to bind with, as if it were to be worshipped like some Indian deity, when it can confer no blessing upon us, but works more and more to our misery." Milton's astonishment and indignation in cases like these are a convincing evidence of his inability to understand average politics, and that world of convenience, precaution, and compromise which is their native place. His own tenacity and constancy have something grim about them. Andrew Marvell, in his tract called _The Rehearsal Transposed_, speaking of the intolerance of his adversary, Samuel Parker, says: "If you have a mind to die, or to be of his party (there are but these two conditions), you may perhaps be rendered capable of his charity." Neither of these two conditions was a certain title to the charity of Milton. In the _Eikonoklastes_ he pursues the dead king with jibe and taunt, and exults over the smallest advantage gained. The opening words of the tract show him conscious of the difficulty and delicacy of the part he acted in making war on one who had "paid his final debt to nature and his faults." But what then? If the king, being dead, could speak, the dead king must be answered, and his gauntlet taken up "in the behalf of liberty and the commonwealth." The manner in which he conducts this and other controversies has brought upon Milton's head universal reproach. He is intemperate and violent, he heaps up personal scurrilities against his adversaries, and triumphs in their misfortunes. There is nothing wherein our age more differs from his than in the accepted rules governing controversy, and he has lost estimation accordingly. Yet not a few critics, it may be suspected, have allowed their dislike of the thing he says to hurry them into an exaggerated censure on his manner of saying it. It is important, in the first place, to remember that his violences are not the violences of the hired rhetorician. He was prepared to stand by what he wrote, and he knew the risks that he ran in those shifting and uncertain times. His life was in danger at the Restoration, and was saved by some unknown piece of good fortune or clemency. He was not a coward reviler, a "tongue-doughty giant," whose ears are the most delicate part about him, but an open fighter, who got as good as he gave. And then it is sometimes forgotten that the most scurrilous of Milton's pamphlets were written in Latin, a language which has always enjoyed an excellent liberty in the matter of personal abuse; while even his English pamphlets, wherein at times he shows almost as pretty a talent in reviling, were written for an audience inured to the habitual amenities of Latin controversy. Sir Thomas More was famous for his knack of calling bad names in good Latin, yet his posterity rise up and call him blessed. Milton, like More, observed the rules of the game, which allowed practices condemned in the modern literary prize-ring. He calls Salmasius a poor grammarian, a pragmatical coxcomb, a silly little scholar, a mercenary advocate, a loggerhead, a hare-brained blunderbuss, a witless brawler, a mongrel cur; he reproaches him with the domestic tyranny put upon him by that barking she-wolf, his wife, and winds up with an elaborate comparison (not wholly unfamiliar to modern methods of controversy) between Salmasius and Judas. With his nameless opponent in the Divorce quarrel he deals--this time in English--no less contemptuously: "I mean not to dispute philosophy with this pork, who never read any." The creature is a conspicuous gull, an odious fool, a dolt, an idiot, a groom, a rank pettifogger, a presumptuous losel, a clown, a vice, a huckster-at-law, whose "jabberment is the flashiest and the fustiest that ever corrupted in such an unswilled hogshead." "What should a man say more to a snout in this pickle? What language can be low and degenerate enough?" In the _Apology_ for Smectymnuus, Milton sets forth his own defence of his acrimony and violence: "There may be a sanctified bitterness," he remarks, "against the enemies of the truth;" and he dares to quote the casuistry of Electra in _Sophocles_:-- 'Tis you that say it, not I. You do the deeds, And your ungodly deeds find me the words. The exigencies of controversy revealed in Milton not only an inexhaustible store of coarse invective, but also, at times, the flash of real wit. "My fate," he says, with some sense of the incongruity of the thing, "extorts from me a talent of sport, which I had thought to hide in a napkin." We are privileged to hear Milton laugh. It is not mirthful nor gentle laughter, but rather the fierce, harsh, vehement laughter of the Hebrew Psalms, the laughter of scorn, the shooting out of the lips, the saying "Ha, ha." He speaks with his mouth, and swords are in his lips. Thus, of Alexander Morus, Professor of Sacred History at Amsterdam, whom he suspected to be the author of a tract in support of Salmasius, he says: "There is one More, part Frenchman and part Scot, so that one country or one people cannot be quite overwhelmed with the whole infamy of his extraction"; and he indulges himself in a debauch of punning on _Morus_, the Latin word for a mulberry. In the prelatical controversy, after discussing with his opponent the meaning of the word "angel," he continues: "It is not ordination nor jurisdiction that is angelical, but the heavenly message of the Gospel, which is the office of all ministers alike.... And if you will contend still for a superiority in one person, you must ground it better than from this metaphor, which you may now deplore as the axe-head that fell into the water, and say, 'Alas, master! for it was borrowed'; unless you have as good a faculty to make iron swim, as you had to make light froth sink." In the _Apology_ for Smectymnuus he heaps one grotesque comparison on another. His adversary, the son of Bishop Hall, is like "some empiric of false accusations to try his poisons upon me, whether they would work or not." The learning that was displayed by the champion of Episcopacy and the very typographical arrangement of his book incur an equal contempt: the margin of his treatise "is the sluice most commonly that feeds the drought of his text.... Nor yet content with the wonted room of his margin, but he must cut out large docks and creeks into his text, to unlade the foolish frigate of his unseasonable authorities." His best folios "are predestined to no better end than to make winding-sheets in Lent for pilchers." With this last stroke Milton is so well pleased that he repeats the same prediction in an elaborated form over the works of Salmasius, and even celebrates in numerous verse the forethought and bounty of one who has thus taken pity on the nakedness of fishes. The fantastic nature of these quips and taunts reminds us that Milton belonged to the age of the metaphysical poets and satirists, the age of Cowley, and Cleveland, and Butler. His prose works have been searched chiefly for passages that may be used to illustrate his poetry; and although the search has been rewarded with many natural coincidences of expression, not a few passages of lofty self-confidence, and some raptures of poetic metaphor, the result has been in the main a disappointment. His admirers, too jealous for the poetic dignity of their hero, have turned away sorrowfully from this memorial heap of odd-shaped missiles, hurled from his dire left hand for the confusion of his enemies. And yet, rightly judged, there is instruction, and an increased reverence for the poet, to be found in these also--in all that wild array of subjects and methods which he commands for the purposes of his prose, but dismisses from the service of his verse. It was a strict and rare selection that he made among the auxiliaries when he addressed himself to the more arduous attempt. Here and there, even in _Paradise Lost_, his education in the handling of satire and invective stood him in stead. The poem contains more than one "flyting"--to use the Scottish term--and the high war of words between Satan and Abdiel in heaven, or between Satan and Gabriel on earth, could not have been handled save by a master of all the weapons of verbal fence and all the devices of wounding invective. In the great close of the Fourth Book, especially, where the arch-fiend and the archangel retaliate defiance, and tower, in swift alternate flights, to higher and higher pitches of exultant scorn, Milton puts forth all his strength, and brings into action a whole armoury of sarcasm and insult whetted and polished from its earlier prosaic exercise. Even the grotesque element in his humour is not wholly excluded from the _Paradise Lost_; it has full scope, for once, in the episodical description of the Paradise of Fools--that barren continent, beaten on by the storms of chaos, dark save for some faint glimmerings from the wall of heaven, the inhabitants a disordered and depraved multitude of philosophers, crusaders, monks, and friars, blown like leaves into the air by the winds that sweep those desert tracts. Unlike the Paradise that was lost, this paradise is wholly of Milton's invention, and is the best extant monument to that spirit of mockery and savage triumph which is all the humour that he knows. The style of his prose works is a style formed upon oratorical models. The long winding sentence, propped on epithets and festooned with digressions, was the habitual vehicle of his meaning. The effect it produces at its best was well described by Marvell, who, in a letter to Milton thanking him for a copy of the _Defence of the People of England_, remarks: "When I consider how equally it turns and rises with so many figures, it seems to me a Trajan's column, in whose winding ascent we see embossed the several monuments of your learned victories." The clink of the rhyming couplet was not more displeasing to Milton's ear than the continued emphatic bark of a series of short sentences. Accustomed as he was to the heavy-armed processional manner of scholarly Renaissance prose, he felt it an indignity to "lie at the mercy of a coy, flirting style; to be girded with frumps and curtal jibes, by one who makes sentences by the statute, as if all above three inches long were confiscate." Later on in the _Apology_ he returns to this grievance, and describes how his adversary "sobs me out half a dozen phthisical mottoes, wherever he had them, hopping short in the measure of convulsion fits; in which labour the agony of his wit having escaped narrowly, instead of well-sized periods, he greets us with a quantity of thumb-ring posies." The men of the Renaissance despised the homely savour of the native English syntax with its rude rhetoric and abrupt logic and its lore of popular adages and maxims; they had learned to taste a subtler pleasure in the progressive undulations of a long mobile sentence, rising and falling alternately, reaching the limit of its height towards the middle, and at the close either dying away or breaking in a sudden crash of unexpected downward emphasis. This is the sentence preferred by Milton, and, where haste or zeal does not interfere with the leisurely ordering, handled by him with excellent skill. At its best and at its worst alike his prose is the prose of a poet. His sentences rarely conform to any strict periodic model; each idea, as it occurs to him, brings with it a train of variation and enrichment, which, by the time the sentence closes, is often found in sole possession. The architecture depends on melody rather than on logic. The emphasis and burden of the thought generally hangs on the epithets, descriptive terms, and phrases, which he strengthens by arranging them in pairs, after a fashion much practised by poets. Thus, to take a few examples from the Divorce pamphlets, a wife, who should be "an intimate and speaking help," "a ready and reviving associate," to comfort "the misinformed and wearied life of man" with "a sweet and gladsome society," is too often "a mute and spiritless mate," united to her husband in "a disconsolate and unenjoined matrimony," whereby the blessing that was expected with her is changed "into a familiar and coinhabiting mischief, at least into a drooping and disconsolate household captivity, without refuge or redemption." "The mystical and blessed union of marriage can be no way more unhallowed and profaned, than by the forcible uniting of such disunions and separations." "And it is a less breach of wedlock to part with wise and quiet consent betimes, than still to foil and profane that mystery of joy and union with a polluting sadness and perpetual distemper." The balance of epithet, the delicate music, the sentence that resembles a chain with link added to link rather than a hoop whose ends are welded together by the hammer--these are the characteristics of Milton's prose. They are illustrated in that short passage of the _Areopagitica_, well known to all readers of English: "I cannot praise a fugitive and cloistered virtue, unexercised and unbreathed, that never sallies out and seeks her adversary, but slinks out of the race, where that immortal garland is to be run for, not without dust and heat." Or in the striking description of London during the Civil War: "Behold now this vast city, a city of refuge, the mansion-house of liberty, encompassed and surrounded with his protection; the shop of war hath not there more anvils and hammers working, to fashion out the plates and instruments of armed justice in defence of beleaguered truth, than there be pens and heads there, sitting by their studious lamps, musing, searching, revolving new notions and ideas wherewith to present, as with their homage and their fealty, the approaching reformation; others as fast reading, trying all things, assenting to the force of reason and convincement." This sonorous balance of phrase and epithet cannot always escape what Milton himself calls "the heathenish battology of multiplying words." It serves the uses of rhetoric rather than of logic, and by the fervour of its repetitions and enlargements unfits his prose for the plainer purposes of argument or exposition. His argument is sometimes destroyed or blemished by the fire that it kindles, his narrative overwhelmed in the tide of passions that it sways. His vocabulary is extraordinarily rich, and here again the contrast is great between his prose and his verse. A full-bodied and picturesque dictionary might be made of the words that occur only in the prose. Most of these words would be found to derive from the Saxon stock, which yields him almost all his store of invective and vituperation. The resources of his Latinised vocabulary enable him to rise by successive gyrations to a point of vantage above his prey, and then the downward rush that strikes the quarry is a Saxon monosyllable. In this cardinal point of art for those who have to do with the English speech he became the teacher of Burke, who, with a lesser wealth of Saxon at his command, employed it with a more telling parsimony. Milton avoids no word of humble origin, so it serve his purpose. His contempt finds voice in such expressions as to "huddle" prayers, and to "keck" at wholesome food. Gehazi "rooks" from Naaman; the bishops "prog and pander for fees," and are "the common stales to countenance every politic fetch that was then on foot." The Presbyterians were earnest enough "while pluralities greased them thick and deep"; the gentlemen who accompanied King Charles in his assault on the privileges of the House of Commons were "the spawn and shipwreck of taverns and dicing-houses." The people take their religion from their minister "by scraps and mammocks, as he dispenses it in his Sunday's dole"; and "the superstitious man by his good will is an atheist, but being scared from thence by the pangs and gripes of a boiling conscience, all in a pudder shuffles up to himself such a God and such a worship as is most agreeable to remedy his fear." There were few incidents in Milton's career, from his personal relations with his college tutor to his choice of blank verse for his epic, that he was not called upon at some time or other in his life to explain and defend. When his free use of homely figures and turns of speech was objected to him, his answer was ready: "Doth not Christ Himself teach the highest things by the similitude of old bottles and patched clothes? Doth He not illustrate best things by things most evil? His own coming to be as a thief in the night, and the righteous man's wisdom to that of an unjust steward?" But the defence is misleading, for the rules that governed Milton's usage are not what it would suggest. When he came to treat of the best and highest things his use of native English became more sparing and dainty, while the rank, strong words that smack of the home soil were all foregone. His prose works, therefore, help us to appreciate better the tribulations of the process whereby he became a classic poet. Eclecticism and the severe castigation of style are dangerous disciplines for any but a rich temperament; from others they produce only what is exquisite and thin and vapid. The "stylist" of the modern world is generally an interesting invalid; his complexion would lose all its transparency if it were exposed to the weather; his weak voice would never make itself heard in the hubbub of the bazaar. Sunbeams cannot be extracted from cucumbers, nor can the great manner in literature emanate from a chill self-culture. But Milton inherited the fulness and vigour of the Elizabethans, and so could afford to write an epic poem in a selection of the language really used by men. The grandeur of _Paradise Lost_ or _Samson Agonistes_ could never, by any conceivable device of chemistry or magic, be compounded from delicate sensibilities and a superfine ear for music. For the material of those palaces whole provinces were pillaged, and the waste might furnish forth a city. CHAPTER III PARADISE LOST: THE SCHEME A prerogative place among the great epics of the world has sometimes been claimed for _Paradise Lost_, on the ground that the theme it handles is vaster and of a more universal human interest than any handled by Milton's predecessors. It concerns itself with the fortunes, not of a city or an empire, but of the whole human race, and with that particular event in the history of the race which has moulded all its destinies. Around this event, the plucking of an apple, are ranged, according to the strictest rules of the ancient epic, the histories of Heaven and Earth and Hell. The scene of the action is Universal Space. The time represented is Eternity. The characters are God and all his Creatures. And all these are exhibited in the clearest and most inevitable relation with the main event, so that there is not an incident, hardly a line of the poem, but leads backwards or forwards to those central lines in the Ninth Book:-- So saying, her rash hand in evil hour Forth-reaching to the fruit, she plucked, she eat. Earth felt the wound, and Nature from her seat, Sighing through all her works, gave signs of woe That all was lost. From this point radiates a plot so immense in scope, that the history of the world from the first preaching of the Gospel to the Millennium occupies only some fifty lines of Milton's epilogue. And if the plot be vast, the stage is large enough to set it forth. The size of Milton's theatre gives to his imagination those colossal scenical opportunities which are turned to such magnificent account. De Quincey enumerates some of them--"Heaven opening to eject her rebellious children; the unvoyageable depths of ancient Chaos, with its 'anarch old' and its eternal war of wrecks; these traversed by that great leading Angel that drew after him the third part of the heavenly host; earliest Paradise dawning upon the warrior-angel out of this far-distant 'sea without shore' of chaos; the dreadful phantoms of Sin and Death, prompted by secret sympathy and snuffing the distant scent of 'mortal change on earth,' chasing the steps of their great progenitor and sultan; finally the heart-freezing visions, shown and narrated to Adam, of human misery through vast successions of shadowy generations: all these scenical opportunities offered in the _Paradise Lost_ become in the hands of the mighty artist elements of undying grandeur not matched on earth." All these grandeurs and beauties are as real and living to-day as they were on the day when Milton conceived them. But the other advantage claimed for his epic, that it deals with matters of the dearest concern to all of us, has been sharply questioned. It was Mr. Pattison's complaint of _Paradise Lost_ that in it "Milton has taken a scheme of life for life itself," and that it requires a violent effort from the modern reader to accommodate his conceptions to the anthropomorphic theology of the poem. The world is now thickly peopled with men and women who, having bestowed their patronage on other ancestors, care little about Adam and Eve, and who therefore feel that Milton's poem is wanting in the note of actuality. Satan himself is not what he used to be; he is doubly fallen, in the esteem of his victims as well as of his Maker, and indeed Comes to the place where he before had sat Among the prime in splendour, now deposed, Ejected, emptied, gazed, unpitied, shunned, A spectacle of ruin. "He who aspires," says Mr. Pattison, "to be the poet of a nation is bound to adopt a hero who is already dear to that people." But how if the hero subsequently fall out of vogue, and his name lose its power with a fickle populace? Can even a poet save him? The drifting away of the popular belief from the tenets of Milton's theology doubtless does something to explain the lukewarm interest taken by most educated English readers in _Paradise Lost_. But it is a mistake to make much of this explanation. Certainly Milton held his own theological beliefs, as expounded in the poem, in perfect good faith and with great tenacity. But the generation after his own, which first gave him his great fame, was not seduced into admiration by any whole-hearted fellowship in belief. Dryden laments the presence in the poem of so many "machining persons,"--as he calls the supernatural characters of _Paradise Lost_. At almost the same date Dr. Thomas Burnet was causing a mild sensation in the theological world by expounding the earlier chapters of the Book of Genesis in an allegorical sense, and denying to them the significance of a literal history. Voltaire, while he praises Milton, remarks that the topic of _Paradise Lost_ has afforded nothing among the French but some lively lampoons, and that those who have the highest respect for the mysteries of the Christian religion cannot forbear now and then making free with the devil, the serpent, the frailty of our first parents, and the rib that was stolen from Adam. "I have often admired," he goes on, "how barren the subject appears, and how fruitful it grows under his hands." It seems likely that Milton himself, before he was fairly caught in the mesh of his own imagination, was well aware that his subject demanded something of the nature of a _tour de force_. He had to give physical, geometric embodiment to a far-reaching scheme of abstract speculation and thought,--parts of it very reluctant to such a treatment. The necessities of the epic form constrained him. When Satan, on the top of Mount Niphates, exclaims-- Which way I fly is Hell; myself am Hell; when Michael promises to Adam, after his expulsion from the garden-- A Paradise within thee; happier far; Milton must have known as well as any of his critics that this conception of Hell and of Paradise, if insisted on, would have shattered the fabric of his poem. His figures of Sin and Death were of his own invention, and we must not suppose him so obtuse as never to have realised the part that his shaping imagination bore in the presentment of other and greater figures in the poem. In some respects he tried rather to impose a scheme of thought and imagination upon his age than to express the ideas that he found current. His theology and his cosmical conceptions are equally tainted with his individual heresies. He flies in the face of the Athanasian Creed by representing the generation of the Son as an event occurring in time--"on such day as Heaven's great year brings forth." His later poem of _Paradise Regained_ and the posthumous treatise of Christian Doctrine show him an Arian; in the poem the Almighty is made to speak of This perfect man, by merit called my Son. His account of the creation of the World as a mere ordering or re-arrangement of the wild welter of an uncreated material Chaos receives no countenance from the Fathers. In many points of theological teaching he is compelled to form definite and even visual conceptions where orthodoxy had cautiously confined itself to vague general propositions. So that the description of Sin and Death and of the causeway built by them between Hell-gates and the World, much as it has been objected to even by admirers of the poem, is only an extreme instance of the defining and hardening process that Milton found needful throughout for the concrete presentment of the high doings which are his theme. He congealed the mysteries of Time and Space, Love and Death, Sin and Forgiveness, into a material system; and in so doing, while paying the utmost deference to his authorities, he yet exercised many a choice with regard to matters indifferent or undefinable. Thus, for instance, he borrows from the Talmud the notion that Satan first learned the existence of a prohibited tree from overhearing a conversation between Adam and Eve. He was surely conscious of what he was doing, and would have been not ill-pleased to learn that the Universe, as he conceived of it, has since been called by his name. It is Milton's Paradise Lost, lost by Milton's Adam and Eve, who are tempted by Milton's Satan, and punished by Milton's God. The stamp of his clear hard imagination is on the whole fabric; and it is not much harder for us to coax ourselves into the belief that his is indeed the very world we inhabit than it was for the men of his own time. The senses and the intellect are older than modern science, and were employed to good effect before the invention of the spectroscope; it is they in their daily operation that make it difficult to leap the gulf which separates the amenities and trivialities of common life from the solemn theatre of the poet's imagination. The objection that the poem has lost much of its value because we are compelled to imagine where our elders believed is of little weight in a case like this, where our lack of belief is not brought home to us until insuperable difficulties are placed in the way of our imagination. Where Milton was freest, there we follow him most gladly; where he wrote in fetters, as notably in some of the scenes transacted in Heaven, our imagination, not our belief, is the first to rebel. We are deceived by names; the more closely _Paradise Lost_ is studied, the more does the hand of the author appear in every part. The epic poem, which in its natural form is a kind of cathedral for the ideas of a nation, is by him transformed into a chapel-of-ease for his own mind, a monument to his own genius and his own habits of thought. The _Paradise Lost_ is like the sculptured tombs of the Medici in Florence; it is not of Night and Morning, nor of Lorenzo and Giuliano, that we think as we look at them, but solely of the great creator, Michael Angelo. The same dull convention that calls the _Paradise Lost_ a religious poem might call these Christian statues. Each is primarily a great work of art in each the traditions of two eras are blended in a unity that is indicative of nothing but the character and powers of the artist. The _Paradise Lost_ is not the less an eternal monument because it is a monument to dead ideas. We do not know exactly when Milton made his choice of subject. His Latin verses addressed to Manso, Marquis of Villa, in January 1638-9, show that Arthur and the Round Table was at that time the uppermost theme in his mind, and that the warlike achievement of heroes was the aspect of it that most attracted him. After his return to England in 1639, it is mentioned once again in his elegy on Charles Diodati, and then we hear no more of it. In the tentative list of subjects, made in 1641, Arthur has disappeared, and the story of _Paradise Lost_ already occupies the most conspicuous place, with four separate drafts suggesting different treatments of the theme. It would be idle to speculate on what Milton might have made of the Arthur legends. One thing is certain; he would have set up the warrior king as a perfectly objective figure, hampered by no allegory, and with no inward and spiritual signification. The national cause, maintained heroically in a hundred battles, and overwhelmed at last by the brute violence of the foreign oppressor, was subject enough for him; he would never have marred his epic by sickly irresolution and the struggles of a divided will in the principal characters. Perhaps his mind reverted to his old dreams when he came to describe the pastimes wherewith the rebel angels beguile their time in Hell:-- Others, more mild, Retreated in a silent valley, sing With notes angelical to many a harp Their own heroic deeds, and hapless fall By doom of battle, and complain that Fate Free Virtue should enthrall to Force or Chance. Their song was partial; but the harmony (What could it less when Spirits immortal sing?) Suspended Hell, and took with ravishment The thronging audience. This is only one of the very numerous places in _Paradise Lost_ where, before he is well aware of it, we catch Milton's sympathies dilating themselves upon the wrong side. His researches in British annals, begun at the time when he was still in quest of a theme, convinced him that the whole story of Arthur was "obscured and blemished with fables." He foraged among other British subjects, feeling that the great poem which was designed to raise England to the literary peerage and set her by the side of countries of older fame must deal with a theme of truly national import. Some of the subjects that he jotted down were obviously of too incidental and trivial a nature for his purpose, and a wise instinct confined him to the earlier history of the island, where his own freedom of treatment was less likely to be hampered by an excess of detail. And then, precisely how or when we do not know, the idea came to him that he would treat a subject still larger and of a more tremendous import,--the fortunes, not of the nation, but of the race:-- With loss of Eden, till one greater Man Restore us, and regain the blissful seat. The attractions that this theme, once hit on, exercised on Milton's mind may easily be guessed. In the first place, it was a sacred subject: an opportunity for leading poetry back to its divine allegiance; and, by the creation of a new species of epic, an escape from a danger which must have been very present to his mind--the danger of too close an imitation of the ancients. More specific reasons concurred in recommending it. In the Garden of Eden he might present to an age which was overrun with a corrupt religion and governed by a decadent court the picture of a religion without a church, of life in its primitive simplicity, and of patriarchal worship without the noisome accretions of later ceremonial. His attitude to the Laudian movement is eloquently expressed, at this same time, in the treatise _Of Reformation in England_, where he describes how the religious teachers of his own and preceding ages "began to draw down all the divine intercourse betwixt God and the soul, yea, the very shape of God himself into an exterior and bodily form, urgently pretending a necessity and obligement of joining the body in a formal reverence and worship circumscribed; they hallowed it, they fumed it, they sprinkled it, they bedecked it, not in robes of pure innocency, but of pure linen, with other deformed and fantastic dresses, in palls and mitres, gold, and gewgaws fetched from Aaron's old wardrobe or the flamen's vestry: then was the priest set to con his motions and his postures, his liturgies and his lurries, till the soul by this means of over-bodying herself, given up justly to fleshly delights, bated her wing apace downward: and finding the ease she had from her visible and sensuous colleague, the body, in performance of religious duties, her pinions now broken and flagging, shifted off from herself the labour of high soaring any more, forgot her heavenly flight, and left the dull and droiling carcase to plod on in the old road and drudging trade of outward conformity." But Adam and Eve, Milton is careful to explain, were not ritualists. They recite their evening hymn of praise as they stand at the entrance to their shady lodge:-- This said unanimous, and other rites Observing none, but adoration pure Which God likes best, into their inmost bower Handed they went. The traits of Milton's Puritanism peep out at unexpected places in the poem. The happy Garden, Adam is told, will be destroyed after the Flood, for a reason that would have been approved by the image-breakers of the Commonwealth:-- To teach thee that God attributes to place No sanctity, if none be thither brought By men who there frequent, or therein dwell. The palace of Pandemonium is built by Satan's host in an hour, whence men may Learn how their greatest monuments of fame, And strength, and art, are easily outdone By spirits reprobate; --a perfectly sound moral, well illustrating Mr. Swinburne's remark that Puritanism has nothing to do with Art, and that the great Puritans and the great artists have never confused them. Milton must also have been drawn to the theme of _Paradise Lost_ by the scope it promised for scenes of quiet natural beauty:-- All that bowery loneliness, The brooks of Eden mazily murmuring And bloom profuse and cedar arches. His imagination was so susceptible to a touch of beauty that even in the bare sketch he has left for a drama dealing with the story of Lot and his escape from Sodom we see how likely he was, here also, to fall into the error of _Comus_. As Lot entertains the angels at supper, "the Gallantry of the town passe by in Procession, with musick and song, to the temple of Venus Urania." The opening Chorus is to relate the course of the city, "each evening every one with mistresse, or Ganymed, gitterning along the streets, or solacing on the banks of Jordan, or down the stream." But in the story of the Garden of Eden the beauty was, for once, on the side of the morality; innocence and purity might be depicted, not, as in a fallen world, clad in complete steel, but at ease in their native haunts, surrounded by all the inexhaustible bounty of an unsubdued and uncorrupted Nature. The chief dramatic interest of the poem, however, comes in with the great outcast angel, stirred up by his passions of envy and revenge to assault the new-created inhabitants of the Garden. It seems likely that Milton was drawn to this part of his theme by chains of interest and sympathy stronger than he confessed or knew. He was an epic poet, striving to describe great events worthily, but the dramatic situation betrayed him. He knew only that he could draw a rebel leader, noble in bearing, superbly outlined, a worthy adversary of the Most High. But it happened to him, as it has happened to others who have found themselves in a position where Satan could do them a service; before long, as if by some mediæval compact, the relations are reversed, and the poet is in the service of the Devil. He can hardly have foreseen this chance; although there are not wanting signs in the poem itself that, before it was half completed, he became uneasily conscious of what was happening, and attempted, too late, to remedy it. When he chose his subject he doubtless intended that the centre of interest should be fixed in the Garden of Eden, and did not perceive how of necessity it must tend to sink lower, to that realm in the shadow of darkness, innumerably more populous, inhabited by beings of a nobler origin, of greater (and more human) passions, with a longer and more distinguished history, and with this further claim upon the sympathy of the reader, that they are doomed to an eternity of suffering. It is worth our while as critics to try to put ourselves in Milton's place at the time when he had made his choice, that we may realise not only the attractions but also the difficulties of the theme. An Italian poet of the early seventeenth century, Giovanni Battista Andreini, from whose drama, entitled _Adamo_, Milton is alleged to have borrowed some trifles, has made a very full and satisfactory statement of these difficulties in the preface to his play. He mentions, for instance, the unpromising monotony of Adam's life during the time spent in the earthly paradise, and the difficulty of giving verisimilitude to the conversation between the woman and the snake. But he waxes most eloquent on the last and greatest difficulty--"since the composition must remain deprived of those poetic ornaments so dear to the Muses; deprived of the power to draw comparisons from implements of art introduced in the course of years, since in the time of the first man there was no such thing; deprived also of naming (at least while Adam speaks or discourse is held with him), for example, bows, arrows, hatchets, urns, knives, swords, spears, trumpets, drums, trophies, banners, lists, hammers, torches, bellows, funeral piles, theatres, exchequers, infinite things of a like nature, introduced by the necessities of sin;... deprived moreover of introducing points of history, sacred or profane, of relating fictions of fabulous deities, of rehearsing loves, furies, sports of hunting or fishing, triumphs, shipwrecks, conflagrations, enchantments, and things of a like nature, that are in truth the ornament and the soul of poetry." All these difficulties for Andreini's drama were difficulties also for Milton's poem. Yet no reader of _Paradise Lost_ is found to complain that the poem is lacking in poetic ornament. Milton has successfully surmounted or evaded many of this formidable catalogue of limitations, without the sacrifice of dramatic propriety. It is true that in the course of their morning orisons, addressed to their Maker, Adam and Eve apostrophise the Mists and Exhalations-- that now rise From hill or steaming lake, dusky or gray, Till the sun paint your fleecy skirts with gold; --where, a purist might urge, neither of them had any right to be acquainted with paint, or skirts, or gold. But anachronisms like these are, after all, only a part of the great anachronism, or postulate rather, whereby Adam and Eve are made to speak the English tongue. In the Twelfth Book Michael is guilty of a graver lapse where he mentions baptism without explanation or apology. On the other hand, Raphael, who had a pleasanter occasion and more time for his retrospective summary, explains the military manoeuvring of angels by what Adam had already seen of the flight of birds, and after describing the great war in Heaven and the fierce hosting of the opposed forces, ventures, at a later point in his story, to illustrate the flowing together of the congregated waters at the Creation by a simile drawn, with apology, from the massing of troops:-- As armies at the call Of trumpet (for of armies thou hast heard) Troop to their standard, so the watery throng, Wave rolling after wave. In the main Milton studies propriety with regard to the forbidden matters enumerated by Andreini. But he escapes from the full effect of the prohibition by a variety of devices. In the first place, there are the two chief episodes of the poem; Raphael's narration, from the Fifth to the Eighth Book, imparted to Adam as a warning against impending dangers, and conveying an account of the history of the Universe before the Creation of Man; and Michael's narration, in the Eleventh and Twelfth Books, consoling and strengthening Adam, before the Expulsion from the Garden, by a rapid survey of the prospective history of the World from that event down to the Millennium. Considered as a narrator, Michael is very subject to dullness; were it not for the unfailing dignity and magniloquence of his diction, his tale would be merely a bleak compendium of the outlines of Scripture history; but to Raphael is committed the story of the war in Heaven and its amazing sequel,--a story containing passages so brilliant, and so little necessary to be narrated at length, that there is some flavour of inconsistency in Milton's apology for his theme, prefixed to the Ninth Book, where he describes himself as-- Not sedulous by nature to indite Wars, hitherto the only argument Heroic deemed, chief mastery to dissect With long and tedious havoc fabled knights In battles feigned (the better fortitude Of patience and heroic martyrdom Unsung), or to describe races and games Or tilting furniture, emblazoned shields, Impresses quaint, caparisons and steeds, Bases and tinsel trappings, gorgeous knights At joust and tournament; then marshalled feast Served up in hall with sewers and seneshals: The skill of artifice and office mean; Not that which justly gives heroic name To person or to poem! Me, of these Nor skilled nor studious, higher argument Remains, sufficient of itself to raise That name, unless an age too late, or cold Climate, or years, damp my intended wing Depressed; and much they may if all be mine, Not hers who brings it nightly to my ear. To depreciate war as a subject for the heroic Muse was ungrateful in Milton, who had devoted the whole of his Sixth Book to a description of the "wild work in Heaven" caused by the great rebellion, and had indulged his imagination with some most extravagant fantasies; such as the digging in the soil of Heaven for sulphur and nitre (where the soil of Hell, it may be remarked, yielded gold to the miner), the invention of artillery, and the use of mountains as missiles, Hurled to and fro with jaculation dire. He had, moreover, attained to the height of the sublime in that terrific closing scene where the Son, riding forth in single majesty, drives the rebel host over the crystal bounds of Heaven into the wasteful abyss. Wars, in short, hold a conspicuous place in the poem,--conflicts and broils so enormous that-- War seemed a civil game To this uproar. Races and athletic sports are among the melancholy diversions of the dwellers in Hell during their forced leisure. Even tilts and tournaments are not absent from _Paradise Lost_, but they are introduced by the second of the devices which enable Milton to extend the scope of his poem; the free and frequent use, namely, of illustrative and decorative comparisons. Thus the spacious hall of Pandemonium is compared to-- A covered field, where champions bold Wont ride in armed, and at the Soldan's chair Defied the best of Panim chivalry To mortal combat, or career with lance. It is plain that although almost all of the characters of the poem are precluded from making allusion to the events of human history, the poet himself is free; and he uses his freedom throughout. Most of the passages that have gained for Milton the name of a learned poet are introduced by way of simile. At times he employs the simplest epic figure, drawn from the habits of rustic or animal life. But his favourite figure is the "long-tailed simile," or, as it is better called, the decorative comparison, used for its ennobling, rather than for its elucidating virtue. Here he parts company with Homer, and even with Virgil, who could draw on no such vast and various store of history, geography, and romance. From Herodotus to Olaus Magnus, and onward to the latest discoveries in geography and astronomy, the researches of Galileo, and the descriptions given by contemporary travellers of China and the Chinese, or of the North American Indians, Milton compels the authors he had read, both ancient and modern, to contribute to the gracing of his work. It is partly this wealth of implicit lore, still more, perhaps, the subtly reminiscent character of much of his diction, that justifies Mr. Pattison in the remark that "an appreciation of Milton is the last reward of consummated scholarship." A third device, not the least remarkable of those by which he gives elasticity to his theme, is to be found in the tradition that he adopts with regard to the later history of the fallen angels. A misunderstanding of four verses in the fourteenth chapter of Isaiah, and some cryptic allusions in the Book of Revelations are the chief Scriptural authorities for the Miltonic account of the Fall of the Angels, which is not borrowed from the Fathers, but corresponds rather with the later version popularised in England by the cycles of Miracle Plays. According to the _Divine Institutes_ of Lactantius, the nameless Angel, to whom from the first had been given power over the new-created Earth, was alone infected with envy of the Son of God, his elder and superior, and set himself to vitiate and destroy mankind in the cradle. He tempted Eve, and she fell; after the expulsion from Paradise he set himself also to corrupt the guardian angels who were sent down from Heaven for the protection and education of the increasing race of men. In this attempt also he succeeded; "the sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were fair, and they took them wives of all which they chose." And they forgot their heavenly estate, and made for themselves a Godless dominion upon Earth. This is the Fall of the Angels as it is narrated at greater length in the recently recovered apocryphal _Book of Enoch_, and alluded to, perhaps in the Epistles of Peter and of Jude, where are mentioned "the angels that sinned," and "the angels which kept not their first estate." Milton's version brings these angels to the earth, not as protectors of mankind, but as conquerors come from Hell, to possess and occupy the spacious world delivered over to them by the victory of Satan. From that point forward, however, he adopts the tradition whereby Jerome, Lactantius, and others had identified the fallen angels with the gods of the heathen. Whether as conquerors or as corrupted guardians of the human race, they seek the same ends,--to divert worship from the true God, and by the destruction of man, to contrive a solace for their own perdition. They are the inventors of astrology, sooth-saying, divination, necromancy, and black magic; they were once the ministers of God, and still have a presentiment of his acts, so that they can sometimes speak truly of the future by means of oracles and magicians, claiming the while the credit of bringing that to pass which in fact they only foresaw. Milton, in adopting this doctrine, merely followed current belief, and did not, as De Quincey seems to think, hit upon it by a fortunate stroke of genius. He might have found it incidentally but fully set forth in so recent a book as Hooker's _Ecclesiastical Polity_, I. iv. "The fall of the angels, therefore," says Hooker, "was pride. Since their fall, their practices have been the clean contrary unto those just mentioned. For, being dispersed, some in the air, some in the earth, some in the water, some among the minerals, dens, and caves that are under the earth; they have by all means laboured to effect a universal rebellion against the laws, and as far as in them lieth utter destruction of the works of God. These wicked spirits the heathen honoured instead of Gods, both generally under the name of _dii inferi_, 'gods infernal,' and particularly, some in oracles, some in idols, some as household gods, some as nymphs; in a word, no foul or wicked spirit which was not one way or other honoured of men as god, till such time as light appeared in the world, and dissolved the works of the Devil." The argument which Milton himself sets forth for the support of this view was accepted as conclusive in his own age. The Ionian gods, he says, Titan, and Saturn, and Jove, and the rest, the youngest branch of that evil and influential family, were-- Held Gods, yet confessed later than Heaven and Earth Their boasted parents. They ruled the middle air and had access to no higher or purer heaven. Howsoever Milton came by the doctrine, it was of enormous use to him; it gave him names for his devils, and characters, and a detailed history of the part they had played in human affairs; it was, in short, a key to all the mythologies. By these devices the author of _Paradise Lost_ escapes the impoverishment of imagination that his subject seemed to impose upon him. On looking once more over Andreini's list of prohibited topics, we are surprised to find how many of them Milton has found a place for. He does introduce points of history, sacred and profane; he relates fictions of fabulous deities; he rehearses loves, furies, triumphs, conflagrations, and things of a like nature. The principal conflagration that he describes is on a very large scale; and the majestic ascent of the Son-- Up to the Heaven of Heavens, his high abode, * * * * * Followed with acclamation, and the sound Symphonious often thousand harps, that tuned Angelic harmonies, is the grandest triumphal procession in all literature. On the other hand, he manages to dispense with some of the institutions and implements "introduced by the necessities of sin." He has swords and spears, trumpets and drums in plenty. But he has no knives, nor hatchets, nor bellows; and no theatres nor exchequers. There are no urns nor funeral piles, because there is no death; or rather, because the only Death that there is increases the number of persons in the poem by one. Sports of hunting and fishing there are, of course, none; and, although it is an heroic poem, the horse takes little part in the celestial war, is hardly known in hell, and is unheard of on earth until Adam beholds in vision the armed concourse of his corrupt descendants. Nevertheless, the general impression left by the poem is one of richness rather than poverty of poetic ornament. The wealth is most profusely displayed in the books treating of Satan and his followers, but it is not absent from Eden nor from the empyreal Heaven, although in the one case the monotony of the situation, and in the other the poet's evident anxiety to authorise his every step from Scripture, prevent the full display of his power. But Milton is a difficult poet to disable; he is often seen at his best on the tritest theme, which he handles after his own grave fashion by comprehensive statement, measured and appropriate, heightened by none save the most obvious metaphors, and depending for almost all its charm on the quiet colouring of the inevitable epithet, and the solemn music of the cadence:-- Now came still Evening on, and Twilight gray Had in her sober livery all things clad; Silence accompanied; for beast and bird They to their grassy couch, these to their nests, Were slunk, all but the wakeful nightingale. She all night long her amorous descant sung: Silence was pleased. Now glowed the firmament With living sapphires; Hesperus, that led The starry host, rode brightest, till the Moon, Rising in clouded majesty, at length Apparent queen, unveiled her peerless light, And o'er the dark her silver mantle threw. Darkness, silence, rest, the nightingale's song, the stars, the rising of the moon--these are all the material of this wonderful passage. Yet did ever such beauty fall with night upon such peace, save in Paradise alone? Once he had got his story, based on his few authorities, with hints unconsciously taken and touches added, perhaps, from his reading of other poets--of Cædmon, Andreini, and Vondel, of Spenser, Sylvester, Crashaw, and the Fletchers--Milton's first task was to reduce it to the strict relations of time and space. His blindness probably helped him by relieving him from the hourly solicitations of the visible world, and giving him a dark and vacant space in which to rear his geometric fabric. Against this background the figures of his characters are outlined in shapes of light, and in this vacancy he mapped out his local Heaven and Hell. Heaven, as Milton portrays it, is a plain of vast extent, diversified with hills, valleys, woods and streams. In the Second Book he speaks of it as-- Extended wide In circuit, undetermined square or round; in the Tenth Book it is determined, and is square. It is bounded by battlements of living sapphire, and towers of opal. In the midst is situated a Mount, the dwelling place of the Most High, surrounded by golden lamps, which diffuse night and day alternately--for without twilight and dawn, his dearest memories, Heaven would have been no Heaven to Milton. On a mountain far to the north of this great plain, Satan erects his pyramids and towers of diamond and gold, and establishes his empire, which lasts exactly three days. At his final overthrow the crystal wall of Heaven rolls back, disclosing a gap into the abyss; the rebels, tortured with plagues and thunder, fling themselves in desperation over the verge. They fall for nine days, through Chaos. Chaos is the realm of a king of the same name, who reigns over it with his consort Night. It is of immeasurable extent, quite dark, and turbulent with the raw material of the Cosmos. Just as Milton, for the purposes of his poem, followed the older astronomy, and gave to it a new lease of life in the popular imagination, so also he abides by the older physics. The orderly created World, or Cosmos, is conceived as compounded of four elements, Earth, Air, Fire, and Water. None of these four is to be found in Chaos, for each of them is composed of the simpler atoms of Hot, Cold, Moist, and Dry, symmetrically arranged in pairs. Thus Air is Hot and Moist, Fire is Hot and Dry, Water is Cold and Moist, Earth is Cold and Dry. Before they are separated and blended by Divine command, the four rudimentary constituents of creation are crowded in repulsive contiguity; they bubble and welter, fight and jostle in the dark, with hideous noises. In its upper strata Chaos is calmer, and is faintly lighted by the effulgence from the partially transparent walls of Heaven. Below is Hell, newly prepared for the rebels. Like Heaven it is a vast plain; a bituminous lake, played over by livid flames, is one of its principal features; and hard by stands a volcanic mountain, at the foot of which the devils build their palace, and hold their assembly. The nine-fold gates of Hell, far distant, are guarded by Sin and Death, the paramour and the son of Satan. No one has plausibly explained how they came by their office. It was intended to be a perfect sinecure; there was no one to be let in and no one to be let out. The single occasion that presented itself for a neglect of their duty was by them eagerly seized. During the nine days while the rebels lay on the burning lake, drowsed by its fumes, the World was created. It consists, according to the astronomy followed by Milton, of ten concentric spheres fitted, like Chinese boxes, one within another, and the Earth in the centre. Nine of these are transparent, the spheres, that is to say, of the seven planets (the Sun and the Moon being reckoned as planets), the sphere of the fixed stars, and the crystalline sphere. The outermost sphere, or _primum mobile_, is opaque and impervious. The whole orbicular World hangs by a golden chain from that part of the battlements of Heaven whence the angels fell. It is connected with Heaven by richly jewelled stairs, to be let down or taken up at pleasure, and can be entered only through an orifice or passage at the top. Between the foot of the stairs and the entrance to the World is a sea or lake of jasper and liquid pearl. All the interest and meaning of the World is centred in one favoured spot of Earth. Eden is a district of Mesopotamia, and the happy garden, called Paradise, is situated in the east of Eden. It is a raised table-land, surrounded on all sides by a high ridge of hill, thickly wooded, and impenetrable. Its single gate, hewn out of a rock of alabaster, faces eastward, and is accessible only by a pass leading up from the plain and overhung by craggy cliffs. Through Eden runs a river which passes by a tunnel under Paradise, and, rising through the porous earth, waters the garden with springs. It was by this underground passage that Satan entered the garden a second time, when, having been discovered by Ithuriel, and expelled by Gabriel, he had circled the Earth seven times, keeping on the shady side to avoid the gaze of Uriel, and at the end of the week had resolved on another attempt. The Fall of Man wrought some few changes in the physical configuration of the Universe. Sin and Death built the mighty causeway that connects the orifice of the World with Hell-gates. Provision had to be made under the new dispensation for the peopling of the whole surface of the Earth; so the axis was turned askew, and the beginning ordained of extremes of cold and heat, of storms and droughts, and noxious planetary influences. Night and day were known to man in his sinless state, but the seasons date from his transgression. The time-scheme of the poem is less carefully defined; indeed, it is not certain that Milton intended accurately to define it. The recurrence of the numbers three and nine, numbers traditionally honoured by poetry, throws suspicion on the efforts of the exact commentators. Even in his statements with regard to spatial relations the poet was not always minutely consistent with himself. The distance from the plain of Heaven to the plain of Hell is said in the First Book to be three times the radius of the World, or, in his own words, the prison of Hell is As far removed from God and light of Heaven As from the centre thrice to the utmost pole. The great globe, therefore, that hangs from the floor of Heaven reaches two-thirds of the way down to Hell. Yet in the Second Book Satan, after a long and perilous journey from Hell, comes in view of This pendent World, in bigness as a star Of smallest magnitude close by the moon. So small is the World, compared with the wide extent of the empyreal Heaven. But it is not easy to conceive how, in the limited space between Heaven and Hell, the World could so appear to Satan. A like curious consideration of the passages where time is mentioned reveals a gap in the tale of days enumerated by Milton. We are not told how long it took Satan to reach the Earth. Driven back on precedents and analogies we find them conflicting. The outcast angels took nine days to fall the same distance. But falling, as Moloch points out in his speech at the Infernal Council, was to them less natural than rising; and Raphael, who was subsequently sent to guard the gates of Hell during the Creation, made the ascent easily in part of a day. If we allow a day and a night for Satan's exploratory voyage, the action of the poem, from the heavenly decree which occasioned the rebellion, to the expulsion of Adam and Eve from Paradise, has been found to occupy thirty-three days, some measured by a heavenly, some by an earthly standard. This would make Adam and Eve about ten days old when they fell. But St. Augustine says that they spent six years in the Earthly Paradise, and the question is better left open. A graver inconsistency is brought to light by a close study of the framework of the poem. Milton seems to have hesitated as to which of two theories he would adopt concerning the Creation of Man. After their fall both Satan and Beelzebub mention a rumour which had long been current in Heaven of a new race, called Man, shortly to be created. That rumour could hardly have reached the rebels during the progress of the war. Yet in the Seventh Book the Creation appears as a compliment paid to Satan, a counter-move devised after the suppression of the great rebellion. The Omnipotent thus declares his intention:-- But, lest his heart exalt him in the harm Already done, to have dispeopled Heaven-- My damage fondly deemed,--I can repair That detriment, if such it be to lose Self-lost, and in a moment will create Another world; out of one man a race Of men innumerable. This last is the account we must accept. Milton no doubt was attracted by the dramatic superiority of this version, which makes the Creation of Man a minor incident in the great war, so that the human race comes, a mere token and pawn-- Between the pass and fell incensed points Of mighty opposites. But he was probably also aware that this view had not the highest warrant of orthodoxy. There is something absurd, perhaps even something repulsive, to the modern mind in this careful, matter-of-fact anatomy of Milton's poem. But it is a useful and necessary exercise, for all his greatest effects are achieved in the realm of the physical and moral sublime, where the moral relations are conditioned chiefly by the physical. There is no metaphysic, nothing spiritual, nothing mysterious, except in name, throughout the whole poem. The so-called spiritual beings are as definitely embodied as man. The rules that Milton followed in dealing with his heavenly essences are very fully laid down in the _Treatise of Christian Doctrine_. He consigned the Fathers to limbo, and built up his entire system from the words of Scripture. Now the Scriptures, in a hundred passages, attribute human passions and actions to Divine beings. We have no choice, said Milton, but to accept these expressions as the truest to which we can attain. "If after the work of six days it be said of God that 'He rested and was refreshed,' _Exodus_, xxxi. 17; if it be said that 'He feared the wrath of the enemy,' _Deuteronomy_, xxxii. 27; let us believe that it is not beneath the dignity of God ... to be refreshed in that which refresheth Him, or to fear in that He feareth." Milton had here the sharp logical dilemma that he loved. Either these expressions are literally true, or they are not. If they are, well and good; if they are not, how can we hope to frame for ourselves better and truer notions of the Deity than those which he has dictated to us as within the reach of our understanding, and fit and proper for us to entertain? So also with angelic beings: Milton dismisses the nine orders of the apocryphal hierarchy--although he enumerates five of them, in the wrong order, in the roll of that recurring verse-- Thrones, Dominations, Princedoms, Virtues, Powers-- and bases himself upon Scripture. There he finds mention of seven chief angels, with some kind of pre-eminence enjoyed by Michael. In the poem he finds employment for only four, Michael, Gabriel, Raphael, and Uriel, with a few Seraphim and Cherubim, to whom he invariably, and very improperly, assigns a subordinate position. His angels fight and play games, as they were doing at the gate of Paradise on the evening when Satan first appeared there. They wear solid armour, and so fall a ready prey to the artillery of their foes-- Unarmed they might Have easily, as spirits, evaded swift By quick contraction or remove; but now Foul dissipation followed, and forced rout. They eat and drink and digest; they even--and here, though we be armed with triple brass, we cannot avoid a sense of shock--they even blush when an indiscreet question is asked of them. When Raphael colours at the inquisitive demands of Adam, it gives a melancholy force to his earlier suggestion-- What if Earth Be but the shadow of Heaven, and things therein Each to other like more than on Earth is thought? This is the scheme of things, and these are the actors, that Milton sets in motion. We shall do well to accept the limitations he assigns, and to look in his poem only for what is to be found there. It would be a wearisome and fruitless quest to journey through the _Paradise Lost_ in search of those profound touches of humanity, and those sudden felicities of insight, which abound in the Elizabethans. Subtleties of thought, fine observation of truths that almost evade the attempt to express them, sentences and figures illuminative of the mysteries of human destiny and the intricacies of human character--of all these there is none. If an author's works are to be used as a treasury or garner of wise and striking sayings, the harvest of sensibility and experience, _Paradise Lost_ will yield only a poor handful of gleanings. One such reflection, enforced by a happy figure, occurs in the Third Book, where Satan, disguised as a youthful Cherub, deceives the Archangel Uriel-- So spake the false dissembler unperceived; For neither man nor angel can discern Hypocrisy--the only evil that walks Invisible, except to God alone, By His permissive will, through Heaven and Earth; And oft, though Wisdom wake, Suspicion sleeps At Wisdom's gate, and to Simplicity Resigns her charge, while Goodness thinks no ill Where no ill seems. Milton plainly had known hypocrisy, and had been deceived by it. But it would be difficult to match this reflection with any single other passage in the whole poem. To say that such reflections are common in Shakespeare would be too moderate a statement; they are the very air he breathes. And even in the lesser dramatists the happy embodiment of observation in a telling figure is to be found on every page. An acute criticism, for instance, is condensed in a dramatic form by Ford, where he describes what may be called low politeness-- Smooth formality Is usher to the rankness of the blood, But impudence bears up the train. The peculiar combination of formality and impudence that marks ill-breeding was never more happily described than in this figure; the mock solemnity of the usher comes first, and is soon followed by the grimacing antics of the page, while each in his own way implies that the advances of courtesy are a pomp and a deceit. Metaphors of the same kind abound in the work of more modern analytic poets. Here is another parable of a door-keeper, more poetic than Milton's:-- They say that Pity in Love's service dwells, A porter at the rosy temple's gate. I missed him going; but it is my fate To come upon him now beside his wells; Whereby I know that I Love's temple leave, And that the purple doors have closed behind. In Milton's poetry we find ourselves in a remote atmosphere; far indeed from the shrewd observation of daily life, farther even from that wonderful analysis of emotion which is the pastime of Shakespeare and of Meredith. Beautiful figured writing and keen psychological observation of this kind are beside the purpose of Milton, and beyond his power. For the time we must forego the attempt to see into the life of things, and must accept in imagination our position as citizens in this strange majestic commonwealth of angels and men. It is no mean city. Noble shapes pass before our eyes. High language is held, and great wars are waged. Events of tremendous import roll on to their destined accomplishment. Golden processions move across the dim expanse of Chaos. Worlds are blown and broken like bubbles. There is concerted song, feasting, and gratulation; dire plots are hatched and blaze forth into light; will clashes with will; Heaven opens, and a torrent of flaming ruin is poured forth into the deep. The Victor, ensconced in his omnipotence, is fiercely triumphant; and in the dark below there is the dull gleam of unconquered pride, deadly courage, and immortal despair. But in the midst of all this vast rivalry of interests and jar of opposed systems, a cry is heard, like that muffled cry which caught Macbeth's ear as he nerved himself for his last fight. It is the cry of the human soul, left homeless and derelict in a universe where she is the only alien. For her the amaranth of the empyreal Heaven is as comfortless as the adamant of Hell. She has lost her Paradise even while Adam's was building--the Paradise where the flowers fade, and loves and hates are mortal. In the poem itself signs are not wanting that Milton felt the terrible strain imposed upon him by the intense and prolonged abstraction of his theme--its unreality and superhuman elevation. Some of the comparisons that he chooses to illustrate scenes in Hell are taken from the incidents of simple rustic life, and by their contrast with the lurid creatures of his imagination come like a draught of cold water to a traveller in a tropical waste of sand and thorns. It is almost as if the poet himself were oppressed by the suffocation of the atmosphere that he has created, and, gasping for breath, sought relief by summoning up to remembrance the sweet security of pastoral life. So, when the devils are shrunk to enter Pandemonium, they are compared to Faery elves Whose midnight revels, by a forest-side Or fountain, some belated peasant sees, Or dreams he sees, while overhead the Moon Sits arbitress, and nearer to the Earth Wheels her pale course. The rejoicings, again, at the end of the infernal consultation, are described in a figure that makes a like impression, and brings the same momentary relief-- As, when from mountain-tops the dusky clouds Ascending, while the North-wind sleeps, o'erspread Heaven's cheerful face, the louring element Scowls o'er the darkened landskip snow or shower, If chance the radiant sun, with farewell sweet, Extend his evening beam, the fields revive, The birds their notes renew, and bleating herds Attest their joy, that hill and valley rings. The splendid artifice of contrast, noted by De Quincey as one of the subtlest of Milton's devices, is illustrated, perhaps, by both these passages. De Quincey instances neither, but chooses, as examples of the way in which two images may act and react, heightening each other by contrast--first, the use of architectural terms in describing Paradise; next, the exhibition of a banquet in the desert in _Paradise Regained_--"stimulating the sense of its utter solitude and remotion from men and cities"; and, last and best, the comparison of Satan, in the same poem, to an old man gathering sticks upon a winter's day. "The household image of old age, of human infirmity, and of domestic hearths, are all meant as a machinery for provoking and soliciting the fearful idea to which they are placed in collision, and as so many repelling poles." This is clever criticism and true philosophy. But the chief effect from the more elaborate figures of this kind is to be found merely in the reprieve and refreshment that they bring. There is a sense of pathos, almost of tears, in being allowed, for one moment only, to taste reality again, to revisit familiar scenes, before we are once more bound on the slow wheel of unnatural events that is urged forward by the poet. Nothing in Eden comes home to the feelings more directly than the simile used to describe Satan as he watches Eve on the morning of the temptation-- As one who, long in populous city pent, Where houses thick and sewers annoy the air, Forth issuing on a summer's morn, to breathe Among the pleasant villages and farms Adjoined, from each thing met conceives delight-- The smell of grain, or tedded grass, or kine, Or dairy, each rural sight, each rural sound-- If chance with nymph-like step fair virgin pass, What pleasing seemed for her now pleases more, She most, and in her look sums all delight: Such pleasure took the Serpent to behold This flowery plot, the sweet recess of Eve. The Serpent is glad to escape from Hell, to breathe the morning air of Eden. But how glad we are to escape from Eden To breathe Among the pleasant villages and farms! There are no villages and farms in Eden, no smell of hay, no sheaves of corn, no cottages, no roads, and no trace of that most human of symbols, the thin blue scarf of smoke rising from a wayside encampment. Even when we are privileged to assist at the first festal celebration of hospitality on Earth, the dinner given to the Angel, for which Eve gathers Fruit of all kinds, in coat Rough or smooth rined, or bearded husk, or shell, and heaps them, with bountiful hand, on the table of raised turf, we are not perfectly at ease with our hosts. Not all the dignity of Adam, nor all the beauty of Eve, can make us forget that they are nut-eaters, that they have not the art of cooking, and do not ferment the juice of the grape. A short stay in Eden teaches us the sad truth that we are dependent, not only for the pleasures of our life, but even for many of the dearest pleasures of our imagination, on the devices "introduced by the necessities of sin." We cannot settle down in the midst of this "enormous bliss"; we wander through the place, open-mouthed with wonder, like country visitors admiring the Crown jewels, and then--we long to be at home. There are no children in any of Milton's poems. The introduction, in _Paradise Lost_, of a real human child, such as Shakespeare brings into _Coriolanus_ or _Macbeth_, would be like the bringing of a spark of fire into a powder magazine. None of these edifying speeches could be made in the presence of such an auditor, or such a critic. The whole system would be blown into fragments; the artificial perspective that Milton preserves with so great care would lose its glamour at a touch. Hell and Heaven and Eden would dissolve away like the baseless fabric of a vision, a scholar's nightmare, if once they were subjected to the free scrutiny of a child. _Paradise Lost_ will not bear--it could at no time, not even in the most theological of ages, have borne--the more searching tests of realism, of verisimilitude, and credibility. It is all the greater skill in the poet that by his careful handling of our imagination and feelings he actually does produce "that willing suspension of disbelief for the moment which constitutes poetic faith." The less it will endure the trial as a system or theory of the universe, the more wonderful does it appear as a work of art. By the most delicate skill of architecture this gigantic filamented structure has been raised into the air. It looks like some enchanted palace that has lighted on the ground for a moment, resting in its flight. It is really the product of the most elaborate and careful engineering science; the strains and stresses put on every part of the material have been calculated and allowed for. The poise and balance are so minutely exact that it just stands, and no more. But that it should stand at all is the marvel, seeing that it is spanned on frail arches over the abyss of the impossible, the unnatural, and the grotesque. Let it be granted that, in its main features, the system of _Paradise Lost_ does correspond with what was and is the religious creed of not a few people. There is many a religious creed, strongly held, which is convincing enough until the imagination begins to work it out in detail, to try to realise it, in a clear light, as a connected whole. Then either the imagination or the creed must give way. The remarkable thing about Milton's achievement is that _Paradise Lost_ is both a creed and a cosmical scheme of imagination, and that, except here and there, it is impossible to point to parts of the poem and say, "Here he ceased to believe," or "Here he gave up the effort to imagine." He both imagined and believed throughout; he projected himself, like a sleep-walker, into the mammoth caves of his antediluvian dreams, and lived among his own radiant and shadowy creations. We need not, therefore, be surprised to find that, in the first place, his daughters ran wild, and neither liked nor understood their father; and that, in the second place, for the rendering of his thought he invented a system of preternaturally majestic diction, perfectly fitted for the utterance of his own conceptions, but, when divorced from those conceptions, so monstrously artificial in effect, that his imitators and followers, hoisting themselves on the Miltonic stilts, brought the very name of "poetic diction" into a contempt that has lasted for more than a century, and is not yet wholly extinct. CHAPTER IV PARADISE LOST: THE ACTORS. THE LATER POEMS The difficulties which Milton felt and conquered in the making of his epic masterpiece had their origin, for the most part, in the intractable and barren nature of his chosen theme. The dangers that beset him, and sometimes tripped his feet, arose, on the other hand, from his own declared intention in the handling of that theme:-- That, to the highth of this great argument, I may assert Eternal Providence And justify the ways of God to men. The pursuit of this argumentative end led him through strange passes. A less courageous or a more sensitive man might well have hesitated at the entrance. But Milton hesitated at nothing. The ultimate mysteries of human existence and Divine government were no mysteries to him. The living Throne, the sapphire blaze, Where angels tremble, while they gaze, He saw; --and he did not tremble. His persons are visible, their characters are known, the nature of their relations is easily ascertained and expounded. Everything, in short, is as plain as a pikestaff. So he came to picture scenes which criticism is reluctant to traverse, and to make statements which it is equally irreverent either to affirm or to deny. Dr. Johnson, with a fearful and sincere piety, refused to follow Milton into Heaven. "Of the agents in the poem," he says, "the chief are such as it is irreverence to name on slight occasions." And again:--"The characters in the _Paradise Lost_ which admit of examination are those of angels and of man." It is impossible not to respect Johnson's attitude, but later critics have found it difficult to follow his example, and Milton himself would have been the last to claim sanctuary in Heaven for the imaginations on which the whole fabric of the poem depends. Coleridge is one of the very few critics who have praised the conduct of the celestial part of the story:--"Wherever God is represented as acting directly as Creator, without any exhibition of his own essence, Milton adopts the simplest and sternest language of the Scriptures.... But, as some personal interest was demanded for the purposes of poetry, Milton takes advantage of the dramatic representation of God's address to the Son, the Filial Alterity, and in _those addresses_ slips in, as it were by stealth, language of affection, or thought, or sentiment.... He was very wise in adopting the strong anthropomorphism of the Hebrew Scriptures at once." Yet this is hardly an answer to the chief objections that have been urged against Milton's conduct of the poem. These are grounded, not on his adoption of the strong anthropomorphism of the Hebrew Scriptures, but on the nature of the matter that he slips in, "as if by stealth," and the character that he attributes to his Divine persons. Had he been a pagan, pure and simple, he might have been frankly and explicitly materialistic in his conceptions. Had he been touched by the spirit of the greatest of Christian poets, he might have shrouded the Godhead in a mystery of silence and light. But he had something to prove to the men of his own time, and neither course served him. Milton's theodicy is of his own devising, and is neither Catholic nor Calvinist. His heresies may be reduced to a single point; the ultimate basis on which he rests the universe is political, not religious. The fierce simplicity of his processes of thought here led him straight into a trap. Law to him is an expression of Will, enforced by due penalties. As promulgated by human authority, laws are to be obeyed only if they do not clash with the dictates of a higher Power. The laws of God are subject to no such restraint. They are; and, save by faith, there is no further word to be said. But Milton had set himself to justify these laws by reason. Destitute as he was of speculative power, he attempted no transcendental amalgam of diverse conceptions, of Love and Law, of Mercy and Justice. He fell back on Law as the naked assertion of Will, and helped out the ancient argument of the pot and the potter with a utilitarian appeal, which he puts into the mouth of a Seraph, to the happy working of the Divine laws in practice. So it comes about that the main argument of the poem is founded on an outrage done to religion. In the place and under the name of Him "with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning," Milton set up in Heaven a whimsical Tyrant, all of whose laws are arbitrary and occasional, and who exacts from his creatures an obedience that differs from brute submission in one point only, that by the gift of free-will it is put within their power to disobey. His commands, like his laws, are issued from time to time. Sometimes they enjoin the impossible on his subjects; as when Michael and Gabriel, at the head of the heavenly host, are ordered to drive Satan and his crew out of Heaven into the abyss--a task they prove wholly unable to accomplish. Sometimes orders are given merely as an assertion of power, and to test submission; as when Raphael is sent to keep the rebels confined in Hell, and explains subsequently to Adam:-- Not that they durst without his leave attempt; But us he sends upon his high behests For state, as sovran King, and to inure Our prompt obedience. The particular event with which, according to Milton, the whole history begins is presented with a crudity that would have horrified the Fathers. The appointment of a Vicegerent to the Almighty, and the edict requiring homage to be done to him, are announced "on a day" to the host of Angels assembled by special summons for this purpose. During the night following, one of the chief Archangels, thereafter called Satan, draws off his forces to the north under pretext of preparing a welcome for the new Commander, who is to make a progress through his domain, promulgating more new laws. The purpose of the rebels is discerned by the All-Knowing, who makes this strange speech to the Son:-- Let us advise, and to this hazard draw With speed what force is left, and all employ In our defence, lest unawares we lose This our high place, our sanctuary, our hill. It is unnecessary to quote more of the speeches in Heaven; they are tangles of Scriptural phrase, from which there can be extracted neither good divinity nor good humanity. "The glory of God," says the Wisdom of Solomon, "is to conceal a thing; the glory of the King is to find it out." But the glory of Milton's Deity is to explain a thing. The proud voluble candour of some of these speeches reminds us only of the author of _A Defence of the People of England_. In some of them there is even a flavour of uneasy boastfulness, as of one who is anxious not to be lessened in the estimation of the rebel adversary. It may be pleaded that the epical necessities of the poem imposed finite conceptions, of one sort or another, upon Milton; and that, when once he had begun to define and explain, he was carried further and further along that perilous way without being fully conscious of whither he was tending. Yet his persistent accumulation of harsh and dread traits seems wilful in its nature; he bases his description, no doubt, on hints from Scripture, but he pays no attention to any that do not fall in with his own narrow and gloomy conception. Satan is permitted to rise from the burning lake-- That with reiterated crimes he might Heap on himself damnation. When he arrives at the foot of the stairway that joins Heaven and the World-- The stairs were then let down, whether to dare The Fiend by easy ascent, or aggravate His sad exclusion from the doors of bliss. Astronomy, it is suggested by "the affable Archangel," has perhaps been made a difficult subject in order to produce the droll fallacies of astronomers: He his fabric of the Heavens Hath left to their disputes--perhaps to move His laughter at their quaint opinions wide. And this conjecture is borne out by what happened when the builders of the tower of Babel were frustrated, for then-- Great laughter was in Heaven, And looking down to see the hubbub strange And hear the din. Milton, in short, has hardened the heart of the God that hardened Pharaoh's heart, and has narrowed his love and his power. Some kind of internal blindness must have visited him if he did not perceive what must inevitably be the effect of all this on the sympathies and interest of the reader. And the irony of the thing is that his own sympathies were not proof against the trial that he had devised for them. He lavished all his power, all his skill, and, in spite of himself, the greater part of his sympathy, on the splendid figure of Satan. He avoids calling _Paradise Lost_ "an heroic poem"; when it was printed, in 1667, the title-page ran merely--_Paradise Lost, A Poem in Ten Books_. Had he inserted the word "heroic," the question as to who is the hero would have been broached at once. And to that question, if it be fairly faced, only one answer can be given,--the answer that has already been given by Dryden and Goethe, by Lord Chesterfield and Professor Masson. It was not for nothing that Milton stultified the professed moral of his poem, and emptied it of all spiritual content. He was not fully conscious, it seems, of what he was doing; but he builded better than he knew. A profound poetic instinct taught him to preserve epic truth at all costs. And the epic value of _Paradise Lost_ is centred in the character and achievements of Satan. Satan unavoidably reminds us of Prometheus, and although there are essential differences, we are not made to feel them essential. His very situation as the fearless antagonist of Omnipotence makes him either a fool or a hero, and Milton is far indeed from permitting us to think him a fool. The nobility and greatness of his bearing are brought home to us in some half-dozen of the finest poetic passages in the world. The most stupendous of the poet's imaginative creations are made the foil for a greater than themselves. Was ever terror more magnificently embodied than in the phantom figure of Death?-- The other Shape-- If shape it might be called that shape had none Distinguishable in member, joint, or limb; Or substance might be called that shadow seemed, For each seemed either--black it stood as Night, Fierce as ten Furies, terrible as Hell, And shook a dreadful dart: what seemed his head The likeness of a kingly crown had on. Satan was now at hand, and from his seat The monster moving onward came as fast With horrid strides; Hell trembled as he strode. This is the passage that drew from Burke a rapture of praise. But as it stands in the poem its elevation is a scaffolding merely, whence we may view the greatness of Satan:-- The undaunted Fiend what this might be admired-- Admired, not feared (God and his Son except, Created thing naught valued he nor shunned). The same magnificent effect of suggestion is wrought even more subtly in the scene where Satan approaches the throne Of _Chaos_, and his dark pavilion spread Wide on the wasteful Deep. Courteously and fearlessly Satan addresses himself to the monarch of the nethermost abyss. His speech contains no threats; he asks guidance in his quest; and, with politic forethought, promises that that quest, if successful, shall restore an outlying lost province to Chaos. There is nothing in his words to cause consternation; but the King is afraid:-- Him thus the anarch old, With faltering speech and visage incomposed, Answered:--"I know thee, stranger, who thou art-- That mighty leading Angel, who of late Made head against Heaven's King, though overthrown." In the war on the plains of Heaven Satan ranges up and down the fighting line, like Cromwell; he fortifies his comrades to endurance, and encourages them to attack. In Hell he stands like a tower:-- His form had yet not lost All her original brightness, nor appeared Less than Archangel ruined, and the excess Of glory obscured. In his contests with Michael in Heaven and with Gabriel on Earth he never falls below himself:-- "If I must contend," said he, "Best with the best--the sender, not the sent; Or all at once." But his motive passions, it is objected, were envy, ambition, and hate, and his end was a crime. To which objection a modern poet has replied that a crime will serve as a measure for the spirit. Certainly to Satan there could never be imputed the sin of "the unlit lamp and the ungirt loin." And Milton has not left him devoid of the gentlest passion, the passion of pity:-- Cruel his eye, but cast Signs of remorse and passion, to behold The fellows of his crime, the followers rather (Far other once beheld in bliss), condemned For ever now to have their lot in pain-- Millions of Spirits for his fault amerced Of Heaven, and from eternal splendours flung For his revolt--yet faithful how they stood, Their glory withered. Thrice he attempts to address them, and thrice-- in spite of scorn Tears, such as Angels weep, burst forth. His followers are devotedly attached to him; they admire him "that for the general safety he despised his own"; and the only scene of rejoicing recorded in the annals of Hell, before the Fall of Man, is at the dissolution of the Stygian Council, when the devils come forth "rejoicing in their matchless Chief." As if of set purpose to raise Satan high above the heads of the other Archangels, Milton devises a pair of similar scenes, in Heaven and in Hell. In the one Satan takes upon himself the unknown dangers of the enterprise that has been approved by the assembly. In the other, which occurs in the very next book, the Heavenly Powers are addressed from the Throne, and asked-- "Which of ye will be mortal, to redeem Man's mortal crime, and just, the unjust to save? Dwells in all Heaven charity so dear?" He asked, but all the Heavenly Quire stood mute, And silence was in Heaven: on Man's behalf Patron or intercessor none appeared-- Much less that durst upon his own head draw The deadly forfeiture, and ransom set. No wonder that Landor--although in another place he declares that Adam is the hero of _Paradise Lost_, and that "there is neither truth nor wit" in giving that name to Satan--is nevertheless startled by this passage into the comment, "I know not what interest Milton could have had in making Satan so august a creature, and so ready to share the dangers and sorrows of the angels he had seduced. I know not, on the other hand, what could have urged him to make the better ones so dastardly that even at the voice of their Creator not one among them offered his service to rescue from eternal perdition the last and weakest of intellectual beings." When Satan first comes in sight of Paradisal bliss and the new-created pair, here surely was a chance for attributing to him the foul passions of envy and hate unalloyed? On the contrary, he is struck with admiration for their grace and infused divinity. He could love and pity them--so he muses--though himself unpitied. He seeks alliance with them, and is prepared to give them a share in all he has--which, it must be allowed, is the spirit of true hospitality. He feels it beneath him to attack innocence and helplessness, but public reasons compel him to do what otherwise he would abhor:-- So spake the Fiend, and with necessity, The tyrant's plea, excused his devilish deeds. But no imputation is cast on the sincerity of the plea, and we are left to conceive of Satan as of a lover of beauty reluctantly compelled to shatter it in the pursuit of his high political aims. In the same way, when he finds Eve alone, on the morning of the temptation, he is disarmed by her beauty and innocence, and, for a spell, is struck "stupidly good." Truly, Adam might boast, with Gibbon, that he fell by a noble hand. It is possible that by the time he had completed the Fourth Book, Milton became uneasy as to the effect he was producing. Up to that point magnanimity and courage had been almost the monopoly of Satan. He had been the Great Dissenter, the undaunted and considerate leader of an outcast minority. But now, in the description of the war in Heaven, there came a chance of doing something to right the balance. Milton makes the most of the episode of Abdiel, who has been led away with the rest of Satan's followers, upon false pretences, and who, when he discovers the true purpose of the expedition, makes a lonely stand for the right:-- Among the faithless faithful only he; ... Nor number nor example with him wrought To swerve from truth, or change his constant mind, Though single. And Abdiel, when he meets Satan again after the outbreak of the war, glories in his nonconformity, and hisses out defiance:-- Thou seest All are not of thy train; there be who faith Prefer, and piety to God, though then To thee not visible when I alone Seemed in thy world erroneous to dissent From all: my Sect thou seest; now learn too late How few sometimes may know when thousands err. In this way Milton attempted to allay his scruples, and to divide the honours of dissent. Later on, after the Fall, when Satan returns to Hell with tidings of his exploit, the change of all the devils to serpents, and of their applause to "a dismal universal hiss" was perhaps devised to cast a slur upon the success of his mission. Some critics have professed to discern a certain progressive degradation and shrinkage in Satan as the poem proceeds. But his original creation lived on in the imagination and memory of Milton, and was revived, with an added pathos, in _Paradise Regained_. The most moving of all Satan's speeches is perhaps the long pleading there made in answer to the challenge of Christ, and its tone of unutterable despair is deepened by the terrible severity of the speech made in answer. The other leaders of the rebel troops take little part in the action outside the scene of the Infernal Council. In his memories of the Long Parliament Milton could easily find examples of the types he has embodied under the names of Belial, Mammon, Moloch, and Beelzebub. Nor has he forgotten the Westminster Assembly of divines. The precise employments of that historic body are described by him as the recreation of the lost spirits:-- Others apart sat on a hill retired, In thoughts more elevate, and reasoned high Of Providence, Foreknowledge, Will, and Fate-- Fixed fate, free will, foreknowledge absolute-- And found no end, in wandering mazes lost. It ill became Milton to cast contempt on these reasonings, seeing that a whole system of them was necessary for the argument of his poem. He is so little of a philosopher that he seems hardly to be conscious of the difficulties of his own theory. Both in _Paradise Lost_ and in the _Treatise of Christian Doctrine_ he enlarges with much dogmatism and some arrogance on the difference between foreknowledge and foreordination. He rejects predestination decisively, but he not only does not answer, he does not even so much as mention, the difficulty that arises in attempting to distinguish between what is foreordained by Omniscience and what is foreknown by Omnipotence. Pope compared some of the speeches delivered in Heaven to the arguments of a "School-divine." The comparison does injustice to the scholastic philosophers. There was never one of them who could have walked into a metaphysical bramble-bush with the blind recklessness that Milton displays. It is time to return to Eden and its inhabitants. They have little to do but "to lop and prune and prop and bind," to adore their Maker, and to avoid the prohibited tree. It would perhaps have been impossible for a poet with more dramatic genius than Milton to make these favourites of Heaven interesting in their happy state, while yet the key that was to admit them to our world of adventure and experience, of suffering and achievement, hung untouched on a tree. And Adam, from the wealth of his inexperience, is lavishly sententious; when anything is to do, even if it is only to go to sleep, he does it in a high style, and makes a speech. Milton plainly saw the danger of arousing a sense of incongruity and ludicrous disproportion from the contest between these harmless tame creatures and the great forces of Satan's empire. So he makes man strong in innocence, and, unlike the fallen angels, exempt from all physical pain or wound. He even goes so far as to make Satan afraid of Adam, of his heroic build and intellectual power. This last, it might be said, is a fear not explained by anything that we are privileged to hear from the lips of Adam himself; but perhaps, in the case of our great ancestor, we shall do well to remember Hamlet's advice to the players, "Follow that lord, and look you mock him not." There remains a more important person--Eve. And with Eve, since the beginning of Milton criticism, there enter all those questions concerning the comparative worthiness and the relative authority of husband and wife which critics of Milton so often and so gladly step aside to discuss. Every one knows the line:-- He for God only, she for God in him. Almost every one knows the lines:-- Nothing lovelier can be found In woman than to study household good, And good works in her husband to promote. Milton certainly shared the views of Knox concerning the "Monstrous Regiment of Women." It is unnecessary to meet him on his own ground, or to attempt a theory that shall explain or control Eve, Cleopatra, Joan of Arc, Catherine of the Medici, Mary Powell, and others of their sex. Such theories prove only that man is a generalising and rationalising animal. The poet brought his fate on himself, for since Eve was the mother of mankind, he thought fit to make her the embodiment of a doctrine. But he also (a thing of far deeper interest) coloured his account by the introduction of personal memories and feelings. Of Eve, at least, he never writes indifferently. When he came to write _Samson Agonistes_, the intensity of his feelings concerning Dalila caused him to deviate from the best Greek tradition and to assign inappropriate matter to the Chorus. And even in his matter-of-fact _History of Britain_, the name of Boadicea awakens him to a fit of indignation with the Britons who upheld her rule. There is full scope in _Paradise Lost_ for similar expressions of indignation. Adam, after the Fall, speaks of his wife as Not to be trusted--longing to be seen Though by the Devil himself. In the Eleventh Book the daughters of men are described as bred only to sing, to dance, To dress, and troll the tongue, and roll the eye. But Milton, it is sometimes forgotten, was also the author of that beautiful eulogy of Eve in the Eighth Book:-- When I approach Her loveliness, so absolute she seems And in herself complete, so well to know Her own, that what she wills to do or say Seems wisest, virtuousest, discreetest, best. All higher Knowledge in her presence falls Degraded; Wisdom in discourse with her Loses, discountenanced, and like Folly shows; Authority and Reason on her wait, As one intended first, not after made Occasionally; and, to consummate all, Greatness of mind and nobleness their seat Build in her loveliest, and create an awe About her, as a guard angelic placed. It is an exact parallel to Florizel's praise of Perdita in _The Winter's Tale_:-- When you speak, sweet, I'd have you do it ever: when you sing, I'd have you buy and sell so, so give alms, Pray so; and, for the ordering your affairs, To sing them too; when you do dance, I wish you A wave o' the sea, that you might ever do Nothing but that; move still, still so, And own no other function: each your doing, So singular in each particular, Crowns what you are doing in the present deed, That all your acts are queens. But Florizel addresses his praise to the lady herself; while Adam, who had never been young, confides it in private to Raphael, after dinner, and studies a more instructive and authoritative strain in his conversations with Eve. And now comes a point worthy of remark. The Angel, to whom, it cannot be doubted, Milton committed the exposition of his own views, after hearing this confession, frowns, and administers a tart reproof. He describes Eve, somewhat grudgingly, as "an outside--fair, no doubt," and peremptorily teaches Adam the duties of self-appreciation and self-assertion:-- Oft-times nothing profits more Than self-esteem, grounded on just and right Well managed. Of that skill the more thou know'st, The more she will acknowledge thee her head, And to realities yield all her shows. And in the sequel, Adam bitterly laments that he had failed to profit by this advice. He might have been comforted by the wisdom of Chaucer's Franklin:-- When maistrie cometh, the god of love anon Beteth his wynges and, farewel, he is gon! The explanation of all this is clear to see. Milton was not, as he has sometimes been described, a callous and morose Puritan. He was extraordinarily susceptible to the attractions of feminine beauty and grace. Adam's confession is his own. But the ideal of character that he had put before himself caused him passionately to resent this susceptibility. It was the joint in his harness, the main breach in his Stoicism, the great anomaly in a life regulated as for his Task-master. He felt that beauty was a power not himself, unbalancing and disturbing the rational self-centred poise of his soul. There have been poets whose service of Venus Verticordia was whole-hearted. But to Milton the power of Beauty was a magnetism to be distrusted for its very strength. He felt something of what he makes Satan express, that there is terror in love and beauty "not approached by stronger hate." The Chorus in _Samson Agonistes_ makes a similar observation:-- Yet beauty, though injurious, hath strange power After offence returning, to regain Love once possessed. To escape from the dominion of the tyrant is the duty of a wise man. When Raphael remarked that "Love ... hath his seat in Reason, and is judicious," he committed himself to a statement which a longer experience of the world would have enabled him to correct. But Milton wished it true; and perhaps even lured himself into a belief of its truth. At any rate, when Satan, in _Paradise Regained_, expounds his opinion on the matter, it is found, for once, to be in substantial agreement with Raphael's:-- Beauty stands In the admiration only of weak minds Led captive; cease to admire, and all her plumes Fall flat, and shrink into a trivial toy, At every sudden slighting quite abashed. It is a great loss to literature that Mrs. Millamant, the delightful heroine of Congreve's comedy, was no reader of Milton. Her favourite author was Suckling:-- I prithee spare me, gentle boy, Press me no more for that slight toy, That foolish trifle of a heart. If she had a copy of the _Paradise Regained_, doubtless it stood in some conspicuous place, and was never opened,--like Mrs. Wishfort's "books over the chimney--Quarles and Prynne, and 'The Short View of the Stage,' with Bunyan's works, to entertain you." But all unawares she has answered the contention of Satan:--"O the vanity of these men!--Fainall, d'ye hear him? If they did not commend us, we were not handsome! Now you must know that they could not commend one, if one was not handsome. Beauty the lover's gift!--Lord, what is a lover, that it can give? ... One no more owes one's beauty to a lover than one's wit to an echo." Like most men of an impressionable temperament and a strong will, Milton was not sympathetic, nor curious to place himself where he might see the world from a point of view other than his own. Besieged by their sensations and impressions, concerned above all things with maintaining their opinions and enforcing their beliefs on others, such men find enough to do within the citadel of their own personality. To judge from some passages of his works, one half of the human race was to Milton an illusion to which the other half was subject. One who is in love with his own ideas cannot but be disappointed alike with existing institutions and with the tissue of surprises that is a person. Milton's disappointment, which had inspired the early Divorce pamphlets, finds renewed expression in Adam's prophecy of unhappy marriages--a notable parallel to the similar prophecy in _Venus and Adonis_-- For either He never shall find out fit mate, but such As some misfortune brings him, or mistake; Or whom he wishes most shall seldom gain, Through her perverseness, but shall see her gained By a far worse; or, if she love, withheld By parents; or his happiest choice too late Shall meet, already linked and wedlock-bound To a fell adversary, his hate or shame. But, with all this, of our two grand parents Eve is the better drawn and the more human. Milton did not intend that it should be so, but he could not help it. One consequence of the doctrine-- He for God only, she for God in him-- is that Adam's single impulse of unselfishness, whereby he elects to share the offence and punishment of Eve, is a vice in him, a "bad compliance." Self-abnegation, the duty of Eve, is hardly within the right of Adam; and Dr. Johnson expressed a half-truth in violently paradoxical terms when he said that Milton "thought woman made only for obedience and man only for rebellion." It would be truer, and weaker, to say that Milton thought woman made for the exercise of private, and man for the exercise of public, virtues. Hence in their mutual relations Eve carries off all the honours, for her duty towards Adam coincides with her inclination, while in his case the two are at variance. There is no speech of Adam's to be matched with the pleading intensity of Eve's appeal, beginning--"Forsake me not thus, Adam!"--and to her Milton commits the last and best speech spoken in Paradise:-- But now lead on; In me is no delay; with thee to go Is to stay here; without thee here to stay Is to go hence unwilling; thou to me Art all things under Heaven, all places thou, Who for my wilful crime art banished hence. She is generous and loving; her only reproach addressed to Adam is that he acceded to her request, and permitted her, on that fateful morning, to do her gardening alone, among the roses and myrtles. She is a fair companion picture to set over against Dalila, and is utterly incapable of Dalila's hypocrisy in justifying private treachery by reasons of public policy. There is even a certain dramatic development in her character; after she has eaten of the fruit, audacity and deceit appear in her reflections; she meditates withholding from Adam the advantages of the tree, in order that she may become-- More equal, and perhaps-- A thing not undesirable--sometimes Superior. It is easy to understand how tired Eve might well become (even before the fallacious fruit was tasted) of Adam's carefully maintained superiority. On thinking, however, of the judgment that she may have to suffer, and of her own death, she resolves to draw him in, her motive being not fear, but a sudden movement of jealousy at the thought of-- Adam wedded to another Eve. This is as near an approach to drama in the handling of a human situation as is to be found in all _Paradise Lost_. But enough of this vein of criticism, which is justified only by the pleasure of detecting Milton too imperfectly concealed behind his handiwork. To treat the scenes he portrays as if analysis of character were his aim, and truth of psychology his touchstone, is to do a wrong to the artist. He is an epic, not a dramatic, poet; to find him at his best we must look at those passages of unsurpassed magnificence wherein he describes some noble or striking attitude, some strong or majestic action, in its outward physical aspect. In this, the loftiest part of his task, his other defects, as if by some hidden law of compensation, are splendidly redeemed. While he deals with abstract thought or moral truth his handling is tight, pedantic, and disagreeably hard. But when he comes to describe his epic personages and his embodied visions, all is power, and vagueness, and grandeur. His imagination, escaped from the narrow prison of his thought, rises like a vapour, and, taking shape before his eyes, proclaims itself his master. No other poet has known so well how to portray, in a few strokes, effects of multitude and vastness. Now it is the sacred congregation in Heaven:-- About him all the Sanctities of Heaven Stood thick as stars, and from his sight received Beatitude past utterance. Now the warrior host of Hell:-- He spake; and, to confirm his words, outflew Millions of flaming swords, drawn from the thighs Of mighty Cherubim; the sudden blaze Far round illumined Hell. In these, as in other like scenes, he preserves epic unity by throwing the whole into the distance. So after the approach of the Messiah to battle, "the poet," says Coleridge, "by one touch from himself--'far off their coming shone!'--makes the whole one image." He describes at a greater range of vision than any other poet: the frame-work of his single scenes is often not less than a third of universal space. When he has added figure to figure in the endeavour to picture the multitudinous disarray of the fallen Angels on the lake, one line suffices to reduce the whole spectacle to its due dimensions beneath that cavernous tent of darkness:-- He called so loud that all the hollow deep Of Hell resounded. The same effect of number and vastness, diminished and unified by the same reference to a larger setting, wherein all is seen at a glance, may be noted in the description of the raising of Satan's standard in Hell:-- The imperial ensign, which, full high advanced, Shone like a meteor streaming to the wind, With gems and golden lustre rich emblazed, Seraphic arms and trophies; all the while Sonorous metal blowing martial sounds: At which the universal host up-sent A shout that tore Hell's concave, and beyond Frighted the reign of Chaos and old Night. All in a moment through the gloom were seen Ten thousand banners rise into the air, With orient colours waving: with them rose A forest huge of spears; and thronging helms Appeared, and serried shields in thick array Of depth immeasureable. Sometimes a line or two gives him scope enough for the rendering of one of these epic scenes, immense and vivid. The ruin and prostration of the rebels is made visible in two lines:-- Cherub and Seraph rolling in the flood With scattered arms and ensigns. And the picture of the East rises at a touch:-- Dusk faces with white silken turbants wreathed. In the drawing of single attitudes Milton studies the same large decorum and majesty. He is never tempted into detail in the describing of gesture or action; never loses the whole in the part. The bulk of _Paradise Lost_ was written between the sixth and the thirteenth years of his blindness. Since the veil had fallen he had lived with the luminous shapes that he could picture against the dark. The human face had lost, in his recollection of it, something of its minuter delineation, but nothing of its radiance. On the other hand, the human figure, in its most significant gestures and larger movements, haunted his visions. His description of the appearance of the wife whom he had never seen is an early model of many of his later drawings. She comes to his bedside and leans over him, stretching forth her arms: Her face was veiled; yet to my fancied sight Love, sweetness, goodness, in her person shined So clear as in no face with more delight. Adam and Eve, as they are first seen in Paradise, have the same shining quality, the same vagueness of beauty expressing itself in purely emotional terms. Satan standing on the top of Mount Niphates, looking down on Eden spread out at his feet, and then with fierce gesticulation addressing himself to the sun at the zenith, is one of the dim solitary figures that dwell in the mind's eye. No less impressive and no less indefinite are those two monumental descriptions of the rebel leader; the first, of his going forth to war in Heaven:-- High in the midst, exalted as a God, The Apostate in his sun-bright chariot sat, Idol of majesty divine, enclosed With flaming Cherubim and golden shields. and the other, of his encounter with Gabriel:-- Satan, alarmed, Collecting all his might, dilated stood, Like Teneriff or Atlas, unremoved: His stature reached the sky, and on his crest Sat Horror plumed; nor wanted in his grasp What seemed both spear and shield. In these, and in a hundred other notable passages, the images are as simple and broad as the emotional effects that they produce,--the sun, flame, gold, a mountain, the sky. Some of the scenes and situations delineated by Milton are of a gentler and more elusive virtue than these terrors and sublimities. His descriptions of morning and evening are always charged with emotion--the quiet coming-on of night in Eden; or the break of day in the wilderness of the Temptation, with a sense of joy and relief "after a night of storm so ruinous." His feeling for the imaginative effects of architecture in a landscape is extraordinarily subtle. One, at least, of these effects is hardly to be experienced among the hedgerows and farmsteads and placid rambling towns of England. Travellers in Italy, or in the East, are better able to understand the transfiguration of a landscape by the distant view of a small compact array of walls and towers perched on a vantage-ground among the hills of the horizon. The lawlessness of Nature, the homelessness of the surface of the earth, and the fears that haunt uninhabited places, are all accentuated by the distrust that frowns from the battlements of such a stronghold of militant civility. For this reason, perhaps, the architectural features in certain pictures and drawings have an indescribable power of suggestion. The city, self-contained and fortified, overlooking a wide expanse of country, stands for safety and society; the little group of figures, parleying at the gate, or moving down into the plain, awakens in the mind a sense of far-off things,--the moving accidents of the great outer world, and the dangers and chances of the unknown. Bunyan, whose imagination was nourished on the Eastern scenery and sentiment of the Bible, shows himself powerfully affected by situations of this kind, as where, in the beginning of the _Pilgrim's Progress_, he describes the man with his face from his own home, running from the City of Destruction, and the group of his kindred calling after him to return:--"but the man put his fingers in his ears, and ran on crying, Life, Life, Eternal Life: so he looked not behind him, but fled towards the middle of the plain." Such another figure is Milton's Abdiel, who escaped from the rebel citadel-- And with retorted scorn his back he turned On those proud towers, to swift destruction doomed. The perils of his flight are vaguely indicated by a few admirable touches in the opening of the next Book:-- All night the dreadless Angel, unpursued, Through Heaven's wide champaign held his way, till Morn Waked by the circling Hours, with rosy hand Unbarred the gates of Light. A more signal instance of the same poetic effect is to be found in the wonderful close of _Paradise Lost_, where Adam and Eve are led down from the garden by the archangel Michael, and are left standing in the vast plain below:-- They, looking back, all the eastern side beheld Of Paradise, so late their happy seat, Waved over by that flaming brand; the gate With dreadful faces thronged and fiery arms. Some natural tears they dropped, but wiped them soon; The world was all before them, where to choose Their place of rest, and Providence their guide. They, hand in hand, with wandering steps and slow, Through Eden took their solitary way. Criticism might exhaust itself in the effort to do justice to the beauty of this close. Of Adam and Eve it may be truly said that none of all their doings in the garden became them like the leaving of it. Yet Addison and Bentley, the ornaments of a polite and learned age, are at one in their depreciation of the last two lines. Addison, after a formal apology for "the smallest Alteration in this divine Work," boldly recommends amputation; while Bentley, with the caution of a more experienced surgeon, offers to crutch the lines on certain wooden contrivances of his own. The three epithets, "wandering," "slow," and "solitary," are all censured by him. Our first parents, he remarks, were guided by Providence, and therefore needed not to wander; they were reassured by Michael's predictions, and so might well display an engaging briskness; while as for "their solitary way," they were no more solitary than in Paradise, "there being no Body besides Them Two, both here and there." He therefore suggests a distich more agreeable to the general scheme:-- Then hand in hand with social steps their way Through Eden took, with Heav'nly Comfort cheer'd It is impossible to answer such criticism; the organs of human speech are too frail. Let Bentley be left to contemplate with delight the hideous gash that his chopper has inflicted on the Miltonic rhythm of the last line. If Addison, for his part, had been less concerned with the opinions of M. Bossu, and the enumeration of the books of the _Æneid_, he might have found leisure to notice that the two later poems, _Paradise Regained_ and _Samson Agonistes_, are each brought to a close which exactly resembles the close of _Paradise Lost_. After the splendours in the last book of _Paradise Regained_--the fall of Satan, "smitten with amazement," from the pinnacle of the Temple, the elaborate classical comparisons of Antaeus and the Sphinx, and the triumphal chorus of Angels who bear the Son of God aloft with anthems of victory--the poem ends with the same exquisite lull:-- He, unobserved, Home to his mother's house private returned. And _Samson Agonistes_ brings as glorious a triumph to no less peaceful a close:-- And calm of mind, all passion spent. The dying fall is the same in all three, and is the form of ending preferred by the musical and poetic genius of Milton. Passages of a crowded and ostentatious magnificence are more frequent in _Paradise Lost_ than in either of the two later poems. In _Paradise Regained_ and _Samson Agonistes_ the enhanced severity of a style which rejects almost all ornament was due in part, no doubt, to a gradual change in Milton's temper and attitude. It is not so much that his power of imagination waned, as that his interest veered, turning more to thought and reflection, less to action and picture. In these two poems, at the last, he celebrated that better fortitude Of patience and heroic martyrdom which he had professed to sing in _Paradise Lost_. We are told by his nephew that he "could not bear with patience any such thing related to him" as that _Paradise Regained_ was inferior to _Paradise Lost_. He was right; its merits and beauties are of a different and more sombre kind, yet of a kind perhaps further out of the reach of any other poet than even the constellated glories of _Paradise Lost_ itself. It should be remembered that _Paradise Lost_, although it was written by Milton between the fiftieth and the fifty-seventh years of his age, was conceived by him, in its main outlines, not later than his thirty-fourth year. Two of the passages noticed above, where Satan addresses himself to the Sun and where the Angel leads Adam and Eve out of Paradise, embody situations which had appealed to his younger imagination. Some of the very words of Satan's address were written, we learn from Phillips, about 1642. And the expulsion of Adam and Eve seems to contain a reminiscence of the time when Milton was considering the history of Lot as a possible subject for an epic. The lines-- In either hand the hastening Angel caught Our lingering parents-- were perhaps suggested by the Scripture narrative--"And while he lingered, the men laid hold upon his hand, and upon the hand of his wife,... and they brought him forth, and set him without the city" (Genesis xix. 16). The gravity and density of the style of _Paradise Lost_ would have been beyond the power of youth, even of the youth of Milton; but the action of the poem, with all its vividness and vigour, could perhaps hardly have been first conceived in mature age. The composition was long deferred, so that in the decade which witnessed the production of all three great poems we see a strangely rapid development, or change rather, of manner. In _Paradise Lost_ Milton at last delivered himself of the work that had been brooding over him "with mighty wings outspread" during all the years of his manhood. But his imagination could not easily emancipate itself from that overmastering presence; and when he took up with a fresh task he gladly chose a theme closely related to the theme of _Paradise Lost_, and an opportunity of re-introducing some of the ancient figures. A kind-hearted, simple-minded, pig-headed young Quaker, called Thomas Ellwood, takes to himself credit for having suggested a sequel to the story of the Fall. "Thou hast said much here," he remarked to Milton, "of _Paradise Lost_; but what hast thou to say of _Paradise Found_?" The words, as it seemed to Ellwood, sank deep, and did their work. "He made me no answer, but sate some time in a muse, then brake off that discourse and fell upon another subject." Perhaps while he sat in a muse Milton was attempting to sound, with the plummet of conjecture, the abyss of human folly, "dark, wasteful, wild." So early as in the fourth line of _Paradise Lost_, and already very fully in the Third Book, he had treated of _Paradise Found_ as an integral part of his subject. The episode of the Eleventh and Twelfth Books was wholly concerned with it. It seems not unlikely, however, that he caught at the suggestion as an excuse for a new and independent work. One of the commonest kinds of critical stupidity is the kind that discovers something "unfinished" in a great work of art, and suggests desirable trimmings and additions. Milton knew that _Paradise Lost_ was finished, in every sense. But room had not been found in it for all that now held the chief place in his matured thought. When he chose the theme of his great work, the actual temptation of man probably bulked much larger in his design than it does in the completed poem. His epic creatures, from being the machinery of the poem, usurped a share of the control. With all Milton's care and skill, there is very little interest in the actual plucking of the apple; Eve was too simple a pleader to make much of the case for the defence. Yet human life presented itself to Milton chiefly under the guise of a series of temptations. The title of one of Andrew Marvell's pieces might well be used to describe the whole canon of his poetry, from _L' Allegro_ to _Samson Agonistes_--all are parts of _A Dialogue between the Resolved Soul and Created Pleasure_. To his youthful fancy Mirth and Melancholy present themselves in the likeness of rival goddesses, claiming allegiance, and offering gifts. The story of Samson is a story of temptation, yielded to through weakness, punished by ignominy, and, in the end, magnificently expiated. In _Comus_ is shown how the temptations of created pleasure may be resisted by the chastity of the "resolved soul." In _Paradise Lost_, however, the resolved soul had somehow, failing Man, found for itself a congenial habitation in the Devil. The high and pure philosophy of the Lady and her brothers has no counterpart in the later and greater poem. Milton, therefore, willingly seized on the suggestion made by Ellwood; and in _Paradise Regained_ exhibited at length, with every variety of form and argument, the spectacle of-- one man's firm obedience fully tried Through all temptation, and the Tempter foiled In all his wiles, defeated and repulsed The subject of _Comus_ is repeated; but in place of the dazzling allurement of the senses which is the temptation of the earlier poem, there is the temptation of the will, the appeal made in vain by Satan to those more strenuous and maturer passions of pride, ambition, love of wealth, and love of power. Instead of the innocent and instinctive purity of the Lady, which unmasks the fallacies of Comus, there is heard in _Paradise Regained_ the voice of a high Stoical philosophy, strong in self-sufficiency, rich in illustrations drawn from the experience of the ages, and attributed, by this singular poet, to the Christ. If his only purpose had been to make a worthy epical counterpart to _Paradise Lost_, those critics are doubtless right who think his chosen subject not altogether adequate to the occasion. The Fall of Man is best matched by the Redemption of Man--a subject which Milton, whether he knew it or not, was particularly ill-qualified to treat. It is sketched, hastily and prosaically, in the Twelfth Book of _Paradise Lost_; but there is no escaping from the conclusion that the central mystery of the Christian religion occupied very little space in Milton's scheme of religion and thought. Had he chosen this subject, the account given, in the apocryphal Gospel of Nicodemus, of the Descent into Hell might have furnished him with rich material for one part of his theme. The conquest of the upper world by Satan, narrated in _Paradise Lost_, might have had for natural sequel the triumphant descent into Hell of the King of Glory, and the liberation of the captives. For Milton's grandiose epical vein the theme has great opportunities, as a brief summary of the Gospel of Nicodemus will show:-- Karinus and Leucius, sons of Simeon, being raised from the dead, write what occurred during their sojourn in the realm of Hades: "While we were lying, along with our fathers, in the depth of the pit and in the uttermost darkness, suddenly there appeared the golden hue of the sun, and a purple royal light shining in upon us. Then the father of all mankind and all the patriarchs and prophets rejoiced, saying: 'That light is the author of everlasting light, who hath promised to translate us to everlasting light.' And Isaiah cried out, and said: 'This is the Light of the Father, the Son of God, according to my prophecy that I prophesied when I was alive upon the earth, "The land of Zabulon, and the land of Nephthalim, beyond Jordan; the people which sat in darkness saw a great light, and to them which sat in the region and shadow of death light is sprung up." And now he has come, and has shone upon us who are sitting in death.' Then Simeon spoke in a like strain of exultation. John the Baptist arrived, a herald of the King of Glory; and Seth, at the bidding of Adam, told how Michael the Archangel had refused him oil from the tree of mercy for the anointing of the body of Adam when he was sick, and had comforted him with the assurance that when the years should be fulfilled Adam would be raised up again, and led into Paradise. And even while the saints were rejoicing there broke out dissension among the lords of Hell. Satan, boasting of his latest exploit, told Hades, the prince of Hell, how he had led Jesus of Nazareth captive to death. But Hades was ill satisfied and asked, 'Perchance this is the same Jesus who by the word of his command took away Lazarus after he had been four days in corruption, whom I kept as dead?' And Satan answered and said, 'It is the same.' And when Hades heard this he said to him, 'I adjure thee by thy powers and mine, bring him not to me. For when I heard the power of his word I trembled for fear, and all my officers were struck with amazement.' And while they were thus disputing, suddenly there was a voice as of thunder, and a shouting as of a multitude of spirits, saying, 'Lift up your gates, O ye princes, and be ye lifted up, ye everlasting gates, and the King of Glory shall come in.' Then Hades, hearing this, said to Satan, 'Depart from me, and get thee out of my realm; if thou art a powerful warrior, fight against the King of Glory.' And he cast him forth from his habitations. And while David and Isaiah were speaking, recalling the words of their prophecy, there came to Hell, in the form of a man, the Lord of Majesty, and lighted up the eternal darkness, and burst asunder the indissoluble chains, and seizing Satan delivered him over to the power of Hades, but Adam he drew with him to his brightness. Then Hades receiving Satan reviled him vehemently and said, 'O Prince of perdition, and author of extermination, derision of angels and scorn of the just, why didst thou do this thing? All thy riches which thou hast acquired by the tree of transgression and the loss of Paradise, thou hast now lost by the tree of the cross, and all thy joy has perished.' But the Lord, holding Adam by the hand, delivered him to Michael the Archangel, and all the saints followed Michael the Archangel, and he led them into Paradise, filled with mercy and glory." Milton would hardly have entertained for a moment the idea of a subject taken from one of the apocryphal gospels. And even if he had felt no scruples on this point, the theme of the Harrying of Hell would hardly have commended itself to him in his later years, least of all its triumphant close. His interest was now centred rather in the sayings of the wise than in the deeds of the mighty. The "crude apple that diverted Eve" was indeed a simple theme compared with the profound topics that are treated in _Samson Agonistes_. The dark tangle of human life; the inscrutable course of Divine providence; the punishment so unwittingly and lightly incurred, yet lying on a whole nation "heavy as frost, and deep almost as life"; the temptation presenting itself in the guise neither of pleasure, nor of ambition, but of despair; and, through all, the recurring assertion of unyielding trust and unflinching acquiescence in the will of God; the song of the Chorus-- Just are the ways of God And justifiable to men-- finding an echo in Samson's declaration-- Nothing of all these evils hath befallen me But justly; I myself have brought them on; Sole author I, sole cause; --these together make up a theme where there is no possible place for the gay theology of _Paradise Lost_. The academic proof of God's justice, contained in the earlier poem, if it were introduced into _Samson Agonistes_ could be met only with the irony of Job: "Am I a sea, or a sea-monster, that thou settest a watch over me?... What is man, that thou shouldest magnify him, and that thou shouldest set thine heart upon him, and that thou shouldest visit him every morning, and try him every moment?" The question has become a real one; not to be answered now by the dogmatism and dialectic of a system. Milton's bewilderment and distress of mind are voiced in the cry of the Chorus:-- Yet toward these thus dignified thou oft Amidst their height of noon Changest thy countenance, and thy hand with no regard Of highest favours past From thee or them, or them to thee of service. And there follows their humble prayer, heard and answered with Divine irony on the very day of their asking:-- So deal not with this once thy glorious champion, The image of thy strength and mighty minister. What do I beg? How hast thou dealt already? Behold him in this state calamitous, and turn His labours, for thou canst, to peaceful end. In the days that now, as he looked back on his youth and manhood, must have seemed to him both distant and barren, Milton had sought for triumph, in action and in argument. His seeking was denied him; but he found peace, and the grace to accept it. CHAPTER V THE STYLE OF MILTON: METRE AND DICTION To approach the question of Milton's poetic style thus late in the course of this treatise is to fall into the absurdity of the famous art-critic, who, lecturing on the Venus of Milo, devoted the last and briefest of his lectures to the shape of that noble work of art. In truth, since Milton died, his name is become the mark, not of a biography nor of a theme, but of a style--the most distinguished in our poetry. But the task of literary criticism is, at the best, a task of such disheartening difficulty, that those who attempt it should be humoured if they play long with the fringes of the subject, and wait for courageous moments to attack essentials. In one sense, of course, and that not the least important, the great works of Milton were the product of the history and literatures of the world. Cycles ferried his cradle. Generations guided him. All forces were steadily employed to complete him. But when we attempt to separate the single strands of his complex genealogy, to identify and arrange the influences that made him, the essential somehow escapes us. The genealogical method in literary history is both interesting and valuable, but we are too apt, in our admiration for its lucid procedure, to forget that there is one thing which it will never explain, and that thing is poetry. Books beget books; but the mystery of conception still evades us. We display, as if in a museum, all the bits of thought and fragments of expression that Milton may have borrowed from Homer and Virgil, from Ariosto and Shakespeare. Here is a far-fetched conceit, and there is an elaborately jointed comparison. But these choice fragments and samples were to be had by any one for the taking; what it baffles us to explain is how they came to be of so much more use to Milton than ever they were to us. In any dictionary of quotations you may find great thoughts and happy expressions as plentiful and as cheap as sand, and, for the most part, quite as useless. These are dead thoughts: to catalogue, compare, and arrange them is within the power of any competent literary workman; but to raise them to blood-heat again, to breathe upon them and vitalise them is the sign that proclaims a poet. The ledger school of criticism, which deals only with borrowings and lendings, ingeniously traced and accurately recorded, looks foolish enough in the presence of this miracle. There is a sort of critics who, in effect, decry poetry, by fixing their attention solely on the possessions that poetry inherits. They are like Mammon-- the least erected Spirit that fell From Heaven; for even in Heaven his looks and thoughts Were always downward bent, admiring more The riches of Heaven's pavement, trodden gold, Than aught divine or holy else enjoyed In vision beatific. With curious finger and thumb they pick holes in the mosaic; and wherever there is wealth they are always ready to cry "Thief!" There is real interest in the enumeration of Milton's borrowings, and in the citation of parallel passages from the ancients to illustrate his work. But since style is the expression of a living organism, not a problem of cunning tesselation, it is permissible, in this place, to pass over what he borrowed from the ancients, in order to deal with a more intimate matter, and to attempt a valuation of that which he borrowed from no one, either ancient or modern. His indomitable personality and irrepressible originality have left their stamp on all his work, and have moulded his treatment, his handling, his diction, his style. We, who have been inured for centuries to Miltonic mouthings and mannerisms, are too likely to underestimate the degree of his originality. Coleridge was probably wrong when he said that "Shakespeare's poetry is characterless; that is, it does not reflect the individual Shakespeare." But he was unquestionably right when he added that "John Milton himself is in every line of _Paradise Lost_." The more they are studied, the more do Milton's life and his art seem to cohere, and to express the pride and the power of his character. Consider first his choice of subject. Ever since the Renaissance had swept modern poetry back to the pagan world, some voices of protest had been raised, some swimmers, rather bold than strong, had attempted to stem the tide. Among the earliest of these was Thomas Sternhold, Groom of the Chamber to King Henry the Eighth. Inspired perhaps by the example of a better poet, Clement Marot, Sternhold thrust some of the Psalms of David into a carterly metre, "thinking thereby," says Anthony à Wood, in his delightfully colloquial fashion, "that the courtiers would sing them instead of their sonnets, but did not, only some few excepted." In the reign of Elizabeth, when the classical mythology reigned and revelled in pageant and masque, in court and town, one Thomas Brice, a painful preacher, cried out against the pagan fancies that had caught the English imagination captive:-- We are not Ethnickes, we forsoth at least professe not so; Why range we then to Ethnickes' trade? Come back, where will ye go? Tel me, is Christe or Cupide lord? Doth God or Venus reign? But he cried to deaf ears, and the Elizabethan age produced no body of sacred poetry worth a record. The beautiful metrical version of the Psalms, made by Sir Philip Sidney and his sister, remained in manuscript for centuries. Drayton's _Harmonie of the Church_ was suppressed. Robert Southwell, whose lyrics on sacred subjects give him a unique place among the poets of his age, joins in the oft-repeated complaint:-- Stil finest wits are 'stilling Venus' rose, In Paynim toyes the sweetest vaines are spent; To Christian workes few have their talents lent. It was left for George Herbert and his contemporaries to take up the attempt once more--this time with better success--"to reprove the vanity of those many love poems that are daily writ and consecrated to Venus, and to bewail that so few are writ that look towards God and heaven." Cannot thy dove Outstrip their Cupid easily in flight? Or, since thy ways are deep, and still the same, Will not a verse run smooth that bears thy name? But although Herbert and his successors, in their devotional lyrics, gave a whole new province to English poetry, they left the idolatrous government of the older provinces undisturbed. Dramatic and narrative poetry went on in the old way, and drew their inspiration from the old founts. Year by year, as our native poetic wealth increased, it became more and more difficult to break with the past, and to lead poetry back to Zion. Nature and precedent seemed allied against the innovation. The worst of religious poetry, as Johnson more than once pointed out, is its poverty of subject, and its enforced chastity of treatment. You cannot make a picture out of light alone; there must be something to break it on. Then, too, there was Shakespeare to be reckoned with: he had written no hymns nor spiritual songs; among the works of God, he had found man to be deserving of his unremitting attention; yet, while a certain monotony of manner afflicted the singers of good and godly ballads, he had seemed never at a loss for a subject, never at the end of the copious inspiration that he drew from his unsanctified themes. Nevertheless, the seventeenth century, which stirred so many questions in politics and criticism, stirred this also; the fitness of sacred subjects for heroic poetry was debated long and ardently both in France and England, and many experiments were made. These experiments belong, as might be expected, mainly to the time of the civil troubles. It was then that the versifying of the Psalms became a desolating industry; and Mr. Zachary Boyd, an ornament of the University of Glasgow, having worked his will on King David, made bold rhyming raids on passages of the Bible that are usually allowed to rest in prose. The high places of scholarship felt the new infection. Early in 1648, Joseph Beaumont, afterwards Master of Peterhouse, and Regius Professor of Divinity at Cambridge, published his poem called _Psyche, or Love's Mystery_, in twenty cantos. "My desire is," he says in the preface, "that this book may prompt better wits to believe that a divine theam is as capable and happy a subject of poetical ornament, as any pagan or humane device whatsoever." The poem is about four times as long as _Paradise Lost_, and was written in eleven months, which circumstance, his admiring biographer allows, "may create some surprise in a reader unacquainted with the vigorous imagination, and fertile flow of fancy, which so remarkably distinguished our author from the common class of writers." A further explanation by the same eulogist, who edited Beaumont's _Original Poems_ in 1749, makes all clear. "Our Author," it appears, "did not look upon poetry as the serious business of his life; for whilst he was thus amusing his leisure hours with the Muses, he wrote a full and clear commentary upon the Book of Ecclesiastes, and large critical notes upon the Pentateuch." After this, the astonished reader will perhaps be disinclined to verify the statement, reluctantly made, that in the poems of our author "we sometimes meet with a vicious copiousness of style, at others, with an affectation of florid, gay, and tedious descriptions; nor did he always use the language of nature." Next, Cowley "came in robustiously and put for it with a deal of violence" in his sacred poem entitled _Davideis_. In the exordium of the First Book he proclaims his mission:-- Too long the _Muses-Lands_ have _Heathen_ bin Their _Gods_ too long were _Devils_, and _Vertues Sin_; But _Thou, Eternal World_, hast call'd forth _Me_, Th' _Apostle_, to convert that _World_ to _Thee_: T' unbind the charms that in slight _Fables_ lie, And teach that _Truth_ is _truest Poesie_. But it was not to be. His "polisht _Pillars_ of strong _Verse_" were destined never to carry a roof. The theme, so vigorously introduced, soon languished; and by the time he had completed a Fourth Book, it lay, for all his nursing skill, prematurely dead on his hands. The poem is not finished, and yet there is nothing to add. After Cowley in date of composition, but before him in date of publication, Davenant in his _Gondibert_ shows traces of the prevalent ambition. He rejects all supernatural fables, and makes it a point of sound doctrine to choose only Christians for his characters. But that poem, too, broke off in the middle. In France the question had been as zealously discussed, and had been illustrated by experiments no less elaborate. In 1657, a year after the appearance of Cowley's _Davideis_, Desmarets de Saint-Sorlin brought out his sacred poem of _Clovis_, with a great flourish of trumpets, and a long prose demonstration that its theme was the grandest a French poet could choose. The real supernatural of the Christian religion, so he argued, is a subject much nobler for poetry than the pagan mythology, as the sunlight is brighter than the shadow. The controversy dragged on till 1673, when Boileau, in the third book of his _Poetic_, settled the question for the nonce, and fixed the opinion of the succeeding generation of critics. He casts an equal ridicule upon _Clovis_ and upon the theory which it was designed to illustrate:-- The arts of fiction give the air of lies Even to the most unquestioned verities; And what a pious entertainment, too, The yells of Satan and his damnèd crew, When, proud to assail your Hero's matchless might, With God himself they wage a doubtful fight. So the burial of _Clovis_ was hastened by ridicule. Yet every one of the arguments brought against that poem by Boileau holds equally good against _Paradise Lost_, which Milton, knowing as little of Boileau as Boileau knew of him, had published some six years earlier. _Paradise Lost_, it might almost be said, is superior to _Clovis_ in nothing, except the style. By the force of his genius and the magic of his style, Milton succeeded in an attempt thought hopeless by the best critical judges of his century, and won his way through a ravine that was strewn with the corpses of his epic predecessors. His courage and originality are witnessed also by the metre that he chose for his poem. To us blank verse seems the natural metre for a long serious poem. Before Milton's day, except in the drama, it had only once been so employed--in an Elizabethan poem of no mark or likelihood, called _A Tale of Two Swannes_. While Milton was writing _Paradise Lost_ the critics of his time were discussing whether the rhymed couplet or some form of stanza was fitter for narrative poetry, and whether the couplet or blank verse better suited the needs of drama. As no one, before Milton, had maintained in argument that blank verse was the best English measure for narrative poetry dealing with lofty themes, so no critic had ever been at the pains to refute that opinion. In the year of the publication of _Paradise Lost_, Dryden delivered his judgment, that the rhymed couplet was best suited for tragic passages in the drama, and that blank verse should be employed chiefly for the lighter and more colloquial purposes of comedy. Some echo of the courtly dispute then in progress between Dryden and his brother-in-law, Sir Robert Howard, probably reached Milton's ear through his bookseller, Samuel Simmons; for it was at the request of his bookseller that he added the three Miltonic sentences on "The Verse," by way of preface. With his accustomed confidence and directness of attack he begs the question in his first words:--"The measure is English heroic verse without rime"; and in his closing words he takes credit to himself for his "example set, the first in English, of ancient liberty recovered to heroic poem from the troublesome and modern bondage of riming." In these two cardinal points, then--the matter and the form of his poem--Milton was original. For the one there was no true precedent in English; for the other there was no precedent that might not rather have been called a warning. His matter was to be arranged and his verse handled by his own ingenuity and at his own peril. He left a highroad behind him, along which many a tuneful pauper has since limped; but before him he found nothing but the jungle and false fires. In considering his style, therefore, it is well to treat the problem as it presented itself to him, and to follow his achievement as he won step by step out of the void. There were two great influences in English poetry, other than the drama, when Milton began to write: the influence of Spenser and the influence of Donne. Only the very slightest traces of either can be discerned in Milton's early verse. There are some Spenserian cadences in the poem _On the Death of a Fair Infant_, written in his seventeenth year:-- Or wert thou of the golden-wingèd host Who, having clad thyself in human weed, To earth from thy prefixed seat didst post, And after short abode fly back with speed, As if to show what creatures Heaven doth breed; Thereby to set the hearts of men on fire To scorn the sordid world, and unto Heaven aspire? The later verses on _The Passion_, written in the same metre, are perhaps the last in which Milton echoes Spenser, however faintly. Meanwhile, in the hymn _On the Morning of Christ's Nativity_, he had struck a note that was his own, and it is not surprising that he left the poem on the Passion unfinished, "nothing satisfied with what was begun." As for the great Dean of St. Paul's, there is no evidence that Milton was touched by him, or, for that matter, that he had read any of his poems. In the verses written _At a Vacation Exercise_, he expressly sets aside Those new-fangled toys and trimming slight Which takes our late fantastics with delight; and he very early came to dislike the fashionable conceits that ran riot in contemporary English verse. A certain number of conceits, few and poor enough, is to be found scattered here and there in his early poems. Bleak Winter, for instance, is represented in three cumbrous stanzas, as the slayer of the Fair Infant:-- For he, being amorous on that lovely dye That did thy cheek envermeil, thought to kiss, But killed, alas! and then bewailed his fatal bliss. In the lines on Shakespeare the monument promised to the dead poet is a marvel of architecture and sculpture, made up of all his readers, frozen to statues by the wonder and astonishment that they feel when they read the plays. But perhaps the nearest approach to a conceit of the metaphysical kind is to be found in that passage of _Comus_, where the Lady accuses Night of having stolen her brothers:-- O thievish Night, Why shouldst thou, but for some felonious end, In thy dark lantern thus close up the stars Which Nature hung in heaven, and filled their lamps With everlasting oil to give due light To the misled and lonely traveller? When Milton does fall into a vein of conceit, it is generally both trivial and obvious, with none of the saving quality of Donne's remoter extravagances. In Donne they are hardly extravagances; the vast overshadowing canopy of his imagination seems to bring the most wildly dissimilar things together with ease. To his unfettered and questioning thought the real seems unreal, the unreal real; he moves in a world of shadows, cast by the lurid light of his own emotions; they take grotesque shapes and beckon to him, or terrify him. All realities are immaterial and insubstantial; they shift their expressions, and lurk in many forms, leaping forth from the most unlikely disguises, and vanishing as suddenly as they came. Sometime we see a cloud that's dragonish; A vapour sometime like a bear or lion, A tower'd citadel, a pendent rock, A forked mountain, or blue promontory With trees upon't that nod unto the world, And mock our eyes with air: thou hast seen these signs; They are black Vesper's pageants. They are the poems of John Donne. Nothing could be further from the manner of Milton, or less likely to overcome his own positive imagination. Here are two examples of Donne's best poetic manner:-- But yet thou canst not die, I know; To leave this world behind, is death; But when thou from this world wilt go, The whole world vapours with thy breath. And again:-- Twice or thrice had I loved thee, Before I knew thy face or name; So in a voice, so in a shapeless flame Angels affect us oft, and worshipp'd be. Let it be considered what Milton means by the terms "World" and "Angel," how clear an external reality each embodies for him. Any forced comparison used by him is not an attempt to express a subtlety, but merely a vicious trick of the intellect. The virtues of the metaphysical school were impossible virtues for one whose mind had no tincture of the metaphysic. Milton, as has been said already, had no deep sense of mystery. One passage of _Il Penseroso_, which might be quoted against this statement, is susceptible of an easier explanation:-- And if aught else great bards beside In sage and solemn tunes have sung Of turneys, and of trophies hung, Of forests, and enchantments drear, Where more is meant than meets the ear. He alludes no doubt to Spenser, and by the last line intends only allegory--a definite moral signification affixed to certain characters and stories--not the mystic correspondences that Donne loves. The most mysterious lines in _Comus_ are these:-- A thousand fantasies Begin to throng into my memory, Of calling shapes, and beckoning shadows dire, And airy tongues that syllable men's names On sands and shores and desert wildernesses. They are purely Elizabethan and reminiscent. But if the stranger beauties of the metaphysical school were beyond his reach, its vices touched him wonderfully little, so that his conceits are merely the rare flaws of his early work. The dramatists were a much more potent influence than either Spenser or the metaphysical school. He learned his blank verse from the dramatists. Perhaps he took the subject of _Comus_ from the _Old Wives' Tale_ of George Peele; and when he set himself to write a masque he was doubtless well acquainted with the works of the chief master in that kind, Ben Jonson. William Godwin, in his _Lives of Edward and John Phillips_, expresses the opinion that Milton studied the works of Jonson more assiduously than those of any other Elizabethan. The specific evidence that he cites--a few passages of possible reminiscence--is not convincing. He has no more striking coincidence to show than the resemblance between a phrase in _Il Penseroso_:-- Come, but keep thy wonted state and two lines of Jonson's _Hymn to Cynthia_:-- Seated in thy silver chair State in wonted manner keep. If the original genius of a poet is to be sworn away at this rate, there will soon come a time when no man is secure. Both words are common in Elizabethan English; if their occurrence in a single line is to warrant a charge of plagiarism, the next step will be to make them Jonson's property, and to forbid the use of either to all but the tribe of Ben. Milton doubtless studied Jonson's works; and, if specific resemblances are both weighed and counted, a good case can be made out for the influence of Jonson's prose on the author of the _Areopagitica_. But the fact is that criticism finds itself here in a region where this minute matching of phrase with phrase is useless or misleading. Milton's early poems grew on Elizabethan soil, and drank Elizabethan air. It matters little that there are few verbal coincidences; the influence is omnipresent, easy to feel, impossible to describe in detail. From whom but the Elizabethans could he have learned to write thus?-- Fly, envious Time, till thou run out thy race: Call on the lazy leaden-stepping Hours, Whose speed is but the heavy plummet's pace; And glut thyself with what thy womb devours. The Elizabethan style is not to be mistaken, the high-figured phrases, loosely welded together, lulling the imagination into acquiescence by the flow of the melody. Lines like these might well occur in _Richard II_. The same Shakespearian note is clearly audible in such a passage as this, where Comus describes the two brothers:-- Their port was more than human, as they stood. I took it for a faery vision Of some gay creatures of the element, That in the colours of the rainbow live, And play i' the plighted clouds. I was awe-strook, And, as I passed, I worshipped. If those you seek, It were a journey like the path to Heaven To help you find them. This has all the technical marks of late Elizabethan dramatic blank verse: "vision" as a trisyllable; the redundant syllable in the middle of the line; the colloquial abbreviation of "in the"; not to mention the fanciful vein of the whole passage, which might lead any one unacquainted with Milton to look for this quotation among the dramas of the prime. The great hyperbolical strain of the Elizabethans, which so often broke into rant, is caught and nobly echoed in praise of virtue:-- If this fail, The pillared firmament is rottenness And earth's base built on stubble. Or, to take a last example of Milton's earlier style, this description of the Lady's singing is in marked contrast to the later matured manner:-- At last a soft and solemn-breathing sound Rose like a steam of rich distilled perfumes, And stole upon the air, that even Silence Was took ere she was ware, and wished she might Deny her nature, and be never more Still to be so displaced. I was all ear, And took in strains that might create a soul Under the ribs of Death. This has the happy audacity of Shakespeare, and his delight in playing with logic; it is almost witty. The Miltonic audacity of the later poems is far less diffuse and playful. When the nightingale sings, in _Paradise Lost_, "Silence was pleased." When Adam begs the Angel to tell the story of the Creation, he adds, "Sleep, listening to thee, will watch." Either of these paradoxes would have been tormented and elaborated into a puzzle by a true Elizabethan. Milton, then, began as a pupil of the dramatists. But his tendencies and ambitions were not dramatic, so he escaped the diseases that afflicted the drama in its decadence. When he began to write blank verse, the blank verse of the dramatists, his contemporaries, was fast degenerating into more or less rhythmical prose. Suckling and Davenant and their fellows not only used the utmost license of redundant syllables at the end of the line, but hustled and slurred the syllables in the middle till the line was a mere gabble, and interspersed broken lines so plentifully that it became impossible even for the most attentive ear to follow the metre. A brief description of a Puritan waiting-woman may be taken as an illustration from Jasper Mayne's comedy of _The City Match_ (1639). As a sample of blank verse it is perhaps somewhat smoother and more regular than the average workmanship of that time:-- She works religious petticoats; for flowers She'll make church-histories. Her needle doth So sanctify my cushionets; besides My smock-sleeves have such holy embroideries, And are so learned, that I fear in time All my apparel will be quoted by Some pure instructor. Yesterday I went _To see a lady that has a parrot: my woman_ _While I was in discourse converted the fowl_; And now it can speak nought but Knox's works; So there's a parrot lost. Blank verse that has learned to tolerate such lines as the two here set in italics can only end by becoming prose. And, indeed, that was the destined development of the drama, even had the theatres never been closed under the Commonwealth. The history of blank verse reflects with curious exactness the phases of the history of the drama. When the metre was first set on the stage, in the Senecan drama, it was stiff and slow-moving; each line was monotonously accented, and divided from the next by so heavy a stress that the absence of rhyme seemed a wilful injury done to the ear. Such as it was, it suited the solemn moral platitudes that it was called upon to utter. Peele, Marlowe, and Shakespeare made the drama lyrical in theme and treatment; the measure, adapting itself to the change, became lyrical in their hands. As the drama grew in scope and power, addressing itself to a greater diversity of matter, and coming to closer grips with the realities of life, the lyrical strain was lost, and blank verse was stretched and loosened and made elastic. During the twenty years of Shakespeare's dramatic activity, from being lyrical it tended more and more to become conversational in Comedy, and in Tragedy to depend for its effects rather on the rhetorical rise and fall of the period than on the unit of the line. From the drama of Charles the First's time, when inferior workmen had carried these licenses to the verge of confusion, it is a perfectly natural transition to the heroic couplet for Tragedy and the well-bred prose of Etherege for Comedy. Blank verse had lost its character; it had to be made vertebrate to support the modish extravagances of the heroic plays; and this was done by the addition of rhyme. Comedy, on the other hand, was tending already, long before the civil troubles, to social satire and the life-like representation of contemporary character and manners, so that prose was its only effective instrument. At the time when blank verse was yielding to decay, Milton took it up, and used it neither for conversational nor for rhetorical purposes. In the interests of pure poetry and melody he tightened its joints, stiffened its texture, and one by one gave up almost all the licenses that the dramatists had used. From the first he makes a sparing use of the double ending. The redundant syllable in the middle of the line, which he sometimes allows himself in _Comus_, does not occur in _Paradise Lost_. In the later poem he adopts strict practices with regard to elision, which, with some trifling exceptions, he permits only in the case of contiguous open vowels, and of short unstressed vowels separated by a liquid consonant, in such words, for instance, as "dissolute," or "amorous." By a variety of small observances, which, when fully stated, make up a formidable code, he mended the shambling gait of the loose dramatic blank verse, and made of it a worthy epic metre. In a long poem variety is indispensable, and he preserved the utmost freedom in some respects. He continually varies the stresses in the line, their number, their weight, and their incidence, letting them fall, when it pleases his ear, on the odd as well as on the even syllables of the line. The pause or cæsura he permits to fall at any place in the line, usually towards the middle, but, on occasion, even after the first or ninth syllables. His chief study, it will be found, is to vary the word in relation to the foot, and the sentence in relation to the line. No other metre allows of anything like the variety of blank verse in this regard, and no other metrist makes so splendid a use of its freedom. He never forgets the pattern; yet he never stoops to teach it by the repetition of a monotonous tattoo. Hence there are, perhaps, fewer one-line quotations to be found in the works of Milton than in the works of any other master of blank verse. De Quincey speaks of the "slow planetary wheelings" of Milton's verse, and the metaphor is a happy one; the verse revolves on its axis at every line, but it always has another motion, and is related to a more distant centre. It may well be doubted whether Milton could have given a clear exposition of his own prosody. In the only place where he attempts it he finds the elements of musical delight to consist in "apt numbers, fit quantity of syllables, and the sense variously drawn out from one verse into another." By "apt numbers" he probably meant the skilful handling of stress-variation in relation to the sense. But the last of the three is the essential of Miltonic blank verse. There lies the secret for whoso can divine it. Every well-marked type of blank verse has a natural gait or movement of its own, which it falls into during its ordinary uninspired moods. Tennyson's blank verse, when it is not carefully guarded and varied, drops into a kind of fluent sing-song. Examples may be taken, almost at random, from the _Idylls of the King_. Here is one:-- So all the ways were safe from shore to shore, But in the heart of Arthur pain was lord. The elements of musical delight here are almost barbarous in their simplicity. There is a surfeit of assonance--_all, shore, shore, lord_; _heart, Arthur_; _ways, safe, pain_. The alliteration is without complexity,--a dreary procession of sibilants. Worst of all are the monotonous incidence of the stress, and the unrelieved, undistinguished, crowded poverty of the Saxon monosyllables. No two such consecutive lines were ever written by Milton. His verse, even in its least admirable passages, does not sing, nor trip with regular alternate stress; its movement suggests neither dance nor song, but rather the advancing march of a body of troops skilfully handled, with incessant changes in their disposition as they pass over broken ground. He can furnish them with wings when it so pleases him. No analysis of his prosody can explain the wonders of his workmanship. But it is not idle to ask for a close attention to the scansion of lines like these, wherein he describes the upward progress of the Son of God and his escort after the Creation:-- The heavens and all the constellations rung, The planets in their station listening stood, While the bright pomp ascended jubilant. In the last line the first four words marshal the great procession in solid array; the last two lift it high into the empyrean. Let any one attempt to get the same upward effect with a stress, however light, laid on the last syllable of the line, or with words of fewer than three syllables apiece, and he will have to confess that, however abstruse the rules of its working may be, there is virtue in metrical cunning. The passage in the Seventh Book from which these lines are quoted would justify an entire treatise. The five regular alternate stresses first occur in a line describing the progress over the wide plain of Heaven:-- He through Heaven, That opened wide her blazing portals, led To God's eternal house direct the way. But, indeed, the examination of the music of Milton involves so minute a survey of technical detail as to be tedious to all but a few lovers of theory. The laws of music in verse are very subtle, and, it must be added, very imperfectly ascertained; so that those who dogmatise on them generally end by slipping into fantasy or pedantry. How carefully and incessantly Milton adjusted the sound to the sense is known to every reader of _Paradise Lost_. The dullest ear is caught by the contrast between the opening of the gates of Heaven-- Heaven opened wide Her ever-during gates, harmonious sound On golden hinges moving-- and the opening of those other gates-- On a sudden open fly, With impetuous recoil and jarring sound, The infernal doors, and on their hinges grate Harsh thunder, that the lowest bottom shook Of Erebus. But there are many more delicate instances than these. In the choruses of _Samson Agonistes_, where he reaches the top of his skill, Milton varies even the length of the line. So he has hardly a rule left, save the iambic pattern, which he treats merely as a point of departure or reference, a background or framework to carry the variations imposed upon it by the luxuriance of a perfectly controlled art. The great charm of the metre of Wither, which Charles Lamb admired and imitated, lies in its facile combination of what, for the sake of brevity, may be called the iambic and trochaic movements. In _L'Allegro_ and _Il Penseroso_ Milton had proved his mastery of both its resources. The gaiety of these lines-- Haste thee, Nymph, and bring with thee Jest, and youthful Jollity-- passes easily into the solemnity of these-- But let my due feet never fail To walk the studious cloister's pale. In _Samson Agonistes_ he sought to extend something of the same liberty to the movement of blank verse. He freely intermixes the falling with the rising stress, shifting the weights from place to place, and often compensating a light patter of syllables in the one half of the line by the introduction of two or three consecutive strong stresses in the other half. Under this treatment the metre of _Gorboduc_ breaks into blossom and song:-- O, how comely it is, and how reviving To the spirits of just men long oppressed, When God into the hands of their deliverer Puts invincible might. To try to explain this marvel of beauty is to beat the air. By his deliberate attention to the elements of verbal melody Milton gave a new character to English blank verse. But this is not all. Quite as important is the alteration that he made in the character of English poetic diction. The essence of the lyric is that it is made up of phrases, not of words. The lines run easily because they run on tracks chosen for their ease by the instinct of generations and worn smooth by use. The lyrical phrase, when the first two or three words of it have been pronounced, finishes itself. From Carew's "Ask me no more," with its long train of imitations, to the latest banality of the music-halls, the songs that catch the ear catch it by the same device. The lyric, that is to say, is almost always dependent for its music on easy idiomatic turns of speech. The surprising word occurs rarely; with all the greater effect inasmuch as it is embedded in phrases that slip from the tongue without a trace of thought or effort. These phrases naturally allow of little diversity of intonation; they have the unity of a single word, a single accepted emphasis, and a run of lightly-stressed syllables more or less musical in sequence. All this Milton changed. He chooses his every word. You cannot guess the adjective from the substantive, nor the end of the phrase from its beginning. He is much given to inverting the natural English order of epithet and noun, that he may gain a greater emphasis for the epithet. His style is not a simple loose-flowing garment, which takes its outline from its natural fall over the figure, but a satin brocade, stiff with gold, exactly fitted to the body. There is substance for it to clothe; but, as his imitators quickly discovered, it can stand alone. He packs his meaning into the fewest possible words, and studies economy in every trifle. In his later poetry there are no gliding connectives; no polysyllabic conjunctive clauses, which fill the mouth while the brain prepares itself for the next word of value; no otiose epithets, and very few that court neglect by their familiarity. His poetry is like the eloquence of the Lord Chancellor Bacon, as described by Ben Jonson:--"No man ever spake more neatly, more pressly, more weightily, or suffered less emptiness, less idleness in what he uttered. No member of his speech but consisted of his own graces. His hearers could not cough, or look aside from him, without loss." It is this quality of Milton's verse that makes the exercise of reading it aloud a delight and a trial. Every word is of value. There is no mortar between the stones, each is held in place by the weight of the others, and helps to uphold the building. In reading, every word must be rendered clearly and articulately; to drop one out, or to slur it over, is to take a stone from an arch. Indeed, if Lamb and Hazlitt are right in thinking that Shakespeare's greatest plays cannot be acted, by the same token, Milton's greatest poems cannot be read aloud. For his most sonorous passages the human voice is felt to be too thin an instrument; the lightest word in the line demands some faint emphasis, so that the strongest could not be raised to its true value unless it were roared through some melodious megaphone. The carefully jewelled mosaic style was practised very early by Milton. It occurs already in the hymn on the Nativity:-- See how from far upon the eastern road The star-led wizards haste with odours sweet: O run, prevent them with thy humble ode And lay it lowly at his blessed feet. The same deliberateness and gentle pause of words one after another rounding and falling like clear drops is found in the song of the Spirit in _Comus_:-- Sabrina fair, Listen where thou art sitting Under the glassy, cool, translucent wave, In twisted braids of lilies knitting The loose train of thy amber-dropping hair. This is the effect which Sir Henry Wotton, Milton's earliest critic, speaks of, in a letter to Milton, as "a certain Doric delicacy in your songs and odes, whereunto I must plainly confess to have seen yet nothing parallel in our language." There are poems, and good poems among the number, written on a more diffuse principle. If you miss one line you find the idea repeated or persisting in the next. It is quite possible to derive pleasure from the _Faerie Queene_ by attending to the leading words, and, for the rest, floating onward on the melody. You can catch the drift with ease. The stream circles in so many eddies that to follow it laboriously throughout its course is felt to be hardly necessary: miss it once and you can often join it again at very near the same point. "But a reader of Milton," as an early critic of Milton remarks, "must be always upon duty; he is surrounded with sense; it rises in every line, every word is to the purpose. There are no lazy intervals: all has been considered, and demands and merits observation. Even in the best writers you sometimes find words and sentences which hang on so loosely, you may blow them off. Milton's are all substance and weight: fewer would not have served his turn, and more would have been superfluous. His silence has the same effect, not only that he leaves work for the imagination, when he has entertained it and furnished it with noble materials; but he expresses himself so concisely, employs words so sparingly, that whoever will possess his ideas must dig for them, and oftentimes pretty far below the surface." An illustration and contrast may serve to point the moral. Here is an example of Spenser's diffuser style, taken from the second book of the _Faerie Queene_. Guyon, escaped from the cave of Mammon, is guarded, during his swoon, by an angel:-- Beside his head there satt a faire young man, (This announces the theme, as in music.) Of wondrous beauty and of freshest yeares, (The fair young man was fair and young.) Whose tender bud to blossom new began, (The fair young man was young.) And florish faire above his equal peers. (The fair young man was fair, fairer even than his equals, who were also his peers.) In the remaining lines of the stanza the comparison of his hair to the rays of the sun is played with in the same way:-- His snowy front curled with golden heares, Like Phoebus' face adorned with sunny rayes, Divinely shone; and two sharp winged sheares, Decked with diverse plumes, like painted Jayes, Were fixed at his back to cut his ayery wayes. The whole stanza is beautiful, and musical with the music of redundance. Nothing could be less like Milton's mature style. His verse, "with frock of mail, Adamantean proof," advances proudly and irresistibly, gaining ground at every step. He brings a situation before us in two lines, every word contributing its share:-- Betwixt these rocky pillars Gabriel sat, Chief of the angelic guards, awaiting night. With as decisive a touch he sketches the story of Jacob-- In the field of Luz, Dreaming by night under the open sky, And waking cried, _This is the gate of Heaven_. Or the descent of Raphael:-- Like Maia's son he stood, And shook his plumes, that heavenly fragrance filled The circuit wide. The packed line introduced by Milton is of a greater density and conciseness than anything to be found in English literature before it. It is our nearest native counterpart to the force and reserve of the high Virgilian diction. In his _Discourse of the Original and Progress of Satire_, Dryden has called attention to the close-wrought quality of Virgil's work. "Virgil," he says, "could have written sharper satires than either Horace or Juvenal, if he would have employed his talent that way. I will produce a verse and a half of his, in one of his Eclogues, to justify my opinion; and with commas after every word, to show that he has given almost as many lashes as he has written syllables: it is against a bad poet, whose ill verses he describes:-- _non tu, in triviis, indocte, solebas_ _Stridenti, miserum, stipula, disperdere, carmen?_" [Wouldst thou not, blockhead, in the public ways, Squander, on scrannel pipe, thy sorry lays?] Dryden appreciated the terrible force of this kind of writing for the purposes of satire. At its best, his own satire attains to something like it, as, for instance, in his description of Shaftesbury's early life:-- Next this (how wildly will ambition steer), A vermin wriggling in the usurper's ear, Bartering his venal wit for sums of gold, He cast himself into the saint-like mould; Groaned, sighed, and prayed, while godliness was gain, The loudest bagpipe of the squeaking train. Except the first line, which is wholly idle, there is nothing that could be spared here. Pope, also, knew the value of condensation; but he works in antithetic phrases, so that his single words are less telling; and where Dryden's lines are swords edged with contempt, Pope's are stings, pointed with spite. Thus, of Lord Hervey:-- Amphibious thing! that acting either part, The trifling head, or the corrupted heart, Fop at the toilet, flatterer at the board, Now trips a lady, and now struts a lord. Eve's tempter thus the Rabbins have exprest, A cherub's face, a reptile all the rest; Beauty that shocks you, parts that none will trust, Wit that can creep, and pride that licks the dust. The necessities of rhyme sometimes hamper both Dryden and Pope; and the nearest parallel to the manner of Virgil is to be sought in Milton. The famous line describing Samson-- Eyeless, in Gaza, at the mill, with slaves-- is a good example; the sense of humiliation and abasement is intensified at every step. Or, to take a passage in a very different key of feeling, the same quality is seen in the description of the obedience of Eve:-- Required with gentle sway And by her yielded, by him best received, Yielded with coy submission, modest pride, And sweet, reluctant, amorous delay. The slight stress and pause needed after each word, to render the full meaning, produce, when the words are short as well as emphatic, a line of terrific weight and impact. What more heartbreaking effect of weariness and eternity of effort could be produced in a single line than this, descriptive of the dolorous march of the fallen angels?-- O'er many a frozen, many a fiery Alp, Rocks, caves, lakes, fens, bogs, dens, and shades of death. It would be difficult to match this line. In _The Tears of Peace_, Chapman has a line (he repeats it in the _Tragedy of Biron_) which owes some of its strength to the same cause. He describes the body as-- This glass of air, broken with less than breath, This slave, bound face to face to death till death. The eight stresses give the line a passionate energy. All superfluous graces are usually discarded by Milton. He steers right onward, and gives the reader no rest. A French critic of that age, who has already been mentioned as the author of _Clovis_, praises Malherbe and Voiture and the worthies of their time, at the expense of the ancients. He calls Homer, especially, "a tattler, who is incessantly repeating the same things in the same idle ridiculous epithets,--_the swift-footed Achilles, the ox-eyed Juno, far-darting Apollo_." Milton felt none of this contempt for Homer, but he discarded the practice. His epithets are chosen to perform one exploit, and are dismissed when it is accomplished. As with single epithets, so with lines and phrases; he does not employ conventional repetitions either for their lyrical value or for wafting the story on to the next point of interest. He seeks no effects such as Marlowe obtained by the lyrical repetition of the line:-- To entertain divine Zenocrate. He arrests the attention at every word; and when the thing is once said, he has done with it. In his _Discourse of Satire_ Dryden raises an interesting point. He makes mention of "the beautiful turns of words and thoughts, which are as requisite in this, as in heroick poetry itself, of which the satire is undoubtedly a species." His attention, he says, was first called to these by Sir George Mackenzie, who repeated many of them from Waller and Denham. Thereupon he searched other authors, Cowley, Davenant, and Milton, to find further examples of them; but in vain. At last he had recourse to Spenser, "and there I met with that which I had been looking for so long in vain. Spenser had studied Virgil to as much advantage as Milton had done Homer; and amongst the rest of his excellencies had copied that." By the "turns of words and thoughts" Dryden here means the repetition of a word or phrase in slightly altered guise as the thought is turned over in the mind and presented in a new aspect. There is an almost epigrammatic neatness about some of the examples that he cites from Ovid and Catullus. It is not surprising that he failed to find these elegant turns in Milton, for they are few. Addison and Steele, writing in the _Tatler_, reproach him with having overlooked the speech of Eve in the Fourth Book of _Paradise Lost_:-- Sweet is the breath of Morn, her rising sweet, With charm of earliest birds; pleasant the Sun, When first on this delightful land he spreads His orient beams, on herb, tree, fruit, and flower, Glistering with dew; fragrant the fertile Earth After soft showers; and sweet the coming-on Of grateful Evening mild; then silent Night, With this her solemn bird, and this fair Moon, And these the gems of Heaven, her starry train: But neither breath of Morn, when she ascends With charm of earliest birds; nor rising Sun On this delightful land; nor herb, fruit, flower, Glistering with dew; nor fragrance after showers Nor grateful Evening mild; nor silent Night, With this her solemn bird, nor walk by moon, Or glittering star-light, without thee is sweet. Dryden remarks that the elegance he speaks of is common in Italian sonnets, which are usually written on the turn of the first thought; and certainly this speech of Eve might be truly compared, in all but the metrical structure, to an interspersed sonnet. There is another elaborate piece of repetition at the close of the Tenth Book, where the humble prostration of Adam and Eve is described in exactly the form of speech used by Adam to propose it. But the repetition in this case is too exact to suit Dryden's meaning; by a close verbal coincidence the ritual of penitence is emphasised in detail, and the book brought to a restful pause. Scattered here and there throughout Milton's longer poems Dryden might, nevertheless, have found the thing he sought. One instance that he gives is taken from the fourth Georgic of Virgil, where Orpheus, leading Eurydice up from Hell, suddenly turns to look on her:-- _Cum subita incautum dementia cepit amantem;_ _Ignoscenda quidem, scirent si ignoscere Manes._ This turn--"deserving grace, if grace were known in Hell"--may easily be matched in Milton. In the Second Book of _Paradise Lost_ is described how the damned feel by turns the bitter change Of fierce extremes, extremes by change more fierce. In the Fifth Book, when Raphael arrives at the gate of Paradise, the angels to his state And to his message high in honour rise, For on some message high they guessed him bound. In _Samson Agonistes_ it is noted that nations grown corrupt love bondage more than liberty, Bondage with ease than strenuous liberty. Yet in the main Dryden is right, for even instances like these are not many, and the tricky neatness of Ovid is nowhere to be found in the English epic poet. Milton seldom allows his verse to play in eddies; he taxes every line to its fullest capacity, and wrings the last drop of value from each word. A signal characteristic of his diction has its origin in this hard dealing. He is often not satisfied with one meaning from a word, but will make it do double duty. Here the Latin element in our language gave him his opportunity. Words borrowed from the Latin always change their usage and value in English air. To the ordinary intelligence they convey one meaning; to a scholar's memory they suggest also another. It became the habit of Milton to make use of both values, to assess his words in both capacities. Any page of his work furnishes examples of his delicate care for the original meaning of Latin words, such as _intend_--"intend at home ... what best may ease the present misery"; _arrive_--"ere he arrive the happy Isle"; _obnoxious_--"obnoxious more to all the miseries of life"; _punctual_--"this opacous Earth, this punctual spot"; _sagacious_--"sagacious of his quarry from so far"; _explode_--"the applause they meant turned to exploding hiss"; _retort_--"with retorted scorn his back he turned"; _infest_--"find some occasion to infest our foes." The Speaker of the House of Commons had to determine, some years ago, whether it is in order to allude to the Members as "infesting" the House. Had Milton been called upon for such a decision he would doubtless have ruled that the word is applicable only to Members whose deliberate intention is to maim or destroy the constitution of Parliament. But he was not content to revive the exact classical meaning in place of the vague or weak English acceptation; he often kept both senses, and loaded the word with two meanings at once. When Samson speaks of Dalila as That specious monster, my accomplished snare-- something of this double sense resides in both epithets. In two words we are told that Dalila was both beautiful and deceitful, that she was skilled in the blandishments of art, and successful in the work of her husband's undoing. With a like double reference Samson calls the secret of his strength "my capital secret." Where light, again, is called the "prime work of God," or where we are told that Hell saw "Heaven ruining from Heaven," the original and derivative senses of the words "prime" and "ruin" are united in the conception. These words, and many others similarly employed, are of Latin origin; but Milton carried his practice over into the Saxon part of our vocabulary. The word "uncouth" is used in a double-barrelled sense in the Second Book of _Paradise Lost_-- Who shall tempt with wandering feet The dark, unbottomed, infinite Abyss, And through the palpable obscure find out His uncouth way? And when Satan's eyes are called "baleful," the word, besides indicating the "huge affliction and dismay" that he feels, gives a hint of the woes that are in store for the victims on whom those eyes have not yet lit. It was this habit of "verbal curiosity" and condensation which seduced Milton into punning. Some of his puns are very bad. There is a modern idea that a pun is a thing to laugh at. Milton's puns, like Shakespeare's, give no smallest countenance to this theory. Sometimes he plays with what is merely a chance identity of sound, as where Satan, entering Paradise-- At one slight bound high overleapt all bound. But in most of these cases it seems likely that he believed in an etymological relation between the two words, and so fancied that he was drawing attention to an original unity of meaning. Some such hypothesis is needful to mitigate the atrocity of his worst pun, in _Paradise Regained_, where he describes The ravens with their horny beaks Food to Elijah bringing even and morn-- Though ravenous, taught to abstain from what they brought. Milton was no philologist, and we may be permitted in charity to suppose that he derived "raven" and "ravenous" from the same root. Some of his puns are to be justified for another reason--that they are made the weapons of mockery. So when Satan rails against Abdiel he says-- Thou shalt behold Whether by supplication we intend Address, and to begirt the Almighty Throne Beseeching or besieging. The long punning-bout between Satan and Belial in the Sixth Book exemplifies the more usual form of the Miltonic pun. When he introduces the newly-invented artillery, Satan makes a speech, "scoffing in ambiguous words"-- Ye, who appointed stand, Do as you have in charge, and briefly touch What we propound, and loud that all may hear. And again, when it has taken effect, scattering the heavenly host in unseemly disorder, he says-- If our proposals once again were heard, We should compel them to a quick result. Belial, "in like gamesome mood," replies to the jests of his leader, until, by the providence of Heaven, his wit and his artillery are buried under a weight heavier than themselves. On this whole scene Landor remarks that "the first overt crime of the refractory angels was punning"; and adds, with true Miltonic conciseness, "they fell rapidly after that." Some minor flaws, which may be found in Milton by those who give a close examination to his works, are to be attributed to the same cause--his love of condensed statement. Mixture of metaphors in poetry is often caused merely by the speed of thought, which presents a subject in a new aspect without care taken to adjust or alter the figure. In these cases the obscurity or violence of expression arises not from defect, but from excess of thought. Some few instances occur in Milton, who, in _Lycidas_, writes thus-- But now my oat proceeds, And listens to the Herald of the Sea. The syntax of the thought is sufficiently lucid and orderly, but it is compressed into too few words. In the Fifth Book of _Paradise Lost_ is described how-- The Eternal Eye, whose sight discerns Abtrusest thoughts, from forth his holy mount, And from within the golden lamps that burn Nightly before him, saw without their light Rebellion rising--saw in whom, how spread Among the Sons of Morn, what multitudes Were banded to oppose his high decree; And, smiling, to his only Son thus said. Here, it is true, "the Eternal Eye" smiles and speaks to his only Son. But Milton has really discarded the figure after the words "his high decree," which bring in a new order of thoughts. He trusts the reader to follow his thought without grammatical readjustment--to drop the symbol and remember only the thing symbolised. His trust was warranted, until Landor detected the solecism. The clearest case of mixed metaphor ever charged against Milton occurs in the Eleventh Book, where the lazar-house is described-- Sight so deform what heart of rock could long Dry-eyed behold? Rogers pointed this out to Coleridge, who told Wordsworth that he could not sleep all the next night for thinking of it. What months of insomnia must he not have suffered from the perusal of Shakespeare's works! The close-wrought style of Milton makes the reading of _Paradise Lost_ a hard task in this sense, that it is a severe intellectual exercise, without relaxation. The attention that it demands, word by word, and line by line, could not profitably be given to most books; so that many readers, trained by a long course of novel-reading to nibble and browse through the pastures of literature, find that Milton yields little or no delight under their treatment, and abandon him in despair. And yet, with however great reluctance, it must be admitted that the close study and admiring imitation of Milton bring in their train some lesser evils. Meaning may be arranged too compactly in a sentence; for perfect and ready assimilation some bulk and distention are necessary in language as in diet. Now the study of Milton, if it teaches anything, teaches to discard and abhor all superfluity. He who models himself upon this master will never "go a-begging for some meaning, and labour to be delivered of the great burden of nothing." But he may easily fall into the opposite error of putting "riddles of wit, by being too scarce of words." He will be so intent upon the final and perfect expression of his thought, that his life may pass before he finds it, and even if, in the end, he should say a thing well, he is little likely to say it in due season. "Brevity is attained in matter," says a master of English prose, "by avoiding idle compliments, prefaces, protestations, parentheses, superfluous circuit of figures and digressions: in the composition, by omitting conjunctions--_not only ... but also, both the one and the other, whereby it cometh to pass_, and such like idle particles." Either sort of brevity may be learned from Milton. But any one who has been compelled to make efforts of unprompted eloquence, and to choose his expressions while he is on his feet, knows well how necessary is the function performed by these same prefaces, protestations, parentheses, and idle particles. Suavely uttered, they keep expectation alive in the audience, and give the orator time to think. Whether in speaking or in writing, no fluent and popular style can well be without them. _I should be inclined to say--If I may be permitted to use the expression--Speaking for myself and for those who agree with me--It is no great rashness to assert_-- a hundred phrases like these are an indispensable part of an easy writer's, as of an easy speaker's, equipment. To forego all these swollen and diluted forms of speech is to run the risk of the opposite danger, congestion of the thought and paralysis of the pen--the scholar's melancholy. To give long days and nights to the study of Milton is to cultivate the critical faculty to so high a pitch that it may possibly become tyrannical, and learn to distaste all free writing. Accustomed to control and punish wanton activity, it will anticipate its judicial duties, and, not content with inflicting death, will devote its malign energy to preventing birth. It is good, therefore, to remember that Milton himself took a holiday sometimes, and gave a loose to his pen and to his thought. Some parts of his prose writings run in a full torrent of unchastened eloquence. An open playground for exuberant activity is of the first importance for a writer. Johnson found such a playground in talk. There he could take the curb off his prejudices, give the rein to his whimsical fancy, and better his expression as he talked. But where men must talk, as well as write, upon oath, paralysis is not easily avoided. In the little mincing societies addicted to intellectual and moral culture the creative zest is lost. The painful inhibition of a continual rigorous choice, if it is never relaxed, cripples the activity of the mind. Those who can talk the best and most compact sense have often found irresponsible paradox and nonsense a useful and pleasant recreation ground. It was Milton's misfortune, not the least of those put upon him by the bad age in which he lived, that what Shakespeare found in the tavern he had to seek in the Church. Denied the wild wit-combats of the Mermaid, he disported himself in a pamphlet-war on bishops and divorce. But he found health and exercise for his faculties there; and the moral (for all things have a moral) is this: that when, in a mood of self-indulgence, we can write habitually with the gust, the licentious force, the flow, and the careless wealthy insolence of the _Animadversions upon the Remonstrant's Defence against Smectymnuus_, we need not then repine or be ill-content if we find that we can rise only occasionally to the chastity, the severity, and the girded majesty of _Paradise Lost_. CHAPTER VI THE STYLE OF MILTON; AND ITS INFLUENCE ON ENGLISH POETRY When Milton was born, Shakespeare, Jonson, Beaumont, Dekker, Chapman, Daniel, Drayton, and half a hundred other Elizabethan notables were yet alive. When he died, Addison, Swift, Steele, and Arbuthnot were already born. Thus his life bridges the gulf between the age of Elizabeth and the age of Anne; and this further examination of his style has for object to inquire what part he may claim in the change of temper, method, subject, and form which came over English poetry during that period. The answer usually given to this question is that he had no part at all. He lived and died alone. He imitated no one, and founded no school. There was none of his more distinguished contemporaries with whom he was on terms of intimacy; none whose ideals in poetry remotely resembled his. So that although he is to be ranged among the greatest of English poets, a place in the legitimate hereditary succession would, on these considerations, be denied to him. When Dryden succeeded to the dictatorship of Jonson, the continuity of literary history was resumed. The great processes of change which affected English letters during the seventeenth century are in no way associated with the name of Milton. Waller and Denham, Davenant and Dryden, "reformed" English verse; Hobbes, Cowley, Tillotson, Dryden and Sprat remodelled English prose. And in the meantime, if this account is to be accepted, while English verse and English prose were in the melting-pot, this splendid efflorescence was an accident, a by-product, without meaning or causal virtue in the chemical process that was going forward. Others will have it that Milton was a belated Elizabethan. But the difficulty of that theory is that he reversed rather than continued many of the practices of the Elizabethans, and introduced reforms of his own, no less striking than the reforms effected by Dryden. Shirley is a good example of a genuine late Elizabethan. But in Shirley's works there is nothing that is not an echo. In Milton's, on the other hand, after the volume of 1645, there is nothing that echoes any earlier English poet even faintly. He renayed his ancestry; and, if he left no descendants, he must needs be regarded as "a vast species alone." The Elizabethans, including even the author of _Sejanus_ and the translator of Homer, were Romantics. The terms Romantic and Classic are perhaps something overworn; and, although they are useful to supply a reason, it may well be doubted whether they ever helped any one to an understanding. Yet here, if anywhere, they are in place; for Milton is, by common consent, not only a Classic poet, but the greatest exemplar of the style in the long bead-roll of English poets. The "Augustans" prided themselves on their resemblance to the poets of the great age of Rome. Was there nothing in common between them and Milton, and did they really borrow nothing and learn nothing from him? This much is agreed, that of all English styles Milton's is best entitled to the name of Classic. In his poems may be found every device that belongs to the Classic manner, as in Shakespeare's plays may be found every device that belongs distinctively to the Romantic. Perhaps the two manners are best compared by the juxtaposition of descriptive passages. In description it is impossible for literature to be exhaustive; a choice must be made, an aspect emphasised, and by far the greater part left to the imagination of the reader. A man, for instance, has stature, feature, bones, muscles, nerves, entrails; his eyes, hair, and skin are of certain colours; he stands in a particular attitude at a particular spot on the surface of the earth; he is agitated by certain passions and ideas; every movement that he makes is related to his constitution and his past history; he has affinity with other men by the ties of the family, the society, the State; he thinks and acts more in a minute than a hundred writers can describe and explain in a year; he is a laughing, weeping, money-making, clothes-wearing, lying, reasoning, worshipping, amorous, credulous, sceptical, imitative, combative, gregarious, prehensile, two-legged animal. He does not cease to be all this and more, merely because he happens to be at one of his thousand tricks, and you catch him in the act. How do you propose to describe him? Broadly speaking, there are two methods available. You may begin with the more general and comprehensive of the relations that fall in with your purpose, securing breadth of view and truth in the larger values, leaving the imagination to supply the more particular and personal details on the barest of hints from you: or you may fix your gaze exclusively on some vivid cluster of details, indicating their remoter relations and their place in a wider perspective by a few vague suggestions. The first of these ways is Milton's. He maps out his descriptions in bold outline, attending always to the unity of the picture and the truth of the larger relations. He is chary of detail, and what he adds is added for its own immediate importance rather than for its remoter power of suggestion. Adam and Eve when they are first introduced, are thus described:-- Two of far nobler shape, erect and tall, Godlike erect, with native honour clad In naked majesty, seemed lords of all, And worthy seemed; for in their looks divine The image of their glorious Maker shone, Truth, wisdom, sanctitude severe and pure,-- Severe, but in true filial freedom placed, Whence true authority in men. As pictorial description this is all but completely empty. It tells you only that they stood upright, that they were like their Maker, and that they were possessed of the virtues that their appearance would lead you to expect. Their physical delineation is to be accommodated by the imagination of the reader to this long catalogue of moral qualities,--nobility, honour, majesty, lordliness, worth, divinity, glory, brightness, truth, wisdom, sanctitude, severity, and purity. In the following lines the poet proceeds to distinguish the one figure from the other, adding a few details with regard to each. The epithets he chooses are still vague. Adam's forehead is "fair" and "large," his eye is "sublime," his locks are "hyacinthine," and (a detail that has escaped the notice of many illustrators of _Paradise Lost_) they fall in clusters as low as his shoulders. From beginning to end of the description the aim of the poet is to preserve the right key of large emotion, and the words that he chooses are chosen chiefly for their emotional value. The emotions are given; the portraiture is left to be filled in by the imagination. Shakespeare commonly works in the reverse way. He does not, like Crabbe, describe "as if for the police"; he chooses his detail with consummate skill, but he makes use of it to suggest the emotions. It is impossible to set his description of persons over against Milton's; for the drama does not describe persons, it presents them in action; and a description, where it occurs, is often designed merely to throw light on the character and feelings of the speaker. "Her voice was ever soft, gentle, and low" is a description rather of Lear, as he hangs over the dead body of Cordelia, refusing to believe that she is dead, than of Cordelia herself. "An excellent thing in woman" is not a doctrine, but a last heartbreaking movement of defiance, as if to refute any stander-by who dares to think that there is something amiss, that a voice should not be so low as to be inaudible. The contrast of the methods may, therefore, be better noted in the description of scenes. There is no very close parallel obtainable; but the two passages compared by Lessing are not wholly dissimilar in theme, and serve well enough to illustrate the difference of the styles. The first, taken from the Seventh Book of _Paradise Lost_, tells how the King of Glory, from the verge of his heavenly domain, beholds the gulf of Chaos:-- On Heavenly ground they stood, and from the shore They viewed the vast immeasurable Abyss, Outrageous as a sea, dark, wasteful, wild, Up from the bottom turned by furious winds And surging waves, as mountains to assault Heaven's highth, and with the centre mix the pole. The other is the imaginary view from Dover Cliff, described by Edgar in _King Lear_:-- How fearful And dizzy 'tis, to cast one's eyes so low! The crows and choughs that wing the midway air Show scarce so gross as beetles: half way down Hangs one that gathers samphire, dreadful trade! Methinks he seems no bigger than his head; The fishermen, that walk upon the beach, Appear like mice; and yond tall anchoring bark, Diminish'd to her cock; her cock, a buoy Almost too small for sight: the murmuring surge That on th' unnumbered idle pebbles chafes, Cannot be heard so high. I'll look no more; Lest my brain turn and the deficient sight Topple down headlong. Johnson objected to this description: "No, sir; it should be all precipice,--all vacuum. The crows impede your fall. The diminished appearance of the boats, and other circumstances, are all very good description, but do not impress the mind at once with the horrible idea of immense height. The impression is divided; you pass on, by computation, from one stage of the tremendous space to another." This criticism is, in effect, a plea for Milton's method, although by a freak of fate it was uttered in vindication of Congreve. Some years earlier, in his edition of Shakespeare, Johnson had remarked on the same passage, and had indicated the poetic method that he approved: "He that looks from a precipice finds himself assailed by one great and dreadful image of irresistible destruction." Johnson's critical opinions on poetry are deserving of the most careful consideration, and, where they fail to convince, of an undiminished respect. But not Johnson himself can raise a doubt as to which of the two passages quoted above is the greater masterpiece of description proper. Shakespeare sets a scene before your eyes, and by his happy choice of vivid impression makes you giddy. The crows help, rather than impede your fall; for to look into illimitable vacuum is to look at nothing, and therefore to be unmoved. But the classic manner is so careful for unity of emotional impression that it rejects these humble means for attaining even to so great an end. It refuses to work by mice and beetles, lest the sudden intrusion of trivial associations should mar the main impression. No sharp discords are allowed, even though they should be resolved the moment after. Every word and every image must help forward the main purpose. Thus, while the besetting sin of the Romantics is the employment of excessive, or irrelevant, or trivial or grotesque detail, the besetting sin of the Classics is so complete an omission of realistic detail that the description becomes inflated, windy and empty, and the strongest words in the language lose their vital force because they are set fluttering hither and thither in multitudes, with no substantial hold upon reality. There is nothing that dies sooner than an emotion when it is cut off from the stock on which it grows. The descriptive epithet or adjective, if only it be sparingly and skilfully employed, so that the substantive carry it easily, is the strongest word in a sentence. But when once it loses its hold upon concrete reality it becomes the weakest, and not all the protests of debility, superlative degrees, and rhetorical insistence, can save it from neglect. It is apparent, therefore, how necessary to Milton were the concrete epic realities with which his poem deals,--the topographical scheme of things, and the definite embodiment of all his spiritual essences. Keats' _Hyperion_ fails largely for want of an exact physical system such as Milton devises. Keats works almost wholly with vague Romantic suggestion, and there is nothing for the poem to hang on by. Something is happening; but it is difficult to say what, for we see only dream-imagery, and hear only muffled echoes. Had Milton made unsparing use of abstraction and suggestion, his poem would have fallen into windy chaos. The "philosophical poems" of his age did so fall. Henry More's _Platonick Song of the Soul_ (1642), wherein are treated the Life of the Soul, her Immortality, the Sleep of the Soul, the Unity of Souls, and Memory after Death, is a dust-storm of verbiage. Such words as "calefaction," "exility," "self-reduplication," "tricentreity," "individuation," "circumvolution," "presentifick circularity," struggle and sprawl within the narrow room of the Spenserian stanza. Milton keeps us in better company than this, even in Hell. He uses abstract terms magnificently, but almost always with a reference to concrete realities, not as the names of separate entities. By the substitution of abstract nouns for concrete he achieves a wonderful effect of majesty. He does not name, for instance, the particular form of wind instrument that the heralds blew in Hell:-- Four speedy Cherubim Put to their mouths the sounding alchymy. He avoids defining his creatures by names that lend themselves to definite picture: of Death he says-- So spake the grisly Terror; and he makes Raphael, at the call of Heaven's king, rise from among Thousand celestial Ardours. In the Tenth Book, Death, snuffing the distant scent of mortality, becomes all nose-- So scented the grim Feature, and upturned His nostril wide into the murky air. A superb example of this powerful use of abstract terms is contained in the First Book of _Paradise Regained_, where is described how Satan, disguised as an old man, took his leave of the Son of God, and Bowing low His gray dissimulation, disappeared Into thin air diffused. The word "dissimulation" expresses the fact of the gray hairs assumed, the purpose of deceit, the cringing attitude, and adds a vague effect of power. The same vagueness is habitually studied by Milton in such phrases as "the vast abrupt," "the palpable obscure," "the void immense," "the wasteful deep," where, by the use of an adjective in place of a substantive, the danger of a definite and inadequate conception is avoided. Milton, therefore, describes the concrete, the specific, the individual, using general and abstract terms for the sake of the dignity and scope that they lend. The best of our Romantic poets follow the opposite course: they are much concerned with abstract conceptions and general truths, but they bring them home by the employment of concrete and specific terms, and figures so familiar that they cannot easily avoid grotesque associations. These grotesque associations, however trivial, are the delight of humour: Alexander's dust will stop a beer-barrel; divine ambition exposes what is mortal and unsure To all that fortune, death, and danger dare, Even for an egg-shell. The comments made by Johnson on a certain well-known passage in _Macbeth_ are an excellent example of the objections urged against the Romantic method--a method whereby, says Johnson, poetry is "debased by mean expressions." He takes for text the invocation of Night by Lady Macbeth-- Come, thick night, And pall thee in the dunnest smoke of hell, That my keen knife see not the wound it makes, Nor heaven peep through the blanket of the dark, To cry, "Hold, hold!" Johnson's criticisms, which take up a whole paper in _The Rambler_, may be conveniently stated in summary. The epithet _dun_, he says, is "an epithet now seldom heard but in the stable, and _dun_ night may come and go without any other notice but contempt." A _knife_, again, is "an instrument used by butchers and cooks in the meanest employments; we do not immediately conceive that any crime of importance is to be committed with a _knife_." In the third place, although to wish to elude the eye of Providence is "the utmost extravagance of determined wickedness," yet even this great conception is debased by two unfortunate words when the avengers of guilt are made to _peep_ through a _blanket_. It is easy, in this case at least, to defend Shakespeare. There is no need to make much of the fact that Johnson attributes the speech to Macbeth. The essence of the crime is that it is the treacherous and cowardly crime of an assassin, committed on a guest while he sleeps. Implements of war are out of place here; it is the very crime for a knife, and Lady Macbeth shows her sense of this when she uses the word. Again, the darkness that she invokes is not the solemn shadow of night, but the stifling, opaque smoke of Hell. The blanket was perhaps suggested to Shakespeare by the black canopy that hung over the Elizabethan stage to represent night; but, in any case, it gives the notion of an artificial privacy, shutting out light and shutting in sound, a smothered unnatural secrecy. The use of the word _blanket_, in fact, carries with it a new fantastic horror. Night herself, who has brought the fatal gift of sleep to Duncan, is represented as the cowardly accomplice of the murderers, performing the most dastardly office that can fall to the hireling of a bravo. The mean associations, therefore, in so far as they exist, help Shakespeare's purpose. Milton had no purpose that could be furthered by such help. The omissions in his descriptions cannot be supplied by an appeal to experience, for what he describes is outside the pale of human experience, and is, in that sense, unreal. His descriptions do not so much remind us of what we have seen as create for us what we are to see. He is bound, therefore, to avoid the slightest touch of unworthy association; the use of even a few domestic figures and homely phrases would bring his hanging palace about his ears. What dangers he escaped may be well seen in Cowley's _Davideis_, which fell into them all. This is how Cowley describes the attiring of his Gabriel, who is commissioned to bear a message to David-- He took for skin a cloud most soft and bright, That e'er the midday Sun pierced through with light: Upon his cheeks a lively blush he spred; Washt from the morning beauties deepest red. An harmless flaming _Meteor_ shone for haire, And fell adown his shoulders with loose care. He cuts out a silk _Mantle_ from the skies, Where the most sprightly azure pleas'd the eyes. This he with starry vapours spangles all, Took in their prime ere they grow _ripe_ and _fall_,-- --and so on. The whole business suggests the arming of Pigwiggin; or the intricacies of Belinda's toilet in _The Rape of the Lock_. Such a Gabriel should add the last touch of adornment from a patch-box filled with sun-spots; and then is fit only to be-- Drawn with a team of little atomies Athwart men's noses as they lie asleep. Milton was not in the least likely to fall into this fantastic-familiar vein. But he was also debarred from dealing freely in realism; from carrying conviction by some sudden startling piece of fidelity to the mixed texture of human experience and human feeling. When the feast is spread in Eden he remarks, it is true,--"No fear lest dinner cool"; but a lapse like this is of the rarest. His success--and he knew it--depended on the untiring maintenance of a superhuman elevation. His choice of subject had therefore not a little to do with the nature of his diction; and, through the influence of his diction, as shall be shown hereafter, with the establishment of the poetic tradition that dominated Eighteenth Century poetry. The same motives and tendencies, the same consistent care for remoteness and loftiness, may be seen in the character of the similes that he most frequently employs. Almost all his figures and comparisons illustrate concrete objects by concrete objects, and occurrences in time by other occurrences later in time. The essentially Romantic sort of figure, scarcely used by Milton, illustrates subtle conceptual relations by parable-- Now at the last gasp of Love's latest breath, When, his pulse failing, Passion speechless lies, And Faith is kneeling by his bed of death, And Innocence is closing up his eyes,-- Now, if thou would'st, when all have given him over, From death to life thou might'st him yet recover. Sometimes, by a curious reversal, poets, especially the more sophisticated poets of the Romantic Revival, describe a perfectly definite outward object or scene by a figure drawn from the most complex abstract conceptions. So Shelley, with whom these inverted figures are habitual, compares the skylark to A poet hidden In the light of thought; and Byron, describing the rainbow over a waterfall, likens it to Love watching Madness with unalterable mien. Both ways are foreign to the epic manner of Milton. His figures may be called historic parallels, whereby the names and incidents of human history are made to elucidate and ennoble the less familiar names and incidents of his prehistoric theme. Sometimes, following Homer, he borrows a figure from rustic life, as where, for instance, he compares the devils, crowding into Pandemonium, to a swarm of bees. But he perceived clearly enough that he could not, for the reasons already explained, afford to deal largely in this class of figure: he prefers to maintain dignity and distance by choosing comparisons from ancient history and mythology, or from those great and strange things in Nature which repel intimacy--the sun, the moon, the sea, planets in opposition, a shooting star, an evening mist, a will-o'-the-wisp, a vulture descending from the Himalayas, the ice-floes on the North-East passage, the sea-beast leviathan, Xerxes' Hellespontic bridge, the gryphon pursuing the Arimaspian, the madness of Alcides in Oeta, the rape of Proserpine, and a hundred more reminiscences of the ancient world. Even the great events of ancient history seemed to him at times too familiar, too little elevated and remote to furnish a resting-place for a song that intended "no middle flight." He transforms his proper names, both to make them more melodious, and to make them more unfamiliar to the ear. No praise is too high for his art and skill in this matter. An example may be found in those four lines--the earliest that have the full Miltonic resonance--describing the fate of Lycidas, carried by the tide southward to the Cornish coast:-- Or whether thou, to our moist vows denied, Sleep'st by the fable of Bellerus old, Where the great Vision of the guarded mount Looks toward Namancos and Bayona's hold. "Bellerus" seems to be a name of Milton's coinage. He had written "Corineus," and probably disliked the sound, for in this case it can hardly have been that the name was too familiar. Both reasons concurred in prompting the allusion to Pharaoh and his Egyptian squadrons as-- Busiris and his Memphian chivalry. One would think "Italy" a pleasant enough sound, and "Vulcan" a good enough name for poetry. Neither was musical enough for Milton; both perhaps had associations too numerous, familiar, and misleading. Vulcan is mentioned, by that name, in _Comus_; but in _Paradise Lost_, where the story of his fall from Heaven is told, and the architect of Pandemonium is identified with him, both names, "Italy" and "Vulcan," are heightened and improved:-- In Ausonian land Men called him Mulciber. "Hephaistos," the name dear to moderns, could have found no place in Milton's works, unless it had been put in a description of the God's smithy, or, perhaps, in the sonnet where are pilloried those harsh-sounding Presbyterian names:-- Collkitto, or Macdonnel, or Galasp. Milton's use of proper names is a measure of his poetic genius. He does not forego it even in the lyric. Was there ever so learned a lyric as that beginning "Sabrina fair"--with its rich stores of marine mythology? History, not philosophy, was the source that he drew on for his splendours; and history, according to Milton, had, since the Fall of Man, furnished nothing but fainter and weaker repetitions of those stupendous events which filled the early theatre of universal space. His epic catalogues, which are few in number, show the same predominant interest in history and geography. The story of the Creation gave him an excellent opportunity of enumerating the kinds and properties of birds, beasts, fishes, and reptiles, plants and trees, after the manner of Chaucer and Spenser. This opportunity he refuses, or, at any rate, turns to but small account. His general descriptions are highly picturesque, but he spends little time on enumeration and detail. Of vegetables, only the vine, the gourd, and the corn are mentioned by name; of the inhabitants of the sea only the seal, the dolphin, and the whale. Natural knowledge, although he made a fair place for it in his scheme of education, was not one of his dearer studies. It was enough for him, as for Raphael, that Adam knew the natures of the beasts, and gave them appropriate names. The mere mention, on the other hand, of historic and geographic names rouses all the poet in him. The splendid roll-call of the devils, in the First Book of _Paradise Lost_, and the only less splendid enumeration, in the Eleventh Book, of the Kingdoms of the Earth, shown to Adam in vision, are a standing testimony to his powers. Compared with these, the list of human diseases and maladies in the Eleventh Book, suggested perhaps by Du Bartas, is rehearsed in a slighter and more perfunctory fashion. One last point in Milton's treatment must not be left unnoticed. Much adverse criticism has been spent on his allegorical figures of Sin and Death. There is good classical precedent for the introduction of such personified abstractions among the actors of a drama; and, seeing that the introduction of sin and death into the world was the chief effect of his main action, Milton no doubt felt that this too must be handled in right epic fashion, and must not be left to be added to the theme as a kind of embroidery of moral philosophy. In no other way could he have treated the topic half so effectively. There is enough of his philosophy in Milton's Heaven to damp our desire for more of it on his Earth or in his Hell. And when once we have given him license to deal only in persons, we are amply rewarded. His management of the poetic figure of personification is superb. It is a figure difficult to handle, and generally fails of effect through falling into one of two extremes. Either the quality, or the person, is forgotten. The figures in the _Romaunt of the Rose_ are good examples of the one type, of the minute materialistic personifications of the Middle Ages, pictorial rather than literary in essence, like the illuminated figures in a psalter. The feeble abstractions that people Gray's Odes, where, as Coleridge remarked, the personification depends wholly on the use of an initial capital, are examples of the other. Neither has the art of combining the vastness and vagueness of the abstract with the precise and definite conception of a person, as is done in the great figure of Religion drawn by Lucretius, as is done also in those other figures--the only creations of English poetry which approach the Latin in grandeur--the horrible phantoms of Sin and Death. These, then, here outlined slightly and imperfectly, are some of the most noteworthy features of Milton's style. By the measured roll of his verse, and the artful distribution of stress and pause to avoid monotony and to lift the successive lines in a climax; by the deliberate and choice character of his diction, and his wealth of vaguely emotional epithets; by the intuition which taught him to use no figures that do not heighten the majesty, and no names that do not help the music of his poem; by the vivid outlines of the concrete imaginations that he imposes on us for real, and the cloudy brilliance that he weaves for them out of all great historical memories, and all far-reaching abstract conceptions, he attained to a finished style of perhaps a more consistent and unflagging elevation than is to be found elsewhere in literature. There is nothing to put beside him. "His natural port," says Johnson, "is gigantick loftiness." And Landor: "After I have been reading the _Paradise Lost_, I can take up no other poet with satisfaction. I seem to have left the music of Handel for the music of the streets, or, at best, for drums and fifes." The secret of the style is lost; and no poet, since Milton's day, has recaptured the solemnity and beauty of the large utterance of Gabriel, or Belial, or Satan. The success of _Paradise Lost_, when it was published in 1667, was immediate and startling. Some of the poet's biographers have shed tears over the ten pounds that was all Milton ever received for his greatest work; others, magnanimously renouncing the world on his behalf, have rejoiced in the smallness of the sum paid him for a priceless work. Lament and heroics are both out of place. London was a small town, and it may well be doubted whether any modern provincial town of the same size would buy up in eighteen months thirteen hundred copies of a poem so serious and difficult and novel as _Paradise Lost_. Moreover, before the close of the century, six editions had appeared, three of them in folio, and so--judged by the number of editions--Milton's epic had outrun Shakespeare's plays in popularity. The folio edition of 1695, with notes and elucidations by one Patrick Hume, a Scottish scholar, appeared fourteen years before Nicholas Rowe produced the first critical edition of Shakespeare. The literary world quickly came to the opinion expressed by Dryden in the year of Milton's death, that the _Paradise Lost_ was "one of the greatest, most noble, and most sublime poems which either this age or nation has produced." Barely twenty years later the editors of the _Athenian Mercury_ were asked to determine "Whether Milton and Waller were not the best English Poets; and which the better of the two?" Their verdict, reflecting, no doubt, the average opinion of the time, ran thus: "They were both excellent in their kind, and exceeded each other, and all besides. Milton was the fullest and loftiest; Waller the neatest and most correct poet we ever had." Long before Addison wrote the papers on _Paradise Lost_ in the _Spectator_, Milton had received full recognition in the literary handbooks of that age. Langbaine, in his _Account of the English Dramatick Poets_ (1691), takes notice of Dryden's debts to _Samson Agonistes_, and, with an effort to be just, remarks of Milton:--" Had his Principles been as good as his Parts, he had been an Excellent Person." Sir Thomas Pope Blount, in his _De Re Poetica_ (1694), and Bysshe in his _Art of English Poetry_ (1702), bear witness, in their several ways, to Milton's great and assured fame. Indeed, Thomas Rymer, of Gray's Inn, Esquire, who in 1677 had sneered at "that Paradise Lost of Milton's which some are pleased to call a Poem," and William Winstanley, who, in the _Lives of the Most Famous English Poets_ (1687), had remarked of Milton that "his Fame is gone out like a Candle in a Snuff, and his Memory will always stink," were almost alone among the voices of their time. They were still under the influence of the old political prejudice, but they did battle for a doomed opinion, and, among judges not illiterate, they are the poet's last detractors. The singular thing to note is that the eighteenth century, which broke with almost every other seventeenth-century poet before Dryden, did not break with Milton. "Who now reads Cowley?" Pope asked: Cowley, whose works ran through so many editions that no modern reprint has been called for. If he had asked, "Who now reads Milton?" the answer must have been, "Every writer of English verse"; and so it has continued from the time of Milton's death to the present day. The choice of blank verse for _Paradise Lost_ established that metre in formidable rivalry to the heroic couplet, so that it became the usual metre for long poems of a reflective or descriptive cast. Professed imitations of Milton's verse were many; among them, Addison's _Translation of a Story out of the Third Aeneid_, Broome's experiment in the translation of the Eleventh Odyssey, Fenton's fragments of two books of the _Iliad_, and Christopher Pitt's paraphrase of Psalm cxxxix. In the first year of the eighteenth century John Philips showed, in his _Splendid Shilling_, how the style of Milton might be applied, for the purposes of burlesque, to humble subjects, a lesson which he further illustrated, with no ostensible comic intent, in his later poems, _Cyder_ and _Blenheim_. Gay, in _Wine, a Poem_, Somerville in _The Chase_, Armstrong in _The Oeconomy of Love_ and _The Art of Preserving Health_, Christopher Smart in The Hop-Garden, Dyer in _The Fleece_, and Grainger in _The Sugar-Cane_, all followed where Philips' _Cyder_ had led, and multiplied year by year what may be called the technical and industrial applications of Milton's style. Among the many other blank verse poems produced during the middle part of the century it is enough to name Thomson's _Seasons_; Blair's _Grave_; Glover's _Leonidas_; Shenstone's _Economy_, _The Ruined Abbey_, and _Love and Honour_; Young's _Night Thoughts_; Akenside's _Pleasures of the Imagination_; Thomas Warton's _Pleasures of Melancholy_; Mallet's _The Excursion_, and _Amyntor and Theodora_; Cooper's _The Power of Harmony_; and Lyttelton's _Blenheim_. The influence of Milton is not equally apparent in all of these, but in none is it wholly wanting; in most it is visible on every page. The mere invocation often tells a tale. Thus Akenside:-- Thou chief, Poetic Spirit, from the banks Of Avon, whence thy holy fingers cull Fresh flowers and dews to sprinkle on the turf Where Shakespeare lies, be present. And with thee Let Fiction come; on her aërial wings Wafting ten thousand colours. The quotation need not be prolonged; even while he commemorates Shakespeare, Akenside goes to Milton for his material, and plays a feeble variation on the Miltonic phrase:-- In his right hand Grasping ten thousand thunders. Thus Lyttelton:-- Minerva, thee to my adventurous lyre Assistant I invoke, that means to sing Blenheim, proud monument of British fame Thy glorious work! "The building, not the field, I sing," he might have added, for Philips had already chanted the battle of Blenheim in like Miltonic fashion. Thus, again, the worthy Grainger, flattest of agricultural bards:-- Spirit of Inspiration, that did'st lead Th' Ascrean poet to the sacred mount, And taught'st him all the precepts of the swain; Descend from Heaven, and guide my trembling steps To Fame's eternal dome, where Maro reigns; Where pastoral Dyer, where Pomona's bard, And Smart and Somervile in varying strains, Their sylvan lore convey: O may I join This choral band, and from their precepts learn To deck my theme, which though to song unknown, Is most momentous to my country's weal! Grainger frequently echoes Milton; and in the passage where he addresses the Avon, at Bristol, he pays a more explicit tribute:-- Though not to you, young Shakespeare, Fancy's child, All-rudely warbled his first woodland notes; * * * * * On you reclined, another tuned his pipe, Whom all the Muses emulously love, And in whose strains your praises shall endure While to Sabrina speeds your healing stream. Better and more striking instances of the Miltonic spell laid on blank verse are easily to be found for the seeking. But since it is the omnipresence of this Miltonic influence that is asserted, passages like these, which catch the eye on any chance page of eighteenth-century blank verse, and are representative of hundreds more, suffice for the purpose. There has been a tendency among recent historians of English literature to group together the poets who, like Dyer in _Grongar Hill_, and Thomas Warton in _The Pleasures of Melancholy_, echo the strains of Milton's early poems, and to name them "Miltonics," precursors of the Romantic Revival. No doubt there is a marked difference between Milton's earlier manner and his later; not a few of his lovers, if they were forced to choose, would readily give up the three major poems to save the five best of the minor. But it is going far to appropriate the name of "Miltonic" to imitators of the earlier poems. Perhaps the study of _L'Allegro_ and _Il Penseroso_ and _Comus_ helped forward the Romantic Revival; but the chief influence of Milton on the development of English poetry was not this. It was natural enough that those who had been taught from childhood to read and admire _Paradise Lost_ should find relief and novelty in the freer and more spontaneous music of these youthful poems. But the truth is that before ever he abetted the escape, he helped to forge the fetters; that Milton, as much as any other single writer, was responsible for the wide and potent sway of the classical convention. Above all, he may fairly be called the inventor and, by the irony of fate, the promulgator of that "poetic diction" which, in the time of its deformity and decay, Wordsworth sought to destroy. Johnson attributes the invention to Dryden. "There was therefore," he says, "before the time of Dryden no poetical diction, no system of words, at once refined from the grossness of domestick use, and free from the harshness of terms appropriated to particular arts. Words too familiar or too remote defeat the purpose of a poet." There is no need to quarrel with this account, if we are careful to understand exactly what Johnson means. Dryden, he says in effect, wrote plain, well-bred English; he eschewed technical terms, shunned the florid licenses of the Elizabethans, and yet, in his more studied verse, never dropped into the town-gallant vein of some of his contemporaries, the slang of Butler or Lestrange. Johnson, it should be remembered, thought the diction of _Lycidas_ "harsh," and it is plain enough from many of his utterances that he ranged Milton with the poets who use words and phrases "too remote" from the language of natural intercourse. He was a devoted adherent of the school of Dryden and Pope; in the _Lives of the Poets_ he loses no opportunity of expressing his contempt for blank verse; he was only too likely to exalt the influence of his masters on the poets of his own time, and to ignore the influence of Milton. Since handbooks of literature are commonly formed by a process of attrition from such works as Johnson's _Lives_, his opinions on a point like this persist in epidemic fashion; they are detached from their authority, and repeated so often that at last they become orthodox. But no ignoring of Milton can alter the fact that English verse went Milton-mad during the earlier half of the eighteenth century. Miltonic cadences became a kind of patter, and the diction that Milton had invented for the rendering of his colossal imaginations was applied indifferently to all subjects--to apple-growing, sugar-boiling, the drainage of the Bedford level, the breeding of negroes, and the distempers of sheep. Milton's shadowy grandeur, his avoidance of plain concrete terms, his manner of linking adjective with substantive, were all necessary to him for the describing of his strange world; but these habits became a mere vicious trick of absurd periphrasis and purposeless vagueness when they were carried by his imitators into the description of common and familiar objects. A reader making his first acquaintance with Thomson's _Seasons_ might suppose that the poem was written for a wager, to prove that country life may be described, and nothing called by its name. The philosophic pride of the eighteenth century was tickled by the use of general terms in description; the chosen periphrases are always more comprehensive than the names that they replace. When Thomson, for instance, speaks of "the feathered nations" or of "the glossy kind," it is only by the context that we are saved from supposing him to allude, in the one case to Red Indians, in the other to moles. And these are but two of some dozen devices for escaping from the flat vulgarity of calling birds by that name. Milton himself, it must be admitted, is not wholly free from blame. The elevation and vagueness of his diction, which were a mere necessity to him in the treatment of large parts of his subject, are yet maintained by him in the description of things comparatively familiar. When Sin is described as "rolling her bestial train" towards the gates of Hell, the diction is faultless; when the serpent (as yet an innocent reptile in Paradise), Insinuating, wove with Gordian twine His braided train, it is impossible to cavil; but when Raphael, in conversation with Adam, describes the formation of the banks-- where rivers now Stream, and perpetual draw their humid train, criticism is less at ease. We feel that we are drawing near to the "poetic diction" of the eighteenth century. Eve's tears are called precious drops that ready stood Each in their crystal sluice, but the description is saved by the lines that immediately precede, where Milton says the word, and thereby shows that he is not seeking idle periphrasis:-- But silently a gentle tear let fall From either eye, and wiped them with her hair. His constant preference for words of Latin origin certainly brings Milton near at times to the poetic diction banned by Wordsworth. "Vernal bloom" for "spring flowers," "humid bow" for "rainbow," the description of the brooks rolling-- With mazy error under pendent shades, the use of phrases like "nitrous powder" or "smutty grain" for "gunpowder," and "optic glass" or "optic tube" for the telescope or "perspective," are instances of the approximation. A certain number of these circuitous phrases are justified by considerations of dramatic propriety. When Raphael describes the artillery used in Heaven, he speaks of cannon balls as "iron globes" and "balls of missive ruin," and calls the linstock the "incentive reed pernicious," thereby perhaps drawing attention to the strange character of the new invention. No such reason can be invoked for his justification when he tells how the sun receives from earth his alimental recompense In humid exhalations; still less when, speaking of food, with which he confesses himself to be familiar, he calls it "corporal nutriment." But the chief sinner is Adam. If the evil passions of the rebel Angels invented the pun, it was the pomposity of our father Adam that first brought "poetic diction" into vogue. When the curse has fallen in Eden he makes a long speech for the comfort of Eve, in the course of which he alludes to "the graceful locks of these fair spreading trees," speaks of the sun as "this diurnal star," and, studying protection against the newly experienced cold, advises-- how we his gathered beams Reflected may with matter sere foment, Or by collision of two bodies grind The air attrite to fire; --for all the world as if he were a man of science lecturing to some Philosophic Institute on the customs of savages. If, then, the term "poetic diction" is to be used as Wordsworth used it, Johnson's account of its origin must be amended. There was little or no poetic diction, of the kind condemned by Wordsworth, before the time of Milton. In the Elizabethan age all diction was free to poetry, and was freely used. Drawing on his accumulated stores of literary reminiscence, and using them for his own special purpose, Milton invented "poetic diction," and bore a main part in the founding of the English school of poetry which is called "Classical." His diction is called "poetic," because it was absolutely fitted to his purpose, which could have been conceived only by the loftiest poetic genius. His style was admired, misunderstood, and imitated for a century. The diction of his imitators is called "poetic," because, for the most part, they believed that dull nonsense and trading platitudes could be made into poetry by a borrowed system of diction. Even the best poets of the age are not freer than the rest from the baneful Miltonic infection. Coleridge found the source of "our pseudo-poetic diction" in Pope's _Homer_. But Pope was from boyhood a sedulous student of Milton, and a frequent borrower. The mock-heroics of the _Dunciad_ are stilted on Miltonic phrases; and in the translation of Homer, above all, reminiscences of Milton abound. In most of them Milton's phraseology is weakened and misapplied. Two instances among many may serve. When Vulcan, in the First Iliad, warns Juno against rousing the anger of Jove, he adds:-- Once in your cause I felt his matchless might, Hurled headlong downward from th' ethereal height. The word "flaming" in Milton's splendid line did not suit Pope's purpose--so it disappears, and with it half the glory of the original. In place of it, to eke out the syllables, he inserts the idle, if not foolish, substitute "downward." This is the art of sinking in poetry. Again, Ulysses, narrating his adventures, in the Ninth Odyssey, remarks:-- In vain Calypso long constrained my stay, With sweet, reluctant, amorous delay. The whole line, so beautiful when it describes the modesty of Eve, in its new context becomes stark nonsense. It is Ulysses who is "reluctant," and Calypso who is "amorous." The misuse of Milton's line makes the situation comic. James Thomson (to take another example) with a genuine thin vein of originality, too often conceals it under Miltonic lendings. The trail of _Paradise Lost_ runs all through _The Seasons_. In such a description as this of the Moon in Autumn there is a cluster of reminiscences:-- Meanwhile the Moon Full-orbed and breaking through the scattered clouds, Shows her broad visage in the crimsoned east. Turned to the Sun direct, her spotted disk, Where mountains rise, umbrageous dales descend, And caverns deep, as optic tube descries, A smaller Earth, gives all his blaze again, Void of its flame, and sheds a softer day. Thomson could not resist the attractions of Milton's stately Latin vocabulary. Where Milton describes how, in Paradise-- the flowery lap Of some irriguous valley spread her store; Thomson follows with-- See where the winding vale its lavish stores Irriguous spreads. Where Milton describes how Satan, wounded by Michael-- writhed him to and fro convolved, Thomson follows with a description of the Spring meadows, where the sportive lambs This way and that convolved, in friskful glee Their frolics play. The lambs emulating Satan are a kind of epitome and emblem of those descriptive poets of the eighteenth century who took Milton for their model. But perhaps the best example of all is Gray, whose work is full of Miltonic reminiscence. He frequently borrows; and, like Pope, almost always spoils in the borrowing. Thus what Milton writes of the nightingale-- She all night long her amorous descant sung,-- is echoed by Gray in the _Sonnet on the Death of Richard West_:-- The birds in vain their amorous descant join. Now a "descant" is a variation imposed upon a plain-song. The word exactly describes the song of the nightingale; but the addition of the verb "join" robs it of all meaning. Again, the passage in the Second Book of _Paradise Lost_ where Moloch describes the pains of Hell-- when the scourge Inexorably, and the torturing hour Calls us to penance,-- lingered in Gray's memory when he addressed Adversity-- Whose iron scourge and torturing hour The bad affright, afflict the best. The "torturing hour" in Gray's line becomes one of the chance possessions of Adversity, suspended from her belt with the rest of her trinkets. Observe how the word "hour" has been emptied of its meaning. It affrights one class of persons, and afflicts another, which anything that is "torturing" might easily do. In Milton the most awful property of Time is indicated; the hour "calls--inexorably." Here, then, in two cases, is plagiarism, which may be defined as unblest theft--the theft of what you do not want, and cannot use. In these and many other passages of eighteenth-century verse it may be seen how literary reminiscence sometimes strangles poetry; and how a great man suffers at the hands of his disciples and admirers. The thing has happened so often that it ceases to cause surprise; were not Lydgate and Occleve pupils (save the mark!) of Chaucer? And yet it remains a paradox that Milton's, of all styles in the world, unapproachable in its loftiness, invented by a temper of the most burning zeal and the profoundest gravity for the treatment of a subject wildly intractable by ordinary methods, should have been chosen by a generation of philosophical organ-grinders as the fittest pattern for their professional melodies; and that a system of diction employed by a blind man for the description of an imaginary world should have been borrowed by landscape-gardeners and travelling pedlars for the setting forth of their works and their wares. EPILOGUE In the meantime, while Dryden and Milton both had their schools, most of our seventeenth-century poetry fell into an almost complete oblivion. Dryden's satiric, and Milton's epic strains engrossed attention, and shaped the verses of an age. But the seventeenth century was extraordinarily wealthy in poetic kinds quite distinct from these: in metaphysic, and mysticism, in devotional ecstasy, and love-lyric, and romance. The English genius in poetry is essentially metaphysical and romantic. Milton was neither. He could not have excelled in any of these kinds; nor have come near to Suckling, or Crashaw, or Vaughan, or Herrick, or Marvell, in their proper realms. It is a permissible indulgence, therefore, in taking leave of Milton, to turn from the _Paradise Lost_ for a moment, and, escaping from the solid materialism of the heroic and epic strain, to find passion once more among the Court lyrists, and spiritual insight among the retired mystics, to find Religion and Love, and the humility that has access to both. A profound humility, impossible to Milton, inspired Vaughan when he wrote such a verse as this:-- There is in God, some say, A deep but dazzling darkness; as men here Say it is late and dusky, because they See not all clear. O for that night! where I in him Might live invisible and dim! There is a natural vision, and there is a spiritual vision; the spiritual belongs to Vaughan, not to Milton. If Milton persuades us to a willing suspension of disbelief for the moment, Vaughan thrills us with a sense of vivid reality. His _Ascension Day_ is a thing seen, as if it were a memory of yesterday:-- The day-star smiles, and light, with thee deceast, Now shines in all the chambers of the East. What stirs, what posting intercourse and mirth Of Saints and Angels glorifie the earth! What sighs, what whispers, busie stops and stays; Private and holy talk fill all the ways! They pass as at the last great day, and run In their white robes to seek the risen Sun; I see them, hear them, mark their haste, and move Amongst them, with them, wing'd with faith and love. To the intensity of his aspiration and hushed expectance the world seems only a turbulent passing pageant, or a hard wayfaring, suffered in a dream:-- Who stays Here long must passe O'er dark hills, swift streames, and steep ways As smooth as glasse. Or a brief sickness:-- So for this night I linger here, And, full of tossings to and fro, Expect still when thou wilt appear, That I may get me up and go. His eyes are fixed on the shining lights that beckon him; the world is full of voices, but its sights and sounds appeal to him in vain; the beauties that surround him are things of naught-- Glorious deceptions, gilded mists, False joyes, phantastick flights. In the distance before him there shines An air of glory Whose light doth trample on my days; My days, which are at best but dull and hoary, Meer glimmering and decays; and he lifts up his voice in passionate desire for the ultimate deliverance:-- Ah! what time will it come? When shall that crie _The Bridegroome's comming_! fill the sky? Shall it in the evening run, When our words and works are done? Or will thy all-surprising light Break at midnight? He broods over it till nothing else is present to him in the night-watches:-- I saw Eternity the other night Like a great ring of calm and endless light. The history of the struggles and corruption of mankind may close at any moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at a signal given:-- All's in deep sleep and night; thick darkness lyes And hatcheth o'er thy people-- But hark! what trumpet's that, what angel cries _Arise! Thrust in thy sickle!_ Here is a religious poet indeed, a visionary, a mystic, and a Christian; none of which names can be truly applied to Milton. And if we wish to find Love enjoying his just supremacy in poetry, we cannot do better than seek him among the lyrists of the Court of Charles II. Milton, self-sufficient and censorious, denies the name of love to these songs of the sons of Belial. Love, he says, reigns and revels in Eden, not in court amours, Mixed dance, or wanton mask, or midnight ball, Or serenate, which the starved lover sings To his proud fair, best quitted with disdain. Yet for the quick and fresh spirit of love in the poetry of that time we must go to the sons of Belial. There is a pathetic passage in one of Milton's divorce pamphlets, where, speaking of the unhappy choices in marriage to which "soberest and best governed men" are liable, he remarks:--"It is not strange though many, who have spent their youth chastely, are in some things not so quick-sighted while they haste too eagerly to light the nuptial torch; nor is it therefore that for a modest error a man should forfeit so great a happiness, and no charitable means to release him, since they who have lived most loosely, by reason of their bold accustoming, prove most successful in their matches, because their wild affections, unsettling at will, have been as so many divorces to teach them experience." The wild affections, unsettling at will, wrote better love-songs than the steadfast principles of the sober and well-governed. Roystering libertines like Sir Charles Sedley were more edifying lovers than the austere husbands of Mary Powell and of Eve. Milton would have despised and detested the pleasure-seeking philosophy of Sedley:-- Let us then ply those joys we have, 'Tis vain to think beyond the grave; Out of our reach the Gods have laid Of Time to come th' event, And laugh to see the Fools afraid Of what the Knaves invent. But the self-abandonment and the passion of two or three of Sedley's songs are out of Milton's reach:-- Not _Celia_ that I juster am, Or better than the rest, For I would change each hour like them, Were not my heart at rest. But I am ty'd to very thee By every thought I have, Thy face I only care to see, Thy heart I only crave. All that in woman is ador'd In thy dear self I find, For the whole sex can but afford The handsome and the kind. Why should I then seek further store, And still make love anew; When change itself can give no more, 'Tis easie to be true. It is like a cup of cold water after the didactic endearments of Adam, and his repeated apostrophe: Daughter of God and Man, immortal Eve-- For such thou art, from sin and blame entire. Then there was John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester. He was drunk for five years on end,--so his biographer, who had it from his own lips, alleges--and he died at the age of thirty-two. Like Sedley, he professes no virtues, and holds no far-reaching views. But what a delicate turn of personal affection he gives to the expression of his careless creed:-- The time that is to come is not, How can it then be mine? The present moment's all my lot, And that, as fast as it is got, Phyllis, is only thine. Then talk not of inconstancy, False hearts, and broken vows If I by miracle can be This live-long minute true to thee, 'Tis all that Heaven allows. Rochester's best love-poetry reaches the topmost pinnacle of achievement in that kind. None has ever been written more movingly beautiful than this:-- When, wearied with a world of woe, To thy safe bosom I retire, Where love and peace and truth does flow, May I contented there expire! Lest, once more wandering from that heaven, I fall on some base heart unblest-- Faithless to thee, false, unforgiven-- And lose my everlasting rest! Or than that other piece (too beautiful and too intense to be cited as a sudden illustration of a thesis) beginning-- Why dost thou shade thy lovely face? O why Does that eclipsing hand of thine deny The sunshine of the Sun's enlivening eye? The wind bloweth where it listeth; the wandering fire of song touches the hearts and lips of whom it will. Milton built an altar in the name of the Lord, and he made a great trench about the altar, and he put the wood in order, and loaded the altar with rich exotic offerings, cassia and nard, odorous gums and balm, and fruit burnished with golden rind. But the fire from Heaven descended on the hastily piled altars of the sons of Belial, and left Milton's gorgeous altar cold. His fame is now old-established and settled, so there is no place left for the eloquence of the memorialist, or the studied praises of the pleader. I have tried to understand Milton; and have already praised him as well as I know how, with no stinted admiration, I trust, and certainly with no merely superstitious reverence. If I must round my discourse by repeating something that I have already said or suggested, it shall be this--that as he stands far aloof from his contemporaries, so in the succession of great figures that mark for us the centuries of our literature he is seen once more singular and a stranger. We bred Shakespeare in our Midlands; he was nourished from the soil that still grows our daily bread. But Milton was an alien conqueror. The crowd of native-born Puritans, who sometimes (not without many searchings of heart and sharp misgivings) attempt to claim him for their leader, have no title in him. It is a proof of his dominating power, and no credit to their intelligence, that they accept him as their representative. His influence on the destinies and history of our literature might be compared to the achievement of Napoleon while he was winning the victories that changed the map of Europe. He could not change the character of a people, nor perpetuate his dynasty. But nothing is as it would have been without him. Our literature is as hospitable as the Hindoo pantheon; the great revolutionary has won a place even in our creed. And the writer has this advantage, at least, over the conqueror and legislator, that he has bequeathed to us not maps, nor laws, but poems, whose beauty, like the World's unwithered countenance, is bright as at the day of their creation. INDEX [For the following Index I am indebted to the kindness of three of my pupils, Miss F. Marston, Miss E. L. Morice, and Miss D. E. Yates.] Abdiel, 72, 138-39, 156, 211 Abstract terms, Milton's use of, 227-31 Adam, 32, 35, 54, 64, 82-4, 87, 92, 95-6, 105, 112, 115, 122, 141-45, 148-50, 154-57, 160, 207, 222, 237, 248-50, 261 _Adamo_, 95 Addison, Joseph, 157-58, 206, 218, 242 _Æneid_, Virgil's, 158 Akenside, Mark, 243 Allegorical figures, Milton's, 237-38 _Amyntor and Theodora_, Mallet's, 243 Andreini, 95-7, 104, 106 Angelo, Michael, 88 _Animadversions on the Remonstrant's Defence against Smectymnuus_, 217 _Apology for Smectymnuus_, 16, 69, 71, 74 Arbuthnot, John, 218 _Areopagitica_, 43, 46, 48, 49, 52, 56-7, 65, 76, 180 Arianism, 86 Ariosto, 171 Armstrong, John, 242 _Art of English Poetry_, Bysshe's, 241 _Art of Preserving Health, The_, Armstrong's, 242 Arthurian Legend, 23, 60, 89-90 _Ascension Day_, Vaughan's, 257 Athanasian Creed, 86 _Athenian Mercury_, 240 Augustine, Saint, 112 Bacon, Francis, 1, 198 Barclay, John, 57 Baxter, Richard, 20-21 Beaumont, Francis, 218 Beaumont, Joseph, 176 Beelzebub, 140 Belial, 140, 211-12, 239, 259 Bembo, Pietro, 46 Bentley, Richard, 157-58 _Biron, Tragedy of_, Chapman's, 204 Blair, Robert, 243 _Blenheim_, Lyttelton's, 243 _Blenheim_, Philips's, 242 Blount, Sir Thomas Pope, 241 Bodley, Sir Thomas, 17 Boileau, Nicolas, 178 _Book of Sports_, 25 Bossu, Charles, 158 Boyd, Zachary, 175 Brice, Thomas, 173 Broome, William, 242 Bunyan, John, 147, 155 Burke, Edmund, 40, 47, 77, 134 Burnet, Dr. Thomas, 84 Butler, Samuel, 44, 72, 246 Byron, George Gordon, Lord, 233 Bysshe, 241 Cædmon, 106 Cambridge, Milton at, 13 Camden, William, 61 Carew, Thomas, 197 Catalogues, Milton's Epic, 236 Catullus, 206 Chapman, George, 204, 218 Charlemagne, 60 Charles I., 23 Charles II., Court of, 26, 259 _Chase, The_, Somerville's, 242 Chaucer, Geoffrey, 145, 236, 255 Chesterfield, Lord, 133 _Christian Doctrine, Treatise of_, 43, 113, 140 Church of England, 17, 19-21, 24, 34 _City Match, The_, Mayne's, 189 Classic School, 220, 226 Cleveland, John, 72 _Clovis_, Saint-Sorlin's, 178-79, 205 Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, 127, 151, 173, 214, 238, 251 _Comus_, 28, 93, 162-63, 182, 184, 191, 199, 235, 245 Congreve, William, 147, 225 Cooper, John Gilbert, 243 _Coriolanus_, Shakespeare's, 122 Court lyrists, 259-63 Cowley, Abraham, 72, 177, 206, 219, 231, 242 Crabbe, George, 223 Crashaw, Richard, 106, 256 Cromwell, Oliver, 62-3, 65, 135 _Cyder_, Philips's, 242 _Cynthia, Hymn to_, Jonson's, 185 Dalila, 51, 149, 209-10 Daniel, Samuel, 218 Davenant, William, 177, 180, 206, 219 _Davideis_, Cowley's, 177-78, 231 _De Re Poetica_, Blount's, 241 _Death of a Fair Infant, On the_, 181-82 _Defence of the People of England_, 47, 74, 131 _Defence of the People of England, Second_, 34, 47, 63 Dekker, John, 218 Denham, John, 206, 219 De Quincey, Thomas, 82, 103, 120, 192 _Dialogue between the Resolved Soul and Created Pleasure_, Marvell's, 162 _Discourse of Satire_, Dryden's, 202, 205 _Divine Institutes_ of Lactantius, 101 _Divine Weekes and Workes_, Du Bartas's, 18 _Divorce Pamphlets_, 16, 19, 48, 52, 54, 69, 75, 248, 259 Donne, John, 181, 183 Dramatists, influence of, on Milton, 15-16, 185-87 Drayton, Michael, 27, 174, 218 Dryden, John, 10, 17, 133, 180, 202, 203, 206-208, 219, 240-41, 246-47, 256 Du Bartas, Guillaume, 18, 237 _Dunciad_, Pope's, 251 Dyer, John, 242, 245 _Ecclesiastical Pamphlets_, 49 _Ecclesiastical Polity_, Hooker's, 103 _Economy_, Shenstone's, 243 _Economy of Love, The_, Armstrong's, 242 _Education, Of_, 48-9 Eighteenth-century poetry, 233; influence of Milton on, 241 _seq._ _Eikonoklastes_, 16, 67 Elizabethan Poetry, 116, 173-75, 186-87; Milton's relation to, 15, 16, 218-20 Ellwood, Thomas, 161, 163 _English Dramatick Poets, Account of the_, Langbaine's, 241 Epic catalogues, Milton's, 236 Etherege, George, 190 Eve,27, 54, 83, 87, 92, 96, 112, 121-22, 142-50, 154-59, 160, 204, 206-207, 222, 249-50, 260 _Excursion, The_, Mallet's, 243 _Faerie Queene_, Spenser's, 199-200 Fenton, Elijah, 242 _Fleece, The_, Dyer's, 242 Fletcher, Giles, 106 Fletcher, Phineas, 106 Ford, John, 117 Gabriel, 72, 129, 135, 154, 239 Galileo, 100 Gay, John, 242 Gibbon, Edward, 138 Glover, Richard, 243 Godwin, William, 185 Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von, 133 _Gondibert_, Davenant's, 177 _Gorboduc_, Sackville's, 196 Grainger, James, 242, 244 _Grave, The_, Blair's, 243 Gray, Thomas, 238, 253-55 _Grongar Hill_, Dyer's, 245 Hall, John, 71 _Hamlet_, Shakespeare's, 142 Hampton Court Conference, 17 Handel, 239 _Harmonie of the Church_, Drayton's, 174 Hazlitt, William, 198 Herbert, George, 174 Herodotus, 100 Herrick, Robert, 21, 256 Hervey, Lord, 203 _History of Britain_, 60, 143 Hobbes, Thomas, 58, 219 Homer, 171, 206, 220, 234 _Homer_, Pope's, 251 _Hop Garden, The_, Smart's, 242 Horace, 202 Horton, 22 Howard, Sir Robert, 180 Hume, Patrick, 240 _Hyperion_, Keats's, 227 _Idylls of the King_, Tennyson's, 193 _Iliad, The_, 242 _Il Penseroso_, 22, 62, 184-85, 195, 245 Johnson, Samuel, 22, 31, 35, 57-8, 127, 149, 175, 216, 224-25, 229-30, 239, 246-47, 251 Jonson, Ben, 18, 27, 185-86, 198, 218-19 Juvenal, 202 Keats, John, 227 King, Edward, 34 Knox, John, 142 Lactantius, 101-102 _L'Allegro_, 22, 24-5, 27, 195, 245 Lamb, Charles, 198 Landor, Walter Savage, 137, 212-13, 239 Langbaine, Gerard, 241 Latinisms, Milton's, 208-10 Laud, Archbishop, 21, 23 Laudian movement, 91 Lawrence, Henry, 8 _Lear, King_, Shakespeare's, 223-24 _Leonidas_, Glover's, 243 Lessing, Gotthold Ephraim, 224 Lestrange, Sir Roger, 246 Licensing Act, 6 _Lives of the Most Famous English Poets_, Winstanley's, 241 _Lives of the Poets_, Johnson's, 247 _Love and Honour_, Shenstone's, 243 Lucretius, 238 _Lycidas_, 23-4, 33, 57, 63, 213, 235, 246 Lydgate, John, 255 Lyttelton, Lord, 243 _Macbeth_, Shakespeare's, 16, 118, 122, 229 Mackenzie, Sir George, 206 Malherbe, Chrétien Guillaume de, 205 Mallet, David, 243 Mammon, 140, 172 Manoa, 51 Manso, 88 Marlowe, Christopher, 190 Marot, Clement, 173 Marvell, Andrew, 67, 73, 162, 256 Masson, Professor David, 133 Meredith, George, 118 Metaphors, Milton's use of, 13-14, 213, 234 Michael, 97, 129, 135, 156-57, 167, 253 "Miltonics," the, 245 Miracle plays, 101 Moloch, 140, 254 _Monstrous Regiment of Women_, Knox's, 142 Montaigne, Michel Eyquem de, 57 Montesquieu, Charles de Secondat, Baron de la Brède et de, 62 More, Henry, 227 More, Sir Thomas, 57, 69 Morus, Alexander, 70 Moryson, Fynes, 15 _Nativity, Ode on the Morning of Christ's_, 181, 199 Nicodemus, Apocryphal Gospel of, 164 _Night Thoughts_, Young's, 243 _Nightingale, Sonnet to the_, 30 Occleve, Thomas, 255 _Odes_, Gray's, 238 _Olaus Magnus_, 100 _Old Wives' Tale_, Peele's, 185 _Original Poems_, Dr. Joseph Beaumont's, 176 Ovid, 206, 208 _Paradise Lost_, 28, 32, 45, 52, 58, 72-3, 79, 81 _seq._, 122-24, 127, 133, 140, 143, 150, 153, 158-64, 168, 176, 179, 188, 191, 195, 206, 208, 210, 213-14, 217, 223-24, 235, 237, 239-42, 245, 252, 254, 256 Characters of, 132-69 Chronology of, 110-11 Cosmography of, 107-10 Criticisms of, by Addison, 157-58 Bentley, 157 Coleridge, 127, 151, 173 De Quincey, 82, 103, 120, 192 Dryden, 240 Johnson, 127, 149, 175 Landor, 137, 212-13, 239 Pattison, 83, 101 Pope, 141 Voltaire, 84 Descriptive scenes in, 120-22, 155-58, 225-26 Sources of, 18, 95, 106 Theme of, 81-9, 91-4, 97-106, 127-28 Theology of, 85-7, 126-27, 128-32 Verse of, 179 _seq._, 191-98 _Paradise Regained_, 86, 120, 146-47, 158-59, 161, 163, 211, 228 Parker, Samuel, 67 Parliament, the Long, 56, 140 _Passion, The_, 181 Pattison, Mark, 54, 83, 101 Peele, George, 185, 190 Philips, John, 242, 244 Phillips, Edward, 160 _Phillips, Lives of Edward and John_, Godwin's, 185 Philosophical poetry, 227 _Pilgrim's Progress_, Bunyan's, 156 Pitt, Christopher, 242 _Platonick Song of the Soul_, More's, 227 _Pleasures of the Imagination_, Akenside's, 243 _Pleasures of Melancholy, The_, Warton's, 243, 245 Plutarch, 59 _Poetics_, Boileau's, 178 Pope, Alexander, 141, 203, 242, 247, 251-52, 254 Powell, Mary, 7, 54, 142, 260 _Power of Harmony, The_, Cooper's, 243 Prelatical controversy, 70 Proper names, poetical use of, by Milton, 235-36 Prynne, William, 147 _Psyche_, Beaumont's, 176 Puns, Milton's, 210-12 Puritanism, Milton's, 28-31, 92, 145, 162, 263 Quakerism, 29, 61 Quarles, Francis, 147 _Rape of the Lock, The_, Pope's, 232 Raphael, 97, 111, 115, 130, 144, 146, 202, 208, 228, 237, 248-49 _Reason of Church Government urged against Prelaty_, 50 _Reformation in England, Of_, 42, 62, 91 _Rehearsal Transposed, The_, Marvell's, 67 Religious poetry, 173-77 Renaissance, the, 19, 59, 74, 173 Republicanism, 66 Restoration, the, 26, 35-8, 68 _Richard II._, Shakespeare's, 187 _Richard III._, Shakespeare's, 16 Rogers, Samuel, 214 Romanticism, 55, 220, 226, 229, 233, 245 _Romaunt of the Rose_, 238 Rowe, Nicholas, 240 _Ruined Abbey, The_, Shenstone's, 243 Rymer, Thomas, 241 Salmasius, 49, 69, 70, 71 _Samson Agonistes_, 26, 29, 37, 50-1, 79, 143, 146, 158-59, 162, 167, 168, 195-96, 203, 208-10, 241 Satan, 28, 60, 72, 85, 94, 102, 105, 109, 110-11, 129, 130, 132-39, 146, 152, 158, 160, 167, 211-12, 228, 239, 253 _Seasons, The_, Thomson's, 243, 248, 252 Sedley, Sir Charles, 260 _Sejanus_, Ben Jonson's, 220 Selden, Thomas, 56 Seneca, 189 Seventeenth-century poetry, 175-77, 256-62; Milton's relation to, 218-20 Shaftesbury, Anthony Ashley Cooper, Earl of, 203 _Shakespeare, Lines on_, Milton's, 182 Shakespeare, William, 3, 4, 5, 7, 15, 18, 19, 22, 25, 116, 118, 171, 175, 190, 198, 214, 217, 218, 220, 223, 225, 230, 231, 240, 243, 263 Shelley, Percy Bysshe, 233 Shenstone, William, 243 Shirley, James, 219 _Short View of the Stage_, Collier's, 147 Sidney, Sir Philip, 174 Simile, Milton's use of, 234 Simmons, Samuel, 180 Smart, Christopher, 242 Somerville, William, 242 Sophocles, 70 Southwell, Robert, 174 _Spectator, The_, Addison's, 241 Spenser, Edmund, 17, 18, 106, 181, 200, 206, 236 _Splendid Shilling, The_, Philips's, 242 Spratt, Thomas, 219 Steele, Richard, 206, 218 Sternhold, Thomas, 173 Stoicism, 29, 145, 163 Strafford, Earl of, 23 Suckling, Sir John, 147, 188, 256 _Sugar Cane, The_, Grainger's, 242 Swift, Jonathan, 218 Swinburne, Algernon Charles, 93 Sylvester, Thomas, 18, 106 Synod of Dort, 17 _Tale of Two Swannes, A_, 179 _Talmud, The_, 87 _Tatler, The_, Steele's, 206 _Tears of Peace_, Chapman's, 204 Tennyson, Alfred, Lord, 193 _Tenure of Kings and Magistrates_, 41 Thomson, James, 243, 248, 252-53 Tillotson, John, 219 _Translation of the Eleventh Odyssey_, Broome's, 242 _Translation of a Story out of the Third Æneid_, Addison's, 242 Tudor state system, the, 57 _Vacation Exercise, At a_, 181 Vaughan, Henry, 256-60 _Venus and Adonis_, Shakespeare's, 148 Virgil, 171, 202-203, 206-207 Voiture, 205 Voltaire, 84 Vondel, Joost van den, 106 Waller, Edmund, 206, 219, 240-41 Warton, Thomas, 243, 245 _West, Sonnet on the Death of Richard_, Gray's, 254 Westminster Assembly of Divines, 140 Wilmot, John, Earl of Rochester, 261-62 _Wine, a Poem_, Gay's, 242 Winstanley, William, 241 _Winter's Tale_, Shakespeare's, 25, 144 Wither, George, 195 Wood, Anthony à, 173 Wordsworth, William, 214, 246, 249, 251 Wotton, Sir Henry, 199 Young, Thomas, 12, 243 
34526	----	Milton's England _UNIFORM VOLUMES_ Dickens' London BY FRANCIS MILTOUN Library 12mo, cloth, gilt top $2.00 The Same, 3/4 levant morocco 5.00 Milton's England BY LUCIA AMES MEAD Library 12mo, cloth, gilt top 2.00 The Same, 3/4 levant morocco 5.00 Dumas' Paris BY FRANCIS MILTOUN Library 12mo, cloth, gilt top _net_ 1.60 _postpaid_ 1.75 The Same, 3/4 levant morocco _net_ 4.00 _postpaid_ 4.15 L. C. PAGE & COMPANY New England Building Boston, Mass. [Illustration: _JOHN MILTON_ _From the miniature painted in 1667 by William Faithorne_] Milton's England By Lucia Ames Mead _Author of "Great Thoughts for Little Thinkers," "Memoirs of a Millionaire," "To Whom Much Is Given"_ Illustrated L. C. PAGE & COMPANY BOSTON PUBLISHERS _Copyright, 1902_ BY L. C. PAGE & COMPANY (INCORPORATED) _All rights reserved_ Fifth Impression, April, 1908 _COLONIAL PRESS Electrotyped and Printed by C. H. Simonds & Co. Boston, U. S. A._ THIS LITTLE STUDY OF BYGONE DAYS AND ANCIENT PLACES IS INSCRIBED TO THE PURITAN SCHOLAR AND DEAR FELLOW PILGRIM WHO WANDERED WITH ME ONE HAPPY SUMMER THROUGH MILTON'S ENGLAND. [Illustration: MAP OF MILTON'S ENGLAND] Milton's Residences in London 1. Bread Street, 1608-1624. 2. St. Bride's Churchyard, in 1639 or 1640. 3. Aldersgate Street, 1640-1645. 4. The Barbican, 1645-1647. 5. Holborn, near Lincoln's Inn, 1647-1649. 6. Charing Cross, opening into Spring Gardens, seven months in 1649. 7. Whitehall, by Scotland Yard, 1649-1652. 8. Petty France, now York Street, 1652-1660. 9. Bartholomew Close, and a prison, 1660. 10. Holborn, near Red Lion Square, in 1660. 11. Jewin Street, 1661-1663 or 1664. 12. Artillery Walk, by Bunhill Fields Cemetery, 1664-1665, and from 1666 to November, 1674. [Illustration: MAP OF MILTON'S LONDON] Map of Milton's London 1. Clarendon House. 2. St. James's Field. 3. St. James's Palace. 4. The New River. 5. St. James's Park. 6. Westminster Abbey. 7. Pall Mall. 8. Whitehall. 9. Scotland Yard. 10. Charing Cross. 11. St. Martin's Field. 12. The Temple. 13. Lincoln Inn Fields. 14. Gray's Inn Fields. 15. Holborn. 16. Hatton Garden. 17. St. John's Gate. 18. Smithfield. 19. Charterhouse Yard. 20. Barbican. 21. Jewin Street. 22. St. Giles's Cripplegate. 23. St. Paul. 24. Bread Street. 25. City Wall. 26. Austin Friars. 27. St. Ethelburga. 28. St. Helen's. 29. Crosby Hall. 30. Bishopsgate Street. 31. Aldgate. 32. Whitechapel Street. 33. St. Olave. 34. The Minories. 35. Custom House. 36. St. Saviour's. 37. Bedlam. 38. Moorfields. 39. Artillery Yard. 40. Aldersgate Street. 41. Cheapside. 42. Lambeth Palace. 43. Petty France. 44. Birdcage Walk. Contents CHAPTER PAGE I. THE LONDON INTO WHICH MILTON WAS BORN 11 II. MILTON'S LIFE ON BREAD STREET 42 III. MILTON AT CAMBRIDGE 57 IV. MILTON AT HORTON 78 V. MILTON ON THE CONTINENT.--IN ST. BRIDE'S CHURCHYARD.--AT ALDERSGATE STREET.--THE BARBICAN.--HOLBORN.--SPRING GARDENS 85 VI. MILTON AT WHITEHALL.--SCOTLAND YARD.--PETTY FRANCE.--BARTHOLOMEW CLOSE.--HIGH HOLBORN.--JEWIN STREET.--ARTILLERY WALK 110 VII. CHALFONT ST. GILES.--ARTILLERY WALK 112 VIII. THE TOWER.--TOWER HILL 126 IX. ALL HALLOWS, BARKING.--ST. OLAVE'S.--ST. CATHERINE CREE'S.--ST. ANDREW UNDERSHAFT 143 X. CROSBY HALL.--ST. HELEN'S.--ST. ETHELBURGA'S.--ST. GILES'S, CRIPPLEGATE 164 XI. GRESHAM COLLEGE.--AUSTIN FRIARS.--GUILDHALL.--ST. MARY'S, ALDERMANBURY.--CHRIST'S HOSPITAL.--ST. SEPULCHRE'S 184 XII. CHARTERHOUSE.--ST. JOHN'S GATE.--ST. BARTHOLOMEW'S.--SMITHFIELD 202 XIII. ELY PLACE.--INNS OF COURT.--TEMPLE CHURCH.--COVENT GARDEN.--SOMERSET HOUSE 221 XIV. WHITEHALL.--WESTMINSTER ABBEY 240 XV. THE PRECINCTS OF THE ABBEY.--WESTMINSTER PALACE.-- ST. MARGARET'S 264 XVI. LAMBETH PALACE.--ST. SAVIOUR'S.--LONDON BRIDGE 277 XVII. THE PLAGUE.--THE FIRE.--WREN.--LONDON REBUILT 293 List of Illustrations PAGE JOHN MILTON _Frontispiece_ OLD ST. PAUL'S CATHEDRAL 47 CHRIST'S COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE 62 PART OF WHITEHALL 101 IN MILTON'S HOUSE AT CHALFONT ST. GILES 113 ST. CATHERINE CREE CHURCH IN 1736 157 CHURCH OF ST. ANDREW UNDERSHAFT IN 1737 163 CHURCH OF ST. GILES CRIPPLEGATE IN 1737 178 THE CHARTERHOUSE 203 ST. JOHN'S GATE, CLERKENWELL 209 SOMERSET HOUSE 239 WESTMINSTER ABBEY AS MILTON KNEW IT 250 WESTMINSTER HALL 274 IN LAMBETH PALACE 280 THE ROYAL EXCHANGE 295 BOW STEEPLE, CHEAPSIDE 304 Milton's England CHAPTER I. THE LONDON INTO WHICH MILTON WAS BORN To every well-read man whose mother tongue is English, whether he be born in America or Australia or within sound of Bow Bells, the little dot upon the map, marked "London," has an interest which surpasses that of any spot on earth. Though in his school-days he was taught nothing of the city's topography and little of its local history, while he has laboriously learned outlandish names on every continent, nevertheless, in his mind's eye, Westminster Abbey looms larger than Chimborazo, and a half-dozen miles of the tidal Thames have more of meaning to him than as many thousand of the Amazon, the Oxus, and the Ganges. To know London--its mighty, historic past and its complex, stupendous present--is to know the religion, the art, the science, the politics,--the development, in short, of the Anglo-Saxon race. Perhaps there is no better method of coming to know what is most interesting in this centre of all English life than studying one of the supremely important periods of its long history, when it was touched by the spiritual genius of one of England's most noble sons. Three periods of a hundred years each stand out above all others since the Christian era in their significance and richness of accomplishment. The third period began about 1790 with the birth of the American Republic and the outbreak of the French Revolution. The first was that one hundred years which from 1450 to 1550 included the beginning of the general use of gunpowder, which made the pigmy with a pistol more than the match for giant with spear and battleaxe. Then it was that "Gutenberg made thought cosmopolite And stretched electric wires from mind to mind." In this period Italian art made its most splendid achievements, and Luther, Calvin, and Columbus gave man new freedom and new possibilities. The middle period--the one in which England made her greatest contribution to human advancement--is the one that we are to consider. Milton's life covered sixty-six of its one hundred years. It began with the destruction of the Spanish Armada in 1588, and included the brilliant period of exploration and adventure just before Milton's birth, in which Hawkins, Drake, and Raleigh, and other ambitious and not too scrupulous sea-rovers sought, like Cecil Rhodes, jewels and gold, empire, expansion, and renown. It covered the chief work of Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Lord Bacon, Milton, Bunyan, Defoe, Dryden, and fifty other men still read to-day. It included all of Milton's great Puritan contemporaries, who, fighting for the rights of Englishmen, fought the world's battle for freedom. It ended in 1688 with the downfall of the house of Stuart and the final triumph of those principles for which Vane and Milton had struggled and died without seeing the fruit of their labours. Since 1688 no monarch has sat upon the English throne by any outworn theory of "divine right of kings," but only, explicitly and emphatically, by the will of the English people. For all believers in the people, for all who honour Washington and Jefferson and Lincoln, Robert Burns, John Bright and Gladstone, the century that knew Cromwell and Milton, Sir Harry Vane and Sir John Eliot, John Hampden, John Winthrop and William Bradford must, more than most others, have significance. John Milton was born in London in 1608; and it is chiefly the London of the twenty years that intervened between the Spanish Armada and his birth which we are to consider in this chapter. As neither man nor anything that he has made can be well understood except as they are related to their origins, so to understand the names, the customs, and the daily sights that the boy Milton knew in this city, where for nearly two millenniums before his day history had been making, one must go back and take a brief survey. Into the mooted question of the origin of the name of London we need not enter. Suffice to say that when we first hear of London it was a little hamlet on a hill of perhaps one hundred feet in height, lying between two ranges of higher hills. At the north rose what we now call Highgate and Hampstead, about 450 feet high, and to the south, beyond the marshes and the Thames and a broad shallow lagoon, whose little islands once marked the site of Southwark, rose the Surrey hills, from one of which in our day the Crystal Palace gleams. Men with stone weapons slew antlered deer upon the little marshy island of Thorney, now Westminster. What is now St. James's Park was then an estuary. Streams flowed down the valleys between the wooded hills. Only their names remain to-day to tell us, among the present stony streets, where rivers and brooks once flowed. West Bourn, Ty Bourn, Hole Bourne, the southern part of which was called the "Fleet," flowed from the hills in the northwest in a southeasterly direction into the Thames. Just east of the last named was the little brook called "Wallbrook," by whose banks, on the present Cornhill, the first settlement was made. All these names, of course, belong to a time long subsequent to the first rude settlements made in unknown antiquity before the Christian era. The Tyburn at its mouth divided, enclosing the island Thorney, upon which in later times arose Westminster. Hole Bourne was so named because of its running through a deep hollow. The lower part of the river--the Fleet--was tidal, and formed the western bulwark of London for centuries. It emptied into the Thames where now is Blackfriars Bridge. Far eastward from the Wallbrook, through broad marshes, flowed the river Lea down from the country known to us as Essex and Hertfordshire. It emptied into the Thames east of the Isle of Dogs, which is now covered with huge docks for the shipping of the great modern city. The Lea still flows as in the time of the Romans and Saxons, though its marshes have largely disappeared. But the other smaller streams are now obliterated, though in Milton's time their course could still partly be discerned, and their degradation into drains was not complete. Through Bread Street, on which Milton was born, passed Watling Street, the old Roman road, named later by the Saxons, which with the Roman wall around the city alone left traces of the Roman occupation in the poet's day. The mosaic floors, the coins, bronze weapons and scanty remains of the Roman period, before the fourth century A. D., are better known to us than to the Londoners of his time. The Roman city spread itself along the river from the Fleet on the west to the site of the present Tower of London on the east, and then gradually crept northward. By the time the Roman wall was built in about 360 A. D., the circumference of the city, counting the river front, was two miles and three quarters. Here stood the town, not in an area of fertile fields, but surrounded by forests on the north, and on all other sides by wide-spreading marshes. The enclosed space was originally 380 acres, to which later additions were made upon the north and east. The wall was built of layers of thin red brick and stone about twenty feet high, and was finished by bastions and additional defences at the angles. Though scant traces of any of the original construction now remain, much of the Roman wall, and, at all events, a complete wall of mingled Roman and mediæval work, encircled the site of the ancient city limits in Milton's day, and its gates were nightly locked until long after his death. At first, two land gates had sufficed, but in 1600 there were seven; on the east, Aldgate; further north was Bishopsgate; further west, upon the northern wall, were Moorgate and Cripplegate; upon the west, Aldersgate, protected by the Barbican, one of the gateway towers; and south of this, Newgate and Ludgate. Upon the waterside, Dowgate, at the mouth of the ancient Wallbrook, now covered by the narrow street of the same name, and Billingsgate, further east toward the Tower of London, gave access to the city. In Roman days the whole enclosure was crossed by two great streets,--Watling Street, which came from the northwest and entered near Newgate, and Ermyn Street, which came from the northeast. Where these two met was later the market or _chepe_, from the Saxon word meaning _sale_. Of the Saxon period, which followed the sudden and mysterious abandonment of their city by the Romans after their occupation of it for three centuries, we have to-day a thousand traces in London names. Evidently the early Anglo-Saxon, like his descendants, had a marked love of privacy and seclusion. His sense of the sacred nature of property was as marked in him as it has always been in his posterity. The idea of inclosure or protection is made prominent in the constantly recurring terminations of _ton_, _ham_, _worth_, _stoke_, _stow_, _fold_, _garth_, _park_, _hay_, _burgh_, _bury_, _brough_, _borrow_. Philologic study of continental terms displays no such marked emphasis upon the idea of property and demarkation lines. Says the learned Taylor: "It may indeed be said, without exaggeration, that the universal prevalence throughout England of names containing this word, _Homes_ [viz., _ham_, _ton_, etc.], gives us the clue to the real strength of the national character of the Anglo-Saxon race." Kensington, Brompton, Paddington, Islington, are but a few of the local names which illustrate in their suffix the origin of the word town--originally a little hedged enclosure. [German _zaun_ or hedge.] The most important remnant of the Saxon influence is to be found in the syllable _ing_ which occurs in thousands of London names. This was the usual Anglo-Saxon patronymic, and occurs most often in the middle syllable, as in Buckingham, the home of Buck's son; Wellington, the village of Wells's son, or the Wells clan. Family settlements are traceable by this syllable _ing_. _Chipping_ or _chepe_ was the old English term for market-place, and Westcheap and Eastcheap were the old London markets of Saxon days. When the word _market_ takes the place in England of the old Anglo-Saxon _chipping_, we may assume the place to be of later origin. The Saxons, unlike the Romans, were not road-makers, and when they applied the English word _street_, corrupted from the Latin _strata_, as in the case of Watling Street--the ancient road which they renamed--we shall usually find that it marks a work of Roman origin. Clerkenwell, Bridewell, Holywell, and names with similar suffixes indicate the site of wells from which it would seem that the ancient Londoners derived their water supply when it was not taken from the Thames, the Holborn, or the Tyburn. _Hithe_, which means landing-place, has in later times largely disappeared, except at Rotherhithe near Greenwich. With the conversion of the Saxons in the seventh century appear the names of Saxon saints. Among the notable ones to whom churches were built was holy St. Ethelburga, the wife of Sebert, the first Christian king, whose church to-day stands on the site of its Saxon predecessor beside Bishopsgate, on the very spot where stood the Roman gate. Another was St. Osyth, queen and martyr, whose name also survives in Sise, or St. Osyth's Lane, and whose black and grimy churchyard was doubtless green in Milton's day. To these must be added St. Dunstan, St. Swithin, St. Edmund the Martyr, and St. Botolph, to whom no less than four churches were erected. The devastating fire of 1135 swept London from end to end, and not a Saxon structure remained, though the new ones that replaced them were built in similar fashion. With the coming of the Danes were built churches to their patrons, St. Olaf and St. Magnus; and in the centre of the Strand, St. Clement's, Danes, is said to mark the spot where tradition assigns a settlement of Danes. As of the Saxons, so of the Danes, the most permanent record of their influence on London and the Danish district of England was in their suffixes to words which still survive. _By_, meaning first a farm and later a village, is one which occurs some six hundred times. To this day our common term, a _by-law_, recalls the Dane. The names of the street on which Milton was born and of those in the near neighbourhood to the booths that once surrounded Cheap indicate the products formerly sold there, or the trades carried on within them. To the north the streets were called: Wood, Milk, Iron, Honey, Poultry; to the south they were named after Bread, Candles, Soap, Fish, Money-Changing. Friday Street was one on which fish and food for fast days were sold. Of Saxon and Danish London there remains in the old city proper not one stone. Of Norman London, we have to-day the great White Tower, the crypt of Bow Church, from whose round arches it received its name, the crypt of St. John's Priory outside the city, part of the church of St. Bartholomew's the Great, and part of St. Ethelburga's, Bishopsgate. Much more existed before the Great Fire of 1666. The chief characteristics of the English Norman work are the half-circular Roman arch, seen in all Romanesque work: massive walls unsupported by great buttresses and not pierced by the large windows which appear in the later Gothic style; square towers without spires; barrel vaulting over nave and aisles in the churches; massive piers; the use of colour upon ornaments and wall surfaces instead of in the windows as in Gothic buildings; small interlacing round arches in wall surfaces; zigzag and "dog tooth" decoration; "pleated" capitals; carvings, more or less grotesque, of human or animal forms. English Norman, like English Gothic, never equalled the French work in both these styles. In Milton's boyhood the impress of Plantagenet London was everywhere visible. Throughout the centuries, from the earliest to the latest Plantagenet, the influence of the Church reigned supreme. It has been estimated that then at least one-fourth of the area of all London was in some way connected with the Church, or the extensive conventual establishments belonging to it. Their Gothic towers and steeples rose clean and pure to the soft blue of the London sky, unfouled with coal smoke. Their lofty walls, over which English ivy crept and roses bloomed, shut from the narrow streets of the old town stretches of soft greensward and shady walks. Among these rose dormitories, refectories, cloisters, and the more prosaic offices. At every hour bells pealed and constantly reminded the citizens of prayer and service. Hardly a street but had its monastery or convent garden. Most of these were just within or just without the city wall, as they were founded when the city had already become of a considerable size, and they were therefore located in the more open parts. The enormous size of the equipment of these religious establishments before the Reformation, in the century when Milton's grandfather was young, can scarcely be conceived to-day when the adjuncts of the Church have shrunk almost to nothingness. In Milton's boyhood, it must have been an easy task among the recent ruins and traditions of these great establishments to reconstruct them to the imagination in their entirety. Sir Walter Besant in his graphic book on "London" details the numbers supported in this earlier period by St. Paul's alone. The cathedral body included the bishop, dean, the four archdeacons, the treasurer, the precentor, the chancellor, thirty greater canons, twelve lesser canons, about fifty chaplains or chantry priests, and thirty vicars. Of lower rank were the sacrist and three vergers, the servitors, the surveyor, the twelve scribes, the book transcriber, the bookbinder, the chamberlain, the rent-collector, the baker, the brewer, the singing men and choir boys, of whom priests were made, the bedesmen and the poor folk. In addition to these were the servants and assistants of all these officers; the sextons, gravediggers, gardeners, bell ringers, makers and menders of the ecclesiastical robes, cleaners and sweepers, carpenters, masons, painters, carvers, and gilders. A similar body, though somewhat smaller, was required in every other religious foundation. No wonder that not only one-fourth of the area but also one-fourth of the whole city population was needed to supply these demands. From Norman London there remained, besides St. Paul's vast monastic house, the priory of St. Bartholomew's, the house of St. Mary Overie's, the hospital of St. Katharine's, and the priory of the Holy Trinity. In Plantagenet London, we find the priory of Crutched--that is, Crossed--Friars, who wore a red cross upon their back and carried an iron cross in their hands. Farther north upon the other side of Aldgate stood the great monastery of Holy Trinity, the richest and most magnificent in the city; and the priory of St. Helen's, Bishopsgate, whose noble ruins had not disappeared more than a century after Milton's death. Farther west and north of Broad Street stood the splendid house of Austin Friars; still farther west was St. Martin's le Grand, and just beyond, the foundation of the Gray Friars or Franciscans. Christ's Hospital, which lies chiefly on the site of this old monastery, we shall consider in a later chapter. In the southwest corner of the London wall dwelt the Black Friars--the Dominicans--whose name to-day is perpetuated in Blackfriars Bridge. Outside the walls were other establishments as rich and splendid as these that were within them. Farther west than the house of the Black Friars was the monastery of White Friars or Carmelites, and beyond these the ancient site of the Knights Templar, whose Temple church, in Milton's day, as well as ours, alone remained. North of the Norman St. Bartholomew's was the house of the Carthusians, whose long history, ending in the Charterhouse, must be reserved to a later chapter. Northwest from the Norman house of St. Bartholomew's stood the Norman priory of St. John's of Jerusalem. Adjacent to it lay the twin foundation--the priory of Black Nuns. South of the Thames lay two great establishments, Bermondsey and St. Thomas's Hospital, while of the hospitals situated among the priories and monasteries to the north were the hospital of St. Mary of Bethlehem and the great hospital of St. Mary Spital, both of which were originally planned for religious houses. This is but a dry, brief catalogue, not of all the great religious houses, but only of those whose walls, more or less transformed or ruined, were within walking distance and most familiar to the boy Milton in his rambles around the city of his birth. Milton must have seen several "colleges" as well as monasteries; among these were St. Michael's College on Crooked Lane, and Jesus Commons, and a "college" for poor and aged priests, called the "Papey." A portion of the "college" of Whittington still remained, and on the site of the present Mercers' Chapel stood a college for the education of priests, whose splendid church remained until the Great Fire. Every lover of the beautiful must fondly dwell upon the glorious period of Gothic architecture during which these structures rose. Though London in the Tudor period eclipsed in wealth and magnificence the city of earlier times, the Elizabethan age had no power in its development of pseudo-classic forms to equal the dignity and beauty of the Norman and Gothic work. Then the unknown reverent artist wrought not for fame or earthly glory, but dedicated his labour to the God of Nature, whose laws and principles were his chief guide. These were the days when vine and tendril and the subtle curves of leaf and flower or supple animal form suggested the enrichment of capital and corbel. No cheap and servile imitation of lute and drum, of spear and sword and ribbon, of casque and crown and plume, displayed a paucity of inventive genius and abandonment of nature's teaching for that of milliner and armourer. Let John Ruskin, in many ways the spiritual son of the beauty-loving Puritan, John Milton, interpret to us the meaning of those poems reared in stone, which Milton's age was fast displacing: "You have in the earlier Gothic less wonderful construction, less careful masonry, far less expression of harmony of parts in the balance of the building. Earlier work always has more or less of the character of a good, solid wall with irregular holes in it, well carved wherever there was room. But the last phase of Gothic has no room to spare; it rises as high as it can on narrowest foundations, stands in perfect strength with the least possible substance in its bars; connects niche with niche and line with line in an exquisite harmony from which no stone can be removed, and to which you can add not a pinnacle; and yet introduces in rich, though now more calculated profusion, the living elements of its sculpture, sculpture in quatrefoils, gargoyles, niches, in the ridges and hollows of its mouldings--not a shadow without meaning and not a line without life. But with this very perfection of his work came the unhappy pride of the builder in what he had done. As long as he had been merely raising clumsy walls and carving them, like a child, in waywardness of fancy, his delight was in the things he thought of as he carved; but when he had once reached this pitch of constructive science, he began to think only how cleverly he could put the stones together. The question was not now with him, What can I represent? but, How high can I build--how wonderfully can I hang this arch in air? and the catastrophe was instant--architecture became in France a mere web of woven lines,--in England a mere grating of perpendicular ones. Redundance was substituted for invention, and geometry for passion." ("The Two Paths.") It is in this later Gothic, for example the much admired Chapel of Henry VII. at Westminster, that we find this redundancy of motive and poverty of invention, as, for instance, in the repetition of the portcullis--the Tudor heraldic ornament. Ruskin would teach us that heraldic signs, though suited for a few conspicuous places, as proclaiming the name or rank or office of the owner, become impertinent when blazoned everywhere, and are wholly devoid of beauty when they reproduce by the hundred some instrument of prosaic use. Plantagenet London, and its many remnants of domestic architecture, in Milton's day, illustrated fully Ruskin's dictum that "Gothic is not an art for knights and nobles; it is an art for the people; it is not an art [merely] for churches and sanctuaries; it is an art for houses and homes.... When Gothic was invented houses were Gothic as well as churches.... Good Gothic has always been the work of the commonalty, _not_ of the churches.... Gothic was formed in the baron's castle and the burgher's street. It was formed by the thoughts and hands and powers of labouring citizens and warrior kings." ("Crown of Wild Olive.") In a memorable passage in his lectures on Architecture in Edinburgh, Ruskin recalls the power with which the Gothic forms appeal to the imagination when embodied in poetry and romance. He asks what would result were the words _tower_ and _turret_, and the mental pictures that they conjure up, removed. Suppose Walter Scott had written, instead of "the old clock struck two from a turret adjoining my bedchamber," "the old clock struck two from the landing at the top of the stair." "What," he asks, "would have become of the passage?" "That strange and thrilling interest with which such words strike you as are in any wise connected with Gothic architecture, as for instance, vault, arch, spire, pinnacle, battlement, barbican, porch,--words everlastingly poetical and powerful,--is a most true and sure index that the things themselves are delightful to you." As to stylobates, and pediments, and triglyphs, and all the classic forms, even when pure and unvulgarised by decadent Renaissance work, how utterly they fail to satisfy the poetic instinct of the man of English lineage is well expressed by James Russell Lowell, as he stood within the portals of Chartres Minster: "The Grecian gluts me with its perfectness Unanswerable as Euclid, self-contained, The one thing finished in this hasty world. But ah! this other, this that never ends, Still climbing, luring fancy still to climb, As full of morals, half divined, as life, Graceful, grotesque, with ever new surprise Of hazardous caprices, sure to please, Heavy as nightmare, airy light as fern, Imagination's very self in stone!" Of the type of architecture most favoured by Milton's contemporaries, Ruskin says: "Renaissance architecture is the school which has conducted men's inventive and constructive faculties from the Grand Canal [in England, he might have said, old Chester or old Canterbury] to Gower Street, from the marble shaft and the lancet arch and the wreathed leafage ... to the square cavity in the brick wall." This is a strong expression of a half truth. But the baldness and blankness of Gower Street and a thousand other streets is not so hopeless as the pretentious bastard Renaissance work which modern London shows. The rich modern world can not plead poverty as its excuse for ugliness. Even the village cottage of three centuries ago, as well as the city streets, showed a popular love of beauty and a power to attain it which few architects, or rather few of their patrons, permit the modern world to see. But let the lover of past beauty take new courage. Hundreds of signs disclose the dawn of a revival of true taste in which England and America bid fair to lead the world. Though in most of its forms the Renaissance art that accompanied the new age of discovery and expansion of commerce in the century before Milton indicates a decadence of the love of beauty, exception must be made to much delightful domestic architecture that has the Tudor stamp and is distinctly English, and unknown on the Continent. The introduction into the background of portraits of such classic outlines as domes, arches, and marble pilasters, is a device used by painters when they would flatter the vanity of their patrons and give them a courtly setting. No Byzantine or Norman arch, or Gothic spire or portal, however rich in decoration, can equal the severe but pompous lines of the Renaissance in conveying a sense of pride. Says Ruskin: "There is in them an expression of aristocracy in its worst characters: coldness, perfectness of training, incapability of emotion, want of sympathy with the weakness of lower men, blank, hopeless, haughty insufficiency. All these characters are written in the Renaissance architecture as plainly as if they were graven on it in words. For, observe, all other architectures have something in them that common men can enjoy; some concession to the simplicities of humanity, some daily bread for the hunger of the multitude; quaint fancy, rich ornament, bright colour, something that shows a sympathy with men of ordinary minds and hearts, and this wrought out, at least in the Gothic, with a rudeness showing that the workman did not mind exposing his own ignorance if he could please others. But the Renaissance is exactly the contrary of this. It is rigid, cold, inhuman; incapable of glowing, of stooping, of conceding, for an instant. Whatever excellence it has is refined, high-trained, and deeply erudite, a kind which the architect well knows no common mind can taste. He proclaims it to you aloud.... All the pleasure you can have in anything I do is in its proud breeding, its rigid formalism, its perfect finish, its cold tranquillity.... And the instinct of the world felt this in a moment.... Princes delighted in it, and courtiers. The Gothic was good for God's worship, but this was good for man's worship.... The proud princes and lords rejoiced in it. It was full of insult to the poor in its every line. It would not be built of materials at the poor man's hand.... It would be of hewn stone; it would have its windows and its doors and its stairs and its pillars in lordly order and of stately size." To the novice, who is beginning to decipher the inner meaning of sermons in stones in which the ages have recorded, all unconsciously, the life and aspiration of the past, these words may sound harsh and fantastic. With the memory of such rare geniuses as Michael Angelo and Wren, and their awe-inspiring cathedrals, built in the Renaissance forms, one may hesitate before completely accepting Ruskin's dictum. Ruskin himself has done homage to their genius and the greatness of their work. "There were of course," he says, "noble exceptions." Yet surely the devout Christian must feel under their glorious domes not so much like praying and reverencing his Maker as glorifying the work of men's hands. Under any dome and architectural reminder of Roman thought and life, whether it be Wren's mighty St. Paul's, or his small and exquisitely proportioned St. Stephen's, Wallbrook, almost in its shadow, the worshipper must feel something akin to Ruskin's sentiment. A meek and contrite heart feels alien and uncomforted amid its perfection. But Ruskin's word chiefly concerns the more perfect Gothic of the Continent, and the manifestations there--worse than any in England--of riotous and insolent excess in its Renaissance work. The most ostentatious and offensive monument in Westminster Abbey, which is adorned with meaningless mouldings, artificial garlands, and cherubs weeping hypocritic tears, is not so odious as those which Venice, Rome, Antwerp, and a hundred other cities reared upon the Continent. Those tasteless, costly structures which modern Englishmen are but now learning to condemn illustrate completely the pride and arrogance of a world drunk with new wealth, in which fashion supplants beauty. Yet to a large extent the England of the splendid Tudor period and the England of the Stuarts substituted for the beautiful and sincere forms of an earlier period a style of construction and decoration which showed distinct decadence. Witness the carvings in the chapel and dining-hall of the Charterhouse, new in Milton's boyhood, the carvings in the dining-halls of the different Inns of Court, and mural tablets everywhere with their obese cherubs and ghastly death's heads. In the quaint beam and plaster front of Staple's Inn on Holborn still remains the ancient type of domestic architecture which antedated and accompanied Milton's boyhood. Hundreds of such cosy, homelike residences with their ample windows of many leaded panes lined the city streets. The merchants who lived in them sold their wares in the shops beneath, and, if they were artificers, housed their apprentices within them. They were built solidly to last for centuries. Strong beams upheld the broad, low-studded ceilings. Capacious fireplaces opened into chimneys whose construction was often made a work of art. Around the house-door were carvings of saints or devils, of prophets, hobgoblins or grotesque dragons, of birds and bees, and any wild or lovely fancy that the craftsman loved to perpetuate in wood or stone. The home must be made beautiful as well as the sanctuary. In those days the mania of migration had not yet destroyed the permanence and sacredness of the homestead. Where the young man brought his bride, even in a city home, there he hoped to dwell and dandle his grandchildren upon his knee. It was Milton's fate to know many homes in London. Discoveries and travel of the Elizabethan period had broken many traditions of the past, and the old order in his day was yielding to the new. But half the architecture of two hundred years before him still remained, and all the traditions of the past were fresh. The dingy and mutilated relics of the time before the Tudors which, outside the Gothic churches, alone remain to us, reveal but little of what he saw. With Henry VIII. and the widespread and thorough dissolution of religious houses, London became a far more commercial and prosaic place. Green convent gardens were sold for the erection of narrow wooden tenements; ancient dormitories, refectories, and chapels were pulled down or transformed for more secular purposes. Crutched Friars' Church became a carpenter's shop and tennis court; Shakespeare and his friends erected a playhouse on the site of the Black Friars' monastery. A tavern replaced the church of St. Martin's le Grand, and far and wide traces of the despoiler and rebuilder were manifest. Stow had then but just written his invaluable chronicles, and little antiquarian interest prevailed. For the first time in human history men sailed around the globe. New worlds were opening to men's visions. Not only dreams of wealth without labour, but golden actualities had dazzled the imagination of thousands. Drake and Hawkins, Frobisher and Raleigh were adding new lustre to an age hitherto unparalleled in prosperity and enterprise. Emerson's description of the Englishman as having a "telescopic appreciation of distant gain" was exemplified. England was rich in poets, great even in Shakespeare's time. Of two hundred and forty who published verses, forty are remembered to-day. Yet of England's six million people, half could not read at all. Never was there among people of privilege such a proportion of accomplished men. Every man tried his hand at verses, and learned to sing a madrigal, and tinkle the accompaniment with his own fingers. Gentlemen travelled to Italy and brought back or made themselves translations of Boccaccio, Ariosto, Tasso. Not only learned ladies like Queen Elizabeth, who had had Roger Ascham for instructor, wrote Latin, but many others were accomplished in those severer studies which ladies in a later age neglected. Sir Walter Besant tells us that from Henry IV. to Henry VIII. herbs, fruits, and roots were scarcely used. At this period, however, the poor again began to consume melons, radishes, cucumbers, parsley, carrots, turnips, salad herbs, and these things as well graced the tables of the gentry. Potatoes were unknown until a much later time. Much meat was eaten, and in different fashion from our own, _e. g._, honey was poured over mutton. Tobacco cost eighteen shillings a pound, and King James complained that there were those who "spent £300 a year upon this noxious weed." No vital statistics existed to show the average of longevity. But certain it is that, with modern sanitation and cleanliness, the great modern London, which to-day houses about as many souls as did all England then, has a much lower death-rate. When one remembers that, spite of stupendous intellectual attainments, of exquisite taste in art and literature, spite of wise statesmanship and all manly virtues, the wise men of that day were children in their knowledge of chemistry and medicine, we cannot wonder at the recurrence of the plague in almost every generation. In 1605 the bills of mortality included the ninety-seven parishes within the walls, sixteen parishes without the walls, and six contiguous outparishes in Middlesex and Surrey. During Milton's lifetime, they included the city of Westminster and the parishes of Islington, Lambeth, Stepney, Newington, Hackney, and Redriff. Scarlet fever was formerly confounded with measles, and does not appear to be reported as a separate disease until 1703. In 1682 Sir William Petty, speaking of the five plagues that had visited London in the preceding hundred years, remarks: "It is to be remembered the plagues of London do commonly kill one-fifth of the inhabitants, and are the chief impediment against the growth of the city." In Milton's boyhood common folk were crowded into such narrow, wooden tenements as one may still see within the enclosure of St. Giles's Church, Cripplegate,--almost the only ones that still remain within the city. There were no sewers and no adequate pavement until 1616. House refuse was not infrequently thrown into the street, and sometimes upon the heads of passers-by, though ancient laws enjoined each man to keep the front of his house clean and to throw no refuse into the gutter. In short, ideas on sanitation in London were much like those in Havana before the summer of 1898. It is difficult to obtain accurate statistics of the population of London, but Loftie estimates that in 1636 seven hundred thousand people lived "within its liberties." Where now lofty, gray stone buildings of pretentious and nondescript architecture shelter banks and offices, gabled buildings with overlapping stories darkened the streets. The city was not dependent on the suburbs or upon other towns for aught but food and raw material. Wool and silk and linen, leather and all metals were wrought close to the shops where they were sold. The odours of glue and dyestuffs tainted the fresh air. The sound of tools and hammers, and of the simple looms and machinery of the day, worked by foot or hand power, were heard. New objects of luxury began to be manufactured--fans, ladies' wigs, fine knives, pins, needles, earthen fire-pots, silk and crystal buttons, shoe-buckles, glassware, nails, and paper. New products from foreign lands were introduced and naturalised--among them, turkeys, hops, and apricots. Forks had not yet appeared as a necessary table furnishing. Kissing was a universal custom, and a guest kissed his hostess and all ladies present. Though in the time of Milton's father the amenities of life had much increased, cruelty and severe punishments were more frequent than in an earlier age. Three-fourths of all the heretics burned at the stake in England suffered in those five years of the bloody queen who, with her Spanish husband at her court, ruled from 1553 to 1558 over unhappy England. Many a time must the boy Milton have heard blood-curdling tales from aged men of these ghastly days when Ridley, Cranmer, Hooper, and John Rogers withered in the flames. His own father may have seen the later martyrdoms of Roman Catholics in Elizabeth's reign, or of that Unitarian in 1585 who suffered at the stake for the denial of the divinity of Christ--a theological view with which Milton himself is shown to have had much sympathy. The historian tells us of men boiled and women burned for poisoning; of ears nailed to the pillory and sliced off for libellous and incendiary language. We read of frightful floggings through the streets and of an enormous number of men hanged. Many rogues escaped punishment altogether, for, though punishment when it came was terrifically out of proportion to the offence, and in its publicity incited by suggestion to more crime, the law was often laxly administered. All periods are more or less transitional, but the England into which Milton came in the first years of the seventeenth century was peculiarly in a state of transformation and unsettlement. As in the beginning of the twentieth century, men's minds were receiving radical, new impressions, and had not yet assimilated or comprehended them. The doctrines of religious and political freedom were the dreams of prophets, and were yet to be conceived a possibility by the masses, who through dumb centuries had toiled and laughed and wept, and then stretched themselves in mother earth and slept among their fathers. The tender, growing shoots which in the days of Wiclif had sprung from the seed, small as a mustard seed, which he had planted, had grown. Birds now lodged among its branches. The time was ripening when, with the axe and hammer of Milton and his mighty compeers, some of its timbers should help rear a new structure for church and state; and others should be driven deep under the foundations of the temple which men of English blood should in the future rear to democracy. CHAPTER II. MILTON'S LIFE ON BREAD STREET Directly under the shadow of St. Mary le Bow Church, and almost within bowshot of old St. Paul's, in a little court off Bread Street, three doors from Cheapside, John Milton, the son of John Milton, scrivener, was born, December 9th in 1608. The house was marked by the sign of a spread eagle, probably adopted from the armorial bearings of the family, which appear on the original agreement for the publication of "Paradise Lost." John Milton, scrivener, whose business was much like that of the modern attorney, was the son of a well-to-do Catholic yeoman of Oxfordshire, and is said to have studied for a time at Christ Church, Oxford. Certain it is that he turned Protestant, was cast off by his father, and in Elizabeth's reign settled in London; by 1600, when he married his wife Sarah, the worldly goods with which he her endowed in the church of All Hallows, Bread Street, included two houses on that street, besides others elsewhere. We know little of Milton's mother, except that she was a woman of a warm heart and generous hand, and had weak eyes which compelled her to wear spectacles before she was thirty, while her husband read without them at the age of eighty-four. Three of their six little ones died in babyhood, but the little John's elder sister, Anne, and younger brother, Christopher, grew with him to middle life. It was a musical household; an organ and other instruments were part of the possessions most highly prized in the Bread Street home. The little lad must have looked with pride at the gold chain and medal presented to his father by a Polish prince for a composition in forty parts which the former had written for him. Many chimes in country churches played the psalm tunes that he had harmonised. To this day a madrigal and other songs of his are known to music lovers. No wonder that the boy reared in this home was ever a lover of sweet sounds, and learned to evoke them with his own little fingers upon the organ keyboard. The Bread Street of Milton's day, though swept over by the Great Fire, was not obliterated, and still covers its old site. Just at the head of it, on Cheapside, stood the "Standard in Cheap"--an ancient monument in hexagonal shape, with sculptures on each side, and on the top the figure of a man blowing a horn. Here Wat Tyler and Jack Cade had beheaded prisoners. A little west was the Gothic Cross in Cheap, one of the nine crosses erected in memory of Queen Eleanor, somewhat similar to the modern one at Charing Cross. Only a few steps from his father's house the little John found himself in the thickest traffic and bustle of the city. Here were mercers' and goldsmiths' shops, and much coming and going of carts, and occasionally coaches, which, as the antiquarian Stow declared, "were running on wheels with many whose parents had been glad to go on foot," for coaches were but newly come into fashion. As the little lad stood at the street corner looking east and west along Cheapside,--the ancient market-place,--his eye fell on well-built houses three and four stories high; they were turned gable end to the street, were built of timber, brick, and plaster, and had projecting upper stories of woodwork. Stow describes a row built by Thomas Wood, goldsmith, of "fair large houses, for the most part possessed of mercers," and westward, beginning at Bread Street, "the most beautiful frame of fair houses and shops that be within the walls of London or elsewhere in England. It containeth in number ten fair dwelling-houses and fourteen shops, all in one frame, uniformly builded, four stories high, beautified toward the street with the goldsmiths' arms and the likeness of woodmen, in memory of his name, riding on monstrous beasts; all of which is cast in lead, richly painted over and gilt." The modern visitor, as he turns from the jostling crowds of Cheapside into Bread Street, which is scarcely wider than a good sidewalk, will find no trace of aught that Milton saw. The present mercantile establishment, at numbers 58-63, that covers the site of his house, covers as well the whole Spread Eagle Court, in which it stood. It bears no inscription, but, if one enters, the courteous proprietor may conduct him to the second story where a bust of Milton is placed over the spot where he was born. A little farther south, on the corner of Watling Street, is the site of All Hallows Church, where Milton was baptised, and which is marked by a gray stone bust of the poet and the inscription: "MILTON BORN IN BREAD STREET 1608 BAPTISED IN CHURCH OF ALL HALLOWS WHICH STOOD HERE ANTE 1878." The register of his baptism referred to him as "John, sonne of John Mylton, Scrivener." Here the Milton family sat every Sunday and listened to the sermons of Reverend Richard Stocke, a zealous Puritan and most respected man, who is said to have had the gift of influencing young people. Further south, on the same side as All Hallows, were "six almshouses builded for poor decayed brethren of the Salter's Company," and beyond this the church of St. Mildred, the Virgin. Upon crossing Basing Lane, Milton saw the most noted house upon the street, known as "Gerrard Hall." This was an antique structure "built upon arched vaults and with arched gates of stone brought from Caen in Normandy," as Stow relates. A giant is said to have lived here, and the large fir pole in the high hall, which reached to the roof, was said to have been his staff. Stow thought it worth while to measure it, and declares it was fifteen inches in circumference. Small boys in Bread Street may well have stood in awe of such a cane. Whether the famous "Mermaid" Tavern was in Bread or Friday Street or between them seems doubtful, but Ben Jonson's lines plainly indicate Bread Street: "At Bread-street's Mermaid having dined and merry, Proposed to go to Holborn in a wherry." [Illustration: OLD ST. PAUL'S CATHEDRAL The two upper views show the porch by Inigo Jones. The two lower views show the "Lesser Cloisters." Milton's school stood at the rear of the church. _From an old engraving._] As Milton was early destined for the Church, his unusually thoughtful disposition and quick perception must have given promise of his fulfillment of his father's hope. At the age of ten he was writing verses. At this time, a Dutch painter, Jansen, reputed to be "equal to Van Dyck in all except freedom of hand and grace," was employed to paint the scrivener's little son, as well as James I. and his children and various noblemen. This portrait shows us a sweet-faced, sober little Puritan in short-cropped auburn hair, wearing a broad lace frill about his neck, and an elaborately braided jacket. This portrait is now in private hands, from whence it is to be hoped that it will some day find its way to the National Portrait Gallery, and be placed beside the striking and noble likeness of the poet in middle life. The lines which were written beneath the first engraving of it may have been the poet's own: "When I was yet a child, no childish play To me was pleasing; all my mind was set Serious to learn and know, and thence to do What might be public good; myself I thought Born to that end, born to promote all truth And righteous things." Milton appears to have been very fond of his preceptor, a Scotch Puritan named Young. He seems to have well grounded the lad in Latin, aroused in him a love of poetry, and set him to making English and Latin verses. But the little John must go to school with other boys; and what more natural than that the famous St. Paul's School, within five minutes' walk, should have been selected? When Milton went to school in 1620, St. Paul's Cathedral was become old and much in need of restoration. It had been built on the site of an older church and was in process of erection and alteration from about 1090 to 1512, when its new wooden steeple, covered with lead, was completed. Its cross was estimated later by Wren to have been at least 460 feet from the ground. This had disappeared in a fire in 1561, and none replaced it. What Milton saw was a huge edifice, chiefly Gothic, with a central tower about 260 feet high. The classical porch by Inigo Jones was not added, neither were certain buildings which abutted the nave torn down until after Milton's school-days were over. On the east end, next his schoolhouse, was a great window thirty-seven feet high, above which was a circular rose window. The choir stretched westward 224 feet, which, with the nave, made the entire length 580 feet. When Jones's portico was added, its whole length was 620 feet. The area which it covered was 82,000 feet, and it was by far the largest cathedral in all England. Upon the southwest corner was a tower once used as a prison, and also as a bell and clock tower. This was the real Lollards' tower, rather than the one at Lambeth which is so called. The northwest tower was likewise a prison. The nave was of transitional Norman design, of twelve bays in length, and with triforium and clerestory. For many decades a large part of the cathedral was desecrated by a throng of hucksters, idlers, and fops. Ben Jonson makes constant allusion to "Paul's." Here he studied the extravagant costumes of the day. According to Dekker, the tailors frequented its aisles to catch the newest fashions: "If you determine to enter into a new suit, warn your tailor to attend you in Paul's, who with his hat in his hand, shall like a spy discover the stuff, colour, and fashion of any doublet or hose that dare be seen there; and stepping behind a pillar to fill his table-book with those notes, will presently send you into the world an accomplished man." Bishop Earle, writing when Milton was twenty years of age, describes St. Paul's as follows: "It is a heap of stones and men with a vast confusion of languages; and were the steeple not sanctified, nothing liker Babel. The noise in it is like that of bees mixed of walking tongues and feet. It is the exchange of all discourse, and no business whatsoever but is here stirring and afoot. It is the market of young lecturers, whom you may cheapen here at all rates and sizes. All inventions are emptied here, and not few pockets. The best sign of a temple in it is that it is the thieves' sanctuary." Well may John Milton senior have cautioned his young son not to tarry in "Duke Humphrey's Walk," as this scene of confusion was called, on his way home from school, though he may well have taken him to inspect the lofty tomb of Dean Colet or the monuments to John of Gaunt and Duke Humphrey and the shrine of St. Erkenwald, which was behind the high altar. As a man, in later years, Milton may have walked down from Aldersgate on a December in 1641 and attended the funeral of the great painter, Sir Anthony Van Dyck, who for nine years had made his residence in England, and was buried here. In a corner of the churchyard stood a covered pulpit surmounted by a cross, where in ancient times the folkmote of the citizens was held. For centuries before Milton, this was a famous spot for outdoor sermons and proclamations. Here the captured flags from the Armada had waved above the preacher. But in 1629, when Milton was in Cambridge, Oliver Cromwell, in his maiden speech in Parliament, declared that flat popery was being preached at Paul's Cross. When Cromwell's day of power was come, and the cathedral during the war was sometimes used to stable horses, Paul's Cross was swept away, and its leaden roof melted into bullets. Before that, in 1633, preaching had been removed from there into the choir. Of the architecture of the bishop's palace, which stood at the northeast of the cathedral, we know nothing, but we know that it existed in Milton's school-days. Adjoining the palace was a "Haw," or small enclosure surrounded by a cloister, filled with tombs, and upon the walls was a grisly picture of the Dance of Death. Death was represented by a skeleton, who led the Pope, and emperor, and a procession of men of all conditions. In brief, the little "Haw" was a small edition of the Pisan Campo Santo. At the east end of the churchyard stood the Bell Tower, surmounted by a spire covered with lead and bearing a statue of St. Paul. The cloister of the Chapter House or Convocation House hid the west wall of the south transept and part of the nave. It was, unlike most structures of that character, two stories in height, and formed a square of some ninety feet, which was called the "Lesser Cloisters," doubtless to distinguish it from the other cloisters in the "Haw." During his most impressionable years, the city boy John Milton could not have stirred from home without being confronted by majestic symbols of the Christian faith, and mighty structures already venerable with age, and rich in treasures of a great historic past. Religion and beauty played as large a part in the influences that moulded the life of his young contemporaries as science and athletics do in the life of every American boy to-day. Whatever faults the methods of education in Milton's age may be accused of, it can not be denied that they developed industry, reverence, and moral courage--three qualities which with all our child study and pedagogical improvements are perhaps less common to-day than they were then. About the year 1620, when William Bradford was writing his famous journal, and John Carver and Edward Winslow were sailing with him in the _Mayflower_, when Doctor Harvey had told London folk that man's blood circulates, and many new things were being noised abroad, twelve-year-old John Milton first went to school. His school had been founded in 1512 by Dean Colet, whose great tomb, just mentioned, was but a stone's throw distant. It was a famous school. Ben Jonson and the famous Camden had studied there, and learned Latin and Greek, the catechism, and good manners. There were 153 boys in all; the number prescribed had reference, curiously, to the number of fishes in Simon Peter's miraculous draught. Over the windows were inscribed the words in large capital letters: "_Schola Catechizationis Puerorum In Christi Opt. Max. Fide Et Bonis Literis_." On entering, the pupils were confronted by the motto painted on each window: "_Aut Doce, Aut Disce, Aut Discede_"--either teach or learn or leave the place. There were two rooms, one called the _vestibulum_, for the little boys, where also instruction was given in Christian manners. In the main schoolroom the master sat at the further end upon his imposing chair of office called a _cathedra_, and under a bust of Colet said to have been a work of "exquisite art." Stow tells us that somewhat before Milton's time the master's wages were a mark a week and a livery gown of four nobles delivered in cloth; his lodgings were free. The sub-master received weekly six shillings, eight pence, and was given his gown. Children of every nationality were eligible; on admission they passed an examination in reading, writing, and the catechism, and paid four pence, which went to the poor scholar who swept the school. The eight classes included boys from eight to eighteen years of age, though the curriculum of the school extended over only six years. Milton's master was Doctor Alexander Gill, who from 1608-1635 held the mastership of St. Paul's School. A progressive man was this same reverend gentleman--a great believer in his native English and in spelling reform. Speaking of Latin, this remarkable Latin master said: "We may have the same treasure in our own tongue. I love Rome, but London better. I favour Italy, but England more. I honour the Latin, but worship the English." He was also an advocate of the retention of good old Saxon words as against the invasion of Latinised ones. "But whither," he writes, "have you banished those words which our forefathers used for these new-fangled ones? Are our words to be exiled like our citizens? O ye Englishmen, retain what yet remains of our native speech!" Under Mr. Gill's instruction, and that of his son, who was usher, Milton spent about four years of strenuous study. So great was his ambition for learning during the years when most boys find school hours alone irksome enough that he says: "My father destined me when a little boy for the study of humane letters, which I seized with such eagerness that from the twelfth year of my age I scarcely ever went from my lessons to bed before midnight; which indeed was the first cause of injury to my eyes, to whose natural weakness there were also added frequent headaches." Philips writes: "He generally sat up half the night as well in voluntary improvements of his own choice as the exact perfecting of his school exercises; so that at the age of fifteen he was full ripe for academical training." During these years the boy probably learned French and Italian, as well as made a beginning in Hebrew. It was in his last year at school that he paraphrased the ninety-fourth Psalm, beginning: "When the blest seed of Terah's faithful son After long toil their liberty had won, And passed from Pharian fields to Canaan's land Led by the strength of the Almighty's hand, Jehovah's wonders were in Israel shown, His praise and glory were in Israel known." Likewise Psalm one hundred and thirty-six, beginning: "Let us with a gladsome mind Praise the Lord, for he is kind: For his mercies aye endure, Ever faithful, ever sure." The present St. Paul's School is now splendidly housed in a great establishment in Hammersmith. But Milton's school and the one which arose on its ashes after the Great Fire are remembered by the following inscription: "On this site, A. D. 1512 to A. D. 1884, stood St. Paul's School, founded by Dr. John Colet, Dean of St. Paul's." From the studio of Mr. Hamo Thornycroft at Kensington, whence came the heroic figures of Cromwell at Westminster and King Alfred at Winchester, St. Paul's School is to receive a noble statue of the great scholar. CHAPTER III. MILTON AT CAMBRIDGE The schoolmate whom Milton most loved was a physician's son, Charles Diodati, almost exactly his own age, who went to Cambridge a little in advance of him. After his sister, who was then eighteen years old, had been wooed and won by Mr. Philips, and had made the first break in the home on Spread Eagle Court, Milton, now sixteen years old, followed his friend to Cambridge. Doubtless he rode on the coach, which every week the hale old stage-coach driver--Hobson--drove from the Bull's Inn on Bishopsgate Street. A well-to-do man was this worthy, who, in spite of eighty winters, still cracked his whip behind his span, and kept forty horses in his livery stable. Milton took a great fancy to him. He soon learned, as did every young gentleman intent on hiring a nag, that "Hobson's choice" meant taking the horse that stood nearest the stable door. Hobson is said to have been the first man in England to let out hackney-coaches. The modern visitor to the university town finds the old carrier honoured by a memorial; for he became a public benefactor, and among many generous gifts bequeathed a sum that to this day provides for a fine conduit and for the runnels of sparkling water that flow along the streets and around the town.[1] Under the mastership of Doctor Thomas Bainbrigge, Milton became a "lesser pensioner" in February, 1624, at Christ's College. Students were classified according to social rank and ability to pay, and Milton stood above the poorer students, called "sizars," who had inferior accommodation; he probably paid about £50 a year for his maintenance. Christ's College, as regards numbers, then stood nearly at the head of the sixteen colleges and had one master, thirteen fellows, and fifty-five scholars, which, together with students, made the number two hundred and sixty, about the same that it has to-day. It stands between Sidney Sussex College and Emmanuel. In the former, Cromwell studied, from April, 1616, to July, 1617, and the room with its bay window and deep window-seats and little bedroom opening out of it, which is said to have been his, may still be seen in the second story of the building next to the street. The window is modern. His portrait, painted in middle life, hangs in the dining-hall. Doctor William Everett, in what is the best book on life in Cambridge,--his "On the Cam,"--thus sums up his estimate of the Protector: "Bigots may defame him, tyrants may insult him, but when the hosts of God rise for their great review and the champions of liberty bear their scars, there shall stand in the foremost rank, shining as the brightness of the firmament, the majestic son of Cambridge, the avenger and protector, Oliver Cromwell." A Royalist has written in a note that is appended to Cromwell's name in the college books: "_Hic fuit grandis ille impostor carnifex perditissimus_;" and it is as "impostor" and "butcher" that two-thirds of Englishmen would have described him before Carlyle resurrected the real man. Emmanuel College is preëminently the Puritan college. It is dear to Americans as the one where William Blackstone, the learned hermit of Shawmut, John Harvard, the founder of Harvard College, and Henry Dunster, its first president, Bradstreet, the colonial governor, and Hugh Peters, the regicide, who lived in Boston, once studied. Here also Thomas Hooker, the founder of Connecticut, was a student, and here John Cotton was a fellow. This beloved preacher afterward left his ministry over St. Botolph's Church in Boston, England, to go to the little settlement of Winthrop's, which had changed its earlier names of "Shawmut" and "Trimountaine" to "Boston" before his arrival. American tourists, who find their way to the spacious grounds of Jesus College to see the Burne-Jones and Morris windows in the chapel, will be glad to note that in these stately halls John Eliot walked a student. Little he then dreamed of his future life in wigwams, a guest of mugwumps, in the forests of Natick, Massachusetts, and of the laborious years to be spent in turning Hebrew poetry and history and gospel message into their barbarous tongue. Francis Higginson, the minister to Salem, and the ancestor of Colonel Thomas W. Higginson, studied here as well. John Winthrop, the governor of the Massachusetts colony, and President Chauncy of Harvard College studied at Trinity a generation before Wren erected its great library, and Isaac Newton was a student there. John Norton, Cotton's successor at the First Church, Boston, studied in Peterhouse, the oldest of all the colleges, and Roger Williams, the founder of Rhode Island, entered Pembroke College the year before Milton entered Christ's. Whether the two, whose lives were to touch so closely later, knew each other then or not is doubtful. William Brewster was the only man who came in the _Mayflower_ who had a college education. He too studied at Cambridge; and so did John Robinson, the dearly loved pastor of the Pilgrims, who remained with the other English refugees at Leyden. It was these men, with Shepard, Saltonstall, and a score more of Oxford and Cambridge men, who were the spiritual fathers of Samuel Adams, Warren, Otis, Hancock; of Jonathan Edwards, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Channing, Beecher, and Phillips Brooks; of Lowell, Longfellow, Whittier, Bryant, Holmes, and Hawthorne; of Garrison, Phillips, and Sumner; of Motley, Bancroft, Prescott, and John Fiske. The Cambridge that Milton knew was the mother and the grandmother of the founders of states and of the architects of national constitutions and ideals. Though most of the New England Puritan leaders came from Cambridge, Oxford furnished several of the great Puritans who remained at home--Pym, Vane, John Eliot, and Hampden. It is estimated that nearly one hundred university men, between 1630 and 1647, left their comfortable homes and the allurements that Oxford, Cambridge, and the picturesque England of their time presented, to undergo the hardships of pioneers in the raw colony upon Massachusetts Bay. Of these, two-thirds came from Cambridge, a particularly large proportion from Emmanuel College. Of the forty or fifty Cambridge or Oxford men who were in Massachusetts in 1639, one-half were within five miles of Boston or Cambridge. It was this element of culture and character that determined the history of New England, and forced its stony soil to bring forth such a crop of men in the ages that were to come as made New England, in the words of Maurice, "the realisation in plain prose of the dreams which haunted Milton his whole life long." [Illustration: CHRIST'S COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE A, Chapel; B, Library; C, Dining-Hall; D, Head Master's Rooms; E, Kitchen; F, Master's Garden; H, Tennis Court. _From an old engraving._] Sidney Sussex, Christ's, and Emmanuel Colleges were erected during the Tudor period, Christ's College, founded in 1505, being the earliest of the three. The buildings of the latter now present a more commonplace appearance than when the "Lady of Christ's," as the students called young Milton, walked among them in his cap and gown. One still may climb the narrow, shabby stairway to the room, with a tiny, irregular bedroom and cupboard, where Milton lived, and which probably he shared with a roommate. It has no inscription or special mark, and probably few strangers seek it out. The visitor will note its two windows opposite each other, whose heavy window-frames, with the wainscoting and cornice, bear mark of age. No one, however, fails to seek within the secluded inner garden the decrepit mulberry-tree, which is said to have been planted by Milton. Its trunk is muffled high in a mound of sod, and its aged limbs, which still bear foliage and black berries, rest on supports. High, sheltering walls shut in the exquisite green lawns around it, and birds, blossoms, and trees make the spot seem a paradise regained. Among the students of Christ's College, none in later years brought it such renown as two men of widely differing types--the authors of "Evidences of Christianity" and "The Origin of Species." William Paley in 1766, when he was but twenty-three years old, was elected a fellow, and remained in Cambridge ten years. His famous work to-day forms part of the subjects required for the "Little Go." Charles Robert Darwin, the Copernicus of the nineteenth century, entered Christ's with the intention of studying for the ministry. He left it to journey on the _Beagle_ through the southern seas, and to bring back results which, with his later study, led to such a revolution in human thought as made it only second to that wrought in the minds of men who lived a generation before Milton was born. Masson tells us that in Milton's college days the daily routine was chapel service at five o'clock in the morning, followed sometimes by a discourse by one of the fellows, then breakfasts, probably served in the students' own rooms, as they are to-day. This was followed by the daily college lectures or university debates, which lasted until noon, when dinner was served in the college dining-halls; there the young men, then as now, sat upon the hard, backless benches, and drank their beer beneath painted windows and portraits, perchance by Holbein, of the eminent men who had been their predecessors. After dinner, if they supped at seven, and attended evening service, they could do much as they pleased otherwise. In Milton's day, the rule of an earlier time, which prescribed that out of their chambers students should converse in some dead language, had been much relaxed. Probably the barbarous Latin and worse Greek and Hebrew, which this prescription must have caused, finally rendered it a dead letter. Smoking was a universal practice, and boxing matches, dancing, bear fights, and other forbidden games were not unknown. Bathing in the sedgy little Cam was prohibited, but was nevertheless a daily practice. In many colleges the undergraduates wore "new fashioned gowns of any colour whatsoever, blue or green, or red or mixt, without any uniformity but in hanging sleeves; and their other garments light and gay, some with boots and spurs, others with stockings of divers colours reversed one upon another." Some had "fair roses upon the shoe, long frizzled hair upon the head, broad spread bands upon their shoulders, and long, large merchants' ruffs about their necks, with fair feminine cuffs at the wrist." The portrait of Milton, which hangs in a spacious apartment used by the dons at Christ's College, shows him a youth of rare beauty, in a rich and tasteful costume with broad lace collar. He holds a gilt-edged volume in his hand, and has the mien of a refined and elegant scholar, but not effeminate withal, for he was used to daily sword practice. Corporal punishment was then still in vogue, and delinquents under eighteen years old were not infrequently chastised in public. In fact, at Trinity College, "there was a regular service of corporal punishment in the hall every Thursday evening at seven in the presence of all the undergraduates." Masson discredits the story that Milton was once subjected to corporal punishment. In Milton's day the old order was changing, and we note that on Fridays men ate meat, and that the clergy indulged in impromptu prayers, to the scandal of the good churchmen. It was complained that "they lean or sit or kneel at prayers, every man in a several posture as he pleases; at the name of Jesus, few will bow, and when the Creed is repeated, many of the boys, by men's directions, turn to the west door." Milton seems to have attended plays at the university, and to have been a critical observer. Toland quotes him as saying: "So many of the young divines and those in next aptitude to Divinity have been seen so often on the stage writhing and unboning their Clergy Lims to all the antic and dishonest Gestures of Trinculos, Buffoons, and bands; prostituting the shame of that ministry which either they had or were nigh having, to the eyes of Courtiers and Court Ladies, with their grooms and Mademoiselles. There where they acted and overacted among other young Scholars, I was a Spectator; they thought themselves gallant Men and I thought them Fools; they made sport, and I laughed; they mispronounced, and I misliked; and to make up the Atticisms, they were out and I hist." It is the boast of Cambridge that she educated Cranmer, Latimer, and Ridley, the three martyrs whom Oxford burned. It must likewise be noted that Erasmus, Spenser, Coke, Walsingham, and Burleigh were Cambridge men. The Cambridge of Milton's time was but a small town of seven thousand inhabitants, about one-sixth of its present size, but rich with a history of nearly six hundred years. Its most beautiful building then as now was King's College Chapel--in fact, the most beautiful building in either Oxford or Cambridge, despite Mr Ruskin's just criticism upon it. No doubt, it would look less like a dining-table bottom-side up, with its four legs in air, were two of its pinnacles omitted; doubtless also the same criticism on its monotonous decoration of the alternate rose and portcullis, which we made in regard to the Chapel of Henry VII., is here applicable. But its great length, its noble proportions, its rare rich windows, its splendid organ-screen--old in Milton's college days--must appeal to every lover of beauty. One loves to think of the young poet musing here upon those well-known lines in "Il Penseroso" which this stately building may have inspired. "But let my due feet never fail To walk the studious cloisters pale, And love the high, embowered roof, With antick pillars massy proof, And storied windows, richly dight, Casting a dim religious light. There let the pealing organ blow, To the full voiced Quire below, In service high and anthem clear, As may with sweetness through mine ear Dissolve me into ecstasies, And bring all heaven before mine eyes." In King's Chapel Queen Elizabeth attended service several times, and listened with delight to a Latin sermon from the text "Let every soul be subject unto the higher powers." On the afternoon of the same Sunday she returned to the antechapel and witnessed a play of Plautus. Among many buildings which were very old even in Milton's time must be mentioned the church of St. Benedict on Bene't Street, which was once the chapel of Corpus Christi College. Its ancient tower is especially noteworthy. Its little double windows are separated by a baluster-shaped column. The tower is similar to one at Lincoln, and, with the whole structure, antedates the Norman conquest. A generation before Milton's time Robert Browne, the father of Congregationalism, drew great crowds within this venerable edifice to listen to his radical doctrine. At Cambridge, where he had studied, he became impressed with the perfunctoriness and worldliness of the Church of his time, and he resolved to "satisfy his conscience without any regard to license or authority from a bishop." When the Pilgrim Fathers fled from Austerfield and Scrooby in 1608, it was as Brownists or Separatists that they went to Holland. They sought a refuge where they might worship God according to the dictates of their own conscience, without interference of bishop or presbyter. It was Browne's doctrine, not only of the absolute separation of Church and state, but also of the independence of each individual congregation, that laid the foundation of church government in New England. Presbyterianism has gained little root east of the Hudson. After Browne had suffered for his faith in thirty of the dismal dungeons of that day, and, shattered in mind by his suffering, had recanted and returned to Mother Church, his disciples remained true to the light that he had shown them; the generation of scholars with whom Milton talked at Cambridge were as familiar with Browne's doctrine as the present generation is with that of Maurice and Martineau, and Milton must have been much influenced by it. Opposite St. John's Chapel is the little round church of the Holy Sepulchre. This is the earliest of the four churches in England built by the Templars which still remain. It is similar to the Temple church in London, and was probably begun a little later than St. Benedict's, which has just been mentioned. It is questionable whether the students of Milton's college days appreciated the beauty of this beautiful remnant of the Norman period that was in their midst. The taste of that day was decidedly for architecture of the Renaissance type, of which Cambridge boasts many examples. In Milton's time the most beautiful quadrangle in Cambridge, and perhaps in the world, that of Trinity, had been but newly finished by the architect, Ralph Symons, who altered and harmonised a group of older buildings. In the centre of the court is Neville's fountain, built in 1602, which is a fine example of good English Renaissance work. During four years of Milton's residence, part of St. John's College was in process of erection in the Italian Gothic style. This was at the expense of the Lord Keeper Williams, whose initials and the date, 1624, are lettered in white stone near the western oriel. It was completed in 1628. Clare Bridge was not finished until 1640, and most of the other beautiful bridges that span the Cam to-day were unknown to Milton when he mused beside its shady banks where "Camus, reverend sire, went footing slow, His mantle hairy and his bonnet sedge Inwrought with figures dim, and on the edge Like to that sanguine flower inscribed with woe." Only fifteen miles away, across the level fields, lay Ely Cathedral, built on what was once hardly more than an island in the Fens. Many a time during his seven years in the university town must Milton have walked over there, or ridden on one of Hobson's horses, perhaps with his dear Charles Diodati, to view the mighty structure, or to study its Norman interior. Its gray towers and octagonal lantern dominate the little town that clusters around it, and may be seen from far across the plain. During these studious years, while Milton walked among the colleges where Chaucer, Bacon, Ben Jonson, and Erasmus had likewise walked as students, he was not only busied with logic, philosophy, and the literature of half a dozen living and dead languages, but his tender emotions seem to have been briefly touched by some unknown fair one; and his interest in public matters, for instance, Sir John Eliot's imprisonment in the Tower, is evident. In one letter he mentions the execution of a child but nine years old, for setting fire to houses. A scourge of the plague afflicted London on the year that he entered Cambridge, and five years later he was driven from town by its devastation there. The university ceased all exercises, and the few members of it that remained shut themselves in as close prisoners. So great was the poverty and suffering incident to this calamity, that the king appealed to the country for aid to the stricken town. During these years of quiet growth, Milton's first noteworthy poems appear, of which the Latin poems, according to good judges, deserve the preference. We here mention only some of his English poems. The longest of these, which was written the month and year when he came to his majority, was begun on Christmas morning, 1629. This serious youth of twenty-one longed to give "a birthday gift for Christ," and thus appeared his poem, "On the Morning of Christ's Nativity." Three or four years earlier he had written on the death of his baby niece, Mrs. Philips's child, his lines "On the Death of a Fair Infant." The revelation of self in his sonnet "On His Being Arrived to the Age of Twenty-Three," makes the latter the most interesting of these early flights of song. The most precious literary treasure which Cambridge possesses, and as Mr. Edmund Gosse asserts, "the most precious manuscript of English literature in the world," is the packet of thirty loose and ragged folio leaves covered with Milton's handwriting, which since 1691 has lain in Trinity College Library. For a generation, they attracted no attention, but later they were examined and handled by so many that they suffered seriously; within fifty years, seventeen lines of "Comus" were torn out and stolen by some unknown thief. Mr. Gosse, in a delightful article in the _Atlantic Monthly_, upon "The Milton Manuscripts at Cambridge," gives reins to his imagination in picturing the sudden temptation of this man, who, passing down the long ranges of "storied urn and animated bust," which adorn the interior of Wren's famous structure, advances beyond the beautiful figure of the youthful Byron to the gorgeous window in which the form of Isaac Newton shines resplendent. The careless attendant places in his hands the richly bound thin folio,--"and now the devil is raging in the visitor's bosom; the collector awakens in him, the bibliomaniac is unchained. In an instant the unpremeditated crime is committed.... And so he goes back to his own place certain that sooner or later his insane crime will be discovered ... certain of silent infamy and unaccusing outlawry, with no consolation but that sickening fragment of torn verse which he can never show to a single friend, can never sell nor give nor bequeath. Among literary criminals, I know not another who so burdens the imagination as this wretched mutilator of 'Comus.'" These pages are the laboratory or studio of the poet, and reveal most interestingly the progress of his art during his earlier creative years. Like Beethoven's note-book, they teach the impatient and inaccurate that genius condescends carefully to note little things and to take infinite pains, whether it be with symphonies or sonnets. Charles Lamb, on looking over the Milton manuscripts, whimsically recorded his astonishment that these lines had not fallen perfect and polished from the poet's pen. "How it staggered me to see the fine things in their ore! interlined, corrected! as if their words were mortal, alterable, displaceable at pleasure!" But the average man, who despairs of ever attaining artistic excellence, and finds every kind of literary composition a formidable task, takes consolation in the fact here revealed, that even the creator of "L'Allegro" and "Il Penseroso," before he reached the perfect phrase,--"endless morn of light,"--experimented with no less than six others: "ever-endless light," "ever glorious," "uneclipsèd," "where day dwells without night," and "in cloudless birth of night." The authorities of Trinity College, having of late realised the invaluable service to men of letters that this glimpse into the poet's workshop would be, have issued a limited edition, in sumptuous form, of a perfect facsimile of the Milton manuscripts. "Now, for the first time," as Mr. Gosse remarks, "we can examine in peace, and without a beating heart and blinded eyes, the priceless thing in its minutest features." When it is remembered that no line of Shakespeare's remains in his own handwriting, and nothing of any consequence of Chaucer's or Spenser's, Mr. Gosse cannot be accused of over-statement when he says that to all lovers of literature this volume is "a relic of inestimable value. To those who are practically interested in the art of verse, it reads a more pregnant lesson than any other similar document in the world." Some day the great university may add to its charms not only an adequate memorial to its Puritans, but one to its poets--Spenser, Milton, Pope, Gray, Coleridge, Wordsworth, Byron, and Tennyson, who have enriched it by their presence, and have made Cambridge _par excellence_ the university of the poets. It must be remembered that Chaucer and Shakespeare were not university men. The time for a pilgrimage to Cambridge is term time, when window-boxes, gay with blossoms, brighten gray old walls within the "quads," and when the streets are enlivened by three thousand favoured youths intent on outdoor sport. Then all points of interest are accessible, and perchance one may be so fortunate as to get entrance up narrow, worn stone stairways into some student's cosy study; the visitor will find it lined with books, rackets, and boxing-gloves, and decorated with trophies and photographs of some one else's sister. Bits of college gossip and local slang, hints of college traditions, prejudices, and customs pleasantly vary the tourist's hours spent over the fine print of Baedeker and in search for the tombs of eminent founders. Even if one is a tourist and not a "fresher," he will find it profitable to study contemporary Cambridge through "The Fresher's Don't," written by "A Sympathiser, B. A.," and addressed to freshers "in all courtesy." As to dress, the "fresher," among other pieces of sage advice, is told: "Don't forget to cut the tassel of your cap just level with the board. Only graduates wear long tassels." "Don't wear knickerbockers with cap and gown, nor carry a stick or umbrella. These are stock eccentricities of Fresherdom." (The genuine Cambridge student would rather be soaked to his skin and risk pneumonia, than encounter the derisive grin which an umbrella would evoke.) "Don't aspire to seniority by smashing your cap or tearing your gown, as you deceive no one." "Don't be a tuft-head. The style is more favoured by errand boys than gentlemen." "Don't by any chance sport a tall hat in Cambridge. It will come to grief." Under other headings, the following injunctions may be selected: "Don't sport during your first month. You will only earn the undesirable appellation of 'Smug.'" "Don't speak disrespectfully of a man 'Who only got a third in his Trip., and so can't be very good.' Before you go down your opinion will be 'That a man must be rather good to take the Trip. at all.'" "Don't mistake a Don for a Gyp. The Gyp is the smarter individual." "Don't forget that St. Peter's College is 'Pot-House,' Caius is 'Keys,' St. Catherine's is 'Cats,' Magdalene is 'Maudlen,' St. John's College Boat Club is 'Lady Margaret,' and a science man is taking 'Stinks.'" "Don't forget that Cambridge men 'keep' and not 'live.'" CHAPTER IV. MILTON AT HORTON On leaving Cambridge, when he was nearly twenty-four years old, Milton retired to his father's new home at Horton, about seventeen miles west of London. Here he tells us that, "with every advantage of leisure, I spent a complete holiday in turning over the Greek and Latin writers; not but that I sometimes exchanged the country for the town, either for the purpose of buying books, or for that of learning something new in mathematics, or in music, in which sciences I then delighted." As Milton's father was in easy circumstances his son never earned money until after he was thirty-two years of age. These free and quiet years at Horton, when he was his own master, and was without a care, were the happiest of his life. The visitor from London now alights at the little station of Wraysbury, and if it be upon a July 4th, as when the writer made a pilgrimage to Horton, he will find no pleasanter way to celebrate the day than to stroll through level fields by the green country roadside a mile and a half to the little hamlet among the trees. On the way he will espy to the left, on the horizon, the gray towers of Windsor, and may imagine the handsome young poet, whose verse has glorified this quiet rural landscape, pausing some morning in the autumn on his early walk to listen to the far sound of the huntsman's horn, and presently to see the merry rout of gaily clad dames and cavaliers dash by, leaping fearlessly the hedgerows and barred gates. Horton is a tiny, tranquil village, with little that remains to-day, outside the ancient parish church, that John Milton saw, except the Horton manor-house of the Bulstrode family, which had had connections with Horton from the time of Edward VI. The modern Milton manor, situated in beautiful grounds, may or may not stand upon the site of Milton's former home, which remained until 1798, when it was pulled down. The old tavern of uncertain date upon the one broad street may perhaps have gathered around its antique hob, within the little taproom, gray-haired peasants who guided clumsy ploughs through the rich loam of the fields of Horton, while the white-handed poet sat on a velvet lawn under leafy boughs, and penned his blithe tribute to the nightingale, or in imagination sported with Amaryllis in the shade, or with the shepherds, sprites, and nymphs who peopled his youthful dreams. As in Cambridge, runnels of clear water, which come from the little river Colne not far distant, flow beside the road. Even to-day one has not far to seek to find the suggestion for those exquisite lines in "Comus" which Milton wrote in Horton: "By the rushy-fringèd bank, Where grows the willow and the osier dank, My sliding chariot stays, Thick set with agate and the azurn sheen Of turkis blue and emerald green That in the channel strays: Whilst from off the waters fleet Thus I set my printless feet O'er the cowslip's velvet head That bends not as I tread." The student of Milton finds the centre of interest in Horton to-day to be the beautiful old church where the Milton family attended service for five years, and where the mother lies buried. It stands in the green churchyard, back from the village street. Yew-trees and rose-bushes lend it shade and fragrance. The tombs for the most part are not moss-grown with age, but are rather new, though the slab at the entrance over which Milton passed is marked "1612." The battlemented stone tower is draped with ivy and topped with reddish brick. Like scores of churches of the twelfth or thirteenth century, in which it was built, the gabled portico is on the side. The interior is well-preserved; it has a nave with two aisles and a chancel, and in the porch is an old Norman arch. Upon the wall at the rear are wooden tablets which record curious bequests of small annuities for monthly doles of bread to needy people. Never since those five joyous years at Horton has any English poet blessed the world with verse of such rare loveliness and perfection as fell from the pen of Milton during this time, when spirit, heart, and mind were in attune. The world's clamour had not broken in upon his peace. Probably at the request of his friend, the composer Lawes, he wrote his "Arcades" in honour of the Countess Dowager of Derby, who had been Spenser's friend. The venerable lady lived about ten miles north of Horton on her fine old estate of Harefield, where Queen Elizabeth had visited her and her husband. On that occasion a masque of welcome had been performed for her in an avenue of elms, which thus received the name of the "Queen's Walk." It was in this verdant theatre that Milton's "Arcades" was performed by the young relatives of the countess. Among these were Lady Alice and her boy-brothers, who on the following year took part in Milton's "Comus," which he wrote anonymously to be played at Ludlow Castle upon the Welsh border, when the children's father was installed as lord president of Wales. Besides these longer poems, Milton wrote his "Il Penseroso" and "L'Allegro" at Horton, as well as the noble elegy "Lycidas," which was written in memory of his gifted friend, Edward King, who was drowned in the summer of 1637, just before Milton left his father's home. In this peaceful valley of the Thames, his clear eye searched out every sight, his musical ear sought out every sound that revealed beauty or that suggested the antique, classic world in which his whole nature revelled. He walked in "twilight groves" of "pine or monumental oak;" he listened to "soft Lydian airs" and curfew bells, to the lark's song, and Philomel's. He watched "the nibbling flocks," the "labouring clouds," and saw, "bosomed high in tufted trees," towers and battlements arise, and beheld in vision his-- "Sabrina fair,... Under the glassy, cool translucent wave In twisted braids of lilies knitting The loose train of her amber dropping hair." He lived in a world enchanted by the magic of his genius. Yet in his little world of loveliness he was not deaf to the distant hoarse cry of the coming storm, and at the last the Puritan within him awoke and cried out at those-- "who little reckoning make Than how to scramble at the shearers' feast ... Blind mouths! that scarce themselves know how to hold A sheephook--or have learnt aught else the least That to the faithful herds-man's art belongs! What recks it them? What need they? They are sped; And when they list, their lean and flashy songs, Grate on their scrannel pipes of wretched straw; The hungry sheep look up and are not fed But swoln with wind and the rank mist they draw Rot inwardly and foul contagion spread." In the spring of 1637, the last year that the poet spent at Horton, just before another outbreak of the plague, his mother died. We may think of brother Christopher, a young student of laws of the Inner Temple, and the widowed sister Anne and her two boys coming post-haste from London, and standing beside the desolate father and the poet-brother in the chancel, when the tabernacle of clay was lowered to its resting-place. A plain blue stone now bears the record: "Heare lyeth the Body of Sarah Milton, the wife of John Milton, who died the 3rd of April, 1637." The American visitor to Horton on the day that commemorates his country's declaration of independence will remember Runnymede and Magna Charta Island. And he will find nothing more consonant with his feeling, after visiting the home of the republican Milton, than to wend his way across the fields, golden with waving grain and gay with scarlet poppies, to the spot where his ancestors and Milton's in 1215 brought tyrant John to sullen submission to their just demands. On the margin of the river he may embark, and as the sun casts grateful shadows eastward, he may drift gently down beside the long, narrow island in the rushy margin of the stream, where white swans build their nests. A notice warns him not to trespass, for the gray stone house upon it, whose gables are half hid by dense shrubbery, is private property. Some day perhaps this English nation that so loves its own great history will reclaim this historic spot, and mark Magna Charta Island with a memorial of the brave men who made it world-famous. Or perhaps,--who knows?--some American, who has spent three years at Oxford, and learned to love the history of the race from which he sprang, may be impelled to honour that which is best in her, and after placing in Cambridge and in Horton fit memorials of Milton, may be moved to erect here a worthy monument to the bold barons. CHAPTER V. MILTON ON THE CONTINENT.--IN ST. BRIDE'S CHURCHYARD.--AT ALDERSGATE STREET.--THE BARBICAN.--HOLBORN.--SPRING GARDENS One year after his mother's death, and probably just after Christopher's wedding, the poet, now a man of thirty, arrived in Paris, accompanied by his servant, and bearing valuable letters of introduction, among others, some from Sir Henry Wotton. As we are dealing with Milton's England, scant space must be allowed to this year or more spent among the _savants_ and the unwonted sights of France and Italy. In Paris the young scholar was introduced by Lord Scudamore to the man whom he most desired to see,--the great Hugo Grotius, a man of stupendous erudition and lofty character. Milton declared that he venerated him more than any modern man, and well he might, for the Dutch hero and exile had not his equal upon the Continent, even in that age of great men. Passing through Provence, Milton entered Italy from Nice, and found himself in the land whose melodious language he had made his own, and whose history and literature few Italians of his age knew better than he. He went to Genoa, "La Superba," which then boasted of two hundred palaces; thence to Leghorn, and fourteen miles farther to Pisa on the Arno, and, farther up the Arno, to beautiful Florence. Here he paused two months, lionised by the best society, and hobnobbing with painters, poets, prelates, and noblemen as he walked in Santa Croce, or on the heights of Fiesole, or in the leafy shade of Vallombrosa. Here it was that he was presented to the blind Galileo, "grown old," he writes, "a prisoner to the Inquisition for thinking in Astronomy otherwise than the Franciscan and Dominican licensers thought." Doubtless, in later years, when blindness and royal disfavour had embittered but failed to crush his spirit, the gray-haired poet often recalled this visit made in his radiant youth. Going by way of Siena, on its rocky height, Milton passed on to Rome in the autumn, and here spent two months in the splendid city of the Popes, in which great St. Peter's was but newly finished. The city swarmed with priests and prelates, but the poet spoke freely of his own faith. One of his great joys was to listen to the incomparable singing of Leonora Baroni, the Jenny Lind of his time, to whom he wrote exuberant panegyrics in Latin. In November, Milton drove to Naples, a hundred miles away, where he was favoured with the hospitality of the aged Manso, the friend of Tasso, and the wealthy patron of letters; he showed the young Englishman his beloved city, presented him with valuable gifts, and welcomed him in his villa at Pozzuoli, overlooking the bay of Naples. Milton had planned to visit Sicily and Greece, but he writes: "The sad news of civil war coming from England called me back; for I considered it disgraceful that, while my fellow countrymen were fighting at home for liberty, I should be travelling abroad at ease for intellectual purposes." War, however, had not yet broken out, and Milton lingered another two months in Rome, little aware of the relics of the Cæsars that lay buried in the Forum under the cow-pasture of his time. Another visit to Florence, where he was again the centre of attraction, was followed by trips to the quaint mediæval cities of Lucca, Ferrara, Bologna, and to Venice by the sea. Guido Reni, Guercino, Domenichino, and Salvator Rosa were then living, and he may have chanced upon them in his wanderings. From Venice he turned back through Verona and Milan, and paused a little in Geneva, which was still under the strong influence of its great reformer, Calvin; then he journeyed on to Paris, where a royal infant, Louis XIV., had been born during his travels. On reaching home, after this journey into the great splendid world full of temptations to every man who was dowered with keen susceptibilities and a passionate, vehement disposition, Milton writes: "I again take God to witness that in all those places where so many things are considered lawful, I lived sound and untouched from all profligacy and vice, having this thought perpetually with me, that though I could escape the eyes of men, I certainly could not the eyes of God." It was a chaste and modest love that inspired the six amatory sonnets in Italian, which were probably written during his stay abroad. It was a refined and high-bred man, who knew the world and took it at its just measure, who was now to lend his hand to fight the people's battle. On his return to England Milton did not take up his residence again in his father's home at Horton, which was then kept by his younger brother and his wife. He went to London, and for a brief time made his home with a tailor named Russel in St. Bride's Churchyard, near Fleet Street, within view of Ludgate Hill and St. Paul's. Here in the winter of 1639-40 he began teaching the little Philips boys, his nephews, and took entire charge of his small namesake John, but eight years old. His sister Anne by this time had remarried, and was now Mrs. Agar. During his stay in St. Bride's Churchyard, Milton jotted down on seven pages of the manuscript that is now in Trinity College Library suggestions for future work with which his brain was teeming. Of the ninety-nine subjects that he considered, sixty-one, including "Paradise Lost" and "Samson," are Scriptural, and thirty-eight, including "Alfred and the Danes" and "Harold and the Normans," are on British subjects. Like the young Goethe who projected "Faust," which was not finished until his hair had whitened, Milton conceived his epic when it was to wait a quarter of a century for completion. Says Edward Philips, the elder nephew whom he taught: "He made no long stay in his lodgings on St. Bride's Churchyard: necessity of having a place to dispose his books in, and other goods fit for the furnishing of a good handsome house, hastening him to take one; and accordingly, a pretty garden-house he took in Aldersgate Street, at the end of an entry, and therefore the fitter for his turn, besides that there are few streets in London more free from noise than that." At that time the entrance to the street from St. Martin's-le-Grand was one of the seven gates of the city wall. A new one, on the site of a far older one, had been erected when Milton was nine years old; this had "two square towers of four stories at the sides, pierced with narrow portals for the foot passengers and connected by a curtain of masonry of the same height across the street, having the main archway in the middle." Besides the figures of Samuel and Jeremiah, the gate was adorned with an equestrian statue of James I. on the Aldersgate side, and the same monarch on his throne on the St. Martin's-le-Grand side. In 1657 Howell says: "This street resembleth an Italian street more than any other in London, by reason of the spaciousness and uniformity of the buildings and straightness thereof, with the convenient distance of the houses." Amid the labyrinth of dingy, crowded alleys with which the garden spaces of the seventeenth century now are covered, one looks in vain to-day for any trace of Milton's home; in short, of all the houses that he occupied in London, no one remains, or even has its site marked. All we know of the house on Aldersgate Street is, that it stood in the second precinct of St. Botolph's parish, between the gate and Maidenhead Court on the right, and Little Britain and Westmoreland Alley on the left. Near by dwelt his old teacher, Doctor Gill, and Doctor Diodati, the father of his dearest friend, whose recent death he mourned in a touching elegy written in Latin. Upon his walks into the open fields, which were not then far distant, he must have passed many fine town houses of the gentry, their sites now covered by a dreary waste of shops and factories. During these years we learn that he varied his studies in the classics, and his keen observations on the doings of the newly assembled Long Parliament by an occasional "gaudy-day," in company with some "young sparks of his acquaintance." It was in Aldersgate Street that Milton began writing his vehement pamphlets, and it was Thomas Underhill, at the sign of the "Bible" in Wood Street, Cheapside, who published the first polemics which he and young Sir Harry Vane sent forth upon the burning questions of the day, into which the scope of this volume forbids us to enter. Milton's future career was a complete refutation of Wordsworth's conception of him as a lonely star that dwelt apart. The gentle author of "Comus" and the composer of elegant sonnets had changed his quill for that "two-handed engine" which was to smite prelate and prince. During these days the post brought daily news of the horrors of the insurrection in Ireland; Milton read "of two and twenty Protestants put into a thatched house and burnt alive" in the parish of Kilmore; of naked men and pregnant women drowned; of "eighteen Scotch infants hanged on clothiers' tenterhooks;" of an Englishman, wife, and five children hanged, and buried when half alive; of eighty forced to go on the ice "till they brake the ice and were drowned." These, and the hideous tortures upon thousands, which history relates, may explain, if they do not palliate the cruelties a few years later which Cromwell committed, and which have made his name synonymous with "monster" to this day throughout this much tormented and turbulent Irish people. Americans who sharply condemn the devastation which old Oliver wrought will also do well to cry out no less loudly at the like barbaric slaughter in the island of Samar, which was ordered two hundred and fifty years later by some of their own officers. War opened. There were doubtless anxious days in the house on Aldersgate Street, for brother Christopher, who stood with the royal party, had moved with his father from Horton to Reading, which was besieged. But war was not the sole cause for anxiety. When old Mr. Milton arrived safely in London late in the summer he found his son John married and already parted from his bride of seventeen, who had lived with him but one short month. Of the brief courting of Mary Powell at her father's house at Forest Hill, near Oxford, we know little. But one day in May, when King Charles I. had driven her brothers and all other students out of Christ Church, and had taken up temporary residence there himself, the venturesome lover came into the enemy's country and called on her. The family was well known to him; their comfortable mansion housed ten or eleven children and had fourteen rooms. We read of their "stilling-house," "cheese-press house," "wool-house," of their two coaches, one wain, and four carts. It was a merry household, and one well-to-do in worldly goods. Whether the girl was deeply enamoured of the grave, handsome man, twice her age, who asked her hand, is doubtful, but they were soon married, and in the Aldersgate house, the nephew relates, there was "feasting held for some days in celebration of the nuptials, and for entertainment of the bride's friends." Then the relatives bade the bride goodbye. But the young wife, having been brought up and lived "where there was a great deal of company and merriment, dancing, etc., when she came to live with her husband found it very solitary; no company came to her;" consequently at the end of a month her preoccupied husband gave consent to the girl's request to pay a visit home, with the promise of returning in September. Some sons of intimate friends joined the nephews as pupils, and the elder Milton was added to the household. But the bride declined to answer her husband's letters or to return; during the following months the irate man, thus deserted, wrote his pamphlets on "Divorce," while all England was astir with the meeting of the famous Westminster Assembly, the spread of Independency, and the king's defeat at Marston Moor. During these days also Milton wrote his remarkable scheme for the education of gentlemen's sons, in which he showed himself as radical and original and as ready to make learning a delightful and not an odious process as did Rousseau and Froebel a century or more later. Marvellous was the work accomplished by Milton's young pupils at Aldersgate Street. We read of these boys of fourteen and sixteen, though even their learned teacher knew not yet of the microscope and the law of gravitation, studying not only Greek and Latin, but Hebrew, Chaldee, Syriac, and Italian. Milton's noble "Areopagitica"--a plea for freedom of the press--was written during these melancholy, wifeless months, while the din of civil war was in the air, and he mused in wrath and bitterness over his country's miseries and his own. The fortunes of the Powell family had waned with the king's cause. One day, when Milton called on a relative who lived near by his home, on the site of the present post-office, "he was surprised," writes his nephew, "to see one whom he thought to have never seen more, making submission and begging pardon on her knees before him." A reconciliation was effected, and, with the wife of nineteen now two years older and wiser than since their first attempt at matrimony, they began housekeeping in the Barbican. This was a larger house than the one in Aldersgate Street, and only a three minutes' walk from it. It remained until Masson's lifetime and had, he says, "the appearance of having been a commodious enough house in the old fashion." "And I have been informed," he adds, "that some of the old windows, consisting of thick bits of glass lozenged in lead, still remained in it at the back, and that the occupants knew one of the rooms in it as a schoolroom, where Milton had used to teach his pupils." The visitor to the noisy, bustling Barbican to-day, close to old London wall, will find nothing that Milton saw. Here he published the first edition of his collected poems. The title-page tells us that the songs were set to music by the same musician, Henry Lawes, "Gentleman of the King's Chapell," who had engaged him to write the "Arcades" and "Comus." It was to be "sold at the signe of the Princes Arms in Paul's Churchyard, 1645." The wretched botch of an engraving of the poet which accompanied it displeased him, and he humourously compelled the unsuspecting and unlearned artist to engrave in Greek beneath it the following lines: "That an unskilful hand had carved this print You'd say at once, seeing the living face; But finding here no jot of me, my friends, Laugh at the botching-artist's mis-attempt." Unfortunately this was the only published portrait of Milton during his life, and gave strangers at home and abroad the impression that his face was as grim as his pamphlets were caustic. By strange coincidence this house, where Milton lived when "Comus" was first published, was but a few yards distant from the town house of the earl in whose honour the masque had been composed a dozen years or more before this. With him was the "Lady Alice," now nearly twenty-four years old, who, as a girl of eleven, had sung Milton's songs in Ludlow Castle. The earl loved music, and his children's music teacher, Lawes, and others who had acted in the merry masque comforted his invalidism with concourse of sweet sounds, almost within hearing of the old scrivener and organist and his poet-son. Milton loved Lawes, and wrote a sonnet to him; doubtless during these days they were much together. About the time that Milton's first baby daughter appeared, the Barbican house was crowded with the disconsolate Powell family, who had nearly lost their all, and fled to Mary's husband for protection. Mother Powell seems to have been a woman of strong personality, and the new baby was christened "Anne" for her. Within two months, both the Milton and Powell grandfathers were buried from the house in Barbican. In the burials at St. Giles's Cripplegate appears, in March, 1646, the record: "John Milton, Gentleman, 15." While worrying over the settlement of the Powell estates and brother Christopher's as well, Milton continued his teaching; his pupil writes: "His manner of teaching never savoured in the least anything of pedantry." Cyriack Skinner, grandson of the great Coke, to whom he wrote two sonnets in later years, was his pupil in the Barbican. In 1647, just after the march of Fairfax and Cromwell through the city, Milton removed to a smaller house in High Holborn, "among those that open backward into Lincoln's Inn Fields," which had been laid out by Inigo Jones. Here he ceased playing the schoolmaster, became definitely a republican at heart, and busied himself with the writing of a history of England, and compiling of a Latin dictionary and a System of Divinity. The new home was among pleasant gardens, and near the bowling green and lounging-place for lawyers and citizens. Its exact site is unknown. In 1648 a second baby girl, called Mary, was born to the Miltons in the new home. By his bold tractate on the "Tenure of Kings and Magistrates," which was written during the terrible days of the king's trial and execution, Milton put himself on the side of the regicides. Exactly a month after its appearance he was waited on at High Holborn by a committee from the Council of State, who asked him to accept the position of "Secretary for Foreign Tongues." His eyesight was already failing; he could no longer read by candle-light; but here was a great opportunity for public service, and he did not long hesitate. On March 20th, when he entered upon office, he learned that all letters to foreign states and princes were to be put into dignified Latin form, so as to be instantly read by government officials in all countries, and not into the "wheedling, lisping jargon of the cringing French," as his nephew calls it. His salary was a trifle over £288--worth about five times that sum to-day. Sometimes an early breakfast at High Holborn was necessary in order to meet the council at seven A.M. in Whitehall, but usually it met at eight or nine. It seemed, however, best for the Miltons to move nearer Whitehall, and while he waited for his apartments to be ready, Milton took lodging at Charing Cross, opening into Spring Garden, where now is the meeting-place of the London County Council. This was on the royal estate, and was so named from a concealed fountain which spurted forth when touched by the unwary foot. It must have been a pleasant spot, with its bathing pond and bowling green and pheasant yard, which led from what is now Trafalgar Square into St. James's Park. Opposite, at Charing Cross, was the palace of the Percys, later called "Northumberland House," and next to it, where now stands the Grand Hotel, was the home of Sir Harry Vane. Queen Eleanor's Cross had been taken down in 1647 and the statue of Charles I., which on the year of Milton's death replaced it on its site, was at this time kept in careful concealment. St. Martin's Lane was a genuine shady lane, bordered with hedges. The church which Milton saw upon the site of the present one was erected by Henry VIII., and was even then in reality St. Martin's in the Fields. Upon the north side of what is now Trafalgar Square, which is occupied by the National Gallery, stood the Royal Stables. Pall Mall, which leads westward, was so named from the Italian outdoor game, resembling croquet, which was played upon a green in the vicinity. It was then a resort for travellers and foreigners, who, like the Londoners Pepys and Defoe, frequented the chocolate and coffee houses in the neighbourhood and for a shilling an hour were carried about in sedan-chairs. The latter tells us that "the chairmen serve you for porters to run on errands, as your gondoliers do at Venice." St. James's Palace, with its picturesque brick gateway, had but just seen the last hours of the monarch whom Milton had helped dethrone. Here Charles II. had been born in 1630, and here the Princess Mary was born in 1662, and was married to William, Prince of Orange, fifteen years later. [Illustration: PART OF WHITEHALL The Banquet-Hall by Inigo Jones is in the centre at the rear. _From an old engraving._] CHAPTER VI. MILTON AT WHITEHALL.--SCOTLAND YARD.--PETTY FRANCE.--BARTHOLOMEW CLOSE.--HIGH HOLBORN.--JEWIN STREET.--ARTILLERY WALK Milton remained in Spring Gardens about seven months, when his new apartments in the north end of Whitehall Palace were ready. These opened from Scotland Yard, in which was the Guard House. The yeomen of the guard wore red cloth roses on back and breast, and must have seemed very gay and imposing personages to the little girls of the Milton family. Their rooms were connected with the various courts and suites of apartments that extended down to the Privy Garden. The palace in Cromwell's time probably retained in residence a large portion of the small army of caterers, butchers, brewers, confectioners, glaziers, etc., who provided for the constant needs of the huge establishment. The Horse Guards, built for gentlemen pensioners, was erected in 1641, and was still quite new. This apparently was not on the site of the present Horse Guards, which was built in 1753. At Scotland Yard, Milton's only son, John, was born, and here his protracted labours in his vehement controversy with Salmasius brought on the blackness of great darkness which, at the age of forty-three, for ever shut his world from view. For the next twenty years and more it is the blind poet whose life we follow, during the period when his fiery spirit was chastened not only by his own afflictions, but by the nation's also. In 1652 Milton moved to Petty France, now York Street, near the Bird Cage Walk, which was so named from the king's aviary there. Here the next year his little daughter Deborah was born, and soon after his wife, at the age of twenty-six, after nine years of married life, died. After the first estrangement and reconciliation, so far as we know, all had gone well. Her little John, who had scarcely learned to speak his father's name, soon followed her to the grave. The household then consisted of the poet, his nephew and amanuensis John, and his three motherless little girls. Masson describes the house as he saw it before its destruction in 1875. It was then No. 19 York Street, and had a squalid shop in its lower part, and a recess on one side of it used for stacking wood. On entering by a small door and passage at the side of the shop, one groped up a dark staircase, where several tenants lived, in the rooms that were once all Milton's. "The larger ones on the first floor are not so bad, and what are now the back rooms of the house may have been even pleasant and elegant when the house had a garden of its own behind it, and that garden opened directly into the park." Jeremy Bentham, who over a century later was landlord of the house and lived close by, placed a tablet on the rear wall inscribed "Sacred to Milton, Prince of Poets." After 1811 Bentham's tenant was William Hazlitt; before that his friend James Mill occupied the house. Lord Scudamore, who had given Milton an introduction to Grotius, was his next-door neighbour at York Street. To-day the loftiest apartment house in London stands upon the unmarked site of Milton's house. The frequent walk which Milton took to Whitehall, with a guide to his dark steps, during his eight years' residence here, led him half a mile across St. James's Park from Queen Anne Gate to Spring Gardens or the Horse Guards. The ornamental water was not then there, but there were ponds and trees and pleasant stretches of green turf. Charles II. had it later all laid out by the famous French landscape artist, Le Nôtre. Occasional sonnets--those to Cromwell, Vane, "On his Blindness," and "On the Late Massacre in Piedmont"--appeared in the increasing leisure of this period, when his duties lessened, and he retired on a diminished salary. But Milton was become a man who was sought out by foreigners of note and persons of quality; among his friends, Andrew Marvell, the poet, and his pupil, Cyriack Skinner, were frequent visitors, with charming Lady Ranelagh, his neighbour, who persuaded him to teach her little son, and who he said had been to him in the place of kith and kin. After four years of widowerhood, when his little girls were sadly in need of a mother, Milton married Katharine Woodcock, daughter of a Captain Woodcock of Hackney, in the church of St. Mary Aldermanbury, on November 12, 1656. Her coming into the home in Petty France brought serenity and happiness to all its inmates. During the brief fifteen months of their married life, a little daughter came, who followed her soon after to her grave in St. Margaret's Church beside the Abbey, and the sorrowing husband was again left in his blindness to bring up his three motherless little daughters. After eighteen years, the poem, sketched out in St. Bride's Churchyard, was resumed, and in the lonely house in Petty France, the first lines of "Paradise Lost" were dictated, just before the closing days of Cromwell's life. Under Richard Cromwell, Milton retained his secretaryship, but with the return of Charles II., in May, 1660, he fled his home in Petty France, for he well knew the vengeance that might follow. His little girls were sent no one knows whither, and he took refuge in a friend's house in Bartholomew Close, a passage which led from West Smithfield, through an ancient arch. It was filled with quaint old tenements, where Doctor Caius, the founder of Caius College, Cambridge, had lived, and also Le Soeur, who had modelled the statue of Charles I., which, as has been stated, was concealed during the Commonwealth, and was soon to be erected. Sixty-five years later, young Benjamin Franklin set up type in a printing-office here. To the blind refugee, it mattered little that he had left his garden to be hemmed in by narrow walls. The labyrinth of little courts and tortuous passages was his safeguard. During those days of arrests and executions of his friends, Milton must have known that any day might bring the hangman's summons for him. Many a time during the nearly four months that he was hidden here must he in imagination have heard the shouts of the fickle populace, and seen himself haled in a cart to Tyburn gallows. Says Masson: "Absolutely no man could less expect to be pardoned at the Restoration than Milton," and "there is no greater historical puzzle than this complete escape." But his faithful friend, Andrew Marvell, pleaded for him, and other powerful friends did their utmost in his behalf; the brain that was to give birth to a great epic was spared to England. Though Milton lay in some prison for a little time, during which his "infamous" books "were solemnly burnt at the Session house in the Old Bailey by the hand of the common hangman," he was soon a free man, though many of his companions were meanwhile hanged and quartered, or like Goffe and Whalley fled beyond seas and even there scarcely escaped the king's swift avengers. In December, Milton emerged from prison and moved temporarily into a little house on the north side of Holborn near Red Lion Square, which was behind it, and nearer Bloomsbury than was his former residence upon the street. Close by was the Red Lion Inn, where in January, on the anniversary of the execution of Charles I., lay on a hurdle, amidst a howling mob, the ghastly bodies of Cromwell, Ireton, and Bradshaw, which had been disinterred and were on their way to Tyburn to be swung upon the gallows. It was well for Milton to sit behind barred doors in silence in those days, while Sir Harry Vane languished in prison, bold Algernon Sidney was in exile, and the England that he loved seemed in eclipse. In 1661, Milton, who had good reason to reside as far away from Petty France and the court end of town as possible, returned to the neighbourhood of his early married life, and took a house in Jewin Street, off Aldersgate, at the end of the street nearest St. Giles's, Cripplegate, where his father lay buried. For the remainder of his life, here and in Artillery Walk, he was a parishioner of this church. During the three years spent here, Vane was beheaded, two thousand clergy were ejected from their livings, and many, as Richard Baxter tells us, starved on an income of only eight or ten pounds a year for a whole family; men of Milton's way of thinking struggled for daily bread on six days in the week, and preached on the seventh with the police upon their track. During these fruitful years in Jewin Street, while "Paradise Lost" was growing apace, Milton had about him his motherless and ill-educated girls. The oldest, about seventeen years of age, was handsome, but lame, and had a defect of speech. It fell to Mary and little eleven-year-old Deborah to read, with scanty comprehension of the words, as their father required their services, from his Latin, Greek, Hebrew, French, Spanish, and Italian works. To them, and to a group of young men who felt it an honour to serve him, he dictated the sonorous lines of his great epic. No wonder that girls of a dozen or sixteen years of age found life in Jewin Street dull, and Greek dictionaries and the daily records of the doings of the hosts of heaven and hell abominably irksome. They served their father with grudging pen, and pilfered from him, and tricked him in his helpless sightlessness--small blame to them, perhaps, whose rearing had been by servants and governesses, but pitiable for the father of fifty years, who fought his daily battles with fate alone in the dark. Andrew Marvell and Cyriack Skinner sought him out, and doubtless told him the latest literary news of Henry More, the Platonist; of Howell, but just appointed historiographer royal; of Samuel Butler, who had just gone with the Lady Alice of "Comus" to Ludlow Castle; of Richard Baxter, whose popular book, "The Saints' Everlasting Rest," Milton had doubtless read when it appeared five years before; of Pepys, now secretary to the Admiralty; of Izaak Walton, whose "Complete Angler" Milton may have read ten years before; of Evelyn and of the poet Cowley; of Bishop Jeremy Taylor; of George Fox, the valiant Quaker, and the philosophers, Hobbes, and John Locke, who was then at Oxford; and the budding poet, John Dryden. We learn from Richardson that Milton usually dictated "leaning backward obliquely in an easy chair, with his leg flung over the elbow of it, though often when lying in bed in a morning." Sometimes he would lie awake all night without composing a line, when a flow of verse would come with such an impetus that he would call Mary and dictate forty lines at once. During these days a newly converted young Quaker, Thomas Ellwood, who was desirous of improving his Latin, and to see John Milton, who, he writes, "was a gentleman of great note for learning throughout the learned world," betook himself to the modest home on Jewin Street, got lodging hard by, and engaged to read Latin to him six afternoons a week. Milton, noticing that he used the English pronunciation, told him that if he wanted to speak with foreigners in Latin he must learn the foreign pronunciation. This Ellwood by hard labour accomplished, when Milton, seeing his earnestness, helped him greatly in translation. These happy hours were interrupted by Ellwood's arrest for attending the Quaker meeting in Aldersgate Street. Three months were spent in Bridewell and Newgate, where he saw the bloody quarters and boiled heads of executed men, and wrote out in detail an account of the hideous spectacle. One heavenly day in a quiet library reading of Dido and Æneas with Milton, the next in an English hell of bestiality, filth, and cruelty--a memorable experience for a young man of twenty-two, was it not? Household affairs were going from bad to worse in Jewin Street, and the unhappy home needed a wife and mother. When the news came to the daughter Mary that her father was to marry again, she exclaimed that it was "no news to hear of his wedding, but if she could hear of his death, that would be something." The third wife, Elizabeth Minshull, was twenty-four years old when Milton married her, in the church of St. Mary Aldermary, a little south of his boyhood's home near Cannon Street. She proved an excellent wife, and was of a "peaceful and agreeable humour." There are traditions that the young stepmother had golden hair and could sing; her good sense and housewifely accomplishments brought peace, comfort, and thrift into the discordant household. Soon after his marriage, the Milton family removed to a house in Artillery Walk, leading to Bunhill Fields. This was on the roadway which is the southern part of Bunhill Row. Not only was there a garden here, but the site of the present Bunhill Fields Cemetery, where Defoe, Bunyan, Richard Cromwell, and Isaac Watts lie buried, was then an open field; while, close at hand, was Artillery Ground, where trained bands occasionally paraded, as they have done from 1537 to the present time. Of the house we know little, except that it had four fireplaces. Near by was "Grub" Street, since changed to "Milton" Street, partly perhaps to commemorate the fact of the poet's residence in the neighbourhood. In June, 1665, while the Great Plague had begun its desolating course, Milton had completed the last lines of "Paradise Lost." It was then that young Ellwood came to his assistance, and engaged for him "a pretty box in Giles-Chalfont," whither he was driven with his wife and daughters. CHAPTER VII. CHALFONT ST. GILES.--ARTILLERY WALK If the pilgrim to the shrines of Puritans and poets has thought worth while to spend an afternoon at Horton, he may well spare two or three days more for a drive from there to Stoke Pogis, Harefield, and the region thirteen miles north of Horton in lovely Buckinghamshire, among the Chiltern hills. Here stands, about twenty-three miles northwest of London, in the little village of Chalfont St. Giles, the only house that still exists in which Milton ever lived. The village lies in a quiet hollow among the hills, three or four miles removed from the shriek of any locomotive. One may approach it by train from the little stations of Chorley Wood or Chalfont Road. It will well repay one before doing so to make a detour of a mile and a half to Chenies,--one of the loveliest villages in all England,--beside the tiny Chess, where Matthew Arnold loved to angle. A delightful hostelry is the "Bedford Arms," where he always "put up." The chief feature of the place is the mortuary chapel of the Russells, where the family have been buried from 1556 until the present day. But the lover of the picturesque will more admire the adjoining Tudor mansion. American multi-millionaires have built no Newport palace that is so attractive to the lover of the beautiful. [Illustration: IN MILTON'S HOUSE AT CHALFONT ST. GILES] As one drives toward Chalfont, he enters it at the end farthest from Milton's cottage, which is one of the last houses upon the left of the main street. It is on the road that leads to Beaconsfield, four miles away. The cottage lies at the foot of a slope close by the roadside; it is built of brick and timber, and has two entrances, four sitting-rooms, and five bedrooms. On the floor which is level with the garden are two sitting-rooms that look toward the hill slope and Beaconsfield. Their quaint old windows are filled with diamond panes, which are set in lead and open outward. The long carved dining-table, in the room at the left, and the small table, cabinet, and stools in the room at the right, which is seen in the illustration, were Milton's own. Here at the open casement, during those days of horror in the stricken city, Milton sat and breathed the fragrant air, and in the evening listened to the nightingales which haunt the Chalfont groves. Hither the brave young Ellwood came to greet him, fresh as he was from another imprisonment; he returned with his comments the manuscript of "Paradise Lost," which Milton had loaned to him, and added: "Thou hast said much here of Paradise lost, but what hast thou to say of Paradise found?" To which the poet answered nothing at the time, but, as the result proved, the query brought later a fitting response in "Paradise Regained." Perhaps the visitor may be allowed to ascend the narrow winding stair with its carved railing to the humble chambers under the gables, whither the poet groped his way to bed, and to glance into narrow cupboards, where he may have piled his books and manuscripts. There is a tender, pathetic charm about the place, which even the greater poet's house at Stratford lacks. The man Shakespeare--the successful dramatist--we know little of; his inner life we only guess at and infer. His consummate genius wins our worship; it does not touch our hearts. But the blind poet, the passionate lover of liberty and fearless pleader for justice, the man who like blind Samson shook his locks in defiance of fate, and would not be cast down, this man we know. We have followed step by step his brilliant youth, his strenuous manhood, and his brave, declining years. With all his faults of temper we love him as we love Dante and Michael Angelo and Beethoven. We linger reverently in the little house made dear to England by his presence there. Then we wander back a little on our way, to a row of antique houses and go through a passage to the venerable parish church and churchyard where Milton's feet doubtless have trod. _En route_ to Beaconsfield the traveller will not fail to pause at Jordan's, a plain, square structure in a leafy grove, beside a green God's Acre. It was the Quaker meeting-house in Milton's day as it is still. At the rear is a concealed gallery where the worshippers took refuge when their service was broken up by armed pursuers. Close by are many unmarked graves, and among them is Ellwood's. But the grave of William Penn, the founder of a great American State, and the graves of his wife and children, have low modern headstones, for their position was well known. Here the man of gentle birth, the hero and saint, who is dear to all Americans, sleeps peacefully among his English kindred. During the year when Milton was at Chalfont, Penn was a youth in Paris, seeing the world, but keeping himself unspotted from it. At Beaconsfield we drive through a broad country road to the Saracen's Head--a conspicuous landmark. We turn our steps at once to the gray old church and its battlemented tower, whose walls of flint rise in rugged strength from the churchyard with its mossy tombs. Within the centre aisle lies buried the valiant apostle of American freedom--Edmund Burke. He was a man with whom the refugee at Chalfont would have found much in common had he lived a century and a quarter later. The inscription over his grave is modern, and so are the bas-relief and inscription to him on the side wall. His former seat within the parish church is marked upon the floor, and a fine carved desk is made from his old pew. Within the churchyard gay roses and solemn yews droop over ancient monuments, among them, the showy obelisk on Waller's grave. Nothing is lovelier than the drive late in an afternoon over the high hills, from which one catches far distant views, to Amersham, which lies in a little valley among the hills. This was a seat of the Puritan revolt and earlier martyrdoms. John Knox preached here--an obnoxious personage to the worthy sexton of the beautiful church, who told the writer that he had buried every man and woman in the parish for forty years. "The fact is," quoth this worthy, "John Knox traduced Mary Queen of Scots; now I've no use for a man who isn't good to the ladies." On being reminded that Elizabeth did worse and cut her head off, he condoned that as being "probably an affair of state." A lover of poets was this sexton. "I've read 'em all," he said, "but my favourite is Pope." Isaac Watts likewise shared his approval, and he volunteered upon the spot a number of his hymns from memory. "But I take a lugubrious view of life," continued this digger of many graves, "for it's just grub, grub, grub, all your life, and then be shovelled under; the fact is, as any man can see with half an eye, that this is the age of mammon and no mistake." Shakespeare would have found a gravedigger to his mind in the sexton of Amersham. Amersham does not offer so favourable accommodations for the night as does Wendover, which has a choice of hostelries, and is but a few minutes' ride by train from the Amersham station, a quarter of a mile away. After viewing the early English church in Wendover next morning, one may hire a trap and drive to Great Hampden, three miles distant, to the stately home of John Hampden, within a large park. There are still traces of the ancient road which was cut through the park for Queen Elizabeth. The shady avenue of beeches around the side leads up to the little church of gray flint stone which stands near the great mansion and its mighty cedars of Lebanon. The little churchyard is carpeted with velvet turf, starred with tiny white flowers which recall the foregrounds in the brilliant paintings of Van Eyck. The reader of Puritan history is reminded of that mournful day after the battle of Chalgrove Field, when the body of John Hampden was brought home. As many soldiers as could be spared accompanied it, marching with arms reversed and muffled drums, while, with uncovered heads, they chanted the solemn words of comfort that begin the ninetieth Psalm: "Lord, Thou hast been our dwelling-place in all generations." They laid him in a grave within the chancel, which still remains unmarked; it is close beside the slab on which he had written his beautiful epitaph to his wife. When they marched back beneath the beeches their voices rang out with the lines of Psalm Forty-three: "Why art thou cast down, O my soul? and why art thou disquieted within me? hope in God." Says a writer of that time: "Never were heard such piteous cries at the death of one man, as at Master Hampden's." Within the spacious mansion, which once was red brick and now is covered with gray plaster, are various relics of Hampden and Cromwell, and a portrait of Queen Elizabeth in the room which she occupied on her visit here. Two miles further, on one of the finest estates in the county, is Chequer's Court, an imposing brick mansion of the Tudor period, once owned by Cromwell's youngest daughter and her husband. It stands in a park, and contains the greatest collection of Cromwelliana in the kingdom. But these and the Hampden relics owned by the Earl of Buckingham at Great Hampden are rarely shown to visitors who do not apply in writing some time in advance of their visit. It is to be hoped that some day the nation may own these and make them freely accessible to all scholars. Through a circuitous drive between beautiful fields of grain, in view of the Chiltern Hills, the traveller reaches the old parish church at Great Kimble, where John Hampden, the sturdy cousin of Cromwell, in 1635 made his refusal to pay King Charles's demands for ship money. Near by lies the field whose tax was in question. The sum was paltry,--only twenty shillings,--but, like George Third's tax on tea in the colonies, the refusal to pay it meant war in the end. This whole section of beautiful Bucks is rich with memories of Milton, and of the men whom he knew and loved. Ellwood records that "when the city was cleansed and become safely habitable," the Miltons returned to Artillery Walk. This must have been about March, 1666. The open fields close to their house had been filled with the bodies of thousands of the plague victims, many of whom were uncoffined. Thereafter it was made a regular cemetery, and was surrounded with a brick wall, and became what Southey called, "the Campo Santo of the Dissenters." On a side street near by, next to a kind of institutional meeting-house belonging to the Friends, is a beautiful green inclosure where fourteen thousand Quakers lie buried in unmarked graves. One humble headstone alone marks a grave near the fence, which was opened in the nineteenth century, and was found to be that of Milton's contemporary,--George Fox,--the tailor with the leather suit, who founded the sect of the uncompromising democrats who called no man "Lord," who used no weapons but their tongues, and who thundered with them to such purpose as to make men quake. While Milton was on the point of publishing his "Paradise Lost," another calamity, to be described later, befell the stricken city. For three days the Great Fire crackled and roared, and drove man and beast before its fearful heat westward to Temple Bar, and swept away Milton's birthplace, which he still owned. It wiped out the church where he was christened, the school where he had studied, and came so far north as almost to bury his father's grave under the walls of St. Giles's, Cripplegate. Amid the horror of smoke and the sound of distant explosions and wild confusion, the poet sat during those awful days, when it seemed as if the fate of Sodom had befallen his dear London town. Up to that date his birthplace had been visited by admiring foreigners. This was the only real estate that he then owned, and its loss must have crippled his resources. The precious manuscript of "Paradise Lost" fell to the censorship of the young clergyman of twenty-eight, who had married Milton to his youthful wife, Elizabeth. This man, named Tomkyns, like Pobedonostzeff two hundred and fifty years later, held that liberty of conscience was a "highly plausible thing," but did not work well in practice, and he came near suppressing the volume, so tradition says, for imaginary treason in some lines; but he relented, and the world was spared its greatest epic poem since the Æneid. The many booksellers around St. Paul's suffered terrible losses, and Pepys estimates that books to the value of £150,000 were burnt in the vicinity. Most of them were hurriedly stowed in the crypt of old St. Paul's Church, but when the walls of the great cathedral fell, they let in the fire which consumed them. In April, 1667, when the ruins had hardly ceased smoking, Milton agreed, for £5 down and three times as much at certain future dates, to sell his copyright to Samuel Symons, printer. Thirteen hundred copies constituted the edition. Through the days of dusty turmoil while the new city was slowly rising on the ashes of the old, the proof-sheets passed from the printing-press in Aldersgate Street to Artillery Walk. There was only an interruption of five anxious days in June, when the bugle sounded, and terrified citizens assembled to ward off the Dutch, who, bent on vengeance, burnt English ships and sent cannon-balls hurtling at English forts. In August "Paradise Lost" appeared as a rather fine looking, small quarto of 342 pages, which could be bought for three shillings in three bookstores. For artistic purposes the poem is written according to the Ptolemaic theory of cosmos, though Milton of course accepted the Copernican view. While John Milton was expecting £15 or £20 for his work of more than seven years, John Dryden, who was much more in fashion in those days of Nell Gwynne and the reopened theatres, was receiving a yearly income of £700. But John Dryden knew a poet when he read him. After reading "Paradise Lost," he exclaimed: "This man cuts us all out, and the ancients, too." About 1670, Milton's three daughters left their father's home. Knowing that they needed to be fitted for self-support, he paid for their apprenticeship, and had them taught embroidery in gold and silver. Doubtless bright silks and gay patterns were much more to their mind than their father's folios, and the change was best for all concerned. Their father sat at his door on pleasant days, dressed in his gray camblet coat, wearing a sword with a small silver hilt. He received many visitors--some of them men of rank and note. He is described as wearing at this time his light brown hair parted from the crown to the middle of the forehead, "somewhat flat, long and waving, a little curled." His voice was musical and he "pronounced the letter r very hard." He rose early, began his day by listening to the Hebrew Bible, and spent his morning listening and dictating. Music, as much walking as his gouty feet permitted, and, in the evening, a smoke, were his sole recreations. He belonged to no church, and attended no service at this period. As his end drew near he told his brother that he left only the residue of his first wife's property to their three daughters, who had "been very undutiful;" but everything else to his "loving wife, Elizabeth." Just one month before he had completed his sixty-sixth year, John Milton died on a Sunday night, November 8, 1674. He was buried beside his father in St. Giles's, Cripplegate, and was followed to the grave by many friends. What hymns were sung we do not know, but certainly none could more fitly have been sung than that noble one by his dear friend, Sir Henry Wotton: "How blessed is he born or taught Who serveth not another's will, Whose armour is his honest thought, And simple truth his highest skill. * * * * "This man is freed from servile bands, Of hope to rise or fear to fall; Lord of himself, though not of lands, And having nothing, yet hath all." Milton's wife was thirty-six years old when the poet died. She lived to be nearly eighty-nine years old, but never remarried. Deborah lived until 1727, when Voltaire writes: "I was in London when it became known that a daughter of blind Milton was still alive, old and in poverty, and in a quarter of an hour she was rich." The latest descendants of John and Christopher Milton died about the middle of the eighteenth century, but their sister Anne's posterity may perhaps be traced to-day. The forgotten Duke of York has his great column in Waterloo Place. The scholarly but uninspired Prince Consort has his gorgeous Memorial, and a hundred nobodies have their lofty monuments scattered all over England, teaching the rising generation their fathers' estimation of the relative worth of names in England's history. The only statue of Milton known to me in England, except the one on the London University Building, is the modest figure which stands, together with Shakespeare and Chaucer, upon a fountain in Park Lane opposite Hyde Park. No student of the period which is treated in this little volume should fail to visit the upper floor of the National Portrait Gallery, and view the portraits of the many noted men who were Milton's contemporaries. Besides portraits of the royal families, he will note those of William Harvey, Samuel Pepys, Cowley, old Parr, Sir Henry Vane, Andrew Marvell, Cromwell and his daughter, Inigo Jones, Selden, Sir Julius Cæsar, Samuel Butler, Hobbes, Dryden, Ireton, Algernon Sidney, Sir Christopher Wren, and the Chandos Shakespeare portrait. Milton's own portrait in middle life, which is little known, is most impressive, and very different from the common portraits. CHAPTER VIII. THE TOWER.--TOWER HILL Except Westminster Abbey, no spot in England is so connected with every phase of England's history as is the Tower of London. A map, printed in the generation before Milton, shows us the ancient moat full of water, and the space within its walls that now is gravelled then covered with greensward. North of St. Peter's little church, where lay the bones of Anne Boleyn, stretched a row of narrow gabled houses like those seen in the neighbouring London streets. The White Tower, built by William the Conqueror, stands to-day practically as it stood in William's time and Milton's. Built of durable flint stones, it has withstood time's decay as few other buildings erected far more recently have done, when they were of the soft, disintegrating quality of stone so often used in London. True, Christopher Wren faced the windows with stone in the Italian style, and somewhat modernised the exterior, but the interior remains practically as it was built over eight hundred years ago. As there is no need of duplicating here the main facts about its history, which are to be found in every guide-book, let us confine ourselves to the chief literary and historical associations with it, that must have appealed to the boy and man, John Milton. One can imagine few things more exciting and stimulating to the mind of an observant boy in 1620 than a visit to the Tower. In the days when circuses were unknown, and menageries of strange beasts were a rare sight, the view of such behind the grated walls of Lion's Tower must have delighted any London lad. The wild beasts were not very numerous,--only a few lions and leopards and "cat lions,"--but no doubt they were as satisfactory as the modern "Zoo" to eyes that were unsatiated with such novelties. Whether small boys were allowed for sixpence to see the rich display of state jewels is not quite clear, yet it is certain that they were shown to strangers. Says that indefatigable antiquarian, Stow, whose old age almost touched the babyhood of Milton: "This Tower is a citadel to defend or command the city; a royal palace for assemblies or treaties; a prison of state for the most dangerous offenders; the only place of coinage for all England at the time; the armory for warlike provisions; the treasury of the ornaments and jewels of the Crown; and general conserver of the records of the king's courts of justice at Westminster." In Milton's boyhood, the royal palace in the southeast corner of the inclosure was standing. But in his manhood, his staunch friend, Oliver, having got possession, it was pulled down. The little Norman chapel of St. John, within the Tower, is one of the best bits of Norman work now extant in England. Its triforium, which extends over the aisles and semicircular east end, probably was used in ancient days to permit the queen and her ladies to attend the celebration of the mass, unseen by the congregation below. The chapel was dismantled before Milton's time. But doubtless as he entered it he could picture in it, more vividly than we in our later age, that scene when from sunset until sunrise forty-six noblemen and gentlemen knelt and watched their armour, before King Henry IV., on the next day, bestowed upon them the newly created Order of the Bath. In this chapel, while he was kneeling in prayer, the lieutenant of the Tower received an order to murder the young Edward V. and his brother, and refused to obey it. Here Queen Mary attended mass for her brother, Edward VI. In the present armory, once the council chamber, King Richard II. was released from prison, and sceptre in hand and the crown on his head, abdicated in favour of Henry IV. Shakespeare thus depicts the scene, and puts the following words into the mouth of the mournful king: "I give this heavy weight from off my head, And this unwieldy sceptre from my hand, The pride of kingly sway from out my heart; With mine own tears I wash away my balm, With mine own hands I give away my crown, With mine own tongue deny my sacred state, With mine own breath release all duteous oaths, My manors, rents, revenues I forego; My acts, decrees, and statutes I deny. God pardon all oaths that are broke to me, God keep all oaths unbroke are made to thee. Make me that nothing have with nothing grieved, And thou with all pleased that hath all achieved! Long may'st thou live in Richard's seat to sit, And soon lie Richard in an earthen pit! God save King Henry, unkinged Richard says, And send him many years of sunshine days!" On this same spot, in 1483, the Protector, afterward Richard III., came in among the lords in council, and asked the Bishop of Ely to send to his gardens in Ely Place, off Holborn, for some strawberries. The terror which royalty inspired--and with good reason in that day--is well described by Sir Thomas More, who was himself a prisoner in less than a half century after the scene which he so graphically describes: "He returned into the chamber, among them, all changed, with a wonderful sour, angry countenance, knitting the brows, frowning and frothing and gnawing of the lips; and so sat him down in his place, all the lords much dismayed and sore marvelling of this manner of sudden change, and what thing should him ail." Then asking what should be the punishment of those who conspired against his life, and being told that they should be punished as traitors, he then accused his brother's wife and his own wife. "'Then,' said the Protector," continues More, "'ye shall see in what wise that sorceress and that other witch ... have by their sorcery and witchcraft wasted my body!' And therewith he plucked up his doublet sleeve to his elbow upon his left arm, and he shewed a werish withered arm, and small as it was never other. And thereupon every man's mind sore misgave him, well perceiving that this matter was but a quarrel ... no man was there present but well knew that his arm was ever such since his birth. Nevertheless the lord chamberlain answered, and said: 'Certainly, my lord, if they have so heinously done they be worthy heinous punishment.' 'What,' quoth the Protector, 'thou servest me ill with ifs and with ands; I tell thee they have so done, and that I will make good on thy body, traitor!... I will not to dinner until I see thy head off.' Within an hour, the lord chamberlain's head rolled in the dust." The author of the "Utopia," being a knight, was leniently treated while in the Tower. He paid ten shillings a week for himself and five shillings for his servant. Occasionally his friends came to see him, and urged in vain that he should propitiate Henry VIII. and his wife, Anne Boleyn, against whose marriage he had objected. But he remained immovable. "Is not this house as nigh heaven as my own?" he asked, serenely, when wife and daughters pleaded with him to reconsider. Lady More petitioned Henry for her husband's pardon, on the ground of his illness and her poverty; she had been forced to sell her clothing to pay her husband's fees in prison. But Henry had no mercy on the gentle scholar, the greatest English genius of his day, and who had been lord chancellor of England. For a time he was allowed to write, but later, books and writing materials were removed; yet he occasionally succeeded in writing to his wife and daughter Margaret on scraps of paper with pieces of coal. "Thenceforth," says his biographer, "he caused the shutters of his cell to be closed, and spent most of his time in the dark." When the end came, his sentence to be hanged at Tyburn was commuted by the king to beheadal at Tower Hill. Cheerful, and even with a tone of jest, he said to the lieutenant on the scaffold, "I pray thee, see me safely up, and for my coming down, let me shift for myself." He removed his beard from the block, saying, "it had never committed treason," and told the bystanders that he died "in and for the faith of the Catholic Church," and prayed God to send the king good counsel. More's body was buried in St. Peter's Church, where that of the fair young Anne Boleyn herself was soon to lie. His head, after the savage custom of the time, was parboiled and affixed to a pole on London Bridge. Dark and bloody were the associations that centre around the Tower in the century preceding Milton's. Few of these have touched the popular heart more than those which cluster around the girl-queen of nine days--the fair Lady Jane Grey. In the Brick Tower, where she was imprisoned, she wrote her last brave, pathetic words to her father and sister upon the leaves of her Greek Testament. From her prison window she saw the headless body of her boy-husband pass by in a cart from Tower Hill, and cried: "Oh, Guildford! Guildford! the antepast is not so bitter that thou hast tasted, and which I soon shall taste, as to make my flesh tremble; it is nothing compared with that feast of which we shall partake this day in heaven." When she was ready to lay her fair young head upon the block, she cried: "I pray you all, good Christian people, to bear me witness that I die a true Christian woman." "Then tied she the handkerchief about her eyes, and feeling for the block, she said, 'What shall I do? Where is it?' One of the standers-by guiding her thereunto, she laid her head down upon the block, and then stretched forth her body, and said: 'Lord, into thy hands I commend my spirit.'" So perished this girl of eighteen, whose beauty, learning, and tragic fate make her one of the most pathetic figures in history. The most interesting parts of the Tower, including St. Peter's Church, the dungeons, Raleigh's cell, and the spot where he wrote his "History of the World," are not shown to ordinary visitors. They can be seen, however, by the receipt of a written order from the Constable of the Tower, and should not be missed by any student of English history. Even a few moments spent in those dark lower vaults help the torpid imagination of those who live in freedom as cheap and common as the air they breathe to realise through what horror and bloody sweat of brave men and women in the past his freedom has been bought. Though these dungeons now are clean and a few modern openings through the massive walls admit some feeble rays of light, it is not difficult to conjure up the black darkness, filth, and vermin, and noisome odours of the past, or the shrieks of saint or sinner, who, like Anne Askew and Guy Fawkes, suffered upon the rack. Only two years before Milton's birth, the conspirators of the Gunpowder Plot were immured in these dungeons, and then hanged, cut down, and disembowelled while they were still living. In Milton's youth, in 1630, while he was writing Latin verses at Christ's College, Cambridge, that brave, heroic, noble soul, Sir John Eliot, was committed to the Tower. Those were sad days for England. Free speech in Parliament was throttled. The nation's ancient liberties were in jeopardy. Says the historian, Green: "The early struggle for Parliamentary liberty centres in the figure of Sir John Eliot.... He was now in the first vigour of manhood, with a mind exquisitely cultivated, and familiar with the poetry and learning of his day, a nature singularly lofty and devout, a fearless and vehement temperament. But his intellect was as clear and cool as his temper was ardent. What he believed in was the English Parliament. He saw in it the collective wisdom of the realm, and in that wisdom he put a firmer trust than in the statecraft of kings." Of the memorable scene in Parliament in which he moved the presentation to the king of a remonstrance, in the session of 1628, a letter of the times gives a description. By royal orders the Speaker of the House stopped him, and Eliot sat abruptly down amid the solemn silence of the members. "Then appeared such a spectacle of passions as the like had seldom been seen in such an assembly; some weeping, some expostulating, some prophesying of the fatal ruin of our kingdom, some playing the divines in confessing their sins and country's sins.... There were above an hundred weeping eyes, many who offered to speak being interrupted and silenced by their own passions." Says President Theodore Roosevelt of Sir John Eliot: "He took his stand firmly on the ground that the king was not the master of Parliament, and of course this could but mean ultimately that Parliament was master of the king. In other words, he was one of the earliest leaders of the movement which has produced English freedom and English government as we now know them. He was also its martyr. He was kept in the Tower, without air or exercise, for three years, the king vindictively refusing to allow the slightest relaxation in his confinement, even when it brought on consumption. In December, 1632, he died; and the king's hatred found its last expression in denying to his kinsfolk the privilege of burying him in his Cornish home." At last the "man of blood," who had tried to wrest England's liberties, himself perished upon the scaffold at Whitehall, and in his condemnation the same author cites his treatment of Sir John Eliot as one of his greatest crimes. "Justice was certainly done, and until the death penalty is abolished for all malefactors, we need waste scant sympathy on the man who so hated the upholders of freedom that his vengeance against Eliot could be satisfied only with Eliot's death; who so utterly lacked loyalty, that he signed the death-warrant of Strafford when Strafford had merely done his bidding; who had made the blood of Englishmen flow like water, to establish his right to rule; and who, with incurable duplicity, incurable double-dealing, had sought to turn the generosity of his victorious foes to their own hurt." These grisly tales of executions and of scenes of fortitude we close with a few words on that valiant, noble soul, Sir Harry Vane, to whom Milton dedicated the well-known sonnet beginning: "Vane, young in years, but in sage counsel old." Speaking before the Phi Beta Kappa of Harvard University, Wendell Phillips, America's silver-tongued orator, uttered a memorable word upon the man whose governorship of Massachusetts for two years of its infant history makes the name of Vane for ever dear to the American descendants of the Puritans: "... Roger Williams and Sir Harry Vane, the two men deepest in thought and bravest in speech of all who spoke English in their day, and equal to any in practical statesmanship. Sir Harry Vane--in my judgment the noblest human being who ever walked the streets of yonder city--I do not forget Franklin or Sam Adams, Washington or Fayette, Garrison or John Brown. But Vane dwells an arrow's flight above them all, and his touch consecrated the continent to measureless toleration of opinion and entire equality of rights. We are told we can find in Plato 'all the intellectual life of Europe for two thousand years.' So you can find in Vane the pure gold of two hundred and fifty years of American civilisation, with no particle of its dross. Plato would have welcomed him to the Academy, and Fénélon kneeled with him at the altar. He made Somers and John Marshall possible; like Carnot, he organised victory; and Milton pales before him in the stainlessness of his record. He stands among English statesmen preëminently the representative, in practice and in theory, of serene faith in the safety of trusting truth wholly to her own defence. For other men we walk backward, and throw over their memories the mantle of charity and excuse, saying reverently, 'Remember the temptation and the age.' But Vane's ermine has no stain; no act of his needs explanation or apology; and in thought he stands abreast of the age--like pure intellect, belongs to all time. Carlyle said, in years when his words were worth heeding, 'Young men, close your Byron and open your Goethe.' If my counsel had weight in these halls, I should say, 'Young men, close your John Winthrop and Washington, your Jefferson and Webster, and open Sir Harry Vane.' It was the generation that knew Vane who gave to our Alma Mater for a seal the simple pledge, Veritas."--_Wendell Phillips, in his Harvard address on the "Scholar in the Republic."_ To the profligate Charles II. few men must have seemed more dangerous than the man who had dared to teach that the king had three "superiors, God, Law, and Parliament." The man who had once walked through the stately halls of Raby Castle as its master found a Tower cell his last earthly abiding-place. When Sir Harry Vane was arraigned as a "false traitor," he made his own defence, well knowing what the end would be, but determined, for the sake of England and the cause he loved, to put his plea on record. For ten hours he fought for his life without refreshment, then later, in his prison, wrote out the substance of his plea. Though, as his biographer relates, "he had torn to pieces as if they were so much rotten thread the legal meshes in which his hunters sought to hold him fast," his doom was sealed. Something was gained when the original sentence of hideous torture and dismemberment was commuted into simple beheading. The day before his execution, Vane said to his children: "Resolve to suffer anything from men rather than sin against God.... I can willingly leave this place and outward enjoyments, for those I shall meet with hereafter in a better country. I have made it my business to acquaint myself with the society of Heaven. Be not you troubled, for I am going home to my Father." "As one goes through Eastcheap to-day, out upon the open space of Tower Hill, he finds himself among prosaic surroundings. Over the pavement rattles the traffic from the great London docks close at hand. High warehouses rise at the side; the sooty trail of steamers pollutes the air toward the river. In one direction, however, the view has suggestions the reverse of commonplace. Looking thither the sensitive beholder feels with deep emotion the fact brought home to him, that to men of English speech, the earth has scarcely a spot more memorable than the ground where he is standing. There rise, as they have risen for eight hundred years, the gray walls of the Tower,--the moat in the foreground, the battlemented line of masonry behind; within, the white keep, with its four turrets.... As mothers have shed tears there for imprisoned children, so children standing there have wondered which blocks in the grim masonry covered the dungeons of their fathers and mothers. Again and again, too, through the ages, all London has gathered, waiting in a hush for the dropping of the drawbridge before the Byward Tower, and the coming forth of the mournful train, conducting some world-famous man to the block draped with black, on the scaffold to the left, where the hill is highest.... On the 14th of June in 1662 in the full glory of the summer, Vane, in the strength of his manhood, was brought forth to die." Thus writes James K. Hosmer in his scholarly biography of Vane. He quotes an eye-witness, who relates how cheerfully and readily Vane went from his chamber to the sledge which took him to the scaffold, and how "from the tops of houses, and out of windows, the people used such means and gestures as might best discover, at a distance, their respects and love to him, crying aloud, 'The Lord go with you, the great God of Heaven and Earth appear in you and for you.' When asked how he did, he answered, 'Never better in my life.' Loud were the acclamations of the people, crying out, 'The Lord Jesus go with your dear soul.'" As Vane stepped upon the scaffold, clad in a black suit and cloak and scarlet waistcoat, a silence fell, and calmly, serenely, he addressed the throng around him. His address displeased the officers, and the trumpets were commanded to silence him. His words, however, had been well prepared and delivered in writing to a friend, so that the world to-day knows with what dignity and truth he spoke. His prayer, however, was not thus broken. "Thy servant, that is now falling asleep, doth heartily desire of thee, that thou shouldst forgive his enemies, and not lay this sin to their charge.... I bless the Lord that I have not deserted the righteous cause for which I suffer." The heads of Cromwell and Bradshaw hung on the poles of Westminster Hall when Vane's fell. Blake's and Ireton's bodies had been flung into dishonoured graves. Pym and Hampden had died early in the civil strife. Algernon Sidney was to be a later victim. In Jewin Street the blind Milton was solacing himself in an uncertain seclusion and quietude, with the preparation of his "Paradise Lost." Everything the Puritans had stood for seemed eclipsed. But the truths these men had lived and died for could not die. Says Lowell, writing for his countrymen: "It was the red dint on Charles's block that marked one in our era." The reign of the Stuarts was doomed, and the Nemesis of what they stood for was assured. Says John Richard Green: "England for the last two hundred years has done little more than carry out in a slow and tentative way, but very surely, the programme laid down by Vane and his friends at the close of the Civil War." It was government of the people, by the people, for the people, for which Vane and Washington and Lincoln lived. Without the foresight and the valour of the brave man who died on Tower Hill the work accomplished by the two later heroes might not have been assured. CHAPTER IX. ALL HALLOWS, BARKING.--ST. OLAVE'S.--ST. CATHERINE CREE'S.--ST. ANDREW UNDERSHAFT At the end of Great Tower Street is the church of All Hallows, Barking, anciently known as "Berkynge Church by the Tower." The edifice, which is situated close to Mark Lane Station on the Metropolitan Railway, ranks as the oldest parish church with a continuous history as such in the city of London. One hundred and fifty years before the union of the seven kingdoms under Egbert, over four hundred years before the Conqueror and the building of the White Tower, a thousand years before the boy Milton visited its historic site, the foundation of the church was laid. For six hundred years a close connection existed between the court and this church when the Tower was a royal residence. Some traces of old Norman work remain, but the present building belongs to the Perpendicular type, and assumed nearly its present shape about one hundred years before Milton's age. From its nearness to the Tower, the church became the burial-place of some of its victims. Here was placed the headless body of Lord Thomas Grey, uncle of Lady Jane, who was beheaded in 1554 for taking part in the rebellion under Wyatt. The heart of Richard the Lion Heart was once placed under its high altar. After his execution on Tower Hill, the body of Archbishop Laud rested here some years, and was "accompanied to earth with great multitudes of people, whom love or curiosity or remorse of conscience had drawn together, and decently interred ... according to the rites and ceremonies of the Church of England, in which it may be noted as a remarkable thing, that being, whilst he lived, the greatest champion of the Common Prayer Book ... he had the honour, being dead, to be buried in the form therein provided, after it had been long disused and almost reprobated in most of the churches of London." Two hundred and fifty years later an Archbishop Laud Commemoration was celebrated here, and where the scaffold stood on Tower Hill services were held. The chief interest of the church for American visitors may be the baptismal register, in which is recorded the baptism, during Milton's early manhood, of Sir William Penn's infant son, the apostle of peace, who was destined to found a great state in the New World. The Great Fire of 1666 touched the church so closely that Pepys tells us the "dyall and part of the porch was burnt." Its interior is beautifully preserved. Its old brasses attract so many who desire to make rubbings that a snug sum for church purposes has been raised by the small fees charged. The church possesses the oldest indenture for the construction of an organ known in England. Its date is 1519. On the south side of Tower Street, at number 48, was formerly a public house painted with the head of the Czar of Muscovy. Here Peter the Great, when he was studying the dockyards and maritime establishments of England under William III., used to resort with his attendants and smoke his pipe and drink beer and brandy. Near by is Muscovy Court, a present reminder of the ancient name. A little farther north, on Hart Street, once stood the richly decorated timber house, called "Whittington's Palace." According to doubtful tradition this was where the famous Dick Whittington, with princely magnanimity, burnt the royal bond for a debt of £60,000, when Henry V. and his queen came to dine with him. "Never had king such a subject," Henry is reported to have said, when Whittington replied to the hero of Agincourt, "Surely, Sire, never had subject such a king." This palace, with its whole front of diamond-paned windows, stood in Milton's time. Near by, on Hart Street, is the church of St. Olave, which with All Hallows, Barking, escaped the Great Fire, and stands as it stood in Milton's life. The tourist must time his visit to it on a week day to the noon hour, as, unlike All Hallows, Barking, it is not open all day. The monastery of the Crutched Friars must have covered in ancient days a large part of the parish of this church. Its dimensions are of the smallest--it is only fifty-four feet long. Its name takes us back to the times of the Danish settlement, for St. Olave is but the corruption of St. Olaf, the Norwegian saint who was the martyred king of the Northmen. The body of this saint rests in the great cathedral at Trondheim, Norway. His history is closely connected with the immediate region. As a boy of twelve he started on his career as viking; later he fought with Ethelred against the usurping Danes in London. The latter held the bridge which connected the walled town with low-lying Southwark across the Thames. The struggle waxed desperate, when the bold Norwegian at a critical juncture fastened cables to the bridge, and then ordered his little ships, which were attached to them, to row hard down stream. The piles tottered, the bridge, which swarmed with the Danes, fell, and those that were not drowned were driven away. When William the Conqueror sailed up the Thames a half century later, the stories of the intrepid Olaf, who had become Norway's king and had died in battle, must have been fresh in mind. Not only this church, but others in the city were erected in his name. The present structure was probably built about 1450, and was repaired about the time that Milton returned to London from Italy. During the Reformation, in 1553, St. Olave's had "a pair of organes." During the Civil War in 1644, an ordinance was passed that all organs in churches "should be taken away and utterly defaced." It is very certain that the music-loving Milton, who joyed to hear "... the organ blow, to the full-voiced choir below" must have mourned this stern decree. In consequence of this, most organ builders for sixteen years were obliged to work as carpenters and joiners. The famous diarist, Pepys, who attended St. Olave's, writes on June 17, 1660: "This day the organs did begin to play at Whitehall Chapel, where I heard very good musique, the first time that ever I remember to have heard the organs and singing men in surplices in my life." On April 20, 1667, he records: "To Hackney Church, and found much difficulty to get pews. That which I went chiefly to see was the young ladies of the schools, whereof there is great store, very pretty, and also the organ, which is handsome, and tunes the psalms and plays with the people, which is mighty pretty, and makes me mighty earnest to have a pair at our church"--which meant St. Olave's. About the time of Pepys's writing, a peal of six remarkably sweet-toned bells was placed in the tower. In the church are quaint brasses and monuments, the most interesting of which is the tomb of Pepys. An elegant monument of alabaster, with a bust of Pepys, taken from his portrait in the National Gallery, was unveiled in 1884. It bears the dates: "b. 1632, d. 1703." The monument is near the door where Pepys used to enter the church from Seething Lane. Pepys, like Milton, was educated at St. Paul's School. His fame rests chiefly on his diary, which was written in cipher, and not deciphered and published until 1825. On the unveiling of his monument, James Russell Lowell, in his address, spoke of Pepys as "a type perhaps of what is now called a Philistine. We have no word in English which is equivalent to the French adjective 'bourgeois,' but at all events, Samuel Pepys was the most perfect type that ever existed of the class of people whom this word describes. He had all its merits, as well as many of its defects." With all these defects, perhaps in spite of them, Lowell maintained, Pepys had written one of the most delightful books that it was man's privilege to read in the English language, or in any other. There was no parallel to the character of Pepys in respect of naïveté unless it were found in that of Falstaff, and Pepys showed himself, too, "like Falstaff, on terms of unbuttoned familiarity with himself.... Pepys's naïveté was the inoffensive vanity of a man who loved to see himself in the glass." It was questionable, he said, whether Pepys could have had any sense of humour at all, and yet permitted himself to be so delightful. The lightest part of the diary was of value historically, for it enabled us to see the London of two hundred years ago, and, what was more, to see it with the eager eyes of Pepys. It was not Pepys the official, the clerk of the acts and secretary of the Admiralty, who had brought that large gathering together--it was Pepys the diarist. Pepys's diary was begun in 1660, when he was in his twenty-seventh year. Ten years later, when he feared blindness, he ceased writing it. He bequeathed it in six volumes, written in cipher as above stated, with his library of three thousand books, to his old college, Magdalen, at Cambridge, and it is now its greatest treasure. Pepys was no Puritan. His comments on the Calvinistic teaching of his pastor, Daniel Mills, are characteristic. In 1666, he writes: "Up and to church, where Mr. Mills, a lazy, simple sermon upon the Devil's having no right to anything in this world;" and again he writes: "Mr. Mills made an unnecessary sermon on original sin, neither understood by himself nor the people." He writes that when he invited the reverend gentleman to dinner on a Sunday, he "had a very good dinner and very merry." Among the notable men buried near Pepys is William Turner, an early Puritan, who was educated under Latimer and died in 1568. He wrote the earliest scientific work by any Englishman on botany. His great object was to learn the _materia medica_ of the ancients throughout the vegetable kingdom. But he wrote against the Roman Antichrist as well. The title of one book illustrates the orthography of his day: "The Hunting and Fynding of the Romish Fox: which more than seven years hath been among the Bysshoppes of England, after that the Kynges Hyghnes, Henry VIII. had commanded hym to be driven out of hys Realme." Of Sir James Deane, a merchant adventurer to India, China, and the Spice Islands, it is recorded that he gave generous bequests, and directed £500 to be expended on his funeral, a vast sum for those days, yet probably no more than was customary for wealthy men. Of Sir John Mennes, who is buried here, Pepys tells us that "he brought many fine expressions of Chaucer which he doats on mightily," and naïvely adds, "and without doubt he is a very fine poet." Droll, lively, garrulous Pepys! Who would have dreamed that this boyish writer was in reality a great military authority, and in a large measure responsible for the care of England's navy? As in All Hallows, Barking, and several old "city" churches, the visitor will notice in St. Olave's the remarkable, wrought-iron "sword-stands," used in Elizabeth's reign and placed in the pews of distinguished persons. The pulpit, with its elaborate carving, said to have been done by Grinling Gibbons, is one that was removed from the "deconsecrated" church of St. Benet. St. Olave's had one of the churchyards in which the victims of the plague were buried in great numbers, and of which Pepys writes: "It frightened me indeed to go through the church, to see so many graves lie so high upon the churchyard where people have been buried of the plague." The gruesome skulls and crossbones, carved over its gateway, are a dismal reminder of the horrors of that time. In the chapter on the "City of the Absent," in his "Uncommercial Traveller," Dickens thus graphically describes his visit to it: "One of my best beloved churchyards, I call the churchyard of Saint Ghastly Grim; touching what men in general call it, I have no information. It lies at the heart of the City, and the Blackwall Railway shrieks at it daily. It is a small, small churchyard, with a ferocious strong spiked iron gate, like a jail. This gate is ornamented with skulls and cross-bones, larger than the life, wrought in stone; but it likewise came into the mind of Saint Ghastly Grim that to stick iron spikes atop of the stone skulls, as though they were impaled, would be a pleasant device. Therefore the skulls grin aloft, horribly thrust through and through with iron spears. Hence there is attraction of repulsion for me in Saint Ghastly Grim, and having often contemplated it in the daylight and the dark, I once felt drawn toward it in a thunder-storm at midnight. 'Why not?' I said; 'I have been to the Colosseum by the light of the moon; is it worse to go to see Saint Ghastly Grim by the light of the lightning?' I repaired to the Saint in a hackney cab, and found the skulls most effective, having the air of a public execution, and seeming, as the lightning flashed, to wink and grin with the pain of the spikes." In the chapter on "A Year's Impressions," in which Dickens depicts repeated visits to the deserted churches of the London of the past, he, with a deft touch, describes the commercial atmosphere which now impregnates all of what poetry, history, and romance remain to-day. "From Rood Lane unto Tower Street, and thereabouts, there was often a subtle flavour of wine. In the churches about Mark Lane, for example, there was a dry whiff of wheat, and I accidentally struck an airy sample of barley out of an aged hassock in one of them. One church near Mincing Lane smelt like a druggist's drawer. Behind the Monument the service had the flavour of damaged oranges, which, a little farther down toward the river, tempered into herrings and gradually toned into a cosmopolitan blast of fish.... The dark vestries and registers into which I have peeped, and the little hemmed-in churchyards that have echoed to my feet, have left impressions on my memory, distinct and quaint. In all those dusty registers that the worms are eating, there is not a line but made some heart leap, or some tears flow, in their day. Still and dry now, still and dry, and the old tree at the window, with no room for its branches, has seen them all out. These churches remain like the tombs of the old citizens who lie beneath them--monuments of another age. They are worth a Sunday exploration, for they echo to the time when the City of London really was London; when the Prentices and Trained Bands were of mark in the state; when even the Lord Mayor himself was a reality." In Milton's day, on the street of the Crutched Friars, named from the ancient convent of Crossed Friars, was the row of almshouses built by Sir John Milborne in 1535 in honour of God and the Virgin. In some way, the relief of the Assumption of the Virgin at the entrance gate escaped destruction by the Puritans, and remained with the almshouses to a late period. To the American, to whom the word "almshouse" signifies the English "workhouse,"--an institution of paupers where all live in common,--little idea is conveyed of the comfortable, and usually quaint and picturesque retreat which "almshouse" signifies to the English mind. In many London suburbs one may see little rows of cottages within walled gardens, where, in quiet and comfort and serenity, aged couples spend their last days, in some ways the happiest of their lives, though it be in an almshouse. At 53 Fenchurch Street, in Milton's time, stood the Queen's Head Tavern, where the Princess Elizabeth dined on pork and peas after her release from the Tower in 1554. The modern building erected on the site bears a commemorative statue of her. Mincing Lane, in the vicinity, was named from houses which belonged to the Minchuns or nuns of Saint Helen's. Near its entrance is the Hall of the Clothworkers' Company, whose badge is a ram; within are gilt statues of James I. and Charles I., which were saved from the Great Fire. Its garden was once the churchyard of All Hallows, Staining, whose fine old tower, which escaped the Fire, still stands as when Milton strolled past and gazed on it. The church, which was demolished recently, was reputed to have been the earliest stone church in the city. "Stane" is the Saxon word for stone, and the word "Staining" indicates the fact mentioned above. Passing north to Aldgate, Milton must have seen the great gate, which was not destroyed until 1760. It was the chief outlet to the eastern counties from the time of the Romans until its destruction. In the dwelling over the gate, according to Loftie, the poet Geoffrey Chaucer lived in 1374. This gate, however, was pulled down just before Milton's birth, and rebuilt the year after he was born, in 1609. When he saw it, a gilded statue of James I. adorned its eastern side, and on the west were statues of Peace, Fortune, and Charity. Aldgate to-day is the entrance into that sordid, dismal region, known as Whitechapel, where within easy walking distance from the site of the ancient gate is its chief attraction to all tourists. On Commercial Street, standing in a group, are the little church of St. Jude, and close beside it that Social Settlement, reared in memory of the gentle Oxford scholar and philanthropist, Arnold Toynbee. This is one of the few beautiful oases in a desert of squalor and commonplaceness, which the name Whitechapel now signifies to most readers. [Illustration: ST. CATHERINE CREE CHURCH IN 1736 The steeple dates from about 1505. The old church was pulled down in 1628, and the present one finished in 1630. Cree Church is a corruption of Christ-Church. _From an old engraving._] But for Milton's haunts, we need not wander farther east than Aldgate; for though Whitechapel Street was thickly lined with houses for some distance even in his day, little of interest remains. Turning back through Leadenhall Street, one sees a little gray stone church, with a low tower and round-arched windows, known as St. Catherine Cree's. This was rebuilt in Milton's youth in 1629, and consecrated two years later by the ill-fated Archbishop Laud. The ceremonies which he used on this occasion savoured so much of Popery, however, that they were later brought against him, and helped to accomplish his downfall. In an older church, upon this site, the famous Hans Holbein, to whom we are indebted for his portraits of Henry VIII., Sir Thomas More, and other famous Englishmen, was buried in 1554, after his death by the plague. Within the church may be seen the effigy in armour of a man who played an important part in England when Milton's father was a boy. To-day, only the historian recalls the name of Sir Nicholas Throckmorton, whose daughter married Walter Raleigh, who was chamberlain of the exchequer, ambassador, and chief butler of England. The stories of his fruitless embassy to Mary Queen of Scots to prevent her marriage with Darnley, and the records of his trial, imprisonment, and death of a broken heart must have been as familiar to the youth of Milton's time as the life of Disraeli or Joseph Chamberlain is to Cambridge youth to-day. Above the gateway, in the churchyard, is a ghastly memorial to the builder of it in the form of a shrouded skeleton on a mattress. In Shakespeare's time, within this churchyard, which is now much smaller than it was then, and is concealed by modern buildings, scaffolds were erected on all sides, and religious plays were performed on Sundays. Every year, on October 16th, the "lion sermon" is preached within the church in memory of an ancient worthy, who in 1648 gave it the sum of £200, in remembrance of his delivery from a lion's paws in Arabia. As at St. Olave's, the noon hour, when daily service is performed for the benefit of the one or two worshippers who may stray in, is the time to visit this historic church. The first edition of "Paradise Lost" bears the imprint: "Printed, and are to be sold by Peter Parker, under Creed Church near Aldgate, 1667." "Creed Church" was this same Catherine Cree's. A little north of Leadenhall, at the entrance to the ancient street called St. Mary Axe, stands the church of St. Andrew Undershaft, another of the churches which remain, of those that Milton saw within the city walls. Its name recalls the ancient English custom of the May-day dance. A lofty May-pole, higher than the tower of the church, once stood beside it, and was pulled down on "Evil May Day," in the reign of Henry VIII., about the time the church was built, 1520-32. It is a gray stone edifice, well preserved, and well worth a visit if for no other end than to see the tomb of the learned and devoted chronicler, Stow--a name dear to every student of ancient London and of English history. Of his "Survey," Loftie says: "It was a wonder even in the age which produced Shakespeare." Stow was bred a tailor, but in middle life retired on a modest competence, and for forty years almost immediately preceding Milton's birth had with unparalleled industry studied the history of his city and native land. His collection for the Chronicles of England, now in the British Museum, fills sixty quarto volumes. Every street of London and prominent building, every church, and almost every monument and inscription, are faithfully recorded in his volumes on London and Westminster. To him and to his editor, Strype, who has continued his work until a later period, modern London, and all who love her and her long history, owe an incalculable debt of gratitude. But so little was his invaluable service recognised in his day that his great collection of books aroused suspicion in some quarters, and his outspoken words on public questions stirred up the jealous and malevolent, as his biographer shows. He was reduced to poverty in his old age, for he had spent his substance in his great enterprise. Like a genuine historian, he sought original sources, and "made use of his own legs (for he could never ride), travelling on foot to many cathedral churches and other places where ancient records and charters were; and with his own eyes to read them." He studied the records in the Tower, and was expert in deciphering old wills and registers and muniments belonging to monasteries. He seems to have been somewhat conservative; perhaps, as his biographer suggests, "being a lover of antiquity and of the old Religious Buildings and monuments, he was the more prejudiced against the Reformed Religion, because of the havoc and destruction those that pretended to it made of them in those days." One instance of Protestant fanaticism that tended to make him more opposed to zeal without knowledge was that a curate of St. Paul's, which was his parish, inveighed "fervently against a long Maypole called a Shaft in the next Parish to his, named St. Andrew Undershaft, and calling it an Idol; which so stirred up the devotion of many hearers that many of them in the afternoon went, and with violence pulled it down from the place where it hung upon hooks; and then sawed it into divers pieces, each householder taking his piece as much as hung over his door or stall, and afterward burnt it." Sir Walter Besant, in a delightful chapter in his "London," describes an imaginary visit to the learned man, and a stroll with him through the town five years before Milton opened his eyes in Bread Street: "I found the venerable antiquary in his lodging. He lived--it was the year before he died--with his old wife in a house over against the Church of St. Andrew Undershaft. The house itself was modest, containing two rooms on the ground floor, and one large room, or solar, as it would have been called in olden time, above. There was a garden at the back, and behind the garden stood the ruins of St. Helen's Nunnery, with the grounds and gardens of that once famous house, which had passed into the possession of the Leathersellers' Company.... I passed within, and mounting a steep, narrow stair, found myself in the library and in the presence of John Stow himself. The place was a long room, lofty in the middle, but with sloping sides. It was lit by two dormer windows; neither carpet nor arras nor hangings of any kind adorned the room, which was filled so that it was difficult to turn about in it, with books, papers, parchments, and rolls. They lay in piles on the floor, they stood in lines and columns against the walls; they were heaped upon the table. I observed too that they were not such books as may be seen in a great man's library, bound after the Italian fashion, with costly leather, gilt letters, golden clasps, and silken strings. Not so; these books were all folios for the most part; their backs were broken; the leaves, where any lay open, were discoloured, many of them were in the Gothic black letter. On the table were paper, pens, and ink, and in the straight-backed armchair sat the old man himself, pen in hand, laboriously bending over a huge tome. He wore a black silk cap; his long white hair fell down upon his shoulders. The casements of the window stood open, and the summer sunshine poured warm and bright upon the scholar's head." In an age of many elaborate and tasteless monuments, Stow's is singularly interesting and tasteful. An almost life-size figure of him is seated, dressed in a long robe, before a table on which rests a book in which he is writing. The whole is placed within a niche in the tomb; upon the sculptured sides, the artist has carved, among other devices, a beggar's wallet, indicative of Stow's poverty, for which James I. in his old age issued him letters patent permitting him to solicit aid. These letters grant "to our loving subject, John Stow, who hath to his own great charge, and with neglect to his ordinary means of maintenance, for the general good of Posteritie, as well as the present age, compiled and published diverse necessary books and chronicles, and therefore we in recompense of his painful labours, and for the encouragement of the like ... authorise him and his deputies to collect among our loving subjects their contributions and kind gratuities." Thus was the man who has chiefly contributed to our knowledge of ancient London allowed in his extreme old age to live in unappreciation and neglect. [Illustration: CHURCH OF ST. ANDREW UNDERSHAFT IN 1737 _From an old engraving._] The visitor cannot but query, as he surveys the handsome monument erected to him by his wife, how this was paid for, but there are many explanations that suggest themselves. Many a time may Milton as a boy and man have stood before this tomb, and viewed the fine timber roof and the late Perpendicular windows, which to-day remain just as he saw them. If the modern visitor would study the fashions of his day, he can do no better than inspect such monuments as the costly Hammersley erected here. The date thereon is 1636, when Milton was a young man of twenty-eight. The absence in the life-size kneeling figure of the huge stiff crinoline on the tombs of a little earlier date shows that the fashions changed as sharply as in the latter half of the nineteenth century. The date of the handsome organ is 1695. CHAPTER X. CROSBY HALL.--ST. HELEN'S.--ST. ETHELBURGA'S.--ST. GILES'S, CRIPPLEGATE Passing by the tiny churchyard of St. Andrew Undershaft, by several narrow and obscure passages amid crowded business blocks, one comes upon the famous Crosby Hall on Bishopsgate Street. This presents to-day one of the most picturesque examples of the beam and plaster houses of the fifteenth century to be found in England. It was, says Stow, "the highest at that time in London," that is, about 1475. Doubtless his reference is to a high turret which once surmounted it, but of which no traces now remain. This was before the more pretentious Tudor buildings of the next century, of whose high towers Stow's biographer says: "He could not endure the high turrets and buildings run up to a great height, which some citizens in his time laid out their money upon to overtop and overlook their neighbours. Such sort of advanced works, both towers and chimneys, they built both in their summerhouses in Moorfields and in other places in the suburbs, and in their dwelling houses in the City itself. They were like midsummer Pageants, 'not so much for use and profit as for show and pleasure,' 'bewraying,' said he, 'the vanities of men's minds. And that it was unlike to the disposition of the ancient citizens, who delighted in the building of hospitals and almshouses for the poor; and therein both employed their wits, and spent their wealth in the preferment of the common commodity of this our city.'" Crosby House was, as Sir Thomas More relates, where Richard, Duke of Gloucester, "lodged himself, and little by little all folks drew unto him, so that the Protector's court was crowded and King Edward's left desolate." Here he probably planned his treasonable and malicious scheme for the death of the little princes. In his play of "Richard III.," Shakespeare mentions Crosby Hall more than once; doubtless he knew it well, for ten years before the birth of Milton it seems evident that he resided in a house hard by. It is quite certain that it is to his immortalising Crosby Hall that its preservation to this day is due, when almost everything else that was contemporaneous in secular architecture has disappeared in its vicinity. The building has been much restored, and its banquet-hall is now utilised for a first-class restaurant, where he who will may dine where dukes and princes dined four centuries ago. Sir Thomas More lived here for several years, and here doubtless wrote his life of the base king, to the echo of whose voice these walls had once resounded. Sir Thomas sold the place to that dear friend to whom he wrote with a coal a sad letter of farewell from his Tower cell before his execution. Later, his daughter, who loved the place where her dear father had passed so many days, hired it, and came here to live. Some years later, in 1594, the rich mayor of London, Sir John Spencer, bought the place, and entertained an ambassador from Henry IV. to King James I. An interesting incident of this visit is related in the memoirs of this ambassador. It appears that much scandal had been wrought by the mad pranks and rioting of the attendants of former envoys. What, then, was the horror of the French duke, when he discovered that one of the young nobles in his train, on going out of Crosby Hall in quest of sport, had got into a fight and murdered an English merchant close by in Great St. Helen's. The duke, determined on making an example, bade all his servants and attendants range themselves in a row against the wall, and taking a lighted torch, he looked sharply in the face of each in turn until he found the terrified face of the guilty man. Determined to wreak speedy vengeance, he ordered, after the arbitrary method of the times, his instant decapitation. But the lord mayor pleaded for mercy, and the youth's life was spared; whereupon, the duke records, "the English began to love, and the French to fear him more." This same Lord Spencer, Mayor of London, had one fair daughter, a gay deceiver of her honoured sire, and as much a lover of fine clothes and service as any modern dame who orders gowns from Worth's, or buys her jewels on Bond Street. She loved, or at all events made up her mind to marry the Earl of Northampton, a man who was _persona non grata_ to her father, who had no mind to wed his daughter, the greatest heiress in England, to this gentleman. But the young folks were not daunted. One day when the mayor gave a sixpence to the baker's boy, who had come with a covered barrow to bring bread, he learned later that the barrow contained not bread, but his own naughty Elizabeth, who was trundled off by her lover in disguise. When their baby came, some time later, grandpapa was wheedled into a reconciliation, and the gay young bride again lived in Crosby Place, the past forgiven. As an illustration of what wealthy ladies in Milton's boyhood demanded for their pleasure, a quotation from her letter written to her husband shortly after marriage, may prove entertaining: "I pray and beseech you to grant me, your most kind and loving wife, the sum of £2,600 quarterly to be paid. Also I would, besides that allowance, have £600 quarterly to be paid, for the performance of charitable works; and those things I would not, neither will be, accountable for. Also I will have three horses for my own saddle, that none should dare to lend or borrow; none lend but I, none borrow but you. Also I would have two gentlewomen ... when I ride a hunting or a hawking, or travel from one house to another, I will have them attending; so for either of these said women, I must and will have for either of them a horse. Also I will have six or eight gentlemen. And I will have my two coaches, one lined with velvet to myself, with four very fine horses; and a coach for my women, lined with cloth and laced with gold, otherwise with scarlet and laced with silver, with four good horses. Also I will have two coachmen. Also, at any time when I travel, I will be allowed not only coaches and spare horses for me and my women, but I will be having such carriages as shall be fitting for all; orderly, not pestering my things with my women's nor theirs with their chambermaids, nor theirs with their washmaids.... And I must have two footmen; and my desire is that you defray all the charges for me. And for myself, besides my yearly allowance, I would have twenty gowns of apparel. Also I would have to put me in my purse £2,000 and £200, and so you to pay my debts. Also I would have £6,000 pounds to buy me jewels, and £4,000 to buy me a pearl chain. Now, seeing I have been and am so reasonable unto you, I pray you do find my children apparel and their schooling, and all my servants, men and women, their wages.... So for my drawing-chambers in all houses, I will have them delicately furnished, both with hangings, couch, canopy, glass, carpet, chairs, cushions, and all things thereunto belonging.... I pray you when you be an earl to allow me £2,000 more than I now desire, and double attendance." The Countess of Pembroke, sister of Sir Philip Sidney and friend of Ben Jonson, once lived as mistress in the halls of Crosby Place. The latter's epitaph upon her is well known: "Underneath this sable hearse Lies the subject of all verse: Sidney's sister, Pembroke's mother. Death, ere thou canst find another Good and fair and wise as she, Time shall throw a dart at thee." Crosby Hall originally occupied far more ground than is indicated by that part of it which stands to-day. A wine cellar with finely groined roof probably belonged to a crypt of its chapel, which has vanished. In its great hall, fifty-four feet long and forty feet high, one sees to-day, in beautiful modern workmanship, the arms of St. Helen's Priory, the earliest proprietor of the place; of Sir John Crosby, its builder; of the "crook-backed tyrant," Richard, and of the wise, the gentle, the learned author of the "Utopia." Its "louvre," or opening in the roof, is found in ancient halls in lieu of a chimney. This hall, however, has a regular fireplace, but perhaps of later construction. The louvre now is closed by the same piece of woodwork that formerly was raised above it. The beautiful carved roof itself is now as it was over four centuries ago, the chief glory of the place. Beneath it the most accomplished musicians of the past discoursed sweet music, and the noble, the learned, and the fashionable gathered at the hospitable board. Not unlikely, the author of "Comus" and "Lycidas," in the days before its owner fought under Charles I., may have been among their company. In Milton's blind old age, Crosby Hall became a Presbyterian meeting-house, and for a century afterward devout worshippers sang psalms beneath its carved oak roof, which had echoed for two hundred years to sounds of mirth and feasting. A little to the left of Crosby Hall, through a low gateway, the sightseer passes from the noisy thoroughfare into a quiet court. Its pavement covers the ancient garden of Crosby Place. But it is not all paved. A small green churchyard still occupies a part of the site of the ancient priory of St. Helen's, and surrounds the low Gothic church to which one descends a few steps from the modern pavement. Helena, the mother of Constantine, according to tradition, discovered the tomb of Christ and thereupon was canonised. From remote antiquity a church in her honour has stood here. Three centuries before Milton's day, the Benedictine nuns built a priory close by the ancient church. They built their church, and finally, getting possession of St. Helen's, incorporated it with their own. To-day the ends of the two naves, with a little cupola at the intersection, present an irregular and picturesque aspect; the interior, likewise, by its irregularities, recalls the curious origin of the structure. An agreeable harmony of differing forms and proportions has been accomplished. The old, old church, dim even on a sunshiny June day, is pervaded by a strange charm. Business has crowded to its very walls; but the rumble of the streets is dulled by the intervening structures of modern prosaic type that hem in its peaceful solitude. Unlike the last three churches of which we have spoken, its doors are open all day long, and the traveller has not to make painful search amid warehouses and down cross streets for the sexton's keys. St. Helen's is large enough and beautiful enough to lure the frequent visitor; and perhaps it is a welcome refuge to many a perplexed and overwearied man of business, who, for a few moments, now and then, flees from his office and commercial cares, to rest and lift his thoughts to heavenly things within this sanctuary. St. Helen's is noted for its tombs, and has been called the Westminster Abbey of the "City." Here lies that noted and remarkable man, Sir Thomas Gresham. The visitor to the upper floor of the National Portrait Gallery, in those rooms where hang the portraits of the Elizabethan era, will remember the strong face and figure, elegantly clad, of the man whose bones rest here, and of whom we shall have more to say in connection with his college and the exchange which rose under his direction. His monument is a large marble slab full of fossil shells, and raised table high. The date is 1579. From the beautiful, great window of the Nun's Church, the coloured rays of his own arms fall on his tomb. Upon the wall behind it are niches; one of them faced by a little carved arcade, through which, it is said, the nuns who were in disgrace listened to the mass from the crypt below. A large ugly piece of masonry on the same wall near the farther end once contained the embalmed body of Francis Bancroft, whose face was visible through the glass lid of his coffin. A few years since both body and tomb were placed within the crypt. According to his will, on the occasion of an annual memorial sermon for which he had arranged, his body was exhibited to certain humble folk for whom he had erected, in expiation of his misdeeds, the almshouses now at Mile End. Browning has with characteristic power depicted the Roman Jew scourged to the Christian church, and forced to hear a sermon once a year for his conversion. Perhaps some later poet may find as gruesome a theme for his sarcastic pen in the scene which imagination conjures up when these feeble and aged recipients of the gift of this erratic snob were yearly brought to listen to the tale of his benefactions, and to gaze upon his shrivelling corpse. Bancroft as a magistrate had been so unpopular that the people tried to upset his coffin on its way to the tomb, and pealed the bells. The oldest monument in the church is to Thomas Langton, chaplain, buried in the choir in 1350. One tomb bears the remarkable name of Sir Julius Cæsar. The inscription is in form of a legal document with a broken seal, in which Sir Julius gives his bond to Heaven to surrender his life whenever it shall please God to call him. If one would see Sir Julius as Milton saw him, let him look upon his portrait that hangs in the National Portrait Gallery with his great contemporaries. The obdurate father-in-law, the rich Sir John Spencer of Crosby Hall, is commemorated, by his son-in-law, the Earl of Northampton, in a stately alabaster tomb. The figures of Sir John and his wife rest under a double canopy, and at their feet kneels the runaway daughter, in the enormous stiff crinoline of 1609, the date of her father's death. Some thousand men in mourning cloaks are said to have attended his funeral. The tomb of Sir John Crosby and his wife, of 1475, the beautiful and perfectly preserved tomb of Oteswich and his wife, of the time of Henry IV., and the fine figure of a girl reading, are a few of the works of art that deserve careful attention. The beauty of that which antedates the Tudor and Stuart periods, as contrasted with the works of art of those periods, is almost as marked as it is at Westminster Abbey. When Milton lived he must have seen still standing the refectory and cloisters, and the old hall of the nuns, which was later used by the Company of Leathersellers. The whole group of buildings, with the adjacent gardens, must have formed a highly picturesque reminder of the days before King "Hal" had ruthlessly swept his besom of destruction over the many houses in the land which sheltered nuns and friars. During Milton's life there stood on Bishopsgate Street the first charitable institution for the insane that was ever established. Its name, "Bethlehem Hospital," was corrupted into Bedlam, and has become a term of general application to scenes of disorder. Just after Milton's death, it was removed to Southwark, where the gray dome of the present structure rises conspicuous amid the London smoke. Passing northeast along the crowded thoroughfare of Bishopsgate Street, but a short distance from St. Helen's, the student of antiquities may see, almost concealed by parasitic houses, the little ancient church of St. Ethelburga. He will need to cross the street in order to perceive the name inscribed in large letters upon the church, beneath the short tower and cupola, and above the clock and the shop that masks its front. In Milton's boyhood, this church was ancient, and had been standing for at least three hundred and fifty years, for it is mentioned as early as 1366. Here Chaucer may have knelt to say his Paternosters. The visitor should time his coming to the middle of the day, when the door opening upon the sidewalk is unlocked, and he may enter into the solemn little sanctuary, and at the farther end step out into the tiny garden at the rear. Here, if it be summer, he may sit in this shady retreat and meditate upon the history of the bit of ancient wall said by the verger to be a Roman wall, the fragments of which are preserved here. The church itself is plain and bare; simply a Gothic nave, with no side aisles. Its chief interest to some may be its antique organ, of uncertain date, but old enough from its appearance to have been heard by the little lad from Bread Street whose soul was full of music. One can easily imagine the father of John Milton, who was himself so skilled in the great art, bringing his son to every church within his neighbourhood that boasted such an instrument. The church stands on the site of a much older one, and is named from the daughter of the French princess, Bertha, who brought to Canterbury, to the home of her Saxon husband, Ethelbert, the Christian religion, which was then new to pagan England. Visitors to the little church of St. Martin's at Canterbury will recall the font in which this king was baptised into the faith of his wife. Not far down Bishopsgate Street, upon the opposite side from St. Ethelburga's, when Milton lived, stood a house with such a marvellous carved front with oriel windows, that when it made way for a modern business block, it was transferred to the South Kensington Museum, where it may now be seen in one of its lofty halls. In Milton's youth, Sir Paul Pindar, its owner, was the richest merchant in the kingdom, and often loaned money to James I. and his son Charles. As ambassador to Constantinople, he did much to improve England's trade in the East. On his return, when Milton was a schoolboy of a dozen years at St. Paul's School, he brought, among his other treasures, a great diamond, valued at £30,000, which he loaned to the king to wear at his opening of the Parliaments; it was afterward sold to Charles I. Twenty years later, when Cromwell and Milton were fighting for the rights of Englishmen, and Charles's strength was failing, this same Paul Pindar provided funds for the escape of Queen Henrietta Maria and her children. He gave £10,000 for the restoration, before the fire, of St. Paul's Cathedral. But his loyalty to the house of Stuart was put to a hard test, for the king borrowed such enormous sums that he was all but ruined. When Milton walked down Bishopsgate Street, past his quaint dwelling-house, he must have seen the mulberry-trees planted in the park to please James I. by his devoted subject. These ancient mulberry-trees disappeared only within the memory of men now living. Passing westward along the northern site of the old city wall, in search of the few landmarks that escaped the Great Fire and still remain, we come to that church of all others most dear to Milton lovers. St. Giles's, Cripplegate, is not easily entered on Sunday, except during hours of service. But a courteous question to the burly guardian of the peace who patrols the neighbourhood may effect an unlocking of the gates and a quiet stroll through the green garden that surrounds the church upon two sides. The big policeman is a good talker, and relates with gusto the ravages of the great fire a few years since, which came so near as to melt the lead upon the church roof. The massive wall which forms a corner of the green yard is a bastion of the city wall in the time of Edward IV. Possibly the long, narrow bricks which still gleam red in the lower part may be a lingering remnant of the old Roman wall. Certainly they are the type that the Romans were wont to use. The policeman assures us that there are mysterious "submarine" passages leading from this wall, and one may well believe almost anything as one thinks of the strange sights that it has witnessed. High walls of business blocks of nondescript style replace the gaps made by the recent fire, which fortunately stopped before it touched the narrow, gabled houses of wood which cluster close about the church. These give almost the only example to-day in London of the type of building which housed the poorer class of Londoners of Milton's time. [Illustration: CHURCH OF ST. GILES CRIPPLEGATE IN 1737 Dedicated to St. Giles, who lived about the year 700; founded in 1090; destroyed by fire in 1545, and rebuilt within the Liberty but without the City of London. _From an old engraving._] The church is on the site of an older one of 1090, and was built about one hundred years before Milton's birth. It is late Perpendicular, and has some good detail. As one enters the church from the garden, the first monument on his right is Milton's, which contains his bust, under a Gothic canopy. The poet's bones lie by his father's, under the pavement near the choir. According to the evidence of a little book written about 1790, it seems that his coffin was opened by irresponsible persons, who found the lead much decayed and easily bent back the top. A servant-maid for a consideration let in sightseers through a window, some of whom, after satisfying their curiosity in gazing on the well-preserved figure, snatched hair and teeth and even an arm-bone to carry away as relics. A later authority questions whether it is certain that the grave thus desecrated was indeed Milton's or another's, and leaves a grain of comfort in the thought that perhaps his honoured remains still rest untouched by vandals. Within this church Ben Jonson was married in 1623, and here Oliver Cromwell, a sturdy youth of twenty-one, married his bride on August 22d in 1620. Little thought the parson, as he and Elizabeth Bourchier knelt before him, to be joined in holy wedlock, that one day he would be entitled not only "Protector of England," but "Protector of Protestantism." A marvellous man, this Oliver, whose deeds left much to be forgiven by a later age, for they sometimes had more of the spirit of Joshua than of the Founder of the Christian Faith, and yet as a lover of England, and a minister to the court of Queen Victoria from England's lusty kin beyond the sea has said: "He lived to make his simple oaken chair More terrible, more grandly beautiful, Than any throne before or after of a British king. * * * * * One of the few who have a right to rank With the true Makers; for his spirit wrought Order from Chaos; proved that right divine Dwelt only in the excellence of truth; And far within old Darkness' hostile lines Advanced and pitched the shining tents of Light Nor shall the grateful Muse forget to tell, That--not the least among his many claims To deathless honour--he was MILTON'S friend, A man not second among those who lived To show us that the poet's lyre demands An arm of tougher sinew than the sword." --_"A Glance Behind the Curtain," Lowell._ One grave within the church may have been dear to Milton besides that of his honoured father. As he lived only one generation removed from the martyrs of Smithfield, he must often have pored over the record of their heroism and cruel deaths, by Fox, the famous martyrologist. Near the west door lies the slab above his grave. The date is 1587. Here, no doubt, Milton, who, as has been said, at different times had dwellings near the church, must often have entered within its doors and paused. Says the historian Marsden: "Fox placed the Church of England under greater obligations than any writer of his time, and had his recompense in an old age of poverty and shame.... Nor were his writings undervalued even then; they were commanded to be chained up in churches by the side of the homilies and the English Bible;... thus the 'Book of Martyrs' stood amongst the high, authentic records of our Church, whilst its venerable author yet lived." Frobisher, the great navigator, is also buried within the church. On the left wall, as one faces the choir, is a curious doggerel inscription to one Busbie. If it be on a Sunday afternoon, and the children have gathered for the Sunday school, it may be interesting to pause a bit, as we have done, before the epitaph, and, while copying it, to lend a half ear to the teaching that goes on within hearing. Three small boys sit on a bench before a solemn youth who holds a book and instructs their infant minds as follows: "Who is God? Where is God? How many persons are there in the Godhead? Keep still there--don't answer until it is your turn. When God put Adam and Eve out of Eden, what did he promise them?" "That they should be saved," mumbles one youngster. "Whom did he promise should save them?" "His Son." "What do we call his Son?" "Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ." The next class and all the others scattered through the church are progressing in Christian nurture in much the same way, and one wonders whether the pedagogical skill of the teachers has advanced one whit in all the hundreds of years since the church was built. We hear no "opening exercises," no joyous singing, no tender, earnest talk about right-doing and the temptations that little boys on Fore Street may encounter on Monday morning. There is nothing but a purely formal catechising of these eager, impressionable little souls as to a theology that they cannot understand, and a history of the world which their first lesson on geology will undermine. This modern Sunday school is the one blot upon the memory of the beautiful old church so dear to every lover of Milton. On a week day one may stand on Redcross Street, and behold, as did the travellers in "The Hand of Ethelberta," "the bold shape of the tower they sought, clothed in every neutral shade, standing clear against the sky, dusky and grim in its upper stages, and hoary gray below, where every corner of stone was rounded off by the waves of wind and storm. All people were busy here; our visitors seemed to be the only idle persons that the city contained; and there was no dissonance--there never is--between antiquity and such beehive industry.... This intramural stir was a fly-wheel, transparent by infinite motion, through which Milton and his day could be seen as if nothing intervened." CHAPTER XI. GRESHAM COLLEGE.--AUSTIN FRIARS.--GUILDHALL--ST. MARY'S, ALDERMANBURY.--CHRIST'S HOSPITAL.--ST. SEPULCHRE'S Through Milton's lifetime and for nearly a century after, there stood on Gresham Street and Basinghall Street the famous Gresham College, founded in 1579, in honour of Sir Thomas Gresham, who gave the Royal Exchange to the city on condition that the corporation should institute lectures on divinity, civil law, astronomy, music, geometry, rhetoric, and physics, to be delivered at his residence. His dwelling-house was a spacious edifice of brick and timber, "with open courts and covered walks which seemed all so well suited for such an intention, as if Sir Thomas had it in view, at the time he built his house." Seven professors were appointed and lectured in the morning in Latin, in the afternoon in English for two hours each day. Among the number was Sir Christopher Wren, who not only was the greatest architect, but, as is elsewhere said, was one of the famous astronomers of his day. It was out of his lectures on astronomy, which were attended by learned men, that the Royal Society originated. On Cromwell's death, all college matters were put in abeyance, and the college was temporarily turned into barracks, and so polluted that Bishop Sprat wrote to Wren that he "found the place in such a nasty condition, so defiled, and the smells so infernal, that if you should now come to make use of your tube [telescope] it would be like Dives looking out of hell into heaven." After the Fire, Gresham College was temporarily used for an Exchange, where merchants met. "Gresham College became an epitome of this great city, and the centre of all affairs, both public and private, which were then transacted in it." Except "London stone" and bits of the Old Wall, little more remains to consider among the important landmarks of the city that was nightly locked within the city gates, and which still endures after the Great Fire. Of this little part, Austin Friars Church, on the site of the Augustinian Convent, is the most notable. Of the extensive and magnificent establishment that was founded here in 1253, nothing to-day remains but the nave of the great church of former days, which is now reached through narrow passages from Old Broad Street north of the Bank. Originally the church was cruciform, with choir, transepts, and a "most fine, spired steeple, both small and straight." Henry VIII. at the Dissolution bestowed the house and grounds upon the first Marquis of Winchester, but the church was given by the young King Edward VI. "to the Dutch nation in London, to be their preaching place." From that day to this the Dutch have worshipped here, and in the days of persecution it was the religious home of other Continental refugees. In the generation before Milton, thousands of the skilled artisans of the Netherlands and France had fled to England, impoverishing the lands of the short-sighted tyrants who drove them forth, to add to English industry and commerce. The most eminent pastor of these exiles was a Polish nobleman, John a Lasco, who shepherded, not only this flock, but all the other foreigners in England, and superintended their schools as well. He was a friend of Melanchthon and Erasmus, was with the latter when he died, and became possessed of his library. It was to these refugees in London, Norwich, and other towns that harboured them, that England owed the introduction of many new, choice flowers, among them, the gillyflower, carnation, Provence rose, and others. The handiwork of these industrious folk produced many new stuffs unknown to English ladies, among others the fine light fabric known as bombazine. One of the Dutch ladies, who taught the English to starch and launder cambric ruffs, was so much sought after and charged such high fees, that she soon earned herself a competence. Evidently these strangers paid their way. The church assigned to them in London once possessed a marvellous array of tombs of noted men. The register is crowded with the names of earls and barons, all of whose monuments were sold by the impecunious and callous marquis for £100. Just before Milton's birth the fourth Marquis of Winchester was compelled to part with all his possessions in Austin Friars. At about this time the tower, declared to be "one of the beautifullest and rarest spectacles" in the city, was pulled down, and the choir and transepts were demolished. The size of the original building may be imagined when we remember that the length of the nave alone is one hundred and fifty feet to-day. The chronicler records that in the beginning of the Dutch services, the church was filled to overflowing. Whether there are fewer Dutch in London four centuries later, or fewer who are glad to worship in their own tongue, cannot be said. But to-day, the visitor, who on a Sunday morning walks through the silent and deserted streets north of the Bank of England, and penetrates to the seclusion of Austin Friars Church, will find but a scant congregation of perhaps two hundred, who gather cosily within the curtains in the centre of the nave, which shut out the great bare aisles. If he thinks of the old days when Roger Williams taught Dutch to his learned pupil, John Milton, he may let his fancy picture to him these men, who ranked among the nation-builders of their day, stepping some Sunday morning under its Gothic arches from out the greensward that then surrounded them, and listening to the gospel in the tongue of those brave exiles who, like them, had fought for freedom of conscience. If the visitor waits after service, he may see in the pastor's room the portrait of John a Lasco, to whom all the congregation point back with pride, as the first and greatest preacher in their history; and the courteous pastor may point out many things of interest that would escape the casual observer. Standing at the front of the church, beside the little tower at the left, whose beautiful spire no longer rises aloft, one finds himself in the heart of the modern business world, relentless, pushing, loving neither beauty nor the sacredness of age. One sign--Barnato Brothers--may attract his attention in a window close to the gray church walls. Here the ambitious and ill-starred king of African mines, Barney Barnato, brought his power to bear upon the men on 'Change a decade since. A decade hence his name, like John a Lasco's, will be remembered by few. These names and the associations they suggest are no unfitting theme for meditation on a Sunday morning stroll amid the stony streets of London past and present. Further west, amid the district swept by the Great Fire, stands Guildhall, not as it stood either before or after the fire, but still worthy of mention in the category of buildings that withstood the flames. Only the roof perished in the fire, and its walls stood intact; but so great have been the changes since their restoration that very little which belonged to Milton's London remains above the crypt. A clergyman, writing the year after the Great Fire, thus describes it, as he saw it during that terrible conflagration: "And amongst other things that night, the sight of Guildhall was a fearful spectacle, which stood the whole of it together, after the fire had taken it, without flames (I suppose because the timber was such solid oake), like a bright shining wal, as if it had been a palace of gold, or a great building of burnished brass." The present roof is as nearly as possible a reproduction of the one that perished in the fire: it is an open oak roof, and has a central louvre. The figures of giants in its hall represent Gog and Magog, who were the Corineus and Gogmagog of the ancient city pageants. The former was a companion of Brutus, the Trojan, and according to tradition killed Gogmagog, the aboriginal giant. The crypt is reputed to be the finest now remaining in London. It is a portion of the ancient hall of 1411. The north and south aisles had formerly mullioned windows, which are now walled up. The vaulting, with four centred arches, is notable, and is probably of the earliest of that type. The Guildhall was founded in 1411, in the time of Henry IV., and when Milton was a boy had attained a certain venerableness. Within its walls had taken place, not merely the civic banquets for which its modern successor is noted, but also many tragic scenes in English history. Here the evil-minded Protector who wished to supplant his boy-nephew, Edward V., had his name presented to the assembled multitudes as the legitimate monarch, by his oily courtier, Buckingham. The people, "marvellously abashed," listened in dead silence, as the accomplished orator proclaimed the bastardy of the little prince, and urged the claims of his ambitious uncle. The speaker, somewhat disconcerted, explained again, louder and more explicitly, his meaning. "But were it for wonder or fear, or that each looked that other should speak first, not one word was there answered of all the people that stood before; but all were as still as the midnight." Then the recorder was summoned to use his efforts with the people. "But all this no change made in the people, which alway after stood as they were amazed." At last some servants of the duke, and 'prentices and lads "thrusted into the hall amongst the press," began suddenly to cry out aloud: "King Richard, King Richard," and "they that stood before cast back their heads marvelling thereat, but nothing they said. And when the duke and the mayor saw this manner, they wisely turned it to their purpose, and said it was a goodly cry and a joyful to hear every man _with one voice_, and no man saying nay." Thus a bold _coup_, struck with a masterful hand, surprised an honest people without organised opposition and leadership, and as so many times in the history of the Anglo-Saxon race, the voice of a small and powerful minority was impudently declared to be _vox populi_. One of the saddest sights that the Guildhall Milton knew ever witnessed was the trial, in the reign of Henry VIII., of that young lady, Anne Askew, whose courage and devotion never were surpassed within the Colosseum, among the Christians who fought with beasts or were sawn asunder. Having become a Protestant, she was driven by her husband, who was a papist, from his home. King Henry, it might have been supposed, would have at least taken no action against her, but she was arrested and examined. The lord mayor of London asked her whether the priest cannot make the body of Christ, to which she replied as shrewdly as Jeanne d'Arc to her inquisitors: "I have read that God made man; but that man can make God, I never yet read." She was condemned at Guildhall to death for heresy. A daughter of a knight, this delicate lady, reared in comfort, was carried to the Tower, thrust into a cell, where but for a few brave friends she would have starved, and then her tender body was put on the rack, and Chancellor Wriothesley himself applied such power as nearly rent it in sunder. The story of her cruel death amid the flames at Smithfield belongs rather to that bloody spot than to the Guildhall. Her life she could have saved, even at the last moment, had her heroic soul faltered, and unsaid what conscience taught. Those were tales to freeze the life from out young hearts, that grandames told in Milton's boyhood. To the men of his day, Guildhall stood chiefly connected with some of the most remarkable trials in England's history. Among them was that of Throckmorton for complicity in Sir Thomas Wyatt's attempt against the Catholic Queen Mary. In those days, when trial usually meant speedy death, his acquittal, due to his own forensic skill and eloquence, is recounted in detail by historians as most remarkable. He it was whose tomb in St. Catherine Cree's is mentioned, and for whom a London street is named. The church of St. Mary Aldermanbury is one that few visitors to London ever enter, but the follower in Milton's footsteps will not fail to seek out, a little west of the Guildhall, this church, whose registers record that here Milton, at the age of forty-eight, married his second wife, Katherine Woodcocke. Aldermanbury derives its name from the ancient court or _bery_ of the aldermen, which is now held at the Guildhall. The church stands in its tiny green churchyard closely surrounded by business blocks, amidst the bustle of the city; on a summer noontide, in its shady retreat, the seats are filled with loiterers who chat or meditate or read their papers around the central monument. This monument, though modern, is of great interest. It records the fact that J. Heminge and Henry Condell, Shakespeare's fellow actors and personal friends, lived many years in this parish, and are buried here. Says the inscription: "To their disinterested affection the world owes all that it calls Shakespeare; they alone collected his dramatic writings, regardless of pecuniary loss, and without the hope of any profit gave them to the world. "First Folio: 'We have but collected them, and done an office to the dead, without ambition of selfe-profit or fame, only to keep the memory of so worthy a friend alive, as was our Shakespeare.' "Extract from Preface: 'It had been a thing, we confesse, worthie to have been wished, that the author himselfe had lived to have set forth and overseene his own writings, but since it hath been ordained otherwise,... we pray you do not envy his Friends the office of their care and paine to have collected and published them, absolute in their numbers, as he conceived them, who as he was a happy imitator of nature, was a most gentle expression of it. His mind and hand went together, and what he thought he uttered, with that easiness that wee have scarse received from him a blot on his papers.'" In 1656 Milton's marriage took place in the earlier church, of very ancient foundation. The present building was designed by Wren, and was begun in 1668, during Milton's blindness. It has a square tower capped by a square bell turret about ninety feet in height. The register of the church, which was preserved, records that: "The agreement and intention of marriage between John Milton, Esq., of the parish of Margaret's in Westminster, and Mrs. Katharine Woodcocke of Mary's in Aldermanbury, was published three several market days in three several weeks ... and no exception being made against their intentions, they were according to the act of Parliament, married on the 12th of November, by Sir John Dethicke, Knight and Alderman, one of the Justices for the Peace in the City of London." A justice instead of a clergyman was prescribed by the Marriage Act which was then in force. Judge Jeffreys of bloody memory is buried in the church (d. 1689). A little west of it is Christ's Hospital, which, since its establishment in 1552 by the boy-king, Edward VI., until the summer of 1902, has been one of the most noted of London schools. Its revenue is about £60,000. Its removal to Horsham in the country will provide the ample playgrounds and modern accommodations that the times demand; but even an American, to say nothing of native Londoners, must feel a pang of regret at the disappearance from the street of the bright-eyed, bare-headed lads, whose quaint costume has for centuries given their school its name of "Blue Coat School." Anciently the boys wore caps, but now they go bare-headed through the year. The school was originally established on the site of the Gray Friars Monastery, as a kind of asylum for poor children. Stow gives the following account of the opening of the institution. "In the month of September they took in near four hundred orphans, and cloathed them in Russet, but ever after they wore Blue Cloath Coats, whence it is commonly called the Blue Coat Hospital. Their habit being now a long coat of blue warm cloth, close to their arms and Body, hanging loose to their Heels, girt about their Waist with a red leather girdle buckled, a round thrum Cap tyed with a red Band, Yellow Stockings, and Black Low-heeled Shoes, their hair cut close their Locks short." "Their fare was Breakfast, bread and beer, 6.30 summer, 7.30 winter. Sunday, beef and pottage for dinners. Suppers, as good legs and shoulders of mutton as can be bought. Tuesdays and Thursdays, same dinner as Sundays. Other days, no flesh--Monday, milk porridge; Wednesday, furmity; Friday, old peas and pottage; Saturday, water-gruel. Rost beef, 12 times a year. Supper, bread and butter or bread and cheese; Wednesday and Friday, pudding pies." This seems to have been a liberal table compared with that of the famous Winchester school in its early days, when two meals a day were all that were allowed, except for invalids. Stow mentions that "the King granted all Church Linnen formerly used in the Churches of London" to the hospital, as a superabundance had been found. Girls as well as boys were lodged and taught here. Stow tells us of the custom which prevailed from his day to ours: "One boy being appointed, goeth up into a pulpit there placed and readeth a chapter ... and prayers. At the end of every prayer all the boys cry 'Amen,' that maketh a very melodious sound. The boy that reads is designed for the university. A Psalm is named by the same boy; and all sing with a good organ that is placed in the said great Hall." He describes the grace said by one boy in the pulpit, and the boys and girls quietly seating themselves while "multitudes of city and court" came to witness it. An ancient writer recounts the joy of the half-starved youngsters when they were first taken into its dining-hall and saw the baskets heaped with bread, and knew that there was enough for all. Among the buildings which are about to be replaced by mercantile establishments there is little, if anything, that Milton saw. Christ's Church, beside it, where Richard Baxter lies buried, was built by Wren a little after his time. Where so many famous men in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries were to be numbered as students,--Coleridge, Leigh Hunt, Charles Lamb, and others,--the one name on its register that would have most interested Milton was that of William Camden who studied here, as well as at St. Paul's. A visitor from Boston, Massachusetts, is interested to know that in 1626, one little lad in yellow stockings and dark blue coat, who studied Latin here to some purpose, was Ezekiel Cheever, who became the master of the Boston Latin School. For thirty years he taught the Yankee boys in the little wooden house on School Street at the foot of Beacon Hill, and made them learn his famous "Accidence," which went through many editions. Often as he wandered over the "rocky nook with hilltops three," where "twice each day the flowing sea took Boston in its arms," his thoughts must have turned back to the walled city with its spires and palaces and prisons which he and Milton knew when they were boys. The London tourist, who visits London for the first time after 1902, will miss seeing one of its most fascinating sights, for he can never stand in the great dining-hall of Christ's Hospital on a Sunday noon and see the procession of pink-cheeked lads in their knee-breeches and long skirts come trooping in an orderly procession into the great hall, bearing great platters of steaming meats and baskets piled with rolls. The "Grecians" and "Deputy-Grecians," and the less distinguished rank and file will never again pause here to listen to the Latin grace, nor will gaze at the huge canvas on the long wall between the galleries at either end. One wonders what will become of the old desks in the schoolroom, into which a score of generations of schoolboys have carved their names, and whether in their splendid new surroundings they will not look back half regretfully to the dim old cloisters which linked them with their great historic past. Old Newgate was a foul prison in Milton's day. Here in filthy chambers, gentlemen like Ellwood, Defoe, and William Penn were thrown together with felons. Diagonally across the street from the huge grim prison of later days, which since 1770 has stretched its length along the thoroughfare which bears its name, is St. Sepulchre's Church. From its tower the knell was struck for executions at the neighbouring Newgate, and many a time must the boys in Christ's Hospital and the Charterhouse School north of it have listened in horrified curiosity as the bell tolled, and they knew it meant that a man, blindfolded and with bound hands, was standing on the scaffold in front of Newgate. St. Sepulchre's has been much altered since Milton entered it, perhaps in search of the same monument that first of all attracts Americans. This is the monument of that bold discoverer and coloniser, John Smith, who settled Jamestown in Virginia the year before Milton was born. Who knows but Milton may have met him, or have gazed upon the dark-eyed Princess Pocahontas, who left her native forests and became the bride of the Englishman Rolfe, after she had saved the life of the gallant Captain Smith. His old tombstone is nearly defaced, and lies in the side aisle, some yards from its original site. A replica of the original inscription is placed on a brass tablet near it: "Here lyes one conquered, who hath conquered kings; Subdued large territories and done things Which to the world impossible will seem But that the Truth is held in more esteem,... Or shall I tell of his adventures since, Done in Virginia, that large Continente? How that he subdued kings unto his yoke, And made those Heathen flee as wind doth smoke, And made their land, being of so large a Station, An habitation for our Christian nation."... The above-mentioned "kings" were doubtless Indian sachems. The Anglo-Saxon satisfaction at the way the heathen were made to flee like smoke, and make room for a Christian nation, as shown by the writer of this effusion, indicates that the white Christian of Smith's day was not unlike his posterity three centuries later in the time of Cecil Rhodes and of Philippine campaigns. John Rogers, the Smithfield martyr, was vicar of this church. During his residence in Antwerp, he had made the acquaintance of Tyndale, the translator of the Bible, and continued Tyndale's work after his death. Dean Milman tells us: "There is no doubt that the first complete English Bible came from Antwerp under his superintendence and auspices. It bore then and still bears the name of Matthews's Bible. Of Matthews, however, no trace has ever been discovered. There is every reason for believing the untraceable Matthews was John Rogers. If so, Rogers was not only the protomartyr of the English Church, but, with due respect for Tyndale, the protomartyr of the English Bible." Among the most eminent men buried at St. Sepulchre's was Roger Ascham, in 1568. Doubtless Milton, before writing his own remarkable treatise on education, must have studied the progressive theories of this man who taught Latin and Greek to Queen Elizabeth. CHAPTER XII. CHARTERHOUSE.--ST. JOHN'S GATE.--ST. BARTHOLOMEW'S.--SMITHFIELD When Milton was a lad at St. Paul's School, it is more than likely that he sometimes visited the boys of Charterhouse. Let us imagine him on some holiday taking a stroll outside the city wall through Newgate, over Holborn Bridge, that arched the Hole Bourne or Fleet, which flowed southward to the Thames, at Blackfriars; then up Holborn Hill and to the right to Charterhouse Square. It is still a quiet square of green shut in by pleasant residences, which replace the handsome palaces, such as Rutland House, which stood here during the Stuarts' reign. If his father accompanied the lad he may have recalled to him the horror of the pestilence which three hundred years before had swept from Asia across Europe. In foul, crowded London, it so filled the churchyards to overflowing, that in 1348, when thousands of bodies were flung into pits without a Christian prayer said over them, the Bishop of London purchased three acres for a burial-ground upon this spot. Near here fifty thousand bodies were buried, one above another in deep graves. But three hundred years is a long time to one who has lived something less than ten, and perhaps these grisly tales of a shadowy and forgotten past appealed less to Milton's boyish heart than those of a nearer time, which his father's life had almost touched. [Illustration: THE CHARTERHOUSE _From an old engraving._] Above the monastery doors which rose here after the Great Plague, might have been seen, only a half century before, the limb from the dismembered body of the martyred prior, who fell beneath the wrath of Henry VIII. He, with divers of his brethren, perished for their faith as nobly as John Rogers, a few years later, died for a different one. Heroism belongs to no one creed. Thus ended the monastic institution, the House of the Salutation of the Mother of God, which since 1371 had housed twenty-four Carthusian friars. Their quiet lives and austere fasts had been in sharp contrast to those of the Knights of St. John, their ancient neighbours, whose habitations perished at about the time when theirs arose. Some remains of the old monastery may be seen within the gates to-day, and doubtless there were many more reminders of it when Milton was shown about by his boy-friends. Perhaps the tall youth, Roger Williams, nine years his senior, whose later life was to touch his, may have noticed the handsome lad who read the Latin inscriptions as easily as boys of his age now read English, and who showed a marvellous comprehension of the antiquities of the place. The visitor to-day on entering the chapel, as Milton did, may notice at the left of the door a white marble tablet framed in yellow marble, on which an American citizen, in memory of the founder of Rhode Island, almost the only tolerator of all religious faiths in an intolerant age, has recently inscribed the fact that Roger Williams studied here. Since Milton's day the character of Charterhouse has not much changed, though many buildings have been added. The present foundation marks the benevolence of one of the richest merchants of Elizabeth's day, whose prayer was: "Lord, thou hast given me a large and liberal estate; give me also a heart to make use thereof." In 1611, Thomas Sutton purchased the Charterhouse for £13,000, from the Earl of Suffolk and his relatives, and made over twenty manors and lordships and other rich estates, including the Charterhouse, in trust for the hospital. The pensioners were originally eighty in number, and the boys, forty-four. Hubert Herkomer's well-known, beautiful painting in the Tate Gallery of the Charterhouse chapel and the venerable figures of the aged gentlemen who daily worship here in their quaint gowns, depicts a scene that Milton saw, and that the modern visitor may see to-day. Beyond the huge, pretentious monument of Sutton, that fills one corner of the chapel, is the side room, where, until quite recent years, the boys sat at morning service. Now their numbers are increased, and they are more happily housed out in the country, where outdoor sports and rural life can do more for them than this region, which is now hemmed in by the encroachments of commercial London. Stow tells us that the master was required to be twenty-seven years old, and that the highest form must every Sunday set up in the Great Hall four Greek and four Latin verses, "each to be made on any part of the second Lesson for that day." One cannot but feel that the old gentlemen must sadly miss their sprightly young comrades, and long for the sound of their merry shouts and whistles. Their numbers are falling off, for the revenues, drawn from agricultural sources, are diminishing. To-day about fifty-five are entered. All must be over sixty years of age. They have all the freedom of private citizens, except that they are expected to dine together in the great panelled dining-hall, and at night to be in by eleven o'clock. Each pensioner has a bedroom and sitting-room, and a loaf and butter is brought him for his breakfast. About £30 a year are allowed each for clothing and other food, and a female attendant is assigned to each half dozen gentlemen. Thackeray's description of Founder's Day is most touching, and deserves to be read by all who visit Charterhouse, where he studied, and in imagination saw the last days of Colonel Newcome: "The custom of the school is on the 12th of December, the Founder's Day, that the head gown-boy shall recite a Latin oration, in praise of our founder and upon other subjects, and a goodly company of old Cistercians is generally brought together to attend this oration, after which we go to chapel and have a sermon, after which we go to a great dinner, where old condisciples meet, old toasts are given, and speeches made. Before marching from the oration hall to chapel, the stewards of the day's dinner, according to the old-fashioned rite, have wands in their hands, walk to church at the head of the procession, and sit in places of honour. The boys are already on their seats with smug fresh faces and shining white collars; the old black-gowned pensioners are on their benches, the chapel is lighted, the founder's tomb, with its grotesque carvings, monsters, heraldries, darkles and shines with the most wonderful lights and shadows. There he sits, Fundator Noster, in his ruff and gown, awaiting the Great Examination Day. We oldsters, be we ever so old, become boys again as we look at that familiar old tomb, and think how the seats were altered since we were here, and how the doctor used to sit yonder and his awful eye used to frighten us shuddering boys on whom it lighted; and how the boy next us _would_ kick our shins during the service time, and how the monitor would cane us afterward because our shins were kicked. Yonder sit forty cherry-cheeked boys, thinking about home and holidays to-morrow. Yonder sit some three-score old gentlemen--pensioners of the hospital, listening to the prayers and psalms. You hear them coughing feebly in the twilight--the old, reverend black gowns.... A plenty of candles light up this chapel, and this scene of youth and age and early memories and pompous death. How solemn the well-remembered prayers are here uttered again in the place where in childhood we used to hear them! How beautiful and decorous the rite! How noble the ancient words of the supplications which the priest utters, and to which generations of bygone seniors have cried, 'Amen,' under those arches." We pass up, as Milton may have done, the broad carved oak staircase of the period antedating Sutton's purchase, when Lord North welcomed the Princess Elizabeth as his guest and entertained her royally, five days before her coronation. In these spacious rooms, with deep-set windows, and richly decorated ceilings, the cautious princess held meetings daily with her councillors. The lofty fireplace and the tapestry hangings that remain recall in their dim splendour days when lords and dukes and maids of honour waited in trepidation upon the behest of the haughty woman who was soon to become their dread sovereign. It was in one of these rooms that the pupil orator gave his oration upon Founder's Day. One of the rooms not always shown to visitors should not be missed. It is the long, cosy library of the pensioners. Here, leaning out of the diamond-paned windows upon a summer's day, or grouping themselves in easy chairs about the blazing hearth in gray November, one loves to think of these lonely gentlemen, who have seen better days, spending their last, quiet years among their books. The visitor to the Charterhouse will not fail to spend a half day within the vicinity. In spite of its sordid and commercial aspect, it possesses many of the most precious relics of the past. [Illustration: ST. JOHN'S GATE, CLERKENWELL _From an old engraving._] A little to the northwest of Smithfield, where it spans a narrow and somewhat squalid street, stands the huge stone gateway of St. John's. Nothing in its vicinity reveals the fact that once beside it stood a conventual church, and a bell-tower that was one of the glories of London, and nothing to indicate that, centuries before these, one of the richest and most famous of all the monastic establishments around London was built here. The history of the Knights of St. John is one of the longest and most romantic of mediæval histories. The prototype of their ancient hospital was in Jerusalem, where the knights of the order lived lives of abstinence and charity. The English establishment in Clerkenwell was founded in 1100 A. D., only a generation after the coming of the Norman Conqueror. This was the time of Godfrey of Bouillon and of the first Crusade. Forty years later the monks in Jerusalem became a military order, and thenceforth their history is one that seemed guided by Joshua rather than the Prince of Peace. Large gifts and power led them soon far from the simple habits of their early days. Of their fights with pirates and with Turks and with rival Christian bodies, there is no space to tell. Like the Christian Church itself, in many periods, they waxed fat and gross, and became the hated "plutocrats" of the working men of their time. In that sweet story, written in Saxon English, by William Morris, of the monk, "John Ball," we have a picture of the brave men of Kent who rose in wrath to destroy, as did the Paris mob of 1793, the men who long had mocked at their impotence and fed upon their toil. The rebels marched with spear and bow to London, and wreaked their vengeance on many, but especially those whose travesty on the teaching of the saint whose name they bore had maddened them to fury. They burnt all the houses belonging to St. John's, and set on fire the beautiful priory, which burned seven days. King Richard II., safe in the Tower, in vain besought his Council for advice in this extremity. The prior himself did not escape, but fell beneath the relentless axe of the men of Kent, as thousands for a like cause fell under the guillotine in Paris. The present gateway was not erected until the following century. In the reign of Edward VI., the church with the "graven gilt and enamelled bell-tower" was undermined and blown up with gunpowder, and the stone was used for building the Lord Protector's House upon the Strand. To-day the members of the revived English League of the Order of St. John hold their meetings in the gate. With the exception of Westminster Abbey, probably no church has more of interest than St. Bartholomew's at Smithfield. Within the century that saw the White Tower of the Conqueror begun, a monastery and church rose on this site. "A pleasant-witted gentleman, who was therefore called 'the king's minstrel,'" as Stow relates, was blest with a most singular vision on his pilgrimage to Rome. Like Saul of Tarsus, he felt the Lord's command to leave his old life and begin anew. Accordingly on his return to England he established a priory for thirteen monks, and in 1123 built the Norman church, part of which stands practically as he left it. Says a nineteenth-century antiquary: "Except the Tower and its immediate neighbourhood, there is no part of London, old or new, around which are clustered so many events interesting in history, as that of the priory of St. Bartholomew-the-Great and its vicinity. There are narrow, tortuous streets, and still narrower courts, about Cloth Fair, where are hidden away scores of old houses, whose projecting eaves and overhanging floors, heavy, cumbrous beams and wattle and plaster walls must have seen the days of the Plantagenets. There are remains of groined arches, and windows with ancient tracery, strong buttresses, and beautiful portals, with toothed and ornate archways, belonging to times long anterior to Wyclif and John of Gaunt yet to be found lurking behind dark, uncanny-looking tenements.... When Chaucer was young, and his Canterbury Pilgrims were men and women of the period, processions of cowled monks and chanting boys, with censers and crucifix, wended their way from the old priory of the Black Friars beside the Thames; and when Edward III. had spent the morning in witnessing the tourney of mailed knights at Smithfield, have they and their attendants, with all the pomp and pageantry of chivalry, passed beneath this old gateway to the grand entertainment of the good prior in the great refectory beyond the south cloisters.... As we go round the Great Close we pass by some very old houses that occupy the place where was once the east cloisters. Behind these houses used to be a great mulberry-tree, only removed in our own time." Here may Milton, during those dark days of the Restoration, when he retired to the seclusion of these narrow streets to escape observation, have sometimes ventured. Here sitting on the stone seat beneath its shade, he may have seen in fancy the processions of sandalled monks, with rosaries dangling against their long gray robes, move silently by as in the olden time, and pass within the portals of the church. And stepping beneath its round arches, he may himself have stood, as countless monks and pilgrims before him have done, before the recumbent painted figure of the tonsured monk, Rahere, who lies under a beautifully wrought Gothic canopy of a much later period. Around him rise the solemn, massive pillars with their cubiform capitals, which seem scarcely less fresh and solid than when Rahere gazed on them with pride. Here are to be seen the slight intimations, even amid Norman semicircular arches, of the Gothic pointed arch that was to supersede them in the near future. Of the four superb arches which once supported the great central tower, two are the half-circle and two are slightly pointed. An interesting and lovely feature of the church is the oriel window by the triforium, opposite Rahere's grave, built by the famous Prior Bolton. Here the prior seems to have had a kind of pew or seat from whence he could overlook the canons when he pleased, without their being aware of his presence, as it communicated with his house. The aisles form a fine study for the architect. The horseshoe Moorish arch is much used, as well as the simpler Norman arch, and there is seen a regular gradation from one to the other. Among the tombs that must have most interested Puritan Milton was one of James Rivers, who died in 1641 just as the civil war was about to break forth, who evidently, had he lived, would have thrown in his lot where Milton did. His epitaph contains the lines: "Whose life and death designed no other end, Than to serve God, his country, and his friend; Who, when ambition, tyranny, and pride Conquered the age, conquered himself and died." A tomb that may have interested Milton is that of Sir Walter Mildmay, the founder of Emmanuel College, Cambridge, which sent so many Puritans to the new colonies in Massachusetts. It was this Mildmay to whom, when he came to court, Queen Elizabeth said: "I hear, Sir Walter, that you have erected a Puritan foundation." "No, madam," was the answer, "but I have set an acorn, which when it becomes an oak, God knows what will be the fruit thereof." In Milton's time many Puritans lived in the parish, and a manuscript book preserved in the vestry records that there was "Collected for the children of New England uppon 2 Sabath daies following in february, 1643, £2, 8. 9." This was a goodly sum for those days, and was doubtless much appreciated by the English cousins, who in their bare pine meeting-houses beside the tidal Charles remembered that the Puritans who remained at home were called to wage a fiercer fight with priestcraft, prerogative, and privilege than they, with poverty. The church to-day is but a fraction of its former size, in fact, hardly more than the choir of the noble building which Rahere erected. The entire length of the church as it left his hand is supposed to have been 225 feet. In 1539 Sir Richard Rich bought church and priory for little more than £1,000, and the thirteen evicted canons were pensioned off. Close by old St. Bartholomew's is Smithfield, so near that, in the reign of the Tudors, the ruddy light of martyrs' fagots must have cast a glow upon its roof and its walls must have resounded to the screams of sufferers in their last agonising moments. On the south side of Smithfield, in Milton's day, rose St. Bartholomew's Hospital, founded by Henry VIII., upon the site of Rahere's earlier one. The great Harvey, the physician of Charles I., who discovered the circulation of the blood, was physician to this hospital for thirty-four years, and here, in 1619, he lectured on his great discovery. The present structure dates from a period early in the eighteenth century. Directly opposite St. Bartholomew's Church, in 1849, excavations three feet below the surface exposed to view a mass of unhewn stones, blackened as by fire, and covered with ashes and human bones, charred and partially consumed. This marked the spot where martyrs, facing eastward toward the great gate of St. Bartholomew's, were chained to the stake. The prior was generally present on such occasions. An old print of the burning of Anne Askew displays a pulpit erected for the sermon, and raised seats for the numerous spectators who came to view the spectacle with probably no more shrinking than the Londoners of the early nineteenth century viewed the hangings at Newgate. Of the two hundred and seventy-seven persons who in Mary's reign here perished for their faith, none is more lovingly remembered in Old England or in New England than John Rogers, the first martyr in the Marian persecution, to whom we have already referred. For a century or more, Calvinistic New England taught its children from that quaint little book known as the "New England Primer," and now treasured in many families as a curiosity. No one among its wretched little woodcuts struck such a solemn awe into the child's mind,--making the courage of the soldier on the battle-field shrink to nothing in comparison, as that picture where John Rogers, surrounded by his wife and nine children and another at the breast, testified to his faith within the flames. "That which I have preached I will seal with my blood," said the indomitable man, when offered pardon for recantation. "I will never pray for thee," quoth his angry questioner. "But I will pray for you," said Master Rogers. History does not record that his little children saw their father die, but only that they met him on the way, and sobbed out their farewells. But enough; we need not enter on the hideous story of this spot in the generation that followed this martyr. In early days, Smithfield, or Smoothfield, was the Campus Martius for sham fights and tilts. All sorts of sports, archery, and bowls, and ball games were played here, and it was a resort for acrobats and jugglers. In 1615, says Howes, "The City of London reduced the rude, vast place of Smithfield into a faire and comely order, which formerly was never held possible to be done, and paved it all over, and made divers sewers to convey the water from the new channels which were made by reason of the new pavement; they also made strong rails round about Smithfield, and sequestered the middle part into a very fair and civil walk, and railed it round about with strong rails, to defend the place from annoyance and danger, as well from carts, as all manner of cattle, because it was intended hereafter that in time it might prove a fair and peaceable market-place, by reason that Newgate Market, Moorgate, Cheapside, Leadenhall, and Gracechurch Street, were immeasurably pestered with the unimaginable increase and multiplicity of market folks. And this field, commonly called West Smithfield, was for many years called Ruffian's Hall, by reason it was the usual place of frays and common fighting during the time that sword and bucklers were in use. But the ensuing deadly fight with rapier and dagger suddenly suppressed the fighting with sword and buckler." In his "Henry IV.," Shakespeare makes Page say of Bardolph: "He's gone to Smithfield to buy your worship a horse." To which Falstaff replies: "I bought him in Paul's, and he'll buy me a horse in Smithfield; an I could get me but a wife in the stews, I were manned, horsed, and wived." Ben Jonson's merry play, "Bartholomew Fair," written in 1613, gives a good account of the babel of entreaties and advertising boasts that assailed the ears of the unwary customer: "Will your worship buy any gingerbread, gilt gingerbread; very good bread, comfortable bread? Buy any ballads? New ballads! Hey! "Now the fair's a filling! O, for a tune to startle The birds of the booths here billing Yearly with old St. Bartle. "Buy any pears, pears, very fine pears! What do you lack, gentleman? Maid, see a fine hoppy-horse for your young master. Cost you but a farthing a week for his provender. "Buy a mouse-trap, a mouse-trap, or a tormentor for a flea? "What do you lack? fine purses, pouches, pin cases, pipes? a pair of smiths to wake you in the morning, or a fine whistling bird? "Gentlewomen, the weather's hot; whither walk you? Have a care of your fine velvet caps; the fair is dusty. Take a sweet delicate booth with boughs, here in the way, and cool yourself in the shade, you and your friends. Here be the best pigs. A delicate show-pig, little mistress, with sweet sauce and crackling, like de bay-leaf i' de fire, la! T'ou shalt ha' the clean side o' the table-clot' and de glass vashed!" From all which, and much more to the same purport, one may judge that whether in Ben Jonson's time or Browning's, whether in Smithfield or in the modern charity fair, the art of alluring or browbeating the man with a purse into buying what he does not want is much the same. Long after Milton's death, the fair was famous, and drew gaping throngs to witness mountebanks swing in mid air, and to view the fat woman and double-headed calf, for all the world like "The Greatest Moral Show on Earth" to-day. Now Smithfield has banished mountebanks and bellowing herds. Only the carcases of the latter may be found in the huge brick market that covers a large part of the once open space. The original size of Smithfield was but three acres, but since 1834 it has been over six acres in extent. CHAPTER XIII. ELY PLACE.--INNS OF COURT.--TEMPLE CHURCH.--COVENT GARDEN.--SOMERSET HOUSE Holborn was paved long before Milton's birth, and was a street of consequence, because of the Inns of Court, which opened north and south from it. From his time until 1868 a row of small houses southward from Gray's Inn blocked up the street, and became even in his day "a mighty hindrance to Holborn in point of prospect." Ely Place, off Holborn, is little known to hasty tourists who have not time to leave the beaten track of sightseeing. But any one who has a quiet hour to spend in the exquisite little church of St. Etheldreda, and to recall the glories of the past which its Gothic walls have witnessed, will be well repaid. Ely Place, a rectangle of dull, commonplace houses, at its entrance gives no glimpse of the chapel, which is shrinkingly withdrawn a little among the interloping walls that now replace the gardens and the palaces of Milton's day. In Chaucer's lifetime, the Bishop of Ely built this very chapel to the Saxon saint, the daughter of the king of the West Angles, who was born about the year 630. She took part in the erection of the Cathedral of Ely amid the morasses of the "Fen" country, and was chosen as its patron saint. In 679 she died, the abbess of the convent of Ely. Singularly enough, this modest lady gave the origin to the word "tawdry," so Thornbury declares. For her name was sometimes called St. Audry, and some cheap necklaces sold at St. Audry's fair at Ely were known as "tawdry" laces, whence the name was applied to other cheap and showy ornaments. After long continuance in the hands of Protestants, the church has again reverted to the faith of those who built it. It is the only instance of a "living" crypt in London, _i. e._, one in which tapers burn and kneeling worshippers assemble before shrines. On any week day, one may in three minutes turn from Holborn into its mediæval quiet and seclusion and tell one's beads, either in the upper or lower sanctuary, or gaze at the glorious decorated east window, and on the chaste proportions of an unspoiled Gothic structure. Its wealth of windows remotely reminds one of the Sainte Chapelle of good King Louis, whose jewelled windows in their slender lofty frames are one of the marvels of the island in the Seine. In the Plantagenet and Tudor period, vineyards, kitchen garden, and orchard surrounded the magnificent buildings of Ely Place. Hither, at the Duke of Gloucester's bidding, as Shakespeare, following history, records, the bishop sent hastily for the strawberries for which his garden was famous. "My Lord of Ely, when I was last in Holborn I saw good strawberries in your garden there; I do beseech you send for some of them." In the reign of Elizabeth, Sir Christopher Hatton was the owner of Ely Place. Except a cluster of houses,--Ely Rents,--standing on Holborn, the land round about this great estate seems to have been unbuilt upon. Sir Christopher, who rose to be Elizabeth's lord chancellor, was a striking looking man and a graceful dancer. He captivated the queen, who was very susceptible to manly beauty. The state papers in the Record Office, it is said, disclose her fond and foolish correspondence with him. In Milton's lifetime, Lady Hatton--a gay and wealthy widow--was wooed and won by the famous Sir Edward Coke. But Hatton House saw many an open quarrel between the ill-matched pair. In the time of Charles I., a pageant almost unparalleled in magnificence was arranged in Ely Place. The redoubtable Prynne, who had preached against all such frivolities in the customary strong language of the time, had not yet lost his ears, as he did later, in the pillory. But his strictures had given offence at the court of Queen Henrietta Maria, who was minded to amuse herself with masques; consequently this famous masque came off. Mr. Lawes, the famous musician and friend of Milton, was set to composing music for the occasion. On an evening in 1633, when Milton was living at Horton, the magnificent procession wended its way through crowds of enthusiastic spectators toward Whitehall. One hundred gentlemen on the best horses that the stables of royalty and the nobility could offer, all clad in gold and silver, and each accompanied by a page and two lackeys carrying torches, were only one feature of the pageant; the others were some of them as odd as these were splendid. Tiny children, dressed like birds, rode on small horses; every beautiful or fantastic conceit imaginable was carried out, and the cost of the whole was no less than £21,000, a sum which meant far more in purchasing power than it does to-day. Some of the musicians, however, received £100 apiece--a fee quite satisfactory to many a prima donna in our time. No more characteristic part of Milton's London exists to-day than the various Inns of Court that lead north and south from Holborn. As the sightseer passes from the jostle and turmoil of the thoroughfare, he is transported in a moment into a silence and seclusion that remind one of a Puritan Sabbath. Quadrangle opens out of quadrangle, shut in by rows of unpretentious buildings, whose monotony is broken by Gothic chapels or Tudor dining-halls surmounted by carved cupolas. Occasionally a cloistered walk under low Tudor arches, or a group of highly ornate terra cotta chimneys is seen, as one wanders around the dim and shadowy passages. All at once a turn, and behold, here in the heart of the life of this six million people of the great overgrown metropolis, still stretch long reaches of greensward, locked safely from the intrusion of the public by their handsome wrought-iron gates. In Gray's Inn, to the north of Holborn, Francis Bacon wrote his "Novum Organum," which he published in 1620, when Milton was a schoolboy at St. Paul's, and when the Leyden Pilgrims in the _Mayflower_ landed on Plymouth Rock. The gardens of Gray's Inn, which Bacon set out with trees, became a fashionable promenade in Milton's old age. Pepys tells us that he took his wife there after church one Sunday, "to observe the fashions of the ladies, because of my wife's making some clothes." It was, in short, quite as much a dress parade as Fifth Avenue on Easter Sunday in New York. Lord Burleigh, Elizabeth's great minister, was, next to Bacon, the most eminent of the members of Gray's Inn. Its hall, which dates from 1560, is little inferior to any hall in all the Inns of Court. It has carved wainscoting, and a timber roof, and windows emblazoned with the arms of Lord Bacon and Lord Burleigh. In Milton's time, Gray's Inn marked the northern limit of the town, and all beyond it was green fields and country lanes. Therefore we now turn south and west to explore briefly the numerous other inns that must often have echoed to the steps of Milton when he lived almost within stone's throw of them. Dickens's description of the little Staple Inn gives the reader an exact impression of the place to-day: "Behind the most ancient part of Holborn, where certain gabled houses some centuries of age still stand looking on the public way, as if disconsolately looking for the Old Bourne that has long since run dry, is a little nook composed of two irregular quadrangles, called Staple Inn. It is one of those nooks, the turning into which, out of the clashing street, imparts to the relieved pedestrian the sensation of having put cotton in his ears and velvet soles on his boots. It is one of those nooks where a few smoky sparrows twitter on smoky trees, as though they called to each other, 'Let us play at country,' and where a few feet of garden mould and a few yards of gravel enable them to do that refreshing violence to their tiny understandings. Moreover, it is one of those nooks that are legal nooks; and it contains a little hall with a little lantern in its roof." Walking through the further quadrangle, and following the narrow street down past the towering, vulgar conglomeration of every incongruous architectural device,--the new Birkbeck Bank,--we enter presently the wide spaces of Lincoln's Inn. The style of buildings, whether new or old, is largely Tudor of the type of Hampton Court. The walls of red brick are inlaid with diagonal lines of darker bricks. The chapel, of Perpendicular Gothic, built by Inigo Jones, is raised on arches which leave a kind of open crypt below, where Pepys tells us he used to walk. The stained glass windows antedate Laud's time, and Laud is said to have wondered that the saints emblazoned on them escaped the "furious spirit" that was aroused against those "harmless, goodly windows" of his at Lambeth. At number 24 of the "Old Buildings," the secretary of Oliver Cromwell lived from 1645 to 1659, where his correspondence was discovered behind a false ceiling. The tradition that the Protector was overheard to discuss with him here about the kidnapping of the three little sons of Charles I. may be dismissed as mythical. Beside the noble brick gateway of Lincoln's Inn, which bore the date 1518, it is said that rare Ben Jonson, in his early days of poverty, was found working with a trowel in one hand and his Horace in the other, when some gentlemen, having compassion on him, as did Cimabue on the gifted child, Giotto, rescued him, and let loose the imprisoned genius who found Shakespeare for a friend, and the Abbey for his tomb. Of Furnivall's, Scroope's, and Barnard's Inns, and Thavie's, oldest of them all, we have no space to write. The characteristics of the four great inns are stated in the lines: "Gray's Inn for walks, Lincoln's Inn for wall, The Inner Temple for a garden, And the Middle for a hall." The modern sightseer finds, as probably Milton found, much more of interest in the two latter, which lie south of Fleet Street, than in all the others combined. Before crossing Fleet Street, mention should be made of Temple Bar, which was erected by Wren four years before Milton's death, and marked the transition from Fleet Street to the Strand. The "Old Cheshire Cheese" in the ancient and dingy Wine Office Court, which opens north from Fleet Street, probably was built a dozen years before Milton died. It was Doctor Johnson's restaurant, and his fame brings many customers to sit in his old seat, which is still carefully preserved. Between the Tower and Westminster stands half-way one little edifice more ancient than any other on that route. It is the little Temple Church of Norman and transitional design, which stands secluded from the traffic of the streets within a stone's throw of Temple Bar. Of its dimensions and manifold restorations, the ordinary guide-books say enough, and make a repetition unnecessary. The round church with its interesting arcade of grotesque, sculptured heads, and its rare proportions; the choir, "springing," as Hawthorne says, "as it were, in a harmonious and accordant fountain out of the clustered pillars that support its pinioned arches," are both a delight to every lover of the beautiful. Hardly more than a century after the Norman conquest we find the Knights Templars on this spot. The year after their removal here from Holborn in 1185, they built their Temple church, the finest of the four round churches that still remain in England. The choir, which is one of the most beautiful specimens of pure early English, was finished in 1240. In early times, the discipline of the knights was most severe. The Master himself scourged disobedient brethren within its walls, and on Fridays there were frequent public whippings within the church. In a narrow, penitential cell to be seen in the church walls, only four and a half feet long and two and a half wide, a disobedient brother is said to have been starved to death. The interesting recumbent figures clad in mail, upon the Temple floor, are not, as is popularly supposed, Knights Templars, but Associates of the Temple, who were only partly admitted to its great privileges. Shortly after the downfall of the Templars, the property passed into the hands of the Knights of St. John of Jerusalem, whose priory, as we remember, was burned by the wrathful men of Kent in Wat Tyler's rebellion. The knights leased it to the law students who belonged to the "King's Court." Therefore, when the rebels reached London, they poured down on the haunts of the Temple lawyers, carried off the books, deeds, and rolls of remembrance, and, in vengeance on the Knights Hospitallers, burned them in Fleet Street. So determined were these men, goaded by years of tyranny, to put an end to all the laws that had oppressed them. In later years, we find that the Temple church in the time of Henry VIII., and later still, of Milton and Ben Jonson, was used in term time for the students as a place for rendezvous. Discussions on legal questions sometimes waxed boisterous, and, as a contemporary said, as "noisy as St. Paul's." In Elizabeth's day the Middle Temple abandoned the old Templar arms--a red cross on a silver shield with a lamb bearing the sacred banner surmounted by a red cross--and substituted a flying Pegasus. Both of these emblems meet the visitor's eye as he winds through the labyrinthine passages of the old quadrangles, and comes at every step upon some spot rich with the associations of centuries. Of the well-known story of the origin of the Wars of the Roses within the Temple Gardens it is not necessary here to speak. An old print of Milton's later years shows the gardens of the Inner Temple laid out in many straight rows of trees, like apple-trees in orchards, which extended down to the wall that bordered the Thames. North, toward Fleet Street, rows upon rows of gabled houses, four stories in height, enclosed quadrangles and courts. The dining-halls, built in the Tudor period, stand as they stood when Spenser, in the generation before Milton, wrote of-- "those bricky towers, The which on Thames' broad back do ride, Where now the studious lawyers have their bowers; There whilom wont the Temple knights to bide Till they decayed through pride." The little Fountain in Fountain Court is dear to lovers of Dickens, for here Ruth Pinch tripped by with merry heart to meet her lover. In Queen Anne's time, a fountain of much loftier altitude sparkled and splashed here, and for aught we know made music when Milton and Shakespeare wandered within the Temple precincts. It was not until after Milton's birth that James I. in 1609 granted the whole property to the two societies of the Inner and Middle Temples; whereupon they presented his Majesty with a precious gold cup of great weight, which cup was esteemed by the monarch as one of his most valued treasures. When the king's daughter Elizabeth was married four years later, the Temple and Gray's Inn men gave a masque, which Sir Francis Bacon planned and executed. The bridal party came by water and landed at the foot of the Temple Gardens amid peals of the little cannon of that day, and with great pomp and merriment. The king gave a supper to the forty masquers. This masque, however, did not compare in splendour with the one given twenty years later, and already alluded to, which was planned by members of the Inns of Court meeting in Ely Place. In Milton's middle life the learned Selden, who died in 1654, was buried in the choir of the Temple church. Of him Milton writes that he is "one of your own now sitting in Parliament, the chief of learned men reputed in this land." When Milton was in his thirty-sixth year and had published his treatise on divorce, he writes of Selden, then in his sixtieth year, whose acquaintance he had probably made, and begged those who would know the truth to "hasten to be acquainted with that noble volume written by our learned Selden, of 'The Law of Nature and of Nations,' a work more useful and more worthy to be perused, whoever studies to be a great man in wisdom, equity, and justice, than all those decretals ... which the pontifical clerks have doted on." Of his well-known "Table Talk," Coleridge observes: "There is more weighty bullion sense in this book than I ever found in the same number of pages of any uninspired writer." One of the greatest names connected with the Temple is that of Richard Hooker, author of the famous "Ecclesiastical Polity." He was for six years Master of the Temple--a position which Izaak Walton, who wrote his life, says he accepted rather than desired. The interest in music in the seventeenth century is evinced by the fierce contest which lasted for a year, as to the organ which should be erected in this church. Two organs were put up by rivals. The great Purcell performed on one which was finally selected by Judge Jeffreys of the Inner Temple. He was a capital musician, and in his case at least the adage seemed disproved that "Music hath charms to soothe the savage breast." With the Restoration and the opening of the floodgates of luxury and licentiousness, which the stern Puritan had for twenty years kept in abeyance, the Temple renewed the banquets and merry-makings of an earlier day. At a continuous banquet which lasted half a month, the Earl of Nottingham kept open house to all London, and entertained all the great and powerful of the time. Fifty servants waited on Charles II. and his company, while twenty violins made merry music at the feast. The Great Fire of 1666 ceased ere it reached the Temple church, but it was not stopped until many sets of chambers and title-deeds of a vast number of valuable estates had perished. Another fire only a dozen years later destroyed much more of the establishment which Milton knew. Of the Inner Temple Hall little exists to-day that his eyes rested on. But the stately Middle Temple Hall, built in 1572, still stands, and is one of the best specimens of Elizabethan architecture that London boasts. The open roof of hammer-beam design, with pendants, is especially characteristic of the work of that period. The screen is an elaborate one of Renaissance work, more interesting for its age and associations than for its conformity to true principles of art. This famous hall witnessed the performance of Shakespeare's "Twelfth Night" in 1601. The same strong, oak tables of the days of Bacon, Coke, and Jonson still stretch from end to end. Viewed from the western dais, the portraits, armour, and rich windows combine with the massive furniture and carved screen to present a scene of sober richness hardly equalled outside of a few dining-halls of Oxford and Cambridge which belong to that same period. Among the eminent men of the Middle Temple whose lives Milton's life touched were Sir Walter Raleigh, John Pym, Ireton,--Cromwell's son-in-law,--Evelyn, Lord Chancellor Clarendon, and many others of equal note in their day. Only one who has delved long in the biography and literature of this great age can realise the stupendous scholarship of the men of this period,--Coke, Selden, Bacon, Newton, Milton, and their contemporaries across the Channel, Grotius, Spinoza, and Galileo,--who, with the men of action of their day, make the century in which they lived one of the most significant since time began. What period since the Golden Age of Greece can match their achievements? Where on earth since the days of Periclean eloquence and wisdom in Athens could be found one spot where so much genius and learning had its centre as in the England into which Milton was born, and in which he lived for two-thirds of a century? "We are apt," says Lowell, "to wonder at the scholarship of the men of three centuries ago and at a certain dignity of phrase that characterises them. They were scholars because they did not read so many things as we. They had fewer books, but those were of the best. Their speech was noble, because they lunched with Plutarch and supped with Plato." Of the long list of eminent men who studied here in the century after Milton, perhaps none was more akin to him in scholarship than the learned Blackstone; none who more deeply understood his Puritan seriousness than Cowper; none who in boldness, love of liberty, and justice more resembled him than Edmund Burke. Fifty years before Milton's birth, as Aggas's old map of 1562 gives evidence, London had extended but a little way beyond the city walls and the Strand. But in Elizabeth's prosperous age, noble mansions and extensive gardens began to replace the fields, commons, and pastures that stretched westward from St. Martin's Lane. One of the busiest spots in modern London, that is, Covent Garden, begins to come into prominence in London history just as Milton reached early manhood. For three centuries before his time the abbots of Westminster had owned "fair spreading pastures" here, now all included in the general name of "Long Acre." Part of this they are thought to have used for the burial of their dead. In Aggas's old map, a brick wall enclosed all but the southern side where the houses and enclosures separated it from the Strand. The property belonged to John Russell, Earl of Bedford, to whom it was given by the Crown in 1552, at which time it had a yearly value of less than £7. To-day his successor holds one of the richest rentals in the world. In 1631 a square was formed, and the famous architect Inigo Jones built an open arcade about the north and east sides. Upon the west rose a Renaissance church by the design of the same artist, and the south was bordered by the garden of Bedford House and a grove or "small grotto of trees most pleasant in the summer season." The duke, in ordering the erection of the chapel, declared that he would go to no expense for it, and it might be a barn. "Then," said Inigo Jones, "it shall be the handsomest barn in England," and fulfilled his promise. It was the first important Protestant church erected in England. Only the portico of the original church remains, as the first building was destroyed by fire in 1795. In the popular dramas written in the last part of Milton's lifetime, constant allusion is made to the fashionable and even licentious companies that frequented the piazza of Covent Garden, and it is safe to say that it was never at any time a haunt of the serious-minded Puritan. The poet Gay, writing in the next generation after Milton, thus describes the Covent Garden that he knew: "Where Covent Garden's famous temple stands, That boasts the work of Jones' immortal hands, Columns with plain magnificence appear, And graceful porches lead along the square; Here oft my course I bend, when lo! from far I spy the furies of the football war: The 'prentice quits his shop to join the crew, Increasing crowds the flying game pursue." At first, peddlers of fruit and vegetables used the gravelled centre of the square for their booths, and gradually the market grew into a well-recognised establishment, and the open square was finally in 1830 covered over. In Milton's later years Covent Garden was fashionable as a residence for the nobility. Bishops, dukes, and earls had here their town houses, and among the titled residents was the painter, Sir Godfrey Kneller. [Illustration: SOMERSET HOUSE This view represents the house as it stood in Milton's boyhood, previous to the alterations by Inigo Jones. Adjoining it is the Savoy, and immediately behind it is the only view extant of Exeter House. _From an ancient painting in Dulwich College._] The palace on the Thames known as "Somerset House" was in Milton's lifetime a magnificent structure; built in 1544-49, it was from the time of Elizabeth to 1775 a residence much favoured by royalty. Pepys tells us in 1662: "Indeed it is observed that the greatest court nowadays is there." It was then the residence of the queen mother, whose rooms he describes as "most stately and nobly furnished," and he remarks upon the echo on the stairs, "which continues a voice so long as the singing three notes, concords one after another, they all three shall sound in concert together a good while most pleasantly." The site occupied an area of six hundred feet from east to west and five hundred from north to south. The present large edifice, which was erected on the site of the old one, demolished in 1775, is used for many important public purposes. CHAPTER XIV. WHITEHALL.--WESTMINSTER ABBEY Scotland Yard, the headquarters of the Metropolitan Police, discloses in its cramped and dingy quarters little if anything that remains of the time when Milton lived within its precincts. In the days when he dwelt here and assisted Cromwell as his Latin secretary, some remnants of the former palace of the Scottish kings, which once had occupied this site, were still to be seen. Hard by at one time lived both the greatest architects of that age of building, Jones and Wren. From Scotland Yard to Cannon Row, Westminster, there extended in Milton's lifetime the stately old palace of Whitehall, built in the Tudor style of Hampton Court. A writer in the last days of Queen Elizabeth tells us that it was truly royal; enclosed on one side by the Thames, on the other by a park which connects it with St. James's, another royal palace. He speaks of an immense number of swans,--birds favoured by royalty then as now,--which floated on the salty bosom of the tidal Thames as now they do upon its sweeter waters at Runnymede and Windsor. He also mentions that deer were numerous. An open way led through the palace grounds from Charing Cross to Westminster, which, although shut in by gates at either end, was an open thoroughfare. When Cardinal Wolsey owned Whitehall, it was known as "York Place," and did not receive the former title until Henry VIII. had taken possession of it. Here the voluptuous monarch visited his great rival in magnificence, and at a masque within these walls cast covetous eyes upon fair Anne Boleyn. Within these richly tapestried and stately halls a few months later, the "little great lord cardinal" bade a long farewell to all his greatness, and with a heavy heart entered his barge at the foot of Whitehall stairs. Henry added many features to his new possessions, among others a stately gateway of three stories with mullioned windows and octagonal towers designed by Holbein. Sir Thomas More at Chelsea had discovered the merits of this artist, and there presented him to the king, who was a clever connoisseur in art as well as wives. It was in Whitehall that Hans Holbein painted the well-known portrait of the straddling monarch. From the advent of that shrewd politician, great sovereign, yet vain and silly woman, Elizabeth, Whitehall became definitely the seat of royalty, though the Tower theoretically remained so. The library of this learned woman was well filled with books, not only English, but French, Latin, Greek, and Italian. Masques, tournaments, and every form of gorgeous entertainment, from Wolsey's time to that of William III., made money flow like water in Whitehall, except during the short domination of the Puritan party. James I., upon the burning of the Banquet Hall in 1615, determined to commission Inigo Jones, not only to build a new one, but to build a whole new palace, of which this hall was but the fortieth part. The Banquet Hall is in the Palladian style of architecture, and is 111 feet in length, and half as great in width and height. Its ceiling is decorated with pictures by Rubens, painted on canvas and sent from abroad. They represent the apotheosis of James I. and scenes from the life of Charles I. The original plan, which was not carried out, was to have included a number of mural paintings by Van Dyck, which should represent the history and ceremonies of the Order of the Garter. The palace was planned to cover the whole space from the Thames to St. James's Park, and from Charing Cross to Westminster. In Milton's time of residence in Whitehall upon the south was the Bowling Green, and north of it the Privy Gardens. The front consisted of the existing Banquet Hall,--the only part of the plan of Inigo Jones that ever materialised,--the gateways, and a row of low gabled buildings. Behind these were three courts or quadrangles. East of the Banquet Hall were a row of offices, the Great Hall or Presence Chamber, and the Chapel and private rooms of the king and queen. The art treasures and library were in the "Stone Gallery," which ran along the east side of the Privy Garden. The magnificence which was displayed at Whitehall in Milton's early boyhood may be perceived from the pomp and luxury of George Villiers, afterward Duke of Buckingham, when he came to make his fortune at the court of James I. "It was common with him at any ordinary dancing to have his cloaths trimmed with great diamonds; hatbands, cockades, and earrings to be yoked with great and manifold knots of pearls--in short, to be manacled, fettered, and imprisoned in jewels, insomuch that at his going over to Paris in 1625, he had twenty-seven suits of cloaths made, the richest that embroidery, silk, velvet, gold, and gems could contribute; one of which was a white, uncut velvet, set all over, both suit and cloak, with diamonds valued at fourscore thousand pounds, besides a great feather stuck all over with diamonds; as were also his sword, girdle, hatband, and spurs." He drove in a coach with six horses, and was carried sometimes in a sedan-chair, which mode of conveyance then was new and caused much outcry against the using of men as beasts of burden. We have already alluded to the famous masque, which was planned by members of the Inns of Court at Ely Place, and carried out in 1633 to please the queen--an entertainment so unique in its splendour as to be referred to in every account of Whitehall. But the palace is chiefly notable, not for scenes of gaiety, but for that mournful sight which struck terror to the breast of every European monarch, and horrified every believer in the divine right of kings. On the 27th of January, 1648-49, the death sentence was passed upon Charles I., of whom a few months later one of his followers wrote: "Great Charles, thou earthly god, celestial man,... Thy heavenly virtues angels should rehearse, It is a theam too high for human verse." Cromwell hesitated long before he signed the death warrant. If banishment of the king could have secured their rights to Englishmen, gladly would he have urged a milder sentence. But with the king alive, he felt there was no surety of peace or justice, and after painful hesitation he set his seal to the death warrant. Says Masson: "At the centre of England was a will that had made itself adamant, by express vow and deliberation beforehand, for the very hour which now had arrived. Fairfax had relented ... Vane had withdrawn from the work ... there was an agony over what was coming among many that had helped to bring it to pass. Only some fifty or sixty governing Englishmen, with Oliver Cromwell in the midst of them, were prepared for every responsibility and stood inexorably to their task. _They_ were the will of England now, and they had the army with them. What proportion of England besides went with them, it might be difficult to estimate. One private Londoner, at all events, can be named who approved thoroughly of their policy, and was ready to testify the same. While the sentenced king was at St. James's, there was lying on Milton's writing-table in his house in High Holborn at least the beginnings of a pamphlet on which he had been engaged during the king's trial, and in which in vehement answer to the outcry of the Presbyterians generally ... he was to defend all the recent acts of the army, Pride's Purge included, justify the existing governments of the army chiefs and the fragment of Parliament that assisted them, inculcate republican beliefs in his countrymen, and prove to them above all this proposition: '_That it is lawful, and hath been held so through all ages, for any who have the power, to call to account a tyrant_, or wicked king, and, after due conviction, to depose and put him to death, if the ordinary magistrate have neglected or denied to do it.' The pamphlet was not to come out in time to bear practically on the deed which it justified; but while the king was yet alive, it was planned, sketched, and in part written." Three days after his sentence the king bade farewell to his sobbing little son and daughter at St. James's Palace, and walked across the park between a line of soldiers to the stairs, which then were on the site of the present Horse Guards. From thence he crossed the street by a gallery, which led him past the scaffold draped in black, and into his own bedchamber in the Banquet Hall. From there, a little later, he passed through a window, or possibly an opening in the wall, upon the scaffold, with his attendant and Bishop Juxon. Two unknown men in masks and false hair had undertaken the grim and dangerous task of executioner. For among the throngs that filled the streets from Charing Cross down to Westminster there were many who would readily have torn them in pieces. The "martyr-king," as Jacobins still call him, now that the end of his arbitrary reign had come, behaved with dignity. His last words were: "To your power I must submit, but your authority I deny." From the roof of a neighbouring mansion, Archbishop Usher stood until he sickened at the sight and swooned, and was carried to his bed. Andrew Marvell's well-known lines upon this scene will be recalled: "While round the armed bands, Did clasp their bloody hands, He nothing common did or mean, Upon that memorable scene, Nor called the gods with vulgar spite, To vindicate his hopeless right; But with his keener eye, The axe's edge did try; Then bowed his kingly head, Down, as upon a bed." Strangely enough, it was on this very spot where his death forecast the dawning of that new principle of government of the people, by the people, for the people, which his whole nature loathed, that London had seen the beginnings of the civil strife. Here a company of the citizens, "returning from Westminster, where they had been petitioning quietly for justice, were set upon by some of the court as they passed Whitehall, in the which tumult divers were hurt, and one or more slain just by the Banqueting House." The regicides, who felt their bloody deed to be a sad necessity for England's safety, had no desire to wreak a mean revenge upon the body of the king. Unlike those of many far nobler men who had died as "traitors," his body was not dishonoured, but was treated with due respect. It was embalmed, and lay for days under a velvet pall at St. James's Palace, where crowds came to see it. The authorities objected to his burial in Westminster Abbey, as the place was too public, and crowds might gather there. But they accorded him a burial in St. George's Chapel, Windsor, whither his body was taken in a hearse drawn by six horses and followed by four mourning coaches. His coffin was placed beside that of Henry VIII. within the choir. The next month after the death of Charles, the Parliament voted the use of a large part of Whitehall to Cromwell. Every Monday he dined with all his officers above the captain's rank. Milton, as his Latin secretary, and Andrew Marvell must have been often at his board, and Waller, his kinsman, and perhaps the youthful Dryden. He was a great lover of music and entertained those who were skilful in any form of art. It is through Cromwell that England owns to-day the Raphael cartoons at Kensington. He purchased many other of the paintings which had belonged to the magnificent collection of Charles I. and had been sold. Here his old mother died, and here in 1658, on a wild August day, amid the tumult of a storm that raged and howled over a large part of England, the great heart of the Protector ceased to beat. On the day that he lay dying, a lad of fifteen years, named Isaac Newton, turned the violence of the storm to his account by jumping first with the wind and then against it, and computing its force by the difference of the distances. As the dying Oliver approached his end, he was much in prayer; an attendant has recorded some of these last utterances in which he commended God's people to the keeping of the Almighty: "Give them," he prayed, "consistency of judgment, one heart, and mutual love; and go on to deliver them and with the work of reformation; and make the name of Christ glorious in the world. Teach those who look too much on thy instruments, to depend more upon thyself. Pardon such as desire to trample upon the dust of a poor worm, for they are thy people too." Probably never by any master of Whitehall was such a sincerely devout and magnanimous petition raised to heaven. Of the decapitation of his dead body and its subsequent history, when Charles II. was able to wreak his vengeance, we need not speak. Neither need we rehearse the well-known record of the dissolute monarch who on the Restoration set up his profligate court at Whitehall. Of the last hours of Charles II. Evelyn paints a loathsome picture: "I can never forget the inexpressible luxury and profaneness, gaming, and all dissoluteness, and as it were total forgetfulness of God (it being Sunday evening) which I was witness of: the king sitting and toying with his concubines, a French boy singing love songs in that glorious gallery, whilst about twenty of the great courtiers and other dissolute persons were at basset around a large table, a bank of at least two thousand pounds in gold before them.... Six days after all was in the dust." In the reign of William III. two fires, in 1691 and 1697, consumed all of the palace except the Banquet Hall of Inigo Jones. [Illustration: WESTMINSTER ABBEY AS MILTON KNEW IT _From an old engraving._] The Westminster Abbey that Milton knew, unlike the old St. Paul's of his day, was indeed a house of God, and was not defiled with the intrusion of hucksters and dandies and the bustle of the Exchange. Its lofty walls, ungrimed by smoke, rose fair and stately; the present towers of the west front were then unbuilt, and its mass presented a long, unbroken, horizontal sky-line. Under its high, embowered roof, Milton may have seen less warmth of colour than we, for the stained glass is modern, but he was spared the majority of the pretentious and tasteless monuments which crowd the transepts and the side aisles to-day, and for the most part are in bulk in inverse proportion to their artistic merit, and to the importance of those whom they honour. Perhaps there was no man in England to whose sensitive soul the solemn minster spoke more eloquently. With a mind richly stored in history, and with the artist's eye and prophet's soul, every stone of this most venerable and beautiful of English churches must have been dear to him. It is not within the scope of this little volume even to touch upon the romantic history of this centre of English life or to examine its noble architecture, but only to indicate what may most have touched the mind and heart of the great scholar and patriot-reformer who often passed its portals on his walk from Petty France to Whitehall. In the south aisle of the nave are buried two ladies whom Milton probably knew. They are the two wives of Cromwell's secretary--Sir Samuel Morland, the inventor of the speaking trumpet and improver of the fire-engine. The inscriptions by their husband appear in Hebrew, Greek, Ethiopic, and English. In the north aisle is a curious monument of 1631 to Jane Hill. At the rear of the lady's figure is a skeleton in a winding-sheet. Among the memorials of his contemporaries which must have peculiarly interested Milton was the little slab in the nave marked, "O rare Ben Jonson," which slab was later removed to the Poets' Corner. Beneath a modern paving stone, which now covers the spot, in an upright posture was placed the coffin of the poet who in his last days of poverty, in 1637, asked Charles I. for eighteen inches of square ground in Westminster Abbey. He died in a house between the Abbey and St. Margaret's Church. Newton's tomb near by Milton never saw, as the youth of the man of science covered only Milton's later years. On entering the south transept, the first monument that must have claimed his interest was that of Camden, the learned antiquary. Just before going to Cambridge, in 1623, Milton may have attended the funeral of this man, whose great work, "Britannia" added new lustre to Elizabeth's glorious reign. Camden did for England what Stow did for London, and preserved the knowledge of the nation of that day. His bust, in the rich costume of his time, presents a speaking likeness, and with his portrait in the National Gallery make the eminent scholar seem a personality as real as Raleigh's. Ben Jonson, who was one of his pupils when he was head master of Westminster School, lovingly ascribes to him the source of his own inspiration: "Camden, most reverend head, to whom I owe All that I am in acts, all that I know." Camden wrote in 1600 the first guide-book of the Abbey, which, being in Latin, would have served Milton better than it would the modern visitor. In an unmarked grave lies the body of Richard Hakluyt, the great geographer, who died in 1616. Just beyond Camden's tomb is that of the great scholar, Casaubon. On its front are plainly scratched the initials of the gentle angler, Izaak Walton, by himself, with the date, 1658. A few feet distant on the pavement a slab marks the grave of the "old, old, very old" man who died in 1635 at the reputed age of one hundred and fifty-two. "Old Parr," as he was known, is said to have been born in 1483, and married his first wife at the age of eighty, and his second in 1605, when he was one hundred and twenty-two years of age. The Earl of Arundel, determined to exhibit this "piece of antiquity," had him carried by litter from Shrewsbury and presented to Charles I. On being questioned by the king about religious matters he cautiously replied that he thought it safest to hold whatever religion was held by the reigning monarch, "for he knew that he came raw into the world, and thought it no point of wisdom to be broiled out of it," an opinion quite to be expected of a man who had lived through the reigns of all the Tudors. Further on, within the Poets' Corner, two monuments especially must have been dear to the author of "Comus" and "Lycidas." One marks the grave of Chaucer, who lies under a beautiful Gothic canopy erected in 1558, after the removal of his body to this spot; the other marks that of Edmund Spenser, who died in 1598 in King Street, hard by, "for lacke of bread." Yet Dean Stanley tells us that "his hearse was attended by poets, and mournful elegies and poems, with the pens that wrote them, were thrown into his tomb. What a funeral was that at which Beaumont, Fletcher, Jonson, and, in all probability, Shakespeare, attended! What a grave in which the pen of Shakespeare may be mouldering away!" Of the author of the "Faërie Queene" Milton himself said: "Our sage and serious Spenser, whom I dare be known to think a better teacher than Scotus or Aquinas." Near by to Spenser's tomb is the monument to Ben Jonson, at some distance from his grave, as has just been said, and close at hand are the memorials to Dryden, Drayton, Cowley, and Francis Beaumont, Milton's famous contemporaries. If the poet could have looked forward two generations he might have seen his own counterfeit presentment in marble upon these walls. By that time the royalist feeling against him had abated, and when in 1737 this belated recognition of his greatness was placed upon the wall, Doctor Gregory remarked to Doctor Johnson: "I have seen erected in the church a bust of that man whose name I once knew considered as a pollution of its walls." After Shakespeare's death there was a strong desire to remove his bones from Stratford to the Abbey, upon which Milton and Jonson both protested. The former wrote: "What needs my Shakespeare for his honoured bones The labour of an age in pilèd stones?" and Jonson more emphatically exclaimed: "My Shakespeare rise! I will not lodge thee by Chaucer or Spenser, or bid Beaumont lie A little further on to make thee room; Thou art a monument without a tomb, And art alive still while thy book doth live And we have wits to read and praise to give." In St. Benedict's Chapel may be noted the graves of Bishop Bilson, Doctor Tunson, Sir Robert Anstruther, and Sir Robert Ayton,--famous men of Milton's time. In St. Edmund's Chapel, farther on, Milton as a lad of fourteen may have seen in 1622 the young man interred whose tomb is surmounted by a beautiful figure of a youth in Roman armour. Hard by under a lofty canopy lie two notable recumbent figures, which mark the grave of the Earl and Countess of Shrewsbury, and show the style of costume of Milton's boyhood years. Among the monuments of his contemporaries in the chapel of Henry VII. that must have awakened a sensation of disgust in the mind of the Puritan poet, was that of the Duke of Buckingham, whose barbaric splendour of attire has already been noted, and who was murdered in 1628. Near by his huge and ostentatious tomb, so characteristic of the man whom it commemorates, lie under the pavement the graves of his king, James I., and his consort. We may be sure that the graves which most interested Milton here were those of Oliver Cromwell, his mother and sister, and his daughter, Elizabeth Claypole, his son-in-law, Ireton, and Bradshaw, who was president of the tribunal which condemned Charles I. The Genoese envoy of the time thus described Cromwell's death and burial in his despatch to the Council of Genoa: "He left the world with unimaginable valour, prudence, and charity, and more like a priest or monk than a man who had fashioned and worked so mighty an engine so few years.... His body was opened and embalmed, and little trace of disease found therein; which was not the cause of his death, but rather the continual fever which came upon him from sorrow and melancholy at Madame Claypole's death." Cromwell's body lay in state at Somerset House, and was thence escorted to the tomb by an immense throng of mourners, which included the city companies. "The effigy or statue of the dead, made most lifelike in royal robes, crown on head, in one hand the sceptre and in the other the globe, was laid out on a bier richly adorned and borne hither in a coach made for the purpose, open on every side, and adorned with many plumes and banners." It is said that Cromwell especially loved the Abbey, and instituted the custom of commemorating English worthies within its walls. Admiral Blake was the first to receive this honour in 1657. "Cromwell caused him to be brought up by land to London in all the state that could be; and to encourage his officers to adventure their lives that they might be pompously buried, he was with all solemnity possible interred in the Chapel of Henry VII., among the monuments of the kings." Who can doubt that Milton stood in sightless grief beside these tombs, before the desecration of "Oliver's Vault?" Only the body of Cromwell's daughter was left in peace, and still remains. His mother and sister were reburied in the green, and the reader already knows what was the vile treatment of the other bodies. It is said that to the royalist dean of Westminster, Thomas Sprat, we owe the refusal of interment in the Abbey to the "regicide" John Milton. Had he been buried later where Cromwell's body had lain, he too might have been thrust forth. It was this dean who esteemed Cowley as a superior poet to Milton, and called the former the "Pindar, Horace, and Virgil of England." In the south aisle lie General George Monck and Elizabeth, Queen of Bohemia, eldest daughter of James I., whose marriage we have seen was celebrated by a merry masque within the Temple grounds. This was the English princess for whom a part of Heidelberg Castle was built; she was mother of Prince Rupert, whose strenuous efforts to save the fortunes of his uncle, Charles I., did not endear him to Milton and his friends. In this chapel lies a wretched victim of her cousin, James I. This is the Lady Arabella Stuart, whose marriage so displeased the king that he immured her in the Tower, where, bereft of reason by her miseries, she died when Milton was a boy. At the eastern end of the north aisle of the chapel of Henry VII. is a baby's cradle-tomb, which has been the frequent theme of verse. Standing beside the little marble form of this daughter of James I., Milton may have felt a pang of heart as he thought of his own little one buried in St. Margaret's, but a stone's throw distant. Of those who were associated with Milton's public work at Whitehall, was Admiral Edward Popham, general of the Fleet of the Republic under Cromwell, who died in 1651. He was buried at the state's expense in the chapel of Henry VII., but after the Restoration his monument, on which is his figure full size in armour, was removed to John the Baptist's Chapel and the inscription on it was erased. Opposite his tomb is the grave of Robert Devereux, third Earl of Essex, son of Elizabeth's unhappy favourite, who, after serving King Charles, became General-in-Chief of the Parliamentarian army in 1642. He died in 1646, and was buried with high honours by the Independents. In St. John's Chapel rests the body of the wife of Colonel Scot, one of the judges of Charles I., who was executed at Charing Cross. At the foot of the steps which lead to the chapel of Henry VII., in 1674,--the same year in which Milton died,--was laid under a nameless stone the body of the famous Earl of Clarendon, who was born in 1608-9, the same year in which the poet was born. This famous Tory, the historian of the Civil Wars and Restoration, was perhaps more responsible than any other man for creating that popular detestation of the name of Cromwell which prevailed until the present generation had been better instructed by less partisan critics. After two hundred years his name was inscribed upon the stone that covers his ashes. Within the Abbey rest twenty of his relatives and descendants, among them his royal granddaughters, Queen Mary and Queen Anne. Not far distant, in the north ambulatory was interred in 1643 the body of the redoubtable John Pym, nicknamed "King Pym" by the Royalists, for as Clarendon himself said: "He seemed to all men to have the greatest influence upon the House of Commons of any man, and in truth I think he was at that time (1640), and some months after, the most popular man and the most able to do hurt that hath lived in any time."[2] Two years after Pym's burial, there was laid close to his grave the body of William Strode, one of the five members demanded by Charles I. when he made his famous entry into the House of Commons with an armed force in 1641-2. The bodies of both were exhumed in 1661, and flung with others of their compatriots into a pit outside the Abbey walls. There is every reason to assume that Milton would have attended the funerals of both of these men. A man whom he must have known well by reputation, Doctor Peter Heylin, who died in 1662, is buried beneath the sub-dean's seat in the north aisle of the choir. He was Laud's chaplain, and wrote a life of the great archbishop; under Charles I. he had for a time supreme authority in the Abbey and superintended its repairs. During the Civil War he suffered and was deprived of his property, but on the accession of Charles II., he was reinstated in the Abbey. It is interesting to note that the coronation chair of oak, decorated with false jewels, which has been used at coronations since the time of Edward I., has never left the Abbey except when it was taken to Westminster Hall, when Oliver Cromwell was there installed as Lord Protector. A few of the scenes that the great minster witnessed in Milton's time may be alluded to. The funeral of James I. in 1625 was the most magnificent that England had ever seen. The hearse was fashioned by Inigo Jones. The sermon was two hours in length. Mourning cloaks were given to nine thousand persons, and the rest of the outlay was proportionate. No wonder that Charles I. within two months sent word to the Commons that "the ordinary revenue is clogged with debts, and exhausted with the late king's funeral and other expenses of necessity and honour." The Abbey suffered somewhat from the Puritan hatred of images and "idolatry," during the Commonwealth. By order of Parliament the sacred vestments were seized and burned. Of the curious wax effigies of monarchs who antedated Milton's death, only one is still preserved. It is that of Charles II. and is robed in red velvet with collar and ruffles of real point lace. For a long time it stood above his grave in the chapel of Henry VII. These waxworks used to be publicly exhibited, after which the cap was passed around for contributions. Milton, in his boyhood, may have gazed in wonder at the gorgeous figure of Elizabeth arrayed as a later one still is to-day, in her own jewelled stomacher and velvet robe embroidered with gold; doubtless he found a visit to the effigies of Westminster Abbey as entertaining as a modern boy finds a visit to Madame Tussaud's to-day. From the time of Edward I. it was customary to make effigies of kings. Up to the time of Henry V. the embalmed bodies and not the effigies were displayed upon the funeral car. At first these figures were made of wood, with perhaps the faces and hands of plaster. These were set up in the church for a season, after which many of them were preserved in presses standing in a row, and shown as has been described. In Milton's time it seems evident that the list included Edward I. and Eleanor, Edward III. and Philippa, Henry V. and Katherine, Henry VII. and Elizabeth of York, James I. and Anne of Denmark, and Henry, Prince of Wales. It is probable that Sir Christopher Wren's plan for the completion of the Abbey would have materially added to its beauty. His scheme is said to have included a graceful Gothic spire rising from the low central tower. The incongruous towers of the west front were chiefly due to Hawksmore. CHAPTER XV. THE PRECINCTS OF THE ABBEY.--WESTMINSTER PALACE.--ST. MARGARET'S During the Civil War, the spot within Westminster which most interested every reformer was that where, for over five years, the famous Westminster Assembly gathered. During that time this body of one hundred and forty-nine prelates and learned men held over fifteen hundred sessions, at first in the chapel of Henry VII., and later in the warmer and cosier apartment known as the "Jerusalem Chamber." This room was in the present generation occupied by the scholars who for years laboured together on the revised version of the Bible. The Assembly was called by Parliament "to be consulted with by them on the settling of the government and liturgy of the Church, and for the vindicating and clearing of the doctrine of the Church of England from false aspersions and interpretations." In that age, when religious questions were paramount, the work that devolved upon these men demanded insight, honesty, and great courage. The members, for the most part, were elected from the different counties and merely confirmed by Parliament; but to these, ten members of the House of Lords and twenty members of the House of Commons were added. Only those questions could be considered that should be proposed by either or both houses of Parliament. Four shillings a day for his expenses was allowed each clerical member, with freedom from all other duties except attendance on the Assembly. Among the one hundred and forty-nine were several members, like Archbishop Usher, who were defenders of Episcopacy. In that age no modern questions as to inspiration disturbed the minds of devout men, but church government was to them a matter of such serious moment as the modern mind can scarcely understand. As the results of these prolonged and serious conferences, Dean Stanley says we have the "Directory, the Longer and Shorter Catechism, and that famous Confession of Faith which, alone within these Islands, was imposed by law on the whole kingdom; and which, alone of all Protestant Confessions, still, in spite of its sternness and narrowness, retains a hold on the minds of its adherents to which its fervour and its logical coherence in some measure entitle it." During Milton's lifetime the Chapter House, which had become public property after the Dissolution, was used for storing public documents, and here he may have seen the ancient Domesday Book, which until within fifty years was treasured there. At the time of the Commonwealth, the ancient chamber close by the Chapter House, and known as the "Pyx," held the regalia, and was broken open by the officers of the House of Commons, in order to make an inventory, when the Church authorities refused to surrender the keys. The Pyx no longer holds the regalia, which, after the Restoration, was transferred to the Tower. The keys of its double doors are seven, and are deposited with seven distinct officers of the Exchequer. The door is lined with human skins. Within the cloisters Henry Lawes, the musician, was buried in 1662. Near by the Abbey stands Westminster School, founded early in the sixteenth century upon the site of the ancient monastery. The dormitory has been turned into a noble schoolroom ninety-six feet in length. Camden, the famous antiquary, was once master of the school, and among its famous pupils whose lives touched Milton's, were the poets, George Herbert, Cowley, who published poems while he was at school here, and Dryden. Among men famous in other walks of life were the great geographer, Hakluyt, and Sir Christopher Wren. Hakluyt, who died the same year that Shakespeare died, in 1616, tells us that his interest in discovery and in naval science began when he was a Queen's Scholar in "that fruitful nurserie." At Oxford he pursued his favourite studies, and read "whatsoever printed or written discoveries or voyages he found extant in Greeke, Latine, Italian, Spanish, Portugall, French, or Englishe languages." Evelyn says in his "Diary:" On "May 13th, 1661, I heard and saw such exercises at the election of scholars at Westminster Schools to be sent to the university, in Latin, Greek, Hebrew, and Arabic, in themes and extempry verses, as wonderfully astonished me in such youths, with such readiness and wit, some of whom not above twelve or thirteen years of age." Here Milton may have witnessed, on a Christmas-tide, a play of Plautus or of Terence, given by the boys of Westminster according to their annual custom, which is still maintained. In the seventeenth century, the double Gatehouse of Westminster, which once stood on the site of the Royal Aquarium of to-day, held as prisoner Sir Walter Raleigh, who passed the last night of his life here. The night before his execution his cousin called on him; Raleigh tried to relieve his sadness with pleasantry, when his cousin remonstrated with the words, "Sir, take heed you go not too much upon the brave hand, for your enemies will take exceptions at that." "Good Charles," replied Raleigh, "give me leave to be merry, for this is the last merriment that ever I shall have in this world, but when I come to the last part, thou shalt see I will look on it like a man," and even so he did. When he had reached the scaffold in Palace Yard the next day, and had taken off his gown and doublet, he asked the executioner to show him his axe. When he had taken it in his hands he felt along the edge, and smiling said: "This is a sharp medicine, but it is a physician for all diseases." Then he granted his forgiveness to the sheriff who knelt before him. When his head was on the block, before the fatal blow, he said: "So the heart be right, it is no matter which way the head lies." So perished the bold discoverer and coloniser, the author and gallant knight, when ten-year-old John Milton lived in Bread Street. Near the spot where his body rests in the church of St. Margaret's, Westminster, now rises a memorial window presented by Americans and inscribed by Lowell in remembrance of Raleigh's connection with America: "The New World's sons, from England's breasts we drew Such milk as bids remember whence we came; Proud of her past, wherefrom our future grew, This window we inscribe with Raleigh's name." In this prison, afterward, John Hampden and Sir John Eliot were confined, and Richard Lovelace, who was imprisoned for his devotion to Charles I., wrote the well-known lines: "Stone walls do not a prison make, Nor iron bars a cage; Minds innocent and quiet take That for a hermitage." Where Westminster Palace Hotel now stands, in the ancient Almonry of the Abbey, Caxton set up his press, and in 1474 printed his first book--the "Game and Play of Chess." In Milton's day, a grim old fortress marked the "Sanctuary," or place of refuge for criminals. From the sacred shelter of this retreat the mother of the little Edward V. surrendered him with sad misgiving to his cruel uncle, who carried him to the Tower. This spot was a resort for persecuted saint and guilty sinner. Within its walls he was as secure as was the ancient Hebrew in his city of refuge. When Milton lived in Petty France and passed from there to Whitehall by the Sanctuary, it had fallen into disrepute and only the most abandoned sought its shelter. The Sanctuary at Westminster was only one of thirty known to have been contemporaneous with it in the monasteries of England before the Dissolution. The magnificent royal palace of Westminster, which was built by Edward the Confessor, and improved by William the Conqueror, had largely disappeared in Milton's time. The Great Hall and the crypt under the chapel of St. Stephen are almost all that now remain, but Milton, in addition to these, saw the chapel itself and its cloisters, and the famous "Star Chamber" and "Painted Chamber," which were preserved until the fire which burned the Houses of Parliament in 1834. Previous to the Dissolution, the Commons had sat within the ancient Chapter House of the Abbey, at an inconvenient distance from the House of Lords. Then they were transferred to St. Stephen's Chapel, an oblong building ninety feet in length and thirty in width, which had externally at each corner an octagonal tower. It was lighted by five windows on each side, between which its walls were supported by great buttresses. It had two stories, and the upper one was occupied by the House of Commons. These walls have echoed to the ringing words of Eliot, Hampden, Pym, Sir Harry Vane, and Cromwell, to Burke and Fox and Pitt, and the long line of valiant Englishmen who never confounded patriotism and loyalty to country with subserviency to the will of any fallible man whom chance had placed upon the nation's throne. Here Eliot, in sharp, emphatic words, which contrasted with the ponderous phraseology of the time, cried out against the gorgeously apparelled and arrogant Buckingham: "He has broken those nerves and sinews of our land, the stores and treasures of the king. There needs no search for it. It is too visible. His profuse expenses, his superfluous feasts, his magnificent buildings, his riots, his excesses, what are they but the visible evidences of an express exhausting of the state, a chronicle of his waste of the revenues of the Crown?... Through the power of state and justice he has dared ever to strike at his own ends." Bold words! which took more courage than to face the cannon's mouth, for his protest then and later meant to face a dungeon in the Tower, from which only death gave him release. But Eliot's words were a tonic to his fellows, and when they met two years later, in 1628, Sir Thomas Wentworth showed himself a worthy follower: "We must vindicate our ancient liberties," said he, "we must reinforce the laws made by our ancestors. We must set such a stamp upon them, as no licentious spirit shall dare hereafter to invade them." Of the Petition of Right, and the Remonstrance; of the dissolution of Parliament, and the eleven years when these walls were silent; of Charles's revival of Star Chamber trials to fill his empty exchequer by the fines, and the Parliamentary history of the Civil War, and all that centres around these walls which echoed with the eloquence of England's noblest statesmen, there is no space to speak. The Star Chamber was probably so named from being anciently ornamented with golden stars. It stood parallel with the river on the eastern side of Palace Yard and was formerly the council chamber of the police. It was a beautiful panelled room with mullioned windows. The lords who tried offences were bound by no law, but they created and defined the offences which they punished. Every penalty except death could be inflicted. In such tyrannies the Star Chamber could have been exceeded only by the terrible Council of Ten in Venice. One of the first deeds of the new Parliament of 1641 was to abolish the Star Chamber. That year a mob of six thousand citizens in Old Palace Yard had come armed with swords and clubs, and had seized the entrance to the House of Lords and called for justice against Lord Strafford. The Painted Chamber was named from its mural decorations, which antedated Milton's time at least three hundred years. It was strangely proportioned, eighty feet long, twenty broad, and fifty feet high. Here the Confessor died. Here was the trial of Charles I. when it was adjourned from Westminster Hall. Here his death warrant was signed, which is now preserved within the library of the House of Lords. Says Knight: "Amid all the misgovernment of the reign of Charles II., the rights of the House of Commons and its true position in the Constitution were recognised in a manner in which they had never been in the former days of the monarchy. Attempts were made to manage the Parliament, and also to govern without it; but when it was suffered to meet, its debates were nearly as free as they are at present, and took as wide a range as they have ever done since. The Commons for session after session during this reign discussed the question of excluding the heir presumptive to the throne, the king's own brother, and even passed a bill for that purpose. Would any approach to such an interference as that have been endured either by Elizabeth or James I.?... and this change, this gain had been brought about by the Long Parliament and the great Rebellion." In the time of Milton the pillory stood before Westminster Hall, and here he may have seen, on one of his trips from Horton in 1636, the stiff-necked Prynne branded on either cheek, and exposed with one ear cut off, according to the barbarous methods of the time, for writings which were supposed to have reflected on the queen. In those days the noble proportions of the hall were partly masked by neighbouring shops. The architecture and the long history of this famous hall of William Rufus are almost as familiar as those of Westminster Abbey, and therefore need little comment here. The story of Guy Fawkes and the sentence passed upon the conspirators here in 1606 was one of the first bits of English history that a boy born but two years later would have heard. In 1640, Charles I. and his queen, concealed behind the tapestry of a dark cabinet, listened to the trial of Strafford, which lasted eighteen days. Nine years later the king sat at his own trial beneath the banners of his troops, which had been taken at the battle of Naseby. When the clerk read the words: "Charles Stuart, as a tyrant, traitor, murderer," etc., the king is said to have laughed in the face of the court. In Pepys's diary we get a glimpse, a few years later, of the commercial uses to which this stately edifice had been degraded, for we find little booths and stalls for selling scarfs and trifles were ranged along the walls of the interior. More than a hundred years later, part of the hall seems to have been reserved for stalls, which presumably were removed for coronation days and the great functions, for which its stately proportions are so well fitted. The building is one of the most spacious edifices of stone whose roof is unsupported. The roof of Irish oak is said to be always free from spiders and insects. [Illustration: WESTMINSTER HALL Begun by William Rufus in 1097. Here William Wallace, Sir Thomas More, Sir Thomas Wyatt, Robert Devereux (Earl of Essex), Guy Fawkes, the Earl of Strafford, and Charles I. were condemned to death. The chief access to the House of Commons in Milton's lifetime was by an archway on the east side, through which Charles I. passed to arrest the Five Members. Here Cromwell, in 1653, wearing the royal purple, and holding a gold sceptre in one hand and a Bible in the other, was saluted as Lord Protector. _From an old engraving._] Close under the shadow of the towering Abbey lies the little church, St. Margaret's, which must have had peculiarly tender associations in Milton's mind. Here he buried his beloved second wife, whom, from Aldermanbury church, he had taken to his home in Petty France, near the Abbey, for one short happy year of married life. It is of her that he speaks in his beautiful sonnet beginning: "Methought my late espoused saint, Brought to me, like Alcestis, from the grave." The large memorial window to Milton at the west end of the church was in recent years presented by Mr. Childs of Philadelphia. This depicts numerous scenes from "Paradise Lost" and from Milton's life. He is represented as a youth visiting the aged Galileo, and as the old blind poet dictating his immortal lines to his two daughters. The inscription by Whittier expresses the thought and feeling not only of the New England poet, but of every American scholar: "The New World honours him whose lofty plea For England's freedom made her own more sure, Whose song immortal as his theme shall be Their common freehold while both worlds endure." Amongst the Puritans who preached here was the famous Richard Baxter, author of "The Saints' Rest," whose glum visage in the National Gallery reveals little of the true nobility of his character and of his well-ordered mind. The modern inscription by Lowell on Raleigh's memorial here has been already mentioned. The church is rich in monuments of figures clad in the fashions of Milton's time and that which just preceded it, the architectural accessories of which indicate the gradual deterioration of Renaissance decoration. The rare old glass of the chancel window is referred to in every guide-book, and its remarkable history need not be here detailed. In the reign of Charles I. fast-day sermons were preached here, and both houses of Parliament met here with the Assembly of Divines, and prayed before taking the covenant. CHAPTER XVI. LAMBETH PALACE.--ST. SAVIOUR'S--LONDON BRIDGE In Milton's day, London Bridge, over the narrowest part of the Thames, was the only bridge that spanned the silent highway between the Tower and Lambeth. The venerable pile of buildings which then, as now, was the chief point of interest on the southern bank, was usually reached by one of the many barges that plied up and down and across from shore to shore. In Milton's boyhood its gray towers had already marked for three centuries the residence of the Archbishops of Canterbury. It has now been the home of more than fifty primates. The student of English history will find no building, with the exception of the Tower and the Abbey, which brings him so closely into connection with the whole history of England as does Lambeth Palace. It lies low upon the site of an ancient marsh overflowed by the Thames at this, its greatest width, this side of London Bridge. As late as Milton's boyhood the shore between Lambeth Church and Blackfriars was a haunt of wild fowl and a royal hunting-ground. A grove stood then on the site of the long line of St. Thomas's Hospital. Lambeth Bridge, so called, was at that time simply a landing-place. As every schoolboy remembers, it was here that on a December night in 1688, Mary of Modena, the fair queen of James II., alighted on her flight from Whitehall, disguised as a washerwoman; under the shelter of the tower of Lambeth she cowered, awaiting the coach that was to rescue her, while in an agony of fear she embraced the parcel of linen which held concealed the infant who was to be known in history as the "Pretender." The visitor to Lambeth will find it worth his while to pause a few minutes before presenting his letter of permission to enter the palace, and spend the brief time in Lambeth Church, if only to see the quaint old window of the peddler and his dog, a memorial of the peddler who centuries since gave an almost worthless acre of land to Lambeth, from which it has since drawn large revenues. There is a peal of eight bells in the old gray tower--the music of the bells was one that our forefathers loved apparently more than other folk. "The English are vastly fond of great noises that fill the air," wrote Hentzner shortly before Milton's birth, "such as firing of cannon, beating of drums, and ringing of bells. It is common that a number of them who have got a glass in their heads do get up into some belfry, and ring bells for hours together, for the sake of exercise. Hence this country has been called 'the ringing island.'" In Milton's time the buildings of Lambeth were less extensive than they are to-day. Its beautiful, lofty gateway known as "Morton's," which was built in 1490, is of red brick with stone trimmings, and has an arched doorway under a large window in the middle portion. It is perhaps the largest and best specimen of the early Tudor work that now remains in England. It is flanked by two massive square towers five stories high. At this gate, from earliest times until recently, a dole of money, bread, and provisions was weekly given to thirty poor parishioners of Lambeth. In earlier times the hospitality that was offered was excessive and encouraged beggary. Stow tells us of the gifts of farthing loaves which amounted to the sum of £500 a year. At present the doles amount to about £200 a year and are given only to well-known persons. In addition to these doles, huge baskets of fragments from the three tables in the long dining-halls sufficed, as Strype tells us, "to fill the bellies of a great number of hungry people that waited at the gate." Some conception of the size of Cranmer's establishment may be gathered from the authentic list of his household: "Steward, treasurer, comptroller, gamators, clerk of the kitchen, caterer, clerk of the spicery, bakers, pantlers, yeomen of the horse, ushers, butlers of wine and ale, larderers, squilleries, ushers of the hall, porter, ushers of the chamber, daily waiters in the great chamber, gentlemen ushers, yeomen of the chamber, carver, sewer, cupbearer, grooms of the chamber, marshal groom ushers, almoner, cooks, chandler, butchers, master of the horse, yeomen of the wardrobe, and harbingers." Over such a rich and splendid household did the Establishment place the man above all others who was to be to England its highest embodiment of the spirit of the young Carpenter of Nazareth. To-day the Archbishop of Canterbury is given two residences, and a salary of £15,000, that he may keep up these establishments; that of the average curate is about £100. [Illustration: IN LAMBETH PALACE _From an old print._] The great hall, which to-day contains the library, is on the site of that of Boniface, who built the first in the thirteenth century. Archbishop Juxon, who attended Charles I. upon the scaffold, rebuilt the present edifice after the original model, which had been destroyed during the Commonwealth. One of the great treasures of this library is Caxton's "Chronicles of Great Britain," which was printed in 1480 at Westminster. The Mazarin Bible, the Life of Laud, with the autograph of Charles I., and many books and manuscripts of great rarity and value are also preserved here. The library is open to the public under proper regulations on five days in the week. Among the names of eminent men who have served as librarians over this small but precious library, none interests us more than that of John Richard Green, the historian of the English people. The chapel, built in the last half of the thirteenth century, is the oldest part that remains. An opening into Cranmer's ancient "parloir" is now the organ-loft. From the chancel one has a glimpse of the original beautiful ceiling. The wall pillars of Purbeck marble in the atrium are said to be one thousand years old. In this chapel two of the first American bishops were consecrated. The oak screen was erected by Archbishop Laud. This chapel contained the windows that were destroyed in the Civil Wars, which served as such a theme of controversy in Laud's trial. He testified as follows: "The first thing the Commons have in their evidence against me, is the setting up and repairing Popish images and pictures in the glass windows of my chapel at Lambeth, and amongst others the picture of Christ hanging on the cross between two thieves in the east window; of God the Father in the form of a little old man with a glory, striking Miriam with a leprosy; of the Holy Ghost descending in the form of a dove; and of Christ's Nativity, Last Supper, Resurrection, Ascension, and others.... To which I answer first, That I did not get these images up, but found them there before; Secondly, that I did only repair the windows which were so broken, and the chapel, which lay so nastily before that I was ashamed to behold, and could not resort to it but with some disdain, which caused me to repair it to my great cost; Thirdly, that I made up the history of these old broken pictures, not by any pattern in the mass book, but only by help of the fragments and remainders of them which I compared with the story." It is related that at a dinner of the domestics during Laud's primacy, the king's jester pronounced the grace, "Give great praise to God, but little Laud to the devil," for which jest he paid by long imprisonment. In the so-called "Lollards' Tower" at the west end of the chapel, the only part of the existing palace that is built of stone, is a niche in which was placed the image of St. Thomas à Becket, to which Dean Stanley tells us "the watermen of the Thames doffed their caps as they rode in their countless barges." The small room at the top of the tower is wainscoted with oak over an inch thick, upon which prisoners chained to its iron rings have carved words in early English and Latin. Through the oubliette in the floor dead prisoners were doubtless dropped into the Thames, which in former days washed the very walls of Lambeth, and swept under this tower. Whether any Lollards were ever lodged here is very doubtful, although it is true that Wyclif, the arch-Lollard, was at one time examined for his opinions, by the bishops at Lambeth. The real Lollards' Tower seems to have been an adjunct of old St. Paul's Cathedral. More probably the prisoners here were Episcopalians of Milton's own time. In the dark crypt, the wretched queen, Anne Boleyn, heard from the lips of Cranmer the annulment of her marriage with Henry, and was forced to affirm the disinheritance of her offspring. From thence she went to the Tower and her doom. In this same palace, where she lay a prisoner in 1533, her predecessor, Katharine of Aragon, was a guest on her arrival in England in 1501. Milton must doubtless sometime have visited this princely residence, and have mused upon the martyred Cranmer and Latimer and Sir Thomas More, and the long list of kings and queens and men, who, as masters, guests, or prisoners, have slept within these walls. Of all the noted men who were connected with Lambeth in his day, none, of course, so stirred his spirit as did Archbishop Laud, who lived here, and exercised his power in the Star Chamber, during the years when Parliament was silenced. From 1633 until his committal to the Tower on the charge of treason in 1641 after the assembling of the Long Parliament, he was master here. It was while here at Lambeth that he supervised the compilation of the Service Book; when this was enforced in 1637 upon the Scottish churches, it was so repugnant to them that the riot begun in Edinburgh, by Jenny Geddes flinging her stool in St. Giles's Cathedral at the bishop's head, initiated a national revolt, which led to the signing of the famous Scottish National Covenant. Milton at this time, at the age of thirty, was living at Horton. Little by little the resolute archbishop came to be looked upon by men of Milton's way of thinking as one whose system demanded submission to absolutism in the state. The student of Milton's prose writings is familiar with the troublous history of Laud's time, and the ludicrously trivial matters that then estranged earnest men. But, while the ceremonies permitted in the church two generations later were practically those that Laud had so zealously striven for, the result, says Gardiner, "was only finally attained by a total abandonment of all Laud's methods. What had been impossible to effect in a church to the worship of which every person in the land was obliged to conform, became possible in a church which any one who pleased was at liberty to abandon." After Laud's execution the see of Canterbury was vacant nearly seventeen years. Among the many portraits of the archbishops which hang at Lambeth, the portrait of Laud by Van Dyck is one of the most admirable. We read that his successor, Sheldon, in 1665, in the time of the Great Plague, "continued in his palace at Lambeth whilst the contagion lasted, preserving by his charities multitudes who were sinking under disease and want, and by his pastoral exertions procured benevolences to a vast amount." Admission to Lambeth must be obtained by written request, but is by no means difficult, yet no important spot in London is so rarely visited by the general public. The enthusiasm and intelligence of the resident guide, who has several times in the last ten years conducted the writer through its historic precincts, makes an hour at Lambeth a memorable lesson in English history. His huge gray cat, whose name, "Massachusetts," in other years brought a smile to the lips of every American who chanced to learn it, no longer purrs a welcome to the dim corridors and towers of the old palace, but has gone the way of all his short-lived contemporaries. Let us hope that his master may for many years to come live to tell the long, romantic tale of these old walls to all of England's kin beyond the sea who journey hither to study with reverent eyes the history of the land from which they came. Among places of minor interest in Southwark, which doubtless Milton well knew, was the "Tabard Inn," the starting-point of Chaucer's Canterbury Pilgrims. This stood on High Street, and was not demolished until 1875. In Milton's time it was inscribed: "This is the Inne where Sir Jeffrey Chaucer and the nine and twenty pilgrims lay in their journey to Canterbury anno 1380." It had then a more modern façade than Chaucer saw. The Globe Theatre of Shakespearian fame was then on the site of the present brewery of Barclay, Perkins, & Co. The visitor to the region just south of London Bridge who would see a bit of quaint domestic architecture that recalls the past, would do well to seek out, amid the noisy, hideous streets, a tiny green oasis, bordered by what is known as the Red Cross Hall and cottages. Thanks to Miss Octavia Hill and her friends, the little Gothic hall, with its frescoes of civic heroes, designed by Walter Crane, and its little row of picturesque gabled houses, stand here as a rest and solace to weary eyes and hearts that hunger amid ugliness for beauty. Just such houses Milton saw at every turn in the beautiful old London that he knew. No church in Southwark and only two or three in London are of so great interest to the antiquarian as St. Saviour's or St. Mary Overy's, whose curious name is explained in every guide-book. It has a record of more than a thousand years. Chaucer, Cruden, the author of the "Concordance," Doctor Samuel Johnson, Oliver Goldsmith, Baxter, and Bunyan were closely connected with this church and parish. In one of its chapels, in the generation preceding Milton, beneath its three-light window, the Bishops of Winchester and London, and others acting for the see of Rome, tried and condemned to death by the flames seven ministers of Christ. Their only crime was opposition to the "usurpations of the Papal Schism." Among these were the rector of the church in which a half century later Milton was baptised, Bishop Hooper, who was burned at Gloucester, and John Rogers, the famous martyr of Smithfield. Another heretic, more fortunate than these seven, had just previously been condemned to the stake and pardoned for the sake of his musical talents. In this stately edifice, which has recently been admirably restored, lies the dust of many dear to lovers of poetry. Chaucer's fellow poet, friend, and teacher, John Gower, lies under a lofty Gothic canopy; his sculptured head rests on three large volumes, which represent his works. Milton's contemporaries, Massinger and Fletcher, lie buried in the same grave. The latter died of the plague when Milton was at Cambridge. His well-known poem on "Melancholy," beginning: "Hence, all you vain delights, As short as are the nights Wherein you spend your folly!" was probably familiar to the young poet at Horton, when he penned his "Il Penseroso," although Fletcher's poem was not published until after that. Both Massinger and Fletcher are commemorated by modern windows. The latter's colleague, Francis Beaumont, whose writings are so indissolubly connected with his, is honoured with a window in which the friendship of the two is typified by the figures of David and Jonathan. The year before Milton's birth, the author of "Hamlet" and "Lear" doubtless stood within the choir of this church beside the grave of his young brother Edmond, an actor, who died at the age of twenty-seven, when his great elder brother's genius had nearly touched its zenith of creative power. The parish boasts that some of the most magnificent masterpieces of the world's literature were written within its borders by this, its most distinguished parishioner, and England's greatest son. In his youth Milton may well have attended the funeral of the great Bishop Andrewes, whose recumbent effigy is on one of the tombs that scholars will seek out. This man, who knew fifteen languages, was president of the little company of ten who gave the world a large part of the King James version of the Hebrew Scriptures, whose perfection of literary form has never been equalled. In the Lady-Chapel may still be seen inscribed upon the windows the virulent words which would not have as greatly offended Milton's taste as that of the present parishioners: "Your sacrament of the Mass is no sacrament at all, neither is Christ present in it;" "From the Bishop of Rome and all his detestable enormities, good Lord deliver us." The London Bridge of Milton's day was one of England's marvels. Standing on the site of two or three predecessors, it stood 60 feet above high water and stretched 926 feet in length. It contained a drawbridge, and nineteen pointed arches, with massive piers. Much of its picturesqueness must have resulted from the irregularity of the breadth of its arches. The skilful chaplain who built it doubtless planned his spans according to the varying depth and strength of current of the tide, and would have scorned the modern mechanical habit of disregarding conditions in order to attain exact uniformity; thus his arches varied in breadth from ten to thirty-two feet. Over the tenth and longest was built a little Gothic chapel dedicated to the then new saint, Thomas of Canterbury. In Milton's lifetime, rows of houses were added to the chapel and stretched across toward the Southwark side. Between the chapel and the southern end of the bridge was a drawbridge, and at the north end of this was a remarkable edifice of wood in Milton's boyhood. This was called "Nonsuch House." It was said to have been built in Holland and brought over in pieces and put together by wooden pegs. It stretched across the bridge upon an archway, and was a curious, fantastic structure, carved elaborately on three sides. The towers on its four corners bore high aloft above the neighbouring buildings low domes and gilded vanes. It stood upon the site of the old tower whereon the heads of criminals had been exposed; when it was taken down, the heads were removed to the tower over the gate upon the Southwark side. This had four circular turrets, and was a notable and imposing entrance to the bridge. At the north end of the bridge was an ingenious engine for raising water for the supply of the city. It was originally worked only by the tide flowing through the first arch; but for this work several of the water courses were later converted into waterfalls or rapids, and thereby greatly inconvenienced navigation. An extension of this simple, early mechanism lasted as late as 1822. This bridge, which was to last six hundred and thirty years, was as long in building as King Solomon's Temple, and, at the time, probably surpassed in strength and size any bridge in the whole world. London Bridge is famous the world over in the nurseries of every English-speaking child. Milton himself, as the fair-haired little darling in the scrivener's house on Bread Street, probably danced and sang the ancient ditty, as thousands had done before him: "London bridge is broken down, Dance over, my Lady Lee; London bridge is broken down, With a gay ladee. "How shall we build it up again? Dance over, my Lady Lee; How shall we build it up again? With a gay ladee. "Build it up with stone so strong, Dance over, my Lady Lee; Huzza, 'twill last for ages long, With a gay ladee." For centuries before Milton was born, Billingsgate, a little to the east of London Bridge, had been one of the city's water-gates, and long before his time its neighbourhood was filled with stalls for the sale of fish, a far more necessary commodity in days when no fresh meat was to be bought in winter. When Stow was preparing his "Survey," Billingsgate was "a large water-gate, port, or harbour for ships and boats commonly arriving there with fish, both fresh and salt, shellfish, salt, oranges, onions, and other fruits and roots, wheat, rye, and grains of divers sorts." CHAPTER XVII. THE PLAGUE.--THE FIRE.--WREN.--LONDON REBUILT In the summer of 1665, the Great Plague appeared in the midst of the alarm over the Dutch invasion. The three earlier visitations of the terrible disease during Milton's youth were to be eclipsed in horror by this, the last great one that England was to know. Little connection between dirt and disease existed in the minds of even scientific men. Dirt was condemned as unæsthetic; but that earth floors covered with rushes, mixed with greasy bones and decaying cabbage leaves, had any connection with the griping pain of the groaning child upon the cot, its father did not dream. Some water was brought in pipes from Tyburn, but much of it was taken from the polluted Thames near London Bridge and carried about the streets in water-carts. How much was taken for bathing purposes may be imagined. When a luxurious monarch like Louis XIV. found a bath no necessity, we need not wonder that the English cartman, and blacksmith, and craftsman, housed in his narrow tenements near Smithfield or in Southwark, considered it a superfluity. The summer of 1665 was hot and oppressive. All through the pitiless heat the wretched inmates of the town, whence two hundred thousand of the fortunate ones like Milton had fled, walked around the gloomy and deserted streets gathering their dead. By September fifteen hundred were dying every day. The heat was aggravated by the bonfires which were kept burning in vain hope of purifying the atmosphere. Physicians, ignorant, but heroic, remained at their posts, cupping and blistering, and uselessly tormenting the helpless folk who with pathetic confidence looked to them for salvation. Some men became insane, and some died of sheer fright. The suddenness of the death was one of the most ghastly features of the scourge. The mother who nursed her child at morning handed its little corpse at night to the man with the bell and dreadful cart, and knew not where its tender limbs were rudely thrust with the haste of a great terror which possessed the wretched gravediggers. Out of a population of less than seven hundred thousand, probably one hundred thousand perished, and starvation and poverty stared many others in the face. [Illustration: Erected in 1564-70 by Sir Thomas Gresham, and burned in the Great Fire in 1666. _From an old engraving._] Something must have been learned of the need of purer water, for we find London, after the fire next year, bestirring itself to get a general supply of water from a canal forty miles long, called "New River," which conducted a supply from Chadswell Springs in Hertfordshire to a reservoir at Islington. The summer of 1666 was likewise hot and dry, and a furious gale blew for weeks together. Conditions were the same as in Chicago before the conflagration that in November, 1871, swept over 1,687 acres, which covered a territory four miles long and nearly three miles wide, and entailed a loss of $300,000,000, though half of the buildings were of wood. The moment was as propitious for the fire fiend as when Mother O'Leary's cow kicked over the lamp in the Windy City of the West. A baker's oven took fire in Pudding Lane, two hundred and two feet from the site of the present Fire Monument, which Wren erected in memory of it that number of feet in height. The fire began on Sunday night. It was twenty-four hours before the dazed citizens attempted organised relief, but then it was too late. By Tuesday evening the flames had licked up everything as far west as the Temple. The resolute king came to the help of the inefficient mayor, and ordered gunpowder to be used to blow up buildings and thus create open spaces where the fire would lack food. By Thursday evening the fire had practically ceased, and the citizens who had looked on at the destruction of their homes and churches and shops and the inestimable treasures of the past, sought shelter for their weary limbs. No telegraphic messages of sympathy, no carloads of provisions from neighbouring cities poured in to their relief, and homeless children cried for bread. Evelyn, in describing the conflagration, says: "All the skie was of a fiery aspect like that of a burning oven, and the light seen above forty miles round about for many nights. God grant mine eyes may never behold the sight--who now saw ten thousand houses all in one flame; the noise and crackling and thunder of the impetuous flames; the shrieking of women and children; the hurry of people, the fall of towers, houses, and churches was like an hideous storme and the aire all about so hot and inflamed that at last one was not able to approach it. The clouds also and smoke were dismall and reached upon computation neere 56 miles in length. The poore inhabitants were dispers'd about St. George's Fields and Moorefields, as far as Highgate, and several miles in circle, some under tents, some under miserable hutts and hovells, many without a rag or any necessary utensils, bed or board, who from delicatenesse, riches, and easy accommodations in stately and well-furnished houses, were now reduc'd to extremest misery and poverty." Pepys tells us that the entire lead roof of St. Paul's Cathedral, no less than six acres by measure, "fell in, the melted lead running down into the streets and into the crypt where books had been carried for safety." He notes that the fire burned just as many parish churches as there were hours from the beginning to the end of the fire. Dryden, in the long section of his "Annus Mirabilis" which describes the "Great Fire," has a few lines among his prosaic stanzas which bear quotation: "The ghosts of traitors from the bridge descend, With bold fanatic spectres to rejoice: About the fire into a dance they bend, And sing their sabbath notes with feeble voice. * * * * * "A key of fire ran all along the shore, And lightened all the river with a blaze: The wakened tides began again to roar, And wondering fish in shining waters gaze. * * * * * "The rich grow suppliant, and the poor grow proud: Those offer mighty gain, and these ask more: So void of pity is the ignoble crowd, When others' ruin may increase their store. * * * * * "The most in fields like herded beasts lie down, To dews obnoxious on the grassy floor; And while their babes in sleep their sorrows drown, Sad parents watch the remnants of their store." The king, who for the time being had behaved in manly fashion, went back to his dalliance with courtesans and "the burning lusts, dissolute court, profane and abominable lives" of which Evelyn writes on the day of fast and humiliation ordered for the occasion. Though there was not a particle of proof that the Catholics had anything whatever to do with the origin of the fire, the frenzy and prejudice of the populace attributed it to them, and an inscription to that effect, which later was erased, was placed upon the monument. The fire destroyed eighty-eight churches besides St. Paul's, together with the city gates, the Exchange, the Custom House, 13,200 dwelling-houses, and four hundred streets. A space of 436 acres, two-thirds of the entire city, was consumed; and property then valued at £7,335,000 was destroyed. For six months London remained a chaos of rubbish heaps. Pepys writes that in March he still saw smoke rising from the ruins. The eight churches in the city proper that still remain practically as Milton saw them have been described in detail. They are All Hallows Barking, St. Ethelburga's, St. Andrew Undershaft, of Saxon foundation; St. Olave's, of Danish; and St. Helen's, of Norman foundation; St. Catherine Cree, Austin Friars, which was the Dutch church, and St. Giles's, Cripplegate, just beside the city wall. Of the six others that were not destroyed, All Hallows by the wall (Broad Street Ward) and St. Katherine Coleman (Aldgate) were rebuilt later. The four that then remained but have since disappeared were St. Christopher le Stocks, and St. Martin Outwich (Broad Street Ward), All-Hallows, Staining (Tower Ward), and St. Alphage, Aldermanbury. Forty churches were rebuilt after the fire, and these were all designed by Sir Christopher Wren, who when he began his gigantic task was a young man of thirty-five. Wren, who was a nephew of the Bishop of Ely, was trained under Doctor Busby in Westminster School, and then at Wadham College, Oxford, and was there noted by John Evelyn as a "miracle of a youth," "a prodigious young scholar," who showed him "a thermometer, a monstrous magnet, and some dials." Wren was a little later one of the chief founders of the Royal Society, and its first meetings were held in his rooms. As versatile and original as Da Vinci, he excelled in Latin, mathematics, and astronomy, and was a close student of anatomy, and other sciences as well. Ten years before the Great Fire he was professor of astronomy in Gresham College, London, and at the age of twenty-eight, he was elected to the professorship of astronomy in Oxford. Before he was thirty and had done any work in architecture, Isaac Barrow declared him to be "something superhuman." About this time he invented an agricultural implement for planting, and a method of making fresh water at sea. A year before the Fire he solved a knotty problem in geometry which Pascal had sent to English mathematicians. Says Hooke, "I must affirm that since the time of Archimedes there scarce ever met in one man in so great a perfection such a mechanical hand and so philosophic a mind." Had Wren never designed a building he would have been famous for his achievements in the study of the cycloid, in rendering practical the use of the barometer, in inventing a method for the transference of one animal's blood to another, in methods for noting longitude at sea, and for other studies and inventions too numerous to mention. Wren was a self-taught architect. Before the Fire he erected Pembroke College Chapel at Cambridge, and the Sheldonian Theatre at Oxford. He then visited Paris, where he saw Bernini, and made the most of observations of the Louvre and such Renaissance work as Paris then afforded. His bent of mind was wholly divergent from the Gothic, and as it proved, in the few instances in which he introduced its features into his Renaissance churches, the result was as incongruous as Chaucer's cap and gown upon a Roman emperor. London's calamity was the opportunity for this little man of mighty intellect. Four days after the fire ceased he laid before the king the sketch of his plan for the restoration of the city. He looked far into the future, and in vision saw a splendid town built on a well-conceived, harmonious plan. He proposed to have Ludgate Hill widen as it approached St. Paul's, where it would divide into two broad streets around the cathedral and leave ample space for its huge mass to be plainly viewed. One of these streets should lead to the Tower and the other to the Royal Exchange, which was to be the centre of the city. Around it should be a great piazza, from which ten streets were to lead, and on the outer edge of this piazza would be situated the Post-Office, the Mint, and other important buildings. "All churchyards, gardens, and trades that use great fires and noisome smells" were to be relegated to the country, and the churches with their spires were to be placed in prominent positions on the main thoroughfares. All this meant present sacrifice for future good; but the short-sighted and impatient Londoners thought of the crying needs of the present year alone. The architect might implore and weep bitter tears, but all in vain. London must rise again on its old, congested plan, with its crooked alleyways and narrow courts. But, though the ground-plan was discarded, Wren was to make the new city his monument. Besides St. Paul's he built within and without the walls fifty parish churches, thirty-six of the companies' halls, the Custom House, and much besides. During the last eight years of Milton's life, the destruction of the walls of St. Paul's went on and the new edifice was assuming shape in the mind of its creator. The old walls were blown down by gunpowder explosions and by battering-rams. This took about two years, and the clearing away of rubbish and building the massive foundations, longer still. Several schemes were considered and rejected, and the plan which finally took its present form was not begun until the funeral wreaths were withered upon Milton's grave. Into the history of this mighty structure we may not enter. In 1710 the last stone of the lantern above the dome was laid by Wren's son in the presence of the now aged architect and of all London, which assembled for the proud spectacle. The fair walls, ungrimed by soot and smoke, rose fresh and perfect, a monument to one of the greatest geniuses of all time. One building erected the year after Milton's death is worth mentioning as an illustration of the consideration shown for the insane at that period. Bethlehem Hospital, which has been referred to, was in Milton's time situated on Bishopsgate Street Without. "This hospital stood in an obscure and close place near unto many common sewers; and also was too little to receive and entertain the great number of distracted Persons both men and women," writes an old author. But the city with admirable public spirit gave ground for a better site against London wall near Moorfields. A handsome brick and stone structure 540 feet long was erected in 1675, and large gardens were provided for the less insane. Over the gate were placed two figures representing a distracted man and woman. This building had a cupola surmounted by a gilded ball; there was a clock within and "three fair dials without." Men occupied one end of the building, and women the other. Hot and cold baths were provided, and there was a "stove room," where in the winter the patients might assemble for warmth. Considering the ignorance of the time, astonishingly good sense was displayed in all the arrangements, insomuch that two out of every three persons were reported cured. As if this were not enough for one man's work, Wren of course was busy all these years with the care of all the churches. Before Milton died he had been knighted, and lived in a spacious mansion in Great Russell Square. He had by then rebuilt St. Dunstan's in the East in Tower Ward; St. Mildred's, Bread Street Ward; St. Mary's, Aldermanbury; St. Edmund the King's; St. Lawrence's, Jewry; St. Michael's, Cornhill, where he attempted Gothic work; the beautiful St. Stephen's, Wallbrook; St. Olave's, Jewry; St. Martin's, Ludgate; St. Michael's, Wood Street; St. Dionis's, Langbourne Ward; St. George's, Botolph Lane; and the Custom House. No interior, either of these or those that followed these, is so perfect as St. Stephen's, Wallbrook. Architecturally speaking, it has been questioned whether St. Paul's itself shows greater genius. In most of his labours Wren was embarrassed by lack of adequate funds and the caprice of his employers. Most of his churches were ingenious compromises between his ideals and their necessities or whims. His spires were in the Renaissance forms, but of endless variations. The most beautiful are so placed as rarely to be seen to advantage. Probably the most admired of all of them are St. Bride's and St. Mary le Bow. The former, which overshadows the spot where Milton conceived the plan of "Paradise Lost," is situated on a little narrow street called after St. Bride or Bridget, the Irish maiden, who died in 525. She had a holy well, which is commemorated by an iron pump within a niche upon its site. [Illustration: BOW STEEPLE, CHEAPSIDE _From a print published in 1798._] The lofty spire of the church rises to an altitude of 226 feet, a trifle higher than Bunker Hill Monument, in Charlestown, Massachusetts, which is a measuring-rod for many Americans. St. Mary le Bow is on the site of a Norman church of the Conqueror's time, and so named because it was built on arches or "bows" of stone. This crypt still remains. The steeple of the later church, which rang its bells above the head of little John Milton on Bread Street, close by, was built a hundred and fifty years before his birth; the church was said to have been a rather low, poor building. Bow bells were nightly rung at nine o'clock, but an old couplet shows that they were not always punctual: "Clark of the Bow Bell, with the yellow lockes, For thy late ringing, thy head shall have knockes." To which the clerk responded: "Children of Cheape, hold you all still, For you shall have the Bow Bell rung at your will." From the days when little Dick Whittington, a forlorn runaway, heard from far Bow bells summon him back to London, the bells have played a notable part in the life of Londoners. A true cockney is supposed to be one born within hearing of these bells. Certainly the boy in Spread Eagle Court deserved the title. The spire of St. Mary le Bow rises a little higher than St. Bride's, and bears a golden dragon nine feet long. Upon the side of Bow Church, half hidden behind the tower, is an inscription which the pilgrim to Milton's London will step aside to read. It is on the tablet which was transferred from All Hallows Church, in which Milton was baptised, when it was torn down. It closes with the familiar lines of Dryden, the poet whom England most admired when this new spire of Wren's was rising upon the ruins of the old, and close beside the birthplace of the greatest soul ever born to London in all her two millenniums of history. "Three poets, in three distant ages born, Greece, Italy, and England did adorn. The first in loftiness of thought surpassed, The next in majesty, in both the last; The force of nature could no farther go, To make a third she joined the other two." THE END. Index Aldersgate Street, 89, 122. Aldgate, 155. All Hallows, Barking, 143. All Hallows Church, Bread St., 42, 45, 306. All Hallows, Staining, tower of, 155. Amersham, 116. Andrewes, Bishop, 289. "Arcades," 81. "Areopagitica," 94. Artillery Walk, 110, 119. Ascham, Roger, 201. Askew, Anne, 191. Austin Friars, 24. Austin Friars' Church, 185-188. Bacon, Francis, 225. Bancroft, Francis, 173. Barbican, 95. Bartholomew Close, 105. Bartholomew Fair, 218. Baroni, Leonora, 87. Baxter, Richard, 107, 108, 197, 276. Beaconsfield, 113, 115. Beaumont, 288. Bethlehem Hospital, 175, 303. Billingsgate, 292. Blake, Admiral, 257. "Blindness, On His," Milton's ode, 104. Blue Coat School, 195-199. Boleyn, Annie, 132, 283. Bread Street, 42-46, 120. Browne, Robert, 68. Buckingham, Duke of, 243, 256. Buckinghamshire, 112-119. Bunhill Fields, 111, 120. Burke, Edmund, 116. Burleigh, 226. Cæsar, Sir Julius, 174. Cambridge, 57-77; university life in Milton's time, 64. Camden, William, 252, 266. Caxton, William, 269. Chalfont St. Giles, 111, 112. Charles I., 244-248, 272, 274. Charles II., 250, 262, 298. Charing Cross, 99. Charterhouse, 202-208. Cheever, Ezekiel, 198. Chenies, 112. Chequer's Court, 118. "Cheshire Cheese, The," 229. Christ's Church, 197. Christ's College, 59, 62. Christ's Hospital, 195-199. Civil War, 87, 92. Clarendon, Earl of, 259. "Comus," 80, 82, 96. Conventual establishments, 22. Covent Garden, 237-239. Cranmer, Archbishop, 280. Cromwell, Oliver, 59, 92, 101, 141, 180, 228, 244, 248, 249, 256-258, 261. "Cromwell, Ode to," Milton's, 104, 106. Cromwell, Richard, 105, 111. Crosby Hall, 164-170. Danish Remains in London, 20. Darwin at Christ's College, 64. Dickens on Old London Churches, 152-154. Diodati, Charles, 88, 91. Dryden, John, 122, 248, 297, 306. Dutch in London, 186. Education, Milton's Essay on, 94. Eliot, Sir John, 134-136, 268, 270. Elizabethan Age, 36. Elizabeth, Queen, 208, 241, 262. Ellwood, Thomas, 109, 111, 115. Ely Cathedral, 71. Ely Place, 221. Emmanuel College, 60, 62. Evelyn, 267, 296. Exchange, The Royal, 184, 298. Fire of London, The Great, 120, 145, 189, 295-298. Fletcher, 288. Forest Hill, 93. Fox, George, 120. Fox, John, 181. "Fresher's Don't, The," 76. Frobisher, Martin, 181. Galileo, 86. Gatehouse, Westminster, 267. Geneva, Milton at, 87. Gill, Alexander, Milton's schoolmaster, 53. Globe Theatre, 286. Gog and Magog, 190. Gothic architecture, 26-30, 34. Gray's Inn, 225. Great Hampden, 117. Great Kimble, 119. Gresham College, 184. Gresham, Sir Thomas, 172, 184. Grey, Lady Jane, 132. Grotius, Hugo, 85. Grub Street, 111. Guild Hall, The, 189-193. Hakluyt, Richard, 266. Hampden, John, 117-119, 268. Hatton, Sir Christopher, 223. Haw, The, 51. Heminge and Condell, monument to, 193. Henry VIII., 249. Heylin, Peter, 261. Hobson, 57. Holbein, 157, 241. Holborn, 98, 106, 225. Hooker, Richard, 234. Horton, 78-84, 92. "Il Penseroso," 68, 82. Inns of Court, 225-235. Ireland, Horrors in, 92. Italy, Milton in, 86. James I., 262. Jeffreys, Judge, 196, 234. Jerusalem Chamber, 264. Jesus College, 60. Jewin Street, 107. Jones, Inigo, 238, 240, 242, 262. Jonson, Ben, 180, 228, 252. Jordan's, 115. Juxon, Bishop, 246, 280. King's College Chapel, 67. King, Edward, 82. Knox, John, 116. "L'Allegro," 82. Lambeth Palace, 277-286. Lasco, John a, 186, 188. Laud, Archbishop, 144, 156, 281, 284. Lawes, Henry, 81, 96, 97, 224. Lincoln's Inn, 227-228. Lincoln's Inn Fields, 98. Lollard's Tower, 49, 282. London, origin and early topography, 14-25. London life in Milton's time, 38-40. London Bridge, 289-291. Long Acre, 237. Lovelace, Richard, 268. "Lycidas," 82, 83. Manso, 87. Mary of Modena, 278. Marvell, Andrew, 104, 108, 247, 248. "Massacre in Piedmont, On the Late," 104. Massinger, 288. Mermaid Tavern, 46. Milborne, Sir John, almshouses built by, 154. Mildmay, Sir Walter, 214. Milton, Anne, sister of the poet, 43, 57, 83, 89, 124. Milton, Christopher, brother of the poet, 43, 83, 92, 97, 124. Milton, Deborah, daughter of the poet, 102, 107, 108, 124. Milton, John, father of the poet, 42, 78, 92, 94, 97. Milton, John, son of the poet, 102. Milton, Mary, daughter of the poet, 98, 107, 108, 110. Milton, Sarah, mother of the poet, 43, 83. Milton Street, 111. Minshull, Elizabeth, Milton's wife, 110, 123, 124. More, Sir Thomas, 131, 166, 241. Morland, Sir Samuel, 251. "Morning of Christ's Nativity, On the," 72. Newgate, 199. Newton, Isaac, 249. Norman remains in London, 21, 24. Oxford, 62, 67, 93. Painted Chamber, Westminster, 270, 272. Paley, William, at Christ's College, 63. Pall Mall, 100. "Paradise Lost," 89, 105, 107, 111, 114, 120-122, 158. "Paradise Regained," 114. Paris, Milton in, 85, 88. Parr, Old, 253. Pembroke, Countess of, 169. Penn, William, 115, 145. Pepys, Samuel, 147-150. Peter the Great, 145. Petty France, 102. Philips, Edward, 89, 94. Philips, John, 89, 94. Pindar, Sir Paul, 177. Plague, The Great, 111, 293. Plantagenet Period, 22, 28. Powell, Anne, Milton's wife's mother, 97. Powell, Mary, Milton's wife, 93, 95, 97, 102. Prynne, 273. Puritans at Cambridge, 60. Pym, John, 260. Queen's Head Tavern, 155. Raleigh, Sir Walter, 133, 267, 268. Ranelagh, Lady, 104. Raphael cartoons, 248. Reading, 92. Red Cross Hall, 286. Red Lion Square, 106. Renaissance architecture, 30-33. Richard II., 129. Richard III., 129, 165, 190. Rogers, John, 201, 216, 287. Roman remains in London, 16. Runnymede, 84. Salmasius, 102. St. Andrew Undershaft, church of, 158. St. Bartholomew the Great, church of, 24, 211-215. St. Bartholomew's Hospital, 215. St. Bride's Church, 305. St. Bride's Churchyard, 89. St. Catherine Crees Church, 156. St. Ethelburga's Church, 175-176. St. Etheldreda's Church, 221-222. St. George's Chapel, Windsor, 248. "Saint Ghastly Grim," 152. St. Giles's Church, Cripplegate, 38, 97, 107, 120, 123, 178-183. St. Helen's Church, Bishopsgate, 24, 171-175. St. James's Palace, 100, 246, 248. St. James's Park, 99, 103. St. John's Gate, 209. St. John, Knights of, 209. St. Jude's Church, 156. St. Margaret's Church, 104, 268, 275. St. Martin's Lane, 99. St. Martin in the Fields, 100. St. Mary Aldermanbury, church of, 104, 193. St. Mary Aldermary, church of, 110. St. Mary le Bow, church of, 305. St. Mary Overy's Church, 24, 287. St. Olave's Church, 146. St. Paul's, old cathedral, 48, 121, 297; new cathedral, 302. St. Paul's Cross, 50. St. Paul's School, 48, 52; early cathedral body, 23. St. Peter's Church, 126, 132. St. Saviour's, Southwark, 287. St. Sepulchre's Church, 199. St. Stephen's Chapel, 270. St. Stephen's, Wallbrook, church of, 33, 304. "Samson," 89. Sanctuary, Westminster, 269. Saxon names in London, 17. Scotland Yard, 101, 102, 240. Scudamore, Lord, 85, 103. Selden, 233. Shakespeare, 165, 255, 288. Sidney, Algernon, 107. Sidney Sussex College, 59, 62. Skinner, Cyriack, 97, 104, 108. Smithfield, 215-220. Smith, John, Captain, 200. Somerset House, 239, 257. Spencer, Sir John, 166, 174. Spenser, Edmund, 254. Sprat, Thomas, dean of Westminster, 258. Spread Eagle Court, 45. Spring Gardens, 99, 101, 103. Staple Inn, 266. Star Chamber, 270, 272. Stow, John, 158-163. Strode, William, 261. Sutton, Thomas, 204. Tabard Inn, 286. Temple, The, 228-235. Temple Bar, 229. Temple Church, The, 229. Thackeray on the Charterhouse, 206. Throckmorton, Sir Nicholas, 157, 193. Tower Hill, 139, 144. Tower of London, The, 126-136. Toynbee Hall, 156. Trafalgar Square, 99, 100. Trinity College Library, Milton manuscript in, 73, 89. Turner, William, 150. Tyndale, 201. Usher, Archbishop, 247, 265. Vane, Sir Harry, 91, 99, 107, 136-141. Vane, Milton's Ode to, 104. Waller, Edmund, 116. Wendover, 117. Westminster Abbey, 250-266. Westminster Assembly, 264. Westminster Hall, 261, 274. Westminster Palace, 269. Westminster School, 266. Whitechapel, 156. Whitehall, 99, 101, 240-250. Whittington's Palace, 145. Williams, Roger, 61, 188, 204. Windsor, 79, 248. Wolsey, Cardinal, 241. Woodcocke, Katharine, 104, 193, 195, 275. Wotton, Sir Henry, 85, 124. Wren, Sir Christopher, 184, 240, 263, 266, 299-304. York Street, 102. Young, Milton's early preceptor, 47. Footnotes: [1] ONE OF MILTON'S TWO EPITAPHS ON HOBSON "Here lies old Hobson. Death hath broke his girt, And here, alas, hath laid him in the dirt; Or else, the ways being foul, twenty to one, He's here stuck in a slough, or overthrown. 'Twas such a shifter, that if truth were known, Death was half glad when he had got him down; For he had any time these ten years full, Dodged with him, betwixt Cambridge and the 'Bull,' And surely death could never have prevailed, Had not his weekly course of carriage failed. But lately finding him so long at home, And thinking now his journey's end was come, And that he had ta'en up his latest inn, In the kind office of a chamberlain, Showed him his room, where he must lodge that night, Pulled off his boots and took away the light; If any ask for him, it shall be said, 'Hobson has supt and's newly gone to bed.'" [2] It is interesting here to contrast John Morley's judgment with that of Clarendon: "Surrounded by men who were often apt to take other views, Pym, if ever English statesmen did, took broad ones; and to impose broad views upon the narrow is one of the things that a party leader exists for. He had the double gift, so rare even among leaders in popular assemblies, of being at once practical and elevated; a master of tactics and organising arts, and yet the inspirer of sound and lofty principles. How can we measure the perversity of a king and counsellors who forced into opposition a man so imbued with the deep instinct of government, so whole-hearted, so keen of sight, so skilful in resource as Pym?" Transcriber's Notes: Passages in italics are indicated by _italics_. Images have been moved from the middle of a paragraph to the closest paragraph break. Punctuation has been corrected without note. "Thockmorton" has been corrected to "Throckmorton" in the index. 
28434	----	TRANSCRIBER'S NOTE Greek letters used to identify stars (Bayer designation), are replaced with the full name of the Greek letter, e.g. Alpha Centauri. The single Greek word in the text is transliterated within braces, {komê}. Minor punctuation and hyphenation inconsistencies have been corrected. The spelling "Bernices" for "Berenices" has been retained throughout. The following minor typographical errors have been corrected: p75: "establish" changed to "established" p99: "Firmanent" changed to "Firmament" p111: "they thoughts" changed to "thy thoughts" p120: "suen" changed to "seuen" p134: "consequenc" changed to "consequence" p146: "geographieal" changed to "geographical" p167: "Lyrae" changed to "Lyræ" for consistency p286: Removed redundant word "degrees" following the degree symbol THE ASTRONOMY OF MILTON'S 'PARADISE LOST' [Illustration: A TYPICAL SUN-SPOT] THE ASTRONOMY OF MILTON'S 'PARADISE LOST' BY THOMAS N. ORCHARD, M.D. MEMBER OF THE BRITISH ASTRONOMICAL ASSOCIATION _These are thy glorious works, Parent of good, Almighty! thine this universal frame, Thus wondrous fair: Thyself how wondrous then! Unspeakable._ LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO. LONDON, NEW YORK, AND BOMBAY 1896 All rights reserved CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE I. A Short Historical Sketch of Astronomy 1 II. Astronomy in the Seventeenth Century 45 III. Milton's Astronomical Knowledge 81 IV. Milton and Galileo 113 V. The Seasons 140 VI. The Starry Heavens 152 VII. The Starry Heavens 200 VIII. Description of Celestial Objects Mentioned in 'Paradise Lost' 244 IX. Milton's Imaginative and Descriptive Astronomy 306 ILLUSTRATIONS _PLATES_ A Typical Sun-spot _Frontispiece_ Venus on the Sun's Disc _To face page_ 66 Cluster in Hercules " 218 Great Nebula in Orion " 230 A Portion of the Moon's Surface " 268 _IN TEXT_ FIG. PAGE 1. The Ptolemaic System of the Universe 86 2. Milton's Division of Universal Space 96 3. A Binary Star System--70 Ophiuchi 184 4. The Orbits of the Components of Gamma Virginis 189 5. Apparent Orbit of the Companion of Sirius 190 6. A Sun-spot Magnified 247 7. The Corona during the Eclipse of May 1883 254 8. A Portion of the Milky Way 289 PREFACE Many able and cultured writers have delighted to expatiate on the beauties of Milton's 'Paradise Lost,' and to linger with admiration over the lofty utterances expressed in his poem. Though conscious of his inability to do justice to the sublimest of poets and the noblest of sciences, the author has ventured to contribute to Miltonic literature a work which he hopes will prove to be of an interesting and instructive character. Perhaps the choicest passages in the poem are associated with astronomical allusion, and it is chiefly to the exposition and illustration of these that this volume is devoted. The writer is indebted to many authors for information and reference, and especially to Miss Agnes M. Clerke, Professors Masson and Young, Mr. James Nasmyth, Mr. G. F. Chambers, and Sir Robert Ball. Also to the works of the late Mr. R. A. Proctor, Sirs W. and J. Herschel, Admiral Smyth, Professor Grant, Mr. J. R. Hind, Sir David Brewster, Rev. A. B. Whatton, and Prebendary Webb. Most of the illustrations have been supplied by the Publishers: Messrs. Macmillan and W. Hunt & Co. have kindly permitted the reproduction of some of their drawings. MANCHESTER, _March 1896_. CHAPTER I A SHORT HISTORICAL SKETCH OF ASTRONOMY Astronomy is the oldest and most sublime of all the sciences. To a contemplative observer of the heavens, the number and brilliancy of the stars, the lustre of the planets, the silvery aspect of the Moon, with her ever-changing phases, together with the order, the harmony, and unison pervading them all, create in his mind thoughts of wonder and admiration. Occupying the abyss of space indistinguishable from infinity, the starry heavens in grandeur and magnificence surpass the loftiest conceptions of the human mind; for, at a distance beyond the range of ordinary vision, the telescope reveals clusters, systems, galaxies, universes of stars--suns--the innumerable host of heaven, each shining with a splendour comparable with that of our Sun, and, in all likelihood, fulfilling in a similar manner the same beneficent purposes. The time when man began to study the stars is lost in the antiquity of prehistoric ages. The ancient inhabitants of the Earth regarded the heavenly bodies with veneration and awe, erected temples in their honour, and worshipped them as deities. Historical records of astronomy carry us back several thousand years. During the greater part of this time, and until a comparatively recent period, astronomy was associated with astrology--a science which originated from a desire on the part of mankind to penetrate the future, and which was based upon the supposed influence of the heavenly bodies upon human and terrestrial affairs. It was natural to imagine that the overruling power which governed and directed the course of sublunary events resided in the heavens, and that its decrees might be understood by watching the movements of the heavenly bodies under its control. It was, therefore, believed that by observing the configuration of the planets and the positions of the constellations at the instant of the birth of an individual, his horoscope, or destiny, could be foretold; and that by making observations of a somewhat similar nature the occurrence of events of public importance could be predicted. When, however, the laws which govern the motions of the heavenly bodies became better known, and especially after the discovery of the great law of gravitation, astrology ceased to be a belief, though for long after it retained its power over the imagination, and was often alluded to in the writings of poets and other authors. In the early dawn of astronomical science, the theories upheld with regard to the structure of the heavens were of a simple and primitive nature, and might even be described as grotesque. This need occasion no surprise when we consider the difficulties with which ancient astronomers had to contend in their endeavours to reduce to order and harmony the complicated motions of the orbs which they beheld circling around them. The grouping of the stars into constellations having fanciful names, derived from fable or ancient mythology, occurred at a very early period, and though devoid of any methodical arrangement, is yet sufficiently well-defined to serve the purposes of modern astronomers. Several of the ancient nations of the earth, including the Chaldeans, Egyptians, Hindus, and Chinese, claim to have been the earliest astronomers. Chinese records of astronomy reveal an antiquity of near 3,000 years B.C., but they contain no evidence that their authors possessed any scientific knowledge, and they merely record the occurrence of solar eclipses and the appearances of comets. It is not known when astronomy was first studied by the Egyptians; but what astronomical information they have handed down is not of a very intelligible kind, nor have they left behind any data that can be relied upon. The Great Pyramid, judging from the exactness with which it faces the cardinal points, must have been designed by persons who possessed a good knowledge of astronomy, and it was probably made use of for observational purposes. It is now generally admitted that correct astronomical observations were first made on the plains of Chaldea, records of eclipses having been discovered in Chaldean cities which date back 2,234 years B.C. The Chaldeans were true astronomers: they made correct observations of the risings and settings of the heavenly bodies; and the exact orientation of their temples and public buildings indicates the precision with which they observed the positions of celestial objects. They invented the zodiac and gnomon, made use of several kinds of dials, notified eclipses, and divided the day into twenty-four hours. To the Greeks belongs the credit of having first studied astronomy in a regular and systematic manner. THALES (640 B.C.) was one of the earliest of Greek astronomers, and may be regarded as the founder of the science among that people. He was born at Miletus, and afterwards repaired to Egypt for the purpose of study. On his return to Greece he founded the Ionian school, and taught the sphericity of the Earth, the obliquity of the ecliptic, and the true causes of eclipses of the Sun and Moon. He also directed the attention of mariners to the superiority of the Lesser Bear, as a guide for the navigation of vessels, as compared with the Great Bear, by which constellation they usually steered. Thales believed the Earth to be the centre of the universe, and that the stars were composed of fire; he also predicted the occurrence of a great solar eclipse. Thales had for his successors Anaximander, Anaximenes, and Anaxagoras, who taught the doctrines of the Ionian school. The next great astronomer that we read of is PYTHAGORAS, who was born at Samos 590 B.C. He studied under Thales, and afterwards visited Egypt and India, in order that he might make himself familiar with the scientific theories adopted by those nations. On his return to Europe he founded his school in Italy, and taught in a more extended form the doctrines of the Ionian school. In his speculations with regard to the structure of the universe he propounded the theory (though the reasons by which he sustained it were fanciful) that the Sun is the centre of the planetary system, and that the Earth revolves round him. This theory--the accuracy of which has since been confirmed--received but little attention from his successors, and it sank into oblivion until the time of Copernicus, by whom it was revived. Pythagoras discovered that the Morning and Evening Stars are one and the same planet. Among the famous astronomers who lived about this period we find recorded the names of Meton, who introduced the Metonic cycle into Greece and erected the first sundial at Athens; Eudoxus, who persuaded the Greeks to adopt the year of 365-1/4 days; and Nicetas, who taught that the Earth completed a daily revolution on her axis. The Alexandrian school, which flourished for three centuries prior to the Christian era, produced men of eminence whose discoveries and investigations, when arranged and classified, enabled astronomy to be regarded as a true theoretical science. The positions of the fixed stars and the paths of the planets were determined with greater accuracy, and irregularities of the motions of the Sun and Moon were investigated with greater precision. Attempts were made to ascertain the distance of the Sun from the Earth, and also the dimensions of the terrestrial sphere. The obliquity of the ecliptic was accurately determined, and an arc of the meridian was measured between Syene and Alexandria. The names of Aristarchus, Eratosthenes, Aristyllus, Timocharis, and Autolycus, are familiarly known in association with the advancement of the astronomy of this period. We now reach the name of HIPPARCHUS of Bithynia (140 B.C.), the most illustrious astronomer of antiquity, who did much to raise astronomy to the position of a true science, and who has also left behind him ample evidence of his genius 'as a mathematician, an observer, and a theorist.' We are indebted to him for the earliest star catalogue, in which he included 1,081 stars. He discovered the Precession of the Equinoxes, and determined the motions of the Sun and Moon, and also the length of the year, with greater precision than any of his predecessors. He invented the sciences of plane and spherical trigonometry, and was the first to use right ascensions and declinations. The next astronomer of eminence after Hipparchus was PTOLEMY (130 A.D.), who resided at Alexandria. He was skilled as a mathematician and geographer, and also excelled as a musician. His chief discovery was an irregularity of the lunar motion, called the '_evection_.' He was also the first to observe the effect of the refraction of light in causing the apparent displacement of a heavenly body from its true position. Ptolemy devoted much of his time to extending and improving the theories of Hipparchus, and compiled a great treatise, called the 'Almagest,' which contains nearly all the knowledge we possess of ancient astronomy. Ptolemy's name is, however, most widely known in association with what is called the Ptolemaic theory. This system, which originated long before his time, but of which he was one of the ablest expounders, was an attempt to establish on a scientific basis the conclusions and results arrived at by early astronomers who studied and observed the motions of the heavenly bodies. Ptolemy regarded the Earth as the immovable centre of the universe, round which the Sun, Moon, planets, and the entire heavens completed a daily revolution in twenty-four hours. After the death of Ptolemy no worthy successor was found to occupy his place, the study of astronomy began to decline among the Greeks, and after a time it ceased to be cultivated by that people. The Arabs next took up the study of astronomy, which they prosecuted most assiduously for a period of four centuries. Their labours were, however, confined chiefly to observational work, in which they excelled; unlike their predecessors, they paid but little attention to speculative theories--indeed, they regarded with such veneration the opinions held by the Greeks, that they did not feel disposed to question the accuracy of their doctrines. The most eminent astronomer among the Arabs was ALBATEGNIUS (680 A.D.). He corrected the Greek observations, and made several discoveries which testified to his abilities as an observer. IBN YUNIS and ABUL WEFU were Arab astronomers who earned a high reputation on account of the number and accuracy of their observations. In Persia, a descendant of the famous Genghis Khan erected an observatory, where astronomical observations were systematically made. Omar, a Persian astronomer, suggested a reformation of the calendar which, if it had been adopted, would have insured greater accuracy than can be attained by the Gregorian style now in use. In 1433, Ulugh Beg, who resided at Samarcand, made many observations, and constructed a star catalogue of greater exactness than was known to exist prior to his time. The Arabs may be regarded as having been the custodians of astronomy until the time of its revival in another quarter of the Globe. After the lapse of many centuries, astronomy was introduced into Western Europe in 1220, and from that date to the present time its career has been one of triumphant progress. In 1230, a translation of Ptolemy's 'Almagest' from Arabic into Latin was accomplished by order of the German Emperor, Frederick II.; and in 1252 Alphonso X., King of Castile, himself a zealous patron of astronomy, caused a new set of astronomical tables to be constructed at his own expense, which, in honour of his Majesty, were called the 'Alphonsine Tables.' Purbach and Regiomontanus, two German astronomers of distinguished reputation, and Waltherus, a man of considerable renown, made many important observations in the fifteenth century. The most eminent astronomer who lived during the latter part of this century was Copernicus. NICOLAS COPERNICUS was born February 19, 1473, at Thorn, a small town situated on the Vistula, which formed the boundary between the kingdoms of Prussia and Poland. His father was a Polish subject, and his mother of German extraction. Having lost his parents early in life, he was educated under the supervision of his uncle Lucas, Bishop of Ermland. Copernicus attended a school at Thorn, and afterwards entered the University of Cracow, in 1491, where he devoted four years to the study of mathematics and science. On leaving Cracow he attached himself to the University of Bologna as a student of canon law, and attended a course of lectures on astronomy given by Novarra. In the ensuing year he was appointed canon of Frauenburg, the cathedral city of the Diocese of Ermland, situated on the shores of the Frisches Haff. In the year 1500 he was at Rome, where he lectured on mathematics and astronomy. He next spent a few years at the University of Padua, where, besides applying himself to mathematics and astronomy, he studied medicine and obtained a degree. In 1505 Copernicus returned to his native country, and was appointed medical attendant to his uncle, the Bishop of Ermland, with whom he resided in the stately castle of Heilsberg, situated at a distance of forty-six miles from Frauenburg. Copernicus lived with his uncle from 1507 till 1512, and during that time prosecuted his astronomical studies, and undertook, besides, many arduous duties associated with the administration of the diocese; these he faithfully discharged until the death of the Bishop, which occurred in 1512. After the death of his uncle he took up his residence at Frauenburg, where he occupied his time in meditating on his new astronomy and undertaking various duties of a public character, which he fulfilled with credit and distinction. In 1523 he was appointed Administrator-General of the diocese. Though a canon of Frauenburg, Copernicus never became a priest. After many years of profound meditation and thought, Copernicus, in a treatise entitled 'De Revolutionibus Orbium Celestium,' propounded a new theory, or, more correctly speaking, revived the ancient Pythagorean system of the universe. This great work, which he dedicated to Pope Paul III., was completed in 1530; but he could not be prevailed upon to have it published until 1543, the year in which he died. In 1542 Copernicus had an apoplectic seizure, followed by paralysis and a gradual decay of his mental and vital powers. His book was printed at Nuremberg, and the first copy arrived at Frauenburg on May 24, 1543, in time to be touched by the hands of the dying man, who in a few hours after expired. The house in which Copernicus lived at Allenstein is still in existence, and in the walls of his chamber are visible the perforations which he made for the purpose of observing the stars cross the meridian. Copernicus was the means of creating an entire revolution in the science of astronomy, by transferring the centre of our system from the Earth to the Sun. He accounted for the alternation of day and night by the rotation of the Earth on her axis, and for the vicissitudes of the seasons by her revolution round the Sun. He devoted the greater part of his life to meditating on this theory, and adduced several weighty reasons in its support. Copernicus could not help perceiving the complications and entanglements by which the Ptolemaic system of the universe was surrounded, and which compared unfavourably with the simple and orderly manner in which other natural phenomena presented themselves to his observation. By perceiving that Mars when in opposition was not much inferior in lustre to Jupiter, and when in conjunction resembled a star of the second magnitude, he arrived at the conclusion that the Earth could not be the centre of the planet's motion. Having discovered in some ancient manuscripts a theory, ascribed to the Egyptians, that Mercury and Venus revolved round the Sun, whilst they accompanied the orb in his revolution round the Earth, Copernicus was able to perceive that this afforded him a means of explaining the alternate appearance of those planets on each side of the Sun. The varied aspects of the superior planets, when observed in different parts of their orbits, also led him to conclude that the Earth was not the central body round which they accomplished their revolutions. As a combined result of his observation and reasoning Copernicus propounded the theory that the Sun is the centre of our system, and that all the planets, including the Earth, revolve in orbits around him. This, which is called the Copernican system, is now regarded as, and has been proved to be, the true theory of the solar system. TYCHO BRAHÉ was a celebrated Danish astronomer, who earned a deservedly high reputation on account of the number and accuracy of his astronomical observations and calculations. The various astronomical tables that were in use in his time contained many inaccuracies, and it became necessary that they should be reconstructed upon a more correct basis. Tycho possessed the practical skill required for this kind of work. He was born December 14, 1546, at Knudstorp, near Helsingborg. His father, Otto Brahé, traced his descent from a Swedish family of noble birth. At the age of thirteen Tycho was sent to the University of Copenhagen, where it was intended he should prepare himself for the study of the law. The prediction of a great solar eclipse, which was to happen on August 21, 1560, caused much public excitement in Denmark, for in those days such phenomena were regarded as portending the occurrence of events of national importance. Tycho looked forward with great eagerness to the time of the eclipse. He watched its progress with intense interest, and when he perceived all the details of the phenomenon occur exactly as they were predicted, he resolved to pursue the study of a science by which, as was then believed, the occurrence of future events could be foretold. From Copenhagen Tycho Brahé was sent to Leipsic to study jurisprudence, but astronomy absorbed all his thoughts. He spent his pocket-money in purchasing astronomical books, and, when his tutor had retired to sleep, he occupied his time night after night in watching the stars and making himself familiar with their courses. He followed the planets in their direct and retrograde movements, and with the aid of a small globe and pair of compasses was able by means of his own calculations to detect serious discrepancies in the Alphonsine and Prutenic tables. In order to make himself more proficient in calculating astronomical tables he studied arithmetic and geometry, and learned mathematics without the aid of a master. Having remained at Leipsic for three years, during which time he paid far more attention to the study of astronomy than to that of law, he returned to his native country in consequence of the death of an uncle, who bequeathed him a considerable estate. In Denmark he continued to prosecute his astronomical studies, and incurred the displeasure of his friends, who blamed him for neglecting his intended profession and wasting his time on astronomy, which they regarded as useless and unprofitable. Not caring to remain among his relatives, Tycho Brahé returned to Germany, and arrived at Wittenberg in 1566. Whilst residing here he had an altercation with a Danish gentleman over some question in mathematics. The quarrel led to a duel with swords, which terminated rather unfortunately for Tycho, who had a portion of his nose cut off. This loss he repaired by ingeniously contriving one of gold, silver, and wax, which was said to bear a good resemblance to the original. From Wittenberg Tycho proceeded to Augsburg, where he resided for two years. Here he made the acquaintance of several men distinguished for their learning and their love of astronomy. During his stay at Augsburg he constructed a quadrant of fourteen cubits radius, on which were indicated the single minutes of a degree; he made many valuable observations with this instrument, which he used in combination with a large sextant. In 1571 Tycho returned to Denmark, where his fame as an astronomer had preceded him, and was the means of procuring for him a hearty welcome from his relatives and friends. In 1572, when returning one night from his laboratory--for Tycho studied alchemy as well as astronomy--he beheld what appeared to be a new and brilliant star in the constellation Cassiopeia, which was situated overhead. He directed the attention of his companions to this wonderful object, and all declared that they had never observed such a star before. On the following night he measured its distance from the nearest stars in the constellation, and arrived at the conclusion that it was a fixed star, and beyond our system. This remarkable object remained visible for sixteen months, and when at its brightest rivalled Sirius. At first it was of a brilliant white colour, but as it diminished in size it became yellow; it next changed to a red colour, resembling Aldebaran; afterwards it appeared like Saturn, and as it grew smaller it decreased in brightness, until it finally became invisible. In 1573 Tycho Brahé married a peasant-girl from the village of Knudstorp. This imprudent act roused the resentment of his relatives, who, being of noble birth, were indignant that he should have contracted such an alliance. The bitterness and mutual ill-feeling created by this affair became so intense that the King of Denmark deemed it advisable to endeavour to bring about a reconciliation. After this Tycho returned to Germany, and visited several cities before deciding where he should take up his permanent residence. His fame as an astronomer was now so great that he was received with distinction wherever he went, and on the occasion of a visit to Hesse-Cassel he spent a few pleasant days with William, Landgrave of Hesse, who was himself skilled in astronomy. Frederick II., King of Denmark, having recognised Tycho Brahé's great merits as an astronomer, and not wishing that his fame should add lustre to a foreign Court, expressed a desire that he should return to his native country, and as an inducement offered him a life interest in the island of Huen, in the Sound, where he undertook to erect and equip an observatory at his own expense; the King also promised to bestow upon him a pension, and grant him other emoluments besides. Tycho gladly accepted this generous offer, and during the construction of the observatory occupied his time in making a magnificent collection of instruments and appliances adapted for observational purposes. This handsome edifice, upon which the King of Denmark expended a sum of 20,000_l._, was called 'Uranienburg' ('The Citadel of the Heavens'). Here Tycho resided for a period of twenty years, during which time he pursued his astronomical labours with untiring energy and zeal, and made a large number of observations and calculations of much superior accuracy to any that existed previously, which were afterwards of great service to his successors. During his long residence at Huen, Tycho was visited by many distinguished persons, who were attracted to his island home by his fame and the magnificence of his observatory. Among them was James VI. of Scotland, who, whilst journeying to the Court of Denmark on the occasion of his marriage to a Danish princess, paid Tycho a visit, and enjoyed his hospitality for a week. The King was delighted with all that he saw, and on his departure presented Tycho with a handsome donation, and at his request composed some Latin verses, in which he eulogised his host and praised his observatory. The island of Huen is situated about six miles from the coast of Zealand, and fourteen from Copenhagen. It has a circumference of six miles, and consists chiefly of an elevated plateau, in the centre of which Tycho erected his observatory, the site of which is now marked by two pits and a few mounds of earth--all that remains of Uranienburg. All went well with Tycho Brahé during the lifetime of his noble patron; but in 1588 Frederick II. died, and was succeeded by his son, a youth eleven years of age. The Danish nobles had long been jealous of Tycho's fame and reputation, and on the death of the King an opportunity was afforded them of intriguing with the object of accomplishing his downfall. Several false accusations were brought against him, and the Court party made the impoverished state of the Treasury an excuse for depriving him of his pension and emoluments granted by the late King. Tycho was no longer able to bear the expense of maintaining his establishment at Huen, and fearing that he might be deprived of the island itself, he took a house in Copenhagen, to which he removed all his smaller instruments. During his residence in the capital he was subjected to annoyance and persecution. An order was issued in the King's name preventing him from carrying on his chemical experiments, and he besides suffered the indignity of a personal assault. Tycho Brahé resolved to quit his ungrateful country and seek a home in some foreign land, where he should be permitted to pursue his studies unmolested and live in quietness and peace. He accordingly removed from the island of Huen all his instruments and appliances that were of a portable nature, and packed them on board a vessel which he hired for the purpose of transport, and, having embarked with his family, his servants, and some of his pupils and assistants, 'this interesting barque, freighted with the glory of Denmark,' set sail from Copenhagen about the end of 1597, and having crossed the Baltic in safety, arrived at Rostock, where Tycho found some old friends waiting to receive him. He was now in doubt as to where he should find a home, when the Austrian Emperor Rudolph, himself a liberal patron of science and the fine arts, having heard of Tycho Brahé's misfortunes, sent him an invitation to take up his abode in his dominions, and promised that he should be treated in a manner worthy of his reputation and fame. Tycho resolved to accept the Emperor's kind invitation, and in the spring of 1599 arrived at Prague, where he found a handsome residence prepared for his reception. He was received by the Emperor in a most cordial manner and treated with the greatest kindness. An annual pension of three thousand crowns was settled upon him for life, and he was to have his choice of several residences belonging to his Majesty, where he might reside and erect a new observatory. From among these he selected the Castle of Benach, in Bohemia, which was situated on an elevated plateau and commanded a wide view of the horizon. During his residence at Benach Tycho received a visit from Kepler, who stayed with him for several months in order that he might carry out some astronomical observations. In the following year Kepler returned, and took up his permanent residence with Tycho, having been appointed assistant in his observatory, a post which, at Tycho's request, was conferred upon him by the Emperor. Tycho Brahé soon discovered that his ignorance of the language and unfamiliarity with the customs of the people caused him much inconvenience. He therefore asked permission from the Emperor to be allowed to remove to Prague. This request was readily granted, and a suitable residence was provided for him in the city. In the meantime his family, his large instruments, and other property, having arrived at Prague, Tycho was soon comfortably settled in his new home. Though Tycho Brahé continued his astronomical observations, yet he could not help feeling that he lived among a strange people; nor did the remembrance of his sufferings and the cruel treatment he received at the hands of his fellow-countrymen subdue the affection which he cherished towards his native land. Pondering over the past, he became despondent and low-spirited; a morbid imagination caused him to brood over small troubles, and gloomy, melancholy thoughts possessed his mind--symptoms which seemed to presage the approach of some serious malady. One evening, when visiting at the house of a friend, he was seized with a painful illness, to which he succumbed in less than a fortnight. He died at Prague on October 24, 1601, when in his fifty-fifth year. The Emperor Rudolph, when informed of Tycho Brahé's death, expressed his deep regret, and commanded that he should be interred in the principal church in the city, and that his obsequies should be celebrated with every mark of honour and respect. Tycho Brahé stands out as the most romantic and prominent figure in the history of astronomy. His independence of character, his ardent attachments, his strong hatreds, and his love of splendour, are characteristics which distinguish him from all other men of his age. This remarkable man was an astronomer, astrologer, and alchemist; but in his latter years he renounced astrology, and believed that the stars exercised no influence over the destinies of mankind. As a practical astronomer, Tycho Brahé has not been excelled by any other observer of the heavens. The magnificence of his observatory at Huen, upon the equipment and embellishment of which it is stated he expended a ton of gold; the splendour and variety of his instruments, and his ingenuity in inventing new ones, would alone have made him famous. But it was by the skill and assiduity with which he carried out his numerous and important observations that he has earned for himself a position of the most honourable distinction among astronomers. In his investigation of the Lunar theory Tycho Brahé discovered the Moon's _annual equation_, a yearly effect produced by the Sun's disturbing force as the Earth approaches or recedes from him in her orbit. He also discovered another inequality in the Moon's motion, called the _variation_. He determined with greater exactness astronomical refractions from an altitude of 45° downwards to the horizon, and constructed a catalogue of 777 stars. He also made a vast number of observations on planets, which formed the basis of the 'Rudolphine Tables,' and were of invaluable assistance to Kepler in his investigation of the laws relating to planetary motion. Tycho Brahé declined to accept the Copernican theory, and devised a system of his own, which he called the 'Tychonic.' By this arrangement the Earth remained stationary, whilst all the planets revolved round the Sun, who in his turn completed a daily revolution round the Earth. All the phenomena associated with the motions of those bodies could be explained by means of this system; but it did not receive much support, and after the Copernican theory became better understood it was given up, and heard of no more. We now arrive at the name of KEPLER, one of the very greatest of astronomers, and a man of remarkable genius, who was the first to discover the real nature of the paths pursued by the Earth and planets in their revolution round the Sun. After seventeen years of close observation, he announced that those bodies travelled round the Sun in elliptical or oval orbits, and not in circular paths, as was believed by Copernicus. In his investigation of the laws which govern the motions of the planets he formulated those famous theorems known as 'Kepler's Laws,' which will endure for all time as a proof of his sagacity and surpassing genius. Prior to the discovery of those laws the Sun, though acknowledged to be the centre of the system, did not appear to occupy a central position as regards the motions of the planets; but Kepler, by demonstrating that the planes of the orbits of all the planets, and the lines connecting their apsides, passed through the Sun, was enabled to assign the orb his true position with regard to those bodies. JOHN KEPLER was born at Weil, in the Duchy of Wurtemberg, December 21, 1571. His parents, though of noble family, lived in reduced circumstances, owing to causes for which they were themselves chiefly responsible. In his youth Kepler suffered so much from ill-health that his education had to be neglected. In 1586 he was sent to a monastic school at Maulbronn, which had been established at the Reformation, and was under the patronage of the Duke of Wurtemberg. Afterwards he studied at the University of Tubingen, where he distinguished himself and took a degree. Kepler devoted his attention chiefly to science and mathematics, but paid no particular attention to the study of astronomy. Maestlin, the professor of mathematics, whose lectures he attended, upheld the Copernican theory, and Kepler, who adopted the views of his teacher, wrote an essay in favour of the diurnal rotation of the Earth, in which he supported the more recent astronomical doctrines. In 1594, a vacancy having occurred in the professorship of astronomy at Gratz consequent upon the death of George Stadt, Kepler was appointed his successor. He did not seek this office, as he felt no particular desire to take up the study of astronomy, but was recommended by his tutors as a man well fitted for the post. He was thus in a manner compelled to devote his time and talents to the science of astronomy. Kepler directed his attention to three subjects--viz. 'the number, the size, and the motion of the orbits of the planets.' He endeavoured to ascertain if any regular proportion existed between the sizes of the planetary orbits, or in the difference of their sizes, but in this he was unsuccessful. He then thought that, by imagining the existence of a planet between Mars and Jupiter, and another between Venus and Mercury, he might be able to attain his object; but he found that this assumption afforded him no assistance. Kepler then imagined that as there were five regular geometrical solids, and five planets, the distances of the latter were regulated by the size of the solids described round one another. The discovery afterwards of two additional planets testified to the absurdity of this speculation. A description of these extraordinary researches was published, in 1596, in a work entitled 'Prodromus of Cosmographical Dissertations; containing the cosmographical mystery respecting the admirable proportion of the celestial orbits, and the genuine and real causes of the number, magnitude, and periods of the planets, demonstrated by the five regular geometrical solids.' This volume, notwithstanding the fanciful speculations which it contained, was received with much favour by astronomers, and both Tycho Brahé and Galileo encouraged Kepler to continue his researches. Galileo admired his ingenuity, and Tycho advised him 'to lay a solid foundation for his views by actual observation, and then, by ascending from these, to strive to reach the causes of things.' Kepler spent many years in these fruitless endeavours before he made those grand discoveries in search of which he laboured so long. The religious dissensions which at this time agitated Germany were accompanied in many places by much tumult and excitement. At Gratz the Catholics threatened to expel the Protestants from the city. Kepler, who was of the Reformed faith, having recognised the danger with which he was threatened, retired to Hungary with his wife, whom he had recently married, and remained there for near twelve months, during which time he occupied himself with writing several short treatises on subjects connected with astronomy. In 1599 he returned to Gratz and resumed his professorship. In the year 1600 Kepler set out to pay Tycho Brahé a visit at Prague, in order that he might be able to avail himself of information contained in observations made by Tycho with regard to the eccentricities of the orbits of the planets. He was received by Tycho with much cordiality, and stayed with him for four months at his residence at Benach, Tycho in the meantime having promised that he would use his influence with the Emperor Rudolph to have him appointed as assistant in his observatory. On the termination of his visit Kepler returned to Gratz, and as there was a renewal of the religious trouble in the city, he resigned his professorship, from which he only derived a small income, and, relying on Tycho's promise, he again journeyed to Prague, and arrived there in 1601. Kepler was presented to the Emperor by Tycho, and the post of Imperial Mathematician was conferred upon him, with a salary of 100 florins a year, upon condition that he should assist Tycho in his observatory. This appointment was of much value to Kepler, because it afforded him an opportunity of obtaining access to the numerous astronomical observations made by Tycho, which were of great assistance to him in the investigation of the subject which he had chosen--viz. the laws which govern the motions of the planets, and the form and size of the planetary orbits. As an acknowledgment of the Emperor's great kindness, the two astronomers resolved to compute a new set of astronomical tables, and in honour of his Majesty they were to be called the 'Rudolphine Tables.' This project pleased the Emperor, who promised to defray the expense of their publication. Logomontanus, Tycho's chief assistant, had entrusted to him that portion of the work relating to observations on the stars, and Kepler had charge of the part which embraced the calculations belonging to the planets and their orbits. This important work had scarcely been begun when the departure of Logomontanus, who obtained an appointment in Denmark, and the death of Tycho Brahé in October 1601, necessitated its suspension for a time. Kepler was appointed Chief Mathematician to the Emperor in succession to Tycho--a position of honour and distinction, and to which was attached a handsome salary, that was paid out of the Imperial treasury. But owing to the continuance of expensive wars, which entailed a severe drain upon the resources of the country, the public funds became very low, and Kepler's salary was always in arrear. This condition of things involved him in serious pecuniary difficulties, and the responsibility of having to maintain an increasing family added to his anxieties. It was with the greatest difficulty that he succeeded in obtaining payment of even a portion of his salary, and he was reduced to such straits as to be under the necessity of casting nativities in order to obtain money to meet his most pressing requirements. In 1609 Kepler published his great work, entitled 'The New Astronomy; or, Commentaries on the Motions of Mars.' It was by his observation of Mars, which has an orbit of greater eccentricity than that of any of the other planets, with the exception of Mercury, that he was enabled, after years of patient study, to announce in this volume the discovery of two of the three famous theorems known as Kepler's Laws. The first is, that all the planets move round the Sun in elliptic orbits, and that the orb occupies one of the foci. The second is, that the radius-vector, or imaginary line joining the centre of the planet and the centre of the Sun, describes equal areas in equal times. The third law, which relates to the connection between the periodic times and the distances of the planets, was not discovered until ten years later, when Kepler, in 1619, issued another work, called the 'Harmonies of the World,' dedicated to James I. of England, in which was contained this remarkable law. These laws have elevated astronomy to the position of a true physical science, and also formed the starting-point of Newton's investigations which led to the discovery of the law of gravitation. Kepler's delight on the discovery of his third law was unbounded. He writes: 'Nothing holds me. I will indulge in my sacred fury. I will triumph over mankind by the honest confession that I have stolen the golden vases of the Egyptians to build up a tabernacle for my God far away from the confines of Egypt. If you forgive me, I rejoice; if you are angry, I can bear it. The die is cast; the book is written, to be read either now or by posterity I care not which. It may well wait a century for a reader, as God has waited six thousand years for an observer.' When Kepler presented his celebrated book to the Emperor, he remarked that it was his intention to make a similar attack upon the other planets, and promised that he would be successful if his Majesty would undertake to find the means necessary for carrying on operations. But the Emperor had more formidable enemies to contend with nearer home than Jupiter and Saturn, and no funds were forthcoming to assist Kepler in his undertaking. The chair of mathematics in the University of Linz having become vacant, Kepler offered himself as a candidate for the appointment, which he was anxious to obtain; but the Emperor Rudolph was averse to his leaving Prague, and encouraged him to hope that the arrears of his salary would be paid. But past experience led Kepler to have no very sanguine expectations on this point; nor was it until after the death of Rudolph, in 1612, that he was relieved from his pecuniary embarrassments. On the accession of Rudolph's brother, Matthias, to the Austrian throne, Kepler was reappointed Imperial Mathematician; he was also permitted to hold the professorship at Linz, to which he had been elected. Kepler was not loth to remove from Prague, where he had spent eleven years harassed by poverty and other domestic afflictions. Having settled with his family at Linz, Kepler issued another work, in 1618, entitled 'Epitome of the Copernican Astronomy,' in which he gave a general account of his astronomical observations and discoveries, and a summary of his opinions with regard to the theories which in those days were the subject of controversial discussion. Almost immediately after its publication it was included by the Congregation of the Index, at Rome, in the list of prohibited books. This occasioned Kepler considerable alarm, as he imagined it might interfere with the sale of his works, or give rise to difficulties in the issue of others. He, however, was assured by his friend Remus that the action of the Papal authorities need cause him no anxiety. The Emperor Matthias died in 1619, and was succeeded by Ferdinand III., who not only retained Kepler in his office, but gave orders that all the arrears of his salary should be paid, including those which accumulated during the reign of Rudolph; he also expressed a desire that the 'Rudolphine Tables' should be published without delay and at his cost. But other obstacles intervened, for at this time Germany was involved in a civil and religious war, which interfered with all peaceful vocations. Kepler's library at Linz was sealed up by order of the Jesuits, and the city was for a time besieged by troops. This state of public affairs necessitated a considerable delay in the publication of the 'Tables.' The 'Rudolphine Tables' were published at Ulm in 1627. They were commenced by Tycho Brahé, and completed by Kepler, who made his calculations from Tycho's observations, and based them upon his own great discovery of the ellipticity of the orbits of the planets. They are divided into four parts. The first and third parts contain logarithmic and other tables for the purpose of facilitating astronomical calculations; in the second are tables of the Sun, Moon, and planets; and in the fourth are indicated the positions of one thousand stars as determined by Tycho. Kepler made a special journey to Prague in order to present the 'Tables' to the Emperor, and afterwards the Grand Duke of Tuscany sent him a gold chain as an acknowledgment of his appreciation of the completion of this great work. Albert Wallenstein, Duke of Friedland, an accomplished scholar and a man fond of scientific pursuits, made Kepler a most liberal offer if he would take up his residence in his dominions. After duly considering this proposal, Kepler decided to accept the Duke's offer, provided it received the sanction of the Emperor. This was readily given, and Kepler, in 1629, removed with his family from Linz to Sagan, in Silesia. The Duke of Friedland treated him with great kindness and liberality, and through his influence he was appointed to a professorship in the University of Rostock. Though Kepler was permitted to retain the pension bestowed upon him by the late Emperor Rudolph, he was unable after his removal to Silesia to obtain payment of it, and there was a large accumulation of arrears. In a final endeavour to recover the amount owing to him he travelled to Ratisbon, and appealed to the Imperial Assembly, but without success. The fatigue which Kepler endured on his journey, combined with vexation and disappointment, brought on a fever, which terminated fatally. He died on November 15, 1630, when in the sixtieth year of his age, and was interred in St. Peter's churchyard, Ratisbon. Kepler was a man of indomitable energy and perseverance, and spared neither time nor trouble in the accomplishment of any object which he took in hand. In thinking over the form of the orbits of the planets, he writes: 'I brooded with the whole energy of my mind on this subject--asking why they are not other than they are--the number, the size, and the motions of the orbits.' But many fanciful ideas passed through Kepler's imaginative brain before he hit upon the true form of the planetary orbits. In his 'Mysterium Cosmographicum' he asserts that the five kinds of regular polyhedral solids, when described round one another, regulated the distances of the planets and size of the planetary orbits. In support of this theory he writes as follows: 'The orbit of the Earth is the measure of the rest. About it circumscribe a dodecahedron. The sphere including this will be that of Mars. About Mars' orbit describe a tetrahedron; the sphere containing this will be Jupiter's orbit. Round Jupiter's describe a cube; the sphere including this will be Saturn's. Within the Earth's orbit inscribe an icosahedron; the sphere inscribed in it will be Venus's orbit. In Venus inscribe an octahedron; the sphere inscribed in it will be Mercury's.' The above quotation is an instance of Kepler's wild and imaginative genius, which ultimately led him to make those sublime discoveries associated with planetary motion which are known as 'Kepler's Laws.' He describes himself as 'troublesome and choleric in politics and domestic matters;' but in his relations with scientific men he was affable and pleasant. He showed no jealousy of a rival, and was always ready to recognise merit in others; nor did he hesitate to acknowledge any error of his own when more recent discoveries proved that he was wrong. Some of his works contain passages, written in a jocular strain, indicative of a bright and cheerful temperament. The following characteristic paragraph refers to the opinions of the Epicureans with regard to the appearance of a new star, which they ascribed to a fortuitous concourse of atoms: 'When I was a youth, with plenty of idle time on my hands, I was much taken with the vanity, of which some grown men are not ashamed, of making anagrams by transposing the letters of my name written in Latin so as to make another sentence. Out of Ioannes Keplerus came _Serpens in akuleo_ (a serpent in his sting); but not being satisfied with the meaning of these words, and being unable to make another, I trusted the thing to chance, and, taking out of a pack of playing-cards as many as there were letters in the name, I wrote one upon each, and then began to shuffle them, and at each shuffle to read them in the order they came, to see if any meaning came of it. Now, may all the Epicurean gods and goddesses confound this same chance, which, although I have spent a good deal of time over it, never showed me anything like sense, even from a distance. So I gave up my cards to the Epicurean eternity, to be carried away into infinity; and it is said they are still flying about there, in the utmost confusion, among the atoms, and have never yet come to any meaning. I will tell those disputants, my opponents, not my own opinion, but my wife's. Yesterday, when weary with writing, and my mind quite dusty with considering these atoms, I was called to supper, and a salad I had asked for was set before me. "It seems, then," said I aloud, "that if pewter dishes, leaves of lettuce, grains of salt, drops of water, vinegar and oil, and slices of egg, had been flying about in the air from all eternity, it might at last happen by chance that there would come a salad." "Yes," says my wife, "but not so nice and well dressed as this of mine is."' Notwithstanding the frequent interruptions which, owing to various reasons, retarded his labours, Kepler was able to bring to a successful completion the numerous and important works upon which he was engaged during his lifetime, the voluminous nature of which may be imagined when it is stated that he published thirty-three separate works, besides leaving behind twenty-two volumes of manuscript. During his researches on the motions of Mars, Kepler discovered that the planet sometimes travelled at an accelerated rate of speed, and at another time its pace was diminished. At one time he observed it to be in advance of the place where he calculated it should be found, and at another time it was behind it. This caused him considerable perplexity, and, feeling convinced in his mind that the form of the planet's orbit could not be circular, he was compelled to turn his attention to some other closed curve, by which those inequalities of motion could be explained. After years of careful observation and study, Kepler arrived at the conclusion that the form of the planet's orbit is an ellipse, and that the Sun occupies one of the foci. He afterwards determined that the orbits of all the planets are of an elliptical form. Having discovered the true form of the planetary orbits, Kepler next endeavoured to ascertain the cause which regulates the unequal motion that a planet pursues in its path. He observed that when a planet approached the Sun its motion was accelerated, and as it receded from him its pace became slower. This he explained in his next great discovery by proving that an imaginary line, or radius-vector, extending from the centre of the Sun to the centre of the planet 'describes equal areas in equal times.' When near the Sun, or at perihelion, a planet traverses a larger portion of its arc in the same period of time than it does when at the opposite part of its orbit, or when at aphelion; but, as the areas of both are equal, it follows that the planet does not always maintain the same rate of speed, and that its velocity is greatest when nearest the Sun, and least when most distant from him. By the application of his first and second laws Kepler was able to formulate a third law. He found that there existed a remarkable relationship between the mean distances of the planets and the times in which they complete their revolutions round the Sun, and discovered 'that the squares of the periodic times are to each in the same proportion as the cubes of the mean distances.' The periodic time of a planet having been ascertained, the square of the mean distance and the mean distance itself can be obtained. It is by the application of this law that the distances of the planets are usually calculated. These discoveries are known as Kepler's Laws, and are usually classified as follows:-- 1. 'The orbit described by every planet is an ellipse, of which the centre of the Sun occupies one of the foci. 2. 'Every planet moves round the Sun in a plane orbit, and the radius-vector, or imaginary line joining the centre of the planet and the centre of the Sun, describes equal areas in equal times. 3. 'The squares of the periodic times of any two planets are proportional to the cubes of their mean distances from the Sun.'[1] These remarkable discoveries do not embrace all the achievements by which Kepler has immortalised his name, and earned for himself the proud title of 'Legislator of the Heavens;' he predicted transits of Mercury and Venus, made important discoveries in optics, and was the inventor of the astronomical telescope. GALILEO GALILEI, the famous Italian astronomer and philosopher, and the contemporary of Kepler and of Milton, was born at Pisa on February 15, 1564. His father, who traced his descent from an ancient Florentine family, was desirous that his son should adopt the profession of medicine, and with this intention he entered him as a student at the University of Pisa. Galileo, however, soon discovered that the study of mathematics and mechanical science possessed a greater attraction for his mind, and, following his inclinations, he resolved to devote his energies to acquiring proficiency in those subjects. In 1583 his attention was attracted by the oscillation of a brass lamp suspended from the ceiling of the cathedral at Pisa. Galileo was impressed with the regularity of its motion as it swung backwards and forwards, and was led to imagine that the pendulum movement might prove a valuable method for the correct measurement of time. The practical application of this idea he afterwards adopted in the construction of an astronomical clock. Having become proficient in mathematics, Galileo, whilst engaged in studying the writings of Archimedes, wrote an essay on 'The Hydrostatic Balance,' and composed a treatise on 'The Centre of Gravity in Solid Bodies.' The reputation which he earned by these contributions to science procured for him the appointment of Lecturer on Mathematics at the University of Pisa. Galileo next directed his attention to the works of Aristotle, and made no attempt to conceal the disfavour with which he regarded many of the doctrines taught by the Greek philosopher; nor had he any difficulty in exposing their inaccuracies. One of these, which maintained that the heavier of two bodies descended to the earth with the greater rapidity, he proved to be incorrect, and demonstrated by experiment from the top of the tower at Pisa that, except for the unequal resistance of the air, all bodies fell to the ground with the same velocity. As the chief expounder of the new philosophy, Galileo had to encounter the prejudices of the followers of Aristotle, and of all those who disliked any innovation or change in the established order of things. The antagonism which existed between Galileo and his opponents, who were both numerous and influential, was intensified by the bitterness and sarcasm which he imparted into his controversies, and the attitude assumed by his enemies at last became so threatening that he deemed it prudent to resign the Chair of Mathematics in the University of Pisa. In the following year he was appointed to a similar post at Padua, where his fame attracted crowds of pupils from all parts of Europe. In 1611 Galileo visited Rome. He was received with much distinction by the different learned societies, and was enrolled a member of the Lyncæan Academy. In two years after his visit to the capital he published a work in which he declared his adhesion to the Copernican theory, and openly avowed his disbelief in the astronomical facts recorded in the Scriptures. Galileo maintained that the sacred writings were not intended for the purpose of imparting scientific information, and that it was impossible for men to ignore phenomena witnessed with their eyes, or disregard conclusions arrived at by the exercise of their reasoning powers. The champions of orthodoxy having become alarmed, an appeal was made to the ecclesiastical authorities to assist in suppressing this recent astronomical heresy, and other obnoxious doctrines, the authorship of which was ascribed to Galileo. In 1615, Galileo was summoned before the Inquisition to reply to the accusation of heresy. 'He was charged with maintaining the motion of the Earth and the stability of the Sun; with teaching this doctrine to his pupils; with corresponding on the subject with several German mathematicians; and with having published it, and attempted to reconcile it to Scripture in his letters to Mark Velser in 1612.' These charges having been formally investigated by the Inquisition, Cardinal Bellarmine was authorised to communicate with Galileo, and inform him that unless he renounced the obnoxious doctrines, and promised 'neither to teach, defend, or publish them in future,' it was decreed that he should be committed to prison. Galileo appeared next day before the Cardinal, and, without any hesitation, pledged himself that for the future he would adhere to the pronouncement of the Inquisition. Having, as they imagined, silenced Galileo, the Inquisition resolved to condemn the entire Copernican system as heretical; and in order to effectually accomplish this, besides condemning the writings of Galileo, they inhibited Kepler's 'Epitome of the Copernican System,' and Copernicus's own work, 'De Revolutionibus Orbium Celestium.' Whether it was that Galileo regarded the Inquisition as a body whose decrees were too absurd and unreasonable to be heeded, or that he dreaded the consequences which might have followed had he remained obstinate, we know that, notwithstanding the pledges which he gave, he was soon afterwards engaged in controversial discussion on those subjects which he promised not to mention again. On the accession of his friend Cardinal Barberini to the pontifical throne in 1623, under the title of Urban VIII., Galileo undertook a journey to Rome to offer him his congratulations upon his elevation to the papal chair. He was received by his Holiness with marked attention and kindness, was granted several prolonged audiences, and had conferred upon him several valuable gifts. Notwithstanding the kindness of Pope Urban and the leniency with which he was treated by the Inquisition, Galileo, having ignored his pledge, published in 1632 a book, in dialogue form, in which three persons were supposed to express their scientific opinions. The first upheld the Copernican theory and the more recent philosophical views; the second person adopted a neutral position, suggested doubts, and made remarks of an amusing nature; the third individual, called Simplicio, was a believer in Ptolemy and Aristotle, and based his arguments upon the philosophy of the ancients. As soon as this work became publicly known, the enemies of Galileo persuaded the Pope that the third person held up to ridicule was intended as a representation of himself--an individual regardless of scientific truth, and firmly attached to the ideas and opinions associated with the writings of antiquity. Almost immediately after the publication of the 'Dialogues' Galileo was summoned before the Inquisition, and, notwithstanding his feeble health and the infirmities of advanced age, he was, after a long and tedious trial, condemned to abjure by oath on his knees his scientific beliefs. 'The ceremony of Galileo's abjuration was one of exciting interest and of awful formality. Clothed in the sackcloth of a repentant criminal, the venerable sage fell upon his knees before the assembled cardinals, and, laying his hand upon the Holy Evangelists, he invoked the Divine aid in abjuring, and detesting, and vowing never again to teach the doctrines of the Earth's motion and of the Sun's stability. He pledged himself that he would nevermore, either in words or in writing, propagate such heresies; and he swore that he would fulfil and observe the penances which had been inflicted upon him.' 'At the conclusion of this ceremony, in which he recited his abjuration word for word and then signed it, he was conveyed, in conformity with his sentence, to the prison of the Inquisition.'[2] Galileo's sarcasm, and the bitterness which he imparted into his controversies, were more the cause of his misfortunes than his scientific beliefs. When he became involved in difficulties he did not possess the moral courage to enable him to abide by the consequences of his acts; nor did he care to become a martyr for the sake of science, his submission to the Inquisition having probably saved him from a fate similar to what befell Bruno. Though it would be impossible to justify Galileo's want of faith in his dealings with the Inquisition, yet one cannot help sympathising deeply with the aged philosopher, who, in this painful episode of his life, was compelled to go through the form of making a retractation of his beliefs under circumstances of a most humiliating nature. But the persecution of Galileo did not delay the progress of scientific inquiry nor retard the advancement of the Copernican theory, which, after the discovery by Newton of the law of gravitation, was universally adopted as the true theory of the solar system. Ferdinand, Duke of Tuscany, having exerted his influence with Pope Urban on behalf of Galileo, he was, after a few days' incarceration, released from prison, and permission was given him to reside at Siena, where he remained for six months. He was afterwards allowed to return to his villa at Arcetri, and, though regarded as a prisoner of the Inquisition, was permitted to pursue his studies unmolested for the remainder of his days. Galileo died at Arcetri on January 8, 1642, when in the seventy-eighth year of his age. Though not the inventor, he was the first to construct a refracting telescope and apply it to astronomical research. With this instrument he made a number of important discoveries which tended to confirm his belief in the truthfulness of the Copernican theory. On directing his telescope to the Sun, he discovered movable spots on his disc, and concluded from his observation of them that the orb rotated on his axis in about twenty-eight days. He also ascertained that the Moon's illumination is due to reflected sunlight, and that her surface is diversified by mountains, valleys, and plains. On the night of January 7, 1610, Galileo discovered the four moons of Jupiter. This discovery may be regarded as one of his most brilliant achievements with the telescope; and, notwithstanding the improvement in construction and size of modern instruments, no other satellite was discovered until near midnight on September 9, 1892, when Mr. E. E. Barnard, with the splendid telescope of the Lick Observatory, added 'another gem to the diadem of Jupiter.' The phases of Venus and Mars, the triple form of Saturn, and the constitution of the Milky Way, which he found to consist of a countless multitude of stars, were additional discoveries for our knowledge of which we are indebted to Galileo and his telescope. Galileo made many other important discoveries in mechanical and physical science. He detected the law of falling bodies in their accelerated motion towards the Earth, determined the parabolic law of projectiles, and demonstrated that matter, even if invisible, possessed the property of weight. In these pages a short historical description is given of the progress made in astronomical science from an early period to the time in which Milton lived. The discoveries of Copernicus, Kepler, and Galileo had raised it to a position of lofty eminence, though the law of gravitation, which accounts for the form and permanency of the planetary orbits, still remained undiscovered. Theories formerly obscure or conjectural were either rejected or elucidated with accuracy and precision, and the solar system, having the Sun as its centre, with his attendant family of planets and their satellites revolving in majestic orbits around him, presented an impressive spectacle of order, harmony, and design. CHAPTER II ASTRONOMY IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY The seventeenth century embraces the most remarkable epoch in the whole history of astronomy. It was during this period that those wonderful discoveries were made which have been the means of raising astronomy to the lofty position which it now occupies among the sciences. The unrivalled genius and patient labours of the illustrious men whose names stand out in such prominence on the written pages of the history of this era have rendered it one of the most interesting and elevating of studies. Though Copernicus lived in the preceding century, yet the names of Tycho Brahé, Kepler, Galileo, and Newton, testify to the greatness of the discoveries that were made during this period, which have surrounded the memories of those men with a lustre of undying fame. Foremost among astronomers of less conspicuous eminence who made important discoveries in this century we find the name of Huygens. CHRISTIAN HUYGENS was born at The Hague in 1629. He was the second son of Constantine Huygens, an eminent diplomatist, and secretary to the Prince of Orange. Huygens studied at Leyden and Breda, and became highly distinguished as a geometrician and scientist. He made important investigations relative to the figure of the Earth, and wrote a learned treatise on the cause of gravity; he also determined with greater accuracy investigations made by Galileo regarding the accelerated motion of bodies when subjected to the influence of that force. Huygens admitted that the planets and their satellites attracted each other with a force varying according to the inverse ratio of the squares of their distances, but rejected the mutual attraction of the molecules of matter, believing that they possessed gravity towards a central point only, to which they were attracted. This supposition was at variance with the Newtonian theory, which, however, was universally regarded as the correct one. Huygens originated the theory by which it is believed that light is produced by the undulatory vibration of the ether; he also discovered polarization. Up to this time the method adopted in the construction of clocks was not capable of producing a mechanism which measured time with sufficient accuracy to satisfy the requirements of astronomers. Huygens endeavoured to supply this want, and applied his mechanical ingenuity in constructing a clock that could be relied upon to keep accurate time. Though the pendulum motion was first adopted by Galileo, he was unable to arrange its mechanism so that it should keep up a continuous movement. The oscillation of the pendulum ceased after a time, and a fresh impulse had to be applied to set it in motion. Consequently, Galileo's clock was of no service as a timekeeper. Huygens overcame this difficulty by so arranging the mechanism of his clock that the balance, instead of being horizontal, was directed perpendicularly, and prolonged downwards to form a pendulum, the oscillations of which regulated the downward motion of the weight. This invention, which was highly applauded, proved to be of great service everywhere, and was especially valuable for astronomical purposes. Huygens next directed his attention to the construction of telescopes, and displayed much skill in the grinding and polishing of lenses. He made several instruments superior in power and accuracy to any that existed previously, and with one of these made some remarkable discoveries when observing the planet Saturn. The telescopic appearance of Saturn is one of the most beautiful in the heavens. The planet, surrounded by two brilliant rings, and accompanied by eight attendant moons, surpasses all the other orbs of the firmament as an object of interest and admiration. To the naked eye, Saturn is visible as a star of the first magnitude, and was known to the ancients as the most remote of the planets. Travelling in space at a distance of nearly one thousand millions of miles from the Sun, the planet accomplishes a revolution of its mighty orbit in twenty-nine and a half years. Galileo was the first astronomer who directed a telescope to Saturn. He observed that the planet presented a triform appearance, and that on each side of the central globe there were two objects, in close contact with it, which caused it to assume an ovoid shape. After further observation, Galileo perceived that the lateral bodies gradually decreased in size, until they became invisible. At the expiration of a certain period of time they reappeared, and were observed to go through a certain cycle of changes. By the application of increased telescopic power it was discovered that the appendages were not of a rounded form, but appeared as two small crescents, having their concave surfaces directed towards the planet and their extremities in contact with it, resembling the manner in which the handles are attached to a cup. These objects were observed to go through a series of periodic changes. After having become invisible, they reappeared as two luminous straight bands, projecting from each side of the planet; during the next seven or eight years they gradually opened out, and assumed a crescentic form; they afterwards began to contract, and on the expiration of a similar period, during which time they gradually decreased in size, they again became invisible. It was perceived that the appendages completed a cycle of their changes in about fifteen years. In 1656, Huygens, with a telescope constructed by himself, was enabled to solve the enigma which for so many years baffled the efforts of the ablest astronomers. He announced his discovery in the form of a Latin cryptograph which, when deciphered, read as follows:-- 'Annulo cingitur, tenui plano, nusquam cohaerente, ad eclipticam inclinatio.' 'The planet is surrounded by a slender flat ring everywhere distinct from its surface, and inclined to the ecliptic.' Huygens perceived the shadow of the ring thrown on the planet, and was able to account in a satisfactory manner for all the phenomena observed in connection with its variable appearance. The true form of the ring is circular, but by us it is seen foreshortened; consequently, when the Earth is above or below its plane, it appears of an elliptical shape. When the position of the planet is such that the plane of the ring passes through the Sun, the edge of the ring only is illumined, and then it becomes invisible for a short period. In the same manner, when the plane of the ring passes through the Earth, the illumined edge of the ring is not of sufficient magnitude to appear visible, but as the enlightened side of the plane becomes more inclined towards the Earth, the ring comes again into view. When the plane of the ring passes between the Earth and the Sun, the unillumined side of the ring is turned towards the Earth, and during the time it remains in this position it is invisible. Huygens discovered the sixth satellite of Saturn (Titan), and also the Great Nebula in Orion. JOHANN HEVELIUS, a celebrated Prussian astronomer, was born at Dantzig in 1611, and died in that city in 1687. He was a man of wealth, and erected an observatory at his residence, where, for a period of forty years, he carried out a series of astronomical observations. He constructed a chart of the stars, and in order to complete his work, formed nine new constellations in those spaces in the celestial vault which were previously un-named. They are known by the names Camelopardus, Canes Venatici, Coma Bernices, Lacerta, Leo Minor, Lynx, Monoceros, Sextans, and Vulpecula. He also executed a chart of the Moon's surface, wrote a description of the lunar spots, and discovered the Libration of the Moon in Longitude. On May 30, 1661, Hevelius observed a transit of Mercury, a description of which he published, and included with it Horrox's treatise on the first-recorded transit of Venus. This work, after having passed through several hands, became the property of Hevelius, who was capable of appreciating its merits. The manuscript was sent to him by Huygens, and in acknowledging it he writes: 'How greatly does my Mercury exult in the joyous prospect that he may shortly fold within his arms Horrox's long looked-for and beloved Venus! He renders you unfeigned thanks that by your permission this much-desired union is about to be celebrated, and that the writer is able, with your concurrence, to introduce them both together to the public.' Hevelius made numerous researches on comets, and suggested that the form of their paths might be a parabola. GIOVANNI DOMENICO CASSINI was born at Perinaldo, near Nice, in 1625. He studied at Genoa and Bologna, and was afterwards appointed to the Chair of Astronomy at the latter University. He was a man of high scientific attainments, and made many important astronomical discoveries. In 1671 he became Director of the Royal Observatory at Paris, and devoted a long life to trying and difficult observations, which in his later years deprived him of his eyesight. In 1644 Cassini proved beyond doubt that Jupiter rotated on his axis, and also assigned his period of rotation with considerable accuracy. He published tables of the planet's satellites, and determined their motions from observations of their eclipses. He ascertained the periods of rotation of Venus and Mars; executed a chart of the lunar surface, and observed an occultation of Jupiter by the Moon. Cassini discovered the dual nature of Saturn's ring, having perceived that instead of one there are two concentric rings separated by a dark space. He also discovered four of the planet's satellites--viz. Japetus, Rhea, Dione, and Tethys. He made a near approximation to the solar parallax by means of researches on the parallax of Mars, and investigated some irregularities of the Moon's motion. Cassini discovered the belts of Jupiter, and also the Zodiacal Light, and established the coincidence of the nodes of the lunar equator and orbit. JAQUES CASSINI, son of Giovanni, was born at Paris in 1677. He followed in his father's footsteps, and wrote several treatises on astronomical subjects. He investigated the period of the rotation of Venus on her axis, and upheld the results arrived at by his father, which were afterwards confirmed by observations made by Schroeter. Cassini made some valuable researches with regard to the proper motion of the stars, and demonstrated that their change of position on the celestial vault was real, and not caused by a displacement of the ecliptic. He attempted to ascertain the apparent diameter of Sirius, and made observations with regard to the visibility of the stars. The Cassini family produced several generations of eminent astronomers, whose discoveries and investigations were of much value in advancing the science of astronomy. OLAUS ROEMER, an eminent Danish astronomer, was born at Copenhagen September 25, 1644. When Picard, a French astronomer, visited Denmark in 1671, for the purpose of ascertaining the exact position of 'Uranienburg,' the site of Tycho Brahé's observatory, he made the acquaintance of Roemer, who was engaged in studying mathematics and astronomy under Erasmus Bartolinus. Having perceived that the young man was gifted with no ordinary degree of talent, he secured his services to assist him in his observations, and, on the conclusion of his labours, Picard was so much impressed with the ability displayed by Roemer, that he invited him to accompany him to France. This invitation he accepted, and took up his residence in the French capital, where he continued to prosecute his astronomical studies. In 1675 Roemer communicated to the Academy of Sciences a paper, in which he announced his discovery of the progressive transmission of light. It was believed that light travelled instantaneously, but Roemer was able to demonstrate the inaccuracy of this conclusion, and determined that light travels through space with a measurable velocity. By diligently observing the eclipses of Jupiter's satellites, Roemer perceived that sometimes they occurred before, and sometimes after their predicted times. This irregularity, he discovered, depended upon the position of the Earth with regard to Jupiter. When the Earth, in traversing her orbit, moved round to the opposite side of the Sun, thereby bringing Jupiter into conjunction, an eclipse occurred sixteen minutes twenty-six seconds later than it did when Jupiter was in opposition or nearest to the Earth. As there existed an impression that light travelled instantaneously, it was believed that an eclipse occurred at the moment it was perceived in the telescope. This, however, was not so. Roemer, after a long series of observations, concluded that the discrepancies were due to the fact that light travels with a measurable velocity, and that it requires a greater length of time, upwards of sixteen minutes, to traverse the additional distance--the diameter of the Earth's orbit--which intervenes between the Earth and Jupiter, when the planet is in conjunction, as compared with the distance between the Earth and Jupiter, when the latter is in opposition. This discovery of Roemer's was the means of enabling the velocity of light to be ascertained, which, according to recent calculations, is about 187,000 miles a second. As an acknowledgment of the importance of his communication, Roemer was awarded a seat in the Academy, and apartments were assigned to him at the Royal Observatory, where he carried on his astronomical studies. In 1681 Roemer returned to Denmark, and was appointed Professor of Mathematics in the University of Copenhagen; he was also entrusted with the care of the city observatory--a duty which his reputation as an astronomer eminently qualified him to undertake. The transit instrument--a mechanism of much importance to astronomers--was invented by Roemer in 1690; it consists of a telescope fixed to a horizontal axis, and adjusted so as to revolve in the plane of the meridian. It is employed in observing the passage of the heavenly bodies across the observer's meridian. To note accurately by means of the astronomical clock the exact instant of time at which a celestial body crosses the centre of the field of view is the essential part of a transit observation. Small transit instruments are employed for taking the time and for regulating the observatory clock, but large instruments are used for delicate and exact observations of Right Ascensions and Declinations of stars of different magnitudes. Meridian, and altitude and azimuth circles, are important astronomical appliances, which owe their existence to the inventive skill of this distinguished astronomer. Roemer resided for many years at the observatory in the city of Copenhagen, where he pursued his astronomical studies until the time of his death, which occurred in 1710. He meritoriously attempted to determine the parallax of the fixed stars; and it is said that the astronomical calculations and observations which he left behind him were so voluminous as to equal in number those made by Tycho Brahé, nearly all of which perished in a great conflagration that destroyed the observatory and a large portion of the city of Copenhagen in 1728. Among other astronomers of this century whose names deserve recording were Descartes and Gassendi, whose mathematical researches in their application to astronomy were of much value; Fabricius, Torricelli, and Maraldi, who by their observations and investigations added many facts to the general knowledge of the science; and Bayer, to whom belongs the distinction of having constructed the first star-atlas. In our own country during this period astronomy was cultivated by a few enthusiastic men, who devoted their time and talents to promoting the advancement of the science. It, however, received no recognition as a subject of study at any of the Universities, and no public observatory existed in Great Britain. Though it was not until towards the close of the century that the attention of all Europe was directed to England in admiration of the discoveries of the illustrious Newton, yet astronomy had its humble votaries, and chief among those was a young clergyman of the name of Horrox. JEREMIAH HORROX was born at Toxteth, near Liverpool, in 1619--close on three centuries ago. Little is known of his family. His parents have been described as persons who occupied a humble position in life, but, as they were able to give their son a classical education which fitted him for one of the learned professions, it is probable they were not so obscure as they have been represented to be. Having received his early education at Toxteth, Horrox afterwards proceeded to Cambridge, and was entered as a student at Emmanuel College on May 18, 1632, when in his fourteenth year. At the University he devoted himself to the study of classics, especially Latin, which in those days was the language adopted by men of learning, when engaged in writing works of a philosophical and scientific character. After having remained at Cambridge for three years, Horrox returned to his native county, and was appointed curate of Hoole, a place about eight miles distant from Preston. Hoole is described as a narrow low-lying strip of land consisting largely of moss, and almost converted into an island by the waters of Martin Mere on the south, and the Ribble on the north; and, though doubtless an open and favourable situation for astronomical observation, it could not have been attractive as a place of residence. Yet it was here on November 24, 1639, that Horrox made his famous observation of the first recorded transit of Venus, an occurrence with which his name will be for ever associated. It was while at Cambridge that Horrox first turned his attention to the study of astronomy. His love of the sublime, and the captivating influence exerted on his mind by the contemplation of the heavenly bodies, induced him to adopt astronomy as a pursuit congenial to his tastes, and capable of exercising his highest mental powers. Having this object in view, he applied himself with much earnestness to the study of mathematics; he had, however, to rely mainly upon his own exertions, for at that time no branch of physical or mathematical science was taught at Cambridge, and consequently he obtained no professional instruction. It was so also with astronomy, which, as a science, was scarcely known in this country; no regular record of astronomical observations was kept by any individual observer, and no public observatory existed in England or in France. The disadvantages and obstacles which Horrox had to encounter may be best described by quoting his own words. He writes: 'There were many hindrances. The abstruse nature of the study, my inexperience and want of means dispirited me. I was much pained not to have any one to whom I could look for guidance, or indeed for the sympathy of companionship in my endeavours, and I was assailed by the languor and weariness which are inseparable from every great undertaking. What then was to be done? I could not make the pursuit an easy one, much less increase my fortune, and least of all imbue others with a love for astronomy; and yet to complain of philosophy on account of its difficulties would be foolish and unworthy. I determined, therefore, that the tediousness of study should be overcome by industry; my poverty--failing a better method--by patience; and that instead of a master I would use astronomical books. Armed with these weapons I would contend successfully; and, having heard of others acquiring knowledge without greater help, I would blush that any one should be able to do more than I, always remembering that word of Virgil's-- Totidem nobis animaeque manusque. Having heard much praise bestowed upon the works of Lansberg, a Flemish astronomer, Horrox thought it would be to his advantage to procure a copy of his writings. This he succeeded in obtaining after some difficulty, and devoted a considerable time to calculating Ephemerides, based upon the Lansberg Tables, but after making a number of computations he discovered that they were unreliable and inaccurate. In the year 1636 Horrox made the acquaintance of William Crabtree, a devoted astronomer, who lived at Broughton, a suburb of Manchester. A close friendship soon existed between the two men, and they carried on an active correspondence about matters relating to the science which they both loved so well. Crabtree, who was an unbeliever in Lansberg, urged Horrox to discard the Flemish astronomer's works, and devote his talents to the study of Tycho Brahé and Kepler. This advice led Horrox to make a more rigorous examination of the Lansberg Tables, and after comparing them with the observations made by Crabtree, which coincided with his own, he resolved to renounce them. Acting on the advice of his friend, Horrox directed his attention to the writings of Kepler. The youthful astronomer soon realised their value, and was charmed with the accuracy of observation and inductive reasoning displayed in the elucidation of those general laws which constituted a new era in the history of astronomy. The Rudolphine Tables, which were the astronomical calculations commenced by Tycho Brahé, and completed by Kepler, were regarded by Horrox as much superior to those of Lansberg; but it occurred to him that they might be improved by changing some of the numbers, and yet retaining the hypotheses. To this task he applied himself with much earnestness and assiduity, and after close application and laborious study he accomplished the arduous undertaking of bringing those tables to a high state of perfection. In his investigation of the Lunar theory, Horrox outstripped all his predecessors, and Sir Isaac Newton distinctly affirms he was the first to discover that the Moon's motion round the Earth is in the form of an ellipse with the centre in the lower focus. Besides having made this discovery, Horrox was able to explain the causes of the inequalities of the Moon's motion, which render the exact computation of her elements so difficult. The Annual Equation, an irregularity discovered by Tycho Brahé, which is produced by the increase and decrease of the Sun's disturbing force as the Earth approaches or recedes from him in her orbit, had its value first assigned by Horrox. This he calculated to be eleven minutes sixteen seconds, which is within four seconds of what it has since been proved to be by the most recent observations. The Evection, an irregular motion of the Moon discovered by Ptolemy, whereby her mean longitude is increased or diminished, was explained by Horrox as depending upon the libratory motion of the apsides, and the change which takes place in the eccentricity of the lunar orbit. These discoveries were made by Horrox before he attained the age of twenty years, and if his reputation had alone rested upon them his name would have been honourably associated with those who have attained to the highest eminence in astronomy. Another achievement which adds lustre to Horrox's name consists in his detection of the inequality in the mean motions of Jupiter and Saturn. He also directed his attention to the study of cometary bodies, and arrived at certain conclusions with regard to the nature of their movements. At first, he believed like Kepler that comets were projected in straight lines from the Sun; this supposition having been upheld on account of the great elongation of their orbits. He next perceived that their velocity increased as they approached the Sun, and decreased as they receded from him. Afterwards he says, 'They move in an elliptic figure or near it,' and finally he arrived at the conclusion that 'comets move in elliptical orbits, being carried round the Sun with a velocity which is probably variable.' This theory has been verified by numerous observations, and is now generally accepted by astronomers. Horrox also made a series of observations on the tides. He notified the extent of their rise and fall at different periods, and investigated other phenomena associated with their ebb and flow. After having continued his observations for some time, he wrote to his friend Crabtree, and informed him that he had perceived many interesting details which had not been previously described, and he hoped to be able to arrive at some important conclusions with regard to their nature and cause. Unfortunately, Horrox's writings on this subject, along with many other important papers, have been lost or destroyed. We are therefore ignorant of the result of his researches, which were the first undertaken by any person for the purpose of scientific inquiry. From his study of the Lansberg and Rudolphine Tables, Horrox arrived at the conclusion that a transit of Venus would occur on November 24, 1639. This transit was for some unaccountable reason overlooked by Kepler, who predicted one in 1631, and the next not until 1761. The transit of 1631 was not visible in Europe. We are indebted to Horrox for a description of the transit of 1639--the first that was ever observed of which there is any record; and were it not for the accuracy of his calculations, the occurrence of the phenomenon would have been unperceived, and no history of the conjunction would have been handed down to posterity. As soon as Horrox had assured himself of the time when the transit would take place, he wrote to Crabtree to inform him of the date, and asked him to make observations with his telescope, and especially to examine the diameter of the planet, which he thought had been over-estimated. He also requested him to write to Dr. Foster of Cambridge, and inform him of the expected event, as it was desirable that the transit should be observed from several places in consequence of the possibility of failure, owing to an overcast sky. His letter is dated October 26, 1639. He says: 'My reason for now writing is to advise you of a remarkable conjunction of the Sun and Venus on the 24th of November, when there will be a transit. As such a thing has not happened for many years past, and will not occur again in this century, I earnestly entreat you to watch attentively with your telescope in order to observe it as well as you can. 'Notice particularly the diameter of Venus, which is stated by Kepler to be seven minutes, and by Lansberg to be eleven, but which I believe to be scarcely greater than one minute.' In describing the method which he adopted for observing the transit, Horrox writes as follows: 'Having attentively examined Venus with my instrument, I described on a sheet of paper a circle, whose diameter was nearly equal to six inches--the narrowness of the apartment not permitting me conveniently to use a larger size. I divided the circumference of this circle into 360 degrees in the usual manner, and its diameter into thirty equal parts, which gives about as many minutes as are equivalent to the Sun's apparent diameter. Each of these thirty parts was again divided into four equal portions, making in all one hundred and twenty; and these, if necessary, may be more minutely subdivided. The rest I left to ocular computation, which, in such small sections, is quite as certain as any mechanical division. Suppose, then, each of these thirty parts to be divided into sixty seconds, according to the practice of astronomers. When the time of the observation approached, I retired to my apartment, and, having closed the windows against the light, I directed my telescope--previously adjusted to a focus--through the aperture towards the Sun, and received his rays at right angles upon the paper already mentioned. The Sun's image exactly filled the circle, and I watched carefully and unceasingly for any dark body that might enter upon the disc of light. 'Although the corrected computation of Venus' motions which I had before prepared, and on the accuracy of which I implicitly relied, forbade me to expect anything before three o'clock in the afternoon of the 24th, yet since, according to the calculations of most astronomers, the conjunction should take place sooner--by some even on the 23rd--I was unwilling to depend entirely on my own opinion, which was not sufficiently confirmed, lest by too much self-confidence I might endanger the observation. Anxiously intent, therefore, on the undertaking through the greater part of the 23rd, and on the whole of the 24th, I omitted no available opportunity of observing her ingress. I watched carefully on the 24th from sunrise to nine o'clock, and from a little before ten until noon, and at one in the afternoon, being called away in the intervals by business of the highest importance, which for these ornamental pursuits I could not with propriety neglect.[3] But during all this time I saw nothing in the Sun except a small and common spot, consisting as it were of three points at a distance from the centre towards the left, which I noticed on the preceding and following days. This evidently had nothing to do with Venus. About fifteen minutes past three in the afternoon, when I was again at liberty to continue my labours, the clouds, as if by divine interposition, were entirely dispersed, and I was once more invited to the grateful task of repeating my observations. I then beheld a most agreeable spectacle--the object of my sanguine wishes; a spot of unusual magnitude and of a perfectly circular shape, which had already fully entered upon the Sun's disc on the left, so that the limbs of the Sun and Venus precisely coincided, forming an angle of contact. Not doubting that this was really the shadow of the planet, I immediately applied myself sedulously to observe it. 'In the first place, with respect to the inclination, the line of the diameter of the circle being perpendicular to the horizon, although its plane was somewhat inclined on account of the Sun's altitude, I found that the shadow of Venus at the aforesaid hour--namely, fifteen minutes past three--had entered the Sun's disc about 62° 30´, certainly between 60° and 65°, from the top towards the right. This was the appearance in the dark apartment; therefore, out of doors, beneath the open sky, according to the laws of optics, the contrary would be the case, and Venus would be below the centre of the Sun, distant 62° 30´ from the lower limbs or the nadir, as the Arabians term it. The inclination remained to all appearances the same until sunset, when the observation was concluded. 'In the second place, the distance between the centres of Venus and the Sun I found by three observations to be as follows:-- The Hour. | Distance of the Centres. | At 3·15 by the clock | 14´ 24´´ " 3·35 " | 13´ 30´´ " 3·45 " | 13´ 0´´ " 3·50 the apparent sunset. | The true setting being 3·45, and the apparent about 5 minutes later, the difference being caused by refraction. The clock therefore was sufficiently correct. 'In the third place I found after careful and repeated observation that the diameter of Venus, as her shadow was depicted on the paper, was larger indeed than the thirtieth part of the solar diameter, though not more so than the sixth, or at the utmost the fifth of such a part. Therefore let the diameter of the Sun be to the diameter of Venus as 30´ to 1´ 12´´. Certainly her diameter never equalled 1´ 30´´, scarcely perhaps 1´ 20´´, and this was evident as well when the planet was near the Sun's limb as when far distant from it. [Illustration: VENUS ON THE SUN'S DISC.] 'This observation was made in an obscure village where I have long been in the habit of observing, about fifteen miles to the north of Liverpool, the latitude of which I believe to be 53° 20´, although by common maps it is stated at 54° 12´, therefore the latitude of the village will be 53° 35´, and longitude of both 22° 30´ from the Fortunate Islands, now called the Canaries. This is 14° 15´ to the west of Uraniburg in Denmark, the longitude of which is stated by Brahé, a native of the place, to be 36° 45´ from these islands. 'This is all I could observe respecting this celebrated conjunction during the short time the Sun remained in the horizon: for although Venus continued on his disc for several hours, she was not visible to me longer than half an hour on account of his so quickly setting. Nevertheless, all the observations which could possibly be made in so short a time I was enabled by Divine Providence to complete so effectually that I could scarcely have wished for a more extended period. The inclination was the only point upon which I failed to attain the utmost precision; for, owing to the rapid motion of the Sun it was difficult to observe with certainty to a single degree, and I frankly confess that I neither did nor could ascertain it. But all the rest is sufficiently accurate, and as exact as I could desire.' Besides having ascertained that the diameter of Venus subtends an angle not much greater than one minute of arc, Horrox reduced the horizontal solar parallax from fifty-seven seconds as stated by Kepler to fourteen seconds, a calculation within one and a half second of the value assigned to it by Halley sixty years after. He also reduced the Sun's semi-diameter. Crabtree, to whom Horrox refers as 'his most esteemed friend and a person who has few superiors in mathematical learning,' made preparations to observe the transit similar to those already described. But the day was unfavourable, dark clouds obscured the sky and rendered the Sun invisible. Crabtree was in despair, and relinquished all hope of being able to witness the conjunction. However, just before sunset there was a break in the clouds, and the Sun shone brilliantly for a short interval. Crabtree at once seized his opportunity, and to his intense delight observed the planet fully entered upon the Sun's disc. Instead of proceeding to take observations, he was so overcome with emotion at the sight of the phenomenon, that he continued to gaze upon it with rapt attention, nor did he recover his self-possession until the clouds again hid from his view the setting Sun.[4] Crabtree's observation of the transit was, however, not a fruitless one. He drew from memory a diagram showing the exact position of Venus on the Sun's disc, which corresponded in every respect with Horrox's observation; he also estimated the diameter of the planet to be 7/200 that of the Sun, which when calculated gives one minute three seconds; Horrox having found it to be one minute twelve seconds. This transit of Venus is remarkable as having been the first ever observed of which there is any record, and for this we are indebted to the genius of Horrox, who by a series of calculations, displaying a wonderfully accurate knowledge of mathematics, was enabled to predict the occurrence of the phenomenon on the very day, and almost at the hour it appeared, and of which he and his friend Crabtree were the only observers. Having thought it desirable to write an account of the transit, Horrox prepared an elegant Latin treatise, entitled 'Venus in Sole Visa'--'Venus seen in the Sun;' but not knowing what steps to take with regard to its publication, he requested Crabtree to communicate with his bookseller and obtain his advice on the matter. In the meantime Horrox returned to Toxteth, and arranged to fulfil a long-promised visit to Crabtree, which he looked forward to with much pleasure, as it would afford him an opportunity of discussing with his friend many matters of interest to both. This visit was frustrated in a manner altogether unexpected. For we read that Horrox was seized with a sudden and severe illness, the nature of which is not known, and that his death occurred on the day previous to that of his intended visit to his friend at Broughton. He expired on January 3, 1641, when in the 23rd year of his age. His death was a great grief to Crabtree, who, in one of his letters, describes it as 'an irreparable loss:' and it is believed that he only survived him a few years.[5] Of the papers left by Horrox, only a few have been preserved, and these were discovered in Crabtree's house after his death. Among them was his treatise on the transit of Venus which, with other papers, was purchased by Dr. Worthington, Fellow of Emmanuel College, Cambridge, a man of learning, who was capable of appreciating their value. Ultimately, the treatise fell into the possession of Hevelius, a celebrated German astronomer, who published it along with a dissertation of his own, describing a transit of Mercury. Horrox did not live to see any of his writings published, nor was any monument erected to his memory until nearly two hundred years after his death. But his name, though long forgotten except by astronomers, is now engraved on marble in Westminster Abbey. Had his life been spared, it would have been difficult to foretell to what eminence and fame he might have risen, or what further discoveries his genius might have enabled him to make. Few among English astronomers will hesitate to rank him next with the illustrious Newton, and all will agree with Herschel, who called him 'the pride and the boast of British Astronomy.' WILLIAM GASCOIGNE was born in 1612, in the parish of Rothwell, in the county of York, and afterwards resided at Middleton, near Leeds. He was a man of an inventive turn of mind, and possessed good abilities, which he devoted to improving the methods of telescopic observation. At an early age he was occupied in observing celestial objects, making researches in optics, and acquiring a proficient knowledge of astronomy. Among his acquaintances were Crabtree and Horrox, with whom he carried on a correspondence on matters appertaining to their favourite study. The measurement of small angles was found at all times to be one of the greatest difficulties which astronomers had to contend with. Tycho Brahé was so misled by his measurements of the apparent diameters of the Sun and Moon, that he concluded a total eclipse of the Sun was impossible. Gascoigne overcame this difficulty by his invention of the micrometer. This instrument, when applied to a telescope, was found to be of great service in the correct measurement of minute angles and distances, and was the means of greatly advancing the progress of practical astronomy in the seventeenth century. A micrometer consists of a short tube, across the opening of which are stretched two parallel wires; these being intersected at right angles by a third. The wires are moved to or from each other by delicately constructed screws, to which they are attached. Each revolution, or part of a revolution, of a screw indicates the distance by which the wires are moved. This apparatus, when placed in the focus of a lens, gives very accurate measurements of the diameters of celestial objects. It was successfully used by Gascoigne in determining the apparent diameters of the Sun, Moon, and several of the planets, and the mutual distances of the stars which form the Pleiades. Crabtree, after having paid Gascoigne a visit in 1639, describes in a letter to Horrox the impression created on his mind by the micrometer. He writes: 'The first thing Mr. Gascoigne showed me was a large telescope, amplified and adorned with new inventions of his own, whereby he can take the diameters of the Sun or Moon, or any small angle in the heavens or upon the earth, most exactly through the glass to a second.' The micrometer is now regarded as an indispensable appliance in the observatory; the use of a spider web reticule instead of wire having improved its efficiency. Gascoigne was one of the earliest astronomers who recognised the value of the Keplerian telescope for observational purposes, and Sherburn affirms that he was the first to construct an instrument of this description having two convex lenses. Whether this be true or not, it is certain that he applied the micrometer to the telescope, and was the first to use telescopic sights, by means of which he was able to fix the optical axis of his telescope, and ascertain by observation the apparent positions of the heavenly bodies. Crabtree, in a letter to Gascoigne, says: 'Could I purchase it with travel, or procure it with gold, I would not be without a telescope for observing small angles in the heavens; or want the use of your device of a glass in a cane upon the movable ruler of your sextant, as I remember for helping to the exact point of the Sun's rays.' It was not known until the beginning of the eighteenth century that Gascoigne had invented and used telescopic sights for the purpose of making accurate astronomical observations. The accidental discovery of some documents which contained a description of his appliances was the means by which this became known. Townley states that Gascoigne had completed a treatise on optics, which was ready for publication, but that no trace of the manuscript could be discovered after his death. Having embraced the Royalist cause, William Gascoigne joined the forces of Charles I., and fell in the battle of Marston Moor on July 2, 1644. The early death of this young and remarkably clever man was a severe blow to the science of astronomy in England. The invention of logarithms, by Baron Napier, of Merchistoun, was found to be of inestimable value to astronomers in facilitating and abbreviating the methods of astronomical calculation. By the use of logarithms, arithmetical computations which necessitated laborious application for several months could with ease be completed in as many days. It was remarked by Laplace that this invention was the means of doubling the life of an astronomer, besides enabling him to avoid errors and the tediousness associated with long and abstruse calculations. THOMAS HARRIOT, an eminent mathematician, and an assiduous astronomer, made some valuable observations of the comet of 1607. He was one of the earliest observers who made use of the telescope, and it was claimed on his behalf that he discovered Jupiter's satellites, and the spots on the Sun, independently of Galileo. Other astronomers have been desirous of sharing this honour, but it has been conclusively proved that Galileo was the first who made those discoveries. The investigations of Norwood and Gilbert, the mechanical genius of Hooke, and the patient researches of Flamsteed--the first Astronomer Royal--were of much value in perfecting many details associated with the study of astronomy. The Royal Observatory at Greenwich was founded in 1675. The building was erected under a warrant from Charles II. It announces the desire of the Sovereign to build a small observatory in the park at Greenwich, 'in order to the finding out of the longitude for perfecting the art of navigation and astronomy.' This action on the part of the King may be regarded as the first public acknowledgment of the usefulness of astronomy for national purposes. Since its erection, the observatory has been presided over by a succession of talented men, who have raised it to a position of eminence and usefulness unsurpassed by any similar institution in this or any other country. The well-known names of Flamsteed, Halley, Bradley, and Airy, testify to the valuable services rendered by those past directors of the Greenwich Observatory in the cause of astronomical science. If we take a general survey of the science of astronomy as it existed from 1608 to 1674--a period that embraced the time in which Milton lived--we shall find that it was still compassed by ignorance, superstition, and mystery. Astrology was zealously cultivated; most persons of rank and position had their nativity or horoscope cast, and the belief in the ruling of the planets, and their influence on human and terrestrial affairs, was through long usage firmly established in the public mind. Indeed, at this time, astronomy was regarded as a handmaid to astrology; for, with the aid of astronomical calculation, the professors of this occult science were enabled to predict the positions of the planets, and by this means practised their art with an apparent degree of truthfulness. Although over one hundred years had elapsed since the death of Copernicus, his theory of the solar system did not find many supporters, and the old forms of astronomical belief still retained their hold on the minds of the majority of philosophic thinkers. This can be partly accounted for, as many of the Ptolemaic doctrines were at first associated with the Copernican theory, nor was it until a later period that they were eliminated from the system. Though Copernicus deserved the credit of having transferred the centre of our system from the Earth to the Sun, yet his theory was imperfect in its details, and contained many inaccuracies. He believed that the planets could only move round the Sun in circular paths, nor was he capable of conceiving of any other form of orbit in which they could perform their revolutions. He was therefore compelled to retain the use of cycles and epicycles, in order to account for irregularities in the uniformly circular motions of those bodies. We are indebted to the genius of Kepler for having placed the Copernican system upon a sure and irremovable basis, and for having raised astronomy to the position of a true physical science. By his discovery that the planets travel round the Sun in elliptical orbits, he was enabled to abolish cycles and epicycles, which created such confusion and entanglement in the system, and to explain many apparent irregularities of motion by ascribing to the Sun his true position with regard to the motions of the planets. After the death of Kepler, which occurred in 1630, the most eminent supporter of the Copernican theory was the illustrious Galileo, whose belief in its accuracy and truthfulness was confirmed by his own discoveries. Five of the planets were known at this time--viz. Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn; the latter, which revolves in its orbit at a profound distance from the Sun, formed what at that time was believed to be the boundary of the planetary system. The distance of the Earth from the Sun was approximately known, and the orb was observed to rotate on his axis. It was also ascertained that the Moon shone by reflected light, and that her surface was varied by inequalities resembling those of our Earth. The elliptical form of her orbit had been discovered by Horrox, and her elements were computed with a certain degree of accuracy. The cloudy luminosity of the Milky Way had been resolved into a multitude of separate stars, disclosing the immensity of the stellar universe. The crescent form of the planet Venus, the satellites of Jupiter and of Saturn, and the progressive motion and measurement of light, had also been discovered. Observations were made of transits of Mercury and Venus, and refracting and reflecting telescopes were invented. The law of universal gravitation, a power which retains the Earth and planets in their orbits, causing them year after year to describe with unerring regularity their oval paths round the Sun, was not known at this time. Though Newton was born in 1642, he did not disclose the results of his philosophic investigations until 1687--thirteen years after the death of Milton--when, in the 'Principia,' he announced his discovery of the great law of universal gravitation. Kepler, though he discovered the laws of planetary motion, was unable to determine the motive force which guided and retained those bodies in their orbits. It was reserved for the genius of Newton to solve this wonderful problem. This great philosopher was able to prove 'that every particle of matter in the universe attracts every other particle with a force proportioned to the mass of the attracting body, and inversely as the square of the distance between them.' Newton was capable of demonstrating that the force which guides and retains the Earth and planets in their orbits resides in the Sun, and by the application of this law of gravitation he was able to explain the motions of all celestial bodies entering into the structure of the solar system. This discovery may be regarded as the crowning point of the science of astronomy, for, upon the unfailing energy of this mysterious power depend the order and stability of the universe, extending as it does to all material bodies existing in space, guiding, controlling, and retaining them in their several paths and orbits, whether it be a tiny meteor, a circling planet, or a mighty sun. The nature of cometary bodies and the laws which govern their motions were at this time still enshrouded in mystery, and when one of those erratic wanderers made its appearance in the sky it was beheld by the majority of mankind with feelings of awe and superstitious dread, and regarded as a harbinger of evil and disaster, the precursor of war, of famine, or the overthrow of an empire. Newton, however, was able to divest those bodies of the mystery with which they were surrounded by proving that any conic section may be described about the Sun, consistent with the law of gravitation, and that comets, notwithstanding the eccentricity of their orbits, obey the laws of planetary motion. Beyond the confines of our solar system, little was known of the magnitude and extent of the sidereal universe which occupies the infinitude of space by which we are surrounded. The stars were recognised as self-luminous bodies, inconceivably remote, and although they excited the curiosity of observers, and conjectures were made as to their origin, yet no conclusive opinions were arrived at with regard to their nature and constitution, and except that they were regarded as glittering points of light which illumine the firmament, all else appertaining to them remained an unravelled mystery. Even Copernicus had no notion of a universe of stars. Galileo, by his discovery that the galaxy consists of a multitude of separate stars too remote to be defined by ordinary vision, demonstrated how vast are the dimensions of the starry heavens, and on what a stupendous scale the universe is constructed. But at this time it had not occurred to astronomers, nor was it known until many years after, that the stars are suns which shine with a splendour resembling that of our Sun, and in many instances surpassing it. It was not until this truth became known that the glories of the sidereal heavens were fully comprehended, and their magnificence revealed. It was then ascertained that the minute points of light which crowd the fields of our largest telescopes, in their aggregations forming systems, clusters, galaxies, and universes of stars, are shining orbs of light, among the countless multitudes of which our Sun may be numbered as one. CHAPTER III MILTON'S ASTRONOMICAL KNOWLEDGE It would be reasonable to imagine that Milton's knowledge of astronomy was comprehensive and accurate, and superior to that possessed by most scientific men of his age. His scholarly attainments, his familiarity with ancient history and philosophy, his profound learning, and the universality of his general knowledge, would lead one to conclude that the science which treats of the mechanism of the heavens, and especially the observational part of it--which at all times has been a source of inspiration to poets of every degree of excellence--was to him a study of absorbing interest, and one calculated to make a deep impression upon his devoutly poetical mind. The serious character of Milton's verse, and the reverent manner in which celestial incidents and objects are described in it, impress one with the belief that his contemplation of the heavens, and of the orbs that roll and shine in the firmament overhead, afforded him much enjoyment and meditative delight. For no poet, in ancient or in modern times, has introduced into his writings with such frequency, or with such pleasing effect, so many passages descriptive of the beauty and grandeur of the heavens. No other poet, by the creative effort of his imagination, has soared to such a height; nor has he ever been excelled in his descriptions of the celestial orbs, and of the beautiful phenomena associated with their different motions. In his minor poems, which were composed during his residence at Horton, a charming rural retreat in Buckinghamshire, where the freshness and varied beauty of the landscape and the attractive aspects of the midnight sky were ever before him, we find enchanting descriptions of celestial objects, and especially of those orbs which, by their brilliancy and lustre, have always commanded the admiration of mankind. For example, in 'L'Allegro' there are the following lines:-- Right against the eastern gate Where the great Sun begins his state, Robed in flames and amber light, The clouds in thousand liveries dight; and in 'Il Penseroso'-- To behold the wandering Moon, Riding near her highest noon, Like one that had been led astray Through the heaven's wide pathless way, And oft as if her head she bowed, Stooping through a fleecy cloud. In the happy choice of his theme, and by the comprehensive manner in which he has treated it, Milton has been enabled by his poetic genius to give to the world in his 'Paradise Lost' a poem which, for sublimity of thought, loftiness of imagination, and beauty of expression in metrical verse, is unsurpassed in any language. It is, however, our intention to deal only with those passages in the poem in which allusion is made to the heavenly bodies, and to incidents and occurrences associated with astronomical phenomena. In the exposition and illustration of these it has been considered desirable to adopt the following general classification:-- 1. To ascertain the extent of Milton's astronomical knowledge. 2. To describe the starry heavens and the celestial objects mentioned in 'Paradise Lost.' 3. To exemplify the use which Milton has made of astronomy in the exercise of his imaginative and descriptive powers. In the earlier half of the seventeenth century the Ptolemaic theory--by which it was believed that the Earth was the immovable centre of the universe, and that round it all the heavenly bodies completed a diurnal revolution--still retained its ascendency over the minds of men of learning and science, and all the doctrines associated with this ancient astronomical creed were still religiously upheld by the educated classes among the peoples inhabiting the different civilised regions of the globe. The Copernican theory--by which the Sun is assigned the central position in our system, with the Earth and planets revolving in orbits round him--obtained the support of a few persons of advanced views and high scientific attainments, but its doctrines had not yet seriously threatened the supremacy of the older system. Though upwards of one hundred years had elapsed since the death of Copernicus, yet the doctrines associated with the system of which he was the founder were but very tardily adopted up to this time. There were several reasons which accounted for this. The Copernican system was at first imperfect in its details, and included several of the Ptolemaic, doctrines which rendered it less intelligible, and retarded its acceptance by persons who would otherwise have been inclined to adopt it. Copernicus believed that the planets travelled round the Sun in circular paths. This necessitated the retention of cycles and epicycles, which gave rise to much confusion; nor was it until Kepler made his great discovery of the ellipticity of the planetary orbits that they were eliminated from the system. As the Ptolemaic system of the universe held complete sway over the minds of men for upwards of twenty centuries, it was difficult to persuade many persons to renounce the astronomical beliefs to which they were so firmly attached, in favour of those of any other system; so that the overthrow of this venerable theory required a lengthened period of time for its accomplishment. It was thus in his earlier years, when Milton devoted his time to the study of literature and philosophy, which he read extensively when pursuing his academic career at Christ's College, Cambridge, and afterwards at Horton, where he spent several years in acquiring a more proficient knowledge of the literary, scientific, and philosophical writings of the age, that he found the beliefs associated with the Ptolemaic theory adopted without doubt or hesitation by the numerous authors whose works he perused. His knowledge of Italian enabled him to become familiar with Dante--one of his favourite authors, whose poetical writings were deeply read by him, and who, in the elaboration of his poem, the 'Divina Commedia,' included the entire Ptolemaic cosmology. In England the Copernican theory had few supporters, and the majority of those who represented the intellect and learning of the country still retained their adherence to the old form of astronomical belief. We therefore find that Milton followed the traditional way of thinking by adopting the views associated with the Ptolemaic theory. According to the Ptolemaic system, the Earth was regarded as the immovable centre of the universe, and surrounding it were ten crystalline spheres, or heavens, arranged in concentric circles, the larger spheres enclosing the smaller ones; and within those was situated the cosmos, or mundane universe, usually described as 'the Heavens and the Earth.' To each of the first seven spheres there was attached a heavenly body, which was carried round the Earth by the revolution of the crystalline. 1st sphere: that of the Moon. 2nd sphere: that of the planet Mercury. 3rd sphere: that of the planet Venus. 4th sphere: that of the Sun; regarded as a planet. 5th sphere: that of the planet Mars. 6th sphere: that of the planet Jupiter. 7th sphere: that of the planet Saturn. 8th sphere: that of the fixed stars. [Illustration: FIG. 1] The eighth sphere included all the fixed stars, and was called the firmament, because it was believed to impart steadiness to the inner spheres, and, by its diurnal revolution, to carry them round the Earth, causing the change of day and night. The separate motions of the spheres, revolving with different velocities, and at different angles to each other, accounted for the astronomical phenomena associated with the orbs attached to each. According to Ptolemy's scheme, the eighth sphere formed the outermost boundary of the universe; but later astronomers added to this system two other spheres--a _ninth_, called the _Crystalline_, which caused Precession of the Equinoxes; and a _tenth_, called the _Primum Mobile_, or First Moved, which brought about the alternation of day and night, by carrying all the other spheres round the Earth once in every twenty-four hours. The Primum Mobile enclosed, as if in a shell, all the other spheres, in which was included the created universe, and, although of vast dimensions, its conception did not overwhelm the mind in the same manner that the effort to comprehend infinitude does. Beyond this last sphere there was believed to exist a boundless, uncircumscribed region, of immeasurable extent, called the Empyrean, or Heaven of Heavens, the incorruptible abode of the Deity, the place of eternal mysteries, which the comprehension of man was unable to fathom, and of which it was impossible for his mind to form any conception. Such were the imaginative beliefs upon which this ancient astronomical theory was founded, that for a period of upwards of two thousand years held undisputed sway over the minds of men, and exercised during that time a predominating influence upon the imagination, thoughts, and conceptions of all those who devoted themselves to literature, science, and art. Of the truthfulness of this assertion there is ample evidence in the poetical, philosophical, and historical writings of ancient authors, whose ideas and conceptions regarding the created universe were limited and circumscribed by this form of astronomical belief. In the works of more recent writers we find that it continued to assert its influence; and among our English poets, from Chaucer down to Shakespeare, there are numerous references to the natural phenomena associated with this system, and most frequently expressed by poetical allusions to 'the music of the spheres.' The ideas associated with the Ptolemaic theory were gratifying to the pride and vanity of man, who could regard with complacency the paramount importance of the globe which he inhabited, and of which he was the absolute ruler, fixed in the centre of the universe, and surrounded by ten revolving spheres, that carried along with them in their circuit all other celestial bodies--Sun, Moon, and stars, which would appear to have been created for his delectation, and for the purpose of ministering to his requirements. But when the Copernican theory became better understood, and especially after the discovery of the law of universal gravitation, this venerable system of the universe, based upon a pile of unreasonable and false hypotheses, after an existence of over twenty centuries, sank into oblivion, and was no more heard of. Milton's Ptolemaism is apparent in some of his shorter pieces, and also in his minor poems, 'Arcades' and 'Comus.' His 'Ode on the Nativity' is written in conformity with this belief, and the expression, Ring out ye crystal spheres, indicates a poetical allusion to this theory. But as Milton grew older his Ptolemaism became greatly modified, and there are good reasons for believing that in his latter years he renounced it entirely in favour of Copernicanism. When on his continental tour in 1638, he made the acquaintance of eminent men who held views different from those with which he was familiar; and in his interview with Galileo at Arcetri, the aged astronomer may have impressed upon his mind the superiority of the Copernican theory, in accounting for the occurrence of celestial phenomena, as compared with the Ptolemaic. On his return to England from the Continent, Milton took up his residence in London, and lived in apartments in a house in St. Bride's Churchyard. Having no regular vocation, and not wishing to be dependent upon his father, he undertook the education of his two nephews, John and Edward Phillips, aged nine and ten years respectively. From St. Bride's Churchyard he removed to a larger house in Aldersgate, where he received as pupils the sons of some of his most intimate acquaintances. In the list of subjects which Milton selected for the purpose of imparting instruction to those youths he included astronomy and mathematics, which formed part of the curriculum of this educational establishment. The text-book from which he taught his nephews and other pupils astronomy was called 'De Sphæra Mundi,' a work written by Joannes Sacrobasco (John Holywood) in the thirteenth century. This book was an epitome of Ptolemy's 'Almagest,' and therefore entirely Ptolemaic in its teaching. It enjoyed great popularity during the Middle Ages, and is reported to have gone through as many as forty editions. The selection of astronomy as one of the subjects in which Milton instructed his pupils affords us evidence that he must have devoted considerable time and attention to acquiring a knowledge of the facts and details associated with the study of the science. In the attainment of this he had to depend upon his own exertions and the assistance derived from astronomical books; for at this time astronomy received no recognition as a branch of study at any of the universities; and in Britain the science attracted less attention than on the Continent, where the genius of Kepler and Galileo elevated it to a position of national importance. We shall find as we proceed that Milton's knowledge of astronomy was comprehensive and accurate; that he was familiar with the astronomical reasons by which many natural phenomena which occur around us can be explained; and that he understood many of the details of the science which are unknown to ordinary observers of the heavens. It is remarkable how largely astronomy enters into the composition of 'Paradise Lost,' and we doubt if any author could have written such a poem without possessing a knowledge of the heavens and of the celestial orbs such as can only be attained by a proficient and intimate acquaintance with this science. The arguments in favour of or against the Ptolemaic and Copernican theories were well known to Milton, even as regards their minute details; and in Book viii. he introduces a scientific discussion based upon the respective merits of those theories. The configuration of the celestial and terrestrial spheres, and the great circles by which they are circumscribed, he also knew. The causes which bring about the change of the seasons; the obliquity of the ecliptic; the zodiacal constellations through which the Sun travels, and the periods of the year in which he occupies them, are embraced in Milton's knowledge of the science of astronomy. The motions of the Earth, including the Precession of the Equinoxes; the number and distinctive appearances of the planets, their direct and retrograde courses, and their satellites, are also described by him. The constellations, and their relative positions on the celestial sphere; the principal stars, star-groups, and clusters, and the Galaxy, testify to Milton's knowledge of astronomy, and to the use which he has made of the science in the elaboration of his poem. The names of fourteen of the constellations are mentioned in 'Paradise Lost.' These, when arranged alphabetically, read as follows:-- Andromeda, Aries, Astrea, Centaurus, Cancer, Capricornus, Gemini, Leo, Libra, Ophiuchus, Orion, Scorpio, Taurus, and Virgo. Milton's allusions to the zodiacal constellations are chiefly associated with his description of the Sun's path in the heavens; but with the celestial sign Libra (the _Scales_) he has introduced a lofty and poetical conception of the means by which the Creator made known His will when there arose a contention between Gabriel and Satan on his discovery in Paradise. The Eternal, to prevent such horrid fray, Hung forth in Heaven his golden scales, yet seen Betwixt Astrea[6] and the Scorpion sign, Wherein all things created first he weighed, The pendulous round Earth with balanced air In counterpoise, now ponders all events, Battles and realms. In these he put two weights, The sequel each of parting and of fight: The latter quick up flew, and kicked the beam.--iv. 996-1004. Orion, the finest constellation in the heavens, did not escape Milton's observation, and there is one allusion to it in his poem. It arrives on the meridian in winter, where it is conspicuous as a brilliant assemblage of stars, and represents an armed giant, or hunter, holding a massive club in his right hand, and having a shield of lion's hide on his left arm. A triple-gemmed belt encircles his waist, from which is suspended a glittering sword, tipped with a bright star. The two brilliants Betelgeux and Bellatrix form the giant's shoulders, and the bright star Rigel marks the position of his advanced foot. The rising of Orion was believed to be accompanied by stormy and tempestuous weather. Milton alludes to this in the following lines:-- When with fierce winds Orion armed Hath vexed the Red Sea coast, whose waves o'erthrew Busiris and his Memphian chivalry.--i. 305-7. Andromeda is described as being borne by Aries, and in 'Ophiuchus huge' Milton locates a comet which extends the whole length of the constellation. It is evident that Milton possessed a precise knowledge of the configuration and size of the constellations, and of the positions which they occupy relatively to each other on the celestial sphere. Though Milton was conversant with the Copernican theory, and entertained a conviction of its accuracy and truthfulness, and doubtless recognised the superiority of this system, which, besides conveying to the mind a nobler conception of the universe and of the solar system--though it diminished the importance of the Earth as a member of it--was capable of explaining the occurrence of celestial phenomena in a manner more satisfactory than could be arrived at by the Ptolemaic theory. Notwithstanding this, he selected the Ptolemaic cosmology as the scientific basis upon which he constructed his 'Paradise Lost,' and in its elaboration adhered with marked fidelity to this system. There were many reasons why Milton, in the composition of an imaginative poem, should have chosen the Ptolemaic system of the universe rather than the Copernican. This form of astronomical belief was adopted by all the authors whose works he perused and studied in his younger days, including his favourite poet, Dante; and his own poetic imaginings, as indicated by his early poems, were in harmony with the doctrines of this astronomical creed, a long acquaintance with which had, without doubt, influenced his mind in its favour. This system of revolving spheres, with the steadfast Earth at its centre, and the whole enclosed by the Primum Mobile, constituted a more attractive and picturesque object for poetic description than the simple and uncircumscribed arrangement of the universe expressed by the Copernican theory. It also afforded him an opportunity of localising those regions of space in which the chief incidents in his poem are described--viz. HEAVEN, or THE EMPYREAN, CHAOS, HELL, and the MUNDANE UNIVERSE. Milton's Ptolemaism, with its adjuncts, may be understood by the following: All that portion of space above the newly created universe, and beyond the Primum Mobile, was known as HEAVEN, or THE EMPYREAN--a region of light, of glory, and of happiness; the dwelling-place of the Deity, Who, though omnipresent, here visibly revealed Himself to all the multitude of angels whom He created, and who surrounded his throne in adoration and worship. Underneath the universe there existed a vast region of similar dimensions to the Empyrean, called CHAOS, which was occupied by the embryo elements of matter, that with incessant turmoil and confusion warred with each other for supremacy--a wild abyss-- The womb of Nature and perhaps her grave.--ii. 911. The lower portion of this region was divided off from the remainder, and embraced the locality known as HELL--the place of torment, where the rebellious angels were driven and shut in after their expulsion from Heaven. As far removed from God and light of Heaven As from the centre thrice to the utmost pole.--i. 73-74. The NEW UNIVERSE, which included the Earth and all the orbs of the firmament known as the Starry Heavens, was created out of Chaos, and hung, as if suspended by a golden chain, from the Empyrean above; and although its magnitude and dimensions were inconceivable, yet, according to the Ptolemaic theory, it was enclosed by the tenth sphere or Primum Mobile. By this partitioning of space Milton was able to contrive a system which fulfilled the requirements of his great poem. The annexed diagram explains the relative positions of the different regions into which space was divided. Though there are traces of Copernicanism found in 'Paradise Lost,' yet Milton has very faithfully adhered to the Ptolemaic mechanism and nomenclature throughout his poem. In his description of the Creation, the Earth is formed first, then the Sun, followed by the Moon, and afterwards the stars, all of which are described as being in motion round the Earth. Allusion is also made to this ancient system in several prominent passages, and in the following lines there is a distinct reference to the various revolving spheres. [Illustration: FIG. 2] They pass the planets seven, and pass the fixed, And that crystalline sphere whose balance weighs The trepidation talked, and that first moved.--iii. 481-83. The seven planetary spheres are first mentioned; then the eighth sphere, or that of the fixed stars; then the ninth, or crystalline, which was believed to cause a shaking, or trepidation, to account for certain irregularities in the motions of the stars; and, lastly, the tenth sphere, or Primum Mobile, called the 'first moved' because it set the other spheres in motion. To an uninstructed observer, the apparent motion of the heavenly bodies round the Earth would naturally lead him to conclude that, of the two theories, the Ptolemaic was the correct one. We therefore find that Milton adopted the system most in accord with the knowledge and intelligence possessed by the persons portrayed by him in his poem; and in describing the natural phenomena witnessed in the heavens by our first parents, he adheres to the doctrines of the Ptolemaic system, as being most in harmony with the simple and primitive conceptions of those created beings. To their upward gaze, the orbs of heaven appeared to be in ceaseless motion; the solid Earth, upon which they stood, was alone immovable and at rest. Day after day they observed the Sun pursue his steadfast course with unerring regularity: his rising in the east, accompanied by the rosy hues of morn; his meridian splendour, and his sinking in the west, tinting in colours of purple and gold inimitable the fleecy clouds floating in the azure sky, as he bids farewell for a time to scenes of life and happiness, rejoicing in the light and warmth of his all-cheering beams. With the advent of night they beheld the Moon, now increasing, now waning, pursue her irregular path, also to disappear in the west; whilst, like the bands of an army marshalled in loose array, the constellations of glittering stars, with stately motion, traversed their nocturnal arcs, circling the pole of the heavens. By referring to Book viii., 15-175, we find an account of an interesting scientific discussion, or conversation, between Adam and Raphael regarding the merits of the Ptolemaic and Copernican systems, and of the relative importance and size of the heavenly bodies. By it we are afforded an opportunity of learning how accurate and precise a knowledge Milton possessed of both theories, and in what clear and perspicuous language he expresses his arguments in favour of or against the doctrines associated with each. We may, with good reason, regard the views expressed by Adam as representing Milton's own opinions, which were in conformity with the Copernican theory; and in the Angel's reply, though of an undecided character, we are able to perceive how aptly Milton describes the erroneous conclusions upon which the Ptolemaic theory was based. In this scientific discussion, it would seem rather strange that Adam, the first of men, should have been capable of such philosophic reasoning, propounding, as if by intuition, a theory upon which was founded a system that had not been discovered until many centuries after the time that astronomy became a science. By attributing to Adam such a degree of intelligence and wisdom, the poet has taken a liberty which enabled him to carry on this discussion in a manner befitting the importance of the subject. In the following lines Adam expresses to his Angel-guest, in forcible and convincing language, his reasons in support of the Copernican theory:-- When I behold this goodly frame, this World, Of Heaven and Earth consisting, and compute Their magnitudes--this Earth, a spot, a grain, An atom, with the Firmament compared And all her numbered stars, that seem to roll Spaces incomprehensible (for such Their distance argues, and their swift return Diurnal) merely to officiate light Round this opacous Earth, this punctual spot, One day and night, in all her vast survey Useless besides--reasoning, I oft admire, How Nature, wise and frugal could commit Such disproportions, with superfluous hand So many nobler bodies to create, Greater so manifold, to this one use, For aught appears, and on their Orbs impose Such restless revolution day by day Repeated, while the sedentary Earth, That better might with far less compass move, Served by more noble than herself, attains Her end without least motion, and receives, As tribute, such a sumless journey brought Of incorporeal speed, her warmth and light; Speed, to describe whose swiftness number fails.--viii. 15-38. We are enabled to perceive that Milton had formed a correct conception of the magnitude and proportions of the universe, and also of the relative size and importance of the Earth, which he describes as 'a spot, a grain, an atom,' when compared with the surrounding heavens. He expresses his surprise that all the stars of the firmament, whose distances are so remote, and whose dimensions so greatly exceed those of this globe, should in their diurnal revolution have 'such a sumless journey of incorporeal speed imposed upon them' merely to officiate light to the Earth, 'this punctual spot;' and reasoning, wonders how Nature, wise and frugal in her ways, should commit such disproportions, by adopting means so great to accomplish a result so small, when motion imparted to the sedentary Earth would with greater ease produce the same effect. The inconceivable velocity with which it would be necessary for those orbs to travel in order to accomplish a daily revolution round the Earth might be described as almost spiritual, and beyond the power of calculation by numbers. The Angel, after listening to Adam's argument, expresses approval of his desire to obtain knowledge, but answers him dubiously, and at the same time criticises in a severe and adverse manner the Ptolemaic theory. To ask or search I blame thee not; for Heaven Is as the Book of God before thee set, Wherein to read his wondrous works, and learn His seasons, hours, or days, or months, or years. This to attain, whether Heaven move or Earth, Imports not, if thou reckon right; the rest From Man or Angel the Great Architect Did wisely to conceal, and not divulge His secrets, to be scanned by them who ought Rather admire. Or, if they list to try Conjecture, he his fabric of the Heavens Hath left to their disputes, perhaps to move His laughter at their quaint opinions wide Hereafter, when they come to model Heaven, And calculate the stars; how they will wield The mighty frame; how build, unbuild, contrive To save appearances; how gird the Sphere With Centric and Eccentric scribbled o'er Cycle and Epicycle, Orb in Orb.--viii. 66-84. When, with the advancement of science, astronomical observations were made with greater accuracy, it was discovered that uniformity of motion was not always maintained by those bodies which were believed to move in circles round the Earth. It was observed that the Sun, when on one side of his orbit, had an accelerated motion, as compared with the speed at which he travelled when on the other side. The planets, also, appeared to move with irregularity: sometimes a planet was observed to advance, then become stationary, and afterwards affect a retrograde movement. Those inequalities of motion could not be explained by means of the revolution of crystalline spheres alone, but were accounted for by imagining the existence of a small circle, or epicycle, whose centre corresponded with a fixed point in the larger circle, or eccentric, as it was called. This small circle revolved on its axis when carried round with the larger one, and round it the planet also revolved, which when situated in its outer portion would have a forward, and when in its inner portion a retrograde, motion. The theory of eccentrics and epicycles was sufficient for a time to account for the inequalities of motion already described, and by this means the Ptolemaic system was enabled to retain its ascendency for a longer period than it otherwise would have done. But more recent discoveries brought to light discrepancies and difficulties which were explained away by adding epicycle to epicycle. This created a most complicated entanglement, and hastened the downfall of a system which, after an existence of many centuries, sank into oblivion, and is now remembered as a belief of bygone ages. The devices which the upholders of this system were compelled to adopt, in order 'to save appearances,' with 'centric and eccentric,' cycle and epicycle, 'orb in orb,' are in this manner appropriately described by Milton, as indicating the confusion arising from a theory based upon false hypotheses. Continuing his reply, the Angel says:-- Already by thy reasoning this I guess, Who art to lead thy offspring, and supposest That bodies bright and greater should not serve The less not bright, nor Heaven such journies run, Earth sitting still, when she alone receives The benefit. Consider, first, that great Or bright infers not excellence. The Earth, Though, in comparison of Heaven, so small, Nor glistering, may of solid good contain More plenty than the Sun that barren shines, Whose virtue on itself works no effect, But in the fruitful Earth; there first received, His beams, inactive else, their vigour find, Yet not to Earth are those bright luminaries Officious, but to thee, Earth's habitant. And, for the Heaven's wide circuit, let it speak The Maker's high magnificence, who built So spacious, and his line stretched out so far, That Man may know he dwells not in his own-- An edifice too large for him to fill, Lodged in a small partition; and the rest Ordained for uses to his Lord best known, The swiftness of those Circles attribute, Though numberless, to his Omnipotence, That to corporeal substances could add Speed almost spiritual. Me thou think'st not slow, Who since the morning-hour set out from Heaven Where God resides, and ere midday arrived In Eden--distance inexpressible By numbers that have name. But this I urge, Admitting motion in the Heavens, to show Invalid that which thee to doubt it moved; Not that I so affirm, though so it seem To thee who hast thy dwelling here on Earth. God, to remove his ways from human sense, Placed Heaven from Earth so far, that earthly sight, If it presume, might err in things too high, And no advantage gain.--viii. 85-122. Notwithstanding the Angel's severe criticism of the Ptolemaic system, he does not unreservedly support the conclusions arrived at by Adam, but endeavours to show that his reasoning may not be altogether correct. He questions the validity of his argument that bodies of greater size and brightness should not serve the smaller, though not bright, and that heaven should move, while the Earth remained at rest. He argues that great or bright infers not excellence, and that the Earth, though small, may contain more virtue than the Sun, that 'barren shines,' whose beams create no beneficial effect, except when directed on the fruitful Earth. He reminds Adam that those bright luminaries minister not to the Earth, but to himself, 'Earth's habitant,' and directs his attention to the magnificence and extent of the surrounding universe, of which he occupies but a small portion. The diurnal swiftness of the orbs that move round the Earth he attributes to God's omnipotence, that to material bodies 'could add speed almost spiritual.' The Angel, after alluding to his rapid flight through space, suggests that God placed heaven so far from Earth that man might not presume to inquire into things which it would be of no advantage for him to know. He then suddenly changes to the Copernican system, which he lucidly describes in the following lines:-- What if the Sun Be centre to the World, and other stars By his attractive virtue and their own Incited, dance about him various rounds? Their wandering course, now high, now low, then hid, Progressive, retrograde, or standing still, In six thou seest; and what if, seventh to these The planet Earth, so steadfast though she seem, Insensibly three different motions move? Which else to several spheres thou must ascribe, Moved contrary with thwart obliquities, Or save the Sun his labour, and that swift Nocturnal and diurnal rhomb supposed Invisible else above all stars, the wheel Of day and night; which needs not thy belief, If Earth, industrious of herself, fetch day Travelling east, and with her part averse From the Sun's beam meet night, her other part Still luminous by his ray. What if that light, Sent from her through the wide transpicuous air, To the terrestrial Moon be as a star, Enlightening her by day, as she by night This Earth--reciprocal, if land be there, Fields and inhabitants? Her spots thou seest As clouds, and clouds may rain, and rain produce Fruits in her softened soil, for some to eat Allotted there; and other Suns, perhaps, With their attendant Moons, thou wilt descry, Communicating male and female light-- Which two great sexes animate the World, Stored in each orb perhaps with some that live. For such vast room in Nature unpossessed By living soul, desert and desolate, Only to shine, yet scarce to contribute Each orb a glimpse of light, conveyed so far Down to this habitable, which returns Light back to them, is obvious to dispute.--viii. 122-58. The Copernican theory, which is less complicated and more easily understood than the Ptolemaic, is described by Milton with accuracy and methodical skill. The Sun having been assigned that central position in the system which his magnitude and importance claim as his due, the planets circling in orbits around him have their motions described in a manner indicative of the precise knowledge which Milton acquired of this theory. At this time the law of gravitation was unknown, and, although the ellipticity of the orbits of the planets had been discovered by Kepler, the nature of the motive force which guided and retained them in their paths still remained a mystery. It was believed that the planets were whirled round the Sun, as if by the action of magnetic fibres; a mutual attractive influence having been supposed to exist between them and the orb, similar to that of the opposite poles of magnets. Milton alludes to this theory in the following lines:-- They, as they move Their starry dance in numbers that compute Days, months, and years, towards his all-cheering lamp Turn swift their various motions, or are turned By his magnetic beam.--iii. 579-83. An important advance upon this theory was made by Horrox, who, in his study of celestial dynamics, attributed the curvilineal motion of the planets to the influence of two forces, one projective, the other attractive. He illustrated this by observing the path described by a stone when thrown obliquely into the air. He perceived that its motion was governed by the impulse imparted to it by the hand, and also by the attractive force of the Earth. Under these two influences, the stone describes a graceful curve, and in its descent falls at the same angle at which it rose. Hence arises the general law: 'When two spheres are mutually attracted, and if not prevented by foreign influences, their straight paths are deflected into curves concave to each other, and corresponding with one of the sections of a cone, according to the velocity of the revolving body. If the velocity with which the revolving body is impelled be equal to what it would acquire by falling through half the radius of a circle described from the centre of deflection, its orbit will be circular; but if it be less than that quantity, its path becomes elliptical.' Newton afterwards embraced this law in his great principle of gravitation, and demonstrated that the force which guides and retains the Earth and planets in their orbits resides in the Sun. By the orb's attractive influence a planet, after having received its first impulse, is deflected from its original straight path, and bent towards that luminary, and by the combined action of the projective and attractive forces is made to describe an orbit which, if elliptical, has one of its foci occupied by the Sun. So evenly balanced are those two forces, that one is unable to gain any permanent ascendency over the other, and consequently the planet traverses its orbit with unerring regularity, and, if undisturbed by external influences, will continue in its path for all time. Milton describes the position of the planets in the sky as-- Now high, now low, then hid; and their motions-- Progressive, retrograde, or standing still. It is evident that Milton was familiar with the apparently irregular paths pursued by the planets when observed from the Earth. He knew of their stationary points, and also the backward loopings traced out by them on the surface of the sphere. If observed from the Sun, all the planets would be seen to follow their true paths round that body; their motion would invariably lie in the same direction, and any variation in their speed as they approached perihelion or aphelion would be real. But the planets, when observed from the Earth, which is itself in motion, appear to move irregularly. Sometimes they remain stationary for a brief period, and, instead of progressing onward, affect a retrograde movement. This irregularity of motion is only apparent, and can be explained as a result of the combined motions of the Earth and planets, which are travelling together round the Sun with different velocities, and in orbits of unequal magnitude. In his allusion to the Copernican system the 'planet' 'Earth' is described by Milton as seventh. This is not strictly accurate, as only five planets were known--viz. Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn; but to make up the number Milton has included the Moon, which may be regarded as the Earth's planet. The three motions ascribed to the Earth are--(1) The diurnal rotation on her axis; (2) her annual revolution round the Sun; (3) Precession of the Equinoxes. The rotation of the Earth on her axis may be likened to the spinning motion of a top, and is the cause of the alternation of day and night. This rotatory motion is sustained with such exact precision that, during the past 2,000 years, it has been impossible to detect the minutest difference in the time in which the Earth accomplishes a revolution on her axis, and therefore the length of the sidereal day, which is 3 minutes 56 seconds shorter than the mean solar day, is invariable. In this motion of the Earth we have a time-measuring unit which may be regarded as absolutely correct. The Earth completes a revolution of her orbit in 365-1/4 days. In this period of time she accomplishes a journey of 580 millions of miles, travelling at the average rate of 66,000 miles an hour. The change of the seasons, and the lengthening and shortening of the day, are natural phenomena, which occur as a consequence of the Earth's annual revolution round the Sun. Precession is a retrograde or westerly motion of the equinoctial points, caused by the attraction of the Sun, Moon, and planets on the spheroidal figure of the Earth. By this movement the poles of the Earth are made to describe a circular path in that part of the heavens to which they point; so that, after the lapse of many years, the star which is known as the Pole Star will not occupy the position indicated by its name, but will be situated at a considerable distance from the pole. These motions, Milton says, unless attributed to the Earth, must be ascribed to several spheres crossing and thwarting each other obliquely; but the Earth, by rotating from west to east, will of herself fetch day, her other half, averted from the Sun's rays, being enveloped in night. Thus saving the Sun his labour, and the 'primum mobile,' 'that swift nocturnal and diurnal rhomb,' which carried all the lower spheres along with it, and brought about the change of day and night. Milton's allusion to the occurrence of natural phenomena in the Moon similar to those which happen on the Earth is in keeping with the opinions entertained regarding our satellite, Galileo having imagined that he discovered with his telescope continents and seas on the lunar surface, which led to the belief that the Moon was the abode of intelligent life. ... and other suns, perhaps, With their attendant moons, thou wilt descry Communicating male and female light.--viii. 148-50. Milton in these lines refers to Jupiter and Saturn, and their satellites, which had been recently discovered; those of the former by Galileo, and four of those of the latter by Cassini. The existence of male and female light was an idea entertained by the ancients, and which is mentioned by Pliny. The Sun was regarded as a masculine star, and the Moon as feminine; the light emanating from each being similarly distinguished, and possessing different properties. Milton supposes that, as the Earth receives light from the stars, she returns light back to them. But in his time little was known about the stars, nor was it ascertained how distant they are. The Angel, in bringing to a conclusion his conversation with Adam, deems it unadvisable to vouchsafe him a decisive reply to his inquiry regarding the motions of celestial bodies, and in the following lines gives a beautifully poetical summary of this elevated and philosophic discussion:-- But whether thus these things, or whether not, Whether the Sun, predominant in Heaven, Rise on the Earth, or Earth rise on the Sun; He from the east his flaming round begin, Or she from west her silent course advance With inoffensive pace that spinning sleeps On her soft axle, whilst she paces even, And bears thee soft with the smooth air along-- Solicit not thy thoughts with matters hid.--viii. 159-67. In this scientific discourse between Adam and Raphael, in which they discuss the structural arrangement of the heavens and the motions of celestial bodies, we are afforded an opportunity of learning what exact and comprehensive knowledge Milton possessed of both the Ptolemaic and Copernican theories. The concise and accurate manner in which he describes the doctrines belonging to each system indicates that he must have devoted considerable time and attention to making himself master of the details associated with both theories, which in his time were the cause of much controversy and discussion among philosophers and men of science. The Ptolemaic system, with its crystalline spheres revolving round the Earth, the addition to those of cycles and epicycles, and the heaping of them upon each other, in order to account for phenomena associated with the motions of celestial bodies, are concisely and accurately described. The unreasonableness of this theory, when compared with the Copernican, is clearly delineated by Milton where Adam is made to express his views with regard to motion in the heavens. His argument, declared in logical and persuasive language, demonstrates how contrary to reason it would be to imagine that the entire heavens should revolve round the Earth to bring about a result which could be more easily attained by imparting motion to the Earth herself. The inconceivable velocity with which it would be necessary for the celestial orbs to travel in order to accomplish their daily revolution is described by him as opposed to all reason, and entailing upon them a journey which it would be impossible for material bodies to perform. None the less accurate is Milton's description of the Copernican system. He describes the Sun as occupying that position in the system which his magnitude and supreme importance claim as his sole right, having the planets with their satellites, That from his lordly eye keep distance due.--iii. 578, circling in majestic orbits around him, acknowledging his controlling power, and bending to his firm but gentle sway. Their positions, their paths, and their motions, real and apparent, are described in flowing and harmonious verse. CHAPTER IV MILTON AND GALILEO After the death of his mother, which occurred in 1637, Milton expressed a desire to visit the Continent, where there were many places of interest which he often longed to see. Having obtained the consent of his kind and indulgent father, he set out on his travels in April 1638, accompanied by a single man-servant, and arrived in Paris, where he only stayed a few days. During his residence in the French capital he was introduced by Lord Scudamore, the English Ambassador at the Court of Versailles, to Hugo Grotius, one of the most distinguished scholars and philosophic thinkers of his age. From Paris Milton journeyed to Nice, where he first beheld the beauty of Italian scenery and the classic shores of the Mediterranean Sea. From Nice he sailed to Genoa and Leghorn, and after a short stay at those places continued his journey to Florence, one of the most interesting and picturesque of Italian cities. Situated in the Valley of the Arno, and encircled by sloping hills covered with luxuriant vegetation, the sides of which were studded with residences half-hidden among the foliage of gardens and vineyards, Florence, besides being famed for its natural beauty, was at that time the centre of Italian culture and learning, and the abode of men eminent in literature and science. Here Milton remained for a period of two months, and enjoyed the friendship and hospitality of its most noted citizens, many of whom delighted to honour their English visitor. He was warmly welcomed by the members of the various literary academies, who admired his compositions and conversation; the flattering encomiums bestowed upon him by those learned societies having been amply repaid by Milton in choice and elegant Latin verse. Among those who resided in the vicinity of Florence was the illustrious Galileo, who in his sorrow-stricken old age was held a prisoner of the Inquisition for having upheld and taught scientific doctrines which were declared to be heretical. After his abjuration he was committed to prison, but on the intervention of influential friends was released after a few days' incarceration, and permitted to return to his home at Arcetri. He was, however, kept under strict surveillance, and forbidden to leave his house or receive any of his intimate friends without having first obtained the sanction of the ecclesiastical authorities. After several years of close confinement at Arcetri, during which time he suffered much from rheumatism and continued ill-health, aggravated by grief and mental depression consequent upon the death of his favourite daughter, Galileo applied for permission to go to Florence in order to place himself under medical treatment. This request was granted by the Pope subject to certain conditions, which would be communicated to him when he presented himself at the office of the Inquisition at Florence. These were more severe than he anticipated. He was forbidden to leave his house or receive any of his friends there, and those injunctions were so strictly adhered to that during Passion Week he had to obtain a special order so that he might be able to attend mass. At the expiration of a few months Galileo was ordered to return to Arcetri, which he never left again. An affliction, perhaps the most deplorable that can happen to any human being, was added to the burden of Galileo's misfortunes and woes. A disorder which had some years previously injured the sight of his right eye returned in 1636. In the following year the left eye became similarly affected, with the result that in a few months Galileo became totally blind. His friends at first hoped that the disease was cataract, and that some relief might be afforded by means of an operation; but it was discovered to be an opacity of the cornea, which at his age was considered unamenable to treatment. This sudden and unexpected calamity was to Galileo a most deplorable occurrence, for it necessitated the relinquishment of his favourite pursuit, which he followed with such intense interest and delight. His friend Castelli writes: 'The noblest eye is darkened which Nature ever made; an eye so privileged, and gifted with such rare qualities that it may with truth be said to have seen more than all of those eyes who are gone, and to have opened the eyes of all who are to come.' Galileo endured his affliction with patient resignation and fortitude, and in the following extract from a letter by him he acknowledges the chastening hand of a Divine Providence: 'Alas! your dear friend and servant Galileo has become totally blind, so that this heaven, this earth, this universe, which with wonderful observations I had enlarged a hundred and a thousand times beyond the belief of bygone ages, henceforward for me is shrunk into the narrow space which I myself fill in it. So it pleases God; it shall then please me also.' The rigorous curtailment of his liberty which prompted Galileo to head his letters, 'From my prison at Arcetri,' was relaxed when total blindness had supervened upon the infirmities of age. Permission was given him to receive his friends, and he was allowed to have free intercourse with his neighbours. Milton, during his stay at Florence, visited Galileo at Arcetri. We are ignorant of the details of this eventful and interesting interview between the aged and blind astronomer and the young English poet, who afterwards immortalised his name in heroic verse, and who in his declining years suffered from an affliction similar to that which befel Galileo, and to which he alludes so pathetically in the following lines:-- Thee I revisit safe, And feel thy sovran vital lamp; but thou Revisitest not these eyes, that roll in vain To find thy piercing ray, and find no dawn; So thick a drop serene hath quenched their orbs, Or dim suffusion veiled.--iii. 21-26. We can imagine that Galileo's astronomical views, which at that time were the subject of much discussion among scientific men and professors of religion, and on account of which he suffered persecution, were eagerly discussed. It is also probable that the information communicated by Galileo, or by some of his followers, may have persuaded Milton to entertain a more favourable opinion of the Copernican theory. The interesting discoveries made by Galileo with his telescope without doubt formed a pleasant subject of conversation, and Milton enjoyed the privilege of listening to a detailed description of these from the lips of the aged astronomer. The telescope, its principle, its mechanism, and the method of observing, were most probably explained to him; and we can believe that an opportunity was afforded him of examining those in Galileo's observatory, and of perhaps testing their magnifying power upon some celestial object favourably situated for observation. Though Milton has not favoured us with any details of his visit to Galileo, yet it was one which made a lasting impression upon his mind, and was never afterwards forgotten by him. 'There it was,' he writes, 'I found and visited the famous Galileo, grown old, a prisoner of the Inquisition for thinking in astronomy otherwise than the Franciscan and Dominican licensers thought.' In years long after, when Milton, himself feeble and blind, sat down to compose his 'Paradise Lost,' the remembrance of the Tuscan artist and his telescope was still fresh in his memory. By the invention of the telescope and its application to astronomical research, a vast amount of information and additional detail have been learned regarding the bodies which enter into the formation of the solar system; and by its aid many new ones were also discovered. On sweeping the heavens with the instrument, the illimitable extent of the sidereal universe became apparent, and numberless objects of interest were brought within the range of vision the existence of which had not been previously imagined. The Galilean telescope was invented in 1609. But the magnifying power of certain lenses, and their combination in producing singular visual effects, are alluded to in the writings of several early authors. The value of single lenses as an aid to sight had been long known, and spectacles were in common use in the fourteenth century. Several mathematicians have described the wonderful optical results obtained from glasses concave and convex, of parabolic and circular forms, and from 'perspective glasses,' in which were embodied the principle of the telescope. It is asserted that our countryman, Roger Bacon (1214), had some notion of the properties of the telescope; but among those familiar with the combination of lenses the two men who made the nearest approach to the invention of the instrument were Baptista Porta and Gerolamo Fracastro. The latter, who died in 1553, writes as follows: 'For which reason those things which are seen at the bottom of water appear greater than those which are at the top; and if anyone look through two eye-glasses, one placed upon the other, he will see everything much larger and nearer.' It is doubtful if Fracastro had any notion of constructing a mechanism which might answer the purpose of a telescopic tube. Baptista Porta (1611) is more explicit in what he describes. He writes: 'Concave lenses show distant objects most clearly, convex those which are nearer; whence they may be used to assist the sight. With a concave glass distant objects will be seen, small, but distinct; with a convex one, those near at hand, larger, but confused; if you know _rightly_ how to combine one of each sort, you will see both far and near objects larger and clearer.' He then goes on to say: 'I shall now endeavour to show in what manner we may continue to recognise our friends at the distance of several miles, and how those of weak sight may read the most minute letters from a distance. It is an invention of great utility, and grounded on optical principles; nor is at all difficult of execution; but it must be so divulged as not to be understood by the vulgar, and yet be clear to the sharp-sighted.' After this, he proceeds to describe a mechanism the details of which are confusing and unintelligible, nor did it appear to bear any resemblance to a telescopic tube. In a work published by Thomas Digges in 1591, he makes the following allusion to his father's experiments with the lenses: 'My father, by his continuall painfull practices, assisted with demonstrations mathematicall, was able, and sundry times hath by proportionall glasses, duely situate in convenient angles, not only discouered things farre off, read letters, numbered peeces of money with the verye coyne and superscription thereof cast by some of his freends of purpose, upon downes in open fields; but also seuen miles off, declared what hath beene doone at that instant in priuate places.' It must be admitted that if Leonard Digges had not constructed a telescope, he knew how to combine lenses by the aid of which a visual effect was created similar to that produced by the use of the instrument. The inventor of the telescope was a Dutchman named Hans Lippershey, who carried on the business of a spectacle-maker in the town of Middelburg. His discovery was purely accidental. It is said that the instrument--which was directed towards a weather-cock on a church spire, of which it gave a large and inverted image--was for some time exhibited in his shop as a curiosity before its importance was recognised. The Marquis Spinola, happening to see this philosophical toy, purchased it, and presented it to Prince Maurice of Nassau, who imagined it might be of service for the purpose of military reconnoitring. The value of the invention was, however, soon realised, and in the following year telescopes were sold in Paris. In 1609, Galileo, when on a visit to a friend at Venice, received intelligence of the invention of an instrument by a Dutch optician which possessed the power of causing distant objects to appear much nearer than when observed by ordinary vision. The accuracy of this information was confirmed by letters which he received from Paris; and this general report, Galileo asserted, was all he knew of the subject. Fuccarius, in a disparaging letter, says that one of the Dutch telescopes had been brought to Venice, and that he himself had seen it. This statement is not incompatible with Galileo's affirmation that he had not seen the original instrument, and knew no more about it than what had been communicated to him in the letters from the French capital. It was insinuated by Fuccarius that Galileo had seen the telescope at Venice, but, as he denied this, we should not hesitate to believe in his veracity. Immediately after his return to Padua, Galileo began to think how he might be able to contrive an instrument with properties similar to the one of which he had been informed; and in the following words describes the process of reasoning by which he arrived at a successful result: 'I argued in the following manner. The contrivance consists either of one glass or of more--one is not sufficient, since it must be either convex, concave, or plane. The last does not produce any sensible alteration in objects; the concave diminishes them. It is true that the convex magnifies, but it renders them confused and indistinct; consequently, one glass is insufficient to produce the desired effect. Proceeding to consider two glasses, and bearing in mind that the plane causes no change, I determined that the instrument could not consist of the combination of a plane glass with either of the other two. I therefore applied myself to make experiments on combinations of the two other kinds, and thus obtained that of which I was in search.' Galileo's telescope consisted of two lenses--one plano-convex, the other plano-concave, the latter being held next the eye. These he fixed in a piece of organ pipe, which served the purpose of a tube, the glasses being distant from each other by the difference of their focal lengths. An exactly similar principle is adopted in the construction of an opera-glass, which can be accurately described as a double Galilean telescope. Galileo must be regarded as the inventor of this kind of telescope, which in one respect differed very materially from the one constructed by the Dutch optician. If what has been said with regard to the _inverted_ weather-cock be true, then Lippershey's telescope was made with two convex lenses, distant from each other by the sum of their focal lengths, and all objects observed with it were seen inverted. Refracting astronomical telescopes are now constructed on this principle, it having been discovered that for observational purposes they possess several advantages over the Galilean instrument. When Galileo had completed his first telescope he returned with it to Venice, where he exhibited it to his friends. The sensation created by this small instrument, which magnified only three times, was most extraordinary, and almost amounted to a frenzy. Crowds of the principal citizens of Venice flocked to Galileo's house in order that they might see the magical tube about which such wonderful reports were circulated; and for upwards of a month he was daily occupied in describing his invention to attentive audiences. At the expiration of this time the Doge of Venice, Leonardo Deodati, hinted that the Senate would not be averse to receive the telescope as a gift. Galileo readily acquiesced with this desire, and, as an acknowledgment of his merits, a decree was issued confirming his appointment as professor at Padua for life, and increasing his salary from 500 to 1,000 florins. The public excitement created by the telescope showed no signs of abatement. Sirturi mentions that, having succeeded in constructing an instrument, he ascended the tower of St. Mark's at Venice, hoping to be able to use it there without interruption. He was, however, detected by a few individuals, and soon surrounded by a crowd, which took possession of his telescope, and detained him for several hours until their curiosity was satisfied. Eager inquiries having been made as to where he lodged, Sirturi, fearing a repetition of his experience in the church tower, decided to quit Venice early next morning, and betake himself to a quieter and less frequented neighbourhood. The instrument was at first called Galileo's tube; the double eye-glass; the perspective; the trunk; the cylinder. The appellation _telescope_ was given it by Demisiano. Galileo next directed his attention to the construction of telescopes, and applied his mechanical skill in making instruments of a larger size, one of which magnified _eight_ times. 'And at length,' he writes, 'sparing neither labour nor expense, he completed an instrument that was capable of magnifying more than _thirty_ times.' Galileo now commenced an exploration of the celestial regions with his telescope, and on carefully examining some of the heavenly bodies, made many wonderful discoveries which added greatly to the fame and lustre of his name. The first celestial object to which Galileo directed his telescope was the Moon. He was deeply interested to find how much her surface resembled that of the Earth, and was able to perceive lofty mountain ranges, the illumined peaks of which reflected the sunlight, whilst their bases and sides were still enveloped in dark shadow; great plains which he imagined were seas, valleys, elevated ridges, depressions, and inequalities similar to what are found on our globe. Galileo believed the Moon to be a habitable world, and concluded that the dark and luminous portions of her surface were land and water, which reflected with unequal intensity the light of the Sun. The followers of Aristotle received the announcement of these discoveries with much displeasure. They maintained that the Moon was perfectly spherical and smooth--a vast mirror, the dark portions of which were the reflection of our terrestrial mountains and forests--and accused Galileo 'of taking a delight in distorting and ruining the fairest works of Nature.' He appealed to the unequal condition of the surface of our globe, but this was of no avail in altering their preconceived notions of the lunar surface. Perhaps the most important discovery made by Galileo with the telescope was that of the four moons of Jupiter. On the night of January 7, 1610, when engaged in observing the planet, his attention was attracted by three small stars which appeared brighter than those in their immediate neighbourhood. They were all in a straight line and parallel with the ecliptic; two of them were situated to the east, and one to the west of Jupiter. On the following night he was surprised to find all three to the west of the planet, and nearer to each other. This caused him considerable perplexity, and he was at a loss to understand how Jupiter could be east of the three stars, when on the preceding night he was observed to the west of two of them. Galileo was unable to reconcile the altered positions of those bodies with the apparent motion of Jupiter among the fixed stars as indicated by the astronomical tables. The next opportunity he had of observing them was on the 10th, when two stars only were visible, and they were to the east of the planet. As it was impossible for Jupiter to move from west to east on January 8 and from east to west on the 10th, he concluded that it was the motion of the stars and not that of Jupiter which accounted for the observed phenomena. Galileo watched the stars attentively on successive evenings and discovered a fourth, and on observing how they changed their positions relatively to each other he soon arrived at the conclusion that the stars were four moons which revolved round Jupiter after the manner in which the Moon revolves round the Earth. Having assured himself that the four new stars were four moons that with periodical regularity circled round the great planet, Galileo named them the Medicean Stars in honour of his patron, Cosmo de' Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany. He also published an essay entitled 'Nuncius Sidereus,' or the 'Sidereal Messenger,' which contained an account of this important discovery. The announcement of Galileo's discovery of the four satellites of Jupiter created a profound sensation, and its significance became at once apparent. Aristotelians and Ptolemaists received the information with much disfavour and incredulity, and many persons positively refused to believe Galileo, whom they accused of inventing fables. On the other hand, the upholders of the Copernican theory hailed it with satisfaction, as it declared that Jupiter with his four moons constituted a system of greater magnitude and importance than that of our globe with her single satellite, and that consequently the Earth could not be regarded as the centre of the universe. When Kepler heard of this remarkable discovery, he wrote to Galileo and expressed himself in the following characteristic manner: 'I was sitting idle at home thinking of you, most excellent Galileo, and your letters, when the news was brought me of the discovery of four planets by the help of the double eye-glass. Wachenfels stopped his carriage at my door to tell me, when such a fit of wonder seized me at a report which seemed so very absurd, and I was thrown into such agitation at seeing an old dispute between us decided in this way, that between his joy, my colouring, and the laughter of both, confounded as we were by such a novelty, we were hardly capable, he of speaking, or I of listening.... I am so far from disbelieving in the existence of the four circumjovial planets, that I long for a telescope to anticipate you, if possible, in discovering two round Mars (as the proportion seems to me to require), six or eight round Saturn, and perhaps one each round Mercury and Venus.' The intelligence of Galileo's discoveries was received by his opponents in a spirit entirely different from that manifested by Kepler. The principal professor of philosophy at Padua, when requested to look at the Moon and planets through Galileo's glass, persistently declined, and did his utmost to persuade the Grand Duke that the four satellites of Jupiter could not possibly exist. Francesco Sizzi, a Florentine astronomer, argued that, as there are seven apertures in the head, seven known metals, and seven days in the week, so there could only be seven planets. To these absurd remarks Galileo replied by saying that, 'whatever their force might be as a reason for believing beforehand that no more than seven planets would be discovered, they hardly seemed of sufficient weight to destroy the new ones when actually seen.' Another individual, named Christmann, writes: 'We are not to think that Jupiter has four satellites given him by Nature in order, by revolving round him, to immortalize the name of the Medici, who first had notice of the observation. These are the dreams of idle men, who love ludicrous ideas better than our laborious and industrious correction of the heavens. Nature abhors so horrible a chaos, and to the truly wise such vanity is detestable.' Martin Horky, a _protégé_ of Kepler's, issued a pamphlet in which he made a violent attack on Galileo. He says: 'I will never concede his four new planets to that Italian from Padua though I die for it.' He then asks the following questions, and replies to them himself: (1) Whether they exist? (2) What they are? (3) What they are like? (4) Why they are? 'The first question is soon disposed of by Horky's declaring positively that he has examined the heavens with Galileo's own glass, and that no such thing as a satellite about Jupiter exists. To the second, he declared solemnly that he does not more surely know that he has a soul in his body than that reflected rays are the sole cause of Galileo's erroneous observations. In regard to the third question, he says that these planets are like the smallest fly compared to an elephant; and, finally, concludes on the fourth, that the only use of them is to gratify Galileo's "thirst of gold," and to afford himself a subject of discussion.'[7] Galileo did not condescend to take any notice of this scurrilous production; but Horky, who imagined that he had done something clever, sent a copy of his pamphlet to Kepler. In a few days after he called to see him, and was received with such a storm of indignation that he begged for mercy and implored his forgiveness. Kepler forgave him, but insisted on his making amends. He writes: 'I have taken him again into favour upon this preliminary condition, to which he has agreed--that I am to show him Jupiter's satellites, _and he is to see them_, and own that they are there.' The evidence in support of the existence of Jupiter's satellites became so conclusive that the opponents of Galileo were compelled to renounce their disbelief in those bodies, whether real or pretended. The Grand Duke, preferring to trust to his eyes rather than believe in the arguments of the professor at Padua, observed the satellites on several occasions, along with Galileo, at Pisa, and on his departure bestowed upon him a gift of one thousand florins. Several of Galileo's enemies, as a result of their observations, now arrived at the conclusion that his discovery was incomplete, and that Jupiter had more than four satellites in attendance upon him. Scheiner counted five, Rheita nine, and other observers increased the number to twelve. But it was found to be quite as hazardous to exceed the number stated by Galileo as it was to deny the existence of any; for, when Jupiter had traversed a short distance of his path among the fixed stars, the only bodies that accompanied him were his four original attendants, which continued to revolve round him with unerring regularity in every part of his orbit. Galileo did not afford his opponents much time to oppose or controvert with argument the discoveries made by him with the telescope before his announcement of a new one attracted public attention from those already known. He, however, exercised greater caution in disclosing the results of his observations, as other persons laid claim to having made similar discoveries prior to the time at which his were announced. He therefore adopted a method in common use among astronomers in those days, by which the letters in a sentence announcing a discovery were transposed so as to form an anagram. Galileo announced his next discovery in this manner, and which read as follows:-- Smaismrmilme poeta leumi bvne nugttaviras. This, when deciphered, formed the sentence:-- Altissimum planetam tergeminum observavi. I have observed that the remotest planet is triple. Galileo perceived that Saturn presented a triform appearance, and that, instead of one body, there were three, all in a straight line, and apparently in contact with each other, the middle one being larger than the two lateral ones. In a letter to Kepler he remarked: 'Now I have discovered a Court for Jupiter, and two servants for this old man, who aid his steps and never quit his side.' Kepler, who excelled as an imaginative writer, replied: 'I will not make an old man of Saturn, nor slaves of his attendant globes; but rather let this tricorporate form be Geryon--so shall Galileo be Hercules, and the telescope his club, armed with which he has conquered that distant planet, and dragged him from the remotest depths of Nature, and exposed him to the view of all.' Continuing his observations, Galileo perceived that the two lateral objects gradually decreased in size, and at the expiration of two years entirely disappeared, leaving the central globe visible only. He was unable to assign any reason for this peculiar occurrence, which caused him much perplexity, and he expresses himself thus: 'What is to be said concerning so strange a metamorphosis? Are the two lesser stars consumed after the manner of the solar spots? Have they vanished and suddenly fled? Has Saturn, perhaps, devoured his own children? Or were the appearances, indeed, illusion or fraud, with which the glasses have so long deceived me, as well as many others to whom I have shown them? Now, perhaps, is the time to revive the well-nigh withered hopes of those who, guided by more profound contemplations, have discovered the fallacy of the new observations, and demonstrated the utter impossibility of their existence. I do not know what to say in a case so surprising, so unlooked-for, and so novel. The shortness of the time, the unexpected nature of the event, the weakness of my understanding, and the fear of being mistaken, have greatly confounded me.' After a certain interval those bodies reappeared; but Galileo's glass was not sufficiently powerful to enable him to ascertain their nature nor solve the mystery, which for upwards of half a century perplexed the ablest astronomers. The elucidation of this inexplicable phenomenon was reserved for Christian Huygens, who, with an improved telescope of his own construction, was able to declare that Saturn's appendages were portions of a ring which surrounds the planet, and is everywhere distinct from its surface. Galileo next directed his attention to the planet Venus, and as a result of his observations was led to communicate to the public another anagram:-- Haec immatura a me jam frustra leguntur oy. This, when rendered correctly, reads:-- Cynthiae figuras aemulatur mater amorum. Venus rivals the appearances of the Moon. The phases of Venus were one of the most interesting of Galileo's discoveries with the telescope. When observed near inferior conjunction the planet presents the appearance of a slender crescent, resembling the Moon when a few days old. Travelling from this point to superior conjunction, the illumined portion of her disc gradually increases, until it becomes circular, like the full Moon. This changing appearance of Venus afforded Galileo irresistible proof that the planet is an opaque body, which derives its light from the Sun, and that it circles round the orb--convincing evidence of the accuracy and truthfulness of the Copernican theory. It was in this manner that Galileo announced his discovery of the phases of Venus, the peerless planet of our morning and evening skies, whose slender crescent forms such a beautiful object in the telescope, and who, as she traverses her orbit, exhibits all the varied changes of form presented by the Moon in her monthly journey round the Earth. These varying aspects of Venus were not unknown to Milton; and, indeed, he may have been informed of them by Galileo in his conversation with him at Arcetri; nor has he failed to introduce an allusion to this beautiful phenomenon in his poem. In his description of the Creation, after the Sun was formed, he adds:-- Hither, as to their fountain, other stars Repairing, in their golden urns draw light, And hence the morning planet gilds her horns.--vii. 364-66. Galileo also discovered that the planet Mars does not always present the appearance of a circular disc. When near opposition the full disc of the planet is visible, but at all other times it is gibbous, and approaches nearest to that of a half-moon when at the quadratures. In the year 1610, on directing his telescope to the Sun, Galileo detected dark spots on the solar disc. Similar spots, sufficiently large to be distinguished by the naked eye, had been observed from time to time for centuries prior to the invention of the telescope, but nothing was known of their nature. In 1609 Kepler observed a spot on the Sun, which he thought was the planet Mercury in conjunction with the orb; the short time during which it was visible, in consequence of clouds having obscured the face of the luminary, prevented him from being able to determine the accuracy of his surmise, but since then it has been ascertained that no transit of Mercury took place at that time, and Kepler afterwards acknowledged that he had arrived at an erroneous conclusion. Galileo was much puzzled in trying to find out the true nature of the spots. At first he was led to imagine that planets like Mercury and Venus revolved round the Sun at a short distance from the orb, and that their dark bodies, travelling across the solar disc, gave rise to the phenomenon of the spots. After further observation, he ascertained that the spots were in actual contact with the Sun; that they were irregular in shape and size, and continued to appear and disappear. Sometimes a large spot would break up into several smaller ones, and at other times three or four small spots would unite to form a large one. They all had a common motion, and appeared to rotate with the Sun, from which Galileo concluded that the orb rotated on his axis in about twenty-eight days. Galileo believed that the spots were clouds floating in the solar atmosphere, and that they intercepted a portion of the light of the Sun. The Milky Way, that wondrous zone of light which encircles the heavens, remained for many ages a source of perplexity to ancient astronomers and philosophers, who, in their endeavours to ascertain its nature, had arrived at various absurd and erroneous conclusions. On directing his telescope to this luminous tract, Galileo discovered, to his inexpressible admiration, that it consists of a vast multitude of stars, too minute to be visible to the naked eye. He also discerned that its milky luminosity is created by the blended light of myriads of stars, so remote as to be incapable of definition by his telescope. In his 'Nuncius Sidereus' he gives an account of his observations of the Galaxy and expresses his satisfaction that he has been enabled to terminate an ancient controversy by demonstrating to the senses the stellar structure of the Milky Way. When engaged in exploring the celestial regions with his telescope, Galileo observed a marked difference in the appearance of the fixed stars, as compared with that of the planets. Each of the latter showed a rounded disc resembling that of a small moon, but the stars exhibited no disc, and shone as vivid sparkling points of light; all of them, whether of large or small magnitude, presenting the same appearance in the telescope. This led him to conclude that the fixed stars were not illumined by the Sun, because their brilliancy in all their changes of position remained unaltered. But, in the case of the planets, he found that their lustre varied according to their distance from the Sun; consequently, he believed they were opaque bodies which reflected the solar rays. On directing his telescope to the Pleiades, which, to the naked eye, appear as a group of seven stars, he succeeded in counting forty lucid points. The nebula Praesepe in Cancer, he was also able to resolve into a cluster of stars. Galileo made many other observations of the heavenly bodies with his telescope, all of which he describes as having afforded him 'incredible delight.' Shortly before the failure of his eyesight, Galileo discovered the Moon's diurnal libration, a variation in the visible edges of the Moon caused by its oscillatory motion, and the diurnal rotation of the Earth on her axis. Though Milton has not favoured us with any interesting details of his interview with Galileo, nor expressed his opinions with regard to the controversies which at that time agitated both the religious and scientific worlds of thought, and which eventually culminated in a storm of rancour and hatred that burst over the devoted head of the aged astronomer, and brought him to his knees, yet he informs us that he 'found and visited' Galileo, whom he describes as 'grown old,' and cynically remarks that he 'was held a prisoner of the Inquisition for thinking in astronomy otherwise than the Franciscan and Dominican licensers thought.' Milton does not allude to his blindness, and yet it would be natural to imagine that, had his host suffered from this affliction at the time of his visit, he would have referred to it. We learn that Milton arrived in Italy in the spring of 1638. In 1637, the affection which, in the preceding year, deprived Galileo of the use of his right eye, attacked the left also, which began to grow dim, and in the course of a few months became sightless; so that, although Milton has not alluded to this calamity, Galileo had become totally blind at the time of his visit. How much Milton was impressed with the fame of Galileo and his telescope becomes apparent on referring to his 'Paradise Lost.' In it he alludes to the instrument upon three different occasions, twice when in the hands of Galileo; and the remembrance of the same artist was doubtless in his mind when he mentions the 'glazed optic tube' in another part of his poem. The interval that elapsed from the date of Milton's visit to Galileo in 1638, to the publication of 'Paradise Lost' in 1667, included a period of about thirty years, yet this length of time did not erase from Milton's memory his recollection of Galileo and of his pleasant sojourn at Florence. The first allusion in the poem to the Italian astronomer is in the lines in which Milton describes the shield carried by Satan:-- The broad circumference Hung on his shoulders like the Moon, whose orb Through optic glass the Tuscan artist views At evening, from the top of Fesolé, Or in Valdarno, to descry new lands, Rivers, or mountains, in her spotty globe.--i. 286-91. Galileo is described as having observed the Moon from the heights of Fesolé, which formed part of the suburbs of Florence, or from Valdarno, the valley of the Arno, in which the city is situated. The belief that Galileo had discovered continents and seas on the Moon justified Milton in imagining the existence of rivers and mountains on the lunar surface. The expression 'spotty globe' is more descriptive of the appearance of our satellite when observed with the telescope, than when seen with the naked eye. Galileo's attention was attracted by the freckled aspect of the Moon--a visual effect created by the number of extinct volcanoes scattered over the surface of the orb. In his next allusion to the telescope Milton associates Galileo's name with the instrument:-- As when by night the glass Of Galileo, less assured, observes Imagined lands and regions in the Moon.--v. 261-63. In these lines Milton describes with accuracy the extent of Galileo's knowledge of our satellite. The conclusions which the Italian astronomer arrived at with regard to its habitability were not supported by telescopic evidence sufficient to justify such a belief. Galileo writes: 'Had its surface been absolutely smooth it would have been but a vast, unblessed desert, void of animals, of plants, of cities and men; the abode of silence and inaction--senseless, lifeless, soulless, and stripped of all those ornaments which now render it so variable and so beautiful:'-- There lands the Fiend, a spot like which perhaps Astronomer in the Sun's lucent orb Through his glazed optic tube yet never saw.--iii. 588-90. Milton may have remembered that Galileo was the first astronomer who directed a telescope to the Sun; and that he discovered the dark spots frequently seen on the solar disc. Anyone who has read a history of the life of Galileo, and contemplated the career of this remarkable man, his ardent struggles in the cause of freedom and philosophic truth, his victories and reverses, his brilliant astronomical discoveries, and his investigation of the laws of motion, and other natural phenomena, will arrive at the conclusion that he merited the distinction conferred upon him by our great English poet, when he included him among the renowned few whose names are found in the pages of 'Paradise Lost.' CHAPTER V THE SEASONS The great path of the Sun among the constellations as seen from the Earth is called the Ecliptic. It is divided into 360°, and again into twelve equal parts of 30°, called Signs. As one half of the ecliptic is north, and the other half south, of the equator, the line of intersection of their planes is at two points which are known as the equinoctial points, because, when the Sun on his upward and downward journey arrives at either of them the days and nights are of equal length all over the world. The equinoctial points are not stationary, but have a westerly motion of 50´´ annually along the ecliptic; at this rate they will require a period of 25,868 years to complete an entire circuit of the heavens. Milton alludes to the ecliptic when he mentions the arrival of Satan upon the Earth:-- Down from the ecliptic, sped with hoped success, Throws his steep flight in many an airy wheel, Nor staid till on Niphates top he lights.--iii. 740-42. Extending for 9° on each side of the ecliptic is a zone or belt called the Zodiac, the mesial line of which is occupied by the Sun, and within this space the principal planets perform their annual revolutions. It was for long believed that the paths of all the planets lay within the zodiac, but on the discovery of the minor planets, Ceres, Pallas, and Juno, it was ascertained that they travelled beyond this zone. The stars situated within the zodiac are divided into twelve groups or constellations, which correspond with the twelve signs, and each is named after an animal or some figure which it is supposed to resemble. The zodiac is of great antiquity; the ancient Egyptians and Hindoos made use of it, and there are allusions to it in the earliest astronomical records. The twelve constellations of the zodiac bear the following names:-- Aries the Ram Taurus the Bull Gemini the Twins Cancer the Crab Leo the Lion Virgo the Virgin Libra the Balance Scorpio the Scorpion Sagittarius the Archer Capricornus the Goat Aquarius the Water-bearer Pisces the Fishes In close association with the Sun's annual journey are the seasons, upon the regular sequence of which mankind depend for the various products of the soil essential for the maintenance and enjoyment of life. The revolution of the Earth in her orbit, and the inclination of her axis to her annual path, causing the plane of the equator to be inclined 23-1/2° to that of the ecliptic, are the reasons which account for the succession of the seasons--Spring, Summer, Autumn, and Winter. Owing to the position of the Earth's axis with regard to her orbit, the Sun appears to travel 23-1/2° north and 23-1/2° south of the equator. When, on June 21, the orb attains his highest northern altitude, we have the summer solstice and the longest days; when, by retracing his steps, he declines 23-1/2° below the equator, at which point he arrives on December 21, we have the winter solstice and the shortest days. Intermediate between those two seasons are spring and autumn. When the Sun, on his journey northward, reaches the equator, we have the vernal equinox, and at this period of the year the days and nights are of equal length all over the globe. In a similar manner, when, on his return journey, the Sun is again on the equator, the autumnal equinox occurs. In summer the North Pole is inclined towards the Sun, consequently his rays fall more direct and impart much more heat to the northern hemisphere than in winter, when the Pole is turned away from the Sun. This difference in the incidence of the solar rays upon the surface of the globe, along with the increased length of the day, mainly accounts for the high temperature of summer as compared with that of winter. Astronomically, the seasons commence at the periods of the equinoxes and solstices. Spring begins on March 21, the time of the vernal equinox; summer on June 21, at the summer solstice; autumn on September 22, at the autumnal equinox; and winter on December 21, at the winter solstice. This conventional division of the year is not equally applicable to all parts of the globe. In the arctic and antarctic regions spring and autumn are very brief, the summer is short and the winter of long duration. In the tropics, owing to the comparatively slight difference in the obliquity of the Sun's rays, one season is, as regards temperature, not much different from the other; but in the temperate regions of the Earth the vicissitudes of the seasons are more perceptible and can be best distinguished by the growth of vegetation, and the changes observable in the foliage of shrubs and trees. In spring there is the budding, in summer the blossom, in autumn the fruit-bearing, and in winter the leafless condition of deciduous trees, and the repose of vegetable life. The legendary belief that before the Fall there reigned on the Earth a perpetual spring, is introduced by Milton in his poem when he describes the pleasant surroundings associated with the happy conditions of life that existed in Paradise:-- Thus was this place, A happy rural seat of various view: Groves whose rich trees wept odorous gums and balm; Others whose fruit, burnished with golden rind, Hung amiable--Hesperian fables true, If true here only--and of delicious taste. Betwixt them lawns, or level downs, and flocks Grazing the tender herb, were interposed, Or palmy hillock; or the flowery lap Of some irriguous valley spread her store, Flowers of all hue, and without thorn the rose. Another side, umbrageous grots and caves Of cool recess, o'er which the mantling vine Lays forth her purple grape, and gently creeps Luxuriant; meanwhile murmuring waters fall Down the slope hill dispersed, or in a lake That to the fringèd bank with myrtle crowned Her crystal mirror holds, unite their streams. The birds their quire apply; airs, vernal airs, Breathing the smell of field and grove, attune The trembling leaves, while universal Pan, Knit with the Graces and the Hours in dance, Led on the eternal Spring.--iv. 246-68. In sad contrast with this charming sylvan scene, we turn to the unhappy consequences which ensued as a result of the first act of transgression. Milton describes a change of climate characterised by extremes of heat and cold which succeeded the perpetual spring. The Sun was made to shine so that the Earth should be exposed to torrid heat and icy cold unpleasant to endure. The pale Moon and the planets were given power to combine with noxious effect, and the fixed stars to shed their malignant influences:-- The Sun Had first his precept so to move, so shine, As might affect the Earth with cold and heat Scarce tolerable, and from the north to call Decrepit winter, from the south to bring Solstitial summer's heat. To the blanc Moon Her office they prescribed; to the other five Their planetary motions and aspects, In sextile, square, and trine, and opposite, Of noxious efficacy, and when to join In synod unbenign; and taught the fixed Their influence malignant when to shower-- Which of them rising with the Sun or falling, Should prove tempestuous. To the winds they set Their corners, when with bluster to confound Sea, air, and shore; the thunder when to roll With terror through the dark aerial hall.--x. 651-67. We are here afforded an opportunity of learning that Milton possessed some knowledge of astrology, to which he makes allusion in other parts of his poem besides. In his time, astrology was believed in by many persons, and there were few learned men but who knew something of that occult science. Milton may be included among those who devoted some attention to astrology. Of this there is ample evidence, by the manner in which he expresses himself in words and phrases in common use among astrologers. The professors of this art recognised five planetary aspects, viz., opposition, conjunction, sextile, square, and trine, each possessing its peculiar kind of influence on events. The Moon, the planets, and the constellations in their conjunctions and configurations, were believed to reveal to those who could understand the significance of their aspects, the destiny of individuals and the occurrence of future events. The inauspicious influences of the heavenly bodies are described by Milton as contributing to the general disarrangement of the happy condition of things that existed before the Fall. After having described the adverse physical changes which occurred in Nature as a consequence of the Fall, Milton makes use of his astronomical knowledge in explaining how they were brought about, and suggests two hypotheses: (1) a change of position of the Earth's axis; (2) an alteration of the Sun's path from the equinoctial road:-- Some say he bid his Angels turn askance The poles of Earth twice ten degrees and more From the Sun's axle; they with labour pushed Oblique the centric globe: some say the Sun Was bid turn reins from the equinoctial road Like distant breadth--to Taurus with the seven Atlantic Sisters, and the Spartan Twins, Up to the Tropic Crab; thence down amain By Leo, and the Virgin, and the Scales, As deep as Capricorn; to bring in change Of seasons to each clime. Else had the spring Perpetual smiled on Earth with vernant flowers.--x. 668-79. In support of the theory of a perpetual spring, Milton assumes that the Earth's axis was directed at right angles to her orbit, and that the plane of the equator coincided with that of the ecliptic. Consequently, the Sun's path remained always on the equator, where his rays were vertical, and north and south of this line each locality on the Earth enjoyed one constant season, the character of which depended upon its geographical position. In what are now the temperate regions of the globe there was one continuous season, similar in climate and length of day to what is experienced at the vernal equinox, when the Sun is for a few days on the equator. There was then no winter, no summer, nor autumn; and, consequently, the growth of vegetation must have taken place under conditions of climate entirely different to what exist on the Earth at the present time. The change of position of the Earth's axis, 'twice ten degrees and more from the Sun's axle,' is described by Milton as having been accomplished by the might of angels, who 'with labour pushed oblique the centric globe.' (2) According to the Ptolemaic belief, the Sun revolved round the Earth, but his course was altered from the equinoctial road to the path that he now pursues, which is the ecliptic. Instead of remaining on the equator, he travels an equal distance from this line upwards and downwards in each hemisphere. The path of the Sun in the heavens is described by Milton with marked precision, and he mentions in regular order the names of the zodiacal constellations through which the orb travels. Passing through Taurus with the seven Atlantic Sisters (the Pleiades) and the Spartan Twins (Gemini), he enters the Tropic Crab (Cancer), in which constellation he attains his highest northern altitude; thence downwards he travels through Leo, Virgo, and the Scales (Libra), as deep as Capricornus, reaching his lowest point of declination at the winter solstice; and were it not for this alteration of the Sun's path, the poet informs us that perpetual spring would have reigned upon the Earth. Milton was evidently well acquainted with the astronomical reasons (the revolution of the Earth in her orbit and the obliquity of the ecliptic) by which the occurrence and regular sequence of the seasons can be explained. The path of the Sun in the heavens; his upward and downward course from the equator; the names of the constellations through which the orb travels, and the periods of the year at which he enters them, were also familiar to him. The grateful change of the seasons, and the varied aspects of nature peculiar to each, which give a charm and freshness to the rolling year, must have been to Milton a source of pleasure and delight, and have stimulated his poetic fancy. His observation of natural phenomena, and his keen perception of the pleasing changes which accompany them, are described in the following lines:-- As, when from mountain-tops the dusky clouds Ascending, while the north wind sleeps, o'erspread Heaven's cheerful face, the louring element Scowls o'er the darkened landskip snow or shower, If chance the radiant Sun, with farewell sweet, Extend his evening beam, the fields revive, The birds their notes renew, and bleating herds Attest their joy, that hill and valley rings.--ii. 488-95. The ancient poets Virgil and Ovid describe the Earth as having been created in the spring; and associated with this season, which to the heart inspires Vernal delight and joy--iv. 154-55, were the Graces and the Hours, which danced hand in hand as they led on the eternal Spring. Milton alludes to the seasons on several occasions throughout his poem, and to the natural phenomena associated with them:-- As bees In springtime when the Sun with Taurus rides, Pour forth their populous youth about the hive In clusters; they among fresh dews and flowers Fly to and fro, or on the smoothèd plank The suburb of their straw-built citadel New rubbed with balm, expatiate and confer Their state affairs.--i. 768-75. The Sun is in the constellation Taurus in April, when the warmth of his rays begins to impart new life and activity to the insect world after their long winter's sleep. In his description of the repast partaken by the Angel Raphael with Adam and Eve in Paradise, Milton writes:-- Raised of grassy turf Their table was, and mossy seats had round, And on her ample square, from side to side, All Autumn piled, though Spring and Autumn here Danced hand in hand.--v. 391-95. In describing Beelzebub when about to address the Stygian Council, he says:-- His look Drew audience and attention still as night Or summer's noontide air, while thus he spake.--ii. 307-309. The failing vision from which Milton suffered in his declining years was succeeded by total blindness. This sad affliction he alludes to in the following lines:-- Thus with the year Seasons return; but not to me returns Day, or the sweet approach of even or morn, Or sight of vernal bloom, or summer's rose.--iii. 40-43. We are able to perceive how much Milton was impressed with the beautiful seasons, and the varying aspects of the year which accompany them, and how his poetic imagination luxuriated in the changing variety of nature observable in earth and sky that from day to day afforded him exquisite delight; and, although his poem was written when blindness had overtaken him, yet those glad remembrances remained as fresh in his memory as when in his youth he roamed among the flowery meadows, the vocal woodlands, and the winding lanes of Buckinghamshire. The idea expressed by Milton that the primitive earth enjoyed a perpetual spring, though pleasing to the imagination, and well adapted for poetic description, is not sustained by any astronomical testimony. Indeed, the position of the Earth, with her axis at right angles to her orbit, is one which may be regarded as being ill adapted for the support and maintenance of life on her surface, just as her present position is the best that can be imagined for fulfilling this purpose. Astronomy teaches us to rely with certainty upon the permanence and regular sequence of the seasons. The position of the Earth's axis as she speeds along in her orbit through the unresisting ether remains unchanged, and her rapid rotation has the effect of increasing its stability. Yet, the Earth performs none of her motions with rigid precision, and there is a very slow alteration of the position of her axis occurring, which, if unchecked, would eventually produce a coincidence of the equator and the ecliptic. Instead of a succession of the seasons, there would then be perpetual spring upon the Earth, and, although it would require a great epoch of time to bring about such a change, there would result a condition of things entirely different to what now exists on the globe. But, before the ecliptic can have approached sufficiently near the equator to produce any appreciable effect upon the climate of the Earth, its motion must cease, and after remaining stationary for a time, it will begin to recede to its former position. The seasons must therefore follow each other in regular sequence, and throughout all time, reminding us of the promise of the Creator, 'that while the Earth remaineth seed-time and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter shall not cease.' CHAPTER VI THE STARRY HEAVENS The celestial vault, that, like a circling canopy of sapphire hue, stretches overhead from horizon to horizon, resplendent by night with myriad stars of different magnitudes and varied brilliancy, forming clusterings and configurations of fantastic shape and beauty, arrests the attention of the most casual observer. But to one who has studied the heavens, and followed the efforts of human genius in unravelling the mysteries associated with those bright orbs, the impression created on his mind as he gazes upon them in the still hours of the night, when the turmoil of life is hushed in repose, is one of wonder and longing to know more of their being and the hidden causes which brought them forth. Here, we have poetry written in letters of gold on the sable vestment of night; music in the gliding motion of the spheres; and harmony in the orbital sweep of sun, planet, and satellite. Milton was not only familiar with 'the face of the sky,' as it is popularly called, but also knew the structure of the celestial sphere, and the great circles by which it is circumscribed. Two of those--the colures--he alludes to in the following lines, when he describes the manner in which Satan, to avoid detection, compassed the Earth, after his discovery by Gabriel in Paradise, and his flight thence:-- The space of seven continued nights he rode With darkness--thrice the equinoctial line He circled, four times crossed the car of night From pole to pole, traversing each colure.--ix. 63-66. Aristarchus of Samos believed the stars were golden studs, that illumined the crystal dome of heaven; but modern research has transformed this conception of the ancient astronomer's into a universe of blazing suns rushing through regions of illimitable space. In Milton's time astronomers had arrived at no definite conclusion with regard to the nature of the stars. They were known to be self-luminous bodies, situated at a remote distance in space, but it had not been ascertained with any degree of certainty that they were suns, resembling in magnitude and brilliancy our Sun. Indeed, little was known of those orbs until within the past hundred years, when the exploration of the heavens by the aid of greatly increased telescopic power, was the means of creating a new branch of astronomical science, called sidereal astronomy. We are indebted to Sir William Herschel, more than to any other astronomer, for our knowledge of the stellar universe. It was he who ascertained the vastness of its dimensions, and attempted to delineate its structural configuration. He also explored the star depths, which occupy the infinitude of space by which we are surrounded, and made many wonderful discoveries, which testify to his ability as an observer, and to his greatness as an astronomer. William Herschel was born at Hanover, November 15, 1738. His father was a musician in the band of the Hanoverian Guard, and trained his son in his own profession. After four years of military service, young Herschel arrived in England when nineteen years of age, and maintained himself by giving lessons in music. We hear of him first at Leeds, where he followed his profession, and instructed the band of the Durham Militia. From Leeds he went to Halifax, and was appointed organist there; on the expiration of twelve months he removed to Bath, and was elected to a similar post at the Octagon Chapel in that city. Here, fortune smiled upon him, and he became a busy and prosperous man. Besides attending to his numerous private engagements, he organised concerts, oratorios, and other public musical entertainments, which gained him much popularity among the cultivated classes which frequented this fashionable resort. Notwithstanding his numerous professional engagements, Herschel was able to devote a portion of his time to acquiring knowledge on other subjects. He became proficient in Italian and Greek, studied mathematics, and read books on astronomy. In 1773 he borrowed a small telescope, which he used for observational purposes, and was so captivated with the appearances presented by the celestial bodies, that he resolved to dedicate his life to acquiring 'a knowledge of the construction of the heavens.' This resolution he nobly adhered to, and became one of the most distinguished of astronomers. Like many other astronomers, Herschel possessed the requisite skill which enabled him to construct his own telescopes. Being desirous of possessing a more powerful instrument, and not having the means to purchase one, he commenced the manufacture of specula, the grinding and polishing of which had to be done by hand, entailing the necessity of tedious labour and the exercise of much patience. After repeated failures he at length completed a 5-1/2-foot Gregorian reflector, and with this instrument made his first survey of the heavens. Having perceived the desirability of possessing a more powerful telescope, he equipped himself with a reflector of twenty feet focal length, and it was with this instrument that he made those wonderful discoveries which established his reputation as a great astronomer. On March 31, 1781, when examining the stars in the constellation Gemini, Herschel observed a star which presented an appearance slightly different to that of the other stars by which it was surrounded; it looked larger, had a perceptible disc, and its light became fainter when viewed with a higher magnifying power. After having carefully examined this object, Herschel arrived at the conclusion that he had discovered a comet. He communicated intelligence of his discovery to the Royal Society, and, a notification of it having been sent to the Continental observatories, this celestial visitor was subjected to a close scrutiny; its progressive motion among the stars was carefully observed, and an orbit was assigned to it. After it had been under observation for some time, doubts were expressed as to its being a comet, these were increased on further examination, and eventually it was discovered that this interesting object was a new planet. This important discovery at once raised Herschel to a position of eminence and distinction, and from a star-gazing musician he became a famous astronomer. A new planet named Uranus was added to our system, which completes a revolution round the Sun in a little over eighty-four years, and at a distance of near 1,000 millions of miles beyond the orbit of Saturn. Herschel's name became a household word. George III. invited him to Court in order that he might obtain from his own lips an account of his discovery of the new planet; and so favourable was the impression made by Herschel upon the King, that he proposed to create him Royal Astronomer at Windsor, and bestow upon him a salary of 200_l._ a year. Herschel decided to accept the proffered appointment, and, with his sister Caroline, removed from Bath to Datchet, near Windsor, in 1782, and from there to Slough in 1786. In 1788 he married the wealthy widow of a London merchant, by whom he had one son, who worthily sustained his father's high reputation as an astronomer. Herschel was created a Knight in 1816, and in 1821 was elected first President of the Royal Astronomical Society. He died at Slough on August 25, 1822, when in the eighty-fourth year of his age, and was buried in Upton Churchyard. It is inscribed on his tomb, that 'he burst the barriers of heaven;' the lofty praise conveyed by this expression is not greater than what Herschel merited when we consider with what unwearied assiduity and patience he laboured to accomplish the results described in the words which have been quoted. By a method called 'star-gauging' he accomplished an entire survey of the heavens and examined minutely all the stars in their groups and aggregations as they passed before his eye in the field of the telescope. He sounded the depths of the Milky Way, and explored the wondrous regions of that shining zone, peopled with myriads of suns so closely aggregated in some of its tracts as to suggest the appearance of a mosaic of stars. He resolved numerous nebulæ into clusters of stars, and penetrated with his great telescope depth after depth of space crowded with 'island universes of stars,' beyond which he was able to discern luminous haze and filmy streaks of light, the evidence of the existence of other universes plunged in depths still more profound, where space verges on infinity. In his exploration of the starry heavens Herschel's labours were truly amazing. On four different occasions he completed a survey of the firmament, and counted the stars in several thousand gauge-fields; he discovered 2,400 nebulæ, 800 double stars, and attempted to ascertain the approximate distances of the stars by a comparison of their relative brightness. It had long been surmised, though no actual proof was forthcoming, that the law of gravitation by which the order and stability of our system are maintained exercises its potent influence over other material bodies existing in space, and that other systems, though differing in many respects from that of ours, and presenting a more complex arrangement in their structure, perform their motions subject to the guidance of this universal law. The uncertainty with regard to the controlling influence of gravity was removed by Herschel when he made his important discovery of binary star systems. The components of a binary star are usually in such close proximity that, to the naked eye, they appear as one star, and sometimes, even with telescopic aid, it is impossible to distinguish them individually; but when observed with sufficient magnifying power they can be easily perceived as two lucid points. Double stars were for a long time believed to be a purely optical phenomenon--an effect created by two stars projected on the sphere so as to appear nearly in the same line of vision, and, although apparently almost in contact, situated at great distances apart. At one time Herschel entertained a similar opinion with regard to those stars. In 1779 he undertook an extensive exploration of the heavens with the object of discovering double stars. As a result of his labours he presented to the Royal Society in 1782 a list of 269 newly discovered double stars, and in three years after he supplemented this list with another which contained 434 more new stars. He carefully measured the distances by which the component stars were separated, and determined their position angles, in order that he might be able to detect the existence of any sensible parallax. On repeating his observations twenty years after, he discovered that the relative positions of many of the stars had changed, and in 1802 he made the important announcement of his discovery that the components of many double stars form independent systems, held together in a mutual bond of union and revolving round one common centre of gravity. The importance of this discovery, which we owe to Herschel's sagacity and accuracy of observation, cannot be over-estimated; what was previously conjecture and surmise, now became precise knowledge established upon a sure and accurate basis. It was ascertained that the law of gravity exerts its power in regulating and controlling the motions of all celestial bodies within the range of telescopic vision, and that the order and harmony which pervade our system are equally present among other systems of suns and worlds distributed throughout the regions of space. The spectacle of two or more suns revolving round each other, forming systems of greater magnitude and importance than that of ours, conveyed to the minds of astronomers a knowledge of the mechanism of the heavens which had hitherto been unknown to them. During the many years which Herschel devoted to the exploration of the starry heavens, and when engaged night after night in examining and enumerating the various groups and clusters of stars which passed before his eye in the field of his powerful telescope, he did not fail to remember the sublime object of his life, and to which he made all his other investigations subordinate, viz., the delineation of the structural configuration of the heavens, and the inclusion of all aggregations, groups, clusters, and galaxies of stars which are apparently scattered promiscuously throughout the regions of space into one grand harmonious design of celestial architecture. Having this object in view, he explored the wondrous zone of the Milky Way, gauged its depths, measured its dimensions, and, in attempting to unravel the intricacies of its structure, penetrated its recesses far beyond the limit attained by any other observer. Acting on the assumption that the stars are uniformly distributed throughout space, Herschel, by his method of star-gauging, concluded that the sidereal system consists of an irregular stratum of evenly distributed suns, resembling in form a cloven flat disc, and that the apparent richness of some regions as compared with that of others could be accounted for by the position from which it was viewed by an observer. The stars would appear least numerous where the visual line was shortest, and, as it became lengthened, they would increase in number until, by crowding behind each other as a greater depth of stratum was penetrated, they would, when very remote, present the appearance of a luminous cloud or zone of light. After further observation Herschel was compelled to relinquish his theory of equal star distribution, and found, as he approached the Galaxy, that the stars became much more numerous, and that in the Milky Way itself there was evidence of the gravitation of stars towards certain regions forming aggregations and clusters which would ultimately lead to its breaking up into numerous separate sidereal systems. As he extended his survey of the heavens and examined with greater minuteness the stellar regions in the Galactic tract, he discovered that by his method of star-gauging he was unable to define the complexity of structure and variety of arrangement which came under his observation; he also perceived that the star-depths are unfathomable, and discerned that beyond the reach of his telescope there existed systems and galaxies of stars situated at an appalling distance in the abysmal depths of space. Though the magnitude of that portion of the sidereal heavens which came under his observation was inconceivable as regards its dimensions, Herschel was able to perceive that it formed but a part--and most probably a small part--of the stellar universe, and that without a more extended knowledge of this universe, which at present is unattainable, it would be impossible to determine its structural configuration or discover the relationships that exist among the sidereal systems and Galactic concourses of stars distributed throughout space. Herschel ultimately abandoned his star-gauging method of observation and confined his attention to exploring the star depths and investigating the laws and theories associated with the bodies occupying those distant regions. Since all the planets if viewed from the Sun would be seen to move harmoniously and in regular order round that body, so there may be somewhere in the universe a central point, or, as some persons imagine, a great central sun, round which all the systems of stars perform their majestic revolutions with the same beautiful regularity; having their motions controlled by the same law of gravitation, and possessing the same dynamical stability which characterises the mechanism of the solar system. The extent of the distance which intervenes between our system and the fixed stars constituted a problem which exercised the minds of astronomers from an early period until the middle of the present century. Tycho Brahé, who repudiated the Copernican theory, asserted as one of his reasons against it that the distances by which the heavenly bodies are separated from each other were greater than even the upholders of this theory believed them to be. Although the distance of the Sun from the Earth was unknown, Tycho was aware that the diameter of the Earth's orbit must be measured by millions of miles, and yet there was no perceptible motion or change of position of the stars when viewed from any point of the vast circumference which she traverses. Consequently, the Earth, if viewed from the neighbourhood of a star, would also appear motionless, and the dimensions of her orbit would be reduced to that of a point. This seemed incredible to Tycho, and he therefore concluded that the Copernican theory was incorrect. The conclusion that the stars are orbs resembling our Sun in magnitude and brilliancy was one which, Tycho urged, should not be hastily adopted; and yet, if it were conceded that the Earth is a body which revolves round the Sun, it would be necessary to admit that the stars are suns also. If the Earth's orbit, as seen from a star, were reduced to a point, then the Sun, which occupies its centre, would be reduced to a point of light also, and, when observed from a star of equal brilliancy and magnitude, would have the same resemblance that the star has when viewed from the Earth, which may be regarded as being in proximity to the Sun. Tycho Brahé would not admit the accuracy of these conclusions, which were too bewildering and overwhelming for his mental conception. But the investigations of later astronomers disclosed the fact that the heavenly bodies are situated at distances more remote from each other than had been previously imagined, and that the reasons which led Tycho to reject the Copernican theory were based upon erroneous conclusions, and could, with greater aptitude, be employed in its support. It was ascertained that the distance of the Sun from the Earth, which at different periods was surmised to be ten, twenty, and forty millions of miles, was much greater than had been previously estimated. Later calculations determined it to be not less than eighty millions of miles, and, according to the most recent observations, the distance of the Sun from the Earth is believed to be about ninety-three millions of miles. Having once ascertained the distance between the Earth and the Sun, astronomers were enabled to determine with greater facility the distances of other heavenly bodies. It was now known that the diameter of the Earth's orbit exceeded 183 millions of miles, and yet, with a base line of such enormous length, and with instruments of the most perfect construction, astronomers were only able to perceive the minutest appreciable alteration in the positions of a few stars when observed from opposite points of the terrestrial orbit. It had long been the ambitious desire of astronomers to accomplish, if possible, a measurement of the abyss which separates our system from the nearest of the fixed stars. No imaginary measuring line had ever been stretched across this region of space, nor had its unfathomed depths ever been sounded by any effort of the human mind. The stars were known to be inconceivably remote, but how far away no person could tell, nor did there exist any guide by which an approximation of their distances could be arrived at. In attempting to calculate the distances of the stars, astronomers have had recourse to a method called 'Parallax,' by which is meant the apparent change of position of a heavenly body when viewed from two different points of observation. The annual parallax of a heavenly body is the angle subtended at that body by the radius of the Earth's orbit. The stars have no diurnal parallax, because, owing to their great distance, the Earth's radius does not subtend any measurable angle, but the radius of the Earth's orbit, which is immensely larger, does, in the case of a few stars, subtend a very minute angle. 'This enormous base line of 183 millions of miles is barely sufficient, in conjunction with the use of the most delicate and powerful astronomical instruments, to exhibit the minutest measureable displacement of two or three of the nearest stars.'--Proctor. The efforts of early astronomers to detect any perceptible alteration in the positions of the stars when observed from any point of the circumference of the Earth's orbit were unsuccessful. Copernicus ascribed the absence of any parallax to the immense distances of the stars as compared with the dimensions of the terrestrial orbit. Tycho Brahé, though possessing better appliances, and instruments of more perfect construction, was unable to perceive any annual displacement of the stars, and brought this forward as evidence against the Copernican theory. Galileo suggested a method of obtaining the parallax of the fixed stars, by observing two stars of unequal magnitude apparently near to each other, though really far apart. Those, when observed from different points of the Earth's orbit, would appear to change their positions relatively to each other. The smaller and more distant star would remain unaltered, whilst the larger and nearer star would have changed its position with respect to the other. By continuing to observe the larger star during the time that the Earth accomplished a revolution of her orbit, Galileo believed that its parallax might be successfully determined. Though he did not himself put this method into practice, it has been tried by others with successful results. In 1669, Hooke made the first attempt to ascertain the parallax of a fixed star, and selected for this purpose Gamma Draconis, a bright star in the Head of the Dragon. This constellation passed near the zenith of London at the time that he made his observations, and was favourably situated, so as to avoid the effects of refraction. Hooke made four observations in the months of July, August, and October, and believed that he determined the parallax of the star; but it was afterwards discovered that he was in error, and that the apparent displacement of the star was mainly due to the aberration of light--a phenomenon which was not discovered at that time. A few years later, Picard, a French astronomer, attempted to find the parallax of Alpha Lyræ, but was unsuccessful. In 1692-93, Roemer, a Danish astronomer, observed irregularities in the declinations of the stars which could neither be ascribed to parallax or refraction, and which he imagined resulted from a changing position of the Earth's axis. One of the principal causes which baffled astronomers in their endeavours to determine the parallax of the fixed stars was a phenomenon called the 'Aberration of Light,' which was discovered and explained by Bradley in 1727. The peculiar effect of aberration was perceived by him when endeavouring to obtain the parallax of Gamma Draconis. Owing to the progressive transmission of light, conjointly with the motion of the Earth in her orbit, there results an apparent slight displacement of a star from its true position. The extent of the displacement depends upon the ratio of the velocity of light as compared with the speed of the Earth in her orbit, which is as 10,000 to 1. As a consequence of this, each star describes a small ellipse in the course of a year, the central point of which would indicate the place occupied by the star if the Earth were at rest. The shifting position of the star is very slight, and at the end of a year it returns to its former place. Prior to the discovery of aberration, astronomers ascribed the apparent displacement of the stars arising from this cause as being due to parallax--a conclusion which led to erroneous results; but after Bradley's discovery this source of error was avoided, and it was found that the parallax of the stars had to be considerably reduced. Bessel was the first astronomer who merited the high distinction of having determined the first reliable stellar parallax, and by this achievement he was enabled to fathom the profound abyss which separates our solar system from the stars. Frederick William Bessel was born in 1764 at Minden, in Westphalia. It was his intention to pursue a mercantile career, and he commenced life by becoming apprenticed to a firm of merchants at Bremen. Soon afterwards he accompanied a trading expedition to China and the East Indies, and while on this voyage picked up a good deal of information with regard to many matters which came under his observation. He acquired a knowledge of Spanish and English, and made himself acquainted with the art of navigation. On his return home, Bessel endeavoured to determine the longitude of Bremen. The only appliances which he made use of were a sextant constructed by himself, and a common clock; and yet, with those rude instruments, he successfully accomplished his object. During the next two years he devoted all his spare time to the study of mathematics and astronomy, and, having obtained possession of Harriot's observations of the celebrated comet of 1607--known as Halley's comet--Bessel, after much diligent application and careful calculation, was enabled to deduce from them an orbit, which he assigned to that remarkable body. This meritorious achievement was the means of procuring for him a widely known reputation. A vacancy for an assistant having occurred at Schröter's Observatory at Lilienthal, the post was offered to Bessel and accepted by him. Here he remained for four years, and was afterwards appointed Director of the new Prussian Observatory at Königsberg, where he pursued his astronomical labours for a period of upwards of thirty years. Bessel directed his energies chiefly to the study of stellar astronomy, and made many observations in determining the number, the exact positions, and proper motions of the stars. He was remarkable for the precision with which he carried out his observations, and for the accuracy which characterised all his calculations. In 1837 Bessel, by the exercise of his consummate skill, endeavoured to solve a problem which for many years baffled the efforts of the ablest astronomers, viz., the determination of the parallax of the fixed stars. This had been so frequently attempted, and without success, that the results of any new observations were received with incredulity before their value could be ascertained. Bessel was ably assisted by Joseph Frauenhofer, an eminent optician of Munich, who constructed a magnificent heliometer for the Observatory at Königsberg, and in its design introduced a principle which admirably adapted it for micrometrical measurement. The star selected by Bessel is a binary known as 61 Cygni, the components being of magnitudes 5·5 and 6 respectively. It has a large proper motion, which led him to conclude that its parallax must be considerable. This star will always be an object of interest to astronomers, as it was the first of the stellar multitude that revealed to Bessel the secret of its distance. Bessel commenced his observations in October 1837, and continued them until March 1840. During this time he made 402 measurements, and, before arriving at a conclusive result, carefully considered every imaginable cause of error, and rigorously calculated any inaccuracies that might arise therefrom. Finally, he determined the parallax of the star to be 0´´·3483--a result equivalent to a distance about 600,000 times that of the Earth from the Sun. In 1842-43 M. Peters, of the Pulkova Observatory, arrived at an almost similar result, having obtained a parallax of 0´´·349; but by more recent observations the parallax of the star has been increased to about half a second. About the same time that Bessel was occupied with his observation of 61 Cygni, Professor Henderson, of Edinburgh, when in charge of the Observatory at the Cape of Good Hope, directed his attention to Alpha Centauri, one of the brightest stars in the Southern Hemisphere. During 1832-33 he made a series of observations of the star, with the object of ascertaining its mean declination; and, having been informed afterwards of its large proper motion, he resolved to make an endeavour to determine its parallax. This he accomplished after his return to Scotland, having been appointed Astronomer Royal in that country. By an examination of the observations made by him at the Cape, he determined the parallax of Alpha Centauri to be 1´´·16, but later astronomers have reduced it to 0´´·75. Professor Henderson's detection of the parallax of Alpha Centauri was communicated to the Astronomical Society two months after Bessel announced his determination of the parallax of 61 Cygni. The parallax of 61 Cygni assigns to the star a distance of forty billions of miles from the Earth, and that of Alpha Centauri--regarded as the nearest star to our system--a distance of twenty-five billions of miles. It is utterly beyond the capacity of the human mind to form any adequate conception of those vast distances, even when measured by the velocity with which the ether of space is thrilled into light. Light, which travels twelve millions of miles in a minute, requires 4-1/3 years to cross the abyss which intervenes between Alpha Centauri and the Earth, and from 61 Cygni the period required for light to reach our globe is rather less than double that time. The parallax of more than a dozen other stars has been determined, and the light passage of a few of the best known is estimated as follows:--Sirius, eight years; Procyon, twelve; Altair, sixteen; Aldebaran, twenty-eight; Capella, thirty; Regulus, thirty-five; Polaris, sixty-three; and Vega, ninety-six years. It does not always follow that the brightest stars are those situated nearest to our system, though in a general way this may be regarded as correct. The diminishing magnitudes of the stars can be accounted for mainly by their increased distances, rather than by any difference in their intrinsic brilliancy. We should not err by inferring that the most minute stars are also the most remote; the telescope revealing thousands that are invisible to the naked eye. There are, however, exceptions to this general rule, and there are many stars of small magnitude less remote than those whose names have been enumerated, and whose light passage testifies to their profound distances and surpassing magnitude when compared with that of our Sun. Sirius, 'the leader of the heavenly host,' is distant fifty billions of miles. The orb shines with a brilliancy far surpassing that of the Sun, and greatly exceeds him in mass and dimensions. Arcturus, the bright star in Boötes, whose golden yellow light renders it such a conspicuous object, is so far distant that its measurement gives no reliable parallax; and if we may infer from what little we know of the stars, Arcturus is believed to be the most magnificent and massive orb entering into the structure of that portion of the sidereal system which comes within our cognisance. Judging by its relative size and brightness, this star is ten thousand times more luminous, and may exceed the Sun one million times in volume. Deneb, in the constellation of the Swan, though a first-magnitude star, possesses no perceptible proper motion or parallax--a circumstance indicative of amazing distance, and magnitude equalling, or surpassing, Arcturus and Sirius. Canopus, in the constellation Argo, in the Southern Hemisphere, the brightest star in the heavens with the exception of Sirius, possesses no sensible parallax; consequently, its distance is unknown, though it has been estimated that its light passage cannot be less than sixty-five years. By establishing a mean value for the parallax of stars of different magnitudes, it was believed that an approximation of their distances could be obtained by calculating the time occupied in their light passage. The light period for stars of the first magnitude has been estimated at thirty-six and a half years; this applies to the brightest stars, which are also regarded as the nearest. At the distance indicated by this period, the Sun would shrink to the dimensions of a seventh-magnitude star and become invisible to the naked eye; this of itself affords sufficient proof that the great luminary of our system cannot be regarded as one of the leading orbs of the firmament. Stars of the second magnitude have a mean distance of fifty-eight light years, those of the third magnitude ninety-two years, and so on. M. Peters estimated that light from stars of the sixth magnitude, which are just visible to the naked eye, requires a period of 138 years to accomplish its journey hither; whilst light emitted from the smallest stars visible in large telescopes does not reach the Earth until after the lapse of thousands of years from the time of leaving its source. The profound distances of the nearest stars by which we are surrounded lead us to consider the isolated position of the solar system in space. A pinnacle of rock, or forsaken raft floating in mid-ocean, is not more distant from the shore than is the Sun from his nearest neighbours. The inconceivable dimensions of the abyss by which the orb and his attendants are surrounded in utter loneliness may be partially comprehended when it is known that light, which travels from the Sun to the Earth--a distance of ninety-three millions of miles--in eight minutes, requires a period of four and a third years to reach us from the nearest fixed star. A sphere having the Sun at its centre and this nearest star at its circumference would have a diameter of upwards of fifty billions of miles; the volume of the orb when compared with the dimensions of this circular vacuity of space is as a small shot to a globe 900 miles in diameter. It has been estimated by Father Secchi that, if a comet when at aphelion were to arrive at a point midway between the Sun and the nearest fixed star, it would require one hundred million years in the accomplishment of its journey thither. And yet the Sun is one of a group of stars which occupy a region of the heavens adjacent to the Milky Way and surrounded by that zone; nor is his isolation greater than that of those stars which are his companions, and who, notwithstanding their profound distance, influence his movements by their gravitational attraction, and in combination with the other stars of the firmament control his destiny. Ancient astronomers, for the purpose of description, have mapped out the heavens into numerous irregular divisions called 'constellations.' They are of various forms and sizes, according to the configuration of the stars which occupy them, and have been named after different animals, mythological heroes, and other objects which they appear to resemble. In a few instances there does exist a similitude to the object after which a constellation is called; this is evident in the case of Corona Borealis (the Northern Crown), in which there can be seen a conspicuous arrangement of stars resembling a coronet, and in the constellations of the Dolphin and Scorpion, where the stars are so distributed that the forms of those creatures can be readily recognised. There is some slight resemblance to a bear in Ursa Major, and to a lion in Leo, and no great effort of the mind is required to imagine a chair in Cassiopeia, and a giant in Orion; but in the majority of instances it is difficult to perceive any likeness of the object after which a constellation is named, and in many cases there is no resemblance whatever. The constellations are sixty-seven in number: excluding those of the Zodiac, which have been already mentioned, the constellations of the Northern Hemisphere number twenty-nine. The most important of these are Ursa Major and Minor, Andromeda, Cassiopeia, Cepheus, Cygnus, Lyra, Aquila, Auriga, Draco, Boötes, Hercules, Pegasus, and Corona Borealis. To an observer of the nocturnal sky the stars appear to be very unequally distributed over the celestial sphere. In some regions they are few in number and of small magnitude, whilst in other parts of the heavens, and especially in the vicinity of the Milky Way, they are present in great numbers and form groups and aggregations of striking appearance and conspicuous brilliancy. On taking a casual glance at the midnight sky on a clear moonless night, one is struck with the apparent countless multitude of the stars; yet this impression of their vast number is deceptive, for not more than two thousand stars are usually visible at one time. Much, however, depends upon the keenness of vision of the observer, and the transparency of the atmosphere. Argelander counted at Bonn more than 3,000 stars, and Hozeau, near the equator, where all the stars of the sphere successively appear in view, enumerated 6,000 stars. This number may be regarded as including all the stars in the heavens that are visible to the naked eye. With the aid of an opera glass thousands of stars can be seen that are imperceptible to ordinary vision. Argelander, with a small telescope of 2-1/2 inches aperture, was able to count 234,000 stars in the Northern Hemisphere. Large telescopes reveal multitudes of stars utterly beyond the power of enumeration, nor do they appear to diminish in number as depth after depth of space is penetrated by powerful instruments. The star-population of the heavens has been reckoned at 100,000,000, but this estimate is merely an assumption; recent discoveries made by means of stellar photography indicate that the stars exist in myriads. It is reasonable to believe that there is a limit to the sidereal universe, but it is impossible to assign its bounds or comprehend the apparently infinite extent of its dimensions. Scintillation or twinkling of the stars is a property which distinguishes them from the planets. It is due to a disturbed condition of the atmosphere and is most apparent when a star is near the horizon; at the zenith it almost entirely vanishes. Humboldt states that in the clear air of Cumana, in South America, the stars do not twinkle after they reach an elevation of 15° above the horizon. The presence of moisture in the atmosphere intensifies scintillation, and this is usually regarded as a prognostication of rain. White stars twinkle more than red ones. The occurrence of scintillation can be accounted for by the fact that the stars are visible as single points of light which twinkle as a whole, but in the case of the Sun, Moon, and planets, they form discs from which many points of light are emitted; they, therefore, do not scintillate as a whole, for the absence of rays of light from one portion of their surface is compensated by those from other parts of their discs, giving a mean average which creates a steadiness of vision. The stars are divided into separate classes called 'magnitudes,' by which their relative apparent size and degree of brightness are distinguished. The magnitude of a star does not indicate its mass or dimensions, but its light-giving power, which depends partly upon its size and distance, though mainly upon the intensity of its luminosity. The most conspicuous are termed stars of the first magnitude; there are ten of those in the Northern Hemisphere, and an equal number south of the equator, but they are not all of the same brilliancy. Sirius outshines every other star of the firmament, and Arcturus has no rival in the northern heavens. The names of the first-magnitude stars north of the equator are: Arcturus, Capella, Vega, Betelgeux, Procyon, Aldebaran, Altair, Pollux, Regulus, and Deneb. The next class in order of brightness are called second-magnitude stars; they are fifty or sixty in number, the most important of which is the Pole Star. The stars diminish in luminosity by successive gradations, and when they sink to the sixth magnitude reach the utmost limit at which they appear visible to the naked eye. In great telescopes this classification is carried so low as to include stars of the eighteenth and twentieth magnitudes. Entering into the structure of the stellar universe we have Single Stars, Double Stars, Triple, Quadruple, and Multiple Stars, Temporary, Periodical, and Variable Stars, Star-groups, Star-clusters, Galaxies, and Nebulæ. SINGLE OR INSULATED STARS include all those orbs sufficiently isolated in space so as not to be perceptibly influenced by the attraction of other similar bodies. They are believed to constitute the centres of planetary systems, and fulfil the purpose for which they were created by dispensing light and heat to the worlds which circle around them. The Sun is an example of this class of star, and constitutes the centre of the system to which the Earth belongs. Reasoning from analogy, it would be natural to conclude that there are other suns, numberless beyond conception, the centres of systems of revolving worlds, and although we are utterly unable to catch a glimpse of their planetary attendants, even with the aid of the most powerful telescopes, yet they have in a few instances been _felt_, and have afforded unmistakable indications of their existence. Since the Sun must be regarded as one of the stellar multitude that people the regions of space, and whose surpassing splendour when contrasted with that of other luminaries can be accounted for by his proximity to us, it would be of interest to ascertain his relative importance when compared with other celestial orbs which may be his peers or his superiors in magnitude and brilliancy. The Sun is one of a widely scattered group of stars situated in the plane of the Milky Way and surrounded by that zone, and, as a star among the stars, would be included in the constellation of the Centaur. Although regarded as one of the leading orbs of the firmament, and of supreme importance to us, astronomers are undecided whether to classify the Sun with stars of greater magnitude and brightness, or assign him a position among minor orbs of smaller size. Much uncertainty exists with regard to star magnitudes. This arises from inability on the part of astronomers to ascertain the distances of the vast majority of stars visible to the naked eye, and also on account of inequality in their intrinsic brilliancy. Among the stars there exists an indefinite range of stellar magnitudes. There are many stars known whose dimensions have been ascertained to greatly exceed those of the Sun, and there are others of much smaller size. No approximation of the magnitude of telescopic stars can be arrived at; many of them may rival Sirius, Canopus, and Arcturus, in size and splendour, their apparent minuteness being a consequence of their extreme remoteness. If the Sun were removed a distance in space equal to that of many of the brightest stars, he would in appearance be reduced to a minute point of light or become altogether invisible; and there are other stars, situated at distances still more remote, of which sufficient is known to justify us in arriving at the conclusion that the Sun must be ranked among the minor orbs of the firmament, and that many of the stars surpass him in brilliancy and magnitude. DOUBLE STARS.--To the unaided eye, these appear as single points of light; but, when observed with a telescope of sufficient magnifying power, their dual nature can be detected. The first double star discovered was Mizar, the middle star of the three in Ursa Major which form the tail of the bear. The components are of the fourth and fifth magnitudes, of a brilliant white colour, and distant fourteen seconds of arc. In 1678, Cassini perceived stars which appeared as single points of light when viewed with the naked eye, but when observed with the telescope presented the appearance of being double. The astronomer Bode, in 1781, published a list of eighty double stars, and, in a few years after, Sir William Herschel discovered several hundreds more of those objects. They are now known to exist in thousands, Mr. Burnham, of the Lick Observatory, having, by his keen perception of vision, contributed more than any other observer to swell their number. All double stars are not binaries; many of them are known as 'optical doubles'--an impression created by two stars when almost in the same line of vision, and, though apparently near, are situated at a great distance apart and devoid of any physical relationship. Binary stars consist of two suns which revolve round their common centre of gravity, and form real dual systems. The close proximity of the components of double stars impressed the minds of some astronomers with the belief that a physical bond of union existed between them. In the interval between 1718 and 1759, Bradley detected a change of 30° in the position angle of the two stars forming Castor, and was very nearly discovering their physical connection. In 1767, the Rev. John Michell wrote: 'It is highly probable in particular, and next to a certainty in general, that such double stars as appear to consist of two or more stars placed very near together do really consist of stars placed near together and under the influence of some general law.' Afterwards he says: 'It is not improbable that a few years may inform us that some of the great number of double and triple stars which have been observed by Mr. Herschel are systems of bodies revolving about each other.' Christian Mayer, a German astronomer, formed a list of stellar pairs, and announced, in 1776, the supposed discovery of 'satellites' to many of the principal stars. His observations were, however, not exact enough to lead to any useful results, and the existence of his 'planet stars' was at that time derided, and believed to find a place only in his imagination. The conclusions arrived at by some astronomers with regard to double stars were afterwards confirmed by Herschel, when, by his observation of a change in the relative positions of many of their components, he was able to announce that they form independent systems in mutual revolution, and are controlled by the law of gravitation. The number of binary stars in active revolution is known to exceed 500; but, besides these, there are doubtless numerous other compound stars which, on account of their extreme remoteness and the close proximity of their components, are irresolvable into pairs by any optical appliances which we possess. The revolution of two suns in one sphere presents to our observation a scheme of creative design entirely different to the single-star system with which we are familiar--one of a higher and more complex order in the ascending scale of celestial architecture. For, if we assume that around each revolving sun there circles a retinue of planetary worlds, it is obvious that a much more complicated arrangement must exist among the orbs which enter into the formation of such a system than is found among those which gravitate round our Sun. The common centre of gravity of a binary system is situated on a line between both stars, and distant from each in inverse proportion to their respective masses. When the stars are of equal mass their orbits are of equal dimensions, but when the mass of one star exceeds that of the other, the orbit of the larger star is proportionately diminished as compared with the circumference traversed by the smaller star. When their orbits are circular--a rare occurrence--both stars pursue each other in the same path, and invariably occupy it at diametrically opposite points; nor is it possible for one star to approach the other by the minutest interval of space in any duration of time, so long as the synchronous harmony of their revolution remains undisturbed. [Illustration: FIG. 3.--A Binary Star System--70 Ophiuchi (_Drawn by Mr. J. E. Gore._)] When a pair of suns move in an ellipse, their orbits intersect and are of equal dimensions when the stars are of equal mass, their common centre of gravity being then at a point equidistant from each. Consequently, neither star can approach or recede from this point without the other affecting a similar motion, they must be at periastron and apastron together, and any acceleration or retardation of speed must occur simultaneously with each. Stars of unequal magnitude always maintain a proportionate distance from their common focus, and both simultaneously occupy corresponding parts of their orbits. The nature of the motions of those distant suns, and the form of the orbits which they traverse, have been investigated by several eminent astronomers, and although the subject is one of much difficulty, on account of their extreme remoteness and the minute angles which have to be dealt with, necessitating the carrying out of very refined observations, yet a considerable amount of information has been obtained with regard to the paths which they pursue in the accomplishment of their revolutions round each other. The orbits of about sixty stellar pairs have been computed, but only with partial success. Some stars have shown themselves to be totally regardless of theory and computation, and have shot ahead far beyond the limits ascribed to them, whilst others, by the slowness of their motions, have upset the calculations of astronomers as much in the opposite direction. So that out of this number the orbits of not more than half a dozen are satisfactorily known. The dimensions of stellar orbits are of very varied extent. Some pairs are apparently so close that the best optical means which we possess are incapable of dividing them, whilst others revolve in wide and spacious orbits. The most marked peculiarity of the orbits of binary stars is their high eccentricity; they are usually much more eccentric than are those of the planets, and in some instances approach in form that of a comet. The finest binary star in the northern heavens is Castor, the brighter of the two leading stars in the constellation Gemini. The components are of the second and third magnitudes, and over five seconds apart. They are of a brilliant white colour, and form a beautiful object in the telescope. In 1719 Bradley determined the relative positions of those stars, and on comparing the results obtained by him with recent measurements it was found that they had altered to the extent of 125°. Travelling at the same rate of speed, they will require a period of about 420 years to complete an entire circuit of their orbits. This pace, however, has not been maintained, for, their periastron having occurred in 1750, they travelled more rapidly in the last century than they are doing at present, and, as their orbits are so eccentric that when at apastron the stars are twice as remote from each other as at periastron, they will for the next three and a half centuries continue to slacken their pace, until they shall have reached the most remote points of their orbits, when they will again begin to approach with an increasing velocity; so that the time in which an entire revolution can be accomplished will not be much less than 1,000 years.[8] As the distance of Castor is unknown, it is impossible to compute the combined mass of its components. They are very remote, their light period being estimated at forty-four years. Castor is doubtless a more massive orb than our Sun, and possesses a higher degree of luminosity. Alpha Centauri, in the Southern Hemisphere, is the brightest binary, and also the nearest known star in the heavens; its estimated distance being twenty-five billions of miles. Both components equal stars of the first magnitude, and are of a brilliant white colour. Since they were first observed, in 1709, they have completed two revolutions, and are now accomplishing a third. The eccentricity of their orbit approaches in form that of Faye's comet, which travels round the Sun; consequently the stars, when at apastron, are twice their periastron distance. Their period of revolution is about eighty-eight years. The mean radius of their orbit corresponds to a span of 1,000 millions of miles, so that those orbs are sometimes as close to each other as Jupiter is to the Sun, and never so far distant as Uranus.[9] Their combined mass is twice that of the Sun, and the luminosity of each star is slightly greater. The double star 61 Cygni--one of the nearest to our system--is believed to be a binary the components of which move in an orbit of more spacious dimensions than that of any other known revolving pair. Though they have been under continuous observation since 1753, it is only within the last few years that any orbital motion has been perceived. Some observers are disinclined to admit the accuracy of this statement; whilst others believe that the stars have executed a hyperbolic sweep round their common centre of gravity and are now separating. The radius of the orbit in which those bodies travel is sixty-five times the distance of the Earth from the Sun; which means that they travel in an orbit twice the width of that of the planet Neptune. It has been estimated that they complete a revolution in about eight centuries. The united mass of the system is about one-half that of the Sun, and in point of luminosity they are much inferior to that orb. The star 70 Ophiuchi (fig. 3) may be regarded as typical of a binary system. The components are five seconds apart, and of the fourth and sixth magnitudes. Their light period is stated to be twenty years, and the combined mass of the system is nearly three times that of the Sun. The pair travel in an orbit from fourteen to forty-two times the radius of the Earth's orbit; so that when at apastron they are three times as distant from each other as when at periastron. They complete a revolution in eighty-eight years. The accompanying diagram (fig. 4) is a delineation of the beautiful orbits of the components of Gamma Virginis. These may be described as elongated ellipses. Both stars being of equal mass, their orbits are of equal dimensions, and their common centre of gravity at a point equidistant from each. Any approach to, or recession from this point, must occur simultaneously with each; they must always occupy corresponding parts of their orbits, and be in apastron and at periastron in the same period of time. The ellipse described by this pair is the most eccentric of known binary orbits, and approaches in form the path pursued by Encke's comet round the Sun. These orbs complete a revolution in 180 years, and when in apastron are seventeen times more remote from each other than when at periastron. [Illustration: FIG. 4.--The Orbits of the Components of Gamma Virginis.] From his observation of the motion of Sirius in 1844, Bessel was led to believe that the brilliant orb was accompanied by another body, whose gravitational attraction was responsible for the irregularities observed in the path of the great dog-star when pursuing his journey through space. The elements of this hypothetical body were afterwards computed by Peters and Auwers, and its exact position assigned by Safford in 1861. On January 31, 1862, Mr. Alvan Clarke, of Cambridgeport, Massachusetts, when engaged in testing a recently constructed telescope of great power, directed it on Sirius, and was enabled by good fortune to discover the companion star at a distance of ten seconds from its primary. Since its discovery, the star has pursued with such precision the theoretical path previously assigned to it that astronomers have had no hesitation in identifying it as the hypothetical body whose existence Bessel had correctly surmised. [Illustration: FIG. 5.--Apparent Orbit of the Companion of Sirius. (_Drawn by Mr. Burnham._)] The Sirian satellite is a yellow star of the eighth magnitude, and shines with a feeble light when contrasted with the surpassing brilliancy of its neighbour. Astronomers were for some time in doubt as to whether the uneven motion which characterised the path of Sirius could be ascribed to the attraction of its obscure attendant, which presented such a marked contrast to its primary, and several observers were inclined to believe that the disturbing body still remained undiscovered. When, however, the density of the lesser star became known, it was discovered that, weight for weight, that of Sirius exceeded it only in the proportion of two to one, though as a light-giver the great orb is believed to be 5,000 times more luminous. The Sirian satellite revolves round its primary in about fifty years, and at a distance twenty-eight times that of the Earth from the Sun. The surpassing brilliancy of Sirius as compared with that of the other stars of the firmament has rendered it at all times an object of interest to observers. The Egyptians worshipped the star as Sothis, and it was believed to be the abode of the soul of Isis. The nations inhabiting the region of the Nile commenced their year with the heliacal rising of Sirius, and its appearance was regarded as a sure forerunner of the rising of the great river, the fertilising flood of which was attributed to the influence of this beautiful star. It is believed that the Mazzaroth in Job is an allusion to this brilliant orb. Among the Romans Sirius was regarded as a star of evil omen; its appearance above the horizon after the summer solstice was believed to be associated with pestilence and fevers, consequent upon the oppressive heat of the season of the year. The _dies caniculares_, or dog-days, were reckoned to begin twenty days before, and to continue for twenty days after, the heliacal rising of Sirius, the dog-star. During those days a peculiar influence was believed to exist which created diseases in men and madness among dogs. Homer alludes to the star 'whose burning breath Taints the red air with fevers, plagues and death.' Sirius, which is in Canis Major (one of Orion's hunting dogs), is a far more glorious orb than our Sun. According to recent photometric measurements it emits seventy times the quantity of light, and is three times more massive than the great luminary of our system. At the distance of Sirius (fifty billions of miles) the Sun would shrink to the dimensions of a third-magnitude star, and the light of seventy such stars would be required to equal in appearance the brilliant radiance of the great dog-star. The orb, with his retinue of attendant worlds--some of which are reported as having been seen--is travelling through space with a velocity of not less than 1,000 miles a minute. An irregularity of motion resembling that of Sirius has been detected with regard to Procyon, the lesser dog-star. But in this case the companion star has not as yet been seen, though a careful search has been made for it with the most powerful of telescopes. Should it be a planetary body, illumined by its primary, its reflected light would not appear visible to us, even if it were much less remote than it is. We are able only to perceive the effulgence of brilliant suns scattered throughout the regions of space; but besides those, there are doubtless many faintly luminous orbs and opaque bodies of vast dimensions occupying regions unknown to us, but by a knowledge of the existence of which an enlarged conception is conveyed to our minds of the greatness of the universe. The most rapid of known revolving pairs is Delta Equulei. The components are so close that only the finest instruments can separate them, and this they cannot do at all times. They accomplish a revolution in eleven and a half years. The slowest revolving pair is Zeta Aquarii. The motion of the components is so tardy that to complete a circuit of their orbits they require a period of about sixteen centuries. Other binary stars have had different periods assigned to them; eleven pairs have been computed to revolve round each other in less than fifty years, and fifteen in less than 100 but more than fifty. There are other compound stars whose motions appear to be much more leisurely than those just mentioned, and although no orbital movement has, so far, been detected among them, yet, so vast is the scale upon which the sidereal system is constructed, that thousands of years must elapse before they can have accomplished a revolution of their orbits. The Pole Star is an optical double, but the components are of very unequal magnitude. The Pole Star itself is of the second magnitude, but its companion is only of the ninth, and on account of its minuteness is regarded as a good test for telescopes of small aperture. Mizar, in the constellation Ursa Major, is a beautiful double star. The components are wide apart, and can be easily observed with a small instrument. There is a remarkable star in the constellation of the Lyre (Epsilon Lyræ), described as a double double. This object can just be distinguished by a person with keen eyesight as consisting of two stars; when observed with a telescope they appear widely separated, and each star is seen to have a companion, the entire system forming two binary pairs in active revolution. The pair which first cross the meridian complete a revolution in about 2,000 years; the second pair have a more rapid motion, and accomplish it in half that time. The two pairs are believed to be physically connected, and revolve round their common centre of gravity in a period of time not much under one million years. Cor Caroli, in Canes Venatici, is a pleasing double star, the components being of a pale white and lilac colour. Albireo, in the constellation of the Swan, is one of the loveliest of double stars. The larger component is of the third magnitude, and of a golden yellow colour; the smaller of the sixth magnitude, and of a sapphire blue. Epsilon Boötis, known also as Mirac, and called by Admiral Smyth 'Pulcherrima,' on account of its surpassing beauty, is a delicate object of charming appearance. The components of this lovely star are of the third and seventh magnitudes: the primary orange, the secondary sea-green. The late Mr. R. A. Proctor, in describing a binary star system, writes as follows: 'If we regard a pair of stars as forming a double sun, round which--or, rather, round the common centre of which--other orbs revolve as planets, we are struck by the difference between such a scheme and our own solar system; but we find the difference yet more surprising when we consider the possibility that in some such schemes each component sun may have its own distinct system of dependent worlds. In the former case the ordinary state of things would probably be such that both suns would be above the horizon at the same time, and then, probably, their distinctive peculiarities would only be recognisable when one chanced to pass over the disc of the other, as our Moon passes over the Sun's disc in eclipses. For short intervals of time, however, at rising or setting, one or other would be visible alone; and the phenomena of sunset and sunrise must therefore be very varied, and also exquisitely beautiful, in worlds circling round such double suns. But when each sun has a separate system, even more remarkable relations must be presented. For each system of dependent worlds, besides its own proper sun, must have another sun--less splendid, perhaps (because farther off), but still brighter beyond comparison than our moon at the full. And, according to the position of any planet of either system, there will result for the time being either an interchange of suns, instead of the change from night to day, or else double sunlight during the day, and a corresponding intensified contrast between night and day. Where the two suns are very unequal or very differently coloured, or where the orbital path of each is very eccentric, so that they are sometimes close together and at others far apart, the varieties in the worlds circling round either, or around the common centre of both, must be yet more remarkable. "It must be confessed," we may well say with Sir John Herschel, "that we have here a strangely wide and novel field for speculative excursions, and one which it is not easy to avoid luxuriating in."' Anyone who takes a cursory glance at the heavens on a clear night can readily perceive that there exists considerable diversity of colour among the stars. The contrast between some is pronounced and well marked, whilst others exhibit refined gradations of hue. The most numerous class of stars are those which are described as white or colourless. They comprise about one-half of the stars visible to the naked eye. Among the most conspicuous examples of this type are Sirius--whose diamond blaze is sometimes mingled with an occasional flash of blue and red--Altair, Spica, Castor, Regulus, Rigel, all the stars of Ursa Major with the exception of one, and Vega--a glittering gem of pale sapphire, almost colourless. The light emitted by stars of this class gives a continuous spectrum, the predominating element being hydrogen, having a very elevated temperature and under relatively high pressure. The vapours of iron, sodium, magnesium, and other metals, are indicated as existing in small quantities. The second class of stars is that to which our Sun belongs. They are of a yellow colour, and embrace two-thirds of the remaining stars. The most prominent examples of this type are Arcturus, Capella, Aldebaran, Procyon, and Pollux. Hydrogen does not predominate so much in these as in the Sirian stars, and their spectra resemble closely the solar spectrum, indicating that they are composed of elements similar to those which exist in the Sun. The star which bears the nearest resemblance to our Sun, both as regards the colour of its light and physical structure, is Capella, the most conspicuous star in the constellation Auriga, and one of the leading brilliants in the Northern Hemisphere. Its spectrum presents all the characteristics observed in the solar spectrum, and there exists an almost identical similarity in their physical constitution, though Capella is a much more magnificent orb than the Sun. The third class of stars includes those which are of a ruddy hue, such as Betelgeux in the right shoulder of Orion, Antares in Scorpio, and Alpha Herculis. Their spectra present a banded or columnar appearance, and there is greater absorption, especially of the blue rays of light. It is believed that the temperature of stars of this colour is not so elevated as that of those belonging to the other two orders, and that this is a sufficient reason to account for the different appearance of their spectra. The aid of a good telescope is, however, necessary to enable us to perceive the varied colours and tints of the sparkling gems with which Nature has adorned her star-built edifice of the universe. Most of the precious stones on Earth have their counterparts in the heavens, presenting in a jewelled form contrasts of colour, pleasing harmonies, and endless variety of shade. The diamond, sapphire, emerald, amethyst, topaz, and ruby sparkle among crowds of stars of more sombre hue. Agate, chalcedony, onyx, opal, beryl, lapis-lazuli, and aquamarine are represented by the radiant sheen emanating from distant suns, displaying an inexhaustible variety of colour, blended in tints of untold harmony. It is among double stars that the richest and most varied colours predominate. There are pairs of white, yellow, orange, and red stars; yellow and blue, yellow and pale emerald, yellow and rose red, yellow and fawn, green and gold, azure and crimson, golden and azure, orange and emerald, orange and lilac, orange and purple, orange and green, white and blue, white and lilac, lilac and dark purple, &c., &c. There are companion stars revolving round their primaries, coloured olive, lilac, russet, fawn, dun, buff, grey, and other shades indistinguishable by any name. Our knowledge of binary star systems brings us to what may be regarded as the threshold of the fabric of the heavens. For it is known that other systems exist into the construction of which numerous stars enter. These form intricate and complex stellar arrangements, in which the component stars are physically united and retained in their orbits by their mutual attraction. CHAPTER VII THE STARRY HEAVENS TRIPLE, QUADRUPLE, AND MULTIPLE STARS.--These, when observed with the naked eye, appear as single stars, but, when examined with a high magnifying power, each lucid point can be resolved into several component stars. They vary in number from three to half a dozen or more, and form systems of a more complex character than what are observed in the case of binary stars. In the usual construction of a triple system, the secondary star of a binary is resolvable into two, each star being in mutual revolution, whilst they both gravitate round their primary. By another arrangement, a close pair control the movements of a distant attendant. One of the most interesting of triple stars is the tricoloured Gamma Andromedæ. The brilliant components of this system have their counterparts in the topaz, the emerald, and the sapphire--the larger star is of the third magnitude and of a golden yellow colour; the secondary of the fifth magnitude and of an emerald green. These stars are ten seconds apart, and, though they have been under observation since 1777, no orbital movement has as yet been detected, but their common proper motion indicates their close relationship and physical connection. In 1842, Otto Struve discovered that the companion star is itself double, and round it there gravitates a sapphire sun, which is believed to accomplish a revolution of its orbit in about 500 years. If round those suns there should be circling planetary systems of worlds inhabited by intelligent beings, the varied effects produced by the light emanating from those different coloured orbs would be of a very beautiful and pleasing nature. A system suggestive of the endless variety of stellar arrangement that exists throughout the sidereal regions is apparent in the case of the triple star Zeta Cancri. Two of the stars, of magnitudes six and seven, form a binary in rapid revolution, the components of which complete a circuit of their orbits in fifty-eight years, whilst the more distant third star, of almost similar magnitude, accomplishes a wide orbital ellipse round the other two in 500 or 600 years. These stars have been closely observed by astronomers during the past forty years, with the result that their motions have appeared most perplexing, and complicated beyond precedent. 'If this be really a ternary system,' wrote Sir John Herschel, 'connected by the mutual attraction of its parts, its perturbations will present one of the most intricate problems in physical astronomy.' The second star revolves round its primary, whilst the third pursues a retrograde course, but its path, instead of being even, presents the appearance of a series of circular loopings, in traversing which the star alternately quickens and slackens its pace, or at times appears to be stationary. Astronomers have arrived at the conclusion that these perturbations are produced by the presence of a fourth member, which, though invisible, is probably the most massive of the system--perhaps a magnificent world teeming with animated beings, and attended by three suns which gravitate round it, dispensing light and heat to meet the requirements of the various forms of life which exist on its surface. In this system we have an arrangement the reverse of what exists in the solar system, where all the planets revolve round a predominant sun; but here there is a strange verification of the old Ptolemaic belief with regard to the path of a sun, though in this instance there are three suns circling round a dark globe which they illumine and vivify. Triple stars occur with comparative frequency throughout the heavens. In Monoceros there is a fine triple star, discovered by Herschel, which he describes as 'one of the most beautiful sights in the heavens.' The stars Xi and Beta Scorpii form triple systems in which the components are differently arranged. In Xi the primary and secondary consist of two revolving stars which control the movements of a distant attendant; in Beta the primary and secondary stars are in mutual revolution, whilst round the former there circles a very close minute companion. There are doubtless many binary stars which, if examined with adequate telescopic power, would resolve themselves into triple and multiple systems, but the profound distances of those objects render the detection of their components a most difficult task. Quadruple stars are usually arranged in pairs, _i.e._ the primary and secondary of a binary system are each resolvable into two, forming two pairs, each pair being in mutual revolution, while they both gravitate round their common centre of gravity. Epsilon Lyræ, which has been described as a double double, is an example of a quadruple system, and Nu Scorpii is of a similar construction, but more beautiful because its components are in closer proximity to each other. Close upon twenty of those double double systems have been discovered in different parts of the heavens. One of the most interesting of quadruple systems is Theta Orionis, which is situated in the Great Nebula, by which it is surrounded. This star, when observed with a telescope of low power, can be at once resolved into four separate lucent points, so arranged as to form a quadrilateral figure or trapezium. They are of the fifth, sixth, seventh, and eighth magnitudes, and described as pale white, garnet, faint lilac, and red. Though they have been under careful observation for upwards of two centuries, no perceptible motion has been perceived as occurring among them, nor has there been any change in their relative positions--they appear to be perfectly motionless; but we must not infer from this that no physical bond of union exists between them, for they are situated at an amazing distance from the Earth. Ascending higher in the scale of celestial architecture, we have multiple stars forming systems still more elaborate and complex, into the structure of which numerous stars enter, and they, as they increase in number, gradually merge into star-clusters. If we assume that around each of the components of a multiple star there circles a retinue of planetary worlds, we are confronted with a most perplexing problem as to how the dynamical stability of a system so different from, and so vastly more complicated than, that of our solar system is maintained--where, as it were, suns and planets intermingle--how numerous circling orbs can accomplish their revolutions without being swayed and deflected from their paths by the gravitational attraction of adjacent members of the same system. Perplexing though the arrangement of such a scheme may be to our conception, yet, each orb has been weighed, poised, and adjusted by Infinite Wisdom, to perform its intricate motions in synchronous harmony with other members of the system--all moving in unison like the parts of a complicated piece of mechanism, and maintained in stable equilibrium by their mutual attraction-- Mystical dance, which yonder starry sphere Of planets and of fixed in all her wheels Resembles nearest; mazes intricate, Eccentric, intervolved, yet regular Then most, when most irregular they seem; And in their motions harmony divine So smooths her charming tones that God's own ear Listens delighted.--v. 620-27. All the natural phenomena with which we are familiar would, in the case of planets revolving round the component suns of a multiple system, be of a different kind or altogether absent. Instead of being illumined by one sun, those worlds would, at certain times, have several suns--some more distant than others--above their horizons, and upon very rare occasions, if ever, would there be an entire absence of all of those orbs from their skies. Consequently there would be no year such as we are familiar with; no regular sequence of seasons similar to what is experienced on Earth; no alternation of day and night, for there would be '_no night there_,' though, in the absence of the primary orb, the light emitted by distant suns, whilst sufficient to banish night, and beyond comparison brighter than the Moon when at full, would, in the diminution of its intensity from that of noonday, be as grateful a change as that of from day to night which occurs on our globe. Should those suns be differently coloured, each emitting its own peculiar shade of light as it appears above the horizon, the varied aspects of the perpetual day enjoyed by the inhabitants of those circling worlds present to the imagination harmonies of light and shade over which it is pleasant to linger. TEMPORARY, PERIODICAL, AND VARIABLE STARS.--It may seem remarkable that among so many thousands of stars which spangle the firmament, there should occur no very perceptible change or variation in their aspect and brilliancy. From age to age they present the same appearance, shine with the same undiminished splendour, and rise and set with the same regularity. So that from time immemorial the stars have been regarded by mankind as the embodiment of all that is eternal and unchangeable. Yet, the serenity of the celestial regions does not always remain undisturbed--at occasional times a 'Nova,' or new star, blazes forth unexpectedly in the heavens, and perplexes astronomers; and, after shining with a varying degree of brilliancy for a few weeks or months, gradually diminishes in size and brightness and eventually becomes lost to sight. A record has been kept of about twenty temporary stars that have been observed at various periods since the time that reliable data of those objects have been published. Pliny mentions the appearance of a new star in the time of Hipparchus (134 B.C.); it was seen in the constellation of the Scorpion, and it is said that it was the apparition of this star which induced the celebrated astronomer to construct what is known as the earliest star catalogue. A new star is said to have become visible when the Emperor Honorius ruled, and another during the reign of the Emperor Otho, about 945 A.D. In May 1012 a new star appeared in Aries, and in July 1203 another was observed in Scorpio, which resembled Saturn. The most remarkable star of this kind was one observed by Tycho Brahé, which appeared in the constellation Cassiopeia. He first perceived it on November 11, 1572. In lustre it equalled Jupiter, and when at its brightest rivalled Venus; it was visible at noonday, and at night its light could be perceived through strata of cloud which rendered all other stars invisible. The star maintained its brilliancy for three weeks, when it became of a yellowish colour and perceptibly decreased in size; it afterwards assumed a ruddy hue resembling Aldebaran, and, diminishing gradually in magnitude and brightness, ceased to be visible in March 1574. It twinkled more than the other stars, and during the time it could be perceived its position remained unchanged. In 1604 a conspicuous new star burst forth in Ophiuchus. It surpassed in brilliancy stars of the first magnitude, and outshone the planet Jupiter, which was in its proximity. Kepler observed this star, and described it as 'sparkling like a diamond with prismatic tints.' It soon began to decline after its appearance; in March 1605 it had shrunk to the dimensions of a third-magnitude star, and in a year later it became entirely lost to view. Other stars of the same class, though of a less conspicuous character, have been observed at occasional times. Anthelme, a Carthusian monk, discovered one near Beta Cygni in 1670; another appeared in Ophiuchus in 1848; one in Scorpio in 1860; one in Corona Borealis in 1866; in Cygnus in 1876; in Andromeda in 1885; and in Auriga in 1892. Various theories have been advanced in order to account for the sudden outbursts of those stars, the light from which has probably occupied not much less than one hundred years in its passage hither. It has been suggested that the collision of two suns, or of two great masses of matter, would create such phenomena; but, apart from the improbability of such a catastrophe occurring among the celestial orbs, the rapid subsidence in the luminosity of the observed objects would indicate that the outburst was produced by causes of a more rapidly transitory nature than what would result from the collision of two condensed masses of matter. A collision occurring between two swarms of meteors has been suggested as one way of accounting for the sudden appearance of those stars; but another, and more plausible, explanation is that they are produced by a great eruption of glowing gas from the interior of a sun, causing an enormous increase in its luminosity, which subsides after a time, and is succeeded by a normal condition of things. It has been observed that all those temporary stars, with the exception of two, have appeared in the region of the Milky Way. In this luminous zone the condensation of small gaseous stars and nebulæ is more pronounced than in any other part of the heavens, and this would seem to indicate that there may be cosmical changes taking place among them which need not be associated with the occurrence of catastrophes resulting in the conflagration of worlds, and that Nature, in accomplishing her purposes, does not overstep the uniform working of her laws, upon which depend the stability and existence of the universe. PERIODICAL AND VARIABLE STARS are distinguished from other similar objects by the fluctuations which occur in the quantity of light emitted by them. The difference in the luminosity of some stars is at times so marked that, in a few weeks or months, they decline from the first or second magnitudes to invisibility, and, after the expiration of a certain period, they again gradually regain their pristine condition. When these changes take place with regular recurrence, they are called 'periodical;' when they occur in a variable and uncertain manner, they are called 'irregular.' About 300 stars are known as variable, but the majority of them are telescopic objects. Their periodical changes of brilliancy present every degree of variety; in some stars they are scarcely perceptible and occur at long intervals; in others, changes of brightness occur in a few hours or days, by which the light emitted is intensified many hundreds of times. Some stars accomplish their cycle of change in a few days, many in a few weeks or months, and there are others which do not complete their periods until the expiration of a number of years. One of the most remarkable of variable stars is called Mira 'the wonderful,' in the constellation Cetus. When at its maximum brilliancy it shines for two or three weeks as a star of the second magnitude. It then begins to gradually decline, and at the end of three months becomes invisible. It remains invisible for five months, and then reappears, and during the ensuing three months it regains by degrees its former brilliancy. Mira completes a cycle of its changes in 334 days, and, during that time, oscillates between a star of the second and tenth magnitude. The variability of Mira Ceti was first observed by David Fabricius in the sixteenth century. Another remarkable star is Eta Argus, which is surrounded by the great nebula in the constellation Argo Navis. It is invisible to the naked eye, but in the telescope it has a reddish appearance, and is slightly brighter than the stars in its vicinity. It was first observed by Halley in 1677, and it was then of the fourth magnitude. In 1751 it had risen to the second magnitude, and maintained its position as a star of this class until 1837, when, on December 16 of that year, its brilliancy suddenly increased, and it equalled in a short time Alpha Centauri. It reached its maximum in 1843, and then it was surpassed only by Sirius. It maintained its brilliancy for about ten years. In 1858, it declined to the second magnitude, in 1859 to the third, and, gradually diminishing, it became invisible to the naked eye in 1868. It is now of the seventh magnitude, and is again increasing, and may soon resume its position among the other stars. It is believed to have a period of seventy years, and in that time its light ebbs and flows between the seventh and first magnitudes. The most interesting variable star in the heavens is Algol (the demon), in the constellation Perseus. Its light fluctuations can be observed without the aid of a telescope, and it completes a cycle of its changes in two or three days. For about two days and thirteen hours it is conspicuously visible as a star of the second magnitude; it then begins to decline, and in about four hours sinks to the dimensions of a fourth-magnitude star; it remains in this condition for twenty minutes, and then increases gradually until, at the expiration of four hours, it regains its former brilliancy, which it sustains for two days and thirteen hours, when it again goes through the same cycle of changes in a precisely similar manner to what has been described. Astrologers have ascribed many evil influences to the demon star, which adorned the head of Medusa; nor did it escape the observation of ancient astronomers that this malevolent orb is--as a modern writer amusingly remarks--slowly winking at us from out the depths of space. Variable stars are found in greater numbers in some parts of the heavens than in others. Those of a white colour, and with shorter and more regular periods, are most numerous in the region of the Milky Way; those that are small, with long periods and of a reddish hue, are more widely removed from that zone. Stars of this class are all very remote, and no attempt has as yet been made to ascertain the parallax of Algol. Several theories have been suggested in order to account for the periodical brilliancy of those stars. It has been suggested that the stars have opaque non-luminous patches on their surfaces, and that during axial rotation their light ebbs and flows according as the dark or bright portions are turned towards us. This theory is highly improbable. Another and more plausible reason, especially with regard to short period variables, is, that around those stars there revolve opaque bodies or satellites which at times intercept a portion of their light by producing a partial eclipse of their discs, similar to that caused by the dark body of the Moon when passing between the Sun and the Earth. It is now known that in the case of variables of the Algol type, the periodical fluctuations of their light arises from this cause, and that round Algol there is a dark world or satellite travelling, which completes a revolution of its orbit in about sixty-nine hours, and that, during each circuit, it intercepts one half of the light of its primary by partially eclipsing the orb, and thereby creating a diminution in its apparent magnitude which becomes perceptible at recurring intervals. STAR GROUPS.--These are plentifully scattered over the heavens and, by their conspicuous brilliancy, add to the grandeur and magnificence of the midnight sky. The Hyades in Taurus, of which Aldebaran is the chief, forming the eye of the Bull, attract attention. The stars in Coma Bernices form a rich group; the sickle in Leo, the seven stars in Ursa Major, and those in Cassiopeia and Aquila are familiarly known to all observers. Besides these, there are many other groups and aggregations of stars which adorn the celestial vault and enhance the beauty of the heavens. STAR CLUSTERS.--On observing the heavens on a clear, dark night, there can be seen in different parts of the sky closely aggregated groups of stars called clusters. In some instances the component stars are so near together that the naked eye is unable to discern the individual members of the cluster. They then assume an indistinct, hazy, cloudlike appearance. Upwards of 500 clusters are known to astronomers, the majority of which are very remote. Many of them contain thousands of stars compressed into a very small space, and others are so distant that the largest telescopes are incapable of resolving their nebulous appearance into separate stars. Star clusters have been arranged into two classes, 'irregular' and 'globular;' but no sharp line of demarcation exists between them, though each have their distinctive peculiarities. Irregular clusters consist of aggregations of stars brought promiscuously together, and presenting an appearance devoid of any structural arrangement. They are of different shapes and sizes, possess no distinct outline, and are not condensed towards their centre, like those that are globular. On examination, they present an intricate reticulated appearance; streams and branches of stars extend outwards from the parent cluster, sometimes in rows and sinuous lines, and, in other instances, diverging from a common centre, forming sprays. Sometimes the stars are seen to follow each other on the same curve which terminates in loops and arches of symmetrical proportions. There are three conspicuous clusters in the northern sky that are visible to the naked eye--viz. the Pleiades in Taurus, the Great Cluster in the sword-handle of Perseus, and Praesepe in Cancer, commonly called the Beehive. The cluster which from time immemorial has had bestowed upon it the chief attention of mankind are the beautiful Pleiades or Seven Sisters, and intertwined among its stars are the legendary and mythological beliefs of ancient nations and untutored tribes inhabiting the different regions of the globe. When viewed with a telescope of moderate size the cluster appears as a scattered group, and numerous stars become visible that are imperceptible to ordinary vision. In the sword-handle of Perseus there is a cluster which, to the naked eye, appears as a small patch of luminous cloud. This inconspicuous object when observed with an instrument of moderate power is resolved into a magnificent assemblage of stars, and presents a spectacle which creates in the mind of the beholder mingled feelings of admiration and amazement. No telescope has yet penetrated its utmost depths, or revealed all the glories of this shining region, crowded with glittering points of light comparable in number to the pebbles strewn on the shore of a troubled sea. The cluster Praesepe in Cancer is visible on a clear night to the unaided eye as a small nebula. This object attracted the attention of Galileo, to which he applied his newly invented telescope, and was delighted to find that his glass was capable of resolving it into a group of stars thirty-six in number, and all of comparatively large magnitude. The disappearance of Praesepe in consequence of the condensation of vapour in the atmosphere was regarded by the ancients as a sure indication of approaching rain. In the same constellation, near the Crab's southern claw, there is another rich cluster, which consists of 200 stars of the ninth and tenth magnitudes. In Sobieski's Shield there is a magnificent fan-shaped cluster of minute stars with a prominent one in its centre; and in the constellation of the Southern Cross there is a cluster which, on account of the varied colours of its component stars, has been compared by Sir John Herschel to 'a piece of rich fancy jewellery;' eight of the principal stars being coloured red, green, and blue. GLOBULAR CLUSTERS.--These have been described by Herschel as 'the most magnificent objects that can be seen in the heavens.' They are all very remote, of a rounded form, and when viewed with a telescope present the appearance of 'a ball of stars.' In some clusters the constituent stars are distinguishable as minute points of light; in others, more remote, they are of a coarse granular texture, and in those still more distant they resemble a 'heap of golden sand.' Some clusters are situated at such a profound distance in space that it is impossible with the most powerful of telescopes to define their stellar structure; all that can be distinguished of these is a cloudy luminosity resembling in appearance an irresolvable nebula. Globular clusters usually present a radiated appearance. Rays, branches, and spiral-shaped streams of stars appear to flow from the circumference of some; and, in other instances, fantastic appendages of stars project outwards from the parent cluster. There doubtless exists much variety in the structural arrangement of these clusters, and an equal diversity in the magnitude and number of the stars which enter into their formation. The stars in some clusters may equal those of the first magnitude, and in others they may not exceed in dimensions the minor planets. In the telescope they vary in size from the eleventh to the fifteenth magnitude; the smaller stars occupy the centre of a cluster, whilst the larger ones are found near its circumference. Globular clusters are more condensed towards their centre than those of irregular shape, and some have a nucleated appearance. This apparent condensation is not altogether owing to the depth of star strata as viewed from the circumference of the cluster, but there appears to exist an attractive force (probably gravitational) which draws the stars towards its centre, and if this 'clustering power' were not opposed by some other counteracting force, those bodies would coalesce into one mass. It may be 'that a centrifugal impulse predominates by which full-grown orbs are driven from the nursery of suns in which they were reared to seek their separate fortunes and enter on an independent career elsewhere.' It is not known how the dynamical equilibrium of a star cluster is maintained; and on account of its extreme distance no motion is perceptible among its component stars. The laws by which those stellar aggregations are produced and governed are wrapped in obscurity, and the nature of the motions of their stars, whether towards concentration or diffusion, cannot at present be ascertained. If those globular clusters could be observed sufficiently near, they would most probably expand into vast systems of suns occupying immense regions of space. The largest and most magnificent globular cluster in the heavens is Omega Centauri, in the Southern Hemisphere. To the naked eye it resembles a round, indistinct, cometary object, about equal to a star of the fourth magnitude; but when observed with a powerful telescope it appears as a globe of considerable dimensions composed of innumerable stars of the thirteenth and fifteenth magnitudes, all exceedingly minute and gathered into small knots and groups. A remarkable cluster in Toucani is described by Sir John Herschel as 'most magnificent; very large; very bright, and very much compressed in the middle.' The interior mass consists of closely aggregated pale rose-coloured stars, surrounded by others of a pure white which embrace the remainder of the cluster. There is a fine globular cluster in Sagittarius between the Archer's head and the bow. It was observed by Hevelius in 1665. The central portion is very much compressed, and consists of excessively minute stars enclosed by others of larger size. In Aquarius there is a magnificent ball of stars of a beautiful spherical form, which Sir J. Herschel compared to a heap of fine sand. Numerous other clusters are profusely distributed over the heavens, occupying regions in the profound depths of space which can only be reached by the aid of most powerful instruments. The finest and most remarkable object of this class visible in the northern heavens is the Great Cluster which lies between Eta and Zeta Herculis. It was discovered by Halley in 1714, who writes: 'This is but a little patch, but it shows itself to the naked eye when the sky is serene and the moon absent.' When observed with a powerful telescope its magnificence at once becomes apparent to the beholder. 'Perhaps,' says Dr. Nichol, 'no one ever saw it for the first time through a telescope without uttering a shout of wonder.' At its circumference the stars are rather scattered, but towards the centre they appear so closely aggregated that their combined effulgence forms a perfect blaze of light. Sir William Herschel estimated that there are 14,000 stars in the cluster, each a magnificent world but unaccompanied by any planetary attendants. [Illustration: CLUSTER IN HERCULES] As a result of more recent investigations this number has been considerably reduced, and it is now generally believed that about 4,000 stars enter into the formation of the cluster. As its distance from the Earth is unknown, it follows that there must be some uncertainty attached to any conclusions that may be arrived at with regard to this superb object. Miss Agnes Clerke estimates the number of the constituent stars at 4,000, and in support of her conclusion this talented lady writes as follows: 'The apparent diameter of this object, including most of the "scattered stars in streaky masses and lines" which form a sort of "glory" round it, is 8´; that of its truly spherical portion may be put at 5´. Now, a globe subtending an angle of 5´ must have (because the sine of that angle is to radius nearly as to 1 : 687) a real diameter 1/687 of its distance from the eye, which, if we assume to be such as would correspond to a parallax of 1/20 of a second, we find that the cluster, outliers apart, measures 558,000 millions of miles across. Light, in other words, occupies thirty-six days in traversing it, but sixty-five years in journeying thence hither. Its components may be regarded, on an average, as of the twelfth magnitude; for, although the divergent stars rank much higher in the scale of brightness, the central ones, there is reason to believe, are notably fainter. The sum total of their light, if concentrated into one stellar point, would at any rate very little (if at all) exceed that of a third-magnitude star. And one star of the third is equivalent to just four thousand stars of the twelfth magnitude. Hence we arrive at the conclusion that the stars in the Hercules Cluster number much more nearly four than fourteen thousand.' For what purpose do those thousands of clustering orbs shine? Who can tell? Night is unknown in the regions illumined by their brilliant radiance. This stupendous aggregation of suns testifies to the magnificence of the starry heavens, and to the omnipotence of the Creator. GALAXIES.--These consist of vast aggregations of stars which form separate 'island universes' floating in the depths of space; they are believed to equal in magnitude and magnificence the Milky Way--the galaxy to which our system belongs. NEBULÆ.--We now reach the last, and what are believed to be the most distant of the known contents of the heavens. They are all exceedingly remote, devoid of any perceptible motion, faintly luminous, and, with the exception of two of their number, invisible to the naked eye. Halley was the first astronomer who paid any attention to those objects. In 1716 he enumerated six of them, but of this number only two can, in a strict sense, be regarded as nebulæ, the others since then have been resolved into magnificent star clusters. In 1784, Messier catalogued 103 nebulæ, and the Herschels--father and son--in their survey of the stellar regions, discovered 4,000 of those objects. There are now 8,000 known nebulæ in the heavens, but the majority of them are not of much interest to astronomers. Prior to the invention of the spectroscope it was believed that all nebulæ were irresolvable star clusters, but the analysis of their light by this instrument indicated that their composition was not stellar but gaseous. Their spectra consist of a few bright lines revealing the presence of hydrogen, nitrogen, and other gaseous elements. Much that is mysterious and uncertain is associated with those objects which appear to lie far beyond the limits of our sidereal system. It is now generally believed that they exhibit the earliest stage in the formation of stars and planets--inchoate worlds in process of slow evolution, which will eventually condense into systems of suns, and planetary worlds. Nebulæ present every variety of form. Some are annular, elliptic, circular, and spiral; others are fan-shaped, cylindrical, and irregular, with tufted appendages, rays, and filaments. A fancied resemblance to different animated creatures has been observed in some. In Taurus there is a nebula called the 'Crab' on account of its likeness to the crustacean; another is called the 'Owl Nebula' from its resemblance to the face of that bird. The Orion Nebula suggests the opened jaws of a fish or sea monster, hence called the Fish-Mouth Nebula. There is a Horse-Shoe Nebula, a Dumb-Bell Nebula, and many others of various shapes and forms. They are classified as follows: (1) Annular Nebulæ, (2) Elliptic Nebulæ, (3) Spiral Nebulæ, (4) Planetary Nebulæ, (5) Nebulous Stars, (6) Large Irregular Nebulæ. ANNULAR NEBULÆ.--These resemble in appearance an oval-shaped luminous ring; they are comparatively few in number, and not more than a dozen have been discovered in the whole heavens. The most remarkable object of this class is the Ring Nebula, which is situated between the stars Beta and Gamma Lyræ. It is visible in a moderate-sized telescope as a well-defined, flat, oval ring; its central part is not quite dark but is occupied by a filmy haze of luminous matter which is prolonged inwards from the margin of the ring. When examined with a high power the edges of the ring have a fringed appearance, and numerous glittering stellar points become visible both within and without its circumference. This nebulous ring, though a small object in the telescope, is of enormous magnitude, and if it were not more distant than 61 Cygni, one of the nearest of the fixed stars, its diameter would not be less than 20,000 millions of miles, but it has been estimated by Herschel that it is 900 times more remote than Sirius. How stupendous, then, must be its dimensions, and how bewildering to our conception is the profound immensity of space in which it is located! An annular nebula similar to that of Lyra, but on a smaller scale, is found in Cygnus, and within it there can be seen a conspicuous star. Another exists in Scorpio which contains two stars situated within the ring at diametrically opposite points to each other. ELLIPTICAL NEBULÆ.--The most interesting object of this class is the Great Nebula in Andromeda, called 'the transcendentally beautiful queen of the nebulæ'--an appellation which it scarcely merits. This object, which is plainly visible to the naked eye, is of an oval shape, of a milky white colour, and is situated near the most northern star of the three which form the girdle of Andromeda. It was known to the ancients, and Ali Sufi, a Persian astronomer who flourished in the tenth century, alludes to it; but it did not attract much attention until the seventeenth century. Simon Marius was the first to observe this object with a telescope. This he did on December 15, 1612; he describes it as shining with a pale white light resembling in appearance the flame of a candle when seen through a semi-transparent piece of horn. When examined with a high magnifying power it is seen to occupy a largely extended area measuring 4° in length and 2-1/2° in breadth. Its luminosity increases from the circumference to the centre, where there can be seen a small nucleus with an ill-defined boundary, which has the appearance of being granular, but its composition is not stellar. Two dark channels running almost parallel to each other and to the axis of the nebula have been observed by Bond; these, when prolonged, form into curves which terminate in two great rings. They are wide rifts which separate streams of nebulous matter, and are indicative that some formative processes may be going on within the nebula. Astronomers have been baffled in their attempts to discover the nature of the Andromeda Nebula. Though great telescopes have been able to render visible thousands of stars over and around it, yet the nebula itself is irresolvable and bears no trace of stellar formation; neither, according to Dr. Huggins, is its spectrum gaseous, a circumstance which deepens the mystery associated with this object. Its distance is unknown, and its dimensions cannot be ascertained. Other elliptical nebulæ are found in different regions of the heavens. In Ursa Major there is an oval nebula resembling that of Andromeda, but on a much smaller scale. It possesses a nucleus, and on the photographic plate there can be detected the presence of spiral structure, indicating the existence of streams of nebulous matter. Adjacent to this nebula is another of the same class with a double nucleus, and associated with it is a nebulous star. SPIRAL NEBULÆ.--The great reflector of Earl Rosse at Parsonstown was the successful means by which nebulæ of this form were discovered. This powerful telescope was capable of defining with greater accuracy the structural formation of those objects than any other instrument in use. It was ascertained that spiral coils and convoluted whorls enter into the structure of most nebulæ, indicating a similarity in the process of change which may be going on in these vast accumulations of cosmical matter. The most interesting specimen of a spiral nebula is situated in Canes Venatici. It consists of spiral coils emanating from a centre with a nucleus and surrounded by a narrow luminous ring. In appearance it resembles the coiled mainspring of a watch. PLANETARY NEBULÆ.--These have been so named on account of the resemblance which they bear to the discs of planets. They are of uniform brightness, circular in shape, with sharply-defined edges, and are frequently of a bluish colour. They are more numerous than annular nebulæ; three-fourths of their number are in the Southern Hemisphere, and they are situated in or very near the Milky Way. Those objects were first described by Sir William Herschel, who was rather perplexed as to what was their real nature and how he should classify them. He remarked that they could not be planets belonging to far-off suns, nor distant comets, nor distended stars. Consequently, he concluded rightly that they were nebulæ. When observed with large telescopes, they lose their planetary aspect, and their sharpness of outline is less apparent; their discs become broken up into bright and dark portions, and in some, numerous minute stars have been observed, whilst others have well-defined nuclei. The most prominent nebula of this class is situated in the constellation Ursa Major, and is called the Owl Nebula, from its fancied resemblance to the face of that bird. Sir John Herschel describes it as 'a most extraordinary object, a large, uniform nebulous disc, quite round, very bright, not sharply defined, but yet very suddenly fading away to darkness.' When examined in 1848 with Earl Rosse's reflector, two bright stars were discovered in its interior; each was in the centre of a circular dark space surrounded by whorls of nebulous matter--hence the origin of its name. This nebula gives a bright line spectrum indicative of gaseous composition. It is believed to consist chiefly of hydrogen and other gases which form a globe of such stupendous magnitude that, if we surmise its distance from the earth to be sixty-five light years--an estimate much too low--'its diameter would exceed that of the orbit of Neptune upwards of 100 times.'[10] Within its compass the orbs of hundreds of solar systems as large as that of ours would be able to perform their revolutions, having spacious intervals existing between each system. Another interesting planetary nebula is in the constellation of the Dragon, near to the pole of the ecliptic; it is slightly oval, of a pale blue colour, and contains a star of the eleventh magnitude in its centre. It gives a gaseous spectrum. Attempts have been made to determine its parallax, but without success, and during the eighty years it has been under observation it has remained apparently motionless. Its light period, if estimated at 140 years, would indicate the existence of a globe with a diameter equal to forty-four diameters of the orbit of the planet Neptune.[11] A nebula of this class was discovered by Sir John Herschel in the Centaur. He described it as resembling Uranus, but larger; its colour was of a beautiful rich blue, and its light equalled that of a star of the seventh magnitude. NEBULOUS STARS.--These stars are each surrounded by a luminous haze several minutes of arc in diameter and of a circular form. Sir William Herschel, by his observation of those objects, arrived at the conclusion 'that there exists in space a shining fluid of a nature totally unknown to us, and that the nebulosity about those stars was not of a starry nature.' Thirteen stars of this type have been enumerated by him and many others have since been discovered. The 'glow' which surrounds them has been observed in a few instances to have vanished without leaving any trace of nebulosity behind, but the causes which have brought about such a result are entirely unknown. The nature of those stars is involved in considerable obscurity, and one class of nebula would seem to merge into the other; nebulous stars with faint aureolæ do not differ much from small nebulæ interspersed with stellar points. LARGE IRREGULAR NEBULÆ.--These are found in both hemispheres, and are remarkable on account of the varied appearances which they present, and the large extent of space which many of them occupy. In some, the nebulous matter of which they are composed can be seen like masses of tufted flocculi, sometimes piled up, and at other times promiscuously scattered, resembling in appearance the foam on the crested billows of a surging ocean rendered suddenly motionless, or cirro-cumuli floating in a tranquil sky. Islands of light with intervening dark channels, promontories projecting into gulfs of deep shade, sprays of luminous matter, convoluted filaments, whorls, wreaths, and spiral streams all enter into the structural formation of a great nebula. The Great Nebula in Argo, in the Southern Hemisphere, is one of the most remarkable objects of this class. It consists of bright irregular masses of luminous matter, streaks and branches, and occupies an area about equal to one square degree. At its eastern border is situated the variable star Eta Argus, which fluctuates between the first and seventh magnitudes in a period of about seventy years. A rich portion of the Galaxy lies in front of the nebula, which creates an effect as if it were studded over with stars. Sir John Herschel, in describing this nebula, writes as follows:--'The whole is situated in a very rich and brilliant part of the Milky Way, so thickly strewed with stars that, in the area occupied by the nebula, not less than 1,200 have been actually counted. Yet it is obvious that these have no connection whatever with the nebula, being, in fact, only a simple continuation over it of the general ground of the Galaxy. The conclusion can hardly be avoided that, in looking at it, we see through and beyond the Milky Way, far out into space, through a starless region, disconnecting it altogether from our system. It is not easy for language to convey a full impression of the beauty and sublimity of the spectacle which this nebula offers as it enters the field of view of a telescope, fixed in right ascension, by the diurnal motion, ushered in as it is by so glorious and innumerable a procession of stars, to which it forms a sort of climax, and in a part of the heavens otherwise full of interest.' Another large bright nebula (called 30 Doradus), also in the Southern Hemisphere, is composed of a series of loops with intricate windings forming a kind of open network against the background of the sky which it adorns. Sir John Herschel describes it as one of the most extraordinary objects in the heavens. The 'Crab' Nebula in Taurus, the 'Horse-Shoe' Nebula in Sobieski's Shield, and the 'Dumb-Bell' Nebula in Vulpecula are remarkable objects, but the assistance of a powerful telescope is required to bring out their distinctive features. The 'Crab' Nebula is partially resolvable into stars; the other two are believed to be gaseous. The largest and most remarkable of all the nebulæ is that known as the Great Nebula in Orion, which was discovered and delineated by Huygens in the middle of the seventeenth century. It is perceptible to the naked eye, and when viewed with a glass of low power can be seen as a circular luminous haze surrounding the multiple star Theta Orionis--one of the stars in the Giant's Sword, and which is of itself a remarkable object. The most conspicuous part of the nebula bears a slight resemblance to the wing of a bird; it consists of flocculent masses of nebulous matter possessing a faint greenish tinge. Sir John Herschel compared it to a surface studded over with flocks of wool, or to the breaking up of a mackerel sky when the clouds of which it consists begin to assume a cirrous appearance. Its brightest portion is occupied by four conspicuous stars, which form a trapezium; around each there is a dark space free from nebulosity, a circumstance which would seem to indicate that the stars possess the power either of absorbing or of repelling the nebulous matter in their immediate vicinity. When observed with a powerful telescope, this nebula appears to be of vast dimensions, and, with its effluents, occupies an area of 4° by 5-1/2°. Irregular branching masses, streams, sprays, filaments, and curved spiral wreaths project outward from the parent mass, and become gradually lost in the surrounding space. This object remained for long a profound mystery; no telescope was capable of resolving it, nor was it known what this 'unformed fiery mist, the chaotic material of future suns,' was, until the spectroscope revealed that it consists of a stupendous mass of incandescent gases--nitrogen, hydrogen, and other elementary substances, occupying a region of space believed by some to equal in extent the whole stellar system to which our Sun belongs. In the Southern Hemisphere, near to the pole of the equator, are two nebulous clouds of unequal size; the larger having an area about four times that of the smaller. They are known as the Magellanic Clouds, having been called after the navigator Magellan. Both are visible on a moonless night, but in bright moonlight the smaller disappears. Sir John Herschel, when at the Cape of Good Hope, examined those objects with his powerful telescope. He described them 'as consisting of swarms of stars, globular clusters, and nebulæ of various kinds, some portions of them being quite irresolvable, and presenting the same milky appearance in the telescope that the nebulæ themselves do to the naked eye.' These are believed to be other universes of stars sunk in the profound depths of space, our knowledge of their existence being dependent upon the faint nebulous light which left them, perhaps, several thousand years ago. [Illustration: GREAT NEBULA IN ORION] The description of the various kinds of nebulæ leads us to consider what is called the Nebular Hypothesis. That the stars and solar system had at some time in the past a beginning, is as much a matter of certainty as that they will at some future time cease to be. Stars, like organic beings, have their birth, grow and arrive at maturity, then decline into a state of decrepitude, and finally die out. The duration of the life of a star, which may be reckoned by millions of years, depends upon the length of time during which it can maintain a temperature that renders it capable of emitting light. By the constant radiation of its heat into space, a condition of its constituent particles consequent upon the gradual contraction of its mass will ultimately occur, which will result in the exhaustion of its stores of thermal energy, the extinction of its light, and the reduction of what was once a brilliant orb to the condition of a mass of cold, opaque, inert matter. Inquiries as to the origin of the stars have led scientific men to conclude that they have been evolved from gaseous nebulæ, and these have therefore been regarded as indicating the earliest stage in the formation of suns and planets. It is believed that the condensation of those attenuated masses of luminous matter into stars is capable of accounting for the generation and formation of all the shining orbs which enter into the structure of the starry heavens. In the evolution of a 'cosmos out of a chaos' we should expect to find stars presenting every stage of development--some in an embryo state and others more advanced; stars in full vigour and activity, stars that have passed the meridian of life, and stars in a condition of decay and on the verge of extinction. The observations of astronomers have led them to conclude that this condition of 'youth and age' exists among the stellar multitude; but the characteristics by which it is distinguished are neither very obvious nor reliable. The nebular theory is incapable of proof or demonstration; but modern discoveries tend to support the accuracy of its conclusions, and its principles have now been adopted by the majority of philosophic thinkers. The physical changes which are going on in the nebulæ towards stellar evolution, or in fully formed stars towards dissolution, are so slow that the life of an individual, or even the historical records of the past, are incapable of furnishing any evidence of alteration in their condition. A period of time infinitely greater than what has elapsed since the birth of science must pass before anything can be known of the life history of the stars; indeed, the allotted span of man's existence on this planet may have terminated ere the evolution of a large nebula into a star cluster can have taken place. The nebular hypothesis was first propounded by Kant, who suggested that the sun and planets originated from a vast and diffused mass of cosmical matter. This theory was afterwards supported by Herschel and by the great French astronomer Laplace. As a result of close and continued observation of the different classes of nebulæ, Herschel arrived at the conclusion that there exists in space a widely diffused 'shining fluid,' of a nature totally unknown to us, and that the nebulosity which he perceived to surround some stars was not of a starry nature. He further adds that this self-luminous matter 'seemed more fit to produce a star by its condensation than to depend on the star for its existence.' His sagacious conclusion with regard to the non-stellar nature of this nebulous matter was afterwards confirmed by the spectroscope; for at that time it was believed that even the faintest nebulæ were irresolvable star clusters. In 1811 Herschel read a paper before the Royal Society in which he propounded his famous nebular hypothesis, and stated his reasons for believing that nebulæ, by their gradual condensation, were transformed into stars. Having assumed that there exists a highly attenuated self-luminous substance diffused over vast regions of space, he endeavoured to show that by the law of attraction its particles would have a tendency to coalesce and form aggregations of nebulous matter, and that each of these, by the continued action of the same force, would gradually condense and ultimately acquire the consistence of a star. In the case of large irregular nebulæ, numerous centres of attraction would originate in the mass, round which the nebulous particles of matter would arrange themselves; each nucleus, when condensation had been completed, would become a star, and the entire nebula would in this manner be transformed into a cluster of stars. Herschel believed that he could trace the different stages of nebular condensation which result in the evolution of a star. In large, faintly luminous nebulæ the process of condensation had only commenced; in others that were smaller and brighter it was in a more advanced stage; in those that contained nuclei there was evidence of nascent stars; and, finally, there could be seen in some nebulæ minute stellar points--new-born suns--interspersed among the haze of the transforming mass. By this theory Herschel was able to account for the phenomena associated with nebulous stars and the supposed changes which were observed in some nebulæ. The nebular hypothesis as described by Herschel was not received with much favour, nor did it unsettle much the belief that all nebulæ were vast stellar aggregations, and that their cloudy luminosity was a consequence of the inadequacy of telescopic power to resolve them into their component stars. Laplace, who was highly gifted as a geometrician, demonstrated how the solar system could have been evolved in accordance with dynamical principles from a slowly rotating and slowly contracting spheroidal nebula. The rotatory motion of a nebula, in obedience to a well-known mechanical law, increases as its density becomes greater, and this goes on until the tangential force at the equator overcomes the gravitational attraction at its centre. When this occurs, a revolving ring of nebulous matter is thrown off from the parent mass, and by this means equilibrium is restored between the two forces. As the rotatory velocity of the nebula continues to increase with its contraction, another ring is cast off, and in this manner a succession of revolving rings may be detached from the condensing spheroid; each newly-formed ring being nearer to the centre of the contracting mass and revolving in a shorter period than its predecessor. In the evolution of our system, the central mass of the nebula became the Sun and each of the revolving rings, by their condensation into one mass, formed a planet. In a similar manner, though on a diminished scale, the elementary planets, whilst in a nebulous state, parted with annular portions of their substance, out of which were evolved their systems of satellites. This theory furnished a plausible reason, which was capable of explaining how the orbs which constitute the solar system came into existence, and, though hypothetical, yet the manner in which it accounted for the orderly and symmetrical genesis of the system rendered it attractive and fascinating to scientific minds. The evidence in support of the nebulous origin of the solar system, if not conclusive, is of much weight and importance. The remarkable harmony with which the orbs of the system perform their motions is strongly indicative of their common origin and that their evolution occurred in subordination to the law of universal gravitation. The following are the characteristic points in favour of this theory:-- 1. All the planets revolve round the Sun in the same direction, and they all occupy nearly the same plane. 2. Their satellites, with the exception of those of Uranus and Neptune, perform their revolutions in obedience to the same law. 3. The rotation on their axes of the Sun, planets, and satellites is in the same direction as their orbital motion. Between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter there revolves a remarkable group of small planets or planetoids. On account of the absence of a planet in this region, where, according to the laws of planetary distances, one ought to be found, the existence of those small bodies was suspected for some years prior to their discovery. The first was detected by Piazzi at Palermo in 1801; two others were discovered by Olbers in 1802 and 1807, and one by Harding in 1804. For some time it was believed that no more planetoids existed, but in 1845 a fifth was detected by Hencke, and from that year until now upwards of 300 of those small bodies have been discovered. Their magnitudes are of varied extent; the diameter of the largest is believed not to exceed 450 miles, and that of the smaller ones from twenty to thirty miles. It was surmised at one time, when only a few of those bodies were known, that they were the fragments of a planet which met with some terrible catastrophe; but since the discovery of so many other planetoids this theory cannot be maintained. According to the nebular hypothesis, these bodies are the consolidated portions of a nebulous ring which remained separate instead of having coalesced into one mass so as to form a planet. The uniform condensation of the ring would result in the formation of a multitude of small planets similar to what are found between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. In Saturn's ring we have a remarkable instance of annular consolidation in which the form of the ring has been preserved. The ring is believed to consist of myriads of minute bodies, each of which travels in an orbit of its own as it pursues its path round the planet; the close approximation and exceeding minuteness of those moving objects create the appearance of a solid continuous ring. Though, by means of the nebular hypothesis, it is impossible to explain all the phenomena associated with the motions of the orbs which enter into the structure of the solar system, yet this does not detract much from the merits of the theory, the fundamental principles of which are based upon the evolution of the solar system from a rotating nebula. The retrograde motions of the satellites of Uranus and Neptune, the velocity of the inner Martian moon, and other abnormalities in the system, have not as yet been explained, but doubtless there are reasons by which those peculiarities can be accounted for if they were only known, '_felix qui potuit cognoscere causas omnium rerum_.' No attempt has been made to supplant the nebular hypothesis by any other theory of cosmical evolution. Modern investigations and discoveries have strengthened its position, and at present it is the only means by which we can account for the existence of the visible material universe by which we are surrounded. In the days when Milton lived--three hundred years ago--the nocturnal heavens presented the same appearance to an observer as they do at the present time. The stars pursued their identical paths, and looked down upon the Earth with the same aspect of serene tranquillity, regardless of the vicissitudes which affect the inhabitants of this terrestrial sphere. The constellations that adorn the celestial vault duly appeared in their seasons, and in the ascending scale Of Heaven the stars that usher evening rose.--iv. 354-55. The winter glories of Orion, the scintillating brilliancy of Sirius, and the spangled firmament, bearing no impress of change or variation which would lead one to conclude that the heavens were other than eternal, attracted then, as now, the admiration of beholders. Apart from the orbs which constitute the solar system, little was known of the sidereal heavens beyond the visual effect created by the nocturnal aspect of the star-lit sky. Though ancient philosophers hazarded an opinion that the stars were suns, they received but scant attention from early astronomers, by whom they were merely regarded as convenient fixed points which enabled them to determine with greater accuracy the positions of the planets and the paths traced out by them in the heavens. The Ptolemaists, who believed in the diurnal revolution of the spheres, assigned to the stars a very subordinate place in their cosmology, which was the one adopted by Milton; and although Copernicus relegated them to their proper location in space, yet he had no clear conception of a universe of stars. Tycho Brahé, who declined to accept the Copernican theory, disbelieved that the stars were suns, and Galileo, who discovered the stellar nature of the Milky Way, remarked that the stars were not illumined by the Sun's rays in the same manner that the planets are, but expressed no opinion with regard to their physical constitution. It is only within the past fifty years that proof has been obtained of the real nature of the stars. By the spectroscopic analysis of their light it has been ascertained that the elements of matter which enter into their composition exist in a condition similar to what is found in the Sun. The stars are therefore suns, many of them surpassing in magnitude and brilliancy the great luminary of our system. Though Milton makes frequent allusion to the magnificence of the starry heavens, we have no evidence that he regarded the stars as suns, nor does he refer to them as such in any part of his poem.[12] What impressed him most was their number and brilliancy, to which reference is made in the following passages: About him all the Sanctities of Heaven Stood thick as stars.--iii. 60-61. And sowed with stars the Heavens thick as a field.--vii. 358. Amongst innumerable stars, that shone Stars distant, but nigh hand seemed other worlds.--iii. 564-65. her reign With thousand lesser lights dividual holds, With thousand thousand stars, that then appeared Spangling the hemisphere.--vii. 381-84. Milton describes the number of the fallen angels as an host Innumerable as the stars of night.--v. 744-45, and the attention of Satan is directed by the archangel Uriel to the multitude of stars formed from the chaotic elements of matter: Numberless as thou seest, and how they move; Each had his place appointed, each his course; The rest in circuit walls this universe.--iii. 719-21. Though Milton was doubtless familiar with the leading orbs of the firmament and knew their names, and the constellations in which they are situated, yet he makes no direct allusion to any of them in his poem. Neither Arcturus, which is mentioned in the Book of Job, nor Sirius, which attracted the attention of Homer, who compared the brightness of Achilles' armour to the dazzling brilliancy of the dog-star, finds a place in 'Paradise Lost.' And yet the superior magnitude and brilliancy of some stars when compared with those of others did not escape Milton's observation when, in describing the lofty eminence of Satan in heaven, prior to his fall, he represents him as brighter once amidst the host Of angels than that star the stars among.--vii. 132-33. There is but one star to which Milton makes individual allusion, and, though not of any conspicuous brilliancy, yet it is one of much importance to astronomers-- the fleecy star that bears Andromeda far off Atlantic seas Beyond the horizon.--iii. 558-60. This is Alpha Arietis, the first point in the constellation of that name, which signifies the Ram, and from which the right ascensions of the stars are measured on the celestial sphere. In the time of Hipparchus the ecliptic intersected the celestial equator in Aries, which indicated the commencement of the astronomical year and the occurrence of the vernal equinox; but, owing to precession, this point is now 30° westward of Aries and in the constellation Pisces. The star was called Hamal by the Arabs, signifying a sheep, and the animal is represented as looking backwards. Manilius writes:-- First Aries, glorious in his golden wool, Looks back and wonders at the mighty Bull. Aries is associated with the legend of the Golden Fleece, in quest of which Jason and his valiant crew sailed in the ship 'Argo.' In the autumn, Andromeda is situated above Aries, and would seem to be borne by the latter, which accounts for Milton's description of the relative positions of those two constellations. Milton alludes to the starry sphere in several passages in his poem, and also mentions the starry pole above which he soared in imagination up to the Empyrean or Heaven of Heavens. His contemplation of the Galaxy must have impressed his mind with the magnitude and extent of the sidereal universe, for he was aware that this luminous zone which encircles the heavens consists of myriads of stars, so remote as to be incapable of definition by unaided vision. Milton's description of this vast assemblage of stars is worthy of its magnificence, and the purpose with which he poetically associates this glorified highway testifies to the sublimity of his thoughts and to the originality of his genius. In those parts of his poem in which he describes the glories of the celestial regions, and instances the beautiful phenomena associated with the individual orbs of the firmament, we are able to perceive with what exquisite delight he beheld them all. The invention of the telescope, and the important discoveries made by Kepler, Galileo, and Newton in the seventeenth century, were the means of effecting a rapid advance in the science of astronomy; but that branch of it known as sidereal astronomy was not then in existence. The star depths, owing to inadequate telescopic power, remained unexplored, and the secrets associated with those distant regions were inviolable, and lay beyond the reach of human knowledge. The physical constitution of the stars was unknown, nor was it ascertained with any degree of certainty that they were suns. The knowledge possessed by astronomers in those days was but meagre compared with what is now known of the sidereal heavens. Milton's astronomical knowledge, we find, was commensurate with what was known of the stellar universe, and this he has conspicuously displayed in his poem. CHAPTER VIII DESCRIPTION OF CELESTIAL OBJECTS MENTIONED IN 'PARADISE LOST' THE SUN The surpassing splendour of the Sun, as compared with that of any of the other orbs of the firmament, is not more impressive than his stupendous magnitude, and the important functions which it is his prerogative to fulfil. Situated at the centre of our system--of which he may be regarded as 'both eye and soul'--the orb has a diameter approaching 1,000,000 miles, and a mass 750 times greater than that of all the planets combined. These, by his attractive power, he retains in their several paths and orbits, and even far distant Neptune acknowledges his potent sway. With prodigal liberality he dispenses his vast stores of light and heat, which illumine and vivify the worlds circling around him, and upon the constant supply of which all animated beings depend for their existence. Deprived of the light of the Sun, this world would be enveloped in perpetual darkness, and we should all miserably perish. The Sun is distant from the Earth about 93,000,000 miles. His diameter is 867,000 miles, or nearly four times the extent of the radius of the Moon's orbit. The mass of the orb exceeds that of the Earth 330,000 times, and in volume 1,305,000 times. The Sun is a sphere, and rotates on his axis from west to east in 25 days 8 hours. The velocity of a point at the solar equator is 4,407 miles an hour. The density of the Sun is only one-fourth that of the Earth, or, in other words, bulk for bulk, the Earth is four times heavier than the Sun. The force of gravity at the Sun's surface is twenty-seven times greater than it is on the Earth; it would therefore be impossible for beings constituted as we are to exist on the solar surface. The dazzling luminous envelope which indicates to the naked eye the boundary of the solar disc is called the PHOTOSPHERE. It is most brilliant at the centre of the Sun, and diminishes in brightness towards the circumference, where its luminosity is but one-fourth that of the central portion of the disc. The photosphere consists of gaseous vapours or clouds, of irregular form and size, separated by less brilliant interstices, and glowing white with the heat derived from the interior of the Sun. In the telescope the photosphere is not of uniform brilliancy, but presents a mottled or granular appearance, an effect created by the intermixture of spaces of unequal brightness. Small nodules of intense brilliance, resembling 'rice-grains,' but which, according to Nasmyth, are of a willow-leaf shape with pointed extremities, which form a network over portions of the photosphere, are sprinkled profusely over a more faintly luminous background. These 'grains' consist of irregular rounded masses, having an area of several hundred miles. By the application of a high magnifying power they can be resolved into 'granules'--minute luminous dots which constitute one-fifth of the Sun's surface and emit three-fourths of the light. This granulation is not uniform over the surface of the photosphere; in some parts it is indistinct, and appears to be replaced by interlacing filamentous bands, which are most apparent in the penumbræ of the spots and around the spots themselves. The 'granules' are the tops of ascending masses of intensely luminous vapour; the comparatively dark 'pores' consist of similar descending masses, which, having radiated their energy, are returning to be again heated underneath the surface of the photosphere. In certain regions of the photosphere several dark patches are usually visible, which are called 'sun-spots.' At occasional times they are almost entirely absent from the solar disc. It has been observed that they occupy a zone extending from 10° to 35° north and south of the solar equator, but are not found in the equatorial and polar regions of the Sun. A sun-spot is usually described as consisting of an irregular dark central portion, called the _umbra_; surrounding it is an edging or fringe less dark, consisting of filaments radiating inwards called the _penumbra_. Within the umbra there is sometimes seen a still darker spot, called the _nucleus_. The umbra is generally uniformly dark, but at times filmy luminous clouds have been observed floating over it. The nucleus is believed to be the orifice of a tubular depression in the floor of the umbra, prolonged downwards to an unknown depth. The penumbra is brightest at its inner edge, where the filaments present a marked contrast when compared with the dark cavity of the umbra which they surround and overhang. Sometimes lengthened processes unite with those of the opposite side and form bands and 'bridges' across the umbra. The darkest portion of the penumbra is its external edge, which stands out conspicuously against the adjoining bright surface of the Sun. One penumbra will sometimes enclose several umbræ whilst the nuclei may be entirely wanting. [Illustration: FIG. 6.--A Sun-spot magnified. (_Janssen._)] Sun-spots usually appear in groups; large isolated spots are of rare occurrence, and are generally accompanied by several smaller ones of less perfect formation. The exact moment of the origin of a sun-spot cannot be ascertained, because it arises from an imperceptible point; it grows very rapidly, and often attains its full size in a day. Prior to its appearance there is an unusual disturbance of the solar surface over the site of the spot: luminous ridges, called _faculæ_, and dark 'pores' become conspicuous, between which greyish patches appear, that seem to lie underneath a thin layer of the photosphere; this is rapidly dispelled and a fully formed spot comes into view. When a sun-spot has completed its period of existence, the photospheric matter overwhelms the penumbra, and rushes into the umbra, which it obliterates, causing the spot to disappear. The duration of sun-spots is subject to considerable variation; some last for weeks or months, and others for a few days or hours. A spot when once fully formed maintains its shape, which is usually rounded, until the period of its breaking up. Spots of long duration rotate with the Sun. Those which become visible at the edge of the Sun's limb have been observed to travel across his disc in less than a fortnight, disappearing at the margin of the opposite limb; afterwards, if sufficiently long-lived, they have reappeared in twelve or thirteen days on the surface of the orb where first observed. It was by observation of the spots that the period of the axial rotation of the Sun became known. Sun-spots vary very much in size--some are only a few hundred miles in width, whilst others have a diameter of 40,000 or 50,000 miles or upwards. In some instances the umbra alone has a breadth of 20,000 or 30,000 miles--three times the extent of the diameter of the Earth. Spots of this size are visible to the naked eye when the Sun is partially obscured by fog, or when his brilliancy is diminished by vapours near the horizon. A year seldom passes without the occurrence of several of such spots being recorded. The largest sun-spot ever observed had a diameter of about 150,000 miles. A group of spots, including their penumbræ, will occupy an area of many millions of square miles. By long observation it has been ascertained that sun-spots increase and diminish in number with periodical regularity, and that a maximum sun-spot period occurs at the end of each eleven years. When spots are numerous on the Sun's disc there is great disturbance of the solar surface, accompanied by fierce rushes of intensely heated gases. This solar activity is known to influence terrestrial magnetism by causing a marked oscillation of the magnetic needle, and giving rise to so-called 'magnetic storms,' accompanied by magnificent displays of auroræ, with variations in electrical earth-currents. It would therefore appear that sun-spots have a pronounced effect upon magnetic terrestrial phenomena, but how this is produced remains unknown. Besides sun-spots, there are seen on the solar disc bright flocculent streaks or ridges of luminous matter called _faculæ_; they are found over the whole surface of the Sun, but are most numerous near the limb and in the immediate vicinity of the spots. They have been compared to immense waves--vast upheavals of photospheric matter, indicative of enormous pressure, and often extending in length for many thousands of miles. Nearly all observers have arrived at the conclusion that sun-spots are depressions or cavities in the photosphere, but considerable difference of opinion exists as to how they are formed. The most commonly accepted theory is that they are caused by the pressure of descending masses of vapour having a reduced temperature, which absorb the light and prevent it reaching us. Our knowledge of the Sun is insufficient to admit of any accurate conclusion on this point; though we are able to perceive that the surface of the orb is in a state of violent agitation and perpetual change, yet his great distance and intense luminosity prevent our capability of perceiving the ultimate minuter details which go to form the _texture_ of the solar surface. 'Bearing in mind that a second of arc on the Sun represents 455 miles, it follows that an object 150 miles in diameter is about the _minimum visible_ even as a mere mathematical point, and that anything that is sufficiently large to give the slightest impression of shape and extension of surface must have an area of at least a quarter of a million square miles; ordinarily speaking, we shall not gather much information about any object that covers less than a million.'[13] Since the British Islands have only an area of 120,700 square miles, it is evident that on the surface of the Sun there are many phenomena and physical changes occurring which escape our observation. Though the changes which occur in the spots and faculæ appear to be slow when observed through the telescope, yet in reality they are not so. Tremendous storms and cyclones of intensely heated gases, which may be compared to the flames arising from a great furnace, sweep over different areas of the Sun with a velocity of hundreds of miles an hour. Vast ridges and crests of incandescent vapour are upheaved by the action of internal heat, which exceeds in intensity the temperature at which the most refractory of terrestrial substances can be volatilised; and downrushes of the same photospheric matter take place after it has parted with some of its stores of thermal energy. Sun-spots of considerable magnitude have been observed to grow rapidly and then disappear in a very short period of time; occasionally a spot is seen to divide into two or more portions, the fragments flying asunder with a velocity of not less than 1,000 miles an hour. It is by these upheavals and convulsions of the solar atmosphere that the light and heat are maintained which illumine and vivify the worlds that gravitate round the Sun. During total eclipses of the Sun, several phenomena become visible which have enabled astronomers to gain some further knowledge of the nature of the solar appendages. The most important of these is the CHROMOSPHERE, which consists of layers of incandescent gases that envelop the photosphere and completely surround the Sun. Its average depth is from 5,000 to 6,000 miles, and when seen during an eclipse is of a beautiful rose colour, resembling a sheet of flame. As seen in profile at the edge of the Sun's disc, it presents an irregular serrated appearance, an effect created by the protuberance of luminous ridges and processes--masses of flame which arise from over its entire surface. The chromosphere consists chiefly of glowing hydrogen, and an element called _helium_, which has been recently discovered in a terrestrial substance called cleveite; there are also present the vapours of iron, calcium, cerium, titanium, barium, and magnesium. From the surface of this ocean of fire, jets and pointed spires of flaming hydrogen shoot up with amazing velocity, and attain an altitude of ten, twenty, fifty, and even one hundred thousand miles in a very short period of time. They are, however, of an evanescent nature, change rapidly in form and appearance, and often in the course of an hour or two die down so as not to be recognisable. These _prominences_, as they are called, have been divided into two classes. Some are in masses that float like clouds in the atmosphere, which they resemble in form and appearance; they are usually attached to the chromosphere by a single stem, or by slender columns; occasionally they are entirely free. These are called _quiescent_ prominences; they consist of clouds of hydrogen, and are of more lasting duration than the other variety, called _eruptive_ or metallic prominences. The latter are usually found in the vicinity of sun-spots, and, besides hydrogen, contain the vapours of various metals. They are of different forms, and present the appearance of filaments, spikes, and jets of liquid fire; others are pyramidal, convoluted, and parabolic. These outbursts, bending over like the jets from a fountain, and descending in graceful curves of flame, ascend from the surface of the chromosphere with a velocity often exceeding 100 miles in a second, and frequently reach an enormous height, but are of transient duration. They are closely connected with sun-spots, and are evidence of the tremendous forces that are in action on the surface of the Sun. The CORONA is an aureole of light which is seen to surround the Sun during a total eclipse. It is an impressive and beautiful phenomenon, and is only visible when the Sun is concealed behind the dark body of the Moon. Professor Young gives the following graphic description of the corona: 'From behind it [the Moon] stream out on all sides radiant filaments, beams, and sheets of pearly light, which reach to a distance sometimes of several degrees from the solar surface, forming an irregular stellate halo, with the black globe of the Moon in its apparent centre. The portion nearest the Sun is of dazzling brightness, but still less brilliant than the prominences, which blaze through it like carbuncles. Generally this inner corona has a pretty uniform height, forming a ring three or four minutes of arc in width, separated by a somewhat definite outline from the outer corona, which reaches to a much greater distance and is far more irregular in form. Usually there are several "rifts," as they have been called, like narrow beams of darkness, extending from the very edge of the Sun to the outer night, and much resembling the cloud shadows which radiate from the Sun before a thundershower. But the edges of these rifts are frequently curved, showing them to be something else than real shadows. Sometimes there are narrow bright streamers as long as the rifts, or longer. These are often inclined, or occasionally even nearly tangential to the solar surface, and frequently are curved. On the whole, the corona is usually less extensive and brilliant over the solar poles, and there is a recognisable tendency to accumulation above the middle latitudes, or spot zones; so that, speaking roughly, the corona shows a disposition to assume the form of a quadrilateral or four-rayed star, though in almost every individual case this form is greatly modified by abnormal streamers at some point or other.' The corona surrounds the Sun and its other envelopes to a depth of many thousands of miles. It consists of various elements which exist in a condition of extreme tenuity; hydrogen, helium, and a substance called coronium appear to predominate, whilst finely divided shining particles of matter and electrical discharges resembling those of an aurora assist in its illumination. [Illustration: FIG. 7.--The Corona during the Eclipse of May 1883.] We possess no knowledge of the physical structure of the interior of the Sun, nor have we any terrestrial analogy to guide us as to how matter would behave when subjected to such conditions of extreme temperature and pressure as exist in the interior of the orb. Yet we are justified in concluding that the Sun is mainly a gaseous sphere which is slowly contracting, and that the energy expended in this process is being transformed into heat so extreme as to render the orb a great fountain of light. Milton in his poem makes more frequent allusion to the Sun than to any of the other orbs of the firmament, and, in all his references to the great luminary, describes him in a manner worthy of his unrivalled splendour, and of his supreme importance in the system which he upholds and governs. After having alighted on Mount Niphates, Satan is described as looking Sometimes towards Heaven and the full-blazing Sun, Which now sat high in his meridian tower.--iv. 29-30. He then addresses him thus:-- O thou that with surpassing glory crowned, Look'st from thy sole dominion like the god Of this new World--at whose sight all the stars Hide their diminished heads--to thee I call, But with no friendly voice, and add thy name, O Sun, to tell thee how I hate thy beams, That bring to my remembrance from what state I fell, how glorious once above thy sphere.--iv. 32-39. On another occasion:-- The golden Sun in splendour likest Heaven Allured his eye.--iii. 572-73. In describing the different periods of the day, Milton seldom fails to associate the Sun with these times, and rightly so, since they are brought about by the apparent diurnal journey of the orb across the heavens. Commencing with morning, he says:-- Meanwhile, To re-salute the world with sacred light, Leucothea waked, and with fresh dews embalmed The Earth.--xi. 133-36. Soon as they forth were come to open sight Of day-spring, and the Sun--who, scarce up-risen, With wheels yet hovering o'er the ocean-brim, Shot parallel to the Earth his dewy ray, Discovering in wide landskip all the east Of Paradise and Eden's happy plains.--v. 138-43 or some renowned metropolis With glistering spires and pinnacles adorned, Which now the rising Sun gilds with his beams.--iii. 549-51. while now the mounted Sun Shot down direct his fervid rays, to warm Earth's inmost womb.--v. 300-302. for scarce the Sun Hath finished half his journey, and scarce begins His other half in the great zone of Heaven.--v. 558-60. To sit and taste, till this meridian heat Be over, and the Sun more cool decline.--v. 369-70. And the great Light of Day yet wants to run Much of his race, though steep. Suspense in Heaven, Held by thy voice, thy potent voice he hears, And longer will delay, to hear thee tell His generation, and the rising birth Of Nature from the unapparent deep.--vii. 98-103. The declining day and approach of evening are described as follows:-- Meanwhile in utmost longitude, where Heaven With Earth and Ocean meets, the setting Sun Slowly descended, and with right aspect Against the eastern gate of Paradise Levelled his evening rays.--iv. 539-43. the Sun now fallen Beneath the Azores; whether the Prime Orb, Incredible how swift, had thither rolled Diurnal, or this less volubil Earth, By shorter flight to the east, had left him there Arraying with reflected purple and gold The clouds that on his western throne attend.--iv. 591-97. the parting Sun Beyond the Earth's green Cape and verdant Isles Hesperian sets, my signal to depart.--viii. 630-32. Now was the Sun in western cadence low From noon, and gentle airs due at their hour To fan the Earth now waked, and usher in The evening cool.--x. 92-95. for the Sun, Declined, was hasting now with prone career To the Ocean Isles, and in the ascending scale Of Heaven the stars that usher evening rose.--iv. 352-55. In the combat between Michael and Satan, which ended in the overthrow of the rebel angels, Milton, in his description of their armour, says:-- two broad suns their shields Blazed opposite.--vi. 305-306, and in describing the faded splendour of the ruined Archangel, the poet compares him to the Sun when seen under conditions which temporarily deprive him of his dazzling brilliancy and glory:-- as when the Sun new-risen Looks through the horizontal misty air Shorn of his beams, or, from behind the Moon In dim eclipse, disastrous twilight sheds On half the nations, and with fear of change Perplexes monarchs.--i. 594-99. This passage affords us an example of the sublimity of Milton's imagination and of his skill in adapting the grandest phenomena in Nature to the illustration of his subject. THE MOON The Moon is the Earth's satellite, and next to the Sun is the most important of the celestial orbs so far as its relations with our globe are concerned. Besides affording us light by night, the Moon is the principal cause of the ebb and flow of the tide--a phenomenon of much importance to navigators. The Moon is almost a perfect sphere, and is 2,160 miles in diameter. The form of its orbit is that of an ellipse with the Earth in the lower focus. It revolves round its primary in 27 days 7 hours, at a mean distance of 237,000 miles, and with a velocity of 2,273 miles an hour. Its equatorial velocity of rotation is 10 miles an hour. The density of the Moon is 3·57 that of water, or 0·63 that of the Earth; eighty globes, each of the weight of the Moon, would be required to counterbalance the weight of the Earth, and fifty globes of a similar size to equal it in dimensions. The orb rotates on its axis in the same period of time in which it accomplishes a revolution of its orbit; consequently the same illumined surface of the Moon is always directed towards the Earth. To the naked eye the Moon appears as large as the Sun, and it very rapidly changes its form and position in the sky. Its motions, which are of a very complex character, have been for many ages the subject of investigation by mathematicians and astronomers, but their difficulties may now be regarded as having been finally overcome. The phases of the Moon are always interesting and very beautiful. The orb is first seen in the west, after sunset, as a delicate slender crescent of pale light; each night it increases in size, whilst it travels eastward, until it attains the figure of a half moon; still growing larger as it pursues its course, it finally becomes a full resplendent globe, rising about the time that the Sun sets and situated directly opposite to him. Then, in a reverse manner, after full moon, it goes through the same phases, until, as a slender crescent, it becomes invisible in the solar rays; afterwards to re-appear in a few days, and, in its monthly round, to undergo the same cycle of changes. The phases of the Moon depend upon the changing position of the orb with regard to the Sun. The Moon shines by reflected light derived from the Sun, and as one half of its surface is always illumined and the other half totally dark, the crescent increases or diminishes when, by the Moon's change of position, we see more or less of the bright side. Visible at first as a slender crescent near the setting Sun, the angular distance from the orb and the width of the crescent increase daily, until, at the expiration of seven days, the Moon is distant one quarter of the circumference of the heavens from the Sun. The Moon is then a semi-circle, or in quadrature. At the end of other seven days, the distance of the Moon from the Sun is at its greatest--half the circumference of its orbit. It is then visible as a circular disc and we behold the orb as full moon. The waning Moon, as it gradually decreases, presents the same aspects reversed, and, finally, its slender crescent disappears in the Sun's rays. The convex edge of the crescent is always turned towards the Sun. The rising of the Moon in the east and its setting in the west is an effect due to the diurnal rotation of the Earth on her axis, but the orb can be perceived to have two motions besides: one from west to east, which carries it round the heavens in 29·53 days, and another from north to south. The west to east motion is steady and continuous, but, owing to the Sun's attractive force, the Moon is made to swerve from its path, giving rise to irregularities of its motion called PERTURBATIONS. The most important of these is the _annual equation_, discovered by Tycho Brahé--a yearly effect produced by the Sun's disturbing influence as the Earth approaches or recedes from him in her orbit; another irregularity, called the _evection_, is a change in the eccentricity of the lunar orbit, by which the mean longitude of the Moon is increased or diminished. _Elliptic inequality_, _parallactic inequality_, the _variation_, and _secular acceleration_, are other perturbations of the lunar motion, which depend directly or indirectly on the attractive influence of the Sun and the motion of the Earth in her orbit. As the plane of the Moon's orbit is inclined at an angle of rather more than 5° to the ecliptic, it follows that the orb, in its journey round the Earth, intersects this great circle at two points called the 'Nodes.' When crossing the ecliptic from south to north the Moon is in its ascending node, and when crossing from north to south in its descending node. In December the Moon reaches the most northern point of its course, and in June the southernmost. Consequently we have during the winter nights the greatest amount of moonlight, and in summer the least. In the evenings the moonlight is least in March and greatest in September, when we have what is called the Harvest Moon. The telescopic appearance of the Moon is very interesting and beautiful, especially if the orb is observed when waxing and waning. As no aqueous vapour or cloud obscures the lunar surface, all its details can be perceived with great clearness and distinctness. Indeed, the topography of the Moon is better known than that of the Earth, for the whole of its surface has been mapped and delineated with great accuracy and precision. The Moon is in no sense a duplicate of its primary, and no analogy exists between the Earth and her satellite. Evidence is wanting of the existence of an atmosphere surrounding the Moon; no clouds or exhalations can be perceived, and no water is believed to exist on the lunar surface. Consequently there are no oceans, seas, rivers, or lakes; no fertile plains or forest-clad mountains, such as are found upon the Earth. Indeed, all the conditions essential for the support and maintenance of organic life by which we are surrounded appear to be nonexistent on the Moon. Our satellite has no seasons; its axial rotation is so slow that one lunar day is equal in length to fourteen of our days; this period of sunshine is succeeded by a night of similar duration. The alternation of such lengthened days and nights subjects the lunar surface to great extremes of heat and cold. When viewed with a telescope, the surface of the Moon is perceived to consist of lofty mountain chains with rugged peaks, numerous extinct volcanoes called crater mountains, hills, clefts, chasms, valleys, and level plains--a region of desolation, presenting to our gaze the shattered and upturned fragments of the Moon's crust, convulsed by forces of a volcanic nature which have long since expended their energies and died out. The mountain ranges on the Moon resemble those of the Earth, but they have a more rugged outline, and their peaks are more precipitous, some of them rising to a height of 20,000 feet. They are called the Lunar Alps, Apennines, and Cordilleras, and embrace every variety of hill, cliff, mound, and ridge of comparatively low elevation. The plains are large level areas, which are situated on various parts of the lunar surface; they are of a darker hue than the mountainous regions by which they are surrounded, and were at one time believed to be seas. They are analogous to the prairies, steppes, and deserts of the Earth. _Valleys._--Some of these are of spacious dimensions; others are narrow, and contract into gorges and chasms. Clefts or rills are long cracks or fissures of considerable depth, which extend sometimes for hundreds of miles across the various strata of which the Moon's crust is composed. The characteristic features of the Moon's surface are the crater mountains: they are very numerous on certain portions of the lunar disc, and give the Moon the freckled appearance which it presents in the telescope, and which Galileo likened to the eyes in the feathers of a peacock's tail. They are believed to be of volcanic origin, and have been classified as follows: 'Walled plains, mountain rings, ring plains, crater plains, craters, craterlets, and crater cones.' Upwards of 13,000 of these mountains have been enumerated, and 1,000 are known to have a diameter exceeding nine miles. Walled plains consist of circular areas which have a width varying from 150 miles to a few hundred yards. They are enclosed by rocky ramparts, whilst the centre is occupied by an elevated peak. The depth of these formations, which are often far below the level of the Moon's surface, ranges from 10,000 to 20,000 feet. Mountain rings, ring plains, and crater plains resemble those already described, but are on a smaller scale; the floors of the larger ones are frequently occupied by craters and craterlets. The latter exist in large numbers, and some portions of the Moon's surface appear honeycombed with them, the smaller craters resting on the sides of larger ones and occupying the bottoms of the more extensive areas. There is no kind of formation on the Earth's surface that can be compared with these crater mountains, which indicate that the Moon was at one time a fiery globe convulsed by internal forces which found an outlet in the numerous volcanoes scattered over her surface. The most remarkable of these volcanic mountains have been named after distinguished men. (1) Copernicus is one of the most imposing; its crater is 56 miles in diameter, and situated at its centre is a mountain with six peaks 2,400 feet in height. The ring by which it is surrounded rises 11,000 feet above the floor of the crater, and consists of terraces believed to have been created by the partial congelation and periodic subsidence of a lake of molten lava which occupied the enclosed area. (2) Tycho is one of the most magnificent and perfect of lunar volcanoes, and is also remarkable as being a centre from which, when the Moon is full, there radiates a number of bright streaks which extend across the lunar surface, over mountain and valley, through ring and crater, for many hundreds of miles. Their nature is unknown, and nothing resembling them is found on the Earth. Tycho has a diameter of 50 miles and a depth of 17,000 feet. The peak which rises from the floor of the crater attains a height of 6,000 feet, and the rampart consists of a series of terraces which give variety to the appearance of the inner wall. The surface of the Moon round Tycho is honeycombed with small volcanoes. (3) Clavius is one of the most extensive of the walled plains; it has a diameter of 142 miles and an area of 16,500 square miles. The rocky annulus which surrounds it is very lofty and precipitous, and at one point reaches a height of 17,300 feet. Upwards of 90 craters have been counted within this space, one of the peaks attaining to an elevation of 24,000 feet above the level floor of the plain. It is believed that the lowest depths of this wild and precipitous region are never penetrated by sunlight, they are so overshadowed by towering crag and fell which intercept the solar rays; and, as there is no atmosphere to cause reflection, they are consequently enveloped in perpetual darkness. (4) Plato has a diameter of about 60 miles and an area of 2,700 square miles; its central peak rises to a height of 7,300 feet. It has an irregular rampart which is broken up into terraces averaging about 4,000 feet high; three cones, each with an elevation of from 7,000 to 9,000 feet, rest on its western border. (5) Theophilus is the deepest of the visible craters on the Moon. It has a diameter of 64 miles, and the inner edge of the ring rises from the level floor to a height ranging from 14,000 to 18,000 feet. A group of mountains occupies the centre of the area, the highest peak of which reaches an elevation of 5,200 feet. Cyrillus and Catharina, two adjacent craters, are each about 16,000 feet deep and connected by a wide valley. (6) Aristarchus is the brightest spot on the Moon, and appears almost dazzling in the telescope. The crater has a diameter of 42 miles, the centre of which is occupied by a steep mountain. The rampart on the western side rises to a height of 7,500 feet, on the east it becomes a plateau which connects it with a smaller crater called Herodotus. Bright streaks radiate from Aristarchus when there is full moon, and extend for a considerable distance over the surface of the orb. Though the face of the Moon has been carefully scanned for two centuries and a half, and selenographers have mapped and delineated her features with the utmost accuracy and precision, yet no perceptible change of a reliable character has been perceived to occur on any part of the orb. The surface of the hemisphere directed towards the Earth appears to be an alternation of desert plains, craggy wildernesses, and extinct volcanoes--a region of desolation unoccupied by any living thing, and 'upon which the light of life has never dawned.' Owing to the absence of an atmosphere, there is neither diffuse daylight nor twilight on the Moon. Every portion of the lunar surface not exposed to the Sun's rays is shrouded in darkness, and black shadows can be observed fringing prominences of silvery whiteness. If the Moon were enveloped in an atmosphere similar to that which surrounds the Earth, the reflection and diffusion of light among the minute particles of watery vapour which permeate it would give rise to a gradual transition from light to darkness; the lunar surface would be visible when not illumined by the direct rays of the Sun, and before sunrise and after sunset, dawn and twilight would occur as upon the Earth. But upon the Moon there is no dawn, and the darkness of night envelops the orb until the appearance of the edge of the Sun's disc above the horizon, then his dazzling rays illumine the summits and loftiest peaks of the lunar mountains whilst yet their sides and bases are wrapped in deep gloom. Since the pace of the Sun across the lunar heavens is 28 times slower than it is with us, there is continuous sunshine on the Moon for 304 hours, and this long day--equal to about a fortnight of our time--is succeeded by a night of similar duration. As there is no atmosphere overhead to diffuse or reflect the light, the Sun shines in a pitch-black sky, and at lunar noonday the planets and constellations can be seen displaying a brilliancy of greater intensity than can be perceived on Earth during the darkest night. Every portion of the Moon's surface is bleak, bare, and untouched by any softening influences. No gentle gale ever sweeps down her valleys or disturbs the dead calm that hangs over this world; no cloud ever tempers the fierce glare of the Sun that pours down his unmitigated rays from a sky of inky blackness; no refreshing shower ever falls upon her arid mountains and plains; no sound ever breaks the profound stillness that reigns over this realm of solitude and desolation. [Illustration: A PORTION OF THE MOON'S SURFACE] As might be expected, Milton makes frequent allusion to the Moon in 'Paradise Lost,' and does not fail to set forth the distinctive charms associated with the unrivalled queen of the firmament. The majority of poets would most likely regard a description of evening as incomplete without an allusion to the Moon. Milton has adhered to this sentiment, as may be perceived in the following lines:-- till the Moon, Rising in clouded majesty, at length Apparent queen, unveiled her peerless light, And o'er the dark her silver mantle threw.--iv. 606-609. now reigns Full-orbed the Moon, and with more pleasing light, Shadowy sets off the face of things.--v. 41-43. The association of the Moon with the nocturnal revels and dances of elves and fairies is felicitously expressed in the following passage:-- or faëry elves, Whose midnight revels, by a forest side Or fountain, some belated peasant sees, Or dreams he sees, while overhead the Moon Sits arbitress, and nearer to the Earth Wheels her pale course.--i. 781-86. In contrast with this, we have Milton's description of the Moon when affected by the demoniacal practices of the 'night-hag' who was believed to destroy infants for the sake of drinking their blood, and applying their mangled limbs to the purposes of incantation. The legend is of Scandinavian origin and the locality Lapland:-- Nor uglier follow the night-hag, when called In secret, riding through the air she comes, Lured with the smell of infant blood, to dance With Lapland witches, while the labouring Moon Eclipses at their charms.--ii. 662-66. In his description of the massive shield carried by Satan, the poet compares it with the full moon:-- his ponderous shield Ethereal temper, massy, large, and round, Behind him cast. The broad circumference Hung on his shoulders like the Moon.--i. 284-87. The phases displayed by the Moon in her monthly journey round the Earth, and which lend a variety of charm to the appearances presented by the orb, are poetically described by Milton in the following lines:-- but there the neighbouring Moon (So call that opposite fair star) her aid Timely interposes, and her monthly round Still ending, still renewing, through mid-Heaven With borrowed light her countenance triform Hence fills and empties, to enlighten the Earth, And in her pale dominion checks the night.--iii. 726-32. It is interesting to observe how aptly Milton describes the subdued illumination of the Moon's reflected light, as compared with the brilliant radiance of the blazing Sun, and how the distinguishing glory peculiar to each orb is appropriately set forth in the various passages in which they are described; their contrasted splendour enhancing rather than detracting from the grandeur and beauty belonging to each. THE PLANET EARTH[14] No lovelier planet circles round the Sun than the planet Earth, with her oceans and continents, her mountains, valleys, rivers, lakes, and plains; surrounded by heaven's azure, radiant with the sunlight of her day and adorned by night with countless sparkling points of gold. This beautiful world, the abode of MAN, is of paramount importance to us, and is the only part of the universe of which we have any direct knowledge. The Earth may be regarded as one of the Sun's numerous family, and is situated third in order from the refulgent orb, round which it revolves in an elliptical orbit at a mean distance of 92,800,000 miles. The Earth is nearest to the Sun at the end of December, and furthest away at the beginning of July; the difference between those distances is 3,250,000 miles--the extent of the eccentricity of the planet's orbit. The figure of the Earth is that of an oblate spheroid; it is slightly flattened at the poles and bulges at the equator. Its polar or shortest diameter is 7,899 miles, its equatorial diameter is 7,926 miles--greater than the other by 27 miles. The circumference of the Earth at the equator is 24,899 miles, and the total area of its surface is 197,000,000 square miles. Its mean density is 5-1/2 times greater than that of water. The two principal motions performed by the Earth are: (1) Rotation on its axis; (2) its annual revolution round the Sun. The Earth always rotates in the same manner, and in the same direction, from west to east. As the axis of rotation corresponds with the shortest diameter of the planet, it affords strong evidence that the Earth assumed its present shape whilst rapidly rotating round its axis when in a fluid or plastic condition. This would accord with the nebular hypothesis. The ends of the Earth's axis are called the poles of the Earth; one is the north, the other the south pole. The north pole is directed towards a star in the Lesser Bear called the Pole Star. The south pole is directed to a corresponding opposite part of the heavens. The Earth's axis is inclined 63° 33´ to the plane of the ecliptic, and is always directed to the same point in the heavens. The Earth accomplishes a revolution on its axis in 23 hours 56 minutes 4 seconds mean solar time, which is the length of the sidereal day. This rate of rotation is invariable. At the equator, where the circumference of the globe exceeds 24,000 miles, the velocity of a point on its surface is upwards of 1,000 miles an hour, but, as the poles are approached, the tangential velocity diminishes, and at those points it is entirely absent. The Earth accomplishes a revolution of her orbit in 365 days 6 hours 9 minutes; in her journey round the Sun she travels a circuit of 580,000,000 miles at an average pace of 66,000 miles an hour. The Earth has other slight motions called _perturbations_, which are produced by the gravitational attraction of other members of the solar system. The most important of these is Precession of the Equinoxes, which is caused by the attraction of the Sun, Moon, and planets, on the protuberant equatorial region of the globe. This attraction has a tendency to turn the Earth's axis at right angles to her orbit, but it only results in the slow rotation of the pole of the equator round that of the ecliptic, which is occurring at the rate of 1° in 70 years, and will require a period of 25,868 years to complete an entire revolution of the heavens. The spot on Earth round which is centred the chief interest in Milton's poem is Paradise, which was situated in the east of Eden, a district of Central Asia. It was here where God ordained that man should first dwell--a place created for his enjoyment and delight. Satan, after his soliloquy on Mount Niphates, directs his way to Paradise, and arrives first in Eden, where he beholds from a distance the Happy Garden-- So on he fares, and to the border comes Of Eden, where delicious Paradise, Now nearer, crowns with her enclosure green, As with a rural mound, the champain head Of a steep wilderness, whose hairy sides With thicket overgrown, grotesque and wild, Access denied; and overhead upgrew Insuperable highth of loftiest shade, Cedar, and pine, and fir, and branching palm, A sylvan scene, and, as the ranks ascend, Shade above shade, a woody theatre Of stateliest view. Yet higher than their tops The verdurous wall of Paradise up-sprung; Which to our general sire gave prospect large Into his nether empire neighbouring round. And higher than that wall, a circling row Of goodliest trees, loaden with fairest fruit, Blossoms and fruits at once of golden hue, Appeared, with gay enamelled colours mixed; On which the Sun more glad impressed his beams Than in fair evening cloud, or humid bow, When God hath showered the Earth: so lovely seemed That landskip. And of pure now purer air Meets his approach, and to the heart inspires Vernal delight and joy, able to drive All sadness but despair. Now gentle gales, Fanning their odoriferous wings, dispense Native perfumes, and whisper whence they stole Those balmy spoils.--iv. 131-59. Satan, having gained admission to the Garden by overleaping the tangled thicket of shrubs and bushes which formed an impenetrable barrier and prevented any access to the enclosure within, he flew up on to the Tree of Life-- Beneath him, with new wonder, now he views, To all delight of human sense exposed, In narrow room Nature's whole wealth; yea, more!-- A Heaven on Earth: for blissful Paradise Of God the garden was, by Him in the east Of Eden planted, Eden stretched her line From Auran eastward to the royal towers Of great Seleucia, built by Grecian kings, Or where the sons of Eden long before Dwelt in Telassar. In this pleasant soil His far more pleasant garden God ordained. Out of the fertile ground he caused to grow All trees of noblest kind for sight, smell, taste; And all amid them stood the Tree of Life, High eminent, blooming ambrosial fruit Of vegetable gold; and next to life, Our death, the Tree of Knowledge, grew fast by-- Knowledge of good, bought dear by knowing ill. Southward through Eden went a river large, Nor changed his course, but through the shaggy hill Passed underneath ingulfed; for God had thrown That mountain, as his garden mould, high raised Upon the rapid current, which, through veins Of porous earth with kindly thirst up-drawn, Rose a fresh fountain, and with many a rill Watered the garden; thence united fell Down the steep glade, and met the nether flood, Which from his darksome passage now appears, And now, divided into four main streams, Runs diverse, wandering many a famous realm And country whereof here needs no account; But rather to tell how, if Art could tell How, from that sapphire fount the crisped brooks, Boiling on orient-pearl and sands of gold, With mazy error under pendent shades Ran nectar, visiting each plant, and fed Flowers worthy of Paradise, which not nice Art In beds and curious knots, but Nature boon Poured forth profuse on hill, and dale, and plain, Both where the morning Sun first warmly smote The open field, and where the unpierced shade Imbrowned the noontide bowers.--iv. 205-46. Milton's description of Paradise is not less remarkable in its way than the lurid scenes depicted by him in Pandemonium. The versatility of his poetic genius is nowhere more apparent than in the charming pastoral verse contained in this part of his poem. The poet has lavished the whole wealth of his luxuriant imagination in his description of Eden and blissful Paradise with its 'vernal airs' and 'gentle gales,' its verdant meads, and murmuring streams, 'rolling on orient-pearl and sands of gold;' its stately trees laden with blossom and fruit; its spicy groves and shady bowers, over which there breathed the eternal Spring. In Book IX. Satan expresses himself in an eloquent apostrophe to the primitive Earth, over which he previously wandered for seven days-- O Earth, how like to Heaven, if not preferred More justly, seat worthier of gods, as built With second thoughts, reforming what was old! For what God, after better, worse would build? Terrestrial Heaven, danced round by other Heavens, That shine, yet bear their bright officious lamps, Light above light, for thee alone, as seems, In thee concentring all their precious beams Of sacred influence! As God in Heaven Is centre, yet extends to all, so thou Centring receiv'st from all those orbs; in thee, Not in themselves, all their known virtue appears, Productive in herb, plant, and nobler birth Of creatures animate with gradual life Of growth, sense, reason, all summed up in Man, With what delight I could have walked thee round, If I could joy in aught--sweet interchange Of hill and valley, rivers, woods, and plains, Now land, now sea, and shores with forest crowned, Rocks, dens, and caves.--ix. 99-118. Though it is impossible to regard the Earth as possessing the importance ascribed to it by the ancient Ptolemaists; nevertheless, our globe is a great and mighty world, and appears to be one of the most favourably situated of all the planets, being neither near the Sun nor yet very far distant from the orb; and although, when compared with the universe, it is no more than a leaf on a tree in the midst of a vast forest; still, it is not the least important among other circling worlds, and unfailingly fulfils the part allotted to it in the great scheme of creation. THE PLANET HESPERUS This is the beautiful morning and evening star, the peerless planet that ushers in the twilight and the dawn, the harbinger of day and unrivalled queen of the evening. Venus, called after the Roman goddess of Love, and also identified with the Greek Aphrodite of ideal beauty, is the name by which the planet is popularly known; but Milton does not so designate it, and the name 'Venus' is not found in 'Paradise Lost.' The ancients called it Lucifer and Phosphor when it shone as a morning star before sunrise, and Hesperus and Vesper when it became visible after sunset. It is the most lustrous of all the planets, and at times its brilliancy is so marked as to throw a distinct shadow at night. Venus is the second planet in order from the Sun. Its orbit lies between that of Mercury and the Earth, and in form approaches nearer to a circle than that of any of the other planets. It travels round the Sun in 224·7 days, at a mean distance of 67,000,000 miles, and with an average velocity of 80,000 miles an hour. Its period of rotation is unknown. By the observation of dusky spots on its surface, it has been surmised that the planet completes a revolution on its axis in 23-1/4 hours; but other observers doubt this and are inclined to believe that it always presents the same face to the Sun. When at inferior conjunction Venus approaches nearer to the Earth than any other planet, its distance then being 27,000,000 miles. Its greatest elongation varies from 45° to 47° 12´; it therefore can never be much more than three hours above the horizon before sunrise, or after sunset. Venus is a morning star when passing from inferior to superior conjunction, and during the other half of its synodical period it is an evening star. The planet attains its greatest brilliancy at an elongation 40° west or east of the Sun--five weeks before and after inferior conjunction. It is at these periods, when at its greatest brilliancy, that it casts a shadow at night. Though so pleasing an object to the unaided eye, Venus, when observed with the telescope, is often a source of disappointment--this is on account of its dazzling brilliancy, which renders any accurate definition of its surface impossible. Sir John Herschel writes: 'The intense lustre of its illuminated part dazzles the sight, and exaggerates every imperfection of the telescope; yet we see clearly that its surface is not mottled over with permanent spots like the Moon; we notice in it neither mountains nor shadows, but a uniform brightness, in which sometimes we may indeed fancy, or perhaps more than fancy, brighter or obscurer portions, but can seldom or never rest fully satisfied of the fact.' It is believed that the surface of the planet is invisible on account of the existence of a cloud-laden atmosphere by which it is enveloped, and which may serve as a protection against the intense glare of the sunshine and heat poured down by the not far-distant Sun. Schröter, a German astronomer, believed that he saw lofty mountains on the surface of the planet, but their existence has not been confirmed by any other observer. The Sun if viewed from Venus would have a diameter nearly half as large again as when seen from the Earth; it is therefore probable that the planet is subjected to a much higher temperature than what is experienced on our globe. The phases of Venus are similar to those exhibited by the Moon, and are caused by a change in position of the illumined hemisphere of the planet with regard to the Earth. At superior conjunction the whole enlightened disc of the planet is turned towards the Earth, but is invisible by being lost in the Sun's rays. Shortly before or after it arrives at this point, its form is gibbous, the illumined portion being less than a circle but greater than a semi-circle. At its greatest elongation west or east of the Sun the planet resembles the Moon in quadrature--a half moon--and between those points and inferior conjunction it is visible as a beautiful crescent. It becomes narrower and sharper as it approaches inferior conjunction, until it resembles a curved luminous thread prior to its disappearance at the conjunction. After having passed this point it reappears on the other side of the Sun as the morning star. It would be only natural to imagine that this peerless orb, the most beautiful and lustrous of the planets, upon which men have gazed with longing admiration, and designated the emblem of 'all beauty and all love,' should have impressed Milton's poetical imagination with its charming appearance, and stimulated the flow of his captivating muse. He addresses the orb as Fairest of Stars, last in the train of night, If better thou belong not to the dawn, Sure pledge of day, that crown'st the smiling morn With thy bright circlet, praise Him in thy sphere While day arises, that sweet hour of prime.--v. 166-70. In these lines the poet alludes to Venus as the morning star. In the other passages in his poem Milton associates the planet sometimes with the morning and at other times with the evening-- His countenance, as the Morning Star that guides The starry flock.--v. 708-709. Or if the Star of Evening and the Moon Haste to thy audience, Night with her will bring Silence, and Sleep listening to thee will watch.--vii. 104-106. And hence the morning planet gilds her horns.--vii. 366. The Sun was sunk and after him the Star Of Hesperus, whose office is to bring Twilight upon the Earth, short arbiter Twixt day and night.--ix. 47-50. and bid haste the Evening Star On his hill top to light the bridal lamp.--viii. 519-20. Milton knew of the phases of Venus and was aware that at certain times the planet was visible in the telescope as a beautiful crescent. The line in which he mentions her as gilding her horns is an allusion to this appearance of Venus. THE PLEIADES The beautiful cluster of the Pleiades or Seven Sisters has been regarded with hallowed veneration from time immemorial. The happy influences believed to be shed down upon the Earth by those stars and their close association with human destinies have rendered them objects of almost sacred interest among the different races of mankind. In every region of the globe and in every clime, among civilised nations and savage fetish-worshipping tribes, the same benign influences were ascribed to the stars which form this interesting group. In Greek mythology they were known as the seven daughters of Atlas and Pleione. Different versions are given of their fate. By some writers it is said they died from grief in consequence of the death of their sisters, the Hyades, or on account of the fate of their father, who, for treason, was condemned by Zeus to bear on his head and hands the vault of heaven, on the mountains of north-west Africa which bear his name. According to others they were the companions of Diana, and, in order to escape from Orion, by whom they were pursued, the gods translated them to the sky. All writers agree in saying that after their death or translation they were transformed into stars. Their names are Alcyone, Electra, Maia, Merope, Sterope, Taygeta, and Celaeno. The seventh Atlantid is said to be the 'lost Pleiad,' but it can be perceived without difficulty by a person possessing good eyesight. In the book of Job there is a beautiful allusion to the Pleiades (chap. xxxviii.) when God speaks out of the whirlwind and asks the patriarch to answer Him-- Canst thou bind the sweet influences of the Pleiades, or loose the bands of Orion? Canst thou bring forth Mazzaroth in his season? or canst thou guide Arcturus with his sons? Knowest thou the ordinances of heaven? canst thou set the dominion thereof in the earth? Admiral Smyth says that this noble passage is more correctly rendered as follows: Canst thou bind the delightful teemings of Cheemah? Or the contractions of Chesil canst thou open? Canst thou draw forth Mazzaroth in his season Or Ayeesh and his sons canst thou guide? He writes: 'In this very early description of the cardinal constellations, _Cheemah_ denotes Taurus with the Pleiades; _Chesil_ is Scorpio; Mazzaroth is Sirius in "the chambers of the south;" and Ayeesh the Greater Bear, the Hebrew word signifying a _bier_, which was shaped by the four well-known bright stars, while the three forming the tail were considered as children attending a funeral.' The Greeks at an early period were attracted by this cluster of stars, and Hesiod alludes to them in his writings. One passage converted into rhyme reads as follows: There is a time when forty days they lie, And forty nights, conceal'd from human eye; But in the course of the revolving year, When the swain sharps the scythe, again appear. Their heliacal rising was considered a favourable time for setting out on a voyage, and their midnight culmination, which occurred shortly after the middle of November, was celebrated by some nations with festivals and public ceremonies. Considerable diversity of opinion existed among the ancients with regard to the number of stars which constitute this group. It was affirmed by some that only six were visible, whilst others maintained that seven could be seen. Ovid writes: Quae septem dici, sex tamen esse solent. Homer and Attalus mention six; Hipparchus and Aratus seven. The legend with regard to the lost Pleiad would seem to indicate that, during a period in the past, the star possessed a superior brilliancy and was more distinctly visible than it is at the present time. This may have been so, for, should it belong to the class of variable stars, there would be a periodic ebb and flow of its light, by which its fluctuating brilliance could be explained. When looked at directly only six stars can be seen in the group, but should the eye be turned sideways more than this number become visible. Several observers have counted as many as ten or twelve, and it is stated by Kepler that his tutor, Maestlin, was able to enumerate fourteen stars and mapped eleven in their relative positions. With telescopic aid the number is largely increased--Galileo observed thirty-six with his instrument and Hooke, in 1664, counted seventy-eight. Large modern telescopes bring into view several thousand stars in this region. The Pleiades are situated at a profound distance in space. Their light period is estimated at 250 years, indicating a distance of 1,500 billions of miles. Our Sun if thus far removed would be reduced to a tenth-magnitude star. 'There can be little doubt,' says Miss Agnes Clerke, 'that the solar brilliancy is surpassed by sixty to seventy of the Pleiades. And it must be in some cases enormously surpassed; by Alcyone 1,000, by Electra 480, by Maia nearly 400 times. Sirius itself takes a subordinate rank when compared with the five most brilliant members of a group, the real magnificence of which we can thus in some degree apprehend.' This is the only star cluster which can be perceived to be moving in space, or which has an ascertained common proper motion. Its constituents form a magnificent system in which the stars bear a mutual relationship to each other, and perform intricate internal revolutions, whilst they in systemic union drift along through the depths of space. There are two allusions to the Pleiades in 'Paradise Lost.' In describing the path of the newly created Sun, Milton introduces them as indicative of the joyfulness associated with the birth of the Universe-- First in his east the glorious lamp was seen, Regent of day, and all the horizon round Invested with bright rays, jocund to run His longitude through heaven's high road; the grey Dawn, and the Pleiades before him danced, Shedding sweet influence.--vii. 370-75. It was believed that the Earth was created in the spring; and towards the end of April this group rises a little before the Sun and precedes him in his course, 'shedding sweet influences.' The ancients believed that the good or evil influences of the stars were exercised not in the night but during the day, when their rays mingled with those of the Sun. The pernicious influence of the Dog-star is mentioned by Latin writers as being most pronounced during the dog-days, at the end of summer and commencement of autumn, the time of the heliacal rising of this star. The other allusion to the Pleiades is in Book X., line 673, where Milton, in describing the altered path of the Sun consequent upon the Fall, mentions how the orb travels through Taurus with the Seven Atlantic Sisters--the seven daughters of Atlas, the Pleiades, which are situated on the shoulder of the animal representing this zodiacal constellation. THE GALAXY The Galaxy or Milky Way is the great luminous zone encircling the heavens, which can be seen extending across the sky from horizon to horizon. Its diffused nebulous appearance caused the ancients much perplexity, and many quaint opinions were hazarded as to the nature of this celestial highway; but the mystery associated with it was not solved until Galileo directed his newly invented telescope to this lucent object, when, to his intense delight, he discovered that it consists of myriads of stars--millions upon millions of suns so distant as to be individually indistinguishable to ordinary vision, and so closely aggregated, that their blended light gives rise to the milky luminosity signified by its name. This stelliferous zone almost completely encircles the sphere, which it divides into two nearly equal parts, and is inclined at an angle of 63° to the celestial equator. In Centaurus it divides into two portions, one indistinct and of interrupted continuity, the other bright and well defined; these, after remaining apart for 120°, reunite in Cygnus. The Milky Way is of irregular outline and varies in breadth from 5° to 16°; it intersects the equinoctial in the constellations Monoceros and Aquila, and approaches in Cassiopeia to within 27° of the north pole of the heavens; an equal distance intervenes between it and the south pole. Its poles are in Coma Bernices and Cetus. The stars in the galactic tract are very unevenly distributed; in some of its richest regions as many stars as are visible to the naked eye on a clear night have been counted within the space of a square degree. In other parts they are much less numerous, and there have been observed besides, adjacent to the most luminous portions of the zone, dark intervals and winding channels almost entirely devoid of stars. An instance of this kind occurs in the constellation of the Southern Cross, where there exists in a rich stellar region a large oval-shaped dark vacuity, 8° by 5° in extent, that appears to be almost entirely denuded of stars. In looking at it, an impression is created that one is gazing into an empty void of space far beyond the Milky Way. This gulf of Cimmerian darkness was called by early navigators the Coal Sack. Similar dark spaces, though not of such magnitude, are seen in Ophiuchus, Scorpio, and Cygnus. The Galaxy, when viewed with a powerful telescope, is found to consist of congeries of stars, vast stellar aggregations, great luminous tracts resolvable into clouds of stars of overpowering magnificence, superb clusters of various orders, and convoluted nebulous streams wandering 'with mazy error' among 'islands of light and lakes of darkness,' resolved by the telescope into banks of shining worlds. The concourses of stars which enter into the formation of this wonderful zone exhibit in a marvellous degree the amazing profusion in which these orbs exist in certain regions of space; yet those multitudes of stars perform their motions in harmonious unison and in orderly array, and by their mutual attraction sustain the dynamical equilibrium of this stupendous galactic ring, the diameter of which, according to one authority, is not traversed by light in less than 13,000 years. [Illustration: FIG. 8.--A Portion of the Milky Way.] Sir William Herschel, to whom we are indebted for most of what we know of the Milky Way, commenced a series of observations in 1785 with the object of acquiring a knowledge of the structure of the sidereal heavens. In the accomplishment of this object, to which he devoted a considerable part of his life, he undertook a systematic survey of that portion of the Galaxy which is visible in the Northern Hemisphere. By a method called star-gauging, which consisted in the enumeration of the stars in each successive telescopic field as the instrument moved slowly over the region under observation, he found that the depth of the star strata could be approximately ascertained by counting the stars along the line of vision; those were most numerous where the visual line appeared of the greatest length and fewest in number where it was shortest. Herschel perceived the internal structure of the Galaxy to be exceedingly intricate and complex, and that it embraced within its confines an endless variety of systems, clusters, and groups, branches, sprays, arches, loops, and streaming filaments of stars, all of which combined to form this luminous zone. 'It is indeed,' says a well-known astronomer, 'only to the most careless glance, or when viewed through an atmosphere of imperfect transparency, that the Milky Way seems a continuous zone. Let the naked eye rest thoughtfully on any part of it, and, if circumstances be favourable, it will stand out rather as an accumulation of patches and streams of light of every conceivable variety of form and brightness, now side by side, now heaped on each other; again spanning across dark spaces, intertwining and forming a most curious and complex network; and at other times darting off into the neighbouring skies in branches of capricious length and shape which gradually thin away and disappear.' Sir John Herschel, who was occupied for four years at the Cape of Good Hope in exploring the celestial regions of the Southern Hemisphere, describes the coming on of the Milky Way as seen in his 20-foot reflector. He first remarks 'that all the stars visible to us, whether by unassisted vision or through the best telescopes, belong to and form part of a vast stratum or considerably flattened and unsymmetrical congeries of stars in which our system is deeply and eccentrically plunged; and, moreover, situated near a point where the stratum bifurcates or spreads itself out into two sheets.' 'As the main body of the Milky Way comes on the frequency and variety of those masses (nebulous) increases; here the Milky Way is composed of separate or slight or strongly connected clouds of semi-nebulous light, and, as the telescope moves, the appearance is that of clouds passing in a scud, as sailors call it.' The Milky Way is like sand, not strewed evenly as with a sieve, but as if flung down by handfuls (and both hands at once), leaving dark intervals, and all consisting of stars of the fourteenth, sixteenth, twentieth magnitudes down to nebulosity, in a most astonishing manner. After an interval of comparative poverty, the same phenomenon, and even more remarkable, I cannot say it is nebulous, it is all resolved, but the stars are inconceivably numerous and minute; there must be millions and all almost equally massed together. Yet they nowhere run to nuclei or clusters much brighter in the middle. Towards the end of the seventeenth hour (Right Ascension) the globular clusters begin to come in; they consist of stars of excessive minuteness, but yet not more so than the ground of the Milky Way, on which not only they appear projected, but of which it is very probable they form a part. 'From the foregoing analysis of the telescopic aspect of the Milky Way in this interesting region, I think it can hardly be doubted that it consists of portions differing exceedingly in distance, but brought by the effect of projection into the same, or nearly the same, visual line; in particular, that at the anterior edge of what we have called the main stream, we see foreshortened a vast and illimitable area scattered over with discontinuous masses and aggregates of stars in the manner of the cumuli of a mackerel sky, rather than of a stratum of regular thickness and homogeneous formation.' The profound distance at which the stars of the Galaxy are situated in space precludes the possibility of our obtaining any definite knowledge of their magnitude and of the extent of the intervals by which they are separated from each other, nor can we learn anything of the details associated with the systems and combinations into which they enter. It is believed that the majority of the stars in the Milky Way equal or surpass the Sun in brilliancy and splendour. They are tenth to fifteenth magnitude stars; now, the Sun at the distance indicated by these magnitudes would in the telescope appear a much fainter object; he would not reach the fifteenth magnitude. Consequently, the galactic stars are regarded as his peers or superiors in magnitude and brilliancy. Those myriads of suns are all in motion--in nature a stationary body is unknown--and they are sufficiently far apart so as not to be unduly influenced by their mutual gravitational attraction; a distance perhaps equal to that which separates our Sun from the nearest fixed star may intervene between each of those orbs. In the deepest recesses of the Milky Way, Sir William Herschel was able to count 500 stars receding in regular order behind each other; between each there existed an interval of space, probably not less extensive than the interstellar spaces among the stars by which we are surrounded. The richest galactic regions in the Northern Hemisphere are found in Perseus, Cygnus, and Aquila. Night after night could be spent in sweeping the telescope over fields where the stars can be seen in amazing profusion. In the interval of a quarter of an hour, Sir William Herschel observed 116,000 stars pass before him in the telescope, and on another occasion he perceived 258,000 stars in the space of forty-one minutes. In the constellation of the Swan there is a region about 5° in breadth which contains 331,000 stars. Photography reveals in a remarkable manner the amazing richness of this stelliferous zone; the impress of the stars on the sensitive plate of the camera, in some instances, resembles a shower of descending snowflakes. Though Sir William Herschel was able to fathom the Galaxy in most of its tracts, yet there were regions which his great telescopes were unable to penetrate entirely through. In Cepheus there is a spot where he observed the stars become 'gradually less till they escape the eye so that appearances here favour the idea of a succeeding more distant clustering part.' He perceived another in Scorpio 'where, through the hollows and deep recesses of its complicated structure, we behold what has all the appearance of a wide and indefinitely prolonged area strewed over with discontinuous masses and clouds of stars which the telescope at length refuses to analyse.' The Great Cluster in Perseus, which lies in the Milky Way, also baffled the penetrative capacity of Herschel's instruments. We cannot help quoting Professor Nichol's description of Herschel's observation of this remarkable object. He says: 'In the Milky Way, thronged all over with splendours, there is one portion not unnoticed by the general observer, the spot in the sword-hand of Perseus. That spot shows no stars to the naked eye; the milky light which glorifies it comes from regions to which unaided we cannot pierce. But to a telescope of considerable power the space appears lighted up with unnumbered orbs; and these pass on through the depths of the infinite, until, even to that penetrating glass, they escape all scrutiny, withdrawing into regions unvisited by its power. Shall we adventure into these deeper retirements? Then, assume an instrument of higher efficacy, and lo! the change is only repeated; those scarce observed before appear as large orbs, and, behind, a new series begins, shading gradually away, leading towards farther mysteries! The illustrious Herschel penetrated on one occasion into this spot, until he found himself among depths whose light could not have reached him in much less than 4,000 years; no marvel that he withdrew from the pursuit, conceiving that such abysses must be endless!' The Milky Way may be regarded as a universe by itself, and our Sun as one of its myriad stars. Milton was aware of the stellar constitution of the Milky Way, which was one of Galileo's discoveries. The poet gives a singularly accurate description of this luminous path, which he glorifies as the way by which the Deity returned up to the Heaven of Heavens after He finished His great work of creation-- So sung The glorious train ascending: He through Heaven, That opened wide her blazing portals, led To God's eternal house direct the way-- A broad and ample road, whose dust is gold, And pavement stars, as stars to thee appear Seen in the Galaxy, that Milky Way Which nightly as a circling zone thou seest Powdered with stars.--vii. 573-81. COMETS Records of the appearance of these remarkable objects have been handed down from earliest times; and when one of those mysterious visitors, travelling from out the depths of space, became visible in our skies, it was regarded with apprehension and dread as betokening the occurrence of calamities and direful events among the nations of the Earth. The word comet is derived from the Greek {komê}, signifying 'hair,' to which the hazy, luminous appearance of those objects bears some resemblance. A comet consists of a bright central part called the _nucleus_; this is surrounded by layers of nebulous matter called the _coma_, and both combined form the _head_, from which a long appendage extends called the _tail_. The nucleus and tail are not essential parts of a comet, for many have been observed in which both have been wanting. The tail is frequently very conspicuous, and presents considerable diversity both as regards its appearance and length. In some comets it is entirely absent, and in others it has been observed to stretch over an arc of sixty or seventy degrees, indicating a length of 100 to 150 million miles. Sometimes it is straight, and at other times it is curved at the extremity; it has been observed bifurcated into two branches; and, on rare occasions, comets have been seen with two or more tails. The tail of a comet is always directed away from the Sun; it increases in size as the comet approaches the orb, and diminishes as it recedes from him. This depends upon the degree of heat to which the comet is exposed, which has the effect of driving off or evaporating some of the matter composing the head. During the time the comet is travelling round the Sun there is a continuous emission of this highly attenuated matter, which is visible as the tail, but when the comet begins to recede from the orb and reaches cooler regions of space the tail diminishes in size as the temperature becomes reduced, and ultimately it disappears. The appearance of a comet in the sky is often sudden and unexpected, and one of those erratic wanderers may become visible at any time and in any part of the heavens. It was remarked by Kepler that there are as many comets in the sky as there are fishes in the ocean. This may or may not be true, for they only become visible when they approach the Sun, and the time during which they remain so does not usually exceed a few weeks or months. Ancient astronomers were much perplexed with the motions of comets, which appeared to be much more irregular than those of other celestial bodies and unconformed to any known laws. Tycho Brahé believed that comets moved in circular orbits, and Kepler imagined that they travelled in straight lines outwards from the Sun. Newton, however, was able to demonstrate that any conic section can be described about the Sun consistent with the law of gravitation, and that the orbits of comets correspond with three of the four sections into which a cone can be divided. Consequently, they obey the laws of planetary motion. Comets which move in ellipses of known eccentricity and return with periodical regularity may be regarded as belonging to the solar system. Twenty of these are known, and eleven of them have more than once passed their perihelion. Those most familiarly known complete their periods in years as follows:--Encke's 3·3; Swift's, 5·5; Winnecke's, 5·6; Tempel's, 6; Brorsen's, 5·5; Faye's, 7·4; Tuttle's, 13·8, and Halley's, 76. Comets with parabolic and hyperbolic orbits may be regarded as stray objects which visit our system once, and depart never to return again. Besides those already mentioned there are many comets with orbits of such marked eccentricity that their ellipses when near perihelion cannot be distinguished from parabolæ. The great comets of 1780, 1811, 1843, 1858, 1861, and 1882 traverse orbits approaching this form, and some of them require hundreds and thousands of years to accomplish a circuit of their paths. Numerous instances of the appearance of remarkable comets have been recorded in the annals of ancient nations. The earliest records of comets are by the Chinese, who were careful observers of celestial phenomena. A comet is said to have appeared at the time of the birth of Mithridates (134 B.C.), which had a disc as large as that of the Sun; a great comet also became visible in the heavens about the time of the death of Julius Cæsar (44 B.C.), and another was seen in the reign of Justinian (531 A.D.). A remarkable comet was observed in 1106, and in 1456, the year in which the Turks obtained possession of Constantinople and threatened to overrun Europe, a great comet appeared, which was regarded by Christendom with ominous forebodings. The celebrated astronomer Halley was the first to predict the return of a comet. Having become acquainted with Newton's investigations, which showed that the forms of the orbits of comets were either parabolæ or extremely elongated ellipses, he subjected the next great comet, which appeared in 1682, to a series of observations, calculated its orbit, and predicted that it would return to perihelion in seventy-five or seventy-six years. On referring to past records he discovered that a great comet appeared in 1607, which pursued a path similar to the one traced out for his comet, another was seen in 1531, and one in 1456. Halley perceived that the intervals between those dates corresponded to a period of about seventy-six years, the time which he calculated would be required for his comet to complete a revolution of its orbit. He therefore had no hesitation in predicting that the comet would appear again in 1758. Halley knew that he would not be alive to witness the event, and alludes to it in the following sentence: 'Wherefore if it should return according to our prediction about the year 1758, impartial posterity will not refuse to acknowledge that this was first discovered by an Englishman.' As the time approached when the comet should be drawing near to our system, much interest was excited among astronomers, who would have an opportunity afforded them of testing the accuracy of Halley's prediction. An eminent French mathematician named Clairaut computed anew, by a method rather different to that adopted by Halley, the retarding effect of the attraction of the planets upon the speed of the comet, and arrived at the conclusion that it would reach perihelion about the middle of April 1759; but, owing to unknown influences--Uranus and Neptune not having been discovered--it might be a month before or behind the calculated time. Clairaut made this announcement on November 14, 1758. Astronomers were now intently on the look-out for the comet, and night after night the sky was swept by telescopes in search of the expected visitor, which for upwards of seventy years had been pursuing its solitary path invisible to mortal eyes. But the mental vision of the mathematician did not fail to follow this celestial object, which was now announced as being on the confines of our system. The comet was first observed on December 25, 1758, it soon became conspicuous in the heavens, and reached perihelion on March 12, 1759, a month before the time assigned to it by Clairaut but within the limit of error allowed for unknown influences. Halley's comet returned again in 1835, and may be expected about the year 1911. The periodic appearance of this comet has been traced back to the year 1305. The celebrated comet of 1680 was noted as having been the one which afforded Newton an opportunity of making observations which led to his discovery that comets describe orbits round the Sun in conformity with the different sections of a cone. The comet of 1811 was observed for many weeks in the northern heavens as a brilliant object with a beautiful fan-shaped tail; it completes a revolution of its orbit in about 3,000 years. The comet of 1843 was also a splendid object. It possessed a tail 200 million miles in length, and approached within 32,000 miles of the Sun. The heat to which it was exposed was sufficient to volatilize the most infusible substances known to exist. Donati's comet of 1858 will be long remembered as one of the most impressive of celestial spectacles: its tail extended over an area of forty degrees, and enveloped the star Arcturus, which could be seen shining through it with undiminished brilliancy. Its period is estimated to be 2,100 years. A great comet appeared in 1861, through the tail of which the Earth passed without any perceptible effect having resulted. No remarkable comets have appeared during recent years. In 1880, 1881, and 1882, several were observed, and that of 1881 was the first successfully photographed. Comets consist of cosmical matter which exists in a condition of extreme tenuity, and especially so in the coma and tail. Sir John Herschel described them as almost spiritual in texture, and small stars have been seen shining through their densest parts without any perceptible diminution of their light. The nucleus is believed to be composed of a congeries of meteoric fragments, and these, when exposed to the Sun's heat, throw off luminous nebulous particles that are swept by some repulsive force into space and form the appendage known as the tail. Comets may be regarded as celestial objects that are perfectly innocuous. Neither fear nor dread need be apprehended from their visits; they come to please and instruct, not to injure or destroy. Milton does not fail to introduce into his poem several allusions to comets, and in doing so expresses the ideas and sentiments which in his time were associated with those objects. In describing the hostile meeting between Satan and Death before the Gates of Hell, he writes: On the other side, Incensed with indignation, Satan stood Unterrified, and like a comet burned, That fires the length of Ophiuchus huge In the arctic sky, and from his horrid hair Shakes pestilence and war.--ii. 706-11. This passage is eminently descriptive of the appearance of a great comet, and the occasion on which it is introduced adds to the intensity of the lurid imaginings and feelings of terror and dismay with which these objects have always been regarded. The comparison of the enraged Prince of Hell with one of those mysterious and fiery looking visitors to our skies was a grand conception of the poet's, and one worthy of the mighty combatant. Ophiuchus (the Serpent-bearer) is a large constellation which occupies a rather barren region of the heavens to the south of Hercules. It has a length of about forty degrees, and is represented by the figure of a man bearing a serpent in both hands. It is not easy to imagine why Milton should have assigned the comet to this uninteresting constellation; he may possibly have seen one in this part of the sky, or his poetical ear may have perceived that the expression 'Ophiuchus huge,' which has about it a ponderous rhythm, was well adapted for the poetic description of a comet. The only other allusion in the poem to a comet is near its conclusion, when the Cherubim descend to take possession of the Garden, prior to the removal of Adam and Eve-- High in front advanced, The brandished sword of God before them blazed, Fierce as a comet; which with torrid heat, And vapour as the Lybian air adust Began to parch that temperate clime.--xii. 632-36. FALLING STARS On any clear night an observer can, by attentively watching the heavens, perceive a few of those objects which become visible for a moment as a streak of light and then vanish. They are the result of the combustion of small meteoric masses having a celestial origin, and travelling with cosmical velocity, and which, in their headlong flight, become so heated by contact with the Earth's atmosphere that they are converted into glowing vapour. This vapour when it cools condenses into fine powder or dust, and gradually descends upon the Earth's surface, where it can be detected. Shooting stars become visible at a height varying between twenty and one hundred and thirty miles, and their average velocity has been estimated at about thirty miles a second. Though casual falling stars can be seen at all times in every part of the heavens, yet there are certain periods at which they appear in large numbers, and have been observed to radiate from certain well-defined parts of the sky. When the radiant point is overhead, the falling stars spread out and resemble a parachute of fire; but when it is below the horizon, the stars ascend upwards like rockets into the sky. The radiant point is fixed among the stars, so that at the commencement of a shower it may be overhead, and before the termination of the display it may have travelled below the horizon. The radiant is usually named after the constellation in which it is observed. The November meteors are called Leonids, because they radiate from a point in the constellation Leo; those in Taurus are called Taurids; in Perseus, Perseids; in Lyra, Lyraïds; and in Andromeda, Andromedes, because their radiant points are situated in those constellations. The falling stars that have attracted most attention are those which appear on or about November 13. Every year at this period they can be seen in greater or less numbers, and on referring to numerous past records it has been ascertained that a magnificent display of those objects occurs every thirty-three years. The earliest historical allusion to this meteoric shower is by Theophanes, who wrote that in the year 472 A.D. the sky at Constantinople appeared to be on fire with falling stars. In the year 902 A.D. another remarkable display took place, and from that time until 1833 twelve conspicuous displays are recorded as having occurred at recurring intervals of thirty-three years. The grandest display of this kind that was ever witnessed occurred in 1833. It was visible over nearly the whole of the American continent, and, having commenced at midnight, lasted for four or five hours. The falling stars were so numerous that they appeared to rain upon the Earth, and caused the utmost consternation and terror among those who witnessed the phenomenon, many persons having imagined that the end of the world was at hand. The regular recurrence of these meteoric displays has been satisfactorily explained by the assumption that round the Sun there travels in an elliptical orbit with planetary velocity a vast shoal of meteoric bodies some millions of miles in length and several hundred thousand miles in breadth. The nearest point of their orbit to the Sun coincides with the Earth's orbit, and the most distant part extends beyond the orbit of Uranus. These bodies accomplish a circuit of their orbit in 33-1/4 years. The Earth in her annual revolution intersects the path of the meteors, and when this occurs some falling stars can always be seen; but when the intersection happens at the time the shoal is passing, then there results a grand meteoric display. Numerous other meteoric swarms travel in orbital paths round the Sun. Milton, in his poem, alludes to falling stars upon two occasions. In describing the fall of Mulciber from Heaven he says:-- from morn To noon he fell, from noon to dewy eve, A summer's day; and with the setting sun Dropt from the zenith like a falling star, On Lemnos the Ægaean isle.--i. 742-46. The rapid flight of the archangel Uriel from the Sun to the Earth is described in the following lines:-- Thither came Uriel, gliding through the even On a sunbeam, swift as a shooting star In autumn thwarts the night, when vapours fired Impress the air, and shows the mariner From what point of his compass to beware Impetuous winds.--iv. 555-60. Milton mentions the season of the year in which those stars are most frequently seen, and refers to an ancient belief by which they were regarded as the precursors of stormy weather. A translation from Virgil contains a similar allusion to them-- Oft shalt thou see ere brooding storms arise, Star after star glide headlong down the skies. The standard borne by the Cherub Azazel is described as having-- Shone like a meteor streaming to the wind.--i. 537. CHAPTER IX MILTON'S IMAGINATIVE AND DESCRIPTIVE ASTRONOMY The theme chosen by Milton for his great epic, viz. the Fall of Man and his expulsion from Paradise--perhaps the most momentous incident in the history of the human race--was one worthy of the genius of a great poet and in the treatment of which Milton has been sublimely successful. The newly created Earth; the untainted loveliness of the Paradise in which our first parents dwelt during their innocence; their temptation; their fall and removal from the happy garden, furnished a theme which afforded him an opportunity for the display of his unrivalled poetic genius. Though the chief interest in the poem is centred in the Garden of Eden and its occupants, yet Milton was enabled, by the comprehensive manner in which he treated his subject, to introduce into his work a cosmology which embraced not only the system to which our globe belongs, but the entire starry heavens by which we are surrounded. But the universality of his genius did not rest here. In the utterance of his sacred song he soared beyond the starry sphere, describing himself as wrapt above the pole--the starry pole--up to the Empyrean, or Heaven of Heavens, the ineffable abode of the Deity and the blissful habitation of angelic beings who, in adoration and worship, surround the throne of the Most High. Descending to that nether world at the opposite pole of the universe, in the lowest depth of Chaos, the place prepared by Eternal Justice for the rebellious, he unfolds to our horror-stricken gaze the terrors of this infernal region; its fiery deluge of ever-burning sulphur; its 'regions of sorrow;' its 'doleful shades'--the unhappy abode of fallen angels who 'in floods and whirlwinds of tempestuous fire,' alternated by exposure to unendurable cold and icy torment, experience the direful consequences of their apostacy. Milton's 'Paradise Lost' may be regarded as the loftiest intellectual effort in the whole range of literature. In it we find all that was known of science, philosophy, and theology. The theme, founded upon a Bible narrative, itself written under divine inspiration, embraces the entire system of Christian doctrine as revealed in the Scriptures, and many of the noblest passages in the sacred volume are introduced into the poem expressed in the lofty utterance of flowing and harmonious verse. The choicest classical writings of Greek and Latin authors; the mythological and traditional beliefs of ancient nations; historical incidents of valour and renown and all that was great and good in the annals of mankind were laid under contribution by Milton in the illustration and embellishment of his poem. In order to obtain a basis or foundation upon which to construct his great epic, Milton found it necessary to localise the regions of space in which the principal events mentioned in his poem are described as having occurred. The unfathomable abyss of space may be regarded as an uncircumscribed sphere boundless on all sides round, and so far as we can comprehend of infinite extent. This sphere Milton divided into two hemispheres--an upper and a lower. The upper was called Heaven, or the Empyrean--a glorified region of boundless dimensions; the lower hemisphere embraced Chaos--a dark, fathomless abyss in which the elements of matter existed in a state of perpetual tumult and wild uproar. The occurrence of a rebellion in Heaven necessitated a further division of the sphere. The revolt, headed by Lucifer, one of the highest archangels, afterwards known as Satan, who drew after him a third of the angelic host, contested the supremacy of Heaven with Michael and the angels which kept their loyalty. After two days' battle-- Him the Almighty Power Hurled headlong flaming from the ethereal sky, With hideous ruin and combustion, down To bottomless perdition; there to dwell In adamantine chains and penal fire.--i. 44-48. Having been precipitated over the crystal wall of Heaven into the deep abyss, Milton says:-- Nine days they fell; confounded Chaos roared, And felt tenfold confusion in their fall Through his wild Anarchy; so huge a rout Encumbered him with ruin. Hell at last, Yawning, received them whole, and on them closed.--vi. 871-75. Hell, Milton locates in the lowest depth of Chaos, a region cut off from the body of Chaos, through which the expelled angels fell for nine days before reaching their destined habitation. There are now three divisions of space: HEAVEN, CHAOS, and HELL. But a fourth is required to enable Milton to complete his scheme for the delineation of his poem. The Earth and starry universe were not as yet called into existence, but after the overthrow of the rebellious angels, God, by circumscribing a portion of Chaos situated immediately underneath the Empyrean, created the Mundane Universe, or the 'Heavens and the Earth.'[15] This new universe He reclaimed from Chaos, and with the embryo elements of matter-- His dark materials to create new worlds.--ii. 916. He formed the Earth and all the countless shining orbs visible overhead, and the myriads more which the telescope reveals, scattered in apparently endless profusion over the circular immensity of space. It is this new universe--the Earth and Starry Heavens--that claims our chief attention, and in the delineation of Milton's imaginative and descriptive powers it is to this latest manifestation of Divine wisdom and might that our remarks shall principally apply. After the expulsion of the rebel angels from Heaven, God sent His Son, the Messiah to create the new universe--a work of omnipotence described by Milton in a manner worthy of so magnificent a display of almighty power-- Meanwhile the Son On his great expedition now appeared, Girt with omnipotence, with radiance crowned Of majesty divine: sapience and love Immense; and all his Father in Him shone. About his chariot numberless were poured Cherub and Seraph, Potentates and Thrones, And Virtues, winged Spirits, and chariots winged From the armoury of God, where stand of old Myriads, between two brazen mountains lodged Against a solemn day, harnessed at hand, Celestial equipage; and now came forth Spontaneous, for within them Spirit lived, Attendant on their Lord. Heaven opened wide Her ever-during gates, harmonious sound! On golden hinges moving, to let forth The King of Glory, in his powerful Word And Spirit, coming to create new worlds. On Heavenly ground they stood, and from the shore They viewed the vast immeasurable abyss Outrageous as a sea, dark, wasteful, wild, Up from the bottom turned by furious winds And surging waves, as mountains to assault Heaven's highth, and with the centre mix the pole. 'Silence, ye troubled Waves, and thou Deep, peace!' Said then the omnific Word: 'your discord end!' Nor stayed; but on the wings of Cherubim Uplifted, in paternal glory rode Far into Chaos, and the World unborn; For Chaos heard his voice. Him all his train Followed in bright procession, to behold Creation, and the wonders of his might. Then stayed the fervid wheels, and in his hand He took the golden compasses, prepared In God's eternal store, to circumscribe This Universe, and all created things. One foot he centred, and the other turned Round through the vast profundity obscure; And said, 'Thus far extend, thus far thy bounds; This be thy just circumference, O World!' Thus God the Heaven created, thus the Earth, Matter unformed and void. Darkness profound Covered the abyss; but on the watery calm His brooding wings the Spirit of God outspread, And vital virtue infused, and vital warmth, Throughout the fluid mass; but downward purged The black, tartareous, cold, infernal dregs, Adverse to life; then founded, then conglobed Like things to like; the rest to several place Disparted, and between spun out the Air; And Earth self balanced on her centre hung.--vii. 192-242. Milton begins his narrative of the Creation by describing the progress of the Deity on His great expedition, accompanied by hosts of angels and surrounded with all the solemn pomp and splendour of Heaven. The brilliant throng having passed through Heaven's gates, which opened wide their portals, they beheld in front of them the dark abyss of Chaos--a tempest-tossed sea of warring elements upturned in wild confusion. At God's instant command silence and peace reigned over the deep, and tranquil calm succeeded noisy discord. Then on the wings of Cherubim He rode far into Chaos, and with His golden compasses decreed the dimensions of the universe by circumscribing the vast vacuity of space. Into the elements which hasted to their several places, His Spirit infused vital warmth and caused the formless mass of matter to assume the figure of a sphere, and thus the Earth poised on her axis unsupported, and in darkness shrouded hung suspended in space. The placing of the golden compasses in the hands of the Creator, with which He measured out the heavens, is a noble conception on the part of Milton, and one most appropriate, since the construction of the universe is based upon the principles of geometrical science. 'Let there be Light!' said God; and forthwith Light Ethereal, first of things, quintessence pure, Sprung from the Deep; and from her native east To journey through the aëry gloom began, Sphered in a radiant cloud; for yet the Sun Was not; she in a cloudy tabernacle Sojourned the while. God saw the light was good; And light from darkness by the hemisphere Divided; light the day, and darkness night He named. Thus was the first day even and morn: Nor passed uncelebrated, nor unsung By the celestial quires, when orient light Exhaling first from darkness they beheld; Birthday of Heaven and Earth; with joy and shout The hollow universal orb they filled, And touched their golden harps, and hymning praised God and his works: Creator Him they sung, Both when first evening was, and when first morn.--vii. 243-60. The appearance of Light, which sprung into existence at the fiat of the Creator, was the next great event witnessed by beholding angels--birthday of Heaven and Earth, first morning and first evening, which the celestial choirs celebrated with praise and shouts of joy. The creation of the firmament was the great work of the second day. Again God said, 'Let there be firmament Amid the waters, and let it divide The waters from the waters!' And God made The firmament, expanse of liquid, pure, Transparent, elemental air, diffused In circuit to the uttermost convex Of this great round--partition firm and sure, The waters underneath from those above Dividing; for as the Earth, so He the World Built on circumfluous waters calm, in wide Crystalline ocean, and the loud misrule Of Chaos far removed, lest fierce extremes Contiguous might distemper the whole frame: And Heaven he named the Firmament. So even And morning chorus sung the second day.--vii. 261-275. After describing the gathering of the waters off the face of the globe into seas, causing the dry land to appear, which at the word of God became clothed with vegetation, rendering the Earth a habitable abode, Milton proceeds to describe the creation of the heavenly bodies-- Again the Almighty spake: 'Let there be Lights High in the expanse of Heaven, to divide The day from night; and let them be for signs, For seasons, and for days, and circling years; And let them be for lights, as I ordain Their office in the firmament of Heaven, To give light on the Earth!' and it was so. And God made two great Lights, great for their use To Man, the greater to have rule by day, The less by night, altern; and made the Stars, And set them in the firmament of Heaven To illuminate the Earth, and rule the day In their vicissitude, and rule the night, And light from darkness to divide. God saw, Surveying his great work, that it was good: For, of celestial bodies, first, the Sun, A mighty sphere He framed, unlightsome first, Though of ethereal mould; then formed the Moon Globose, and every magnitude of Stars, And sowed with stars the Heaven thick as a field. Of light by far the greater part he took, Transplanted from her cloudy shrine, and placed In the Sun's orb, made porous to receive And drink the liquid light; firm to retain Her gathered beams, great palace now of Light. Hither, as to their fountain, other stars Repairing, in their golden urns draw light, And hence the morning planet gilds her horns; By tincture or reflection they augment Their small peculiar, though, from human sight So far remote, with diminution seen. First in his east the glorious lamp was seen, Regent of day, and all the horizon round Invested with bright rays, jocund to run His longitude through Heaven's high road; the grey Dawn, and the Pleiades before him danced, Shedding sweet influence. Less bright the Moon, But opposite in levelled west was set His mirror, with full face borrowing her light From him; for other light she needed none In that aspect, and still that distance keeps Till night; then in the east her turn she shines, Revolved on Heaven's great axle, and her reign With thousand lesser lights dividual holds, With thousand thousand stars that then appeared Spangling the hemisphere. Then first adorned With their bright luminaries, that set and rose, Glad evening and glad morn crowned the fourth day.--vii. 339-86. The first creation was Light, and Milton, according to Scriptural testimony, ascribes its origin to the bidding of the Creator. 'God said, Let there be light; and there was light!' The Sun he describes as a mighty sphere, but at first non-luminous. There was light, but no sun. The reason usually given in explanation of this phenomenon is, that the heavenly bodies were created at the same time as the Earth, but were rendered invisible by a canopy of vapour and cloud which enveloped the newly-formed globe; and that afterwards, when it dispersed, they appeared in the firmament, shining in all their pristine splendour. Milton does not, however, adhere to this view of things, but says that light for the first three days sojourned in a cloudy shrine or tabernacle, and was afterwards transplanted in the Sun, which became a great palace of light. He expresses himself in a somewhat similar manner in Book III., which opens with an address to Light--one of the most beautiful passages in the poem, in which he alludes to his blindness when expressing his thoughts and sentiments with regard to this ethereal medium, which conveys to us the pleasurable sensation of vision-- Hail, holy Light! offspring of Heaven first-born! Or of the Eternal co-eternal beam, May I express thee unblamed? since God is light, And never but in unapproached light Dwelt from eternity--dwelt then in thee, Bright effluence of bright essence increate! Or hear'st thou rather, pure Ethereal stream, Whose fountain who shall tell? Before the Sun, Before the Heavens thou wert, and at the voice Of God, as with a mantle, didst invest The rising world of waters dark and deep, Won from the void and formless Infinite.--iii. 1-12. The Sun having become a lucent orb, Milton poetically describes how the planets repair to him as to a fountain, and in their golden urns draw light; and how the morning planet Venus gilds her horns illumined by his rays. The poet associates joyous ideas with the new-born universe. The Sun, now the glorious regent of day, begins his journey in the east, lighting up the horizon with his beams; whilst before him danced the grey dawn, and the Pleiades shedding sweet influences. There existed an ancient belief that the Earth was created in the spring, and in April the Sun is in the zodiacal constellation Taurus, in which are also situated the Pleiades; they rise a little before the orb, and precede him in his path through the heavens. The stars of this group have always been regarded with a peculiar sacredness, and their rays, mingling with those of the Sun, were believed to shed sweet influences upon the Earth. The Moon, less bright, with borrowed light, in her turn shines in the east, and, with the thousand thousand luminaries that spangle the firmament, reigns over the night. We learn in Book III. that the archangel Uriel, who was beguiled by Satan, witnessed the Creation, and described how the heavenly bodies were brought into existence, he having perceived what we should call the gaseous elements of matter rolled into whorls and vortices which became condensed into suns and systems of worlds. This mighty angel says:-- I saw when, at his word the formless mass, This World's material mould, came to a heap: Confusion heard his voice, and wild Uproar Stood ruled, stood vast Infinitude confined; Till at his second bidding darkness fled, Light shone, and order from disorder sprung. Swift to their several quarters hasted then The cumbrous elements, Earth, Flood, Air, Fire; And this ethereal quintessence of Heaven Flew upward, spirited with various forms, That rolled orbicular, and turned to stars Numberless, as thou seest, and how they move; Each had his place appointed, each his course; The rest in circuit walls this Universe.--iii. 708-21. In his sublime description of the Creation Milton has adhered with marked fidelity to the Mosaic version, as narrated in the first two chapters of Genesis, when God, by specific acts in certain stated periods of time, created the visible universe and all that it contains. The successive acts of creation are described in words almost identical with those of Scripture, embellished and adorned with all the wealth of expression which our language is capable of affording. The several scenes presented to the imagination, and witnessed by hosts of admiring angels as each portion of the magnificent work was accomplished, are full of a grandeur and majesty worthy of the loftiest conceivable effort of Divine power and might. The return of the Creator after the completion of His great work is described by Milton in a manner worthy of the progress of Deity through the celestial regions. The whole creation rang with jubilant delight, and the bright throng which witnessed the wonders of His might followed Him with acclamation, ascending by the glorified path of the Milky Way up to His high abode--the Heaven of Heavens-- Here finished He, and all that He had made Viewed, and behold! all was entirely good. So even and morn accomplished the sixth day: Yet not till the Creator from his work Desisting, though unwearied, up returned, Up to the Heaven of Heavens, His high abode, Thence to behold this new created World, The addition of his empire, how it showed In prospect from His throne, how good, how fair, Answering his great idea. Up He rode, Followed with acclamation, and the sound Symphonious of ten thousand harps, that tuned Angelic harmonies: The Earth, the Air Resounded (thou remember'st, for thou heard'st) The Heavens and all the constellations rung, The planets in their stations listening stood, While the bright pomp ascended jubilant. 'Open ye everlasting gates!' they sung; 'Open ye Heavens! your living doors; let in The great Creator, from his work returned Magnificent, his six days' work, a World; Open, and henceforth oft; for God will deign To visit oft the dwellings of just men, Delighted; and with frequent intercourse Thither will send his winged messengers On errands of supernal grace.' So sung The glorious train ascending: He through Heaven, That opened wide her blazing portals, led To God's eternal house direct the way-- A broad and ample road, whose dust is gold, And pavement stars, as stars to thee appear Seen in the Galaxy, that Milky Way Which nightly as a circling zone thou seest Powdered with stars.--vii. 548-81. Milton, throughout his description of the Creation, sustains with lofty eloquence his sublime conception of this latest display of almighty power; and invests with becoming majesty all the acts of the Creator, who, when He finished His great work, saw that all was entirely good. Shortly after the creation of the new universe, Satan, having escaped from Hell, plunged into the abyss of Chaos, and, after a long and arduous journey upwards, in which he had to fight his way through the surging elements that raged around him like a tempestuous sea, he reached the upper confines of this region where less confusion prevailed, and where a glimmering dawn of light penetrated its darkness and gloom, indicating that the limit of the empire of Chaos and ancient Night had been reached by the adventurous fiend. Pursuing his way with greater ease, he leisurely beholds the sight which is opening to his eyes--a sight rendered more glorious by his long sojourn in darkness. He sees:-- Far off the empyreal Heaven, extended wide In circuit, undetermined square or round, With opal towers and battlements adorned Of living sapphire, once his native seat, And, fast by, hanging in a golden chain, This pendent World, in bigness as a star Of smallest magnitude close by the Moon.--ii. 1047-53. He gazes upon his native Heaven where once he dwelt, and observes the pendent world in quest of which he journeyed hither--hung by a golden chain from the Empyrean and no larger than a star of the smallest magnitude when close by the Moon. In this passage Milton does not allude to the Earth, which was invisible, but to the entire starry heavens--the newly created universe reclaimed from Chaos, which, when contrasted with the Empyrean, appeared in size no larger than the minutest star when compared with the full moon. Pursuing his journey, the new universe as it is approached expands into a globe of vast dimensions; its convex surface--round which the chaotic elements in stormy aspect lowered--seemed a boundless continent, dark, desolate, and starless, except on the side next to the wall of Heaven, which though far-distant afforded it some illumination by its reflected light. Satan, having alighted on this convex shell which enclosed the universe, wandered long over its bleak and dismal surface, until his attention was attracted by a gleam of light which appeared through an opening at its zenith right underneath the Empyrean. Thither he directed his steps, and perceived a structure resembling a staircase, or ladder, which formed the only means of communication between Heaven and the new creation, and upon which angels descended and ascended-- Far distant he descries, Ascending by degrees magnificent Up to the wall of Heaven, a structure high; At top whereof, but far more rich, appeared The work as of a kingly palace gate, With frontispiece of diamond and gold Embellished; thick with sparkling orient gems The portal shone, inimitable on Earth By model, or by shading pencil drawn. The stairs were such as whereon Jacob saw Angels ascending and descending, bands Of Guardians bright, when he from Esau fled To Padan Aram, in the field of Luz Dreaming by night under the open sky, And waking cried, '_This is the gate of Heaven._'--iii. 501-15. Sometimes this mysterious structure was drawn up to Heaven and invisible. At the time that Satan reached the opening, the stairs were lowered, and standing at their base he looked down with wonder upon the entire starry universe-- Such wonder seized, though after Heaven seen, The Spirit malign, but much more envy seized, At sight of all this World beheld so fair, Round he surveys (and well might, where he stood So high above the circling canopy Of night's extended shade) from eastern point Of Libra to the fleecy star that bears Andromeda far off Atlantic seas Beyond the horizon; then from pole to pole He views in breadth, and without longer pause, Down right into the World's first region throws His flight precipitant, and winds with ease Through the pure marble air his oblique way Amongst innumerable stars, that shone Stars distant, but nigh hand seemed other worlds, Or other worlds they seemed, or happy isles, Like those Hesperian Gardens famed of old, Fortunate fields, and groves, and flowery vales; Thrice happy isles! But who dwelt happy there He staid not to inquire: above them all The golden Sun, in splendour likest Heaven Allured his eye: thither his course he bends Through the calm firmament, (but up or down By centre or eccentric hard to tell Or longitude) where the great luminary, Aloof the vulgar constellations thick, That from his lordly eye keep distance due, Dispenses light from far. They, as they move Their starry dance in numbers that compute Days, months, and years, towards his all-cheering lamp Turn swift their various motions, or are turned By his magnetic beam, that gently warms The Universe, and to each inward part With gentle penetration, though unseen, Shoots invisible virtue even to the Deep; So wondrously was set his station bright.--iii. 552-87. The Ptolemaic cosmology having been adopted by Milton in the elaboration of his poem, he describes the universe in conformity with the doctrines associated with this form of astronomical belief. To each of the first seven spheres which revolved round the steadfast Earth there was attached a heavenly body; the eighth sphere embraced all the fixed stars, a countless multitude; the ninth the crystalline; and enclosing all the other spheres as if in a shell was the tenth sphere, or Primum Mobile, which in its diurnal revolution carried round with it all the other spheres. The nine inner spheres were transparent, but the tenth was an opaque solid shell-like structure, which enclosed the new universe and constituted the boundary between it and Chaos underneath and the Empyrean above. It was on the surface of this sphere that Satan wandered until he discovered the opening at its zenith, where, by means of a staircase or ladder, communication was maintained with the Empyrean. Standing on the lower steps of this structure he paused for a moment to look down into the glorious universe which lay beneath him-- another Heaven From Heaven-gate not far, founded in view On the clear hyaline the glassy sea.--vii. 617-19. He beholds it in all its dimensions, from pole to pole, and longitudinally from Libra to Aries, then without hesitation precipitates himself down into the world's first region, and winds his way with ease among the fixed stars. Around him he sees innumerable shining worlds, sparkling and glittering in endless profusion over the circumscribed immensity of space--mighty constellations that shone from afar; clustering aggregations of stars; floating islands of light; twinkling systems rising out of depths still more profound, and a zone luminous with the light of myriads of lucid orbs verging on the confines of the universe. All these worlds the fiend passed unheeded, nor stayed he to inquire who dwelt happy there. In splendour above them all the Sun attracted his attention and, directing his course towards the great luminary of our system, he alights on the surface of the orb. Milton now makes a digression in order to describe what Satan observed in the Sun after having landed there. The poet embraces an opportunity for exercising his imaginative and descriptive powers by giving an ideal description of what, judging from the appearance of the orb, might be the natural condition of things existing on his surface-- There lands the Fiend, a spot like which perhaps Astronomer in the Sun's lucent orb Through his glazed optic tube, yet never saw. The place he found beyond expression bright, Compared with aught on Earth, metal or stone; Not all parts like, but all alike informed With radiant light, as glowing iron with fire; If metal, part seemed gold, part silver clear; If stone, carbuncle most or chrysolite, Ruby or topaz, to the twelve that shone In Aaron's breastplate, and a stone besides, Imagined rather oft than elsewhere seen; That stone, or like to that, which here below Philosophers in vain so long have sought, In vain, though by their powerful art they bind Volatile Hermes, and call up unbound In various shapes old Proteus from the sea, Drained through a limbec to his native form. What wonder then if fields and regions here Breathe forth elixir pure, and rivers run Potable gold, when, with one virtuous touch, The arch-chemic Sun, so far from us remote, Produces, with terrestrial humour mixed, Here in the dark so many precious things Of colour glorious, and effect so rare? Here matter new to gaze the Devil met Undazzled; far and wide his eye commands; For sight no obstacle found here, nor shade, But all sunshine, as when his beams at noon Culminate from the equator, as they now Shot upward still direct, whence no way round Shadow from body opaque can fall; and the air, Nowhere so clear sharpened his visual ray To objects distant far, whereby he soon Saw within here a glorious Angel stand.--iii. 588-622. The physical structure of the interior of the Sun is unknown; all that we see of the orb is the photosphere--the dazzling luminous envelope which indicates to the eye the boundary of the solar disc, and which is the source of light and heat. Milton, in his imaginative and beautifully poetical description of the Sun, is not more fanciful in his conception of the nature of the refulgent orb than a renowned astronomer (Sir William Herschel) who writes in the following strain: 'A cool, dark, solid globe, its surface diversified with mountains and valleys, clothed in luxuriant vegetation and richly stored with inhabitants, protected by a heavy cloud-canopy from the intolerable glare of the upper luminous region, where the dazzling coruscations of a solar aurora some thousands of miles in depth evolved the stores of light and heat which vivify our world.' Satan, disguised as a cherub, makes himself known to Uriel, Regent of the Sun. The upright Seraph in response to his request directs him to the Earth, the abode of Man-- Look downward on that Globe, whose hither side With light from hence, though but reflected, shines, That place is Earth, the seat of Man; that light His day, which else, as the other hemisphere, Night would invade; but there neighbouring Moon (So call that opposite fair star) her aid Timely interposes, and her monthly round Still ending, still renewing, through mid-Heaven, With borrowed light her countenance triform Hence fills and empties, to enlighten the Earth, And in her pale dominion checks the night.--iii. 722-32. It would be impossible not to feel impressed with the accuracy and comprehensiveness of Milton's astronomical knowledge; and how he has united in charming poetic expression the dry details of science with the divine inspiration of the heavenly muse. The distinctive appearances of the Sun, Moon, planets, and stars; their functional importance as regards this terrestrial sphere; the splendour and lustre peculiar to each; and the glory displayed in the entire created heavens, are portrayed with a skill indicative of a masterly knowledge of the science of astronomy. Descend from Heaven, Urania, by that name If rightly thou art called, whose voice divine Following, above the Olympian hill I soar, Above the flight of Pegasean wing! The meaning, not the name, I call; for thou Nor of the Muses nine, nor on the top Of old Olympus dwell'st; but heavenly-born, Before the hills appeared or fountain flowed, Thou with Eternal Wisdom didst converse, Wisdom thy sister, and with her didst play In presence of the Almighty Father, pleased With thy celestial song. Up led by thee, Into the Heaven of Heavens I have presumed, An earthly guest, and drawn empyreal air, Thy tempering. With like safety guided down, Return me to my native element; Lest, from this flying steed unreined, (as once Belerophon, though from a lower clime) Dismounted, on the Aleian field I fall, Erroneous there to wander, and forlorn. Half yet remains unsung, but narrower bound Within the visible diurnal sphere. Standing on Earth, not rapt above the pole, More safe I sing with mortal voice, unchanged To hoarse or mute, though fallen on evil days, On evil days though fallen, and evil tongues, In darkness, and with dangers compassed round, And solitude; yet not alone, while thou Visit'st my slumbers nightly, or when morn Purples the east. Still govern thou my song, Urania, and fit audience find though few.--vii. 1-32. The Muses were Greek mythological divinities who possessed the power of inspiring song, and were the patrons of poets and musicians. According to Hesiod they were nine in number and presided over the arts. Urania was the Goddess of Astronomy, and Calliope the Goddess of Epic Poetry. They are described as the daughters of Zeus, and Homer alludes to them as the goddesses of song who dwelt on the summit of Mount Olympus. They were the companions of Apollo, and accompanied with song his playing on the lyre at the banquets of the Immortals. Milton does not invoke the mythological goddess, but Urania the Heavenly Muse, whose aid he also implores at the commencement of his poem prior to his flight above the Aonian Mount. Under her divine guidance he ascended to the Heaven of Heavens and breathed empyreal air, her tempering; in like manner he requests her to lead him down to his native element lest he should meet with a fate similar to what befell Bellerophon. Half his task he has completed, the other half, confined to narrower bounds within the visible diurnal sphere, remains unsung, and in its fulfilment he still implores his celestial patroness to govern his song. The natural phenomena which occur as a consequence of the motions of the heavenly bodies and the diurnal rotation of the Earth on her axis, are accompanied by agreeable alternations in the aspect of nature with which every one is familiar. The rosy footsteps of morn; the solar splendour of noonday; the fading hues of even; and night with her jewelled courts and streams of molten stars, have been sung with rapturous admiration by poets of every nation and in every age. They, as ardent lovers of nature, have described in choicest language the pleasing vicissitudes brought about by the real and apparent motions of the celestial orbs. In this respect Milton is unsurpassed by any poet in ancient or in modern times. The occasions on which he describes the heavenly bodies, or alludes to them in association with other phenomena, testify to the felicity of his thoughts and to the greatness of his poetic genius. Surely no poet has ever given us a lovelier description of evening, or has added more to its exquisite beauty by his allusion to the celestial orbs, than Milton when he describes the first evening in Paradise-- Now came still Evening on, and Twilight gray Had in her sober livery all things clad; Silence accompanied; for beast and bird, They to their grassy couch, these to their nests Were slunk, all but the wakeful nightingale. She all night long her amorous descant sung; Silence was pleased. Now glowed the firmament With living sapphires: Hesperus that led The starry host, rode brightest, till the Moon, Rising in clouded majesty, at length Apparent queen, unveiled her peerless light, And o'er the dark her silver mantle threw.--iv. 598-609. In the avowal of her conjugal love, Eve, with charming expression, associates the orbs of the firmament with the delightful appearances of nature which presented themselves to her observation after she awoke to the consciousness of intelligent existence. Sweet is the breath of Morn, her rising sweet, With charm of earliest birds: pleasant the Sun, When first on this delightful land he spreads His orient beams, on herb, tree, fruit, and flower, Glistering with dew; fragrant the fertile Earth After soft showers; and sweet the coming on Of grateful Evening mild; then silent Night, With this her solemn bird, and this fair Moon, And these the gems of Heaven, her starry train: But neither breath of Morn, when she ascends With charm of earliest birds; nor rising Sun On this delightful land; nor herb, fruit, flower, Glistering with dew; nor fragrance after showers; Nor grateful Evening mild; nor silent Night, With this her solemn bird; nor walk by Moon, Or glittering star-light, without thee is sweet. But wherefore all night long shine these? for whom This glorious sight, when sleep hath shut all eyes?--iv. 641-58. One of the charms of Milton's verse is the devoutly poetical sentiment which pervades it. His thoughts, though serious, are not austere or gloomy, and it is in his loftiest musings that his reverence becomes most apparent. This feeling is conspicuous in Adam's reply to the inquiry addressed to him by Eve-- Daughter of God and Man, accomplished Eve, These have their course to finish round the Earth By morrow evening, and from land to land In order, though to nations yet unborn, Ministering light prepared, they set and rise; Lest total Darkness should by night regain Her old possession, and extinguish life In Nature and all things; which these soft fires Not only enlighten, but with kindly heat Of various influence foment and warm, Temper or nourish, or in part shed down Their stellar virtue on all kinds that grow On Earth, made hereby apter to receive Perfection from the Sun's more potent ray. These, then, though unbeheld in deep of night, Shine not in vain; nor think, though men were none, That Heaven would want spectators, God want praise: Millions of spiritual creatures walk the Earth Unseen, both when we wake, and when we sleep: All these with ceaseless praise his works behold Both day and night. How often from the steep Of echoing hill or thicket, have we heard Celestial voices to the midnight air, Sole, or responsive each to other's note Singing their Great Creator! Oft in bands While they keep watch, or nightly rounding walk, With heavenly touch of instrumental sounds In full harmonic number joined, their songs Divide the night, and lift our thoughts to Heaven.--iv. 660-88. The Morning Hymn of Praise which Adam and Eve offer up in concert to their Maker contains their loftiest thoughts and most reverent sentiments, expressed in melodiously flowing verse. In their solemn invocations they call upon the orbs of the firmament to join in praising and extolling the Creator, and in their devout enthusiasm and adoration address by name those that are most conspicuous. Hesperus, 'fairest of stars,' is asked to praise Him in her sphere. The Sun, great image of his Maker, is told to acknowledge Him his greater, and to sound His praise in his eternal course. The Moon, the fixed stars, and the planets are called upon to resound the praise of the Creator, whose glory is declared in the Heavens-- Fairest of Stars, last in the train of night, If better thou belong not to the dawn, Sure pledge of day, that crown'st the smiling morn With thy bright circlet, praise Him in thy sphere While day arises, that sweet hour of prime. Thou Sun, of this great world both eye and soul, Acknowledge Him thy greater; sound his praise In thy eternal course, both when thou climb'st, And when high noon hast gained, and when thou fall'st. Moon, that now meet'st the orient Sun, now fliest With the fixed stars, fixed in their orb that flies; And ye five other wandering Fires, that move In mystic dance, not without song, resound His praise, who out of darkness called up Light.--v. 166-79. Milton's conception of celestial distances, and of the vast regions of interstellar space, is finely described in the following lines:-- Down thither prone in flight He speeds, and through the vast ethereal sky Sails between worlds and worlds, with steady wing Now on the polar winds; then with quick fan Winnows the buxom air, till, within soar Of towering eagles.--v. 266-71. As in their morning, so in their evening devotions, our first parents never fail to introduce a reference to the celestial orbs as indicating the power and goodness of the Creator, made manifest in the beauty and greatness of His works-- Thus, at their shady lodge arrived, both stood, Both turned, and under open sky adored The God that made both Sky, Air, Earth and Heaven Which they beheld; the Moon's resplendent globe, And starry pole.--iv. 720-24. The numerous extracts contained in this volume impress upon one's mind how largely astronomy enters into the composition of 'Paradise Lost,' and of how much assistance the knowledge of this science was to Milton in the elaboration of his poem. Indeed, it would be hard to imagine how such a work could have been written except by a poet who possessed a proficient and comprehensive knowledge of astronomy. The chief characteristic of Milton's poetry is its sublimity, which is the natural outcome of the magnificence of his conceptions and of his own pure imaginative genius. Among all the fields of literature, science, and philosophy explored by him, he found none more congenial to his tastes, or that afforded his imagination more freedom for its loftiest flights, than the sublimest of sciences--astronomy. Whether we admire most the accuracy of his astronomical knowledge, or the wonderful creations of his poetic fancy, or his beautiful descriptions of the celestial orbs, it is apparent that in this domain of science, as a poet, he stands alone and without a rival. In his choice of the Ptolemaic cosmology Milton adopted a system with which he had been familiar from his youth--the same which his favourite poet Dante introduced into his poem, 'The Divina Commedia,' and which was well adapted for poetic description. The picturesque conception of ten revolving spheres, carrying along with them the orbs assigned to each, which, by their revolution round the steadfast Earth, brought about with unfailing regularity the successive alternation of day and night, and in every twenty-four hours exhibited the pleasing vicissitudes of dawn, of sunshine, of twilight, and of darkness, relieved by the soft effulgence of the nocturnal sky, afforded Milton a favourable basis upon which to construct a cosmical epic. The Copernican theory--with which he was equally conversant, and in the accuracy and truthfulness of which he believed--though less complicated than the Ptolemaic in its details, did not possess the same attractiveness for poetic description that belonged to the older system. According to this theory there is, surrounding us on all sides, a boundless uncircumscribed ocean of space, to which it is impossible to assign any conceivable limit; in every effort to comprehend its dimensions or fathom its depths, the mind recoils upon itself, baffled and discomfited, with a conscious feeling that there can be no nearer approach to the end when end there is none that can be conceived of. Interspersed throughout the regions of this azure vast of space is the stellar universe, which to our comprehension is as infinite as the abyss in which it exists. The solar system, though of magnificent dimensions, is but a unit in the astronomical whole, in which are embraced millions of other similar units--other solar systems, perhaps differing in construction from that of ours, with billions of miles of interstellar space intervening between each; yet so vast are the dimensions of the celestial sphere that those distances when measured upon it sink into utter insignificance. As the receding depths of space are penetrated by powerful telescopes, they are found to be pervaded with stars and starry archipelagoes, distributed in profusion over the circular immensity and extending away into abysmal depths, beyond the reach of visibility by any optical means which we possess. To the universe there is no known end--nowhere in imagination can its boundary be reached! This bewildering conception of the cosmos did not trouble the minds of pre-Copernican thinkers. They regarded the steadfast Earth as the most important body in the universe; nor were the celestial orbs which circled round it believed to be very far distant. Tycho Brahé imagined that the stars were not much more remote than the planets. Epicurus thought the stars were small crystal mirrors in the sky which reflected the solar rays, and the Venerable Bede remarked that they needed assistance from the Sun's light in order to render them more luminous. The adoption of the Ptolemaic system by Milton afforded greater scope for the exercise of his imaginative powers, and enabled him to bring within the mental grasp of his readers a conception of the universe which was not lost in the immensity associated with the Copernican view of things. Besides, it also furnished him with a distinctly defined basis upon which to erect the superstructure of his poem. Above the circumscribed universe was Heaven or the Empyrean; underneath it was Chaos, from which it had been reclaimed, and in the lowest depth of which Milton located the infernal world called Hell. These four regions embraced universal space; and in the elaboration of his great epic Milton relied upon his imaginative genius, his brilliant scholarship, his vast erudition, and the divine inspiration of the heavenly muse. With these, aided by the power and vigour of his intellect, he was enabled to produce a cosmical epic that surpassed all previous efforts of a similar kind, and which still remains without a parallel. One of the distinguishing features of Milton's mind was his wonderful imagination, and in its exercise he beheld those sublime celestial and terrestrial visions on which he reared fabrics of splendour and beauty, described in harmonious numbers with the fervid eloquence and charm of a true poet. An example of the loftiness and originality of his imagination is afforded us in his description of the Creation, the main facts of which he derived from the first two chapters of Genesis, and upon these he elaborated in full and striking detail his magnificent conception of the efforts of Divine Might, which in six successive creative acts called into existence the universe and all that it contains. The rising of the Earth out of Chaos; the creation of light and of the orbs of the firmament; the joyfulness associated with the onward career of the new-born Sun; the subdued illumination of the full-orbed Moon, and the thousand thousand stars that spangle the nocturnal sky--all these afforded Milton a rich field in which his imagination luxuriated, and in the description of which he found subject-matter worthy of his gifted intellect. Milton gives an ampler and more detailed description of the new universe in his narration of Satan's journey through space in search of this world, and brings more vividly before the imagination of his readers the glories of the celestial regions. The fiend, having emerged from the dark abyss of Chaos into a region of light, first beheld the new creation from such a distance that to his view it appeared as a star suspended by a golden chain from the Empyrean. This stellar conception of the poet's harmonised with the views of the Ptolemaists, who believed that the universe was of limited extent, and though its dimensions were vast beyond comprehension, it was, nevertheless, enclosed by the tenth sphere or Primum Mobile. It was on the surface of this sphere that Satan alighted, and over which he wandered, until attracted by a beam of light that appeared through an opening at its zenith, where, by means of a stair or ladder, communication was maintained between the new universe and Heaven above. Hither the undaunted fiend hied, and, standing on the lower steps of this structure, momentarily paused to gaze upon the glorious sight which burst upon his view before directing his flight down into the newly created universe. Milton then describes his progress through the stellar regions, his landing in the Sun and what he saw there, and the termination of his journey when he descends from the ecliptic down to the Earth. In doing so the poet gives a wonderfully beautiful description of the starry universe, of the Sun, Moon, and Earth (Book III. 540-742), enhanced and adorned with his own poetic imaginings derived from fable, philosophy, and science. Milton makes more frequent allusion to the Sun than to any of the other orbs of the firmament. This we should expect: the poet always gives the orb the precedence which is his due, and never fails, when the occasion requires it, to surround him with the 'surpassing glory' which marks his pre-eminence above all other occupants of the sky. The Moon, his consort--peerless in the subdued effulgence of her borrowed light; the beautiful star of evening, Hesperus; the sidereal heavens with their untold glories; the Galaxy, overpowering in the magnificence of its clouds and streams of stars--all these have their beauties and charms mirrored in the pages of this remarkable poem. That the observation of the celestial orbs, their phases, and the varied phenomena which occur as a consequence of their motions, were to Milton an unfailing source of enjoyment and of meditative delight, is evident from the frequency with which he alludes to them. The following lines also testify to this:-- For wonderful indeed are all his works, Pleasant to know, and worthiest to be all Had in remembrance always with delight! But what created mind can comprehend Their number, or the wisdom infinite That brought them forth, but hid their causes deep?--iii. 703-708. It is very pleasant, as Milton says, to sit and rightly spell Of every star that heaven doth show. It is also pleasant to know the astronomy of his 'Paradise Lost,' and to linger over the delightful and harmonious utterances associated with the sublimest of sciences, expressed in the melodious language of England's greatest epic poet. PRINTED BY SPOTTISWOODE AND CO., NEW-STREET SQUARE LONDON FOOTNOTES: [1] Chambers's _Handbook of Astronomy_. [2] Brewster's _Martyrs of Science_. [3] The transit occurred on a Sunday, and the 'business of the highest importance' to which Horrox alludes was his clerical duties. [4] A fresco by the late Mr. Ford Maddox-Brown, depicting Crabtree observing the transit of Venus, adorns the interior of the Manchester Town Hall. [5] William Crabtree died on August 1, 1644, aged 34 years. [6] The constellation Virgo. [7] _Life of Galileo_ (Library of Useful Knowledge). [8] Miss Clerke's _System of the Stars_. [9] Miss Clerke's _System of the Stars_. [10] Miss Clerke's _System of the Stars_. [11] _Ibid._ [12] An expression in Book VIII. 148-49 would seem to indicate that this was inaccurate, but the lines 'and other suns perhaps With their attendant moons, thou wilt descry,' are an allusion to the planets Jupiter and Saturn, whose satellites had been recently discovered. [13] Mr. E. W. Maunder, in _Knowledge_, March 1894. [14] Though not a celestial body, it is considered desirable to describe the Earth as a member of the solar system. [15] See diagram, chap. iii. p. 96. 
8770	----	MILTON by MARK PATTISON, B.D. RECTOR OF LINCOLN COLLEGE, OXFORD CONTENTS. FIRST PERIOD. 1608-1639. CHAPTER I. FAMILY--SCHOOL--COLLEGE CHAPTER II. RESIDENCE AT HORTON--L'ALLEGRO--IL PENSEROSO--AUCADES --COMUS--LYCIDAS CHAPTER III. JOURNEY TO ITALY SECOND PERIOD. 1640-1660. CHAPTER IV. EDUCATIONAL THEORY--TEACHING CHAPTER V. MARRIAGE AND PAMPHLET ON DIVORCE CHAPTER VI. PAMPHLETS CHAPTER VII. BIOGRAPHICAL. 1640-1649 CHAPTER VIII THE LATIN SECRETARYSHIP CHAPTER IX. MILTON AND MORUS--BLINDNESS CHAPTER X. MILTON AND MOSES--THE SECOND DEFENSE--THE DEFENSE FOR HIMSELF CHAPTER XI. LATIN SECRETARYSHIP COMES TO AN END--MILTON'S FRIENDS THIRD PERIOD. 1660--1674 CHAPTER XII. BIOGRAPHICAL--LITERARY OCCUPATION--RELIGIOUS OPINIONS CHAPTER XIII.PARADISE LOST--PARADISE REGAINED--SAMSON AGONISTES INDEX MILTON. _FIRST PERIOD_. 1608-1639. CHAPTER I. FAMILY--SCHOOL--COLLEGE. In the seventeenth century it was not the custom to publish two volumes upon every man or woman whose name had appeared on a title-page. Nor, where lives of authors were written, were they written with the redundancy of particulars which is now allowed. Especially are the lives of the poets and dramatists obscure and meagrely recorded. Of Milton, however, we know more personal details than of any man of letters of that age. Edward Phillips, the poet's nephew, who was brought up by his uncle, and lived in habits of intercourse with him to the last, wrote a life, brief, inexact, superficial, but valuable from the nearness of the writer to the subject of his memoir. A cotemporary of Milton, John Aubrey (b.1625), "a very honest man, and accurate in his accounts of matters of fact," as Toland says of him, made it his business to learn all he could about Milton's habits. Aubrey was himself acquainted with Milton, and diligently catechised thepoet's widow, his brother, and his nephew, scrupulously writing down each detail as it came to him, in the minutee of lives which he supplied to Antony Wood to be worked up in his _Athenae_ and _Fasti_. Aubrey was only an antiquarian collector, and was mainly dependent on what could be learned from the family. None of Milton's family, and least of all Edward Phillips, were of a capacity to apprehend moral or mental qualities, and they could only tell Aubrey of his goings out and his comings in, of the clothes he wore, the dates of events, the names of his acquaintance. In compensation for the want of observation on the part of his own kith and kin, Milton himself, with a superb and ingenuous egotism, has revealed the secret of his thoughts and feelings in numerous autobiographical passages of his prose writings. From what he directly communicates, and from what he unconsciously betrays, we obtain an internal life of the mind, more ample than that external life of the bodily machine, which we owe to Aubrey and Phillips. In our own generation all that printed books or written documents have preserved about Milton has been laboriously brought together by Professor David Masson, in whose _Life of Milton_ we have the most exhaustive biography that ever was compiled of any Englishman. It is a noble and final monument erected to the poet's memory, two centuries after his death. My excuse for attempting to write of Milton alter Mr. Masson is that his life is in six volumes octavo, with a total of some four to five thousand pages. The present outline is written for a different class of readers, those, namely, who cannot afford to know more of Milton than can be told in some two hundred and fifty pages. A family of Miltons, deriving the name in all probability from the parish of Great Milton near Thame, is found in various branches spread over Oxfordshire and the adjoining counties in the reign of Elisabeth. The poet's grandfather was a substantial yeoman, living at Stanton St. John, about five miles from Oxford, within the forest of Shotover, of which he was also an under-ranger. The ranger's son John was at school in Oxford, possibly as a chorister, conformed to the Established Church, and was in consequence cast off by his father, who adhered to the old faith. The disinherited son went up to London, and by the assistance of a friend was set up in business as a scrivener. A scrivener discharged some of the functions which, at the present day, are undertaken for us in a solicitor's office. John Milton the father, being a man of probity and force of character, was soon on the way to acquire "a plentiful fortune." But he continued to live over his shop, which was in Bread Street, Cheapside, and which bore the sign of the Spread Eagle, the family crest. It was at the Spread Eagle that his eldest son, John Milton, was born, 9th December, 1608, being thus exactly contemporary with Lord Clarendon, who also died in the same year as the poet. Milton must be added to the long roll of our poets who have been natives of the city which now never sees sunlight or blue sky, along with Chaucer, Spenser, Herrick, Cowley, Shirley, Ben Jonson, Pope, Gray, Keats. Besides attending as a day-scholar at St. Paul's School, which was close at hand, his father engaged for him a private tutor at home. The household of the Spread Eagle not only enjoyed civic prosperity, but some share of that liberal cultivation, which, if not imbibed in the home, neither school nor college ever confers. The scrivener was not only an amateur in music, but a composer, whose tunes, songs, and airs found their way into the best collections of music. Both schoolmaster and tutor were men of mark. The high master of St. Paul's at that time was Alexander Gill, an M.A. of Corpus Christi College, Oxford, who was "esteemed to have such an excellent way of training up youth, that none in his time went beyond it." The private tutor was Thomas Young, who was, or had been, curate to Mr. Gataker, of Rotherhithe, itself a certificate of merit, even if we had not the pupil's emphatic testimony of gratitude. Milton's fourth elegy is addressed to Young, when, in 1627, he was settled at Hamburg, crediting him with having first infused into his pupil a taste for classic literature and poetry. Biographers have derived Milton's Presbyterianism in 1641 from the lessons twenty years before of this Thomas Young, a Scotchman, and one of the authors of the _Smectymnuus_. This, however, is a misreading of Milton's mind--a mind which was an organic whole--"whose seed was in itself," self-determined; not one whose opinions can be accounted for by contagion or casual impact. Of Milton's boyish exercises two have bean preserved. They are English paraphrases of two of the Davidic Psalms, and were done at the age of fifteen. That they were thought by himself worth printing in the same volume with _Comus_, is the most noteworthy thing about them. No words are so commonplace but that they can be made to yield inference by a biographer. And even in these school exercises we think we can discern that the future poet was already a diligent reader of Sylvester's _Du Bartas_ (1605), the patriarch of Protestant poetry, and of Fairfax's _Tasso_ (1600). There are other indications that, from very early years, poetry had assumed a place in Milton's mind, not merely as a juvenile pastime, but as an occupation of serious import. Young Gill, son of the high master, a school-fellow of Milton, went up to Trinity, Oxford, where he got into trouble by being informed against by Chillingworth, who reported incautious political speeches of Gill to his godfather, Laud. With Gill Milton corresponded; they exchanged their verses, Greek, Latin, and English, with a confession on Milton's part that he prefers English and Latin composition to Greek; that to write Greek verses in this age is to sing to the deaf. Gill, Milton finds "a severe critic of poetry, however disposed to be lenient to his friend's attempts." If Milton's genius did not announce itself in his paraphrases of Psalms, it did in his impetuosity in learning, "which I seized with such eagerness that from the twelfth year of my age, I scarce ever went to bed before midnight." Such is his own account. And it is worthnotice that we have here an incidental test of the trustworthiness of Aubrey's reminiscences. Aubrey's words are, "When he was very young he studied very hard, and sate up very late, commonly till twelve or one o'clock at night; and his father ordered the maid to sit up for him." He was ready for college at sixteen, not earlier than the usual age at that period. As his schoolmasters, both the Gills, were Oxford men (Young was of St. Andrew's), it might have been expected that the young scholar would have been placed at Oxford. However, it was determined that he should go to Cambridge, where he was admitted a pensioner of Christ's, 12th February, 1625, and commenced residence in the Easter term ensuing. Perhaps his father feared the growing High Church, or, as it was then called, Arminianism, of his own university. It so happened, however, that the tutor to whom the young Milton was consigned was specially noted for Arminian proclivities. This was William Chappell, then Fellow of Christ's, who so recommended himself to Laud by his party zeal, that he was advanced to be Provost of Dublin and Bishop of Cork. Milton was one of those pupils who are more likely to react against a tutor than to take a ply from him. A preaching divine--Chappell composed a treatise on the art of preaching--a narrow ecclesiastic of the type loved by Land, was exactly the man who would drive Milton into opposition. But the tutor of the seventeenth century was not able, like the easy-going tutor of the eighteenth, to leave the young rebel to pursue the reading of his choice in his own chamber. Chappell endeavoured to drive his pupil along the scholastic highway of exercises. Milton, returning to Cambridge after his summer vacation, eager for the acquisition of wisdom, complains that he "was dragged from his studies, and compelled to employ himself in composing some frivolous declamation!" Indocile, as he confesses himself (indocilisque aetas prava magistra fuit), he kicked against either the discipline or the exercises exacted by college rules. He was punished. Aubrey had heard that he was flogged, a thing not impossible in itself, as the _Admonition Book_ of Emanuel gives an instance of corporal chastisement as late as 1667. Aubrey's statement, however, is a dubitative interlineation in his MS., and Milton's age, seventeen, as well as the silence of his later detractors, who raked up everything which could be told to his disadvantage, concur to make us hesitate to accept a fact on so slender evidence. Anyhow, Milton was sent away from college for a time, in the year 1627, in consequence of something unpleasant which had occurred. That it was something of which he was not ashamed is clear, from his alluding to it himself in the lines written at the time,-- Nec duri libet usque minas perferre magistri Caeteraque ingenio non subeunda meo. And that the tutor was not considered to have been wholly free from blame is evident from the fact that the master transferred Milton from Chappell to another tutor, a very unusual proceeding. Whatever the nature of the punishment, it was not what is known as rustication; for Milton did not lose a term, taking his two degrees of B.A. and M.A. in regular course, at the earliest date from his matriculation permitted by the statutes. The one outbreak of juvenile petulance and indiscipline over, Milton's force of character and unusual attainments acquired him the esteem of his seniors. The nickname of "the lady of Christ's" given him in derision by his fellow-students, is an attestation of virtuous conduct. Ten years later, in 1642, Milton takes an opportunity to "acknowledge publicly, with all grateful mind, that more than ordinary respect which I found, above many of my equals, at the hands of those courteous and learned men, the Fellows of that college wherein I spent some years; who, at my parting after I had taken two degrees, as the manner is, signified many ways how much better it would content them that I would stay; as by many letters full of kindness and loving respect, both before that time and long after, I was assured of their singular good affection towards me." The words "how much better it would content them that I would stay" have been thought to hint at the offer of a fellowship at Christ's. It is highly improvable that such an offer was ever made. There had been two vacancies in the roll of fellows since Milton had become eligible by taking his B.A. degree, and he had been passed over in favour of juniors. It is possible that Milton was not statutably eligible, for, by the statutes of Christ's, there could not be, at one time, more than two fellows who were natives of the same county. Edward King, who was Milton's junior, was put in, not by college election, but by royal mandate. And in universities generally, it is not literature or general acquirements which recommend a candidate for endowed posts, but technical skill in the prescribed exercises, and a pedagogic intention. Further than this, had a fellowship in his college been attainable, it would not have had much attraction for Milton. A fellowship implied two things, residence in college, with teaching, and orders in the church. With neither of these two conditions was Milton prepared to comply. In 1632, when he proceeded to his M.A. degree, Milton was twenty-four, he had been seven years in college, and had therefore sufficient experience what college life was like. He who was so impatient of the "turba legentum prava" in the Bodleian library, could not have patiently consorted with the vulgar-minded and illiterate ecclesiastics, who peopled the colleges of that day. Even Mede, though the author of _Clavis Apocalyptica_ was steeped in the soulless clericalism of his age, could not support his brother-fellows without frequent retirements to Balsham, "being not willing to be joined with such company." To be dependent upon Bainbrigge's (the Master of Christ's) good pleasure for a supply of pupils; to have to live in daily intercourse with the Powers and the Chappells, such as we know them from Mede's letters, was an existence to which only the want of daily bread could have driven Milton. Happily his father's circumstances were not such as to make a fellowship pecuniarily an object to the son. If he longed for "the studious cloister's pale," he had been, now for seven years, near enough to college life to have dispelled the dream that it was a life of lettered leisure and philosophic retirement. It was just about Milton's time that the college tutor finally supplanted the university professor, a system which implied the substitution of excercises performed by the pupil for instruction given by the teacher. Whatever advantages this system brought with it, it brought inevitably the degradation of the teacher, who was thus dispensed from knowledge, having only to attend to form. The time of the college tutor was engrossed by the details of scholastic superintendence, and the frivolous worry of academical business. Admissions, matriculations, disputations, declamations, the formalities of degrees, public reception of royal and noble visitors, filled every hour of his day, and left no time, even if he had had the taste, for private study. To teaching, as we shall see, Milton was far from averse. But then it must be teaching as he understood it, a teaching which should expand the intellect and raise the character, not dexterity in playing with the verbal formulae of the disputations of the schools. Such an occupation could have no attractions for one who was even now meditating _Il Penseroso_ (composed 1633). At twenty he had already confided to his schoolfellow, the younger Gill, the secret of his discontent with the Cambridge tone. "Here among us," he writes from college, "are barely one or two who do not flutter off, all unfledged, into theology, having gotten of philology or of philosophy scarce so much as a smattering. And for theology they are content with just what is enough to enable them to patch up a paltry sermon." He retained the same feeling towards his Alma Mater in 1641, when he wrote (Reason of Church Government), "Cambridge, which as in the time of her better health, and mine own younger judgment, I never greatly admired, so now much less...." On a review of all these indications of feeling, I should conclude that Milton never had serious thoughts of a college fellowship, and that his antipathy arose from a sense of his own incompatibility of temper with academic life, and was not, like Phineas Fletcher's, the result of disappointed hopes, and a sense of injury for having been refused a fellowship at King's. One consideration which remains to be mentioned would alone be decisive in favour of this view. A fellowship required orders. Milton had been intended for the church, and had been sent to college with that view. By the time he left Cambridge, at twenty-four, it had become clear, both to himself and his family, that he could never submit his understanding to the trammels of church formularies. His later mind, about 1641, is expressed by himself in his own forcible style,--"The church, to whose service by the intention of my parents and friends I was destined of a child, and in mine own resolutions, till coming to some maturity of years, and perceiving what tyranny had invaded in the church, that he who would take orders must subscribe slave, and take an oath withal.... I thought it better to prefer a blameless silence before the sacred office of speaking, bought and begun with servitude and forswearing." When he took leave of the university, in 1632, he had perhaps not developed this distinct antipathy to the establishment. For in a letter, preserved in Trinity College, and written in the winter of 1631-32, he does not put forward any conscientious objections to the clerical profession, but only apologises to the friend to whom the letter is addressed, for delay in making choice of some profession. The delay itself sprung from an unconscious distaste. In a mind of the consistent texture of Milton's, motives are secretly influential before they emerge in consciousness. We shall not be wrong in asserting that when he left Cambridge in 1632, it was already impossible, in the nature of things, that he should have taken orders in the Church of England, or a fellowship of which orders were a condition. CHAPTER II. RESIDENCE AT HORTON--L'ALLEGRO--IL PENSEROSO--ARCADES--COMUS--LYCIDAS. Milton had been sent to college to quality for a profession. The church, the first intended, he had gradually discovered to be incompatible. Of the law, either his father's branch, or some other, he seems to have entertained a thought, but to have speedily dismissed it. So at the age of twenty-four he returned to his father's house, bringing nothing with him but his education and a silent purpose. The elder Milton had now retired from business, with sufficient means but not with wealth. Though John was the eldest son, there were two other children, a brother, Christopher, and a sister, Anne. To have no profession, even a nominal one, to be above trade and below the status of squire or yeoman, and to come home with the avowed object of leading an idle life, was conduct which required justification. Milton felt it to be so. In a letter addressed, in 1632, to some senior friend at Cambridge, name unknown, he thanks him for being "a good watchman to admonish that the hours of the night pass on, for so I call my life as yet obscure and unserviceable to mankind, and that the day with me is at hand, wherein Christ commands all to labour." Milton has no misgivings. He knows that what he is doing with himself is the best he can do. His aim is far above bread-winning, and therefore his probation must be long. He destines for himself no indolent tarrying in the garden of Armida. His is a "mind made and set wholly on the accomplishment of greatest things." He knows that the looker-on will hardly accept his apology for "being late," that it is in order to being "more fit." Yet it is the only apology he can offer. And he is dissatisfied with his own progress. "I am something suspicious of myself, and do take notice of a certain belatedness in me." Of this frame of mind the record is the second sonnet, lines which are an inseparable part of Milton's biography-- How soon hath Time, the subtle thief of youth, Stol'n on his wing my three-and-twentieth year! My hasting days fly on with full career, But my late spring no bud or blossom shew'th. Perhaps my semblance might deceive the truth That I to manhood am arrived so near, And inward ripeness doth much less appear, That some more timely-happy spirits endu'th. Yet, be it less or more, or soon or slow, It shall be still in strictest measure even To that same lot, however mean or high, Toward which Time leads me, and the will of Heaven. All is, if I have grace to use it so, As ever in my great Taskmaster's eye. With aspirations thus vast, though unformed, with "amplitude of mind to greatest deeds," Milton retired to his father's house in the country. Five more years of self-education, added to the seven years of academical residence, were not too much for the meditation of projects such as Milton was already conceiving. Years many more than twelve, filled with great events and distracting interests, were to pass over before the body and shape of _Paradise Lost_ was given to these imaginings. The country retirement in which the elder Milton had fixed himself was the little village of Horton, situated in that southernmost angle of the county of Buckingham, which insinuates itself between Berks and Middlesex. Though London was only about seventeen miles distant, it was the London of Charles I., with its population of some 300,000 only; before coaches and macadamised roads; while the Colne, which flows through the village, was still a river, and not the kennel of a paper-mill. There was no lack of water and woods meadow and pasture, closes and open field, with the regal towers of Windsor--"bosom'd high in tufted trees," to crown the landscape. Unbroken leisure, solitude, tranquillity of mind, surrounded by the thickets and woods, which Pliny thought indispensable to poetical meditation (Epist.9.10), no poet's career was ever commenced under more favourable auspices. The youth of Milton stands in strong contrast with the misery, turmoil, chance medley, struggle with poverty, or abandonment to dissipation, which blighted the early years of so many of our men of letters. Milton's life is a drama in three acts. The first discovers him in the calm and peaceful retirement of Horton, of which _L'Allegro_, _Il Penseroso_, and _Lycidas_ are the expression. In the second act he is breathing the foul and heated atmosphere of party passion and religious hate, generating the lurid fires which glare in the battailous canticles of his prose pamphlets. The three great poems, _Paradise Lost_, _Paradise Regained_, and _Samson Agonistes_, are the utterance of his final period of solitary and Promethean grandeur, when, blind, destitute, friendless, he testified of righteousness, temperance, and judgment to come, alone before a fallen world. In this delicious retirement of Horton, in alternate communing with nature and with books, for five years of persevering study he laid in a stock, not of learning, but of what is far above learning, of wide and accurate knowledge. Of the man whose profession is learning, it is characteristic that knowledge is its own end, and research its own reward. To Milton all knowledge, all life, virtue itself, was already only a means to a further end. He will know only "that which is of use to know," and by useful, he meant that which conduced to form him for his vocation of poet. From a very early period Milton had taken poetry to be his vocation, in the most solemn and earnest mood. The idea of this devotion was the shaping idea of his life. It was, indeed, a bent of nature, with roots drawing from deeper strata of character than any act of reasoned will, which kept him out of the professions, and now fixed him, a seeming idler, but really hard at work, in his father's house at Horton. The intimation which he had given of his purpose in the sonnet above quoted had become, in 1641, "an inward prompting which grows daily upon me, that by labour and intent study, which I take to be my portion in this life, joined with the strong propensity of nature, I might perhaps leave something so written to after times, as they should not willingly let it die." What the ultimate form of his poetic utterance shall be, he is in no hurry to decide. He will be "long choosing," and quite content to be "beginning late." All his care at present is to qualify himself for the lofty function to which he aspires. No lawyer, physician, statesman, ever laboured to fit himself for his profession harder than Milton strove to qualify himself for his vocation of poet. Verse-making is, to the wits, a game of ingenuity; to Milton, it is a prophetic office, towards which the will of heaven leads him. The creation he contemplates will not flow from him as the stanzas of the _Gerusalemme_ did from Tasso at twenty-one. Before he can make a poem, Milton will make himself. "I was confirmed in this opinion, that he who would not be frustrated of his hope to write well hereafter in laudable things ought himself to be a true poem.... not presuming to sing high praises of heroic men or famous cities, unless he have in himself the experience and practise of all that which is praiseworthy." Of the spontaneity, the abandon, which are supposed to be characteristic of the poetical nature, there is nothing here; all is moral purpose, precision, self-dedication. So he acquires ail knowledge, not for knowledge' sake, from the instinct of learning, the necessity for completeness, but because he is to be a poet. Nor will he only have knowledge, he will have wisdom; moral development shall go hand in hand with intellectual. A poet's soul should "contain of good, wise, just, the perfect shape." He will cherish continually a pure mind in a pure body. "I argued to myself that, if unchastity in a woman, whom St. Paul terms the glory of man, be such a scandal and dishonour, then certainly in a man, who is both the image and glory of God, it must, though commonly not so thought, be much more deflouring and dishonourable." There is yet a third constituent of the poetical nature; to knowledge and to virtue must be added religion. For it is from God that the poet's thoughts come. "This is not to be obtained but by devout prayer to that Eternal Spirit that can enrich with all utterance and knowledge, and sends out his seraphim with the hallowed fire of his altar, to touch and purify the life of whom he pleases. To this must be added industrious and select reading, steady observation, and insight into all seemly and generous acts and affairs; till which in some measure be compast, I refuse not to sustain this expectation." Before the piety of this vow, Dr. Johnson's morosity yields for a moment, and he is forced to exclaim, "From a promise like this, at once fervid, pious, and rational, might be expected the _Paradise Lost_." Of these years of self-cultivation, of conscious moral architecture, such as Plato enacted for his ideal State, but none but Milton ever had the courage to practise, the biographer would gladly give a minute account. But the means of doing so are wanting. The poet kept no diary of his reading, such as some great students, e.g. Isaac Casaubon, have left. Nor could such a record, had it been attempted, have shown us the secret process by which the scholar's dead learning was transmuted in Milton's mind into living imagery. "Many studious and contemplative years, altogether spent in the search of religious and civil knowledge" is his own description of the period. "You make many inquiries as to what I am about;" he writes to Diodati--"what am I thinking of? Why, with God's help, of immortality! Forgive the word, I only whisper it in your ear! Yes, I am pluming my wings for a flight." This was in 1637, at the end of five years of the Horton probation. The poems, which, rightly read, are strewn with autobiographical hints, are not silent as to the intention of this period. In _Paradise Regained_ (i. 196), Milton reveals himself. And in _Comus_, written at Horton, the lines 375 and following are charged with the same sentiment,-- And wisdom's self Oft seeks to sweet retired solitude, Where, with her best nurse, contemplations She plumes her feathers, and lets grow her wings, That in the various bustle of resort Were all-to ruffled and sometimes impair'd. That at Horton Milton "read all the Greek and Latin writers" is one of Johnson's careless versions of Milton's own words, "enjoyed a complete holiday in turning over Latin and Greek authors." Milton read, not as a professional philologian, but as a poet and scholar, and always in the light of his secret purpose. It was not in his way to sit down to read over all the Greek and Latin writers, as Casaubon or Salmasius might do. Milton read with selection, and "meditated," says Aubrey, what he read. His practice conformed to the principle he has himself laid down in the often-quoted lines (_Paradise Regained_, iv. 322)-- Who reads Incessantly, and to his reading brings not A spirit and judgment equal or superior, Uncertain and unsettled still remains, Deep vers'd in books, and shallow in himself. Some of Milton's Greek books have been traced; his _Arattis, Lyeophron, Euripides_ (the Stepharnis of 1602), and his _Pindar_ (the Benedictus of 1620), are still extant, with marginal memoranda, which should seem to evince careful and discerning reading. One critic even thought it worth while to accuse Joshua Barnes of silently appropriating conjectural emendations from Milton's _Euripides_. But Milton's own poems are the beat evidence of his familiarity with all that is most choice in the remains of classic poetry. Though the commentators are accused of often, seeing an imitation where there is none, no commentary can point out the ever-present infusion of classical flavour, which bespeaks intimate converse far more than direct adaptation. Milton's classical allusions, says Hartley Coleridge, are amalgamated and consubstantiated with his native thought. A commonplace book of Milton's, after having lurked unsuspected for 200 years in the archives of Netherby, has been disinterred in our own day (1874). It appears to belong partly to the end of the Horton period. It is not by any means an account of all that he is reading, but only an arrangement, under certain heads, or places of memoranda for future use. These notes are extracted from about eighty different authors, Greek, Latin, French, Italian, and English. Of Greek authors no less than sixteen are quoted. The notes are mostly notes of historical facts, seldom of thoughts, never of mere verbal expression. There is no trace in it of any intention to store up either the imagery or the language of poetry. It may be that such notes were made and entered in another volume; for the book thus accidentally preserved to us seems to refer to other similar volumes of collections. But it is more likely that no such poetical memoranda were ever made, and that Milton trusted entirely to memory for the wealth of classical allusion with which his verse is surcharged. He did not extract from the poets and the great writers whom he was daily turning over, but only from the inferior authors and secondary historians, which he read only once. Most of the material collected in the commonplace book is used in his prose pamphlets. But when so employed the facts are worked into the texture of his argument, rather than cited as extraneous witnesses. In reading history it was his aim to get at a conspectus of the general current of affairs rather than to study minutely a special period. He tells Diodati in September, 1637, that he has studied Greek history continuously, from the beginning to the fall of Constantinople. When he tells the same friend that he has been long involved in the obscurity of the early middle ages of Italian History down to the time of the Emperor Rudolph, we learn from the commonplace book that he had only been reading the one volume of Sigonius's _Historia Regni Italici_. From the thirteenth century downwards he proposes to himself to study each Italian state in some separate history. Even before his journey to Italy he read Italian with as much ease as French. He tells us that it was by his father's advice that he had acquired these modern languages. But we can, see that they were essential parts of his own scheme of self-education, which included, in another direction, Hebrew, both Biblical and Rabbinical and even Syriac. The intensity of his nature showed itself in his method of study. He read, not desultorily, a bit here and another there, but "when I take up with a thing, I never pause or break it off, nor am drawn away from it by any other interest, till I have arrived at the goal I proposed to myself," He made breaks occasionally In this routine of study by visits to London, to see friends, to buy books, to take lessons in mathematics, to go to the theatre, or to concerts. A love of music was inherited from his father. I have called this period, 1632-39, one of preparation, and not of production. But though the first volume of poems printed by Milton did not appear till 1645, the most considerable part of its contents was written during the period included in the present chapter. The fame of the author of _Paradise Lost_ has overshadowed that of the author of _L'Allegro, Il Penseroso,_ and _Lycidas_. Yet had _Paradise Lost_ never been written, these three poems, with _Comus_, would have sufficed to place their author in a class apart, and above all those who had used the English language for poetical purposes before him. It is incumbent on Milton's biographer to relate the circumstances of the composition of _Comus_, as it is an incident in the life of the poet. Milton's musical tastes had brought him the acquaintance of Henry Lawes, at that time the most celebrated composer in England. When the Earl of Bridgewater would give an entertainment at Ludlow Castle to celebrate his entry upon his office as President of Wales and the Marches, it was to Lawes that application was made to furnish the music. Lawes, as naturally, applied to his young poetical acquaintance Milton, to write the words. The entertainment was to be of that sort which was fashionable at court, and was called a Mask. In that brilliant period of court life which was inaugurated by Elisabeth and put an end to by the Civil War, a Mask was a frequent and favourite amusement. It was an exhibition in which pageantry and music predominated, but in which dialogue was introduced as accompaniment or explanation. The dramatic Mask of the sixteenth century has been traced by the antiquaries as far back as the time of Edward III. But in its perfected shape it was a genuine offspring of the English renaissance, a cross between the vernacular mummery, or mystery-play, and the Greek drama. No great court festival was considered complete without such a public show. Many of our great dramatic writers, Beaumont, Fletcher, Ben Jonson, Middleton, Dekker, Shirley, Carew, were constrained by the fashion of the time to apply their invention to gratify this taste for decorative representation. No less an artist than Inigo Jones must occasionally stoop to construct the machinery. The taste for grotesque pageant in the open air must have gradually died out before the general advance of refinement. The Mask by a process of evolution would have become the Opera. But it often happens that when a taste or fashion is at the point of death, it undergoes a forced and temporary revival. So it was with the Mask. In 1633, the Puritan hatred to the theatre had blazed out in Prynne's _Histriomastix_, and as a natural consequence, the loyal and cavalier portion of society threw itself into dramatic amusements of every kind. It was an unreal revival of the Mask, stimulated by political passion, in the wane of genuine taste for the fantastic and semi-barbarous pageant, in which the former age had delighted. What the imagination of the spectators was no longer equal to, was to be supplied by costliness of dress and scenery. Those last representations of the expiring Mask were the occasions of an extravagant outlay. The Inns of Court and Whitehall vied with each other in the splendour and solemnity with which they brought out,--the Lawyers, Shirley's _Triumph of Peace_,--the Court, Carew's _Coelum Britannicum_. It was a strange caprice of fortune that made the future poet of the Puritan epic the last composer of a cavalier mask. The slight plot, or story, of _Comus_ was probably suggested to Milton by his recollection of George Peele's _Old Wives' Tale_, which he may have seen on the stage. The personage of _Comus_ was borrowed from a Latin extravaganza by a Dutch professor, whose _Comus_ was reprinted at Oxford in 1634, the very year in which Milton wrote his _Mask_. The so-called tradition collected by Oldys, of the young Egertons, who acted in _Comus_, having lost themselves in Haywood Forest on their way to Ludlow, obviously grew out of Milton's poem. However casual the suggestion, or unpromising the occasion, Milton worked out of it a strain of poetry such as had never been heard in England before. If any reader wishes to realise the immense step upon what had gone before him, which was now made by a young man of twenty-seven, he should turn over some of the most celebrated of the masks of the Jacobean period. We have no information how _Comus_ was received when represented at Ludlow, but it found a public of readers. For Lawes, who had the MS. in his hands, was so importuned for copies that, in 1637, he caused an edition to be printed off. Not surreptitiously; for though Lawes does not say, in the dedication to Lord Brackley, that he had the author's leave to print, we are sure that he had it, only from the motto. On the title page of this edition (1637), is the line,-- Eheu! quid volui miscro mihi! floribus anstrum Perditus-- The words are Virgil's, but the appropriation of them, and their application in this "second intention" is too exquisite to have been made by any but Milton.To the poems of the Horton period belong also the two pieces _L'Allegro_ and _Il Penseroso_, and _Lycidas_. He was probably in the early stage of acquiring the language, when he superscribed the two first poems with their Italian titles. For there is no such word as "Penseroso," the adjective formed from "Pensiero" being "pensieroso". Even had the word been written correctly, its signification is not that which Milton intended, viz. thoughtful, or contemplative, but anxious, full of cares, carking. The rapid purification of Milton's taste will be best perceived by comparing _L'Allegro_ and _Il Penseroso_ of uncertain date, but written after 1632, with the _Ode on the Nativity_, written 1629. The Ode, notwith- standing its foretaste of Milton's grandeur, abounds in frigid conceits, from which the two later pieces are free. The Ode is frosty, as written in winter, within the four walls of a college chamber. The two idylls breathe the free air of spring and summer, and of the fields round Horton. They are thoroughly naturalistic; the choicest expression our language has yet found of the fresh charm of country life, not as that life is lived by the peasant, but as it is felt by a young and lettered student, issuing at early dawn, or at sunset, into the fields from his chamber and his books. All rural sights and sounds and smells are here blended in that ineffable combination, which once or twice perhaps in our lives has saluted our young senses before their perceptions were blunted by alcohol, by lust, or ambition, or diluted by the social distractions of great cities. The fidelity to nature of the imagery of these poems has been impugned by the critics. Then to come, in spite of sorrow, And at my window bid good morrow. The skylark never approaches human habitations in this way, as the redbreast does, Mr. Masson replies that the subject of the verb "to come" is, not the skylark, but L'Allegro, the joyous student. I cannot construe the lines as Mr. Masson does, even though the consequence were to convict Milton, a city-bred youth, of not knowing a skylark from a sparrow when he saw it. A close observer of things around us would not speak of the eglantine as twisted, of the cowslip as wan, of the violet as glowing, or of the reed as balmy. Lycidas' laureate hearse is to be strewn at once with primrose and woodbine, daffodil and jasmine. When we read "the rathe primrose that forsaken dies," we see that the poet is recollecting Shakespeare (Winter's Tale, 4. 4), not looking at the primrose. The pine is not "rooted deep as high" (_P.R._ 4416), but sends its roots along the surface. The elm, one of the thinnest foliaged trees of the forest, is inappropriately named starproof (_Arc_. 89). Lightning does not singe the tops of trees (_P.L._ i. 613), but either shivers them, or cuts a groove down the stem to the ground. These and other such like inaccuracies must be set down partly to conventional language used without meaning, the vice of Latin versification enforced as a task, but they are partly due to real defect of natural knowledge. Other objections of the critics on the same score, which may be met with, are easily dismissed. The objector, who can discover no reason why the oak should be styled "monumental," meets with his match in the defender who suggests, that it may be rightly so called because monuments in churches are made of oak. I should tremble to have to offer an explanation to critics of Milton so acute as these two. But of less ingenious readers I would ask, if any single word can be found equal to "monumental" in its power of suggesting to the imagination the historic oak of park or chase, up to the knees in fern, which has outlasted ten generations of men; has been the mute witness of the scenes of love, treachery, or violence enacted in the baronial hall which it shadows and protects; and has been so associated with man, that it is now rather a column and memorial obelisk than a tree of the forest? These are the humours of criticism. But, apart from these, a naturalist is at once aware that Milton had neither the eye nor the ear of a naturalist. At no time, even before his loss of sight, was he an exact observer of natural objects. It may be that he knew a skylark from a redbreast, and did not confound the dog-rose with the honeysuckle. But I am sure that he had never acquired that interest in nature's things and ways, which leads to close and loving watching of them. He had not that sense of outdoor nature, empirical and not scientific, which endows the _Angler_ of his cotemporary Walton, with its enduring charm, and which is to be acquired only by living in the open country in childhood. Milton is not a man of the fields, but of books. His life is in his study, and when he steps abroad into the air he carries his study thoughts with him. He does look at nature, but he sees her through books. Natural impressions are received from without, but always in those forms of beautiful speech, in which the poets of all ages have clothed them. His epithets are not, like the epithets of the school of Dryden and Pope, culled from the _Gradus ad Parnassum_; they are expressive of some reality, but it is of a real emotion in the spectator's soul, not of any quality detected by keen insight in the objects themselves. This emotion Milton's art stamps with an epithet, which shall convey the added charm of classical reminiscence. When, e.g., he speaks of "the wand'ring moon," the original significance of the epithet comes home to the scholarly reader with the enhanced effect of its association with the "errantem lunam" of Virgil. Nor because it is adopted from Virgil has the epithet here the second-hand effect of a copy. If Milton sees nature through books, he still sees it. To behold the wand'ring moon, Riding near her highest noon, Like one that had been led astray. Through the heaven's wide pathless way, And oft, as if her head she bow'd, Stooping through a fleecy cloud. No allegation that "wand'ring moon" is borrowed from Horace can hide from us that Milton, though he remembered Horace, had watched the phenomenon with a feeling so intense that he projected his own soul's throb into the object before him, and named it with what Thomson calls "recollected love". Milton's attitude towards nature is not that of a scientific naturalist, nor even that of a close observer. It is that of a poet who feels its total influence too powerfully to dissect it. If, as I have said, Milton reads books first and nature afterwards, it is not to test nature by his books, but to learn from both. He is learning not books, but from books. All he reads, sees, hears, is to him but nutriment for the soul. He is making himself. Man is to him the highest object; nature is subordinate to man, not only in its more vulgar uses, but as an excitant of fine emotion. He is not concerned to register the facts and phenomena of nature, but to convey the impressions they make on a sensitive soul. The external forms of things are to be presented to us as transformed through the heart and mind of the poet. The moon is endowed with life and will, "stooping", "riding", "wand'ring", "bowing her head", not as a frigid personification, and because the ancient poets so personified her, but by communication to her of the intense agitation which the nocturnal spectacle rouses in the poet's own breast. I have sometimes read that these two idylls are "masterpieces of description". Other critics will ask if in the scenery of _L'Allegro_ and _Il Penseroso_ Milton has described the country about Horton, in Bucks, or that about Forest Hill, in Oxfordshire; and will object that the Chiltern Hills are not high enough for clouds to rest upon their top, much less upon their breast. But he has left out the pollard willows, says another censor, and the lines of pollard willow are the prominent feature in the valley of the Colne, even more so than the "hedgerow elms." Does the line "Walk the studious cloister's pale," _mean_ St. Paul's or Westminster Abbey? When these things can continue to be asked, it is hardly superfluous to continue to repeat, that truth of fact and poetical truth are two different things. Milton's attitude towards nature is not that of a "descriptive poet", if indeed the phrase be not a self-contradiction. In Milton, nature is not put forward as the poet's theme. His theme is man, in the two contrasted moods of joyous emotion, or grave reflection. The shifting scenery ministers to the varying mood. Thomson, in the _Seasons_ (1726), sets himself to render natural phenomena as they truly are. He has left us a vivid presentation in gorgeous language of the naturalistic calendar of the changing year. Milton, in these two idylls, has recorded a day of twenty-four hours. But he has not registered the phenomena; he places us at the standpoint of the man before whom they deploy. And the man, joyous or melancholy, is not a bare spectator of them; he is the student, compounded of sensibility and intelligence, of whom we are not told that he saw so and so, or that he felt so, but with whom we are made copartners of his thoughts and feeling. Description melts into emotion, and contemplation bodies itself in imagery. All the charm of rural life is there, but it is not tendered to us in the form of a landscape; the scenery is subordinated to the human figure in the centre. These two short idylls are marked by a gladsome spontaneity which never came to Milton again. The delicate fancy and feeling which play about _L'Allegro_ and _Il Penseroso_ never reappear, and form a strong contrast to the austere imaginings of his later poetical period. These two poems have the freedom and frolic, the natural grace of movement, the improvisation, of the best Elizabethan examples, while both thoughts and words are under a strict economy unknown to the diffuse exuberance of the Spenserians. In _Lycidas_ (1637) we have reached the high-water mark of English Poesy and of Milton's own production. A period of a century and a half was to elapse before poetry in England seemed, in Wordsworth's _Ode on Immortality_ (1807), to be rising again towards the level of inspiration which it had once attained in _Lycidas_. And in the development of the Miltonic genius this wonderful dirge marks the culminating point. As the twin idylls of 1632 show a great advance upon the _Ode on the Nativity_ (1629), the growth of the poetic mind during the five years which follow 1632 is registered in _Lycidas_. Like the _L'Allegro_ and _Il Penseroso_, _Lycidas_ is laid out on the lines of the accepted pastoral fiction; like them it offers exquisite touches of idealised rural life. But _Lycidas_ opens up a deeper vein of feeling, a patriot passion so vehement and dangerous, that, like that which stirred the Hebrew prophet, it is compelled to veil itself from power, or from sympathy, in utterance made purposely enigmatical. The passage which begins "Last came and last did go", raises in us a thrill of awe-struck expectation which. I can only compare with that excited by the Cassandra of Aeschylus's _Agamemnon_. For the reader to feel this, he must have present in memory the circumstances of England in 1637. He must place himself as far as possible in the situation of a contemporary. The study of Milton's poetry compels the study of his time; and Professor Masson's six volumes are not too much to enable us to understand that there were real causes for the intense passion which glows underneath the poet's words--a passion which unexplained would be thought to be intrusive. The historical exposition must be gathered from the English history of the period, which may be read in Professor Masson's excellent summary. All I desire to point out here is, that in _Lycidas_, Milton's original picturesque vein is for the first time crossed with one of quite another sort, stern, determined, obscurely indicative of suppressed passion, and the resolution to do or die. The fanaticism of the covenanter and the sad grace of Petrarch seem to meet in Milton's monody. Yet these opposites, instead of neutralising each other, are blended into one harmonious whole by the presiding, but invisible, genius of the poet. The conflict between the old cavalier world--the years of gaiety and festivity of a splendid and pleasure-loving court, and the new puritan world into which love and pleasure were not to enter--this conflict which was commencing in the social life of England, is also begun in Milton's own breast, and is reflected in _Lycidas_. For we were nurs'd upon the self-same hill. Here is the sweet mournfulness of the Spenserian time, upon whose joys Death is the only intruder. Pass onward a little, and you are in presence of the tremendous Two-handed engine at the door, the terror of which is enhanced by its obscurity. We are very sure that the avenger is there, though we know not who he is. In these thirty lines we have the preluding mutterings of the storm which was to sweep away mask and revel and song, to inhibit the drama, and suppress poetry. In the earlier poems Milton's muse has sung in the tones of the age that is passing away; the poet is, except in his austere chastity, a cavalier. Though even in _L'Allegro_ Dr. Johnson truly detects "some melancholy in his mirth." In _Lycidas_, for a moment, the tones of both ages, the past and the coming, are combined, and then Milton leaves behind him for ever the golden age, and one half of his poetic genius. He never fulfilled the promise with which _Lycidas_ concludes, "Tomorrow to fresh woods and pastures new." CHAPTER III. JOURNEY TO ITALY. Before 1632 Milton had begun to learn Italian. His mind, just then open on all sides to impressions from books, was peculiarly attracted by Italian poetry. The language grew to be loved for its own sake. Saturated as he was with Dante and Petrarch, Tasso and Ariosto, the desire arose to let the ear drink in the music of Tuscan speech. The "unhappy gift of beauty," which has attracted the spoiler of all ages to the Italian peninsula, has ever exerted, and still exerts, a magnetic force on every cultivated mind. Manifold are the sources of this fascination now. The scholar and the artist, the antiquarian and the historian, the architect and the lover of natural scenery, alike find here the amplest gratification of their tastes. This is so still; but in the sixteenth century the Italian cities were the only homes of an ancient and decaying civilization, Not insensible to other impressions, it was specially the desire of social converse with the living poets and men of taste--a feeble generation, but one still nourishing the traditions of the great poetic age--which drew Milton across the Alps. In April, 1637, Milton's mother had died; but his younger brother, Christopher, had come to live, with his wife, in the paternal home at Horton. Milton, the father, was not unwilling that his son should have his foreign tour, as a part of that elaborate education by which he was qualifying himself for his doubtful vocation. The cost was not to stand in the way, considerable as it must have been. Howell's estimate, in his _Instructions for Forreine Travel_, 1642, was 300 l. a year for the tourist himself, and 50 l. for his man, a sum equal to about 1000 l. at present. Among the letters of introduction with which Milton provided himself, one was from the aged Sir Henry Wotton, Provost of Eton, in Milton's immediate neighbourhood. Sir Henry, who had lived a long time in Italy, impressed upon his young friend the importance of discretion on the point of religion, and told him the story which he always told to travellers who asked his advice. "At Siena I was tabled in the house of one Alberto Scipioni, an old Roman courtier in dangerous times.... At my departure for Rome I had won confidence enough to beg his advice how I might carry myself securely there, without offence of others, or of mine own conscience. 'Signor Arrigo mio,' says he, '_pensieri stretti ed il viso sciolto_ (thoughts close, countenance open) will go safely over the whole world.'" Though the intensity of the Catholic reaction had somewhat relaxed in Italy, the deportment of a Protestant in the countries which were terrorised by the Inquisition was a matter which demanded much circumspection. Sir H. Wotton spoke from his own experience of far more rigorous times than those of the Barberini Pope. But he may have noticed, even in his brief acquaintance with Milton, a fearless presumption of speech which was just what was most likely to bring him into trouble, The event proved that the hint was not misplaced. For at Rome itself, in the very lion's den, nothing could content the young zealot but to stand up for his Protestant creed. Milton would not do as Peter Heylin did, who, when asked as to his religion, replied that he was a Catholic, which, in a Laudian, was but a natural equivoque. Milton was resolute in his religion at Rome, so much so that many were deterred from showing him the civilities they were prepared to offer. His rule, he says, was "not of my own accord to introduce in those places conversation about religion, but, if interrogated respecting the faith, then, whatsoever I should suffer, to dissemble nothing. What I was, if any one asked, I concealed from no one; if any one in the very city of the Pope attacked the orthodox religion, I defended it most freely." Beyond the statement that the English Jesuits were indignant, we hear of no evil consequences of this imprudence. Perhaps the Jesuits saw that Milton was of the stuff that would welcome martyrdom, and were sick of the affair of Galileo, which had terribly damaged the pretensions of their church. Milton arrived in Paris April or May, 1638. He received civilities from the English ambassador, Lord Scudamore, who at his request gave him an introduction to Grotius. Grotius, says Phillips, "took Milton's visit kindly, and gave him entertainment suitable to his worth, and the high commendations he had heard of him." We have no other record of his stay of many days in Paris, though A. Wood supposes that "the manners and graces of that place were not agreeable to his mind." It was August before he reached Florence, by way of Nice and Genoa, and in Florence he spent the two months which we now consider the most impossible there, the months of August and September. Nor did he find, as he would find now, the city deserted by the natives. We hear nothing of Milton's impressions of the place, but of the men whom he met there he retained always a lively and affectionate remembrance. The learned and polite Florentines had not fled to the hills from the stifling heat and blinding glare of the Lung' Arno, but seem to have carried on their literary meetings in defiance of climate. This was the age of academies--an institution, Milton says, "of most praiseworthy effect, both for the cultivation of polite letters and the keeping up of friendships." Florence had five or six such societies, the Florentine, the Delia Crusca, the Svogliati, the Apotisti, &c. It is easy, and usual in our day, to speak contemptuously of the literary tone of these academies, fostering, as they did, an amiable and garrulous intercourse of reciprocal compliment, and to contrast them unfavourably with our societies for severe research. They were at least evidence of culture, and served to keep alive the traditions of the more masculine Medicean age. And that the members of these associations were not unaware of their own degeneracy and of its cause, we learn from Milton himself. For as soon as they found that they were safe with the young Briton, they disclosed their own bitter hatred of the church's yoke which they had to bear. "I have sate among their learned men," Milton wrote in 1644, "and been counted happy to be born in such a place of philosophic freedom as they supposed England was, while themselves did nothing but bemoan the servile condition into which learning amongst them was brought, that this was it which had dampt the glory of Italian wits, that nothing had been written there now these many years but flattery and fustian." Milton was introduced at the meetings of their academies; his presence is recorded on two occasions, of which the latest is the 16th September at the Svogliati. He paid his scot by reciting from memory some of his youthful Latin verses, hexameters, "molto erudite," says the minute-book of the sitting, and others, which "I shifted, in the scarcity of boots and conveniences, to patch up." He obtained much credit by these exercises, which, indeed, deserved it by comparison. He ventured upon the perilous experiment of offering some compositions in Italian, which, the fastidious Tuscan ear at least professed to include in those "encomiums which the Italian is not forward to bestow on men of this side the Alps." The author of _Lycidas_ cannot but have been quite aware of the small poetical merit of such an ode as that which was addressed to him by Francini. In this ode Milton is the swan of Thames--"Thames, which, owing to thee, rivals Boeotian Permessus;" and so forth. But there is a genuine feeling, an ungrudging warmth of sympathetic recognition underlying the trite and tumid panegyric. And Milton may have yielded to the not unnatural impulse of showing his countrymen, that though not a prophet in boorish and fanatical England, he had found recognition in the home of letters and arts. Upon us is forced, by this their different reception of Milton, the contrast between the two countries, Italy and England, in the middle of the seventeenth century. The rude north, whose civilisation was all to come, concentrating all its intelligence in a violent effort to work off the ecclesiastical poison from its system, is brought into sharp contrast with the sweet south, whose civilisation is behind it, and whose intellect, after a severe struggle, has succumbed to the material force and organisation of the church. As soon as the season allowed of it, Milton set forward to Rome, taking what was then the usual way by Siena. At Rome he spent two months, occupying himself partly with seeing the antiquities, and partly with cultivating the acquaintance of natives, and some of the many foreigners resident in the eternal city. But though he received much civility, we do not find that he met with the peculiar sympathy which endeared to him his Tuscan friends. His chief ally was the German, Lucas Holstenius, a native of Hamburg, who had abjured Protestantism to become librarian of the Vatican. Holstenius had resided three years in Oxford, and considered himself bound to repay to the English scholar some of the attentions he had received himself. Through Holstenius Milton was presented to the nephew, Francesco Barberini, who was just then everything in Rome. It was at a concert at the Barberini palace that Milton heard Leonora Baroni sing. His three Latin epigrams addressed to this lady, the first singer of Italy, or of the world at that time, testify to the enthusiasm she excited in the musical soul of Milton. Nor are these three epigrams the only homage which Milton paid to Italian beauty. The susceptible poet, who in the sunless north would fain have "sported with the tangles of Neaera's hair," could not behold Neaera herself and the flashing splendour of her eye, unmoved. Milton proclaims (_Defensio Secunda_) that in all his foreign tour he had lived clear from all that is disgraceful. But the pudicity of his behaviour and language covers a soul tremulous with emotion, whose passion was intensified by the discipline of a chaste intention. Five Italian pieces among his poems are to the address of another lady, whose "majestic movements and love-darting dark brow" had subdued him. The charm lay in the novelty of this style of beauty to one who came from the land of the "vermeil-tinctur'd cheek" (_Comus_) and the "golden nets of hair" (_El._ i. 60). No clue has been discovered to the name of this divinity, or to the occasion on which, Milton saw her. Of Milton's impression of Rome there is no record. There are no traces of special observation in his poetry. The description of the city in _Paradise Regained_ (iv. 32) has nothing characteristic, and could have been written by one who had never seen it, and by many as well as by Milton. We get one glimpse of him by aid of the register of the English College, as dining there at a "sumptuous entertainment" on 30th October, when he met Nicholas Carey, brother of Lord Falkland. In spite of Sir Henry Wotton's caution, his resoluteness, as A. Wood calls it, in his religion, besides making the English Jesuits indignant, caused others, not Jesuits, to withhold civilities. Milton only tells us himself that the antiquities detained him in Rome about two months. At the end of November he went on to Naples. On the road he fell in with an Eremite friar, who gave him an introduction to the one man in Naples whom it was important he should know, Giovanni Battista Manso, Marquis of Villa. The marquis, now seventy-eight, had been for two generations the Maecenas of letters in Southern Italy. He had sheltered Tasso in the former generation, and Marini in the latter. It was the singular privilege of his old age that he should now entertain a third poet, greater than either. In spite of his years, he was able to act as cicerone to the young Englishman over the scenes which he himself, in his _Life of Tasso_, has described with the enthusiasm of a poet. But even the high-souled Manso quailed before the terrors of the Inquisition, and apologised to Milton for not having shown him greater attention, because he would not be more circumspect in the matter of religion. Milton's Italian journey brings out the two conflicting strains of feeling which were uttered together in _Lycidas_, the poet's impressibility by nature, the freeman's indignation at clerical domination. The time was now at hand when the latter passion, the noble rage of freedom, was to suppress the more delicate flower of poetic imagination. Milton's original scheme had included Sicily and Greece. The serious aspect of affairs at home compelled him to renounce his project. "I considered it dishonourable to be enjoying myself at my ease in foreign lands, while my countrymen were striking a blow for freedom." He retraced his steps leisurely enough, however, making a halt of two months in Rome, and again one of two months in Florence. We find him mentioned in the minutes of the academy of the Svogliati as having been present at three of their weekly meetings, on the 17th, 24th, and 31st March. But the most noteworthy incident of his second Florentine residence is his interview with Galileo. He had been unable to see the veteran martyr of science on his first visit. For though Galileo was at that time living within the walls, he was kept a close prisoner by the Inquisition, and not allowed either to set foot outside his own door, or to receive visits from non-Catholics. In the spring of 1639, however, he was allowed to go back to his villa at Gioiello, near Arcetri, and Milton obtained admission to him, old, frail, and blind, but in full possession of his mental faculty. There is observable in Milton, as Mr. Masson suggests, a prophetic fascination of the fancy on the subject of blindness. And the deep impression left by this sight of "the Tuscan artist" is evidenced by the feeling with which Galileo's name and achievement are imbedded in _Paradise Lost_. From Florence, Milton crossed the Apennines by Bologna and Ferrara to Venice. From this port he shipped for England the books he had collected during his tour, books curious and rare as they seemed to Phillips, and among them a chest or two of choice music books. The month of April was spent at Venice, and bidding farewell to the beloved land he would never visit again, Milton passed the Alps to Geneva. No Englishman's foreign pilgrimage was complete without touching at this marvellous capital of the reformed faith, which with almost no resources had successfully braved the whole might of the Catholic reaction. The only record of Milton's stay at Geneva is the album of a Neapolitan refugee, to which Milton contributed his autograph, under date 10th June, 1639, with the following quotation:-- If virtue feeble were, Heaven itself would stoop to her. (From _Comus_). Caelum non animum muto, dum trans mare curro. (From _Horace_.) But it is probable that he was a guest in the house of one of the leading pastors, Giovanni Diodati, whose nephew Charles, a physician commencing practice in London, was Milton's bosom friend. Here Milton first heard of the death, in the previous August, of that friend. It was a heavy blow to him, for one of the chief pleasures of being at home again would have been to pour into a sympathetic Italian ear the story of his adventures. The sadness of the homeward journey from Geneva is recorded for us in the _Epitaphium Damonis_. This piece is an elegy to the memory of Charles Diodati. It unfortunately differs from the elegy on King in being written in Latin, and is thus inaccessible to uneducated readers. As to such readers the topic of Milton's Latin poetry is necessarily an ungrateful subject, I will dismiss it here with one remark. Milton's Latin verses are distinguished from most Neo-latin verse by being a vehicle of real emotion. His technical skill is said to have been surpassed by others; but that in which he stands alone is, that in these exercises of imitative art he is able to remain himself, and to give utterance to genuine passion. Artificial Arcadianism is as much the frame-work of the elegy on Diodati as it is of _Lycidas_. We have Daphnis and Bion, Tityrus and Amyntas for characters, Sicilian valleys for scenery, while Pan, Pales, and the Fauns represent the supernatural. The shepherds defend their flocks from wolves and lions. But this factitious bucolicism is pervaded by a pathos, which, like volcanic heat, has fused into a new compound the dilapidated débris of the Theocritean world. And in the Latin elegy there is more tenderness than in the English. Charles Diodati was much nearer to Milton than had been Edward King. The sorrow in _Lycidas_ is not so much personal as it is the regret of the society of Christ's. King had only been known to Milton as one of the students of the same college; Diodati was the associate of his choice in riper manhood. The _Epitaphium Damonis_ is further memorable as Milton's last attempt in serious Latin verse. He discovered in this experiment that Latin was not an adequate vehicle of the feeling he desired to give vent to. In the concluding lines he takes a formal farewell of the Latian muse, and announces his purpose of adopting henceforth the "harsh and grating Brittonic idiom" (_Brittonicum stridens_). _SECOND PERIOD_. 1640-1660. CHAPTER IV. EDUCATIONAL THEORY-TEACHING. Milton was back in England in August, 1639. He had been absent a year and three months, during which space of time the aspect of public affairs, which had been perplexed and gloomy when he left, had been growing still more ominous of a coming storm. The issues of the controversy were so pervasive, that it was almost impossible for any educated man who understood them not to range himself on a side. Yet Milton, though he had broken off his projected tour in consequence, did not rush into the fray on his return. He resumed his retired and studious life, "with no small delight, cheerfully leaving," as he says, "the event of public affairs first to God, and then to those to whom the people had committed that task." He did not return to Horton, but took lodgings in London, in the house of Russel a tailor, in St. Bride's churchyard, at the city end of Fleet-street, on the site of what is now Farringdon-street. There is no attempt on the part of Milton to take up a profession, not even for the sake of appearances. The elder Milton was content to provide the son, of whom he was proud, with the means of prosecuting his eccentric scheme of life, to continue, namely, to prepare himself for some great work, nature unknown. For a young man of simple habits and studious life a little suffices. The chief want is books, and of these, for Milton's style of reading, select rather than copious, a large collection is superfluous. There were in 1640 no public libraries in London, and a scholar had to find his own store of books or to borrow from his friends. Milton never can have possessed a large library. At Horton he may have used Kederminster's bequest to Langley Church. Still, with his Italian acquisitions, added to the books that he already possessed, he soon found a lodging too narrow for his accommodation, and removed to a house of his own, "a pretty garden-house, in Aldersgate, at the end of an entry." Aldersgate was outside the city walls, on the verge of the open country of Islington, and was a genteel though not a fashionable quarter. There were few streets in London, says Phillips, more free from noise. He had taken in hand the education of his two nephews, John and Edward Phillips, sons of his only sister Anne. Anne was a few years older than her brother John. Her first husband, Edward Phillips, had died in 1631, and the widow had given her two sons a stepfather in one Thomas Agar, who was in the Clerk of the Crown's office. Milton, on settling in London in 1639, had at once taken his younger nephew John to live with him. When, in 1640, he removed to Aldersgate, the elder, Edward, also came under his roof. If it was affection for his sister which first moved Milton to undertake the tuition of her sons, he soon developed a taste for the occupation. In 1643 he began to receive into his house other pupils, but only, says Phillips (who is solicitous that his uncle should not be thought to have kept a school), "the sons of some gentlemen that were his intimate friends." He threw into his lessons the same energy which he carried into everything else. In his eagerness to find a place for everything that could be learnt, there could have been few hours in the day which were not invaded by teaching. He had exchanged the contemplative leisure of Horton for a busy life, in which no hour but had its calls. Even on Sundays there were lessons in the Greek Testament and dictations of a system of Divinity in Latin. His pamphlets of this period betray, in their want of measure and equilibrium, even in their heated style and passion-flushed language, the life at high pressure which their author was leading. We have no account of Milton's method of teaching from any competent pupil. Edward Phillips was an amiable and upright man, who earned his living respectably by tuition and the compilation of books. He held his uncle's memory in great veneration. But when he comes to describe the education he received at his uncle's hands, the only characteristic on which he dwells is that of quantity. Phillips's account is, however, supplemented for us by Milton's written theory. His _Tractate of Education to Master Samuel Hartlib_ is probably known even to those who have never looked at anything else of Milton's in prose. Of all the practical arts, that of education seems the most cumbrous in its method, and to be productive of the smallest results with the most lavish expenditure of means. Hence the subject of education is one which is always luring on the innovator and the theorist. Every one, as he grows up, becomes aware of time lost, and effort misapplied, in his own case. It is not unnatural to desire to save our children from a like waste of power. And in a time such as was that of Milton's youth, when all traditions were being questioned, and all institutions were to be remodelled, it was certain that the school would be among the earliest objects to attract an experimental reformer. Among the advanced minds of the time there had grown up a deep dissatisfaction with the received methods of our schools, and more especially of our universities. The great instaurator of all knowledge, Bacon, in preaching the necessity of altering the whole method of knowing, included as matter of course the method of teaching to know. The man who carried over the Baconian aspiration into education was Comenius (d. 1670). A projector and enthusiast, Comenius desired, like Bacon, an entirely new intellectual era. With Bacon's intellectual ambition, but without Bacon's capacity, Comenius proposed to revolutionise all knowledge, and to make complete wisdom accessible to all, in a brief space of time, and with a minimum of labour. Language only as an instrument, not as an end in itself; many living languages, instead of the one dead language of the old school; a knowledge of things, instead of words; the free use of our eyes and ears upon the nature that surrounds us; intelligent apprehension, instead of loading the memory--all these doctrines, afterwards inherited by the party of rational reform, were first promulgated in Europe by the numerous pamphlets--some ninety have been reckoned up--of this Teuto-Slav, Comenius. Comenius had as the champion of his views in England Samuel Hartlib, a Dantziger by origin, settled in London since 1628. Hartlib had even less of real science than Comenius, but he was equally possessed by the Baconian ideal of a new heaven and a new earth of knowledge. Not himself a discoverer in any branch, he was unceasingly occupied in communicating the discoveries and inventions of others. He had an ear for every novelty of whatever kind, interesting himself in social, religious, philanthropic schemes, as well as in experiments in the arts. A sanguine universality of benevolence pervaded that generation of ardent souls, akin only in their common anticipation of an unknown Utopia. A secret was within the reach of human ingenuity which would make all mankind happy. But there were two directions more especially in which Hartlib's zeal without knowledge abounded. These were a grand scheme for the union of Protestant Christendom, and his propagand of Comenius's school-reform. For the first of these projects it was not likely that Hartlib would gain a proselyte in Milton, who had at one-and-twenty judged Anglican orders a servitude, and was already chafing against the restraints of Presbytery. But on his other hobby, that of school-reform, Milton was not only sympathetic, but when Hartlib came to talk with him, he found that most or all of Comenius's ideas had already independently presented themselves to the reflection or experience of the Englishman. At Hartlib's request Milton consented to put down his thoughts on paper, and even to print them in a quarto pamphlet of eight pages, entitled, _Of Education: to Master Samuel Hartlib_. This tract, often reproduced and regarded, along with one of Locke's, as a substantial contribution to the subject, must often have grievously disappointed those who have eagerly consulted it for practical hints or guidance of any kind. Its interest is wholly biographical. It cannot be regarded as a valuable contribution to educational theory, but it is strongly marked with the Miltonic individuality. We find in it the same lofty conception of the aim which Milton carried into everything he attempted; the same disdain of the beaten routine, and proud reliance upon his own resources. He had given vent elsewhere to his discontent with the system of Cambridge, "which, as in the time of her better health, and mine own younger judgment, I never greatly admired, so now (1642) much less." In the letter to Hartlib he denounces with equal fierceness the schools and "the many mistakes which have made learning generally so unpleasing and so unsuccessful." The alumni of the universities carry away with them a hatred and contempt for learning, and sink into "ignorantly zealous" clergymen, or mercenary lawyers, while the men of fortune betake themselves to feasts and jollity. These last, Milton thinks, are the best of the three classes. All these moral shipwrecks are the consequence, according to Milton, of bad education. It is in our power to avert them by a reform of schools. But the measures of reform, when produced, are ludicrously incommensurable with the evils to be remedied. I do not trouble the reader with the proposals; they are a form of the well-known mistake of regarding education as merely the communication of useful knowledge. The doctrine as propounded in the _Tractate_ is complicated by the further difficulty, that the knowledge is to be gathered out of Greek and Latin books. This doctrine is advocated by Milton with the ardour of his own lofty enthusiasm. In virtue of the grandeur of zeal which inspires them, these pages, which are in substance nothing more than the now familiar omniscient examiner's programme, retain a place as one of our classics. The fine definition of education here given has never been improved upon: "I call a complete and generous education that which fits a man to perform justly, skilfully, and magnanimously, all the offices, both private and public, of peace and war." This is the true Milton. When he offers, in another page, as an equivalent definition of the true end of learning, "to repair the ruin of our first parents by regaining to know God aright," we have the theological Milton, and what he took on from the current language of his age. Milton saw strongly, as many have done before and since, one weak point in the practice of schools, namely, the small result of much time. He fell into the natural error of the inexperienced teacher, that of supposing that the remedy was the ingestion of much and diversified intelligible matter. It requires much observation of young minds to discover that the rapid inculcation of unassimilated information stupefies the faculties instead of training them. Is it fanciful to think that in Edward Phillips, who was always employing his superficial pen upon topics with which he snatched a fugitive acquaintance, we have a concrete example of the natural result of the Miltonic system of instruction? CHAPTER V. MARRIAGE, AND PAMPHLETS ON DIVORCE We have seen that Milton turned back from his unaccomplished tour because he "deemed it disgraceful to be idling away his time abroad for his own gratification, while his countrymen were contending for their liberty." From these words biographers have inferred that he hurried home with the view of taking service in the Parliamentarian army. This interpretation of his words seems to receive confirmation from what Phillips thinks he had heard,--"I am much mistaken if there were not about this time a design in agitation of making him Adjutant-General in Sir William Waller's army." Phillips very likely thought that a recruit could enlist as an Adjutant-General, but it does not appear from Milton's own words that he himself ever contemplated service in the field. The words "contending for liberty" (de libertate dimicarent) could not, as said of the winter 1638-39, mean anything more than the strife of party. And when war did break out, it must have been obvious to Milton that he could serve the cause better as a scholar than as a soldier. That he never took service in the army is certain. If there was a time when he should have been found in the ranks, it was on the 12th November, 1642, when every able-bodied citizen turned out to oppose the march of the king, who had advanced to Brentford. But we have the evidence of the sonnet-- Captain, or Colonel, or Knight in arms, that Milton, on this occasion, stayed at home. He had, as he announced in February, 1642, "taken labour and intent study" to be his portion in this life. He did not contemplate enlisting his pen in the service of the Parliament, but the exaltation of his country's glory by the composition of some monument of the English language, as Dante or Tasso had done for Italian. But a project ambitious as this lay too far off to be put in execution as soon as thought of. The ultimate purpose had to give place to the immediate. One of these interludes, originating in Milton's personal relations, was his series of tracts on divorce. In the early part of the summer of 1643, Milton took a sudden journey into the country, "nobody about him certainly knowing the reason, or that it was any more than a journey of recreation." He was absent about a month, and when he returned he brought back a wife with him. Nor was the bride alone. She was attended "by some few of her nearest relations," and there was feasting and celebration of the nuptials, in the house in Aldersgate-street. The bride's name was Mary, eldest daughter of Richard Powell, Esq., of Forest Hill, J.P. for the county of Oxford. Forest Hill is a village and parish about five miles from Oxford on the Thame road, where Mr. Powell had a house and a small estate of some 300 l. a year, value of that day. Forest Hill was within the ancient royal forest of Shotover, of which Mr. Powell was lessee. The reader will remember that the poet's father was born at Stanton St. John, the adjoining parish to Forest Hill, and that Richard Milton, the grandfather, had been under-ranger of the royal forest. There had been many transactions between the Milton and the Powell families as far back as 1627. In paying a visit to that neighbourhood, Milton was both returning to the district which had been the home of all the Miltons, and renewing an old acquaintance with the Powell family. Mr. Powell, though in receipt of a fair income for a country gentleman--300 l. a year of that day may be roughly valued at 1000 l. of our day--and his wife had brought him 3000 l., could not live within his means. His children were numerous, and, belonging as he did to the cavalier party, his house was conducted with the careless hospitality of a royalist gentleman. Twenty years before he had begun borrowing, and among other persons had had recourse to the prosperous and saving scrivener of Bread-street. He was already mortgaged to the Miltons, father and sons, more deeply than his estate had any prospect of paying, which was perhaps the reason why he found no difficulty in promising a portion of 1000 l. with his daughter. Milton, with a poet's want of caution, or indifference to money, and with a lofty masculine disregard of the temper and character of the girl he asked to share his life, came home with his bride in triumph, and held feasting in celebration of his hasty and ill-considered choice. It was a beginning of sorrows to him. Hitherto, up to his thirty-fifth year, independent master of leisure and the delights of literature, his years had passed without a check or a shadow. From this day forward domestic misery, the importunities of business, the clamour of controversy, crowned by the crushing calamity of blindness, were to be his portion for more than thirty years. Singular among poets in the serene fortune of the first half of life, in the second half his piteous fate was to rank in wretchedness with that of his masters, Dante or Tasso. The biographer, acquainted with the event, has no difficulty in predicting it, and in saying at this point in his story, that Milton might have known better than, with his puritanical connections, to have taken to wife a daughter of a cavalier house, to have brought her from a roystering home, frequented by the dissolute officers of the Oxford garrison, to the spare diet and philosophical retirement of a recluse student, and to have looked for sympathy and response for his speculations from an uneducated and frivolous girl. Love has blinded, and will continue to blind, the wisest men to calculations as easy and as certain as these. And Milton, in whose soul Puritan austerity was as yet only contending with the more genial currents of humanity, had a far greater than average susceptibility to the charm of woman. Even at the later date of _Paradise Lost_, voluptuous thoughts, as Mr. Hallam has observed, are not uncongenial to him. And at an earlier age his poems, candidly pure from the lascivious inuendoes of his contemporaries, have preserved the record of the rapid impression of the momentary passage of beauty upon his susceptible mind. Once, at twenty, he was set all on flame by the casual meeting, in one of his walks in the suburbs of London, with a damsel whom he never saw again. Again, sonnets III. to V. tell how he fell before the new type of foreign beauty which crossed his path at Bologna. A similar surprise of his fancy at the expense of his judgment seems to have happened on the present occasion of his visit to Shotover. There is no evidence that Mary Powell was handsome, and we may be sure that it would have been mentioned if she had been. But she had youth, and country freshness; her "unliveliness and natural sloth unfit for conversation" passed as "the bashful muteness of a virgin;" and if a doubt intruded that he was being too hasty, Milton may have thought that a girl of seventeen could be moulded at pleasure. He was too soon undeceived. His dream of married happiness barely lasted out the honeymoon. He found that he had mated himself to a clod of earth, who not only was not now, but had not the capacity of becoming, a helpmeet for him. With Milton, as with the whole Calvinistic and Puritan Europe, woman was a creature of an inferior and subordinate class. Man was the final cause of God's creation, and woman was there to minister to this nobler being. In his dogmatic treatise, _De doctrina Christiana_, Milton formulated this sentiment in the thesis, borrowed from the schoolmen, that the soul was communicated "in semine patris." The cavalier section of society had inherited the sentiment of chivalry, and contrasted with the roundhead not more by its loyalty to the person of the prince, than by its recognition of the superior grace and refinement of womanhood. Even in the debased and degenerate epoch of court life which followed 1660, the forms and language of homage still preserved the tradition of a nobler scheme of manners. The Puritan had thrown off chivalry as being parcel of Catholicism, and had replaced it by the Hebrew ideal of the subjection and seclusion of woman. Milton, in whose mind the rigidity of Puritan doctrine was now contending with the freer spirit of culture and romance, shows on the present occasion a like conflict of doctrine with sentiment. While he adopts the oriental hypothesis of woman for the sake of man, he modifies it by laying more stress upon mutual affection, the charities of home, and the intercommunion of intellectual and moral life, than upon that ministration of woman to the appetite and comforts of man, which makes up the whole of her functions in the Puritan apprehension. The failure in his own case to obtain this genial companionship of soul, which he calls "the gentlest end of marriage," is what gave the keenest edge to his disappointment in his matrimonial venture. But however keenly he felt and regretted the precipitancy which had yoked him for life to "a mute and spiritless mate," the breach did not come from his side. The girl herself conceived an equal repugnance to the husband she had thoughtlessly accepted, probably on the strength of his good looks, which was all of Milton that she was capable of appreciating. A young bride, taken suddenly from the freedom of a jovial and an undisciplined home, rendered more lax by civil confusion and easy intercourse with the officers of the royalist garrison, and committed to the sole society of a stranger, and that stranger possessing the rights of a husband, and expecting much from all who lived with him, may not unnaturally have been seized with panic terror, and wished herself home again. The young Mrs. Milton not only wished it, but incited her family to write and beg that she might be allowed to go home to stay the remainder of the summer. The request to quit her husband at the end of the first month was so unreasonable, that the parents would hardly have made it if they had not suspected some profound cause of estrangement. Nor could Milton have consented, as he did, to so extreme a remedy unless he had felt that the case required no less, and that her mother's advice and influence were the most available means of awakening his wife to a sense of her duty, Milton's consent was therefore given. He may hare thought it desirable she should go, and thus Mrs. Powell would not have been going very much beyond the truth when she pretended some years afterwards that her son-in-law had turned away his wife for a long space. Mary Milton went to Forest Hill in July, but on the understanding that she was to come back at Michaelmas. When the appointed time came, she did not appear. Milton wrote for her to come. No answer. Several other letters met the same fate. At last he despatched a foot messenger to Forest Hill desiring her return. The messenger came back only to report that he had been "dismissed with some sort of contempt." It was evident that Mary Milton's family had espoused her cause as against her husband. Whatever may have been the secret motive of their conduct, they explained the quarrel politically, and began to repent, so Phillips thought, of having matched the eldest daughter of their house with a violent Presbyterian. If Milton had "hasted too eagerly to light the nuptial torch," he had been equally ardent in his calculations of the domestic happiness upon which he was to enter. His poet's imagination had invested a dull and common girl with rare attributes moral and intellectual, and had pictured for him the state of matrimony as an earthly paradise, in which he was to be secure of a response of affection showing itself in a communion of intelligent interests. In proportion to the brilliancy of his ideal anticipation was the fury of despair which came upon him when he found out his mistake. A common man, in a common age, would have vented his vexation upon the individual. Milton, living at a time when controversy turned away from details, and sought to dig down to the roots of every question, instead of urging the hardships of his own case, set to to consider the institution of marriage in itself. He published a pamphlet with the title, _The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce_, at first anonymously, but putting his name to a second edition, much enlarged. He further reinforced this argument in chief with three supplementary pamphlets, partly in answer to opponents and objectors; for there was no lack of opposition, indeed of outcry loud and fierce. A biographer closely scans the pages of these pamphlets, not for the sake of their direct argument, but to see if he can extract from them any indirect hints of their author's personal relations. There is found in them no mention of Milton's individual case. Had we no other information, we should not be authorised to infer from them that the question of the marriage tie was more than an abstract question with the author. But though all mention of his own case is studiously avoided by Milton, his pamphlet, when read by the light of Phillips's brief narrative, does seem to give some assistance in apprehending the circumstances of this obscure passage of the poet's life. The mystery has always been felt by the biographers, but has assumed a darker hue since the discovery by Mr. Masson of a copy of the first edition of _The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce_, with the written date of August 1. According to Phillips's narrative, the pamphlet was engendered by Milton's indignation at his wife's contemptuous treatment of him, in refusing to keep the engagement to return at Michaelmas, and would therefore be composed in October and November, time enough to allow for the sale of the edition, and the preparation of the enlarged edition, which came out in February, 1644. But if the date "August 1" for the first edition be correct, we have to suppose that Milton was occupying himself with the composition of a vehement and impassioned argument in favour of divorce for incompatibility of temper, during the honeymoon! Such behaviour on Milton's part, he being thirty-five, towards a girl of seventeen, to whom he was bound, to show all loving tenderness, is so horrible, that a suggestion has been made that there was a more adequate cause for his displeasure, a suggestion, which Milton's biographer is bound to notice, even if he does not adopt it. The suggestion, which I believe was first made by a writer in the _Athenaeum_, is that Milton's young wife refused him the consummation of the marriage. The supposition is founded upon a certain passage in Milton's pamphlet. If the early date of the pamphlet be the true date; if the _Doctrine and Discipline_ was in the hands of the public on August 1 if Milton was brooding over this seething agony of passion all through July, with the young bride, to whom he had been barely wedded a month, in the house where he was writing, then the only apology for this outrage upon the charities, not to say decencies, of home is that which is suggested by the passage referred to. Then the pamphlet, however imprudent, becomes pardonable. It is a passionate cry from the depths of a great despair; another evidence of the noble purity of a nature which refused to console itself as other men would have consoled themselves; a nature which, instead of an egotistical whine for its own deliverance, sets itself to plead the common cause of man and of society. He gives no intimation of any individual interest, but his argument throughout glows with a white heat of concealed emotion, such as could only he stirred by the sting of some personal and present misery. Notwithstanding the amount of free opinion abroad in England, or at least in London, at this date, Milton's divorce pamphlets created a sensation of that sort which Gibbon is fond of calling a scandal. A scandal, in this sense, must always arise in your own party; you cannot scandalise the enemy. And so it was now. The Episcopalians were rejoiced that Milton should ruin his credit with his own side by advocating a paradox. The Presbyterians hastened to disown a man who enabled their opponents to brand their religious scheme as the parent of moral heresies. For though church government and the English constitution in all its parts had begun to be open questions, speculation had not as yet attacked either of the two bases of society, property or the family. Loud was the outcry of the Philistines. There was no doubt that the rigid bonds of Presbyterian orthodoxy would not in any case have long held Milton. They were snapped at once by the publication of his opinions on divorce, and Milton is henceforward to be ranked among the most independent of the new party which shortly after this date began to be heard of under the name of Independents. But the men who formed the nucleus of this new mode of thinking were as yet, in 1643, not consolidated into a sect, still less was their importance as the coming political party dreamt of. At present they were units, only drawn to each other by the sympathy of opinion. The contemptuous epithets, Anabaptist, Antinomian, &c., could be levelled against them with fatal effect by every Philistine, and were freely used on this occasion against Milton. He says of himself that he now lived in a world of disesteem. Nor was there wanting, to complete his discomfiture, the practical parody of the doctrine of divorce. A Mistress Attaway, lacewoman in Bell-alley, and she-preacher in. Coleman-street, had been reading Master Milton's book, and remembered that she had an unsanctified husband, who did not speak the language of Canaan. She further reflected that Mr. Attaway was not only unsanctified, but was also absent with the army, while William Jenney was on the spot, and, like herself, also a preacher. Could a "scandalised" Presbyterian help pointing the finger of triumphant scorn at such examples, the natural fruits of that mischievous book, _The Doctrine and Discipline_? Beyond the stage of scandal and disesteem the matter did not proceed. In dedicating _The Doctrine and Discipline_ to the Parliament, Milton had specially called on that assembly to legislate for the relief of men who were encumbered with unsuitable spouses. No notice was taken of this appeal, as there was far other work on hand, and no particular pressure from without in the direction of Milton's suit. Divorce for incompatibility of temper remained his private crotchet, or obtained converts only among his fellow-sufferers, who, however numerous, did not form a body important enough to enforce by clamour their demand for relief. Milton was not very well pleased to find that the Parliament had no ear for the bitter cry of distress wrung from their ardent admirer and staunch adherent. Accordingly, in 1645, in dedicating the last of the divorce pamphlets, which, he entitled _Tetrachordon_, to the Parliament, he concluded with a threat, "If the law make not a timely provision, let the law, as reason is, bear the censure of the consequences." This threat he was prepared to put in execution, and did, in 1645, as Phillips tells us, contemplate a union, which could not have been a marriage, with another woman. He was able at this time to find some part of that solace of conversation which his wife failed to give him, among his female acquaintance. Especially we find him at home in the house of one of the Parliamentary women, the Lady Margaret Ley, a lady "of great wit and ingenuity," the "honoured Margaret" of Sonnet x. But the Lady Margaret was a married woman, being the wife of a Captain Hobson, a "very accomplished gentleman," of the Isle of Wight. The young lady who was the object of his attentions, and who, if she were the "virtuous young lady" of Sonnet ix., was "in the prime of earliest youth," was a daughter of a Dr. Davis, of whom nothing else is now known. She is described by Phillips, who may have seen her, as a very handsome and witty gentlewoman. Though Milton was ready to brave public opinion. Miss Davis was not. And so the suit hung, when all schemes of the kind were pat an end to by the unexpected submission of Mary Powell. Since October, 1643, when Milton's messenger had been dismissed from Forest Hill, the face of the civil struggle was changed. The Presbyterian army had been replaced by that of the Independents, and the immediate consequence had been the decline of the royal cause, consummated by its total ruin on the day of Naseby, in June, 1645. Oxford was closely invested, Forest Hill occupied by the besiegers, and the Powell family compelled to take refuge within the lines of the city. Financial bankruptcy, too, had overtaken the Powells. These influences, rather than any rumours which may hare reached them of Milton's designs in regard to Miss Davis, wrought a change in the views of the Powell family. By the triumph of the Independents Mr. Milton was become a man of consideration, and might be useful as a protector. They concluded that the best thing they could do was to seek a reconciliation. There were not wanting friends of Milton's also, some perhaps divining his secret discontent, who thought that such reconciliation would be better for him too, than perilling his happiness upon the experiment of an illegal connexion. A conspiracy of the friends of both parties contrived to introduce Mary Powell into a house where Milton often visited in St. Martin's-le-Grand. She was secreted in an adjoining room, on an occasion when Milton was known to be coming, and he was surprised by seeing her suddenly brought in, throw herself on her knees, and ask to be forgiven. The poor young thing, now two years older and wiser, but still only nineteen, pleaded, truly or falsely, that her mother "had been all along the chief promoter of her frowardness" Milton, with a "noble leonine clemency" which became him, cared not for excuses for the past. It was enough that she was come back, and was willing to live with him as his wife. He received her at once, and not only her, but on the surrender of Oxford, in June, 1646, and the sequestration of Forest Hill, took in the whole family of Powells, including the mother-in-law, whose influence with her daughter might even again trouble his peace. It is impossible not to see that Milton had this impressive scene, enacted in St. Martin's-le-Grand in 1645, before his mind, when he wrote, twenty years afterwards, the lines in _Paradise Lost_, x. 937:-- ... Eve, with tears that ceas'd not flowing And tresses all disorder'd, at his feet Fell humble, and embracing them, besought His peace... ... Her lowly plight Immovable, till peace obtain'd from fault Acknowledg'd and deplor'd, in Adam wrought Commiseration; soon his heart relented Tow'rds her, his life so late and sole delight, Now at his feet submissive in distress! Creature so fair his reconcilement seeking, * * * * * At once disarm'd, his anger all he lost. The garden-house in Aldersgate-street had before been found too small for the pupils who were being now pressed upon Milton. It was to a larger house in Barbican, a side street leading out of Aldersgate, that he brought the Powells and Mary Milton. Milton probably abated his exactions on the point of companionship, and learned to be content with her acquiescence in the duties of a wife. In July, 1646, she became a mother, and bore in all four children. Of these, three, all daughters, lived to grow up. Mary Milton herself died in giving birth to the fourth child in the summer of 1652. She was only twenty-six, and had been married to Milton nine years. CHAPTER VI PAMPHLETS. We have now seen Milton engaged in teaching and writing on education, involved in domestic unhappiness, and speculating on the obligations of marriage. But neither of these topics formed the principal occupation of his mind during these years. He had renounced a cherished scheme of travel because his countrymen were engaged at home in contending for their liberties, and it could not but be that the gradually intensified stages of that struggle engrossed his interest, and claimed his participation. So imperative did he regard this claim that he allowed it to override the purposed dedication of his life to poetry. Not indeed for ever and aye, but for a time. As he had renounced Greece, the Aegean Isles, Thebes, and the East for the fight for freedom, so now to the same cause he postponed the composition of his epic of Arthurian romance, or whatever his mind "in the spacious circuits of her musing proposed to herself of highest hope and hardest attempting." No doubt at first, in thus deferring the work of his life, he thought the delay would be for a brief space. He did not foresee that having once taken an oar, he would be chained to it for more than twenty years, and that he would finally owe his release to the ruin of the cause he had served. But for the Restoration and the overthrow of the Puritans, we should never have had the great Puritan epic. The period then of his political activity is to be regarded as an episode in the life of the poet Milton. It is indeed an episode which fills twenty years, and those the most vigorous years of manhood, from his thirty-second to his fifty-second year. He himself was conscious of the sacrifice he was making, and apologises to the public for thus defrauding them of the better work which he stood pledged to execute. As he puts it, there was no choice for him. He could not help himself, at this critical juncture, "when the Church of God was at the foot of her insulting enemies;" he would never have ceased to reproach himself, if he had refused to employ the fruits of his studies in her behalf. He saw also that a generation inflamed by the passions of conflict, and looking in breathless suspense for the issue of battles, was not in a mood to attend to poetry. Nor, indeed, was he ready to write, "not having yet (this is in 1642) completed to my mind the full circle of my private studies." But though he is drawn into the strife against his will, and in defiance of his genius, when he is in it, he throws into it the whole vehemence of his nature. The pamphlet period, I have said, is an episode in the life of the poet. But it is a genuine part of Milton's life. However his ambition may have been set upon an epic crown, his zeal for what he calls the church was an equal passion, nay had, in his judgment, a paramount claim upon him, He is a zealot among the zealots; his cause is the cause of God; and the sword of the Independents is the sword of the Lord and of Gideon. He does not refute opponents, but curses enemies. Yet his rage, even when most delirious, is always a Miltonic rage; it is grand, sublime, terrible! Mingled with the scurrilities of the theological brawl are passages of the noblest English ever written. Hartley Coleridge explains the dulness of the wit-combats in Shakspeare and Jonson, on the ground that repartee is the accomplishment of lighter thinkers and a less earnest age. So of Milton's pamphlets it must be said that he was not fencing for pastime, but fighting for all he held most worthy. He had to think only of making his blows tell. When a battle is raging, and my friends are sorely pressed, am I not to help because good manners forbid the shedding of blood? No good man can, with impunity, addict himself to party. And the best men will suffer most, because their conviction of the goodness of their cause is deeper. But when one with the sensibility of a poet throws himself into the excitements of a struggle, he is certain to lose his balance. The endowment of feeling and imagination which qualifies him to be the ideal interpreter of life, unfits him for participation in that real life, through the manoeuvres and compromises of which reason is the only guide, and where imagination is as much misplaced as it would be in a game of chess. "The ennobling difference between one man and another is that one feels more than another." Milton's capacity of emotion, when once he became champion of a cause, could not be contained within the bounds of ordinary speech. It breaks into ferocious reprobation, into terrific blasts of vituperation, beneath which the very language creaks, as the timbers of a ship in a storm. Corruptio optimi pessima. The archangel is recognisable by the energy of his malice. Were all those accomplishments; those many studious years hiving wisdom, the knowledge of all the tongues, the command of all the thoughts of all the ages, and that wealth of English expression--were all these acquirements only of use, that their possessor might vie in defamation with an Edwards or a Du Moulin? For it should be noted that these pamphlets, now only serving as a record of the prostitution of genius to political party, were, at the time at which they appeared, of no use to the cause in which they were written. Writers, with a professional tendency to magnify their office, have always been given to exaggerate the effect of printed words. There are examples of thought having been influenced by books. But such books have been scientific, not rhetorical. Milton's pamphlets are not works of speculation, or philosophy, or learning, or solid reasoning on facts. They are inflammatory appeals, addressed to the passions of the hour. He who was meditating the erection of an enduring creation, such as the world "would not willingly let die," was content to occupy himself with the most ephemeral of all hackwork. His own polemical writings may be justly described in the words he himself uses of a book by one of his opponents, as calculated "to gain a short, contemptible, and soon-fading reward, not to stir the constancy and solid firmness of any wise man ... but to catch the worthless approbation of an inconstant, irrational, and image-doting rabble." It would have been not unnatural that the public school and university man, the admirer of Shakspeare and the old romances, the pet of Italian academies, the poet-scholar, himself the author of two Masks, who was nursing his wings for a new flight into the realms of verse, should have sided with the cavaliers against the Puritans, with the party of culture and the humanities against the party which shut up the theatres and despised profane learning. But we have seen that there was another side to Milton's mind. This may be spoken of as his other self, the Puritan self, and regarded as in internal conflict with the poet's self. His twenty years' pamphlet warfare may be presented by his biographer as the expression of the Puritanic Milton, who shall have been driven back upon his suppressed instincts as a poet by the ruin of his political hopes. This chart of Milton's life is at once simple and true. But like all physiological diagrams it falls short of the subtlety and complexity of human character. A study of the pamphlets will show that the poet is all there, indeed only too openly for influence on opinion, and that the blighted hope of the patriot lends a secret pathos to _Paradise Lost_ and _Samson Agonistes_. This other element in Milton is not accurately named Puritanism. Even the term republicanism is a coarse and conventional description of that sentiment which dominated his whole being, and which is the inspiration at once of his poetry and of his prose. To give a name to this sentiment, I must call it the love of liberty. It was an aspiration at once real and vague, after a new order of things, an order in which the old injustices and oppressions should cease; after a new Jerusalem, a millennium, a Utopia, an Oceana. Its aim was to realise in political institutions that great instauration of which Bacon dreamed in the world of intelligence. It was much more negative than affirmative, and knew better, as we all do, how good was hindered than how it should be promoted. "I did but prompt the age to _quit their clogs_." Milton embodied, more perfectly than any of his cotemporaries, this spirit of the age. It is the ardent aspiration, after the pure and noble life, the aspiration which stamps every line he wrote, verse or prose, with a dignity as of an heroic age. This gives consistency to all his utterances. The doctrinaire republican of to-day cannot understand how the man who approved the execution of the would-be despot Charles Stuart, should have been the hearty supporter of the real autocrat Oliver Cromwell. Milton was not the slave of a name. He cared not for the word republic, so as it was well with the commonwealth. Parliaments or single rulers, he knew, are "but means to an end; if that end was obtained, no matter if the constitutional guarantees exist or not. Many of Milton's pamphlets are certainly party pleadings, choleric, one-sided, personal. But through them all runs the one redeeming characteristic--that they are all written on the side of liberty. He defended religious liberty against the prelates, civil liberty against the crown, the liberty of the press against the executive, liberty of conscience against the Presbyterians, and domestic liberty against the tyranny of canon law. Milton's pamphlets might have been stamped with the motto which Selden inscribed (in Greek) in all his books, "Liberty before everything." One virtue these pamphlets possess, the virtue of style. They are monuments of our language so remarkable that Milton's prose works must always be resorted to by students, as long as English remains a medium of ideas. Yet even on the score of style, Milton's prose is subject to serious deductions. His negligence is such as to amount to an absence of construction. He who, in his verse, trained the sentence with delicate sensibility to follow his guiding hand into exquisite syntax, seems in his prose writing to abandon his meaning to shift for itself. Here Milton compares disadvantageously with Hooker. Hooker's elaborate sentence, like the sentence of Demosthenes, is composed of parts so hinged, of clauses so subordinated to the main thought, that we foresee the end from the beginning, and close the period with a sense of perfect roundness and totality. Milton does not seem to have any notion of what a period means. He begins anywhere, and leaves off, not when the sense closes, but when he is out of breath. We might have thought this pell-mell huddle of his words was explained, if not excused, by the exigencies of the party pamphlet, which cannot wait. But the same asyntactle disorder is equally found in the _History of Britain_, which he had in hand for forty years. Nor is it only the Miltonic sentence which is incoherent; the whole arrangement of his topics is equally loose, disjointed, and desultory. His inspiration comes from impulse. Had he stayed to chastise his emotional writing by reason and the laws of logic, he would have deprived himself of the sources of his strength. These serious faults are balanced by virtues of another kind. Putting Bacon aside, the condensed force and poignant brevity of whose aphoristic wisdom has no parallel in English, there is no other prosaist who possesses anything like Milton's command over the resources of our language. Milton cannot match the musical harmony and exactly balanced periods of his predecessor Hooker. He is without the power of varied illustration, and accumulation of ornamental circumstance, possessed by his contemporary, Jeremy Taylor (1613-1667). But neither of these great writers impresses the reader with a sense of unlimited power such as we feel to reside in Milton. Vast as is the wealth of magnificent words which he flings with both hands carelessly upon the page, we feel that there is still much more in reserve. The critics have observed (Collier's _Poetical Decameron_) that as Milton advanced in life he gradually disused the compound words he had been in the habit of making for himself. However this may be, his words are the words of one who made a study of the language, as a poet studies language, searching its capacities for the expression of surging emotion. Jeremy Taylor's prose is poetical prose. Milton's prose is not poetical prose, but a different thing, the prose of a poet; not like Taylor's, loaded with imagery on the outside; but coloured by imagination from within. Milton is the first English writer who, possessing in the ancient models a standard of the effect which could be produced by choice of words, set himself to the conscious study of our native tongue with a firm faith in its as yet undeveloped powers as an instrument of thought. The words in Milton's poems have been counted, and it appears that he employs 8000, while Shakspeare's plays and poems yield about 15,000. From this it might be inferred that the Miltonic vocabulary is only half as rich as that of Shakspeare. But no inference can be founded upon the absolute number of words used by any writer. We must know, not the total of different words, but the _proportion_ of different words to the whole of any writer's words. Now to furnish a list of 100 different words the English Bible requires 531 common words, Shakspeare 164, Milton 135 only. This computation is founded on the poems; it would be curious to have the same test tried upon the prose writings, though no such test can be as trustworthy as the educated ear of a listener to a continued reading. It is no part of a succinct biography, such as the present, to furnish an account in detail of the various controversies of the time, as Milton engaged in them. The reader will doubtless be content with the, bare indication of the subjects on which he wrote. The whole number of Milton's political pamphlets Is twenty-five. Of these, twenty-one are written in English, and four in Latin, Of the _Tractate of Education_ and the four divorce pamphlets something has been already said. Of the remaining twenty, nine, or nearly half, relate to church government, or ecclesiastical affairs; eight treat of the various crises of the civil strife; and two are personal vindications of himself against one of his antagonists. There remains one tract of which the subject is of a more general and permanent nature, the best known of all the series, _Areopagitica: A Speech for the Liberty of unlicensed Printing, to the Parliament of England_. The whole series of twenty-five extends over a period of somewhat less than twenty years; the earliest, viz., _Of Reformation touching Church Discipline in England, and the Causes that hitherto have hindered it_, having been published in 1641; the latest, entitled, _A ready and easy way to establish a free Commonwealth_, coming out in March, 1660, after the torrent of royalism had set in, which was to sweep away the men and the cause to which Milton had devoted himself. Milton's pen thus accompanied the whole of the Puritan revolution from the modest constitutional opposition in which It commenced, through its unexpected triumph, to its crushing overthrow by the royalist and clerical reaction. The autumn of 1641 brought with it a sensible lull in the storm of revolutionary passion. Indeed, there began to appear all the symptoms of a reaction, and of the formation of a solid conservative party, likely to be strong enough to check, or even to suppress, the movement. The impulse seemed to have spent itself, and a desire for rest from political agitation began to steal over the nation. Autumn and the harvest turn men's thoughts towards country occupations and sports. The King went off to Scotland in August; the Houses adjourned till the 20th October. The Scottish army had been paid off, and had repassed the border; the Scottish commissioners and preachers had left London. It was a critical moment for the Puritan party. Some very considerable triumphs they had gained. The archenemy Strafford had been brought to the block; Laud was in the tower; the leading members of Convocation, bishops, deans, and archdeacons, had been heavily fined; the Star Chamber and the High Commission Court had been abolished; the Stannary and Forestal jurisdictions restrained. But the Puritan movement aimed at far more than this. It was not only that the root-and-branch men were pushing for a generally more levelling policy, but the whole Puritan party was committed to a struggle with the hierarchy of the Established Church. It was not so much that they demanded more and more reform, with the growing appetite of revolution, but that as long as bishops existed, nothing that had been wrested from them was secure. The Puritans could not exist in safety side by side with a church whose principle was that there was no church without the apostolic succession. The abolition of episcopacy and the substitution of the Presbyterian platform was, so it then seemed, a bare measure of necessary precaution, and not merely the extravagant demand of dissatisfied spirits. Add to this, that it was well understood by those near enough to the principal actors in the drama, that the concessions made by the Court had been easily made, because they could be taken back, when the time should come, with equal ease. Even the most moderate men, who were satisfied with the amount of reform already obtained, must have trembled at its insecurity. The Puritan leaders must have viewed with dismay the tendency in the nation towards a reaction in favour of things as they were. It was upon this condition of the public mind that Milton persistently poured pamphlet after pamphlet, successive vials of apocalyptic wrath. He exhausts all the resources of rhetoric, and plays upon every note in the gamut of public feeling; that he may rouse the apathetic, confirm the wavering, dumbfound the malignant; where there was zeal, to fan it into flame; where there was opposition, to sow and browbeat it by indignant scorn and terrific denunciation. The first of these manifestoes was (1) _Of Reformation touching Church Discipline_, of which I have already spoken. This was immediately followed by (2) _Of Prelaticall Episcopacy_. This tract was a reply, in form, to a publication of Archbishop Usher. It was about the end of May, 1641, that Usher had come forward on the breach with his _Judgment of Dr. Rainolds touching the Original of Episcopacy_, Rainolds, who had been President of Corpus (1598-1607), had belonged to the Puritan party in his day, had refused a bishopric, and was known, like Usher himself, to be little favourable to the exclusive claims of the high prelatists. He was thus an unexceptionable witness to adduce in favour of the apostolic origin of the distinction between bishop and presbyter. Usher, in editing Rainolds' opinions, had backed them up with all the additional citations which his vast reading could supply. Milton could not speak with the weight that attached to Usher, the most learned Churchman of the age, who had spent eighteen years in going through a complete course of fathers and councils. But, in the first paragraph of his answer, Milton adroitly puts the controversy upon a footing by which antiquarian research is put out of court. Episcopacy is either of human or divine origin. If of human origin, it may be either retained or abolished, as may be found expedient. If of divine appointment, it must be proved to be so out of Scripture. If this cannot be proved out of inspired Scripture, no accumulation of merely human assertion of the point can be of the least authority. Having thus shut out antiquity as evidence in the case, he proceeds nevertheless to examine his opponent's authorities, and sets them aside by a style of argument which has more of banter than of criticism. One incident of this collision between Milton, young and unknown, and the venerable prelate, whom he was assaulting with the rude wantonness of untempered youth, deserves to be mentioned here. Usher had incautiously included the Ignatian epistles among his authorities. This laid the most learned man of the day at the mercy of an adversary of less reading than himself. Milton, who at least knew so much suspicion of the genuineness of these remains as Casaubon's _Exercitations on Baronius_ and Vedelin's edition (Geneva, 1623) could suggest, pounced upon this critical flaw, and delightedly denounced in trenchant tones this "Perkin Warbeck of Ignatius," and the "supposititious offspring of some dozen epistles." This rude shock it was which set Usher upon a more careful examination of the Ignatian question. The result was his well-known edition of Ignatius, printed 1642, though not published till 1644, in which he acknowledged the total spuriousness of nine epistles, and the partial interpolation of the other six. I have not noticed in Usher's _Prolegomena_ that he alludes to Milton's onslaught. Nor, indeed, was he called upon to do so in a scientific investigation, as Milton had brought no contribution to the solution of the question beyond sound and fury. Of Milton's third pamphlet, entitled (3) _Animadversions on the Remonstrants defence against Smectymnuus_, it need only be said that it is a violent personal onfall upon Joseph Hall, bishop, first, of Exeter and afterwards of Norwich. The bishop, by descending into the arena of controversy, had deprived himself of the privilege which his literary eminence should have secured to him. But nothing can excuse or reconcile us to the indecent scurrility with which he is assailed in Milton's pages, which reflect more discredit on him who wrote them, than on him against whom they are written. The fifth pamphlet, called (5) _An Apology against a Pamphlet called "A Modest Confutation, &c."_ (1642), is chiefly remarkable for a defence of his own Cambridge career. A man who throws dirt, as Milton did, must not be surprised if some of it comes back to him. A son of Bishop Hall, coming forward as his father's champion and avenger, had raked up a garbled version of Milton's quarrel with his tutor Chappell, and by a further distortion, had brought it out in the shape that, "after an inordinate and violent youth spent at the university," Milton had been "vomited out thence." From the university this "alchemist of slander" follows him to the city, and declares that where Milton's morning haunts are, he wisses not, but that his afternoons are spent in playhouses and bordelloes. Milton replies to these random charges by a lengthy account of himself and his studious habits. As the reader may expect a specimen of Milton's prose style, I quote a part of this autobiographical paragraph:-- "I had my time, as others have who have good learning bestowed upon them, to be sent to those places where the opinion was it might be sooner attained; and, as the manner is, was not unstudied in those authors which are most commended, whereof some were grave orators and historians, whom methought I loved indeed, but as my age then was, so I understood them; others were the smooth elegiac poets, whereof the schools are not scarce; whom both for the pleasing sound of their numerous writing, which in imitation I found most easy, and most agreeable to nature's part in me, and for their matter, which what it is there be few who know not, I was so allowed to read, that no recreation came to me better welcome.... Whence having observed them to account it the chief glory of their wit, in that they were ablest to judge, to praise, and by that could esteem themselves worthiest to love those high perfections which under one or other name they toot to celebrate, I thought with myself by every instinct and presage of nature which is not wont to be false, that what emboldened them to this task might with such diligence as they used embolden me, and that what judgment, wit, or elegance was my share, would herein best appear and best value itself by how much more wisely and with more love of virtue I should choose (let rude ears be absent) the object of not unlike praises.... Nor blame it in those years to propose to themselves such a reward as the noblest dispositions above other things in this life have sometimes preferred. Whereof not to be sensible when good and fair in one person meet, argues both a gross and shallow judgment, and withal an ungentle and swainish breast. For by the firm settling of these persuasions I became so much a proficient, that if I found those authors anywhere speaking unworthy things of themselves, or unchaste of those names which before they had extolled, this effect it wrought with me, from that time forward their art I still applauded, but the men I deplored; and above them all preferred the two famous renowners of Beatrice and Laura, who never write but honour of them to whom they devote their verse, displaying sublime and pure thoughts without transgression. And long it was not after, when I was confirmed in this opinion, that he, who would not be frustrate of his hope to write well hereafter in laudable things, ought himself to be a true poem, that is a composition and pattern of the best and honourablest things, not presuming to sing high praises of heroic men or famous cities, unless he have in himself the experience and the practice of all that which is praiseworthy. "These reasonings together with a certain niceness of nature, an honest haughtiness and self-esteem, either of what I was or what I might be, which let envy call pride, and lastly that modesty, whereof, though not in the title-page, yet here, I may be excused to make some beseeming profession, all these uniting the supply of their natural aid together, kept me still above those low descents of mind, beneath which he must deject and plunge himself, that can agree to saleable and unlawful prostitutions. "Next, for hear me out now, readers, that I may tell ye whither my younger feet wandered, I betook me among those lofty fables and romances which recount in solemn cantos the deeds of knighthood founded by our victorious kings, and from hence had in renown over all Christendom. There I read it in the oath of every knight, that he should defend to the expence of his best blood, or of his life if it so befel him, the honour and chastity of virgin or matron. From whence even then I learnt what a noble virtue chastity ever must be, to the defence of which so many worthies by such a dear adventure of themselves had sworn. And if I found in the story afterwards any of them by word or deed breaking that oath, I judged it the same fault of the poet as that which is attributed to Homer to have written undecent things of the gods. Only this my mind gave me, that every free and gentle spirit without that oath ought to be borne a knight, nor needed to expect the gilt spur, or the laying of a sword upon his shoulder, to stir him up both by his counsel and his arm to serve and protect the weakness of any attempted chastity. So that even those books which to many others have been the fuel of wantonness and loose living, I cannot think how unless by divine indulgence, proved to me so many incitements to the love and steadfast observation of virtue." This is one of the autobiographical cases in these pamphlets, which are otherwise arid deserts of sand, scorched by the fire of extinct passion. It may be asked why it is that a few men, Gibbon or Milton, are indulged without challenge in talk about themselves, which would be childish vanity or odious egotism in others. When a Frenchman writes, "Nous avons tous, nous autres Français, des séduisantes qualités"(Gaffarel), he is ridiculous. The difference is not merely that we tolerate in a man of confessed superiority what would be intolerable in an equal. This is true; but there is a further distinction of moral quality in men's confessions. In Milton, as in Gibbon, the gratification of self-love, which attends all autobiography, is felt to be subordinated to a nobler intention. The lofty conception which Milton formed of his vocation as a poet, expands his soul and absorbs his personality. It is his office, and not himself, which he magnifies. The details of his life and nurture are important, not because they belong to him, but because he belongs, by dedication, to a high and sacred calling. He is extremely jealous, not of his own reputation, but of the credit which is due to lofty endeavour. We have only to compare Milton's magnanimous assumption of the first place with the paltry conceit with which, in the following age of Dryden and Pope, men spoke of themselves as authors, to see the wide difference between the professional vanity of successful authorship and the proud consciousness of a prophetic mission. Milton leads a dedicated life, and has laid down for himself the law that "he who would not be frustrate of his hope to write well hereafter in laudable things, ought himself to be a true poem." If Milton had not been the author of _Lycidas_ and _Paradise Lost_, his political pamphlets would have been as forgotten as are the thousand civil war tracts preserved in the Thomason collection in the Museum, or have served, at most, as philological landmarks. One, however, of his prose tracts has continued to enjoy some degree of credit down to the present time, for its matter as well as for its words, _Areopagitica_. This tract belongs to the year 1644, the most fertile year in Milton's life, as in it he "brought out two of his divorce tracts, the _Tractate of Education_, and the _Areopagitica_. As Milton's moving principle was not any preconceived system of doctrine but the passion for liberty in general, it was natural that he should plead, when occasion called, for liberty of the press, among others. The occasion was one personal to himself. It is well known that, early in the history of printing, governments became jealous of this new instrument for influencing opinion. In England, in 1556, under Mary, the Stationers' Company was invested with legal privileges, having the twofold object of protecting the book trade and controlling writers. All publications were required, to be registered in the register of the company. No persons could set up a press without a licence, or print anything which had not been previously approved by some official censor. The court, which had come to be known as the court of Star-chamber, exercised criminal jurisdiction over offenders, and even issued its own decrees for the regulation of printing. The arbitrary action of this court had no small share in bringing about the resistance to Charles I. But the fall of the royal authority did not mean the emancipation of the press. The Parliament had no intention of letting go the control which the monarchy had exercised; the incidence of the coercion was to be shifted from themselves upon their opponents. The Star-chamber was abolished, but its powers of search and seizure were transferred to the Company of Stationers. Licensing was to go on as before, but to be exercised by special commissioners, instead of by the Archbishop and the Bishop of London. Only whereas, before, contraband had consisted of Presbyterian books, henceforward it was Catholic and Anglican books which would be suppressed. Such was not Milton's idea of the liberty of thought and speech in a free commonwealth. He had himself written for the Presbyterians four unlicensed pamphlets. It was now open to him to write any number, and to get them licensed, provided they were written on the same side. This was not liberty, as he had learned it in his classics, "ubi sentire quae velis, et quae sentias dicere licet." Over and above this encroachment on the liberty of the free citizen, it so happened that at this moment Milton himself was concerned to ventilate an opinion which was not Presbyterian, and had no chance of passing a Presbyterian licenser. His _Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce_ was just ready for press when the ordinance of 1643 came into operation. He published it without licence and without printer's name, in defiance of the law, and awaited the consequences. There were no consequences. He repeated the offence in a second edition in February, 1644, putting his name now (the first edition had been anonymous), and dedicating it to the very Parliament whose ordinance he was setting at nought. This time the Commons, stirred up by a petition from the Company of Stationers, referred the matter to the committee of printing. It went no further. Either it was deemed inexpedient to molest so sound a Parliamentarian as Milton, or Cromwell's "accommodation resolution" of September 13, 1644, opened the eyes of the Presbyterian zealots to the existence in the kingdom of a new, and much wider, phase of opinion, which ominously threatened the compact little edifice of Presbyterian truth that they had been erecting with a profound conviction of its exclusive orthodoxy. The occurrence had been sufficient to give a new direction to Milton's thoughts. Regardless of the fact that his plea for liberty in marriage had fallen upon deaf ears, he would plead for liberty of speech. The _Areopagitica, for the Liberty of unlicensed Printing_, came out in November, 1644, an unlicensed, unregistered publication, without printer's or bookseller's name. It was cast in the form of a speech addressed to the Parliament. The motto was taken from Euripides, and printed in the original Greek, which was not, when addressed to the Parliament of 1644, the absurdity which it would be now. The title is less appropriate, being borrowed from the _Areopagitic Discourse_ of Isocrates, between which and Milton's _Speech_ there is no resemblance either in subject or style. All that the two productions have in common is their form. They are both unspoken orations, written to the address of a representative assembly--the one to the Boulé or Senate of Athens, the other to the Parliament of England. Milton's _Speech_ is in his own best style; a copious flood of majestic eloquence, the outpouring of a noble soul with a divine scorn of narrow dogma and paltry aims. But it is a mere pamphlet, extemporised in, at most, a month or two, without research or special knowledge, with no attempt to ascertain general principles, and more than Milton's usual disregard of method. A jurist's question, is here handled by a rhetorician. He has preached a noble and heart-stirring sermon on his text, but the problem for the legislator remains where it was. The vagueness and confusion of the thoughts finds a vehicle in language which is too often overcrowded and obscure. I think the _Areopagitica_ has few or no offences against taste; on the other hand, it has few or none of those grand passages which redeem the scurrility of his political pamphlets. The passage in which Milton's visit to Galileo "grown old, a prisoner to the Inquisition," is mentioned, is often quoted for its biographical interest; and the terse dictum, "as good almost kill a man as kill a good book," has passed into a current axiom. A paragraph at the close, where he hints that the time may be come to suppress the suppressors, intimates, but so obscurely as to be likely to escape notice, that Milton had already made up his mind that a struggle with the Presbyterian party was to be the sequel of the overthrow of the Royalists. He has not yet arrived at the point he will hereafter reach, of rejecting the very idea of a minister of religion, but he is already aggrieved by the implicit faith which the Puritan laity, who had cast out bishops, were beginning to bestow upon their pastor; "a factor to whose care and credit he may commit the whole managing of his religious affairs." Finally, it must be noted, that Milton, though he had come to see round Presbyterianism, had not, in 1644, shaken off all dogmatic profession. His toleration of opinion was far from complete. He would call in the intervention of the executioner in the case of "mischievous and libellous books," and could not bring himself to contemplate the toleration of Popery and open superstition, "which as it extirpates all religious and civil supremacies, so itself should be extirpate; provided first that all charitable and compassionate means be used to win and gain the weak and misled." The _Areopagitica_, as might be expected, produced no effect upon the legislation of the Long Parliament, of whom (says Hallam) "very few acts of political wisdom or courage are recorded." Individual licensers became more lax in the performance of the duty, but this is reasonably to be ascribed to the growing spirit of independency--a spirit which was incompatible with any embargo on the utterance of private opinion. A curious epilogue to the history of this publication is the fact, first brought to light by Mr. Masson, that the author of the _Areopagitica_, at a later time, acted himself in the capacity of licenser. It was in 1651, under the Commonwealth, Marchmont Needham being editor of the weekly paper called _Mercurius Politicus_, that Milton was associated with him as his censor or supervising editor. Mr. Masson conjectures, with some probability, that the leading articles of the _Mercurius_, during part of the year 1651, received touches from Milton's hand. But this was, after all, rather in the character of editor, whose business it is to see that nothing improper goes into the paper, than in that of press licenser in the sense in which the _Areopagitica_ had denounced it. CHAPTER VII. BIOGRAPHICAL. 1640--1649. In September, 1645, Milton left the garden-house in Aldersgate, for a larger house in Barbican, in the same neighbourhood, but a little further from the city gate, i.e. more in the country. The larger house was, perhaps, required for the accommodation of his pupils (see above, p. 44), but it served to shelter his wife's family, when they were thrown upon the world by the surrender of Oxford in June, 1646. In this Barbican house Mr. Powell died at the end of that year. Milton had been promised with his wife a portion of 1000 l.; but Mr. Powell's affairs had long been in a very embarrassed condition, and now by the consequences of delinquency that condition had become one of absolute ruin. Great pains have been bestowed by Mr. Masson in unravelling the entanglement of the Powell accounts. The data which remain are ample, and we cannot but feel astonished at the accuracy with which our national records, in more important matters so defective, enable us to set out a debtor and creditor balance of the estate of a private citizen, who died more than 200 years ago. But the circumstances are peculiarly intricate, and we are still unable to reconcile Mr, Powell's will with the composition records, both of which are extant. As a compounding delinquent, his fine, assessed at the customary rate of two years' income, was fixed by the commissioners at 180 l. The commissioners must have, therefore, been satisfied that his income did not exceed 90 l. a year. Yet by his will of date December 30, 1646, he leaves his estate of Forest Hill, the annual value of which alone far exceeded 90 l., to his eldest son. This property is not mentioned in the inventory of his estate, real and personal, laid before the commissioners, sworn to by the delinquent, and by them accepted. The possible explanation is that the Forest Hill property had really passed into the possession, by foreclosure, of the mortgagee, Sir Robert Pye, who sate for Woodstock in the Long Parliament, but that Mr. Powell, making his will on his deathbed, pleased himself with the fancy of leaving his son and heir an estate which was no longer his to dispose of. Putting Forest Hill out of the account, it would appear that the sequestrators had dealt somewhat harshly with Mr. Powell; for they had included in their estimate one doubtful asset of 500 l., and one non-existent of 400 l. This last item was a stock of timber stated to be at Forest Hill, but which had really been appropriated without payment by the Parliamentarians, and part of it voted by Parliament itself towards repair of the church in the staunch Puritan town of Banbury. The upshot of the whole transaction is that, in satisfaction of his claim of 1500 l. (1000 l. his wife's dower, 500 l. an old loan of 1627), Milton came into possession of some property at Wheatley. This property, consisting of the tithes of Wheatley, certain cottages, and three and a half yard lands, had in the time of the disturbances produced only 40 l. a year. But as the value of all property improved when, the civil war came to an end, Milton found the whole could now be let for 80 l. But then out of this he had to pay Mr. Powell's composition, reduced to 130 l. on Milton's petition, and the widow's jointure, computed at 26 l. 13 s. 4 d. per annum. What of income remained after these disbursements he might apply towards repaying himself the old loan of 1627. This was all Milton ever saw of the 1000 l. which Mr. Powell, with the high-flying magnificence of a cavalier who knew he was ruined, had promised as his daughter's portion. Mr. Powell's death was followed in less than three months by that of John Milton, senior. He died in the house in Barbican, and the entry, "John Milton, gentleman, 15 (March)," among the burials in 1646, is still to be seen in the register of the parish of St. Giles's, Cripplegate. A host of eminent men have traced the first impulse of their genius to their mother. Milton always acknowledged with just gratitude that it was to his father's discerning taste and fostering care, that he owed the encouragement of his studies, and the leisure which rendered them possible. He has registered this gratitude in both prose and verse. The Latin hexameters, "Ad patrem," written at Horton, are inspired by a feeling far beyond commonplace filial piety, and a warmth which is rare indeed in neo-Latin versification. And when, in his prose pamphlets, he has occasion to speak of himself, he does not omit the acknowledgment of "the ceaseless diligence and care of my father, whom God recompense." (_Reason of Church Government_.) After the death of his father, being now more at ease in his circumstances, he gave up taking pupils, and quitted the large house in Barbican for a smaller in High Holborn, opening backwards into Lincoln's-Inn-Fields. This removal was about Michaelmas, 1647. During this period, 1639--1649, while his interests were engaged by the all-absorbing events of the civil strife, he wrote no poetry, or none deserving the name. All artists have intervals of non-productiveness, usually caused by exhaustion. This was not Milton's case. His genius was not his master, nor could it pass, like that of Leonardo da Vinci, unmoved through the most tragic scenes. He deliberately suspended it at the call of what he believed to be duty to his country. His unrivalled power of expression was placed at the service of a passionate political conviction. This prostitution of faculty avenged itself; for when he did turn to poetry, his strength was gone from him. The period is chiefly marked, by sonnets, not many, one in a year, or thereabouts. That _On the religious memory of Mrs. Catherine Thomson_, in 1646, is the lowest point touched by Milton in poetry, for his metrical psalms do not deserve the name. The sonnet, or Elegy on Mrs. Catherine Thomson in the form of a sonnet, though in poetical merit not distinguishable from the average religious verse of the Caroline age, has an interest for the biographer. It breathes a holy calm that is in sharp contrast with the angry virulence of the pamphlets, which were being written at this very time by the same pen. Amid his intemperate denunciations of his political and ecclesiastical foes, it seems that Milton did not inwardly forfeit the peace which passeth all understanding. He had formerly said himself (_Doctrine and Disc._), "nothing more than disturbance of mind suspends us from approaching to God." Now, out of all the clamour and the bitterness of the battle of the sects, he can retire and be alone with his heavenly aspirations, which have lost none of their ardour by having laid aside all their sectarianism. His genius has forsaken him, but his soul still glows with the fervour of devotion. And even of this sonnet we may say what Ellis says of Catullus, that Milton never ceases to be a poet, even when his words are most prosaic. The sonnet (xv.) _On the Lord-General Fairfax, at the siege of Colchester_, written in 1648, is again a manifesto of the writer's political feelings, nobly uttered, and investing party with a patriotic dignity not unworthy of the man, Milton. It is a hortatory lyric, a trumpet-call to his party in the moment of victory to remember the duties which that victory imposed upon them. It is not without the splendid resonance of the Italian canzone. But it can scarcely be called poetry, expressing, as it does, facts directly, and not indirectly through their imaginative equivalents. Fairfax was, doubtless, well worthy that Milton should have commemorated him in a higher strain. Of Fairfax's eminent qualities the sonnet only dwells on two, his personal valour, which had been tried in many fights--he had been three times dangerously wounded in the Yorkshire campaign--and his superiority to sordid interests. Of his generalship, in which he was second to Cromwell only, and of his love of arts and learning, nothing is said, though the last was the passion of his life, for which at forty he renounced ambition. Perhaps in 1648 Milton, who lived a very retired life, did not know of these tastes, and had not heard that it was by Fairfax's care that the Bodleian library was saved from wreck on the surrender of Oxford in 1646. And it was not till later, years after the sonnet was written, that the same Fairfax, "whose name in arms through Europe rings," became a competitor of Milton in the attempt to paraphrase the Psalms in metre. Milton's paraphrase of the Psalms belongs to history, but to the history of psalmody, not that of poetry. At St. Paul's School, at fifteen, the boy had turned two psalms, the 114th and the 136th, by way of exercise. That in his day of plenary inspiration, Milton, who disdained Dryden as "a rhymist but no poet," and has recorded his own impatience with the "drawling versifiers," should have undertaken to grind down the noble antistrophic lyrics of the Hebrew bard into ballad rhymes for the use of Puritan worship, would have been impossible. But the idea of being useful to his country had acquired exclusive possession of his mind. Even his faculty of verse should be employed in the good cause. If Parliament had set him the task, doubtless he would have willingly undertaken it, as Corneille, in the blindness of Catholic obedience, versified the _Imitatio Christi_ at the command of the Jesuits. Milton was not officially employed, but voluntarily took up the work. The Puritans were bent upon substituting a new version of the Davidic Psalms for that of Sternhold and Hopkins, for no other reason than that the latter formed part of the hated Book of Common Prayer. The Commons had pronounced in favour of a version by one of their own members, the staunch Puritan M.P. for Truro, Francis Rouse. The Lords favoured a rival book, and numerous other claimants were before the public. Dissatisfied with any of these attempts, Milton would essay himself. In 1648 he turned nine psalms, and recurring to the task in 1653, "did into verse" eight more. He thought these specimens worth preserving, and annexing to the volume of his poems which he published himself in 1673. As this doggerel continues to encumber each succeeding edition of the _Poetical Works_, it is as well that Milton did not persevere with his experiment and produce a complete Psalter. He prudently abandoned a task in which success is impossible. A metrical psalm, being a compromise between the psalm and the hymn, like other compromises, misses, rather than combines, the distinctive excellences of the things united. That Milton should ever have attempted what poetry forbids, is only another proof how entirely at this period more absorbing motives had possession of his mind, and overbore his poetical judgment. It is a coincidence worth remembering that Milton's contemporary, Lord Clarendon, was at this very time solacing his exile at Madrid by composing, not a version but a commentary upon the Psalms, "applying those devotions to the troubles of this time." Yet all the while that he was thus unfaithful in practice to his art, it was poetry that possessed his real affections, and the reputation of a poet which formed his ambition. It was a temporary separation, and not a divorce, which he designed. In each successive pamphlet he reiterates his undertaking to redeem his pledge of a great work, as soon as liberty shall be consolidated in the realm. Meanwhile, as an earnest of what should be hereafter, he permitted the publication of a collection of his early poems. This little volume of some 200 pages, rude in execution as it is, ranks among the highest prizes of the book collector, very few copies being extant, and those mostly in public libraries. It appeared in 1645, and owed its appearance, not to the vanity of the author, but to the zeal of a publisher. Humphrey Moseley, at the sign, of the Prince's Arms, in St. Paul's Churchyard, suggested the collection to Milton, and undertook the risk of it, though knowing, as he says in the prefixed address of The Stationer to the Reader, that "the slightest pamphlet is nowadays more vendible than the works of learnedest men." It may create some surprise that, in 1645, there should have been any public in England for a volume of verse. Naseby had been fought in June, Philiphaugh in September, Fairfax and Cromwell were continuing their victorious career in the west, Chester, Worcester, and the stronghold of Oxford, alone holding out for the King. It was clear that the conflict was decided in favour of the Parliament, but men's minds must have been strung to a pitch of intense expectation as to what kind of settlement was to come. Yet, at the very crisis of the civil strife, we find a London publisher able to bring out the Poems of Waller (1644), and sufficiently encouraged by their reception to follow them up, in the next year, with the Poems of Mr. John Milton. Are we warranted in inferring that a finer public was beginning to loathe the dreary theological polemic of which it had had a surfeit, and turned to a book of poetry as that which was most unlike the daily garbage, just as a later public absorbed five thousand copies of Scott's _Lay of the Last Minstrel_ in the year of Austerlitz? One would like to know who were the purchasers of Milton and Waller, when the cavalier families were being ruined by confiscations and compositions, and Puritan families would turn with pious horror from the very name of a Mask. Milton was himself editor of his own volume, and prefixed to it, again out of Virgil's Eclogues, the characteristic motto, "Baccare frontem Cingite, ne vati noceat mala lingua _futuro_," indicating that his poetry was all to come. CHAPTER VIII. THE LATIN SECRETARYSHIP. The Crown having fallen on January 30, 1649, and the House of Lords by the vote of February 6 following, the sovereign power in England was for the moment in the hands of that fragment of the Long Parliament, which remained after the various purges and expulsions to which it had been subjected. Some of the excluded members were allowed to return, and by occasional new elections in safe boroughs the number of members was raised to one hundred and fifty, securing an average attendance of about seventy. The future government of the nation was declared to be by way of a republic, and the writs ran in the name of the Keepers of the Liberty of England, by authority of Parliament. But the real centre of power was the Council of State, a body of forty-one members, nominated for a period of twelve months, according to a plan of constitution devised by the army leaders. In the hands of this republican Council was concentrated a combination of power such as had never been wielded by any English monarch. But, though its attribution of authority was great, its exercise of the powers lodged with it was hampered by differences among its members, and the disaffection of various interests and parties. The Council of State contained most of the notable statesmen of the Parliamentary party, and had before it a vast task in reorganizing the administration of England, in the conduct of an actual war in Ireland, a possible war in Scotland, and in the maintenance of the honour of the republic in its relations with foreign princes. The Council of State prepared the business for its consideration through special committees for special departments of the public service. The Committee for Foreign Affairs consisted of Whitelocke, Vane, Lord Lisle, Lord Denbigh, Mr. Marten, Mr. Lisle. A secretary was required to translate despatches, both those which were sent out, and those which were received. Nothing seems more natural than that the author of the _Tenure of Kings and Magistrates_, who was at once a staunch Parliamentarian, an accomplished Latin scholar, and conversant with more than one of the spoken languages of the Continent, should be thought of for the office. Yet so little was Milton personally known, living as he did the life of a retired student, that it was the accident of his having the acquaintance of one of the new Council to which he owed the appointment. The post was offered him, but would he accept it? He had never ceased to revolve in his mind subjects capable of poetical treatment, and to cherish his own vocation as the classical poet of the English language. Peace had come, and leisure was within his reach. He was poor, but his wants were simple, and he had enough wherewith to meet them. Already, in 1649, unmistakable symptoms threatened his sight, and warned him of the necessity of the most rigid economy in the use of the eyes. The duties that he was now asked to undertake were indefinite already in amount, and would doubtless extend themselves if zealously discharged. But the temptation was strong, and he did not resist it. The increase of income was, doubtless, to Milton the smallest among the inducements now offered him. He had thought it a sufficient and an honourable employment to serve his country with his pen as a volunteer. Here was an offer to become her official, authorised servant, and to bear a part, though a humble part, in the great work of reorganisation which was now to be attempted. Above all other allurements to a retired student, unversed in men, and ready to idealise character, was the opportunity of becoming at once personally acquainted with all the great men of the patriotic party, whom his ardent imagination had invested with heroic qualities. The very names of Fairfax, Vane, and Cromwell, called up in him emotions for which prose was an inadequate vehicle. Nor was it only that in the Council itself he would be in daily intercourse with such men as Henry Marten, Hutchinson, Whitelocke, Harrington, St. John, Ludlow, but his position would introduce him at once to all the members of the House who were worth knowing. It was not merely a new world; it was _the_ world which was here opened for the first time to Milton. And we must remember that, all scholar as he was, Milton was well convinced of the truth that there are other sources of knowledge besides books. He had himself spent "many studious and contemplative years in the search of religious and civil knowledge," yet he knew that, for a mind large enough to "take in a general survey of humane things," it was necessary to know-- The world,... her glory, Empires and monarchs, and their radiant courts, Best school of best experience. _P.R._ iii. 237. He had repeatedly, as if excusing his political interludes, renewed his pledge to devote all his powers to poetry as soon, as they should be fully ripe. To complete his education as a poet, he wanted initiation into affairs. Here was an opening far beyond any he had ever dreamed of. The sacrifice of time and precious eyesight which he was to make was costly, but it was not pure waste; it would be partly returned to him in a ripened experience in this Insight In all things to greatest actions lead, He accepted the post at once without hesitation. On March 13, 1649, the Committee for Foreign Affairs was directed to make the offer to him; on March 15, he attended at Whitehall to be admitted to office. Well would it have been both for his genius and his fame if he had declined it. His genius might have reverted to its proper course, while he was in the flower of age, with eyesight still available, and a spirit exalted by the triumph of the good cause. His fame would have been saved from the degrading incidents of the contention with Salmasius and Morus, and from being tarnished by the obloquy of the faction which he fought, and which conquered him. No man can with impunity insult and trample upon his fellow-man, even in the best of causes. Especially if he be an artist, he makes it impossible to obtain equitable appreciation of his work. So far as Milton reckoned upon a gain in experience from his secretaryship, he doubtless reaped it. Such a probation could not be passed without solidifying the judgment, and correcting its tendency to error. And this school of affairs, which is indispensable for the historian, may also be available for the poet. Yet it would be difficult to point in Milton's subsequent poetry to any element which the poet can be thought to have imbibed from the foreign secretary. Where, as in Milton's two epics, and _Samson Agonistes_, the personages are all supernatural or heroic, there is no room for the employment of knowledge of the world. Had Milton written comedy, like Molière, he might have said with Molière after he had been introduced at court, "Je n'ai plus que faire d'étudier Plaute et Terence; je n'ai qu'à étudier le monde." The office into which Milton was now inducted is called in the Council books that of "Secretary for foreign tongues." Its duties were chiefly the translation of despatches from, and to, foreign governments. The degree of estimation in which the Latin secretary was held, may be measured by the amount of salary assigned him. For while the English chief Secretary had a salary of 730 l. (= 2200 l. of our day), the Latin Secretary was paid only 288 l. 13s. 6d. (= 900 l.). For this, not very liberal pay, he was told that all his time was to be at the disposal of the government. Lincoln's Inn Fields was too far off for a servant of the Council who might have to attend meetings at seven in the morning. He accordingly migrated to Charing Cross, now become again Charing without the cross, this work of art having been an early (1647) victim of religious barbarism. In November he was accommodated with chambers in Whitehall. But from these he was soon ousted by claimants more considerable or more importunate, and in 1651 he removed to "a pretty garden-house" in Petty France, in Westminster, next door to the Lord Scudamore's, and opening into St. James's Park. The house was extant till 1877, when it disappeared, the last of Milton's many London residences. It had long ceased to look into St. James's Park, more than one row of houses, encroachments upon the public park, having grown up between. The garden-house had become a mere ordinary street house in York-street, only distinguished from the squalid houses on either side of it by a tablet affixed by Bentham, inscribed "sacred to Milton, prince of poets." Petty France lost its designation in the French Revolution, in obedience to the childish petulance which obliterates the name of any one who may displease you at the moment, and became one of the seventeen York-streets of the metropolis. Soon after the re-baptism of the street, Milton's house was occupied by William Hazlitt, who rented it of Bentham. Milton had lived in it for nine years, from 1651 till a few weeks before the Restoration. Its nearness to Whitehall where the Council sat, was less a convenience than a necessity. For Milton's life now became one of close attention, and busy service. As Latin secretary, and Weckherlin's successor, indeed, his proper duties were only those of a clerk or translator. But his aptitude for business of a literary kind soon drew on him a great variety of employment. The demand for a Latin translation of a despatch was not one of frequent occurrence. The Letters of the Parliament, and of Oliver and Richard, Protectors, which are, intrusively, printed among Milton's works, are but one hundred and thirty-seven in all. This number is spread over ten years, being at the rate of about fourteen per year; most of them are very short. For the purposes of a biography of Milton, it is sufficient to observe, that the dignified attitude which the Commonwealth took up towards foreign powers lost none of its elevation in being conveyed in Miltonic Latin. Whether satisfaction for the murder of an envoy is to be extorted from the arrogant court of Madrid, or an apology is to be offered to a humble count of Oldenburg for delay in issuing a salva-guardia which had been promised, the same equable dignity of expression is maintained, equally remote from crouching before the strong, and hectoring the weak. His translations were not all the duties of the new secretary. He must often serve as interpreter at audiences of foreign envoys. He must superintend the semi-official organ, the _Mercurius Politicus_. He must answer the manifesto of the Presbyterians of Ireland. The _Observations_ on the peace of Kilkenny are Milton's composition, but from instructions. By the peace the Irish had obtained home rule in its widest extent, release from the oath of supremacy, and the right to tie their ploughs to the tail of the horse. The same peace also conceded to them the militia, a trust which Charles I. had said he would not devolve on the Parliament of England, "not for an hour!" Milton is indignant that these indulgences, which had been refused to their obedience, should have been extorted by their rebellion, and the massacre of "200,000 Protestants". This is an exaggeration of a butchery sufficiently tragic in its real proportions, and in a later tract (_Eikonoklastes_) he reduces it to 154,000. Though the savage Irish are barbarians, uncivilised and uncivilisable, the _Observations_ distinctly affirm the new principle of toleration. Though popery be a superstition, the death of all true religion, still conscience is not within the cognisance of the magistrate. The civil sword is to be employed against civil offences only. In adding that the one exception to this toleration is atheism, Milton is careful to state this limitation as being the toleration professed by Parliament, and not as his private opinion. So well satisfied were the Council with their secretary's _Observations_ on the peace of Kilkenny, that they next imposed upon him a far more important labour, a reply to the _Eikon Basiliké_. The execution of Charles I. was not an act of vengeance, but a measure of public safety. If, as Hallam affirms, there mingled in the motives of the managers any strain of personal ill-will, this was merged in the necessity of securing, themselves from the vengeance of the King, and what they had gained from being taken back. They were alarmed by the reaction which had set in, and had no choice but to strengthen themselves by a daring policy. But the first effect of the removal of the King by violence was to give a powerful stimulus to the reaction already in progress. The groan, which burst from the spectators before Whitehall on January 30, 1649, was only representative of the thrill of horror which ran through England and Scotland in the next ten days. This feeling found expression in a book entitled "_Eikon Basiliké_, the portraiture of his sacred majesty in his solitude and sufferings." The book was, it should seem, composed by Dr. Gauden, but professed to be an authentic copy of papers written by the King. It is possible that Gauden may have had in his hands some written scraps of the King's meditations. If he had such, he only used them as hints to work upon. Gauden was a churchman whom his friends might call liberal, and his enemies time-serving. He was a churchman of the stamp of Archbishop Williams, and preferred bishops and the Common-prayer to presbyters and extempore sermons, but did not think the difference between the two of the essence of religion. In better times Gauden would have passed for broad, though his latitudinarianism was more the result of love of ease than of philosophy. Though a royalist he sat in the Westminster Assembly, and took the covenant, for which compliance he nearly lost the reward which, after the Restoration, became his due. Like the university-bred men of his day, Gauden was not a man of ideas, but of style. In the present instance the idea was supplied by events. The saint and martyr, the man of sorrows, praying for his murderers, the King, who renounced an earthly kingdom to gain a heavenly, and who in return for his benefits received from an unthankful people a crown of thorns--this was the theme supplied to the royalist advocate. Poet's imagination had never invented one more calculated to touch the popular heart. This _imitatio Christi_ to which every private Christian theoretically aspires, had been realised by a true prince upon an actual scaffold with a graceful dignity of demeanour, of which it may be said, that nothing in life became him like the leaving it. This moving situation Gauden, no mean stylist, set out in the best academical language of the period. Frigid and artificial it may read now, but the passion and pity, which is not in the book, was supplied by the readers of the time. And men are not dainty as to phrase when they meet with an expression of their own sentiments. The readers of _Eikon Basilike_--and forty-seven editions were necessary to supply the demand of a population of eight millions--attributed to the pages of the book emotions raised in themselves by the tragic catastrophe. They never doubted that the meditations were those of the royal martyr, and held the book, in the words of Sir Edward Nicholas, for "the most exquisite, pious, and princely piece ever written." The Parliament thought themselves called upon to put forth a reply. If one book could cause such a commotion of spirits, another book could allay it--the ordinary illusion of those who do not consider that the vogue of a printed appeal depends, not on the contents of the appeal, but on a predisposition of the public temper. Selden, the most learned man, not only of his party, but of Englishmen, was first thought of, but the task was finally assigned to the Latin Secretary. Milton's ready pen completed the answer, _Eikonoklastes_, a quarto of 242 pages, before October, 1649. It is, like all answers, worthless as a book. Eikonoklastes, the Image-breaker, takes the Image, Eikon, paragraph by paragraph, turning it round, and asserting the negative. To the Royalist view of the points in dispute Milton opposes the Independent view. A refutation, which follows each step of an adverse book, is necessarily devoid of originality. But Milton is worse than tedious; his reply is in a tone of rude railing and insolent swagger, which would have been always unbecoming, but which at this moment was grossly indecent. Milton must, however, be acquitted of one charge which has been made against him, viz., that he taunts the king with his familiarity with Shakespeare. The charge rests on a misunderstanding. In quoting Richard III. in illustration of his own meaning, Milton, says, "I shall not instance an abstruse author, wherein the King might be less conversant, but one whom we well know was the closet companion of these his solitudes, William Shakespeare." Though not an overt gibe, there certainly lurks an insinuation to Milton's Puritan readers, to whom stage plays were an abomination--an unworthy device of rhetoric, as appealing to a superstition in others which the writer himself does not share. In Milton's contemptuous reference to Sidney's _Arcadia_ as a vain amatorious poem, we feel that the finer sense of the author of _L'Allegro_ has suffered from immersion in the slough of religious and political faction. Gauden, raking up material from all quarters, had inserted in his compilation a prayer taken from the _Arcadia_. Milton mercilessly works this topic against his adversary. It is surprising that this plagiarism from so well-known a book as the _Arcadia_ should not have opened Milton's eyes to the unauthentic character of the _Eikon_. He alludes, indeed, to a suspicion which was abroad that one of the royal chaplains was a secret coadjutor. But he knew nothing of Gauden at the time of writing the _Eikonoklastes_, and probably he never came to know anything. The secret of the authorship of the _Eikon_ was well kept, being known only to a very few persons--the two royal brothers, Bishop Morley, the Earl of Bristol, and Clarendon. These were all safe men, and Gauden was not likely to proclaim himself an impostor. He pleaded his authorship, however, as a claim to preferment at the Restoration, when the church spoils came to be partitioned among the conquerors, and he received the bishopric of Exeter. A bishopric--because less than the highest preferment could not be offered to one whose pen had done such signal service; and Exeter--because the poorest see (then valued at 500 l. a year) was good enough for a man who had taken the covenant and complied with the usurping government. By ceaseless importunity the author of the _Eikon Basilike_ obtained afterwards the see of Worcester, while the portion of the author of _Eikonoklastes_ was poverty, infamy, and calumny. A century after Milton's death it was safe for the most popular writer of the day to say that the prayer from the _Arcadia_ had been interpolated in the _Eikon_ by Milton himself, and then by him charged upon the King as a plagiarism (Johnson, _Lives of the Poets_.) CHAPTER IX. MILTON AND SALMASIUS.--BLINDNESS. The mystery which long surrounded the authorship of _Eikon Basilike_ lends a literary interest to Milton's share in that controversy, which does not belong to his next appearance in print. Besides, his pamphlets against Salmasius and Morus are written in Latin, and to the general reader in this country and in America inaccessible in consequence. In Milton's day it was otherwise; the widest circle of readers could only be reached through Latin. For this reason, when Charles II. wanted a public vindication of his father's memory, it was indispensable that it should be composed in that language. The _Eikon_ was accordingly turned into Latin, by one of the royal chaplains, Earle, afterwards Bishop of Salisbury. But this was not enough; a defence in form was necessary, an _Apologia Socratis_, such as Plato composed for his master after his death. It must not only be written in Latin, but in such Latin as to ensure its being read. In 1649 Charles II. was living at the Hague, and it so happened that the man, who was in the highest repute in all Europe as a Latinist, was professor at the neighbouring university of Leyden. Salmasius (Claude de Saumaise) was commissioned to prepare a manifesto, which should be at once a vindication of Charles's memory, and an indictment against the regicide government. Salmasius was a man of enormous reading and no judgment. He says of himself that he wrote Latin more easily than his mother-tongue (French). And his Latin was all the more readable because it was not classical or idiomatic. With all his reading--and Isaac Casaubon had said of him when in his teens that he had incredible erudition--he was still, at sixty, quite unacquainted with public affairs, and had neither the politician's tact necessary to draw a state paper as Clarendon would have drawn it, nor the literary tact which had enabled Erasmus to command the ear of the public. Salmasius undertook his task as a professional advocate, though without pay, and Milton accepted the duty of replying as advocate for the Parliament, also without reward; he was fighting for a cause which was not another's but his own. Salmasius' _Defensio regia_--that was the title of his book--reached this country before the end of 1649. The Council of State, in very unnecessary alarm, issued a prohibition. On 8th January, 1650, the Council ordered "that Mr. Milton do prepare something in answer to the book of Salmasius." Early in March, 1651, Milton's answer, entitled _Pro Populo Anglicano Defensio_, was out. Milton was as much above Salmasius in mental power as he was inferior to him in extent of book knowledge. But the conditions of retort which he had chosen to accept neutralised this superiority. His greater power was spent in a greater force of invective. Instead of setting out the case of the Parliament in all the strength of which it was capable, Milton is intent upon tripping up Salmasius, contradicting him, and making him odious or ridiculous. He called his book a _Defence of the People of England_; but when he should have been justifying his clients from the charges of rebellion and regicide before the bar of Europe, Milton is bending all his invention upon personalities. He exaggerates the foibles of Salmasius, his vanity, and the vanity of Madame de Saumaise, her ascendancy over her husband, his narrow pedantry, his ignorance of everything but grammar and words. He exhausts the Latin vocabulary of abuse to pile up every epithet of contumely and execration on the head of his adversary. It but amounts to calling Salmasius fool and knave through a couple of hundred pages, till the exaggeration of the style defeats the orator's purpose, and we end by regarding the whole, not as a serious pleading, but as an epideictic display. Hobbes said truly that the two books were "like two declamations, for and against, made by one and the same man as a rhetorical exercise" (_Behemoth_). Milton's _Defensio_ was not calculated to advance the cause of the Parliament, and there is no evidence that it produced any effect upon the public, beyond that of raising Milton's personal credit. That England, and Puritan England, where humane studies were swamped in a biblical brawl, should produce a man who could write Latin as well as Salmasius, was a great surprise to the learned world in Holland. Salmasius was unpopular at Leyden, and there was therefore a predisposition to regard Milton's book with favour. Salmasius was twenty years older than Milton, and in these literary digladiations readers are always ready to side with a new writer. The contending interests of the two great English parties, the wider issue between republic and absolutism, the speculative inquiry into the right of resistance, were lost sight of by the spectators of this literary duel. The only question was whether Salmasius could beat the new champion, or the new man beat Salmasius, at a match of vituperation. Salmasius of course put in a rejoinder. His rapid pen found no difficulty in turning off 300 pages of fluent Latin. It was his last occupation. He died at Spa, where he was taking the waters, in September, 1653, and his reply was not published till 1660, after the Restoration, when all interest had died out of the controversy. If it be true that the work was written at Spa, without books at hand, it is certainly a miraculous effort of memory. It does no credit to Salmasius. He had raked together, after the example of Scioppius against Scaliger, all the tittle-tattle which the English exiles had to retail about Milton and his antecedents. Bramhall, who bore Milton a special grudge, was the channel of some of this scandal, and Bramhall's source was possibly Chappell, the tutor with whom Milton had had the early misunderstanding. (See above p. 6). If any one thinks that classical studies of themselves cultivate the taste and the sentiments, let him look into Salmasius's _Responsio_. There he will see the first scholar of his age not thinking it unbecoming to taunt Milton with his blindness, in such language as this: "a puppy, once my pretty little man, now blear-eyed, or rather a blindling; having never had any mental vision, he has now lost his bodily sight; a silly coxcomb, fancying himself a beauty; an unclean beast, with nothing more human about him than his guttering eyelids; the fittest doom for him would be to hang him on the highest gallows, and set his head on the Tower of London." These are some of the incivilities, not by any means the most revolting, but such as I dare reproduce, of this literary warfare. Salmasius's taunt about Milton's venal pen is no less false than his other gibes. The places of those who served the Commonwealth, were places of "hard work and short rations." Milton never received for his _Defensio_ a sixpence beyond his official salary. It has indeed been asserted that he was paid 1000 l.. for it by order of Parliament, and this falsehood having been adopted by Johnson--himself a pensioner--has passed into all the biographies, and will no doubt continue to be repeated to the end of time. This is a just nemesis upon Milton, who on his part had twitted Salmasius with having been complimented by the exiled King with a purse of 100 Jacobuses for his performance. The one insinuation was as false as the other. Charles II. was too poor to offer more than thanks. Milton was too proud to receive for defending his country what the Parliament was willing to pay. Sir Peter Wentworth, of Lillingston Lovell, in Oxfordshire, left in his will 100 l. to Milton for his book against Salmasius. But this was long after the Restoration, and Milton did not live to receive the legacy. Instead of receiving an honorarium for his _Defence of the English People_, Milton had paid for it a sacrifice for which money could not compensate him. His eyesight, though quick, as he was a proficient with the rapier, had never been strong. His constant headaches, his late study, and (thinks Phillips) his perpetual tampering with physic to preserve his sight, concurred to bring the calamity upon him. It had been steadily coming on for a dozen years before, and about 1650 the sight of the left eye was gone. He was warned by his doctor that if he persisted in using the remaining eye for book-work, he would lose that too. "The choice lay before me," Milton writes in the _Second Defence_, "between dereliction of a supreme duty and loss of eyesight; in such a case I could not listen to the physician, not if Aesculapius himself had spoken from his sanctuary; I could not but obey that inward monitor, I know not what, that spake to me from heaven. I considered with myself that many had purchased less good with worse ill, as they who give their lives to reap only glory, and I thereupon concluded to employ the little remaining eyesight I was to enjoy in doing this, the greatest service to the common weal it was in my power to render." It was about the early part of the year 1652 that the calamity was consummated. At the age of forty-three he was in total darkness. The deprivation of sight, one of the severest afflictions of which humanity is capable, falls more heavily on the man whose occupation lies among books, than upon others. He who has most to lose, loses most. To most persons books are but an amusement, an interlude between the hours of serious occupation. The scholar is he who has found the key to knowledge, and knows his way about in the world of printed books. To find this key, to learn the map of this country, requires a long apprenticeship. This is a point few men can hope to reach much before the age of forty. Milton had attained it only to find fruition snatched from him. He had barely time to spell one line in the book of wisdom, before, like the wizard's volume in romance, it was hopelessly closed against him for ever. Any human being is shut out by loss of sight from accustomed pleasures, the scholar is shut out from knowledge. Shut out at forty-three, when his great work was not even begun! He consoles himself with the fancy that in his pamphlet, the _Defensio_, he had done a great work (_quanta maxima quivi_) for his country. This poor delusion helped him doubtless to support his calamity. He could not foresee that, in less than ten years, the great work would he totally annihilated, his pamphlet would he merged in the obsolete mass of civil war tracts, and the _Defensio_, on which he had expended his last year of eyesight, only mentioned because it had been written by the author of _Paradise Lost_. The nature of Milton's disease is not ascertainable from the account he has given of it. In the well-known passage of _Paradise Lost_, iii. 25, he hesitates between amaurosis (drop serene) and cataract (suffusion) So thick a drop serene hath quench'd their orbs, Or dim suffusion veil'd. A medical friend referred to by Professor Alfred Stern, tells him that some of the symptoms are more like glaucoma. Milton himself has left such an account as a patient ignorant of the anatomy of the organ could give. It throws no light on the nature of the malady. But it is characteristic of Milton that even his affliction does not destroy his solicitude about his personal appearance. The taunts of his enemies about "the lack-lustre eye, guttering with prevalent rheum" did not pass unfelt. In his _Second Defence_ Milton informs the world that his eyes "are externally uninjured. They shine with an unclouded light, just like the eyes of one whose vision is perfect. This is the only point in which I am, against my will, a hypocrite." The vindication appears again in Sonnet xix. "These eyes, though clear To outward view of blemish or of spot." In later years, when the exordium of Book iii. of _Paradise Lost_ was composed, in the pathetic story of his blindness, this little touch of vanity has disappeared, as incompatible with the solemn dignity of the occasion. CHAPTER X. MILTON AND MORUS--THE SECOND DEFENCE--THE DEFENCE FOR HIMSELF. Civil history is largely a history of wars between states, and literary history is no less the record of quarrels in print between jealous authors. Poets and artists, more susceptible than practical men, seem to live a life of perpetual wrangle. The history of these petty feuds is not healthy intellectual food, it is at best amusing scandal. But these quarrels of authors do not degrade the authors in our eyes, they only show them to be, what we knew, as vain, irritable, and opinionative as other men. Ben Jonson, Dryden, Pope, Voltaire, Rousseau, belabour their enemies, and we see nothing incongruous in their doing so. It is not so when the awful majesty of Milton descends from the empyrean throne of contemplation to use the language of the gutter or the fish-market. The bathos is unthinkable. The universal intellect of Bacon shrank to the paltry pursuit of place. The disproportion between the intellectual capaciousness and the moral aim jars upon the sense of fitness, and the name of Bacon, "wisest, meanest," has passed into a proverb. Milton's fall is far worse. It is not here a union of grasp of mind with an ignoble ambition, but the plunge of the moral nature itself from the highest heights to that despicable region of vulgar scurrility and libel, which is below the level of average gentility and education. The name of Milton is a synonym for sublimity. He has endowed our language with the loftiest and noblest poetry it possesses, and the same man is found employing speech for the most unworthy purpose to which it can be put, that of defaming and vilifying a personal enemy, and an enemy so mean that barely to have been mentioned by Milton had been an honour to him. In Salmasius, Milton had at least been measuring his Latin against the Latin of the first classicist of the age. In Alexander Morus he wreaked august periods of Roman eloquence upon a vagabond preacher, of chance fortunes and tarnished reputation, a _graeculus esuriens_, who appeared against Milton by the turn of accidents, and not as the representative of the opposite principle. In crushing Morus, Milton could not beguile himself with the idea that he was serving a cause. In 1652 our country began to reap the fruits of the costly efforts it had made to obtain good government. A central authority was at last established, stronger than any which had existed since Elisabeth, and one which extended over Scotland and Ireland, no less than over England. The ecclesiastical and dynastic aims of the Stuart monarchy had been replaced by a national policy, in which the interests of the people of Great Britain sprang to the first place. The immediate consequence of this union of vigour and patriotism, in the government, was the self-assertion of England as a commercial, and therefore as a naval power. This awakened spirit of conscious strength meant war with the Dutch, who while England was pursuing ecclesiastical ends, had possessed themselves of the trade of the world. War accordingly broke out early in 1652. Even before it came to real fighting, the war of pamphlets had recommenced. The prohibition of Salmasius' _Defensio regia_ annulled itself as a matter of course, and Salmasius was free to prepare a second _Defensio_ in answer to Milton. For the most vulnerable point of the new English Commonwealth, was through the odium excited on the continent against regicide. And the quarter from which the monarchical pamphlets were hurled against the English republic, was the press of the republic of the United Provinces, the country which had set the first example of successful rebellion against its lawful prince. Before Salmasius' reply was ready, there was launched from the Hague, in March, 1652, a virulent royalist piece in Latin, under the title of _Regii sanguinis clamor ad coelum_ (Cry of the King's blood to Heaven against the English parricides). Its 160 pages contained the usual royalist invective in a rather common style of hyperbolical declamation, such as that "in comparison of the execution of Charles I., the guilt of the Jews in crucifying Christ was as nothing." Exaggerated praises of Salmasius were followed by scurrilous and rabid abuse of Milton. In the style of the most shameless Jesuit lampoon, the _Amphitheatrum_ or the _Scaliger hypobolimaeus_, and with Jesuit tactics, every odious crime is imputed to the object of the satire, without regard to truth or probability. Exiles are proverbially credulous, and it is likely enough that the gossip of the English refugees at the Hague was much employed in improving or inventing stories about the man, who had dared to answer the royalist champion in Latin as good as his own. Salmasius in his _Defensio_ had employed these stories, distorting the events of Milton's life to discredit him. But for the author of the _Clamor_ there was no such excuse, for the book was composed in England, by an author living in Oxford and London, who had every opportunity for informing himself accurately of the facts about Milton's life and conversation. He chose rather to heap up at random the traditional vocabulary of defamation, which the Catholic theologians had employed for some generations past, as their best weapon against their adversaries. In these infamous productions, hatched by celibate pedants in the foul atmosphere of the Jesuit colleges, the gamut of charges always ranges from bad grammar to unnatural crime. The only circumstance which can be alleged in mitigation of the excesses of the _Regii sanguinis clamor_ is that Milton had provoked the onfall by his own violence. He who throws dirt must expect that dirt will be thrown back at him, and when it comes to mud-throwing, the blackguard has, as it is right that he should have, the best of it. The author of the _Clamor_ was Peter Du Moulin, a son of the celebrated French Calvinist preacher of the same name. The author not daring to entrust his pamphlet to an English press, had sent it over to Holland, where it was printed under the supervision of Alexander Morus. This Morus (More or Moir) was of Scottish parentage, but born (1616) at Castres, where his father was principal of the Protestant college. Morus fitted the _Clamor_ with a preface, in which Milton was further reviled, and styled a "monstrum horrendum, informe, ingens, cui lumen ademtum." The secret of the authorship was strictly kept, and Morus having been known to be concerned in the publication, was soon transformed in public belief into the author. So it was reported to Milton, and so Milton believed. He nursed his wrath, and took two years to meditate his blow. He caused inquiries to be made into Morus's antecedents. It happened that Morus's conduct had been wanting in discretion, especially in his relations with women. He had been equally imprudent in his utterances on some of the certainties of Calvinistic divinity. It was easy to collect any amount of evidence under both these heads. The system of kirk discipline offered a ready-made machinery of espionage and delation. The standing jest of the fifteenth century on the "governante" of the curé was replaced, in Calvinistic countries, by the anxiety of every minister to detect his brother minister in any intimacy upon which a scandalous construction could be put. Morus endeavoured, through every channel at his command, to convince Milton that he was not the author of the _Clamor_. He could have saved himself by revealing the real author, who was lurking all the while close to Milton's elbow, and whose safety depended on Morus' silence. This high-minded respect for another's secret is more to Morus' honour, than any of the petty gossip about him is to his discredit. He had nothing to offer, therefore, but negative assurances, and mere denial weighed nothing with Milton, who was fully convinced that Morus lied from terror. Milton's _Defensio Secunda_ came out in May, 1654. In this piece (written in Latin) Morus is throughout assumed to be the author of the _Clamor_, and as such is pursued through many pages in a strain of invective, in which banter is mingled with ferocity. The Hague tittle-tattle about Morus's love-affairs is set forth in the pomp of Milton's loftiest Latin. Sonorous periods could hardly be more disproportioned to their material content. To have kissed a girl is painted as the blackest of crimes. The sublime and the ridiculous are here blended without the step between. Milton descends even to abuse the publisher, Vlac, who had officially signed his name to Morus's preface. The mixture of fanatical choler and grotesque jocularity, in which he rolls forth his charges of incontinence against Morus, and of petty knavery against Vlac, is only saved from being unseemly by being ridiculous. The comedy is complete when we remember that Morus had not written the _Clamor_, nor Vlac the preface. Milton's rage blinded him; he is mad Ajax castigating innocent sheep instead of Achsaeans. The Latin pamphlets are indispensable to a knowledge of Milton's disposition. We see in them his grand disdain of his opponents, reproducing the concentrated intellectual scorn of the Latin Persius; his certainty of the absolute justice of his own cause, and the purity of his own motives. This lofty cast of thought is combined with an eagerness to answer the meanest taunts. The intense subjectivity of the poet breaks out in these paragraphs, and while he should be stating the case of the republic, he holds Europe listening to an account of himself, his accomplishments, his studies and travels, his stature, the colour of his eyes, his skill in fencing, &c. These egoistic utterances must have seemed to Milton's contemporaries to be intrusive and irrelevant vanity. _Paradise Lost_ was not as yet, and to the Council of State Milton was, what he was to Whitelocke, "a blind man who wrote Latin." But these paragraphs, in which he talks of himself, are to us the only living fragments out of many hundred worthless pages. To the _Defensio Secunda_ there was of course a reply by Morus. It was entitled _Fides Publica_, because it was largely composed of testimonials to character. When one priest charges another with unchastity, the world looks on and laughs. But it is no laughing matter to the defendant in such an action. He can always bring exculpatory evidence, and in spite of any evidence he is always believed to be guilty. The effect of Milton's furious denunciation of Morus had been to damage his credit in religious circles, and to make mothers of families shy of allowing him to visit at their houses. Milton might have been content with a victory which, as Gibbon said of his own, "over such an antagonist was a sufficient humiliation." Milton's magnanimity was no match for his irritation. He published a rejoinder to Morus's _Fides Publica_, reiterating his belief that Morus was author of the _Clamor_, but that it was no matter whether he was or not, since by publishing the book, and furnishing it with a recommendatory preface, he had made it his own. The charges against Morus' character he reiterated, and strengthened by new "facts", which Morus's enemies had hastened to contribute to the budget of calumny. These imputations on character, mixed with insinuations of unorthodoxy, such as are ever rife in clerical controversy, Milton invests with the moral indignation of a prophet denouncing the enemies of Jehovah. He expends a wealth of vituperative Latin which makes us tremble, till we remember that it is put in motion to crush an insect. This _Pro se defensio_ (Defence for himself), appeared in August, 1656. Morus met it by a supplementary _Fides Publica_, and Milton, resolved to have the last word, met him by a _Supplement to the Defence_. The reader will be glad to hear that this is the end of the Morus controversy. We leave Milton's victim buried under the mountains of opprobrious Latin here heaped upon him--this "circumforanens pharmacopola, vanissimus circulator, propudium hominis et prostibulum." CHAPTER XI. LATIN SECRETARYSHIP COMES TO AN END--MILTON'S FRIENDS. It is no part of Milton's biography to relate the course of public events in these momentous years, merely because as Latin secretary he formulated the despatches of the Protector or of his Council, and because these Latin letters are incorporated in Milton's works. On the course of affairs Milton's voice had no influence, as he had no part in their transaction. Milton was the last man of whom a practical politician would have sought advice. He knew nothing of the temper of the nation, and treated all that opposed his own view with supreme disdain. On the other hand, idealist though he was, he does not move in the sphere of speculative politics, or count among those philosophic names, a few in each century, who have influenced, not action but thought. Accordingly his opinions have for us a purely personal interest. They are part of the character of the poet Milton, and do not belong to either world, of action or of mind. The course of his political convictions up to 1654 has been traced in our narrative thus far. His breeding at home, at school, at college, was that of a member of the Established Church, but of the Puritan and Calvinistic, not of the Laudian and Arminian, party within its pale. By 1641, we find that his Puritanism has developed into Presbyterianism; he desires, not to destroy the Church, but to reform it by abolishing government by bishops, and substituting the Scotch or Genevan discipline. When he wrote his _Reason of Church Government_ (1642), he is still a royalist; not in the cavalier sense of a person attached to the reigning sovereign, or the Stuart family, but still retaining the belief of his age that monarchy in the abstract had somewhat of divine sanction. Before 1649, the divine right of monarchy, and the claim of Presbytery to be scriptural, have yielded in his mind to a wider conception of the rights of the man and the Christian. To use the party names of the time, Milton the Presbyterian has expanded into Milton the Independent. There is to be no State Church, and instead of a monarchy there is to be a commonwealth. Very soon the situation developes the important question how this commonwealth shall be administered--whether by a representative assembly, or by a picked council, or a single governor. This question was put to a test in the Parliament of 1654. The experiment of a representative assembly, begun in September 1654, broke down in January 1655. Before it was tried we find Milton in his _Second Defence_, in May 1654, recommending Cromwell to govern not by a Parliament, but by a council of officers; i.e. he is a commonwealth's man. Arrived at this point, would Milton take his stand upon doctrinaire republicanism, and lose sight of liberty in the attempt to secure equality, as his friends Vane, Overton, Bradshaw would have done? Or would his idealist exaltation sweep him on into some one of the current fanaticisms, Leveller, Fifth Monarchy, or Muggletonian? Unpractical as he was, he was close enough to State affairs as Latin Secretary, to see that personal government by the Protector was, at the moment, the only solution. If the liberties that had been conquered by the sword were to be maintained, between levelling chaos on the one hand, and royalist reaction on the other, it was the Protector alone to whom those who prized liberty above party names could look. Accordingly Milton may be regarded from the year 1654 onwards as an Oliverian, though with particular reservations. He saw--it was impossible for a man in his situation not to see--the unavoidable necessity which forced Cromwell, at this moment, to undertake to govern without a representative assembly. The political necessity of the situation was absolute, and all reasonable men who were embarked in the cause felt it to be so. Through all these stages Milton passed in the space of twenty years--Church-Puritan, Presbyterian, Royalist, Independent, Commonwealth's man, Oliverian. These political phases were not the acquiescence of a placeman, or indifferentist, in mutations for which he does not care; still less were they changes either of party or of opinion. Whatever he thought, Milton thought and felt intensely, and expressed emphatically; and even his enemies could not accuse him of a shadow of inconsistency or wavering in his principles. On the contrary, tenacity, or persistence of idea, amounted in him to a serious defect of character. A conviction once formed dominated him, so that, as in the controversy with Morus, he could not be persuaded that he had made a mistake. No mind, the history of which we have an opportunity of intimately studying, could be more of one piece and texture than was that of Milton from youth to age. The names, which we are obliged to give to his successive political stages, do not indicate shades of colour adopted from the prevailing political ground, but the genuine development of the public consciousness of Puritan England repeated in an individual. Milton moved forward, not because Cromwell and the rest advanced, but with Cromwell and the rest. We may perhaps describe the motive force as a passionate attachment to personal liberty, liberty of thought and action. This ideal force working in the minds of a few, "those worthies which are the soul of that enterprise" (_Tenure of Kings_), had been the mainspring of the whole revolution. The Levellers, Quakers, Fifth Monarchy men, and the wilder Anabaptist sects, only showed the workings of the same idea in men, whose intellects had not been disciplined by education or experience. The idea of liberty, formulated into a doctrine, and bowed down to as a holy creed, made some of its best disciples, such as Harrison and Overton, useless at the most critical juncture. The party of anti-Oliverian republicans, the Intransigentes, became one of the greatest difficulties of the Government. Milton, with his idealism, his thoroughness, and obstinate persistence, was not unlikely to have shipwrecked upon the same rock. He was saved by his constancy to the principle of religious liberty, which was found with the party that had destroyed the King because he would not be ruled by a Parliament, while in 1655 it supported the Protector in governing without a Parliament. Supreme authority in itself was not Cromwell's aim; he used it only to secure the fulfilment of those ideas of religious liberty, civil order, and Protestant ascendancy in Europe, which filled his whole soul. To Milton, as to Cromwell, forms, whether of worship or government, were but means to an end, and were to be changed whenever expediency might require. In 1655, then, Milton was an Oliverian, but with reservations. The most important of these reservations regarded the relation of the state to the church. Cromwell never wholly dropped the scheme of a national church. It was, indeed, to be as comprehensive as possible; Episcopacy was pulled down, Presbytery was not set up, but individual ministers might be Episcopalian or Presbyterian in sentiment, provided they satisfied a certain standard, intelligible enough to that generation, of "godliness". Here Milton seems to have remained throughout upon the old Independent platform; he will not have the civil power step over its limits into the province of religion at all. Many matters, in which the old prelatic church had usurped upon the domain of the state, should be replaced under the secular authority. But the spiritual region was matter of conscience, and not of external regulation. A further reservation which Milton would make related to endowments, or the maintenance of ministers. The Protectorate, and the constitution of 1657, maintained an established clergy in the enjoyment of tithes or other settled stipends. Nothing was more abhorrent to Milton's sentiment than state payment in religious things. The minister who receives such pay becomes a state pensioner, "a hireling." The law of tithes is a Jewish law, repealed by the Gospel, under which the minister is only maintained by the freewill offerings of the congregation to which he ministers. This antipathy to hired preachers was one of Milton's earliest convictions. It thrusts itself, rather importunately, into _Lycidas_ (1636), and reappears in the Sonnet to Cromwell (_Sonnet_ xvii., 1652), before it is dogmatically expounded in the pamphlet, _Considerations touching means to remove Hirelings out of the Church_ (1659). Of the two corruptions of the church by the secular power, one by force, the other by pay, Milton regards the last as the most dangerous. "Under force, though no thank to the forcers, true religion ofttimes best thrives and flourishes; but the corruption of teachers, most commonly the effect of hire, is the very bane of truth in them who are so corrupted." Nor can we tax this aversion to a salaried ministry, with being a monomania of sect. It is essentially involved in the conception of religion as a spiritual state, a state of grace. A soul in this state can only be ministered to by a brother in a like frame of mind. To assign a place with a salary, is to offer a pecuniary inducement to simulate this qualification. This principle may be wrong, but it is not unreasonable. It is the very principle on which the England of our day has decided against the endowment of science. The endowment of the church was to Milton the poison of religion, and in so thinking he was but true to his conception of religion. Cromwell, whatever may have been his speculative opinions, decided in favour of a state endowment, upon the reasons, or some of them, which have moved modern statesmen to maintain church establishments. With whatever reservations, Milton was an Oliverian. Supporting the Protector's policy, he admired his conduct, and has recorded his admiration in the memorable sonnet xii. How the Protector thought of Milton, or even that he knew him at all, there remains no evidence. Napoleon said of Corneille that, if he had lived in his day, he would have made him his first minister. Milton's ideas were not such as could have value in the eyes of a practical statesman. Yet Cromwell was not always taking advice, or discussing business. He, who could take a liking for the genuine inwardness of the enthusiast George Fox, might have been expected to appreciate equal unworldliness, joined with culture and reading, in Milton. "If," says Neal, "there was a man in England who excelled in any faculty or science, the Protector would find him out and reward him." But the excellence which the Protector prized was aptness for public employment, and this was the very quality in which Milton was deficient. The poverty of Milton's state letters has been often remarked. Whenever weighty negotiations are going on, other pens than his are employed. We may ascribe this to his blindness. Milton could only dictate, and therefore everything entrusted to him must pass through an amanuensis, who might blab. One exception to the commonplace character of the state papers there is. The massacre of the Vaudois by their own sovereign, Charles Emanuel II., Duke of Savoy, excited a thrill of horror in England greater than the massacres of Scio or of Batak roused in our time. For in Savoy it was not humanity only that was outraged, it was a deliberate assault of the Papal half of Europe upon an outpost of the Protestant cause. One effect of the Puritan revolution had been to alter entirely the foreign policy of England. By nature, by geographical position, by commercial occupations, and the free spirit of the natives, these islands were marked out to be members of the northern confederacy of progressive and emancipated Europe. The foreign policy of Elisabeth had been steady adhesion to this law of nature. The two first Stuarts, coquetting with semi-Catholicism at home, had leaned with all the weight of the crown and of government towards catholic connexions. The country had always offered a vain resistance; the Parliament of 1621 had been dismissed for advising James to join the continental protestants against Spain. It was certain, therefore, that when the government became Puritan, its foreign policy would again become that of Elisabeth. This must have been the case even if Cromwell had not been there. He saw not only that England must be a partner in the general protestant interest, but that it fell to England to make the combination and to lead it. He acted in this with his usual decision. He placed England in her natural antagonism to Spain; he made peace with the Dutch; he courted the friendship of the Swiss Cantons, and the alliance of the Scandinavian and German Princes; and to France, which had a divided interest, he made advantageous offers provided the Cardinal would disconnect himself from the ultramontane party. It was in April 1655, that the Vaudois atrocities suddenly added the impulse of religious sympathy to the permanent gravitation of the political forces. In all catholic countries the Jesuits had by this time made themselves masters of the councils of the princes. The aim of Jesuit policy in the seventeenth century was nothing less than the entire extirpation of protestantism and protestants in the countries which they ruled. The inhabitants of certain Piedmontese valleys had held from time immemorial, and long before Luther, tenets and forms of worship very like those to which the German reformers had sought to bring back the church. The Vaudois were wretchedly poor, and had been incessantly the objects of aggression and persecution. In January 1655, a sudden determination was taken by the Turin government to make them conform to the catholic religion by force. The whole of the inhabitants of three valleys were ordered to quit the country within three days, under pain of death and confiscation of goods, unless they would become, or undertake to become, catholic. They sent their humble remonstrances to the court of Turin against this edict. The remonstrances were disregarded, and military execution was ordered. On April 17, 1655, the soldiers, recruits from all countries--the Irish are specially mentioned--were let loose upon the unarmed population. Murder and rape and burning are the ordinary incidents of military execution. These were not enough to satisfy the ferocity of the catholic soldiery, who revelled for many days in the infliction of all that brutal lust or savage cruelty can suggest to men. It was nearly a month before the news reached England. A cry of horror went through the country, and Cromwell said it came "as near his heart as if his own nearest and dearest had been concerned." A day of humiliation was appointed, large collections were made for the sufferers, and a special envoy was despatched to remonstrate with the Duke of Savoy. Cardinal Mazarin, however, seeing the importance which the Lord Protector would acquire by taking the lead on this occasion, stepped in, and patched up a hasty arrangement, the treaty of Pignerol, by which some sort of fallacious protection was ostensibly secured to the survivors of the massacre. All the despatches in this business were composed by Milton. But he only found the words; especially in the letter to the Duke of Savoy, the tone of which is much more moderate than we should have expected, considering that Blake was in the Mediterranean, and master of the coasts of the Duke's dominions. It is impossible to extract from these letters any characteristic trait, unless it is from the speech, which the envoy, Morland, was instructed to deliver at Turin, in which it is said that all the Neros of all ages had never contrived inhumanities so atrocious, as what had taken place in the Vaudois valleys. Thus restricted in his official communications, Milton gave vent to his personal feelings on the occasion in the well-known sonnet (xviii.) "Avenge, O Lord, thy slaughtered saints, whose bones Lie scattered on the Alpine mountains cold." It has been already said that there remains no trace of any personal intercourse between Milton and Cromwell. He seems to have remained equally unknown to, or unregarded by, the other leading men in the Government or the Council. It is vain to conjecture the cause of this general neglect. Some have found it in the coldness with which Milton regarded, parts at least of, the policy of the Protectorate. Others refer it to the haughty nature of the man, who will neither ask a favour, nor make the first advances towards intimacy. This last supposition is nearer the truth than the former. An expression he uses in a private letter may be cited in its support. Writing to Peter Heimbach in 1657, to excuse himself from giving him a recommendation to the English ambassador in Holland, he says: "I am sorry that I am not able to do this; I have very little acquaintance with those in power, inasmuch as I keep very much to my own house, and prefer to do so." Something may also be set down to the character of the Puritan leaders, alien to all poetry, and knowing no books but the Bible. The mental isolation in which the great poet lived his life, is a remarkable feature of his biography. It was not only after the Restoration that he appears lonely and friendless; it was much the same during the previous period of the Parliament and the Protectorate. Just at one time, about 1641, we hear from our best authority, Phillips, of his cultivating the society of men of his own age, and "keeping a gawdy-day", but this only once in three weeks or a month, with "two gentlemen of Gray's Inn." He had, therefore, known what it was to be sociable. But the general tenour of his life was other; proud, reserved, self-contained, repellent; brooding over his own ideas, not easily admitting into his mind the ideas of others. It is indeed an erroneous estimate of Milton to attribute to him a hard or austere nature. He had all the quick sensibility which belongs to the poetic temperament, and longed to be loved that he might love again. But he had to pay the penalty of all who believe in their own ideas, in that their ideas come between them and the persons that approach them, and constitute a mental barrier which can only be broken down by sympathy. And sympathy for ideas is hard to find, just in proportion as those ideas are profound, far-reaching, the fruit of long study and meditation. Hence it was that Milton did not associate readily with his contemporaries, but was affable and instructive in conversation with young persons, and those who would approach him in the attitude of disciples. His daughter Deborah, who could tell so little about him, remembered that he was delightful company, the life of a circle, and that he was so, through a flow of subjects, and an unaffected cheerfulness and civility. I would interpret this testimony, the authenticity of which is indisputable, of his demeanour with the young, and those who were modest enough to wait upon his utterances. His isolation from his coevals, and from those who offered resistance, was the necessary consequence of his force of character, and the moral tenacity which endured no encroachment on the narrow scheme of thought; over which it was incessantly brooding. Though, as Johnson says "his literature was immense", there was no humanity in it; it was fitted immovably into a scholastic frame-work. Hence it was no bond of sympathy between him and other men. We find him in no intimate relation with any of the contemporary men of learning, poets, or wits. From such of them as were of the cavalier party he was estranged by politics. That it was Milton's interposition which saved Davenant's life in 1651, even were the story better authenticated than it is, is not an evidence of intimacy. The three men most eminent for learning (in the usually received sense of the word) in England at that day were Selden (d. 1654), Gataker (d. 1654), and Archbishop Usher (d. 1656), all of whom were to be found in London. With none of the three is there any trace of Milton ever having had intercourse. It is probable, but not certain, that it was at Milton's intercession that the Council proposed to subsidise Brian Walton in his great enterprise--the Polyglott Bible. This, the noblest monument of the learning of the Anglican Church, was projected and executed by the silenced clergy. Fifteen years of spoliation and humiliation thus bore richer fruit of learning than the two centuries of wealth and honour which have since elapsed. As Brian Walton had, at one time, been curate of Allhallows, Bread Street, Milton may have known him, and it has been inferred that by Twells' expression--"The Council of state, before whom _some_, having _relation to them_, brought this business"--Milton is meant. Not with John Hales, Cudworth, Whichcote, Nicholas Bernard, Meric Casaubon, nor with any of the men of letters who were churchmen, do we find Milton in correspondence. The interest of religion was more powerful than the interest of knowledge; and the author of _Eikonoklastes_ must have been held in special abhorrence by the loyal clergy. The general sentiment of this party is expressed in Hacket's tirade, for which the reader is referred to his Life of Archbishop Williams. From Presbyterians, such as Theophilus Gale or Baxter, Milton was equally separated by party. Of Hobbes, Milton's widow told Aubrey "that he was not of his acquaintance; that her husband did not like him at all, but would acknowledge him to be a man of great parts." Owing to these circumstances, the circle of Milton's intimates contains few, and those undistinguished names. One exception there was. In Andrew Marvel Milton found one congenial spirit, incorruptible amid poverty, unbowed by defeat. Marvel was twelve years Milton's junior, and a Cambridge man (Trinity), like himself. He had had better training still, having been for two years an inmate of Nunappleton, in the capacity of instructor to Mary, only daughter of the great Lord Fairfax. In 1652, Milton had recommended Marvel for the appointment of assistant secretary to himself, now that he was partially disabled by his blindness. The recommendation was not effectual at the time, another man, Philip Meadows, obtaining the post. It was not till 1657, when Meadows was sent on a mission to Denmark, that Marvel became Milton's colleague. He remained attached to him to the last. It were to be wished that he had left some reminiscences of his intercourse with the poet in his later years, some authentic notice of him in his prose letters, instead of a copy of verses, which attest, at least, his affectionate admiration for Milton's great epic, though they are a poor specimen of his own poetical efforts. Of Marchmont Needham, and Samuel Hartlib mention has been already made. During the eight years of his sojourn in the house in Petty France, "he was frequently visited by persons of quality," says Phillips. The only name he gives is Lady Ranelagh. This lady, by birth a Boyle, sister of Robert Boyle, had placed first her nephew, and then her son, under Milton's tuition. Of an excellent understanding, and liberally cultivated, she sought Milton's society, and as he could not go to visit her, she went to him. There are no letters of Milton addressed to her, but he mentions her once as "a most superior woman," and when, in 1656, she left London for Ireland, he "grieves for the loss of the one acquaintance which was worth to him all the rest." These names, with that of Dr. Paget, exhaust the scanty list of Milton's intimates during this period. To these older friends, however, must be added his former pupils, now become men, but remaining ever attached to their old tutor, seeing him often when in London, and when absent corresponding with him. With them he was "affable and instructive in conversation." Henry Lawrence, son of the President of Oliver's Council, and Cyriac Skinner, grandson, of Chief Justice Coke, were special favourites. With these he would sometimes "by the fire help waste a sullen day;" and it was these two who called forth from him the only utterances of this time which are not solemn, serious, or sad. Sonnet XVI is a poetical invitation to Henry Lawrence, "of virtuous father virtuous son," to a "neat repast," not without wine and song, to cheer the winter season. Besides these two, whose names are familiar to us through the Sonnets, there was Lady Ranelagh's son, Richard Jones, who went, in 1656, to Oxford, attended by his tutor, the German Heinrich Oldenburg. We have two letters (Latin) addressed to Jones at Oxford, which are curious as showing that Milton was as dissatisfied with that university even after the reform, with Oliver Chancellor, and Owen Vice-Chancellor, as he had been with Cambridge. His two nephews, also his pupils, must have ceased at a very early period to be acceptable either as friends or companions. They had both--but the younger brother, John, more decidedly than Edward--passed into the opposite camp. This is a result of the uncle's strict system of Puritan discipline, which will surprise no one who has observed that, in education, mind reacts against the pressure of will. The teacher who seeks to impose his views raises antagonists, and not disciples. The generation of young men who grew up under the Commonwealth were in intellectual revolt against the constraint of Puritanism, before they proceeded to political revolution against its authority. Long before the reaction embodied itself in the political fact of the Restoration, it had manifested itself in popular literature. The theatres were still closed by the police, but Davenant found a public in London to applaud an "entertainment by declamations and music, after the manner of the ancients" (1656). The press began timidly to venture on books of amusement, in a style of humour which seemed ribald and heathenish to the staid and sober covenanter. Something of the jollity and merriment of old Elisabethan days seemed to be in the air. But with a vast difference. Instead of "dallying with the innocence of love," as in _England's Helicon_ (1600), or _The Passionate Pilgrim_, the sentiment, crushed and maimed by unwise repression, found a less honest and less refined expression. The strongest and most universal of human passions when allowed freedom, light, and air, becomes poetic inspiration. The same passion coerced by police is but driven underground. So it came to pass that, in these years, the Protector's Council of state was much exercised by attempts of the London press to supply the public, weary of sermons, with some light literature of the class now (1879) known as facetious. On April 25, 1656, the august body which had upon its hands the government of three kingdoms and the protection of the protestant interest militant throughout Europe, could find nothing better to do than to take into consideration a book entitled _Sportive Wit, or The Muse's Merriment_. Sad to relate, the book was found to contain "much lascivious and profane matter." And the editor?--no other than John Phillips, Milton's youngest nephew! It is as if nature, in reasserting herself, had made deliberate selection of its agent. The pure poet of _Comus_, the man who had publicly boasted his chastity, had trained up a pupil to become the editor of an immodest drollery! Another and more original production of John Phillips, the _Satyr against Hypocrites_, was an open attack, with mixed banter and serious indignation, on the established religion. "It affords," says Godwin, "unequivocal indication of the company now kept by the author with cavaliers, and _bon vivans_, and demireps, and men of ruined fortunes." Edward Phillips, the elder brother, followed suit with the _Mysteries of Love and Eloquence_ (1658), a book, according to Godwin, "entitled to no insignificant rank among the multifarious productions issued from the press, to debauch the manners of the nation, and to bring back the King." Truly, a man's worst vexations come to him from his own relations. Milton had the double annoyance of the public exposure before the Council of State, and the private reflection on the failure of his own system of education. The homage which was wanting to the prophet in his own country was more liberally tendered by foreigners. Milton, it must be remembered, was yet only known in England as the pamphleteer of strong republican, but somewhat eccentric, opinions. On the continent he was the answerer of Salmasius, the vindicator of liberty against despotic power. "Learned foreigners of note," Phillips tells us, "could not part out of this city without giving a visit" to his uncle. Aubrey even exaggerates this flocking of the curious, so far as to say that some came over into England only to see Oliver Protector and John Milton. That Milton had more than he liked of these sightseers, who came to look at him when he could not see them, we can easily believe. Such visitors would of course be from protestant countries. Italians, though admiring his elegant Latin, had "disliked him on account of his too severe morals." A glimpse, and no more than a glimpse, of the impression such visitors could carry away, we obtain in a letter written, in 1651, by a Nüremberg pastor, Christoph Arnold, to a friend at home:--"The strenuous defender of the new _régime_, Milton, enters readily into conversation; his speech is pure, his written style very pregnant. He has committed himself to a harsh, not to say unjust, criticism of the old English divines, and of their Scripture commentaries, which are truly learned, be witness the genius of learning himself!" It must not be supposed from this that Milton had discoursed with Arnold on the English divines. The allusion is to that onfall upon the reformers, Cranmer, Latimer, &c., which had escaped from Milton's pen in 1642 to the great grief of his friends. If the information of a dissenting minister, one Thomas Bradbury, who professed to derive it from Jeremiah White, one of Oliver's chaplains, may be trusted, Milton "was allowed by the Parliament a weekly table for the entertainment of foreign ministers and persons of learning, such especially as came from protestant states, which allowance was also continued by Cromwell." Such homage, though it may be a little tiresome, may have gratified for the moment the political writer, but it would not satisfy the poet who was dreaming of an immortality of far other fame-- Two equal'd with me in fate, So were I equal'd with them in renown. And to one with Milton's acute sensibility, yearning for sympathy and love, dependent, through his calamity, on the eyes, as on the heart, of others, his domestic interior was of more consequence than outside demonstrations of respect. Four years after the death of his first wife he married again. We know nothing more of this second wife, Catharine Woodcock, than what may be gathered from the Sonnet XIX, in which he commemorated his "late espoused saint," in whose person "love, sweetness, goodness shin'd." After only fifteen months union she died (1658), after having given birth to a daughter, who lived only a few months. Milton was again alone. His public functions as Latin Secretary had been contracted within narrow limits by his blindness. The heavier part of the duties had been transferred to others, first to Weckherlin, then to Philip Meadows, and lastly to Andrew Marvel. The more confidential diplomacy Thurloe reserved for his own cabinet. But Milton continued up to the last to be occasionally called upon for a Latin epistle. On September 3, 1658, passed away the master-mind which had hitherto compelled the jarring elements in the nation to co-exist together, and chaos was let loose. Milton retained and exercised his secretaryship under Richard Protector, and even under the restored Parliament. His latest Latin letter is of date May 16, 1659. He is entirely outside all the combinations and complications which filled the latter half of that year, after Richard's retirement in May. It is little use writing to foreign potentates now, for, with one man's life, England has fallen from her lead in Europe, and is gravitating towards the catholic and reactionary powers, France or Spain. Milton, though he knows nothing more than one of the public, "only what it appears to us without doors," he says, will yet write about it. The habit of pamphleteering was on him, and he will write what no one will care to read. The stiff-necked commonwealth men, with their doctrinaire republicanism, were standing out for their constitutional ideas, blind to the fact that the royalists were all the while undermining the ground beneath the feet alike of Presbyterian and Independent, Parliament and army. The Greeks of Constantinople denouncing the Azymite, when Mohammed II. was forming his lines round the doomed city, were not more infatuated than these pedantic commonwealth men with their parliamentarianism when Charles II. was at Calais. Not less inopportune than the public men of the party, Milton chooses this time for inculcating his views on endowments. A fury of utterance was upon him, and he poured out, during the death-throes of the republic, pamphlet upon pamphlet, as fast as he could get them written to his dictation. These extemporised effusions betray in their style, hurry and confusion, the restlessness of a coming despair. The passionate enthusiasm of the early tracts is gone, and all the old faults, the obscurity, the inconsecutiveness, the want of arrangement, are exaggerated. In the _Ready Way_ there is a monster sentence of thirty-nine lines, containing 336 words. Though his instincts were perturbed, he was unaware what turn things were taking. In February 1660, when all persons of ordinary information saw that the restoration of monarchy was certain, Milton knew it not, and put out a tract to show his countrymen a _Ready and easy way to establish a free Commonwealth_. With the same pertinacity with which he had adhered to his own assumption that Morus was author of the _Clamor_, he now refused to believe in the return of the Stuarts. Fast as his pen moved, events outstripped it, and he has to rewrite the _Ready and easy way_ to suit their march. The second edition is overtaken by the Restoration, and it should seem was never circulated. Milton will ever "give advice to Sylla," and writes a letter of admonition to Monk, which, however, never reached either the press or Sylla. The month of May 1660, put a forced end to his illusion. Before the 29th of that month he had fled from the house in Petty France, and been sheltered by a friend in the city. In this friend's house, in Bartholomew Close, he lay concealed till the passing of the Act of Oblivion, 29th August. Phillips says that he owed his exemption from the vengeance which overtook so many of his friends, to Andrew Marvel, "who acted vigorously in his behalf, and made a considerable party for him." But in adding that "he was so far excepted as not to bear any office in the commonwealth," Phillips is in error. Milton's name does not occur in the Act. Pope used to tell that Davenant had employed his interest to protect a brother-poet, thus returning a similar act of generosity done to himself by Milton in 1650. Pope had this story from Betterton the actor. How far Davenant exaggerated to Betterton his own influence or his exertions, we cannot tell. Another account assigns the credit of the intervention to Secretary Morris and Sir Thomas Clarges. After all, it is probable that he owed his immunity to his insignificance and his harmlessness. The formality of burning two of his books by the hands of the hangman was gone through. He was also for some time during the autumn of 1660 in the custody of the serjeant-at-arms, for on 15th December, there is an entry in the Commons journals ordering his discharge. It is characteristic of Milton that, even in this moment of peril, he stood up for his rights, and refused to pay an overcharge, which the official thought he might safely exact from a rebel and a covenanter. THIRD PERIOD, 1660-1674. CHAPTER XII. BIOGRAPHICAL.--LITERARY OCCUPATION.--RELIGIOUS OPINIONS. Revolutions are of two kinds; they are either progressive or reactionary. A revolution of progress is often destructive, sweeping away much which should have been preserved. But such a revolution has a regenerating force; it renews the youth of a nation, and gives free play to its vital powers. Lost limbs are replaced by new. A revolution of reaction, on the other hand, is a benumbing influence, paralysing effort, and levelling character. In such a conservative revolution, the mean, the selfish, and the corrupt come to the top; man seeks ease and enjoyment rather than duty; virtue, honour, patriotism, and disinterestedness disappear altogether from a society which has ceased to believe in them. The Restoration of 1660 was such a revolution. Complete and instantaneous inversion of the position of the two parties in the nation, it occasioned much individual hardship. But this was only the fortune of war, the necessary consequence of party ascendancy. The Restoration was much more than a triumph of the party of the royalists over that of the roundheads; it was the deathblow to national aspiration, to all those aims which raise man above himself. It destroyed and trampled under foot his ideal. The Restoration was a moral catastrophe. It was not that there wanted good men among the churchmen, men as pious and virtuous as the Puritans whom they displaced. But the royalists came back as the party of reaction, reaction of the spirit of the world against asceticism, of self-indulgence against duty, of materialism against idealism. For a time virtue was a public laughing-stock, and the word "saint," the highest expression in the language for moral perfection, connoted everything that was ridiculous. I do not speak of the gallantries of Whitehall, which figure so prominently in the histories of the reign. Far too much is made of these, when they are made the scapegoat of the moralist. The style of court manners was a mere incident on the surface of social life. The national life was more profoundly tainted by the discouragement of all good men, which penetrated every shire and every parish, than by the distant reports of the loose behaviour of Charles II. Servility, meanness, venality, time-serving, and a disbelief in virtue diffused themselves over the nation like a pestilential miasma, the depressing influence of which was heavy, even upon those souls which individually resisted the poison. The heroic age of England had passed away, not by gradual decay, by imperceptible degeneration, but in a year, in a single day, like the winter's snow in Greece. It is for the historian to describe, and unfold the sources of this contagion. The biographer of Milton has to take note of the political change only as it affected the worldly circumstances of the man, the spiritual environment of the poet, and the springs of his inspiration. The consequences of the Restoration to Milton's worldly fortunes were disastrous. As a partisan he was necessarily involved in the ruin of his party. As a matter of course he lost his Latin secretaryship. There is a story that he was offered to be continued in it, and that when urged to accept the offer by his wife, he replied, "Thou art in the right; you, as other women, would ride in your coach; for me, my aim is to live and die an honest man." This tradition, handed on by Pope, is of doubtful authenticity. It is not probable that the man who had printed of Charles I. what Milton had printed, could have been offered office under Charles II. Even were court favour to be purchased by concessions, Milton was not the man to make them, or to belie his own antecedents, as Marchmont, Needham, Dryden, and so many others did. Our wish for Milton is that he should have placed himself from the beginning above party. But he had chosen to be the champion of a party, and he loyally accepted the consequences. He escaped with life and liberty. The reaction, though barbarous in its treatment of its victims, was not bloodthirsty. Milton was already punished by the loss of his sight, and he was now mulcted in three-fourths of his small fortune. A sum of 2000 l. which he had placed in government securities was lost, the restored monarchy refusing to recognise the obligations of the protectorate. He lost another like sum by mismanagement, and for want of good advice, says Phillips, or according to his granddaughter's statement, by the dishonesty of a money-scrivener. He had also to give up, without compensation, some property, valued at 60 l. a year, which he had purchased when the estates of the Chapter of Westminster were sold. In the great fire, 1666, his house in Bread-street was destroyed. Thus, from easy circumstances, he was reduced, if not to destitution, at least to narrow means. He left at his death 1500 l., which Phillips calls a considerable sum. And if he sold his books, one by one, during his lifetime, this was because, knowing their value, he thought he could dispose of them to greater advantage than his wife would be able to do. But far outweighing such considerations as pecuniary ruin, and personal discomfort, was the shock which the moral nature felt from the irretrievable discomfiture of all the hopes, aims, and aspirations which had hitherto sustained and nourished his soul. In a few months the labour of twenty years was swept away without a trace of it being left. It was not merely a political defeat of his party, it was the total wreck of the principles, of the social and religious ideal, with which Milton's life was bound up. Others, whose convictions only had been engaged in the cause, could hasten to accommodate themselves to the new era, or even to transfer their services to the conqueror. But such flighty allegiance was not possible for Milton, who had embarked in the Puritan cause not only intellectual convictions, but all the generosity and ardour of his passionate nature. "I conceive myself to be," he had written in 1642, "not as mine own person, but as a member incorporate into that truth whereof I was persuaded, and whereof I had declared myself openly to be the partaker." It was now in the moment of overthrow that Milton became truly great. "Wandellos im ewigen Ruin," he stood alone, and became the party himself. He took the only course open to him, turned away his thoughts from the political disaster, and directed the fierce enthusiasm which burned within, upon an absorbing poetic task. His outward hopes were blasted, and he returned with concentrated ardour to woo the muse, from whom he had so long truanted. The passion which seethes beneath the stately march of the verse in _Paradise Lost_, is not the hopeless moan of despair, but the intensified fanaticism which defies misfortune to make it "bate one jot of heart or hope." The grand loneliness of Milton after 1668, "is reflected in his three great poems by a sublime independence of human sympathy, like that with which mountains fascinate and rebuff us" (_Lowell_). Late then, but not too late, Milton, at the age of fifty-two, fell back upon the rich resources of his own mind, upon poetical composition, and the study of good books, which he always asserted to be necessary to nourish and sustain a poet's imagination. Here he had to contend with the enormous difficulty of blindness. He engaged a kind of attendant to read to him. But this only sufficed for English books--imperfectly even for these--and the greater part of the choice, not extensive, library upon which Milton drew, was Hebrew, Greek, Latin, and the modern languages of Europe. In a letter to Heimbach, of date 1666, he complains pathetically of the misery of having to spell out, letter by letter, the Latin words of the epistle, to the attendant who was writing to his dictation. At last he fell upon the plan of engaging young friends, who occasionally visited him, to read to him and to write for him. In the precious volume of Milton MSS. preserved in the library of Trinity College, Cambridge, six different hands have been distinguished. Who they were is not always known. But Phillips tells us that, "he had daily about him one or other to read to him; some persons of man's estate, who of their own accord greedily catch'd at the opportunity of being his reader, that they might as well reap the benefit of what they read to him, as oblige him by the benefit of their reading; others of younger years sent by their parents to the same end." Edward Phillips himself, who visited his uncle to the last, may have been among the number, as much as his own engagements as tutor, first to the only son of John Evelyn, then in the family of the Earl of Pembroke, and finally to the Bennets, Lord Arlington's children, would permit him. Others of these casual readers were Samuel Barrow, body physician to Charles II., and Cyriac Skinner, of whom mention has been already made (above, p. 132). To a blind man, left with three little girls, of whom the youngest was only eight at the Restoration, marriage seemed equally necessary for their sake as for his own. Milton consulted his judicious friend and medical adviser, Dr. Paget, who recommended to him Elizabeth Minshull, of a family of respectable position near Nantwich, in Cheshire. She was some distant relation of Paget, who must have felt the terrible responsibility of undertaking to recommend. She justified his selection. The marriage took place in February 1663, and during the remaining eleven years of his life, the poet was surrounded by the thoughtful attentions of an active and capable woman. There is but scanty evidence as to what she was like, either in person or character. Aubrey, who knew her, says she was "a gent. (genteel?) person, (of) a peaceful and agreeable humour." Newton, Bishop of Bristol, who wrote in 1749, had heard that she was "a woman of a most violent spirit, and a hard mother-in-law to his children." It is certain that she regarded her husband with great veneration, and studied his comfort. Mary Fisher, a maidservant in the house, deposed that at the end of his life, when he was sick and infirm, his wife having provided something for dinner she thought he would like, he "spake to his said wife these or like words, as near as this deponent can remember: 'God have mercy, Betty, I see thou wilt perform according to thy promise, in providing me such dishes as I think fit while I live, and when I die thou knowest I have left thee all.'" There is no evidence that his wife rendered him literary assistance. Perhaps, as she looked so thoroughly to his material comfort, her function was held, by tacit agreement, to end there. As casual visitors, or volunteer readers, were not always in the way, and a hired servant who could not spell Latin was of very restricted use, it was not unnatural that Milton should look to his daughters, as they grew up, to take a share in supplying his voracious demand for intellectual food. Anne, the eldest, though she had handsome features, was deformed and had an impediment in her speech, which made her unavailable as a reader. The other two, Mary and Deborah, might now have been of inestimable service to their father, had their dispositions led them to adapt themselves to his needs, and the circumstances of the house. Unfortunate it was for Milton, that his biblical views on the inferiority of woman had been reduced to practice in the bringing up of his own daughters. It cannot indeed be said that the poet whose imagination created the Eve of _Paradise Lost_, regarded woman as the household drudge, existing only to minister to man's wants. Of all that men have said of women nothing is more loftily conceived than the well-known passage at the end of Book viii.:-- When I approach Her loveliness, so absolute she seems, And in herself complete, so well to know Her own, that what she wills to do or say Seems wisest, virtuousest, discreetest, best; All higher knowledge in her presence falls Degraded; wisdom in discourse with her Loses discountenanc'd, and like folly shows; Authority and reason on her wait, As one intended first, not after made Occasionally; and, to consummate all, Greatness of mind, and nobleness, their seat Build in her loveliest, and create an awe About her, as a guard angelic plac'd. Bishop Newton thought that, in drawing Eve, Milton had in mind his third wife, because she had hair of the colour of Eve's "golden tresses." But Milton had never seen Elizabeth Minshull. If reality suggested any trait, physical or mental, of the Eve, it would certainly have been some woman seen in earlier years. But wherever Milton may have met with an incarnation of female divinity such as he has drawn, it was not in his own family. We cannot but ask, how is it that one, whose type of woman is the loftiest known to English literature, should have brought up his own daughters on so different a model? Milton is not one of the false prophets, who turn round and laugh at their own enthusiasms, who say one thing in their verses, and another thing over their cups. What he writes in his poetry is what he thinks, what he means, and what he will do. But in directing the bringing up of his daughters, he put his own typical woman entirely on one side. His practice is framed on the principle that Nothing lovelier can be found In woman, than to study household good. _Paradise Lost_, ix. 233. He did not allow his daughters to learn any language, saying with a gibe that one tongue was enough for a woman. They were not sent to any school, and had some sort of teaching at home from a mistress. But in order to make them useful in reading to him, their father was at the pains to train them to read aloud in five or six languages, of none of which they understood one word. When we think of the time and labour which must have been expended to teach them to do this, it must occur to us that a little more labour would have sufficed to teach them so much of one or two of the languages, as would have made their reading a source of interest and improvement to themselves. This Milton refused to do. The consequence was, as might have been expected, the occupation became so irksome to them, that they rebelled against it. In the case of one of them, Mary, who was like her mother in person, and took after her in other respects, this restiveness passed into open revolt. She first resisted, then neglected, and finally came to hate, her father. When some one spoke in her presence of her father's approaching marriage, she said "that was no news to hear of his wedding; but if she could hear of his death, that was something." She combined with Anne, the eldest daughter, "to counsel his maidservant to cheat him in his marketings." They sold his books without his knowledge. "They made nothing of deserting him," he was often heard to complain. They continued to live with him five or six years after his marriage. But at last the situation became intolerable to both parties, and they were sent out to learn embroidery in gold or silver, as a means of obtaining their livelihood. Deborah, the youngest, was included in the same arrangement, though she seems to have been more helpful to her father, and to have been at one time his principal reader. Aubrey says that he "taught her Latin, and that she was his amanuensis." She even spoke of him when she was old--she lived to be seventy-four--with some tenderness. She was once, in 1725, shewn Faithorne's crayon drawing of the poet, without being told for whom it was intended. She immediately exclaimed, "O Lord! that is the picture of my father!" and stroking down the hair of her forehead, added, "Just so my father wore his hair." One of Milton's volunteer readers, and one to whom we owe the most authentic account of him in his last years, was a young Quaker, named Thomas Ellwood. Milton's Puritanism had been all his life slowly gravitating in the direction of more and more liberty, and though he would not attach himself to any sect, he must have felt in no remote sympathy with men who repudiated state interference in religious matters, and disdained ordinances. Some such sympathy with the pure spirituality of the Quaker may have disposed Milton favourably towards Ellwood. The acquaintance once begun, was cemented by mutual advantage. Milton, besides securing an intelligent reader, had a pleasure in teaching; and Ellwood, though the reverse of humble, was teachable from desire to expand himself. Ellwood took a lodging near the poet, and went to him every day, except "first-day," in the afternoon, to read Latin to him. Milton's frequent change of abode has been thought indicative of a restless temperament, seeking escape from petty miseries by change of scene. On emerging from hiding, or escaping from the serjeant-at-arms in 1660, he lived or a short time in Holborn, near Red Lion Square. From this he removed to Jewin Street, and moved again, on his marriage, in 1662, to the house of Millington, the bookseller, who was now beginning business, but who, before his death in 1704, had accumulated the largest stock of second-hand books to be found in London. His last remove was to a house in a newly-created row facing the Artillery-ground, on the site of the west side of what is now called Bunhill Row. This was his abode from his marriage till his death, nearly twelve years, a longer stay than he had made in any other residence. This is the house which, must be associated with the poet of _Paradise Lost_, as it was here that the poem was in part written, and wholly revised and finished. Bat the Bunhill Row house is only producible "by the imagination; every trace of it has long been swept away, though the name Milton Street, bestowed upon a neighbouring street, preserves the remembrance of the poet's connexion with the locality. Here "an ancient clergyman of Dorsetshire, Dr. Wright, found John Milton in a small chamber, "hung with rusty green, sitting in an elbow-chair, and dressed neatly in black; pale, but not cadaverous, his hands and fingers gouty and with chalk-stones." At the door of this house, sitting in the sun, looking out upon the Artillery-ground, "in a, grey coarse cloth coat," he would receive his visitors. On colder days he would walk for hours--three or four hours at a time. In his garden. A garden was a _sine qua non_, and he took care to have one to every house he lived in. His habit in early life had been to study late into the night. After he lost his sight, he changed his hours, and retired to rest at nine. In summer he rose at four, in winter at five, and began the day with having the Hebrew Scriptures read to him. "Then he contemplated. At seven his man came to him again, and then read to him and wrote till dinner. The writing was as much as the reading" (Aubrey). Then he took exercise, either walking in the garden, or swinging in a machine. His only recreation, besides conversation, was music. He played the organ and the bass viol, the organ most. Sometimes he would sing himself or get his wife to sing to him, though she had, he said, no ear, yet a good voice. Then he went up to his study to be read to till six. After six his friends were admitted to visit him, and would sit with him till eight. At eight he went down to supper, usually olives or some light thing. He was very abstemious in his diet, having to contend with a gouty diathesis. He was not fastidious in his choice of meats, but content with anything that was in season, or easy to be procured. After supping thus sparingly, he smoked a pipe of tobacco, drank a glass of water, and then retired to bed. He was sparing in his use of wine. His Samson, who in this as in other things, is Milton himself, allays his thirst "from the clear milky juice." Bed with its warmth and recumbent posture he found favourable to composition. At other times he would compose or prune his verses, as he walked in the garden, and then, coming in, dictate. His verse was not at the command of his will. Sometimes he would lie awake the whole night, trying but unable to make a single line. At other times lines flowed without premeditation "with a certain impetus and oestro." What was his season of inspiration is somewhat uncertain. In the elegy "To Spring," Milton says it was the spring which restored his poetic faculty. Phillips, however, says, "that his vein never flowed happily but from the autumnal equinox to the vernal," and that the poet told him this. Phillips' reminiscence is perhaps true at the date of _Paradise Lost_, when Milton's habits had changed from what they had been at twenty. Or we may agree with Toland, that Phillips has transposed the seasons, though preserving the fact of intermittent inspiration. What he composed at night, he dictated in the day, sitting obliquely in an elbow-chair, with his leg thrown over the arm. He would dictate forty lines, as it were in a breath, and then reduce them to half the number. Milton's piety is admitted, even by his enemies; and it is a piety which oppresses his writings as well as his life, The fact that a man, with a deep sense of religion, should not have attended any place of public worship, has given great trouble to Milton's biographers. And the principal biographers of this thorough-going nonconformist have been Anglican clergymen; Bishop Newton, Todd, Mitford; Dr. Johnson, more clerical than any cleric, being no exception, Mitford would give Milton a dispensation on the score of his age and infirmities. But the cause lay deeper. A profound apprehension of the spiritual world leads to a disregard of rites. To a mind so disposed externals become, first indifferent, then impedient. Ministration is officious intrusion. I do not find that Milton, though he wrote against paid ministers as hirelings, ever expressly formulated an opinion against ministers as such. But as has already been hinted, there grew up in him, in the last period of his life, a secret sympathy with the mode of thinking which came to characterise the Quaker sect. Not that Milton adopted any of their peculiar fancies. He affirms categorically the permissibility of oaths, of military service, and requires that women should keep silence in the congregation. But in negativing all means of arriving at truth except the letter of scripture interpreted by the inner light, he stood upon the same platform as the followers of George Fox. Milton's latest utterance on theological topics is found in a tract published by him the year before his death, 1673. The piece is entitled _Of true religion, heresy, schism, toleration_; but its meagre contents do not bear out the comprehensiveness of the title. The only matter really discussed in the pages of the tract is the limit of toleration. The stamp of age is upon the style, which is more careless and incoherent even, than usual. He has here dictated his extempore thoughts, without premeditation or revision, so that we have here a record of Milton's habitual mind. Having watched him gradually emancipating himself from the contracted Calvinistic mould of the Bread-street home, it is disappointing to see that, at sixty-five, his development has proceeded no further than we here find. He is now willing to extend toleration to all sects who make the Scriptures their sole rule of faith. Sects may misunderstand Scripture, but to err is the condition of humanity, and will be pardoned by God, if diligence, prayer, and sincerity have been used. The sects named as to be tolerated are, Lutherans, Calvinists, Anabaptists, Arians, Socinians, Arminians. They are to be tolerated to the extent of being allowed, on all occasions, to give account of their faith, by arguing, preaching in their several assemblies, writing and printing. In this pamphlet the principle of toleration is flatly enunciated in opposition to the practice of the Restoration. But the principle is rested not on the statesman's ground of the irrelevancy of religious dispute to good government, but on the theological ground of the venial nature of religious error. And to permissible error there are very narrow limits; limits which exclude Catholics. For Milton will exclude Romanists from toleration, not on the statesman's ground of incivism, but on the theologian's ground of idolatry. All his antagonism in this tract is reserved for the Catholics. There is not a hint of discontent with the prelatry, once intolerable to him. Yet that prelatry was now scourging the nonconformists with scorpions instead of with whips, with its Act of Uniformity, its Conventicle Act, its Five-mile Act, filling the gaols with Milton's own friends and fellow-religionists. Several times, in these thirteen pages, he appeals to the practice or belief of the Church of England, once even calling it "our church." This tract alone is sufficient refutation of an idle story that Milton died a Roman Catholic, The story is not well vouched, being hearsay three times removed. Milton's younger brother. Sir Christopher, is said to have said so at a dinner entertainment. If he ever did say as much, it must be set down to that peculiar form of credulity which makes perverts think that every one is about to follow their example. In Christopher Milton, "a man of no parts or ability, and a superstitions nature" (Toland), such credulity found a congenial soil. The tract _Of true religion_ was Milton's latest published work. But he was preparing for the press, at the time of his death, a more elaborate theological treatise. Daniel Skinner, a nephew of his old friend Cyriac, was serving as Milton's amanuensis in writing out a fair copy. Death came before a third of the work of correction, 196 pages out of 735, had been completed, of which the whole rough draft consists. The whole remained in Daniel Skinner's hands in 1674. Milton, though in his preface he if aware that his pages contain not a little which will be unpalatable to the reigning opinion in religion, would have dared publication, if he could have passed the censor. But Daniel Skinner, who was a Fellow of Trinity, and had a career before him, was not equally free. What could not appear in London, however, might be printed at Amsterdam. Skinner accordingly put both the theological treatise, and the epistles written by the Latin Secretary, into the hands of Daniel Elzevir. The English government getting intelligence of the proposed publication of the foreign correspondence of the Parliament and the Protector, interfered, and pressure was put upon Skinner, through the Master of Trinity, Isaac Barrow. Skinner hastened to save himself from the fate which in 1681 befel Locke, and gave up to the Secretary of State, not only the Latin letters, but the MS. of the theological treatise. Nothing further was known as to the fate of the MS. till 1823, when it was disinterred from one of the presses of the old State Paper Office. The Secretary of State, Sir Joseph Williamson, when he retired from office in 1678, instead of carrying away his correspondence as had been the custom, left it behind him. Thus it was that the _Treatise of Christian doctrine_ first saw light, one hundred and fifty years after the author's death. In a work which had been written as a text-book for the use of learners, there can be little scope for originality. And Milton follows the division of the matter into heads usual in the manuals then current. But it was impossible for Milton to handle the dry bones of a divinity compendium without stirring them into life. And divinity which is made to live, necessarily becomes unorthodox. The usual method of the school text-books of the seventeenth century was to exhibit dogma in the artificial terminology of the controversies of the sixteenth century. For this procedure Milton substitutes the words of Scripture simply. The traditional terms of the text-books are retained, but they are employed only as heads under which to arrange the words of Scripture. This process, which in other hands would be little better than index making, becomes here pregnant with meaning. The originality which Milton voluntarily resigns, in employing only the words of the Bible, he recovers by his freedom of exposition. He shakes himself loose from the trammels of traditional exposition, and looks at the texts for himself. The truth was Left only in those written records pure, Though not but by the spirit understood. _Paradise Lost_, xii. 510. Upon the points which interested him most closely, Milton knew that his understanding of the text differed from the standard of Protestant orthodoxy. That God created matter, not out of nothing, but out of Himself, and that death is, in the course of nature, total extinction of being, though not opinions received, were not singular. More startling, to European modes of thinking, is his assertion that polygamy is not, in itself, contrary to morality, though it may be inexpedient. The religious sentiment of his day was offended by his vigorous vindication of the freewill of man against the reigning Calvinism, and his assertion of the inferiority of the Son in opposition to the received Athanasianism. He labours this point of the nature of God with especial care, showing how greatly it occupied his thoughts. He arranges his texts so as to exhibit in Scriptural language the semi-Arian scheme, i.e. a scheme which, admitting the co-essentiality, denies the eternal generation. Through all this manipulation of texts we seem to see, that Milton is not the school logician erecting a consistent fabric of words, but that he is dominated by an imagination peopled with concrete personalities, and labouring to assign their places to the Father and the Son as separate agents in the mundane drama. The _De doctrina Christiana_ is the prose counterpart of _Paradise Lost_ and _Regained_, a caput mortuum of the poems, with every ethereal particle evaporated. In the royal injunctions of 1614, James I. had ordered students in the universities not to insist too long upon compendiums, but to study the Scriptures, and to bestow their time upon the fathers and councils. In his attempt to express dogmatic theology in the words of Scripture, Milton was unwittingly obeying this injunction. The other part of the royal direction as to fathers and councils it was not in Milton's plan to carry out. Neither indeed was it in his power, for he had not the necessary learning. M. Scherer says that Milton "laid all antiquity, sacred and profane, under contribution." So far is this from being the case, that while he exhibits, in this treatise, an intimate knowledge of the text of the canonical books, Hebrew and Greek, there is an absence of that average acquaintance with Christian antiquity which formed at that day the professional outfit of the episcopal divine. Milton's references to the fathers are perfunctory and second-hand. The only citation of Chrysostom, for instance, which I have noticed is in these words: "the same is said to be the opinion of Chrysostom, Luther, and other moderns." He did not esteem the judgment of the fathers sufficiently, to deem them worth studying. In the interpretation of texts, as in other matters of opinion, Milton withdrew within the fortress of his absolute personality. I have now to relate the external history of the composition of _Paradise Lost_. When Milton had to skulk for a time in 1660, he was already in steady work upon the poem. Though a few lines of it were composed as early as 1642, it was not till 1658 that he took up the task of composition continuously. If we may trust our only authority (Aubrey-Phillips), he had finished it in 1663, about the time of his marriage. In polishing, re-writing, and writing out fair, much might remain to be done, after the poem was, in a way, finished. It is in 1665, that we first make acquaintance with _Paradise Lost_ in a complete state. This was the year of the plague, known in our annals as the Great Plague, to distinguish its desolating ravages from former slighter visitations of the epidemic. Every one who could fled from the city of destruction. Milton applied to his young friend Ellwood to find him a shelter, Ellwood, who was then living as tutor in the house of the Penningtons, took a cottage for Milton, in their neighbourhood, at Chalfont St. Giles, in the county of Bucks, Not only the Penningtons, but General Fleetwood had also his residence near this village, and a report is mentioned by Howitt that it was Fleetwood who provided the ex-secretary with a refuge. The society of neither of these friends was available for Milton. For Fleetwood was a sentenced regicide, and in July, Pennington and Ellwood were hurried off to Aylesbury gaol by an indefatigable justice of the peace, who was desirous of giving evidence of his zeal for the king's government. That the Chalfont cottage "was not pleasantly situated," must have been indifferent to the blind old man, as much so as that the immediate neighbourhood, with its heaths and wooded uplands, reproduced the scenery he had loved when he wrote _Il Allegro_. As soon as Ellwood was relieved from imprisonment, he returned to Chalfont. Then it was that Milton put into his hands the completed _Paradise Lost_, "bidding me take it home with me, and read it at my leisure, and when I had so done, return it to him with my judgment thereupon." On returning it, besides giving the author the benefit of his judgment, a judgment not preserved, and not indispensable--the Quaker made his famous speech, "Thou hast said much here of _Paradise Lost_, but what hast thou to say of Paradise found?" Milton afterwards told Ellwood that to this casual question was due his writing _Paradise Regained_, We are not, however, to take this complaisant speech quite literally, for it is highly probable that the later poem was included in the original conception, if not in the scheme of the first epic. But we do get from Ellwood's reminiscence a date for the beginning of _Paradise Regained_, which must have been at Chalfont in the autumn of 1665. When the plague was abated, and the city had become safely habitable, Milton returned to Artillery Row. He had not been long back when London was devastated by a fresh calamity, only less terrible than the plague, because it destroyed the home, and not the life. The Great Fire succeeded the Great Plague. 13,000 houses, two-thirds of the city, were reduced to ashes, and the whole current of life and business entirely suspended. Through these two overwhelming disasters, Milton must have been supporting his solitary spirit by writing _Paradise Regained_, _Samson Agonistes_, and giving the final touches to _Paradise Lost_. He was now so wholly unmoved by his environment, that we look in vain in the poems for any traces of this season of suffering and disaster. The past and his own meditations were now all in all to him; the horrors of the present were as nothing to a man who had outlived his hopes. Plague and fire, what were they, after the ruin of the noblest of causes? The stoical compression of _Paradise Regained_ is in perfect keeping with the fact that it was in the middle of the ruins of London that Milton placed his finished poem in the hands of the licenser. For licenser there was now, the Archbishop of Canterbury to wit, for religious literature. Of course the Primate read by deputy, usually one of his chaplains. The reader into whose hands _Paradise Lost_ came, though an Oxford man, and a cleric on his preferment, who had written his pamphlet against the dissenters, happened to be one whose antecedents, as Fellow of All Souls, and Proctor (in 1663), ensured his taking a less pedantic and bigoted view of his duties. Still, though Dryden's dirty plays would have encountered no objection before such a tribunal, the same facilities were not likely to be accorded to anything which bore the name of John Milton, ex-secretary to Oliver, and himself an austere republican. Tomkyns--that was the young chaplain's name--did stumble at a phrase in Book i, 598, With fear of change Perplexes monarchs. There had been in England, and were to be again, times when men had hanged for less than this. Tomkyns, who was sailing on the smooth sea of preferment with a fair wind, did not wish to get into trouble, but at last he let the book pass, Perhaps he thought it was only religious verse written for the sectaries, which would never be heard of at court, or among the wits, and that therefore it was of little consequence what it contained. A publisher was found, notwithstanding that Paul's, or as it now was again, St, Paul's-Churchyard had ceased to exist, in Aldersgate, which lay outside the circuit of the conflagration. The agreement, still preserved in the national museum, between the author, "John Milton, gent, of the one parte, and Samuel Symons, printer, of the other parte," is among the curiosities of our literary history. The curiosity consists not so much in the illustrious name appended (not in autograph) to the deed, as in the contrast between the present fame of the book, and the waste-paper price at which the copyright is being valued. The author received 5 l. down, was to receive a second 5 l. when the first edition should be sold, a third 5 l. when the second, and a fourth 5 l., when the third edition should be gone. Milton lived to receive the second 5 l., and no more, 10 l. in all, for _Paradise Lost_. I cannot bring myself to join in the lamentations of the biographers over this bargain. Surely it is better so; better to know that the noblest monument of English letters had no money value, than to think of it as having been paid for at a pound the line. The agreement with Symons is dated 27 April, 1667, the entry in the register of Stationers' Hall is 20th August. It was therefore in the autumn of 1667 that _Paradise Lost_ was in the hands of the public. We have no data for the time occupied in the composition of _Paradise Regained_ and _Samson Agonistes_. We have seen that the former poem was begun at Chalfont in 1665, and it may be conjecturally stated that _Samson_ was finished before September, 1667. At any rate, both the poems were published together in the autumn of 1670. Milton had four years more of life granted him after this publication. But he wrote no more poetry. It was as if he had exhausted his strength in a last effort, in the Promethean agony of Samson, and knew that his hour of inspiration was passed away. But, like all men who have once tasted the joys and pangs of composition, he could not now do without its excitement. The occupation, and the indispensable solace of the last ten sad years, had been his poems. He would not write more verse, when the oestrus was not on him, but he must write. He took up all the dropped threads of past years, ambitious plans formed in the fulness of vigour, and laid aside, but not abandoned. He was the very opposite of Shelley, who could never look at a piece of his own composition a second time, but when he had thrown it off at a heat, rushed into something else. Milton's adhesiveness was such that he could never give up a design once entered upon. In these four years, as if conscious that his time was now nearly out, he laboured to complete five such early undertakings. (1.) Of his _Compendium of Theology_ I have already spoken. He was overtaken by death while preparing this for the press. (2.) His _History of Britain_ must hare cost him much labour, bestowed upon comparison of the conflicting authorities. It is the record of the studies he had made for his abandoned epic poem, and is evidence how much the subject occupied his mind. The _History of Britain_, 1670, had been preceded by (3) a Latin grammar, in 1669, and was followed by (4) a Logic on, the method of Ramus, 1672. (5.) In 1673 he brought out a new edition of his early volume of _Poems_. In this volume he printed for the first time the sonnets, and other pieces, which had been written in the interval of twenty-seven years, since the date of his first edition. Not, indeed, all the sonnets which we now have. Four, in which Fairfax, Vane, Cromwell, and the Commonwealth are spoken of as Milton would speak of them, were necessarily kept back, and not put into print till 1694, by Phillips, at the end of his life of his uncle. In proportion to the trouble which Milton's words cost him, was his care in preserving them. His few Latin letters to his foreign friends are remarkably barren either of fact or sentiment. But Milton liked them well enough to have kept copies of them, and now allowed a publisher, Brabazon Aylmer, to issue them in print, adding to them, with a view to make out a volume, his college exercises, which he had also preserved. Among the papers which he left at his death, were the beginnings of two undertakings, either of them of overwhelming magnitude, which he did not live to complete. We have seen that he taught his pupils geography out of _Davity, Description de l'Univers_. He was not satisfied with this, or with any existing compendium. They were all dry; exact enough with their latitudes and longitudes, but omitted such uninteresting stuff as manners, government, religion, &c. Milton would essay a better system. All he had ever executed was Russia, taking the pains to turn over and extract for his purpose all the best travels in that country. This is the fragment which figures in his Works as a _Brief History of Moscovia_. The hackneyed metaphor of Pegasus harnessed to a luggage trolley, will recur to us when we think of the author of _L'Allegro_, setting himself to compile a Latin lexicon. If there is any literary drudgery more mechanical than another, it is generally supposed to be that of making a dictionary. Nor had he taken to this industry as a resource in age, when the genial flow of invention had dried up, and original composition had ceased to be in his power. The three folio volumes of MS. which Milton left were the work of his youth; it was a work which the loss of eyesight of necessity put an end to. It is not Milton only, but all students who read with an alert mind, reading to grow, and not to remember, who have felt the want of an occupation which shall fill those hours when mental vigilance is impossible, and vacuity unendurable. Index-making or cataloguing has been the resource of many in such hours. But it was not, I think, as a mere shifting of mental posture that Milton undertook to rewrite Robert Stephens; it was as part of his language training. Only by diligent practice and incessant exercise of attention and care, could Milton have educated his susceptibility to the specific power of words, to the nicety which he attained beyond any other of our poets. Part of this education is recorded in the seemingly withered leaves of his Latin Thesaurus, though the larger part must have been achieved, not by a reflective and critical collection of examples, but by a vital and impassioned reading. Milton's complaint was what the profession of that day called gout. "He would be very cheerful even in his gout fits, and sing," says Aubrey. This gout returned again and again, and by these repeated attacks wore out his resisting power. He died of the "gout struck in" on Sunday, 8th November, 1674, and was buried, near his father, in the chancel of St. Giles's, Cripplegate. The funeral was attended, Toland says, "by all his learned and great friends in London, not without a friendly concourse of the vulgar." The disgusting profanation of the leaden coffin, and dispersion of the poet's bones by the parochial authorities, during the repair of the church in August, 1790, has been denied, but it is to be feared the fact is too true. CHAPTER XIII. PARADISE LOST--PARADISE REGAINED--SAMSON AGONISTES "Many men of forty," it has been said, "are dead poets;" and it might seem that Milton, Latin secretary, and party pamphleteer, had died to poetry about the fatal age. In 1645, when he made a gathering of his early pieces for the volume published by Humphry Moseley, he wanted three years of forty. That volume contained, besides other things, _Comus_, _Lycidas_, _L'Allegro_, and _Il Penseroso_; then, when produced, as they remain to this day, the finest flower of English poesy. But, though thus like a wary husbandman, garnering his sheaves in presence of the threatening storm, Milton had no intention of bidding farewell to poetry. On the contrary, he regarded this volume only as first-fruits, an earnest of greater things to come. The ruling idea of Milton's life, and the key to his mental history, is his resolve to produce a great poem. Not that the aspiration in itself is singular, for it is probably shared by every young poet in his turn. As every clever schoolboy is destined by himself or his friends to become Lord Chancellor, and every private in the French army carries in his haversack the bâton of a marshal, so it is a necessary ingredient of the dream on Parnassus, that it should embody itself in a form of surpassing brilliance. What distinguishes Milton, from the crowd of young ambition, "audax juventa," is the constancy of resolve. He not only nourished through manhood the dream of youth, keeping under the importunate instincts which carry off most ambitions in middle life into the pursuit of place, profit, honour--the thorns which spring up and smother the wheat--but carried out his dream in its integrity in old age. He formed himself for this achievement, and for no other. Study at home, travel abroad, the arena of political controversy, the public service, the practice of the domestic virtues, were so many parts of the schooling which was to make a poet. The reader who has traced with me thus far the course of Milton's mental development will perhaps be ready to believe, that this idea had taken entire possession of his mind from a very early age. The earliest written record of it is of date 1632, In Sonnet II. This was written as early as the poet's twenty-third year; and in these lines the resolve is uttered, not as then just conceived, but as one long brooded upon, and its non-fulfilment matter of self-reproach. If this sonnet stood alone, its relevance to a poetical, or even a literary performance, might he doubtful. But at the time of its composition it is enclosed in a letter to an unnamed friend, who seems to have been expressing his surprise that the Cambridge B.A. was not settling himself, now that his education was complete, to a profession. Milton's apologetic letter is extant, and was printed by Birch in 1738. It intimates that Milton did not consider his education, for the purposes he had in view, as anything like complete. It is not "the endless delight of speculation," but "a religious advisement how best to undergo; not taking thought of being late, so it give advantage to be more fit." He repudiates the love of learning for its own sake; knowledge is not an end, it is only equipment for performance. There is here no specific engagement as to the nature of the performance. But what it is to be, is suggested by the enclosure of the "Petrarchian stanza" (i.e. the sonnet). This notion that his life was like Samuel's, a dedicated life, dedicated to a service which required a long probation, recurs again more than once in his writings. It is emphatically repeated, in 1641, in a passage of the pamphlet No. 4:-- None hath by mote studious ways endeavoured, and with more unwearied spirit none shall,--that I dare almost aver of myself, as far as life and full license will extend. Neither do I think it shame to covenant with any knowing reader that for some few years yet I may go on trust with him toward the payment of what I am now indebted, as being a work not to be raised from the heat of youth, or the vapours of wine, like that which flows at waste from the pen of some vulgar amorist, or the trencher fury of a rhyming parasite, not to be obtained by the invocation of Dame Memory and her siren daughters, but by devout prayer to that Eternal Spirit who can enrich with all utterance and knowledge, and sends out his seraphim with the hallowed fire of his altar to touch and purify the life of whom he pleases. To this must be added industrious and select reading, steady observation, insight into all seemly and generous acts and affairs. Till which in some measure be compassed, at mine own peril and cost, I refuse not to sustain this expectation, from as many as are not loth to hazard so much credulity upon the best pledges that I can give them. In 1638, at the age of nine and twenty, Milton has already determined that this lifework shall be a poem, an epic poem, and that its subject shall probably be the Arthurian legend. Si quando indigenas revocabo in carmina regea, Arturumque etiam sub terris bella moventem, Aut dicam invictae sociali foedere mensae Magnanimos heroas, et, o modo spiritus adsit! Frangam Saxonicas Britonum sub marte phalangas. May I find such a friend ... when, if ever, I shall revive in song our native princes, and among them Arthur moving to the fray even in the nether world, and when I shall, if only inspiration be mine, break the Saxon bands before our Britons' prowess. The same announcement is reproduced in the _Epitaphium Damonis_, 1639, and, in Pamphlet No. 4, in the often-quoted words:-- Perceiving that some trifles which I had in memory, composed at under twenty, or thereabout, met with acceptance.... I began to assent to them (the Italians) and divers of my friends here at home, and not less to an inward prompting which now grows dally upon me, that by labour and intent study, which I take to be my portion in this life, joined with the strong propensity of nature, I might perhaps leave something so written to aftertimes as they should not willingly let it die. Between the publication of the collected _Poems_ in 1645, and the appearance of _Paradise Lost_ in 1687, a period of twenty-two years, Milton gave no public sign of redeeming this pledge. He seemed to his cotemporaries to have renounced the follies of his youth, the gewgaws of verse; and to have sobered down into the useful citizen, "Le bon poëte," thought Malherbe, "n'est pas plus utile à l'état qu'un bon joueur de quilles." Milton had postponed his poem, in 1641, till "the land had once enfranchished herself from this impertinent yoke of prelatry, under whose inquisitorious and tyrannical duncery no free and splendid wit can flourish." Prelatry was swept away, and he asked for further remand on account of the war. Peace was concluded, the country was settled under the strong government of a Protector, and Milton's great work did not appear. It was not even preparing. He was writing not poetry but prose, and that most ephemeral and valueless kind of prose, pamphlets, extempore articles on the topics of the day. He poured out reams of them, in simple unconsciousness that they had no influence whatever on the current of events. Nor was it that, during all these years, Milton was meditating in secret what he could not bring forward in public; that he was only holding back from publishing, because there was no public ready to listen to his song. In these years Milton was neither writing nor thinking poetry. Of the twenty-four sonnets indeed--twenty-four, reckoning the twenty-lined piece, "The forcers of conscience," as a sonnet--eleven belong to this period. But they do not form a continuous series, such as do Wordsworth's _Ecclesiastical Sonnets_, nor do they evince a sustained mood of poetical meditation. On the contrary, their very force and beauty consist in their being the momentary and spontaneous explosion of an emotion welling up from the depths of the soul, and forcing itself into metrical expression, as it were, in spite of the writer. While the first eight sonnets, written before 1645, are sonnets of reminiscence and intention, like those of the Italians, or the ordinary English sonnet, the eleven sonnets of Milton's silent period, from 1645 to 1658, are records of present feeling kindled by actual facts. In their naked, unadorned simplicity of language, they may easily seem, to a reader fresh from Petrarch, to be homely and prosaic. Place them in relation to the circumstance on which each piece turns, and we begin to feel the superiority for poetic effect of real emotion over emotion meditated and revived. History has in it that which can touch us more abidingly than any fiction. It is this actuality which distinguishes the sonnets of Milton from any other sonnets. Of this difference Wordsworth was conscious when he struck out the phrase, "In his hand the _thing became_ a trumpet." Macaulay compared the sonnets in their majestic severity to the collects, They remind us of a Hebrew psalm, with its undisguised outrush of rage, revenge, exultation, or despair, where nothing is due to art or artifice, and whose poetry is the expression of the heart, and not a branch of literature. It is in the sonnets we most realise the force of Wordsworth's image-- Thou hadst a voice whose sound was like the sea. We are not then to look in the sonnets for latent traces of the suspended poetic creation They come from the other side of Milton's nature, the political, not the artistic. They are akin to the prose pamphlets, not to _Paradise Lost_. Just when the sonnets end, the composition of the epic was taken in hand. The last of the sonnets (23 in the ordinary numeration) was written in 1658, and it is to the same year that our authority, Aubrey-Phillips, refers his beginning to occupy himself with _Paradise Lost_. He had by this time settled the two points about which he had been long in doubt, the subject, and the form. Long before bringing himself to the point of composition, he had decided upon the Fall of man as subject, and upon the narrative, or epic, form, in preference to the dramatic. It is even possible that a few isolated passages of the poem, as it now stands, may have been written before. Of one such passage we know that it was written fifteen or sixteen years before 1658, and while he was still contemplating a drama. The lines are Satan's speech, _P. L._ iv. 32, beginning,-- O, thou that with surpassing glory crowned. These lines, Phillips says, his uncle recited to him, as forming the opening of his tragedy. They are modelled, as the classical reader will perceive, upon Euripides. Possibly they were not intended for the very first lines, since if Milton intended to follow the practice of his model, the lofty lyrical tone of this address should have been introduced by a prosaic matter-of-fact setting forth of the situation, as in the Euripidean prologue. There are other passages in the poem which have the air of being insititious in the place where they stand. The lines in Book iv, now in question, may reasonably be referred to 1640-42, the date of those leaves in the Trinity College MS., in which Milton has written down, with his own hand, various sketches of tragedies, which might possibly be adopted as his final choice. A passage in _The Reason of Church Government_, written at the same period, 1641, gives us the the fullest account of his hesitation. It was a hesitation caused, partly by the wealth of matter which his reading suggested to him, partly by the consciousness that he ought not to begin in haste while each year was ripening his powers. Every one who has undertaken a work of any length has made the experience, that the faculty of composition will not work with ease, until the reason is satisfied that the subject chosen is a congenial one. Gibbon has told us himself of the many periods of history upon which he tried his pen, even after the memorable 16 October, 1764, when he "sate musing amid the ruins of the Capitol, while the bare-footed friars were singing vespers in the temple of Jupiter." We know how many sketches of possible tragedies Recine would make before he could adopt one as the appropriate theme, on which he could work with that thorough enjoyment of the labour, which is necessary to give life and verve to any creation, whether of the poet or the orator. The leaves of the Trinity College MS., which are contemporary with his confidence to the readers of his tract _Of Church Government_, exhibit a list of nearly one hundred subjects, which, had occurred to him from time to time as practicable subjects. From the mode of entry we see that, already in 1641, a scriptural was likely to have tie preference over a profane subject, and that among scriptural subjects _Paradise Lost_ (the familiar title appears in this early note), stands out prominently above the rest. The historical subjects are all taken from native history, none are foreign, and all are from the time before the Roman conquest. The scriptural subjects are partly from the Old, partly from the New, Testament. Some of these subjects are named and nothing more, while others are slightly sketched out. Among these latter--are _Baptistes_, on the death of John the Baptist, and _Christus Patiens_, apparently to be confined to the agony in the garden. Of _Paradise Lost_ there are four drafts in greater detail than any of the others. These drafts of the plot or action, though none of them that which was finally adopted, are sufficiently near to the action of the poem as it stands, to reveal to as the fact that the author's imaginative conception of what he intended to produce was generated, cast, and moulded, at a comparatively early age. The commonly received notion, therefore, with which authors, as they age, are wont to comfort themselves, that one of the greatest feats of original invention achieved by man, was begun after fifty, must be thus far modified. _Paradise Lost_ was _composed_ after fifty, but was _conceived_ at thirty-two. Hence the high degree of perfection realised in the total result. For there were combined to produce it the opposite virtues of two distinct periods of mental development; the daring imagination and fresh emotional play of early manhood, with the exercised judgment and chastened taste of ripened years. We have regarded the twenty-five years of Milton's life between 1641 and the commencement of _Paradise Lost_, as time ill laid out upon inferior work which any one could do, and which was not worth doing by any one. Yet it may be made a question if in any other mode than by adjournment of his early design, Milton could have attained to that union of original strength with severe restraint, which distinguishes from all other poetry, except that of Virgil, the three great poems of his old age. If the fatigue of age is sometimes felt in _Paradise Regained_, we feel in _Paradise Lost_ only (in the words of Chateaubriand), "la maturité de l'âge à travers les passions des légères années; une charme extraordinaire de vieillesse et de jeunesse." A still further inference is warranted by the Trinity College jottings of 1641. Not the critics merely, but readers ready to sympathise, have been sometimes inclined to wish that Milton had devoted his power to a more human subject, in which the poet's invention could have had freer play, and for which his reader's interest could have been more ready. And it has been thought that the choice of a Biblical subject indicates the narrowing effect of age, adversity, and blindness combined. We now know that the Fall was the theme, if not determined on, at least predominant in Milton's thoughts, at the age of thirty-two. His ripened judgment only approved a selection made in earlier years, and in days full of hope. That in selecting a scriptural subject he was not In fact exercising any choice, but was determined by his circumstances, is only what must be said of all choosing. With all his originality, Milton was still a man of his age. A Puritan poet, in a Puritan environment, could not have done otherwise. But even had choice been in his power, it is doubtful if he would have had the same success with a subject taken from history. First, looking at his public. He was to write in English. This, which had at one time been matter of doubt, had at an early stage come to be his decision. Sot had the choice of English been made for the sake of popularity, which he despised. He did not desire to write for the many, but for the few. But he was enthusiastically patriotic. He had entire contempt for the shouts of the mob, but the English nation, as embodied in the persons of the wise and good, he honoured and reverenced with all the depth of his nature. It was for the sake of his nation that he was to devote his life to a work, which was to ennoble her tongue among the languages of Europe. He was then to write in English, for the English, not popularly, but nationally. This resolution at once limited his subject. He who aspires to be the poet of a nation is bound to adopt a hero who is already dear to that people, to choose a subject and characters which are already familiar to them. This is no rule of literary art arbitrarily enacted by the critics, it is a dictate of reason, and has been the practice of all the great national poets. The more obvious examples will occur to every reader, But it may be observed that even the Greek tragedians, who addressed a more limited audience than the epic poets, took their plots from the best known legends touching the fortunes of the royal houses of the Hellenic race. Now to the English reader of the seventeenth century--and the same holds good to this day--there were only two cycles of persons and events sufficiently known beforehand to admit of being assumed by a poet. He must go either to the Bible, or to the annals of England. Thus far Milton's choice of subject was limited by the consideration of the public for whom he wrote. Secondly, he was still farther restricted by a condition which the nature of his own intelligence imposed upon himself. It was necessary for Milton that the events and personages, which were to arouse and detain his interests, should be real events and personages. The mere play of fancy with the pretty aspects of things could not satisfy him; he wanted to feel beneath him a substantial world of reality. He had not the dramatist's imagination which can body forth fictitious characters with such life-like reality that it can, and does itself, believe in their existence. Macaulay has truly said that Milton's genius is lyrical, not dramatic. His lyre will only echo real emotion, and his imagination is only stirred by real circumstances. In his youth he had been within the fascination of the romances of chivalry, as well in their original form, as in the reproductions of Ariosto and Spenser. While under this influence he had thought of seeking his subject among the heroes of these lays of old minstrelsy. And as one of his principles was that his hero must be a national hero, it was of course upon the Arthurian cycle that his aspiration fixed. When he did so, he no doubt believed at least the historical existence of Arthur. As soon, however, as he came to understand the fabulous basis of the Arthurian legend, it became unfitted for his use. In the Trinity College MS. of 1641, Arthur has already disappeared from the list of possible subjects, a list which contains thirty-eight suggestions of names from British or Saxon history, such as Vortigern, Edward the Confessor, Harold, Macbeth, &c. While he demanded the basis of reality for his personages, he at the same time, with a true instinct, rejected all that fell within the period of well-ascertained history. He made the Conquest the lower limit of his choice. In this negative decision against historical romance we recognise Milton's judgment, and his correct estimate of his own powers. Those who have been thought to succeed best in engrafting fiction upon history, Shakspeare or Walter Scott, have been eminently human poets, and have achieved their measure of success by investing some well-known name with the attributes of ordinary humanity such as we all know it. This was precisely what Milton could not have done. He had none of that sympathy with which Shakspeare embraced all natural and common affections of his brother men. Milton, burning as he did with a consuming fire of passion, and yearning for rapt communion with select souls, had withal an aloofness from ordinary men sad women, and a proud disdain of commonplace joy and sorrow, which has led hasty biographers and critics to represent him as hard, austere, an iron man of iron mould. This want of interest in common life disqualified him for the task of revivifying historic scenes. Milton's mental constitution, then, demanded in the material upon which it was to work, a combination of qualities such as very few subjects could offer. The events and personages must be real and substantial, for he could not occupy himself seriously with airy nothings and creatures of pure fancy. Yet they must not be such events and personages as history had pourtrayed to us with well-known characters, and all their virtues, faults, foibles, and peculiarities. And, lastly, it was requisite that they should be the common property and the familiar interest of a wide circle of English readers. These being the conditions required in the subject, it is obvious that no choice was left to the poet in the England of the seventeenth century but a biblical subject. And among the many picturesque episodes which the Hebrew Scriptures present, the narrative of the Fall stands out with a character of all-embracing comprehensiveness which belongs to no other single event in the Jewish annals. The first section of the book of Genesis clothes in a dramatic form the dogmatic idea from which was developed in the course of ages the whole scheme of Judaico-Christian anthropology. In this world-drama, Heaven above and Hell beneath, the powers of light and those of darkness, are both brought upon the scene in conflict with each other, over the fate of the inhabitants of our globe, a minute ball of matter suspended between two infinities. This gigantic and unmanageable material is so completely mastered by the poet's imagination, that we are made to feel at one and the same time the petty dimensions of our earth in comparison with primordial space and almighty power, and the profound import to us of the issue depending on the conflict. Other poets, of inferior powers, have from time to time attempted, with different degrees of success, some of the minor Scriptural histories; Bodmer, the Noachian Deluge; Solomon Gessner, the Death of Abel, &c. And Milton himself, after he had spent his full strength upon his greater theme, recurred in _Samson Agonistes_ to one such episode, which he had deliberately set aside before, as not giving verge enough for the sweep of his soaring conception. These considerations duly weighed, it will be found, that the subject of the Fall of Man was not so much Milton's choice as his necessity. Among all the traditions of the peoples of the earth, there is not extant another story which, could have been adequate to his demands. Biographers may have been, somewhat misled by his speaking of himself as "long choosing and beginning late." He did not begin till 1658, when he was already fifty, and it has been somewhat hastily inferred that he did not choose till the date at which he began, But, as we have seen, he had already chosen at least as early as 1642, when, the plan of a drama on the subject, and under the title, of _Paradise Lost_ was fully developed. In the interval between 1642 and 1658, he changed the form from a drama to an epic, but his choice remained unaltered. And as the address to the sun (_Paradise Lost_, iv, 32) was composed at the earlier of these dates, it appears that he had already formulated even the rhythm and cadence of the poem that was to be. Like Wordsworth's "Warrior"-- He wrought Upon the plan that pleas'd his boyish thought. I have said that this subject of the Fall was Milton's necessity, being the only subject which his mind, "in the spacious circuits of her musing," found large enough. But as it was no abrupt or arbitrary choice, so it was not forced upon him from without, by suggestion of friends, or command of a patron, We must again remind ourselves that Milton had a Calvinistic bringing up. And Calvinism in pious Puritan souls of that fervent age was not the attenuated creed of the eighteenth century, the Calvinism which went not beyond personal gratification of safety for oneself, and for the rest damnation. When Milton was being reared, Calvinism was not old and effete, a mere doctrine. It was a living system of thought, and one which carried the mind upwards towards the Eternal will, rather than downwards towards my personal security. Keble has said of the old Catholic views, founded on sacramental symbolism, that they are more poetical than any other religious conception. But it must be acknowledged that a predestinarian scheme, leading the cogitation upward to dwell upon "the heavenly things before the foundation of the world," opens a vista of contemplation and poetical framework, with which none other in the whole cycle of human thought can compare. Not election and reprobation as set out in the petty chicanery of Calvin's _Institutes_, but the prescience of absolute wisdom revolving all the possibilities of time, space, and matter. Poetry has been defined as "the suggestion by the image of noble grounds for noble emotions," and, in this respect, none of the world-epics--there are at most five or six such in existence--can compete with _Paradise Lost_. The melancholy pathos of Lucretius indeed pierces the heart with a two-edged sword more keen than Milton's, but the compass of Lucretius' horizon is much less, being limited to this earth and its inhabitants. The horizon of _Paradise Lost_ is not narrower than all space, its chronology not shorter than eternity; the globe of our earth becomes a mere spot in the physical universe, and that universe itself a drop suspended in the infinite empyrean. His aspiration had thus reached "one of the highest arcs that human contemplation circling upwards can make from the glassy sea whereon she stands" (_Doctr. and Disc_.), Like his contemporary Pascal, his mind had beaten her wings against the prison walls of human thought. The vastness of the scheme of _Paradise Lost_ may become more apparent to us if we remark that, within its embrace, there to be equal place for both the systems of physical astronomy which were current in the seventeenth century. In England, about the time _Paradise Lost_ was being written, the Copernican theory, which placed the sun in the centre of our system, was already the established belief of the few well-informed. The old Ptolemaic or Alphonsine system, which explained the phenomena on the hypothesis of nine (or ten) transparent hollow spheres wheeling round the stationary earth, was still the received astronomy of ordinary people. These two beliefs, the one based on science, though still wanting the calculation which Newton was to supply to make it demonstrative, the other supported by the tradition of ages, were, at the time we speak of, in presence of each other in the public mind. They are in presence of each other also in Milton's epic. And the systems confront each other in the poem, in much the same relative position which they occupied in the mind of the public. The ordinary, habitual mode of speaking of celestial phenomena is Ptolemaic (see _Paradise Lost_, vii. 339; iii. 481). The conscious, or doctrinal, exposition of the same phenomena is Copernican (see _Paradise Lost_, viii. 122). Sharp as is the contrast between the two systems, the one being the direct contradictory of the other, they are lodged together, not harmonised, within the vast circuit of the poet's imagination. The precise mechanism of an object so little as is our world in comparison with the immense totality may be justly disregarded. "De minimis non curat poeta." In the universe of being the difference between a heliocentric and a geocentric theory of our solar system is of as small moment, as the reconcilement of fixed fate, free-will, foreknowledge absolute is in the realm of absolute intelligence. The one Is the frivolous pastime of devils; the other the Great Architect Hath left to there disputes, perhaps to move His laughter at their quaint opinions wide. As one, and the principal, inconsistency in Milton's presentment of his matter has now been, mentioned, a general remark may be made upon the conceptual incongruities in _Paradise Lost_. The poem abounds in such, and the critics, from Addison downwards, have busied themselves in finding out more and more of them. Milton's geography of the world is as obscure and untenable as that of Herodotus. The notes of time cannot stand together. To give an example: Eve says (_Paradise Lost_, iv. 449)-- That day I oft remember, when from sleep I first awak'd. But in the chronology of the poem, Adam himself, whose creation preceded that of Eve, was but three days old at the time this reminiscence is repeated to him. The mode in which the Son of God is spoken of is not either consistent Athanasianism or consistent Arianism. Above all there is an incessant confusion of material and immaterial in the acts ascribed to the angels. Dr. Johnson, who wished for consistency, would have had it preserved "by keeping immateriality out of sight." And a general arraignment has been laid against Milton of a vagueness and looseness of imagery, which contrasts unfavourably with the vivid and precise detail of other poets, of Homer or of Dante, for example. Now first, it must be said that Milton is not one of the poets of inaccurate imagination. He could never, like Scott, have let the precise picture of the swan on "still Saint Mary's lake" slip into the namby-pamby "sweet Saint Mary's lake." When he intends a picture, he is unmistakably distinct; his outline is firm and hard. But he is not often intending pictures. He is not, like Dante, always seeing--he is mostly thinking in a dream, or as Coleridge best expressed it, he is not a picturesque, but a musical poet. The pictures in _Paradise Lost_ are like the paintings on the walls of some noble hall--only part of the total magnificence. He did not aim at that finish of minute parts in which, each bit fits into every other. For it was only by such disregard of minutiae that the theme could be handled at all. The impression of vastness, the sense that everything, as Bishop Butler says, "runs up into infinity," would have been impaired if he had drawn attention to the details of his figures. Had he had upon his canvas only a single human incident, with ordinary human agents, he would have known, as well as other far inferior artists, how to secure perfection of illusion by exactness of detail. But he had undertaken to present, not the world of human experience, but a supernatural world, peopled by supernatural beings, God and his Son, angels and archangels, devils; a world in which Sin and Death, may be personified without palpable absurdity. Even his one human pair are exceptional beings, from whom we are prepared not to demand conformity to the laws of life which now prevail in our world. Had he presented all these spiritual personages in definite form to the eyes the result would have been degradation. We should have had the ridiculous instead of the sublime, as in the scene of the _Iliad_, where Diomede wounds Aphrodite in the hand, and sends her crying home to her father. Once or twice Milton has ventured too near the limit of material adaptation, trying to explain _how_ angelic natures subsist, as in the passage (_Paradise Lost_, v. 405) where Raphael tells Adam that angels eat and digest food like man. Taste here receives a shock, because the incongruity, which before was latent, is forced upon our attention. We are threatened with being transported out of the conventional world of Heaven, Hell, Chaos, and Paradise, to which we had well adapted ourselves, into the real world in which we know that such beings could not breathe and move. For the world of _Paradise Lost_ is an ideal, conventional world, quite as much as the world of the _Arabian Nights_, or the world of the chivalrous romance, or that of the pastoral novel. Not only dramatic, but all, poetry is founded on illusion. We must, though it be but for the moment, suppose it true. We must be transported out of the actual world into that world in which the given scene is laid. It is chiefly the business of the poet to effect this transportation, but the reader (or hearer) must aid. "Willst du Dichter ganz verstehen, musst in Dichter's Lande gehen." If the reader's imagination is not active enough to assist the poet, he must at least not resist him. When we are once inside the poet's heaven, our critical faculty may justly require that what takes place there shall be consistent with itself, with the laws of that fantastic world. But we may not begin by objecting that it is impossible that such a world should exist. If, in any age, the power of imagination is enfeebled, the reader becomes more unable to make this effort; he ceases to co-operate with the poet. Much of the criticism on _Paradise Lost_ which we meet with resolves itself into a refusal on the part of the critic, to make that initial abondonment to the conditions which the poet demands; a determination to insist that his heaven, peopled with deities, dominations, principalities, and powers, shall have the same material laws which govern our planetary system. It is not, as we often hear it said, that the critical faculty is unduly developed in the nineteenth century. It is that the imaginative faculty fails us; and when that is the case, criticism is powerless--it has no fundamental assumption upon which its judgments can proceed, It is the triumph of Milton's skill to have made his ideal world actual, if not to every English mind's eye, yet to a larger number of minds than have ever been reached by any other poetry in our language. Popular (in the common use of the word) Milton has not been, and cannot be. But the world he created has taken possession of the public mind. Huxley complains that the false cosmogony, which will not yield, to the conclusions of scientific research, is derived from the seventh, book of _Paradise Lost_, rather than, from Genesis. This success Milton owes partly to his selection of his subject, partly to his skill in handling it. In his handling, he presents his spiritual existences with just so much relief as to endow them with life and personality, and not with, that visual distinctness which would at once reveal their spectral immateriality, and so give a shock to the illusion. We might almost say of his personages that they are shapes, "if shape it might be called, that shape had none." By his art of suggestion by association, he does all he can to aid us to realise his agents, and at the moment when distinctness would disturb, he withdraws the object into a mist, and so disguises the incongruities which he could not avoid. The tact that avoids difficulties inherent in the nature of things, is an art which gets the least appreciation either in life or in literature. But if we would have some measure of the skill which in _Paradise Lost_ has made impossible beings possible to the imagination, we may find it in contrasting them with the incarnated abstraction and spirit voices, which we encounter at every turn in Shelley, creatures who leave behind them no more distinct impression than that we have been in a dream peopled with ghosts. Shelley, too, Voyag'd th' unreal, vast, unbounded deep Of horrible confusion. _Paradise Lost_, x. 470. and left it the chaos which he found it. Milton has elicited from similar elements a conception so life-like that his poetical version has inseparably grafted itself upon, if it has not taken the place of, the historical narrative of the original creation. So much Milton has effected by his skilful treatment. But the illusion was greatly facilitated by his choice of subject. He had not to create his supernatural personages, they were already there. The Father, and the Son, the Angels, Satan, Baal and Moloch, Adam and Eve, were in full possession of the popular imagination, and more familiar to it than any other set of known names. Nor was the belief accorded to them a half belief, a bare admission of their possible existence, such as prevails at other times or in some countries. In the England of Milton, the angels and devils of the Jewish Scriptures were more real beings, and better vouched, than any historical personages could be. The old chronicles were full of lies, but this was Bible truth. There might very likely have been a Henry VIII, and he might have been such as he is described, but at any rate he was dead and gone, while Satan still lived and walked the earth, the identical Satan who had deceived Eve. Nor was it only to the poetic public that his personages were real, true, and living beings. The poet himself believed as entirely in their existence as did his readers. I insist upon this point, because one of the first of living critics has declared of _Paradise Lost_ that it is a poem in which every artifice of invention, is consciously employed, not a single fact being, for an instant, conceived as tenable by any living faith. (Ruskin, _Sesame and Lilies_, p. 138). On the contrary, we shall not rightly apprehend either the poetry or the character of the poet until we feel that throughout _Paradise Lost_, as in _Paradise Regained_ and _Samson_, Milton felt himself to he standing on the sure ground of fact and reality. It was not in Milton's nature to be a showman, parading before an audience a phantasmagoria of spirits, which he himself knew to be puppets tricked up for the entertainment of an idle hour. We are told by Lockhart, that the old man who told the story of Gilpin Horner to Lady Dalkeith _bonâ fide_ believed the existence of the elf. Lady Dalkeith repeated the tale to Walter Scott, who worked it up with consummate skill into the _Lay of the Last Minstrel_. This is a case of a really believed legend of diablerie becoming the source of a literary fiction. Scott neither believed in the reality of the goblin page himself, nor expected his readers to believe it. He could not rise beyond the poetry of amusement, and no poetry with only this motive can ever be more than literary art. Other than this was Milton's conception of his own function. Of the fashionable verse, such as was written in the Caroline age, or in any age, he disapproved, not only because it was imperfect art, but because it was untrue utterance. Poems that were raised "from the heat of youth, or the vapours of wine, like that which flows at waste from the pen of some vulgar amourist, or the trencher fury of a rhyming parasite," were in his eyes treachery to the poet's high vocation. * * * * * Poetical powers "are the inspired gift of God rarely bestowed ... in every nation, and are of power, beside the office of a pulpit, to imbreed and cherish in a great people the seeds of virtue and public civility, to allay the perturbation of the mind, and set the affections in right tune; to celebrate in glorious and lofty hymns the throne and equipage of God's almightiness, and what he works, and what he suffers to be wrought with high providence in his church; to sing victorious agonies of martyrs and saints, the deeds and triumphs of just and pious nations, doing valiantly through faith against the enemies of Christ; to deplore the general relapses of kingdoms and states from justice and God's true worship." * * * * * So he had written in 1642, and this lofty faith in his calling supported him twenty years later, in the arduous labour of his attempt to realise his own ideal. In setting himself down to compose _Paradise Lost_ and _Regained_, he regarded himself not as an author, but as a medium, the mouthpiece of "that eternal Spirit who can enrich with all utterance and all knowledge: Urania, heavenly muse," visits him nightly, And dictates to me Blumb'ring, or inspires Easy my unpremeditated verse. _Paradise Lost_, ix. 24. Urania bestows the flowing words and musical sweetness; to God's Spirit he looks to Shine inward, and the mind through all her powers Irradiate, there plant eyes, all mist from thence Purge and disperse, that I may see and tell Of things invisible to mortal sight. _Paradise Lost,/i>, iii, 50. The singers with whom he would fain equal himself are not Dante, or Tasso, or, as Dryden would have it, Spenser, but Blind Thamyris, and blind Maeonides, And Tiresias and Phineus, prophets old. As he in equalled with these in misfortune--loss of sight--he would emulate them in function. Orpheus and Musaeus are the poets he would fain have as the companions of his midnight meditation (_Penseroso_). And the function of the poet is like that of the prophet in the old dispensation, not to invent, but to utter. It is God's truth which passes His lips--lips hallowed by the touch of sacred fire. He is the passive instrument through whom flows the emanation from on high; His words are not his own, but a suggestion. Even for style Milton is indebted to his "celestial patroness who deigns her nightly visitation unimplor'd." Milton was not dependent upon a dubious tradition in the subject he had selected. Man's fall and recovery were recorded in the Scriptures. And the two media of truth, the internal and the external, as deriving from the same source, must needs be in harmony. That the Spirit enlightens the mind within, in this belief the Puritan saint, the poet, and the prophet, who all met in Milton, were at one. That the Old Testament Scriptures were also a revelation, from God, was an article of faith which he had never questioned. Nor did he only receive these books as conveying in substance a divine view of the world's history, he regarded them as in the letter a transcript of fact. If the poet-prophet would tell the story of creation or redemption, he was thus restrained not only by the general outline and imagery of the Bible, but by its very words. And here we must note the skill of the poet in surmounting an added or artificial difficulty, in the subject he had chosen as combined with his notion of inspiration. He must not deviate in a single syllable from the words of the Hebrew books. He must take up into his poem the whole of the sacred narrative. This he must do, not merely because his readers would expect such literal accuracy from him, but because to himself that narrative was the very truth which he was, undertaking to deliver. The additions which his fancy or inspiration might supply must be restrained by this severe law, that they should be such as to aid the reader's imagination to conceive how the event took place. They must by no means be suffered to alter, disfigure, traduce the substance or the letter of the revelation. This is what Milton has done. He has told the story of creation in the very words of Scripture. The whole of the seventh book, is little more than a paraphrase of a few verses of Genesis. What he has added is so little incongruous with his original, that most English men and women would probably have some difficulty in discriminating in recollection the part they derive from Moses, from that which they have added from the paraphrast. In Genesis it is the serpent who tempts Eve, in virtue of his natural wiliness. In Milton it is Satan who has entered into the body of a serpent, and supplied the intelligence. Here indeed Milton was only adopting a gloss, as ancient at least as the Book of Wisdom (ii. 24). But it is the gloss, and not the text of Moses, which is in possession of our minds, and who has done most to lodge it there, Milton or the commentators? Again, it is Milton and not Moses who makes the serpent pluck and eat the first apple from the tree. But Bp. Wilson comments upon the words of Genesis (iii, 6) as though they contained this purely Miltonic circumstance, It could hardly but he that one or two of the incidents which Milton has supplied, the popular imagination has been unable to homologate. Such an incident is the placing of artillery in the wars in heaven, We reject this suggestion, and find it mars probability. But It would not seam so Improbable to Milton's contemporaries; not only because it was an article of the received poetic tradition (see _Ronsard_ 6, p. 40), but also because fire-arms had not quite ceased to be regarded as a devilish enginery of a new warfare, unfair in the knightly code of honour, a base substitute of mechanism for individual valour. It was gunpowder and not _Don Quixote_ which had destroyed, the age of chivalry, Another of Milton's fictions which has been found too grotesque is the change (_P, L._, x. 508) of the demons into serpents, who hiss their Prince on his return from his embassy. Here it is not, I think, so much the unnatural character of the incident itself, as its gratuitousness which offends. It does not help us to conceive the situation. A suggestion of Chateaubriand may therefore go some way towards reconciling the reader even to this caprice of imagination. It indicates, he says, the degradation of Satan, who, from the superb Intelligence of the early scenes of the poem, is become at its close a hideous reptile. He has not triumphed, but has failed, and is degraded into the old dragon, who haunts among the damned. The braising of his head has already commenced. The bridge, again, which Sin and Death construct (_Paradise Lost_, x. 300), leading from the mouth of hell to the wall of the world, has a chilling effect upon the imagination of a modern reader. It does not assist the conception of the cosmical system which we accept in the earlier books. This clumsy fiction seems more at home in the grotesque and lawless mythology of the Turks, or in the Persian poet Sadi, who is said by Marmontel to have adopted it from the Turk. If Milton's intention were to reproduce Jacob's ladder, he should, like Dante (_Parad_, xxi. 25), have made it the means of communication between heaven and earth. It is possible that Milton himself, after the experiment of _Paradise Lost_ was fully before him, suspected that he had supplemented too much for his purpose; that his imagery, which was designed to illustrate history, might stand in its light. For in the composition of _Paradise Regained_ (published 1671) he has adopted a much severer style. In this poem he has not only curbed his imagination, but has almost suppressed it. He has amplified, but has hardly introduced any circumstance which is not in the original. _Paradise Regained_ is little more than a paraphrase of the Temptation as found in the synoptical gospels. It is a marvel of ingenuity that more than two thousand lines of blank verse can have been constructed out of some twenty lines of prose, without the addition of any invented incident, or the insertion of any irrelevant digression. In the first three books of _Paradise Regained_ there is not a single simile. Nor yet can it be said that the version of the gospel narrative has the fault of most paraphrases, viz., that of weakening the effect, and obliterating the chiselled features of the original. Let a reader take _Paradise Regained_ not as a theme used as a canvas for poetical embroidery, an opportunity for an author to show off his powers of writing, but as a _bonâ fide_ attempt to impress upon the mind the story of the Temptation, and he will acknowledge the concealed art of the genuine epic poet, bent before all things upon telling his tale. It will still be capable of being alleged that the story told does not interest; that the composition is dry, hard, barren; the style as of set purpose divested of the attributes of poetry. It is not necessary indeed that an epic should be in twelve books; but we do demand in an epic poem multiplicity of character and variety of incident. In _Paradise Regained_ there are only two personages, both of whom are supernatural. Indeed, they can scarcely be called personages; the poet, in his fidelity to the letter, not having thought fit to open up the fertile vein of delineation which was afforded by the human character of Christ. The speakers are no more than the abstract principles of good and evil, two voices who hold a rhetorical disputation through four books and two thousand lines. The usual explanation of the frigidity of _Paradise Regained_ is the suggestion, which is nearest at hand, viz., that it is the effect of age. Like Ben Jonson's _New Inn_, it betrays the feebleness of senility, and has one of the most certain marks of that stage of authorship, the attempt to imitate himself in those points in which he was once strong. When "glad no more, He wears a face of joy, because He has been glad of yore." Or it is an "oeuvre de lassitude," a continuation, with the inevitable defect of continuations, that of preserving the forms and wanting the soul of the original, like the second parts of _Faust_, of _Don Quixote_, and of so many other books. Both these explanations of the inferiority of _Paradise Regained_ have probability. Either of them may be true, or both may have concurred to the common effect. In favour of the hypothesis of senility is the fact, recorded by Phillips, that Milton "could not hear with patience any such thing when related to him." The reader will please to note that this is the original statement, which the critics have improved into the statement that he preferred _Paradise Regained_ to _Paradise Lost_. But his approval of his work, even if it did not amount to preference, looks like the old man's fondness for his youngest and weakest offspring. Another view of the matter, however, is at least possible. Milton's theory as to the true mode of handling a biblical subject was, as I have said, to add no more dressing, or adventitious circumstance, than should assist the conception of the sacred verity. After he had executed _Paradise Lost_, the suspicion arose that he had been too indulgent to his imagination; that he had created too much. He would make a second experiment, in which he would enforce his theory with more vigour. In the composition of _Paradise Lost_ he must have experienced that the constraint he imposed upon himself had generated, as was said of Racine, "a plenitude of soul." He might infer that were the compression carried still further, the reaction of the spirit might be still increased. Poetry he had said long before should be "simple, sensuous, impassioned" (_Tractate of Education_). Nothing enhances passion like simplicity. So in _Paradise Regained_ Milton has carried simplicity of dress to the verge of nakedness. It is probably the most unadorned poem extant in any language. He has pushed severe abstinence to the extreme point, possibly beyond the point, where a reader's power is stimulated by the poet's parsimony. It may elucidate the intention of the author of _Paradise Regained_, if we contrast it for a moment with a poem constructed upon the opposite principle, that, viz., of the maximum of adornment, Claudian's _Rape of Proserpine_ (A.D. 400) is one of the most rich and elaborate poems ever written. It has in common with Milton the circumstance that its whole action is contained in a solitary event, viz., the carrying off of Proserpine from the vale of Henna by Pluto, All the personages, too, are superhuman; and the incident itself supernatural. Claudian's ambition was to overlay his story with the gold and jewellery of expression and invention. Nothing is named without being carved, decked, and coloured from the inexhaustible resources of the poet's treasury. This is not done with ostentatious pomp, as the hyperbolical heroes of vulgar novelists are painted, but always with taste, which though lavish is discriminating. Milton, like Wordsworth, urged his theory of parsimony farther in practice than he would have done, had he not been possessed by a spirit of protest against prevailing error. Milton's own ideal was the chiselled austerity of Greek tragedy. Bat he was impelled to overdo the system of holding back, by his desire to challenge the evil spirit which was abroad. He would separate himself not only from the Clevelands, the Denhams, and the Drydens, whom he did not account as poets at all, but even from the Spenserians. Thus, instead of severe, he became rigid, and his plainness is not unfrequently jejune. "Pomp and ostentation of reading," he had once written, "is admired among the vulgar; but, in matters of religion, he is learnedest who is plainest." As Wordsworth had attempted to regenerate poetry by recurring to nature and to common objects, Milton would revert to the pure Word of God. He would present no human adumbration of goodness, but Christ Himself. He saw that here absolute plainness was best. In the presence of this unique Being silence alone became the poet. This "higher argument" was "sufficient of itself" (_Paradise Lost_, ix., 42). There are some painters whose work appeals only to painters, and not to the public. So the judgment of poets and critics has been more favourable to _Paradise Regained_ than the opinion of the average reader. Johnson thinks that "if it had been written, not by Milton, but by some imitators, it would receive universal praise." Wordsworth thought it "the most perfect in execution of anything written by Milton." And Coleridge says of it, "in its kind it is the most perfect poem extant." There is a school of critics which maintains that a poem is, like a statue or a picture, a work of pure art, of which beauty is the only characteristic of which the reader should be cognisant. And beauty is wholly ideal, an absolute quality, out of relation to person, time, or circumstance. To such readers _Samson Agonistes_ will seem tame, flat, meaningless, and artificial. From the point of view of the critic of the eighteenth century, it is "a tragedy which only ignorance would admire and bigotry applaud" (Dr. Johnson). If, on the other hand, it be read as a page of contemporary history, it becomes human, pregnant with real woe, the record of an heroic soul, not baffled by temporary adversity, but totally defeated by an irreversible fate, and unflinchingly accepting the situation, in the firm conviction of the righteousness of the cause. If fiction is truer than fact, fact is more tragic than fiction. In the course of the long struggle of human liberty against the church, there had been terrible catastrophes. But the St. Bartholomew, the Revocation of the Edict, the Spanish Inquisition, the rule of Alva in the Low Countries,--these and other days of suffering and rebuke have been left to the dull pen of the annalist, who has variously diluted their story in his literary circumlocution office. The triumphant royalist reaction of 1680, when the old serpent bruised the heel of freedom by totally crushing Puritanism, is singular in this, that the agonised cry of the beaten party has been preserved in a cotemporary monument, the intensest utterance of the most intense of English poets--the _Samson Agonistes_. In the covert representation, which we have in this drama, of the actual wreck of Milton, his party, and his cause, is supplied that real basis of truth which was necessary to inspire him to write. It is of little moment that the incidents of Samson's life do not form a strict parallel to those of Milton's life, or to the career of the Puritan cause. The resemblance lies in the sentiment and situation, not in the bare event. The glorious youth of the consecrated deliverer, his signal overthrow of the Philistine foe with means so inadequate that the hand of God was manifest in the victory; his final humiliation, which he owed to his own weakness and disobedience, and the present revelry and feasting of the uncircumsised Philistines in the temple of their idol,--all these things together constitute a parable of which no reader of Milton's day could possibly mistake the interpretation. More obscurely adumbrated is the day of vengeance, when virtue should return to the repentant backslider, and the idolatrous crew should be smitten with a swift destruction in the midst of their insolent revelry. Add to these the two great personal misfortunes of the poet's life, his first marriage with a Philistine woman, out of sympathy with him or his cause, and his blindness; and the basis of reality becomes so complete, that the nominal personages of the drama almost disappear behind the history which we read through them. But while for the biographer of Milton _Samson Agonistes_ is charged with a pathos, which as the expression of real suffering no fictive tragedy can equal, it must be felt that as a composition the drama is languid, nerveless, occasionally halting, never brilliant. If the date of the composition of the _Samson_ be 1663, this may have been the result of weariness after the effort of _Paradise Lost_. If this drama were composed in 1667, it would be the author's last poetical effort, and the natural explanation would then be that his power over language was failing. The power of metaphor, i.e. of indirect expression, is, according to Aristotle, the characteristic of genius. It springs from vividness of conception of the thing spoken of. It is evident that this intense action of the presentative faculty is no longer at the disposal of the writer of _Samson_. In _Paradise Regained_ we are conscious of a purposed restraint of strength. The simplicity of its style is an experiment, an essay of a new theory of poetic words. The simplicity of _Samson Agonistes_ is a flagging of the forces, a drying up of the rich sources from which had once flowed the golden stream of suggestive phrase which makes _Paradise Lost_ a unique monument of the English language. I could almost fancy that the consciousness of decay utters itself in the lines (594)-- I feel my genial spirits droop, My hopes all flat, nature within me seems In all her functions weary of herself, My race of glory run, and race of shame, And I shall shortly be with them that rest. The point of view I have insisted on is that Milton conceives a poet to be one who employs his imagination to make a revelation of truth, truth which the poet himself entirely believes. One objection to this point of view will at once occur to the reader, the habitual employment in both poems of the fictions of pagan mythology. This is an objection as old as Miltonic criticism. The objection came from those readers who had no difficulty in realising the biblical scenes, or in accepting demoniac agency, but who found their imagination repelled by the introduction of the gods of Greece or Rome. It is not that the biblical heaven and the Greek Olympus are incongruous, but it is that the unreal is blended with the real, in a way to destroy credibility. To this objection the answer has been supplied by De Quincey. To Milton the personages of the heathen Pantheon were not merely familiar fictions or established poetical properties; they were evil spirits. That they were so was the creed of the early interpreters. In their demonology, the Hebrew and the Greek poets had a common ground. Up to the advent of Christ, the fallen angels had been permitted to delude mankind. To Milton, as to Jerome, Moloch was Mars, and Chemosh Priapus. Plato knew of hell as Tartarus, and the battle of the giants in Hesiod is no fiction, but an obscured tradition of the war once waged in heaven. What has been adverse to Milton's art of illusion is, that the belief that the gods of the heathen world were the rebellious angels has ceased to be part of the common creed of Christendom. Milton was nearly the last of our great writers who was fully possessed of the doctrine. His readers now no longer share it with the poet. In Addison's time (1712) some of the imaginary persons in _Paradise Lost_ were beginning to make greater demands upon the faith of readers, than those cool rationalistic times could meet. There is an element of decay and death in poems which we vainly style immortal. Some of the sources of Milton's power are already in process of drying up. I do not speak of the ordinary caducity of language, in virtue of which every effusion of the human spirit is lodged in a body of death. Milton suffers little as yet from this cause. There are few lines in his poems which are less intelligible now, than they were at the time they were written. This is partly to be ascribed to his limited vocabulary, Milton, in his verse, using not more than eight thousand words, or about half the number used by Shakespeare. Nay, the position of our earlier writers has been improved by the mere spread of the English language over a wider area. Addison apologised for _Paradise Lost_ falling short of the _Aeneid_, because of the inferiority of the language in which it was written. "So divine a poem in English is like a stately palace built of brick." The defects of English for purposes of rhythm and harmony are as great now as they ever were, but the space that our speech fills in the world is vastly increased, and this increase of consideration is reflected back upon our older writers. But if, as a treasury of poetic speech, _Paradise Lost_ has gained by time, it has lost far more as a storehouse of divine truth. We at this day are better able than ever to appreciate its force of expression, its grace of phrase, its harmony of rhythmical movement, but it is losing its hold over our imagination. Strange to say, this failure of vital power in the constitution of the poem is due to the very selection of subject by which Milton sought to secure perpetuity. Not content with being the poet of men, and with describing human passions and ordinary events, he aspired to present the destiny of the whole race of mankind, to tell the story of creation, and to reveal the councils of heaven and hell. And he would raise this structure upon no unstable base, but upon the sure foundation of the written word. It would have been a thing incredible to Milton that the hold of the Jewish Scriptures over the imagination of English men and women could ever be weakened. This process, however, has already commenced. The demonology of the poem has already, with educated readers, passed from the region of fact into that of fiction. Not so universally, but with a large number of readers, the angelology can be no more than what the critics call machinery. And it requires a violent effort from any of our day to accommodate their conceptions to the anthropomorphic theology of _Paradise Lost_. Were the sapping process to continue at the same rate for two more centuries, the possibility of epic illusion would be lost to the whole scheme and economy of the poem. Milton has taken a scheme of life for life itself. Had he, in the choice of subject, remembered the principle of the Aristotelean Poetic (which he otherwise highly prized), that men in action are the poet's proper theme, he would have raised his imaginative fabric on a more permanent foundation; upon the appetites, passions, and emotions of men, their vices and virtues, their aims and ambitions, which are a far more constant quantity than any theological system. This perhaps was what Goethe meant, when he pronounced the subject of _Paradise Lost_, to be "abominable, with a fair outside, but rotten inwardly." Whatever fortune may be in store for _Paradise Lost_ in the time to come, Milton's choice of subject was, at the time he wrote, the only one which offered him the guarantees of reality, authenticity, and divine truth, which he required. We need not therefore search the annals of literature to find the poem which may have given the first suggestion of the fall of man as a subject. This, however, has been done by curious antiquaries, and a list of more than two dozen authors has been made, from one or other of whom Milton may have taken either the general idea or particular hints for single incidents. Milton, without being a very wide reader, was likely to have seen the _Adamus Exul_ of Grotius (1601), and he certainly had read Giles Fletcher's _Christ's Victory and Triumph_ (1610). There are traces of verbal reminiscence of Sylvester's translation of _Du Bartas_. But out of the long catalogue of his predecessors there appear only three, who can claim to have conceived the same theme with anything like the same breadth, or on the same scale as Milton has done. These are the so-called Caedmon, Andreini, and Vondel. 1. The anonymous Anglo-Saxon poem which passes under the name of Caedmon has this one point of resemblance to the plot of _Paradise Lost_, that in it the seduction of Eve is Satan's revenge for his expulsion from heaven. As Francis Junius was much occupied upon this poem of which he published the text in 1655, it is likely enough that he should have talked of it with his friend Milton. 2. Voltaire related that Milton during his tour in Italy (1638) had seen performed _L'Adamo_, a sacred drama by the Florentine Giovanni Battista Andreini, and that he "took from that ridiculous trifle" the hint of the "noblest product of human imagination." Though Voltaire relates this as a matter of fact, it is doubtful if it be more than an _on dit_ which he had picked up in London society. Voltaire could not have seen Andreini's drama, for it is not at all a ridiculous trifle. Though much of the dialogue is as insipid as dialogue in operettas usually is, there is great invention in the plot, and animation in the action. Andreini is incessantly offending against taste, and is infected with the vice of the Marinists, the pursuit of _concetti_, or far-fetched analogies between things unlike. His infernal personages are grotesque and disgusting, rather than terrible; his scenes in heaven childish--at once familiar and fantastic, in the style of the Mysteries of the age before the drama. With all these faults the _Adamo_ is a lively and spirited representation of the Hebrew legend, and not unworthy to have been the antecedent of _Paradise Lost_. There is no question of plagiarism, for the resemblance is not even that of imitation or parentage, or adoption. The utmost that can be conceded is to concur in Hayley's opinion that, either in representation or in perusal, the _Adamo_ of Andreini had made an impression on the mind of Milton; had, as Voltaire says, revealed to him the hidden majesty of the subject. There had been at least three editions of the _Adamo_ by 1641, and Milton may have brought one of these with him, among the books which he had shipped from Venice, even, if he had not seen the drama on the Italian stage, or had not, as Todd suggests, met Andreini in person. So much appears to me to be certain from the internal evidence of the two compositions as they stand. But there are further some slight corroborative circumstances, (i.) The Trinity College sketch, so often referred to, of Milton's scheme when it was intended to be dramatic, keeps much more closely, both in its personages and in its ordering, to Andreini. (ii.) In Phillips's _Theatrum Poetarum_, a compilation in which he had his uncle's help, Andreini is mentioned as author "of a fantastic poem entitled Olivastro, which was printed at Bologna, 1642." If Andreini was known to Edward Phillips, the inference is that he was known to Milton. 3. Lastly, though external evidence is here wanting, it cannot be doubted that Milton was acquainted with the _Lucifer_ of the Dutch poet, Joost van den Vondel, which appeared in 1654. This poem is a regular five-act drama in the Dutch language, a language which Milton was able to read. In spite of commercial rivalry and naval war there was much intercourse between the two republics, and Amsterdam books came in regular course to London. The Dutch drama turns entirely on the revolt of the angels, and their expulsion from heaven, the fall of man being but a subordinate incident. In _Paradise Lost_ the relation of the two events is inverted, the fall of the angels being there an episode, not transacted, but told by one of the personages of the epic. It is therefore only in one book of _Paradise Lost_, the sixth, that the influence of Vondel can be looked for. There may possibly occur in other parts of our epic single lines of which an original may be found in Vondel's drama. Notably such a one is the often-quoted-- Better to reign in hell than serve in heaven. _Paradise Lost_, i. 263. which is Vondel's-- En liever d'eerste Vorst in eenigh lager hof Dan in't gezalight licht de tweede, of noch een minder! But it is in the sixth book only in which anything more than a verbal similarity is traceable. According to Mr. Gosse, who has given an analysis, with some translated extracts, of Vondel's _Lucifer_, the resemblances are too close and too numerous to be mere coincidences. Vondel is more human than Milton, just where human attributes are unnatural, so that heaven is made to seem like earth, while in _Paradise Lost_ we always feel that we are in a region aloft. Miltonic presentation has a dignity and elevation, which is not only wanting but is sadly missed in the Dutch drama, even the language of which seems common and familiar. The poems now mentioned form, taken together, the antecedents of _Paradise Lost_. In no one instance, taken singly, is the relation of Milton to a predecessor that of imitation, not even to the extent in which the Aeneid, for instance, is an imitation of the Iliad and Odyssey. The originality of Milton lies not in his subject, but in his manner; not in his thoughts, but in his mode of thinking. His story and his personages, their acts and words, had been the common property of all poets since the fall of the Roman Empire. Not only the three I have specially named had boldly attempted to set forth a mythical representation of the origin of evil, but many others had fluttered round the same central object of poetic attraction. Many of these productions Milton had read, and they had made their due impression on his mind according to their degree of force. When he began to compose _Paradise Lost_ he had the reading of a life-time behind him. His imagination worked upon an accumulated store, to which books, observation, and reflection had contributed in equal proportions. He drew upon this store without conscious distinction of its sources. Not that this was a recollected material, to which the poet had recourse whenever invention failed him; it was identified with himself. His verse flowed from his own soul, but his was a soul which had grown up nourished with the spoil of all the ages. He created his epic, as metaphysicians have said that God created the world, by drawing it out of himself, not by building it up out of elements supplied _ab extra_. The resemblances to earlier poets, Greek, Latin, Italian, which could be pointed out in _Paradise Lost_, were so numerous that in 1695, only twenty-one years after Milton's death, an editor, one Patrick Hume, a schoolmaster in the neighbourhood of London, was employed by Tonson to point out the imitations in an annotated edition. From that time downwards, the diligence of our literary antiquaries has been busily employed in the same track of research, and it has been extended to the English poets, a field which was overlooked, or not known to the first collector. The result is a valuable accumulation of parallel passages, which have been swept up into our _variorum_ Miltons, and make _Paradise Lost_, for English phraseology, what Virgil was for Latin in the middle ages, the centre round which the study moves. The learner, who desires to cultivate his feeling for the fine shades and variations of expression, has here a rich opportunity, and will acknowledge with gratitude the laborious services of Newton, Pearce, the Wartons, Todd, Mitford, and other compilers. But these heaped-up citations of parallel passages somewhat tend to hide from us the secret of Miltonic language. We are apt to think that the magical effect of Milton's words has been produced by painfully inlaying tesserae of borrowed metaphor--a mosaic of bits culled from extensive reading, carried along by a retentive memory, and pieced together so as to produce a new whole, with the exquisite art of a Japanese cabinet-maker. It is sometimes admitted that Milton was a plagiary, but it is urged in extenuation that his plagiarisms were always reproduced in finer forms. It is not in the spirit of vindicating Milton, but as touching the mystery of metrical language, that I dwell a few moments upon this misconception. It is true that Milton has a way of making his own even what he borrows. While Horace's thefts from Alcaeus or Pindar are palpable, even from the care which he takes to Latinise them, Milton cannot help transfusing his own nature into the words he adopts. But this is far from all. When Milton's widow was asked "if he did not often read Homer and Virgil, she understood it as an imputation upon him for stealing from those authors, and answered with eagerness, that he stole from nobody but the muse who inspired him." This is more true than she knew. It is true there are many phrases or images in _Paradise Lost_ taken from earlier writers--taken, not stolen, for the borrowing is done openly. When Adam, for instance, begs Raphael to prolong his discourse deep into night,-- Sleep, listening to thee, will watch; Or we can bid his absence, till thy song End, and dismiss thee ere the morning shine; we cannot be mistaken, in saying that we have here a conscious reminiscence of the words of Alcinous to Ulysses in the eleventh book of the Odyssey. Such imitation is on the surface, and does not touch the core of that mysterious combination of traditive with original elements in diction, which Milton and Virgil, alone of poets known to us, have effected. Here and there, many times, in detached places, Milton has consciously imitated. But, beyond this obvious indebtedness, there runs through the whole texture of his verse a suggestion of secondary meaning, a meaning which has been accreted to the words, by their passage down the consecrated stream of classical poetry. Milton quotes very little for a man of much reading. He says of himself (_Judgment of Bucer_) that he "never could delight in long citations, much less in whole traductions, whether it be natural disposition or education in me, or that my mother bore me a speaker of what God made mine own, and not a translator." And the observation is as old as Bishop Newton, that "there is scarce any author who has written so much, and upon such various subjects, and yet quotes so little from his contemporary authors." It is said that "he could repeat Homer almost all without book." But we know that common minds are apt to explain to themselves the working of mental superiority, by exaggerating the power of memory. Milton's own writings remain a sufficient evidence that his was not a verbal memory. And, psychologically, the power of imagination and the power of verbal memory, are almost always found in inverse proportion. Milton's diction is the elaborated outcome of all the best words of all antecedent poetry, not by a process of recollected reading and storage, but by the same mental habit by which we learn to speak our mother tongue. Only, in the case of the poet, the vocabulary acquired has a new meaning superadded to the words, from the occasion on which they have been previously employed by others. Words, over and above their dictionary signification, connote all the feeling which has gathered round them by reason of their employment through a hundred generations of song. In the words of Mr. Myers, "without ceasing to be a logical step in the argument, a phrase becomes a centre of emotional force. The complex associations which it evokes, modify the associations evoked by other words in the same passage, in a way distinct from logical or grammatical connection." The poet suggests much more than he says, or as Milton himself has phrased it, "more is meant than meets the ear." For the purposes of poetry a thought is the representative of many feelings, and a word is the representative of many thoughts. A single word may thus set in motion in us the vibration of a feeling first consigned to letters 3000 years ago. For oratory words should be winged, that they may do their work of persuasion. For poetry words should be freighted, with associations of feeling, that they may awaken sympathy. It is the suggestive power of words that the poet cares for, rather than their current denotation. How laughable are the attempts of the commentators to interpret a line in Virgil as they would a sentence in Aristotle's _Physics!_ Milton's secret lies in his mastery over the rich treasure of this inherited vocabulary. He wielded it as his own, as a second mother-tongue, the native and habitual idiom of his thought and feeling, backed by a massive frame of character, and "a power which is got within me to a passion." (_Areopagitica_) When Wordsworth came forward at the end of the eighteenth century with his famous reform of the language of English poetry, the Miltonic diction was the current coin paid out by every versifier. Wordsworth revolted against this dialect as unmeaning, hollow, gaudy, and inane. His reform consisted in dropping the consecrated phraseology altogether, and reverting to the common language of ordinary life. It was necessary to do this in order to reconnect poetry with the sympathies of men, and make it again a true utterance instead of the ingenious exercise in putting together words, which it had become. In projecting this abandonment of the received tradition, it may be thought that Wordsworth was condemning the Miltonic system of expression in itself. But this was not so. Milton's language had become in the hands of the imitators of the eighteenth century sound without sense, a husk without the kernel, a body of words without the soul of poetry. Milton had created and wielded an instrument which was beyond the control of any less than himself. He used it as a living language; the poetasters of the eighteenth century wrote it as a dead language, as boys make Latin verses. Their poetry is to _Paradise Lost_, as a modern Gothic restoration is to a genuine middle-age church. It was against the feeble race of imitators, and not against the master himself, that the protest of the lake poet was raised. He proposed to do away with the Miltonic vocabulary altogether, not because it was in itself vicious, but because it could now only be employed at secondhand. One drawback there was attendant upon the style chosen by Milton, viz. that it narrowly limited the circle of his readers. All words are addressed to those who understand them. The Welsh triads are not for those who have not learnt Welsh; an English poem is only for those who understand English. But of understanding English there are many degrees; it requires some education to understand literary style at all. A large majority of the natives of any country possess, and use, only a small fraction of their mother tongue. These people may be left out of the discussion. Confining ourselves only to that small part of our millions which we speak of as the educated classes, that is those whose schooling is carried on beyond fourteen years of age, it will be found that only a small fraction of the men, and a still smaller fraction of the women, fully apprehend the meaning of words. This is the case with what is written in the ordinary language of books. When we pass from a style in which words have only their simple signification, to a style of which the effect depends on the suggestion of collateral association, we leave behind the majority even of these few. This is what is meant by the standing charge against Milton that he is too learned. It is no paradox to say that Milton was not a learned man. Such men there were in his day, Usher, Selden, Voss, in England; in Holland, Milton's adversary Salmasius, and many more. A learned man was one who could range freely and surely over the whole of classical and patristic remains in the Greek and Latin languages (at least), with the accumulated stores of philological, chronological, historical criticism, necessary for the interpretation of those remains. Milton had neither made these acquisitions, nor aimed at them. He even expresses himself, in his vehement way, with contempt of them. "Hollow antiquities sold by the seeming bulk," "marginal stuffings," "horse-loads of citations and fathers," are some of his petulant outbursts against the learning that had been played upon his position by his adversaries. He says expressly that he had "not read the Councils, save here and there" (_Smectymnuus_). His own practice had been "industrious and select reading." He chose to make himself a scholar rather than a learned man. The aim of his studies was to improve faculty, not to acquire knowledge. "Who would be a poet must himself be a true poem;" his heart should "contain of just, wise, good, the perfect shape." He devoted himself to self-preparation with the assiduity of Petrarch or of Goethe, "In wearisome labour and studious watchings I have tired out almost a whole youth." "Labour and intense study I take to be my portion in this life." He would know, not all, but "what was of use to know," and form himself by assiduous culture. The first Englishman to whom the designation of our series, _Men of Letters_, is appropriate, Milton was also the noblest example of the type. He cultivated, not letters, but himself, and sought to enter into possession of his own mental kingdom, not that he might reign there, but that he might royally use its resources in building up a work, which should bring honour to his country and his native tongue. The style of _Paradise Lost_ is then only the natural expression of a soul thus exquisitely nourished upon the best thoughts and finest words of all ages. It is the language of one who lives in the companionship of the great and the wise of past time. It is inevitable that when such a one speaks, his tones, his accent, the melodies of his rhythm, the inner harmonies of his linked thoughts, the grace of his allusive touch, should escape the common ear. To follow Milton one should at least have tasted the same training through which he put himself. "Te quoque dignum finge deo." The many cannot see it, and complain that the poet is too learned. They would have Milton talk like Bunyan or William Cobbett, whom they understand. Milton did attempt the demagogue in his pamphlets, only with the result of blemishing his fame and degrading his genius. The best poetry is that which calls upon us to rise to it, not that which writes down to us. Milton knew that his was not the road to popularity. He thirsted for renown, but he did not confound renown with vogue. A poet has his choice between the many and the few; Milton chose the few. "Paucis hujusmodi lectoribus contentus," is his own inscription in a copy of his pamphlets sent by him to Patrick Young. He derived a stern satisfaction from the reprobation with which the vulgar visited him. His divorce tracts were addressed to men who dared to think, and ran the town "numbering good intellects." His poems he wished laid up in the Bodleian Library, "where the jabber of common people cannot penetrate, and whence the base throng of readers keep aloof" (_Ode to Rouse_). If Milton resembled a Roman republican in the severe and stoic elevation of his character, he also shared the aristocratic intellectualism of the classical type. He is in marked contrast to the levelling hatred of excellence, the Christian trades-unionism of the model Catholic of the mould of S. François de Sales whose maxim of life is "marchons avec la troupe de nos frères et compagnons, doucement, paisiblement, et amiablement." To Milton the people are-- But a herd confus'd, A miscellaneous rabble, who extol Things vulgar. _Paradise Regained_, iii. 49. At times his indignation carries him past the courtesies of equal speech, to pour out the vials of prophetic rebuke, when he contemplates the hopeless struggle of those who are the salt of the earth, "amidst the throng and noises of vulgar and irrational men" (_Tenure of Kings_), and he rates them to their face as "owls and cuckoos, asses, apes, and dogs" (_Sonnet_ xii.); not because they will not listen to him, but "because they "hate learning more than toad or asp" (_Sonnet_ ix.). Milton's attitude must be distinguished from patrician pride, or the _noli-me-tangere_ of social exclusiveness. Nor, again, was it, like Callimachus's, the fastidious repulsion of a delicate taste for the hackneyed in literary expression; it was the lofty disdain of aspiring virtue for the sordid and ignoble. Various ingredients, constitutional or circumstantial, concurred to produce this repellent or unsympathetic attitude in Milton. His dogmatic Calvinism, from the effects of which his mind never recovered--a system which easily disposes to a cynical abasement of our fellow-men--counted for something. Something must be set down to habitual converse with the classics--a converse which tends to impart to character, as Platner said of Godfrey Hermann, "a certain grandeur and generosity, removed from the spirit of cabal and mean cunning which prevail among men of the world." His blindness threw him out of the competition of life, and back upon himself, in a way which was sure to foster egotism. These were constitutional elements of that aloofness from men which characterised all his utterance. These disposing causes became inexorable fate, when, by the turn of the political wheel of fortune, he found himself alone amid the mindless dissipation and reckless materialism of the Restoration. He felt himself then at war with human society as constituted around him, and was thus driven to withdraw himself within a poetic world of his own creation. In this antagonism of the poet to his age much was lost; much energy was consumed in what was mere friction. The artist is then most powerful when he finds himself in accord with the age he lives in. The plenitude of art is only reached when it marches with the sentiments which possess a community. The defiant attitude easily slides into paradox, and the mind falls in love with its own wilfulness. The exceptional emergence of Milton's three poems, _Paradise Lost, Regained_, and _Samson_, deeply colours their context. The greatest achievements of art--in their kinds have been the capital specimens of a large crop; as the _Iliad_ and _Odyssey_ are the picked lines out of many rhapsodies, and Shakespeare the king of an army of contemporary dramatists. Milton was a survival, felt himself such, and resented it. Unchang'd, ....Though Fall'n on evil days, On evil days though fall'n, and evil tongues; In darkness, and with dangers compass'd round, And solitude. _Paradise Lost_, vii. 24. Poetry thus generated we should naturally expect to meet with more admiration than sympathy. And such, on the whole, has been Milton's reception. In 1678, twenty years after the publication of _Paradise Lost_, Prior spoke of him (_Hind transversed_) as "a rough, unhewn fellow, that a man must sweat to read him," And in 1842, Hallam had doubts "if _Paradise Lost_, published eleven years since, would have met with a greater demand" than it did at first. It has been much disputed by historians of our literature what inference is to be drawn from the numbers sold of _Paradise Lost_ at its first publication. Between 1667 and 1678, a space of twenty years, three editions had been printed, making together some 4500 copies. Was this a large or a small circulation? Opinions are at variance on the point. Johnson and Hallam thought it a large sale, as books went at that time. Campbell, and the majority of our annalists of books, have considered it as evidence of neglect. Comparison with what is known of other cases of circulation leads to no more certain conclusion. On the one hand, the public could not take more than three editions--say 3000 copies--of the plays of Shakespeare in sixty years, from 1623 to 1684. If this were a fair measure of possible circulation at the time, we should have to pronounce Milton's sale a great success. On the other hand, Cleveland's poems ran through sixteen or seventeen editions in about thirty years. If this were the average output of a popular book, the inference would be that _Paradise Lost_ was not such a book. Whatever conclusion may be the true one from the amount of the public demand, we cannot be wrong in asserting that from the first, and now as then, _Paradise Lost_ has been more admired than read. The poet's wish and expectation that he should find "fit audience, though few," has been fulfilled. Partly this has been due to his limitation, his unsympathetic disposition, the deficiency of the human element in his imagination, and his presentation of mythical instead of real beings. But it is also in part a tribute to his excellence, and is to be ascribed to the lofty strain which requires more effort to accompany, than an average reader is able to make, a majestic demeanour which no parodist has been able to degrade, and a wealth of allusion demanding more literature than is possessed by any but the few whose life is lived with the poets. An appreciation of Milton is the last reward of consummated scholarship; and we may apply to him what Quintilian has said of Cicero, "Ille se profecisse sciat, cui Cicero valde placebit." Causes other than the inherent faults of the poem long continued to weigh down the reputation of _Paradise Lost_. In Great Britain the sense for art, poetry, literature, is confined to a few, while our political life has been diffused and vigorous. Hence all judgment, even upon a poet, is biassed by considerations of party. Before 1688 it was impossible that the poet, who had justified regicide, could have any public beyond the suppressed and crouching Nonconformists. The Revolution of 1688 removed this ban, and from that date forward the Liberal party in England adopted Milton as the republican poet. William Hogg, writing in 1690, says of _Paradise Lost_ that "the fame of the poem is spread through the whole of England, but being written in English, it is as yet unknown in foreign lands." This is obvious exaggeration. Lauder, about 1748, gives the date exactly, when he speaks of "that infinite tribute of veneration that has been paid to him _these sixty years past_." One distinguished exception there was. Dryden, royalist and Catholic though he was, was loyal to his art. Nothing which Dryden ever wrote is so creditable to his taste, as his being able to see, and daring to confess, in the day of disesteem, that the regicide poet alone deserved the honour which his cotemporaries were for rendering to himself. Dryden's saying; "This man cuts us all out, and the ancients too," is not perfectly well vouched, but it would hardly have been invented, if it had not been known to express his sentiments. And Dryden's sense of Milton's greatness grew with his taste. When, in the preface to his _State of Innocence_ (1674), Dryden praised _Paradise Lost_, he "knew not half the extent of its excellence," John Dennis says, "as more than twenty years afterwards he confessed to me." Had he known it, he never could have produced his vulgar parody, _The State of Innocence_, a piece upon which he received the compliments of his cotemporaries, as "having refined the ore of Milton." With the one exception of Dryden, a better critic than poet, Milton's repute was the work of the Whigs. The first _édition de luxe_ of _Paradise Lost_ (1688) was brought out by a subscription got up by the "Whig leader, Lord Somers. In this edition Dryden's pinchbeck epigram so often quoted, first appeared-- Three poets in three distant ages born, &c. It was the Whig essayist, Addison, whose papers in the _Spectator_ (1712) did most to make the poem popularly known. In 1737, in the height of the Whig ascendancy, the bust of Milton penetrated Westminster Abbey, though, in the generation before, the Dean of that day had refused to admit an inscription on the monument erected to John Phillips, because the name of Milton occurred in it. The zeal of the Liberal party in the propagation of the cult of Milton was of course encountered by an equal passion on the part of the Tory opposition. They were exasperated by the lustre which was reflected upon Revolution principles by the name of Milton. About the middle of the eighteenth century, when Whig popularity was already beginning to wane, a desperate attempt was made by a rising Tory pamphleteer to crush the new Liberal idol. Dr. Johnson, the most vigorous writer of the day, conspired with one William Lauder, a native of Scotland seeking fortune in London, to stamp out Milton's credit by proving him to be a wholesale plagiarist. Milton's imitations--he had gathered pearls wherever they were to be found--were thus to be turned into an indictment against him. One of the beauties of _Paradise Lost_ is, as has been already said, the scholar's flavour of literary reminiscence which hangs about its words and images. This Virgilian art, in which Milton has surpassed his master, was represented by this pair of literary bandits as theft, and held to prove at once moral obliquity and intellectual feebleness. This line of criticism was well chosen; It was, in fact, an appeal to the many from the few. Unluckily for the plot, Lauder was not satisfied with the amount of resemblance shown by real parallel passages. He ventured upon the bold step of forging verses, closely resembling lines in _Paradise Lost_, and ascribing these verses to older poets. He even forged verses which he quoted as if from _Paradise Lost_, and showed them as Milton's plagiarisms from preceding writers. Even these clumsy fictions might have passed without detection at that uncritical period of our literature, and under the shelter of the name of Samuel Johnson. But Lauder's impudence grew with the success of his criticisms, which he brought out as letters, through a series of years, in the _Gentleman's Magazine_. There was a translation of _Paradise Lost_ into Latin hexameters, which had been made in 1690 by William Hogg. Lander inserted lines, taken from this translation, into passages taken from Massenius, Staphorstius, Taubmannus, neo-Latin poets, whom Milton had, or might have read, and presented these passages as thefts by Milton. Low as learning had sunk in England in 1750, Hogg's Latin _Paradisus amissus_ was just the book, which tutors of colleges who could teach Latin verses had often in their hands. Mr. Bowle, a tutor of Oriel College, Oxford, immediately recognised an old acquaintance in one or two of the interpolated lines. This put him upon the scent, he submitted Lauder's passages to a closer investigation, and the whole fraud was exposed. Johnson, who was not concerned in the cheat, and was only guilty of indolence and party spirit, saved himself by sacrificing his comrade. He afterwards took ample revenge for the mortification of this exposure, in his _Lives of the Poets_, in which he employed all his vigorous powers and consummate skill to write down Milton. He undoubtedly dealt a heavy blow at the poet's reputation, and succeeded in damaging it for at least two generations of readers. He did for Milton what Aristophanes did for Socrates, effaced the real man and replaced him by a distorted and degrading caricature. It was again a clergyman to whom Milton owed his vindication from Lauder's onslaught. John Douglas, afterwards bishop of Salisbury, brought Bowle's materials before the public. But the high Anglican section of English life has never thoroughly accepted Milton. R.S. Hawker, vicar of Morwenstow, himself a poet of real feeling, gave expression, in rabid abuse of Milton, to the antipathy which more judicious churchmen suppress. Even the calm and gentle author of the _Christian Year_, wide heart ill-sorted with a narrow creed, deliberately framed a theory of Poetic for the express purpose, as it would seem, of excluding the author of _Paradise Lost_ from the first class of poets. But a work such as Milton has constructed, at once intense and elaborate, firmly knit and broadly laid, can afford to wait. Time is all in its favour, and against its detractors. The Church never forgives, and faction does not die out. But Milton has been, for two centuries, getting beyond the reach of party feeling, whether of friends or foes. In each national aggregate an instinct is always at work, an instinct not equal to exact discrimination of lesser degrees of merit, but surely finding out the chief forces which have found expression in the native tongue. This instinct is not an active faculty, and so exposed to the influences which warp the will, it is a passive deposition from unconscious impression. Our appreciation of our poet is not to be measured by our choosing him for our favourite closet companion, or reading him often. As Voltaire wittily said of Dante, "Sa reputation s'affirmera toujours, parce qu'on ne le lit guère." We shall prefer to read the fashionable novelist of each season as it passes, but we shall choose to be represented at the international congress of world poets by Shakespeare and Milton; Shakespeare first, and next MILTON. 
8509	----	Proofreading Team AMONG MY BOOKS Second Series by JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL To R.W. EMERSON. A love and honor which more than thirty years have deepened, though priceless to him they enrich, are of little import to one capable of inspiring them. Yet I cannot deny myself the pleasure of so far intruding on your reserve as at least to make public acknowledgment of the debt I can never repay. CONTENTS. DANTE SPENSER WORDSWORTH MILTON KEATS DANTE.[1] On the banks of a little river so shrunken by the suns of summer that it seems fast passing into a tradition, but swollen by the autumnal rains with an Italian suddenness of passion till the massy bridge shudders under the impatient heap of waters behind it, stands a city which, in its period of bloom not so large as Boston, may well rank next to Athens in the history which teaches _come l' uom s' eterna_. Originally only a convenient spot in the valley where the fairs of the neighboring Etruscan city of Fiesole were held, it gradually grew from a huddle of booths to a town, and then to a city, which absorbed its ancestral neighbor and became a cradle for the arts, the letters, the science, and the commerce[2] of modern Europe. For her Cimabue wrought, who infused Byzantine formalism with a suggestion of nature and feeling; for her the Pisani, who divined at least, if they could not conjure with it, the secret of Greek supremacy in sculpture; for her the marvellous boy Ghiberti proved that unity of composition and grace of figure and drapery were never beyond the reach of genius;[3] for her Brunelleschi curved the dome which Michel Angelo hung in air on St. Peter's; for her Giotto reared the bell-tower graceful as an Horatian ode in marble; and the great triumvirate of Italian poetry, good sense, and culture called her mother. There is no modern city about which cluster so many elevating associations, none in which the past is so contemporary with us in unchanged buildings and undisturbed monuments. The house of Dante is still shown; children still receive baptism at the font (_il mio bel San Giovanni_) where he was christened before the acorn dropped that was to grow into a keel for Columbus; and an inscribed stone marks the spot where he used to sit and watch the slow blocks swing up to complete the master-thought of Arnolfo. In the convent of St. Mark hard by lived and labored Beato Angelico, the saint of Christian art, and Fra Bartolommeo, who taught Raphael dignity. From the same walls Savonarola went forth to his triumphs, short-lived almost as the crackle of his martyrdom. The plain little chamber of Michel Angelo seems still to expect his return; his last sketches lie upon the table, his staff leans in the corner, and his slippers wait before the empty chair. On one of the vine-clad hills, just without the city walls, one's feet may press the same stairs that Milton climbed to visit Galileo. To an American there is something supremely impressive in this cumulative influence of the past full of inspiration and rebuke, something saddening in this repeated proof that moral supremacy is the only one that leaves monuments and not ruins behind it. Time, who with us obliterates the labor and often the names of yesterday, seems here to have spared almost the prints of the _care piante_ that shunned the sordid paths of worldly honor. Around the courtyard of the great Museum of Florence stand statues of her illustrious dead, her poets, painters, sculptors, architects, inventors, and statesmen; and as the traveller feels the ennobling lift of such society, and reads the names or recognizes the features familiar to him as his own threshold, he is startled to find Fame as commonplace here as Notoriety everywhere else, and that this fifth-rate city should have the privilege thus to commemorate so many famous men her sons, whose claim to pre-eminence the whole world would concede. Among them is one figure before which every scholar, every man who has been touched by the tragedy of life, lingers with reverential pity. The haggard cheeks, the lips clamped together in unfaltering resolve, the scars of lifelong battle, and the brow whose sharp outline seems the monument of final victory,-- this, at least, is a face that needs no name beneath it. This is he who among literary fames finds only two that for growth and immutability can parallel his own. The suffrages of highest authority would now place him second in that company where he with proud humility took the sixth place.[4] Dante (Durante, by contraction Dante) degli Alighieri was born at Florence in 1265, probably during the month of May.[5] This is the date given by Boccaccio, who is generally followed, though he makes a blunder in saying, _sedendo Urbano quarto nella cattedra di San Pietro_, for Urban died in October, 1264. Some, misled by an error in a few of the early manuscript copies of the _Divina Commedia_, would have him born five years earlier, in 1260. According to Arrivabene,[6] Sansovino was the first to confirm Boccaccio's statement by the authority of the poet himself, basing his argument on the first verse of the _Inferno_,-- "Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita"; the average age of man having been declared by the Psalmist to be seventy years, and the period of the poet's supposed vision being unequivocally fixed at 1300.[7] Leonardo Aretino and Manetti add their testimony to that of Boccaccio, and 1265 is now universally assumed as the true date. Voltaire,[8] nevertheless, places the poet's birth in 1260, and jauntily forgives Bayle (who, he says, _écrivait à Rotterdam_ currente calamo _pour son libraire_) for having been right, declaring that he esteems him neither more nor less for having made a mistake of five years. Oddly enough, Voltaire adopts this alleged blunder of five years on the next page in saying that Dante died at the age of 56, though he still more oddly omits the undisputed date of his death (1321), which would have shown Bayle to be right. The poet's descent is said to have been derived from a younger son of the great Roman family of the Frangipani, classed by the popular rhyme with the Orsini and Colonna:-- "Colonna, Orsini, e Frangipani, Prendono oggi e pagano domani." That his ancestors had been long established in Florence is an inference from some expressions of the poet, and from their dwelling having been situated in the more ancient part of the city. The most important fact of the poet's genealogy is, that he was of mixed race, the Alighieri being of Teutonic origin. Dante was born, as he himself tells us,[9] when the sun was in the constellation Gemini, and it has been absurdly inferred, from a passage in the _Inferno_,[10] that his horoscope was drawn and a great destiny predicted for him by his teacher, Brunetto Latini. The _Ottimo Comento_ tells us that the Twins are the house of Mercury, who induces in men the faculty of writing, science, and of acquiring knowledge. This is worth mentioning as characteristic of the age and of Dante himself, with whom the influence of the stars took the place of the old notion of destiny.[11] It is supposed, from a passage in Boccaccio's life of Dante, that Alighiero the father was still living when the poet was nine years old. If so, he must have died soon after, for Leonardo Aretino, who wrote with original documents before him, tells us that Dante lost his father while yet a child. This circumstance may have been not without influence in muscularizing his nature to that character of self-reliance which shows itself so constantly and sharply during his after-life. His tutor was Brunetto Latini, a very superior man (for that age), says Aretino parenthetically. Like Alexander Gill, he is now remembered only as the schoolmaster of a great poet, and that he did his duty well may be inferred from Dante's speaking of him gratefully as one who by times "taught him how man eternizes himself." This, and what Villani says of his refining the Tuscan idiom (for so we understand his _farli scorti in bene parlare_),[12] are to be noted as of probable influence on the career of his pupil. Of the order of Dante's studies nothing can be certainly affirmed. His biographers send him to Bologna, Padua, Paris, Naples, and even Oxford. All are doubtful, Paris and Oxford most of all, and the dates utterly undeterminable. Yet all are possible, nay, perhaps probable. Bologna and Padua we should be inclined to place before his exile; Paris and Oxford, if at all, after it. If no argument in favor of Paris is to be drawn from his _Pape Satan_[13] and the corresponding _paix, paix, Sathan,_ in the autobiography of Cellini, nor from the very definite allusion to Doctor Siger,[14] we may yet infer from some passages in the _Commedia_ that his wanderings had extended even farther;[15] for it would not be hard to show that his comparisons and illustrations from outward things are almost invariably drawn from actual eyesight. As to the nature of his studies, there can be no doubt that he went through the _trivium_ (grammar, dialectic, rhetoric) and the _quadrivium_ (arithmetic, music, geometry, and astronomy) of the then ordinary university course. To these he afterward added painting (or at least drawing,--_designavo un angelo sopra certe tavolette_),[16] theology, and medicine. He is said to have been the pupil of Cimabue, and was certainly the friend of Giotto, the designs for some of whose frescos at Assisi and elsewhere have been wrongly attributed to him, though we may safely believe in his helpful comment and suggestion. To prove his love of music, the episode of Casella were enough, even without Boccaccio's testimony. The range of Dante's study and acquirement would be encyclopedic in any age, but at that time it was literally possible to master the _omne scibile_, and he seems to have accomplished it. How lofty his theory of science was, is plain from this passage in the _Convito_: "He is not to be called a true lover of wisdom (_filosofo_) who loves it for the sake of gain, as do lawyers, physicians, and almost all churchmen (_li religiosi_), who study, not in order to know, but to acquire riches or advancement, and who would not persevere in study should you give them what they desire to gain by it.... And it may be said that (as true friendship between men consists in each wholly loving the other) the true philosopher loves every part of wisdom, and wisdom every part of the philosopher, inasmuch as she draws all to herself, and allows no one of his thoughts to wander to other things."[17] The _Convito_ gives us a glance into Dante's library. We find Aristotle (whom he calls the philosopher, the master) cited seventy-six times; Cicero, eighteen; Albertus Magnus, seven; Boethius, six; Plato (at second-hand), four; Aquinas, Avicenna, Ptolemy, the Digest, Lucan, and Ovid, three each; Virgil, Juvenal, Statius, Seneca, and Horace, twice each; and Algazzali, Alfrogan, Augustine, Livy, Orosius, and Homer (at second-hand), once. Of Greek he seems to have understood little; of Hebrew and Arabic, a few words. But it was not only in the closet and from books that Dante received his education. He acquired, perhaps, the better part of it in the streets of Florence, and later, in those homeless wanderings which led him (as he says) wherever the Italian tongue was spoken. His were the only open eyes of that century, and, as nothing escaped them, so there is nothing that was not photographed upon his sensitive brain, to be afterward fixed forever in the _Commedia_. What Florence was during his youth and manhood, with its Guelphs and Ghibellines, its nobles and trades, its Bianchi and Neri, its kaleidoscopic revolutions, "all parties loving liberty and doing their best to destroy her," as Voltaire says, it would be beyond our province to tell even if we could. Foreshortened as events are when we look back on them across so many ages, only the upheavals of party conflict catching the eye, while the spaces of peace between sink out of the view of history, a whole century seems like a mere wild chaos. Yet during a couple of such centuries the cathedrals of Florence, Pisa, and Siena got built; Cimabue, Giotto, Arnolfo, the Pisani, Brunelleschi, and Ghiberti gave the impulse to modern art, or brought it in some of its branches to its culminating point; modern literature took its rise; commerce became a science, and the middle class came into being. It was a time of fierce passions and sudden tragedies, of picturesque transitions and contrasts. It found Dante, shaped him by every experience that life is capable of,--rank, ease, love, study, affairs, statecraft, hope, exile, hunger, dependence, despair,--until he became endowed with a sense of the nothingness of this world's goods possible only to the rich, and a knowledge of man possible only to the poor. The few well-ascertained facts of Dante's life may be briefly stated. In 1274 occurred what we may call his spiritual birth, the awakening in him of the imaginative faculty, and of that profounder and more intense consciousness which springs from the recognition of beauty through the antithesis of sex. It was in that year that he first saw Beatrice Portinari. In 1289 he was present at the battle of Campaldino, fighting on the side of the Guelphs, who there utterly routed the Ghibellines, and where, he says characteristically enough, "I was present, not a boy in arms, and where I felt much fear, but in the end the greatest pleasure, from the various changes of the fight."[18] In the same year he assisted at the siege and capture of Caprona.[19] In 1290 died Beatrice, married to Simone dei Bardi, precisely when is uncertain, but before 1287, as appears by a mention of her in her father's will, bearing date January 15 of that year. Dante's own marriage is assigned to various years, ranging from 1291 to 1294; but the earlier date seems the more probable, as he was the father of seven children (the youngest, a daughter, named Beatrice) in 1301. His wife was Gemma dei Donati, and through her Dante, whose family, though noble, was of the lesser nobility, became nearly connected with Corso Donati, the head of a powerful clan of the _grandi_, or greater nobles. In 1293 occurred what is called the revolution of Gian Della Bella, in which the priors of the trades took the power into their own hands, and made nobility a disqualification for office. A noble was defined to be any one who counted a knight among his ancestors, and thus the descendant of Cacciaguida was excluded. Della Bella was exiled in 1295, but the nobles did not regain their power. On the contrary, the citizens, having all their own way, proceeded to quarrel among themselves, and subdivided into the _popolani grossi_ and _popolani minuti_, or greater and lesser trades,--a distinction of gentility somewhat like that between wholesale and retail tradesmen. The _grandi_ continuing turbulent, many of the lesser nobility, among them Dante, drew over to the side of the citizens, and between 1297 and 1300 there is found inscribed in the book of the physicians and apothecaries, _Dante d' Aldighiero, degli Aldighieri, poeta Fiorentino_[20] Professor de Vericour[21] thinks it necessary to apologize for this lapse on the part of the poet, and gravely bids us take courage, nor think that Dante was ever an apothecary. In 1300 we find him elected one of the priors of the city. In order to a perfect misunderstanding of everything connected with the Florentine politics of this period, one has only to study the various histories. The result is a spectrum on the mind's eye, which looks definite and brilliant, but really hinders all accurate vision, as if from too steady inspection of a Catharine-wheel in full whirl. A few words, however, are necessary, if only to make the confusion palpable. The rival German families of Welfs and Weiblingens had given their names, softened into Guelfi and Ghibellini,--from which Gabriel Harvey[22] ingeniously, but mistakenly, derives elves and goblins,--to two parties in Northern Italy, representing respectively the adherents of the pope and of the emperor, but serving very well as rallying-points in all manner of intercalary and subsidiary quarrels. The nobles, especially the greater ones,--perhaps from instinct, perhaps in part from hereditary tradition, as being more or less Teutonic by descent,--were commonly Ghibellines, or Imperialists; the bourgeoisie were very commonly Guelphs, or supporters of the pope, partly from natural antipathy to the nobles, and partly, perhaps, because they believed themselves to be espousing the more purely Italian side. Sometimes, however, the party relation of nobles and burghers to each other was reversed, but the names of Guelph and Ghibelline always substantially represented the same things. The family of Dante had been Guelphic, and we have seen him already as a young man serving two campaigns against the other party. But no immediate question as between pope and emperor seems then to have been pending; and while there is no evidence that he was ever a mere partisan, the reverse would be the inference from his habits and character. Just before his assumption of the priorate, however, a new complication had arisen. A family feud, beginning at the neighboring city of Pistoja, between the Cancellieri Neri and Cancellieri Bianchi,[23] had extended to Florence, where the Guelphs took the part of the Neri and the Ghibellines of the Bianchi.[24] The city was instantly in a ferment of street brawls, as actors in one of which some of the Medici are incidentally named,--the first appearance of that family in history. Both parties appealed at different times to the pope, who sent two ambassadors, first a bishop and then a cardinal. Both pacificators soon flung out again in a rage, after adding the new element of excommunication to the causes of confusion. It was in the midst of these things that Dante became one of the six priors (June, 1300),--an office which the Florentines had made bimestrial in its tenure, in order apparently to secure at least six constitutional chances of revolution in the year. He advised that the leaders of both parties should be banished to the frontiers, which was forthwith done; the ostracism including his relative Corso Donati among the Neri, and his most intimate friend the poet Guido Cavalcanti among the Bianchi. They were all permitted to return before long (but after Dante's term of office was over), and came accordingly, bringing at least the Scriptural allowance of "seven other" motives of mischief with them. Affairs getting worse (1301), the Neri, with the connivance of the pope (Boniface VIII.), entered into an arrangement with Charles of Valois, who was preparing an expedition to Italy. Dante was meanwhile sent on an embassy to Rome (September, 1301, according to Arrivabene,[25] but probably earlier) by the Bianchi, who still retained all the offices at Florence. It is the tradition that he said in setting forth: "If I go, who remains? and if I stay, who goes?" Whether true or not, the story implies what was certainly true, that the council and influence of Dante were of great weight with the more moderate of both parties. On October 31, 1301, Charles took possession of Florence in the interest of the Neri. Dante being still at Rome (January 27, 1302), sentence of exile was pronounced against him and others, with a heavy fine to be paid within two months; if not paid, the entire confiscation of goods, and, whether paid or no, exile; the charge against him being pecuniary malversation in office. The fine not paid (as it could not be without admitting the justice of the charges, which Dante scorned even to deny), in less than two months (March 10, 1302) a second sentence was registered, by which he with others was condemned to be burned alive if taken within the boundaries of the republic.[26] From this time the life of Dante becomes semi-mythical, and for nearly every date we are reduced to the "as they say" of Herodotus. He became now necessarily identified with his fellow-exiles (fragments of all parties united by common wrongs in a practical, if not theoretic, Ghibellinism), and shared in their attempts to reinstate themselves by force of arms. He was one of their council of twelve, but withdrew from it on account of the unwisdom of their measures. Whether he was present at their futile assault on Florence (July 22, 1304) is doubtful, but probably he was not. From the _Ottimo Comento_, written at least in part[27] by a contemporary as early as 1333, we learn that Dante soon separated himself from his companions in misfortune with mutual discontents and recriminations.[28] During the nineteen years of Dante's exile, it would be hard to say where he was not. In certain districts of Northern Italy there is scarce a village that has not its tradition of him, its _sedia, rocca, spelonca,_ or _torre di Dante_; and what between the patriotic complaisance of some biographers overwilling to gratify as many provincial vanities as possible, and the pettishness of others anxious only to snub them, the confusion becomes hopeless.[29] After his banishment we find some definite trace of him first at Arezzo with Uguccione della Faggiuola; then at Siena; then at Verona with the Scaligeri. He himself says: "Through almost all parts where this language [Italian] is spoken, a wanderer, wellnigh a beggar, I have gone, showing against my will the wound of fortune. Truly I have been a vessel without sail or rudder, driven to diverse ports, estuaries, and shores by that hot blast, the breath of grievous poverty; and I have shown myself to the eyes of many who perhaps, through some fame of me, had imagined me in quite other guise, in whose view not only was my person debased, but every work of mine, whether done or yet to do, became of less account."[30] By the election of the emperor Henry VII. (of Luxemburg, November, 1308), and the news of his proposed expedition into Italy, the hopes of Dante were raised to the highest pitch. Henry entered Italy, October, 1310, and received the iron crown of Lombardy at Milan, on the day of Epiphany, 1311. His movements being slow, and his policy undecided, Dante addressed him that famous letter, urging him to crush first the "Hydra and Myrrha" Florence, as the root of all the evils of Italy (April 16, 1311). To this year we must probably assign the new decree by which the seigniory of Florence recalled a portion of the exiles, excepting Dante, however, among others, by name.[31] The undertaking of Henry, after an ill-directed dawdling of two years, at last ended in his death at Buonconvento (August 24, 1313; Carlyle says wrongly September); poisoned, it was said, in the sacramental bread, by a Dominican friar, bribed thereto by Florence.[32] The story is doubtful, the more as Dante nowhere alludes to it, as he certainly would have done had he heard of it. According to Balbo, Dante spent the time from August, 1313, to November, 1314, in Pisa and Lucca, and then took refuge at Verona, with Can Grande della Scala (whom Voltaire calls, drolly enough, _le grand can de Vérone_, as if he had been a Tartar), where he remained till 1318. Foscolo with equal positiveness sends him, immediately after the death of Henry, to Guido da Polenta[33] at Ravenna, and makes him join Can Grande only after the latter became captain of the Ghibelline league in December, 1318. In 1316 the government of Florence set forth a new decree allowing the exiles to return on conditions of fine and penance. Dante rejected the offer (by accepting which his guilt would have been admitted), in a letter still hot, after these five centuries, with indignant scorn. "Is this then the glorious return of Dante Alighieri to his country after nearly three lustres of suffering and exile? Did an innocence, patent to all, merit this?--this, the perpetual sweat and toil of study? Far from a man, the housemate of philosophy, be so rash and earthen hearted a humility as to allow himself to be offered up bound like a school-boy or a criminal! Far from a man, the preacher of justice, to pay those who have done him wrong as for a favor! This is not the way of retaining to my country; but if another can be found that shall not derogate from the fame and honor of Dante, that I will enter on with no lagging steps. For if by none such Florence may be entered, by me then never! Can I not everywhere behold the mirrors of the sun and stars? speculate on sweetest truths under any sky without first giving myself up inglorious, nay, ignominious, to the populace and city of Florence? Nor shall I want for bread." Dionisi puts the date of this letter in 1315.[34] He is certainly wrong, for the decree is dated December 11, 1316. Foscolo places it in 1316, Troya early in 1317, and both may be right, as the year began March 25. Whatever the date of Dante's visit to Voltaire's great Khan[35] of Verona, or the length of his stay with him, may have been, it is certain that he was in Ravenna in 1320, and that, on his return thither from an embassy to Venice (concerning which a curious letter, forged probably by Doni, is extant), he died on September 14, 1321 (13th, according to others). He was buried at Ravenna under a monument built by his friend, Guido Novello.[36] Dante is said to have dictated the following inscription for it on his death-bed:-- JVRA MONARCHIAE SVPEROS PHLEGETHONTA LACVSQVE LVSTRANDO CECINI VOLVERVNT FATA QVOVSQVE SED QVIA PARS CESSIT MELIORIBVS HOSPITA CASTRIS AVCTOREMQVE SVVM PETIIT FELICIOR ASTRIS HIC CLAVDOR DANTES PATRIIS EXTORRIS AB ORIS QVEM GENVIT PARVI FLORENTIA MATER AMORIS. Of which this rude paraphrase may serve as a translation:-- The rights of Monarchy, the Heavens, the Stream of Fire, the Pit, In vision seen, I sang as far as to the Fates seemed fit; But since my soul, an alien here, hath flown to nobler wars, And, happier now, hath gone to seek its Maker 'mid the stars, Here am I Dante shut, exiled from the ancestral shore, Whom Florence, the of all least-loving mother, bore.[37] If these be not the words of Dante, what is internal evidence worth? The indomitably self-reliant man, loyal first of all to his most unpopular convictions (his very host, Guido, being a Guelph), puts his Ghibellinism (_jura monarchiae_) in the front. The man whose whole life, like that of selected souls always, had been a war fare, calls heaven another camp,--a better one, thank God! The wanderer of so many years speaks of his soul as a guest,--glad to be gone, doubtless. The exile, whose sharpest reproaches of Florence are always those of an outraged lover, finds it bitter that even his unconscious bones should lie in alien soil. Giovanni Villani, the earliest authority, and a contemporary, thus sketches him: "This man was a great scholar in almost every science, though a layman; was a most excellent poet, philosopher, and rhetorician; perfect, as well in composing and versifying as in haranguing; a most noble speaker.... This Dante, on account of his learning, was a little haughty, and shy, and disdainful, and like a philosopher almost ungracious, knew not well how to deal with unlettered folk." Benvenuto da Imola tells us that he was very abstracted, as we may well believe of a man who carried the _Commedia_ in his brain. Boccaccio paints him in this wise: "Our poet was of middle height; his face was long, his nose aquiline, his jaw large, and the lower lip protruding somewhat beyond the upper; a little stooping in the shoulders; his eyes rather large than small; dark of complexion; his hair and beard thick, crisp, and black; and his countenance always sad and thoughtful. His garments were always dignified; the style such as suited ripeness of years; his gait was grave and gentlemanlike; and his bearing, whether public or private, wonderfully composed and polished. In meat and drink he was most temperate, nor was ever any more zealous in study or whatever other pursuit. Seldom spake he, save when spoken to, though a most eloquent person. In his youth he delighted especially in music and singing, and was intimate with almost all the singers and musicians of his day. He was much inclined to solitude, and familiar with few, and most assiduous in study as far as he could find time for it. Dante was also of marvellous capacity and the most tenacious memory." Various anecdotes of him are related by Boccaccio, Sacchetti, and others, none of them verisimilar, and some of them at least fifteen centuries old when revamped. Most of them are neither _veri_ nor _ben trovati_. One clear glimpse we get of him from the _Ottimo Comento_, the author of which says:[38] "I, the writer, heard Dante say that never a rhyme had led him to say other than he would, but that many a time and oft (_molte e spesse volte_) he had made words say for him what they were not wont to express for other poets." That is the only sincere glimpse we get of the living, breathing, word-compelling Dante. Looked at outwardly, the life of Dante seems to have been an utter and disastrous failure. What its inward satisfactions must have been, we, with the _Paradiso_ open before us, can form some faint conception. To him, longing with an intensity which only the word _Dantesque_ will express to realize an ideal upon earth, and continually baffled and misunderstood, the far greater part of his mature life must have been labor and sorrow. We can see how essential all that sad experience was to him, can understand why all the fairy stories hide the luck in the ugly black casket; but to him, then and there, how seemed it? Thou shalt relinquish everything of thee, Beloved most dearly; this that arrow is Shot from the bow of exile first of all; And thou shalt prove how salt a savor hath The bread of others, and how hard a path To climb and to descend the stranger's stairs![39] _Come sa di sale!_ Who never wet his bread with tears, says Goethe, knows ye not, ye heavenly powers! Our nineteenth century made an idol of the noble lord who broke his heart in verse once every six months, but the fourteenth was lucky enough to produce and not to make an idol of that rarest earthly phenomenon, a man of genius who could hold heartbreak at bay for twenty years, and would not let himself die till he had done his task. At the end of the _Vita Nuova_, his first work, Dante wrote down that remarkable aspiration that God would take him to himself after he had written of Beatrice such things as were never yet written of woman. It was literally fulfilled when the _Commedia_ was finished twenty-five years later. Scarce was Dante at rest in his grave when Italy felt instinctively that this was her great man. Boccaccio tells us that in 1329[40] Cardinal Poggetto (du Poiet) caused Dante's treatise _De Monarchiâ_, to be publicly burned at Bologna, and proposed further to dig up and burn the bones of the poet at Ravenna, as having been a heretic; but so much opposition was roused that he thought better of it. Yet this was during the pontificate of the Frenchman, John XXII., the reproof of whose simony Dante puts in the mouth of St. Peter, who declares his seat vacant,[41] whose damnation the poet himself seems to prophesy,[42] and against whose election he had endeavored to persuade the cardinals, in a vehement letter. In 1350 the republic of Florence voted the sum of ten golden florins to be paid by the hands of Messer Giovanni Boccaccio to Dante's daughter Beatrice, a nun in the convent of Santa Chiara at Ravenna. In 1396 Florence voted a monument, and begged in vain for the metaphorical ashes of the man of whom she had threatened to make literal cinders if she could catch him alive. In 1429[43] she begged again, but Ravenna, a dead city, was tenacious of the dead poet. In 1519 Michel Angelo would have built the monument, but Leo X. refused to allow the sacred dust to be removed. Finally, in 1829, five hundred and eight years after the death of Dante, Florence got a cenotaph fairly built in Santa Croce (by Ricci), ugly beyond even the usual lot of such, with three colossal figures on it, Dante in the middle, with Italy on one side and Poesy on the other. The tomb at Ravenna, built originally in 1483, by Cardinal Bembo, was restored by Cardinal Corsi in 1692, and finally rebuilt in its present form by Cardinal Gonzaga, in 1780, all three of whom commemorated themselves in Latin inscriptions. It is a little shrine covered with a dome, not unlike the tomb of a Mohammedan saint, and is now the chief magnet which draws foreigners and their gold to Ravenna. The _valet de place_ says that Dante is not buried under it, but beneath the pavement of the street in front of it, where also, he says, he saw my Lord Byron kneel and weep. Like everything in Ravenna, it is dirty and neglected. In 1373 (August 9) Florence instituted a chair of the _Divina Commedia_, and Boccaccio was named first professor. He accordingly began his lectures on Sunday, October 3, following, but his comment was broken off abruptly at the 17th verse of the 17th canto of the _Inferno_ by the illness which ended in his death, December 21, 1375. Among his successors were Filippo Villani and Filelfo. Bologna was the first to follow the example of Florence, Benvenuto da Imola having begun his lectures, according to Tiraboschi, so early as 1375. Chairs were established also at Pisa, Venice, Piacenza, and Milan before the close of the century. The lectures were delivered in the churches and on feast-days, which shows their popular character. Balbo reckons (but this is guess-work) that the MS. copies of the _Divina Commedia_ made during the fourteenth century, and now existing in the libraries of Europe, are more numerous than those of all other works, ancient and modern, made during the same period. Between the invention of printing and the year 1500 more than twenty editions were published in Italy, the earliest in 1472. During the sixteenth century there were forty editions; during the seventeenth,--a period, for Italy, of sceptical dilettanteism,--only three; during the eighteenth, thirty-four; and already, during the first half of the nineteenth, at least eighty. The first translation was into Spanish, in 1428.[44] M. St. René Taillandier says that the _Commedia_ was condemned by the inquisition in Spain; but this seems too general a statement, for, according to Foscolo,[45] it was the commentary of Landino and Vellutello, and a few verses in the _Inferno_ and _Paradiso_, which were condemned. The first French translation was that of Grangier, 1596, but the study of Dante struck no root there till the present century. Rivarol, who translated the _Inferno_ in 1783, was the first Frenchman who divined the wonderful force and vitality of the _Commedia_.[46] The expressions of Voltaire represent very well the average opinion of cultivated persons in respect of Dante in the middle of the eighteenth century. He says: "The Italians call him divine; but it is a hidden divinity; few people understand his oracles. He has commentators, which, perhaps, is another reason for his not being understood. His reputation will go on increasing, because scarce anybody reads him."[47] To Father Bettinelli he writes: "I estimate highly the courage with which you have dared to say that Dante was a madman and his work a monster." But he adds, what shows that Dante had his admirers even in that flippant century: "There are found among us, and in the eighteenth century, people who strive to admire imaginations so stupidly extravagant and barbarous."[48] Elsewhere he says that the _Commedia_ was "an odd poem, but gleaming with natural beauties, a work in which the author rose in parts above the bad taste of his age and his subject, and full of passages written as purely as if they had been of the time of Ariosto and Tasso."[49] It is curious to see this antipathetic fascination which Dante exercised over a nature so opposite to his own. At the beginning of this century Châteaubriand speaks of Dante with vague commendation, evidently from a very superficial acquaintance, and that only with the _Inferno_, probably from Rivarol's version.[50] Since then there have been four or five French versions in prose or verse, including one by Lamennais. But the austerity of Dante will not condescend to the conventional elegance which makes the charm of French, and the most virile of poets cannot be adequately rendered in the most feminine of languages. Yet in the works of Fauriel, Ozanam, Ampère, and Villemain, France has given a greater impulse to the study of Dante than any other country except Germany. Into Germany the _Commedia_ penetrated later. How utterly Dante was unknown there in the sixteenth century is plain from a passage in the "Vanity of the Arts and Sciences" of Cornelius Agrippa, where he is spoken of among the authors of lascivious stories: "There have been many of these historical pandars, of which some of obscure fame, as Aeneas Sylvius, Dantes, and Petrarch, Boccace, Pontanus," etc.[51] The first German translation was that of Kannegiesser (1809). Versions by Streckfuss, Kopisch, and Prince John (late king) of Saxony followed. Goethe seems never to have given that attention to Dante which his ever-alert intelligence might have been expected to bestow on so imposing a moral and aesthetic phenomenon. Unless the conclusion of the second part of "Faust" be an inspiration of the _Paradiso_, we remember no adequate word from him on this theme. His remarks on one of the German translations are brief, dry, and without that breadth which comes only of thorough knowledge and sympathy. But German scholarship and constructive criticism, through Witte, Kopisch, Wegele, Ruth, and others, have been of pre-eminent service in deepening the understanding and facilitating the study of the poet. In England the first recognition of Dante is by Chaucer in the "Hugelin of Pisa" of the "Monkes Tale,"[52] and an imitation of the opening verses of the third canto of the _Inferno_ ("Assembly of Foules"). In 1417 Giovanni da Serravalle, bishop of Fermo, completed a Latin prose translation of the _Commedia_, a copy of which, as he made it at the request of two English bishops whom he met at the council of Constance, was doubtless sent to England. Later we find Dante now and then mentioned, but evidently from hearsay only,[53] till the time of Spenser, who, like Milton fifty years later, shows that he had read his works closely. Thenceforward for more than a century Dante became a mere name, used without meaning by literary sciolists. Lord Chesterfield echoes Voltaire, and Dr. Drake in his "Literary Hours"[54] could speak of Darwin's "Botanic Garden" as showing the "wild and terrible sublimity of Dante"! The first complete English translation was by Boyd,--of the _Inferno_ in 1785, of the whole poem in 1802. There have been eight other complete translations, beginning with Cary's in 1814, six since 1850, beside several of the _Inferno_ singly. Of these that of Longfellow is the best. It is only within the last twenty years, however, that the study of Dante, in any true sense, became at all general. Even Coleridge seems to have been familiar only with the _Inferno_. In America Professor Ticknor was the first to devote a special course of illustrative lectures to Dante; he was followed by Longfellow, whose lectures, illustrated by admirable translations, are remembered with grateful pleasure by many who were thus led to learn the full significance of the great Christian poet. A translation of the _Inferno_ into quatrains by T.W. Parsons ranks with the best for spirit, faithfulness, and elegance. In Denmark and Russia translations of the _Inferno_ have been published, beside separate volumes of comment and illustration. We have thus sketched the steady growth of Dante's fame and influence to a universality unparalleled except in the case of Shakespeare, perhaps more remarkable if we consider the abstruse and mystical nature of his poetry. It is to be noted as characteristic that the veneration of Dantophilists for their master is that of disciples for their saint. Perhaps no other man could have called forth such an expression as that of Ruskin, that "the central man of all the world, as representing in perfect balance the imaginative, moral, and intellectual faculties, all at their highest, is Dante." The first remark to be made upon the writings of Dante is that they are all (with the possible exception of the treatise _De Vulgari Eloquio_) autobiographic, and that all of them, including that, are parts of a mutually related system, of which the central point is the individuality and experience of the poet. In the _Vita Nuova_ he recounts the story of his love for Beatrice Portinari, showing how his grief for her loss turned his thoughts first inward upon his own consciousness, and, failing all help there, gradually upward through philosophy to religion, and so from a world of shadows to one of eternal substances. It traces with exquisite unconsciousness the gradual but certain steps by which memory and imagination transubstantiated the woman of flesh and blood into a holy ideal, combining in one radiant symbol of sorrow and hope that faith which is the instinctive refuge of unavailing regret, that grace of God which higher natures learn to find in the trial which passeth all understanding, and that perfect womanhood, the dream of youth and the memory of maturity, which beckons toward the forever unattainable. As a contribution to the physiology of genius, no other book is to be compared with the _Vita Nuova_. It is more important to the understanding of Dante as a poet than any other of his works. It shows him (and that in the midst of affairs demanding practical ability and presence of mind) capable of a depth of contemplative abstraction, equalling that of a Soofi who has passed the fourth step of initiation. It enables us in some sort to see how, from being the slave of his imaginative faculty, he rose by self-culture and force of will to that mastery of it which is art. We comprehend the _Commedia_ better when we know that Dante could be an active, clear-headed politician and a mystic at the same time. Various dates have been assigned to the composition of the _Vita Nuova_. The earliest limit is fixed by the death of Beatrice in 1290 (though some of the poems are of even earlier date), and the book is commonly assumed to have been finished by 1295; Foscolo says 1294. But Professor Karl Witte, a high authority, extends the term as far as 1300.[55] The title of the book also, _Vita Nuova_, has been diversely interpreted. Mr. Garrow, who published an English version of it at Florence in 1846, entitles it the "Early Life of Dante." Balbo understands it in the same way.[56] But we are strongly of the opinion that "New Life" is the interpretation sustained by the entire significance of the book itself. His next work in order of date is the treatise _De Monarchiâ_. It has been generally taken for granted that Dante was a Guelph in politics up to the time of his banishment, and that out of resentment he then became a violent Ghibelline. Not to speak of the consideration that there is no author whose life and works present so remarkable a unity and logical sequence as those of Dante, Professor Witte has drawn attention to a fact which alone is enough to demonstrate that the _De Monarchiâ_ was written before 1300. That and the _Vita Nuova_ are the only works of Dante in which no allusion whatever is made to his exile. That bitter thought was continually present to him. In the _Convito_ it betrays itself often, and with touching unexpectedness. Even in the treatise _De Vulgari Eloquio_, he takes as one of his examples of style: "I have most pity for those, whosoever they are, that languish in exile, and revisit their country only in dreams." We have seen that the one decisive act of Dante's priorate was to expel from Florence the chiefs of both parties as the sowers of strife, and he tells us (_Paradiso_, XVII.) that he had formed a party by himself. The king of Saxony has well defined his political theory as being "an ideal Ghibellinism"[57] and he has been accused of want of patriotism only by those short-sighted persons who cannot see beyond their own parish. Dante's want of faith in freedom was of the same kind with Milton's refusing (as Tacitus had done before) to confound license with liberty. The argument of the _De Monarchiâ_ is briefly this: As the object of the individual man is the highest development of his faculties, so is it also with men united in societies. But the individual can only attain the highest development when all his powers are in absolute subjection to the intellect, and society only when it subjects its individual caprices to an intelligent head. This is the order of nature, as in families, and men have followed it in the organization of villages, towns, cities. Again, since God made man in his own image, men and societies most nearly resemble him in proportion as they approach unity. But as in all societies questions must arise, so there is need of a monarch for supreme arbiter. And only a universal monarch can be impartial enough for this, since kings of limited territories would always be liable to the temptation of private ends. With the internal policy of municipalities, commonwealths, and kingdoms, the monarch would have nothing to do, only interfering when there was danger of an infraction of the general peace. This is the doctrine of the first book, enforced sometimes eloquently, always logically, and with great fertility of illustration. It is an enlargement of some of the _obiter dicta_ of the _Convito_. The earnestness with which peace is insisted on as a necessary postulate of civic well-being shows what the experience had been out of which Dante had constructed his theory. It is to be looked on as a purely scholastic demonstration of a speculative thesis, in which the manifold exceptions and modifications essential in practical application are necessarily left aside. Dante almost forestalls the famous proposition of Calvin, "that it is possible to conceive a people without a prince, but not a prince without a people," when he says, _Non enim gens propter regem, sed e converso rex propter gentem_.[58] And in his letter to the princes and peoples of Italy on the coming of Henry VII., he bids them "obey their prince, but so as freemen preserving their own constitutional forms." He says also expressly: _Animadvertendum sane, quod cum dicitur humanum genus potest regi per unum supremum principem, non sic intelligendum est ut ab illo uno prodire possint municipia et leges municipales. Habent namque nationes, regna, et civitates inter se proprietates quas legibus differentibus regulari oportet_. Schlosser the historian compares Dante's system with that of the United States.[59] It in some respects resembled more the constitution of the Netherlands under the supreme stadtholder, but parallels between ideal and actual institutions are always unsatisfactory.[60] The second book is very curious. In it Dante endeavors to demonstrate the divine right of the Roman Empire to universal sovereignty. One of his arguments is, that Christ consented to be born under the reign of Augustus; another, that he assented to the imperial jurisdiction in allowing himself to be crucified under a decree of one of its courts. The atonement could not have been accomplished unless Christ suffered under sentence of a court having jurisdiction, for otherwise his condemnation would have been an injustice and not a penalty. Moreover, since all mankind was typified in the person of Christ, the court must have been one having jurisdiction over all mankind; and since he was delivered to Pilate, an officer of Tiberius, it must follow that the jurisdiction of Tiberius was universal. He draws an argument also from the wager of battle to prove that the Roman Empire was divinely permitted, at least, if not instituted. For since it is admitted that God gives the victory, and since the Romans always won it, therefore it was God's will that the Romans should attain universal empire. In the third book he endeavors to prove that the emperor holds by divine right, and not by permission of the pope. He assigns supremacy to the pope in spirituals, and to the emperor in temporals. This was a delicate subject, and though the king of Saxony (a Catholic) says that Dante did not overstep the limits of orthodoxy, it was on account of this part of the book that it was condemned as heretical.[61] Next follows the treatise _De Vulgari Eloquio_. Though we have doubts whether we possess this book as Dante wrote it, inclining rather to think that it is a copy in some parts textually exact, in others an abstract, there can be no question either of its great glossological value or that it conveys the opinions of Dante. We put it next in order, though written later than the _Convito_, only because, like the _De Monarchiâ_, it is written in Latin. It is a proof of the national instinct of Dante, and of his confidence in his genius, that he should have chosen to write all his greatest works in what was deemed by scholars a _patois_, but which he more than any other man made a classic language. Had he intended the _De Monarchiâ_ for a political pamphlet, he would certainly not have composed it in the dialect of the few. The _De Vulgari Eloquio_ was to have been in four books. Whether it was ever finished or not it is impossible to say; but only two books have come down to us. It treats of poetizing in the vulgar tongue, and of the different dialects of Italy. From the particularity with which it treats of the dialect of Bologna, it has been supposed to have been written in that city, or at least to furnish an argument in favor of Dante's having at some time studied there. In Lib. II. Cap. II., is a remarkable passage in which, defining the various subjects of song and what had been treated in the vulgar tongue by different poets, he says that his own theme had been righteousness. The _Convito_ is also imperfect. It was to have consisted of fourteen treatises, but, as we have it, contains only four. In the first he justifies the use of the vulgar idiom in preference to the Latin. In the other three he comments on three of his own _Canzoni_. It will be impossible to give an adequate analysis of this work in the limits allowed us.[62] It is an epitome of the learning of that age, philosophical, theological, and scientific. As affording illustration of the _Commedia_, and of Dante's style of thought, it is invaluable. It is reckoned by his countrymen the first piece of Italian prose, and there are parts of it which still stand unmatched for eloquence and pathos. The Italians (even such a man as Cantù among the rest) find in it and a few passages of the _Commedia_ the proof that Dante, as a natural philosopher was wholly in advance of his age,--that he had, among other things, anticipated Newton in the theory of gravitation. But this is as idle as the claim that Shakespeare had discovered the circulation of the blood before Harvey,[63] and one might as well attempt to dethrone Newton because Chaucer speaks of the love which draws the apple to the earth. The truth is, that it was only as a poet that Dante was great and original (glory enough, surely, to have not more than two competitors), and in matters of science, as did all his contemporaries, sought the guiding hand of Aristotle like a child. Dante is assumed by many to have been a Platonist, but this is not true, in the strict sense of the word. Like all men of great imagination, he was an idealist, and so far a Platonist, as Shakespeare might be proved to have been by his sonnets. But Dante's direct acquaintance with Plato may be reckoned at zero, and we consider it as having strongly influenced his artistic development for the better, that transcendentalist as he was by nature, so much so as to be in danger of lapsing into an Oriental mysticism, his habits of thought should have been made precise and his genius disciplined by a mind so severely logical as that of Aristotle. This does not conflict with what we believe to be equally true, that the Platonizing commentaries on his poem, like that of Landino, are the most satisfactory. Beside the prose already mentioned, we have a small collection of Dante's letters, the recovery of the larger number of which we owe to Professor Witte. They are all interesting, some of them especially so, as illustrating the prophetic character with which Dante invested himself. The longest is one addressed to Can Grande della Scalla, explaining the intention of the _Commedia_ and the method to be employed in its interpretation. The authenticity of this letter has been doubted, but is now generally admitted. We shall barely allude to the minor poems, full of grace and depth of mystic sentiment, and which would have given Dante a high place in the history of Italian literature, even had he written nothing else. They are so abstract, however, that without the extrinsic interest of having been written by the author of the _Commedia_, they would probably find few readers. All that is certainly known in regard to the _Commedia_ is that it was composed during the nineteen years which intervened between Dante's banishment and death. Attempts have been made to fix precisely the dates of the different parts, but without success, and the differences of opinion are bewildering. Foscolo has constructed an ingenious and forcible argument to show that no part of the poem was published before the author's death. The question depends somewhat on the meaning we attach to the word "published." In an age of manuscript the wide dispersion of a poem so long even as a single one of the three divisions of the _Commedia_ would be accomplished very slowly. But it is difficult to account for the great fame which Dante enjoyed during the latter years of his life, unless we suppose that parts, at least, of his greatest work had been read or heard by a large number of persons. This need not, however, imply publication; and Witte, whose opinion is entitled to great consideration, supposes even the _Inferno_ not to have been finished before 1314 or 1315. In a matter where certainty would be impossible, it is of little consequence to reproduce conjectural dates. In the letter to Can Grande, before alluded to, Dante himself has stated the theme of his song. He says that "the literal subject of the whole work is the state of the soul after death simply considered. But if the work be taken allegorically, the subject is man, as by merit or demerit, through freedom of the will, he renders himself liable to the reward or punishment of justice." He tells us that the work is to be interpreted in a literal, allegorical, moral, and anagogical sense, a mode then commonly employed with the Scriptures,[64] and of which he gives the following example: "To make which mode of treatment more clear, it may be applied in the following verses: _In exitu Israel de Aegypto, domus Jacob de populo barbaro, facta est Judaea sanctificatio ejus, Israel potestas ejus_.[65] For if we look only at the literal sense, it signifies the going out of the children of Israel from Egypt in the time of Moses; if at the allegorical, it signifies our redemption through Christ; if at the moral, it signifies the conversion of the soul from the grief and misery of sin to a state of grace; and if at the anagogical, it signifies the passage of the blessed soul from the bondage of this corruption to the freedom of eternal glory." A Latin couplet, cited by one of the old commentators, puts the matter compactly together for us:-- "_Litera_ gesta refert; quid credas _allegoria_; _Moralis_ quid agas; quid speres _anagogia_." Dante tells us that he calls his poem a comedy because it has a fortunate ending, and gives its title thus: "Here begins the comedy of Dante Alighieri, a Florentine by birth, but not in morals."[66] The poem consists of three parts, Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise. Each part is divided into thirty-three cantos, in allusion to the years of the Saviour's life; for though the Hell contains thirty-four, the first canto is merely introductory. In the form of the verse (triple rhyme) we may find an emblem of the Trinity, and in the three divisions, of the threefold state of man, sin, grace, and beatitude. Symbolic meanings reveal themselves, or make themselves suspected, everywhere, as in the architecture of the Middle Ages. An analysis of the poem would be out of place here, but we must say a few words of Dante's position as respects modern literature. If we except Wolfram von Eschenbach, he is the first Christian poet, the first (indeed, we might say the only) one whose whole system of thought is colored in every finest fibre by a purely Christian theology. Lapse through sin, mediation, and redemption, these are the subjects of the three parts of the poem: or, otherwise stated, intellectual conviction of the result of sin, typified in Virgil (symbol also of that imperialism whose origin he sang); moral conversion after repentance, by divine grace, typified in Beatrice; reconciliation with God, and actual blinding vision of him,--"The pure in heart shall see God." Here are general truths which any Christian may accept and find comfort in. But the poem comes nearer to us than this. It is the real history of a brother man, of a tempted, purified, and at last triumphant human soul; it teaches the benign ministry of sorrow, and that the ladder of that faith by which man climbs to the actual fruition of things not seen _ex quovis ligno non fit_, but only of the cross manfully borne. The poem is also, in a very intimate sense, an apotheosis of woman Indeed, as Marvell's drop of dew mirrored the whole firmament, so we find in the _Commedia_ the image of the Middle Ages, and the sentimental gyniolatry of chivalry, which was at best but skin-deep, is lifted in Beatrice to an ideal and universal plane. It is the same with Catholicism, with imperialism, with the scholastic philosophy, and nothing is more wonderful than the power of absorption and assimilation in this man, who could take up into himself the world that then was, and reproduce it with such, cosmopolitan truth to human nature and to his own individuality, as to reduce all contemporary history to a mere comment on his vision. We protest, therefore, against the parochial criticism which would degrade Dante to a mere partisan, which sees in him a Luther before his time, and would clap the _bonnet rouge_ upon his heavenly muse. Like all great artistic minds, Dante was essentially conservative, and, arriving precisely in that period of transition when Church and Empire were entering upon the modern epoch of thought, he strove to preserve both by presenting the theory of both in a pristine and ideal perfection. The whole nature of Dante was one of intense belief. There is proof upon proof that he believed himself invested with a divine mission Like the Hebrew prophets, with whose writings his whole soul was imbued, it was back to the old worship and the God of the fathers that he called his people, and not Isaiah himself was more destitute of that humor, that sense of ludicrous contrast, which is an essential in the composition of a sceptic. In Dante's time, learning had something of a sacred character, the line was hardly yet drawn between the clerk and the possessor of supernatural powers, it was with the next generation, with the elegant Petrarch, even more truly than with the kindly Boccaccio, that the purely literary life, and that dilettanteism, which is the twin sister of scepticism, began. As a merely literary figure, the position of Dante is remarkable. Not only as respects thought, but as respects aesthetics also, his great poem stands as a monument on the boundary line between the ancient and modern. He not only marks, but is in himself, the transition. _Arma virumque cano_, that is the motto of classic song; the things of this world and great men. Dante says, _subjectum est homo_, not _vir_; my theme is man, not a man. The scene of the old epic and drama was in this world, and its catastrophe here; Dante lays his scene in the human soul, and his fifth act in the other world. He makes himself the protagonist of his own drama. In the _Commedia_ for the first time Christianity wholly revolutionizes Art, and becomes its seminal principle. But aesthetically also, as well as morally, Dante stands between the old and the new, and reconciles them. The theme of his poem is purely subjective, modern, what is called romantic; but its treatment is objective (almost to realism, here and there), and it is limited by a form of classic severity. In the same way he sums up in himself the two schools of modern poetry which had preceded him, and, while essentially lyrical in his subject, is epic in the handling of it. So also he combines the deeper and more abstract religious sentiment of the Teutonic races with the scientific precision and absolute systematism of the Romanic. In one respect Dante stands alone. While we can in some sort account for such representative men as Voltaire and Goethe (nay, even Shakespeare) by the intellectual and moral fermentation of the age in which they lived, Dante seems morally isolated and to have drawn his inspiration almost wholly from his own internal reserves. Of his mastery in style we need say little here. Of his mere language, nothing could be better than the expression of Rivarol "His verse holds itself erect by the mere force of the substantive and verb, without the help of a single epithet." We will only add a word on what seems to us an extraordinary misapprehension of Coleridge, who disparages Dante by comparing his Lucifer with Milton's Satan. He seems to have forgotten that the precise measurements of Dante were not prosaic, but absolutely demanded by the nature of his poem. He is describing an actual journey, and his exactness makes a part of the verisimilitude. We read the "Paradise Lost" as a poem, the _Commedia_ as a record of fact; and no one can read Dante without believing his story, for it is plain that he believed it himself. It is false aesthetics to confound the grandiose with the imaginative. Milton's angels are not to be compared with Dante's, at once real and supernatural; and the Deity of Milton is a Calvinistic Zeus, while nothing in all poetry approaches the imaginative grandeur of Dante's vision of God at the conclusion of the _Paradiso_. In all literary history there is no such figure as Dante, no such homogeneousness of life and works, such loyalty to ideas, such sublime irrecognition of the unessential; and there is no moral more touching than that the contemporary recognition of such a nature, so endowed and so faithful to its endowment, should be summed up in the sentence of Florence: _Igne comburatur sic quod moriatur_.[67] The range of Dante's influence is not less remarkable than its intensity. Minds, the antipodes of each other in temper and endowment, alike feel the force of his attraction, the pervasive comfort of his light and warmth. Boccaccio and Lamennais are touched with the same reverential enthusiasm. The imaginative Ruskin is rapt by him, as we have seen, perhaps beyond the limit where critical appreciation merges in enthusiasm; and the matter-of-fact Schlosser tells us that "he, who was wont to contemplate earthly life wholly in an earthly light, has made use of Dante, Landino, and Vellutello in his solitude to bring a heavenly light into his inward life." Almost all other poets have their seasons, but Dante penetrates to the moral core of those who once fairly come within his sphere, and possesses them wholly. His readers turn students, his students zealots, and what was a taste becomes a religion. The homeless exile finds a home in thousands of grateful hearts. _E venne da esilio in questa pace!_ Every kind of objection, aesthetic and other, may be, and has been, made to the _Divina Commedia_, especially by critics who have but a superficial acquaintance with it, or rather with the _Inferno_, which is as far as most English critics go. Coleridge himself, who had a way of divining what was in books, may be justly suspected of not going further, though with Carey to help him. Mr. Carlyle, who has said admirable things of Dante the man, was very imperfectly read in Dante the author, or he would never have put Sordello in hell and the meeting with Beatrice in paradise. In France it was not much better (though Rivarol has said the best thing hitherto of Dante's parsimony of epithet)[68] before Ozanam, who, if with decided ultramontane leanings, has written excellently well of our poet, and after careful study. Voltaire, though not without relentings toward a poet who had put popes heels upward in hell, regards him on the whole as a stupid monster and barbarian. It was no better in Italy, if we may trust Foscolo, who affirms that "neither Pelli nor others deservedly more celebrated than he ever read attentively the poem of Dante, perhaps never ran through it from the first verse to the last."[69] Accordingly we have heard that the _Commedia_ was a sermon, a political pamphlet, the revengeful satire of a disappointed Ghibelline, nay, worse, of a turncoat Guelph. It is narrow, it is bigoted, it is savage, it is theological, it is mediaeval, it is heretical, it is scholastic, it is obscure, it is pedantic, its Italian is not that of _la Crusca_, its ideas are not those of an enlightened eighteenth century, it is everything, in short, that a poem should not be; and yet, singularly enough, the circle of its charm has widened in proportion as men have receded from the theories of Church and State which are supposed to be its foundation, and as the modes of thought of its author have become more alien to those of his readers. In spite of all objections, some of which are well founded, the _Commedia_ remains one of the three or four universal books that have ever been written. We may admit, with proper limitations, the modern distinction between the Artist and the Moralist. With the one Form is all in all, with the other Tendency. The aim of the one is to delight, of the other to convince. The one is master of his purpose, the other mastered by it. The whole range of perception and thought is valuable to the one as it will minister to imagination, to the other only as it is available for argument. With the moralist use is beauty, good only as it serves an ulterior purpose; with the artist beauty is use, good in and for itself. In the fine arts the vehicle makes part of the thought, coalesces with it. The living conception shapes itself a body in marble, color, or modulated sound, and henceforth the two are inseparable. The results of the moralist pass into the intellectual atmosphere of mankind, it matters little by what mode of conveyance. But where, as in Dante, the religious sentiment and the imagination are both organic, something interfused with the whole being of the man, so that they work in kindly sympathy, the moral will insensibly suffuse itself with beauty as a cloud with light. Then that fine sense of remote analogies, awake to the assonance between facts seemingly remote and unrelated, between the outward and inward worlds, though convinced that the things of this life are shadows, will be persuaded also that they are not fantastic merely, but imply a substance somewhere, and will love to set forth the beauty of the visible image because it suggests the ineffably higher charm of the unseen original. Dante's ideal of life, the enlightening and strengthening of that native instinct of the soul which leads it to strive backward toward its divine source, may sublimate the senses till each becomes a window for the light of truth and the splendor of God to shine through. In him as in Calderon the perpetual presence of imagination not only glorifies the philosophy of life and the science of theology, but idealizes both in symbols of material beauty. Though Dante's conception of the highest end of man was that he should climb through every phase of human experience to that transcendental and super-sensual region where the true, the good, and the beautiful blend in the white light of God, yet the prism of his imagination forever resolved the ray into color again, and he loved to show it also where, entangled and obstructed in matter, it became beautiful once more to the eye of sense. Speculation, he tells us, is the use, without any mixture, of our noblest part (the reason). And this part cannot in this life have its perfect use, which is to behold God (who is the highest object of the intellect), except inasmuch as the intellect considers and beholds him in his effects.[70] Underlying Dante the metaphysician, statesman, and theologian, was always Dante the poet,[71] irradiating and vivifying, gleaming through in a picturesque phrase, or touching things unexpectedly with that ideal light which softens and subdues like distance in the landscape. The stern outline of his system wavers and melts away before the eye of the reader in a mirage of imagination that lifts from beyond the sphere of vision and hangs in serener air images of infinite suggestion projected from worlds not realized, but substantial to faith, hope, and aspiration. Beyond the horizon of speculation floats, in the passionless splendor of the empyrean, the city of our God, the Rome whereof Christ is a Roman,[72] the citadel of refuge, even in this life, for souls purified by sorrow and self denial, transhumanized[73] to the divine abstraction of pure contemplation. "And it is called Empyrean," he says in his letter to Can Grande, "which is the same as a heaven blazing with fire or ardor, not because there is in it a material fire or burning, but a spiritual one, which is blessed love or charity." But this splendor he bodies forth, if sometimes quaintly, yet always vividly and most often in types of winning grace. Dante was a mystic with a very practical turn of mind. A Platonist by nature, an Aristotelian by training, his feet keep closely to the narrow path of dialectics, because he believed it the safest, while his eyes are fixed on the stars and his brain is busy with things not demonstrable, save by that grace of God which passeth all understanding, nor capable of being told unless by far off hints and adumbrations. Though he himself has directly explained the scope, the method, and the larger meaning of his greatest work,[74] though he has indirectly pointed out the way to its interpretation in the _Convito_, and though everything he wrote is but an explanatory comment on his own character and opinions, unmistakably clear and precise, yet both man and poem continue not only to be misunderstood popularly, but also by such as should know better.[75] That those who confined their studies to the _Commedia_ should have interpreted it variously is not wonderful, for out of the first or literal meaning others open, one out of another, each of wider circuit and purer abstraction, like Dante's own heavens, giving and receiving light.[76] Indeed, Dante himself is partly to blame for this. "The form or mode of treatment," he says, "is poetic, fictive, descriptive, digressive, transumptive, and withal definitive, divisive, probative, improbative, and positive of examples." Here are conundrums enough, to be sure! To Italians at home, for whom the great arenas of political and religious speculation were closed, the temptation to find a subtler meaning than the real one was irresistible. Italians in exile, on the other hand, made Dante the stalking-horse from behind which they could take a long shot at Church and State, or at obscurer foes.[77] Infinitely touching and sacred to us is the instinct of intense sympathy which drawst hese latter toward their great forerunner, _exul immeritus_ like themselves.[78] But they have too often wrung a meaning from Dante which is injurious to the man and out of keeping with the ideas of his age. The aim in expounding a great poem should be, not to discover an endless variety of meanings often contradictory, but whatever it has of great and perennial significance; for such it must have, or it would long ago have ceased to be living and operative, would long ago have taken refuge in the Chartreuse of great libraries, dumb thenceforth to all mankind. We do not mean to say that this minute exegesis is useless or unpraiseworthy, but only that it should be subsidiary to the larger way. It serves to bring out more clearly what is very wonderful in Dante, namely, the omnipresence of his memory throughout the work, so that its intimate coherence does not exist in spite of the reconditeness and complexity of allusion, but is woven out of them. The poem has many senses, he tells us, and there can be no doubt of it; but it has also, and this alone will account for its fascination, a living soul behind them all and informing all, an intense singleness of purpose, a core of doctrine simple, human, and wholesome, though it be also, to use his own phrase, the bread of angels. Nor is this unity characteristic only of the _Divina Commedia_. All the works of Dante, with the possible exception of the _De vulgari Eloquio_ (which is unfinished), are component parts of a Whole Duty of Man mutually completing and interpreting one another. They are also, as truly as Wordsworth's "Prelude," a history of the growth of a poet's mind. Like the English poet he valued himself at a high rate, the higher no doubt after Fortune had made him outwardly cheap. _Sempre il magnanimo si magnifica in suo cuore; e così lo pusillanimo per contrario sempre si tiene meno che non è._[79] As in the prose of Milton, whose striking likeness to Dante in certain prominent features of character has been remarked by Foscolo, there are in Dante's minor works continual allusions to himself of great value as material for his biographer. Those who read attentively will discover that the tenderness he shows toward Francesca and her lover did not spring from any friendship for her family, but was a constant quality of his nature, and that what is called his revengeful ferocity is truly the implacable resentment of a lofty mind and a lover of good against evil, whether showing itself in private or public life; perhaps hating the former manifestation of it the most because he believed it to be the root of the latter,--a faith which those who have watched the course of politics in a democracy, as he had, will be inclined to share. His gentleness is all the more striking by contrast, like that silken compensation which blooms out of the thorny stem of the cactus. His moroseness,[80] his party spirit, and his personal vindictiveness are all predicated upon the _Inferno_, and upon a misapprehension or careless reading even of that. Dante's zeal was not of that sentimental kind, quickly kindled and as soon quenched, that hovers on the surface of shallow minds, "Even as the flame of unctuous is wont To move upon the outer surface only";[81] it was the steady heat of an inward fire kindling the whole character of the man through and through, like the minarets of his own city of Dis.[82] He was, as seems distinctive in some degree of the Latinized races, an unflinching _à priori_ logician, not unwilling to "syllogize invidious verities,"[83] wherever they might lead him, like Sigier, whom he has put in paradise, though more than suspected of heterodoxy. But at the same time, as we shall see, he had something of the practical good sense of that Teutonic stock whence he drew a part of his blood, which prefers a malleable syllogism that can yield without breaking to the inevitable, but incalculable pressure of human nature and the stiffer logic of events. His theory of Church and State was not merely a fantastic one, but intended for the use and benefit of men as they were; and he allowed accordingly for aberrations, to which even the law of gravitation is forced to give place; how much more, then, any scheme whose very starting-point is the freedom of the will! We are thankful for a commentator at last who passes dry-shod over the _turbide onde_ of inappreciative criticism, and, quietly waving aside the thick atmosphere which has gathered about the character of Dante both as man and poet, opens for us his City of Doom with the divining-rod of reverential study. Miss Rossetti comes commended to our interest, not only as one of a family which seems to hold genius by the tenure of gavelkind, but as having a special claim by inheritance to a love and understanding of Dante. She writes English with a purity that has in it something of feminine softness with no lack of vigor or precision. Her lithe mind winds itself with surprising grace through the metaphysical and other intricacies of her subject. She brings to her work the refined enthusiasm of a cultivated woman and the penetration of sympathy. She has chosen the better way (in which Germany took the lead) of interpreting Dante out of himself, the pure spring from which, and from which alone, he drew his inspiration, and not from muddy Fra Alberico or Abbate Giovacchino, from stupid visions of Saint Paul or voyages of Saint Brandan. She has written by far the best comment that has appeared in English, and we should say the best that has been done in England, were it not for her father's _Comento analitico_, for excepting which her filial piety will thank us. Students of Dante in the original will be grateful to her for many suggestive hints, and those who read him in English will find in her volume a travelling map in which the principal points and their connections are clearly set down. In what we shall say of Dante we shall endeavor only to supplement her interpretation with such side-lights as may have been furnished us by twenty years of assiduous study. Dante's thought is multiform, and, like certain street signs, once common, presents a different image according to the point of view. Let us consider briefly what was the plan of the _Divina Commedia_ and Dante's aim in writing it, which, if not to justify, was at least to illustrate, for warning and example, the ways of God to man. The higher intention of the poem was to set forth the results of sin, or unwisdom, and of virtue, or wisdom, in this life, and consequently in the life to come, which is but the continuation and fulfilment of this. The scene accordingly is the spiritual world, of which we are as truly denizens now as hereafter. The poem is a diary of the human soul in its journey upwards from error through repentance to atonement with God. To make it apprehensible by those whom it was meant to teach, nay, from its very nature as a poem, and not a treatise of abstract morality, it must set forth everything by means of sensible types and images. "To speak thus is adapted to your mind, Since only from the sensible it learns What makes it worthy of intellect thereafter, On this account the Scripture condescends Unto your faculties, and feet and hands To God attributes, and means something else."[84] Whoever has studied mediaeval art in any of its branches need not be told that Dante's age was one that demanded very palpable and even revolting types. As in the old legend, a drop of scalding sweat from the damned soul must shrivel the very skin of those for whom he wrote, to make them wince if not to turn them away from evil doing. To consider his hell a place of physical torture is to take Circe's herd for real swine. Its mouth yawns not only under Florence, but before the feet of every man everywhere who goeth about to do evil. His hell is a condition of the soul, and he could not find images loathsome enough to express the moral deformity which is wrought by sin on its victims, or his own abhorrence of it. Its inmates meet you in the street every day. "Hell hath no limits, nor is circumscribed In one self place, for where we are is hell, And where hell is there we must ever be."[85] It is our own sensual eye that gives evil the appearance of good, and out of a crooked hag makes a bewitching siren. The reason enlightened by the grace of God sees it as it truly is, full of stench and corruption.[86] It is this office of reason which Dante undertakes to perform, by divine commission, in the _Inferno_. There can be no doubt that he looked upon himself as invested with the prophetic function, and the Hebrew forerunners, in whose society his soul sought consolation and sustainment, certainly set him no example of observing the conventions of good society in dealing with the enemies of God. Indeed, his notions of good society were not altogether those of this world in any generation. He would have defined it as meaning "the peers" of Philosophy, "souls free from wretched and vile delights and from vulgar habits, endowed with genius and memory."[87] Dante himself had precisely this endowment, and in a very surprising degree. His genius enabled him to see and to show what he saw to others; his memory neither forgot nor forgave. Very hateful to his fervid heart and sincere mind would have been the modern theory which deals with sin as involuntary error, and by shifting off the fault to the shoulders of Atavism or those of Society, personified for purposes of excuse, but escaping into impersonality again from the grasp of retribution, weakens that sense of personal responsibility which is the root of self-respect and the safeguard of character. Dante indeed saw clearly enough that the Divine justice did at length overtake Society in the ruin of states caused by the corruption of private, and thence of civic, morals; but a personality so intense as his could not be satisfied with such a tardy and generalized penalty as this. "It is Thou," he says sternly, "who hast done this thing, and Thou, not Society, shalt be damned for it; nay, damned all the worse for this paltry subterfuge. This is not my judgment, but that of universal Nature[88] from before the beginning of the world."[89] Accordingly the highest reason, typified in his guide Virgil, rebukes him for bringing compassion to the judgments of God,[90] and again embraces him and calls the mother that bore him blessed, when he bids Filippo Argenti begone among the other dogs.[91] This latter case shocks our modern feelings the more rudely for the simple pathos with which Dante makes Argenti answer when asked who he was, "Thou seest I am one that weeps." It is also the one that makes most strongly for the theory of Dante's personal vindictiveness,[92] and it may count for what it is worth. We are not greatly concerned to defend him on that score, for he believed in the righteous use of anger, and that baseness was its legitimate quarry. He did not think the Tweeds and Fisks, the political wire-pullers and convention-packers, of his day merely amusing, and he certainly did think it the duty of an upright and thoroughly trained citizen to speak out severely and unmistakably. He believed firmly, almost fiercely, in a divine order of the universe, a conception whereof had been vouchsafed him, and that whatever and whoever hindered or jostled it, whether wilfully or blindly it mattered not, was to be got out of the way at all hazards; because obedience to God's law, and not making things generally comfortable, was the highest duty of man, as it was also his only way to true felicity. It has been commonly assumed that Dante was a man soured by undeserved misfortune, that he took up a wholly new outfit of political opinions with his fallen fortunes, and that his theory of life and of man's relations to it was altogether reshaped for him by the bitter musings of his exile. This would be singular, to say the least, in a man who tells us that he "felt himself indeed four-square against the strokes of chance," and whose convictions were so intimate that they were not merely intellectual conclusions, but parts of his moral being. Fortunately we are called on to believe nothing of the kind. Dante himself has supplied us with hints and dates which enable us to watch the germination and trace the growth of his double theory of government, applicable to man as he is a citizen of this world, and as he hopes to become hereafter a freeman of the celestial city. It would be of little consequence to show in which of two equally selfish and short-sighted parties a man enrolled himself six hundred years ago, but it is worth something to know that a man of ambitious temper and violent passions, aspiring to office in a city of factions, could rise to a level of principle so far above them all. Dante's opinions have life in them still, because they were drawn from living sources of reflection and experience, because they were reasoned out from the astronomic laws of history and ethics, and were not weather-guesses snatched in a glance at the doubtful political sky of the hour. Swiftly the politic goes: is it dark? he borrows a lantern; Slowly the statesman and sure, guiding his feet by the stars. It will be well, then, to clear up the chronology of Dante's thought. When his ancestor Cacciaguida prophesies to him the life which is to be his after 1300,[93] he says, speaking of his exile:-- "And that which most shall weigh upon thy shoulders Will be the bad and foolish company With which into this valley thou shalt fall; * * * * * "Of their bestiality their own proceedings Shall furnish proof; _so 'twill be well for thee A party to have made thee by thyself_." Here both context and grammatical construction (infallible guides in a writer so scrupulous and exact) imply irresistibly that Dante had become a party by himself before his exile. The measure adopted by the Priors of Florence while he was one of them (with his assent and probably by his counsel), of sending to the frontier the leading men of both factions, confirms this implication. Among the persons thus removed from the opportunity of doing mischief was his dearest friend Guido Cavalcanti, to whom he had not long before addressed the _Vita Nuova_.[94] Dante evidently looked back with satisfaction on his conduct at this time, and thought it both honest and patriotic, as it certainly was disinterested. "We whose country is the world, as the ocean to the fish," he tells us, "though we drank of the Arno in infancy, and love Florence so much that, _because we loved her, we suffer exile unjustly,_ support the shoulders of our judgment rather upon reason than the senses."[95] And again, speaking of old ago, he says: "And the noble soul at this age blesses also the times past, and well may bless them, because, revolving them in memory, she recalls her righteous conduct, without which she could not enter the port to which she draws nigh, with so much riches and so great gain." This language is not that of a man who regrets some former action as mistaken, still less of one who repented it for any disastrous consequences to himself. So, in justifying a man for speaking of himself, he alleges two examples,--that of Boethius, who did so to "clear himself of the perpetual infamy of his exile"; and that of Augustine, "for, by the process of his life, which was from bad to good, from good to better, and from better to best, he gave us example and teaching."[96] After middle life, at least, Dante had that wisdom "whose use brings with it marvellous beauties, that is, contentment with every condition of time, and contempt of those things which others make their masters."[97] If Dante, moreover, wrote his treatise _De Monarchiâ_ before 1302, and we think Witte's inference,[98] from its style and from the fact that he nowhere alludes to his banishment in it, conclusive on this point, then he was already a Ghibelline in the same larger and unpartisan sense which ever after distinguished him from his Italian contemporaries. "Let, let the Ghibellines ply their handicraft Beneath some other standard; for this ever Ill follows he who it and justice parts," he makes Justinian say, speaking of the Roman eagle.[99] His Ghibellinism, though undoubtedly the result of what he had seen of Italian misgovernment, embraced in its theoretical application the civilized world. His political system was one which his reason adopted, not for any temporary expediency, but because it conduced to justice, peace, and civilization,--the three conditions on which alone freedom was possible in any sense which made it worth having. Dante was intensely Italian, nay, intensely Florentine, but on all great questions he was, by the logical structure of his mind and its philosophic impartiality, incapable of intellectual provincialism.[100] If the circle of his affections, as with persistent natures commonly, was narrow, his thought swept a broad horizon from that tower of absolute self which he had reared for its speculation. Even upon the principles of poetry, mechanical and other,[101] he had reflected more profoundly than most of those who criticise his work, and it was not by chance that he discovered the secret of that magical word too few, which not only distinguishes his verse from all other, but so strikingly from his own prose. He never took the bit of art[102] between his teeth where only poetry, and not doctrine, was concerned. If Dante's philosophy, on the one hand, was practical a guide for the conduct of life, it was, on the other, a much more transcendent thing, whose body was wisdom her soul love, and her efficient cause truth. It is a practice of wisdom from the mere love of it, for so we must interpret his _amoroso uso di sapienzia_, when we remember how he has said before[103] that "the love of wisdom for its delight or profit is not true love of wisdom." And this love must embrace knowledge in all its branches, for Dante is content with nothing less than a pancratic training, and has a scorn of _dilettanti_, specialists, and quacks. "Wherefore none ought to be called a true philosopher who for any delight loves any part of knowledge, as there are many who delight in composing _Canzoni_, and delight to be studious in them, and who delight to be studious in rhetoric and in music, and flee and abandon the other sciences which are all members of wisdom."[104] "Many love better to be held masters than to be so." With him wisdom is the generalization from many several knowledges of small account by themselves; it results therefore from breadth of culture, and would be impossible without it. Philosophy is a noble lady (_donna gentil_),[105] partaking of the divine essence by a kind of eternal marriage, while with other intelligences she is united in a less measure "as a mistress of whom no lover takes complete joy."[106] The eyes of this lady are her demonstrations, and her smile is her persuasion. "The eyes of wisdom are her demonstrations by which truth is beheld most certainly; and her smile is her persuasions in which the interior light of wisdom is shown under a certain veil, and in these two is felt that highest pleasure of beatitude which is the greatest good in paradise."[107] "It is to be known that the beholding this lady was so largely ordained for us, not merely to look upon the face which she shows us, but that we may desire to attain the things which she keeps concealed. And as through her much thereof is seen by reason, so by her we believe that every miracle may have its reason in a higher intellect, and consequently may be. Whence our good faith has its origin, whence comes the hope of those unseen things which we desire, and through that the operation of charity, by the which three virtues we rise to philosophize in that celestial Athens where the Stoics, Peripatetics, and Epicureans through the art of eternal truth accordingly concur in one will."[108] As to the double scope of Dante's philosophy we will cite a passage from the _Convito_, all the more to our purpose as it will illustrate his own method of allegorizing. "Verily the use of our mind is double, that is, practical and speculative, the one and the other most delightful, although that of contemplation be the more so. That of the practical is for us to act virtuously, that is, honorably, with prudence, temperance, fortitude, and justice. [These are the four stars seen by Dante, _Purgatorio_, I. 22-27.] That of the speculative is not to act for ourselves, but to consider the works of God and nature.... Verily of these uses one is more full of beatitude than the other, as it is the speculative, which without any admixture is the use of our noblest part.... And this part in this life cannot have its use perfectly, which is to see God, except inasmuch as the intellect considers him and beholds him through his effects. And that we should seek this beatitude as the highest, and not the other, the Gospel of Mark teaches us if we will look well. Mark says that Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Mary Salome went to find the Saviour at the tomb and found him not, but found a youth clad in white who said to them, 'Ye seek the Saviour, and I say unto you that he is not here; and yet fear ye not, but go and say unto his disciples and Peter that he will go before them into Galilee, and there ye shall see him even as he told you.' By these three women may be understood the three sects of the active life, that is, the Epicureans, the Stoics, and the Peripatetics, who go to the tomb, that is, to the present life, which is a receptacle of things corruptible, and seek the Saviour, that is, beatitude, and find him not, but they find a youth in white raiment, who, according to the testimony of Matthew and the rest, was an angel of God. This angel is that nobleness of ours which comes from God, as hath been said, which speaks in our reason and says to each of these sects, that is, to whoever goes seeking beatitude in this life, that it is not here, but go and say to the disciples and to Peter, that is, to those who go seeking it and those who are gone astray (like Peter who had denied), that it will go before them into Galilee, that is, into speculation. Galilee is as much as to say Whiteness. Whiteness is a body full of corporeal light more than any other, and so contemplation is fuller of spiritual light than anything else here below. And he says, 'it will go before,' and does not say, 'it will be with you,' to give us to understand that God always goes before our contemplation, nor can we ever overtake here Him who is our supreme beatitude. And it is said, 'There ye shall see him as he told you,' that is, here ye shall have of his sweetness, that is, felicity, as is promised you here, that is, as it is ordained that ye can have. And thus it appears that we find our beatitude, this felicity of which we are speaking, first imperfect in the active life, that is, in the operations of the moral virtues, and afterwards wellnigh perfect in the operation of the intellectual ones, the which two operations are speedy and most direct ways to lead to the supreme beatitude, the which cannot be had here, as appears by what has been said."[109] At first sight there may seem to be some want of agreement in what Dante says here of the soul's incapacity of the vision of God in this life with the triumphant conclusion of his own poem. But here as elsewhere Dante must be completed and explained by himself. "We must know that everything most greatly desires its own perfection, and in that its every desire is appeased, and by that everything is desired. [That is, the one is drawn toward, the other draws.] And this is that desire which makes every delight maimed, for no delight is so great in this life that it can take away from the soul this thirst so that desire remain not in the thought."[110] "And since it is most natural to wish to be in God, the human soul naturally wills it with all longing. And since its being depends on God and is preserved thereby it naturally desires and wills to be united with God in order to fortify its being. And since in the goodnesses of human nature is shown some reason for those of the Divine, it follows that the human soul unites itself in a spiritual way with those so much the more strongly and quickly as they appear more perfect, and this appearance happens according as the knowledge of the soul is clear or impeded. And this union is what we call Love, whereby may be known what is within the soul, seeing those it outwardly loves.... And the human soul which is ennobled with the ultimate potency, that is, reason, participates in the Divine nature after the manner of an eternal Intelligence, because the soul is so ennobled and denuded of matter in that sovran potency that the Divine light shines in it as in an angel."[111] This union with God may therefore take place before the warfare of life is over, but is only possible for souls _perfettamente naturati_, perfectly endowed by nature.[112] This depends on the virtue of the generating soul and the concordant influence of the planets. "And if it happen that through the purity of the recipient soul, the intellectual virtue be well abstracted and absolved from every corporeal shadow, the Divine bounty is multiplied in it as a thing sufficient to receive the same."[113] "And there are some who believe that if all the aforesaid virtues [powers] should unite for the production of a soul in their best disposition, so much of the Deity would descend into it that it would be almost another incarnate God."[114] Did Dante believe himself to be one of these? He certainly gives us reason to think so. He was born under fortunate stars, as he twice tells us,[115] and he puts the middle of his own life at the thirty-fifth year, which is the period he assigns for it in the diviner sort of men.[116] The stages of Dante's intellectual and moral growth may, we think, be reckoned with some approach to exactness from data supplied by himself. In the poems of the _Vita Nuova_, Beatrice, until her death, was to him simply a poetical ideal, a type of abstract beauty, chosen according to the fashion of the day after the manner of the Provençal poets, but in a less carnal sense than theirs. "And by the fourth nature of animals, that is, the sensitive, man has another love whereby he loves according to sensible appearance, even as a beast.... And by the fifth and final nature, that is, the truly human, or, to speak better, angelic, that is, rational, man has a love for truth and virtue.... Wherefore, since this nature is called _mind_, I said that love discoursed in my mind to make it understood that this love was that which is born in the noblest of natures, that is, [the love] of truth and virtue, and to _shut out every false opinion by which it might be suspected that my love was for the delight of sense._"[117] This is a very weighty affirmation, made, as it is, so deliberately by a man of Dante's veracity, who would and did speak truth at every hazard. Let us dismiss at once and forever all the idle tales of Dante's amours, of la Montanina, Gentucca, Pietra, Lisetta, and the rest, to that outer darkness of impure thoughts _là onde la stoltezza dipartille._[118] We think Miss Rossetti a little hasty in allowing that in the years which immediately followed Beatrice's death Dante gave himself up "more or less to sensual gratification and earthly aim." The earthly aim we in a certain sense admit; the sensual gratification we reject as utterly inconsistent, not only with Dante's principles, but with his character and indefatigable industry. Miss Rossetti illustrates her position by a subtle remark on "the lulling spell of an intellectual and sensitive delight in good running parallel with a voluntary and actual indulgence in evil." The dead Beatrice beckoned him toward the life of contemplation, and it was precisely during this period that he attempted to find happiness in the life of action. "Verily it is to be known, that we may in this life have two felicities, following two ways, good and best, which lead us thither. The one is the active, the other the contemplative life, the which (though by the active we may attain, as has been said, unto good felicity) leads us to the best felicity and blessedness."[119] "The life of my heart, that is, of my inward self, was wont to be a sweet thought which went many times to the feet of God, that is to say, in thought I contemplated the kingdom of the Blessed. And I tell the final cause why I mounted thither in thought when I say, 'Where it [the sweet thought] beheld a lady in glory,' that I might make it understood that I was and am certain, by _her gracious revelation, that she was in heaven,_ [not on earth, as I had vainly imagined,] whither I went in thought, so often as was possible to me, as it were rapt."[120] This passage exactly answers to another in _Purgatorio_, XXX. 115-138:-- "Not only by the work of those great wheels That destine every seed unto some end, According as the stars are in conjunction, _But by the largess of celestial graces,_ * * * * * "Such had this man become in his New Life Potentially, that every righteous habit Would have made admirable proof in him; * * * * * "Some time I did sustain him with my look (_volto_); Revealing unto him my youthful eyes, I led him with me turned in the right way. As soon as ever of my second age I was upon the threshold and changed life, Himself from me he took and gave to others. When from the flesh to spirit I ascended, And beauty and virtue were in me increased, I was to him less dear and less delightful, And into ways untrue he turned his steps, Pursuing the false images of good That never any promises fulfil[121] Nor prayer for inspiration me availed,[122] _By means of which in dreams and otherwise I called him back_, so little did he heed them. So low he fell, that all appliances For his salvation were already short Save showing him the people of perdition." Now Dante himself, we think, gives us the clew, by following which we may reconcile the contradiction, what Miss Rossetti calls "the astounding discrepancy," between the Lady of the _Vita Nuova_ who made him unfaithful to Beatrice, and the same Lady in the _Convito_, who in attributes is identical with Beatrice herself. We must remember that the prose part of the _Convito_, which is a comment on the _Canzoni_, was written after the _Canzoni_ themselves. How long after we cannot say with certainty, but it was plainly composed at intervals, a part of it probably after Dante had entered upon old age (which began, as he tells us, with the forty-fifth year), consequently after 1310. Dante had then written a considerable part of the _Divina Commedia_, in which Beatrice was to go through her final and most ethereal transformation in his mind and memory. We say in his memory, for such idealizations have a very subtle retrospective action, and the new condition of feeling or thought is uneasy till it has half unconsciously brought into harmony whatever is inconsistent with it in the past. The inward life unwillingly admits any break in its continuity, and nothing is more common than to hear a man, in venting an opinion taken up a week ago, say with perfect sincerity, "I have always thought so and so." Whatever belief occupies the whole mind soon produces the impression on us of having long had possession of it, and one mode of consciousness blends so insensibly with another that it is impossible to mark by an exact line where one begins and the other ends. Dante in his exposition of the _Canzoni_ must have been subject to this subtlest and most deceitful of influences. He would try to reconcile so far as he conscientiously could his present with his past. This he could do by means of the allegorical interpretation. "For it would be a great shame to him," he says in the _Vita Nuova_, "who should poetize something under the vesture of some figure or rhetorical color, and afterwards, when asked, could not strip his words of that vesture in such wise that they should have a true meaning." Now in the literal exposition of the _Canzone_ beginning, "Voi che intendendo il terzo ciel movete,"[123] he tells us that the _grandezza_ of the _Donna Gentil_ was "temporal greatness" (one certainly of the felicities attainable by way of the _vita attiva_), and immediately after gives us a hint by which we may comprehend why a proud[124] man might covet it. "How much wisdom and how great a persistence in virtue (_abito virtuoso_) are hidden for want of this lustre!"[125] When Dante reaches the Terrestrial Paradise[126] which is the highest felicity of this world, and therefore the consummation of the Active Life, he is welcomed by a Lady who is its symbol, "Who went along Singing and culling floweret after floweret." and warming herself in the rays of Love, or "actual speculation," that is, "where love makes its peace felt."[127] That she was the symbol of this is evident from the previous dream of Dante,[128] in which he sees Leah, the universally accepted type of it, "Walking in a meadow, Gathering flowers; and singing she was saying, 'Know whosoever may my name demand That I am Leah, who go moving round My beauteous hands to make myself a garland,'" that is to say, of good works. She, having "washed him thoroughly from sin,"[129] "All dripping brought Into the dance of the four beautiful,"[130] who are the intellectual virtues Prudence, Justice, Temperance, and Fortitude, the four stars, guides of the Practical Life, which he had seen when he came out of the Hell where he had beheld the results of sin, and arrived at the foot of the Mount of Purification. That these were the special virtues of practical goodness Dante had already told us in a passage before quoted from the _Convito_.[131] That this was Dante's meaning is confirmed by what Beatrice says to him,[132] "Short while shalt thou be here a forester (_silvano_) And thou shalt be with me forevermore A citizen of that Rome where Christ is Roman"; for by a "forest" he always means the world of life and action.[133] At the time when Dante was writing the _Canzoni_ on which the _Convito_ was a comment, he believed science to be the "ultimate perfection itself, and not the way to it,"[134] but before the _Convito_ was composed he had become aware of a higher and purer light, an inward light, in that Beatrice, already clarified wellnigh to a mere image of the mind, "who lives in heaven with the angels, and on earth with my soul."[135] So spiritually does Dante always present Beatrice to us, even where most corporeal, as in the _Vita Nuova_, that many, like Biscione and Rossetti, have doubted her real existence. But surely we must consent to believe that she who speaks of "The fair limbs wherein I was enclosed, which scattered are in earth," was once a creature of flesh and blood,-- "A creature not too bright and good For human nature's daily food." When she died, Dante's grief, like that of Constance, filled her room up with something fairer than the reality had ever been. There is no idealizer like unavailing regret, all the more if it be a regret of fancy as much as of real feeling. She early began to undergo that change into something rich and strange in the sea[136] of his mind which so completely supernaturalized her at last. It is not impossible, we think, to follow the process of transformation. During the period of the _Convito Canzoni_, when he had so given himself to study that to his weakened eyes "the stars were shadowed with a white blur,"[137] this star of his imagination was eclipsed for a time with the rest. As his love had never been of the senses (which is bestial),[138] so his sorrow was all the more ready to be irradiated with celestial light, and to assume her to be the transmitter of it who had first awakened in him the nobler impulses of his nature,-- ("Such had this man become in his New Life Potentially,") and given him the first hints of a higher, nay, of the highest good. With that turn for double meaning and abstraction which was so strong in him, her very name helped him to allegorize her into one who makes blessed (_beat_), and thence the step was a short one to personify in her that Theosophy which enables man to see God and to be mystically united with him even in the flesh. Already, in the _Vita Nuova_,[139] she appears to him as afterwards in the Terrestrial Paradise, clad in that color of flame which belongs to the seraphim who contemplate God in himself, simply, and not in his relation to the Son or the Holy Spirit.[140] When misfortune came upon him, when his schemes of worldly activity failed, and science was helpless to console, as it had never been able wholly to satisfy, she already rose before him as the lost ideal of his youth, reproaching him with his desertion of purely spiritual aims. It is, perhaps, in allusion to this that he fixes the date of her death with such minute precision on the 9th June, 1390, most probably his own twenty-fifth birthday, on which he passed the boundary of adolescence.[141] That there should seem to be a discrepancy between the Lady of the _Vita Nuova_ and her of the _Convito_, Dante himself was already aware when writing the former and commenting it. Explaining the sonnet beginning _Gentil pensier_, he says, "In this sonnet I make two parts of myself according as my thoughts were divided in two. The one part I call _heart_, that is, the appetite, the other _soul_, that is, reason.... It is true that in the preceding sonnet I take side with the heart against the eyes [which were weeping for the lost Beatrice], and that appears contrary to what I say in the present one; and therefore I say that in that sonnet also I mean by my _heart_ the appetite, because my desire to remember me of my most gentle Lady was still greater than to behold this one, albeit I had already some appetite for her, but slight as should seem: whence it appears that the one saying is not contrary to the other."[142] When, therefore, Dante speaks of the love of this Lady as the "adversary of _Reason_," he uses the word in its highest sense, not as understanding (_Intellectus_), but as synonymous with _soul_. Already, when the latter part of the _Vita Nuova_, nay, perhaps the whole of the explanatory portion of it, was written the plan of the _Commedia_ was complete, a poem the higher aim of which was to keep the soul alive both in this world and for the next. As Dante tells us, the contradiction in his mind was, though he did not become aware of it till afterwards, more apparent than real. He sought consolation in study, and, failing to find it in Learning (_scienza_), he was led to seek it in Wisdom (_sapienza_), which is the love of God and the knowledge of him.[143] He had sought happiness through the understanding; he was to find it through intuition. The lady Philosophy (according as she is moral or intellectual) includes both. Her gradual transfiguration is exemplified in passages already quoted. The active life leads indirectly by a knowledge of its failures and sins (_Inferno_), or directly by a righteous employment of it (_Purgatorio_), to the same end. The use of the sciences is to induce in us the ultimate perfection, that of speculating upon truth; the use of the highest of them, theology, the contemplation of God.[144] To this they all lead up. In one of those curious chapters of the _Convito_,[145] where he points out the analogy between the sciences and the heavens, Dante tells us that he compares moral philosophy with the crystalline heaven or _Primum Mobile_, because it communicates life and gives motion to all the others below it. But what gives motion to the crystalline heaven (moral philosophy) itself? "The most fervent appetite which it has in each of its parts to be conjoined with each part of that most divine quiet heaven" (Theology).[146] Theology, the divine science, corresponds with the Empyrean, "because of its peace, the which, through the most excellent certainty of its subject, which is God, suffers no strife of opinions or sophistic arguments."[147] No one of the heavens is at rest but this, and in none of the inferior sciences can we find repose, though he likens physics to the heaven of the fixed stars, in whose name is a suggestion of the certitude to be arrived at in things demonstrable. Dante had this comparison in mind, it may be inferred, when he said, "Well I perceive that never sated is Our intellect unless the Truth illume it Beyond which nothing true[148] expands itself. It rests therein as wild beast in his lair; When it attains it, and it can attain it; If not, then each desire would frustrate be. Therefore springs up, in fashion of a shoot, Doubt at the foot of truth, and this is nature Which to the top from height to height impels us."[149] The contradiction, as it seems to us, resolves itself into an essential, easily apprehensible, if mystical, unity. Dante at first gave himself to the study of the sciences (after he had lost the simple, unquestioning faith of youth) as the means of arriving at certainty. From the root of every truth to which he attained sprang this sucker (_rampollo_) of doubt, drawing out of it the very sap of its life. In this way was Philosophy truly an adversary of his soul, and the reason of his remorse for fruitless studies which drew him away from the one that alone was and could be fruitful is obvious enough. But by and by out of the very doubt came the sweetness[150] of a higher and truer insight. He became aware that there were "things in heaven and earth undreamt of in your philosophy," as another doubter said, who had just finished _his_ studies, but could not find his way out of the scepticism they engendered as Dante did. "Insane is he who hopeth that our reason Can traverse the illimitable way Which the one Substance in three Persons follows! Mortals, remain contented at the _Quia_; For, if ye had been able to see all, No need there were [had been] for Mary to bring forth. And ye have seen desiring without fruit, Those whose desire would have been quieted Which evermore is given them for a grief. I speak of Aristotle and of Plato And many others."[151] Whether at the time when the poems of the _Vita Nuova_ were written the Lady who withdrew him for a while From Beatrice was (which we doubt) a person of flesh and blood or not, she was no longer so when the prose narrative was composed. Any one familiar with Dante's double meanings will hardly question that by putting her at a window, which is a place to look out of, he intended to imply that she personified Speculation, a word which he uses with a wide range of meaning, sometimes as _looking for_, sometimes as seeing (like Shakespeare's "There is no speculation in those eyes"), sometimes as _intuition_, or the beholding all things in God, who is the cause of all. This is so obvious, and the image in this sense so familiar, that we are surprised it should have been hitherto unremarked. It is plain that, even when the _Vita Nuova_ was written, the Lady was already Philosophy, but philosophy applied to a lower range of thought, not yet ascended from flesh to spirit. The Lady who seduced him was the science which looks for truth in second causes, or even in effects, instead of seeking it, where alone it can be found, in the First Cause; she was the Philosophy which looks for happiness in the visible world (of shadows), and not in the spiritual (and therefore substantial) world. The guerdon of his search was doubt. But Dante, as we have seen, made his very doubts help him upward toward certainty; each became a round in the ladder by which he climbed to clearer and clearer vision till the end.[152] Philosophy had made him forget Beatrice; it was Philosophy who was to bring him back to her again, washed clean in that very stream of forgetfulness that had made an impassable barrier between them.[153] Dante had known how to find in her the gift of Achilles's lance, "Which used to be the cause First of a sad and then a gracious boon."[154] There is another possible, and even probable, theory which would reconcile the Beatrice of the _Purgatorio_ with her of the _Vita Nuova_. Suppose that even in the latter she signified Theology, or at least some influence that turned his thoughts to God? Pietro di Dante, commenting the _pargoletta_ passage in the _Purgatorio_, says expressly that the poet had at one time given himself to the study of theology and deserted it for poesy and other mundane sciences. This must refer to a period beginning before 1290. Again there is an early tradition that Dante in his youth had been a novice in a Franciscan convent, but never took the vows. Buti affirms this expressly in his comment on _Inferno_, XVI. 106-123. It is perhaps slightly confirmed by what Dante says in the _Convito_,[155] that "one cannot only turn to Religion by making himself like in habit and life to St. Benedict, St. Augustine, St. Francis, and St. Dominic, but likewise one may turn to good and true religion in a state of matrimony, for God wills no religion in us but of the heart." If he had ever thought of taking monastic vows, his marriage would have cut short any such intention. If he ever wished to wed the real Beatrice Portinari, and was disappointed, might not this be the time when his thoughts took that direction? If so, the impulse came indirectly, at least, from her. We have admitted that Beatrice Portinari was a real creature, "Col sangue suo e con le sue giunture"; but _how_ real she was, and whether as real to the poet's memory as to his imagination, may fairly be questioned. She shifts, as the controlling emotion or the poetic fitness of the moment dictates, from a woman loved and lost to a gracious exhalation of all that is fairest in womanhood or most divine in the soul of man and ere the eye has defined the new image it has become the old one again, or another mingled of both. "Nor one nor other seemed now what it was, E'en as proceedeth on before the flame Upward along the paper a brown color, Which is not black as yet, and the white dies."[156] As the mystic Griffin in the eyes of Beatrice (her demonstrations), so she in his own, "Now with the one, now with the other nature; Think, Reader, if within myself I marvelled When I beheld the thing itself stand still And in its image it transformed itself."[157] At the very moment when she had undergone her most sublimated allegorical evaporation, his instinct as poet, which never failed him, realized her into woman again in those scenes of almost unapproached pathos which make the climax of his _Purgatorio_. The verses tremble with feeling and shine with tears.[158] Beatrice recalls her own beauty with a pride as natural as that of Fair Annie in the old ballad, and compares herself as advantageously with the "brown, brown bride" who had supplanted her. If this be a ghost, we do not need be told that she is a woman still.[159] We must remember, however, that Beatrice had to be real that she might be interesting, to be beautiful that her goodness might be persuasive, nay, to be beautiful at any rate, because beauty has also something in it of divine. Dante has told, in a passage already quoted, that he would rather his readers should find his doctrine sweet than his verses, but he had his relentings from this Stoicism. "'Canzone, I believe those will be rare Who of thine inner sense can master all, Such toil it costs thy native tongue to learn; Wherefore, if ever it perchance befall That thou in presence of such men shouldst fare As seem not skilled thy meaning to discern, I pray thee then thy grief to comfort turn, Saying to them, O thou my new delight, 'Take heed at least how fair I am to sight.'"[160] We believe all Dante's other Ladies to have been as purely imaginary as the Dulcinea of Don Quixote, useful only as _motives_, but a real Beatrice is as essential to the human sympathies of the _Divina Commedia_ as her glorified Idea to its allegorical teaching, and this Dante understood perfectly well.[161] Take _her_ out of the poem, and the heart of it goes with her; take out her ideal, and it is emptied of its soul. She is the menstruum in which letter and spirit dissolve and mingle into unity. Those who doubt her existence must find Dante's graceful sonnet[162] to Guido Cavalcante as provoking as Sancho's story of his having seen Dulcinea winnowing wheat was to his master, "so alien is it from all that which eminent persons, who are constituted and preserved for other exercises and entertainments, do and ought to do."[163] But we should always remember in reading Dante that with him the allegorical interpretation is the true one (_verace sposizione_), and that he represents himself (and that at a time when he was known to the world only by his minor poems) as having made righteousness (_rettitudine_, in other words, moral philosophy) the subject of his verse.[164] Love with him seems first to have meant the love of truth and the search after it (_speculazione_), and afterwards the contemplation of it in its infinite source (_speculazione_ in its higher and mystical sense). This is the divine love "which where it shines darkens and wellnigh extinguishes all other loves."[165] Wisdom is the object of it, and the end of wisdom to contemplate God the true mirror (_verace spegio, speculum_), wherein all things are seen as they truly are. Nay, she herself "is the brightness of the eternal light, the unspotted mirror of the majesty of God."[166] There are two beautiful passages in the _Convito_, which we shall quote, both because they have, as we believe a close application to Dante's own experience, and because they are good specimens of his style as a writer of prose. In the manly simplicity which comes of an earnest purpose, and in the eloquence of deep conviction, this is as far beyond that of any of his contemporaries as his verse, nay, more, has hardly been matched by any Italian from that day to this. Illustrating the position that "the highest desire of everything and the first given us by nature is to return to its first cause," he says: "And since God is the beginning of our souls and the maker of them like unto himself, according as was written, 'Let us make man in our image and likeness,' this soul most greatly desires to return to him. And as a pilgrim who goes by a way he has never travelled, who believes every house he sees afar off to be his inn, and not finding it to be so directs his belief to another, and so from house to house till he come to the inn, so our soul forthwith on entering upon the new and never-travelled road of this life directs its eyes to the goal of its highest good, and therefore believes whatever thing it sees that seems to have in it any good to be that. And because its first knowledge is imperfect by reason of not being experienced nor indoctrinated, small goods seem to it great. Wherefore we see children desire most greatly an apple, and then proceeding further on desire a bird, and then further yet desire fine raiment, and then a horse, and then a woman, and then, riches not great, and then greater and greater. And this befalls because in none of these things it finds that which it goes seeking, and thinks to find it further on. By which it may be seen that one desirable stands before another in the eyes of our soul in a fashion as it were pyramidal, for the smallest at first covers the whole of them, and is as it were the apex of the highest desirable, which is God, as it were the base of all; so that the further we go from the apex toward the base the desirables appear greater; and this is the reason why human desires become wider one after the other. Verily this way is lost through error as the roads of earth are; for as from one city to another there is of necessity one best and straightest way, and one that always leads farther from it, that is, the one which goes elsewhere, and many others, some less roundabout and some less direct, so in human life are divers roads whereof one is the truest and another the most deceitful, and certain ones less deceitful, and certain less true. And as we see that that which goes most directly to the city fulfils desire and gives repose after weariness, and that which goes the other way never fulfils it and never can give repose, so it falls out in our life. The good traveller arrives at the goal and repose, the erroneous never arrives thither, but with much weariness of mind, always with greedy eyes looks before him."[167] If we may apply Dante's own method of exposition to this passage, we find him telling us that he first sought felicity in knowledge, "That apple sweet which through so many branches The care of mortals goeth in pursuit of,"[168] then in fame, a bird that flits before us as we follow,[169] then in being esteemed of men ("to be clothed in purple, ... to sit next to Darius, ... and be called Darius his cousin "), then in power,[170] then in the riches of the Holy Spirit in larger and larger measure.[171] He, too, had found that there was but one straight road, whether to the Terrestrial Paradise or the Celestial City, and may come to question by and by whether they be not parallel one with the other, or even parts of the same road, by which only repose is to be reached at last. Then, when in old age "the noble soul returns to God as to that port whence she set forth on the sea of this life, ... just as to him who comes from a long journey, before he enters into the gate of his city, the citizens thereof go forth to meet him, so the citizens of the eternal life go to meet _her_, and do so because of her good deeds and contemplations, who, having already betaken herself to God, seems to see those whom she believes to be nigh unto God."[172] This also was to be the experience of Dante, for who can doubt that the _Paradiso_ was something very unlike a poetical exercise to him who appeals to the visions even of sleep as proof of the soul's immortality? When did his soul catch a glimpse of that certainty in which "the mind that museth upon many things" can find assured rest? We have already said that we believe Dante's political opinions to have taken their final shape and the _De Monarchiâ_ to have been written before 1300.[173] That the revision of the _Vita Nuova_ was completed in that year seems probable from the last sonnet but one, which is addressed to pilgrims on their way to the Santa Veronica at Rome.[174] In this sonnet he still laments Beatrice as dead; he would make the pilgrims share his grief. It is the very folly of despairing sorrow, that calls on the first comer, stranger though he be, for a sympathy which none can fully give, and he least of all. But in the next sonnet, the last in the book, there is a surprising change of tone. The transfiguration of Beatrice has begun, and we see completing itself that natural gradation of grief which will erelong bring the mourner to call on the departed saint to console him for her own loss. The sonnet is remarkable in more senses than one, first for its psychological truth, and then still more for the light it throws on Dante's inward history as poet and thinker. Hitherto he had celebrated beauty and goodness in the creature; henceforth he was to celebrate them in the Creator whose praise they were.[175] We give an extempore translation of this sonnet, in which the meaning is preserved so far as is possible where the grace is left out. We remember with some compunction as we do it, that Dante has said, "know every one that nothing harmonized by a musical band can be transmuted from its own speech to another without breaking all its sweetness and harmony,"[176] and Cervantes was of the same mind:[177] "Beyond the sphere that hath the widest gyre Passeth the sigh[178] that leaves my heart below; A new intelligence doth love bestow On it with tears that ever draws it higher; When it wins thither where is its desire, A Lady it beholds who honor so And light receives, that, through her splendid glow, The pilgrim spirit[179] sees her as in fire; It sees her such, that, telling me again I understand it not, it speaks so low Unto the mourning heart that bids it tell; Its speech is of that noble One I know, For 'Beatrice' I often hear full plain, So that, dear ladies, I conceive it well." No one can read this in its connection with what goes before and what follows without feeling that a new conception of Beatrice had dawned upon the mind of Dante, dim as yet, or purposely made to seem so, and yet the authentic forerunner of the fulness of her rising as the light of his day and the guide of his feet, the divine wisdom whose glory pales all meaner stars. The conception of a poem in which Dante's creed in politics and morals should be picturesquely and attractively embodied, and of the high place which Beatrice should take in it, had begun vaguely to shape itself in his thought. As he brooded over it, of a sudden it defined itself clearly. "Soon after this sonnet there appeared to me a marvellous vision[180] wherein I saw things which made me propose not to say more of that blessed one until I could treat of her more worthily. And to arrive at that I study all I can, as she verily knows. So that, if it be the pleasure of Him through whom all things live, that my life hold out yet a few years, I hope to say that of her which was never yet said of any (woman). And then may it please Him who is the Lord of Courtesy that my soul may go to see the glory of her Lady, that is, of that blessed Beatrice who gloriously beholds the face of Him _qui est per omnia saecula benedictus_." It was the method of presentation that became clear to Dante at this time,--the plan of the great poem for whose completion the experience of earth and the inspiration of heaven were to combine, and which was to make him lean for many years.[181] The doctrinal scope of it was already determined. Man, he tells us, is the only creature who partakes at once of the corruptible and incorruptible nature; "and since every nature is ordained to some ultimate end, it follows that the end of man is double. And as among all beings he alone partakes of the corruptible and incorruptible, so alone among all beings he is ordained to a double end, whereof the one is his end as corruptible, the other as incorruptible. That unspeakable Providence therefore foreordered two ends to be pursued by man, to wit, beatitude in this life, which consists in the operation of our own virtue, and is figured by the Terrestrial Paradise, and the beatitude of life eternal, which consists in a fruition of the divine countenance, whereto our own virtue cannot ascend unless aided by divine light, which is understood by the Celestial Paradise." The one we attain by practice of the moral and intellectual virtues as they are taught by philosophers, the other by spiritual teachings transcending human reason, and the practice of the theological virtues of Faith, Hope, and Charity. For one, Reason suffices ("which was wholly made known to us by philosophers"), for the other we need the light of supernatural truth revealed by the Holy Spirit and "needful for us." Men led astray by cupidity turn their backs on both, and in their bestiality need bit and rein to keep them in the way. "Wherefore to man was a double guidance needful according to the double end," the Supreme Pontiff in spiritual, the Emperor in temporal things.[182] But how to put this theory of his into a poetic form which might charm while it was teaching? He would typify Reason in Virgil (who would serve also as a symbol of political wisdom as having celebrated the founding of the Empire), and the grace of God in that Beatrice whom he had already supernaturalized into something which passeth all understanding. In choosing Virgil he was sure of that interest and sympathy which his instinct led him to seek in the predisposition of his readers, for the popular imagination of the Middle Ages had busied itself particularly with the Mantuan poet. The Church had given, him a quasi-orthodoxy by interpreting his _jam redit et virgo_ as a prophecy of the birth of Christ. At Naples he had become a kind of patron saint, and his bones were exhibited as relics. Dante himself may have heard at Mantua the hymn sung on the anniversary of St. Paul, in which the apostle to the Gentiles is represented as weeping at the tomb of the greatest of poets. Above all, Virgil had described the descent of Aeneas to the under-world. Dante's choice of a guide was therefore, in a certain degree, made for him. But the mere Reason[183] of man without the illumination of divine Grace cannot be trusted, and accordingly the intervention of Beatrice was needed,--of Beatrice, as Miss Rossetti admirably well expresses it "already transfigured, potent not only now to charm and soothe, potent to rule; to the Intellect a light, to the Affections a compass and a balance, a sceptre over the Will." The wood obscure in which Dante finds himself is the world.[184] The three beasts who dispute his way are the sins that most easily beset us, Pride, the Lusts of the Flesh, and Greed. We are surprised that Miss Rossetti should so localize and confine Dante's meaning as to explain them by Florence, France, and Rome. Had he written in so narrow a sense as this, it would indeed be hard to account for the persistent power of his poem. But it was no political pamphlet that Dante was writing. _Subjectum est Homo_, and it only takes the form of a diary by Dante Alighieri because of the intense realism of his imagination, a realism as striking in the _Paradiso_ as the _Inferno_, though it takes a different shape. Everything, the most supersensual, presented itself to his mind, not as abstract idea, but as visible type. As men could once embody a quality of good in a saint and _see_ it, as they even now in moments of heightened fantasy or enthusiasm can personify their country and speak of England, France, or America, as if they were real beings, so did Dante habitually.[185] He saw all his thoughts as distinctly as the hypochondriac sees his black dog, and, as in that, their form and color were but the outward form of an inward and spiritual condition. Whatever subsidiary interpretations the poem is capable of, its great and primary value is as the autobiography of a human soul, of yours and mine, it may be, as well as Dante's. In that lie its profound meaning and its permanent force. That an exile, a proud man forced to be dependent, should have found some consolation in brooding over the justice of God, weighed in such different scales from those of man, in contrasting the outward prosperity of the sinner with the awful spiritual ruin within, is not wonderful, nay, we can conceive of his sometimes finding the wrath of God sweeter than his mercy. But it is wonderful that out of the very wreck of his own life he should have built this three-arched bridge, still firm against the wash and wear of ages, stretching from the Pit to the Empyrean, by which men may pass from a doubt of God's providence to a certainty of his long-suffering and loving-kindness. "The Infinite Goodness hath such ample arms That it receives whatever turns to it."[186] A tear is enough to secure the saving clasp of them.[187] It cannot be too often repeated that Dante's Other World is not in its first conception a place of _departed_ spirits. It is the Spiritual World, whereof we become denizens by birth and citizens by adoption. It is true that for artistic purposes he makes it conform so far as possible with vulgar preconceptions, but he himself has told us again and again what his real meaning was. Virgil tells Dante,-- "Thou shalt behold the people dolorous Who have foregone the good of intellect."[188] The "good of the intellect," Dante tells us after Aristotle, is Truth.[189] He says that Virgil has led him "through the deep night of the _truly dead_."[190] Who are they? Dante had in mind the saying of the Apostle, "to be carnally minded is death." He says: "In man to live is to use reason. Then if living is the being of man, to depart from that use is to depart from being, and so to be dead. And doth not he depart from the use of reason who doth not reason out the object of his life?" "I say that so vile a person is dead, seeming to be alive. For we must know _that the wicked man may be called truly dead_." "He is dead who follows not the teacher. And of such a one some might say, how is he dead and yet goes about? I answer that the man is dead and the beast remains."[191] Accordingly he has put living persons in the _Inferno_, like Frate Alberigo and Branca d' Oria, of whom he says with bitter sarcasm that he still "eats and drinks and puts on clothes," as if that were his highest ideal of the true ends of life.[192] There is a passage in the first canto of the _Inferno_[193] which has been variously interpreted:-- "The ancient spirits disconsolate Who cry out each one for the _second death_." Miss Rossetti cites it as an example of what she felicitously calls "an ambiguity, not hazy, but prismatic, and therefore not really perplexing." She gives us accordingly our choice of two interpretations, "'each cries out on account of the second death which he is suffering,' and 'each cries out for death to come a second time and ease him of his sufferings.'"[194] Buti says: "Here one doubts what the author meant by the second death, and as for me I think he meant the last damnation, which shall be at the day of judgment, because they would wish through envy that it had already come, that they might have more companions, since the first death is the first damnation, when the soul parted from the body is condemned to the pains of hell for its sins. The second is when, resuscitated at the judgment day, they shall be finally condemned, soul and body together.... It may otherwise be understood as annihilation." Imola says, "Each would wish to die again, if he could, to put an end to his pain. Do not hold with some who think that Dante calls the second death the day of judgment," and then quotes a passage from St. Augustine which favors that view. Pietro di Dante gives us four interpretations among which to choose, the first being that, "allegorically, depraved and vicious men are in a certain sense dead in reputation, and this is the first death; the second is that of the body." This we believe to be the true meaning. Dante himself, in a letter to the "most rascally (_scelestissimis_) dwellers in Florence," gives us the key: "but you, transgressors of the laws of God and man, whom the direful maw of cupidity hath enticed not unwilling to every crime, does not the terror of the _second death_ torment you?" Their first death was in their sins, the second is what they may expect from the just vengeance of the Emperor Henry VII. The world Dante leads us through is that of his own thought, and it need not surprise us therefore if we meet in it purely imaginary beings like Tristrem[195] and Renoard of the club.[196] His personality is so strongly marked that it is nothing more than natural that his poem should be interpreted as if only he and his opinions, prejudices, or passions were concerned. He would not have been the great poet he was if he had not felt intensely and humanly, but he could never have won the cosmopolitan place he holds had he not known how to generalize his special experience into something mediatorial for all of us. Pietro di Dante in his comment on the thirty-first canto of the _Purgatorio_ says that "unless you understand him and his figures allegorically, you will be deceived by the bark," and adds that our author made his pilgrimage as the representative of the rest (_in, persona ceterorum_).[197] To give his vision reality, he has adapted it to the vulgar mythology, but to understand it as the author meant, it must be taken in the larger sense. To confine it to Florence or to Italy is to banish it from the sympathies of mankind. It was not from the campanile of the Badia that Dante got his views of life and man. The relation of Dante to literature is monumental, and marks the era at which the modern begins. He is not only the first great poet, but the first great prose writer who used a language not yet subdued to literature, who used it moreover for scientific and metaphysical discussion, thus giving an incalculable impulse to the culture of his countrymen by making the laity free of what had hitherto been the exclusive guild of clerks.[198] Whatever poetry had preceded him, whether in the Romance or Teutonic tongues, is interesting mainly for its simplicity without forethought, or, as in the _Nibelungen_, for a kind of savage grandeur that rouses the sympathy of whatever of the natural man is dormant in us. But it shows no trace of the creative faculty either in unity of purpose or style, the proper characteristics of literature. If it have the charm of wanting artifice, it has not the higher charm of art. We are in the realm of chaos and chance, nebular, with phosphorescent gleams here and there, star stuff, but uncondensed in stars. The _Nibelungen_ is not without far-reaching hints and forebodings of something finer than we find in it, but they are a glamour from the vague darkness which encircles it, like the whisper of the sea upon an unknown shore at night, powerful only over the more vulgar side of the imagination, and leaving no thought, scarce even any image (at least of beauty) behind them. Such poems are the amours, not the lasting friendships and possessions of the mind. They thrill and cannot satisfy. But Dante is not merely the founder of modern literature. He would have been that if he had never written anything more than his _Canzoni_, which for elegance, variety of rhythm, and fervor of sentiment were something altogether new. They are of a higher mood than any other poems of the same style in their own language, or indeed in any other. In beauty of phrase and subtlety of analogy they remind one of some of the Greek tragic choruses. We are constantly moved in them by a nobleness of tone, whose absence in many admired lyrics of the kind is poorly supplied by conceits. So perfect is Dante's mastery of his material, that in compositions, as he himself has shown, so artificial,[199] the form seems rather organic than mechanical, which cannot be said of the best of the Provençal poets who led the way in this kind. Dante's sonnets also have a grace and tenderness which have been seldom matched. His lyrical excellence would have got him into the Collections, and he would have made here and there an enthusiast as Donne does in English, but his great claim to remembrance is not merely Italian. It is that he was the first Christian poet, in any proper sense of the word, the first who so subdued dogma to the uses of plastic imagination as to make something that is still poetry of the highest order after it has suffered the disenchantment inevitable in the most perfect translation. Verses of the kind usually called _sacred_ (reminding one of the adjective's double meaning) had been written before his time in the vulgar tongue,--such verses as remain inviolably sacred in the volumes of specimens, looked at with distant reverence by the pious, and with far other feelings by the profane reader. There were cycles of poems in which the physical conflict between Christianity and Paganism[200] furnished the subject, but in which the theological views of the authors, whether doctrinal or historical, could hardly be reconciled with any system of religion ancient or modern. There were Church legends of saints and martyrs versified, fit certainly to make any other form of martyrdom seem amiable to those who heard them, and to suggest palliative thoughts about Diocletian. Finally, there were the romances of Arthur and his knights, which later, by means of allegory, contrived to be both entertaining and edifying; every one who listened to them paying the minstrel his money, and having his choice whether he would take them as song or sermon. In the heroes of some of these certain Christian virtues were typified, and around a few of them, as the Holy Grail, a perfume yet lingers of cloistered piety and withdrawal. Wolfram von Eschenbach, indeed, has divided his _Parzival_ into three books, of Simplicity, Doubt, and Healing, which has led Gervinus to trace a not altogether fanciful analogy between that poem and the _Divina Commedia_. The doughty old poet, who says of himself,-- "Of song I have some slight control, But deem her of a feeble soul That doth not love my naked sword Above my sweetest lyric word," tells us that his subject is the choice between good and evil; "Whose soul takes Untruth for its bride And sets himself on Evil's side, Chooses the Black, and sure it is His path leads down to the abyss; But he who doth his nature feed With steadfastness and loyal deed Lies open to the heavenly light And takes his portion with the White." But Wolfram's poem has no system, and shows good feeling rather than settled conviction. Above all it is wandering (as he himself confesses), and altogether wants any controlling purpose. But to whatever extent Christianity had insinuated itself into and colored European literature, it was mainly as mythology. The Christian idea had never yet incorporated itself. It was to make its avatar in Dante. To understand fully what he accomplished we must form some conception of what is meant by the Christian idea. To bring it into fuller relief, let us contrast it with the Greek idea as it appears in poetry; for we are not dealing with a question of theology so much as with one of aesthetics. Greek art at its highest point is doubtless the most perfect that we know. But its circle of motives was essentially limited; and the Greek drama in its passion, its pathos, and its humor is primarily Greek, and secondarily human. Its tragedy chooses its actors from certain heroic families, and finds its springs of pity and terror in physical suffering and worldly misfortune. Its best examples, like the _Antigone_, illustrate a single duty, or, like the _Hippolytus_, a single passion, on which, as on a pivot, the chief character, statuesquely simple in its details, revolves as pieces of sculpture are sometimes made to do, displaying its different sides in one invariable light. The general impression left on the mind (and this is apt to be a truer one than any drawn from single examples) is that the duty is one which is owed to custom, that the passion leads to a breach of some convention settled by common consent,[201] and accordingly it is an outraged society whose figure looms in the background, rather than an offended God. At most it was one god of many, and meanwhile another might be friendly. In the Greek epic, the gods are partisans, they hold caucuses, they lobby and log-roll for their candidates. The tacit admission of a revealed code of morals wrought a great change. The complexity and range of passion is vastly increased when the offence is at once both crime and sin, a wrong done against order and against conscience at the same time. The relation of the Greek Tragedy to the higher powers is chiefly antagonistic, struggle against an implacable destiny, sublime struggle, and of heroes, but sure of defeat at last. And that defeat is final. Grand figures are those it exhibits to us, in some respects unequalled, and in their severe simplicity they compare with modern poetry as sculpture with painting. Considered merely as works of art, these products of the Greek imagination satisfy our highest conception of form. They suggest inevitably a feeling of perfect completeness, isolation, and independence, of something rounded and finished in itself. The secret of those old shapers died with them; their wand is broken, their book sunk deeper than ever plummet sounded. The type of their work is the Greek Temple, which leaves nothing to hope for in unity and perfection of design, in harmony and subordination of parts, and in entireness of impression. But in this aesthetic completeness it ends. It rests solidly and complacently on the earth, and the mind rests there with it. Now the Christian idea has to do with the human soul, which Christianity may be almost said to have invented. While all Paganism represents a few pre-eminent families, the founders of dynasties or ancestors of races, as of kin with the gods, Christianity makes every pedigree end in Deity, makes monarch and slave the children of one God. Its heroes struggle not against, but upward and onward _toward_, the higher powers who are always on their side. Its highest conception of beauty is not aesthetic, but moral. With it prosperity and adversity have exchanged meanings. It finds enemies in those worldly good-fortunes where Pagan and even Hebrew literature saw the highest blessing, and invincible allies in sorrow, poverty, humbleness of station, where the former world recognized only implacable foes. While it utterly abolished all boundary lines of race or country and made mankind unitary, its hero is always the individual man whoever and wherever he may be. Above all, an entirely new conception of the Infinite and of man's relation to it came in with Christianity. That, and not the finite, is always the background, consciously or not. It changed the scene of the last act of every drama to the next world. Endless aspiration of all the faculties became thus the ideal of Christian life, and to express it more or less perfectly the ideal of essentially Christian art. It was this which the Middle Ages instinctively typified in the Gothic cathedral,--no accidental growth, but the visible symbol of an inward faith,--which soars forever upward, and yearns toward heaven like a martyr-flame suddenly turned to stone. It is not without significance that Goethe, who, like Dante, also absorbed and represented the tendency and spirit of his age, should, during his youth and while Europe was alive with the moral and intellectual longing which preluded the French Revolution, have loved the Gothic architecture. It is no less significant that in the period of reaction toward more positive thought which followed, he should have preferred the Greek. His greatest poem, conceived during the former era, is Gothic. Dante, endeavoring to conform himself to literary tradition, began to write the _Divina Commedia_ in Latin, and had elaborated several cantos of it in that dead and intractable material. But that poetic instinct, which is never the instinct of an individual, but of his age, could not so be satisfied, and leaving the classic structure he had begun to stand as a monument of failure, he completed his work in Italian. Instead of endeavoring to manufacture a great poem out of what was foreign and artificial, he let the poem make itself out of him. The epic which he wished to write in the universal language of scholars, and which might have had its ten lines in the history of literature, would sing itself in provincial Tuscan, and turns out to be written in the universal dialect of mankind. Thus all great poets have been in a certain sense provincial,--Homer, Dante, Shakespeare, Goethe, Burns, Scott in the "Heart of Midlothian" and "Bride of Lammermoor,"--because the office of the poet is always vicarious, because nothing that has not been living experience can become living expression, because the collective thought, the faith, the desire of a nation or a race, is the cumulative result of many ages, is something organic, and is wiser and stronger than any single person, and will make a great statesman or a great poet out of any man who can entirely surrender himself to it. As the Gothic cathedral, then, is the type of the Christian idea, so is it also of Dante's poem. And as that in its artistic unity is but the completed thought of a single architect, which yet could never have been realized except out of the faith and by the contributions of an entire people, whose beliefs and superstitions, whose imagination and fancy, find expression in its statues and its carvings, its calm saints and martyrs now at rest forever in the seclusion of their canopied niches, and its wanton grotesques thrusting themselves forth from every pinnacle and gargoyle, so in Dante's poem, while it is as personal and peculiar as if it were his private journal and autobiography, we can yet read the diary and the autobiography of the thirteenth century and of the Italian people. Complete and harmonious in design as his work is, it is yet no Pagan temple enshrining a type of the human made divine by triumph of corporeal beauty; it is not a private chapel housing a single saint and dedicate to one chosen bloom of Christian piety or devotion; it is truly a cathedral, over whose high altar hangs the emblem of suffering, of the Divine made human to teach the beauty of adversity, the eternal presence of the spiritual, not overhanging and threatening, but informing and sustaining the material. In this cathedral of Dante's there are side-chapels as is fit, with altars to all Christian virtues and perfections; but the great impression of its leading thought is that of aspiration, for ever and ever. In the three divisions of the poem we may trace something more than a fancied analogy with a Christian basilica. There is first the ethnic forecourt, then the purgatorial middle-space, and last the holy of holies dedicated to the eternal presence of the mediatorial God. But what gives Dante's poem a peculiar claim to the title of the first Christian poem is not merely its doctrinal truth or its Christian mythology, but the fact that the scene of it is laid, not in this world, but in the soul of man; that it is the allegory of a human life, and therefore universal in its significance and its application. The genius of Dante has given to it such a self-subsistent reality, that one almost gets to feel as if the chief value of contemporary Italian history had been to furnish it with explanatory foot-notes, and the age in which it was written assumes towards it the place of a satellite. For Italy, Dante is the thirteenth century. Most men make the voyage of life as if they carried sealed orders which they were not to open till they were fairly in mid-ocean. But Dante had made up his mind as to the true purpose and meaning of our existence in this world, shortly after he had passed his twenty-fifth year. He had already conceived the system about which as a connecting thread the whole experience of his life, the whole result of his studies, was to cluster in imperishable crystals. The cornerstone of his system was the Freedom of the Will (in other words, the right of private judgment with the condition of accountability), which Beatrice calls the "noble virtue."[202] As to every man is offered his choice between good and evil, and as, even upon the root of a nature originally evil a habit of virtue may be engrafted,[203] no man is excused. "All hope abandon ye who enter in," for they have thrown away reason which is the good of the intellect, "and it seems to me no less a marvel to bring back to reason him in whom it is wholly spent than to bring back to life him who has been four days in the tomb."[204] As a guide of the will in civil affairs the Emperor; in spiritual, the Pope.[205] Dante is not one of those reformers who would assume the office of God to "make all things new." He knew the power of tradition and habit, and wished to utilize it for his purpose. He found the Empire and the Papacy already existing, but both needing reformation that they might serve the ends of their original institution. Bad leadership was to blame, men fit to gird on the sword had been turned into priests, and good preachers spoiled to make bad kings.[206] The spiritual had usurped to itself the prerogatives of the temporal power. "Rome, that reformed the world, accustomed was Two suns to have which one road and the other, Of God and of the world, made manifest. One has the other quenched, and to the crosier The sword is joined, and ill beseemeth it, * * * * * "Because, being joined one feareth not the other."[207] Both powers held their authority directly from God, "not so, however, that the Roman Prince is not in some things subject to the Roman Pontiff, since that human felicity [to be attained only by peace, justice, and good government, possible only under a single ruler] is in some sort ordained to the end of immortal felicity. Let Caesar use that reverence toward Peter which a first-born son ought to use toward a father; that, shone upon by the light of paternal grace, he may more powerfully illumine the orb of earth over which he is set by him alone who is the ruler of all things spiritual and temporal."[208] As to the fatal gift of Constantine, Dante demonstrates that an Emperor could not alienate what he held only in trust; but if he made the gift, the Pope should hold it as a feudatory of the Empire, for the benefit, however, of Christ's poor.[209] Dante is always careful to distinguish between the Papacy and the Pope. He prophesies for Boniface VIII. a place in hell,[210] but acknowledges him as the Vicar of Christ, goes so far even as to denounce the outrage of Guillaume de Nogaret at Anagni as done to the Saviour himself.[211] But in the Spiritual World Dante acknowledges no such supremacy, and, when he would have fallen on his knees before Adrian V., is rebuked by him in a quotation from the Apocalypse:-- "Err not, fellow-servant am I With thee and with the others to one power."[212] So impartial was this man whose great work is so often represented as a kind of bag in which he secreted the gall of personal prejudice, so truly Catholic is he, that both parties find their arsenal in him. The Romanist proves his soundness in doctrine, the anti-Romanist claims him as the first Protestant, the Mazzinist and the Imperialist can alike quote him for their purpose. Dante's ardent conviction would not let him see that both Church and Empire were on the wane. If an ugly suspicion of this would force itself upon him, perhaps he only clung to both the more tenaciously; but he was no blind theorist. He would reform the Church through the Church, and is less anxious for Italian independence than for Italian good government under an Emperor from Germany rather than from Utopia. The Papacy was a necessary part of Dante's system, as a supplement to the Empire, which we strongly incline to believe was always foremost in his mind. In a passage already quoted, he says that "the soil where Rome sits is worthy beyond what men preach and admit," that is, as the birthplace of the Empire. Both in the _Convito_ and the _De Monarchia_ he affirms that the course of Roman history was providentially guided from the first. Rome was founded in the same year that brought into the world David, ancestor of the Redeemer after the flesh. St. Augustine said that "God showed in the most opulent and illustrious Empire of the Romans how much the civil virtues might avail even without true religion, that it might be understood how, this added, men became citizens of another city whose king is truth, whose law charity, and whose measure eternity." Dante goes further than this. He makes the Romans as well as the Jews a chosen people, the one as founders of civil society, the other as depositaries of the true faith.[213] One side of Dante's mind was so practical and positive, and his pride in the Romans so intense,[214] that he sometimes seems to regard their mission as the higher of the two. Without peace which only good government could give, mankind could not arrive at the highest virtue, whether of the active or contemplative life. "And since what is true of the part is true of the whole, and it happens in the particular man that by sitting quietly he is perfected in prudence and wisdom, it is clear that the human race in the quiet or tranquillity of peace is most freely and easily disposed for its proper work which is almost divine, as it is written, 'Thou hast made him a little lower than the angels'[215] Whence it is manifest that universal peace is the best of those things which are ordained for our beatitude. Hence it is that not riches, not pleasures, not honors, not length of life, not health, not strength, not comeliness, was sung to the shepherds from on high, but peace."[216] It was Dante's experience of the confusion of Italy, where "One doth gnaw the other Of those whom one wall and one fosse shut in,"[217] that suggested the thought of a universal umpire, for that, after all, was to be the chief function of his Emperor. He was too wise to insist on a uniformity of political institutions _a priori_,[218] for he seems to have divined that the surest stay of order, as of practical wisdom, is habit, which is a growth, and cannot be made offhand. He believed with Aristotle that vigorous minds were intended by nature to rule,[219] and that certain races, like certain men, are born to leadership.[220] He calls democracies, oligarchies, and petty princedoms (_tyrannides_) "oblique policies which drive the human race to slavery, as is patent in all of them to one who reasons."[221] He has nothing but pity for mankind when it has become a many-headed beast, "despising the higher intellect irrefragable in reason, the lower which hath the face of experience."[222] He had no faith in a turbulent equality asserting the divine right of _I'm as good as you_. He thought it fatal to all discipline: "The confounding of persons hath ever been the beginning of sickness in the state."[223] It is the same thought which Shakespeare puts in the mouth of Ulysses:-- "Degree being vizarded, The unworthiest shows as fairly in the mask, When degree is shaked, Which is the ladder to all high designs, The enterprise is sick."[224] Yet no one can read Dante without feeling that he had a high sense of the worth of freedom, whether in thought or government. He represents, indeed, the very object of his journey through the triple realm of shades as a search after liberty.[225] But it must not be that scramble after undefined and indefinable rights which ends always in despotism, equally degrading whether crowned with a red cap or an imperial diadem. His theory of liberty has for its corner-stone the Freedom of the Will, and the will is free only when the judgment wholly controls the appetite.[226] On such a base even a democracy may rest secure, and on such alone. Rome was always the central point of Dante's speculation. A shadow of her old sovereignty was still left her in the primacy of the Church, to which unity of faith was essential. He accordingly has no sympathy with heretics of whatever kind. He puts the ex-troubadour Bishop of Marseilles, chief instigator of the horrors of Provence, in paradise.[227] The Church is infallible in spiritual matters, but this is an affair of outward discipline merely, and means the Church as a form of polity. Unity was Dante's leading doctrine, and therefore he puts Mahomet among the schismatics, not because he divided the Church, but the faith.[228] Dante's Church was of this world, but he surely believed in another and spiritual one. It has been questioned whether he was orthodox or not. There can be no doubt of it so far as outward assent and conformity are concerned, which he would practice himself and enforce upon others as the first postulate of order, the prerequisite for all happiness in this life. In regard to the Visible Church he was a reformer, but no revolutionist; it is sheer ignorance to speak of him as if there were anything new or exceptional in his denunciation of the corruptions of the clergy. They were the commonplaces of the age, nor were they confined to laymen.[229] To the absolute authority of the Church Dante admitted some exceptions. He denies that the supreme Pontiff has the unlimited power of binding and loosing claimed for him. "Otherwise he might absolve me impenitent, which God himself could not do."[230] "By malison of theirs is not so lost Eternal Love that it cannot return."[231] Nor does the sacredness of the office extend to him who chances to hold it. Philip the Fair himself could hardly treat Boniface VIII. worse than he. With wonderful audacity, he declares the Papal throne vacant by the mouth of Saint Peter himself.[232] Even if his theory of a dual government were not in question, Dante must have been very cautious in meddling with the Church. It was not an age that stood much upon ceremony. He himself tells us he had seen men burned alive, and the author of the _Ottimo Comento_ says: "I the writer saw followers of his [Fra Dolcino] burned at Padua to the number of twenty-two together."[233] Clearly, in such a time as this, one must not make "the veil of the mysterious Terse" _too_ thin.[234] In the affairs of this life Dante was, as we have said, supremely practical, and he makes prudence the chief of the cardinal virtues.[235] He has made up his mind to take things as they come, and to do at Rome as the Romans do. "Ah, savage company! but in the Church With saints, and in the tavern with the gluttons!"[236] In the world of thought it was otherwise, and here Dante's doctrine, if not precisely esoteric, was certainly not that of his day, and must be gathered from hints rather than direct statements. The general notion of God was still (perhaps is largely even now) of a provincial, one might almost say a denominational, Deity. The popular poets always represent Macon, Apolm, Tervagant, and the rest as quasi-deities unable to resist the superior strength of the Christian God. The Paynim answers the arguments of his would-be converters with the taunt that he would never worship a divinity who could not save himself from being done ignominiously to death. Dante evidently was not satisfied with the narrow conception which limits the interest of the Deity to the affairs of Jews and Christians That saying of Saint Paul, "Whom, therefore, ye ignorantly worship, him declare I unto you," had perhaps influenced him, but his belief in the divine mission of the Roman people probably was conclusive. "The Roman Empire had the help of miracles in perfecting itself," he says, and then enumerates some of them. The first is that "under Numa Pompilius, the second king of the Romans, when he was sacrificing according to the rite of the Gentiles, a shield fell from heaven into the city chosen of God."[237] In the _Convito_ we find "Virgil speaking in the person of God," and Aeacus "wisely having recourse to God," the god being Jupiter.[238] Ephialtes is punished in hell for rebellion against "the Supreme Jove,"[239] and, that there may be no misunderstanding, Dante elsewhere invokes the "Jove Supreme, Who upon earth for us wast crucified."[240] It is noticeable also that Dante, with evident design, constantly alternates examples drawn from Christian and Pagan tradition or mythology.[241] He had conceived a unity in the human race, all of whose branches had worshipped the same God under divers names and aspects, had arrived at the same truth by different roads. We cannot understand a passage in the twenty-sixth _Paradiso_, where Dante inquires of Adam concerning the names of God, except as a hint that the Chosen People had done in this thing even as the Gentiles did.[242] It is true that he puts all Pagans in Limbo, "where without hope they live in longing," and that he makes baptism essential to salvation.[243] But it is noticeable that his Limbo is the Elysium of Virgil, and that he particularizes Adam, Noah, Moses, Abraham, David, and others as prisoners there with the rest till the descent of Christ into hell.[244] But were they altogether without hope? and did baptism mean an immersion of the body or a purification of the soul? The state of the heathen after death had evidently been to Dante one of those doubts that spring up at the foot of every truth. In the _De Monarchia_ he says: "There are some judgments of God to which, though human reason cannot attain by its own strength, yet is it lifted to them by the help of faith and of those things which are said to us in Holy Writ,--as to this, that no one, however perfect in the moral and intellectual virtues both as a habit [of the mind] and in practice, can be saved without faith, it being granted that he shall never have heard anything concerning Christ; for the unaided reason of man cannot look upon this as just; nevertheless, with the help of faith, it can."[245] But faith, it should seem, was long in lifting Dante to this height; for in the nineteenth canto of the _Paradiso_, which must have been written many years after the passage just cited, the doubt recurs again, and we are told that it was "a cavern," concerning which he had "made frequent questioning." The answer is given here:-- "Truly to him who with me subtilizes, _If so the Scripture were not over you_, For doubting there were marvellous occasion." But what Scripture? Dante seems cautious, tells us that the eternal judgments are above our comprehension, postpones the answer, and when it comes, puts an orthodox prophylactic before it:-- "Unto this kingdom never Ascended one who had not faith in Christ Before or since he to the tree was nailed But look thou, _many crying are, 'Christ, Christ!' Who at the judgment shall be far less near To him than some shall be who knew not Christ_." There is, then, some hope for the man born on the bank of Indus who has never heard of Christ? Dante is still cautious, but answers the question indirectly in the next canto by putting the Trojan Ripheus among the blessed:-- "Who would believe, down in the errant world, That e'er the Trojan Ripheus in this round Could be the fifth one of these holy lights? Now knoweth he enough of what the world Has not the power to see of grace divine, Although _his_ sight may not discern the bottom." Then he seems to hesitate again, brings in the Church legend of Trajan brought back to life by the prayers of Gregory the Great that he might be converted, and after an interval of fifty lines tells us how Ripheus was saved:-- "The other one, through grace that from so deep A fountain wells that never hath the eye Of any creature reached its primal wave, Set all his love below on righteousness; Wherefore from grace to grace did God unclose His eye to our redemption yet to be, Whence he believed therein, and suffered not From that day forth the stench of Paganism, And he reproved therefor the folk perverse. Those maidens three, whom at the right hand wheel[246] Thou didst behold, were unto him for baptism More than a thousand years before baptizing." If the reader recall a passage already quoted from the _Convito_,[247] he will perhaps think with us that the gate of Dante's _Limbo_ is left ajar even for the ancient philosophers to slip out. The divine judgments are still inscrutable, and the ways of God past finding out, but faith would seem to have led Dante at last to a more merciful solution of his doubt than he had reached when he wrote the _De Monarchia_. It is always humanizing to see how the most rigid creed is made to bend before the kindlier instincts of the heart. The stern Dante thinks none beyond hope save those who are dead in sin, and have made evil their good. But we are by no means sure that he is not right in insisting rather on the implacable severity of the law than on the possible relenting of the judge. Exact justice is commonly more merciful in the long run than pity, for it tends to foster in men those stronger qualities which make them good citizens, an object second only with the Roman-minded Dante to that of making them spiritually regenerate, nay, perhaps even more important as a necessary preliminary to it. The inscription over the gate of hell tells us that the terms on which we receive the trust of life were fixed by the Divine Power (which can what it wills), and are therefore unchangeable; by the Highest Wisdom, and therefore for our truest good; by the Primal Love, and therefore the kindest. These are the three attributes of that justice which moved the maker of them. Dante is no harsher than experience, which always exacts the uttermost farthing; no more inexorable than conscience, which never forgives nor forgets. No teaching is truer or more continually needful than that the stains of the soul are ineffaceable, and that though their growth may be arrested, their nature is to spread insidiously till they have brought all to their own color. Evil is a far more cunning and persevering propagandist than Good, for it has no inward strength, and is driven to seek countenance and sympathy. It must have company, for it cannot bear to be alone in the dark, while "Virtue can see to do what Virtue would By her own radiant light." There is one other point which we will dwell on for a moment as bearing on the question of Dante's orthodoxy. His nature was one in which, as in Swedenborg's, a clear practical understanding was continually streamed over by the northern lights of mysticism, through which the familiar stars shine with a softened and more spiritual lustre. Nothing is more interesting than the way in which the two qualities of his mind alternate, and indeed play into each other, tingeing his matter-of-fact sometimes with unexpected glows of fancy, sometimes giving an almost geometrical precision to his most mystical visions. In his letter to Can Grande he says: "It behooves not those to whom it is given to know what is best in us to follow the footprints of the herd; much rather are they bound to oppose its wanderings. For the vigorous in intellect and reason, endowed with a certain divine liberty, are constrained by no customs. Nor is it wonderful, since they are not governed by the laws, but much more govern the laws themselves." It is not impossible that Dante, whose love of knowledge was all-embracing, may have got some hint of the doctrine of the Oriental Sufis. With them the first and lowest of the steps that lead upward to perfection is the Law, a strict observance of which is all that is expected of the ordinary man whose mind is not open to the conception of a higher virtue and holiness. But the Sufi puts himself under the guidance of some holy man [Virgil in the _Inferno_], whose teaching he receives implicitly, and so arrives at the second step, which is the Path [_Purgatorio_] by which he reaches a point where he is freed from all outward ceremonials and observances, and has risen from an outward to a spiritual worship. The third step is Knowledge [_Paradiso_], endowed by which with supernatural insight, he becomes like the angels about the throne, and has but one farther step to take before he reaches the goal and becomes one with God. The analogies of this system with Dante's are obvious and striking. They become still more so when Virgil takes leave of him at the entrance of the Terres trial Paradise with the words:-- "Expect no more a word or sign from me; Free and upright and sound is thy free-will, And error were it not to do its bidding; Thee o'er thyself I therefore crown and mitre,"[248] that is, "I make thee king and bishop over thyself; the inward light is to be thy law in things both temporal and spiritual." The originality of Dante consists in his not allowing any divorce between the intellect and the soul in its highest sense, in his making reason and intuition work together to the same end of spiritual perfection. The unsatisfactoriness of science leads Faust to seek repose in worldly pleasure; it led Dante to find it in faith, of whose efficacy the short-coming of all logical substitutes for it was the most convincing argument. That we cannot know, is to him a proof that there is some higher plane on which we can believe and see. Dante had discovered the incalculable worth of a single idea as compared with the largest heap of facts ever gathered. To a man more interested in the soul of things than in the body of them, the little finger of Plato is thicker than the loins of Aristotle. We cannot but think that there is something like a fallacy in Mr. Buckle's theory that the advance of mankind is necessarily in the direction of science, and not in that of morals. No doubt the laws of morals existed from the beginning, but so also did those of science, and it is by the application, not the mere recognition, of both that the race is benefited. No one questions how much science has done for our physical comfort and convenience, and with the mass of men these perhaps must of necessity precede the quickening of their moral instincts; but such material gains are illusory, unless they go hand in hand with a corresponding ethical advance. The man who gives his life for a principle has done more for his kind than he who discovers a new metal or names a new gas, for the great motors of the race are moral, not intellectual, and their force lies ready to the use of the poorest and weakest of us all. We accept a truth of science so soon as it is demonstrated, are perfectly willing to take it on authority, can appropriate whatever use there may be in it without the least understanding of its processes, as men send messages by the electric telegraph, but every truth of morals must be redemonstrated in the experience of the individual man before he is capable of utilizing it as a constituent of character or a guide in action. A man does not receive the statements that "two and two make four," and that "the pure in heart shall see God," on the same terms. The one can be proved to him with four grains of corn; he can never arrive at a belief in the other till he realize it in the intimate persuasion of his whole being. This is typified in the mystery of the incarnation. The divine reason must forever manifest itself anew in the lives of men, and that as individuals. This atonement with God, this identification of the man with the truth,[249] so that right action shall not result from the lower reason of utility, but from the higher of a will so purified of self as to sympathize by instinct with the eternal laws,[250] is not something that can be done once for all, that can become historic and traditional, a dead flower pressed between the leaves of the family Bible, but must be renewed in every generation, and in the soul of every man, that it may be valid. Certain sects show their recognition of this in what are called revivals, a gross and carnal attempt to apply truth, as it were, mechanically, and to accomplish by the etherization of excitement and the magnetism of crowds what is possible only in the solitary exaltations of the soul. This is the high moral of Dante's poem. We have likened it to a Christian basilica; and as in that so there is here also, painted or carven, every image of beauty and holiness the artist's mind could conceive for the adornment of the holy place. We may linger to enjoy these if we will, but if we follow the central thought that runs like the nave from entrance to choir, it leads us to an image of the divine made human, to teach us how the human might also make itself divine. Dante beholds at last an image of that Power, Love, and Wisdom, one in essence, but trine in manifestation, to answer the needs of our triple nature and satisfy the senses, the heart, and the mind. "Within the deep and luminous subsistence Of the High Light appeared to me three circles Of threefold color and of one dimension, And by the second seemed the first reflected As iris is by iris, and the third Seemed fire that equally by both is breathed. * * * * * "Within itself, of its own very color, Seemed to me painted with our effigy, Wherefore my sight was all absorbed therein." He had reached the high altar where the miracle of transubstantiation is wrought, itself also a type of the great conversion that may be accomplished in our own nature (the lower thing assuming the qualities of the higher), not by any process of reason, but by the very fire of the divine love. "Then there smote my mind A flash of lightning wherein came its wish."[251] Perhaps it seems little to say that Dante was the first great poet who ever made a poem wholly out of himself, but, rightly looked at, it implies a wonderful self-reliance and originality in his genius. His is the first keel that ever ventured into the silent sea of human consciousness to find a new world of poetry. "L'acqua ch' io prendo giammai non si corse."[252] He discovered that not only the story of some heroic person, but that of any man might be epical; that the way to heaven was not outside the world, but through it. Living at a time when the end of the world was still looked for as imminent,[253] he believed that the second coming of the Lord was to take place on no more conspicuous stage than the soul of man; that his kingdom would be established in the surrendered will. A poem, the precious distillation of such a character and such a life as his through all those sorrowing but undespondent years, must have a meaning in it which few men have meaning enough in themselves wholly to penetrate. That its allegorical form belongs to a past fashion, with which the modern mind has little sympathy, we should no more think of denying than of whitewashing a fresco of Giotto. But we may take it as we may nature, which is also full of double meanings, either as picture or as parable, either for the simple delight of its beauty or as a shadow of the spiritual world. We may take it as we may history, either for its picturesqueness or its moral, either for the variety of its figures, or as a witness to that perpetual presence of God in his creation of which Dante was so profoundly sensible. He had seen and suffered much, but it is only to the man who is himself of value that experience is valuable. He had not looked on man and nature as most of us do, with less interest than into the columns of our daily newspaper. He saw in them the latest authentic news of the God who made them, for he carried everywhere that vision washed clear with tears which detects the meaning under the mask, and, beneath the casual and transitory, the eternal keeping its sleepless watch. The secret of Dante's power is not far to seek. Whoever can express _himself_ with the full force of unconscious sincerity will be found to have uttered something ideal and universal. Dante intended a didactic poem, but the most picturesque of poets could not escape his genius, and his sermon sings and glows and charms in a manner that surprises more at the fiftieth reading than the first, such variety of freshness is in imagination. There are no doubt in the _Divina Commedia_ (regarded merely as poetry) sandy spaces enough both of physics and metaphysics, but with every deduction Dante remains the first of descriptive as well as moral poets. His verse is as various as the feeling it conveys; now it has the terseness and edge of steel, and now palpitates with iridescent softness like the breast of a dove. In vividness he is without a rival. He drags back by its tangled locks the unwilling head of some petty traitor of an Italian provincial town, lets the fire glare on the sullen face for a moment, and it sears itself into the memory forever. He shows us an angel glowing with that love of God which makes him a star even amid the glory of heaven, and the holy shape keeps lifelong watch in our fantasy constant as a sentinel. He has the skill of conveying impressions indirectly. In the gloom of hell his bodily presence is revealed by his stirring something, on the mount of expiation by casting a shadow. Would he have us feel the brightness of an angel? He makes him whiten afar through the smoke like a dawn,[254] or, walking straight toward the setting sun, he finds his eyes suddenly unable to withstand a greater splendor against which his hand is unavailing to shield him. Even its reflected light, then, is brighter than the direct ray of the sun.[255] And how mack more keenly do we feel the parched lips of Master Adam for those rivulets of the Casentino which run down into the Arno, "making their channels cool and soft"! His comparisons are as fresh, as simple, and as directly from nature as those of Homer.[256] Sometimes they show a more subtle observation, as where he compares the stooping of Antaeus over him to the leaning tower of Garisenda, to which the clouds, flying in an opposite direction to its inclination, give away their motion.[257] His suggestions of individuality, too, from attitude or speech, as in Farinata, Sordello, or Pia,[258] give in a hint what is worth acres of so-called character-painting. In straightforward pathos, the single and sufficient thrust of phrase, he has no competitor. He is too sternly touched to be effusive and tearful: "Io non piangeva, si dentro impietrai."[259] His is always the true coin of speech, "Si lucida e si tonda Che nel suo conio nulla ci s'inforsa," and never the highly ornamented promise to pay, token of insolvency. No doubt it is primarily by his poetic qualities that a poet must be judged, for it is by these, if by anything, that he is to maintain his place in literature. And he must be judged by them absolutely, with reference, that is, to the highest standard, and not relatively to the fashions and opportunities of the age in which he lived. Yet these considerations must fairly enter into our decision of another side of the question, and one that has much to do with the true quality of the man, with his character as distinguished from his talent, and therefore with how much he will influence men as well as delight them. We may reckon up pretty exactly a man's advantages and defects as an artist; these he has in common with others, and they are to be measured by a recognized standard; but there is something in his _genius_ that is incalculable. It would be hard to define the causes of the difference of impression made upon us respectively by two such men as Aeschylus and Euripides, but we feel profoundly that the latter, though in some respects a better dramatist, was an infinitely lighter weight. Aeschylus stirs something in us far deeper than the sources of mere pleasurable excitement. The man behind the verse is far greater than the verse itself, and the impulse he gives to what is deepest and most sacred in us, though we cannot always explain it, is none the less real and lasting. Some men always seem to remain outside their work; others make their individuality felt in every part of it; their very life vibrates in every verse, and we do not wonder that it has "made them lean for many years." The virtue that has gone out of them abides in what they do. The book such a man makes is indeed, as Milton called it, "the precious lifeblood of a master spirit." Theirs is a true immortality, for it is their soul, and not their talent, that survives in their work. Dante's concise forthrightness of phrase, which to that of most other poets is as a stab[260] to a blow with a cudgel, the vigor of his thought, the beauty of his images, the refinement of his conception of spiritual things, are marvellous if we compare him with his age and its best achievement. But it is for his power of inspiring and sustaining, it is because they find in him a spur to noble aims, a secure refuge in that defeat which the present always seems, that they prize Dante who know and love him best. He is not merely a great poet, but an influence, part of the soul's resources in time of trouble. From him she learns that, "married to the truth, she is a mistress, but otherwise a slave shut out of all liberty."[261] All great poets have their message to deliver us, from something higher than they. We venture on no unworthy comparison between him who reveals to us the beauty of this world's love and the grandeur of this world's passion and him who shows that love of God is the fruit whereof all other loves are but the beautiful and fleeting blossom, that the passions are yet sublimer objects of contemplation, when, subdued by the will, they become patience in suffering and perseverance in the upward path. But we cannot help thinking that if Shakespeare be the most comprehensive intellect, so Dante is the highest spiritual nature that has expressed itself in rhythmical form. Had he merely made us feel how petty the ambitions, sorrows, and vexations of earth appear when looked down on from the heights of our own character and the seclusion of our own genius, or from the region where we commune with God, he had done much: "I with my sight returned through one and all The sevenfold spheres, and I beheld this globe Such that I smiled at its ignoble semblance."[262] But he has done far more; he has shown us the way by which that country far beyond the stars may be reached, may become the habitual dwelling-place and fortress of our nature, instead of being the object of its vague aspiration in moments of indolence. At the Round Table of King Arthur there was left always one seat empty for him who should accomplish the adventure of the Holy Grail. It was called the perilous seat because of the dangers he must encounter who would win it. In the company of the epic poets there was a place left for whoever should embody the Christian idea of a triumphant life, outwardly all defeat, inwardly victorious, who should make us partakers of that cup of sorrow in which all are communicants with Christ. He who should do this would indeed achieve the perilous seat, for he must combine poesy with doctrine in such cunning wise that the one lose not its beauty nor the other its severity,--and Dante has done it. As he takes possession of it we seem to hear the cry he himself heard when Virgil rejoined the company of great singers, "All honor to the loftiest of poets!" Footnotes: [1] The Shadow of Dante, being an Essay towards studying Himself, his World, and his Pilgrimage. By Maria Francesca Rossetti. "Se Dio te lasci, lettor prender frutto Di tua lezione." Boston: Roberts Brothers. 1872. 8vo. pp. 296. [2] The Florentines should seem to have invented or re-invented banks, book-keeping by double entry, and bills of exchange. The last, by endowing Value with the gift of fern seed and enabling it to walk invisible, turned the flank of the baronial tariff-system and made the roads safe for the great liberalizer Commerce. This made Money omnipresent, and prepared the way for its present omnipotence. Fortunately it cannot usurp the third attribute of Deity,--omniscience. But whatever the consequences, this Florentine invention was at first nothing but admirable, securing to brain its legitimate influence over brawn. The latter has begun its revolt, but whether it will succeed better in its attempt to restore mediaeval methods, than the barons in maintaining them remains to be seen. [3] Ghiberti's designs have been criticised by a too systematic aestheticism, as confounding the limits of sculpture and painting. But is not the _riliero_ precisely the bridge by which the one art passes over into the territory of the other? [4] Inferno, IV. 102. [5] The Nouvelle Biographie Générale gives May 8 as his birthday. This is a mere assumption, for Boccaccio only says generally May. The indication which Dante himself gives that he was born when the sun was in Gemini would give a range from about the middle of May to about the middle of June, so that the 8th is certainly too early. [6] Secolo di Dante, Udine edition of 1828, Vol. III. Part I. p.578. [7] Arrivabene, however, is wrong. Boccaccio makes precisely the same reckoning in the first note of his Commentary (Bocc. Comento, etc., Firenze, 1844, Vol. I. pp. 32, 33). [8] Dict. Phil., art. _Dante_. [9] Paradise, XXII. [10] Canto XV. [11] Purgatorio, XVI. [12] Though he himself preferred French, and wrote his _Trésor_ in that language for two reasons, _"l'una perchè noi siamo in Francia, e l'altra perchè, la parlatura francesca e più dilettevolee più comune che tutti li altri linguaggi_." (_Proemio, sul fine_.) [13] Inferno, Canto VII. [14] Paradiso, Canto X. [15] See especially Inferno, IX. 112 et seq.; XII. 120; XV. 4 et seq.; XXXII. 25-30. [16] Vit. Nuov. p. 61, ed. Pesaro, 1829. [17] Tratt. III. Cap. XI. [18] Letter of Dante, now lost, cited by Aretino. [19] Inferno, XXI. 94. [20] Balbo, Vita di Dante, Firenze, 1853, p. 117. [21] Life and Times of Dante, London, 1858, p. 80. [22] Notes to Spenser's "Shepherd's Calendar." [23] See the story at length in Balbo, Vita di Dante, Cap. X. [24] Thus Foscolo. Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that at first the blacks were the extreme Guelphs, and the whites those moderate Guelphs inclined to make terms with the Ghibellines. The matter is obscure, and Balbo contradicts himself about it. [25] Secolo di Dante, p. 654. He would seem to have been in Rome during the Jubilee of 1300. See Inferno, XVIII. 28-33. [26] That Dante was not of the _grandi_, or great nobles (what we call grandees), as some of his biographers have tried to make out, is plain from this sentence, where his name appears low on the list and with no ornamental prefix, after half a dozen _domini_. Bayle, however, is equally wrong in supposing his family to have been obscure. [27] See Witte, "Quando e da chi sia composto l' Ottimo Comento," etc. (Leipsic, 1847) [28] Ott. Com. Parad. XVII. [29] The loose way in which many Italian scholars write history is as amazing as it is perplexing. For example: Count Balbo's "Life of Dante" was published originally at Turin, in 1839. In a note (Lib. I. Cap. X.) he expresses a doubt whether the date of Dante's banishment should not be 1303, and inclines to think it should be. Meanwhile, it seems never to have occurred to him to employ some one to look at the original decree, still existing in the archives. Stranger still, Le Monnier, reprinting the work at Florence in 1853, within a stone's throw of the document itself, and with full permission from Balbo to make corrections, leaves the matter just where it was. [30] Convito, Tratt. I. Cap. III. [31] Macchiavelli is the authority for this, and is carelessly cited in the preface to the Udine edition of the "Codex Bartolinianus" as placing it in 1312. Macchiavelli does no such thing, but expressly implies an earlier date, perhaps 1310. (See Macch. Op. ed. Baretti, London, 1772, Vol. I. p. 60.) [32] See Carlyle's "Frederic," Vol. I. p. 147. [33] A mistake, for Guido did not become lord of Ravenna till several years later. But Boccaccio also assigns 1313 as the date of Dante's withdrawal to that city, and his first protector may have been one of the other Polentani to whom Guido (surnamed Novello, or the Younger; his grandfather having borne the same name) succeeded. [34] Under this date (1315) a 4th _condemnatio_ against Dante is mentioned _facta in anno 1315 de mense Octobris per D. Rainerium, D. Zachario de Urbeveteri, olim et tunc vicarium regium civitatis Florentia_, etc. It is found recited in the decree under which in 1342 Jacopo di Dante redeemed a portion of his father's property, to wit: _Una possessione cum vinea et cum domibus super ea, combustis et non combustis, posita in populo S. Miniatis de Pagnlao_. In the _domibus combustis_ we see the blackened traces of Dante's kinsman by marriage, Corso Donati, who plundered and burnt the houses of the exiled Bianchi, during the occupation of the city by Charles of Valois. (See "De Romanis," notes on Tiraboschi's Life of Dante, in the Florence ed. of 1830, Vol. V. p. 119.) [35] Voltaire's blunder has been made part of a serious theory by Mons. E. Aroux, who gravely assures us that, during the Middle Ages, Tartar was only a cryptonym by which heretics knew each other, and adds: _Il n'y a donc pas trop à s'etonner des noms bizarres de Mastino et de Cane donnés à ces Della Scala_. (Dante, hérétique, révolutionnaire, et socialiste, Paris, 1854, pp. 118-120.) [36] If no monument at all was built by Guido, as is asserted by Balbo (Vita, I. Lib. II. Cap. XVII.), whom De Vericour copies without question, we are at a loss to account for the preservation of the original epitaph replaced by Cardinal Bembo when he built the new tomb, in 1483. Bembo's own inscription implies an already existing monument, and, if in disparaging terms, yet epitaphial Latin verses are not to be taken too literally, considering the exigencies of that branch of literary ingenuity. The doggerel Latin has been thought by some unworthy of Dante, as Shakespeare's doggerel English epitaph has been thought unworthy of him. In both cases the rudeness of the verses seems to us a proof of authenticity. An enlightened posterity with unlimited superlatives at command, and in an age when stone-cutting was cheap, would have aimed at something more befitting the occasion. It is certain, at least in Dante's case, that Cardinal Bembo would never have inserted in the very first words an allusion to the De Monarchiâ, a book long before condemned as heretical. [37] We have translated _lacusque_ by "the Pit," as being the nearest English correlative. Dante probably meant by it the several circles of his Hell, narrowing, one beneath the other, to the centre. As a curious specimen of English we subjoin Professor de Vericour's translation: "I have sang the rights of monarchy; I have sang, in exploring them, the abode of God, the Phlegethon and the impure lakes, as long as destinies have permitted. But as the part of myself, which was only passing, returns to better fields, and happier, returned to his Maker, I, Dante, exiled from the regions of fatherland, I am laid here, I, to whom Florence gave birth, a mother who experienced but a feeble love." (The Life and Times of Dante, London, 1858, p. 208.) [38] Inferno, X. 85. [39] Paradiso, XVII. [40] He says after the return of Louis of Bavaria to Germany, which took place in that year. The De Monarchiâ was afterward condemned by the Council of Trent. [41] Paradiso, XXVII. [42] Inferno, XI. [43] See the letter in Gaye, Carteggio inedito d' artisti, Vol. I. p. 123. [44] St. René Taillandier, in Revue des Deux Mondes, December 1, 1856. [45] Dante, Vol. IV. p. 116. [46] Ste. Beuve, Causeries du Lundi, Tome XI. p. 169. [47] Dict. Phil., art. _Dante_. [48] Corresp. gén., Oeuvres, Tome LVII. pp. 80, 81. [49] Essai sur les moeurs, Oeuvres, Tome XVII. pp. 371, 372. [50] Génie du Christianisme, Cap. IV. [51] Ed. Lond. 1684, p. 199. [52] It is worth notice, as a proof of Chaucer's critical judgment, that he calls Dante "the great poet of Itaille," while in the "Clerke's Tale" he speaks of Petrarch as a "worthy clerk," as "the laureat poete" (alluding to the somewhat sentimental ceremony at Rome), and says that his "Rhetorike sweete Enlumined all Itaille of poetry." [53] It is possible that Sackville may have read the Inferno, and it is certain that Sir John Harrington had. See the preface to his translation of the Orlando Furioso. [54] Second edition, 1800. [55] Dante Alighieri's lyrische Gedichte, Leipzig, 1842, Theil II. pp. 4-9. [56] Vita, p. 97. [57] Comment on Paradiso, VI. [58] Jean de Meung had already said,-- "Ge n'en met hors rois ne prélas * * * * * "Qu'il sunt tui serf au menu pueple." Roman de la Rose (ed. Méon), V. ii. pp. 78, 79. [59] Dante, Studien, etc., 1855, p. 144. [60] Compare also Spinoza, Tractat. polit., Cap. VI. [61] It is instructive to compare Dante's political treatise with those of Aristotle and Spinoza. We thus see more clearly the limitations of the age in which he lived, and this may help us to a broader view of him as poet. [62] A very good one may be found in the sixth volume of the Molini edition of Dante, pp. 391-433. [63] See Field's "Theory of Colors." [64] As by Dante himself in the Convito. [65] Psalm cxiv. 1, 2. [66] He commonly prefaced his letters with some such phrase as _exul immeritus_. [67] In order to fix more precisely in the mind the place of Dante in relation to the history of thought, literature, and events, we subjoin a few dates: Dante born, 1265; end of Crusades, death of St. Louis, 1270; Aquinas died, 1274; Bonaventura died, 1274; Giotto born, 1276; Albertus Magnus died, 1280; Sicilian vespers, 1282; death of Ugolino and Francesca da Rimini, 1282; death of Beatrice, 1290; Roger Bacon died, 1292; death of Cimabue, 1302; Dante's banishment, 1302; Petrarch born, 1304; Fra Dolcino burned, 1307; Pope Clement V. at Avignon, 1309; Templars suppressed, 1312; Boccaccio born, 1313; Dante died, 1321; Wycliffe born, 1324; Chaucer born, 1328. [68] Rivavol characterized only a single quality of Dante's style, who knew how to spend as well as spare. Even the Inferno, on which he based his remark, might have put him on his guard. Dante understood very well the use of ornament in its fitting place. _Est enim exornatio alicujus convenientis additio_, he tells us in his De Vulgari Eloquio (Lib. II. C. II.). His simile of the doves (Inferno, V. 82 et seq.), perhaps the most exquisite in all poetry, quite oversteps Rivarol's narrow limit of "substantive and verb." [69] Discorso sul testo, ec., § XVIII. [70] Convito, B. IV. C. XXII. [71] It is remarkable that when Dante, in 1297, as a preliminary condition to active politics, enrolled himself in the guild of physicians and apothecaries, he is qualified only with the title _poeta_. The arms of the Alighieri (curiously suitable to him who _sovra gli altri come aquila vola_) were a wing of gold in a field of azure. His vivid sense of beauty even hovers sometimes like a _corposant_ over the somewhat stiff lines of his Latin prose. For example, in his letter to the kings and princes of Italy on the coming of Henry VII: "A new day brightens, revealing the dawn which already scatters the shades of long calamity; already the breezes of morning gather; _the lips of heaven are reddening!"_ [72] Purgatorio, XXXII. 100. [73] Paradiso, I. 70. [74] In a letter to Can Grande (XI. of the Epistolae). [75] Witte, Wegele, and Ruth in German, and Ozanam in French, have rendered ignorance of Dante inexcusable among men of culture. [76] Inferno, VII. 75. "Nay, his style," says Miss Rossetti, "is more than concise: it is elliptical, it is recondite. A first thought often lies coiled up and hidden under a second; the words which state the conclusion involve the premises and develop the subject." (p. 3.) [77] A complete vocabulary of Italian billingsgate might be selected from Biagioli. Or see the concluding pages of Nannucci's excellent tract "Intorno alle voci usate da Dante," Corfu, 1840. Even Foscolo could not always refrain. Dante should have taught them to shun such vulgarities. See Inferno, XXX. 131-148. [78] "My Italy, my sweetest Italy, for having loved thee too much I have lost thee, and, perhaps, ... ah, may God avert the omen! But more proud than sorrowful, for an evil endured for thee alone, I continue to consecrate my vigils to thee alone.... An exile full of anguish, perchance, availed to sublime the more in thy Alighieri that lofty soul which was a beautiful gift of thy smiling sky; and an exile equally wearisome and undeserved now avails, perhaps, to sharpen my small genius so that it may penetrate into what he left written for thy instruction and for his glory." (Rossetti, Disamina, ec., p. 405.) Bossetti is himself a proof that a noble mind need not be narrowed by misfortune. His "Comment" (unhappily incomplete) is one of the most valuable and suggestive. [79] The great-minded man ever magnifies himself in his heart, and in like manner the pusillanimous holds himself less than he is. (Convito, Tr. I. c. 11.) [80] Dante's notion of virtue was not that of an ascetic, nor has any one ever painted her in colors more soft and splendid than he in the Convito. She is "sweeter than the lids of Juno's eyes," and he dwells on the delights of her love with a rapture which kindles and purifies. So far from making her an inquisitor, he says expressly that she "should be gladsome and not sullen in all her works." (Convito, Tr. I. c. 8.) "Not harsh and crabbed as dull fools suppose"! [81] Inferno, XIX. 28, 29. [82] Inferno, VIII. 70-75. [83] Paradise, X. 138. [84] Paradiso, IV. 40-45 (Longfellow's version). [85] Marlowe's "Faustus." "Which way I fly is hell, myself am hell." (Paradise Lost, IV. 75.) In the same way, _ogni dove in cielo o Paradiso_. (Paradiso, III. 88, 89.) [86] Purgatorio, XIX. 7-33. [87] Convito, Tr. II. c. 16. [88] _La natura universale, cioè Iddio._ (Convito, Tr. III. c. 4.) [89] Inferno, III. 7, 8. [90] Inferno, XX. 30. Mr. W.M. Rossetti strangely enough renders this verse "Who hath a passion for God's judgeship" _Compassion porta_, is the reading of the best texts, and Witte adopts it. Buti's comment is "_cioè porta pena e dolore di colui che giustamente è condannato da Dio che e sempre giusto_." There is an analogous passage in "The Revelation of the Apostle Paul," printed in the "Proceedings of the American Oriental Society" (Vol. VIII. pp. 213, 214): "And the angel answered and said, 'Wherefore dost thou weep? Why! art thou more merciful than God?' And I said, 'God forbid, O my lord; for God is good and long-suffering unto the sons of men, and he leaves every one of them to his own will, and he walks as he pleases'" This is precisely Dante's view. [91] Inferno, VIII 40. [92] "I following her (Moral Philosophy) in the work as well as the passion, so far as I could, abominated and disparaged the errors of men, not to the infamy and shame of the erring, but of the errors." (Convito, Tr IV. c. 1.) "Wherefore in my judgment as he who defames a worthy man ought to be avoided by people and not listened to, so a vile man descended of worthy ancestors ought to be hunted out by all." (Convito, Tr. IV. c. 29.) [93] Paradise, XVII. 61-69. [94] It is worth mentioning that the sufferers in his Inferno are in like manner pretty exactly divided between the two parties. This is answer enough to the charge of partiality. He even puts persons there for whom he felt affection (as Brunetto Latini) and respect (as Farinata degli Uberti and Frederick II.). Till the French looked up their MSS., it was taken for granted that the _beccajo di Parigi_ (Purgatorio, XX. 52) was a drop of Dante's gall. "Ce fu Huez Capez e' on apelle bouchier." Hugues Capet, p. 1. [95] De Vulgari Eloquio, Lib. I, Cap. VI. Cf. Inferno, XV. 61-64. [96] Convito, Tr. IV. c. 23. Ib. Tr. I. c. 2. [97] Convito, Tr. III. c. 13. [98] Opp. Min., ed. Fraticelli, Vol. II. pp. 281 and 283. Witte is inclined to put it even earlier than 1300, and we believe he is right. [99] Paradiso, VI. 103-105. [100] Some Florentines have amusingly enough doubted the genuineness of the De vulgari Eloquio, because Dante therein denies the pre-eminence of the Tuscan dialect. [101] See particularly the second book of the De vulgari Eloquio. [102] Purgatorio, XXXIII. 141. "That thing one calls beautiful whose parts answer to each other, because pleasure results from their harmony." (Convito, Tr. I. c. 5.) Carlyle says that "he knew too, partly, that his work was great, the greatest a man could do." He knew it fully. Telling us how Giotto's fame as a painter had eclipsed that of Cimabue, he takes an example from poetry also, and selecting two Italian poets,--one the most famous of his predecessors, the other of his contemporaries,--calmly sets himself above them both (Purgatorio, XI. 97-99), and gives the reason for his supremacy (Purgatorio, XXIV. 49-62). It is to be remembered that _Amore_ in the latter passage does not mean love in the ordinary sense, but in that transcendental one set forth in the Convito,--that state of the soul which opens it for the descent of God's spirit, to make it over into his own image. "Therefore it is manifest that in this love the Divine virtue descends into men in the guise of an angel, ... and it is to be noted that the descending of the virtue of one thing into another is nothing else than reducing it to its own likeness." (Convito, Tr. III. c. 14.) [103] Convito, Tr. III. c. 11. Ib. Tr. I. c. 11. [104] Convito, Tr. III. c. 12-15. [105] Inferno, II. 94. The _donna gentil_ is Lucia, the prevenient Grace, the _light_ of God which shows the right path and guides the feet in it. With Dante God is always the sun, "which leadeth others right by every road." (Inferno, I. 18.) "The spiritual and unintelligible Sun, which is God." (Convito, Tr. III. c. 12) His light "enlighteneth every man that cometh into the world," but his dwelling is in the heavens. He who wilfully deprives himself of this light is spiritually dead in sin. So when in Mars he beholds the glorified spirits of the martyrs he exclaims, "O Elios, who so arrayest them!" (Paradiso, XIV. 96.) Blanc (Vocabolario, _sub voce_) rejects this interpretation. But Dante, entering the abode of the Blessed, invokes the "good Apollo," and shortly after calls him _divina virtù._ We shall have more to say of this hereafter. [106] Convito, Tr. III. c. 12. [107] Convito, Tr. III. c. 15. Recalling how the eyes of Beatrice lift her servant through the heavenly spheres, and that smile of hers so often dwelt on with rapture, we see how Dante was in the habit of commenting and illustrating his own works. We must remember always that with him the allegorical exposition is the true one (Convito, Tr. IV. c. 1), the allegory being a truth which is hidden under a beautiful falsehood (Convito, Tr. II. c. 1), and that Dante thought his poems without this exposition "under some shade of obscurity, so that to many their beauty was more grateful than their goodness" (Convito, Tr. I. c. 1), "because the goodness is in the meaning, and the beauty in the ornament of the words" (Convito, Tr. II. c. 12). [108] Convito, Tr. III. c. 14. [109] Convito, Tr. IV. c. 22. [110] Convito, Tr. III. c. 6. [111] Convito, Tr. III. c. 2. By _potenzia_ and _potenza_ Dante means the faculty of receiving influences or impressions. (Paradiso, XIII. 61; XXIX. 34.) Reason is the "sovran potency" because it makes us capable of God. [112] "O thou _well-born_, unto whom Grace concedes To see the thrones of the Eternal triumph, Or ever yet the warfare be abandoned." Paradiso, V. 115-118. [113] Convito, Tr. IV. c. 21. [114] Convito, Tr. III. c. 7. [115] Inferno, X. 55, 56; Paradiso, XXII. 112-117. [116] Convito, Tr. I. c. 23 (cf. Inferno, I. IV). [117] Convito, Tr. III. c. 3; Paradiso, XVIII. 108-130. [118] See an excellent discussion and elucidation of this matter by Witte, who so highly deserves the gratitude of all students of Dante, in Dante Alighieri's Lyrische Gedichte, Theil II. pp. 48-57. It was kindly old Boccaccio, who, without thinking any harm, first set this nonsense agoing. His "Life of Dante" is mainly a rhetorical exercise. After making Dante's marriage an excuse for revamping all the old slanders against matrimony, he adds gravely, "Certainly I do not affirm these things to have happened to Dante, for I do not know it, though it be true that (whether things like these or others were the cause of it), once parted from her, he would never come where she was nor suffer her to come where he was, for all that she was the mother of several children by him." That he did not come to her is not wonderful, for he would have been burned alive if he had. Dante could not send for her because he was a homeless wanderer. She remained in Florence with her children because she had powerful relations and perhaps property there. It is plain, also, that what Boccaccio says of Dante's _lussuria_ had no better foundation. It gave him a chance to turn a period. He gives no particulars, and his general statement is simply incredible. Lionardo Bruni and Vellutello long ago pointed out the trifling and fictitious character of this "Life." Those familiar with Dante's allegorical diction will not lay much stress on the literal meaning of _pargoletta_ in Purgatono, XXXI. 59. Gentucca, of course, was a real person, one of those who had shown hospitality to the exile. Dante remembers them all somewhere, for gratitude (which is quite as rare as genius) was one of the virtues of his unforgetting nature Boccaccio's "Comment" is later and far more valuable than the "Life." [119] Convito, Tr. IV. c. 17; Purgatorio, XXVII. 100-108. [120] Convito, Tr. II. c. 8. [121] That is, _wholly_ fulfil, _rendono intera_. [122] We should prefer here, "Nor inspirations _won by prayer_ availed," as better expressing _Nè l'impetrare spirazion_. Mr. Longfellow's translation is so admirable for its exactness as well as its beauty that it may be thankful for the minutest criticism, such only being possible. [123] Which he cites in the Paradiso, VIII. 37. [124] Dante confesses his guiltiness of the sin of pride, which (as appears by the examples he gives of it) included ambition, in Purgatorio, XIII. 136, 137. [125] Convito, Tr. II. c. 11. [126] Purgatorio, XXVIII. [127] Purgatorio, XXVIII. 40-44; Convito, Tr. III. c. 13. [128] Purgatorio, XXVII. 94-105. [129] Psalm li. 2. "And therefore I say that her [Philosophy's] beauty, that is, morality, rains flames of fire, that is, a righteous appetite which is generated in the love of moral doctrine, the which appetite removes us from the natural as well as other vices." (Convito, Tr. III. c. 15.) [130] Purgatorio, XXXI. 103,104. [131] Tr. IV. c. 22. [133] Purgatorio, 100-102. [133] Such is the _selva oscura_ (Inferno, I. 2), such, the _selva erronea di questa vita_ (Convito, Tr. IV. c. 24). [134] Convito, Tr. I. c. 13. [135] Convito, Tr. II. c. 2. [136] _Mar di tutto il senno_, he calls Virgil (Inferno, VIII. 7). Those familiar with his own works will think the phrase singularly applicable to himself. [137] Convito, Tr. III. c. 9. [138] Convito, Tr. III. c. 3. [139] Vita Nuova, XI. [140] Vita Nuova, Tr. II. c. 6. [141] Convito, Tr. IV. c. 24. The date of Dante's birth is uncertain, but the period he assigns for it (Paradiso, XXII. 112-117) extends from the middle of May to the middle of June. If we understand Buti's astrological comment, the day should fall in June rather than May. [142] Vita Nuova, XXXIX. Compare for a different view, "The New Life of Dante, an Essay with Translations," by C. E. Norton, pp. 92. et seq. [143] There is a passage in the Convito (Tr. III. c. 15) in which Dante seems clearly to make the distinction asserted above, "And therefore the desire of man is limited in this life to that _knowledge_ (_scienzia_) which may here be had, and passes not save by error that point which is beyond our natural understanding. And so is limited and measured in the angelic nature the amount of that _wisdom_ which the nature of each is capable of receiving." Man is, according to Dante, superior to the angels in this, that he is capable both of reason and contemplation, while they are confined to the latter. That Beatrice's reproaches refer to no human _pargoletta_, the context shows, where Dante asks, "But wherefore so beyond my power of sight Soars your desirable discourse that aye The more I strive, so much the more I lose it? That thou mayst recognize, she said, the school Which thou hast followed, and mayst see how far Its doctrine follows after my discourse, And mayst behold your path from the divine Distant as far as separated is From earth the heaven that highest hastens on." Purgatorio, XXXIII. 82-90. The _pargoletta_ in its ordinary sense was necessary to the literal and human meaning, but it is shockingly discordant with that non-natural interpretation which, according to Dante's repeated statement, lays open the true and divine meaning. [144] "So then they that are in the flesh cannot please God. But ye are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, if so be that the Spirit of God dwell in you." Romans viii. 8, 9. [145] Convito, Tr. II. c. 14, 15. [146] Convito, Tr. II. c. 4. Compare Paradiso, I. 76, 77. [147] "Vain babblings and oppositions of science falsely so called." 1 Tim. vi. 20. [148] That is, no partial truth. [149] Paradise, IV. 124-132. [150] "Out of the eater came forth meat, and out of the strong came forth sweetness."--Judges xiv. 14. [151] Purgatorio, III. 34-44. The allusions in this passage are all to sayings of Saint Paul, of whom Dante was plainly a loving reader. "Remain contented at the _Quia_," that is, be satisfied with knowing _that_ things are, without inquiring too nicely _how_ or _why_. "Being justified by faith we have peace with God" (Rom. v. 1). _Infinita via_: "O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments, and his ways past finding out!" (Rom. xi. 93) _Aristotle and Plato_: "For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who hold the truth in unrighteousness.... For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead, so _that they are without excuse_. Because that when they knew God, they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful, but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened" (Rom. i. 18-21). He refers to the Greeks. The Epistle to the Romans, by the way, would naturally be Dante's favorite. As Saint Paul made the Law, so he would make Science, "our schoolmaster to bring us unto Christ, that we might be justified by faith" (Gal. iii. 24). He puts Aristotle and Plato in his Inferno, because they did not "adore God duly" (Inferno, IV. 38), that is, they "held the truth in unrighteousness." Yet he calls Aristotle "the master and guide of human reason" (Convito, Tr. IV. c. 6), and Plato "a most excellent man" (Convito, Tr. II. c 5). Plato and Aristotle, like all Dante's figures, are types. We must disengage our thought from the individual, and fix on the genus. [152] It is to be remembered that Dante has typified the same thing when he describes how Reason (Virgil) first carries him down by clinging to the fell of Satan, and then in the same way upwards again _a riveder le stelle_. Satan is the symbol of materialism, fixed at the point "To which things heavy draw from every side"; as God is Light and Warmth, so is he "cold obstruction"; the very effort which he makes to rise by the motion of his wings begets the chilly blast that freezes him more immovably in his place of doom. The danger of all science save the highest (theology) was that it led to materialism There appears to have been a great deal of it in Florence in the time of Dante. Its followers called themselves Epicureans, and burn in living tombs (Inferno, X.). Dante held them in special horror. "Of all bestialities that is the most foolish and vile and hurtful which believes there is no other life after this." "And I so believe, so affirm, and so am certain that we pass to another better life after this" (Convito, Tr. II. c. 9). It is a fine divination of Carlyle from the _Non han speranza di morte_ that "one day it had risen sternly benign in the scathed heart of Dante that he, wretched, never resting, worn as he was, would [should] full surely _die_." [153] Purgatorio, XXXI. 103. [154] Inferno, XXXI. 5, 6. [155] Tr. IV. c. 28. [156] Inferno, XXV. 64-67. [157] Purgatorio, XXXI. 123-126. [158] Spenser, who had, like Dante, a Platonizing side, and who was probably the first English poet since Chaucer that had read the Commedia, has imitated the pictorial part of these passages in the "Faerie Queene" (B. VI. c. 10). He has turned it into a compliment, and a very beautiful one, to a living mistress. It is instructive to compare the effect of his purely sensuous verses with that of Dante's, which have such a wonderful reach behind them. They are singularly pleasing, but they do not stay by us as those of his model had done by him. Spenser was, as Milton called him, a "sage and serious poet"; he would be the last to take offence if we draw from him a moral not without its use now that Priapus is trying to persuade us that pose and drapery will make him as good as Urania. Better far the naked nastiness; the more covert the indecency, the more it shocks. Poor old god of gardens! Innocent as a clownish symbol, he is simply disgusting as an ideal of art. In the last century, they set him up in Beatrice recalls her Germany and in France as befitting an era of enlightenment, the light of which came too manifestly from the wrong quarter to be long endurable. [159] This touch of nature recalls another. The Italians claim humor for Dante. We have never been able to find it, unless it be in that passage (Inferno, XV. 119) where Brunetto Latini lingers under the burning shower to recommend his Tesoro to his former pupil. There is a comical touch of nature in an author's solicitude for his little work, not, as in Fielding's case, after _its_, but his own damnation. We are not sure, but we fancy we catch the momentary flicker of a smile across those serious eyes of Dante's. There is something like humor in the opening verses of the XVI. Paradiso, where Dante tells us how even in heaven he could not help glorying in being gently born,--he who had devoted a Canzone and a book of the Convito to proving that nobility consisted wholly in virtue. But there is, after all, something touchingly natural in the feeling. Dante, unjustly robbed of his property, and with it of the independence so dear to him, seeing "Needy nothings trimmed in jollity, And captive Good attending Captain Ill," would naturally fall back on a distinction which money could neither buy nor replace. There is a curious passage in the Convito which shows how bitterly he resented his undeserved poverty. He tells us that buried treasure commonly revealed itself to the bad rather than the good. "Verily I saw the place on the flanks of a mountain in Tuscany called Falterona, where the basest peasant of the whole countryside digging found there more than a bushel of pieces of the finest silver, which perhaps had awaited him more than a thousand years." (Tr. IV. c. 11.) One can see the grimness of his face as he looked and thought, "how salt a savor hath the bread of others!" [160] L'Envoi of Canzone XIV. of the Canzoniere, I. of the Convito. Dante cites the first verse of this Canzone, Paradiso, VIII. 37. [161] How Dante himself could allegorize even historical personages may be seen in a curious passage of the Convito (Tr. IV. c. 28), where, commenting on a passage of Lucan, he treats Martia and Cato as mere figures of speech. [162] II. of the Canzoniere. See Fraticelli's preface. [163] Don Quixote, P. II. c. VIII. [164] De vulgari Eloquio, L. II. c. 2. He says the same of Giraud de Borneil, many of whose poems are moral and even devotional. See, particularly, "Al honor Dieu torn en mon chan" (Raynouard, Lex Rom I. 388), "Ben es dregz pos en aital port" (Ib. 393), "Jois sia comensamens" (Ib. 395), and "Be veg e conosc e say" (Ib. 398). Another of his poems ("Ar ai grant joy," Raynouard, Choix, III. 304) may _possibly_ be a mystical profession of love for the Blessed Virgin, for whom, as Dante tells us, Beatrice had a special devotion. [165] Convito, Tr. III. c. 14. In the same chapter is perhaps an explanation of the two rather difficult verses which follow that in which the _verace speglio_ is spoken of (Paradise, XXVI. 107, 108). "Che fa di sè pareglie l' altre cose E nulla face lui di sè pareglio." Buti's comment is, "that is, makes of itself a receptacle to other things, that is, to all things that exist, which are all seen in it." Dante says (_ubi supra_), "The descending of the virtue of one thing into another is a reducing that other into a likeness of itself.... Whence we see that the sun sending his ray down hitherward reduces things to a likeness with his light in so far as they are able by their disposition to receive light from his power. So I say that God reduces this love to a likeness with himself as much as it is possible for it to be like him." In Provençal _pareilh_ means _like_, and Dante may have formed his word from it. But the four earliest printed texts read:-- "Che fa di sè pareglio all' altre cose." Accordingly we are inclined to think that the next verse should be corrected thus:-- "E nulla face a lui di sè pareglio." We would form _pareglio_ from _parere_ (a something in which things _appear_), as _miraglio_ from _mirare_ (a something in which they are _seen_). God contains all things in himself, but nothing can wholly contain him. The blessed behold all things in him as if reflected, but not one of the things so reflected is capable of his image in its completeness. This interpretation is confirmed by Paradiso, XIX. 49-51. "E quinci appar _ch' ogni minor natura É corto recettacolo a quel bene Che non ha fine_, e sè con sè misura." [166] "Wisdom of Solomon," VII. 26, quoted by Dante (Convito, Tr. III. c. 15) There are other passages in the "Wisdom of Solomon" besides that just cited which we may well believe Dante to have had in his mind when writing the Canzone beginning,-- "Amor che nella mente mi ragiona," and the commentary upon it, and some to which his experience of life must have given an intenser meaning. The writer of that book also personifies Wisdom as the mistress of his soul: "I loved her and sought her out from my youth, I desired to make her my spouse, and I was a lover of her beauty." He says of Wisdom that she was "present when thou (God) madest the world," and Dante in the same way identifies her with the divine Logos, citing as authority the "beginning of the Gospel of John." He tells us, "I perceived that I could not otherwise obtain her except God gave her me," and Dante came at last to the same conclusion. Again, "For the very true beginning of her is the desire of discipline; and the care of discipline is love. And love is the keeping of her laws; and the giving heed unto her laws is the assurance of incorruption." But who can doubt that he read with a bitter exultation, and applied to himself passages like these which follow? "When the righteous _fled from his brothers wrath, she guided him in right paths showed him the kingdom of God, and gave him knowledge of holy things_. She defended him from his enemies and kept him safe from those that lay in wait, ... that he might know that godliness is stronger than all.... She forsook him not, but delivered him from sin; _she went down with him into the pit_, and left him not in bonds till she brought him the sceptre of the kingdom, ... and gave him perpetual glory." It was, perhaps, from this book that Dante got the hint of making his punishments and penances typical of the sins that earned them. "Wherefore, whereas men lived dissolutely and unrighteously, thou hast tormented them with their own abominations." Dante was intimate with the Scriptures. They do even a scholar no harm. M. Victor Le Clerc, in his "Histoire Littéraire de la France au quatorzième siècle" (Tom. II. p. 72), thinks it "not impossible" that a passage in the Lamentations of Jeremiah, paraphrased by Dante, may have been suggested to him by Rutebeuf or Tristan, rather than by the prophet himself! Dante would hardly have found himself so much at home in the company of _jongleurs_ as in that of prophets. Yet he was familiar with French and Provençal poetry. Beside the evidence of the _Vulgari Eloquio_, there are frequent and broad traces in the Commedia of the _Roman de la Rose_, slighter ones of the _Chevalier de la Charette, Guillaume d'Orange,_ and a direct imitation of Bernard de Ventadour. [167] Convito, Tr. I. c. 12. [168] Purgatorio, XXII. 115, 116. [169] That Dante loved fame we need not be told. He several times confesses it, especially in the De Vulgari Eloquio, I. 17. "How glorious she [the Vulgar Tongue] makes her intimates [_familiares_, those of her household], we ourselves have known, who in the sweetness of this glory put our exile behind our backs." [170] Dante several times uses the sitting a horse as an image of rule. See especially Purgatorio, VI. 99, and Convito, Tr. IV. c. 11. [171] "O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and the knowledge of God!" Dante quotes this in speaking of the influence of the stars, which, interpreting it presently "by the theological way," he compares to that of the Holy Spirit "And thy counsel who hath known, except thou give wisdom and send thy Holy Spirit from above?" (Wisdom of Solomon, ix. 17.) The last words of the Convito are, "her [Philosophy] whose proper dwelling is in the depths of the Divine mind". The ordinary reading is _ragione_ (reason), but it seems to us an obvious blunder for _magione_ (mansion, dwelling). [172] Convito, Tr. IV. c. 28. [173] He refers to a change in his own opinions (Lib II. § 1), where he says, "When I knew the nations to have murmured against the preeminence of the Roman people, and saw the people imagining vain things _as I myself was wont_." He was a Guelph by inheritance, he became a Ghibelline by conviction. [174] It should seem from Dante's words ("at the time when much people went to see the blessed image," and "ye seem to come from a far off people") that this was some extraordinary occasion, and what so likely as the jubilee of 1300? (Compare Paradiso, XXXI. 103-108.) Dante's comparisons are so constantly drawn from actual eye-sight, that his allusion (Inferno, XIII. 28-33) to a device of Boniface VIII. for passing the crowds quietly across the bridge of Saint Angelo, renders it not unlikely that he was in Rome at that time, and perhaps conceived his poem there as Giovanni Villani his chronicle. That Rome would deeply stir his mind and heart is beyond question "And certes I am of a firm opinion that the stones that stand in her walls are worthy of reverence, and the soil where she sits worthy beyond what is preached and admitted of men." (Convito, Tr. IV. c. 5.) [175] _Beatrice, loda di Dio vera_, Inferno, II. 103. "Surely vain are all men by nature who are ignorant of God, and could not out of the good things that are seen know him that is, neither by considering the works did they acknowledge the work-master.... For, being conversant in his works, they search diligently and believe their sight, because the things are beautiful that are seen. Howbeit, neither are they to be pardoned." (Wisdom of Solomon, XIII. 1, 7, 8.) _Non adorar debitamente, Dio_. "For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and godhead; so that they are without excuse." It was these "invisible things" whereof Dante was beginning to get a glimpse. [176] Convito, Tr. I. c. 7. [177] "And here we would have forgiven Mr. Captain if he had not betrayed him (_traido, traduttore traditore_) to Spain and made him a Castilian, for he took away much of his native worth, and so will all those do who shall undertake to turn a poem into another tongue; for with all the care they take and ability they show, they will never reach the height of its original conception," says the Curate, speaking of a translation of Ariosto. (Don Quixote, P. I. c. 6.) [177] In his own comment Dante says, "I tell whither goes my thought, calling it by the name of one of its effects." [178] _Spirito_ means in Italian both breath (_spirto ed acqua fessi_, Purgatorio, XXX. 98) and spirit. [180] By _visione_ Dante means something seen waking by the inner eye. He believed also that dreams were sometimes divinely inspired, and argues from such the immortality of the soul. (Convito, Tr. II. c. 9.) [181] Paradiso, XXV. 1-3. [182] De Monarchia, Lib. III. § _ult_. See the whole passage in Miss Rossetti, p 39. It is noticeable that Dante says that the Pope is to _lead_ (by example), the Emperor to _direct_ (by the enforcing of justice) The duty, we are to observe, was a double but not a divided one. To exemplify this unity was indeed one object of the Commedia. [183] "What Reason seeth here Myself [Virgil] can tell thee; beyond that await For Beatrice, since 'tis a work of Faith." _Purgatorio_, XVIII. 46-48. Beatrice here evidently impersonates Theology. It would be interesting to know what was the precise date of Dante's theological studies. The earlier commentators all make him go to Paris, the great fountain of such learning, after his banishment. Boccaccio indeed says that he did not return to Italy till 1311. Wegele (Dante's "Leben und Werke," p. 85) puts the date of his journey between 1292 and 1297. Ozanam, with a pathos comically touching to the academic soul, laments that poverty compelled him to leave the university without the degree he had so justly earned. He consoles himself with the thought that "there remained to him an incontestable erudition and the love of serious studies." (Dante et la philosophic catholique, p. 112.) It _is_ sad that we cannot write _Dantes Alighierius, S. T. D._! Dante seems to imply that he began to devote himself to Philosophy and Theology shortly after Beatrice's death. (Convito, Tr. II. c. 13.) He compares himself to one who, "seeking silver, should, without meaning it, find gold, which an occult cause presents to him, not perhaps without the divine command." Here again apparently is an allusion to his having found Wisdom while he sought Learning. He had thought to find God in the beauty of his works, he learned to seek all things in God. [184] In a more general view, matter, the domain of the senses, no doubt with a recollection of Aristotle's [Greek: hylae]. [185] As we have seen, even a sigh becomes _He_. This makes one of the difficulties of translating his minor poems. The modern mind is incapable of this subtlety. [186] Purgatorio, III. 122,123. [186] Purgatorio, III. 122,123. [187] Purgatorio, V. 107. [188] Inferno, III. 17, 18 (_hanno perduto_ = thrown away). [189] Convito, Tr. II. c. 14. [190] Purgatorio, XXIII. 121, 122. [191] Convito, Tr. IV. c. 7. [192] Inferno, XXXIII. 118, et seq. [193] Inferno, I. 116, 117. [194] Mr. Longfellow's _for_, like the Italian _per_, gives us the same privilege of election. We "freeze for cold," we "hunger for food." [195] Inferno, V. 67. [196] Paradiso, XVIII. 46. Renoard is one of the heroes (a rudely humorous one) in "La Bataille d'Alischans," an episode of the measureless "Guillaume d'Orange." It was from the graves of those supposed to have been killed in this battle that Dante draws a comparison, Inferno, IX. Boccaccio's comment on this passage might have been read to advantage by the French editors of "Alischans." [197] We cite this comment under its received name, though it is uncertain if Pietro was the author of it. Indeed, we strongly doubt it. It is at least one of the earliest, for it appears, by the comment on Paradiso, XXVI., that the greater part of it was written before 1341. It is remarkable for the strictness with which it holds to the spiritual interpretation of the poem, and deserves much more to be called Ottimo, than the comment which goes by that name. Its publication is due to the zeal and liberality of the late Lord Vernon, to whom students of Dante are also indebted for the parallel-text reprint of the four earliest editions of the Commedia. [198] See Wegele, _ubi supra_, p. 174, et seq. The best analysis of Dante's opinions we have ever met with is Emil Ruth's "Studien über Dante Alighieri," Tübingen, 1853. Unhappily it wants an index, and accordingly loses a great part of its usefulness for those not already familiar with the subject. Nor are its references sufficiently exact. We always respect Dr. Ruth's opinions, if we do not wholly accept them, for they are all the results of original and assiduous study. [199] See the second book of the De Vulgari Eloquio. The only other Italian poet who reminds us of Dante in sustained dignity is Guido Guinicelli. Dante esteemed him highly, calls him maximus in the De Vulgari Eloquio, and "the father of me and of my betters," in the XXVI. Purgatorio. See some excellent specimens of him in Mr. D. G. Rossetti's remarkable volume of translations from the early Italian poets. Mr. Rossetti would do a real and lasting service to literature by employing his singular gift in putting Dante's minor poems into English. [200] The old French poems confound all unbelievers together as pagans and worshippers of idols. [201] Dante is an ancient in this respect as in many others, but the difference is that with him society is something divinely ordained. He follows Aristotle pretty closely, but on his own theory crime and sin are identical. [202] Purgatorio, XVIII. 73. He defines it in the De Monarchia (Lib. I. § 14). Among other things he calls it "the first beginning of our liberty." Paradiso, V. 19, 20, he calls it "the greatest gift that in his largess God creating made." "Dico quod judicium medium est apprehensionis et appetitus." (De Monarchia, _ubi supra_.) "Right and wrong, Between whose endless jar justice resides." _Troilus and Cressida._ [203] Convito, Tr. IV. c. 22. [204] Convito, Tr. IV. c. 7. "Qui descenderit ad inferos, non ascendet." Job vii. 9. [205] But it may he inferred that he put the interests of mankind above both. "For citizens," he says, "exist not for the sake of consuls, nor the people for the sake of the king, but, on the contrary, consuls for the sake of citizens, and the king for the sake of the people." [206] Paradiso, VIII. 145, 146. [207] Purgatorio, XVI. 106-112. [208] De Monarchia, § _ult_. [209] De Monarchia Lib III § 10. "Poterat tamen Imperator in patrocinium Eccelesiae patrimonium et alia deputare immoto semper superiori dominio cujus unitas divisio non patitur. Poterat et Vicarius Dei recipere, non tanquam possessor, sed tanquam fructuum pro Eccelesia proque Christi pauperibus dispensator." He tells us that St. Dominic did not ask for the tithes which belong to the poor of God. (Paradiso, XII. 93, 94.) "Let them return whence they came," he says (De Monarchia, Lib II. § 10); "they came well, let them return ill, for they were well given and ill held." [210] Inferno, XIX. 53; Paradiso, XXX. 145-148. [211] Purgatorio, XX. 86-92. [211] Purgatorio, XX. 86-92. [212] Purgatorio, XIX. 134, 135. [213] This results from the whole course of his argument in the second book of De Monarchia, and in the VI. Paradiso he calls the Roman eagle "the bird of God" and "the scutcheon of God." We must remember that with Dante God is always the "Emperor of Heaven," the barons of whose court are the Apostles. (Paradiso, XXIV. 115; Ib., XXV. 17.) [214] Dante seems to imply (though his name be German) that he was of Roman descent He makes the original inhabitants of Florence (Inferno, XV. 77, 78) of Roman seed, and Cacciaguida, when asked by him about his ancestry, makes no more definite answer than that their dwelling was in the most ancient part of the city (Paradiso, XVI. 40.) [215] Man was created, according to Dante (Convito, Tr. II. c. 6), to supply the place of the fallen angels, and is in a sense superior to the angels, inasmuch as he has reason, which they do not need. [216] De Monarchia, Lib I. § 5. [217] Purgatorio, VI. 83, 84. [218] De Monarchia, Lib. I. § 16. [219] De Monarchia, Lib. I. § 5. [220] De Monarchia, Lib II. § 7. [221] Purgatorio, XVI. 67, 68. [222] "Troilus and Cressida," Act I. s. 3. The whole speech is very remarkable both in thought and phrase. [223] Purgatorio, I. 71. [224] De Monarchia, Lib. I. § 14. [225] De Monarchia, Lib. I. § 18. [226] De Monarchia, Lib. I. § 14. [227] Paradiso, IX. [228] Inferno, XXXVIII; Purgatorio, XXXII. [229] See the poems of Walter Mapes (who was Archdeacon of Oxford); the "Bible Guiot," and the "Bible au seignor de Berze," Barbezan and Méon, II. [230] De Monarchia, Lib. III. § 8. [231] Purgatorio, III. 133, 134. [232] Paradiso, XXVII. 22. [233] Purgatorio, XXVII. 18; Ottimo, Inferno, XXVIII. 55. [234] Inferno, IX. 63; Purgatorio, VIII. 20. [235] Purgatorio, XXIX. 131, 132. [236] Inferno, XXII. 13, 14. [237] De Monarchia, Lib. II. § 4. [238] Convito, Tr. IV. c. 4; Ib., c. 27; Aeneid, I. 178, 179; Ovid's Met., VII. [239] Inferno, XXXI. 92. [240] Purgatorio, VI. 118, 119. Pulci, not understanding, has parodied this. ("Morgante," Canto II. st. 1.) [241] See, for example, Purgatorio, XX. 100-117. [242] We believe that Dante, though he did not understand Greek, knew something of Hebrew. He would have been likely to study it as the sacred language, and opportunities of profiting by the help of learned Jews could not have been wanting to him in his wanderings. In the above-cited passage some of the best texts read _I s' appellava_, and others _Un s' appellava_. God was called I (the _Je_ in Jehovah) or _One_, and afterwards _El_,--the strong,--an epithet given to many gods. Whichever reading we adopt, the meaning and the inference from it are the same. [243] Inferno, IV. [244] Dante's "Limbo," of course, is the older "Limbus Patrum." [245] De Monarchia, Lib. II. § 8. [246] Faith, Hope, and Charity. (Purgatorio, XXIX. 121.) Mr. Longfellow has translated the last verse literally. The meaning is, "More than a thousand years ere baptism was." [247] In which the _celestial Athens_ is mentioned. [248] Purgatorio, XXVII. 139-142. [249] "I conceived myself to be now," says Milton, "not as mine own person, but as a member incorporate into that truth whereof I was persuaded." [250] "But now was turning my desire and will, Even as a wheel that equally is moved, The Love that moves the sun and other stars." Paradiso, XXXIII., closing verses of the Divina Commedia. [251] Dante seems to allude directly to this article of the Catholic faith when he says, on entering the Celestial Paradise, "to signify transhumanizing by words could not be done," and questions whether he was there in the renewed spirit only or in the flesh also:-- "If I was merely _what of me thou newly Createdst_, Love who governest the heavens, Thou knowest who didst lift me with thy light." Paradiso, I. 70-75. [252] Paradiso, II. 7. Lucretius makes the same boast:-- "Avia Pieridum peragro loca nullius ante Trita solo." [253] Convito, Tr. IV. c. 15. [254] Purgatorio, XVI. 142. Here is Milton's "Far off his coming shone." [255] Purgatorio, XV. 7, et seq. [256] See, for example, Inferno, XVII. 127-132; Ib. XXIV. 7-12; Purgatorio, II. 124-129; Ib., III. 79-84; Ib., XXVII. 76-81; Paradiso, XIX. 91-93; Ib. XXI. 34-39; Ib. XXIII. 1-9. [257] Inferno, XXXI. 136-138. "And those thin clouds above, in fakes and bars, That give away their motion to the stars." Coleridge, "Dejection, an Ode." See also the comparison of the dimness of the faces seen around him in Paradise to "a pearl on a white forehead." (Paradiso, III. 14.) [258] Inferno, X. 35-41; Purgatorio, VI. 61-66; Ib., X. 133. [259] For example, Cavalcanti's _Come dicesti egli ebbe_? (Inferno, X. 67, 68.) Anselmuccio's _Tu guardi si, padre, che hai_? (Inferno, XXXIII. 51.) [260] To the "bestiality" of certain arguments Dante says, "one would wish to reply, not with words, but with a knife." (Convito, Tr. IV. c. 14.) [261] Convito, Tr. IV. c. 2. [262] Paradiso, XXII. 132-135; Ib., XXVII. 110. SPENSER. Chaucer had been in his grave one hundred and fifty years ere England had secreted choice material enough for the making of another great poet. The nature of men living together in societies, as of the individual man, seems to have its periodic ebbs and floods, its oscillations between the ideal and the matter-of-fact, so that the doubtful boundary line of shore between them is in one generation a hard sandy actuality strewn only with such remembrances of beauty as a dead sea-moss here and there, and in the next is whelmed with those lacelike curves of ever-gaining, ever-receding foam, and that dance of joyous spray which for a moment catches and holds the sunshine. From the two centuries between 1400 and 1600 the indefatigable Ritson in his _Bibliographia Poetica_ has made us a catalogue of some six hundred English poets, or, more properly, verse-makers. Ninety-nine in a hundred of them are mere names, most of them no more than shadows of names, some of them mere initials. Nor can it be said of them that their works have perished because they were written in an obsolete dialect; for it is the poem that keeps the language alive, and not the language that buoys up the poem. The revival of letters, as it is called, was at first the revival of _ancient_ letters, which, while it made men pedants, could do very little toward making them poets, much less toward making them original writers. There was nothing left of the freshness, vivacity, invention, and careless faith in the present which make many of the productions of the Norman Trouvères delightful reading even now. The whole of Europe during the fifteenth century produced no book which has continued readable, or has become in any sense of the word a classic. I do not mean that that century has left us no illustrious names, that it was not enriched with some august intellects who kept alive the apostolic succession of thought and speculation, who passed along the still unextinguished torch of intelligence, the _lampada vitae_, to those who came after them. But a classic is properly a book which maintains itself by virtue of that happy coalescence of matter and style, that innate and exquisite sympathy between the thought that gives life and the form that consents to every mood of grace and dignity, which can be simple without being vulgar, elevated without being distant, and which is something neither ancient nor modern, always new and incapable of growing old. It is not his Latin which makes Horace cosmopolitan, nor can Béranger's French prevent his becoming so. No hedge of language however thorny, no dragon-coil of centuries, will keep men away from these true apples of the Hesperides if once they have caught sight or scent of them. If poems die, it is because there was never true life in them, that is, that true poetic vitality which no depth of thought, no airiness of fancy, no sincerity of feeling, can singly communicate, but which leaps throbbing at touch of that shaping faculty the imagination. Take Aristotle's ethics, the scholastic philosophy, the theology of Aquinas, the Ptolemaic system of astronomy, the small politics of a provincial city of the Middle Ages, mix in at will Grecian, Roman, and Christian mythology, and tell me what chance there is to make an immortal poem of such an incongruous mixture. Can these dry bones live? Yes, Dante can create such a soul under these ribs of death that one hundred and fifty editions of his poem shall be called for in these last sixty years, the first half of the sixth century since his death. Accordingly I am apt to believe that the complaints one sometimes hears of the neglect of our older literature are the regrets of archaeologists rather than of critics. One does not need to advertise the squirrels where the nut-trees are, nor could any amount of lecturing persuade them to spend their teeth on a hollow nut. On the whole, the Scottish poetry of the fifteenth century has more meat in it than the English, but this is to say very little. Where it is meant to be serious and lofty it falls into the same vices of unreality and allegory which were the fashion of the day, and which there are some patriots so fearfully and wonderfully made as to relish. Stripped of the archaisms (that turn every _y_ to a meaningless _z_, spell which _quhilk_, shake _schaik_, bugle _bowgill_, powder _puldir_, and will not let us simply whistle till we have puckered our mouths to _quhissill_) in which the Scottish antiquaries love to keep it disguised,--as if it were nearer to poetry the further it got from all human recognition and sympathy,--stripped of these, there is little to distinguish it from the contemporary verse-mongering south of the Tweed. Their compositions are generally as stiff and artificial as a trellis, in striking contrast with the popular ballad-poetry of Scotland (some of which possibly falls within this period, though most of it is later), which clambers, lawlessly if you will, but at least freely and simply, twining the bare stem of old tradition with graceful sentiment and lively natural sympathies. I find a few sweet and flowing verses in Dunbar's "Merle and Nightingale,"--indeed one whole stanza that has always seemed exquisite to me. It is this:-- "Ne'er sweeter noise was heard by living man Than made this merry, gentle nightingale. Her sound went with the river as it ran Out through the fresh and flourished lusty vale; O merle, quoth she, O fool, leave off thy tale, For in thy song good teaching there is none, For both are lost,--the time and the travail Of every love but upon God alone." But except this lucky poem, I find little else in the serious verses of Dunbar that does not seem to me tedious and pedantic. I dare say a few more lines might be found scattered here and there, but I hold it a sheer waste of time to hunt after these thin needles of wit buried in unwieldy haystacks of verse. If that be genius, the less we have of it the better. His "Dance of the Seven Deadly Sins," over which the excellent Lord Hailes went into raptures, is wanting in everything but coarseness; and if his invention dance at all, it is like a galley-slave in chains under the lash. It would be well for us if the sins themselves were indeed such wretched bugaboos as he has painted for us. What he means for humor is but the dullest vulgarity; his satire would be Billingsgate if it could, and, failing, becomes a mere offence in the nostrils, for it takes a great deal of salt to keep scurrility sweet. Mr. Sibbald, in his "Chronicle of Scottish Poetry," has admiringly preserved more than enough of it, and seems to find a sort of national savor therein, such as delights his countrymen in a _haggis_, or the German in his _sauer-kraut_. The uninitiated foreigner puts his handkerchief to his nose, wonders, and gets out of the way as soon as he civilly can. Barbour's "Brus," if not precisely a poem, has passages whose simple tenderness raises them to that level. That on Freedom is familiar.[263] But its highest merit is the natural and unstrained tone of manly courage in it, the easy and familiar way in which Barbour always takes chivalrous conduct as a matter of course, as if heroism were the least you could ask of any man. I modernize a few verses to show what I mean. When the King of England turns to fly from the battle of Bannockburn (and Barbour with his usual generosity tells us he has heard that Sir Aymer de Valence led him away by the bridle-rein against his will), Sir Giles d'Argente "Saw the king thus and his menie Shape them to flee so speedily, He came right to the king in hy [hastily] And said, 'Sir, since that is so That ye thus gate your gate will go, Have ye good-day, for back will I: Yet never fled I certainly, And I choose here to bide and die Than to live shamefully and fly.'" The "Brus" is in many ways the best rhymed chronicle ever written. It is national in a high and generous way, but I confess I have little faith in that quality in literature which is commonly called nationality,--a kind of praise seldom given where there is anything better to be said. Literature that loses its meaning, or the best part of it, when it gets beyond sight of the parish steeple, is not what I understand by literature. To tell you when you cannot fully taste a book that it is because it is so thoroughly national, is to condemn the book. To say it of a poem is even worse, for it is to say that what should be true of the whole compass of human nature is true only to some north-and-by-east-half-east point of it. I can understand the nationality of Firdusi when, looking sadly back to the former glories of his country, he tells us that "the nightingale still sings old Persian"; I can understand the nationality of Burns when he turns his plough aside to spare the rough burr thistle, and hopes he may write a song or two for dear auld Scotia's sake. That sort of nationality belongs to a country of which we are all citizens,--that country of the heart which has no boundaries laid down on the map. All great poetry must smack of the soil, for it must be rooted in it, must suck life and substance from it, but it must do so with the aspiring instinct of the pine that climbs forever toward diviner air, and not in the grovelling fashion of the potato. Any verse that makes you and me foreigners is not only not great poetry, but no poetry at all. Dunbar's works were disinterred and edited some thirty years ago by Mr. Laing, and whoso is national enough to like thistles may browse there to his heart's content. I am inclined for other pasture, having long ago satisfied myself by a good deal of dogged reading that every generation is sure of its own share of bores without borrowing from the past. A little later came Gawain Douglas, whose translation of the Aeneid is linguistically valuable, and whose introductions to the seventh and twelfth books--the one describing winter and the other May--have been safely praised, they are so hard to read. There is certainly some poetic feeling in them, and the welcome to the sun comes as near enthusiasm as is possible for a ploughman, with a good steady yoke of oxen, who lays over one furrow of verse, and then turns about to lay the next as cleverly alongside it as he can. But it is a wrong done to good taste to hold up this _item_ kind of description any longer as deserving any other credit than that of a good memory. It is a mere bill of parcels, a _post-mortem_ inventory of nature, where imagination is not merely not called for, but would be out of place. Why, a recipe in the cookery-book is as much like a good dinner as this kind of stuff is like true word-painting. The poet with a real eye in his head does not give us everything, but only the _best_ of everything. He selects, he combines, or else gives what is characteristic only; while the false style of which I have been speaking seems to be as glad to get a pack of impertinences on its shoulders as Christian in the Pilgrim's Progress was to be rid of his. One strong verse that can hold itself upright (as the French critic Rivarol said of Dante) with the bare help of the substantive and verb, is worth acres of this dead cord-wood piled stick on stick, a boundless continuity of dryness. I would rather have written that half-stanza of Longfellow's, in the "Wreck of the Hesperus," of the "billow that swept her crew like icicles from her deck," than all Gawain Douglas's tedious enumeration of meteorological phenomena put together. A real landscape is never tiresome; it never presents itself to us as a disjointed succession of isolated particulars; we take it in with one sweep of the eye,--its light, its shadow, its melting gradations of distance: we do not say it is this, it is that, and the other; and we may be sure that if a description in poetry is tiresome there is a grievous mistake somewhere. All the pictorial adjectives in the dictionary will not bring it a hair's-breadth nearer to truth and nature. The fact is that what we see is in the mind to a greater degree than we are commonly aware. As Coleridge says,-- "O lady, we receive but what we give, And in our life alone doth Nature live!" I have made the unfortunate Dunbar the text for a diatribe on the subject of descriptive poetry, because I find that this old ghost is not laid yet, but comes back like a vampire to suck the life out of a true enjoyment of poetry,--and the medicine by which vampires were cured was to unbury them, drive a stake through them, and get them under ground again with all despatch. The first duty of the Muse is to be delightful, and it is an injury done to all of us when we are put in the wrong by a kind of statutory affirmation on the part of the critics of something to which our judgment will not consent, and from which our taste revolts. A collection of poets is commonly made up, nine parts in ten, of this perfunctory verse-making, and I never look at one without regretting that we have lost that excellent Latin phrase, _Corpus poetarum_. In fancy I always read it on the backs of the volumes,--a _body_ of poets, indeed, with scarce one soul to a hundred of them. One genuine English poet illustrated the early years of the sixteenth century,--John Skelton. He had vivacity, fancy, humor, and originality. Gleams of the truest poetical sensibility alternate in him with an almost brutal coarseness. He was truly Rabelaisian before Rabelais. But there is a freedom and hilarity in much of his writing that gives it a singular attraction. A breath of cheerfulness runs along the slender stream of his verse, under which it seems to ripple and crinkle, catching and casting back the sunshine like a stream blown on by clear western winds. But Skelton was an exceptional blossom of autumn. A long and dreary winter follows. Surrey, who brought back with him from Italy the blank-verse not long before introduced by Trissino, is to some extent another exception. He had the sentiment of nature and unhackneyed feeling, but he has no mastery of verse, nor any elegance of diction. We have Gascoyne, Surrey, Wyatt, stiff, pedantic, artificial, systematic as a country cemetery, and, worst of all, the whole time desperately in love. Every verse is as flat, thin, and regular as a lath, and their poems are nothing more than bundles of such tied trimly together. They are said to have refined our language. Let us devoutly hope they did, for it would be pleasant to be grateful to them for something. But I fear it was not so, for only genius can do that; and Sternhold and Hopkins are inspired men in comparison with them. For Sternhold was at least the author of two noble stanzas:-- "The Lord descended from above And bowed the heavens high, And underneath his feet he cast The darkness of the sky; On cherubs and on cherubims Full royally he rode, And on the wings of all the winds Came flying all abroad." But Gascoyne and the rest did nothing more than put the worst school of Italian love poetry into an awkward English dress. The Italian proverb says, "Inglese italianizzato, Diavolo incarnato," that an Englishman Italianized is the very devil incarnate, and one feels the truth of it here. The very titles of their poems set one yawning, and their wit is the cause of the dulness that is in other men. "The lover, deceived by his love, repenteth him of the true love he bare her." As thus:-- "Where I sought heaven there found I hap; From danger unto death, Much like the mouse that treads the trap In hope to find her food, And bites the bread that stops her breath,-- So in like case I stood." "The lover, accusing his love for her unfaithfulness, proposeth to live in liberty." He says:-- "But I am like the beaten fowl That from the net escaped, And thou art like the ravening owl That all the night hath waked." And yet at the very time these men were writing there were simple ballad-writers who could have set them an example of simplicity, force, and grandeur. Compare the futile efforts of these poetasters to kindle themselves by a painted flame, and to be pathetic over the lay figure of a mistress, with the wild vigor and almost fierce sincerity of the "Twa Corbies":-- "As I was walking all alone I heard twa corbies making a moan. The one unto the other did say, Where shall we gang dine to-day? In beyond that old turf dyke I wot there lies a new slain knight; And naebody kens that he lies there But his hawk and his hound and his lady fair. His hound is to the hunting gone, His hawk to fetch the wild fowl home, His lady has ta'en another mate, So we may make our dinner sweet. O'er his white bones as they lie bare The wind shall blow forevermair." There was a lesson in rhetoric for our worthy friends, could they have understood it. But they were as much afraid of an attack of nature as of the plague. Such was the poetical inheritance of style and diction into which Spenser was born, and which he did more than any one else to redeem from the leaden gripe of vulgar and pedantic conceit. Sir Philip Sidney, born the year after him, with a keener critical instinct, and a taste earlier emancipated than his own, would have been, had he lived longer, perhaps even more directly influential in educating the taste and refining the vocabulary of, his contemporaries and immediate successors. The better of his pastoral poems in the "Arcadia" are, in my judgment, more simple, natural, and, above all, more pathetic than those of Spenser, who sometimes strains the shepherd's pipe with a blast that would better suit the trumpet. Sidney had the good sense to feel that it was unsophisticated sentiment rather than rusticity of phrase that befitted such themes.[264] He recognized the distinction between simplicity and vulgarity, which Wordsworth was so long in finding out, and seems to have divined the fact that there is but one kind of English that is always appropriate and never obsolete, namely, the very best.[265] With the single exception of Thomas Campion, his experiments in adapting classical metres to English verse are more successful than those of his contemporaries. Some of his elegiacs are not ungrateful to the ear, and it can hardly be doubted that Coleridge borrowed from his eclogue of Strephon and Klaius the pleasing movement of his own _Catullian Hendecasyllabics_. Spenser, perhaps out of deference to Sidney, also tried his hand at English hexameters, the introduction of which was claimed by his friend Gabriel Harvey, who thereby assured to himself an immortality of grateful remembrance. But the result was a series of jolts and jars, proving that the language had run off the track. He seems to have been half conscious of it himself, and there is a gleam of mischief in what he writes to Harvey: "I like your late English hexameter so exceedingly well that I also enure my pen sometime in that kind, which I find indeed, as I have often heard you defend in word, neither so hard nor so harsh but that it will easily yield itself to our mother-tongue. For the only or chiefest hardness, which seemeth, is in the accent, which sometime gapeth, and, as it were, yawneth ill-favoredly, coming short of that it should, and sometime exceeding the measure of the number, as in _Carpenter_; the middle syllable being used short in speech, when it shall be read long in verse, seemeth like a lame gosling that draweth one leg after her; and _Heaven_ being used short as one syllable, when it is in verse stretched out with a diastole, is like a lame dog that holds up one leg."[266] It is almost inconceivable that Spenser's hexameters should have been written by the man who was so soon to teach his native language how to soar and sing, and to give a fuller sail to English verse. One of the most striking facts in our literary history is the pre-eminence at once so frankly and unanimously conceded to Spenser by his contemporaries. At first, it is true, he had not many rivals. Before the "Faery Queen" two long poems were printed and popular,--the "Mirror for Magistrates" and Warner's "Albion's England,"--and not long after it came the "Polyolbion" of Drayton and the "Civil Wars" of Daniel. This was the period of the saurians in English poetry, interminable poems, book after book and canto after canto, like far-stretching _vertebrae_, that at first sight would seem to have rendered earth unfit for the habitation of man. They most of them sleep well now, as once they made their readers sleep, and their huge remains lie embedded in the deep morasses of Chambers and Anderson. We wonder at the length of face and general atrabilious look that mark the portraits of the men of that generation, but it is no marvel when even their relaxations were such downright hard work. Fathers when their day on earth was up must have folded down the leaf and left the task to be finished by their sons,--a dreary inheritance. Yet both Drayton and Daniel are fine poets, though both of them in their most elaborate works made shipwreck of their genius on the shoal of a bad subject. Neither of them could make poetry coalesce with gazetteering or chronicle-making. It was like trying to put a declaration of love into the forms of a declaration in trover. The "Polyolbion" is nothing less than a versified gazetteer of England and Wales,--fortunately Scotland was not yet annexed, or the poem would have been even longer, and already it is the plesiosaurus of verse. Mountains, rivers, and even marshes are personified, to narrate historical episodes, or to give us geographical lectures. There are two fine verses in the seventh book, where, speaking of the cutting down some noble woods, he says,-- "Their trunks like aged folk now bare and naked stand, As for revenge to heaven each held a withered hand"; and there is a passage about the sea in the twentieth book that comes near being fine; but the far greater part is mere joiner-work. Consider the life of man, that we flee away as a shadow, that our days are as a post, and then think whether we can afford to honor such a draft upon our time as is implied in these thirty books all in alexandrines! Even the laborious Selden, who wrote annotations on it, sometimes more entertaining than the text, gave out at the end of the eighteenth book. Yet Drayton could write well, and had an agreeable lightsomeness of fancy, as his "Nymphidia" proves. His poem "To the Cambro-Britons on their Harp" is full of vigor; it runs, it leaps, clashing its verses like swords upon bucklers, and moves the pulse to a charge. Daniel was in all respects a man of finer mould. He did indeed refine our tongue, and deserved the praise his contemporaries concur in giving him of being "well-languaged."[267] Writing two hundred and fifty years ago, he stands in no need of a glossary, and I have noted scarce a dozen words, and not more turns of phrase, in his works, that have become obsolete. This certainly indicates both remarkable taste and equally remarkable judgment. There is an equable dignity in his thought and sentiment such as we rarely meet. His best poems always remind me of a table-land, where, because all is so level, we are apt to forget on how lofty a plane we are standing. I think his "Musophilus" the best poem of its kind in the language. The reflections are natural, the expression condensed, the thought weighty, and the language worthy of it. But he also wasted himself on an historical poem, in which the characters were incapable of that remoteness from ordinary associations which is essential to the ideal. Not that we can escape into the ideal by _merely_ emigrating into the past or the unfamiliar. As in the German legend the little black Kobold of prose that haunts us in the present will seat himself on the first load of furniture when we undertake our flitting, if the magician be not there to exorcise him. No man can jump off his own shadow, nor, for that matter, off his own age, and it is very likely that Daniel had only the thinking and languaging parts of a poet's outfit, without the higher creative gift which alone can endow his conceptions with enduring life and with an interest which transcends the parish limits of his generation. In the prologue to his "Masque at Court" he has unconsciously defined his own poetry:-- "Wherein no wild, no rude, no antic sport, But tender passions, motions soft and grave, The still spectator must expect to have." And indeed his verse does not snatch you away from ordinary associations and hurry you along with it as is the wont of the higher kinds of poetry, but leaves you, as it were, upon the bank watching the peaceful current and lulled by its somewhat monotonous murmur. His best-known poem, blunderingly misprinted in all the collections, is that addressed to the Countess of Cumberland. It is an amplification of Horace's _Integer Vitae_, and when we compare it with the original we miss the point, the compactness, and above all the urbane tone of the original. It is very fine English, but it is the English of diplomacy somehow, and is never downright this or that, but always has the honor to be so or so, with sentiments of the highest consideration. Yet the praise of _well-languaged_, since it implies that good writing then as now demanded choice and forethought, is not without interest for those who would classify the elements of a style that will wear and hold its colors well. His diction, if wanting in the more hardy evidences of muscle, has a suppleness and spring that give proof of training and endurance. His "Defence of Rhyme," written in prose (a more difficult test than verse), has a passionate eloquence that reminds one of Burke, and is more light-armed and modern than the prose of Milton fifty years later. For us Occidentals he has a kindly prophetic word:-- "And who in time knows whither we may vent The treasure of our tongue? to what strange shores The gain of our best glory may be sent To enrich unknowing nations with our stores? What worlds in the yet unformed Occident May come refined with accents that are ours?" During the period when Spenser was getting his artistic training a great change was going on in our mother-tongue, and the language of literature was disengaging itself more and more from that of ordinary talk. The poets of Italy, Spain, and France began to rain influence and to modify and refine not only style but vocabulary. Men were discovering new worlds in more senses than one, and the visionary finger of expectation still pointed forward. There was, as we learn from contemporary pamphlets, very much the same demand for a national literature that we have heard in America. This demand was nobly answered in the next generation. But no man contributed so much to the transformation of style and language as Spenser; for not only did he deliberately endeavor at reform, but by the charm of his diction, the novel harmonies of his verse, his ideal method of treatment, and the splendor of his fancy, he made the new manner popular and fruitful. We can trace in Spenser's poems the gradual growth of his taste through experiment and failure to that assured self-confidence which indicates that he had at length found out the true bent of his genius,--that happiest of discoveries (and not so easy as it might seem) which puts a man in undisturbed possession of his own individuality. Before his time the boundary between poetry and prose had not been clearly defined. His great merit lies not only in the ideal treatment with which he glorified common things and gilded them with a ray of enthusiasm, but far more in the ideal point of view which he first revealed to his countrymen. He at first sought for that remoteness, which is implied in an escape from the realism of daily life, in the pastoral,--a kind of writing which, oddly enough, from its original intention as a protest in favor of naturalness, and of human as opposed to heroic sentiments, had degenerated into the most artificial of abstractions. But he was soon convinced of his error, and was not long in choosing between an unreality which pretended to be real and those everlasting realities of the mind which seem unreal only because they lie beyond the horizon of the every-day world and become visible only when the mirage of fantasy lifts them up and hangs them in an ideal atmosphere. As in the old fairy-tales, the task which the age imposes on its poet is to weave its straw into a golden tissue; and when every device has failed, in comes the witch Imagination, and with a touch the miracle is achieved, simple as miracles always are after they are wrought. Spenser, like Chaucer a Londoner, was born in 1553.[268] Nothing is known of his parents, except that the name of his mother was Elizabeth; but he was of gentle birth, as he more than once informs us, with the natural satisfaction of a poor man of genius at a time when the business talent of the middle class was opening to it the door of prosperous preferment. In 1569 he was entered as a sizar at Pembroke Hall, Cambridge, and in due course took his bachelor's degree in 1573, and his master's in 1576. He is supposed, on insufficient grounds, as it appears to me, to have met with some disgust or disappointment during his residence at the University.[269] Between 1576 and 1578 Spenser seems to have been with some of his kinsfolk "in the North" It was during this interval that he conceived his fruitless passion for the Rosalinde, whose jilting him for another shepherd, whom he calls Menalcas, is somewhat perfunctorily bemoaned in his pastorals[270] Before the publication of his "Shepherd's Calendar" in 1579, he had made the acquaintance of Sir Philip Sidney, and was domiciled with him for a time at Penshurst, whether as guest or literary dependant is uncertain. In October, 1579, he is in the household of the Earl of Leicester. In July, 1580 he accompanied Lord Grey de Wilton to Ireland as Secretary, and in that country he spent the rest of his life, with occasional flying visits to England to publish poems or in search of preferment. His residence in that country has been compared to that of Ovid in Pontus. And, no doubt, there were certain outward points of likeness. The Irishry by whom he was surrounded were to the full as savage, as hostile, and as tenacious of their ancestral habitudes as the Scythians[271] who made Tomi a prison, and the descendants of the earlier English settlers had degenerated as much as the Mix-Hellenes who disgusted the Latin poet. Spenser himself looked on his life in Ireland as a banishment. In his "Colm Clout's come Home again" he tells us that Sir Walter Raleigh, who visited him in 1589, and heard what was then finished of the "Faery Queen,"-- "'Gan to cast great liking to my lore And great disliking to my luckless lot, That banisht had myself, like wight forlore, Into that waste, where I was quite forgot The which to leave thenceforth he counselled me, Unmeet for man in whom was aught regardful, And wend with him his Cynthia to see, Whose grace was great and bounty most rewardful." But Spenser was already living at Kilcolman Castle (which, with 3,028 acres of land from the forfeited estates of the Earl of Desmond, was confirmed to him by grant two years later), amid scenery at once placid and noble, whose varied charm he felt profoundly. He could not complain, with Ovid,-- "Non liber hie ullus, non qui mihi commodet aurem," for he was within reach of a cultivated society, which gave him the stimulus of hearty admiration both as poet and scholar. Above all, he was fortunate in a seclusion that prompted study and deepened meditation, while it enabled him to converse with his genius disengaged from those worldly influences which would have disenchanted it of its mystic enthusiasm, if they did not muddle it ingloriously away. Surely this sequestered nest was more congenial to the brooding of those ethereal visions of the "Faery Queen" and to giving his "soul a loose" than "The smoke, the wealth, and noise of Rome, And all the busy pageantry That wise men scorn and fools adore." Yet he longed for London, if not with the homesickness of Bussy-Rabutin in exile from the Parisian sun, yet enough to make him joyfully accompany Raleigh thither in the early winter of 1589, carrying with him the first three books of the great poem begun ten years before. Horace's _nonum prematur in annum_ had been more than complied with, and the success was answerable to the well-seasoned material and conscientious faithfulness of the work. But Spenser did not stay long in London to enjoy his fame. Seen close at hand, with its jealousies, intrigues, and selfish basenesses, the court had lost the enchantment lent by the distance of Kilcolman. A nature so prone to ideal contemplation as Spenser's would be profoundly shocked by seeing too closely the ignoble springs of contemporaneous policy, and learning by what paltry personal motives the noble opportunities of the world are at any given moment endangered. It is a sad discovery that history is so mainly made by ignoble men. "Vide questo globo Tal ch'ei sorrise del suo vil sembiante." In his "Colin Clout," written just after his return to Ireland, he speaks of the Court in a tone of contemptuous bitterness, in which, as it seems to me, there is more of the sorrow of disillusion than of the gall of personal disappointment. He speaks, so he tells us,-- "To warn young shepherds' wandering wit Which, through report of that life's painted bliss, Abandon quiet home to seek for it And leave their lambs to loss misled amiss; For, sooth to say, it is no sort of life For shepherd fit to live in that same place, Where each one seeks with malice and with strife To thrust down other into foul disgrace Himself to raise; and he doth soonest rise That best can handle his deceitful wit In subtle shifts.... To which him needs a guileful hollow heart Masked with fair dissembling courtesy, A filëd tongue furnisht with terms of art, No art of school, but courtiers' schoolery. For arts of school have there small countenance, Counted but toys to busy idle brains, And there professors find small maintenance, But to be instruments of others' gains, Nor is there place for any gentle wit Unless to please it can itself apply. * * * * * "Even such is all their vaunted vanity, Naught else but smoke that passeth soon away. * * * * * "So they themselves for praise of fools do sell, And all their wealth for painting on a wall. * * * * * "Whiles single Truth and simple Honesty Do wander up and down despised of all."[272] And again in his "Mother Hubberd's Tale," in the most pithy and masculine verses he ever wrote:-- "Most miserable man, whom wicked Fate Hath brought to Court to sue for _Had-I-wist_ That few have found and many one hath mist! Full httle knowest thou that hast not tried What hell it is in suing long to bide; To lose good days that might be better spent, To waste long nights in pensive discontent, To speed to day, to be put back to-morrow, To feed on hope, to pine with fear and sorrow, To have thy prince's grace yet want her Peers', To have thy asking yet wait many years, To fret thy soul with crosses and with cares, To eat thy heart through comfortless despairs, To fawn, to crouch, to wait, to ride, to run, To spend, to give, to want, to be undone. * * * * * "Whoever leaves sweet home, where mean estate In safe assurance, without strife or hate, Finds all things needful for contentment meek, And will to court for shadows vain to seek, * * * * * "That curse God send unto mine enemy!"[273] When Spenser had once got safely back to the secure retreat and serene companionship of his great poem, with what profound and pathetic exultation must he have recalled the verses of Dante!-- "Chi dietro a jura, e chi ad aforismi Sen giva, e chi seguendo sacerdozio, E chi regnar per forza e per sofismi, E chi rubare, e chi civil negozio, Chi nei diletti della carne involto S' affaticava, e chi si dava all' ozio, Quando da tutte queste cose sciolto, Con Beatrice m' era suso in cielo Cotanto gloriosamente accolto."[274] What Spenser says of the indifference of the court to learning and literature is the more remarkable because he himself was by no means an unsuccessful suitor. Queen Elizabeth bestowed on him a pension of fifty pounds, and shortly after he received the grant of lands already mentioned. It is said, indeed, that Lord Burleigh in some way hindered the advancement of the poet, who more than once directly alludes to him either in reproach or remonstrance. In "The Ruins of Time," after speaking of the death of Walsingham, "Since whose decease learning lies unregarded, And men of armes do wander unrewarded," he gives the following reason for their neglect.-- "For he that now wields all things at his will, Scorns th' one and th' other in his deeper skill. O grief of griefs! O gall of all good hearts, To see that virtue should despisëd be Of him that first was raised for virtuous parts, And now, broad spreading like an aged tree, Lets none shoot up that nigh him planted be: O let the man of whom the Muse is scorned Nor live nor dead be of the Muse adorned!" And in the introduction to the fourth book of the "Faery Queen," he says again:-- "The rugged forehead that with grave foresight Wields kingdoms' causes and affairs of state, My looser rhymes, I wot, doth sharply wite For praising Love, as I have done of late,-- * * * * * "By which frail youth is oft to folly led Through false allurement of that pleasing bait, That better were in virtues discipled Than with vain poems' weeds to have their fancies fed. "Such ones ill judge of love that cannot love Nor in their frozen hearts feel kindly flame; Forthy they ought not thing unknown reprove, Ne natural affection faultless blame For fault of few that have abused the same: For it of honor and all virtue is The root, and brings forth glorious flowers of fame That crown true lovers with immortal bliss, The meed of them that love and do not live amiss." If Lord Burleigh could not relish such a dish of nightingales' tongues as the "Faery Queen," he is very much more to be pitied than Spenser. The sensitive purity of the poet might indeed well be wounded when a poem in which he proposed to himself "to discourse at large" of "the ethick part of Moral Philosophy"[275] could be so misinterpreted. But Spenser speaks in the same strain and without any other than a general application in his "Tears of the Muses," and his friend Sidney undertakes the defence of poesy because it was undervalued. But undervalued by whom? By the only persons about whom he knew or cared anything, those whom we should now call Society and who were then called the Court. The inference I would draw is that, among the causes which contributed to the marvellous efflorescence of genius in the last quarter of the sixteenth century, the influence of direct patronage from above is to be reckoned at almost nothing.[276] Then, as when the same phenomenon has happened elsewhere, there must have been a sympathetic public. Literature, properly so called, draws its sap from the deep soil of human nature's common and everlasting sympathies, the gathered leaf-mould of countless generations ([Greek: oiae per phullon geneae]), and not from any top-dressing capriciously scattered over the surface at some master's bidding.[277] England had long been growing more truly insular in language and political ideas when the Reformation came to precipitate her national consciousness by secluding her more completely from the rest of Europe. Hitherto there had been Englishmen of a distinct type enough, honestly hating foreigners, and reigned over by kings of whom they were proud or not as the case might be, but there was no England as a separate entity from the sovereign who embodied it for the time being.[278] But now an English people began to be dimly aware of itself. Their having got a religion to themselves must have intensified them much as the having a god of their own did the Jews. The exhilaration of relief after the long tension of anxiety, when the Spanish Armada was overwhelmed like the hosts of Pharaoh, while it confirmed their assurance of a provincial deity, must also have been like sunshine to bring into flower all that there was of imaginative or sentimental in the English nature, already just in the first flush of its spring. ("The yongë sonne Had in _the Bull_ half of his course yronne.") And just at this moment of blossoming every breeze was dusty with the golden pollen of Greece, Rome, and Italy. If Keats could say, when he first opened Chapman's Homer,-- "Then felt I like some watcher of the skies When a new planet swims into his ken; Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes He stared at the Pacific, and all his men Looked at each other with a wild surmise," if Keats could say this, whose mind had been unconsciously fed with the results of this culture,--results that permeated all thought, all literature, and all talk,--fancy what must have been the awakening shock and impulse communicated to men's brains by the revelation of this new world of thought and fancy, an unveiling gradual yet sudden, like that of a great organ, which discovered to them what a wondrous instrument was in the soul of man with its epic and lyric stops, its deep thunders of tragedy, and its passionate _vox humana!_ It might almost seem as if Shakespeare had typified all this in Miranda, when she cries out at first sight of the king and his courtiers, "O, wonder! How many goodly creatures are there here! How beauteous mankind is! O, brave new world That hath such people in't!" The civil wars of the Roses had been a barren period in English literature, because they had been merely dynastic squabbles, in which no great principles were involved which could shake all minds with controversy and heat them to intense conviction. A conflict of opposing ambitions wears out the moral no less than the material forces of a people, but the ferment of hostile ideas and convictions may realize resources of character which before were only potential, may transform a merely gregarious multitude into a nation proud in its strength, sensible of the dignity and duty which strength involves, and groping after a common ideal. Some such transformation had been wrought or was going on in England. For the first time a distinct image of her was disengaging itself from the tangled blur of tradition and association in the minds of her children, and it was now only that her great poet could speak exultingly to an audience that would understand him with a passionate sympathy, of "This happy breed of men, this little world, This precious stone set in a silver sea, This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England, This land of such dear souls, this dear, dear land, England, bound in with the triumphant sea!" Such a period can hardly recur again, but something like it, something pointing back to similar producing causes, is observable in the revival of English imaginative literature at the close of the last and in the early years of the present century. Again, after long fermentation, there was a war of principles, again the national consciousness was heightened and stung by a danger to the national existence, and again there was a crop of great poets and heroic men. Spenser once more visited England, bringing with him three more books of the "Faery Queen," in 1595. He is supposed to have remained there during the two following years.[279] In 1594 he had been married to the lady celebrated in his somewhat artificial _amoretti_. By her he had four children. He was now at the height of his felicity; by universal acclaim the first poet of his age, and the one obstacle to his material advancement (if obstacle it was) had been put out of the way by the death of Lord Burleigh, August, 1598. In the next month he was recommended in a letter from Queen Elizabeth for the shrievalty of the county of Cork. But alas for Polycrates! In October the wild kerns and gallowglasses rose in no mood for sparing the house of Pindarus. They sacked and burned his castle, from which he with his wife and children barely escaped.[280] He sought shelter in London and died there on the 16th January, 1599, at a tavern in King Street, Westminster. He was buried in the neighboring Abbey next to Chaucer, at the cost of the Earl of Essex, poets bearing his pall and casting verses into his grave. He died poor, but not in want. On the whole, his life may be reckoned a happy one, as in the main the lives of the great poets must have commonly been. If they feel more passionately the pang of the moment, so also the compensations are incalculable, and not the least of them this very capacity of passionate emotion. The real good fortune is to be measured, not by more or less of outward prosperity, but by the opportunity given for the development and free play of the genius. It should be remembered that the power of expression which exaggerates their griefs is also no inconsiderable consolation for them. We should measure what Spenser says of his worldly disappointments by the bitterness of the unavailing tears be shed for Rosalind. A careful analysis of these leaves no perceptible residuum of salt, and we are tempted to believe that the passion itself was not much more real than the pastoral accessories of pipe and crook. I very much doubt whether Spenser ever felt more than one profound passion in his life, and that luckily was for his "Faery Queen." He was fortunate in the friendship of the best men and women of his time, in the seclusion which made him free of the still better society of the past, in the loving recognition of his countrymen. All that we know of him is amiable and of good report. He was faithful to the friendships of his youth, pure in his loves, unspotted in his life. Above all, the ideal with him was not a thing apart and unattainable, but the sweetener and ennobler of the street and the fireside. There are two ways of measuring a poet, either by an absolute aesthetic standard, or relatively to his position in the literary history of his country and the conditions of his generation. Both should be borne in mind as coefficients in a perfectly fair judgment. If his positive merit is to be settled irrevocably by the former, yet an intelligent criticism will find its advantage not only in considering what he was, but what, under the given circumstances, it was possible for him to be. The fact that the great poem of Spenser was inspired by the Orlando of Ariosto, and written in avowed emulation of it, and that the poet almost always needs to have his fancy set agoing by the hint of some predecessor, must not lead us to overlook his manifest claim to originality. It is not what a poet takes, but what he makes out of what he has taken, that shows what native force is in him. Above all, did his mind dwell complacently in those forms and fashions which in their very birth are already obsolescent, or was it instinctively drawn to those qualities which are permanent in language and whatever is wrought in it? There is much in Spenser that is contemporary and evanescent; but the substance of him is durable, and his work was the deliberate result of intelligent purpose and ample culture. The publication of his "Shepherd's Calendar" in 1579 (though the poem itself be of little interest) is one of the epochs in our literature. Spenser had at least the originality to see clearly and to feel keenly that it was essential to bring poetry back again to some kind of understanding with nature. His immediate predecessors seem to have conceived of it as a kind of bird of paradise, born to float somewhere between heaven and earth, with no very well defined relation to either. It is true that the nearest approach they were able to make to this airy ideal was a shuttlecock, winged with a bright plume or so from Italy, but, after all, nothing but cork and feathers, which they bandied back and forth from one stanza to another, with the useful ambition of _keeping it up_ as long as they could. To my mind the old comedy of "Gammer Gurton's Needle" is worth the whole of them. It may be coarse, earthy, but in reading it one feels that he is at least a man among men, and not a humbug among humbugs. The form of Spenser's "Shepherd's Calendar," it is true, is artificial, absurdly so if you look at it merely from the outside,--not, perhaps, the wisest way to look at anything, unless it be a jail or a volume of the "Congressional Globe,"--but the spirit of it is fresh and original We have at last got over the superstition that shepherds and shepherdesses are any wiser or simpler than other people. We know that wisdom can be on only by wide commerce with men and books, and that simplicity, whether of manners or style, is the crowning result of the highest culture. But the pastorals of Spenser were very different things, different both in the moving spirit and the resultant form from the later ones of Browne or the "Piscatory Eclogues" of Phinehas Fletcher. And why? Browne and Fletcher wrote because Spenser had written, but Spenser wrote from a strong inward impulse--an instinct it might be called--to escape at all risks into the fresh air from that horrible atmosphere into which rhymer after rhymer had been pumping carbonic-acid gas with the full force of his lungs, and in which all sincerity was on the edge of suffocation. His longing for something truer and better was as honest as that which led Tacitus so long before to idealize the Germans, and Rousseau so long after to make an angel of the savage. Spenser himself supremely overlooks the whole chasm between himself and Chaucer, as Dante between himself and Virgil. He called Chaucer master, as Milton was afterwards to call _him_. And, even while he chose the most artificial of all forms, his aim--that of getting back to nature and life--was conscious, I have no doubt, to himself, and must be obvious to whoever reads with anything but the ends of his fingers. It is true that Sannazzaro had brought the pastoral into fashion again, and that two of Spenser's are little more than translations from Marot; but for manner he instinctively turned back to Chaucer, the first and then only great English poet. He has given common instead of classic names to his personages, for characters they can hardly be called. Above all, he has gone to the provincial dialects for words wherewith to enlarge and freshen his poetical vocabulary.[281] I look upon the "Shepherd's Calendar" as being no less a conscious and deliberate attempt at reform than Thomson's "Seasons" were in the topics, and Wordsworth's "Lyrical Ballads" in the language of poetry. But the great merit of these pastorals was not so much in their matter as their manner. They show a sense of style in its larger meaning hitherto displayed by no English poet since Chaucer. Surrey had brought back from Italy a certain inkling of it, so far as it is contained in decorum. But here was a new language, a choice and arrangement of words, a variety, elasticity, and harmony of verse most grateful to the ears of men. If not passion, there was fervor, which was perhaps as near it as the somewhat stately movement of Spenser's mind would allow him to come. Sidney had tried many experiments in versification, which are curious and interesting, especially his attempts to naturalize the _sliding_ rhymes of Sannazzaro in English. But there is everywhere the uncertainty of a 'prentice hand. Spenser shows himself already a master, at least in verse, and we can trace the studies of Milton, a yet greater master, in the "Shepherd's Calendar" as well as in the "Faery Queen." We have seen that Spenser, under the misleading influence of Sidney[282] and Harvey, tried his hand at English hexameters. But his great glory is that he taught his own language to sing and move to measures harmonious and noble. Chaucer had done much to vocalize it, as I have tried to show elsewhere,[283] but Spenser was to prove "That no tongue hath the muse's utterance heired For verse, and that sweet music to the ear Struck out of rhyme, so naturally as this." The "Shepherd's Calendar" contains perhaps the most picturesquely imaginative verse which Spenser has written. It is in the eclogue for February, where he tells us of the "Faded oak Whose body is sere, whose branches broke, Whose naked arms stretch unto the fire." It is one of those verses that Joseph Warton would have liked in secret, that Dr. Johnson would have proved to be untranslatable into reasonable prose, and which the imagination welcomes at once without caring whether it be exactly conformable to _barbara_ or _celarent_. Another pretty verse in the same eclogue, "But gently took that ungently came," pleased Coleridge so greatly that he thought it was his own. But in general it is not so much the sentiments and images that are new as the modulation of the verses in which they float. The cold obstruction of two centuries' thaws, and the stream of speech, once more let loose, seeks out its old windings, or overflows musically in unpractised channels. The service which Spenser did to our literature by this exquisite sense of harmony is incalculable. His fine ear, abhorrent of barbarous dissonance, his dainty tongue that loves to prolong the relish of a musical phrase, made possible the transition from the cast-iron stiffness of "Ferrex and Porrex" to the Damascus pliancy of Fletcher and Shakespeare. It was he that "Taught the dumb on high to sing, And heavy ignorance aloft to fly That added feathers to the learned's wing, And gave to grace a double majesty." I do not mean that in the "Shepherd's Calendar" he had already achieved that transmutation of language and metre by which he was afterwards to endow English verse with the most varied and majestic of stanzas, in which the droning old alexandrine, awakened for the first time to a feeling of the poetry that was in him, was to wonder, like M. Jourdain, that he had been talking prose all his life,--but already he gave clear indications of the tendency and premonitions of the power which were to carry it forward to ultimate perfection. A harmony and alacrity of language like this were unexampled in English verse:-- "Ye dainty nymphs, that in this blessed brook Do bathe your breast, Forsake your watery bowers and hither look At my request.... And eke you virgins that on Parnass dwell, Whence floweth Helicon, the learned well, Help me to blaze Her worthy praise, Which in her sex doth all excel." Here we have the natural gait of the measure, somewhat formal and slow, as befits an invocation; and now mark how the same feet shall be made to quicken their pace at the bidding of the tune:-- "Bring here the pink and purple columbine, With gilliflowers; Bring coronations and sops in wine, Worne of paramours; Strow me the ground with daffadowndillies, And cowslips and kingcúps and loved lilies; The pretty paunce And the chevisance Shall match with the fair flowërdelice."[284] The argument prefixed by E.K. to the tenth Eclogue has a special interest for us as showing how high a conception Spenser had of poetry and the poet's office. By Cuddy he evidently means himself, though choosing out of modesty another name instead of the familiar Colin. "In Cuddy is set forth the perfect pattern of a Poet, which finding no maintenance of his state and studies, complaineth of the contempt of Poetry and the causes thereof, specially having been in all ages, and even amongst the most barbarous, always of singular account and honor, _and being indeed so worthy and commendable an art, or rather no art, but a divine gift and heavenly instinct not to be gotten by labor and learning, but adorned with both, and poured into the wit by a certain Enthousiasmos and celestial inspiration_, as the author hereof elsewhere at large discourseth in his book called THE ENGLISH POET, which book being lately come into my hands, I mind also by God's grace, upon further advisement, to publish." E. K., whoever he was, never carried out his intention, and the book is no doubt lost; a loss to be borne with less equanimity than that of Cicero's treatise _De Gloria_, once possessed by Petrarch. The passage I have italicized is most likely an extract, and reminds one of the long-breathed periods of Milton. Drummond of Hawthornden tells us, "he [Ben Jonson] hath by heart some verses of Spenser's 'Calendar,' about wine, between Coline and Percye" (Cuddie and Piers).[285] These verses are in this eclogue, and are worth quoting both as having the approval of dear old Ben, the best critic of the day, and because they are a good sample of Spenser's earlier verse:-- "Thou kenst not, Percie, how the rhyme should rage; O, if my temples were distained with wine, And girt in garlands of wild ivy-twine, How I could rear the Muse on stately stage And teach her tread aloft in buskin fine With quaint Bellona in her equipage!" In this eclogue he gives hints of that spacious style which was to distinguish him, and which, like his own Fame, "With golden wings aloft doth fly Above the reach of ruinous decay, And with brave plumes doth beat the azure sky, Admired of base-born men from far away."[286] He was letting his wings grow, as Milton said, and foreboding the "Faery Queen":-- "Lift thyself up out of the lowly dust * * * * * "To 'doubted knights whose woundless armor rusts And helms unbruised waxen daily brown: There may thy Muse display her fluttering wing, And stretch herself at large from East to West." Verses like these, especially the last (which Dryden would have liked), were such as English ears had not yet heard, and curiously prophetic of the maturer man. The language and verse of Spenser at his best have an ideal lift in them, and there is scarce any of our poets who can so hardly help being poetical. It was this instantly felt if not easily definable charm that forthwith won for Spenser his never-disputed rank as the chief English poet of that age, and gave him a popularity which, during his life and in the following generation, was, in its select quality, without a competitor. It may be thought that I lay too much stress on this single attribute of diction. But apart from its importance in his case as showing their way to the poets who were just then learning the accidence of their art and leaving them a material to work in already mellowed to their hands, it should be remembered that it is subtle perfection of phrase and that happy coalescence of music and meaning, where each reinforces the other, that define a man as poet and make all ears converts and partisans. Spenser was an epicure in language. He loved "seld-seen costly" words perhaps too well, and did not always distinguish between mere strangeness and that novelty which is so agreeable as to cheat us with some charm of seeming association. He had not the concentrated power which can sometimes pack infinite riches in the little room of a single epithet, for his genius is rather for dilatation than compression.[287] But he was, with the exception of Milton and possibly Gray, the most learned of our poets. His familiarity with ancient and modern literature was easy and intimate, and as he perfected himself in his art, he caught the grand manner and high bred ways of the society he frequented. But even to the last he did not quite shake off the blunt rusticity of phrase that was habitual with the generation that preceded him. In the fifth book of the "Faery Queen," where he is describing the passion of Britomart at the supposed infidelity of Arthegall, he descends to a Teniers-like realism,[288]--he whose verses generally remind us of the dancing Hours of Guido, where we catch but a glimpse of the real earth and that far away beneath. But his habitual style is that of gracious loftiness and refined luxury. He shows his mature hand in the "Muiopotmos," the most airily fanciful of his poems, a marvel for delicate conception and treatment, whose breezy verse seems to float between a blue sky and golden earth in imperishable sunshine. No other English poet has found the variety and compass which enlivened the octave stanza under his sensitive touch. It can hardly be doubted that in Clarion the butterfly he has symbolized himself, and surely never was the poetic temperament so picturesquely exemplified:-- "Over the fields, in his frank lustiness, And all the champain o'er, he soared light, And all the country wide he did possess, Feeding upon their pleasures bounteously, That none gainsaid and none did him envy. "The woods, the rivers, and the meadows green, With his air-cutting wings he measured wide, Nor did he leave the mountains bare unseen, Nor the rank grassy fens' delights untried; But none of these, however sweet they been, Mote please his fancy, or him cause to abide; His choiceful sense with every change doth flit; No common things may please a wavering wit. "To the gay gardens his unstaid desire Him wholly carried, to refresh his sprights; There lavish Nature, in her best attire, Pours forth sweet odors and alluring sights, And Art, with her contending doth aspire, To excel the natural with made delights; And all that fair or pleasant may be found, In riotous excess doth there abound. "There he arriving, round about doth flie, From bed to bed, from one to the other border, And takes survey with curious busy eye, Of every flower and herb there set in order, Now this, now that, he tasteth tenderly, Yet none of them he rudely doth disorder, Ne with his feet their silken leaves displace, But pastures on the pleasures of each place. "And evermore with most variety And change of sweetness (for all change is sweet) He casts his glutton sense to satisfy, Now sucking of the sap of herbs most meet, Or of the dew which yet on them doth lie, Now in the same bathing his tender feet; And then he percheth on some branch thereby To weather him and his moist wings to dry. "And then again he turneth to his play, To spoil [plunder] the pleasures of that paradise; The wholesome sage, the lavender still gray, Rank-smelling rue, and cummin good for eyes, The roses reigning in the pride of May, Sharp hyssop good for green wounds' remedies Fair marigolds, and bees-alluring thyme, Sweet marjoram and daisies decking prime, "Cool violets, and orpine growing still, Embathed balm, and cheerful galingale, Fresh costmary and breathful camomill, Dull poppy and drink-quickening setuale, Vein-healing vervain and head-purging dill, Sound savory, and basil hearty-hale, Fat coleworts and comforting perseline, Cold lettuce, and refreshing rosemarine.[289] "And whatso else of virtue good or ill, Grew in this garden, fetched from far away, Of every one he takes and tastes at will, And on their pleasures greedily doth prey; Then, when he hath both played and fed his fill, In the warm sun he doth himself embay, And there him rests in riotous suffisance Of all his gladfulness and kingly joyance. "What more felicity can fall to creature Than to enjoy delight with liberty, And to be lord of all the works of nature? To reign in the air from earth to highest sky, To feed on flowers and weeds of glorious feature, To take whatever thing doth please the eye? Who rests not pleased with such happiness, Well worthy he to taste of wretchedness." The "Muiopotmos" pleases us all the more that it vibrates in us a string of classical association by adding an episode to Ovid's story of Arachne. "Talking the other day with a friend (the late Mr. Keats) about Dante, he observed that whenever so great a poet told us anything in addition or continuation of an ancient story, he had a right to be regarded as classical authority. For instance, said he, when he tells us of that characteristic death of Ulysses, ... we ought to receive the information as authentic, and be glad that we have more news of Ulysses than we looked for."[290] We can hardly doubt that Ovid would have been glad to admit this exquisitely fantastic illumination into his margin. No German analyzer of aesthetics has given us so convincing a definition of the artistic nature as these radiant verses. "To reign in the air" was certainly Spenser's function. And yet the commentators, who seem never willing to let their poet be a poet pure and simple, though, had he not been so, they would have lost their only hold upon life, try to make out from his "Mother Hubberd's Tale" that he might have been a very sensible matter of-fact man if he would. For my own part, I am quite willing to confess that I like him none the worse for being _un_practical, and that my reading has convinced me that being too poetical is the rarest fault of poets. Practical men are not so scarce, one would think, and I am not sure that the tree was a gainer when the hamadryad flitted and left it nothing but ship-timber. Such men as Spenser are not sent into the world to be part of its motive power. The blind old engine would not know the difference though we got up its steam with attar of roses, nor make one revolution more to the minute for it. What practical man ever left such an heirloom to his countrymen as the "Faery Queen"? Undoubtedly Spenser wished to be useful and in the highest vocation of all, that of teacher, and Milton calls him "our sage and serious poet, whom I dare be known to think a better teacher than Scotus or Aquinas." And good Dr. Henry More was of the same mind. I fear he makes his vices so beautiful now and then that we should not be very much afraid of them if we chanced to meet them; for he could not escape from his genius, which, if it led him as philosopher to the abstract contemplation of the beautiful, left him as poet open to every impression of sensuous delight. When he wrote the "Shepherd's Calendar" he was certainly a Puritan, and probably so by conviction rather than from any social influences or thought of personal interests. There is a verse, it is true, in the second of the two detached cantos of "Mutability," "Like that ungracious crew which feigns demurest grace," which is supposed to glance at the straiter religionists, and from which it has been inferred that he drew away from them as he grew older. It is very likely that years and widened experience of men may have produced in him their natural result of tolerant wisdom which revolts at the hasty destructiveness of inconsiderate zeal. But with the more generous side of Puritanism I think he sympathized to the last. His rebukes of clerical worldliness are in the Puritan tone, and as severe a one as any is in "Mother Hubberd's Tale," published in 1591.[291] There is an iconoclastic relish in his account of Sir Guyon's demolishing the Bower of Bliss that makes us think he would not have regretted the plundered abbeys as perhaps Shakespeare did when he speaks of the winter woods as "bare ruined choirs where late the sweet birds sang";-- "But all those pleasant bowers and palace brave Guyon broke down with rigor pitiless, Ne ought their goodly workmanship might save Them from the tempest of his wrathfulness, But that their bliss he turned to balefulness; Their groves he felled, their gardens did deface, Their arbors spoil, their cabinets suppress, Their banquet-houses burn, their buildings rase, And of the fairest late now made the foulest place." But whatever may have been Spenser's religious opinions (which do not nearly concern us here), the bent of his mind was toward a Platonic mysticism, a supramundane sphere where it could shape universal forms out of the primal elements of things, instead of being forced to put up with their fortuitous combinations in the unwilling material of mortal clay. He who, when his singing robes were on, could never be tempted nearer to the real world than under some subterfuge of pastoral or allegory, expatiates joyously in this untrammelled ether:-- "Lifting himself out of the lowly dust On golden plumes up to the purest sky." Nowhere does his genius soar and sing with such continuous aspiration, nowhere is his phrase so decorously stately, though rising to an enthusiasm which reaches intensity while it stops short of vehemence, as in his Hymns to Love and Beauty, especially the latter. There is an exulting spurn of earth in it, as of a soul just loosed from its cage. I shall make no extracts from it, for it is one of those intimately coherent and transcendentally logical poems that "moveth altogether if it move at all," the breaking off a fragment from which would maim it as it would a perfect group of crystals. Whatever there is of sentiment and passion is for the most part purely disembodied and without sex, like that of angels,--a kind of poetry which has of late gone out of fashion, whether to our gain or not may be questioned. Perhaps one may venture to hint that the animal instincts are those that stand in least need of stimulation. Spenser's notions of love were so nobly pure, so far from those of our common ancestor who could hang by his tail, as not to disqualify him for achieving the quest of the Holy Grail, and accordingly it is not uninstructive to remember that he had drunk, among others, at French sources not yet deboshed with _absinthe_.[292] Yet, with a purity like that of thrice-bolted snow, he had none of its coldness. He is, of all our poets, the most truly sensuous, using the word as Milton probably meant it when he said that poetry should be "simple, sensuous, and passionate." A poet is innocently sensuous when his mind permeates and illumines his senses; when they, on the other hand, muddy the mind, he becomes sensual. Every one of Spenser's senses was as exquisitely alive to the impressions of material, as every organ of his soul was to those of spiritual beauty. Accordingly, if he painted the weeds of sensuality at all, he could not help making them "of glorious feature." It was this, it may be suspected, rather than his "praising love," that made Lord Burleigh shake his "rugged forehead." Spenser's gamut, indeed, is a wide one, ranging from a purely corporeal delight in "precious odors fetched from far away" upward to such refinement as "Upon her eyelids many graces sate Under the shadow of her even brows," where the eye shares its pleasure with the mind. He is court-painter in ordinary to each of the senses in turn, and idealizes these frail favorites of his majesty King Lusty Juventus, till they half believe themselves the innocent shepherdesses into which he travesties them.[293] In his great poem he had two objects in view: first the ephemeral one of pleasing the court, and then that of recommending himself to the permanent approval of his own and following ages as a poet, and especially as a moral poet. To meet the first demand, he lays the scene of his poem in contemporary England, and brings in all the leading personages of the day under the thin disguise of his knights and their squires and lady-loves. He says this expressly in the prologue to the second book:-- "Of Faery Land yet if he more inquire, By certain signs, here set in sundry place, He may it find; ... And thou, O fairest princess under sky, In this fair mirror mayst behold thy face And thine own realms in land of Faery." Many of his personages we can still identify, and all of them were once as easily recognizable as those of Mademoiselle de Scudéry. This, no doubt, added greatly to the immediate piquancy of the allusions. The interest they would excite may be inferred from the fact that King James, in 1596, wished to have the author prosecuted and punished for his indecent handling of his mother, Mary Queen of Scots, under the name of Duessa.[294] To suit the wider application of his plan's other and more important half, Spenser made all his characters double their parts, and appear in his allegory as the impersonations of abstract moral qualities. When the cardinal and theological virtues tell Dante, "Noi siam qui ninfe e in ciel siamo stelle," the sweetness of the verse enables the fancy, by a slight gulp, to swallow without solution the problem of being in two places at the same time. But there is something fairly ludicrous in such a duality as that of Prince Arthur and the Earl of Leicester, Arthegall and Lord Grey, and Belphoebe and Elizabeth. "In this same interlude it doth befall That I, one Snout by name, present a wall." The reality seems to heighten the improbability, already hard enough to manage. But Spenser had fortunately almost as little sense of humor as Wordsworth,[295] or he could never have carried his poem on with enthusiastic good faith so far as he did. It is evident that to him the Land of Faery was an unreal world of picture and illusion, "The world's sweet inn from pain and wearisome turmoil," in which he could shut himself up from the actual, with its shortcomings and failures. "The ways through which my weary steps I guide In this delightful land of Faery Are so exceeding spacious and wide, And sprinkled with such sweet variety Of all that pleasant is to ear and eye, That I, nigh ravisht with rare thoughts' delight, My tedious travail do forget thereby, And, when I 'gin to feel decay of might, It strength to me supplies, and cheers my dullëd spright." Spenser seems here to confess a little weariness; but the alacrity of his mind is so great that, even where his invention fails a little, we do not share his feeling nor suspect it, charmed as we are by the variety and sweep of his measure, the beauty or vigor of his similes, the musical felicity of his diction, and the mellow versatility of his pictures. In this last quality Ariosto, whose emulous pupil he was, is as Bologna to Venice in the comparison. That, when the personal allusions have lost their meaning and the allegory has become a burden, the book should continue to be read with delight, is proof enough, were any wanting, how full of life and light and the other-worldliness of poetry it must be. As a narrative it has, I think, every fault of which that kind of writing is capable. The characters are vague, and, even were they not, they drop out of the story so often and remain out of it so long, that we have forgotten who they are when we meet them again; the episodes hinder the advance of the action instead of relieving it with variety of incident or novelty of situation; the plot, if plot it may be called, "That shape has none Distinguishable in member, joint, or limb," recalls drearily our ancient enemy, the Metrical Romance; while the fighting, which, in those old poems, was tediously sincere, is between shadow and shadow, where we know that neither can harm the other, though are tempted to wish he might. Hazlitt bids us not mind the allegory, and says that it won't bite us nor meddle with us if we do not meddle with it. But how if it bore us, which after all is the fatal question? The truth is that it is too often forced upon us against our will, as people were formerly driven to church till they began to look on a day of rest as a penal institution, and to transfer to the Scriptures that suspicion of defective inspiration which was awakened in them by the preaching. The true type of the allegory is the Odyssey, which we read without suspicion as pure poem, and then find a new pleasure in divining its double meaning, as if we somehow got a better bargain of our author than he meant to give us. But this complex feeling must not be so exacting as to prevent our lapsing into the old Arabian Nights simplicity of interest again. The moral of a poem should be suggested, as when in some mediaeval church we cast down our eyes to muse over a fresco of Giotto, and are reminded of the transitoriness of life by the mortuary tablets under our feet. The vast superiority of Bunyan over Spenser lies in the fact that we help make his allegory out of our own experience. Instead of striving to embody abstract passions and temptations, he has given us his own in all their pathetic simplicity. He is the Ulysses of his own prose-epic. This is the secret of his power and his charm, that, while the representation of what may happen to all men comes home to none of us in particular, the story of any one man's real experience finds its startling parallel in that of every one of us. The very homeliness of Bunyan's names and the everydayness of his scenery, too, put us off our guard, and we soon find ourselves on as easy a footing with his allegorical beings as we might be with Adam or Socrates in a dream. Indeed, he has prepared us for such incongruities by telling us at setting out that the story was of a dream. The long nights of Bedford jail had so intensified his imagination, and made the figures with which it peopled his solitude so real to him, that the creatures of his mind become _things_, as clear to the memory as if we had seen them. But Spenser's are too often mere names, with no bodies to back them, entered on the Muses' musterroll by the specious trick of personification. There is likewise, in Bunyan, a childlike simplicity and taking-for-granted which win our confidence. His Giant Despair,[296] for example, is by no means the Ossianic figure into which artists who mistake the vague for the sublime have misconceived it. He is the ogre of the fairy-tales, with his malicious wife; and he comes forth to us from those regions of early faith and wonder as something beforehand accepted by the imagination. These figures of Bunyan's are already familiar inmates of the mind, and, if there be any sublimity in him, it is the daring frankness of his verisimilitude. Spenser's giants are those of the later romances, except that grand figure with the balances in the second Canto of Book V., the most original of all his conceptions, yet no real giant, but a pure eidolon of the mind. As Bunyan rises not seldom to a natural poetry, so Spenser sinks now and then, through the fault of his topics, to unmistakable prose. Take his description of the House of Alma,[297] for instance:-- "The master cook was cald Concoctiön, A careful man, and full of comely guise; The kitchen-clerk, that hight Digestion, Did order all the achates in seemly wise." And so on through all the organs of the body. The author of Ecclesiastes understood these matters better in that last pathetic chapter of his, blunderingly translated as it apparently is. This, I admit, is the worst failure of Spenser in this kind; though, even here, when he gets on to the organs of the mind, the enchantments of his fancy and style come to the rescue and put us in good-humor again, hard as it is to conceive of armed knights entering the chamber of the mind, and talking with such visionary damsels as Ambition and Shamefastness. Nay, even in the most prosy parts, unless my partiality deceive me, there is an infantile confidence in the magical powers of Prosopopoeia which half beguiles us as of children who _play_ that everything is something else, and are quite satisfied with the transformation. The problem for Spenser was a double one: how to commend poetry at all to a generation which thought it effeminate trifling,[298] and how he, Master Edmund Spenser, of imagination all compact, could commend _his_ poetry to Master John Bull, the most practical of mankind in his habitual mood, but at that moment in a passion of religious anxiety about his soul. _Omne tulit punctum qui miscuit utile dulci_ was not only an irrefragable axiom because a Latin poet had said it, but it exactly met the case in point. He would convince the scorners that poetry might be seriously useful, and show Master Bull his new way of making fine words butter parsnips, in a rhymed moral primer. Allegory, as then practised, was imagination adapted for beginners, in words of one syllable and illustrated with cuts, and would thus serve both his ethical and pictorial purpose. Such a primer, or a first instalment of it, he proceeded to put forth; but he so bordered it with bright-colored fancies, he so often filled whole pages and crowded the text hard in others with the gay frolics of his pencil, that, as in the Grimani missal, the holy function of the book is forgotten in the ecstasy of its adornment. Worse than all, does not his brush linger more lovingly along the rosy contours of his sirens than on the modest wimples of the Wise Virgins? "The general end of the book," he tells us in his Dedication to Sir Walter Raleigh, "is to fashion a gentleman of noble person in virtuous and gentle discipline." But a little further on he evidently has a qualm, as he thinks how generously he had interpreted his promise of cuts: "To some I know this method will seem displeasant, which had rather have good discipline delivered plainly in way of precepts or sermoned at large,[299] as they use, than thus cloudily enwrapped in allegorical devices." Lord Burleigh was of this way of thinking, undoubtedly, but how could poor Clarion help it? Has he not said, "And whatso else, _of virtue good or ill,_ Grew in that garden, fetcht from far away, Of every one he takes and tastes at will, And on their pleasures greedily doth prey"? One sometimes feels in reading him as if he were the pure sense of the beautiful incarnated to the one end that he might interpret it to our duller perceptions So exquisite was his sensibility,[300] that with him sensation and intellection seem identical, and we "can almost say his body thought." This subtle interfusion of sense with spirit it is that gives his poetry a crystalline purity without lack of warmth. He is full of feeling, and yet of such a kind that we can neither say it is mere intellectual perception of what is fair and good, nor yet associate it with that throbbing fervor which leads us to call sensibility by the physical name of heart. Charles Lamb made the most pithy criticism of Spenser when he called him the poets' poet. We may fairly leave the allegory on one side, for perhaps, after all, he adopted it only for the reason that it was in fashion, and put it on as he did his ruff, not because it was becoming, but because it was the only wear. The true use of him is as a gallery of pictures which we visit as the mood takes us, and where we spend an hour or two at a time, long enough to sweeten our perceptions, not so long as to cloy them. He makes one think always of Venice; for not only is his style Venetian,[301] but as the gallery there is housed in the shell of an abandoned convent, so his in that of a deserted allegory. And again, as at Venice you swim in a gondola from Gian Bellini to Titian, and from Titian to Tintoret, so in him, where other cheer is wanting, the gentle sway of his measure, like the rhythmical impulse of the oar, floats you lullingly along from picture to picture. "If all the pens that ever poet held Had fed the feeling of their master's thoughts, And every sweetness that inspired their hearts Their minds and muses on admired themes, If all the heavenly quintessence they still From their immortal flowers of poesy, If these had made one poem's period, And all combined in beauty's worthiness; Yet should there hover in their restless heads One thought, one grace, one wonder at the best, Which into words no virtue can digest."[302] Spenser, at his best, has come as near to expressing this unattainable something as any other poet. He is so purely poet that with him the meaning does not so often modulate the music of the verse as the music makes great part of the meaning and leads the thought along its pleasant paths. No poet is so splendidly superfluous as he; none knows so well that in poetry enough is not only not so good as a feast, but is a beggarly parsimony. He spends himself in a careless abundance only to be justified by incomes of immortal youth. "Pensier canuto nè molto nè poco Si può quivi albergare in alcun cuore; Non entra quivi disagio nè inopia, Ma vi sta ogn'or col corno pien la Copia."[303] This delicious abundance and overrunning luxury of Spenser appear in the very structure of his verse. He found the _ottava rima_ too monotonously iterative; so, by changing the order of his rhymes, he shifted the let from the end of the stave, where it always seems to put on the brakes with a jar, to the middle, where it may serve at will as a brace or a bridge; he found it not roomy enough, so first ran it over into another line, and then ran that added line over into an alexandrine, in which the melody of one stanza seems forever longing and feeling forward after that which is to follow. There is no ebb and flow in his metre more than on the shores of the Adriatic, but wave follows wave with equable gainings and recessions, the one sliding back in fluent music to be mingled with and carried forward by the next. In all this there is soothingness indeed, but no slumberous monotony; for Spenser was no mere metrist, but a great composer. By the variety of his pauses--now at the close of the first or second foot, now of the third, and again of the fourth--he gives spirit and energy to a measure whose tendency it certainly is to become languorous. He knew how to make it rapid and passionate at need, as in such verses as, "But he, my lion, and my noble lord, How does he find in cruel heart to hate Her that him loved and ever most adored As the God of my life? Why hath he me abhorred?"[304] or this, "Come hither, come hither, O, come hastily!"[305] Joseph Warton objects to Spenser's stanza, that its "constraint led him into many absurdities." Of these he instances three, of which I shall notice only one, since the two others (which suppose him at a loss for words and rhymes) will hardly seem valid to any one who knows the poet. It is that it "obliged him to dilate the thing to be expressed, however unimportant with trifling and tedious circumlocutions, namely, Faery Queen, II. ii. 44:-- "'Now hath fair Phoebe with her silver face Thrice seen the shadows of this nether world, Sith last I left that honorable place, In which her royal presence is enrolled.' "That is, it is three months since I left her palace."[306] But Dr. Warton should have remembered (what he too often forgets in his own verses) that, in spite of Dr. Johnson's dictum, poetry is not prose, and that verse only loses its advantage over the latter by invading its province.[307] Verse itself is an absurdity except as an expression of some higher movement of the mind, or as an expedient to lift other minds to the same ideal level. It is the cothurnus which gives language an heroic stature. I have said that one leading characteristic of Spenser's style was its spaciousness, that he habitually dilates rather than compresses. But his way of measuring time was perfectly natural in an age when everybody did not carry a dial in his poke as now. He is the last of the poets, who went (without affectation) by the great clock of the firmament. Dante, the miser of words, who goes by the same timepiece, is full of these roundabout ways of telling us the hour. It had nothing to do with Spenser's stanza, and I for one should be sorry to lose these stately revolutions of the _superne ruote_. Time itself becomes more noble when so measured; we never knew before of how precious a commodity we had the wasting. Who would prefer the plain time of day to this? "Now when Aldebaran was mounted high Above the starry Cassiopeia's chair"; or this? "By this the northern wagoner had set His seven-fold team behind the steadfast star That was in ocean's waves yet never wet, But firm is fixt and sendeth light from far To all that in the wide deep wandering are"; or this? "At last the golden oriental gate Of greatest heaven gan to open fair, And Phoebus, fresh as bridegroom to his mate, Came dancing forth, shaking his dewy hair And hurls his glistening beams through dewy air." The generous indefiniteness, which treats an hour more or less as of no account, is in keeping with that sense of endless leisures which it is one chief merit of the poem to suggest. But Spenser's dilatation extends to thoughts as well as to phrases and images. He does not love the concise. Yet his dilatation is not mere distension, but the expansion of natural growth in the rich soil of his own mind, wherein the merest stick of a verse puts forth leaves and blossoms. Here is one of his, suggested by Homer:[308] "Upon the top of all his lofty crest A bunch of hairs discolored diversly, With sprinkled pearl and gold full richly drest, Did shake, and seemed to dance for jollity; Like to an almond-tree mounted high On top of green Selinus all alone With blossoms brave bedeckëd daintily, Whose tender locks do tremble every one At every little breath that under heaven is blown." And this is the way he reproduces five pregnant verses of Dante:-- "Seggendo in piume In fama non si vien, nè sotto coltre, Senza la qual chi sua vita consuma, Cotal vestigio in terra di se lascia Qual fumo in aere ed in acqua la schiuma."[309] "Whoso in pomp of proud estate, quoth she, Does swim, and bathes himself in courtly bliss, Does waste his days in dark obscurity And in oblivion ever buried is; Where ease abounds it's eath to do amiss: But who his limbs with labors and his mind Behaves with cares, cannot so easy miss. Abroad in arms, at home in studious kind, Who seeks with painful toil shall Honor soonest find. "In woods, in waves, in wars, she wonts to dwell, And will be found with peril and with pain, Ne can the man that moulds in idle cell Unto her happy mansiön attain; Before her gate high God did Sweat ordain, And wakeful watches ever to abide; But easy is the way and passage plain To pleasure's palace; it may soon be spied, And day and night her doors to all stand open wide."[310] Spenser's mind always demands this large elbow-room. His thoughts are never pithily expressed, but with a stately and sonorous proclamation, as if under the open sky, that seems to me very noble. For example,-- "The noble heart that harbors virtuous thought And is with child of glorious-great intent Can never rest until it forth have brought The eternal brood of glory excellent."[311] One's very soul seems to dilate with that last verse. And here is a passage which Milton had read and remembered:-- "And is there care in Heaven? and is there love In heavenly spirits to these creatures base, That may compassion of their evils move? There is: else much more wretched were the case Of men than beasts: but O, the exceeding grace Of highest God, that loves his creatures so, And all his works with mercy doth embrace, That blessed angels he sends to and fro, To serve to wicked man, to serve his wicked foe! "How oft do they their silver bowers leave, To come to succor us that succor want! How oft do they with golden pinions cleave The fleeting skies like flying pursuivant, Against foul fiends to aid us militant! They for us fight, they watch and duly ward, And their bright squadrons round about us plant; And all for love and nothing for reward; O, why should heavenly God to men have such regard?"[312] His natural tendency is to shun whatever is sharp and abrupt. He loves to prolong emotion, and lingers in his honeyed sensations like a bee in the translucent cup of a lily. So entirely are beauty and delight in it the native element of Spenser, that, whenever in the "Faery Queen" you come suddenly on the moral, it gives you a shock of unpleasant surprise, a kind of grit, as when one's teeth close on a bit of gravel in a dish of strawberries and cream. He is the most fluent of our poets. Sensation passing through emotion into revery is a prime quality of his manner. And to read him puts one in the condition of revery, a state of mind in which our thoughts and feelings float motionless, as one sees fish do in a gentle stream, with just enough vibration of their fins to keep themselves from going down with the current, while their bodies yield indolently to all its soothing curves. He chooses his language for its rich canorousness rather than for intensity of meaning. To characterize his style in a single word, I should call it _costly_. None but the daintiest and nicest phrases will serve him, and he allures us from one to the other with such cunning baits of alliteration, and such sweet lapses of verse, that never any word seems more eminent than the rest, nor detains the feeling to eddy around it, but you must go on to the end before you have time to stop and muse over the wealth that has been lavished on you. But he has characterized and exemplified his own style better than any description could do:-- "For round about the walls yclothed were With goodly arras of great majesty, Woven with gold and silk so close and near That the rich metal lurked privily As faining to be hid from envious eye; Yet here and there and everywhere, unwares It showed itself and shone unwillingly Like to a discolored snake whose hidden snares Through the green grass his long bright-burnished back declares."[313] And of the lulling quality of his verse take this as a sample:-- "And, more to lull him in his slumber soft, A trickling stream from high rock tumbling down And ever drizzling rain upon the loft, Mixt with the murmuring wind much like the soun Of swarming bees did cast him in a swoon. No other noise, nor peoples' troublous cries, As still are wont to annoy the walled town, Might there be heard: but careless quiet lies Wrapt in eternal silence far from enemies."[314] In the world into which Spenser carries us there is neither time nor space, or rather it is outside of and independent of them both, and so is purely ideal, or, more truly, imaginary; yet it is full of form, color, and all earthly luxury, and so far, if not real, yet apprehensible by the senses. There are no men and women in it, yet it throngs with airy and immortal shapes that have the likeness of men and women, and hint at some kind of foregone reality. Now this place, somewhere between mind and matter, between soul and sense, between the actual and the possible, is precisely the region which Spenser assigns (if I have rightly divined him) to the poetic susceptibility of impression,-- "To reign in the air from the earth to highest sky." Underneath every one of the senses lies the soul and spirit of it, dormant till they are magnetized by some powerful emotion. Then whatever is imperishable in us recognizes for an instant and claims kindred with something outside and distinct from it, yet in some inconceivable way a part of it, that flashes back on it an ideal beauty which impoverishes all other companionship. This exaltation with which love sometimes subtilizes the nerves of coarsest men so that they feel and see, not the thing as it seems to others, but the beauty of it, the joy of it, the soul of eternal youth that is in it, would appear to have been the normal condition of Spenser. While the senses of most men live in the cellar, his "were laid in a large upper chamber which opened toward the sunrising." "His birth was of the womb of morning dew, And his conception of the joyous prime." The very greatest poets (and is there, after all, more than one of them?) have a way, I admit, of getting within our inmost consciousness and in a manner betraying us to ourselves. There is in Spenser a remoteness very different from this, but it is also a seclusion, and quite as agreeable, perhaps quite as wholesome in certain moods when we are glad to get away from ourselves and those importunate trifles which we gravely call the realities of life. In the warm Mediterranean of his mind everything "Suffers a sea change Into something rich and strange." He lifts everything, not beyond recognition, but to an ideal distance where no mortal, I had almost said human, fleck is visible. Instead of the ordinary bridal gifts, he hallows his wife with an Epithalamion fit for a conscious goddess, and the "savage soil"[315] of Ireland becomes a turf of Arcady under her feet, where the merchants' daughters of the town are no more at home than the angels and the fair shapes of pagan mythology whom they meet there. He seems to have had a common-sense side to him, and could look at things (if we may judge by his tract on Irish affairs) in a practical and even hard way; but the moment he turned toward poetry he fulfilled the condition which his teacher Plato imposes on poets, and had not a particle of prosaic understanding left. His fancy, habitually moving about in worlds not realized, unrealizes everything at a touch. The critics blame him because in his Prothalamion the subjects of it enter on the Thames as swans and leave it at Temple Gardens as noble damsels; but to those who are grown familiar with his imaginary world such a transformation seems as natural as in the old legend of the Knight of the Swan. "Come now ye damsels, daughters of Delight, Help quickly her to dight: But first come ye, fair Hours, which were begot In Jove's sweet paradise of Day and Night, ... And ye three handmaids of the Cyprian Queen, The which do still adorn her beauty's pride, Help to adorn my beautifulest bride. * * * * * "Crown ye god Bacchus with a coronal, And Hymen also crown with wreaths of vine, And let the Graces dance unto the rest,-- For they can do it best. The whiles the maidens do their carols sing, To which the woods shall answer and their echo ring." The whole Epithalamion is very noble, with an organ-like roll and majesty of numbers, while it is instinct with the same joyousness which must have been the familiar mood of Spenser. It is no superficial and tiresome merriment, but a profound delight in the beauty of the universe and in that delicately surfaced nature of his which was its mirror and counterpart. Sadness was alien to him, and at funerals he was, to be sure, a decorous mourner, as could not fail with so sympathetic a temperament; but his condolences are graduated to the unimpassioned scale of social requirement. Even for Sir Philip Sidney his sighs are regulated by the official standard. It was in an unreal world that his affections found their true object and vent, and it is in an elegy of a lady whom he had never known that he puts into the mouth of a husband whom he has evaporated into a shepherd, the two most naturally pathetic verses he ever penned:-- "I hate the day because it lendeth light To see all things, but not my love to see."[316] In the Epithalamion there is an epithet which has been much admired for its felicitous tenderness:-- "Behold, whiles she before the altar stands, Hearing the holy priest that to her speakes And blesseth her with his two _happy_ hands." But the purely impersonal passion of the artist had already guided him to this lucky phrase. It is addressed by Holiness--a dame surely as far abstracted from the enthusiasms of love as we can readily conceive of--to Una, who, like the visionary Helen of Dr. Faustus, has every charm of womanhood, except that of being alive as Juliet and Beatrice are. "O happy earth, Whereon thy innocent feet do ever tread!"[317] Can we conceive of Una, the fall of whose foot would be as soft as that of a rose-leaf upon its mates already fallen,--can we conceive of her treading anything so sordid? No; it is only on some unsubstantial floor of dream that she walks securely, herself a dream. And it is only when Spenser has escaped thither, only when this glamour of fancy has rarefied his wife till she is grown almost as purely a creature of the imagination as the other ideal images with which he converses, that his feeling becomes as nearly passionate--as nearly human, I was on the point of saying--as with him is possible. I am so far from blaming this idealizing property of his mind, that I find it admirable in him. It is his quality, not his defect. Without some touch of it life would be unendurable prose. If I have called the world to which he transports us a world of unreality, I have wronged him. It is only a world of unrealism. It is from pots and pans and stocks and futile gossip and inch-long politics that he emancipates us, and makes us free of that to-morrow, always coming and never come, where ideas shall reign supreme.[318] But I am keeping my readers from the sweetest idealization that love ever wrought:-- "Unto this place whenas the elfin knight Approached, him seemëd that the merry sound Of a shrill pipe, he playing heard on height, And many feet fast thumping the hollow ground, That through the woods their echo did rebound; He nigher drew to wit what it mote be. There he a troop of ladies dancing found Full merrily and making gladful glee; And in the midst a shepherd piping he did see. "He durst not enter into the open green For dread of them unwares to be descried, For breaking of their dance, if he were seen; But in the covert of the wood did bide Beholding all, yet of them unespied; There he did see that pleased so much his sight That even he himself his eyes envied, A hundred naked maidens lily-white, All ranged in a ring and dancing in delight. "All they without were ranged in a ring, And danced round; but in the midst of them Three other ladies did both dance and sing, The while the rest them round about did hem, And like a garland did in compass stem. And in the midst of these same three was placed Another damsel, as a precious gem Amidst a ring most richly well enchased, That with her goodly presence all the rest much graced. "Look how the crown which Ariadne wove Upon her ivory forehead that same day, That Theseus her unto his bridal bore, (When the bold Centaurs made that bloody fray, With the fierce Lapithes, that did them dismay) Being now placëd in the firmament, Through the bright heaven doth her beams display, And is unto the stars an ornament, Which round about her move in order excellent; "Such was the beauty of this goodly band, Whose sundry parts were here too long to tell, But she that in the midst of them did stand, Seemed all the rest in beauty to excel, Crowned with a rosy garland that right well Did her beseem. And, ever as the crew About her danced, sweet flowers that far did smell, And fragrant odors they upon her threw; But most of all those three did her with gifts endue. "Those were the graces, Daughters of Delight, Handmaids of Venus, which are wont to haunt Upon this hill and dance there, day and night; Those three to men all gifts of grace do grant And all that Venus in herself doth vaunt Is borrowed of them; but that fair one That in the midst was placed paravant, Was she to whom that shepherd piped alone, That made him pipe so merrily, as never none. "She was, to weet, that jolly shepherd's lass Which pipëd there unto that merry rout; That jolly shepherd that there pipëd was Poor Colin Clout; (who knows not Colin Clout?) He piped apace while they him danced about; Pipe, jolly shepherd, pipe thou now apace, Unto thy love that made thee low to lout; Thy love is present there with thee in place, Thy love is there advanced to be another Grace."[319] Is there any passage in any poet that so ripples and sparkles with simple delight as this? It is a sky of Italian April full of sunshine and the hidden ecstasy of larks. And we like it all the more that it reminds us of that passage in his friend Sidney's _Arcadia_, where the shepherd-boy pipes "as if he would never be old." If we compare it with the mystical scene in Dante,[320] of which it is a reminiscence, it will seem almost like a bit of real life; but taken by itself it floats as unconcerned in our cares and sorrows and vulgarities as a sunset cloud. The sound of that pastoral pipe seems to come from as far away as Thessaly when Apollo was keeping sheep there. Sorrow, the great idealizer, had had the portrait of Beatrice on her easel for years, and every touch of her pencil transfigured the woman more and more into the glorified saint. But Elizabeth Nagle was a solid thing of flesh and blood, who would sit down at meat with the poet on the very day when he had thus beatified her. As Dante was drawn upward from heaven to heaven by the eyes of Beatrice, so was Spenser lifted away from the actual by those of that ideal Beauty whereof his mind had conceived the lineaments in its solitary musings over Plato, but of whose haunting presence the delicacy of his senses had already premonished him. The intrusion of the real world upon this supersensual mood of his wrought an instant disenchantment:-- "Much wondered Calidore at this strange sight Whose like before his eye had never seen, And, standing long astonished in sprite And rapt with pleasance, wist not what to ween, Whether it were the train of Beauty's Queen, Or Nymphs, or Fairies, or enchanted show With which his eyes might have deluded been, Therefore resolving what it was to know, Out of the woods he rose and toward them did go. "But soon as he appearëd to their view They vanished all away out of his sight And clean were gone, which way he never knew, All save the shepherd, who, for fell despite Of that displeasure, broke his bagpipe quite." Ben Jonson said that "he had consumed a whole night looking to his great toe, about which he had seen Tartars and Turks, Romans and Carthaginians, fight in his imagination"; and Coleridge has told us how his "eyes made pictures when they were shut" This is not uncommon, but I fancy that Spenser was more habitually possessed by his imagination than is usual even with poets. His visions must have accompanied him "in glory and in joy" along the common thoroughfares of life and seemed to him, it may be suspected, more real than the men and women he met there. His "most fine spirit of sense" would have tended to keep him in this exalted mood. I must give an example of the sensuousness of which I have spoken :-- "And in the midst of all a fountain stood Of richest substance that on earth might be, So pure and shiny that the crystal flood Through every channel running one might see; Most goodly it with curious imagery Was overwrought, and shapes of naked boys, Of which some seemed with lively jollity To fly about, playing their wanton toys, Whilst others did themselves embay in liquid joys. "And over all, of purest gold was spread A trail of ivy in his native hue; For the rich metal was so colorëd That he who did not well avised it view Would surely deem it to be ivy true; Low his lascivious arms adown did creep That themselves dipping in the silver dew Their fleecy flowers they tenderly did steep, Which drops of crystal seemed for wantonness to weep. "Infinite streams continually did well Out of this fountain, sweet and fair to see, The which into an ample laver fell, And shortly grew to so great quantity That like a little lake it seemed to be Whose depth exceeded not three cubits' height, That through the waves one might the bottom see All paved beneath with jasper shining bright, That seemed the fountain in that sea did sail upright. "And all the margent round about was set With shady laurel-trees, thence to defend The sunny beams which on the billows bet, And those which therein bathed mote offend. As Guyou happened by the same to wend Two naked Damsels he therein espied, Which therein bathing seemed to contend And wrestle wantonly, ne cared to hide Their dainty parts from view of any which them eyed. "Sometimes the one would lift the other quite Above the waters, and then down again Her plunge, as overmasterëd by might, Where both awhile would coverëd remain, And each the other from to rise restrain; The whiles their snowy limbs, as through a veil, So through the crystal waves appeared plain: Then suddenly both would themselves unhele, And the amorous sweet spoils to greedy eyes reveal. "As that fair star, the messenger of morn, His dewy face out of the sea doth rear; Or as the Cyprian goddess, newly born Of the ocean's fruitful froth, did first appear; Such seemed they, and so their yellow hear Crystalline humor dropped down apace. Whom such when Guyon saw, he drew him near, And somewhat gan relent his earnest pace; His stubborn breast gan secret pleasance to embrace. "The wanton Maidens him espying, stood Gazing awhile at his unwonted guise; Then the one herself low duckéd in the flood, Abashed that her a stranger did avise; But the other rather higher did arise, And her two lily paps aloft displayed, And all that might his melting heart entice To her delights, she unto him bewrayed; The rest, hid underneath, him more desirous made. "With that the other likewise up arose, And her fair locks, which formerly were bound Up in one knot, she low adown did loose, Which flowing long and thick her clothed around, And the ivory in golden mantle gowned: So that fair spectacle from him was reft, Yet that which reft it no less fair was found; So hid in locks and waves from lookers' theft, Naught but her lovely face she for his looking left. "Withal she laughëd, and she blushed withal, That blushing to her laughter gave more grace, And laughter to her blushing, as did fall. * * * * * "Eftsoones they heard a most melodious sound, Of all that mote delight a dainty ear, Such as at once might not on living ground, Save in this paradise, be heard elsewhere: Right hard it was for wight which did it hear To read what manner music that mote be; For all that pleasing is to living ear Was there consorted in one harmony; Birds, voices, instruments, winds, waters, all agree. "The joyous birds, shrouded in cheerful shade, Their notes unto the voice attempered sweet; The angelical soft trembling voices made To the instruments divine respondence mete; The silver-sounding instruments did meet With the base murmur of the water's fall; The water's fall with difference discreet, Now soft, now loud, unto the wind did call; The gentle warbling wind low answerëd to all." Spenser, in one of his letters to Harvey, had said, "Why, a God's name, may not we, as else the Greeks, have the kingdom of our own language?" This is in the tone of Bellay, as is also a great deal of what is said in the epistle prefixed to the "Shepherd's Calendar." He would have been wiser had he followed more closely Bellay's advice about the introduction of novel words: "Fear not, then, to innovate somewhat, particularly in a long poem, with modesty, however, with analogy, and judgment of ear; and trouble not thyself as to who may think it good or bad, hoping that posterity will approve it,--she who gives faith to doubtful, light to obscure, novelty to antique, usage to unaccustomed, and sweetness to harsh and rude things." Spenser's innovations were by no means always happy, as not always according with the genius of the language, and they have therefore not prevailed. He forms English words out of French or Italian ones, sometimes, I think, on a misapprehension of their true meaning; nay, he sometimes makes new ones by unlawfully grafting a scion of Romance on a Teutonic root. His theory, caught from Bellay, of rescuing good archaisms from unwarranted oblivion, was excellent; not so his practice of being archaic for the mere sake of escaping from the common and familiar. A permissible archaism is a word or phrase that has been supplanted by something less apt, but has not become unintelligible; and Spenser's often needed a glossary, even in his own day.[321] But he never endangers his finest passages by any experiments of this kind. There his language is living, if ever any, and of one substance with the splendor of his fancy. Like all masters of speech, he is fond of toying with and teasing it a little; and it may readily be granted that he sometimes "hunted the letter," as it was called, out of all cry. But even where his alliteration is tempted to an excess, its prolonged echoes caress the ear like the fading and gathering reverberations of an Alpine horn, and one can find in his heart to forgive even such a debauch of initial assonances as "Eftsoones her shallow ship away did slide, More swift than swallow shears the liquid sky." Generally, he scatters them at adroit intervals, reminding us of the arrangement of voices in an ancient catch, where one voice takes up the phrase another has dropped, and thus seems to give the web of harmony a firmer and more continuous texture. Other poets have held their mirrors up to nature, mirrors that differ very widely in the truth and beauty of the images they reflect; but Spenser's is a magic glass in which we see few shadows cast back from actual life, but visionary shapes conjured up by the wizard's art from some confusedly remembered past or some impossible future; it is like one of those still pools of mediaeval legend which covers some sunken city of the antique world; a reservoir in which all our dreams seem to have been gathered. As we float upon it, we see that it pictures faithfully enough the summer-clouds that drift over it, the trees that grow about its margin, but in the midst of these shadowy echoes of actuality we catch faint tones of bells that seem blown to us from beyond the horizon of time, and looking down into the clear depths, catch glimpses of towers and far-shining knights and peerless dames that waver and are gone. Is it a world that ever was, or shall be, or can be, or but a delusion? Spenser's world, real to him, is real enough for us to take a holiday in, and we may well be content with it when the earth we dwell on is so often too real to allow of such vacations. It is the same kind of world that Petrarca's Laura has walked in for five centuries with all ears listening for the music of her footfall. The land of Spenser is the land of Dream, but it is also the land of Rest. To read him is like dreaming awake, without even the trouble of doing it yourself, but letting it be done for you by the finest dreamer that ever lived, who knows how to color his dreams like life and make them move before you in music. They seem singing to you as the sirens to Guyon, and we linger like him:-- "O, thou fair son of gentle Faery That art in mighty arms most magnified Above all knights that ever battle tried, O, turn thy rudder hitherward awhile, Here may thy storm-beat vessel safely ride, This is the port of rest from troublous toil, The world's sweet inn from pain and wearisome turmoil.[322] "With that the rolling sea, resounding swift In his big bass, them fitly answered, And on the rock the waves, breaking aloft, A solemn mean unto them measured, The whiles sweet Zephyrus loud whisteled His treble, a strange kind of harmony Which Guyon's senses softly tickeled That he the boatman bade row easily And let him hear some part of their rare melody." Despite Spenser's instinctive tendency to idealize, and his habit of distilling out of the actual an ethereal essence in which very little of the possible seems left, yet his mind, as is generally true of great poets, was founded on a solid basis of good-sense. I do not know where to look for a more cogent and at the same time picturesque confutation of Socialism than in the Second Canto of the Fifth Book. If I apprehend rightly his words and images, there is not only subtile but profound thinking here. The French Revolution is prefigured in the well-meaning but too theoretic giant, and Rousseau's fallacies exposed two centuries in advance. Spenser was a conscious Englishman to his inmost fibre, and did not lack the sound judgment in politics which belongs to his race. He was the more English for living in Ireland, and there is something that moves us deeply in the exile's passionate cry:-- "Dear Country! O how dearly dear Ought thy remembrance and perpetual band Be to thy foster-child that from thy hand Did common breath and nouriture receive! How brutish is it not to understand How much to her we owe that all us gave, That gave unto us all whatever good we have!" His race shows itself also where he tells us that "chiefly skill to ride seems a science Proper to gentle blood," which reminds one of Lord Herbert of Cherbury's saying that the finest sight God looked down on was a fine man on a fine horse. Wordsworth, in the supplement to his preface, tells us that the "Faery Queen" "faded before" Sylvester's translation of Du Bartas. But Wordsworth held a brief for himself in this case, and is no exception to the proverb about men who are their own attorneys. His statement is wholly unfounded. Both poems, no doubt, so far as popularity is concerned, yielded to the graver interests of the Civil War. But there is an appreciation much weightier than any that is implied in mere popularity, and the vitality of a poem is to be measured by the kind as well as the amount of influence it exerts. Spenser has _coached_ more poets and more eminent ones than any other writer of English verse. I need say nothing of Milton, nor of professed disciples like Browne, the two Fletchers, and More. Oowley tells us that he became "irrecoverably a poet" by reading the "Faery Queen" when a boy. Dryden, whose case is particularly in point because he confesses having been seduced by Du Bartas, tells us that Spenser had been his master in English. He regrets, indeed, comically enough, that Spenser could not have read the rules of Bossu, but adds that "no man was ever born with a greater genius or more knowledge to support it." Pope says, "There is something in Spenser that pleases one as strongly in one's old age as it did in one's youth. I read the _Faery Queen_ when I was about twelve with a vast deal of delight; and I think it gave me as much when I read it over about a year or two ago." Thomson wrote the most delightful of his poems in the measure of Spenser; Collins, Gray, and Akenside show traces of him; and in our own day his influence reappears in Wordsworth, Byron, Shelley, and Keats. Landor is, I believe, the only poet who ever found him tedious. Spenser's mere manner has not had so many imitators as Milton's, but no other of our poets has given an impulse, and in the right direction also, to so many and so diverse minds; above all, no other has given to so many young souls a consciousness of their wings and a delight in the use of them. He is a standing protest against the tyranny of Commonplace, and sows the seeds of a noble discontent with prosaic views of life and the dull uses to which it may be put. Three of Spenser's own verses best characterize the feeling his poetry gives us:-- "Among wide waves set like a little nest," "Wrapt in eternal silence far from enemies," "The world's sweet inn from pain and wearisome turmoil." We are wont to apologize for the grossness of our favorite authors sometimes by saying that their age was to blame and not they; and the excuse is a good one, for often it is the frank word that shocks us while we tolerate the thing. Spenser needs no such extenuations. No man can read the "Faery Queen" and be anything but the better for it. Through that rude age, when Maids of Honor drank beer for breakfast and Hamlet could say a gross thing to Ophelia, he passes serenely abstracted and high, the Don Quixote of poets. Whoever can endure unmixed delight, whoever can tolerate music and painting and poetry all in one, whoever wishes to be rid of thought and to let the busy anvils of the brain be silent for a time, let him read in the "Faery Queen." There is the land of pure heart's ease, where no ache or sorrow of spirit can enter. Footnotes: [263] Though always misapplied in quotation, as if he had used the word in that generalized meaning which is common now, but which could not without an impossible anachronism have been present to his mind. He meant merely freedom from prison. [264] In his "Defence of Poesy" he condemns the archaisms and provincialisms of the "Shepherd's Calendar." [265] "There is, as you must have heard Wordsworth point out, a language of pure, intelligible English, which was spoken in Chaucer's time, and is spoken in ours; equally understood then and now; and of which the Bible is the written and permanent standard, as it has undoubtedly been the great means of preserving it." (Southey's Life and Correspondence, III. 193, 194.) [266] Nash, who has far better claims than Swift to be called the English Rabelais, thus at once describes and parodies Harvey's hexameters in prose, "that drunken, staggering kind of verse, which is all up hill and down hill, like the way betwixt Stamford and Beechneld, and goes like a horse plunging through the mire in the deep of winter, now soused up to the saddle, and straight aloft on his tiptoes." It was a happy thought to satirize (in this inverted way) prose written in the form of verse. [267] Edmund Bolton in his _Hypercritica_ says, "The works of Sam Daniel contained somewhat a flat, but yet withal a very pure and copious English, and words as warrantable as any man's, and _fitter perhaps for prose than measure_." I have italicized his second thought, which chimes curiously with the feeling Daniel leaves in the mind. (See Haslewood's Ancient Crit. Essays, Vol. II.) Wordsworth, an excellent judge, much admired Daniel's poem to the Countess of Cumberland. [268] Mr. Hales, in the excellent memoir of the poet prefixed to the Globe edition of his works, puts his birth a year earlier, on the strength of a line in the sixtieth sonnet. But it is not established that this sonnet was written in 1593, and even if it were, a sonnet is not upon oath, and the poet would prefer the round number forty, which suited the measure of his verse, to thirty-nine or forty-one, which might have been truer to the measure of his days. [269] This has been inferred from a passage in one of Gabriel Harvey's letters to him. But it would seem more natural, from the many allusions in Harvey's pamphlets against Nash, that it was his own wrongs which he had in mind, and his self-absorption would take it for granted that Spenser sympathized with him in all his grudges. Harvey is a remarkable instance of the refining influence of classical studies. Amid the pedantic farrago of his omni-sufficiency (to borrow one of his own words) we come suddenly upon passages whose gravity of sentiment, stateliness of movement, and purity of diction remind us of Landor. These lucid intervals in his overweening vanity explain and justify the friendship of Spenser. Yet the reiteration of emphasis with which he insists on all the world's knowing that Nash had called him an ass, probably gave Shakespeare the hint for one of the most comic touches in the character of Dogberry. [270] The late Major C. G. Halpine, in a very interesting essay, makes it extremely probable that Rosalinde is the anagram of Rose Daniel, sister of the poet and married to John Florio He leaves little doubt, also, that the name of Spenser's wife (hitherto unknown) was Elizabeth Nagle. (See "Atlantic Monthly," Vol II 674 November, 1858.) Mr. Halpine informed me that he found the substance of his essay among the papers of his father, the late Rev. N. J. Halpine, of Dublin. The latter published in the series of the Shakespeare Society a sprightly little tract entitled "Oberon," which, if not quite convincing, is well worth reading for its ingenuity and research. [271] In his prose tract on Ireland, Spenser, perhaps with some memory of Ovid in his mind, derives the Irish mainly from the Scythians. [272] Compare Shakespeare's LXVI. Sonnet. [273] This poem, published in 1591, was, Spenser tells us in his dedication, "long sithens composed in the raw conceit of my youth." But he had evidently retouched it. The verses quoted show a firmer hand than is generally seen in it, and we are safe in assuming that they were added after his visit to England. Dr. Johnson epigrammatized Spenser's indictment into "There mark what ills the scholar's life assail, Toil, envy, want, the patron and the jail," but I think it loses in pathos more than it gains in point. [274] Paradiso, XI. 4-12 Spenser was familiar with the "Divina Commedia," though I do not remember that his commentators have pointed out his chief obligations to it. [275] His own words as reported by Lodowick Bryskett. (Todd's Spenser, I. lx.) The whole passage is very interesting as giving us the only glimpse we get of the living Spenser in actual contact with his fellow-men. It shows him to us, as we could wish to see him, surrounded with loving respect, companionable and helpful. Bryskett tells us that he was "perfect in the Greek tongue," and "also very well read in philosophy both moral and natural." He encouraged Bryskett in the study of Greek, and offered to help him in it. Comparing the last verse of the above citation of the "Faery Queen" with other passages in Spenser, I cannot help thinking that he wrote, "do not love amiss." [276] "And know, sweet prince, when you shall come to know, That 'tis not in the power of kings to raise A spirit for verse that is not born thereto; Nor are they born in every prince's days" _Daniel's Dedic Trag. of "Philotas."_ [277] Louis XIV. is commonly supposed in some miraculous way to have created French literature. He may more truly be said to have petrified it so far as his influence went. The French _renaissance_ in the preceding century was produced by causes similar in essentials to those which brought about that in England not long after. The _grand siècle_ grew by natural processes of development out of that which had preceded it, and which, to the impartial foreigner at least, has more flavor, and more French flavor too, than the Gallo-Roman usurper that pushed it from its stool. The best modern French poetry has been forced to temper its verses in the colder natural springs of the ante-classic period. [278] In the Elizabethan drama the words "England" and "France" we constantly used to signify the kings of those countries. [279] I say supposed, for the names of his two sons, Sylvanus and Peregrine, indicate that they were born in Ireland, and that Spenser continued to regard it as a wilderness and his abode there as exile. The two other children are added on the authority of a pedigree drawn up by Sir W. Betham and cited in Mr. Hales's Life of Spenser prefixed to the Globe edition. [280] Ben Jonson told Drummond that one child perished in the flames. But he was speaking after an interval of twenty-one years, and, of course, from hearsay. Spenser's misery was exaggerated by succeeding poets, who used him to point a moral, and from the shelter of his tomb launched many a shaft of sarcasm at an unappreciative public. Giles Fletcher in his "Purple Island" (a poem which reminds us of the "Faery Queen" by the supreme tediousness of its allegory, but in nothing else) set the example in the best verse he ever wrote:-- "Poorly, poor man, he lived; poorly, poor man, he died." Gradually this poetical tradition established itself firmly as authentic history. Spenser could never have been poor, except by comparison. The whole story of his later days has a strong savor of legend. He must have had ample warning of Tyrone's rebellion, and would probably have sent away his wife and children to Cork, if he did not go thither himself. I am inclined to think that he did, carrying his papers with him, and among them the two cantos of Mutability, first published in 1611. These, it is most likely, were the only ones he ever completed, for, with all his abundance, he was evidently a laborious finisher. When we remember that ten years were given to the elaboration of the first three books, and that five more elapsed before the next three were ready, we shall waste no vain regrets on the six concluding books supposed to have been lost by the carelessness of an imaginary servant on their way from Ireland. [281] Sir Philip Sidney did not approve of this. "That same framing of his style to an old rustic language I dare not allow, since neither Theocritus in Greek, Virgil in Latin, nor Sannazzaro in Italian did affect it." ("Defence of Poesy.") Ben Jonson, on the other hand, said that Guarini "kept not decorum in making shepherds speak as well as himself could." ("Conversations with Drummond.") I think Sidney was right, for the poets' Arcadia is a purely ideal world, and should be treated accordingly. But whoever looks into the glossary appended to the "Calendar" by E.K., will be satisfied that Spenser's object was to find unhackneyed and poetical words rather than such as should seem more on a level with the speakers. See also the "Epistle Dedicatory." I cannot help thinking that E.K. was Spenser himself, with occasional interjections of Harvey. Who else could have written such English as many passages in this Epistle? [282] It was at Penshurst that he wrote the only specimen that has come down to us, and bad enough it is. I have said that some of Sidney's are pleasing. [283] See "My Study Windows," 264 _seqq_. [284] Of course _dillies_ and _lilies_ must be read with a slight accentuation of the last syllable (permissible then), in order to chime with _delice_. In the first line I have put _here_ instead of _hether_, which (like other words where _th_ comes between two vowels) was then very often a monosyllable, in order to throw the accent back more strongly on _bring_, where it belongs. Spenser's innovation lies in making his verses by ear instead of on the finger-tips, and in valuing the stave more than any of the single verses that compose it. This is the secret of his easy superiority to all others in the stanza which he composed, and which bears his name. Milton (who got more of his schooling in these matters from Spenser than anywhere else) gave this principle a greater range, and applied it with more various mastery. I have little doubt that the tune of the last stanza cited above was clinging in Shakespeare's ear when he wrote those exquisite verses in "Midsummer Night's Dream" ("I know a bank"), where our grave pentameter is in like manner surprised into a lyrical movement. See also the pretty song in the eclogue for August. Ben Jonson, too, evidently caught some cadences from Spenser for his lyrics. I need hardly say that in those eclogues (May, for example) where Spenser thought he was imitating what wiseacres used to call the _riding-rhyme_ of Chaucer, he fails most lamentably. He had evidently learned to scan his master's verses better when he wrote his "Mother Hubberd's Tale." [285] Drummond, it will be remarked, speaking from memory, takes Cuddy to be Colin. In Milton's "Lycidas" there are reminiscences of this eclogue as well as of that for May. The latter are the more evident, but I think that Spenser's "Cuddie, the praise is better than the price," suggested Milton's "But not the praise, Phoebus replied, and touched my trembling ears." Shakespeare had read and remembered this pastoral. Compare "But, ah, Mecaenas is yclad in clay, And great Augustus long ago is dead, And all the worthies liggen wrapt in lead," with "King Pandion, he is dead; All thy friends are lapt in lead." It is odd that Shakespeare, in his "lapt in lead," is more Spenserian than Spenser himself, from whom he caught this "hunting of the letter." [286] "Ruins of Time." It is perhaps not considering too nicely to remark how often this image of _wings_ recurred to Spenser's mind. A certain aerial latitude was essential to the large circlings of his style. [287] Perhaps his most striking single epithet is the "sea-shouldering whales," B. II 12, xxiii. His ear seems to delight in prolongations For example, he makes such words as _glorious_, _gratious_, _joyeous_, _havior_, _chapelet_ dactyles, and that, not at the end of verses, where it would not have been unusual, but in the first half of them. Milton contrives a break (a kind of heave, as it were) in the uniformity of his verse by a practice exactly the opposite of this. He also shuns a _hiatus_ which does not seem to have been generally dipleasing to Spenser's ear, though perhaps in the compound epithet _bees-alluring_ he intentionally avoids it by the plural form. [288] "Like as a wayward child, whose sounder sleep Is broken with some fearful dream's affright, With froward will doth set himself to weep Ne can be stilled for all his nurse's might, But kicks and squalls and shrieks for fell despight, Now scratching her and her loose locks misusing, Now seeking darkness and now seeking light, Then craving suck, and then the suck refusing." He would doubtless have justified himself by the familiar example of Homer's comparing Ajax to a donkey in the eleventh book of the Illiad. So also in the "Epithalamion" it grates our nerves to hear, "Pour not by cups, but by the bellyful, Pour out to all that wull." Such examples serve to show how strong a dose of Spenser's _aurum potabile_ the language needed. [289] I could not bring myself to root out this odorous herb-garden, though it make my extract too long. It is a pretty reminiscence of his master Chaucer, but is also very characteristic of Spenser himself. He could not help planting a flower or two among his serviceable plants, and after all this abundance he is not satisfied, but begins the next stanza with "And whatso _else_." [290] Leigh Hunt's Indicator, XVII. [291] Ben Jonson told Drummond "that in that paper Sir W. Raleigh had of the allegories of his Faery Queen, by the Blatant Beast the Puritans were understood." But this is certainly wrong. There were very different shades of Puritanism, according to individual temperament. That of Winthrop and Higginson had a mellowness of which Endicott and Standish were incapable The gradual change of Milton's opinions was similar to that which I suppose in Spenser. The passage in Mother Hubberd may have been aimed at the Protestant clergy of Ireland (for he says much the same thing in his "View of the State of Ireland"), but it is general in its terms. [292] Two of his eclogues, as I have said, are from Marot, and his earliest known verses are translations from Bellay, a poet who was charming whenever he had the courage to play truant from a bad school. We must not suppose that an analysis of the literature of the _demi-monde_ will give us all the elements of the French character. It has been both grave and profound; nay, it has even contrived to be wise and lively at the same time, a combination so incomprehensible by the Teutonic races that they have labelled it levity. It puts them out as nature did Fuseli. [293] Taste must be partially excepted. It is remarkable how little eating and drinking there is in the "Faery Queen." The only time he fairly sets a table is in the house of Malbecco, where it is necessary to the conduct of the story. Yet taste is not wholly forgotten:-- "In her left hand a cup of gold she held, And with her right the riper fruit did reach, Whose sappy liquor, that with fulness sweld, Into her cup she scruzed with dainty breach Of her fine fingers without foul impeach, That so fair wine-press made the wine more sweet." B. II c. xii. 56. Taste can hardly complain of unhandsome treatment! [294] Had the poet lived longer, he might perhaps have verified his friend Raleigh's saying, that "whosoever in writing modern history shall follow truth too near the heels, it may haply strike out his teeth." The passage is one of the very few disgusting ones in the "Faery Queen." Spenser was copying Ariosto; but the Italian poet, with the discreeter taste of his race, keeps to generalities. Spenser goes into particulars which can only be called nasty. He did this, no doubt, to pleasure his mistress, Mary's rival; and this gives us a measure of the brutal coarseness of contemporary manner. It becomes only the more marvellous that the fine flower of his genius could have transmuted the juices of such a soil into the purity and sweetness which are its own peculiar properties. [295] There is a gleam of humor in one of the couplets of "Mother Hubberd's Tale," where the Fox, persuading the Ape that they should disguise themselves as discharged soldiers in order to beg the more successfully, says,-- "Be you the soldier, for you likest are For manly semblance _and small skill in war."_ [296] Bunyan probably took the hint of the Giants suicidal offer of "knife, halter, or poison," from Spenser's "swords, ropes, poison," in Faery Queen, B. I. c. ix. 1. [297] Book II. c. 9. [298] See Sidney's "Defence," and Puttenham's "Art of English Poesy," Book I. c. 8. [299] We can fancy how he would have done this by Jeremy Taylor, who was a kind of Spenser in a cassock. [300] Of this he himself gives a striking hint, when speaking in his own person he suddenly breaks in on his narrative with the passionate cry, "Ah, dearest God, me grant I dead be not defouled." _Faery Queen_, B. I. c. x. 43. [301] Was not this picture painted by Paul Veronese, for example? "Arachne figured how Jove did abuse Europa like a bull, and on his back Her through the sea did bear: ... She seemed still back unto the land to look, And her playfellows' aid to call, and fear The dashing of the waves, that up she took Her dainty feet, and garments gathered near.... Before the bull she pictured winged Love, With his young brother Sport, ... And many nymphs about them flocking round, And many Tritons which their horns did sound." _Muiopotmos_, 281-296. Spenser begins a complimentary sonnet prefixed to the "Commonwealth and Government of Venice" (1599) with this beautiful verse, "Fair Venice, flower of the last world's delight." Perhaps we should read "lost"? [302] Marlowe's "Tamburlaine," Part I. Act V. 2. [303] Grayheaded Thought, nor much nor little, may Take up its lodging here in any heart; Unease nor Lack can enter at this door; But here dwells full-horned Plenty evermore. _Orl. Fur._, e. vi. 78. [304] B. I. c. iii. 7. Leigh Hunt, one of the most sympathetic of critics, has remarked the passionate change from the third to the first person in the last two verses. [305] B. II. c. viii. 3. [306] Observations on Faery Queen, Vol. I pp. 158, 159. Mr. Hughes also objects to Spenser's measure, that it is "closed always by a fullstop, in the same place, by which every stanza is made as it were a distinct paragraph." (Todd's Spenser, II. xli.) But he could hardly have read the poem attentively, for there are numerous instances to the contrary. Spenser was a consummate master of versification, and not only did Marlowe and Shakespeare learn of him, but I have little doubt that, but for the "Faery Queen," we should never have had the varied majesty of Milton's blank verse. [307] As where Dr. Warton himself says:-- "How nearly had my spirit past, Till stopt by Metcalf's skilful hand, To death's dark regions wide and waste And the black river's mournful strand, Or to," etc., to the end of the next stanza. That is, I had died but for Dr. Metcalf 's boluses. [308] Iliad, XVII. 55 _seqq_. Referred to in Upton's note on Faery Queen, B. I. c. vii. 32. Into what a breezy couplet trailing off with an alexandrine has Homer's [Greek: pnoiai pantoion anemon] expanded! Chaplin unfortunately has slurred this passage in his version, and Pope _tittivated_ it more than usual in his. I have no other translation at hand. Marlowe was so taken by this passage in Spenser that he put it bodily into his _Tamburlaine_. [309] Inferno, XXIV. 46-52. "For sitting upon down, Or under quilt, one cometh not to fame, Withouten which whoso his life consumeth Such vestige leaveth of himself on earth As smoke in air or in the water foam." _Longfellow._ It shows how little Dante was read during the last century that none of the commentators on Spenser notice his most important obligations to the great Tuscan. [310] Faery Queen, B. II. c. iii. 40, 41. [311] Ibid., B. I. c. v. 1. [312] Ibid., B. II. c. viii. 1,2. [313] B. III. c. xi. 28. [314] B. I. c. i. 41. [315] This phrase occurs in the sonnet addressed to the Earl of Ormond and in that to Lord Grey de Wilton in the series prefixed to the "Faery Queen". These sonnets are of a much stronger build than the "Amoretti", and some of them (especially that to Sir John Norris) recall the firm tread of Milton's, though differing in structure. [316] Daphnaida, 407, 408. [317] Faery Queen, B. I. c. x. 9. [318] Strictly taken, perhaps his world is not _much_ more imaginary than that of other epic poets, Homer (in the Iliad) included. He who is familiar with mediaeval epics will be extremely cautious in drawing inferences as to contemporary manners from Homer. He evidently _archaizes_ like the rest. [319] Faery Queen, B. VI. c. x. 10-16. [320] Purgatorio, XXIX., XXX. [321] I find a goodly number of Yankeeisms in him, such as _idee_ (not as a rhyme); but the oddest is his twice spelling _dew deow_, which is just as one would spell it who wished to phonetize its sound in rural New England. [322] This song recalls that in Dante's Purgatorio (XIX. 19--24), in which the Italian tongue puts forth all its siren allurements. Browne's beautiful verses ("Turn, hither turn your winged pines") were suggested by these of Spenser. It might almost seem as if Spenser had here, in his usual way, expanded the sweet old verses:-- "Merry sungen the monks binnen Ely When Knut king rew thereby; 'Roweth knightes near the loud, That I may hear these monkes song.'" WORDSWORTH. A generation has now passed away since Wordsworth was laid with the family in the churchyard at Grasmere.[323] Perhaps it is hardly yet time to take a perfectly impartial measure of his value as a poet. To do this is especially hard for those who are old enough to remember the last shot which the foe was sullenly firing in that long war of critics which began when he published his manifesto as Pretender, and which came to a pause rather than end when they flung up their caps with the rest at his final coronation. Something of the intensity of the _odium theologicum_ (if indeed the _aestheticum_ be not in these days the more bitter of the two) entered into the conflict. The Wordsworthians were a sect, who, if they had the enthusiasm, had also not a little of the exclusiveness and partiality to which sects are liable. The verses of the master had for them the virtue of religious canticles stimulant of zeal and not amenable to the ordinary tests of cold-blooded criticism. Like the hymns of the Huguenots and Covenanters, they were songs of battle no less than of worship, and the combined ardors of conviction and conflict lent them a fire that was not naturally their own. As we read them now, that virtue of the moment is gone out of them, and whatever of Dr. Wattsiness there is gives us a slight shock of disenchantment. It is something like the difference between the _Marseillaise_ sung by armed propagandists on the edge of battle, or by Brissotins in the tumbrel, and the words of it read coolly in the closet, or recited with the factitious frenzy of Thérèse. It was natural in the early days of Wordsworth's career to dwell most fondly on those profounder qualities to appreciate which settled in some sort the measure of a man's right to judge of poetry at all. But now we must admit the shortcomings, the failures, the defects, as no less essential elements in forming a sound judgment as to whether the seer and artist were so united in him as to justify the claim first put in by himself and afterwards maintained by his sect to a place beside the few great poets who exalt men's minds, and give a right direction and safe outlet to their passions through the imagination, while insensibly helping them toward balance of character and serenity of judgment by stimulating their sense of proportion, form, and the nice adjustment of means to ends. In none of our poets has the constant propulsion of an unbending will, and the concentration of exclusive, if I must not say somewhat narrow, sympathies done so much to make the original endowment of nature effective, and in none accordingly does the biography throw so much light on the works, nor enter so largely into their composition as an element whether of power or of weakness. Wordsworth never saw, and I think never wished to see, beyond the limits of his own consciousness and experience. He early conceived himself to be, and through life was confirmed by circumstances in the faith that he was, a "dedicated spirit,"[324] a state of mind likely to further an intense but at the same time one-sided development of the intellectual powers. The solitude in which the greater part of his mature life was passed, while it doubtless ministered to the passionate intensity of his musings upon man and nature, was, it may be suspected, harmful to him as an artist, by depriving him of any standard of proportion outside himself by which to test the comparative value of his thoughts, and by rendering him more and more incapable of that urbanity of mind which could be gained only by commerce with men more nearly on his own level, and which gives tone without lessening individuality. Wordsworth never quite saw the distinction between the eccentric and the original. For what we call originality seems not so much anything peculiar, much less anything odd, but that quality in a man which touches human nature at most points of its circumference, which reinvigorates the consciousness of our own powers by recalling and confirming our own unvalued sensations and perceptions, gives classic shape to our own amorphous imaginings, and adequate utterance to our own stammering conceptions or emotions. The poet's office is to be a Voice, not of one crying in the wilderness to a knot of already magnetized acolytes, but singing amid the throng of men and lifting their common aspirations and sympathies (so first clearly revealed to themselves) on the wings of his song to a purer ether and a wider reach of view. We cannot, if we would, read the poetry of Wordsworth as mere poetry; at every other page we find ourselves entangled in a problem of aesthetics. The world-old question of matter and form of whether nectar _is_ of precisely the same flavor when served to us from a Grecian chalice or from any jug of ruder pottery, comes up for decision anew. The Teutonic nature has always shown a sturdy preference of the solid bone with a marrow of nutritious moral to any shadow of the same on the flowing mirror of sense. Wordsworth never lets us long forget the deeply rooted stock from which he sprang,--_vien ben dà lui_. * * * * * William Wordsworth was born at Cockermouth in Cumberland on the 7th of April, 1770, the second of five children. His father was John Wordsworth, an attorney-at-law, and agent of Sir James Lowther, afterwards first Earl of Lonsdale. His mother was Anne Cookson, the daughter of a mercer in Penrith. His paternal ancestors had been settled immemorially at Penistone in Yorkshire, whence his grandfather had emigrated to Westmoreland. His mother, a woman, of piety and wisdom, died in March, 1778, being then in her thirty-second year. His father, who never entirely cast off the depression occasioned by her death, survived her but five years, dying in December, 1783, when William was not quite fourteen years old. The poet's early childhood was passed partly at Cockermouth, and partly with his maternal grandfather at Penrith. His first teacher appears to have been Mrs. Anne Birkett, a kind of Shenstone's Schoolmistress, who practised the memory of her pupils, teaching them chiefly by rote, and not endeavoring to cultivate their reasoning faculties, a process by which children are apt to be converted from natural logicians into impertinent sophists. Among his schoolmates here was Mary Hutchinson, who afterwards became his wife. In 1778 he was sent to a school founded by Edwin Sandys, Archbishop of York, in the year 1585, at Hawkshead in Lancashire. Hawkshead is a small market-town in the vale of Esthwaite, about a third of a mile northwest of the lake. Here Wordsworth passed nine years, among a people of simple habits and scenery of a sweet and pastoral dignity. His earliest intimacies were with the mountains, lakes, and streams of his native district, and the associations with which his mind was stored during its most impressible period were noble and pure. The boys were boarded among the dames of the village, thus enjoying a freedom from scholastic restraints, which could be nothing but beneficial in a place where the temptations were only to sports that hardened the body, while they fostered a love of nature in the spirit and habits of observation in the mind. Wordsworth's ordinary amusements here were hunting and fishing, rowing, skating, and long walks around the lake and among the hills, with an occasional scamper on horseback.[325] His life as a school-boy was favorable also to his poetic development, in being identified with that of the people among whom he lived. Among men of simple habits, and where there are small diversities of condition, the feelings and passions are displayed with less restraint, and the young poet grew acquainted with that primal human basis of character where the Muse finds firm foothold, and to which he ever afterward cleared his way through all the overlying drift of conventionalism. The dalesmen were a primitive and hardy race who kept alive the traditions and often the habits of a more picturesque time. A common level of interests and social standing fostered unconventional ways of thought and speech, and friendly human sympathies. Solitude induced reflection, a reliance of the mind on its own resources, and individuality of character. Where everybody knew everybody, and everybody's father had known everybody's father, the interest of man in man was not likely to become a matter of cold hearsay and distant report When death knocked at any door in the hamlet, there was an echo from every fireside, and a wedding dropt its white flowers at every threshold. There was not a grave in the churchyard but had its story, not a crag or glen or aged tree untouched with some ideal hue of legend It was here that Wordsworth learned that homely humanity which gives such depth and sincerity to his poems. Travel, society, culture, nothing could obliterate the deep trace of that early training which enables him to speak directly to the primitive instincts of man. He was apprenticed early to the difficult art of being himself. At school he wrote some task-verses on subjects imposed by the master, and also some voluntaries of his own, equally undistinguished by any peculiar merit. But he seems to have made up his mind as early as in his fourteenth year to become a poet.[326] "It is recorded," says his biographer vaguely, "that the poet's father set him very early to learn portions of the best English poets by heart, so that at an early age he could repeat large portions of Shakespeare, Milton, and Spenser."[327] The great event of Wordsworth's school days was the death of his father, who left what may be called a hypothetical estate, consisting chiefly of claims upon the first Earl of Lonsdale, the payment of which, though their justice was acknowledged, that nobleman contrived in some unexplained way to elude so long as he lived. In October, 1787, he left school for St. John's College, Cambridge. He was already, we are told, a fair Latin scholar, and had made some progress in mathematics. The earliest books we hear of his reading were Don Quixote, Gil Blas, Gulliver's Travels, and the Tale of a Tub; but at school he had also become familiar with the works of some English poets, particularly Goldsmith and Gray, of whose poems he had learned many by heart. What is more to the purpose, he had become, without knowing it, a lover of Nature in all her moods, and the same mental necessities of a solitary life which compel men to an interest in the transitory phenomena of scenery, had made him also studious of the movements of his own mind, and the mutual interaction and dependence of the external and internal universe. Doubtless his early orphanage was not without its effect in confirming a character naturally impatient of control, and his mind, left to itself, clothed itself with an indigenous growth, which grew fairly and freely, unstinted by the shadow of exotic plantations. It has become a truism, that remarkable persons have remarkable mothers; but perhaps this is chiefly true of such as have made themselves distinguished by their industry, and by the assiduous cultivation of faculties in themselves of only an average quality. It is rather to be noted how little is known of the parentage of men of the first magnitude, how often they seem in some sort foundlings, and how early an apparently adverse destiny begins the culture of those who are to encounter and master great intellectual or spiritual experiences. Of his disposition as a child little is known, but that little is characteristic. He himself tells us that he was "stiff, moody, and of violent temper." His mother said of him that he was the only one of her children about whom she felt any anxiety,--for she was sure that he would be remarkable for good or evil. Once, in resentment at some fancied injury, he resolved to kill himself but his heart failed him. I suspect that few boys of passionate temperament have escaped these momentary suggestions of despairing helplessness. "On another occasion," he says, "while I was at my grandfather's house at Penrith, along with my eldest brother Richard we were whipping tops together in the long drawing-room, on which the carpet was only laid down on particular occasions. The walls were hung round with family pictures, and I said to my brother, 'Dare you strike your whip through that old lady's petticoat?' He replied, 'No, I won't.' 'Then,' said I, 'here goes,' and I struck my lash through her hooped petticoat, for which, no doubt, though I have forgotten it, I was properly punished. But, possibly from some want of judgment in punishments inflicted, I had become perverse and obstinate in defying chastisement, and rather proud of it than otherwise." This last anecdote is as happily typical as a bit of Greek mythology which always prefigured the lives of heroes in the stories of their childhood. Just so do we find him afterward striking his defiant lash through the hooped petticoat of the artificial style of poetry, and proudly unsubdued by the punishment of the Reviewers. Of his college life the chief record is to be found in "The Prelude." He did not distinguish himself as a scholar, and if his life had any incidents, they were of that interior kind which rarely appear in biography, though they may be of controlling influence upon the life. He speaks of reading Chaucer, Spenser, and Milton while at Cambridge,[328] but no reflection from them is visible in his earliest published poems. The greater part of his vacations was spent in his native Lake-country, where his only sister, Dorothy, was the companion of his rambles. She was a woman of large natural endowments, chiefly of the receptive kind, and had much to do with the formation and tendency of the poet's mind. It was she who called forth the shyer sensibilities of his nature, and taught an originally harsh and austere imagination to surround itself with fancy and feeling, as the rock fringes itself with a sun-spray of ferns. She was his first public, and belonged to that class of prophetically appreciative temperaments whose apparent office it is to cheer the early solitude of original minds with messages from the future. Through the greater part of his life she continued to be a kind of poetical conscience to him. Wordsworth's last college vacation was spent in a foot journey upon the Continent (1790). In January, 1791, he took his degree of B.A., and left Cambridge. During the summer of this year he visited Wales, and, after declining to enter upon holy orders under the plea that he was not of age for ordination, went over to France in November, and remained during the winter at Orleans. Here he became intimate with the republican General Beaupuis, with whose hopes and aspirations he ardently sympathized. In the spring of 1792 he was at Blois, and returned thence to Orleans, which he finally quitted in October for Paris. He remained here as long as he could with safety, and at the close of the year went back to England, thus, perhaps, escaping the fate which soon after overtook his friends the Brissotins. As hitherto the life of Wordsworth may be called a fortunate one, not less so in the training and expansion of his faculties was this period of his stay in France. Born and reared in a country where the homely and familiar nestles confidingly amid the most savage and sublime forms of nature, he had experienced whatever impulses the creative faculty can receive from mountain and cloud and the voices of winds and waters, but he had known man only as an actor in fireside histories and tragedies, for which the hamlet supplied an ample stage. In France he first felt the authentic beat of a nation's heart; he was a spectator at one of those dramas where the terrible footfall of the Eumenides is heard nearer and nearer in the pauses of the action; and he saw man such as he can only be when he is vibrated by the orgasm of a national emotion. He sympathized with the hopes of France and of mankind deeply, as was fitting in a young man and a poet; and if his faith in the gregarious advancement of men was afterward shaken, he only held the more firmly by his belief in the individual, and his reverence for the human as something quite apart from the popular and above it. Wordsworth has been unwisely blamed, as if he had been recreant to the liberal instincts of his youth. But it was inevitable that a genius so regulated and metrical as his, a mind which always compensated itself for its artistic radicalism by an involuntary leaning toward external respectability, should recoil from whatever was convulsionary and destructive in politics, and above all in religion. He reads the poems of Wordsworth without understanding, who does not find in them the noblest incentives to faith in man and the grandeur of his destiny, founded always upon that personal dignity and virtue, the capacity for whose attainment alone makes universal liberty possible and assures its permanence. He was to make men better by opening to them the sources of an inalterable well-being; to make them free, in a sense higher than political, by showing them that these sources are within them, and that no contrivance of man can permanently emancipate narrow natures and depraved minds. His politics were always those of a poet, circling in the larger orbit of causes and principles, careless of the transitory oscillation of events. The change in his point of view (if change there was) certainly was complete soon after his return from France, and was perhaps due in part to the influence of Burke. "While he [Burke] forewarns, denounces, launches forth, Against all systems built on abstract rights, Keen ridicule; the majesty proclaims Of institutes and laws hallowed by time; Declares the vital power of social ties Endeared by custom; and with high disdain, Exploding upstart theory, insists Upon the allegiance to which men are born. .... Could a youth, and one In ancient story versed, whose breast hath heaved Under the weight of classic eloquence, Sit, see, and hear, unthankful, uninspired?"[329] He had seen the French for a dozen years eagerly busy in tearing up whatever had roots in the past, replacing the venerable trunks of tradition and orderly growth with liberty-poles, then striving vainly to piece together the fibres they had broken, and to reproduce artificially that sense of permanence and continuity which is the main safeguard of vigorous self-consciousness in a nation. He became a Tory through intellectual conviction, retaining, I suspect, to the last, a certain radicalism of temperament and instinct. Haydon tells us that in 1809 Sir George Beaumont said to him and Wilkie, "Wordsworth may perhaps walk in; if he do I caution you both against his terrific democratic notions"; and it must have been many years later that Wordsworth himself told Crabb Eobinson, "I have no respect whatever for Whigs, but I have a great deal of the Chartist in me." In 1802, during his tour in Scotland, he travelled on Sundays as on the other days of the week.[330] He afterwards became a theoretical churchgoer. "Wordsworth defended earnestly the Church establishment. He even said he would shed his blood for it. Nor was he disconcerted by a laugh raised against him on account of his having confessed that he knew not when he had been in a church in his own country. 'All our ministers are so vile,' said he. The mischief of allowing the clergy to depend on the caprice of the multitude he thought more than outweighed all the evils of an establishment."[331] In December, 1792, Wordsworth had returned to England, and in the following year published "Descriptive Sketches" and the "Evening Walk." He did this, as he says in one of his letters, to show that, although he had gained no honors at the University, he _could_ do something. They met with no great success, and he afterward corrected them so much as to destroy all their interest as juvenile productions, without communicating to them any of the merits of maturity. In commenting, sixty years afterward, on a couplet in one of these poems,-- "And, fronting the bright west, the oak entwines Its darkening boughs and leaves in stronger lines,"-- he says: "This is feebly and imperfectly expressed, but I recollect distinctly the very spot where this first struck me.... The moment was important in my poetical history; for I date from it my consciousness of the infinite variety of natural appearances which had been unnoticed by the poets of any age or country, so far as I was acquainted with them, and I made a resolution to supply in some degree the deficiency." It is plain that Wordsworth's memory was playing him a trick here, misled by that instinct (it may almost be called) of consistency which leads men first to desire that their lives should have been without break or seam, and then to believe that they have been such. The more distant ranges of perspective are apt to run together in retrospection. How far could Wordsworth at fourteen have been acquainted with the poets of all ages and countries,--he who to his dying day could not endure to read Goethe and knew nothing of Calderon? It seems to me rather that the earliest influence traceable in him is that of Goldsmith, and later of Cowper, and it is, perhaps, some slight indication of its having already begun that his first volume of "Descriptive Sketches" (1793) was put forth by Johnson, who was Cowper's publisher. By and by the powerful impress of Burns is seen both in the topics of his verse and the form of his expression. But whatever their ultimate effect upon his style, certain it is that his juvenile poems were clothed in the conventional habit of the eighteenth century. "The first verses from which he remembered to have received great pleasure were Miss Carter's 'Poem on Spring,' a poem in the six-line stanza which he was particularly fond of and had composed much in,--for example, 'Ruth.'" This is noteworthy, for Wordsworth's lyric range, especially so far as tune is concerned, was always narrow. His sense of melody was painfully dull, and some of his lighter effusions, as he would have called them, are almost ludicrously wanting in grace of movement. We cannot expect in a modern poet the thrush-like improvisation, the impulsively bewitching cadences, that charm us in our Elizabethan drama and whose last warble died with Herrick; but Shelley, Tennyson, and Browning have shown that the simple pathos of their music was not irrecoverable, even if the artless poignancy of their phrase be gone beyond recall. We feel this lack in Wordsworth all the more keenly if we compare such verses as "Like an army defeated The snow hath retreated And now doth fare ill On the top of the bare hill," with Goethe's exquisite _Ueber allen Gipfeln ist Ruh_, in which the lines (as if shaken down by a momentary breeze of emotion) drop lingeringly one after another like blossoms upon turf. "The Evening Walk" and "Descriptive Sketches" show plainly the prevailing influence of Goldsmith, both in the turn of thought and the mechanism of the verse. They lack altogether the temperance of tone and judgment in selection which have made the "Traveller" and the "Deserted Village," perhaps, the most truly classical poems in the language. They bear here and there, however, the unmistakable stamp of the maturer Wordsworth, not only in a certain blunt realism, but in the intensity and truth of picturesque epithet. Of this realism, from which Wordsworth never wholly freed himself, the following verses may suffice as a specimen. After describing the fate of a chamois-hunter killed by falling from a crag, his fancy goes back to the bereaved wife and son:-- "Haply that child in fearful doubt may gaze, Passing his father's bones in future days, Start at the reliques of that very thigh On which so oft he prattled when a boy." In these poems there is plenty of that "poetic diction" against which Wordsworth was to lead the revolt nine years later. "To wet the peak's impracticable sides He opens of his feet the sanguine tides, Weak and more weak the issuing current eyes Lapped by the panting tongue of thirsty skies." Both of these passages have disappeared from the revised edition, as well as some curious outbursts of that motiveless despair which Byron made fashionable not long after. Nor are there wanting touches of fleshliness which strike us oddly as coming from Wordsworth.[332] "Farewell! those forms that in thy noontide shade Rest near their little plots of oaten glade, Those steadfast eyes that beating breasts inspire To throw the 'sultry ray' of young Desire; Those lips whose tides of fragrance come and go Accordant to the cheek's unquiet glow; Those shadowy breasts in love's soft light arrayed, And rising by the moon of passion swayed." The political tone is also mildened in the revision, as where he changes "despot courts" into "tyranny." One of the alterations is interesting. In the "Evening Walk" he had originally written "And bids her soldier come her wars to share Asleep on Minden's charnel hill afar." An _erratum_ at the end directs us to correct the second verse, thus:-- "Asleep on Bunker's charnel hill afar."[333] Wordsworth somewhere rebukes the poets for making the owl a bodeful bird. He had himself done so in the "Evening Walk," and corrects his epithets to suit his later judgment, putting "gladsome" for "boding," and replacing "The tremulous sob of the complaining owl" by "The sportive outcry of the mocking owl." Indeed, the character of the two poems is so much changed in the revision as to make the dates appended to them a misleading anachronism. But there is one truly Wordsworthian passage which already gives us a glimpse of that passion with which he was the first to irradiate descriptive poetry and which sets him on a level with Turner. "'Tis storm; and hid in mist from hour to hour All day the floods a deepening murmur pour: The sky is veiled and every cheerful sight; Dark is the region as with coming night; But what a sudden burst of overpowering light! Triumphant on the bosom of the storm, Glances the fire-clad eagle's wheeling form; Eastward, in long prospective glittering shine The wood-crowned cliffs that o'er the lake recline; Those eastern cliffs a hundred streams unfold, At once to pillars turned that flame with gold; Behind his sail the peasant tries to shun The West that burns like one dilated sun, Where in a mighty crucible expire The mountains, glowing hot like coals of fire." Wordsworth has made only one change in these verses, and that for the worse, by substituting "glorious" (which was already implied in "glances" and "fire-clad") for "wheeling." In later life he would have found it hard to forgive the man who should have made cliffs recline over a lake. On the whole, what strikes us as most prophetic in these poems is their want of continuity, and the purple patches of true poetry on a texture of unmistakable prose; perhaps we might add the incongruous clothing of prose thoughts in the ceremonial robes of poesy. During the same year (1793) he wrote, but did not publish, a political tract, in which he avowed himself opposed to monarchy and to the hereditary principle, and desirous of a republic, if it could be had without a revolution. He probably continued to be all his life in favor of that ideal republic "which never was on laud or sea," but fortunately he gave up politics that he might devote himself to his own nobler calling, to which politics are subordinate, and for which he found freedom enough in England as it was.[334] Dr. Wordsworth admits that his uncle's opinions were democratical so late as 1802. I suspect that they remained so in an esoteric way to the end of his days. He had himself suffered by the arbitrary selfishness of a great landholder, and he was born and bred in a part of England where there is a greater social equality than elsewhere. The look and manner of the Cumberland people especially are such as recall very vividly to a New-Englander the associations of fifty years ago, ere the change from New England to New Ireland had begun. But meanwhile, Want, which makes no distinctions of Monarchist or Republican, was pressing upon him. The debt due to his father's estate had not been paid, and Wordsworth was one of those rare idealists who esteem it the first duty of a friend of humanity to live for, and not on, his neighbor. He at first proposed establishing a periodical journal to be called "The Philanthropist," but luckily went no further with it, for the receipts from an organ of opinion which professed republicanism, and at the same time discountenanced the plans of all existing or defunct republicans, would have been necessarily scanty. There being no appearance of any demand, present or prospective, for philanthropists, he tried to get employment as correspondent of a newspaper. Here also it was impossible that he should succeed; he was too great to be merged in the editorial We, and had too well defined a private opinion on all subjects to be able to express that average of public opinion which constitutes able editorials. But so it is that to the prophet in the wilderness the birds of ill omen are already on the wing with food from heaven; and while Wordsworth's relatives were getting impatient at what they considered his waste of time, while one thought he had gifts enough to make a good parson, and another lamented the rare attorney that was lost in him,[335] the prescient muse guided the hand of Raisley Calvert while he wrote the poet's name in his will for a legacy of £900. By the death of Calvert, in 1795, this timely help came to Wordsworth at the turning point of his life and made it honest for him to write poems that will never die, instead of theatrical critiques as ephemeral as play bills, or leaders that led only to oblivion. In the autumn of 1795 Wordsworth and his sister took up their abode at Racedown Lodge, near Crewkerne, in Dorsetshire. Here nearly two years were passed, chiefly in the study of poetry, and Wordsworth to some extent recovered from the fierce disappointment of his political dreams, and regained that equable tenor of mind which alone is consistent with a healthy productiveness. Here Coleridge, who had contrived to see something more in the "Descriptive Sketches" than the public had discovered there, first made his acquaintance. The sympathy and appreciation of an intellect like Coleridge's supplied him with that external motive to activity which is the chief use of popularity, and justified to him his opinion of his own powers It was now that the tragedy of "The Borderers" was for the most part written, and that plan of the "Lyrical Ballads" suggested which gave Wordsworth a clew to lead him out of the metaphysical labyrinth in which he was entangled. It was agreed between the two young friends, that Wordsworth was to be a philosophic poet, and, by a good fortune uncommon to such conspiracies, Nature had already consented to the arrangement. In July, 1797, the two Wordsworths removed to Allfoxden in Somersetshire, that they might be near Coleridge, who in the mean while had married and settled himself at Nether-Stowey. In November "The Borderers" was finished, and Wordsworth went up to London with his sister to offer it for the stage. The good Genius of the poet again interposing, the play was decisively rejected, and Wordsworth went back to Allfoxden, himself the hero of that first tragi-comedy so common to young authors. The play has fine passages, but is as unreal as Jane Eyre. It shares with many of Wordsworth's narrative poems the defect of being written to illustrate an abstract moral theory, so that the overbearing thesis is continually thrusting the poetry to the wall. Applied to the drama, such predestination makes all the personages puppets and disenables them for being characters. Wordsworth seems to have felt this when he published "The Borderers" in 1842, and says in a note that it was "at first written ... without any view to its exhibition upon the stage." But he was mistaken. The contemporaneous letters of Coleridge to Cottle show that he was long in giving up the hope of getting it accepted by some theatrical manager. He now applied himself to the preparation of the first volume of the "Lyrical Ballads" for the press, and it was published toward the close of 1798. The book, which contained also "The Ancient Mariner" of Coleridge, attracted little notice, and that in great part contemptuous. When Mr. Cottle, the publisher, shortly after sold his copyrights to Mr. Longman, that of the "Lyrical Ballads" was reckoned at _zero_, and it was at last given up to the authors. A few persons were not wanting however, who discovered the dawn-streaks of a new day in that light which the critical fire-brigade thought to extinguish with a few contemptuous spurts of cold water.[336] Lord Byron describes himself as waking one morning and finding himself famous, and it is quite an ordinary fact, that a blaze may be made with a little saltpetre that will be stared at by thousands who would have thought the sunrise tedious. If we may believe his biographer, Wordsworth might have said that he awoke and found himself in-famous, for the publication of the "Lyrical Ballads" undoubtedly raised him to the distinction of being the least popular poet in England. Parnassus has two peaks; the one where improvising poets cluster; the other where the singer of deep secrets sits alone,--a peak veiled sometimes from the whole morning of a generation by earth-born mists and smoke of kitchen fires, only to glow the more consciously at sunset, and after nightfall to crown itself with imperishable stars. Wordsworth had that self-trust which in the man of genius is sublime, and in the man of talent insufferable. It mattered not to him though all the reviewers had been in a chorus of laughter or conspiracy of silence behind him. He went quietly over to Germany to write more Lyrical Ballads, and to begin a poem on the growth of his own mind, at a time when there were only two men in the world (himself and Coleridge) who were aware that he had one, or at least one anywise differing from those mechanically uniform ones which are stuck drearily, side by side, in the great pin-paper of society. In Germany Wordsworth dined in company with Klopstock, and after dinner they had a conversation, of which Wordsworth took notes. The respectable old poet, who was passing the evening of his days by the chimney-corner, Darby and Joan like, with his respectable Muse, seems to have been rather bewildered by the apparition of a living genius. The record is of value now chiefly for the insight it gives us into Wordsworth's mind. Among other things he said, "that it was the province of a great poet to raise people up to his own level, not to descend to theirs,"--memorable words, the more memorable that a literary life of sixty years was in keeping with them. It would be instructive to know what were Wordsworth's studies during his winter in Goslar. De Quincey's statement is mere conjecture. It may be guessed fairly enough that he would seek an entrance to the German language by the easy path of the ballad, a course likely to confirm him in his theories as to the language of poetry. The Spinosism with which he has been not unjustly charged was certainly not due to any German influence, for it appears unmistakably in the "Lines composed at Tintern Abbey" in July, 1798. It is more likely to have been derived from his talks with Coleridge in 1797.[337] When Emerson visited him in 1833, he spoke with loathing of "Wilhelm Meister," a part of which he had read in Carlyle's translation apparently. There was some affectation in this, it should seem, for he had read Smollett. On the whole, it may be fairly concluded that the help of Germany in the development of his genius may be reckoned as very small, though there is certainly a marked resemblance both in form and sentiment between some of his earlier lyrics and those of Goethe. His poem of the "Thorn," though vastly more imaginative, may have been suggested by Bürger's _Pfarrer's Tochter von Taubenhain_. The little grave _drei Spannen lang_, in its conscientious measurement, certainly recalls a famous couplet in the English poem. After spending the winter at Goslar, Wordsworth and his sister returned to England in the spring of 1799, and settled at Grasmere in Westmoreland. In 1800, the first edition of the "Lyrical Ballads" being exhausted, it was republished with the addition of another volume, Mr. Longman paying £100 for the copyright of two editions. The book passed to a second edition in 1802, and to a third in 1805.[338] Wordsworth sent a copy of it, with a manly letter, to Mr. Fox, particularly recommending to his attention the poems "Michael" and "The Brothers," as displaying the strength and permanence among a simple and rural population of those domestic affections which were certain to decay gradually under the influence of manufactories and poor houses. Mr. Fox wrote a civil acknowledgment, saying that his favorites among the poems were "Harry Gill," "We are Seven," "The Mad Mother," and "The Idiot," but that he was prepossessed against the use of blank verse for simple subjects. Any political significance in the poems he was apparently unable to see. To this second edition Wordsworth prefixed an argumentative Preface, in which he nailed to the door of the cathedral of English song the critical theses which he was to maintain against all comers in his poetry and his life. It was a new thing for an author to undertake to show the goodness of his verses by the logic and learning of his prose; but Wordsworth carried to the reform of poetry all that fervor and faith which had lost their political object, and it is another proof of the sincerity and greatness of his mind, and of that heroic simplicity which is their concomitant, that he could do so calmly what was sure to seem ludicrous to the greater number of his readers. Fifty years have since demonstrated that the true judgment of one man outweighs any counterpoise of false judgment, and that the faith of mankind is guided to a man only by a well-founded faith in himself. To this _Defensio_ Wordsworth afterward added a supplement, and the two form a treatise of permanent value for philosophic statement and decorous English. Their only ill effect has been, that they have encouraged many otherwise deserving young men to set a Sibylline value on their verses in proportion as they were unsalable. The strength of an argument for self reliance drawn from the example of a great man depends wholly on the greatness of him who uses it; such arguments being like coats of mail, which, though they serve the strong against arrow-flights and lance-thrusts, may only suffocate the weak or sink him the sooner in the waters of oblivion. An advertisement prefixed to the "Lyrical Ballads," as originally published in one volume, warned the reader that "they were written chiefly with a view to ascertain how far _the language of conversation in the middle and lower classes_ of society is adapted to the purposes of poetic pleasure." In his preface to the second edition, in two volumes, Wordsworth already found himself forced to shift his ground a little (perhaps in deference to the wider view and finer sense of Coleridge), and now says of the former volume that "it was published as an experiment which, I hoped, might be of some use to ascertain how far, by fitting to metrical arrangement, _a selection of the real language of men in a state of vivid sensation_, that sort of pleasure and that quantity of pleasure may be imparted which a poet may _rationally endeavor_ to impart."[339] Here is evidence of a retreat towards a safer position, though Wordsworth seems to have remained unconvinced at heart, and for many years longer clung obstinately to the passages of bald prose into which his original theory had betrayed him. In 1815 his opinions had undergone a still further change, and an assiduous study of the qualities of his own mind and of his own poetic method (the two subjects in which alone he was ever a thorough scholar) had convinced him that poetry was in no sense that appeal to the understanding which is implied by the words "rationally endeavor to impart." In the preface of that year he says, "The observations prefixed to that portion of these volumes which was published many years ago under the title of 'Lyrical Ballads' have so little of special application to the greater part of the present enlarged and diversified collection, that they could not with propriety stand as an introduction to it." It is a pity that he could not have become an earlier convert to Coleridge's pithy definition, that "prose was words in their best order and poetry the _best_ words in the best order." But idealization was something that Wordsworth was obliged to learn painfully. It did not come to him naturally as to Spenser and Shelley and to Coleridge in his higher moods. Moreover, it was in the too frequent choice of subjects incapable of being idealized without a manifest jar between theme and treatment that Wordsworth's great mistake lay. For example, in "The Blind Highland Boy" he had originally the following stanzas:-- "Strong is the current, but be mild, Ye waves, and spare the helpless child! If ye in anger fret or chafe, A bee-hive would be ship as safe As that in which he sails. "But say, what was it? Thought of fear! Well may ye tremble when ye hear! --A household tub like one of those Which women use to wash their clothes, This carried the blind boy." In endeavoring to get rid of the downright vulgarity of phrase in the last stanza, Wordsworth invents an impossible tortoise-shell, and thus robs his story of the reality which alone gave it a living interest. Any extemporized raft would have floated the boy down to immortality. But Wordsworth never quite learned the distinction between Fact, which suffocates the Muse, and Truth, which is the very breath of her nostrils. Study and self-culture did much for him, but they never quite satisfied him that he was capable of making a mistake. He yielded silently to friendly remonstrance on certain points, and gave up, for example, the ludicrous exactness of "I've measured it from side to side, 'T is three feet long and two feet wide." But I doubt if he was ever really convinced, and to his dying day he could never quite shake off that habit of over-minute detail which renders the narratives of uncultivated people so tedious, and sometimes so distasteful.[340] "Simon Lee," after his latest revision, still contains verses like these:-- "And he is lean and he is sick; His body, dwindled and awry, Rests upon ankles swollen and thick; His legs are thin and dry; * * * * * "Few months of life he has in store, As he to you will tell, For still, the more he works, the more Do his weak ankles swell,"-- which are not only prose, but _bad_ prose, and moreover guilty of the same fault for which Wordsworth condemned Dr. Johnson's famous parody on the ballad-style,--that their "_matter_ is contemptible." The sonorousness of conviction with which Wordsworth sometimes gives utterance to commonplaces of thought and trivialities of sentiment has a ludicrous effect on the profane and even on the faithful in unguarded moments. We are reminded of a passage in the "Excursion":-- "List! I heard From yon huge breast of rock _a solemn bleat, Sent forth as if it were the mountain's voice_." In 1800 the friendship of Wordsworth with Lamb began, and was thenceforward never interrupted. He continued to live at Grasmere, conscientiously diligent in the composition of poems, secure of finding the materials of glory within and around him; for his genius taught him that inspiration is no product of a foreign shore, and that no adventurer ever found it, though he wandered as long as Ulysses. Meanwhile the appreciation of the best minds and the gratitude of the purest hearts gradually centred more and more towards him. In 1802 he made a short visit to France, in company with Miss Wordsworth, and soon after his return to England was married to Mary Hutchinson, on the 4th of October of the same year. Of the good fortune of this marriage no other proof is needed than the purity and serenity of his poems, and its record is to be sought nowhere else. On the 18th of June, 1803, his first child, John, was born, and on the 14th of August of the same year he set out with his sister on a foot journey into Scotland Coleridge was their companion during a part of this excursion, of which Miss Wordsworth kept a full diary. In Scotland he made the acquaintance of Scott, who recited to him a part of the "Lay of the Last Minstrel," then in manuscript. The travellers returned to Grasmere on the 25th of September. It was during this year that Wordsworth's intimacy with the excellent Sir George Beaumont began. Sir George was an amateur painter of considerable merit, and his friendship was undoubtedly of service to Wordsworth in making him familiar with the laws of a sister art and thus contributing to enlarge the sympathies of his criticism, the tendency of which was toward too great exclusiveness. Sir George Beaumont, dying in 1827, did not forego his regard for the poet, but contrived to hold his affection in mortmain by the legacy of an annuity of £100, to defray the charges of a yearly journey. In March, 1805, the poet's brother, John, lost his life by the shipwreck of the Abergavenny East-Indiaman, of which he was captain. He was a man of great purity and integrity, and sacrificed himself to his sense of duty by refusing to leave the ship till it was impossible to save him. Wordsworth was deeply attached to him, and felt such grief at his death as only solitary natures like his are capable of, though mitigated by a sense of the heroism which was the cause of it. The need of mental activity as affording an outlet to intense emotion may account for the great productiveness of this and the following year. He now completed "The Prelude," wrote "The Wagoner," and increased the number of his smaller poems enough to fill two volumes, which were published in 1807. This collection, which contained some of the most beautiful of his shorter pieces, and among others the incomparable Odes to Duty and on Immortality, did not reach a second edition till 1815. The reviewers had another laugh, and rival poets pillaged while they scoffed, particularly Byron, among whose verses a bit of Wordsworth showed as incongruously as a sacred vestment on the back of some buccaneering plunderer of an abbey.[341] There was a general combination to put him down, but on the other hand there was a powerful party in his favor, consisting of William Wordsworth. He not only continued in good heart himself, but, reversing the order usual on such occasions, kept up the spirits of his friends.[342] Wordsworth passed the winter of 1806-7 in a house of Sir George Beaumont's, at Coleorton in Leicestershire, the cottage at Grasmere having become too small for his increased family. On his return to the Vale of Grasmere he rented the house at Allan Bank, where he lived three years. During this period he appears to have written very little poetry, for which his biographer assigns as a primary reason the smokiness of the Allan Bank chimneys. This will hardly account for the failure of the summer crop, especially as Wordsworth composed chiefly in the open air. It did not prevent him from writing a pamphlet upon the Convention of Cintra, which was published too late to attract much attention, though Lamb says that its effect upon him was like that which one of Milton's tracts might have had upon a contemporary.[343] It was at Allan Bank that Coleridge dictated "The Friend," and Wordsworth contributed to it two essays, one in answer to a letter of Mathetes[344] (Professor Wilson), and the other on Epitaphs, republished in the Notes to "The Excursion." Here also he wrote his "Description of the Scenery of the Lakes." Perhaps a truer explanation of the comparative silence of Wordsworth's Muse during these years is to be found in the intense interest which he took in current events, whose variety, picturesqueness, and historical significance were enough to absorb all the energies of his imagination. In the spring of 1811 Wordsworth removed to the Parsonage at Grasmere. Here he remained two years, and here he had his second intimate experience of sorrow in the loss of two of his children, Catharine and Thomas, one of whom died 4th June, and the other 1st December, 1812.[345] Early in 1813 he bought Rydal Mount, and, having removed thither, changed his abode no more during the rest of his life. In March of this year he was appointed Distributor of Stamps for the county of Westmoreland, an office whose receipts rendered him independent, and whose business he was able to do by deputy, thus leaving him ample leisure for nobler duties. De Quincey speaks of this appointment as an instance of the remarkable good luck which waited upon Wordsworth through his whole life. In our view it is only another illustration of that scripture which describes the righteous as never forsaken. Good luck is the willing handmaid of upright, energetic character, and conscientious observance of duty. Wordsworth owed his nomination to the friendly exertions of the Earl of Lonsdale, who desired to atone as far as might be for the injustice of the first Earl, and who respected the honesty of the man more than he appreciated the originality of the poet.[346] The Collectorship at Whitehaven (a more lucrative office) was afterwards offered to Wordsworth, and declined. He had enough for independence, and wished nothing more. Still later, on the death of the Stamp-Distributor for Cumberland, a part of that district was annexed to Westmoreland, and Wordsworth's income was raised to something more than £1,000 a year. In 1814 he made his second tour in Scotland, visiting Yarrow in company with the Ettrick Shepherd. During this year "the Excursion" was published, in an edition of five hundred copies, which supplied the demand for six years. Another edition of the same number of copies was published in 1827, and not exhausted till 1834. In 1815 "The White Doe of Rylstone" appeared, and in 1816 "A Letter to a Friend of Burns," in which Wordsworth gives his opinion upon the limits to be observed by the biographers of literary men. It contains many valuable suggestions, but allows hardly scope enough for personal details, to which he was constitutionally indifferent.[347] Nearly the same date may be ascribed to a rhymed translation of the first three books of the Aeneid, a specimen of which was printed in the Cambridge "Philological Museum" (1832). In 1819 "Peter Bell," written twenty years before, was published, and, perhaps in consequence of the ridicule of the reviewers, found a more rapid sale than any of his previous volumes. "The Wagoner," printed in the same year, was less successful. His next publication was the volume of Sonnets on the river Duddon, with some miscellaneous poems, 1820. A tour on the Continent in 1820 furnished the subjects for another collection, published in 1822. This was followed in the same year by the volume of "Ecclesiastical Sketches." His subsequent publications were "Yarrow Revisited," 1835, and the tragedy of "The Borderers," 1842. During all these years his fame was increasing slowly but steadily, and his age gathered to itself the reverence and the troops of friends which his poems and the nobly simple life reflected in them deserved. Public honors followed private appreciation. In 1838 the University of Dublin conferred upon him the degree of D.C.L. In 1839 Oxford did the same, and the reception of the poet (now in his seventieth year) at the University was enthusiastic. In 1842 he resigned his office of Stamp-Distributor, and Sir Robert Peel had the honor of putting him upon the civil list for a pension of £300. In 1843 he was appointed Laureate, with the express understanding that it was a tribute of respect, involving no duties except such as might be self-imposed. His only official production was an Ode for the installation of Prince Albert as Chancellor of the University of Cambridge. His life was prolonged yet seven years, almost, it should seem, that he might receive that honor which he had truly conquered for himself by the unflinching bravery of a literary life of half a century, unparalleled for the scorn with which its labors were received, and the victorious acknowledgment which at last crowned them. Surviving nearly all his contemporaries, he had, if ever any man had, a foretaste of immortality, enjoying in a sort his own posthumous renown, for the hardy slowness of its growth gave a safe pledge of its durability. He died on the 23d of April, 1850, the anniversary of the death of Shakespeare. We have thus briefly sketched the life of Wordsworth,--a life uneventful even for a man of letters, a life like that of an oak, of quiet self development, throwing out stronger roots toward the side whence the prevailing storm-blasts blow, and of tougher fibre in proportion to the rocky nature of the soil in which it grows. The life and growth of his mind, and the influences which shaped it, are to be looked for, even more than is the case with most poets, in his works, for he deliberately recorded them there. Of his personal characteristics little is related. He was somewhat above the middle height, but, according to De Quincey, of indifferent figure, the shoulders being narrow and drooping. His finest feature was the eye, which was gray and full of spiritual light. Leigh Hunt says: "I never beheld eyes that looked so inspired, so supernatural. They were like fires, half burning, half smouldering, with a sort of acrid fixture of regard. One might imagine Ezekiel or Isaiah to have had such eyes." Southey tells us that he had no sense of smell, and Haydon that he had none of form. The best likeness of him, in De Quincey's judgment, is the portrait of Milton prefixed to Richardson's notes on Paradise Lost. He was active in his habits, composing in the open air, and generally dictating his poems. His daily life was regular, simple, and frugal; his manners were dignified and kindly; and in his letters and recorded conversations it is remarkable how little that was personal entered into his judgment of contemporaries. The true rank of Wordsworth among poets is, perhaps, not even yet to be fairly estimated, so hard is it to escape into the quiet hall of judgment uninflamed by the tumult of partisanship which besets the doors. Coming to manhood, predetermined to be a great poet, at a time when the artificial school of poetry was enthroned with all the authority of long succession and undisputed legitimacy, it was almost inevitable that Wordsworth, who, both by nature and judgment was a rebel against the existing order, should become a partisan. Unfortunately, he became not only the partisan of a system, but of William Wordsworth as its representative. Right in general principle, he thus necessarily became wrong in particulars. Justly convinced that greatness only achieves its ends by implicitly obeying its own instincts, he perhaps reduced the following his instincts too much to a system, mistook his own resentments for the promptings of his natural genius, and, compelling principle to the measure of his own temperament or even of the controversial exigency of the moment, fell sometimes into the error of making naturalness itself artificial. If a poet resolve to be original, it will end commonly in his being merely peculiar. Wordsworth himself departed more and more in practice, as he grew older, from the theories which he had laid down in his prefaces;[348] but those theories undoubtedly had a great effect in retarding the growth of his fame. He had carefully constructed a pair of spectacles through which his earlier poems were to be studied, and the public insisted on looking through them at his mature works, and were consequently unable to see fairly what required a different focus. He forced his readers to come to his poetry with a certain amount of conscious preparation, and thus gave them beforehand the impression of something like mechanical artifice, and deprived them of the contented repose of implicit faith. To the child a watch seems to be a living creature; but Wordsworth would not let his readers be children, and did injustice to himself by giving them an uneasy doubt whether creations which really throbbed with the very heart's-blood of genius, and were alive with nature's life of life, were not contrivances of wheels and springs. A naturalness which we are told to expect has lost the crowning grace of nature. The men who walked in Cornelius Agrippa's visionary gardens had probably no more pleasurable emotion than that of a shallow wonder, or an equally shallow self-satisfaction in thinking they had hit upon the secret of the thaumaturgy; but to a tree that has grown as God willed we come without a theory and with no botanical predilections, enjoying it simply and thankfully; or the Imagination recreates for us its past summers and winters, the birds that have nested and sung in it, the sheep that have clustered in its shade, the winds that have visited it, the cloud-bergs that have drifted over it, and the snows that have ermined it in winter. The Imagination is a faculty that flouts at foreordination, and Wordsworth seemed to do all he could to cheat his readers of her company by laying out paths with a peremptory _Do not step off the gravel!_ at the opening of each, and preparing pitfalls for every conceivable emotion, with guide-boards to tell each when and where it must be caught. But if these things stood in the way of immediate appreciation, he had another theory which interferes more seriously with the total and permanent effect of his poems. He was theoretically determined not only to be a philosophic poet, but to be a _great_ philosophic poet, and to this end he must produce an epic. Leaving aside the question whether the epic be obsolete or not, it may be doubted whether the history of a single man's mind is universal enough in its interest to furnish all the requirements of the epic machinery, and it may be more than doubted whether a poet's philosophy be ordinary metaphysics, divisible into chapter and section. It is rather something which is more energetic in a word than in a whole treatise, and our hearts unclose themselves instinctively at its simple _Open sesame!_ while they would stand firm against the reading of the whole body of philosophy. In point of fact, the one element of greatness which "The Excursion" possesses indisputably is heaviness. It is only the episodes that are universally read, and the effect of these is diluted by the connecting and accompanying lectures on metaphysics. Wordsworth had his epic mould to fill, and, like Benvenuto Cellini in casting his Perseus, was forced to throw in everything, debasing the metal, lest it should run short. Separated from the rest, the episodes are perfect poems in their kind, and without example in the language. Wordsworth, like most solitary men of strong minds, was a good critic of the substance of poetry, but somewhat niggardly in the allowance he made for those subsidiary qualities which make it the charmer of leisure and the employment of minds without definite object. It may be doubted, indeed, whether he set much store by any contemporary writing but his own, and whether he did not look upon poetry too exclusively as an exercise rather of the intellect than as a nepenthe of the imagination.[349] He says of himself, speaking of his youth:-- "In fine, I was a better judge of thoughts than words, Misled in estimating words, not only By common inexperience of youth, But by the trade in classic niceties, The dangerous craft of culling term and phrase From languages that want the living voice To carry meaning to the natural heart; To tell us what is passion, what is truth, What reason, what simplicity and sense."[350] Though he here speaks in the preterite tense, this was always true of him, and his thought seems often to lean upon a word too weak to bear its weight. No reader of adequate insight can help regretting that he did not earlier give himself to "the trade of classic niceties." It was precisely this which gives to the blank-verse of Landor the severe dignity and reserved force which alone among later poets recall the tune of Milton, and to which Wordsworth never attained. Indeed, Wordsworth's blank-verse (though the passion be profounder) is always essentially that of Cowper. They were alike also in their love of outward nature and of simple things. The main difference between them is one of scenery rather than of sentiment, between the life-long familiar of the mountains and the dweller on the plain. It cannot be denied that in Wordsworth the very highest powers of the poetic mind were associated with a certain tendency to the diffuse and commonplace. It is in the understanding (always prosaic) that the great golden veins of his imagination are imbedded.[351] He wrote too much to write always well; for it is not a great Xerxes-army of words, but a compact Greek ten thousand, that march safely down to posterity. He set tasks to his divine faculty, which is much the same as trying to make Jove's eagle do the service of a clucking hen. Throughout "The Prelude" and "The Excursion" he seems striving to bind the wizard Imagination with the sand-ropes of dry disquisition, and to have forgotten the potent spell-word which would make the particles cohere. There is an arenaceous quality in the style which makes progress wearisome. Yet with what splendors as of mountain-sunsets are we rewarded! what golden rounds of verse do we not see stretching heavenward with angels ascending and descending! what haunting harmonies hover around us deep and eternal like the undying barytone of the sea! and if we are compelled to fare through sands and desert wildernesses, how often do we not hear airy shapes that syllable our names with a startling personal appeal to our highest consciousness and our noblest aspiration, such as we wait for in vain in any other poet! Take from Wordsworth all which an honest criticism cannot but allow, and what is left will show how truly great he was. He had no humor, no dramatic power, and his temperament was of that dry and juiceless quality, that in all his published correspondence you shall not find a letter, but only essays. If we consider carefully where he was most successful, we shall find that it was not so much in description of natural scenery, or delineation of character, as in vivid expression of the effect produced by external objects and events upon his own mind, and of the shape and hue (perhaps momentary) which they in turn took from his mood or temperament. His finest passages are always monologues. He had a fondness for particulars, and there are parts of his poems which remind us of local histories in the undue relative importance given to trivial matters. He was the historian of Wordsworthshire. This power of particularization (for it is as truly a power as generalization) is what gives such vigor and greatness to single lines and sentiments of Wordsworth, and to poems developing a single thought or sentiment. It was this that made him so fond of the sonnet. That sequestered nook forced upon him the limits which his fecundity (if I may not say his garrulity) was never self-denying enough to impose on itself. It suits his solitary and meditative temper, and it was there that Lamb (an admirable judge of what was permanent in literature) liked him best. Its narrow bounds, but fourteen paces from end to end, turn into a virtue his too common fault of giving undue prominence to every passing emotion. He excels in monologue, and the law of the sonnet tempers monologue with mercy. In "The Excursion" we are driven to the subterfuge of a French verdict of extenuating circumstances. His mind had not that reach and elemental movement of Milton's, which, like the tradewind, gathered to itself thoughts and images like stately fleets from every quarter; some deep with silks and spicery, some brooding over the silent thunders of their battailous armaments, but all swept forward in their destined track, over the long billows of his verse, every inch of canvas strained by the unifying breath of their common epic impulse. It was an organ that Milton mastered, mighty in compass, capable equally of the trumpet's ardors or the slim delicacy of the flute, and sometimes it bursts forth in great crashes through his prose, as if he touched it for solace in the intervals of his toil. If Wordsworth sometimes puts the trumpet to his lips, yet he lays it aside soon and willingly for his appropriate instrument, the pastoral reed. And it is not one that grew by any vulgar stream, but that which Apollo breathed through, tending the flocks of Admetus,--that which Pan endowed with every melody of the visible universe,--the same in which the soul of the despairing nymph took refuge and gifted with her dual nature,--so that ever and anon, amid the notes of human joy or sorrow, there comes suddenly a deeper and almost awful tone, thrilling us into dim consciousness of a forgotten divinity. Wordsworth's absolute want of humor, while it no doubt confirmed his self-confidence by making him insensible both to the comical incongruity into which he was often led by his earlier theory concerning the language of poetry and to the not unnatural ridicule called forth by it, seems to have been indicative of a certain dulness of perception in other directions.[352] We cannot help feeling that the material of his nature was essentially prose, which, in his inspired moments, he had the power of transmuting, but which, whenever the inspiration failed or was factitious, remained obstinately leaden. The normal condition of many poets would seem to approach that temperature to which Wordsworth's mind could be raised only by the white heat of profoundly inward passion. And in proportion to the intensity needful to make his nature thoroughly aglow is the very high quality of his best verses. They seem rather the productions of nature than of man, and have the lastingness of such, delighting our age with the same startle of newness and beauty that pleased our youth. Is it his thought? It has the shifting inward lustre of diamond. Is it his feeling? It is as delicate as the impressions of fossil ferns. He seems to have caught and fixed forever in immutable grace the most evanescent and intangible of our intuitions, the very ripple-marks on the remotest shores of being. But this intensity of mood which insures high quality is by its very nature incapable of prolongation, and Wordsworth, in endeavoring it, falls more below himself, and is, more even than many poets his inferiors in imaginative quality, a poet of passages. Indeed, one cannot help having the feeling sometimes that the poem is there for the sake of these passages, rather than that these are the natural jets and elations of a mind energized by the rapidity of its own motion. In other words, the happy couplet or gracious image seems not to spring from the inspiration of the poem conceived as a whole, but rather to have dropped of itself into the mind of the poet in one of his rambles, who then, in a less rapt mood, has patiently built up around it a setting of verse too often ungraceful in form and of a material whose cheapness may cast a doubt on the priceless quality of the gem it encumbers.[353] During the most happily productive period of his life, Wordsworth was impatient of what may be called the mechanical portion of his art. His wife and sister seem from the first to have been his scribes. In later years, he had learned and often insisted on the truth that poetry was an art no less than a gift, and corrected his poems in cold blood, sometimes to their detriment. But he certainly had more of the vision than of the faculty divine, and was always a little numb on the side of form and proportion. Perhaps his best poem in these respects is the "Laodamia," and it is not uninstructive to learn from his own lips that "it cost him more trouble than almost anything of equal length he had ever written." His longer poems (miscalled epical) have no more intimate bond of union than their more or less immediate relation to his own personality. Of character other than his own he had but a faint conception, and all the personages of "The Excursion" that are not Wordsworth are the merest shadows of himself upon mist, for his self-concentrated nature was incapable of projecting itself into the consciousness of other men and seeing the springs of action at their source in the recesses of individual character. The best parts of these longer poems are bursts of impassioned soliloquy, and his fingers were always clumsy at the _callida junctura_. The stream of narration is sluggish, if varied by times with pleasing reflections (_viridesque placido aequore sylvas_); we are forced to do our own rowing, and only when the current is hemmed in by some narrow gorge of the poet's personal consciousness do we feel ourselves snatched along on the smooth but impetuous rush of unmistakable inspiration. The fact that what is precious in Wordsworth's poetry was (more truly even than with some greater poets than he) a gift rather than an achievement should always be borne in mind in taking the measure of his power. I know not whether to call it height or depth, this peculiarity of his, but it certainly endows those parts of his work which we should distinguish as Wordsworthian with an unexpectedness and impressiveness of originality such as we feel in the presence of Nature herself. He seems to have been half conscious of this, and recited his own poems to all comers with an enthusiasm of wondering admiration that would have been profoundly comic[354] but for its simple sincerity and for the fact that William Wordsworth, Esquire, of Rydal Mount, was one person, and the William Wordsworth whom he so heartily reverenced quite another. We recognize two voices in him, as Stephano did in Caliban. There are Jeremiah and his scribe Baruch. If the prophet cease from dictating, the amanuensis, rather than be idle, employs his pen in jotting down some anecdotes of his master, how he one day went out and saw an old woman, and the next day did _not_, and so came home and dictated some verses on this ominous phenomenon, and how another day he saw a cow. These marginal annotations have been carelessly taken up into the text, have been religiously held by the pious to be orthodox scripture, and by dexterous exegesis have been made to yield deeply oracular meanings. Presently the real prophet takes up the word again and speaks as one divinely inspired, the Voice of a higher and invisible power. Wordsworth's better utterances have the bare sincerity, the absolute abstraction from time and place, the immunity from decay, that belong to the grand simplicities of the Bible. They seem not more his own than ours and every man's, the word of the inalterable Mind. This gift of his was naturally very much a matter of temperament, and accordingly by far the greater part of his finer product belongs to the period of his prime, ere Time had set his lumpish foot on the pedal that deadens the nerves of animal sensibility.[355] He did not grow as those poets do in whom the artistic sense is predominant. One of the most delightful fancies of the Genevese humorist, Toepffer, is the poet Albert, who, having had his portrait drawn by a highly idealizing hand, does his best afterwards to look like it. Many of Wordsworth's later poems seem like rather unsuccessful efforts to resemble his former self. They would never, as Sir John Harrington says of poetry, "keep a child from play and an old man from the chimney-corner."[356] Chief Justice Marshall once blandly interrupted a junior counsel who was arguing certain obvious points of law at needless length, by saying, "Brother Jones, there are _some_ things which a Supreme Court of the United States sitting in equity may be presumed to know." Wordsworth has this fault of enforcing and restating obvious points till the reader feels as if his own intelligence were somewhat underrated. He is over-conscientious in giving us full measure, and once profoundly absorbed in the sound of his own voice, he knows not when to stop. If he feel himself flagging, he has a droll way of keeping the floor, as it were, by asking himself a series of questions sometimes not needing, and often incapable of answer. There are three stanzas of such near the close of the First Part of "Peter Bell," where Peter first catches a glimpse of the dead body in the water, all happily incongruous, and ending with one which reaches the height of comicality:-- "Is it a fiend that to a stake Of fire his desperate self is tethering? Or stubborn spirit doomed to yell, In solitary ward or cell, Ten thousand miles from all his brethren?" The same want of humor which made him insensible to incongruity may perhaps account also for the singular unconsciousness of disproportion which so often strikes us in his poetry. For example, a little farther on in "Peter Bell" we find:-- "_Now_--like a tempest-shattered bark That overwhelmed and prostrate lies, And in a moment to the verge Is lifted of a foaming surge-- Full suddenly the Ass doth rise!" And one cannot help thinking that the similes of the huge stone, the sea-beast, and the cloud, noble as they are in themselves, are somewhat too lofty for the service to which they are put.[357] The movement of Wordsworth's mind was too slow and his mood to meditative for narrative poetry. He values his own thoughts and reflections too much to sacrifice the least of them to the interests of his story. Moreover, it is never action that interests him, but the subtle motives that lead to or hinder it. "The Wagoner" involuntarily suggests a comparison with "Tam O'Shanter" infinitely to its own disadvantage. "Peter Bell," full though it be of profound touches and subtle analysis, is lumbering and disjointed. Even Lamb was forced to confess that he did not like it. "The White Doe," the most Wordsworthian of them all in the best meaning of the epithet, is also only the more truly so for being diffuse and reluctant. What charms in Wordsworth and will charm forever is the "Happy tone Of meditation slipping in between The beauty coming and the beauty gone," A few poets, in the exquisite adaptation of their words to the tune of our own feelings and fancies, in the charm of their manner, indefinable as the sympathetic grace of woman, _are_ everything to us without our being able to say that they are much in themselves. They rather narcotize than fortify. Wordsworth must subject our mood to his own before he admits us to his intimacy; but, once admitted, it is for life, and we find ourselves in his debt, not for what he has been to us in our hours of relaxation, but for what he has done for us as a reinforcement of faltering purpose and personal independence of character. His system of a Nature-cure, first professed by Dr. Jean Jaques and continued by Cowper, certainly breaks down as a whole. The Solitary of "The Excursion," who has not been cured of his scepticism by living among the medicinal mountains, is, so far as we can see, equally proof against the lectures of Pedler and Parson. Wordsworth apparently felt that this would be so, and accordingly never saw his way clear to finishing the poem. But the treatment, whether a panacea or not, is certainly wholesome inasmuch as it inculcates abstinence, exercise, and uncontaminate air. I am not sure, indeed, that the Nature-cure theory does not tend to foster in constitutions less vigorous than Wordsworth's what Milton would call a fugitive and cloistered virtue at a dear expense of manlier qualities. The ancients and our own Elizabethans, ere spiritual megrims had become fashionable, perhaps made more out of life by taking a frank delight in its action and passion and by grappling with the facts of this world, rather than muddling themselves over the insoluble problems of another. If they had not discovered the picturesque, as we understand it, they found surprisingly fine scenery in man and his destiny, and would have seen something ludicrous, it may be suspected, in the spectacle of a grown man running to hide his head in the apron of the Mighty Mother whenever he had an ache in his finger or got a bruise in the tussle for existence. But when, as I have said, our impartiality has made all those qualifications and deductions against which even the greatest poet may not plead his privilege, what is left to Wordsworth is enough to justify his fame. Even where his genius is wrapped in clouds, the unconquerable lightning of imagination struggles through, flashing out unexpected vistas, and illuminating the humdrum pathway of our daily thought with a radiance of momentary consciousness that seems like a revelation. If it be the most delightful function of the poet to set our lives to music, yet perhaps he will be even more sure of our maturer gratitude if he do his part also as moralist and philosopher to purify and enlighten; if he define and encourage our vacillating perceptions of duty; if he piece together our fragmentary apprehensions of our own life and that larger life whose unconscious instruments we are, making of the jumbled bits of our dissected map of experience a coherent chart. In the great poets there is an exquisite sensibility both of soul and sense that sympathizes like gossamer sea-moss with every movement of the element in which it floats, but which is rooted on the solid rock of our common sympathies. Wordsworth shows less of this finer feminine fibre of organization than one or two of his contemporaries, notably than Coleridge or Shelley; but he was a masculine thinker, and in his more characteristic poems there is always a kernel of firm conclusion from far-reaching principles that stimulates thought and challenges meditation. Groping in the dark passages of life, we come upon some axiom of his, as it were a wall that gives us our bearings and enables us to find an outlet. Compared with Goethe we feel that he lacks that serene impartiality of mind which results from breadth of culture; nay, he seems narrow, insular, almost provincial. He reminds us of those saints of Dante who gather brightness by revolving on their own axis. But through this very limitation of range he gains perhaps in intensity and the impressiveness which results from eagerness of personal conviction. If we read Wordsworth through, as I have just done, we find ourselves changing our mind about him at every other page, so uneven is he. If we read our favorite poems or passages only, he will seem uniformly great. And even as regards "The Excursion" we should remember how few long poems will bear consecutive reading. For my part I know of but one,--the Odyssey. None of our great poets can be called popular in any exact sense of the word, for the highest poetry deals with thoughts and emotions which inhabit, like rarest sea-mosses, the doubtful limits of that shore between our abiding divine and our fluctuating human nature, rooted in the one, but living in the other, seldom laid bare, and otherwise visible only at exceptional moments of entire calm and clearness. Of no other poet except Shakespeare have so many phrases become household words as of Wordsworth. If Pope has made current more epigrams of worldly wisdom, to Wordsworth belongs the nobler praise of having defined for us, and given us for a daily possession, those faint and vague suggestions of other-worldliness of whose gentle ministry with our baser nature the hurry and bustle of life scarcely ever allowed us to be conscious. He has won for himself a secure immortality by a depth of intuition which makes only the best minds at their best hours worthy, or indeed capable, of his companionship, and by a homely sincerity of human sympathy which reaches the humblest heart. Our language owes him gratitude for the habitual purity and abstinence of his style, and we who speak it, for having emboldened us to take delight in simple things, and to trust ourselves to our own instincts. And he hath his reward. It needs not to bid "Renowned Chaucer lie a thought more nigh To rare Beaumond, and learned Beaumond lie A little nearer Spenser"; for there is no fear of crowding in that little society with whom he is now enrolled as fifth in the succession of the great English Poets. Footnotes: [323] "I pay many little visits to the family in the churchyard at Grasmere," writes James Dixon (an old servant of Wordsworth) to Crabb Robinson, with a simple, one might almost say canine pathos, thirteen years after his master's death. Wordsworth was always considerate and kind with his servants, Robinson tells us. [324] In the Prelude he attributes this consecreation to a sunrise seen (during a college vacation) as he walked homeward from some village festival where he had danced all night-- "My heart was full; I made no vows, but vows Were then made for me; bond unknown to me Was given that I should be, else sinning greatly, A dedicated spirit."--B. IV. [325] Prelude, Book II. [326] "I to the muses have been bound, These fourteen years, by strong indentures." _Idiot Boy_ (1798). [327] I think this more than doubtful, for I find no traces of the influence of any of these poets in his earlier writings. Goldsmith was evidently his model in the Descriptive Sketches and the Evening Walk. I speak of them as originally printed. [328] Prelude, Book III. He studied Italian also at Cambridge, his teacher, whose name was Isola, had formerly taught the poet Gray. It may be pretty certainly inferred, however, that his first systematic study of English poetry was due to the copy of Andersen's British Poets, left with him by his sailor brother John on setting out for his last voyage in 1805. [329] Prelude, Book VII. Written before 1805, and referring to a still earlier date. "Wordsworth went in powder, and with cocked hat under his arm, to the Marchioness of Stafford's rout." (Southey to Miss Barker, May, 1806.) [330] This was probably one reason for the long suppression of Miss Wordsworth's journal, which she had evidently prepared for publication as early as 1805. [331] Crabb Robinson, I. 250, Am. Ed. [332] Wordsworth's purity afterwards grew sensitive almost to prudery. The late Mr. Clough told me that he heard him at Dr. Arnold's table denounce the first line in Keats's Ode to a Grecian Urn as indecent, and Haydon records that when he saw the group of Cupid and Psyche he exclaimed, "The dev-ils!" [333] The whole passage is omitted in the revised edition. The original, a quarto pamphlet, is now very rare, but fortunately Charles Lamb's copy of it is now owned by my friend Professor C. E. Norton. [334] Wordsworth showed his habitual good sense in never sharing, so far as is known, the communistic dreams of his friends Coleridge and Southey. The latter of the two had, to be sure, renounced them shortly after his marriage, and before his acquaintance with Wordsworth began. But Coleridge seems to have clung to them longer. There is a passage in one of his letters to Cottle (without date, but apparently written in the spring of 1798) which would imply that Wordsworth had been accused of some kind of social heresy. "Wordsworth has been caballed against _so long and so loudly_ that he has found it impossible to prevail on the tenant of the Allfoxden estate to let him the house after their first agreement is expired." Perhaps, after all, it was Wordsworth's insulation of character and habitual want of sympathy with anything but the moods of his own mind that rendered him incapable of this copartnery of enthusiasm. He appears to have regarded even his sister Dora (whom he certainly loved as much as it was possible for him to love anything but his own poems) as a kind of tributary dependency of his genius, much as a mountain might look down on one of its ancillary spurs. [335] Speaking to one of his neighbors in 1845 he said, "that, after he had finished his college course, he was in great doubt as to what his future employment should be. He did not feel himself good enough for the Church; he felt that his mind was not properly disciplined for that holy office, and that the struggle between his conscience and his impulses would have made life a torture. He also shrank from the Law, although Southey often told him that he was well fitted for the higher parts of the profession. He had studied military history with great interest, and the strategy of war, and he always fancied that he had talents for command, and he at one time thought of a military life, but then he was without connections, and he felt, if he were ordered to the West Indies, his talents would not save him from the yellow fever, and he gave that up." (Memoirs, II. 466.) It is curious to fancy Wordsworth a soldier. Certain points of likeness between him and Wellington have often struck me. They resemble each other in practical good sense, fidelity to duty, courage, and also in a kind of precise uprightness which made their personal character somewhat uninteresting. But what was decorum in Wellington was piety in Woidsworth, and the entire absence of imagination (the great point of dissimilarity) perhaps helped as much as anything to make Wellington a great commander. [336] Cottle says, "The sale was so slow and the severity of most of the reviews so great that its progress to oblivion seemed to be certain." But the notices in the Monthly and Critical Reviews (then the most influential) were fair, and indeed favorable, especially to Wordsworth's share in the volume. The Monthly says, "So much genius and originality are discovered in this publication that we wish to see another from the same hand." The Critical, after saying that "in the whole range of English, poetry we scarcely recollect anything superior to a passage in Lines written near Tintern Abbey," sums up thus: "Yet every piece discovers genius; and ill as the author has frequently employed his talents, they certainly rank him with the best of living poets." Such treatment cannot surely be called discouraging. [337] A very improbable story of Coleridge's in the Biographia Literaria represents the two friends as having incurred a suspicion of treasonable dealings with the French enemy by their constant references to a certain "Spy Nosey." The story at least seems to show how they pronounced the name, which was exactly in accordance with the usage of the last generation in New England. [338] Wordsworth found (as other original minds have since done) a hearing in America sooner than in England. James Humphreys, a Philadelphia bookseller, was encouraged by a sufficient _list of subscribers_ to reprint the first edition of the Lyrical Ballads. The second English edition, however, having been published before he had wholly completed his reprinting, was substantially followed in the first American, which was published in 1802. [339] Some of the weightiest passages in this Preface, as it is now printed, were inserted without notice of date in the edition of 1815. [340] "On my alluding to the line, "'Three feet long and two feet wide,' "and confessing that I dared not read them aloud in company, he said, 'They ought to be liked.'" (Crabb Robinson, 9th May, 1815.) His ordinary answer to criticisms was that he considered the power to appreciate the passage criticised as a test of the critic's capacity to judge of poetry at all. [341] Byron, then in his twentieth year, wrote a review of these volumes not, on the whole, unfair. Crabb Robinson is reported as saying that Wordsworth was indignant at the Edinburgh Review's attack on Hours of Idleness. "The young man will do something if he goes on," he said. [342] The Rev. Dr. Wordsworth has encumbered the memory of his uncle with two volumes of Memoirs, which for confused dreariness are only matched by the Rev. Mark Noble's "History of the Protectorate House of Cromwell." It is a misfortune that his materials were not put into the hands of Professor Reed, whose notes to the American edition are among the most valuable parts of it, as they certainly are the clearest. The book contains, however, some valuable letters of Wordsworth, and those relating to this part of his life should be read by every student of his works, for the light they throw upon the principles which governed him in the composition of his poems. In a letter to Lady Beaumont (May 21, 1807) he says, "Trouble not yourself upon their present reception, of what moment is that compared with what I trust is their destiny!--to console the afflicted, to add sunshine to daylight by making the happy happier; to teach the young and the gracious of every age, to see, to think and feel, and therefore to become more actively and securely virtuous; this is their office, which I trust they will faithfully perform long after we (that is all that is mortal of us) are mouldered in our graves.... To conclude, my ears are stone dead to this idle buzz [of hostile criticism] and my flesh as insensible as iron to these petty stings and; after what I have said, I am sure yours will be the same I doubt not that you will share with me an invincible confidence that my writings (and among them these little poems) will co-operate with the benign tendencies in human nature and society wherever found; and that they will in their degree be efficacious in making men wiser, better, and happier." Here is an odd reversal of the ordinary relation between an unpopular poet and his little public of admirers; it is he who keeps up their spirits, and supplies them with faith from his own inexhaustible cistern. [343] "Wordsworth's pamphlet will fail of producing any general effect, because the sentences are long and involved; and his friend De Quincey, who corrected the press, has rendered them more obscure by an unusual system of punctuation." (Southey to Scott, 30th July, 1809.) The tract is, as Southey hints, heavy. [344] The first essay in the third volume of the second edition. [345] Wordsworth's children were,-- John, born 18th June, 1803; still living; a clergyman. Dorothy, born 16th August, 1804; died 9th July, 1847. Thomas, born 16th June, 1806; died 1st December, 1812. Catharine, born 6th September, 1808; died 4th June, 1812. William, born 12th May, 1810; succeeded his father as Stamp-Distributor. [346] Good luck (in the sense of _Chance_) seems properly to be the occurrence of Opportunity to one who has neither deserved nor knows how to use it. In such hands it commonly turns to ill luck. Moore's Bermudan appointment is an instance of it Wordsworth had a sound common-sense and practical conscientiousness, which enabled him to fil his office as well as Dr. Franklin could have done. A fitter man could not have been found in Westmoreland. [347] "I am not one who much or oft delight In personal talk." [348] How far he swung backward toward the school under whose influence he grew up, and toward the style against which he had protested so vigorously, a few examples will show. The advocate of the language of common life has a verse in his Thanksgiving Ode which, if one met with it by itself, he would think the achievement of some later copyist of Pope:-- "While the _tubed engine_ [the organ] feels the inspiring blast." And in "The Italian Itinerant" and "The Swiss Goatherd" we find a thermometer or barometer called "The well-wrought scale Whose sentient tube instructs to time A purpose to a fickle clime." Still worse in the "Eclipse of the Sun," 1821:-- "High on her speculative tower Stood Science, waiting for the hour When Sol was destined to endure That darkening." So in "The Excursion," "The cold March wind raised in her tender throat Viewless obstructions." [349] According to Landor, he pronounced all Scott's poetry to be "not worth five shillings." [350] Prelude, Book VI. [351] This was instinctively felt, even by his admirers. Miss Martineau said to Crabb Robinson in 1839, speaking of Wordsworth's conversation: "Sometimes he is annoying from the pertinacity with which he dwells on trifles; at other times he flows on in the utmost grandeur, leaving a strong impression of inspiration." Robinson tells us that he read "Resolution" and "Independence" to a lady who was affected by it even to tears, and then said, "I have not heard anything for years that so much delighted me; but, _after all, it is not poetry_." [352] Nowhere is this displayed with more comic self-complacency than when he thought it needful to rewrite the ballad of Helen of Kirconnel,--a poem hardly to be matched in any language for swiftness of movement and savage sincerity of feeling. Its shuddering compression is masterly. Compare "Curst be the heart that thought the thought, And curst the hand that fired the shot, When in my arms burd Helen dropt, That died to succor me! O, think ye not my heart was sair When my love dropt down and spake na mair?" compare this with,-- "Proud Gordon cannot bear the thoughts That through his brain are travelling, And, starting up, to Bruce's heart He launched a deadly javelin: Fair Ellen saw it when it came, And, _stepping forth to meet the same_, Did with her body cover The Youth, her chosen lover. * * * * * "And Bruce (_as soon, as he had slain The Gordon_) sailed away to Spain, And fought with rage incessant Against the Moorish Crescent." These are surely the verses of an attorney's clerk "penning a stanza when he should engross." It will be noticed that Wordsworth here also departs from his earlier theory of the language of poetry by substituting a javelin for a bullet as less modern and familiar. Had he written,-- "And Gordon never gave a hint, But, having somewhat picked his flint, Let fly the fatal bullet That killed that lovely pullet," it would hardly have seemed more like a parody than the rest. He shows the same insensibility in a note upon the Ancient Mariner in the second edition of the Lyrical Ballads: "The poem of my friend has indeed great defects; first, that the principal person has no distinct character, either in his profession of mariner, or as a human being who, having been long under the control of supernatural impressions, might be supposed himself to partake of something supernatural; secondly, that he does not act, but is continually acted upon; thirdly, that the events, having no necessary connection, do not produce each other; and lastly, that the imagery is somewhat laboriously accumulated." Here is an indictment, to be sure, and drawn, plainly enough, by the attorney's clerk aforenamed. One would think that the strange charm of Coleridge's most truly original poems lay in this very emancipation from the laws of cause and effect. [353] "A hundred times when, roving high and low, I have been harassed with the toil of verse, Much pains and little progress, and at once Some lovely Image in the song rose up, Full formed, like Venus rising from the sea." _Prelude_, Book IV. [354] Mr. Emerson tells us that he was at first tempted to smile, and Mr. Ellis Yarnall (who saw him in his eightieth year) says, "These quotations [from his own works] he read in a way that much impressed me; it seemed almost as if he were _awed by the greatness of his own power, the gifts with which he had been endowed_." (The italics are mine.) [355] His best poetry was written when he was under the immediate influence of Coleridge. Coleridge seems to have felt this, for it is evidently to Wordsworth that he alludes when he speaks of "those who have been so well pleased that I should, year after year, flow with a hundred nameless rills into _their_ main stream." (Letters, Conversations, and Recollections of S.T.C., Vol. I. pp. 5-6.) "Wordsworth found fault with the repetition of the concluding sound of the participles in Shakespeare's line about bees: "'The singing masons building roofs of gold.' "This, he said, was a line that Milton never would have written. Keats thought, on the other hand, that the repetition was in harmony with the continued note of the singers." (Leigh Hunt's Autobiography.) Wordsworth writes to Crabb Robinson in 1837, "My ear is susceptible to the clashing of sounds almost to disease." One cannot help thinking that his training in these niceties was begun by Coleridge. [356] In the Preface to his translation of the Orlando Furioso. [357] In "Resolution" and "Independence". MILTON.[358] If the biographies of literary men are to assume the bulk which Mr. Masson is giving to that of Milton, their authors should send a phial of _elixir vitae_ with the first volume, that a purchaser might have some valid assurance of surviving to see the last. Mr. Masson has already occupied thirteen hundred and seventy-eight pages in getting Milton to his thirty-fifth year, and an interval of eleven years stretches between the dates of the first and second instalments of his published labors. As Milton's literary life properly begins at twenty-one, with the "Ode on the Nativity," and as by far the more important part of it lies between the year at which we are arrived and his death at the age of sixty-six, we might seem to have the terms given us by which to make a rough reckoning of how soon we are likely to see land. But when we recollect the baffling character of the winds and currents we have already encountered, and the eddies that may at any time slip us back to the reformation in Scotland or the settlement of New England; when we consider, moreover, that Milton's life overlapped the _grand siècle_ of French literature, with its irresistible temptations to digression and homily for a man of Mr Masson's temperament, we may be pardoned if a sigh of doubt and discouragement escape us. We envy the secular leisures of Methusaleh, and are thankful that _his_ biography at least (if written in the same longeval proportion) is irrecoverably lost to us. What a subject would that have been for a person of Mr. Masson's spacious predilections! Even if he himself can count on patriarchal prorogations of existence, let him hang a print of the Countess of Desmond in his study to remind him of the ambushes which Fate lays for the toughest of us. For myself, I have not dared to climb a cherry-tree since I began to read his work. Even with the promise of a speedy third volume before me, I feel by no means sure of living to see Mary Powell back in her husband's house; for it is just at this crisis that Mr. Masson, with the diabolical art of a practised serial writer, leaves us while he goes into an exhaustive account of the Westminster Assembly and the political and religious notions of the Massachusetts Puritans. One could not help thinking, after having got Milton fairly through college, that he was never more mistaken in his life than when he wrote, "How _soon_ hath Time, that subtle thief of youth, Stolen on his wing my three-and-twentieth year!" Or is it Mr. Masson who has scotched Time's wheels? It is plain from the Preface to the second volume that Mr. Masson himself has an uneasy consciousness that something is wrong, and that Milton ought somehow to be more than a mere incident of his own biography. He tells us that, "whatever may be thought by a hasty person looking in on the subject from the outside, no one can study the life of Milton as it ought to be studied without being obliged to study extensively and intimately the contemporary history of England, and even incidentally of Scotland and Ireland too.... Thus on the very compulsion, or at least the suasion, of the biography, a history grew on my hands. It was not in human nature to confine the historical inquiries, once they were in progress, within the precise limits of their demonstrable bearing on the biography, even had it been possible to determine these limits beforehand; and so the history assumed a co-ordinate importance with me, was pursued often for its own sake, and became, though always with a sense of organic relation to the biography, continuous in itself." If a "hasty person" be one who thinks eleven years rather long to have his button held by a biographer ere he begin his next sentence, I take to myself the sting of Mr. Masson's covert sarcasm. I confess with shame a pusillanimity that is apt to flag if a "to be continued" do not redeem its promise before the lapse of a quinquennium. I could scarce await the "Autocrat" himself so long. The heroic age of literature is past, and even a duodecimo may often prove too heavy [Greek: oion nun brotoi] for the descendants of men to whom the folio was a pastime. But what does Mr. Masson mean by "continuous"? To me it seems rather as if his somewhat rambling history of the seventeenth century were interrupted now and then by an unexpected apparition of Milton, who, like Paul Pry, just pops in and hopes he does not intrude, to tell us what _he_ has been doing in the mean while. The reader, immersed in Scottish politics or the schemes of Archbishop Laud, is a little puzzled at first, but reconciles himself on being reminded that this fair-haired young man is the protagonist of the drama. _Pars minima est ipsa puella sui_. If Goethe was right in saying that every man was a citizen of his age as well as of his country, there can be no doubt that in order to understand the motives and conduct of the man we must first make ourselves intimate with the time in which he lived. We have therefore no fault to find with the thoroughness of Mr. Masson's "historical inquiries." The more thorough the better, so far as they were essential to the satisfactory performance of his task. But it is only such contemporary events, opinions, or persons as were really operative on the character of the man we are studying that are of consequence, and we are to familiarize ourselves with them, not so much for the sake of explaining them as of understanding him. The biographer, especially of a literary man, need only mark the main currents of tendency, without being officious to trace out to its marshy source every runlet that has cast in its tiny pitcherful with the rest. Much less should he attempt an analysis of the stream and to classify every component by itself, as if each were ever effectual singly and not in combination. Human motives cannot be thus chemically cross-examined, nor do we arrive at any true knowledge of character by such minute subdivision of its ingredients. Nothing is so essential to a biographer as an eye that can distinguish at a glance between real events that are the levers of thought and action, and what Donne calls "unconcerning things, matters of fact,"--between substantial personages, whose contact or even neighborhood is influential, and the supernumeraries that serve first to fill up a stage and afterwards the interstices of a biographical dictionary. "Time hath a wallet at his back Wherein he puts alms for Oblivion." Let the biographer keep his fingers off that sacred and merciful deposit, and not renew for us the bores of a former generation as if we had not enough of our own. But if he cannot forbear that unwise inquisitiveness, we may fairly complain when he insists on taking us along with him in the processes of his investigation, instead of giving us the sifted results in their bearing on the life and character of his subject, whether for help or hindrance. We are blinded with the dust of old papers ransacked by Mr. Masson to find out that they have no relation whatever to his hero. He had been wise if he had kept constantly in view what Milton himself says of those who gathered up personal traditions concerning the Apostles: "With less fervency was studied what Saint Paul or Saint John had written than was listened to one that could say, 'Here he taught, here he stood, this was his stature, and thus he went habited; and O, happy this house that harbored him, and that cold stone whereon he rested, this village where he wrought such a miracle.'.... Thus while all their thoughts were poured out upon circumstances and the gazing after such men as had sat at table with the Apostles, ... by this means they lost their time and truanted on the fundamental grounds of saving knowledge, as was seen shortly in their writings." Mr. Masson has so _poured out his mind upon circumstances_, that his work reminds us of Allston's picture of Elijah in the Wilderness, where a good deal of research at last enables us to guess at the prophet absconded like a conundrum in the landscape where the very ravens could scarce have found him out, except by divine commission. The figure of Milton becomes but a speck on the enormous canvas crowded with the scenery through which he may by any possibility be conjectured to have passed. I will cite a single example of the desperate straits to which Mr. Masson is reduced in order to hitch Milton on to his own biography. He devotes the first chapter of his Second Book to the meeting of the Long Parliament. "Already," he tells us, "in the earlier part of the day, the Commons had gone through the ceremony of hearing the writ for the Parliament read, and the names of the members that had been returned called over by Thomas Wyllys, Esq., the Clerk of the Crown in Chancery. His deputy, _Agar, Milton's brother-in-law, may have been in attendance on such an occasion_. During the preceding month or two, _at all events_, Agar and his subordinates in the Crown Office had been unusually busy with the issue of the writs and with the other work connected with the opening of Parliament." (Vol. II. p. 150.) Mr. Masson's resolute "at all events" is very amusing. Meanwhile "The hungry sheep look up and are not fed." Augustine Thierry has a great deal to answer for, if to him we owe the modern fashion of writing history picturesquely. At least his method leads to most unhappy results when essayed by men to whom nature has denied a sense of what the picturesque really is. The historical picturesque does not consist, in truth of costume and similar accessaries, but in the grouping, attitude, and expression of the figures, caught when they are unconscious that the artist is sketching them. The moment they are posed for a composition, unless by a man of genius, the life has gone out of them. In the hands of an inferior artist, who fancies that imagination is something to be squeezed out of color-tubes, the past becomes a phantasmagoria of jackboots, doublets, and flap-hats, the mere property-room of a deserted theatre, as if the light had been scenical and illusory, the world an unreal thing that vanished with the foot-lights. It is the power of catching the actors in great events at unawares that makes the glimpses given us by contemporaries so vivid and precious. And St. Simon, one of the great masters of the picturesque, lets us into the secret of his art when he tells us how, in that wonderful scene of the death of Monseigneur, he saw "_du premier coup d'oeil vivement porté_, tout ce qui leur échappoit et tout ce qui les accableroit." It is the gift of producing this reality that almost makes us blush, as if we had been caught peeping through a keyhole, and had surprised secrets to which we had no right,--it is this only that can justify the pictorial method of narration. Mr. Carlyle has this power of contemporizing himself with bygone times, he cheats us to "Play with our fancies and believe we see"; but we find the _tableaux vivants_ of the apprentices who "deal in his command without his power," and who compel us to work very hard indeed with our fancies, rather wearisome. The effort of weaker arms to shoot with his mighty bow has filled the air of recent literature with more than enough fruitless twanging. Mr. Masson's style, at best cumbrous, becomes intolerably awkward when he strives to make up for the want of St. Simon's _premier coup d'oeil_ by impertinent details of what we must call the pseudo-dramatic kind. For example, does Hall profess to have traced Milton from the University to a "suburb sink" of London? Mr. Masson fancies he hears Milton saying to himself, "A suburb sink! has Hall or his son taken the trouble to walk all the way down to Aldersgate here, to peep up the entry where I live, and so have an exact notion of my whereabouts? There has been plague in the neighborhood certainly; and I hope Jane Yates had my doorstep tidy for the visit." Does Milton, answering Hall's innuendo that he was courting the graces of a rich widow, tell us that he would rather "choose a virgin of mean fortunes honestly bred"? Mr. Masson forthwith breaks forth in a paroxysm of what we suppose to be picturesqueness in this wise: "What have we here? Surely nothing less, if we choose so to construe it, than a marriage advertisement! Ho, all ye virgins of England (widows need not apply), here is an opportunity such as seldom occurs: a bachelor, unattached; age, thirty-three years and three or four months; height [Milton, by the way, would have said _highth_] middle or a little less; personal appearance unusually handsome, with fair complexion and light auburn hair; circumstances independent; tastes intellectual and decidedly musical; principles Root-and-Branch! Was there already any young maiden in whose bosom, had such an advertisement come in her way, it would have raised a conscious flutter? If so, did she live near Oxford?" If there _is_ anything worse than an unimaginative man trying to write imaginatively, it is a heavy man when he fancies he is being facetious. He tramples out the last spark of cheerfulness with the broad damp foot of a hippopotamus. I am no advocate of what is called the dignity of history, when it means, as it too often does, that dulness has a right of sanctuary in gravity. Too well do I recall the sorrows of my youth, when I was shipped in search of knowledge on the long Johnsonian swell of the last century, favorable to anything but the calm digestion of historic truth. I had even then an uneasy suspicion, which has ripened into certainty, that thoughts were never draped in long skirts like babies, if they were strong enough to go alone. But surely there should be such a thing as good taste, above all a sense of self-respect, in the historian himself, that should not allow him to play any tricks with the dignity of his subject. A halo of sacredness has hitherto invested the figure of Milton, and our image of him has dwelt securely in ideal remoteness from the vulgarities of life. No diaries, no private letters, remain to give the idle curiosity of after-times the right to force itself on the hallowed seclusion of his reserve. That a man whose familiar epistles were written in the language of Cicero, whose sense of personal dignity was so great that, when called on in self-defence to speak of himself, he always does it with an epical stateliness of phrase, and whose self-respect even in youth was so profound that it resembles the reverence paid by other men to a far-off and idealized character,--that he should be treated in this offhand familiar fashion by his biographer seems to us a kind of desecration, a violation of good manners no less than of the laws of biographic art. Milton is the last man in the world to be slapped on the back with impunity. Better the surly injustice of Johnson than such presumptuous friendship as this. Let the seventeenth century, at least, be kept sacred from the insupportable foot of the interviewer! But Mr. Masson, in his desire to be (shall I say) idiomatic, can do something worse than what has been hitherto quoted. He can be even vulgar. Discussing the motives of Milton's first marriage, he says, "Did he come seeking his £500, and did Mrs. Powell _heave a daughter at him?_" We have heard of a woman throwing herself at a man's head, and the image is a somewhat violent one; but what is this to Mr. Masson's improvement on it? It has been sometimes affirmed that the fitness of an image may be tested by trying whether a picture could be made of it or not. Mr. Masson has certainly offered a new and striking subject to the historical school of British art. A little further on, speaking of Mary Powell, he says, "We have no portrait of her, nor any account of her appearance; but on the usual rule of the elective affinities of opposites, Milton being fair, _we will vote her_ to have been dark-haired." I need say nothing of the good taste of this sentence, but its absurdity is heightened by the fact that Mr. Masson himself had left us in doubt whether the match was one of convenience or inclination. I know not how it may be with other readers, but for myself I feel inclined to resent this hail-fellow-well-met manner with its jaunty "_we_ will vote." In some cases, Mr. Masson's indecorums in respect of style may possibly be accounted for as attempts at humor by one who has an imperfect notion of its ingredients. In such experiments, to judge by the effect, the pensive element of the compound enters in too large an excess over the hilarious. Whether I have hit upon the true explanation, or whether the cause lie not rather in a besetting velleity of the picturesque and vivid, I shall leave the reader to judge by an example or two. In the manuscript copy of Milton's sonnet in which he claims for his own house the immunity which the memory of Pindar and Euripides secured for other walls, the title had originally been, "_On his Door when the City expected an Assault_." Milton has drawn a line through this and substituted "_When the Assault was intended to the City_." Mr. Masson fancies "a mood of jest or semi-jest in the whole affair"; but we think rather that Milton's quiet assumption of equality with two such famous poets was as seriously characteristic as Dante's ranking himself _sesto tra cotanto senno_. Mr. Masson takes advantage of the obliterated title to imagine one of Prince Rupert's troopers entering the poet's study and finding some of his "Anti-Episcopal pamphlets that had been left lying about inadvertently. 'Oho!' the Cavalier Captain might then have said, 'Pindar and Euripides are all very well, by G----! I've been at college myself; and when I meet a gentleman and scholar, I hope I know how to treat him; but neither Pindar nor Euripides ever wrote pamphlets against the Church of England, by G----! It won't do, Mr. Milton!'" This, it may be supposed, is Mr. Masson's way of being funny and dramatic at the same time. Good taste is shocked with this barbarous dissonance. Could not the Muse defend her son? Again, when Charles I., at Edinburgh, in the autumn and winter of 1641, fills the vacant English sees, we are told, "It was more than an insult; it was a sarcasm! It was as if the King, while giving Alexander Henderson his hand to kiss, had winked his royal eye over that reverend Presbyter's back!" Now one can conceive Charles II. winking when he took the Solemn League and Covenant, but never his father under any circumstances. He may have been, and I believe he was, a bad king, but surely we may take Marvell's word for it, that "He nothing common did or mean," upon any of the "memorable scenes" of his life. The image is, therefore, out of all imaginative keeping, and vulgarizes the chief personage in a grand historical tragedy, who, if not a great, was at least a decorous actor. But Mr. Masson can do worse than this. Speaking of a Mrs. Katherine Chidley, who wrote in defence of the Independents against Thomas Edwards, he says, "People wondered who this she-Brownist, Katherine Chidley, was, and did not quite lose their interest in her when they found that she was an oldish woman, and a member of some hole-and-corner congregation in London. Indeed, _she put her nails into Mr. Edwards with some effect_." Why did he not say at once, after the good old fashion, that she "set her ten commandments in his face"? In another place he speaks of "Satan standing with his _staff_ around him." Mr. Masson's style, a little Robertsonian at best, naturally grows worse when forced to condescend to every-day matters. He can no more dismount and walk than the man in armor on a Lord Mayor's day. "It [Aldersgate Street] stretches away northwards a full fourth of a mile as one continuous thoroughfare, until, crossed by Long Lane and the Barbican, it parts with the name of Aldersgate Street, and, under the new names of Goswell Street and Goswell Road, _completes its tendency towards the suburbs_ and fields about Islington." What a noble work might not the Directory be if composed on this scale! The imagination even of an alderman might well be lost in that full quarter of a mile of continuous thoroughfare. Mr. Masson is very great in these passages of civic grandeur; but he is more surprising, on the whole, where he has an image to deal with. Speaking of Milton's "two-handed engine" in Lycidas, he says: "May not Milton, whatever else he meant, have meant a coming English Parliament with its two Houses? Whatever he meant, his prophecy had come true. As he sat among his books in Aldersgate Street, the two-handed engine at the door of the English Church was on the swing. Once, twice, thrice, it had swept its arcs to gather energy; now it was on the backmost poise, and the blow was to descend." One cannot help wishing that Mr. Masson would try his hand on the tenth horn of the beast in Revelation, or on the time and half a time of Daniel. There is something so consoling to a prophet in being told that, no matter what he meant, his prophecy had come true, and that he might mean "whatever else" he pleased, so long as he _may_ have meant what we choose to think he did, reasoning backward from the assumed fulfilment! But perhaps there may be detected in Mr. Masson's "swept its arcs" a little of that prophetic hedging-in vagueness to which he allows so generous a latitude. How if the "two-handed engine," after all, were a broom (or besom, to be more dignified), "Sweeping--vehemently sweeping, No pause admitted, no design avowed," like that wielded by the awful shape which Dion the Syracusan saw? I make the suggestion modestly, though somewhat encouraged by Mr. Masson's system of exegesis, which reminds one of the casuists' doctrine of probables, in virtue of which a man may be _probabiliter obligatus_ and _probabiliter deobligatus_ at the same time. But perhaps the most remarkable instance of Mr. Masson's figures of speech is where we are told that the king might have established a _bona fide_ government "by giving public ascendency to the popular or Parliamentary element in his Council, and _inducing the old leaven in it either to accept the new policy, or to withdraw and become inactive."_ There is something consoling in the thought that yeast should be accessible to moral suasion. It is really too bad that bread should ever be heavy for want of such an appeal to its moral sense as should "induce it to accept the new policy." Of Mr. Masson's unhappy infection with the _vivid_ style an instance or two shall be given in justification of what has been alleged against him in that particular. He says of London that "he was committed to the Tower, where for more than two months he lay, with as near a prospect as ever prisoner had of a _chop_ with the executioner's axe on a scaffold on Tower Hill." I may be over-fastidious, but the word "chop" offends my ears with its coarseness, or if that be too strong, has certainly the unpleasant effect of an emphasis unduly placed. Old Auchinleck's saying of Cromwell, that "he gart kings ken they had a lith in their necks," is a good example of really vivid phrase, suggesting the axe and the block, and giving one of those dreadful hints to the imagination which are more powerful than any amount of detail, and whose skilful use is the only magic employed by the masters of truly picturesque writing. The sentence just quoted will serve also as an example of that tendency to _surplusage_, which adds to the bulk of Mr. Masson's sentences at the cost of their effectiveness. If he had said simply "chop on Tower Hill" (if chop there must be), it had been quite enough, for we all know that the executioner's axe and the scaffold are implied in it. Once more, and I have done with the least agreeable part of my business. Mr. Masson, after telling over again the story of Strafford with needless length of detail, ends thus: "On Wednesday, the 12th of May, that proud _curly_ head, the casket of that brain of power, rolled on the scaffold of Tower Hill." Why _curly_? Surely it is here a ludicrous impertinence. This careful thrusting forward of outward and unmeaning particulars, in the hope of giving that reality to a picture which genius only has the art to do, is becoming a weariness in modern descriptive writing. It reminds one of the Mrs. Jarley expedient of dressing the waxen effigies of murderers in the very clothes they wore when they did the deed, or with the real halter round their necks wherewith they expiated it. It is probably very effective with the torpid sensibilities of the class who look upon wax figures as works of art. True imaginative power works with other material. Lady Macbeth striving to wash away from her hands the damned spot that is all the more there to the mind of the spectator because it is not there at all, is a type of the methods it employs and the intensity of their action. Having discharged my duty in regard to Mr. Masson's faults of manner, which I should not have dwelt on so long had they not greatly marred a real enjoyment in the reading, and were they not the ear-mark of a school which has become unhappily numerous, I turn to a consideration of his work as a whole. I think he made a mistake in his very plan, or else was guilty of a misnomer in his title. His book is not so much a life of Milton as a collection of materials out of which a careful reader may sift the main facts of the poet's biography. His passion for minute detail is only to be equalled by his diffuseness on points mainly if not altogether irrelevant. He gives us a Survey of British Literature, occupying one hundred and twenty-eight pages of his first volume, written in the main with good judgment, and giving the average critical opinion upon nearly every writer, great and small, who was in any sense a contemporary of Milton. I have no doubt all this would be serviceable and interesting to Mr. Masson's classes in Edinburgh University, and they may well be congratulated on having so competent a teacher; but what it has to do with Milton, unless in the case of such authors as may be shown to have influenced his style or turn of thought, one does not clearly see. Most readers of a life of Milton may be presumed to have some knowledge of the general literary history of the time, or at any rate to have the means of acquiring it, and Milton's manner (his style was his own) was very little affected by any of the English poets, with the single exception, in his earlier poems, of George Wither. Mr. Masson also has something to say about everybody, from Wentworth to the obscurest Brownist fanatic who was so much as heard of in England during Milton's lifetime. If this theory of a biographer's duty should hold, our grandchildren may expect to see "A Life of Thackeray, or who was who in England, France, and Germany during the first Half of the Nineteenth Century." These digressions of Mr. Masson's from what should have been his main topic (he always seems somehow to be "completing his tendency towards the suburbs" of his subject), give him an uneasy feeling that he must get Milton in somehow or other at intervals, if it were only to remind the reader that he has a certain connection with the book. He is eager even to discuss a mere hypothesis, though an untenable one, if it will only increase the number of pages devoted specially to Milton, and thus lessen the apparent disproportion between the historical and the biographical matter. Milton tells us that his morning wont had been "to read good authors, or cause them to be read, till the attention be weary, or memory have his full fraught; then with useful and generous labors preserving the body's health and hardiness, to render lightsome, clear, and not lumpish obedience to the mind, to the cause of religion and our country's liberty when it shall require firm hearts in sound bodies to stand and cover their stations rather than see the rum of our Protestantism and the enforcement of a slavish life." Mr. Masson snatches at the hint: "This is interesting," he says; "Milton, it seems, has for some time been practising drill! The City Artillery Ground was near.... Did Milton among others make a habit of going there of mornings? Of this more hereafter." When Mr. Masson returns to the subject he speaks of Milton's "all but positive statement ... that in the spring of 1642, or a few months before the breaking out of the Civil War, he was in the habit of spending a part of each day in _military exercise somewhere not far from his house in Aldersgate Street_." What he puts by way of query on page 402 has become downright certainty seventy-nine pages further on. The passage from Milton's tract makes no "statement" of the kind it pleases Mr. Masson to assume. It is merely a Miltonian way of saying that he took regular exercise, because he believed that moral no less than physical courage demanded a sound body. And what proof does Mr. Masson bring to confirm his theory? Nothing more nor less than two or three passages in "Paradise Lost," of which I shall quote only so much as is essential to his argument:-- "And now Advanced in view they stand, a horrid front Of dreadful length and dazzling arms, in guise Of warriors old with _ordered_ spear and shield, Awaiting what command their mighty chief Had to impose."[359] Mr. Masson assures us that "there are touches in this description (as, for example, the _ordering_ of arms at the moment of halt, and without word of command) too exact and technical to have occurred to a mere civilian. Again, at the same review.... "'He now prepared To speak; whereat their doubled ranks they bend From wing to wing, and half enclose him round With all his peers; _attention_ held them mute.'[360] "To the present day this is the very process, or one of the processes, when a commander wishes to address his men. They wheel inward and stand at 'attention.'" But his main argument is the phrase "_ported_ spears," in Book Fourth, on which he has an interesting and valuable comment. He argues the matter through a dozen pages or more, seeking to prove that Milton _must_ have had some practical experience of military drill. I confess a very grave doubt whether "attention" and "ordered" in the passages cited have any other than their ordinary meaning, and Milton could never have looked on at the pike-exercise without learning what "ported" meant. But, be this as it may, I will venture to assert that there was not a boy in New England, forty years ago, who did not know more of the manual than is implied in Milton's use of these terms. Mr. Masson's object in proving Milton to have been a proficient in these martial exercises is to increase our wonder at his not entering the army. "If there was any man in England of whom one might surely have expected that he would be in arms among the Parliamentarians," he says, "that man was Milton." Milton may have had many an impulse to turn soldier, as all men must in such times, but I do not believe that he ever seriously intended it. Nor is it any matter of reproach that he did not. It is plain, from his works, that he believed himself very early set apart and consecrated for tasks of a very different kind, for services demanding as much self-sacrifice and of more enduring result. I have no manner of doubt that he, like Dante, believed himself divinely inspired with what he had to utter, and, if so, why not also divinely guided in what he should do or leave undone? Milton wielded in the cause he loved a weapon far more effective than a sword. It is a necessary result of Mr. Masson's method, that a great deal of space is devoted to what might have befallen his hero and what he might have seen. This leaves a broad margin indeed for the insertion of purely hypothetical incidents. Nay, so desperately addicted is he to what he deems the vivid style of writing, that he even goes out of his way to imagine what might have happened to anybody living at the same time with Milton. Having told us fairly enough how Shakespeare, on his last visit to London, perhaps saw Milton "a fair child of six playing at his father's door," he must needs conjure up an imaginary supper at the Mermaid. "Ah! what an evening ... was that; and how Ben and Shakespeare _be-tongued_ each other, while the others listened and wondered; and how, when the company dispersed, the sleeping street heard their departing footsteps, and the stars shone down on the old roofs." Certainly, if we may believe the old song, the stars "had nothing else to do," though their chance of shining in the middle of a London November may perhaps be reckoned very doubtful. An author should consider how largely the art of writing consists in knowing what to leave in the inkstand. Mr. Masson's volumes contain a great deal of very valuable matter, whatever one may think of its bearing upon the life of Milton. The chapters devoted to Scottish affairs are particularly interesting to a student of the Great Rebellion, its causes and concomitants. His analyses of the two armies, of the Parliament, and the Westminster Assembly, are sensible additions to our knowledge. A too painful thoroughness, indeed, is the criticism we should make on his work as a biography. Even as a history, the reader might complain that it confuses by the multiplicity of its details, while it wearies by want of continuity. Mr. Masson lacks the skill of an accomplished story-teller. A fact is to him a fact, never mind how unessential, and he misses the breadth of truth in his devotion to accuracy. The very order of his title-page, "The Life of Milton, narrated in Connection with the Political, Ecclesiastical, and Literary History of his Time," shows, it should seem, a misconception of the true nature of his subject. Milton's chief importance, it might be fairly said his only importance, is a literary one. His place is fixed as the most classical of our poets. Neither in politics, theology, nor social ethics, did Milton leave any distinguishable trace on the thought of his time or in the history of opinion. In both these lines of his activity circumstances forced upon him the position of a controversialist whose aims and results are by the necessity of the case desultory and ephemeral. Hooker before him and Hobbes after him had a far firmer grasp of fundamental principles than he. His studies in these matters were perfunctory and occasional, and his opinions were heated to the temper of the times and shaped to the instant exigencies of the forum, sometimes to his own convenience at the moment, instead of being the slow result of a deliberate judgment enlightened by intellectual and above all historical sympathy with his subject. His interest was rather in the occasion than the matter of the controversy. No aphorisms of political science are to be gleaned from his writings as from those of Burke. His intense personality could never so far dissociate itself from the question at issue as to see it in its larger scope and more universal relations. He was essentially a _doctrinaire_, ready to sacrifice everything to what at the moment seemed the abstract truth, and with no regard to historical antecedents and consequences, provided those of scholastic logic were carefully observed. He has no respect for usage or tradition except when they count in his favor, and sees no virtue in that power of the past over the minds and conduct of men which alone insures the continuity of national growth and is the great safeguard of order and progress. The life of a nation was of less importance to him than that it should be conformed to certain principles of belief and conduct. Burke could distill political wisdom out of history because he had a profound consciousness of the soul that underlies and outlives events, and of the national character that gives them meaning and coherence. Accordingly his words are still living and operative, while Milton's pamphlets are strictly occasional and no longer interesting except as they illustrate him. In the Latin ones especially there is an odd mixture of the pedagogue and the public orator. His training, so far as it was thorough, so far, indeed, as it may be called optional, was purely poetical and artistic. A true Attic bee, he made boot on every lip where there was a trace of truly classic honey. Milton, indeed, could hardly have been a match for some of his antagonists in theological and ecclesiastical learning. But he brought into the contest a white heat of personal conviction that counted for much. His self-consciousness, always active, identified him with the cause he undertook. "I conceived myself to be now not as mine own person, but as a member incorporate into that truth whereof I was persuaded and whereof I had declared myself openly to be the partaker."[361] Accordingly it does not so much seem that he is the advocate of Puritanism, Freedom of Conscience, or the People of England, as that all these are _he_, and that he is speaking for himself. He was not nice in the choice of his missiles, and too often borrows a dirty lump from the dunghill of Luther; but now and then the gnarled sticks of controversy turn to golden arrows of Phoebus in his trembling hands, singing as they fly and carrying their messages of doom in music. Then, truly, in his prose as in his verse, his is the large utterance of the early gods, and there is that in him which tramples all learning under his victorious feet. From the first he looked upon himself as a man dedicated and set apart. He had that sublime persuasion of a divine mission which sometimes lifts his speech from personal to cosmopolitan significance; his genius unmistakably asserts itself from time to time, calling down fire from heaven to kindle the sacrifice of irksome private duty, and turning the hearthstone of an obscure man into an altar for the worship of mankind. Plainly enough here was a man who had received something other than Episcopal ordination. Mysterious and awful powers had laid their unimaginable hands on that fair head and devoted it to a nobler service. Yet it must be confessed that, with the single exception of the "Areopagitica," Milton's tracts are wearisome reading, and going through them is like a long sea-voyage whose monotony is more than compensated for the moment by a stripe of phosphorescence heaping before you in a drift of star-sown snow, coiling away behind in winking disks of silver, as if the conscious element were giving out all the moonlight it had garnered in its loyal depths since first it gazed upon its pallid regent. Which, being interpreted, means that his prose is of value because it is Milton's, because it sometimes exhibits in an inferior degree the qualities of his verse, and not for its power of thought, of reasoning, or of statement. It is valuable, where it is best, for its inspiring quality, like the fervencies of a Hebrew prophet. The English translation of the Bible had to a very great degree Judaized, not the English mind, but the Puritan temper. Those fierce enthusiasts could more easily find elbow-room for their consciences in an ideal Israel than in a practical England. It was convenient to see Amalek or Philistia in the men who met them in the field, and one unintelligible horn or other of the Beast in their theological opponents. The spiritual provincialism of the Jewish race found something congenial in the English mind. Their national egotism quintessentialized in the prophets was especially sympathetic with the personal egotism of Milton. It was only as an inspired and irresponsible person that he could live on decent terms with his own self-confident individuality. There is an intolerant egotism which identifies itself with omnipotence,[362] and whose sublimity is its apology; there is an intolerable egotism which subordinates the sun to the watch in its own fob. Milton's was of the former kind, and accordingly the finest passages in his prose and not the least fine in his verse are autobiographic, and this is the more striking that they are often unconsciously so. Those fallen angels in utter ruin and combustion hurled, are also cavaliers fighting against the Good Old Cause; Philistia is the Restoration, and what Samson did, that Milton would have done if he could. The "Areopagitica" might seem an exception, but that also is a plea rather than an argument, and his interest in the question is not one of abstract principle, but of personal relation to himself. He was far more rhetorician than thinker. The sonorous amplitude of his style was better fitted to persuade the feelings than to convince the reason. The only passages from his prose that may be said to have survived are emotional, not argumentative, or they have lived in virtue of their figurative beauty, not their weight of thought. Milton's power lay in dilation. Touched by him, the simplest image, the most obvious thought, "Dilated stood Like Teneriffe or Atlas.... .... nor wanted in his grasp What _seemed_ both spear and shield." But the thin stiletto of Macchiavelli is a more effective weapon than these fantastic arms of his. He had not the secret of compression that properly belongs to the political thinker, on whom, as Hazlitt said of himself, "nothing but abstract ideas makes any impression." Almost every aphoristic phrase that he has made current is borrowed from some one of the classics, like his famous "License they mean when they cry liberty," from Tacitus. This is no reproach to him so far as his true function, that of poet, is concerned. It is his peculiar glory that literature was with him so much an art, an end and not a means. Of his political work he has himself told us, "I should not choose this manner of writing, wherein, knowing myself inferior to myself (led by the genial power of nature to another task), I have the use, as I may account, but of my left hand." Mr. Masson has given an excellent analysis of these writings, selecting with great judgment the salient passages, which have an air of blank-verse thinly disguised as prose, like some of the corrupted passages of Shakespeare. We are particularly thankful to him for his extracts from the pamphlets written against Milton, especially for such as contain criticisms on his style. It is not a little interesting to see the most stately of poets reproached for his use of vulgarisms and low words. We seem to get a glimpse of the schooling of his "choiceful sense" to that nicety which could not be content till it had made his native tongue "search all her coffers round." One cannot help thinking also that his practice in prose, especially in the long involutions of Latin periods, helped him to give that variety of pause and that majestic harmony to his blank-verse which have made it so unapproachably his own. Landor, who, like Milton, seems to have thought in Latin, has caught somewhat more than others of the dignity of his gait, but without his length of stride. Wordsworth, at his finest, has perhaps approached it, but with how long an interval! Bryant has not seldom attained to its serene equanimity, but never emulates its pomp. Keats has caught something of its large utterance, but altogether fails of its nervous severity of phrase. Cowper's muse (that moved with such graceful ease in slippers) becomes stiff when (in his translation of Homer) she buckles on her feet the cothurnus of Milton. Thomson grows tumid wherever he assays the grandiosity of his model. It is instructive to get any glimpse of the slow processes by which Milton arrived at that classicism which sets him apart from, if not above, all our other poets. In gathering up the impressions made upon us by Mr. Masson's work as a whole, we are inclined rather to regret his copiousness for his own sake than for ours. The several parts, though disproportionate, are valuable, his research has been conscientious, and he has given us better means of understanding Milton's time than we possessed before. But how is it about Milton himself? Here was a chance, it seems to me, for a fine bit of portrait-painting. There is hardly a more stately figure in literary history than Milton's, no life in some of its aspects more tragical, except Dante's. In both these great poets, more than in any others, the character of the men makes part of the singular impressiveness of what they wrote and of its vitality with after times. In them the man somehow overtops the author. The works of both are full of autobiographical confidences. Like Dante, Milton was forced to become a party by himself. He stands out in marked and solitary individuality, apart from the great movement of the Civil War, apart from the supine acquiescence of the Restoration, a self-opinionated, unforgiving, and unforgetting man. Very much alive he certainly was in his day. Has Mr. Masson made him alive to us again? I fear not. At the same time, while we cannot praise either the style or the method of Mr. Masson's work, we cannot refuse to be grateful for it. It is not so much a book for the ordinary reader of biography as for the student, and will be more likely to find its place on the library-shelf than the centre-table. It does not in any sense belong to light literature, but demands all the muscle of the trained and vigorous reader. "Truly, in respect of itself, it is a good life; but in respect that it is Milton's life it is naught." Mr. Masson's intimacy with the facts and dates of Milton's career renders him peculiarly fit in some respects to undertake an edition of the poetical works. His edition, accordingly, has distinguished merits. The introductions to the several poems are excellent and leave scarcely anything to be desired. The general Introduction, on the other hand, contains a great deal that might well have been omitted, and not a little that is positively erroneous. Mr. Masson's discussions of Milton's English seem often to be those of a Scotsman to whom English is in some sort a foreign tongue. It is almost wholly inconclusive, because confined to the Miltonic verse, while the basis of any altogether satisfactory study should surely be the Miltonic prose; nay, should include all the poetry and prose of his own age and of that immediately preceding it. The uses to which Mr. Masson has put the concordance to Milton's poems tempt one sometimes to class him with those whom the poet himself taxed with being "the mousehunts and ferrets of an index." For example, what profits a discussion of Milton's [Greek: hapax legomena], a matter in which accident is far more influential than choice?[363] What sensible addition is made to our stock of knowledge by learning that "the word _woman_ does not occur in any form in Milton's poetry before 'Paradise Lost,'" and that it is "exactly so with the word _female_"? Is it any way remarkable that such words as _Adam, God, Heaven, Hell, Paradise, Sin, Satan_, and _Serpent_ should occur "very frequently" in "Paradise Lost"? Would it not rather have been surprising that they should not? Such trifles at best come under the head of what old Warner would have called cumber-minds. It is time to protest against this minute style of editing and commenting great poets. Gulliver's microscopic eye saw on the fair skins of the Brobdignagian maids of honor "a mole here and there as broad as a trencher," and we shrink from a cup of the purest Hippocrene after the critic's solar microscope has betrayed to us the grammatical, syntactical, and, above all, hypothetical monsters that sprawl in every drop of it. When a poet has been so much edited as Milton, the temptation of whosoever undertakes a new edition to see what is not to be seen becomes great in proportion as he finds how little there is that has not been seen before. Mr. Masson is quite right in choosing to modernize the spelling of Milton, for surely the reading of our classics should be made as little difficult as possible, and he is right also in making an exception of such abnormal forms as the poet may fairly be supposed to have chosen for melodic reasons. His exhaustive discussion of the spelling of the original editions seems, however, to be the less called-for as he himself appears to admit that the compositor, not the author, was supreme in these matters, and that in nine hundred and ninety-nine cases to the thousand Milton had no system, but spelt by immediate inspiration. Yet Mr. Masson fills nearly four pages with an analysis of the vowel sounds, in which, as if to demonstrate the futility of such attempts so long as men's ears differ, he tells us that the short _a_ sound is the same in _man_ and _Darby_, the short _o_ sound in _God_ and _does_, and what he calls the long _o_ sound in _broad_ and _wrath_. Speaking of the apostrophe, Mr. Masson tells us that "it is sometimes inserted, not as a possessive mark at all, but merely as a plural mark: _hero's_ for _heroes_, _myrtle's_ for _myrtles_, _Gorgons_ and _Hydra's_, etc." Now, in books printed about the time of Milton's the apostrophe was put in almost at random, and in all the cases cited is a misprint, except in the first, where it serves to indicate that the pronunciation was not heróës as it had formerly been.[364] In the "possessive singular of nouns already ending in _s_" Mr. Masson tells us, "Milton's general practice is not to double the _s_; thus, _Nereus wrinkled look, Glaucus spell_. The necessities of metre would naturally constrain to such forms. In a possessive followed by the word _sake_ or the word _side_, dislike to [of] the double sibilant makes us sometimes drop the inflection. In addition to '_for righteousness' sake_' such phrases as '_for thy name sake_' and '_for mercy sake_,' are allowed to pass; _bedside_ is normal and _riverside_ nearly so." The necessities of metre need not be taken into account with a poet like Milton, who never was fairly in his element till he got off the soundings of prose and felt the long swell of his verse under him like a steed that knows his rider. But does the dislike of the double sibilant account for the dropping of the _s_ in these cases? Is it not far rather the presence of the _s_ already in the sound satisfying an ear accustomed to the English slovenliness in the pronunciation of double consonants? It was this which led to such forms as _conscience sake_ and _on justice side_, and which beguiled Ben Jonson and Dryden into thinking, the one that _noise_ and the other that _corps_ was a plural,[365] What does Mr. Masson say to _hillside, Bankside, seaside, Cheapside, spindleside, spearside, gospelside_ (of a church), _nightside, countryside, wayside, brookside_, and I know not how many more? Is the first half of these words a possessive? Or is it not rather a noun impressed into the service as an adjective? How do such words differ from _hilltop, townend, candlelight, rushlight, cityman_, and the like, where no double _s_ can be made the scapegoat? Certainly Milton would not have avoided them for their sibilancy, he who wrote "And airy tongues that syllable men's names On sands and shores and desert wildernesses," "So in his seed all nations shall be blest," "And seat of Salmanasser whose success," verses that hiss like Medusa's head in wrath, and who was, I think, fonder of the sound than any other of our poets. Indeed, in compounds of the kind we always make a distinction wholly independent of the doubled _s_. Nobody would boggle at _mountainside_; no one would dream of saying _on the fatherside_ or _motherside_. Mr. Masson speaks of "the Miltonic forms _vanquisht, markt, lookt_, etc." Surely he does not mean to imply that these are peculiar to Milton? Chapman used them before Milton was born, and pressed them farther, as in _nak't_ and _saf't_ for _naked_ and _saved_. He often prefers the contracted form in his prose also, showing that the full form of the past participle in _ed_ was passing out of fashion, though available in verse.[366] Indeed, I venture to affirm that there is not a single variety of spelling or accent to be found in Milton which is without example in his predecessors or contemporaries. Even _highth_, which is thought peculiarly Miltonic, is common (in Hakluyt, for example), and still often heard in New England. Mr. Masson gives an odd reason for Milton's preference of it "as indicating more correctly the formation of the word by the addition of the suffix _th_ to the adjective _high_." Is an adjective, then, at the base of _growth_, _earth_, _birth_, _truth_, and other words of this kind? Horne Tooke made a better guess than this. If Mr. Masson be right in supposing that a peculiar meaning is implied in the spelling _bearth_ (Paradise Lost, IX. 624), which he interprets as "collective produce," though in the only other instance where it occurs it is neither more nor less than _birth_, it should seem that Milton had hit upon Horne Tooke's etymology. But it is really solemn trifling to lay any stress on the spelling of the original editions, after having admitted, as Mr. Masson has honestly done, that in all likelihood Milton had nothing to do with it. And yet he cannot refrain. On the word _voutsafe_ he hangs nearly a page of dissertation on the nicety of Milton's ear. Mr. Masson thinks that Milton "must have had a reason for it,"[367] and finds that reason in "his dislike to [of] the sound _ch_, or to [of] that sound combined with _s_.... His fine ear taught him not only to seek for musical effects and cadences at large, but also to be fastidious as to syllables, and to avoid harsh or difficult conjunctions of consonants, except when there might be a musical reason for harshness or difficulty. In the management of the letter _s_, the frequency of which in English is one of the faults of the speech, he will be found, I believe, most careful and skilful. More rarely, I think, than in Shakespeare will one word ending in _s_ be found followed immediately in Milton by another word beginning with the same letter; or, if he does occasionally pen such a phrase as _Moab's sons_, it will be difficult to find in him, I believe, such a harsher example as _earth's substance_, of which many writers would think nothing. [With the index to back him Mr. Masson could safely say this.] The same delicacy of ear is even more apparent in his management of the _sh_ sound. He has it often, of course; but it may be noted that he rejects it in his verse when he can. He writes _Basan_ for _Bashan_, _Sittim_ for _Shittim_, _Silo_ for _Shiloh_, _Asdod_ for _Ashdod_. Still more, however, does he seem to have been wary of the compound sound _ch_ as in _church_. Of his sensitiveness to this sound in excess there is a curious proof in his prose pamphlet entitled 'An Apology against a Pamphlet, called A Modest Completion, etc.,' where, having occasion to quote these lines from one of the Satires[368] of his opponent, Bishop Hall, "'Teach each hollow grove to sound his love, Wearying echo with one changeless word,' "he adds, ironically, 'And so he well might, and all his auditory besides, with his _teach each!_'" Generalizations are always risky, but when extemporized from a single hint they are maliciously so. Surely it needed no great sensitiveness of ear to be set on edge by Hall's echo of _teach each_. Did Milton reject the _h_ from _Bashan_ and the rest because he disliked the sound of _sh_, or because he had found it already rejected by the Vulgate and by some of the earlier translators of the Bible into English? Oddly enough, Milton uses words beginning with _sh_ seven hundred and fifty four times in his poetry, not to speak of others in which the sound occurs, as, for instance, those ending in _tion_. Hall, had he lived long enough, might have retorted on Milton his own "Manli_est_, resolut_est_, br_east_, As the magnetick hard_est_ iron draws," or his "What moves thy inquisition? Know'st thou not that my rising is thy fall, And my promotion thy destruction?" With the playful controversial wit of the day he would have hinted that too much _est-est_ is as fatal to a blank-verse as to a bishop, and that danger was often incurred by those who too eagerly _shun_ned it. Nay, he might even have found an echo almost tallying with his own in "To begirt the almighty throne Beseeching or besieging," a pun worthy of Milton's worst prose. Or he might have twitted him with "a _seq_uent king who _seeks_." As for the _sh_ sound, a poet could hardly have found it ungracious to his ear who wrote, "Gna_sh_ing for angui_sh_ and despite and _sh_ame," or again, "Then bursting forth Afre_sh_ with con_sc_ious terrors vex me round That rest or intermi_ssion_ none I find. Before mine eyes in oppos_ition_ sits Grim Death, my son." And if Milton disliked the _ch_ sound, he gave his ears unnecessary pain by verses such as these,-- "Straight cou_ch_es close; then, rising, _ch_anges oft His cou_ch_ant wat_ch_, as one who _ch_ose his ground"; still more by such a juxtaposition as "matchless chief."[369] The truth is, that Milton was a harmonist rather than a melodist. There are, no doubt, some exquisite melodies (like the "Sabrina Fair ") among his earlier poems, as could hardly fail to be the case in an age which produced or trained the authors of our best English glees, as ravishing in their instinctive felicity as the songs of our dramatists, but he also showed from the first that larger style which was to be his peculiar distinction. The strain heard in the "Nativity Ode," in the "Solemn Music," and in "Lycidas," is of a higher mood, as regards metrical construction, than anything that had thrilled the English ear before, giving no uncertain augury of him who was to show what sonorous metal lay silent till he touched the keys in the epical organ-pipes of our various language, that have never since felt the strain of such prevailing breath. It was in the larger movements of metre that Milton was great and original. I have spoken elsewhere of Spenser's fondness for dilatation as respects thoughts and images. In Milton it extends to the language also, and often to the single words of which a period is composed. He loved phrases of towering port, in which every member dilated stands like Teneriffe or Atlas. In those poems and passages that stamp him great, the verses do not dance interweaving to soft Lydian airs, but march rather with resounding tread and clang of martial music. It is true that he is cunning in alliterations, so scattering them that they tell in his orchestra without being obvious, but it is in the more scientific region of open-voweled assonances which seem to proffer rhyme and yet withhold it (rhyme-wraiths one might call them), that he is an artist and a master. He even sometimes introduces rhyme with misleading intervals between and unobviously in his blank-verse:-- "There rest, if any rest can harbour _there_; And, reassembling our afflicted powers, Consult how we may henceforth most offend Our enemy, our own loss how re_pair_, How overcome this dire calamity, What reinforcement we may gain from hope, If not, what resolution from des_pair_."[370] There is one almost perfect quatrain,-- "Before thy fellows, ambitious to win From me some plume, that thy success may show Destruction to the rest. This pause between (Unanswered lest thou boast) to let thee know"; and another hardly less so, of a rhyme and an assonance,-- "If once they hear that voice, their liveliest pledge Of hope in fears and dangers, heard so oft In worst extremes and on the perilous edge Of battle when it raged, in all assaults." There can be little doubt that the rhymes in the first passage cited were intentional, and perhaps they were so in the others; but Milton's ear has tolerated not a few perfectly rhyming couplets, and others in which the assonance almost becomes rhyme, certainly a fault in blankverse:-- "From the Asian Kings (and Parthian among these), From India and the Golden Chersonese"; "That soon refreshed him wearied, and repaired What hunger, if aught hunger, had impaired"; "And will alike be punished, whether thou Reign or reign not, though to that gentle brow"; "Of pleasure, but all pleasure to destroy, Save what is in destroying, other joy"; "Shall all be Paradise, far happier place Than this of Eden, and far happier days"; "This my long sufferance and my day of grace They who neglect and scorn shall never taste"; "So far remote with diminution seen, First in his East the glorious lamp was seen."[371] These examples (and others might be adduced) serve to show that Milton's ear was too busy about the larger interests of his measures to be always careful of the lesser. He was a strategist rather than a drill-sergeant in verse, capable, beyond any other English poet, of putting great masses through the most complicated evolutions without clash or confusion, but he was not curious that every foot should be at the same angle. In reading "Paradise Lost" one has a feeling of vastness. You float under an illimitable sky, brimmed with sunshine or hung with constellations; the abysses of space are about you; you hear the cadenced surges of an unseen ocean; thunders mutter round the horizon; and if the scene change, it is with an elemental movement like the shifting of mighty winds. His imagination seldom condenses, like Shakespeare's, in the kindling flash of a single epithet, but loves better to diffuse itself. Witness his descriptions, wherein he seems to circle like an eagle bathing in the blue streams of air, controlling with his eye broad sweeps of champaign or of sea, and rarely fulmining in the sudden swoop of intenser expression. He was fonder of the vague, perhaps I should rather say the indefinite, where more is meant than meets the ear, than any other of our poets. He loved epithets (like _old_ and _far_) that suggest great reaches, whether of space or time. This bias shows itself already in his earlier poems, as where he hears "The _far off_ curfew sound Over some _widewatered_ shore," or where he fancies the shores[372] and sounding seas washing Lycidas far away; but it reaches its climax in the "Paradise Lost." He produces his effects by dilating our imaginations with an impalpable hint rather than by concentrating them upon too precise particulars. Thus in a famous comparison of his, the fleet has no definite port, but plies stemming nightly toward the pole in a wide ocean of conjecture. He generalizes always instead of specifying,--the true secret of the ideal treatment in which he is without peer, and, though everywhere grandiose, he is never turgid. Tasso begins finely with "Chiama gli abitator dell' ombre eterne II rauco suon della tartarea tromba; Treman le spaziose atre caverne, E l'aer cieco a quel rumor rimbomba," but soon spoils all by condescending to definite comparisons with thunder and intestinal convulsions of the earth; in other words, he is unwary enough to give us a standard of measurement, and the moment you furnish Imagination with a yardstick she abdicates in favor of her statistical poor-relation Commonplace. Milton, with this passage in his memory, is too wise to hamper himself with any statement for which he can be brought to book, but wraps himself in a mist of looming indefiniteness; "He called so loud that all the hollow deep Of hell resounded," thus amplifying more nobly by abstention from his usual method of prolonged evolution. No caverns, however spacious, will serve his turn, because they have limits. He could practise this self-denial when his artistic sense found it needful, whether for variety of verse or for the greater intensity of effect to be gained by abruptness. His more elaborate passages have the multitudinous roll of thunder, dying away to gather a sullen force again from its own reverberations, but he knew that the attention is recalled and arrested by those claps that stop short without echo and leave us listening. There are no such vistas and avenues of verse as his. In reading the "Paradise Lost" one has a feeling of spaciousness such as no other poet gives. Milton's respect for himself and for his own mind and its movements rises wellnigh to veneration. He prepares the way for his thought and spreads on the ground before the sacred feet of his verse tapestries inwoven with figures of mythology and romance. There is no such unfailing dignity as his. Observe at what a reverent distance he begins when he is about to speak of himself, as at the beginning of the Third Book and the Seventh. His sustained strength is especially felt in his beginnings. He seems always to start full-sail; the wind and tide always serve; there is never any fluttering of the canvas In this he offers a striking contrast with Wordsworth, who has to go through with a great deal of _yo-heave-ohing_ before he gets under way. And though, in the didactic parts of "Paradise Lost," the wind dies away sometimes, there is a long swell that will not let us forget it, and ever and anon some eminent verse lifts its long ridge above its tamer peers heaped with stormy memories. And the poem never becomes incoherent; we feel all through it, as in the symphonies of Beethoven, a great controlling reason in whose safe-conduct we trust implicitly. Mr. Masson's discussions of Milton's English are, it seems to me, for the most part unsatisfactory He occupies some ten pages, for example, with a history of the genitival form _its_, which adds nothing to our previous knowledge on the subject and which has no relation to Milton except for its bearing on the authorship of some verses attributed to him against the most overwhelming internal evidence to the contrary. Mr. Masson is altogether too resolute to find traces of what he calls oddly enough "recollectiveness of Latin constructions" in Milton, and scents them sometimes in what would seem to the uninstructed reader very idiomatic English. More than once, at least, he has fancied them by misunderstanding the passage in which they seem to occur. Thus, in "Paradise Lost," XI. 520, 521, "Therefore so abject is their punishment, Disfiguring not God's likeness but their own," has no analogy with _eorum deformantium_, for the context shows that it is the _punishment_ which disfigures. Indeed, Mr. Masson so often finds constructions difficult, ellipses strange, and words needing annotation that are common to all poetry, nay, sometimes to all English, that his notes seem not seldom to have been written by a foreigner. On this passage in "Comus,"-- "I do not think my sister so to seek Or so unprincipled in virtue's book And the sweet peace that virtue bosoms ever As that the single want of light and noise * * * * * "(Not being in danger, as I trust she is not) Could stir the constant mood of her calm thoughts," Mr. Masson tells us, that "in very strict construction, _not being_ would cling to _want_ as its substantive; but the phrase passes for the Latin ablative absolute." So on the words _forestalling night_, "i. e. anticipating. Forestall is literally to anticipate the market by purchasing goods before they are brought to the stall." In the verse "Thou hast immanacled while Heaven sees good," he explains that "_while_ here has the sense of _so long as_." But Mr. Masson's notes on the language are his weakest. He is careful to tell us, for example, "that there are instances of the use of _shine_ as a substantive in Spenser, Ben Jonson, and other poets." It is but another way of spelling _sheen_, and if Mr. Masson never heard a shoeblack in the street say, "Shall I give you a shine, sir?" his experience has been singular.[373] His notes in general are very good (though too long). Those on the astronomy of Milton are particularly valuable. I think he is sometimes a little too scornful of parallel passages,[374] for if there is one thing more striking than another in this poet, it is that his great and original imagination was almost wholly nourished by books, perhaps I should rather say set in motion by them. It is wonderful how, from the most withered and juiceless hint gathered in his reading, his grand images rise like an exhalation; how from the most battered old lamp caught in that huge drag-net with which he swept the waters of learning, he could conjure a tall genius to build his palaces. Whatever he touches swells and towers. That wonderful passage in Comus of the airy tongues, perhaps the most imaginative in suggestion he ever wrote, was conjured out of a dry sentence in Purchas's abstract of Marco Polo. Such examples help us to understand the poet. When I find that Sir Thomas Browne had said before Milton, that Adam "was _the wisest of all men since_," I am glad to find this link between the most profound and the most stately imagination of that age. Such parallels sometimes give a hint also of the historical development of our poetry, of its apostolical succession, so to speak. Every one has noticed Milton's fondness of sonorous proper names, which have not only an acquired imaginative value by association, and so serve to awaken our poetic sensibilities, but have likewise a merely musical significance. This he probably caught from Marlowe, traces of whom are frequent in him. There is certainly something of what afterwards came to be called Miltonic in more than one passage of "Tamburlaine," a play in which gigantic force seems struggling from the block, as in Michel Angelo's Dawn. Mr. Masson's remarks on the versification of Milton are, in the main, judicious, but when he ventures on particulars, one cannot always agree with him. He seems to understand that our prosody is accentual merely, and yet, when he comes to what he calls _variations_, he talks of the "substitution of the Trochee, the Pyrrhic, or the Spondee, for the regular Iambus, or of the Anapaest, the Dactyl, the Tribrach, etc., for the same." This is always misleading. The shift of the accent in what Mr. Masson calls "dissyllabic variations" is common to all pentameter verse, and, in the other case, most of the words cited as trisyllables either were not so in Milton's day,[375] or were so or not at choice of the poet, according to their place in the verse. There is not an elision of Milton's without precedent in the dramatists from whom he learned to write blank-verse. Milton was a greater metrist than any of them, except Marlowe and Shakespeare, and he employed the elision (or the slur) oftener than they to give a faint undulation or retardation to his verse, only because his epic form demanded it more for variety's sake. How Milton would have _read_ them, is another question. He certainly often marked them by an apostrophe in his manuscripts. He doubtless composed according to quantity, so far as that is possible in English, and as Cowper somewhat extravagantly says, "gives almost as many proofs of it in his 'Paradise Lost' as there are lines in the poem."[376] But when Mr. Masson tells us that "Self-fed and self-consumed: if this fail," and "Dwells in all Heaven charity so rare," are "only nine syllables," and that in "Created hugest that swim the ocean-stream," "either the third foot must be read as an _anapaest_ or the word _hugest_ must be pronounced as one syllable, _hug'st_," I think Milton would have invoked the soul of Sir John Cheek. Of course Milton read it "Created hugest that swim th' ocean-stream," just as he wrote (if we may trust Mr. Masson's facsimile) "Thus sang the uncouth swain to th' oaks and rills," a verse in which both hiatus and elision occur precisely as in the Italian poets.[377] "Gest that swim" would be rather a knotty _anapaest_, an insupportable foot indeed! And why is even _hug'st_ worse than Shakespeare's "_Young'st_ follower of thy drum"? In the same way he says of "For we have also our evening and our morn," that "the metre of this line is irregular," and of the rapidly fine "Came flying and in mid air aloud thus cried," that it is "a line of unusual metre." Why more unusual than "As being the contrary to his high will"? What would Mr. Masson say to these three verses from Dekkar?-- "And _knowing_ so much, I muse thou art so poor"; "I fan away the dust _flying_ in mine eyes"; "_Flowing_ o'er with court news only of you and them." All such participles (where no consonant divided the vowels) were normally of one syllable, permissibly of two.[378] If Mr. Masson had studied the poets who preceded Milton as he has studied _him_, he would never have said that the verse "Not this rock only; his omnipresence fills," was "peculiar as having a distinct syllable of overmeasure." He retains Milton's spelling of _hunderd_ without perceiving the metrical reason for it, that _d, t, p, b,_ &c., followed by _l_ or _r_, might be either of two or of three syllables. In Marlowe we find it both ways in two consecutive verses:-- "A hundred [hundered] and fifty thousand horse, Two hundred thousand foot, brave men at arms."[379] Mr. Masson is especially puzzled by verses ending in one or more unaccented syllables, and even argues in his Introduction that some of them might be reckoned Alexandrines. He cites some lines of Spenser as confirming his theory, forgetting that rhyme wholly changes the conditions of the case by throwing the accent (appreciably even now, but more emphatically in Spenser's day) on the last syllable. "A spirit and judgment equal or superior," he calls "a remarkably anomalous line, consisting of twelve or even thirteen syllables." Surely Milton's ear would never have tolerated a dissyllabic "spirit" in such a position. The word was then more commonly of one syllable, though it might be two, and was accordingly spelt _spreet_ (still surviving in _sprite_), _sprit_, and even _spirt_, as Milton himself spells it in one of Mr. Masson's facsimiles.[380] Shakespeare, in the verse "Hath put a spirit of youth in everything," uses the word admirably well in a position where it _cannot_ have a metrical value of more than one syllable, while it gives a dancing movement to the verse in keeping with the sense. Our old metrists were careful of elasticity, a quality which modern verse has lost in proportion as our language has stiffened into uniformity under the benumbing fingers of pedants. This discussion of the value of syllables is not so trifling as it seems. A great deal of nonsense has been written about imperfect measures in Shakespeare, and of the admirable dramatic effect produced by filling up the gaps of missing syllables with pauses or prolongations of the voice in reading. In rapid, abrupt, and passionate dialogue this is possible, but in passages of continuously level speech it is barbarously absurd. I do not believe that any of our old dramatists has knowingly left us a single imperfect verse. Seeing in what a haphazard way and in how mutilated a form their plays have mostly reached us, we should attribute such _faults_ (as a geologist would call them) to anything rather than to the deliberate design of the poets. Marlowe and Shakespeare, the two best metrists among them, have given us a standard by which to measure what licenses they took in versification,--the one in his translations, the other in his poems. The unmanageable verses in Milton are very few, and all of them occur in works printed after his blindness had lessened the chances of supervision and increased those of error. There are only two, indeed, which seem to me wholly indigestible as they stand. These are, "Burnt after them to the bottomless pit," and "With them from bliss to the bottomless deep." This certainly looks like a case where a word had dropped out or had been stricken out by some proof-reader who limited the number of syllables in a pentameter verse by that of his finger-ends. Mr. Masson notices only the first of these lines, and says that to make it regular by accenting the word _bottomless_ on the second syllable would be "too horrible." Certainly not, if Milton so accented it, any more than _blasphémous_ and twenty more which sound oddly to us now. However that may be, Milton could not have intended to close not only a period, but a paragraph also, with an unmusical verse, and in the only other passage where the word occurs it is accented as now on the first syllable: "With hideous ruin and combustion down To bottomless perdition, there to dwell." As _bottom_ is a word which, like _bosom_ and _besom_, may be monosyllabic or dissyllabic according to circumstances, I am persuaded that the last passage quoted (and all three refer to the same event) gives us the word wanting in the two others, and that Milton wrote, or meant to write,-- "Burnt after them down to the bottomless pit," which leaves in the verse precisely the kind of ripple that Milton liked best.[381] Much of what Mr. Masson says in his Introduction of the way in which the verses of Milton should be read is judicious enough, though some of the examples he gives, of the "comicality" which would ensue from compressing every verse into an exact measure of ten syllables, are based on a surprising ignorance of the laws which guided our poets just before and during Milton's time in the structure of their verses. Thus he seems to think that a strict scansion would require us in the verses "So he with difficulty and labor hard," and "Carnation, purple, azure, or specked with gold," to pronounce _diffikty_ and _purp'_. Though Mr. Masson talks of "slurs and elisions," his ear would seem somewhat insensible to their exact nature or office. His _diffikty_ supposes a hiatus where none is intended, and his making _purple_ of one syllable wrecks the whole verse, the real slur in the latter case being on _azure or_.[382] When he asks whether Milton required "these pronunciations in his verse," no positive answer can be given, but I very much doubt whether he would have thought that some of the lines Mr. Masson cites "remain perfectly good Blank Verse even with the most leisurely natural enunciation of the spare syllable," and I am sure he would have stared if told that "the number of accents" in a pentameter verse was "variable." It may be doubted whether elisions and compressions which would be thought in bad taste or even vulgar now were more abhorrent to the ears of Milton's generation than to a cultivated Italian would be the hearing Dante read as prose. After all, what Mr. Masson says may be reduced to the infallible axiom that poetry should be read as poetry. Mr. Masson seems to be right in his main principles, but the examples he quotes make one doubt whether he knows what a verse is. For example, he thinks it would be a "horror," if in the verse "That invincible Samson far renowned" we should lay the stress on the first syllable of _invincible_. It is hard to see why this should be worse than _cónventicle_ or _rémonstrance_ or _súccessor_ or _incómpatible_, (the three latter used by the correct Daniel) or why Mr. Masson should clap an accent on _surfàce_ merely because it comes at the end of a verse, and deny it to _ínvincible_. If one read the verse just cited with those that go with it, he will find that the accent _must_ come on the first syllable of _invincible_ or else the whole passage becomes chaos.[383] Should we refuse to say _obleeged_ with Pope because the fashion has changed? From its apparently greater freedom in skilful hands, blank-verse gives more scope to sciolistic theorizing and dogmatism than the rhyming pentameter couplet, but it is safe to say that no verse is good in the one that would not be good in the other when handled by a master like Dryden. Milton, like other great poets, wrote some bad verses, and it is wiser to confess that they are so than to conjure up some unimaginable reason why the reader should accept them as the better for their badness. Such a bad verse is "Rocks, caves, lakes, _fens_, bogs, _dens_ and shapes of death," which might be cited to illustrate Pope's "And ten low words oft creep in one dull line." Milton cannot certainly be taxed with any partiality for low words. He rather loved them tall, as the Prussian King loved men to be six feet high in their stockings, and fit to go into the grenadiers. He loved them as much for their music as for their meaning,--perhaps more. His style, therefore, when it has to deal with commoner things, is apt to grow a little cumbrous and unwieldy. A Persian poet says that when the owl would boast he boasts of catching mice at the edge of a hole. Shakespeare would have understood this. Milton would have made him talk like an eagle. His influence is not to be left out of account as partially contributing to that decline toward poetic diction which was already beginning ere he died. If it would not be fair to say that he is the most artistic, he may be called in the highest sense the most scientific of our poets. If to Spenser younger poets have gone to be sung-to, they have sat at the feet of Milton to be taught. Our language has no finer poem than "Samson Agonistes," if any so fine in the quality of austere dignity or in the skill with which the poet's personal experience is generalized into a classic tragedy. Gentle as Milton's earlier portraits would seem to show him, he had in him by nature, or bred into him by fate, something of the haughty and defiant self-assertion of Dante and Michel Angelo. In no other English author is the man so large a part of his works. Milton's haughty conception of himself enters into all he says and does. Always the necessity of this one man became that of the whole human race for the moment. There were no walls so sacred but must go to the ground when _he_ wanted elbow-room; and he wanted a great deal. Did Mary Powell, the cavalier's daughter, find the abode of a roundhead schoolmaster _incompatible_ and leave it, forthwith the cry of the universe was for an easier dissolution of the marriage covenant. If _he_ is blind, it is with excess of light, it is a divine partiality, an over-shadowing with angels' wings. Phineus and Teiresias are admitted among the prophets because they, too, had lost their sight, and the blindness of Homer is of more account than his Iliad. After writing in rhyme till he was past fifty, he finds it unsuitable for his epic, and it at once becomes "the invention of a barbarous age to set off wretched matter and lame metre." If the structure of _his_ mind be undramatic, why, then, the English drama is naught, learned Jonson, sweetest Shakespeare, and the rest notwithstanding, and he will compose a tragedy on a Greek model with the blinded Samson for its hero, and he will compose it partly in rhyme. Plainly he belongs to the intenser kind of men whose yesterdays are in no way responsible for their to-morrows. And this makes him perennially interesting even to those who hate his politics, despise his Socinianism, and find his greatest poem a bore. A new edition of his poems is always welcome, for, as he is really great, he presents a fresh side to each new student, and Mr. Masson, in his three handsome volumes, has given us, with much that is superfluous and even erroneous, much more that is a solid and permanent acquisition to our knowledge. It results from the almost scornful withdrawal of Milton into the fortress of his absolute personality that no great poet is so uniformly self-conscious as he. We should say of Shakespeare that he had the power of transforming himself into everything; of Milton, that he had that of transforming everything into himself. Dante is individual rather than self-conscious, and he, the cast-iron man, grows pliable as a field of grain at the breath of Beatrice, and flows away in waves of sunshine. But Milton never let himself go for a moment. As other poets are possessed by their theme, so is he _self_-possessed, his great theme being John Milton, and his great duty that of interpreter between him and the world. I say it with all respect, for he was well worthy translation, and it is out of Hebrew that the version is made. Pope says he makes God the Father reason "like a school divine." The criticism is witty, but inaccurate. He makes Deity a mouthpiece for his present theology, and had the poem been written a few years later, the Almighty would have become more heterodox. Since Dante, no one had stood on these visiting terms with heaven. Now it is precisely this audacity of self-reliance, I suspect, which goes far toward making the sublime, and which, falling by a hair's-breadth short thereof, makes the ridiculous. Puritanism showed both the strength and weakness of its prophetic nurture; enough of the latter to be scoffed out of England by the very men it had conquered in the field, enough of the former to intrench itself in three or four immortal memories. It has left an abiding mark in politics and religion, but its great monuments are the prose of Bunyan and the verse of Milton. It is a high inspiration to be the neighbor of great events; to have been a partaker in them and to have seen noble purposes by their own self-confidence become the very means of ignoble ends, if it do not wholly depress, may kindle a passion of regret deepening the song which dares not tell the reason of its sorrow. The grand loneliness of Milton in his latter years, while it makes him the most impressive figure in our literary history, is reflected also in his maturer poems by a sublime independence of human sympathy like that with which mountains fascinate and rebuff us. But it is idle to talk of the loneliness of one the habitual companions of whose mind were the Past and Future. I always seem to see him leaning in his blindness a hand on the shoulder of each, sure that the one will guard the song which the other had inspired. Footnotes: [358] The Life of John Milton: narrated in Connection with the Political, Ecclesiastical, and Literary History of his Time. By David Masterson, M.D., LL.D. Professor of Rhetoric and English Literature in the University of Edinburgh. Vols. I., II. 1638-1643. London and New York: Macmillan & Co. 1871. 8vo. pp. xii, 608. The Poetical Works of John Milton, edited, with Introduction, Notes and an Essay on Milton's English by David Masson, M.A., LL.D. Professor of Rhetoric and English Literature in the University of Edinburgh. 3 vols. 8vo. Macmillan & Co. 1874. [359] Book I. 562-567. [360] Ibid., 615-618. [361] Apology for Smectymnuus. [362] "For him I was not sent, nor yet to free That people, victor once, now vile and base, Deservedly made vassal."--P.R. IV. 131-133. [363] If things are to be scanned so micrologically, what weighty inferences might not be drawn from Mr. Masson's invariably printing [Greek: _apax legomena_!] [364] "That you may tell heroës, when you come To banquet with your wife." _Chapman's Odyssey_, VIII. 336, 337. In the facsimile of the sonnet to Fairfax I find "Thy firm unshak'n vertue ever brings," which shows how much faith we need give to the apostrophe. [365] Mr. Masson might have cited a good example of this from Drummond, whom (as a Scotsman) he is fond of quoting for an authority in English,-- "Sleep, Silence' child, sweet father of soft rest." The survival of _Horse_ for _horses_ is another example. So by a reverse process _pult_ and _shay_ have been vulgarly deduced from the supposed plurals _pulse_ and _chaise_. [366] Chapman's spelling is presumably his own. At least he looked after his printed texts. I have two copies of his "Byron's Conspiracy," both dated 1608, but one evidently printed later than the other, for it shows corrections. The more solemn ending in _ed_ was probably kept alive by the reading of the Bible in churches. Though now dropped by the clergy, it is essential to the right hearing of the more metrical passages in the Old Testament, which are finer and more scientiflc than anything in the language, unless it be some parts of "Samson Agonistes." I remember an old gentleman who always used the contracted form of the participle in conversation, but always gave it back its embezzled syllable in reading. Sir Thomas Browne seems to have preferred the more solemn form. At any rate he has the spelling _empuzzeled_ in prose. [367] He thinks the same of the variation _strook_ and _struck_, though they were probably pronounced alike. In Marlowe's "Faustus" two consecutive sentences (in prose) begin with the words "Cursed be he that struck." In a note on the passage Mr. Dyce tells us that the old editions (there were three) have _stroke_ and _strooke_ in the first instance, and all agree on _strucke_ in the second. No inference can be drawn from such casualties. [368] The lines are _not_ "from one of the Satires," and Milton made them worse by misquoting and bringing _love_ jinglingly near to _grove_. Hall's verse (in his Satires) is always vigorous and often harmonious. He long before Milton spoke of rhyme almost in the very terms of the preface to Paradise Lost. [369] Mr. Masson goes so far as to conceive it possible that Milton may have committed the vulgarism of leaving a _t_ out of _slep'st_, "for ease of sound." Yet the poet could bear _boast'st_ and--one stares and gasps at it--_doat'dst_. There is, by the way, a familiar passage in which the _ch_ sound predominates, not without a touch of _sh_, in a single couplet:-- "Can any mortal mixture of earth's mould Breathe su_ch_ divine enchanting ravi_sh_ment?" So "Blotches and blains must all his flesh emboss," and perhaps "I see his tents Pitched about Sechem" might be added. [370] I think Coleridge's nice ear would have blamed the nearness of _enemy_ and _calamity_ in this passage. Mr. Masson leaves out the comma after _If not_, the pause of which is needful, I think, to the sense, and certainly to keep _not_ a little farther apart from _what_, ("teach each"!) [371] "First in his East," is not soothing to the ear. [372] There seems to be something wrong in this word _shores_. Did Milton write _shoals_? [373] But his etymological notes are worse. For example, "_recreant_, renouncing the faith, from the old French _recroire_, which again is from the mediaeval Latin _recredere_, to 'believe back,' or apostatize." This is pure fancy. The word had no such meaning in either language. He derives _serenate_ from _sera_, and says that _parle_ means treaty, negotiation, though it is the same word as _parley_, had the same meanings, and was commonly pronounced like it, as in Marlowe's "What, shall we _parlé_ with this Christïan?" It certainly never meant _treaty_, though it may have meant _negotiation_. When it did it implied the meeting face to face of the principals. On the verses "And some flowers and some bays For thy hearse to strew the ways," he has a note to tell us that _hearse_ is not to be taken "in our sense of a carriage for the dead, but in the older sense of a tomb or framework over a tomb," though the obvious meaning is "to strew the ways for thy hearse." How could one do that for a tomb or the framework over it? [374] A passage from Dante (Inferno, XI. 96-105), with its reference to Aristotle, would have given him the meaning of "Nature taught art," which seems to puzzle him. A study of Dante and of his earlier commentators would also have been of great service in the astronomical notes. [375] Almost every combination of two vowels might in those days be a diphthong or not, at will. Milton's practice of elision was confirmed and sometimes (perhaps) modified by his study of the Italians, with whose usage in this respect he closely conforms. [376] Letter to Rev. W. Bagot, 4th January, 1791. [377] So Dante:-- "Ma sapienza e amore e virtute." So Donne:-- "Simony and sodomy in churchmen's lives." [378] Mr. Masson is evidently not very familiar at first hand with the versification to which Milton's youthful ear had been trained, but seems to have learned something from Abbott's "Shakespearian Grammar" in the interval between writing his notes and his Introduction. Walker's "Shakespeare's Versification" would have been a great help to him in default of original knowledge. [379] Milton has a verse in Comus where the _e_ is elided from the word _sister_ by its preceding a vowel:-- "Heaven keep my sister! again, again, and near!" This would have been impossible before a consonant. [380] So _spirito_ and _spirto_ in Italian, _esperis_ and _espirs_ in Old French. [381] Milton, however, would not have balked at _th' bottomless_ any more than Drayton at _th' rejected_ or Donne at _th' sea_. Mr. Masson does not seem to understand this elision, for he corrects _i' th' midst_ to _i' the midst_, and takes pains to mention it in a note. He might better have restored the _n_ in _i'_, where it is no contraction, but merely indicates the pronunciation, as _o'_ for _of_ and _on_. [382] Exactly analogous to that in treasurer when it is shortened to two syllables. [383] Milton himself has _ínvísible_, for we cannot suppose him guilty of a verse like "Shoots invisible virtue even to the deep," while, if read rightly, it has just one of those sweeping elisions that he loved. KEATS. There are few poets whose works contain slighter hints of their personal history than those of Keats; yet there are, perhaps, even fewer whose real lives, or rather the conditions upon which they lived, are more clearly traceable in what they have written. To write the life of a man was formerly understood to mean the cataloguing and placing of circumstances, of those things which stood about the life and were more or less related to it, but were not the life itself. But Biography from day to day holds dates cheaper and facts dearer. A man's life, so far as its outward events are concerned, may be made for him, as his clothes are by the tailor, of this cut or that, of finer or coarser material; but the gait and gesture show through, and give to trappings, in themselves characterless, an individuality that belongs to the man himself. It is those essential facts which underlie the life and make the individual man that are of importance, and it is the cropping out of these upon the surface that gives us indications by which to judge of the true nature hidden below. Every man has his block given him, and the figure he cuts will depend very much upon the shape of that,--upon the knots and twists which existed in it from the beginning. We were designed in the cradle, perhaps earlier, and it is in finding out this design, and shaping ourselves to it, that our years are spent wisely. It is the vain endeavor to make ourselves what we are not that has strewn history with so many broken purposes and lives left in the rough. Keats hardly lived long enough to develop a well-outlined character, for that results commonly from the resistance made by temperament to the many influences by which the world, as it may happen then to be, endeavors to mould every one in its own image. What his temperament was we can see clearly, and also that it subordinated itself more and more to the discipline of art. * * * * * John Keats, the second of four children, like Chaucer and Spenser, was a Londoner, but, unlike them, he was certainly not of gentle blood. Lord Houghton, who seems to have had a kindly wish to create him gentleman by brevet, says that he was "born in the upper ranks of the middle class." This shows a commendable tenderness for the nerves of English society, and reminds one of Northcote's story of the violin-player who, wishing to compliment his pupil, George III., divided all fiddlers into three classes,--those who could not play at all, those who played very badly, and those who played very well,--assuring his Majesty that he had made such commendable progress as to have already reached the second rank. We shall not be too greatly shocked by knowing that the father of Keats (as Lord Houghton had told us in an earlier biography) "was employed in the establishment of Mr. Jennings, the proprietor of large livery-stables on the Pavement in Moorfields, nearly opposite the entrance into Finsbury Circus." So that, after all, it was not so bad; for, first, Mr. Jennings was a _proprietor_; second, he was the proprietor of an _establishment_; third, he was the proprietor of a _large_ establishment; and fourth, this large establishment was _nearly_ opposite Finsbury Circus,--a name which vaguely dilates the imagination with all sorts of potential grandeurs. It is true Leigh Hunt asserts that Keats "was a little too sensitive on the score of his origin,"[384] but we can find no trace of such a feeling either in his poetry or in such of his letters as have been printed. We suspect the fact to have been that he resented with becoming pride the vulgar Blackwood and Quarterly standard, which measured genius by genealogies. It is enough that his poetical pedigree is of the best, tracing through Spenser to Chaucer, and that Pegasus does not stand at livery even in the largest establishments in Moorfields. As well as we can make out, then, the father of Keats was a groom in the service of Mr. Jennings, and married the daughter of his master. Thus, on the mother's side, at least, we find a grandfather, on the father's there is no hint of such an ancestor, and we must charitably take him for granted. It is of more importance that the elder Keats was a man of sense and energy, and that his wife was a "lively and intelligent woman, who hastened the birth of the poet by her passionate love of amusement," bringing him into the world, a seven-months' child, on the 29th October, 1795, instead of the 29th of December, as would have been conventionally proper. Lord Houghton describes her as "tall, with a large oval face, and a somewhat saturnine demeanour." This last circumstance does not agree very well with what he had just before told us of her liveliness, but he consoles us by adding that "she succeeded, _however_, in inspiring her children with the profoundest affection." This was particularly true of John, who once, when between four and five years old, mounted guard at her chamber door with an old sword, when she was ill and the doctor had ordered her not to be disturbed.[385] In 1804, Keats being in his ninth year, his father was killed by a fall from his horse. His mother seems to have been ambitious for her children, and there was some talk of sending John to Harrow. Fortunately this plan was thought too expensive, and he was sent instead to the school of Mr. Clarke at Enfield with his brothers. A maternal uncle, who had distinguished himself by his courage under Duncan at Camperdown, was the hero of his nephews, and they went to school resolved to maintain the family reputation for courage. John was always fighting, and was chiefly noted among his school-fellows as a strange compound of pluck and sensibility. He attacked an usher who had boxed his brother's ears; and when his mother died, in 1810, was moodily inconsolable, hiding himself for several days in a nook under the master's desk, and refusing all comfort from teacher or friend. He was popular at school, as boys of spirit always are, and impressed his companions with a sense of his power. They thought he would one day be a famous soldier. This may have been owing to the stories he told them of the heroic uncle, whose deeds, we may be sure, were properly famoused by the boy Homer, and whom they probably took for an admiral at the least, as it would have been well for Keats's literary prosperity if he had been. At any rate, they thought John would be a great man, which is the main thing, for the public opinion of the playground is truer and more discerning than that of the world, and if you tell us what the boy was, we will tell you what the man longs to be, however he may be repressed by necessity or fear of the police reports. Lord Houghton has failed to discover anything else especially worthy of record in the school-life of Keats. He translated the twelve books of the Aeneid, read Robinson Crusoe and the Incas of Peru, and looked into Shakespeare. He left school in 1810, with little Latin and no Greek, but he had studied Spence's Polymetis, Tooke's Pantheon, and Lempriere's Dictionary, and knew gods, nymphs, and heroes, which were quite as good company perhaps for him as artists and aspirates. It is pleasant to fancy the horror of those respectable writers if their pages could suddenly have become alive tinder their pens with all that the young poet saw in them.[386] On leaving school he was apprenticed for five years to a surgeon at Edmonton. His master was a Mr. Hammond, "of some eminence" in his profession, as Lord Houghton takes care to assure us. The place was of more importance than the master, for its neighborhood to Enfield enabled him to keep up his intimacy with the family of his former teacher, Mr. Clarke, and to borrow books of them. In 1812, when he was in his seventeenth year, Mr. Charles Cowden Clarke lent him the "Faerie Queene." Nothing that is told of Orpheus or Amphion is more wonderful than this miracle of Spenser's, transforming a surgeon's apprentice into a great poet. Keats learned at once the secret of his birth, and henceforward his indentures ran to Apollo instead of Mr. Hammond. Thus could the Muse defend her son. It is the old story,--the lost heir discovered by his aptitude for what is gentle and knightly. Haydon tells us "that he used sometimes to say to his brother he feared he should never be a poet, and if he was not he would destroy himself." This was perhaps a half-conscious reminiscence of Chatterton, with whose genius and fate he had an intense sympathy, it may be from an inward foreboding of the shortness of his own career.[387] Before long we find him studying Chaucer, then Shakespeare, and afterward Milton. But Chapman's translations had a more abiding influence on his style both for good and evil. That he read wisely, his comments on the "Paradise Lost" are enough to prove. He now also commenced poet himself, but does not appear to have neglected the study of his profession. He was a youth of energy and purpose, and though he no doubt penned many a stanza when he should have been anatomizing, and walked the hospitals accompanied by the early gods, nevertheless passed a very creditable examination in 1817. In the spring of this year, also, he prepared to take his first degree as poet, and accordingly published a small volume containing a selection of his earlier essays in verse. It attracted little attention, and the rest of this year seems to have been occupied with a journey on foot in Scotland, and the composition of "Endymion," which was published in 1818. Milton's "Tetrachordon" was not better abused; but Milton's assailants were unorganized, and were obliged each to print and pay for his own dingy little quarto, trusting to the natural laws of demand and supply to furnish him with readers. Keats was arraigned by the constituted authorities of literary justice. They might be, nay, they were Jeffrieses and Scroggses, but the sentence was published, and the penalty inflicted before all England. The difference between his fortune and Milton's was that between being pelted by a mob of personal enemies and being set in the pillory. In the first case, the annoyance brushes off mostly with the mud; in the last, there is no solace but the consciousness of suffering in a great cause. This solace, to a certain extent, Keats had; for his ambition was noble, and he hoped not to make a great reputation, but to be a great poet. Haydon says that Wordsworth and Keats were the only men he had ever seen who looked conscious of a lofty purpose. It is curious that men should resent more fiercely what they suspect to be good verses, than what they know to be bad morals. Is it because they feel themselves incapable of the one and not of the other? Probably a certain amount of honest loyalty to old idols in danger of dethronement is to be taken into account, and quite as much of the cruelty of criticism is due to want of thought as to deliberate injustice. However it be, the best poetry has been the most savagely attacked, and men who scrupulously practised the Ten Commandments as if there were never a _not_ in any of them, felt every sentiment of their better nature outraged by the "Lyrical Ballads." It is idle to attempt to show that Keats did not suffer keenly from the vulgarities of Blackwood and the Quarterly. He suffered in proportion as his ideal was high, and he was conscious of falling below it. In England, especially, it is not pleasant to be ridiculous, even if you are a lord; but to be ridiculous and an apothecary at the same time is almost as bad as it was formerly to be excommunicated. _A priori_, there was something absurd in poetry written by the son of an assistant in the livery-stables of Mr. Jennings, even though they were an establishment, and a large establishment, and nearly opposite Finsbury Circus. Mr. Gifford, the ex-cobbler, thought so in the Quarterly, and Mr. Terry, the actor,[388] thought so even more distinctly in Blackwood, bidding the young apothecary "back to his gallipots!" It is not pleasant to be talked down upon by your inferiors who happen to have the advantage of position, nor to be drenched with ditchwater, though you know it to be thrown by a scullion in a garret. Keats, as his was a temperament in which sensibility was excessive, could not but be galled by this treatment. He was galled the more that he was also a man of strong sense, and capable of understanding clearly how hard it is to make men acknowledge solid value in a person whom they have once heartily laughed at. Reputation is in itself only a farthing-candle, of wavering and uncertain flame, and easily blown out, but it is the light by which the world looks for and finds merit. Keats longed for fame, but longed above all to deserve it. To his friend Taylor he writes, "There is but one way for me. The road lies through study, application, and thought." Thrilling with the electric touch of sacred leaves, he saw in vision, like Dante, that small procession of the elder poets to which only elect centuries can add another laurelled head. Might he, too, deserve from posterity the love and reverence which he paid to those antique glories? It was no unworthy ambition, but everything was against him,--birth, health, even friends, since it was partly on their account that he was sneered at. His very name stood in his way, for Fame loves best such, syllables as are sweet and sonorous on the tongue, like Spenserian, Shakespearian. In spite of Juliet, there is a great deal in names, and when the fairies come with their gifts to the cradle of the selected child, let one, wiser than the rest, choose a name for him from which well-sounding derivatives can be made, and, best of all, with a termination in _on_. Men judge the current coin of opinion by the ring, and are readier to take without question whatever is Platonic, Baconian, Newtonian, Johnsonian, Washingtonian, Jeffersonian, Napoleonic, and all the rest. You cannot make a good adjective out of Keats,--the more pity,--and to say a thing is _Keatsy_ is to contemn it. Fortune likes fine names. Haydon tells us that Keats was very much depressed by the fortunes of his book. This was natural enough, but he took it all in a manly way, and determined to revenge himself by writing better poetry. He knew that activity, and not despondency, is the true counterpoise to misfortune. Haydon is sure of the change in his spirits, because he would come to the painting-room and sit silent for hours. But we rather think that the conversation, where Mr. Haydon was, resembled that in a young author's first play, where the other interlocutors are only brought in as convenient points for the hero to hitch the interminable web of his monologue upon. Besides, Keats had been continuing his education this year, by a course of Elgin marbles and pictures by the great Italians, and might very naturally have found little to say about Mr. Haydon's extensive works, that he would have cared to hear. Lord Houghton, on the other hand, in his eagerness to prove that Keats was not killed by the article in the Quarterly, is carried too far toward the opposite extreme, and more than hints that he was not even hurt by it. This would have been true of Wordsworth, who, by a constant companionship with mountains, had acquired something of their manners, but was simply impossible to a man of Keats's temperament. On the whole, perhaps, we need not respect Keats the less for having been gifted with sensibility, and may even say what we believe to be true, that his health was injured by the failure of his book. A man cannot have a sensuous nature and be pachydermatous at the same time, and if he be imaginative as well as sensuous, he suffers just in proportion to the amount of his imagination. It is perfectly true that what we call the world, in these affairs, is nothing more than a mere Brocken spectre, the projected shadow of ourselves; but as long as we do not know it, it is a very passable giant. We are not without experience of natures so purely intellectual that their bodies had no more concern in their mental doings and sufferings than a house has with the good or ill fortune of its occupant. But poets are not built on this plan, and especially poets like Keats, in whom the moral seems to have so perfectly interfused the physical man, that you might almost say he could feel sorrow with his hands, so truly did his body, like that of Donne's Mistress Boulstred, think and remember and forebode. The healthiest poet of whom our civilization has been capable says that when he beholds "desert a beggar born, And strength by limping sway disabled, And art made tongue-tied by authority," alluding, plainly enough, to the Giffords of his day, "And simple truth miscalled simplicity," as it was long afterward in Wordsworth's case, "And captive Good attending Captain Ill," that then even he, the poet to whom, of all others, life seems to have been dearest, as it was also the fullest of enjoyment, "tired of all these," had nothing for it but to cry for "restful Death." Keats, to all appearance, accepted his ill fortune courageously. He certainly did not overestimate "Endymion," and perhaps a sense of humor which was not wanting in him may have served as a buffer against the too importunate shock of disappointment. "He made Ritchie promise," says Haydon, "he would carry his 'Endymion' to the great desert of Sahara and fling it in the midst." On the 9th October, 1818, he writes to his publisher, Mr. Hessey, "I cannot but feel indebted to those gentlemen who have taken my part. As for the rest, I begin to get acquainted with my own strength and weakness. Praise or blame has but a momentary effect on the man whose love of beauty in the abstract makes him a severe critic of his own works. My own domestic criticism has given me pain without comparison beyond what Blackwood or the Quarterly could inflict; and also, when I feel I am right, no external praise can give me such a glow as my own solitary reperception and ratification of what is fine. J.S. is perfectly right in regard to 'the slipshod Endymion.' That it is so is no fault of mine. No! though it may sound a little paradoxical, it is as good as I had power to make it by myself. Had I been nervous about its being a perfect piece, and with that view asked advice and trembled over every page, it would not have been written; for it is not in my nature to fumble. I will write independently. I have written independently _without judgment_. I may write independently and _with judgment_, hereafter. The Genius of Poetry must work out its own salvation in a man. It cannot be matured by law and precept, but by sensation and watchfulness in itself. That which is creative must create itself. In 'Endymion' I leaped headlong into the sea, and thereby have become better acquainted with the soundings, the quicksands, and the rocks, than if I had stayed upon the green shore, and piped a silly pipe, and took tea and comfortable advice. I was never afraid of failure; for I would sooner fail than not be among the greatest." This was undoubtedly true, and it was naturally the side which a large-minded person would display to a friend. This is what he thought, but whether it was what he _felt_, I think doubtful. I look upon it rather as one of the phenomena of that multanimous nature of the poet, which makes him for the moment that of which he has an intellectual perception. Elsewhere he says something which seems to hint at the true state of the case. "I must think that difficulties nerve the spirit of a man: _they make our prime objects a refuge as well as a passion_." One cannot help contrasting Keats with Wordsworth,--the one altogether poet; the other essentially a Wordsworth, with the poetic faculty added,--the one shifting from form to form, and from style to style, and pouring his hot throbbing life into every mould; the other remaining always the individual, producing works, and not so much living in his poems as memorially recording his life in them. When Wordsworth alludes to the foolish criticisms on his writings, he speaks serenely and generously of Wordsworth the poet, as if he were an unbiassed third person, who takes up the argument merely in the interest of literature. He towers into a bald egotism which is quite above and beyond selfishness. Poesy was his employment; it was Keats's very existence, and he felt the rough treatment of his verses as if it had been the wounding of a limb. To Wordsworth, composing was a healthy exercise, his slow pulse and imperturbable self trust gave him assurance of a life so long that he could wait, and when we read his poems we should never suspect the existence in him of any sense but that of observation, as if Wordsworth the poet were a half-mad land-surveyor, accompanied by Mr. Wordsworth the distributor of stamps, as a kind of keeper. But every one of Keats's poems was a sacrifice of vitality, a virtue went away from him into every one of them; even yet, as we turn the leaves, they seem to warm and thrill our fingers with the flush of his fine senses, and the flutter of his electrical nerves, and we do not wonder he felt that what he did was to be done swiftly. In the mean time his younger brother languished and died, his elder seems to have been in some way unfortunate and had gone to America, and Keats himself showed symptoms of the hereditary disease which caused his death at last. It is in October, 1818, that we find the first allusion to a passion which was, erelong, to consume him It is plain enough beforehand, that those were not moral or mental graces that should attract a man like Keats. His intellect was satisfied and absorbed by his art, his books, and his friends He could have companionship and appreciation from men; what he craved of woman was only repose. That luxurious nature, which would have tossed uneasily on a crumpled rose leaf, must have something softer to rest upon than intellect, something less ethereal than culture. It was his body that needed to have its equilibrium restored, the waste of his nervous energy that must be repaired by deep draughts of the overflowing life and drowsy tropical force of an abundant and healthily poised womanhood. Writing to his sister-in-law, he says of this nameless person: "She is not a Cleopatra, but is, at least, a Charmian; she has a rich Eastern look; she has fine eyes and fine manners. When she comes into a room she makes the same impression as the beauty of a leopardess. She is too fine and too conscious of herself to repulse any man who may address her. From habit, she thinks that _nothing particular_. I always find myself at ease with such a woman; the picture before me always gives me a life and animation which I cannot possibly feel with anything inferior. I am at such times too much occupied in admiring to be awkward or in a tremble. I forget myself entirely, because I live in her. You will by this time think I am in love with her, so, before I go any farther, I will tell you that I am not. She kept me awake one night, as a tune of Mozart's might do. I speak of the thing as a pastime and an amusement, than which I can feel none deeper than a conversation with an imperial woman, the very _yes_ and _no_ of whose life is to me a banquet.... I like her and her like, because one has no _sensation_; what we both are is taken for granted.... She walks across a room in such a manner that a man is drawn toward her with magnetic power.... I believe, though, she has faults, the same as a Cleopatra or a Charmian might have had. Yet she is a fine thing, speaking in a worldly way; for there are two distinct tempers of mind in which we judge of things,--the worldly, theatrical, and pantomimical; and the unearthly, spiritual, and ethereal. In the former, Bonaparte, Lord Byron, and this Charmian hold the first place in our minds; in the latter, John Howard, Bishop Hooker rocking his child's cradle, and you, my dear sister, are the conquering feelings. As a man of the world, I love the rich talk of a Charmian; as an eternal being, I love the thought of you. I should like her to ruin me, and I should like you to save me." It is pleasant always to see Love hiding his head with such pains, while his whole body is so clearly visible, as in this extract. This lady, it seems, is not a Cleopatra, only a Charmian; but presently we find that she is imperial. He does not love her, but he would just like to be ruined by her, nothing more. This glimpse of her, with her leopardess beauty, crossing the room and drawing men after her magnetically, is all we have. She seems to have been still living in 1848, and as Lord Houghton tells us, kept the memory of the poet sacred. "She is an East-Indian," Keats says, "and ought to be her grandfather's heir." Her name we do not know. It appears from Dilke's "Papers of a Critic" that they were betrothed: "It is quite a settled thing between John Keats and Miss ----. God help them. It is a bad thing for them. The mother says she cannot prevent it, and that her only hope is that it will go off. He don't like any one to look at her or to speak to her." Alas, the tropical warmth became a consuming fire! "His passion cruel grown took on a hue Fierce and sanguineous." Between this time and the spring of 1820 he seems to have worked assiduously. Of course, worldly success was of more importance than ever. He began "Hyperion," but had given it up in September, 1819, because, as he said, "there were too many Miltonic inversions in it." He wrote "Lamia" after an attentive study of Dryden's versification. This period also produced the "Eve of St. Agnes," "Isabella," and the odes to the "Nightingale" and to the "Grecian Urn." He studied Italian, read Ariosto, and wrote part of a humorous poem, "The Cap and Bells." He tried his hand at tragedy, and Lord Houghton has published among his "Remains," "Otho the Great," and all that was ever written of "King Stephen." We think he did unwisely, for a biographer is hardly called upon to show how ill his _biographee_ could do anything. In the winter of 1820 he was chilled in riding on the top of a stage-coach, and came home in a state of feverish excitement. He was persuaded to go to bed, and in getting between the cold sheets, coughed slightly. "That is blood in my mouth," he said; "bring me the candle; let me see this blood." It was of a brilliant red, and his medical knowledge enabled him to interpret the augury. Those narcotic odors that seem to breathe seaward, and steep in repose the senses of the voyager who is drifting toward the shore of the mysterious Other World, appeared to envelop him, and, looking up with sudden calmness, he said, "I know the color of that blood; it is arterial blood; I cannot be deceived in that color. That drop is my death-warrant; I must die." There was a slight rally during the summer of that year, but toward autumn he grew worse again, and it was decided that he should go to Italy. He was accompanied thither by his friend, Mr. Severn, an artist. After embarking, he wrote to his friend, Mr. Brown. We give a part of this letter, which is so deeply tragic that the sentences we take almost seem to break away from the rest with a cry of anguish, like the branches of Dante's lamentable wood. "I wish to write on subjects that will not agitate me much. There is one I must mention and have done with it. Even if my body would recover of itself, this would prevent it. The very thing which I want to live most for will be a great occasion of my death. I cannot help it. Who can help it? Were I in health it would make me ill, and how can I bear it in my state? I dare say you will be able to guess on what subject I am harping,--you know what was my greatest pain during the first part of my illness at your house I wish for death every day and night to deliver me from these pains, and then I wish death away, for death would destroy even those pains, which are better than nothing. Land and sea, weakness and decline, are great separators, but Death is the great divorcer forever. When the pang of this thought has passed through my mind, I may say the bitterness of death is passed. I often wish for you, that you might flatter me with the best. I think, without my mentioning it, for my sake, you would be a, friend to Miss ---- when I am dead. You think she has many faults, but for my sake think she has not one. If there is anything you can do for her by word or deed I know you will do it. I am in a state at present in which woman, merely as woman, can have no more power over me than stocks and stones, and yet the difference of my sensations with respect to Miss ---- and my sister is amazing,--the one seems to absorb the other to a degree incredible. I seldom think of my brother and sister in America; the thought of leaving Miss ---- is beyond everything horrible,--the sense of darkness coming over me,--I eternally see her figure eternally vanishing, some of the phrases she was in the habit of using during my last nursing at Wentworth Place ring in my ears. Is there another life? Shall I awake and find all this a dream? There must be; we cannot be created for this sort of suffering." To the same friend he writes again from Naples, 1st November, 1820:-- "The persuasion that I shall see her no more will kill me. My dear Brown, I should have had her when I was in health, and I should have remained well. I can bear to die,--I cannot bear to leave her. O God! God! God! Everything I have in my trunks that reminds me of her goes through me like a spear. The silk lining she put in my travelling-cap scalds my head. My imagination is horribly vivid about her,--I see her, I hear her. There is nothing in the world of sufficient interest to divert me from her a moment. This was the case when I was in England, I cannot recollect, without shuddering, the time that I was a prisoner at Hunt's, and used to keep my eyes fixed on Hampstead all day. Then there was a good hope of seeing her again,--now!--O that I could be buried near where she lives! I am afraid to write to her, to receive a letter from her,--to see her handwriting would break my heart. Even to hear of her anyhow, to see her name written, would be more than I can bear. My dear Brown, what am I to do? Where can I look for consolation or ease? If I had any chance of recovery, this passion would kill me. Indeed, through the whole of my illness, both at your house and at Kentish Town, this fever has never ceased wearing me out." The two friends went almost immediately from Naples to Rome, where Keats was treated with great kindness by the distinguished physician, Dr. (afterward Sir James) Clark.[389] But there was no hope from the first. His disease was beyond remedy, as his heart was beyond comfort. The very fact that life might be happy deepened his despair. He might not have sunk so soon, but the waves in which he was struggling looked only the blacker that they were shone upon by the signal-torch that promised safety and love and rest. It is good to know that one of Keats's last pleasures was in hearing Severn read aloud from a volume of Jeremy Taylor. On first coming to Rome, he had bought a copy of Alfieri, but, finding on the second page these lines, "Misera me! sollievo a me non resta Altro che il pianto, ed il pianto é delitto," he laid down the book and opened it no more. On the 14th February, 1821, Severn speaks of a change that had taken place in him toward greater quietness and peace. He talked much, and fell at last into a sweet sleep, in which he seemed to have happy dreams. Perhaps he heard the soft footfall of the angel of Death, pacing to and fro under his window, to be his Valentine. That night he asked to have this epitaph inscribed upon his gravestone,-- "HERE LIES ONE WHOSE NAME WAS WRIT IN WATER." On the 23d he died, without pain and as if falling asleep. His last words were, "I am dying; I shall die easy; don't be frightened, be firm and thank God it has come!" He was buried in the Protestant burial-ground at Rome, in that part of it which is now disused and secluded from the rest. A short time before his death he told Severn that he thought his intensest pleasure in life had been to watch the growth of flowers; and once, after lying peacefully awhile, he said, "I feel the flowers growing over me." His grave is marked by a little headstone on which are carved somewhat rudely his name and age, and the epitaph dictated by himself. No tree or shrub has been planted near it, but the daisies, faithful to their buried lover, crowd his small mound with a galaxy of their innocent stars, more prosperous than those under which he lived.[390] In person, Keats was below the middle height, with a head small in proportion to the breadth of his shoulders. His hair was brown and fine, falling in natural ringlets about a face in which energy and sensibility were remarkably mixed. Every feature was delicately cut; the chin was bold; and about the mouth something of a pugnacious expression. His eyes were mellow and glowing, large, dark, and sensitive. At the recital of a noble action or a beautiful thought they would suffuse with tears, and his mouth trembled.[391] Haydon says that his eyes had an inward Delphian look that was perfectly divine. The faults of Keats's poetry are obvious enough, but it should be remembered that he died at twenty-five, and that he offends by superabundance and not poverty. That he was overlanguaged at first there can be no doubt, and in this was implied the possibility of falling back to the perfect mean of diction. It is only by the rich that the costly plainness, which at once satisfies the taste and the imagination, is attainable. Whether Keats was original or not, I do not think it useful to discuss until it has been settled what originality is. Lord Houghton tells us that this merit (whatever it is) has been denied to Keats, because his poems take the color of the authors he happened to be reading at the time he wrote them. But men have their intellectual ancestry, and the likeness of some one of them is forever unexpectedly flashing out in the features of a descendant, it may be after a gap of several generations. In the parliament of the present every man represents a constituency of the past. It is true that Keats has the accent of the men from whom he learned to speak, but this is to make originality a mere question of externals, and in this sense the author of a dictionary might bring an action of trover against every author who used his words. It is the man behind the words that gives them value, and if Shakespeare help himself to a verse or a phrase, it is with ears that have learned of him to listen that we feel the harmony of the one, and it is the mass of his intellect that makes the other weighty with meaning. Enough that we recognize in Keats that indefinable newness and unexpectedness which we call genius. The sunset is original every evening, though for thousands of years it has built out of the same light and vapor its visionary cities with domes and pinnacles, and its delectable mountains which night shall utterly abase and destroy. Three men, almost contemporaneous with each other,--Wordsworth, Keats, and Byron,--were the great means of bringing back English poetry from the sandy deserts of rhetoric, and recovering for her her triple inheritance of simplicity, sensuousness, and passion. Of these, Wordsworth was the only conscious reformer, and his hostility to the existing formalism injured his earlier poems by tingeing them with something of iconoclastic extravagance. He was the deepest thinker, Keats the most essentially a poet, and Byron the most keenly intellectual of the three. Keats had the broadest mind, or at least his mind was open on more sides, and he was able to understand Wordsworth and judge Byron, equally conscious, through his artistic sense, of the greatnesses of the one and the many littlenesses of the other, while Wordsworth was isolated in a feeling of his prophetic character, and Byron had only an uneasy and jealous instinct of contemporary merit. The poems of Wordsworth, as he was the most individual, accordingly reflect the moods of his own nature; those of Keats, from sensitiveness of organization, the moods of his own taste and feeling; and those of Byron, who was impressible chiefly through the understanding, the intellectual and moral wants of the time in which he lived. Wordsworth has influenced most the ideas of succeeding poets; Keats, their forms; and Byron, interesting to men of imagination less for his writings than for what his writings indicate, reappears no more in poetry, but presents an ideal to youth made restless with vague desires not yet regulated by experience nor supplied with motives by the duties of life. Keats certainly had more of the penetrative and sympathetic imagination which belongs to the poet, of that imagination which identifies itself with the momentary object of its contemplation, than any man of these later days. It is not merely that he has studied the Elizabethans and caught their turn of thought, but that he really sees things with their sovereign eye, and feels them with their electrified senses. His imagination was his bliss and bane. Was he cheerful, he "hops about the gravel with the sparrows"; was he morbid, he "would reject a Petrarcal coronation,--on account of my dying day, and because women have cancers." So impressible was he as to say that he "had no nature," meaning character. But he knew what the faculty was worth, and says finely, "The imagination may be compared to Adam's dream: he awoke and found it truth." He had an unerring instinct for the poetic uses of things, and for him they had no other use. We are apt to talk of the classic _renaissance_ as of a phenomenon long past, nor ever to be renewed, and to think the Greeks and Romans alone had the mighty magic to work such a miracle. To me one of the most interesting aspects of Keats is that in him we have an example of the _renaissance_ going on almost under our own eyes, and that the intellectual ferment was in him kindled by a purely English leaven. He had properly no scholarship, any more than Shakespeare had, but like him he assimilated at a touch whatever could serve his purpose. His delicate senses absorbed culture at every pore. Of the self-denial to which he trained himself (unexampled in one so young) the second draft of Hyperion as compared with the first is a conclusive proof. And far indeed is his "Lamia" from the lavish indiscrimination of "Endymion." In his Odes he showed a sense of form and proportion which we seek vainly in almost any other English poet, and some of his sonnets (taking all qualities into consideration) are the most perfect in our language. No doubt there is something tropical and of strange overgrowth in his sudden maturity, but it _was_ maturity nevertheless. Happy the young poet who has the saving fault of exuberance, if he have also the shaping faculty that sooner or later will amend it! As every young person goes through all the world-old experiences, fancying them something peculiar and personal to himself, so it is with every new generation, whose youth always finds its representatives in its poets. Keats rediscovered the delight and wonder that lay enchanted in the dictionary. Wordsworth revolted at the poetic diction which he found in vogue, but his own language rarely rises above it, except when it is upborne by the thought. Keats had an instinct for fine words, which are in themselves pictures and ideas, and had more of the power of poetic expression than any modern English poet. And by poetic expression I do not mean merely a vividness in particulars, but the right feeling which heightens or subdues a passage or a whole poem to the proper tone, and gives entireness to the effect. There is a great deal more than is commonly supposed in this choice of words. Men's thoughts and opinions are in a great degree vassals of him who invents a new phrase or reapplies an old epithet. The thought or feeling a thousand times repeated becomes his at last who utters it best. This power of language is veiled in the old legends which make the invisible powers the servants of some word. As soon as we have discovered the word for our joy or sorrow we are no longer its serfs, but its lords. We reward the discoverer of an anaesthetic for the body and make him member of all the societies, but him who finds a nepenthe for the soul we elect into the small academy of the immortals. The poems of Keats mark an epoch in English poetry; for, however often we may find traces of it in others, in them found its most unconscious expression that reaction against the barrel-organ style which had been reigning by a kind of sleepy divine right for half a century. The lowest point was indicated when there was such an utter confounding of the common and the uncommon sense that Dr. Johnson wrote verse and Burke prose. The most profound gospel of criticism was, that nothing was good poetry that could not be translated into good prose, as if one should say that the test of sufficient moonlight was that tallow-candles could be made of it. We find Keats at first going to the other extreme, and endeavoring to extract green cucumbers from the rays of tallow; but we see also incontestable proof of the greatness and purity of his poetic gift in the constant return toward equilibrium and repose in his later poems. And it is a repose always lofty and clear-aired, like that of the eagle balanced in incommunicable sunshine. In him a vigorous understanding developed itself in equal measure with the divine faculty; thought emancipated itself from expression without becoming its tyrant; and music and meaning floated together, accordant as swan and shadow, on the smooth element of his verse. Without losing its sensuousness, his poetry refined itself and grew more inward, and the sensational was elevated into the typical by the control of that finer sense which underlies the senses and is the spirit of them. Footnotes: [384] Hunt's Autobiography (Am. ed.), Vol. II. p. 36. [385] Haydon tells the story differently, but I think Lord Houghton's version the best. [386] There is always some one willing to make himself a sort of accessary after the fact in any success; always an old woman or two, ready to remember omens of all quantities and qualities in the childhood of persons who have become distinguished. Accordingly, a certain "Mrs. Grafty, of Craven Street, Finsbury," assures Mr. George Keats, when he tells her that John is determined to be a poet, "that this was very odd, because when he could just speak, instead of answering questions put to him, he would always make a rhyme to the last word people said, and then laugh." The early histories of heroes, like those of nations, are always more or less mythical, and I give the story for what it is worth. Doubtless there is a gleam of intelligence in it, for the old lady pronounces it odd that any one should _determine_ to be a poet, and seems to have wished to hint that the matter was determined earlier and by a higher disposing power. There are few children who do not soon discover the charm of rhyme, and perhaps fewer who can resist making fun of the Mrs. Graftys, of Craven Street, Finsbury, when they have the chance. See Haydon's Autobiography, Vol I. p.361. [387] "I never saw the poet Keats but once, but he then read some lines from (I think) the 'Bristowe Tragedy' with an enthusiasm of admiration such as could be felt only by a poet, and which true poetry only could have excited."--J. H. C., in Notes & Queries, 4th s. x. 157. [388] Haydon (Autobiography, Vol. I. p.379) says that he "strongly suspects" Terry to have written the articles in Blackwood. [389] The lodging of Keats was on the Piazza di Spagna, in the first house on the right hand in going up the Scalinata. Mr. Severn's Studio is said to have been in the Cancello over the garden gate of the Villa Negroni, pleasantly familiar to all Americans as the Roman home of their countryman Crawford. [390] Written in 1856. O irony of Time! Ten years after the poet's death the woman he had so loved wrote to his friend Mr. Dilke, that "the kindest act would be to let him rest forever in the obscurity to which circumstances had condemned him"! (Papers of a Critic, I. 11.) O Time the atoner! In 1874 I found the grave planted with shrubs and flowers, the pious homage of the daughter of our most eminent American sculptor. [391] Leigh Hunt's Autobiography, II. 43. 
14380	----	THE LIFE OF JOHN MILTON Narrated in Connexion with the Political, Ecclesiastical, and Literary History of His Time by DAVID MASSON, M.A., LL.D., Professor of Rhetoric and English Literature in the University of Edinburgh VOLUME V 1654-1660 London: MacMillan and Co. 1877 CONTENTS. BOOK I. SEPTEMBER 1654-JUNE 1657. HISTORY:--OLIVER'S FIRST PROTECTORATE CONTINUED. BIOGRAPHY:--MILTON'S LIFE AND SECRETARYSHIP THROUGH THE FIRST PROTECTORATE CONTINUED. CHAP. I. SECTION I. Oliver and his First Parliament: Sept. 3, 1654-Jan. 22, 1654-5.--Meeting of the First Parliament of the Protectorate: Its Composition: Anti-Oliverians numerous in it: Their Four Days' Debate in challenge of Cromwell's Powers: Debate stopped by Cromwell: His Speech in the Painted Chamber: Secession of some from the Parliament: Acquiescence of the rest by Adoption of _The Recognition_: Spirit and Proceedings of the Parliament still mainly Anti-Oliverian: Their Four Months' Work in Revision of the Protectoral Constitution: Chief Debates in those Four Months: Question of the Protector's Negatives: Other Incidental Work of the Parliament: Question of Religious Toleration and of the Suppression of Heresies and Blasphemies: Committee and Sub-Committee on this Subject: Baxter's Participation: Tendency to a Limited Toleration only, and Vote against the Protector's Prerogative of more: Case of John Biddle, the Socinian.--Insufficiency now of our former Synopsis of English Sects and Heresies: New Sects and Denominations: The Fifth-Monarchy Men: The Ranters: The Muggletonians and other Stray Fanatics: Bochmenists and other Mystics: The Quakers or Friends: Account of George Fox, and Sketch of the History of the Quakers to the year 1654.--Policy of the Parliament with their Bill for a New Constitution: Parliament outwitted by Cromwell and dissolved: No Result. CHAP. I. SECTION II. Between the Parliaments, or the Time of Arbitrariness: Jan. 22, 1654-55--Sept. 17, 1656.--Avowed "Arbitrariness" of this Stage of the Protectorate, and Reasons for it.--First Meeting of Cromwell and his Council after the Dissolution: Major-General Overton in Custody: Other Arrests: Suppression of a wide Republican Conspiracy and of Royalist Risings in Yorkshire and the West: Revenue Ordinance and Mr. Cony's Opposition at Law: Deference of Foreign Governments: Blake in the Mediterranean: Massacre of the Piedmontese Protestants: Details of the Story and of Cromwell's Proceedings in consequence: Penn in the Spanish West Indies: His Repulse from Hispaniola and Landing in Jamaica: Declaration of War with Spain and Alliance with France: Scheme of the Government of England by Major-Generals: List of them and Summary of their Police-System: Decimation Tax on the Royalists, and other Measures _in terrorem_: Consolidation of the London Newspaper Press: Proceedings of the Commission of Ejectors and of the Commission of Triers: View of Cromwell's Established Church of England, with Enumeration of its various Components: Extent of Toleration outside the Established Church: The Protector's Treatment of the Roman Catholics, the Episcopalians, the Anti-Trinitarians, the Quakers, and the Jews: State of the English Universities and Schools under the Protectorate: Cromwell's Patronage of Learning: List of English Men of Letters alive in 1656, and Account of their Diverse Relations to Cromwell: Poetical Panegyrics on him and his Protectorate.--New Arrangements for the Government of Scotland: Lord Broghill's Presidency there for Cromwell: General State of the Country: Continued Struggle between the Resolutioners and the Protesters for Kirk-Supremacy: Independency and Quakerism in Scotland: More Extreme Anomalies there: Story of "Jock of Broad Scotland": Brisk Intercourse between Scotland and London: Mission of Mr. James Sharp.--Ireland from 1654 to 1656.--Glimpse of the Colonies. CHAP. I. SECTION III. Oliver and the First Session of his Second Parliament: Sept. 17, 1656-June 26, 1657.--Second Parliament of the Protectorate called: Vane's _Healing Question_ and another Anti-Oliverian Pamphlet: Precautions and Arrests: Meeting of the Parliament: Its Composition: Summary of Cromwell's Opening Speech: Exclusion of Ninety-three Anti-Oliverian Members: Decidedly Oliverian Temper of the rest: Question of the Excluded Members: Their Protest: Summary of the Proceedings of the Parliament for Five Months (Sept. 1656-Feb. 1656-7): Administration of Cromwell and his Council during those Months: Approaches to Disagreement between Cromwell and the Parliament in the _Case of James Nayler_ and on the Question of Continuation of the Militia by Major-Generals: No Rupture.--The Soxby-Sindercombe Plot.--Sir Christopher Pack's Motion for a New Constitution (Feb. 23, 1656-7): Its Issue in the _Petition and Advice_ and Offer of the Crown to Cromwell: Division of Public Opinion on the Kingship Question: Opposition among the Army Officers: Cromwell's Neutral Attitude: His Reception of the Offer: His long Hesitations and several Speeches over the Affair: His Final Refusal (May 8, 1657): Ludlow's Story of the Cause.--Harrison and the Fifth Monarchy Men: Venner's Outbreak at Mile-End-Green.--Proposed New Constitution of the _Petition and Advice_ retained in the form of a Continued Protectorate: Supplements to the _Petition and Advice_: Bills assented to by the Protector, June 9: Votes for the Spanish War.--Treaty Offensive and Defensive with France against Spain: Dispatch of English Auxiliary Army, under Reynolds, for Service in Flanders: Blake's Action in Santa Cruz Bay.--"_Killing no Murder_": _Additional and Explanatory Petition and Advice_: Abstract of the Articles of the New Constitution as arranged by the two Documents: Cromwell's completed Assent to the New Constitution, and his Assent to other Bills. June 26, 1657: Inauguration of the Second Protectorate that day: Close of the First Session of the Second Parliament. CHAP. II. Milton's Life and Secretaryship through the First Protectorate continued: September 1654-June 1657.--SECTION I.: From September 1654 to January 1654-5, or Through Oliver's First Parliament.--Ulac's Hague Edition of Milton's _Defensio Secunda_, with the _Fides Publica_ of Morus annexed: Preface by Dr. Crantzius to the Reprint: Ulac's own Preface of Self-Defence: Account of Morus's _Fides Publica_, with Extracts: His Citation of Testimonies to his Character: Testimony of Diodati of Geneva: Abrupt Ending of the Book at this Point, with Ulac's Explanation of the Cause.--Particulars of the Arrest and Imprisonment of Milton's Friend Overton.--Three more Latin State-Letters by Milton for Oliver (Nos. XLIX.-LI.): No State-Letters by Milton for the next Three Months: Milton then busy on a Reply to the _Fides Publica_ of Morus. CHAP. II. SECTION II.: From January 1654-5 to September 1656, or Through the Period of Arbitrariness.--Letter to Milton from Leo de Aitzema: Milton's Reply: Letter to Ezekiel Spanheim at Geneva: Milton's Genovese Recollections and Acquaintances: Two more of Milton's Latin State-Letters (Nos. LII., LIII.): Small Amount of Milton's Despatch-Writing for Cromwell hitherto.--Reduction of Official Salaries, and Proposal to Reduce Milton's to £150 a Year: Actual Commutation of his £288 a Year at Pleasure into £200 for Life: Orders of the Protector and Council relating to the Piedmontese Massacre, May 1655: Sudden Demand on Milton's Pen in that Business: His Letter of Remonstrance from the Protector to the Duke of Savoy, with Ten other Letters to Foreign States and Princes on the same Subject (Nos. LIV.-LXIV.): His Sonnet on the Subject.--Publication of the _Supplementum_ to More's _Fides Publica_: Account of the _Supplementum_, with Extracts: Milton's Answer to the _Fides Publica_ and the _Supplementum_ together in his _Pro Se Defensio_, Aug. 1655: Account of that Book, with Specimens: Milton's Disbelief in Morus's Denials of the Authorship of the _Regii Sanguinis Clamor_: His Reasons, and his Reassertions of the Charge in a Modified Form: His Notices of Dr. Crantzius and Ulac: His Renewed Onslaughts on Morus: His Repetition of the Bontia Accusation and others: His Examination of Morus's Printed Testimonials: Ferocity of the Book to the last: Its Effects on Morus.--Question of the Real Authorship of the _Regii Sanguinis Clamor_ and of the Amount of Morus's Concern in it: The Du Moulin Family: Dr. Peter Du Moulin the Younger the Real Author of the _Regii Sanguinis Clamor_, but Morus the Active Editor and the Writer of the Dedicatory Epistle: Du Moulin's own Account of the whole Affair: His close Contact with Milton all the while, and Dread of being found out.--Calm in Milton's Life after the Cessation of the Morus-Salmasius Controversy: Home-Life in Petty France: Dabblings of the Two Nephews in Literature: John Phillips's _Satyr against Hypocrites_: Frequent Visitors at Petty France: Marvell, Needham, Cyriack Skinner, &c.: The Viscountess Ranelagh, Mr. Richard Jones, and the Boyle Connexion: Dr. Peter Du Moulin in that Connexion: Milton's Private Sonnet on his Blindness, his Two Sonnets to Cyriack Skinner, and his Sonnet to young Lawrence: Explanation of these Four Sonnets.--_Scriptum Domini Protectoris contra Hispanos_: Thirteen more Latin State-Letters of Milton for the Protector (Nos. LXV.-LXXVII.), with Special Account of Count Bundt and the Swedish Embassy in London: Count Bundt and Mr. Milton.--Increase of Light Literature in London: Erotic Publications: John Phillips in Trouble for such: Edward Phillips's London Edition of the Poems of Drummond of Hawthornden: Milton's Cognisance of the same.--Henry Oldenburg and Mr. Richard Jones at Oxford: Letters of Milton to Jones and Oldenburg.--Thirteen more State-Letters of the Milton Series (Nos. LXXVIII.-XC.): Importance of some of them. CHAP. II. SECTION III.: From September 1656 to June 1657, or Through the First Session of Oliver's Second Parliament.--Another Letter from Milton to Mr. Richard Jones: Departure of Lady Ranelagh for Ireland: Letter from Milton to Peter Heimbach: Milton's Second Marriage: His Second Wife, Katharine Woodcock: Letter to Emeric Bigot: Milton's Library and the Byzantine Historians: M. Stoupe: Ten more State-Letters by Milton for the Protector (Nos. XCI.-C.): Morland, Meadows, Durie, Lockhart, and other Diplomatists of the Protector, back in London: More Embassies and Dispatches over Land and Sea: Milton Standing and Waiting: His Thoughts about the Protectorate generally. BOOK II. JUNE 1657-SEPTEMBER 1658 HISTORY:--OLIVER'S SECOND PROTECTORATE. BIOGRAPHY:--MILTON'S LIFE AND SECRETARYSHIP THROUGH THE SECOND PROTECTORATE. CHAP. I. Oliver's Second Protectorate: June 26, 1657-Sept. 3, 1658.--Regal Forms and Ceremonial of the Second Protectorate: The Protector's Family: The Privy Council: Retirement of Lambert: Death of Admiral Blake: The French Alliance and Successes in Flanders: Siege and Capture of Mardike: Other Foreign Relations of the Protectorate: Special Envoys to Denmark, Sweden, and the United Provinces: Aims of Cromwell's Diplomacy in Northern and Eastern Europe: Progress of his English Church-Establishment: Controversy between John Goodwill and Marchamont Needham: The Protector and the Quakers: Death of John Lilburne: Death of Sexby: Marriage of the Duke of Buckingham to Mary Fairfax: Marriages of Cromwell's Two Youngest Daughters: Preparations for another Session of the Parliament: Writs for the Other House: List of Cromwell's Peers.--Reassembling of the Parliament. Jan. 20, 1667-8: Cromwell's Opening Speech, with the Supplement by Fiennes: Anti-Oliverian Spirit of the Commons: Their Opposition to the Other House: Cromwell's Speech of Remonstrance: Perseverance of the Commons in their Opposition: Cromwell's Last Speech and Dissolution of the Parliament, Feb. 4, 1657-8.--State of the Government after the Dissolution: The Dangers, and Cromwell's Dealings with them: His Light Dealings with the Disaffected Commonwealth's Men: Threatened Spanish Invasion from Flanders, and Ramifications of the Royalist Conspiracy at Home: Arrests of Royalists, and Execution of Slingsby and Hewit: The Conspiracy crushed: Death of Robert Rich: The Earl of Warwick's Letter to Cromwell, and his Death: More Successes in Flanders: Siege and Capture of Dunkirk: Splendid Exchanges of Compliments between Cromwell and Louis XIV.: New Interference in behalf of the Piedmontese Protestants, and Project of a Protestant Council _De Propaganda Fide_: Prospects of the Church Establishment: Desire of the Independents for a Confession of Faith: Attendant Difficulties: Cromwell's Policy in the Affairs of the Scottish Kirk: His Design for the Evangelization and Civilization of the Highlands: His Grants to the Universities of Edinburgh and Glasgow: His Council in Scotland: Monk at Dalkeith: Cromwell's Intentions in the Cases of Biddle and James Nayler: Proposed New Act for Restriction of the Press: Firmness and Grandeur of the Protectorate in July 1658: Cromwell's Baronetcies and Knighthoods: Willingness to call another Parliament: Death of Lady Claypole: Cromwell's Illness and Last Days, with the Last Acts and Incidents of his Protectorship. CHAP. II. Milton's Life and Secretaryship through the Second Protectorate. --Milton still in Office: Letter to Mr. Henry de Brass, with Milton's Opinion of Sallust: Letters to Young Ranelagh and Henry Oldenburg at Saumur: Morus in New Circumstances: Eleven more State-Letters of Milton for the Protector (Nos. CI.-CXI.): Andrew Marvell brought in as Assistant Foreign Secretary at last (Sept. 1657): John Dryden now also in the Protector's Employment: Birth of Milton's Daughter by his Second Wife: Six more State-Letters of Milton (Nos. CXII.-CXVII.): Another Letter to Mr. Henry de Brass, and another to Peter Heimbach: Comment on the latter: Deaths of Milton's Second Wife and her Child: His two Nephews, Edward and John Phillips, at this date: Milton's last Sixteen State-Letters for Oliver Cromwell (Nos. CXVIII.-CXXXIII), including Two to Charles Gustavus of Sweden, Two on a New Alarm of a Persecution of the Piedmontese Protestants, and Several to Louis XIV. and Cardinal Mazarin: Importance of this last Group of the State-Letters, and Review of the whole Series of Milton's Performances for Cromwell: Last Diplomatic Incidents of the Protectorate, and Andrew Marvell in connexion with them: Incidents of Milton's Literary Life in this Period: Young Güntzer's _Dissertatio_ and Young Kock's Phalæcians: Milton's Edition of Raleigh's Cabinet Council: Resumption of the old Design of Paradise Lost and actual Commencement of the Poem: Change from the Dramatic Form to the Epic: Sonnet in Memory of his Deceased Wife. BOOK III. SEPTEMBER 1658--MAY 1660. HISTORY:--THE PROTECTORATE OF RICHARD CROMWELL, THE ANARCHY, MONK'S MARCH AND DICTATORSHIP, AND THE RESTORATION. RICHARD'S PROTECTORATE: SEPT. 3, 1658--MAY 25, 1659. THE ANARCHY:-- STAGE I.:--THE RESTORED RUMP: MAY 25, 1659--OCT. 13, 1659. STAGE II.:--THE WALLINGFORD-HOUSE GOVERNMENT: OCT. 13, 1659--DEC. 26, 1659. STAGE III.:--SECOND RESTORATION OF THE RUMP, WITH MONK'S MARCH FROM SCOTLAND: DEC. 26, 1659--FEB. 21, 1859-60. MONK'S DICTATORSHIP, THE RESTORED LONG PARLIAMENT, AND THE RESTORATION. BIOGRAPHY:--MILTON'S LIFE AND SECRETARYSHIP THROUGH RICHARD'S PROTECTORATE, THE ANARCHY, AND MONK'S DICTATORSHIP. CHAP. I. FIRST SECTION. The Protectorate of Richard Cromwell: Sept. 3, 1858--May 25, 1659.--Proclamation of Richard: Hearty Response from the Country and from Foreign Powers: Funeral of the late Protector: Resolution for a New Parliament.--Difficulties in Prospect: List of the most Conspicuous Props and Assessors of the New Protectorate: Monk's Advice to Richard: Union of the Cromwellians against Charles Stuart: Their Split among themselves into the Court or Dynastic Party and the Army or Wallingford-House Party: Chiefs of the Two Parties: Richard's Preference for the Court Party, and his Speech to the Army Officers: Backing of the Army Party towards Republicanism or Anti-Oliverianism: Henry Cromwell's Letter of Rebuke to Fleetwood: Differences of the Two Parties as to Foreign Policy: The French Alliance and the War with Spain: Relations to the King of Sweden.--Meeting of Richard's Parliament (Jan. 27, 1658-9): The Two Houses: Eminent Members of the Commons: Richard's Opening Speech: Thurloe the Leader for Government in the Commons: Recognition of the Protectorship and of the Other House, and General Triumph of the Government Party: Miscellaneous Proceedings of the Parliament.--Dissatisfaction of the Army Party: Their Closer Connexion with the Republicans: New Convention of Officers at Wallingford-House: Desborough's Speech; The Convention forbidden by the Parliament and dissolved by Richard: Whitehall surrounded by the Army, and Richard compelled to dissolve the Parliament.--Responsible Position of Fleetwood, Desborough, Lambert, and the other Army Chiefs: Bankrupt State of the Finances: Necessity for some kind of Parliament: Phrenzy for "The Good Old Cause" and Demand for the Restoration of the Rump: Acquiescence of the Army Chiefs: Lenthall's Objections: First Fortnight of the Restored Rump: Lingering of Richard in Whitehall: His Enforced Abdication. CHAP. I. SECOND SECTION. The Anarchy, Stage I.: or The Restored Rump: May 25, 1659-Oct. 13, 1659.--Number of the Restored Rumpers and List of them: Council of State of the Restored Rump: Anomalous Character and Position of the New Government: Momentary Chance of a Civil War between the Cromwellians and the Rumpers: Chance averted by the Acquiescence of the Leading Cromwellians: Behaviour of Richard Cromwell, Monk, Henry Cromwell, Lockhart, and Thurloe, individually: Baulked Cromwellianism becomes Potential Royalism: Energetic Proceedings of the Restored Rump: Their Ecclesiastical Policy and their Foreign Policy: Treaty between France and Spain: Lockhart at the Scene of the Negotiations as Ambassador for the Rump: Remodelling and Reofficering of the Army, Navy, and Militia: Confederacy of Old and New Royalists for a Simultaneous Rising: Actual Rising under Sir George Booth in Cheshire: Lambert sent to quell the Insurrection: Peculiar Intrigues round Monk at Dalkeith: Sir George Booth's Insurrection crushed: Exultation of the Rump and Action taken against the Chief Insurgents and their Associates: Question of the future Constitution of the Commonwealth: Chaos of Opinions and Proposals: James Harrington and his Political Theories: The Harrington or Rota Club: Discontents in the Army: Petition, and Proposals of the Officers of Lambert's Brigade: Severe Notice of the same by the Rump: Petition and Proposals of the General Council of Officers: Resolute Answers of the Rump: Lambert, Desborough, and Seven other Officers, cashiered: Lambert's Retaliation and Stoppage of the Parliament. CHAP. I. SECOND SECTION (continued). The Anarchy, Stage II.: or The Wallingford-House Interregnum: Oct. 13, 1659-Dec. 26, 1659.--The Wallingford-House Government: Its _Committee of Safety_: Behaviour of Ludlow and other Leading Republicans: Death of Bradshaw.--Army--Arrangements of the New Government: Fleetwood, Lambert, and Desborough, the Military Chiefs: Declared Championship of the Rump by Monk in Scotland: Negotiations opened with Monk, and Lambert sent north to oppose him: Monk's Mock Treaty with Lambert and the Wallingford-House Government through Commissioners in London: His Preparations meanwhile in Scotland: His Advance from Edinburgh to Berwick: Monk's Army and Lambert's.--Foreign Relations of the Wallingford-House Government: Treaty between France and Spain: Lockhart: Charles II. at Fontarabia: Gradual Improvement of his Chances in England.--Discussions of the Wallingford-House Government as to the future Constitution of the Commonwealth: The Vane Party and the Whitlocke Party in these Discussions: Johnstone of Warriston, the Harringtonians, and Ludlow: Attempted Conclusions.--Monk at Coldstream: Universal Whirl of Opinion in favour of him and the Rump: Utter Discredit of the Wallingford-House Rule in London: Vacillation and Collapse of Fleetwood: The Rump Restored a second time. CHAP. I. SECOND SECTION (continued). The Anarchy, Stage III.: or Second Restoration of the Rump, with Monk's March from Scotland: Dec. 26, 1659-Feb. 21, 1659.--The Rump after its Second Restoration: New Council of State: Penalties on Vane, Lambert, Desborough, and the other Chiefs of the Wallingford-House Interregnum: Case of Ludlow: New Army Remodelling: Abatement of Republican Fervency among the Rumpers: Dispersion of Lambert's Force in the North: Monk's March from Scotland: Stages and Incidents of the March: His Halt at St. Alban's and Message thence to the Rump: His Nearer View of the Situation: His Entry into London, Feb. 3, 1659-60: His Ambiguous Speech to the Rump, Feb. 6: His Popularity in London: Pamphlets and Letters during his March and on his Arrival: Prynne's pamphlets on behalf of the Secluded Members: Tumult in the City: Tumult suppressed by Monk as Servant of the Rump: His Popularity gone: Blunder retrieved by Monk's Reconciliation with the City and Declaration against the Rump: _Roasting of the Rump in London_, Feb. 11, 1659-60: Monk Master of the City and of the Rump too; Consultations with the Secluded Members: Bill of the Rump for Enlarging itself by New Elections; Bill set aside by the Reseating of the Secluded Members: Reconstitution of the Long Parliament under Monk's Dictatorship. CHAP. I. THIRD SECTION. Monk's Dictatorship, the Restored Long Parliament, and the Drift to the Restoration: Feb. 21, 1659-60--April 25, 1660.--The Restored Long Parliament: New Council of State: Active Men of the Parliament: Prynne, Arthur Annesley, and William Morrice: Miscellaneous Proceedings of the Parliament: Release of old Royalist Prisoners: Lambert committed to the Tower: Rewards and Honours for Monk: "Old George" in the City: Revival of the Solemn League and Covenant, the Westminster Confession of Faith, and all the Apparatus of a Strict Presbyterian Church-Establishment: Cautious Measures for a Political Settlement: The Real Question evaded and handed over to another Parliament: Calling of the Convention Parliament and Arrangements for the Same: Difficulty about a House of Lords: How obviated: Last Day of the Long Parliament, March 16, 1659-60: Scene in the House.--Monk and the Council of State left in charge: Annesley the Managing Colleague of Monk: New Militia Act carried out: Discontents among Monk's Officers and Soldiers: The Restoration of Charles still very dubious: Other Hopes and Proposals for the moment: The Kingship privately offered to Monk by the Republicans: Offer declined: Bursting of the Popular Torrent of Royalism at last, and Enthusiastic Demands for the Recall of Charles: Elections to the Convention Parliament going on meanwhile: Haste of hundreds to be foremost in bidding Charles welcome: Admiral Montague and his Fleet in the Thames: Direct Communications at last between Monk and Charles: Greenville the Go-between: Removal of Charles and his Court from Brussels to Breda: Greenville sent back from Breda with a Commission for Monk and Six other Documents.--Broken-spiritedness of the Republican Leaders, but formidable Residue of Republicanism in the Army: Monk's Measures for Paralysing the same: Successful Device of Charges; Montague's Fleet in Motion: Escape of Lambert from the Tower: His Rendezvous in Northamptonshire: Gathering of a Wreck of the Republicans round him: Dick Ingoldsby sent to crush him: The Encounter near Daventry, April 22, 1660, and Recapture of Lambert: Great Review of the London Militia, April 24, the day before the Meeting of the Convention Parliament: Impatient longing for Charles: Monk still impenetrable, and the Documents from Breda reserved. CHAP. II. FIRST SECTION. Milton's Life and Secretaryship through Richard's Protectorate: Sept. 1658-May 1659.--Milton and Marvell still in the Latin Secretaryship: Milton's first Five State-Letters for Richard (Nos. CXXXIII.-CXXXVII.): New Edition of Milton's _Defensio Prima_: Remarkable Postscript to that Edition: Six more State-Letters for Richard (Nos. CXXXVIII.-CXLIII.): Milton's Relations to the Conflict of Parties round Richard and in Richard's Parliament: His probable Career but for his Blindness: His continued Cromwellianism in Politics, but with stronger private Reserves, especially on the Question of an Established Church: His Reputation that of a man of the Court-Party among the Protectoratists: His _Treatise of Civil Power in Ecclesiastical Causes_: Account of the Treatise, with Extracts: The Treatise more than a Plea for Religious Toleration: Church-Disestablishment the Fundamental Idea: The Treatise addressed to Richard's Parliament, and chiefly to Vane and the Republicans there: No Effect from it: Milton's Four last State-Letters for Richard (Nos. CXLIV.-CXLVII.): His Private Epistle to Jean Labadie, with Account of that Person: Milton in the month between Richard's Dissolution of his Parliament and his formal Abdication: His Two State-Letters for the Restored Rump (Nos. CXLVIII.-CXLIX.) CHAP. II. SECOND SECTION. Milton's Life and Secretaryship through the Anarchy: May 1659--Feb. 1659-60.--_First Stage of the Anarchy, or The Restored Rump_ (May--Oct. 1659):--Feelings and Position of Milton in the new State of Things: His Satisfaction on the whole, and the Reasons for it: Letter of Moses Wall to Milton: Renewed Agitation against Tithes and Church Establishment: Votes on that Subject in the Rump: Milton's _Considerations touching the Likeliest Means to remove Hirelings out of the Church_: Account of the Pamphlet, with Extracts: Its thorough-going Voluntaryism: Church-Disestablishment demanded absolutely, without Compensation for Vested Interests: The Appeal fruitless, and the Subject ignored by the Rump: Dispersion of that Body by Lambert.--_Second Stage of the Anarchy, or The Wallingford-House Interruption_ (Oct.-Dec. 1659):--Milton's Thoughts on Lambert's coup d'etat in his _Letter to a Friend concerning the Ruptures of the Commonwealth_: The Letter in the main against Lambert and in Defence of the Rump: Its extraordinary practical Proposal of a Government by two Permanent Central Bodies: The Proposal compared with the actual Administration by the _Committee of Safety_ and the Wallingford-House Council of Officers: Milton still nominally in the Latin Secretaryship: Money Warrant of Oct. 25, 1659, relating to Milton, Marvell, and Eighty-four other Officials: No Trace of actual Service by Milton for the new _Committee of Safety_: His Meditations through the Treaty between the Wallingford-House Government and Monk in Scotland: His Meditations through the Committee-Discussions as to the future Model of Government; His Interest in this as now the Paramount Question, and his Cognisance of the Models of Harrirgton and the Rota Club: Whitlocke's new Constitution disappointing to Milton: Two more Letters to Oldenburg and Young Ranelagh: Gossip from abroad in connection with these Letters: Morns again, and the Council of French Protestants at Londun: End of the Wallingford-House Interruption.--_Third Stage of ike Anarchy, or The Second Restoration of the Rump_ (Dec. 1659-Feb. 1659-60):--Milton's Despondency at this Period: Abatement of his Faith in the Rump: His Thoughts during the March of Monk from Scotland and after Monk's Arrival in London: His Study of Monk near at hand and Mistrust of the Omens: His Interest for a while in the Question of the Preconstitution of the new Parliament promised by the Rump: His Anxiety that it should be a Republican Parliament by mere Self-enlargement of the Rump: His Preparation of a new Republican Pamphlet: The Publication postponed by Monk's sudden Defection from the Rump, the Roasting of the Rump in the City, and the Restoration of the Secluded Members to their places in the Parliament: Milton's Despondency complete. CHAP. II. THIRD SECTION. Milton through Monk's Dictatorship: Feb. 1659-60--May 1660.--First Edition of Milton's _Ready and Easy Way to Establish a Free Commonwealth_: Account of the Pamphlet, with Extracts: Vehement Republicanism of the Pamphlet, with its Prophetic Warnings: Peculiar Central Idea of the Pamphlet, viz. the Project of a Grand Council or Parliament to sit in Perpetuity, with a Council of State for its Executive: Passages expounding this Idea: Additional Suggestion of Local and County Councils or Committees: Daring Peroration of the Pamphlet: Milton's Recapitulation of the Substance of it in a short Private Letter to Monk entitled _Present Means and Brief Delineation of a Free Commonwealth_: Wide Circulation of Milton's Pamphlet: The Response by Monk and the Parliament of the Secluded Members in their Proceedings of the next fortnight: Dissolution of the Parliament after Arrangements for its Successor: Royalist Squib predicting Milton's speedy Acquaintance with the Hangman at Tyburn: Another Squib against Milton, called _The Censure of the Rota upon Mr. Milton's Book_: Specimens of this Burlesque: Republican Appeal to Monk, called _Plain English_: Reply to the same, with another attack on Milton: Popular Torrent of Royalism during the forty days of Interval between the Parliament of the Secluded Members and the Convention Parliament (March 16, 1659-60--April 25, 1660): Caution of Monk and the Council of State: Dr. Matthew Griffith and his Royalist Sermon, _The Fear of God and the King_: Griffith imprisoned for his Sermon, but forward Republicans checked or punished at the same time: Needham discharged from his Editorship and Milton from his Secretaryship: Resoluteness of Milton in his Republicanism: His _Brief Notes on Dr. Griffith's Sermon_: Second Edition of his _Ready and Easy Way to Establish a Free Commonwealth_: Remarkable Additions and Enlargements in this Edition: Specimens of these: Milton and Lambert the last Republicans in the field: Roger L'Estrange's Pamphlet against Milton, called _No Blind Guides_: Larger Attack on Milton by G. S., called _The Dignity of Kingship Asserted_: Quotations from that Book; Meeting of the Convention Parliament, April 25, 1660: Delivery by Greenville of the Six Royal Letters from Breda, April 28-May 1, and Votes of both Houses for the Recall of Charles: Incidents of the following Week: Mad impatience over the Three Kingdoms for the King's Return: He and his Court at the Hague, preparing for the Voyage home: Panic among the surviving Regicides and other prominent Republicans: Flight of Needham to Holland and Absconding of Milton from his house in Petty France: Last Sight of Milton in that house.        *       *       *       *       * BOOK I. SEPTEMBER 1654--JUNE 1657. HISTORY:--OLIVER'S FIRST PROTECTORATE CONTINUED. BIOGRAPHY:--MILTON'S LIFE AND SECRETARYSHIP THROUGH THE FIRST PROTECTORATE CONTINUED. THE LIFE OF JOHN MILTON, WITH THE HISTORY OF HIS TIME.        *       *       *       *       * CHAPTER I. OLIVER'S FIRST PROTECTORATE CONTINUED: SEPT. 3, 1654-JUNE 26, 1657. Oliver's First Protectorate extended over three years and six months in all, or from December 16, 1653 to June 26, 1657. The first nine months of it, as far as to September 1654, have been already sketched; and what remains divides itself very distinctly into three Sections, as follows:-- Section I:--_From Sept._ 3, 1654 _to Jan._ 22, 1654-5. This Section, comprehending four months and a half, may be entitled OLIVER AND HIS FIRST PARLIAMENT. Section II:--_From Jan._ 22, 1654-5 _to Sept._ 17, 1656. This Section, comprehending twenty months, may be entitled BETWEEN THE PARLIAMENTS, OR THE TIME OF ARBITRARINESS. Section III:--_From Sept._ 17, 1656 _to June_ 26, 1657. This Section, comprehending nine months, may be entitled OLIVER AND THE FIRST SESSION OF HIS SECOND PARLIAMENT. We map out the present chapter accordingly. SECTION I. OLIVER AND HIS FIRST PARLIAMENT: SEPT, 3, 1654-JAN. 22, 1654-5. MEETING OF THE FIRST PARLIAMENT OF THE PROTECTORATE: ITS COMPOSITION: ANTI-OLIVERIANS NUMEROUS IN IT: THEIR FOUR DAYS' DEBATE IN CHALLENGE OF CROMWELL'S POWERS: DEBATE STOPPED BY CROMWELL: HIS SPEECH IN THE PAINTED CHAMBER: SECESSION OF SOME FROM THE PARLIAMENT: ACQUIESCENCE OF THE REST BY ADOPTION OF _THE RECOGNITION_: SPIRIT AND PROCEEDINGS OF THE PARLIAMENT STILL MAINLY ANTI-OLIVERIAN: THEIR FOUR MONTHS' WORK IN REVISION OF THE PROTECTORAL CONSTITUTION: CHIEF DEBATES IN THOSE FOUR MONTHS: QUESTION OF THE PROTECTOR'S NEGATIVES: OTHER INCIDENTAL WORK OF THE PARLIAMENT: QUESTION OF RELIGIOUS TOLERATION AND OF THE SUPPRESSION OF HERESIES AND BLASPHEMIES: COMMITTEE AND SUB-COMMITTEE ON THIS SUBJECT: BAXTER'S PARTICIPATION: TENDENCY TO A LIMITED TOLERATION ONLY, AND VOTE AGAINST THE PROTECTOR'S PREROGATIVE OF MORE: CASE OF JOHN RIDDLE, THE SOCINIAN.--INSUFFICIENCY NOW OF OUR FORMER SYNOPSIS OF ENGLISH SECTS AND HERESIES: NEW SECTS AND DENOMINATIONS: THE FIFTH-MONARCHY MEN: THE RANTERS: THE MUGGLETONIANS AND OTHER STRAY FANATICS: BOEHMENISTS AND OTHER MYSTICS: THE QUAKERS OR FRIENDS: ACCOUNT OF GEORGE FOX, AND SKETCH OF THE HISTORY OF THE QUAKERS TO THE YEAR 1654.--POLICY OF THE PARLIAMENT WITH THEIR BILL FOR A NEW CONSTITUTION: PARLIAMENT OUTWITTED BY CROMWELL AND DISSOLVED: NO RESULT. Before the 3rd of September, 1654, the day fixed by the Constitutional Instrument for the meeting of the First Parliament of the Protectorate, the 460 newly elected members, or the major part of them, had flocked to Westminster. They were a gathering of the most representative men of all the three nations that could be regarded as in any sense adherents of the Commonwealth. All the Council of State, except the Earl of Mulgrave and Lord Lisle, had been returned, some of them by two or three different constituencies. Secretary Thurloe had been returned; Cromwell's two sons, Richard and Henry, had been returned, Henry as member for Cambridge University; several gentlemen holding posts in his Highness's household had been returned. Of the old English peers, there had been returned the Earl of Salisbury, the Earl of Stamford, and Lord Dacres; and of the titular nobility there were Lord Herbert, Lord Eure, Lord Grey of Groby, and the great Fairfax. Among men of Parliamentary fame already were ex-Speaker Lenthall, Whitlocke, Sir Walter Earle, Dennis Bond, Sir Henry Vane _Senior_, Sir Arthur Hasilrig, Thomas Scott, William Ashurst, Sir James Harrington, John Carew, Robert Wallop, and Sir Thomas Widdrington; and of Army or Navy men, of former Parliamentary experience or not, there were Colonels Whalley, Robert Lilburne, Barkstead, Harvey, Stapley, Purefoy, Admiral Blake, and ex-Major-General Harrison. Some of these had been returned by two constituencies. Bradshaw was a member, with two of the Judges, Hale and Thorpe, and ex-Judge Glynne. Lawyers besides were not wanting; and Dr. Owen, though a divine, represented Oxford University. One missed chiefly, among old names, those of Sir Henry Vane _Junior_, Henry Marten, Selden, Algernon Sidney, and Ludlow; but there were many new faces. Among the thirty members sent from Scotland were the Earl of Linlithgow, Sir Alexander Wedderburn, Colonel William Lockhart, the Laird of Swinton, and the English Colonels Okey and Read. Ireland had also returned military Englishmen in Major-General Hardress Waller, Colonels Hewson, Sadler, Axtell, Venables, and Jephson, with Lord Broghill, Sir Charles Coote, Sir John Temple, Sir Robert King, and others, describable as Irish or Anglo-Irish.[1] [Footnote 1: Complete list gives in Parl. Hist, III. 1428-1433.] The 3rd of September, selected as Cromwell's "Fortunate Day," chancing to be a Sunday, the Parliament had only a brief meeting with him that day, in the Painted Chamber, after service in the Abbey, and his opening speech was deferred till next day, On Monday, accordingly, it was duly given, but not till after another sermon in the Abbey, preached by Thomas Goodwin, in which Cromwell found much that he liked. It was a political sermon, on "Israel's bringing-out of Egypt, through a Wilderness, by many signs and wonders, towards a Place of Rest,"--Egypt interpreted as old Prelacy and the Stuart role in England, the Wilderness as all the intermediate course of the English Revolution, and the Place of Rest as the Protectorate or what it might lead to. Goodwill seems to have described with special reprobation that latest part of the Wilderness in which the cry had arisen for sheer Levelling in the State and sheer Voluntaryism in the Church; and Cromwell, starting in that key himself, addressed the Parliament, with noble earnestness, in what would now be called a highly "conservative" speech. Glancing back to the Barebones Parliament and beyond, he sketched, the proceedings of himself and the Council and the great successes of the Commonwealth during the intervening eight months and a half, and hopefully committed to the Parliament the further charge of Order and Settlement throughout the three nations, Then he withdrew. That same day they chose Lenthall for their Speaker, and Scobell for their Clerk.[1] [Footnote 1: Cromwell's Second Speech (Carlyle, III. 16-37); Commons Journals of dates.] Cromwell's hopes were blasted. The political division of the population of the British Islands was now into OLIVERIANS, REPUBLICAN IRRECONCILABLES, PRESBYTERIANS, and STUARTISTS, the two last denominations hardly separable by any clear line, Now, in this new Parliament, though there were many staunch Oliverians, and no avowed Stuartists, the Republican Irreconcilables and the Presbyterians together formed a majority. They needed only to coalesce, and the Parliament called by Oliver's own writs would be an Anti-Oliverian Parliament. And this is what happened. No sooner was the House constituted, with about 320 members present out of the total 460, than it proposed for its first business what was called "The Matter of the Government"; by which was meant a review of that document of forty-two Articles, called the _Government of the Commonwealth_, which was the constitutional basis of the Protectorate. On Thursday, Sept. 7, accordingly, they addressed themselves to the vital question of the whole document as propounded in the first of the Articles. "Whether the House shall approve that the Government shall be in one Single Person and a Parliament": such was the debate that day in Grand Committee, after a division on the previous question whether they should go into Committee. On this previous question 136 had voted _No_, with Sir Charles Wolseley and Mr. Strickland (two of the Council of State) for their tellers, but 141 had voted _Yea_, with Bradshaw and Colonel Birch for their tellers. In other words, it had been carried by a majority of five that it fell within the province of the House to determine whether the Single-Person element in the Government of the Commonwealth, already introduced somehow as a matter of fact, should be continued. On this subject the House debated through the rest of that sitting, and the whole of the next, and the next, and the next,--i.e. till Monday, Sept 11. Bradshaw, Hasilrig, and Scott took the lead for the Republicans, not that they hoped to unseat Cromwell, but that they wanted to assert the paramount authority of Parliament, and convert the existing Protectorship into a derivative from the House then sitting. Lawrence, Wolseley, Strickland, and others of the Council of State, describable as the ministerial members, maintained the existing constitution of the Protectorate, and pointed out the dangers that would arise from plucking up a good practical basis for mere reasons of theory. Matthew Hale interposed at last with a middle motion, substantially embodying the Republican view, but affirming the Protectorship at once, and reserving qualification. All in all, there was great excitement, much confusion, and an outbreak from some members of very violent language about Cromwell.[1] [Footnote 1: Commons Journals of dates: Parl. Hist. III. 1445; Godwin, IV. 116-125.] What might have been the issue had a vote come on can only be guessed. Things were not allowed to go that length. On Tuesday, Sept, 12, the members, going to the House, found the doors locked, soldiers in and around Westminster Hall, and a summons from the Lord Protector to meet him again in the Painted Chamber. Having assembled there, they listened to Cromwell's "Third Speech." It is one of the most powerful of all his speeches. It began with a long review of his life in general and the steps by which he had recently been brought to the Protectorship. It proceeded then to a recitation of what he called "the witnesses" to his Government, or proofs of its validity--the Witness _above_, or God's manifest Providence in leading him to where he was; the Witness _within_, or his own consciousness of integrity; and the Witnesses _without_, or testimonies of confidence he had received from the Army, the Judges, the City of London, other cities, counties and boroughs, and public bodies of all sorts. "I believe," he said, "that, if the learnedest men in this nation were called to show a precedent, equally clear, of a Government so many ways approved of, they would not in all their search, find it." Then, coming to the point, he asked what right the present Parliament had to come after all those witnesses and challenge his authority. Had they not been elected under writs issued by him, in which writs it was expressly inserted, by regulation of Article XII. of the Constitutional Instrument of the Protectorate, "That the persons elected shall not have power to alter the Government as it is hereby settled in one Single Person and a Parliament"? On this point he was very emphatic. "That _your_ judgments, who are persons sent from all parts of the nation under the notion of approving this Government--for _you_ to disown or not to own it; for _you_ to act with Parliamentary authority especially in the disowning of it, contrary to the very fundamental things, yea against the very root of this Establishment; to sit and not own the Authority by which you sit:--is that which I believe astonisheth more men than myself." A revision of the Constitution of the Protectorate in _circumstantials_ he would not object to, but the _fundamentals_ must be left untouched. And let those hearing him be under no mistake as to his own resolution. "The wilful throwing away of this Government, such as it is, so owned of God, so approved by men, so witnessed to in the fundamentals of it as was mentioned above, were a thing which,--and in reference not to _my_ good, but to the good of these Nations and Posterity,--I can sooner be willing to be rolled into my grave, and buried with infamy, than I can give my consent unto." He had therefore called them now that they might come to an understanding. There was a written parchment in the lobby of the Parliament House to which he requested the signatures of such as might see fit. The doors of the Parliament House would then be open for all such, to proceed thenceforth as a free Parliament in all things, subject to the single condition expressed in that parchment. "You have an absolute Legislative Power in all things that can possibly concern the good and interest of the public; and I think you may make these Nations happy by this settlement." With so much great work before them, with the three nations looking on in hope, with foreign nations looking on with wonder or worse feelings, had they not a great responsibility?[1] [Footnote 1: Carlyle's Cromwell, III. 37-61.] Bradshaw, Hasilrig, and others, would not sign the document offered them, which was a brief engagement "to be true and faithful to the Lord Protector and the Commonwealth," and not to propose alteration of the Government as "settled in a single Person and a Parliament." The Parliament, therefore, lost these leaders; but within an hour "The Recognition," as it came to be called, was signed by a hundred members, and the number was raised to 140 before the day was over, and ultimately to about 300. And so, with this goodly number, the House went on. But the Anti-Oliverian leaven was still strong in it. This appeared even in the immediate dealings of the House with the Recognition itself. They first (Sept, 14) declared that it should not be construed to comprehend the whole Constitutional Instrument of the Protectorate, but only the main principle of the first Article; and then (Sept. 18) they converted the Recognition into a resolution of their own, requiring all members to sign it, Next, in order to get rid of the stumbling-block of the First Article altogether, they resolved (Sept. 19) that the Supreme Legislative authority was and did reside in "One Person and the People assembled in Parliament," and also (Sept. 20) that Oliver Cromwell was and should he Lord Protector for life, and that there should be Triennial Parliaments. Thus free to advance through the rest of the Forty-two Articles at their leisure, they made that thenceforward almost their sole work. Through the rest of September, the whole of October, and part of November, the business went on in Committee, with the result of a new and more detailed Constitution of the whole Government in sixty Articles instead of the Forty-two. A Bill for enacting this Constitution, passed the first reading on the 22nd of December, and the second on the 23rd; it then went back into Committee for amendments; and in January 1654-5 the House was debating these amendments and others.[1] [Footnote 1: Commons Journals of dates given and of Nov. 7, and Godwin, IV, 130-132.] In the long course of the total debate perhaps the most interesting divisions had been one in Committee on October 16, and one in the House on November 10. In the first the question was whether the Protectorship should be hereditary, and it had been carried by 200 votes to 60 that it should _not_. This was not strictly an Anti-Oliverian demonstration; for, though Lambert was the mover for a hereditary Protectorship in Cromwell's family, many of the undoubted Oliverians voted in the majority, nor does there seem to be any proof that Lambert had acted by direct authority from Cromwell. More distinctly an Anti-Oliverian vote had been that of Nov. 10, which was on a question of deep interest to Cromwell: viz. the amount of his prerogative in the form of a negative on Bills trenching on fundamentals. In his last speech he had himself indicated these "fundamentals," which ought to be safe against attack even by Parliament--one of them being Liberty of Conscience, another the Control of the Militia as belonging to the Protector _in conjunction with_ the Parliament, and a third the provision, that every Parliament should sit but for a fixed period. In all other matters he was content with a negative for twenty days only; but on bills trenching on these fundamentals he required a negative absolutely. The question had come to the vote in a very subtle form. The motion of the Opposition was that Bills should become Law without the Protector's consent after twenty days, "provided that such Bills contain nothing in them contrary to such matters wherein the Parliament shall think fit to give a negative to the Lord Protector," while the amendment of the Oliverians or Court-party altered the wording into "wherein the Single Person and the Parliament shall declare a negative to be in the Single Person," thus giving Cromwell himself, and not the Parliament only, a right of deciding where a negative should lie. On this question the Oliverians were beaten by 109 votes to 85, and the decision would probably have caused a rupture had not the Opposition conceded a good deal when they went on to settle the matters wherein Parliament _would_ grant the Protector a negative.[1] [Footnote 1: Journals of dates and Godwin, IV. 134-139.] As we have said, almost the sole occupation of the Parliament was this revision of the flooring on which itself and the Protectorate stood. They did, however, some little pieces of work besides. They undertook a revision of the Ordinances that had been passed by the Protector and his Council, and also of the Acts of the Barebones Parliament; and they proposed Bills of their own to supersede some of these,--especially a new Bill for the Ejection of Scandalous Ministers, and a new Bill for Reform of the Court of Chancery. But of all the incidental work undertaken by this Parliament none seems to have been undertaken with so much gusto as that which consisted in efforts for the suppression of Heresy and Blasphemy. Here was the natural outcome of the Presbyterianism with which the Parliament was charged, and here also the Parliament was very vexatious to the soul of the Lord-Protector. After all, this portion of the work of the Parliament can hardly be called incidental. It was part and parcel of their main work of revising the Constitution, and it was inter-wrought with the question of Cromwell's negatives. Article XXXVII. of the original Instrument of the Protectorate had guaranteed liberty of worship and of preaching outside the Established Church to "such as profess faith in Jesus Christ," and Cromwell, in his last speech, had noted this as one of the "fundamentals" he was bound to preserve. How did the Parliament meet the difficulty? Very ingeniously. They said that the phrase "such as profess faith in Jesus Christ" was a vague phrase, requiring definition; and, the whole House having formed itself into a Committee for Religion, and this Committee having appointed a working sub-Committee of about fourteen, the sub-Committee was empowered to take steps for coming to a definition. Naturally enough, in such a matter, the sub-Committee wanted clerical advice; and, each member of the sub-Committee having nominated one divine, there was a small Westminster Assembly over again to illuminate Parliament on the dark subject. Dr. Owen and Dr. Goodwin were there, with Nye, Sidrach Simpson, Stephen Marshall, Mr. Vines, Mr. Manton, and others. Mr. Richard Baxter had the honour of being one, having been asked to undertake the duty by Lord Breghill, when the venerable ex-Primate Usher had declined it; and it is from Baxter that we have the fullest account of the proceedings. When he came to town from Kidderminster, he found the rest of the divines already busy in drawing up a list of "fundamentals of faith," the profession of which was to be the necessary title to the toleration promised. Knowing "how ticklish a business the enumeration of fundamentals was," Baxter tried, he says, to stop that method, and suggested that acceptance of the Creed, the Lord's P[r]ayer, and the Decalogue would be a sufficient test. This did not please the others; Baxter almost lost his character for orthodoxy by his proposal; Dr. Owen, in particular, forgetful of his own past, was now bull-mad for the "fundamentals." They were drawn out at last, either sixteen or twenty of them in all, and handed to Parliament through the sub-Committee. Thus illuminated, Parliament, after a debate extending over six days (Dec. 4-15, 1654), discharged its mind fully on the Toleration Question. They resolved that there should certainly be a toleration for tender consciences outside the Established Church, but that it should not extend to "Atheism, Blasphemy, damnable Heresies to be particularly enumerated by this Parliament, Popery, Prelacy, Licentiousness or Profaneness," nor yet to "such as shall preach, print, or avowedly maintain anything contrary to the fundamental principles of Doctrine held forth in the public profession,"--said "fundamental principles" being the "fundamentals" of Dr. Owen and his friends, so far as the House should see fit to pass them. They were already in print, with the Scriptural proofs, for the use of members, and the first of them _was_ passed the same day. It was "That the Holy Scripture is that rule of knowing God, and living unto Him, which whoso does not believe cannot be saved." The others would come in time. Meanwhile it was involved in the Resolution of the House that the Protector himself should have no veto on any Bills for restraining or punishing Atheists, Blasphemers, damnable Heretics, Papists, Prelatists, or deniers of any of the forthcoming Christian fundamentals.[1] [Footnote 1: Commons Journals of days given; Neal, IV. 97-100; Baxter's Life, 197-205. On this visit to town, Baxter had the honour to preach before Cromwell, having never done so till then, "save once long before when Cromwell was an inferior man among other auditors." He had also the honour of two long interviews with Cromwell, the first with one or two others present, the second in full Council. They seem to have been reciprocally disagreeable. On both occasions, according to Baxter, Cromwell talked enormously for the most part "slowly" and "tediously" to Baxter's taste, but with passionate outbreaks against the Parliament. On the second occasion the topic was Liberty of Conscience, and what was being done in the Subcommittee and by the Divines on the subject. Baxter ventured to hint that he had put his views on paper and that it might save time if his Highness would read them. "He received the paper after, but I scarce believe that he ever read it; for I saw that what he learned must be from himself--being more disposed to speak many hours than to hear one, and little heeding what another said when he had spoken himself." Cromwell had made up his mind about Baxter long ago (Vol. III. p. 386), but had apparently now given him another trial, on the faith of his reputed liberality on the Toleration question. But Baxter did not gain upon him.] As if to show how much in earnest they were on this whole subject, the House had at that moment the notorious Anti-Trinitarian John Biddle in their custody. Since 1644, when he was a schoolmaster in Gloucester, this mild man had been in prison again and again for his opinions, and the wonder was that the Presbyterians had not succeeded in bringing him to the scaffold in 1648 under their tremendous Ordinance of that year. His Socinian books were then known over England and even on the Continent, and he would certainly have been the first capital victim under the Ordinance if the Presbyterians had continued in power. At large since 1651, he had been living rather quietly in London, earning his subsistence as a Greek reader for the press, but also preaching regularly on Sundays to a small Socinian congregation. In accordance with the general policy of the Government since Cromwell had become master, he had been left unmolested. The orthodox had been on the watch, however, and another Socinian book of Biddle's, called _A Two-fold Catechism_, published in 1654, had given them the opportunity they wanted. For this book Biddle had been arrested on the 12th of December, and he had been brought before the House on his knees and committed to prison on the 13th. The views which the House were then formulating on the Limits of Toleration in the abstract may be said therefore to have been illustrated over Mr. Biddle's body in the concrete. His case came up again on the 15th of January, when the House, after hearing with horror some extracts from his books, ordered them to be burnt by the hangman, and at the same time instructed a Committee to prepare a Bill for punishing him. The punishment, if the Presbyterians could succeed in falling back on their Parliamentary Ordinance of May 1648, was to be death.[1] [Footnote 1: Wood's Ath. III. 593-598; Commons Journals of dates.] It was really of very great consequence to the Commonwealth of the Protectorate what theory of Toleration should be adopted into its Constitution, whether the Parliament's or Cromwell's. For the ferment of religious and irreligious speculation of all kinds in the three nations was now something prodigious, and there were widely diffused denominations of dissent and heresy that had not been in existence ten years before, when the Long Parliament and the Westminster Assembly first discussed the Toleration Question. Our synopsis of the English sects and Heresies of 1644 (Vol. III. 143-159) is not, indeed, wholly out of date for 1654, but it would require extensions and modifications to adjust it accurately to the latter year. There had been the natural flux and reflux of ideas during the intervening decade, the waning of some sects and singularities that had no deep root, the interblending of others, and new bursts in the teeming chaos. _Atheists_, Sceptics_, _Mortalists_ or _Materialists_, _Anti-Scripturists_, _Anti-Trinitarians_ or _Socinians_, _Arians_, _Anti-Sabbatarians_, _Seekers_, and _Divorcers_ or _Miltonists_: all these terms were still in the vocabulary of the orthodox, describing persons or bodies of persons of whose opinions the Civil Magistrate was bound to take account. Sects, on the other hand, that had been on the black list ten years ago had now been admitted to respectability. _Baptists_ or _Anabaptists_, _Antinomians, _Brownists_, nay even INDEPENDENTS generally, had been regarded in 1644 as dark and dangerous schismatics; but now, save in the private colloquies or controversial tracts of Presbyterians, no feeling of horror attached to those names. INDEPENDENTS, indeed, were now the Lords of the Commonwealth, and _Anabaptists_ and _Antinomians_ were in high places, so that the most orthodox Presbyterians found themselves side by side with them in private gatherings and committees. In the Established Church of the Protectorate there was to be a comprehension of Presbyterians, Independents, and such Baptists and other really Evangelical Sectaries as might be willing; and, accordingly, the question of mere Toleration outside the Established Church no longer concerned the Evangelical sects lying immediately beyond ordinary Independency. If, from objection to the principle of an Establishment, they chose to remain outside, they would have toleration there as a matter of course. To make up, however, for this removal of so many of the old Sectaries from all practical interest in the question on their own account, there were new religious denominations of such strange ways and tendencies, such unknown relations to anything hitherto recognised as Orthodoxy or as Heresy, that the poor Civil Magistrate, or even the coolest Abstract Tolerationist, in contemplating them, might well be puzzled. The following is a list of the chief of these new Sects that had sprung up since 1644:-- FIFTH-MONARCHY MEN:--At first sight this does not appear a new sect, but merely a continuation of the old MILLENARIES or CHILIASTS (Vol. III, pp. 152-153), who believed that the Personal Reign of Christ on Earth for a thousand years was approaching. The change of name, however, indicates greater precision in the belief, and also greater intensity. According to the wild system of Universal Chronology then in vogue, the past History of the World, on this side of the Flood, had consisted of four great successive Empires or Monarchies--the Assyrian, which ended B.C. 531; the Persian, which ended B.C. 331; the Macedonian, or Greek Empire of Alexander, which was made to stretch to B.C. 44; and the Roman, which had begun B.C. 44, with the Accession of Augustus Cæsar, and which had included, though people might not see how, all that had happened on the Earth since then. But this last Monarchy was tottering, and a Fifth Universal Monarchy was at hand. It was that foreshadowed in Rev. xx.: "And I saw an Angel come down from Heaven, having the key of the Bottomless Pit and a great chain in his hand. And he laid hold on the Dragon, that great serpent, which is the Devil and Satan, and bound him a thousand years, and cast him into the Bottomless Pit, and shut him up, and set a seal upon him, that he should deceive the nations no more, till the thousand years should be fulfilled: and after that he must be loosed a little season. And I saw Thrones, and they sat upon them, and judgment was given unto them: and I saw the souls of them that were beheaded for the witness of Jesus, and for the worship of God, and which had not worshipped the beast, neither his image, neither had received his mark upon their foreheads, or in their hands; and they lived and reigned with Christ a thousand years. But the rest of the dead lived not again until the thousand years were finished." This prophecy was the property of all Christians, and might receive different interpretations. The literal interpretation, favoured by some theologians, was that, at some date fast approaching, Christ would reappear visibly on Earth, accompanied by the re-embodied souls of dead saints and martyrs, while the rest of the dead slept on, and that in the glorious reign of Righteousness and the subjugation of all Evil thus begun for a thousand years men then living, or the true saints among them, might partake. This interpretation, though scouted by the more rational theologians, had seized on many of the more fervid English Independents and Sectaries, so that they had begun to see, in the great events of their own time and land, the dazzling edge of the near Millennium. The doctrine had caught the souls of Harrison and other men of action, hitherto classed as Anabaptists or Seekers. Now, so far there was no harm in it, nor could any of the orthodox who rejected it for themselves dare to treat it as one of the heresies to be restrained by the Civil Magistrate. Evidently, however, there was a root of danger. What if the Fifth-Monarchy men should make it part of their faith that the saints could accelerate the Fifth Monarchy, and that it was their duty to do so? Then their tenet might have strange practical effects upon English politics. Already, in the time of the Barebones Parliament, there had been warnings of this, the Fifth-Monarchy men there, or outside the Parliament, having distinguished themselves by an ultra-Republicanism which verged on Communism, and also by their zeal for pure Voluntaryism in Religion and the abolition of a paid Ministry and all express Church machinery. The fact had not escaped Cromwell, and in his speech at the opening of the present Parliament he had taken notice of it. In that very speech he had singled out for remark "the mistaken notion of the Fifth Monarchy." It was a notion, he admitted, held by many good and sincere men; nay it was a notion he honoured and could find a high meaning in. "But for men, on this principle, to betitle themselves that they are the only men to rule kingdoms, govern nations, and give laws to people, and determine of property and liberty and everything else,--upon such a pretension as this: truly they had need to give clear manifestations of God's presence with them, before wise men will receive or submit to their conclusions." If they were notions only, he added, they were best left alone; for "notions will hurt none but those who have them." But, when the notions were turned into practice, and proposals were made for abrogation of Property and Magistracy to smooth the way for the Fifth Monarchy, then one must remember Jude's precept as to the mode of dealing with the errors of good men. "Of some have compassion," Jude had said, "making a difference; others save with fear, pulling them out of the fire."[1] [Footnote 1: Hearne's _Ductor Historicus_, 1714 (for the old doctrine of the Four Monarchies); Thomason Pamphlets; Carlyle's Cromwell, III. 24-27.--The Fifth Monarchy notion was by no means an upstart oddity of thought among the English Puritans of the seventeenth century. It was a tradition of the most scholarly thought of mediæval theologians as to the duration and final collapse of the existing Cosmos; and it may be traced in the older imaginative literature of various European nations. Thus the Scottish Sir David Lindsay's long poem entitled _Monarchy, or Ane Dialogue betwix Experience and one Courtier of the Miserable Estate of the World_, the date of which is 1553, is a moralized sketch of the whole previous history of the world, according to the then accepted doctrine of the Four past Secular Monarchies, with a glance around at the Europe of Lindsay's own time as already certainly in the dregs of "The Latter Days," and an anticipation, as if with assured personal belief, of a glorious Fifth Monarchy, or miraculous reconstitution of the whole Universe into a new Heaven and Earth, to begin probably about the year 2000.] RANTERS:--"These made it their business," says Baxter, "to set up the Light of Nature under the name of _Christ in Man_, and to dishonour and cry down the Church, the Scripture, and the present Ministry, and our worship and ordinances; and called men to hearken to Christ within them. But withal they conjoined a cursed doctrine of Libertinism, which brought them to all abominable filthiness of life. They taught, as the FAMILISTS, (see Vol. III. p. 152), that God regardeth not the actions of the outward man, but of the heart, and that to the pure all things are pure ... I have seen myself letters written from Abington, where among both soldiers and people this contagion did then prevail, full of horrid oaths and curses and blasphemy, not fit to be repeated by the tongue or pen of man; and this all uttered as the effect of knowledge and a part of their Religion, in a fanatic strain, and fathered on the Spirit of God." The Ranters, in fact, seem to have been ANTINOMIANS (see Vol. III. 151-152) run mad, with touches from FAMILISM and SEEKERISM greatly vulgarized. Of no sect do we hear more in the pamphlets and newspapers between 1650 and 1655, though there are traces of them of earlier date. The pamphlets about them generally take the form of professed accounts of some of their meetings, with reports of their profane discourses and the indecencies with which they were accompanied. There are illustrative wood-cuts in some of the pamphlets; and, on the whole, I fancy that some low printers and booksellers made a trade on the public curiosity about the Ranters, getting up pretended accounts of their meetings as a pretext for prurient publications. There is plenty of testimony, however, besides Baxter's word, that there was a real sect of the name pretty widely spread in low neighbourhoods in towns, and holding meetings. Among Ranters named in the pamphlets I have noticed a T. Shakespeare. "The horrid villainies of the sect," says Baxter, "did not only speedily extinguish it, but also did as much as ever anything did to disgrace all sectaries, and to restore the credit of the ministry and the sober unanimous Christians;" and this, or the transfusion of Ranterism into equivalent phrenzies with other names, may account for the fact that after a while the pamphlets about the Ranters cease or become rare. Clearly, in the main, the regulation of such a sect, so long as it did last, was a matter of police; and the only question is whether there were any tenets mixed up with Ranterism, or held by some roughly called Ranters, that were capable of being dissociated, and that were in fact in some cases dissociated, from offences against public decency. Exact data are deficient, and there were probably varieties of Ranters theologically. Pantheism, or the essential identity of God with the universe, and his indwelling in every creature, angelic, human, brute, or inorganic, seems to have been the belief of most Ranters that could manage to rise to a metaphysics--with which belief was conjoined also a rejection of all essential distinction between good and evil, and a rejection of all Scripture as mere dead letter; but from a so-called "Carol of the Ranters" I infer that Atheism, or at least Mortalism or Materialism (see Vol. III. p. 156-157), had found refuge among some of the varieties. Thus:-- "They prate of God! Believe it, fellow-creature, There's no such bugbear: all was made by Nature. We know all came of nothing, and shall pass Into the same condition once it was By Nature's power, and that they grossly lie That say there's hope of immortality. Let them but tell us what a soul is: then We shall adhere to these mad brainsick men."[1] [Footnote 1: Baxter's Life, 76-77; and Thomason Pamphlets _passim_. The pamphlet last quoted is in Vol. 485 (old numbering). I have also used a quotation from another pamphlet in Barclay's _Inner Life of the Religious Societies of the Commonwealth_ (1876), pp. 417-418.] STRAY FANATICS: THE MUGGLETONIANS:--Sometimes confounded with the Ranters, but really distinguishable, were some crazed men, whose crazes had taken a religious turn, and whose extravagances became contagious.--Such was a John Robins, first heard of about 1650, when he went about, sometimes as God Almighty, sometimes as Adam raised from the dead, with the power of raising others from the dead. He had raised Cain and Judas, and other personages of Scripture, forgiving their sins and blessing them; which personages, changed in character, but remembering their former selves quite well, went about in Robins's company and were seen and talked with by various people. He could work miracles, and in dark rooms would exhibit himself surrounded with angels, and fiery serpents, and shining lights, or riding in the air. He had been sent to Bridewell, and his supernatural powers had left him.--One heard next, in 1652, of two associates, called John Reeve and Ludovick Muggleton, who professed to be "the two last Spiritual Witnesses (Rev. xi.) and alone true Prophets of the Lord Jesus Christ, God alone blessed to all eternity." They believed in a real man-shaped God, existing from all eternity, who had come upon earth as Jesus Christ, leaving Moses and Elijah to represent him in Heaven--also in the mortality of the soul till the resurrection of the body; and their chief commission was to denounce and curse all false prophets, and all who did not believe in Reeves and Muggleton. They visited Robins in Bridewell and told _him_ to stop his preaching under pain of eternal damnation; but they favoured some eminent Presbyterian and Independent ministers of London with letters to the same effect. They dated their letters "from Great Trinity Lane, at a Chandler's shop, against one Mr. Millis, a brown baker, near Bow Lane End;" and the editor of _Mercurius Politicus_, who had received one of their letters so dated, had the curiosity to go to see them, with some friends of his, in the end of August 1653. He found them "at the top of an old house in a cockloft," and made a paragraph of them thus:--"They are said to be a couple of tailors: but only one of them works, and that is Muggleton; the other, they say, writes prophecies. We found two women there whom they had convinced; whom we questioning, they said they believed all. Besides there was an old country plain man of Essex, who said he had been with them twice before; and, being asked whether he were of the same opinion and did believe them, he answered, Truly he could not tell what to say, but he was come to have some discourse with them in private." Two mouths after this interview (Oct. 1653), they were brought before the Lord Mayor and Recorder for their letters to ministers, and sentenced to six months of imprisonment each. But they were to be farther heard of in the world. Muggleton indeed to as late as 1698, when he died at the age of ninety, leaving a sect called THE MUGGLETONIANS, who are perhaps not extinct yet.--Among those who attached themselves to Reeves and Muggleton was a Thomas Tany, who called himself also "Theauro John," and professed to be the Lord's High Priest. They would have nothing to do with him, and put him on their excommunicated list. Whether because this preyed on the poor man's mind or not, he was found in the lobby of the Parliament House on Saturday, Dec. 30. 1654, with a drawn sword, slashing at members, and knocking for admittance. The House, who were then in the midst of their debate on the proper Limits of Toleration, ordered him to be brought to the bar:--"Where," say the journals, "being demanded by Mr. Speaker what his name was, answered' _Theeror John_'; being asked why he came hither, saith, He fired his tent, and the people were ready to stone him because he burnt the Bible--which he acknowledgeth he did. Saith it is letters, not life. And he drew his sword because the man jostled him at the door. Saith he burnt the Bible because the people say it is the Word of God, and it is not; it deceived _him_. And saith he burnt the sword and pistols and Bibles because they are the Gods of England. He did it not of himself; and, being asked who bid him do it, saith God.' And thereupon was commanded to withdraw." He was sent into custody immediately.--Stray fanatics like Robins, Reeves, Muggleton, and Theauro John, seem to have been not uncommon through England.[1] [Footnote 1: Godwin, IV. 313-317; Mercurius Politicus, No. 167 (Aug. 18-25, 1653); Commons Journals, Dec. 30, 1654; Barclay's _Religious Societies_, pp. 421-422.] BOEHMENISTS AND OTHER MYSTICS:--Of the German Mystic Jacob Boehme (1575-1624) there had been a _Life_ in English since 1644, with a catalogue of his writings, and since then translations of some of the writings themselves had appeared at intervals, mostly from the shop of one publisher, Humphrey Blunden. The interest in "the Teutonical Philosopher" thus excited had at length taken form in a small sect of professed BOEHMENISTS, propounding the doctrine of the Light of Nature, i.e. of a mystic intuitional revelation in the soul itself of all true knowledge of divine and human things. Of this sect Baxter says that they were "fewer in number," and seemed "to have attained to greater meekness and conquest of passions," than the other sects. The chief of them was Dr. Pordage, Rector of Bradfield, in Berks, with his family. They held "visible and sensible communion with angels" in the Rectory, on the very walls and windows of which there appeared miraculous pictures and symbols; and the Doctor himself, besides alarming people with such strange phrases as "the fiery deity of Christ dwelling in the soul and mixing itself with our flesh," was clearly unorthodox on many particular points.[1]--Boehme's system included a mystical physics or cosmology as well as a metaphysics or theosophy, and some of his English followers seem to have allied themselves with the famous Astrologer William Lilly, whose prophetic Almanacks, under the title of _Merlinus Anglicus_, had been appearing annually since 1644. But indeed all sorts of men were in contact with this quack or quack-mystic. He had been consulted by Charles I as to the probable issue of events; he had been consulted and feed by partisans of the other side: his Almanacks, with their hieroglyphics and political predictions, had a boundless popularity, and were bringing him a good income; he was the chief in his day of those fortune-telling and spirit-auguring celebrities who hover all their lives between high society and Bridewell. As he had adhered to the Parliamentarians and made the stars speak for their cause, he had hitherto been pretty safe; but the leading Presbyterian and Independent ministers, as we have seen (ante IV, p. 392), had recently called upon Parliament to put down his bastard science. Gataker had attacked "that grand impostor Mr. William Lilly" in an express publication.[2]--Is it in a spirit of mischief that Baxter names THE VANISTS, or disciples of Sir Henry Vane the younger, as one of the recognised sects of this time? That great Republican leader, it was known, with all his deep practical astuteness and the perfect clearness and shrewdness of his speeches and business-letters, carried in his head a mystic Metaphysics of his own which he found it hard to express. It was a something unique, including ideas from the Antinomians, the Anabaptists, and the Seekers, he had been so much among, with something also of the Fifth-Monarchy notion, and with the theory of absolute Voluntaryism in Religion, but all these amalgamated with new ingredients. Burnet tells us that, though he had taken pains to find out Vane's meaning in his own books, he could never reach it, and that, as many others had the same experience, it might be reasonable to conclude that Vane had purposely kept back the key to his system. Friends of Vane had told Burnet, however, that "he leaned to Origen's notion of a universal salvation of all, both of devils and the damned, and to the doctrine of pre-existence." Even when Cromwell and Vane had been close friends, calling each other "Fountain" and "Heron" in their private letters. Vane had been in possession of such peculiar lights, or of others, beyond Cromwell's apprehension. "Brother Fountain can guess at his brother's meaning," he had written to Cromwell in Scotland August 2, 1651, with reference to some troublesome on-goings in the Council of State during Cromwell's absence, begging him not to believe ill-natured reports about "Brother Heron" in connexion with them, and adding, "Be assured he answers your heart's desire in all things, except he be esteemed even by you in principles too high to fathom; which one day, I am persuaded, will not be so thought by you, when, by increasing with the increasings of God, you shall be brought to that sight and enjoyment of God in Christ which passes knowledge." If this to Cromwell, what to others? Three years had passed, and Vane was now in compulsory retirement. His _Retired Man's Meditations_ had not yet been published. Such Vanists, therefore, as there were in 1654 must have imbibed their knowledge of them from Sir Henry's conversation or indirectly. Among these Baxter mentions Peter Sterry, one of Cromwell's favourite preachers, and afterwards known as a mystic on his own account. Of Sterry's preaching, already notoriously obscure, Sir Benjamin Rudyard had said that "it was too high for this world and too low for the other," and Baxter puns on the association of Vane and Sterry, asking whether _Vanity_ and _Sterility_ had ever been more happily conjoined. But the sect of the VANISTS existed perhaps mainly in Baxter's fancy.[3] [Footnote 1: Stationers' Registers from 1644 to 1654; Baxter, 77-78; Neal, IV. 112-113.] [Footnote 2: Engl. Cycl. Art. _Lilly_; Stationers' Registers of date June 10, 1653 (Gataker's Tract) and of other dates (Lilly's Almanacks).] [Footnote 3: Baxter, 74-76; Milton Papers by Nickolls, 78-79; Wood's Ath. III, 578 et seq. and IV. 136-138.] QUAKERS OR FRIENDS:--Who can think of the appearance of this sect in English History without doing what the sect itself would forbid, and reverently raising the hat? And yet in 1654 this was the very sect of sects. It was about the Quakers that there had begun to be the most violent excitement among the guardians of social order throughout the British Islands.--It was then six or seven years since they had first been heard of in any distinct way, and four since they had received the name QUAKERS. A Derbyshire Justice of the Peace, it is said, first invented that name for them, because they seemed to be fond of the text Jer. v. 22, and had offended him by addressing it to himself and a brother magistrate: "Fear ye not me? saith the Lord; will ye not tremble at my presence?" But Robert Barclay's account of the origin of the name in his _Apology for the Quakers_ (1675) is probably more correct, though not inconsistent. He says it arose from the fact that, in the early meetings of "The Children of the Light," as they first called themselves, violent physical agitations were not unfrequent, and conversions were often signalized by that accompaniment. There was often an "inward travail" in some one present; "and from this inward travail, while the darkness seeks to obscure the light, and the light breaks through the darkness, which it will always do if the soul gives not its strength to the darkness, there will be such a painful travail found in the soul that will even work upon the outward man, so that often-times, through the working thereof, the body will be greatly shaken, and many groans and sighs and tears, even as the pangs of a woman in travail, will lay hold of it: yea, and this not only as to one, but ... sometimes the power of God will break forth into a whole meeting, and there will be such an inward travail, while each is seeking to overcome the evil in themselves, that by the strong contrary workings of these opposite powers, like the going of two contrary tides, every individual will be strongly exercised as in a day of battle, and thereby trembling and a motion of body will be upon most, if not upon all, which, as the power of Truth prevails, will from pangs and groans end with a sweet sound of thanksgiving and praise. And from this the name of _Quakers_, i.e. _Tremblers_, was first reproachfully cast upon us; which though it be none of our choosing, yet in this respect we are not ashamed of it, but have rather reason to rejoice therefore, even that we are sensible of this power that hath oftentimes laid hold of our adversaries, and made them yield to us, and join with us, and confess to the Truth, before they had any distinct and discursive knowledge of our doctrines."--The Quakers, then, according to this eminent Apologist for them, _had_, from the first, definite doctrines, which might be distinctly and discursively known. What were they? They hardly amounted to any express revolution of existing Theology. In no essential respect did any of their recognised representatives impugn any of the doctrines of Christianity as professed by other fervid Evangelical sects. The Trinity, the Divinity of Christ, the natural sinfulness of men, propitiation by Christ alone, sanctification by the Holy Spirit, the inspiration and authority of the Scriptures--in these, and in other cardinal tenets, they were at one with the main body of their contemporary Christians. Though it was customary for a time to confound them with the Ranters, they themselves repudiated the connexion, and opposed the Ranters and their libertinism wherever they met them. Wherein then lay the distinctive peculiarity of the Quakers? It has been usual to say that it consisted in their doctrine of the universality of the gift of the Spirit, and of the constant inner light, and motion, and teaching of the Spirit in the soul of each individual believer. This is not sufficient. That doctrine they shared substantially with various other sects,--certainly with the Boehmenists and other Continental Mystics, not to speak of the English Antinomians and Seekers. Nay, in their first great practical application of the doctrine they had been largely anticipated. If the inner motion or manifestation of the Spirit in each mind, in interpretation of the Bible or over and above the Bible, is the sole true teaching of the Gospel, and if the manifestation cometh as the Spirit listeth, and cannot be commanded, a regular Ministry of the Word by a so-called Clergy is an absurdity, and a hired Ministry an abomination! So said the Quakers. In reaching this conclusion, however, they had only added themselves to masses of people, known as Brownists, Seekers, and Anabaptists, who had already, by the same route or by others, advanced to the standing-ground of absolute Voluntaryism. What did distinguish the early Quakers seems to have been, in the first place, the thorough form of their apprehension of that doctrine of the Inner Light, or Immediate Revelation of the Spirit, which they held in common with other sects, and, in the second place, their courage and tenacity in carrying out the practical inferences from that doctrine in every sentence of their own speech and every hour of their own conduct. As to the form in which they held the doctrine itself Barclay will be again our best authority. "The testimony of the Spirit," he says, "is that alone by which the true knowledge of God hath been, is, and can only be, revealed; who, as by the moving of his own Spirit he converted the Chaos of this world into that wonderful Order wherein it was in the beginning, and created Man a living Soul to rule and govern it, so by the same Spirit he hath manifested himself all along unto the sons of men, both Patriarchs, Prophets, and Apostles: which revelations of God by the Spirit, whether by outward voices and appearances, dreams, or inward objective manifestations in the heart, were of old the formal object of their faith and remain yet so to be,--since the object of the Saints' faith is the same in all ages, though set forth under divers administrations." This Inner Light of the Spirit, seizing men and women at all times and places, and illuminating them in the knowledge of God, was, Barclay elsewhere explains, something altogether supernatural, something totally distinct from natural Reason. "That Man, as he is a rational creature, hath Reason as a natural faculty of his soul, we deny not; for this is a property natural and essential to him, by which he can know and learn many arts and sciences, beyond what any other animal can do by the mere animal principle. Neither do we deny that by this rational principle Man may apprehend in his brain, and in the notion, a knowledge of God and spiritual things; yet, that not being the right organ, ... it cannot profit him towards salvation, but rather hindereth." And what of the use and value of the Scriptures? "From these revelations of the Spirit of God to the saints have proceeded the Scriptures of Truth, which contain (1) A faithful historical account of the actings of God's people in divers ages, with many singular and remarkable providences attending them; (2) A prophetical account of several things, whereof some are already past and some yet to come; (3) A full and ample account of all the chief principles of the doctrine of Christ ... Nevertheless, because they are only a declaration of the fountain, and not the fountain itself, therefore they are not to be esteemed the principal ground of all Truth and Knowledge, nor yet the adequate primary rule of faith and manners. Nevertheless, as that which giveth a true and faithful testimony of the first foundation, they are and may be esteemed a secondary rule, subordinate to the Spirit, from which they have all their excellency and certainty." So much for the _form_ of the central principle of Early Quakerism, so far as it can be expressed logically. But it was in the resolute application of the principle in practice that the Early Quakers made themselves conspicuous. They were not Speculative Voluntaries, waiting for the abolition of the National Church, and paying tithes meanwhile. They were Separatists who would at once and in every way assert their Separatism. They would pay no tithes; they called every church "a steeple-house"; and they regarded every parson as the hired performer in one of the steeple-houses. Then, in their own meetings for mutual edification and worship, all their customs were in accordance with their main principle. They had no fixed articles of congregational creed, no prescribed forms of prayer, no ordinance of baptism or of sacramental communion, no religious ceremony in sanction of marriage, and no paid or appointed preachers. The ministry was to be as the spirit moved; all equally might speak or be silent, poor as well as rich, unlearned as well as learned, women as well as men; if special teachers did spring up amongst them, it should not be professionally, or to earn a salary. Yet, with all this liberty among themselves, what unanimity in the moral purport of their teachings! Their restless dissatisfaction with the Established Church and with all known varieties of Dissent, their passion for a full reception of Christ at the fountain-head, their searchings of the Scriptures, their private raptures and meditations, their prayers and consultations in public, had resulted in a simple re-issue of the Christianity of the Sermon on the Mount. Quakerism, in its kernel, was but the revived Christian morality of meekness, piety, benevolence, purity, truthfulness, peacefulness, and passivity. There were to be no oaths: Yea or Nay was to be enough. There were to be no ceremonies of honour or courtesy-titles among men: the hat was to be taken off to no one, and all were to be addressed in the singular, as _Thou_ and _Thee_. War and physical violence were unlawful, and therefore all fighting and the trade of a soldier. Injuries to oneself were to be borne with patience, but there was to be the most active energy in relieving the sufferings of others, and in seeking out suffering where it lurked. The sick and those in prison were to be visited, the insane and the outcast; and the wrongs and cruelties of law, whether in death-sentences for mere offences against property, or in brutal methods of prison-treatment, were to be exposed and condemned. For the rest, the Friends were to walk industriously and domestically through the world, honest in their dealings, wearing a plain Puritan garb, and avoiding all vanities and gaieties.--Had it been possible for such a sect to come into existence by mere natural growth, or the unconcerted association of like-minded persons in all parts of the country at once, even then, one can see, there would have been irritation between it and the rest of the community. The refusal to pay tithes, the refusal of oaths in Courts of Law or anywhere else, the objection to war and to the trade of a soldier, the _Theeing_ and _Thouing_ of all indiscriminately, the keeping of the hat on in any presence, would have occasioned constant feud between any little nucleus of Quakers and the society round about it. But the sect had not formed itself by any such quiet process of simultaneous grouping among people who had somehow imbibed its tenets. It had come into being, and in fact had shaped its tenets and become aware of them, through a previous fervour of itinerant Propagandism such as had hardly been known since the first Apostles and Christian missionaries had walked among the heathen. The first Quaker, the man in whose dreamings by himself, aided by scanty readings, the principles of the sect had been evolved, and in whose conduct by himself for a year or two the sect had practically originated, was the good, blunt, obstinate, opaque-brained, ecstatic, Leicestershire shoemaker, George Fox, the Boehme of England. From the year 1646, when he was two and twenty years of age, the life of Fox had been an incessant tramp through the towns and villages of the Midlands and the North, with preachings in barns, in inns, in market-places, outside courts of justice, and often inside the steeple-houses themselves, by way of interruption of the regular ministers, or correction of their doctrine after the hours of regular service. Extraordinary excitements had attended him everywhere, paroxysms of delight in him with tears and tremblings, outbreaks of rage against him with hootings and stonings. Again and again he had been brought before justices and magistrates, to whose presence indeed he naturally tended of his own accord for the purpose of lecturing them on their duties, and to whom he was always writing Biblical letters. He had been beaten and put in the stocks; he had been in Derby jail and in several other prisons, charged with riot or blasphemy; and in these prisons he had found work to his mind and had sometimes converted his jailors. And so, by the year 1654, "the man with the leather breeches," as he was called, had become a celebrity throughout England, with scattered converts and adherents everywhere, but voted a pest and terror by the public authorities, the regular steeple-house clergy whether Presbyterian or Independent, and the appointed preachers of all the old sects. By this time, however, he was by no means the sole preacher of Quakerism. Every now and then from among his converts there had started up one fitted to assist him in the work of itinerant propagandism, and the number of such had increased in 1654 to about sixty in all. Richard Farnsworth, James Nayler, William Dewsbury, Thomas Aldam, John Audland, Francis Howgill, Edward Burrough, Thomas Taylor, John Camm, Richard Hubberthorn, Miles Halhead, James Parnel, Thomas Briggs, Robert Widders, George Whitehead, Thomas Holmes, James Lancaster, Alexander Parker, William Caton, and John Stubbs, of the one sex, with Elizabeth Hooton, Anna Downer, Elizabeth Heavens, Elizabeth Fletcher, Barbara Blaugden, Catherine Evans, and Sarah Cheevers, of the other sex, were among the chief of these early Quaker preachers after Fox. They had carried the doctrines into every part of England, and also into Scotland and Ireland; some of them had even been moved to go to the Continent. Wherever they went there was the same disturbance round them as round Fox himself, and they had the same hard treatment--imprisonment, duckings, whippings. It is necessary that the reader should remember that in 1654 Quakerism was still in this first stage of its diffusion by a vehement propagandism carried on by some sixty itinerant preachers at war with established habits and customs, and had not settled down into mere individual Quietism, with associations of those who had been converted to its principles, and could be content with their own local meetings. In the chief centres, indeed, there were now fixed meetings for the resident Quakers, the main meeting place for London being the Bull and Mouth in St. Martin's-le-Grand; but Fox and most of his coadjutors were still wandering about the country.--There was already an extensive literature of Quakerism, consisting of printed letters and tracts by Fox himself, Farnsworth, Nayler, Dewsbury, Howgill, and others, and of invectives against the Quakers and their principles by Presbyterians and Independents; and some of the letters of the Quakers had been directly addressed to Cromwell. There had also, some time in 1654, been one interview between the Lord Protector and Fox. Colonel Hacker, having arrested Fox in Leicestershire, had sent him up to London. Brought to Whitehall, one morning early, when the Lord Protector was dressing, he had said, on entering, "Peace be on this House!" and had then discoursed to the Protector at some length, the Protector kindly listening, occasionally putting a question, and several times acknowledging a remark of George's by saying it was "very good," and "the truth." At parting, the Protector had taken hold of his hand, and, with tears in his eyes, said "Come again to my house! If thou and I were but an hour of the day together, we should be nearer one to another. I wish no more harm to thee than I do to my own soul." Outside, the captain on guard, informing George that he was free, had wanted him, by the Protector's orders, to stay and dine with the household; but George had stoutly declined.[1] [Footnote 1: Sewel's _History of the People called Quakers_ (ed. 1834), I, I--136; Rules and Discipline of the Society of Friends (1834), _Introduction_; Baxter, 77; Neal, IV. 31-41; Pamphlets in Thomason Collection; Robert Barclay's _Apology for the Quakers_ (ed. 1765), pp. 4, 48, 118, 309-310. This last is a really able and impressive book--far the most reasoned exposition even yet, I believe, of the principles of early Quakerism. Though not written till twenty years after our present date, it was the first accurate and articulate expression, I believe, of the principles that had really, though rather confusedly, pervaded the Quaker teachings and writings at that date.--There are many particles of information about the early Quakers, and about other contemporary English sects, in _The Inner Life of the Religious Societies of the Commonwealth_, published in 1878, the posthumous work of a second Robert Barclay, two hundred years after the first. But the book, though laborious, is very chaotic, and shows hardly any knowledge of the time of which it mainly treats.] Such were the more recent sects and heresies for which, as well as for those older and more familiar, the First Parliament of the Protectorate had been, with the help of Dr. Owen and his brother-divines, preparing a strait-jacket. Of that Parliament, however, and of all its belongings, the Commonwealth was to be rid sooner than had been expected. It had been the astute policy of the Parliament to concentrate all their attention upon the new Constitution for the Protectorate, and to neglect and postpone other business until the Bill of the Constitution had been pushed through and presented to Cromwell for his assent. In particular they had postponed, as much as possible, all supplies for Army and Navy and for carrying on the Government. By this, as they thought, they retained Cromwell in their grasp. By the instrument under which they had been called, he could not dissolve them till they had sat five months,--which, by ordinary counting from Sept. 3, 1654, made them safe till Feb. 3, 1654-5. But, if they could contrive that it should be Cromwell's interest not to dissolve them then, there was no reason why they should not sit on a good while longer, perhaps even till near Oct. 1656, the time they had themselves fixed for the meeting of the next Parliament. To postpone supplies, therefore, till after the general Bill of the Constitution in all its sixty Articles should have received Cromwell's assent, to wrap up present supplies and the hope of future supplies as much as possible in the Bill itself, was the plan of the Anti-Oliverians. The Bill, it will be remembered, had passed the second reading on Dec. 23, had then gone into Committee for amendments, and had come back to the House with these amendments. On the 10th of January, 1654-5, when the Bill was almost ready to be engrossed, it was moved by the Oliverians that there should be a conference about it with the Protector; but the motion was lost by 107 votes to 95. Among various subsequent divisions was one on the 16th on the question whether the Bill should become Law even if the Lord Protector should refuse his assent, and the Anti-Oliverians negatived the putting of the question by eighty-six votes to fifty-five. The next day, after another division, it was resolved thus: "That this Bill entitled _An Act Declaring and Settling the Government of the Commonwealth_, &c., be engrossed in order to its presentment to the Lord Protector for his consideration and assent," and that, if "the Lord Protector and the Parliament shall not agree thereunto and to every Article thereof, then the Bill shall be void and of none effect." Cromwell having thus been shut up to accept all or none, the Bill passed the third and conclusive reading on Friday, Jan. 19. Then all depended on Cromwell, who would have twenty days to make up his mind. He had made up his mind already, and did not mean to wait for the parchment. The Bill included provisions striking, as he conceived, at the root of his Protectorate, e.g. one for depriving him and the Council of State of that power of interim legislation which they had hitherto exercised with so much effect, and others withholding the negative he thought his due on future Bills affecting fundamentals. He was, besides, wholly disgusted with the spirit and conduct of the Parliament. Accordingly, having bethought himself that, in the payment of the soldiers and sailors, a month was construed as twenty-eight days only, he let the Saturday and Sunday after the third reading of the Bill pass quietly by, and then, on Monday the 22nd, having summoned the House to meet him in the Painted Chamber, addressed them in what counts as the Fourth of his Speeches, told them their time was up that day, and dissolved them. Their Constitutional Bill of Sixty Articles disappeared with them; and they had not, in all the five months, sent up a single Bill to Cromwell for his assent.[1] [Footnote 1: Commons Journals of dates; Godwin, IV. 148-157; Carlyle, III. 70-95.] SECTION II. BETWEEN THE PARLIAMENTS, OR THE TIME OF ARBITRARINESS: JAN. 22, 1654-55--SEPT. 17, 1656. AVOWED "ARBITRARINESS" OF THIS STAGE OF THE PROTECTORATE, AND REASONS FOR IT.--FIRST MEETING OF CROMWELL AND HIS COUNCIL AFTER THE DISSOLUTION: MAJOR-GENERAL OVERTON IN CUSTODY: OTHER ARRESTS: SUPPRESSION OF A WIDE REPUBLICAN CONSPIRACY AND OF ROYALIST RISINGS IN YORKSHIRE AND THE WEST: REVENUE ORDINANCE AND MR. CONY'S OPPOSITION AT LAW: DEFERENCE OF FOREIGN GOVERNMENTS: BLAKE IN THE MEDITERRANEAN: MASSACRE OF THE PIEDMONTESE PROTESTANTS: DETAILS OF THE STORY AND OF CROMWELL'S PROCEEDINGS IN CONSEQUENCE: PENN IN THE SPANISH WEST INDIES: HIS REPULSE FROM HISPANIOLA AND LANDING IN JAMAICA: DECLARATION OF WAR WITH SPAIN AND ALLIANCE WITH FRANCE: SCHEME OF THE GOVERNMENT OF ENGLAND BY MAJOR-GENERALS: LIST OF THEM AND SUMMARY OF THEIR POLICE-SYSTEM: DECIMATION TAX ON THE ROYALISTS, AND OTHER MEASURES _IN TERROREM_: CONSOLIDATION OF THE LONDON NEWSPAPER PRESS: PROCEEDINGS OF THE COMMISSION OF EJECTORS AND OF THE COMMISSION OF TRIERS: VIEW OF CROMWELL'S ESTABLISHED CHURCH OF ENGLAND, WITH ENUMERATION OF ITS VARIOUS COMPONENTS: EXTENT OF TOLERATION OUTSIDE THE ESTABLISHED CHURCH: THE PROTECTOR'S TREATMENT OF THE ROMAN CATHOLICS, THE EPISCOPALIANS, THE ANTI-TRINITARIANS, THE QUAKERS, AND THE JEWS: STATE OF THE ENGLISH UNIVERSITIES AND SCHOOLS UNDER THE PROTECTORATE: CROMWELL'S PATRONAGE OF LEARNING: LIST OF ENGLISH MEN OF LETTERS ALIVE IN 1656, AND ACCOUNT OF THEIR DIVERSE RELATIONS TO CROMWELL: POETICAL PANEGYRICS ON HIM AND HIS PROTECTORATE.--NEW ARRANGEMENTS FOR THE GOVERNMENT OF SCOTLAND: LORD BROGHILL'S PRESIDENCY THERE FOR CROMWELL: GENERAL STATE OF THE COUNTRY: CONTINUED STRUGGLE BETWEEN THE RESOLUTIONERS AND THE PROTESTERS FOR KIRK-SUPREMACY: INDEPENDENCY AND QUAKERISM IN SCOTLAND: MORE EXTREME ANOMALIES THERE: STORY OF "JOCK OF BROAD SCOTLAND": BRISK INTERCOURSE BETWEEN SCOTLAND AND LONDON: MISSION OF MR. JAMES SHARP.--IRELAND FROM 1654 TO 1656.--GLIMPSE OF THE COLONIES. This long stretch of twenty months was to be another period of the government of the Commonwealth by the Lord Protector and the Council of State on their own responsibility and without a Parliament. In the circumstances in which the late Parliament had left them, without supplies and without a single concluded and authoritative enactment, they could only fall back on the original Instrument of the Protectorate, amending its defects by their own ingenuity as exigencies occurred, with a suggestion now and then snatched, for the sake of quasi-Parliamentary countenance, from the wreck of the late Constitutional Bill. Hence a character of "arbitrariness" in Cromwell's government throughout this period greater perhaps than in any other of his whole Protectorate. For that, however, he was prepared. At the first meeting of the Council after the Dissolution of Parliament (Tuesday, Jan. 23, 1654-5) there were present, I find, His Highness himself, and thirteen out of the eighteen Councillors, viz.: Lord President Lawrence, the Earl of Mulgrave, Viscount Lisle, Lambert, Desborough, Fiennes, Montague, Sydenham, Strickland, Sir Charles Wolseley, Skippon, Jones, and Rous; and it was then "ordered by his Highness and the Council that Friday next be set apart for their seeking of God, and that Mr. Lockyer, Mr. Caryl, Mr. Denn, and Mr. Sterry, be desired then to give their assistance." In entering on the new period of their Government, the Protector and the Council thought a day of special prayer very fitting.[1] [Footnote 1 Council Order Book of date.--Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper, having shown Anti-Oliverian tendencies in the late Parliament, did not reappear in the Council after the Dissolution, and had virtually ceased to be a member. Colonel Mackworth had died Dec. 26, 1654. The three other members not present at the meeting of Jan. 23, 1664-5 were Fleetwood, Sir Gilbert Pickering, and Richard Mayor. Fleetwood was in Ireland; Pickering's absence was accidental, and he was in his place very regularly afterwards; Mayor did not attend steadily.] In the Dissolution Speech Cromwell, rebuking the Parliament for their inattention to what he considered their real duty, had compared them to a tree under the shadow of which there had been a too thriving growth of other vegetation. Interpreting the parable, he had explained to them that there was at that moment a new and very complex conspiracy against the Commonwealth, that the Levellers at home had been in correspondence with the Cavaliers abroad, that their plans were laid and their manifestos ready, that commissioners from Charles Stuart had arrived and stores of arms and money had been collected, and also (worst of all) that there had been tamperings with the Army by Commonwealth men of higher note than the mere Levellers. He did not believe, he said, that any then in Parliament were in the Cavalier interest in the connexion, but he was not sure that they were all perfectly clear of the connexion on all its sides. At all events, he knew that their policy of starving the Army had given the enemy their best opportunity. Fortunately, he had already some of the chief home-conspirators in custody, and the Cavalier part of the plot might explode when it liked.[1] [Footnote 1: Speech IV (Carlyle, III 75-81.)] The chief of those in custody when Cromwell spoke was the Republican Major-General Overton. He had been under suspicion before, as we have seen, but had cleared himself sufficiently to Cromwell, and had been sent back to Scotland as second in command to Monk (Sept. 1654). Since then, however, he had relapsed into the Anti-Oliverian mood, and had become, it was believed, the head of the numerous Anti-Oliverians or Republicans in Monk's Army, The proposal was to seize Monk, make Overton the commander-in-chief, and march into England, But, information having been received in time, there had been the necessary arrests of the guilty officers (Dec. 1654). Most of them had been kept in Edinburgh to be dealt with by Monk; but the chiefs had been sent at once to London, and among them Overton, whose arrest had taken place at Aberdeen. He was committed to the Tower Jan. 16, 1654-5. The clue having thus been furnished, further investigation had disclosed more. In concert with the Anti-Oliverian movement in the Army of Scotland, and depending on that movement for help, there had been plottings in England, in which Harrison, Colonel Okey, Colonel Alured, Colonel Sexby, Adjutant-General Allen, Admiral Lawson, Major John Wildman, Lord Grey of Groby, Carew, and even Bradshaw, Hasilrig, and Henry Marten, were, or were said to be, more or less involved. The aim seems to have been a combination of the Anabaptist Levellers with the more eminent Republicans,--the Levellers, or some of them, quite willing to combine also with the Royalists, and indeed in confidential negotiation with them. How the scheme, or medley of schemes, would have turned out in the working, was never to be known. It was frustrated by the arrest, in January and February, of most of the suspected. The most important arrest was that of Major Wildman, the undoubted chief of the Levelling section of the conspiracy. When arrested in Wiltshire, he was found in the act of dictating a "Declaration of the Free and Well-affected People of England now in arms against the tyrant Oliver Cromwell, Esq." He was imprisoned in Chepstow Castle. Sexby, the most active man after Wildman in the Levelling or Anabaptist section of the conspiracy, escaped and went abroad. Adjutant-General Allen, and others less deeply implicated, were dismissed from their posts in the Army. Harrison was confined in the Isle of Portland, Carew in St. Mawes, in Cornwall, and Lord Grey of Groby in Windsor Castle. None of all the Republicans, higher or lower, it was remarked, suffered any punishment beyond such seclusion or dismissal from the service. Clemency on that side was always Cromwell's policy.[1] [Footnote 1: Godwin, IV. 158-165; Carlyle, III. 66-70 and 98-99; Whitlocke, IV. 182-188 (Wildman's Proclamation); Life of Robert Blair, 319.] Much sharper was Cromwell's method of dealing with the attempted invasion and insurrection of the Royalists independently. Hopes had risen high at the Court of the Stuarts, and the preparations had been extensive. Charles himself had gone to Middleburg, with the Marquis of Ormond and others, to be ready for a landing in England; Hull had been thought of as the likeliest landing-place; commissioned pioneers of the enterprise were already moving about in various English counties. Of all this Thurloe had procured sufficient intelligence through his foreign spies, and the precautions of the Protector and Council had been commensurate. The projected Overton revolt in Scotland and the Wildman-Sexby plot in England having been brought to nothing, the Royalists had to act for themselves. Two abortive risings in March, 1654-5, exhausted their energy. One was in Yorkshire, where Sir Henry Slingsby and Sir Richard Malevrier appeared in arms, but were immediately suppressed. The other was in the West, and was more serious. On the night of Sunday, the 11th of March, a body of 200 Cavaliers, headed by Sir Joseph Wagstaff, one of Charles's emissaries from abroad, took possession of the city of Salisbury, The assizes were to be held in the city the next day, and Chief Justice Rolle, Judge Nicholas, and the High Sheriff, had arrived and were in their beds. They were seized; and next morning Wagstaff issued orders for hanging them, but was stopped in the act by the remonstrances of Colonel John Penruddock and others. From Salisbury, finding no encouragement among the citizens, the insurgents moved westward till they reached South Molton in Devonshire, where they were overtaken on the night of Wednesday, March 14, by Captain Unton Crook. There was a brief street-fight, ending in the defeat of the Royalists, and the capture of Penruddock and about fifty more. Wagstaff escaped. Of the contemporary insurgents in the north there had meanwhile escaped Malevrier and also Wilmot, Earl of Rochester, who had come from abroad to head the Royalist insurrection generally, had gone to the north, but had not awaited the actual upshot. He lay concealed in London for a time, and got to Cologne at last. In the trials which ensued those who suffered capitally were Penruddock, beheaded at Exeter, a Captain Hugh Grove and several others at other places in the West, and two or three at York. Many of the inferior culprits, capitally convicted, had their lives spared, but were sent in servitude to Barbadoes.[1] [Footnote 1: Clarendon, 824-827; Whitlocke, IV. 188; Godwin, IV. 167-169; Carlyle, III. 99-100.] Revenue had been one of the first cares of the Protector and Council in resuming power after the Dissolution. By a former ordinance of theirs of June 1654 (Vol. IV. p. 562), the assessment for the Army and Navy had been renewed for three months at the rate of £120,000 per month, and for the next three months at the lowered rate of £90,000 per month. This ordinance had expired at Christmas 1654; and, though the Parliament had then passed a Bill for extending the assessment for three months more at £60,000 per month, the Bill had never been presented to Cromwell for his assent. On the 8th of February, 1654-5, therefore, a new Ordinance by his Highness and Council fixed the assessment for a certain term at £60,000 per month. This acceptance of the reduction proposed by the Parliament gave general satisfaction; and there is evidence that at this time Cromwell and the Council let themselves be driven to various shifts of economy rather than overstrain their power of ordinance-making in the unpopular particular of supplies. But, indeed, it was on the question of the validity of this power generally, all-essential as it was, that they encountered their greatest difficulties. A merchant named Cony did more to wreck the Protectorate by a suit at law than did the Cavaliers by their armed insurrection. Having refused to pay custom duty because it was levied only by an ordinance of the Lord Protector and Council of March, 1654, and not by authority of Parliament, he had been fined £500 by the Commissioners of Customs, and had been committed to prison for non-payment. On a motion for a writ of _habeas corpus_ his case came on for trial in May 1655. Maynard and two other eminent lawyers who were his counsel pleaded so effectively that they were committed to the Tower for what was called language destructive to the Government. Cony himself then went on with the pleading, and so sturdily that Chief Justice Rolle was non-plussed, and had to confess as much to Cromwell. It was only by delay, and then by some private management of Cony, that a decision was avoided which would have enabled the whole population legally to defy every taxing ordinance of the Protectorate. Similarly the Ordinance of August 1654 for regulating the Court of Chancery, and even the Ordinance of Treason under which the late insurgents had been tried, had brought the Protectorate into collision with the consciences of Lawyers and Judges. There were such remonstrances to Cromwell on the subject that he had to re-arrange the whole Bench. He removed Rolle and two other Judges, appointing Glynne and Steele in their stead, and he deprived Whitlocke and Widdrington of their Commissionerships of the Great Seal, compensating them after a while by Commissionerships of the Treasury. For all this "arbitrariness" Cromwell avowed, in the simplest and most downright manner, the plea of absolute necessity. The very existence of his Protectorate was at peril; and that meant, he declared, the existence of the Commonwealth.[1] [Footnote 1: Godwin, IV. 174-183; Whitlocke, through April, May, June, and July, 1655.] For such "arbitrariness" in some of the Protector's home-proceedings there was, most people allowed, a splendid atonement in the marvels of his foreign policy. Never had there been on the throne of England a sovereign more bent upon making England the champion-nation of the world. The deference, the sycophancy, of foreign princes and potentates to him, and the proofs of the same in letters and embassies, and in presents of hawks and horses, had become a theme for jests and caricatures among foreigners themselves. Parliaments might come and go in Westminster; but there sat Cromwell, immoveable through all, the impersonation of the British Islands. His dissolution of the late Parliament, and his easy suppression of the subsequent tumult, had but increased the respect for him abroad. Whether he would finally declare himself for Spain or for France was still the momentous question. The Marquis of Leyda, Spanish Governor of Dunkirk, had come to London to assist Cardenas in the negotiations for Spain; but Mazarin was indefatigable in his offers, through M. de Bordeaux and otherwise.[1] [Footnote 1: Council Order Books _passim_; Guizot, II. 203.] While the Parliament was still sitting, Cromwell had sent out two fleets, one under the command of Blake (Oct. 1654), the other under that of Penn (Dec. 1654). There was the utmost secrecy as to the destination and objects of both, but the mystery did not last long about Blake's. He had received instructions to go into the Mediterranean, make calls there on all powers against which the Commonwealth had claims, and bring them to account. Blake fulfilled his mission with his usual precision and success. His first call of any importance was on the Grand Duke of Tuscany, formerly so much in the good graces of the Commonwealth (Vol. IV. pp. 483-485), but whom Cromwell, after looking more into matters, had found culpable. Blake's demands were for heavy money-damages on account of English ships taken by Prince Rupert in 1650, and sold in Tuscan ports, and also on account of English ships ordered out of Leghorn harbour in March 1653, so that they fell into the hands of the Dutch. There was the utmost consternation among the Tuscans, and the alarm extended even to Rome, inasmuch as some of Rupert's prizes had been sold in the Papal States. A disembarcation of the English heretics and even their march to Rome did not seem impossible; and Tuscans and Romans were greatly relieved when the Grand Duke paid £60,000 and the Pope 20,000 pistoles (£14,000), and Blake retired. His next call was at Tunis, where there were accounts with the Dey. That Mussulman having pointed to his forts, and dared Blake to do his worst, there was a tremendous bombardment on the 3rd of April, 1655, reducing the forts to ruins, followed by the burning of the Dey's entire war-squadron of nine ships. This sufficed not only for Tunis, but also for Tripoli and Algiers. All the Moorish powers of the African coast gave up their English captives, and engaged that there should be no more piracy upon English vessels. Malta, Venice, Toulon, Marseilles, and various Spanish ports were then visited for one reason or another; and in the autumn of 1655 Blake was still in the Mediterranean for ulterior purposes, understood between him and Cromwell.[1] [Footnote 1: Guizot, II. 186-198, with, documents in Appendix; Godwin, IV. 187-188; Whitlocke. IV., 206-207.] While Blake was in the Mediterranean, one Italian potentate did a sudden act of infamy, which resounded through Europe, and for which Cromwell would fain have clutched him by the throat in his own inland capital. This was Carlo Emanuele II., Duke of Savoy and Prince of Piedmont. In the territories of this young prince, in the Piedmontese valleys of Luserna, Perosa, and San Martino, on the east side of the Cottian Alps, lived the remarkable people known as the Vaudois or Waldenses. From time immemorial these obscure mountaineers, speaking a peculiar Romance tongue of their own, had kept themselves distinct from the Church of Rome, maintaining doctrines and forms of worship of such a kind that, after the Lutheran Reformation, they were regarded as primitive Protestants who had never swerved from the truth through the darkest ages, and could therefore be adopted with acclamation into the general Reformed communion. The Reformation, indeed; had penetrated into their valleys, rendering them more polemical for their faith, and more fierce against the Church of Rome, than they had been before. They had experienced persecutions through their whole history, and especially after the Reformation; but, on the whole, the two last Dukes of Savoy, and also Christine, daughter of Henry IV. of France, and Duchess-Regent through the minority of her son, the present Duke, had protected them in their privileges, even while extirpating Protestantism in the rest of the Piedmontese dominions. Latterly, however, there had been a passion at Turin and at Rome for their conversion to the Catholic faith, and priests had been traversing their valleys for the purpose. The murder of one such priest, and some open insults to the Catholic worship, about Christmas 1654, are said to have occasioned what followed. On the 25th of January, 1654-5, an edict was issued, under the authority of the Duke of Savoy, "commanding and enjoining every head of a family, with its members, of the pretended Reformed Religion, of what rank, degree, or condition soever, none excepted, inhabiting and possessing estates in the places of Luserna, Lucernetta, San Giovanni, La Torre, Bubbiana, and Fenile, Campiglione, Briccherassio, and San Secondo, within three days, to withdraw and depart, and be, with their families, withdrawn, out of the said places, and transported into the places and limits marked out for toleration by his Royal Highness during his good pleasure, namely Bobbio, Villaro, Angrogna, Rorata, and the County of Bonetti, under pain of death and confiscation of goods and houses, unless they gave evidence within twenty days of having become Catholics." Furthermore it was commanded that in every one even of the tolerated places there should be regular celebration of the Holy Mass, and that there should be no interference therewith, nor any dissuasion of any one from turning a Catholic, also on pain of death. All the places named are in the Valley of Luserna, and the object was a wholesale shifting of the Protestants of that valley out of nine of its communes and their concentration into five higher up. In vain were there remonstrances at Turin from those immediately concerned. On the 17th of April, 1655, the Marquis di Pianezza entered the doomed region with a body of troops, mainly Piedmontese, but with French and Irish among them. There was resistance, fighting, burning, pillaging, flight to the mountains, and chasing and murdering for eight days, Saturday, April 24, being the climax. The names of about three hundred of those murdered individually are on record, with the ways of the deaths of many of them. Women were ripped open, or carried about impaled on spikes; men, women, and children, were flung from precipices, hacked, tortured, roasted alive; the heads of some of the dead were boiled and the brains eaten; there are forty printed pages, and twenty-six ghastly engravings, by way of Protestant tradition of the ascertained variety of the devilry. The massacre was chiefly in the Valley of Luserna, but extended also into the other two valleys. The fugitives were huddled in crowds high among the mountains, moaning and starving; and not a few, women and infants especially, perished amid the snows. On the 27th of April some of the remaining Protestant pastors and others, gathered together somewhere, addressed a circular letter to Protestants outside the Valleys, stating the hard case of the survivors. "Our beautiful and flourishing churches," they said, "are utterly lost, and that without remedy, unless God Almighty work miracles for us. Their time is come, and our measure is full. O have pity upon the desolations of Jerusalem, and be grieved for the afflictions of poor Joseph! Shew the real effects of your compassions, and let your bowels yearn for so many thousands of poor souls who are reduced to a morsel of bread for following the Lamb whithersoever he goes."[1] [Footnote 1: Morland's History of the Evangelical Churches of the Valleys of Piedmont, with a Relation of the Massacre (1658), 287-428; Guizot, II. 213-215.] There was a shudder of abhorrence through Protestant Europe, but no one was so much roused as Cromwell. In the interval between the Duke of Savoy's edict and the Massacre he had been desirous that the Vaudois should publicly appeal to him rather than to the Swiss; and, when the news of the Massacre reached England, he avowed that it came "as near his heart as if his own nearest and dearest had been concerned." On Thursday the 17th of May, and for many days more, the business of the Savoy Protestants was the chief occupation of the Council. Letters, all in Milton's Latin, but signed by the Lord Protector in his own name, were despatched (May 25) to the Duke of Savoy himself, to the French King, to the States General of the United Provinces, to the Protestant Swiss Cantons, to the King of Sweden, to the King of Denmark, and to Ragotski, Prince of Transylvania. A day of humiliation was appointed for the Cities of London and Westminster, and another for all England. A Committee was appointed, consisting of all the Councillors, with Sir Christopher Pack and other eminent citizens, and also some ministers, to organize a general collection of money throughout England and Wales in behalf of the suffering Vaudois. The collection, as arranged June 1, was to take the form of a house-to-house visitation by the ministers and churchwardens in every city, town, and parish on a particular Lord's day, for the receipt of whatever sum each householder might freely give, every such sum to be noted in presence of the donor, and the aggregates, parish by parish, or city by city, to be remitted to the treasurers in London, who were to enter them duly in a general register. The subscription, which lagged for a time in some districts, produced at length a total of £38,097 7_s._ 3_d._--equal to about £137,000 now. Of this sum £2000 (equal to about £7500 now) was Cromwell's own contribution, while London and Westminster contributed £9384 6_s._ 11_d._, and the various counties sums of various magnitudes, according to their size, wealth, and zeal, from Devonshire at the head, with £1965 0_s._ 3_d._, Yorkshire next, with £1786 14_s._ 5_d._, and Essex next, with £1512 17_s._ 7_d._, down to Merionethshire yielding £3 0_s._ 1_d._ from her eight parishes, and Radnorshire £1 14_s._ 4_d._ from her seven. Cromwell's own donation of £2000 went at once to Geneva for immediate use; and £10,000 followed on the 10th of July, as the first instalment of the general subscription. There were similar subscriptions, it ought to be added, in other Protestant countries.[1] [Footnote 1: Letter from Thurloe to Pell at Geneva (Vaughan's Protectorate, I. 158-159); Council Order Books, May 17, 18, 22, 23, 25, June 1 and July 8, 1655; Morland, 562-596. Morland gives an interesting abstract of the Treasurer's Accounts of the Collection; but the original accounts in a large folio book, entitled _Committee for Piedmont_ &c., are in the Record Office. The counties are arranged there alphabetically and the parishes alphabetically under each county, with the sums which the _parishes_ individually subscribed. Some parishes seem wholly to have neglected the subscription, and there are blanks opposite their names.] At the time of the massacre Cromwell had two agents in Switzerland, viz. Mr. JOHN PELL (Vol. IV. p. 449) and the ubiquitous JOHN DURIE. They had been sent abroad early in 1654, to cultivate the friendly intercourse already begun between the Evangelical Cantons and the Commonwealth, and also to watch the progress of a struggle which had just broken out between the Popish Cantons of the Confederacy and the Evangelical Cantons. As the Evangelical Cantons were also astir about the Vaudois, whose cause was so closely connected with their own, the services of Pell and Durie were now available for that business. Cromwell, however, had thought an express Commissioner necessary, with instructions to negotiate directly with the Duke of Savoy, and had selected for the purpose Mr, SAMUEL MORLAND, an able and ingenious man, about thirty years of age, who had been with Whitlocke in his Swedish Embassy, and had been taken into the Council office on his return as assistant to Thurloe. On the 26th of May Morland left London, carrying with him the letters addressed to Louis XIV. and the Duke of Savoy. He was at La Fère in France on the 1st of June, treating with the French King and Mazarin, and was able to despatch thence a letter from the French King to Cromwell, expressing willingness to do all that could be done for the Vaudois, and explaining that he had already conveyed his views on the subject to the Duke of Savoy. Thence Morland continued his journey to Rivoli, near Turin, where he arrived on the 21st of June. He was received most politely, was entertained and driven about both at Rivoli and at Turin itself, and was admitted to a formal audience on or about the 24th. He there made a speech in Latin to the Duke, the Duchess-mother being also present, and delivered Cromwell's letter, The speech was a very bold one. He spared no detail of horror in his picture of the massacre as he had authentically ascertained it, and added, "Were all the Neros of all times and ages alive again (I would be understood to say it with out any offence to your Highness, inasmuch as we believe that none of these things was done by any fault of yours), they would be ashamed at finding that they had contrived nothing that was not even mild and humane in comparison. Meanwhile angels are horrorstruck, mortals amazed!" The Duchess-mother, replying for her son, could hardly avoid hinting that Mr. Morland had been rather rude. She was, nevertheless, profuse in expressions of respect for the Lord Protector, who had no doubt received very exaggerated representations of what had happened, but at whose request she was sure her son would willingly pardon his rebellious subjects and restore them to their privileges. During the rest of Morland's stay in Turin or its neighbourhood the object of the Duke's counsellors, and also of the French minister, was to furnish him with what they called a more correct account of the facts, and induce him to convey to Cromwell a gentler view of the whole affair. Morland kept his own counsel; but, having had a second audience, and received the Duke's submissive but guarded answer to Cromwell, and also several other papers, he left Turin on the 19th of July and proceeded, according to his instructions, to Geneva.[1] [Footnote 1: Morland, 563-583; and Letters between Pell and Thurloe given in _Vaughan's Protectorate_.] Meanwhile Cromwell, dissatisfied with the coolness of the French King and Mazarin, and also with the shuffling and timidity of the Swiss Cantons, had been taking the affair more and more into his own hands. He had despatched, late in July, another Commissioner, Mr. GEORGE DOWNING, to meet Morland at Geneva, help Morland to infuse some energy into the Cantons, and then proceed with him to Turin to bring matters to a definite issue. He had been inquiring also about the fittest place for landing an invading force against the Duke, and had thought of Nice or Villafranca. Blake's presence in the Mediterranean was not forgotten. All which being known to Mazarin, that wily statesman saw that no time was to be lost. While Mr. Downing was still only on his way to Geneva through France, Mazarin had instructed M. Servien, the French minister at Turin, to insist, in the French King's name, on an immediate settlement of the Vaudois business. The result was a _Patente di Gratia e Perdono_, or "Patent of Grace and Pardon," granted by Charles Emanuel to the Vaudois Protestants, Aug. 19, in terms of a Treaty at Pignerol, in which the French Minister appeared as the real mediating party and certain Envoys from the Swiss Cantons as more or less assenting. As the Patent substantially retracted the Persecuting Edict and restored the Vaudois to all their former privileges, nothing more was to be done. Cromwell, it is true, did not conceal that he was disappointed. He had looked forward to a Treaty at Turin in which his own envoys, Morland and Downing, and D'Ommeren, as envoy from the United Provinces, would have taken the leading part, and he somewhat resented Mazarin's too rapid interference and the too easy compliance of the envoys of the Cantons. The Treaty of Pignerol contained conditions that might occasion farther trouble. Still, as things were, he thought it best to acquiesce. Downing, who had arrived at Geneva early in September, was at once recalled, leaving Morland and Pell still there, to superintend the distribution of the English subscription-money among the poor Vaudois, instalment after instalment, as they arrived. The charitable work was to detain Morland in Geneva or its neighbourhood for more than a year, nor was the great business of the Piedmontese Protestants to be wholly out of Cromwell's mind to the day of his death.[1] [Footnote 1: Morland, 605-673; Guigot, II. 220-225; Council Order Book, July 17.] Just at the date of the happy, though not perfect, conclusion of the Piedmontese business, came almost the only chagrin ever experienced by Cromwell in the shape of the failure of an enterprise. It was now some months since he had made up his mind in private to a rupture with Spain, intending that the fact should be first announced to the world in the actions of the fleet which he had sent with sealed orders to the West Indies under Penn's command. The instructions to Penn and to General Robert Venables, who went with him as commander of the troops, were nothing less, indeed, than that they should strike some shattering blow at that dominion of Spain in the New World which was at once her pride and the source of her wealth. It might be in one of her great West-India Islands, St. Domingo, Cuba, or Porto Rico, or it might be at Cartagena on the South-American mainland, where the treasures of Peru were amassed, for annual conveyance across the Atlantic. Much discretion was left to Penn and Venables, but on the whole St. Domingo, then called Hispaniola, was indicated for a beginning. Blake's presence in the Mediterranean with the other fleet had been timed for an assault on Spain at home when the news should arrive of the disaster to her colonies.[1] [Footnote 1: Guizot, II. 184-186; Godwin, IV. 180-194.] Penn and Venables together were not equal to one Blake. They opened their sealed instructions at Barbadoes, one of the two or three small Islands of the West-Indies then possessed by the English, and, after counsel and preparation, proceeded to Hispaniola. The fleet now consisted of about sixty vessels, and there were about 9000 soldiers on board, some of them veterans, but most of them recruits of bad quality. They were off St. Domingo, the capital of the Island, on the 14th of April, 1655, and from that moment there was misunderstanding and blundering. Penn, Venables, and the Chief Commissioner who had been sent out with them, differed as to the proper landing point; the wrong landing point was chosen for the main body; the men fell ill and mutinied; the Spaniards, who might have been surprised at first by a direct assault on St. Domingo, resisted bravely, and poured shot among the troops from ambuscade. Two attempts to get into St. Domingo were both foiled with heavy loss, including the death of Major-General Heane and others of the best officers. The mortality from climate and bad food being also great, the enterprise on Hispaniola was then abandoned; but, dreading a return to England with nothing accomplished, Penn and Venables bethought themselves of Jamaica. Here, where they arrived May 10, they were rather more fortunate. The Spaniards, utterly unforewarned, deserted the coast, and fled inland. There was no difficulty, therefore, in taking nominal possession of the chief town, though even that was done in a bungling manner. Then, leaving the Island in charge of a portion of the troops, under Major-General Fortescue, with Vice-Admiral Goodson to sail about it with a protecting squadron, Penn hastened back to England, Venables quickly following him. They arrived in London, within a few days of each other, early in September, and were at once committed to the Tower for having returned without orders. The news of the failure of their enterprise had preceded them, and Cromwell was profoundly angry. A bilious illness which he had about this time was attributed by the French ambassador Bordeaux to his brooding over the West-Indian mischance. He was soon himself again, however, and Penn and Venables had nothing to fear. They were released after a few weeks. After all, Jamaica was better than nothing.[1] [Footnote 1: Godwin, IV. 195-203; Carlyle, III. 122-123; Guizot, II. 226-231; Letters of Cromwell to Vice-Admiral Goodson and Major-General Fortescue (Carlyle, III. 126-132).] One result of the West Indian expedition was that the long-delayed alliance with France was now a settled affair. Cardenas had his pass-ports sent him, and on the 22nd of October, 1655, he left England. The Court of Madrid had already recalled him, laid an embargo on all English property in Spain, and conferred a Marquisate and pension on the Governor of Hispaniola. On the 24th of October the Treaty of Peace and Commerce between Cromwell and Louis XIV. was finally signed; and within a few days afterwards there was out in London an elaborate document entitled "_Scriptum Domini Protectoris, ex consensu atque sententia Concilii sui editum, in quo hujus Reipublica causa contra Hispanos justa esse demonstratur_" ("The Lord-Protector's Manifesto, published with the consent and advice of his Council, in which the justice of the Cause of this Commonwealth against the Spaniards is demonstrated"). Now, accordingly, the Commonwealth entered on a new era of her history. Cromwell and Mazarin were to be fast friends, and the Stuarts were to have no help or countenance any more from the French crown; while, on the other hand, there was to be war to the death between the Commonwealth and Spain, war in the new world and war in the old, and Spain was thus naturally to adopt the cause of Charles II., and employ exiled English Royalism everywhere as one of her agencies,--Of the consciousness of the Lord-Protector and the Council of this increased complexity of the foreign relations of the Commonwealth in consequence of the rupture with Spain there is a curious incidental illustration. "That several volumes of the book called _The New Atlas_ be bought for the use of the Council, and that the Globe heretofore standing in the Council Chamber be again brought thither," had been one of the Council's instructions to Thurloe at their meeting of Oct. 2. Thenceforth, doubtless, both the Globe and the Atlas were to be much in request.--More important, however, than such fixed apparatus in the Council Room was the moving instrumentality of envoys and diplomatists in the chief European cities and capitals. Above all, an able ambassador in Paris was now an absolute necessity. Nor was the fit man wanting. Among the former Royalists of the Presbyterian section that had become reconciled to the Commonwealth, and attached to the Protector by strong personal loyalty, was the Scottish WILLIAM LOCKHART, member for Lanarkshire in the late Parliament. He had been trained to arms in France in his youth, and had since then served as a Colonel among the Scots. In this capacity he had been in Hamilton's Army of the Engagement, defeated by Cromwell at Preston, and in David Leslie's subsequent Army for Charles II., defeated at Dunbar. Having received some insults from Charles, of such a kind that he had declared that "no King on earth should use him in that manner," he had snapped his connexion with the Stuarts before the Battle of Worcester; and for some time after that battle he had lived moodily in Scotland, meditating a return to France for military employment. A visit to London and an interview with Cromwell had retained his talents for the service of the Protectorate, and his affection for that service had been confirmed by his marriage, in 1654, with Robina Sewster, the orphan niece of the Protector. Altogether Cromwell had judged him to be the very man to represent the Protectorate at Paris, and be even a match for Mazarin. He was now thirty-four years of age. He was nominated to the embassy in December 1655; but he did not go to his post till the following April.--Hardly a less important appointment was that, in January 1655-6, of young Edward Montague to be one of the Admirals of the Fleet. Blake, who had been cruising off Cadiz, and on whom there was the chief dependence for action against the Spaniards at sea, had felt the responsibility too great, and had applied for a colleague. Penn, being in disgrace, was out of the question; and Montague, then a member of the Protector's Council, was chosen. He had been one of Cromwell's favourites and disciples since the days of Marston Moor and Naseby, when, though hardly out of his teens, he had distinguished himself highly as a Parliamentary Colonel. Henceforth the sea was to be his chief element; and, as Admiral or General at sea, he was to become very famous.[1] [Footnote 1: Godwin, IV, 214-217 and 298-300; Guizot, II. 231-234; Thomason copy of the Declaration against Spain, dated Nov. 9, 1655; Council Order Books, Oct. 2, 1655; Article on Lockhart in Chambers's Biographical Dictionary of Scotsmen; Carlyle, III. 309-310.] It was just about this time of change and extension in the foreign relations of the Commonwealth that the people of England and Wales became aware that they were, and had been for some time, under an entirely new system of home-government, called _Government by Major-Generals_. The difficulties of the home-government of the Protectorate were great and peculiar. The power of the Lord-Protector and his Council to pass ordinances had been called in question. Judges and lawyers were not only pretty unanimous in the opinion that resistance to payment of imposts not enacted by Parliamentary authority might be made good at law, and that the Ordinance for Chancery Reform was also legally invalid; they doubted even whether, in strict law, there could be proceedings for the preservation of the public peace, by courts and magistrates, under any Council ordinance about crimes and treasons. All this Cromwell had been meditating. How was revenue to be raised? How were Royalist and Anabaptist plottings to be suppressed? How were police regulations about public manners and morals to be enforced? How was the will of the Central Government at Whitehall, in any matter whatsoever, to be transmitted to any spot in the community and made really operative? Meditating these questions, Cromwell, as he expressed it afterwards, "did find out a little poor invention": "I say," he repeated, "there was a little thing invented."[1] The little invention consisted in a formal identification of the Protector's Chief Magistracy with his Headship of the Army. He had resolved to map out England and Wales into districts, and to plant in each district a trusty officer, with the title of Major-General, who should be nominally in command of the militia of that district, but should be really also the executive there for the Central Government in all things. A beginning had been made in the business as early as May 1655, when Desborough was appointed Major-General of the Militia in the six southwestern counties; and the districts had been all marked out and the Major-Generals chosen in August. But there had been very great secrecy about the scheme; and not till the 31st of October was there official announcement of the new organization. Only about mid-winter, 1655-6, did people fully realise what it meant. The Major-Generalcies then stood thus:-- [Footnote 1: Speech V. (Carlyle, III. 176).] Person. District. 1. MAJOR-GENERAL PHILIP SKIPPON. _London._ 2. MAJOR-GENERAL JOHN BARKSTEAD. _Westminster and Middlesex._ 3. MAJOR-GENERAL THOMAS KELSEY. _Kent and Surrey._ 4. MAJOR-GENERAL WILLIAM GOFFE. _Sussex, Hants, and Berks._ 5. FLEETWOOD (with MAJOR-GENERAL _Oxford, Bucks, Herts,_ HEZEKIAH HAYNES as his deputy). _Norfolk, Suffolk, Essex,_ _and Cambridge._ 6. MAJOR-GENERAL EDWARD WHALLEY. _Lincoln, Notts, Derby,_ _Warwick, and Leicester._ 7. MAJOR-GENERAL WILLIAM BUTLER. _Northampton, Bedford,_ _Hunts, and Rutland._ 8. MAJOR-GENERAL CHARLES WORSLEY _Chester, Lancaster, and_ (succeeded by MAJOR-GENERAL _Stafford._ TOBIAS BRIDGES). 9. LAMBERT (with MAJOR-GENERAL _York, Durham, Cumberland_ ROBERT TILBURNE and MAJOR-GENERAL _Westmorland,_ CHARLES HOWARD as his deputies). _and Northumberland._ 10. MAJOR-GENERAL JOHN DESBOROUGH. _Gloucester, Wilts, Dorset,_ _Somerset, Devon, and_ _Cornwall._ 11. MAJOR-GENERAL JAMES BERRY. _Worcester, Hereford, Salop,_ _and North Wales._ 12. MAJOR-GENERAL DAWKINS. _Monmouthshire and_ _South Wales._[1] [Footnote 1: Council Order Books, as digested by Godwin, IV. 228-229.] The powers intrusted to these Major-Generals and to their subordinate officers in the several counties were all but universal. They were to patrol the counties with horse and foot, but especially with horse. They were to guard against robberies and tumults and to bring criminals to punishment. They were to take charge of the public morals, and see the laws put in force against drunkenness, blasphemy, plays and interludes, profanation of the Lord's Day, and disorderliness generally. They were to keep a register of all disaffected persons, remove arms from their houses, note their changes of residence, and take security for the good behaviour of themselves, their families, and servants. All travellers and strangers were bound to appear before them, and give an account of themselves and their business. They were to arrest vagabonds and persons with no visible means of living. Above all, they were to see to the execution of a certain very severe and far-reaching measure which the Protector and the Council had determined to adopt in consequence of the late Royalist insurrection and conspiracy. Either from information that had been received, or merely _in terrorem_, there had, during the past summer and autumn, been numerous arrests of persons of rank and wealth that had hitherto been allowed to live quietly in their country mansions, on the understanding that, though Royalists, they had ceased to be such, in any active sense. The Marquis of Hertford, the Earl of Lindsey, the Earl of Newport, the Earl of Northampton, the Earl of Rivers, the Earl of Peterborough, Viscount Falkland, and Lords Lovelace, St. John, Petre, Coventry, Maynard, Lucas, and Willoughby of Parham, with a great many commoners of distinction, had been thus arrested. There was a general consternation among the peaceful Royalists throughout the country. It looked as if their peacefulness was to be of no avail, as if the Act of Oblivion of Feb. 1651-2 was to be a dead letter, as if Cromwell had suddenly changed his policy of universal conciliation. In reality, Cromwell had no intention of reversing his policy of universal conciliation; but he wanted to teach the lesson that Royalist insurrections and conspiracies would fall heavily on the Royalists themselves, and he wanted particularly, at that moment, to make the Royalists pay the expenses of the police kept up on their account. Under cover of the consternation caused by the numerous arrests, he introduced, in fact, a _Decimation_ upon the Royalists, i.e. an income tax of ten per cent, upon all Royalists possessing estates in land of £100 a year and upwards or personal property worth £1500. It was to be the main business of the Major-Generals to assess this tax within their bounds, and to collect it strictly and swiftly. It is astonishing with what ease they succeeded. It seems to have been even a relief to the Royalists to know definitely what their principles were to cost them, and to have arrest or the dread of it commuted into a fixed money payment. As soon as the tax was fairly in operation, all or most of those who had been arrested were liberated, and subsequent arrests by the Major-Generals themselves were only of vagabonds or suspicious persons. The only appeal from the Major-Generals was to his Highness himself and the Council.[1] [Footnote 1: Godwin, 223-242; Carlyle, III. 101.] What with the vigilance of the Major-Generals in their districts, what with the edicts of the Protector and the Council for the direction of the Major-Generals, the public order now kept over all England and Wales was wonderfully strict. At no time since the beginning of the Commonwealth had there been so much of that general decorum of external behaviour which Cromwell liked to see. Cock-fights, dancing at fairs, and other such amusements, were under ban. Indecent publications that had flourished long in the guise of weekly pamphlets disappeared; and books of the same sort were more closely looked after than they had been. But what shall we say about this Order, affecting the newspaper press especially:--"_Wednesday, 5th Sept._, 1655--At the Council at Whitehall, Ordered by his Highness the Lord Protector and the Council, That no person whatever do presume to publish in print any matter of public news or intelligence without leave of the Secretary of State"? The effect of the order was that not only the indecent publications purporting to be newspapers were suppressed, but also a considerable number of newspapers proper, insomuch that the London newspaper press was reduced thenceforth to two weekly prints, authorized by Thurloe, viz. Needham's _Mercurius Politicus_, published on Thursdays, and _The Public Intelligencer_, a more recent adventure, published on Mondays. Just after the order, I note, the _Mercurius Politicus_ enlarged its size somewhat, to match with the _Public Intelligencer_, and in the first number of the new size (Sept. 22-Oct. 4, 1655) the Editor speaks with great approbation of the Order of Council "silencing the many pamphlets that have hitherto presumed to come abroad." Needham seems now to have assumed the editorship of both papers; and after the twenty-third number of the _Intelligencer_ (March 3-10, 1655-6) the publisher of it, as well as of the _Mercurius Politicus_, was Thomas Newcome. The newspaper press of the Protectorate was thus pretty well consolidated by Mr. Thurloe. There were two papers only, under one management, or rather there was a single bi-weekly newspaper with alternative names.[1] [Footnote 1: Council Order Books of 1655 and 1658 _passim; Merc. Pol._ and _Public Intelligencer_ of dates given.] It was part of the duty of the Major-Generals to assist, so far as might still be necessary, in the execution of the Ordinance of Aug. 1654 for the ejection of scandalous and insufficient ministers and schoolmasters (Vol. IV. p. 564 and p. 571), The County _Committees of Ejectors_ under that Ordinance had already performed their disagreeable work in part, but were still busy. On the whole, though they turned out many, they seem not to have abused their powers. "I must needs say," is Baxter's testimony, "that in all the counties where I was acquainted, six to one at least, if not many more, that were sequestered by the Committees were, by the oaths of witnesses, proved insufficient or scandalous, or both--especially guilty of drunkenness or swearing,--and those that, being able godly preachers, were cast out for the war alone, as for their opinions' sake, were comparatively very few. This, I know, will displease that party; but this is true." Baxter admits, indeed, that there were cases in which the Committees were swayed too much by mere political feeling, and ejected men from their pulpits whom it would have been better to retain. Other authorities assert the same more strongly, but rather fail in the proof. The most notorious instance produced of a blunder on the part of any of the Committees was in Berkshire. The Rector of Childrey in this county was the learned orientalist Pocock, who had lost his Professorship of Hebrew in the University of Oxford for refusing the engagement to the Commonwealth, but still held the Arabic lectureship there, because there was no one else who knew Arabic sufficiently. Not liking his look, or not seeing what Orientalism had to do with the Gospel, the rude Berkshire Committee were on the point of turning him out of his Rectory, when Dr. Owen interfered manfully and prevented the scandal. About the same time, it is said, Thomas Fuller was in some trepidation about his living of Waltham Abbey, in Essex, but acquitted himself before the Committee handsomely.[1] [Footnote 1: Baxter, 74; Wood's Ath. IV. 319; Godwin, IV. 40-41.] Distinct from the County Committees of Ejectors, and forming the other great constitutional power in Cromwell's Church-Establishment, was the Central or London _Committee of the Thirty-eight Triers_ (Vol. IV. p. 571). It was their duty to examine "all candidates for the public ministry," i.e. all persons presented to livings by the patrons of the same, and pass only those that were fit. Baxter's report of the work of these Triers, as done either by themselves in conclave, or by Sub-commissioners for them in the counties, is the more remarkable because he disowned the authority under which the Triers acted and was in controversy with most of them. "Though their authority was null," he says, "and though some few over-busy and over-rigid Independents among them, were too severe against all that were Arminians, and too particular in inquiring after evidences of sanctification in those whom they examined, and somewhat too lax in their admission of unlearned and erroneous men that favoured Antinomianism or Anabaptism, yet, to give them their due, they did abundance of good to the Church. They saved many a congregation from ignorant, ungodly, drunken teachers. That sort of men that intended no more in the ministry than to say a sermon as readers say their common prayers, and so patch up a few good words together to talk the people asleep with on Sunday, and all the rest of the week go with them to the ale-house and harden them in sin; and that sort of ministers that either preached against a holy life, or preached as men that never were acquainted with it; all those that used the ministry but as a common trade to live by, and were never likely to convert a soul:--all these they usually rejected, and in their stead admitted of any that were able serious preachers, and lived a godly life, of what tolerable opinion soever they were. So that, though they were many of them somewhat partial for the Independents, Separatists, Fifth Monarchy men, and Anabaptists, and against the Prelatists and Arminians, yet so great was the benefit above the hurt which they brought to the Church that many thousands of souls blessed God for the faithful ministers whom they let in." Royalist writers after the Restoration give, of course, a different picture. "Ignorant, bold, canting fellows," they say, "laics, mechanics, and pedlars," were brought into the Church by Cromwell's Triers. One may, in the main, trust Baxter.[1] [Footnote 1: Baxter, 72; Noal, IV. 102-109.] Cromwell's Established Church of England and Wales may now be imaged with tolerable accuracy. It contained two patches of completed Presbyterian organization, one in London and the other in Lancashire. The system of Presbyteries or Classes, with half-yearly Provincial Assemblies, which had been set up by the Long Parliament in these two districts, remained undisturbed. Both in London and in Lancashire, however, the system was in a languid state; and for the rest of the country, and indeed for non-Presbyterians in London and Lancashire too, the Church or Public Ministry was practically on the principle of the Independency of Congregations. Each parish had, or was to have, its regular minister, recognised by the State, and the association of ministers among themselves for consultation or mutual criticism was very much left to chance and discretion. Ministers and deacons, however, did draw up Agreements and form voluntary Associations in various counties, holding monthly or other periodical meetings; and, as it was the rule in such associations not to meddle with matters of Civil Government, they were countenanced by the Protectorate. Baxter tells us much of the Association in Worcestershire which he had helped to form in 1653, and adds that similar associations sprang up afterwards in Cumberland and Westmorland, Wilts, Dorset, Somersetshire, Hampshire, and Essex. These Associations are to be conceived as imperfect substitutes for the regular Presbyterian organization, and most of the ministers belonging to them were eclectics or quasi-Presbyterians, like Baxter himself, making the most of untoward circumstances, while the stricter Presbyterians, who sighed for the perfect model, held aloof. Perhaps the majority of the State-clergy all over the country consisted of these two classes of Presbyterians baulked of their full Presbyterianism,--the _Rigid Presbyterians_, who would accept nothing short of the system as exemplified in London and Lancashire, and the _Eclectics_ or _Quasi-Presbyterians_ grouped in voluntary Associations. But among the State-clergy collectively there were several other varieties. There were many of the old _Church-of-England Rectors and Vicars_, still Prelatic in sentiment, and, though obliged to disuse the Book of Common Prayer, maintaining some sweet remnant of Anglicanism. Some of these, not of the High Church school, did not scruple to join the quasi-Presbyterian Associations that were liberal enough to admit them; but most found more liberty in keeping by themselves. Then there were the Independents proper, drawn from all those various Evangelical Sects, however named separately, whose principle of Independency stopped short of absolute Voluntaryism, and therefore did not prevent them from belonging to a State-Church. The more moderate of these Independents might easily enough, in consistency with their theory of Congregationalism, join the quasi-Presbyterian Associations, and some of them did so; but not very many. The majority of them were simply ministers of the State-Church, in charge of individual parishes and congregations, and consulting each other, if at all, only in informal ways. Among the Independent Sectaries of all sorts thus officiating individually in the State-Church, the difficulty, as far as one can see, must have been chiefly, or solely, with the _Baptists_. How could preachers who rejected the rite of Infant Baptism, maintained the necessity of the rebaptism of adults, and thought dipping the proper form of the rite, be ministers of parishes, or be included in any way among the State-clergy? That such ministers did hold livings in Cromwell's Established Church is a fact. Mr. John Tombes, the chief of the Anti-Pædobaptists, and himself one of Cromwell's Triers, retained the vicarage of Leominster in Herefordshire, with the parsonage of Boss in the same county, and a living at Bewdley in Worcestershire; and there are other instances. Baxter's language already quoted implies nothing less, indeed, than that Anti-Pædobaptists in considerable numbers were presented to Church-livings by the patrons and passed by the Triers; and he elsewhere signifies that he did not himself greatly object to this. "Let there be no withdrawing," he says, "from the ministry and church of that place [i.e. a parish of mixed Pædobaptists and Anti-Pædobaptists] upon the mere ground of Baptism. If the minister be an Anabaptist, let not us withdraw from him on that ground; and, if he be a Pædobaptist, let not _them_ withdraw from _us_." He even suggests that the pastor of a church might openly record his opinion on the Baptism subject, if it were contrary to that of the majority of the members, and then proceed in his pastorate all the same, and that, on the other hand, private members might publicly enter their dissent from their pastor's opinion, and yet abide with him lovingly and obediently in all other things. How far, and in how many places, this method of leaving Pædo-baptism an open question was actually in operation in the Established Church of the Protectorate, and whether Infant Baptism thus fell into complete abeyance in some parishes where Anabaptists of eminence were settled, or whether the Pædobaptist parishioners in such eases quietly avoided that result by having their children baptized by other ministers, are points of some obscurity. On the whole, the difficulty can have been felt but exceptionally and here and there, for it was obviated on the great scale by the fact that most of the real Anabaptists, preachers and people alike, were Voluntaries, disowning the State-Church altogether, and meeting only in separate congregations. Even for such, however, in localities where they were pretty numerous, there seems to have been a desire to make some provision. Thus on March 13, 1655-56, it was ordered by His Highness and the Council "that it be referred to General Desborough, Major-General for the County of Devon, to take care that the Church under the form of Baptism at Exeter have such one of the public meeting-places assigned to them for their place of worship as is best in repair, and may with most conveniency be spared and set apart for that use." The Exeter Baptists may have thought it not inconsistent with their principles to accept so much of State favour. Not the public buildings, so much as the Tithes and Lay Patronage with which they were connected, were the abominations of the State-Church in the eyes of the Anabaptist Voluntaries. For let it not be forgotten that Cromwell's ardent passion for a Church-Establishment under his Protectorate had come more and more to involve, in his reasonings, the preservation of the Tithe-system and the continuance of lay Patronage. The legal patrons of livings retained their right of nominating to vacancies; the Triers only checked that right by examination of nominees and the rejection of the unfit. Cromwell himself combined in his own person, to a most extraordinary extent, the functions both of Patron and Trier. "It is observable that, his Highness having near one half of the livings in England, one way or other, in his own immediate disposal by presentation, he seldom bestoweth one of them upon any man whom himself doth not first examine and make trial of in person, save only that, at such times as his great affairs happen to be more urgent than ordinary, he useth to appoint some other to do it in his behalf; which is so rare an example of piety that the like is not to be found in the stories of Princes." We have not exaggerated, it will be seen, Cromwell's personal anxiety about his Established Church. That, indeed, is farther proved, in a very interesting manner, by certain entries in the Order Books of his Council which become more and more frequent in this middle section of his Protectorate. They refer to "augmentations of ministers' stipends." Thus, in December 1655, there is an order for the augmentation of the stipends of seventy-five ministers in different counties, all in one batch; and succeeding entries in 1656 show the steady progress of the same work by repeated orders for other augmentations, batch after batch. Clearly Cromwell had resolved that there should be a systematic increase of the salaries of the parochial clergy all over England, beginning with those who needed it most. The details of the business were managed by that body of "Trustees for maintenance of ministers" which had been appointed by Ordinance in Sept. 1654 (Vol. IV. p. 564); but the final Orders for Augmentations came from the Protector and Council, and there was no part of his work in which the Protector seemed to have more pleasure.[1] [Footnote 1: Baxter, 96-97 and 180-188; Wood's Ath. III. 1083; Council Order Books of dates; Neal, IV. Chap. 3; Marchamont Needham's Book against John Goodwin, entitled _The Great Accuser Cast Down_, published in July 1657. The information about Cromwell's practice in his patronage of livings is from the last. The book was dedicated to Cromwell.] But what of that Toleration of Dissent from the Established Church which he professed to be equally dear to him? That Cromwell was faithful still to the principle of Liberty of Conscience, to the fullest extent of his past professions, there can be no doubt. It may be more doubtful whether his past professions pledged him to a theory of Toleration as absolute as that which had been advocated eleven or twelve years before by Roger Williams and John Goodwin, and then adopted by the Army Independents generally, and which was still upheld by the main body of the Anabaptists. The evidence, however, rather favours the idea that he had already been in sympathy even with this extreme theory of Toleration, and so that now, though he had bitterly disappointed his old Anabaptist associates by declaring himself for the Civil Magistrate's Authority in matters of Religion, he still cherished the extreme theory of Toleration as it might be applied round about his Established Church. In his heart, I believe, he was for persecuting nobody whatsoever, troubling nobody whatsoever, for mere religious heresy, even of the kinds he himself most abhorred. But, though this might be his private ideal, his difficulties publicly and practically were enormous. The other unlimited Tolerationists in England were Anabaptists and the like, detesting his Established Church as incompatible with true Toleration, and in league for battering it down. Through the rest of the community there was but little voice for Toleration. The frantic and idiotic stringency of the Presbyterians of 1644-6 was now, indeed, rather out of fashion, and a certain mild babble about a Limited Toleration was common in the public mouth. But the old leaven was at work in many quarters; occasional pamphlets from the Presbyterian camp still wailed lamentably about "the effects of the present Toleration, especially as to the increase of Blasphemy and Damnable Errors;" and some Presbyterian booksellers had recently published _A Second Beacon Fired_, in which they insidiously tried to work upon the Lord Protector's new Conservative and State-Church instincts; by denouncing the books of some leading Anabaptists and other heretics, hostile to his Government, and humbly adjuring him to "do what might be expected from Christian magistrates" in such flagrant cases. In the late Parliament there had been much of this Presbyterian spirit, and it had been proved abundantly that the Protector's idea of Toleration would have been voted down by the national representatives. Then what a harassing definition of proper Christian Toleration had come even from Cromwell's favourite Independents, Messrs. Owen and the rest, with their twenty fundamentals! Add the difficulties arising from the nature of some of the current heresies themselves, as tending directly to the defamation of his government, the subversion of laws and institutions, and the disturbance of the peace.[1] [Footnote 1: Various Thomason Pamphlets of 1654-1656. The _Second Beacon Fired_ was published in Oct. 1654 by six London booksellers--Luke Fawne, John Rothwell, Samuel Gellibrand, Thomas Underhill, Joshua Kirton, and Nathaniel Webb. Two of them, Rothwell and Underhill, had published for Milton in former days. The heretics chiefly denounced are Biddle, Dell, Farnworth, Norwood, Braine, John Webster, and Feake. John Goodwin replied to the booksellers in _A fresh Discovery of the High Presbyterian Spirit, or the Quenching of "The Second Beacon Fired_," published in Jan. 1654-5, and so found himself in a new quarrel. There was a reply called _An Apology for the Six Booksellers_.] A very fair amount of Liberty of the Press, though not to newspapers, nor to publications clearly immoral, seems to have been allowed by Cromwell. Through 1655 and 1656 there were books and pamphlets of the most various kinds, and advocating the most various opinions. There were Episcopalian books and Anabaptist books, arguments for Tithes and arguments against Tithes, Fifth Monarchy tracts, Quaker Tracts and Anti-Quaker Tracts, in extraordinary profusion. Prynne would publish one day _The Quakers unmasked and clearly detected to be but the spawn of Romish frogs, Jesuits and Franciscan Friars, sent from Rome to seduce the intoxicated giddy-headed English nation_, and George Fox would print the next day _The Unmasking and Discovery of Antichrist, with all the False Prophets, by the true light which comes from Christ Jesus_. Nor, of course, was there, any interference with the religious meetings of any of the ordinary Puritan sects, Baptists or whatever else, that chose to form separatist congregations. Even those who so far passed the bounds that they were called Ranters or Fanatics were quite safe in their own conventicles; and altogether one has to conclude that much that went by the still worse names of Blasphemy, Atheism, Infidelity, and Anti-Christianism, had as quiet a life under the Protectorate as in any later time. Practically, all that is of interest in the enquiry as to the amount of Religious Toleration under Cromwell's Government lies in what is known of his dealings with five denominations of Dissenters from his Established Church--the Papists, the Episcopalians, the Socinians or Anti-Trinitarians, the Quakers, and the Jews. (1) _The Papists._ Papists might be Papists under Cromwell's government in the sense that there was no positive compulsion on them to abjure their creed and profess another. The question, however, is as to open liberty of Roman Catholic worship. This question had passed through Cromwell's mind, and the results of his ruminations upon it appear most succinctly in one of his letters to Mazarin. After the Treaty made with France, the Cardinal very naturally pressed the subject of a toleration for Catholics in England, the rather as Cromwell was always so energetic for a toleration of Protestants in Catholic countries. "Although I have this set home to my spirit," Cromwell wrote in reply, "I may not (shall I tell you I _cannot_?) at this juncture of time, and as the face of my affairs now stands, answer your call for Toleration. I say _I cannot_, as to a public declaration of my sense in that point; although I believe that under my government your Eminency, in behalf of Catholics, has less reason for complaint, as to rigour on men's consciences, than under the Parliament. For I have of some, and those very many, had compassion; making a difference. Truly I have (and I may speak it with cheerfulness in the presence of God, who is a witness within me to the truth of what I affirm) made a difference; and, as Jude speaks, 'plucked many out of the fire,'--the raging fire of persecution, which did tyrannise over their consciences, and encroached by an arbitrariness of power upon their estates. And herein it is my purpose, as soon as I can remove impediments, and some weights that press me down, to make a farther progress, and discharge my promise to your Eminency in relation to that."[1] [Footnote 1: Carlyle, III. 202-203. The letter is dated Dec. 26, 1656.] (2) _The Episcopalians._ The question under this heading is not about those moderate Episcopalian divines who had conformed so far as to retain their rectories and vicarages in the Established Church, but about those Episcopalians of stronger principle, whether High Church and Arminian or not, who had been ejected from their former livings, or were trying to maintain themselves by some kind of private practice of their clerical profession in various parts of England. Against these, just at the time when the Major-Generalcies were coming into full operation, there did issue one fell Ordinance. It was published Nov. 24, 1655, under the title of _An Ordinance for Securing the Peace of the Commonwealth_, and it ordered that after Jan. 1, 1655-6 no persons should keep in their houses as chaplains or tutors any of the ejected clergy, and also that none of the ejected should teach in schools, preach publicly or privately, celebrate baptism or marriage, or use the Book of Common Prayer, under pain of being prosecuted. The Ordinance seems to have been issued merely as part and parcel of that almost ostentatious menace of severities against the Royalists by which Cromwell sought at that particular time to terrify them into submission and prevent farther plottings. At all events, it was announced in the Ordinance itself that there would be great delicacy in the application of it, so as to favour such of the ejected as deserved tender treatment; and, in fact, it was never applied or executed at all. No one was prosecuted under it; and, though it was not recalled, it was understood that it was suspended by the pleasure of his Highness, and that chaplains, teachers, and preachers, of the Episcopal persuasion, might go on as before, and reckon on all the toleration accorded to other Dissenters. On this footing they did go on, ex-Bishops and future Bishops among them, with increasing security; and gradually the notion got abroad that the Protector began to have even a kindly feeling for the "good old Church." Many Royalist authorities concur to that effect. "The Protector," says one, "indulged the use of the Common-Prayer in families and in private conventicles; and, though the condition of the Church of England was but melancholy, yet it cannot be denied that they had a great deal more favour and indulgence than under the Parliament." Burnet, on the authority of Dr. Wilkins, afterwards Bishop Wilkins, who was the second husband of Cromwell's youngest sister, adds a more startling statement. "Dr. Wilkins told me," says Burnet, "he (Cromwell) often said to him (Wilkins) no temporal government could have a sure support without a national church that adhered to it, and he thought England was capable of no constitution but Episcopacy; to which he told me he did not doubt but Cromwell would have turned." Wilkins probably liked to think this after he himself had turned; but it is hardly credible in the form in which Burnet has expressed it. Yet Cromwell, in that temper of conservatism, or desire of a settled order in all things, which more and more grew upon him after he had assumed the Protectorate, had undoubtedly the old Episcopalian clergy in view as a body to be conciliated, and employed as a counterpoise to the Anabaptists. He cannot but have been aware, too, of the spontaneous movements in some of the quasi-Presbyterian Associations of the clergy for a reunion as far as possible with the more moderate Episcopalians, as distinct from the High-Church Prelatists or Laudians. Among others, Baxter was extremely zealous for such a project; and his accounts of his correspondence about it with ex-Bishop Brownrigg in 1655, and his conversations about it at the same time with ex-Primate Usher, are very curious and interesting. Baxter and many more were quite willing that there should be a restored Episcopacy after Usher's own celebrated model: i.e. an Episcopacy not professing to be _jure divino_, but only for ecclesiastical conveniency,--the Bishops to be permanent Presidents of clusters of the clergy, and to be fitted into an otherwise Presbyterian system of Classes and Provincial Synods. They were willing, moreover, in the interest of such a scheme, to reconsider the old questions of a Liturgy, kneeling at the Sacrament, and other matters of Anglican ceremonial. Enough all this to rouse the angry souls of _Smectymnuus_, Milton, and the other Root-and-Branch Anti-Prelatists who had led the English Revolution. But, as times change, men change, and it is not impossible that Cromwell, the first real mover of the Root-and-Branch Bill of 1641, may now, fifteen years later, have looked speculatively sometimes at the old trunk in the timberyard. It is certain that he treated with profound respect the man whose advice about any remodelling of Episcopacy would have been the most authoritative generally. Ex-Primate Usher had lived in London through the Commonwealth and the Protectorate with the highest honour, pensioned at the rate of £400 a year, and holding also the preachership to the Society of Lincoln's Inn. Cromwell had shown him every attention, and had consulted him on several occasions. He had retired to Reigate a short time before his death, which happened on the 21st of March, 1655-6. He was buried in Westminster Abbey, a sum of £200 having been voted for his funeral by the Protector and Council. Eight months after his death there was published from his manuscript, by his friend and former chaplain, Dr. Nicholas Bernard, that famous _Reduction of Episcopacy into the form of Synodical Government_ which had got about surreptitiously in 1641 (Vol. II. 229-230), and which was then regarded, and has been regarded ever since, as the most feasible model of a Low-Church Episcopacy adapted to Presbyterian forms.[1] [Footnote 1: Neal, IV. 135-137 and 101-2; Burnet (ed. 1823) I. 110; Baxter, 172-178 and 206; Thomason Catalogue, Nov. 25, 1656 (date of publication of Usher's _Reduction_); Wood's Fasti, I. 446.] (3) _Anti-Trinitarians._ The crucial test of Cromwell's Toleration policy as regarded this class of heretics, and indeed as regarded all heresies of the higher order, was the case of poor Mr. John Biddle. The dissolution of the late Parliament had been so far fortunate for him that the prosecution begun against him by that Parliament under the old Blasphemy Ordinance of 1648 had been stopped and he had been set at liberty (March 1655). But it was only to get into fresh trouble. The orthodox in London were determined that he should not be at large, and it was reported to the Council on the 3rd of July that on the preceding Thursday, June 28, "in the new meeting-house at Paul's, commonly called Captain Chillingdon's church meeting-place, John Biddle did then and there, in presence of about 500 persons, maintain, some hours together, in a dispute, that Jesus Christ was not the Almighty or most High God, and hath undertaken to proceed in the game dispute the next Thursday." Cromwell himself was present at this meeting of the Council, with Lawrence, Lambert, the Earl of Mulgrave, Skippon, Rous, Sydenham, Pickering, Montague, Fiennes, Viscount Lisle, Wolseley, and Strickland. What were they to do? They ordered the Lord Mayor to stop the intended meeting, and all such meetings in future, and to arrest Biddle if necessary; and they referred the affair for farther enquiry to Skippon and Rous. The affair, it seems, could not possibly be hushed up; Biddle was committed to Poultry Compter, and then to Newgate, and his trial came on at the Old Bailey, again under the Blasphemy Ordinance of 1648. Having, with difficulty, been allowed counsel, he put in legal objections, and the trial was adjourned till next term. Meanwhile London was greatly agitated. The Presbyterians and the orthodox generally were eager for Biddle's conviction; but a very considerable number of persons, including not only Biddle's own followers and free-thinkers of other sorts, but also some Independent and Baptist ministers, whose orthodoxy was beyond suspicion, bestirred themselves in his behalf. Pamphlets appeared in that interest, one entitled _The Spirit of Persecution again broken loose against Mr. John Biddle_, and a numerously signed petition was addressed to Cromwell, requesting his merciful interference. The Petition, as we learn from _Mercurius Politicus_, was very badly managed. "The persons who presented a petition some few days since to his Highness on the behalf of Biddle," says that paper under date Sept. 28, "came this day in expectation of an answer. They had access, and divers godly ministers were present. And, the Petition being read in the hearing of divers of those under whose countenance it was presented, many of them disowned it, as being altered both in the matter and title of it since they signed it, and so looked upon it as a forged thing, wherein both his Highness and they were greatly abused, and desired that the original which they signed might be produced; which Mr. Ives and some others of the contrivers and presenters of it were not able to do, nor had they anything to say in excuse of so foul a miscarriage. Whereupon they were dismissed, his Highness having opened to them the evil of such a practice [tampering with petitions after they had been signed], as also how inconsistent it was for _them_, who professed to be members of the Churches of Christ and to worship him with the worship due to God, to give any countenance to one who reproached themselves and all the Christian Churches in the world as being guilty of idolatry: showing that, if it be true which Mr. Biddle holds, to wit that our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ is but a creature, then all those who worship him with the worship due to God are idolaters. His Highness showed moreover that the maintainers of this opinion of Mr. Biddle's are guilty of great blasphemy against Christ, who is God equal with the Father; and he referred it to them to consider whether any who loved the Lord Jesus Christ in sincerity could give any countenance to such a person as he is." But, while the petitioners were thus dismissed with a severe lecture, Cromwell had made up his mind to save Mr. Biddle. On the 5th of October it was resolved by the Council that he should be removed to the Isle of Scilly and there shut up; and Cromwell's warrant to that effect was at once issued. In no other way could the trial have been quashed, and it was the kindest thing that could have been done for Biddle in the circumstances. He lived comfortably enough in his seclusion in the distant Island for the next two years and a half, receiving an allowance of a hundred crowns _per annum_ from Cromwell, and employing his leisure in the deep study of the Apocalypse and the preparation of a treatise against the Doctrine of the Fifth Monarchy.[1] [Footnote 1: Council Order Books, July 3 and Oct. 5, 1655; _Merc. Pol._ Sept. 27-Oct. 4, 1655; Wood's Ath. III. 599-601; Thomason Catalogue (Tracts for and against Biddle).] (4) _The Quakers._ There was immense difficulty with this new sect--from the fact, as has been already explained, that they had not settled down into mere local groups of individuals, asking toleration for themselves, but were still in open war with all other sects, all other forms of ministry, and prosecuting the war everywhere by itinerant propagandism. George Fox himself and the best of his followers seem by this time indeed to have given up the method of actually interrupting the regular service in the steeple-houses in order to preach Quakerism; but they were constantly tending to the steeple-houses for the purpose of prophesying there, as was the custom in country-places, after the regular service was over. Thus, as well as by their conflicts with parsons of every sect wherever they met them, and their rebukings of iniquity on highways and in market-places, not to speak of their obstinate refusals to pay tithes in their own parishes, they were continually getting into the hands of justices of the peace and the assize-judges. Take as one example of their treatment in superior courts the appearance of William Dewsbury and other Quakers before Judge Atkins at Northampton after they had been half a year in Northampton jail.--Seeing them at the bar with their hats on, the Judge told the jailor he had a good mind to fine him ten pounds for bringing prisoners into the Court in that fashion, and ordered the hats to be removed by the jailor's man. Then, after some preliminary parley, "What is thy name?" said the Judge to Dewsbury, who had made himself spokesman for all. "Unknown to the World," said Dewsbury. "Let us hear what that name is that the World knows not," said the Judge goodhumouredly. "It is," quoth Dewsbury, "known in the light, and none can know it but he that hath it; but the name the world knows me by is William Dewsbury." Then to the question of the Judge, "What countryman art thou?" the reply was, "Of the Land of Canaan." The Judge remarked that Canaan was far off. "Nay," answered Dewsbury, "for all that dwell in God are in the holy city, the new Jerusalem, which comes down from Heaven, where the soul is in rest, and enjoys the love of God in Jesus Christ, in whom the union is with the Father of Light." The Judge admitted that to be very true, but asked Dewsbury whether, being an Englishman, he was ashamed of that more prosaic fact. "Nay," said Dewsbury, "I am free to declare that my natural birth was in Yorkshire, nine miles from York towards Hull." The Judge then said, "You pretend to be extraordinary men, and to have an extraordinary knowledge of God." Dewsbury replied, "We witness the work of regeneration to be an extraordinary work, wrought in us by the Spirit of God." The conversation then turned on their preaching itinerancy, and abstinence from all ordinary callings, the Judge remarking that even the Apostles had worked with their hands. Dewsbury admitted that some of the Apostles had been fishermen, and Paul a tent-maker, but asserted that, "when they were called to the ministry of Christ, they left their callings to follow Christ whither he led them by his Spirit," and that he and his fellow-prisoners had but done the same. The end of the colloquy was that the Judge, with every wish to be lenient, could not make up his mind to discharge the prisoners. "I see by your carriage," he said, "that what my brother Hale did at the last assizes, in requiring bond for your good behaviour, he might justly do it, for you are against magistrates and ministers"; and they were remitted to Northampton jail accordingly.--If judges like Hale and Atkins had to act thus, one may imagine how the poor Quakers fared in the hands of inferior and rougher functionaries. Fines and imprisonment for vagrancy, contempt of court, or non-payment of tithes, were the ordinary discipline for all; but there were cases here and there of whipping by the hangman, and other more ferocious cruelties. For among the Quakers themselves there were varieties of milder and wilder, less provoking and more provoking. The Quakerism of men like Fox and Dewsbury was, at worst, but an obdurate and irritating eccentricity, in comparison, for example, with the Quakerism run mad of James Nayler. This enthusiast, once quarter-master in a horse troop under Lambert, and regarded as "a man of excellent natural parts," had for three or four years kept himself within bounds, and been known only as one of the most eminent preachers of the ordinary Gospel of the Quakers and a prolific writer of Quaker tracts. But, having come to London in 1655, he had been unbalanced by the adulation of some Quaker women, with a Martha Simmons for their chief. "Fear and doubting then entered him," say the Quaker records, "so that he came to be clouded in his understanding, bewildered, and at a loss in his judgment, and became estranged from his best friends, because they did not approve his conduct." In other words, he became stark mad, and set up for himself, as "The Everlasting Son, the Prince of Peace, the Fairest among Ten Thousand, the Altogether Lovely." In this capacity he went into the West of England early in 1656, the admiring women following him, and chaunting his praises with every variety of epithet from the Song of Solomon, till he was clapped up in Exeter jail. Nor was Nayler the only madman among the Quakers about this time. A kind of epidemic of madness seems to have broken out in the sect, or among those reputed to belong to it. "One while," says Baxter, "divers of them went naked through divers chief towns and cities of the land, as a prophetical act: some of them have famished and drowned themselves in melancholy;" and he adds, more especially, as his own experience in Kidderminster, "I seldom preached a lecture, but going and coming I was railed at by a Quaker in the market-place in the way, and frequently in the congregation bawled at by the names of Hireling, Deceiver, False Prophet, Dog, and such like language." The Protector's own chapel in Whitehall was not safe. On April 13, 1656, "being the Lord's day," says the _Public Intelligencer_ for that week, "a certain Quaker came into the chapel in sermon time, and in a very audacious manner disturbed the preacher, so that he was fain to be silent a while, till the fellow was taken away. His Highness, being present, did after sermon give order for the sending him to a justice of peace, to be dealt with according to law."--Naturally, the whole sect suffered for these indecencies and extravagances of some of its members, and the very name _Quakerism_ became a synonym for all that was intolerable. The belief had got abroad, moreover, that "subtle and dangerous heads," Jesuits and others, had begun to "creep in among them," to turn Quakerism to political account, and "drive on designs of disturbance." Altogether the Protector and Council were sorely tried. Their policy seems, on the whole, to have been to let Quakerism run its course of public obloquy, and get into jail, or even to the whipping-post _ad libitum_, for offences against the peace, but at the same time to instruct the Major-Generals privately to be as discreet as possible, making differences between the sorts of Quakers, and especially letting none of them come to harm for their mere beliefs. "Making a difference," as by the injunction in Jude's epistle, was, as we know, Cromwell's own great rule in all cases where complete toleration was impossible, and he does not seem to have been able to do more for the Quakers. He had not, however, forgotten his interview with their chief, and may have been interested in knowing more especially what had become of _him_.--Fox, after much wandering in the West without serious mishap, had fallen among Philistines in Cornwall early in 1656, and had been arrested, with two companions, for spreading papers and for general vagrancy and contumacy. He had been in Launceston prison for some weeks, when Chief Justice Glynne came to hold the assizes in those parts. There had been the usual encounter between the Judge and the Quakers on the eternal question of the hats. "Where had they hats at all, from Moses to Daniel?" said the Chief Justice, rather rashly, meaning to laugh at the notion that Scripture could be brought to bear on the question in any way whatever. "Thou mayest read in the third of Daniel," said Fox, "that the three children were cast into the fiery furnace, by Nebuchadnezzar's command, with their coats, their hose, and _their hats on_." Glynne, though he had lost his joke, and though Fox put him further out of temper by distributing among the jurymen a paper against swearing, did not behave badly on the whole, and the issue was the simple recommitment of Fox and his friends to Launceston prison. There, however, as they would not any longer pay the jailor the seven shillings a week he demanded for the board of each, they were put into the most horrible hole in the place and treated abominably. They were in this predicament when Cromwell heard of them. "While G. Fox was still in prison, one of his friends went to Oliver Cromwell, and offered himself, body for body, to lie in prison in his stead, if he would take him and let G. Fox go at liberty. But Cromwell said he could not do it, for it was contrary to law; and, turning to those of his Council, 'Which of you,' quoth he, 'would do as much for me if I were in the same condition?'" An order was sent by Cromwell to the Governor of Pendennis Castle to enquire meantime into the treatment of the Launceston prisoners, and their release followed after a little while. It was noted also, in proof of his personal kindness towards the Quakers, that, though he received letters from some of them violently abusive of himself and his government, he never showed any anger on that account.[1] [Footnote 1: Sewel's History of the Quakers (ed. 1834) I. 137-173; Baxter, 77 and 180; _Public Intelligencer_ of April 14-21, 1656; Council Order Book, Feb. 6, 1655-6.] (5)_The Jews._ A very interesting incident of Cromwell's Protectorate was his attempt to obtain an open toleration for the Jews in England. Since the year 1290, when they had been banished in a body out of the kingdom under Edward I., there had been only isolated and furtive instances of visits to England or residence in England by persons of the proscribed race. Of late, however, a certain Manasseh Ben Israel, an able and earnest Portuguese Jew, settled in Amsterdam as a physician, had conceived the idea that, in the new age of liberty and other great things in England, there might be a permission for the Jews to return and live and trade freely. He had opened negotiations by letter, first with the Rump and then with the Barebones Parliament, but had at length come over to London to deal directly with the Protector. "_To his Highness the Lord Protector, &c. the Humble Addresses of Manasseh Ben Israel, Divine and Doctor of Physic, in behalf of the Jewish Nation_," were in print on the 5th of November, 1655; and they were formally before the Council on the 13th, his Highness present in person. The petition was for a general protection of such Jews as might come to reside in England, with liberty of trade, freedom for their worship, the possession of a Jewish synagogue and a Jewish cemetery in London, and a revocation of all statutes contrary to such privileges. Cromwell was thoroughly in favour of the proposal and let the fact be known; but, as it was necessary to proceed with caution, the matter was referred to a conference between the Council and twenty-eight persons outside of it, fourteen of whom were clergymen (Owen, Thomas Goodwin, Nye, Cudworth, Hugh Peters, Sterry, &c.), and the rest lawyers (St. John, Glynne, Steele, &c.), or city merchants (Lord Mayor Dethicke, Aldermen Pack and Tichbourne, &c.) There were four meetings of this Conference at Whitehall in December, Cromwell himself taking part. "I never heard a man speak so well," says an auditor of his speech at one of the meetings. On the whole, however, the Conference could not agree with his Highness. Some of the city-men objected, on commercial grounds, to the admission of the Jews; and the clergy were against it almost to a man, partly on the authority of Scripture texts, partly from fear of the effects of the importation into London of the new sect of Judaism. The Conference was discontinued; and, though the good Rabbi lingered on in London till April 1656, nothing could be done. Prejudice in the religious world was too strong. Nevertheless the Protector found means of giving effect to his own views. Not only did he mark his respect for Manasseh Ben Israel by a pension of £100 a year, to be paid him in Amsterdam; he admitted so many Jews, one by one, by private dispensation, that there was soon a little colony of them in London, with a synagogue to suit, and a piece of ground at Stepney leased for a cemetery. In effect, the readmission of the Jews into England dates from Cromwell's Protectorate.[1] [Footnote 1: _Merc. Pol._ Nov. 1-8, 1655; Council Order Book, Nov. 13; Godwin, IV. 243-251; Carlyle, III. 136, note. Prynne opposed the Readmission of the Jews in a pamphlet, in two parts, called _A Short Demurrer to the Jews' long discontinued Remitter_ (March 1656); and Durie published, in the form of a letter to Hartlib, _A Case of Conscience: whether it be lawful to admit Jews into a Christian Commonwealth_ (June 27, 1656). I have not seen Durie's letter; but Mr. Crossley (_Worthington's Diary_, I. 83, note) reports it as moderately favourable to the Jewish claim. The letter is dated, he says, from Cassel, Jan. 8, 1655-6.] Although making no great pretensions to learning himself, Cromwell seems to have taken especial pleasure in that part of his powers and privileges which gave him an influence on the literature and education of the country. Here, in fact, he but carried out in a special department that general notion of the Civil Magistrate's powers and duties which had led him to declare himself so strongly for the preservation and extension of an Established Church. The more thorough-going champions of Voluntaryism in that day, Anabaptists and others, had begun, as we have seen, to agitate not only for the abolition of a national Church or State-paid clergy of any kind, but also for the abolition of the Universities, the public schools, and all endowments for science or learning. But, if Cromwell had so signally disowned and condemned the system of sheer Voluntaryism in Religion, it was not to be expected that the more peculiar and exceptional Voluntaryism which challenged even State Endowments for education should find any countenance from _his_ Protectorate. Nor did it. The two English Universities had been sufficiently Puritanized long before Cromwell's accession to the supreme power--Cambridge in 1644-5, under the Chancellorship of the Earl of Manchester (III. 92-6), and Oxford in 1647-8, under the Chancellorship of the Earl of Pembroke (IV. 51-52). The Earl of Manchester, who had been living in complete retirement from public affairs since the establishment of the Commonwealth, still retained the nominal dignity of the Cambridge Chancellorship; but Cromwell had already for five years been Chancellor of the University of Oxford himself, having been elected to the office in January 1650-1, after the Earl of Pembroke's death. His interest in University matters had been naturally sustained by this official connexion with Oxford, and had shown itself in various ways before his Protectorate; but his Protectorate added fresh powers to those of his mere Chancellorship for Oxford, and brought his native University of Cambridge also within his grasp. He availed himself of his powers largely and punctually in the affairs of both, and was applauded in both as the steady defender of their honours and privileges.--To rectify what might still be amiss in them, or too much after the mere Presbyterian standard of Puritanism, he had appointed, by ordinance of September 2, 1654, (Vol. IV. p. 565), a new body of Visitors for each, to inquire into abuses, determine disputes, &c. The result was that the two Universities were now in better and quieter working order than they had been since the first stormy interruption of their old routine by the Civil War. Each reckoned a number of really able and efficient men among its heads of colleges, and in its staff of professors and tutors. In Oxford there was Dr. John Owen, head of Christ Church, and all but permanently Vice-Chancellor of the University, with Dr. Thomas Goodwin, Dr. John Wilkins, Dr. Robert Harris, Dr. Thankful Owen, Dr. John Conant, Dr. Jonathan Goddard, and others, as heads of other Colleges, and Dr. Henry Wilkinson, Dr. Lewis Du Moulin, Dr. Pocock, and the mathematicians Dr. Seth Ward and Dr. John Wallis among the Professors. Cambridge boasted of such men as Dr. Ralph Cudworth, Dr. Benjamin Whichcote, Dr. John Worthington, Dr. John Lightfoot, Dr. Lazarus Seaman, Dr. John Arrowsmith, Dr. Anthony Tuckney, Dr. Henry More, and others now less remembered. And under the discipline and teaching of such chiefs there was growing up in both Universities a generation of young men as well grounded in all the older sorts of learning as any generation of their predecessors, with the benefit also of newer lights, as was to be proved by the names and appearances of many of them in English history to the end of the century. Even Clarendon admits as much. It was a wonder to him to find, in the subsequent days of his own Chancellorship of the University of Oxford, that the "several tyrannical governments mutually succeeding each other" through so many previous years had not so affected the place but that it still "yielded a harvest of extraordinary good and sound knowledge in all parts of learning." He attributed this to the inherent virtues of the academic soil itself, which could choke bad seeds, cherish the good, and even defy barrenness by finding its own seeds; but it may be more reasonable to suppose that the superintendence of the Universities under the "tyrannical governments," and especially under Cromwell's as the latest of them, had not been barbaric.--The University Commissioners, it may be added, had authority to inspect Westminster School, Eton, Winchester, and Merchant Taylors'. But, indeed, there seems hardly to have been a foundation for learning anywhere in England that was not, in one way or another, brought under Cromwell's eye. In his inquiries after moneys that might still be recoverable out of the wreck of the old ecclesiastical revenues one can see that, next to the increase and better sustenance of his Established Ministry, additions to the endowed scholastic machinery of the country were always in his mind. It is clear indeed that one of those characteristics of conservatism by which Cromwell intended that his government should be distinguished from the preceding Governments of the Revolution was greater care of the surviving educational institutions of England and Wales, with the resuscitation of some that had fallen into decay. The money-difficulties were great, and less could be accomplished than he desired; but, apart from what may have been done for the refreshment of the older foundations, it is memorable that Cromwell was able to give effect to at least one very considerable design of English University extension. A College in Durham, expressly for the benefit of the North of England, with a Provostship, four Professorships, and tutorships and fellowships to match, was one of the creations of the Protectorate.[1] [Footnote 1: Wood's Fasti Oxon. from 1654 onwards; Orme's Life of John Owen, 175-187; Clarendon, 623; Godwin, IV. 102-104 and 595; Neal, IV. 121-123; with references to Worthington's Diary by Crossley, and Cattermole's _Literature of the Church of England_.] While it was chiefly through the organized means afforded by the Universities and Colleges that Cromwell did what he could for the encouragement of learning, his relations to the learned men individually that were living in the time of his Protectorate were always at least courteous, and in some instances peculiarly friendly. Usher being dead (March 21, 1655-6), and also the great Selden (Nov. 20, 1654) and the venerable and learned Gataker (July 27, 1654), the following were the Englishmen of greatest literary celebrity already, or of greatest coming note in English literary history, who were alive at the midpoint of Oliver's Protectorate, and could and did then range themselves (for we exclude those of insufficient age) as his adherents on the whole, his subjects by mere compulsion, or his implacable and exiled enemies. We divide the list into groups according to that classification, as calculated for the year 1656; but the names within each group are arranged in the order of seniority:[1]-- [Footnote 1: There may be errors and omissions in the list; but, having taken some pains, I will risk it as it stands.] ADHERENTS MORE OR LESS CORDIAL. George Wither (_ætat_ 68). John Goodwin (_ætat_ 63). Edmund Calamy (_ætat_ 56). Thomas Goodwin (_ætat_ 56). John Lightfoot (_ætat_ 54). Edmund Waller (_ætat_ 51). John Rushworth (_ætat_ 49). Milton (_ætat_ 48). Benjamin Whichcote (_ætat_ 46). James Harrington (_ætat_ 45). Henry More (_ætat_ 42). John Wilkins (_ætat_ 42). John Owen (_ætat_ 40). John Wallis (_ætat_ 40). Ralph Cudworth (_ætat_ 39). Algernon Sidney (_ætat_ 39). Marchamont Needham (_ætat_ 36). Andrew Marvell (_ætat_ 36). Roger Boyle, Lord Broghill (_ætat_ 35). William Petty (_ætat_ 33). Thomas Stanley (_ætat_ 31). John Aubrey (_ætat_ 30). Robert Boyle (_ætat_ 29). John Bunyan (_ætat_ 28). Sir William Temple (_ætat_ 27). John Tillotson (_ætat_ 26). John Howe (_ætat_ 26). Edward Phillips (_ætat_ 26). John Phillips (_ætat_ 25). John Dryden (_ætat_ 25). Henry Stubbe (_ætat_ 25). John Locke (_ætat_ 24). Samuel Pepys (_ætat_ 24). Edward Stillingfleet (_ætat_ 21). SUBJECTS BY COMPULSION. Ex-Bishop Hall (died Sept. 8, 1656, _ætat_ 82). John Hales (died May 19, 1656, _ætat_ 72). Robert Sanderson (_ætat_ 69). Thomas Hobbes (_ætat_ 68). Robert Herrick (_ætat_ 65). John Hacket (_ætat_ 64). Izaak Walton (_ætat_ 63). James Shirley (_ætat_ 62). James Howell (_ætat_ 62). Gilbert Sheldon (_ætat_ 58). William Prynne (_ætat_ 56). Brian Walton (_ætat_ 56). Peter Heylin (_ætat_ 56). Jasper Mayne (_ætat_ 52). Thomas Fuller (_ætat_ 52). Edward Pocock (_ætat_ 52). Sir William Davenant (_ætat_ 51). Thomas Browne of Norwich (_ætat_ 51). William Dugdale (_ætat_ 51). Henry Hammond (_ætat_ 51). Richard Fanshawe (_ætat_ 48). Aston Cockayne (_ætat_ 48). Samuel Butler (_ætat_ 44). Jeremy Taylor (_ætat_ 43). John Cleveland (_ætat_ 43). John Pearson (_ætat_ 43). John Birkenhead (_ætat_ 41). John Denham (_ætat_ 41). Richard Baxter (_ætat_ 41). Roger L'Estrange (_ætat_ 40). Abraham Cowley (_ætat_ 38). John Evelyn (_ætat_ 36). Isaac Barrow (_ætat_ 26). Anthony Wood (_ætat_ 25). Robert South (_ætat_ 23). ACTIVE ENEMIES IN EXILE. John Bramhall (_ætat_ 63). George Morley (_ætat_ 58). John Earle (_ætat_ 55). Sir Kenelm Digby (_ætat_ 53). Sir Edward Hyde (_ætat_ 48). Thomas Killigrew (_ætat_ 45). George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham (_ætat_ 29). The relations of Cromwell to such persons varied, of course, with their attitudes towards himself and his government. The theologian among his adherents to whom he seems to have been drawn by the strongest elective affinity was Dr. John Owen. "Sir, you are a person I must be acquainted with," he had said to Owen in Fairfax's garden; laying his hand on his shoulder, one day in April 1649, just after he had first heard Owen preach;[1] and so, from being merely minister of Coggeshall in Essex, Owen had become Cromwell's friend and chaplain in Ireland, and had still, through his subsequent promotions, ending with the Deanery of Christ Church and the Vice-Chancellorship of Oxford, been much about Cromwell and much trusted by him. Perhaps the only difference now between them was that Owen's theory of Toleration was less broad than Cromwell's. Next to Owen among the divines of the Commonwealth, the Protector seems to have retained his liking for Dr. Thomas Goodwin, and for such other fervid or Evangelical Independents as Caryl, Sterry, Hugh Peters, and Nicholas Lockyer, with a gradual tendency to John Howe, the youngest of his chaplains. For the veteran free-lance and Arminian John Goodwin, a keen critic now of Cromwell's Commission of Triers and of other parts of his Church-policy, his liking must have been less; but Goodwin's merits were fairly appreciated, and he had at least perfect liberty to conduct his congregation as he pleased and to publish his pamphlets. So, on the other hand, eminent Presbyterian divines like Calamy, accommodated amply in Cromwell's Established Church, had all freedom and respect.--As to his dealings with non-clerical men of letters friendly to his government, we know a good deal already. Milton, of whose relations to the Protectorate we shall have to speak more at large, was his Latin Secretary; Needham was his journalist; Marvell was in his private employment and was looking for something more public. Still younger men were growing up, in the Universities or just out of them, regarding the Protectorate as now the settled order of things, in which they must pass their future lives. Cudworth, recently promoted from the mastership of Clare College, Cambridge, to that of Milton's old College of Christ's, had been asked by the Protector to recommend to him any very promising young Cambridge men he might discover;[2] and, doubtless, there had been a similar request to Owen of Oxford. Dryden, still at Cambridge, though now twenty-five years of age, and already, by his father's death, a small Northamptonshire squire of £40 a year, was looking forward, we shall find, as his family connexions with the Parliamentarians and the Commonwealth made natural, to a life in London under the great Protector's shadow. [Footnote 1: Orme's Life of Owen (1820), p. 113.] [Footnote 2: Life of Cudworth, as cited by Godwin, IV. 596.] All that could be expected by divines and scholars ranking in our second category, i.e. as subjects of the Protectorate by mere compulsion, and known to be strongly disaffected to it, was protection and safety on condition of remaining quiet. This they did receive. For a month or two, indeed, after the terrible ordinance of Nov. 24, 1655, threatening the expulsion of the ejected Anglican clergy from the family-chaplaincies, schoolmasterships, and tutorships, in which so many of them had found refuge, and forbidding them to preach anywhere or use the Book of Common Prayer, there had been a flutter of consternation among the poor dispersed clerics. That Ordinance, however, as we saw, had merely been _in terrorem_ at a particular moment, and had remained a dead letter. The admirable John Hales, it is true, did resign a chaplaincy which he held near Eton rather than bring the good lady who sheltered him into trouble; and by his death soon afterwards England lost a man of whom the Protector must have had as kindly thoughts as of any of the old Anglicans. That case was exceptional. Ex-Bishop Hall, in the end of his much-battered life, lived quietly near Norwich, remembering his past losses and sequestrations under the Long Parliament rather than suffering anything more of the kind. Peter Heylin was in similar circumstances in Oxfordshire, and by no means bashful. Jeremy Taylor alternated between the Earl of Carbery's seat, called "the Golden Grove," in Caernarvonshire, near which he taught a school, and the society of his friend John Evelyn, in London or at Sayes Court in Surrey,--tending on the whole to London, where he resumed preaching, and, after a brief arrest and some little questioning, was left unmolested. Hammond was mainly at Sir John Packington's in Worcestershire; Sanderson and Fuller were actually in parochial livings, the one in Lincolnshire, the other in Essex; and Pocock was in a Professorship. Sorely vexed as such men were, and poorer in the world's goods than they had been, this was the time of the greatest literary productiveness of some of them. Old Bishop Hall had not ceased to write, but was to leave trifles of his last days to be published after the Restoration as "Shakings of the Olive Tree"; and works, or tracts and sermons, by Sanderson, Heylin, Hammond, Fuller, and Jeremy Taylor, some of them of a highly Episcopal tenor, were among the publications of the Protectorate. Fuller's _Church History of Britain_, one of the best and most lightsome books in our language, was published in 1655-6. Brian Walton's great Polyglott had not yet been carried farther than the third volume; but the Protector had continued to that scholar the material furtherance in his arduous work which had been yielded first by the Rump Government, apparently on some solicitation by Milton (Vol. IV. pp. 446, 447); and the work, when it did appear complete in six volumes folio, in 1657, was to contain handsome acknowledgment by Walton of this generosity. Of the incessant literary activity of the Presbyterian Baxter through the Protectorate we need say nothing. It is more remarkable that there was no interruption of William Prynne's interminable series of pamphlets on all sorts of public questions, and often violently against the Government. For the rest, where were the Herricks, the Shirleys, the Clevelands, and the other old Royalist wits and satirists of the lighter sort? Keeping schools, most of them, or living with friends in the country, and now and then sending out, as before, some light thing in print. Samuel Butler, a secretary or the like in private families, was yet unknown to fame, but was taking notes and sure to print them some day; and the two most placid and imperturbable men in all England were Browne of Norwich and Izaak Walton. Browne, all his best known writings published long ago, but appearing in new editions, was contented now with attending his patients; and, when Izaak Walton was not in his house in Clerkenwell (to which neighbourhood he seems to have removed after giving up his shop in Chancery Lane), he was away on some fishing ramble. His _Complete Angler, or The Contemplative Man's Recreation_ had appeared in May 1653, and a second edition of it was just out.[1] [Footnote 1: Details in this paragraph are from various sources: e.g. Wood's; 'Ath. and Fasti and Walker's Sufferings of the Clergy under the several names, Cattermole's _Literature of the Church of England_, Lowndes's Bibliographer's Manual by Bohn, and the Thomason Catalogue of Pamphlets. See also, for Jeremy Taylor, Evelyn's _Diary and Correspondence_, about date 1855-6. Evelyn was greatly concerned about Cromwell's ordinance for suppressing preaching and schoolmastering by the Anglican clergy, and about its probable results for Taylor in particular. See one of his letters to Taylor (pp. 593-4, ed. 1870).] The number of wits and men of letters still hostile to the Protectorate to such a degree that they would undergo the hardships of exile rather than live in England was, it will have been observed, comparatively small. This arose from the fact that some who had been in exile at the death of Charles I, or even afterwards in the train of Charles II., had reluctantly lost faith in the possibility of a restoration of the Stuarts, and had returned to England, to join themselves with those whom we have classed generally as Cromwell's "subjects by compulsion." Leading cases were those of Hobbes, Sir William Davenant, and Abraham Cowley; with which, for convenience, may be associated that of the satirist Cleveland, though _he_ had never gone into exile, but had remained in England, taking the risks.--HOBBES, who had been in Paris since 1641, to be out of the bustle of the English confusions, but who had come into central connexion with the Stuart cause there by his appointment in 1646 to be tutor to young Charles, had been obliged to leave that connexion, ostensibly at least, in 1651 or 1652. The occasion is said to have been the publication of his _Leviathan_. That famous book of 1651, like its two predecessors of 1650, _Human Nature_ and _De Corpore Politico_, he had found it convenient to publish in London, where the Commonwealth authorities do not seem to have made the least objection. But by this time Hobbes's infidelity, or Atheism, or Hobbism, or whatever it was, had become a dreadful notoriety in the world; and, when Hobbes presented a fine copy of his great book to Charles II., that pious young prince had been instructed by the Royalist divines about him that it would not do to countenance either Mr. Hobbes or his books any longer. Charles retained privately all his own real regard for his old tutor, and Hobbes perfectly understood that; but the hint had been taken. Back in England at last, and permitted to live in the house of his old pupil and patron, the Earl of Devonshire, where his only annoyance was the society of the Earl's chaplain, Jasper Mayne, he had found the Protectorate comfortable enough for all his purposes, and had been publishing new books under it, including his pungent disputations with ex-Bishop Bramhall on Liberty and Necessity and with Wallis of Oxford on Mathematics.[1]--Hobbes's friend DAVENANT had for some time been less lucky. _His_ return to England had been involuntary. He had been captured at sea in 1650 on his way to Virginia (Vol. IV. p. 193), had been a prisoner in the Isle of Wight and in the Tower and in danger of trial for his life, and had been released only by strong intercession in his favour, in which Milton is thought to have helped. This result, however, had reconciled him, and Davenant too had become one of the subjects of the Protectorate. Nay he had struck out an ingenious mode of livelihood for himself under Cromwell, somewhat in his old line of business. "At that time," says Wood, "tragedies and comedies being esteemed very scandalous by the Presbyterians, and therefore by them silenced, he contrived a way to set up an Italian Opera, to be performed by declamations and music; and, that they might be performed with all decency, seemliness, and without rudeness and profaneness, John Maynard, serjeant-at-law, and several sufficient citizens, were engagers. This Italian Opera began in Rutland House in Charter-house yard, May 23, 1656, and was afterwards transferred to the Cockpit in Drury Lane." Cromwell's own fondness for music may have prompted him to this relaxation, in Davenants favour, of the old theatre-closing Ordinance of September 1642. At all events, money was coming in for Davenant, and he was not very unhappy.[2]--The Satirist JOHN CLEVELAND, as we have said, had never gone into exile. This was the more remarkable because, through the Civil War, he had adhered to the King's cause most tenaciously, not only in official employment for it, but also serving it by the circulation of squibs and satires very offensive to the Parliamentarians, and to the Scots in particular. Through the Commonwealth, however, and also into the Protectorate, he _had_ lived on in England, in obscurity and with risks, latterly somewhere in or about Norfolk, as tutor or quasi-tutor to a gentleman, on £30 a year. By ill luck, in Nov. 1655, just when the police of the Major-Generals was coming into operation, he had been apprehended, on his way to Newark, by the vigilance of Major-General Haynes, and committed to prison in Yarmouth, There seems to have been no definite charge, other than that he was "the poet Cleveland" and was a questionable kind of vagrant. He had been in prison for some months when it occurred to him to address a letter to the Protector himself. "May it please your Highness," it began, "Rulers within the circle of their government have a claim to that which is said of the Deity: they have their centre everywhere and their circumference nowhere, It is in this confidence that I address your Highness, as knowing no place in the nation is so remote as not to share in the ubiquity of your care, no prison so close as to shut me up from the partaking of your influence." After explaining that he had been and still was a Royalist, but that he had taken no active part in affairs for about ten years, he concludes, in a clever vein of compliment, thus: "If you graciously please to extend indulgence to your suppliant in taking me out of this withering durance, you will find mercy will establish you more than power, though all the days of your life were as pregnant with victories as your twice-auspicious Third of September." The appeal to Cromwell's magnanimity was successful. Cleveland was released, came to London, and lived by his wits there till his death in May 1658.[3]--A much later returner from among the Royalist exiles than either Hobbes or Davenant was the poet COWLEY. His return was late in 1655 or early in 1656, and seems to have been attended with some mystery. He had been for years at Paris or St. Germains, in the household of Lord Jermyn, acting as secretary to his Lordship and to Queen Henrietta Maria, deciphering the secret letters that came to them, and therefore at the very heart of the intrigues for Charles II. Yet, after a temporary imprisonment, security in £1000 had been accepted in his behalf, and he had been allowed to remain in London. The story afterwards by his Royalist friends was that he had come over, by understanding with Jermyn and the ex-Queen, to watch affairs in their interest and send them intelligence, and that, the better to disguise the design, he pretended compliance with the existing powers, meaning to obtain the degree of M.D. from Oxford, and set up cautiously as a medical practitioner. It is very unlikely that such a dangerous game could have been safely tried under eyes like Thurloe's; and the fact seems to be that Cowley was honestly tired of exile and willing to comply, in a manly way, for the sake of life once more at home. One of his first acts after his return was to publish his Collected Poems in a volume of four parts. They appeared, on or about April 1656, from the shop of Humphrey Moseley, the publisher of Milton's Poems ten years before, and still always dealing, as then, in the finer literature. In a preface to the book Cowley distinctly avowed his intention to accept the inevitable, treat the controversy as at length determined against the Stuarts by the unaccountable will of God, and no longer persist in the ridiculous business of weaving laurels for the conquered. He announced at the same time that he had not only excluded from the volume all his pieces of this last kind, but had even burnt the manuscripts. In a copy of the book presented by him to the Bodleian Library at Oxford there is a "Pindarique Ode" in his own hand, dated June 26, 1656, breathing the same sentiment. The book is supposed to be addressing the great Library; and, after congratulating itself on being admitted into such a glorious company without deserts of its own, but by mere predestination, it is made to say:-- [Footnote 1: Wood's Ath. III. 1207-1212, and 972.] [Footnote 2: Wood's Ath. III. 805-806. In Davenant's works (pp. 341-359 of folio edition of 1673) will be found, by those who are curious, a copy of _"The First Day's Entertainment at Rutland House by Declamations and Musick: after the manner of the Ancients."_ It strikes one as very proper and very heavy, but it may have been a godsend to the Londoners after their long deprivation of theatrical entertainments. The music was partly by Henry Lawes.] [Footnote 3: _Cromwelliana_, 154; Wood's Fasti, I. 499; Godwin, IV. 240-241. There is a MS. copy of Cleveland's letter among the Thomason large quartos. It is dated "Oct. 1657;" but that, I imagine, is an error.] "Ah! that my author had been tied, like me, To such a place and such a company, Instead of several countries, several men, And business which the Muses hate!"[1] [Footnote 1: Wood's Fasti, II. 209-213; Johnson's Lives of the Poets, with Cunningham's Notes (1854), I. 7-12. Cowley did receive the M.D. degree at Oxford, Dec. 2, 1657, and did remain in England through the rest of Cromwell's Protectorate; and, though the Royalists welcomed him back after Cromwell's death, his compliance was to be remembered against him.] As the Muses were returning to England in full number, and ceasing to be so Stuartist as they had been, it was natural that there should be express celebrations of the Protectorate in their name. There had been dedications of books to Cromwell, and applauses of him in prose and verse, from the time of his first great successes as a Parliamentary General; and such things had been increasing since, till they defied enumeration. In the Protectorate they swarmed. Matchless still among the tributes in verse was Milton's single Sonnet of May 1652, "_Cromwell, our chief of men_," and Milton had written no more to or about Cromwell in the metrical form since the Protectorate had begun, but had contented himself with adding to his former prose tributes in various pamphlets that most splendid and subtle one of all which flames through several pages of his _Defensio Secunda_. It is Milton now, almost alone, that we remember as Cromwell's laureate; but among the sub-laureates there were some by no means insignificant. Old George Wither, though his marvellous metrical fluency had now lapsed into doggrel and senility, had done his best by sending forth, in 1654-5, from some kind of military superintendentship he held in the county of Surrey (Wood calls it distinctly a Major-Generalship at last, but that is surely an exaggeration), two Oliverian poems, one called _The Protector: A Poem briefly illustrating the Supereminency of that Dignity,_ the other _A Rapture occasioned by the late miraculous Deliverance of his Highness the Lord Protector from a desperate danger_.[1] In stronger and more compact style, though still rather rough, Andrew Marvell, in the same year, had added to his former praises of Cromwell a poem of 400 lines, published in a broad-sheet, with the title _The First Anniversary of the Government under his Highness the Lord Protector_. It began:-- [Footnote 1: Wood's Ath. III. 762-772.] "Like the vain curlings of the watery maze Which in smooth streams a sinking weight does raise, So man, declining always, disappears In the weak circles of increasing years, And his short tumults of themselves compose, While flowing Time above his head does close. Cromwell alone with greater vigour runs, Sun-like, the stages of succeeding suns; And still the day which he doth next restore Is the just wonder of the day before. Cromwell alone doth with new lustre spring, And shines the jewel of the yearly ring; 'Tis he the force of scattered Time contracts, And in one year the work of ages acts."[1] [Footnote 1: Marvell's Works, edited by Dr. Grosart, I. 169-170.] But the most far-blazoned eulogy at the time, and the smoothest to read now, was one in forty-seven stanzas, which appeared May 31, 1655, with the title _A Panegyric to my Lord Protector of the present greatness and joint interest of his Highness and this Nation, by E. W., Esq._ The author was Edmund Waller, still under a cloud for his old transgression, but recovering himself gradually by his wealth, his plausibility and fine manners, and his powers of versifying. Here are four of the stanzas:-- "Your drooping country, torn by civil hate, Restored by you, is made a glorious state, The seat of Empire, where the Irish come, And the unwilling Scots, to fetch their doom. "The sea's our own; and now all nations greet, With bending sails, each vessel of our fleet; Your power extends as far as winds can blow, Or swelling sails upon the globe may go. "Heaven, that hath placed this Island to give law To balance Europe and its states to awe, In this conjunction doth on Britain smile,-- The greatest Leader and the greatest Isle .... "Had you some ages past this race of glory Run, with amazement we should read your story; But living virtue, all achievements past, Meets envy still to grapple with at last."[1] [Footnote 1: Waller's Poems: date of this from Thomason's Catalogue.] Waller's verses, if nothing else, would suggest that we ought to know something more, at this point, of the state of Scotland, Ireland, and even the Colonies, under Cromwell's Protectorate. SCOTLAND. After August 1654, when the Glencairn-Middleton insurrection had been suppressed (Vol. IV, p. 532), the administration of Scotland had been again for some time wholly in the hands of Monk, as the Commander-in-chief there, with assistance from the four resident English Judges and minor officials. Cromwell and his Council in London, however, had been thinking of a more regular method for the Government of Scotland; and, at length, in the end of July 1655, the following was the arrangement: I. CIVIL ESTABLISHMENT. COUNCIL, SITTING IN EDINBURGH. _President of Council_ (£2000 a year): Roger Boyle, Lord Broghill. General Monk. Major-General Charles Howard. Colonel Adrian Scroope. Colonel Cooper. Colonel Nathaniel Whetham. Colonel William Lockhart (soon afterwards Sir William, and Ambassador to France). John Swinton, Laird of Swinton (afterwards Sir John). Samuel Desborough, Esq. (brother of the Regicide). _Chief Clerk to the Council_ (£300 a year): Emanuel Downing. SUPREME COMMISSIONERS OF JUSTICE (in lieu of the Old Scotch Court of Session):--This was a body of Seven Judges; four of whom were English--George Smith, Edward Moseley, William Lawrence, and Henry Goodyere (the last two in the places of two of the original four of 1652),--but three of them native Scots, accustomed to Scottish law and practice. These native Judges had been added for some time already, and there had been, and were to be, changes of the persons; but one hears most of Lockhart, Swinton, Sir James Learmont, Alexander Pearson, and Andrew Ker. At hand, and helping much, though no longer now the great man he had been in Scotland, was Sir Archibald Johnstone of Warriston. STATE OFFICERS:--Most of the state-offices of the old Scottish constitution were still kept up, but were held, of course, by the new Councillors and Judges. The _Keepership of the Great Seal_ was given to Desborough; the _Signet_ or _Privy Seal_, with the fees of the old _Secretaryship_, to Lockhart; the _Clerk Registership_ to Judge Smith; &c. TRUSTEES OF FORFEITED AND SEQUESTRATED ESTATES:--Under this name, by the Ordinance of April 12, 1654 (Vol. IV. pp. 561-562), there was a body of seven persons, about half of them English, looking after the rents and revenues of those numerous Scottish nobles and lairds the punishment of whom, for past delinquency, by total or partial seizing of their estates, had been one of the necessary incidents of the Conquest (Vol. IV. pp. 559-561). II. MILITARY ESTABLISHMENT. COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF, General George Monk (head-quarters Dalkeith), with Major-General Howard, Colonels Cooper, Scroope, and Whetham, and other Colonels and inferior officers, under him. The total force of horse and foot in Scotland may have been about 7000 or 8000. It was distributed over the country in forts and garrisons, the chief being those of Edinburgh, Leith, Glasgow, Stirling, Dundee, Perth, Aberdeen, Dunnottar, Burntisland, Linlithgow, Dumbarton, Ayr, Dunstaffnage, and Inverness. Everywhere the English soldiers acted as a police, and their officers superseded, or were conjoined with, the native magistrates and sheriffs in the local courts.[1] [Footnote 1: Council Order Books of the English Council July 26, 1655, containing letter from "Oliver P." to Monk, announcing the new establishment; _Perfect Proceedings_, No. 307, publishing for the Londoners, under date July 27, the names of his Highness's new Council for Scotland; Baillie's Letters, III. 249-250; Godwin, IV. 462-3.] Under this government Scotland was now very tranquil and tolerably prosperous. True, almost all the old poppy-heads or thistle-heads, the native nobles and notables, were gone. Those of them who had been taken at Worcester, or had been sent out of Scotland as prisoners about the same time by Monk, were still, for the most part, in durance in England; others were in foreign exile; the few that remained in Scotland, such as Argyle, Loudoun, Lothian, the Marquis of Douglas, and his son Angus, were out of sight in their country-houses, utterly broken by private debts or fines and forfeitures, and in very low esteem. Then, among many Scots of good status throughout the community, there were complaints and grumblings on account of the taxes for the support of the English Army, or on account of loss of posts and chances by the admission of Englishmen to the same, or by the promotion of such other Scots as the English saw fit to favour, Incidents of this kind, much noted at the time, had been the ejection of some Professors from the Universities by the English Visitors in 1653, and the appointments by the same visitors of men of their own choice to University posts--e.g. Mr. Robert Leighton, minister of Newbattle, to the Principalship of Edinburgh University, and Mr. Patrick Gillespie to that of the University of Glasgow. But even Baillie, whose complaints on such grounds had been bitter in 1654, and to whom the appointment of Gillespie to the Glasgow Principal-ship had been a particular private grievance, was in better spirits before 1656. Glasgow, he then reports, was flourishing. "Through God's mercy, our town, in its proportion, thrives above all the land. The Word of God is well loved and regarded; albeit not as it ought and we desire, yet in no town of our land better. Our people has much more trade in comparison than any other: their buildings increase strangely both for number and fairness." Burnet's account is that the whole country partook of this growing prosperity, which he attributes to the excellent police of the English, the trading they introduced, and the money they put in circulation. "A man may ride over all Scotland with a switch in his hand and a hundred pounds in his pocket, which he could not have done these five hundred years," was Mr. Samuel Desborough's summary account afterwards of the state of the country which he had helped to administer under the Protectorate; and Cromwell's own reference to the subject is even more interesting and precise. Acknowledging that the Scots had suffered much, and were in fact "a very ruined nation," yet what had befallen them had introduced, he hinted, a very desirable change in the constitution of Scottish society. It had enfranchised and encouraged the middle and lower classes. "The _meaner_ sort in Scotland," he said, "love us well, and are likely to come into as thriving a condition as when they were under their own great lords, who made them work for their living no better than the peasants of France;" and "The _middle_ sort of people," he added, "do grow up there into such a substance as makes their lives comfortable, if not better than they were before." Of course, in neither of these classes, any more than from among the dispossessed nobles and lairds, can the sentiment of Scottish nationality and the pain of its abolition have been extinct. Yet one notices, towards the end of 1656, a soothing even in that respect. The Scots, all but universally, by that time, had acquired the habit of speaking deferentially of "His Highness" or "His Highness the Lord Protector"; correspondence with Charles II. had entirely ceased; the Edinburgh barristers had returned to the bar; and the Scottish clergy, pretty generally, left off praying for Charles publicly. Lord Broghill's admirable management had helped much to this reconciliation. "If men of my Lord Broghill's parts and temper be long among us," wrote Baillie, "they will make the present Government more beloved than some men wish. From our public praying for the King Broghill's courtesies, more than his threats, brought off our leading men." Baillie himself had yielded that point at last.[1] [Footnote 1: Baillie, III. 236-321 (including letters to Spang, July 19, 1654, Dec. 31, 1655, and Sept. 1, 1656); Burnet (ed. 1823), I. 104-105; Chambers's Domestic Annals of Scotland, II. 249; Carlyle, III. 342-3 (Cromwell's Speech XVII.).] Raging yet among the Scottish clergy, and dividing the Scottish community so far as the clergy had influence, was the controversy between the _Resolutioners_ and the _Remonstrants_ or _Protesters_ (Vol. IV. pp. 201-214, 281-284, 288-289, and 361). By a law of political life, every community, at every time, must have _some_ polarizing controversy; and this was Scotland's through the whole period of her absorption in the English Commonwealth and Protectorate. The Protesters were the Whigs, and the Resolutioners the Tories, of Scotland through that time; and the strife between the parties was all the fiercer because, Scottish autonomy being lost, it was the only native strife left for Scotsmen, and they were battened down to it, as an indulgence among themselves, by a larger and unconcerned rule overhead. General Assemblies of the Kirk being no longer allowed, it had to be conducted in Provincial Synods and Presbyteries only, or in sermons and pamphlets of mutual reproach. The exasperation was great; Church-censures and threats of such passed and repassed; all attempts at agreement failed; the best friends were parted. Leaders among the majority, or Resolutioner clergy, were Mr. Robert Douglas of Edinburgh, who had preached the coronation sermon of Charles II. at Scone, Mr. James Sharp of Crail (these two back for some time from the imprisonment in London to which Monk had sent them in 1651: Vol. IV. 296), Mr. James Wood of St. Andrews, old Mr. David Dickson, now Professor of Divinity in Edinburgh, and our perpetual friend Baillie. The minority, or Protesters, were led by such ministers as Mr. James Guthrie of Stirling, their first oracle, Mr. Patrick Giliespie of Glasgow University, Mr. John Livingston of Ancram, Mr, Samuel Rutherford of St. Andrews, and Mr. Andrew Cant of Aberdeen; with whom, as their best lay head, was Johnstone of Warriston. Peace-makers, such as Mr. Robert Blair of St. Andrews and Mr. James Durham of Glasgow, negociated between the two sides; and Mr. Robert Leighton, in his Edinburgh Principalship, looked on with saintly and philosophic indifference. He hoped that, while so many brethren "preached to the times," one brother might be allowed "to preach on eternity" and that the differences on earth would "make heaven the sweeter." In fact, however, the controversy was not merely a theoretical one. Not only was it involved whether the two last General Assemblies, of 1651 and 1652, swayed as they had been by the Resolutioners, should be recognised and their acts held valid, and what should be the spirit and constitution of the Kirk in future: present interests were also involved. It had been to the Protesters that Cromwell had turned with greatest liking and hope, both on political grounds and from spiritual sympathy, when he was fighting in Scotland; and, since the beginning of his Protectorate, _they_ had been most in favour. Early in 1654 three of their number, Mr. Patrick Gillespie, Mr. John Livingston, and Mr. John Menzies, had been summoned to London to advise the Protector; they had been there two or three months; and the effects of their advice had been visible in an ordinance about vacant Kirk-livings very favourable to the Protesters, and generally in a continued inclination towards the Protesters in the proceedings of the English Government in Scotland. The ministers and others ejected by Cromwell's visitors had been mostly of the Resolutioner species; and one of Baillie's complaints is that Protesters, whether fit or not, were put into vacant livings by the English, and that only Scotsmen of that colour were conjoined with the English in the executive and the judicatories. Till 1656 all this had been very natural. The dregs of Stuartism, and consequent antipathy to the Protectorate, had persisted till then most visibly among the Resolutioners.[1] [Footnote 1: Baillie, _ut supra_; Life of Robert Blair, 313 _et seq._; Wodrow's Introduction to his _History_ (1721); Beattie's _Church of Scotland during the Commonwealth_ (1842), Chap. III.] Though the Protesters were originally what we have called super-ultra-Presbyterians, it was not surprising that some of them had moved into Independency. There certainly were some Independents among the Scottish parish clergy at this time, especially about Aberdeen; and the Independents apart from the National Church had become numerous. But mere Independency now, or even Anabaptism, was nothing very shocking in Scotland; it was the increase of newer sectaries that alarmed the clergy. Quakerism had found its way into Scotland; so that there were now, we are told by a contemporary, "great numbers of that damnable sect of the Quakers, who, being deluded by Satan, drew away many to their profession, both men and women." As in England, Quaker preachers went about disturbing the regular service in churches, or denouncing every form of ministry but their own to open-air congregations, and often with physical convulsions and fits of insane phrenzy. The Church-courts and the civil authorities were much exercised by the innovation, and had begun action against the sect, the rather because many of the common people, in their weariness of the strife among their own clergy, "resetted" the Quaker preachers and said they "got as much good of them as of anybody else."[1] [Footnote 1: The quotations are from Chambers's _Dom. Annals of Scotland_, II. 232-234.] Not an importation like Quakerism, but of ineradicable native growth, was the crime of witchcraft; and, though that crime was known in England too, and occupied English law-courts, Scotland maintained her fearful superiority in witch-trials and witch-burnings. "There is much witchery up and down our land," wrote Baillie: "the English be but too sparing to try it, but some they execute." Against crimes of other orders the English judges were willing enough to act; and nothing is more startling to one who is new to such facts than to find how much of their business, in pious and Presbyterian Scotland, consisted in trials of cases of hideous and abnormal sexualism. But, indeed, very strange _isms_ of quite another sort, and of which mere modern theory would have pronounced the Scotland of that time incapable, lurked underneath all the piety, all the preaching, all the exercise of Presbyterian discipline, all the seeming distribution of the population universally into Resolutioners and Protesters, with interspersed Independents, Baptists, Quakers, and other vehement Christians. Bead, from the Scottish correspondence of Needham's _Mercurius Politicus_, in the number for June 26-July 3, 1656, the following account of one of the cases that had come before Judge Smith and Judge Lawrence in their Dumfriesshire circuit of the previous May:-- "Alexander Agnew, commonly called Jock of Broad Scotland," [apparently an itinerant beggar, or Edie Ochiltree, of Dumfriesshire] was tried on this indictment.--"_First_, the said Alexander, being desired to go to church, answered 'Hang God: God was hanged long since; what had _he_ to do with God? he had nothing to do with God'. _Secondly_, He answered he was nothing in God's common; God gave him nothing, and he was no more obliged to God than to the Devil; and God was very greedy. _Thirdly_, When he was desired to seek anything in God's name, he said he would never seek anything for God's sake, and that it was neither God nor the Devil that gave the fruits of the land: the wives of the country gave _him_ his meat. _Fourthly_, Being asked how many persons were in the Godhead, answered there was only one person in the Godhead, who made all; but, for Christ, he was not God, because he was made, and came into the world after it was made, and died as other men, being nothing but a mere man. _Sixthly_, He declared that he knew not whether God or the Devil had the greater power; but he thought the Devil had the greatest; and 'When I die,' said he, 'let God and the Devil strive for my soul, and let him that is strongest take it.' _Seventhly_, He denied there was a Holy Ghost, or knew there was a Spirit, and denied he was a sinner or needed mercy. _Eighthly_, He denied he was a sinner, and [said] that he scorned to seek God's mercy. _Ninthly_, He ordinarily mocked all exercise of God's worship and convocation in His name, in derision saying 'Pray you to your God, and I will pray to mine when I think time.' And, when he was desired by some to give thanks for his meat, he said, 'Take a sackful of prayers to the mill, and shill them, and grind them, and take your breakfast off them.' To others he said, 'I will give you a twopence, and [if ye] pray until a boll of meal and one stone of butter fall down from heaven through the house-rigging to you.' To others, when bread and cheese was given him, and was laid on the ground by him, he said, 'If I leave this, I will [shall] long cry to God before he give it me again.' To others he said, 'Take a bannock, and break it in two, and lay down one half thereof, and ye will long-pray to God before he put the other half to it again.' _Tenthly_, Being posed whether or not he knew God or Christ, he answered he had never had any profession, nor never would--he had never had any religion, nor never would: also that there was no God nor Christ, and that he never received anything from God, but from Nature, which he said ever reigned and ever would, and that to speak of Gods and their persons was an idle thing, and that he would never name such names, for he had shaken his cap of such things long since. And he denied that a man has a soul, or that there is a Heaven or a Hell, or that the Scriptures are the Word of God. Concerning Christ, he said that he heard of such, a man; but, for the second person of the Trinity, he had been the second person of the Trinity if the ministers had not put him in prison, and that he was no more obliged to God nor the Devil.--And these aforesaid blasphemies are not rarely or seldom uttered by him, but frequently and ordinarily in several places where he resorted, to the entangling, deluding, and seducing of the common people. Through the committing of which blasphemies, he hath contravened the tenor of the laws and acts of Parliament, and incurred the pain of death mentioned therein; which ought to be inflicted upon him with all rigour, in manner specified in the indictment.--Which indictment being put to the knowledge of an assize, the said Alexander Agnew, called Jock of Broad Scotland, was by the said assize, all in one voice, by the mouth of William Carlyle, late bailie of Dumfries, their chancellor, found guilty of the said crimes of blasphemy mentioned in his indictment; for which the commissioners ordained him, upon Wednesday, 21 May, 1656, betwixt two and four hours in the afternoon, to be taken to the ordinary place of execution for the Burgh of Dumfries, and there to be hanged on a gibbet while [till] he be dead, and all his moveable goods to be escheat." The intercourse between Scotland and London, both by letters and by journeys to and fro, was now very brisk.[1] Not only were Lauderdale, Eglinton, Marischal, David Leslie, and a number of the other distinguished Scottish prisoners of 1651, still detained in London, in more or less strict custody, with their wives and retainers near them; but many Scots whose proper residence was in Scotland were coming to London, on visits of some length, for their own or for public business. Among these, late in 1655, was Lockhart,--to be converted, as we know, into the Protector's ambassador to the Court of France. The eccentric ex-Judge Scot of Scotstarvet had already been in London, petitioning for the remission or reduction of his fine of £1500 for former delinquency, and succeeding completely at last, "in consideration of the pains he hath taken and the service he hath done to the Commonwealth." The Earl of Lothian was in London, painfully prosecuting petitions for the recovery of certain lost family-properties. But the most remarkable apparition was that of the Marquis of Argyle. He came to London in September, 1655, and he seems to have remained there for a long while. What had brought him up was also a suit with the Protector and the Council for reparation of some portions of his lost fortunes and for favour generally; but he seems to have gone about a good deal, visiting various people. "Came to visit me." says Evelyn, the naturalist and virtuoso of Sayes Court, in his diary, under date May 28, 1656, "the old Marquis of Argyle. Lord Lothian, and some other Scotch noblemen, all strangers to me. _Note_: The Marquis took the turtle-doves in the aviary for owls." It had been his characteristic mistake through life.[2] [Footnote 1: In the London _Public Intelligencer_ for April 12-19, 1658, among other advertisements of stage-coaches starting from "the George Inn, without Aldersgate," is one of a fortnightly stage-coach for Edinburgh, the fare £4. Something of the sort may have been running already.] [Footnote 2: Council Order Books of the Protectorate through 1655 and 1656; _Mere. Pol._ for Sept. 27-Oct. 4, 1655; Evelyn's _Diary_ (ed. 1870), p. 248. In the Council Order Books, under date Sept. 11, 1656, is minuted an order that, in terms of an Act of the Estates of Scotland of March 16, 1649, the Marquis of Argyle shall, from and after Nov. 10, 1657, have half the excise of wines and strong waters in Scotland, but not exceeding £3000 in any one year, until he is satisfied of a debt of £145,400 Scots due to him by Scotland on public grounds.] Any influence which the Marquis could now have with the Protector in matters of Scottish Government must have been small; but it was understood that, such as it was, it would be on the side of the Kirk party of the Protesters. And this had become of some consequence. In and through 1656, if not earlier, it had become obvious that the inclinations of the Protector to that party had been considerably shaken. The change was attributed partly to Lord President Broghill. Almost from his first coming to Scotland, this nobleman had found it desirable to win over the Resolutioners. "The President Broghill," says Baillie, "is reported by all to be a man exceeding wise and moderate, and by profession a Presbyterian: he has gained more on the affections of the people than all the English that ever were among us. He has been very civil to Mr. Douglas and Mr. Dickson, and is very intime with Mr. James Sharp. By this means we [the Resolutioners] have an equal hearing in all we have ado with the Council. Yet their way is exceeding longsome, and all must be done first at London." So far as Broghill's communications with London might serve, the Resolutioners, therefore, might count on him as their friend. And by this time he had reasons to show. Had he not succeeded, where the stern Monk had failed, in inducing the Resolutioner clergy to give up public praying for King Charles and otherwise to conform; and was it not on this ground that Monk was believed still to befriend the Protesters? But perhaps it hardly needed Broghill's representations to induce Cromwell to reconsider his Scottish policy in regard to the Kirk. That same Conservatism which had been gaining on him in the English department of his Protectorate, leading him rather to discourage extreme men while tolerating them, had begun to affect his views of Kirk parties in Scotland. The Resolutioners were numerically the larger party: if they would be reconciled, might they not be his most massive support in North Britain? It is possible that the institution of the new Scottish Council under Broghill's Presidency may have been the result of such thoughts, and that Broghill thus only took a course indicated for him by Cromwell. At all events, various relaxations of former orders, about admission to vacant livings and the like, had already been made in favour of the Resolutioners; and, in and from 1656, it was noted that extreme men in Scotland too were not to his Highness's taste, and that, contrary to what might have been expected from his former relations to Scottish Presbyterianism, his aim now was to rebuild a good and solid Established Church in Scotland mainly on the native Presbyterian principle, though under control, and to leave extravagant spirits, including even those too forward for Independency among the Scots, to the mere benefits of an outside toleration. It was not his way to proceed hurriedly, however; and, as the Protesters were religiously the men most to his liking, and must by all means be kept within the Kirk, an agreement between them and the Resolutioners was a political necessity. To this end he had again, more than once recently, requested some of the leaders of both parties to come to London for consultation, as Gillespie, Livingston, and Menzies, for the Protesters, had done before. Appeals to the Civil Power in ecclesiastical matters being against the Presbyterian theory which the parties professed in common, that suggestion had not been taken, notwithstanding the precedent, and the parties had persisted in their war of mutual invective in Scotland, each getting what it could by private dealings with the Council there,--the Resolutioners through Broghill and the Protesters through Monk. But that could not last for ever; and, in August 1656, strict Presbyterian theory had been so far waived by both parties that both had resolved on direct appeal to his Highness in London. The Resolutioners had the start. They had picked out as their fittest single emissary Mr. James Sharp of Crail, then forty-three years of age, already well acquainted with London by his former compulsory stay there, and with the advantage now of intimacy with Broghill. His Instructions, signed by three of the leading Resolutioners, were ready on the 23rd of August. They were substantially that he should clear the Resolutioners with the Protector from the misrepresentations of the Protesters, paint the Protesters in return as mainly hot young spirits and disturbers, and obtain from his Highness a restoration of Presbyterian use and wont through the whole Kirk, with preponderance to the Resolutioners, though not with a General Assembly till times were more quiet. _Per contra_, the Protesters had drawn out certain propositions to be submitted to Cromwell. They asked for a Commission for the plantation of kirks, to be appointed by his authority and to consist of those he might think fit, to administer the revenues of the Kirk according to the Acts of Assemblies and the laws of the land prior to 1651, the fatal year of the "Resolutions." They asked also for a Commission of Visitation, one half to be elected by the Resolutioners and one half by the Protesters, to have the power of "planting and purging" in parishes and of composing differences in Synods and Presbyteries. For urging these propositions a deputation to Cromwell had been thought of, and actually appointed. As it was postponed, however, Sharp was to be in London first by himself. Hence some importance for the Protesters in any counterweight there might be in Argyle's presence there already. [1] [Footnote 1: Baillie, Letters to Spang, in 1655 and 1656, as already cited, with III. 568-573 for Instructions to Sharp and Propositions of the Protesters; Life of Robert Blair, 325-329.] No one was more anxious for the success of Mr. Sharp's mission than the good Baillie of Glasgow University, now in his fifty-fifth year, a widower for three years, but about to marry again, and known as one of the stoutest Resolutioners and Anti-Protesters since that controversy had begun. He had had his discomforts and losses in the University under the new Principalship of Mr. Patrick Gillespie; but had been busy with his lectures and books, and the correspondence of which he was so fond. Among his letters of 1654-5, besides those to Spang, are two hearty ones to his old friend Lauderdale in his London captivity, one or two to London Presbyterian ministers, and an interesting one to Thomas Fuller, regretting that they had not been sooner acquainted, and saying he had "fallen in love" with Fuller's books and was longing for his _Church History_. This was not the only sign of Baillie's mellower temper by this time towards the Anglicans. He was inquiring much about Brian Walton, whose name had not been so much as heard of when Baillie was in London, and whose Polyglott seemed now to him the book of the age. Baxter, on the other hand, was an Ishmaelite, a man to be put down. All these matters, however, had been absorbed at length in Baillie's interest in Mr. Sharp's mission. He was to write to his old London friends, Rous, Calamy, and Ashe, urging them to help Mr. Sharp to the utmost, and he was to correspond with Sharp himself. "I pray God help you and guide you; you had need of a long spoon [in supping with a certain personage]: trust no words nor faces, for all men are liars," is the memorable ending of the first letter that Sharp in London was to receive from Baillie.[1] [Footnote 1: Baillie, III. 234-335; with Mr. Laing's Life of Baillie.] IRELAND. There had been little of novelty in Ireland for some time after the proclamation of the Protectorate (Vol. IV. p. 551). Fleetwood, with the full title of "Lord Deputy" since Sept. 1654, had conducted the Government, as well as he could, with a Council of assessors, consisting, after that date, of Miles Corbet, Robert Goodwin, Colonel Matthew Tomlinson, and Colonel Robert Hammond. This last, so brought into the Protector's service after long retirement, died at Dublin in July 1655. Ludlow still kept aloof, disowning the Protectorate, though remaining in Ireland with his old military commission. Left very much to themselves, Fleetwood and his Council had carried out, as far as possible, the Acts for the Settlement of the country passed or proposed by the Rump in 1652, but not pushing too severely the great business which the Rump had schemed out, of a general and gradual cooping up of the Roman Catholics within the single province of Connaught. In the nature of things, that business, or indeed any actual prevention of the exercise of the Catholic Religion wherever Roman Catholics abounded, was impracticable. It was enough, in the Lord Protector's view, that the land lay quiet, the Roman Catholics and their faithful priests not stirring too publicly, the English soldiery keeping all under sufficient pressure, and English and Scottish colonization shooting in here and there, with Protestant preaching and Protestant farming in its track. On the whole, Fleetwood's Lord-Deputyship, if not eventful, was far from unpopular. [1] [Footnote 1: Godwin, IV. 447-449.] It had occurred to Cromwell, however, that more could be done in Ireland, and that his son-in-law Fleetwood was perhaps not sufficiently energetic, or sufficiently Oliverian, for the purpose. Accordingly, about the same time that Fleetwood had been raised to the Lord-Deputyship, Cromwell's second son, Henry, had been appointed Major-General of the Irish Army. The good impression he had made in his former mission to Ireland (Vol. IV. p. 551) justified the appointment. Not till the middle of 1655, however, did he arrive in Ireland. His reception then was enthusiastic, and was followed by the sudden recall of Fleetwood to London, professedly for a visit only, but really not to return. The title of Lord-Deputy of Ireland was still to be Fleetwood's for the full term of his original appointment; but he was to be occupied by the duties of his English Major-Generalship and his membership of Oliver's Council at home, and the actual government of Ireland was thenceforth in the hands of Henry Cromwell. The young Governor, whose wife had accompanied him, held a kind of Court in Dublin, with Fleetwood's Councillors about him, or others in their stead, and a number of new Judges. The diverse tempers of these advisers, among whom were some Anabaptists or Anti-Oliverians, and his own doubts as to some of the instructions that reached him from his father, made his position a very difficult one; but, though very anxious and sensitive, he managed admirably. In particular, it was observed that, in matters of religion, he had all his father's liberality. It was "against his conscience," he said, "to bear hard upon any merely on account of a different judgment." He conciliated the Presbyterian clergy in a remarkable manner; the Royalists liked him; he would not quarrel with the Anabaptists; and he was as moderate as possible towards the Roman Catholics.[1] [Footnote 1: Godwin, IV. 449-458; _Milton Papers_ by Nickolls, 187-138; Carlyle, III. 108-109, and 133-140 (Letters from Cromwell to his son Harry).] One of Henry Cromwell's difficulties would have been Ludlow, had that uncompromising Republican remained in Ireland. From that he was relieved. In January 1655 Fleetwood had been ordered by the Protector to make Ludlow give up his commission; and, as Ludlow questioned the legality of the demand, he had arranged with Fleetwood to go and settle the matter with the Protector himself. The Protector seeming to prefer that Ludlow should stay where he was, and having sent orders to that effect, Fleetwood was himself In England, and Henry Cromwell was in his place in Dublin, and still there seemed no chance of leave for Ludlow to cross the Channel. At length, without distinct leave, but trusting to a written engagement Fleetwood had given him, he ventured on the passage; and on Dec. 12, 1655, after the experience of a most stormy sea, he had that of a more stormy interview with the Protector and some of his Council at Whitehall. Cromwell rated him roundly for his past behaviour generally and for his return without leave, and demanded his _parole_ of submission to the established Government for the future. Some kind of _parole_ Ludlow was willing to give, declaring that he saw no immediate chance of a subversion of the Government and knew of no design for that end, but refusing to tie his hands "if Providence _should_ offer an occasion." With that Cromwell, who had begun to "carry himself more calmly" towards the end of the interview, was obliged to be content. He became quite civil to Ludlow, saying he "wished him as well as he did any of his Council," and desiring him to make "choice of some place to live in where he might have good air." Ludlow retired into Essex[1]. [Footnote 1: Ludlow's Memoirs, 481-557; Carlyle, III. 136.] THE COLONIES. With the exception of a factory of the London East India Company, which had been established at _Surat_ on the west coast of Hindostan in 1612, and a settlement on the _Gambia_ on the western coast of Africa, dating from 1631, all the considerable Colonies of England in 1656 were American:--I. NEW ENGLAND. The four chief New England Colonies, _Plymouth_, _Massachusetts_, _Connecticut_, and _New Haven_, confederated since 1643, together with the outlying Plantations of _Providence_ and _Rhode-Island_, &c., still belonged politically to the mother-country; and through Cromwell's Protectorate, as before, the connexion had been signified by references of various subjects to the Home-Government, discussions of these by that Government, and orders and advices transmitted in return. In the main, however, the Colonies remained independent, each with its annually elected Governor, and the Confederacy with its annually elected Board of Commissioners besides; and, while professing high admiration of Cromwell and approval generally of his rule, they were not troubled with questions of rule seriously affecting their own interests. The war with the Dutch did for some time involve them in inconveniences with their Dutch neighbours; but their dissensions were chiefly with each other, or domestically within each colony. The harsh proceedings in Massachusetts and elsewhere against Baptists and other Sectaries gave some colour to Roger Williams's assertion that, in the matter of religious toleration, New England was becoming old while Old England was becoming new; and, as soon as Quakerism had broken out in New England and Quakers had appeared there (1656), it became evident that there would be even less mercy for that sect in New England than on the other side of the Atlantic. Nevertheless, with their zealous Puritanism, their energy and industry, and the abilities of their Bradfords, Bradstreets, Winslows, Winthrops, Standishes, Endicotts, Hayneses, Hopkinses, Newmans, Williamses, and other prominent governors or assistant-governors, the Confederacy and the Plantations went on prosperously towards their ultimate, though yet unforeseen, destiny in the formation of the United States. Cromwell, indeed, had a scheme which would have stopped that issue. He had a scheme for fetching all the Puritans of New England back and planting them splendidly in Ireland. Communications on the subject had passed as early as 1651, when Ireland had been just reconquered; but naturally without effect. The New Englanders were not then too numerous perhaps to have been transported to Ireland bodily; but, as one of their historians says, "they had taken root." Their increase, however, for more than a century thenceforward was to be mainly within themselves, for new arrivals from England had become scarce.[1] II. OTHER COLONIES AND SETTLEMENTS IN NORTH AMERICA. These too went on very much at their own will, though not quite unnoticed. _Virginia_, dating from 1608, and _Maryland_, dating from 1634, continued to be the favourite colonies for Royalist settlers, Anglican or Roman Catholic; but there had been recent additions of English Puritans, and of transported Scottish prisoners of war, to the population of Virginia, and the connexions with the mother-country had remained unbroken. There were commercial regulations about both Colonies by the English Council, and grants of passes to them. Canada and the other regions about the St. Lawrence, the possession of which had been contested by the English and the French in the reign of Charles I, had lapsed long ago into the hands of the French; but Major Sedgwick had wrested back for Cromwell, in 1654, the peninsula then called _Acadie_, but now _Nova Scotia_, being part of the territory that had been granted under that name by Charles to his Scottish Secretary, the Earl of Stirling, and had been colonised by Scots, to some extent, from 1625 onwards. Off the mainland, Newfoundland, which had contained an English fishing population for at least twenty years, was not neglected; and, beyond the bounds of any of the North-American Colonies or Plantations that were definitely named and recognised, there may have been stragglers knowing themselves to be subjects of the Protectorate.[2] III. THE WEST INDIES. The _Bermudas_ or _Summer Islands_ had been English since 1612, and had now a considerable population of opulent settlers, attracted by their beauty and the salubrity of the climate; _Barbadoes_, English since 1605, and with a population of more than 50,000, had been a refuge of Royalists, but had been taken for the Commonwealth in 1652, and had been much used of late for the reception of banished prisoners; such other Islands of the Lesser Antilles as _Antigua_, _Nevis_, _Montserrat_, and the _Virgin Islands_, together with _The Bahamas_, to the north of Cuba, had been colonised in the late reign; and _Jamaica_ had been Cromwell's own conquest from the Spaniards, by Penn's blunder, in 1655. The war with Spain had given new importance to those West India possessions of the Protectorate. They had become war-stations for ships, with considerable armed forces on some of them; and some of Cromwell's best officers had been sent out, or were to be sent out, to command in them. Of them all Jamaica was Cromwell's pet island. He had resolved to keep it and do his best with it. The charge of it had been given to a commission consisting of Admiral Goodson, Major-General Fortescue, Major-General Sedgwick (the recaptor of Nova Scotia from the French), and Daniel Serle, Governor of Barbadoes; and Fortescue and Sedgwick, and others in succession, were to die at their posts there. To have the rich island colonised at once with the right material was the Protector's great anxiety; and his first thoughts on that subject, as soon as he had learnt that the Island was his, had issued in a most serious modification of his former offer to the New Englanders. As they had refused to come back and colonise Ireland, would they not accept Jamaica? "He did apprehend the people of New England had as clear a call to transport themselves thence to Jamaica as they had had from England to New England, in order to the bettering of their outward condition;" besides which, their removal thither would have a "tendency to the overthrow of the Man of Sin." They should be transported free of cost; they should have lands rent-free for seven years, and after that at a penny an acre; they should be free from customs, excise, or any tax for four years; they should have the most liberal constitution that could be framed: only his Highness would keep the right of appointing the successive Governors and their Assistants. The answer of the Massachusetts people, when it did arrive, was evasive. They spoke of the reported unhealthiness of Jamaica, and they assured Ms Highness of their admiration, their gratitude, and their prayers. The answer had not been received at the date we have reached (Sept. 1656), and the Protector still cherished his idea. As it proved, the New Englanders were to remain New Englanders, and Jamaica was to be colonised slowly and with less select material.[3] [Footnote 1: Palfrey's Hist. of New England, II. 304-415, and especially 388-390.] [Footnote 2: Various minutes in Council Order Books from 1649 onwards; Carlyle, III, Appendix, 442-443.] [Footnote 3: Mills's _Colonial Constitutions_ (1856), 124-133, Introd. XXXIV. et seq.; Carlyle, III. 124-133; Palfrey's _New England_, II. 390-393.] SECTION III. OLIVER AND THE FIRST SESSION OP HIS SECOND PARLIAMENT: SEPT. 17, 1656-JUNE 26, 1657. SECOND PARLIAMENT OF THE PROTECTORATE CALLED: VANE'S _HEALING QUESTION_ AND ANOTHER ANTI-OLIVERIAN PAMPHLET: PRECAUTIONS AND ARRESTS: MEETING OF THE PARLIAMENT: ITS COMPOSITION: SUMMARY OF CROMWELL'S OPENING SPEECH: EXCLUSION OF NINETY-THREE ANTI-OLIVERIAN MEMBERS: DECIDEDLY OLIVERIAN TEMPER OF THE REST: QUESTION OF THE EXCLUDED MEMBERS: THEIR PROTEST: SUMMARY OF THE PROCEEDINGS OF THE PARLIAMENT FOR FIVE MONTHS (SEPT. 1656-FEB. 1656-7): ADMINISTRATION OF CROMWELL AND HIS COUNCIL DURING THOSE MONTHS: APPROACHES TO DISAGREEMENT BETWEEN CROMWELL AND THE PARLIAMENT IN THE CASE OF JAMES NAYLER AND ON THE QUESTION OF CONTINUATION OF THE MILITIA BY MAJOR-GENERALS: NO RUPTURE.--THE SEXBY-SINDERCOMBE PLOT.--SIR CHRISTOPHER PACK'S MOTION FOR A NEW CONSTITUTION (FEB. 23, 1656-7): ITS ISSUE IN THE _PETITION AND ADVICE_ AND OFFER OF THE CROWN TO CROMWELL: DIVISION OF PUBLIC OPINION ON THE KINGSHIP QUESTION: OPPOSITION AMONG THE ARMY OFFICERS: CROMWELL'S NEUTRAL ATTITUDE: HIS RECEPTION OF THE OFFER: HIS LONG HESITATIONS AND SEVERAL SPEECHES OVER THE AFFAIR: HIS FINAL REFUSAL (MAY 8, 1657): LUDLOW'S STORY OF THE CAUSE.--HARRISON AND THE FIFTH-MONARCHY MEN: VENNER'S OUTBREAK AT MILE-END-GREEN.--PROPOSED NEW CONSTITUTION OF THE _PETITION AND ADVICE_ RETAINED IN THE FORM OF A CONTINUED PROTECTORATE: SUPPLEMENTS TO THE _PETITION AND ADVICE_: BILLS ASSENTED TO BY THE PROTECTOR, JUNE 9: VOTES FOR THE SPANISH WAR,--TREATY OFFENSIVE AND DEFENSIVE WITH FRANCE AGAINST SPAIN: DISPATCH OF ENGLISH AUXILIARY ARMY, UNDER REYNOLDS, FOR SERVICE IN FLANDERS: BLAKE'S ACTION IN SANTA CRUZ BAY.--_"KILLING--NO MURDER"_: ADDITIONAL AND EXPLANATORY PETITION AND ADVICE: ABSTRACT OF THE ARTICLES OP THE NEW CONSTITUTION AS ARRANGED BY THE TWO DOCUMENTS: CROMWELL'S COMPLETED ASSENT TO THE NEW CONSTITUTION, AND HIS ASSENT TO OTHER BILLS, JUNE 26, 1657: INAUGURATION OF THE SECOND PROTECTORATE THAT DAY: CLOSE OF THE FIRST SESSION OF THE SECOND PARLIAMENT. Willing to relieve his government, if possible, from the character of "arbitrariness" it had so long borne, Cromwell had at last resolved on calling another Parliament. The matter had been secretly deliberated in Council in May and June 1656, and the writs were out on July 10. There had ensued, throughout England, Scotland, and Ireland, a great bustle of elections, the Major-Generals in England and the Councils in Scotland and Ireland exerting themselves to secure the return of Oliverians, and the Protector and his Council by no means easy as to the result. Two recent Republican pamphlets had caused agitation. One, which had been called forth by a Proclamation of a General East a month or two before, was by Sir Henry Vane, and was entitled _A Healing Question Propounded and Resolved._ It was temperate enough, approving of the government in some respects, and even suggesting the continuance of some kind of sovereignty in a single person, but containing censures of the "great interruption" of popular liberties, and appeals to the people to do their part. The other and later pamphlet (Aug. 1), directly intended to bear on the Elections, was called _England's Remembrancer,_ and was virtually a call on all to use their votes so as to return a Parliament that should unseat Oliver. The author of this second pamphlet evaded detection; but Vane was brought to task for his. He was summoned to London from his seat of Belleau in Lincolnshire, July 29; by an order of Aug. 21 he was required to give security in £5000 that he would do nothing "to prejudice the present government"; and, on his refusal, there issued a warrant, signed by Henry Lawrence, as President of the Council, for his committal to King Charles's old prison, Carisbrooke Castle in the Isle of Wight. About the same time, precautions were taken with Bradshaw, Harrison, Ludlow, Lawson, Rich, Okey, Alured, and others. Bradshaw was suspended for a week or two from his Chief-Justiceship of Chester; Harrison was sent to Pendennis Castle in Cornwall; Rich to Windsor; security in £5000 was exacted from Ludlow, or rather arranged for him by Cromwell; and the others were variously under guard. Nor did leading royalists escape. Just before the meeting of the Parliament, a dozen of them, including Lord Willoughly of Parham and Sir John Ashburnham, were sent to the Tower. The Republican Overton was still there. All this new "arbitrariness" for the moment was for the purpose of sufficiently tuning the Parliament.[1] [Footnote 1: Council Order Books through July, Aug. and Sept. 1656; Godwin, IV. 261-277; Ludlow, 568-573; Catalogue of Thomason Pamphlets.] It met on Wednesday, Sept. 17, when the first business was attendance, with the Protector, in the Abbey Church, to hear a sermon from Dr. Owen. Among the 400 members returned from England and Wales were the Protector's eldest son, Richard Cromwell (for Cambridge University), Lord President Lawrence and at least twelve other members of the Council (Fleetwood, Lambert, Desborough, Skippon, Jones, Montague, Sydenham, Pickering, Wolseley, Rous, Strickland, and Nathaniel Fiennes), with Mr. Secretary Thurloe, Admiral Blake, and most of the Major-Generals not of the Council (Howard, Berry, Whalley, Haynes, Butler, Barkstead, Goffe, Kelsey, and Lilburne). Other members, of miscellaneous note and various antecedents, were Whitlocke, Ingoldsby, Scott, Dennis Bond, Maynard, Prideaux, Glynne, Sir Harbottle Grimston, the Earl of Salisbury, Sir Arthur Hasilrig, Sir Anthony Irby, Alderman Sir Christopher Pack, Lord Claypole, Sir Thomas Widdrington, Ex-Speaker Lenthall, Richard Norton, Pride (now Sir Thomas), and Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper,--this last long an absentee from the Council, Of the thirty members returned from the shires, burghs, or groups of such, in Scotland; about half were Englishmen: e.g. President Lord Broghill for Edinburgh, Samuel Desborough for Midlothian, Judge Smith for Dumfriesshire, the physician Dr. Thomas Clarges (Monk's brother-in-law) for Ross, Sutherland, and Cromarty, Colonel Nathaniel Whetham for St. Andrews, &c.; while among the native Scots returned were Ambassador Lockhart, Swinton, the Earl of Tweeddale, and Colonel David Barclay. Ireland had returned, among _her_ thirty (who were nearly all Englishmen), Sir Hardress Waller, Major-General Jephson, Sir Charles Coote, and several Colonels.[1]--Not a few of the chief members had been returned by more than one constituency: e.g. Lord Broghill, for Cork as well as for Edinburgh. Several of those returned cannot have been expected to give attendance, at least at first. Thus, Admirals Blake and Montague were away with their fleets, off Spain and Portugal. But Broghill did come up from Scotland to attend, and Swinton and most of the other members of the Scottish Council with him, leaving Monk once more in his familiar charge. Ambassador Lockhart also had come over, or was coming. [Footnote 1: List of the members returned for the Second Parliament of the Protectorate in _Part. Hist._ III. 1479-1484.] There were two rather important interventions between Dr. Owen's opening sermon to the Parliament and their settling down to business. One was the Lord Protector's opening speech in the Painted Chamber, now numbered as Speech V, of the Cromwell series. It was very long, of extremely gnarled structure, but full of matter. The pervading topic was the war with Spain. This was justified, with approving references to the published Latin Declaration of Oct. 1655 on the subject, entitled _Scriptum Domini Protectoris, &c._ (Milton's?), and with vehement expressions of his Highness's personal abhorrence of Spain and her policy. He represented her and her allies and dependents as the anti-English and anti-Christian Hydra of the world, while France, though Roman Catholic too, stood apart from all the other Catholic powers in not being under the Pope's lash and so able to be fair and reasonable. He urged the most energetic prosecution of the war that had been begun. But with the Spanish war he connected the dangers to England from the Royalist risings and conspiracies of the last two years, announcing moreover that he had now full intelligence of a compact between Spain and Charles II., a force of 7000 or 8000 Spaniards ready at Bruges in consequence, and other forces promised by Popish princes, clients of Spain. There were English agents of the alliance at work, he said, and one miscreant in particular who had been an Anabaptist Colonel; and, necessarily, all schemes and conspiracies against the present government would drift into the Hispano-Stuartist interest. He acquitted some of the opponents of his government, calling themselves "Commonwealth's men" and "Fifth Monarchy men," from any intention of that conjunction; but so it would happen. His arrests of some such had been necessary for the public safety. He knew his system of Major-Generalships was much criticised, and thought arbitrary; but that had been necessary too, and a most useful invention. He had called this Parliament with a hope of united constitutional action with them for the future, and would recommend, in the domestic programme, under the general head of "Reformation," certain great matters to their care. There was the Sustentation of the Church and the Universities; there was Reformation of Manners; and there was the still needed Reformation of the Laws. On the Church-question he avowed, more strongly than ever before, his desire to uphold and perpetuate an Established Church. "For my part," he said, "I should think I were very treacherous if I took away Tithes, till I see the Legislative Power settle maintenance to Ministers another way." He knew that some of the ministers themselves would prefer some other form of State-provision; but, on the whole, believing that some distinct State-maintenance of the Clergy, whether by tithes or otherwise, was "the root of visible profession." he adjured the Parliament not to swerve from that. He expounded also his principle of comprehending Presbyterians, Independents, Baptists, and all earnest Evangelical men amicably in the Established Church, with small concern about their differences from each, other, and expressed his especial satisfaction that the Presbyterians had at length come round to this view, and given up much of their old Anti-Toleration tenet. "I confess I look at that as the blessedest thing which hath been since the adventuring upon this government." Towards the end of the speech there was just a hint that he stood on his Protectorship for life, and regarded that as a fundamental, not to be called in question. "I say, Look up to God: have peace among yourselves. Know assuredly that, if I have an interest, I am by the voice of the People the Supreme Magistrate, and, it may be, do know somewhat that might satisfy my conscience, if I stood in doubt. But it is a union, really it is a union, between you and me; and, both of us united in faith and love to Jesus Christ, and to His peculiar Interest in the world,-_that_ must ground this work. And in that, if I have any peculiar interest which is personal to myself, which is not subservient to the public end, it were not an extravagant thing for me to curse myself, because I know God will curse me if I have." After quoting the 85th Psalm, he dismissed them to choose their Speaker.[1] [Footnote 1: Speech V.; Carlyle, III. 159-196.] Then, however, there was the second intervention. It was in the lobby of the House. Some persons, acting for the Clerk of the Commonwealth in Chancery, stood there, with tickets certifying that such and such members had been duly returned and also "_approved by his Highness's Council";_ the doors of the House were guarded by soldiers; and none but those for whom the tickets had been made out were allowed to enter. About ninety-three found themselves thus excluded; among whom, were Hasilrig, Scott, Irby, Sir Harbottle Grimston, the Earl of Salisbury, Maynard, four of the six members for the city of London, and Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper. The residue, who had received tickets, proceeded to constitute the House, and unanimously elected Sir Thomas Widdrington, Sergeant at Law and one of the Commissioners of the Treasury, for their Speaker. Almost the only other business that day was to thank Dr. Owen for his sermon, and order it to be printed.[1] [Footnote 1: Commons Journals, Sept. 17, 1656; and Parl. Hist. III. 1484-1487.] The next day there was read in the House a letter to the Speaker, signed by a number of the excluded, informing him of the fact and desiring to be admitted. Through that and the two following sittings, an inquiry into the circumstances of the exclusion formed part of the proceedings. The Clerk of the Commonwealth in Chancery, being required to attend, did at last present himself, and explained that he had but obeyed orders. He had received a letter from Mr. Jessop, the Clerk of the Council, ordering him to deliver tickets only to such of the persons elected as should be certified to him as approved by the Council; and he had acted accordingly. With some reluctance, he produced the letter; and the House then resolved to ask the Council for their reasons for excluding so many members. These were given, on the 20th, by Fiennes for the Council. They were to the effect that Article XXI. of the constituting Instrument of the Protectorate, called _The Government of the Commonwealth_ (Vol. IV. pp. 542-544), required the Clerk of the Commonwealth in Chancery, for the first three Parliaments of the Protectorate, to report to the Council what persons had been returned, and empowered the Council to admit those duly qualified and to exclude others, and also that, by another clause in the same Instrument (Art. XVII.), it was required that the persons elected should be "of known integrity, fearing God, and of good conversation." All which being undeniable, it was resolved by the House, after debate, Sept. 22, by a majority of 125 to twenty-nine, to refer the excluded to the Council itself for any farther satisfaction they wanted, and meanwhile "to proceed with the great affairs of the nation." The House, _without_ the excluded, it will be seen, was decidedly Oliverian in the main. The excluded, or some of them, took their revenge by printing and distributing a Protest or Remonstrance addressed to the Nation, with the names of all the ninety-three attached, those of Hasilrig and Scott first. It was a document of extreme vehemence, denouncing the Protector as an armed tyrant and all who had abetted him in his last act as capital enemies to the Commonwealth, and disowning beforehand, as null and void, all that the truncated Parliament might do. Cromwell took no notice whatever of this Remonstrance. By one more stroke of "arbitrariness," bolder than any before, but allowed, he might plead, by the Instrument of his Protectorate, he had fashioned for himself a Second Parliament, likely to be more to his mind than his First.[1] [Footnote 1: Commons Journals, Sept, 18-22, 1656; Whitlocke, IV. 274-280 (where the Remonstrance of the Excluded is given in full); Ludlow, 579-580.] So it proved. Some of the excluded having been admitted after all, and new elections having been made in cases where members had been returned by two or more constituencies, the House went on for the first five months (Sept. 1656-Feb. 1656-7) with a pretty steady working attendance of about 220 at the maximum--which implies that, besides the excluded, there must have been a large number of absentees or very lax attenders. During these five months a large amount of miscellaneous business was done, with occasional divisions, but no vital disagreement within the House, or between it and the Protector. There was an Act for renouncing and disavowing Charles II, over again, and an Act for the safety of the Lord Protector's person and government, both made law, by Cromwell's assent, Oct. 27. There was a vote of approbation of the war with Spain, with votes of means for carrying it on. There were Bills, more formal than before, for adjusting and completing the incorporation of Scotland and Ireland with the Commonwealth. There were Committees of all sorts for maturing these and other Bills. Among the grand Committees was one for Religion. There were votes of reward to various persons for past services. The better observance of the Lord's Day was one of the subjects of discussion. Amid the minor or more private business one notes a great many _naturalizings_ of foreigners resident in England, or of persons of English descent born abroad or otherwise requiring to be naturalized. Theodore Haak and his family, Dr. Lewis Du Moulin, a number of Lawrences and Carews, and a daughter of the poet Waller, are among the scores included in such Naturalization Bills. Through all this, hardly a week, of course, without an order to Dr. Owen, Dr. Thomas Goodwin, Caryl, Nye, Sterry, Manton, or some other leading divine, to preach a special sermon, with thanks after for his "great pains," and generally a request that the sermon should be printed. On the whole, Speaker Widdrington had no light post. Indeed, in January 1656-7, the House, perceiving him to be very ill and weak, insisted on his taking leave of absence, and appointed Whitlocke as his substitute. Whitlocke acted as pro-Speaker, he tells us, from January 27 to Feb. 18, with great acceptance and rapid despatch of business. On the last of these days, however, Widdrington, though at the risk of his life, reappeared and resumed duty. A fee of £5, it seems, was due to the Speaker from every person naturalized by bill, and all such fees would have gone to Whitlocke had Widdrington remained absent. The loss to Whitlocke was made up handsomely by the House in a vote of £2000, besides repayment of £500 he had expended over his allowance in his Swedish embassy, and thanks for his many eminent services.[1] [Footnote 1: Commons Journals over period and for dates named; Whitlocke, IV. 280-286.] About a fortnight after the Parliament had met (Oct. 2), there had come splendid news from Blake and Montague. A Spanish fleet from the West Indies, with the ex-Viceroy of Peru and his family on board, and a vast treasure of silver, had been attacked in Cadiz bay by six English frigates under the command of Captain Stayner. Two of the ships had been taken, two burnt and sunk (the ex-Viceroy, his wife, and eldest daughter, perishing most tragically in the flames), and there had been a great capture of silver. The rejoicing in London was great, and it was renewed a month afterwards by the actual arrival of the silver from Portsmouth, a long train of waggon-loads through the open streets, on its way to the Mint, Admiral Montague himself had come with it. He was in the House Nov. 4, welcomed with thanks and applauses to his place for a while among the legislators.[1] [Footnote 1: Commons Journals of dates given, and Godwin, IV, 300-303.] Legislative work being back in the hands of a Parliament, the Protector and his Council had confined themselves meanwhile to matters of administration, war, and diplomacy. Vane had been released from his imprisonment in the Isle of Wight by order of Council, Dec. 11, and permitted to return to Lincolnshire; and there had been other relaxations of the severities attending the opening of the Parliament. There had been an order of Council (Oct. 2) for the release of imprisoned Quakers at Exeter, Dorchester, Colchester, and other places, with instructions to the Major-Generals in the respective districts to see the order carried out and the fines of the poor people discharged. The business of the Piedmontese Protestants still occupied the Council, and there were letters to various foreign powers. Of new diplomatic arrangements of the Protector about this time, and through the whole session of the Parliament, account will be more conveniently taken hereafter; but Ambassador Lockhart's temporary presence in London, and his frequent colloquies with the Protector over French affairs, Spanish affairs, the movements of Charles II abroad, a rumoured dissension between Charles II. and his brother the Duke of York, and Mazarin's astute intimacy with all, are worthy of remark even now. It was on Dec. 10, 1656, that Lockhart received from his Highness the honour of knighthood at Whitehall; and on Feb. 3, 1656-7, it was settled by his Highness and the Council that Lockhart's allowance thenceforward in his Embassy should be £100 a week, i.e, about £18,000 a year in present value. Lockhart's real post being in Paris, his attendance in Parliament can have been but brief. His fellow-Scotsman, Swinton of Swinton, also gave but brief attendance. The Protector had taken the opportunity of Swinton's visit to London to show him special attention, and to promote in the Council certain very substantial recognitions of his adhesion to the Commonwealth when other Scots abhorred it, and of his good services in Scotland to it and the Protectorate since. But, as his proper place was in Edinburgh, it was ordered, Dec. 25, 1656, that he, and his fellow-members of the Scottish Council, Major-General Charles Howard and Colonel Adrian Scroope, should return thither. This was the more necessary because Lord Broghill did not mean to return to Scotland, the air of which did not suit him, but preferred employment for the future either in England or in his native Ireland. Broghill's Presidency in Scotland had now, indeed, virtually ceased, and the administration there, with the difficult steering between the Resolutioners and the Protesters of the Kirk, had been left to Monk and the rest. Nay, as we know, the hearing of that vital Scottish question had been transferred to London. Sharp, who had come to London in Broghill's train as agent for the Resolutioners, "presently got access to the Protector" and "was well liked of and accepted." But the Marquis of Argyle had weight enough yet to stop any concession to him till the other party had been heard. Accordingly, in October, 1656, a Mr. James Simson, minister of Airth, had been sent up by the Protesters, to be followed, more effectively, in January, by Mr. James Guthrie himself, Principal Gillespie of Glasgow, and three elders, of whom one was Warriston. There had been a conference and debate between Sharp and these Protesters before Cromwell, three of his Council being present, and Owen, Lockyer, Manton, and Ashe attending as representative English divines; but his Highness had not yet made up his mind. The rumour in Scotland was that Sharp was likely to succeed, and that he had driven Warriston and Gillespie very hard in the Conference, and contrived, in particular, to make Warriston, in self-defence, betray some awkward secrets. One finds, however, that Principal Gillespie was invited to preach twice before the Parliament, and thanked for his sermons, and that he had influence enough to move in the Council a suit in the interests of the University of Glasgow. Though Sharp, as Baillie advised him, was "supping with a long spoon," Cromwell had probably taken estimate of him.[1] [Footnote 1: Council Order Books of dates given, and of others (e.g. Nov. 4 and Dec. 2, 1656, and Jan. 12 and Feb. 12, 1656-7); _Merc. Pol._ No. 340 (Dec. 11-18, 1656); Life of Robert Blair, 329-331; Baillie, III. 328-341.] One matter In which there had been an approach to disagreement between the Parliament and the Protector was the famous _Case of James Nayler;_--Quakerism and its extravagancies were irritating the sober part of the nation unspeakably, and this maddest of all the Quakers, on account of the outrageous "blasphemies" of his recent Song-of-Simon procession through the west of England--repeated at Bristol after his release from Exeter jail--had been selected by Parliament for an example. On the 31st of October, 1856, a large committee was appointed on his case; and on the 5th of December, Nayler and others having been brought prisoners to London meanwhile, the report of the Committee was made, and there began a debate on the case, which was protracted through ten sittings, Nayler himself brought once or twice to the bar. It was easily resolved that he had been "guilty of horrid blasphemy" and was a "grand impostor and great seducer of the people": the difficult question was as to his punishment. On the 16th of December it was carried but by ninety-six votes to eighty-two that it should _not_ be death, and, after some faint farther argument on the side of mercy, this was the sentence: "That James Nayler be set on the pillory, with his head in the pillory, in the New Palace, Westminster, during the space of two hours, on Thursday next, and shall be whipped by the hangman through the streets from Westminster to the Old Exchange, London, there likewise to be set on the pillory, with his head in the pillory, for the space of two hours, between the hours of eleven and one on Saturday next--in each of the said places wearing a paper containing an inscription of his crimes: and that at the Old Exchange his tongue shall be bored through with a hot iron; and that he be there also stigmatized in the forehead with the letter B: And that he be afterwards sent to Bristol, and conveyed into and through the said city on a horse bare-ridged, with his face backwards, and there also publicly whipped the next market-day after he comes thither: And that from thence he be committed to prison in Bridewell, London, and there restrained from the society of all people, and kept to hard labour, till he be released by Parliament, and during that time be debarred from the use of pen, ink, and paper, and have no relief but what he earns by his daily labour." Though petitions for clemency had already been presented to Parliament by some very orthodox people, the first part of this atrocious sentence was duly executed Dec. 18. Then came more earnest petitions both to Parliament and the Protector, with the effect of a respite of the next part from the 20th to the 27th; between which dates this letter from the Protector was read in the House: "O.P. Right Trusty and Well-beloved, We greet you well. Having taken notice of a judgment lately given by yourselves against one James Nayler, Although we detest and abhor the giving or occasioning the least countenance to persons of such opinions and practices, or who are guilty of the crimes commonly imputed to the said person: Yet, We, being intrusted in the present Government on behalf of the People of these Nations, and _not knowing how far such Proceeding, entered into wholly without Us, may extend in the consequence of it_, Do desire that the House will let Us know the grounds and reasons whereupon they have proceeded." Two things are here to be perceived. One is that Cromwell did not approve of the course taken with Nayler. The other, and more important, is that he regarded this action of the House, without his consent, as an intrenchment on that part of his prerogative which concerned Toleration. He thought himself, by the constitution of his Protectorate, entrusted with a certain guardianship of this principle, even against Parliament; and he did not know how far Nayler's case might be made a precedent for religious persecutions. What may have been the exact reply to Cromwell from the House we do not know; but the House was not in a mood to spare Nayler. He had not satisfied the clergymen sent to confer with him. Accordingly, on the 27th, a motion to respite him for another week having been lost by 113 to 59, the second part of his punishment was inflicted to the letter; after which he was removed to Bristol to receive the rest. All that one can say is that, though Cromwell was far from pleased with the business, and even thought it a horrible one, he did not feel that he could at that time make it the occasion of an actual quarrel with the Parliament.[1] [Footnote 1: Commons Journals of dates; Carlyle III, 213-215; Sewel's _History of the People called Quakers_ (ed. 1834) I. 179-207.] Another matter in which a disagreement might have been feared between Cromwell and his Parliament was that of _The Major-Generalships._ This "invention" of Cromwell's for the police of England and Wales generally, and specially for the collection of the Decimation or Militia Tax from the Royalists, had been so successful that he had congratulated himself on It in his opening speech to the Parliament. He, doubtless, desired that Parliament should adopt and continue it. On the 7th of January, 1656-7, accordingly, there was read for the first time "a Bill for the continuing and assessing of a Tax for the paying and maintaining of the Militia forces in England and Wales," i.e. for prolonging Cromwell's Decimation Tax of 1655, and virtually the whole machinery of the Major-Generalships. That there would be serious opposition in the House had been foreseen since Dec. 25, when there had been two divisions on the question of leave to bring in the Bill, and leave had been obtained only by eighty-eight votes to sixty-three. Among the opponents were Whitlocke and the other lawyers, all those indeed who wanted to terminate the time of "arbitrariness," and objected to a tax now on old political delinquents as contrary to the Parliamentary Act of Oblivion of Feb. 1651-2. On the other hand, the Bill was strongly supported by Lambert. Fiennes, Lisle, Pickering, Sydenham, other members of Council, and the Major-Generals themselves. It was, in fact, a Government Bill, Nevertheless, after a protracted debate of six days, the second reading of the Bill was negatived Jan. 29 by 121 to 78, and the Bill absolutely rejected by 124 to 88. Cromwell himself had helped to bring about this result. Much as he liked his "invention," he had perceived, in the course of the debate, that it must be given up; and he had given hints to that effect. The House, in short, had understood that they were left to their own free will. And so the Major-Generalships disappeared, the police of the country reverted to the ordinary magistracy, and Cromwell was to trust to Parliament for necessary supplies in more regular ways.[1] [Footnote 1: Commons Journals of dates; Godwin, IV. 327-331.] What drew the Parliament and the Protector more closely together about this time was the explosion of a new plot against the Protector's life. At the centre of the plot was that "wretched creature, an apostate from religion and all honesty," of whom Cromwell had spoken in his opening speech as going between Charles II. and the King of Spain, and negotiating for a Spanish invasion of England. In other words, he was Edward Sexby, once a stout trooper and agitator in the Parliamentarian army (Vol. III. p. 534), afterwards Captain and even Colonel in the same, but since then one of the fiercest Anabaptist malcontents. He had been in the Wildman plot of Feb. 1654-5, but had then escaped abroad; and since then his occupation had been as described by Cromwell,--now in Flanders, now in Madrid, shuttling alliance between Spain and the Stuarts. But, though a Spanish invasion of England to restore the Stuarts was his great game, an assassination of Cromwell anyhow, whether without a Spanish invasion or in anticipation of it, was nearest to his heart. Actually he had been in London just before the meeting of the Parliament, trying to arrange for such "fiddling things"--so Cromwell had called them--as shooting him in the Park or blowing him up in his chamber at Whitehall. Before Thurloe had traces of him, he had again decamped to Flanders; but he had left a substitute in Miles Sindercombe, an old leveller and mutineer of 1647, but since then a quarter-master in Monk's Army in Scotland, and dismissed for his complicity in the Overton project. Sexby had left Sindercombe £1600; and with this money Sindercombe had been again tampering with Cromwell's guard, taking a house at Hammersmith convenient for shots at Cromwell's coach when he drove to Hampton Court, and buying gunpowder and combustibles for a nearer attempt in Whitehall. He had been, seen in the Chapel at Whitehall on the evening of January 8, and that night the sentinel on duty smelt fire just in time to extinguish a slow-match that was to explode a mass of blazing chemicals at midnight. All Whitehall having been roused, the Protector with the rest, information led at once to Sindercombe. He was arrested in his lodging, and sent to the Tower; and, his trial having followed, Feb. 9, he was convicted on evidence given by accomplices, and doomed to execution on the 14th. In the night preceding he was found dead in his bed, having poisoned himself. He had left intimation that he was under no concern about his immortal soul, having passed out of any form of religion recognising such an entity, and become a Materialist or Soul-sleeper. Meanwhile his plot had raised a ferment of new loyalty round the Protector. On the 19th of January, when Thurloe made a formal disclosure to the House of all the particulars of the plot, a general thanksgiving throughout England, Scotland, and Ireland, was ordered, and it was resolved that the whole House should wait upon his Highness "to congratulate with his Highness on this great mercy and deliverance." The interview was on January the 23rd, in the Banqueting House in Whitehall, when Speaker Widdrington made the address for the House, and Cromwell replied in a most affectionate speech (_Speech_ VI.). The thanksgiving was on Feb. 20; on which day Principal Gillespie of Glasgow and Mr. Warren had the honour of preaching the special sermons before the House in St. Margaret's, Westminster. The day was wound up by a noble dinner in Whitehall, to which the whole House had been invited by the Protector, followed by a concert, vocal and instrumental, in the part of the Palace called the Cockpit.[1] [Footnote 1: Commons Journals of dates given, and of Feb. 18; Carlyle, III. 204-211; Godwin, IV. 331-333; _Merc. Pol._ No. 349 (Feb. 12-19, 1656-7); Whitlocke, IV. 286; Parl. Hist. III. 1490.] Three days after the great dinner in Whitehall, i.e. on Monday, Feb. 23, 1656-7, there was an incident in the House which turned all the future proceedings of this Second Parliament of the Protectorate into a new channel. It is thus entered in the Journals:-- " ... Sir Christopher Pack [Ex-Mayor of London, knighted by Cromwell, Sept. 25, 1655, and now one of the members for the City] presented a Paper to the House, declaring it was somewhat come to his hand tending to the Settlement of the Nation and of Liberty and Property, and prayed it might be received and read; and, it being much controverted whether the same should be read without farther opening [preliminary explanation] thereof, the Question being propounded _That this Paper, offered by Sir Christopher Pack, be further opened by him before it is read,_ and the Question being put _That this Question be now put,_ it passed in the Negative. The Question being propounded _That this Paper, offered by Sir Christopher Pack, be now read,_ and the Question being put _That that Question be now put,_ the House was divided. The Noes went forth:--Colonel Sydenham, Mr. Robinson, Tellers for the Noes--with the Noes 54; Sir Charles Wolseley, Colonel Fitzjames, Tellers for the Yeas--with the Yeas 144. So it passed in the Affirmative. And, the main Question being put, it was Resolved _That this Paper, offered by Sir Christopher Pack, be now read._ The said Paper was read accordingly, and was entitled 'The Humble Address and Remonstrance of the Knights, Citizens, and Burgesses, now assembled in the Parliament of this Commonwealth.'"[1] [Footnote 1: Commons Journals of date.] The debate on the Paper was protracted to the evening "a candle" having been ordered in for the purpose; and it was then adjourned to the next day. In fact, for the next four months, or through the whole remainder of the session, the House was to continue the debate, or questions arising out of it, and to do little else. For, on the 24th of February, it was resolved by a majority of 100 to 44 (Lambert and Strickland tellers for the _Minority_) that the paper should be taken up and discussed in its successive parts, "beginning at the first Article after the Preamble;" and, though an attempt was made next day to throw the subject into Grand Committee, that was defeated by 118 to 63. In evidence of the momentousness of the occasion, a whole Parliamentary day was set apart for "seeking the Lord" upon it, with prayers and sermons by Dr. Owen and others; and, when the House met again after that ceremonial (Feb. 28), it was resolved that no vote passed on any part of the Paper should be binding till all should be completed.[1] [Footnote 1: Commons Journals of dates.] Sir Christopher Pack's paper of Feb. 23, 1656-7, entitled _The Humble Address and Remonstrance, &c._, was nothing less than a proposed address by Parliament to the Protector, asking him to concur with the Parliament in a total recast of the existing Constitution. It had been privately considered and prepared by several persons, and Whitlocke had been requested to introduce it, "Not liking--several things in it," he had declined to do so; but, Sir Christopher having volunteered, Whitlocke, Broghill, Glynne and others, were to back him. Indeed, all the Oliverians were to back him. Or, rather, there was to grow out of the business, according as the Oliverians were more hearty or less hearty in their cooperation, a new distinction of that body into _Thorough Oliverians_ and _Distressed Oliverians_ or _Contrariants_. Why this should have been the case will appear if we quote the First Article of the proposed Address after the Preamble. It ran thus: "That your Highness will be pleased to assume the name, style, title, dignity, and office of KING of England, Scotland, and Ireland, and the respective Dominions and Territories thereunto belonging, and exercise thereof, to hold and enjoy the same, with the rights and privileges and prerogatives justly, legally, and rightfully, belonging thereunto: That your Highness will be pleased, during your life-time, to appoint and declare the person who shall, immediately after your death, succeed you in the Government of these Nations." The rest of the Address was to correspond. Thus Article II. proposed a return to the system of two Houses of Parliament, and generally the tenor was towards royal institutions. On the other hand, the regality proposed was to be strictly constitutional. There was to be an end to all arbitrary power. There were to be free and full Parliaments once in three years at farthest; there was to be no violent interference in future with the process of Parliament, no exclusion of any persons that had been duly returned by the constituencies; and his Highness and Council were not to make ordinances by their own authority, but all laws, and changes or abrogations of laws, were to be by Act of Parliament. Oliver was to be King, if he chose, and a King with very large powers; but he was to keep within Statute.[1] [Footnote 1: Whitlocke, IV. 286 and 289; Commons Journals of March 2, 3, and 24, 1656-7, and March 25, 1657 (whence I have recovered the original wording of Article I. of the Address).] On March 2 and 3 the First Article of the Address was debated, with the result that it was agreed to _postpone_ any vote on the first and most important part of the Article, offering Oliver the Kingship, but with the passing of the second part, offering him, whether it should be as King or not, the power of nominating his successor. A motion for postponing the vote on this part also was lost by 120 to 63. Then, on the 5th, Article II., proposing Parliaments of _two Houses_, was discussed, and adopted without a division; after which there were discussions and adoptions of the remaining proposals, day after day, with occasional divisions about the wording, till March 24. On that day, the House, their survey of the document being tolerably complete, went back on the _postponed_ clause of the First Article, involving the all-important question of the offer of the Kingship. Through two sittings that day, and again on March 25 (New Year's Day, 1657), there was a very anxious and earnest debate with closed doors, the opposition trying to stave off the final vote by two motions for adjournment. These having failed, the final vote was taken (March 25); when, by a majority of 123 to 62, the Kingship clause was carried in this amended form: "That your Highness will be pleased to assume the name, style, title, dignity, and office of King of England, Scotland, and Ireland, and the respective Dominions and Territories thereunto belonging, and to exercise the same according to the laws of these Nations." Then, it seemed, all was over, except verbal revision of the entire address. Next day (March 26) it was referred to a Committee, with Chief Justice Glynne for Chairman, to perform this--i.e. to "consider of the title, preamble, and conclusion, and read over the whole, and consider the coherence, and make it perfect." All which having been done that same day, and the House having given some last touches, the document was ready to be engrossed for presentation to Cromwell. By recommendation of the Committee, the title had been changed from _Address and Remonstrance_ into _Petition and Advice_.[1] [Footnote 1: Commons Journals of dates, and between March 5 and March 25.] Of course, the great proposal in Parliament had been rumoured through the land, notwithstanding the instructed reticence or mysterious vagueness of the London newspapers; and, in the interval between the introduction of Sir Christopher Pack's paper and the conversion of the same into the _Petition and Advice_, with the distinct offer of Kingship in its forefront, there had been wide discussion of the affair, with much division of opinion. Against the Kingship, even horrified by the proposal of it, were most of those Army-men who had hitherto been Oliverians, and had helped to found the Protectorate. Lambert, Fleetwood, and Desborough, were at the head of this military opposition, which included nearly all the other ex-Major-Generals, and the bulk of the Colonels and inferior officers. One of their motives was dread of the consequences to themselves from a subversion of the system under which they had been acting and a return to a Constitutional and Royal system in which Cromwell and they might have to part company. This, and a theoretical Republicanism still lingering in their minds, tended, in the present emergency, almost to a reunion between them and the old or Anti-Oliverian Republicans. It had been some of the Oliverian Army-men in Parliament, at all events, that had first resisted Pack's motion. Ludlow's story is that they very nearly laid violent hands on Pack when he produced his paper; and the divisions in the Commons Journals exhibit Lambert and various Colonels, with Strickland, as among the chief obstructors of the _Petition and Advice_ in its passage through the House. Strickland, it will be remembered, was an eminent member of the Protector's own Council; and, as far as one can gather, several others of that body, besides Lambert, Fleetwood, Desborough, and Strickland--perhaps half of the whole number of those now habitually attending the Council--were opposed to the Kingship. On the other hand, the more enthusiastic Oliverians of the Council, those most attached to Cromwell personally, e.g. Sir Charles Wolseley, appear to have been acquiescent, or even zealous for the Kingship; and there were at least some military Oliverians, out of the Council, of the same mind. In the final vote of March 25, carrying the offer of Kingship, the tellers for the majority were Sir John Reynolds (Tipperary and Waterford), and Major-General Charles Howard (Cumberland), while those for the minority were Major-General Butler (Northamptonshire), and Colonel Salmon (Dumfries Burghs). Undoubtedly, however, the chief managers of the _Petition and Advice_ in the House from the first had been Whitlocke, Glynne, and others of the lawyers, with Lord Broghill. The lawyers had been long anxious for a constitutional Kingship: nothing else, they thought, could restore the proper machinery of Law and State, and make things safe. Accordingly, out of doors, in the whole civilian class, and largely also among the more conservative citizens, the idea of Oliver's Kingship was far from unwelcome. The Presbyterians generally, it is believed, were very favourable to it, their dispositions towards Cromwell having changed greatly of late; nor of the old Presbyterian Royalists were all averse. There were Royalists now who were not Stuartists, who wanted a king on grounds of general principle and expediency, but were not resolute that he should be Charles II. only. The real combination of elements against Oliver's Kingship consisted, therefore, of the unyielding old Royalists of the Stuart adhesion, regarding the elevation of the usurping "brewer" to the throne as abomination upon abomination, the Army Oliverians or Lambert and Fleetwood men, interested in the preservation of the existing Protectorate, and the passionate Republicans and Levellers, who had not yet condoned even the Protectorate, and whom the prospect of King and House of Lords over again, with all their belongings, made positively frantic. How far Cromwell had been aware beforehand of such a project as that of Sir Christopher Pack's paper may be a question. That he had let it be known for some time that he was not disinclined to a revision and enlargement of the constitution of the original Protectorate may be fairly assumed; but that he had concocted Pack's project and arranged for bringing it on (which is Ludlow's representation, and, of course, that of all the Histories) is very unlikely. The project, as in Pack's paper, and as agreed upon by Whitlocke, Glynne, and other lawyers and Parliament men, was by no means, in all its parts, such a project as Cromwell himself would have originated. To the Kingship he may have had no objection, and we have his own word afterwards that he favoured the idea of a Second House of Parliament; but there were accompanying provisions not so satisfactory. What he had hitherto valued in his Protectorate was the place and scope given to his own supreme personality, his power to judge what was best and to carry it through as he could, unhampered by those popular suffrages and Parliamentary checks and privileges which he held to be mere euphemisms for ruin and mutual throat-cutting all through the British Islands in their then state of distraction; and it must therefore have been a serious consideration with him how far, in the public interests, or for his own comfort, he could put himself in new shackles for the mere name of King. What, for example, of the proposed restitution of the ninety-and-odd excluded members to the present Parliament? How could he get on after that? In short, there was so much in Pack's paper suggestive of new and difficult questions as to the futurity of Cromwell, his real influence in affairs, if he exchanged the Protectorship for Kingship, that the paper, or the exact project it embodied, cannot have been of Cromwell's devising. There are subsequent events in proof of the fact. On the 27th of February, the fourth day after the introduction of Pack's paper, and the very day of the Fast appointed by the House prior to consideration of it in detail, Cromwell had been waited on by a hundred officers, headed by the alarmed Major-Generals, imploring him not to allow the thing to go farther. His reply was that, though he then specifically heard of the whole project for the first time, he could by no means share their instantaneous alarm. Kingship was nothing in itself, at best "a mere feather in a man's hat"; but it need be no bugbear, and at least ought to be no new thing to _them_. Had they not offered it to him at the institution of the Protectorate, though the title of Protector had been then preferred? Under that title he had been often a mere drudge of the Army, constrained to things not to his own liking. For the rest, were there not reasons for amending, in other respects, the constitution of the Protectorate? Had it not broken down in several matters, and were there not deficiencies in it? If there had been a Second House of Parliament, for example, would there have been that indiscreet decision in the case of James Nayler, a decision that might extend farther than Nayler, and leave no man safe?--Thus, with the distinct information that Cromwell would not interfere with Pack's project in its course through the House, had the Officers been dismissed. It was probably in consequence of their remonstrance with Cromwell, however, that the vote on the Kingship clause of the First Article had been postponed from the 2nd of March to the 25th. The delay had been useful. Though Lambert, Fleetwood, Desborough, and the mass of the military men, still remained "contrariants," not a few of them had been shaken by Cromwell's arguments, or at least by his judgment. If _he_, whom it was their habit to trust, was prepared to take the Kingship, and saw reasons for it, why should they stand out? So, before the vote did come on, Major-Generals Berry, Goffe, and Whalley, with others, had ceased to oppose, and the Kingship clause, reserved to the last, as the keystone of the otherwise completed arch, had been carried, as we have seen, by two-thirds of the House.[1] [Footnote 1: Godwin, IV. 349-353; Carlyle, III. 217.] It was on Tuesday, March 31, in the Banqueting House in Whitehall, that Speaker Widdrington, attended by the whole House, and by all the high State-officers, formally presented to Cromwell, after a long speech, the _Petition and Advice_, engrossed on vellum. The understanding, by vote of the House, was that his Highness must accept the whole, and that otherwise no part would be binding. Cromwell's answer, in language very calm and somewhat sad (_Speech_ VII.), was one of thanks, with a request for time to consider. On the 3rd of April, a Committee of the House, appointed by his request, waited on him for farther answer. It was still one of thanks: e.g. "I should be very brutish did I not acknowledge the exceeding high honour and respect you have had for me in this Paper"; but it was in effect a refusal, on the ground that, being shut up to accept all or none, he could not see his way to accept (_Speech_ VIII.). Notwithstanding this answer, which could hardly be construed as final, the House next day resolved, after two divisions, to adhere to their _Petition and Advice_, and to make new application to the Protector. On the previous question the division was seventy-seven to sixty-five, Major-Generals Howard and Jephson telling for the majority, and Major-General Whalley and Colonel Talbot for the minority; on the main question there was a majority of seventy-eight, with Admiral Montague and Sir John Hobart for tellers, against sixty-five, told by General Desborough and Colonel Hewson. A Committee having then prepared a brief paper representing to his Highness the serious obligation he was under in such a matter, there was a second Conference of the whole House with his Highness (April 8). His reply to Widdrington then (_Speech_ IX.) did not withdraw his former refusal, but signified willingness to receive farther information and counsel. To give such information and counsel, and In fact to reason out the matter thoroughly with Cromwell, the House then appointed a large Committee of _ninety-nine_, composed in the main, one must fancy, of members who were now eager for the Kingship, or at least had ceased to object. Whitlocke, Broghill, Glynne, Fiennes, Lenthall, Lord Commissioner Lisle, Sir Charles Wolseley, and Thurloe, were to be the most active members of this Committee; but it included also Admiral Montague, Generals Howard, Jephson, Whalley, Pack, Goffe, and Berry, with Sydenham, Rous, the Scotch Earl of Tweeddale, the Lord Provost of Edinburgh, the poet Waller, and even Strickland. The Committee was appointed April 9, and the House was to await the issue.[1] [Footnote 1: Carlyle, III. 218-228 (with Cromwell's _Speeches_ VII., VIII., and IX.); Commons Journals of dates.] It seemed as if it would never be reached. The Conferences of the Committee with Cromwell between April 11 to May 8, their reasonings with him to induce him to accept the Kingship, his reasonings in reply in the four speeches now numbered X.-XIII. of the Cromwell series, his doubts, delays, avoidances of several meetings, and constant adjournments of his final answer, make a story of great interest in the study of Cromwell's character, not without remarkable flashes of light on past transactions, and on Cromwell's theory of his Protectorship and of Government in general. Speech XIII., in particular, which is by far the longest, and which was addressed to the Committee on April 21, is full of instruction. Having in his previous speeches dealt chiefly with the subject of the Kingship, and stated such various objections to the kingly title as the bad associations with it, the blasting as if for ever which it had received from God's Providence in England, and the antipathy to it of many good men, he here took up the rest of the _Petition and Advice_. Approving, on the whole, of the spirit and contents of the document, and especially of the apparent rejection in it of that notion of perpetually-sitting Single-House Parliaments which he considered the most fatal fallacy in politics, and persistence in which by the Rump had left him no option but to dissolve that body forcibly and assume the Dictatorship, he yet found serious defects in some of the Articles, and want of precision on this point and that. His criticisms of this kind were masterly examples of his breadth of thought, his foresight, and his practical sagacity, and made an immediate impression. For, at this stage of the proceedings, the belief being that he would ultimately accept the Kingship, the House, whose sittings had been little more than nominal during the great Whitehall Conferences, applied itself vigorously, by deliberations in Committee and exchanges of papers with the Protector, to such amendments of the _Petition and Advice_ as he had indicated. On April 30 sufficient intimation of such amendments was ready, and the former Committee of Ninety-nine were required to let his Highness know the same and ask him to appoint a time for his positive answer. For another week, notwithstanding two appointments for the purpose, all was still in suspense. During that week we are to suppose Cromwell either in perplexed solitary meditation, or shut up in those confidential meetings with a few of the most zealous promoters of the Kingship which Whitlocke describes. "The Protector," says Whitlocke, "often advised about this and other great businesses with the Lord Broghill, Pierrepoint, myself, Sir Charles Wolseley and Thurloe, and would be shut up three or four hours together in private discourse, and none were admitted to come in to him. He would sometimes be very cheerful with us, and, laying aside his greatness, he would be exceeding familiar with us, and by way of diversion would make verses with us, and every one must try his fancy. He commonly called for tobacco, pipes, and a candle, and would now and then take tobacco himself: then he would fall again to his serious and great business." At length, on Friday, May 8, the Parliament, assembled once more in the Banqueting House, did receive their positive answer. It was in a brief speech (Speech _XIV._) ending "I cannot undertake this Government with the title of King; and that is mine Answer to this great and weighty business."[1] [Footnote 1: Carlyle, III. 280-301 (with Speeches X.--XIV.); Commons Journals of dates; Whitlocke, IV. 289-290.] The story in Ludlow is that to the last moment Cromwell had meant to accept, and that his sudden and unexpected refusal was occasioned by a bold stroke of the Army-men. Having invited himself to dine at Desborough's, says Ludlow, he had taken Fleetwood with him, and had begun "to droll with them about monarchy," and ask them why sensible men like them should make so much of the affair, and refuse to please the children by permitting them to have "their rattle." Fleetwood and Desborough still remaining grave, he had called them "a couple of scrupulous fellows," and left them. Next day (May 6) he had sent a message to the House to meet him in the Painted Chamber next morning; and, casually encountering Desborough again, he had told Desborough what he intended. That same day Desborough had told Pride, whereupon that resolute colonel had surprised Desborongh by saying he would prevent it still. Going to Dr. Owen on the instant, Pride had made him draft an Officers' Petition to the House. It was to the effect that the petitioners, having "hazarded their lives against monarchy," and being "still ready to do so," observed with pain the "great endeavours to bring the nation again under their old servitude," and begged the House not to allow a title to be pressed upon their General which would be destructive to himself and the Commonwealth. To this petition Pride had obtained the signatures of two Colonels, seven Lieutenant-Colonels, eight Majors, and sixteen Captains, not members of the House; and Cromwell, learning what was in progress, had sent for Fleetwood, and scolded him for allowing such a thing, the rather as Fleetwood must know "his resolution not to accept the crown without the consent of the Army." The appointment with the House in the Painted Chamber for the 7th was changed, however, into that in the Banqueting House on the 8th, the latter place, as the more familiar, being fitter for the negative answer he now meant to give.--Ludlow's story, though he cites Desborough as his chief informant, is not perfectly credible in all its details; but the Commons Journals do show that the meeting originally appointed by Cromwell on the 6th for the Painted Chamber on the 7th was put off to the 8th, and then held in the Banqueting House, and also that there was an Officers' Petition in the interim. It was brought to the doors of the House, by "divers officers of the Army," on the 8th, just as the House was adjourning to the Banqueting House; and the Journals only record that the officers were admitted, and that, a Colonel Mason having presented the Petition in their name and his own, they withdrew. The rest is guess; but two main facts cannot be doubted. One is that Cromwell's great, if not sole, reason at last for refusing the Crown was his knowledge of the persistent opposition of a great number of the Army men. The other is that he remembered afterwards who had been the chief _Contrariants_.[1] [Footnote 1: Ludlow, 586-591; Commons Journals of dates. There had been public pamphlets against the Kingship: e.g. one by Samuel Chidley, addressed to the Parliament, and called "Reasons against choosing the Protector to be King."] While the great question of the Kingship had been in progress there had been a detection of a conspiracy of the Fifth-Monarchy Men. Ever since the abortive ending of the Barebones Parliament these enthusiasts had been recognisable as a class of enemies of the Protectorate distinct from the ordinary and cooler Republicans. While Vane and Bradshaw might represent the Republicans or Commonwealth's men generally, the head of the Fifth-Monarchy Republicans was Harrison. The Harrisonian Republic, the impassioned dream of this really great-hearted soldier, was the coming Reign of Christ on Earth, and the trampling down, in anticipation of that reign, of all dignities, institutions, ministries, and magistracies, that might be inconsistent with it. In the Barebones Parliament, where the Fifth-Monarchy Men had been numerous, and where Harrison had led them, they had gone far, as we know, in conjunction with the Anabaptists, in a practical attempt to convert Cromwell's interim Dictatorship, with Cromwell's assent or acquiescence, into a beginning of the great new era. They had voted down Tithes, Church-Establishments, and all their connexions, and only the steadiness of Rons, Sydenham, and the other sober spirits, in making that vote the occasion of a resurrender of all power into Cromwell's hands, had prevented the consequences. And so, Cromwell's Protectorate having come in where Harrison wanted to keep a vacuum for the Fifth Monarchy, and that Protectorate having not only conserved Tithes and an Established Church, but professed them to be parts of its very basis, Harrison had abjured Cromwell for ever. "Those who had been to me as the apple of my eye," said Harrison afterwards, "when they had turned aside, said to me, Sit thou on my right hand; but I loathed it." Through the Protectorate, accordingly, Harrison, dismissed from the Army, had been living as a suspected person, with great powers of harm; and, three or four times, when there were Republican risings, or threatenings of such, it had been thought necessary to question him, or put him under temporary arrest. The last occasion had been just before the opening of the present Parliament, when he was arrested with Vane, Rich, and others, and had the distinction of being sent as far off as Pendennis Castle in Cornwall, while Vane was sent only to the Isle of Wight, and Rich only to Windsor. The imprisonments, however, being merely precautionary, had been but short; and, at the time of the proposal of the Kingship to Cromwell, Harrison, as well as the others, was again at liberty. That Harrison had ever practically implicated himself in any attempt to upset the Protectorate by force hardly appears from the evidence. He was an experienced soldier, and, with all his fervid notions of a Fifth Monarchy, too massive a man to stir without calculation. All that can be said is that he was an avowed enemy of Cromwell's rule, that he was looked up to by all the Fifth-Monarchy Republicans, and that he held himself free to act should there be fit opportunity. But there were Harrisonians of a lower grade than Harrison. Especially in London, since the winter of 1655, there had been a kind of society of Fifth-Monarchy Men, holding small meetings in five places, only one man in each meeting knowing who belonged to the others, but the five connecting links forming a central Committee for management and propagandism. It must have been from this Committee, I suppose, that there emanated, in Sept. 1656, a pamphlet called "_The Banner of Truth displayed, or a Testimony for Christ and against Antichrist: being the substance of several consultations holden and kept by a certain number of Christians who are waiting for the visible appearance of Christ's Kingdom in and over the World, and residing in and about the City of London_." Probably as yet these humble Fifth-Monarchy Men had not gone beyond private aspirations. At all events, Thurloe, though aware of their existence, had not thought them worth notice. But Sindercombe's Plot of Feb. 1656-7, and the subsequent proposal of the Kingship for Cromwell, had excited them prodigiously, and they had been longing for action, and looking about for leaders. Harrison was their chief hope, and they had applied to him, but also to other Republicans who were not specially Fifth-Monarchy Men, such as Rich, Lawson, and Okey. What encouragement they had or thought they had from such men one does not know; but they had fixed Thursday, April 9, the very day of the appointment of the great Committee of Ninety-nine to deal with Cromwell about the Kingship, for an experimental rendezvous and standard-raising on Mile-End-Green. This being known to Thurloe, a horse-troop or two finished the affair by the capture of about twenty of them at Shoreditch, ready to ride to Mile-End-Green, and also by the capture at Mile-End-Green itself of their intended standard, some arms, and a quantity of Fifth-Monarchy books and manifestos. Five or six of the captured, among whom was Thomas Venner, a wine-cooper, the real soul of the conspiracy, were imprisoned in the Tower, and the rest elsewhere; but, in accordance with Cromwell's lenient custom in such cases, there was no trial, or other public notice of the affair, beyond a report about it by Thurloe to the House (April 11). Harrison, however, was again arrested, with Rich, Lawson, and Major Danvers; and amongst those taken was a Mr. Arthur Squib, who had been in the Barebones Parliament, and one of Harrison's chief followers there. Squib's connexion with Venner in the present wretched conspiracy seems to have been much closer than Harrison's.[1] [Footnote 1: Godwin, IV. 372-375; Carlyle, III. 228-229; Thomason Catalogue of Pamphlets; Commons Journals, April 11, 1657; Thurloe, I. 289.] Cromwell had used the Venner outbreak to point a moral in one or two of his speeches on the Kingship Question. The standard taken at Mile-End-Green bore a Red Lion couchant, with the motto _Who shall rouse him up?;_ and among the tracts or manifestos taken was one called _A Standard set up, whereunto the true Seed and Saints of the Most High may be gathered together for the lamb, against the Beast and the False Prophet_. It was a fierce diatribe against Cromwell, with a scheme for the government of the Commonwealth on Fifth-Monarchy principles after his overthrow. The supreme authority was to be the Lord Jesus Christ; but there was to be an annually elected Sanhedrim or Supreme Council to represent Him, and to administer Biblical Law, and no other, with inferior elected judges for towns and counties. The Bible being the sole Law, a formal Legislature would be unnecessary; and all other magistracy besides the Sanhedrim and the Judgeships was to be abolished, and also, of course, all State ministry of Religion. Now, to Cromwell, who had read the Tract, all this furnished excellent illustration of the kind he wanted. Always frankly admitting that it might be said he had "griped at the government of the nations without a legal assent," he had never ceased to declare that this had been a sheer necessity for the nations themselves. But the _Standard set up_ of the Fifth-Monarchy insurgents of Mile-End-Green had enabled him to return to the topic with reference specifically to the Barebones Parliament and the transition thence to the Protectorate. That wild pamphlet, he had told his auditors, in Speech XII. (April 20), was by one who had been "a leading person" in the Barebones Parliament (Harrison or Squib?); and in Speech XIII. (April 21) he had dwelt on the fact again more at large, revealing a story, as he said, of his "own weakness and folly." The Barebones Parliament had been one of his own choosing; he had filled it with "men of our own judgment, who had fought in the wars, and were all of a piece upon that account." This he had done in his "simplicity," expecting the best results. But, as it had happened, there was a band of men in that Parliament driving even then for nothing but the principles of this wretched Fifth-Monarchy manifesto, the abolition of Church and Magistracy, and a trial of a fantastic government by the Law of Moses. Major-General Harrison and Mr. Squib had been the leaders of this band, with the Anabaptist minister Mr. Feak as their confidant out of doors; and what they did from day to day in the Parliament had been concocted in private meetings in Mr. Squib's house. "This was so _de facto:_ I know it to be true." Had he not done well in accepting the Protectorate at such a moment, and so saving the Commonwealth from the delirium of which they had just seen a new spurt at Mile-End-Green?[1] [Footnote 1: I have taken the account of the _Standard Set Up_ from Godwin, IV. 375-378, not having seen it myself. The passages in Cromwell's speeches referring to it will be found in Carlyle, III, 260, and 276-277.] After the Protector's refusal of the Kingship the House proceeded to adjust the new constitution they had prepared in the _Petition and Advice_ to that unavoidable fact. Not much was necessary. It was only necessary to re-shape the key-stone, by removing the word "King" from the first clause of the First Article and retaining the word "Protector": all the rest would hold good. Accordingly, after some days of debate, it was finally agreed, May 22, that the former first clause of the First Article should be cancelled, and this substituted: "That your Highness will be pleased, by and under the name and style of Lord Protector of the Commonwealth of England, Scotland, and Ireland, and the Dominions and Territories thereunto belonging, to hold and exercise the office of Chief Magistrate of these Nations, and to govern according to this _Petition and Advice_ in all things therein contained, and in all other things according to the Laws of these Nations, and not otherwise." The remaining clause of the First Article, empowering Cromwell to appoint his immediate successor, was left untouched, as well as all the subsequent Articles. To the whole of the _Petition and Advice_, so arranged, Cromwell solemnly gave his assent in the Painted Chamber, May 25, addressing the House in a short speech, in which he expressed his thorough confidence in them in respect to those explanations or modifications of the document which they had promised in order to meet the objections he had taken the liberty of making. He did not doubt there would be "a perfecting of those things."[1] [Footnote 1: Commons Journals of dates. The speech of Cromwell in assenting to the _Petition and Advice_, May 25, 1657, had been accidentally omitted in the earlier editions of Carlyle's _Cromwell;_ but it was given in the Appendix to the edition of 1657. It may stand as Speech XIV*. in the numbering.] The "perfecting of those things" occupied a good deal of time. What was necessary was to cast the resolutions already come to in supplement to the _Petition and Advice_, or those that might yet suggest themselves, into a valid legal form; and it was agreed, June 4, that, except in as far as it might be well to pass express Bills on specific matters, the best way would be to frame and submit to his Highness a _Humble Additional and Explanatory Petition and Advice_. The due framing of this, and the preparation of the necessary Bills, were to be work for three weeks more.[1] [Footnote 1: Commons Journals of date, and afterwards.] Meanwhile, in evidence that the Session of the Parliament up to this point, notwithstanding the great business of the _Petition and Advice_ and the Kingship question, had by no means been barren in legislation, the House had gathered up all the Bills already passed, but not yet assented to, for presentation to his Highness in a body. On the 9th of June thirty-eight such Bills, "some of the public, and the others of a more private, concernment," were presented to his Highness by the whole House, assembled in the Painted Chamber, the Speaker, "after a short and pithy speech," offering them as some grapes preceding the full vintage, and his Highness ratifying all by his assent.--Among these was one very comprehensive Act with this preamble: "Whereas, since the 20th of April, 1653, in the great exigences and necessities of these nations, divers Acts and Ordinances have been made without the consent of the People assembled in Parliament--which is not according to the fundamental laws of the nations and the rights of the People, and is not for the future to be drawn into example--yet, the actings thereupon tending to the settlement of the estates of several persons and families and the peace and quiet of the nations: Be it enacted by his Highness the Lord Protector and this present Parliament," &c. What is enacted is that about a hundred Acts and Ordinances, all duly enumerated, out of those made by the Barebones Parliament in 1653 or by Oliver and his Council after the establishment of the Protectorate in Dec. 1656, together with all acts and ordinances of the same touching customs and excise, shall by this Act be confirmed and made good, either wholly and absolutely (which is the case with nearly all) or with specified modifications--"all other Acts and Ordinances, and every branch and clause therein contained, not confirmed by these presents, which have been made or passed between the 20th day of April 1653 and the 17th day of September 1656" to be absolutely null and void. In other words, the House had been revising long and carefully the Acts of the Barebones Parliament and the arbitrary Ordinances of Oliver and his Council from Dec. 1653 onwards, with a view to adopt all that might stand and to give them new constitutional sanction. Among the Acts of the Barebones Parliament so confirmed and continued was their famous Act for the forms and ceremonial of Marriage and for the Registration of Births and Burials (Vol. IV. p. 511), except only the clause therein declaring any other marriages than as these prescribed to be illegal. Of Cromwell's own Ordinances from Dec. 1653 onwards all were preserved that, I suppose, he really cared for. Thus, of his _eighty-two_ first public Ordinances, passed between Dec. 1653 and the meeting of his First Parliament Sept. 3, 1654, _thirty-six_ were expressly confirmed; which, as most of the rest were Excise or Customs Ordinances or Orders for temporary occasion, means that substantially all his legislation on his entering on the Protectorate was to remain in force. More particularly, I may note that Nos. 7, 16, 24, 30, 31, 32, 33, 50, 54, 58, 60, 66, 67, 69, 71, 81, and 82, in our List of his first eighty-two Public Ordinances (Vol. IV. pp. 558-565) were among those confirmed. These included his Ordinances against Cockfights and Duels, his Ordinance for Reform of the Court of Chancery, his various Ordinances for the incorporation and management of Scotland, and his various Church-Establishment Ordinances for England and Wales, with his two commissions of Triers and Ejectors. Among contemporary ordinances of his also confirmed, over and above those in the main list of Eighty-two, were that for setting up Lectures in Scotland, that in favour of Glasgow University, and that for the better support of the Universities of Scotland--this last, however, limited to the Universities alone by the omission of what related to "the encouragement of public preachers" (Vol. IV. p. 565: footnote). The most noticeable Ordinances of Cromwell's _not_ confirmed are those relating to Treasons--No. 8 in the List of Eighty-two, and its appendages Nos. 12 and 49. Altogether, the Parliament had handsomely cleared Cromwell in respect of his Interim Dictatorship and what was past of his Protectorate, and he had every reason to be satisfied. But, besides this all-comprehensive Act of retrospection, several of the other Acts presented for his assent at the same time must have been very much to his mind.--There was an Act for settling lands in Scotland upon General Monk, with similar Acts for settling lands in Ireland on Fleetwood, Dr. Owen, Sir Hardress Waller, and other persons of desert; there were several Naturalization Bills in favour of a great number of foreigners and English aliens; there was "An Act for limiting and settling the prices of Wines"; and there was "An Act against Vagrants, and wandering, idle, dissolute Persons." Most welcome to Cromwell, and drawing from him a few words of special acknowledgment after his assent to all the Bills (_Speech XV._), were "Two Bills for an Assessment towards the defraying of the charge of the Spanish war and other occasions of the Commonwealth." One was for £60,000 a month from England for the three months ending June 24; the other for an assessment of £20,000 from Ireland for the same three months. These were instalments of a lump sum of £400,000, which the House had voted as long ago as Jan. 30, 1656-7, for the carrying on of the Spanish war, and the remainder of which was to be raised in other ways. The House had already before it a general Bill for the continued assessment of England, Scotland, and Ireland, for Army and Navy purposes, beyond the period specified; but that Bill had not yet passed.[1] [Footnote 1: Commons Journals of dates; Scobell's Acts and Ordinances of 1656, given in mass in his book, Part II. p. 371 et seq. See especially there, pp. 389-395.] Army and Navy purposes, and the carrying on of the Spanish War: these, through all the bustle of the Kingship question, had still been the deepest things in Cromwell's mind. His alliance with France, settled so far by the Treaty of Peace and Commerce dated Oct. 24, 1655, but much imperilled since by Mazarin's dexterity in evasion and his occasional oscillations towards Spain, had at length, by Lockhart's exertions, been converted into a great Treaty "offensive and defensive," signed at Paris, March 23rd, 1656-7, and ratified by Louis XIV. April 30, and by Cromwell himself May 4, 1657. By this treaty it was provided that there should be joint action against Spain, by sea and land, for the reduction and capture of Gravelines, Mardyke, and Dunkirk, the three coast-towns of Spanish Flanders adjoining the French territories on the north-east. Gravelines, if taken, was to belong to France ultimately, but, if taken first, was to be held by the English till Mardyke and Dunkirk were taken--which two towns were to belong permanently to England, only with stipulation of inviolability of Roman Catholic worship for the inhabitants, and of no further English encroachments on Flanders. For the joint-enterprise France was to supply 20,000 men, and Cromwell an auxiliary army of 6000 foot (half at the expense of France), besides a fleet for coast-service. A secret article of the Treaty was that neither power should make separate peace with the Spanish Crown for the space of one year from the date of the Treaty.[1]--Cromwell had lost no time in fulfilling his part of the engagement. To command the auxiliary English army in Flanders he had selected Sir John Reynolds, who had served ably heretofore in Ireland, and was now, as we have seen, member for Tipperary and Waterford in the present Parliament, and a strong Oliverian. His commission was dated April 25; and by May 14 he and his 6000 English foot had all been landed at Boulogne. They were thought the most splendid body of soldiers in Europe, and were admired and complimented by Louis XIV., who went purposely, with Lockhart, to review them. The promised fleet of cooperation was to be under the command of young Admiral Montague, who was still, however, detained in England.[2]--Meanwhile Blake, in his wider command off the coasts of Spain itself, or wherever in the Atlantic there could be a dash at the Spaniard, had added one more to the series of his naval exploits. To intercept a rich Spanish fleet from Mexico, he had gone to the Canary Isles; he had found the fleet there, sixteen ships in all, impregnably ensconced, as it was thought, in the fortified bay of Santa Cruz in Teneriffe; and, after a council of war, in which it was agreed that, though the ships could not be taken, they might be destroyed, he had ventured that tremendous feat April 20, with the most extraordinary success. He had emerged from Santa Cruz Bay, after eleven hours of connonading and fighting, all but undamaged himself, but leaving not a ship of the Spanish fleet extant, and every fort in ruins. Not till May 28 did the news reach London; but on that day Thurloe presented a narrative of the glorious action to the House, who forthwith ordered a special thanksgiving, and a jewel worth £500 to Blake. On the 10th of June the jewel was sent, with a letter of honour from the Protector, and instructions to leave fourteen of his ships off Cadiz, and return home himself with the rest of his fleet.[3] [Footnote 1: Godwin, IV. 540-542. But see Guizot's _Cromwell and the English Commonwealth_, II. 377 (Engl. Transl. 1854), with Latin Text of the Treaty itself in Appendix to same volume.] [Footnote 2: Godwin, IV. 542-543; Commons Journals of May 5, 1657 (leave to Reynolds to go on the service).] [Footnote 3: Commons Journals, May 28 and 29, 1657; Godwin, IV. 418-420; Carlyle, III. 264 and 304-305.] "_Killing no Murder: briefly discoursed, in Three Questions, by William Allen:_" such was the title of a pamphlet in secret circulation in London in June, 1657, and still of some celebrity. It began with a letter "To His Highness, Oliver Cromwell," in this strain: "To your Highness justly belongs the honour of dying for the people; and it cannot choose but be an unspeakable consolation to you in the last moments of your life to consider with how much benefit to the world you are likely to leave it ... To hasten this great good is the chief end of my writing this paper." There follows, accordingly, a letter to those officers and soldiers of the army who remember their engagements, urging them to assassinate Cromwell. "We wish we had rather endured thee, O Charles," it says, "than have been condemned to this mean tyrant, not that we desire any kind of slavery, but that the quality of the master sometimes graces the condition of the slave." Sindercombe is spoken of as "a brave man," of as "great a mind" as any of the old Romans. At the end there is this postscript: "Courteous reader, expect another sheet or two of paper on this subject, if I escape the Tyrant's hands, although he gets in the interim the crown upon his head, which he hath underhand put his confederates on to petition his acceptance thereof." This would imply that, though not in circulation till June, the pamphlet had been written while the Kingship question was in suspense, i.e, before May 8. The name "William Allen" on the title-page was, of course, assumed. The pamphlet, hardly any one now doubts, was by Edward Sexby, the Stuartist arch-conspirator, then moving between England and the continent, and known to have been the real principal of Sindercombe's plot. Actually, when the pamphlet appeared, the desperate man was again in England, despite Thurloe's police. The pamphlet was greedily sought after, and much talked of. The sale was, of course, dangerous. A copy could not be had under five shillings.[1] [Footnote 1: Copy of _Killing no Murder_ (first edition, much rarer than a second and enlarged edition of 1659) among the Thomason Pamphlets, with the date "June 1657" marked on it: Wood's Ath. IV. 624-5; Godwin, IV. 388-390 (where the pamphlet is assumed to have been out "early in May"); Carlyle, III, 67. After the Restoration, Sexby being then dead, the pamphlet was claimed by another.--An answer to _Killing no Murder_, under the title _Killing is Murder_, appeared Sept. 21, 1657. It was by a Michael Hawke, of the Middle Temple.] People were still talking of _Killing no Murder_ when the First Protectorate came to a close. We have now only to take account of the circumstances of that event, and of the differences there were to be, constitutionally, between the First Protectorate and the Second. On the 25th of June, 1657, all the details of the _Humble Additional and Explanatory Petition and Advice_ having been at length settled by the House, that supplement to the original _Petition and Advice_ was also ready for his Highness's assent. The two documents together, to be known comprehensively as _The Petition and Advice_, were to supersede the more military Instrument, called _The Government of the Commonwealth_, to which Cromwell had sworn in Dec. 1653, at his first installation, and were to be the charter of his new and constitutionalized Protectorate. The Articles of this new Constitution were seventeen in all, and deserve some attention:--Article I., as we know, confirmed Cromwell's Protectorship and empowered him to choose his successor.--Article II. provided for the calling of Parliaments of Two Houses once in three years at furthest.--Article III. stipulated for all Parliamentary privileges and the non-exclusion of any of the duly elected members except by judgment of the House of which they might be members.--Article IV., which was much the longest, determined the classes of persons who should be disqualified from being elected or voting in elections. _Universally_, all Roman Catholics were to be excluded, and all who had abetted the Irish Rebellion. Farther, in _England_, were to be excluded all who had been engaged in any war against Parliament since Jan. I, 1641-2, unless they had afterwards given "signal testimony" of their good affections, and all who, since the establishment of the Protectorate, had been engaged in any plot or insurrection against _it_. In _Scotland_ were to be excluded all who had been in arms against the Parliament of England or against that of Scotland before April 1, 1648 (old _Malignants_ and _Montrosists_), except such as had afterwards given "signal testimony," &c., and also all who, since April 1, 1648, had been in arms against the English Parliament or the Commonwealth (the _Hamiltonians_ of 1648, and the _Scottish Royalists of all varieties_ who had fought for Charles II. in 1650-51), except such as had since March 1, 1651-2, "lived peaceably"--but with the supplementary proviso, required by his Highness, that, while "having lived peaceably" since Worcester would suffice for the miscellaneous Royalists of 1650-51, who were indeed nearly the whole population of Scotland, the less pardonable _Hamiltonians_ of 1648 would have to pass much stricter tests. In _Ireland_, though Protestants generally were to be qualified, there was to be like caution in admitting such as, though faithful before March 1, 1649-50, had afterwards opposed the Commonwealth or the Protector. These disqualifications affected both voting and eligibility; but eligibility was restricted still farther. Ineligible were to be all atheistic persons, scoffers at Religion, unbelievers in the divine authority of the Bible, or other execrable heretics, all profaners of the Lord's Day, all habitual drunkards or swearers, and all who had married Roman Catholics or allowed their children to marry such. For the rest, all persons of the voting sex, over the age of twenty-one, and "of known integrity, fearing God, and of good conversation," were to be eligible. One farther exception had been made in the original _Petition and Advice_; to wit, all in holy orders, all ministers or public preachers. "There may be some of us, it may be, who have been a little guilty of that, who would be loath to be excluded from sitting in Parliament," Cromwell had said laughingly while commenting on this clause; and it had accordingly been defined as excluding only regular pastors of congregations. He had procured an important modification of another clause of the same Article. It had been proposed that the business of examining who had been duly elected, and the power of suspending members till the House itself should decide, should be vested in a body of forty-one commissioners to be appointed by Parliament; but, Cromwell having pointed out that this would be a clumsy process, and that the commissioners themselves might be "uncertain persons," and might "keep out good men," it was agreed that the judgment of the House itself, with a fine of £1000 on every unqualified person that might take his seat, would fully answer the purpose.--Article V. related to the Second House of Parliament, called simply "the other House." It was to consist of not more than seventy nor fewer than forty persons, qualified as by the last Article, to be nominated by the Protector and approved by the Commons House, twenty-one to be a quorum, and no proxies allowed. Vacancies were to be filled up by nominations by the Protector, approved by the House itself. The powers of the House were also defined. They were to try no criminal cases whatsoever, unless on an impeachment sent up from the Commons, and only certain specified kinds of civil cases. All their final determinations were to be by the House itself, and not by delegates or Committees.--Article VI. ruled that all other particulars concerning "the calling and holding of Parliaments" should be by law and statute, and that there should be no legislation, or suspension, or abrogation of law, but by Act of Parliament.--Article VII. guaranteed a yearly revenue of £1,300,000, whereof £1,000,000 to be for the Army and Navy, and the remaining £300,000 for the support of the Government, the sums not to be altered without the consent of Parliament, and no part of them to be raised by a land-tax. There might also be "temporary supplies" over and above, to be voted by the Commons; but on no account was his Highness to impose any tax, or require any contribution, by his own authority. By Cromwell's request it was added that his expenditure of the Army and Navy money should be with the advice of his Council, and that accounts should be rendered to Parliament.--Article VIII. settled that his Highness's Privy Council should consist of not more than twenty-one persons, seven a quorum, to be approved by both Houses, and to be irremovable but by the consent of Parliament, though in the intervals of Parliament any of them might be suspended by the Protector. It was asked that the Government should always be with the advice of the Council, and stipulated that, after Cromwell's death, all appointments to the Commandership-in-chief, or to Generalships at land or sea, should be by the future Protectors with consent of the Council.--Article IX. required that the Lord Chancellor, or Lord Keeper, or Lords Commissioners of the Great Seal, the Lord Treasurer or Lords Commissioners of the Treasury, the Judges, and all the great State-officers in England, Scotland, or Ireland, should, in cases of future appointment by the Protector and his Council, be approved by Parliament.--Article X. congratulated the Protector on his Established Church, and begged him to punish, according to law, all open revilers of the same.--Article XI. related to Religion and Toleration. The Protestant Faith, as contained in the Old and New Testaments, and as yet to be formulated in a Confession of Faith to be agreed upon between his Highness and the Parliament, was to be the professed public Religion, and to be universally respected as such; but all believers in the Trinity and in the divine authority of the Scriptures, though they might dissent otherwise in doctrine, worship, or discipline from the Established Church, were to be protected in the exercise of their own religion and worship,--this liberty not to extend to Popery, Prelacy, or the countenancing of blasphemous publications. Ministers and Preachers agreeing in "matters of faith" with "the public profession," though differing in "matters of worship and discipline," were not to be excluded from the Established Church by that difference, but might have "the public maintenance appointed for the ministry" and promotion and employment in the Church according to their abilities. None but those whose difference extended to matters of faith need remain outside the Established Church. Dissenters from the Established Church, if sufficiently right in the faith, were to have equal admission with others to all civil trusts and appointments, subject only to any disqualification for civil office attached to the ministerial profession. His Highness was requested to agree to the repeal of all laws inconsistent with these provisions.--Article XII. required that all past Acts for disestablishing or disendowing the old Prelatic Church, and appropriating the revenues of the same, should hold good.--Article XIII. required that Old Malignants, and other such classes of persons as those disqualified for Parliament in Article IV., should be excluded also from other public trusts.--Article XIV. stipulated that nothing in the _Petition and Advice_ should be construed as implying the dissolution of the present Parliament before such time as his Highness should independently think fit.--Article XV. provided that the _Petition and Advice_ should not be construed as repealing or annulling any Laws or Ordinances already in force, not distinctly incompatible with itself.--Article XVI. protected in a similar way all writs, commissions, grants, law-processes, &c., issued and in operation already, even though the wording should seem a little past date.--Article XVII. and Last requested his Highness to be pleased to take an oath of office. A form of such oath appeared in the _Additional Petition and Advice_, with another form of oath for his Highness's Councillors in England, Scotland, and Ireland, and a third for the members of either House of Parliament. This last, besides a promise to uphold and promote the true Protestant Religion, contained a special promise of fidelity to the Lord Protector and his Government. Farther, by the same _Additional Petition and Advice_, the Lord Protector was requested and empowered to issue writs calling qualified persons to the other House in convenient time before the next session of Parliament, and such persons were empowered to meet and constitute the other House at the time and place appointed without requiring farther approbation from the present Single House.[1] [Footnote 1: The original Petition and Advice is given in full in Scobell (378-383), Whitlocke (IV. 292-301), and in Parl. Hist. (III. 1502-1511); the Additional Petition and Advice in Scobell 450-452, and Whitlocke, IV. 306-310. But see also Cromwell's Speech XIII. with Mr. Carlyle's elucidations (Carlyle, III. 279 et seq.)] Friday, June 26, 1657, was the last day of the present Single House, and a day of high ceremonial in London. The House, having met as usual in the morning, and transacted some overstanding business, rose about two o'clock to meet his Highness in the Painted Chamber. There, with the words "The Lord Protector doth consent," the _Additional Petition and Advice_, and therefore the whole new Constitution of the Protectorate, as just described, became law, and assent was given also to a number of Bills that had passed the House since the 9th. Among these was an "Act for convicting, discovering, and repressing of Popish Recusants," an "Act for the Better Observation of the Lord's Day," and an "Act for punishing such persons as live at high rates and have no visible estate, profession, or calling, answerable thereto." There were also two Money Bills for temporary supplies: viz. one for raising £15,000 from Scotland, to go along with the £180,000 from England, and the £20,000 from Ireland, voted for the three months just ended, and another general and prospective one, assessing England at £35,000 a month, Scotland at £6000 a month, and Ireland at £9000 a month, for the next three years. All these assents having been received, there was an adjournment to Westminster Hall for the solemn installation of his Highness in his Second Protectorate.--The Hall had been magnificently prepared, and contained a vast assemblage. The members of the House, the Judges in their robes, the Lord Mayor and Aldermen in their robes, and other dignitaries, were ranged in the midst round, a canopied chair of state. It was the royal chair of Scotland, with the mystic coronation-stone underneath it, brought for the purpose from the Abbey. In front of the chair was a table, covered with pink-coloured Geneva velvet fringed with gold; and on the table lay a large Bible, a sword, the sceptre, and a robe of purple velvet, lined with ermine. His Highness, having entered, attended by his Council, the great state officers, his son Richard, the French Ambassador, the Dutch Ambassador, and "divers of the nobility and other persons of great quality," stood, beside the chair under the canopy. The Speaker, assisted by the Earl of Warwick, Whitlocke, and others, then attired his Highness in the purple velvet robe; after which he delivered to him the richly-gilt Bible, girt him with the sword, and put the gold sceptre into his hand. His Highness then swore the oath of office, administered to him by the Speaker, After that, the Speaker addressed him in a well-turned speech. "You have no new name," he said, "but a new date now added to the old name: the 16th of December is now changed into the 26th of June." He explained that the robe, the Bible, the sword, and the sceptre were presents to his Highness from the Parliament, and dwelt poetically on the significance of each. "What a comely and glorious sight," he concluded, "it is to behold a Lord Protector in a purple robe, with a sceptre in his hand, a sword of justice girt about him, and his eyes fixed upon the Bible! Long may you prosperously enjoy them all, to your own comfort, and the comfort of the people of these three Nations!" His Highness still standing, Mr. Manton offered up a prayer. Then, the assemblage giving several great shouts, and the trumpets sounding, his Highness sat down in the chair, still holding the sceptre. Then a herald stood up aloft, and signalled for three trumpet-blasts, at the end of which, by authority of Parliament, he proclaimed the Protector. There were new trumpet-blasts, loud hurrahs through the Hall, and cries of "God save the Lord Protector." Once more there was proclamation, and once more a burst of applauses. Then, all being ended, his Highness, with his robe borne up by several young persons of rank, passed with his retinue from the Hall by the great gate, where his coach was in waiting. And so, with the Earl of Warwick seated opposite to him in the coach, his son Richard and Whitlocke on one side, and Viscount Lisle and Admiral Montague on the other, he was driven through the crowd to Whitehall, surrounded by his life-guards, and followed by the Lord Mayor and other dignitaries in their coaches.--There was a brief sitting of the House after the Installation. It was agreed to recommend to his Highness to "encourage Christian endeavours for uniting the Protestant Churches abroad," and also to recommend to him to take some effectual course "for reforming the government of the Inns of Court, and likewise for placing of godly and able ministers there"; and it was ordered that the Acts passed by the House should be printed collectively, and that every member should have a copy. Then, according to one of the Acts to which his Highness had that day assented, the House adjourned itself for seven months, i.e. to Jan. 20, 1657-8.[1] [Footnote 1: Commons Journals of June 26, 1657; Parl. Hist. III. 1514-1518 (Reprint of the authorized contemporary account of the Installation-Ceremony, which had a frontispiece by Hollar); Whitlocke, IV. 303-305; Guizot's Cromwell, II. 337-339 (where some of the particulars of the Installation seem to be from French eye-witnesses).] CHAPTER II. MILTON'S LIFE AND SECRETARYSHIP THROUGH THE FIRST PROTECTORATE CONTINUED: SEPTEMBER 1654--JUNE 1657. For more than reasons of mere mechanical symmetry, it will be well to divide this Chapter of Milton's Biography into Sections corresponding with those of Oliver's Continued Protectorate in the preceding Chapter. SECTION I: FROM SEPTEMBER 1654 TO JANUARY 1654-5, OR THROUGH OLIVER'S FIRST PARLIAMENT. ULAC'S HAGUE EDITION OF MILTON'S _DEFENSIO SECUNDA_, WITH THE _FIDES PUBLICA_ OF MORUS ANNEXED: PREFACE BY DR. CRANTZIUS TO THE REPRINT: ULAC'S OWN PREFACE OF SELF-DEFENCE: ACCOUNT OF MORUS'S _FIDES PUBLICA_, WITH EXTRACTS: HIS CITATION OF TESTIMONIES TO HIS CHARACTER: TESTIMONY OF DIODATI OF GENEVA: ABRUPT ENDING OF THE BOOK AT THIS POINT, WITH ULAC'S EXPLANATION OF THE CAUSE.--PARTICULARS OF THE ARREST AND IMPRISONMENT OF MILTON'S FRIEND OVERTON.--THREE MORE LATIN STATE-LETTERS BY MILTON FOR OLIVER (NOS. XLIX.--LI.): NO STATE-LETTERS BY MILTON FOR THE NEXT THREE MONTHS: MILTON THEN BUSY ON A REPLY TO THE _FIDES PUBLICA_ OF MORUS. In October 1654 there was out at the Hague, from Ulac's press, a volume in two parts, with this title: "_Joannis Miltoni Defensio Secunda pro Populo Anglicano contra infamem Libellum, cujus titulus 'Regii Sanguinis Clamor adversus Parricidas Anglicanos.' Accessit Alexandri Mori, Ecclesiastæ, Sacrarumque Litterarum Professoris, Fides Publica contra calumnias Joannis Miltoni, Scurræ. Hagæ-Comitum, ex Typographia Adriani Ulac_, MDCLIV." ("John Milton's Second Defence for the English People in reply to an infamous Book entitled 'Cry of the King's Blood against the English Parricides.' To which is added A Public Testimony of Alexander Morus, Churchman, and Professor of Sacred Literature, in reply to the Calumnies of John Milton, Buffoon. Printed at the Hague by Adrian Ulac, 1654.") The reprint of Milton's _Defensio Secunda_ fills 128 pages of the volume; More's appended _Fides Publica_, or Public Testimony, in reply, is in larger type and fills 129 pages separately numbered. Morus, after all, it will be seen, had been obliged to acquiesce in Ulac's arrangement (Vol. IV. p. 634). Instead of trying vainly any longer to suppress Milton's book on the Continent, he had exerted himself to the utmost in preparing a Reply to it, to go forth with that reprint of it for the foreign market which Ulac had been pushing through the press and would not keep back. Although Milton complains that Ulac's edition of his book for the foreign market was not only a piracy, but also slovenly in itself, with printer's errors vitiating the sense and arrangement in some cases,[1] it was substantially a reprint of the original. Its interest for us, therefore, lies wholly in the preliminary matter. This consists of a short Preface headed "_Lectori_" ("To the Reader") and signed "GEORGIUS CRANTZIUS, _S.S. Theol. D._," and a longer statement headed "_Typographus pro Se-ipso_" ("The Printer in his own behalf") and signed "A. ULACQ." [Footnote 1: Pro Se Def. (1655).] The Rev. Dr. Crantzius, who does not give his exact address, writes in an authoritative clerical manner. Though in bad health, he says, he cannot refrain from penning a few lines, to say how much he is shocked at the length to which personalities in controversy are going. He really thinks Governments ought to interfere to put such things down. Readers will find in the following book of Milton's a lamentable specimen. He knows nothing of Milton himself; but Milton's writings show him to be a man of a most damnable disposition, and Salmasius had once shown him (Dr. Crantzius) an English book of Milton's propounding the blasphemy "that the doctrine of the Gospel, and of our Lord Jesus Christ, concerning Divorce is devilish." Dr. Crantzius had known Salmasius very well; and O what a man _he_ was! Nothing amiss in him, except perhaps a hasty temper, and too great subjection to a peculiar connubial fate! There was a posthumous book of Salmasius against Milton; and, should it ever appear, Milton would feel that even the dead could bite. Dr. Crantzius had seen a portion of it; and, "Good Heavens! what a blackguard is Milton, if Salmasius may be trusted." Dr. Crantzius had known Morus both at Geneva and in Holland. He was certainly a man often at feud with enemies and rivals, and giving them too great opportunities by his irascibility and freedom of speech. But he was a man of high aspirations; and the late Rev. Dr. Spanheim had once told Dr. Crantzius that Morus's only fault was that he was _altier_, as the French say, i.e. haughty. As for Milton's special accusations against Morus, Dr. Crantzius knew them for a certainty to be false. Even after the Bontia scandal had got abroad and the lawsuit of Morus with the Salmasian household was running its course, Dr. Crantzius had heard Salmasius, who was not in the habit of praising people, speak highly of Morus. Salmasius had admitted at the same time that his wife had injured Morus, though he could not afford to destroy his "domestic peace" by opposing her in the matter. On the Bontia affair specifically, Salmasius's express words, not only to Dr. Crantzius, but to others whom he names, had been, "If Morus is guilty, then I am the pimp, and my wife the procuress." As to the sequel of the case Dr. Crantzius is ignorant; and he furnishes Ulac with this preface to the Book only in the interests of truth. But what a quarrelsome fellow Milton must be, who had not kept his hands off even the "innocent printer"! The "innocent printer's" own preface to the Reprint shows him to have been a very shrewd person indeed. He keeps his temper better than any of them. Two years had elapsed., he says, since he printed the _Regii Sanguinis Clamor_. Who the real author of the book was he did not even yet know. All he knew was that some one, who wanted to be anonymous, had sent the manuscript to Salmasius, and that, after some delay and hesitation, he had obliged Salmasius by putting the book to press. Ulac then relates the circumstances, already known to us, of his correspondence with Hartlib about the book, and his offers to Milton, through Hartlib, to publish any reply Milton might make. He had been surprised at the long delay of this reply, and also at the extraordinary ignorance of business shown by Milton and his friends in their resentment of _his_ part in the matter. It was for a tradesman to be neutral in his dealings; he had relations with both the Parliamentarians and the Royalists, and would publish for either side; and, as to his lending his name to the Dedicatory Preface to Charles II., everybody knew that printers did such things every day. However, here now is Mr. Milton's _Defensio Secunda_ in an edition for the foreign market, printed with the same good will as if Milton had himself given the commission. It contains, he finds, a most unjustifiable attack on M. Morus, with abuse also of Salmasius, who is now in his grave; but that is other people's business, not Ulac's. He cannot pass, however, the defamation of himself inserted in Milton's book.--Ulac then quotes the substance of Milton's account of him as once a swindler and bankrupt in London, then the same in Paris, &c. (Vol. IV. p. 588). This information, Ulac has little doubt, Milton has received from a particular London bookseller, whom Ulac believes also to have been the real publisher of Milton's book, though Newcome's name appears on it. It is all a tissue of lies, however, and Ulac will meet it by a sketch of his own life since he first dealt in books. This takes him twenty-six years back. It was at that time that, being in Holland, which is his native country, and having till then not been in trade at all, he received from England a copy of the _Arithmetica Logarithmica_ of the famous mathematician Henry Briggs [published 1624]. Greatly enamoured with this work and with the whole new science of Logarithms, and observing that Briggs had given the Logarithms for numbers only from 1 to 20,000, and then from 90,000 to 100,000, he had set himself to fill up the gap by finding the Logarithms for numbers from 20,000 to 90,000, and had had the satisfaction, in an incredibly short space of time, of bringing out the result [in an extended edition of Briggs's book published at Gouda, 1628]. Briggs and the English mathematicians were highly gratified, and Ulac was asked to publish also Briggs's _Trigonometria Britannica_. This also he had done [at Gouda in 1633, Briggs having died in 1630, and left the work in charge of his friend Henry Gellibrand]; after which he had engaged in the heavy labour of converting into Logarithms the Sines and Tangents to a Radius of 10,000,000,000 given in the _Opus Palatinum_, and had issued the same under the title _Trigonometria Artificialis_. These labours of Ulac's were not unknown to the mathematical world; and it was somewhat surprising that Milton had not heard of them, especially as, in his sketch of his own life in the _Defensio Secunda_, he professed his interest in Mathematics, and spoke of his visits to London from Horton for the purpose of picking up any novelties in that science. At any rate, it was zeal for the dissemination of the mathematical books above-mentioned that had turned Ulac into a printer and bookseller. In that capacity he certainly had been in London, trading in books generally, and he had been in difficulties there, though not of a kind discreditable to himself. After he had been some years in London, trading peaceably, some London booksellers, jealous for their monopoly, had conspired against him, and tried to obtain an order from Archbishop Laud for the confiscation of his whole stock in trade. Through the kind offices of Dr. Juxon, Bishop of London, this had been prevented, and he had been empowered to sell off his existing stock. Nay, a little while afterwards, he had had a prospect, through the Royal Printers, of a full trading licence from the Archbishop, on condition of his buying from them copies of two heavy works they had printed by the Archbishop's desire--viz. _Theophylact on St. Paul's Epistles_ and the _Catena of the Greek Fathers on Job_. He had actually obtained such a licence for two years, and had hopes of its renewal, when the Civil War broke out. On that account only, and not in any disgrace, as Milton said, he had, after having been about ten years in all in London, transferred himself to Paris.[1] He had been there about six years, dealing honestly, and publishing important theological and other books, the titles of some of which he gives; but here also he had been the victim of trade jealousy. He had found it impossible to get on in Paris, though it was utterly false that he dared not now show his face there. He _had_ shown his face there, since he had returned to his native Holland and made the Hague his head-quarters; and he could show his face there again without any inconvenience. Meanwhile he was in the Hague, comfortable enough; and his character there might easily be ascertained.--To return to Milton's present book. Though Ulac had reprinted it, he had done so in doubt whether, now that there was peace between the United Provinces and the Protector, such irritating books between the two nations ought not to be mutually suppressed. His own leanings had always been rather to the English Parliamentarians than to the Royalists, and hence he had been disposed to think well of Milton. Though he cannot think so well of him now, he will not retaliate by any abuse of Milton. "If Milton is acknowledged in his own country to be a good man, let him be glad of it; but I hear that many Englishmen who know him are of another opinion. I would decide nothing on mere rumour; nay, if I had ascertained anything scandalous about him with positive certainty, I should think it better to hold my tongue than to blazon it about publicly." How strange, however, that Milton had fallen foul of Morus at such a violent rate! Had he not been told two years ago, through Hartlib, that Morus was not the author of the book for which he made him suffer? It was the more inexcusable inasmuch as in the _Joannis Philippi, Angli, Responsio ad Apologiam Anonymi Cujusdam_--which work Milton had superintended, if he had not written it--there had been the same mistake of attributing a work to the wrong person. It would be for Morus himself, however, to take cognisance of that. [Footnote 1: Long ago, foreseeing the interest I should have in ULAC, I made notes in the State-Paper Office of some documents appertaining to him when he was a Bookseller in London. They do not quite correspond with Ulac's account of his reasons for leaving London. The documents, here arranged in what seems to be their chronological order, are as follows:--(1) Petition of Ulac, undated, to Sir John Lambe, Dean of the Arches, that he would intercede with Laud in Ulac's favour. His two years' licence for importing hooks is now almost expired; but many of the Greek books he had bought from the Royal Printers are still on his hands unsold, besides the whole impression of a _Vita Christi_ which he had also bought from them after the London stationers would not look at it. It would be a great thing for him therefore to have his licence extended for a time; and, if this favour is obtained from his Grace, he promises to do all he can for the importation of learned Greek and Latin books of the kind his Grace likes. (2) Humble Petition to Laud by Richard Whittaker, Humphrey Robinson, George Thomason, and other London Booksellers, dated April 15, 1640, representing to his Grace that, contrary to decree in Star-Chamber, "one Adrian Ulacke, a Hollander, hath now lately imported and landed at the Custom House divers bales or packs of books, printed beyond seas, with purpose to vent them in this kingdom," and praying for the attachment of the said bales and the apprehension of Ulac. (3) Of the same date, Laud's order, or suggestion to the Lord Treasurer to join him in an order, to attach the goods in the Custom House accordingly. (4) Humble Petition of Ulac to Juxon, Bishop of London, of date April 1640, explaining the transaction for which he is in trouble. He had gone to Paris "upon the 5th of Dec. last," and had there sold a great many copies of _Theophylact on Paul's Epistles_, the _Catena Patrum Græcorum in Jobum_, Bishop Montague's _De Vita Christi_, _Spelman's British Councils_, &c., at the same time buying a number of books to be imported into England. Although these last had been sent off from Paris before January, "yet, by want of ships and winds, they could come no sooner"--i.e. not till after the 13th of April, 1640, when his two years' licence for importing had expired. He humbly beseeches Juxon that he may be allowed to "receive and dispose of the said books so sent freely without any trouble." (5) A note of Laud's, written by his secretary, but signed by himself, as follows:--"Had not the Petitioner offended in a high matter against the State in transporting bullion of the kingdom, I should have been willing to have given time as is here [i.e. in the last document] expressed. However, I desire Sir John Lambe to consider of his Petition, and do further therein as he shall find to be just and fitting, unless he find that the sentence in the Star-Chamber hath disabled him.--W. CANT. _Apr._ 21, 1640." (6) Humble Petition, undated, of Ulac, now "prisoner in the Fleet," to Sir John Lambe. The prisoner "was, the 24th of May last, censured by the Lords in the High Court of Star-Chamber in £1000 to his Majesty and imprisonment." He is in very great straits, owing above £500 to his Majesty's Printers for books, "much hindered by the deadness of trading," and by the return of many books on his hands. He is "a stranger, without any friends," and unless the fine of £1000 is mitigated "to a very low rate," he will be in "utter ruin and misery." He therefore prays Lambe's good word with Laud.--My only doubt is whether the document I have put here as No. 6, ought not to _precede_ the others: i.e. whether Ulac's offence in the matter of the "bullion," with his fine and imprisonment, was not an affair of older date than his importation of books after time in April 1640, though then remembered against him. All the documents were together in the same bundle in the S. P. 0. when I examined them, and the published Calendars have not yet overtaken them.] And now for More's own _Fides Publica_ or Public Testimony for Himself. It is a most painful book on the whole. Gradually it impresses you with considerable respect for the ability of the author, and especially for his skill both in logical and pathetic pleading; and throughout you cannot but pity him, and remember that he was placed in about the most terrible position that a human being, and especially a clergyman of wide celebrity, could occupy--placed there too by what would now be called an act of literary savagery, outraging all the modern proprieties of personal controversy. Still the impression left finally is not satisfactory. It is but fair, however, that he should speak for himself. The book opens thus:-- "If I could acknowledge as true of me any of those things which you, by a wild and unbridled licence, have not only attributed to me, but have even, to your eternal disgrace, dared to publish, I should be angry with you to a greater degree than I am, you most foolish Milton: for let that be your not unfitting, though mild, designation in the outset, while that of liar and others will fashion themselves out of the sequel. But, as the charges are such that there is no one of those to whom I am a little more closely known, however unfavourable to me, but could convict them of falsehood from beginning to end, I might afford, strong in the sole consciousness of my rectitude, to despise them, and perhaps this is what I ought to do. Still, with a mind as calm as a sense of the indignity of the occasion will permit, I have resolved to expostulate with you. Yet I confess myself to be somewhat moved; not by anger, but by another feeling. I am sorry, let me tell you, for your own case, and shall be sorry until you prove penitent, and this whether it is from sheer mental derangement that you have assailed with mad and impotent fury a man who had done you no harm, and who was, as you cannot deny, entirely unknown to you, or whether you have let out the empty house of your ears, as those good masters of yours say, to foul whisperings going about, and, with your ears, put your hand and pen too, for I know not what wages, but certainly little honourable, at the disposal of other people's malicious humour. Choose which you please. I pray God Almighty to be merciful to you, and I beg Him also in my own behalf that, as I proceed to the just defence of my reputation, He may suggest to me a true and modest oration, utterly free from all lying and obscenity,--that is, very unlike yours." On the point of the authorship of the _Regii Sanguinis Clamor_ Morus is emphatic enough. He declares over and over again that _he_ was not the author, and he declares that Milton knew this perfectly well,--might have known it for two years, but had beyond all doubt known it before he had published the _Defensio Secunda_. We shall bring together the passages that refer to this subject:-- I neither wrote it, nor ever pretended to have done so,--this I here solemnly declare, and make God my witness,--nor did I contribute anything to the writing of it.... The real author is alive and well, unknown to me by face, but very well known to several good men, on the strength of whose joint knowledge of the fact I challenge with righteous detestation the public lie which wriggles everywhere through your whole book.... Let the author answer for himself: I neither take up his quarrel, nor thrust my sickle into his corn.... But I wish the anonymous author would come forth some time or other openly in his own name.... What then would Milton think? He might have reason to fame and detest the light of life, being manifestly convicted of lying before the world. He might say, indeed, "I had not thought of it: I have been under a mistake" ... But what if I prove by clear evidence that you knew well enough already that the author of this book was another person, not I? ... [Morus then goes on to say that Milton might have learnt the fact in various ways, even from a comparison of the style of the book with that of Morus's acknowledged writings; but he lays stress chiefly on the information actually sent to Milton in 1652 by Ulac, and on the subsequent communications to him, through Durie and the Dutch Ambassador Nieuport, before the _Defensio Secunda_ had left the press] ... Will you hear a word of truth? You had certainly learnt the fact, and cannot for two whole years have been ignorant of it. But, as you perceived it would not suit your convenience to vent your spleen against an anonymous opponent, that is a nobody, and some definite person must be pitched upon as an adversary to bear your rage expressly, no one else seemed to you more opportune than I as an object of calumny, whether because you heard that I had many enemies, though (what proves their savageness) without any cause, who would hold up both thumbs in applause of your jocosities, or because you knew that, by the arts of a Juno, I was involved in a lawsuit, more troublesome in reality than dangerous, and you did not believe that I should be, as I have been, the winner before all the tribunals.... Your book once written, Morus must of necessity stand for your opponent, or Milton, the Defender of the People, would have done nothing in two years! He would have lost all the laborious compilation of his days and nights, all his punnings upon my name, all his sarcasms on my sacred office and profession.... For, if you had taken out of your book all the reproaches thrown at me, how little would there have been, certainly not more than a few pages, remaining for your "People"! What fine things would have perished, what flowery, I had almost said Floralian, expressions! What would have become of your "gardens of Alcinous and Adonis," of your little story about "Hortensius"; what of the "syca_more_," what of "Pyramus and Thisbe," what of the "Mulberry tree"? [All these are phrases in Milton's book, introduced whenever he refers circumstantially to the naughty particulars of the scandals against Morus, whether in Geneva or in Leyden. The name _Morus_, which means "mulberry tree" and "fool" in Latin and Greek, and may be taken also for "Moor" or "Ethiop," and in still other meanings, had yielded to the Dutch wits, as well as to Milton, no end of metaphors and punning etymologies in their squibs against the poor man] ... The real author of the _Regii Sanguinis Clamor_ neither lives among the Dutch,--is not "stabled" among them, to use your own expression--nor has he, I believe, anything in common with them ... Vehemently and almost tragically you complain that I have upbraided you with your blindness. I can positively affirm that I did not know till I read it in your own book that you had lost your eyesight. For, if anything occurred to me that might seem to look that way, I referred to the mind [Note this sentence: the Latin is "_Nam, si quid fortè se dabat quod eò spectare videretur, ad animum referebam_"] ... Could I then upbraid you with blindness who did not know that you were blind,--with personal deformity who believed you even good-looking, chiefly in consequence of having seen the rather neat likeness of you prefixed to your Poems [Marshall's ludicrous botch of 1645 which Milton had disowned] ... Nor did I know any more that you had written on Divorce. I have never read that book of yours; I have never seen it ... I will have done with this subject. That book is not mine. I have published, and shall yet publish, other books, not one letter of which shall you, while I am alive and aware of it, attack with impunity. Some _Sermons_ of mine are in men's hands; my books _On Grace and Free Will_ are to be had; there are in print my _Exercitations on the Holy Scripture, or on the Cause of God_, which I know have passed into England, so that you have no excuse,--as well as my _Apology for Calvin_, dedicated to the illustrious Usher of Armagh, your countryman, my very great friend, whose highly honourable opinion of me, if the golden old man would permit, I would put against a thousand Miltons. With God's help others will appear, some of which, as but partly finished, I am keeping back, while others are ready for issue. [A list of some of these, including _Orationes Argumenti Sacri, cum Poematiis_: the list closed with a statement that he has mentioned only his Latin works, and not his French Sermons]. Every now and then there is a passage of retaliation on Milton. Here are two specimens: MILTON'S OWN CHARACTER AND REPUTATION:--"Do not think, obscurely though you live, that, because you have had the first innings in this game in the art of slander, you therefore stand aloft beyond the reach of darts. You have not the ring of Gyges to make you invisible. Your virtues are taken note of. You are not such a person, my friend, that Fame should fear to tell lies even about _you_; and, unless Fame lies, there is not a meaner or more worthless man going, and nothing is clearer than that you estimate by your own morals the characters of other people. But I hope Fame lies in this. For who could hear without the greatest pain--what I for my part hardly, nay not to the extent of hardly, bring my mind to credit--that there is a man living among Christians who, being himself a concrete of every form of outrageous iniquity, could so censure others?" MILTON'S PRODIGIOUS SELF-ESTEEM:--"All which has so elated you that you would be reckoned next after the very first man in England, and sometimes put yourself higher than the supreme Cromwell himself; whom you name familiarly, without giving him any title of rank, whom you lecture under the guise of praising him, to whom you dictate laws, assign boundaries to his rights, prescribe duties, suggest counsels, and even hold out threats if he shall not behave accordingly. You grant him arms and rule; you claim genius and the gown for yourself. '_He only is to be called great_,' you say, '_who has either done great things_'--Cromwell, to wit!---'_or teaches great things_'--Milton on Divorce, to wit!--'_or writes of them worthily_'--the same twice-great Milton, I suppose, in his Defence of the English People!" How does Morus proceed in the main business of clearing his own character from Milton's charges? His plan was to produce a dated and authenticated series of testimonials from others, extending over the period of his life which had been attacked, and to interweave these with explanations and an autobiographic memoir. He has reached the eightieth page of his book before he properly begins this enterprise. He gives first a testimonial from the Genevan Church, dated Jan. 25, 1648, and signed by seventeen ministers, of whom Diodati is one; then another from the Genevan Senate or Town Council, dated Jan. 26, 1648; then two more, one from the Church again, and one from the Senate again, both dated April 1648; then, among others, a special testimonial from Diodati, in the form of a long letter to Salmasius, dated "Geneva, 9th May, 1648." Diodati's testimonial, which is given both in French and in Latin, is the most interesting in itself, and will represent the others. "As to his morals," says Diodati, writing of Morus to Salmasius, "I can speak from intimate knowledge, and do so with, strict conscientiousness. His natural disposition is good and without deceit or reservation, frank and noble, such as ought to put him in very harmonious relations with all persons of honour and virtue, of whatsoever condition,--quick and very sensible to indignities, but easily coming to himself again: not one to provoke others, but yet one who has terrible spurs for his own defence. I have hardly seen any who have done themselves credit by attacking him. _Conscia virtus_, and you may add what belongs to the _genus irritabile vatum_, make him well armed against his assailants. For the rest, piety, honesty, temperance, freedom from all avarice or meanness, are found in him in a degree suitable to his profession." Suddenly, just when we have read this, and seen Morus self-described as far as to the year 1648, when he was about to leave Geneva for Holland, the book comes to a dead stop. Diodati's letter ends on page 129; and when we turn over the leaf we find a Latin note from Ulac, headed "_The Printer to the Reader_" and expressed as follows:-- "Our labours towards finishing this Treatise had come to this point, when lo! M. Morus, who had been staying for some time here at the Hague with the intention of completing it, called away by I know not what occasion to France, and with a favourable wind hastening his journey, was prevented from bringing all to an end, and so gratifying with every possible speed the desire of many curious persons to read both Treatises at once, Milton's and More's. What to do I was for some days uncertain; but some gentlemen, not of small condition, at length persuaded me that I should not defer longer the publication of what of his I had already in print,--alleging that the remaining and still wanting testimonies of eminent men, and of the Senates and Churches of Middleburg, Amsterdam, &c., given for the vindication of M. Morus, and which were here to have been subjoined, might be afterwards printed separately when they reached me. Wishing to comply with their request, and my own inclination too, I now therefore do publish, Reader, what I am confident will please your curiosity, if not in full measure, at least a good deal. Let whosoever desires to see the sequel expect it as soon as possible." Was there ever such an unfortunate as Morus? Everything everywhere seems to go wrong with him. Here, at the Hague, having absented himself from Amsterdam for the purpose, he has been writing his Defence of Himself against Milton, doing it cleverly and in a way likely to make some impression, when, suddenly, for some reason unknown even to his printer, he is obliged to break off for a journey into France, just as he was approaching the heart of his subject. Had he absconded? This seems actually to have been the construction, abroad. "Morus is gone into France," writes a Hague correspondent of Thurloe, Nov. 3, 1654; "it is believed that he has a calling, _et quidem a Castris_, and that he will not return to Amsterdam. They love well his renown and learning, but not his conversation; for they do not desire that he should come to visit the daughters of condition as he was used to do. He promised Ulac to finish his Apology; but he went away without taking his leave of him: so that you see that Ulac hath finished abrupt." Morus, as we shall find, did finish the book; but the _Fides Publica_, as it was first circulated in Holland towards the end of 1654, and as it first reached Milton, was the book abruptly broken off as above, at page 130, with the testimonials and the autobiography coming no farther down than the year 1648, when Morus had not yet left Geneva. In January, 1654-5, when Milton had read Morus's _Fides Publica_ in its imperfect state, and was considering in what form he should reply to it, his thoughts on the subject must have been interrupted by the new misfortune of his friend Overton. What that was has already been explained generally (ante pp. 32-33); but the details of the incident belong to Milton's biography. Overton's former misunderstanding with the Protector having been made up, he had been sent back to Scotland, as we saw, in September, 1654, to be Major-General there under Monk, and pledged to be faithful in his trust until he should himself give the Protector notice of his desire to withdraw from it. For a month or two, accordingly, all had gone well, Monk in the main charge of Scotland, with his head-quarters at Dalkeith, near Edinburgh, and Overton in special charge of the North of Scotland, with his head-quarters at Aberdeen. Meanwhile, as Oliver's First Parliament had been incessantly opposing him, questioning his Protectorship, and labouring to subvert it, the anti-Oliverian temper had again been strongly roused throughout the country, and not least among the officers and soldiers of the army in Scotland. There had been meetings and consultations among them, and secret correspondence with scattered Republicans in England and with some of the Parliamentary Oppositionists, till at length, if Thurloe's informations were true, the design was nothing less than to depose Monk, put Overton in supreme command, and march into England under an anti-Oliverian banner. The Levellers, on the one side, and the Royalists, on the other, were to be drawn into the movement, if indeed there had not been actual communications already with agents of Charles II. It may be a question how far Overton himself was a party to the design; but it is certain that he had relapsed into his former anti-Oliverian humour, and was very uneasy in his post at Aberdeen. "I bless the Lord," he writes mysteriously from that town, Dec. 26, in answer to a letter of condolence from some friend--"I bless the Lord I do remember you and yours (by whom I am much remembered) so far as I am able in everything. I know right well you and others do it much for me; and, pray, dear Sir, do it still. Heave me up upon the wings of your prayers to Him who is a God hearing prayers and granting requests. Entreat Him to enable me to stand to his Truth; which I shall not do if He deject or forsake me." This letter, as well as several letters _to_ Overton, had been intercepted by Monk's vigilance; and hardly had it been written when Overton was arrested by Monk's orders, and brought to Leith. At Leith his papers were searched, and there was found in his letter-case this copy of verses in his own hand:-- "A Protector! What's that? 'Tis a stately thing That confesseth itself but the ape of a King; A tragical Cæsar acted by a clown, Or a brass farthing stamped with a kind of crown; A bauble that shines, a loud cry without wool; Not Perillus nor Phalaris, but the bull; The echo of Monarchy till it come; The butt-end of a barrel in the shape of a drum; A counterfeit piece that woodenly shows; A golden effigies with a copper nose; The fantastic shadow of a sovereign head; The arms-royal reversed, and disloyal instead; In fine, he is one we may Protector call,-- From whom the King of Kings protect us all!" With this piece of doggrel, the intercepted letters, and the other informations, Overton was shipped off by Monk from Leith to London on the 4th of January, 1654-5; and on the 16th of that month he was committed to the Tower. Thence the next day he wrote a long letter to a private friend, in which he enumerates the charges against him, and replies to them one by one. He denies that he has broken trust with the Protector; he denies that he is a Leveller; and, what pleases us best of all, he denies the authorship of the doggrel lines just quoted. His exact words about these may be given. "But, say some, you made a copy of scandalous verses upon the Lord Protector, whereby his Highness and divers others were offended and displeased ... I must acknowledge I copied a paper of verses called _The Character of a Protector_; but I did neither compose them, nor (to the best of my remembrance) show them to any after I had writ them forth. They were taken out of my letter-case at Leith, where they had been a long time by me, neglected and forgotten. I had them from a friend, who wished my Lord [Cromwell] well, and who told me that his Lordship had seen them, and, I believe, laughed at them, as, to my knowledge, he hath done at papers and pamphlets of more personal and particular import and abuse." It is really a relief to know that Overton, who is still credited with these lines by Godwin, Guizot, and others, was not the author of them, and this not because of their peculiar political import, but because of their utter vulgarity. How else could we have retained our faith in Milton's character of Overton--"you, Overton, bound to me these many years past in a friendship of more than brotherly closeness and affection, both by the similarity of our tastes, and the sweetness of your manners"? Still to have copied and kept such lines implied some sympathy with their political meaning; and, Thurloe's investigations having made it credible otherwise that Overton was implicated, more than he would admit, in the design of a general rising against the Protector's Government, there was an end to the promising career of Milton's friend under the Protectorate. He remained from that time a close prisoner while Oliver lived. On the 3rd of July, 1656, I find, his wife, "Mrs. Anne Overton," had liberty from the Council "to abide with her husband in the Tower, if she shall so think fit."[1] [Footnote 1: Thurloe, III. 75-77, and 110-112; Council Order Book, July 3, 1656. Godwin, whose accuracy can very seldom be impeached, had not turned to the last-cited pages of Thurloe; and hence he leaves the doggrel lines as indubitably Overton's own (_Hist. of Commonwealth_, IV. 163). Guizot and others simply follow Godwin in this, as in most things else.--That Overton's disaffection was very serious indeed, and that Cromwell had had good reason for his suspicions of him even on the former occasion, appears from the fact that among the Clarendon Papers in the Bodleian there is a draft, in Hyde's hand, of a letter, dated April 1654, either actually sent, or meant to be sent, by Charles II. to Overton. The substance of the letter, as in Mr. Macray's abstract of it for the Calendar of the Clarendon Papers (II. 344), is as follows:--"_The King to Col. Ov[erton]._ Has received such information of his affection that he does not doubt it, and believes that he abhors those who, after all their pretences for the public, do now manifest that they have wholly intended to satisfy their own ambition. He has it in his power to redeem what he has heretofore done amiss; and the King is very willing to receive such a service as may make him a principal instrument of his restoration, for which whatsoever he or his family shall wish they shall receive, and what he shall promise to any of his friends who may concur with him shall be made good." If this letter was among those found among Overton's papers at Leith (which is not very likely), little wonder that Cromwell would not trust him at large a second time.] At the date of Overton's imprisonment the Protector was making up his mind to dismiss his troublesome First Parliament after his four months and a half of experience of its temper; and six days after that date he did dismiss it, to its own surprise, before it had sent him up a single Bill. How many Latin letters had Overton's friend Milton written for the Protector in his official capacity during the four months and a half of that troublesome Parliament? So far as the records show, only three. They were as follows:-- (XLIX.) "To THE MOST ILLUSTRIOUS LORD, LUIS MENDEZ DE HARO," _Sept._ 4, 1654:[1]--The Spanish Prime Minister, Luis de Haro, had recently, in the Protector's apparent indecision between the Spanish alliance and the French alliance, resolved to try to secure him for Spain by sending over a new Ambassador, to supersede Cardenas, or to co-operate with him. He had announced the same in letters to Cromwell; who now thanks him, professes his desire to be in friendship with Spain, and promises every attention to the new Ambassador when he may arrive, Cromwell pays a compliment to the minister himself. "To have your affection and approbation," he says, "who by your worth and prudence have acquired such authority with the King of Spain that you preside, with a mind to match, over the greatest affairs of that kingdom, ought truly to be a pleasure to me corresponding with my apprehension of the honour I shall have from the good opinion of a man of excellence." Milton is dexterous in wording his documents. [Footnote 1: No. 29 in Skinner Transcript (where exact date is given); No. 47 in Printed Collection and in Phillips (where month only is given).] (L.) TO THE CONSULS AND SENATE OF THE CITY OF BREMEN, _Oct. 25_, 1654:--There has come to be a conflict between the City of Bremen and the new King of Sweden, arising from military designs of that King on the southern shores of the North Sea and the Baltic, Bremen is in great straits; and the authorities have represented this to Cromwell through their agent, Milton's friend, Henry Oldenburg, and have requested Cromwell's good offices with the Swedish King. Cromwell answers that he has done what they want. He has great respect for Bremen as a thoroughly Protestant city, and he regrets that there should he a quarrel between it and the powerful Protestant Kingdom of Sweden, having no stronger desire than that "the whole Protestant denomination should at length coalesce in one by fraternal agreement and concord." (LI.) To CHARLES X., KING OF SWEDEN, _Oct._ 28, 1654:--As announced to the Bremeners in the last letter, Cromwell did write on their behalf to the Swedish King. He had hoped that the great Peace of Munster or Westphalia (1648) had left all continental Protestants united, and he regrets to hear that a dispute between Sweden and the Bremeners has arisen out of that Treaty. How dreadful that Protestant Swedes and Protestant Bremeners, once in league against the common foe, should now be slaughtering each other! Can nothing be done? Could not advantage be taken of the present truce? He will himself do anything in his power to bring about a permanent reconciliation. These three letters, it will be observed, belong to the first two months of that cramped and exasperated condition in which Oliver found himself when he had his First Parliament by his side; and there is not a single preserved letter of Milton for Oliver between Oct. 26, 1654, the date of the last of the three, and Jan. 22, 1654-5, the date of the sudden dissolution of the Parliament. The reason of this idleness of Milton, in his Secretaryship during those three months, leaving all the work to Meadows, must have been, I believe, that he was then engaged on a Reply to More's _Fides Publica_ in the imperfect state in which it had just come forth. All along, as we have seen, the Literary Defence of the Commonwealth on every occasion of importance had been regarded as the special charge of Milton in his Secretaryship, to which routine duty must give way; and, as his _Defensio Secunda_ in reply to the _Regii Sanguinis Clamor_ had been, like several of his preceding writings, a task performed by him on actual commission from the Rump Government, though not finished till the Protectorate had begun, Oliver and his Council may have thought it but fair that another pamphlet of the same series in reply to the _Fides Publica_ of Morus should count also to the credit of Milton's official services, even though it must necessarily be more a pamphlet of mere personal concern than any of its predecessors. But, indeed, by this time, Mr. Milton was a privileged man, who might regulate matters very much for himself, and drop in on Thurloe and Meadows at the office only when he liked. SECTION II: FROM JANUARY 1654-5 TO SEPTEMBER 1656, OR THROUGH THE PERIOD OF ARBITRARINESS. LETTER TO MILTON FROM LEO DE AITZEMA: MILTON'S REPLY: LETTER TO EZEKIEL SPANHEIM AT GENEVA: MILTON'S GENEVESE RECOLLECTIONS AND ACQUAINTANCES: TWO MORE OF MILTON'S LATIN STATE-LETTERS (NOS. LII., LIII.): SMALL AMOUNT OF MILTON'S DESPATCH-WRITING FOR CROMWELL HITHERTO.--REDUCTION OF OFFICIAL SALARIES, AND PROPOSAL TO REDUCE MILTON'S TO £150 A YEAR: ACTUAL COMMUTATION OF HIS £288 A YEAR AT PLEASURE INTO £200 FOR LIFE: ORDERS OF THE PROTECTOR AND COUNCIL RELATING TO THE PIEDMONTESE MASSACRE, MAY 1655: SUDDEN DEMAND ON MILTON'S PEN IN THAT BUSINESS: HIS LETTER OF REMONSTRANCE FROM THE PROTECTOR TO THE DUKE OF SAVOY, WITH TEN OTHER LETTERS TO FOREIGN STATES AND PRINCES ON THE SAME SUBJECT (NOS. LIV.--LXIV.): HIS SONNET ON THE SUBJECT.--PUBLICATION OF THE SUPPLEMENTUM TO MORE'S _FIDES PUBLICA_: ACCOUNT OF THE SUPPLEMENTUM, WITH EXTRACTS: MILTON'S ANSWER TO THE _FIDES PUBLICA_ AND THE SUPPLEMENTUM TOGETHER IN HIS _PRO SE DEFENSIO_, AUG. 1655: ACCOUNT OF THAT BOOK, WITH SPECIMENS: MILTON'S DISBELIEF IN MORUS'S DENIALS OF THE AUTHORSHIP OF THE _REGII SANGUINIS CLAMOR_: HIS REASONS, AND HIS REASSERTIONS OF THE CHARGE IN A MODIFIED FORM: HIS NOTICES OF DR. CRANTZIUS AND ULAC: HIS RENEWED ONSLAUGHTS ON MORUS: HIS REPETITION OF THE BONTIA ACCUSATION AND OTHERS: HIS EXAMINATION OF MORUS'S PRINTED TESTIMONIALS: FEROCITY OF THE BOOK TO THE LAST: ITS EFFECTS ON MORUS.--QUESTION OF THE REAL AUTHORSHIP OF THE _REGII SANGUINIS CLAMOR_ AND OF THE AMOUNT OF MORUS'S CONCERN IN IT: THE DU MOULIN FAMILY: DR. PETER DU MOULIN THE YOUNGER THE REAL AUTHOR OF THE _REGII SANGUINIS CLAMOR_, BUT MORUS THE ACTIVE EDITOR AND THE WRITER OF THE DEDICATORY EPISTLE: DU MOULIN'S OWN ACCOUNT OF THE WHOLE AFFAIR: HIS CLOSE CONTACT WITH MILTON ALL THE WHILE, AND DREAD OF BEING FOUND OUT.--CALM IN MILTON'S LIFE AFTER THE CESSATION OF THE MORUS-SALMASIUS CONTROVERSY: HOME-LIFE IN PETTY FRANCE: DABBLINGS OF THE TWO NEPHEWS IN LITERATURE: JOHN PHILLIPS'S _SATYR AGAINST HYPOCRITES_: FREQUENT VISITORS AT PETTY FRANCE: MARVELL, NEEDHAM, CYRIACK SKINNER, &C.: THE VISCOUNTESS RANELAGH, MR. RICHARD JONES, AND THE BOYLE CONNEXION: DR. PETER DU MOULIN IN THAT CONNEXION: MILTON'S PRIVATE SONNET ON HIS BLINDNESS. HIS TWO SONNETS TO CYRIACK SKINNER, AND HIS SONNET TO YOUNG LAWRENCE: EXPLANATION OF THESE FOUR SONNETS.--_SCRIPTUM DOMINI PROTECTORIS CONTRA HISPANOS_: THIRTEEN MORE LATIN STATE-LETTERS OF MILTON FOR THE PROTECTOR (NOS. LXV.--LXXVII.), WITH SPECIAL ACCOUNT OF COUNT BUNDT AND THE SWEDISH EMBASSY IN LONDON: COUNT BUNDT AND MR. MILTON.--INCREASE OF LIGHT LITERATURE IN LONDON: EROTIC PUBLICATIONS: JOHN PHILLIPS IN TROUBLE FOR SUCH: EDWARD PHILLIPS'S LONDON EDITION OF THE POEMS OF DRUMMOND OF HAWTHORNDEN: MILTON'S COGNISANCE OF THE SAME.--HENRY OLDENBURG AND MR. RICHARD JONES AT OXFORD: LETTERS OF MILTON TO JONES AND OLDENBURG.--THIRTEEN MORE STATE-LETTERS OF THE MILTON SERIES (NOS. LXXVIII.--XC.): IMPORTANCE OF SOME OF THEM. Oliver had just entered on his period of Arbitrariness, or Government without a Parliament, when Milton received the following letter in Latin from Leo de Aitzema, or Lieuwe van Aitzema, formerly known to him as agent for Hamburg and the Hanse Towns in London, but now residing at the Hague in the same capacity (IV. 378-379). Aitzema, we may now mention, was a Frieslander by birth, eight years older than Milton, and is remembered still, it is said, for a voluminous and valuable _History of the United Provinces_, consisting of a great collection of documents, with commentaries by himself in Dutch.[1] This had not yet been published. [Footnote 1: See Article _Aitzema_ in Bayle's Dictionary.] "To the honourable and highly esteemed Mr. John Milton, Secretary to the Council of State, London. "Partly because Morus, in his book, has made some aspersions on you for your English Book on Divorce, partly because many have been inquiring eagerly about the arguments with which you support your opinion, I have, most honoured and esteemed Sir, given your little work entire to a friend of mine to be translated into Dutch, with a desire to have it printed soon. Not knowing, however, whether you would like anything corrected therein or added, I take the liberty to give you this notice, and to request you to let me know your mind on the subject. Best wishes and greetings from "Your very obedient "LEO AITZEMA[1] "Hague: Jan. 29, 1654-5." [Footnote 1: Communicated by the late Mr. Thomas Watts of the British Museum, and published by the late Rev. John Mitford in Appendix to Life of Milton prefixed to Pickering's Edition of Milton's Works (1851).] Milton's answer, rather unusually for him, was immediate. TO LEO VAN AITZEMA. It is very gratifying to me that you retain the same amount of recollection of me as you very politely showed of good will by once and again visiting me while you resided among us. As regards the Book on Divorce which you tell me you have given to some one to be turned into Dutch, I would rather you had given it to be turned into Latin. For my experience in those books of mine has now been that the vulgar still receive according to their wont opinions not already common. I wrote a good while ago, I may mention, _three_ treatises on the subject:--the first, in two books, in which _The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce_ (for that is the title of the book) is contained at large; a second, which is called _Tetrachordon_, and in which the four chief passages of Scripture concerning that doctrine are explicated; the third called _Colasterion_, in which answer is made to a certain sciolist. [The _Bucer Tract_ omitted in the enumeration.] Which of these Treatises you have given to be translated, or what edition, I do not know: the first of them was twice issued, and was much enlarged in the second edition. Should you not have been made aware of this already, or should I understand that you desire anything else on my part, such as sending you the more correct edition or the rest of the Treatises, I shall attend to the matter carefully and with pleasure. For there is not anything at present that I should wish changed in them or added. Therefore, should you keep to your intention, I earnestly hope for myself a faithful translator, and for you all prosperity. Westminster: Feb. 5, 1654-5.[1] [Footnote 1: Epist. Fam. 16.] The next letter, written in the following month, also connects itself, but still more closely, with the Morus controversy. It is addressed to Ezekiel Spanheim, the eldest son of that Frederick Spanheim, by birth a German, of whom we have heard as Professor of Theology successively at Geneva (1631-1642) and at Leyden (1642-1649). This elder Spanheim, it will be remembered, had been implicated in the opposition to Morus in both places--the story being that he had contracted a bad opinion of Morus during his colleagueship with him in Geneva, and that, when Salmasius, partly to spite Spanheim, of whose popularity at Leyden he was jealous, had negotiated for bringing Morus to Holland, Spanheim "moved heaven and earth to prevent his coming." It is added that Spanheim's death (May 1649) was caused by the news that Morus was on his way, and that he had said on his death-bed that "Salmasius had killed him and Morus had been the dagger."[1] On the other hand, we have had recently the assurance of Dr. Crantzius that Spanheim had once told him that the only fault in Morus was that he was _altier_, or self-confident. That the stronger story is the truer one substantially, if not to its last detail, appears from the fact that an antipathy to Morus was hereditary in the Spanheim family, or at least in the eldest son, Ezekiel. As a scholar, an antiquarian, and a diplomatist, this Ezekiel Spanheim was to attain to even greater celebrity than his father, and his varied career in different parts of Europe was not to close till 1710. At present he was only in his twenty-fifth year, and was living at Geneva, where he had been born, and whither he had returned from Leyden in 1651, to accept a kind of honorary Professorship that had been offered him, in compliment partly to his father's memory, partly to his own extraordinary promise. As one who had lived the first thirteen years of his age in Geneva, and the next nine in Leyden (1642-1651), and who was now back in Geneva, he had been amply and closely on the track of Morus; and how little he liked him will now appear:-- [Footnote 1: Bayle, both in Article _Spanheim_ and in Article _Morus_.] TO EZEKIEL SPANHEIM OF GENEVA. I know not by what accident it has happened that your letter has reached me little less than three months after date. There is clearly extreme need of a speedier conveyance of mine to you; for, though from day to day I was resolving to write it, I now perceive that, hindered by some constant occupations, I have put it off nearly another three months. I would not have you understand from this my tardiness in replying that my grateful sense of your kindness to me has cooled, but rather that the remembrance has sunk deeper from my longer and more frequent daily thinking of my duty to you in return. Late performance of duty has at least this excuse for itself, that there is a clearer confession of obligation to do a thing when it is done so long after than if it had been done immediately. You are not wrong, in the first place, in the opinion of me expressed in the beginning of your letter--to wit, that I am not likely to be surprised at being addressed by a foreigner; nor could you, indeed, have a more correct impression of me than precisely by thinking that I regard no good man in the character of a foreigner or a stranger. That you are such I am readily persuaded by your being the son of a most learned and most saintly father, also by your being well esteemed by good men, and also finally by the fact that you hate the bad. With which kind of cattle as I too happen to have a warfare, Calandrini has but acted with his usual courtesy, and in accordance with my own sentiment, in signifying to you that it would be very gratifying to me if you lent me your help against a common adversary. This you have most obligingly done in this very letter, part of which, with the author's name not mentioned, I have not hesitated, trusting in your regard for me, to insert by way of evidence in my forthcoming _Defensio_ [in reply to More's _Fides Publica_]. This book, as soon as it is published, I will direct to be sent to you, if there is any one to whose care I may rightly entrust it. Any letters you may intend for me, meanwhile, you will not, I think, be unsafe if you send under cover to Turretin of Geneva, now staying in London, whose brother in Geneva you know; through whom as this of mine will reach you most conveniently, so will yours reach me. For the rest I would assure you that you have won a high place in my esteem, and that I particularly wish to be loved by you yet more. Westminster: March 24, 1654-5.[1] [Footnote 1: Epist. Fam. 17.] In writing this letter Milton must have had brought back to his recollection his visit to Geneva fifteen years before (June 1639) on his way home from Italy. The venerable Diodati, the uncle of his friend Charles, was the person in Geneva of whom he had seen most, and who dwelt most in his memory; but the elder Spanheim had then been in the same city, and Morus too, and the present Ezekiel Spanheim, as a boy in his tenth year, and others, still alive, who had then known Morus, and had since that time had him in view. Milton had certainly not then himself seen Morus, though he must have heard of him; but it is possible he may have seen the elder Spanheim, and may now, in writing to Spanheim's son, have remembered the fact. In any case there were links of acquaintanceship still connecting Milton with Geneva and its gossip. The "Calandrini," for example, who is mentioned in Milton's letter, and who may be identified with a Genevese merchant named "Jean Louis Calandrin," heard of in Thurloe's correspondence, must in some way have been known to Milton personally, and interested in serving him.[1] It had been in in consequence of a suggestion of this Calandrini, "acting-with his usual courtesy," that young Spanheim had, in October 1654, when Morus's fragmentary _Fides Publica_ was just out or nearly so, addressed a polite letter to Milton, sending him some additional information about the Genevese portion of Morus's career. The letter had not readied Milton till the end of December or the beginning of January 1654-5; and for nearly three months after that he had left it unacknowledged. That he had been moved to acknowledge it at last was, doubtless, as his letter itself suggests, and as we shall see yet more precisely, because he had then nearly ready his Reply to the _Fides Publica_, and had used Spanheim's information there, only suppressing the name of his informant. But that Milton had already had no lack of private informants about Morus's career, whether in Geneva or in Holland, has appeared abundantly. The Hartlib-Durie-Haak-Oldenburg connexion about him in London was a perfect sponge for all kinds of gossip from, abroad. We hear now, however, of another person in particular who may have supplied Milton with his earlier information as to the Genevese part of Morus's life, A family long of note in Geneva had been that of the Turretins, originally from Italy, and indeed from Lucca, whence they had been driven, as the Diodatis had been, by their Protestantism, One of this family, Benedict Turretin, born in Geneva, had been a distinguished Theology Professor there, and at his death in 1631 had left at least two sons. One of these, Francis Turretin, born at Geneva in 1623, had, after the usual wanderings of Continental scholars in those days, just returned to Geneva (1653), and settled there in what may be called the family-business, i.e. the profession of Theology. In this he was to attain extraordinary celebrity, his _Institutio Theologiæ Elencticæ_ ranking to this day among Calvinistic Theologians as a master-work of its kind. Well, this Francis Turretin, rising into fame at Geneva, just as Ezekiel Spanheim was, and seeing Spanheim daily, had, it seems from Milton's letter, a brother in London, on intimate terms with Milton; and Milton's proposition to young Spanheim was that they should correspond in future through the two Turretins. Who would have thought to find the future author of the _Institutio Theologiæ Elencticæ_ used by Milton for postal purposes? Is it not clear too that the London Turretin must have been one of Milton's informants about Morus's reasons for leaving Geneva? Respectability everywhere, at our present date at least, seems adverse to Morus.[2] [Footnote 1: For mention of Jean Louis Calandrin, the Genevese merchant, see Letters between Pell and Thurloe in _Vaughan's Protectorate_ (I. 302, 308, 354). He died at Geneva, in Feb. 1655-6, about a year after this mention of him by Milton. It is possible he may have been a relative of a "Cæsar Calandrinus" mentioned by Wood as one of the many foreigners who had studied at Exeter College, Oxford, during the Rectorship of Dr. Prideaux (1612-1641), and who was afterwards "a Puritanical Theologist," intimate with Usher, a Rector in Essex, and finally minister of the parish of Peter le Poor in London, where he died in 1665, leaving a son named John. Wood speaks of him as a German (Wood, Ath. III. 269, and Fasti, I. 393-4); but the name is evidently Italian. Indeed I find that there had been an intermarriage in Italy between the Diodati family and a family of Calandrinis, bringing some of the Calandrinis also to Geneva about the year 1575. (Reprint, for private circulation, of a Paper on the Italian ancestry of Mr. William Diodate of New Haven, U.S., read before the New Haven Colony Historical Society, June 28, 1875, by Edward E. Salisbury, p. 13). By the kindness of Colonel Chester, whose genealogical researches are all-inclusive, I have a copy of the will of the above-named Cæsar Calandrini of St. Peter le Poor, London. It is dated Aug. 4, 1665, when he was "three score and ten," and mentions two sons, Lewis and John, two daughters living, one of them married to a Giles Archer, and grandchildren by these children, besides nephews and nieces of the names of Papillon and Burlamachi. The son "John" in this will proved it in October 1665, and cannot have been the Calandrini of Milton's letter; but that Calandrini may have been of the same connexion.] [Footnote 2: Bayle, Art. _Francois Turretin_.] Busy over his reply to the _Fides Publica_, Milton had stretched his dispensation from routine duty in his Secretaryship not only through November and December 1654 and January 1654-5, as was noted in last section, but as far as to April 1655 in the present section. Through these five months there is, so far as the records show, a total blank, at all events, in his official letter-writing. In April 1655, however, as if his reply to the _Fides Publica_ were then off his mind, and lying in the house in Petty France complete or nearly complete in manuscript, we do come upon two more of his Latin State-letters, as follows:-- (LII.) TO THE PRINCE OF TARENTE, _April_ 4, 1655[1]:--This Prince, one of the chiefs of the French nobility, but connected with Germany by marriage, was a Protestant by education, had been mixed up with the wars of the Fronde, and was altogether a very stirring man abroad. He had written to Cromwell invoking his interest in behalf of foreign, and especially of French, Protestantism. Cromwell expresses his satisfaction in having had such an address from so eminent a representative of the Reformed faith in a kingdom in which so many have lapsed from it, and declares that nothing would please him more than "to be able to promote the enlargement, the safety, or, what is most important, the peace, of the Reformed Church." Meanwhile he exhorts the Prince to be himself firm and faithful to his creed to the very last.--The Prince of Tarente, it may be mentioned, had interested himself much in the lawsuit between Morus and Salmasius. He had tried to act as mediator and induce Morus to withdraw his action--a condescension which Morus acknowledges, though he felt himself obliged, he says, to go on. [Footnote 1: No. 32 in Skinner Transcript (which gives the exact date); also in Printed Collection and in Phillips.] (LIII.) To ARCHDUKE LEOPOLD of AUSTRIA, GOVERNOR OF THE SPANISH NETHERLANDS (_undated_):--Sir Charles Harbord, an Englishman, has had certain goods and household stuff violently seized at Bruges by Sir Richard Grenville. The goods had originally been sent from England to Holland in 1643 by the then Earl of Suffolk, in pledge for a debt owing to Harbord; and Grenville's pretext was that he also was a creditor of the Earl, and had obtained a decree of the English Chancery in his favour. Now, by the English law, neither was the present Earl of Suffolk bound by that decree nor could the goods be distrained under it. The decision of the Court to that effect is herewith transmitted; and His Serenity is requested to cause Grenville to restore the goods, inasmuch as it is against the comity of nations that any one should be allowed an action in foreign jurisdiction which he would not be allowed in the country where the cause of the action first arose. "The justice of the case itself and the universal reputation of your Serenity for fair dealing have moved us to commend the matter to your attention; and, if at any time there shall be occasion to discuss the rights or convenience of your subjects with as, I promise that you shall find our diligence in the same not remiss, but at all times most ready."[1] [Footnote 1: Undated in Printed Collection and in Phillips; dated "Aug. 1658" in the Skinner Transcript, but surely by mistake. Such a letter can hardly have been sent to the Archduke after Oct. 1655, when the war with Spain broke out. I have inserted it at this point by conjecture only, and may be wrong.] In April 1655, when these two letters were written, Oliver was in the sixteenth month of his Protectorship. His first nine months of personal sovereignty without a Parliament, and his next four months and a half of unsatisfactory experience with his First Parliaments were left behind, and he had advanced two months and more into his period of compulsory Arbitrariness, when he had to govern, with the help of his Council only, by any means he could. Count all the Latin State-Letters registered by Milton himself as having been written by him for Cromwell during those first fifteen months and more of the Protectorate, and they number only nine (Nos. XLV.-XLVIII in Vol. IV. pp. 635-636, and Nos. XLIX.-LIII. in the present volume). These nine Letters, with the completion and publication of his _Defensio Secunda_, and now the preparation of a Reply to More's _Fides Publica_, and also perhaps occasional calls at Thurloe's office and occasional presences at interviews with ambassadors and envoys in Whitehall, were all he had been doing for fifteen months for his salary of £288 a year. The fact cannot have escaped notice. He had himself called attention to it, as if by anticipation, in that passage of his _Defensio Secunda_ in which he spoke of the kind indulgence of the State-authorities in retaining him honourably in full office, and not abridging his emoluments on account of his disability by blindness. The passage may have touched Cromwell and some of the Councillors, and there was doubtless a general feeling among them of the worth, beyond estimate in money, of Milton's name to the Commonwealth, and of his past acts of literary championship for her. Economy, however, is a virtue easily recommended to statesmen by any pinch of necessity, and it so chanced that at the very time we have now reached, April 1655, the Protector and his Council, being in money straits, were in a very economical mood (see ante p. 35). Here, accordingly, is what we find in the Council Order Books under date April 17, 1655. _Tuesday, April_ 17, 1655:--Present the Lord President Lawrence, Lord Lambert (styled so in the minute), Colonel Montague, Colonel Sydenham, Sir Charles Wolseley, Sir Gilbert Pickering, Major-General Skippon. "The Council resumed the debate upon the Report made from the Committee of the Council to whom it was referred to consider of the Establishment of the Council's Contingencies. "_Ordered:_-- "That the salary of £400 _per annum_ granted to MR. GUALTER FROST as Treasurer for the Council's Contingencies be reduced to £300 _per annum_, and be continued to be paid after that proportion till further order. "That the former yearly salary of MR. JOHN MILTON, of £288, &c., formerly charged on the Council's Contingencies, be reduced to £150 _per annum_, and paid to him during his life out of his Highness's Exchequer. "That the yearly salaries hereafter mentioned, being formerly paid out of the Council's Contingencies,--that is to say £45 12_s._ 6_d._ _per annum_ to Mr. Henry Giffard, Mr. Gualter Frost's assistant,--_per annum_ to Mr. John Hall,--_per annum_ to Mr. Marchamont Needham,--_per annum_ to Mr. George Vaux, the house-keeper at Whitehall,--_per annum_ for the rent of Sir Abraham Williams's house [for the entertainment of Ambassadors], and--_per annum_ to M. René Angler,--be for the future retrenched and taken away. "That some convenient rooms at Somerset House be set apart for the entertainment of Foreign Ambassadors upon their address to his Highness. "That it be referred to Mr. Secretary Thurloe to put that part of the Intelligence [from abroad] which is managed by M. René Augier into the common charge of Intelligence, and to order it for the future by M, Augier or otherwise, as he shall see most for the Commonwealth's service. * * * * * "That it be offered to his Highness as the advice of the Council that several warrants be issued under the great seal for authorizing and requiring the Commissioners of his Highness's Treasury to pay, by quarterly payments, at the receipt of his Highness's Exchequer, to the several officers, clerks, and other persons after-named, according to the proportions allowed them for their salary in respect of their several respective offices and employments during their continuance or till his Highness or the Council shall give other order: that is to say:-- "To John Thurloe, Esq., Secretary of State:--For his own office, after the proportion of £800 _per annum_; for the office of Mr. Philip Meadows, Secretary for the Latin Tongue, after the rate of £200 per annum; for the salaries of--clerks attending his [Thurloe's] office at 6_s._ 8_d._ _per diem_, a piece (which together amount to----); for the salaries of eleven messengers at 5_s._ _per diem_, apiece (which together amount to £1003 15_s._): amounting in the whole to ---- "To Mr. Henry Scobell and Mr. William Jessop, Clerks to the Council, or to either of them:--For their own offices, viz. Mr. Scobell £500 _per annum_, Mr. Jessop £500 _per annum_; for the salaries of--clerks attending their office at 6_s._ 8_d._ _per diem_ (which together amount to ----): amounting in the whole to ---- "To Mr, Edward Dendy, Serjeant at Arms attending the Council:--For his own office after the proportion of £365 _per annum_; for the salaries of his _ten_ deputies at 3_s._ 4_d._ _per diem_ a piece (which together amount to £608 6_s._ 8_d._); amounting in the whole to £973 6 8 "To Richard Scutt, Usher of the Council Chamber:--For himself and his assistants at 13_s._ _per diem_, (being £237 5_s_, _per annum_); for Thomas Bennett's salary, keeper of the back-door of the Council Chamber, at 4_s. per diem_ (being £73 _per annum_); for the salary of Robert Stebbin, fire-maker to the clerks, at 2_s. per diem_ (being £36 10_s. per annum_): amounting in the whole to £346 15 0 "The first payment of the said several and respective sums before-mentioned to commence from the 1st of April instant. "To Richard Nutt, master of his Highness's barge:--For his own office after £80 _per annum;_ for Thomas Washborne, his assistant, for his salary, after £20 _per annum;_ for the salaries of 25 watermen to attend his Highness's barge, at £4 _per annum_ to each (amounting together to £100 _per annum_): amounting in the whole to £200 _per ann._ "The same to commence from 25th March, 1655." Clearly the Council were in a mood of economy. Not only were certain salaries to be reduced, but a good many outlays were to be stopped altogether, including Needham's subsidy or pension for his journalistic services. But more appears from the document. In spite of the general tendency to retrenchment, the salaries of Scobell and Jessop, the two clerks of the Council, are to be raised from £365 a year to £500 a year. This alone would suggest that not retrenchment only, but an improvement also in the system of the Council's business, was intended. The document as a whole confirms that idea. It maps out the service of the Council more definitely than hitherto into departments. Thurloe, of course, is general head, styled now "Secretary of State"; but it will be observed that the department of Foreign Affairs, including the management of Intelligence from abroad, is spoken of as now wholly and especially his, and that Meadows, with the designation of "Secretary for the Latin Tongue," ranks distinctly under him in that department. Scobell and Jessop, as "Clerks to the Council," though under Thurloe too, are now important enough to be jointly at the head of a separate staff; the Bailiff or Constable department is separate from theirs, and under the charge of Mr. Sergeant-at-Arms Dendy; and minor divisions of service, nameable as Ushership and Barge-attendance, are under the charge of Messrs. Scutt and Nutt respectively. The payments of salaries are henceforward not to be vaguely through Mr. Gualter Frost, as Treasurer for the Council's Contingencies, but by warrants to the Treasury to pay regularly to the several heads the definite sums-total in their departments, their own salaries included. Milton's case was evidently treated as a peculiar one. It was certainly proposed that his allowance should be reduced from £288 18_s._ 6_d._ a year, which had hitherto been its rate, to £150 a year--i.e. by nearly one half. Most of us perhaps are disappointed by this, and would have preferred to hear that Milton's allowance had been doubled or tripled under the Protectorate,--made equal, say, to Thurloe's. Records must stand as they are, however, and must be construed coolly. Milton's £288 a year for _his_ lighter and more occasional duties had doubtless been all along in fair proportion to the elder Frost's £600 a year, or Thurloe's £800, for _their_ more vast and miscellaneous drudgery. Nor, if Milton had ceased to be able to perform the duties, and another salaried officer had been required in consequence, was there anything extraordinary, in a time of general revision of salaries, that the fact should come into consideration. The question was precisely as if now a high official under government, who had been in receipt of a salary of over £1000 a year, was struggling on in blindness after six years of service, and an extra officer at £700 a year had been for some time employed for his relief. In such a case, the official being a man of great public celebrity and having rendered extraordinary services in his post, would not superannuation on a pension or retiring-allowance be considered the proper course? But this was exactly the course proposed in Milton's case. The reduction from £288 to £150 a year was, it ought to be noted, only part of the proposition; for, whereas the £288 a year had been at the Council's pleasure, it was now proposed that the £150 a year should be for life. In short, what was proposed was the conversion of a terminable salary of £288 a year, payable out of the Council's contingencies, into a life-pension of £150 a year, payable out of the Protector's Exchequer: which was as if in a corresponding modern case a terminable salary of over £1000 a year were converted into a life-pension of between £500 and £600. On studying the document, I have no doubt that the intention was to relieve Milton from that moment from all duty whatsoever, putting an end to that anomalous _Latin Secretaryship Extraordinary_, into which his connexion with the Council had shaped itself since his blindness, and remitting him, as _Ex-Secretary_ Milton, a perfectly free and highly-honoured man, to pensioned leisure in his house in Petty France. For it is impossible that the Council could have intended to retain. Milton in any way in the working Secretaryship at a reduced salary of £150 a year while Meadows, his former assistant, had the title of "Secretary for the Latin Tongue," with a higher salary of £200 a year. Perhaps one may detect Thurloe's notions of official symmetry in the proposed change. Milton's _Latin Secretaryship Extraordinary_ or _Foreign Secretaryship Extraordinary_ may have begun to seem to Thurloe an excrescence upon his own general _Secretaryship of State_, and he may have desired that Milton should retire altogether, and leave the Latin Secretaryship complete to Meadows as his own special subordinate in the foreign department. The document, however, we have to add farther, though it purports to be an Order of Council, did not actually or fully take effect. I find, for example, that Needham's pension or subsidy of £100 a year, which is one of the outlays the document proposed to "retrench and take away," did not suffer a whit. He went on drawing his salary, sometimes quarterly and sometimes half-yearly, just as before, and precisely in the same form, viz. by warrant from President Lawrence and six others of the Council to Mr. Frost to pay Mr. Needham so much out of the Council's Contingencies. Thus on May 24, 1655, or five weeks after the date of the present Order, there was a warrant to Frost to pay Needham £50, "being for half a year's salary due unto him from the 15th of Nov. last to the 15th of this instant May"; and the subsequent series of warrants in Needham's favour is complete to the end of the Protectorate.[1] Again, Mr. George Vaux, whom our present order seems to discharge from his house-keepership of Whitehall, is found alive in that post and in receipt of his salary of £150 a year for it to as late as Oct. 1659.[2] There must, therefore, have been a reconsideration of the Order by the Council, or between the Council and the Protector, with modifications of the several proposals. The proposal to raise the salaries of Scobell and Jessop from £365 a year to £500 a year each must, indeed, have been made good,--for Scobell and Jessop's successor in the colleagueship to Scobell are found afterwards in receipt of £500 a year.[3] But, on the same evidence, we have to conclude that the reductions proposed in the cases of Mr. Gualter Frost and Milton were _not_ confirmed, or were confirmed only _partially_. Frost is found afterwards distinctly in receipt of £365 a year,[4] The actual reduction, in his case, therefore, was not from £400 to £300, as had been proposed, but only from £400 to £365, or back to what his salary had been formerly (Vol. IV. 575-578). Milton again is found at the end of the Protectorate in receipt of £200 a year, and not of £150 only, as had been proposed In the Order.[5] The inference must be, therefore, that there had been a reconsideration and modification of the Order in his case also, ratifying the proposal of a reduction, but diminishing considerably the proposed _amount_ of the reduction. One would like to know to what influence the modification was owing, and how far Cromwell himself may have interfered in the matter. On the whole, while one infers that the reconsideration of the Order generally may have been owing to direct remonstrances from those whom it affected injuriously, such as Frost, Vaux, and Needham, there is little difficulty in seeing what must have happened in Milton's particular. My belief is that he signified, or caused it to be signified, that he had no desire to retire on a life-pension, that it would be much more agreeable to him to continue in active employment for the State, that for certain kinds of such employment he found his blindness less and less a disqualification, that the arrangement as to salary might be as the Council pleased, but that his own suggestion would be that his salary should be reduced to £200, so that he and Mr. Meadows should henceforth be on an equality in that respect. Such, at all events, was the arrangement adopted; and we may now dismiss this whole incident in Milton's biography by saying that, though in April 1655 there was a proposal to superannuate him entirely on a life-pension of £150 a year, the proposal did not take effect, but he went on from that date, just as before, in the Latin Secretaryship Extraordinary, though at the reduced salary of £200 a year instead of his original £288. [Footnote 1: My notes from the Money Warrant Books of the Council.] [Footnote 2: Money Warrants of Feb. 15, 1658-9 and Oct. 25, 1659.] [Footnote 3: Money Warrant of Oct. 25, 1659.] [Footnote 4: Ibid.] [Footnote 5: Ibid.] As if to prove that the arrangement was a perfectly suitable one, and that Milton's retirement into ex-Secretaryship would have been a loss, there came from him, immediately after the arrangement had been made, that burst of Latin State-letters which is now the most famous of his official performances for Cromwell. It was in the second week of May, 1655, that the news of the Massacre of the Piedmontese Protestants reached England; and from the 17th of that month, onwards for weeks and weeks, the attention of the Protector and the Council was all but engrossed, as we have seen (ante pp. 38-44), by that dreadful topic. Here are a few of the first Minutes of Council relating to it:-- _Thursday, May_ 17, 1655:--Present: HIS HIGHNESS THE LORD PROTECTOR, Lord President Lawrence, the Earl of Mulgrave, Colonel Fiennes, Lord Lambert, Mr. Rous, Major-General Skippon, Lord Viscount Lisle, Sir Gilbert Pickering, Colonel Montague, Colonel Jones, General Desborough, Colonel Sydenham, Sir Charles Wolseley, Mr. Strickland. _Ordered_, "That it be referred to the Earl of Mulgrave, Sir Gilbert Pickering, Mr. Rous, and Colonel Jones, or any--of them to consider of the Petition [a Petition from London ministers and others], and also of the papers of intelligence already come touching the Protestants under the Duke of Savoy, and such other intelligence as shall come to Mr. Secretary Thurloe, and to offer to the Council what they shall think fit, as well _touching writing of letters_, collections, or otherwise, in order to their relief ... That it be referred to Colonel Fiennes, Mr. Strickland, Sir Gilbert Pickering, and Mr. Secretary Thurloe, to prepare the draft of a letter to the French King upon this day's debate touching the Protestants suffering in the Dukedom of Savoy, and to bring in the same to-morrow morning." _Friday, May_ 18:--At a second, or afternoon sitting (_present_: Lord President Lawrence, Lord Lambert, General Desborough, the Earl of Mulgrave, Colonel Fiennes, Colonel Jones, Colonel Sydenham, Colonel Montague), "Colonel Fiennes reports from the Committee of the Council to whom the same was referred the draft of a Letter to be sent from his Highness to the King of France concerning the Protestants in the Dukedom of Savoy; which, after some amendments, was approved and ordered to be offered to his Highness as the advice of the Council." _Tuesday, May_ 22:--_Present_: Lord President Lawrence, Colonel Sydenham, Mr. Rous, Colonel Montague, Colonel Jones, General Desborough, Mr. Strickland, Colonel Fiennes, Lord Viscount Lisle, Sir Gilbert Pickering, Lord Lambert. "The Latin draft of a Letter to the Duke of Savoy in behalf of the Protestants in his Territory was this day read. _Ordered_, That it be offered to his Highness as the advice of the Council that his Highness will please to sign the said Letter and cause it to be sent to the said Duke." _Wednesday, May_ 23:--"Colonel Fiennes reports from the Committee of the Council the draft of two letters in reference to the sufferings of the Protestants in the territories of the Duke of Savoy, the one to the States-General of the United Provinces, the other to the Cantons of the Swisses professing the Protestant Religion; which were read, and, after several amendments, agreed. _Ordered_, That it be offered to his Highness the Lord Protector as the advice of the Council that he will please to send the said letters in his Highness's name to the said States-General and the Cantons respectively." Though Milton's name is not mentioned in these minutes, it was he, and no other, that penned, or at least turned into Latin, for the Committee, and so for the Council and the Protector, the particular letters minuted, and indeed all the other documents required by the occasion. The following is a list of them:-- (LIV.) TO THE DUKE OF SAVOY, _May_ 25, 1655:[1]--This Letter may be translated entire. It is superscribed "OLIVER, Protector of the Commonwealth of England, &c., to the Most Serene Prince, EMANUEL, Duke of Savoy, Prince of Piedmont, Greeting "; and it is worded as follows:--"Most Serene Prince,--Letters have reached us from Geneva, and also from the Dauphinate and many other places bordering upon your dominion, by which we are informed that the subjects of your Royal Highness professing the Reformed Religion were recently commanded by your edict and authority, within three days after the promulgation of the said edict, to depart from their habitations and properties under pain of death and forfeiture of all their estates, unless they should give security that, abandoning their own religion, they would within twenty days embrace the Roman Catholic one, and that, though they applied as suppliants to your Royal Highness, begging that the edict might be revoked, and that they might be taken into their ancient favour and restored to the liberty granted them by your Most Serene ancestors, yet part of your army attacked them, butchered many most cruelly, threw others into chains, and drove the rest into the deserts and snow-covered mountains, where some hundreds of families are reduced to such extremities that it is to be feared that all will soon perish miserably by cold and hunger. When such news was brought us, we could not possibly, in hearing of so great a calamity to that sorely afflicted people, but be moved with extreme grief and compassion. But, confessing ourselves bound up with them not by common humanity only, but also by community of Religion, and so by an altogether brotherly relationship, we have thought that we should not be discharging sufficiently either our duty to God, or the obligations of brotherly love and the profession of the same religion, if we were merely affected with feelings of grief over this disaster and misery of our brethren, and did not exert ourselves to the very utmost of our strength and ability for their rescue from so many unexpected misfortunes. Wherefore the more we most earnestly beseech and adjure your Royal Highness that you will bethink yourself again of the maxims of your Most Serene ancestors and of the liberty granted and confirmed by them time after time to their Vaudois subjects. In granting and confirming which, as they performed what in itself was doubtless most agreeable to God, who has pleased to reserve the inviolable jurisdiction and power over Conscience for Himself alone, so there is no doubt either that they had a due regard for their subjects, whom they found hardy and faithful in war and obedient always in peace. And, as your Royal Serenity most laudably treads in the footsteps of your forefathers in all their other kindly and glorious actions, so it is our prayer to you again and again not to depart from them in this matter either, but to repeal this edict, and any other measure that may have been passed for the molestation of your subjects of the Reformed Religion, restoring them to their habitations and goods, ratifying the rights and liberty anciently granted them, and ordering their losses to be repaired and an end to be put to their troubles. If your Royal Highness shall do this, you will have done a deed most acceptable to God, you will have raised up and comforted those miserable and distressed sufferers, and you will have highly obliged all your neighbours that profess the Reformed Religion,--ourselves most of all, who shall then regard your kindness and clemency to those poor people as the fruit of our solicitation. Which will moreover tie us to the performance of all good offices in return, and lay the firmest foundations not only for the establishment but even for the increase of the relationship and friendship between this Commonwealth and your Dominion. Nor do we less promise this to ourselves from your justice and moderation. We beg Almighty God to bend your mind and thoughts in this direction, and we heartily pray for you and for your people peace and truth and prosperity in all your affairs."[2]--The bearer of this letter to the Duke, as we know, was Mr. Samuel Morland, who had been selected as the Protector's special Commissioner for the purpose. He left London on the 26th of May. He took with him, also, a copy of the Latin speech which he was to deliver to the Duke in presenting the letter. As there is much probability that this Latin speech is also in part of Milton's composition, and as it is in even a bolder and more indignant strain than the letter, it may be well to translate it too:--"Your Serene and Royal Highnesses [the Duke and his mother both addressed?],--The Most Serene Lord, Oliver, Protector of the Commonwealth of England, Scotland, and Ireland, has sent me to your Royal Highnesses; whom he salutes very heartily, and to whom, with a very high affection and peculiar regard for your Serenities, he wishes a long life and reign, and a prosperous issue of all your affairs, amid the applauses and respect of your people. And this is due to you, whether in consideration of the excellent character and royal descent of your Highnesses, and the great expectation of the world from so many eminent good qualities, or in recollection, after reference to records, of the ancient friendship of our Kings with the Royal house of Savoy. Though I am, I confess, but a young man, and not very ripe in experience of affairs, yet it has pleased my Most Serene and Gracious Master to send me, as one much devoted to your Royal Highnesses and ardently attached to all bearing the Italian name, on what is really a great mission.--The ancient legend is that the son of Croesus was completely dumb from his birth. When, however, he saw a soldier aiming a wound at his father, straightway he had the use of his tongue. No other is my predicament, feeling as I do my tongue loosened by those very recent and bloody wounds of Mother Church. A great mission surely that is to be called wherein all the safety and hope of many poor people is comprehended--their sole hope lying in the chance that they shall be able, by all their loyalty, obedience, and most humble prayers, to mollify and appease the minds of your Royal Highnesses, now irritated against them. In behalf of these poor people, whose cause pity itself may seem to make its own, the Most Serene Protector of England also comes as an intercessor, and most earnestly requests and beseeches your Royal Highnesses to deign to extend your mercy to these your very poor and most outcast subjects--those, I mean, who, inhabiting the roots of the Alps and certain valleys in your dominion, have professed nominally the Religion of the Protestants. For he has heard (what no one can say has been done by the will of your Royal Highnesses) that those wretched creatures have been partly killed by your forces, partly expelled by violence and driven from their home and country, so that they are now wandering, with their wives and children, houseless, roofless, poor, and destitute of all resource, through rugged and inhospitable spots and over snow-covered mountains. And, through the days of this transaction, if only the things are true that fame at present reports everywhere (would that Fame were proved a liar!), what was not dared and attempted against them? Houses smoking everywhere, torn limbs, the ground bloody! Ay, and virgins, ravished and hideously abused, breathed their last miserably; and old men and persons labouring under illness were committed to the flames; and some infants were dashed against the rocks, and the brains of others were cooked and eaten. Atrocity horrible and before unheard of, savagery such that, good God, were all the Neros of all times and ages to come to life again, what a shame they would feel at having contrived nothing equally inhuman! Verily, verily, Angels are horrorstruck, men are amazed; heaven itself seems to be astounded by these cries, and the earth itself to blush with the shed blood of so many innocent men. Do not, great God, do not seek the revenge due to this iniquity. May thy blood, Christ, wash away this stain!--But it is not for me to relate these things in order as they happened, or to dwell longer upon them; and what my Most Serene Master requests from your Royal Highnesses you will understand better from his own Letter. Which letter I am ordered to deliver to your Royal Highnesses with all observance and due respect; and, should your Royal Highnesses, as we greatly hope, grant a favourable and speedy answer, you will both do an act most gratifying to the Lord Protector, who has taken this business deeply to heart, and to the whole Commonwealth of England, and also restore, by an exercise of mercy very worthy of your Royal Highnesses, life, safety, spirit, country, and estates to many thousands of most afflicted people who depend on your pleasure; and me you will send back to my native country as the happy messenger of your conspicuous clemency, with great joy and report of your exalted virtues, the deeply obliged servant of your Royal Highnesses for evermore."[3] [Footnote 1: So dated in the official copy preserved in the Record Office (Hamilton's _Milton Papers_, p. 15) and in the copy actually delivered to the Duke (Morland, pp. 572-574)--the phrase in both being "_Dabantur ex aula nostra Westmonasterii_, 25 _Maii_, _anno_ 1654." In the Skinner Transcript, however, the dating is "_Westmonsterio, May_ 10, 1655;" which again is changed into "_Alba Aula, May_ 1655," i.e. "Whitehall, May 1655" (month only given) in the Printed Collections and in Phillips.] [Footnote 2: There are one or two slight verbal differences between Milton's original draft, here translated, and the official copy as actually delivered to the Duke, and as printed by Morland. Thus, in the first sentence, instead of _"Redditæ sunt nobis e Geneva, necnon ex Delphinatu aliisque multis ex locis ditioni vestræ finitimis, literæ,"_ the official copy has simply _"Redditæ sunt nobis multis ex locis ditioni vestæ finitimis literæ."_] [Footnote 3: I have translated the speech from the official Latin draft, as preserved in the Record Office, and as printed by Mr. Hamilton, _Milton Papers_, pp. 18-20. Mr. Hamilton has no doubt that the composition is Milton's. He founds his opinion partly on the style, and partly on the fact that the draft is "written in the same hand as the other official copies of Milton's letters." I agree with Mr. Hamilton, though the matter does not seem to be absolutely beyond controversy. The style is generally like Milton's; there are phrases repeated from Milton's Latin elsewhere--e.g. "_montesque nivibus coopertos_," repeated from the Letter to the Duke of Savoy, and "_totius nominis Italici studiosissimum_" which almost repeats the "_toiius Græci nominis ... cultor_" of the second Letter to Philaras; and there are also phrases identical with some used in Milton's other letters on the subject of the Massacre which have yet to be noted in this list. On the other hand, there are passages and expressions in the Speech that strike one as hardly Miltonic, while the purport in some places would favour the idea that Morland wrote the speech himself. What seems to negative this idea most strongly, and therefore to point most distinctly to Milton as the author, is the existence of the MS. official copy in the Record Office. The speech, that copy proves, must have been prepared before Morland left London, and must have been taken with him. For that it cannot have been merely deposited in the State Paper Office afterwards, as a record of what he did say at Turin, is proved by the fact that his actual speech at Turin, as printed by himself in his book, with an English Translation (pp. 558-561), though in substance identical with the draft-copy, differs in some particulars. In the actual speech the plural, "Your Royal Highnesses," is changed into the singular, "Your Royal Highness," for address to the Duke only, though the Duchess-mother was present; the parenthetical comparison of Morland to the Son of Croesus is entirely omitted; and there are other verbal changes, apparently suggested by Morland's closer information as he approached Turin, or by his sense of fitness at the moment--in illustration of which the reader may compare the very strong passage about "the Neros of all times and ages" as we have just rendered it from the draft with the same passage as we have previously rendered it from Morland's actual speech (ante p. 42). But, if Morland took the speech with him, unless he wrote it himself and had it approved before his departure, who so likely to have furnished it as Milton? All in all, that is the most probable conclusion; and anything un-Miltonic in the speech may be accounted for by supposing that, though the Latin was Milton's, the substance was not entirely his. Morland, though he does not say in his book that the speech was furnished him, does not positively claim it as his own. He, at all events, used the liberty of deviating from the original draft.] (LV.) TO THE EVANGELICAL SWISS CANTONS, _May 25, 1655_[1]:--His Highness in this letter recapitulates the facts at some length, and expresses his conviction that the Cantons, so much nearer the scene of the horrors, are already duly roused. He informs them that he has written to the Duke of Savoy and hopes the intercession may have effect; but adds, "If, however, he should determine otherwise, we are prepared to exchange counsels with you on the subject of the means by which we may be able most effectively to relieve, re-establish, and save from certain and undeserved ruin, an innocent people oppressed and tormented by so many injuries, they being also our dearest brothers in Christ."[2] [Footnote 1: So dated in the official copy as dispatched, and as printed in Morland's book, pp. 581-562; but draft dated "_Westmonasterio, May 19, 1655_" in the Skinner Transcript, the Printed Collection, and Phillips.] [Footnote 2: One of the phrases in this letter about the poor Piedmontese Protestants is "_nunc sine tare, sine teoto, ... per monies desertos atque nives, cum conjugibus ac liberis, miserrime vagantur_." The phrase occurs almost verbatim in Morland's speech to the Duke of Savoy--"_sine lare, sine tecto ... cum suis conjugibus ac liberis vagari_."] (LVI.) TO CHARLES GUSTAVUS, KING OF SWEDEN, _May_ 25, 1655:--To the same effect as the last, _mutatis mutandis_. What sovereign can be more ready to stir in such a cause than his Swedish majesty, the successor of those who have been champions of the Protestantism of Europe? Gladly will the Protector form a league with him and with other powers to do whatever may be necessary. (LVII.) TO THE KING OF DENMARK, May 25, 1655:[1]--An appeal in the same strain to his Danish Majesty: phraseology varied a little, But matter the same. [Footnote 1: This and the last both so dated in official copy as printed in Morland's book, pp. 554-557; dated only "May 1655" in Skinner Transcript, Printed Collection, and Phillips.] (LVIII.) TO LOUIS XIV., KING OF FRANCE, May 25, 1655:[1]--The story recapitulated for the benefit of his French Majesty, with the addition that it is reported that some troops of his Majesty had assisted the Piedmontese soldiery in the attack on the Vaudois. This the Protector can hardly believe: it would be so much against that policy of Toleration which the Kings of France have found essential for the peace of their own dominions. The Protector cannot doubt, at all events, that his Majesty will use his powerful influence with the Duke of Savoy to induce him at once, as far as may be possible, to repair the outrageous wrong already done. [Footnote 1: This Letter is omitted in the Printed Collection and in Phillips; but it is given in the Skinner Transcript (No. 38 there), and Mr. Hamilton has printed it in his Milton Papers (p. 2). It had already been printed in Morland's book (pp. 564-565).] (LIX.) TO THE MOST EMINENT LORD, CARDINAL MAZARIN, _May_ 25, 1625:[1]--Not content with writing to Louis XIV., Cromwell addressed also the great French Minister. After mentioning the dreadful occasion, the letter proceeds--"There is clearly nothing which has obtained for the French nation greater esteem with all their neighbours professing the Reformed Religion than the liberty and privileges permitted and granted to Protestants by edicts and public acts. It is for this reason chiefly, though for others as well, that this Commonwealth has sought for the friendship and alliance of the French to a greater degree than before. For the settlement of this there have now for a good while been dealings here with the King's Ambassador, and his Treaty is now almost brought to a conclusion. Moreover, the singular benignity and moderation of your Eminence, always manifest hitherto in the most important transactions of the Kingdom relating to the French Protestants, causes me to hope much from your own prudence and magnanimity." [Footnote 1: Utterly undated in Printed Collection and in Phillips, and quite misplaced in both; properly dated "May 25, 1655" in Skinner Transcript.] (LX.) TO THE STATES-GENERAL OF THE UNITED PROVINCES, _May_ 25, 1655:[1]--To the same effect as the letters to the Swiss Cantons and the Kings of Sweden and Denmark, but with emphatic expression of his Highness's peculiar confidence In the Dutch Republic in such a crisis. He offers in the close to act in concert with the States-General and other Protestant powers for any interference that may be necessary. [Footnote 1: So dated in official copy, as printed in Morland's book, pp. 558-560; but undated in Printed Collection and in Phillips, and dated "_West., Junii_--1655" in Skinner Transcript (No. 41 there). This last is a mistake; for Thurloe speaks of the letter as already written May 25 (Thurloe to Pell, _Vaughan's Protectorate_, I. 185). The official copy, as given in Morland, differs somewhat from Milton's draft. "_Ego_" for Cromwell, in one sentence, is changed into "_Nos;_" and the closing words of the draft, "_et is demum, sentiet orthodoxnon injurias atque miserias tam graves non posse nos negligere_" are omitted in the official copy, possibly as too strong. These may be among the amendments made in Council, May 23.] (LXI.) TO THE PRINCE OF TRANSYLVANIA, _May_, 1655:[1]--Transylvania, now included in the Austrian Empire, was then an independent Principality of Eastern Europe, in precarious and variable relations with Austria, Poland, Russia, and the Ottoman Empire. The population, a mixture of Wallachs, Magyars. Germans, and Slavs, was largely Protestant; and the present Prince, George Ragotzki, was an energetic supporter of the Protestant interest in that part of Europe, and a man generally of much political and military activity. He had written, it appears, to Cromwell on the 16th of November, 1654, and had sent an Envoy to England with the letter. It had expressed his earnest desire for friendship and alliance with the Protector, and for co-operation with him in the defence of the Reformed Religion. Cromwell now acknowledges the letter and embassy, with high compliments to the Prince personally, of whose merits and labours there had been so much fame. This leads him at once to the Piedmontese business. Is not that an opportunity for the co-operation his Serenity had mentioned? At any rate, it behoves all Protestant princes to be on the alert; for who knows how far the Duke of Savoy's example may spread? [Footnote 1: Dated so in Skinner Transcript, Printed Collection, and Phillips--with the addition "Westminster" in the first, and "Whitehall" in the two last: no copy given in Morland's book.] (LXII.) TO THE CITY OF GENEVA, _June_ 8, 1655:--This letter announces the collection in progress in England for the relief of the Piedmontese Protestants. It will take some time to complete the collection; but meanwhile the first instalment of £2000 [Cromwell's personal contribution] is remitted for immediate use. His Highness is quite sure that the City authorities of Geneva will cheerfully take charge of the money, and see it distributed among those most in need. A postscript bids the Genevese expect £1500 of the sum through Gerard Hensch of Paris, and the remaining £500 through Mr. Stoupe, a well known travelling agent of Cromwell and Thurloe. (LXIII.) TO THE KING OF FRANCE, _July_ 29, 1655:--The Protector here acknowledges an answer received to his previous letter of May 25. [The answer had been delivered to Morland early in June, when he was on his way through Paris, and transmitted by him to the Protector. A translation of it is given in Morland's book, pp. 566-567.] He is glad to be confirmed in his belief that the French officers who lent their troops to assist the Piedmontese soldiery in that bloody business did so without his Majesty's order and against his will--glad also to learn that these officers have been rebuked, and that his Majesty has, of his own accord, remonstrated with the Duke of Savoy, and advised him to stop his persecution of the Vaudois. As no effect has yet been produced however, [Morland has by this time delivered his speech at Turin, and reported the dubious answer given by the Duke of Savoy: ante pp. 42-43], the Protector is now despatching a special envoy [i.e. Mr. George Downing] to Turin, to make farther remonstrances. This envoy will pass through Paris, and his mission will have the greater chance of success if his Majesty will take the opportunity of again impressing his views upon the Duke. By so doing, by punishing those French officers who employed his Majesty's troops so disgracefully, and by sheltering such of the poor Vaudois as may have sought refuge in France, his Majesty will earn the respect of other Powers, and will strengthen the loyalty of his own Protestant subjects. (LXIV.) To CARDINAL MAZARIN, _July_ 29, 1655:--This is a special note, accompanying the foregoing letter, and introducing and recommending Mr. Downing to his Eminence. Besides these official documents for Cromwell on the Piedmontese business, there came from Milton his memorable Sonnet on the same, expressing his own feelings, and Cromwell's too, with less restraint. It may have been in private circulation at the Protector's Court at the date of the last two of the ten letters: ON THE LATE MASSACRE IN PIEDMONT. Avenge, O Lord, thy slaughtered saints, whose bones Lie scattered on the Alpine mountains cold; Even them who kept thy truth so pure of old, When all our fathers worshipped stocks and stones, Forget not: in thy book record their groans Who were thy sheep, and in their ancient fold Slain by the bloody Piedmontese, that rolled Mother with infant down the rocks. Their moans The vales redoubled to the hills, and they To heaven. Their martyred blood and ashes sow O'er all the Italian fields, where still doth sway The triple Tyrant; that from these may grow A hundredfold, who, having learnt thy way, Early may fly the Babylonian woe.[1] [Footnote 1: If Morland's speech at Turin was of Milton's composition, as we have found probable, the contrast between one phrase in that speech and the opening of this Sonnet is curious. "Do not, great God, do not seek the revenge due to this iniquity," says the Speech; "Avenge, O Lord, thy slaughtered saints," says the Sonnet.] From the Piedmontese Massacre we have now to revert to Morus. His _Fides Publica_, in reply to Milton's _Defensio Secunda_, had been published in an incomplete state, as we have seen, by Ulac at the Hague in August or September 1654; and Milton had a rejoinder to this publication ready or nearly ready, as we have also seen, by the end of March 1655. The reason why this Rejoinder had not already appeared has now to be stated. One of Morus's reasons for hurrying into France so unexpectedly, and leaving his unfinished book in Ulac's hands, seems to have been the chance of a professorship or pastorship there that would enable him to quit Holland permanently, and settle at length in his own country. "Some speak of calling Morus, against whom Mr. Milton writes so sharply, to be Professor of Divinity at Nismes; but most men say it will ruin that church," is a piece of Parisian news sent by Pell to Thurloe in a letter from Zurich dated Oct. 28, 1654;[1] and, with that prospect, or some other, Morus seems to have remained in France for some time after that date. When copies of his incomplete _Fides Publica_ reached him there, he may not have thanked Ulac for issuing the book in such a state without leave given. All the more, however, he must have felt himself obliged to complete the book. Accordingly he did, from France, forward the rest of the MS. to Ulac, with the result of the appearance at last from Ulac's press of a supplementary volume with this title: "_Alexandri Mori, Ecclesiastæ et Sacrarum Litterum Professoris, Supplementum Fidei Publicæ contra calumnias Joannis Miltoni. Hagae-Comitum, Typis Adriani Ulacq, 1655._" ("Supplement to the Public Testimony of Alexander Morus, Churchman and Professor of Sacred Literature, in reply to the Calumnies of John Milton. Hague: Printed by Adrian Ulac, 1655.") Ulac prefixes, under the heading "_The Printer to the Reader_," a brief explanatory Preface. "You have here, good Reader," he says, "the missing remainder of the edition of a Treatise which we lately printed and published under the title _Aleaxandri Mori Fides Publica contra calumnias Joannis Miltoni_. This remainder that Reverend gentleman has sent me from France. Of the whole matter judge as may seem fair and just to you. Let it suffice for me to have satisfied your curiosity. Farewell." It must have been this _Supplementum_ of Morus, reaching London perhaps in April 1655, or perhaps during the first busy correspondence about the Piedmontese massacre, that delayed the appearance of Milton's already written Rejoinder to the imperfect _Fides Publica_. He would notice this "Supplement" as well as the volume already published, and so have done with Morus altogether. [Footnote 1: Vaughan's _Protectorate_, I. 73; where "Mr. Miton" appears as "Mr. Hulton."] Morus's _Supplementum_ consists of 105 pages, added to the original _Fides Publica_, but numbered onwards from the last page there, so as to admit of the binding of the two volumes into one volume consecutively paged, though with two title-pages, differently dated. The matter also proceeds continuously from the point at which the _Fides Publica_, broke off. Referring to the testimony borne to his character in the venerable Diodati's Letter from Geneva to Salmasius, dated May 9, 1648, and connecting it with Milton's mention of his personal acquaintance with Diodati formed in his visit to Geneva in 1639, Morus addresses Milton thus: "This is that John Diodati upon whom you cast no small stain by your praise, and who truly, if he were alive, would prefer to be in the number of those who are vituperated by you. Would he _were_ alive! How he would beat back your pride, not indeed with other pride, but with the gravest smile of contempt! How he would despise in his great mind your thoughts, sayings, acts, all in one! How he would anticipate your fine satire, and, moved with holy loathing, spit upon it! '_With him_,' you say, '_I had daily society at Geneva_.' But what did you learn from him? What of desirable contagion did you carry away from his acquaintance? Often have we heard him enumerating those friends he had in your country whom he commended on the score of either learning or goodness. Of _you_ we never heard a syllable from him." Then, after telling of his affectionate parting with Diodati at Geneva, when both, were in tears and the old man blessed him, he proceeds to quote other Testimonials, either in French or in Latin. Four more are still from former Swiss friends:--viz. an extract from another letter of Diodati, addressed to M. L'Empereur; a letter from M. Sartoris to Salmasius, dated Geneva, April 5, 1648; a testimonial from the lawyer Gothofridius, dated Geneva, May 24, 1648; and a subsequent letter from the same, dated Basel, April 23, 1651. All are very complimentary. Passing then to his life in Holland after leaving Switzerland, Morus continues the series of his testimonials. We have first, in French or Latin, or both, a letter from the Church at Middleburg to the Church at Geneva, dated Nov. 2, 1649, an extract from a letter of the Synod of the Walloon Churches of the United Provinces to the Pastors and Professors of Geneva, dated May 6, 1650, and a testimonial from the Church of Middleburg, on the occasion of sending M. Morus as deputy to the said Synod, dated April 19, 1650. More documents of the same kind follow, chiefly for the purpose of disproving the assertion that M. Morus had been condemned and ejected by the Middleburg Church. They include an extract from the Acts of the Consistory of the Walloon Church of Middleburg, dated July 10, 1652, a testimonial from the Middleburg Church of the same date, and an extract from the Articles of the Synod of the Walloon Churches held at Groede, Aug. 21-23, 1652. Having thus brought himself, with ample testimonials of character, to the date of his removal from the Middleburg Church to the Professorship in Amsterdam, he takes up more expressly the _Accusatio de Bontid_ or Bontia scandal. He gives what he calls the true and exact version of that story, with those details about Madame de Saumaise and her quarrel with him on Bontia's account which have already appeared in our narrative. He lays stress on the fact that it was himself that had instituted the law-process, and persevered in it to the end; and he dwells at some length on the successful issue of the case both in the Walloon Synod and in the Supreme Court of Holland. He has evidence, he says, that Salmasius, to his dying day, spoke in high terms of him, and admitted that Madame de Saumaise was in the wrong. "This statement has been made," he says, "not solely in reply to your insolence, but also out of regard for the weakness and ignorance of those at a distance who have imbibed the venom of the calumny and heard of the spiteful revenge to which I was subject, but not of the unusual sequel of its judicial discomfiture. All of whom, but especially my friends and countrymen, amid whom there has happened to me the same that happened to Basil among _his_ neighbours, I request and beseech by all that is sacred not rashly to credit mere report, much less the letters which my adversaries have sent hither and thither through all nations, especially after they perceived that they were driven from all their defences at home, judging that they would more easily invest their lie with belief and authority in distant parts. Fair critics, I doubt not, will at least suspend their judgment, and not incline to either side, until there shall have reached them a just narrative of the facts, truly and freely written by a friend, the publication of which has hitherto been kept back at my desire." Three additional testimonials are then appended to show that his reputation had not suffered in Amsterdam on account of the Saumaise-Bontia scandal, and especially that the rumour that he had been suspended from ministerial functions there was utterly untrue. These Amsterdam testimonials, as being the latest in date, and the most important in Morus's favour, may be given in abstract:-- _From the Magistrates of Amsterdam, July 11, 1654_:--"Whereas the Reverend and very learned Mr. Alexander Morus, Professor of Sacred History in our illustrious School, has complained to us that one John Milton, in a lately published book, has attacked his reputation with atrocious calumnies, and has added moreover that the Magistrates of Amsterdam have interdicted him the pulpit, and that only his Professorship of Greek remains,... We, &c., testify." What they testify is that, since Morus had come to Amsterdam, "not only had he done nothing which could afford ground for such calumnies, or was unworthy of a Christian and Theologian," but he had also discharged the duties of his Professorship with extraordinary learning, eloquence and acceptance. So far, therefore, were the Magistrates from censuring M. Morus that, on the contrary, they were ready still, on any occasion, to afford him all the protection and show him all the good will in their power. The certificate is sealed with the City seal, and signed by "N. Nicolai," the City clerk. _From the Amsterdam Church (about same date)_:--Three Pastors of this Church--Gothofrid Hotton, Henry Blanche-Tete, and Nicolas de la Bassecour--certify, "in the name of the whole convocation of the Gallo-Belgie Church of Amsterdam," that Morus discharges his Professorship with high credit; also "that, as regards his life and conversation, they are so far from knowing or acknowledging him to be guilty of those things of which he is accused by one Milton, an Englishman, in his lately published book, that, on the contrary, they have frequently requested sermons from him, and he has delivered such in the church, excellent in quality and perfectly orthodox,--which could not have occurred if anything of the alleged kind had been known to his brethren (_quod heud factum fuisset si hujusmodi quioquam nobis innotuisset_)." _From the Curators of the Amsterdam School, July 29, 1654_:--To the same effect, with the story of the circumstances of the appointment of Morus to the Professorship. They had been very anxious to get him, and he had justified their choice. "We think the calumnies with which he is undeservedly loaded arise from nothing else than the ill-will which is the inseparable accompaniment of especially distinguished virtue." Signed, for the Curators, by "C. de Graef" and "Simon van Hoorne." After asking Milton how he can face these flat contradictions of his charges, not from mere individuals, but from important public bodies, and saying that "one favourable nod from any one of the persons concerned would be worth more than the vociferations of a thousand Miltons to all eternity," Morus corrects Milton's mistake as to the nature of his Professorship. It is not a Professorship of Greek, but of Sacred History, involving Greek only in so far as one might refer in one's lectures to Josephus or the Greek Fathers. But he _had_ been a Professor of Greek--in Geneva, to wit, when little over twenty years of age. Nor, in spite of all Milton's facetiousness on the subject of Greek, and his puns on _Morus_ in Greek, was he ashamed of the fact. "For all learning whatever is Greek, so that whoever despises Greek Literature, or professors of the same, must necessarily be a sciolist." And here he detects the reason of Milton's incessant onslaughts on Salmasius. Milton was evidently most ambitious of the fame of scholarship, as appeared from his anticipations of immortality in his Latin poems; and, though he might be a fair Latinist--not immaculate in Latin either, as he might hear some time or other from Salmasius himself, though that was a secret yet--he knew that he could never snatch away from Salmasius the palm of the highest, i.e. of Greek, scholarship. Morus does not claim for himself the title of a perfect classic; he is content with his present position and its duties. Admirable lessons in life are to be obtained from the study of Church History. Of these not the least is the verification of the words in the Gospel, "Woe unto you when all men shall speak well of you." What calumnies had been borne by Jerome, Nazianzen, Chrysostom, Athanasius, and others of the best of men! With such examples before one, why should an insignificant person, like the writer, conscious too of many faults and weaknesses, take calumny too much to heart? This pathetic strain, attained towards the close of the book, is maintained most skilfully in the peroration. "But, if credit enough is not given to my own solemn affirmation, nor to this Public Testimony, Thee, Lord God, I make finally my witness, who explorest the inmost recesses of the spirit, who triest the reins, and knowest the secret motives of the breast, a Searcher of hearts to whom, as if by thorough dissection, all things are bare. Thee, God, Thee I call as my witness, who shalt one day be my Judge and the Judge of all, whether it is not the case that men see in this heart of mine what Thou seest not. Would that Thou didst not also see in the same heart what they do not see! But ah me! I am far baser in reality than they feign. Suppliantly I adore the will of Thy Providence that permits me to be falsely accused among men on account of so many hidden faults of which I am truly guilty in Thy sight. Thou, Lord, saidst to Shimei, 'Curse David.' Glory be to Thy name that hast chosen to preserve me, exercised with so many griefs, that I may serve Thyself. There is one great sin discernible in my soul, which I confess before the whole world. I have never served Thee in proportion to my strength; that little talent of Thy grace which Thou hast deigned to grant me I have not yet turned to full account--whether because I have followed too much the pleasures of mere study, or whether I have consumed too much time and labour in refuting the invectives of the evil-disposed, to whom, such has been Thy pleasure, I have been constantly an object of attack. Cover the past for me, regulate the future. Cleared before men, before Thee I shall be cleared never, unless Thy mercy shall be my succour. I confess I have sinned against Thee, nor shall I do so more. Thou seest how this paper on which I write is now all wet with my tears: pardon me, Redeemer mine, and grant that the vow I now take to Thee I may sacredly perform. Let a thousand dogs bark at me, a thousand bulls of Bashan rush upon me, as many lions war against my soul, and threaten me with destruction, I will reply no more, defended enough if only I feel Thee propitious. I will no more waste the time due to Thee, sacred to Thee, in mere trifles, or lose it in beating off the importunity of moths. Whatever extent of life it shall please Thee to appoint me still, I vow, I dedicate, all to Thee, all to Thy Church. So shall we be revenged on our enemies. Convert us all, Thou who only canst. Forgive us, forgive them also; nor to us, nor to them, but to Thy name, be the glory!" Milton read this, but was not moved. On the 8th of August, 1655, there was published his Rejoinder to the original _Fides Publica_, with his notice of the _Supplementum_ appended. It is a small volume of 204 pages, entitled _Joannis Miltoni_, _Angli_, _Pro Se Defensio contra Alexandrum Morum_, _Ecclesiasten_, _Libelli famosi_, _cui titulus 'Regii Sanguinis Clamor ad Cælum adversus Parricidas Anglicanus'_, _authorem recte dictum. Londini_, _Typis Newcomianis_, 1655 ("The English, John Milton's Defence for Himself, in reply to Alexander Morus, Churchman, rightly called the author of the notorious book entitled 'Cry of the King's Blood to Heaven against the English Parricides,' London, from Newcome's Press, 1655"). This is perhaps the least known now of all Milton's writings. It has never been translated, even in the wretched fashion in which his _Defensio Prima_ and _Defensio Secunda_ have been; and it is omitted altogether in some professed editions of Milton's whole works.[1] [Footnote 1: The date of publication is from the Thomason copy in the British Museum.] After a brief Introduction, in which Milton remarks that the quarrel, which was originally for Liberty and the English People, has now dwindled into a poor personal one, he discusses afresh, as the first real point in dispute, the question of the authorship of the _Regii Sanguinis Clamor_. Morus's denials, or seeming denials, go for nothing. Any man may deny anything; there are various ways of denial; and he still maintains that Morus is, to all legal intents and purposes, responsible for the book. "Unless I show this." he says, "unless I make it plain either that you are the author of that most notorious book against us, or that you have given sufficient occasion for justly regarding you as the author, I do not object to the conclusion that I have been beaten by you in this controversy, and come out of it ignominiously, with disgrace and shame." How is this strong statement supported? In the first place, there is reproduced the evidence of original, universal, and persistent rumour. "This I say religiously, that through two whole years I met no one, whether a countryman of my own or a foreigner, with whom there could be talk about that book, but they all agreed unanimously that you were called its author, and they named no one for the author but you." To Morus's assertion that he had openly, loudly, and energetically disowned the book, where suspected of the authorship, Milton returns a complex answer. Partly he does not believe the assertion, on the ground that there were many who had heard Morus confessing to the book and boasting of it. Partly he asks why such energetic repudiations were necessary, and why, in spite of them, intimate friends of Morus retained their former opinion. Partly he admits that there may latterly have been such repudiations, but not till there was danger in being thought the author. Any criminal will deny his crime in sight of the axe; and, apart from the punishment which Morus had reason to expect when he knew that Milton's reply to the _Regii Sanguinis Clamor_ was forthcoming, what had not the author of that book to dread after the Peace between the Dutch and the Commonwealth had been concluded? By articles IX., X., and XI. of the Peace it was provided that no public enemy of the Commonwealth should have residence, shelter, living, or commerce, within the bounds of the United Provinces; and who more a public enemy of the Commonwealth than the author of the _Regii Sanguinis Clamor_? No wonder that, after that Peace, Morus had trembled for the consequences of his handiwork. The loss of his Amsterdam Professorship, instant ejection from Holland, and prohibition of return under pain of death, were what he had to fear. Were not these powerful enough motives for denial to a man like Morus? Had not Milton, when he learnt by letters from Durie in May 1654 that Morus was disowning--the book, been entitled to remember these motives? For what other evidence had been produced besides Morus's own word? His friend Hotton's only; and that was no independent testimony, but only Morus's at second hand. And even now, after Morus's repeated and studiously-worded denials in his _Fides Publica_, how did the case stand? "That book [the _Regii Sanguinis Clamor_] consists of various prooemia and epilogues [i.e. addition to the central text]--to wit, _An Epistle to Charles_, another _To the Reader_, and two sets of verses at the close, one eulogistic of Salmasius, the other in defamation of me. Now, if I find that you wrote or contributed any page of this whole book, even a single verse, or that you published it, or procured it, or advised it, or superintended the publishing, or even lent the smallest particle of aid therein, you alone, since no one else is to the fore, shall be to me responsible for the whole, the author, the 'Crier'. Nor can you call this merely my severity or vehemence; for this is the procedure established among almost all nations by right and laws of equity. I will adduce, as universally accepted, the Imperial Civil Law. Read _Institut. Justiniani l. IV. De Injuriis, Tit. 4_: 'If any one shall write, compose, or publish, or with evil design cause the writing, composing, or publishing, of a book or poem (or story) for the defamation of any one,' &c. Other laws add 'Even should he publish in the name of another, or without name;' and all decree that the person is to be taken for the author and punished as such. I ask you now, not whether you wrote the text of the _Regii Sanguinis Clamor_, but whether you made, wrote, published, or caused to be published, the Epistle Dedicatory to Charles prefixed to the _Clamor_, or any particle thereof; I ask whether you composed or caused to be published the other Epistle to the Reader, or finally that Defamatory Poem, You have replied nothing yet to these precise questions. By merely disowning the _Clamor_ itself and strenuously swearing that you wrote no portion of it, you thought to escape with safe credit, and make game of us, inasmuch as the Epistle to Charles the Son, or that to the Reader, or the set of Iambic verses, is not the _Regii Sanguinis Clamor_. Take now this in brief, therefore, that you may not be able so to wheel about or prevaricate in future, or hope for any escape or concealment, and that all may know how far from mendacious, how veritable on the contrary, or at least not unfounded, was that report which arose about you: take, I say, this in brief,--that I have ascertained, not by report alone, but by testimony than which none can be surer, that you managed the bringing out of the whole book entitled _Regii Sanguinis Clamor_, and corrected the printer's proofs, and composed, either alone, or in association with one or two others, the Epistle to Charles II. which bears Ulac's name. Of this your own name 'ALEXANDER MORUS,' subscribed to some copies of that Epistle, has been too clear and ocular proof to many witnesses of the fact for you to be able to deny the charge or to get rid of it.... There are several who have heard yourself either admit, on interrogation, that that Epistle is yours, or declare the fact spontaneously.... If you ask on what evidence I, at such a distance, make these statements, and how they can have become so certain to myself, I reply that it is not on the evidence of rumour merely, but partly on that of most scrupulous witnesses who have most solemnly made the assertions to myself personally, partly on that of letters written either to myself or to others. I will quote the very words of the letters, but will not give the names of the writers, considering that unnecessary in matters of such notoriety independently. Here you have first an extract from a letter to me from the Hague, the writer of which is a man of probity and had no common means of investigating this affair:--'I have ascertained beyond doubt (_exploratissimum mihi est_) that Morus himself offered the copy of the _Clamor Regii Sanguinis_ to some other printers before Ulac received it, that he superintended the correction of the errors of the press, and that, as soon as the book was finished, copies were given and distributed by him to not a few.'... Take again the following, which a highly honourable and intelligent man in Amsterdam writes as certainly known to himself and as abundantly witnessed there:--'It is most certain that almost all through these parts have regarded Morus as the author of the book called _Regii Sanguinis Clamor_; for he corrected the sheets as they came from the press, and some copies bore the name of Morus subscribed to the Dedicatory Epistle, of which also he was the author. He himself told a certain friend of mine that he was the author of that Epistle: nay there is nothing more certain than that Morus either assumed or acknowledged the authorship of the same.' ... I add yet a third extract. It is from another letter from the Hague:--'A man of the first rank in the Hague has told me that he has in his possession a copy of the _Regii Sanguinis Clamor_ with Morus's own letter.'" Farther on Milton re-adverts to the same topic, in a passage which it is also well to quote: "You say you 'will produce not rumours merely, not conversations merely, but letters, in proof that I had been warned not to assail an innocent man.' Let us then inspect the letter you publish, which was written to you by 'that highly distinguished man, Lord Nieuport, ambassador of the Dutch Confederation,'--a letter, it is evident, which you bring forward to be read, not for any force of proof in it, for it has none, but merely in ostentation. He--and it shows the singular kindliness of 'the highly distinguished man' (for what but goodness in him should make him take so much trouble on your most unworthy account?)--goes to Mr. Secretary Thurloe. He communicates your letter to Mr. Secretary. When he saw that he had no success, he sends to me two honourable persons, friends of mine, with that same letter of yours. What do they do? They read me that letter of Morus, and they request, and say that Ambassador Nieuport also requests, that I will trust to your letter in which you deny being the author of the _Clamor Regii Sanguinis_. I answered that what they asked was not fair--that neither was Morus's word worth so much, nor was it customary to believe, in contradiction to common report and other ascertained evidence, the mere letter of an accused person and an adversary denying what was alleged against him. They, having nothing more to say on the other side, give up the debate.... When afterwards the Ambassador wanted to persuade Mr. Secretary Thurloe, he had still no argument to produce but the same copy of your letter; whence it is quite clear that those 'reasons' brought to me 'for which he desired' me to be so good as not to publish my book had nothing to do with reasons of State. Do not then corrupt the Ambassador's letter. Nothing there of 'hostile spirit,' nothing of the 'inopportune time;' all he writes is that he 'is sorry I had chosen, notwithstanding his request, to show so little moderation'--sorry, that is, that I had not chosen, at his private request, to oblige you, a public adversary, and to recall and completely rewrite a work already printed and all but out. Let 'the highly distinguished man,' especially as an Ambassador, hold me excused if I would not, and really could not, condone public injuries on private intercessions." Before Milton passes to the review of Morus's vindication of his character and past career, he disposes of Dr. Crantzius and Ulac, as objects intervening between him and that main task. For the _Fides Publica_, it will be remembered, had been bound up with that Hague edition of Milton's _Defensio Secunda_ to which the Rev. Dr. Crantzius had prefixed a preface in rebuke of Milton and in defence of Morus, and to which Ulac had also prefixed a statement replying to Milton's charges against him of dishonesty and bankruptcy. Several pages are given to Dr. Crantzius, who is called "a certain I know not what sort of a bed-ridden little Doctor," then taxed with ignorance, garrulity, and general imbecility, and at last kicked out of the way with the phrase "But I do marvellously delight in Doctors." Ulac, as having been reckoned with before, receives briefer notice. "_You are a swindler, Ulac_, said I; _I am a good Arithmetician_, says Ulac:" so the notice begins; and then follow some sentences to the effect that Ulac's creditors had been very ill satisfied with his _counting_, that the rule of probity is not the _Logarithmic canon_, that correct accounts are different things from _Tables of Sines_ or _Tables of Tangents and Secants_, and that acting on the square is not necessarily taught by _Trigonometry_. After which Milton reverts to Ulac's double-dealings with himself, first in his fathering the abusive Dedication of the _Regii Sanguinis Clamor_ while he was corresponding with Milton's friends in London and making kind inquiries about Milton's health, and next in bringing out a pirated edition of the _Defensio Secunda_, printing the same inaccurately, and actually binding it up with the _Fides Publica_ of Morus, so as to compel a united sale of the two books for his own profit. How a man could have published so coolly a book in which he was himself held up as a rogue and swindler passes Milton's comprehension; but Ulac, he seems to admit, was no ordinary tradesman. For poor Morus himself there is not an atom of mercy yet. All his dexterous pleading, all his declarations of innocence, all his pathetic appeals, all his citations of the decisions in his favour in the Bontia case by the Walloon Synod and the Supreme Court of Holland, are simply trampled under foot, and the charges formerly made against him are ruthlessly reiterated as true nevertheless. There are even additional details, and fresh charges of the same kind, derived from more recent information. The plan adopted by Milton is to go over the _Fides Publica_, extracting phrases and sentences from it, and commenting on each extract; but the general effect of the book is that of the ruthless chasing round and round of the poor ecclesiastic in a biographical ellipse, the two foci of which are Geneva and Leyden. Distinct evidence is produced that both at Geneva and in Holland the _fama_ against Morus was still as strong as ever. The evidence takes the form of extracts from two letters received by Milton since the _Fides Publica_ had appeared;-- _From a Letter from Geneva, dated Oct. 14, 1654_ (i.e. from that letter of Ezekiel Spanheim of which Milton had told Spanheim that he meant to avail himself, though without mentioning the writer's name: sec ante pp. 172-173). "Our people here cannot sufficiently express their wonder that you are so thoroughly acquainted with the private history of a man unknown to you personally, and that you have painted him so in his native colours that not even by those with whom he has been on the most familiar terms could the whole play-acting career of the man (_tota, hominis histrionia_) have been more accurately or happily set forth; whence they are at a loss, and I with them, to understand with what face, shameless though he is and impudent-mouthed, he is on the point of daring again to appear in the public theatre. For it is the consummation and completeness of your success in this part of the business that you have not brought forward either imagined or otherwise unknown charges against the man, but charges of common repetition in the mouths of all his greatest friends even, and which can be clearly corroborated by the authority and vote of the whole assembly, and even by the accession of farther criminations to the same effect... I would assure you that hardly any one can now longer be found here, where for many years he discharged a public-office, but greatly to the disgrace of this Church, who would dare or undertake longer to lend his countenance to the man's prostituted character." _From a Letter from Durie at Basel, Oct. 3, 1654_:--"As regards Morus's vices and profligacy, Hotton does not seem to entertain that opinion of him; I know, however, that others speak very ill of him, that his hands are against nearly everybody and everybody's hands against him, and that many ministers even of the Walloon Synod are doing their best to have him deprived of the pastoral office. Nor here in Basel do I find men's opinion of him different from that in Holland of those who like him least." The fresh, particulars of information that Milton had received about Morus and his alleged misdeeds are unsparingly brought out. The name of the woman of bad character at Geneva with whom Morus was said to have been implicated there, and the scandal about whom had driven him from Geneva, has now been ascertained by Milton. It was Claudia Pelletta; and of her name, and all the topographical details of Morus's alleged meetings with her, there is enough and more than enough. Claudia Pelletta at Geneva, and Bontia at Leyden, pull Morus between them page after page: not that they only have claims, for in one sentence we hear of an insulted widow somewhere in Holland, and in another of a dubious female figure seen one rainy night with Morus in a street in Amsterdam. But Bontia is still Milton's favourite. He repeats the Latin epigram about her and Morus; he apologizes for having hitherto called her Pontia, attributes the error to a misreading of the MS. of that epigram when it first came from Holland, but says he still thinks Pontia the prettier name; and, using information that had recently reached him, though we have been in prior possession of something equivalent (Vol. IV. p. 465), he thus reminds Morus of his most memorable meeting with that brave damsel:-- "You remember perhaps that day, nay I am sure you remember the day, and the hour and the place too, when, as I think, you and Pontia [he still keeps to the form 'Pontia'] last met in the house of Salmasius--you to renounce the marriage-bond, she to make you name the day for the nuptials. When she saw, on the contrary, that it was your intention to dissolve the marriage-engagement made in the seduction, then lo! your unmarried bride, for I will not call her Tisiphone, not able to bear such a wrong, flew furiously at your face and eyes with uncut nails. You who, on the testimony of Crantzius (for it is right that so great a contest should not begin without quotation from your own _Fides Publica_)--you who, on the testimony of Crantzius, were _altier_ in French, or _fiercish_ in Latin, and on the testimony of Diodati had _terrible spurs for self-defence_, prepare to do your manly utmost in this feminine kind of fight. Madame de Saumaise stands by as Juno, arbiter of the contest, Salmasius himself, lying in the next room ill with the gout, when he heard the battle begun, almost dies with laughing. But alas! and O fie! our unwarlike Alexander, no match for his Amazon, falls down vanquished. She, getting her man underneath, then first, from her position of vantage, goes at his forehead, his eye-brows, his nose; with wonderful arabesques, and in a Phrygian style of execution, she runs her finger-points over the whole countenace of her prostrate subject: never were you less pleased, Morus, with Pontia's lines of beauty. At last, with difficulty, either margin of his cheeks fully written on, but the chin not yet finished, up he rises, a man, by your leave, absolutely nail-perfect, no mere Professor now but a Pontifical Doctor,--for you might have inscribed upon him, as on a painting, _Pontia fecit_. [We see now the reason for keeping to the form 'Pontia.'] Doctor? Nay rather a codex in which his vengeful critic had scraped her adverse comments with a new stilus. You felt then, I think, Ulac's Tables of Tangents and Secants, to a radius of I know not how many painful ciphers, printed on your skin." How does Milton meet Morus's protestations of his innocence both at Geneva and in Leyden, and the evidence he adduces in his behalf? Respecting the protestations, he notes that they are merely general and that, like his denials of the authorship of the _Regii Sanguinis Clamor_, they are worded equivocally or indistinctly. Why does he not deny the Pelletta charge and the Bontia charge, and the other charges, one by one specifically, and in a downright manner? Why does he not go back to Geneva, face the living witnesses and the documentary evidence there waiting him, and abide the issue? As for the decisions in his favour in the Bontia case by the Walloon Synod and the Supreme Court of Holland, of what worth are they? One could see, one had even been informed, that there had been influences at work with both tribunals to procure the result, such as it was. Many good, but easy, men had thought it best, for the reputation of the Christian ministry, not to rake too deeply into such an unpleasant business. Especially in the Synod the proceedings had been a farce. When Riverius, the moderator of the Synod, at the close of the proceedings, had said to Morus, "_Never was a Moor so whitewashed as you have been to-day_," could not everybody, with any sense of humour, perceive that the Reverend gentleman had been joking? Then, what had been the formal decision of the Synod? "_That nothing had been found in the papers of weight to take away from the Churches their wonted liberty of inviting M. Morus to preach when there was occasion_." Was that a whitewashing with which to be content? No wonder that Morus had taken refuge among his paper testimonials. About the whole system of Testimonials Milton is considerably dubious. He does not deny that a public testimonial may be an honour, and that there may be proper occasion for such things; but, real discernment of merit being rare, and those who give and those who seek testimonials being but a jumble of the good and the bad together, the abuses of the system bring it into discredit. "The man of highest quality needs another's testimonial the least; nor does any good man ever do anything merely to make himself known." Waiving that general question, however, one may _examine_ Morus's testimonials. This examination of the testimonials is begun in the first or main part of Milton's _Pro Se Defensio_; but, as Morus had only entered on his testimonials in the _Fides Publica_ as originally published, and presented most of them in his _Supplementum_ to that book, so Milton prolongs this branch of his criticism into an appendix entitled separately _Authoris ad Aleasandri Mori Supplementum Responsio_ ("The Author's Answer to Alexander More's Supplement.") Prom the first sentences of this Appendix we learn that the preceding part of Milton's book had been written two months before the _Supplementum_ had come into his hands. Morus's published Testimonials divide themselves chronologically, it may have been observed, into three sets--(1) those given him at Geneva early in the year 1648, and brought by him into Holland on his removal thither, (2) those given him at Middleburg between Nov. 1649 and Aug. 1652, and (3) the three given him at Amsterdam in July 1654, after Milton's _Defensio Secunda_ had appeared, and in contradiction of statements made in that book.--On the Genevese set of Testimonials, including that from the venerable Diodati, Milton's criticism, in substance, is that they were vitiated by their date. They had been given, or obtained by hard begging, not perhaps before the Pelletta scandal had been heard of, but before it had been sufficiently notorious, and while it still seemed credible to many that Morus was innocent, and others were good-naturedly willing to stop the investigation by speeding him off to another scene, Theodore Tronchin, pastor and Professor of Theology, and Mermilliod and Pittet, two other pastors, had been the first movers, among the Genevese clergy, for an inquiry into Morus's conduct; the elder Spanheim had, as Milton believed, been one of those that even then would have nothing to do with the Testimonials; the aged Diodati had then for some time ceased to attend the meetings of his brethren, and might not know all. But, in any case, nearly a year had elapsed between the date of the last of those Genevese Testimonials which Morus had published and Morus's actual departure from Geneva. During that interval there had been a progress of Genevese opinion on the subject of his character and conduct, and he had been furnished with fresh papers in the nature of farewell Testimonials. Morus had suppressed those. Would he venture to produce them?--On the Middleburg Testimonials the criticism is that they do not matter much one way or another, but that they show Morus on the whole to have soon been found a troublesome person in Holland also, some business about whom was always coming up in the Walloon Synods. In Middleburg too there had been a progress of opinion about him with farther experience. His co-pastor there. M. Jean Long, who had been his firm friend for a while, and had signed some of the testimonials, was now understood to speak of him with absolute detestation. Morus having produced some of these testimonials to disprove Milton's assertion that he had been ejected by the Middleburg church, Milton explains that he had not said _ejected_, but only _turned adrift_, and that this was substantially the fact. Now, however, if Durie's report is correct, not only would the single Middleburg church, but nearly the whole Walloon Synod also, willingly _eject_ him.--Milton's greatest difficulty is with the three Amsterdam testimonials of July 1654. He has to admit that they prove him to have been misinformed when he said that the Amsterdam authorities had interdicted Morus from the pulpit, just as he had been wrong in calling Morus's Amsterdam professorship that of Greek. That admission made (and it was hard for Milton ever to admit he was wrong, even in a trifle), he contents himself with quoting sentences from the Amsterdam testimonials to show how merely formal they were, how little hearty, and with this characteristic observation about the Amsterdam dignitaries, tossing their testimony aside in any case: "_Et id nescio_, [Greek: aristindên] _an_ [Greek: ploutindên], _virtute an censu, magistratum ilium in civitate suâ obtineant_: And I know not, moreover, whether it is by merit or by wealth that the gentlemen hold that magistracy in their city." This is, doubtless, Milton's return for the slighting mention of himself in the Amsterdam testimonials.[1] [Footnote 1: A Hague correspondent of Thurloe, commenting on the appearance of the first part of Morus's _Fides Publica_ and its abrupt ending had written, Nov. 3, 1654, thus: "The truth is Morus durst not add the sentence [text of the judicial finding] against Pontia; for the charges are recompensed [costs allowed her], and where there is payment of charges that is to say that the action of Pontia is good, but that the proofs fail.... The attestations of his life at Amsterdam and at the Hague, he could not get them to his fancy" (Thurloe, 11.708).] While we have thus given, with tolerable completeness, an abstract of Milton's extraordinary _Pro Se Defensio contra Alexandrum Morum_, we have by no means noticed everything in it that might be of interest in the study of Milton's character. There is, for example, one very curious passage in which Milton, in reply to a criticism of Morus, defends his use of very gross words (_verba nuda et prætextata_) in speaking of very gross things. He makes two daring quotations, one from Piso's Annals and the other from Sallust, to show that he had good precedent; and he cites Herodotus, Seneca, Suetonius, Plutarch, Erasmus, Thomas More, Clement of Alexandria, Arnobius, Lactantlas, Eusebius, and the Bible itself, as examples occasionally of the very reverse of a squeamish euphemism. Of even greater interest is a passage in which he foresees the charges of cruelty, ruthlessness, and breach of literary etiquette, likely to be brought against him on account of his treatment of Morus, and expounds his theory on that subject. The passage may fitly conclude our account of the _Pro Se Defensio_:-- "To defame the bad and to praise the good, the one on the principle of severe punishment and the other on that of high reward, are equally just, and make up together almost the sum of justice; and we see in fact that the two are of nearly equal efficacy for the right management of life. The two things, in short, are so interrelated, and so involved in one and the same act, that the vituperation of the bad may in a sense be called the praising of the good. But, though right, reason, and use are equal on both sides, the acceptability is not the same likewise; for whoever vituperates another bears the burden and imputation of two very heavy things at once,--accusing another, and thinking well of himself. Accordingly, all are ready enough with praise, good and bad alike, and the objects of their praise worthy and unworthy together; but no one either dares or is able to accuse freely and intrepidly but the man of integrity alone. Accustomed in our youth, under so many masters, to make laborious displays of imaginary eloquence, and taught to think that the demonstrative force of the same lies no less in invective than in praise, we certainly do at the desk hack to pieces bravely the traditional tyrants of antiquity. Mezentius, if such is the chance, we slay over again with unsavoury antitheta; or we roast to perfection Phalaris of Agrigentum, as in his own bull, with lamentable bellowing of enthymemes. In the debating room or lecture-room, I mean; for in the State for the most part we rather adore and worship such, and call them most powerful, most great, most august. The proper thing would be either not to have spent our first years in sport as imaginary declaimers, or else, when our country or the State needs, to leave our mere fencing-foils, and venture sometimes into the sun, and dust, and field of battle, to exert real brawn, shake real arms, seek a real foe. The Suffeni and Sophists of the past, on the one hand, the Pharisees and Simons and Hymenæi and Alexanders of the past on the other, we go at with many a weapon: those of the present day, and come to life again in the Church, we praise with studied eulogies, we honour with professorships, and stipends, and chairs, the incomparable men that they are, the highly-learned and saintly. If it comes to the censuring of one of them, if the mask and specious skin of one of them are dragged off, if he is shown to be base within, or even publicly and openly criminal, there are some who, for what purpose or through what timidity I know not, would have him publicly defended by testimonies in his favour rather than marked with due animadversion. My principle, I confess, and as the fact has several times proved, is far enough apart from theirs, inasmuch as, if I have made any profit when young in the literary leisure I then had, whether by the instructions of learned men or by my own lucubrations, I would employ the whole of it to the advantage of life and of the human race, could I range so far, to the utmost of my weak ability. And, if sometimes even out of private enmities public delinquencies come to be exposed and corrected, and I have now, impelled by all possible reasons, prosecuted with most just invective, nor yet without proper result, not an adversary of my own merely, but one who is the common adversary of almost all, a nefarious man, a disgrace to the Reformed Religion and to the sacred order especially, a dishonour to learning, a most pernicious teacher of youth, an unclean ecclesiastic, it will be seen, I hope, by those who are chiefly interested in making an example of him (for why should I not so trust?), that herein I have performed an action neither displeasing to God, nor unwholesome to the Church, nor unuseful to the State." What a blast this to pursue poor Morus over the Continent! It would seem as if, in expectation of it, he had put himself as far as he could out of hearing. When Milton's _Pro Se Defensio_ appeared, Morus was no longer in France, but in Italy; and it was not till May, 1656, or nine months after, that he reappeared in Holland. Then, as he had outrun by more than a year his formal leave of absence from his Amsterdam professorship, granted Dec, 20, 1654, there seem to have been strict inquiries as to the causes of his long absence. It was explained that he had fallen ill at Florence; it also came out that he had had a very distinguished reception from the Grand Duke of Tuscany, and that the Venetian Senate had presented him with a chain of gold for a Latin poem he had written on a recent defeat of the Turks at sea by the Venetian navy; and, what was most to the point, it appeared, by addresses of his own at Amsterdam, and at a meeting of the Walloon Synod at Leyden, that he had found in Italy great opportunities "for advancing the glory of God by the preaching of the Gospel." We know independently that, while in Italy, he had made acquaintance with some of those wits and scholars among whom Milton had moved so delightfully in his visit of 1638-9, and among whom Heinsius had been back in 1652-3, to find that they still remembered Milton, and could talk about him (Vol. IV. pp. 475-476); and it is even startling to have evidence from Moms himself that he exchanged especial compliments at Rome with Milton's old friend Holstenius, the Vatican librarian, and became so very intimate at Florence with Milton's beloved Carlo Dati as to receive from Dati the most affectionate attention and nursing through his illness. And so, all seeming fully satisfied at Amsterdam, he resumed his duties in the Amsterdam School. Not to be long at peace, however. Hardly had he returned when, either on the old charges, now so terrifically reblazoned through Holland by Milton's perseverance for his ruin, or on new charges arising from new incidents, he and the Walloon church-authorities were again at feud. In this uncomfortable state we must leave him for the present.[1] [Footnote 1: Bayle's Dict, Art. _Morus_, and Bruce's Life of Morus, pp. 142-145 and 204-205. This last book is a curiosity. One hardly sees why the life and character of Morus should have so fascinated the Rev. Archibald Bruce, who was minister of the Associate Congregation at Whitburn, in Linlithgowshire, from 1768 to 1816, and Professor of Theology there for the Associate Presbyterian Synod for nearly all that time. He was a worthy and learned man, for whom Dr. McCrie, the author of the Life of John Knox, and of the same Presbyterian denomination, entertained a more "profound veneration" than for any other man on earth (see Life of McCrie by his son, edit. 1840, pp. 52-57). He was "a Whig of the Old School," with liberal political opinions in the main, but strongly opposed to Roman Catholic emancipation; which brought him into connexion with Lord George Gordon, of the "No Popery Riots" of 1780. He wrote many books and pamphlets, and kept a printer at Whitburn for his own use. He may have been drawn to Morus by his interest in the history of Presbyterianism abroad, especially as Morus was of Scottish parentage, or by his interest in the proceedings of Presbyterian Church Courts in such cases of scandal as that of Morus. At any rate, he defends Morus throughout most resolutely, and with a good deal of scholarly painstaking. Milton, on the other hand, he thoroughly dislikes, and represents as a most malicious and un-Christian man, consciously untruthful, and of most lax theology to boot. To be sure, he was the author of _Paradise Lost_; but that much-praised poem had serious religious defects too! There is something actually refreshing in the _naïveté_ and courage with which the sturdy Professor of the Associate Synod propounds his own dissent from the common Milton-worship.--The authority for Morus's acquaintanceship in Italy with Holstenius and Dati is the collection of his Latin Poems, a thin quarto, published at Paris in 1669, under the title of _Alexandri Mori Poemata_. It contains his poem, a longish one in Hexameters, on the victory of the Venetians over the Turks; also verses to the Grand-Duke of Tuscany; also obituary elegiacs to Diodati of Geneva, and several pieces to or on Salmasius. One piece, in elegiacs, is addressed "_Ad Franciscum Turretinum, raræ indolis ac summæ spei juvenem_." This Francis Turretin (so addressed, I suppose, long ago, when he and Morus were in Geneva together) was, if I mistake not, the famous Turretin of Milton's letter about Morus to Ezekiel Spanheim (ante pp. 173-176). Among the other pieces are one to Holstenius and one to Carlo Dati. In the first Morus, speaking of his introduction to Holstenius and to the Vatican library together, says he does not know which seemed to him the greater library. The poem to Dati is of considerable length, in Hexameters, and entitled "_Ægri Somnium: ad præstantem virum Carolum Dati_" ("An Invalid's Dream: To the excellent Carlo Dati"). It represents Morus as very ill in Florence and thinking himself dying. Should he die in Florence and be buried there, he would have a poetic inscription over his grave to the effect that while alive he also had cultivated the Muses, and begging the passer-by to remember his name ("_Qui legis hæc obiter, Morique morique memento_"). How kind Dati had been to him--Dati, "than whom there is not a better man, the beloved of all the sister Muses, the ornament of his country, having the reputation of being all but unique in Florence for learning in the vanished arts, siren at once in Tuscan, Latin, and Greek! ... This Dati soothed my fever-fits with the music of his liquid singing, and sat by my bed-side, and spoke words of sweetness, which inhere yet in my very marrow." And so Milton's Italian friend of friends (Vol. III. pp. 551-654 and 680-683) had been charitable to poor Morus, whom he knew to be a fugitive from Milton's wrath, and who could name Milton, if at all, only with tears and cursing.] It is now high time, however, to answer a question which must have suggested itself again and again in the course of our narrative of the Milton and Morus controversy. Who was the real author of the book for which Morus had been so dreadfully punished, and what was the real amount of Morus's responsibility in it? That Milton's original belief on this subject had been shaken has been already evident. He had written his _Defensio Secunda_, in firm reliance on the universal report that Morus was the one proper author of the _Regii Sanguinis Clamor_, or that it had been concocted between him and Salmasius; and, though Morus's denial of the authorship had been formally conveyed to him before the _Defensio Secunda_ left the press, he had let it go forth as it was, in the conviction that he was still not wrong in the main. The more express and reiterated denials of Morus in the _Fides Publica_, however, with the references there to another person as the real author, though Morus was not at liberty to divulge his name, had produced an effect. The authorship of the _Regii Sanguinis Clamor_ was then indeed a secondary question, inasmuch as in the _Fides Publica_ Morus had interposed himself personally,--not only in self-defence, but also for counter-attack on Milton. Still, as the _Fides Publica_ would never have been written had not Milton assumed Morus to be the author of the _Regii Sanguinis Clamor_ and dragged him before the world solely on that account, Milton had necessarily, in replying to the _Fides Publica_, adverted to the secondary question. His assertion now, i.e, in the _Pro Se Defensio_, was a modified one. It was that, whatever facts had yet to be revealed respecting the authorship of the four or five parts of the compound book severally, he yet knew for certain that Morus had been the editor of the whole book, the corrector of the press for the whole, the busy and ostentatious agent in the circulation of early copies, and the writer at least of the Dedicatory Preface to Charles II., put forth in Ulac's name. The question for us now is how far this modified assertion of Milton was correct. Almost to a tittle, it _was_. That Morus was the editor of the book, the corrector of the press, and the active agent in the circulation of early copies, may be taken as established by the documentary proofs furnished by Milton, and is corroborated by independent evidence known to ourselves long ago (Vol. IV. pp. 459-465). But was he also partially the author? Here too Milton's evidence may be taken as conclusive, so far as respects the Dedicatory Epistle to Charles II. That Epistle, with its enormous praises of Salmasius, and its extremely malignant notice of Milton, was undoubtedly by Morus, for copies of it signed by himself were still extant. So far, therefore, Milton was right in saying that Morus's denial of the authorship of the _Regii Sanguinis Clamor_ was an equivocation, resting on a tacit distinction between the body of the book and the additional or editorial matter. In several passages Morus himself had betrayed this equivocation, but in none so remarkably as in a sentence to the peculiar phrasing of which we called attention in quoting it (ante p. 159). Protesting that he had not so much as known the fact of Milton's blindness at the time of the publication of the _Regii Sanguinis Clamor_, and therefore could not have been guilty of the heartless allusion to it in the Dedicatory Epistle, he there said, "_If anything occurred to me that might seem to look that way, I referred to the mind_,"--a phrase which it is difficult to construe otherwise than as an admission that he had written the Dedicatory Epistle, but had employed the familiar quotation there ("_monstrum horrendum, informe, ingens, cui lumen ademptum_") only metaphorically. All in all, then, the authorship of the Dedicatory Epistle, as well as the editorship and adoption of the whole anonymous book, is fastened upon Morus. With this amount of responsibility fastened upon him, however, Morus must be dismissed, and another person brought to the bar. He was the Rev. DR. PETER DU MOULIN the younger. The Du Moulins were a French family, well known in England. The father, Dr. Peter Du Moulin the elder (called _Molinæus_ in Latin), was a French Protestant theologian of great celebrity. He had resided for a good while in England in the reign of James I., officiating as French minister in London, and in much credit with the King and others; but, on the death of James, he had returned to France. At our present date he was still alive at the age of eighty-seven, and still not so much out of the world but that people in different countries continued to think of him as a contemporary and to quote his writings. There are references to him, far from disrespectful, in one of Milton's Anti-Episcopal Pamphlets in reply to Bishop Hall.[1] Two of his sons, both born in France, had settled permanently in England, and had become passionately interested in English public affairs, though in very different directions.--The younger of these, LEWIS DU MOULIN, born 1606, having taken the degree of Doctor of Physic at Leyden, had come to England when but a young man, and, after having been incorporated in the same degree at Cambridge (1684), had been in medical practice in London. At the beginning of the Long Parliament, he had taken the Parliamentarian side, and had written, under the name of "Irenæus Philalethes," two Latin pamphlets against Bishop Hall's _Episcopacy by Divine Right_--pamphlets very much in the same vein of root-and-branch Church Reform as those of the Smectymnuans and Milton at the same time. Since then, still adhering to the Parliament through the Civil War, he had become well known as an Independent--much, it is said, to the chagrin of his old father, who was a Presbyterian, with leanings to moderate Episcopacy; and in 1647, in the Parliamentary visitation of the University of Oxford, he had been rewarded with the Camden Professorship of History in that University. He had been made M.D. of Oxford in 1649. At least three publications had come from his pen since his appointment to the Professorship, one of them a Translation into Latin (1650) of the first chapter of Milton's _Eikonoklastes_. From this we should infer, what is independently likely, that he was acquainted with Milton personally.[2]--Very different from the Independent and Commonwealth's man Lewis Du Monlin. M.D. and History Professor of Oxford, was his elder brother PETER DU MOULIN, D.D. Born in 1600, he had been educated, like his brother, at Leyden, and had taken his D.D. degree there. He is first heard of in England in 1640, when he was incorporated in the same degree at Cambridge; and at the beginning of the Civil War he was so far a naturalised Englishman as to be Rector of Wheldrake, near York. From that time, though a zealous Calvinist theologically, he was as intensely Royalist and Episcopalian as his brother was Parliamentarian and Independent. So we learn most distinctly from a brief MS. sketch of his life through the Civil Wars and the Commonwealth, written by himself after the Restoration, for insertion into a copy of the second edition of one of his books, of date 1660, presented by him to the library of Canterbury Cathedral. "Our gracious King and now glorious Martyr, Charles the First, he there says, finding that his rebellious subjects, not content to make war against him in his kingdom, assaulted him with another war out of his kingdom with their tongues and pens, he set out a Declaration to invite all his loving subjects and friends that could use the tongues of the neighbouring states to represent with their pens the justice of his cause, especially to Protestant Churches abroad. That Declaration smote my heart, as particularly addressed to me; and I took it as a command laid upon me by God himself. Whereupon I made a solemn vow to God that, as far as Latin and French could go in the world, I would make the justice of the King's and the Church's cause to be known, especially to the Protestants of France and the Low Countries, whom the King's enemies did chiefly labour to seduce and misinform. To pay my vow, I first made this book" [entitled originally "_Apologie de la Religion Reformée, et de la Monarchie et de I'Église d'Angleterre, contre les Calomnies de la Ligue Rebelle de quelques Anglois et Écossois_"; but in an imperfect English translation the title was afterwards changed into "_History of the Presbyterians_", and in the second French edition, on a copy of which Du Moulin was now writing, it became "_Histoire des Nouveaux Presbytériens, Anglois et Écossois_"]--which was begun "at York, during the siege [i.e. June 1644, just before Marston Moor], in a room whose chimney was beaten down by the cannon while I was at my work; and, after the siege and my expulsion from my Rectory at Wheldrake, it was finished in an underground cellar, where I lay hid to avoid warrants that were out against me from committees to apprehend me and carry me prisoner to Hull. Having finished the book, I sent it to be printed in Holland by the means of an officer of the Master of the Posts at London, Mr. Pompeo Calandrini, who was doing great and good services to the King in that place. But, the King being dead, and the face of public businesses altered, I sent for my MS. out of Holland, and reformed it for the new King's service. And it was printed, but very negligently, by Samuel Browne at the Hague [1649?] ... Much about the same time I set out my Latin Poem, _Ecclesiæ Gemitus_ ('Groans of the Church'), with, a long Epistle to all Christians in the defence of the King and the Church of England; and, two years after [1652], _Clamor Regii Sanguinis ad Coelum_. God blessed these books, and gave them the intended effect, the disabusing of many misinformed persons. And it was so well resented by his Majesty, then at Breda, that, being showed my sister Mary among a great company of ladies, he brake the crowd to salute her, and tell her that he was very sensible of his obligations to her brother, and that, if ever God settled him in his kingdom, he would make him know that he was a grateful prince." Here, then, in Dr. Peter Du Moulin's own hand, though not till after the Restoration, we have the _Regii Sanguinis Clamor_ claimed as his, with the information that it was one of a series of books written by him with the special design of maintaining the cause of Charles II. and discrediting the Commonwealth among Continental Protestants.[3] [Footnote 1: See close of _Animadversions on the Remonstrant's Defence_.] [Footnote 2: Wood's Fasti, II. 125-126; Whitlocke, II. 290. The writings of Lewis Du Moulin I have here mentioned are known to me only by the titles and descriptions given by Wood and his annotator Dr. Bliss.] [Footnote 3: Wood's Fasti, II. 195; and _Gentleman's Magazine_ for 1773, pp. 369-370. In the last is given the autobiographic sketch of Du Moulin, transcribed from the copy of his _Histoire des Nouveaux Presbytériens_ (edit. 1660) in the Canterbury Library.--The Mary du Moulin, the sister of Peter and Lewis, mentioned in the autobiographic sketch, died at the Hague in Feb. 1699, having, like most of the Du Moulins, attained a great age. The father, Dr. Peter the elder, died in 1658 at the age of ninety; Lewis died in 1683 at the age of seventy-seven; and Peter the younger, of the _Regii Sanguinis Clamor_, died in 1684 at the age of eighty-four.--The reader will have noted the Pompeo Calandrini mentioned as an official in the London Post Office in the time of the Civil War, and as secretly aiding Charles I. in his correspondence. He was, doubtless, of the Italian-Genevese family of Calandrinis already mentoned, _ante_ pp. 172-173 and footnote.] Yet farther proof on the subject, also from Dr. Peter's own hand. In the Library of Canterbury Cathedral there is, or was, his own copy of the original edition of the _Regii Sanguinis Clamor_; and in that copy the preliminary Dedicatory Epistle in Ulac's name to Charles II. is marked for deletion, and has these words prefixed to it in Du Moulin's hand; "_Epistola, quam aiunt esse Alexandri Mori, quæ mihi valde non probatur_" ("Epistle which they say is by Alexander Morus, and which is not greatly to my taste"),[1] All the rest, therefore, was his own. But, to remove all possible doubt, we have the still more complete and exact information furnished by him in 1670, Milton then still alive and in the first fame of his _Paradise Lost_. In that year there appeared from the Cambridge University Press a volume entitled _Petri Molinæi P. F. [Greek: Parerga]: Poematum Libelli Tres_. It was a collection of Dr. Peter Du Moulin's Latin Poems, written at various times of his life, and now arranged by him in three divisions, separately title-paged, entitled respectively "Hymns to the Apostles' Creed," "Groans of the Church" (_Ecclesiæ Gemitus_), and "Varieties." In the second division were reprinted the two Latin Poems that had originally formed part of the _Regii Sanguinis Clamor_, with their full titles as at first: to wit, the "Eucharistic Ode," to the great Salmasius for his _Defensio Regia_, and the set of scurrilous Iambics "To the Bestial Blackguard John Milton, Parricide and Advocate of the Parricide." With reference to the last there are several explanations for the reader in Latin prose at different points in the volume. At one place the reader is assured that, though the Iambics against Milton, and some other things in the volume, may seem savage, zeal for Religion and the Church, in their hour of sore trial, had been a sufficient motive for writing them, and they must not be taken as indicating the private character of the author, as known well enough to his friends. At another place (pp. 141-2 of the volume) there is, by way of afterthought or extension, a larger and more express statement about the Iambics against Milton, which must here be translated in full: "Into what danger I was thrown," says Du Moulin, "by the first appearance of this Poem in the _Clamor Regii Sanguinis_ would not seem to me worthy of public notice now, were it not that the miracle of divine protection by which I was kept safe is most worthy of the common admiration of the good and the praise of the Supreme Deliverer. I had sent my manuscript sheets to the great Salmasius, who entrusted them to the care of that most learned man, Alexander Morus. This Morus delivered them to the printer, and prefixed to them an Epistle to the King, in the Printer's name, exceedingly eloquent and full of good matter. When that care of Morus over the business of printing the book had become known to Milton through the spies of the Regicides in Holland, Milton held it as an ascertained fact that Morus was the author of the _Clamor;_ whence that most virulent book of Milton's against Morus, entitled _Defensio Secunda pro Populo Anglicano_. It had the effect, moreover, of making enemies for Morus in Holland; for at that time the English Tyrants were very much feared in foreign parts. Meanwhile I looked on in silence, and not without a soft chuckle, at seeing my bantling laid at another man's door, and the blind and furious Milton fighting and slashing the air, like the hoodwinked horse-combatants in the old circus, not knowing by whom he was struck and whom he struck in return. But Morus, unable to stand out against so much ill-will, began to cool in the King's cause, and gave Milton to know who the author of the _Clamor_ really was (_Clamoris authorem Miltono indicavit_). For, in fact, in his Reply to Milton's attack he produced two witnesses, of the highest credit among the rebels, who might have well known the author, and could divulge him on being asked. Thus over me and my head there hung the most certain destruction. But that great Guardian of Justice, to whom I had willingly devoted both my labour and my life, wrought out my safety through Milton's own pride, as it is customary with His Wisdom to bring good out of evil, and light out of darkness. For Milton, who had gone full tilt at Morus with his canine eloquence, and who had made it almost the sole object of his _Defensio Secunda_ to cut up the life and reputation of Morus, never could be brought to confess that he had been so grossly mistaken: fearing, I suppose, that the public would make fun of his blindness, and that grammar-school boys would compare him to that blind Catullus in Juvenal who, meaning to praise the fish presented to Domitian, "'Made a long speech, Facing the left, while on his right there lay The actual turbot.' [Footnote 1: _Gentleman's Magazine_ for 1773, as in last note.] "And so, Milton persisting in his blundering charge against Morus for that dangerous service to the King, the other Rebels could not, without great damage to their good patron, proceed against any other than Morus as guilty of so great a crime. And, as Milton preferred my getting off scatheless to being found in a ridiculous position himself, I had this reward for my pains, that Milton, whom I had treated so roughly, turned out my patron and sedulous body-guard. Don't laugh, reader; but give best thanks, with me, to God, the most good, the most great, and the most wise, deliverer." This final version of the story of Du Moulin (in 1670, remember) seems to have become current among those who, after the Restoration, retained any interest in the subject. Thus, Aubrey, in his notes for Milton's life, written about 1680, has a memorandum to this effect, giving "Mr. Abr. Hill" as his authority: "His [Milton's] sharp writing against Alexander More of Holland, upon a mistake, notwithstanding he [Morus] had given him [Milton], by the ambassador, all satisfaction to the contrary, viz. that the book called _Clamor_ was writ by Peter Du Moulin. Well, that was all one [said Milton]; he having writ it [the _Defensio Secunda_], it should go into the world: one of them was as bad as the other.'"--_Bentrovato_; but there is at least one vital particular in which neither Du Moulin's amusing statement in 1670 nor Aubrey's subsequent anecdote seems to be consistent with the exact truth as already before us in the documents. The secret of the real authorship of the _Regii Sanguinis Clamor_ had been better and longer kept than Du Moulin's statement would lead us to suppose. Even Ulac in 1654, as we have seen, while declaring that Morus was not the author, could not tell who else he was. Morus himself did then know, having been admitted into the secret, probably from the first; and several others then knew, having been told in confidence by Salmasius, Morus, or Du Moulin. Charles II. himself seems to have been informed. But that Morus had refrained from divulging the secret generally, or communicating it in a precise manner to Milton, even at the moment when he was frantically trying to avert Milton's wrath and stop the publication of the _Defensio Secunda_, seems evident, and must go to his credit. In the remonstrance with Thurloe, in May 1654, through the Dutch ambassador Nieuport, intended to stop the publication when, it was just leaving the press, we hear only of the denial of Morus that he was the author--nothing of any information from him that Du Moulin was the real author; and, though Durie had about the same time informed Milton in a letter from the Hague that he had heard the book attributed, on private authority from Morus, to "a certain French minister," no name was given. Farther, in the _Fides Publica_, published some months afterwards, Morus was still almost chivalrously reticent. While declaring that the real author was "alive and well," and while describing him negatively so far as to say that he was not in Holland, nor within the circle of Morus's own acquaintances, he still avoids naming him, and only appeals to himself to come forward and own his performance. And so, as late as August 1655, when Milton replied to Morus in his _Pro Se Defensio_, the evidence still is that, though he had more correct ideas by that time as to the amount and nature of Morus's responsibility for the book, and was aware of some other author at the back of Morus, he had not yet ascertained who this other author was, and still thought that the defamatory Iambics against himself, as well as the Dedicatory Epistle to Charles II., might be Morus's own. It seems to me possible that not till after the Restoration did Milton know that the alleged "French Minister" at the back of Morus in the _Regii Sanguinis Clamor_ was Dr. Peter Du Moulin, or at all events that not till then did he know that the defamatory Iambics, as well as the main text, were that gentleman's. The only person who could have put an end to the mystery completely was Du Moulin himself, and not till after the Restoration, as we have seen, was it convenient, or even safe, for Du Moulin to avow his handiwork. Yet all the while, as Du Moulin himself hints in his confession of 1670, he had been, if we may so express it, close at Milton's elbow. In 1652, when the _Regii Sanguinis Clamor_ appeared, Du Moulin, then fifty-two years of age, and knows as a semi-naturalized Frenchman, the brother of Professor Lewis Du Moulin of Oxford, had been going about in England as an ejected parson from Yorkshire, the very opposite of his brother in politics. He had necessarily known something of Milton already; and, indeed, in the book itself there is closer knowledge of Milton's position and antecedents than would have been easy for Salmasius, or Morus, or any other absolute foreigner. The author had evidently read Milton's _Tenure of Kings and Magistrates_ and his _Eikonoklastes_, as well as his _Defensio Prima_; he was aware of the significance given to the first of these treatises by the coincidence of its date with the King's Trial, and could represent it as actually a cause of the Regicide; he had gone back also upon Milton's Divorce Pamphlets and Anti-Episcopal Pamphlets, and had collected hints to Milton's detriment out of the attacks made upon him by Bishop Hall and others during the Smectymnuan controversy. All this acquaintance with Milton, the phrasing being kept sufficiently indefinite, Du Moulin could show in the book without betraying himself. That, as he has told us, would have been his ruin. The book, though shorter than the _Defensio Regia_ of Salmasius, was even a more impressive and successful vilification of the Commonwealth than that big performance; and not even to the son of the respected European theologian Molinaeus, and the brother of such a favourite of the Commonwealth as Dr. Lewis Du Moulin, could Parliament or the Council of State have shown mercy after such an offence. As for Milton, the attack on whom ran through the more general invective, not for "forty thousand brothers" would _he_ have kept his hands off Dr. Peter had he known. Providentially, however, Dr. Peter remained _incognito_, and it was Morus that was murdered, Dr. Peter looking on and "softly chuckling." Rather, I should say, getting more and more alarmed, and almost wishing that the book had never been written, or at all events praying more and more earnestly that he might not be found out, and that Morus, murdered irretrievably at any rate, would take his murdering quietly and hold his tongue. For the Commonwealth had firmly established itself meanwhile, and had passed into the Protectorate; and all rational men in Europe had given up the cause of the Stuarts, and come to regard pamphlets in their behalf as so much waste paper; and was it not within the British Islands after all, ruled over though they were by Lord Protector Cromwell, that a poor French divine of talent, tied to England already by various connexions, had the best chances and outlooks for the future? So, it appears, Du Moulin had reasoned with himself, and so he had acted. "After Ireland was reduced by the Parliamentary forces," we are informed by Wood, "he lived there, some time at Lismore, Youghal, and Dublin, under the patronage of Richard, Earl of Cork. Afterward, going into England, he settled in Oxon (where he was tutor or governor to Charles, Viscount Dungarvan, and Mr. Richard Boyle his brother); lived there two or more years, and preached constantly for a considerable time in the church of St. Peter in the East."[1] His settlement at Oxford, near his brother Dr. Lewis, dates itself, as I calculate, about 1654; and it must have been chiefly thence, accordingly, that he had watched Milton's misdirected attentions to poor Morus, knowing himself to be "the actual turbot." There is proof, however, as we shall find, that he was, from that date onwards, a good deal in London, and, what is almost startlingly strange, in a select family society there which must have brought him into relations with Milton, and perhaps now and then into his company. Du Moulin could believe in 1670 that Milton even then knew his secret, and that he owed his escape to Milton's pride and unwillingness to retract his blunder about Morus. We have seen reason to doubt that; and, indeed, Milton, had, in his second Morus publication, put himself substantially right with the public about the extent of Morus's concern in the _Regii Sanguinis Clamor_, and had scarcely anything to retract. What he could do in addition was Du Moulin's danger. He could drag a new culprit to light and immolate a second victim. That he refrained may have been owing, as we have supposed most likely, to his continued ignorance that the Dr. Du Moulin now going about in Oxford and in London, so near himself, was the original and principal culprit; or, if he did have any suspicions of the fact, there may have been other reasons, in and after 1655, for a dignified silence. [Footnote 1: Wood's Fasti, II. 195.] In proceeding from the month of August 1655, when Milton published his _Pro Se Defensio_, to his life through the rest of Oliver's Protectorate, it is as if we were leaving a cluster of large islands that had detained us long by their size and by the storms on their coasts, and were sailing on into a tract of calmer sea, where the islands, though numerous, are but specks in comparison. The reason of this is that we are now out of the main entanglement of the Salmasius and Morus controversy. Milton had taken leave of that subject, and indeed of controversy altogether for a good while. In the original memoirs of Milton due note is taken of this calm in his life after his second castigation of Morus. "Being now quiet from state adversaries and public contests," says Phillips, "he had leisure again for his own studies and private designs"; and Wood's phrase is all but identical: "About the time that he had finished these things, he had more leisure and time at command." Both add that, in this new leisure, he turned again at once to those three labours which had been occupying him, at intervals, for so many years, and which were, in fact, always in reserve as his favourite hack-employments when he had nothing else to do--his compilations for his intended _Thesaurus Linguæ Latinæ_, his _History of Britain_, and his _Body of Biblical Theology_. The mere mention of such works as again in progress in the house in Petty France in the third or fourth year of Milton's blindness confirms conclusively the other evidences that he had by this time overcome in a remarkable manner the worst difficulties of his condition. One sees him in his room, daily for hours together, with his readers and amanuenses, directing them to this or that book on the shelves, listening as they read the passages wanted, interrupting and requiring another book, listening again, interrupting again, and so at length dictating his notes, and giving cautions as to the keeping of them. His different sets of papers, with the volumes most in use, are familiar now even to his own touch in their places on the table or the floor; and, when his amanuenses are gone, he can sit on by himself, revising the day's work mentally, and projecting the sequel. And so from day to day, with the variation of his afternoon exercise in the garden, or the walk beyond it in some one's company into the park or farther, or an occasional message from Thurloe on office-business, or calls from friends singly or two or three together, and always, of course, at intervals through the day, the pleased contact of the blind hands with the stops of the organ. Among the inmates of the house in Petty France in the latter part of 1655, besides the blind widower himself, were his three little orphan girls, the eldest, Anne, but nine years of age, the second, Mary, but seven, and the youngest, Deborah, only three. How they were tended no one knows; but one fancies them seeing little of their father, and left very much to the charge of servants. Two women-servants, with perhaps a man or boy to wait on Milton personally, may have completed the household, unless Milton's two nephews are to be reckoned as also belonging to it. That the nephews still hovered about Milton, and resided with him occasionally, together or by turn, giving him their services as amanuenses, appears to be certain. Edward Phillips was now twenty-five years of age, and John Phillips twenty-four; but neither of them had taken to any profession, or had any other means of subsistence than private pedagogy, with such work for the booksellers as could be obtained by their own ability or through their uncle's interest. The younger, as we know, had made some name for himself by his _Joannis Philippi, Angli, Responsio_ of 1652, written in behalf of his uncle, and under his uncle's superintendence; and it is probable that both the brothers had in the interval been doing odds and ends of literary work. There are verses by both among the commendatory poems prefixed to the first two parts of Henry Lawes's _Ayres and Dialogues for one, two, or three Voices_, published in 1653, as a sequel to that previous publication of 1648, entitled _Choice Psalmes put into musick for three Voices_, which had contained Milton's own sonnet to Lawes; and in the _Divine Poems_ of Thomas Washbourne, a Gloucestershire clergyman, published in 1654, there are "Verses to his friend Thomas Washbourne" by Edward Phillips. In this latter year, I find, John Phillips must have been away for some time in Scotland, for in a letter to Thurloe dated "Wood Street, Compter, 11th April, 1654", the writer--no other than Milton's interesting friend Andrew Sandelands, now back from Scotland himself--mentions Phillips as there instead. Sandelands had not ceased, under the Protectorate, to try to make himself useful to the Government, and so get restored to his Rectory; and, as nothing had come of his grand proposal about the woods of Scotland, he had interested himself in a new business: viz. "the prosecution of that information concerning the Crown Lands in Scotland which his Highness and the late Council of State did refer to the Commissioners at Leith." Assuring Thurloe that he had been diligent in the affair, he says, "I have employed Mr. John Phillips, Mr. Milton's kinsman, to solicit the business, both with the Judges at Edinburgh and with the Commissioners at Leith; who by _his last letter_ promiseth to give me a very good account very speedily." Whether this means that Sandelands had himself sent Phillips from London to Scotland on the business, or only that, knowing Phillips to be already in Scotland, he had put the business into his hands, in either case one discerns an attempt on Milton's part to find some public employment, other than clerkship under himself, for the unsteady Phillips. The attempt, however, must have failed; for in 1655 Phillips was back in London, still a Bohemian, and apparently in a mood that boded ill for his ever being anything else.[1] [Footnote 1: Wood's Ath. IV. 760-769 and 212; Lawes's _Ayres and Dialogues_; Thurloe, II. 226-227.--At the date of the letter to Thurloe (April 11, 1654) Sandelands was still in great straits. He had been arrested for debt and was then in prison. He reminds Thurloe of his attempts to be useful for the last year or more, not forgetting his project, in the winter of 1652-3, of timber and tar from the Scottish woods. The "stirs in Scotland" since, it appears, had obstructed that design after it had been lodged, through Milton, with the Committee of the Admiralty; but Sandelands hopes it may be revived, and recommends a beginning that summer in the wood of Glenmoriston about Loch Ness, where the English soldiers are to be plentiful at any rate. "Sir," he adds, "if a winter journey into Scotland to do the State service, and my long attendance here, hath not deserved a small reward, or at least the taking off of the sequestration from my parsonage in Yorkshire, I hope ere long I shall merit a far greater, when by my means his Highness's revenues shall be increased."--Milton, I may mention, had, about this time, several old acquaintances in the Protector's service in Scotland. One was the ex-licencer of pamphlets, Gilbert Mabbot. I find him, in June 1653, in some official connexion with Leith (Council Order Book, June 3).] On the 17th of August, 1655, or just nine days after the publication of Milton's _Pro Se Defensio_, there appeared anonymously in London, in the form of a small quarto pamphlet of twenty-two pages, a poem in rhyming heroics, entitled _A Satyr against Hypocrites_. In evidence that it was the work of a scholar, there were two mottoes from Juvenal on the title-page, one of them the well known "Si natura negat, facit indignatio versum." Of the performance itself there can be no more exact description than that of Godwin. "It is certainly written," he says, "with considerable talent; and the scenes which the author brings before us are painted in a very lively manner. He describes successively a Sunday, as it appeared in the time of Cromwell, a christening, a Wednesday, which agreeably to the custom of that period was a weekly fast, and the profuse and extravagant supper with which, according to him, the fast-day concluded. The christening, the bringing home the child to its mother, who is still in confinement, and the talk of the gossips, have a considerable resemblance to the broadest manner of Chaucer." This last remark Godwin at once qualifies. Whereas in Chaucer, he says, we have sheer natural humour, with no ulterior end, the _The Satyr against Hypocrites_ "is an undisguised attack upon the National Religion, upon everything that was then visible in this country and metropolis under the name of Religion." In other words, it is in a vein of anti-Puritanism, or even anti-Cromwellianism, quite as bitter as that of any of the contemporary Royalist writers, or as that of Butler and the post-Restoration wits, with a decided tendency also to indecency in ideas and expression, Of the more serious parts this is a specimen:-- "Oh, what will men not dare, if thus they dare Be impudent to Heaven, and play with prayer, Play with that fear, with that religious awe, Which keeps men free, and yet is man's great law! What can they but the worst of Atheists be Who, while they word it 'gainst impiety, Affront the throne of God with their false deeds? Alas! this wonder in the Atheist breeds. Are these the men that would the age reform, That _Down with Superstition_ cry, and swarm This painted glass, that sculpture, to deface, But worship pride and avarice in their place? _Religion_ they bawl out, yet know not what Religion is, unless it be to prate!" That such "a smart thing," as Wood calls it, should have appeared in the middle of Cromwell's Protectorate, and that, its anti-Cromwellianism being implied in its general anti-Puritanism rather than explicitly avowed, it should have had a considerable circulation, need not surprise us. What is surprising is that the author should have been Milton's younger nephew, who had been brought up from his very childhood under his uncle's roof, and educated wholly and solely by his uncle's own care. It would add to the surprise if the thing had been actually written in Milton's house; and even for that there is, as we shall find, something like evidence. Altogether, I should say, Mr. John Phillips had, of late, got quite beyond his uncle's control, and had taken to courses of his own, not in very good company. Among new acquaintances he had forsworn his uncle's politics, and was no longer perfectly at ease with him.[1] [Footnote 1: _A Satyr against Hypocrites_, 1655 (Thomason copy for date of publication); Godwin's _Lives of the Phillipses_, 49-51; Wood's Ath. IV. 764.--The _Satyr against Hypocrites_ is ascribed in some book-catalogues to Edward Phillips; nay, I have found it ascribed, by a singular absurdity, to Milton himself. That it passed at the time as Edward Phillips's seems proved by the entry of it in the Stationers' Registers under date March 14, 1654-5: "_A Satyr against Hypocrites by Edward Phillips, Gent_," the publisher's name being given as "Nathaniel Brooke." I cannot explain this; but John Phillips was certainly the author. Wood alone would be good authority; but it appears from one of Bliss's notes to Wood that the piece was afterwards claimed by John Phillips, and in Edward Phillips's _Theatrum Poetarum_, published in 1675, the piece is ascribed by name to his brother John, in evidence of his "vein of burlesque and facetious poetry" (Godwin, Lives of the Phillipses, p. 158). It was a rather popular piece when first published, and was twice reprinted after the Restoration.] During the whole time of Milton's residence in Petty France, his elder nephew tells us, "he was frequently visited by persons of quality, particularly my lady Ranelagh (whose son for some time he instructed), all learned foreigners of note (who could not part out of this city without giving a visit to a person so eminent), and lastly by particular friends that had a high esteem for him: viz. Mr. Andrew Marvell, young Lawrence (the son of him that was President of Oliver's Council), ... Mr. Marchamont Needham, the writer of _Politicus_, but above all Mr. Cyriack Skinner." To these may be added Hartlib, Durie (when he was not abroad), Henry Oldenburg, and others of the Hartlib-Durie connexion. Altogether, the group is an interesting one, and it is precisely in and about 1655 that we have the means of seeing all the individuals of it in closest proximity to Milton and to each other. As one's curiosity is keenest, at this point, about Lady Ranelagh, she may have the precedence. On her own account she deserves it. We have already seen (ante Vol. III. 658-660) who she was,--by marriage the Viscountess Ranelagh, wife of Arthur Jones, second Viscount Ranelagh in the Irish Peerage, but by birth Catharine Boyle, daughter of the great Richard Boyle, first Earl of Cork, with the four surviving sons of that Earl for her brothers, and his five other surviving daughters for her sisters.--Of her four brothers, the eldest, Richard Boyle, second Earl of Cork, lived generally in Ireland, looking after his great estates there; and indeed it was in Ireland that most of the family had their chief properties. But the second brother, Roger Boyle, Lord Broghhill, already known to us for his services in Ireland under Cromwell, and for his conspicuous fidelity to Cromwell ever since, was now in Scotland, as President of Cromwell's Council there. _He_ may be called the literary brother; for, though his chief activity hitherto had been in war and politics, he had found time to write and publish his long romance or novel called _Parthenissa_, and so to begin a literary reputation which was to be increased by poems, tragedies, comedies, &c., in no small profusion, in coming years. His age, at our present date, was about thirty-four. Two years younger was Francis Boyle, the third brother, afterwards Lord Shannon, and four years younger still was the philosophical and scientific brother, Mr. Boyle, or "the Honourable Mr. Robert Boyle." When we last saw this extraordinary young man, after his return from his travels, i.e. in 1645-48, he was in retirement at Stalbridge in Dorsetshire, absorbed in studies and in chemical experiments, but corresponding eagerly with Hartlib and others in London, and sometimes coming to town himself, when he would attend those meetings of the _Invisible College_, the germ of the future Royal Society, about the delights of which Hartlib was never tired of writing to him. This mode of life he had continued, with the interruption of a journey or two abroad, till 1652. "Nor am I here altogether idle," he says in one of his latest letters to Hartlib from Stalbridge; "for I can sometimes make a shift to snatch from the importunity of my affairs leisure to trace such plans, and frame such models, as, if my Irish fortune will afford me quarries and woods to draw competent materials from to construct after them, will fit me to build a pretty house in Athens, where I may live to Philosophy and Mr. Hartlib." The necessity of looking after the Irish fortune of which he here speaks had since then taken him to Ireland and kept him there for the greater part of two years. He found it, he says, "a barbarous country, where chemical spirits were so misunderstood, and chemical instruments so unprocurable, that it was hard to have any Hermetic thoughts in it;" and he had betaken himself to "anatomical dissections" as the only kind of scientific pastime that Irish conditions favoured. On returning to England, in 1654, he had settled in Oxford, to be in the society of Wilkins, Wallis, Goddard, Ward, Petty, Bathurst, Willis, and other kindred scientific spirits, most of them recently transferred from London to posts in the University, and so forming the Oxford offshoot of the _Invisible College_, as distinct from the London original. But still from Oxford, as formerly from Stalbridge, the young philosopher made occasional visits to London; and always, when there, he was to be found at the house of his sister, Lady Ranelagh.--What property belonged to Lady Ranelagh herself, or to her husband, lay also mainly in Ireland; but for many years, in consequence of the distracted state of that country, her residence had been in London. "In the Pall Mall, in the suburbs of Westminster," is the more exact designation. Her Irish property seems, for the present, to have yielded her but a dubious revenue; and though she had a Government pension of £4 a week on some account or other, she seems to have been dependent in some degree on subsidies from her wealthier relatives. It also appears, though hazily, that there was some deep-rooted disagreement between her and her husband, and that, if he was not generally away in Ireland, he was at least now seldom with her in London. She had her children with her, however. One of these was her only son, styled then simply Mr. Richard Jones, though modern custom would style him Lord Navan. In 1655 he was a boy of fifteen years of age, Lady Ranelagh herself being then just forty. The education of this boy, and of her two or three girls, was her main anxiety; but she took a deep interest as well in the affairs of all the members of the Boyle family, not one of whom would take any step of importance without consulting her. She corresponded with them all, but especially with Lord Broghill and the philosophical young Robert, both of them her juniors, and Robert peculiarly her _protegé_. In his letters to her, all written carefully and in a strain of stately and respectful affection, we see the most absolute confidence in her judgment; and it is from her letters to him, full of solicitude about his health, and of interest in his experiments and speculations, that we obtain perhaps the best idea of that combination of intellectual and moral excellencies to which her contemporaries felt they could not do justice except by calling her "the incomparable Lady Ranelagh." For that name, which was to be hers through an entire generation more, was already as common in talk about her beyond the circle of her own family as the affectionate one of "Sister Ranelagh" was within that circle. Partly it was because she was one of the best-educated women of her time, with the widest tastes and sympathies in matters literary and philosophical, and with much of that genius of the Boyles, though in feminine form, which was represented by Lord Broghill and Robert Boyle among her brothers. Just before our present date we find her taking lessons in Hebrew from a Scotch teacher of that language then in London, who afterwards dedicated his _Gate to the Holy Tongue_ to her, with much respect for her "proficiency in so short a time," and "amidst so many abstractions as she was surrounded with." And so in things of greater grasp. In writing to her brother Robert her satisfaction with the new Experimental Philosophy which he and others are trying to institute can express itself as a belief that it will "help the considering part of mankind to a clearer prospect into this great frame of the visible world, and therein of the power and wisdom of its great Maker, than the rough draft wherein it has hitherto been represented in the ignorant and wholesale philosophy that has so long, by the power of an implicit faith in the doctrine of Aristotle and the Schools, gone current in the world has ever been able to assist them towards." But it was not merely by variety of intellectual culture that Lady Ranelagh was distinguished. One cannot read her letters without discerning in them a deep foundation of piety in the best sense, real wisdom, a serious determination with herself to make her own life as actively useful as possible, and a disposition always to relate herself to what was sterling around her. "Though some particular opinions might shut her up in a divided communion," said Burnet of her long afterwards, "yet her soul was never of a party. She divided her charities and friendships, her esteem as well as her bounty, with the truest regard to merit and her own obligations, without any difference made upon the account of opinion." This was true even at our present date, when she was an Oliverian in politics, like her brother Broghill, though perhaps more moderately so, and in religious matters what may be called a very liberal Puritan.[1] [Footnote 1: Birch's Life of Robert Boyle, prefixed to edition of Boyle's Works, pp. 27-33; Letters of Boyle to Lady Ranelagh and of Lady Ranelagh to Boyle in Vol. V. of his Works; Notes by Mr. Crossley to his edition of _Worthington's Diary and Correspondence_ for the Chetham Society, I. p. 164-165, and 366. Mrs. Green's Calendar of State-Papers for 1651, p. 574.] How long Lady Ranelagh had known Milton is uncertain; but, as her nephew, the young Earl of Barrimore, had been one of Milton's pupils in his house in the Barbican, and as we had express information that he had been sent there by his aunt, the acquaintance must have begun as early as 1646 or 1647. And now, it appears, through all the intermediate eight years of Milton's changes of residence and fortune, including his six in the Latin Secretaryship, the acquaintanceship has been kept up, and has been growing more intimate, till, in 1655, in his widowerhood and blindness in his house in Petty France, there is no one, and certainly no lady, that more frequently calls upon him, or whose voice, on the staircase, announcing who the visitor is, he is more pleased to hear. They were close neighbours, only St. James's Park between their houses; and his having taught her nephew, the young Earl of Barrimore, was not now the only link of that kind between themselves. She had not been satisfied till she had contrived that her own son should, to some extent, be Milton's pupil too. "My Lady Ranelagh, whose son for some time he instructed" are Phillips's words on this point; and, though we included Lady Ranelagh's son, Mr. Richard Jones, afterwards third Viscount and first Earl of Ranelagh, in our general enumeration of Milton's pupils, given under the year 1647, when the Barbican establishment was complete, it was with the intimation that this particular pupil, then but seven years old, could hardly have been one of the Barbican boys, but must have had the benefit of lessons from Milton in some exceptional way afterwards. The fact, on the likeliest construction of the evidence, seems to have been that Milton, to oblige Lady Ranelagh, had quite recently allowed the boy to come daily, or every other day, from his mother's house in Pall Mall to Petty France, to sit with him for an hour or two, and read Greek and Latin. To the end of his life Milton found this easy kind of pedagogy a pleasant amusement in his blindness, and made it indeed one of his devices for help to himself in his readings and references to books; and Lady Ranelagh's son may have been his first experiment in the method. That he retained an interest in this young Ranelagh of a semi-tutorial kind, as well as on his mother's account, the sequel will prove. Strange things do happen in real life; and actually it was possible that, on the day of one of Lady Ranelagh's visits to Milton, she might have had a call in her own house from Dr. Peter Du Moulin. For her ladyship's circle of acquaintance did include this gentleman. He had been tutor in Ireland to her two nephews, Viscount Dungarvan and Mr. Richard Boyle, sons of her eldest brother, the Earl of Cork, and he had come with them, still in that capacity, to Oxford (ante p. 224), and so had been introduced into the whole Boyle connexion.[1] What amount of awkwardness there may have been in a possible meeting between Du Moulin and Milton themselves through this common social connexion of theirs in London has been already discussed. The Ranelagh circle, for the rest, included all those, or most of them, that were Milton's friends independently, and could converse about him in her ladyship's own spirit. The family of Lord President Lawrence, for example, were in high esteem with Lady Ranelagh; and the President's son, Mr. Henry Lawrence, Milton's young friend, and presumably one of his former pupils of the Barbican days, seems to have been about this time much in the company of her ladyship's nephew, the Earl of Barrimore. That young nobleman, we may mention, had become a married man, shortly after he had ceased to be Milton's pupil in the Barbican, and was now leading a gallant and rather idle life about London, but not quite astray from his aunt's society, or perhaps from Milton's either.[2] Then there were Hartlib, Durie, Haak, and other lights of the London branch of the _Invisible College_, friends of Robert Boyle for years past, and corresponding with him and the other luminaries of the Oxford colony of the _College_. Hartlib, in particular, who now lived at Charing Gross, and who had found a new theme of interest in the wonderful abilities and wonderful experiments of Mr. Clodius, a German chemist, who had recently become his son-in-law, was still in constant correspondence with Boyle, and was often at Lady Ranelagh's on some occasion or other.[3] Nor must Milton's new German friend, Henry Oldenburg, the agent for Bremen, be forgotten. He also, as we shall find, had been drawn, in a special manner, into the Boyle and Ranelagh connexion, and was, in fact, entering, by means of this connexion, on that part of his interesting career for which he is remembered in the annals of English science. He was to marry Durie's only daughter, and be retained by that tie, as well as by others, in the Hartlib-Durie cluster of Milton's friends. [Footnote 1: Dr. Peter Du Moulin was one of Robert Boyle's friends and correspondents both before and after the Restoration. It was at Boyle's request that Du Moulin translated and published in 1658 a little book called _The Devil of Mascon_, a French story of well-authenticated spirit-rapping; and the book was dedicated by Dumoulin to Boyle, and Boyle contributed an introductory letter to it. Moreover, it was to Boyle that Du Moulin in 1670 dedicated the first part of his _Parerga_ or Collection of Latin Poems, the second part of which contained his reprint of the Iambics against Milton from the _Regii Sanguinis Clamor_.--See Birch's Life of Boyle, p. 60, and four letters of Du Moulin to Boyle in Boyle's Works, Vol. V (pp 594-596). In three of these letters, all written after the Restoration, Du Moulin presents his respectful services to "My Honourable Lady Ranelagh" in terms implying long-established acquaintanceship. But there are other scattered proofs of Du Moulin's long intimacy with the whole Boyle family.] [Footnote 2: The young Earl had married, hastily and against his mother's will, in 1649, shortly after he had been Milton's pupil. See a letter of condolence on the subject from Robert Boyle to his sister, the young Earl's mother (Boyle's Works, V. 240). For the intimacy between the young Earl of Barrimore and young Henry Lawrence see a letter of Hartlib's to Boyle. (Ibid. V. 279).] [Footnote 3: Letters of Hartlib to Boyle in Vol. V. of Boyle's Works.] Marvell, Needham, and Cyriack Skinner are not certainly known to have been among Lady Ranelagh's acquaintances. _Their_ visits to Milton, therefore, have to be imagined apart. Marvell's, if he were still domiciled at Eton, can have been but occasional, but must have been always welcome. Needham's cannot have been, as formerly, on business connected with the _Mercurius Politicus_; for Milton had ceased for some years to have anything to do with the editorship of that journal. The duty of licensing it and its weekly double, _The Public Intelligencer_, also edited by Needham and published by Newcome, was now performed regularly by the omnipotent Thurloe. Both journals would come to Milton's house, to be read to him; and Needham, in his visits, would bring other gossip of the town, and be altogether a very chatty companion. "Above all, Mr. Cyriack Skinner" is, however, Phillips's phrase in his enumeration of those of his uncle's friends who were most frequently with him about this time. The words imply that, since June 1654, when this old pupil of Milton's had again "got near" him (Vol. IV. pp. 621-623), his attention to Milton had been unremitting, so that Milton had come to depend upon it and to expect him almost daily. On that understanding it is that we may read most luminously four private Sonnets of Milton, all of the year 1655, two of them addressed to Cyriack Skinner, and one to young Lawrence. The remaining sonnet, standing first of the four in the printed editions, is addressed to no one in particular; but the four will be read best in connexion. In reading them Cyriack Skinner is to be pictured as about twenty-eight years of age, and Lawrence as a youth of two and twenty:-- (1) When I consider how my light is spent Ere half my days in this dark world and wide, And that one talent which is death to hide Lodged with me useless, though my soul more bent To serve therewith my Maker, and present My true account, lest He, returning, chide, "Doth God exact day-labour, light denied?" I fondly ask. But Patience, to prevent That murmur, soon replies:--"God doth not need Either man's work or his own gifts. Who best Bear his mild yoke, they serve him best. His state Is kingly; thousands at his bidding speed, And post o'er land and ocean without rest: They also serve who only stand and wait." (2) Cyriack, this three years' day these eyes, though clear, To outward view, of blemish or of spot, Bereft of light, their seeing have forgot; Nor to their idle orbs doth sight appear Of sun, or moon, or star, throughout the year, Or man, or woman. Yet I argue not Against Heaven's hand or will, nor bate a jot Of heart or hope, but still bear up and steer Right onward. What supports me, dost thou ask? The conscience, friend, to have lost them overplied In Liberty's defence, my noble task, Of which all Europe talks from side to side. This thought might lead me through the world's vain masque Content, though blind, had I no better guide. (3) Lawrence, of virtuous father virtuous son, Now that the fields are dank, and ways are mire, Where shall we sometimes meet, and by the fire Help waste a sullen day, what may be won From the hard season gaining? Time will run On smoother, till Favonius reinspire The frozen earth, and clothe in fresh attire The lily and rose, that neither sowed nor spun. What neat repast shall feast us, light and choice, Of Attic taste, with wine, whence we may rise To hear the lute well touched, or artful voice Warble immortal notes and Tuscan air? He who of those delights can judge, and spare To interpose them oft, is not unwise. (4) Cyriack, whose grandsire on the royal bench Of British Themis, with no mean applause, Pronounced, and in his volumes taught, our laws, Which others at their bar so often wrench, To-day deep thoughts resolve with me to drench In mirth that after no repenting draws; Let Euclid rest, and Archimedes pause, And what the Swede intend, and what the French. To measure life learn thou betimes, and know Toward solid good what leads the nearest way; For other things mild Heaven a time ordains, And disapproves that care, though wise in show, That with superfluous burden loads the day, And, when God sends a cheerful hour, refrains. It has been argued that the last two of these Sonnets must be out of their proper chronological places in the printed editions. They must have been written, it is said, before Milton lost his sight: for how are such invitations to mirth and festivity reconcileable with Milton's circumstances in the third or fourth year of his blindness? There is no mistake in the matter, however. In Milton's own second or 1673 edition of his Minor Poems the sonnets, in the order in which we have printed them,--with the exception of No. 2, which had then to be omitted on account of its political point,--come immediately after the sonnet on the Piedmontese Massacre; and there are other reasons of external evidence which assign Nos. 1, 3, and 4, distinctly to about the same date as No. 2, the opening--words of which date _it_ near the middle of 1655. But, indeed, we should miss much of the biographic interest of the last two sonnets by detaching them from the two first. In No. 1 we have a plaintive soliloquy of Milton on his blind and disabled condition, ending with that beautiful expression of his resignation to God's will in which, under the image of the varieties of service that may be required by some great monarch, he contrasts his own stationariness and inactivity with the energy and bustle of so many of his contemporaries. In No. 2, addressed to Cyriack Skinner, he treats of the same topic, only reverting with pride, as he had done several times in prose, to the literary labour that had brought on his calamity. In both the intimation is that he has disciplined himself to live on as cheerfully as possible, taking daily duties, and little pleasures too, as they come. What more natural, therefore, than that, some little while after those two affecting sonnets on his blindness had been written, there should be two others, in which not a word should be said of his blindness, but young Lawrence and Cyriack Skinner should find themselves invited, in a more express manner than usual, to a day in Milton's company? For that is the proper construction of the Sonnets. They are cards of invitation to little parties, perhaps to one and the same little party, in Milton's house in the winter of 1655-6. It is dull, cold, weather; the Parks are wet, and the country-roads all mire; and for some days Milton has been baulked of his customary walk out of doors, tended by young Lawrence or Cyriack. To make amends, there shall be a little dinner in the warm room at home--"a neat repast" says Milton temptingly, adding "with wine," that there may be no doubt in that particular--to be followed by a long talk and some choice music. So young Lawrence is informed in the metrical missive to _him_; and the same day (unless, as we may hope, the little dinner became a periodical institution in Milton's house), Cyriack is told to come too. Altogether they are model cards of invitation.[1] [Footnote 1: More detailed reasons for the dating of Sonnets 1, 3, and 4 (for Sonnet 2 dates itself) will be found in the Introductions to those Sonnets in the Cambridge Edition of Milton. In line 12 of No. 2 I have substituted the word "talks" for the word "rings," now always printed in that place. "Of which all Europe rings from side to side," is the reading in the copy of the Sonnet as first printed by Phillips in 1694 at the end of his memoir of Milton; but that copy is corrupt in several places. The original dictated draft of the Sonnet among the Milton MSS. at Cambridge is to be taken as the true text; and there the word is "talks." Phillips had doubtless the echo of "rings" in his ear from the Sonnet to Fairfax. The more sonorous reading, however, has found such general acceptance that an editor hardly dares to revert to "talks."] We are now in the winter of 1655-6, and we have seen no Secretarial work from Milton since his letters and other documents in the business of the Piedmontese Protestants in May, June, and July, 1655. Officially, therefore, he had had another relapse into idleness. Not, however, into total idleness. "_Scriptum Dom. Protectoris Reipublicæ Anglicæ, Scotiæ, Hiberniæ, &c., ex Consensa atque Sententia Concilii Sui Edictum, in quo Hujus Reipublicæ Causa contra Hispanos justa esse demonstratur_, 1655" ("Manifesto of the Lord Protector of the Commonwealth of England, Scotland. Ireland, &c., put forth by the consent and advice of his Council, in which the justice of the cause of this Commonwealth against the Spaniards is demonstrated, 1655"), is the title of a Latin document, of the length of about twenty such pages as the present, now always included in editions of Milton's prose-writings, on the probability, though not quite the certainty, that it was Milton's performance. If so, it was the third great document in the nature of a Declaration of War furnished by Milton for the Commonwealth, the two former having been his Latin version of the Declaration of the Causes of War against the Scots in June 1650 (IV. 228) and his similar version of the Declaration against the Dutch in July 1652 (IV. 482-483). The present manifesto was perhaps a more difficult document to draft than either of those had been, inasmuch as Cromwell had to justify in it his recent attack upon the Spanish possessions in the West Indies. Accordingly, the manifesto had been prepared with some pains. It passed the Council finally on the 26th of October, 1655, four days after the Spanish ambassador Cardenas had left England, and two days after the Treaty between Cromwell and France had been signed;[1] and the Latin copies of it were out in London on the 9th of November.[2] Unlike the previous Declarations against the Scots and the Dutch, which had been printed in several languages, it appears to have been printed in Latin only. [Footnote 1: Council Order Book of date.] [Footnote 2: Dated copy among the Thomason Pamphlets.] A general notion of the document will be obtained from, an extract or two in translation. The opening is as follows:-- "That the causes that induced us to our recent attack on certain Islands in the West Indies, now for some time past in the possession of the Spaniards, are just and in the highest degree reasonable, there is no one but will easily understand if only he will reflect in what manner that King and his subjects have always conducted themselves towards the English nation in that tract of America ... Whenever they have opportunity, though without the least reason of justice, and with no provocation of injury, they are incessantly killing, murdering, nay butchering in cold blood, our countrymen there, as they think fit, seizing their goods and fortunes, destroying their plantations and houses, capturing any of their vessels they may meet on those seas, and treating their crews as enemies and even pirates. For they call by that opprobrious name all of any nation, themselves alone excepted, who dare to navigate those waters. Nor do they profess to have any other or better right for this than reliance on some ridiculous donation of the Pope, and the fact that they were the first discoverers of some parts of that western region ... Certainly it would have been disgraceful and unworthy in us, in possession as we were, by God's bounty, of so many ships, furnished, equipped, and ready for every use of maritime warfare, to have chosen to let them rot idly at home, rather than employ them in those parts in avenging the blood of the English, so unjustly, so inhumanly, and so often, shed by the Spaniards there,--nay, the blood too of the Indians, inasmuch as God 'hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth, and hath determined the times before appointed, and the bounds of their habitation' [Acts xvii. 26] ... Our purpose, however, is to show the right and equity of the transaction itself, rather than to state all our several reasons for it. And, that we may do this the more clearly, and explain general assertions by particulars, it will be proper to cast our eyes back a little into the past, and to run strictly over the transactions between the English and the Spaniards, observing the state of affairs on both sides, as far as mutual relations were concerned, from the time of the first discovery of the West Indies and of the Reformation of Religion. For those two great events, as they were nearly contemporary, occasioned everywhere in the world vast changes, but especially as between the English and the Spaniards; which two nations have from that time followed diverse and almost opposite methods and principles in the management of their affairs." The manifesto, accordingly, then reviews the history of the relations between Spain and England from the time of Henry VIII., appending at last a long list of more recent outrages by the Spaniards on English ships and settlements in the West Indies, the dates all duly given, with the names of the ships and their captains, and the values of the cargoes. After which, returning to more general considerations, it discusses the two pretexts of the Spaniards for their sole sovereignty in the West Indies,--the Papal donation, and the right of first discovery. Both are dismissed as absurd; and the document ends with an appeal to the common interests of Protestantism throughout Europe. Even the recent massacre of the Vaudois Protestants is brought into the plea. Thus:-- "If meanwhile we suffer such grievous injuries to be done to our countrymen in the West Indies without any satisfaction or vengeance; if we consent to be all excluded from that so important part of the world; if we permit our bitter and inveterate enemy (especially now that peace has been made with the Dutch) to carry home unmolested those huge treasures from the West Indies, by which he can repair his present losses, and restore his affairs to such a condition that he shall be able again to betake himself to that deliberation of his in 1588 'whether it would be more prudent to begin with England for the recovery of the United Provinces of Holland, or to begin with them for the subjugation of England';--beyond a doubt he will find for himself not fewer, but even more reasons, why the beginning should now be made with England. And, should God permit him ever to carry out these designs, then we should have good grounds for expecting that on us first, but eventually on all Protestants wheresoever, there would be wreaked the residue of that most brutal massacre suffered lately by our brothers in the Alpine valleys: which massacre, if credit is to be given to the published complaints of those poor orthodox Christians, was originally schemed and appointed in the secret councils of the Spanish Court, through the agency of those paltry friars whom they call missionaries (_per illos fraterculos missionarios quos vacant Hispanicæ aulæ consiliis intimis informata primitus ac designata erat_)." How far Milton's hand helped in this important document of the Protectorate may fairly be a question. The substance was probably drafted by the Council and Thurloe, and only handed to Milton for re-expression and translation; nay, it is possible that even in the work of translation, to save time, Milton and Meadows may have been partners. All in all, however, as the proofs are all but certain that Milton's hand was to _some_ extent employed in the document, it may mark his return to ordinary official work in Oct.-Nov. 1655, after three months of renewed exemption from such work, following his batch of state-letters on the subject of the Massacre in Piedmont.[1] [Footnote 1: The _Scriptum Domini Protectoris contra Hispanos_ was reprinted, as indubitably Milton's, in 1738, and again in 1741, to assist in rousing British feeling afresh against Spain; and Birch and all succeeding editors of Milton have agreed in regarding it as his. Godwin, however (_Hist. of Commonwealth_, IV. 217-219, footnote), suggests doubts.] What adds to the probability that Cromwell's Manifesto against Spain, dated Oct. 26, 1655, and published Nov. 9, was partly of Milton's composition, is the fact, to which we have now to request attention, that he did about this time resume ordinary office-work to an extent beyond expectation. The following is a list of Letters to Foreign States and Princes written by him for Cromwell from Dec. 1655 to May 1656 inclusively. Two or three of them are important Cromwellian documents, and require elucidation:-- (LXV.) TO THE DOGE OF VENICE, _Dec. 1655_:--His Highness congratulates the Venetians upon their recent naval victory over the Turks, but brings to their notice the fact that among the ships they had taken in that victory there was an English one, called _The Great Prince_, belonging to William and Daniel Williams and Edward Beal, English merchants. She had been pressed by the Turks at Constantinople, and employed as a transport for Turkish soldiers and provisions to Crete. The crew had been helpless in the affair, and the owners blameless; and his Highness does not doubt that the Doge and Senate will immediately give him a token of their friendship by causing the ship to be restored.--The naval victory of the Venetians was, doubtless, that which Morus had celebrated In the Latin poem for which he received his gold chain (ante pp. 212-213). (LXVI.) To LOUIS XIV. OF FRANCE, Dec. 1655:--Samuel Mico, William Cockain, George Poyner, and other English merchants have petitioned his Highness about a ship of theirs, called _The Unicorn_, which had been seized in the Mediterranean as long ago as 1650 by the Admiral and Vice-Admiral of the French fleet, with a cargo worth £34,000. The capture was originally unfair, as there was then peace between England and France, and express promises had been recently given by Cardinal Mazarin and the French Ambassador, M. de Bordeaux, that amends would be made as soon as the Treaty with France was complete. That happily being now the case, his Highness expects from his Majesty the indemnification of the said merchants as "the first-fruits of the renewed friendship and recently formed alliance." (LXVII.) To LOUIS XIV. OF FRANCE, _Jan._ 1655-56:[1]--His Highness has been informed of very extraordinary conduct on the part of the French Governor of Belleisle in the Bay of Biscay. On the 10th of December last, or thereabouts, he not only admitted into his port one Dillon, a piratic enemy of the English Commonwealth, and assisted him with supplies, but also prevented the recapture of a merchant ship from the said Dillon by Captain Robert Vessey of the _Nightingale_ war-ship, and further secured Dillon's escape when Vessey had fought him and had him at his mercy. All this is, of course, utterly against the recent Treaty: and his Majesty will doubtless take due notice of the Governor's conduct and give satisfaction. [Footnote 1: Not in the Printed Collection nor in Phillips; but in the Skinner Transcript (No. 46 there), and printed thence in Hamilton's Milton Papers (p. 4).] (LXVIII.) TO THE EVANGELICAL SWISS CANTONS, _Jan._ 1655-6. To understand this important letter it is necessary to remember that in 1653 there had broken out, for the second or third time, a Civil War of Religion among the Swiss. The Popish Cantons of Schwytz, Uri, Zug, Unterwalden, Luzern, &c., had quarrelled with the Protestant or Evangelical Cantons of Zurich, Basel, Schaffhausen, Bern, Glarus, Appenzell, &c.; and, as the Popish Cantons trusted to help from surrounding Catholic powers, the Confederation and Swiss Protestantism were in peril. It had been to watch events and proceedings in this struggle that Cromwell had sent into Switzerland, early in 1654, Mr. John Pell and Mr. John Durie, as his agents (ante p. 41). Durie had remained only about a year; but Pell was still there, reinforced now by Morland, who, after his special mission to the Duke of Savoy on the business of the Piedmontese Massacre of April 1655, had taken up his abode in Geneva to superintend the distributing of the money collected for the Piedmontese Protestants. That massacre had been ominous to the Swiss, and had complicated the strife between the Popish and the Evangelical Cantons. In the Popish Cantons, especially that of Schwytz, there had been severe persecutions of Protestant Dissenters; the union of these Cantons among themselves and their Anti-Protestant temper had become stronger; and altogether the news from Switzerland was bad. Application had been made by the Evangelical Cantons, through Pell, for help from Cromwell, similar application being made at the same time to the Dutch; and the following is Cromwell's answer:--"Both from your public acts transmitted to us by our Commissioners at Geneva [Pell and Morland], and from your letter dated at Zürich, Dec. 27, we understand abundantly in what condition your affairs are.--too abundantly, since it is none of the best. Wherein, though we grieve to find your peace at an end and so lasting a Confederacy ruptured, yet, as it appears that this has happened by no fault on your part, we trust that hence, from the very iniquity and obstinacy of your adversaries, there is again being furnished you only so much new occasion for displaying your courage and your long-known constancy in the Evangelical Faith. For what the Schwytz Cantoners are driving at in their resolution to make it a capital offence in any one to embrace our Religion, and who they are that have instigated them to proceedings of such a hostile spirit to the Orthodox Faith, no one can avoid knowing who has not yet forgotten that foul slaughter of our brethren in Piedmont. Wherefore, well-beloved friends, as you always have been, be still, by God's help, brave; do not yield your rights and federate privileges, nay, Liberty of Conscience and Religion itself, to be trampled on by worshippers of idols; and so prepare yourselves that you may not only appear the champions of your own liberty and safety, but may be able also to succour and stand by your neighbouring brethren by all means in your power, especially those most sorrow-stricken Piedmontese: firmly persuaded of this, that the intention was to have opened a passage to your persons over their bodies and deaths. For my part, be assured [the expression in the singular: _de me scitote_] that your safety and prosperity are no less my care and anxiety than if this fire had broken out in this our own Commonwealth, or than if those axes of the Schwytz Cantoners had been sharpened, and their swords drawn (as they veritably are, for all the Reformed are concerned), for our own necks. No sooner, therefore, have we been informed of the state of your affairs, and the obdurate temper of your enemies, than, taking counsel with some very honourable persons, and some ministers of the Church of highest esteem for their piety, on the subject of the assistance it might be possible to send you consistently with our own present requirements, we have come to those resolutions which our agent Pell will communicate to you. For the rest, we cease not to commend to the favour of Almighty God all your plans, and the protection of this most righteous cause of yours, whether in peace or in war."--From a private letter of Thurloe's to Pell, of the same date as this official one, we learn that the persons consulted by Cromwell on the occasion were the Committee for the Piedmontese Collection (ante pp. 40-41), his Highness regarding the Piedmontese business and the Swiss business as radically identical, and desiring to prepare the public mind for exertions, if necessary, in behalf of Swiss Protestantism as extraordinary as those that had been made for the Piedmontese. The conferences on the subject were very earnest, with the result that his Highness instructed Pell to offer the Cantons of Zürich and Bern a subsidy of £20,000, at the rate of £5000 a month, on security for repayment--the first £5000, however, to be sent immediately, without waiting for such security.[1] [Footnote 1: See Thurloe's Letter in Vaughan's _Protectorate_, I, 334-337.] (LXIX.) To CHARLES X., KING OF SWEDEN, _Feb._ 1655-6:[1]--This letter also is very important, though less in itself than in its circumstances; and it requires introduction.--Charles X., or Charles Gustavus (Karl Gustav), the successor of Queen Christina on the Swedish throne, was proving himself a man of energy. Chancellor Oxenstiern, so long the leading statesman of Sweden, had died in Aug. 1654, just after the accession of Charles; and under the new King, with the younger Oxenstiern for his Chancellor, Sweden had entered on a career of war, which was to continue through his whole reign, and the aim of which was little less than the extension of Sweden into an Empire across the Baltic. He had begun with Poland, between which and Sweden there was an old feud, and the King of which then was John Casimir. Other powers, however, had been immediately stirred by the war. Denmark, Russia, and the German empire generally, were interested in saving Poland, and therefore tended to an alliance against Karl Gustav; while, on the other hand, the Great Elector of Brandenburg, Friedrich-Wilhelm, found it convenient for the present, in the interests of his Prussian possessions, to be on the side of Sweden. Cromwell had not been likely at first to interfere directly in such a complicated continental quarrel; and, indeed, as we have seen from a previous letter of his to the Swedish King (ante p. 166), his first feeling on hearing of the Swedish movements on the Continent had been that of regret at the disturbance of the Peace of Westphalia. Still Sweden was a power which commanded Cromwell's respect. Nor was Charles X., on his side, less anxious to retain the friendship of the great English Protector. On succeeding Christina he had accepted and ratified her Treaty with Cromwell--"Whitlocke's Treaty," as it may be called; he had sent a Mr. PETER COYET to be Swedish Resident in London; and, after he had begun his Polish war, there was nothing he desired more than some yet closer partnership between himself and Cromwell, that might unite Sweden and England in a common European policy. Accordingly, in July 1655, Charles X. being then in camp in Poland, there had arrived in London a splendid Swedish embassy extraordinary, consisting of COUNT CHRISTIERN BUNDT, and other noblemen and gentlemen, with attendants, to the number of two hundred persons in all, "generally proper handsome men and fair-haired." Whitlocke, who was naturally called in by the Protector on this occasion, describes with unusual gusto the reception of the Embassy. There was a magnificent torchlight procession of coaches, most of them with six horses, to convey the Ambassador and his suite from Tower Wharf, where they landed, to Sir Abraham Williams's house in Westminster; there were feastings and other entertainments, at the Lord Protector's charge, for three days; and at length on the third day Count Bundt had audience in the Banqueting House at Whitehall, in the midst of a great assembly, with ladies in the galleries. It was difficult to say whether in this audience the Ambassador or the Protector acquitted himself best. "The Ambassador's people," says Whitlocke, "were all admitted into the room, and made a lane within the rails in the midst of the room. At the upper end, upon a footpace and carpet, stood the Protector, with a chair of state behind him, and divers of his Council and servants about him. The Master of the Ceremonies [still Sir Oliver Fleming] went before the Ambassador on the left side; the Ambassador, in the middle, betwixt me and Strickland, went up in the open lane of the room. As soon as they [the Ambassador and his immediate suite] came within the room, at the lower end of the lane, they put off their hats, the Ambassador a little while after the rest; and, when he was uncovered, the Protector also put off his hat, and answered the Ambassador's three salutations in his coming up to him; and on the foot-pace they saluted each other as friends usually do; and, when the Protector put on his hat, the Ambassador put on his as soon as the other. After a little pause, the Ambassador put off his hat, and began to speak, and then put it on again; and, whensoever in his speech he named the King his master, or Sweden, or the Protector, or England, he moved his hat: especially if he mentioned anything of God, or the good of Christendom, he put off his hat very low; and the Protector still answered him in the like postures of civility." The speech, which was in Swedish, but immediately translated into Latin by the Ambassador's secretary, was to the effect that the King of Sweden desired to propound to His Highness some matters for additional treaty. Cromwell's reply, delivered in English, which the Ambassador understood, was to the effect that he was very willing to enter into "a nearer and more strict alliance" with the King of Sweden and would nominate some persons to hear Count Bundt's proposals.--All this had been in the last days of July 1655; but, though there had been subsequent audiences of the Ambassador, and banquets given to him and the other chief Swedes by the Protector himself at Hampton Court, August had passed, and September, and October, and November, and still the actual Treaty had been avoided. Other things engrossed the Protector--the Treaty with France, the West-India Expedition, the beginning of the War with Spain, &c. But in Count Bundt there had been sent to Cromwell perhaps the most high-tempered ambassador he had ever seen. Immediately after the first audience, Dorset House, in Fleet Street, taken and furnished at the Ambassador's own expense, had become the head-quarters of the Embassy; and here, as month after month had passed without approach to real business, his impatience had flashed into fierceness. It broke out in his talk to Whitlocke, who took every opportunity of being with him, the rather because other "grandees" held aloof. "No Commissioners being yet come to the Swedish Ambassador," writes Whitlocke, under date Dec. 1655, "he grew into some high expressions of his sense of the neglect to his master by this delay; which I did endeavour to excuse, and acquainted the Protector with it, who thereupon promised to have it mended." In truth, the warlike Swedish King had become by this time a man whose embassy compelled attention. "_Letters of the success of the Swedes in Poland and Lithuania," "Letters of the Swedes' victory against the Muscovites," "The Swedes had good success in Poland and Moscovia," "An Agreement made between the King of Sweden and the Elector of Brandenburg:_" such had been pieces of foreign news recently coming in. Accordingly, in January 1655-6, Whitlocke, Fiennes, Strickland, and Sir Gilbert Pickering, had been empowered, on the Protector's part, to treat with Count Bundt, and the Treaty had begun.--There were preliminary difficulties, however. Cromwell wanted a Treaty that should include the Dutch and the King of Denmark, and be, in fact, a League of the chief Protestant Powers of Europe in behalf of general Protestant interests; Count Bundt, on the other hand, pressed that special League between England and Sweden which he had come to propound, arguing that, while it would be more advantageous to both countries in the meantime, it might be extended afterwards. For a while there was danger of wreck on this preliminary difference; and Cromwell even talked of transferring the Treaty to Stockholm and sending Whitlocke thither for the second time as Ambassador-Plenipotentiary--greatly to Whitlocke's horror, who had no desire for another such journey, and a good deal to Count Bundt's displeasure, who thought himself and his mission slighted. At length, the Ambassador having signified that he had received new instructions from his master, which would enable him to meet Cromwell's views in some points, he was allowed to have his own way in the main; and in February 1655-6 the Treaty was on foot, both in the Council meetings at Whitehall, and in meetings of Whitlocke and the other English Commissioners with the Ambassador at Dorset House. "A long debate touching levies of soldiers and hiring of ships in one another's dominions;" "long debates touching contraband goods, in which list were inserted by the Council corn, hemp, pitch, tar, money, and other things:" such are Whitlocke's descriptions of the Dorset House meetings. The Treaty, in fact, was partly commercial and partly political, pointing to new advantages for England, but also to new responsibilities, all round the Baltic and throughout Germany. In the debates no one more resolute, no one more clear-headed, no one more contemptuous when he pleased, than Count Bundt; and he had, it appears, a very able second in his subordinate, the Swedish Resident in ordinary, Mr. Coyet.--In the midst of these laborious debates over the Treaty news had arrived of the birth at Stockholm of a son and heir to the Swedish King. The birth of this Prince, afterwards Charles XI. of Sweden, occasioned a grand display of loyalty at the Swedish Embassy in London. "Feb. 20," writes Whitlocke, "the Swedish Ambassador kept a solemnity this evening for the birth of the young Prince of Sweden. All the glass of the windows of his house, which were very large, being new-built, were taken off, and instead thereof painted papers were fitted to the places, with the arms of Sweden upon them, and inscriptions in great letters testifying the rejoicing for the birth of the young Prince: on the inside of the papers in the rooms were set close to them a very great number of lighted candles, glittering through the painted papers: the arms and colours and writings were plainly to be discerned, and showed glorious, in the street: the like was in the staircase, which had the form of a tower. In the balconies on each side of the house were trumpets, which sounded often seven or eight of them, together. The company at supper were the Dutch Ambassador, the Portugal and Brandenburg Residents, Mynheer Coyet, Resident for Sweden, the Earls of Bedford and Devon, the Lords St. John, Ossory, Bruce, Ogilvie, and two or three other young lords, the Count of Holac (a German), the Lord George Fleetwood, and a great many knights and gentlemen, besides the Ambassador's company. It was a very great feast, of seven courses. The Swedish Ambassador was very courteous to me; but the Dutch and others were reserved towards me, and I as much to them."--Milton's Letter to the Swedish King in Cromwell's name relates itself to this last incident. The King had written specially to Cromwell announcing the happy news of the birth of his son and heir; and Cromwell replies in this fashion:--"As it is universally understood that all concerns of friends, whether adverse or prosperous, ought to be of mutual and common interest among them, the performance by your Majesty of the most agreeable duty of friendship, by vouchsafing to impart to us your joy by express letters from yourself, cannot but be extremely gratifying to us, in regard that it is a sign of singular and truly kingly civility in you, indisposed as you are to live merely for yourself, so to be indisposed even to keep a joy to yourself, without feeling that your friends and allies participate in the same. We duly rejoice, therefore, in the birth of a Prince, to be the son of so excellent a King, and the heir, we hope, of his father's valour and glory; and we congratulate you on the same happy coincidence of domestic good fortune and success in the field with which of old that King of renowned fortitude, Philip of Macedon, was congratulated--the birth of whose son Alexander and his conquest of the powerful nation of the Illyrians are said to have been simultaneous. For we make no question but the wresting of the Kingdom of Poland by your arms from the Papal Empire, as it were a horn from the head of the Beast, and your Peace made with the Duke of Brandenburg, to the great satisfaction of all the pious, though with growls from your adversaries, will be of very great consequence for the peace and profit of the Church. May God grant an end worthy of such signal beginnings; may He grant you a son like his father in virtue, piety, and achievements! All which we truly expect and heartily pray of God Almighty, already so propitious to your affairs,"--It is clear that Cromwell desired to be all the more polite to the Swedish monarch because of the long delay of the Treaty with Count Bundt. That Treaty was going on slowly; and we shall hear more of Milton in connexion with it.[2] [Footnote 1: So dated in Printed Collection, Phillips, and Skinner Transcript.] [Footnote 2: Whitlocke, IV. 208-227; i.e. from July 1655 to Feb. 20, 1655-6.] (LXX.) To FREDERICK III., KING OF DENMARK, _Feb._ 1655-6(?)[1]:--John Freeman, Philip Travis, and other London merchants, have represented to his Highness that a ship of theirs was seized and detained by the Danish authorities in March 1653 because the Captain tried to slip past Elsinore without paying the toll. He was a Dutchman and had done this dishonestly on his own account, that he might pocket the money. There had been negotiations on the subject with the Danish Ambassador when there had been one in London, and redress had been promised; but, though the merchants had since sent an agent to Copenhagen, the only effect had been to add expense to their loss. By the Danish law it is the master of a ship that is punishable for the offence of evading toll, and the ship may be condemned, but not the goods. The offender in this case is now dead, but left a confession; the sum evaded was small; the cargo detained was worth £3000; will his Majesty see that the goods are restored, with reparation? [Footnote 1: Quite undated in Printed Collection, Phillips, and Skinner Transcript, but conjecturally of about this date.] (LXXI.) TO THE STATES GENERAL OF THE UNITED PROVINCES, _April_ 1, 1656:--A complaint in behalf of Thomas Bussel, Richard Beare, and other English merchants. A ship of theirs, called _The Edmund and John_, on her voyage from Brazil to Lisbon, was seized long ago by a privateer of Flushing, commanded by a Lambert Bartelson. The ship itself and the personal property of the sailors had been restored; but not the goods of the merchants. The Judges in Holland had not done justice in their case; and now, after long litigation, an appeal is made to the chief authority. (LXXII.) To Louis XIV. OF FRANCE, _April_ 9, 1656 (?): This is the Credential Letter of LOCKHART, going on his embassy to the French King. As Lockhart was by far the most eminent of the Protector's envoys, it may be translated entire: "WILLIAM LOCKHART, to whom We have given this letter to be carried to your Majesty, is a Scot by nation, of an honourable house, beloved by us, known for his very great fidelity, valour, and integrity of character. He, that he may reside in France, and be with you, so as to be able assiduously to signify to you my singular respect for your Majesty, and my desire not only for the preservation of peace between us but also for the perpetuation of friendship, has received from us the amplest instructions. We request, therefore, that you will receive him kindly, and give him gracious audience as often as there may be occasion, and place absolutely the same trust in whatsoever may be said and settled by him in our name as if the same things had been said and settled by Ourselves in person. We shall hold them all as ratified. Meanwhile we pray all peace and prosperity for your Majesty and your kingdom." (LXXIII.) To CARDINAL MAZARIN, _April_ 9, 1656 (?):--A Letter accompanying the above, and introducing LOCKHART specially to the Cardinal. It is also worth translating entire: "Seeing the affairs of France most happily administered by your counsels, and daily increasing in prosperity to such a degree that your high popularity and high authority in government are justly increased and enlarged accordingly, I have thought it fit, when sending an ambassador to your King with letters and instructions, to recommend him also most expressly to your Eminence: to wit, WILLIAM LOCKHART, a man of honourable family, closely related to us, and respected by us besides for his singular trustworthiness. Wherefore your Eminence may receive as our own whatsoever shall be communicated by him in our name, and may also freely commit and entrust to him in my confidence whatever you shall think fit to communicate in return. From him too you will learn more at large, what I now again profess, as more than once already, how high is my feeling of your great services to France, and what a well-wisher I am to your reputation and dignity."[1] [Footnote 1: Neither of these Letters about Lockhart is in the Printed Collection or in Phillips; but both are in the Skinner Transcript (Nos. 110 and 111 there), whence they have been printed by Mr. Hamilton in his _Milton Papers_ (pp. 9-10). He dates them both, as in the Transcript, "_West., Aug._ 1658;" but that is clearly a mistake, and the letters are out of their proper places in the Transcript. Lockhart was nominated for the Embassy in Dec. 1655, and he "took ship at Rye on the 14th of April, 1656, on his way to France" (see a letter of Thurloe's to Pell in Vaughan's _Protectorate_, I. 376-377). I have ventured to affix the exact date "April 9, 1656" to the two letters, because it is on that day that I find Lockhart's departure on his embassy definitely settled in the Council Order Books. Before "Aug. 1658" Lockhart had known Louis XIV. and the Cardinal intimately for more than two years and needed no introduction.] (LXXIV.) To CHARLES X., KING OF SWEDEN, _April_ 17, 1656:--Another extremely polite letter of the Protector to his Swedish Majesty, marking a farther stage in the proceedings of the Swedish Treaty.--That Treaty had been going on at Dorset House, the Swedish Ambassador and the Swedish Resident, continuing their colloquies with Whitlocke. Fiennes, and Strickland, about pitch, tar, hemp, mutual privileges of trade between England and Sweden, trade also with Prussia, Poland, and Russia, and all the other items of the Treaty, and the Ambassador always pushing on the business and chafing at the slow progress made. Again and again he had taken serious offence at something. Once it was because, waiting on the Protector at Whitehall, he had been kept half-an-hour before the Protector appeared. It was with difficulty he was prevented from going away without seeing his Highness; "he durst not for his head," he said, "admit of such dishonour to his master"; he had to be pacified by an apology. Then, when he did see the Protector, he had fresh cause for dissatisfaction. The propositions of the Treaty, as agreed upon so far between the Commissioners and the Ambassador, having been reported to the Council, and there having been a discussion on them there, Thurloe taking a chief part, new hesitations and difficulties had arisen, so that, when Cromwell conversed with Count Bundt, the Count was amazed to find his Highness cooler about the Treaty altogether than he had expected, and again harping on Protestant interests and the necessity of including the Dutch. The Count seems then to have broken bounds in his talk about the Protector to Whitlocke and others. In his own country, Sweden, he said, "when a man professed sincerity, they understood it to be plain and clear dealing"; if a man meant _Yea_ he said _Yea_, and if he meant _No_ he said _No_; but in England it seemed to be different. The explanations and soft words of Whitlocke and the rest having calmed him down again, the Treaty proceeded.--One of the most important meetings at Dorset House, by Whitlocke's account, was on the 8th of April. Mr. Jessop, as one of the Clerks of the Council, was there by appointment, and read "the new Articles in English as they were drawn up according to the last resolves of the Council." A long debate on the Articles followed. The Ambassador begged "to be excused if he should mistake anything of the sense of them, they being in English, which he could not so well understand as if they had been in Latin, which they must be put into in conclusion; but he did observe," &c. In fact, he restated his objections to making pitch, tar, hemp, flax, and sails, contraband, as they were the staple produce of Sweden. Lord Fiennes, in reply, premised: "that the Articles were brought in English for the saving of time, and they should be put in Latin when his Excellency should desire," and then discussed the main subject. Whitlocke followed, and the Ambassador again, and Fiennes again, all in English; and "Mynheer Coyet then spake in Latin, that pitch, tar, and hemp were not in their own nature, nor by the law of nations, esteemed contraband goods," &c. Strickland said a few words in reply, and then Whitlocke made a longer and more lawyer-like answer to Mynheer Coyet,--also, as he takes care to tell us, speaking in Latin. The discussion, which was long protracted, and extended to other topics, was closed by the Ambassador; who said "he desired a copy of these Articles now debated, and, if they pleased, that he might have it in Latin, which he would consider of." This was promised.--The meeting so described was nearly the last in which the Swedish Resident, M. Coyet, took part. He was on the eve of his departure from England, leaving his principal, Count Bundt, to finish the Treaty; and the present brief letter of Milton for Cromwell to his Swedish Majesty has reference to that fact. "Peter Julius Coyet," it begins, "having performed his mission to us, and so performed it that he ought not to be dismissed by us without the distinction of justly earned praise, is on the point of returning to your Majesty"; and in three sentences more very handsome testimony is borne to Coyet's ability and fidelity in the discharge of his duty, and his Swedish Majesty is again assured of the Protector's high regard for himself. "A constant course of victories against all enemies of the Church" is the Protector's wish for him.--Evidently, again, Cromwell, whatever might be the issue of the Treaty, was anxious to stand well with the Scandinavian; in corroboration of which we have this special paragraph in Whitlocke under date May 3: "This day the Protector gave the honour of knighthood to MYNHEER COYET, the King of Sweden's Resident here, who was now SIR PETER COYET, and gave him a fair jewel, with his Highness's picture, and a rich gold chain: it cost about £400." Coyet, therefore, had remained in London a fortnight after the date of Milton's letter.[1] Indeed he remained a few days longer, assisting in the Treaty to the last. [Footnote 1: Whitlocke, IV. 227-255: i.e. from Feb. 20, 1655-6, to May 3, 1656.] (LXXV.) To Louis XIV. OF FRANCE, _May_ 14, 1656:[1]--John Dethicke, Merchant, at present Lord Mayor of the City of London, and another merchant, named William Wakefield, have represented to his Highness that, as long ago as October 1649, a ship of theirs, called _The Jonas of London_, was taken at the mouth of the Thames by one White of Barking, acting under a commission from the son of the late King, and taken into Dunkirk, then governed for the French King by M. L'Estrades. They had applied for satisfaction at the time, but had received a harsh answer from the governor. Perhaps his French Majesty, on receipt of this letter, will direct justice to be done. [Footnote 1: Not dated in Printed Collection, Phillips, or Skinner Transcript; but dated by reference to it in a subsequent letter.] (LXXVI.) TO THE STATES-GENERAL OF THE UNITED PROVINCES, _May_ 1656:--Also about a ship, but this time for the recovery of insurance on one. She was _The Good Hope of London_, belonging to John Brown, Nicholas Williams, and others; she had been insured in Amsterdam; she had been taken by a ship of the Dutch East India Company on her way to the East Indies; the insurers had refused to pay the sum insured for; and for six years the poor owners had been hopelessly fighting the case in the Dutch courts. It is a case of real hardship. (LXXVII.) TO THE SAME, _May_ 1656:--Three times before letters have been written to the States-General in the interest of Thomas and William Lower, who had been left property in Holland by their father's will, but have been unjustly kept out of the same by powerful persons there, and tossed from law-court to law-court. This fourth application, it is hoped, may be more successful. These thirteen State Letters, were there nothing else, would prove that in and after the winter of 1655-6 Milton's services were again in request for ordinary office-work. But they do not represent the whole of his renewed industry in that employment. The tremendous Swedish ambassador, Count Bundt, whose energy in his master's interests had swept through Whitehall like a storm, searching out flaws, waking up Thurloe and the Council, and obliging Cromwell himself to be more circumspect, had made his influence felt, it seems, even in the house of the blind Secretary-Extraordinary. It was on the 8th of April, 1656, as we have just learnt from Whitlocke, that the Ambassador, in one of his conferences with Whitlocke, Fiennes, and Strickland, in Dorset House, M. Coyet also being present, had rather objected to the fact that the new Articles of the Treaty, drafted for his consideration by the Council, and brought to the conference by Mr. Jessop, had been brought in English, and not in Latin, as would have been business-like. Latin or English, as the Commissioners knew, it would have been all the same to Count Bundt, inasmuch as it was the matter of the Articles that displeased him; but they had promised that he should have them in Latin, and Whitlocke had judiciously taken the opportunity of speaking in Latin, in reply to some of M. Coyet's observations in the same tongue, as if to show the Ambassador that Latin was by no means so scarce a commodity as he seemed to suppose about the Protector's Court. There had been delay, however, in furnishing the promised Latin translation; and Count Bundt, glad of that new occasion for fault-finding, did not let it escape him. "The Swedish Ambassador," relates Whitlocke under date May 6, 1656, "again complained of the delays in his business, and that, when he had desired to have the Articles of this Treaty put into Latin, according to the custom in Treaties, it was fourteen days they made him stay for that translation, and sent it to one MR. MILTON, a blind man, to put them into Latin, who, he said, must use an amanuensis to read it to him, and that amanuensis might publish the matter of the Articles as he pleased; and that it seemed strange to him there should be none but a blind man capable of putting a few Articles into Latin: that the Chancellor [the late Oxenstiern] with his own hand penned the Articles made at Upsal [in Whitlocke's Treaty], and so he heard the Ambassador Whitlocke did for those on his part. The employment of MR. MILTON was excused to him, because several other servants of the Council, fit for that employment, were then absent."[1] If this is exact, Count Bundt, having been promised the Latin translation on the 8th of April, did not receive it till about the 22nd, and he had been nursing his wrath on the subject for a fortnight more before it exploded. In the delay itself he had certainly good ground for complaint. There was reason also in the complaint that important secret documents had gone to a blind man, who must employ an amanuensis, unless the Commissioners could have replied that the Protector and the Council had thoroughly seen to that matter, and that Milton's amanuensis on such occasions was always a sworn clerk from the Whitehall office. On the whole, the Commissioners seem to have taken more easily than became their places, or than the Protector would have liked, the insinuation of the imperious Count that the Protector's official retinue must be a ragged and undisciplined rout, not to be compared with Karl Gustav's. May not Whitlocke himself, however, thinking at that moment of his own Latin sufficiency, have sharpened the point of the insinuation?[2] [Footnote 1: Whitlocke, IV. 257.] [Footnote 2: Whitlocke, from his interest in Swedish affairs, had taken ample notes of the negotiations with Count Bundt; and his story of them is unusually minute. One observes that more than once in the course of it he dwells on the fact that, though employed by the Protector in this business, and taking the lead in it, he was still _not_ one of the Council.] The excuse of the Commissioners to Count Bundt for having sent the Articles to Milton for translation was that "several other servants of the Council, fit for that employment, were then absent." They mast have referred, in particular, to Mr. Philip Meadows, the Latin Secretary in Ordinary. He had, we find, taken some part in the negotiation in its earlier stage;[1] but, before it had proceeded far, he had been selected for a service which took him out of England. In December 1655 it had been resolved to send a special agent to Portugal; and on the 19th of February, 1655-6, at a Council meeting at which Cromwell himself was present, Meadows, thought of from the first, was formally nominated as the fit person. It was a great promotion for Meadows; for, whereas his salary hitherto in the Latin Secretaryship had been £200 a year, his allowance for the Portuguese agency was to be £800 a year or more. On the 21st of February he had £300 advanced to him for his outfit; on the 28th he was voted £100, being for two quarters of his Secretarial salary due to him, with £50 more for the quarter then current but not completed; and within a few days afterwards he was on his way to Lisbon.[2] His departure, I should say--preceded perhaps by a week or two of cessation from office duty in preparation for it--was the real cause of the re-employment of Milton at this time in such routine work as we have seen him engaged in. All or most of his former letters for the Protector, it may have been noticed, e.g. those on the Piedmontese business, had been on important occasions, such as might justify resort to the Latin Secretary Extraordinary; but in the batch written since Dec. 1655, when Meadows's Portuguese mission had been resolved on, the ordinary and the extraordinary come together, and Milton, in writing letters about ships, as well as in translating draft articles, does work that would have been done by Meadows. And this arrangement, we may add, was to continue henceforth. For, despite the sneers of Count Bundt as to the poverty of the Protector's official staff, the Protector and Council, we shall find, were in no hurry to fill up the place left vacant by Meadows, but were quite satisfied that Mr. Milton should go on doing his best alone, with Thurloe to instruct him, and with the help of such underlings in Latin as Thurloe could put at his disposal. My belief is that Milton was pleased at this trust in his renewed ability for ordinary business. [Footnote 1: Whitlocke, IV. 218; where it is mentioned that in Dec. 1655 Meadows communicated with Whitlocke on the subject of the Treaty by Thurloe's orders.] [Footnote 2: Council Order Books of dates. It is curious that Whitlocke, noting the new appointment of Meadows, under March 1655-6, enters it thus: "Mr. Meadows was going for _Denmark_, agent for the Protector." Meadows did go to Denmark, but not till a good while afterwards; and the blunder of _Denmark_ at this date for _Portugal_ is one of the many proofs that Whitlocke's memorials are not all strictly contemporary, but often combinations of reminiscences and afterthoughts with the materials of an actual diary.] Among the matters that occupied the attention of the Protector's Government about this time was the state of Popular Literature. It is a fact, easily explained by the laws of human nature, and capable of being proved statistically, that since the strong government of Cromwell had come in, and something like calm and leisure had become possible, there had been a return of people's fancies to the lighter Muses. Nothing strikes one more, in turning over the Registers of the old London Book-trade, than the steady increase through the Protectorate of the proportion of books of secular and general interest to those of controversy and theology. One feels oneself still in the age of Puritanism, it is true, but as if past the densest and most stringent years of Puritanism and coming once more into a freer and merrier air. Poems, romances, books of humour, ballads and songs, reprints of Elizabethan tragedies and comedies, reprints of such pieces as Shakespeare's _Venus and Adonis_, collections of facetious extracts from the wits and poets of the reigns of James and Charles I., are now not uncommon. Humphrey Moseley, Milton's publisher of 1645, faithful to his old trade-instinct for poetry and the finer literature generally, was still at the head of the publishers in that line; but Henry Herringman, who had published Lord Broghill's _Parthenissa_, had begun to rival Moseley, and there were other caterers of amusing and humorous books. Publishers imply authors; and so in the London of the Protectorate, apart from stray survivors from among the wits of King Charles's reign, there were men of a younger sort, bred amid the more recent Puritan conditions, but with literary zests that were Bohemian rather than Puritan, Among these, as we have hinted, and as we may now state more distinctly, were Milton's nephews, Edward and John Phillips.[1] [Footnote 1: My notes from the Stationers' Registers, from 1652 to 1656.] Such Popular Literature as we have described had been left perfectly free. Indeed Censorship or Licensing of books generally, as distinct from newspapers, had all but ceased. Since Bradshaw's Press-Act of 1649, it had been rather rare for an author or bookseller to take the trouble, in the case of a non-political book, to procure the imprimatur of any official licenser in addition to the ordinary trade-registration; and in this, as an established custom, Cromwell's Government had acquiesced. Only in one particular, apart from politics, was there any disposition to interfere with the liberty of printing. This was where popular wit, humour, or poetry might pass into the ribald, profane, or indecent. Vigilance against open immorality had from the first appeared to Cromwell one of the chief duties of his Government; and he seems to have been unusually attentive to this duty in 1655-6, when he had just put the country under the military police of his Major-Generals and their subordinates. Then it is that we hear most of the suppressing of horse-races and the like, and that we are least surprised at encountering such a piece of information as that "players were taken in Newcastle and whipped for rogues." Now, though by this time there had already, by previous care on the part of Government, been a considerable cleansing of the Popular Literature of London, yet something or other in the state of the book-world about 1655-6 seems to have occasioned new and more special interference. I believe it to have been the increased frequency of ballads, facetiæ, and reprints, of higher literary character than the coarse pamphlets that had been suppressed, but objectionable on the same moral grounds. At all events, all but simultaneously with the Order of the Protector and his Council, of Sept. 5, 1655, concentrating the whole newspaper press in the hands of Needham and Thurloe (see ante pp. 51-52), there had been a new general Ordinance "against Scandalous Books and Pamphlets and for the Regulation of Printing" (Aug. 18, 1655), and it was not long before this Ordinance was put in operation in one or two cases of the kind indicated. Here are some extracts from the Order Books of the Council in April and May 1656:-- _Tuesday, April_ 1656:--"That it be referred to the Earl of Mulgrave, Colonel Jones, and Lord Strickland, or any two of them, to examine the business touching the book entitled _Sportive Wit or the Muses' Merriment_, and to send for the author and printer, and report the same to the Council." _Friday, April_ 25, 1656:--Present: the Lord President Lawrence, the Earl of Mulgrave, Lord Lambert, Sir Gilbert Pickering, Colonel Sydenham, Colonel Jones, the Lord Deputy of Ireland (Fleetwood), Lord Viscount Lisle, Mr. Rous, Major-General Skippon, and Lord Strickland. "Colonel Jones reports from the Committee of the Council to whom was referred the consideration of a book entitled _Sportive Wit or the Muses' Merriment_, that the said book contains in it much scandalous, lascivious, scurrilous, and profane matter. _Ordered_ by his Highness the Lord Protector, by and with the advice of the Council, That the Lord Mayor of the City of London and the rest of the Committee for the regulation of Printing do cause all such [copies] of the said book as are not already seized to be forthwith seized on, wherever they shall be found, and cause the same, together with those already seized, to be delivered to the Sheriffs of London and Middlesex, who are to cause the same to be forthwith publicly burnt.--He further reports that Nathaniel Brookes, Stationer, at the Angel in Cornhill, caused the said book to be printed; that the printers thereof were John Grismond, living in Ivy Lane, and James Cotterill, living in Lambeth Hill; and that JOHN PHILLIPS, of Westminster, was the author of the Epistle Dedicatory. _Ordered_, That it be referred to Sir John Barkstead, Knight, Lieutenant of the Tower [and Major-General for Westminster and Middlesex], to cause the fines to be levied on the said persons according to law: [also] that the said persons do attend the Council on Tuesday next."--Milton's younger nephew, therefore, had been the editor of the offending volume. Of the eleven members of Council present when this fact came out, six were among those friends of Milton whom he had specially mentioned in his _Defensio Secunda_: viz. Fleetwood, Lambert, Lawrence, Pickering, Sydenham, and Strickland. _Saturday, April_ 26, 1656:--His Highness the Lord Protector approves of a great many recent Orders of Council presented to him all at once by Mr. Scobell, the Clerk of the Council. Among them is the order "for burning the book called _Sportive Wit_." _Friday, May_ 9, 1656:--His Highness the Lord Protector present in person, with Lord President Lawrence, Lambert, Fleetwood, Sir Gilbert Pickering, Strickland, Sydenham, and Jones:--_Ordered_, &c. "That the Lord Mayor of the City of London and the rest of the Committee for regulating Printing do cause all the books entitled _Choice Droliery, Songs and Sonnets_ (being stuffed with profane and obscene matter, tending to the corruption of manners), to be seized wherever the same shall be found, and cause the same to be delivered to the Sheriffs of London and Middlesex, who are required to give order that the same be burnt." Copies of the second of the two books thus condemned by Cromwell and his Council have, I believe, survived the burning, The publisher was a John Sweeting, who had duly registered the book on the 9th of February 1655-6, shortly after which date it had appeared with this full title, _Choice Drollery, Songs and Sonnets: being a Collection of Divers Eminent Pieces of Poetry of several Eminent Authors, never before printed_. I have not seen any copy of the other book bearing the precise title _Sportive Wit, or the Muses' Merriment_; but there are surviving copies of what may be the same with an alternative title, viz. _Wit and Drollery: Jovial Poems, never before printed, by Sir J.M., Jas. S., Sir W.D., J.D., and other admirable wits_. It had been out in London since. Jan. 18, 1655-6, had been registered on the 30th of that month, and is a respectably printed little book of 160 pages, with the motto "_Ut nectar ingenium_" under the title, and with, the imprint _London. Printed for Nath. Brook, at the Angel in Cornhill_, 1656. It contains moreover a Dedication "To the truly noble Edward Pepes, Esq.," and an Epistle "To the Courteous Reader," both signed with the initials J.P. Either, therefore, this is the same book as the _Sportive Wit or the Muses' Merriment_ which, figures in the Orders of the Council, or John Phillips had edited simultaneously for Nathaniel Brooke (who had been the publisher of his _Satyr against Hypocrites_ in the preceding August) two books of the same general character. Even on the latter supposition, _Wit and Drollery,_ in the absence of _Sportive Wit,_ may serve as a representative of that production of the same editor and the same publisher. The substance of Phillips's Epistle to the Reader in _Wit and Drollery_ is as follows:-- "Reader,--To give thee a broadside of plain dealing, this _Wit_ I present thee with is such as can only be in fashion, invented purposely to keep off the violent assaults of melancholy, assisted by the additional engines and weapons of sack and good company... What hath not been extant of Sir J. M., of Ja. S., of Sir W. D., of J. D., and other miraculous muses of the times, are here at thy service; and, as Webster, at the end of his play called _The White Devil,_ subscribes that the action of Perkins crowned the whole play, so, when thou viewest the title, and readest the sign of 'Ben Jonson's Head, in the backside of the Exchange, and the Angel in Cornhill,' where they are sold, enquire who could better furnish thee with such sparkling copies of wit." Among the included pieces are the younger Alexander Gill's lampoon on Ben Jonson for his _Magnetic Lady_ and Ben Jonson's reply to the same (ante Vol. I. pp. 528-529); there are also several pieces of Suckling; but, for the rest, as the title-page bears, the volume consists chiefly of specimens of _"Sir J. M."_ (Sir John Mennes), _"Jas. S."_ (James Smith), _"Sir W. D"_ (Sir William Davenant), and _"J. D."_ (Dr. Donne), professing not to have been before in print. Whether this was so, and whether the pieces were all authentically by these poets, need not here concern us. It is enough to say that many of the pieces are decidedly, and some very grossly, of the improper kind. The reader will not expect to have this proved by extract; but of the more innocent "drollery" the following stanzas from a poem entitled _"Nonsense"_ may be a sample:-- O that my lungs could bleat like buttered pease! But bleating of my lungs hath caught the itch, And are as mangy as the Irish seas, That doth engender windmills in a bitch. I grant that rainbows, being lulled asleep, Snort like a woodknife in a lady's eyes; Which makes her grieve to see a pudding creep; For creeping puddings only please the wise. Note that a hard-roed herring should presume To swing a tithe-pig in a catskin purse, For fear the hailstones which did fall at Rome By lessening of the fault should make it worse. For 'tis most certain winter woolsacks grow, Till that the sheepshorn planets give the hint, From geese to swans, if men could keep them so, And pickle pancakes in Geneva print. At worst, the volume was but a catchpenny collection of pieces of a kind of which there was plenty already dispersed in print under the names of the same authors, or of others as classical; and, if this was the same book as the _Sportive Wit,_ or at all like that book, it may have been some mere accident of the moment that brought Government censure upon Phillips's volume, while others, as had, escaped. But how annoying the whole occurrence to Milton![1] [Footnote 1: Thomason copy of _Wit and Drollery_ in the British Museum, dated Jan. 18, 1655-6.--I failed to find a book with the title _The Sportive Wit_ in the Thomason Collection, and hence my hypothesis that there was but one book, with alternative titles. I am rather inclined to believe, however, that there were two, and have a vague recollection of having seen two books, one with one of the titles and the other with the other, advertised in a contemporary newspaper list of books on sale by the publisher Brooke. In Lowndes's Bibliog. Manual by Bohn, _sub voce_ "Wit," the two books are given as distinct; but then _Sportive Wit or the Muses' Merriment_ is there dated 1656, while there is no notice of an edition of _Wit and Drollery, Jovial Poems,_ till 1661. Though I leave the matter in doubt, some collector of Facetiac may know all about it. In any case, if _Wit and Drollery_ was not the identical book condemned, it is of interest to us as being one of Phillips's editing at the same moment.--Donne, who figures so strangely in _Wit and Drollery,_ had been dead twenty-five years, but was accessible in various editions and reprints of his Poems. The other three poets named in the title-page as the chief authors of the pieces--Sir John Mennes, James Smith, and Davenant--were still alive and publishing for themselves. Indeed the _Musarum Delitice, or Muses' Recreation,_ consisting of pieces by Mennes and Smith, had been published by Herringman only the year before (1655), and was in its second edition in 1658; and it may have been the success of this and Smith in it. Mennes, a stout book that led to Phillips's publication and to the use of the names of Mennes Royalist sea-captain, who had served with Prince Rupert, and was in exile at our present date, became Chief Comptroller of the Navy after the Restoration and lived to 1670. Smith was a Devonshire clergyman, of Royalist antecedents, who had complied with the existing powers and retained his living. After the Restoration he had promotion in the Church: and he died in 1667.] Less unsatisfactory to Milton, must hare been the literary appearances about the same time of his elder nephew, Edward Phillips. On the same day on which the stationer Nathaniel Brooke had registered _Wit and Drollery_ edited by John Phillips, i.e. on Jan. 30, 1655-6, he had registered two tales or small novels called "_The Illustrious Shepherdess_" and "_The Imperious Brother_" both "written originally in Spanish and now Englished by Edward Phillips, Gent."[1] The first of these translations, both from the Spanish of Juan Perez de Montalvan (1602-1638), is dedicated by Phillips to the Marchioness of Dorchester, in what Godwin calls "an extraordinary style of fustian and bombast."[2] With the exception, of such affectation in style, which Phillips afterwards threw off, there is nothing ill to report of these early performances of his; and two translations from the Spanish were a creditable proof of accomplishment. But still more interesting was another literary performance of Edward Phillips's of the same date. This was his edition of the Poems of Drummond of Hawthornden. [Footnote 1: Stationers' Registers of date.] [Footnote 2: Godwin's _Lives of the Phillipses_, 138-139. I know the translations only from Godwin's account of them.] Drummond had died in 1649, leaving in manuscript, at Hawthornden or in Edinburgh, not only his _History of Scotland from 1423 to 1542, or through the Reigns of the Five Jameses_, but also various other prose-writings, and a good deal of verse in addition to what he had published in his life-time. Drummond's son and heir being under age, the care of the MSS. had devolved chiefly on Drummond's brother-in-law, Sir John Scot of Scotstarvet, a well-known Scottish judge, antiquary, and eccentric. Hitherto the troubles in Scotland had prevented the publication by Sir John of these remains of his celebrated relative, the only real Scottish poet of his generation. With the other Scottish dignitaries and officials who had resisted the English invasion, Sir John himself had been turned out of his public posts, heavily fined, and remitted into private life (Vol. IV. p. 561). Gradually, however, as Scotland had become accustomed to her union with England, things had come round again for the old ex-Judge, as well as for others. There is reason to believe that he was in London for some time in 1654-5, soliciting the Protector and the Council for favour in the matter of his fine, if not for restoration to one of his former offices, the Director of the Scottish Chancery. The case of Scot of Scotstarvet, at all events, _was_ then under discussion in the Council, with the result that his fine, which had been originally £1500, but had been reduced to £500, was first reduced farther to £300, and next, apparently by Cromwell's own interposition, altogether "discharged and taken off, in consideration of the pains he hath taken and the service he hath done to the Commonwealth."[1] If Scotstarvet himself, then seventy years of age, had come to London on the business, he must have brought Drummond's MSS., or copies of them, with him. On the 16th of January 1854-5 there had been registered at Stationers' Hall, as forthcoming, Drummond's _History of Scotland through the Reigns of the Five Jameses_, with a selection of other prose-writings of his, chiefly of a political kind; and the volume did appear immediately, as a handsome small folio, bearing date 1655, and "printed by Henry Hills for Rich. Tomlins and himself." As Henry Hills was one of the printers to his Highness and the Council, the appearance from his press of a volume so full of conservative doctrine, inculcating so strongly the duty of submission to kingly prerogative and to constituted authority, may not be without significance. Another interesting circumstance about it is that it had appeared under the charge of a London editor, "Mr. Hall of Gray's Inn,"--i.e., unless I am mistaken, that Mr. John Hall whom we saw brought in, at £100 a year, to do pieces of literary hackwork for the Council under Milton as long ago as May 1649, and who had been in some such employment for the Council, at least occasionally, ever since (ante p. 177). Accidental or not, the fact that the editor of Drummond's Prose Writings, selected by Scotstarvet or by the printer Hills, should have been a servant of the Council of State, and a kind of underling of Milton in that capacity, is at least curious. But it becomes more curious when taken in connexion, with the fact that the editor of the companion volume, containing the first professedly complete edition of Drummond's Poems, was Milton's elder nephew. This volume, though announced by Mr. Hall in his Introduction to the Prose Volume, did not appear till about a year afterwards, and then as an octavo of 224 pages, with this title, _"Poems by that most famous Wit, William Drummond of Hawthornden ... London, Printed for Rickard Tomlins, at the Sun and Bible, neare Pye-Corner,_ 1656." The volume is dedicated to Sir John Scot of Scotstarvet, and includes about sixty small pieces of Drummond never before published, which Sir John had supplied from the Hawthornden MSS. Apart from revision of the proofs, Phillips's editorship consisted in a prose preface, signed "E.P.," and a set of commendatory verses, signed in full "Edward Phillips." [Footnote 1: Council Order Books, March 9 and March 19, 1654-5.] Drummond's Poetry had long been known to Milton in the fragmentary state in which alone it had been till then accessible, i.e. in the successive instalments of it published by Drummond himself in Edinburgh between 1613 and 1638. There might be proof also that Drummond was one of Milton's favourites, and regarded by him as one of the sweetest and truest poets that there had been in Great Britain through that age of miscellaneous metrical effort, much of it miscalled Poetry, which included the whole of the laureateship of Ben Jonson and the beginning of that of Davenant. Accordingly, it is not difficult to suppose that phrases about Drummond from Milton's own mouth were worked by Phillips into his prose preface to the London edition of the Poems of Drummond. There is a little hyperbolism in that preface; but the opening definition of Drummond's genius is exact, and the fitness of some of the phrases quite admirable. Thus:-- "To say that these Poems are the effects of a genius the most polite and verdant that ever the Scottish nation produced, although it he a commendation not to be rejected (for it is well known that that country hath afforded many rare and admirable wits), yet it is not the highest that may be given him; for, should I affirm that neither Tasso, nor Guarini, nor any of the most neat and refined spirits of Italy, nor even the choicest of our English Poets, can challenge to themselves any advantage above him, it could not be judged any attribute superior to what he deserves ... And, though he hath not had the good fortune to be so generally famed abroad as many others, perhaps of less esteem, yet this is a consideration that cannot diminish, but rather advance, his credit; for, by breaking forth of obscurity, he will attract the higher admiration, and, like the sun emerging from a cloud, appear at length with so much the more forcible rays..." Milton's interesting German friend, Henry Oldenburg, had recently removed from London to Oxford. "In the beginning of this year," says Wood in his _Fasti_ for 1656, "studied in Oxon, in the condition of a sojourner, HENRY OLDENBURG, who wrote himself sometimes GRUBENDOL [anagram of OLDENBUBG]; and in the month of June he was entered a, student by the name of _'Henricus Oldenburg, Bremensis, Nobilis Saxo'_: at which time he was tutor to a young Irish nobleman, called Henry O'Bryen [son of Henry, Earl of Thomond], then also a student there."[1] As we construe the case, Oldenburg, having been for some years in England as agent for Bremen, had begun to see that he was likely to remain in England permanently; and he had gone to Oxford for the benefit of a year of study there with readings in the Bodleian, and the society more especially of Robert Boyle, Wilkins, Wallis, Petty, and the rest of the Oxford colony or offshoot from the _Invisible College_ of London. Desirable on its own account, this migration to Oxford had been made easier to him financially, if it had not been, occasioned, by the arrangement that he should be tutor there to the young Irish nobleman whom Wood names. But this young nobleman was not to be Oldenburg's only pupil at Oxford. Though Wood does not mention the fact, there went with him thither, or there speedily followed him thither, to be also under his charge, another young Irish nobleman. This was no other than, our own Richard Jones, son of Viscount and Lady Ranelagh, the Benjamin among Milton's pupils. Whatever had been the nature of Milton's recent instructions of the youth, they had now ceased, and Oldenburg was to be thenceforward the youth's more regular tutor. It does not seem to have been intended that young Ranelagh should formally enter a college, so as to receive the usual education at the University, but only that he should obtain some acquaintance with Oxford and its ways, and be for a while in the society of his uncle Boyle, and of his two cousins, Viscount Dungarvan and Mr. Richard Boyle. If these two sons of the Earl of Cork were still under the tutorship of Dr. Peter Du Moulin, Oldenburg and Jones at Oxford must have come necessarily also into constant intercourse with that very secret admirer of Milton. Oxford, we do gather, was still Du Moulin's head-quarters; but he was so much on the wing thence that Oldenburg might expect to succeed him in the tutorship of at least one of the young Boyles. Oldenburg was then thirty years of age, and young Ranelagh about sixteen. [Footnote 1: Wood's Fasti, II. 197.] Among four letters to young Jones or Ranelagh included in Milton's Latin Familiar Epistles one is undated. It is put second of the four in the printed collection, but it ought to have been put first. It is Milton's first letter to the youth in his new position at Oxford under Henry Oldenburg's charge. The date may be in or about May 1636:-- "To the Noble Youth, RICHARD JONES. "I received your letter much after its date,--not till it had lain, I think, fifteen days, put away somewhere, at your mother's. Most gladly at last I recognised in it your continued affection for me and sense of gratitude. In truth my goodwill to you, and readiness to give you the most faithful admonitions, have never but justified, I hope, both your excellent mother's opinion of me and confidence in me, and your own disposition. There is, indeed, as you write, plenty of amenity and salubrity in the place where you now are; there are books enough for the needs of a University: if only the amenity of the spot contributed as much to the genius of the inhabitants as it does to pleasant living, nothing would seem wanting to the happiness of the place. The Library there, too, is splendidly rich; but, unless the minds of the students are made more instructed by means of it in the best kinds of study, you might more properly call it a book-warehouse than a Library. Most justly you acknowledge that to all these helps there must be added a spirit for learning and habits of industry. Take care, and steady care, that I may never have occasion to find you in a different state of mind; and this you will most easily avoid if you diligently obey the weighty and friendly precepts of the highly accomplished Henry Oldenburg beside you. Farewell, my well-beloved Richard; and allow me to exhort and incite you to virtue and piety, like another Timothy, by the example of that most exemplary woman, your mother. "Westminster." In this letter one observes the rather strict tone of Mentorship assumed towards young Ranelagh, as if Milton was aware of something in the youth, that needed checking, or as if Lady Ranelagh, with her motherly knowledge, had given Milton a hint that the strict tone with him would be generally the best. The tendency to a depreciation of Oxford, which is also visible in the letter, is no surprise from Milton. The Anti-Oxonian feeling, if that is not too strong a name for it after all, is even more apparent in Milton's next letter, addressed not to young Ranelagh, but to his tutor. Young Ranelagh, it appears, not long after the receipt of the foregoing, had run up to London on a brief visit to his mother, and had brought Milton a letter from Oldenburg. To this Milton replies as follows:-- "To HENRY OLDENBURG, Agent for Bremen with the English Government. "Your letter, brought by young Ranelagh, has found me rather busy; and so I am forced to be briefer than I should wish. You have certainly kept _your_ departing promise of writing to me, and that with a punctuality surpassed. I believe, by no one hitherto in the payment of a debt. I congratulate you on your present retirement, to my loss though it be, since it gives pleasure to you; I congratulate you also on that happy state of mind which enables you so easily to set aside at once the ambition and the ease of city-life, and to lift your thoughts to higher matters of contemplation. What advantage that retirement affords, however, besides plenty of books, I know not; and those persons you have found there as fit associates in your studies I should suppose to be such rather from their own natural constitution than from the discipline of the place,--unless perchance, from missing you here, I do less justice to the place for keeping you away. Meanwhile you yourself rightly remark that there are too many there whose occupation it is to spoil divine and human things alike by their frivolous quibblings, that they may not seem to be doing absolutely nothing for those many endowments by which they are supported so much to the public detriment. All this you will understand better for yourself. Those ancient annals of the Chinese from the Flood downwards which you say are promised by the Jesuit Martini[1] are doubtless very eagerly expected on account of the novelty of the thing; but I do not see what authority or confirmation they can add to the Mosaic books. Our Cyriack, whom you bade me salute, returns the salutation. Farewell. "Westminster: June 25, 1656." [Footnote 1: Martin Martini, Jesuit Missionary to China, was born 1614 and died 1661.] That Count Bundt's remonstrance on the employment of a blind man in the Protector's diplomatic business had had no effect will be proved by the following list of state-letters written by Milton immediately after that remonstrance. We bring the list down to Sept. 1656, the month in which the Second Parliament of the Protectorate met: (LXXVIII.) To KINGS AND FOREIGN STATES GENERALLY, _June_ 1656:[1]--This is a Passport by the Protector in favour of PETER GEORGE ROMSWINCKEL, Doctor of Laws. He had been born and bred in the Roman Catholic Church, and had held high offices in that Church at Cologne, but had become an ardent Protestant, and had been for some time in England. He was now on his way back to Germany, to assume the post of Councillor to the widowed Duchess of Symmeren (?); and the Protector desires all English officers, consuls, agents, &c., and also all foreign Governments, to give him free passage and handsome treatment. The tone of the letter is even haughtily Protestant. On the ground that "most people think in Religion with easy acquiescence in exactly what they have received from their forefathers, and not what they themselves, after imploring divine help, have learnt to be true by their own perception and knowledge," the case of Romswinckel is represented as peculiarly interesting; and such phrases as "the Papal superstition" are not spared. The passport was probably expected to come only into Protestant hands. [Footnote 1: This Letter is not given in the Printed Collection or in Phillips; it is in the Skinner Transcript, and has been printed by Mr. Hamilton in his _Milton Papers_ (pp. 5-6).] (LXXIX.) To CHARLES X., KING OF SWEDEN, _June_ 1656:[1]--A special recommendation of the above Romswinckel to the Swedish King, in the same high Protestant tone. [Footnote 1: Not in Printed Collection or Phillips, but in Skinner Transcript, and printed by Hamilton (_Milton Papers_, 6-7).] (LXXX.) TO THE KING OF PORTUGAL, _July_ 1656:--The Portuguese merchants of the Brazil Company owe certain English merchants a considerable sum of money on shipping accounts since 1649 and 1650. The English merchants, understanding that, by recent orders of his Portuguese Majesty, they are likely to lose the principal of the debt, and be put off with the bare interest, have applied to the Protector. He thinks it a hard case, and begs the King to let the debt be paid in full, principal and five years of interest. (LXXXI.) To CHARLES X., KING OF SWEDEN, _July_ 1656:--After more than two months of farther debating between Count Bundt and the English Commissioners, in the course of which there had been frequent new displays of the Count's high temper, the Treaty between the Protector and Charles Gustavus had at last been happily finished on the 17th of July. On that day, Whitlocke tells as, he and Lords Fiennes and Strickland had their long final meeting over the Treaty with the Ambassador, ending; in formal signing and sealing on both sides. The main difficulty had been got over thus: "Concerning the carrying of pitch, tar, &c. to Spain, during our war with them [the Spaniards], there was a single Article, that the King of Sweden should be moved to give order for the prohibiting of it, and a kind of undertaking that it should be done." On the whole, the Protector was satisfied; and, as he had contracted some admiration and liking for the Ambassador, precisely on account of his unusual spirit and stubbornness, he marked the conclusion of the Treaty by special compliments and favours. "The Swedish Ambassador," says Whitlocke under date July 25, "having taken his leave of the Protector, received great civilities and respects from him, and afterwards dined with him at Hampton Court, and hunted with him. The Protector bestowed the dignity of knighthood upon one of his [the Ambassador's] gentlemen, Sir Gustavus Duval, the mareschal." The present Latin letter by Milton, accordingly, was the letter of honourable dismissal which the Swede was to take back to his master. Perhaps the Swede knew that even this was written by the Protector's blind Latinist.--"Oliver, Protector of the Commonwealth of England, Scotland, Ireland, &c., to the most Serene Prince, Charles Gustavus, King of the Swedes, Goths, and Vandals, &c." is the heading of the letter; which proceeds thus:--"Most Serene King,--As we have justly a very high regard for the friendship of so great a Prince as your Majesty, one so famous for his achievements, so necessarily should that most illustrious Lord, CHRISTIERN BUNDT, your Ambassador Extraordinary, by whose endeavours a Treaty of the closest alliance has just been ratified between us, have been to as, were it but on this pre-eminent account, an object of favour and good report. We have accordingly judged it fit that he should be sent back to you after his most praiseworthy performance of this Embassy: but not without the highest acknowledgment at the same time of his other excellent merits, to the end that one who has been heretofore in esteem and honour with you may now feel that he is indebted to this our commendation for yet more abundant fruits of his assiduity and prudence. As for the transactions that yet remain, we have resolved shortly to send to your Majesty a special Embassy for those; and meanwhile may God preserve your Majesty safe, to be a pillar in His Church's defence and in the affairs of Sweden!--From our Palace of Westminster,--July 1656. Your Majesty's most affectionate, OLIVER, Protector &c."--Count Bundt, we may add, remained in England a month more after all, receiving farther attentions and entertainments; and not till Aug. 23 did he finally depart, taking with him not only Milton's Letter, but also a present from the Protector of £1200 worth of "white cloth" and a magnificent jewel. It was because this jewel could not be got ready at once that he had staid on; and it was worth waiting for. "The jewel was his Highness's picture in a case of gold, about the bigness of a five-shillings piece of silver, set round the case with sixteen fair diamonds, each diamond valued at £60: in all worth about £1000." The Count wore the jewel tied with a blue ribbon to his breast so long as he was in sight, barging down the Thames.[1] [Footnote 1: Whitlocke, IV. 257-273.] (LXXXII.) To the King of Portugal, _Aug._ 1656:--Mr. Philip Meadows has been in Lisbon since March, busy in the duties of his mission, and sending letters and reports home. There was still danger, however, in being an agent for the English Commonwealth in a Roman Catholic country; and Meadows had nearly shared the fate of Dorislaus and Ascham. On the 11th of May, as he was returning at night to his lodgings in Lisbon, carried in a litter, he was attacked by two horsemen, who "discharged two pistols into the litter and shot him through the left hand."[1] The wound was not serious; but the King of Portugal was naturally in great concern. He offered a large reward for the discovery of the criminals; and, in a Latin letter to Cromwell, dated "Alcantara, May 26, N.S.," he professed his desire to have them punished, whether they were English refugees or native Portuguese.[2] The present Letter by Milton is the Protector's reply. Though there has been some interval since the receipt of his Majesty's letter, his Highness has not yet heard that the criminals have been apprehended; and he insists that there shall be a vigorous prosecution of the search and recommends that it should be put into the hands of "some persons of honesty and sincerity, well-wishers to both nations." [Footnote 1: Thurloe to Pell, June 26, Vaughan's _Protectorate_, I. 432.] [Footnote 2: See Letter itself in Thurloe, V. 28.] (LXXXIII.) To Louis XIV. of France, _Aug._ 1656:--Again about a ship, but this time in a peremptory strain.--Richard Baker and Co. of London have complained to the Protector that a ship of theirs, called _The Endeavour_, William Jopp master, laden at Teneriffe with 300 pipes of rich Canary wine, had, in November last, been seized by four French privateer vessels under command of a Giles de la Roche, who had carried ship, cargo, and most of the crew away to the East Indies, after landing fourteen of the crew on the Guinea coast. For this daring act he had pleaded no excuse, except that his own fleet wanted provisions and that he believed the owners of his fleet would make good the loss. The Protector now demands that £16,000 be paid to Messrs. Baker and Co., and also that Giles de la Roche be punished. It concerns his French Majesty's honour to see to this, after that recent League with the English Commonwealth to which his royal oath is pledged. Otherwise all faith in Leagues will be at an end. (LXXXIV.) TO CARDINAL, MAZARIN, _Aug._ 1656:--On the same subject as the last. While writing to the King about such an outrage, the Protector cannot refrain from imparting the matter also to his Eminence, as "the sole and only person whose singular prudence governs the most important affairs of the French and the chief business of the kingdom, with equal fidelity, counsel, and vigilance." (LXXXV.) TO THE STATES-GENERAL OF THE UNITED PROVINCES, _Aug._ 1656. A Letter of some length, and very important. "We doubt not," It begins, "but all will bear us this testimony--that no considerations have ever been stronger with us in contracting foreign alliances than, the duty of defending the Truth of Religion, and that we have never accounted anything more sacred than the union and reconciliation of those who are either the friends and defenders of Protestants, or at least not their enemies." With what grief, then, does his Highness hear of new dissensions breaking out among Protestant powers, and especially of signs of a rupture between the United Provinces and Sweden! Should there be war between those two great Protestant powers, how the common enemy will rejoice! "To the Spaniard the prospect has already brought such an access of spirit and confidence that he has not hesitated, through his Ambassador residing with you, to obtrude most audaciously his counsels upon you, and that about the chief concerns of your Republic: daring even partly to terrify you by throwing in threats of a renewal of war, partly to solicit you by setting forth a false show of expediency, to the end that, abandoning by his advice your old and most faithful friends, the French, the English, and the Swedes, you would be pleased to form a close alliance with your former enemy and tyrant, pacified now forsooth, and, what is most to be feared, quite fawning." The Protector earnestly adjures their High Mightinesses the States to be on their guard. "We are not ignorant that you, in your wisdom, often revolve in your minds the question of the present state of Europe in general, and especially the condition of the Protestants: how the Cantons of the Swiss following the orthodox faith are kept in suspense by the expectation from day to day of new commotions to be stirred up by their countrymen following the faith of the Pope, and this while they have hardly emerged from that war which, plainly on account of Religion, was blown and kindled by the Spaniard, who gave their enemies leaders and supplied the money; how for the inhabitants of the Alpine Valleys the designs of the Spaniards are again contriving the same slaughter and destruction which they most cruelly inflicted on them last year; how the German Protestants are most grievously troubled under the rule of the Kaiser, and retain their paternal homes with difficulty; how the King of Sweden, whom God, as we hope, has raised up as a valiant champion of the Orthodox Religion, is carrying on with the whole strength of his kingdom a doubtful and most severe war with the most powerful enemies of the Reformed Faith; how your own Provinces are threatened by the ominous league lately struck up among your Papist neighbours, of whom a Spaniard is the Prince; how we here, finally, are engaged in a war declared against the Spanish King." What an aggravation of this condition of things if there should be an actual conflict between their High Mightinesses and Sweden! Will not their High Mightinesses lay all this to heart, and come to a friendly arrangement with Charles Gustavus? The Protector hardly understands the causes of the disagreement; but, if he can be of any use between the two powers, he will spare no exertion. He is about to send an embassy to the Swedish King, and will convey to him also the sentiments of this letter.--That the preparation of this Letter to the States-General had been very careful appears from the following minute relating to it in the Council Order-Books for Tuesday Aug. 19:--"Mr. Secretary [Thurloe] reports the draft of a letter to the States-General of the United Provinces; which was read, and committed to Sir Charles Wolseley, with the assistance of the Secretary, to amend the same, in pursuance of the present debate, and report it again to the Council." Cromwell was himself present at this meeting of the Council, with Lawrence, Lambert, Wolseley, Strickland, Rous, Jones, Skippon, and Pickering. The draft read was most probably the English that was to be turned into Latin by Milton: but this does not preclude the idea that the document itself was substantially Milton's. Thurloe can hardly have drafted _such_ a document. He may have gone to Milton first. (LXXXVI.) To The King of Portugal, _Aug._ 1656:--The Protector has received his Portuguese Majesty's Ratification of the Peace negotiated in London by his Extraordinary Ambassador Count Sa in 1654, and also of the secret and preliminary articles of the same; and he has received letters from Philip Meadows, his agent at Lisbon, informing him that the counterpart Ratification on the English side had been duly delivered to his Majesty. There being now therefore a firm and settled Peace between the two nations, dating formally from June 1656, the Protector salutes his Majesty with all cordiality. As to his Majesty's letters of June 24th, mentioning some clauses of the League a slight alteration of which would be convenient for Portugal, the Protector is willing to have these carefully considered, but suggests that the whole Treaty may be perilled by tampering with any part of it. (LXXXVII.) To THE COUNT OF ODEMIRA, _Aug._ 1656:--This is a letter to the Prime Minister of Portugal, to accompany the foregoing to the King. The Protector acknowledges the Count's zeal and diligence in promoting the Peace now concluded, and takes the opportunity of pressing upon him, rather than again upon the King, relentless inquiry into the late attempt to assassinate Meadows. (LXXXVIII.) To CHARLES X., KING OF SWEDEN, _Aug._ 1656:--A letter very much in the strain of that just sent to the States-General of the United Provinces. Although, knowing what a champion the Protestant Faith has in his Swedish Majesty, the Protector cannot but rejoice in the news of his successes, there is one drawback. It is the accompanying news of the misunderstanding between his Majesty and the Dutch, now come to such a pass, he hears, that open conflict is likely, especially in the Baltic. The Protector is in the dark as to the causes, but ventures to press on his Majesty the views he had been pressing, but a few days ago, upon the Dutch. Let him think of the perils of Protestantism; let him think of Piedmont, of Austria, of Switzerland! "Who is ignorant that the counsels of the Spaniards and of the Roman Pontiff have, for two years past, filled all those places with conflagrations, slaughters, and troubles to the orthodox? If to these evils, so many already, there shall be added an outbreak of bad feeling among Protestant brethren themselves, and especially between two powers in whose valour, resources, and constancy lies the greatest safeguard of the Reformed Churches, so far as human means avail, the Reformed Religion itself must be endangered and brought to an extreme crisis. On the other hand, were all of the Protestant name to cultivate perpetual peace with that brotherly unanimity which becomes them, there will be no reason at all to be very much afraid of inconvenience to us from all that the arts or force of our enemies can do." O that his Majesty may see his way to a pacific settlement of his differences with the Dutch! The Protector will gladly do anything to secure that result. (LXXXIX.) TO THE STATES OF HOLLAND, _Sept._ 1856:--William Cooper, a London minister, has represented to the Protector that his father-in-law, John le Maire of Amsterdam, invented, about thirty-three years ago, a certain device by which much revenue was brought in to the States of Holland, without any burden to the people. It was the settling of a certain small seal or stamp to be used in the Provinces ("_id autem erat parvi sigilli in Provinciis constitutio_"). For the working this invention he had taken into partnership one John van den Brook; and the States of Holland had promised the partners 3000 guilders yearly, equal to about £300 English, for the use of the thing. Not a farthing, however, had they ever received, though the States had benefited so much; and now, as they are both tired out, they have transferred their right to William Cooper, who means to prosecute the claim. The States are prayed to look into the matter, and to pay Cooper the promised annual pension, with arrears. (XC.) To LOUIS XIV. of FRANCE, _Sept._ 1656:--His Highness is sorry to trouble his Majesty so often; but the grievances of English subjects must be attended to. Now a London merchant, called Robert Brown, who had bought 4000 hides, part of the cargo of a Dieppe ship, legally taken before the League between France and Britain, had sold about 200 of them to a currier in Dieppe, but; instead of receiving the money, had found it attached and stopped in his factor's hands. He could have no redress from the French court of law to which the suit had been referred; and the Protector now desires his Majesty to bring the matter before his own Council. If acts done before the League are to be called in question, Leagues will be meaningless; and it would be well to make an example or two of persons causing trouble of this kind. Six of these thirteen State-Letters, it ought to be observed, belong to the single month of August 1656. They form Milton's largest contribution of work of this kind in any one month since the very beginning of his Secretaryship, with the exception of his burst of letters on the news of the Piedmontese Massacre in May 1655. Nor ought it to escape notice that some of the letters of Aug. 1656 are particularly important, and that two of them are manifestos of that passionate Protestantism of the Protector which had prompted his bold stand in the matter of the Piedmontese Persecution, and which had matured itself politically since then into the scheme of an express League or Union of all the Protestant Powers of Europe. It cannot be by mere accident that, when Cromwell wanted letters written in the highest strain of his most characteristic passion, they should have always been supplied by Milton. Whatever might be done by the office people that Thurloe had about him, it must have been understood that, for things of this sort, there was always to be recourse to the Latin Secretary Extraordinary. A little item of recent Council-business of which Milton may have heard with some interest appears as follows in the Council Order-Books under date Aug. 7, 1656:--"Upon consideration of the humble petition of Peter Du Moulin, the son, Doctor of Divinity, and a certificate thereunto subscribed, being presented to his Highness, and by his Highness referred to the Council, _Ordered_ ... That the said Dr. Peter Du Moulin, the petitioner, be permitted to exercise his ministerial abilities, the late Proclamation [of Nov. 24, 1655: see ante pp. 61-62], or any orders or instructions given to the Major-Generals and Commissioners in the several counties, notwithstanding." And so even the author of the _Regii Sanguinis Clamor_ was now an indulged man, and might look forward to being a Vicar or a Rector, or something higher still, in Cromwell's Established Church. _Can_ his secret have possibly been then known? _Can_ the Council have known that the man who petitioned the Protector for indulgence, and to whom they now advised the Protector to grant it, was the author of the most vehement and bitter book that had ever been written on the Royalist side, the man who had abused the Commonwealth men as "robbers, traitors, parricides" and "plebeian scoundrels," who had written of Cromwell "Verily an egg is not liker an egg than Cromwell is like Mahomet," and who had capped all his other politenesses about Milton by calling him "more vile than Cromwell, damned than Ravaillac"?[1] [Footnote 1: Dr. Peter du Moulin did become a Vicar in Cromwell's Established Church. He was inducted into the Vicarage of Bradwell, in Bucks, Oct. 24, 1657, but quitted it in a few days, apparently for something better (Wood's Fasti, II. 195: Note by Cole).] SECTION III: FROM SEPTEMBER 1656 TO JUNE 1657, OR THROUGH THE FIRST SESSION OF OLIVER'S SECOND PARLIAMENT. ANOTHER LETTER FROM MILTON TO MR. RICHARD JONES: DEPARTURE OF LADY RANELAGH FOR IRELAND: LETTER FROM MILTON TO PETER HEIMBACH: MILTON'S SECOND MARRIAGE: HIS SECOND WIFE, KATHARINE WOODCOCK: LETTER TO EMERIC BIGOT: MILTON'S LIBRARY AND THE BYZANTINE HISTORIANS: M. STOUPE: TEN MORE STATE-LETTERS BY MILTON FOR THE PROTECTOR (NOS. XCI.-C.): MORLAND, MEADOWS, DURIE, LOCKHART, AND OTHER DIPLOMATISTS OF THE PROTECTOR, BACK IN LONDON: MORE EMBASSIES AND DISPATCHES OVER LAND AND SEA: MILTON STANDING AND WAITING: HIS THOUGHTS ABOUT THE PROTECTORATE GENERALLY. Not much altogether is recoverable of Milton's life through that section of the Protectorate which coincides with the first Session of the Second Parliament (Sept. 17, 1656-June 26, 1657). What is recoverable will connect itself with (1) Three Private Epistles of his dated in these nine months, and (2) The series of his State-letters in the same period. To Richard Jones, _alias_ young Ranelagh, still at Oxford with Oldenburg, Milton, four days after the meeting of the Parliament, addressed another letter in that tone of Mentorship which he seems to have thought most suitable for the youth:-- "To the Noble youth, RICHARD JONES. "Preparing again and again to reply to your last letter, I was first prevented, as you know, by some sudden pieces of business, of such a kind as are apt to be mine; then I heard you were off on an excursion to some places in your neighbourhood; and now your most excellent mother, on her way to Ireland--whose departure ought to be a matter of no ordinary regret to both of us (for to me also she has stood in the place of all kith and kin: _nam et mihi omnium, necessitudinum loco fuit_)--carries you this letter herself. That you feel assured of my affection for you, right and well; and I would have you feel daily more and more assured of it, the more of good disposition and of good use of your advantages you give me to see in you. Which result, by God's grace, I see you not only engage for personally, but, as if I had provoked you by a wager on the subject, give solemn pledge and put in bail that you will accomplish,--not refusing, as it were, to abide judgment, and to pay the penalty of failure if judgment should be given against you. I am truly delighted with this so good hope you have of yourself; which you cannot now be wanting to, without appearing at the same time not only to have been faithless to your own promises but also to have run away from your bail. As to what you write to the effect that you do not dislike Oxford, you adduce nothing to make me believe that you have got any good there or been made any wiser: you will have to shew me that by very different proofs. Victories of Princes, which you extol with praises, and matters of that sort in which force is of most avail, I would not have you admire too much, now that you are listening to Philosophers [Robert Boyle and his set?]. For what should be the great wonder if in the native land of _wethers_ there are born strong horns, able to _ram_ down most powerfully cities and towns? [_Quid enim magnopere mirandum est si vervecum, in patria valida nascantur cornua quæ urbes et oppida arietare valentissime possint?_ Besides the pun, there is some geographical allusion, or allusion of military history, which it is difficult to make out.] Learn you, already from your early age, to weigh and discern great characters not by force and animal strength, but by justice and temperance. Farewell; and please to give best salutations in my name to the highly accomplished Henry Oldenburg, your chamber-fellow. "Westminster: Sept. 21, 1656." If the date of this letter, as published by Milton himself, is correct, it was written on a Sunday. Yet there can have been no particular haste; for Lady Ranelagh, who was to carry the letter to her son at Oxford on her way to Ireland, did not leave London for at least another fortnight. The pass for "Lady Catharine, Viscountess of Ranelagh, and her two daughters," with their servants, eight horses, &c., to go into Ireland, was granted, I find, by the Protector's Council, Oct. 7, 1656, on the motion of Lord President Lawrence.[1] She was to be away in Ireland for some years, occupied with family business of various kinds; and Milton was thinking with regret of the blank in his life that would be caused by her absence. For she had been to him, he says, "in the place of all kith and kin." How much that phrase involves! Though we have no letters from Milton to Lady Ranelagh, or from Lady Ranelagh to Milton, and though the fact of their friendship has been left by Milton unrecorded in that poetical form, whether of sonnet or of idyll, which has preserved for us so finely other incidents and intimacies of his life, this one phrase, duly interpreted, ought to make up for all. Perhaps in no part of any eminent man's life, especially if he is bereft domestically, is there wanting this benefit of some supreme womanly interest wakened in his behalf. Twice in Milton's life, so unfortunate domestically hitherto, we have seen something of the kind. Twelve years ago, in the old Aldersgate days of his desertion by his wife, it seemed to be the Lady Margaret Ley that was paramount. More recently, through the Westminster years of blindness and widowerhood, the real ministering angel, if there had been any such, had been that Lady Ranelagh whom English History remembers at any rate as the incomparable sister of Lord Broghill and of Robert Boyle. Let there be restored to her henceforth the honour also of having been Milton's friend. [Footnote 1: Council Order-Books of date.] The next extant Epistle of Milton, written when the Second Parliament of the Protectorate had sat nearly two months, is also quite of a private nature. Of the German or Dutch youth to whom it is addressed, Peter Heimbach, I have ascertained only that he had been residing for some time in London, perhaps originally brought thither in the train of some embassy or agency, and that he had recently published in London a Latin letter of eulogy on Cromwell,[1] extremely enthusiastic and somewhat juvenile. Milton's letter suggests farther that he had been much about Milton, as amanuensis or what not, but was now on a visit to Holland. [Footnote 1: The Letter, which is in thirty-five pages of small folio, is entitled "_Petri ab Heimbach, G.F., ad Serenissimum Potentissimumque Principem Olivarium, D. G. Magnæ Brittaniæ Protectorem, veræ Fidei Defensorem, Pium, Felicem, Invictum, Adlocutio Gralulatoria: Londini, Ex Typographia Jacobi Cottrellii_, 1656." The praise of Cromwell is boundless; and his conduct in the Piedmontese business, and his care of learning and the Universities, are especially noticed.] "To the very accomplished youth, PETER HEIMBACH. "Most amply, my Heimbach, have you fulfilled your promises and all the other expectations one would have of your goodness, with the exception, that I have still to long for your return. You promised that it would be within two months at farthest; and now, unless my desire to have you back makes me misreckon the time, you have been absent nearly three. In the matter of the Atlas you have abundantly performed all I requested of you; which was not that you should procure me one, but only that you would find out the lowest price of the book. You write that they ask 130 florins; it must be the Mauritanian mountain _Atlas_, I think, and not a book, that you tell me is to be bought at so huge a price. Such is now the luxury of Typographers in printing books that the furnishing of a library seems to have become as costly as the furnishing of a villa. Since to me at least, on account of my blindness, painted maps can hardly be of use, vainly surveying as I do with blind eyes the actual globe of the earth, I am afraid that the bigger the price at which I should buy that book the greater would seem to be my grief over my deprivation. Be good enough, pray, to take so much farther trouble for me as to be able to inform me, when you return, how many volumes there are in the complete work, and which of the two issues, that of Blaeu or that of Jansen, is the larger and more correct. This I hope to hear from yourself personally, on your speedy return, rather than by another letter. Meanwhile farewell, and come back to us as soon as you can. "Westminster: Nov. 8, 1656." One guesses from this letter that Heimbach was then in Amsterdam. It was there, at all events, that the two Atlases about which Milton enquired had been published or were in course of publication. That of John Jansen, called _Novus Atlas_, when completed in 1658, consisted of six folio volumes; the yet more magnificent _Geographia Blaeviana_, or Atlas of the geographer and printer John Blaeu, was not perfect till 1662, and then consisted of eleven volumes of very large folio. But various Atlases, or collections of maps in anticipation of the complete Atlas, had been on sale by Blaeu for ten or twelve years previously: e.g., from his own trade-catalogue in 1650, "Atlas, four volumes illuminated, bound after the best fashion, will cost 150 guldens," and "Belgia Foederata and Belgia Regia, two vols., white [uncoloured], 70 guldens, or illuminated 140 guldens." The gulden or Dutch florin was equal to 1_s._ 8_d._ English, so that the price of Blaeu's four volume Atlas of 1650 was £12 10_s._ To Milton in 1656 the price of the same, or of whatever other Atlas he had in view, was to be twenty florins less, i.e. about £11. It was much as if one were asked to give £38 for a book now; and no wonder that Milton hesitated.[1] [Footnote 1: The information about the prices of Blaeu's general Atlas in 1650 and his special Atlas of the two Belgiums in the same year is from a curious letter in the _Correspondence of the Earls of Ancram and Lothian_, edited for the Marquis of Lothian, in 1875, by Mr. David Laing (II. 256).] Just four days after the date of the letter to Heimbach, i.e. on the 12th of November, 1656, there took place an event of no less consequence to the household in Petty France than Milton's second marriage, after four years of widowerhood. It was performed, as the Marriage Act then in force required, not by a clergyman, but by a justice of the peace, and is registered thus in the books of the parish of St. Mary Aldermanbury, London, under the year 1656: "The agreement and intention of marriage between JOHN MILTON, Esq., of the Parish of Margaret's in Westminster, and MRS. KATHARINE WOODCOCKE, of the Parish of Mary's in Aldermanbury, was published three several market-days in three several weeks, viz. on Wednesday the 22nd and Monday the 27th of October, and on Monday the 3rd of November; and, no exceptions being made against their intention, they were, according to the Act of Parliament, married the 12th of November by Sir John Dethicke, Knight and Alderman, one of the Justices of Peace for this City of London."[1] Of this KATHARINE WOODCOCK (the "Mrs." before whose name does not mean that she had been married before) we learn farther, from Phillips, that she was "the daughter of Captain Woodcock of Hackney"; and that is nearly all that we know of her family. A Captain John Woodcock, who is found giving a receipt for £13 8_s._ to the Treasurer-at-War on Oct. 6, 1653, on the disbanding of his troop, may possibly have been her father, as no other Captain Woodcock of the time has been discovered.[2] There is reason to believe that Milton had not been acquainted with the lady before his blindness, and so that, literally, he had never _seen_ her. Not the less, for the brief space of her life allotted to their union, she was to be a light and blessing in his dark household. [Footnote 1: Given in Gentleman's Magazine for June, 1840; but I owe my copy to the kindness of Colonel Chester, who took it direct from the Register of St. Mary, Aldermanbury; and who supplies me with the following information in connexion with it: "It is generally said that the marriage took place in that church; but this, I think, may be doubted. I noticed, in several instances, that, when the religious ceremony was performed after the civil one, the fact was recorded; but it is not so in this case. I think that the City marriages at that period usually took place in the Guildhall, where a magistrate sat daily; though I believe they were sometimes solemnized at the residence of one of the parties."] [Footnote 2: Phillips; Hunter's _Milton Gleanings_, p. 35. Colonel Chester tells me that, although Katharine Woodcock is described in the Register as "of the parish of Mary's in Aldermanbury," he found no trace of her family in that parish at the time. "There were Woodcocks there at a much earlier period (say 100 years before); but about this time I found only one burial, that of Michael Woodcock, whose will I have since looked at, but which does not mention her." The conjecture that Mr. Francis Woodcock, minister of St. Olave's, Southwark, was a relative, receives no support from what is known of his principles (see Vol. III, 184). A contemporary Puritan divine, Thomas Woodcock, for some time minister of St. Andrew Undershaft, is found living at Hackney after the Restoration.] The household better ordered; the three young orphan girls of the first marriage better tended; more of lightsomeness and cheerfulness for Milton himself among his books; continuance, under new management, of the little hospitalities to the learned foreigners who occasionally call, and to the habitual visitors: so, we are to imagine, pass away at home those winter months of 1656-7 during which the great topics of interest outside were the war with Spain, Sindercombe's plot against the Protector's life, the debates in Parliament over the case of James Nayler, and the proceedings there for amending the system of the Protectorate, whether by converting it into Kingship or otherwise. Not, however, till the last day of March 1656-7, or three months and a half after the marriage with Katharine Woodcock, have we another distinct glimpse of Milton in his private life. On that day he dictated, in Latin, the following letter:-- "To the most accomplished EMERIC BIGOT. "That on your coming into England I had the honour of being thought by you more worth visiting and saluting than others was truly and naturally gratifying to me; and that now you renew your salutation by letter, even at such an interval, is somewhat more gratifying still. For in the first instance you might have come to me perhaps on the inducement of other people's opinion; but you could hardly return to me by letter save at the prompting of your own judgment, or, at least, good will. On this surely I have ground to congratulate myself. For many have made a figure by their published writings whose living voice and daily conversation have presented next to nothing that was not low and common: if, then, I can attain the distinction of seeming myself equal in mind and manners to any writings of mine that have been tolerably to the purpose, there will be the double effect that I shall so have added weight personally to my writings, and shall receive back by way of reflection from them credit, how small soever it may be, yet greater in proportion. For, in that case, whatever is right and laudable in them, that same I shall seem not more to have derived from authors of high excellence than to have fetched forth pure and sincere from the inmost feelings of my own mind and soul. I am glad, therefore, to know that you are assured of my tranquillity of spirit in this great affliction of loss of sight, and also of the pleasure I have in being civil and attentive in the reception of visitors from abroad. Why, in truth, should I not bear gently the deprivation of sight, when I may hope that it is not so much lost as revoked and retracted inwards, for the sharpening rather than the blunting of my mental edge? Whence it is that I neither think of books with anger, nor quite intermit the study of them, grievously though they have mulcted me,--were it only that I am instructed against such moroseness by the example of King Telephus of the Mysians, who refused not to be cured in the end by the weapon that had wounded him. As to that book you possess, _On the Manner of Holding Parliaments_, I have caused the marked passages of it to be either amended, or, if they were doubtful, confirmed, by reference to the MS. in the possession of the illustrious Lord Bradshaw, and also to the Cotton MS., as you will see from your little paper returned herewith. In compliance with your desire to know whether also the autograph of this book is extant in the Tower of London, I sent one to inquire of the Herald who has the custody of the Deeds, and with whom I am on familiar terms. His answer is that no copy of that book is extant among those records. For the help you offer me in return in procuring literary material I am very much obliged. I want, of the Byzantine Historians, _Theophanis Chronographia_ (folio: Greek and Latin), _Constantini Manassis Breviarium Historicum_, with _Codini Excerpta de Antiquitatibus Constantinopolitanis_ (folio: Greek and Latin), _Anastasii Bibliothecarii Historia et Vitæ Romanorum Pontificum_ (folio); to which be so good as to add, from the same press, _Michael Glycas_, and _Joannes Cinnamus_, the continuator of Anna Comnena, if they are now out. I do not ask you to get them as cheap as you can, both because there is no need to put a very frugal man like yourself in mind of that, and because they tell me the price of these books is fixed and known to all. MR. STOUPE has undertaken the charge of the money for you in cash, and also to see about the most convenient mode of carriage. That you may have all you wish, and all you aspire after, is my sincere desire. Farewell. "Westminster: March 24, 1656-7." Of the French scholar to whom this letter was addressed there is an excellent notice in Bayle. "EMERIC BIGOT," says Bayle, "one of the most learned and most honest men of the seventeenth century, was a native of Rouen, and of a family very distinguished in the legal profession. He was born in 1626. The love of letters drew him aside from public employments; his only occupation was in books and the acquisition of knowledge; he augmented marvellously the library which had been left him by his father. Once every week there was a meeting at his house for talk on matters of erudition. He kept up literary intercourse with a great number of learned men; his advices and information were useful to many authors; and he laboured all he could for the good and advantage of the Republic of Letters. He published but one book [a Life of St. Chrysostom]; but apparently he would have published others had he lived to complete them. M. Ménage in France, and Nicolas Heinsius among foreigners, were his two most intimate friends. He had none of the faults that accompany learning: he was modest and an enemy to disputes. In general, one may say he was the best heart in the world. He died at Rouen Dec. 18, 1689, aged about sixty-four years." How exactly this description of Bigot for his whole life tallies with the notion we should have of him, at the age of thirty-two, from Milton's letter! He had been in England some time ago, it appears, and had there, like other foreigners, paid his respects to Milton. And now, either from Rouen, or more probably from Paris, he had reopened the communication, quite in the style of a man such as Bayle paints him. The immediate object of his letter seems to have been to ask Milton to have some doubtful passages in a book "On the Manner of Holding Parliaments" compared with MS. authorities in London; but he had taken occasion to express also his vivid recollection of Milton, his interest in Milton's present condition, and his desire to be of use to him in the quest or purchase of foreign books. Milton, who had evidently performed very punctually Bigot's immediate commission,[1] did, it will be observed, send him a commission in return. It deserves a little explanation:--There was then in course of publication at Paris, under the auspices and at the expense of Louis XIV., the first splendid collective edition of the Byzantine Historians, i.e. of that series of Historians, Chroniclers, Antiquarians, and Memoir-writers of the Eastern or Greek Empire from the 6th century to the 15th in whose works lies imbedded all our information as to the History of the East through the Middle Ages. The publication, which was to attain to the vast size of thirty-six volumes folio, containing the Greek Texts with Latin Translations and Notes, was not to be completed till 1711; but it had been begun in 1645. Now, in Milton's library, it appears, the Byzantine Historians were already pretty well represented, either in the shape of the earlier volumes of this Parisian collection, or in that of separate prior editions of particular writers. There were some gaps, however, which he wanted to fill up. He wanted the _Chronographia_ of Theophanes Isaacius, a chronicle of events from A.D. 277 to A.D. 811; also the _Brevarium Historicum_ of Constantine Manasses, a metrical chronicle of the world from the Creation to A.D. 1081; also the book of Georgius Codinus, the compiler of the fifteenth century, entitled _Excerpta de Originibus Constantinopolitanis_; also that of Anastasius Bibliothecarius on the _Lives of the Popes_. The Parisian editions of these, or of the first three, were now out (all in 1655). At the same time there might be sent him the Parisian editions, if they had appeared, of the Annals of _Michael Glycas_, bringing the History of the World from the Creation to A.D. 1118, and the valuable Lives of John and Manuel Comnenus by _Joannes Cinnamus_, the imperial notary of the 12th century.--As the Parisian edition of Michael Glycas (by Labbe) did not appear till 1660, and that of Joannes Cinnamus (by Du Cange) not till 1670, Bigot can have forwarded to Milton only the first-mentioned Byzantine books. One may imagine the arrival of the parcel of learned folios in the neat new tenement which Milton inhabited in Petty France; and it gives one a stronger idea than we have yet had of Milton's passion for books, and of his indomitable perseverance and ingenuity in the use of them in his blind state, that he should have taken such pains, at our present date, to supply himself with copies of some of the rare Byzantine Historians. Connecting this purchase, through Bigot, with the recent inquiry, through Heimbach, about the price of Blaeu's great Atlas, may we not also discern some increased attention to the furnishing of the house occasioned by the second marriage? [Footnote 1: It seems to me possible, though I would not be too sure, that the book about which Bigot wrote to Milton was one entitled _Modus tenendi Parliamentum apud Anglos_, by Henry Elsynge, Clerk of the House of Lords, and father of the Henry Elsynge who was Clerk of the Commons In the Long Parliament (Wood, Ath. III. 363-4). The book, which had been sent forth under Parliamentary authority in 1641, was a standard one; and manuscript copies of it, or drafts for it, more complete than itself, may well have been extant in such places as the Cotton Library or Bradshaw's. Actually Elsynge's autograph of the book, dated 1626, was extant in London at the date of Milton's letter, though not in the Tower. An edition of the book, "enriched with a large addition from the author's original MS.," was published in 1768; and the MS. itself is now in the British Museum (Bonn's _Lowndes_, Article "Elsynge").] The Herald in charge of the Records in the Tower, mentioned in Milton's letter as one of his acquaintances, was, I believe, WILLIAM RYLEY, Norroy King-at-arms. He had been Clerk of the Records, under the Master of the Rolls, for some years, and was to continue in the post till after the Restoration. A more interesting person was the "MR. STOUPE" who took charge of the cash to Bigot for the Byzantine volumes, and was to see to their conveyance to London.--He was no common character. A Grison by birth, he had settled in London as minister of the French Church in the Savoy; but he had left that post to be one of Thurloe's travelling-agents and political intelligencers or spies. For two years or more he had been employed in secret missions to France and Switzerland, chiefly for negotiation in the interests of the continental Protestants; and his success in this kind of employment, often at considerable personal risk, and his talent for collecting information in London itself by means of correspondence from abroad, had gradually recommended him to the Protector. Burnet, who knew him well in after life, when he was more a frantic Deist than either a Protestant or "Christian," had more anecdotes about Cromwell from him than from any other man. The anecdotes he liked best to tell were those in which his own intriguing ability figured. Thus it was Stoupe, according to his own account, that knew of Cromwell's design on the Spanish West Indies before all the rest of the world. One day, late in 1654, having been called into the Protector's room on business, he had noticed him very intent upon a map and measuring distances on it. Information being Stoupe's trade, he contrived to see that the map was one of the Bay of Mexico, and drew his inference. Accordingly, when the fleet of Penn and Venables was ready to sail, but nobody knew its destination, "Stoupe happened to say in a company he believed the design was on the West Indies. The Spanish Ambassador, hearing that, sent for him very privately, to ask him upon what ground he said it; and he offered to lay down £10,000 if he could make any discovery of that. Stoupe owned to me that he had a great mind to the money, and fancied he betrayed nothing if he did discover the grounds of these conjectures, since nothing had been trusted to him; but he expected greater matters from Cromwell, and said only that in a diversity of conjectures that seemed to him more probable than any others." Another of Stoupe's stories to Burnet was even more curious. Having learnt by a letter from Brussels that a certain refugee had come over to assassinate Cromwell, and was lodged in King Street, Westminster, he had hurried to Whitehall, and sent in a note to Cromwell, then in Council, saying he had something to communicate. Cromwell, supposing it might be one of Stoupe's ordinary pieces of intelligence, had sent out Thurloe to him. Though "troubled at this," Stoupe had no option but to show Thurloe the letter. To his surprise, Thurloe had made light of the matter, saying that they had rumours of that kind by the score, and it was not for a great man like the Protector to trouble himself about them. Stoupe, who had hoped his fortune would be made, went away "much cast down," to write to Brussels for surer evidence. He mentioned the matter, however, to Lord Lisle; and so, when Sexby's or Sindercombe's Plot was discovered a while afterwards, Lisle, talking of it with the Protector, and not doubting that the Protector knew all about Stoupe's previous revelation, said _that_ must be the man Stoupe had spoken of. "Cromwell seemed amazed at this, and sent for Stoupe, and in great wrath reproached him for his ingratitude in concealing a matter of such consequence to him. Stoupe upon this shewed him the letters he had received, and put him in mind of the note he had sent in to him, which was immediately after he had the first letter, and that he had sent out Thurloe to him. At that Cromwell seemed yet more amazed, and sent for Thurloe, to whose face Stoupe affirmed the matter; nor did he deny any part of it, but only said that he had many such advertisements sent him, in which till this time he had never found any truth. Cromwell replied sternly that he ought to have acquainted _him_ with it, and left _him_ to judge of the importance of it. Thurloe desired to speak in private with Cromwell. So Stoupe was dismissed, and went away, not doubting but Thurloe would be disgraced." What was his surprise, however, to find not only that Thurloe was not disgraced, but that he himself was thenceforth less in favour? Thurloe, in justifying himself, had told Cromwell more about Stoupe than he previously knew, and "possessed Cromwell with such an ill opinion of him that after that he never treated him with any confidence."[1] If the story is true, Stoupe's loss of favour dates from Jan. 1656-7, or two months before Milton's letter to Bigot. It would seem, however, that he was still employed in some way as one of Thurloe's agents; and hence Milton's use of him to convey the cash to France.[2] That Milton knew Stoupe would have been certain without this evidence; but the evidence is interesting.[3] [Footnote 1: Burnet's _Hist. of his Own Time_, Book I.] [Footnote 2: Of the £2000 sent from London to Geneva in June 1655 as the first instalment of relief for the Piedmontese Protestants (Cromwell's own subscription) £500 had been sent through Stoupe. See ante p. 190.] [Footnote 3: Stoupe might make a good character in any historical novel of the time of the Protectorate. His career did not end then. He was to be "a brigadier-general in the French armies," and one knows not what else, before Burnet made his acquaintance.] Of the following State-Letters of Milton, all belonging to our present section of his life, five bear date before his second marriage, and five after. Those after the marriage come at longer intervals than those before:-- (XCI.) TO THE KING OF PORTUGAL, _Oct._ 1656:--Peace with Portugal being happily ratified, the Protector is despatching THOMAS MAYNARD to be his consul in that country. This letter is to introduce him and bespeak access for him to his Majesty. (XCII.) TO THE KING OF SWEDEN, _Oct._ 1656:--A soldierly knight, Sir William Vavasour, who has been in England, is now returning to his military duty under the Swedish King. The Protector need hardly recommend back to his Majesty a servant so distinguished, but ventures to do so, and to suggest that he should be paid his arrears. (XCIII.) TO THE KING OF PORTUGAL, _Oct._ 1656:--An English ship-master, called Thomas Evans, is going to Lisbon to prosecute his claim for £7000 against the Brazil Company, being damages sustained by the seizure of his ship, the _Scipio_, six years before, by the Portuguese Government, while he was in the Company's service. The Treaty provides for such claims; and, though the Protector has written before on the subject generally, he cannot but write specially in this case. (XCIV.) TO THE SENATE OF HAMBURG, _Oct. 16, 1656:_--Long ago, in the time of King Charles, two brothers, James and Patrick Hays, being the lawful heirs of their brother Alexander, who had died intestate in Hamburg, had obtained a decree in their favour in the Hamburg Court, assigning them all the said Alexander's property, except dower for his widow. From that day to this, however, chiefly by the influence of Albert van Eizen, a man of consequence in Hamburg, they have been kept out of their rights. They are in extreme poverty and have applied to the Protector. As he considers it the first duty of his Protectorate to look after such cases, he writes this letter. It is to request the Hamburg Senate to see that the two brothers have the full benefit of the old decision of the Court. Further delay has been threatened, he hears, in the form of an appeal to the Chamber of Spires. That such an appeal is illegal will appear by the signed opinions of English lawyers which he forwards. "But, if entreaty is of no avail, it will be necessary, and that by the common right of nations, to resort to measures of retaliation." His Highness hopes this may be avoided by the prudence of the Senate. (XCV.) TO LOUIS XIV. OF FRANCE, _Nov. 1656:_--No answer has yet been received to his Highness's former letter, of May 14, on the subject of the claim of Sir John Dethicke, then Lord Mayor of London, and his partner William Wakefield, on account of the capture of a ship of theirs in 1649 by a pirate acting for Charles Stuart, and the insolent detention of the same by M. L'Estrades, the French Governor of Dunkirk (see the Letter, ante p. 253). Perhaps the delay had arisen from the fact that M. L'Estrades was then away with the army in Flanders; but "now he is living in Paris itself, or rather fluttering about with impunity in city and court enriched with the spoils of our people." His Highness now imperatively demands immediate and strict attention to the matter. It is one of positive obligation by the Treaty; and the honour and good faith of His French Majesty are directly concerned.--It is a curious coincidence that within a day or two of the writing of this strong letter by Milton in behalf of Sir John Dethicke, that knight should have solemnised Milton's marriage with Katharine Woodcock. Nov. 12 was the date of the marriage; and, as Dethicke is spoken of in this letter as no longer in his Mayoralty, it must have been written after Lord Mayor's day, i.e. after Nov. 9, 1656. (XCVI.) TO FREDERICK III., KING OF DENMARK, _Dec. 1856:_--This is another of Cromwell's fervid Protestant letters, very much in the strain of those four months before to the States-General of the United Provinces and Charles Gustavus of Sweden, and indeed, with identical expressions. First he acknowledges letters from his Danish Majesty, of date Feb. 16, received through the worthy Simon de Pitkum, his Majesty's agent. They have been so gratifying, and the matter of them is so important, that his Highness has been looking about for a suitable person to be sent as confidential minister to Copenhagen. Such a person he hopes to send soon: meanwhile a letter may convey some thoughts about the state of Europe that are much occupying his Highness. The dissensions among Protestant States are causing him profound grief. Especially he is grieved by the jealousies and misunderstandings that separate two such important Protestant States as Denmark and Sweden. Can they not be removed? Sweden and the United Provinces, with both of which his Highness had taken the liberty of remonstrating to the same effect, have been coming to a happy accommodation: why should Denmark keep aloof? Let his Danish Majesty lay this to heart. Let him think of the persecutions of Protestants in Piedmont, in Austria, and in Switzerland; and let him imagine the eternal machinations of the Spaniard behind all. These surely are inducements sufficient to a reconciliation with Sweden, if it can be brought about. The Protector's good offices towards that end shall not be wanting if required. He has the highest esteem for the King of Denmark, and would cultivate yet closer alliance with him.--Relating to this letter is a minute of Council of the date Tuesday, Dec. 2: "The draft of a letter from his Highness to the King of Denmark was this day read, and after read by parts; and the several clauses thereof, being put to the question, were, with some amendments, agreed; and, the whole being so passed, it was offered to his Highness as the advice of the Council that his Highness will please to send the same." The letter, therefore, was deemed important. Was the draft read in English or in Latin? On the first supposition it may still have come from Milton, though it had to go back to him. (XCVII.) To WILLIAM, LANDGRAVE OF HESSE, _March 1656-7_:--After an apology to the Landgrave for not having sooner answered a letter of his received nearly twelve months ago, the Protector here also plunges into the subject of Union among Protestants. He is glad that the Landgrave appreciates the exertions in this behalf that have been made in Britain and elsewhere. "We have particularly desired the same peace for the Churches of all Germany, where dissension has been too sharp and of too long continuance; and through our DURIE, labouring at the same fruitlessly now for many years, we have heartily offered any possible service of ours that might contribute thereto. We remain still in the same mind; we desire to see the same brotherly love to each other among those Churches: but how hard a business this is of settling a peace among those sons of peace, as they pretend themselves, we understand, to our great grief, only too abundantly. For it is hardly to be hoped that those of the Reformed and those of the Augustan confession will ever coalesce into the communion of one Church; they cannot without force be prevented from severally, by word and writings, defending their own beliefs; and force cannot consist with ecclesiastical tranquillity. This, at least, however, they might allow one to entreat--that, as they do differ, they would differ more humanely and moderately, and love each other nevertheless." It is a great pleasure to the Protector to exchange sentiments on this subject with a Prince of such distinguished Protestant ancestry. (XCVIII.) TO THE DUKE OF COURLAND, _March 1657_:--After thanking this potentate of the Baltic for his hospitality, some time ago, to an English agent passing through to Muscovy, the Protector brings to his notice the case of one John Jamesone, a Scotchman, master of one of the Duke's ships. The ship had been wrecked going into port, but not by Jamesone's fault. The pilot, to whom he had intrusted it, according to rule and custom, had been alone to blame. Jamesone has been a faithful servant of the Duke for seven years; he is in great distress; and his Highness hopes the Duke will not stop his pay. (XCIX.) TO THE CONSULS AND SENATE OF DANTZIG, _April 1657_:--The Dantzigers, for whom the Protector has a great respect, have unfortunately sided with the Poles against the King of Sweden. Would that, for the sake of Religion, and in the spirit of their old commercial amity with England, they had chosen otherwise, or would yet change their views! That, however, is rather beyond the immediate business of this letter; which is to request them either to release the noble Swede, Count Konigsmarck, who has become their prisoner by treachery, or at least make his captivity easier. (C.) TO THE EMPEROR OF RUSSIA, _April 1657_:--On the throne of this vast, chaotic, semi-Asiatic Empire at this time was Alexis, the son and successor of Michael Romanoff, the founder of that new dynasty under which Russia was to enter on her era of greatness. He had come to the throne, as a young man, in 1645, and had since then, in the despotic Czarish way, continued his father's policy for the civilization of his subjects by cultivating commerce with the neighbouring European states, and bringing in foreigners for service in his armies or otherwise. On the execution of Charles I., however, he had broken utterly with the Regicide Island, and had ordered out of his dominions all English adherents of the Parliament. He alone of European Sovereigns had at once taken this high stand against the English Republic. But events, Russian interests, and communications from the Protector, had gradually brought him round. Since 1654, when a certain WILLIAM PRIDEAUX had been sent to Russia as agent for the Protector, the trade with Russia, through Archangel, had resumed its former dimensions, under rules permitting English merchants to sell and buy goods at Archangel, and have a factory there, but "not to go up in the country for Moscow or any other city in Russia."[1] The envoy himself, however, had visited Moscow; and his long letters thence, or from Archangel, had thrown much light on the internal condition of that strange outlandish Muscovy, as Russia was then generally called, about which there had been hitherto more of curiosity than knowledge. The immense wealth of the Emperor, his vast military forces, the barbaric splendours of his Court, the Oriental submissiveness of the people and their oddities of dress and manners, the peculiarities of the Greek Religion, the great resources of Russia, and the obstructions yet existing in the way of trade with her, had all become topics of English gossip. But, in fact, Alexis had become a considerable personage in general European politics. By wars with Poland, and other populations about him, he had greatly enlarged his territories, adopting new titles of sovereignty to signify the same; and in the general imbroglio of North-Eastern Europe, involving Sweden, Denmark, Poland, the United Provinces, and even Germany, he had come to be a power whose movements and embassies commanded attention. It had been resolved, therefore, by the Protector and his Council to send a more special envoy to "the Great Duke of Muscovia"; and, on the 12th of March 1656-7, RICHARD BRADSHAW, ESQ., so long Resident for the Commonwealth at Hamburg, was recommended by the Council to his Highness as the proper person.[2] The present letter of Milton, accordingly, is the Letter of Credence which Bradshaw was to take with him.--The Letter is addressed to his Russian Majesty, as punctually as possible, by all his chaos of titles, thus: "Oliver, Protector of the Commonwealth of England, Scotland, Ireland, &c., to the Most Serene and most powerful Prince and Lord, the Emperor and Great Duke of all Russia, Lord of Volodomeria, Moscow, and Novgorod, King of Kazan, Astracan, and Siberia, Lord of Vobscow, Great Duke of Smolensk, Tuerscow, and other places, Lord and Great Duke of Novograda, and of the lower countries of Czernigow, Rezanscow, &c., Lord of all the Northern Clime, and also Lord of Everscow, Cartalinska, and many other lands."[3] After referring to the old commercial intercourse between Russia and England, the Protector says he is moved to seek closer communication, with his most august Imperial Majesty by that extraordinary worth, far outshining that of all his ancestors, by which he has won himself so good an opinion among all neighbouring Princes, Then he introduces and highly recommends BRADSHAW, who will duly reveal his instructions. [Footnote 1: Thurloe, II. 562.] [Footnote 2: Council Order Book of date.] [Footnote 3: Compare this address with that which the Envoy of the United Provinces was instructed by the States-General to be most punctual in using in his addresses to his Czarish Majesty nearly six years before (Aug. 1651: see Thurloe, I. 196):--"Most illustrious, most potent great Lord, Czar and Grand Duke Alexey Michaelowitz, Autocrator of all both the Greater and Lesser Russia, Czar of Kiof, Wolodomiria, Novgorod, Czar of Kazan, Czar of Astracan, Czar of Siberia, Lord of Plescow, and Grand Duke of Smolensko, Tweer, Jugonia, Permia, Weatka, Bolgaria, Lord and Grand-Duke of Novagrada and the low lands of Zenigow, Resan, Polotzko, Rostof, Yareslav, Belooseria, Udoria, Obdoria, Condinia, Wietepsky, M'Stitslof, Lord of all the Northern Lands, Lord of the Land of Iversky, Czar of Cartalinsky and Grusinsky, and of the Land of Cardadinsky, Prince of the Circasses and Gorshes, heir of his Father and Grand-father, and Lord and Sovereign of many other Easterly, Westerly, and Northerly Lordships and Dominions." Milton, for the Protector, is somewhat more economical and uses _Rex_ for _Czar_.] The mission of BRADSHAW to Russia was not the only incident in the Protector's diplomatic service about this time in which Milton, as Foreign Secretary Extraordinary, may have felt an interest. MORLAND, after having been in Switzerland for about a year and a half on the business that had grown out of his original Piedmontese mission, had been at length recalled, leaving the Swiss agency, as before, in the hands of PELL by himself. He had been back in London since Dec. 1656, had attended the Council several times to give full and formal report of his proceedings, and had also appeared before the great Committee for the Collection for the Piedmontese Protestants, and presented his accounts of the moneys received and expended. All that he had done met with high approbation; and, by way of reward in kind, it was voted by the Council, May 5, 1657, that he should have £700 for 'the charge of paper, printing, and cutting of the maps, for 2000 copies of his History,' and the whole of the profits of that book. Morland's _History of the Evangelical Churches of Piemont_, which appeared in the following year, was therefore a State publication the copyright of which was made over to the author. More munificent still was the reward of the services of MEADOWS in Portugal. His special mission having been successfully accomplished, and ordinary consular duty in Lisbon having been put into good hands, he too had returned to London, but only to be designated at once (Feb. 24, 1656-7) for another mission of importance. This was that mission to the King of Denmark which Cromwell had promised in his letter to the King of Dec. 1656, but for which a suitable person had not then been found. To Meadows, fresh from Portugal, the appointment to Denmark was in itself a high compliment; but there were very substantial accompaniments. His allowance in his new mission was to be £1000 a year; a special sum of £400 was voted for the expense of his journey; and it was ordered that, for his able discharge of his Portuguese mission, £100 a year should be settled on him and his for ninety-nine years--a vote partly commuted a few days afterwards (March 19) into a present money-payment of £1000. For DURIE, who was also now back in England, and indeed close to Milton in Westminster, after another of his roving missions, first through Switzerland, and then in other parts, there was to be no employment so distinguished as that found for Meadows. It was enough that he should be at hand for any farther service of propagandism in behalf of his life-long idea of a Pan-Protestant Union. Of two new diplomatic appointments that were soon to be made, both above Durie's mark, we shall hear in time. The most splendid diplomatic appointment of all in the Protector's service had, as we already know (ante p. 114), just received an increase of dignity. The Scottish COLONEL WILLIAM LOCKHART, the husband of Cromwell's niece, and his Ambassador at the Court of France since April 1656, had been back on a visit in the end of the year to attend Parliament and to consult with Cromwell; and now, knighted by Cromwell, he had returned to France as SIR WILLIAM LOCKHART, with his great allowance of £100 a week, or £5200 a year.[1] [Footnote 1: Council Order Books of dates Jan. 1, 27, Feb. 3, 24, March 5, 12, 19, 1656-7, and May 5, 1657; Letter of Durie, dated "Westminster, May 28, 1657," in Vaughan's Protectorate (II. 173).] At no time, indeed, since the beginning of the Protectorate, had there been such activity in that foreign and diplomatic department of the Protector's service to which Milton belonged. Cromwell's alliance offensive and defensive with France against Spain (March 23, 1656-7), leading immediately to the transport of an English auxiliary army under General Reynolds to co-operate with the French in Flanders (ante pp. 140-141), would in itself have caused an increase of such activity; but, in addition to this, and inextricably involved with this in Cromwell's general Anti-Spanish policy, was that idea of a League or Union of the Protestant States of Europe which had first perhaps been roused in his mind by the Piedmontese massacre of 1655, but had gradually, as so many of Milton's subsequent State-Letters prove, assumed firmer form and wider dimensions. The Dutch, the Protestant Swiss, the Protestant German princes and cities, the Danes, the Swedes, the Protestants of Transylvania and other eastern parts, perhaps even the Russians, all, so far as Cromwell's influence could go, were to be brought to a common understanding for the promotion of Protestant interests throughout the world and the defiance of all to the contrary. It was Durie's old dream of Pan-Protestantism redreamt by a man whose state was kingly, and who had the means of turning his dreams into realities. Now, consequently, in the service of that dream, as in his service generally, "Thousands at his bidding speed, And post o'er land and ocean without rest." While so many were thus coming and going, at £800 a year, £1000 a year, or £5000 a year, blind Milton, with his £200 a year, could only "stand and wait," the stationary Latin drudge. The return of his old assistant Meadows from Portugal may again have relieved him of somewhat of the drudgery; for, though Meadows was designated for the new mission to Denmark Feb. 24, 1656-7, he did not actually set out for Denmark till the following August, and there is something like proof that in the interval, envoy though he now was, he resumed secretarial duty at Whitehall under Thurloe. His renewed presence in London may account for the comparative rarity of Milton's State-Letters from Dec. 1656 to April 1657, and also for the fact that then there follows a total blank of four months in the series, bringing us precisely to August, when Meadows was preparing to go away again. What passed during these months we already know. The great question of Kingship or continued Protectorship, which had been in suspense during those months of March and April in which Milton had written his last four letters, had been brought to a close May 8, when Cromwell at last decisively refused the Crown; and the First Session of his Second Parliament had accordingly ended, June 26, not in his coronation, as had been expected, but in his inauguration in that Second Protectorship the constitution of which had been framed by the Parliament in their so-called _Petition and Advice_.--What may have been Milton's thoughts on the Kingship question we can pretty easily conjecture. Almost to a certainty, he was one of the private "_Contrariants_," one of those Oliverians who, with Lambert, Fleetwood, and most of the Army-men, objected theoretically to a return to Kingship, feared it would be fatal, and were glad therefore when Cromwell declined it and accepted the constitutionalized Protectorship instead. But, indeed, by this time, it is possible that Milton, though still Oliverian in the main, still a believer in Cromwell's greatness and goodness, was not so devotedly an Oliverian as he had been when he had written his panegyric on the Protector and the Protectorate in his _Defensio Secunda_. Even then he had made his reserves, and had ventured to express them in advices and cautions to Cromwell himself. He can hardly have professed that in those virtues of the avoidance of arbitrariness and self-will, the avoidance of over-legislation and over-restriction, which he had especially recommended to Cromwell, the rule of the Protector through the last three years had quite satisfied his ideal. Many of the so-called "arbitrary" measures, and even the temporary device of the Major-Generalships, he may have excused, as Cromwell himself did, on the plea of absolute necessity; all the measures distinctly for repression of Royalist risings and conspiracies must have had his thorough approbation; and, in the great matter of liberty of speculation and speech, Cromwell had certainly shown more sympathy with the spirit of Milton's _Areopagitica_ than most of his Councillors or either of his Parliaments. Nor, as we have sufficiently seen, did Milton's notions of Public Liberty, any more than Cromwell's, formulate themselves in mere ordinary constitutionalism, or the doctrine of the rightful supremacy of Parliaments elected by a wide or universal suffrage, and a demand that such should be sitting always. He had more faith perhaps, as Cromwell had, in a good, broad, and pretty permanent Council, acting on liberal principles, and led by some single mind. But there _had_ been disappointments. What, for example, of the frequent questionings and arrests of Bradshaw, Vane, and other high-minded Republicans whom Milton admired, and what especially of the prolonged disgrace and imprisonment of his dear friend Overton? Or, even if the plea of necessity or supposed necessity should cover such cases too (for Cromwell's informations through Thurloe might reach farther than the public knew, and the good Overton, at all events, had gone into devious and dangerous courses), what about the Protector's grand infatuation on the subject of an Established Church? He had preserved the abomination of a State-paid ministry; he had made that institution the very pride of his Protectorate; he was actually fattening up over again a miscellaneous State-clergy, in place of the old Anglicans, by studied encouragements and augmentations of stipend. So Milton thought, and very much in that language; and here, above all, must have been his dissatisfaction with Cromwell's Government. But what could be done? What other Government could there be? What would the Commonwealth have been without Cromwell, and in what condition would it be if he were removed? On the whole, what could a blind private thinker do but, in his occasional interviews with the great Protector on business, or his rarer presences perhaps in a retired place at one of the Protector's musical entertainments at Whitehall, keep all such thoughts to himself, reserving frank expression of them for his intimates, and meanwhile behaving as a loyal Oliverian and performing his duty? In such a state of mind, as I believe, did Milton pass from the First Protectorate into the Second. BOOK II. JUNE 1657-SEPTEMBER 1658. HISTORY:--OLIVER'S SECOND PROTECTORATE. BIOGRAPHY:-MILTON'S LIFE AND SECRETARYSHIP THROUGH THE SECOND PROTECTORATE. CHAPTER I. OLIVER'S SECOND PROTECTORATE: JUNE 26, 1657--SEPT. 3, 1658. REGAL FORMS AND CEREMONIAL OF THE SECOND PROTECTORATE: THE PROTECTOR'S FAMILY: THE PRIVY COUNCIL: RETIREMENT OF LAMBERT: DEATH OF ADMIRAL BLAKE: THE FRENCH ALLIANCE AND SUCCESSES IN FLANDERS: SIEGE AND CAPTURE OF MARDIKE: OTHER FOREIGN RELATIONS OF THE PROTECTORATE: SPECIAL ENVOYS TO DENMARK, SWEDEN, AND THE UNITED PROVINCES: AIMS OF CROMWELL'S DIPLOMACY IN NORTHERN AND EASTERN EUROPE: PROGRESS OF HIS ENGLISH CHURCH-ESTABLISHMENT: CONTROVERSY BETWEEN JOHN GOODWIN AND MARCHAMONT NEEDHAM: THE PROTECTOR AND THE QUAKERS: DEATH OF JOHN LILBURNE: DEATH OF SEXBY: MARRIAGE OF THE DUKE OF BUCKINGHAM TO MARY FAIRFAX: MARRIAGES OF CROMWELL'S TWO YOUNGEST DAUGHTERS: PREPARATIONS FOR ANOTHER SESSION OF THE PARLIAMENT: WRITS FOR THE OTHER HOUSE: LIST OF CROMWELL'S PEERS.--REASSEMBLING OF THE PARLIAMENT, JAN. 20, 1657-8: CROMWELL'S OPENING SPEECH, WITH THE SUPPLEMENT BY FIENNES: ANTI-OLIVERIAN SPIRIT OF THE COMMONS: THEIR OPPOSITION TO THE OTHER HOUSE: CROMWELL'S SPEECH OF REMONSTRANCE: PERSEVERANCE OF THE COMMONS IN THEIR OPPOSITION: CROMWELL'S LAST SPEECH AND DISSOLUTION OF THE PARLIAMENT, FEB. 4, 1657-8.--STATE OF THE GOVERNMENT AFTER THE DISSOLUTION: THE DANGERS, AND CROMWELL'S DEALINGS WITH THEM: HIS LIGHT DEALINGS WITH THE DISAFFECTED COMMONWEALTH'S MEN: THREATENED SPANISH INVASION FROM FLANDERS, AND RAMIFICATIONS OF THE ROYALIST CONSPIRACY AT HOME: ARRESTS OF ROYALISTS. AND EXECUTION OF SLINGSBY AND HEWIT: THE CONSPIRACY CRUSHED: DEATH OF ROBERT RICH: THE EARL OF WARWICK'S LETTER TO CROMWELL, AND HIS DEATH: MORE SUCCESSES IN FLANDERS: SIEGE AND CAPTURE OF DUNKIRK: SPLENDID EXCHANGES OF COMPLIMENTS BETWEEN CROMWELL AND LOUIS XIV.: NEW INTERFERENCE IN BEHALF OF THE PIEDMONTESE PROTESTANTS, AND PROJECT OF A PROTESTANT COUNCIL _DE PROPAGANDA FIDE_; PROSPECTS OF THE CHURCH ESTABLISHMENT: DESIRE OF THE INDEPENDENTS FOR A CONFESSION OF FAITH: ATTENDANT DIFFICULTIES: CROMWELL'S POLICY IN THE AFFAIRS OF THE SCOTTISH KIRK: HIS DESIGN FOR THE EVANGELIZATION AND CIVILIZATION OF THE HIGHLANDS: HIS GRANTS TO THE UNIVERSITIES OF EDINBURGH AND GLASGOW; HIS COUNCIL IN SCOTLAND: MONK AT DALKEITH: CROMWELL'S INTENTIONS IN THE CASES OF BIDDLE AND JAMES NAYLER; PROPOSED NEW ACT FOR RESTRICTION OF THE PRESS: FIRMNESS AND GRANDEUR OF THE PROTECTORATE IN JULY 1658: CROMWELL'S BARONETCIES AND KNIGHTHOODS: WILLINGNESS TO CALL ANOTHER PARLIAMENT: DEATH OF LADY CLAYPOLE: CROMWELL'S ILLNESS AND LAST DAYS, WITH THE LAST ACTS AND INCIDENTS OF HIS PROTECTORSHIP. Whether Cromwell's Second and Constitutionalized Protectorship was as agreeable to himself as his First had been may be doubted. He had accepted it, however, and meant to try it in all good faith. If, on the one hand, it was more limited, on the other it was attended with more of grandeur and dignity. Inasmuch as the actual Kingship had been offered him, and the new constitution was exactly that which would have gone with the Kingship, his Protectorship now, in the eyes of all the world, was equivalent to Kingship. When inducted into his First Protectorship, stately though the ceremonial had been, he had worn but a black velvet suit, with a gold band round his hat, and the chief symbol of his investiture had been the removal of his own military sword and substitution of the civil sword presented to him by Lambert. He had come into this Second Protectorship robed in purple, and holding a sceptre of massy gold. In heraldry, as well as in reality, he had taken his place among the Sovereigns of Europe. Round about Cromwell, even through the First Protectorate, there had been, as we have abundantly seen, much of the splendour and equipage of sovereignty. The phrases "His Highness's Court" and "His Highness's Household" had become quite familiar. On all public occasions he was attended and addressed most ceremoniously; when he rode out in state it was with life-guards about him, outriders in front, and coaches following; and the Order-Books of the Council prove that his relations to the Council were regulated by careful etiquette, and that his personal attendance at any of their meetings was regarded as a distinction. One observes also, as with Cromwell's approval, and in evidence of the conservatism that had been growing upon himself, a retention or even multiplication of aristocratic forms in his court and government. He had conferred knighthoods less sparingly than at first, though still rather sparingly;[1] in mentions of any of the old nobility, whether those that had become Oliverian and were to be seen at Whitehall, or those who lived in retirement, their old titles were scrupulously preserved,--e.g. "The Marquis of Hertford," "The Earl of Warwick," "The Earl of Mulgrave," "The Lord Viscount Lisle," "The Right Honourable the Lord Broghill"; and not only were official or courtesy titles still recognised, as by calling Fleetwood "My Lord Deputy," Whitlocke "Lord Commissioner Whitelocke," Fiennes "Lord Commissioner Fiennes," and Lawrence "Lord President Lawrence," but there had been a curious extension of usage in this last particular. The Protector's sons had become respectively "The Lord Richard Cromwell" and "The Lord Henry Cromwell" in the newspapers and in public correspondence; and, for some reason or other, probably on account of places held in his Highness's Household or Ministry apart from the Council, at least two of the Councillors had of late received similar courtesy-promotion. From the beginning of 1655 Lambert had ceased to be called "Major-General Lambert," and had become "Lord Lambert," and from the beginning of 1656 "Mr. Strickland" had passed into "Lord Strickland." They are so named both in the Council Order-Books and in the Journals of the First Session of the Second Parliament. [Footnote 1: Here is a list of Cromwell's Knights of the First Protectorate, so far as I have ascertained them:--Lord Mayor Thomas Viner (Feb. 8, 1653-4); John Copleston (June 1, 1655); Colonel John Reynolds (June 11, 1655); Lord Mayor Sir Christopher Pack (Sept. 20, 1655); Colonel Thomas Pride, of 'Pride's Purge' celebrity (Jan. 17, 1655-6); Major-General John Barkstead, Lieutenant of the Tower (Jan. 19, 1655-6); M. Coyet, of the Swedish Embassy (April 15, 1656); Richard Combe (Aug. 1656); Lord Mayor Dethicke and George Fleetwood, Esq. of Bucks (both Sept. 15, 1656); Ambassador Lockhart, Lord Mayor Robert Tichbourne, Sheriff James Calthorpe, and Lislebone Long, Esq., Recorder of London (all Dec. 10, 1656); Colonel James Whitlocke, a son of Bulstrode Whitlocke (Jan. 6, 1656-7); Thomas Dickson, of York (March 3, 1656-7); Richard Stayner (June 11, 1657).] If there had been so much of sovereign and aristocratic form in the First Protectorate, there was a natural increase of such in the Second. In the first place, the family of the Protector now lived in the reflection of that dignity of the purple which had been formally thrown round himself. The Protector's very aged Mother having died in honour and peace at Whitehall, Nov. 16, 1654, blessing him with her last words[1], the family, in the Second Protectorate, was as follows:-- [Footnote 1: At "ninety-four years of age" according to a letter of Thurloe's the day after her death (Thurloe to Pell, Nov. 17, 1654, in Vaughan's _Protectorate_, I. 79-81); but Colonel Chester (_Westminster Abbey Registers, 521, Note_) sees reason for believing she had been baptized at Ely, Oct. 28, 1565, and was therefore only in her ninetieth year at her death.] HIS HIGHNESS, OLIVER, LORD PROTECTOR: _ætat. 58._ HER HIGHNESS, ELIZABETH, LADY PROTECTRESS. Children and Children-in-Law. 1. THE LADY BRIDGET: _ætat. 33_: Ireton's widow, married to Fleetwood since 1652. FLEETWOOD, though he had been recalled from Ireland in the middle of 1655, and had been in London since then, retained his nominal Lord-Deputyship till Nov. 1657. 2. THE LORD RICHARD CROMWELL: _ætat._ 31: married since 1649 to DOROTHY MAYOR, daughter of Richard Mayor, Esq., of Hursley, Hants, who had been member for Hants in the Long Parliament, a fellow-Colonel with Cromwell in the Civil War, and afterwards in some of the Councils of the Commonwealth, in the Little Parliament, and in the Council of the Protectorate.--Though Lord Richard's tastes were all for a quiet country-life, with "hawking, hunting, and horse-racing," he had been in both the Parliaments of the Protectorate, and had taken some little part in the Second. His father now brought him more forward. On the 3rd of July, 1657, when the Second Protectorate was but a week old, the Lord Protector resigned his Chancellorship of the University of Oxford; and on the 18th Lord Richard was elected in his stead. He was installed at Whitehall, July 29. He was also made a Colonel, and at length he was brought into the Council. The fact is thus minuted in the Council's Books under date Dec. 31, 1657:--"The Lord Richard Cromwell did this day take the oath of a Councillor, the same being administered unto him by the Earl of Mulgrave and General Desborough, in virtue of his Highness's Commission under the Great Seal." He was immediately put on all Committees of the Council; and generally after that, when he did attend, his name was put next after the President's in the _sederunt_. 3. THE LORD HENRY CROMWELL: _ætat. 29_: in the Army since his boyhood; Colonel since 1649; Major-General and chief Commander in Ireland since the middle of 1655. At the beginning of the Second Protectorate he was still in the Government of Ireland with his military title only; but on the 24th of November 1657 he was sworn into the full Lord Deputyship in succession to Fleetwood. He had been married since 1653 to a daughter of Sir Francis Russell, of Chippenham, Cambridgeshire. 4. THE LADY ELIZABETH: _ætat. 28_: married in her seventeenth year to JOHN CLAYPOLE, ESQ., of a Northamptonshire family. He had been made the Lord Protector's "Master of Horse," and had therefore been known for some time by the courtesy-title of "Lord Claypole." He had been in the Second Parliament of the Protectorate; and, as Master of Horse, had figured prominently in the ceremonial of the late Installation. Lord and Lady Claypole were established in the household of the Lord Protector, at Whitehall, or at Hampton Court; and Lady Claypole was a very favourite daughter. 5. THE LADY MARY: _ætat. 21_. She was unmarried when the Second Protectorate began, though Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper is said to have sought her hand, and to have turned against the Protector on being refused it; but on the 18th of November 1657 she became the second wife of THOMAS BELLASIS, VISCOUNT FALCONBRIBGE, one of the old nobility. He was about thirty years of age, had been abroad, had been sounded by Lockhart in Paris as to his inclinations to the Protectorate, had given every satisfaction in that matter, and had been certified by Lockhart to the Protector as "a person of extraordinary parts." On his own account, and also because he was of an old Royalist family, his marriage with Lady Mary was thought an excellent match. 6. THE LADY FRANCES: _ætat. 19_. This, the youngest of Cromwell's children, was also unmarried at the beginning of the Second Protectorate. The fond dream of the wealthy old Gloucestershire squire, Mr. John Dutton, that his nephew and Cromwell's ward, Mr. William Dutton, Andrew Marvell's pupil at Eton with the Oxenbridges, might become the husband of the Lady Frances, as had been arranged between him and Cromwell (vol. IV. pp. 616-619), had not been fulfilled; and, the old squire himself being now dead, young Dutton was left to find another wife for himself in due time.[1] For the Lady Frances, his Highness's youngest daughter, there might well be greater destinies. There had been vague whispers, indeed, of a suggestion in certain quarters that Charles II. himself should propose for her and negotiate for a restoration, or a succession to Cromwell, accordingly; but for more than a year there had been more authentic talk of her marriage with Mr. ROBERT RICH, the only son of Lord Rich, and grandson and (after his father) heir-apparent of the Earl of Warwick. That this great and popular old Parliamentarian and Presbyterian Earl had been won round at last to the Protectorate, and that he had graced the late Installation conspicuonsly by his presence, were no unimportant facts; and the projected family-alliance was by no means indifferent to Cromwell. There were difficulties, not on the part of the young people; but at length, Nov. 11, 1657, just a week before the marriage of the elder sister to Lord Falconbridge, Lady Frances did become the wife of Mr. Rich. In the fourth month of the marriage, however. Feb. 16, 1657-8, the husband died, leaving the Lady Frances, not yet twenty years of age, a widow. She married again, and did not die till Jan. 1720-1. [Footnote 1: The will of John Dutton, Esq., of Sherborne, Gloucestershire, was proved June 30, 1657, just four days after the beginning of the Second Protectorate; and young Mr. William Dutton married a widow eventually--"Mary, daughter of John, Viscount Scudamore, and relict of Thomas Russell of Worcestershire, Esq." (Noble's Cromwell, I, pp 153-154).] OTHER RELATIVES Worth noting among the Relatives of Cromwell alive in the Second Protectorate, were the following;--(1) The Protector's eldest surviving sister, ELIZABETH CROMWELL, _ætat. 64_, living at Ely, unmarried, and receiving occasional presents from her brother. She lived to 1672. (2) The Protector's sister CATHERINE, _ætat._ 61, first married to a Roger Whetstone, a Parliamentarian officer, and afterwards to COLONEL JOHN JONES, member of the Long Parliament for Monmouthshire, and one of the Regicides. He had been a member of the first and second Councils of the Commonwealth, had been for some time in Ireland as one of Fleetwood's Council, and was now a member of the Protector's Second Parliament. (3) The Protector's youngest sister ROBINA, formerly the wife of a Peter French, D.D., but now the wife of DR. JOHN WILKINS, Warden of Wadham College, Oxford. Wilkins held the Wardenship by dispensation from Cromwell, his marriage in the office being against Statute. The only child of Mrs. Wilkins, by her first marriage, became afterwards the wife of Archbishop Tillotson. (4) The Protector's niece, ROBINA, daughter of his deceased sister Mrs. Anna Sewster, and now wife of SIR WILLIAM LOCKHART. (5) The Protector's brother-in-law COLONEL VALENTINE WALTON, who had been member for Huntingdonshire in the Long Parliament, one of the Regicides, and a member of all the Councils of the Commonwealth; His first wife; Oliver's sister Margaret, being dead, he had married a second, and had for some time been less active politically and less Oliverian. (6) The Protector's brother-in-law JOHN DESBOROUGH, known as an officer of horse through the Civil Wars, and latterly as one of Cromwell's stoutest adherents through his Interim Dictatorship and Protectorate, a member of both his Parliaments, one of his Councillors, and one of his Major-Generals, though opposed to the Kingship. He was now a widower by the recent death of his wife, Cromwell's sister Jane. (7) The Protector's cousin, or father's sister's son, EDWARD WHALLEY, Colonel in the Civil Wars, one of the Regicides, and latterly member of both Parliaments of the Protectorate and one of the Major-Generals. (8) The Protector's aunt, or father's sister, Mrs. ELIZABETH HAMPDEN, mother of the famous Hampden, and now a very aged widow, living about Whitehall, with another son alive, besides grandchildren by her famous dead son, the eldest of whom, Richard Hampden, was a member of the present Parliament. (9) The Protector's cousin's son, COLONEL RICHARD INGOLDSBY, a Recruiter in the Long Parliament, one of the signers of Charles's death-warrant, and one of the members for Buckinghamshire in both Parliaments of the Protectorate. More distant kindred of the Protector were the DUNCHES of Berkshire, and the MASHAMS of Essex, the head of whom, Sir William Masham, Bart., had been member for that county in the Long Parliament, and a member of all the Councils of the Commonwealth and of the first Parliament of the Protectorate. The poet WALLER was connected with the Protector by his cousinship with the Hampdens.[1] [Footnote 1: Among authorities for the facts in this compilation, besides Council Order Books, and the whole narrative heretofore, are Carlyle's three genealogical Notes (I. 16, 20-21, and 54-55), Wood's Fasti, II. 155-8, various passages in Codwin, and two "Narratives" in _Harl. Misc_ III. 429-468.] The Protector's new Privy Council for his Second Protectorate was not constituted till Monday, July 13, 1657, more than a fortnight after his installation. Then, his Highness being present, there were sworn in, according to the new oath of fidelity provided by the _Petition and Advice_, Lord President Lawrence, General Desborough, Lord Commissioner Fiennes, the Earl of Mulgrave, Lord Viscount Lisle, Mr. Rous, Lord Deputy Fleetwood, Lord Strickland, and Mr. Secretary Thurloe. This last took his seat at the board as full Councillor by special nomination of his Highness. In the course of the next few meetings there came in Colonel Sydenham, Major-General Skippon, Sir Gilbert Pickering, and Sir Charles Wolseley, raising the number to thirteen; which completed the Council for some time, though Colonel Philip Jones and Admiral Montague afterwards took their seats, and Lord Richard Cromwell, as we have seen, was added Dec. 31. On comparing the total list with that of the Council of the First Protectorate (Vol. IV. p. 545), it will be seen that Cromwell retained all that were alive of his former Council, except Lambert, Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper, and Mr. Richard Mayor. Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper had been a deserter from the former Council as early as Dec. 1654, and had since then been so conspicuous in the opposition that he had been one of the ninety-three excluded from the House at the opening of the Second Parliament. Mr. Mayor, Richard Cromwell's father-in-law, though still nominally in the Council, seems to have been now in poor health and in retirement. The one extraordinary omission was that of Lambert. He had taken all but the chief part in the foundation of the First Protectorate; why was he absent from the Government of the Second? His Oliverianism, it appears, had evaporated in the late debates about the Kingship and the new constitution. Certain it is that he did not present himself at the first meeting of the new Council, and that, after an interview with Cromwell in consequence, he surrendered his two regimental colonelcies, his major-generalship, and £10 a day which he had for the last, and withdrew into private life. Still called "Lord Lambert," and with a pension of £2000 a year granted him by Cromwell, he retired to Wimbledon, where his chief amusement was the cultivation of tulips.[1] [Footnote 1: Council Order Books of July 13, 1657, and thenceforward; Ludlow, 593-594; Godwin, IV. 446-447.] The new Council having been constituted, and having begun to hold its meetings twice or thrice a week, the administration of affairs, home and foreign, was free to go on, in his Highness's hands and the Council's, without farther Parliamentary interruption till Jan. 20, 1657-8. Foreign affairs may here have the precedence. Blake's grand blow at the Spaniard in Santa Cruz Bay was still in all people's minds, and they were looking for the return of that hero, recalled as he had been, June 10, either for honourable repose in his battered and enfeebled state after three years at sea, or for further employment nearer home in connexion with the French-English alliance and the Flanders expedition. He was never, alas! to set foot in England. Off Plymouth, as his fleet was touching the shores, he died, utterly worn out with scurvy and dropsy, Aug. 7, 1657, aged fifty-eight. As the news spread, there was great sorrow; and on the 13th of August it was ordered by the Council, "That the Commissioners for the Admiralty and Navy do forthwith give order for the interment of General Blake in the Abbey Church at Westminster, and for all things requisite to be prepared for the funeral of General Blake in such sort as was done for the funeral of General Deane, and that they give direction for the preparing of Greenwich House for the reception of the body of General Blake, in order to his funeral." The body, having been embalmed, lay at Greenwich till Sept. 4, when it was brought up the Thames with all funereal pomp, mourning hangings on the barges and the wherries all the way, and so buried in Henry the Seventh's chapel, the Council, the great Army officers, the Lord Mayor and Aldermen, and other dignitaries standing round, while a multitude thronged outside. It was observed that Lord Lambert had made a point of being present, as if to signify that the great sailor and he had always understood each other. How Blake would have farther comported himself had he lived no one really knows. At sea he had made it a principle to abstain from party-politics. "When news was brought him of a metamorphosis in the State at home, he would then encourage the seamen to be most vigilant abroad; for, said he, 'tis not our duty to mind State-affairs, but to keep foreigners from fooling us." The idea among the ultra-Republicans of using Blake's popularity to undermine Cromwell had long come to nothing.[1] [Footnote 1: Council Order Books, Aug. 13, 1657: Godwin, IV. 420-421; Wood's Fasti, I. 371.] Blake gone, the naval hope of England now was Admiral Montague. Since August 11 he had been cruising up and down the Channel with his fleet under general orders. The interest of the war with Spain now lay chiefly in Flanders, where the Protector's army of 6000 foot under General Reynolds was co-operating with the larger French army of Louis XIV. commanded by Turenne. Here Cromwell had, again to complain of Mazarin's wily policy. By the Treaty the great object of the expedition was to be the reduction of the coast-towns, Gravelines, Mardike, and Dunkirk; but these sieges had been postponed, and Turenne had been campaigning in the interior, the English troops obliged to attend him hither and thither, and complaining much of their bad accommodation and bad feeding. Mazarin, in fact, was studying French interests only, A peremptory communication from Cromwell through Ambassador Lockhart, Aug. 31, changed the state of matters. "I pray you tell the Cardinal from me," he said, "that I think, if France desires to maintain its ground, much more to _get_ ground, upon the Spaniard, the performance., of his Treaty with us will better do it than anything appears yet to me of any design he hath." He offered 2000 more men from England, if necessary; but he added in a postscript, "If indeed the French be so false to us as that they would not have us have any footing on that side the water, then I desire ... that all things may be done in order to the giving us satisfaction, and to the drawing-off of our men. And truly, Sir, I desire you to take boldness and freedom to yourself in your dealing with the French on these accounts." The Cardinal at once succumbed, and the siege of Mardike by land and sea was begun Sept. 21. The place was taken in a few days, and, in terms of the Treaty, given into the possession of General Reynolds for the English. A little while afterwards, a large Spanish force under Don John of Austria, the Duke of York serving in it with four regiments of English and Irish refugees, attempted a recapture of the place; but, by the desperate fighting of the garrison and Montague's assisting fire from his ships, the attempt was foiled. The Protector had thus obtained at least one place of footing on the Continent; and, with English valour to assist the military genius of Turenne, there was prospect, late in 1657, of still more success in the Spanish Netherlands. Lockhart was again in London for consultation with Cromwell Oct. 15, and Montague was back Oct. 24, on which day he took his oath and place in the Council.[1] [Footnote 1: Carlyle, III. 306-315 (including two Letters of Cromwell to Lockhart); Godwin, IV. 543-544; Guizot, II. 379-381; _Cromwelliana_, 168; Council Order Books, Oct. 24, 1657.] Various other matters of foreign concern occupied the Protector and his Council in the first months of the new Protectorate. There is an order in the Council Books, July 28, 1657, for the despatch of £1000 more to the Piedmontese Protestants, and for certain sums to be paid to Genevese and other ministers for trouble they had taken in that matter; and, as late as Nov. 25, there is an order for another despatch of £1500. There were, indeed, to be farther collections for the Piedmontese sufferers, and new interposition in their behalf with the Duke of Savoy. Nay, by this time, the generosity of his Highness in the Piedmontese business had led to applications from distressed Protestants in other parts of Europe. Thus, Nov. 4, his Highness being himself present in the Council, and having communicated "a petition from the pastors of several churches of the Reformed Religion in Higher Poland, Bohemia, &c., now scattered abroad through persecution in those parts, desiring some relief, and also a petition from Adam Samuel Hartmann and Paul Cyril, delegates from these exiles, together with a narrative of their condition and sufferings," it was ordered that the matter should be referred to the Committee for the Piedmontese Protestants and preparations made for another collection of money. All the while, of course, there had been the more usual and regular diplomatic business between the Protector and the various agencies of foreign powers in London. One hears especially of the arrival, Aug. 1657, of a new Ambassador-Extraordinary from Portugal, Don Francisco de Mello, of entertainments to him, and of audiences granted to him; also of much intercourse between his Highness and the Dutch Ambassador Lord Nieuport, now so long resident in England and so much regarded there. But the latter half of 1657 is also remarkable for the despatch by his Highness of three special Envoys of his own to the northern Protestant Powers. MR. PHILIP MEADOWS, appointed Envoy to Denmark as long ago as Feb. 24, 1656-7 (ante p. 294), but detained meanwhile in London, set out on his mission at last, Aug. 31; and at the same time MAJOR-GENERAL WILLIAM JEPHSON, distinguished for his services in Ireland, and returned as member for Cork and Youghal to both Parliaments of the Protectorate, set out as Envoy to his Swedish Majesty. He had been chosen for the important post Aug. 4. Finally, on the 18th of December, partly in consequence of the departure of the Dutch Ambassador Nieuport in the preceding month, for some temporary stay at home on private affairs, GEORGE DOWNING, ESQ. (ante pp. 43 and 191) was appointed to follow him in the capacity of Resident for his Highness in the United Provinces.[1] [Footnote 1: Council Order Books of dates; Whitlocke, IV. 311-313; and _Cromwelliana_, 168-169.] The general purport of these three missions of Cromwell in 1657 requires explanation. Not commercial interests merely, but also zeal for union among the Protestant Powers, had all along moved his diplomacy; and now the state of things in the north of Europe was so extraordinary that, on the one hand, the cause of Protestant union seemed in fatal peril, but, on the other hand, if it could be retrieved, it might be retrieved perhaps in a definite and magnificent form. The prime agency in bringing about this state of things had been the vast energy of the young Swedish King, Charles X. or Karl-Gustav. Cromwell had by this time contracted an especial admiration of this prince, and had begun to regard him as a kindred spirit and the armed champion of Continental Protestantism. To see him succeed to the last in his Polish enterprise, and then turn himself against Austria and her Roman Catholic clientage in the Empire, had come to be Cromwell's desire and the desire in Great Britain generally. For a time that had seemed probable. In the great Battle of Warsaw, fought July 28-30, 1656, Charles-Gustavus and his ally the Elector of Brandenburg routed the Poles disastrously; and, Ragotski, Prince of Transylvania, also abetting and assisting the Swede, "_actum jam videbatur de Polonia_" as an old annalist says: "it seemed then all over with Poland." But a medley of powers, for diverse reasons and interests, had been combining themselves for the salvation of Poland, or at least for driving back the Swede to his own side of the Baltic. Not merely the Austrians and the German Catholic princes were in this combination, but also the Muscovites or Russians, and, most unnatural of all, the Danes, with countenance even from the more distant Dutch. Nay, the prudent Elector of Brandenburg, hitherto the ally of the Swede, was drawn off from that alliance. This was done by a treaty, dated Nov. 10, 1656, by which the Polish King, John Casimir, yielded to the Elector the full sovereignty of Ducal Prussia or East Prussia, till then held by the Elector only by a tenure of homage to the Polish Crown. All being ready, the Danish King, Frederick III., gave the signal by declaring war against Sweden and invading part of the Swedish territories. When the news reached Cromwell, which it did Aug. 13, 1657, it affected him profoundly. He had previously been remonstrating, as we have seen, both with the Danes and the Dutch, by letters of Milton's composition (ante pp. 272-3 and 290), trying to avert such an unseemly Protestant intervention in arrest of the Swedish King's career. And now, having his two envoys, MEADOWS and JEPHSON, ready for the emergency, he despatched them at once to the scene of that new Swedish-Danish war in which what had hitherto been the Swedish-Polish war was to be at once engulphed. For Karl-Gustav had turned back out of Poland to deal directly with the Danes, and the interest was now concentrated on the struggle between these two powers--the Poles, the German Catholics, the Muscovites, the Elector of Brandenburg, the Dutch, and other powers, looking on more or less in sympathy with the Danes, and some of them ready to strike in. To end the war, if possible, by reconciling Charles X. and Frederick III, was Cromwell's first object; and, with that aim in view, Jephson was to attach himself more particularly to Charles X., whatever might be his war-track, and Meadows more particularly to Frederick III. But they might cross each other's routes, deal with other States along these routes, and work into each other's hands. RICHARD BRADSHAW, likewise, who had been sent as Envoy to the Czar of Muscovy in the beginning of the year (ante pp. 292-294), would be moving about usefully on the east of the Baltic. And, if a reconciliation between Sweden and Denmark should by any means be brought about, what then should be aimed at but a repair of the rupture between the Elector of Brandenburg and the Swedish King, so as to save the Elector from the threatened vengeance of the Swede, and then farther the aggregation of other Protestant German States, and of the Dutch, round this nucleus of a Swedish-Danish-Brandenburg alliance, for common action against Poland, Austria, and German Catholicism? Even the Muscovites, as of the Greek Church, might be brought in, or at least they might be rendered neutral. All this was in contemplation, as a tissue of ideal possibilities, when MEADOWS and JEPHSON were despatched in August, and the mission of DOWNING four months later to the United Provinces was partly in the same great interest. It may seem matter for wonder that a man of Cromwell's practical sagacity, already so deeply implicated on the Continent by his Flanders enterprise and his alliance with France, should have had such a passion for farther interference as thus to insert his hands into the apparently measureless entanglement in northern and eastern Europe. But, in the first place, his practical sagacity was not at fault. Precisely that it should not be an entanglement, but a marshalling of powers in two sets according to their true religions and political affinities, was the essence of his aspiration; there were deep tendencies towards that result; sagacity consisted in perceiving these, and practicality in promoting them. Cromwell's aspiration in connexion with the Swedish-Danish war was also, it could be proved, that of other thoughtful Protestants then contemplating the war and speculating on its chances. But, in the second place, the business of the French alliance and the Flanders enterprise was vitally inter-connected with the so-called entanglement in the north and east. The German Emperor Ferdinand III. had died in April 1657; the Empire was vacant; Mazarin had set his heart on obtaining that central European dignity for his young master, Louis XIV., and was intriguing with the Electors for the purpose; it was still uncertain whether, when the time came, a majority of the Electoral College would vote for Louis XIV. or would retain the Imperial dignity in the House of Austria by choosing the late Emperor's son Leopold. The future of Germany and of Protestantism in Germany was concerned deeply in that issue; and, whatever may have been Cromwell's feelings in the special prospect of the election of his ally Louis XIV. to the Empire, he was bound to prefer that to the election of another incarnation of Austrian Catholicism.[1] [Footnote 1: Studied from scattered documents in Thurloe and from those of Milton's State-Letters for Cromwell that appertain to Sweden and Denmark and the missions of 1657, with help from a very luminous passage in Baillie's Letters (III. 370-371), and with facts and dates from the excellent abridged History forming the Supplement to the _Rationarium Temporum_ of the Jesuit Petavius (edit. 1745, I. 562-564), and from Carlyle's _History of Frederick the Great_, I. 222-223.] At home meanwhile things went on smoothly. Cromwell had by this time brought his Established Church into a condition highly satisfactory to himself. The machinery of the _Ejectors_ and the _Triers_ was still in full operation; and, on reports from the _Trustees for the Maintenance of Ministers_, his Highness and the Council still had the pleasure, from time to time, of ordering new augmentations of clerical stipends. The Voluntaryism which still existed in wide diffusion through the English mind had become comparatively silent; and indeed open reviling of the Established Church had been made punishable by Article X. of the _Petition and Advice_. Perhaps the plainest speaker now against the principle of an Established Church, or at least against the constitution of the present one, was the veteran John Goodwin of Coleman Street. "_The Triers (or Tormentors) tried and cast by the Laws of God and Men_" was the title of a pamphlet of Goodwin's, which had been out since May 1657, assailing the Commission of Triers. Goodwin was too eminent a Commonwealth's man, and too fair a controversialist, to be treated as a mere reviler; and it was left to the Protector's journalist, Marchamont Needham, to reply through the press. "_The Great Accuser cast down, or a Public Trial of Mr. John Goodwin of Coleman Street, London, at the Bar of Religion and Right Reason_," was a pamphlet by Needham, published July 31. It was dedicated "To His Most Serene Highness, Oliver, Lord Protector," &c., in such terms as these:--"Sir, It is a custom in all countries, when any man hath taken a strange creature, immediately to present it to the Prince: whereupon I, having taken one of the strangest that (I think) any part of your Highness's dominions hath these many years produced, do, with all submissiveness, make bold to present him, bound hand and foot with his own cords (as I ought to bring him), to your Highness. He need not be sent to the Tower for his mischievousness: there is no danger in him now, nor like to be henceforth, as I have handled him." In a prefixed Epistle to the Reader there is a good deal of scurrility against Goodwin. He is described as "worse than a common nuisance." He is taxed also with inconsistency, inasmuch as he had been one of those who, in Feb. 1651-2, had signed the famous _Proposals of Certain Ministers to the Committee for the Propagation of the Gospel_, in which the principle of an Established Church had been assumed and asserted (ante, IV. 392). In the body of the pamphlet Needham maintains that principle. "Christ left no such rules and directions," he says, "nor was it his intention to leave such, for propagating the Gospel, as exclude the Magistrate from using his wisdom and endeavours in order thereunto." He defends the Commission of Triers and the Commission of Ejectors, and more than once twits Goodwin with having taken up at last the extreme crotchets of Roger Williams the American. "_A Letter of Address to the Protector occasioned by Mr. Needham's Reply to Mr. Goodwin's Book against Triers_" appeared Aug. 25; but we need not follow the controversy farther. It had come to be Mr. John Goodwin's fate to be the severest public critic of Cromwell's Established Church; it had come to be Mr. Marchamont Needham's to be the most prominent defender of that institution.[1] [Footnote 1: Thomason Pamphlets, and Catalogue of the same for dates.] More likely than such men as John Goodwin to be classed as open revilers of the Established Church were the Quakers. They were now very numerous, going about in England, Scotland, Ireland, and everywhere else, as before, and mingling denunciations of every form of the existing ministry with their softer and richer teachings. They were still liable, of course, to varieties of penal treatment, according to the degrees of their aggressiveness and the moods of the local authorities; but the disposition at head-quarters was decidedly towards gentleness with them. Hardly had the new Council of State been constituted when, Cromwell himself present, three of the most eminent London physicians, Dr. Wright, Dr. Cox, and Dr. Bates, were instructed "to visit James Nayler, prisoner in Bridewell, and to consider of his condition as to the state both of his mind and body in point of health"; and, from that date (July 16, 1657), his farther detention seems to have been merely for his cure. George Fox, whose circuits of preaching took him as far as Edinburgh and the Scottish Highlands, could never be in London without addressing a pious letter or two to Cromwell, or even going to see him; and another Quaker, Edward Burrough, was so drawn to Cromwell that he was continually penning letters to him and leaving them at Whitehall. During and after the Kingship question these letters were particularly frequent, the Quakers being all _Contrariants_ on that point. "O Protector, who hast tasted of the power of God, which many generations before thee have not so much since the days of apostasy from the Apostles, take heed that thou lose not thy power; but keep Kingship off thy head, which the world would give to thee:" so had Fox written in one letter, ending, "O Oliver, take heed of undoing thyself by running into things that will fade, the things of this world that will change; be subject and obedient to the Lord God." There was something in all this that really reached Cromwell's heart, while it amused him; and, though he would begin by bantering Fox at an interview, sitting on a table and talking in "a light manner," as Fox himself tells us, he would end with some serious words. Both to Fox personally, and to the letters from him and other Quakers, his reply in substance uniformly was that they were good people, and that, for himself, "all persecution and cruelty was against his mind." Cromwell was only at the centre, however, and could not regulate the administration of the law everywhere.[1] [Footnote 1: Council Order Books of date; and Sewel's _History of the Quakers_, I. 210-233.] John Lilburne once more, but now for the last time, and in a totally new guise! Committed to prison in 1653 by the government of the Barebones Parliament, acting avowedly not by law but simply "for the peace of this nation" (ante, IV. 508), he had been first in the Tower, then in a castle in Jersey, and then in Dover Castle. In this last confinement, which had been made tolerably easy, a Quaker had had access to him, with very marked effects. "Here, in Dover Castle," Lilburne had written to his wife, Oct. 4, 1655, "through the loving-kindness of God, I have met with a more clear, plain, and evident knowledge of God, and myself, and His gracious outgoings to my soul, than ever I had in all my lifetime, not excepting my glorying and rejoicing condition under the Bishops." Again, in a later letter: "I particularly can, and do hereby, witness that I am already dead or crucified to the very occasions and real grounds of outward wars, and carnal sword-fightings, and fleshly bustlings and contests, and that therefore confidently I now believe that I shall never hereafter be a user of the temporal sword more, nor a joiner with those that do. And this I do here solemnly declare, not in the least to avoid persecution, or for any politic ends of my own, or in the least for the satisfaction of the fleshly wills of any of my great adversaries, or for satisfying the carnal will of my poor weak afflicted wife, but by the special movings and compulsions of God now upon my soul ... and that thereby, if yet I must be an imprisoned sufferer, it may from this day forward be for the truth as it is in Jesus, which truth I witness to be truly professed and practised by the savouriest of people, called Quakers." This had not at once procured his release, for he remained in Dover Castle through at least part of 1656. At length, however, after some proposal to let him go abroad again, or to send him and his wife to the Plantations, security had been accepted for his good behaviour, and he had been allowed to live as he liked at Eltham in Kent. Here, and elsewhere, he sometimes preached, and was in much esteem among the Quakers; and here, on Saturday the 29th of August, 1657, he died. On the following Monday his corpse was removed to London and conveyed to the house called "The Bull and Mouth" at Aldersgate, the chief meeting-place of the London Quakers. "At this place, that afternoon, assembled a medley of people, among whom the Quakers were most eminent for number; and within the house a controversy Was whether the ceremony of a hearse-cloth should be cast over his coffin; but, the major part, being Quakers, not assenting, the coffin was about five o'clock in the evening brought forth into the street. At its coming out, there stood a man on purpose to cast a velvet hearse-cloth over the coffin, and he endeavoured to do it; but, the crowd of Quakers not permitting it and having gotten the body on their shoulders, they carried it away without further ceremony, and the whole company conducted it into Moorfields, and thence into the new churchyard adjoining to Bedlam, where it lieth interred." Lilburne at his death was but thirty-nine years of age. He was popular to the last with the Londoners, and there were notices of him, comic and serio-comic, long after his death. By order of Council, Nov. 4, his Highness himself present, payment of the arrears of an allowance he had of 40_s._ a week, with continuation of the same allowance thenceforward, was granted to his wife, Elizabeth.[1] [Footnote 1: Sewel's _History of the Quakers_. I. 160-163 (where, however, there is an error as to the date of Lilburne's death); Wood's Ath. III. 357; _Cromwelliana_, 168; Council Order Books of Nov. 4, 1657.] When the subdued Lilburne thus went to his grave among the Quakers, his unsubdued successor in the trade of Anti-Cromwellian conspiracy, the Anabaptist ex-Colonel Sexby, was in the Tower, waiting his doom. He had been arrested, July 24, in a mean disguise and with a great over-grown beard, on board a ship that was to carry him back to Flanders after one of his visits to London on his desperate design of an assassination of Cromwell, to be followed by a Spanish-Stuartist invasion. What _would_ have been his doom can be but guessed. He became insane in the Tower, and died there in that state Jan. 13, 1657-8. He had previously confessed to Barkstead, the Lieutenant of the Tower, that he had been the real mover of the Sindercombe Plot, that he had been in the pay of Spain, and also, apparently, that he was the author of _Killing no Murder_.[1] [Footnote 1: _Merc. Pol._ of dates, as quoted in _Cromwelliana_, 167-170.] So quiet and even was the course of home-affairs through the first seven months of the new Protectorate that such glimpses and anecdotes of particular persons have to suggest the general history. Yet one more of the sort. In the parish register of Bolton Percy in Yorkshire there is this entry: "George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, and Mary, the daughter of Thomas, Lord Fairfax, Baron of Cameron, of Nunappleton within this Parish of Bolton Percy, were married the 15th day of September _anno Dom_. 1657." This was, in fact, the marriage of the great Fairfax's only child, Marvell's former pupil, now nineteen years of age, to the Royalist Duke of Buckingham, aged thirty. The poet Cowley, who had known the Duke since their Cambridge days together, acted as his best man at the wedding, which was celebrated with great festivities at Nunappleton, Cowley contributing a poem. But surely it was a most extraordinary marriage, and, though there had been rumours of such a possibility for several years, it was heard of with surprise. The only child and heiress of the great Parliamentarian General, one of the founders of the Commonwealth, married to this Royalist of Royalists, the handsome young insurgent in the Second Civil War of 1648, the boon-companion of Charles II. for some time abroad, his boon-companion and buffoon all through his dreary year of Kingship among the Scots, his fellow-fugitive from the field of Worcester, and ever since, though less in Charles's company than before, and serving as a volunteer in the French army, yet a main trump-card in Charles's lists! How had it happened? Easily enough. The great Fairfax, with ample wealth of his own, had made most honourable and chivalrous use of the accessions to that wealth that had come in the shape of Parliamentary grants to him out of the confiscated estates of Royalists. Now, one such grant, in lieu of a money pension of £4000 a year, had been a portion of the confiscated property of the young Duke of Buckingham, including an estate in Yorkshire and York House in the Strand. The young Duke, stripped of his revenues of £25,000 a year, had been living meanwhile on the proceeds of a great collection of pictures, Titians and what not, that had been made by his father, and which had been quietly conveyed abroad for sale. But Fairfax had not forgotten the splendid young man, and had every wish to retrieve his fortunes for him. There had probably been communications to that end, not only with Buckingham himself, but even with Charles II.; and the result had been the Duke's return to England and appearance in Yorkshire, early in 1657, to woo Mary Fairfax or to complete the wooing. Who could resist him? It might have been better for Mary Fairfax had she died in her girlhood, fresh from Marvell's teaching; but now she was Duchess of Buckingham. York House and the estate in Yorkshire had been restored to her husband by gift, and Nunappleton and other Fairfax estates were to be settled on him and her for their lives, and on their heirs should there be any.[1] [Footnote 1: Markham's Life of Fairfax, 364-372.] Naturally, the Protector might have something to say to the arrangement. The great Fairfax was a man to whom anything in reason would be granted; and, though Cromwell had no reason to believe that Fairfax favoured his Protectorate, and there had been even reports from Thurloe's foreign agents of correspondence between Fairfax and Charles II.,[1] no one could challenge Fairfax's honour or doubt his passive allegiance. But a son-in-law like Buckingham about him altered the case. Little wonder, therefore, that the marriage at Nunappleton was discussed at the Council in London. On the 9th of October, his Highness and eight more being present, it was ordered that a warrant should issue for arresting, and confining in the Isle of Jersey, George, Duke of Buckingham, who had been "in this nation for divers months without licence or authority." This led, of course, to earnest representations from Fairfax. Accordingly, Nov. 17, "His Highness having communicated to the Council that the Lord Fairfax hath made addresses to him, with some desires on behalf of the Duke of Buckingham," it was ordered "That the Resolves and Act of Parliament in the case of the said Duke be communicated to the Lord Fairfax as the grounds of the Council's proceedings touching the said Duke, and that there be withal signified to the Lord Fairfax the Council's civil respects to his Lordship's own person." The message was to be conveyed by the Earl of Mulgrave, Lord Deputy Fleetwood, and Lord Strickland. Fairfax and the young couple must have made farther appeal; for, Dec. 1, his Highness "delivered in to the Council a paper containing an offer of some reasons in reference to the Duke of Buckingham his liberty," whereupon it was minuted "That the Council do declare it as their opinion that it is not consistent with their duty to advise his Highness to grant the Duke of Buckingham his liberty as is desired, nor consistent with his Highness's trust to do the same." Lord Strickland and Sir Charles Wolseley were to communicate the minute to Fairfax. Probably Fairfax had come up to town on the business. The young couple would seem to have remained in the country; nor do I find that the order for the arrest of the Duke was yet actually enforced.[2] [Footnote 1: As early as Nov. 1654 Charles II. had written to Fairfax, begging him to "wipe out all he had done amiss" by such services to the Royal cause as he might yet render (Macray's Calendar of the Clarendon State Papers, II. 426).] [Footnote 2: Council Order Books of dates.] What may have disposed Cromwell not to be too harsh about the marriage was the fact that he had just celebrated the marriages of his own two youngest daughters. Lady Frances, the youngest, became Mrs. Rich on the 11th of November, and Lady Mary became Viscountess Falconbridge on the 18th. The drift of public interest was now towards the reassembling of the adjourned Parliament on the 20th of January 1657-8. Especially there was great curiosity as to the persons that would be called by his Highness to form the Second or Upper House. That was satisfied in the course of December by the issue of his Highness's writs under the great seal (quite in regal style, with the phrases "We," "ourself," "our great seal," &c.) to the following _sixty-three_ persons, the asterisks to be explained presently:-- *Lord Richard Cromwell (_Councillor_, &c.). Lord Henry Cromwell (_Lord Deputy of Ireland_). Of the Titular Nobility. The Earl of Warwick. The Earl of Manchester. The Earl of Mulgrave (_Councillor_). The Earl of Cassilis (Scotch). William, Viscount Say and Sele. *Thomas, Viscount Falconbridge (_son-in-law_). *Philip, Viscount Lisle (_Peer's son and Councillor_). *Charles, Viscount Howard (raised to this rank by Cromwell, July 20, 1657). Philip, Lord Wharton. *George, Lord Eure. *Roger, Lord Broghill (_Peer's son_). *John, Lord Claypole (_son-in-law and "Master of our Horse"_). Great Army and Navy Officers. *Lieutenant-General Charles Fleetwood (_son-in-law and Councillor_). *Admiral, or "General of our Fleet," John Desborough (_brother-in-law and Councillor_: made Admiral in suecession to Blake). *Admiral, or "General of our Fleet," Edward Montague (_Councillor, and one of the Lords Commissioners of the Treasury_). *Commissary-General of Horse, Edward Whalley (_cousin_). Commander-in-Chief in Scotland, General George Monk. Great State and Law Officers. *Nathaniel Fiennes (_Councillor_), Lord Commissioner of the Great Seal. *John Lisle, ditto. *Bulstrode Whitlocke, one of the Lords Commissioners of the Treasury. *William Sydenham (_Councillor_), ditto. *Henry Lawrence (_Lord President of the Council_). Oliver St. John, Lord Chief Justice of the Common Pleas. *John Glynne, Lord Chief Justice of the Upper Bench. *William Lenthall, Master of the Rolls. William Steele, Lord Chancellor of Ireland. Baronets. Sir Gilbert Gerrard. Sir Arthur Hasilrig. *Sir John Hobart. *Sir Gilbert Pickering (_Councillor and Chamberlain to the Household_). *Sir Francis Russell (_Henry Cromwell's father-in-law_). *Sir William Strickland. *Sir Charles Wolseley (_Councillor_). Knights. *Sir John Barkstead (knighted by Cromwell Jan, 19, 1655-6). Sir George Fleetwood (knighted by Cromwell Sept. 15, 1656). *Sir John Hewson (_Colonel_, knighted by Cromwell Dec. 5, 1657). *Sir Thomas Honeywood. Sir Archibald Johnstone of Warriston (Scotch). Sir William Lockhart (_Ambassador_, knighted by Cromwell Dec. 10, 1656). *Sir Christopher Pack (_Alderman_, knighted by Cromwell Sept. 20, 1656). *Sir Richard Onslow. *Sir Thomas Pride (Colonel Pride, knighted by Cromwell Jan, 17, 1655-6). *Sir William Roberts. *Sir Robert Tichbourne (_Alderman_, knighted by Cromwell Dec. 10, 1656). Sir Matthew Tomlinson (_Colonel_, knighted in Dublin by Lord Henry Cromwell. Nov. 25, 1657). Others. *James Berry (_the Major-General_). John Clerke (_Colonel_). *Thomas Cooper (_Colonel_). John Crewe. *John Fiennes. *William Goffe (_the Major-General_). *Richard Ingoldsby (_Cousin's son and Colonel_). *John Jones (_brother-in-law and Colonel_). *Philip Jones (_Councillor and Colonel_, and now "_Comptroller of our Household_"). *Richard Hampden (son of the great Hampden). William Pierrepoint. Alexander Popham. *Francis Rous (_Councillor and Provost of Eton_). *Philip Skippon (_Councillor and Major-General_). *Walter Strickland (_Councillor_). *Edmund Thomas.[1] [Footnote 1: In compiling the list I have used the enumerations in Parl. Hist. III. 1518-1519, Whitlocke, IV. 313-314, and Godwin. IV. 469-471 (the last two not perfect): also a Pamphlet of April 1659 called _A Second Narrative of the Late Parliament_.] Such were "Oliver's Peers or Lords," remembered by that name now, and so called at the time, not because they were Peers or Lords in the old sense, but because they were to be members of that "Other House" which, by Article V. of the _Petition and Advice_, was to exercise some of the functions of the old House of Lords. The selection was various enough, and probably as good as could be made; but there must have been great doubts as to the result. Would those of the old English hereditary nobility whom it had been deemed politic to summon condescend to sit as fellow-peers with Hewson, once a shoemaker, Pride, once a brewer's drayman, and Berry, once a clerk in some iron works? What of Manchester, recollecting his deadly quarrel with Cromwell as long ago as 1644-5, and what of Say and Sele, who had remained sternly aloof from the Protectorate from the very first, the pronounced Oliverianism of two of his sons notwithstanding? Then would Anti-Oliverian Commoners like Hasilrig and Gerrard, hating the Protector with their whole hearts, take it as a compliment to be removed from the Commons, where they could have some power in opposition, to a so-called Upper House where they would be lost in a mass of Oliverians? Farther, of the Oliverians who would have willingly taken their seats and been useful, several of the most distinguished, such as Henry Cromwell, Monk, Lockhart, and Tomlinson, were at a distance, and could not appear immediately. Finally, if, after all these deductions, a sufficient House should be brought together, it would be at the expense of a considerable weakening of the Government party in the Commons by the withdrawal of leading members thence, and this at a time when such weakening was most dangerous. For, by the _Petition and Advice_, were not the Anti-Oliverians excluded from last session, to the number of ninety or more, to take their seats in the Commons now, without farther let or hindrance from the Protector? Cromwell had, doubtless, foreseen that one of the difficulties of his Second Protectorate would be the transition from the system of a Single-House Parliament, now nine years in use, to a revived form of the method of Two Houses. The experiment, however, had been, of his own suggestion and was still to his liking, Could the Second House take root, it might aid him, on the one hand, in that steady and orderly domestic policy which, he desired in general, and it might increase his power, on the other hand, to stand firmly on his own broad notion of religious toleration. At all events, the time had now come when the difficulty must be faced. On Wednesday. Jan. 20, 1657-8; the members of the two Senses, such of them at least as had appeared, were duly in their places. Those of the new House were assembled in what tad formerly been the House of Lords, Of the sixty-three that had been summoned forty-three had presented themselves and had been sworn in by the form of oath prescribed in the _Petition and Advice_, They were the forty-three whose names are marked by asterisks in the preceding list of those summoned. When it is considered that from seven to ten of those not asterisked there (e.g. Henry Cromwell, Monk, Steele, Lockhart, and Tomlinson) would certainly have taken their places but for necessary and distant absence, and might take them yet, the House mast be called, so far, a very successful one. It had failed most conspicuously, as had been expected, in one of its proposed ingredients. Of the old English Peers there had come in only Visconnt Falconbridge and Lord Eure; Warwick, Manchester, Say and Sele, Wharton, even Mulgrave, were absent. More ominous still was the absence of the Anti-Oliverian commoner Sir Arthur Hasilrig, He had not yet come to town, and there was much speculation what course he would take if he did come. Would he regard himself as still member for Leicester in the Commons House, though he had been excluded thence in September 1656, as he had before been driven from the same seat in the First Parliament of the Protectorate; and would he reclaim that seat now rather than go into the Upper House? Meanwhile for most of those who had been excluded in Sept. 1658 along with Hasilrig there was no such dilemma; and, accordingly, they had mustered, in pretty large number, to claim their seats in the Commons, The only formality with which they had to comply now was the prescribed oath of the _Petition and Advice_, by which they, as well as the members of the Upper House, were to swear, among other things, "to be true and faithful to the Lord Protector," &c., and not to "contrive, design, or attempt anything against his person or lawful authority." It is evident that Cromwell trusted a good deal to the effects of this oath; for he had taken care that there should be stately commissioners in the lobby of the Commons from a very early hour in the morning to swear the members as they came in. As many as 150 or 180 members in all, the formerly excluded and the old sitters together, seem to have been in the House, thus sworn, about the time when the forty-three were assembled in the adjacent Other House. The Commons had then resumed business, on their own account, as met after regular adjournment. They had appointed a Mr. John Smythe to be their Clerk, in lieu of Mr. Henry Scobell, now made general "Clerk of the Parliament" and transferred to the Other House, and they had fixed that day week as a day of prayer for divine assistance, when the Usher of the Black Rod appeared to summon them to meet his Highness in the Other House. Arranging that the Sergeant-at-Arms should carry the mace with him, and stand by the Speaker with the mace at his shoulder through the whole interview with his Highness, the House obeyed the summons.[1] [Footnote 1: Commons Journals, Jan. 20, 1657-8, et seq.; Ludlow, 596-597; List of the 43 who sat in the Upper House in pamphlet of 1659 already cited, called _A Second Narrative_, &c.] Cromwell's speech to the two Houses (Speech XVI.) opened significantly with the words "_My Lords, and Gentlemen of the House of Commons_." It was a very quiet speech, somewhat slowly and heavily delivered, with "peace" for the key-word. He represented the nation as now in such a nourishing state, especially in the possession of a settled and efficient Public Ministry of the Gospel, and at the same time of ample religious liberty for all, that nothing more was needed than oblivion of past differences, and a hearty co-operation of the two Houses with each other, and with himself. Apologizing for being too ill to discourse more at length, he asked Lord Commissioner Fiennes to do so for him. The speech of Fiennes was essentially a continuation in the same strain, but with a gorgeousness and variety of metaphor, Biblical and poetical, in description of the new era of peace and its duties, utterly beyond the bounds of usual Parliamentary oratory even then, and to which Cromwell and the rest, with all their experience of metaphor from the pulpit, must have listened with astonishment. "Jacob, speaking to his son Joseph, said _I had not thought to have seen thy face, and lo! God hath showed me thy seed, also:_ meaning his two sons, Ephraim and Manasseh. And may not many amongst us well say some years hence _We had not thought to have seen a Chief Magistrate again among us, and lo! God hath shown us a Chief Magistrate in his Two Houses of Parliament?_ Now may the good God make them like Ephraim and Manasseh, that the Three Nations may be blessed in them, saying _God made thee like these Two Houses of Parliament, which two, like Leah and Rachel, did build the House of God!_ May you do worthily in Ephrata, and be famous in Bethlehem!" There was more of the same kind, including a comparison of the new constitution of the _Petition and Advice_ to the perfected eduction of the orderly universe out of chaos. It was the speech of a Puritan Jean Paul.[1] [Footnote 1: Carlyle, III. 320-326; Commons Journals Jan. 21 and Jan. 25, 1657-8. Fiennes's speech is given in full under the last date, and must have much talked of. Whitlocke also prints it, IV. 315-329.] Which of the two Houses was Ephraim and which Manasseh in Fiennes's own fancy does not appear; but the Commons had already voted themselves to be Ephraim, and the Other House to be the questionable Manasseh. The Anti-Oliverians among them, now in the majority or nearly so, had resolved that their best policy, bound as they were by oath to the Protectorate and the new Constitution of the _Petition and Advice_ generally, would be to question the powers of the new House as defined in the constituting document. The definition had been rather vague. The meaning had certainly been that the new House should be a legislative House, standing in very much the same relation to the Commons as the old House of Lords had done, and not merely a Judicial High Court for certain classes of cases, with general powers of advice to the Commons in the conduct of weighty affairs. This, however, was what the Anti-Oliverians in the Commons contended; and on this contention, if possible, they were to break down the Other House and so make a gap in the new Constitution. They had made a beginning even in the small matter of the relative claims of Mr. Smythe, their own new Clerk, and Mr. Scobell, as general "Clerk of the Parliament," to the possession of certain documents; but they found a better opportunity when, at their third sitting (Jan. 22, afternoon), they were informed that "some gentlemen were at the door with a message from the Lords." The message was merely a request that the Commons would join the Lords in an address to his Highness asking him to appoint a day of humiliation throughout the three nations; but, purporting to be from "the Lords," it cut very deep. By a majority of seventy-five to fifty-one it was resolved "That this House will send an answer by messengers of their own," i.e. that they would take time to consider the subject. Two more days passed, the House transacting some miscellaneous business, but nursing its resolution for a split; and, on Monday the 25th, lo! Sir Arthur Hasilrig among them, standing up prominently and insisting on being sworn and admitted to his seat. He had disdained the summons to the Other House, and his proper place was _here!_ With some hesitation, he was duly sworn, and so was added to the group of Anti-Oliverian leaders already in the House. He, Thomas Scott, Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper, John Weaver, Sergeant Maynard, and one or two others, were thenceforth to head the opposition within doors. Outside there were in process of signature certain great petitions to the Commons House intended to widen the difference between it and the Protector.[1] [Footnote 1: Commons Journals of dates; Godwin, IV. 479-495; Carlyle, III. 328.] At this point the Protector interposed. On the afternoon of the same day on which Hasilrig had taken his seat (Jan. 25) the Commons were summoned to the Banqueting House in Whitehall, to listen to another speech from his Highness (Speech XVII.), addressed to them and the Other House together. It opened with the phrase "_My Lords and Gentlemen of thee Two Houses of Parliament_," to obviate any objections there might be to the form of opening in the speech of five days before; and it was conceived in the same spirit of respectfulness to both Houses and anxiety for their support. But it expounded, more strongly and at more length than the former speech, the pressing reasons for unanimity now. It surveyed, first, the state of Europe generally, dwelling on the ominous combination of Roman Catholic interests everywhere, and the perils to the Protestant Cause from the disputes among the Protestant Powers, and especially from the hostility of the Danes and the Dutch to the heroic King of Sweden, who had "adventured his all against the Popish Interest In Poland." It declared the vital concern of Great Britain in all this, if only because an invasion of Great Britain in behalf of the Stuarts was a settled part of the Anti-Protestant programme. "You have accounted yourselves happy in being environed with a great Ditch from all the world beside. Truly, you will not be able to keep your Ditch, nor your shipping, unless you turn your ships and shipping into troops of horse and companies of foot, and fight to defend yourselves on _terra firma_." Then, turning to the state of affairs at home, he insisted on the necessity of a general union in defence of the existing settlement. One Civil War more, he said, would throw the nation into a universal confusion, with or without a restoration of the Stuarts, and, if _with_ such a restoration, then with consequences to some that they did not now contemplate. He made no express reference to the proceedings in the Commons of the last few days, but implored both Houses to abstain from dissensions, stand on the basis to which he and they had sworn, and join with him in real work.[1] [Footnote 1: Carlyle, III. 329-347.] The appeal to the Commons was in vain. After three or four more meetings, they resumed, Jan. 29, the subject of the answer to be returned to the message of the 22nd from the Other House. By a vote of eighty-four to seventy-eight they resolved to go into Grand Committee on the subject. This having been done, they resolved, Jan. 30, "That the first thing to be debated shall be the Appellation to be given to the persons to whom the answer shall be made." On this one point there was a protracted debate of four days, the oppositionists insisting that the appellation should be simply "The Other House," as in the _Petition and Advice_, and the Oliverians contending that that was no name at all, that it had been employed in the _Petition and Advice_ only as a blank to be afterwards filled up, and that the proper name would be "The House of Lords." In one of two divisions on Feb. 3 the votes were eighty-seven against eighty-six; in the other they were ninety-three against eighty-seven. These divisions, however, were merely incidental, and the debate was still going on fiercely on Thursday, Feb. 4. Scott had spoken and was trying to speak again in defiance of rule, with Hasilrig backing him, when "Mr. Speaker informed the House that the Usher of the Black Rod was at the door with a message from his Highness." Hasilrig seems to have been still on his feet when the Black Rod, having been admitted, delivered his message: "Mr. Speaker, His Highness is in the Lords House, and desires to speak with you." Thither they adjourned, and there his Highness briefly addressed the two Houses once again (Speech XVIII.). Or rather he addressed both Houses only through about half of his speech; for, at a particular point, he turned deliberately to the Commons and proceeded thus: "I do not speak to these Gentlemen, or Lords, or whatsoever you will call them; I speak not this to _them_, but to _you_. You advised me to come into this place [the Second Protectorship], to be in a capacity by your advice. Yet, instead of owning a thing, some must have I know not what; and you have not only disjointed yourselves but the whole Nation, which is in likelihood of running into more confusion in these fifteen or sixteen days that you have sat than it hath been from the rising of the last session to this day. Through the intention of devising a Commonwealth again, that some people might be the men that might rule all! And they are endeavouring to engage the Army to carry that thing. And hath that man been true to this Nation, whosoever he be, especially that hath taken an oath, thus to prevaricate? These designs have been made among the Army, to break and divide us. I speak this in the presence of some of the Army: that these things have not been according to God, nor according to truth, pretend what you will. These things tend to nothing else but the playing of the King of Scots' game (if I may so call him); and I think myself bound before God to do what I can to prevent it. That which I told you in the Banqueting House was true: that there are preparations of force to invade us, God is my witness, it hath been confirmed to me since, not a day ago, that the King of Scots hath an Army at the water's side, ready to be shipped for England. I have it from those who have been eyewitnesses of it. And, while it is doing, there are endeavours from some who are not far from this place to stir up the people of this town into a tumulting--what if I said into a rebellion? And I hope I shall make it appear to be no better, if God assist me. It hath been not only your endeavour to pervert the Army while you have been sitting, and to draw them to state the question about a Commonwealth; but some of you have been listing of persons, by commission of Charles Stuart, to join with any insurrection that may be made. And what is like to come upon this, the enemy being ready to invade us, but even present blood and confusion? And, if this be so, I do assign it to this cause: your not assenting to what you did invite me to by your _Petition and Advice,_ as that which might prove the Settlement of the Nation. And, if this be the end of your sitting, and this be your carriage, I think it high time that an end be put to your sitting. And I DO DISSOLVE THIS PARLIAMENT. And let God be judge between you and me!"[1] [Footnote 1: Commons Journals of dates; and Carlyle, III. 348-353.] Thus, after a second session of only sixteen days, the Second Parliament of the Protectorate was at an end. Cromwell's explanation of his reasons for dissolving it is perfectly accurate. Through the first session the Parliament, as a Single House Parliament, had, by the exclusion of about ninety of those returned to it, been a thoroughly Oliverian body, and its chief work had been a reconstitution of the Protectorate on a definite basis; but through the second session this Parliament, though nominally the same, had been split into two Houses, the House of Lords wholly Oliverian, but the House of Commons, by the loss of a number of its former members and the readmission of the excluded, turned into an Anti-Oliverian conclave. Fourteen folio pages of the _Commons Journals_ are the only remaining formal records of the short and unfortunate Session. Oliver's Lords can have had little more to do than meet and look at each other. * * * * * There was to be no Parliament more while Cromwell lived. For seven months onwards from Feb. 4, 1657-8, he was to govern, one may say, more alone than ever, more as a sovereign, and with all his energies in performance of the sovereignty more tremendously on the strain. There was still, of course, the Council, now essentially a Privy Council, meeting twice or thrice a week, or sometimes on special summons, and with this novelty in the public style and title of the councillors, that those of them who had been in the Upper House of the late Parliament retained the name of "Lords." Lord President Lawrence, Lord Richard Cromwell, Lord Fleetwood, Lord Montague, Lord Commissioner Fiennes, Lord Desborough, Lord Viscount Lisle, the Earl of Mulgrave, Lord Rous, Lord Skippon, Lord Pickering (_alias_ "The Lord Chamberlain"), Lord Strickland, Lord Wolseley, Lord Sydenham, Lord Jones (_alias_ "Mr. Comptroller"), and Mr. Secretary Thurloe: such would have been the minute of a complete _sederunt_ of the Council when, it resumed duty after the dissolution of the Parliament. There never was such a complete _sederunt:_ ten out of the sixteen was the average attendance, rising sometimes to twelve. Occasionally Cromwell came to one of their meetings; but generally they transacted business among themselves to his order, and communicated with him privately. A few of the Councillors were more closely in his confidence than the rest; Whitlocke, though not of the Council, was often consulted about special affairs; and the man-of-all-work, closeted with his Highness daily, was Mr. Secretary Thurloe. His Highness had, moreover, a private secretary, Mr. William Malyn, who had been with him already for several years.[1] [Footnote 1: Council Order Books from Feb. 1857-8 onwards; Thurloe, II. 224.] As Cromwell had intimated in his Dissolution Speech, his first labour after the dissolution was to attack that vast complication of dangers of which he had already sure knowledge, and which he declared to have been caused, or brought to a head, by the wretched conduct of the Commons through their sixteen days of session, and by the positive treason of some of their number. He had described the dangers as gathering from two quarters, though they were already interrelated and would run together at last. There was "the King of Scots' game," or the plot of a Royalist commotion in conjunction with a threatened invasion of the Spanish-Stuartist Army; and there was the design of a great insurrection of Old Commonwealth's men for a subversion of the Protectorate and a return to the pure Single-House Republic. Of the first danger he had said, "I think myself bound before God to do what I can to prevent it"; the second he had denounced as rebellion, saying, "I hope I shall make it appear to be no better, if God assist me." For three or four months he was to be engaged in making good these words; but he had begun already. On February 6, at a great meeting of the Army-officers in the Banqueting House, he had discoursed to them impressively for two hours, abashing two or three that had been tampered with, and receiving from the rest assurances of their eternal fidelity. Ludlow says that, for several nights successively, before or after this meeting, Cromwell himself took the inspection of the watch among the soldiers at Whitehall.[1] [Footnote 1: 2 Ludlow, 598-600; Godwin. IV. 496-7.] As always, Cromwell's tenderness towards the Republicans or Old Commonwealth's men appeared now in his dealings with the new commotion on that side. Colonel Packer and Captain Gladman, two disaffected officers in his own regiment of horse, appear to have been merely dismissed from their commands; and one hears besides of but a few arrests, with no farther consequences than examination before the Council and temporary imprisonment. Harrison was again arrested, the Fifth-Monarchy men having, of course, lent themselves to the agitation, and Harrison having this time, Whitlocke says, been certainly "deep in it." Among the others arrested were Mr. John Carew, the Regicide and Councillor under the Commonwealth, John Portman, who had been secretary to Blake in the Fleet, a Hugh Courtney, and John Rogers, a preacher. There seems to have been no thought of any proceedings against Hasilrig, Scott, Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper, and the other Anti-Cromwellian leaders in the late Parliament. This, however, is less remarkable than that, with information in Cromwell's possession that some of the members of the Parliament, nominally Commonwealth's men, had actually commissions from Charles II. and were enlisting persons under such commissions for any possible insurrection whatever, he had contented himself with announcing the fact in his Dissolution Speech and so merely signifying to the culprits that their lives were in his hands.[1] [Footnote 1: Ludlow, 599-600; Whitlocke, IV. 330; Godwin, IV. 502-503.] The Royalist project and its ramifications were really very formidable. A Spanish Army of about 8000 men, with Charles II. and his refugees among them, _was_ gathered about Bruges, Brussels, and Ostend, with vessels of transport provided; and the burst of a great Royalist Insurrection at home, in Sussex, London, and elsewhere, _was_ to coincide with the invasion from abroad. The Duke of Ormond himself had come to London in disguise, to observe matters and make preparations. He was in London for three weeks, living in the house of a Roman Catholic surgeon in Drury Lane, till Cromwell, who knew the fact, generously sent Lord Broghill to him with a hint to be gone. This was early in March, some days after a proclamation "commanding all Papists and other persons who have been of the late King's party or his son's to depart out of the cities of London and Westminster," and another proclamation forbidding such persons living in the country to stir more than five miles from their fixed places of abode. On the 12th of that month the Lord Mayor, Aldermen, and Common Council of the City of London met his Highness and the Army-officers by appointment at Whitehall, where his Highness explained to them at length the nature of the crisis, informed them particularly of the strength of the Flanders army of invasion, Ormond's visit, &c., and solemnly committed to them the safety of the City. The response of the City authorities was extremely loyal.[1] [Footnote 1: Godwin, IV. 507-508; Carlyle, III. 353-354; _Merc. Pol._, of March 11-18, 1657-8, quoted in _Cromwelliana_, pp. 170-171. The Proclamation ordering Papists and other Royalists out of London and Westminster, and that ordering such persons in the country to keep near home, are both dated Feb. 25, 1657-8. There are copies at the end of one of the volumes of the Council's minutes.] On the principle that the country could not afford for ever this periodical trouble of a Royalist Conspiracy, and that some examples of severity might make the present upheaving the last of the kind, Cromwell had resolved on a few such examples. His information, through Thurloe and otherwise, was unerring. He knew, and had known for some time, who were the members of the so-called "Sealed Knot," i.e. that secret association of select Royalists resident in England who were in closest correspondence with Hyde and the other Councillors of Charles abroad, and were chiefly trusted by them for the management of the cause at home, Indeed, Sir Richard Willis, one of the chiefs of the "Sealed Knot," had for some time been in understanding with Cromwell, pledged to him by a peculiar compact, and revealing to him all that passed among the Royalists. Hence, before the end of April, some of the members of the "Sealed Knot," and a number of leading Royalists besides, had been lodged in the Tower. Among them were Colonel John Russell (brother of the Earl of Bedford), Colonel John White, Sir William Compton, Sir William Clayton, Sir Henry Slingsby (a prisoner in Hull since the Royalist rising of 1654-5, but negotiating there desperately of late to secure the officers and the town itself for Charles), Sir Humphrey Bennett, Mr. John Mordaunt (brother of the Earl of Peterborough), Dr. John Hewit (a London Episcopal clergyman), Mr. Thomas Woodcock, and a Henry Mallory. It was part of the understanding with Willis that several of the prisoners, Willis's particular friends, should be ultimately released. For trial were selected Slingsby, Clayton, Bennett, Mordaunt, Woodcock, Mallory, and Dr. Hewit. The trials were in Westminster Hall, in May and June, before a great High Court of Justice, consisting of all the judges, some of the great state officers, and a hundred and thirty commissioners besides, all in conformity with an Act of the late Parliament prescribing the mode of trial for such prime offences. Five of the seven were either acquitted or spared: only Slingsby and Dr. Hewit were brought to the scaffold. They were beheaded on Tower Hill, June 8. Much influence was exerted in behalf of Hewit; but, besides that he had been deeply implicated, he had been contumacious in the Court, challenging its competency, and refusing to plead. Prynne had stood by him, and prepared his demurrer.--From the evidence collected in Dr. Hewit's case it appeared that he, if not Ormond, had been calculating on the co-operation of Fairfax, Lambent, Sir William Waller, and a great many other persons of name, up and down the country, not included among those whom Cromwell had seen fit to arrest. As Thurloe distinctly says, "It's certain Sir William Waller was fully engaged," the omission, of that veteran commander from the number must have been an act of grace. About Lambert the speculation seems to have been absurd; and, though Cromwell must have known that Fairfax was now inclining generally towards a Restoration, he cannot have believed anything stronger at present in his case. There was no public reference to such high personages; nor, with the exception of some friendly expostulation by the Protector with a young Mr. John Stapley of Sussex (son of Stapley the Regicide and Councillor of the Commonwealth), who _had_ been lured into the business, was any account taken of the other miscellaneous persons in Hewit's list of reputable sympathisers. It was enough for Cromwell to know who had swerved so far, and to have made examples of Hewit himself and Slingsby.--These two would have been the only victims but for a wild sub-conspiracy in the City of London while the trials of Hewit and Slingsby were in progress. A few desperate cavaliers about town, the chief of whom were a Sir William Leighton, a Colonel Deane, and a Colonel Manley, holding commissions from Charles, had met several times at the Mermaid Tavern and elsewhere, and had arranged for a midnight tumult on Saturday the 15th of May. They were to attack the guard at St. Paul's, seize the Lord Mayor, raise a conflagration near the Tower, &c. The hour had come, and the conspirators were in the Mermaid Tavern for their final arrangements, when lo! the trainbands on the alert all round them and Barkstead riding through the streets with a train of five small cannon. A good many were arrested, thirty of them London prentices. Six of the principals were condemned July 2, of whom one was hanged, two were hanged, drawn, and quartered, and three were reprieved. For the prentices there was all clemency.[1] [Footnote 1: Clarendon, 869-870; Godwin, IV. 508-527; _Merc. Pol_, May 13-20, 1658, quoted in _Cromwelliana_, 171-172; Thurloe, VII. 25, 65-69, 88-90, 100, and 147-8; Whitlocke, IV. 334.] Though the prosecutions of the Royalist plotters were not concluded till the beginning of July, all real danger from the plot itself had been over in March or April, when Ormond was back in Bruges with the report that his mission had been abortive and that Cromwell was too strong. We must go back, therefore, for the other threads of our narrative. The death of Mr. Robert Rich, Cromwell's son-in-law since the preceding November, had occurred Feb. 16, 1657-8, only twelve days after the dissolution of the Parliament. Cromwell, saddened by the event himself, had found time even then to write letters of condolence and comfort to the young man's grandfather, the Earl of Warwick. The Earl's reply, dated March 11, is extant. "My pen and my heart," it begins, "were ever your Lordship's servants; now they are become your debtors. This paper cannot enough confess my obligation, and much less discharge it, for your seasonable and sympathising letters, which, besides the value they deserve from so worthy a hand, express such faithful affections, and administer such Christian advice, as renders them beyond measure welcome and dear to me." Then, after pious expression at once of his grief and of his resignation, he concludes with words that have a historical value. "My Lord," he says, "all this is but a broken echo of your pious counsel, which gives such ease to my oppressed mind that I can scarce forbid my pen being tedious. Only it remembers your Lordship's many weighty and noble employments, which, together with your prudent, heroic, and honourable managery of them, I do here congratulate as well as my grief will give me leave. Others' goodness is their own; yours is a whole country's, yea three kingdoms'--for which you justly possess interest and renown with wise and good men: virtue is a thousand escutcheons. Go on, my Lord; go on happily, to love Religion, to exemplify it. May your Lordship long continue an instrument of use, a pattern of virtue, and a precedent of glory!" On the 19th of April 1658, or not six weeks after the letter was written, the old Earl himself died. By that time the louring appearances had rolled away, and Cromwell's "prudent, heroic, and honourable managery" had again been widely confessed.[1] [Footnote 1: Godwin, IV. 527-531, where Warwick's beautiful letter is quoted in full, but where his death is postdated by a month. See Thurloe, VII. 85.] Through all the turmoil of the proceedings against the plotters Cromwell had not abated his interest in his bold enterprise in Flanders, or in his alliance with the French generally. That alliance having been renewed for another year (March 28, 1658), reinforcements were sent to the English auxiliary army to fit it for farther work in the Netherlands. Sir John Reynolds, the first commander of that army, having been unfortunately drowned in returning to England on a short leave of absence (Dec. 5, 1657), the Governorship of Mardike had come into the hands of Major-General Morgan, while the command in the field had been assigned to Lockhart, hitherto the Protector's Ambassador only, though soldiering had been formerly his more familiar business. In conjunction with Turenne, Lockhart had been pushing on the war, and at length (May 1658) the two armies, and Montagu's fleet, were engaged in the exact service which Cromwell most desired, and Lockhart had been always urging. This was the siege of Dunkirk, with a view to the possession of that town, as well as Mardike, by the English. To be near the scene of such important operations, Louis XIV. and Cardinal Mazarin had taken up their quarters at Calais; and, not to miss the opportunity of such near approach of the French monarch to the shores of England, Cromwell despatched his son-in-law Viscount Falconbridge on a splendid embassy of compliment and congratulation. He landed at Calais on the 29th of May, was received by both King and Cardinal with such honours as they had never accorded to an ambassador before, and returned on the 3rd of June to make his report. The very next day there was a tremendous battle close to Dunkirk between the French-English forces under Turenne and Lockhart and a Spanish army which had come for the relief of the besieged town under Don John of Austria and the Prince of Condé, with the Dukes of York and Gloucester in their retinue. Mainly by the bravery of Lockhart's "immortal six thousand," the victory of the French and English was complete; and, though the Marquis of Leyda, the Spanish Governor of Dunkirk, maintained the defence valiantly, the town had to surrender on the 14th of June, two days after the Marquis had been mortally wounded in a sally. Next day, according to the Treaty with Cromwell, the town was at once delivered to Lockhart, Louis XIV. himself, who was on the spot, handing him the keys. Already, while that event was unknown, and merely to reciprocate the compliment of Falconbridge's embassy to Calais, there had been sent across the Channel, in the name of Louis XIV., the Duke de Crequi, first Gentleman of his Bedchamber, and M. Mancini, the nephew of Cardinal Mazarin, "accompanied by divers of the nobility of France and many gentlemen of quality." Met at Dover by Fleetwood and an escort, they arrived in London June 16, and remained there till the 21st, having audiences with his Highness, delivering to him letters from Louis and the Cardinal, and entertained by him with all possible magnificence. While they were there, a special envoy joined them, announcing the capture of Dunkirk; and so the joy was complete. There was nothing the French King would not do to show his regard for the great Protector; and, but for his Majesty's illness at that moment from small-pox, the Cardinal himself would have come over instead of sending his nephew. And why should there not be a renewal of the Treaty after the expiry of the present term, to secure another year or two of that co-operation of the English Army and Fleet with Turenne which had led already to such excellent results? What if Ostend, as well as Dunkirk and Mardike, were to be made over to the Protector? These were suggestions for the future, and meanwhile new successes _were_ added to the capture of Dunkirk. Town after town in Flanders, including Gravelines at last, yielded to Turenne, or other generals, and received French garrisons, and through the summer autumn the Spaniards were so beset in Flanders that an expedition thence for the invasion of England in the interest of Charles Stuart, or in any other interest, was no longer even a possibility.[1] [Footnote 1: Godwin, IV. 544-551; where, however, the digest of facts does not seem accurate in every point. Compare Thurloe, VII. 173-177 and-192-3, and _Merc. Pol._ June 10-17 and June 17-24, 1658 (as quoted in _Cromwelliana_, 172-173), and Guizot, II 380-388.] While thus turning to account the alliance with the only Catholic power with which there could be safe dealing, the Protector clung firmly to his idea of a League among the Protestant Powers themselves. If Burnet's information is correct, it was about this time that he contemplated the institution in London of "a Council for the Protestant Religion in opposition to the Congregation _De Propaganda_ _Fide_ at Rome." It was to sit at Chelsea College: there were to be seven Councillors, with a large yearly fund at their disposal; the world was to be mapped out into four great regions; and for each region there was to be a Secretary at £500 a year, maintaining a correspondence with that region, ascertaining the state of Religion in it, and any exigency requiring interference. That remained only a project; but meanwhile there was the agency of Jephson with the King of Sweden, of Meadows with the King of Denmark, of Downing with the United Provinces, and of other Envoys here and there, all working for peace among the Protestant States and joint action against the common enemy. In the Council Order Books for May 1658 one comes also upon new considerations of the old subject of the Protestants of the Piedmontese valleys, with a fresh remittance of £3000 for their relief, and an advance at the same time of £500 out of the Piedmontese Fund for the kindred purpose of relieving twenty distressed Bohemian families. Indeed in that month his Highness was again at white heat on the subject of his favourite Piedmontese. The Treaty of Pignerol, by which the persecuting Edict of 1655 had been recalled and liberty of worship again yielded to the poor Vaudois (ante pp. 43-44), had gradually been less and less regarded; there were new troubles to the Vaudois from the House of Savoy; there were even signs of a possible repetition in the valleys of all the former horrors. How to prevent that was a serious thought with Cromwell amid all his other affairs; and he made his most effective stroke by an immediate appeal to the French King. On the 26th of May there went to his Majesty one of Milton's Latin State Letters in the Protector's name, adjuring him, by his own honour and by the faith of their alliance, to save the poor Piedmontese and secure the Treaty which had been made in their behalf by former French intervention; and on the same day there went a letter to Lockhart urging him to his utmost diligence in the matter, and suggesting that the French King should incorporate the Piedmontese valleys with his own dominion, giving the Duke of Savoy some bit of territory with a Catholic population in exchange. Reaching Louis XIV. and Lockhart at the moment of the great success before Dunkirk, these letters accomplished their object. The will of France was signified at Turin, and the Protestants of the Valleys had another respite.[1] [Footnote 1: Burnet (ed. 1823), I. 133; Letters of Downing, &c. in Thurloe, Vol. VII.; Council Order Books of date; Carlyle, III. 357-365.] Were one asked what subject of home concern had the first place in Cromwell's attention through all the events and transactions that have hitherto been noticed, the answer must still be the same for this as for all the previous portions of his Protectorate. It was "The Propagation of the Gospel," with all that was then implied in that phrase as construed by himself. As regarded England and Wales, the phrase meant, all but exclusively, the sustenance, extension, and consolidation of Cromwell's Church Establishment. The _Trustees for the better Maintenance of Ministers_, as well as the _Triers_ and _Ejectors_, were still at work; and in the Council minutes of the summer of 1658, just as formerly, there are orders for augmentations of ministers' stipends, combinations of parishes and chapelries, and the like. Substantially, the Established Church had been brought into a condition nearly approaching Cromwell's ideal; but he had still notions of more to be done for it in one direction or another, and especially in the direction of wider theological comprehension. He did not despair of seeing his great principle of concurrent endowment yet more generally accepted among those who were really and evangelically Protestant. Much would depend on the nature of that Confession of Faith which Article XI. of the _Petition and Advice_ had required or promised as a standard of what should be considered qualifying orthodoxy for the Church of the Protectorate. For such a purpose the Westminster Confession of Faith, even though its doctrinal portions might stand much as they were, could hardly suffice as a whole. That Confession was to be recast, or a new one framed. So the _Petition and Advice_ had provided or suggested; but it may be doubted whether Cromwell was very anxious for any such formal definition of the creed of his Established Church. He preferred the broad general understanding which all men had, with himself, as to what constituted sound Evangelical Christianity, and he had more trust in administration in detail through his Triers and Ejectors than in the application of formulas of orthodoxy. Here, however, Owen and the other Independent divines most in his confidence appear to have differed from him. They felt the want of some such confession and agreement for Association and Discipline as might suit at least the Congregationalists of the Established Church, and be to them what the Westminster Confession was to the Presbyterians. "From the first, all or at least the generality of our churches," they said, "have been in a manner like so many ships, though holding forth the same general colours, yet launched singly, and sailing apart and alone on the vast ocean of these tumultuous times, and exposed to every wind of doctrine, under no other conduct than that of the word and spirit, and their particular elders and principal brethren, without association among themselves, or so much as holding out common lights to others to know where they were." A petition to this effect, though not in these terms, having been presented to his Highness, he reluctantly yielded. He allowed a preliminary meeting of representatives of the Congregational churches in and about London to be held on June 21, 1658, and circular letters to be sent out to all the Congregational churches in England and Wales convoking a Synod at the Savoy on the 29th of September. The Confession of Faith, if any, to be drawn up by this Synod was not, of course, to be the comprehensive State Confession foreshadowed in Article XI. of the _Petition and Advice_, but only the voluntary agreement of the Congregationalists or Independents for themselves. In fact, to all appearance, if the harmonious comprehension of moderate Anglicans, Presbyterians, Independents, and Baptists, within one and the same Church, was to be signified by written symbols as well as carried out practically, this could be done only by a plan of concurrent confessions justifying the concurrent endowments. Even for that, it would seem, Cromwell was now prepared. Yet he was a little dubious about the policy of the coming Synod, and certainly was as much resolved as ever that Synods and other ecclesiastical assemblies should be only a permitted machinery for the denominations severally, and that the Civil Magistrate should determine what denominations could be soldered together to make a suitable State-Church, and should supervise and make fast the junctions.[1] [Footnote 1: Council Order Books of May 1658; Neal's Puritans, IV. 188 et seq.; Orme's Life of Owen, 230-232.] There is very striking evidence of Cromwell's attention at this time to the spiritual needs of Scotland in particular.--Early in 1657 we left Mr. James Sharp in London as agent for the Scottish Resolutioner clergy, and Principal Gillespie of Glasgow, Mr. James Guthrie, Mr. James Simpson, and Johnstone of Warriston, with the Marquis of Argyle in the background, opposing the clever Sharp, and soliciting his Highness's favour for the Scottish Protesters or Remonstrants (ante pp. 115-116). Both deputations had remained on in London perseveringly, Sharp making interest with the Protector through Broghill; Thurloe, and the London Presbyterian ministers, while Owen, Lockyer, and the rest of the Independent ministers, with Lambert and Fleetwood, took part rather with the agents of the Protesters. Wearied with listening to the dispute personally, Cromwell had referred it to a mixed committee of twelve English Presbyterians and Independents, and at length had told both parties to "go home and agree among themselves." Sharp, Simpson, and Guthrie had, accordingly, returned to Scotland before the autumn of 1657; and, though Gillespie, Warriston, and Argyle were left behind, it was difficult to say that either party had won the advantage. Baillie, indeed, writing from Glasgow after Sharp's return, could report that the Protesters had, on the whole, been foiled, and chiefly by the instrumentality of "that very worthy, pious, wise, and diligent young man, Mr. James Sharp." But, on the other hand, the Protesters had obtained some favours. As far as one can discern, Cromwell's judgment as between the two parties of Scottish Kirkmen had come to be that they were to be treated as a Tory majority and a pugnacious Whig minority, whose differences would do no harm if they were both kept under proper control, and that both together formed such a Presbyterian body as might suitably possess, and yet divide, the Church of Scotland. For, as has been remarked already, Cromwell, in his conservatism, had come, on the whole, to be of opinion that the national clergy of Scotland must be left massively Presbyterian, and that it would not do to weld into the Scottish Establishment, as into the English, Baptists, or even ordinary professing Independents, in any considerable number. This would be bad news for those Scottish Independents and Baptists who had naturally expected encouragement under Cromwell's rule, but had already been disappointed. It would be the common policy of the Resolutioners and Protesters to keep or drive such erratic spirits out of the Kirk.[1]--Whether because the long stay of the Scottish deputations in London had turned much of Cromwell's thoughts towards Scotland, or simply because his own anxiety for the "Propagation, of the Gospel" everywhere in his dominions, had led his eyes at last to that portion of Great Britain, we have now to record one of Cromwell's designs for Scotland worthy of strong mark even in the total history of his Protectorate. On Thursday, April 15, 1658, there being present In the Council the Lord President Lawrence, Lord Richard Cromwell, the Earl of Mulgrave, and Lords Meetwood, Wolseley, Sydenham, Lisle, Strickland and Jones, the following draft was agreed to:--"Oliver, by the grace of God Lord Protector of the Commonwealth of England, Scotland, and Ireland, and the Dominions and Territories thereunto belonging, To our well-beloved Council in Scotland greeting: Whereas for about the space of one hundred years last past the Gospel, blessed be God! hath been plentifully preached in the Lowlands of the said nation, and competent maintenance provided for the ministers there, yet little or no care hath been taken for a very numerous people inhabiting in the Highlands by the establishing of a ministry or maintenance,--where the greatest part have scarce heard whether there be an Holy Ghost or not, though there be some in several parts, as We are informed, that hunger and thirst after the means of salvation,--and that there is a concealed maintenance detained in unrighteousness, and diverted from the right ends to the sole benefit of particular persons; And being also informed that there hath been much revenue for many years together in the late King's time and since concealed and detained from Us by such persons as have no right or title thereunto, and that some ministers that were acquainted with the Highland language have in a late summer season visited those parts and been courteously used by many professing there breathings after the Gospel: We do therefore, in consideration of their sad condition, the great honour and glory of God, and the good that may redound to the souls of many poor ignorant creatures, Will and Require you, with all care, industry and conveniency, to find out a way and means for the Planting of the Gospel in those parts, and that, in pursuance thereof and the better carrying on of so pious a work, our Barons of our Exchequer in Scotland do search and find out _£600 per annum_ of concealed estates and revenues belonging to Us, or that may belong to Us and our Successors, and issue forth and pay the same unto such person or persons as by our said Council shall be nominated and appointed, out of such concealed rents or any other concealed revenues whatsoever, quarterly or half-yearly as there shall be cause, by and with their assent and approbation, to the only use and end aforesaid. For which so doing this shall be your and their warrant. Witness Ourself at our Palace at Westminster the ---- day ---- 1658." This does not seem to have sufficed for his Highness; for on Tuesday, May 4, the Council returned to the subject and prepared another draft, beginning, "Forasmuch as We, taking into consideration the sad condition of our People in Scotland living in the Highlands, for want of the Preaching of the Gospel and Schools of Learning for training up of youth in Learning and Civility, whereby the inhabitants of those places in their lives and whole demeanour are little different from the most savage heathens," and ending with instructions that £1200 a year, or double the sum formerly proposed, should be set apart out of still recoverable rents and revenues of alienated Chaplaincies, Deaneries, &c. of the old Popish and Episcopal Church of Scotland, and applied to the purposes of preaching and education in the Highlands. The sum, in the Scotland of that time, might go as far as £7000 or £8000 a year now, though in England it would have been worth only about £4200 of present value. Spent on an effective Gaelic mission of travelling pastors, and on a few well-planted schools, it might have accomplished a good deal.[2]--Since the beginning of the Protectorate there had been some care in finding new funds for the Scottish Universities as well as for the English. Principal Gillespie of Glasgow had procured a grant for the University of that city (Vol. IV. p. 565), and something had been done for University-reform in Aberdeen. Accordingly, that Edinburgh might not complain, it was now agreed, at a meeting of Council, July 15, 1658, his Highness himself present; to issue an order beginning, "Know ye that We, taking into our consideration the condition of the University of Edinburgh, and that (being but of late foundation, viz. since the Reformation of Religion in Scotland) the rents thereof are exceedingly small," and concluding by putting £200 a year at the disposal of the Town Council of Edinburgh, "being the founders and undoubted patrons of the said University," to be applied for University purposes with the advice and consent of the Masters and Regents. The gift, it appears, had been promised to Principal Leighton, when he had been in London, some time before, on one of his yearly journeys for his own bookish purposes, and certainly neither as Resolutioner nor Protester. "Mr. Leighton does nought to count of, but looks about him in his chamber," is Baillie's characteristic fancy-sketch of Leighton when he was back in Edinburgh and the £200 a year had become a certainty; but he adds that the saint had shown more temper than usual at finding that Mr. Sharp had contrived that £100 of the sum should go to Mr. Alexander Dickson (son of the Resolutioner David Dickson) who had been recently appointed to the Hebrew Professorship, and whom Leighton did not like. Indeed Baillie makes merry over the possibility that the poor £200 a year for Edinburgh might never be forthcoming, any more than the richer "flim-flams" Mr. Gillespie had obtained for Glasgow, though in _them_ he confessed a more lively interest.[3]--Whether Scotland should ever actually handle the new endowments for her Universities, or the more important £1200 a year for the civilization of the Highlands, depended on the energy and ability of his Highness's Scottish Council in finding out ways and means. Broghill being still absent in England, but on the wing for Ireland, and Lockhart and others being also absent, the most active of the Councillors now left in Scotland, in association with Monk, seem to have been Lord Keeper Desborough, Swinton of Swinton, and Colonel Whetham. Since August 1656, by the Protector's orders, _three_ had been a sufficient quorum of the Council. Monk, of course, was the real Vice-Protector. Scotland had become his home. He had lived for some years in the same house at Dalkeith, "pleasantly seated in the midst of a park," occupying all his spare time "with the pleasures of planting and husbandry"; he had buried his second son, an infant, in a chapel near; and to all appearance he might expect to spend the rest of his days where he was, a wealthy English soldier-farmer naturalized among the Scots, acquiring estates among them, and keeping them under quiet command.[4] [Footnote 1: Baillie, III, 836-874 and 577-582; Blair's Life, 333-334; Council Order Books, Feb. 12 and March 5, 1656-7, and Sept. 18, 1657; and a pamphlet published in London in July 1659 with the title "_The Hammer of Persecution, or the Mystery of Iniquity in the Persecution of many good people in Scotland under the Government of Oliver, late Lord Protector, and continued by others of the same spirit, disclosed with the Remedies thereof, by Robt. Pitilloh, Advocate._" The Persecution complained of by Mr. Pitilloh, a Scottish lawyer who had left Presbyterianism, was simply the discouragement under the Protectorate of such Scottish ministers as had turned Independents and Baptists. The names of some such are given: e.g. Mr. John Row, Principal of the College of Old Aberdeen; Mr. Thomas Charters, Kilbride; Mr. John Menzies, Aberdeen; Mr. Seaton, Old Aberdeen; Mr. Youngston, Durris; Mr. John Forbes, Kincardine. "As soon as Oliver was lift up to the throne," says the writer, "some of the Presbyterian faction were sent for; and, to ingratiate himself with them, intimating tacitly that it was his law no minister in Scotland should have allowance of a livelihood but a National Presbyterian, he ordered that none should have stipends as ministers ... but such as had certificates from some four of a select party, being thirty in all, ... of the honest Presbyterian party."] [Footnote 2: Council Order Books of dates.] [Footnote 3: Council Order Books of date, and Baillie, III. 356 and 365-366. Another interesting item of Scottish History under Cromwell's rule may have a place here, though it belongs properly to the First Protectorate. In the Council Order Books under date Feb. 17, 1656-7, is this minute:--"On consideration of a report from his Highness's Attorney General, annexed to the draft of a Patent prepared by his High Counsel learned, in pursuance of the Council's order of the 13th of January last, according to the purport of an agreement in writing presented to the Council under the hand of the Provost of Edinburgh on behalf of that city and of Dr. Purves on behalf of the Physicians of Scotland, the same being for erecting a College of Physicians in Scotland: _Ordered_, That it be offered to his Highness as the advice of the Council that his Highness will be pleased to issue his warrant for Mr. Attorney General to prepare a Patent for his Highness's signature according to the said Draft."] [Footnote 4: Council Order Books, Aug. 14, 1656.] Next to the Propagation of the Gospel by an Established Ministry everywhere, the fixed idea of Cromwell for his Home-Government, as we have had again and again to explain, was toleration of all varieties of religious opinion. Under this head little that is new presents itself in the part of his Protectorate with which we are now concerned. The Anti-Trinitarian Mr. John Biddle, who had been in custody in the Isle of Scilly since Oct. 1655 (ante p. 66), had moved for a writ of habeas corpus, and had been brought to London, apparently with an intention on Cromwell's part to set him at liberty. Nor had Cromwell lost sight of the poor demented Quaker, James Nayler. There is extant a long and confidential letter to his Highness from his private secretary Mr. William Malyn, giving an account of a visit Malyn had paid to Nayler in Bridewell expressly by his Highness's command. It is to the effect that he had found Nayler well enough in bodily health, but so mulishly obstinate or mad that he could not be coaxed in a long interview to speak even a single word, and that therefore, though Malyn did not like to "dissuade" his Highness from "a work of tenderness and mercy," he could hardly yet advise Nayler's release, but would carefully apply the money he had received from his Highness for Nayler's comfort. For the Quakers generally there was, we fear, no more specific protection than Cromwell's good-nature when a case of cruelty was distinctly brought within his cognisance. What shall we say, however, of one order or intention of Cromwell's Council in June 1658, which, if not against liberty of conscience in the general sense, was decidedly retrograde in respect of the specific liberty of the press? On the 22nd of that month, nine members being present, though not his Highness, it was agreed, on a report by Mr. Comptroller, i.e. by Lord Jones, from a Committee that had been appointed on the subject, to recommend to his Highness to issue a warrant with this preamble, "Whereas there are divers good laws, statutes, acts, and ordinances of Parliament in force, which were heretofore made and published against the printing of unlicensed, seditious, and scandalous books and pamphlets, and for the better regulating of printing, wherein several provisions are contained, sufficient to prevent the designs of persons disaffected to the State and Government of this Commonwealth, who have assumed to themselves and do continually take upon them a licentious boldness to write, print, publish, and disperse many dangerous, seditious, blasphemous, Popish, and scandalous pamphlets, books, and papers, to the high dishonour of God, the scorn and contempt of the Laws and of all good Order and Government; and forasmuch as it nearly concerns Us, in respect of the public peace and safety, to take care for a due execution of the said laws." What followed was a special charge to the Master and Wardens of the Stationers' Company, together with Henry Hills and John Field, his Highness's Printers, to see to the strict enforcement in future of the restrictions of certain cited Press Acts,--to wit, the ordinance of the Long Parliament of June 14, 1643 (that against which Milton had written his _Areopagitica_), the similar ordinance of the same Parliament of date Sept. 28, 1647, the Act of the Rump Parliament of Sept. 20, 1649 (Bradshaw's Press Act of the first year of the Commonwealth), and the renewal of the same Jan. 7, 1652-3. Had this been all, one might have inferred nothing more than one of those occasional panics about Press licentiousness from the recurrence of which even Milton's reasoning had never been able to free the Government with which he was connected. But at the same meeting it was referred to Lord Fleetwood, Lord Wolseley, Lord Pickering, Lord Jones, Lord Desborough, Lord Viscount Lisle, and Lord Strickland, or to any two of them, "to consider of fit persons to be added for licensing of books and to report the names of such persons to the Council." This was distinctly retrogressive; and the regret of Milton must have been none the less because four of the Committee that were to find the new licensers were men he had named in his _Defensio Secunda_ as heroes of the Commonwealth, and because, as appears from a marginal jotting to the minute as it stands in the Council Order Books, the man thought of at once for one of the new licensers, or as the person fittest to be first consulted in the business, was Marchamont Needham. After all, it may have been, like some of the previous movements for press-regulation, only a push from Paternoster Row in defence of the legitimate book-trade, and the main intention of the Council itself may have been against pamphlets like _Killing no Murder_ or publications of the indecent order.[1] [Footnote 1: Council Order Books of dates, and Nickolis's _Milton State Papers_, 143-144 (the last for Malyn's Letter about Nayler). For previous Press Acts referred to by the Council, see ante Vol. III. 266-271, and Vol. IV. 116-118.] O how stable and grand seemed the Protectorate in the month of July 1658! Rebellion at home in all its varieties quashed once more, and now, as it might seem, for ever; the threatened invasion of the Spaniards and Charles Stuart dissipated into ridicule; a footing acquired on the Continent, and 6000 Englishmen stationed there in arms; Foreign Powers, with Louis XIV. at their head, obeisant to the very ground whenever they turned their gaze towards the British Islands, and dreading the next bolt from the Protector's hands; those hands evidently toying with several new bolts and poising them towards the parts of Europe for which they were intended; great schemes, besides, for England, Scotland, Ireland, and the Colonies, in that inventive brain! All this, we say, in July 1658, by which time also it was known that the Protector, so far from fearing to face a new Parliament, was ready to call one and would take all the chances. His immediate necessity, of course, was money. His second Parliament, at the close of its first and loyal session in June 1657, had provided ordinary supplies for three years; but there had been no new revenue-arrangements in the short second session, and the current expenses for the Flanders expedition, the various Embassies, the Court, and the whole conduct of the Government, far outran the voted income. The pay of the armies in England, Scotland, and Ireland was greatly in arrears; on all hands there were straits for money; and, whatever might be done by expedients and ingenuity meanwhile, the effective extrication could only be by a Parliament. Not for subsidies only, however, was Cromwell willing to resort again to that agency, with all its perils. He believed that, in consequence of what had passed since the Dissolution in January, any Parliament that should now meet him would be in a different mood towards himself from that he had recently encountered. Then might there not be proposals, in which he and such a Parliament might agree, for constitutional changes in advance of the Articles of the _Petition and Advice_, though in the same direction of orderliness and settled and stately rule? Was there not wide regret among the civilians that he had not accepted the Kingship; had his refusal of it been really wise; might not that question be reopened? With that question might there not go the question of the succession, whether by nomination for one life only as was now fixed, or by perpetual nomination, or by a return to the hereditary and dynastic principle which the lawyers and the civilians thought the best? Nor could the Second House of Parliament remain the vague thing it had been so far fashioned. It must be amended in the points in which its weakness had been proved; and all the evidence hitherto was that it must be made truly and formally a House of Lords, if even with the reinstitution of a peerage as part and parcel of the legislative system. Whether such a peerage should be hereditary or for life only might be in doubt; but there were symptoms that, even if the Legislative Peerage should be only for life, Cromwell had convinced himself of the utility, for general purposes, of at least a Social Peerage with, hereditary rank and titles. In his First Protectorate he had made knights only; in his Second he created a few baronets. Nay, besides favouring the courtesy appellation of "lords," as applied to all who had sat in the late Upper House and to the great officers of State, he had added at least two peers of his own making to the hereditary peerage as it had come down from the late reign.[1] [Footnote 1: In continuation of a former note giving a list of the Knighthoods of Cromwell's First Protectorate so far as I have ascertained them (ante p. 303), here is a list of the Knighthoods of the Second:--William Wheeler (Aug. 26, 1657); Edward Ward, of Norfolk (Nov. 2, 1657); Alderman Thomas Andrews (Nov. 14, 1657); Colonel Matthew Tomlinson (Nov. 25, 1657, in Dublin, by Lord Henry Cromwell as Lord Deputy for Ireland); Alderman Thomas Foot, Alderman Thomas Atkins, and Colonel John Hewson (all Dec. 5, 1657); James Drax, Esq., a Barbadoes merchant (Dec. 31, 1657); Henry Bickering and Philip Twistleton (Feb. 1, 1657-8); John Lenthall, Esq., son of Speaker Lenthall (March 9, 1657-8); Alderman Chiverton and Alderman John Ireton (March 22, 1857-8); Colonel Henry Jones (July 17, 1658, for distinguished bravery at the siege of Dunkirk).-Baronetcies conferred by Cromwell were the following:--John Read, of Hertfordshire (Juae 25. 1657); the Hon. John Claypole, father of Lord Claypole (July 20, 1657); Thomas Chamberlain (Oct. 6, 1657); Thomas Beaumont, of Leicestershire (March 5, 1657-8); Colonel Henry Ingoldsby, John Twistleton, Esq., and Henry Wright, Esq., son of the physician Dr. Wright (all April 10, 1658); Griffith Williams, of Carnarvonshire (May 28, 1658); Attorney General Edmund Prideaux and Solicitor General William Ellis (Aug. 13, 1668); William Wyndham, Esq., co. Somerset (Aug. 28, 1658). The Baronetcies, being rare, seem to have been much prized; and that of Henry Ingoldsby raised jealousies (see letter of Henry Cromwell in Thurloe, VII. 57).--_Peerages_ conferred by Cromwell were not likely, any more than his Knighthoods and Baronetcies, to be paraded by their possessors after the Restoration. But Cromwell's favourite, Colonel Charles Howard, a scion of the great Norfolk Howards, was raised to the dignity of Viscount Howard of Morpeth and Baron Gilsland in Cumberland; Cromwell's relative, Edmund Dunch, of Little Wittenham, Berks, was created Baron Burnell, April 20, 1658; and Cromwell, just before his death, made, or wanted to make, Bulstrode Whitlocke a Viscount.] As early as April the new Parliament had been thought of, and since June there had been a select committee of nine, precognoscing the chances, considering the questions to be brought up, and feeling in every way the public pulse. The nine so employed were Lords Fleetwood, Fiennes, Desborough, Pickering, Philip Jones, Whalley, Cooper, and Goffe, and Mr, Secretary Thurloe. There are a few glimpses of their consultations in the Thurloe correspondence, where also there is a hint of some hope of the compliance at last even of such old Republicans as Vane and Ludlow. But July 1658 had come, and no one yet knew when the Parliament would meet. It could not be expected then before the end of the year.[1] [Footnote 1: Thurloe, VII. 99, 151-152, et seq.] Before that time Oliver Cromwell was to be out of the world. Though but in his sixtieth year, and with his prodigious powers of will, intellect, heart, and humour, unimpaired visibly in the least atom, his frame had for some time been giving way under the pressure of his ceaseless burden. For a year or two his handwriting, though statelier and more deliberate than at first, had been singularly tremulous, and to those closest about him there had been other signs of physical breaking-up. Not till late in July, however, or early in August, was there any serious cause for alarm, and then in consequence of the terrible effects upon his Highness of his close attendance on the death-bed of his second daughter, the much-loved Lady Claypole. She had been lingeringly ill for some time, of a most painful internal disease, aggravated by the death of her youngest boy, Oliver. Hampton Court had received her as a dying invalid, tortured by "frequent and long convulsion-fits"; and here, through a great part of July, the fond father had been hanging about her, broken-hearted and unfit for business. For his convenience the Council had transferred its meetings from Whitehall to Hampton Court; but, though he was present at one there on July 15, he avoided one on July 20, another on July 22, and a third on July 27. On the 29th, which was the fifth meeting at Hampton Court, he did look in again and take his place. Next day Lord and Lady Falconbridge arrived at Hampton Court, where already, besides the Protestor and the Lady Protectress, there were Lord Richard Cromwell, the widowed Lady Frances, and others of the family, all round the dying sufferer. After that meeting of the Council of July 29 which he had managed to attend, and an intervening meeting at Whitehall without him, the Council was again at Hampton Court on Thursday the 5th of August. At this meeting one of the resolutions was "That Mr. Secretary be desired to make a collection of such injuries received by the English from the Dutch as have come to his cognisance, and to offer the same to the Council on this day seven-night." This was a very important resolution, significant of a dissatisfaction with the conduct of the Dutch, and a desire to call them to account again, which had for some time been growing in Cromwell's mind; and there can be no doubt that he had suggested the subject to the Council. But his Highness did not appear in the meeting himself, and next day Lady Claypole lay dead. Before her death his grief had passed into an indefinite illness, described as "of the gout and other distempers"; and, though he was able to come to London on the 10th of August, on which night Lady Claypole's remains were interred in a little vault that had been prepared for them in Henry VIIth's Chapel in Westminster Abbey, he returned to Hampton Court greatly the worse. But, after four or five days of confinement, attended by his physicians--on one of which days (the 13th) Attorney General Prideaux and Solicitor General Ellis were made baronets--he was out again for an hour on the 17th; and thence till Friday the 20th he seemed so much better that Thurloe and others thought the danger past. From the public at large the fact of his illness had been hitherto concealed as much as possible; and hence it may have been that on two or three of those days of convalescence he showed himself as usual, riding with his life-guards in Hampton Court Park. It was on one of them, most probably Friday the 20th, that George Fox had that final meeting with him which he describes in his Journal. The good but obtrusive Quaker had been writing letters of condolence and mystical religious advice to Lady Claypole in her illness, and had recently sent one of mixed condolence and rebuke to Cromwell himself; and now, not knowing of Cromwell's own illness, he had come to have a talk with him about the sufferings of the Friends. "Before I came to him, as he rode at the head of his life-guard," says Fox, "I saw and felt a waft of death go forth, against him; and, when I came to him, he looked like a dead man." Fox, nevertheless, had his conversation with the Protector, who told him to come again, but does not seem to have mentioned the inquiry he had been making, through his secretary Mr. Malyn, about the state of Fox's fellow-Quaker, poor James Nayler. Next day, Saturday, Aug. 21, when Fox went to Hampton Court Palace to keep his appointment, he could not be admitted. Harvey, the groom of the bedchamber, told him that his Highness was very ill, with his physicians about him, and must be kept quiet. That morning his distemper had developed itself distinctly into "an ague"; which ague proved, within the next few days, to be of the kind called by the physicians "a bastard tertian," i.e. an ague with the cold and hot shivering fits recurring most violently every third day, but with the intervals also troublesome. Yet it was on this first day of his ague that he signed a warrant for a patent to make Bulstrode Whitlocke a Viscount. Whitlocke himself, though he afterwards declined the honour as inconvenient, is precise as to the date. The physicians thinking the London air better for the malady than that of Hampton Court, his Highness was removed to Whitehall on Tuesday the 24th. That was one of the intervals of his fever, and he seems to have come up easily enough in his coach, and to have been quite able to take an interest in what he found going on at Whitehall. Six days before (Aug. 18) the Duke of Buckingham, who had been for some time in London undisturbed, living in his mansion of York House with his recently wedded wife, and with Lord and Lady Fairfax in their society, had been apprehended on the high-road some miles from Canterbury; and, whether on the old grounds, or from new suspicions, the Council, by a warrant issued on the 19th, doubtless with Cromwell's sanction intimated from Hampton Court, had committed him to the Tower. On the very day of Cromwell's return to Whitehall this business of the Duke was again before the Council, in consequence of a petition from the young Duchess that he might be permitted to remain at York House on sufficient security. Fairfax himself had gone to Whitehall to urge his daughter's request and to tender the security, and Cromwell, though unable to be in the Council-room, gave him a private interview. According to the story in the Fairfax family, it must have been an unpleasant one. Cromwell could be stern on such a subject even at such a time and to his old commander, and so Fairfax "turned abruptly from him in the gallery at Whitehall, cocking his hat, and throwing his cloak under his arm, as he used to do when he was angry." Nor was this the last piece of public business of which the Protector, though never more in the Council-room, must have been directly cognisant. Whitlocke says he visited him and was kept to dine with him on the 26th, and that he was then able to discourse on business; but, as Whitlocke makes Hampton Court the place, there must be an error as to the day. The last baronetcy he conferred was made good on Saturday the 28th, four days after the interview with Fairfax; and even after that, between his fever-fits, he kept some grasp of affairs, and received and sent messages. But that Saturday of the last baronetcy was a day of marked crisis. The ague had then changed into a "double tertian," with two fits in the twenty-four hours, both extremely weakening. So Sunday passed, with prayers in all the churches; and then came that extraordinary Monday (Aug. 30, 1658) which lovers of coincidence have taken care to remember as the day of most tremendous hurricane that ever blew over London and England. From morning to night the wind raged and howled, emptying the streets, unroofing houses, tearing up trees in the parks, foundering ships at sea, and taking even Flanders and the coasts of France within its angry whirl. The storm was felt, within England, as far as Lincolnshire, where, in the vicinity of an old manor-house, a boy of fifteen years of age, named Isaac Newton, was turning it to account, as he afterwards remembered, by jumping first with the wind, and then against it, and computing its force by the difference of the distances. Through all this storm, as it shuddered round Whitehall, shaking the doors and windows, the sovereign patient had lain on, passing from fit to fit, but talking in the intervals with the Lady Protectress or with his physicians, while Owen, Thomas Goodwin, Sterry, or some other of the preachers that were in attendance, went and came between the chamber and an adjoining room. A certain belief that he would recover, which he had several times before expressed to the Lady Protectress and others, had not yet left him, and had communicated itself to the preachers as an assurance that their prayers were heard. Writing to Henry Cromwell at nine o'clock that night, Thurloe could say, "The doctors are yet hopeful that he may struggle through it, though their hopes are mingled with much fear." Even the next day, Tuesday, Aug. 31, Cromwell was still himself, still consciously the Lord Protector. Through the storm of the preceding day Ludlow had made a journey to London from Essex on family-business, beaten back in the morning by a wind against which two horses could not make way, but contriving late at night to push on as far as Epping. "By this means," he says, "I arrived not at Westminster till Tuesday about noon, when, passing by Whitehall, notice was immediately given to Cromwell that I was come to town. Whereupon he sent for Lieutenant General Fleet wood, and ordered him to enquire concerning the reasons of my coming at such haste and at such a time." If Cromwell could attend to such a matter that day, he must have been able also to prompt the resolution of his Council in Whitehall the same day in the case of the Duke of Buckingham. It was that the Duke, on account of his health, might be removed from the Tower to Windsor Castle, but must continue in confinement. At the end of the day, Fleetwood, writing to Henry Cromwell, reported, "The Lord is pleased to give some little reviving this evening: after few slumbering sleeps, his pulse is better." As near as can be guessed, it was that same night that Cromwell himself uttered the well-known short prayer, the words of which, or as nearly as possible the very words, were preserved by the pious care of his chamber-attendant Harvey. It is to the same authority that we owe the most authentic record of the religious demeanour of the Protector from the beginning of his illness. Very beautifully and simply Harvey tells us of his "holy expressions," his fervid references to Scripture texts, and his repetitions of some texts in particular, such repetitions "usually being very weighty and with great vehemency of spirit." One of them was "It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God." Three times he repeated this; but the texts of promise and of Christian triumph had all along been more frequently on his lips. All in all, his single short prayer, which Harvey places "two or three days before his end," may be read as the summary of all that we need to know now of the dying Puritan in these eternal respects. "Lord," he muttered, "though I am a miserable and wretched creature, I am in covenant with Thee through grace, and I may, I will, come to Thee. For Thy people, Thou hast made me, though very unworthy, a mean instrument to do them some good, and Thee service; and many of them have set too high a value upon me, though others wish and would be glad of my death. But, Lord, however Thou dost dispose of me, continue and go on to do good for them. Give them consistency of judgment, one heart, and mutual love; and go on to deliver them, and with the work of reformation; and make the name of Christ glorious in the world. Teach those who look too much upon Thy instruments to depend more upon Thyself; pardon such as desire to trample upon the dust of a poor worm, for they are Thy people too; and pardon the folly of this short prayer, even for Jesus Christ's sake; and give us a good night, if it be Thy pleasure." Wednesday, Sept. 1, passes unmarked, unless it may be for the delivery to the Lady Protectress, in her watch over Cromwell, of a letter, dated that day, and addressed to her and her children, from the Quaker Edward Burrough. It was long and wordy, but substantially an assurance that the Lord had sent this affliction upon the Protector's house on account of the unjust sufferings of the Quakers. "Will not their sufferings lie upon you? For many hundreds have suffered cruel and great things, and some the loss of life (though not by, yet in the name of, the Protector); and about a hundred at this present day lie in holes, and dungeons, and prisons, up and down the nation." The letter, we may suppose, was not read to Cromwell, and the Wednesday went by. On Thursday, Sept. 2, there was an unusually full Council-meeting close to his chamber, at which order was given for the removal of Lords Lauderdale and Sinclair from Windsor Castle to Warwick Castle, to make more room at Windsor for the Duke of Buckingham. That night Harvey sat up with his Highness and again noted some of his sayings. One was "Truly, God is good; indeed He is; He will not--" He did not complete the sentence. "His speech failed him," says Harvey; "but, as I apprehended, it was 'He will not leave me.' This saying, that God was good, he frequently used all along, and would speak it with much cheerfulness and fervour of spirit in the midst of his pain. Again he said, 'I would be willing to live to be farther serviceable to God and His people; but my work is done.' He was very restless most part of the night, speaking often to himself. And, there being something to drink offered him, he was desired to take the same, and endeavour to sleep; unto which he answered, 'It is not my design to drink or to sleep, but my design is to make what haste I can to be gone.' Afterwards, towards morning, using divers holy expressions, implying much inward consolation and peace, among the rest he spake some exceeding self-debasing words, annihilating and judging himself." This is the last. The next day, Friday, was his twice victorious Third of September, the anniversary of Dunbar and Worcester. That morning he was speechless; and, though the prayers in Whitehall, and in all London and the suburbs, did not cease for him, people in the houses and passers in the streets knew that hope was over and Oliver at the point of death. For several days there had been cautious approaches to him on the subject of the nomination of his successor, and either on the stormy Monday or later that matter had been settled somehow.[1] [Footnote 1: Council Order Books from July 8 to Sept. 2, 1658, giving minutes of fifteen meetings at Whitehall or Hampton Court, Cromwell present at the two first, viz. July 8 (Whitehall), July 15 (Hampton Court), and at the sixth, viz. July 29 (Hampton Court), but at no other; Thurloe, VII. 309, 320, 323, 340, 344, 354-356, 362-364, 366-367, 369-370; _A Collection of Several Passages concerning his late Highness, Oliver Cromwell, in the Time of his Sickness_ (June 9, 1659, "London, Printed for Robert Ibbetson, dwelling in Smithfield, near Hosier Lane"); _Cromwelliana_, 174-178 (including an abridgment of the last tract); Whitlocke, IV. 334-335; Markham's Life of Fairfax, 373-374; Ludlow, 610; Godwin, IV. 564-575; Carlyle, III. 367-376 (which may well be read again and again); Sewel's History of the Quakers, 1. 242-245; Life of Newton by Sir David Brewster (1860), I. 14.] CHAPTER II. MILTON'S LIFE AND SECRETARYSHIP THROUGH THE SECOND PROTECTORATE. MILTON STILL IN OFFICE: LETTER TO MR. HENRY DE BRASS, WITH MILTON'S OPINION OF SALLUST: LETTERS TO YOUNG RANELAGH AND HENRY OLDENBURG AT SAUMUR: MORUS IN NEW CIRCUMSTANCES: ELEVEN MOBE STATE-LETTERS OF MILTON FOR THE PROTECTOR (NOS. CI.-CXI.): ANDREW MARVELL BROUGHT IN AS ASSISTANT FOREIGN SECRETARY AT LAST (SEPT. 1657): JOHN DRYDEN NOW ALSO IN THE PROTECTOR'S EMPLOYMENT: BIRTH OF MILTON'S DAUGHTER BY HIS SECOND WIFE: SIX MORE STATE-LETTERS OF MILTON (NOS. CXII.-CXIII.): ANOTHER LETTER TO MR. HENRY DE BRASS, AND ANOTHER TO PETER HEIMBACH: COMMENT ON THE LATTER: DEATHS OF MILTON'S SECOND WIFE AND HER CHILD: HIS TWO NEPHEWS, EDWARD AND JOHN PHILLIPS, AT THIS DATE: MILTON'S LAST SIXTEEN STATE-LETTERS FOR OLIVER CROMWELL (NOS. CXVIII.-CXXXIII.), INCLUDING TWO TO CHARLES GUSTAVUS OF SWEDEN. TWO ON A NEW ALARM OF A PERSECUTION OF THE PIEDMONTESE PROTESTANTS, AND SEVERAL TO LOUIS XIV. AND CARDINAL MAZARIN: IMPORTANCE OF THIS LAST GROUP OF THE STATE-LETTERS, AND REVIEW OF THE WHOLE SERIES OF MILTON'S PERFORMANCES FOR CROMWELL: LAST DIPLOMATIC INCIDENTS OF THE PROTECTORATE, AND ANDREW MARVELL IN CONNEXION WITH THEM: INCIDENTS OF MILTON'S LITERARY LIFE IN THIS PERIOD: YOUNG GUNTZER'S _DISSERTATIO_ AND YOUNG KECK'S PHALAECIANS: MILTON'S EDITION OF RALEIGH'S _CABINET COUNCIL_: RESUMPTION OF THE OLD DESIGN OF _PARADISE LOST_ AND ACTUAL COMMENCEMENT OF THE POEM: CHANGE FROM THE DRAMATIC POEM TO THE EPIC: SONNET IN MEMORY OF HIS DECEASED WIFE. Through the Second Protectorate Milton remained in office just as before. He was not, however, as had been customary before at the commencement of each new period of his Secretaryship, sworn in afresh. Thurloe was sworn in, both as General Secretary and as full Councillor, and Scobell and Jessop were sworn in as Clerks;[1] but we hear of no such ceremony in the case of Milton. His Latin Secretaryship, we infer, was now regarded as an excrescence from the Whitehall establishment, rather than an integral part of it. An oath may have been administered to him privately, or his old general engagement may have sufficed. [Footnote 1: Council Order Books, July 13 and 14, 1657.] Our first trace of Milton after the new inauguration of Cromwell is in one of his Latin Familiar Epistles, addressed to some young foreigner in London, of whom I know nothing more than may be learnt from the letter itself:-- "To the Very Distinguished MR. HENRY DE BRASS. "I see, Sir, that you, unlike most of our modern youth in their surveys of foreign lands, travel rightly and wisely, after the fashion of the old philosophers, not for ordinary youthful quests, but with a view to the acquisition of fuller erudition from every quarter. Yet, as often as I look at what you write, you appear to me to be one who has come among strangers not so much to receive knowledge as to impart it to others, to barter good merchandise rather than to buy it. I wish indeed it were as easy for me to assist and promote in every way those excellent studies of yours as it is pleasant and gratifying to have such help asked by a person of your uncommon talents. "As for the resolution you say you have taken to write to me and request my answers towards solving those difficulties about which for many ages writers of Histories seem to have been in the dark, I have never assumed anything of the kind as within my powers, nor should I dare now to do so. In the matter of Sallust, which you refer to me, I will say freely, since you wish me to tell plainly what I do think, that I prefer Sallust to any other Latin historian; which also was the almost uniform opinion of the Ancients. Your favourite Tacitus has his merits; but the greatest of them, in my judgment, is that he imitated Sallust with all his might. As far as I can gather from what you write, it appears that the result of my discourse with you personally on this subject has been that you are now nearly of the same mind with me respecting that most admirable writer; and hence it is that you ask me, with reference to what he has said, in the introduction to his _Catilinarian War_--as to the extreme difficulty of writing History, from the obligation that the expressions should be proportional to the deeds--by what method I think a writer of History might attain that perfection. This, then, is my view: that he who would write of worthy deeds worthily must write with mental endowments and experience of affairs not less than were in the doer of the same, so as to be able with equal mind to comprehend and measure even the greatest of them, and, when he has comprehended them, to relate them distinctly and gravely in pure and chaste speech. That he should do so in ornate style, I do not much care about; for I want a Historian, not an Orator. Nor yet would I have frequent maxims, or criticisms on the transactions, prolixly thrown in, lest, by interrupting the thread of events, the Historian should invade the office of the Political Writer: for, if the Historian, in explicating counsels and narrating facts, follows truth most of all, and not his own fancy or conjecture, he fulfils his proper duty. I would add also that characteristic of Sallust, in respect of which he himself chiefly praised Cato,--to be able to throw off a great deal in few words: a thing which I think no one can do without the sharpest judgment and a certain temperance at the same time. There are many in whom you will not miss either elegance of style or abundance of information; but for conjunction of brevity with abundance, i.e. for the despatch of much in few words, the chief of the Latins, in my judgment, is Sallust. Such are the qualities that I think should be in the Historian that would hope to make his expressions proportional to the facts he records. "But why all this to you, who are sufficient, with the talent you have, to make it all out, and who, if you persevere in the road you have entered, will soon be able to consult no one more learned than yourself. That you do persevere, though you require no one's advice for that, yet, that I may not seem to have altogether failed in replying correspondingly with the value you are pleased to put upon my authority with you, is my earnest exhortation and suggestion. Farewell; and all success to your real worth, and your zeal for acquiring wisdom. "Westminster: July 15, 1657." Henry Oldenburg, and his pupil Richard Jones, _alias_ young Ranelagh, had left Oxford in April or May 1657, after about a year's stay there, and had gone abroad on a tour which was to extend over more than four years. It was an arrangement for the farther education of young Ranelagh in the way most satisfactory to his mother, Lady Ranelagh, and perhaps also to his uncle, Robert Boyle, neither of whom seems to have cared much for the ordinary University routine; and particulars had been settled by correspondence between Oldenburg at Oxford and Lady Ranelagh in Ireland.[1] Young Ranelagh, I find, took with him as his servant a David Whitelaw, who had been servant to Durie in his foreign travels: "my man, David Whitelaw," as Durie calls him.[2] The ever-convenient Hartlib was to manage the conveyance of letters to the travellers, wherever they might be.[3] [Footnote 1: Letter of Oldenburg to Boyle, dated April! 5, 1657, given in Boyle's Works (V. 299).] [Footnote 2: Letters of Durie in _Vaughan's Protectorate_ (II. 174 and 195).] [Footnote 3: Letter of Oldenburg in Boyle's Works (V. 301).] They went, pretty directly, to Saumur in the west of France, a pleasant little town, with a college, a library, &c., which they had selected for their first place of residence, rather than Paris. An Italian master was procured to teach young Jones "something of practical geometry and fortification"; and, for the rest, Oldenburg himself continued to superintend his studies, directing them a good deal in that line of physical and economical observation which might be supposed congenial to a nephew of Boyle, and which had become interesting to himself. "As for us here," wrote Oldenburg to Boyle from Saumur, Sept. 8, 1657, "we are, through the goodness of God, in perfect health; and, your nephew having spent these two or three months we have been here very well and in more than ordinary diligence, I cannot but give him some relaxation in taking a view of this province of Anjou during this time of vintage; which, though it be a very tempting one to a young appetite, yet shall, I hope, by a careful watchfulness, prove unprejudicial to his health."[1] A good while before Oldenburg wrote this letter to Boyle both he and his pupil had written to Milton, and Milton's replies had already been received. They are dated on the same day, but we shall put that to young Ranelagh first. It will be seen that Oldenburg must have had a sight of it from his pupil before he wrote the above to Boyle:-- [Footnote 1: Boyle's Works, V. 299.] "To the noble youth, RICHARD JONES. "That you made out so long a journey without inconvenience, and that, spurning the allurements of Paris, you have so quickly reached your present place of residence, where you can enjoy literary leisure and the society of learned persons, I am both heartily glad, and set down to the credit of your disposition. There, so far as you keep yourself in bounds, you will be in harbour; elsewhere you would have to beware the Syrtes, the Rocks, and the songs of the Sirens. All the same I would not have you thirst too much after the Saumur vintage, with which you think to delight yourself, unless it be also your intention to dilute that juice of Bacchus, more than a fifth part, with the freer cup of the Muses. But to such a course, even if I were silent, you have a first-rate adviser; by listening to whom you will indeed consult best for your own good, and cause great joy to your most excellent mother, and a daily growth of her love for you. Which that you may accomplish you ought every day to petition Almighty God, Farewell; and see that you return to us as good as possible, and as cultured as possible in good arts. That will be to me, beyond others, a most delightful result. "Westminster: Aug. 1, 1657." The letter to Oldenburg contains matter of more interest:-- "To HENRY OLDENBURG. "I am glad you have arrived safe at Saumur, the goal of your travel, as I believe. You are not mistaken in thinking the news would be very agreeable to me in particular, who both love you for your own merit, and know the cause of your undertaking the journey to be so honourable and praiseworthy. "As to the news you have heard, that so infamous a priest has been called to instruct so illustrious a church, I had rather any one else had heard it in Charon's boat than you in that of Charenton; for it is mightily to be feared that whoever thinks to get to heaven under the auspices of so foul a guide will be a whole world awry in his calculations. Woe to that church (only God avert the omen!) where such ministers please, mainly by tickling the ears,--ministers whom the Church, if she would truly be called _Reformed_, would more fitly cast out than desire to bring in. "In not having given copies of my writings to any one that does not ask for them, you have done well and discreetly, not in my opinion alone, but also in that of Horace:-- "Err not by zeal for us, nor on our books Draw hatred by too vehement care. "A learned man, a friend of mine, spent last summer at Saumur. He wrote to me that the book was in demand in those parts; I sent only one copy; he wrote back that some of the learned to whom he had lent it had been pleased with it hugely. Had I not thought I should be doing a thing agreeable to them, I should have spared you trouble and myself expense. But, "If chance my load of paper galls your back, Off with, it now, rather than in the end Dash down the panniers cursing. "To our Lawrence, as you bade me, I have given greetings in your name. For the rest, there is nothing I should wish you to do or care for more than see that yourself and your pupil get on in good health, and that you return to us as soon as possible with all your wishes fulfilled. "Westminster: Aug. 1, 1657." The books mentioned in the third paragraph as having been sent by Milton to Saumur in Oldenburg's charge must have been copies of the _Defensio Secunda_ and of the _Pro Se Defensio_. The person mentioned with such loathing in the second paragraph was the hero of those performances, Morus. The paragraph requires explanation. For Morus, uncomfortable at Amsterdam, and every day under some fresh discredit there, a splendid escape had at length presented itself. He had received an invitation to be one of the ministers of the Protestant church of Charenton, close to Paris. This church of Charenton was indeed the main Protestant church of Paris itself and the most flourishing representative of French Protestantism generally. For the French law then obliged Protestants to have their places of worship at some distance from the cities and towns in which they resided, and the village of Charenton was the ecclesiastical rendezvous of the chief Protestant nobility and professional men of the capital, some of whom, in the capacity of lay-elders, were associated in the consistory of the church with the ministers or pastors. Of these, in the beginning of 1657, there had been five, all men of celebrity in the French Protestant world--viz. Mestrezat, Faucheur, Drelincourt, Daillé, and Gaches; but the deaths of the two first in April and May of that year had occasioned vacancies, and it was to fill up one of these vacancies that Morus had been invited from Amsterdam. Oldenburg, as we understand, had heard this piece of news, when passing through Paris on his way to Saumur, probably in June. He had heard it, seemingly, on board the Charenton boat--i.e. as we guess, on board the boat plying on the Marne between Paris and Charenton. Hence the punning phraseology of Milton's reply. He would rather that such a piece of news had been heard by anybody on board _Charon's/_ boat than by Oldenburg on board the _Charenton_ wherry. Altogether the idea that Morus should be admitted as one of the pastors of the most important Protestant church in France was, we can see, horrible to him; and he hoped the calamity might yet be averted.--For the time it seemed likely that it would be. There had been ample enough knowledge in Paris of the coil of scandals about the character of Morus; and copies of Milton's two Anti-Morus pamphlets had been in circulation there long before Oldenburg took with him into France his new bundle of them for distribution. Accordingly, though there was a strong party for Morus, disbelieving the scandals, and anxious to have him for the Charenton church on account of his celebrity as a preacher, there were dissentients among the congregation and even in the consistory itself. One hears of Sieur Papillon and Sieur Beauchamp, Parisian advocates, and elders in the church, as heading the opposition to the call. The business of the translation of Morus from Amsterdam was, therefore, no easy one. In any case it would have brought those Protestant church courts of France that had to sanction the admission of Morus at Charenton into communication about him with those courts of the Walloon Church in Holland from whose jurisdiction he was to be removed; and one can imagine the peculiar complications that would arise in a case so extraordinary and involving so much inquiry and discussion. In fact, for more than two years, the business of the translation of Morus from Amsterdam to Paris was to hang notoriously between the Dutch Walloon Synods, who in the main wanted to disgrace and depose him before they had done with him, and the French Provincial Synods, now roused in his behalf, and willing in the main to receive him back into his native country as a man not without his faults, but more sinned against than sinning.[1]--And so for the present (Aug. 1657) Morus was still in his Amsterdam professorship, longing to be in France, but uncertain whether his call thither would hold. How the case ended we shall see in time. Meanwhile it is quite apparent that Milton was not only willing, but anxious, that _his_ influence should be imported into the affair, to turn the scale, if possible, against the man he detested. As he had not heard of the call of Morus to Charenton till the receipt of Oldenburg's letter, his motives originally for despatching a bundle of his Anti-Morus pamphlets into France with Oldenburg can have been only general; but one gathers from his reply to Oldenburg that he thought the pamphlets might now be of use specifically in the business of the proposed translation. Indeed, one can discern a tone of disappointment in Milton's letter with Oldenburg's report of what he had been able to do with the pamphlets hitherto. He might have spared himself the expense, he says, and Oldenburg the trouble. Oldenburg, as we know (Vol. IV. pp. 626-627), had never been very enthusiastic over Milton's onslaughts on Morus, The distribution of the Anti-Morus publications, therefore, may not have been to his taste. Milton seems to hint as much. [Footnote 1: Bayle, Art. Morus; Brace's Life of Morus, 204 et seq.--It was deemed of great importance by the English Royalists that they should be able to report of Charles II., when Paris was his residence, that he attended the church at Charenton. There is a letter to him of April 17, 1653, saying his non-attendance there was "much to his prejudice." (Macray's Cal. of Clarendon Papers, II. 193).] In August 1657 Milton, after three months of total rest, so far as the records show, from the business of writing foreign Letters for the Protector, resumed that business. We have attributed his release from it for so long to the fact that his old assistant MEADOWS was again in town, and available in the Whitehall office, in the interval between his return from Portugal and his departure on his new mission to Denmark; and the coincidence of Milton's resumption of this kind of duty with the precise time of Meadows's preparations for his new absence is at least curious. Though it had been intended that he should set out for Denmark immediately after his appointment to the mission in February, he had been detained for various reasons; and now in August, the great war between Denmark and Sweden having just begun, he was to set out in company with another envoy: viz. MAJOR-GENERAL WILLIAM JEPHSON, whom Cromwell had selected as a suitable person for a contemporary mission, to the King of Sweden (ante p. 312). It will be observed that eight of the following ten Letters of Milton, all written in August or September 1657, and forming his first contribution of letters for the Second Protectorate, relate to the missions of Jephson and Meadows:-- (CI.) To CHARLES X., KING OF SWEDEN, _August_ 1657:--His Highness has heard with no ordinary concern that war has broken out between Sweden and Denmark. [He had received the news August 13: see ante p. 313.] He anticipates great evils to the Protestant cause in consequence. He sends, therefore, the most Honourable WILLIAM JEPHSON, General, and member of his Parliament, as Envoy-extraordinary to his Majesty for negotiation in this and in other matters. He begs a favourable reception for Jephson. (CII.) TO THE COUNT OF OLDENBURG, _August_ 1657:--On his way to the King of Sweden, then in camp near Lubeck, JEPHSON would have to pass through several of the German states, and first of all through the territories of this old and assured friend of the English Commonwealth and of the Protector (see Vol. IV. pp. 424, 480-1, 527, 635-6). Cromwell, therefore, introduces JEPHSON, and requests all furtherance for him. (CIII.) TO THE CONSULS AND SENATE OF BREMEN, _August_ 1657:--Also to introduce and recommend JEPHSON; who, on his route from Oldenburg eastwards, would pass through Bremen. (CIV.) TO THE CONSULS AND SENATE OF HAMBURG, _August_ 1657:--Still requesting attention to JEPHSON on his transit. (CV.) TO THE CONSULS AND SENATE OF LUBECK, _August_ 1657:--Still recommending JEPHSON; who, at Lubeck, would be near his destination, the camp of Charles Gustavus. (CVI.) TO FREDERICK-WILLIAM, MARQUIS OF BRANDENBURG, _August_ 1657:--At first this Prince, better known now as "The Great Elector, Friedrich-Wilhelm of Prussia," had been on the side of Sweden against Poland; and, in conjunction with Charles Gustavus, he had fought that great Battle of Warsaw (July 1656) which had nearly ruined the Polish King, John Casimir. Having been detached from his alliance with Sweden, however, in a manner already explained (ante p. 313), he had now a very difficult part to play in the Swedish-Polish-German-Danish entanglement.--As Jephson had instructions to treat with this important German Prince, as well as with the King of Sweden, Cromwell begs leave to introduce him formally. "The singular worth of your Highness both in peace and in war, and the greatness and constancy of your spirit, being already so famed over the whole world that almost all neighbouring Princes are eager for your friendship, and no one could desire for himself a more faithful and constant friend and ally, in order that you may understand that we also are in the number of those that have the highest and strongest opinion of your remarkable services to the Christian Commonweal, we have sent to you the most Honourable WILLIAM Jephson," &c.: so the note opens; and the rest is a mere request that the Elector will hear what Jephson has to say.--The relations between the Elector and the Protector had hitherto been rather indefinite, if not cool; and hence perhaps the highly complimentary strain of this letter. (CVII.) TO THE CONSULS AND SENATE OF HAMBURG, _August_ 1657:--All the foregoing, for Jephson, must have been written between August 13, when the news of the proclamation of war between Sweden and Denmark reached London, and August 29, when Jephson set out on his mission. MEADOWS left London, on his distinct mission, two days afterwards.[1] His route was not to be quite the same as Jephson's; but he also was to pass through Hamburg. He is therefore recommended separately, by this note, to the authorities of that city. His letters of credence to the King of Denmark had, doubtless, already been made out,--possibly by himself. They are not among Milton's State-letters. [Footnote 1: Whitlocke, under Aug. 1657.] (CVIII.) To M. DE BORDEAUX, AMBASSADOR EXTRAORDINARY FOR THE FRENCH KING, _August_ 1657:--There has been presented to the Lord Protector a petition from Samuel Dawson, John Campsie, and John Niven, merchants of Londonderry, stating that, shortly after the Treaty with France in 1655, a ship of theirs called _The Speedwell_ ("name of better omen than the event proved"), the master of which was John Ker, had been seized, on her return voyage from Bordeaux to Derry, by two armed vessels of Brest, taken into Brest harbour, and sold there with her cargo. The damages altogether are valued at £2,500. The petitioners have not been able to obtain redress in France. The matter has been referred by the Protector to his Council. They find that the petitioners have a just right either to the restitution of their ship and cargo or to compensation in money. "I therefore request of your Excellency, and even request it in the name of the most Serene Lord Protector, that you will endeavour your utmost, and join also the authority of your office to your endeavours, that as soon as possible one or other be done." The wording shows that the letter was not signed by the Protector himself, but only by Lawrence as President of the Council. It was probably not in rule for the Protector personally to write to an Ambassador in such a case. (CIX.) TO THE GRAND-DUKE OF TUSCANY, _Sept._ 1657:--A letter of rather peculiar tenor. A William Ellis, master of a ship called _The Little Lewis_, had been hired at Alexandria by the Pasha of Memphis, to carry rice, sugar, and coffee, either to Constantinople or Smyrna, for the use of the Sultan himself; instead of which the rascal, giving the Turkish fleet the slip, had gone into Leghorn, where he was living on his booty. "The act is one of very dangerous example, inasmuch as it throws discredit on the Christian name and exposes to the risk of robbery the fortunes of merchants living under the Turk." The Grand-Duke is therefore requested to be so good as to arrest Ellis, keep him in custody, and see to the safety of the ship and cargo till they are restored to the Sultan. (CX.) TO THE DUKE OF SAVOY (undated)[1]:--This letter to the prince on whom the Piedmontese massacre has conferred such dark celebrity is on very innocent and ordinary business. The owners of a London ship, called The Welcome, Henry Martin master, have Informed his Highness that, on her way to Genoa and Leghorn, she was seized by a French vessel of forty-six guns having letters of marque from the Duke, and carried into his port of Villafranca. The cargo is estimated at £25,000. Will the Duke see that ship and cargo are restored to the owners, with damages? He may expect like justice in any similar case in which he may have to apply to his Highness. [Footnote 1: Not in Printed Collection nor in Phillips; but in the Skinner Transcript as No. 120 with the title _Duci Subaudiæ_, and printed thence by Mr. Hamilton in his _Milton Papers_ (pp. 11-12). No date is given in the Skinner Transcript; and the insertion of the letter here is a mere guess. The place where it occurs in the Skinner Transcript suggests that it came rather late in the Protectorate, perhaps even after the present point. The years 1656 and 1657 seem the likeliest.] (CXI.) TO THE MARQUIS OF BRANDENBURG, _Sept._ 1657:--This is an important letter. "By our last letter to your Highness," it begins, "either already delivered or soon to be delivered by our agent WILLIAM JEPHSON, we have made you aware of the legation intrusted to him; and we could not but there make some mention of your high qualities and signification of our goodwill towards you. Lest, however, we should seem only cursorily to have touched on your superlative services in the Protestant cause, celebrated so highly in universal discourse, we have thought it fit to resume that subject, and to offer you our respects, not indeed more willingly or with greater devotion, but yet somewhat more at large. And justly so, when news is brought to our ears every day that your faith and constancy, though tempted by all kinds of intrigues, solicited by all contrivances, yet cannot by any means be shaken, or diverted from the friendship of the brave King your ally,--and that too when the affairs of the Swedes are in such a posture that, in preserving their alliance, it is manifest your Highness is led rather by regard to the common cause of the Reformed Religion than by your own interests; when we know too that, though surrounded on all sides, and all but besieged, either by hidden or nearly imminent enemies, you yet, with your valiant but far from large forces, stand out with such firmness and strength of mind, such counsel and prowess of generalship, that the sum and weight of the whole business seems to rest, and the issue of this war to depend, mainly on your will." The Protector goes on to say that, in such circumstances, he would consider it unworthy of himself not to testify in a special manner his sympathy with the Elector and regard for him. He apologizes for delay hitherto in treating with the Elector's agent in London, JOHN FREDERICK SCHLEZER, on the matters about which he had been sent; and he closes with fervent good wishes.--Evidently, the recognition of the importance of the Elector, and anxiety as to the part he might take in the war now involving Sweden, Denmark, Poland, and part of Germany, had been growing stronger in Cromwell's mind within the last few weeks. From the language of the letter one would infer either that Cromwell did not yet fully know of that treaty of Nov. 1656 by which the Polish King had bought off the Elector from the Swedish alliance by ceding to him the full sovereignty of East Prussia, or else that since then the Elector had been oscillating back to the alliance.--SCHLEZER had been in London since 1655, and had lodged at Hartlib's house in the end of that year.[1] [Footnote 1: Letter of Hartlib's in Worthington's Diary and Correspondence, edited by Crossley (I, 66).] Ten Latin State-letters nearly all at once, implying as they do consultations with Thurloe, if not also interviews with the Protector and the Council, argue a pretty considerable demand upon Milton at this date for help again in the Foreign Secretaryship. It would seem, however, that it had occurred to the Protector and the Council that they were again troubling Mr. Milton too much or left too dependent on him, and that, with the increase of foreign business now in prospect in consequence of the Swedo-Danish war and its complications, it would be well to have an assistant to him, such as Meadows had been. Accordingly, at a meeting of the Council on Tuesday Sept. 8, 1657, Cromwell himself present, with Lawrence, Fleetwood, Lord Lisle, Strickland, Pickering, Sydenham, Wolseley, and Thurloe, there was this minute: "Ordered by his Highness the Lord Protector, by and with the advice of the Council, that MR. STERRY do, in the absence of Mr. Philip Meadows, officiate in the employment of Mr. Meadows under Mr. Secretary [Thurloe], and that a salary of 200 merks _per annum_ be allowed him for the same."[1] Whether this Mr. Sterry was the preacher Mr. Peter Sterry, already employed and salaried as one of the Chaplains to the Council, or only a relative of his, I have not ascertained; but it is of the less consequence because the appointment did not take effect. The person actually appointed was MR. ANDREW MARVELL at last. We say "at last," for had he not been recommended for the precise post by Milton four years and a half before under the Rump Government? Milton may have helped now to bring him in, or it may have been done by Oliver himself in recognition of Marvell's merits in his tutorship of young Dutton and of his Latin and English Oliverian verses. There seems to be no record of Marvell's appointment in the Order Books; but he tells us himself it was in the year 1657. "As to myself," he wrote in 1672, "I never had any, not the remotest, relation to public matters, nor correspondence with the persons then predominant, until the year 1657, when indeed I entered into an employment for which I was not altogether improper." When Marvell wrote this, he was oblivious of some particulars; for, though it is true that he was in no public employment under the Protectorate till 1657, it can hardly be said that he had not "the remotest relation" till then to public matters, nor any "correspondence with the persons then predominant." Enough for us that, from the year he specifies, and precisely from September in that year, he was Milton's colleague in the Foreign or Latin Secretaryship. "_Colleague_" we may call him, for his salary was to be £200 a year (not 200 merks, as had been proposed for Sterry), the same as Milton's was, and the same as Meadows's had been; and yet not _quite_ "colleague," inasmuch as Milton's £200 a year was a life-pension, and also inasmuch as, in stepping into Meadows's place, Marvell became one of Thurloe's subordinates in the office, while something of the original honorary independence of the Foreign Secretaryship still encircled Milton.--Just as Marvell had for some time been wistful after a place in the Council Office, suitable for a scholar and Latinist, so there was another person now in the same condition of outside waiting and occasional looking-in. "Received then of the Right honble. Mr. Secretary Thurloe the sume of fifty pounds: £50: _by mee_, JOHN DRIDEN" is a receipt, of date "19 October 1657," among Thurloe's papers in the Record Office--the words "_by mee_, JOHN DRIDEN" in a neat slant hand, different from the body of the receipt. The poet Dryden, it may be remembered, was the cousin and client of Sir Gilbert Pickering, one of the most important men in the Council and one of the most strongly Oliverian. The poet left Cambridge, his biographers tell us, without his M.A. degree, "about the middle of 1657," and it was a taunt against him afterwards that he had begun his London life as "clerk" to Sir Gilbert. As he cannot have got the £50 from Thurloe for nothing, the probability is that he had been employed, through Sir Gilbert, to do some clerkly or literary work for the Council. No harm, at all events, in remembering the ages at this date of the three men of letters thus linked to the Protectorate at its centre. Milton was in his forty-ninth year, Marvell in his thirty-eighth, Dryden in his twenty-seventh.[2] [Footnote 1: Council Order Books of date.] [Footnote 2: Marvell's _Rehearsal Transprosed_ (in Mr. Grosart's edition of Marvell's Prose Works), I. 322; Receipt in Record Office as quoted; Christie's Memoir of Dryden prefixed to Globe edition of Dryden's Poetical Works.--That Marvell was appointed Milton's colleague or assistant precisely in September 1657 is proved by the fact that his first quarter's salary appears in certain accounts as due in the following December (see Thurloe, VII. 487).] On the day on which Dryden received his fifty pounds from Thurloe there was this entry in the birth-registers of the parish of St. Margaret's, Westminster: "October 19, 1657, _Katherin Milton, d. to John, Esq., by Katherin_." The entry may be still read in the book, with these words appended in an old hand some time afterwards: "_This is Milton, Oliver's Secretary_." It is the record of the birth of a daughter to Milton by his second wife, Katharine Woodcock, in the twelfth month of their marriage. The little incident reminds us at this point of the domestic life in Petty France; but it need not delay us. We proceed with the Secretaryship. Whatever share of the regular work of the Foreign Department may have been now allotted to Marvell, an occasional letter was still required from Milton. The following Latin dispatches were written by him between September 1657 and Jan. 1657-8, when the Protector's Second Parliament reassembled for its second session, as a Parliament of two Houses:-- (CXII.) TO M. DE BORDEAUX, THE FRENCH AMBASSADOR, _Oct._ 1657:--This is not in the Protector's name, but in that of the President of the Council. It is about the case of a Luke Lucy (_Lucas Lucius_) a London merchant. A ship of his, called _The Mary_, bound from Ireland to Bayonne, had been driven by tempest into the port of St. Jean de Luz, seized there at the suit of one Martin de Lazon, and only discharged on security given to abide a trial at law of this person's claim. Now, his claim was preposterous. It was founded on an alleged loss of money as far back as 1642 by the seizure by the English Parliament of goods on board a ship called _The Santa Clara_. He was not the owner of the goods, but only agent, with a partner of his, called Antonio Fernandez, for the real owners; there had been a quarrel between the partners; and the Parliament had stopped the goods till it should be decided by law who ought to have them. Fernandez was willing to try the action in the English Courts; but De Lauzon had made no appearance there. And now De Lauzon had hit on the extraordinary expedient of seizing Lucy's ship and dragging the totally innocent Lucy into an action in the French Courts. All which having been represented to the Protector by Lucy's petition, it is begged that De Lauzon may be told he must go another way to work. (CXIII.) TO THE DOGE AND SENATE OF VENICE, _Oct._ 1657:--A rather long letter, and not uninteresting. First the Protector congratulates the Venetians on their many victories over the Turks, not only because of the advantage thence to the Venetian State, but also because of the tendency of such successes to "the liberation of all Christians under Turkish servitude." But, under cover of this congratulation, he calls to their attention again the case of a certain brave ship-captain, Thomas Galilei (_Thomam Galileum_). He had, some five years ago, done gallant service for the Venetians in his ship called _The Relief_, fighting alone with a whole fleet of Turkish galleys and making great havoc among them, till, his own ship having caught fire, he had been taken and carried away as a slave. For five years he had been in most miserable captivity, unable to ransom himself because he had no property in the world besides what might be owing to him for his ship and services by the Venetian Government. He had an old father still alive, "full of grief and tears which have moved Us exceedingly"; and this old man begs, and His Highness begs, that the Doge and Senate will arrange for the immediate release of the captive. They must have taken many Turkish prisoners in their late victories, and it is understood that those who detain the captive are willing to exchange him for any Turk of equal value. Also his Highness hopes the Doge and Senate will pay at once to the old man whatever may be due to his captive son. This, his Highness believes, had been arranged for after his former application on the subject; but probably, in the multiplicity of business, the matter had been overlooked. May the Republic of Venice long flourish, and God grant them victories over the Turks to the very end! (CXIV.) TO THE HIGH AND MIGHTY LORDS, THE STATES GENERAL OF THE UNITED PROVINCES, _Nov._ 1657:--This is a letter of commendation of the Dutch Ambassador William Nieuport on his temporary return home on private affairs (see ante p. 312). Through the "several years" of His Highness's acquaintance with him, he had found him of "such fidelity, vigilance, prudence, and justice, in the discharge of his office" that he could not desire a better Ambassador, or believe their High Mightinesses could find a better one. He cannot take leave of him, though but for a short time, without saying as much. Throughout his embassy, his aim had been, "without deceit or dissimulation," to preserve the peace and friendship that had been established; and, so long as he should be Dutch Ambassador in London, his Highness did not see "what occasion of offence or scruple could rankle or sprout up" between the two States. At the present juncture he should regret his departure the more if he were not assured that no man would better represent to their High Mightinesses the Protector's goodwill to them and the condition of things generally. "May God, for His own glory and the defence of the Orthodox Church, grant prosperity to your affairs and perpetuity to our friendship!"--In writing this letter, Milton must have remembered Nieuport's interference in behalf of Morus, for the suppression at the last moment, if possible, of the _Defensio Secunda_. He had not quite relished that interference, or the manner of it. See Vol. IV, pp. 631-633, and ante p. 202-203. (CXV.) TO THEIR HIGH MIGHTINESSES THE STATES GENERAL OF THE UNITED PROVINCES, _Dec._ 1657:--A fit sequel to the foregoing, for it is the Letter Credential to GEORGE DOWNING, just selected to be his Highness's Resident at the Hague, and so the counterpart of Nieuport (ante p. 312). "GEORGE DOWNING," it begins, "a gentleman of rank, has been for a long time now, by experience of him in many and various transactions, recognised and known by Us as of the highest fidelity, probity, and ability." He is, accordingly, recommended in the usual manner; and there is intimation, though not in language so strong as that of Lockhart's credentials to France, that "communications" with him will be the same as with his Highness personally. "Communications" only this case, Downing not being a plenipotentiary like Lockhart.[1] [Footnote 1: Downing's father was Emanuel Downing, a settler in Massachusetts, and his mother was a sister of the celebrated Governor John Winthrop. Though born in this country (in or near Dublin in 1623), their son had grown up in New England, much under the charge of Hugh Peters, who was related to him. He graduated at Harvard University in 1642. Thence he had come to England, and, from being a preacher in Okey's regiment of dragoons in the New Model (1645), had passed gradually into other employments. He had been Scoutmaster-General to the Army in Scotland (1653), but had been attached since 1655 to Thurloe's office, and employed, as we have seen, in diplomatic missions. His appointment to be Cromwell's minister at the Hague was a great promotion. His salary in the post was to be £1100 a year, worth nearly £4000 a year now. (Sibley's _Biographical Sketches of Graduates of Harvard University_. I. 28-53, with corrections at p. 583.)] (CXVI.) TO THE PROVINCIAL STATES OF HOLLAND, _Dec._ 1657:--While recommending DOWNING to the States General, his Highness cannot refrain from recommending him also specially to the States of Holland, self-governed as they are internally, and "so important a part of the United Provinces" besides. (CXVII.) TO FERDINAND, GRAND DUKE OF TUSCANY, _Dec._ 1657:--The Protector's last letter to the Grand Duke (ante 372) had produced immediate effect. The rascally Englishman Ellis, who, to the discredit of English and Christian good faith, had run off with the cargo of rice, sugar, and coffee, belonging to the Sultan of Turkey, had been arrested in Leghorn. So the Grand Duke had informed Cromwell in a letter dated Nov. 10. The present is a reply to that letter, and is very characteristic. "We give you thanks for this good office; and now we make this farther request,--that, as soon as the merchants have undertaken that satisfaction shall be made to the, Turks, the said Master be liberated from custody, and the ship and her lading be forthwith let off, lest perchance we should seem to have made more account of the Turks than of our own citizens. Meanwhile we relish so agreeably your Highness's singular, conspicuous, and most acceptable good-will towards us that we should not refuse the brand of ingratitude if we did not eagerly desire a speedy opportunity of gratifying you in return by the like promptitude, by means of which we might prove to you in very deed our readiness also in returning good offices. Your Highness's most affectionate OLIVER." To the same month as the last three of these Latin State-Letters belong two more of Milton's Latin Familiar Epistles. The persons to whom they are addressed are already known to us: "To the very distinguished MR. HENRY DE BRASS. "Having been hindered these days past by some occupations, illustrious Sir, I reply later than I meant. For I meant to do so all the more speedily because I saw that your present letter, full of learning as it is, did not so much leave me room for suggesting anything to you (a thing which you ask of me, I believe, out of compliment to me, not for your own need) as for simple congratulation. I congratulate myself especially on my good fortune in having, as it appears, so suitably explained Sallust's meaning, and you on your so careful perusal of that most wise author with so much benefit from the same. Respecting him I would venture to make the same assertion to you as Quintilian made respecting Cicero,--that a man may know himself no mean proficient in the business of History who enjoys his Sallust. As for that precept of Aristotle's in the Third Book of his Rhetoric [Chap. XVII] which you would like explained--'Use is to be made of maxims both in the narrative of a case and in the pleading, for it has a moral effect'--I see not what it has in it that much needs explanation: only that the _narration_ and the _pleading_ (which last is usually also called the _proof_) are here understood to be such as the Orator uses, not the Historian; for the parts of the Orator and the Historian are different whether they narrate or prove, just as the Arts themselves are different. What is suitable for the Historian you will have learnt more correctly from the ancient authors, Polybius, the Halicarnassian, Diodorus, Cicero, Lucian, and many others, who have handed down certain stray precepts concerning that subject. For me, I wish you heartily all happiness in your studies and travels, and success worthy of the spirit and diligence which I see you employ on everything of high excellence. Farewell. "Westminster: December 16, 1657." "To the highly accomplished PETER HEIMBACH. "I have received your letter dated the Hague. Dec. 18 [foreign reckoning: the English would be Dec. 8], which, as I see it concerns your interests, I have thought I ought to answer on the very day it has reached me. After thanking me for I know not what favours of mine,--which, as one who desires everything good for you, I would were really of any consideration at all,--you ask me to recommend you, through Lord Lawrence, to our Minister appointed for Holland [DOWNING, whose credential letters Milton had drawn up only a day or two before]. I really regret that this is not in my power, both because of my very few intimacies with the men of influence, almost shut up at home as I am, and as I prefer to be (_propter paucissimas familiaritates meas cum gratiosis, qui domi fere, idque libenter, me contineo_), and also because I believe the gentleman is now embarking and on his way, and has with him in his company the person he wishes to be his Secretary--the very office about him you seek. But the post is this instant going, Farewell. "Westminster: December 18, 1657." Too much is not to be made of certain phrases in this note. Milton was declining, in as civil terms as possible, a request which might perhaps have been troublesome even if the Secretaryship to Mr. Downing had been vacant; and, though it would have been enough, as far as Heimbach's present application was concerned, to tell him that Mr. Downing was already provided, the other reason may have been thrown in by way of discouragement of such applications in future. We have had proof that Milton liked Heimbach; but we do not know what estimate he had formed of Heimbach's abilities. Still, any words used by Milton about himself are always to be taken as in correspondence with fact; and hence we are to suppose that, at the time he wrote, he did keep himself as much aloof as possible from the magnates of the Council, performing the pieces of work required of him in his own house, rather than making them occasions for visits and colloquies. His old and intimate friend Fleetwood, and his friend Lord President Lawrence, with Desborough, Pickering, Strickland, Montague, and Sydenham, all of whom had been mentioned by him with more or less of personal regard in the _Defensio Secunda_ in 1654, were still Councillors, and formed indeed more than half the Council; but his intercourse with some of these individually may have been less since his blindness. Then, of the rest, Thurloe was the real man of influence, the real _gratiosus_ who could carry or set aside a request like Heimbach's; and, though Milton's communications with Thurloe must necessarily have been more frequent than with any other person of the Council, one has an indefinable impression that Thurloe had never taken cordially to Milton or Milton to Thurloe. At the date of Milton's note to Heimbach, too, _gratiosi_ were becoming plentiful all round the Council. Cromwell's sixty-three writs for the new Upper House had gone out, or were going out, and in a week or two many more "lords" were to be seen walking in couples in any street in Westminster. Milton, in _his_ quiet retreat there, may have had something of all this in his mind when he wrote to young Mr. Heimbach. The short second session of the Parliament, with its difficult experiment of the two Houses once more, and the angry dispute of the Commons whether the name of "Lords" _should_ be allowed to the Other House, had come and gone (Jan. 20--Feb. 4, 1657-8), and of Milton or his thoughts and doings through that crisis we have no trace whatever. Our next glimpse of him is just after the moment of the abrupt dissolution of the Parliament, when Cromwell was addressing himself again, single-handed, to the task of grappling with the double danger of anarchy within and a threatened invasion from without. The glimpse is a very sad one. "_Feb._ 10, 1657-8, _Mrs. Katherin Milton_," and again "_March_, 20, 1657-8, _Mrs. Katherin Milton_," are two entries, within six weeks of each other, in the burial registers of St, Margaret's, Westminster. They are the records of the deaths of Milton's second wife and the little girl she had borne him only in October last. Which entry designates the mother and which, the child we should not know from the entries themselves; but a sentence in Phillips's memoir of his uncle settles the point. "By his second wife; Katharine, the daughter of Captain Woodcock of Hackney," says Phillips, "he had only one daughter, of which the mother, the first year after her marriage, died in childbed, and the child also within a month after." The first entry, therefore, is for the mother, and the second for the child. The mother died exactly at the time of the dissolution of the Parliament, and not in child-birth itself, but nearly four months after child-birth; and the little orphan, outliving the mother a short while, died at the age of five months. And so Milton was again left a widower, with his three daughters by the first marriage, the eldest in her twelfth year. His private life, for eighteen years now, had certainly not been a happy one; but this death of his second wife seems to have been remembered by him ever afterwards with deep and peculiar sorrow. She had been to him during the short fifteen months of their union, all that he had thought saintlike and womanly, very sympathetic with himself, and maintaining such peace and order in his household as had not been there till she entered it. And now once more it was a dark void, in which he must grope on, and in which things must happen as they would. Small comfort at this time can Milton have had from either of his nephews. Not that they had openly separated themselves from him, or even ceased to be deferential to him and proud of the relationship, but that they had more and more gone into those courses of literary Bohemianism those habits of mere facetious hack-work and balderdash, which he must have noted of late as an increasing and very ominous form of protest among the clever young Londoners against Puritanism and its belongings. The _Satyr against Hypocrites_ by his younger nephew in 1655 had been, in reality, an Anti-Puritan and Anti-Miltonic production; and, since the censure of that younger nephew by the Council in 1656 for his share in _The Sportive Wit or Muses' Merriment_, he had naturally stumbled farther and farther in the same direction. By the year 1658, I should say, John Phillips had entirely given up his uncle's political principles, and was known among his tavern-comrades as an Anti-Oliverian. We have no express publications in his name of this date, but he seems to have been scribbling anonymously. Of the literary industry of his more sedate and likeable elder brother, Edward, there is authentic evidence. _A New World of Words, or a General Dictionary, containing the Terms, Etymologies, Definitions, and Perfect Interpretations, of the proper Significations of hard English words throughout the Arts and Sciences_: such is the title of a folio volume published by him in 1657, and for the purposes of which he was afterwards accused of having plagiarized largely from the _Glossographia_ of one Thomas Blount, published in the preceding year. In this piece of labour, which was doubtless a bookseller's commission, he must have had, the question of plagiarism apart, his uncle's thorough good-will; but it cannot have been the same with his _Mysteries of Love and Eloquence: or the Arts of Wooing and Complimenting, as they are managed in the Spring Garden, Hide Park, the New Exchange, and other eminent Places_. That performance, which appeared in August 1658, with a Preface "To the Youthful Gentry," and which must have been in progress at our present date, was much more in the vein of his brother John, and indeed was done to the order of Nathaniel Brooke, the bookseller who had published John's _Satyr against Hypocrites_, and also the more questionable _Sportive Wit or the Muses' Merriment_. "The book," says Godwin, "is put together with conspicuous ingenuity and profligacy, and is entitled to no insignificant rank among the multifarious productions which were at that time issued from the press to debauch the manners of the nation and bring back the King. It consists of imaginary conversations and forms of address for conversation, poems, models of letters, questions and answers, an Art of Logic with examples from the poets, and various instructions and helps to the lover for the composition of his verses; and, if we could overlook the gross provocations to libertinism and vice which everywhere occur in the book, it might be mentioned as no unentertaining illustration of the manners of the men of wit and gallantry in the time when it was published." To Godwin's description we may add that the book includes a Rhyming Dictionary, "useful for that pleasing pastime called Crambo," also a collection of parlour-games, and a number of other clever things. The poems and songs interspersed with the prose were mostly old ones reprinted, some of them chosen with fine taste; but one or two were Phillips's own. Of the model phrases or set expressions which form one of the prose parts of the volume, by way of instruction in the language of gallantry and courtship, specimens are these,--"With your ambrosiac kisses bathe my lips;" "You are a white enchantress, lady, and can enchain me with a smile;" "Midnight would blush at this;" "You walk in artificial clouds and bathe your silken limbs in wanton dalliance." What could Milton do, so far as such a production came within his knowledge, but shake his head and mingle smiles with a frown? Clearly the elder nephew too had slipped the Miltonic restraints. He had not lapsed, however, so decidedly as his brother; and we may partly retract in his case the statement that Milton could have little comfort from him. He still went and came about Milton, very attentively.[1] [Footnote 1: Godwin's _Lives of the Phillipses_ (1815), 49-57, and 139-140; Wood's _Ath._ IV. 760-769. I have not myself examined Phillips's _New World of Words_; but I have looked at the Thomason copy of his _Mysteries of Love and Eloquence_, where the date of publication is given. Perhaps Godwin is a little too severe in his account of it.] During the month immediately preceding his wife's death, and the two months following it, there is a break in the series of Milton's State-Letters for Cromwell. But he resumed the familiar occupation on the 30th of March, 1658; and thenceforward to the end of the Protectorate the series is again pretty continuous. Indeed, of this period of Milton's life we know little more than may be inferred from, or associated with, the following morsels of his continued Secretaryship:-- (CXVIII.) To CHARLES X., KING OF SWEDEN, _March_ 30, 1658:--The occasion of this letter was the receipt of news at last of the climax of the Swedish-Danish war in a great triumph of the Swedes. "In January 1658 Karl Gustav marches his army, horse, foot, and artillery, to the amount of twenty thousand, across the Baltic ice, and takes an island without shipping,--Island of Fünen, across the Little Belt; three miles of ice; and a part of the sea _open_, which has to be crossed on planks. Nay, forward from Fünen, when he is once there, he achieves ten whole miles more of ice; and takes Zealand itself--to the wonder of mankind." Such, in Mr. Carlyle's summary (_History of Frederick the Great, i. 223, edit._ 1869), was the feat of the Swedish warrior against his Danish enemy. It was followed almost immediately by a Peace between the two Powers, called _The Peace of Roeskilde_, by which Sweden acquired certain territories from Denmark, but very generous terms on the whole were granted to the Danes. Of all this there had been news to Cromwell, not only from his own correspondents, but also in an express letter from Charles Gustavus; and it is to this letter that Milton now replies in Cromwell's name:--"Most serene and potent King, most invincible Friend and Ally,--The Letter of your Majesty, dated from the Camp in Zealand, Feb. 21, has brought Us all at once many reasons why, both privately on our own account, and on account of the whole Christian Commonwealth, we should be affected by no ordinary joy. In the first place, because the King of Denmark (made your enemy, I believe, not by his own will or interests, but by the arts of the common foes) has been, by your sudden advent into the heart of his kingdom, and without much bloodshed, reduced to such a pass that he has at length, as was really the fact, judged peace more advantageous to him than the war undertaken against you. Next, because, when he thought he could in no way sooner obtain such a peace than by using Our help long ago offered him for a conciliation, your Majesty, on the prayer merely of the letters of our Envoy, deigned to show, by such an easy grant of peace, how much value you attached to Our friendship and interposed good-will, and chose that it should be My office in particular, in this pious transaction, to be myself nearly the sole adviser and author of a Peace which is speedily to be, as I hope, so salutary to Protestant interests. For, whereas the enemies of Religion despaired of being able to break your combined strength otherwise than by engaging you against each other, they will now have cause, as I hope, thoroughly to fear that this unlooked-for conjunction of your arms and hearts will turn into destruction for themselves, the kindlers of this war. Do you, meanwhile, most brave King, go on and prosper in your conspicuous valour, and bring it to pass that, such good fortune as the enemies of the Church have lately admired in your exploits and course of victories against the King now your ally, the same they may feel once more, with God's help, in their own crushing overthrow."[1] From this letter it will be seen that the missions of Meadows and Jephson, but especially that of Meadows, had been of use. The immediate object of the missions, a reconciliation of Sweden and Denmark, had been accomplished; and what remained farther was, as Cromwell hints, the association of the other Continental Protestant powers with these two Scandinavian kingdoms in a league against Austria and Spain. How exactly this idea accorded with reflective Protestant sentiment everywhere appears from a few sentences in one of Baillie's letters, commenting on the very occurrences that occasioned Cromwell's present despatch. "I am glad," writes Baillie, "that by a Peace, however extorted, the Swedes are free to take course with other enemies. I wish Brandenburg may return to his old posture, and not draw on himself next the Swedish armies; which the Lord forbid! for, after Sweden, we love Brandenburg next best.... Our wish is that the Muscoviter, for reforming of his churches, civilizing of his people, and doing some good upon the Turks and Tartars, were more straitly allied with Sweden, Brandenburg, the Transylvanian, and other Protestant princes. We should rejoice if, on this too good a quarrel against the Austrians ... he [Charles Gustavus] would turn his victorious army upon them and their associates, with the assistance of France and a good Dutch league. It seems no hard matter to get the Imperial Crown and turn the Ecclesiastic Princes into Secular Protestants."[2] Very much in the direction of Baillie's hopes were Cromwell's envoys, Meadows, Jephson, Bradshaw, and Downing, to labour for the next few months. Of their journeys hither and thither, their expectations and disappointments, there are glimpses in successive letters in _Thurloe_; from which also it appears that Meadows and Downing gave most satisfaction, and that, after a while, Jephson was relieved of the main business of the Swedish mission, and that mission was conjoined with the Danish in the hands of Meadows (Thurloe, VII. 63-64). [Footnote 1: The translation of this letter by Phillips is unusually careless. It jumbles the tenses in such a manner that the Peace between Sweden and Denmark does not seem to have yet taken place, but only to be hoped for by Cromwell. In fact, Phillips's translation robs the letter of all its meaning and interest.] [Footnote 2: Baillie, III. 371.] (CXIX.) TO THE GRAND-DUKE OF TUSCANY, _April_ 7, 1658:--A John Hosier, master of a ship called _The Lady_, had been swindled in April 1656 by an Italian named Guiseppe Armani, who has moreover possessed himself fraudulently of 6000 pieces of eight belonging to one Thomas Clutterbuck. There is a suit against Armani at Leghorn; but Hosier, after going to great expenses, is deterred from appearing there by threats of personal violence. "We therefore request your Highness both to relieve this oppressed man, and also to restrain the insolence of his adversary, according to your accustomed justice." (CXX.) TO LOUIS XIV. OF FRANCE, _May_ 26, 1658:[1]--This is a very momentous letter. It is Cromwell's appeal to the French King in behalf once more of the poor Piedmontese Protestants:--"Most serene and potent King, most august Friend and Ally,--Your Majesty may remember that, at the time when there was treaty between us for the renewing of our League [April 1655]--the highly auspicious nature of which transaction is now testified by many resulting advantages to both nations and much damage to the common enemy--there fell out that miserable massacre of the People of the Valleys, whose cause, forsaken on all hands and sorely beset, we commended, with all ardour of heart and commiseration, to your pity and protection. Nor do we think that your Majesty, of yourself, was wanting in a duty so pious, nay so human, in as far as, by your authority or by the respect due to your person, you could prevail with the Duke of Savoy. We, certainly, and many other Princes and States, were not wanting, in the matter of embassies, letters, interposed entreaties, on the subject. After a most bloody slaughter of both sexes and of every age, Peace was at last granted, or rather a kind of more guarded hostility clothed with the name of Peace: the conditions of the Peace were settled in your town of Pignerol--hard conditions indeed, but in which wretched and poor people that had suffered all that was dreadful and brutal might easily acquiesce, if only, hard and unjust as they are, they were to be stood to. They are _not_ stood to; for the promise of each and all of them is eluded and violated by false interpretation and various asides: many are thrown out of their ancient abodes; many are interdicted from their native religion; new tributes are exacted; a new citadel is hung over their heads, whence soldiers frequently break forth, plundering or murdering all they meet: in addition to all which, new forces of late are secretly being got ready against them, and those among them who profess the Roman Religion have warning orders to remove for a time, so that all things now again seem to point to an exterminating onslaught on those most miserable creatures who were left over from that last butchery. That you will not allow this to be done I beseech and conjure you, Most Christian King, by that right hand of yours which sealed alliance and friendship with Us, by that most sacred ornament of the title of _Most Christian_; that you will not permit such a license of furious raging, I do not say to any prince (for such furious raging cannot possibly come upon any prince, much less upon the tender age of that Prince, or into the womanly mind of his Mother), but to those most holy assassins, who, while they profess themselves the servants and imitators of our Saviour Christ, Him who came into this world to save sinners, abuse His most meek name and institutes for savage slaughters of innocents. Snatch, thou who art able, and who in such a towering station art worthy to be able, so many suppliants of yours from the hands of homicides, who, drunk with gore recently, thirst for blood again, and consider it most advisable for themselves to lay at the doors of princes the odium of their own cruelty. Do not thou, while thou reignest, suffer thy titles or the territories of thy realm, or the most merciful Gospel of Christ, to be defiled by that scandal. Remember that these very Vaudois submitted themselves to your grandfather Henry, that great favourer of Protestants, when the victorious Lesdiguières, through those parts where there is even yet the most convenient passage into Italy, pursued the yielding Savoyard across the Alps. The instrument of that Surrender is yet extant among the Public Acts of your Kingdom; in which, among other things, it is expressly provided and precautioned that the Vaudois should thenceforth be handed over to no one unless with those same conditions on which, by that instrument, your most invincible grandfather received them into his protection. This protection the suppliants now implore; as pledged by the grandfather, they demand it from you, the grandson. They would prefer and desire to be your subjects rather than his to whom they now belong, even by some exchange, if that could be managed; but, if that cannot be managed, to be yours at least in as far as your patronage, pity, and shelter can make them so. There are even reasons of state which might exhort you not to drive back Vaudois fleeing to you for refuge; but I would not, such a great King as you are, think of you as moved to the defence of those lying under calamity by other considerations than the promise of your ancestors, piety, and kingly benignity and greatness of soul. So the praise and glory of a most beautiful deed will be yours unalloyed and entire, and through all your life you will find the Father of Mercy, and His Son, King Christ, whose name and doctrine you will have vindicated from a wicked atrocity, more favouring and propitious to yourself. May God Almighty, for His own glory, the safeguard of so many innocent Christian human beings, and your true honour, dispose your Majesty to this resolution!" The letter was sent to Ambassador Lockhart, then commanding the English auxiliaries at Dunkirk, with very precise instructions to deliver it to his French Majesty, and to follow it up energetically by his own counsels.[2] It may have been delivered to Louis XIV. at or near Calais. It had, as we have seen, full effect. All in all, it is one of the most eloquent of the Milton series; and Milton must have exerted himself in the composition. [Footnote 1: The exact day of the month is not given either in the Printed Collection or in the Skinner Transcript; but it is determined by a letter of Cromwell's to Ambassador Lockhart on the same business. The two letters went together (see Carlyle, III. 357-365).] [Footnote 2: Letter of Cromwell to Lockhart of date May 25, 1658, printed by Mr. Carlyle, _loc. cit._, from the Ayscough MSS.] (CXXI.) TO THE EVANGELICAL SWISS CANTONS, _May_ 26, 1658:[1]--On the same great business as the last.--"Illustrious and most honourable Lords, most dear Friends:--Concerning the Vaudois, your most afflicted neighbours, what grievous and intolerable things they have suffered from their Prince for Religion's sake, besides that the mind almost shrinks from remembering them because of the very atrocity of the facts, we have thought it superfluous to write to you what must be much better known to yourselves. We have also seen copies of the letters which your Envoys, who a good while since were the advisers and witnesses of the Peace of Pignerol, have written to the Duke of Savoy and the President of his Council in Turin; in which they show and prove in detail that all the conditions of the Peace have been broken, and have been rather a snare for those miserable people than a security. Which violation of the conditions, continued from the very date of the Peace even to this day, and every day growing more grievous, unless they endure patiently, unless they prostrate themselves and lie down to be trampled on and pushed into mud, their Religion itself forsworn, there impends over them the same calamity, the same havoc, which harassed and desolated them, with their wives and children, in so miserable a manner three years ago, and which, if it is to be undergone again, will wholly extirpate them. What can the poor people do? They have no respite, no breathing-time, as yet no certain refuge. They have to deal with wild beasts or with furies, to whom the recollection of the former slaughters has brought no remorse, no pity for their fellow-countrymen, no sense of humanity or satiety in shedding blood. These things are clearly not to be borne, whether we have regard to our Vaudois brethren, cherishers of the Orthodox Religion from of old, or to the safety of that Religion itself. We, for our part, removed though we are by too great an interval of space, have heartily performed all we could in the way of help, and shall not cease to do the like. Do you, who are close not only to the torments and almost to the cries of your brethren, but also to the fury of the same enemies, consider prospectively, in the name of Immortal God, and that betimes, what is now _your_ duty; on the question of what assistance, what protection, you can and ought to give to your neighbours and brothers, otherwise speedily to perish, consult your own prudence and piety, but your valour also. It is identity of Religion, be sure, that is the cause why the same enemies would see you likewise destroyed, nay why they would, at the same time, in the same by-past year, _have_ seen you destroyed by an intestine war against you by members of your Confederacy. Next to the Divine aid it seems simply to be with you to prevent the very oldest branch of the purer Religion from being cut down in that remnant of the primitive faithful: and, if you neglect their safety, now brought to the extreme crisis of peril, see that the next turn do not, a little while after, visit yourselves. While we advise thus fraternally and freely, we are meanwhile not idle on our own part: what alone it is allowed to us at such a distance to do, whether for securing the safety of those who are endangered, or for succouring the poverty of those who are in need, we have taken all pains in our power to do, and shall yet take all pains, God grant to us both such tranquillity and peace at home, such a settled condition of things and times, that we may be able to turn all our resources and strength, all our anxiety, to the defence of His Church against the fury and madness of His enemies!" [Footnote 1: The day of the month not given either in the Printed Collection or in the Skinner Transcript; but we may date by the last letter.] (CXXII.-CXXV.) TO LOUIS XIV. AND CARDINAL MAZARIN: end of _May_ 1658:[1]--This is a group of four letters, two to the King and two to the Cardinal, all appertaining to the splendid embassy of compliment on which Cromwell despatched his son-in-law, Viscount Falconbridge, in the end of May 1658, when he heard that the French Court had come so near England as Calais (ante pp. 340-341):--(1.) TO LOUIS XIV. "Most serene and potent King, most august Friend and Ally,--Thomas, Viscount Falconbridge, my son-in-law, being on the point of setting out for France, and desiring to come into your presence, to kiss your royal hand and testify his veneration and the respect which he cherishes for your Majesty, though, on account of the great pleasantness of his society, I am unwilling to part with him, yet, as I do not doubt but, from the Court of so great a King, in which so many most prudent and valiant men have their resort, he will shortly return to us much more accomplished for all honourable occupations, and in a sense finished, I have not thought it right to oppose his mind and wish. And, though he is one, if I mistake not, who may seem to bring his own sufficient recommendations with him wherever he goes, yet, if he should feel himself somewhat more acceptable to your Majesty on my account, I shall likewise consider myself honoured and obliged by that same kindness. May God keep your Majesty safe, and long preserve our fast friendship for the common good of the Christian world."--(2.) TO CARDINAL MAZARIN. As his son-in-law Lord Falconbridge is going into France, recommended by a letter to the French King, Cromwell cannot but inform his Eminence of the fact, and give Lord Falconbridge an introduction to his Eminence also. "Whatever benefit he may receive from his stay amongst you (and he hopes it will not be small) he is sure to owe most of it to your favour and kindness, whose mind and vigilance almost singly sustain and guard such great affairs in that kingdom." (3.) To LOUIS XIV. "Most serene and potent King, most august Friend and Ally,--As soon as news had arrived that your Majesty was come into camp, and was besieging with so great forces that infamous town and asylum of pirates, Dunkirk, I conceived a great joy, and also a sure hope that now in a short time, by God's good assistance, the sea will be less infested with robbers and more safely navigable, and that your Majesty will soon by your warlike prowess avenge those frauds of the Spaniard,--one commander corrupted by gold to betray Hesden, another treacherously taken at Ostend. I therefore send to you the most noble Thomas, Viscount Falconbridge, my son-in-law, both to congratulate your arrival in a camp so close to us, and also to explain personally with what affection we follow your Majesty's achievements, not only by the junction of our forces, but with all wishes besides that God Almighty may keep your Majesty's self safe and long preserve our fast friendship for the common good of the Christian world." (4.) To CARDINAL MAZARIN. As he is sending his son-in-law Viscount Falconbridge to congratulate the arrival of his French Majesty in the camp near Dunkirk, he has commanded him to convey also salutations and thanks to his Eminence, "by whose fidelity, prudence, and vigilance, above all, it has been brought about that French business is so prosperously managed against the common enemy in so many different parts, and especially in neighbouring Flanders." It is clear that all these letters cannot have been sent, but only two of them. The closing words of the two letters to the King, for example, are identical to an extent incompatible with the idea that they were both delivered. It may be guessed by the suspicious that at first the intention was that Lord Falconbridge should seem to be visiting France for his own curiosity or pleasure, the Protector only taking advantage of his whim, and that letters 1 and 2 were then drafted, but that afterwards it was thought better to send Lord Falconbridge on an avowed embassy of congratulation in Cromwell's own name, and letters 3 and 4 were then substituted. Perhaps, however, there was no duplicity in the affair at all, and the idea of the embassy did actually originate in a whim of Lord Falconbridge. Anyhow all the notes were written by Milton, and he kept copies of those not used. [Footnote 1: Exact day not given either in Printed Collection or in Skinner Transcript; but the occasion fixes the time pretty closely.] (CXXVI.) To THE GRAND DUKE OF TUSCANY, _May_ 1658:--This is in a very different tone from recent letters of the Protector to the same Italian Prince (ante p. 372 and p. 378).--His Highness has been informed of various acts of discourtesy of late to his Fleet off Leghorn, utterly inconsistent with the terms of friendship on which he had supposed himself to stand with the Grand Duke. Accommodation to the ships has been refused, out of deference to Spain; restrictions have been put on their supplies of fresh water; English merchants resident in Leghorn, and even the English Consul, have not been permitted to go on board; shots have actually been fired; &c. If these things had been done by the Governor of the Town without orders, let him be punished; but, if otherwise, "let your Highness consider that, as we have always very highly valued your good-will, so we have learnt to distinguish open injuries from-good-will." (CXXVII.-CXXX.) To LOUIS XIV. AND CARDINAL MAZARIN. _June_ 1658:--On the 16th of June there had arrived in London, in rapid return for the embassy of Viscount Falconbridge to Calais, the splendid counter-embassy to Cromwell of the Duke de Crequi and M. Mancini, the Cardinal's nephew (ante pp. 340-341). That in itself would have been an incident calling for some special acknowledgment from the Protector; but hardly had the embassy arrived when there came news of the great event which both Louis XIV. and Cromwell had for some time been intently expecting--the capture of Dunkirk. On the 15th of June the keys of the captured town had been handsomely delivered to Sir William Lockhart by Louis XIV. himself, so that the Treaty with Cromwell had been fully kept in that particular. Louis had sent a special Envoy with letters to announce the event to Cromwell formally; and this Envoy shared in the magnificent hospitalities which Cromwell showered upon the Duke de Crequi, M. Mancini, and their retinue. The four following letters all relate to this glorious occasion, and date themselves between June 16, when the French ambassadors arrived in London, and June 21, when they took their departure. (1.) To Louis XIV. "Most serene and potent King, most august Friend and Ally,--That your Majesty has so speedily, by the illustrious embassy you have sent, repaid my mission of respect with interest, besides that it is a proof of your singular graciousness and magnanimity, comes as a manifestation also of the degree of your regard for my honour and dignity, not to myself only, but to the whole English People; on which account, in their name, I duly return your Majesty my most cordial thanks. Over the most happy victory which God gave to our conjoint forces against the enemy [in the Battle near Dunkirk on June 3, ten days before the surrender of the town: ante p. 340], I rejoice along with you; and it is very gratifying to me that in that battle our men were not wanting either to their duty to you, or to the warlike glory of their ancestors, or to their own valour. As for Dunkirk, your Majesty's hopes for the near surrender of which are expressed in your letter, I have the additional joy of being able so soon to write back that the surrender has now actually taken place; and my hopes are that the Spaniard will presently pay for his double treachery by the loss not of one city only,--the effecting of which result by the capture of the other town [Bergen, near Dunkirk, now also besieged] I would that your Majesty may have it in your power to report as quickly. As to your Majesty's farther promise that my interests shall be your care, in that matter I have no mistrust, the promise coming from a King of such worth and friendliness, and having the confirmation of the word of his Ambassador, the most excellent and accomplished Duke de Crequi. That Almighty God may be propitious to your Majesty and to the French State, at home and in war, is my sincere wish." (2.) To CARDINAL MAZARIN. As we have already seen in Cromwell's correspondence with France, letters to the King and the Cardinal then almost always went in pairs, for Louis XIV. was but beginning his long career of _Grand Monarque_ at the age of twenty, while the Cardinal, at the age of fifty-six, still retained that ministerial ascendancy which he had exercised all through the minority of Louis, and indeed since the death of Richelieu in 1642. This letter of Cromwell's to the Cardinal is even more interesting than that to the King, and may be given in full:--"Most Eminent Lord,--While I am thanking by letter your most Serene King, who has sent such a splendid embassy to return respects and congratulations and to communicate to me his joy over the recent most noble victory, I should be ungrateful if I did not at the same time pay by letter the thanks due also to your Eminence, who, to testify your good-will towards me, and your regard for my honour in all possible ways, have sent with the embassy your most worthy and highly accomplished young nephew, and even write that, if you had any one nearer akin to you or dearer, you would have sent that person in preference,--adding a reason which, coming from the judgment of so great a man, I consider no mean tribute of praise and distinction: to wit, your desire that those nearest to you in blood should imitate your Eminence in honouring and respecting me. Well, they will perhaps, at least, in your love for me, have had no stinted example of politeness, candour, and friendliness: of worth and prudence at their highest there are other far more brilliant examples in you, by which they may learn how to administer kingdoms and the greatest affairs with glory. With which that your Eminence may long and prosperously conduct affairs, for the common good of the French kingdom, yea of the whole Christian Republic, a distinction properly yours, I promise that my wishes shall not be wanting." (3.) To LOUIS XIV.[1] A more formal letter than the last, acknowledging the French King's own intimation that Dunkirk had been taken, and given into the possession of Lockhart. "That Dunkirk had surrendered to your Majesty, and that it had been by your orders immediately put in our possession, we had already heard by report; but with what a willing and glad mind your Majesty did it, to testify your good-will towards me in this matter, I have been especially informed by your royal letter, and have had abundantly confirmed by the gentleman in whom, from the tenor of that letter, I have all confidence,--the master in ordinary of your Palace. In addition to this testimony, though it needs no farther weight with me, our Ambassador with you [Lockhart], in discharge of his duty, writes to the same effect, and there is nothing that he does not ascribe to your most firm steadiness in my favour. Let your Majesty be assured in turn that there shall be no want of either care or integrity on our part in performing all that remains of our agreement with the same faith and diligence as hitherto. For the rest, I congratulate your Majesty on your successes and on the very near approach of the capture of Bergen; and may God Almighty grant that there may be as frequent exchanges as possible of such congratulations between us." (4.) TO CARDINAL MAZARIN[2]. This is on the same occasion and in the same strain. One sentence will suffice. "With what faith and expression of the highest good-will all was performed by you, though your Eminence's own assurance fully satisfied me, yet, that I should have nothing more to desiderate, our Ambassador, in carefully writing to me the details, had omitted nothing that could either serve for my information or answer your opinion of him."--It is curious, after these two last letters, to turn to those letters of Lockhart's to which Cromwell refers. They quite confirm his words, though they contain expressions, about both the King and the Cardinal, of which Cromwell would not perhaps have sent them literal copies. Thus, in a letter to Thurloe, of June 14, the day before the delivery of Dunkirk to the English, but when all the arrangements for the delivery had been made, Lockhart, speaking of the difficulties he anticipated in so arduous and delicate a post as the Governorship of Dunkirk, especially with his small supplies and great lack of money, adds,--"Nevertheless I must say I find him [the Cardinal] willing to hear reason; and, though the generality of Court and Army are even mad to see themselves part with what they call _un si bon morceau_, so delicate a bit, yet he is still constant to his promises, and seems to be as glad in the general, notwithstanding our differences in little particulars, to give this place to his Highness as I can be to receive it: the King is also exceeding obliging and civil, and hath more true worth in him than I could have imagined." Next day Lockhart wrote a brief note to Thurloe announcing himself as actually in possession, "blessed be God for this great mercy, and the Lord continue his protection to his Highness"; and there were subsequent longer letters both to Thurloe and to Cromwell himself[3]. Dunkirk was called "The Key of Spanish Flanders"; and the conquest of this place for the Protectorate was, it is to be remembered, among the last of Cromwell's great acts. [Footnote 1: This Letter is not to be found in the Printed Collection or in Phillips; but it is in the Skinner Transcript (No. 102 there), and has been printed by Mr. Hamilton in his _Milton Papers_, 7-8.] [Footnote 2: Neither is this Letter in the Printed Collection. It stands as No. 103 in the Skinner Transcript, and has been printed by Hamilton, p. 8.] [Footnote 3: Thurloe, VII. 173 et seq.] (CXXXI.) TO CHARLES GUSTAVUS, KING OF SWEDEN, _June_ 1658:--Since Cromwell's last letter by Milton to this heroic Scandinavian (March 30), congratulating him on his generous Peace with Denmark, and urging the policy of a League of all the northern Protestant Powers for conjoint action against Austria, Poland, and Catholicism universally, the movements of the Swede had been most perplexing. Now he had been turning against the Poles and Austrians; but again Denmark, or even the Dutch, seemed to be the object of his resentment, while there was very quarrelsome negotiation between him and the Elector Marquis of Brandenburg, and every appearance that the Elector might have to bear the next full burst of his wrath. All this did not seem favourable to the prospects of a Protestant League, and Cromwell's envoys, Meadows, Jephson, Bradshaw, and Downing, had been going to and fro with their wits on the stretch. Such, in general, was the condition of affairs when Milton for Cromwell wrote as follows:--"Most serene and potent King, most dear Friend and Ally,--As often as we look upon the ceaseless plots and various artifices of the common enemies of Religion, so often our thought with ourselves is how necessary it is for the Christian world, and how salutary it would be, for the easier frustration of the attempts of these adversaries, that the Potentates of Protestantism should be conjoined in the strictest league among themselves, and principally your Majesty with our Commonwealth. How much, and with what zeal, that has been furthered by Us, and how agreeable latterly it would have been to us if the affairs of Sweden and our own had been in such a condition and position that the League could have been ratified heartily by us both, and with all fit aid the one to the other, We have testified to your agents from the time when they first treated of the matter with Us. Nor, truly, were they wanting to their duty; but, as was their custom in other things, in this matter also they displayed prudence and diligence. But we have been so exercised at home by the perfidy of wicked citizens, who, though several times received back into trust, do not yet cease to form new conspiracies, and to repeat their already often shattered and routed plots with the exiles, and even with the Spanish enemy, that, occupied in beating off our own dangers, we have not hitherto been able, as was our wish, to turn our whole attention and entire strength to the guardianship of the common cause of Religion. What was possible, however, to the full extent of our power, we have already studiously performed; and, whatever for the future in this direction shall seem to conduce to your Majesty's interests, we shall not desist not only to desire, but also to co-operate with you with all our strength in accomplishing where they may be opportunity. Meanwhile we congratulate, and heartily rejoice in, your Majesty's most prudent and most valiant actions, and desire with assiduous prayers that God may will, for the glory of his own Deity, that the same course of prosperity and victory may be a very long one."--So far as Milton's state-letters show, this is the last of the relations between Oliver Cromwell and Karl-Gustav of Sweden. But, in _Thurloe_ and elsewhere, there are farther traces of the great Swede in connexion with Cromwell, and of the interest which the two kindred souls felt in each other. Passing over some weeks of still uncertain movement of the Swede hither and thither in his complications with Austria, Poland, Denmark, Muscovy, Brandenburg, and the Dutch, we may note the sudden surprise of all Europe when, early in August, he tore up his brief Peace with Denmark, re-invaded Zealand, and marched straight upon Copenhagen. His reasons for this extraordinary act he thought it right to explain to Cromwell in a long letter dated from his quarters near Copenhagen, August 18, 1658. The letter can have reached Cromwell only on his death-bed; and, on the whole, Cromwell had to leave the world with the consciousness that the League of Protestant Powers for which he had prayed and struggled was apparently as far off as ever. The election to the vacant Emperorship had already taken place at last, July 8, 1658, at Frankfort-on-the-Main, and it was the Austrian Leopold, King of Hungary, and not the French Louis XIV., after all, that had been proclaimed and saluted _Imperator Romanorum_.[1] [Footnote 1: Thurloe, VII., at various points from the beginning, but especially pp. 338, 342, and 257. Foreign dates in Thurloe have to be rectified.] (CXXXII.) TO THE KING OF PORTUGAL, _August_ 1658:--A John Buffield, merchant of London, has been wronged by the detention of property of his by a Portuguese mercantile firm, and has been tossed about in Portuguese law-courts. The Protector requests his Portuguese Majesty to look into the matter and see justice done. So ends the series of Milton's Letters for Oliver. As there had been eighty-eight such in all (XLV.-CXXXII.) during the four years and nine months of the Protectorate, whereas there had been but forty-four (I.-XLIV.) similar letters during the preceding four years and ten months of the Commonwealth proper and Interim Dictatorship, it will be seen that Milton's industry in this particular form of his Secretaryship had been just twice as great for Oliver as for the Governments before the Protectorate.[1] That fact in itself is rather remarkable, when we remember that Milton came into the Protector's service totally blind. Of course, whoever had been in the post would have had more to do in the way of letter-writing for the Protector than had been required by the preceding Councils of State in their comparatively thin relations with foreign powers; but that a blind man in the post should have been so satisfactory for the increased requirements says something for the employer as well as for the blind man. Thurloe and others had relieved Milton of much of the secretarial work; there had also been many breaks in Milton's secretaryship even in the letter-writing department, occasioned by ill-health, family-troubles, or occupation with literary tasks which were really public commissions and were credited to him as such; and at such times the dependence had been on Meadows or some one else for the Latin letters necessary. Always, however, when the occasion was very important, as when there had to be the burst of circular letters about the Piedmontese massacre, the blind man had to be sent to, or sent for. And what is worthy of notice now is that this had continued to be the case to the last. At no time in the Secretaryship had there been a series of more important letters from Milton's pen than those just inventoried, written for the Protector in the last five months of his life, and mostly in the months of May and June, 1658. Two or three of them are about ships or other small matters, showing that, even with Marvfell now; at hand for such drudgery, Milton did not wholly escape it; but the rest are on the topics of highest interest to Cromwell and closest to his heart. The poor Piedmontese Protestants are again in danger. Who must again sound the alarm? Milton. Cromwell's son-in-law, the gallant Falconbridge, starts on his embassy to Calais. Who must write the letters that are to introduce him to King Louis and the Cardinal? Milton. The gorgeous return embassy of the Duke de Crequi and M. Mancini has to be acknowledged, and the bells rung for the fall of Dunkirk; and with the congratulations to be conveyed across the Channel on that event there have to be interwoven Cromwell's thanks to the King and the Cardinal for having so punctually kept their faith with him by the delivery of the town to Lockhart. Who shall express the complex message? None but Milton. Finally, Cromwell would stretch his hand eastward across the seas to grasp that of the Swedish Charles Gustavus struggling with _his_ peculiar difficulties, to give him brotherly cheer in the midst of them, brotherly hope also that they two, whoever else in a generation of hucksters, may yet live to lead in a glorious Protestant League for the overthrow of Babylon and the woman blazing in scarlet. Who interprets between hero and hero? Always and only the blind Milton. Positively, in reading Milton's despatches for Cromwell on such subjects as the persecutions of the Vaudois and the scheme of a Protestant European League, one hardly knows which is speaking, the secretary or the ruler. Cromwell melts into Milton, and Milton is Cromwell eloquent and Latinizing.[2] [Footnote 1: With one exception, all the State-letters of Milton, from the beginning of his Secretaryship to the death of Cromwell, that have been preserved either in the Printed Collection or in the Skinner Transcript, have now been inventoried, and, as far as possible, dated and elucidated in the text of these volumes. The exception is a brief scrap thrown in at the end of the Letters for Cromwell both in the Printed Collection and in the Skinner Transcript, but omitted by Phillips in his translation as not worthwhile. It was not written for Cromwell or his Council, but only for the Commissioners of the Great Seal--whether for those under the Protectorate, or for their predecessors, does not appear, though perhaps that might be ascertained. The scrap may be numbered at this point, though inserted only as a note:--(CXXXIII.) "We, Commissioners of the Great Seal of England, &c., desire that the Supreme Court of the Parliament of Paris will, on request, take such steps that Miles, William, and Maria Sandys, children of the lately deceased William Sandys and his wife Elizabeth Soame, English by birth and minors, may be able, from Paris, where they are now under protection of the said Court, to return to us forthwith, and will deliver the said children into the charge of the Scotchman James Mowat, a good and honest man, to whom we have delegated this charge, that he may receive them where they are and bring them to us; and we engage that, on opportunity of the same sort offered, there will be a return from this Court of the like justice and equity to any subjects of France."] [Footnote 2: The uniformly Miltonic style of the greater letters for the Protector, the same style as had been used in the more important letters for the Commonwealth, utterly precludes the idea that Milton was only the translator of drafts furnished him. In the smaller letters, about ships wrongfully seized and other private injuries, the case may have been partly so, though even there Milton must have had liberty of phraseology, and would imbed the facts in his own expressions. But there was not a man about the Council that could have furnished the drafts of the greater letters as we now have them. My idea as to the way in which they were composed is that, on each occasion, Milton learnt from Thurloe, or even in a preappointed interview with the Council, or with Cromwell himself, the sort of thing that was wanted, and that then, having himself dictated and sent in an English draft, he received it back, approved or with corrections and suggested additions, to be turned into Latin. Special Cromwellian hints to Milton for the letter to Louis XIV, on the alarm of a new persecution of the Piedmontese (ante pp. 387-9) must have been, I should say, the causal reference to a certain pass as the best military route yet into Italy from France, and the suggestion of an exchange of territories between Louis and the Duke of Savoy so as to make the Vaudois French subjects. The hints may have been given to Milton beforehand, or they may have been [n]otched in by Cromwell in revising Milton's English draft.] The last letters to Louis XIV., Mazarin, and Charles Gustavus of Sweden, bring us to within about two months of Cromwell's death, and the last one of all, that to the King of Portugal, to within less than a single month of the same. We have yet a farther trace of the diplomacies proper to Milton's office round the dying Protector. Here, however, it is not Milton that comes into view, but his colleague or assistant, Andrew Marvell. The Dutch Lord-Ambassador Nieuport, after having been absent in Holland since November 1657, had been sent back by their High Mightinesses, the States-General, to resume his post. The complication of affairs in northern Europe by the movements of Charles Gustavus, and the menacing attitude of that King not only pretty generally all round the Baltic, but also towards the Dutch themselves, had rendered Nieuport's renewed presence in London very necessary. Newly commissioned and instructed, he made his voyage, and was in the Thames on the night of the 23rd of July, though too late to reach Gravesend that night. The arrival of an ambassador being then an affair of much punctilio, he sent his son up the river in a shallop, to inform Mr. Secretary Thurloe and Sir Oliver Fleming, the master of the ceremonies, and to deliver to Thurloe a letter requesting that the pomp of a public reception might be waived and he might be permitted to take up his quarters quietly in the Dutch Embassy, still furnished and ready, just as he had left it. Young Mynheer Nieuport, coming to London on this errand, found things there in unexpected confusion,--the Lord Protector at Hampton Court, attending the death-bed of his daughter Lady Claypole, and leaving business to itself, and Secretary Thurloe also out of town. Fortunately, Thurloe was not then at Hampton Court, but only at his own country-house two miles off. Thither young Nieuport rode at once. He met Thurloe coming in his coach to Whitehall; whereupon Thurloe, after all proper salutations, informed him that his Highness had already heard of his father's arrival and had given orders for his suitable reception. Meanwhile, would young Mr. Nieuport come into the coach, so that they might drive back to Whitehall together? Arrived at Whitehall, Thurloe immediately gave orders for the preparation of one of his Highness's barges to be sent down to Gravesend, "with a gentleman called Marvell, who is employed in the despatches for the Latin tongue." Apparently this gentleman was on the spot, and was at once introduced by Thurloe to young Nieuport. Then young Nieuport went down the river by himself, rejoining his father at Gravesend, and bringing him a letter from Thurloe, to the effect that his Highness was very anxious that his reception should be in all points such as became the respect due to himself and his office, but that Mr. Marvell would come expressly to discuss and arrange particulars and that whatever Lord Nieuport should finally judge fitting should also be satisfactory to his Highness. That was on the night of Saturday, the 24th. Next day, Sunday the 25th, Marvell was duly down at Gravesend in the barge, actually before morning-sermon, as the Ambassador himself informs us, bidding the Ambassador formally welcome in the Lord Protector's name, and sketching out for him "a public reception, with barges and coaches, and also an entertainment, such as is usually given to the chiefest Ambassadors." Lord Nieuport still preferring less bustle on his own account, and thinking also that a great public reception would be unseemly at a time when "the Lord Protector and the whole Court were in great sadness for the mortal distemper of the Lady Claypole," Marvell remained in waiting on him at Gravesend that day, and in the night brought him up to town in his barge _incognito_. It was thought that his Highness might possibly be able to come from Hampton Court to Whitehall the next day or the next; but, that chance having passed, it was arranged that the Ambassador should himself go to Hampton Court, and have an audience with the Protector at three o'clock in the afternoon of Thursday the 29th. Accordingly, at eleven o'clock on that day the master of the ceremonies was at the Dutch Embassy, with three six-horse coaches; and, having been driven to Hampton Court, the Ambassador was received by Thurloe "at the second gate of the first court," and taken to his Highness's room. After interchange of compliments, his Highness expressed his regret "that his own indisposition, and other domestic inconveniencies, had hindered him from coming to London"; and then, the general company having been dismissed, and only Lord President Lawrence, Lord Strickland, and Thurloe, remaining in the room, there was some talk on business. Various matters were mentioned, but only generally, Nieuport not thinking it fit to trouble his Highness with "a large discourse," and his Highness indeed intimating that he did not find himself well enough to talk much. But all was very amicable, and at the end of the interview Cromwell, saying he hoped to be in London next week, insisted on conducting the Ambassador to the door of the antechamber, leaving Lawrence, Strickland, and Thurloe, to do the rest by attending him through the galleries back to the coaches. On that same day there had been a Council-meeting at Hampton Court, the last at which Cromwell was present. Possibly Dutch business was discussed there, and also at the next meeting of Council, which was at Whitehall on the 3rd of August, and without Cromwell. On the 5th, at all events, when the Council again met at Hampton Court, Cromwell not present, there was, as we have seen (ante, p. 355), a minute on Dutch business of a very ominous character. Cromwell's heart was now with the magnanimous Swede rather than with the merchandizing Dutch; and, in all probability, had he lived longer, Ambassador Nieuport would have had to send home news that might not have been pleasant to their High Mightinesses. But the next day (August 6) Lady Claypole was dead; and from that day, through the remaining four weeks of Cromwell's life, the concerns of the foreign world grew dimmer and dimmer in his regards. Perhaps to the last moment of his consciousness what did most interest him in that foreign world was the great new commotion round the Baltic in which his Swedish brother was the central figure, and in which both the Dutch and the Brandenburg Elector were playing anti-Swedish parts, the Elector avowedly, the Dutch more warily, "The King of Sweden hath again invaded the Dane, and very probably hath Copenhagen by this time," wrote Thurloe from Whitehall to Henry Cromwell at two o'clock in the morning of August 27. Cromwell, therefore, had learnt that fact before his death, and it must have mingled with his thoughts in his dying hours. In these very hours, we find, not only was Ambassador Nieuport close at hand again, for Dutch negotiations in which the fact would naturally be of high moment, but Herr. Schlezer also, the London agent of the Brandenburg Elector, was at the doors of the Council office, with express letters from the Elector, which he was anxious to deliver to Thurloe himself, in case even at such a time some answer might be elicited. Thurloe choosing to be inaccessible, he had left the letters with Mr. Marvell. Thus, twice in the last weeks of Oliver's Protectorate we have a distinct sight of Marvell in his capacity of substitute for Milton. He barges down the Thames very early on a Sunday morning to salute an Ambassador in the name of the Protector and bring him up to town in a proper manner; and he receives in the Whitehall office a troublesome diplomatic agent, who has come with important despatches.[1] [Footnote 1: Thurloe, VII 286 and 298-299 (Letters of Nieuport to the States-General), 362 (Letter of Thurloe to Henry Cromwell), and 373-374 (Latin letter of Schlezer to Thurloe, two days after Cromwell's death).] Thirty-three Latin State-Letters and five Latin Familiar Epistles are the productions of Milton's pen we have hitherto registered as belonging to the Second Protectorate of Oliver. Two or three incidents, appertaining more properly to his Literary Biography, have yet to be noticed before we leave the period. Here is the title of a little foreign tract of which I have seen a solitary, and perhaps unique, copy:-"_Dissertationis ad quoedam loca Miltoni Pars Posterior; quam, adspirante Deo, Præsids Dn. Jacobo Schallero, S.S, Theol. Doct, et Philos. Pract. Prof., ad. h.t. Facult. Phil. Decano, solenniter defendet die[17] mens. Septemb. Christophorus Güntzer, Argentorat. Argentorati, Typis Friderici Spoor, 1657_" ("Second Part of a Dissertation, on certain Passages of Milton; which, with God's favour, and tinder the presidency of James Schaller, Doctor of Divinity and Professor of Practical Philosophy, acting as Dean of the Faculty of Philosophy for the occasion, Christopher Güntzer of Strasburg will solemnly defend on the 17th of September. Strasburg, Printed by Frederic Spoor, 1657"). Of the Schaller here mentioned we have heard before in connexion with a publication of his in 1653, also entitled _Dissertatio ad loca quædam Miltoni_, and appended then to certain _Exercitationes_ concerning the English Regicide by the Leipsic jurist Caspar Ziegler (Vol. IV. pp. 534-535). He seems to have retained an interest in the subject, and to have kept it up among those about him; for here, four years after his own Dissertation, he is to preside at the academic defence of another on the same subject by a Christopher Güntzer, who was probably one of his pupils. Young Güntzer, it seems, had been trying his hand on the subject already; for this is but the "second part" of his performance. The "first part" I have not seen, though it seems to have been published. The "second part" is a thin quarto, paged 45-92, as if to be bound with the first. It is in a juvenile and dry style of quotation and academic reasoning, modelled after Schaller's older Dissertation, and not worth an abstract. More interesting than itself are eleven pieces of congratulatory Latin verse prefixed to it by college friends of the disputant. In more than one of these Milton is mentioned; but the liveliest mention of him is in a set of Phalæcians signed "Christianus Keck." Phalæcians are not to be attempted in English; but, as the semi-absurd relish of the thing would be lost in prose, the first few lines may run into a kind of equivalent doggrel:-- "What Salmasius, he whom all men hailed as Learning's prodigy, Phoenix much too big for His own late generation, ay or any old one, Wrote so bravely against the sin of Britain, Then all wet with the royal bloodshed in her, Milton answered with pen that, be it granted, Showed vast genius, nor a mind without some Real marks of artistic cultivation, Though, O shame! patronizing such an outrage. Milton's pen is refuted next by Schaller's,-- Quite a different pen and more respected." Young Keck then goes on to assure his fellow-students that, if their eminent Professor Schaller's Dissertation of 1653 in reply to Milton had been duly read and pondered in Great Britain, it would have been of far more use towards a restoration of the Stuarts than camps and cannon; and he ends by congratulating the world on the fact that now young Güntzer, the accomplished young Güntzer, has placed himself by the side of the learned Professor, to wave the same inextinguishable torch of truth.[1]--In all probability, Milton never heard of such a trifle. It illustrates, however, the kind of rumour of himself and his writings that was circling, in the year 1657, in holes and corners of German Universities. Strasburg, with Elsatz generally, was then within the dominions of Austria; and it was naturally less in Austrian Germany than in other parts of the Continent that there was that especial admiration of Milton which had been growing since the publication of his _Defensio Prima_, but which, as Aubrey tells us, had reached its height under the Protectorate. "He was mightily importuned," says Aubrey, "to go into France and Italy. Foreigners came much to see him, and much admired him, and offered to him great preferments to come over to them; and the only inducement of several foreigners that came over into England was chiefly to see O. Protector and Mr. J. Milton; and [they] would see the house and chamber where he was born. He was much more admired abroad than at home." This corresponds with all our own evidence hitherto, though we have heard nothing of those invitations and offers of foreign preferment of which Aubrey speaks. [Footnote 1: The copy I have seen of Güntzer's _Dissertatio_ is in the British Museum Library. The figure "17" is inserted in MS. after the word "_die_" in the title-page.] In May 1658, three or four months before Cromwell's death, there was published in London a little volume of about 200 pages, with this title-page: "_The Cabinet Council; Containing the chief Arts of Empire, and Mysteries of State; Discabineted in Political and Polemical Aphorisms, grounded, on Authority, and Experience; And illustrated with the choicest Examples and Historical Observations. By the Ever-renowned Knight, Sir Walter Raleigh, published by John Milton Esq._-Quis Martem tunicâ tectum Adamantinâ digne scripserit?-_London, Printed by Tho. Newcomb for Tho. Johnson at the sign of the Key in St. Pauls Churchyard, near the West-end, 1658."_ Prefixed to the body of the volume, which is divided into twenty-six chapters, is a note "_To the Reader,"_ as follows: "Having had the manuscript of this Treatise, written by Sir Walter Raleigh, many years in my hands, and finding it lately by chance among other books and papers, upon reading thereof I thought it a kind of injury to withhold longer the work of so eminent an author from the public: it being both answerable in style to other works of his already extant, as far as the subject would permit, and given me for a true copy by a learned man at his death, who had collected several such pieces.-JOHN MILTON."[1] [Footnote 1: There were subsequent reprints of Raleigh's _Cabinet Council_ from this 1658 edition by Milton, with changes of title. See Bohn's Lowndes under _Raleigh_] By far the most interesting fact, however, in Milton's literary life under the Second Protectorate is that he had certainly, before its close, resumed his design of a great English poem, to be called Paradise Lost. Phillips's words might even imply that he had resumed this design before the end of the First Protectorate. For, after having mentioned that, in the comparative leisure in which he was left by the conclusion of his controversy with Morus (Aug. 1655), he resumed those two favourite hack-occupations on which he always fell back when he had nothing else to do,--his History of England and his compilations for a Latin Dictionary,--Phillips adds, "But the highth of his noble fancy and invention began now to be seriously and mainly employed in a subject worthy of such a muse: viz. a Heroic Poem, entitled _Paradise Lost_, the noblest," &c. In this passage, however, Phillips is throwing together, in 1694, all his recollections of the four years of his uncle's life between Aug. 1655 and Aug. 1659; and Aubrey's earlier information (1680), originally derived from Phillips himself, is that _Paradise Lost_ was begun "about two years before the King came in," i.e. about May 1658. This would fix the date somewhere in the two or three months immediately following the death-of Milton's second wife. In such a matter exact certainty is unattainable; and it is enough to know for certain that the resumption of _Paradise Lost_ was an event of the latter part of Cromwell's Second Protectorate, and that some portion of the poem was actually written in the house in Petty France, Westminster, while Milton was in communication with Cromwell and writing letters for him. In the rooms of that house, or in the garden that stretched from the house into St. James's Park across part of what is now the ground of Wellington Barracks, the subject of the epic first took distinct shape in Milton's mind, and here he began the great dictation. Eighteen years had elapsed since Milton, just settled in London after his return from Italy, had first fastened on the subject, preferred it by a sure instinct to all the others that occurred in competition with it, and sketched four plans for its treatment in the form of a sacred tragedy, one with the precise title _Paradise Lost_, and another with the title _Adam Unparadised_ (Vol. II. pp. 106-108, and 115-119). Through all the distractions of those eighteen years the grand subject had not ceased to haunt him, nor the longing to return to it and to his poetic vocation. Nay there had hung in his memory all this while certain lines he had actually written and destined for the opening of the intended tragedy. They were the ten lines that now form lines 32-41 of the fourth book of our present _Paradise Lost_. He had imagined, for the opening of his tragedy, Satan already arrived within our Universe out of Hell, and alighted on our central Earth near Eden, and gazing up to Heaven and the Sun blazing there in meridian splendour. He had imagined Satan, in this pause of his first advent into the Universe he was to ruin, thus addressing the Sun as its chief visible representative:-- "O thou that with surpassing glory crowned, Look'st from thy sole dominion like the god Of this new World,--at whose sight all the stars Hide their diminished heads,--to thee I call, But with no friendly voice, and add thy name, O Sun, to tell thee how I hate thy beams, That bring to my remembrance from what state I fell, how glorious once above thy sphere, Till pride and worse ambition threw me down, Warring in Heaven against Heaven's matchless King!" And now, after eighteen years, the poem having been resumed, but with the resolution, made natural by Milton's literary observations and experiences in the interval, that the dramatic form should be abandoned and the epic substituted, these ten lines, written originally for the opening of the Drama, were to be the nucleus of the Epic.[1] With our present _Paradise Lost_ before us, we can see the very process of the gradual reinvention. In the epic Satan must not appear, as had been proposed in the drama, at once on our earth or within our universe. He must be fetched from the transcendental regions, the vast extra-mundane spaces, of his own prior existence and history. And so, round our fair universe, newly-created and wheeling softly on its axle, conscious as yet of no evil, conscious only of the happy earth and sweet human life in the midst, and of the steady diurnal change from day and light-blue sunshine into spangled and deep-blue night, Milton was figuring and mapping out those other infinitudes which outlay and encircled his conception of all this mere Mundane Creation. Deep down beneath this MUNDANE CREATION, and far separated from it, he was seeing the HELL from which was to come its woe; all round the Mundane Creation, and surging everywhere against its outmost firmament, was the dark and turbid CHAOS out of which its orderly and orbicular immensity had been cut; and high over all, radiant above Chaos, but with the Mundane Universe pendent from it at one gleaming point, was the great EMPYREAN or HEAVEN of HEAVENS, the abode of Angels and of Eternal Godhead. Not to the mere Earth of Man or the Mundane Universe about that Earth was Milton's adventurous song now to be confined, representing only dramatically by means of speeches and choruses those transactions in the three extramundane Infinitudes that might bear on the terrestrial story. It must dare also into those infinitudes themselves, pursue among them the vaster and more general story of Satan's rebellion and fall, and yet make all converge, through Satan's scheme in Hell and his advent at last into our World, upon that one catastrophe of the ruin of infant Mankind which the title of the poem proclaimed as the particular theme. [Footnote 1: Phillips's words in quoting these lines are, "In the Fourth Book of the Poem there are six [he says _six_, but quotes all the _ten_] verses which, several years before the Poem was begun, were shown to me and some others as designed for the very beginning of the said Tragedy." These words, if the Epic was begun in 1658, might carry us back at farthest to about 1650 as the date when the ten lines were in existence; but, besides that Phillips's expression is vague, we have Aubrey's words in 1680 as follows:--"In the [4th] Book of _Paradise Lost_ there are about six verses of Satan's exclamation to the Sun which Mr. E. Phi. remembers about fifteen or sixteen years before ever his Poem was thought of; which verses were intended for the beginning of a Tragoedie, which he had designed, but was diverted from it by other business." This, on Phillips's own authority, would take the lines back to 1642 or 1643; and that, on independent grounds, is the probable date. Hardly after 1642 or 1643 can Milton have adhered to his original intention of writing _Paradise Lost_ in a dramatic form.] "Of Man's first disobedience, and the fruit Of that forbidden tree whose mortal taste Brought death into the World, and all our woe, With loss of Eden, till one greater Man Restore us and regain the blissful seat, Sing, Heavenly Muse"-- Such might be the simple invocation at the outset; but, knowing now all that the epic was really to involve, and how far it was to carry him in flight above the Aonian Mount, little wonder that he could already promise in it "Things unattempted yet in prose or rhyme." It may have been in one of the nights following a day of such meditation of the great subject he had resumed, and some considerable instalment of the actual verse of the poem as we now have it may have been already on paper, or in Milton's memory for repetition to himself, when he dreamt a memorable dream. The house is all still, the voices and the pattering feet of the children hushed in sleep, and Milton too asleep, but with his waking thoughts pursuing him into sleep and stirring the mimic fancy. Not this night, however, is it of Heaven, or Hell, or Chaos, or the Universe of Man with its luminaries, or any other of the objects of his poetic contemplation by day, that dreaming images come. Nor yet is it the recollection of any business, Piedmontese, Swedish, or French, last employing him officially, that now passes into his involuntary visions. His mind is wholly back on himself, his hard fate of blindness, and his again vacant and desolate household. But lo! as he dreams, that seems somehow all a mistake, and the household is _not_ desolate. A radiant figure, clothed in white, approaches him and bends over him. He knows it to be his wife, whom he had thought dead, but who is not dead. Her face is veiled, and he cannot see that; but then he had never seen that, and it was not so he could distinguish her. It was by the radiant, saintlike, sweetness of her general presence. That is again beside him and bending over him, the same as ever; and it was certainly she! So for the few happy moments while the dream lasts; but he awakes, and the spell is broken. So dear has been that dream, however, that he will keep it as a sacred memory for himself in the last of all his Sonnets:-- "Methought I saw my late espoused saint Brought to me like Alcestis from the grave, Whom Jove's great son to her glad husband gave, Rescued from Death by force, though pale and faint. Mine, as whom washed from spot of child-bed taint Purification in the Old Law did save, And such as yet once more I trust to have Full sight of her in Heaven without restraint, Came vested all in white, pure as her mind. Her face was veiled; yet to my fancied sight Love, sweetness, goodness, in her person shined So clear as in no face with more delight. But oh! as to embrace me she inclined, I waked, she fled, and day brought back my night."[1] [Footnote 1: We do not know the exact date of this Sonnet; but the internal evidence decidedly is that it was written not very long after the second wife's death, and probably in 1658. The manuscript copy of it among the Milton MSS. at Cambridge is in the hand of a person who was certainly acting as amanuensis for Milton early in 1660 and afterwards.] BOOK III. SEPTEMBER 1660--MAY 1660. HISTORY:--THE PROTECTORATE OF RICHARD CROMWELL, THE ANARCHY, MONK'S MARCH AND DICTATORSHIP, AND THE RESTORATION. RICHARD'S PROTECTORATE: SEPT. 3, 1658--MAY 25, 1659. THE ANARCHY:-- STAGE I.:--THE RESTORED RUMP: MAY 25, 1659--OCT. 13, 1659. STAGE II.:--THE WALLINGFORD-HOUSE GOVERNMENT: OCT. 13, 1659--DEC. 26, 1659. STAGE III.:--SECOND RESTORATION OF THE RUMP, WITH MONK'S MARCH FROM SCOTLAND: DEC. 26, 1659--FEB. 21, 1659-60. MONK'S DICTATORSHIP, THE RESTORED LONG PARLIAMENT, AND THE RESTORATION. BIOGRAPHY:--MILTON'S LIFE AND SECRETARYSHIP THROUGH RICHARD'S PROTECTORATE, THE ANARCHY, AND MONK'S DICTATORSHIP. CHAPTER I. First Section. THE PROTECTORATE OF RICHARD CROMWELL: SEPT. 3, 1658--MAY 25, 1659. PROCLAMATION OF RICHARD: HEARTY RESPONSE FROM THE COUNTRY AND FROM FOREIGN POWERS: FUNERAL OF THE LATE PROTECTOR: RESOLUTION FOR A NEW PARLIAMENT.--DIFFICULTIES IN PROSPECT: LIST OF THE MOST CONSPICUOUS PROPS AND ASSESSORS OF THE NEW PROTECTORATE: MONK'S ADVICES TO RICHARD: UNION OF THE CROMWELLIANS AGAINST CHARLES STUART: THEIR SPLIT AMONG THEMSELVES INTO THE COURT OR DYNASTIC PARTY AND THE ARMY OR WALLINGFORD-HOUSE PARTY: CHIEFS OF THE TWO PARTIES: RICHARD'S PREFERENCE FOR THE COURT PARTY, AND HIS SPEECH TO THE ARMY OFFICERS: BACKING OF THE ARMY PARTY TOWARDS REPUBLICANISM OR ANTI-OLIVERIANISM: HENRY CROMWELL'S LETTER OF REBUKE TO FLEETWOOD: DIFFERENCES OF THE TWO PARTIES AS TO FOREIGN POLICY: THE FRENCH ALLIANCE AND THE WAR WITH SPAIN: RELATIONS TO THE KING OF SWEDEN.--MEETING OF RICHARD'S PARLIAMENT (JAN. 27, 1658-9): THE TWO HOUSES: EMINENT MEMBERS OF THE COMMONS: RICHARD'S OPENING SPEECH: THURLOE THE LEADER FOR GOVERNMENT IN THE COMMONS: RECOGNITION OF THE PROTECTORSHIP AND OF THE OTHER HOUSE, AND GENERAL TRIUMPH OF THE GOVERNMENT PARTY: MISCELLANEOUS PROCEEDINGS OF THE PARLIAMENT.--DISSATISFACTION OF THE ARMY PARTY: THEIR CLOSER CONNEXION WITH THE REPUBLICANS: NEW CONVENTION OF OFFICERS AT WALLINGFORD-HOUSE: DESBOROUGH'S SPEECH: THE CONTENTION FORBIDDEN BY THE PARLIAMENT AND DISSOLVED BY RICHARD: WHITEHALL SURROUNDED BY THE ARMY, AND RICHARD COMPELLED TO DISSOLVE THE PARLIAMENT.--RESPONSIBLE POSITION OF FLEETWOOD, DESBOROUGH, LAMBERT, AND THE OTHER ARMY CHIEFS: BANKRUPT STATE OF THE FINANCES: NECESSITY FOR SOME KIND OF PARLIAMENT: PHRENZY FOR "THE GOOD OLD CAUSE" AND DEMAND FOR THE RESTORATION OF THE RUMP: ACQUIESCENCE OF THE ARMY CHIEFS: LENTHALL'S OBJECTIONS: FIRST FORTNIGHT OF THE RESTORED RUMP; LINGERING OF RICHARD IN WHITEHALL: HIS ENFORCED ABDICATION. OLIVER was dead, and Richard was Protector. He had been nominated, in some indistinct way, by his father on his death-bed; and, though there was missing a certain sealed nomination paper, of much earlier date, in which it was believed that Fleetwood was the man, it was the interest of all parties about Whitehall at the moment, Fleetwood himself included, to accept the death-bed nomination. That having been settled through the night following Oliver's death, Richard was proclaimed in various places in London and Westminster on the morning of September 4, amid great concourses, with firing of cannon, and acclamations of "_God save His Highness Richard Lord Protector!_" It was at once intimated that the Government was to proceed without interruption, and that all holding his late Highness's commissions, civil or military, were to continue in their appointments. Over the country generally, and through the Continent, the news of Oliver's death and the news that Richard had succeeded him ran simultaneously. For some time there was much anxiety at Whitehall as to the response. From all quarters, however, it was reassuring. Addresses of loyal adhesion to the new Protector poured in from towns, counties, regiments, and churches of all denominations; the proclamations in London and Westminster were repeated in Edinburgh, Dublin, and everywhere else; the Armies in England, Scotland, and Ireland were alike satisfied; the Navy was cordial; from Lockhart, as Governor of Dunkirk, and from the English Army in Flanders, there were votes of confidence; and, in return for the formal intimation made to all foreign diplomatists in London of the death of the late Protector and the accession of his son, there came mingled condolences on the one event and congratulations on the other from all the friendly powers. Richard himself, hitherto regarded as a mere country-gentleman of simple and jolly tastes, seemed to suit his new position better than had been expected. In audiences with deputations and with foreign ambassadors he acquitted himself modestly and respectably; and, as he had his father's Council still about him, with Thurloe keeping all business in hand in spite of an inopportune illness, affairs went on apparently in a satisfactory course.--A matter which interested the public for some time was the funeral of the late Protector. His body had been embalmed, and conveyed to Somerset House, there to lie in open state, amid banners, escutcheons, black velvet draperies and all the sombre gorgeousness that could be devised from a study of the greatest royal funerals on record, including a superb effigy of his Highness, robed in purple, ermined, sceptred, and diademed, to represent the life; and not till the 23rd of November was there an end to these ghastly splendours by a great procession from Somerset House to Westminster Abbey to deposit the effigy in the chapel of Henry VII., where the body itself had already been privately interred.--A week after this disappearance of the last remains of Oliver (Nov. 29, 1658) it was resolved in Council to call a Parliament. This, in fact, was but carrying out the intention formed in the late Protectorate; but, while the cause that had mainly made another Parliament desirable to Oliver was still excruciatingly in force,--to wit, the exhaustion of funds,--it was considered fitting moreover that Richard's accession should as soon as possible pass the ordeal of Parliamentary approval. Thursday, Jan. 27, 1658-9, was the day fixed for the meeting of the Parliament. Through the intervening weeks, while all the constituencies were busy with the canvassing and the elections, the procedure of Richard and his Council at Whitehall seemed still regular and judicious. There was due correspondence with foreign powers, and there was no interruption of the home-administration. The Protector kept court as his father had done, and conferred knighthoods and other honours, which were thankfully accepted. Sermons were dedicated to him as "the thrice illustrious Richard, Lord Protector." In short, nearly five months of his Protectorship passed away without any tumult or manifest opposition.[1] [Footnote 1: _Merc. Pol._, from Sept. 1658 to Jan. 1658-9, as quoted in _Cromwelliana_, 178-181; Thurloe, VII. 383-384, _et seq._ as far as 541; Whitlocke, IV. 335-339; Phillips (i.e. continuation of Baker's Chronicle by Milton's nephew, Edward Phillips), ed. 1679, pp. 635-639; _Peplum Olivarii_, a funeral sermon on Oliver, dated Nov. 17, 1658, among Thomason Pamphlets.--Knights of Richard's dubbing in the first five months of his Protectorate were--General Morgan (Nov. 26), Captain Beke (Dee. 6), and Colonel Hugh Bethel (Dee. 26). There may have been others.] Appearances, however, were very deceptive. The death of Cromwell had, of course, agitated the whole world of exiled Royalism, raising sunk hopes, and stimulating Charles himself, the Queen-Mother, Hyde, Ormond, Colepepper, and the other refugees over the Continent, to doubled activity of intrigue and correspondence. And, though that immediate excitement had passed, and had even been succeeded by a kind of wondering disappointment among the exiles at the perfect calm attending Richard's accession, it was evident that the chances of Charles were immensely greater under Richard than they had been while Oliver lived. For one thing, would the relations of Louis XIV. and Mazarin to Richard's Government remain the same as they had been to Oliver's? There was no disturbance of these relations as yet. The English auxiliaries in Flanders were still shoulder to shoulder with Turenne and his Frenchmen, sharing with them such new successes as the capture of Ypres, accomplished mainly by the valour of the brave Morgan. But who knew what might be passing in the mind of the crafty Cardinal? Then what of the Dutch? In the streets of Amsterdam the populace, on receipt of the news of Cromwell's death, had gone about shouting "The Devil is dead"; the alliance between the English Commonwealth and the United Provinces had recently been on strain almost to snapping; what if, on the new opportunity, the policy of the States-General should veer openly towards the Stuart interest? All this was in the calculations of Hyde and his fellow-exiles, and it was their main disappointment that the quiet acceptance and seeming stability of the new Protectorate at home prevented the spring against it of such foreign possibilities. "I hope this young man will not inherit his father's fortune," wrote Hyde in the fifth month after Richard's accession, "but that some confusion will fall out which must make open a door for us." The speculation was more likely than even Hyde then knew. Underneath the great apparent calm at home the beginnings of a confusion at the very centre were already at work.[1] [Footnote 1: Thurloe, VII. 405 and 414; Guizot's _Richard Cromwell and the Restoration_ (English edition of 1856), I. 6-11.] It will be well at this point to have before us a list of the most conspicuous props and assessors of the new Protectorate. The name _Oliverians_ being out of date now, they may be called _The Cromwellians_. We shall arrange them in groups:-- I. THE COUNCIL. Lord President Lawrence. Lord Lieutenant-General Fleetwood (his Highness's brother-in-law). Lord Major-General Desborough (his Highness's uncle-in-law). Lord Sydenham (Colonel). Lord Pickering (_Chamberlain of the Household_). Lord Strickland. Lord Skippon. Lord Fiennes (_one of the Commissioners of the Great Seal_). Lord Viscount Lisle. Lord Admiral Montague. Lord Wolseley. Lord Philip Jones (_Comptroller of the Household_). Mr. Secretary Thurloe.[1] [Footnote 1: On comparing this list of Richard's Council with the list of the Council in Oliver's Second Protectorate (ante p. 308) two names will be missed--those of the EARL of MULGRAVE and old FRANCIS ROUS. The Earl of Mulgrave had died Aug. 28, 1658, five days before Cromwell himself. The venerable Rous only just survived. He died Jan. 7, 1658-9, and is hardly to be counted in the present list. Richard's father-in-law, RICHARD MAYOR, though still alive and nominally in the Council, had retired from active life.] II. NEAR ADVISERS, NOT OF THE COUNCIL. Lord Viscount Falconbridge (his Highness's brother-in-law). Lord Viscount Howard (Colonel). Lord Richard Ingoldsby (Colonel). Lord Whitlocke (still a much respected Cromwellian, and conjoined with Fiennes and Lisle in the Commission of the Great Seal, Jan. 22, 1658-9). Lord Commissioner John Lisle. Lord Chief Justice Glynne. Lord Chief Justice St. John. William Pierrepoint. Sir Edmund Prideaux (_Attorney General_). Sir William Bills (_Solicitor General_). Sir Oliver Fleming (_Master of the Ceremonies_). Sir Richard Chiverton (_Lord Mayor of London_). Dr. John Wilkins (his Highness's uncle-in-law). Dr. John Owen. Dr. Thomas Goodwin. III. CHIEF REPRESENTATIVES OF THE ARMY IN OR NEAR LONDON:--Fleetwood and Desborough, besides being Councillors, were the real heads of the Army; and Skippon, Sydenham, and Montague, though of the Council too, with Viscount Howard and Ingoldsby, among the near advisers out of the Council, might also rank as Army-chiefs. But, in addition to these, there were many distinguished officers, tied to the Cromwellian dynasty, as it might seem, by their antecedents. Among these were Edward Whalley, William Goffe, Robert Lilburne, Sir John Barkstead, James Berry, Thomas Kelsay, William Butler, Tobias Bridges, Sir Thomas Pride, Sir John Hewson, Thomas Cooper, John Jones, and John Clerk. These were now usually designated, in their military capacity, as merely _Colonels;_ but the first eight had been among Cromwell's "Major-Generals," three of the thirteen had their knighthoods from him, and nine of the thirteen (Whalley, Goffe, Barkstead. Berry, Pride, Hewson, Cooper, Jones, and Clerk) had been among his Parliamentary "Lords."--We have mentioned but the chiefs of the Army, called "the Army Grandees;" but, since Richard's accession, and by his consent or summons, Army-officers of all grades had flocked to London to form a kind of military Parliament round Fleetwood and Desborough, and to assist in launching the new Protectorate. They held weekly meetings, sometimes to the number of 200 or more, in Fleetwood's residence of WALLINGFORD HOUSE, close to Whitehall Palace; and, as at these meetings, as well as at the smaller meetings of "the Army Grandees" in the same place, all matters were discussed, WALLINGFORD HOUSE was, for the time, a more important seat of deliberation than the Council-Room itself. There were also more secret meetings in Desborongh's house. IV. WEIGHTY CROMWELLIANS AWAY FROM LONDON. (1) GENERAL GEORGE MONK, _Commander-in-Chief in Scotland;_ with whom may be associated such members of the Scottish Council as Samuel Desborough, Colonel Adrian Scroope, Colonel Nathaniel Whetham, and Swinton of Swinton. (2) LORD HENRY CROMWELL, _Lord Deputy of Ireland_ hitherto, but now, by his brother's commission, _Lord Lieutenant of Ireland_ (Sept. 1658); with whom may be associated such of the Irish Council or military staff as Chancellor Steele, Chief Justice Pepys, Colonel Sir Hardress Waller, Colonel Sir Matthew Tomlinson, Colonel William Purefoy, Colonel Jerome Zanchy, and Sir Francis Russell. Also in Ireland at this time, and nominally in retirement, but a Cromwellian of the highest magnitude, was LORD BROGHILL. (3) Abroad the most important Cromwellian by far was SIR WILLIAM LOCKHART, _Lord Ambassador to France, General, and Governor of Dunkirk;_ with whom may be remembered George Downing, Resident in the United Provinces, and Meadows and Jephson, Envoys to the Scandinavian powers. Lockhart managed to be in England on a brief visit in December 1658. These fifty or sixty persons, one may say, were the men on whom it mainly depended, in the first months of Richard's Protectorate, whether that Protectorate should succeed or should founder. It has been customary, in general retrospects of the time, to represent some of them as already tired of the Commonwealth in any possible form, and scheming afar off for the restoration of the Stuarts. This, however, is quite a misconstruction.--Monk, who is chiefly suspected, and who did now, from his separate station in the north, watch events in an independent manner, had certainly as yet no thought of the kind imagined. He had sent Richard a paper of advices showing a real desire to assist him at the outset. He advised him, substantially, to persevere in the later or very conservative policy of his father, but with certain differences or additions, which would be now easy. He ought, said Monk, at once to secure the affections of the great Presbyterian body, by attaching to himself privately some of the most eminent Presbyterian divines, and by publicly calling an Assembly of Divines, in which Moderate Presbyterians and Moderate Independents together might agree on a standard of orthodoxy, and so stop the blasphemy and profaneness "too frequent in many places by the great extent of Toleration." Then, when a Parliament should meet, he ought to bring a number of the most prudent and trustworthy of the old nobility and the wealthy country gentry into the House of Lords. For retrenchment of expense the chief means would be a reduction of the Armies in England, Scotland, and Ireland, by throwing two regiments everywhere into one, and so getting rid of unnecessary officers; nor let his Highness think this advice too bold, for Monk could assure him "There is not an officer in the Army, upon any discontent, that has interest enough to draw two men after him, if he be out of place." On the other hand, the Navy ought to be strengthened, and many of the ships re-officered[1]--Such were Monk's advices; and, whatever may be thought of their value, they were certainly given in good faith. And so with those others to whom, from their subsequent conduct, similar suspicions have been attached. At our present date there was no ground for these suspicions. To some in the list, either ranking among the actual Regicides or otherwise deeply involved in the transactions of the late reign and their immediate consequences, the idea of a Restoration of the Stuarts may have been more horrible, on personal grounds, than it need have been to others, conscious only of later participation and lighter responsibility; but not a man in the list yet dreamt of going over to the Royalist cause. The dissensions were as to the manner and extent of their adhesion to Richard, and the policy to be recommended to him or forced upon him. [Footnote 1: Thurloe, VII. 387-388.] Cromwell's death having removed the one vast personal ascendency that had so long kept all in obedience, jealousies and selfish interests had sprung up, and were wrangling round his successor. From certain mysterious letters in cipher from Falconbridge to Henry Cromwell it appears that the wrangle had begun even round Cromwell's death-bed, "Z. [Cromwell] is now beyond all possibility of recovery" Falconbridge had written on Tuesday, Aug. 31: "I long to hear from A. [Henry Cromwell] what his intentions are. If I may know, I'll make the game here as fair as may be; and, if I may have commission from A., I can make sure of Lord Lockhart and those with him." One might imagine from this that Falconbridge would have liked to secure the succession for Henry; but it rather appears that what he wanted was to counteract a cabal against the interests of the family generally, which he had reported as then going on among the officers. Certain it is that, after Richard had been proclaimed and Henry had most loyally and affectionately put all his services at the disposal of his elder brother, Falconbridge continued in cipher letters to inform Henry of the proceedings of the same cabal. Gradually, in these letters and in other documents, we come to a clear view of the main fact. It was that the wrangle of jealousies and personal interests round the new Protector had taken shape in a distinct division of his adherents and supporters into two parties. First there was what may be called the _Court Party_ or _Dynastic Party,_ represented by Falconbridge himself, and by Admiral Montague, Fiennes, Philip Jones, Thurloe, and others in the Council, with Howard, Whitlocke, and Ingoldsby, out of the Council, and with the assured backing of Henry Cromwell, Broghill, and Lockhart, if not also of Monk. What they desired was to make Richard's Protectorate an avowed continuation of his father's, with the same forms, the same powers, and the permanence of the _Petition and Advice_ as the instrument of the Protectoral Constitution in every particular. In opposition to this party was the _Army Party,_ or _Wallingford-House Party,_ led by Fleetwood and Desborough, with a following of others in the Council and of the Army-officers almost in mass. While maintaining the Protectorate in name, they were for such modifications of the Protectoral Constitution as might consist with the fact that the chief magistrate was now no longer Oliver, but the feeble and unmilitary Richard. In especial, they were for limiting the Protectorship by taking from Richard the control of the Army, and re-assuming it for the Army itself in the name of the Commonwealth. It was their proposal, more precisely, that Fleetwood should be Commander-in-chief independently, and so a kind of military co-ordinate with the Protector.[1] [Footnote 1: Falconbridge's Letters (deciphered) in Thurloe, VII. 365-366 et seq., with other Letters in Thurloe and Letters of the French Ambassador, M. de Bordeaux, chiefly to Mazarin, appended to Guizot's _Richard Cromwell and the Restoration,_ I. 231 _et seq._] For nearly five months there had been this tug of parties at Whitehall round poor Richard. Naturally, all his own sympathies were with the Dynastic Party; and he had made this apparent. He had proposed to bring Falconbridge and Broghill, perhaps also Whitlocke, into the Council; and, when he found that the Army party would not consent, he had declined to bring in Whalley, Goffe, Berry, and Cooper, proposed by that party in preference. In the matter of the limitation of his Protectorship by the surrender of his headship of the Army he had been even more firm. The matter having come before him formally by petition from the Council of Officers, after having been pressed upon him again and again by Fleetwood and Desborough in private, he had, in a conference with all the officers then in town (Oct, 14). Fleetwood at their head, explained his sentiments fully. The speech was written for him by Thurloe. After some gentle preliminaries, with dutiful references to his father, it came to the main subject. "I am sure it may be said of me," said Richard, "that not for my wisdom, my parts, my experience, my holiness, hath God chosen me before others: there are many here amongst you who excel me in all these things: but God hath done herein as it pleased Him, and the nation, by His providence, hath put things this way. Being then thus trusted, I shall make a conscience, I hope, in the execution of this trust; which I see not how I should do if I should part with any part of the trust which is committed to me unto any others, though they may be better men than myself." He then instanced the two things which he understood to be demanded of him by the Army. "For instance," he said, "if I should trust it to any one person or more to fill up the vacancies of the Army otherwise than it is in the _Petition and Advice_--which directs that the commanders-in-chief of England, Scotland, and Ireland, and the other field-officers, should be from time to time supplied by me, with the consent of the Council, leaving all other commissioned officers only to my disposal--I should therein break my trust and do otherwise than the Parliament intended. It may as well be asked of me that I would commit it to some other persons to supply the vacancies in the Council, in the Lords' House, and all other magistracies. I leave it to any reasonable man to imagine whether this be a thing in my power to do.... There hath also been some discourse about a Commander-in-chief. You know how that stands in the _Petition_ and _Advice_, which I must make my rule in my government, and shall through the blessing of God stick close to that. I am not obliged to make _any_ Commander-in-chief: that is left to my own liberty, as it was in my father's; only, if I will make any, it must be done by the consent of the Council. And by the Commander-in-chief can be meant no other than the person who _under me_ commands the whole Army, call him what you will--'Field-Marshal,' 'Commander-in-chief,' 'Major-General,' or 'Lieutenant-General.' ... Commander-in-chief is the genus; the others are the species. And, though I am not obliged to have any such person besides myself to command all the forces, yet I _have_ made one: that is, I have made my brother Fleetwood Lieutenant-General of all the Army, and so by consequence commander-in-chief [_under me_]; and I am sure I can do nothing that will give him more influence in the Army than that title will give him, unless I should make him General [_instead of me_]; and I have told you the reasons why I cannot do that." Altogether, the speech, and the modesty with which it was delivered, produced very considerable effect for the moment upon the officers. Whalley, Goffe, Berry, and others are understood to have shown more sympathy with Richard in consequence; there was respect for his firmness among people generally when it came to be known; and, though the meetings at Wallingford House and Desborough's house were continued, action was deferred. One effect, however, had been to rouse the dormant Anti-Cromwellianism of the Army-men, and to bring out, more than Fleetwood and Desborough intended, that leaven of pure Republicanism, or affection for the "good old cause" of 1648-1653, which had not ceased, through all the submission to the Protectorate, to lurk in the regiments in combination with Anabaptistry, Fifth-Monarchism, and other extreme forms of religious Independency. In the meetings round Fleetwood and Desborough there had been reflections on the late Protector's memory far from respectful. Henry Cromwell in Ireland had heard of this; and among many interesting letters of his to various correspondents on the difficulties of his brother's opening Protectorate, all showing a proud and fine sensitiveness, with some flash of his father's intellect, there is one (Oct. 20) of rebuke to his brother-in-law Fleetwood on account of _his_ conjunction with the malcontents, "Pray give me leave to expostulate with you. How came those 200 or 300 officers together? ... If they were called, was it with his Highness's privity? If they met without leave in so great a number, were they told their error? I shall not meddle with the matter of their petition, though some things in it do unhandsomely reflect not only on this present, but his late, Highness, I wish with all my heart you were Commander-in-chief of all the forces in the three nations; but I had rather have it done by his Highness's especial grace and mere motion than put upon you in a tumultuary soldierly way. But, dear brother, I must tell you (and I cannot do it without tears) I hear that dirt was thrown upon his late Highness at that great meeting. They were exhorted to stand up for that 'good old cause which had long lain asleep,' &c. I thought my dear father had pursued it to the last. He died like a servant of God, and prayed for those that desired to trample upon his dust, for _they_ also were God's people. O dear brother! ... whither do these things tend? Surely God hath a controversy with us. What a hurly-burly is there made! A hundred Independent ministers called together" [the Savoy Synod of the Congregationalists, with Owen, Thomas Goodwin, Nye, Caryl, and others, at their head, convoked Sept. 29, 1658, for framing a Confession of Faith, by permission from the late Protector: see ante p. 844]. "a Council, as you call it, of 200 or 300 officers of a judgment! Remember what has always befallen imposing spirits. Will not the loins of an imposing Independent or Anabaptist be as heavy as the loins of an imposing Prelate or Presbyter? And is it a dangerous error that dominion is founded on grace when it is held by the Church of Rome, and a sound principle when it is held by the Fifth Monarchy? ... O dear brother, my spirit is sorely oppressed with the consideration of the miserable estate of the innocent people of these three poor nations. What have these sheep done that _their_ blood should be the price of _our_ lust and ambition? Let me beg of you to remember how his late Highness loved you, how he honoured you with the highest trust in the world by leaving the sword in your hand which must defend or destroy us; and his declaring his Highness his successor shows that he left it there to preserve _him_ and _his_ reputation. O brother, use it to curb extravagant spirits and busybodies; but let not the nations be governed by it. Let us take heed of arbitrary power. Let us be governed by the known laws of the land, and let all things be kept in their proper channels; and let the Army be so governed that the world may never hear of them unless there be occasion to fight. And truly, brother, you must pardon me if I say God and man may require this duty at your hand, and lay all miscarriages in the Army, in point of discipline, at _your_ door." Fleetwood could answer this (Nov. 9) but very lamely: "I do wonder what I have done to deserve such a severe letter from you," &c. Fleetwood was really a good-hearted gentleman, meaning no desperate harm to Richard or his Protectorate, though desiring the Commandership-in-chief for himself, and perhaps (who knows domestic secrets?) a co-equality of public status for his wife, Lady Bridget, with the Lady-Protectress Dorothy. In fact, however, Lieutenant-General Fleetwood and Major-General Desborough between them had let loose forces that were to defy their own management. Meanwhile, the phenomenon observable in the weeks preceding the meeting of the Parliament which Richard had called was that of a violent division already among the councillors and assessors of the Protectorate. There was the _Court Party_ or _Dynastic Party,_ taking their stand on the _Petition and Advice,_ and advocating a strictly conservative and constitutional procedure, in the terms of that document, on the lines laid down by Oliver. There was also the _Army Party_ or _Wallingford-House Party,_ led by Fleetwood and Desborough, with an immediate retinue of Cromwellian ex-Major-Generals and Colonels purposely in London, and a more shadowy tail of majors, captains, and inferior officers, coiled away among the regiments.[1] [Footnote 1: Thurloe, VII. 447-449, 454-455, and 498; Phillips, 639; Guizot, I. 13-19, with Letters of M. de Bordeaux appended to the volume.] More than questions of home-administration was involved in this division of parties. It involved also the future foreign policy of the Protectorate. The desire of Richard himself and of the Court Party was to prosecute the foreign policy which Oliver had so strenuously begun. Now, the great bequests from the late Protectorate in the matter of foreign policy had been two: (1)_The War with Spain, in alliance with France._ The Treaty Offensive and Defensive with France against Spain, originally formed by Cromwell March 23, 1656-7, and renewed March 28, 1658, was to expire on March 28, 1659. Was it to be then again renewed? If not, how was the war with Spain to be farther conducted, and what was to become of Dunkirk, Mardike, and other English conquests and interests in Flanders? Mazarin was really anxious on this topic. The alliance with England had been immensely advantageous for France; and could it not be continued? In frequent letters, since Cromwell's death, to M. de Bordeaux, the French Ambassador in London, Mazarin had pressed for information on this point. The substance of the Ambassador's replies had been that the new Protector and his Council, especially Mr. Secretary Thurloe, were too much engrossed with home-difficulties to be very explicit with him, but that he had reason to believe a loan from France of £50,000 would aid the natural inclinations of the Court-party to continue the alliance. This was more than Mazarin would risk on the chance, though he was willing to act on the suggestion of the ambassador that a present of Barbary horses should be sent to Lord Falconbridge, or a jewel to Lady Falconbridge, to keep _them_ in good-humour. There can be no doubt that Falconbridge, Thurloe, Lockhart, and the Court Party generally, did hope to preserve the close friendship with France and the hold acquired by England on Flanders. Lockhart particularly had at heart the hard, half-starved condition of his poor Dunkirk garrison and the other forces in Flanders. On the other hand, there were signs that public feeling might desert the Court Party in their desire to carry on Oliver's joint-enterprise with France against the Spaniards. Dunkirk and Mardike were precious possessions; but might it not be better for trade to make peace with Spain, even if Jamaica should have to be given back and there should have to be other sacrifices? This idea had diffused itself, it appears, pretty widely among the pure Commonwealth's men, and was in favour with some of the Wallingford-House party. Why be always at war with Spain? True, she was Roman Catholic, and the more the pity; but what did that concern England? Was there not enough to do at home?[1] (2) _Assistance to the King of Sweden_. A great surprise to all Europe just before Cromwell's death had been, as we know, the sudden rupture of the Peace of Roeskilde between Sweden and Denmark, with the reinvasion of Zealand by Charles Gustavus, and his march on Copenhagen (ante p. 396). Had Cromwell lived, there is no doubt that, with whatever regret at the new rupture, he would have stood by his heroic brother of Sweden. For was not the Swedish King still, as before, the one real man of mark in the whole world of the Baltic, the hope of that league of Protestant championship on the Continent which Cromwell had laboured for; and was he not now standing at bay against a most ugly and unnatural combination of enemies? Not only were John Casimir and his Roman Catholic Poles, and the Emperor Leopold and his Roman Catholic Austrians, and Protestant Brandenburg and some other German States, all in eager alliance with the Danes for the opportunity of another rush against _him_; the Dutch too were abetting the Danes for their own commercial interests? Actually this was the state of things which Richard's Government had to consider. Charles Gustavus was still besieging Copenhagen; a Dutch fleet, under Admiral Opdam, had gone to the Baltic to relieve the Danes (Oct. 1658): was Cromwell's grand alliance with the Swede, were the prospects of the Protestant League, were English interests in the Baltic, to be of no account? Applications for help had been made by the Swedish King; Mazarin, through the French ambassador, had been urging assistance to Sweden; the inclinations of Richard, Thurloe, and the rest, were all that way. Here again, however, the perplexity of home-affairs, the want of money, the refusal of Mazarin himself to lend even £50,000, were pleaded in excuse. All that could be done at first was to further the despatch to the Baltic of Sir George Ayscough, an able English Admiral who had for some years been too much in the background, but of whom the Swedish Count Bundt had conceived a high opinion during his embassy to England in 1655-6, and who had consequently been invited by the Swedish King to enter his service, bringing with him as many English officers and seamen as he could. This volunteer expedition of Ayscough Richard and his Council did at once countenance. Nay, when news came (Nov. 8) of a great defeat of Opdam's Dutch fleet by the Swedish Admiral Wrangel, the disposition to help the Swede became stronger. On the 13th of that month a special envoy from the Swedish King, who had been in London for some weeks, took his departure with some satisfaction; and within a few days Vice-Admiral Lawson and his fleet of some twenty or twenty-one ships in the Downs had orders to sail for the Sound, for mediation at least, but for the support of Charles Gustavus if necessary. The fleet did put to sea, but with hesitations to the last and the report that it was "wind-bound."[2] [Footnote 1: Letters between Mazarin and M. de Bordeaux in Guizot, I. 231-286, and II. 441-450; Thurloe, VII. 466-467.] [Footnote 2: Letters between Mazarin and M. de Bordeaux last cited, with. Guizot, I. 23-26; Thurloe, VII. 412, 509, 529; Whitlocke for Sept., Oct., Nov., and Dec. 1658, also for Aug. 1656; Phillips, 638.] "Wind-bound" was the exact description of the state of Richard's Government itself. All depended on what should blow from the Parliament that had been called. In the writs for the elections to the Commons there had been a very remarkable retrogression from the practice of Oliver for his two Parliaments. For those two Parliaments there had been adopted the reformed electoral system agreed upon by the Long Parliament, reducing the total number of members for England and Wales to about 400, instead of the 500 or more of the ancient system, and allocating the 400 among constituencies rearranged so as to give a vast proportion of the representation to the counties, while reducing that of the burghs generally and disfranchising many small old burghs altogether. The _Petition and Advice_ having left this matter of the number of seats and their distribution open for farther consideration, Richard and his Council had been advised by the lawyers that it would be more "according to law" and therefore more safe and more agreeable to the spirit and letter of the _Petition and Advice_, to abandon the late temporary method, though sanctioned by the Long Parliament, and revert to the ancient use and wont. Writs had been issued, therefore, for the return of over 500 members from England and Wales by the old time-honoured constituencies, besides additions from Scotland and Ireland. Thus, whereas, for the last two Protectoral Parliaments, some of the larger English counties had returned as many as six, eight, nine, or twelve members each, all were now reduced alike to two, the large number of seats so set free, together with the extra hundred, going back among the burghs, and reincluding those that had been disfranchised. London also was reduced from six seats to four. It seems amazing now that this vast retrogression should have been so quietly accepted. It seems even to have been popular; and, at all events, it roused no commotion. It had been recommended by the lawyers, and it was expected to turn out favourable to the Government.[1] [Footnote 1: Ludlow, 615-619; and compare the List of Members of this Parliament of Richard (_Part. Hist._ III. 1530-1537) with the lists of Oliver's two Parliaments _(Part. Hist._ 1428-1433, and 1479-1484).] On Thursday, Jan. 27, 1658-9, the two Houses assembled in Westminster. In the Upper House, where Lord Commissioner Fiennes occupied the woolsack, were as many of Cromwell's sixty-three "Lords" (ante pp. 323-324) as had chosen to come. All the Council, except Thurloe, being in this House, and the others having been, for the most part, carefully selected Cromwellians, it might have been expected that Government would be strong in the House. As it included, however, Fleetwood, Desborough, and all the chief Colonels of the Wallingford-House party, it is believed that in such attendances as there were (never more than forty perhaps) that party may have been stronger than the Court party. But it was the composition of the Commons House that was really of consequence, and here appearances promised well for Richard. The total number of the members, by the returns, was 558, of whom 482 were from English counties and burghs, 25 from Wales, 30 from Ireland, and only 21 from Scotland. Some fifty of the total number were resolute pure Republicans, among whom may be noted Bradshaw (Cheshire), Vane (Whitchurch in Hants), Scott (Wycombe), Hasilrig (Leicester), Ludlow (Hindon), Henry Neville (Reading), Okey (Bedfordshire), and Weaver (Stamford); and there was a considerable sprinkling of Anti-Cromwellians of other colours besides, including Lord Fairfax (Yorkshire), Lambert (Pontefract), Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper (Wilts), and Major-General Browne (London). But Thurloe was there to represent the Government in chief (returned by Cambridge University, but by several other places also); and he could count about a hundred sure English adherents on the benches; among whom were Sir Edmund Prideaux (Saltash), Sir William Ellis (Grantham), together with his own subordinate in the Council-office, William Jessop (Stafford), and Milton's assistant in the Foreign Secretaryship, Andrew Marvell (Hull). There were not a few Army-officers of the Wallingford-House party; but, on the whole, this element did not seem to be particularly strong in the House. Among the members for Scottish constituencies were the Marquis of Argyle (Aberdeenshire), Samuel Desborough (Midlothian), the Earl of Tweeddale (East Lothian), Colonel Adrian Scroope (Linlithgow group of Burghs), Swinton of Swinton (Haddingtonshire), Colonel Whetham (St. Andrews, &c.), and Monk's brother-in-law, Dr. Thomas Clarges (Aberdeen, Banff, and Cullen). Ireland had returned, among her thirty, Sir Hardress Waller (Kerry, &c.), Sir Jerome Zanchy (Tipperary and Waterford), Sir Charles Coote (Galway and Mayo), and two Ingoldsbys. The Scottish and Irish representatives were, almost to a man, Government nominees. Altogether, Thurloe's anxiety must have been about the yet unknown mass of 300 or so, some scores of them lawyers, others country-gentlemen, and many of them young, that formed the neutral stuff to be yet operated upon. Among these, in spite of the oath of fidelity to the Lord Protector, there were indubitably not a few who were Stuartists at heart; but most wavered between Republicanism and the Protectorate, and it was hopeful for Thurloe in this respect that so much of the mass was Presbyterian. Ludlow, who did not at first take his seat, tells us that he at last contrived to do so furtively without being sworn, and seems to hint that Vane did the same. There was negligence on the part of the doorkeepers, or they were confused by the multitude of strange faces; for a stray London madman, named King, sat in the House for some time, in the belief that, as one of that name had been elected for some place, he might possibly be the person.[1] [Footnote 1: List in _Parl. Hist._ III. 1530-1537; Ludlow, 619 et seq.] Richard's opening speech was in a good strain. It assumed loyalty to the memory of his father and to the _Petition and Advice_, and recommended immediate attention to the arrears of the Army and to other money-exigencies, with zealous prosecution of the war with Spain, and consideration of what might be done for the King of Sweden, the cause of European Protestantism, and English interests in the Baltic. The speech was delivered in the Lords, only a few of the Commons attending. They were busy with swearing in their members, and with the election of a Speaker. Mr. Chaloner Chute, a lawyer, one of the members for Middlesex, was unanimously chosen; but, short as the session was to be, the House was to have three Speakers in succession. Mr. Chute acted till March 9, when his health broke down, and Sir Lislebone Long, one of the members for Wells, was appointed his substitute. Sir Lislebone died only seven days afterwards (March 16), and Mr. Thomas Bampfield, one, of the members for Exeter, succeeded him. Chute having died also, Bampfield became full Speaker. April 15, 1659.[1] [Footnote 1: _Parl. Hist._ III. 1537-1540, and Commons Journals of dates.] A day or two having been spent in preliminary business, and the House presenting the spectacle, long unknown in Westminster, of no fewer than between 300 and 400 members in daily attendance, Thurloe, on the 1st of February, boldly threw down the gage by bringing in a bill for recognising Richard's right and title to be Lord Protector. Hasilrig and the Republicans were taken by surprise, and could only protest that the motion was unseasonable and that other matters ought to have precedence. The bill having been read the first time that day, Thurloe consented that the second reading should be deferred to the 7th. On that day, accordingly, there began a debate which lasted for seven successive days, and was a full trial of strength between the Government and the Republicans. Hasilrig, Neville, Scott, Vane, Ludlow, and others, exerted themselves to the utmost, Hasilrig leading, and making one speech three hours long. It was evident, however, that the Republicans knew themselves to be but a minority, and used the debate only for re-opening the question of a Republic. They did not attack the direct proposal of the Bill; on the contrary they vied with the Cromwellians in language of respect for Richard. "I confess I do love the person of the Lord Protector; I never saw nor heard either fraud or guile in him." said Hasilrig. "I would not hazard a hair of his present Highness's head," said Scott; "if you think of a Single Person, I would have him sooner than any man alive." They did not want, they said, to pull down the Protectorate; they only objected to Thurloe's high-handed method for committing the House to a foregone conclusion. But Thurloe beat. On Monday the 14th, the question having been finally put "that it be part of this Bill to recognise and declare his Highness Richard, Lord Protector, to be the undoubted Lord Protector and Chief Magistrate," it was carried by 191 votes to 168 to retain the words "recognise and," and so to accept Richard's accession as valid already. On a proposal to leave out the word "undoubted" Thurloe did not think a division worth while, but made the concession. He did oppose a resolution, suddenly brought forward, to the effect that the vote just passed should not be binding until the House should have settled the clauses farther defining the powers of the Lord Protector; but that resolution, having caught the fancy of the House, passed with his single dissent. On the whole, he had succeeded in his first great battle with the Republicans.--Nor was he less successful in the second. The Protectorship having been voted, it was Thurloe's policy to push next the question of the recognition of the Other House, whereas the Republicans desired to avoid that question as long as possible, so as to keep the Other House a mere nonentity, while the Commons proceeded, as the substantial and sovereign House, to define the powers of the Protector. On the 18th of February, the Republicans, having challenged a settlement of this difference by moving that the question of the negative voice of the Protector in passing laws should have precedence of the question of the Other House, were beaten overwhelmingly by 217 votes to 86; and then for more than a month the question of the Other House was the all-engrossing one. It involved other questions, some of them apparently independent. Thus, on the 8th of March, the debate took a curiously significant turn. Indignant at the very notion that there should be anything in England calling itself "The House of Lords," the Republican speakers had played on this supposed horror with every variety of sarcasm, sneering at the existing "Other House," with its shabby equipment of old colonels and other originally mean persons. If there was to be a House of Lords, Hasilrig and others now said imprudently, why should it not be a real one, why should not the old nobility, so many of them honourable men, resume their places? "Why not?" was the instant retort from some independent members, with the instant applause of many in the House. Hasilrig saw his mistake, of which Thurloe did not fail to take advantage. "The old Peers," said Thurloe, "are not excluded by the _Petition and Advice_: divers are called,--others may be"; and the occasion was taken to pass a resolution expressly reserving for such of the old peers as had been faithful the privilege of being summoned to the Other House, should the issue of the debate be in favour of the existence of that institution. The divisions on this incidental resolution were the largest recorded in the Journals of the House--the previous question for putting the resolution being carried by 203 to 184, and the resolution itself by 195 to 188. Though the majority was but small, the gain to the Court Party was precious, because on an unexpected point. But the Republicans had done themselves no good by their style in the main discussion, A miscellaneous assembly always resents the ungenerous, and the sneers at the existing composition of the Other House had seemed ungenerous. "They have gone through wet and dry, hot and cold, fire and water; they are the best officers of the best army in the world; their swords are made of what Hercules's club was made of": such were the terms in which one speaker defended the military veterans of the Other House; and they were received with cheers. Nor did the next step of the Republicans improve their position. Having observed what a considerable proportion of Thurloe's majorities consisted of the members from Scotland and Ireland, Cromwellians nearly to a man, they tried to sweep these from the House in anticipation of future votes. First, they raised the question about the Scottish members, contending that their presence in an English Parliament was unconstitutional, that the _de facto_ incorporation of Scotland with the Commonwealth had never been legally consummated, &c. On this subject, the House having first negatived the proposal that the Scottish members should withdraw during the debate, it was decided, March 21, by a majority of 211 (Thurloe one of the tellers) to 120 (Vane one of the tellers), "That the members returned for Scotland shall continue to sit as members during this present Parliament," A like vote, March 23, retained the Irish members. The Republicans had again lost character by this piece of tactics. Not only was it offensive to Scotland and Ireland; but to many disinterested English members it seemed a mean attempt to depreciate, for a mere party purpose, those great achievements of recent years which had made the British Islands, as if by miracle, one body-politic at last. On the 28th of March the principal debate came to an end in this two-claused Resolution: "That this House will transact with the persons now sitting in the Other House, as an House of Parliament, during the present Parliament; and that it is not hereby intended to exclude such Peers as have been faithful to the Parliament from their privilege of being duly summoned to be members of that House." The final division was 198 to 125; but there had been a preceding division on the question whether the words "when they shall be approved by this House" should be inserted after the word "Parliament" in the first clause. This very ingenious amendment of the Anti-Cromwellians had been rejected by 183 votes to 146, the tellers for the Cromwellian majority being the Marquis of Argyle and Thurloe, and for the minority Lord Fairfax and Lord Lambert.--Thus, at the end of the second month of the Parliament, the victory was clearly with Thurloe and the Government. The Protectorship had been recognised; and the Other House also had been recognised, rather grudgingly indeed, and not by the desired name of "The House of Lords," but with a proviso that seemed to put that and more within reach. It had also been ascertained in general that, in a House of Commons larger than had been seen in Westminster for many years, Richard's Government was stronger, on vital questions, than the Republicans and all other Anti-Cromwellians together. For there had been discussions affecting the foreign policy of the Protectorate, and in these the Republicans and Anti-Cromwellians had been equally beaten. It had been, carried, for example, on Thurloe's representation, to persevere in the despatch of a strong fleet to the Baltic in the interest of the Swedish King; and such a fleet, now under Admiral Montague's command, had actually sailed before the end of March. It was in the Sound early in April.[1] [Footnote 1: Commons Journals of dates, and Guizot, I. 46-72 (where the extracts from speeches are from _Burton's Diary_); also Commons Journals of Feb. 21 and 24; and Thurloe, VII. 636-637 and 644-645.] In minor matters the House had shown some independence. On the 23rd of February they had ordered the release of the Duke of Buckingham from the imprisonment to which he had been committed by Oliver, accepting the Duke's own word of honour, and Fairfax's bail of £20,000, that he would not abet the enemies of the Commonwealth. So, on the 16th of March, they had released Milton's friend, the Republican Major-General Overton, from his four years' imprisonment, declaring Cromwell's mere warrant for the same to have been insufficient and illegal. This was a most popular act, and the liberated Overton was received in London with enthusiastic ovations. Other political prisoners of the late Protectorate were similarly released, and, on the whole, the majority of the House, though with all reverence for Oliver's memory, were ready to take any occasion for signifying that his more "arbitrary" acts must be debited to himself only. There were also distinct evidences of a disposition in the House, due to the massive representation of the Presbyterians in it, to question the late Protector's liking for unlimited religions toleration. They approved heartily, it appears, of his Established Church, and even of its breadth as including Presbyterians and Independents; but, like preceding Parliaments, they were for a more rigorous care for Church-orthodoxy, and more severe dealings with "heresies and blasphemies." Quakers, Anti-Trinitarians, and Jews were especially threatened. Here, indeed, the House meant rather to indicate its good-will to the Protectorate than the reverse; for, though. Richard and Henry Cromwell inherited their father's religious liberality, and others of the Cromwellians agreed with them, not a few were disposed, like Monk, to make a compact with the Presbyterians for heresy-hunting part of the very programme of Richard's Protectorate. The Toleration tenet, indeed, was perhaps more peculiarly a tenet of the Republicans than of any other political party, and not without strong reasons of a personal kind, people said, on the part of some of them. Had not Mr. Henry Neville, for example, been heard to say that he was more affected by some parts of Cicero than by anything in the Bible? If heathenism like that infected the Republican opposition, what could any plain honest Christian do but support the Protectorate?[1] [Footnote 1: Commons Journals of dates given, and of Feb. 26 and April 2; Guizot, I. 103-104.] April 1659 was the third month of the Parliament. About a hundred of the members hitherto in attendance had then withdrawn, and the attendances had sunk to between 150 and 270. This was the more ominous because the struggle had now ceased to be one between the Protector's Government and the Opposition, and had become one between the Court Party and the Army or Wallingford-House Party for the farther use of Thurloe's victories. The Republicans, foiled in their own measures, had entered into relations with the Wallingford-House magnates. True, these were not, for the nonce, Republicans. On the contrary, they were still one wing of the declared supporters of Richard's Protectorship, and their chiefs all but composed that Other House the rights of which Thurloe had vindicated so manfully against the Republicans, and which was now therefore a working part of the Legislature. But might there not be ways and means of breaking down the allegiance of the Wallingford-House men to the Protectorate, their present implication with it notwithstanding? They were primarily Army-chiefs, and only secondarily politicians for the Protectorate; behind them was the Army itself, charged with Republican sentiments from of old, and with not a few important officers in it who were Republicans re-avowed; and, besides, they were politicians for the Protectorate in an interest of their own which quite separated them from the Court Party. Might not these differences between the Court Party and the Wallingford-House Party be so operated upon as to force the Court Party into open antagonism to the Army, and so leave the Wallingford-House men no option but to fall back upon Army Republicanism and make the Army an agent, in spite of themselves, for the "good Old Cause"? How well-founded was this calculation will appear if we remember one or two facts. Cessation of Army-domination in politics, and reliance on massive public feeling and on constitutional methods, were now fixed principles of the Court Party. Monk had expressed them when he advised Richard to reduce the Army and get rid of superfluous officers, assuring him that the most disaffected officer, once discharged, would be a very harmless animal. Henry Cromwell had expressed the same in that letter to Fleetwood in which he sighed for the happy time when the Army would never be heard of except when it was fighting. Thurloe, Broghill, Falconbridge, and the rest, were of the same general opinion; and parts of the Army itself, they believed, had been schooled into docility. Monk could answer for the troops and officers in Scotland, Henry Cromwell for those in Ireland, and Lockhart for those in Flanders. But then there was the great body of soldiers and officers in England, with London for their rendezvous. To them abnegation of direct influence in politics was death. It was not only their arrears that they saw endangered, but that Army privilege of debating and theorizing which had been asserted by Cromwell in the Civil War, and which Cromwell afterwards, while regulating and checking it, had never abolished. Were they to meet no more, agitate no more? Was the great Army of the Commonwealth to be degraded, for the benefit of this new Protector, into a mere collection of men paid for bestriding horses and handling pikes and ramrods? So reasoned the rank and file and the subalterns; but the chiefs, while sharing the general feeling, had additional alarms of their own. They had left actions behind them, done in their major-generalcies or other commands for Cromwell, for which they might be called to account under a civilian Protectorate, or other merely constitutional Government. There had actually been signs in the present Parliament of a tendency to the re-investigation of cases of military oppression and the impeachment of selected culprits. Were the Army-men to consent, in such circumstances, to give up their powers of self-defence and corporate action? No! Oliver's son might deserve consideration; but Oliver's Army had prior claims. Hitherto, Fleetwood, Desborough, and the rest of the Wallingford-House Party, had been content with private remonstrances with Richard on Army grievances in general, or particular grievances occasioned by his own exercise of Army-patronage. A saying of Richard's in one of these conferences had been widely reported and had given great offence. In reply to a suggestion that he was doing wrong in appointing any but "godly" officers, he had said, "Here is Dick Ingoldsby, who can neither pray nor preach, and yet I will trust him before ye all." As nothing was to be made of Richard in this private way, the Army party had resolved on another great convention of officers in London, nominally for the consideration of Army affairs, but really to constrain both Richard and the Parliament. Ludlow, who had hitherto been the medium of communication between the Republicans and the Wallingford-House men, was informed of this proposal; and he and the other Republicans looked on with the keenest interest. Would Richard, with his recent experience, allow the officers to reassemble in general council? To the horror of Broghill, Falconbridge, Thurloe, and the rest of the Court party, it was found that, in a moment of weakness, cajoled privately by Fleetwood and Desborough, he _had_ given the permission, without even consulting his Council. Nothing could be done but let the convention meet, taking care that as many officers as possible of the Court party should be present in it. Accordingly, on the 5th of April 1659, there were about 500 officers of all ranks at Wallingford House, Fleetwood and Desborough at the head of one Protectoral party, and Broghill, Viscount Howard, Falconbridge, with Whalley and Goffe, representing the other, while among the general body there were no one knew how many pure Republicans. The meeting having been solemnly opened with prayer by Dr. Owen, there was a vehement speech from Desborough. The essence of the speech was that "several sons of Belial" had crept into the Army, corrupting its former integrity, and that therefore he would propose that every officer should be cashiered that would not "swear that he did believe in his conscience that the putting to death of the late King, Charles Stuart, was lawful and just." Amid the cheers that followed, Lords Howard and Falconbridge (two of the denounced "sons of Belial"?) left in disgust; but Broghill remained and opposed bravely. He disliked all tests; but, if there was to be a test, he would propose that it should be simply an oath "to defend the Government as it is now established under the Protector and Parliament." If the present meeting insisted on a test, and did not adopt that one, he would see that it should be moved in Parliament. This, supported by Whalley and Goffe, calmed the meeting somewhat; and, after much more speaking, in which the necessity of a separation of the military power from the civil was a prominent topic, the result was "_A Humble Representation and Petition of the Officers of the Armies of England, Scotland, and Ireland_," expressed in general and not unrespectful terms, but conveying sufficiently the Army's demands. Presented to Richard in Whitehall on the 6th of April, this petition was forwarded by him to the Commons on the 8th, with a letter to the Speaker. For more than a week no notice was taken by the House; but, the petition having been circulated in print, with other petitions and documents more fierce for "the good old cause," and the general council of officers still continuing the meetings at Wallingford House, with the excitement of sermons and prayers added to that of their debates, the House was driven at last into that attitude of direct antagonism to the Army in the name of the Protectorate on which both Royalists and Republicans had calculated. Thurloe would fain have avoided this, and had almost longed for some Cavalier outbreak to occupy the two conflicting Protectoral parties and reunite them. But the numerous Cavaliers in London had been well instructed and lay provokingly still; and the management of the crisis for Richard had passed from Thurloe to the House itself. On Monday the 18th of April, in a House of 250, with shut doors to prevent any from leaving, it was resolved, by 163 votes to 87, "That, during the sitting of the Parliament there shall be no general council or meeting of the officers of the Army without the direction, leave, and authority of his Highness the Lord Protector and both Houses of Parliament"; and it was also resolved, "That no person shall have or continue any command or trust in any of the Armies or Navies of England, Scotland, or Ireland, or any of the Dominions or Territories thereto belonging, who shall refuse to subscribe, That he will not disturb nor interrupt the free meetings in Parliament of any of the members of either House of Parliament, or their freedom in their debates and counsels." The concurrence of the Other House was desired in these votes; and the Commons, who had noted with surprise that Hasilrig, Ludlow, Scott, and Vane, rather took part with the Army in the debate, proceeded to the serious consideration of the arrears of pay due to the officers and soldiers, and of other real military grievances, in order to reconcile the Army, if possible, to their strong Resolutions.[1] [Footnote 1: Ludlow, 633-638; Commons Journals of dates; Guizot, I. 112-120; Phillips, 641; Thurloe, VII. 657-658; Letters of M. de Bordeaux to Mazarin, in Guizot, I. 361-365.] That was not possible. Richard, urged by Broghill and others, and strengthened by the votes of the Commons, summoned up courage to go to the council of officers at Wallingford House next day, and, after listening to their debates for a while, declare their meetings dissolved. The only effect was that they dispersed themselves then, to meet from day to day just as before, Dr. Owen and other preachers still among them. Meanwhile, the concurrence of the Other House with the Resolutions having been purposely delayed and all but refused, the Commons adopted what farther measures they could for securing Richard's control of the militia. Richard was advised by those around him to empower them to seize Fleetwood and Desborough, and also Lambert, whose conjunction with the Wallingford-House party was now notorious. He hesitated. He had never done harm to anybody, he said, and he would not have a drop of blood shed on his poor account. The question now was between a forced dissolution of the Wallingford-House council of officers and a dissolution of the Parliament itself. That, in spite of Richard's objection to violence, seemed on the eve of being decided by a murderous battle in the streets of London. Fleetwood, summoned to Whitehall to see the Protector, neglected the summons; and through the night between Wednesday the 20th and Thursday the 21st of April there was a rendezvous in and round St. James's, by Fleetwood's order, of all the regiments in town. A counter-rendezvous, in Richard's name, was attempted at Whitehall; but Whalley, Goffe, and Ingoldsby, who would have commanded here and done their best, found that they had no soldiers to command, the bulk of their own regiments, with some of Richard's guards, having preferred the other rendezvous. What then happened is told by Ludlow in a single sentence. "About noon," says the sturdy democrat, "Colonel Desborough went to Mr. Richard Cromwell at Whitehall, and told him that, if he would dissolve his Parliament, the officers would take care of him, but that, if he refused to do so, they would do it without him, and leave him to shift for himself." There was some consultation, in which Broghill, Fiennes, Thurloe, Wolseley, and Whitlocke, took part. Whitlocke, as he tells us, was against a dissolution even in that extremity; but most of the others thought it inevitable. Richard, therefore, reluctantly yielded; but, as he declined to dissolve the Parliament in person, a commission for the purpose, directed to Lord Commissioner Fiennes, the Speaker of the Upper House, was drawn up by Thurloe, and delivered in the night to Fleetwood and Desborough. Next day, Friday the 22nd, when the message came to the Commons by the Black Rod to attend in the House of Lords, there was the utmost possible confusion. Some members who had gone out were recalled; all were ordered to remain in their places; there was a wild hubbub of motions and speeches, Fairfax conspicuous for his indignation; and, at length, the House, without paying attention to the summons of the Black Rod, adjourned itself to Monday morning at eight o'clock. The Dissolution, therefore, had to be effected by published proclamation, and by padlocking and guarding the doors of the House.[1] [Footnote 1: Ludlow, 639-641; Whitlocke under date April 21, 1659; Commons Journals of April 22; Phillips, 641-642; Guizot, I. 120-128, with Letters of M. de Bordeaux to Mazarin appended at pp. 366-375.] A week before the Dissolution the Parliament had estimated the public debt, as it would stand at the end of the year then current, at a total of £2,222,090, besides what might be due to the forces in Flanders. Of this sum £1,747,584 was existing debt in arrears, £393,883 was debt of the Navy running on for the year, and £80,623 was the calculated deficit for the year by the excess of the ordinary expenditure in England, Scotland, and Ireland over the revenues from these countries. It is interesting to note the particulars of this last item. The annual income from England was £1,517,275, and the annual expenses in England £1,547,788, leaving a deficit for England of £30,513; the annual income from Scotland was £143,652, but the outlay £307,271 (more than double the income), leaving a deficit for Scotland of £163,619; the annual income from Ireland was £207,790, and the outlay £346,480, leaving a deficit for Ireland of £138,690. This would have made the total deficit, for the ordinary administration, civil and military, of the three nations, £332,823; but, as £252,200 of this sum would be met by special taxes on England for the support of the Armies in Scotland and Ireland, the real deficit was £80,623, as above. How to meet that, and the £393,883 running on for the Navy, and the arrears of £1,747,584 besides, and the unknown amount that might be due to the Army in Flanders, was the financial problem to be solved. Two millions and a half, it may be said roughly, were required to set the Commonwealth clear.[1] [Footnote 1: Commons Journals, April 16, 1659.] The late Parliament having stated the problem, but having had no time to attempt the solution, the responsibility had descended to those who had turned them out. It was but one form of the enormous and most complex responsibility they had undertaken; but it was the particular form of responsibility that had most to do in determining their immediate proceedings. Had it been merely the administration that had come into their hands, with the defence of the Commonwealth against the renewed danger of a Royalist outburst at home and inburst from abroad to take advantage of the political crash, the Wallingford-House chiefs would probably have thought it sufficient to constitute themselves into a military Oligarchy for maintaining and carrying on Richard's Protectorate. Fleetwood, Desborough, and Lambert would have been a Triumvirate in Richard's name, and the only deliberative apparatus would have been the general council of officers continued, or a more select Council of their number associated with a few chosen civilians. The Triumvirs might have given such a form to the constitution as, while securing the real power for themselves, and not abolishing Richard, would have satisfied or beguiled for the moment the so-called Republicanism now again rampant among the inferior Army-men. But there was no money; Government in any form was at a deadlock until money could be raised; and how was that to be effected? The Wallingford-House magnates did meditate for an instant whether they should not try to raise money by their own authority, but concluded that the experiment would be too desperate, and that, for this reason, if for no other, some kind of Parliament must be at once set up.--But what Parliament? Here they had not far to seek. For the last month or more, placards on all the walls of London, the very cries of news-boys in the streets, had been telling them what Parliament. We have several times quoted the phrase "The Good Old Cause," as coming gradually into use after Oliver's death, and passing to and fro in documents and speeches. But no one can describe now the force and frequency of that phrase in London and throughout England in April 1659 and for months afterwards. If two men passed you in the street, you heard the words "the good old cause" from one of them; every second or third pamphlet in the booksellers' shops had "The Good Old Cause" on its title-page or running through its text; veterans rolled out the phrase sonorously in their nightly prayers, or went to sleep mumbling it. One notes constantly in the history of any country this phenomenon of the expression of a great wave of feeling in some single popular phrase, generally worn out in a few months; but the present is a peculiarly remarkable instance. The phrase, in itself, was ambiguous. One might have supposed "the good old cause" to be the cause of Royalty and the Stuarts. This was an ironical advantage; for the phrase was a Republican, and even a Regicide, invention. It meant, as we have passingly explained, the pure Republican constitution which had been founded on the Regicide and which lasted till Cromwell's dissolution of the Rump on the 20th of April, 1653. It proclaimed that Cromwell's Interim Dictatorship and Protectorate had been an interruption of the natural course of things, dexterously leaving it an open question whether that interruption had been necessary or justifiable, but calling on all men, now that Oliver was dead and his greatness gone with him, to regard his rule as exceptional and extraordinary, and to revert to the old Commonwealth. It involved, therefore, a very exact answer to the question which the Wallingford-House magnates were now pondering. A Parliament was wanted: what other Parliament could it be than the Rump restored? Let that very Assembly which Cromwell had dissolved on the 20th of April, 1653, resume their places now, treat the six years of interval as a dream, and carry on the Government.--With this course prescribed to them by the very clamours that were in the air, and pressed upon them by Ludlow, Vane, Hasilrig, and the more strenuously Republican men of the Army-Council itself, Fleetwood, Desborough, and the other magnates still faltered. They hardly liked to descend from their own elevation; such Republicanism as they had learnt of late to profess was not the old Republicanism of Ludlow and Vane, but one admitting the supreme magistracy of a Single Person; and they had obligations of honour, moreover, to the present Richard. They pleaded that it was impossible to restore the Rump, inasmuch as there were not survivors enough from that body to make a House. Hereupon Dr. Owen, who seems to have been extremely active in this crisis, produced in Wallingford House a list, which he had obtained from Ludlow, of about 160 persons who had been duly qualified (i.e. non-secluded) members of the Rump between 1648 and 1653, and were believed to be still alive. There were then meetings for consultation at Sir Henry Vane's house, with farther differences over some demands of the Army-magnates. They demanded the payment of Richard's debts, ample provision for his subsistence and dignity, and some recognition of his Protectorship; and they also demanded that, besides the Representative House, there should be a Select Senate or Other House. To these demands for a continuation of the Protectorate in a limited form the Republicans could not yield, though Ludlow, to remove obstructions, was willing to concede a temporary Senate for definite purposes. The differences had not been adjusted when the Wallingford-House men intimated that they were prepared for the main step and would join with the Republicans in restoring the Rump. This was finally arranged on the 6th of May, when there was drawn up for the purpose "A Declaration of the Officers of the Army," signed by the Army Secretary "by the direction of the Lord Fleetwood and the Council of Officers," and when two deputations, one of Army-chiefs with the Declaration in their hands, and the other of independent Republicans, waited on old Speaker Lenthall at his house in Covent Garden. It was for Lenthall, as the Speaker of the Rump at its dissolution, to convoke the surviving members.[1] [Footnote 1: Ludlow, 644-649; Parl. Hist. III. 1546-7; Thomason Pamphlets, and Chronological Catalogue of the same.] Ludlow becomes even humorous in describing the difficulties they had with old Lenthall. To the deputation of Republicans, which arrived first, "he began to make many trifling excuses, pleading his age, sickness, inability to sit long," the fact being, as Ludlow says, that he had been one of Oliver's and Richard's courtiers, and was now thinking of his Oliverian peerage, which would be lost if the Protectorate lapsed into a Republic. When the military deputation arrived, and Lambert opened the subject fully, Lenthall was still very uneasy. "He was not fully satisfied that the death of the late King had not put an end to the Parliament." That objection having been scouted, and the request pressed upon him that he would at once issue invitations to such of the old members as were in town to meet him next morning and form a House, "he replied that he could by no means do as we desired, having appointed a business of far greater importance to himself, which he would not omit on any account, because it concerned the salvation of his own soul. We then pressed him to inform us what it might be: to which he answered that he was preparing himself to participate of the Lord's supper, which he was resolved to take on the next Lord's day. Upon this it was replied that mercy is more acceptable to God than sacrifice, and that he could not better prepare himself for the aforesaid duty than by contributing to the public good." As he was still obdurate, the deputations told him they would do without him. The list of members was divided among such clerks as were at hand, and the circulars were duly sent out.[1] [Footnote 1: Ludlow, 649-650.] Next morning, Saturday May 7, 1659, about thirty of the members of the old Rump were shaking hands with each other in the House of Lords, waiting anxiously till as many more should drop in as would make the necessary quorum of forty, before marching into the Commons. Army officers and other spectators were in the lobbies, equally anxious. Time passed, and a few more did drop in, including Henry Marten, luckily remembered as in jail for debt near at hand, and fetched thence in triumph. At length, about thirty-seven having mustered, old Lenthall, who had spies on the spot, thought it best to come in; and, about twelve o'clock, he led a procession of exactly forty-two persons into the Commons House, the officers and other spectators attending them to the doors with congratulations. The House, having been constituted, entered at once on business, framing a Declaration for the public suitable for the occasion, and appointing several committees. They set apart next day, Sunday the 8th, for special religious services, with a re-inauguration sermon by Dr. Owen.[1] [Footnote 1: Ludlow, 651-652; Commons Journals, May 7, 1659; Parl Hist. III. 1547-1550.] On Monday, May 9, the small new House had to re-encounter a difficulty which had troubled them somewhat at their first meeting on Saturday. On that day, besides the forty-two members of the Rump who had answered the summons, there had come to the lobbies fourteen persons who had been members of the Long Parliament before it became the Rump, i.e. before that famous Pride's Purge of Dec. 6-7, 1648, which excluded 143 of the Presbyterians and other Royalists from their seats, and so converted the Long Parliament into the more compact body wanted for the King's Trial and the formation of the Republic (Vol. III. pp. 696-698). The fourteen, among whom were the Presbyterians Sir George Booth and William Prynne, had insisted on being admitted, but had been kept out by the officers after some altercation. But now, on Monday, several of them were back, to see the issue of a protest that had been meanwhile sent to the Speaker on behalf of 213 members of the Long Parliament who were in the same general predicament of "Secluded Members"--to wit, the 143 excluded by Pride's Purge and seventy more who had been excluded at various times before for Royalist contumacy. Finding the doors open, three of these unwelcome visitors went in, of whom two came out again and were not re-admitted, but one remained. That one was William Prynne. He sat like a ghoul among the Rumpers. No persuasion on earth could induce him to leave. Hasilrig stormed at him, and Vane coaxed him; but there he sat, and there he would sit! He was a member of the Long Parliament, and no other Parliament was or could be rightfully in existence but that; if they turned him out, it should only be by carrying him out by his feet and shoulders! Unwilling to resort to that method, those present got rid of the intruder by postponing their meeting to a later hour, and taking care that, when Prynne reappeared, he should be turned back. The House that day passed an order that none should sit in it but genuine Rumpers, appointing a committee to ascertain who these were and to report on dubious cases; and the order was affixed to the doors outside. For a day or two Prynne and others still haunted the lobbies; but at length they desisted, Prynne taking his revenge by at once printing _The Republicans' and Others' spurious Old Cause briefly and truly anatomized_, and then _One Sheet, or, if you will, a Winding Sheet, for the Good Old Cause_.[1] [Footnote 1: Guizot, I. 138-141; Commons Journals, May 9, 1659; Catalogue of Thomason Pamphlets. The first of the two named pamphlets of Prynne appeared, with his name in full, May 13; the second, "by W.P.," May 30.--Prynne continued, in subsequent pamphlets, to attack the Rumpers for the wrong done to him and the other secluded members in still debarring them from their seats. One was entitled _A True and Perfect Narrative of what was done, spoken, by and between Mr. Prynne, the old and newly-forcibly late Secluded Members, the Army Officers, and those now sitting both in the Commons Lobby, House, and elsewhere, on Saturday and Monday last (the 7 and 9 of this instant May)_. Though so entitled, it did not appear till June 13. It contained this passage against the Bumpers:--"Themselves in divers of their printed Declarations, and their instruments in sundry books (as JOHN GOODWIN, MARKHAM NEEDHAM, MELTON, and others), justified, maintained, the very highest, worst, treasonablest, execrablest, of all Popish, Jesuitical, Unchristian, tenets, practices, treasons, as the murthering of Christian Protestant Kings." This is a sample at once of Prynne's style and of his accuracy. He does not take the trouble to know the names of the persons he writes about, but plods, on like a rhinoceros in blinkers.] For eighteen days after the resuscitation of the Rump, and notwithstanding their distinct announcement in their public declaration that they were to "endeavour the settlement" of the Commonwealth "without a Single Person, Kingship, or House of Peers," Richard still lingered in Whitehall and his Protectorship remained nominally in existence. But the Republicans made what haste they could to put an end to that anomaly. Their difficulty lay in their yet unadjusted differences with the Army-officers conjoined with them in the Restoration of the Rump. Towards the removal of these differences something was done on the 13th of May, when the House appointed Fleetwood "Lieutenant-General and Commander-in-chief of the land-forces in England and Scotland" (Ireland reserved), and associated with him Lambert, Desborough, Berry, Ludlow, Hasilrig, and Vane, in a commission of seven empowered to nominate, for approval by the Parliament, the commissioned officers of the whole Army. Even with, this arrangement, however, the Army-magnates were not satisfied; and it left other differences over, which were restated that very day in a petition and address from the whole Council of Officers. This Petition and Address, presented to the House by a deputation of eighteen chief officers, headed by Lambert and Desborough, consisted of fifteen Articles, the last three of which contained the points of most vital debate with the pure Republicans. In Article XIII. it was petitioned that, for the Legislative, there should be, in addition to the Popular or Representative House, "a select Senate, co-ordinate in power." Article XIV. required also, for the Executive; a separate Council of State. Article XV. concerned the Cromwell family. It did not demand a continuation of the Protectorate, but It demanded the payment by the State of all debts contracted by Oliver or Richard in their Protectorates, the settlement of £10,000 a year on Richard and his heirs for ever, the settlement of a farther £10,000 a year on Richard for his life, and the settlement of £8,000 a year for life on "his honourable mother," the Protectress-dowager,--all this to the end that there might remain to posterity "a mark of the high esteem this nation hath of the good service done by his father, our ever-renowned General." The House was not then prepared to answer the demands of Articles XIII. and XV., but only that of Article XIV. after a certain fashion. It was agreed that day that there should be an executive Council of State, to consist of thirty-one persons, ten of them not members of Parliament, the Council to hold office till Dec. 1 next ensuing; and at that meeting and the two next the thirty-one Councillors were duly chosen. Then, on the 21st of May, various addresses of confidence in the new Government having by this time come in from London and other parts, the Republicans felt themselves strong enough to discuss the petition of the officers, article by article, accepting most of them, but postponing the three last and another. Without saying what they meant to do for the Cromwell family, they had In the Interim (May 16) appointed a committee to "take into consideration the present condition of the eldest son of the late Lord-General Cromwell, and to inform themselves what his estate is, and what his debts are, and how they have been contracted, and how far he doth acquiesce in the government of this Commonwealth." There were interviews with Richard in Whitehall accordingly, with the result that there was brought to the House on the 25th of May a paper signed by him, together with a schedule of his means and debts. The paper was, in fact, an abdication, In these terms: "Having, I hope, in some degree, learnt rather to reverence and submit to the hand of God than to be unquiet under it, and, as to the late providences that have fallen out amongst us, however, in respect of the particular engagements that lay upon me, I could not be active in making a change in the government of these nations, yet, through the goodness of God, I can freely acquiesce in it, being made." He promised, in conclusion, to live peaceably under the new government, and to do all in his power to induce those with whom he had any interest to do the same. From the accompanying schedule it appeared that his debts, incurred by his father or himself in the Protectorship, amounted to £29,640, and that his own clear revenue, after deduction of annuities to his mother and others of the family, was but £1299 a year, and that encumbered by a private debt of £3000. The House accepted the abdication, undertook the discharge of the debts as stated, voted £2000 at once to Mr. Richard, referred it to a committee to consider what more could be, done towards his "comfortable and honourable subsistence," and, for the rest, requested him to retire from Whitehall, and "dispose of himself as his private occasions shall require." He lingered still a little, fearing arrest by his creditors, but did at length retire to Hampton Court, and thence into deeper and deeper privacy, to live fifty-three years more and become very venerable, though the more rude of the country-people would persist in calling him "Tumble-Down Dick." In the week of his abdication there was on the London book-stalls a rigmarole poem on the subject, called _The World in a Maze, or Oliver's Ghost_. It opened with this dialogue between father and son:-- _Oliver P._: Richard.!. Richard! Richard! _Richard_: Who calls "Richard"? 'Tis a hollow voice; And yet perhaps it may be mine own thoughts. _Oliver_: No: 'tis thy father risen from the grave; Nor--would I have thee fooled, nor yet turn knave. _Richard_: I could not help it, father.[1] [Footnote 1: Commons Journals of dates; Parl. Hist. III. 1551-1557; Pamphlet, of given title, dated May 21 in MS. in the Thomason copy.] CHAPTER I. Second Section. THE ANARCHY, STAGE I.: OR THE RESTORED RUMP: MAY 25, 1859-OCT. 13, 1659. NUMBER OF THE RESTORED RUMPERS AND LIST OF THEM: COUNCIL OP STATE OF THE RESTORED RUMP: ANOMALOUS CHARACTER AND POSITION OP THE NEW GOVERNMENT: MOMENTARY CHANCE OF A CIVIL WAR BETWEEN THE CROMWELLIANS AND THE RUMPERS: CHANCE AVERTED BY THE ACQUIESCENCE OF THE LEADING CROMWELLIANS: BEHAVIOUR OF RICHARD CROMWELL, MONK, HENRY CROMWELL, LOCKHART, AND THURLOE, INDIVIDUALLY: BAULKED CROMWELLIANISM BECOMES POTENTIAL ROYALISM: ENERGETIC PROCEEDINGS OF THE RESTORED RUMP: THEIR ECCLESIASTICAL POLICY AND THEIR FOREIGN POLICY: TREATY BETWEEN FRANCE AND SPAIN: LOCKHART AT THE SCENE OF THE NEGOTIATIONS AS AMBASSADOR FOR THE RUMP: REMODELLING AND RE-OFFICERING OF THE ARMY, NAVY, AND MILITIA: CONFEDERACY OF OLD AND NEW ROYALISTS FOR A SIMULTANEOUS RISING: ACTUAL RISING UNDER SIR GEORGE BOOTH IN CHESHIRE: LAMBERT SENT TO QUELL THE INSURRECTION: PECULIAR INTRIGUES ROUND MONK AT DALKEITH: SIR GEORGE BOOTH'S INSURRECTION CRUSHED: EXULTATION OF THE RUMP AND ACTION TAKEN AGAINST THE CHIEF INSURGENTS AND THEIR ASSOCIATES: QUESTION OF THE FUTURE CONSTITUTION OF THE COMMONWEALTH: CHAOS OF OPINIONS AND PROPOSALS: JAMES HARRINGTON AND HIS POLITICAL THEORIES: THE HARRINGTON OR ROTA CLUB: DISCONTENTS IN THE ARMY: PETITION AND PROPOSALS OF THE OFFICERS OF LAMBERT'S BRIGADE: SEVERE NOTICE OF THE SAME BY THE RUMP: PETITION AND PROPOSALS OF THE GENERAL COUNCIL OF OFFICERS: RESOLUTE ANSWERS OF THE RUMP: LAMBERT, DESBOROUGH, AND SEVEN OTHER OFFICERS, CASHIERED: LAMBERT'S RETALIATION AND STOPPAGE OF THE PARLIAMENT. The Restored Rump, which had met on the 7th of May, 1659, only forty-two strong, had very sensibly increased its numbers by the 25th, the day of Richard's abdication. In obedience to a summons sent out to Rumpers in the country, between forty and fifty more had by that time come in, raising the number in attendance to nearly ninety. In subsequent months still others and others dropped in, till the House could reckon about 122 altogether as belonging to it. The following is the most complete list I have been able to draw out for the whole of our present term of the existence of the Restored House. Marks are added to each name, to signify the political course or resting-place of its owner from his first connexion with the Long Parliament to his present reappearance:-- The asterisk prefixed to a name denotes a _Regicide_, i.e. an actual signer of the Death-Warrant of Charles I. (Vol. III. 720). The contraction _Rec._ prefixed signifies that the person was not an original member of the Long Parliament when it met in Nov. 1640, but one of the _Recruiters_ who came in at various times afterwards to supply vacancies. Most of these came in between Aug. 1645 and the end of 1646 (Vol. III. 401-402); but there were stray Recruiters through 1647 and 1648; nay, about _eight_ persons were added by the Rump to itself by new writs issued after the institution of the Commonwealth. _R_ added to a name signifies a member of the Barebones Parliament of 1653; _O^1_ a member of Oliver's First Parliament of Sept. 1654-Jan. 1654-5; _O^2_ a member of Oliver's Second Parliament of Sept. 1656-Feb. 1657-8. The addition [t] in the last case denotes that the person was one of the Anti-Oliverians secluded at the beginning of the first Session, but restored at the beginning of the second. _R_ denotes a member of the Commons in Richard's late Parliament, just dissolved; and _L_ denotes that the person had been one of Oliver's and Richard's Lords. Other marks might have indicated the distinction of having belonged to one, or more, or all of the Councils of State of the Commonwealth, or to the Council of the Protectorate; but in most cases there will be sufficient recollection of this distinction by the reader, and references to the lists of the Councils already given will be easy where particulars are wanted. Aristocratic courtesy-designations of Oliverian origin are now stripped off, so as to present the names in the form thought correct by the restored Republic. _Speaker_: William Lenthall (_ætat._ 68), _O^1_, _O^2_, _L_ _Rec._ Andrews, Robert _R_ _Rec._ Anlaby, John _B_, _R_ _Rec._ Ash, James _O^1_, _O^2_, _R_ _Rec._ Atkins, Alderman _Rec._ Baker, James _R_ Barker, Col. John _Rec._ Bennett, Col. Robert _B_, _O^1_, _R_ _Rec._ Bingham, Col. John _B_, _0^1_, _O^2_, _R_ _Rec._ Birch, Col. John _O^1_, _O^2[t]_, _R_ *_Rec._ Blagrave, Daniel _O^2_, _R_ _Rec._ Boone, Thomas _O^1_, _R_ *_Rec._ Bourchier, Sir John Brereton, Sir Wm., Bart. _Rec._ Brewster, Robert _O^1_, _O^2_, _R_ * Carew, John _B_ * Cawley, William _R_ *_Rec._ Challoner, Thomas _R_ _Rec._ Corbet, John _Rec._ Crompton, Thomas _O^1_, _O^2_, _R_ _Rec._ Darley, Henry _O^2[t]_ _Rec._ Darley, Richard _O^2[t]_ *_Rec._ Dixwell, Col. John _O^1_, _O^2_, _R_ _Rec._ Dormer, John _Rec._ Dove, John *_Rec._ Downes, Col. John Dunch, Edmund _O^1_, _O^2_ _Rec._ Earle, Serjeant Erasmus Ellis, Sir William _O^1_, _O^2_, _R_ _Rec._ Eyre, Col. William _R_ _Rec._ Fagg, John _O^1_, _O^2_, _R_ _Rec._ Fielder, Col. John _R_ _Rec._ Fleetwood, Lieut.-Gen, Charles _O^1_, _O^2_, _L_ *_Rec._ Garland, Augustine _O^1_ _Rec._ Gold, Nicholas _R_ Goodwin, Robert _R_ Goodwyn, John _O^1_, _O^2[t]_, _R_ _Rec._ Gurdon, Brampton Gurdon, John _O^1_ Hallows, Nathaniel Harby, Edward _Rec._ Harrington, Sir James _O^1_ _Rec._ Harvey, Col. Edward _O^1_, _O^2[t]_ Hasilrig, Sir Arthur, Bart. _O^1_, _O^2[t]_, _R_, _L_ _Rec._ Hay, William _O^1_, _O^2_, _R_ Heveningham, William _Rec._ Hill, Roger _R_ Holland, Cornelius _O^1_ *_Rec._ Hutchinson, Col. John *_Rec._ Jones, Col. John (Cromwell's brother-in-law) _O^2[t]_, _L_ _Rec._ Jones, Col. Philip _B_, _O^1_, _O^2_, _L_ _Rec._ Leman, William _Rec._ Lechmere, Nicholas _O^1_, _O^2_, _R_ _Rec._ Lenthall, Sir John _R_ Lisle, Lord Commissioner _O^1_, _O^2_, _L_ Lisle, Viscount Philip _B_, _L_ _Rec._ Lister, Thomas _O^1_, _O^2[t]_ *_Rec._ Livesey, Sir Michael _Rec._ Love, Nicholas _R_ Lowry, John _R_ _Rec._ Lucy, Sir Richard, Bart., _B_, _O^1_, _O^2[t]_, _R_ _Rec._ Ludlow, Lieut.-Gen. Edmund _R_ * Marten, Henry _Rec._ Martin, Christopher _B_, _R_ *_Rec._ Mayne. Simon Mildmay, Sir Henry _O^1_, _O^2[t]_, _R_ *_Rec._ Millington, Gilbert Monson, Viscount (Irish Peer) Morley, Col. Herbert _O^1_, _O^2_, _R_ _Rec._ Nelthorpe, James _Rec._ Neville, Henry _R_ Nicholas, Robert Nutt, John Oldworth, Michael Palmer, Dr. John Pembroke, the Earl of (Earl since 1650) Pennington, Alderman Isaac Pickering, Sir Gilbert, Bart. _B_, _O^1_, _O^2_ _Rec._ Pigott, Gervase Prideaux, Sir Edmund _O^1_, _O^2_, _R_ * Purefoy, Col. William _O^1_, _O^2_, _R_ Pury, Thomas, Senr. _O^1_, _O^2_ _Rec._ Pury, Thomas, Junr. Pyne, Col. John _B_ _Rec._ Raleigh, Carew (son of the great Raleigh) _R_ Reynolds, Robert _R_ _Rec._ Rich, Col. Charles _R_ _Rec._ Robinson, Luke _O^1_, _O^2_ St. John, Chief Justice _L_ _Rec._ Salisbury, the Earl of _O^1_, _O^2[t]_ Salway, Major Richard _B_ *_Rec._ Say, William *_Rec._ Scott, Thomas _O^1_, _O^2[t]_, _R_ _Rec._ Skinner, Capt. Augustine _O^1_ _Rec._ Skippon, Major-Gen. _O^1_, _O^2_, _L_ _Rec._ Sidney, Col. Algernon _Rec._ Smith, Philip *_Rec._ Smyth, Henry _Rec._ Strickland, Walter _B_, _O^1_, _O^2_, _L_ Strickland, Sir William _O^1_, _O^2_, _L_ _Rec._ Sydenham, Col. Wm. _B_, _O^1_, _O^2_, _L_ *_Rec._ Temple, James *_Rec._ Temple, Peter _Rec._ Thompson, Col. George _R_ _Rec._ Thorpe, Serjeant Francis _O^1_, _O^2[t]_ Trenchard, John _O^1_, _O^2_, _R_ Trevor, Sir John _O^1_, _O^2_, _R_ Vane, Sir Henry _R_ _Rec._ Wallop, Robert _O^1_, _O^2_, _R_ Walsingham, Sir Thomas * Walton, Col. Valentine (Cromwell's brother-in-law) *_Rec._ Wayte, Col. Thomas _Rec._ Weaver, Edmund _Rec._ Wentworth, Sir Peter _Rec._ West, Edmund _Rec._ Weston. Benjamin _R_ _Rec._ White, Col. William Whitlocke, Lord Commissioner _O^1_, _O^2_, _L_ Widdrington, Sir Thomas _O^1_, _O^2_ *_Rec._ Wogan, Thomas _Rec._ Wroth, Sir Thomas _O^2_, _R_ Wylde, Chief Baron _R_[1] [Footnote 1: I may explain the manner in which the list has been prepared:--(1) I have gone over the Journals of the House through the five months of its sittings--_Commons Journals_, Vol. VII. pp. 644-797--and collected the names appearing in the lists of Committees. This certifies actual or assumed attendance, more or less, and at one time or another. (2) I have compared the result with a list in _Parl. Hist._, III. 1547-8. It is much less complete than my own, giving only ninety-one names; but it helped me once or twice. (3) For the political antecedents of the members I have referred to Mr. Carlyle's Revised List of the Long Parliament, appended to Vol. II. of his _Cromwell_, and to the Lists of the Barebones Parliament, Oliver's two Parliaments, and Richard's Parliament in Vol. III. of the _Parl. Hist._--With all my care, I may have left errors. Once or twice, where there are several persons of the same surname, I was doubtful as to the Christian name. The Journals often omit that.--I have seen, since writing the above, a folio fly-leaf, published in London in March 1660, giving what it calls "a perfect list of the Rumpers." It includes 121 names, and nearly corresponds with mine, but not quite--containing one or two names not given in mine (e.g. Sir Francis Russell), and omitting one or two I give. Effectively, I believe my own list the more authentic.] From this list it will be seen, in the first place, that, if Ludlow was correct in his estimate that there were 160 old Rumpers still alive, a good many of them did not now reappear in that capacity at Westminster. It will be seen, farther, that nearly two-thirds of those who did re-appear were not original members of the Long Parliament, but Recruiters. But this is not all. While about one-third of the total number that re-appeared, including fifteen out of the twenty-three Regicides on the list, had been in retirement during the intervening governments from 1653 to 1659, about two-thirds had not kept themselves so immaculate in that interval, but had served in the Barebones Parliament or in the Parliaments of the Protectorate. A good many of these, indeed--e.g. Birch, John Goodwyn, Harvey, Hasilrig, Lister, Lucy, Mildmay, Scott, and Thorpe had done so avowedly with Republican motives; but, on the other hand, some--e.g. Colonel Philip Jones, Pickering, Prideaux, St. John, Skippon, the two Stricklands, Sydenham, and Whitlocke--had merged their Republicanism in Oliverianism, had been courtiers of Cromwell, and had taken honours from him. The Restored Rump could be described as unanimously a Republican body, therefore, only in the sense that many in it had never swerved from pure Republican principles, and that the rest were willing now to go back to such. Be it observed, finally, that the number 122 represents the hypothetical strength of the Restored House rather than its real strength. In the only division in the House before the day of Richard's abdication the Journals show but forty-four as present and voting; nor do the records of divisions through the whole duration of the House ever show more than seventy six as thus effectively present at any one sitting. Only five or six times are as many as sixty noted as present and voting. One infers that many of the members, after having begun attending, ceased to do so, from indifference, or from dislike to what was going on.[1] [Footnote 1: Commons Journals of May 13, 1659, with the recorded divisions in the Journals for the whole session.] A very considerable proportion of the effective attendance in the House must have been furnished by the presence in it of those members who were members also of the Council of State. This body, appointed by the House, May 13-16, to be an executive for the restored Rump Government, consisted of twenty-one Parliamentary and ten non-Parliamentary members. They were as follows, the asterisks again denoting Regicides:-- Parliamentary Members (In the order of the number of votes they obtained in the ballot). *Sir Arthur Hasilrig, Bart. Sir Henry Vane Colonel *Lieut.-General Ludlow Lieut.-General Fleetwood Major Richard Salway Colonel Herbert Morley *Thomas Scott Colonel Robert Wallop Sir James Harrington *Colonel Valentine Walton *Colonel John Jones Colonel William Sydenham Algernon Sidney Henry Neville *Thomas Challoner *Colonel John Downes Lord Chief Justice St. John George Thompson Lord Commissioner Whitlocke *Colonel John Dixwell Robert Reynolds Non-Parliamentary Members. _Seven_ appointed without ballot. Thomas, Lord Fairfax _O^1_, _R_ Major-General Lambert _O^1_, _O^2_, _R_ Colonel John Desborough _O^1_, _O^2_, _L_ Colonel James Berry _O^2_, _L_ *John Bradshaw _O^1_, _O^2[t]_, _R_ Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper, Bart. _B_, _O^1_, _O^2[t]_, _R_ Sir Horatio Townshend _R_ _Three_ chosen, by ballot. Josiah Berners _O^1_ Sir Archibald Johnstone, of Warriston _L_ Sir Robert Honeywood _R_ Fairfax was put among the non-Parliamentary ten because, though he had been a member of the Rump (a very late Recruiter, elected Feb. 1648-9), he had retired from it before its dissolution. His nomination now to a seat in the Council was but a compliment, for he withdrew into Yorkshire. An exceptional appointment was that of the Scottish Sir Archibald Johnstone of Warriston. The Restored Rump was avowedly an English Parliament only, treating the union with Scotland as a business yet to be consummated. The election of a single Scotchman among the non-Parliamentary members of the Council was like a pledge that Scottish interests should not meanwhile be neglected. His election was by the recommendation of his friend Vane, who probably knew that Johnstone was by this time a _bonâ fide_ Republican. More questionable appointments, from the Republican point of view, were those of Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper and Sir Horatio Townshend. The second, a cousin of Fairfax, and one of the wealthiest men in Norfolk, was in secret communication with Charles II., and had express permission from him to accept the present appointment.[1] [Footnote 1: Commons Journals, May 13-16, 1659; Markham's Fairfax, 375; Baillie's Letters, III. 430; Guizot, I. 153.] There was one fatal absurdity in the position of the Restored Rump Government. It came together in the name of "the good old cause," or a pure and absolute Republic; and yet it stood there itself in glaring contradiction to what is usually regarded, and to what itself put forth, as the very root-principle of a pure Republic--to wit, the Sovereignty of the People. Richard's House of Commons had been as freely elected as any House of Commons since that of the Long Parliament, and, as far as England and Wales were concerned, by the same constituencies; it represented no past mood of the community, but precisely their mood in January 1658-9; and the attendances in the House, when it did meet, were unusually numerous. Well, in a series of debates and votes, in which there was no concussion, this Parliament had declared, in the main, for a continuation of the Protectorate and the Protectoral Constitution as settled by Oliver's Second Parliament. Hardly had this been done when, by a combination in London between the disappointed Republicans and the Army malcontents, the Parliament was abruptly dissolved. What then stepped in to take its place? A small body, effectively about eighty strong at the utmost, having no pretence of representing the community at that time, or of being anything else than the casual surviving rag of a Parliament of 500, the members of which had been elected at various times, and irregularly, between 1640 and 1649. Nay, it was not even the surviving rag of that Parliament itself, but the rag of a stump to which that Parliament had been already reduced in 1649 by prior military hacking and carving. What pinch of representative virtue, for the England, Scotland, and Ireland of May 1659, or even for the non-Royalist portions of their populations, was there in the Restored Rump? Many of them had not been in contact with their original constituencies for ten years or more; those who had gone back to their original constituencies, or to others, for election to the Protectorate Parliaments, or to any of them, had by that fact treated the rights of the Long Parliament, in its integrity or in its last stump, as lapsed and defunct, and had appealed to the community afresh. When that appeal had gone against them, when the last and fullest Parliament had represented it as the will of the people that the Protectoral system should be continued, was it not odd that about forty of the defeated minority of that Parliament, without consulting their constituencies, should associate themselves with a number of others, then quite astray from any constituencies, and with no other title than that of being Old Rumpers too, and this for the purpose of instituting the very form of Government just ascertained to be unpopular? It was odd _theoretically_; for, though there were then Republicans--Milton for one--who had adopted the principle (essentially Cromwell's too) that the government of States cannot and ought not to go by mere multitudinous suffrage, but may be dictated and compelled by the proper few, the Rumpers did not profess to be Republicans of this sort. The supremacy of the People through a Single Representative House was the deepest theoretical tenet of most of the men who had now met to oppose the will of the People as declared in the fullest Representative House within memory. But, though odd theoretically, the contradiction is of a kind common enough in History. The ultra-Republicans of the Restored Rump, whose very definition of the right Republican system was that there ought to be nothing in it _a priori_ whatever, were yet believers in the indefeasible and _a priori_ authority of that Republican system itself. In other words, so important was it that there should be no government except by the people themselves through a Representative House that, if the people would not govern themselves by a Representative House in a certain particular manner, they must not be allowed to govern themselves by a Representative House, but must be governed by a non-representative House till they came to their senses! These remarks are not made speculatively, but because they express the sentiments common throughout the British Islands at the time, and explain what followed. The first expectation after the usurpation of the Restored Rump had been that there would be a civil war between the Protectoratists and the Rumpers. For, though Fleetwood, Desborough, and the other Army-officers at the centre, had been the agents in Richard's downfall and had joined with the Republicans in restoring the Rump, the chances of the Protectorate were by no means exhausted by _their_ defection. While Richard lingered at Whitehall, his Protectorship could not be said to be extinct, and whatever of Cromwellianism survived anywhere apart from the central English Army might be rallied for the rescue. There was Henry Cromwell and the Army in Ireland; there was Monk and the Army in Scotland; there was Lockhart and the Army in Flanders; there was the fleet under Admiral Montague, a man marked even among Cromwellians for the ardour of his devotion to Cromwell and his family; and there were other Cromwellians of influence, dispersed from London by the recent events, and carrying their resentment with them wherever they went. Broghill and Coote were back in Ireland; Ingoldsby was on a visit to Ireland to consult with Henry Cromwell; Falconbridge was in country-seclusion; and the Marquis of Argyle (a Londoner and client of the Protectorate for some years) was back furtively in Scotland, to avoid arrest for his debts, and try new scheming. Then, if there could be a combination of such elements, what masses of diffused material on which to work! There was the great body of the English Presbyterians, reconciled to Oliver's rule completely before his death, and desiring nothing better now than a continuation of the Protectoral system; there were the orderly and conservative classes generally, including many Anglicans who had ceased to be Royalists; and there were one knows not how many scattered Cromwellians, whether in civil life or in the Army, whose Cromwellianism was, like Montague's, less a political creed than a passionate private hero-worship. Nor was this all. Louis XIV, and Mazarin were Cromwellians too for the nonce, faithful to the memory of the great man whose alliance they had courted, and ready to lend the armed aid of France, if necessary, to the support of his dynasty. No one had been watching the course of events in England more coolly than M. de Bordeaux, the French Ambassador in London; and through. May and part of June 1659 his letters to Mazarin show amply the nature of his communications with Richard and Thurloe. "I have frequently renewed my offers of the King's assistance," he wrote to the Cardinal on the 16th of May, nine days after the first meeting of the Restored Rump and eleven days before Richard's abdication; and again, more distinctly, on the 19th, "Having yesterday contrived to get an interview with him [Thurloe] in the country, I assured him that the King would spare neither money nor troops in order to re-establish the Protector, if there were any likelihood of success," The Ambassador, it is true, had conceived the bold private idea that Louis XIV, and the Cardinal might do better by using such a fine opportunity for an invasion and conquest of England by France on her own account; and he had hinted as much to the Cardinal. The idea was not encouraged; and so the position of M. de Bordeaux in London remained that of a secret partisan of the Cromwellians, offering them all help from France if they should engage in a civil war with the Rumpers.[1] [Footnote 1: Guizot, I. 141-146, with Letters of M. de Bordeaux in the Appendix to the volume (where the dates are by the French reckoning)--especially Letters 46, 47, 48, and 49 (pp, 381-402); Baillie, III. 430; Phillips, 647-648.] Before the middle of June it was evident that such a Civil War was not to be feared. Richard himself had been quite inert in Whitehall, and his abdication was a signal to all his partisans to give up the cause. Even after that there were efforts or protests in his behalf here and there, but they died away.--Monk, about whose conduct in the crisis there had been great anxiety among the Rumpers, and who had sulkily wanted to know at first what this "Good Old Cause" was that they were so enthusiastic about in London, had already sounded the Army in Scotland sufficiently to find that they would not oppose their English brethren. A letter of adhesion to the Restored Commonwealth by Monk and the Scottish Army had, accordingly, been received May 18, and read in the House with great joy; and, though there were still signs that Monk would stand a good deal on his independence, his adhesion on any terms was an immense gain.--Lockhart also, looking about him in Flanders, and considering what would be best for English interests altogether, had given up all thoughts of a revolt from the Rump by the Continental forces, and had returned to England, early in June, to render his accounts. The Council of the Rump, on their side, considering what was best in the circumstances, with Dunkirk and the other results of Cromwell's Flanders enterprise still on their hands, were glad to retain Lockhart's services in the post of Ambassador to Louis XIV. and sent him back, after a week or two, with re-credentials in that post from the new Government.--There had been more uncertainty about Henry Cromwell in Ireland. His great popularity and the conditions of the country itself made a Cromwellian revolt there more likely than anywhere else. But there was to be no such thing. Left by his inert brother without direct communications, and receiving intelligence, as he says, "only from common fame," Henry had very bravely held out to the last, ascertaining the temper of his officers and the Army. Not till the 15th of June was he clear as to his duty; but on that day, having fully made up his mind, he addressed to the Speaker of the Rump a letter worthy of himself and of the occasion. "All this while," he wrote, "I expected directions from his Highness, by whose authority I was placed here, still having an eye to the common peace, by preventing all making of parties and divisions either among the people or Army. But, hearing nothing expressly from him, and yet having credible notice of his acquiescing in what Providence had brought forth as to the future government of these nations, I now think it time, lest a longer suspense should beget prejudicial apprehensions in the minds of any, to give you this account: viz, that I acquiesce in the present way of government, although I cannot promise so much, affection, to the late changes as others very honestly may. For my own part, I can say that I believe God was present in many of your administrations before you were last interrupted [i.e. before his Father's dissolution of them in April 1653], and may be so again; to which end I hope that those worthy persons who have lately acknowledged such their interrupting you in the year 1653 to have been their fault will by that sense of their impatience be henceforth engaged to do so no more, but be the instruments of your defence whilst you quietly search out the ways of peace. .... Yet I must not deny but that the free submission which many worthy, wise, and conscientious persons yielded to the late Government under a Single Person, by several ways as well real as verbal, satisfied me also in that frame. And, whereas my Father (whom I hope you yet look upon as no inconsiderable instrument of these Nations' freedom and happiness), and since him my Brother, were constituted chief in those administrations, and that the returning to another form hath been looked upon as an indignity to those my nearest relations, I cannot but acknowledge my own weakness as to the sudden digesting thereof, and my own unfitness to serve you in the carrying on your further superstructures upon that basis. And, as I cannot promote anything which infers the diminution of my late Father's honour and merit, so I thank the Lord for that He hath kept me safe in the great temptation wherewith I have been assaulted to withdraw my affection from that Cause wherein he lived and died." Thus beautifully and honourably did the real head of the Cromwells then living draw down the family flag. He was in London on the 4th of July, to attend the pleasure of the House; on which day they ordered that it should be referred to the Council to hear his report on Irish affairs, and then that "Colonel Henry Cromwell have liberty to retire himself into the country, whither he shall think fit, on his own occasions." The same day there was an arrangement for paying the mourning expenses of Cromwell's funeral; and on the 16th the subject of a retiring provision for Richard Cromwell was resumed. His debts, as by former assurance, were to be discharged for him; he was to have a protection from trouble from his creditors meanwhile; and farther inquiry was directed into the state of his resources, with the understanding that his income should receive such an increase as should raise it to £10,000 a year in all.--Monk, Lockhart, and the Cromwells themselves, having adhered to the new Government, there could be no separate action by Montague even if he could have won the Baltic Fleet to his will. Nor, of course, could Louis XIV. and Mazarin do otherwise now than treat the Protectoratist cause as extinct, and re-instruct M. de Bordeaux accordingly. He received credentials as Ambassador from France to the new Government.[1] [Footnote 1: Thurloe, VII. 669-671, and 683-684; Letters of M. de Bordeaux, in Guizot, I. 409-413; Commons Journals, June 13 and July 2, 1659.] The Cromwellians or Protectoratists being thus no longer a party militant, the struggle was to be a direct one between the Bumpers and the cause of Charles II. Here, however, one has to note a most extraordinary phenomenon. The cause of Charles II., by no exertion on its own part, but by the mere whirl of events between May and July, had received an enormous accession of strength. Baulked of their own. natural purpose of a preserved Protectorate constitutionally defined and guaranteed afresh, and resenting the outrage done to their latest suffrages for that end, what could many of the Cromwellians do but cease to call themselves by that now inoperative name and melt into the ranks of the Stuartists? For the veteran Cromwellians, implicated in the Regicide and its close accompaniments, this was, of course, impossible. To the last breath _they_ must strive to keep out the King; and, as they could do so no longer as Protectoratists, they must fall in with the pure Republicans or Restored Rumpers, But for the great body of the Cromwellians, not burdened by overwhelming recollections of personal responsibility, there was no such compulsion. What mattered it to the Presbyterians, or to that younger part of the entire population which had grown into manhood since the death of Charles I., whether Kingship, which they would willingly enough have seen Oliver assume, should now come back to them with the old dynasty? All this Charles and Hyde had been observing. From May 1659 it had been their policy to enter into communications with the more eminent of the disappointed or baulked Cromwellians, and to assure them not only of indemnity for the past, but of rewards and honours to any extent, if they would now become Royalists. Monk, Montague, Howard, Falconbridge, Broghill, and Lockhart, had all been thought of. Applications had been made even to the two Cromwells themselves, and particularly to Henry Cromwell. There seems to be a reference to that fact in the close of his fine letter to the Rump Parliament. He thanked God that he had been able to resist temptation to a course which in _him_, at all events, would have been infamous; and, though, he could not serve the Republican Parliament in _their_ "further superstructures," he could wish them well on the whole, and so feel that he was remaining as true as he could be, in such perplexed circumstances, to the cause wherein his father had lived and died. Monk, without any such reservation, had already adhered to the Parliament, and Charles's letter, when it did reach him, was not even to remain in his own pocket till he should see his way more clearly. Falconbridge and Howard, those two "sons of Belial" in Desborongh's esteem, had meanwhile, I believe, let it be known that they might be reckoned on by Charles, Montague and Broghill tended that way, but were in no such haste. Lockhart had deemed it best to enter the service of the Restored Rump, and would act honourably for them while he remained their servant. Thurloe also, though not yet safe from prosecution by the new Government, thought it only fair to assist them with advices and information.[1] [Footnote 1: Phillips, 650-651; Guizot, I. 177-178.] Meanwhile the new Government had been stoutly at work. The spirit of the "good old cause" was strong in the two or three scores of members most regularly in attendance, among whom were Vane, Marten, Ludlow, Hasilrig, Scott, Salway, Weaver, Neville, Raleigh, Lister, Walton, Say, Downes, Morley, and John Jones. Remembering the great days of the Commonwealth between 1649 and 1653, and not inquiring how much of the greatness of those days had been owing to the fact that the politicians at the centre had then a Cromwell marching over the map for them, and winning them the victories that gave them great work to do, they set themselves, with all their industry, courage, and ability, to prove to the world that those great days might be renewed without a Cromwell. The Council generally held its meetings early in the morning, so that the Council-business might not interfere with their attendance in the House. Johnstone of Warriston, though a non-Parliamentary member of the Council, at once acquired high influence in it. He, Vane, and Whitlocke, were most frequently in the chair. A new great seal; new Commissioners for the same (Bradshaw, Tyrrell, and Fountain); new Judges; state of the public debts; orders for the sale of Hampton Court and Somerset House; suspension of the sale of Hampton Court; votes for pay of the Army and Navy; an Act of Indemnity and Oblivion; a Bill for settling the Union with Scotland; re-declarations of a Free Commonwealth, without Single Person, Kingship, or House of Peers; Irish affairs; a Vote for ending the present Parliament on the 7th of May ensuing: these mere headings will indicate much of the miscellaneous activity of the Council, or of the House, or of committees of the House, as far as to the end of July. One may glance more closely at their proceedings and intentions in two departments: (1) _Church and Religion_, On the 27th of June, In reply to a petition from "many thousands of the free-born people of this Commonwealth" for the abolition of Tithes, the House voted that "the payment of Tithes shall continue as now they are, unless this Parliament shall find out some other and more equal and comfortable maintenance." Evidently, therefore, the Restored Rumpers were not yet prepared to interfere materially with the Church-Establishment as it had been left by Oliver. The petition, however, which drew from them this declaration, is itself significant. In the opinion of many over the country absolute Voluntaryism in Religion was part and parcel of "the good old cause," and ought to be re-proclaimed as such, at once. Nor, though the Rumpers now refused to admit that, was sympathy with the demand wanting within their own body. The majority of the Parliament and of its Council were, indeed, orthodox Independents or Semi-Presbyterians, approving of Cromwell's Church policy, and anxious to support the existing public ministry. But Vane and some other leading Rumpers were men of mystic and extreme theological lights, pointing in the direction of Fifth-Monarchyism, Quakerism, and all other varieties of that fervency for Religion itself which would destroy mere state-paid machinery in its behalf, while a few, on the other hand, such as Neville, were cool freethinkers, contemptuous of Church and Clergy as but an apparatus for the prevalent superstition. For the present, it had been thought impolitic perhaps to divide counsels in that matter, or to give offence to the sober majority of the people by reviving the question, so much agitated between 1649 and 1653, whether pure Republicanism in politics did not necessarily involve absolute Voluntaryism in Religion; but the probability is that the question was only adjourned. In the connected question of Religious Toleration the new Government was more free at once to give effect to strong views; and, though it was not formally announced that unlimited Toleration was to be the rule of the Restored Republic, this was substantially the understanding. On the whole, Cromwell's policy in Church-matters was merely continued. (2) _Relations with Foreign Powers_. In this matter the rule of the new Government was a very simple one. It was to withdraw, as speedily as possible, from all foreign entanglements. No longer now could Charles Gustavus of Sweden calculate on help from England. Montague's Fleet, indeed, was still in the Baltic; Meadows was re-commissioned as envoy-in-ordinary to the Kings of Denmark and Sweden; envoys from Sweden had audiences in London; and at length, early in July, the importance of the Baltic business was fully recognised by the despatch of Algernon Sidney and Sir Robert Honeywood, two of the members of the Council of State, and Mr. Boone, a member of the House, to act as plenipotentiaries with Montague for the settlement of the differences between Sweden and Denmark and between Sweden and the Dutch. The instructions, however, were to compel the Swedish King to a pacification, and to co-operate with the Dutch and the Danes in that interest. As regarded the Dutch themselves, among whom Downing was grudgingly continued as Resident, there was the most studious care for a friendly intercourse. There was no revival now of that imperious project of the old Commonwealth Government for a union of the two Republics which had alarmed the Dutch and led to the great naval war with them. It was enough that the English should mind their own affairs, and the Dutch theirs. But the determination to have no more of Cromwell's "spirited foreign policy" was most signally manifested in the business of the French alliance and the war with Spain. That peace should be made with Spain was a foregone conclusion, and circumstances were favourable. The Spaniards, crippled by their losses in Flanders, had for some time been making overtures of peace to the French Court; these had been received the more willingly at last because of the uncertainties in which Louis XIV. and Mazarin were left by Cromwell's death; negotiations had been cleverly on foot since the beginning of the year for a treaty between the two Catholic Powers, to include the marriage of Louis XIV. with the Spanish Infanta, Maria Theresa; and, though the treaty had not been concluded, preliminaries had been so far arranged that, since May 1659, there had been a cessation of hostilities. Thus relieved already from the trouble of carrying on military operations in Flanders, the Restored Rumpers took steps to get themselves included in the Treaty in progress between the two Kings, or, if they should fail in that, to secure peace with Spain independently. This was the main business on which Lockhart had been re-commissioned as ambassador to the French Court, From Paris he went to St. Jean de Luz, at the foot of the Pyrenees, where Mazarin and the Spanish Prime Minister Don Luis de Haro were then holding their consultations. He arrived there on the 1st of August, in such ambassadorial pomp as he thought likely to credit his difficult mission. The business of that mission, was to undo the work he had done for Cromwell. Such was the will of his new masters. Dunkirk and the rest of Cromwell's acquisitions on the Continent were only a trouble; and, if any decent arrangement could be made for selling them either to France or back to Spain, why not be satisfied? War with Continental Papacy and championship of Continental Protestantism were but expensive moonshine.[1] [Footnote 1: Whitlocke, from May to the end of July 1659; Parl. Hist. for same term; Commons Journals of dates; Guizot, I. 165-172.] In nothing was the Republican energy of the new Rumpers more conspicuous than in their determination to subject all forms of the public service to direct Parliamentary control. They would have all rigorously in the grasp of the little Restored House itself, until the power should be handed over to a duly constituted successor. Hence their precaution, while nominating Fleetwood Lieutenant-General and Commander-in-chief of the Forces in England and Scotland, of not giving him supreme power in appointing his officers, but making him only one of a Commission of Seven for recommending officers to the House (May 13). Persevering in this policy, and becoming even more stringent in it, notwithstanding the complaints of the Army-magnates that it showed want of confidence in their integrity, the House proceeded, May 28, to a vast remodelling of the entire Armies of England. Scotland, and Ireland. Fleetwood was confirmed in the Commandership-in-Chief for England and Scotland by a special Bill, passed June 7; and by another Bill, passed June 8, reconstituting the Commissioners for nominations of officers, it was secured not only that such nominations should require Parliamentary approval, but also that each commission to an officer should be signed by the Speaker in the name of the Parliament, and delivered, if possible, to the officer personally from the Speaker's own hands. Accordingly, on the 9th of June, Fleetwood himself was solemnly presented with a signed transcript of the Act appointing him Commander-in-Chief in England and Scotland; and from that day, on through the rest of June, the whole of July, and even into August and September, much of the business of the House consisted in passing commissions to the officers recommended, sometimes with a rejection or substitution, and in seeing the officers come up in batches to the Speaker to receive their commissions one by one, each with a lecture on his duty. As each foot-regiment, consisting of ten companies, had its colonel, its lieutenant-colonel, its major, and its quartermaster, with seven captains besides, and twenty subalterns, and as each horse-regiment, consisting of six troops, had its colonel, its major, four captains besides, six lieutenants, six cornets, and six quartermasters, one may guess the tediousness of this process of approving nominations and delivering commissions. About 1200 persons had to be approved and commissioned, or, if we throw in chaplains, surgeons, &c., about 1400 in all. Nevertheless, with certain arrangements for delivering commissions to officers at a distance, the process was carried so far that one can make out from the Journals of the House not only the general plan of the Remodelling, but even the names of a large proportion of the actually appointed officers. The essence of the scheme was, of course, that all very pronounced Cromwellians,--e.g. Falconbridge, Howard, Ingoldsby, Whalley, Barkstead, Goffe, and Pride,--should be thrown out of their commands, and men of the right stamp substituted. It is to be noticed also, however, that there were to be now properly but two _Generals_, and that the highest officers under these, whatever had been their previous designations, were all, with a certain courtesy exception in favour of Lambert and Monk, to rank on one level as merely _Colonels_. As far as to these Colonels, the result was as follows: I. ENGLAND AND SCOTLAND. _Commander-in-Chief_: LIEUTENANT-GENERAL, CHARLES FLEETWOOD. I. FOR, SERVICE IN ENGLAND AND WALES: 1. _Colonels of Horse Regiments_: John Lambert (with Richard Creed for his Major), John Desborough, James Berry (with Unton Crooke for his Major), Robert Lilburne, Francis Hacker, John Okey, William Packer (with John Gladman for his Major), Nathaniel Rich, Thomas Saunders, and Herbert Morley. 2. _Colonels of Foot-Regiments_: Lieutenant-General Fleetwood, Lambert, Robert Overton, Matthew Alured, John Hewson (with John Duckinfield for his Lieutenant-Colonel), John Biscoe, William Sydenham, Edward Salmon, Richard Mosse, Richard Ashfield, Sir Arthur Hasilrig, Thomas Kelsay, John Clerk, Robert Gibbon, Robert Barrow.--One finds, besides, certain Colonels appointed to garrison commands: e.g. Colonel Thomas Fitch to be Governor of the Tower, Colonel Nathaniel Whetham to be Governor of Portsmouth, Colonel Mark Grimes to be Governor of Cardiff Overton was Governor of Hall as well as Colonel of a Foot-Regiment; and Alured had charge of the Life-Guard of the House and the Council at Westminster,--All these appointments were actually made; other colonelcies probably stood over for consideration.--In the _Journals_ Lambert is styled "Major-General Lambert," but that was only by courtesy. He had no commission with that title; and Ludlow makes a point of marking this by always calling him "Colonel Lambert" only. His distinction was in holding two colonelcies together, one of Foot and one of Horse. II. FOR SERVICE IN SCOTLAND:--Here, probably because of Monk's passive resistance, the reorganization was less completely carried out; but the intention seems to have been that Monk, though in courtesy he might still be called "General Monk," should have only, by actual commission, the same distinction of double colonelcy that Lambert had in England. He had a Regiment of Foot and also one of Horse; and among the other Colonels were, or were to be, Thomas Talbot (at Edinburgh), Timothy Wilkes (at Leith), Ralph Cobbet (at Glasgow), Roger Sawrey (at Ayr), Charles Fairfax (at Aberdeen), Thomas Read (at Stirling, with John Clobery for his Lieutenant-Colonel), Henry Smith (at Inverness), John Pierson (at Perth), the veteran Thomas Morgan of Flanders celebrity (a Dragoon Regiment), and Philip Twistleton (a Horse Regiment). One or two of these were substitutions for officers whom Monk preferred. II. IRELAND. _Commander-in-Chief_: LIEUTENANT-GENERAL EDMUND LUDLOW. Ludlow, after having been commissioned to an English Colonelcy of Foot, was removed to this higher post, in succession to Henry Cromwell, July 4, not with the title of Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, but with the military title of "Lieutenant-General of Horse." For the Civil Government of Ireland there were associated with him, under the title of Commissioners, Colonel John Jones, William Steele, Robert Goodwyn, Colonel Matthew Tomlinson, and Miles Corbet. Ludlow did not go to Ireland till late in July or early in August; and he had stipulated, in accepting the Irish command-in-chief, that he should be at liberty to return to England on occasion. Probably because Ludlow's recommendations from Ireland were waited for, fewer commissions were actually issued for Ireland than for England and Scotland. Ludlow himself, with Lambert and Monk, had the distinction of a Colonelcy of Horse and one of Foot together; and other Colonels appointed were Thomas Cooper, Richard Lawrence, Alexander Brayfield, Thomas Sadler, and Henry Markham, for Foot-Regiments, and Jerome Zanchy, Peter Wallis, and Daniel Axtell, for Horse-Regiments. Sir Hardress Waller, Sir Charles Coote, Theophilus Jones, and others to be heard of in Ludlow's memoirs, were still on duty in their old Colonelcies when he arrived in Ireland. In exactly the same way was the Navy to be brought within Parliamentary grasp. John Lawson, an assured Commonwealth's man, having been appointed Vice-Admiral and Commander-in-Chief in the narrow seas (to counterbalance the Cromwellian Montague), received his commission from the Speaker's hands on the 8th of June; such captains and other officers for Lawson's Fleet as were at hand received their commissions in the same manner; and commissions signed by the Speaker were sent out to the flag-officers, captains, and lieutenants in Montague's Baltic Fleet.--More a matter of wonder still was the re-organization of the Militia of the Cities and Counties of all England and Wales. The regular Army could not but remark the extreme attention of the Parliament to the recruiting and re-officering of this vast civilian soldiery. A Bill for settling the Militia, brought in on the 2nd of July, passed on the 26th; and from that time there was a stream of Militia officers from the counties, just as of the Regulars, to receive their commissions from the Speaker. Old Skippon was re-appointed in his natural position as Major-General of the Militia for the City of London (July 27) and Commander-In-Chief of all the Forces within, the Weekly Bills (Aug. 2); and Lord Mayor John Ireton was one of the City Colonels.[1] [Footnote 1: I have compiled these lists of names, with some labour, from the Commons Journals of May-Sept. 1659, aided by references to Ludlow's Memoirs and other authorities for some particulars. There may be one or two omissions in the lists of actually appointed Colonels. Possibly also the distribution of the regiments between England and Scotland, or between Great Britain and Ireland, may not be absolutely correct. Perhaps that is hardly possible; for there were shiftings of regiments between England and Ireland within the few months under notice, and shiftings of regiments, or of parts of regiments, between England and Scotland. I have put Overton among the Colonels in England, because he was made Governor of Hull; but the larger part of the regiment to which he was appointed was with Monk in Scotland, and Overton's former military experience in high command had been chiefly in Scotland.] The energetic little Rump and its Council were in the midst of all this re-organizing and re-officering of the Forces of the Commonwealth when a demand suddenly burst upon them for the actual service of a portion of those forces, such as they were. After a long period of judicious quiet, Hyde and the other Councillors of Charles abroad, in advice with the Royalists at home, had resolved on testing the King's improved chances by a general insurrection. The arrangements had been made chiefly by Mr. John Mordaunt (see ante p. 337), Sir John Greenville, Sir Thomas Peyton, Mr. Arthur Annesley, and Mr. William Legge. These five had been the authorized commissioners for the King in England since March last in place of the former secret commissioners of the Sealed Knot; and Mordaunt had been in Brussels to consult with Charles. In idea at least the arrangements had been most formidable. The conspiracy had its network through all England and Wales, and included not only the old Royalists, but also the more numerous Presbyterians and other baulked Cromwellians, now known collectively as "new Royalists." Mordaunt himself, with other friends, had undertaken Surrey; Sir George Booth was to lead in Lancashire and Cheshire, where his influence with the Presbyterians was boundless; old Sir Thomas Middleton was to head the rising in Shrepshire and Flintshire; the Earl of Stamford that in Leicestershire; Lord Willoughby of Parham that in Suffolk; Colonel Egerton that in Staffordshire; Colonel Rossiter that in Lincolnshire; Lord Herbert and Major-General Massey were to rouse Worcestershire, Gloucestershire, and the Welsh border; and there were commissions from Charles to known persons in other counties, with blank commissions besides. The Duke of Buckingham, the Earls of Manchester, Derby, Northampton, and Oxford, Lord Fairfax, Lord Bruce, Lord Falkland, Lord Falconbridge, Sir William Waller, Colonel Popham, Colonel Ingoldsby, Mr. Edmund Dunch, and many others, were all implicated, or reported as implicated. Major-General Browne had been sounded, with a view to a rising of the London Presbyterians. Moreover, there had been communications from Charles himself to Admiral Montague in the Baltic, begging him to declare for the cause, and bring his fleet, or at least his own ship, home for use. There had been special devices also for bringing Monk into the confederacy. "I am confident that George Monk can have no malice in his heart against me, nor hath he done anything against me which I cannot easily pardon," Charles had written to Sir John Greenville on the 21st of July, authorizing him to treat with Monk, who was a distant relative of Greenville's, and to offer him whatever reward in lands and titles he might himself propose as the price of his adhesion. With this letter there had gone one to be conveyed by Greenville to Monk. "I cannot think you will decline my interest," Charles there said, adding various kind expressions, and offering to leave the time and manner of Monk's declaring for him entirely to Monk's own judgment. The letter had not yet been delivered, but much was expected from it. Meanwhile, as it was deemed essential to the success of the insurrection that Charles himself should come to England, he, Ormond, the Earl of Bristol, and one or two others, went, with all possible privacy, from Brussels to Calais. The Duke of York was to follow them thither, or to Boulogne; and all were to embark together.[1] [Footnote 1: Clarendon, 868-870; Phillips, 640 and 619-651; Guizot, 191-204.] As usual, there was great bungling. On the one hand, Thurloe's means of intelligence being still wonderfully goods, if only because the Royalist traitor Sir Richard Willis still maintained with him the curious compact made with Cromwell, and Thurloe's information being at the disposal of the Rump Government, there had been time for some precautions on their part, Through the whole of July 30 and July 31 the Council, with Whitlocke for President, were busy with examinations. On the other hand, and chiefly through the agency of Willis himself, doubts and hesitations had already arisen among the confederates. It had all along been Willis's good-natured policy to balance his treachery in revealing the Royalist plans by preventing his friends from running upon ruin by executing those plans; and this policy he had again been pursuing. Now, though Charles had by this time been made aware of Sir Richard's long course of treachery, and had privately informed Mordaunt of the extraordinary discovery, the fact had been too little divulged to destroy the effects of Sir Richard's counsels of wariness and delay, agreeable as these naturally were to men fearing for their lives and estates and remembering the failure of all previous insurrections. In short, whatever was the cause, August 1, which had been the day fixed for a simultaneous rising in many places, passed with far less demonstration than had been promised. Mordaunt and a few of his friends tried a rendezvous in Surrey, only to find it useless; in several other places those who straggled together dispersed themselves at once; in Gloucestershire, where Major-General Massey, Lord Herbert, and their associates, did appear more openly, the affair ended in the arrest or surrender of the leaders, Massey escaping after having been taken. Only in Cheshire, where Sir George Booth was the leader, did a considerable body rise in arms. Booth, the Earl of Derby, Colonel Egerton, and a number of others, having met at Warrington, issued a proclamation in which no mention was made of the King, but it was merely declared that certain "Lords, Gentlemen, and Citizens, Freeholders and Yeomen, in this once happy nation," tired of the existing anarchy and tyranny, had resolved to do what they could to recover liberty and free Parliamentary Government. Hundreds and hundreds flocking to their standard, they marched on Chester and took the city without opposition, though the castle held out. The agitation then extended itself into Flintshire, where the aged Sir Thomas Middleton distinguished himself by brandishing his sword in the market-place of Wrexham and proclaiming the King. Various castles and garrisons in the two counties fell in, and Presbyterian Lancashire was also in commotion. Sir George Booth found himself at the head of between 4000 and 5000 men, and it remained to be seen whether the movement he had begun so boldly in Cheshire, Flintshire, and Lancashire, might not spread itself northwards, eastwards, and southwards, and so do the work of the universal rising originally projected. It was hoped that his Majesty himself, instead of landing in the south of England, as had been proposed, would appear soon in the district that had so happily taken the initiative.[1] [Footnote 1: Clarendon, 869-871; Whitlocke, IV. 355-356; Phillips, 649-652 (where Booth's Proclamation is given).] After some hesitations among the Rumpers in London on the question what officer should be sent against Sir George Booth, it was resolved to send Lambert. He set out on the 6th of August, with three regiments of horse, three of foot, one of dragoons, and a train of artillery; and orders were sent for other forces to join him on his march, and for bringing two regiments from Ireland and three from Flanders. Communications were to be kept up between Lambert and the Council at Westminster by messengers twice or thrice every day. Such incessant communication was very necessary. Over England, Scotland, and Ireland, the talk was of Sir George Booth's Insurrection, with much exaggeration of its dimensions, and speculation as to its chances. Old and new Royalists everywhere, and men who had not yet declared themselves Royalists, were waiting for news that might determine their course.--Above all, Monk at Dalkeith was looking southwards with interest, and timing the arrival of each post-bag In Edinburgh. He had then a visitor at Dalkeith, in the person of his brother, the Rev. Mr. Nicholas Monk, minister of Kilhampton parish in Cornwall, This gentleman had come to take home his daughter, who had been living with Monk, a suitable husband having now been found for her in England. But he had come on a little piece of business besides. His Cornish living had been given him, about a year before, by Sir John Greenville; and Sir John had thought him the very man to be employed in bringing round Monk to the King's interest. He had, accordingly, gone from Cornwall to London, had seen Greenville there and received instructions, and had also consulted Dr. Thomas Clarges, Monk's brother-in-law, and his trusty agent in London, Clarges, without committing himself on the special subject of the mission, easily procured a passage to Scotland by sea for Mr. Nicholas Monk. He sailed for Leith, Aug. 5. He had not run the risk of carrying with him the King's letters to Monk and Greenville; but he had got their substance by heart. And so, having first sounded Monk's domestic chaplain, Dr. John Price, who was of Royalist proclivities too, he had opened to Monk the fact that his sole purpose In coming was not to bring back his daughter. He told him of the King's commission to Greenville to treat with him, of the King's letter to himself, of the extent of the confederacy for the King in England, and of the hopes that Sir George Booth's rising in Cheshire would yet bring out the confederacy in its full strength. This was late at night in Dalkeith House, when the two brothers were by themselves. "The thinking silent General," we are told, listened and asked a few questions, but, as usual, said not a word expressing either assent or dissent. Through the next few days he and Dr. Price, with Dr. Thomas Gumble, the Presbyterian chaplain to the Council in Edinburgh, and Dr. Samuel Barrow, chief physician to the Army in Scotland, were much together in private over a Remonstrance or Declaratory Letter, to be sent to the ruling Junto in Westminster, "the substance of which was to represent to them their own and the nation's dissatisfaction at the long and continued session of this Parliament, desiring them to fill up their members, and to proceed in establishing such rules for future elections that the Commonwealth Government might be secured by frequent and successive Parliaments." The letter had been drafted by Dr. Price, agreed to at a meeting in Dr. Price's room on Sunday after evening sermon, and signed by the four and by Adjutant Jeremiah Smith; and Adjutant Smith was waiting for his horse to go into Edinburgh, taking the letter with him for the signatures of other likely officers, when Monk returned to the room and said it would be better to wait for the next post from England. Next day the post came, with such news that the letter was burnt and all concerned in it were enjoined to secrecy.--The news was that Sir George Booth's Insurrection had been totally and easily crushed by Lambert (August 17-19). Colonel Egerton and other prisoners of importance had been taken; Sir Thomas Middleton had capitulated; Sir George Booth himself and the Earl of Derby had escaped, but only to be taken a few days afterwards.[1] [Footnote 1: Whitlocke, IV. 356-359; Phillips, 652; Skinner's Life of Monk, 90-104; Wood's Ath., IV. 815; Phillips, 652-653.] At Westminster, where the good news was received Aug. 20, and more fully Aug. 22 and Aug. 23, all was exultation. A jewel worth £1000 was voted to Lambert, and there were to be rewards to his officers and soldiers out of the estates of the delinquents. Since Lambert had gone, there had been farther searches after delinquents; and, through the rest of August and the whole of September, both the Council and the House proceeded with inquiries and examinations relating to the Insurrection. Among those committed to the Tower, besides Sir George Booth and Lord Herbert, were the Earl of Oxford, Sir William Waller ("upon suspicion of high treason," aggravated by his refusal to pledge his honour not to act against the Government), Lord Falconbridge (discharged on bail of £10,000, Oct. 8), and Sir Thomas Leventhorpe. The Earl of Derby, the Earl of Chesterfield, and Lord Willoughby of Parham, in custody in the country, were to be brought to London; proclamations were out against Mordaunt and Massey; and the Duke of Buckingham, Sir Henry Yelverton, the poet Davenant, the Earl of Stamford, Denzil Holies, and many others, including some Presbyterian ministers, were under temporary arrest or otherwise in trouble. Vane and Hasilrig conducted the inquiries as cautiously as possible, and with every desire not to multiply prosecutions too much. Thus, Admiral Montague, who had suddenly left the Baltic with his whole fleet, against the will and in spite of the remonstrances of his fellow-plenipotentiaries, Sidney, Honeywood, and Boone, and who arrived off the English coast Sept. 10, only to know that the Royalist revolt was at an end, and that any intentions he may have had in connexion with it must be concealed, was not called in question for his strange conduct. He came boldly to London, reported himself to the Council of State, explained that he had come back for provisions, &c., and was more or less believed.--For, in fact, the Council itself, and the House itself, contained more open culprits. Sir Horatio Townshend had shown himself in his true colours, and had been among the first apprehended; and, though the wily Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper cleared himself before a committee of the Council appointed to investigate a charge against him, strong suspicions remained. On the 8th of August, just after Lambert had marched against Booth, there had been a call of the House with the result that Mr. Peter Brooke and Mr, Edmund Dunch, two members who had never attended and about whom there were evil reports, were fined £100 each; and on the 13th of September, while Dunch's fine was remitted on explanations given, Brooke, who had actually been in arms with Booth, was brought to the bar of the House in custody, disabled from sitting in Parliament, and sent to the Tower on a charge of high treason. Again, on the 30th of September, there was a call of the House, when fines of £100 were inflicted on Henry Arthington (_Rec., O²_), John Carew (*_Rec., B_), Thomas Mackworth (_Rec., O¹, O², R_), Alexander Popham (_O^1, O^2, R_), Richard Norton (_Rec., B, O^1, O^2, R_), and John Stephens (_Rec., R_). These six, I imagine, were so punished as having never attended the House, and as notoriously contumacious or disaffected. But the House took the opportunity of punishing with smaller fines, ranging from £5 to £40, twenty-five members who had been attending of late too negligently; among whom were Lord Chief Justice St. John, Viscount Lisle, Lord Commissioner Lisle, Colonel Hutchinson, and Colonel Philip Jones. At the same time they made an example of Major-General Harrison (*_Rec., O^1, R_). He, of course, had never attended in the Restored Rump, for the very good reason that he had been Cromwell's chief aider and abettor in the dissolution of the Rump in April 1653. Remembering that fact, the House now ejected him altogether, and declared him incapable of ever sitting in a Parliament. There was, of course, no suspicion of _his_ complicity with the Royalists, nor of the complicity of many that had been fined £5 or £20. The House, in its hour of triumph, was merely settling all scores together.--In what high spirits Lambert's victory had put the Rumpers appears from the fact that the House ordered the release of the Quaker James Nayler at last (Sept. 8), and from such half-jocular entries in the Order Books of the Council (Aug. 22 _et seq._) as that Colonel Sydenham, Mr. Neville, or some other member of the Council, or Mr. Brewster, a member of the Parliament, should "have a fat buck of this season" out of the New Forest, Hampton Court Park, or some other deer-preserve of the Commonwealth. The attendances in the Council through August and September averaged from twelve to sixteen, and generally included Whitlocke, Vane, Bradshaw, Hasilrig, Scott, Johnstone of Warriston, Neville, Salway, Walton, Berry, and Sydenham. Fleetwood and Desborough were more rarely present.[1] [Footnote 1: Commons Journals of dates and of Aug. 25 and Sept. 14 (Ashley Cooper); Whitlocke, IV. 355-362; Thurloe, VII. 731-734 (about Montague); and Order Books of Council of State from Aug. 11 to the end of September 1659. There is a gap in the series of the Order Books, as preserved in the Record Office, between Sept. 2, 1658, the day before Oliver's death and Aug. 11, 1659. After Oct. 25, 1659, there is again a gap.] Precisely in this time of triumph after Lambert's success did the Rumpers find leisure to address themselves to the question of the Form of Government they were to set up in the Commonwealth before retiring from the scene themselves. It was on the 8th of September that, after some previous debates in the House, it was referred to a committee of twenty-nine "to prepare something to be offered to the House in order to the settlement of the Government of this Commonwealth." The Committee was to sit from day to day, and to report on or before the 10th of October. Vane was named first on the Committee, which included also Hasilrig, Whitlocke, Marten, Neville, Fleetwood, Sydenham, Salway, Scott, Chief Justice St. John, Downes, Strickland, and Sir Gilbert Pickering. What a work for a Committee! It was predetermined, of course, that the Constitution they were to concoct was to be one suitable for a Free Commonwealth or Republic, without King, Single Person of any other denomination, or House of Lords; but, even within that prelimitation, what a range of possibilities! Nor were the Committee to be perplexed only by the varieties of their own inventiveness in the art of constitution-making. All the theorists and ideologists of England, Scotland, and Ireland, were on the alert to help them, Ludlow's summary of the various proposals made within the Committee itself, or pressed upon it from the outside, is worth quoting. "At this time," he says, "the opinions of men were much divided concerning a Form of Government to be established amongst us. The great officers of the Army, as I said before, were for a Select Standing Senate, to be joined to the Representative of the People. Others laboured to have the supreme authority to consist of an Assembly chosen by the People, and a Council of State to be chosen by that Assembly, to be vested with executive power, and accountable to that which should next succeed, at which time the power of the said Council should determine. Some were desirous to have a Representative of the People constantly sitting, but changed by a perpetual rotation. Others proposed that there might be joined to the Popular Assembly a select number of men in the nature of the Lacedæmonian Ephori, who should have a negative in things wherein the essentials of the Government should be concerned, such as the exclusion of a Single Person, touching Liberty of Conscience, alteration of the Constitution, and other things of the last importance to the State. Some were of opinion that it would be most conducive to the public happiness if there might be two Councils chosen by the People, the one to consist of about 300, and to have the power only of debating and proposing laws, the other to be in number about 1000, and to have the power finally to resolve and determine--every year a third part to go out and others to be chosen in their places." There were differences, Ludlow adds, as to the proper composition of the body that should consider and frame the new Constitution. Some were for referring the deliberation to twenty Parliament men and ten representatives of the Army, and proposed that, when these had agreed on a model, it should be submitted first to the whole Army in a grand rendezvous. Parliament, however, had settled the method of procedure so far by appointing the present Committee.[1] [Footnote 1: Commons Journals of Sept. 8, 1659; Thomason Catalogue of Pamphlets; Ludlow, 674-676.] Of the varieties of political theorists glanced at by Ludlow the most famous at this time were the Harringtonians or Rota-men. Some account of them is here necessary. Their chief or founder was James Harrington, quite a different person from the "Sir James Harrington" now of the Council of State. He was the "Mr. James Harrington" who had been one of the grooms of the bedchamber to Charles I. in his captivity at Holmby and in the Isle of Wight (Vol. III. p. 700). Even then he had been a political idealist of a certain Republican fashion, and it had been part of the King's amusement in his captivity to hold discourses with him and draw out his views.--After the King's death, Harrington, cherishing very affectionate recollections of his Majesty personally, had lived for some years among his books, writing verses, translating Virgil's Eclogues, and dreaming dreams. Especially he had been prosecuting those speculations in the science of politics which had fascinated him since his student days at Oxford. He read Histories; he studied and digested the political writings of Aristotle, Plato, Macchiavelli, Bacon, Hobbes, and others; he added observations of his own, collected during his extensive travels in France, Germany, and Italy; he admired highly the constitution of the Venetian Republic, and derived hints from it; and, altogether, the result was that he came forth from his seclusion with a more perfect theory and ideal of a body-politic, as he believed, than had yet been explained to the world. He had convinced himself "that no government is of so accidental or arbitrary an institution as people are apt to imagine, there being in societies natural causes producing their necessary effects, as well as in the earth or the air"; and one of these natural causes he had discovered in the great principle or axiom "that Empire follows the Balance of Property." The troubles and confusions In England for the last few ages were to be attributed, he thought, not so much to faults in the governors or in the governed as to a change in the balance of property, dating from the reign of Henry VII., which had gradually shifted the weight of affairs from the King and Lords to the Commons. But all could be put right by adopting a true model. It must not be an arbitrary monarchy, or a mixed monarchy, or a mere democracy as vulgarly understood, or any other of the make-shift constitutions of the past, but something worthy of being called a Free and Equal Commonwealth, and yet conserving what was genuine and natural in rank or aristocracy. The basis must be a systematic classification of the community in accordance with facts and needs, and the arrangements such as to give full liberty to all, while distributing power among all in such ways and proportions as to keep the balance eternally even and make factions and contests impossible. These arrangements, as he had schemed them out, were to be very numerous and complicated, every kind of social assemblage or activity, from the most local and parochial to the most general and national, having an exact machinery provided for it; but two all-pervading principles were to be election by Ballot and rotation of Eligibility.--Harrington's ideal had been set forth in a thin folio volume, entitled _The Commonwealth of Oceana_, published in 1656, and dedicated to Cromwell. The book was in the form of a political romance, with high-flown dialogues, and a very fantastic nomenclature for his proposed dignities and institutions, throwing the whole into the air of poetic or literary whimsy. There was, however, an elaborate exposition of the system and process of the Ballot. Though too fantastic for direct effect, the book had been a good deal talked of, and had procured for the author not only a considerable reputation, but also some following of disciples. One of these, and his intimate friend, was the Republican free-thinker Henry Neville. There had also been some criticisms by opponents, Royalist and Republican; in answer to which Harrington, in 1658, had published a second treatise, called _The Prerogative of Popular Government_, re-interpreting and vindicating the doctrines of the _Oceana_, but more in a style of direct dissertation.--The Harringtonians were by this time pretty numerous. Besides Neville there were perhaps six or eight of them among the Rumpers themselves. Why, then, should there not be an effort to impregnate the "Good Old Cause," sadly in need of new impregnation of some kind, with a few of the essential Harringtonian principles? By Neville's means the effort had been actually made in the Parliament. On the 6th of July there had been presented a petition from "divers well-affected persons," to which the petitioners "might have had many thousand hands" besides their own, had they not preferred relying on the inherent strength of their case. The answer of the House, through the Speaker, had been most gracious. They perceived that this was a petition "without any private ends and only for public interest"; and they assured the petitioners that the business to which the petition referred, viz. the settlement of a Constitution for the Commonwealth, was one in which the House intended "to go forward." There is nothing in the Journals to indicate the nature of the petition; but it had been drawn up by Harrington and may be read in his Works. It abjured, in the strongest terms, Kingship or Single-Person Sovereignty in any form, and particularly "the interest of the late King's son"; but it represented the existing state of things as chaotic, and urged the adoption of a definite Constitution for England, the legislative part of which should consist of two Parliamentary Houses, both to be elected by the whole body of the People. One was to contain about 300 members, and was to have the power of debating and propounding laws; the other was to be much larger, and was to pass or reject the laws so propounded. Great stress was laid on Rotation in the elections to both. "There cannot," said the petitioners, "be a union of the interests of a whole nation in the Government where those that shall sometimes govern be not also sometimes in the condition of the governed"; and hence they proposed that annually a third part of each of the two Houses should wheel out of the House, not to be re-eligible for a considerable period, and their places to be taken by newly elected members. Thus every third year the stuff of each House would be entirely changed.--Not content with petitioning Parliament, the Harringtonians disseminated their ideas vigorously through the press. _A Discourse showing that the spirit of a Parliament with a Council in the intervals is not to be trusted for a Settlement, lest it introduce Monarchy_, was a pamphlet of Harrington's, published July 28; another, published Aug. 31, was entitled _Aphorisms Political_, and consisted of a series of brief propositions: e.g. "Nature is of God," "The Union with Scotland, as it is vulgarly discoursed of, is destructive both to the hopes of a Commonwealth and to Liberty in Scotland." There were to be other and still other publications, by Harrington or his disciples, through the rest of the year, including, for popular effect, a copper engraving of an Assembly in full session, watching the dropping of noble voting-balls into splendid urns. But this was not all. The Harringtonians set up their famous debating club, called _The Rota_. "In 1659, in the beginning of Michaelmas term," says Anthony Wood, "they had every night a meeting at the then Turk's Head in the New Palace Yard at Westminster (the next house to the stairs where people take water), called Miles's coffee-house--to which place their disciples and virtuosi would commonly then repair: and their discourses about Government and of ordering of a Commonwealth were the most ingenious and smart that ever were heard, for the arguments in the Parliament House were but flat to those. This gang had a balloting box, and balloted how things should be carried, by way of _tentamens_; which being not used or known in England before upon this account, the room every evening was very full. Besides our author and H. Neville, who were the prime men of this club, were Cyriack Skinner, ... (which Skinner sometimes held the chair), Major John Wildman, Charles Wolseley of Staffordshire, Rog. Coke, Will. Poulteney, afterwards a knight (who sometimes held the chair), Joh. Hoskyns, Joh. Aubrey, Maximilian Pettie of Tetsworth in Oxfordshire, a very able man in these matters, ... Mich. Mallet, Ph. Carteret of the Isle of Guernsey, Franc. Cradock a merchant, Hen. Ford, Major Venner, ... Tho. Marriett of Warwickshire, Henry Croone a physician, Edward Bagshaw of Christ Church, and sometimes Rob. Wood of Linc. Coll., and James Arderne, then or soon afterwards a divine, with many others, besides antagonists and auditors of note whom I cannot now name. Dr. Will. Petty was a Rota-man, and would sometimes trouble Ja. Harrington in his Club; and one Stafford, a gent. of Northamptonshire, who used to be an auditor, did with his gang come among them one evening very mellow from the tavern, and did much affront the junto, and tore in pieces their orders and minutes. The soldiers who commonly were there, as auditors and spectators, would have kicked them down stairs; but Harrington's moderation and persuasion hindered them. The doctrine was very taking, and the more because as to human foresight there was no possibility of the King's return. The greatest of the Parliament men hated this design of rotation and ballotting, as being against their power. Eight or ten were for it." By Wood's dating in this passage, the Harrington or Rota Club must have been in full operation shortly after the appointment, Sept. 8, of the great Committee of Parliament on the new Constitution. Neville was one of that Committee, and the popularity of the Club among the soldiers and citizens must have strengthened his hands in the Committee. Indeed for five months the Rota Club was to be one of the busiest and most attractive institutions in London, yielding more amusement of an intellectual kind than any such meetings as those of the few physicists left in London to be the nucleus of the future Royal Society. It is worthy of remark that Harrington and the chief Harringtonians looked with contempt on these physical philosophers. What were _their_ occupations over drugs, water-tubs, and the viscera of frogs, compared with great researches into human nature and plans for the government of states? Dr. William Petty, who belonged to both bodies, seems to have taken pleasure in troubling the Rota with his doubts and interrogatives.[1] [Footnote 1: Harrington's Works (large folio, 1727), with Toland's Life of Harrington (1699) prefixed; Wood's Ath., III. 1115-1126; Commons Journals, July 6, 1659; Catalogue of the Thomason Pamphlets (for dates), with inspection of first editions of some of Harrington's Pamphlets in the Thomason Collection.] While the Rota was holding its first meetings, the Rump and the Wallingford-House Party were again in deadly quarrel. More and more the resolute proceedings of the pure Republicans for subjecting the Army completely to the Parliament had alienated the Army magnates. The reviewing by Parliament of all nominations for commissions, the discharging of this officer and the bringing in of that, the delivering out of the commissions by the Speaker to the officers individually, were brooded over as insults. What was the intrinsic worth of this little so-called Parliament, what were its rights, that it should so treat the Army that had set it up, and one company of which could turn it out of doors in five minutes? Though brooding thus, the Army chiefs had contented themselves with rare attendance in the House or the Council, and had made no active demonstration. They were perhaps doubtful whether the spirit of submission to the Parliament might not be now pretty general among the inferior officers, all with their bran-new commissions from the Speaker himself. But the insurrection of Sir George Booth, and the march of Lambert's brigade into Cheshire to quell it, and the quick and signal success of that enterprise, had given them the opportunity of testing the Army's real feelings. Had not the Array now again a title to remember that it ought to be something more than a mere instrument of the existing civil authority? Was it not still the old English Army, always doing the real hard work of the State, and entitled therefore to some real voice in State-affairs? Where would the Rump have been, where would the Republic have been, but for this service of Lambert's brigade? These were the questions asked in Lambert's brigade itself, more free to put such questions and to discuss them because of the distance from London; but there were communications between Lambert's brigade and the centre at Wallingford House, with arrangements for concerted action. As was fitting, the first bolt came from Lambert's brigade. At a meeting of about fifty officers of that brigade, held at Derby on the 16th of September, it was agreed, after discussion, to appoint a small committee to draw up the sense of the meeting in due form. Lambert himself then came quietly to London, where he was on the 20th, with several of his leading officers. The issue of the committee left at Derby was a petition to Parliament in the name of "the Officers under the command of the Right Honourable the Lord Lambert in the late northern expedition." The petition was to be presented to Parliament when fully signed; but meanwhile a copy of it was sent up to Colonel Ashfield, Colonel Cobbet, and Lieutenant-Colonel Duckinfield, then in London, to be given, with a letter, to Fleetwood as Commander-in-chief, that so it might be brought before the General Council of Officers. On the 22nd the House, having heard of the nature of the Petition, required that the original document should be forthcoming for inspection, and that Fleetwood should at once produce his copy. The copy sufficed for all purposes of information. The Petition consisted of a Preamble and five Articles. It was full of a spirit of dissatisfaction, with complaints of the prevalence everywhere of "apostates, malignants, and neuters"; but its specific demands were two. One was that the semi-Cromwellian petition of the General Council of Officers at Wallingford House of date May 12, 1659 (ante pp. 449-450), "may not be laid asleep, but may have fresh life given unto it." The other was that Fleetwood, whose term of office was just expiring, should be fixed in the Commandership-in-chief, that Lambert should be made general officer and chief commander next under him, that Desborough should be third as chief officer of the Horse, and Monk fourth as chief commander of the Infantry. On the 23rd these demands, and the attitude which they signified, were discussed in the House, with shut doors, and in great excitement, Hasilrig leading the fury. Here was latent Cromwellianism, or threatened single-person Government over again, the soft Fleetwood to stop the gap meanwhile, but Lambert, once he was made general officer and nominally second, to emerge as the new Cromwell! This was what was felt, if not said; and it was resolved "That this House doth declare that to have any more general officers in the Army than are already settled by the Parliament is needless, chargeable, and dangerous to the Commonwealth." A motion for censoring the Petition was negatived by thirty-one to twenty-five (Neville and Scott telling for the minority); but it was ordered that Fleetwood should communicate the Resolution to the officers of the Army and admonish them of their irregular proceedings.[1] [Footnote 1: Commons Journals of dates; Parl. Hist., III. 1562; Phillips, 654-656 (where the Petition itself is given).] Wallingford House itself now took up the controversy, There were meetings and meetings of the General Conncil of the officers, cautious at first, but gradually swelling into a chorus of anger over the indignity put upon their brethren of Lambert's northern expedition. There were dissenters who wanted to wait and have Monk's advice, but they were overborne. On the 5th of October Desborough and some others were in the House with a petition signed by 230 officers then about London. It consisted of a long preamble and nine proposals. The preamble complained generally of the misrepresentation, by some, "to evil and sinister ends," of the petition and proposals of the faithful officers of Lambert's brigade, and avowed the continued fidelity of the Army officers to Commonwealth principles, their repudiation of single-person Government, and their desire to be at one with the Parliament. The articles did not repeat the exact demands of the petition of the Lambert brigade, but asked for an immediate settlement somehow of the Commandership-in-chief, for justice in all ways to the Army, and especially for a guarantee that no officer or soldier should be cashiered "without a due proceeding at a court-martial." The debate on this Petition was begun on the 8th of October. The House was still in a most resolute mood. They had received assurances from Monk of his decided sympathies with them rather than with the Wallingford-House Council, and they believed still in the disinclination of many of the officers in England to follow Lambert and Desborough to extremities. Accordingly, taking up the proposals of the Petition one by one, they formulated answers to the first and second on Oct. 10, and answers to the next three on the 11th, all in a strain of high Parliamentary authority. At this point, however, the House interrupted its consideration of the Petition to hurry through a Bill of very vital consequence at such a juncture. It was a Bill annulling, from and after May 7, 1659, all Acts, Orders, or Ordinances passed by any Single Person and His Council, or by any pretended Parliament or other pretended authority between the 19th of April 1653 (the day before Cromwell's dissolution of the Rump) and the 7th of May 1659 (the day of the Restoration of the Rump), except in so far as these had been confirmed by the present Parliament, and farther declaring it high treason for any person or persons, after Oct. 11, 1659, to assess, levy, collect, or receive, any tax, impost, or money contribution whatsoever, on or from the subjects of the Commonwealth, without their consent in Parliament, or as by law might have been done before Nov. 3, 1640. This comprehensive Act, calculated to overawe the Army Magnates by debarring them from all power of money-raising, had been hurried through because of signs that nothing less would avail, if even that would now suffice. Not only had copies of the Army Petition of the 5th been circulated in print, but there had been letters, with copies of the Petition, to various important officers away from London, Monk in chief, urging them to obtain subscriptions in their regiments, and forward the same immediately to Wallingford House. One such letter, signed by Lambert, Desborough, Berry, Kelsay, Ashfield, Cobbet, Packer, Barrow, and Major Creed, had been misdelivered by chance to Colonel Okey, now on the side of the Parliament; and Okey gave it to Hasilrig. The letter itself was one on which action might be taken, and an incident determined the House to very decisive action indeed. Precisely on that 11th of October when the House had formulated their answers to the Army Petition as far as to the fifth Article, and when they also passed the Bill so comprehensively asserting and guarding their own sole prerogative, Mr. Nicholas Monk arrived in London from Scotland, with powers from his brother to Dr. Clarges to let the Parliament know that he would stand by them against the Wallingford-House party, and would, if necessary, march into England for their support. Next morning, Oct. 12, this news was buzzed among the Republican leaders of the House, and with prodigious effect. The misdelivered letter was read and discussed; and, after a division, on the previous question, of fifty (Mildmay and Lister tellers) against fifteen (Colonel Rich and Alderman Pennington tellers), it was resolved "That the several commissions of these several persons, viz. Colonel John Lambert, Colonel John Desborough, Colonel James Berry, Colonel Thomas Kelsay, Colonel Richard Ashfield, Colonel Ealph Cobbet, Major Richard Creed, Colonel William Packer, and Colonel William Barrow, who have subscribed the said Letter, shall be, and are hereby, made null and void, and they and every of them be, and are hereby, discharged from all military employment." The House then vested the entire government of the Army in a commission of seven,--to wit, Fleetwood, Ludlow, Monk, Hasilrig, Colonel Walton, Colonel Morley, and Colonel Overton, any three to be a quorum; and, having ordered the regiments of Morley and Okey, and a part of that of Colonel Mosse, to be on guard in Westminster through the night, they rose with the consciousness of a bold day's work.[1] [Footnote 1: Commons Journals of dates; Parl. Hist., III. 1562-8; Phillips, 656-660; Skinner's Life of Monk, 111-113.] Next day, Thursday Oct. 13, there was no House at all. An entry in the Journals of the House, subsequently inserted, explains why. "This day," runs the entry, "the late Principal Officers of the Army, whose commissions were vacated, drew up forces in and about Westminster, obstructed all passages both by land and water, stopped the Speaker on his way, and placed and continued guards upon and about the doors of the Parliament House, and so interrupted the members from coming to the House and attending their service there." This is a very correct summary of the incidents of more than twelve hours. Lambert had resolved to do the feat, and he managed it in the manner described. Morley's regiment and Mosse's regiment were faithfully on guard round the House as ordered, and Okey would have been there too had not his men deserted him; but the House was to remain empty. Lambert had taken care of that by posting regiments in an outer ring round Morley's and Mosse's, so as to block all accesses. Speaker Lenthall, trying to pass in his coach, was stopped by Lieutenant-Colonel Duckinfield, and turned back with civility to his house in Covent Garden; and so with the members generally. A few did break through and get in, among whom was Sir Peter Wentworth, who had come by water with a stout set of boatmen. This was in the morning; and through the rest of the day Lambert was riding about, coming up now and then to Morley's men or Mosse's and haranguing them. Would they suffer nine of their old officers to be disgraced and ruined? There were waverings and slidings-off towards Lambert, perhaps a general tendency to him; but for some hours the opposed masses stood within pistol-shot of each other, Morley and Mosse refusing to yield their trust, and neither side willing to begin a battle. The citizens of London and Westminster waited the issue and had no desire to interfere. The Council of State, however, had met in Whitehall; all stray members of the House, though not of the Council, had been invited to join them; and there was thus a sufficient gathering of both parties to negotiate an agreement. Not till the evening was this finally arranged; but then orders were sent out, in the name of the Council of State, to the regiments on both sides to go peaceably to their quarters. The orders were most gladly obeyed. The information that went forth to the citizens, and that was circulated over the country in letters, was that the Council of Officers "had been necessitated to obstruct the sitting of the Parliament for the present," but would themselves take all necessary charge of the public peace till there should be a more regular authority. In fact, the Rump had been dissolved a second time after a restored session, of five months.[1] [Footnote 1: Commons Journals of date; Phillips, 661; Whitlocke, IV. 364-365; Ludlow, 711 and 723-726.] CHAPTER I. Second Section (continued). THE ANARCHY, STAGE II.: OR THE WALLINGFORD-HOUSE INTERREGNUM: OCT. 13, 1659-DEC. 26, 1659. THE WALLINGFORD-HOUSE GOVERNMENT: ITS _COMMITTEE OF SAFETY_: BEHAVIOUR OF LUDLOW AND OTHER LEADING REPUBLICANS: DEATH OF BRADSHAW.--ARMY-ARRANGEMENTS OF THE NEW GOVERNMENT: FLEETWOOD, LAMBERT, AND DESBOROUGH THE MILITARY CHIEFS: DECLARED CHAMPIONSHIP OF THE RUMP BY MONK IN SCOTLAND: NEGOTIATIONS OPENED WITH MONK, AND LAMBERT SENT NORTH TO OPPOSE HIM: MONK'S MOCK TREATY WITH LAMBERT AND THE WALLINGFORD-HOUSE GOVERNMENT THROUGH COMMISSIONERS IN LONDON: HIS PREPARATIONS MEANWHILE IN SCOTLAND: HIS ADVANCE FROM EDINBURGH TO BERWICK: MONK'S ARMY AND LAMBERT'S.--FOREIGN RELATIONS OF THE WALLINGFORD-HOUSE GOVERNMENT: TREATY BETWEEN FRANCE AND SPAIN: LOCKHART: CHARLES II. AT FONTARABIA: GRADUAL IMPROVEMENT OF HIS CHANCES IN ENGLAND.--DISCUSSIONS OF THE WALLINGFORD-HOUSE GOVERNMENT AS TO THE FUTURE CONSTITUTION OF THE COMMONWEALTH: THE VANE PARTY AND THE WHITLOCKE PARTY IN THESE DISCUSSIONS: JOHNSTONE OF WARRISTON, THE HARRINGTONIANS, AND LUDLOW: ATTEMPTED CONCLUSIONS.--MONK AT COLDSTREAM: UNIVERSAL WHIRL OF OPINION IN FAVOUR OF HIM AND THE RUMP: UTTER DISCREDIT OF THE WALLINGFORD-HOUSE RULE IN LONDON: VACILLATION AND COLLAPSE OF FLEETWOOD: THE RUMP RESTORED A SECOND TIME. For about a fortnight after Lambert's _coup d'état_, the Council of State of the Rump, having become in a manner a party to that action, still continued to sit in Whitehall, on an understanding with the General Council of the Officers meeting in Wallingford House. There are preserved minutes of their sitting's to the 25th of October, from which it appears that the Laird of Warriston was in the chair once or twice, but Whitlocke principally. Bradshaw, who was then a dying man, had appeared at one meeting, but only to protest that, "being now going to his God," he must leave his testimony against a compromise founded on perjury to the Republic. But on the 26th of October, after much consultation, the Council of State gave place to a new Supreme Executive, chosen by the Wallingford--House officers, and called _The Committee of Safety._ It consisted of twenty-three persons, as follows:-- Whitlocke (made also_ Lord Keeper of the Great Seal_, Nov. 1). Colonel Robert Bennett Colonel James Berry Henry Brandreth Colonel John Clerk Desborough Fleetwood Sir James Harrington Colonel Hewson Cornelius Holland Alderman Ireton Sir Archibald Johnstone of Wariston Lambert Henry Lawrence Colonel Robert Lilburne Ludlow Major Salway William Steele (Chancellor of Ireland) Walter Strickland Colonel William Sydenham Robert Thompson Alderman Tichbourne Sir Henry Vane. The combination of persons is curious. Some were mere inserted ciphers, and others would not act. Whitlocke, who was earnestly pressed by the officers to give to the body the weight and reputation of his presence, had very considerable hesitations, but did consent, chiefly on the ground, as he tells us, that he might be able to counteract the extravagant communistic tendencies of Vane and Salway, and so prevent mischief. It is perhaps stranger to find Vane and Salway themselves on the list. Of late, however, Vane had been detaching himself from the group of more intense Parliamentarians and seeing prospects for his ideas from conjunction, rather with the Army-men. So with Salway, Ludlow had been nominated on the new body at a venture. Thinking he might be wanted to help the Rump in their struggle with the Army, he had returned from Ireland, leaving Colonel John Jones as his _locum tenens_ there; and he had not heard the astonishing news of Lambert's action till his landing on the Welsh coast. He had then wavered for a while between going back to Ireland and coming on to London, but had decided for the latter. Before his arrival in town he had heard of his nomination to the Committee of Safety and resolved not to accept it. He was more willing than usual, however, to make the best of circumstances; he consented even to shake hands with Lambert when he first met him; and, though not concealing his opinion that Lambert's act had been utterly unjustifiable, and that a restitution of the Rump even yet was the only proper amends, he would not go entirely with those friends of his who were working for that end, as he thought, too wildly and boisterously, and too much with a view to mere revenge. These were Hasilrig, Scott, Neville, Morley, Walton, and their followers, among whom it is no surprise to find Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper. They, of course, had been left out of the new Committee of Safety, as the open and irreconcileable enemies of the system of things Lambert had brought in. Bradshaw, who would have been with them, died on the 31st of October, five days after the constitution of the Committee, leaving surely a most troubled world.[1] [Footnote 1: Council Order Books from Oct. 13 to Oct. 25, 1659; Ludlow, 706-713, 716-718, and 729-731; Whitlocke, IV. 365-368; Phillips, 662.] Military arrangements had been made already (October 14-17) by the Wallingford-House Council. Fleetwood had been named Commander-in-chief of all the Armies; Lambert Major-General of the Forces in England and Scotland; Desborough Commissary-General of the Horse; and these three, with Vane, Berry, and Ludlow, were to be the Committee for nominations of all Army-officers. Though this, with the omission of Hasilrig, was the very committee the Rump had appointed for the same business, Ludlow could not make up his mind to act on it. Disaffected officers, such as Okey, Morley, and Alured, had been removed from their commands; Articles of War for maintaining discipline everywhere had been drawn out; and the Committee of nominations was to see that the officers throughout England, Scotland, and Ireland should be men under engagement to the newly-established order.--It was foreseen that in this there would be great difficulties. Even within England and Wales there might be many officers, besides those already discharged, whose adhesion to the Wallingford-House policy was dubious; and these had to be found out. There was still greater uncertainty about Ireland, where Ludlow had for some months been master for the Rump. Thither, accordingly, there was despatched Colonel Barrow, to be an agent for the Wallingford-House policy with Ludlow's deputy Colonel John Jones, and with the officers of the Irish Army. But it was from Scotland that the hurricane was expected. Monk, having offered to stand by the Rump against the Wallingford-House party while yet the two were in struggle, had necessarily been omitted from that fourth Generalship, after Fleetwood, Lambert, and Desborough, to which he would doubtless have been appointed, in conformity with one of the proposals of the Lambert Brigade Petition of the preceding month, but for that predeclaration of his hostility. It had been suggested, indeed, that such an honour might pacify him; but it had been thought best to wait for farther evidences of his state of mind, and merely to despatch Colonel Cobbet to Scotland to give explanations to Monk himself and to probe also the feelings of his officers and soldiers.--They had not to wait long. No sooner had Monk heard of Lambert's _coup d'état_ than he repeated his former determination most emphatically, both by energetic procedure on his own Scottish ground and by letters to all the four winds. "I am resolved, by the grace and assistance of God, as a true Englishman," he wrote to Speaker Lenthall from Edinburgh October 20, "to stand to and assert the liberty and authority of Parliament; and the Army here, praised be God, is very courageous and unanimous." There were letters to the same effect to Fleetwood and Lambert, to Ludlow and his substitutes in Ireland, to the commanders of the Fleet, and to many private persons. Colonel Gobbet was not allowed to enter Scotland, but was seized at Berwick and put in prison. In short, before October 28, when the new Committee of Safety met for the first time in Whitehall, it was clear that Monk had constituted himself the antagonist-in-chief of their government, and the armed champion of the dismissed Rump. Hasilrig, Scott, Neville, and their comrades, were in exultation accordingly.[1] [Footnote 1: Whitlocke, IV. 366-367; Ludlow, 710-712 and 728-729; Phillips, 663-666; Skinner's Life of Monk, 117-128; Guizot, II. 18-22.] Two resolutions were immediately taken by the Committee of Safety. It was resolved to attempt even then a negotiation with Monk; and it was resolved to send Lambert north with a large force to prevent Monk's march into England if the negotiation should fail. On the night of the 28th of October, Monk's brother-in-law Dr. Clarges, and Colonel Talbot, one of Monk's favourite officers, then in London, were sent for by the Committee, and asked to undertake the mission of peace. They willingly consented, and set out on the 29th, to be followed within a few days by six other missionaries for the same purpose--Colonels Whalley and Goffe for the Wallingford-House officers, a Mr. Dean specially for Fleetwood, and three Independent ministers, Caryl, Barker, and Hammond, on a religious account. There were letters in plenty also from Fleetwood and others. Monk was to be reasoned with from all points of view. But, on the 3rd of November, Lambert also set out for York, to join Colonel Robert Lilburne there, and gather forces to block the north of England against the possibility of Monk's invasion.[1] [Footnote 1: Whitlocke, IV. 368-369; Phillips, 663; Skinner, 131, 140, and 142-143; Guizot, II. 27-29.] Monk, on his part, when Clarges and Talbot arrived in Edinburgh (Nov. 2), and Clarges had held his first long private discourse with him, was very willing to _seem_ to negotiate, and gave Clarges his reasons. Though he had represented his Army as unanimously with him, that was hardly the case. The re-modelling operations of the late Rump had perturbed his Army considerably, displacing or degrading officers he liked, and inserting or promoting officers he did not want. Fortunately, most of the new officers had not yet come to their posts, and the old ones were still available. But the regiments, or parts of regiments, in all their dispersed stations, at Edinburgh, Leith, Dalkeith. Stirling, Perth, Glasgow, Dundee, Aberdeen, Ayr, Inverness, and the remoter Highland outposts, had to be manipulated, weeded of oppositionists, and pulled gradually together; and, as it turned out, there were about 140 oppositionists among Monk's own approved officers of all ranks. To get rid of these, and otherwise to shape the Army to his mind, would take six weeks at least. Then, as he told Clarges, he should be ready. His total force would consist of ten regiments of foot (his own, Talbot's, Wilkes's, Read's, Daniel's, Fairfax's, and those now called Overton's, Cobbet's, Sawrey's, and Smith's), with two regiments of horse (his own and Twistleton's) and one of dragoons (that of the redoubted Morgan, now absent in England). By recent careful economy, he had £70,000 in the bank: his credit with the Scots was such that he could have more on demand; he had but to give permission, and the Scots themselves would flock in arms to his standard. He had resolved, however, that the performance should be in substance wholly an English one, and that the Scots should be involved in it but indirectly and sparingly. Additional reasons for delay were furnished by the fact that the sympathy with Monk which he knew to exist in England and Ireland, had not yet had due development, In short, Monk and Clarges agreed that it would be best to fall in with the offer of negotiation, in order to gain time; and next day (Nov. 3), at a meeting of Monk's officers, Colonel Wilkes, Lieutenant-Colonel Clobery, and Major Knight, were deputed to go into England as Commissioners for a Treaty. They had certain instructions given them, in which Monk himself "invented matter to confound their debates." They were to insist on the restoration of the Rump, or, if the Rump would not be restored, then on a full and free new Parliament.[1] [Footnote 1: Phillips, 663-667, and Skinner, 133-136. Phillips's information about Monk and his proceedings in Scotland is very full and minute; indeed his whole account of Monk's enterprise henceforward to the Restoration, though in form only part of a continuation of _Baker's Chronicle_, is a contribution of original history rather than a mere compilation. He was permitted, as he tells us, the use of Monk's papers and those of his agents. This part of the book, in fact, looks like a literary commission executed for Monk.] And so, having dispatched the commissioners, Monk continued his colloquies with Clarges, such privileged persons as the physician Dr. Barrow and the chaplain Dr. Gumble being admitted to some of them, but only Clarges fathoming Monk's intentions, and he but in part. When the Independent ministers and other envoys arrived, there was a conference at Holyrood House at which they made speeches, Monk listening, but keeping his own mouth shut. Once, indeed, when Mr. Caryl warned him that war and bloodshed, if begun, would be "laid at his door," he burst out against Lambert and his party, saying _they_ had begun the war, and, if they continued in their course, he would "lay them on their backs." While the Independent ministers were yet in Edinburgh, doing their best, there was a more welcome advent in the person of Colonel Morgan (Nov. 8). He had been lying ill of gout at York, but had recovered so far as to be able to come to Edinburgh as a kind of messenger to Monk from Lambert. He delivered his message punctually enough, but told Monk he was glad to be with him again, and would follow him implicitly whatever he did, being "no statesman" himself. Monk was vastly pleased, looking on Morgan, it is said, as worth more than all the 140 officers he had lost. Morgan had, moreover, brought important communications from Yorkshire, which led Monk to dispatch Clarges and Talbot thither to establish an understanding with Lord Fairfax.[1] [Footnote 1: Phillips, 667-669; Skinner, 138-140.] Meanwhile Monk's three Commissioners had arrived at York and been in parley with Lambert. Finding that the question of the restitution of the Rump was involved in their instructions, he passed them on to London, having stipulated for a truce till the result should be known. On the 12th of November the Commissioners were in London; and on the 15th, after three days of consultation at Wallingford House, a treaty of nine Articles was agreed to, and signed by them on the part of Monk and the Army in Scotland, and by Fleetwood on the part of the Wallingford-House Council. There was great delight in Whitehall over this result, and the Tower cannon proclaimed the happy reconciliation between Monk and the Government. But Monk's Commissioners had been too hasty, or had been outwitted; and Clarges, who arrived in London that day, had come too late to stop them and spin out the time. A pledge of both parties against Charles Stuart or any single-person Government was in the forefront of the Treaty; and the rest of the Articles simply admitted Monk and the officers of the Scottish Army to a share in the Government as then going on, and in certain arrangements which the Committee of Safety and the Wallingford-House Council had been already devising on their own account. Monk received the news at Haddington on the evening of Nov. 18; he returned to Edinburgh next day, "very silent and reserved"; but that day it was resolved by him, in consultation with some of his chief officers and with Dr. Barrow, to disown the Treaty--not, indeed, by actual rejection of any of the Articles, but on the plea that several things had been omitted and that there must be farther specification. For this purpose it was proposed that two Commissioners on Monk's part should be added to the former three, and that five Commissioners from the Army in England should meet these and continue the Treaty at Alnwick or some other indifferent place near Scotland. When this answer reached London, Whitlocke, who had all along, as he tells us, protested that Monk's object was delay only and "that the bottom of his design was to bring in the King," repeated more earnestly his former advice that Lambert should be pushed on to immediate action. "His advice was not taken," says Whitlocke, "but a new Treaty consented to by Commissioners on each part, to be at Newcastle." From about the 20th of November that was Lambert's headquarters, while Monk, having left a portion of his forces behind him for necessary garrison purposes in Scotland, came on from Edinburgh to establish himself at Berwick with the rest. He was there before the end of the month. In the beginning of December 1659, therefore, the two Armies were all but facing each other,--Monk's consisting now of about 6000 foot and 1400 horse and dragoons, and Lambert's of between 4000 and 5000 horse and about 3000 foot: the excess in horse giving Lambert a great superiority. At Monk's back, moreover, there was no effective support in case of failure, unless by that arming of the Scots which he was unwilling to risk, while to back Lambert there were about 20,000 more regulars in England, besides a militia of 30,000, not to speak of the forces in Ireland, and the regiments in Flanders. Between the two Armies all that intervened to prevent conflict was the Treaty to be resumed at Newcastle. Monk magnified the importance of that, but took great care to postpone it. Wilkes, Clobery, and Knight, had not returned from London, and were rather slow to do so and face Monk after their blunder; and the two new Commissioners had not yet been appointed. Meanwhile letters and messages passed between the two Armies, and there were desertions from the one to the other.[1] [Footnote 1: Skinner, 146-158; Phillips, 670-672; Whitlocke, IV. 373-377.] All this while the London Government of the Committee of Safety had been attending as well as they could to such general business as belonged to them in their double capacity of supreme executive and temporary deliberative. For, at the constitution of the body on the 26th of October, it had been agreed that they should not only exercise the usual powers of a Council of State, but should also prosecute that great question of the future form of the Government of the Commonwealth which had occupied the late Rump. They were to prosecute this question in conference, if necessary, with the chief Army officers and others; and, if they should not come to a conclusion within six weeks, the question was to return to the Wallingford-House Council itself.[1] [Footnote 1: Letter of M. de Bordeaux to Mazarin of date Nov. 6, 1659 (i.e. Oct. 28 in English reckoning), in Appendix to Guizot, II. 274-278.] In the matter of foreign relations the Committee of Safety had little to do, the arrangements of the late Rump for withdrawing from foreign entanglements still holding good for the present. Meadows, who had become tired of his agency with the two Scandinavian powers, no longer such an inspiring office as it had been under the Protectorate, had asked the Rump more than once to recall him. He had remained in the Baltic to as late as October, but was now back in London, anxious about his own future and about his arrears of salary. If the present Government should succeed, there might possibly be a revival of the Cromwellian policy of co-operation with Charles Gustavus, and then the services of Meadows might be again in request; but meanwhile Algernon Sidney and the other plenipotentiaries sent by the Rump into the Baltic, though checking the heroic Swede and scorned by him in return, might represent the only policy yet possible. Downing, though also much exercised by the rapid turns of affairs, and thinking of scoundrel-like means for securing himself, does not seem to have been so dissatisfied with his position at the Hague as Meadows was with his in the Baltic. He had come to London early in November; a sub-committee of the Committee of Safety had been appointed to receive his report on present relations with the United Provinces; and he was waiting for re-credentials. The Dutch Ambassador Nieuport, we may add, was still in London, as also the French Ambassador M. de Bordeaux, and other inferior foreign residents, but all meanwhile as mere on-lookers.--One inquires with most interest about Ambassador Lockhart. Since August, he had been at or near St. Jean de Luz, on the borders between France and Spain, charged, as Ambassador for the Rump, with the business of endeavouring to have the English Commonwealth included in the great Treaty then going on between Mazarin and the Spanish minister Don Luis de Haro, so that, when peace had been definitely concluded between France and Spain, there might be peace also between Spain and the Commonwealth. There he had been received, with the utmost respect by Mazarin and with all courtesy by Don Luis de Haro, both of them friendly enough to the purpose of his mission for reasons of their own. It was found, however, that the Peace between France and Spain was a matter of sufficient complication and difficulty in itself; and so, though it was not finally concluded and signed till the end of November, when it took the name of _The Treaty of the Pyrenees_, and secured, among many other things, the marriage of Louis XIV. with the Spanish Infanta, Lockhart, knowing all to be settled, had taken his farewell. He was in London on the 14th of November, in the very crisis of the negotiation between Monk and the new Government, but remained only a fortnight. Till Peace with Spain should be concluded by some means, his true place was at Dunkirk, for the recovery of which Spain would now certainly wrestle, while France would also bid high for the acquisition. He left London for Dunkirk on the 1st of December, the issue between Monk and the new Government still undecided.--While Lockhart was on the scene of the great negotiation between Mazarin and Luis de Haro on the Spanish border, there had been the surprise of the arrival there of no less a person than Charles II. himself. In August we left him waiting anxiously at Calais, ready to embark for England on the due explosion there of the great pre-arranged insurrection of the old Royalists and new Royalists. He had lingered about the French coast for some time; but, when the revolt of Sir George Booth had collapsed, the notion of a new residence in Brussels after another of his failures had become disagreeable to him. He did go to Brussels, but only to conceive the idea of a trip, half of pleasure, half of speculation, to the scene of the great diplomatic conferences. Might not his interests be considered in the Treaty? Mazarin, who had no wish to see him at the conferences, declined to give him a passport; but he risked the journey _incognito_, with Ormond, the Earl of Bristol, and one or two other attendants, going by a long and circuitous route, and finding much amusement by the way. As they approached their destination, there was an unlucky separation of the party into two, Ormond going on ahead for inquiries and appointing a place for their reunion. But for some days Charles and the Earl of Bristol were lost. Ormond, who had missed them at the appointed place, had gone on to Fontarabia, a small frontier town of Spain, and the residence of Don Luis de Haro during the Treaty, just as St. Jean de Luz, two or three miles off, but in the French territory, was the residence of Mazarin. Sir Henry Bennet, the Ambassador for Charles at the Spanish Court, was already there; and he, and Ormond, and Don Luis himself, were in no small anxiety. At length it appeared that the fugitives, on false information that the Treaty was already concluded, had gone into Spain on their own account, bound for Madrid itself, and had got as far as Saragossa. Fetched back to Fontarabia, they were received with all politeness and state by Don Luis. But, though they remained some time, the Treaty was so far settled that Charles found that nothing could be done for his interests through that means. Mazarin, indeed, resenting his intrusion, and his passage through France without leave, refused to see him, and gave orders also that Sir Henry Bennet should not be admitted. With only general assurances of good wishes from the Spanish minister, a present of 7000 gold pistoles for "the expenses of his journey," and promises of farther consideration of his case when there should be opportunity, Charles returned through France by Paris, and was back in Brussels in December, just about the time when Lockhart was back in Dunkirk. They had been crossing each other's paths and were again near neighbours.--Although the late Rump Government had taken some alarm at Charles's visit to Fontarabia, and had made remonstrances on the subject of his passage through France, it was now known that there was no danger of action for Charles either by France or by Spain. The danger, indeed, was of a more subtle and incalculable kind, and within the Commonwealth itself. We have seen how naturally the baulked Cromwellianism of the epoch of the dissolution of Richard's Parliament and the overthrow of his Protectorate tended to transmute itself into Stuartism, and how much of the strength of Sir George Booth's insurrection consisted of new Royalism so produced. What we have now to add is that every baulked or defeated cause in succession within the Commonwealth yielded in the same way potential capital for Charles. The cause of Charles was like an ultimate refuge for all the disappointed and destitute. Those who had not already been driven into it were ruefully or gladly looking forward to it. Even among the extreme Rumpers or pure Republicans, now maddened by Lambert's coup _d'état_, there were some, Colonel Herbert Morley for one, who were feeling cautiously for ways and means of forgiveness at Brussels. Nay, in the present Committee of Safety and in the Wallingford-House Council associated with it, there were some fully prepared, should this experiment also fail, to help in a restoration of the Stuarts rather than go back into the Republican grasp of Scott, Neville, and Hasilrig. There was a vague common cognisance of this convergence of so many separate currents to one final reservoir. It showed itself in mutual accusations of that very tendency of which all were conscious. Every party of Commonwealth's men accused every other party of a design to bring the King in, and every party so accused repudiated the charge with such strength of language as to beget the suspicion, "The Lady protests too much, methinks." On the other hand, the uneasy common consciousness disposed people to be practically somewhat tolerant. When no one knew what might happen to himself, why should he indict his neighbour for treason? On some such ground it may have been, as well as to try to win grace with the Presbyterians or new Royalists, that the present Government did not proceed with the trials of the lords and gentlemen committed for high treason for their concern in the late Insurrection, but released all or most of them. Lords Northampton, Falkland, Herbert, Howard, and others had been released November 1, and Sir George Booth himself was set at liberty on the 9th of December.[1] [Footnote 1: Thurloe, VII. 708, 727, 743, 753-4, 775, and 802; Whitlocke, IV. 369, 377, and 378; Clarendon, 872-877; Guizot, I. 211-215; Letters of M. de Bordeaux, in Appendix to Guizot, II. 288, 294, and 298; Order Books of Council of State, Aug. 23 and Oct. 13, 1659.] In the matter of a new Constitution for the future the procedure of the Committee of Safety had been not uninteresting. On the 1st of November they had referred the subject to a sub-committee, consisting of Vane, Whitlocke, Fleetwood, Ludlow, Salway, and Tichbourne; and on this sub-committee Ludlow did consent to act. In fact, however, the General Committee and the Wallingford-House Council kept along with the Sub-Committee in the great discussion.[1] [Footnote 1: Whitlocke, IV. 368-369, and Ludlow, 736. Whitlocke does not here name himself as one of the sub-committee, though he names the others; but Ludlow names him distinctly, and Whitlocke's words afterwards (e.g., p. 376) show him to have been an active member.] The Kingship of Charles Stuart was, of course, an utterly forbidden idea in the deliberations. The idea of a revival of any form of the Protectorship, whether by the recall of Richard, or by the election of Fleetwood or Lambert, was equally forbidden, although there had been whispers of the kind about Wallingford House, and Richard was understood to be hovering near, in case he should be wanted. "Such a form of Government as may best suit and comport with a Free State and Commonwealth, without a Single Person, Kingship, or House of Peers," was what had been solemnly promised in the first public declaration of the present powers; and to that all stood pledged. This, of course, involved a Parliament. But what Parliament or what sort of Parliament? _The late Rump reinstated at once with full authority_, Ludlow was bound to say, and did say; but, as that was out of the question with all the rest, he could suppose himself outvoted on that, and go on. _Richard's late Parliament_ had been the murmur of some outside, perhaps not the least sensible in the main; but the suggestion passed, as meaningless without Richard himself. _The Long Parliament as it was before it became the Rump, i.e. with all the survivors of the illegally secluded members of 1642-1649 restored to their seats_, was a third proposal, of more tremendous significance, that had been heard outside, and indeed had become a wide popular cry. Inasmuch as this meant the bringing back of the Parliament precisely as it had been before the King's trial and the institution of the Commonwealth, with all those Presbyterians and Royalists in it that it had been necessary to eject in mass in order to make the King's trial and a Commonwealth possible, little wonder that the present junto shuddered at the bare suggestion. _A new Parliament, called by ourselves_, was the conclusion in which they took rest. But here their debates only began. Should it be a Parliament of one House or of two Houses? If of two Houses, should the Second House be a select Senate of fifty or seventy, coordinate with the larger House, as the Army-chiefs had advised the Rumpers, or should it be a much larger body? What should be the size of the larger House, and what the powers and relations of the two? Then, whether of one or of two Houses, how should the Parliament be elected? To prevent the mere inrush of a Parliament of the old and ordinary sort, whose first act would probably be to subvert the Commonwealth, what qualifications should be established for suffrage and eligibility? Might it not even be advisable not to permit the people at first full choice of their representatives, with whatever prescribed qualifications, but to allow them only choice among nominees sent down to them by a higher power? Should Harrington's principle of Rotation be adopted, and, if so, to what extent? Farther, whatever was to be the structure of the Parliament, were any fundamentals to be laid down beforehand, as eternal principles of the Commonwealth, which even the Parliament should be bound not to touch? Must not the perpetuity of Republican Government itself, or non-return to Kingship or single Chief Magistracy of any kind, be one of these fundamentals, and Liberty of Conscience another? Nay, should a Church Establishment and Tithes be left open questions, or should there be some absolute pre-determination on that great subject? Finally, when the Sub-Committee and the Committee of Safety, and the Army officers round about, should have agreed upon all these questions, so far as to be able to draw out a Constitution or Form of Government sufficiently satisfactory to themselves, ought not that Constitution to be submitted to some wider representative authority for revision and ratification before being imposed on the People? If so, what should that intervening and ratifying authority be?[1] [Footnote 1: This is not a paragraph of suppositions, but the result of a study of the actual chaos of opinion at the moment, by the help of hints from Whitlocke, Ludlow, the letters of M. de Bordeaux, and information in contemporary Thomason pamphlets. Strangely enough, some of the most luminous hints come from the letters of M. de Bordeaux. He was observing all coolly and clearly with foreign eyes, and reporting twice a week to Mazarin.] One can see that there were two parties among the debaters. Vane, in his strange position at last after his many vicissitudes, had come trailing clouds of his peculiar notions with him, and was regarded as the advocate of wild and impracticable novelties. Not merely absolute Liberty of Conscience and abolition of Tithes, in which Ludlow and others went with him, but certain Millenarian or Fifth Monarchy speculations, pointing to a glorious future over the trampled ruins of the Church-Establishment and of much besides, were ideas which he wanted to ingraft in some shape into the new Constitution. Here he represented a number of enthusiasts among the subalterns of the Army and among ex-Army men; and, indeed, it had been with some difficulty that Major-General Harrison, the head of the Millenarians, had been kept out of the Committee of Safety at its first formation, and so prevented from resuming public functions after his five years of disablement. Not having Harrison by his side, Vane could do little more than ventilate his Millenarianism, Communism, or whatever it was, though, as Whitlocke says, he "was hard to be satisfied and did much stick to his own apprehensions." The leader of the more moderate party, as against Vane, was Whitlocke himself. He represented the Lawyers, the Established Clergy, all the more sober and conservative spirits. Parliamentary use and wont, with no great new-fangled inventions, but only prudent modifications and precautions; preservation of the Established Church, the Universities, and the existing legal system; Liberty of Conscience certainly, but so guarded as not to give reins to Quakerism and other Sectarian excesses: these were the recommendations of Whitlocke. The Laird of Warriston, it appears, who was not on the Sub-Committee, took up a position of his own in the General Committee, which was neither Vane's nor Whitlocke's, but represented what Ludlow calls "the Scottish interest." One of its principles was that Liberty of Conscience should be very limited indeed. And so, through November, while Monk was consolidating his forces in Scotland, the discussion of the new Constitution had been straggling on in the Sub-Committee and Committee at Whitehall, and in less authorized assemblies in the same neighbourhood. Among these, besides a clerical conclave of Independent ministers, such as Owen and Nye, meeting at the Savoy and advising Whitlocke on the Church-question, one must specially remember Harrington's Rota Club at the Turk's Head in New Palace Yard. That institution was now in its full nightly glory, discussing all the questions that were discussed in Whitehall and many more. It had won by this time the crowning distinction of being a subject of daily jokes and witticisms. In a London squib of Nov. 12, 1659, laughing at Harrington and his Rota-men, the public were informed that among the last "decrees and orders of the Committee of Safety of the Commonwealth of Oceana" had been these three:--1. "That the politic casuists of the Coffee Club in Bow Street [had the Rota adjourned thither, or was this some other debating Club?] appoint some of their number to instruct the Committee of Safety at Whitehall how they shall find an invention to escape Tyburn, if ever the law be restored; 2. That Harrington's _Aphorisms_ and other political slips be recommended to the English Plantation in Jamaica, to try how they will agree with that apocryphal purchase; 3. That a Levite and an Elder be sent to survey the Government of the Moon, and that Warriston Johnstone and Parson Peters be the men, as a couple of learned Rabbis in Lunatics." Heedless of such mockery, the Harringtonians did not cease to put forth their own pamphlets with all seriousness. _Valerius and Publicola, or the True Form of a Popular Commonwealth extracted e puris naturalibus_ is the title of a dialogue of Harrington's, of Nov. 17, expounding his principles afresh.[1] [Footnote 1: Whitlocke, IV. 376 and 379-380; Ludlow, 751-752; Letters of M. de Bordeaux, in Appendix to Guizot, II. 275, 293, 304; Thomason Tract of date, entitled _Decrees and Orders, &c.;_ and Thomason Catalogue.] Two conclusions at least had been arrived at in the Sub-Committee and Committee, and approved by the Wallingford-House Council of officers, before the middle of November, when they were actually embodied in the Treaty with Monk's Commissioners in London. One was as to the mode of determining Parliamentary qualifications. That duty was to be entrusted to a body of nineteen persons, ten of them named (Whitlocke, Vane, Ludlow, St. John, Warriston, &c.), and the other nine to be chosen by the Armies of England, Ireland, and Scotland, three by each. A still more important conclusion was as to the body, intermediate between the present powers and the People, to which the whole Constitution should be submitted for revision and ratification before being imposed upon the People. It was to be a great Representative Council of the Army and Navy, to be composed of delegates in the proportion of two commissioned officers from each regiment in England, Scotland, or Ireland, chosen by the commissioned officers of the regiments severally, together with ten naval officers to be chosen by the officers of the Fleet collectively. To Ludlow, approving only coldly of all that departed from his fixed idea of sheer restitution of the Rump, this arrangement seemed, nevertheless, a very fair one. It was settled, in fact, that the great Representative Council should meet at Whitehall on the 6th of December, by which time the complete draft of the Constitution would be ready.[1] [Footnote 1: Whitlocke, IV. 374; Phillips. 671-672.] The Army and Navy Council did meet on that day, and it is from their proceedings that we learn best the nature of the Constitution submitted to them. The meeting, indeed, was not the great one that had been expected. The delegates from Ireland had not arrived; none had come from Monk's army, though due intimation had been given to him and he was reckoned bound by the Treaty; and, of course, in the circumstances, delegates could not be spared from Lambert's. There was, however, a sufficient gathering, and Ludlow attended, by request, as one representative from Ireland. In a debate of five or six days all the questions that had been discussed in the Committee of Safety and its Sub-Committee were discussed over again, Ludlow and Colonel Rich fighting for the restitution of the Rump even yet as the one thing needful, others starting wild proposals even yet for a restoration of the Protectorate, but Fleetwood, Desborough, and the majority urging substantially the proposals that had come from the Committee of Safety, or rather a reduction of those, by the omission of such portions of them as were Vane's, to the moderate and conservative core which might be regarded as Whitlocke's. As Whitlocke himself was permitted to be present and advise in the Council, he was able to contribute much to this result by his lawyerly gravity and frequent mentions of the Great Seal. Altogether the Constitution as it passed the Council may be considered as his. And what was it? Nothing very alarming. A new Parliament, of a Single House, to be elected by the people very much as by use and wont, but in conformity with a well-considered scheme of "qualifications" for keeping out the dangerous; a separation, however, of the Executive from the Legislative, by the appointment, as heretofore, of a Supreme Council of State; maintenance of the Established Church, and that by Tithes till some other as ample provision should be devised; Toleration of Dissent and of free expression of religious belief, but still on this side of Quakerism and other anomalies, heresies, and extravagancies: such, after all, was the homely outcome. If Vane and the theorists of the Harringtonian Club were disappointed, Ludlow was even in worse despair; and at the last moment he proposed an extraordinary addition. If the late Rump was not to be restored, and if they were to adopt a Constitution which threatened, as he feared, to let in Charles, or to put all back under the power of the sword, let them at least try to avert such consequences by defining a few fundamentals which should be inviolable, and let them appoint, under the name of _Conservators of Liberty_, twenty-one men to be guardians of these fundamentals. He was humoured in this; and, three fundamentals having been agreed on--to wit, (1) Commonwealth in perpetuity, without King, Single Person, or House of Peers, (2) Liberty of Conscience, (3) Unalterability of the Army arrangements except by the Conservators--the Assembly proceeded to ballot on a list of persons named by Ludlow as suitable for the office of Conservators. All went as Ludlow wished for the first seven or eight on the list,--dexterously arranged by him so because, being all men of the Wallingford-House party except Vane and Salway, these two could hardly in decency be blackballed. But then the order of voting was broken; and, though Ludlow himself was elected, not another man of the Parliamentarian party was let in. Actually, the Laird of Warriston, who had declared publicly against Liberty of Conscience, and Tichbourne, who had proposed to restore Richard to the Protectorship, were preferred to such men as Hasilrig and Neville, and made guardians of fundamentals in which they did not believe. Ludlow then threw up the entire business in disgust, and resolved that it was high time for him to be back in Ireland. Nevertheless, his afterthought of the Fundamentals and their Conservators was incorporated into Whitlocke's Constitution as it went back to the Committee of Safety, with the ratification of the Council of Army and Navy officers, This was on the 14th of December. The next day the nature of the new Constitution was known to all who were interested, and there was a proclamation for a Parliament to meet in February.[1] [Footnote 1: Whitlocke, IV. 377-380; Ludlow, 753-769; Letters of M. de Bordeaux in Guizot, II. 306 and 315.] Monk was now at Coldstream, on the Tweed, about nine miles from Berwick. On the 13th of December he had taken leave, at Berwick, of a deputation of Scottish nobles and gentlemen, headed by the Earls of Glencairn, Tullibardine, Rothes, Roxburgh, and Wemyss, who had come from Edinburgh with certain propositions and requests. As he was going into England, leaving Scotland garrisoned but by a poor residue of his soldiers, would he not permit the shires to raise small native forces for police purposes, or would he not at least restore to the Scottish nobility and gentry the privilege of wearing arms themselves and having their servants armed? Farther, might he not, a little while hence, sanction a general arming, so that Scotland might have the pleasure of putting 6000 foot and 1500 horse at his disposal? The minor requests were, within certain limits, granted easily; but against the last Monk was still very wary. To have granted it would have been to proclaim that he was taking the Scottish nation with him in his enterprise, and so give indubitable foundation to those rumours that "the King was at the bottom of it" which were flying about already, and which it was his first care to contradict. There must be no general arming of the Scots: he would march into England with his own little army only! Still, however, he did not move from Coldstream, but stuck there, exchanging messages with Lambert respecting the renewal of the Treaty. It was now dead winter, and the snow lay thick over the whole region between the two Generals. Monk's personal accommodations at Coldstream were much worse than Lambert's at Newcastle. He was quartered in a wretched cottage, with two barns, where, on the first night of his arrival, he could find nothing for supper, and had to munch more than his usual allowance of raw tobacco instead. But he had the means of paying his men and keeping them in good humour, while bad pay and the cold weather were demoralising Lambert's.[1] [Footnote 1: Skinner's Life of Monk, 161-168; Phillips, 674-675.] For the restitution of the Rump Parliament, Monk's march into England was to be quite unnecessary. His mere pertinacity in declaring himself the champion of the Rump and making preparations for the march had disintegrated all that seemingly coherent strength of the Wallingford-House party throughout England and Ireland on which Lambert could rely when he left London in the beginning of November. All over England and Ireland, for six weeks now, people had been talking of "Silent Old George," as Monk's own soldiers called him, though he was but in his fifty-second year, and speculating on his possible meaning, and on the chance that even Lambert might find him more than a match. And such mere gossip and curiosity everywhere, mingling with previous doubtings in some quarters, and with relics of positive partisanship with the Rump in others, had gradually induced a complete whirl of public feeling. By the middle of December, when the Wallingford-House Government put forth their proclamation of a new Parliament, this was so apparent that Whitlocke and his friends at the centre might well doubt whether that Parliament would ever meet. By that time, at all events, Lambert had begun to curse his own folly in not having fallen upon Monk at first, and in having let himself afterwards be deluded so long by the phantom of a renewed treaty at Newcastle. For what had been the news, and continued to be the news, post after post? Colonel Whetham, Governor of Portsmouth, formerly Monk's associate in the Scottish Council, now in declared cooperation with him, and holding the town for the Rump; Hasilrig, Morley, and Walton, gone to Portsmouth to turn the revolt to account; these and other members of the late Rump, such as Neville; Scott, and Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper, openly resuming their functions and issuing documents in which they declared General Monk, "the ablest and most experienced commander in these nations," to be "warranted in his present actings" by their express commission; risings or threatenings of risings in various parts of England, whether Royalist or Republican not known, but equally troublesome to the existing powers; Admiral Lawson and his Fleet actually in the Thames with an avowal at length of allegiance to the late Parliament only, and resisting all Vane's persuasions the other way; the Army in Ireland, which had seemed so safe, now in a confused ferment, with Sir Hardress Waller, Sir Charles Coote, Colonel Theophilus Jones, and others, promoting a general demonstration in Monk's behalf! Lambert's own Army was infected. That part of it which was called the Irish Brigade, as consisting of regiments that had been brought from Ireland at the time of Sir George Booth's insurrection, sympathised with Monk openly; the rest were dubious or listless. In the rear of Lambert in Yorkshire, though he can hardly yet have known the fact, Lord Fairfax was organising a movement, really with Royalist aims, but to take the form of a concerted combination with Monk as soon as Monk should advance. But it was in London itself, close round the powers at Whitehall, that their weakness had become most notorious and alarming. For some time the Lord Mayor, Aldermen, and Common Council had been acting almost as an independent authority; the citizens were resolute against the payment of taxes, and had formed associations to resist their collection; all that was Cavalierish in the city was astir, with all that was Republican, in daily displays of contempt for the Wallingford-House junta and their soldiery. Hewson's regiment, marching through the city, had been jeered at by the apprentices and pelted with stones. In the centre of these London tumults, Fleetwood, the Commander-in-chief, and the honorary head of the Government, had shown himself incapable even of the local management. Of Fleetwood, all in all, indeed, one knows not, by this time, what to think. The combination of mild qualities which Milton had eulogised in him in 1654 did not now suit. Ever since Richard's fall, to which he had so largely contributed, Fleetwood had comported himself as a dignified and sweet-mannered man, more acceptable in the highest place than Lambert, but uneasy in his mind, and uncomfortable in his relations to Lambert. He was a deeply religious man, which Lambert was not; and it was observed that on late occasions in the Council of Officers, when bad news made some sudden resolution necessary, and Lambert would have been, ready with one, Fleetwood's one resource had been "Gentlemen, let us pray." One thinks of Fleetwood's brother-in-law, poor Henry Cromwell, and what he might have been in Fleetwood's place. He, the man of real fitness, was in seclusion in Cambridgeshire, rejected where he was most needed, and indeed, though he did not yet fully know it, foreclosed already, at the age of thirty-one, by his own honourable fidelity to his father's ashes, from all farther career or employment in any English world.[1] [Footnote 1: Phillips, 674-676; Whitlocke, IV. 378-380; Skinner, 170-178; Thurloe, VII. 797-798 (Letter of Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper, Scott, &c., to Fleetwood); Guizot, II. 54-57; Letters of M. de Bordeaux in Appendix to Guizot, II. 307-318.] It was close on Christmas, and the anarchy in London had become indescribable. "I wished myself out of these daily hazards, but knew not how to get free of them," is Whitlocke's entry in his diary for Dec. 20; and, under Dec. 22, he writes, "Most of the soldiery about London declared their judgment to have the Parliament sit again, in honour, freedom, and safety; and now those who formerly were most eager for Fleetwood's party became as violent against them, and for the Parliament to sit again." In other words, the soldiers of Fleetwood's own London regiments were tired of being insulted and jeered at, and had come to the conclusion, with their brethren everywhere else, that Lambert's _coup d'état_ of Oct. 13 had been a blunder and that the Rump must be reinstated.--In these circumstances, Whitlocke, after consultation with Lord Willoughby of Parham, the Presbyterian Major-General Browne, and others, thought himself justified in going to Fleetwood with a very desperate project. It was evident, Whitlocke told him, that Monk's design was to bring in the King; if so, the King's return was inevitable; and, if the King should return by Monk's means, the lives and fortunes of all in the Wallingford-House connexion were at the King's or Monk's mercy. Would not Fleetwood be beforehand with Monk, and himself be the agent of the unavoidable restoration? He might adopt either of two plans, an indirect or a direct. The indirect plan would be to fraternize with the City, declare for "a full and free Parliament"--not that Parliament for which Whitlocke was preparing writs, but the fuller and freer one, unfettered by Wallingford-House "qualifications," for which the Royalists had been astutely calling out,--and then either take the field with his forces under that banner, or else, if the forces he could rally proved too small, shut himself up in the Tower, and trust to the City itself till the effect were seen. The other way would be to dispatch an envoy to the King at once with offers and instructions. Whitlocke himself was equally willing to go into the Tower with Fleetwood or to be his envoy to Charles. After some rumination, Fleetwood, as Whitlocke understood, had concluded for the latter plan, and Whitlocke was taking leave of him, with that understanding, to prepare for his journey, when they found Vane, Desborough, and Berry, in the ante-chamber. At Fleetwood's request Whitlocke waited there, while the new comers and Fleetwood consulted in the other room. In less than a quarter of an hour, says Whitlocke, Fleetwood came out, telling him passionately "I cannot do it, I cannot do it." The reason he gave was that he had just been reminded that he was under a pledge to Lambert to take no such step without his consent. To Whitlocke's remonstrance that, Lambert being absent, and the matter being one of life or death, only instant action could prevent ruin to Fleetwood himself and his friends, the answer was "I cannot help it"; and so they parted.--This was on Thursday the 22nd of December. The next day, though Whitlocke had a call from Colonel Ingoldsby, Colonel Howard, and another, suggesting that, as Keeper of the Great Seal, he might fitly go to the King on his own account, he went on sealing writs, he tells us, for the new Wallingford-House Parliament. Meanwhile, the uproar in the City being at its maximum, such members of the late Council of the Rump as were in town met at Speaker Lenthall's house and issued orders for a rendezvous of Fleetwood's regiments in Lincoln's Inn Fields under the command of Okey, Alured, Markham, and Mosse. Fleetwood, applied to for the keys of the Parliament house, willingly gave them up and resigned all charge. On Saturday the 24th the mass of the soldiers were gladly at the appointed rendezvous, and were marched down Chancery Lane, where the Speaker came out to them at the Rolls, and was received with shouts of joy and repentance. On Monday the 26th all the members of the Rump who were at hand met the Speaker in the Council-Chamber at Whitehall, and walked thence to Westminster Hall, the mace carried before them, and the soldiers and populace cheering as they passed. They constituted the House and proceeded at once to business. They had been excluded two months and fourteen days.[1] [Footnote 1: Whitlocke, IV. 380-384; Phillips, 676; Letter of M. de Bordeaux to Mazarin of Dec. 28, 1659 (English reckoning), Guizot, 318-322.] CHAPTER I. Second Section (continued). THE ANARCHY, STAGE III.: OR SECOND RESTORATION OF THE RUMP, WITH MONK'S MARCH FROM SCOTLAND: DEC. 26, 1659--FEB. 21, 1659-60. THE RUMP AFTER ITS SECOND RESTORATION: NEW COUNCIL OF STATE: PENALTIES ON VANE, LAMBERT, DESBOROUGH, AND THE OTHER CHIEFS OF THE WALLINGFORD-HOUSE INTERREGNUM: CASE OF LUDLOW: NEW ARMY REMODELLING: ABATEMENT OF REPUBLICAN FERVENCY AMONG THE RUMPERS: DISPERSION OF LAMBERT'S FORCE IS THE NORTH: MONK'S MARCH FROM SCOTLAND: STAGES AND INCIDENTS OF THE MARCH: HIS HALT AT ST. ALBAN'S AND MESSAGE THENCE TO THE RUMP: HIS NEARER VIEW OF THE SITUATION: HIS ENTRY INTO LONDON, FEB. 3, 1659-60: HIS AMBIGUOUS SPEECH TO THE RUMP, FEB. 6: HIS POPULARITY IN LONDON: PAMPHLETS AND LETTERS DURING HIS MARCH AND ON HIS ARRIVAL: PRYNNE'S PAMPHLETS ON BEHALF OF THE SECLUDED MEMBERS: TUMULT IN THE CITY: TUMULT SUPPRESSED BY MONK AS SERVANT OF THE RUMP: HIS POPULARITY GONE: BLUNDER RETRIEVED BY MONK'S RECONCILIATION WITH THE CITY AND DECLARATION AGAINST THE RUMP: ROASTING OF THE RUMP IN LONDON, FEB. 11, 1659-60: MONK MASTER OF THE CITY AND OF THE RUMP TOO: CONSULTATIONS WITH THE SECLUDED MEMBERS: BILL OF THE RUMP FOR ENLARGING ITSELF BY NEW ELECTIONS: BILL SET ASIDE BY THE RESEATING OF THE SECLUDED MEMBERS: RECONSTITUTION OF THE LONG PARLIAMENT UNDER MONK'S DICTATORSHIP. The Rump, as restored the second time, never recovered even its former small dimensions. On a division taken the day after its restoration there were only thirty-seven present and voting, nor in any subsequent division did the number exceed fifty-three. This arose from the fact that Rumpers who had been conspicuous in the Wallingford-House defection now absented themselves. On the other hand, the Journals show an accession of at least five members not visible in the previous session: viz. Colonel Alexander Popham, Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper, Colonel Henry Markham, Mr. John Lassell, and Mr. Robert Cecil (second son of the Earl of Salisbury). Ashley Cooper, not an original Rumper, came in by the recognition, Jan. 7, 1659-60, of his right to sit for Downton in Wilts. Lassell, whose name is not on the list of the Long Parliament, may have found a seat in the same way. Prynne and some others of the secluded members renewed their attempt to get into the House, but were again refused.[1] [Footnote 1: Commons Journals (Divisions and Committees) from Dec. 26, 1659 to Feb. 21, 1659-60.] A new Council of State was, of course, appointed at once. It was to consist, as before, of _twenty-one_ Parliamentaries and _ten_ non-Parliamentaries, and to hold office from Jan. 1, 1659-60 to April 1, 1660. The following is the list, the order in each section being that of preference as shown by the numbers of votes obtained in the ballot, and the asterisk again denoting a Regicide. PARLIAMENTARIES. Sir Arthur Hasilrig, Bart. Colonel Herbert Morley Robert Wallop *Colonel Valentine Walton *Thomas Scott Nicholas Love Chief Justice St. John Colonel William White John Weaver Robert Reynolds Sir James Harrington Sir Thomas Widdrington Colonel George Thompson *John Dixwell Henry Neville Colonel John Fagg John Corbet *Thomas Challoner *Henry Marten *William Say Luke Robinson (a tie between him and Carew Raleigh, decided by lot). NON-PARLIAMENTARIES. Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper, Bart. (appointed before his election as M.P.) Josiah Berners General Monk Vice-Admiral Lawson Alderman Love Thomas Tyrrell Lord Fairfax Alderman Foote Robert Rolle Slingsby Bethell.[1] [Footnote 1: Commons Journals, Dec. 31, 1659 and Jan. 2, 1659-60.] The proceeding's of the House for the first month showed no diminution of self-confidence by the late interruption. Hasilrig, who was now the chief man in the Parliament and in the Council, was in such a state of elevation that his friends were a little alarmed. Next in activity, and more a man of business, was Scott, whose merits were acknowledged by his appointment first to an informal Secretaryship of State (Jan. 10), and then to that office fully and formally, with charge of the foreign and domestic intelligence (Jan. 17). He was to be for the Rump government what Thurloe had been for the Protectorate. A good deal of the first month's business consisted in votes of approbation for those who had been faithful during the interruption and votes condemning the Wallingford-House "usurpers" and their acts. Monk, of course, was the hero among the faithful. Messages of thanks were sent to him again and again, and on the 16th of January it was resolved to bestow on him and his heirs £1000 a year. But there were thanks as well to Admiral Lawson, Whetham, and Fairfax; to Hasilrig, Scott, Neville, Morley, Walton, and the other members of the Council of State who had laboured for the good old cause in the interim; and to Sir Hardress Waller, Sir Charles Coote, and Colonel Theophilus Jones, for what they had done in Ireland. In the censure of delinquents there was nothing very revengeful. The Committee of Safety was styled "the late pretended Committee of Safety," and all their doings were voted null; but an indemnity for life and estate was assured to the men themselves, and to all officers who had acted under them, on condition of present submission. This indemnity was not so complete but that a few of the late chief's might expect some punishment. Accordingly, on the 9th of January Vane was brought before the House, disabled from sitting there any longer, and ordered into private life at his estate of Raby in Durham; and on the same day it was voted that Colonels Lambert, Desborough, Berry, Ashfield, Kelsay, Cobbet, Barrow, Packer, and Major Creed, all of whom were still at large, should seclude themselves in whatever houses of theirs were farthest from London. Vane, Lambert, and the rest not having complied sufficiently, there were subsequent votes, with little or no effect, for apprehending and compelling them; and on the 18th of January Sydenham and Salway were added to the list of the reproved, the former by being expelled from the House and the latter by being suspended. Whitlocke and the Laird of Warriston, though unanimously regarded as among the prime culprits, escaped without punishment. Whitlocke even ventured to appear in the House, but was received so coolly that he soon withdrew into the country, leaving instructions to his wife to burn a quantity of his papers and to deliver the great seal to the Speaker. So far was Fleetwood from being in danger that they were considering whether he might not be retained as Commander-in-chief. Ludlow, much to his surprise, found himself among the accused. This, however, was not because of the middle course he had taken in London through the late interruption, though he had lost some credit by that with his Republican friends. He had unfortunately left London on his way back to Ireland on the very eve of that happy restitution of the Rump which he had despaired of seeing, and it was in Ireland that his enemies were most numerous and violent. He had hardly arrived among them and attempted to resume his command when he received notice from the House that he and Colonel John Jones, with Miles Corbet and Matthew Tomlinson, were required to come over to answer certain charges against them relating to their Irish government (Jan. 5). Ludlow and the others obeyed, and found, on their arrival in London in February, that Sir Charles Coote and other officers in Ireland had lodged an impeachment against them for nothing less than high treason.[1] [Footnote 1: Commons Journals of dates, and generally from Dec. 26, 1659 to Feb. 1659-60; Ludlow, 783-806; Whitlocke, IV. 384-392.] Another business, natural in the circumstances, was the now too familiar one of "re-modelling." Men not now satisfactory had to be removed from all departments of the public service and more proper men substituted. Whitlocke's great seal was given into new keeping, and there were new judicial appointments. To supply vacancies caused by the removal of defaulting officers in regiments, there began again, too, on a considerable scale, that process of nomination for new commissions and of delivery of the commissions by the Speaker which had been so wearisome in the former session of the House. To Whetham, Walton, Morley, Okey, Mosse, Alured, Hasilrig, Rich, Eyre, Hacker, and others, retaining their former colonelcies, or promoted to farther military trusts, there were added Colonels Camfield, Streater, Smithson, Sanders, &c.; and now, as heretofore, one is puzzled by the appearance of many persons as "colonels" who had the title only from their places in the militia of their counties, or from the courtesy custom of designating a retired army-man by his former name of honour. Lambert, Desborough, and the eight others ordered into seclusion, were, of course, among the discharged; so also was Robert Lilburne; but Hewson seems to have been forgiven.[1] [Footnote 1: Commons Journals, Dec, 1659 and Jan. 1659-60; Whitlocke as before.] Through all these proceedings of the first month there had been signs of a curious abatement of that thorough-going Republican fervency which had characterized the House in its previous session. The essential Republican principle had indeed been at once re-proclaimed. It had been resolved that each member of the new Council of State, before assuming office, should take an oath renouncing "the pretended title or titles of Charles Stuart and the whole line of the late King James, and of every person, as a single person, pretending or which shall pretend," &c. The very next day, however, when Hasilrig brought in a Bill enacting that every member of the House itself, or of any succeeding House, should take the same oath, a minority, among whom were Ingoldsby, Colonel Hutchinson, Colonel Fielder, and Colonel Fagg, opposed very strongly. Not, of course, that they were other than sound Commonwealth's men; but that oaths were becoming frightfully frequent, and this one would be "a confining of Providence," &c.! The first reading of the Bill was carried only by a majority of twenty-four (Neville and Garland tellers) against fifteen (Colonel Hutchinson and Colonel Fagg tellers). The effect was that, after a second reading, the Bill went into Committee and remained there, the members meanwhile sitting on without any engagement. About a half of those nominated to the Council of State, including Fairfax, St. John, Morley, Weaver, and Fagg, remained out of the Council rather than submit to the qualification made essential in _their_ case. This was symptomatic enough; but it was also evident that, on such important questions as Tithes, an Established Church, and Liberty of Conscience, the House was in no disposition to persevere in what had hitherto been believed to be radical and necessary articles of the Republican policy. The instructions given to a Committee on the 21st of January indicate very comprehensively the prevalence of a conservative temper in the House on these and other questions. The Committee were to prepare a declaration for the public "That the Parliament intends forthwith to proceed to the settlement of the government, and will uphold a learned and pious Ministry of the nation and their maintenance by Tithes: and that they will proceed to fill up the House as soon as may be, and to settle the Commonwealth without a King, Single Person, or House of Peers; and will promote the Trade of the nation; and will reserve due Liberty to tender consciences: and that the Parliament will not meddle with the executive power of the Law, but only in cases of mal-administration and appeals, &c." Such a declaration was adopted and ordered to be published on the 23rd. It was of a nature to conciliate the Presbyterian and Independent clergy of the Establishment and the conservative mass of the people generally, but to disappoint grievously those various sectarian enemies of the Church Establishment who had hitherto been the most enthusiastic exponents of the "good old cause." The very phrase "the good old cause," one observes, was now passing into disrepute, and the word "fanatics" as a name for its extreme supporters was coming into use within the circle of the Rump politicians themselves. Hasilrig, Neville, and the rest of the ultra-Republicans, mast have felt the power going from their hands.[1] [Footnote 1: Commons Journals of dates; Phillips, 678; Ludlow, 807-809; Letters of M. de Bordeaux, Guizot, II. 325-839.] While much of this cooling of the original Republican fervency was owing to the recent experience of the public fickleness and of the necessity of not "confining Providence" too much in the decision of what to-morrow should bring forth, there was a special cause in the relations now subsisting between the House and Monk. The House having been restored by Monk's agency, but without that march to London which he had proposed for the purpose, the majority were by no means anxious to see him in London. Monk, on the other hand, to whom it had been a disappointment that the House had been restored without his presence to see it done, was resolved nevertheless that the march should take place. He was already within England when the news of the premature restitution of the Rump reached him, having advanced through the snow from Coldstream to Wooler in Northumberland on the 2nd of January, to fight Lambert at last. He was at Morpeth on the 4th, and at Newcastle on the 5th, to find that there was to be no necessity for fighting Lambert after all. Lambert's army had melted away with the utmost alacrity on orders from London, leaving their leader to submit and shift for himself. After remaining three days at Newcastle, Monk resumed his march, by Durham and Northallerton, receiving addresses and deputations by the way, and was at York on the 11th. Here he remained five days, besieged with more addresses and deputations, but having a conference also with Lord Fairfax, followed by a visit to his Lordship at his house of Nunappleton. Fairfax had been in arms to attack Lambert's rear, in accordance with the understanding he had come to with Monk; and it was part of Monk's business at York to reform the wreck of Lambert's forces, incorporating some of them with his own and putting the rest under the command of officers who had declared for Fairfax. He arranged also for leaving one of his own regiments at York and for sending Morgan back with two others to take charge of Scotland. By these changes his army for farther advance was reduced to 4000 foot and 1800 horse. Hitherto his march had been by his own sole authority; but at York he received orders from the Council of State to come on to London. Dreading what might happen from his conjunction with the great Fairfax, and not daring to order him back to Scotland, the Rump leaders had assented to what they could not avoid. From York, accordingly, he resumed his advance on the 16th, the country before him, like that he had left behind, still covered thick with snow. On the 18th, at Mansfield in Nottinghamshire, he met Dr. Gumble, whom he had sent on to London about ten days before with letters to the Parliament and the Council of State, and who had returned with valuable information. Next day, at Nottingham, his brother-in-law De Clarges also met him, bringing farther information for his guidance. On the 22nd, as he was approaching Leicester, Messrs. Scott and Robinson, who had been sent from London as Commissioners from the Rump to attend him in the rest of his march, made their appearance ceremoniously and were duly received. They had come really as anxious spies on Monk's conduct, and were very inquisitive and loquacious; but they relieved him thenceforth of much of the trouble of answering the deputations and addresses by which he was still beset on his route. They were with him at Northampton, where he was on the 24th; at Dunstable, where he was on the 27th; and at St. Alban's, where he arrived on the 28th. Here, twenty miles from London, he rested for five days, to see the issue of a very important message he had been secretly preparing for the Parliament and which he now sent on by Dr. Clarges. It was a request to the House to clear London of all but two of the regiments then in it, on the ground that, having so recently served Fleetwood and the Wallingford-House party in their usurpation, they were not to be trusted. The message was of a kind to surprise and perplex the House, and Monk had purposely reserved it to this late stage of his march that there might be the less time for discussion. While waiting at St. Alban's, he had to endure, we are told, "amongst the rest of his interruptions," a long fast-day sermon from Hugh Peters, who had come to his quarters, with two other ministers. Monk's chaplain, Dr. Price, who was present at the sermon, has left an account of it. The text was Psalm cvii. 7, "And He led them forth by the right way, that they might go to a city of habitation"; and Peters, in discoursing on this text, drew from it the assurance of a happy settlement of the Commonwealth at last. "With his fingers on the cushion," says Dr. Price, "he measured the right way from the Red Sea, through, the Wilderness, to Canaan; told us it was not forty days' march, but God led Israel forty years through the Wilderness before they came thither; yet this was still the Lord's right way, who led his people _crinkledum cum crankledum_." Monk's present march was to be one of the last of the windings.[1] [Footnote 1: Skinner's Life of Monk, 175-199; Phillips, 677-680; Parl. Hist., III. 1574 (quotation from Dr. Price).] While Monk is at St. Alban's, we may inquire into his real intentions. They connect themselves with the purport of those addresses with which he had been troubled along his whole route. Not only had there been addresses from the inhabitants or authorities of the towns he passed through; but there had been letters to him at Morpeth from the Lord Mayor, Aldermen, and Common Council, of the City of London, followed by an address presented to him on the borders of Northamptonshire by a deputation of three commissioners from the City, two of them Aldermen. Now, almost all the addresses had been in one strain. Thanking Monk for what he had already done, they prayed him to earn the farther gratitude of his countrymen either by (1) securing that the present House should be converted into a real Parliament by the restoration of the secluded members of 1642-1648 to their seats and the filling up of other vacancies, or (2) securing that a full and free new Parliament should be called at once. Both these methods implied the restoration of Charles, though mention of that consequence, and by some even the thought of it, was most studiously avoided. A full and free new Parliament meant, in the present mood of the country, a recall of Charles rapidly and unhesitatingly. The filling up of the present Parliament by the restoration of the secluded members, and by new elections for other vacancies, meant the reconstituting of the Long Parliament entire, just as it had been while negotiations with Charles I. were going on, and before the Army, in order to stop these negotiations and bring in the Republic, ejected the Royalist and Presbyterian members. Such a reconstituted Parliament, if time were given it, would also inevitably recall Charles II., though it might do so after a preliminary compact with him on the basis of that Treaty of Newport which had been going on with his father late in 1648, and which might be regarded as still embodying the views of the Presbyterians respecting Royalty and its limits. Of the two methods the Cavaliers or Old Royalists naturally preferred that which would bring in Charles most speedily and with the fewest conditions; but, as they were outnumbered by the Presbyterians or New Royalists, they were willing to accept _their_ method. To the genuine Rumpers, of course, either proposal was dreadful. To retain the power themselves, enlarging their House, if at all, only by new elections permitted by themselves, and not to part with their power unless to a new Parliament the qualifications for which should have been carefully pre-determined by themselves, was the only procedure by which they could hope to preserve the Commonwealth. Hence, on the one hand, their willingness to throw overboard all that was not absolutely essential to a Republican policy; but hence, on the other, their anxiety to enforce an oath among themselves abjuring Charles and the Stuarts utterly. It had been to feel Monk's inclinations in this matter of the abjuration oath, and also to watch his attitude to the deputations and their requests, that they had despatched their two commissioners, Scott and Robinson, to be in attendance on him. He had baffled them by his matchless taciturnity. Very probaby, his intention, when he first projected his march to London, had been to restore the Rump and to insist at the same time on the re-admission of the secluded members; and this had been recommended to him by Fairfax. But, now that the Rump was again sitting without the secluded members, and determined to keep them out, not even to Fairfax had he committed himself by a definite promise on that point. To the deputations he would reply only in curt generalities, or indeed, after Scott and Robinson had joined him, in generalities which would have been thought crusty and uncivil, had not Gumble, or Price, or the physician Dr. Barrow, been always at hand to explain privately to disappointed persons that the General's way was peculiar. Only in one matter was he explicit himself. He would not permit the least insinuation that he designed to bring in Charles. At York he had caned one of his officers for having said something imprudent to that effect.[1] [Footnote 1: Skinner and Phillips _ut supra_; Letter of M. de Bordeaux to Mazarin, of date Jan. 21, in Guizot, II. 336-340.] On the 30th of January, with whatever reluctance, the House did comply with Monk's request, by issuing orders for the removal of Fleetwood's regiments from London; and on the 1st of February the way was farther cleared by the appointment of Clarges to be commissary-general of the musters for England and Scotland. There was a mutiny among Fleetwood's soldiers on account of the disgrace put upon them, and also on account of their dislike of country quarters after the pleasures of London; but the mutiny only quickened the desire to get rid of them. They were marched out by their officers; and on Friday the 3rd of February, Monk, who had come on to Barnet the day before, marched in with his army, by Gray's Inn Lane, Chancery Lane, and the Strand. They appeared to the citizens a very rough and battered soldiery indeed after their month's march through the English snows, the horses especially lean and ragged. That night, and all Saturday and Sunday, Monk was in quarters at Whitehall, receiving distinguished visitors. Though asked to take his seat in the Council of State on Saturday, he declined to do so till he should see his way more clearly on the disputed question of the abjuration oath.[1] [Footnote 1: Commons Journals of dates; Skinner, 199-206; Phillips, 680-682.] On Monday, Feb. 6, the House was assembled in state to see Monk introduced into it by Messrs. Scott and Robinson. His designation among them was only "Commissioner Monk"; for, though he had been appointed Commander-in-Chief of all the Forces of England, Scotland, and Ireland, by a secret commission sent him by Hasilrig and a few other members of the old Council of State during the late interruption, that commission did not now hold, and he had really no other authority than that implied by his appointment before Lambert's _coup d'état_ to be fellow-commissioner with Fleetwood, Ludlow, Hasilrig, Walton, and Morley for the regulation of the Army. The last three of these, as still acting in the commission, were nominally his equals. But every care was taken to testify to Monk the sense of his extraordinary services. A chair was set for him opposite the Speaker; at the back of which, as he declined the invitation to be seated, he stood while the Speaker addressed him in a harangue of glowing thanks. Then, with his hand on the chair, he spoke in return the speech he had carefully conned. "Sir, I shall not trouble you with large narratives," he said; "only give me leave to acquaint you that, as I marched from Scotland hither, I observed the people in most counties in great and earnest expectations of Settlement, and they made several applications to me, with numerous subscriptions. The chiefest heads of their desires were:--for a free and full Parliament, and that you would determine your sitting; a Gospel Ministry; encouragement of Learning and Universities; and for admittance of the members secluded before 1648, without any previous oath or engagement. To which I commonly answered, That you are now in a _free_ Parliament, and, if there were any force remaining upon you, I would endeavour to remove it; and that you had voted to fill up your House, and then you would be a _full_ Parliament also...; but, as for those gentlemen secluded in 1648, I told them you had given judgment in it and all people ought to acquiesce in that judgment; but to admit any members to sit in Parliament without a previous oath or engagement to secure the Government in being, it was never yet done in England. And, although I said it not to them, I must say it with pardon to you, that the less oaths and engagements are imposed (with respect had to the security of the common cause) your settlement will be the sooner attained to." He was now half through his speech; and the rest consisted of general recommendations of a policy in accordance with "the sober interest," with care that "neither the Cavalier nor Fanatic party" should have a share of the civil or military power. He ended with a glance at Ireland and Scotland, bespeaking particular attention to the Scots, as "a nation deserving much to be cherished," and sure to appreciate the late declaration in favour of a sober and conservative Church policy, inasmuch as no nation more dreaded "to be overrun with fanatic notions." Having thus delivered himself, Monk withdrew, leaving the House wholly mystified, but also a good deal distempered, by his ambiguities. It seems to have been on this occasion that Henry Marten vented that witty description of Monk which is one of the best even of _his_ good sayings. "Monk," he said, "is like a man that, being sent for to make a suit of clothes, should bring with him a budget full of carpenter's tools, and, being told that such things were not at all fit for the work he was desired to do, should answer, 'It matters not; I will do your work well enough, I warrant you.'" Monk was now on the spot with his budget of carpenter's tools, and he meant to make a tolerable suit of clothes with them somehow.[1] [Footnote 1: There is a hiatus in the Journals at the point of Monk's reception and speech in the House; but the speech was printed separately, and is given in the Parl. Hist. III. 1575-7. The original authority for Henry Marten's witticism is, I believe, Ludlow (810-811).] There was no lack of advices for his direction. Through the month of his march and of the anxious sittings of the House in expectation of him, the London press had teemed with pamphlets for the crisis. _The Rota, or a Model of a Free State or Equal Commonwealth_ was another of Harrington's, published Jan. 9, when Monk was between Newcastle and York; and on the 8th of February, when Monk had been five days in London, he was saluted by _The Ways and Means whereby an Equal and lasting Commonwealth may be suddenly introduced_, also by Harrington. _A Coffin for the Good Old Cause_ was another, in a different strain; and there were others and still others, some of them in the form of letters expressly addressed to Monk. From the moment of his arrival at St. Alban's, indeed, he had become the universal target for letter-writers and the universal object of popular curiosity. _The Pedigree and Descent of his Excellency General Monk_ was on the book-stalls the day before his entry into London, and his speech to the Parliament was in print the day after its delivery. All were watching to see what "Old George" would do. He did not yet know that himself, but was trying to find out. What occupied him was that question of the means towards a full and free Parliament which had been pressed upon him all along his march, and about which he had hitherto been so provokingly ambiguous. Of all the pamphlets that were coming out only those that could give him light on this question can have been of the least interest to his rough common sense. Now, as it happened, he could be under no mistake, after his arrival in London, as to the strength and massiveness of that current of opinion which had set in for a re-seating of the secluded members. Since the first restoration of the Rump in May 1659, Prynne had been keeping the case of the secluded members perpetually before the public in pamphlets; and Prynne, more than any other man, had created the feeling that now prevailed. "Conscientious, Serious, Theological and Legal Queries propounded to the twice dissipated, self-erected, Anti-Parliamentary Westminster Juncto"; "Six Important Queries proposed to the Re-sitting Rump of the Long Parliament"; "Seven Additional Queries in behalf of the Secluded Members"; "Case of the Old secured, secluded, and twice excluded Members"; "Three Seasonable Queries proposed to all those Cities, Counties, and Boroughs, whose respective citizens have been forcibly excluded," &c.; "Full Declaration": such are the titles of those of Prynne's pamphlets, the last of a long series in one and the same strain, which were delighting or tormenting London when Monk arrived. Many of the secluded members were in town to await the issue, and the last-named of Prynne's pamphlets (published Jan. 30) contained an alphabetical list of the whole body of them. There were, it appears, 194 secluded members then alive, besides forty who had died since 1648. If Monk was to do anything at all, was not Prynne's way the safest and most popular? Practically, at all events, he could now see that the possible courses had reduced themselves to two,--(1) The Rump's own way, or self-enlargement of the present House by new writs, issued with all Republican precautions; (2) The City's way, or Prynne's way, which proposed to re-insert the secluded members into the present House, so as to make it legally the Long Parliament over again, with its rights and engagements precisely as they had been at the time of the last negotiations with Charles I. in 1648. For which of these two courses he should declare himself was the question Monk had to ponder.[1] [Footnote 1: Thomason Pamphlets, and Catalogue of the same; Wood's Ath. III. 870-871.] He nearly blundered. The Rump, having him and his Army at hand, had become more firm in their determination to proceed in their own way. On the 4th of February, the day after Monk's arrival, they resolved that the present House should be filled up to the number of 400 members in all for England and Wales, and that the returning constituencies should be as in 1653; and, having referred certain details to a Committee, they proceeded on subsequent days to settle some of the qualifications for voting or eligibility. The Londoners, tumultuous already, were enraged beyond bounds by these new signs of the Rump's obstinacy. It was again debated in the Common Council "whether the City should pay the taxes ordered by the Government"; influential citizens urged the Lord Mayor to put himself at the head of a resistance to the Rump at all hazards; there were riots in the streets and skirmishes between the militia and the apprentices. Thus, instead of having time to deliberate, Monk found himself in the midst of such a clash between the House and the City that instant decision for the one or the other was imperative.--On the night of the 8th, two days after his speech in Parliament, he received orders from the Council of State to go into the City with his regiments and reduce it to obedience. He was to take away the posts and chains in the streets, unhinge the City gates, and wedge the portcullises; he was to use any force necessary for the purpose; and he was to arrest eleven citizens named, and others at his discretion. The orders, though addressed nominally to all the four Army-Commissioners, were really intended for Monk; and there was the utmost anxiety among the leaders of the Rump to see whether he would execute them. To the surprise of all, to the surprise of his own soldiers even, he did execute them. On the 9th the House had three sittings; and in the second of these it was announced that Monk had marched his regiments that morning into the City, that he was then at Guildhall, that he had nine of the eleven citizens already in custody, and that he had removed the posts and chains. All being now quiet, and the Lord Mayor and Aldermen having undertaken to hold a meeting of the Common Council and give the Parliament every satisfaction, he had thought it best not to incense the City by the extreme insult of unhinging the gates and wedging the portcullises. The Rumpers were in ecstasies. Monk had committed himself, and was irredeemably theirs. "All is our own: he will be honest," said Hasilrig to the friends beside him. In their triumph, they rose once more for a moment to the full height of Republican confidence. It happened that a deputation of London citizens, headed by Mr. Praise-God Barebone, had come to the House that day with a petition and address, signed by some thousands of "lovers of the good old cause," who were anxious to disclaim all connexion with the City tumults and with "the promoters of regal interest" in the City or elsewhere. The petitioners demanded nothing less than that the House should at once impose an oath abjuring Charles Stuart upon all clergymen and other persons in public employment; but even this did not prevent the House from thanking them cordially. As for the City generally, now that Monk had brought it to submission, the House would trample it under foot! The Lord Mayor, having behaved discreetly through the tumults, was to be thanked; but it was voted that the present Common Council should be dissolved and a new one elected by such citizens only as the House should deem worthy of the franchise. Nor was Monk to hesitate any longer about the city gates and portcullises. Orders were sent to him, not only to unhinge the gates and wedge the portcullises, as the Council had already ordered, but to break them in pieces. The City was to be overmastered utterly and finally, and Monk was to be the agent.--Not even yet did Monk rebel. The gates and portcullises were broken in pieces by his soldiers, and every other order was punctually carried out. The soldiers were in indignation over their base employment, and the citizens were stupefied. In vain were Clarges, Dr. Barrow, and others of Monk's friends going about and assuring the Lord Mayor and Aldermen that the General was a man of very peculiar ways and must not be too hastily judged. "Very peculiar ways indeed," thought the citizens, mourning for their honours lost, and their broken gates and portcullises. On the night of Friday, Feb. 10, when Monk returned to Whitehall, after his two days of rough work in the city, it was, as it seemed, with his reputation ruined for ever among the Londoners. A few days before he had been the popular demigod, the man on whom all depended, and who had all in his power. Now what was he but the slave and hireling of the Rump?[1] [Footnote 1: Commons Journals of dates; Phillips, 684-685; Skinner, 211-219; Whitlocke, IV. 394-396.] It was afterwards represented by Monk's admirers that his City proceedings of Feb. 9 and 10 were the effects of consummate judgment. He could not then have disobeyed the Rump without resigning his command; Hasilrig and Walton, two of his fellow-commissioners, would have executed the orders independently; though by a disagreeable process, he had felt the temper of his officers and soldiers, and ascertained that they were as disgusted with the Rump as he was himself! It may be doubted, however, whether he had not only been handling his carpenter's tools with too sluggish caution. Certain it is that he had returned to Whitehall in a sullen mood, and that, after a consultation overnight with his officers, his conclusion was that he must at once retrieve himself. That was a night of busy preparations between him and his officers. A letter was drafted, to be sent to the House next day; and a copy was taken, that it might be in the printer's hands before the House had received the original. Next morning, Saturday Feb. 11, Monk and his regiments were again in the City, drawn up in Finsbury Fields. He had left the letter for the House, signed by himself, seven of his colonels, one lieutenant-colonel, and six majors, to be delivered to the House by two of the signing colonels, Clobery and Lydcott; and he had come to make his peace with the City. This was not very easy. The Lord Mayor, to whom Clarges had been sent to announce the return of the regiments, and to say that the General meant to dine with his Lordship that day, was naturally suspicious and distant; but, having taken counsel with some of the chief citizens, he could do no less than answer that he would expect the General. At the early dinner-hour, accordingly, Monk was at his Lordship's house in Leadenhall Street, coldly received at first, but gradually with more of curiosity and goodwill as his drift was perceived. He begged earnestly that his Lordship would send out summonses for an immediate meeting of the Common Council in Guildhall, notwithstanding the dissolution of that body by the Rump, saying he would accompany his Lordship thither and make certain public explanations. Dinner over, and the Lord Mayor and Common Council having met in Guildhall about five o'clock, Monk did surprise them. He apologised for his proceedings of the two preceding days, declaring that the work was the most ungrateful he had ever performed in his life, and that he would have laid down his power rather than perform it, unless he had seen that by such a step he would only have given advantage to the dominant faction. He was come now, however, to make amends. He had that morning sent a letter to the House, requiring them to issue out writs within seven days for the filling up of vacancies in their ranks, and also, that being done, to dissolve themselves by the 6th of May at latest, that they might be succeeded by a full and free Parliament! Till he should receive ample satisfaction in reply to these demands and otherwise, he meant to remain in the City of London with his regiments, making common cause with the faithful citizens! Guildhall rang with acclamations; and, as the news was dispersed thence through the City, confirmed by the printed copies of Monk's letter to the Rump that were by this time in circulation, the dejection of the two last days passed into a phrenzy of joy. Housewives ran out to Monk's soldiers, who had been standing all day under arms, carrying them food and drink without stint; crowds of apprentices danced everywhere like delirious demons; the bells of all the churches were set a-ringing; the houses of several "fanatics" were besieged, and the windows in Barebone's all smashed; and far into the night and into the Sunday morning the streets blazed with long rows of bonfires. Whatever piece of flesh, in butcher's stall or in family-safe, bore resemblance to a rump, or could be carved into something of that shape, was hauled to one of these bonfires to be flung in and burnt; and for many a day afterwards the 11th of February 1659-60 was to be famous in London as _The Roasting of the Rump_.[1] [Footnote 1: Phillips, 685-687; Skinner, 219-230; Parl. Hist. III. 1578-9; Letter of M. de Bordeaux, Guizot, II. 350-351; Pepys's Diary, Feb. 11, 1659-60.] On receiving Monk's letter early in the forenoon of Saturday the House had temporized. They had sent Messrs. Scott and Robinson into the City after Monk, to thank him for his faithful service of the two previous days, and to assure him "that, as to the filling up of the House, the Parliament were upon the qualifications before the receipt of the said letter, and the same will be despatched in due time." But at an evening sitting, with candles brought in, the House, informed by that time of Monk's proceedings in the City, had shown their resentment by reconstituting the Commission for regulation of the Army. They did not dare to turn Monk out; but they negatived by thirty (Marten and Neville tellers) to fifteen (Carew Raleigh and Robert Goodwyn tellers) a proposal of his partisans to make Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper one of his colleagues. The colleagues they did appoint were Hasilrig, Morley, Walton, and Alured; and, in settling the quorum at three, they rejected a proposal that Monk should always be one of the quorum.--Through the following week, however, efforts were still made to come to terms with Monk. On Monday the 13th the Council of State begged him to return to Whitehall and assist them with his presence and counsels. His reply was that, so long as the Abjuration Oath was required of members of the Council, he would not appear in it, and that meanwhile there were sufficient reasons for his remaining in the City. Accordingly, he kept his quarters there, first at the Glass House in Broad Street, and then at Drapers' Hall in Throgmorton Street, holding _levées_ of the citizens and city-clergy, and receiving also visits from Hasilrig and other members of the House. Even Ludlow, though one of the complaints in Monk's letter was that the House was allowing Ludlow to sit in it notwithstanding the charge of high treason lodged against him from Ireland, ventured to go into the den of the lion. He was shy at first, Ludlow tells us, but became very civil, and, when Ludlow had discoursed on the necessity of union to keep out Charles Stuart, "Yea," said he, "we must live and die together for a Commonwealth." The interest that was now pressing closest round Monk, however, was that of the Secluded Members. The applications on their behalf by the Presbyterians of the City and of the counties round were incessant. Monk even yet had his hesitations. On the one hand, to avert, if possible, the re-seating of the secluded among them, the Rumpers had been acting through the week in the spirit of their answer to Monk's letter. They had been pushing on their Bill of Qualifications, so that there might be no delay in the issue of writs for filling up their House to the number of 400, as formerly decided. They had, moreover, tried to pacify Monk in other ways. They had resolved (Feb. 14) that the engagement to be taken by members of Parliament should simply be, "I will be true and faithful to the Commonwealth of England and the Government thereof in the way of a Commonwealth and Free State, without a King, Single Person, or House of Lords"; and they had resolved that this simple declaration should be substituted for the stronger abjuration oath even for members of the Council of State. They had also complied with Monk's demands that there should be more severe reprimand of the late Committee of Safety and especially of Vane and Lambert. All this was to induce Monk to accept the proffered _Self-Enlargement of the present House_, rather than yield to the popular and Presbyterian demand for _the Long Parliament reconstituted_. Nor were there wanting objections to the latter plan in Monk's own mind. If a House with the secluded members re-seated in it would confine itself to questions of present exigency and future political order, there might be no harm. But would it do so? With a Presbyterian majority in it, looking on all that had been done since 1648 as the illegal acts of pretended Governments, might it not be tempted to a revengeful revision of all those acts? Might it not thus unsettle those arrangements for the sale, purchase, gift, and conveyance of property upon which the fortunes of many thousands, including the Army officers and the soldiery in England, in Scotland, and especially in Ireland, now depended? Would Monk's own officers risk such a consequence? To come to some understanding with the secluded members on these points, Monk himself, and Clarges and Gumble for him, had been holding interviews with such of the secluded members as were in London; and matters had been so far ripened that at length, on Saturday the 18th, by Monk's invitation, there was a conference at his quarters between about a dozen of the leading Rumpers and as many representatives of the Secluded. Hasilrig was one of the Rumpers present; but, as most of the others were of the Monk party, the conference was not unamicable. Even the Rumpers who were favourable to the re-admission of the Secluded, however, could only speak for themselves, and the representatives of the Secluded could hardly undertake for their absent brethren; and so there was no definite agreement.----Monk then took the matter into his own hands. Having, in the course of the Sunday and Monday, secured the concurrence of his officers, and made a rough compact in writing with a few of the secluded members, he marched his Army out of the City on the morning of Tuesday the 21st; and, the secluded members having met him by appointment at Whitehall, to the number of about sixty, he made a short speech to them, caused a longer "Declaration" which he had taken the precaution of putting on paper to be read to them, and then sent them, under the conduct of Captain Miller and a sufficient guard, to the doors of the Parliament House. The incident had been expected; there were soldiers all round the House already; and the procession walked through cheering crowds of spectators. Monk remained at Whitehall himself, to hold a General Council of his officers later in the day.[1] [Footnote 1: Commons Journals of dates; Phillips, 687-688; Skinner, 233-242; Ludlow, 832-836; Letters of M. de Bordeaux in Guizot, II. 347-365.] The Rump, which had been still busy on Saturday with the Bill of Qualifications or "Disabling Bill," but whose sitting on Monday is marked only by a hiatus in the Journals, had not formed the House on Tuesday morning when the procession of secluded members, swelled to about eighty by stragglers on the way, entered and took their seats. A few of the Rumpers, seeing what had occurred, ruefully left the House, to return no more; but most remained and amalgamated themselves easily with the more numerous new comers. The reconstituted House then plunged at once into business thus:-"PRAYERS: _Resolved_, &c., That the Resolution of this House of the 18th of December, 1648, 'that liberty be given to the members of this House to declare their dissent to the vote of the 5th of December 1648 that the King's Answer to the Propositions of both Houses was a ground for this House to proceed upon for settlement of the Peace of the Kingdom,' be vacated, and made null and void, and obliterated." In other words, here was the Long Parliament, like a Rip Van Winkle, resuming in Feb. 1659-60 the work left off in Dec. 1648, and acknowledging not an inch of gap between the two dates. There were seven other similar Resolutions, cancelling votes and orders standing in the way; and these, with orders for the discharge of the citizens recently imprisoned by the Rump, and resolutions for annulling the late new Army Commission of the Rump, and for appointing Monk to be "Captain-General and Commander-in-Chief, under the Parliament, of all the land-forces of England, Scotland, and Ireland," and continuing Vice-Admiral Lawson, in his naval command, were the sum and substance of the business of the first sitting.[1] [Footnote 1: Commons Journals of date.] Before night Monk and his officers had drafted a Letter to all the regiments and garrisons of England, Scotland, and Ireland, explaining to them that, by the grace of God and good London management, they had passed through another revolution. The Letter began "Dear Brethren and Fellow-Soldiers," and bore Monk's signature, followed by those of Colonels Ralph Knight, John Clobery, Thomas Read, John Hubblethorn, Leonard Lydcott, Thomas Sanders, William Eyre, John Streater, Richard Mosse, William Parley, Arthur Evelyn, and sixteen inferior officers. It was vague, but intimated that the Government was still to be that of a Commonwealth, and that all disturbances of the peace "in favour of Charles Stuart or any other pretended authority" were to be put down. More explicit had been Monk's speech at Whitehall that morning to the secluded members on their way to the House, published copies of which were also distributed by Monk's authority. He had assured the secluded members, "and that in God's presence," that he had nothing before his eyes "but God's glory and the settlement of these nations upon Commonwealth foundations"; and he had pointed out the interest of the Londoners especially in the preservation of a Commonwealth, "that Government only being capable to make them, through the Lord's blessing, the metropolis and bank of trade for all Christendom." On the Church question he had been very precise. "As to a Government in the Church," he had said, "the want whereof hath been no small cause of these nations' distractions, it is most manifest that, if it be monarchical in the State, the Church must follow and Prelacy must be brought in--which these nations, I know, cannot bear, and against which they have so solemnly sworn; and indeed moderate, not rigid, Presbyterian Government, with a sufficient liberty for consciences truly tender, appears at present to be the most indifferent and acceptable way to the Church's settlement." It is not uninteresting to know that Monk's chief ecclesiastical adviser at this moment, and probably the person who had formulated for him the description of the kind of Church that would be most desirable, was Mr. James Sharp, from Crail in Scotland. He had followed Monk to London with a commission from the leaders of the Scottish Resolutioner clergy; and from his arrival there he had been, Baillie informs us, "the most wise, faithful, and happy counsellor" Monk had, keeping him from all wrong steps by his extraordinary Banffshire sagacity.[1] [Footnote 1: Phillips, 688-689; Parl. Hist. III, 1579-1581 (Monk's Speech and Declaration); Baillie, III. 440-441. How uncertain it was yet whether Monk would ever desert the Commonwealth, and how anxious the Royalists were on the subject, appears from a letter of Mordaunt to Charles, dated Feb. 17, 1659-60, or four days before the Restoration of the Secluded Members (_Clar. State Papers_, III. 683). Speaking of Monk, Mordaunt writes thus:--"The visible inclination of the people; the danger he foresees from so many enemies; his particular pique to Lambert; the provocation of the Anabaptists and Sectaries, with whom I may now join the Catholics; the want of money to continue standing armies; the divisions of the chief officers in those respective armies; the advices of those near him--I mean, in particular, Clobery and Knight...; the admonitions daily given him by Mr. Annesley and Alderman Robinson;--unless God has fed him to the slaughter, cannot but move him."] CHAPTER I. Third Section. MONK'S DICTATORSHIP, THE RESTORED LONG PARLIAMENT, AND THE DRIFT TO THE RESTORATION: FEB. 21, 1659-60--APRIL 25, 1660. THE RESTORED LONG PARLIAMENT: NEW COUNCIL OF STATE: ACTIVE MEN OF THE PARLIAMENT: PRYNNE, ARTHUR ANNESLEY, AND WILLIAM MORRICE: MISCELLANEOUS PROCEEDINGS OF THE PARLIAMENT: RELEASE OF OLD ROYALIST PRISONERS: LAMBERT COMMITTED TO THE TOWER: REWARDS AND HONOURS FOR MONK: "OLD GEORGE" IN THE CITY: REVIVAL OF THE SOLEMN LEAGUE AND COVENANT, THE WESTMINSTER CONFESSION OF FAITH, AND ALL THE APPARATUS OF A STRICT PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH-ESTABLISHMENT: CAUTIOUS MEASURES FOR A POLITICAL SETTLEMENT: THE REAL QUESTION EVADED AND HANDED OVER TO ANOTHER PARLIAMENT: CALLING OF THE CONVENTION PARLIAMENT AND ARRANGEMENTS FOR THE SAME: DIFFICULTY ABOUT A HOUSE OF LORDS: HOW OBVIATED: LAST DAY OF THE LONG PARLIAMENT, MARCH 16, 1659-60: SCENE IN THE HOUSE.--MONK AND THE COUNCIL OF STATE LEFT IN CHARGE: ANNESLEY THE MANAGING COLLEAGUE OF MONK: NEW MILITIA ACT CARRIED OUT: DISCONTENTS AMONG MONK'S OFFICERS AND SOLDIERS: THE RESTORATION OF CHARLES STILL VERY DUBIOUS: OTHER HOPES AND PROPOSALS FOR THE MOMENT: THE KINGSHIP PRIVATELY OFFERED TO MONK BY THE REPUBLICANS: OFFER DECLINED: BURSTING OF THE POPULAR TORRENT OF ROYALISM AT LAST, AND ENTHUSIASTIC DEMANDS FOR THE RECALL OF CHARLES: ELECTIONS TO THE CONVENTION PARLIAMENT GOING ON MEANWHILE: HASTE OF HUNDREDS TO BE FOREMOST IN BIDDING CHARLES WELCOME: ADMIRAL MONTAGUE AND HIS FLEET IN THE THAMES: DIRECT COMMUNICATIONS AT LAST BETWEEN MONK AND CHARLES: GREENVILLE THE GO-BETWEEN: REMOVAL OF CHARLES AND HIS COURT FROM BRUSSELS TO BREDA: GREENVILLE SENT BACK FROM BREDA WITH A COMMISSION FOR MONK AND SIX OTHER DOCUMENTS.--BROKEN-SPIRITEDNESS OF THE REPUBLICAN LEADERS, BUT FORMIDABLE RESIDUE OF REPUBLICANISM IN THE ARMY: MONK'S MEASURES FOR PARALYSING THE SAME: SUCCESSFUL DEVICE OF CLARGES: MONTAGUE'S FLEET IN MOTION: ESCAPE OF LAMBERT FROM THE TOWER: HIS RENDEZVOUS IN NORTHAMPTONSHIRE: GATHERING OF A WRECK OF THE REPUBLICANS FOUND HIM: DICK INGOLDSBY SENT TO CRUSH HIM: THE ENCOUNTER NEAR DAVENTRY, APRIL 22, 1660, AND RECAPTURE OF LAMBERT: GREAT REVIEW OF THE LONDON MILITIA, APRIL 24, THE DAY BEFORE THE MEETING OF THE CONVENTION PARLIAMENT: IMPATIENT LONGING FOR CHARLES: MONK STILL IMPENETRABLE, AND THE DOCUMENTS FROM BREDA RESERVED. In the nomination of a new Council of State the House adhered to the now orthodox number of thirty-one. Monk was named first of all, by special and open vote, on the 21st of February; and the others were chosen by ballot, confirmed by open vote in each case, on the 23rd, when the number of members present and giving in voting-papers was 114. The list, in the order of preference, was then, as follows:-- General GEORGE MONK William Pierrepoint John Crewe Colonel Edward Rossiter (Rec.) Richard Knightley Colonel Alexander Popham Colonel Herbert Morley Lord Fairfax Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper, Bart. Sir Gilbert Gerrard, Bart. Lord Chief Justice St. John Lord Commissioner Widdrington Sir John Evelyn of Wilts Sir William Waller Sir Richard Onslow Sir William Lewis, Bart. Colonel (Admiral) Edward Montague (_Rec._) Colonel Edward Harley (_Sec._) Richard Norton (_Rec._) Arthur Annesley (_Rec._) Denzil Holles Sir John Temple (_Rec._) Colonel George Thompson (_Sec._) John Trevor (_Rec._) Sir John Holland, Bart. Sir John Potts, Bart. Colonel John Birch (_Rec._) Sir Harbottle Grimstone John Swinfen (_Rec._) John Weaver (_Rec._) Serjeant John Maynard. With the exception of Monk and Fairfax, who were not members of the Parliament, and the latter of whom was absent in Yorkshire, these Councillors are to be imagined as also active in the business of the House. About nine of them were Residuary Rumpers who had accepted willingly or cheerfully the return of the secluded. The proportion of Residuary Rumpers in the whole House was even larger. Though it had been reported by Prynne that as many as 194 of the secluded were still alive, and a contemporary printed list gives the names of 177 as available,[1] the present House never through its brief session attained to a higher attendance than 150, the average attendance ranging from 100 to 120; and I have ascertained by actual counting that more than a third of these were Residuary Rumpers. It is strange to find among them such of the extreme Republicans as Hasilrig, Scott, Marten, and Robinson. They left the House for a time, but re-appeared in it, whereas Ludlow and Neville and others would not re-appear--Ludlow, as he tells us, making a practice of walking up and down in Westminster Hall outside, partly in protest, partly to show that he had not fled.[2] Actually six Regicides remained in the House: viz. Scott, Marten, Ingoldsby, Millington, Colonel Hutchinson, and Sir John Bourchier. The majority of the Residuary Rumpers, however,--represented by such men as Lenthall, St. John, Ashley Cooper, Colonel Thompson, Colonel Fielder, Carew Raleigh, Attorney-General Reynolds, Solicitor-General Ellis, and Colonel Morley, and even by two of the Regicides mentioned (Ingoldsby and Hutchinson),--were now in harmony with the Secluded, and by no means disposed to abet Hasilrig, Scott, and Marten in any farther contest for Rump principles. In other words, the House was now led really by the chiefs of the reinstated members. Prominent among these, besides Crewe, Knightley, Gerrard, Sir John Evelyn of Wilts, Sir William Waller, Sir William Lewis, Arthur Annesley, Sir Harbottle Grimston, and others named as of the Council, were Prynne, Sir Anthony Irby, Major-General Browne, Sir William Wheeler, Lord Ancram (member for a Cornish burgh), William Morrice, and some others, not of the Council.--Prynne, who ought to have been on the Council, if courage for the cause of the Secluded and indefatigable assiduity in pleading it were sufficient qualifications, had not been thought fit for that honour; but he was a very busy man in the House. He had taken his place there very solemnly the first day, with an old basket-hilt sword on; and he was much in request on Committees.--Of more aristocratic manners and antecedents, and therefore fitter for the Council, was Arthur Annesley, a man of whom we have not heard much hitherto, but who, from this point onwards, was to attract a good deal of notice. The eldest son of the Irish peer Viscount Valentia and Baron Mountnorris, he had come into the Long Parliament in 1640 as member for Radnorshire; he had gone with the King in the beginning of the Civil War; but he had afterwards done good service for the Parliament in Ireland during the Rebellion, and had at length conformed to the Commonwealth and the Protectorate. While the Protectorate lasted he had been really a Cromwellian; but, like so many other Cromwellians, he was now a half-declared Royalist. He had been one of the chief negotiators with Monk for the re-seating of the Secluded, and he took at once a foremost place among them, both in the House and in the Council. He was now about forty-fire years of age.--An accession to the House, after it had sat for a week or more, was Mr. William Morrice. He was a Devonshire man, like Monk, to whom he was related by marriage. He had been sent into the Long Parliament in 1645 as Recruiter for Devonshire, and had been afterwards secluded; and he had been returned to Oliver's two Parliaments and to Richard's. Living in Devonshire as a squire "of fair estate," he had acquired the character of an able and bookish man of enlightened Presbyterian principles; he had been of use to Monk in the management of his Devonshire property; there had been constant correspondence between them; and there was no one for whom Monk had a greater regard. Now, accordingly, at the age of about five and fifty, Morrice had left his books and come from Devonshire to London at Monk's request, not only to take his place in Parliament, but also to be a kind of private adviser and secretary to Monk, more in his intimacy than even Dr. Clarges.--To complete this view of the composition of the new Government, we may add that on Feb. 24 Thomas St. Nicholas was made Clerk of the Parliament, and that on the 27th the House appointed Thurloe and a John Thompson to be joint-secretaries of State. There was a division on Thurloe's appointment, but it was carried by sixty-five votes to thirty-eight. The tellers against Thurloe were Annesley and Sir William Waller, but he was supported by Sir John Evelyn of Wilts and Colonel Hutchinson. Thurloe's former subordinate, Mr. William Jessop, was now clerk to the Council of State.[3] [Footnote 1: A single folio fly-leaf, dated March 26 in the Thomason copy, and called "_The Grand Memorandum: A True and Perfect Catalogue of the Secluded Members of the House of Commons," &c._ It was printed by Husbands on the professed "command" of one of the members (Prynne?).] [Footnote 2: The fly-leaf mentioned in last note gives the names of thirty-three Rumpers who did not sit in the House after the readmission of the secluded members. Arranged alphabetically they were:--Anlaby, Bingham, John Carew, Cawley, James Challoner, Crompton, Darley, Fleetwood, John Goodwyn, Nicholas Gold, John Gurdon, Sir James Harrington, Hallows, Harvey, Heveningham, John Jones, Viscount Lisle, Livesey, Ludlow, Christopher Martin, Neville, Nicholas, Pigott, Pyne, Sir Francis Russell, the Earl of Salisbury, Algernon Sidney, Walter Strickland, Sir William Strickland, Wallop, Sir Thomas Walsingham, and Whitlocke. Compare with the list of the Restored Rump, ante pp. 453-455.] [Footnote 3: Commons Journals of dates, and generally from Feb. 21 to March 16, 1659-60, with examination of the lists of all the Committees through that period; Ludlow, 845-846; Wood's Ath. IV. 181 et seq. (Annesley), and III. 1087 et seq. (Morrice); Clarendon, 891 and 895.] By the rough compact made with Monk, the House was to confine itself to the special work for which it was the indispensable instrument, and to push on as rapidly as possible, through that, to an act for its own dissolution. The majority was such that the compact was easily fulfilled. Six-and-twenty days sufficed for all that was required from this reinstated fag-end of the famous Long Parliament. Naturally much of the work of the House took the form (1) of redress of old or recent injuries, and (2) of rewards and punishments. Almost the first thing done by the House was to restore the privileges of the City of London, release the imprisoned Common Council men and citizens, and issue orders for the repair of the broken gates and portcullises. The City and the Parliament were now heartily at one, and there was a loan from the City of £60,000 in token of the happy reconciliation. Sir George Booth, who had been recommitted to the Tower by the Rump, was finally released, though still on security. There were several other releases of prisoners and removals of sequestrations, and at length (Feb. 27) it was referred to a Committee to consider comprehensively the cases of all persons whatsoever then in prison on political grounds. On the 3rd of March particular orders were given for the discharge of the Earl of Lauderdale, the Earl of Crawford, and Lord Sinclair, from their imprisonment in Windsor Castle; and thus the last of the Scottish prisoners from Worcester Battle found themselves free men once more. Twelve days afterwards the House went to the extreme of the merciful process by ordering the release of poor Dr. Matthew Wren, the Laudian ex-Bishop, who had been committed by the Long Parliament early in 1641 along with Laud and Strafford, and who had been lying in the Tower, all but forgotten, through the intervening nineteen years. At the same time discretionary powers were given to the Council of State to discharge any political prisoners that might be still left.--In the article of _punishments_ the House was very temperate indeed. Notorious Rumpers were removed, of course, from military and civil offices, and there were sharper inquiries after Colonel Cobbet, Colonel Ashfield, Major Creed, and others too suspiciously at large; but, with one exception, there seemed to be no thought of the serious prosecution of any for what had been done either under the Rump Government or during the Wallingford-House interruption. The exception was Lambert. Brought before the Council, and unable or unwilling to find the vast bail of £20,000 which they demanded for his liberty, he was committed by them to the Tower; and the House, on the 6th of March, confirmed the act, and ordered his detention for future trial. While Lambert was thus treated as the chief criminal, the rewards and honours went still, of course, mainly to Monk. To his Commandership-in-chief of all the Armies there was added the Generalship of the whole Fleet, though in this command, to Monk's disappointment, Montague was conjoined with him (March 2). He was also made Keeper of Hampton Court; and the £1000 a year in lands which the Rump had voted him was changed by a special Bill into £20,000 to be paid at once (March 16), As the Bill was first drafted, the reward was said to be "for his signal services"; but by a vote on the third reading the word "signal" was changed into "eminent." Perhaps Annesley, Sir William Waller, and the other new chiefs at Whitehall were becoming a little tired of the praises of so peculiar an Aristides. But he was still a god among the Londoners. From St. James's, which was now his quarters, he would go into the City every other day, to attend one of a series of dinners which they had arranged for him in the halls of the great companies, and at which he found himself so much at ease in his morose way that he would hardly ever leave the table "till he was as drunk as a beast." Ludlow, who tells us so, would not have told an untruth even about Monk; and Ludlow was then in London, knowing well what went on. Let us suppose, however, that he exaggerated a little, and that old George was the victim of circumstances.[1] [Footnote 1: Commons Journals of dates, and generally from Feb. 21 to March 16; Ludlow, 855-856.] A large proportion of the proceedings of the House and the Council may be described as simply a re-establishment of Presbyterianism. The secluded members being Presbyterians to a man, there was at once an enthusiastic recollection of the edicts of the Long Parliament between 1643 and 1648, setting up Presbytery as the national Religion, with a determination to revert in detail to those symbols and forms of the Presbyterian system which the triumph of Independency had set aside during the Commonwealth, and which had been allowed only partially, and side by side with their contraries, in the broad Church-Establishment of the Protectorate. The unanimity and rapidity of the House in their votes in this direction must have alarmed the Independents and Sectaries. It was on Feb. 29 that the House appointed a Committee of twenty-nine on the whole subject of Religion and Church affairs--Annesley, Ashley Cooper, Prynne, and Sir Samuel Luke (i.e. Butler's Presbyterian "Sir Hudibras") being of the number; and on the 2nd of March, on report from this Committee, the Westminster Assembly's Confession of Faith, as it had been under discussion in the Long Parliament in 1646 (Vol. III. p. 512), was again brought before the House, and passed bodily at once, with the exception of chapter 30, "_Of Church Censures_," and chapter 31, "_Of Synods and Councils_"--which two chapters it was thought as well to keep still in Committee. The same day there were other resolutions of a Presbyterian tenor. But the climax was on March 5, in this form: "_Ordered_, That the SOLEMN LEAGUE AND COVENANT be printed and published, and set up and forthwith read in every church, and also read once a year according to former Act of Parliament, and that the said SOLEMN LEAGUE AND COVENANT be also set up in this House." Thus, when the bones of Alexander Henderson had been for more than thirteen years in their tomb in Grey Friars churchyard in Edinburgh, was the great document which he had drafted in that city in August 1643, as a bond of religious union for the Three Kingdoms, and only the first fortunes of which he had lived to see, resuscitated in all its glory. What more could Presbyterianism desire? That nothing might be wanting, however, there followed, on the 14th of March, a Bill "for approbation and admittance of ministers to public benefices and lectures," one of the clauses of which prescribed means for the immediate division of all the counties of England and Wales into classical Presbyteries, according to those former Presbyterianizing ordinances of the Long Parliament which had never been carried into effect save in London and Lancashire. The Universities were to be constituted into presbyteries or inserted into such; and the whole of South Britain was to be patterned ecclesiastically at last in that exact resemblance to North Britain which had been the ideal before Independency burst in. What measures of "liberty for consciences truly tender" might be conceded did not yet appear. Anabaptists, Quakers, Fifth Monarchy enthusiasts, and Monk's "Fanatics" generally, might tremble; and even moderate and orthodox Independents might foresee difficulty In retaining their livings in the State Church. Indeed Owen was already (March 13) displaced from his Deanery of Christ Church, Oxford, by a vote of the House recognising a prior claim of Dr. Reynolds to that post.[1] [Footnote 1: Commons Journals of dates; Neal, IV. 224-225.] In the matter of a political settlement the proceedings were equally rapid and simple. Celerity here was made possible by the fact that the House considered itself quite precluded from discussing the whole question of the future Constitution. Had they entered on that question, the probability is that they would have decided for a negotiation with Charles II., with a view to his return to England and assumption of the Kingship on terms borrowed from the old Newport Treaty with his father, or at all events on strictly expressed terms of some kind, limiting his authority and securing the Presbyterian Church-Establishment. Even this, however, was problematical. There were still Republicans and Cromwellians in the Parliament, and not a few of the Presbyterians members had been Commonwealth's men so long that it might well appear doubtful to them whether a return to Royalty now was worth the risks, or whether, if there must be a return to Royalty, it was in the least necessary to fix it again in the unlucky House of Stuart. Then the difficulties out of doors! No one knew what might be the effect upon Monk's own army, or upon the numerous Republican sectaries, of a sudden proposal in the present Parliament to restore Charles. On the other hand, the Old Royalists throughout the country had no wish to hear of such a proposal. _They_ dreaded nothing so much, short of loss of all chance of the King's return, as seeing him return tied by such terms as the present Presbyterian House would impose. It was a relief to all parties, therefore, and a satisfactory mode of self-delusion to some, that the present House should abstain from the constitutional question altogether, and should confine itself to the one duty of providing another Parliament to which that question, with all its difficulties, might be handed over.--On the 22nd of February, the second day of the restored House, it was resolved that a new Parliament should be summoned for the 25th of April, and a Committee was appointed to consider qualifications. The Parliament was to be a "full and free" one, by the old electoral system of English and Welsh constituencies only, without any representation of Scotland or Ireland. But what was meant by "full and free"? On this question there was some light on the 13th of March, when the House passed a resolution annulling the obligation of members of Parliament to take the famous engagement to be faithful to "the Commonwealth as established, without King or House of Lords," and directing all orders enjoining that engagement to be expunged from the Journals. This was certainly a stroke in favour of Royalty, in so far as it left Royalty and Peerage open questions for the constituencies and the representatives they might choose; but, taken in connexion with the order, eight days before, for the revival of the Solemn League and Covenant--in which document "to preserve and defend the King's Majesty's person and authority" is one of the leading phrases--it was received generally as a positive anticipation of the judgment on these questions. There was yet farther light, however, between March 13 and March 16, when the House, on report from the Committee, settled the qualifications of members and electors. All Papists and all who had aided or abetted the Irish Rebellion were to be incapable of being members, and also all who, or whose fathers, had advised or voluntarily assisted in any war against the Parliament since Jan. 1, 1641-2, unless there had been subsequent manifestation of their good affections. This implied the exclusion of all the very conspicuous Royalists of the Civil Wars and the sons of such; and the present House, as the lineal representative of the Parliamentarians in those wars, could hardly have done less, especially as there was a saving-clause of which moderate Royalists would have the benefit, and as the electors were sure to interpret the saving-clause very liberally. For there was not even the same guardedness in the qualifications of the electors themselves. It was proposed, indeed, by the Committee to disfranchise all "that have been actually in arms for the late King or his son against the Parliament or have compounded for his or their delinquency" with an exception only in favour of manifest penitents; but this was negatived by the House by ninety-three votes (Lord Ancram and Mr, Herbert tellers) to fifty-six votes (Scott and Henry Marten tellers). Thus, active Royalists of the Civil Wars, if they might not be elected, might at least elect; and, as another regulation disqualified from electing or being elected all "that deny Magistracy or Ministry or either of them to be the Ordinances of God "--viz. all Fifth Monarchy men, extreme Anabaptists, and Quakers--the balance was still towards the Royalists. In short, as finally passed, the Bill was one tending to bring in a Parliament the main mass of which should consist of Presbyterians, though there might be a large intermixture of Old Royalists, Cromwellians, and moderate Commonwealth's men. To such a Parliament it might be safely left to determine what the future form of Government should be, whether Commonwealth continued, restored Kingship, or a renewal of the Protectorate. The present House had not itself decided anything. It had not decided against a continuance of the Commonwealth, should that seem best. It had only assumed that possibly that might not seem the best, and had therefore removed obstacles to the free deliberation of either of the other schemes. The revival of the Solemn League and Covenant might seem to imply more; but the phraseology of a document of 1643 might admit of re-interpretation in 1660.--A special perplexity of the present House was in the matter of the Other House or House of Lords. They were now sitting themselves as a Single House, notwithstanding that the Long Parliament, of which they professed themselves to be a continuation, consisted of two Houses. This was an anomaly in itself, nay an illegality; and there had been a hot-headed attempt of some of the younger Peers to remove it by bursting into the House of Lords at the same time that the secluded members took their seats in the Commons. Monk's soldiers had, by instructions, prevented that; and, with the full consent of all the older and wiser peers at hand, the management of the crisis had been left to the one reconstituted House. The anomaly, however, had been a subject of serious discussion in that House. On the one hand, they could not pass a vote for the restitution of the House of Peers without trenching on that very question of the future form of Government which they had resolved not to meddle with. On the other hand, absolute silence on the matter was impossible. How could the present single House, for example, even if its other acts were held valid, venture on, an Act for the dissolution of that Long Parliament whose peculiar privilege, wrung from Charles I. in May 1641, was that it should never be dissolved except by its own consent, i.e. by the joint-consent of the two component Houses? Yet this was the very thing--that had to be done before way could be made for the coming Parliament. The course actually taken was perhaps the only one that the circumstances permitted. When the House, at their last sitting, on Friday, March 16, did pass the Act dissolving itself and-calling the new Parliament, it incorporated with the Act a proviso in these words: "Provided always, and be it declared, that the single actings of this House, enforced by the pressing necessities of the present times, are not intended in the least to infringe, much less take away, the ancient native right which the House of Peers, consisting of those Lords who did engage in the cause of the Parliament against the forces raised in the name of the late King, and so continued until 1648, had and have to be a part of the Parliament of England." Here again there was not positive prejudgment so much as the removal of an obstacle.--It did seem, however, as if the House would not separate without passing the bounds it had prescribed for itself. It had already been debated in whose name the writs for the new Parliament should issue? "In King Charles's" had been the answer of the undaunted Prynne. He had been overruled, and the arrangement was that the writs should issue, as under a Commonwealth, "in the name of the Keepers of the Liberties of England." At the last sitting of the House, just as the vote for the dissolution was being put, the Presbyterian Mr. Crewe, provoked by some Republican utterance of Scott, moved that the House, before dissolving, should testify its abhorrence of the murder of the late King by a resolution disclaiming all hand in that affair. The untimely proposal caused a great excitement, various members starting up to protest that they at least had never concurred in the horrid act, while others, who had been King's judges or regicides, betrayed their uneasiness by prevarications and excuses. Not so Scott. "Though I know not where to hide my head at this time," he said boldly, "yet I dare not refuse to own that not only my hand, but my heart also, was in that action"; and he concluded by declaring he should consider it the highest honour of his existence to have it inscribed on his tomb: "_Here lieth one who had a hand and a heart in the execution of Charles Stuart_." Having thus spoken, he left the House, most of the Republicans accompanying him. The Dissolution Act was passed, and there was an end of the Long Parliament. Their last resolution was that the 6th of April should be a day of general fasting and humiliation.[1] [Footnote 1: Commons Journals of dates; Ludlow, 863-864; Noble's Lives of the Regicides, II. 169-199 (Life of Scott, with evidence of Lenthall and others at his trial); Phillips, 694; Guizot, II. 167-168.] Though the House was dissolved, the Council of State was to sit on, with full executive powers, till the meeting of the new Parliament. Annesley was now generally, if not habitually, the President of the Council, and in that capacity divided the principal management of affairs with Monk. The Parliament having provided for expenses by an assessment of £100,000 a month for six months, the Council could give full attention to the main business of preserving the peace till the elections should be over. Conjoined with this, however, was the important duty of carrying out a new Militia Act which the Parliament had framed. It was an Act disbanding all the militia forces as they had been raised and officered by the Rump, and ordering the militia in each county to be reorganized by commissioners of Presbyterian or other suitable principles. The Act had given great offence to the regular Army, naturally jealous at all times of the civilian soldiery, but especially alarmed now by observing into what hands the Militia was going. It would be a militia of King's men, they said, and the Commonwealth would be undone! So strong was this feeling in the Army that Monk himself had remonstrated with the House, and the Militia Act, though passed on the 12th of March, was not printed till the House had removed his objections. This had been done by pointing to the clause of the Act which required that all officers of the new Militia should take an acknowledgment "that the war undertaken by both Houses of Parliament in their defence against the forces raised in the name of the late King was just and lawful." When Monk had professed himself satisfied, the re-organization of the Militia went on rapidly in all the counties. Monk was one of the Commissioners for the Militia of Middlesex, and to his other titles was added that of Major-General and Commander-in-chief of the Militia of London. Meanwhile the Council had issued proclamations over the country against any disturbance of the peace, and most of the active politicians had left town to look after their elections. The Harringtonian or Rota Club, one need hardly say, was no more in existence. After having been a five months' wonder, it had vanished, amid the laughter of the Londoners, as soon as the secluded members had added themselves to the Rump. Theorists and their "models" were no longer wanted.[1] [Footnote 1: Commons Journals, March 10-16; Phillips, 694; Whitlocke, IV. 405-406; Wood's Ath. III. 1120.] Not even yet was there any positive intimation that the Commonwealth was defunct. No one could declare that authoritatively, and every one might hope or believe as he liked. The all but universal conviction, however, even among the Republicans, was that the Republic was doomed, and that, if the last and worst consummation in a return of Charles Stuart was to be prevented, it could only be by consenting to some single-person Government of a less fatal kind. O that Richard's Protectorate could be restored! The thing was talked of by St. John and others, but the possibility was past. But might not Monk himself be invested with the sovereignty? Hasilrig and others actually went about Monk with the offer, imploring him to save his country by this last means; and the chance seemed so probable that the French ambassador, M. de Bordeaux, tried to ascertain through Clarges whether Monk's own inclinations ran that way. Monk was too wary for either the Rumpers or the Ambassador. He declined the offers of Hasilrig and his friends, allowing Clarges privately to inform the Council that such had been made; and, though he received the Ambassador, it was but gruffly. "The French ambassador visited General Monk, whom he found no accomplished courtier or statesman," writes Whitlocke sarcastically under March 24; and the ambassador's own account is that he could get nothing more from Monk, in reply to Mazarin's polite messages and requests for confidence, than a reiterated statement that he had no information to give. And so, a Single Person being inevitable, and the momentary uncertainty whether it would be "Charles, George, or Richard again" being out of the way, the long-dammed torrent had broken loose. And what a torrent! "King Charles! King Charles! King Charles!" was the cry that seemed to burst out simultaneously and irresistibly over all the British Islands. Men had been long drinking his health secretly or half-secretly, and singing songs of the old Cavalier kind in their own houses, or in convivial meetings with their neighbours; openly Royalist pamphlets had been frequent since the abolition of Richard's Protectorate; and, since the appearance of the Presbyterian Parliament of the secluded members, there had been hardly a pretence of suppressing any Royalist demonstrations whatever. On the evening of the 15th of March, the day before the Parliament dissolved itself, some bold fellows had come with a ladder to the Exchange in the City of London, where stood the pedestal from which a statue of Charles I. had been thrown down, and had deliberately painted out with a brush the Republican inscription on the pedestal, "_Exit tyrannus, Regum ultimus_," a large crowd gathering round them and shouting "God bless Charles the Second" round an extemporized bonfire. That had been a signal; but for still another fortnight, though all knew what all were thinking, there had been a hesitation to speak out. It was in the end of March or the first days of April 1660, when the elections had begun, that the hesitation suddenly ceased everywhere, and the torrent was at its full. They were drinking Charles's health openly in taverns; they were singing songs about him everywhere; they were tearing down the Arms of the Commonwealth in public buildings, and putting up the King's instead.[1] [Footnote 1: Phillips, 695; Letters of M. de Bordeaux, Guizot, II. 381-395; Whitlocke, IV. 405; Pepys's Diary, from beginning to April 11, 1660.] Popular feeling having declared itself so unmistakeably for Charles, it was but ordinary selfish prudence in all public men who had anything to lose, or anything to fear, to be among the foremost to bid him welcome. No longer now was it merely a rat here and there of the inferior sort, like Downing and Morland,[1] that was leaving the sinking ship. So many were leaving, and of so many sorts and degrees, that Hyde and the other Councillors of Charles had ceased to count, on their side, the deserters as they clambered up. He received now, Hyde tells us, "the addresses of many men who had never before applied themselves to him, and many sent to him for his Majesty's approbation and leave to sit in the next Parliament." Between London and Flanders messengers were passing to and fro daily, with perfect freedom and hardly any disguise of their business. Annesley, the President of the Council of State, was in correspondence with the King; Thurloe, now back in the Secretaryship to the Council, was in correspondence with him, and by no means dishonourably; and in the meetings of the Council of State itself, though it was bound to be corporately neutral till the Parliament should assemble, the drift of the deliberations was obvious. The only two men whose resistance even now could have compelled a pause were Monk and Montague. What of them?----It was no false rumour that Montague, the Cromwellian among Cromwellians, the man who would have died for Cromwell or perhaps for his dynasty, had been holding himself free for Charles. Under a cloud among the Republicans since his suspicious return from the Baltic in September last, but restored to command by the recent vote of the Parliament of the secluded members making him joint chief Admiral with Monk, he was at this moment (i.e. from March 23 onwards) in the Thames with his fleet, in receipt of daily orders from the Council and guarding the sea-passage between them and Flanders. He had on board with him, as his secretary, a certain young Mr. Samuel Pepys, who had been with him already in the Baltic, had been meanwhile in a clerkship in the Exchequer office, but had now left his house in Axe Yard, Westminster, and his young wife there, for the pleasure and emoluments of being once more secretary to so kind and great a master. In cabin talk with the trusty Pepys the Lord Admiral made no secret of his belief that the King would come in; but it was only by shrewd observations of what passed on board, and of the strange people that came and went, that Pepys then guessed what he afterwards knew to be the fact. "My Lord," as Pepys always affectionately calls his patron, was pledged to the King, and was managing most discreetly in his interest.[2]--But the power of Montague, as Commander-in-chief of the Navy only, was nothing in comparison with Monk's. How was Monk comporting himself? Most cautiously to the last. Though it was the policy of his biographers afterwards, and agreeable to himself, that his conduct from the date of his march out of Scotland should be represented as a slow and continuous working on towards the one end of the King's restoration, the truth seems to be that he clung to the notion of some kind of Commonwealth longer than most people, and made up his mind for the King only when circumstances absolutely compelled him. With the Army, or a great part of it, to back him, he might resist and impede the restoration of Charles; but, as things now were, could he prevent it ultimately? Why not himself manage the transaction, and reap the credit and advantages, rather than leave it to be managed by some one else and be himself among the ruined? That he had been later than others in sending Charles his adhesion was no matter. He had gained consequence by the very delay. He was no longer merely commander of an Army in Scotland, but centre and chief of all the Armies; he was worth more for Charles's purposes than all the others put together; and Charles knew it! So Monk had been reasoning for some time; and it was on the 17th of March, the day after the dissolution of the Parliament of the Secluded Members, that his ruminations had taken practical effect. Even then his way of committing himself was characteristic. His kinsman, Sir John Greenville, the same who had been commissioned to negotiate with him when he was in Scotland, was again the agent. With the utmost privacy, only Mr. Morrice being present as a third party, Monk had received Greenville at St. James's, acknowledged his Majesty's gracious messages, and given certain messages for his Majesty in return. He would not pen a line; Greenville was to convey the messages verbally. They included such recommendations to his Majesty as that he should smooth the way for his return by proclaiming a pardon and indemnity in as wide terms as possible, a guarantee of all sales and conveyances of lands under the Commonwealth, and a liberal measure of Religious Toleration; but the most immediate and practical of them all was that his Majesty should at once leave the Spanish dominions, take up his quarters at Breda, and date all his letters and proclamations thence. For the rest, as there were still many difficulties and might be slips, the agreement between his Majesty and Monk was to be kept profoundly secret.[3] [Footnote 1: These two of the late public servants of Oliver--Downing his minister at the Hague, and Morland his envoy in the business of the Piedmontese massacre of 1655--had behaved most dishonourably. Both, for some months past, had been establishing friendly relations with Charles by actually betraying trusts they still held with the government of the Commonwealth--Morland by communicating papers and information which came into his possession confidentially in Thurloe's office (_Clar. Hist._ 869), and Downing by communicating the secrets of his embassy to Charles, and acting in his interests in that embassy, on guarantee that he should retain it, and have other rewards, when Charles came to the throne (_Clar. Life_, 1116-1117). There was to be farther proof that Downing was the meaner rascal of the two.] [Footnote 2: Pepys's Diary, from beginning to April 11, 1660. Montague seems to have first positively and directly pledged himself to Charles in a letter of April 10, beginning "May it please your excellent Majesty,--From your Majesty's incomparable goodness and favour, I had the high honour to receive a letter from you when I was in the Sound last summer, and now another by the hands of my cousin" (Clar. State Papers). But the cousin had been already negotiating.] [Footnote 3: Clarendon, 891-896; Thurloe, VII. 807-898; Skinner, 266-275; Phillips, 695-696.] Over the seas went Greenville, as fast as ship could carry him, with the precious messages he bore. At Ostend, where he arrived on the 23rd of March, he reduced them to writing; and the next day, and for several days afterwards, Charles, Hyde, Ormond, and Secretary Nicholas, were in joyful consultation over them in Brussels. The advice of an instant removal to Breda fitted in with their own intentions. Neither the Spanish territory nor the French was a good ground from which to negotiate openly with England; nor indeed was Spanish territory quite safe for Charles at a time when, seeing his restoration possible, Spain might detain him as a hostage for the recovery of Dunkirk and Mardike. To Breda, accordingly, as Monk advised, the refugees went. They went in the most stealthy manner, and just in time to avoid being detained by the Spanish authorities. Before they reached Breda, however, but when Greenville could say that he had seen them safe within Dutch territory, he left them, to post back to England with a private letter to Monk in the King's own hand, enclosing a commission to the Captaincy-General of all his Majesty's forces, and with six other documents, which had been drafted by Hyde, and were all dated by anticipation "_At Our Court at Breda, this 4/14th of April 1660, in the Twelfth Year of Our Reign_." One was a public letter "To our trusty and well-beloved General Monk," to be by him communicated to the President and Council of State and to the Army officers; another was to the Speaker of the House of Commons in the coming Parliament; a third was a general "Declaration" for all England, Scotland, and Ireland; a fourth was a short letter to the House of Lords, should there be one; a fifth was for Admirals Monk and Montague, to be communicated to the Fleet; and the sixth was to the Lord Mayor, Aldermen, and Common Councilmen of the City of London. Besides the originals, copies of all were sent to Monk, that he might keep the originals unopened or suppress any of them.[1] [Footnote 1: Clarendon, 896-902; Phillips, 696; Skinner, 276-280.] It could be an affair now only of a few weeks, more or less. There, at Breda, was his swarthy, witty, good-humoured, utterly profligate and worthless, young Majesty, with his refugee courtiers round him; at home, over all Britain and Ireland, they were ready for him, longing for him, huzzahing for him, Monk and the Council managing silently in London; and between, as a moveable bridge, there was Montague and his fleet. When would the bridge move towards the Continent? That would depend on the newly-elected Parliament, which was to meet on the 25th. Could there be any mischance in the meantime? It did not seem so. The late politicians of the Rump were dispersed and powerless. Hasilrig sat by himself in London, moaning "_We are undone: we are undone_"; Scott was in Buckinghamshire, if perchance they might elect him for Wycombe: Ludlow hid in Wiltshire and Somersetshire, also nominated for a seat, but careless about it; the rest absconded one knows not where. The "Fanatics," as the Republican Sectaries were now called collectively, were silenced and overwhelmed. Even Mr. Praise-God Barebone, tired of having his windows broken, was under written engagement to the Council to keep himself quiet. The same written engagement had been exacted from Hasilrig and Scott.--But what of the Army, the original maker of the Commonwealth, its defender and preserver through good report and bad report for eleven years, and with strength surely to maintain it yet, or make a stand in its behalf? The question is rather difficult. It may be granted that something of the general exhaustion, the fatigue and weariness of incessant change, the longing to be at rest by any means, had come upon the Army itself. Not the less true is it that Republicanism was yet the general creed of the Army, and that, could a universal vote have been taken through the regiments in England, Scotland, and Ireland, it would have kept out Charles Stuart. Nay, so engrained was the Republican feeling in the ranks of the soldiery, and so gloomily were they watching Monk, that, could any suitable proportion of them have been brought together, and could any fit leader have been present to hold up his sword for the Commonwealth, they would have rallied round him with acclamations. Precisely to prevent this, however, had been Monk's care. One remembers his advice from Scotland to Richard Cromwell nineteen months ago, when Richard was entering on his Protectorate. It was to cashier boldly. Not an officer in the Army, he had said, would have interest enough, if he were once cashiered, to draw two men after him in opposition to any existing Government. The very soul of Monk lies in that maxim, and he had been acting on it himself. Not only, as we have seen, had he reofficered his own army in Scotland with the utmost pains before venturing on his march into England; but, since his coming into England, he had still been discharging officers, and appointing or promoting others. He had done so while still conducting himself as the servant of the Restored Rump; and he had done so again very particularly after he had become Commander-in-chief for the Parliament of the Secluded Members. The consequence was most apparent in that portion of the Army which was more especially his own, consisting of the regiments he had brought from Scotland, and that were now round him in London. The officers--Knight, Read, Clobery, Hubblethorn, &c.--were all men accustomed to Monk, or of his latest choosing. His difficulty had been greater with the many dispersed regiments away from London, once Fleetwood's and Lambert's. Not only was there no bond of attachment between them and Monk; they were full of bitterness against him, as an interloper from Scotland who had put them to disgrace, and had turned some of them out of London to make room for his own men. But with these also Monk had taken his measures. Besides quartering them in the manner likeliest to prevent harm, he had done not a little among them too by discharges and new appointments. One of his own colonels, Charles Fairfax, had been left at York; Colonel Rich's regiment had been given to Ingoldsby; Walton's regiment to Viscount Howard; a Colonel Carter had been made Governor of Beaumaris, with command in Denbighshire; the Republican Overton had been removed from the Governorship of Hull; Mr. Morrice had been converted into a soldier, and made Governor of Plymouth; Dr. Clarges was Commissary General of the Musters for England, Scotland, and Ireland; and colonelcies were found for Montague, Rossiter, Sheffield, and Lord Falconbridge. When it is remembered that Fleetwood, Lambert, Desborough, Berry, Kelsay, and others of the old officers, Rumpers or Wallingford-House men, were already incapacitated, and either in prison or under parole to the Council of State, it will be seen that the English Army of April 1660 was no longer its former self. There were actually Royalists now among the colonels, men in negotiation with the King as Monk himself was. Still, if Monk and these colonels had even now gone before most of the regiments and announced openly that they meant to bring in the King, they would have been hooted or torn in pieces. Even in colloquies with the officers of his own London regiments Monk had to keep up the Republican phraseology. Suspicions having arisen among them, with meetings and agitations, his plan had been to calm them by general assurances, reminding them at the same time of that principle of the submission of the military to the civil authority which he and they had accepted. On this principle alone, and without a word implying desertion, of the Commonwealth, he prohibited any more meetings or agitations, and caused strict orders to that effect from the Council of State to be read at the head of every regiment. But an ingenious device of Clarges went further than such prohibitions. It was that as many of the officers as possible should be got to sign a declaration of their submission to the civil authority, not in general terms merely, but in the precise form of an engagement to agitate the question of Government no more among themselves, but abide the decision of the coming Parliament. Many who could not have been brought to declare for Charles Stuart directly could save their consciences by signing a document thus conditionally in his interest; and the device of Clarges was most successful. On the 9th of April a copy of the engagement signed by a large number of officers in or near London was in Monk's hands, and copies were out in England, Scotland, and Ireland, for additional signatures. As to the response from Scotland there could be little doubt. Morgan, the commander-in-chief in Scotland, had already reported the complete submission of the Army there to the order established by the Parliament of the Secluded Members. Only a single captain had been refractory, and he far away in the Orkneys. From Ireland, where Coote and Broghill were now managing, the report was nearly as good. Altogether, by the 9th of April, Monk could regard the Republicanism of the Army as but the stunned and paralysed belief of so many thousands of individual red-coats.--It was no otherwise with the Navy. Moored with his fleet in the Thames, or cruising with it beyond, Montague could assure Pepys in private that he knew most of his captains to be Republicans, and that he was not sure even of the captain of his own ship; and, studying a certain list which Montague had given him, Pepys could observe that the captains Montague was most anxious about were all or nearly all of the Anabaptist persuasion. Still there was no sign of concerted mutiny; and it was a great thing at such a time that Vice-Admiral Lawson, Montague's second in command, and the pre-eminent Republican of the whole Navy, had shown an example of obedience.[1] [Footnote 1: Phillips, 694-698; Skinner, 263-265; Ludlow, 865-873; Whitlocke, IV. 405-406; Pepys's Diary, March 28-April 9.] There was to be one dying flash for the Republic after all. Lambert had escaped from the Tower. It was on the night of April 9, the very day on which Monk was congratulating himself on the engagement of obedience signed by so many of his officers. For some days no one knew where the fugitive had gone, and Monk and the Council of State were in consternation. Proclamations against him were out, forbidding any to harbour him, and offering a reward for his capture. Meanwhile emissaries from Lambert were also out in all directions, to rouse his friends and bring them to a place of rendezvous in Northamptonshire. One of these emissaries, a Major Whitby, found Ludlow in Somersetshire, and delivered Lambert's message to him. Ludlow was not unwilling to join Lambert, but wanted to know more precisely what he declared for. With some passion, Whitby suggested that it was not a time to be asking what a man declared _for_; it was enough to know what he declared _against_. Ludlow demurred, and said it was always best to put forth a distinct political programme! He merely circulated the information; therefore, in Somersetshire and adjoining counties, and waited for further light. Along many roads, however, especially in the midland counties, others were straggling to the appointed rendezvous. Discharged soldiers, Anabaptists, Republican desperates of every kind, were flocking to Lambert.--Alas! before many of these could reach Lambert, it was all over. Hither and thither, wherever there were signs of disturbance, Monk had been despatching his most efficient officers; and, on the 18th of April, having received more exact information as to Lambert's whereabouts, he sent off Colonel Richard Ingoldsby to do his very best in that scene of action. There could not have been a happier choice. For this was honest Dick Ingoldsby, the Cromwellian, of whom his kinsman Richard Cromwell had said that, though he could neither preach nor pray, he could be trusted. He was also "Dick Ingoldsby, the Regicide," who had unfortunately signed the death-warrant of Charles I., to please Cromwell; and that recollection was a spur to him now. Since the abdication of Richard, he had been telling people that he would thenceforth serve the King and no one else, even though his Majesty, when he came home, would probably cut off his head. That consequence, however, was to be avoided if possible; and already, since the restoration of the secluded members, Ingoldsby had been doing whatever stroke of work for them might help towards earning his pardon. Now had come his most splendid opportunity, and he was not to let it slip.--On Sunday, the 22nd of April, being Easter Sunday, he came up with Lambert in Northamptonshire, about two miles from Daventry. Lambert had then but seven broken troops of horse, and one foot company; but Colonels Okey, Axtell, Cobbet, Major Creed, and several other important Republican ex-officers, were with him. Ingoldsby had brought his own horse regiment from Suffolk; Colonel Streater, with 500 men of a Northamptonshire foot-regiment, had joined him; the Royalist gentry round were sending in more horse; the country train-bands were up. The battle would be very unequal; was it worth while to fight? For some hours the two bodies stood facing each other, Lambert's in a ploughed field, with a little stream in his front, to which Ingoldsby rode up frequently, parleying with such of Lambert's troopers as were nearest, and so effectively as to bring some of them over. At last, Lambert showing no signs of surrender, Ingoldsby and Streater advanced, Ingoldsby ready to charge with his horse, but Streater marching the foot first with beat of drum to try the effect of a close approach. There was the prelude of a few shots, which hurt one or two of Lambert's troopers; but the orders were that the general fire should be reserved till the musketeers should see the pikemen already within push of the enemy. Then it was not necessary. Lambert's men had been wavering all the while; his troopers now turned the noses of their pistols downwards; one troop came off entire to Ingoldsby; the rest broke up and fled. But Lambert himself was Ingoldsby's mark. Dashing up to him, pistol in hand, he claimed him as his prisoner. There was a kind of scuffle, Creed and others imploring Ingoldsby to let Lambert go; and in the scuffle Lambert turned his horse and made off, Ingoldsby after him at full gallop. They were men of about the same age, neither over forty, but Ingoldsby the stouter and more fearless for a personal encounter. The two horses were abreast, or Ingoldsby's a little ahead, the rider turning round in his seat, with his pistol presented at Lambert, whom he swore he would shoot if he did not yield. Lambert pleaded yet a pitiful word or two, and then reined in and was taken.--On Tuesday, the 24th of April, Lambert was again in the Tower, with Cobbet, Creed, and other prisoners, though Okey and Axtell were not yet among them. There had been a great review of the City Militia that day in Hyde Park, at which the various regiments, red, white, green, blue, yellow, and orange, with the auxiliaries from the suburbs, made the magnificent muster of 12,000 men. The Parliament was to meet next day, and Monk and the Council of State had no farther anxiety. Among the measures they had taken after Lambert's escape had been an order that the engagement, already so generally signed by the Officers, pledging to agreement in whatever Parliament should prescribe as to the future form of government, should be tendered also to the private soldiers throughout the whole army. In the troops and companies of Fleetwood's old regiments, as many as a third of the soldiers, or in some cases a half, were leaving the ranks in consequence; but in Monk's own regiments from Scotland only two sturdy Republicans had stepped out.[1] [Footnote 1: Phillips, 698-699; Skinner, 286-289; Ludlow, 873-877; Wood's Fasti, II. 133-134; Whitlocke, IV. 407-409; M. de Bordeaux to Mazarin, Guizot, II. 415.] So sure was the Restoration of Charles now that the only difficulty was in restraining impatience and braggartism among the Royalists themselves. The last argument of the Republican pamphleteers having been that the Royalists would be implacable after they had got back the king, and that nothing was to be then expected but the bloodiest and severest revenges upon all who had been concerned with the Commonwealth, and some of the younger Royalists having given colour to such representations by their wild utterances in private, there had been printed protests to the contrary by leading Royalists in London and in many of the counties. They desired no revenges, they said; they reflected on the past as the mysterious course of an all-wise Providence; they were anxious for an amicable reunion of all in the path so wonderfully opened up by the wisdom and valour of General Monk; they utterly disowned the indiscreet expressions of fools and "hot-spirited persons"; and they would take no steps themselves, but would confide in Monk, the Council of State, and the Parliament, The London "declaration" to this effect was signed by ten earls, four viscounts, five lords, many baronets, knights, and squires, with several Anglican clergymen, among whom was Jeremy Taylor. It was of no small use to Monk, who had equally to be on his guard against too great haste. They were crowding round him now, and asking why there should be any more delay, why the king should not be brought to England at once. His one reply still was that the Parliament alone could decide what was to be done, and that he and others were bound to leave all to the Parliament. Meanwhile Sir John Greenville had been back from his mission for some time, and had duly delivered to Monk the important documents from Breda. Monk had kept Charles's private letter, but had given Greenville back all the rest, including his own commission to be his Majesty's Captain-General. Not a soul was to know of their existence till the moment when they should be produced in the Parliament.[1] [Footnote 1: Phillips, 699-701; Skinner, 283-284 and 290-294; Clarendon, 902.] CHAPTER II. First Section. MILTON'S LIFE AND SECRETARYSHIP THROUGH RICHARD'S PROTECTORATE: SEPT. 1658-MAY 1659. MILTON AND MARVELL STILL IN THE LATIN SECRETARYSHIP: MILTON'S FIRST FIVE STATE-LETTERS FOR RICHARD (NOS. CXXXIII.-CXXXVII.): NEW EDITION OF MILTON'S _DEFENSIO PRIMA_: REMARKABLE POSTSRCIPT TO THAT EDITION: SIX MORE STATE-LETTERS FOR RICHARD (NOS. CXXXVIII.-CXLIII.): MILTON'S RELATIONS TO THE CONFLICT OF PARTIES ROUND RICHARD AND IN RICHARD'S PARLIAMENT: HIS PROBABLE CAREER BUT FOR HIS BLINDNESS: HIS CONTINUED CROMWELLIANISM IN POLITICS, BUT WITH STRONGER PRIVATE RESERVES, ESPECIALLY ON THE QUESTION OF AN ESTABLISHED CHURCH: HIS REPUTATION THAT OF A MAN OF THE COURT-PARTY AMONG THE PROTECTORATISTS: HIS _TREATISE OF CIVIL POWER IN ECCLESIASTICAL CAUSES_: ACCOUNT OF THE TREATISE, WITH EXTRACTS: THE TREATISE MORE THAN A PLEA FOR RELIGIOUS TOLERATION: CHURCH-DISESTABLISHMENT THE FUNDAMENTAL IDEA: THE TREATISE ADDRESSED TO RICHARD'S PARLIAMENT, AND CHIEFLY TO VANE AND THE REPUBLICANS THERE: NO EFFECT FROM IT: MILTON'S FOUR LAST STATE-LETTERS FOR RICHARD (NOS. CXLIV.-CXLVII.): HIS PRIVATE EPISTLE TO JEAN LABADIE, WITH ACCOUNT OF THAT PERSON: MILTON IN THE MONTH BETWEEN RICHARD'S DISSOLUTION OF HIS PARLIAMENT AND HIS FORMAL ABDICATION: HIS TWO STATE-LETTERS FOR THE RESTORED RUMP (NOS. CXLVIII.-CXLIX.). Milton and Marvell continued together In the Latin Secretaryship through the Protectorate of Richard Cromwell, The following were the first Letters of Milton for Richard:-- (CXXXIII.) To Louis XIV. OF FRANCE, _Sept._ 5, 1658:--"Most serene and most potent King, Friend and Confederate: As my most serene Father, of glorious memory, Oliver, Protector of the Commonwealth of England, such being the will of Almighty God, has been, removed by death on the 3rd of September, I, his lawfully declared successor in this Government, though in the depth of sadness and grief, cannot but on the very first opportunity inform your Majesty by letter of so important a fact, assured that, as you have been a most cordial friend to my Father and this Commonwealth, the sudden intelligence will be no matter of joy to you either. It is my business now to request your Majesty to think of me as one who has nothing more resolvedly at heart than to cultivate with all fidelity and constancy the alliance and friendship that existed between my most glorious parent and your Majesty, and to keep and hold as valid, with the same diligence and goodwill as himself, the treaties, counsels, and arrangements, of common interest, which he established with you. To which intent I desire that our Ambassador at your Court [Lockhart] shall be invested with the same powers as formerly; and I beg that, whatever he may transact with you in our name, you will receive it as if done by myself. Finally, I wish your Majesty all prosperity.--From our Court at Westminster." (CXXXIV.) To Cardinal Mazarin, _Sept._ [5], 1658:--Dispatched with the last, and to the same effect. Knowing the reciprocal esteem between his late Father and his Eminence, Richard cannot but write to his Eminence as well as to the King. (CXXXV.) To Charles Gustavus, King of Sweden. _October_ 1658:--"Most serene and most potent King, Friend and Confederate: As I think I cannot sufficiently imitate my father's excellence unless I cultivate and desire to retain the same friendships which he sought, and acquired by his worth, and regarded in his singular judgment as most deserving to be cultivated and retained, there is no reason for your Majesty to doubt that it will be my duty to conduct myself towards your Majesty with the same attentiveness and goodwill which my Father, of most serene memory, made his rule in his relations to you. Wherefore, although in this beginning of my Government and dignity I do not find our affairs in such a position that I can at present reply to certain heads which your agents have propounded for negotiation, yet the idea of continuing, and even more closely knitting, the treaty established with your Majesty by my Father is exceedingly agreeable to me; and, as soon as I shall have more fully understood the state of affairs on both sides, I shall indeed be always most ready, as far as I am concerned, for such arrangements as shall be thought most advantageous for the interests of both Commonwealths. Meanwhile may God long preserve your Majesty, to His own glory and for the guardianship and defence of the Orthodox Church."--The peculiar state of the relations between the Swedish King and the English Government is here to be remembered. The heroic Swede, by his sudden recommencement of war with Denmark, had brought a host of enemies again around him; and the question, just before Oliver's death, was whether Oliver would consider himself disobliged by the rupture of the Peace with Denmark, which had been mainly of his own making, or whether he would stand by his brother of Sweden and think him still in the right. That the second would have been Oliver's course there can be little doubt. The question had now descended to Richard and his Council. They were anxious to adhere to the foreign policy of the late Protector in the Swedish as in all other matters; but there were difficulties. (CXXXVI. AND CXXXVII.) To CHARLES GUSTAVUS OF SWEDEN, _Oct._ 1659:--Two more letters to his Swedish Majesty, following close on the last:--(1) In the first, dated "Oct. 13," Richard acknowledges a letter received from the King of Sweden through his envoy in London, and also a letter from the King to Philip Meadows, the English Resident at the Swedish Court, which Meadows has transmitted. He is deeply sensible of his Swedish Majesty's kind expressions, both of sorrowing regard for his great father's memory, and of goodwill towards himself. There could not be a greater honour to him, or a greater encouragement in the beginning of his government, than the congratulations of such a King. "As respects the relations entered into between your Majesty and Us concerning the common cause of Protestants, I would have your Majesty believe that, since I succeeded to this government, though our Affairs are in such a state as to require the extreme of diligence, care, and vigilance, chiefly at home, yet I have had and still have nothing more sacredly or more deliberately in my mind than not to be wanting, to the utmost of my power, to the Treaty made by my father with your Majesty. I have therefore arranged for sending a fleet into the Baltic Sea, with those commands which our Internuncio [Meadows], whom we have most amply instructed for this whole business, will communicate to your Majesty." This was the fleet of Admiral Lawson, which did not actually put to sea till the following month, and was then wind-bound off the English coast. See ante p. 428; where it is also explained that Sir George Ayscough was to go out with Lawson, to enter the Swedish service as a volunteer.--(2) The other letter to Charles Gustavus, though dated "Oct." merely in the extant copies, was probably written on the same day as the foregoing, and was to introduce this Ayscough. "I send to your Majesty (and cannot send a present of greater worth or excellence) the truly distinguished and truly noble man, George Ayscough, Knight, not only famous and esteemed for his knowledge of war, especially naval war, as proved by his frequent and many brave performances, but also gifted with probity, modesty, ingenuity, and learning, dear to all for the sweetness of his manners, and, what is now the sum of all, eager to serve under the banners of your Majesty, so renowned over the whole world by your warlike prowess." A favourable reception is bespoken for Ayscough, who is to bring certain communications to his Majesty, and who, in any matters that may arise out of these, is to be taken as speaking for Richard himself. It was not till the beginning of the following year that Ayscough did arrive in the Baltic. These five letters were undoubtedly the most important diplomatic dispatches of the beginning of Richard's Protectorate. They refer to the two most momentous foreign interests bequeathed from Oliver: viz. the French Alliance against Spain, and the entanglement in Northern Europe round the King of Sweden. Milton, as having written all the previous state-letters on these great subjects, was naturally required to be himself the writer of the five in which Richard announced to France and Sweden his resolution to continue the policy of his father. Marvell's pen may have been used, then and afterwards, for minor dispatches. To the month of October 1658, the month after that of Oliver's death, belongs also a new edition of Milton's _Defensio Prima_. It was in octavo size, in close and clear type, and bore this title: "_Joannis Miltonii, Angli, Pro Populo Anglicano Defensio contra Claudii Anonymi, alias Salmasii, Defensionem Regiam. Editio correctior et auctior, ab Autore denuo recognita. Londini, Typis Newcombianis, Anno Dom. 1658_" (John Milton's Defence, &c. "_Corrected and Enlarged Edition, newly revised by the Author_" London: from Newcome's press, &c.).[1] This edition seems to have escaped the notice to which it is entitled. As far as my examination has gone, the differences from the original edition through the body of the work can be but slight. There is, however, a very important postscript of two pages, which I shall here translate:-- [Footnote 1: Thomason copy in British Museum, with the date "_Octob._" (no day) written on the title-page.] "Having published this book, some years ago now [April 1651], in the hurried manner then required by the interests of the Commonwealth, but with the notion that, if ever I should have leisure to take it into my hands again, I might, as is customary, afterwards polish up something in it, or perchance cancel or add something, this I fancy I have now accomplished, though with fewer changes than I thought: a monument, as I see, whosoever has contrived it, not easily to perish. If there shall be found some one who will defend civil liberty more freely than here, yet certainly it will hardly be in a greater or more illustrious example; and truly, if the belief is that a deed of such arduous and famous example was not attempted and so prosperously finished without divine inspiration, there may be reason to think that the celebration and defence of the same with such applauses was also by the same aid and impulse,--an opinion I would much rather see entertained by all than have any other happiness of genius, judgment, or diligence, attributed to myself. Only this:--Just as that Roman Consul, laying down his magistracy, swore in public that the Commonwealth and that City were safe by his sole exertion, so I, now placing my last hand on this work, would dare assert, calling God and men to witness, that I have demonstrated in this book, and brought publicly forward out of the highest authors of divine and human wisdom, those very things by which I am confident that the English People have been sufficiently defended in this cause for their everlasting fame with posterity, and confident also that the generality of mankind, formerly deceived by foul ignorance of their own rights and a false semblance of Religion, have been, unless in as far as they may prefer and deserve slavery, sufficiently emancipated. And, as the universal Roman People, itself sworn in that public assembly, approved with one voice and consent that Consul's so great and so special oath, so I have for some time understood that not only all the best of my own countrymen, but all the best also of foreign men, sanction and approve this persuasion of mine by no silent vote over the whole world. Which highest fruit of my labours proposed for myself in this life I both gratefully enjoy and at the same time make it my chief thought how I may be best able to assure not only my own country, for which I have already done my utmost, but also the men of all nations whatever, and especially all of the Christian name, that the accomplishment of yet greater things, if I have the power--and I _shall_ have the power, if God be gracious,--is meanwhile for their sakes my desire and meditation." Perhaps one begins to be a little tired of this high-strained exultation for ever and ever on the subject of his success in the Salmasian controversy. The recurrence at this point, however, is not uninstructive. At the beginning of Richard's Protectorate, we can see Milton's defences of the English Republic were still regarded as the unparalleled literary achievements of the age, and Milton's European celebrity on account of them had not waned in the least. It was something for the blind man, seated by himself in his small home in Westminster, and sending his thoughts out over the world from which for six years now he had been so helplessly shut in, to know this fact, and to be able to imagine the continued recollection of him as still alive among the myriads moving in that vast darkness. This fruit of his past labours, he says, he would "gratefully enjoy," but with no vulgar satisfaction. He would not confess it even to be with any lingering in him now of the last infirmity of a noble mind. In his fiftieth year, and in his present state, he could feel himself superior to that, and could describe his consciousness as something higher. If he had done a great work already, as he himself believed, and as the voice of all the best of mankind acknowledged, had it not been because God had chosen and inspired him for the same, and might he not in that faith send out a message to the world that perhaps God had not yet done with him, and they might expect from him, blind and desolate though he was, something greater and better still? The closing sentence is exactly such a message, and one can suppose that Milton was there thinking of his progress in _Paradise Lost_. Whatever was the amount of Marvell's exertion in the secretaryship, Milton was not wholly exempted from the duty of writing even the more ordinary letters for Richard and his Council. There is a vacant interval of three months, indeed, after the five last registered and the next; but in January 1658-9 the series is resumed, and there are six more letters of Milton for Richard between the end of that month and the end of February. Richard's Parliament, it is to be remembered, met on the 27th of January. (CXXXVIII.) To CHARLES GUSTAVUS, KING OF SWEDEN, _Jan._ 27, 1658-9 (i.e. the day of the meeting of the Parliament):--Samuel Piggott, merchant of London, has complained to the Protector that two ships of his--the _Post_, Tiddy Jacob master, and the _Water-dog_, Garbrand Peters master--are detained somewhere in the Baltic by his Majesty's forces. They had sailed from London to France; thence to Amsterdam, where one had taken in ballast only, but the other a cargo of herrings, belonging in part to one Peter Heinsberg, a Dutchman; and, so laden, they had been bound for his Majesty's port of Stettin. Probably the Dutch ownership of part of the herring cargo was the cause of the detention of the ships; but Piggott was the lawful owner of the ships themselves and of the rest of the goods. His Majesty is prayed to restore them, and so save the poor man from ruin. (CXXXIX.) To THE HIGH AND MIGHTY, THE STATES OF WEST FRIESLAND, _Jan._ 27, 1658-9:--A widow, named Mary Grinder, complains that Thomas Killigrew, a commander in the service of the States, has for eighteen years owed her a considerable sum of money, the compulsory payment of which he is trying now to evade by petitioning their Highnesses not to allow any suit against him in their Courts for debts due in England. "If I only mention to your Highnesses that she, whom this man tries to deprive of nearly all her fortunes, is a widow, that she is poor, the mother of many little children, I will not do you the injustice of supposing that with you, to whom I am confident the divine commandments, and especially those about not oppressing widows and the fatherless, are well known, any more serious argument will be needed against your granting this privilege of fraud to the man's petition."--The Thomas Killigrew here concerned may have been one of several well-known Killigrews, then refugee Royalists. Hence perhaps the earnestness of the letter. (CXL.) To LOUIS XIV. OF FRANCE, _Feb._ 18, 1658-9:--"We have heard, and not without grief, that some Protestant churches in Provence were so scandalously interrupted by a certain ill-tempered bigot that the matter was thought worthy of severe notice by the magistrates of Grenoble, to whom the cognisance of the case belonged by law; but that a convention of the clergy, held shortly afterwards in, those parts, has obtained your Majesty's order that the whole affair shall be brought before your Royal Council in Paris, and that meanwhile, there being no decision there hitherto, these churches, and especially that of Aix, are prohibited from meeting for the worship of God." His Majesty is asked to remove this prohibition, and to see the author of the mischief properly censured. Such a missive proves that Richard and his Council kept to Oliver's rule of interference whenever there was persecution of Protestants, and also that they did not doubt their influence with Louis and Mazarin. (CXLI.) To CARDINAL MAZARIN, _Feb._ 19, 1658-9:[1]--The Duchess-Dowager of Richmond, with her son, the young duke, is going into France, and means to reside there for some time. His Eminence is requested to show all possible attention to the illustrious lady and her son. [Footnote 1: So dated in the Skinner Transcript, but "29 Feb." in Printed Collection and Phillips.] (CXLII.) To CARDINAL MAZARIN, _Feb._ 22, 1658-9:[1]--About eight months ago the case of Peter Pett, "a man of singular probity, and of the highest utility to us and the Commonwealth by his remarkable skill in naval affairs," was brought before his Eminence by a letter of the late Lord Protector (not among Milton's letters). It was to request that his Eminence would see to the execution of a decree of his French Majesty's Council, as far back as Nov. 4, 1647, that compensation should be made to Pett for the seizure and sale of a ship of his, called the _Edward_, by one Bascon, in the preceding year. His Eminence has doubtless attended to the request; but there is still some impediment. Will his Eminence see where it lies and remove it?--Since the time of Queen Mary there had been three Peter Petts in succession, ship-builders and masters of the Royal Dockyard at Deptford; and the present Peter was the father of the more celebrated Sir Peter Pett, who was fellow of the Royal Society after the Restoration. [Footnote 1: So dated in Printed Collection and in the Skinner Transcript; misdated "Feb. 25" in Phillips.] (CXLIII.) To ALFONSO V., KING OF PORTUGAL, _Feb._ 23, 1658-9:[1]--Congratulations to his Portuguese Majesty upon a victory he had recently obtained over "our common enemy the Spaniard," with acknowledgment of his Majesty's handsome behaviour, through his Commissioners in London, in the matter of satisfaction, according to an article in the League between Portugal and the English Commonwealth, to those English merchants who had let out their vessels to the Brazil Company. But there is still one such merchant unpaid--a certain Alexander Bence, whose ship, _The Three Brothers_, John Wilks master, had made two voyages for the Company. They refuse to pay him, though they have fully paid others who had made but one voyage; and "why this is done I do not understand, unless it be that in their estimation a person is more worthy of his hire who has earned it once than one who has earned it twice." Will his Majesty see that Bence receives his due? [Footnote 1: In the Printed Collection and Phillips, and also, I think, in the Skinner Transcript, the king's name is given as "John"; but John IV. of Portugal had died in 1656 and been succeeded by Alfonso.] These six letters belong to the first month of Richard's Parliament, with its very large and freely elected House of Commons representing England, Scotland, and Ireland, and its anomalous addition or excrescence of another or Upper House, consisting of the two or three scores of recently-created Cromwellian "Lords." The battle between the Republicans and the Protectoratists had begun in the Commons, Thurloe ably leading there for the Protectoratists; the Republicans had been beaten on the first great question by the recognition of the Single-Person principle and of Richard's title to the Protectorship; and the House had gone on to the question of the continued existence and functions of the other House, with every prospect that the Cromwillians would beat the Republicans on that question too. From January to April, not only in the Parliament, but also over the country at large, the all-engrossing interest, as we know, was this controversy between pure old Republicanism, desiring neither single sovereignty nor aristocracy, and that more conservative form of Commonwealth which had been set up by the Oliverian constitution. Over the country, no less than in the Parliament, the conservative policy was in favour, and the Cromwellians or Protectoratists, among whom the Presbyterians now ranked themselves, were far more numerous than the old Republicans. Royalism, or at least Stuart Royalism, was at its lowest ebb. Many that had been Royalists heretofore had accepted the constitutionalized Protectorate as the best substitute for Royalty that circumstances allowed, and saw no course left them but to cooperate with the majority of their countrymen in confirming Richard's rule. How Milton stood related to this controversy is a matter rather of inference than of direct information. Having been a faithful adherent and official of Oliver through his whole Protectorate, and still holding his official place under Richard's Government, there is little doubt that, if he had been obliged to post himself publicly on either of the two sides, he would have gone among the Cromwellians. Nay, if he had been obliged to choose between the two subdivisions of this body, known as the _Court Party_ (supporting Richard absolutely) and the _Wallingford-House Party_ (supporting Richard's civil Protectorate, but wanting to transfer the military power to the Army-chiefs), there can be little doubt that he would have gone with the former. Had he been in the House of Commons, like his colleague Andrew Marvell, his duty there, like Marvell's, would have been that of a ministerial member, assisting Thurloe and voting with him in all the divisions. But for his blindness, we may here say, the chances are that he _would_ long ere now have been a known Parliamentary man, and that, after having been a Cromwellian leader in Oliver's second Parliament, he might have been now in Thurloe's exact place in Richard's present Parliament, or beside Thurloe as a strangely different chief. This, or that other alternative of a foreign ambassadorship or residency, which must have suggested itself again and again to the reader in the course of our narrative, might have been the natural career of Milton through the rule of the Cromwells, had not blindness disabled him. For, if Meadows, his former mere assistant in the Foreign Secretaryship, had been for some time in the one career with increasing distinction, and if an opening had been easily found for Marvell in the other, why may not imagination trace either career, or a combination of the two, had physical infirmity not prevented, for the greater Cromwellian of whom these were but satellites? It is imagination only, and would not be worth while, were it not for one important biographical question which it brings forward. Had Milton remained capable of any such practical career under the Cromwells, would he have retained, to the same extent as he had done through his blindness, the necessary qualification of being an Oliverian or Cromwellian? How far was his present Cromwellianism the actual consequence of his blindness, the mere submissiveness of a blind man to what he had no power to disturb? It is partly an answer to this question to remember again his _Defensio Secunda_ of 1654, with its great panegyric on Cromwell. Milton had been but two years blind when that was published, and had not lost aught of the vehemence of his Republican convictions. Not without deliberation, therefore, had he given up the first form of the Commonwealth, consisting in a single supreme House of Parliament and an annual Council of State chosen by the same, and accepted the later or Protectoral form, with Cromwell for its head, a permanent Council of State round Cromwell, and Parliaments on occasion. But, underneath this general adhesion to the Protectorate, there had been even then certain Miltonic reserves, and especially the reserve of a protest against the continuance of a State Church. Now, had Milton been in a condition to act the part of a practical statesman through Oliver's Protectorate, might not some extraordinary development have been given to those reserves? With his boundless courage and the non-conforming habits of his genius, would he ever have been the Parliamentary servant of a Government from which he differed at all,--from which he differed so vitally on the question of Church Establishment? Probably in nothing else had Cromwell wholly disappointed him. Through the Protectorate there had been all the toleration of religious differences that could be desired, or what shortcoming there had been had hardly been by Cromwell's own fault; the other interferences with liberty had hardly perhaps, in Milton's estimation, gone beyond the necessities of police; and in Cromwell's foreign policy, with its magnificent championship of Protestantism abroad, what man in England was more ardently at one with him than the draftsman of his great foreign despatches? At the time of the proposal of Cromwell's Kingship, and generally at the time of the transition out of his first Protectorate into his second, with the resuscitation then of so many aristocratic forms and the attempt to reinstitute a house of peers, there may have been, as we have already hinted, an uprising in Milton's mind of democratic objections, and the effect may have been that Milton before the end of Oliver's Protectorate was less of an Oliverian than he had been at the beginning. Still, precluded from any active concern in those constitutional changes, he may have reconciled himself to them easily enough, and also to the transmission of the Protectorship from Oliver to Richard. The one insuperable stumbling-block, I believe, had been and was Cromwell's Established Church. Even in his blindness he could theorize on that, and stiffen himself more and more in his intense Religious Voluntaryism, Conscious of his irreconcileable dissent from Cromwell's policy in this great matter, and knowing that Cromwell was aware of the fact, it may have been a satisfaction to him that he was not called upon to act a Parliamentary part, in which proclamation of the dissent and consequent rupture with Cromwell on the ecclesiastical question would have been inevitable. It may have been some satisfaction to him that he could go on faithfully and honestly as a servant of Cromwell in the special business of the Latin Secretaryship, and for the rest be a lonely thinker and take refuge in silence. It is worth observing, indeed, that nothing of a political kind had come from Milton's pen during the last three or four years of Oliver's Protectorate,--nothing even indirectly bearing on the internal politics of the Commonwealth since his _Pro Se Defensio_ against Morus in 1655, and nothing directly bearing thereon since his _Defensio Secunda_ of 1654. And so, if we conclude this inquiry by saying that, at the time of Richard's accession and the meeting of his Parliament, Milton was still a Cromwellian, but a Cromwellian with the old Miltonic reserves, and these strengthened of late rather than weakened, we shall be about right. To the public, however, in the present controversy between the Protectoratists and the pure Republicans, he was distinctly a Protectoratist, a Cromwellian, one of the Court-party, an official of Richard and his Council. Since Cromwell's death, we have now to add, Milton had been re-mustering his reserves. Under a new Protector, and from the new Parliament of that new Protector, might he not have a hearing on points on which he had for some time been silent? On this chance, he had interrupted even his _Paradise Lost_, in order to prepare an address to the new Parliament. As might be expected, it was on the subject of the relations of Church and State. Meditating on this subject, and how it might be best treated practically at such a time, Milton, had concluded that it might be broken into two parts. "Two things there be which have been ever found working much mischief to the Church of God and the advancement of Faith,--Force on the one side restraining, and Hire on the other side corrupting, the Teachers thereof." He would, therefore, write one tract on the effects of Compulsion or State-restraint in matters of Religion and Speculation, and another on the effects of Hire or State-endowments in the same. The two would be interconnected, and would in fact melt into each other; but they might appear separately, and it might be well to begin with the first, as the least irritating. Accordingly, before the meeting of the Parliament he had prepared, and after it had met there was published, in the form of a very tiny octavo, a tract with this title-page: "_A Treatise of Civil Power in Ecclesiastical Causes: Shewing that it is not lawfull for any power on Earth to compell in matters of Religion. The author J.M. London, Printed by Tho. Newcomb, Anno_ 1659." The tract consists of an address "To the Parlament of the Commonwealth of England with the Dominions thereof," occupying ten of the small pages, and signed "John Milton" in full, and then of eighty-three pages of text.[1] [Footnote 1: The little book was duly registered at Stationers' Hall, under date Feb. 16, 1658-9, thus: "Mr. Tho. Newcomb entered for his copy (under the hand of Mr. Pulleyn, warden) a book called A Treatise of Civil Power in Ecclesiastical Causes by John Milton."] After intimating that this was but the first of two tracts and that the other would follow, and also that his argument is to be wholly and exclusively from Scripture, Milton propounds the argument itself under four successive heads or propositions.--The first is that, there being, by the fundamental principle of Protestantism, "no other divine rule or authority from without us, warrantable to one another as a common ground, but the Holy Scripture, and no other within us but the illumination of the Holy Spirit so interpreting that Scripture as warrantable only to ourselves and to such whose consciences we can so persuade," it follows that "no man or body of men in these times can be the infallible judges or determiners in matters of religion to any other men's consciences but their own." Having reasoned this at some length by quotations of Scripture texts and explanations of the same, he proceeds to "yet another reason why it is unlawful for the civil magistrate to use force in matters of Religion: which is, because to judge in those things, though we should grant him able, which is proved he is not, yet as a civil magistrate he hath no right." Under this second head, and also by means of Scripture quotations, there is an exposition of Milton's favourite idea of the purely spiritual nature of Christ's kingdom and of the instrumentalities it permits. The third proposition advances the argument by maintaining that not only is the civil magistrate unable, from the nature of the case, to determine in matters of Religion, and not only has he no right to try, but he also does positive wrong by trying. In arguing this, still Scripturally, Milton dilates on the meaning of the "Christian liberty" of the true believer, with the heights and depths which it implies in the renewed spirit, the superiority to "the bondage of ceremonies" and "the weak and beggarly rudiments." The fourth and last reason pleaded, still from Scripture, against the compulsion of the magistrate in Religion, is that he must fail signally in the very ends he proposes to himself; "and those hardly can be other than first the glory of God, next either the spiritual good of them whom he forces or the temporal punishment of their scandal to others." Far from attaining either of these ends, he can but dishonour God and promote profanity and hypocrisy.--"On these four Scriptural reasons as on a firm square." says Milton at the close, "this truth, the right of Christian and Evangelic Liberty, will stand immoveable against all those pretended consequences of license and confusion which, for the most part, men most licentious and confused themselves, or such as whose severity would be wiser than divine wisdom, are ever aptest to object against the ways of God." Such is the plan of the little treatise, the literary texture of which is plain and homely, rather than rich, learned, or rhetorical. "Pomp and ostentation of reading," he expressly says, "is admired among the vulgar; but doubtless in matters of Religion he is learnedest who is plainest." It was, we may remember, his first considerable English dictation for the press since his blindness, and what one chiefly notices in the style is the strong grasp he still retains of his old characteristic syntax.[1] The following are a few of the more interesting individual passages or expressions:-- [Footnote 1: I have noted in the Tract one occurrence at least of the very un-Miltonic word _its_, as follows:--"As the Samaritans believed Christ, first for the woman's word, but next and much rather for his own, so we the Scripture first on the Church's word, but afterwards and much more for its own as the word of God."] _Blasphemy._--"But some are ready to cry out 'What shall then be done to Blasphemy?' Them I would first exhort not thus to terrify and pose the people with a Greek word, but to teach them better what it is: being a most usual and common word in that language to signify any slander, any malicious or evil speaking, whether against God or man or anything to good belonging." _Heresy and Heretic_:--"Another Greek apparition stands in our way, 'Heresy and Heretic': in like manner also railed at to the people, as in a tongue unknown. They should first interpret to them that Heresy, by what it signifies in that language, is no word of evil note; meaning only the choice or following of any opinion, good or bad, in religion or any other learning." _A Wrested Text of Scripture_:--"It hath now twice befallen me to assert, through God's assistance, this most wrested and vexed place of Scripture [_Romans_ XIII, 'Let every soul be subject unto the higher powers,' &c.]: heretofore against Salmasius and regal tyranny over the State; now against Erastus and State-tyranny over the Church." _Are Popery and Idolatry to be Tolerated?_--"But, as for Popery and Idolatry, why they also may not hence plead to be tolerated, I have much less to say. Their Religion, the more considered, the less can be acknowledged a Religion, but a Roman Principality rather, endeavouring to keep up her old universal dominion under a new name and mere shadow of a Catholic Religion; being indeed more rightly named a Catholic Heresy against the Scripture; supported mainly by a civil, and, except in Rome, by a foreign, power: justly therefore to be suspected, not tolerated, by the magistrate of another country. Besides, of an implicit faith, which they profess, the conscience also becomes implicit, and so, by voluntary servitude to man's law, forfeits her Christian liberty. Who, then, can plead for such a conscience as, being implicitly enthralled to man instead of God, almost becomes no conscience, as the will not free becomes no will? Nevertheless, if they ought not to be tolerated, it is for just reason of State more than of Religion; which they who force, though professing to be Protestants, deserve as little to be tolerated themselves, being no less guilty of Popery in the most Popish point. Lastly, for Idolatry, who knows it not to be evidently against all Scripture, both of the Old and New Testament, and therefore a true heresy, or rather an impiety; wherein a right conscience can have naught to do, and the works thereof so manifest that a magistrate can hardly err in prohibiting and quite removing at least the public and scandalous use thereof." _Christ's unique act of Compulsion_:--"We read not that Christ ever exercised force but once; and that was to drive profane ones out of his Temple, not to force them in." _Concluding Recommendation to Statesmen and Ministers_:--"As to those magistrates who think it their work to settle Religion, and those ministers or others who so oft call upon them to do so, I trust that, having well considered what hath been here argued, neither _they_ will continue in that intention, nor _these_ in that expectation from them, when they shall find that the settlement of Religion belongs only to each particular church by persuasive and spiritual means within itself, and that the defence only of the Church belongs to the magistrate. Had he once learnt not further to concern himself with Church affairs, half his labour might be spared and the Commonwealth better tended." * * * * * In this last extract there is a distinct outbreak of the intention which is rather covert through the rest of the tract. To a hasty reader the tract might seem only a plea for the amplest toleration, of religious dissent, a plea for full liberty, outside of the Established Church, not merely to Baptists, but also to Quakers, Anti-Trinitarians, and all other sects professing in any way to be Christians and believers in the Bible, Papists alone excepted, and they but partially and reluctantly. There would be no censure on Cromwell's policy, if that were all. But an acute reader of the tract would have detected that more was intended in it than a plea for Toleration, that the very existence of any Established Church whatever was condemned. In the passage last quoted it is clearly seen that this is the ultimate scope. It is a reflection on Cromwell, almost by name, for not having freed himself from the notion that the settlement of Religion is an affair of the Civil Magistrate, but on the contrary having made such a supposed settlement of Religion one of the passions of his Protectorate. It is a reflection on him, and on Owen, Thomas Goodwin, and all his ecclesiastical advisers and assessors, Independent or Presbyterian, for having busied themselves in maintaining and re-shaping any State-Church, on however broad a basis, and so having perpetuated the old distinction between Establishment and Dissent, Orthodoxy and Heresy, instead of abolishing that distinction utterly, and leaving all varieties of Christianity, equally unstamped and unfavoured, to organize themselves as they best could on the principle of voluntary association. For the future, statesmen and ministers are invited to cease from persevering in this delusion of the great and good Cromwell. The tract was addressed, as we have said, to the Parliament of Cromwell's son. The preface, signed with Milton's name in full, is a recommendation of the doctrine to that body in particular. "I have prepared, Supreme Council, against the much expected time of your sitting," Milton there says, "this treatise; which, though to all Christian Magistrates equally belonging, and therefore to have been written in the common language of Christendom, natural duty and affection hath confined and dedicated first to my own nation, and in a season wherein the timely reading thereof, to the easier accomplishment of your great work, may save you much labour and interruption." Then, after having stated the main doctrine, he continues:--"One advantage I make no doubt of, that I shall write to many eminent persons of your number already perfect and resolved in this important article of Christianity: some of whom I remember to have heard often, for several years, at a Council next in authority to your own, so well joining religion with civil prudence, and yet so well distinguishing the different power of either, and this not only voting but frequently reasoning why it should be so, that, if any there present had been before of an opinion contrary, he might doubtless have departed thence a convert in that point, and have confessed that then both Commonwealth and Religion will at length, if ever, flourish, in Christendom, when either they who govern discern between Civil and Religious, or they only who so discern shall be admitted to govern." In other words, Milton's hopes of a favourable hearing for his doctrine in Richard's Parliament were founded (1) on the general ground that many members of the Parliament were old Commonwealth's men, of the kind that would have carried the abolition of Tithes and of a State-Church in the Barebones Parliament of 1653, had not Rous broken up that Parliament and resurrendered the power to Cromwell, and (2) on the special fact that some of them were men whom Milton had himself heard with admiration, in the Councils of State of the Commonwealth, when he first sat there as Foreign Secretary in attendance, avowing and expounding the principle of Voluntaryism in Religion, in its fullest possible extent. Among these last Milton must have had in view chiefly such members of the Commons House in Richard's Parliament as Vane, Bradshaw, Harrison, Neville, Ludlow, and Scott, all of whom had been members of one, or several, or all, of the Councils of State of the old Commonwealth; but he may have had in view also such members of the present Upper House as Fleetwood, St. John, and Viscount Lisle. Above all, Vane must have been in his mind,--Vane, on whom half of his eulogy in 1652 had been. "To know Both spiritual power and civil, what each means, What severs each, _thou_, hast learned; which few have done. The bounds of either sword to _thee_ we owe." Might not Vane and his fellows move in the present Parliament for a reconsideration of that part of the policy of the Protectorate which concerned Religion? Might they not induce the Parliament to revert, in the matters of Tithes, a State Ministry, and Endowments of Religion, to the temper and determinations of the much-abused, but really wise and deep-minded, Barebones Parliament? Nothing less than this is the ultimate purport of Milton's appeal; and little wonder that he prefixed an intimation that he wrote now only as a private man, and without any official authority whatever. "Of Civil Liberty," he says in the conclusion of his preface, "I have written heretofore by the appointment, and not without the approbation, of Civil Power: of Christian Liberty I write now,--which others long since having done with all freedom under Heathen Emperors, I should do wrong to suspect that now I shall with less under Christian Governors, and such especially as profess openly their defence of Christian liberty, although I write this not otherwise appointed and induced than by an inward persuasion of the Christian duty which I may usefully discharge herein to the common Lord and Master of us all." The words imply just a shade of doubt whether he, a salaried servant of the Government, might not be called to account for having been so bold. Altogether, Milton's _Treatise of Civil Power in Ecclesiastical Causes_ can be construed no otherwise than as an effort on his part, Protectoratist and Court-official though he was, to renew his relations with the old Republican party in the Parliament in the special interest of his extreme views on the religious question. Merely as a pleading against Religious Persecution, the treatise might have had some effect on the Parliament generally, where it was in fact much needed, in consequence of the presence of so much of the Presbyterian element, and the likelihood therefore of increased stringency against Quakers, Socinians, and other Non-Conformists. The treatise would have found many in the Parliament, besides the Republicans, quite willing to listen to its advices so far. But only or chiefly among the old Republicans can there have been any hope of an acceptance of its extreme definition of Christian Liberty, as involving Disestablishment and entire separation of Church and State. The Treatise, so far as we can see, produced no effect whatever. So far as the Religious Question did appear in the Parliament, it was evident that the preservation of Cromwell's Church-Establishment, its perpetuation as an integral part of Richard's Protectorate, was a foregone conclusion in the minds of the vast majority. Any Disestablishment proposal, emanating from the Republican party, or from any individual member like Vane, would have been tramped out by the united strength of the Presbyterians, the Cromwellians of the Court, and the Wallingford-House Cromwellians. The danger even was that there might be a retrogression in the matter of mere Toleration, and that the presence and pressure of so many Presbyterians among the supporters of Richard might compel Richard's Government, against his own will and that of his Cromwellian Councillors, to a severer Church-discipline than had characterized the late Protectorate. But, indeed, it was not on the Religious Question in any form that the Republicans found time or need to try their strength. Their battles in the Parliament were on the two main constitutional questions:--first, the question of the Protectorate itself or Single-Person Government; and, next, the question of the Other House or House of Lords. On the first they were definitively beaten in February; and on the second they were beaten, no less definitively, and with more distressing incidents of defeat, before the end of March (ante pp. 432-435). Then, feeling themselves powerless as an independent party, they changed their tactics. No sooner had the Protectoratists or Cromwellians triumphed collectively under Thurloe's leadership than there had begun among them that fatal straggle between the two divisions of their body of which the beaten Republicans could not fail to take advantage. The _Court party_ of the Cromwellians, still led by Thurloe in the Commons, desired to preserve the Protectorate unbroken and with full powers, reducing the Army, as in an orderly and well-constituted State, to its proper place and dimensions as the instrument of the civil authority; the _Army Party_, or _Wallingford-House Party_, represented by Fleetwood and Desborough in chief, wanted to leave Richard only the civil Protectorship, and to set up a co-ordinate military power. The differences between the two parties had been smouldering since Richard's accession, and had been too visible since the first meeting of the Parliament; but it was in April 1659, after their joint victory over the Republicans, that they turned against each other in deadly strife, the Republicans looking on. Through that month the ominous spectacle was that of two rival Parliaments in Westminster--Richard's regular Parliament, and the irregular Wallingford-House Parliament of Army officers--watching each other and interchanging threats and denunciations. It was on the 18th of the month that the regular Parliament passed their two courageous resolutions asserting their supreme authority. They were that the Wallingford Council of officers should be immediately dissolved and no more such meetings of officers permitted, and that all officers of the Army and Navy should take an engagement not to interrupt the established power (ante pp. 440-441). Then it was evident there would be a crash, but in what form was still unknown. Precisely at this crisis in Richard's Protectorship comes the last batch of Milton's official letters for him. The letters are four in number:[1]-- [Footnote 1: These Letters do not appear in the ordinary Printed Collection, or in Phillips; but they are in the Skinner Transcript, and have been printed thence by Mr. Hamilton in his _Milton Papers_, pp. 12-14.] (CXLIV. and CXLV.) To FERDINAND, GRAND DUKE OF TUSCANY, _April_ 19, 1659:--Two Letters to this Prince on the same day. (1) Sir John Dethicke, James Gold, John Limbery, and other London merchants, are owners of a ship called _The Happy Entrance_, which they sent out with merchandise for trade in the Mediterranean, under the command of a John Marvin. They can get no account from him, and have reason to fear he means to play the rogue with the ship and cargo and never return. It is believed that within two months he may put in at Leghorn; and the Protector requests the Grand Duke to give the merchants, in that case, facilities for the recovery of their property. (2) A James Modiford, merchant, complains to the Protector that certain goods of his, taken to Leghorn about 1652 by another English trader, Humphrey Sidney, were there seized by some Italian creditors of Sidney. Modiford has been unable to obtain redress; and the Grand Duke is now prayed to see his goods restored and any claims Sidney may have upon him referred to the English Courts. (CXLVI.) To ALFONSO V., KING OF PORTUGAL, _April_ 1659:[1]--A Francis Hurdidge of London complains that a ship of his, called _The Mary and John_, cargo valued at 70,000 crowns, employed in the Brazil trade in 1649 and 1650, was seized by the Portuguese. The ship was afterwards taken from the Portuguese by the Dutch. The Treaty between the English Commonwealth and Portugal provides for such cases; and his Portuguese Majesty is requested to make compensation to Hurdidge to the extent of 25,000 crowns. The man is in great straits. [Footnote 1: "_Joanni Portugallioe Regi_" is the heading in Mr. Hamilton's copy from the Skinner Transcript; but this is a mistake (see ante p. 576, note).] (CXLVII.) To CHARLES GUSTAVUS, KING OF SWEDEN, _April_ 1659:--David Fithy, merchant, informs the Protector that, about a month ago, he contracted to supply to the Navy 150 sacks of hemp. He has the hemp now at Riga, and a ship ready to bring it thence for the use of the fleet--"part of which," the Protector skilfully adds, "has just sailed for the Baltic for your protection" (i.e. Montague's fleet, despatched this very month: see ante p. 435). It appears, however, that his Swedish Majesty has forbidden the exportation of hemp from his port of Riga without special permission. His Majesty is requested to give Fithy this permission, that he may be able to fulfil his contract. The Protector will consider himself much obliged by the kindness. No more letters was poor Richard to write to crowned heads. On the very day on which the two first of the foregoing were written, he appeared in Wallingford House, and ordered the dissolution of the Council of Officers according to the edict of the Parliament. Next day it was known through all London that the question was between a dissolution of this Council of officers and a dissolution of the Parliament itself. The day after, Thursday, April 21, there was the famous double rendezvous of the two masses of soldiery round Whitehall to try the question, the rendezvous for Richard and the Parliament utterly failing, while that for Fleetwood, Desborough, and the other rebel chiefs, flooded the streets and St. James's Park. That night, quailing before the rough threats of Desborough, Richard and his Council yielded; and on Friday, the 22nd, the indignant Parliament knew itself to be dissolved, and Richard's Protectorate virtually at an end. Nominally, it dragged on for a month more. On Thursday, April 21, the day of the dreadful double rendezvous, and of Desborough's stormy interview with Richard in Whitehall to compel the dissolution of the Parliament, Milton, in his house in Petty France, on the very edge of the uproar, was quietly dictating a private letter. It is that numbered 28 among his _Epistoloe Familiares_, and headed "_Joanni Badioeo, Pastori Arausionensi_," i.e. "To John Badiaeus, Pastor of Orange." With some trouble, I have identified this "Badiaeus" with a certain French JEAN LABADIE, who is characterized by Bayle as a "schismatic minister, followed like an apostle," and by another authority as "one of the most dangerous fanatics of the seventeenth century." The facts of his life, to the moment of our present concern with him, are given in the accepted French authorities thus:--Born in 1610 at Bourg-en-Guyenne, the son of a soldier who had risen to be lieutenant, he had received a Jesuit education at Bordeaux, had entered the Jesuit order at an early age, and had become a priest. For fifteen years he had remained in the order, preaching, and also teaching rhetoric and philosophy, reputed "a prodigy of talent and piety," but also a mystic and enthusiast, with fancies that he must found a new religious sect. While preaching orthodox Catholicism in public, he had been indoctrinating disciples in private with his peculiarities; and, when they were numerous enough, he wanted to leave the Jesuits. By reasonings and kindness, they managed to retain him for a while; but he grew more odd and visionary, fasting often, eating only herbs, and having divine revelations. After a dangerous illness, which brought him to death's door, he did obtain his dismissal from the Jesuit order in April 1639, and went over France propagandizing. The Bishop of Amiens, caught by his eloquence, made him prebendary of a collegiate church in that town; in connexion with which, and with the Bishop's approval, he founded a religious association of young women, called St. Mary Magdalene. All seemed to go well for a time; but at length there was a scandal about him and a girl in Abbeville, with a burst of similar scandals about his abuse of the confessional for vicious purposes. To avoid arrest, he absconded to Paris in August 1644, and thence to Bazas, where he lived under a feigned name. But the Bishop of Bazas took him up; he cleared himself to the Bishop and others, and defied his calumniators. Only for a time; for again there were scandals, and he was expelled the diocese. Going then to Toulouse, he gained the confidence of the Archbishop there, who gave him charge of a convent of nuns. In this post he developed more systematically his notions of the religious life, described as a compound of Quietism and Antinomianism, after the fashion of sects already known in France and Germany, but with sexual extravangances which, when divulged, raised an indignant storm. In November 1649, he had to abscond from Toulouse; and, after various wanderings, in which he called himself "Jean de Jesus Christ" and obtained popularity as a prophet, he came to Montauban, and there publicly abjured Roman Catholicism in October 1650. Elected minister of the Protestant church of that town in 1652, he lived there for some years in great esteem among the Protestants, but in deadly feud with the Roman Catholics. The schism was such that at last the magistrates had to banish him from the town as a disturber of the peace. Then he had found refuge in Orange; and he was in some kind of temporary Protestant pastorship in that town of south-east France when there was this communication between him and Milton.[1] [Footnote 1: Article LABADIE in _Nouvelle Biographie Générale_ (1859), with additional information from Article on him in the _Biographie Universelle_ (edit. 1819), and from _La Vie du Sieur Jean Labadie_ by Bolsec (Lyon, 1664), and some passages in Bayle's Dictionary (e.g. in Article _Mamillaires_). It is from the additional authorities that I learn the fact of the removal of Labadie from Montauban to Orange; the Article in the _N. Biog. Gen._ omits it.--I have seen two publications of Labadie at Montauban--one of 1650, entitled _Declaration de Jean de L'Abadie, cydevant prestre_, giving his reasons for quitting the Church of Rome; the other of 1651, entitled _Lettre de J. de L'Abadie à ses amis de la Communion Romaine touchant sa Declaration_.] TO JEAN LABADIE, MINISTER OF ORANGE. "If I answer you rather late, distinguished and reverend Sir, our common friend Durie, I believe, will not refuse to let me transfer the blame of the late answer from myself to him. For, now that he has communicated to me that paper which you wished read to me, on the subject of your doings and sufferings in behalf of the Gospel, I have not deferred preparing this letter for you, to be given to the first carrier, being really anxious as to the interpretation you may put upon my long silence. I owe very great thanks meanwhile to your Du Moulin of Nismes [not far from Orange], who, by his speeches and most friendly talk concerning me, has procured me the goodwill of so many good men in those parts. And truly, though I am not ignorant that, whether from the fact that I did not, when publicly commissioned, decline the contest with an adversary of such name [Salmasius], or on account of the celebrity of the subject, or, finally, on account of my style of writing, I have become sufficiently known far and wide, yet my feeling is that I have real fame only in proportion to the good esteem I have among good men. That you also are of this way of thinking I see plainly--you who, kindled by the regard and love of Christian Truth, have borne so many labours, sustained the attacks of so many enemies, and who bravely do such actions every day as prove that, so far from seeking any fame from the bad, you do not fear rousing against you their most certain hatred and maledictions. O happy man thou! whom God, from among so many thousands, otherwise knowing and learned, has snatched singly from the very gates and jaws of Hell, and called to such an illustrious and intrepid profession of his Gospel! And at this moment I have cause for thinking that it has happened by the singular providence of God that I did not reply to you sooner. For, when I understood from your letter that, assailed and besieged as you are on all hands by bitter enemies, you were looking round, and no wonder, to see where you might, in the last extremity, should it come to that, find a suitable refuge, and that England was most to your mind, I rejoiced on more accounts than one that you had come to this conclusion,--one reason being the hope of having you here, and another the delight that you should have so high an opinion of my country; but the joy was counterbalanced by the regret that I did not then see any prospect of a becoming provision for you among us here, especially as you do not know English. Now, however, it has happened most opportunely that a certain French minister here, of great age, died a few days ago. The persons of most influence in the congregation, understanding that you are by no means safe where you are at present, are very desirous (I report this not from vague rumour, but on information from themselves) to have you chosen to the place of that minister: in fact, they invite you; they have resolved to pay the expenses of your journey; they promise that you shall have an income equal to the best of any French minister here, and that nothing shall be wanting that can contribute to your pleasant discharge of the pastoral duty among them. Wherefore, take my advice, Reverend Sir, and fly hither as soon as possible, to people who are anxious to have you, and where you will reap a harvest, not perhaps so rich in the goods of this world, but, as men like you most desire, numerous, I hope, in souls; and be assured that you will be most welcome here to all good men, and the sooner the better. Farewell. "Westminster: April 21, 1659." It is clear from this letter that Milton had never heard of the scandals against M. Labadie's moral character, or, if he had, utterly disbelieved them, and regarded him simply as a convert from Roman Catholicism whose passionate and aggressive Protestant fervour had brought intolerable and unjust persecution upon him in France. Durie was his informant; and, for all we can now know, Milton's judgment about Labadie may have been the right one, and the traditional French account of him to this day may be wrong. It is certainly strange, however, to find Milton befriending with so much readiness and zeal this French Protestant minister, against whom there were exactly such scandals abroad as those which he had himself believed and blazoned about Morus, for the murder of Morus's reputation over Europe, and his ruin in the French Protestant Church in particular. Nor does the reported sequel of Labadie's life, in the ordinary accounts of him, lessen the wonder.--Labadie did not come to London, as Milton had hoped. When he received Milton's letter, he was on the wing for Geneva, where he arrived in June 1659, and where he continued his preaching. Here, in the very city where Morus had once been, there still were commotions round him; and, after new wanderings in Germany, we find him at Middleburg in Holland in 1666, thus again by chance in a town where Morus had been before him. At Middleburg he seems to have attained his widest celebrity, gathering a body of admirers and important adherents, the chief of whom was "Mademoiselle Schurmann, so versed in the learned languages." At length a quarrel with M. de Wolzogue, minister of the Walloon church at Utrecht, brought Labadie into difficulties with the Walloon Synod and with the State authorities, and he migrated to Erfurt, and thence to Altona, where he died in 1674, "in the arms of Mademoiselle Schurmann," who had followed him to the last. He left a sect called _The Labadists_, who were strong for a time, and are perhaps not yet extinct. Among the beliefs they inherited from him are said to have been these:--(1) That God may and does deceive man; (2) That Scripture is not necessary to salvation, the immediate action of the Spirit on souls being sufficient; (3) That there ought to be no Baptism of Infants; (4) That truly spiritual believers are not bound by law and ceremonies; (5) That Sabbath-observance is unnecessary, all days being alike; (6) That the ordinary Christian Church is degenerate and decrepit. One sees here something like a French Quakerism, but with ingredients from older Anabaptism. Had Milton's letter had the intended effect, the sect might have had its home in London.[1] [Footnote 1: _Nouvelle Biographie Générale_, as before.--It is to be remembered that Milton himself authorized the publication of his letter to Badiaeus with his other Latin Familiar Epistles in 1674 (see Vol. I. p. 239). By that time he must have known the whole subsequent career of Labadie and all the reports about him; and he cannot even then have thought ill of him or of Mad'lle Schurmann. To the end, he liked all bold schismatics and sectaries, if they took a forward direction.] Virtually at an end on the 22nd of April by the enforced dissolution of the Parliament, Richard's Protectorate was more visibly at an end on the 7th of May, when the Wallingford-House chiefs agreed with the Republicans in restoring the Rump. Eight days after that event Milton was called on to write two letters for the new Republican authorities. They were as follows:-- (CXLVIII.) TO CHARLES GUSTAVUS, KING OF SWEDEN, _May_ 15, 1659:--"Most serene and most potent King, and very dear Friend: As it has pleased God, the best and all-powerful, with whom alone are all changes of Kingdoms and Commonwealths, to restore Us to our pristine authority and the supreme administration of English affairs, we have thought it good in the first place to inform your Majesty of the fact, and moreover to signify to you both our high regard for your Majesty, as a most potent Protestant prince, and also our desire to promote to the utmost of our power such a peace between you and the King of Denmark, himself likewise a very potent Protestant prince, as may not be brought about without our exertions and most willing good offices. Our pleasure therefore is that our internuncio extraordinary, Philip Meadows, be continued in our name in exactly the same employment which he has hitherto discharged with your Majesty for this Commonwealth; and to that end we, by these presents, give him the same power of making proposals and of treating and dealing with your Majesty which he had by his last commendatory letters. Whatever shall be transacted and concluded by him in our name, the same we pledge our promise, with God's good help, to confirm and ratify. May God long preserve your Majesty as a pillar and defence of the Protestant cause.--WILLIAM LENTHALL, _Speaker of the Parliament of the Commonwealth of England_." (CXLIX) To FREDERICK III., KING OF DENMARK, _May_ 15, 1659:--The counterpart of the foregoing. His Danish Majesty, addressed as "most serene King and very dear Friend" is informed by Lenthall of the change in English affairs, and of the sympathy the present English Government feels with him in his adversity. They will do their utmost to secure a peace between him and the King of Sweden; and Philip Meadows, their Envoy Extraordinary to the King of Sweden, has full powers to treat with his Danish Majesty too for that end. "God grant to your Majesty, as soon as possible, a happy and joyful outcome from all those difficulties of your affairs in which you behave so bravely and magnanimously!" On the 25th of May Richard sent in his reluctant abdication, leaving the Rump, which had already assumed the supreme authority, to exercise that authority without further challenge or opposition on his part. Most of the public officials remained in their posts, and Milton remained In his. After five years and five months of Secretaryship under a Single-Person Government, he found himself again Secretary under exactly such a Republican Government as he had served originally, consisting now of the small Parliament of the Restored Rumpers and of a Council of State appointed by that Parliament. In this Council of State were Bradshaw, Vane, Sir James Harrington, St. John, Hasilrig, Scott, Walton, and Whitlocke, who had been members of all the first five Councils of the Commonwealth, from that which had invited Milton to the Secretaryship in 1649 to that which Cromwell forcibly dissolved in 1653, besides Fairfax, Fleetwood, Ludlow, John Jones, Wallop, Challoner, Neville, Dixwell, Downes, Morley, Thompson, and Algernon Sidney, whom Milton had known as members of one or more of those five Councils, and Lambert and Desborough, who had not been in any of them, but were among his later acquaintances. CHAPTER II. Second Section. MILTON'S LIFE AND SECRETARYSHIP THROUGH THE ANARCHY: MAY 1659--FEB. 1659-60. _FIRST STAGE OF THE ANARCHY, OR THE RESTORED RUMP_ (MAY--OCT. 1659):--FEELINGS AND POSITION OF MILTON IN THE NEW STATE OF THINGS: HIS SATISFACTION ON THE WHOLE, AND THE REASONS FOR IT: LETTER OF MOSES WALL TO MILTON: RENEWED AGITATION AGAINST TITHES AND CHURCH-ESTABLISHMENT: VOTES ON THAT SUBJECT IN THE RUMP: MILTON'S CONSIDERATIONS TOUCHING THE LIKELIEST MEANS TO REMOVE HIRELINGS OUT OF THE CHURCH: ACCOUNT OF THE PAMPHLET, WITH EXTRACTS: ITS THOROUGH-GOING VOLUNTARYISM: CHURCH-DISESTABLISHMENT DEMANDED ABSOLUTELY, WITHOUT COMPENSATION FOR VESTED INTERESTS: THE APPEAL FRUITLESS, AND THE SUBJECT IGNORED BY THE RUMP: DISPERSION OF THAT BODY BY LAMBERT. _SECOND STAGE OF THE ANARCHY, OR THE WALLINGFORD-HOUSE INTERRUPTION_ (OCT.--DEC. 1659):--MILTON'S THOUGHTS ON LAMBERT'S COUP D'ÉTAT IN HIS _LETTER TO A FRIEND CONCERNING THE RUPTURES OF THE COMMONWEALTH_: THE LETTER IN THE MAIN AGAINST LAMBERT AND IN DEFENCE OF THE RUMP: ITS EXTRAORDINARY PRACTICAL PROPOSAL OF A GOVERNMENT BY TWO PERMANENT CENTRAL BODIES: THE PROPOSAL COMPARED WITH THE ACTUAL ADMINISTRATION BY THE _COMMITTEE OF SAFETY_ AND THE _WALLINGFORD-HOUSE COUNCIL OF OFFICERS_: MILTON STILL NOMINALLY IN THE LATIN SECRETARYSHIP: MONEY WARRANT OF OCT. 25, 1659, RELATING TO MILTON, MARVELL, AND EIGHTY-FOUR OTHER OFFICIALS: NO TRACE OF ACTUAL SERVICE BY MILTON FOR THE NEW _COMMITTEE OF SAFETY_: HIS MEDITATIONS THROUGH THE TREATY BETWEEN THE WALLINGFORD-HOUSE GOVERNMENT AND MONK IN SCOTLAND: HIS MEDITATIONS THROUGH THE COMMITTEE-DISCUSSIONS AS TO THE FUTURE MODEL OF GOVERNMENT: HIS INTEREST IN THIS AS NOW THE PARAMOUNT QUESTION, AND HIS COGNISANCE OF THE MODELS OF HARRINGTON AND THE ROTA CLUB: WHITLOCKE'S NEW CONSTITUTION DISAPPOINTING TO MILTON: TWO MORE LETTERS TO OLDENBURG AND YOUNG RANELAGH: GOSSIP FROM ABROAD IN CONNECTION WITH THESE LETTERS: MORUS AGAIN, AND THE COUNCIL OF FRENCH PROTESTANTS AT LOUDUN: END OF THE WALLINGFORD-HOUSE INTERRUPTION. _THIRD STAGE OF THE ANARCHY, OR THE SECOND RESTORATION OF THE RUMP_ (DEC. 1659-FEB. 1659-60):--MILTON'S DESPONDENCY AT THIS PERIOD: ABATEMENT OF HIS FAITH IN THE RUMP: HIS THOUGHTS DURING THE MARCH OF MONK FROM SCOTLAND AND AFTER MONK'S ARRIVAL IN LONDON: HIS STUDY OF MONK NEAR AT HAND AND MISTRUST OF THE OMENS: HIS INTEREST FOR A WHILE IN THE QUESTION OF THE PRECONSTITUTION OF THE NEW PARLIAMENT PROMISED BY THE RUMP: HIS ANXIETY THAT IT SHOULD BE A REPUBLICAN PARLIAMENT BY MERE SELF-ENLARGEMENT OF THE RUMP: HIS PREPARATION OF A NEW REPUBLICAN PAMPHLET: THE PUBLICATION POSTPONED BY MONK'S SUDDEN DEFECTION FROM THE RUMP, THE ROASTING OF THE RUMP IN THE CITY, AND THE RESTORATION OF THE SECLUDED MEMBERS TO THEIR PLACES IN THE PARLIAMENT: MILTON'S DESPONDENCY COMPLETE. With what feelings was it that Milton found himself once more in the employment of his old masters, the original Republicans or Commonwealth's-men? That there may have been some sense of awkwardness in the re-connexion is not unlikely. Had he not for six years been a most conspicuous Cromwellian? Had he not justified again and again in print Cromwell's _coup d'état_ of 1653, by which the Rump had been turned out of power, and which the now Restored Rumpers, and especially such of their leaders as Vane, Scott, Hasilrig, and Bradshaw, were bound to remember as Cromwell's unpardonable sin, and the woeful beginning of an illegitimate interregnum? He had justified it, hardly anonymously, in his Letter to a Gentleman in the Country, published in May 1653, only a fortnight after the fact (Vol. IV. pp. 519-523). He had justified it a year later in his _Defensio Secunda_ of 1654, published some months after the Protectorate had actually begun. In that famous pamphlet, he had, amid much else to the same effect, made special reference to Cromwell's Dissolution of the Rump in these words addressed to Cromwell himself: "When you saw delays being contrived, and every one more intent on his private interests than on the public good, and the people complaining of being cheated of their hopes and circumvented by the power of a few, you did what they themselves had so often declined to do when asked, and put an end to their Government" (Vol. IV. p. 604). Rumpers of tenacious memories cannot have forgotten such published utterances of Milton, while the fact that he had for some years past been an Oliverian, a Protectoratist, a Court-official for Oliver and Richard, was patent to all. Yet, now that the old Rumpers were restored to power, the survivors of the original "few" whose dissolution by Cromwell he had publicly praised and defended, here was Milton still in his secretaryship and writing the first foreign letters they required. How was this? It is hardly a sufficient answer to say that it is quite customary for officials to remain in their places through changes of Government. On the one hand, Milton was not a man to remain in an element with which he could not conscientiously accord; and, on the other, the Rumpers were rather careful in seeking public servants of their own sort. Thurloe was out of the general Secretaryship; and one of the first acts of the restored House was to punish Mr. Henry Scobell, Clerk of the Parliament, for having entered, the fact of Cromwell's Dissolution of the House on April 20, 1653, in the Journals tinder that date. They ordered a Bill to be brought in for repealing the Act by which Scobell held the Clerkship.[1] The truth, then, is that Milton was not, on the whole, displeased by the return of his old friends to power. Though he had justified Cromwell's dissolution of the Rump and had become openly an Oliverian at the beginning of the Protectorate, he had never ceased to regard with admiration and affection such of the old Republicans as Vane, Bradshaw, and Overton. It had probably all along been a question with him whether the blame of their disablement under the Protectorate lay more with themselves or with Oliver. Then, as we have abundantly seen, there is reason for believing that before the end of the Protectorate his own Oliverianism or Cromwellianism had become weaker than at first. The Miltonic reserves, as we have called them, with which he had given his adhesion to the Protectorate even at first, had taken stronger and stronger development in his mind; and, whatever he found to admire in Cromwell's Government all in all, the whole course of that Government in Church matters had been a disappointment. Milton wanted to see Church and State entirely separated; Cromwell had mixed them, intertwined them, more than ever. Milton wanted to see the utter abolition in England of anything that could be called a clergy; Cromwell had made it one of the chief objects of his rule to maintain a clergy and extend it massively. Whether this policy might not yet be reversed had been one of Milton's first questions with himself after Cromwell's death; and his _Treatise of Civil Power in Ecclesiastical Causes_, addressed to Richard's Parliament, had been a challenge to that Parliament not to shrink from the great attempt. In that treatise, it is not too much to say, Milton had shaken hands again with the old Republican party. In the preface to it he had dwelt fondly on his former connexion with them, on his recollection especially of the speeches he had heard from some of them in the old Councils of State of the Commonwealth, when he had first the honour to sit there as Latin Secretary, and listen to their private debates. What clearness then, what decisiveness, in such men as Vane and Bradshaw, on that "important article of Christianity," the necessary distinctness of the Civil from the Religious! Ah! could those old days be back! He had written as if those days had not been satisfactory, as if the dispersion of his old masters of those days had been necessary; but, in so writing, had he not been too hasty? So he had been asking himself of late; and though, as Richard's Latin Secretary, and writing under his Protectorate, he had not said a word against the established Protectoral Government, he had expressed generally his conviction that England would never be right till either those charged with the Government should be men "discerning between Civil and Religious" or none but such should be charged with the Government. Now, however, in May 1659, he might speak more plainly. Richard's Government had been swept away;--Richard's Parliament, which he had addressed, was no more in being; and, by a revolution which he had not expected, and in which he had taken no part, the pure Republic, with the relics of the Parliament that had first created it, was again the established order. All round about him the men he respected most were exulting in the change, and calling it a revival of "the Good Old Cause." Without pronouncing on the change in all its aspects, he could join in the exultation for a special reason. Would not the restored Republican Parliament and their Councils of State see it to be part of their duty to assert at last the principle of absolute Religious Voluntaryism? [Footnote 1: Commons Journals, May 19, 1659.] This representation of Milton's position at the time of the restoration of the Rump is confirmed by a private letter then addressed to him. The writer was a certain Moses Wall, of Causham or Caversham in Oxfordshire, a scholar and Republican opinionist of whom there are traces in Hartlib's correspondence and elsewhere.[1] Milton had recently written to him, sending him perhaps a copy of his _Treatise of Civil Power in Ecclesiastical Causes_; and this is Wall's reply--written, it will be observed, the very day after Richard's abdication:-- [Footnote 1: Worthington's Diary and Correspondence, by Crossley, I. 355 and 365.] "Sir, "I received yours the day after you wrote, and do humbly thank you that you are pleased to honour me with your letters. I confess I have (even in my privacy in the country) oft had thoughts about you, and that with much respect for your friendliness to truth in your early years and in bad times. But I was uncertain whether your relation to the Court (though I think that a Commonwealth was more friendly to you than a Court) had not clouded your former light; but your last book resolved that doubt. "You complain of the non-progressency of the nation, and of its retrograde motion of late, in liberty and spiritual truths. It is much to be bewailed; but, yet, let us pity human frailty. When those who had made deep protestations of their zeal for our liberty, both spiritual and civil, and made the fairest offers to be the asserters thereof, and whom we thereupon trusted,--when these, being instated in power, shall betray the good thing committed to them, and lead us back to Egypt, and by that force which we gave them to win us liberty hold us fast in chains,--what can poor people do? You know who they were that watched our Saviour's sepulchre to keep him from rising [soldiers! see Matthew XXVII. and XXVIII.]. Besides, whilst people are not free, but straitened in accommodations for life, their spirits will be dejected and servile; and, conducing to that end [of rousing them], there should be an improving of our native commodities, as our manufactures, our fishery, our fens, forests, and commons, and our trade at sea, &c.: which would give the body of the nation a comfortable subsistence. And the breaking that cursed yoke of Tithes would much help thereto. Also another thing I cannot but mention; which is that the Norman Conquest and Tyranny is continued upon the nation without any thought of removing it: I mean the tenure of land by copyhold, and holding for life under a lord, or rather tyrant, of a manor; whereby people care not to improve their land by cost upon it, not knowing how soon themselves or theirs may be outed it, nor what the house is in which they live, for the same reason; and they are far more enslaved to the lord of the manor than the rest of the nation is to a king or supreme magistrate. "We have waited for liberty; but it must be God's work and not man's: who thinks it sweet to maintain his pride and worldly interest to the gratifying of the flesh, whatever becomes of the precious liberty of mankind. But let us not despond, but do our duty; God will carry on that blessed work, in despite of all opposites, and to their ruin if they persist therein. "Sir, my humble request is that you would proceed, and give us that other member of the distribution mentioned in your book: viz. that Hire doth greatly impede truth and liberty. It is like, if you do, you shall find opposers; but remember that saying,_'Beatius est pati quam frui,'_ or, in the Apostle's words, James V. 11. [Greek: Makarizomen tous hypomenontas] ['We count them happy that endure']. I have sometimes thought (concurring with your assertion) of that storied voice that should speak from heaven when Ecclesiastics were endowed with worldly preferments, _'Hodie venenum infunditur in Ecelesiam'_ ['This day is poison poured into the Church']; for, to use the speech of Gen. IV. _ult._, according to the sense which it hath in the Hebrew, 'Then began men to corrupt the worship of God.' I shall tell you a supposal of mine; which is this:--Mr. Durie has bestowed about thirty years' time in travel, conference, and writing, to reconcile Calvinists and Lutherans, and that with little or no success. But the shortest way were:--Take away ecclesiastical dignities, honours, and preferments on both sides, and all would soon be hushed; those ecclesiastics would be quiet, and then the people would come forth into truth and liberty. But I will not engage in this quarrel. Yet I shall lay this engagement upon myself,--to remain "Your faithful friend and servant, "M. Wall.[1] "Causham: May 26, 1659." [Footnote 1: Copy in Ayscough: MS. in British Museum, No. 4292 (f. 121); where the copyist "J. Owen" (the Rev. J. Owen of Rochdale) certifies it as from the original. It was printed, not very correctly, by Richard Baron, in 1756, in his preface to his edition of the _Eikonoklastes._] Here, from a man evidently after Milton's own heart on the Church question, we have Milton's welcome back into the ranks of the old Republicans. And more and more through the five months of the first Restoration of the Rump (May 7--Oct. 13) the friends of "the good old cause" had reason to know that Milton was again one of themselves. It happens, indeed, that we have no more letters of his for the Restored Rump Government than the two of May 15, already quoted, which he wrote for the restored House, and which were signed by Speaker Lenthall. Those two letters close the entire series of the known and extant State-Letters of Milton. He and Marvell, however, were still in their Secretaryship, drawing their salaries as before; and of the completeness of Milton's re-adherence to the Republican Government there is evidence more massive and striking than could have been furnished by any number of farther official letters by him for the Rump or its Council. Milton, had not judged wrongly in supposing that the question of Church-disestablishment would now be made part and parcel of "the good old cause." We have already glanced at the facts (p. 466), but they may be given here more in detail:--Hardly had the Rump been reconstituted when petitions for Disestablishment, in the form of petitions for the abolition of Tithes, began to pour in upon it. One such, called "The Humble Representation and Petition of many well-affected persons in the counties of Somerset, Wilts, and some parts of Devon, Dorset, and Hampshire," was read in the House on the 14th of June. The petitioners were thanked, and informed that the House resolved "to give encouragement to a godly, preaching, learned ministry throughout the nation, and for that end to continue the payment of Tithes till they can find out some other more equal and comfortable maintenance for the ministry, and satisfaction of the people; which they intend with all convenient speed." That day, accordingly, in a division of thirty-eight Yeas (Carew Raleigh and Sir William Brereton tellers) to thirty-eight Noes (Hasilrig and Colonel White tellers) it was carried, by the Speaker's casting vote, to refer the question of some substitute for Tithes to a Grand Committee. On the 27th of June, there having been other petitions against Tithes in the meantime, signed by "many thousands," the House came to a more definite resolution, which they ordered to be printed and published by the Judges in their circuits. It was "That this Parliament doth declare that, for the encouragement of a godly, preaching, learned ministry throughout the nation, the payment of Tithes shall continue as now they are, _unless_ this Parliament shall find out some other," &c. As the word _unless_ had been, substituted for the word _until_ without a division, it is evident that the House had gone back in their intentions in the course of the fortnight, and were less disposed to commit themselves to any serious interference with the Church Establishment as left by Cromwell. The disappointment to the petitioning thousands must have been great. Still, the question had been raised, and might be regarded as only adjourned. What was wanted was continued agitation out of doors, more petitioning and more pamphleteering.[1] [Footnote 1: Commons Journals of dates.] It was in this last way that Milton could help. As advised by his friend Moses Wall, he had been busy over that second Disestablishment tract which he had promised; and in August 1659 it appeared in this form: _"Considerations touching the likeliest means to remove Hirelings out of the Church. Wherein is also discourc'd of Tithes, Church-fees, Church Revenues; and, whether any maintenance of ministers can be settl'd by law. The author J.M. London, Printed by T.N. for L. Chapman at the Crown in Popes-head Alley,_ 1659." The volume is a very small octavo, and contains eighteen unnumbered pages of prefatory address to the Parliament in large open type, signed "John Milton" in full, followed by 153 pages of text.[1] [Footnote 1: Copy in Thomason Collection, with date "Aug." marked on title-page--month only, no day.] The Address to the Parliament deserves particular notice. The following is the main portion of it, with two phrases Italicised:-- "Owing to your protection, Supreme Senate, this liberty of writing which I have used these eighteen years on all occasions to assert the just rights and freedoms both of Church and State, and so far approved as to have been trusted with the representment and defence of your actions to all Christendom against an adversary of no mean repute, to whom should I address what I still publish on the same argument but to you, whose magnanimous counsels first opened and unbound the age from a double bondage under Prelatical and Regal tyranny, above our own hopes heartening us to look up at last like Men and Christians from the slavish dejection wherein from father to son we were bred up and taught, and thereby deserving of these nations, if they be not barbarously ingrateful, to be acknowledged, next under God, _the authors and best patrons of Religious and Civil Liberty that ever these Islands brought forth?_ The care and tuition of whose peace and safety, _after a short but scandalous night of interruption,_ is now again, by a new dawning of God's miraculous Providence among us, revolved upon your shoulders. And to whom more appertain these Considerations which I propound than to yourselves, and the debate before you, though I trust of no difficulty, yet at present of great expectation, not whether ye will gratify, were it no more than so, but whether ye will hearken to the just petition of many thousands best affected both to Religion and to this your return, or whether ye will satisfy (which you never can) the covetous pretences and demands of insatiable Hirelings, whose disaffection ye well know hath to yourselves and your resolutions? That I, though among many others in this common concernment, interpose to your deliberations what my thoughts also are, your own judgment and the success thereof hath given me the confidence: which requests but this--that, if I have prosperously, God so favouring me, defended the public cause of this Commonwealth to foreigners, ye would not think the reason and ability whereon ye trusted once (and repent not) your whole reputation to the world either grown less by more maturity and longer study or less available in English than in another tongue: but that, if it sufficed, some years past, to convince and satisfy the unengaged of other nations in the justice of your doings, though then held paradoxal, it may as well suffice now against weaker opposition in matters (except here in England, with a spirituality of men devoted to their temporal gain) of no controversy else among Protestants." This is, unmistakeably, a public testimony of Milton's re-adhesion to the Rumpers, with something like an expression of regret that he had ever parted from them. After all, he could call them "the authors and best patrons of religious and civil liberty that ever these Islands brought forth"; and, with this renewed conviction, and remembering also their former confidence in himself, especially in the Salmasian controversy, he could now congratulate them and the country on their return to power. But is not the Address also a recantation of his Oliverianism? To some extent, it must be so interpreted. It seems utterly impossible, indeed, that the phrase "_a short but scandalous night of interruption_" was intended to apply to the entire six years of the Cromwellian Dictatorship and Protectorship. That had not been a "short" interruption, for it had exceeded in length the whole duration of the Commonwealth it had interrupted; and it would be the most marvellous inconsistency on record if Milton could ever have brought himself to call it "scandalous." Who had written the panegyric on Cromwell and his actually established Protectorship in the _Defensio Secunda?_ Who had been Oliver's Latin Secretary from first to last, and penned for him his despatches on the Piedmontese massacre and all his greatest besides? The likelihood, therefore, is that "the short but scandalous night of interruption" in Milton's mind was the fortnight or so of Wallingford-House usurpation which broke up Richard's Parliament and Protectorate, and from the continuance of which, with all the inconveniences of a mere military despotism, the restoration of the Rump had seemed a happy rescue. But, though this single phrase may be thus explained, the tone of the whole address intimates far less of gratitude to Oliver dead than there had been of admiration for Oliver living. And the reason at this point is most obvious. Was it not precisely because Cromwell had failed to fulfil Milton's expectation of him, in his sonnet of May 1652, that he would deliver the Commonwealth from the plague of "hireling wolves," calling themselves a Clergy--was it not because Cromwell from first to last had pursued a contrary policy--that it remained for Milton now, seven years after the date of that sonnet, to have to offer, as a private thinker, and on mere printed paper, his own poor _Considerations touching the likeliest means to remove Hirelings out of the Church?_ It was not in a pamphlet on that subject, wherever else, that Milton could say his best for the memory of Cromwell. After some preliminary observations connecting the present treatise with its forerunner; Milton opens his subject thus:-- "Hire of itself is neither a thing unlawful, nor a word of any evil note, signifying no more than a due recompense or reward, as when our Saviour saith, 'The labourer is worthy of his hire.' That which makes it so dangerous in the Church, and properly makes HIRELING a word always of evil signification, is either the excess thereof or the undue manner of giving and taking it. What harm the excess thereof brought to the Church perhaps was not found by experience till the days of Constantine; who, out of his zeal, thinking he could be never too liberally a nursing father of the Church, might be not unfitly said to have either overlaid it or choked it in the nursing. Which was foretold, as is recorded in Ecclesiastical traditions, by a voice heard from Heaven, on the very day that those great donations of Church-revenues were given, crying aloud, _'This day is poison poured into the Church'_ [Note the adoption of the anecdote from Mr. Wall's letter]. Which the event soon after verified, as appears by another no less ancient observation, that 'Religion brought forth wealth, and the Daughter devoured the Mother.' But, long ere _wealth_ came into the Church, so soon as any _gain_ appeared in Religion, HIRELINGS were apparent, drawn in long before by the very scent thereof [References to Judas as the first hireling, to Simon Magus as the second, and to various texts in the Acts and Epistles proving that among the early preachers of Christianity there were men who preached 'for filthy lucre's sake,' or made a mere trade of the Gospel] .... Thus we see that not only the excess of Hire in wealthiest times, but also the undue and vicious taking or giving it, though but small or mean, as in the primitive times, gave to hirelings occasion, though not intended yet sufficient, to creep at first into the Church. Which argues also the difficulty, or rather the impossibility, to remove them quite, unless every minister were, as St. Paul, contented to teach _gratis:_ but few such are to be found. As therefore we cannot justly take away all Hire in the Church, because we cannot otherwise quite remove Hirelings, so are we not, for the impossibility of removing them all, to use therefore no endeavour that fewest may come in, but rather, in regard the evil, do what we can, will always be incumbent and unavoidable, to use our utmost diligence how it may be least dangerous. Which will be likeliest effected if we consider,--first what recompense God hath ordained should be given to ministers of the Church (for that a recompense ought to be given them, and may by them justly be received, our Saviour himself, from the very light of reason and of equity, hath declared, Luke X. 7, '_The labourer is worthy of his hire'_); _next,_ by whom; and, _lastly,_ in what manner." In this passage and in other passages throughout the Treatise it is clear that Milton's ideal was a Church in which no minister should take pay at all for his preaching or ministry, whether pay from the state or from his hearers, but every minister should, as St. Paul did, preach, absolutely and systematically _gratis_, deriving his livelihood and his leisure to preach from his private resources, or, if he had none such, then from the practice of some calling or handicraft apart from his preaching. Deep down in Milton's mind, notwithstanding his professed deference to Christ's words, "_The labourer is worthy of his hire,_" we can see this conviction that it would be better for the world if religious doctrine, or in fact doctrine of any kind, were never bought or sold, but all spiritual teachers were to abhor the very touch of money for their lessons, being either gentlemen of independent means who could propagate the truth splendidly from high motives, or else tent-makers, carpenters, and bricklayers, passionate with the possession of some truth to propagate. This, however, having been acknowledged to be perhaps an impossibility on any great scale, he goes on to inquire, as proposed, what the legitimate and divinely-appointed hire of Gospel-ministers is, from whom it may come, and in what manner. The general result is as follows:--I. The Tithes of the old Jewish dispensation are utterly abolished under the Gospel. Nearly half the treatise is an argument to this effect, and consequently for the immediate abolition of the tithe-system in England. Here Milton lends his whole force to the popular current on this subject among the friends of "the good old cause," advocating those petitions to the Rump of which he has spoken in his preface. But he goes farther than the abolition of tithes. He will not allow of any statutory substitute for tithes, any taxation of the people in any form for the support of Religion. The only substitute for tithes which he discusses specifically is compulsory church-fees for ministerial offices, such as baptisms, marriages, and burials. These, as well as tithes, he utterly condemns; and he winds up this part of his inquiry thus: "Seeing, then, that God hath given to ministers under the Gospel that only which is justly given them (that is to say, a due and moderate livelihood, the hire of their labour), and that the heave-offering of Tithes is abolished with the Altar (yes, though not abolished, yet lawless as they enjoy them), their Melchizedekian right also trivial and groundless, and both tithes and fees, if exacted or established, unjust and scandalous, we may hope, with _them_ removed, to remove Hirelings in some good measure." II. It is maintained that the lawful maintenance of the ministry can consist only in the voluntary offerings of those they instruct, whether tendered individually, or collected into a common treasury for distribution. The flocks ought to maintain their own pastors, and no others are bound to contribute for the purpose. But what of poor neighbourhoods that cannot maintain pastors and yet need them most sorely? Milton has unbounded confidence that these will be overtaken and provided for by the zeal of pious individuals, or by "the charity of richer congregations," taking the form of itinerant missions. "If it be objected that this itinerary preaching will not serve to plant the Gospel in those places unless they who are sent abide there some competent time, I answer that, if they stay there for a year or two, which was the longest time usually staid by the Apostles in one place, it may suffice to teach them who will attend and learn all the points of Religion necessary to salvation: then, sorting them into several congregations of a moderate number, out of the ablest and zealousest of them to create elders, who, exercising and requiring from themselves what they have learnt (for no learning is retained without constant exercise and methodical repetition), may teach and govern the rest: and, so exhorted to continue faithful and stedfast, they may securely be committed to the providence of God and the guidance of his Holy Spirit till God may offer some opportunity to visit them again and to confirm them." The only concession Milton will make is that, in cases of urgent necessity, application may be made to magistrates or other trustees of charitable funds for aid in these temporary and itinerant missions. For the rest, it will be seen, it is with difficulty that he allows the existence of a permanent pastorate anywhere. If there is to be a body of men in the community making a business of preaching, and if in towns and populous neighbourhoods congregations choose to retain the services, for life or for an indefinite period, of particular ministerial persons selected from this body, and to erect handsome buildings convenient for such services, well and good, or rather it cannot be helped; but the picture most to Milton's fancy is that of an England generally, or at all events of a rural England, without any fixed or regular parish pastors or parish-churches, but each little local cluster of believers meeting on Sundays or other days in chapel or barn for mutual edification, or to be instructed by such simple teaching elders as may easily, from time to time, be produced within itself. Add the itinerant agency of more practiced and professional preachers, circulating periodically among the local clusters, to rouse them or keep them alive; and nothing more would be needed. There would be plenty of preaching, and good preaching, everywhere; but, as most of it would be spontaneous by hard-handed men known among their neighbours, and working, like their neighbours, for their ordinary subsistence, the preaching profession, as a means of income, would be reduced to a minimum. In a Church so constituted there would still be hirelings, especially in large towns and where there were wealthy congregations; but the number of such would be greatly reduced. III. Under the third head of the "manner" of the recompense to ministers, where there is any recompense at all, the substance of Milton's remarks is that the purely voluntary character of the recompense must be studiously maintained. It must be purely an alms, an oblation of benevolence. Hence it should never take the form of a life-endowment, or even of a contract conferring a legal title to demand payment. The appearance of a minister of the Gospel in a law-court to sue for money supposed to be due to him for his ministerial services, even by promise or agreement, is spoken of with disgust. Were it the understood rule that there could be no recovery by a minister even of his promised salary, would not that also tend in some degree to keep Hirelings out of the Church? The pamphlet, it will be seen, is more outspoken and thoroughgoing than its forerunner. It contains also more of those individual passages that represent Milton in his rough mood of sarcastic strength, though none of such beauty or eloquence as are to be found in his earlier pamphlets. The following are characteristic:-- _Mr. Prynne's Defences of Tithes_:--"To heap such unconvincing citations as these in Religion, whereof the Scripture only is our rule, argues not much learning nor judgment, but the lost labour of much unprofitable reading. And yet a late hot Querist for Tithes, whom ye may know, by his wits lying ever beside him in the margin, to be ever beside his wits in the text,--a fierce Reformer once, now rankled with a contrary heat,--would send us back, very reformedly indeed, to learn Reformation from Tyndarus and Rebuffas, two Canonical Promoters."[1] [Footnote 1: The reference is to Prynne's _Ten Considerable Queries concerning Tithes, &c., against the Petitioners and Petitions for their Total Abolition_: 1659.] _Marriages and Clerical Concern in the same_:--"As for Marriages, that ministers should meddle with them, as not sanctioned or legitimate without their celebration, I find no ground in Scripture either of precept or example. Likeliest it is (which our Selden hath well observed _I. II. c. 28. Ux. Heb._) that in imitation of heathen priests, who were wont at nuptials to use many rites and ceremonies, and especially judging it would be profitable and the increase of their authority not to be spectators only in business of such concernment to the life of man, they insinuated that marriage was not holy without their benediction, and for the better colour made it a Sacrament; being of itself a Civil Ordinance, a household contract, a thing indifferent and free to the whole race of mankind, not as religious, but as men. Best, indeed, undertaken to religious ends, as the Apostle saith (1 Cor. VII. '_In the Lord_'); yet not therefore invalid or unholy without a minister and his pretended necessary hallowing, more than any other act, enterprise, or contract, of civil life,--which ought all to be done also in the Lord and to his glory,--all which, no less than marriage, were by the cunning of priests heretofore, as material to their profit, transacted at the altar. Our Divines deny it to be a Sacrament; yet retained the celebration, till prudently a late Parliament recovered the civil liberty of marriage from their encroachment, and transferred the ratifying and registering thereof from their Canonical Shop to the proper cognisance of Civil Magistrates" [The Marriages Act of the Barebones Parliament; in accordance with which had been Milton's own second marriage: see ante p. 281, and Vol. IV. p. 511]. _Sitting under a Stated Minister:_--"If men be not all their lifetime under a teacher to learn Logic, Natural Philosophy, Ethics, or Mathematics, ... certainly it is not necessary to the attainment of Christian knowledge that men should sit all their life long at the foot of a pulpited divine, while he, a lollard indeed over his elbow-cushion, in almost the seventh part of forty or fifty years, teaches them scarce half the principles of Religion, and his sheep ofttimes sit the while to as little purpose of benefiting as the sheep in their pews at Smithfield." _Congregations for mutual Edification:_--"Notwithstanding the gaudy superstition of some devoted still ignorantly to temples, we may be well assured that He who disdained not to be laid in a manger disdains not to be preached in a barn, and that by such meetings as these, being indeed most apostolical and primitive, they will in a short time advance more in Christian knowledge and reformation of life than by the many years preaching of such an incumbent,--I may say such an incubus ofttimes,--as will be meanly hired to abide long in those places." _A Reflection on Cromwell for his Established Church:_--"For the magistrate, in person of a nursing father, to make the Church his mere ward, as always in minority,-the Church to whom he ought as a Magistrate (Isaiah XLIS. 23) '_to bow down with his face toward the earth and lick up the dust of her feet,_'--her to subject to his political drifts and conceived opinions by mastering her revenue, and so by his examinant Committees to circumscribe her free election of ministers,--is neither just nor pious: no honour done to the Church, but a plain dishonour." _University Education of Ministers:--State of the Facts:_ "They pretend that their education, either at School or University, hath been very chargeable, and therefore ought to be repaired in future by a plentiful maintenance: whereas it is well known that the better half of them, and ofttimes poor and pitiful boys, of no merit or promising hopes that might entitle them to the public provision but their poverty and the unjust favour of friends, have had the most of their breeding, both at School and University, by scholarships, exhibitions, and fellowships, at the public cost,--which might engage them the rather to give freely, as they have freely received. Or, if they have missed of these helps at the latter place, they have after two or three years left the course of their studies there, if they ever well began them, and undertaken, though furnished with little else but ignorance, boldness, and ambition, if with no worse vices, a chaplainship in some gentleman's house, to the frequent imbasing of his sons with illiterate and narrow principles. Or, if they have lived there [at the University] upon their own, who knows not that seven years' charge of living there,--to them who fly not from the government of their parents to the licence of a University, but come seriously to study,--is no more than, may be well defrayed and reimbursed by one year's revenue of an ordinary good benefice? If they had then means of breeding from their parents, 'tis likely they have more now; and, if they have, it needs must be mechanic and uningenuous in them to bring a bill of charges for the learning of those liberal Arts and Sciences which they have learnt (if they have indeed learnt them, as they seldom have) to their own benefit and accomplishment. But they will say 'We had betaken us to some other trade or profession, had we not expected to find a better livelihood by the Ministry.' This is what I looked for,--to discover them openly neither true lovers of Learning and so very seldom guilty of it, nor true ministers of the Gospel." _University Education of Ministers not Necessary_: "What Learning, either human or divine, can be necessary to a minister may as easily and less chargeably be had in any private house ... Those theological disputations there held [i.e. at the Universities] by Professors and Graduates are such as tend least of all to the edification or capacity of the people, but rather perplex and leaven pure doctrine with scholastical trash than enable any minister to the better preaching of the Gospel. Whence we may also compute, since they come to reckonings, the charges of his needful library; which, though some shame not to value at £600 [equivalent to £2000 now], may be competently furnished for £60 [equivalent to £200 now]. If any man, for his own curiosity or delight, be in books further expensive, that is not to be reckoned as necessary to his ministerial either breeding or function. But Papists and other adversaries cannot be confuted without Fathers and Councils, immense volumes and of vast charges! I will show them therefore a shorter and a better way of confutation: _Tit. I._ 9; 'Holding fast the faithful Word as he hath been taught, that he may be able, by sound doctrine, both to exhort and to convince gainsayers,'--who are confuted as soon as heard bringing that which is either not in Scripture or against it. To pursue them further through the obscure and entangled wood of antiquity, Fathers and Councils fighting one against another, is needless, endless, not requisite in a minister, and refused by the first Reformers of our Religion. And yet we may be confident, if these things be thought needful, let the State but erect in public good store of Libraries, and there will not want men in the Church who of their own inclinations will become able in this kind against Papists or any other Adversary." No Parliament that England ever saw, not even the Barebones Parliament itself, could have entertained for a moment, with a view to practical legislation, these speculations of the blind Titan in all their length and breadth. Disestablishment, Disendowment, Abolition of a Clergy, had been the dream of the Anabaptists and Fifth Monarchy men of the Barebones Parliament. Even in that House, however, the battle practically, and on which the House broke up, was on the question of the continuance of Tithes, and it is dubious whether some in that half of the House which voted against Tithes would not have been for preserving a Church Establishment or Preaching Ministry by some other form of state-maintenance. Nor can one imagine, even in those eager and revolutionary times, an utter disregard of that principle of compensation for life-interests which any Parliament now, contemplating a scheme of Disestablishment, would consider binding in common equity. The old Bishops, and the Prelatic Clergy, indeed, had been disestablished without much consideration of life-interests; but the procedure in their case had been of a penal character, and it is unlikely that it would have been equally unceremonious with the new clergy of Presbyterians and Independents, allowed generally to be orthodox. From any hesitation on that score Milton is absolutely free. He sees no difficulties, takes regard of none. It is not with a flesh-and-blood world that he deals, a world of men, and their wives, and their families, and their yearly incomes, and their fixed residences and household belongings. It is with a world of wax, or of flesh and blood that must be content to be treated as wax. It is thought right to disestablish the Church: well, then, let the Clergy go! Abolish tithes; provide no substitute; proclaim that, after this day week, or the first day of the next year, not a penny shall be paid to any man by the State for preaching the Gospel, or doing any other act of the ministry: and what then? Why, there will be a flutter of consternation, of course, through some ten thousand or twelve thousand parsonages; ten thousand or twelve thousand clerical gentlemen will stare bewilderedly for a while at their wives' faces: but do not be too much concerned! They will all shift very well for themselves when they know they must; the best of them will find congregations where they are, or in other places, and will work all the harder; and, if the drones and dotards go threadbare and starve for the rest of their lives, that is but God's way with such since the beginning of the world! Be instant, be rapid, be decisive, be thoroughgoing, O ye statesmen! What are vested interests in the Church of Christ? As the Restored Rumpers had already decreed that an Established Church should be kept up in England, and had gone no farther on the Tithes question than to say that Tithes must be paid, as by use and wont, until some substitute should be provided, it is not likely that, however long they had sat, Milton's views would have had much countenance from them. There were individuals among them of Milton's way of thinking on the whole; but he had probably made a mistake in fancying that he had materially improved his influence, or the chances of his notions of Church-polity, by his public re-adhesion to the Rump. In fact, the continued existence of the Rump was more precarious than he had thought. In August 1659, while his pamphlet was in circulation, Lambert was away in the north, suppressing the Cheshire Insurrection of Sir George Booth; in the next month discontent with the Rumpers and their rule was rife in Lambert's victorious northern Brigade; and in the beginning of October London was again in agitation with the rupture of the hasty alliance that had been patched up between the Republicans and the Wallingford-House Council of Army Officers. It was on the 12th of October that the Rump defied the Army by cashiering Lambert, Desborough, Berry, and six other officers; and on the 13th Lambert retaliated by his _coup d'état_, filling the streets with his soldiery, catching the Rumpers one by one as they went to the House, and informing them that it was the will of the Army that they should sit no more. Thus had begun that "Second Stage of the Anarchy" which we have called _The Wallingford-House Interruption_. Of Milton's thoughts over the change effected by Lambert's _coup d'état_ we have an authentic record in a letter of his, dated "October 20, 1659" (i.e. just a week after the _coup d'état_), and addressed to some friend with whom he had been conversing on the previous night. It appears in his works now with the title "_A Letter to a Friend, concerning the Ruptures of the Commonwealth: Published from the Manuscript_."[1] Who the Friend was does not appear; but the words of the Letter imply that he was some one very near the centre of affairs. "Sir," it begins, "upon the sad and serious discourse which we fell into last night, concerning these dangerous ruptures of the Commonwealth, scarce yet in her infancy, which cannot be without some inward flaw in her bowels, I began to consider more intensely thereon than hitherto I have been wont,--resigning myself [i.e. having hitherto resigned myself] to the wisdom and care of those who had the government, and not finding that either God or the Public required more of me than my prayers for those that govern. And, since you have not only stirred up my thoughts by acquainting me with the state of affairs more inwardly than I knew before, but also have desired me to set down my opinion thereof, trusting to your ingenuity, I shall give you freely my apprehension, both of our present evils, and what expedients, if God in mercy regard us, may remove them." At the close of the Letter he says, "You have the sum of my present thoughts, as much as I understand of these affairs, freely imparted, at your request and the persuasion you wrought in me that I might chance hereby to be some way serviceable to the Commonwealth in a time when all ought to be endeavouring what good they can, whether much or but little. With this you may do what you please. Put out, put in, communicate or suppress: you offend not me, who only have obeyed your opinion that, in doing what I have done, I might happen to offer something which might be of some use in this great time of need. However, I have not been wanting to the opportunity which you presented before me of showing the readiness which I have, in the midst of my unfitness, to whatever may be required of me as a public duty." The expressions might suggest that the friend who had been talking with Milton was Vane or some one else of those Councillors of the Rump who still sat on at Whitehall consulting with the Wallingford-House Chiefs as to the form of Government to be set up instead of the Rump (ante pp. 494-495). It may, however, have been some lesser personage, such as Meadows, back from the Baltic this very month. In any case, the letter was meant to be shown about, if not printed. It was, in fact, Milton's contribution, at a friend's request, to the deliberations going on at Whitehall. [Footnote 1: It was first published in the so-called Amsterdam Edition of Milton's Prose Works (1698); and Toland, who gave it to the publishers of that edition, informs us that it had been communicated to him "by a worthy friend, who, a little after the author's death, had it from his nephew"--i.e. from Phillips.] He does not conceal his strong disapprobation of Lambert's _coup d'état_. Indeed he takes the opportunity of declaring, even more strongly than he had done two months before, how heartily he had welcomed the restoration of the Rump. Thus:-- "I will begin with telling you how I was overjoyed when I heard that the Army, under the working of God's holy Spirit, as I thought, and still hope well, had been so far wrought to Christian humility and self-denial as to confess in public their backsliding from the good Old Cause, and to show the fruits of their repentance in the righteousness of their restoring the old famous Parliament which they had without just authority dissolved: I call it the famous Parliament, though not the harmless, since none well-affected but will confess they have deserved much more of these nations than they have undeserved. And I persuade me that God was pleased with their restitution, signing it as He did with such a signal victory when so great a part of the nation were desperately conspired to call back again their Egyptian bondage [Lambert's victory over Sir George Booth]. So much the more it now amazes me that they whose lips were yet scarce closed from giving thanks for that great deliverance should be now relapsing, and so soon again backsliding into the same fault, which they confessed so lately and so solemnly to God and the world, and more lately punished in those Cheshire Rebels,--that they should now dissolve that Parliament which they themselves re-established, and acknowledged for their Supreme Power in their other day's _Humble Representation_: and all this for no apparent cause of public concernment to the Church or Commonwealth, but only for discommissioning nine great officers in the Army; which had not been done, as is reported, but upon notice of their intentions against the Parliament. I presume not to give my censure on this action,--not knowing, as yet I do not, the bottom of it. I speak only what it appears to us without doors till better cause be declared, and I am sure to all other nations,--most illegal and scandalous, I fear me barbarous, or rather scarce to be exampled among any Barbarians, that a paid Army should, for no other cause, thus subdue the Supreme Power that set them up. This, I say, other nations will judge to the sad dishonour of that Army, lately so renowned for the civilest and best-ordered in the world, and by us here at home for the most conscientious. Certainly, if the great officers and soldiers of the Holland, French, or Venetian forces should thus sit in council and write from garrison to garrison against their superiors, they might as easily reduce the King of France, or Duke of Venice, and put the United Provinces in like disorder and confusion." He adds more in the same strain, and calls upon the Army, as one "jealous of their honour," to "manifest and publish with all speed some better cause of these their late actions than hath hitherto appeared, and to find out the Achan amongst them whose close ambition in all likelihood abuses their honest natures against their meaning to these disorders,"--in other words, to disown and denounce Lambert. But, having thus delivered his conscience on the subject of the second dismission of the Rump, he declares farther complaint to be useless, and proceeds to inquire what is now to be done. "Being now in anarchy, without a counselling and governing power, and the Army, I suppose, finding themselves insufficient to discharge at once both military and civil affairs, the first thing to be found out with all speed, without which no Commonwealth can subsist, must be a SENATE or GENERAL COUNCIL OF STATE, in whom must be the power first to preserve the public peace, next the commerce with foreign nations, and lastly to raise moneys for the management of these affairs. This must either be the [Rump] Parliament readmitted to sit, or a Council of State allowed of by the Army, since they only now have the power. The terms to be stood on are _Liberty of Conscience to all professing Scripture to be the Rule of their Faith and Worship_ and the _Abjuration of a Single Person_. If the [Rump] Parliament be again thought on, to salve honour on both sides, the well-affected party of the City and the Congregated Churches may be induced to mediate by public addresses and brotherly beseechings; which, if there be that saintship among us which is talked of, ought to be of highest and undeniable persuasion to reconcilement. If the Parliament be thought well dissolved, _as not complying fully to grant Liberty of Conscience, and the necessary consequence thereof, the Removal of a forced Maintenance from Ministers_ [Milton's own sole dissatisfaction with the Restored Rump], then must the Army forthwith choose a Council of State, whereof as many to be of the Parliament as are undoubtedly affected to these two conditions proposed. That which I conceive only able to cement and unite the Army either to the Parliament recalled or this chosen Council must be a mutual League and Oath, private or public, not to desert one another till death: that is to say that the Army be kept up and all these Officers in their places during life, and so likewise the Parliament or Councillors of State; which will be no way unjust, considering their known merits on either side, in Council or in Field, unless any be found false to any of these two principles, or otherwise personally criminous in the judgment of both parties. If such a union as this be not accepted on the Army's part, be confident there is a Single Person underneath. That the Army be upheld the necessity of our affairs and factions will [at any rate] constrain long enough perhaps to content the longest liver in the Army. And whether the Civil Government be an annual Democracy or a perpetual Aristocracy is not to me a consideration for the extremities wherein we are, and the hazard of our safety from our common enemy, gaping at present to devour us. That it be not an Oligarchy, or the Faction of a few, may be easily prevented by the numbers of their own choosing who may be found infallibly constant to those two conditions forenamed--full Liberty of Conscience and the Abjuration of Monarchy proposed; and the well-ordered Committees of their faithfullest adherents in every county may give this Government the resemblance and effects of a perfect Democracy. As for the Reformation of Laws and the Places of Judicature, whether to be here, as at present, or in every county, as hath been long aimed at, and many such proposals tending no doubt to public good, they may be considered in due time, when we are past these pernicious pangs, in a hopeful way of health and firm constitution. But, unless these things which I have above proposed, one way or other, be once settled, in my fear (which God avert!), we instantly ruin, or at best become the servants of one or other Single Person, the secret author and fomenter of these disturbances." There is considerable boldness in these proposals of Milton, and yet a cast of practicality which is unusual with him. They prove again, if new proof were needed, that he was not a Republican of the conventional sort. He glances, indeed, at the possibility of an "Annual Democracy," i.e. a future succession of annual Parliaments, or at least of annual Plebiscites for electing the Government. But he rather dismisses that possibility from his calculations; and moreover, even had he entertained it farther, we know that the Parliaments or Plebiscites he would have allowed would not have been "full and free," but only guarded representations of the "well-affected" of the community,--to wit, the Commonwealth's-men. But the Constitution to which he looks forward with most confidence, and which he ventures to think might answer all the purposes of a perfect democracy, is one that should consist of two perpetual or life aristocracies at the centre,--one a civil aristocracy in the form of a largish Council of State, the other a military aristocracy composed of the great Army Officers,--these two aristocracies to be pledged to each other by oath, and sworn also to the two great principles of Liberty of Conscience and resistance to any attempt at Single Person sovereignty. What communication between the Central Government so constituted and the body of the People might be necessary for the free play of opinion might be sufficiently kept up, he hints, by the machinery of County Committees. The entire scheme may seem strange to those whose theory of a Republic refuses the very imagination of an aristocracy or of perpetuity of power in the same hands; but both, notions, and especially that of perpetuity of power in the same hands, had been growing on Milton, and were not inconsistent with _his_ theory of a Republic. Nor was his present scheme, with all its strangeness, the least practical of the many "models" that theorists were putting forth. It would, doubtless, have failed in the trial,--for the conception of a perpetual Civil Council at Whitehall always in harmony with a perpetual Military Council in Wallingford House presupposed moral conditions in both bodies less likely to be forthcoming in themselves than in Milton's thoughts about them. But everything else would have failed equally, and some of the "models" perhaps more speedily. Since the subversion of Richard's Protectorate by Fleetwood and Desborough there had been no possible stop-gap against the return of the Stuarts. The consulting authorities at Whitehall and Wallingford House did adopt a course having some semblance of that suggested by Milton. Before the 25th of October, or within six days after the date of Milton's letter, the relics of the Council of State of the Rump agreed to be transformed, with additions nominated by the Officers, into the new Supreme Executive called _The Committee of Safety_; and, as _The Wallingford-House Council of Officers_ still continued to sit in the close vicinity of this new Council at Whitehall, the Government was then vested, in fact, in the two aristocracies, with Fleetwood, Lambert, Desborough, Berry, and others, as members of both, and connecting links between them. But the new _Committee of Safety_ was not such a Senate or Council as Milton had imagined. For one thing, it consisted but of twenty-three persons (see the list ante p. 494), whereas Milton would have probably liked to see a Council of twice that size or even larger. For another, it was not composed of persons perfectly sound on Milton's two proposed fundamentals of Liberty of Conscience and Abjuration of any Single Person. Vane, to be sure, was on the Committee, and a host in himself for both principles; and there were others, such as Salway and Ludlow, that would not flinch on either. But Whitlocke, Sydenham, and the majority, were but moderately for Liberty of Conscience, and certainly utterly against that Miltonic interpretation of it which implied Church-disestablishment, while one at least, the Scottish Johnstone of Warriston, was positively against Liberty of Conscience beyond very narrow Presbyterian limits. Nor, though probably all would have assented at that time to an oath abjuring Charles Stuart, were they all without taint of the Single Person heresy in other forms. Some of them, including Whitlocke and Berry, would have liked to restore Richard; and Fleetwood and Lambert were not wrongly suspected of seeing the most desirable Single Person every morning in the looking-glass. Milton's former regard for Fleetwood must have suffered considerably by recent events; and he thought of Lambert as the very "Achan" to be dreaded. But, farther, even had the two aristocracies been of perfectly satisfactory composition, they had abandoned that idea of their own permanence which Milton had made all but essential. They had agreed that their chief work should consist in shaping out a fit constitution for the Commonwealth, and that the _Committee of Safety_ should continue in power only till that should be done and the new Constitution should come into operation. Such as it was, the new Government of the Wallingford-House Interruption had no objection to retaining Mr. Milton in the Latin Secretaryship if he cared to keep it. That he had held the post throughout the whole of the Government of the Restored Rump (though all but in sinecure, as we must conclude from the cessation of the series of his Latin Letters in the preceding May) appears from a very interesting document in the Record Office. The Council of State of the Rump, it is to be remembered, had not vanished with the Rump itself on Oct. 13, but had sat on for twelve days more, though with its number reduced by the secession of Hasilrig, Scott, Neville, and other very vehement Rumpers,--the object being to maintain the continuity of the public business and to make the most amicable arrangement possible with the Army-officers. That object having been accomplished by the institution, of the new _Committee of Safety_, the Council of the Rump, before demitting its powers to this new body, which was to meet on the 28th of October, held its own last meeting at Whitehall on the 25th. At such a last meeting it was but business-like to clear off all debts due by the Council; and, accordingly, this was done by the issue of the following comprehensive money-warrant, signed by Whitlocke as President, and by four others of those present. "These are to will and require you, out of such moneys as are or shall come into your hands, to pay unto the several persons whose names are endorsed the several sums of money to their names mentioned, making on the whole the sum of Three Thousand Six Hundred Eighty-two Pounds, Eight Shillings, and Six Pence: being so much due to them for their salaries and service to this Council unto the Two-and-twentieth day of this instant October. Hereof you are not to fail; and for so doing this shall be your sufficient warrant. Given at the Council of State at Whitehall this 25th day of October, 1659. "B. WHITLOCKE, _President._ A. JOHNSTON. JAMES HARRINGTON. CHARLES FLEETWOOD. JA. BERRY. "To GUALTER FROST, Esq., "Treasurer for the Council's Contingencies." "The eighty-six persons to whom the payments are to be made are divided into groups in the Warrant, the particular sum due to each person appended to his name. The first five groups stand thus:-- £ _s._ _d._ Richard Deane 234 7 6 _"At £500 per annum each_ Henry Scobell 234 7 6 William Robinson 83 0 0 _At £1 per day_ Richard Kingdon 86 0 0 _At £200 per annum each_ JOHN MILTON 86 12 0 ANDREW MARVELL 86 12 0 Gualter Frost 138 0 10 _At 20_s._ per diem each_ Matthew Fairbank 139 0 0 Samuel Morland 88 0 0 Edward Dendy 169 0 0 Matthew Lea 56 6 8 _At 6_s._ 8_d._ per diem each_ [Clerks] Thomas Lea 56 6 8 William Symon 56 6 8" Then follow the names of _twenty-nine_ persons at 5_s._ per diem each: viz. Zachary Worth, David Salisbury, Peter Llewellen, Edward Cooke, Richard Stephens, Stephen Montague, Thomas Powell; Henry Symball, Joseph Butler, Thomas Pidcott, Richard Freeman, George Hussey, Roger Read, Edward Osbaldiston, William Feild, Robert Cooke (or his widow), Thomas Blagden, William Ledsom, Edward Cooke; Edward Tytan, Thomas Baker, John Bradley, Nicholas Hill, Anthony Compton, Joshua Leadbetter, Alexander Turner, Thomas Wright, William Geering, and Edward Bridges. The occupations of the first seven are not described, but they were probably under-clerks; the next twelve were "messengers"; the last ten "serjeant deputies" under Dendy as Serjeant-at-Arms. The sums ordered to be paid to them vary from £4 to £42 5_s._--_Forty-four_ more persons are added more miscellaneously, with the sums due to them respectively. Among these I may note the following:--"George Vaux, _Housekeeper_" (£69 9_s._ 8_d._), "Mr. Nutt, the _Barge-keeper_" (£65), "Mr. Embrey, _Surveyor_" (£140 12_s._ 6_d._), and "Mr. Kinnereley, _Wardrobe-keeper_" (£140 12_s._ 6_d._).[1] [Footnote 1: From Warrant Book in Record Office. On comparing the list of persons in this warrant with that in the extract from the Order Books of Oliver's Council of date April 17, 1655 (pp. 177-179), and with lists in a former Council minute of date Feb. 3, 1653-4, and in a Money Warrant of Oliver of same date (Vol. IV. pp. 575-578), it will be seen that there had been changes in the staff meanwhile. Milton, Scobell, Gualter Frost, Serjeant Dendy, Housekeeper Vaux, Bargemaster Nutt, and about a dozen of the clerks, messengers, and serjeant-deputies remain (one of the former clerks, Matthew Fairbank, now promoted from his original 6_s._ 8_d._ a day to 20_s._ a day); but Thurloe, Jessop, Meadows, two younger Frosts, and a good many others are gone, while new men are Deane, Robinson, Kingdon, Morland, Marvell, and others. Morland, as we know, had been brought in a while ago to assist Thurloe; and his salary, we now see, was larger than Milton's.--When Milton's salary was reduced, in April 1655, it was arranged that it should be a life-pension, and payable out of the Exchequer; but the present warrant Directs payment to him, as to the rest, out of the Council's contingencies. It would seem, therefore, that Oliver's arrangement for him had not taken effect, or had been cancelled by the Rump, and that he was now not a life-pensioner, but once more a mere official at the Council's pleasure.] There is nothing in this warrant to show that Milton's services were transferred to the new Committee of Safety; but the fact seems to be that he did remain nominally in the Latin Secretaryship with Marvell through the whole duration of that body and of the Fleetwood-Lambert rule, i.e. to Dec. 26, 1659. Nominally only it must have been; for we have no trace of any official work of his through the period. There was very little to do for the Government at that time in the way of foreign correspondence, and for what there was Marvell must have sufficed. Through the months of November and December Milton's thoughts, like those of other people, must have been much occupied with the negotiations going on between the new Government and their formidable opponent in Scotland. What would be the issue? Would Monk persevere in that championship of the ill-treated Rump which he had so boldly undertaken? Would he march into England to restore the Rump, as he had threatened; or would he yet be pacified and induced to accept the Wallingford-House order of things, with a competent share in the power? No one could tell. Lambert was in the north with his army, to beat and drive back Monk if he did attempt to invade England,--at York early in November, and at Newcastle from the 20th of November onwards; Monk was still in Scotland,--at Edinburgh or Dalkeith till the end of November, then at Berwick, but from the beginning of December at Coldstream. Between the two armies agents were passing and repassing; negotiators on the part of the London Government were round about Monk and reasoning with him; Monk's own Commissioners in London had concluded their Treaty of the 15th of November with Fleetwood and the Wallingford-House Council, and there had been rejoicings over what seemed then the happy end of the quarrel; but again the news had come from Scotland that Monk repudiated the agreement made by his Commissioners, and that the negotiation must be resumed at Newcastle. To that the Committee of Safety and the Wallingford-House Council had consented; but, through Monk's delays, the negotiation had not yet been resumed. Would it ever be, or would Monk's army and Lambert's come into clash at last? If so, for which ought one to wish the victory? So far as Milton was concerned, he was bound to wish the success of Monk. Was not Monk the champion of that little Restored Rump to which Milton had himself adhered, and the late suppression of which he had pronounced to be "illegal and scandalous"? Was not Monk also professing and proclaiming that very principle of the proper submission of the military power to the civil on which Milton himself had dilated? Would it not be only God's justice if Lambert, "the secret author and fomenter of these disturbances," should be disgraced and overthrown? Yet, on the other hand, who could desire even that consequence, or the Restoration of the Rump, at the expense of another civil war and bloodshed? Where would the process stop? And, besides, was Monk, with his Presbyterian notions, learnt among the Scots, the man from whose ascendancy Milton could hope anything but farther disappointment in the Church question? All in all, we are to imagine Milton anxious for a reconciliation. No less interesting to Milton must have been the activity of the new Government meanwhile in their great business of inventing "such a Form of Government as may best suit and comport with a Free State and Commonwealth."----The Rump itself, as we know, had been busy with this problem through the last month of its sittings, having appointed on the 8th of September a great Committee on the subject, with Vane named first, but all the most eminent Rumpers included (ante p. 480). Through this Committee there had been an inburst into the Parliamentary mind, as Ludlow informs us, of the thousand and one competing proposals or models of a Commonwealth already devised by the Harringtonians and other theorists; and, in fact, while the Committee was sitting, there had started up for its assistance, close to the doors of Parliament, the famous Harrington or Rota Club, meeting nightly in Miles's Coffee-house, and including Neville and others of the Rumpers among its most constant members (ante pp. 484-486). That Milton knew already about Harrington and his "models" by sufficient readings of Harrington's books there can be no doubt. In the address to the Rump prefixed to his _Considerations touching Hirelings_ in August last he had distinctly referred to the kind acceptance by the Rump of "new models of a Commonwealth" daily tendered to them in Petitions, and must have had specially in view the Petition of July 6, which had been drawn up by Harrington, and which proposed a constitution of two Parliamentary Houses, one of 300 members, the other much larger, on such a system of rotation as would change each completely every third year (ante pp. 483-484). His only criticism on the competing models then had been that, till his own notion of Church-disestablishment were carried into effect, "no model whatsoever of a Commonwealth, would prove successful or undisturbed." At that time, accordingly, Milton was so engrossed with his Church-disestablishment notion as to be comparatively careless about the general question of the Form of Government. But, two months later, as we have seen, in his _Letter on the Ruptures of the Commonwealth_ occasioned by Lambert's assault on the Rump, he had abandoned this indifference, and had proposed a model Constitution of his own, adapted to the immediate exigencies. From that time, we may now report, though Church-disestablishment was never lost sight of, the question of the Form of Government had fastened itself on Milton's mind as after all the main one. From that time he never ceased to ruminate it himself, and he attended more to the speculations and theories of others on the same subject. If, once or twice in the winter months of 1659, Cyriack Skinner, the occasional chairman of the Rota Club, did not persuade Milton to leave his house in Petty France late in the evening, and be piloted through the streets to the Coffee-house in New Palace Yard to hear one of the great debates of the Club, and become acquainted with their method of closing the debate by a ballot, it would really be a wonder.----Not in the Rota Club, however, but in the Committee of Safety at Whitehall and in the Wallingford-House Council, was the real and practical debate in progress. On the 1st of November the Committee had appointed their sub-committee of six to deliberate on the new Constitution; and through the rest of the month, both in the sub-committee and in the general committee, there had been that intricate discussion in which Vane led the extreme party, or party of radical changes, while Whitlocke stood for lawyerly use and wont in all things, and Johnstone of Warriston threw in suggestions from his peculiar Scottish point of view. So far as Milton was cognisant of the discussion, his hopes must have been in the efforts of his friend Vane. If any one could succeed in inducing his colleagues to insert articles for Church-disestablishment and full Liberty of Conscience into the new Constitution, who so likely as he who had held those articles as tenets of his private creed so much earlier and so much more tenaciously than any other public man? Seven years ago Milton had described him on this account as Religion's "eldest son," on whose firm hand she could lean in peace. Now that he was again in power, and that not merely as one of a miscellaneous Parliamentary body, but as one of a small committee of leaders drafting a Constitution _de novo_, what might he not accomplish? That Vane did battle in Committee for the notions he held in common with Milton, and for others besides, we already know; but we know also that the massive resistance of Whitlocke, backed outside by the lawyers and the Savoy clique of the clergy, was too much for Vane, and that the draft Constitution as it emerged ultimately was substantially Whitlocke's. It was on the 6th of December that this draft Constitution was submitted to the Convention of Army and Navy delegates at Whitehall; and it was on the 14th that, after modifications by this body tending to make it still more Whitlocke's than it had been, it went back to the Committee of Safety approved and ratified. A Single House Parliament of the customary sort to meet in February; a new Council of State of the customary sort to be appointed by that Parliament; the Established Church to be kept up, and by the system of Tithes until some other form of ample State-maintenance for the clergy should be provided; Liberty of Conscience for Nonconformists, but within limits: this and no more was the parturition after all. If Ludlow was in despair because no sufficient security had been taken that the new Parliament should be true to the Commonwealth, and if the theorists of the Rota were disappointed because none of their patent models had been adopted, Milton's regret can have been no less. Government after government, but all deaf alike to his teachings! Even this one, with Vane at the heart of it, unable to rise above the old conceits of a customary state-craft, and ending in a solemn vote for conserving a Church of Hirelings! So in the middle of December. Then, for another week, the strange phenomenon, day after day, of that whirl of popular and army opinion which was to render all the long debate over the new Constitution nugatory, to upset the Wallingford-House administration, and stop Whitlocke in his issue of the writs for the Parliament that had just been announced. Monk's dogged persistency for the old Rump had done the work without the need of his advance from Coldstream to fight Lambert. All over England and Ireland people were declaring for Monk with increasing enthusiasm, and execrating Lambert's _coup d'état_ and the Wallingford-House usurpation. Portsmouth had revolted; the Londoners were in riot; Lambert's own soldiery were falling away from him at Newcastle; Fleetwood's soldiery in London were growing ashamed of themselves and of their chief amid the taunts and insults of the populace. On the 20th of December appearances were such that Whitlocke and his colleagues were in the utmost perplexity. One great Republican had not lived to see this return of public feeling to the cause of his heart. Bradshaw had died on the 22nd of November, all but despairing of the Republic. His will was proved on the 16th of December. It consisted of an original will, dated March 22, 1653, and two codicils, the second dated September 10, 1655. His wife having predeceased him, leaving no issue, the bulk of his extensive property went to his nephew, Henry Bradshaw; but there were various legacies, and among them the following in one group in the second codicil,--"To old Margarett ffive markes, to Mr. Marcham^t. Nedham tenne pounds, and to Mr. John Milton tenne poundes." There is nothing here to settle the disputed question of Milton's cousinship, on his mother's side, with Bradshaw.[1] The legacy was a trifling one, equivalent to £35 now; and, as Needham and Milton are associated on terms of equality, Bradshaw must have been thinking of them together as the two literary officials who had been so much in contact with each other, and with himself, in the days of his Presidency of the Council of State,--Needham as the appointed journalist of the Commonwealth, and Milton as its Latin champion, and for some time Needham's censor and supervisor. In Milton's case perhaps, as the codicil was drawn up fifteen months after the publication of the _Defensio Secunda_, the legacy may have been intended not merely as a small token of general respect and friendliness, but also as a recognition by Bradshaw of the bold eulogy on him inserted into that work at a critical moment of his relations to Cromwell. [Footnote 1: Ormerod's Cheshire, III. 409; but I owe the verbatim extract from the codicil to the never-failing kindness of Colonel Chester.--By an inadvertence the date of Bradshaw's death has been given, ante p. 495, as Oct. 31, 1659, instead of Nov. 22.] * * * * * More than two years had elapsed since Milton's last letters to Oldenburg and young Ranelagh (ante pp. 366-367). They were then at Sáumur in France, where they remained till March 1658; but since that time they had been travelling about, and from May 1659, if not earlier, they had been boarding in Paris. There are glimpses of them in letters from Oldenburg to Robert Boyle, and also in letters of Hartlib to Boyle, in which he quotes passages from letters he has received both from Oldenburg and from young Ranelagh. Thus, in a letter of Hartlib's to Boyle of April 12, 1659, there is this from Oldenburg's last: "I have had some discourse with an able but somewhat close physician here, that spoke to me of a way, though without particularizing all, to draw a liquor of the beams of the sun; which peradventure some person that is knowing and experienced (as noble Mr. Boyle) may better beat out than we can who want experience in these matters." Young Ranelagh seems to have fully acquired by this time the tastes for physical and experimental science which characterized his tutor; and his uncle Boyle may have read with a smile this from Hartlib of date October 22, 1659:--"This week Mr. Jones hath saluted me with a very kind letter, containing a very singular observation in these words: 'Concerning the generation of pearls I am of opinion that they are engendered in the cockle-fishes (I pray, Sir, give me the Latin word for it in your next) of the same manner as the stone in our body,--which I endeavour fully to show in a discourse of mine about the generation of pearls; which, when I shall have done it, shall wait upon you for my part in revenge of your observations. I heard lately a very remarkable story about margarites from a person of quality and honour in this town, which you will be glad, I believe, to hear. A certain German baron of about twenty-four years old, being in prison here at Paris, in the same chamber with a Frenchman (who told this, as having been eyewitness of it, to him that told it me), they having both need of money, the baron sent his man to a goldsmith to buy seven or eight ordinary pearls, of about twenty pence a piece, which he put a-dissolving in a glass of vinegar; and, being well dissolved, he took the paste and put it together with a powder (which I should be glad to know) into a golden mould, which he had in his pocket, and so put it a-warming for some time upon the fire; after which, opening the mould, they found a very great and lovely oriental pearl in it, which they sold for about two hundred crowns, although it was a great deal more worth. The same baron, throwing a little powder he had with him into a pitcher of water, and letting it stand about four hours, made the best wine that a man can drink.' Thus far the truly hopeful young gentleman, whereby he hath hugely obliged me. I wish he had the forementioned powder, that we might try whether we could make the like pearls and wine." From a subsequent letter of Hartlib's, dated Nov. 29, 1659, it appears that Oldenburg and Jones were both much interested in the optical instruments of a certain Bressieux, then in Paris, who had for two years been chief workman in that line for Descartes. They were anxious to make him a present of some good glass from London, because he was rather secretive about his workmanship, and such a present would go a great way towards mollifying him.[1] [Footnote 1: Letters of Oldenburg and Hartlib to Boyle in Boyle's Works (1744), V. 280-296 and 300-302.] Very possibly with this last letter of Oldenburg's to Hartlib there had been enclosed a letter from Oldenburg, and another from young Ranelagh, to Milton. Two such letters, at all events, Milton had received, and undoubtedly through Hartlib, who was still the universal foreign postman for his friends. We can guess the substance of the two letters. Young Ranelagh does not seem to have troubled Milton with his speculations on the generation of pearls, or his story of the German baron and his alchemic powders, but only to have sent his dutiful regards, with excuses for long neglect of correspondence. Oldenburg had also sent his excuses for the same, but with certain pieces of news from abroad, and certain references to the state of affairs at home. Among the pieces of news were two of some personal interest to Milton. One was that the unfinished reply to his _Defensio Prima_, which Salmasius had left in manuscript at his death six years ago, was about to appear as a posthumous publication. The other was that there was to be a great Synod of the French Protestant Church, at which the case of Morus was to be again discussed. For, though it was more than two years since Morus had received his call to the collegiate pastorship of the Protestant Church of Paris or Charenton, the question of his admissibility to the charge had hung all that while between the Walloon Synods of the United Provinces and the French Protestant Church Courts, the latter on the whole favouring him, the former more and more bent on disgracing him. In April of the present year a Walloon Synod at Tergou had actually passed on him a sentence of suspension from the ministerial office and from the holy communion "until by a sincere repentance of his sins he shall have repaired so many scandals he has brought upon us." In spite of this, a French Provincial Synod, held at Ai in Champagne in the following month, had ordered his admission to be carried into effect, and the Parisian consistory had obeyed this order, though two members of it protested. There had since then been another Walloon Synod, held at Nimeguen in September, in which the former sentence of the Tergou Synod was confirmed, but, for the sake of peace between the Walloon Church and their brethren of the French Protestant Church, it was agreed to waive all farther jurisdiction over Morus in Holland and to "remit the whole cause unto the prudence, discretion, and charity of the National Assembly of the French churches to meet at Loudun." This was the Synod of whose approaching meeting Oldenburg had informed Milton--the Synod of Loudun in Anjou (Nov. 10, 1659--Jan. 10, 1660). It was to be a very important assembly indeed,--no mere Provincial Synod, but a national one, expressly allowed by Louis XIV., and to consist of deputies, clerical and lay, from all the Protestant churches of France, empowered to transact all business relating to those churches under certain royal regulations and restrictions, and in the presence of a royal Commissioner. As there had been no such National Protestant Synod in France for fifteen years, there was an accumulation of business for it, the case of Morus included. They were to examine that case _de novo_, and to pronounce finally whether Morus was guilty or not guilty, whether he should remain a minister of the French Church or not.[1] [Footnote 1: Bayle, Art. _Morus_, and Bruce's Life of Morus, 204-226.] Milton's replies to the two letters will now be intelligible. He writes, it will be observed, in a gloomy mood, on the very day on which Whitlocke, for different reasons, was in a gloomy mood too and "wishing himself out of these daily hazards":-- TO HENRY OLDENBURG. "That forgiveness which you ask for _your_ silence you will give rather to _mine_; for, if I remember rightly, it was my turn to write to you. By no means has it been any diminution of my regard for you (of this I would have you fully persuaded) that has been the impediment, but only my employments or domestic cares; or perhaps it is mere sluggishness to the act of writing that makes me guilty of the intermitted duty. As you desire to be informed, I am, by God's mercy, as well as usual. Of any such work as compiling the history of our political troubles, which you seem to advise, I have no thought whatever [_longe absum_]: they are worthier of silence than of commemoration. What is needed is not one to compile a good history of our troubles, but one who can happily end the troubles themselves; for, with you, I fear lest, amid these our civil discords, or rather sheer madnesses, we shall seem to the lately confederated enemies of Liberty and Religion a too fit object of attack, though in truth they have not yet inflicted a severer wound on Religion than we ourselves have been long doing by our crimes. But God, as I hope, on His own account, and for His own glory, now in question, will not allow the counsels and onsets of the enemy to succeed as they themselves wish, whatever convulsions Kings and Cardinals meditate and design. Meanwhile, for the Protestant Synod of Loudun, which you tell me is so soon to meet [Milton does not seem to know that it had been sitting already for six weeks] I pray--what has never happened to any Synod yet--a happy issue, not of the Nazianzenian sort,[1] and am of opinion that the issue of this one will be happy enough if, should they decree nothing else, they should decree the expulsion of Morus. Of my posthumous adversary, as soon as he makes his appearance, be good enough to give me the earliest information. Farewell. "Westminster: December 20, 1659." [Footnote 1: The allusion seems to be to the great OEcumenical Council of Constantinople in 381, which confirmed Gregory Nazianzen in the Patriarchate of Constantinople, and in which Gregory presided for some time and inefficiently.] TO THE NOBLE YOUTH, RICHARD JONES. "For the long break in your correspondence with me your excuses are truly most modest, inasmuch as you might with more justice accuse me of the same fault; and, as the case stands, I am really at a loss to know whether I should have preferred your not having been in fault to your having apologised so finely. On no account let it ever come into your mind that I measure your gratitude, if anything of the kind is due to me from you, by your constancy in letter-writing. My feeling of your gratitude to me will be strongest when the fruits of those services of mine to you of which you speak shall appear not so much in frequent letters as in your perseverance and laudable proficiency in excellent pursuits. You have rightly marked out for yourself the path of virtue in that theatre of the world on which you have entered; but remember that the path is common so far to virtue and vice, and that you have yet to advance to where the path divides itself into two. And you ought now betimes to prepare yourself for leaving this common path, pleasant and flowery, and for being able the more readily, with your own will, though with labour and danger, to climb that arduous and difficult one which is the slope of virtue only. For this you have great advantages over others, believe me, in having secured so faithful and skilful a guide. Farewell. "Westminster: December 20, 1659." Two days after the date of these letters the uproar of execration round the Wallingford-House Government had reached such an extreme that Whitlocke made his desperate proposal to Fleetwood that they should extricate themselves from their difficulty by declaring for Charles and opening negotiations with him. Two days more, and Fleetwood's soldiery, under the command of officers of the Rump, were marching down Chancery Lane, cheering Speaker Lenthall and asking his forgiveness. Again two days more, and on the 26th of December, Fleetwood having given up the game and sent the keys of the Parliament House to Lenthall, the Rumpers were back in their old places. We have arrived, therefore, at that _Third Stage of the Anarchy_ which may be called "The Second Restoration of the Rump." * * * * * Of Milton in this stage of the Anarchy we hear little or nothing directly; but there are means for tracing the course of his thoughts. As may be inferred from the melancholy tone of his letter to Oldenburg, he had all but ceased to hope for any deliverance for the Commonwealth by any of the existing parties. Even the Second Restoration of the Rump, though it was what he was bound to approve, and had indeed suggested as possibly the best course, can have brought him but little increase of expectation. If, in its best estate, after its first restoration, the Rump had disappointed him, what could he hope from it now in its attenuated and crippled condition, with Vane expelled from it because of his actings during the Wallingford-House Interruption, with Salway out of it, who had worked so earnestly with Vane on the Church-question, and with others of the ablest also out of it, leaving a House of but about two scores of persons, to be managed by Hasilrig, Scott, Neville, and Henry Marten? Nay, not to be managed even by those undoubted Republicans, but to a great extent also by Ashley Cooper, Fagg, and others, whose Republicanism was of a very dubious character! For Milton cannot have failed to take note of the abatement in this session of the Rump of that Republican fervency which had characterized its former session. What had been his own two proposed tests of genuine Republicanism? Willingness of every one concerned with the Government to take a solemn oath of Abjuration of a Single Person, and willingness also of every such person to swear to the principle of Liberty of Conscience. How was it faring with these two tests in this renewed Session of the Rumpers? An abjuration oath of the kind indicated had been imposed indeed on the new Council of State; but nearly half of those nominated to the Council had remained out of that body rather than take the oath, and Hasilrig's proposal to require the same oath from all members of the House itself had been so strenuously resisted that it had fallen to the ground. Then, on the religious question, what was the deliberate offer of the House to the country in their heads for a public Declaration on the 21st of January 1659-60? "Due liberty to tender consciences" was promised; but that was a mere phrase of custom, implying little or nothing, and it was utterly engulphed, in Milton's estimate, by the accompanying engagement to "uphold a learned and pious ministry of the nation and their maintenance by Tithes." On the Church-disestablishment question the House had actually receded from its former self by announcing that it was not even to prosecute the inquiry as to a possible substitute for Tithes. Altogether, before the twice-restored Rump had sat a month, Milton must have seen that his ideal Commonwealth was just as far off as ever. All he could hope was that the wretched little Parliament would not prove positively treacherous. With others, however, he must have been thinking more of Monk's proceedings and intentions than of those of the Parliament. Monk's march from Coldstream southwards on the 2nd of January; the vanishing of the residue of Lambert's forces before him; the addresses to him in the English counties all along his route; his answers or supposed answers to these addresses; his wary behaviour to the two Parliamentary Commissioners that had been sent to attach themselves to him and find out his disposition in the matter of the Abjuration Oath; his arrival at St. Alban's on the 28th of January; his message thence to the Parliament to clear all Fleetwood's regiments out of London and Westminster before his own entry; that entry itself on the 3rd of February, when he and his battered columns streamed in through Gray's Inn Lane; finally his first appearance in the House and speech, there:--of all this Milton had exact cognisance through the newspapers of his friend Needham and otherwise. It was very puzzling and by no means reassuring. If he had ever thought of Monk as by possibility such a saviour of the Commonwealth as he had been longing for, the study of the actually approaching physiognomy of Old George all the way from Scotland, and still more Old George's first deliverance of himself in the Parliament, must have undeceived him. The Abjuration Oath, it appeared, was not at all to Monk's mind. He would not take it himself in order to be qualified for the seat voted him in the Council of State, and he plainly intimated his opinion that the day for such oaths and engagements was past. Milton cannot have liked that rejection by the General of one of the tests on which he had himself placed so much reliance. But, further, what meant Monk's very ambiguous utterance respecting the three immediate courses one of which must be chosen? He had distinctly mentioned in the House that the drift of public opinion, as he could ascertain it from the addresses made to him along his march, was towards either _an enlargement of the present House by the re-admission of the Secluded Members_ or _a full and free Parliament by a new general election_; and, though he had seemed to acquiesce in that third course which was proposed by the House itself, viz. _the enlargement of the House by a competent number of new writs issued by itself under a careful scheme of qualification for electing or being eligible_, he had left a very vague impression as to his real preference. Now to Milton, as to all other ardent Commonwealth's men, the vital question was which of these three courses was to be taken. To adopt either of the two first was to subvert the Commonwealth. To re-admit the secluded members into the present House was to convert it into a House with an overwhelming Presbyterian majority, and to bring back the days of Presbyterian ascendancy, with the prospect of a restoration of Royalty on merely Presbyterian terms. To summon what was called a new full and free Parliament was, all but certainly, to bring back Royalty by a more hurried process still. Only by the third method, the Rump's own method, did there seem a chance of preserving the Republican constitution; and yet Monk's assent to it had been but hesitating and uncertain. More ominous still had been his few words intimating his wishes in the matter of ecclesiastical policy. He could conceive nothing so good, on the whole, as the Scottish Presbyterianism he had been living amidst for the last few years, and he thought that the 'sober interest' in England, steering between the 'Cavalier party' on the one side and the 'Fanatic party' on the other, would be most secure by keeping to a moderate Presbytery in the State-Church. That Milton's views as to the merits of Scottish Presbytery were not Monk's is an old story, needing no repetition here. What must have concerned him was to see Monk not only at one with the great mass of his countrymen on the subject of a Church-Establishment, but actually retrograde on the question of the desirable nature of such an Establishment, inasmuch as he seemed to signal his countrymen back out of Cromwell's broad Church of mixed Presbyterians, Independents, and Baptists, into a Church more strictly on the Presbyterian model. Then another unpleasant novelty in Monk's case was his fondness for the phrases _Fanatics, Fanatic Notions_, the _Fanatic Party_. The phrases were not new; but Monk had sent them out of Scotland before him, and had brought them himself out of Scotland, with a new significance. Very probably they had been supplied to him out of the vocabulary of his Scottish clerical adviser Mr. James Sharp, or of the Scottish Resolutioner clergy generally. At all events, it is from and after the date of Monk's march into England that one finds the name _Fanatics_ a common one for all those Commonwealth's men collectively who opposed a State-Church or the moderate Presbyterian or semi-Presbyterian form of it. Had Monk drawn out a list of his 'Fanatics,' he would have had to put Milton himself at the top of them, with Vane, Harrison, Barebone, and the leading Quakers. Nevertheless, here was Monk, such as he was, the armed constable of the crisis, the one man who could keep the peace and let the Rumpers proceed in doing their best. That "best" as they had agreed specifically on the 4th of February, the day after Monk's arrival, was to be the recruiting of their own House up to a total of 400 members for England and Wales, such recruiting to be effected by the issue of a certain number of new writs, together with a scheme of qualifications calculated to bring in only sound Republicans, or persons likely to cooperate in farther measures with the present Rumpers. This being what was promised by the conjunction of Monk and the Rump, what could Milton do but acquiesce, be glad it was no worse, and contribute what advice he could? This, accordingly, is what he did. Pamphlets on the crisis, as we know, had been coming out abundantly--pamphlets for the good old cause of the Republic, pamphlets from Rota-men, pamphlets from Prynne and other haters of the Rump, pamphlets from crypto-Royalists, and pamphlets openly Royalist; and many of these had taken, and others were still to take, the form of letters addressed to Monk. It need be no surprise that Milton had _his_ pamphlet in preparation. He had begun it just after Monk's arrival in London and the resolution, of the Rump to recruit itself; he had written it hurriedly and yet with some earnest care; and it seems to have been ready for the press about or not long after the middle of February. Before it could go to press, however, there had been another revolution, obliging him to hold it back. There had been the rebellion of the Londoners because of the resolution of the Rump to perpetuate itself by recruiting, instead of either readmitting the secluded members or calling a new free and full Parliament; there had been Monk's notorious two days in the City, by order of the Rump, quashing the rebellion, and breaking the gates and portcullises (Feb. 9-10); there had been his extraordinary return the third day, with his profession of regret before the Lord Mayor and the Aldermen and Common Council, and his announcement that he had dissolved his connexion with the Rump,--that third day wound up with yells of delight through all the City, the smashing of Barebone's windows, and the universal Roasting of the Rump in street-bonfires (Feb. 11); there had been the ten more days of Monk's continued residence in the City, the Rumpers vainly imploring reconciliation with him, and the Secluded Members and their friends gathering round him and negotiating; and, on Tuesday, Feb. 21, when he did remove from the City to Westminster, it was with the Secluded Members in his train, to be marched under military guard to their seats beside the Rumpers. The writs issued by the Rump for recruiting itself were now useless. It had been recruited in the way it least liked, by the sudden reappearance in it of the excluded Presbyterians and Royalists of the pre-Commonwealth period of the Long Parliament. Far more than the mere stopping of his pamphlet was involved for Milton in the events of that fortnight. He could construe them no otherwise than as the breaking down of the inner rampart that defended the Commonwealth against Charles Stuart. The _Roasting of the Rump_ in London was but a rough popular metaphor for "Down with the Republic"; and, had the tumult of that night extended from the City to Westminster and the breaking of the windows of "fanatics" become general, Milton's would not have escaped. Then, in the course of the negotiations with Monk through the fatal fortnight, had not the Rump itself quailed? Had they not offered to cancel the solemn Abjuration Oath, alike for the Councillors of State and for future members of Parliament, and to substitute only a general engagement to be faithful to the Commonwealth, without King, Single Person, or House of Lords? Hardly anywhere now did there seem to be that stern, bold, uncompromising opposition to Royalty which would register itself, as Milton wanted, in an oath before God and man, but only that feebler Republicanism which would pledge itself with the understood reservation of "circumstances permitting." But worst of all was the crowning fact that the Secluded Members had been restored. By that one stroke of Monk's all that had happened since the Commonwealth had been set up was put in question, and the power was given back into the hands of the very men who had protested and struggled against the setting up of the Commonwealth eleven years ago. How would these act? It might be hoped perhaps that some of the more prudent among them, having regard to the lapse of time and the change of circumstances, might not think it their duty to be as vehemently Royalist now as they had been in 1648, and also perhaps that the power of Monk, if Monk himself remained true, might restrain the rest. But _would_ Monk remain true, or would his power avail long in restraining a Parliament the majority of which were Presbyterians and Royalists? Not to speak of the varied ability and subtlety of such of the new Parliamentary chiefs as Annesley, Sir William Waller, Denzil Holles, Ashley Cooper, and Harbottle Grimstone, what was to be expected from the remorseless obstinacy, the rhinoceros persistency, of such a Presbyterian as Prynne? How often had Milton jeered at Prynne and the margins of his endless pamphlets! It might be of some consequence to him now to remember that he had done so, and had therefore this virtual Attorney-General of the Secluded for his personal enemy. Altogether, Milton's despondency had never yet been so deep as it must have been at this beginning of the last phase of the long English Revolution, represented in the Parliament of the Secluded Members and in Monk's accompanying Dictatorship. CHAPTER II. Third Section. MILTON THROUGH MONK'S DICTATORSHIP. FEB. 1659-60--MAY 1660. FIRST EDITION OF MILTON'S _READY AND EASY WAY TO ESTABLISH A FREE COMMONWEALTH_: ACCOUNT OF THE PAMPHLET, WITH EXTRACTS: VEHEMENT REPUBLICANISM OF THE PAMPHLET, WITH ITS PROPHETIC WARNINGS: PECULIAR CENTRAL IDEA OF THE PAMPHLET, VIZ. THE PROJECT OF A GRAND COUNCIL OR PARLIAMENT TO SIT IN PERPETUITY, WITH A COUNCIL OF STATE FOR ITS EXECUTIVE: PASSAGES EXPOUNDING THIS IDEA: ADDITIONAL SUGGESTION OF LOCAL AND COUNTY COUNCILS OR COMMITTEES: DARING PERORATION OF THE PAMPHLET: MILTON'S RECAPITULATION OF THE SUBSTANCE OF IT IN A SHORT PRIVATE LETTER TO MONK ENTITLED _PRESENT MEANS AND BRIEF DELINEATION OF A FREE COMMONWEALTH_: WIDE CIRCULATION OF MILTON'S PAMPHLET: THE RESPONSE BY MONK AND THE PARLIAMENT OF THE SECLUDED MEMBERS IN THEIR PROCEEDINGS OF THE NEXT FORTNIGHT: DISSOLUTION OF THE PARLIAMENT AFTER ARRANGEMENTS FOR ITS SUCCESSOR: ROYALIST SQUIB PREDICTING MILTON'S SPEEDY ACQUAINTANCE WITH THE HANGMAN AT TYBURN: ANOTHER SQUIB AGAINST MILTON, CALLED THE _CENSURE OF THE ROTA UPON MR. MILTON'S BOOK_: SPECIMENS OF THIS BURLESQUE: REPUBLICAN APPEAL TO MONK, CALLED _PLAIN ENGLISH_: REPLY TO THE SAME, WITH ANOTHER ATTACK ON MILTON: POPULAR TORRENT OF ROYALISM DURING THE FORTY DAYS OF INTERVAL BETWEEN THE PARLIAMENT OF THE SECLUDED MEMBERS AND THE CONVENTION PARLIAMENT (MARCH 16, 1659-60--APRIL 25, 1660): CAUTION OF MONK AND THE COUNCIL OF STATE: DR. MATTHEW GRIFFITH AND HIS ROYALIST SERMON, _THE FEAR OF GOD AND THE KING_: GRIFFITH IMPRISONED FOR HIS SERMON, BUT FORWARD REPUBLICANS CHECKED OR PUNISHED AT THE SAME TIME: NEEDHAM DISCHARGED FROM HIS EDITORSHIP AND MILTON FROM HIS SECRETARYSHIP: RESOLUTENESS OF MILTON IN HIS REPUBLICANISM: HIS _BRIEF NOTES ON DR. GRIFFITH'S SERMON_: SECOND EDITION OF HIS _READY AND EASY WAY TO ESTABLISH A FREE COMMONWEALTH_: REMARKABLE ADDITIONS AND ENLARGEMENTS IN THIS EDITION: SPECIMENS OF THESE: MILTON AND LAMBERT THE LAST REPUBLICANS IN THE FIELD: ROGER L'ESTRANGE'S PAMPHLET AGAINST MILTON, CALLED _NO BLIND GUIDES_: LARGER ATTACK ON MILTON BY G.S., CALLED _HE DIGNITY OF KINGSHIP ASSERTED_: QUOTATIONS FROM THAT BOOK: MEETING OF THE CONVENTION PARLIAMENT, APRIL 25, 1660: DELIVERY BY GREENVILLE OF THE SIX ROYAL LETTERS FROM BREDA, APRIL 28--MAY 1, AND VOTES OF BOTH HOUSES FOR THE RECALL OF CHARLES; INCIDENTS OF THE FOLLOWING WEEK: MAD IMPATIENCE OVER THE THREE KINGDOMS FOR THE KING'S RETURN: HE AND HIS COURT AT THE HAGUE, PREPARING FOR THE VOYAGE HOME: PANIC AMONG THE SURVIVING REGICIDES AND OTHER PROMINENT REPUBLICANS: FLIGHT OF NEEDHAM TO HOLLAND AND ABSCONDING OF MILTON FROM HIS HOUSE IN PETTY FRANCE: LAST SIGHT OF MILTON IN THAT HOUSE. The Parliament of the Secluded Members and Residuary Rumpers had been sitting for a few days, had confirmed Monk in the Dictatorship by formally appointing him Captain-General and Commander-in-chief (Feb. 21), and had also (Feb. 22) intimated their resolution to devolve all really constitutional questions on a new "full and free Parliament," when Milton did send forth the pamphlet he had written. It was a small quarto of eighteen pages with this title-page: "_The Readie and Easie Way to Establish a Free Commonwealth, and the Excellence therof compar'd with the inconveniences and dangers of readmitting kingship in this nation. The author J.M., London, Printed by T.N., and are to be sold by Livewell Chapman at the Crown in Popes-Head Alley_. 1660." Copies seem to have been procurable before the end of February 1659-60, but Thomason's copy bears date "March 3."[1] That was the day of the order of Parliament for the release of the last remaining Scottish captives of Worcester Battle. [Footnote 1: In Wood's Fasti (I. 485) the pamphlet is mentioned as "published in Feb." The publication, we learn from subsequent words of Milton himself, was very hurried, and copies got about without his press-corrections. I find no entry of the pamphlet in the Stationers' Registers.--It is particularly necessary to remember that this was but the _first edition_ of the pamphlet. Another was to follow. In all the editions of Milton's collected works, from that of 1698 onwards, the reprint is from the later edition, without notice of the first; but I hardly know a case in which the distinction between two editions is more important.] The pamphlet opens thus:-- "Although, since the writing of this treatise, the face of things hath had some change, writs for new elections [by the late Rump] have been recalled, and the members at first chosen [for the original Long Parliament] readmitted from exclusion to sit again in Parliament, yet, not a little rejoicing to hear declared the resolutions of all those who are now in power, jointly tending to the establishment of a Free Commonwealth, and to remove, if it be possible, this unsound humour of returning to old bondage instilled of late by some cunning deceivers, and nourished from bad principles and false apprehensions among too many of the people, I thought best not to suppress what I had written, hoping it may perhaps (the Parliament now sitting more full and frequent) be now much more useful than before: yet submitting what hath reference to the state of things as they then stood to present constitutions, and, so the same end be pursued, not insisting on this or that means to obtain it. The treatise was thus written as follows." This is an attempt by Milton even yet to disguise his despondency. He had written the pamphlet while the late Rump was still sitting, while the conjunction between them and Monk was unbroken, and when the last news was that they had issued, or were about to issue, writs for the recruiting of their body by a large number of like-minded additional members; but he will assume that the pamphlet may yet answer its purpose, with hardly a change of phraseology. No longer, it is true, does the power lie with the Rump, recruited or unrecruited; it lies now in the unexpected Parliament of the Residuary Rumpers _plus_ Monk's restored representatives of the pre-Commonwealth period of the Long Parliament. But he will suppose the best even after that surprise. There is, at any rate, a more "full and frequent" Parliament than before: and there has been no declaration hitherto of any intention to subvert the Commonwealth. On the contrary, had not Monk, both in his speech to the Secluded Members before readmitting them, and also in his Declaration or Address to the Army published after their re-admission, used the language of a true Commonwealth's-man, and even called God to witness that his only aim was "God's glory and the settlement of these nations upon Commonwealth foundations"? Had not the Secluded Members virtually made a compact with Monk upon these terms? Milton will not, for the present, suppose either Monk or the Parliament false in the main matter. He will only suppose that they have perceived, with himself, the infatuated drift of the popular humour towards a restoration of Royalty, and will themselves listen, and allow the country to listen, to what he had written on that subject two or three weeks ago. The despondency which he disguises in the preface appears in the pamphlet itself. Or rather it is a despondency dashed with a sanguine remnant of faith that all might yet be well, and that the means of perpetuating a Republic, all contrary appearances notwithstanding, might yet be shown to be "ready and easy." The use of these two words in the title of such a pamphlet at such a time is very characteristic. It was the public theorist, however, that ventured on them, rather than the secret and real man. Throughout the pamphlet there is a sad and fierce undertone, as of one knowing that what he is prophesying as easy will never come to pass. About half of the pamphlet consists of a declamation in general on the advantages of a Commonwealth Government over a Kingly Government, and on the dishonour, inconveniences, and dangers, to the British Islands in particular, if they should relapse into the one form of Government after having had so much prosperous experience of the other. In the following specimen of the declamation the reader will note the prophecy of actual events as far as to the Revolution of 1688:-- "After our liberty thus successfully fought for, gained, and many years possessed (except in those unhappy interruptions which God hath removed), ... to fall back, or rather to creep back, so poorly as it seems the multitude would, to their once abjured and detested thraldom of kingship, not only argues a strange degenerate corruption suddenly spread among us, fitted and prepared for new slavery, but will render us a scorn and derision to all our neighbours. And what will they say of us but scoffingly as of that foolish builder mentioned by our Saviour, who began to build a tower and was not able to finish it: 'Where is this goodly Tower of a Commonwealth, which the English boasted they would build to overshadow Kings and be another Rome in the West? The foundation indeed they laid gallantly; but fell into a worse confusion, not of tongues but of factions, than those at the Tower of Babel, and have left no memorial of their work behind them remaining but in the common laughter of Europe.' Which must needs redound the more to our shame if we but look on our neighbours THE UNITED PROVINCES, to us inferior in all outward advantages; who, notwithstanding, in the midst of great difficulties, courageously, wisely, constantly, went through with the same work, and are settled in all the happy enjoyments of a potent and flourishing Republic to this day.--Besides this, if we return to kingship, and soon repent (as undoubtedly we shall, when we begin to find the old encroachments coming on by little and little upon our consciences, which must needs proceed from King and Bishop united inseparably in one interest), we may be forced perhaps to fight over again all that we have fought and spend over again all that we have spent, but are never likely to attain, thus far as we are now advanced to the recovery of our freedom, never likely to have it in possession as we now have it,--never to be vouchsafed hereafter the like mercies and signal assistance from Heaven in our cause, if by our ingrateful backsliding we make these fruitless to ourselves, all His gracious condescensions and answers to our once importuning prayers against the tyranny which we then groaned under to become now of no effect, by returning of our own foolish accord, nay running headlong again with full stream wilfully and obstinately, into the same bondage: making vain and viler than dirt the blood of so many thousand faithful and valiant Englishmen, who left us in this liberty bought with their lives; losing by a strange after-game of folly all the battles we have won, all the treasure we have spent (not that corruptible treasure only, but that far more precious one of all our late miraculous deliverances), and most pitifully depriving ourselves the instant fruition of that Free Government which we have so dearly purchased,--a Free Commonwealth: not only held by wisest men in all ages the noblest, the manliest, the equalest, the justest Government, the most agreeable to all due liberty, and proportioned equality both human, civil, and Christian, most cherishing to virtue and true religion, but also, (I may say it with greatest probability) plainly commended or rather enjoined by our Saviour Himself to all Christians, not without remarkable disallowance and the brand of Gentilism upon Kingship [quotation here of _Luke_ XXII. 25, 26][1] ... And what Government comes nearer to this precept of Christ than a Free Commonwealth? Wherein they who are greatest are perpetual servants and drudges to the public at their own costs and charges,--neglect their own affairs, yet are not elevated above their brethren,--live soberly in their families, walk the streets as other men, may be spoken to freely, familiarly, friendly, without adoration: whereas a King must be adored like a demigod, with a dissolute and haughty Court about him, of vast expense and luxury, masques and revels, to the debauching of our prime gentry both male and female,--nor at his own cost, but on the public revenue,--and all this to do nothing but bestow the eating and drinking of excessive dainties, to set a pompous face upon the superficial actings of State, to pageant himself up and down in progress among the perpetual bowings and cringings of an abject people." [Footnote 1: This is one of Milton's very long sentences; and the length shows, I think, the glow and rapidity of the dictation.] Having thus expressed his belief that "a Free Commonwealth, without Single Person or House of Lords, is by far the best government, _if it can be had_," Milton glances at the objection that recent experience in England has shown such government to be practically unattainable. He denies this, alleging that all disappointment hitherto "may be ascribed with most reason to the frequent disturbances, interruptions, and dissolutions which the Parliament hath had, partly from the impatient or disaffected people, partly from some ambitious leaders in the Army"; and he declares that the present time is peculiarly favourable for one more vigorous effort. "Now is the opportunity, now the very season, wherein we may obtain a Free Commonwealth, and establish it for ever in the land without difficulty or much delay." He had written this when the Rump was sitting, and when he had in view the new elections that were to recruit that "small remainder of those faithful worthies who at first freed us from tyranny and have continued ever since through all changes constant to their trust"; but he lets it stand now, as not inapplicable to the new condition of things brought in by the sudden mixture of the Secluded with the Rumpers. The "_Ready and Easy Way_," however, has still to be explained; and to that he proceeds. The central idea of the pamphlet, and practically its backbone, is _One and the same Parliament in Perpetuity or Membership for Life_. This may be a surprise, not only to those who, knowing that Milton was a Republican, conceive him therefore to have held necessarily the exact modern theory of Representative Government, but also to those who understand Milton better, and who may remember at this point his somewhat contemptuous estimates on previous occasions of the value of the bodies called Parliaments. If those previous passages of his writings are studied, however, it will be found that he is not now so inconsistent as he looks. He had always thought a broad general council of fit men in the centre of a nation the essential of good government; and his chief recommendation to Cromwell, even when approving of his exceptional Sovereignty, had been that he should keep round him such a general Council. Further, it will be found that _permanence of the same men at the centre of affairs_ had always been his implied ideal, whether permanence of an exceptional Single-Person sovereignty surrounded by a Council, or permanence of a Council without a Single-Person sovereignty. His real objection to so-called Parliaments, it will be found, lay in the association with them of the ideas of shiftingness, interruptedness, successiveness, the turmoil and debauchery of successive general elections. So possessed was he with the notion of permanence of tenure as desirable in the governing agency, whatever it might be, that he had even modified the notion, as we have seen, to suit the anomalous conditions of that stage of the Anarchy which we have called the Wallingford-House Interruption, He had recommended then the experiment of a duality of life-aristocracies, one civil and the other military. And now, the turn of circumstances and of his speculations shutting him up once more to a single Civil Parliament of the ordinary size and kind, he will insist on the quality of permanence or perpetuity as that which alone will make _it_ answer the purpose. But, the very name "Parliament" having been vitiated so as to make a permanent Parliament a difficult conception for most people, he would rather get rid of the name altogether, and call the central governing body simply THE GENERAL OR GRAND COUNCIL OF THE NATION. All this appears in Milton's own words, as follows:-- "The ground and basis of every just and free Government (since men have smarted so oft for committing all to one person) is a GENERAL COUNCIL OF ABLEST MEN, chosen by the people to consult of public affairs from time to time for the common good. This Grand Council must have the forces by sea and land in their power, must raise and manage the public revenue, make laws as need requires, treat of commerce, peace, or war, with foreign nations; and, for the carrying on some particular affairs of State with more secrecy and expedition, must elect, as they have already, out of their own number and others, a _Council of State_, And, although it may seem strange at first hearing, by reason that men's minds are prepossessed with the conceit of successive Parliaments, I affirm that the GRAND OR GENERAL COUNCIL, being well chosen, should sit perpetual: for so their business is, and they will become thereby skilfullest, best acquainted with the people, and the people with them. The Ship of the Commonwealth is always under sail: they sit at the stern; and, if they steer well, what need is there to change them, it being rather dangerous? Add to this that the GRAND COUNCIL is both foundation and main pillar of the whole State, and to move pillars and foundations, unless they be faulty, cannot be safe for the building. I see not therefore how we can be advantaged by successive Parliaments, but that they are much likelier continually to unsettle rather than to settle a free Government, to breed commotions, changes, novelties, and uncertainties, and serve only to satisfy the ambition of such men as think themselves injured and cannot stay till they be orderly chosen to have their part in the Government. If the ambition of such be at all to be regarded, the best expedient will be, and with least danger, that every two or three years a hundred or some such number may go out by lot or suffrage of the rest, and the like number be chosen in their places (which hath been already thought on here, and done in other Commonwealths); but in my opinion better nothing moved, unless by death or just accusation.... [Farther argument for the permanence of the Supreme Governing Body, with illustrations from the Sanhedrim of the Jews, the Areopagus of Athens, the Senates of Lacedaemon and Home, the full Venetian Senate, and the States-General of the United Provinces]. I know not therefore what should be peculiar in England to make successive Parliaments thought safest, or convenient here more than in all other nations, unless it be the fickleness which is attributed to us as we are Islanders. But good education and acquisite wisdom ought to correct the fluxible fault, if any such be, of our watery situation. I suppose therefore that the people, well weighing these things, would have no cause to fear or murmur, though the Parliament, abolishing that name, as originally signifying but the _parley_ of our Commons with their Norman King when he pleased to call them, should perpetuate themselves, if their ends be faithful and for a free Commonwealth, under the name of a GRAND OR GENERAL COUNCIL: nay, till this be done, I am in doubt whether our State will be ever certainly and thoroughly settled.... The GRAND COUNCIL being thus firmly constituted to perpetuity, and still upon the death or default of any member supplied and kept in full number, there can be no cause alleged why peace, justice, plentiful trade, and all prosperity, should not thereupon ensue throughout the whole land, with as much assurance as can be of human things that they shall so continue (if God favour us and our wilful sins provoke Him not) even, to the coming of our true and rightful and only to be expected King, only worthy as He is our only Saviour, the Messiah, the Christ, the only heir of his Eternal Father, the only by Him anointed and ordained, since the work of our redemption finished, Universal Lord of all mankind. The way propounded is plain, easy, and open before us, without intricacies, without the mixture of inconveniences, or any considerable objection to be made, as by some frivolously, that it is not practicable. And this facility we shall have above our next neighbouring Commonwealth (if we can keep us from the fond conceit of something like a Duke of Venice, put lately into many men's heads by some one or other subtly driving on, under that pretty notion, his own ambitious ends to a crown),[1] that our liberty shall not be hampered or hovered over by any engagement to such a potent family as the House of Nassau, of whom to stand in perpetual doubt and suspicion, but we shall live the clearest and absolutest free nation, in the world." [Footnote 1: The allusion here is vague.] In effect, therefore, Milton's _Ready and Easy Way_, recommended to the mixed Parliament of Residuary Rumpers and their reseated Presbyterian half-brothers of March 1659-60, is that this Parliament, nailing the Republican flag to the mast, should make itself, or some enlargement of itself, the perpetual supreme power under the name of THE GRAND COUNCIL OF THE COMMONWEALTH, appointing a smaller _Council of State_, as heretofore, to be the working executive, but plainly intimating to the people that there are to be no more general Parliamentary elections, but only elections to vacancies as they may occur in the Grand Council by death or misdemeanour. He is himself against the adoption of Harrington's principle of rotation to any extent whatever; but, if it would reconcile people to his scheme, he would concede rotation so far as to let a portion of the Grand Council go out every second or third year to admit new men. While expounding his main idea, Milton had intimated that he had another suggestion in reserve, which might help to reconcile reasonable men of democratic prepossessions to the seeming novelty of an irremovable apparatus of Government at the centre. This suggestion he brings forward near the end of the pamphlet. He arrives at it in the course of a demonstration in farther detail of certain superiorities of Commonwealth government over Regal. "The whole freedom of man," he says, "consists either in Spiritual or Civil Liberty." Glancing first at Spiritual Liberty, he contents himself with a general statement of the principle of Liberty of Conscience, as implying the absolute and unimpeded right of every individual Christian to interpret the Scripture for himself and give utterance and effect to his conclusions; and, though he does not conceal that in his own opinion such Liberty of Conscience cannot be complete without Church-disestablishment, he does not press that for the present. Enough that Liberty of Conscience, according to any endurable definition of it, is more safe in a Republic than in a Kingdom,--which, by various instances from history, he maintains to be a fact. Then, coming to Civil Liberty, he propounds his reserved suggestion, or the second real novelty of his pamphlet, thus:-- "The other part of our freedom consists in the civil rights and advancements of every person according to his merit: the enjoyment of _those_ never more certain, and the access to _these_ never more open, than in a free Commonwealth. And _both_ in my opinion may be best and soonest obtained if every county in the land were made a _Little Commonwealth_, and their chief town a _City_ if it be not so called already; where the nobility and chief gentry may build houses or palaces befitting their quality, may bear part in the [district or city] government, make their own judicial laws, and execute them by their own elected judicatures, without appeal, in all things of Civil Government between man and man. So they shall have justice in their own hands, and none to blame but themselves if it be not well administered. In these employments they may exercise and fit themselves till their lot fall to be chosen into THE GRAND COUNCIL, according as their worth and merit shall be taken notice of by the people. As for controversies that may happen between men of several counties, they may repair, as they now do, to the Capital City. They should have here also [i.e. in their own Cities and Counties] schools and academies at their own choice, wherein their children may be bred up in their own sight to all learning and noble education, not in grammar only, but in all liberal arts and exercises." This is what would now be called a scheme of _Decentralization_ or _Systematic Local Government_. The counties, with their chief cities, should be so many little independent communities, each with its legislative council, its law-courts, and its other institutions, employing and tasking the political energies and abilities of the citizens or inhabitants of the district. While this would be advantageous in itself, inasmuch as it would stimulate mental activity and social improvement everywhere, and would relieve the GRAND CENTRAL COUNCIL of much work more properly appertaining to municipalities, it would doubtless reconcile many to the existence of such a GRAND CENTRAL COUNCIL in perpetuity. Energetic and ambitious spirits would have scope and training in their own cities and neighbourhoods, and the hope of being elected to the Central Government when there should be a vacancy there would be a fine incitement to the best to qualify themselves to the utmost for national statesmanship. The following is the closing passage of the whole pamphlet:-- "With all hazard I have ventured what I thought my duty, to speak in season and to forewarn my country in time; wherein I doubt not but there be many wise men in all places and degrees, but am sorry the effects of wisdom are so little seen among us. Many circumstances and particulars I could have added in those things whereof I have spoken; but a few main matters now put speedily into execution will suffice to recover us and set all right. And there will want at no time who are good at circumstances; but men who set their minds on main matters and sufficiently urge them in these most difficult times I find not many. What I _have_ spoken is the language of the Good Old Cause: if it seem strange to any, it will not seem more strange, I hope, than convincing to backsliders. Thus much I should perhaps have said though I were sure I should have spoken only to trees and stones, and had none to cry to but, with the Prophet, _O Earth, Earth, Earth_, to tell the very soil itself what God hath determined of Coniah and his seed for ever. But I trust I shall have spoken persuasion to abundance of sensible and ingenuous men,--to some perhaps whom God may raise of these stones to become Children of Liberty, and may enable and unite in their noble resolutions to give a stay to these our ruinous proceedings and to this general defection of the misguided and abused multitude." To understand fully the tremendous daring of this peroration, one must turn to the passage of Hebrew prophecy which it cites and applies to Charles Stuart. It is _Jeremiah XXII._ 24-30, where woe is denounced upon Coniah, Jeconiah, or Jehoiachin, the worthless King of Judah, no better than his father Jehoiakim:--"As I live, saith the Lord, though Coniah, the son of Jehoiakim, King of Judah, were the signet upon my right hand, yet would I pluck thee thence. And I will give thee into the hand of them that seek thy life, and into the hand of them whose face thou fearest, even into the hand of Nebuchadnezzar King of Babylon, and into the hand of the Chaldeans. And I will cast thee out, and thy mother that bare thee, into another country, where ye were not born; and there shall ye die. But to the land whereunto they desire to return, thither shall they not return. Is this man Coniah a despised broken idol? is he a vessel wherein is no pleasure? Wherefore are they cast out, he and his seed, and are cast into a land which they know not? O Earth, Earth, Earth, hear the word of the Lord. Thus saith the Lord: Write ye this man childless, a man that shall not prosper in his days; for no man of his seed shall prosper, sitting upon the throne of David and ruling any more in Judah." A curious supplement to Milton's _Ready and Easy Way to establish a Free Commonwealth_ exists in the shape of a private letter which he addressed to General Monk. It was not published at the time, and bears no date, but must have been written immediately after the publication of the pamphlet, while the Parliament of the Secluded Members and Residuary Rumpers was still sitting. Milton, it would seem, had sent Monk a copy of the pamphlet; and this private letter is nothing but a brief summary of the suggestions of the pamphlet for the General's easier reading, should he think fit. It is entitled, in our present copies, "_The Present Means and Brief Delineation of a Free Commonwealth, easy to be put in practice and without delay: In a Letter to General Monk_."[1] The whole consists of less than three of the present pages. Believing that all endeavours must now be used "that the ensuing election be of such, as are already firm or inclinable to constitute a Free Commonwealth," Milton appeals to Monk to be himself the man to lead in these endeavours. "The speediest way," he says, "will be to call up forthwith [to London] the chief gentlemen out of every county, [and] to lay before them (as your Excellency hath already, both in your published Letters to the Army and your Declaration recited to the Members of Parliament), the danger and confusion of readmitting kingship in this land." Then let the gentlemen so charged return at once to their counties, and elect or cause to be elected, "by such at least of the people as are rightly qualified," a STANDING COUNCIL in every city and great town, all great towns henceforth to be called _Cities_. Let it be understood that these councils are to be permanent seats of district and local judicature and of political deliberation; but, while setting up such councils, let the gentlemen also see to the election of "the usual number of ablest knights and burgesses, engaged for a Commonwealth, to make up the PARLIAMENT, or, as it will from henceforth be better called, THE GRAND OR GENERAL COUNCIL OF THE NATION." The local or city councils having meanwhile been set up, and it having been intimated that on great occasions their assent will be required to measures proposed by the Grand Council of the nation, Milton does not anticipate that there will be much opposition "though this GRAND COUNCIL be perpetual, as in that book [his pamphlet] I proved would be best and most conformable to best examples"; but, should there be opposition, "the known expedient may at length be used of a partial _rotation_." This is all that Milton has to say, with one exception:--"If these gentlemen convocated refuse these fair and noble offers of immediate liberty and happy condition, no doubt there be enough in every county who will thankfully accept them, your Excellency once more declaring publicly this to be your mind, and having a faithful veteran Army so ready and glad to assist you in the prosecution thereof."--What Monk thought of Mr. Milton's Letter, if he ever took the trouble to read it, may be easily guessed. It was at this time that he was so often drunk or nearly so at the dinners given in the City, and that Sir John Greenville, on the part of Charles, was watching for an interview with him at St. James's. [Footnote 1: "_Published from the Manuscript_" is the addition in all our present reprints. In other words, this Letter to Monk, together with the previous _Letter to a Friend concerning the Ruptures of the Commonwealth_, came into Toland's hands in the manner described in Note p. 617, and was also given by Toland for use in the 1698 edition of Milton's Prose Works.] Not one of Milton's pamphlets had a larger immediate circulation or provoked a more rapid fury of criticism than his _Ready and Easy Way to establish a Free Commonwealth_. From the Parliament indeed the response was only indirect; but every atom of such indirect response was a dead and contemptuous negative. Though, when Milton published the pamphlet, he was entitled to assume that the compact between Monk and the Secluded Members whom he had restored guaranteed a continuance of the Commonwealth form of Government, the entire tenor of their proceedings during the five-and-twenty days to which they confined their sittings (Feb. 2l-March 16, 1659-60) was such as to undeceive him and others on that point, and to show that, though they abstained from abolishing the Commonwealth themselves, they meant to leave the succeeding full and free Parliament they had called at perfect liberty to do so. No other construction could be put upon their votes even in ecclesiastical matters. Hardly was Milton's pamphlet out when he knew that they had voted the revival of the Westminster Assembly's Confession of Faith as the standard of doctrine in the National Church (March 2), and the revival of the Solemn League and Covenant as a document of perpetual national obligation (March 5). Then followed (March 14) their vote for mapping out all England and Wales according to the strict pattern of the Scottish Presbyterian organization. But, that there might be no mistake, their votes predetermining the composition of the coming Parliament were also in the direction of the admission of Royalists and the exclusion of those that could be called Fanatics for the Republic. The engagement to be faithful to the Commonwealth without King or House of Lords was annulled (March 13); the clauses disqualifying even the active and conspicuous Royalists of the Civil Wars were far from stringent; and the very act by which the House dissolved itself contained a proviso saving the legal and constitutional rights of the old House of Lords and pointing to the restitution of the Peerage. How significant also that scene in the House on the last day of their sittings, Friday, March 16, when Mr. Crewe moved for a vote of execration on the Regicides, and poor Thomas Scott, standing up on the floor, and reckless though the words should seal his doom, declared himself to be one of the blood-stained band and claimed the fact as his highest earthly honour! What Scott did that day in the House Milton had done even more publicly a fortnight before in the daring peroration of his pamphlet. From March 16, 1659-60, Milton and Scott, whoever else, might regard themselves as in the list for the future hangman. In the list for the future hangman! It is a strong expression, but true historically to the very letter. Read the following from a scurrilous pamphlet, of six pages in shabby print, called _The Character of the Rump_, which was out in London on Saturday the 17th of March, the day after the dissolution of the Parliament:-- "An ingenious person hath observed that Scott is the Rump's man Thomas; and they might have said to him, when he was so busy with the General, "Peace, for the Lord's sake, Thomas! lest Monk take us, And drag us out, as Hercules did Cacus. "But John Milton is their goose-quill champion; who had need of a help-meet to establish anything, for he has a ram's head and is good only at batteries,--an old heretic both in religion and manners, that by his will would shake off his governors as he doth his wives, four in a fortnight. The sunbeams of his scandalous papers against the late King's Book is [sic] the parent that begot his late _New Commonwealth_; and, because he, like a parasite as he is, by flattering the then tyrannical power, hath run himself into the briars, the man will be angry if the rest of the nation will not bear him company, and suffer themselves to be decoyed into the same condition. He is so much an enemy to usual practices that I believe, when he is condemned to travel to Tyburn in a cart, he will petition for the favour to be the first man that ever was driven thither in a wheelbarrow. And now, John, _you_ must stand close and draw in your elbows [the fancy is of Milton standing on the scaffold pinioned], that Needham, the Commonwealth didapper, may have room to stand beside you ... He [Needham] was one of the spokes of Harrington's Rota, till he was turned out for cracking. As for Harrington, _he's_ but a demi-semi in the Rump's music, and should be good at the cymbal; for he is all for wheeling instruments, and, having a good invention, may in time find out the way to make a concert of grindstones."[1] [Footnote 1: Pamphlet, of title and date given, in the Thomason Collection. I have mended the pointing, but nothing else.] Such was the popular verdict, in March 1660, on Milton and his last pamphlet, and all his deserts and accomplishments in the world he had lived in for one-and-fifty years. More of the like may be found on search; but I will pass to one retort on his _Ready and Easy Way_, of somewhat higher literary quality than the last, and which retains a certain celebrity yet. It appeared on March 30, as a small quarto of sixteen pages, with this title: "_The Censure of the Rota upon Mr. Milton's Book, entituled 'The Ready and Easie Way to Establish a Free Commonwealth_.'" On the title-page is the imprint, "_London, Printed by Paul Giddy, Printer to the Rota, at the sign of the Windmill in Turne-againe Lane_. 1660," and also a professed extract from the minutes of the Rota Club, "_Die Luna 26 Martii_ 1660," certified by "_Trundle Wheeler, Clerk to the Rota_," authorizing and ordering Mr. Harrington, as Chairman of the Club, to draw up and publish a narrative of that day's debate of the Club over Mr. Milton's pamphlet, and to transmit a copy of the same to Mr. Milton. The thing, though it has been mistaken by careless people as actually a production of Harrington's, is in reality a clever burlesque by some Royalist, in which, under the guise of an imaginary debate in the Rota over Milton's pamphlet, Milton and the Rota-men are turned into ridicule together. The mock-names on the title-page (_Paul Giddy, Trundle Wheeler, &c._) are part of the burlesque; and it is well kept up in the tract itself, which takes the form of a letter gravely addressed to Milton and signed with Harrington's initials, "_J. H._"[1] [Footnote 1: The Rota Club, as we already know (ante p. 555), can have had no meeting on the day supposed in the burlesque, having disappeared, with all its appurtenances, ballot-box included, at or immediately after the swamping of the old Rump by the readmission of the secluded members. The last glimpses we have of it are these from Pepys's Diary:--_Jan._ 10, 1659-60. "To the Coffee-house, where were a great confluence of gentlemen: viz. Mr. Harrington, Poulteney (chairman), Gold, Dr. Petty, &c.; where admirable discourse till 9 at night."--_Jan._ 17. "I went to the Coffee Club, and heard very good discourse. It was in answer to Mr. Harrington's answer, who said that the state of the Roman government was not a settled government, and so it was no wonder that the balance of property was in one hand and the command in another, it being therefore always in a posture of war; but it was carried by ballot that it was a steady government, though it is true by the voices it had been carried before that it was an unsteady government: so to-morrow it is to be proved by the opponents that the balance lay in one hand and the government in another."--_Feb._ 20 (day before Restitution of the Secluded). "I to the Coffee-house, where I heard Mr, Harrington and my Lord Dorset and another Lord talking of getting another place [for the Club meetings] at the Cockpit, and they did believe it would come to something." Had there been an express order for closing the Club?] Mr. Harrington is supposed to begin by expressing his regret to Mr. Milton that his duty obliges him to make so unsatisfactory a report as to the reception of Mr. Milton's last pamphlet by the Club. "For, whereas it is our usual custom to dispute everything, how plain or obscure soever, by knocking argument against argument, and tilting at one another with our heads (as rams fight) till we are out of breath, and then refer it to our wooden oracle, the Box, and seldom anything, how slight soever, hath appeared without some person or other to defend it, I must confess I never saw bowling-stones run so unluckily against any boy, when his hand has been out, as the ballots did against you when anything was put to the question from the beginning of your book to the end." First, one gentleman had objected to the very name of the book, _The Ready and Easy Way_, &c., and had remarked that Mr. Milton was generally unlucky in his titles to his pamphlets, most of them having been absurd or fantastic. A second gentleman had been even more impolite. "He wondered you did not give over writing, since you have always done it to little or no purpose; for, though you have scribbled your eyes out, your works have never been printed but for the company of chandlers and tobaccomen, who are your stationers, and the only men that vend your labours. He said that he himself reprieved the whole _Defence of the People of England_ for a groat,... though it cost you much oil and labour and the Rump £300 a year." Then a third gentleman, a member of the Long Robe, had been very severe and sarcastic on Mr. Milton's knowledge of Law; and a fourth, who had travelled much abroad, had followed with an equally severe criticism on Mr. Milton's knowledge of European history. This last speaker was beginning to be prosy, when fortunately some one came into the Club with news that Sir Arthur Hasilrig, "the Brutus of our Republic," had been nearly torn in pieces by a rabble of boys in Westminster Hall, just outside the Club, and had saved himself by taking to his heels. The laughter over this made the last gentleman forget what he was saying; which gave opportunity to a fifth gentleman to rise and discourse at some length on the sophistical and abominable character of Mr. Milton's Political Philosophy:-- "He was of opinion that you did not believe yourself, nor those reasons you give in defence of Commonwealth, but that you are swayed by something else, as either by a stork-like fate (as a modern Protector-Poet calls it, because that fowl is observed to live nowhere but in Commonwealths), or because you have unadvisedly scribbled yourself obnoxious, or else you fear such admirable eloquence as yours would be thrown away under a Monarchy.... All your politics are derived from the works of Declaimers, with which sort of writers the ancient Commonwealths had the fortune to abound ... All which you have outgone (according to your talent) in their several ways: for you have done your feeble endeavour to rob the Church, of the little which the rapine of the most sacrilegious persons hath left, in your learned work against Tithes; you have slandered the dead worse than envy itself, and thrown your dirty outrage on the memory of a murdered Prince, as if the Hangman were but your usher. These have been the attempts of your stiff formal eloquence, which you arm accordingly with anything that lies in your way, right or wrong,--not only begging but stealing questions, and taking everything for granted that will serve your turn. For you are not ashamed to rob O. Cromwell himself, and make use of his canting assurances from Heaven and answering condescensions: the most impious Mahometan doctrine that ever was vented among Christians."... This speaker having ended with a comment on Mr. Milton's remark that Christ himself had put "the brand of Gentilism" upon Kingship, "a young gentleman made answer that your writings are best interpreted by themselves, and that be remembered, in that book wherein you fight with the King's Picture, you call Sir Philip Sidney's Princess Pamela, who was born and bred of Christian parents in England, 'a heathen woman,' and therefore he thought that by _Heathenish_ you meant _English_, and that in calling Kingship heathenish you inferred it was the only proper and natural government of the English nation, as it hath been proved in all ages. To which another objected that such a sense was quite contrary to your purpose; to which he immediately replied that it was no new thing with you to write that which is as well against as for your purpose. After much debate, they agreed to put it to the ballot; and the young gentleman carried it without contradiction." Then another critic fell foul of Mr. Milton's Divinity and Church notions,--one of which, he said, was "that the Church of Christ ought to have no head upon earth, but the monster of many heads, the multitude," and another "that any man may turn away his wife, and take another as oft as he pleases": to which last accusation is added the comment, "As you have most learnedly proved upon the fiddle [_Tetrachordon_], and practised in your life and conversation; for which you have achieved the honour to be styled the founder of a sect." The audience by this time becoming weary, "a worthy knight of this Assembly stood up and said that, if we meant to examine all the particular fallacies and flaws in your writing, we should never have done; he would therefore, with leave, deliver his judgment upon the whole: which in brief was this:--That it is all windy foppery from the beginning to the end, written, to the elevation of that rabble and meant to cheat the ignorant; that you fight always with the flat of your hand like a rhetorician, and never contract the logical fist; that you trade altogether in universals, the region of deceits and fallacy, but never come so near particulars as to let us know which among divers things of the same kind you would be at ... Besides this, as all your politics reach but the outside and circumstances of things, and never touch at realities, so you are very solicitous about _words_, as if they were charms, or had more in them than what they signify; for no conjuror's devil is more concerned in a spell than you are in a mere word." This last speaker having moved that Mr. Harrington himself, in conclusion, should deliver _his_ opinion on Mr. Milton's book, the result was as follows:-- "I knew not (though unwilling) how to avoid it; and therefore I told them, as briefly as I could, that that which I disliked most in your treatise was that there is not one word of _The Balance of Property_, nor the _Agrarian_, nor _Rotation_, in it from the beginning to the end: without which (together with a _Lord Archon_) I thought I had sufficiently demonstrated, not only in my writings but public exercises in that coffee-house, that there is no possible foundation of a free Commonwealth. To the first and second of these,--that is, the _Balance_ and the _Agrarian_,--you made no objection; and therefore I should not need to make any answer. But for the third,--I mean _Rotation_,--which you implicitly reject in your design to perpetuate the present members, I shall only add this to what I have already said and written on that subject: That a Commonwealth is like a great top, that must be kept up by being whipt round, and held in perpetual circulation; for, if you discontinue the rotation, and suffer the Senate to settle and stand still, down it falls immediately. And, if you had studied this point as carefully as I have done, you could not but know there is no such way under Heaven of disposing the vicissitudes of command and obedience, and of distributing equal right and liberty among all men, as this of _Wheeling_."...[1] [Footnote 1: There is a reprint of this _Censure of the Rota_ in the Harleian Miscellany (IV. 179-186). I take the date of publication from the Thomason copy of the original.] How notoriously Milton had flashed forth as the chief militant Republican of the crisis, how universally he had drawn upon himself in that character the eyes of the Royalists and become the target for their bitterest shafts, may appear from yet another probing among the contemporary London pamphlets.----Perhaps the last formal and collective appeal on behalf of the Republic to Monk and the others in power was a small tract which appeared in the end of March, with this title:--_Plain English to his Excellencie the Lord-General Monk and the Officers of his Army: or a Word in Season, not onely to them, but to all impartial Englishmen. To which is added a Declaration of the Parliament in the year 1647, setting forth the grounds and reasons why they resolved to make no further Address or Application to the King. Printed at London in the year_ 1660. The first part of the tract consists of eight pages addressed to Monk, in the form of a letter dated "March 22," by some persons who do not give their names, but sign themselves "your Excellency's most faithful friends and servants in the common cause"; after which, in smaller type, comes a reprint of the famous reasons of the Long Parliament for their total rupture with Charles I. in January 1647-8 (Vol. III. pp. 584-585). The letter begins thus:--"My Lord and Gentlemen,--It is written _The prudent shall keep silence in the evil time_; and 'tis like we also might hold our peace, but that we fear a knife is at the very throat not only of our and your liberties, but of our persons also. In this condition we hope it will be no offence if we cry out to you for help,--you that, through God's goodness, have helped us so often, and strenuously maintained the same cause with us against the return of that family which pretends to the Government of these nations ... We cannot yet be persuaded, though our fears and jealousies are strong and the grounds of them many, that you can so lull asleep your consciences, or forget the public interests and your own, as to be returning back with the multitude to Egypt, or that you should with them be hankering after the leeks and onions of our old bondage." There follows an earnest invective against the Stuarts; but the tone of respectfulness to Monk is kept up studiously throughout. There is no sign of Milton in the language, and one guesses on the whole that the tract was a concoction of a few of the City Republicans, with Barebone among them, meeting privately perhaps in the back-parlour of the Republican bookseller who ventured the publication anonymously; but it is possible that Milton may have been consulted, or at least have been cognisant of the affair. The reprinting of the reasons of the Long Parliament for their No-Address Resolutions of January 1647-8 was an excellent idea, inasmuch as it reminded people of that disgust with Charles I., that impossibility of dealing with him even in his captive condition, which had driven the Parliamentarians to the theory of a Republic a year before the Republic had been actually founded; and this feature of the tract may have seemed good to Milton.----The Tract must have annoyed Monk and the other authorities, for it was immediately suppressed. This we learn from a reply to it, which appeared on the 3rd of April, with the title _Treason Arraigned, in answer to Plain English, being a Trayterous and Phanatique Pamphlet which was condemned by the Counsel of State, suppressed by Authority, and the Printer declared against by Proclamation ... London, Printed in the year_ 1660. The reply takes the very curious form of a reproduction of the condemned tract almost textually, paragraph by paragraph, with a running comment of vituperation upon the author or authors. The following sentences, culled from the vituperative comment, will show that the writer suspected Milton as the person chiefly responsible, and will sufficiently represent the entire performance:-- "Some two days since came to my view a bold sharp pamphlet, called _Plain English_, directed to the General and his Officers.... It is a piece drawn by no fool, and it deserves a serious answer. By the design, the subject, malice, and the style, I should suspect it for a blot of the same pen that wrote _Eikonoklastes_. It runs foul, tends to tumult; and, not content barely to applaud the murder of the King, the execrable author of it vomits upon his ashes with a pedantic and envenomed scorn, pursuing still his sacred memory. Betwixt him [Milton] and his brother Rabshakeh [Needham?] I think a man may venture to divide the glory of it. It relishes the mixture of their united faculties and wickedness.... Say, Milton, Needham, either or both of you, or whosoever else, say where this worthy person [Monk] ever mixed with you.... Come, hang yourself; beg right; here's your true method of begging:--'O, for Tom Scott's sake, for Hasilrig's sake, for Robinson, Holland, Mildmay, Mounson, Corbet, Atkins, Vane, Livesey, Skippon, Milton, Tichbourne, Ireton, Gordon, Lechmere, Blagrave, Barebone, Needham's sake, and, to conclude, for all the rest of our unpenitent brethren's sake, help a company of poor rebellious devils[1].'" [Footnote 1: The dates of the two pamphlets, and the extracts, are from copies in the Thomason Collection. Such references to Milton in the pamphlets of March--April 1660 might be multiplied. He was then in all men's mouths.] We are now, it is to be seen, in the mid-stream of those final forty days which intervened between the self-dissolution of the last fag-end of the Long Parliament and the meeting of the Full and Free Parliament called for the conclusive settlement (March 16, 1659-60-April 25, 1660). Monk was Dictator; the Council of State, with Annesley for President, was the body in charge, along with Monk, keeping the peace; but all eyes were directed towards the coming Parliament, the elections for which were going on. It was precisely in the beginning of April that the popular current towards a restoration of Charles Stuart and nothing else had acquired full force and become a roaring and foaming torrent. They were shouting for him, singing for him, treating his restoration as already certain, though the precise manner and date of it must be left to the Parliament. Only the chiefs, Monk, Annesley, Montague, and the other Councillors, kept up an appearance as if the issue must not be anticipated till the Parliament should have actually met. With letters to and from Charles in their pockets, and each knowing or guessing that the others had such letters, they were trying to look as unpledged and as merely cogitative as they could. It was for the multitude to roar and shout for Charles, and they had now full permission. It was for the chiefs to be silent themselves, only managing and manipulating, and watchful especially against any outbreak of Republican fanaticism even yet that might interfere with the plain course of things and baulk or delay the popular expectation. Wherever they could perceive a likelihood of disturbance, by act or by speech, there they were bound to curb or suppress. At least in one instance they found it necessary to curb a too hasty and impetuous Royalist. This was Dr. Matthew Griffith, a clergyman over sixty years of age, once a _protegé_ of the poet Donne. Sequestered in the early days of the Long Parliament from his rectory of St. Mary Magdalen, London, he had taken refuge with the King through the civil wars, and had been made D.D. at Oxford, and one of the King's chaplains. Afterwards, returning to London, he had lived there through the Commonwealth and the Protectorate, one of those that continued the use of the liturgy and other Anglican church-forms by stealth to small gatherings of cavaliers, and that found themselves often in trouble on that account. He had suffered, it is said, four imprisonments. The near prospect of the return of Charles II. at last had naturally excited the old gentleman; and, chancing to preach in the Mercers' Chapel on Sunday the 25th of March, 1660, he had chosen for his text _Prov._ XXIV. 21, which he translated thus: "My son, fear God and the King, and meddle not with them that be seditious or desirous of change." On this text he had preached a very Royalist sermon. There would have been nothing peculiar in that, as many clergymen were doing the like. But, not content with having preached the sermon, Dr. Griffith resolved to publish it, in an ostentatious manner and with certain accompaniments. "_The Fear of God and the King. Press'd in a Sermon preach'd at Mercers Chappell on the 25th of March, 1660. Together with a brief Historical Account of the Causes of our unhappy distractions and the onely way to heal them. By Matthew Griffith, D.D., and Chaplain to the late King. London, Printed for Tho. Johnson at the Golden Key in St. Pauls Churchyard_, 1660": such was the name of a duodecimo out in London in the first days of April.[1] The volume consists of three parts,--first, a dedicatory epistle "To His Excellency George Monck, Captain-General of all the Land Forces of England, Scotland, and Ireland, and one of the Generals of all the Naval Forces"; then the sermon itself in fifty-eight pages; and then an addition, in the shape of a directly political pamphlet, headed "_The Samaritan Revived_." The gem is the dedication to Monk. The substance of that is as follows:-- [Footnote 1: "April" only, without day, is the date in the Thomason copy; but it was registered at Stationers' Hall, March 31, and there is proof that the publication was immediate.] "My Lord,--If you will be pleased to allow me to be a physician in the same sense that all moral divines do acknowledge the body-politic (consisting of Church and State) to be a patient, then I will now give your Highness a just account both how far and how faithfully I have practised upon it by virtue of my profession. When I first observed things to be somewhat out of order, by reason of a high distemper, which then appeared by some infallible indications, I thought it my duty to prescribe an wholesome electuary (out of the 122nd Psalm at the 6th verse, in a sermon which I was called to preach in the Cathedral Church of Saint Paul's, anno 1642, and soon after published by command under this title: _A Pathetical Persuasion to pray for the Public Peace_), to be duly and devoutly taken every morning next our hearts: hoping that, by God's blessing on the means, I should have prevented that distemper from growing into a formed disease. Yet, finding that my preventing physic did not work so kindly and take so good an effect as I earnestly desired, but rather that this my so tenderly beloved patient grew worse and worse, as not only being in process of time fallen into a fever and that pestilential, but also as having received divers dangerous wounds, which, rankling and festering inwardly, brought it into a spiritual atrophy and deep consumption, and the parts ill-affected (for want of Christian care and skill in such mountebanks as were trusted with the cure, while myself and most of the ancient orthodox clergy were sequestered and silent) began to gangrene: and, when some of us became sensible thereof, we took the confidence (being partly emboldened by the connivance of the higher powers that then were) to fall to the exercise of our ministerial functions again in such poor parishes as would admit us: Then I saw it was high time not only to prescribe strong purgative medicines in the pulpit (contempered of the myrrh of mortification, the aloes of confession and contrition, the rhubarb of restitution and satisfaction, with divers other safe roots, seeds, and flowers, fit and necessary to help to carry away by degrees the incredible confluence of ill humours and all such malignant matter as offended), but also to put pen to paper and appear in print (as in this imperfect and impolished piece, which as guilty of an high presumption here in all humility begs your Lordship's pardon) wherein my chief scope is to personate the Good Samaritan, that, as he cured the wounded traveller by searching his wounds with wine and suppling them with oil, so I have here both described the rise and progress of our national malady, and also prescribed the only remedy, that I might be in some kind instrumental, under God and your Highness, in the healing of the same ... My Lord, as it must needs grieve you to see these three distressed kingdoms lie like a body without a head, so it may also cheer you to consider that the Comforter hath empowered you (and in this nick of time you only) to make these dead and dry bones live. You may by this one act ennoble and eternize yourself more in the hearts and chronicles of these three kingdoms than by all your former victories and the long line of your extraction from the Plantagenets your ancestors ... It is a greater honour to _make_ a king than to _be_ one. Your proper name minds you of being St. George for England; you surname prompts you to stand for order: then let not panic fears, punctilios of human policy, or state formalities, beguile you (whom we look upon as Jethro's magistrate, who was a man of courage, fearing God, dealing truly, and hating covetousness) of that immarescible crown of glory due to you, whom we hope that God hath designed to be the repairer of the breach and the temporal redeemer of your native country." Evidently Dr. Griffith was a silly person, more likely to make a cause ridiculous than to help it. There were things in his sermon and its accompaniments, however, that might harm the King's cause otherwise than by the bad literary taste of the defence. There was a tone of that revengeful spirit which it was the policy of all the more prudent Royalists to disown. Hence the publication annoyed even in that quarter. The unpardonable offence, however, was the address to Monk. He was studying to be as secret as the grave, had signified his leanings to the King by not a single public word, and indeed had hardly ceased to swear he stood for the Commonwealth. And here was an impudent Doctor of Divinity spoiling all by openly assuming and announcing the very thing to be concealed. Monk was excessively irritated; the Council of State sympathized with him; and so, "to please and blind the fanatical party" for the moment, Dr. Griffith was sent to Newgate.[1] [Footnote 1: Wood's Ath. III. 711-713.--Hyde, writing from Breda, April 16, 1660, says to a Royalist correspondent: "This very last post hath brought over three or four complaints to the king of the very unskillful passion and distemper of some of our divines in their late sermons; with which they say that both the General and the Council of State are highly offended, as truly they have reason to be ... One Dr. Griffith is mentioned." _Ibid._, note by Bliss.] It was more natural, however, for the General and the Council to take similar precautions against too violent expressions of anti-Royalism, too vehement efforts to stir up the Republican embers. Of their vigilance in this respect we have just seen an instance in their instant suppression of the Republican appeal to Monk and his Officers entitled _Plain English_, and their procedure by proclamation against the anonymous publisher of that tract. If I am not mistaken, he was Livewell Chapman, of the Crown in Pope's Head Alley, the publisher of Milton's _Considerations touching the likeliest means to remove Hirelings out of the Church_, and also of his more recent _Ready and Easy Way to establish a Free Commonwealth_. There was, at all events, a printed proclamation of the Council of State against this person, dated "Wednesday, 28 March, 1660," and signed "William Jessop, Clerk of the Council." It began in these terms:--"Whereas the Council of State is informed that Livewell Chapman, of London, Stationer, having from a wicked design to engage the nation in blood and confusion caused several seditious and treasonable books to be printed and published, doth, now hide and obscure himself, for avoiding the hand of justice"; and it ended with an order that Chapman should surrender himself within four days, and that none should harbour or conceal him, but all, and especially officers, try to arrest him. If he was the publisher of _Plain English_, there would be additional reason for suspecting that Milton had some cognisance of that anonymous appeal to Monk; but there can be no doubt that among the "seditious and treasonable books" the publication of which constituted Chapman's offence was Milton's own _Ready and Easy Way_. The authorities had not yet struck at Milton himself, but they were coming very near him. They had ordered the arrest of his publisher. Within a few days after the order for the arrest of Milton's publisher, Livewell Chapman, the authorities signified their displeasure, though in a less harsh manner, with another Republican associate of Milton, his old friend Marchamont Needham.--Not without difficulty had this Oliverian journalist, the subsidized editor since 1655 of the bi-weekly official newspaper of the Protectorate (calling itself _The Public Intelligencer_ on Mondays and _Mercurius Politicus_ on Thursdays), been retained in the service of the Good Old Cause. His Oliverianism having been excessive, to the extent of defending not only Oliver's Established Church, but also all else in his policy that grated most on the pure Republicans, he had been discharged from his editorship on the 13th of May, 1659, by order of the Restored Rump, before it had been six days in power, the place going then to John Canne. But Needham's versatility was matchless, and on the 15th of August the Rump had thought it best to reappoint him to the editorship.[1] Since then, having already in succession been Parliamentarian, Royalist, Commonwealth's man or Rumper, and all but anti-Republican Protectoratist, the world had known him in his fifth phase of Rumper or pure Commonwealth's man again. Not only in his journals, but also in independent pamphlets, he had advocated the Good Old Cause. One such pamphlet, published with his name in August 1659, under the title of _Interest will not lie_,[2] had been in reply to some Royalist who had propounded "a way how to satisfy all parties and provide for the public good by calling in the son of the late King": against whom Needham's contention was "that it is really the interest of every party (except only the Papist) to keep him out." One can understand now why, in the Royalist squib lately quoted, Needham was named as "the Commonwealth didapper"[3] along with Milton as "their goose-quill champion," and why the public were there promised the pleasure of soon seeing the two at Tyburn together.--But the final performance of Needham's, it is believed, was a tract called _News from Brussels, in a Letter from a near attendant on his Majesty's person to a Person of Honour here_. It purports to be dated at Brussels, March 10, 1659-60, English style, and was out in London on March 23. The publication is said to have been managed secretly by Mr. Praise-God Barebone; and, though the tract was anonymous, it was attributed at once to Needham. Being "fall of rascalities against Charles II. and his Court," as Wood says, and professing to give private information as to the terrible severities which they were meditating when they should be restored to England, the pamphlet was much resented by the Royalists; and John Evelyn roused himself from a sickbed to pen an instant and emphatic contradiction, called _The late News or Message from Brussels unmasked_. Needham's connexion, or supposed connexion, with so violent an anti-Royalist tract, and possibly also with the Republican manifesto called _Plain English_, which appeared in the same week, could not be overlooked; and, accordingly, in Whitlocke, under date April 9, 1660, we find this note: "The Council discharged Needham from writing the Weekly Intelligence and ordered Dury and Muddiman to do it." The Dury here mentioned was not our John Durie of European celebrity, but an insignificant Giles Dury. His colleague Muddiman, the real successor of Needham in the editorship, was Henry Muddiman, an acquaintance of Pepys, who certifies that he was "a good scholar and an arch rogue." He had been connected with the London press for some time (for smaller news-sheets had been springing up again beside the authorized _Mercurius_ and _Intelligencer_), and had been writing for the Rumpers. He had just been, owning to Pepys, however, that he "did it only to get money," and had no liking for them or their politics.[4] [Footnote 1: Commons Journals of dates. As only the _Intelligencer_ is named in the orders, one infers that Needham retained the editorship of the _Mercurius_ during his three months of suspension. He may have had more of a proprietary hold on that paper.] [Footnote 2: Thomason Catalogue: large quartos.] [Footnote 3: _Didapper_: a duck that dives and reappears.] [Footnote 4: Wood's Ath. III. 1180-1190; Whitlocke as cited; Pepys, under date Jan. 9, 1659-60; Evelyn's Diary, Feb. 17, 1659-60 _et seq._; Baker's Chronicle continued by Edward Phillips (ed. 1679), pp. 699-700.--It is curious to read Phillips's remarks on the "several seditious pamphlets" put forth by the Republican fanatics "to deprave the minds of the people" and prevent the Restoration. Though he must have remembered well that his uncle's were the chief of these, he avoids naming him. He mentions, however, the _News from Brussels_, and dilates on the great service done by Evelyn in replying to it. Phillips had meanwhile (1663-1665) been in Evelyn's employment as tutor to his son.] If they turned Needham out of his editorship, they could hardly do less than turn Milton out of his Latin Secretaryship. About this time, accordingly, he did cease to hold the office which he had held for eleven years. Phillips's words are that he was "sequestered from his office of Latin Secretary and the salary thereunto belonging"; but, unfortunately, though he gives us to understand that this was shortly before the Restoration, he leaves the exact date uncertain. Though the last of Milton's state-letters now preserved and known as his are the two, dated May 15, 1659, written for the Rump immediately after the subversion of Richard's Protectorate, we have seen him holding his office in sinecure, and drawing his salary of £200 a year, to as late at least as the beginning of the Wallingford-House Interruption in October 1659; and there is no reason for thinking that the Council or Committee of Safety of the Wallingford-House Government, his dissent from their usurpation notwithstanding, thought it necessary to dismiss him. Far less likely is it that the Republican Rumpers, when restored the second time in December 1659, would have parted with a man so thoroughly Republican and so respectful to themselves, even while they dared not adopt his Church-disestablishment suggestions. We may fairly assume, then, that Milton remained Marvell's nominal colleague till Monk's final termination of the tenure of the Rump by re-admitting the secluded members, i.e. till Feb. 21, 1659-60. Had he been then at once dismissed, it would have been no wonder. How could he, the Independent of Independents, the denouncer of every form of State-Church, the enemy and satirist of the Presbyterians, and moreover the author of the Divorce heresy and the founder of a sect of Divorcers, be retained in the service of a re-Presbyterianized Government, founding itself on the Westminster Confession and the Solemn League and Covenant? There is no proof, however, of any such instant dismissal of Milton by the new powers, but rather a shade of proof to the contrary in the phraseology of the preface to his _Ready and Easy Way_. The probability, therefore, is that it was after March 3, the date of the publication of that pamphlet, that Milton was sequestered, and that it was the pamphlet itself, added to the sum of his previous obnoxiousness to the new powers, that led to the sequestration. Yet, as the new powers were proceeding warily, and keeping up as long as they could the pretence of leaving the Commonwealth an open question, it is quite possible that they were in no haste to discharge Milton, All in all, the most probable time of his dismissal is some time after the dissolution of the Parliament of the Secluded Members on the 16th of March, 1659-60, when Monk and the Council of State were left in the management. As Milton had been originally appointed by the Council of State and not by Parliament, it was in the Council's pleasure to continue him or dismiss him. They were in a severe mood, virtually anti-Republican already, though not yet avowedly so, between March 28, when they ordered Livewell Chapman's arrest, and April 9, when they dismissed Needham; and that or thereabouts may be the date of Milton's discharge.[1] [Footnote 1: Phillips's narrative of his uncle's dismissal is a blotch of confused wording and pointing:--"It was but a little before the King's Restoration that he wrote and published his book in defence of a Commonwealth; so undaunted he was in declaring his true sentiments to the world; and not long before his _Power of the Civil Magistrate in Ecclesiastical Affairs_ and his _Treatise against Hirelings,_ just upon the King's coming over; having a little before been sequestered from his office of Latin Secretary and the salary thereunto belonging, he was force," &c. This, as it stands, defies interpretation. The _Treatise of Civil Power in Ecclesiastical Causes_ appeared in April 1659, or eight months before the same. There ought, I believe, to have been a full stop after _Hirelings_, and the rest should have run on thus:--"Just upon the King's coming over, having a little before been sequestered from his office of latin Secretary and the salary therunto belonging, he was force," &c.] * * * * * In office or out of office, it was the same to Milton. He had determined that he would not be suppressed, that he would not be silent, till they should tie his hands, or gag his mouth. There is no grander exhibition of dying resistance, of solitary and useless fighting for a lost cause, than in his conduct through April 1680. Alone he then stood, we may say, the last of the visible Republicans. Hasilrig, Scott, Ludlow, Neville, and Vane, had collapsed or were out of sight, the last under ban already by his former brothers of the Commonwealth; Needham was extinguished; most of the Cromwellians had gone over to the enemy, or were hastening to surrender. Blind Milton alone remained, the Samson Agonistes, On him, in the absence of others, the eyes of the Philistine mob, the worshippers of Dagon, had been turned from time to time of late as the Hebrew that could make them most efficient sport; and now it was as if they had all met, by common consent, to be amused by this single Hebrew's last exertions, and had sent to bring him on the stage. They laughed, they shouted, they shrieked, the gathered Philistine thousands: "He, patient, but undaunted, where they led him Came to the place." The first of the feats of strength of Milton, thus alone on the stage, and knowing himself to be confronted and surrounded by a jeering multitude, was a somewhat puny and unnecessary one. It was an onslaught on Dr. Matthew Griffith for his Royalist sermon. He wanted some object of attack, and the very notoriety given to Dr. Griffith's performance by the rebuke of the Council of State recommended it for the purpose despite its intrinsic wretchedness. Accordingly, having had Dr. Griffith's Sermon and its accompaniments read over to him, he dictated what appeared some time in April with this title: "_Brief Notes upon a late Sermon, titled 'The Fear of God and the King'; Preach'd, and since published, by Matthew Griffith, D.D., and Chaplain to the late King. Wherin many notorious wrestings of Scripture, and other falsities are observed._"[1] [Footnote 1: Original copies of this pamphlet of Milton must be very scarce. I could not find one in the British Museum, and I have looked in vain elsewhere. Probably, at the date when it was published, the Council of State had become very alert in suppressing such things. I take the title and extracts from Pickering's (1851) collective edition of Milton's Works, "printed from the original editions."] The tract, which is very short, opens thus:-- "I affirmed, in the Preface of a late Discourse, entitled _The Ready Way to establish a Free Commonwealth, and the Dangers of readmitting Kingship in this Nation_, that 'the humour of returning to our old bondage was instilled of late by some deceivers': and, to make good that what I then affirmed was not without just ground, one of those deceivers I present here to the people, and, if I prove him not such, refuse not to be so accounted in his stead." The greater part of the pamphlet consists of an examination of the sermon itself, with minute remarks on its wrestings or misinterpretations of Scripture texts, and on the poverty of the preacher's theology and scholarship generally. There is no actual disguise of the fact that Milton has the lowest opinion of the intellectual _calibre_ of his antagonist, whom he once names "a pulpit-mountebank," and of whom he once says that "the rest of his preachment is mere groundless chat," Yet, on the other hand, he would evidently have Dr. Griffith taken as a fair enough specimen of the average Church-of-England clergyman. "O people of an implicit faith, no better than Romish if these be your prime teachers!" he once exclaims, as if Dr. Griffith were a man of some distinction. The only portions of the _Notes_ of interest now are those that bear on the historical situation at the moment. Thus, in the notice of the Dedicatory Epistle to Monk prefixed to Dr. Griffith's sermon, there is an evident struggle on Milton's part to speak as if one might still have faith in the General. It is possible that the censure of Dr. Griffith by the Council of State, intended as it was "to please and blind the fanatical party," may have had some such temporary effect on Milton. At all events, he refers to Monk as one "who hath so eminently borne his part in the whole action," and he characterizes one portion of the Dedicatory Epistle, where Monk is prayed "to carry on what he had so happily begun," as nothing less than "an impudent calumny and affront to his Excellence." It charges him, says Milton, "most audaciously and falsely, with the renouncing of his own public promises and declarations both to the Parliament and the Army; and we trust his actions ere long will deter such insinuating slanderers from thus approaching him for the future." Throughout the _Notes_, however, one sees that even this small lingering of confidence in Monk is forced, and that Milton is too sadly convinced of the probable predetermination of all now in power to fulfil the general expectation and bring in Charles. In the following passage there is a half-veiled intimation that, rather than see that ignominious conclusion, Milton would reconcile himself to Monk's own assumption of the Crown:-- "Free Commonwealths have been ever counted fittest and properest for civil, virtuous, and industrious nations, abounding with prudent men worthy to govern; Monarchy fittest to curb degenerate, corrupt, idle, proud, luxurious people. If we desire to be of the former, nothing better for us, nothing nobler, than a Free Commonwealth; if we will needs condemn ourselves to be of the latter, despairing of our own virtue, industry, and the number of our able men, we may then, conscious of our own unworthiness to be governed better, sadly betake us to our befitting thraldom: yet, choosing out of our own number one who hath best aided the people and best merited against tyranny, the space of a reign or two we may chance to live happily enough, or tolerably. But that a victorious people should give up themselves again to the vanquished was never yet heard of, seems rather void of all reason and good policy, and will in all probability subject the subduers to the subdued,--will expose to revenge, to beggary, to ruin and perpetual bondage, the victors, under the vanquished: than which what can be more unworthy?" Of far more moment than the _Brief Notes on Dr. Griffith's Sermon_ was a second and enlarged edition of the _Ready and Easy Way to establish a Free Commonwealth_. Though it is announced distinctly and emphatically in the opening paragraph that this edition is a "revised and enlarged" one, not till after a careful comparison with the former edition is it seen how much the announcement implies. There are large additions; there are omissions; there are changes of phraseology in every page. The new pamphlet, were it nothing else, would be an interesting study of Milton's art in authorcraft, of the expertness he had acquired in recasting a composition of his, ingeniously dove-tailing passages into it without spoiling the connexion, and ejecting phrases that had ceased to be relevant or vital, all under the difficulties of his blindness, when his ear listening to some mouth beside him and his own mouth interrupting and replying were his sole instruments. But there is much more than this. The later edition is Milton about a month farther down the torrent than the first, a month nearer the falls; and the additions, omissions, and alterations, convey what had passed in his mind through that month. The second edition of the _Ready and Easy Way to establish a Free Commonwealth_ is to be taken, in short, for Milton's Biography at least, as an important new publication. Only the essential additions and omissions can be here noticed.[1] [Footnote 1: The fact that there are two editions of the _Ready and Easy Way_, though Milton calls express attention to it in the second, seems to have escaped all the bibliographers. There is no note of it in Lowndes. What is most curious, however, is that, while it is the second or enlarged edition alone that is now accessible to everybody in the collective editions of Milton's Prose Works, from the so-called Amsterdam edition of 1898 to Pickering's and Bonn's, yet original copies of this second edition seem, to have wholly disappeared. There are several original copies of the _Ready and Easy Way_ in the British Museum, but all of the first edition, not one of the second; the Bodleian has no copy of the second; every original copy of the tract that I have been able to see or hear of anywhere else has always turned out to be one of the first edition. In my perplexity, I began to ask myself whether this was to be explained by supposing that Milton, after he had prepared the second edition for the press, did not succeed in getting it published, and so that it was not till 1698 that it saw the light, and then by the accident that his enlarged press-copy had survived, and come (through Toland or otherwise) into the hands of the printers of the Amsterdam edition of the Prose Works. But, though several pieces in that edition are expressly noted as "never before published" (see notes ante, p. 617 and p. 656), there is no such editorial note respecting _The Ready and Easy Way_, but every appearance of mere reprinting from a previously published copy of 1660. On the whole, therefore, I conclude that Milton did publish his second and enlarged edition some time in April 1660; and I account for the rarity of original copies of this second edition by supposing that either the impression was seized before many copies had got about, or the Restoration itself came so rapidly after the publication as to make it all but abortive. Original copies of Milton's contemporary _Notes on Dr. Griffith's Sermon_ seem, as I have mentioned (ante p. 675, note), to be equally scarce with original copies of the second edition of the _Ready and Easy Way_. They were the two last utterances of Milton before the Restoration, and so close to that event as perhaps to be sucked down in the whirlpool. Yet, as we know for certain that the _Notes on Dr. Griffith's Sermon_ did appear, there is no need for a contrary supposition respecting the other. Very possibly original copies of both _have_ survived somewhere; and I should be glad to hear of the fact. As it is, I have had to take my descriptions of both from the copies in the collective Prose Works. By the bye, it is an error in bibliographers and editors to give only the titles of old books from the original title-pages, without adding the imprints of the publishers. Much historical and biographical information lies in such imprints. In the present instance, for example, I should have liked very much to know whether Livewell Chapman was nominally the publisher of the second edition as well as of the first, or whether Milton was obliged to put forth the second edition without any publisher's name.] Among the _additions_ the most prominent is this motto (an extension of Juvenal I. 15, 16) prefixed to the whole:-- "_Et nos_ _Consilium dedimus Syllæ: demus Populo nunc_"; which may be translated:-- "We have advised Sulla himself: advise we now the People." Had this been prefixed to the first edition, the inevitable conclusion would have been that Sulla stood for Oliver Cromwell, and that Milton meant that, having taken the liberty in his _Defensio Secunda_ of tendering wholesome advices even to the great Protector in the height of his power, it might be allowed to him now to advise the general body of his countrymen. Much would have depended then on Milton's estimate of the character of the real or Roman Sulla. That seems to have been the ordinary and traditional one, for in one of the smaller insertions in the text of the present edition he speaks of the Roman People as having been brought, by their own infatuation, "under the tyranny of Sulla." Now, though we have seen that Milton had modified his opinion of the worth of Cromwell's Government all in all, we should have been shocked by an epithet of posthumous opprobrium applied to the man he had so panegyrized while living. Fortunately, we are spared the shock. Monk, not Cromwell, is the military dictator that Milton has in view in the metonymy _Sulla_. He is thinking of his Letter to Monk only the other day, containing that specific suggestion of a PERPETUAL NATIONAL COUNCIL in the centre and CITY COUNCILS in all the counties which he developes more at large in his pamphlet. Perhaps he is thinking also of the more recent remonstrance, called _Plain English_, addressed by some London Republicans, of whom he may have been one, to Monk and his Officers. He has now done with Monk; he knows that the suggestions have taken no effect in that quarter, perhaps have been rebuffed; he will therefore dedicate them afresh to the people at large, for whom they were first written. The translation, accordingly, may run definitely thus:-- "This advice we have given Sulla himself: 'tis for the People now." In one or two of the added passages, or modifications of phraseology, we note reference to the course of events since the publication of the former edition. Compare, for example, the following portion of the prefatory paragraph with the corresponding portion of the same paragraph as it first stood (p. 645):-- ... "I thought best not to suppress what I had written, hoping that it may now be of much more use and concernment to be freely published in the midst of our elections to a Free Parliament, or their sitting to consider freely of the Government; whom it behoves to have all things represented to them that may direct their judgment therein: and I never read of any state, scarce of any tyrant, grown so incurable as to refuse counsel from any in a time of public deliberation, much less to be offended. If their absolute determination be to enthral us, before so long a Lent of servitude they may permit us a little Shroving-time first, wherein to speak freely and take our leaves of Liberty, And, because in the former edition, through haste, many faults escaped, and many books were suddenly dispersed ere the note to mend them could be sent, I took the opportunity from this occasion to revise and somewhat to enlarge the whole discourse, especially that part which argues for a Perpetual Senate. The treatise, thus revised and enlarged, is as follows." Again, the renewal of the Solemn League and Covenant by the late Parliament of the Secluded Members furnishes Milton with a fresh text. He does not, as might have been expected, and as he certainly would have done on another occasion, upbraid the Parliament with the fact, or denounce the return to Presbyterian strictness of which it was a signal: on the contrary, he presses the fact into his service as a new argument against the recall of Charles. The first of the following sentences had appeared in the former edition; but the rest is suggested by the revival of the Covenant in the interim:-- "What Liberty of Conscience can we then expect of others [even the good and great Queen Elizabeth, he has just said, had thought persecution necessary to preserve royal authority], far worse principled from, the cradle, trained up and governed by Popish and Spanish counsels, and on such depending hitherto for subsistence? Especially, what can this last Parliament expect, who, having revived lately and published the Covenant, hare re-engaged themselves never to readmit Episcopacy? Which no son of Charles returning but will most certainly bring back with him, if he regard the last and strictest charge of his father, _to persevere in not the Doctrine only, but Government, of the Church of England, [and] not to neglect the speedy and effectual suppressing of Errors and Schisms_,--among which he accounted Presbytery one of the chief. Or, if, notwithstanding that charge of his father, he submit to the Covenant, how will he keep faith to _us_ with disobedience to _him_, or regard that faith given which must be founded on the breach of that last and solemnest paternal charge, and the reluctance, I may say the antipathy, which is in all kings against Presbyterian and Independent Discipline?" Perhaps the most striking instance of _omission_ in the new edition of matter that had appeared in the first is in the paragraph on the subject of Spiritual Liberty to which reference has been made at p. 653. He retains in that paragraph nearly all that related to Liberty of Conscience generally, but he carefully removes the two or three sentences in which he had intimated his individual opinion that there could be no perfect Liberty of Conscience without abolition of Church Establishments and dissolution of every form of connexion between Church and State. There was practical sagacity in this omission at the moment at which he was re-issuing his pamphlet. It was no time then to be obtruding upon the public, or upon the Presbyterians that were flocking in to the new Parliament, his peculiar Disestablishment notion, however precious it might be to himself. His real business was to stir up all, by any means, to the defence even yet of the Republican form of Government; in such an argument, addressed mainly to Presbyterians and other zealots for a State Church, the question of Disestablishment was rather to be avoided; nay, for himself, that question had faded into insignificance for the time in comparison with the vaster question whether the Republic should be preserved or the Stuarts brought back, and most willingly would he have been, assured of the preservation of the Republic even though a State Church should continue to be part and parcel of it, and the special battle of Disestablishment should have to be postponed. To keep out the Stuarts, to rouse dread and disgust even yet at the idea that the Stuarts should return, was the single all-including possibility, or impossibility, for which he was now striving. To this end it is that again and again in the course of the pamphlet he inserts new passages heightening the contrast between the glories and advantages of free Republican Government and the miseries and degradation of subjection to a Monarchy. Near the beginning there is an enlargement of this kind, to the extent of three pages, in which he reviews, in greater detail than before, the steps that had led to the establishment of the English Commonwealth; and appeals to his countrymen whether their experience of Commonwealth government had not been on the whole satisfactory. Had not the very speeches and writings of that period, he had asked in his first edition, "testified a spirit in this nation no less noble and well-fitted to the liberty of a Commonwealth than in the ancient Greeks or Romans"? In returning to that topic now, he cannot refrain from breaking out once more, though it should be the last time, in his characteristic vein of self-appreciation. "Nor was the heroic cause," he adds, "unsuccessfully defended to all Christendom against the tongue of a famous and thought invincible adversary, nor the constancy and fortitude that so nobly vindicated our liberty, our victory at once against two the most prevailing usurpers over mankind, Superstition and Tyranny, unpraised or uncelebrated in a written monument likely to outlive detraction, as it hath hitherto convinced or silenced not a few detractors, especially in parts abroad." Readers who may think that we are already too familiar with this strain may be reminded that Milton was here taking account of the contemptuous notices of his Defences of the Commonwealth in some of the recent Royalist pamphlets, and also that, as he dictated, the thought must have been passing in his mind that very probably his days were numbered, and those Defences of the Commonwealth would have to remain, after all, his last important bequest to the world. There is proof that Milton had read the burlesque Censure of the Rota on the first edition. Not only are two or three sentences omitted or modified in consequence of remarks there made; but, in the considerable enlargements he thinks necessary for the support of his main notion of PERPETUITY OF THIS NATIONAL GREAT COUNCIL, he takes care to extend also his former references to Harrington's principle of Rotation and other doctrines. Of course, he was well aware that it was not Harrington himself that had complained of the slightness of the former references, but only some Royalist wit caricaturing Harrington together with himself. While disagreeing with Harrington, he shows his respect for him. The following are specimens of these particular enlargements:-- _The Rotation Principle_:--"But, if the ambition of such as think themselves injured that they also partake not of the Government, and are impatient till they be chosen, cannot brook the perpetuity of others chosen before them, or if it be feared that long continuance of power may corrupt sincerest men, the known expedient is, and by some lately propounded, that annually (or, if the space be longer, so much perhaps the better) the third part of Senators may go out, according to the precedence of their election, and the like number be chosen in their places, to prevent the settling of too absolute a power if it should be perpetual: and this they call _Partial Rotation_. But I could wish that this wheel or partial wheel in State, if it be possible, might be avoided, as having too much, affinity with the Wheel of Fortune. For it appears not how this can be done without danger and mischance of putting out a great number of the best and ablest; in whose stead new elections may bring in as many raw, unexperienced, and otherwise affected, to the weakening and much altering for the worse of public transactions. Neither do I think a Perpetual Senate, especially chosen and entrusted by the people, much in this land to be feared, where the well-affected, either in a Standing Army or in a Settled Militia, have their arms in their own hands. Safest therefore to me it seems, and of least hazard or interruption to affairs, that none of the Grand Council be moved, unless by death or just conviction of some crime; for what can be expected firm or stedfast from a floating foundation? However, I forejudge not any probable expedient, any temperament that can be found in things of this nature, so disputable on either side." _Contrast of Harrington's Model with Milton's, and a Suggestion for the mode of Elections_:--"And this annual Rotation of a Senate to consist of 300, as is lately propounded, requires also another Popular Assembly upward of 1000, with an answerable Rotation. Which, besides that it will be liable to all those inconveniencies found in the foresaid remedies, cannot but be troublesome and chargeable, both in their motion and their session, to the whole land,--unwieldy with their own bulk: unable in so great a number to mature their consultations as they ought, if any be allotted to them, and that they meet not from so many parts remote to sit a whole year leaguer in one place, only now and then to hold up a forest of fingers, or to convey each man his bean or ballot into the box, without reason shown or common deliberation; incontinent of secrets, if any be imparted to them; emulous and always jarring with the other Senate. The much better way doubtless will be, in this wavering condition of our affairs, to defer the changing or circumscribing of our Senate, more than may be done with ease, till the Commonwealth be thoroughly settled in peace and safety and they themselves give us the occasion.... Another way will be to well qualify and refine Elections: not committing all to the noise and shouting of a rude multitude, but permitting only those of them who are rightly qualified to nominate as many as they will; and out of that number others of a better breeding to choose a less number more judiciously; till, after a third or fourth sifting and refining of exactest choice, they only be left chosen who are the due number, and seem by most voices the worthiest.... But, to prevent all mistrust, the People then will have their several Ordinary Assemblies (which will henceforth quite annihilate the odious power and name of _Committees_) in the chief towns of every County,--without the trouble, charge, or time lost, of summoning and assembling from so far, in so great a number, and so long residing from their own houses, or removing of their families,--to do as much at home in their several shires, entire or subdivided, towards the securing of their liberty, as a numerous Assembly of them all formed and convened on purpose with the wariest rotation." _Glance at some of Harrington's other notions_:--"The way propounded [Milton's] is plain, easy, and open before us: without intricacies, without the introducement of new or obsolete forms or terms, or exotic models,--ideas that would effect nothing, but with a number of new injunctions to manacle the native liberty of mankind; turning all virtue into prescription, servitude, and necessity, to the great impairing and frustrating of Christian Liberty." As if the very closeness of the vision of returning Royalty had rendered Milton's defiance of it more desperate and reckless, he inserts, wherever he can, some new expression of his contempt for Charles and all his family, and of his prophetic horror of the state of society they will bring in. Thus:-- "There will be a Queen of no less charge, in most likelihood outlandish and a Papist, besides a Queen-Mother, such already, together with both their Courts and numerous Train: then a Royal issue, and ere long severally _their_ sumptuous Courts, to the multiplying of a servile crew, not of servants only, but of nobility and gentry, bred up then to the hopes not of public, but of court offices, to be Stewards, Chamberlains, Ushers, Grooms." But the most terrific new passage in prediction of the Restoration and its revenges is the following: in which the reader will observe also the recognition, as in one spurn of boundless scorn, of the Royalist scurrilities against himself:-- "Admit that Monarchy of itself may be convenient to some nations; yet to us who have thrown it out, received back again, it cannot but prove pernicious. For Kings to come, never forgetting their former ejection, will be sure to fortify and arm themselves sufficiently for the future against all such attempts hereafter from the People; who shall be then so narrowly watched and kept so low that, though they would never so fain, and at the same rate of their blood and treasure, they never shall be able to regain what they now have purchased and may enjoy, or to free themselves from any yoke imposed upon them. Nor will they dare to go about it,--utterly disheartened for the future, if these their highest attempts prove unsuccessful: which will be the triumph of all Tyrants hereafter over any People that shall resist oppression; and their song will then be to others _How sped the Rebellious English?_, to our posterity _How sped the Rebels your fathers?_.... Yet neither shall we obtain or buy at an easy rate this new gilded yoke which thus transports us. A new Royal Revenue must be found, a new Episcopal,--for those are individual: both which, being wholly dissipated or bought by private persons, or assigned for service done, and especially to the Army, cannot be recovered without a general detriment and confusion to men's estates, or a heavy imposition on all men's purses,--benefit to none but to the worst and ignoblest sort of men, whose hope is to be either the ministers of Court riot and excess or the gainers by it. But, not to speak more of losses and extraordinary levies on our estates, what will then be the revenges and offences remembered and returned, not only by the Chief Person, but by all his adherents: accounts and reparations that will be required, suits, indictments, inquiries, discoveries, complaints, informations,--who knows against whom or how many, though perhaps neuters,--if not to utmost infliction, yet to imprisonment, fines, banishment, or molestation. If not these, yet disfavour, discountenance, disregard, and contempt on all but the known Royalist, or whom he favours, will be plenteous. Nor let the new-royalized Presbyterians persuade themselves that their old doings, though, now recanted, will be forgotten, whatever conditions be contrived or trusted on. Will they not believe this, nor remember the Pacification how it was kept to the Scots, how other solemn promises many a time to us? Let them but now read the diabolical forerunning libels, the faces, the gestures, that now appear foremost and briskest in all public places as the harbingers of those that are in expectation to reign over us; let them but hear the insolencies, the menaces, the insultings of our newly animated common enemies, crept lately out of their holes, their Hell I might say, by the language of their infernal pamphlets, the spew of every drunkard, every ribald: nameless, yet not for want of licence, but for very shame of their own vile persons; not daring to name themselves while they traduce others by name, and give us to foresee that they intend to second their wicked words, if ever they have power, with more wicked deeds. Let our zealous backsliders [the Presbyterians] forethink now with themselves how _their_ necks, yoked with these tigers of Bacchus,--these new fanatics of not the preaching but the sweating tub, inspired with nothing holier than the venereal pox,--can draw one way, under Monarchy, to the establishing of Church-Discipline with these new-disgorged Atheisms. Yet shall they not have the honour to yoke with these, but shall be yoked under them: these shall plough on _their_ backs. And do they among them who are so forward to bring in the Single Person think to be by him trusted or long regarded? So trusted they shall be and so regarded as by Kings are wont reconciled enemies,--neglected and soon after discarded, if not prosecuted for old traitors, the first inciters, beginners, and more than to the third part actors, of all that followed." Milton, does not deny that the vast majority of the nation desire the restoration of the King. He admits the fact and scouts it. He asserts that by "the trial of just battle" the larger part of the population of England long ago "lost the right of their election what the form of Government shall be," and that, if even a majority of the rest would now vote for Kingship, their wishes must go for nothing. "Is it just or reasonable that most voices, against the main end of Government, should enslave the less number that would be free? More just it is, doubtless, if it come to force, that a less number compel a greater to retain (which can be no wrong to them) their liberty than that a greater number, for the pleasure of their baseness, compel a less most injuriously to be their fellow-slaves." When he wrote this, he must have known well enough that he was writing in vain. He confesses as much in his peroration. He confesses it there even by that single modification of the language which might seem at first sight the only sign of prudential concession and anticipation of personal consequences throughout the whole pamphlet. In citing the prophecy of Jeremiah he omits the passage exulting in God's decree of exile against Coniah and his seed for ever (ante p. 654-655). But this is no prudential concession, no softening down in anticipation that the passage might be produced against him. Of that state of mind, of any fear of consequences whatever, there is not a trace throughout the recast of his pamphlet. He is defying and daring the worst, and has thrown in already every possible addition of matter of insult to the coming Charles. He omits the passage about Coniah precisely because its application to Charles is unfortunately no longer possible; and the peroration for the rest is modified by the sorrow that so it should be. He will exhort against the Restoration to his latest breath; but he is looking across the Restoration now, and sending his words on to an unknown posterity. "What I have spoken is the language of that which is not called amiss _The Good Old Cause_: if it seem strange to any, it will not seem more strange, I hope, than convincing to backsliders. Thus much I should perhaps have said though I were sure I should have spoken only to trees and stones, and had none to cry to but, with the Prophet, _O Earth, Earth, Earth!_, to tell the very soil itself what her perverse inhabitants are deaf to. Nay, though what I have spoken should happen (which Thou suffer not who didst create Mankind free, nor Thou next who didst redeem us from being servants of men!) to be the last words of our expiring Liberty. But I trust I shall have spoken persuasion to abundance of sensible and ingenuous men,--to some perhaps whom God may raise up of these stones to become children of reviving Liberty, and may reclaim, though they seem now choosing them a Captain back for Egypt, to bethink themselves a little and consider whither they are rushing; to exhort this torrent also of the people not to be so impetuous, but to keep their due channel; and, at length recovering and uniting their better resolutions, now that they see already how open and unbounded the insolence and rage is of our common enemies, to stay these ruinous proceedings, justly and timely fearing to what a precipice of destruction the deluge of this epidemic madness would hurry us, through the general defection of a misguided and abused multitude." To exhort a torrent! The very mixture and hurry of the metaphors In Milton's mind are a reflex of the facts around him. Current, torrent, rush, rapid, avalanche, deluge hurrying to a precipice: mix and jumble such figures as we may, we but express more accurately the mad haste which London and all England were making in the end of April 1660 to bring Charles over from the Continent. Of the only important relic of opposition, the Republicanism of the Army, and how that had been already managed by Monk, and was still being managed by him, we have taken account. Its dying effort, as we saw, took the form of Lambert's escape from the Tower on the 9th of April, and his thirteen days of wild wandering and skulking on the chance of bringing the dispersed remains of Republicanism to a rendezvous. That was over on Easter-Sunday, April 22, when Dick Ingoldsby, with flushed face, and pistol in hand, collared the fugitive Lambert on his horse in a field near Daventry, and brought him back, with others, to his prison in the Tower. Strange that it should have been Lambert after all that Milton found maintaining last by arms the cause which he was himself maintaining last by the pen. Lambert was the Republican he least liked, hardly indeed a genuine Republican at all, though driven to a desperate attempt for Republicanism as his final shift, So it had happened, however. Milton and Lambert may be remembered together as the last opponents of the avalanche. Lambert had fronted it with a small rapier; Milton had wrestled with it in a grand exhortation.[1] [Footnote 1: As the date of the second edition of Milton's _Ready and Easy Way_ is a matter of real interest, it may be well to note here the evidence on the point furnished by the extracts that have been made. In the second extract the phrase "_What can this last Parliament expect, who, having revived lately and published the Covenant &c.?_" seems distinctly to certify that Milton was writing after the 16th of March, when the Parliament of the Secluded Members had dissolved itself. The first extract, giving the new and enlarged form of the opening paragraph, farther indicates that, while Milton was writing, the country was in the midst of the elections for the new "free and full" Parliament which had been called,--i.e. what is now known as The Convention Parliament. He thinks that his pamphlet, as modified, "_may now be of much more use and concernment to be freely published in the midst of our elections to a Free Parliament or their sitting to consider freely of the Government_." Now, the elections went on from the end of March to about the 20th of April, and Milton's words almost imply that he expected them to be pretty well advanced before his second edition was in circulation, so that the effect of that new edition, if it had any, would rather be on the Parliament itself after its meeting on April 25. The passages referring to Harrington, and which seem to imply that Milton had read the _Censure of the Rota_ on his first edition, would also bring the second edition into the month of April, inasmuch as the _Censure_ was not out till March 30. Finally, the whole tone of the added passages implies, as we have already said, that Milton was at least a month farther down the stream towards the Restoration than when the first edition appeared, and the fact that in this second edition he utterly cancels and withdraws the small lingering of faith in Monk which he had expressed in his _Notes to Dr. Griffith's Sermon_ seems more particularly to certify that those _Notes_ preceded the new edition of the _Ready and Easy Way_ by a week or more. On the whole, I do not think I am wrong in regarding the new edition as Milton's very last performance before the Restoration, and in dating it somewhere between April 9, the day of Lambert's escape from the Tower, and April 24, when Lambert was brought back a prisoner to London and the members of the Convention Parliament were already gathered in town. As Thomason's copy of the first edition is marked "March 3," this would make the interval between the two editions about a month and a half.] The wrestlings now were ended. All that remained for the blind Samson was to listen, with bowed head, to the renewed burst of Philistine hissings, howlings, and execrations, against him, before they would let him retire. It came from all quarters; but at least two persons stepped out from the crowd to convert the mere inarticulate uproar into distinct invective and insult. "_No Blinde Guides: in answer to a seditious Pamphlet of J. Milton's entituled 'Brief Notes on a late Sermon, &c.' Addressed to the Author_.--'If the Blinde lead the Blinde, both shall fall into the ditch.'--_London, Printed for Henry Brome, April_ 20, 1660." This was the title of a tract, of fourteen small quarto pages, which was out on April 25. The author does not give his name; but he was Roger L'Estrange, the Royalist pamphleteer.[1] The following specimen will represent the rest:-- [Footnote 1: Wood's Ath. III. 712. The date of the actual appearance of the tract is from the Thamason copy.] "Mr. Milton, "Although in your life and doctrine you have resolved one great question, by evidencing that devils may indue human shapes and proving yourself even to your own wife an incubus, you have yet started another; and that is whether you are not of that regiment which carried the herd of swine headlong into the sea, and moved the people to beseech Jesus to depart out of their coasts. (_This_ may be very well imagined from your suitable practices _here_.) Is it possible to read your _Proposals of the benefits of a Free State_ without reflecting upon your tutor's 'All this will I give thee if thou wilt fall down and worship me'? Come, come, Sir: lay the Devil aside; do not proceed with so much malice and against knowledge. Act like a man, that a good Christian may not be afraid to pray for you. Was it not you that scribbled a justification of the murder of the King against Salmasius, and made it good too thus: that murder was an action meritorious compared with your superior wickedness? 'Tis there (as I remember) that you commonplace yourself into set forms of railing, two pages thick; and, lest your infamy should not extend itself enough within the course and usage of your mother-tongue, the thing is dressed up in a travelling garb and language, to blast the English nation to the universe, and give every man a horror for mankind when he considers _you_ are of the race. In this you are above all others; but in your _Eikonoklastes_ you exceed yourself. There, not content to see that sacred head divided from the body, your piercing malice enters into the private agonies of his struggling soul, with a blasphemous insolence invading the prerogative of God himself (omniscience), and by deductions most unchristian and illogical aspersing his last pieties (the almost certain inspirations of the Holy Spirit) with juggle and prevarication. Nor are the words ill-fitted to the matter, the bold design being suited with a conform irreverence of language. But I do not love to rake long in a puddle. To take a view in particular of all your factious labours would cost more time than I am willing to afford them. Wherefore I shall stride over all the rest and pass directly to your _Brief Notes upon a late Sermon_ ... Any man that can but read your title may understand your drift, and that you charge the royal interest and party through the Doctor's sides. I am not bold enough to be his champion in all particulars, nor yet so rude as to take an office most properly to him belonging out of his hand. Let him acquit himself in what concerns the divine; and I'll adventure upon the most material parts of the rest." [Extracts from Milton's _Notes on Dr. Griffith's Sermon_ follow, with brief comments, of no interest, and showing no ability.] Almost immediately there followed "_The Dignity of Kingship Asserted: in answer to Mr. Milton's 'Ready and Easie Way to establish a Free Commonwealth.' Proving that Kinqship is both in itself and in reference to these nations farre the most Excellent Government, and the returning to our former Loyalty or Obedience thereto is the only way under God to restore and settle these three once flourishing, now languishing, broken, and almost ruined nations. By G. S., a Lover of Loyalty. Humbly Dedicated and Presented to his most Excellent Majesty Charles the Second, of England, Scotland, France, and Ireland, true Hereditary King. London, Printed by E.C. for H. Seile, over against St. Dunstan's Church in Fleet-street, and for W. Palmer at the Palm-Tree over against Fetter-lane end in Fleet Street._ 1660." It is a duodecimo volume, the dedication to Charles occupying twenty-one pages, and the main body of the text 177 pages, with a peroration in thirty-nine additional pages addressed to Monk and his Officers and to the two Houses of Parliament about to meet, and then three pages more of concluding address to his Majesty. Though the author does not give his name, he hints in the course of the volume that he may "be inquired after and perhaps soon found out." He says also that his profession "much differs from politics." Hence it may be doubted whether the conjecture is right which assigns the book to a George Searle, who had been an original member of the Long Parliament for Taunton, and had been one of the Secluded. One might venture rather on the query whether the author may not have been Dr. Gilbert Sheldon, soon to be Bishop of London and Archbishop of Canterbury, but for the present waiting with anxiety for the certainty of Charles's recall, and doing all he could, with other divines, to hasten it.[1] [Footnote 1: The Thomason copy gives "May," without any day, as the date of publication; but I find the book entered in the Stationers' Registers as early as March 31, 1660. The writing had been then begun, and the printing of the book had been going on through April. There is internal evidence that the new Parliament had not met, or at least that the Restoration was not positively resolved on, when the book was finished. Both in the dedication and in the peroration, the parts last written, the event is spoken of as only in near prospect.--Sheldon, though a man of public distinction in his time, has left hardly any writings by which his style could be ascertained. I think the guess worth risking that the present performance may have been his, if only because the offer of the guess may lead to its confutation. George Searle is the man proposed by the bibliographers (see Bohn's _Lowndes_, Art. Milton, and note p. 108 of Todd's Life of Milton, edit. 1852); but I know not on what authority except that his initials are "G.S." and that he was "a writer."--As far as I have observed, it was the first edition of Milton's pamphlet only that G.S. had before him as he wrote.] Whoever wrote the book must have had a touch of scholarly candour in his nature. Though there is plenty of abuse of Milton, with the stereotyped allusions to his Divorce Doctrine and its effects, and with such occasional phrases as "your wind-mill brain," "the unpracticableness of these your fanatic state-whimsies," and though there is abuse also, in the coarse familiar strain, of the Rumpers and Commonwealths-men generally, and of "Oliver, the copper-nosed saint," we come upon such passages as the following, appreciative at least of Milton's literary power:-- "I am not ignorant of the ability of Mr. Milton, whom the Rump (which was well-stored with men of pregnant though pernicious wits) made choice of before others to write their _Defence against Salmasius;_ one of the greatest learned men of this age, both for reality and reputation." "... made choice of Mr. Milton to be their champion to answer Salmasius; who, as may be conceived, not vulgarly rewarded for this service, undertakes it with as much learning and performance as could be expected from the most able and acute scholar living: concerning whose answer thus much must be confessed,--that nothing could be therein desired which either a shrewd wit could prompt or a fluent elegant style express. And, indeed, to give him his due, in whatever he vomited out against his Majesty formerly, or now declaims against Monarchy in behalf of a Republic, he then did, and doth now, want nothing on his side but truth." These are casual expressions in the course of the argumentation with Milton; and, as there is no need to exhibit the argumentation itself, a single quotation more will suffice. It is from the Dedication to Charles II. That, though coming first in the book, was probably written last, when the writer could exult in the idea that his Majesty was so soon to land on the British shores, and could have pleasure in being one of the first to address him ceremoniously and in public with all his royal titles. Let it be remembered that, by the introduction of Milton into this Dedication, not only prominently, but even singly and exclusively, it was as if pains were taken to remind Charles, just as he was preparing to step into the ship that was to convey him to England, of the name of that one man among his subjects who had done more to keep him out, and had attacked him and his more ferociously, more relentlessly, and more successfully, than any other living. Suppose that his Majesty, waiting at Breda, was curious to know already, for certain reasons, what person, not on the actual list of those who had signed his father's death-warrant, would be designated to him by universal opinion at home as the least pardonable traitor; and read this as the answer of G.S.:-- This detestable, execrable murder, committed by the worst of parricides, accompanied with the disclaiming of your whole royal stock, disinheriting your Majesty's self and the rest of the royal branches, driving you and them into exile, with endeavouring to expunge and obliterate your never-to-be-forgotten just title; tearing up and pulling down the pillars of Majesty, the Nobles; garbling and suspending from the place of power all of the Commons House that had anything of honesty or relenting of spirit toward the injured Father of three Nations and his royal posterity: acts horrible to be imagined, and yet with high hand most villainously, perfidiously, and perjuriously perpetrated by monsters of mankind, yet blasphemously dishonourers of God in making use of His name and usurping the title of Saints in their never-before-paralleled nor ever-sufficiently-to-be-lamented-and-abhorred villanies:--this Murder, I say, and these Villainies, were defended, nay extolled and commended, by one MR. JOHN MILTON, in answer to the most learned Salmasius, who declaimed against the same with most solid arguments and pathetical expressions; in which Answer he did so bespatter the white robes of your Royal Father's spotless life (human infirmities excepted) with the dirty filth of his satirical pen that to the vulgar, and those who read his book with prejudice, he represented him a most debauched, vicious man (I tremble, Royal Sir, to write it), an irreligious hater and persecutor of Religion and religious men, an ambitious enslaver of the nation, a bloody tyrant, and an implacable enemy to all his good subjects; and thereupon calls that execrable and detestable horrible Murder a just Execution, and commends it as an heroic action: and, in a word, whatever was done in prosecution of their malice toward your Royal Progenitor and his issue, or relations, or friends and assistants, he calls Restoring of the nation to its Liberty. Yea! to make your illustrious Father more odious in their eyes where he by any means could fix his scandals, he would not spare that incomparable piece of his writing, his _Eikon Basilike_, but in a scurrilous reply thereto, which he entitled _Eikonoklastes_, he would not spare his devout prayers (which no doubt the Lord hath heard and will hear): in all which he expressed, as his inveterate and causeless malice, so a great deal of wicked, desperate wit and learning, most unworthily misbestowed, abused, and misapplied, to the reviling of his Prince, God's vice-gerent on Earth, and the speaking ill of the Ruler of the People. Now, although your Majesty, nor your Royal Father, neither of you, need vindication (much less that elaborate work of his), nor doth anything he hath written in aspersion of his Sovereign deserve answer (absolutely considered), yet, forasmuch as he hath in both showed dangerous wit and wicked learning, which together with elegance in expression is always (in some measure at least) persuasive with some, and because in these last and worst days those dangerous times are come in which many account Treason to be Saintship, and the madness of the people, like the inundation of waters, hath for many years overflowed all the bounds, &c ... [The writer, in continuation, refers to the assiduity of the fanatical enemies of Charles, still working, though at the end of their wits, to keep him out.] Among many of whom MR. MILTON comes on the stage in post haste and in this juncture of time, that he may, if possible, overthrow the hopes of all good men, and endeavours what he can to divert those that at present sit at the helm, and by fair pretences and sophisticate arguments would, &c ... Which I taking notice of, and meeting with this forementioned pamphlet of MR. MILTON'S, and upon perusal of it finding it dangerously ensnaring, the fallacy of the arguments being so cunningly hidden as not to be discerned by any nor every eye,--observing also the language to be smooth and tempting, the expressions pathetical and apt to move the affections, ... I thought it my duty, &c. Before this salutation of his returning Majesty was visible on the book-stalls the great event which it anticipated was as good as accomplished. The two Houses of Parliament had met on Wednesday, the 25th of April. There was not only the "full and free" House of Commons for which writs had been issued, but a House of Lords also, assembled by its own will and motion. In the Commons, where Sir Harbottle Grimstone was elected Speaker, there were present over 400 out of the total of 500 and more that were actually due; in the Lords, where the Earl of Manchester was chosen Speaker _pro tem._, there were present on the first day only nine peers besides himself: viz. the Earls of Northumberland, Lincoln, Denbigh, and Suffolk, Viscount Say and Sele, and Lords Wharton, Hunsdon, Grey of Wark, and Maynard. It was for these two bodies to execute between them the task appointed.[1] [Footnote 1: Commons Journals and Parl. Hist., for the opening of the Convention Parliament.] The meetings of the first three days were but preliminary, and not a word passed in either House to signify what was coming. On Friday, the 27th of April, there was an adjournment of both Houses to Tuesday, the 1st of May. During that breathless interval it was as when a mine is ready, the gunpowder and other explosives all stored, the train laid, and what is waited for is the application of the lighted match. That duty fell to Sir John Greenville, and the mode in which it should be performed was settled privately between him and wary Old George. On Saturday, April 28, the Council of State are met at Whitehall, Annesley in the chair as usual. Colonel Birch, one of the members, entering late, informs General Monk that there is a gentleman at the door who desires to speak with him. Monk goes to the door, finds Sir John Greenville there, and receives him as a perfect stranger, the guards looking on. Sir John delivers to him a letter, and tells him that he does so by command of his Majesty. Monk orders the guards to detain this gentleman, and returns to the Council-room with the letter. Having broken the seal, but not opened the letter, he hands it to the President, intimating from whom it has come. The superscription itself leaves no doubt on that point. The letter is one of the six, dated "_At our Court at Breda this 4/14th of April 1660, in the twelfth year of Our Reign_," which Sir John Greenville had brought over to be used by Monk at his discretion, and which Monk had given back into Greenville's custody till the proper moment for using them should arrive. It was that particular one of the six which was addressed to Monk himself, to be communicated by him to the Council of State and the Officers of the Army. There was much surprise in the Council, real or affected, Colonel Birch protesting that he knew nothing of the business, but had merely found a gentleman at the door inquiring for General Monk and had brought in his message to the General. That gentleman was sent for and asked how he came by the letter. "It was given to me by his Majesty with his own hand," said Sir John. Altogether the Council were at a loss how to act; but finally it was agreed that they dared not read the letter without leave from Parliament. There was some question of sending Greenville into custody meanwhile; but Monk said he was a kinsman of his and he would be answerable for his appearance. In short, this attempt to apply the match in the Council had not sufficiently succeeded, and Sir John knew that he must be forthcoming in the two Houses themselves. Sir John was equal to the occasion. Early in the morning of Tuesday, the 1st of May, he was at the door of the House of Lords with that one of the six Letters from Breda which was addressed to their Lordships. There were now forty-two peers present. By one of these Greenville sent in his name to Speaker the Earl of Manchester, with an intimation of the nature of his message. The Earl had no sooner informed the House who and what were at the door than it was voted that the Earl should walk down the floor, all present attending him, to receive his Majesty's letter. Sir John having thus got rid of two of his documents, presented himself next at the door of the Commons, to try his chance with a third. He had already conveyed to Speaker Sir Harbottle Grimstone the fact that he was in attendance with a letter from his Majesty. He came now at the most fit moment, for the House had just received a report from the Council of State of what had happened at the sitting of the Council on the preceding Saturday. The scene will be best imagined from the record in the Journals of the House:--"_Tuesday, May the 1st_, 1660. PRAYERS. Mr. Annesley reports from the Council of State a Letter from the King, unopened, directed 'To our trusty and well-beloved General Monk, to be communicated to the President and Council of State, and to the Officers of the Armies under his command,' being received from the hands of Sir John Greenville. The House, being informed that Sir John Greenville, a messenger from the King, was at the door, _Resolved_, &c. That Sir John Greenville, a messenger from the King, be called in. He was called in accordingly, and, being at the bar, after obeisance made, said: 'Mr. Speaker, I am commanded by the King, my master, to deliver this Letter to You, and he desires that You will communicate it to the House.' The Letter was directed 'To Our trusty and well-beloved the Speaker of the House of Commons'; which, after the messenger was withdrawn, was read to the House by the Speaker." The bold Sir John had now got rid of three of his six documents. Nay, he had got rid of four; for in each of the three there had been enclosed a copy of his Majesty's general _Declaration_, or Letter to "all Our Loving Subjects of what degree or quality soever." It was for the Parliament to determine what should be done with this Declaration, as well as with the other two remaining Letters, one of them addressed to Generals Monk and Montague for communication to the Fleet, and the other to the Lord Mayor, Aldermen, and Common Council of the City of London. The train had been sufficiently fired already by the delivery of four of the Breda documents.[1] [Footnote 1: Lords and Commons Journals of dates; Parl. Hist. IV. 10-25; Phillips (continuation of Baker), 701-705; Skinner's Life of Monk, 297-302; Whitlocke, IV. 409-411.] The explosion was over and the air cleared, and all pretence was at an end at last. In the Commons, a few minutes after Sir John Greenville had left the House, it was "RESOLVED, _nemine contradicente_, That an answer be prepared to his Majesty's Letter, expressing the great and joyful sense of this House of His gracious offers, and their humble and hearty thanks to his Majesty for the same, and with professions of their loyalty and duty to his Majesty." The Lords had already passed an equivalent resolution, and had recalled Sir John Greenville to receive their hearty thanks for his care in the discharge of his duty. The rest of that day was spent in a conference between the two Houses, and in farther resolutions and arrangements in each, subsidiary to those two resolutions of the forenoon which had virtually decreed the Restoration. Thus, in the Commons, still in the forenoon, "RESOLVED, _nemine contradicente_, that the sum of £50,000 be presented to the King's Majesty from this House," and "RESOLVED, _nemine contradicente_, that the Letters from His Majesty, both that to the House and that to the Lord General, and his Majesty's Declaration which came enclosed, be entered at large in the Journal Book of this House"; and, again, at an afternoon sitting, the conference with the Lords having meanwhile been held, "RESOLVED, That this House doth agree with the Lords, and do own and declare that, according to the ancient and fundamental laws of this kingdom, the Government is, and ought to be, by King, Lords, and Commons." The news of what was doing in Parliament was already rushing hither and thither among the Londoners; the day ended among _them_, of course, with bonfires and ringing of bells and the roar of rejoicing cannon; in the boom of the cannon, and in whatever form of rude telegraph or of horsemen at the gallop along the four great highways, London was shaking the message from itself in palpitations through all the land; nor among the galloping horsemen were those the least fleet that were spurring through Kent to the seaside to unmoor the packet-boats and convey the tidings to Charles. On the 1st of May, 1660, the English Commonwealth was no more.[1] [Footnote 1: Commons Journals and Parl. Hist. of dates; Whitlocke, IV. 411.] Yet another week for the formalities of its burial. A few of the leading incidents of that week may be presented in abstract:-- _May_ 2:--Ordered by the Lords "that the statues of the late King's Majesty be set up again in all the places from whence they were pulled down, and that the Arms of the Commonwealth be demolished and taken away wherever they are, and the King's Arms be put up in their stead." _Same day in the Commons_:--Leave given to the Lord Mayor, Aldermen, and Common Council of the City of London, to return an answer to his Majesty's Letter addressed to them. This was the fifth of the Breda documents. Also leave given to Dr. Clarges, a member of the House, to go at once to Breda, with Monk's answer to the letter _he_ had received. _May_ 3:--Sir John Greenville brought into the House of Commons to receive thanks, and the information that the House had voted him £500 to buy a jewel. The Speaker, Sir Harbottle Grimstone, addressed him as follows:--"Sir John Greenville, I need not tell you with what grateful and thankful hearts the Commons now assembled in Parliament have received his Majesty's gracious Letter. _Res ipsa loquitur_: you yourself have been _ocularis et auricularis testis de rei veritate_: our bells and our bonfires have already proclaimed his Majesty's goodness and our joys. We have told the people that our King, the glory of England, is coming home again; and they have resounded it back again in our ears that they are ready, and their hearts open, to receive him. Both Parliament and People have cried aloud to the King of Kings in their prayers _Long live King Charles the Second_." The rest of the speech was compliment to Sir John himself. _Same day, in Montague's Fleet in the Downs_:--His Majesty's letter to Monk and Montague, intended to be communicated to the Fleet, having been sent by express from Monk, reached Montague that morning on board his flagship the Naseby. His secretary Pepys describes what followed: "My Lord summoned a Council of War, and in the meantime did dictate to me how he would have the vote ordered which he would have pass this Council. Which done, the Commanders all came on board, and the Council sat in the coach [Council cabin], the first Council of War that had been in my time; where I read the Letter and Declaration; and, while they were discoursing upon it, I seemed to draw up a vote, which, being offered, they passed. Not one man seemed to say _No_ to it, though I am confident many in their hearts were against it. After this was done, I went up to the quarterdeck with my Lord and the Commanders, and there read both the papers and the vote; which done, and demanding their opinion, the seamen did all of them cry out _God save King Charles_." Pepys then made a circuit of the other ships with the same great news. "Which was a very brave sight, to visit all the ships, and to be received with the respect and honour that I was on board them all, and much more to see the great joy that I brought to all men, not one through the whole fleet shewing the least dislike of the business. In the evening, as I was going on board the Vice-Admiral, the General began to fire his guns, which he did, all that he had in his ship, and so did all the rest of the Commanders; which was very gallant, and to hear the bullets go hissing over our heads as we were in the boat! This done, and finished my proclamation, I returned to the Naseby, where my Lord was much pleased to hear how all the fleet took it in a transport of joy, and shewed me a private letter of the King's to him, and another from the Duke of York, in such familiar style as their common friend, with all kindness imaginable. And I found by the letters, and so my Lord told me too, that there had been many letters passed between them for a great while, _and I perceive unknown to Monk_." _May_ 5. On report from the Council of State, a General Proclamation adopted by the Commons, with concurrence of the Lords, forbidding tumults, and instructing all in authority to continue in their respective offices and exercise the same thenceforth in his Majesty's name. _May_ 7. Sir George Booth, Lord Falkland, Mr. Denzil Holles, Sir John Holland, Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper, Lord Bruce, Sir Horatio Townshend, Lord Herbert, Lord Castleton, Lord Fairfax, Sir Henry Cholmley, and Lord Mandeville, chosen by the House of Commons to be the persons to carry to his Majesty the answer of the House to his Majesty's gracious Letter. The similar deputation from the Lords' House was to consist of the Earl of Oxford, the Earl of Warwick, the Earl of Middlesex, Viscount Hereford, Lord Berkley, and Lord Brooke. Same day, on receipt from Montague of a copy of his Majesty's letter addressed to Monk and himself, as Generals of the Fleet, with news of the reception of the same by the Fleet on the 3rd, Monk and Montague were authorized to answer that letter. Thus the sixth and last of the Breda documents was finally disposed of.--Resolved also that Thursday next should be a day of thanksgiving in London and Westminster for the happy reconciliation with his Majesty, and farther, "That all and every the ministers throughout the Kingdoms of England, Scotland, and Ireland, the Dominion of Wales, and the Town of Berwick-upon-Tweed, do, and are hereby required and enjoined in their public prayers to, pray for the King's most excellent Majesty by the name of Our Sovereign Lord, Charles the Second, by the grace of God King of England, Scotland, France, and Ireland, Defender of the Faith."--Resolved also that the King be proclaimed to-morrow. _Tuesday, May_ 8. Proclamation of Charles accordingly in Westminster Hall, and at Whitehall, Temple Bar, Fleet Conduit, the Exchange, and other places, his reign to date from the death of his father. Copies of the Proclamation to be sent to all authorities over Great Britain and Ireland, that it may be repeated everywhere. Also "RESOLVED, _nemine contradicente_, that the King's Majesty be desired to make his speedy return to his Parliament and to the exercise of his Kingly Office."[1] [Footnote 1: These Notes, except the extract from Pepys, are compiled from the Commons Journals and the Parliamentary History for the week between May 1 and May 8, with references to Whitlocke and Phillips.] And so all was settled between Charles and his Three Kingdoms. By this time, indeed, not only in London, Edinburgh, and Dublin, but all over the main island from Land's End to Caithness and all over the lesser from Mizen Head to Malin Head, there was simply a universal impatience till it should be known that Montague's fleet had shot from the Downs towards the Dutch coasts, to bring his Majesty and his Court, on the decks of his own ships, within hail of the cheering from Dover cliffs. The delay was chiefly because of the necessity of certain upholstering and tailoring preparations on both sides. At home there had to be due preparations of a household for his Majesty, and of households for his two brothers, when they should arrive. There had to be got ready not only a new crown and sceptre, and new robes and ermines, but also the velvet bed, with the gold embroidery, the lining of satin or cloth of silver, the satin quilts, the fustian quilts to lie under the satin quilts, the down bolster, the fustian blankets, the Spanish blankets, the Holland sheets, with other accoutrements for his Majesty's own bedroom, besides similar furnishing for the bedrooms of the Dukes of York and Gloucester, a new coach for his Majesty, liveries for his coachmen, footmen, and other servants, and innumerable etceteras. Then, on the other side of the water, where his Majesty had meanwhile received with extraordinary satisfaction, through Sir John Greenville, the £50,000 voted him by the Commons, £10,000 of it in gold from England, and the rest in bank bills payable at sight in Amsterdam, and where the Duke of York had been promised another £10,000 and the Duke of Gloucester £5000, much of the money had to be converted into the apparel and other equipments required for the suitable appearance of the three royal personages and their retinues when they should present themselves in England. A great deal might be done at Breda, where already there was swarming round his Majesty a miscellany of private visitors, English, Scottish, and Irish, all anxious to be useful, and many of them with presents of money. But the final arrangements were to be at the Hague, the capital of the United Provinces, amid whatever stately ceremonial of congratulation and farewell the Dutch Government could now offer in atonement for previous neglect or indifference. There had been most pressing solicitations, indeed, from the Spanish authorities of Flanders, that Charles would return to Brussels and make his arrangements there; Mazarin too had sent a message at last, begging him to honour France by making Calais his port of departure; but Charles preferred the Hague. It was at the Hague, therefore, that the commissioners from the two Houses of Parliament, with deputations from the City of London and the London clergy, were to wait upon Charles; it was there that he was to confer his first large collective batch of English knighthoods, following the single knighthood conferred conspicuously already on Dr. Clarges at Breda; and it was thence that there was to be the great embarkation for Dover.[1] [Footnote 1: Clarendon, 906-910; Pepys's Diary, from the 8th of May onwards.] And what meanwhile of the chief Republican criminals at home, whether the Regicides or the scores of others that might count themselves in peril for more than mere place or property? Since the 1st of May, or before, such of them as could, such as were at liberty and had money, had absconded or been trying to abscond. Of the Regicides and some of the rest we shall hear enough in due course. For the present let us attend only to Needham and Milton. Needham had absconded in good time. It had probably been in the very beginning of May, if not earlier; for on the 10th of May there was out in London, in the form of a printed squib, _An Hue and Cry after Mercurius Politicus_, giving a sketch of his career, and containing some doggrel verse about his escape, in this style:-- "But, if at Amsterdam you meet With one that's purblind in the street, Hawk-nosed, turn up his hair, And in his ears two holes you'll find; And, if they are, not pawned behind, Two rings are hanging there. "His visage meagre is and long, His body slender," &c.[1] [Footnote 1: "_O. Cromwell's Thankes to the Lord General faithfully presented by Hugh Peters in another Conference, together with an Hue and Cry after Mercurius Politicus: London, Printed by M.T._" ("1660, May 10" in the Thomason copy).] Our latest glimpse of Milton is on the 7th of May, the day before the public proclamation of Charles in London. On that day "John Milton, of the City of Westminster," transferred to his friend "Cyriack Skinner, of Lincoln's Inn, Gentleman," a Bond for £400 given by the Commissioners of the Excise in part security for money which Milton had invested in their hands. In the deed of conveyance, still extant, under the words at the end, "_Witness my hand and seal thus_," there follows the signature "JOHN MILTON," not in his own hand, but recognisably in the fine and peculiar hand of that amanuensis to whom he had dictated the sonnet in memory of his second wife about two years before. In yet another hand is the date "7th May, 1660"; but attached, to verify all, is Milton's family-seal of the double-headed eagle. Milton, we can see, wanted some money for sudden and urgent occasions, and his friend Cyriack advanced it. Cyriack and others had, doubtless, been already about him for some days, imploring him to hide himself, and devising the means; and that very night, or the next, as we are to fancy, he is conveyed furtively out of his house in Petty France to some obscure but suitable shelter. The three children he has parted with, the eldest not yet fourteen years old, the second not twelve, and the third just eight, are left under what tendence there may be, hardly knowing what has happened, but uncertain whether they shall ever again see their strange blind father. All is dark, and we may drop the curtain.[1] [Footnote 1: Sotheby's _Ramblings in Elucidation of Milton's Autograph_, p. 129, and plate after p. 124. The document mentioned was purchased in Aug. 1858, for £19, by Mr. Monckton Milnes (now Lord Houghton), apparently under the impression that the signature was Milton's own.] CORRIGENDA AND ADDENDA IN VOLS. IV. AND V. _Vol. IV. pp._ 272-273:--From Mrs. Everett Green's Calendar of Domestic State Papers for the Third Year of the Commonwealth I learn that the first meeting of the Council of State for that year was on Feb. 17, 1650-51, and not on Feb. 19. There had been two meetings before that of the 19th, and at the first of these Bradshaw had been re-appointed President. _Vol. IV. pp._ 416-418 _and_ 423-424:--To Milton's Letter to the Oldenburg agent Hermann Mylius, translated and commented on pp. 416-418, and to the story, as told at pp. 423-424, of the Safeguard for the Count of Oldenburg's subjects obtained from the English Council of State by the joint exertions of Mylius and Milton, an interesting addition has turned up in the form of another Latin letter from Milton to Mylius, preserved "in a collection of autographs belonging to the Cardinal Bishop-Prince von Schwartzenberg." A copy was sent by Dr. Goll of Prague to Professor Alfred Stern of Bern, author of _Milton und Seine Zeit_; and Professor Stern communicated it to the _Academy_, where it appeared Oct. 13, 1877. It may be here translated:--"Yesterday, my most respected Hermann, after you had gone, there came to me a mandate of the Council, ordering me to compare the Latin copy [of the Safeguard] with the English, and to take care that they agreed with each other, and then to send both to Lord Whitlocke and Mr. Neville for revision; which I did, and at the same time wrote fully to Lord Whitlocke on the subject of the insertion you wanted made,--namely that there should be a clause in favour also of the successors and descendents of his Lordship the Count, and this in the formula which you yourself suggested: I added moreover the reasons you assigned why, unless that were done, the business would seem absolutely null. What happened in the Council in consequence I do not know for certain, for I was kept at home by yesterday's rain and was not present. If you write to the President of the Council [_Concilii_ only in the copy, but one guesses that the word for 'President' has to be inserted], or, better still, if you send one of your people to Mr. Frost, you may yourself, I believe, hear from them; or, at all events, you shall know in the evening from me,--your most devoted JOHN MILTON. Feb. 13, 1651 [i.e. 1651-2]." The letter accords in every particular with the extract we have given from the minutes of the Council of State of Feb. 11, and enables us to see how the Safeguard for the Count of Oldenburg did emerge, in the desired form at last, in Parliament on Feb. 17. Professor Stern, in his communication to the _Academy_, adds that the Safeguard is "printed by J.J. Winkelmann in his _Oldenburgische Friedens und der benachbarten Oerter Kriegshandlungen_, p. 390, with the annotation, '_Hoc diploma ex Anglico originali in Latinum verbatim versum est._ JOANNES MILTONIUS. _Westmonasterii, 17 Febr., anno_ 1651-2" ('This diploma is turned verbatim into Latin from the English original. JOHN MILTON. Westminster, 17 Febr., in the year 1651-2'), I assume, but am not certain, that it is the same as that mentioned as given in Thurloe, i, 385-6. _Vol. IV. p._ 560:--For the Earl of Airly, mentioned as one of the delinquent Scottish noblemen who were fined by Oliver's ordinance for Scotland of April 12, 1654, substitute the Earl of Ethie. He was Sir John Carnegie of Ethie, co. Forfar, Lord Lour since 1639, and created Earl of Ethie in 1647,--which title he exchanged, after the Restoration, for that of Earl of Northesk. _Vol. V. p. 227, in connexion with Vol. IV, pp._ 487-494:--A paper found very recently by Mrs. Everett Green in the Record Office, and kindly communicated by her to me, in continuation of those for which I have already acknowledged my obligations to her, enables me to throw some further light on Milton's friend and correspondent Andrew Sandelands, and on that scheme of his for utilising the fir-woods of Scotland in which he sought Milton's assistance. The paper, which is in the handwriting of Sandelands, is dated "30 June, 1653," i.e. two months and ten days after Cromwell had dissolved the Rump and begun his Interim Dictatorship; it is addressed "For the Honor'ble. Sir Gilbert Pickering"--Pickering being then, it would seem, President of Cromwell's Interim Council of Thirteen (see Vol. IV. pp, 498-499); and it is headed "_A Brief Narration of my Transactions concerning some Woods in Scotland_." From this statement of Sandelands it appears that he had first broached his scheme of obtaining masts and tar for the English navy from the woods of Scotland to Cromwell himself in August 1652, and that it was in consequence of Cromwell's recommendation of the scheme to the Council of State then in power that the business had been referred to the Commander-in-chief in Scotland and Sandelands had gone to Scotland ("at my own charge," he says) and had the conferences with Major-General Dean and Colonel Lilburne described at pp. 490-491 of Vol. IV. The result had been that detailed written explanation of his scheme to Lilburne the substance of which has been quoted in the same pages--"the copy whereof," adds Sandelands, "now remains in Mr. Thurloe's hands." He means, of course, the copy he had enclosed to Milton in his letter of Jan. 15, 1652-3, and which Milton had duly delivered to the Council of State. More had come of the matter than we knew at that date; for Sandelands proceeds thus in his statement:--"The Council of State, having received this information (recommended by the Commander-in-chief), gave order that Colonel Lilburne should prosecute the design effectually. Upon receipt of which order, Colonel Lilburne was pleased to employ me to try whether the Earl of Tullibardine (who had an interest of the third part of the woods of Abernethy and Glencalvie) would sell his share; which I did, and brought with me an agreement under his hand that for £221 he would yield up all his interest in the former woods and all other be-north Tay, upon condition that the money should be paid before the 25th of March last [1653]; which Colonel Lilburne certified to the Council of State. But, their greater affairs [the discussions with Cromwell just before his _coup d'état_] obstructing this design, neither money nor orders were sent. Therefore I did entreat Colonel Lilburne to do me that justice to certify my diligence; which he did; and [having come to London meanwhile] I delivered it to his Excellency [Cromwell] the 12th of June [a month and three weeks after the _coup d'état_]; who was pleased immediately after to revive this motion to the Council of State [Cromwell's Interim Council of Thirteen], and they to refer it to Mr. Carew [one of the Thirteen]. Since which time I have given my daily attendance at Whitehall, expecting the event of the business." He ends by soliciting Pickering, as he had solicited Milton some months before, to bring the matter to some such conclusion as might reimburse him for his journey to Scotland and all his care and pains there at his own charge. From a note appended to the Statement, it appears that the whole business was referred by Cromwell's Interim Council to a Committee; but, as we have found Sandelands still in distress and in want of employment as late as April 1654 (Vol. V. p. 227), his renewed application can have had but small success. End of Volume V 
6483	----	THE LIFE OF JOHN MILTON: NARRATED IN CONNEXION WITH THE POLITICAL, ECCLESIASTICAL, AND LITERARY HISTORY OF HIS TIME. VOL. III. 1643-1649. BY DAVID MASSON, M.A., LL.D. CONTENTS. BOOK I. JULY 1643--MARCH 1643-4. _HISTORY_:--FIRST EIGHT MONTHS OF THE WESTMINSTER ASSEMBLY: CIVIL WAR AND THE LONG PARLIAMENT CONTINUED. _BIOGRAPHY_:--MILTON STILL IN ALDERSGATE STREET: HIS MARRIAGE MISFORTUNE: HIS FIRST DIVORCE TREATISE. CHAP. I. The Westminster Assembly in Session--The Solemn League and Covenant: Scottish Commissioners in the Assembly--Debates on Church-Government: _Apologetical Narration_ of the Independents--Parliamentary Proceedings--Scottish Auxiliary Army in England II. Milton unhappy in his Marriage: His First Divorce Tract: Two Editions of it BOOK II. MARCH 1644-MARCH 1645. _HISTORY_:--THE YEAR OF MARSTON MOOR: CIVIL WAR, LONG PARLIAMENT, AND WESTMINSTER ASSEMBLY CONTINUED--STRUGGLE OF INDEPENDENCY WITH PRESBYTERIANISM: TOLERATION CONTROVERSY: ENGLISH SECTS AND SECTARIES-- PRESBYTERIAN SETTLEMENT VOTED--NEW MODEL OF THE ARMY. _BIOGRAPHY_:--MILTON AMONG THE SECTARIES: HIS SECOND DIVORCE PAMPHLET, _TRACT ON EDUCATION_, _AREOPAGITICA_, _TETRACHORDON_, AND _COLISTERION_. CHAP. I. Inactivity of the Scottish Auxiliaries--Spread of Independency and Multiplication of Sects--Visitation of the University of Cambridge-- Battle of Marston Moor--Fortnight's Vacation of the Westminster Assembly (July 23-August 7, 1644),--Principle of Toleration and State of the Toleration Controversy: Synopsis of English Sects and Sectaries in 1644.- -Resumption of Assembly's Proceedings: Denunciation of Picked Sectaries and Heretics--Cromwell's Interference for Independency: Accommodation Order of Parliament--Presbyterian Settlement voted--Essex beaten and the War flagging: Self-denying Ordinance and New Model of the Army-- Parliamentary Vengeances: Death of Laud II. Milton among the Sectaries, and in a "World of Disesteem": Story of Mrs. Attaway--Samuel Hantlib, John Durie, and John Amos Comenius: Schemes of a Reformed Education, and Project of a London University--Milton's _Tract on Education_, and Method with his Pupils--His Second Divorce Tract, or Compilation from Bucer--Mr. Herbert Palmer's Attack on Milton from the Pulpit--Milton and the Stationers' Company: Their Accusation of him in a Petition to the Commons--His _Areopagitica_, or Speech for the Liberty of Unlicensed Printing--Anger of the Stationers, and their Complaint against Milton to the Lords: Consequence of the Complaint--The Divorce Question continued: Publication of Mr. Herbert Palmer's Sermon, and farther Attacks on Milton by Prynne, Dr. Featley, and an Anonymous Pamphleteer--_Tetrachordon_ and _Colasterion_: Their Replies to the Assailants. BOOK III. APRIL 1645-AUGUST 1646. _HISTORY_:--SIXTEEN MONTHS OF THE NEW MODEL, AND OF THE LONG PARLIAMENT AND WESTMINSTER ASSEMBLY CONTINUED.--BATTLE OF NASEBY AND ITS CONSEQUENCES: EPISODE OF MONTROSE IN SCOTLAND: FLIGHT OF THE KING TO THE SCOTS AND CONCLUSION OF THE CIVIL WAR.--PROGRESS OF THE TOLERATION CONTROVERSY AND OF THE STRUGGLE BETWEEN THE PRESBYTERIANS AND THE INDEPENDENTS.--LONDON AND LANCASHIRE PRESBYTERIANIZED. _BIOGRAPHY_:--RETURN OF MILTON'S WIFE: HIS REMOVAL FROM ALDERSGATE STREET TO BARBICAN: FIRST EDITION OF HIS POEMS: THREE MORE SONNETS: CONTINUED PRESBYTERIAN ATTACKS ON MILTON: HIS RETALIATION: TROUBLES OF THE POWELL FAMILY. CHAP. I. Composition of the New Model, and View of the Work lying before it-- First Actions of the New Model--Cromwell retained in Command: Battle of Naseby: Other Successes of the New Model--Poor Performance of the Scottish Auxiliary Army--Episode of Montrose in Scotland--Fag-end of the War in England, and Flight of the King to the Scots--Fallen and Risen Stars. II. Work in Parliament and the Westminster Assembly during the Sixteen Months of the New Model--The two continued Church Controversies-- Independency and Sectarianism in the New Model: Toleration Controversy continued: Cromwell's part in it: Lilburne and other Pamphleteers: Sion College and the Corporation of London: Success of the Presbyterians in Parliament--Presbyterian Frame of Church Government completed: Details of the Arrangement--The Recruiting of the Commons: Eminent Recruiters-- Effects of the Recruiting: Alliance of Independency and Erastianism: Check given to the Presbyterians: Westminster Assembly rebuked and curbed--Negotiations round the King at Newcastle--Threatened Rupture between the Scots and the English: Argyle's Visit to London: The Nineteen Propositions--Parliament and the Assembly reconciled: Presbyterianizing of London and Lancashire: Death of Alexander Henderson. III. Effects of Milton's _Areopagitica_--His Intention of another Marriage: His Wife's Return and Reconciliation with him--Removal from Aldersgate Street to Barbican--First Edition of Milton's Collected Poems: Humphrey Moseley the Bookseller--Two Divorce Sonnets and Sonnet to Henry Lawes--Continued Presbyterian Attacks on Milton: His Anti-Presbyterian Sonnet of Reply--Surrender of Oxford: Condition of the Powell Family--The Powells in London: More Family Perplexities: Birth of Milton's first Child. BOOK IV. AUGUST 1646--JANUARY 1648-9. _HISTORY_:--THE LAST TWO YEARS AND A HALF OF THE REIGN OF CHARLES I.:-- I. HIS CONTINUED CAPTIVITY WITH THE SCOTS AT NEWCASTLE, AND FAILURE OF HIS NEGOTIATIONS WITH THE PRESBYTERIANS; II. HIS CAPTIVITY AT HOLMBY HOUSE, AND THE QUARREL BETWEEN THE ENGLISH PARLIAMENT AND THE ENGLISH ARMY; III. HIS CAPTIVITY WITH THE ENGLISH ARMY, AND THEIR PROPOSALS TO HIM; IV. HIS CAPTIVITY IN THE ISLE OF WIGHT, AND THE SECOND CIVIL WAR; V. HIS TRIAL AND DOOM. _BIOGRAPHY_:--MILTON IN BARBICAN AND IN HIGH HOLBORN.--PRIVATE AND PUBLIC ANXIETIES: ODE TO ROUS, TWO MORE SONNETS, AND TRANSLATION OF NINE PSALMS: OTHER WORKS IN PROGRESS: LETTERS TO AND FROM CARLO DATI. CHAP. I. Charles in his Captivity First Stage of the Captivity: Still with the Scots at Newcastle: Aug. 1646--Jan. 1646-7.--Balancings of Charles between the Presbyterians and the Independents--His Negotiations in the Presbyterian direction: The Hamiltons his Agents among the Scots--His Attempt to negotiate with the Independents: Will Murray in London-- Interferences of the Queen from France: Davenant's Mission to Newcastle-- The Nineteen Propositions unanswered: A Personal Treaty offered-- Difficulties between the Scots and the English Parliament--Their Adjustment: Departure of the Scots from England, and Cession of Charles to the English--Westminster Assembly Business, and Progress of the Presbyterian Settlement Second Stage of the Captivity: At Holmby House: Feb. 1646-7--June 1647.-- The King's Manner of Life at Holmby--New Omens in his favour from the Relations of Parliament to its own Army--Proposals to disband the Army and reconstruct part of it for service in Ireland--Summary of Irish Affairs since 1641--Army's Anger at the Proposal to disband it--View of the State of the Army: Medley of Religious Opinions in it. Passion for Toleration: Prevalence of Democratic Tendencies: The Levellers-- Determination of the Presbyterians for the Policy of Disbandment, and Votes in Parliament to that effect--Resistance of the Army: Petitions and Remonstrances from the Officers and Men: Regimental Agitators--Cromwell's Efforts at Accommodation: Fairfax's Order for a General Rendezvous-- Cromwell's Adhesion to the Army--The Rendezvous at Newmarket, and Joyce's Abduction of the King from Holmby--Westminster Assembly Business: First Provincial Synod of London: Proceedings for the Purgation of Oxford University Third Stage of the Captivity: The King with the Army: June-Nov. 1647.-- Effects of Joyce's Abduction of the King--Movements of the Army: their Denunciation of Eleven of the Presbyterian Leaders: Parliamentary Alarms and Concessions--Presbyterian Phrenzy of the London Populace: Parliament mobbed, and Presbyterian Votes carried by Mob-law: Flight of the two Speakers and their Adherents: Restoration of the Eleven--March of the Army upon London: Military Occupation of the City: The Mob quelled, Parliament reinstated, and the Eleven expelled--Generous Treatment of the King by the Army: His Conferences with Fairfax, Cromwell, and Ireton--The Army's _Heads of Proposals_, and Comparison of the same with the _Nineteen Propositions_ of the Parliament--The King at Hampton Court, still demurring privately over the _Heads of Proposals_, but playing them off publicly against the _Nineteen Propositions:_ Army at Putney-- Cromwell's Motion for a Recast of the _Nineteen Propositions_ and Re- application to the King on that Basis: Consequences of the Compromise-- Intrigues at Hampton Court: Influence of the Scottish Commissioners there: King immoveable--Impatience of the Army at Putney: Cromwell under Suspicion: New Activity of the Agitatorships: Growth of Levelling Doctrines among the Soldiers: _Agreement of the People_--Cromwell breaks utterly with the King: Meetings of the Army Officers at Putney: Proposed Concordat between the Army and Parliament--The King's Escape to the Isle of Wight Fourth Stage of the Captivity: In the Isle of Wight: Nov. 1647-Nov. 1648.--Carisbrooke Castle, and the King's Letters thence--Parliament's New Method of the _Four Bills_--Indignation of the Scots: their Complaints of Breach of the Covenant--Army Rendezvous at Ware: Suppression of a Mutiny of Levellers by Cromwell, and Establishment of the Concordat with Parliament--Parliamentary Commissioners in the Isle of Wight: Scottish Commissioners also there: the King's Rejection of the Four Bills--Firmness of Parliament: their Resolutions of No Farther Addresses to the King: Severance of the Scottish Alliance--_The Engagement_, or Secret Treaty between Charles and the Scots in the Isle of Wight--Stricter guard of the King in Carisbrooke Castle: His Habits in his Imprisonment--First Rumours of _The Scottish Engagement_: Royalist Programme of a SECOND CIVIL WAR--Beginnings of THE SECOND CIVIL WAR: Royalist Risings: Cromwell in Wales: Fairfax in the Southeast: Siege of Colchester--Revolt of the Fleet: Commotion among the Royalist Exiles abroad: Holland's attempted Rising in Surrey--Invasion of England by Hamilton's Scottish Army: Arrival of the Prince of Wales off the Southeast Coast: Blockade of the Thames--Consternation of the Londoners: Faintheartedness of Parliament: New Hopes of the Presbyterians: their Ordinance against Heresies and Blasphemies: their Leanings to the King: Independents in a struggling minority: Charge of Treason against Cromwell in his absence--The Three Days' Battle of Preston and utter Defeat of the Scots by Cromwell: Surrender of Colchester to Fairfax: Return of the Prince of Wales to Holland: Virtual End of THE SECOND CIVIL WAR-- Parliamentary Treaty with the King at Newport: Unsatisfactory Results-- Protests against the Treaty by the Independents--Disgust of the Army with the Treaty: Revocation of their Concordat with Parliament, and Resolution to seize the Political Mastery: Formation of a Republican Party-- Petitions for Justice on the King: The _Grand Army Remonstrance_-- Cromwell in Scotland: Restoration of the Argyle Government there: Cromwell at Pontefract: His Letter to Hammond--The King removed from the Isle of Wight to Hurst Castle--The Army again in possession of London II. Troubles in the Barbican Household: Christopher Milton's Composition Suit: Mr. Powell's Composition Suit: Death of Mr. Powell: His Will: Death of Milton's Father--Sonnet XIV. and Ode to John Rous--Italian Reminiscences: Lost Letters from Carlo Dati of Florence: Milton's Reply to the last of them--Pedagogy in the Barbican: List of Milton's known Pupils: Lady Ranelagh--Educational Reform still a Question: Hartlib again: The Invisible College: Young Robert Boyle and William Petty-- Removal from Barbican to High Holborn--Meditations and Occupations in the House in High Holborn: Milton's Sympathies with the Army Chiefs and the Expectant Republicans--Still under the Ban of the Presbyterians: Testimony of the London Ministers against Heresies and Blasphemies: Milton in the Black List--Another Letter from Carlo Dati: Translation of Nine Psalms from the Hebrew--Milton through the Second Civil War: His personal Interest in it, and Delight in the Army's Triumph: His Sonnet to Fairfax--Birth of Milton's Second Child: Another Letter from Carlo Dati III. The Two Houses in the Grasp of the Army: Final Efforts for the King: Pride's Purge and its Consequences--The King brought from Hurst Castle to Windsor: Ordinance for his Trial passed by the Commons alone: Constitution of the Court--The Trial in Westminster Hall: Incidents of the Seven successive Days: The Sentence--Last Three Days of Charles's Life: His Execution and Burial BOOK I. JULY 1643--MARCH 1643-4. _HISTORY_:--FIRST EIGHT MONTHS OF THE WESTMINSTER ASSEMBLY: CIVIL WAR AND THE LONG PARLIAMENT CONTINUED. _BIOGRAPHY_:--MILTON STILL IN ALDERSGATE STREET: HIS MARRIAGE MISFORTUNE: HIS FIRST DIVORCE TREATISE. CHAPTER I THE WESTMINSTER ASSEMBLY IN SESSION--THE SOLEMN LEAGUE AND COVENANT: SCOTTISH COMMISSIONERS IN THE ASSEMBLY--DEBATES ON CHURCH-GOVERNMENT: _APOLOGETICAL NARRATION_ OF THE INDEPENDENTS--PARLIAMENTARY PROCEEDINGS--SCOTTISH AUXILIARY ARMY IN ENGLAND. The Westminster Assembly held its first formal meeting in Henry the Seventh's Chapel on Saturday, July 1, 1643, after the impressive opening ceremonial of a sermon preached before a great congregation in the Abbey Church by the appointed Prolocutor, Dr. Twisse, on the text John xiv. 18, "_I will not leave you comfortless_!" About 69 of the members were present at that first meeting, many who attended afterwards not having yet come up from the country. Among the 69 were the few of "the Episcopal persuasion" who afterwards dropped off; and these were conspicuous by their canonical dresses among the bulk of the members in all sorts of plain Puritan suits. The average attendance subsequently seems to have been from 60 to 80. The place of meeting for some time continued to be King Henry the Seventh's Chapel; but this was changed, when the weather grew colder, for the celebrated Jerusalem Chamber, also in the close vicinity of the Houses of Parliament. [Footnote: The Ordinance of Parliament authorizing the change of the place of meeting to the Jerusalem Chamber is dated Sept. 23, 1643 see Lords Journals for that day] None but members of the Assembly were allowed to be present, and there was no deviation from this rule except on the very rarest occasions and by special authority from Parliament. The Assembly sat commonly from nine in the morning till one or two P.M. The Prolocutor sat at one end of the room on a raised chair; his two Assessors were near him; and a table ran through the whole length of the room, at one end of which sat the Scribes, close to the Prolocutor, while the members were seated in tiers at the sides and other end. The forms of debate and voting were very much those of the House of Commons. Besides the meetings of the Assembly as such, there were afternoon meetings of Committees for the preparation of business for the Assembly. There were three such chief Standing Committees, to one or other of which every member belonged. [Footnote: Lightfoot's Notes of Assembly Works (ed. 1824), Vol. XIII, pp. 4, 5; and Baillie, II. 107-109] FIRST BUSINESS OF THE ASSEMBLY: REVISION OF THE ARTICLES. Not till Thursday, July 6, or indeed Saturday, July 8, was the Assembly constituted for actual business. On the first of these days the Regulations which had been drawn up by the two Houses of Parliament for the procedure of the Assembly were duly received; and on the second all the members of Assembly present took the solemn Protestation which had been settled for them by the Commons with the concurrence of the Lords. It was in these terms: "I, A. B., do seriously and solemnly protest, in the presence of Almighty God, that in this Assembly, wherein I am a member, I will not maintain anything in matters of Doctrine but what I think in my conscience to be truth, or in point of Discipline but what I shall conceive to conduce most to the glory of God and the good and peace of His Church." So sworn, the members were ready for their first work. That also had been rigidly prescribed for them by Parliament. On July 5 the Commons had ruled and the Lords had agreed "that the Assembly, in their beginning, in the first place shall take the ten first Articles of the Church of England into their consideration, to vindicate them from all false doctrine and heresy." In other words, it was the pleasure of Parliament that the first business of the Assembly should consist in a revision and amendment of the Thirty-nine Articles, and that, by way of a commencement in this business, or specimen to Parliament of the manner in which it might be done, they were to confine themselves at first to the first Ten of the Articles. Accordingly, the Assembly at once addressed themselves to this business. It was with a view to it that they first adopted that machinery of Committees which was to be employed subsequently, with so much effect, in all the deliberations. The Divines of the Assembly were distributed, in the order in which their names stood in the Ordinance calling the Assembly, into three Committees for preparatory revision of the said Articles in such a manner that the whole Assembly might more clearly exercise its final judgment on them; while a fourth Committee, in which the lay-members were included, was to assist the others by procuring the most correct copies of the text of the Articles. To the first revising Committee, of which Dr. Burges was appointed chairman, were entrusted the first four Articles; to the second, of which Dr. Stanton was chairman, the fifth, sixth, and seventh Articles; and to the third, which had Mr. Gibbon for chairman, the eighth, ninth, and tenth. Imagine the Assembly collectively in Henry the Seventh's Chapel, and its Committees distributively there or in other places of meeting, busy day after day, through the rest of the hot month of July, and then into August, over its appointed revision of the Articles. "_I. Of Faith in the Holy Trinity; II. Of the Word, or Son of God, which was made very Man; III. Of the going down of Christ into Hell; IV. Of the Resurrection of Christ; V. Of the Holy Ghost; VI. Of the Sufficiency of the Holy Scriptures for Salvation; VII. Of the Old Testament; VIII. Of the Three Creeds; IX. Of Original or Birth Sin; X. Of Free Will_;" imagine the Articles under these headings discussed successively, sentence by sentence and clause by clause, most of the sentences and clauses allowed to pass without change as perfectly satisfactory, but here and there at intervals a phrase modified or omitted, or a slight addition made, so as to bring the meaning more sharply into accord with the letter of Scripture or the Calvinistic system of doctrine. Such mere imagination of the general process will suffice, and it is unnecessary to take account of the actual changes proposed in the phraseology of particular Articles. For, in fact, these first weeks of the Assembly's pains over the Articles of the Church were to be labour wasted. Before the end of August, and while they were still probing through the first Ten Articles, events had taken such a course that the Assembly was called upon to co-operate with the Parliament in matters of greater urgency. THE SOLEMN LEAGUE AND COVENANT: SCOTTISH COMMISSIONERS TO THE ASSEMBLY. The war, which had been on the whole in the King's favour hitherto, was going more and more against Parliament. In the north, Lord Fairfax had been beaten at Atherston Moor by the Earl of Newcastle (June 30); Sir William Waller, the hitherto unconquered, had been beaten twice in the south-west (at Lansdowne, July 5, and at Roundway Down, July 13); the Queen, coming from the north, had joined the King in his quarters, amid great rejoicing, after their seventeen months of separation; and Bristol, inefficiently defended by Nathaniel Fiennes, was on the point of yielding to Prince Rupert. It was time, in short, to do what it had long been in the mind of Parliament to do--call in once more the aid of the Scots. On this the Parliament had already resolved. As it was judged likely, however, that the Scots would listen more readily to the application for armed aid if it were accompanied with some distinct proof of a desire for "uniformity of religion" between the two kingdoms, the Assembly was required to assist Parliament in pleading with the Scots. The Scottish Convention of Estates was then sitting (it had met, by express call, June 22); and the Scottish General Assembly was to meet on the 2nd of August. Let there be Commissioners from both the English Parliament and the Westminster Assembly to these two bodies; let the Assembly write letters to the Scottish Assembly, backing the political application with religious arguments; let every exertion be made to secure a new alliance with the Scottish nation! Accordingly, while the Assembly was pursuing its revision of the Articles, or occupying itself with such incidental matters as the appointment of ministers to preach before the two Houses, and the recommendation of a Fast Day extraordinary in London, their thoughts, like those of Parliament, were chiefly fixed on the issue of their joint embassy to Edinburgh. [Footnote: Lightfoot's Notes for July 1643; and my MS. chronology of events] The Scots had foreseen the application. Three courses were before them. They might remain neutral; they might interfere as "redders," or mediators between the King and the English Parliament; or they might openly side with the Parliament and help it in the war. Great efforts had been made by the King to induce the Scots to the first course. [Footnote: Burnet's Dukes of Hamilton (ed. 52), pp. 279-298] Five or six of the Scottish noblemen who were with the King at Oxford had been sent back among their countrymen to labour for this end. All in vain. It had become clear to Argyle, Loudoun, Warriston, and the other Scottish leaders, that neutrality would be ruinous. Things were in this state when the Commissioners from the English Parliament and the Westminster Assembly arrived in Edinburgh (Aug. 7). The Scottish Convention of Estates was then still sitting; and the General Assembly of the Scottish Kirk, with Alexander Henderson again its Moderator (the third time he had been raised to this Presidency), was in the middle of its annual fortnight or so of Scottish ecclesiastical business--one item of the business this time being, I find, "the late extraordinar multiplying of witches," especially in Fifeshire. Both the Convention and the Assembly had been anxiously waiting for the English Commissioners, and were delighted when they arrived. They were six in all--Sir William Armyn, Sir Harry Vane the younger, Mr. Hatcher, and Mr. Darley, from the Parliament; and Stephen Marshall and Philip Nye from the Westminster Divines. And what moving letters they brought with them--official letters from the Parliament and the Westminster Assembly to the Scottish Convention of Estates and General Assembly, and also a more private letter signed by about seventy English Divines! And how the Scots were impressed by the letters! The private letter of the seventy Divines in especial was "so lamentable" that, when it was read in the General Assembly, "it drew tears from many." And how all were struck by the ability and gravity of young Sir Harry Vane, and liked him and Stephen Marshall, but did not take so much to Mr. Nye, because of his known Independency! In short, in conferences between the English Commissioners and Commissioners appointed by the Scottish Convention and General Assembly to meet them, it was all arranged. There was, indeed, still some lingering question at first among the Scottish leaders whether it might not do to "go as redders or friends to both, without siding altogether with the Parliament;" but Warriston alone "did show the vanity of that notion and the impossibility of it." And so Vane and the other Commissioners could write to England that their mission had been successful, and that the armed aid of the Scottish nation might be expected. Ay, but there was a special condition. The Commissioners had come to treat about "Scottish assistance to Parliament and a uniformity of religion," and it was the prospect held out in the second phrase that most reconciled the Scots to all that was involved in the first. The extension of Scottish Presbyterianism over all England and Ireland, or, at all events, the union of the two kingdoms in some common form of Church-government not essentially differing from Scottish Presbyterianism--for that object the Scots _would_ strike in; for that object they _would_ shed their blood, as fellow-soldiers with Englishmen, in the fields of England! Now the English Commissioners, like wary men, and probably in accordance with their instructions, would fain have avoided any too definite a pledging of England to a particular ecclesiastical future. Nye, in especial, as an Independent, must have desired to avoid this; and Vane, as a man who did not know how far from his present opinions continued reasoning might carry him, may have felt with Nye. Hence, on the religious question, they tried to get off with generalities. If there were a league between the two kingdoms for their civil liberties, would not a uniformity in Church matters naturally follow? But this was not quite satisfactory to the Scottish Commissioners. "The English were for a civil league, we for a religious covenant," says Baillie; and the event has made the sentence memorable historically. Let England and Scotland unite first in subscribing one and the same document, swearing one and the same oath, which should base their alliance on a certain amount of mutual engagement in the matter of Religion! To such oaths of mutual allegiance the Scots, among themselves, had long been accustomed. They called them "Covenants." This agency of "Covenanting" had been a grand agency in Scottish History. Was not the present liberation of Scotland, the destruction of Episcopacy root and branch within its borders, the result of the "National Covenant" sworn to only five years and a half ago--that Covenant being but the renewal, with slight additions, of a document which had done not unimportant work in a former age? Why not have another Covenant for the present emergency--not that National or purely Scottish Covenant, but a Covenant expressly framed for the new purpose, and fit to be a religious pact between the two kingdoms? So argued the Scots with the English Commissioners; and, that the English Commissioners might see what was meant, Alexander Henderson, who was probably the author of the idea, and to whom, at any rate, the preparation of any extremely important document was always entrusted, produced a draft of the proposed Covenant. The English Commissioners did not altogether like this draft; but, after a good deal of discussion, and apparently some suggestions from Vane tending to vagueness in the religious part and greater prominence of the civil, the draft was modified into a shape in which it was agreed to unanimously. On the 17th of August it was reported by Henderson to the General Assembly, and passed there not only unanimously and with applause, but with a most unusual show of emotion among old and young; and on the same day it passed the Scottish Convention. "This seems to be a new period and crise of the most great affair," writes Baillie, recording these facts. [Footnote: Acts of Scottish General Assembly of 1644; Baillie's Letters, II. 81-90; Burnet's Hamiltons, 298-307.] Baillie was right. THE SOLEMN LEAGUE AND COVENANT, as Henderson's amended document of August 1643 was called (not the same thing at all, it is to be remembered, as the SCOTTISH NATIONAL COVENANT of 1638, though generally confounded therewith), became a most potent instrument in England. This, however, could not be foreseen at first. It remained to be seen whether the English Parliament would adopt the document which had been agreed to by their Commissioners in Edinburgh. In the faith that they would, or that they might be induced to do so, the Scottish General Assembly, before its rising (Aug. 19), not only sent cordial and sympathetic answers to the letters received from the Parliament and the Westminster Divines, but also complied with that request of the Parliament which desired the nomination of some Scottish ministers to be members of the Westminster Assembly. The ministers nominated were Henderson, Mr. Robert Douglas, Baillie, Mr. Samuel Rutherford, and Mr. George Gillespie; but it was thought right, if only to accustom the English to the principle of lay-eldership, to associate with these ministers the Earl of Cassilis, Lord Maitland, and Johnstone of Warriston. Of the eight Commissioners so appointed three were to be a quorum. Accordingly, Henderson, Gillespie, and Lord Maitland sailed for London at once (Aug. 30), leaving the others to follow more at leisure. [Footnote: Acts of Scottish Assembly of 1643; and Baillie's Letters, II. 96-98.] When Henderson reached London, he found his "Covenant" the universal topic. The Parliament had lost no time in referring the document to the Westminster Divines for their consideration; and there had been three or four days of debate over it in that Assembly (Aug. 28 and onwards). Some members, especially Dr. Cornelius Burges, took exceptions. On the whole, however, the feeling of the Assembly decidedly was that the Covenant was a splendid invention, might be adopted with a few verbal changes, and might lead to fine results. This was reported to Parliament Aug. 31; and Dr. Burges, continuing in his captiousness against this judgment of the Assembly, found himself in disgrace. The two Houses then proceeded to examine the Covenant for themselves. They also proposed some modifications of the document, and referred it back, with these, to the Assembly (Sept. 14). The arrival of Henderson and his two colleagues at this nick of time accelerated the conclusion. On the 15th of September, when they first appeared among the Westminster Divines, and Henderson first opened his mouth in the Assembly and expounded the whole subject of the relations between the two kingdoms, all opposition came to an end. The document passed, with only the modifications that had already seemed reasonable, and to which the Scots Commissioners had assented; and, "after all was done, "Mr. Prolocutor, at the desire of the Assembly, gave thanks "to God for the sweet concurrence of us in the Covenant." The words are Lightfoot's; who adds that, to make the joy complete, Dr. Burges came in radiant and repentant, expressing his complete satisfaction now with the Covenant, and begging to be forgiven. [Footnote: Burges had actually been suspended by Parliament from being a member of the Assembly for his contumacy in this affair, Sept. 2, 1643; but he was restored on his own humble petition, Sept. 15, the very day of his repentant reappearance in the Assembly. He had already on that day been called in before the Commons and had explained "that it was very true he had unhappily taken exception to some things in the Covenant," but that "he hears there had been a review of this Covenant," and such an alteration "as will give him satisfaction." See Commons Journals of the two dates named.] The Covenant having thus been finally adjusted, the two Houses of Parliament were swift in enacting it. On the 21st of September, they ordered that it should be printed and published, and subscribed and sworn to by the whole English realm; and, on Monday the 25th, to set the example, there was a solemn meeting of the members of the two Houses and of the Divines of the Assembly in St. Margaret's Church, Westminster, at which 220 of the Commons and all the Divines then present swore to the new pact, and signed it with their names.--This was but the beginning. The Covenant was thenceforth the Shibboleth of Parliamentarianism. In London first, and then gradually through England, in towns, parishes, and parish churches, wherever Parliament prevailed, all had to sign it or swear to it if they would be considered friends to the cause of Parliament and allowed action and standing-room as true Englishmen. Oliver Cromwell, as a member of the House of Commons, signed it--if not among the 220 of the Commons who signed it originally on the 25th of September (at which time there is proof that he was absent from London), at least in due course; and Milton must have signed it, as a London householder. But, in fact, the signing went on for months and months, the Royal Proclamation from Oxford forbidding the Covenant (Oct. 9) only increasing the zeal for it. From Sept. 1643, onwards for some years, the test of being a Parliamentarian in England was "Have you signed the Covenant?" and the test of willingness to _become_ a Parliamentarian, and of fitness to be forgiven for past malignancy or lukewarmness, was "Will you _now_ sign the Covenant?" Such was the strange fortune of the hurried paper drawn up by Henderson's pen in some room in the High Street of Edinburgh.--In Scotland, it need hardly be said, the Covenant was sworn to with alacrity. As the document was, in its very nature, a pact between the two kingdoms, proposed by the Scots, it was useless for them to swear until they had seen whether the English would accept the pact. But, as soon as it was known in Scotland that the Covenant had been adopted by the English and that the swearing in England had begun, the Scots did their part. There was some little grumbling at first over the verbal changes that had been made by the English in the text of the Covenant; but this ceased, and it was even agreed that the changes were for the better. Accordingly, on the 13th of October, 1643, most of the Scottish nobles in Edinburgh, including 18 of the Privy Council, swore solemnly to the Covenant in one of the city churches; and from that day on, for weeks and months, there was a general swearing to the Covenant by the whole people of Scotland, as by the Parliamentarians in England, district by district, and parish by parish. Thus the Scots came now to have two Covenants. There was their own _National Scottish Covenant_, peculiar to themselves; and there was the _Solemn League and Covenant_, in which they were joined with the English Parliamentarians. [Footnote: Lightfoot, XIII. 10-16; Baillie, II. 98, 99, and 102; Neal, III. 65-70; Stevenson, 515, 516; Parl. Hist. III. 172-174; Carlyle's Cromwell (ed. 1857), I. 137, 138.] And what was this _Solemn League and Covenant_, the device of Henderson and the Scots for linking the Scottish and English nations in a permanent civil and religious alliance? The document is not nearly Henderson at his best, and it has not the deep ring, the fervour and fierceness, of the old Scottish Covenant. For its purpose, however, it was efficient enough, and not so very illiberal either, the necessity of such a league being allowed, and the time and other things considered. Here are the essential parts:-- We, Noblemen, Barons, Knights, Gentlemen, Citizens, Burgesses, Ministers of the Gospel, arid Commons of all sorts, in the Kingdoms of England, Scotland, and Ireland ... with our hands lifted up to the most high God, do swear:-- I. That we shall sincerely, really, and constantly, through the grace of God, endeavour, in our several places and callings, the preservation of the Reformed Religion in the Church of Scotland, in Doctrine, Worship, Discipline and Government, against our common enemies; [also] the Information of Religion in the Kingdoms of England and Ireland, in Doctrine, Worship, Discipline and Government, according to the Word of God and the example of the best Reformed Churches: and we shall endeavour to bring the Churches of God in the three Kingdoms to the nearest conjunction and uniformity in Religion, Confession of Faith, Form of Church-Government, Directory for Worship and Catechising, that we and our posterity after us may, as brethren, live in faith and love, and the Lord may delight to dwell in the midst of us. II. That we shall in like manner, without respect of persons, endeavour the extirpation of Popery, Prelacy (_i.e._ Church-government by Archbishops, Bishops, their Chancellors and Commissaries, Deans, Deans and Chapters, Archdeacons, and all other ecclesiastical Officers depending on that Hierarchy), Superstition, Heresy, Schism, Profaneness, and whatsoever shall be found to be contrary to sound doctrine and the power of godliness; lest we partake in other men's sins, and thereby be in danger to receive of their plagues, and that the Lord may be one and his Name one in the three Kingdoms. III. We shall with the same sincerity, reality, and constancy, in our several vocations, endeavour with our estates and lives mutually to preserve the rights and privileges of the Parliaments, and the liberties of the Kingdoms, and to preserve and defend the King's Majesty's person and authority, in the preservation and defence of the true Religion and Liberties of the Kingdoms; that the world may bear witness with our consciences of our loyalty, and that we have no thoughts or intentions to diminish his Majesty's just power and greatness. IV. We shall also with all faithfulness endeavour the discovery of all such as have been or shall be Incendiaries, Malignants, or evil Instruments, by hindering the Information of Religion, dividing the King from his People, or one of the Kingdoms from another, or making any faction or parties among the People contrary to the League and Covenant; that they may be brought to public trial, and receive condign punishment as the degree of their offences shall require or deserve, or the supreme judicatories of both Kingdoms respectively, or others having power from them for that effect, shall judge convenient. V. And, whereas the happiness of a blessed Peace between these Kingdoms, denied in former times to our progenitors, is by the good Providence of God granted unto us, and hath been lately concluded and settled by both Parliaments, we shall, each one of us, according to our places and interest, endeavour that they may remain conjoined in a firm Peace and Union to all posterity, and that justice may be done upon the wilful opposers thereof in manner expressed in the precedent Article. VI. We shall also, according to our places and callings, in this common cause of Religion, Liberty, and Peace of the Kingdoms, assist and defend all those that enter into this League and Covenant in the maintaining and pursuing thereof, and shall not suffer ourselves, directly or indirectly, by whatsoever combination, persuasion, or terror, to be divided and withdrawn from this blessed union and conjunction, whether to make defection to the contrary part, or give ourselves to a detestable indifferency and neutrality in this cause, which so much concerneth the glory of God, the good of the Kingdoms, and the honour of the King; but shall all the days of our lives zealously and constantly continue therein against all opposition, and promote the same according to our power against all lets and impediments whatsoever; and what we are not able ourselves to suppress or overcome we shall reveal and make known, that it may be timely prevented or removed: all which we shall do as in the sight of God... [Footnote: Rushworth, V. 478-9, and Lords Journals, Sept. 18, 1643.--"Not so very illiberal either," I have said of the League and Covenant in the text; and reader of the Second Article, pledging to "endeavour the extirpation of Popery, Prelacy, Superstition, Heresy, Schism, Profaneness," will naturally demur. This Article, however, was but a repetition of what all, of both nations, who might sign the Covenant, including the English Parliament, were, by past actions and resolutions, already pledged to, neck-deep or more. The illiberality is to be charged not upon this particular League and Covenant, but upon the entire British mind of the time, with individual theorists excepted. It belonged to the Royalists equally with the Parliamentarians; the only difference being that the objects for "extirpation" in _their_ policy were and had been the Calvinisms and Presbyterianisms that were now exulting in the power of counter-extirpation.--The most important Article of the six is the First, pledging to a recognition and defence of the Presbyterian Church of Scotland, and to an endeavour after a Reformation of Religion in England and Ireland "according to the Word of God," with a view to uniformity in the three Kingdoms. The insertion of the caution "according to the word of God" is said to have been owing to Vane, who did not want to pre-commit the English too much to exact Scottish Presbytery. The few other changes made by the English Parliament and Westminster Assembly in Henderson's original Edinburgh draft of the Covenant may be traced by a diligent reader in the proceedings of the Lords and Commons on this subject as recorded in their Journals between Aug. 31 and Sept. 15. The parenthetical definition of Prelacy in Art. II. was a suggestion of the Assembly's; the bringing in of Ireland into the Covenant seems to have been a notion of the Commons.] Ono effect of the Solemn League and Covenant was to clear away from the Westminster Assembly the few Anglicans who had till then tried to hang on to it. Dr. Featley alone, of this party, persisted in keeping his place for some time longer; but, on the discovery that he was acting as a spy in the King's interest and corresponding with Usher, he was expelled by the Parliament, sequestrated from his livings, and committed to prison (Sept. 30). On the other hand, the Assembly had now an accession of strength in the Commissioners deputed to it from the Kirk of Scotland. Two of these, Mr. Douglas and the Earl of Cassilis, never made their appearance; but the other six duly took their places, though not all at once. They were admitted by warrant of the Parliament, entitling them "to be present and to debate upon occasion"; but, as Commissioners from the Church of another nation, they declined being considered "members" in the ordinary sense. Practically, however, this was a mere formality; and the reader has now therefore to add to the list of the Assembly the following Scotchmen:-- DIVINES. ALEXANDER HENDERSON: since 1639 one of the ministers of Edinburgh, and since 1640 Rector of the University of Edinburgh (annually re-elected). _ætat._ 60.--As Henderson has appeared again and again in this History, I have only to add here that my researches have more and more convinced me that he was, all in all, one of the ablest and best men of his age in Britain, and the greatest, the wisest, and most liberal, of the Scottish Presbyterians. They had all to consult him; in every strait and conflict he had to be appealed to, and came in at the last as the man of supereminent composure, comprehensiveness, and breadth of brow. Although the Scottish Presbyterian rule was that no churchman should have authority in State affair's, it had to be practically waived in his case: he was a Cabinet Minister without office. The tradition in Scotland is perfectly just which recollects him as the second founder of the Reformed Church in that part of the island, its greatest man after Knox. Such is the tradition; and yet you may look in Encyclopædias and such-like works of reference published of late years in Scotland, and not find Henderson's name. The less wonder that he has never received justice in general British History! I undertake, however, that any free-minded English historian, investigating the course of even specially English History from 1638 to 1646, will dig up the Scottish Henderson for himself and see reason to admire him.--Henderson, it will be remembered, had been in London, on the Anglo-Scottish business, before. But his stay then had been for but seven months (Nov. 1640-June 1641). Now, as Scottish Commissioner to the Westminster Assembly, he was to remain in England for the best part of three years (Aug. 1643--Aug. 1646). It was the easier for him to give this service to English Parliamentarianism because he was an unmarried man. His Edinburgh congregation and Edinburgh University had to endure his absence as well as they could. Letters between Edinburgh and London could go and come by sea in ten or twelve days. GEORGE GILLESPIE: one of the ministers of Edinburgh (formerly minister of the parish of Wemyss in Fifeshire): _ætat._ 3l.--He had flashed into notice in Scotland in 1637, when he was only four-and-twenty years of ago. He was then but tutor in the household of the Earl of Cassilis; but he had written "_A Dispute against the English--Popish Ceremonies obtruded upon the Church of Scotland_;" and the publication of this treatise, happening opportunely in the crisis of the Scottish revolt against Laud's novelties, attracted immediate attention to him, and caused him to be regarded as one of the young hopes of Scottish Presbyterianism. Hence his appointment to the parish of Wemyss (1638); and hence his previous mission to London, in company with Henderson, Baillie, and Blair (1640-41). Returning from that mission, he had been translated from Wemyss to Edinburgh; but hardly had he settled in Edinburgh when he was again sent off to London on this new business. His wife and family joined him in London. He took a very active part in the business of the Assembly. He died in 1648, soon after his return to Scotland, aged only 35, leaving various writings besides his first one. Among these were Notes of the Proceedings of the Assembly, chiefly during 1644. They were first published from the MSS. in 1846. ROBERT BAILLIE: Professor of Divinity in the University of Glasgow (formerly minister of Kilwinning in Ayrshire): _ætat._ 4l.--Baillie also had been on the former Scottish Commission to London; and it way sorely against his will that he was appointed on this second one. He followed Henderson and Gillespie in November 1643, leaving his wife and family in Glasgow. He also remained fully three years in London, attending the Assembly punctually, but not speaking much. Fortunately, however, he kept up his habit of jotting down in his note-books and his correspondence all he saw and heard, Baillie's _Letters and Journals_ (first properly edited by Mr. David Laing in 1842) are among the most graphic books of contemporary memoir to be found in any language. His faculty of narration in his pithy native Scotch is nothing short of genius. Whenever we have an account from Baillie of anything he saw or was present at, it is worth all other accounts put together for accuracy and vividness. So in his account of Stratford's trial; and so in his account of his first impressions of the Westminster Assembly. SAMUEL RUTHERFORD: one of the ministers of St. Andrews, and also Professor of Divinity in the University there (formerly minister of Anwoth, Kirkcudbright): _ætat_. 43.--Of him, as of the others, we have had to take note before. Much of his celebrity in Scottish ecclesiastical history and in the history of Scottish theology had yet to be acquired; but for sixteen years he had been known as one of the most fervid spirits and most popular preachers in all Scotland. In what mood he accepted his commission to the Westminster Assembly may be judged from a private letter of his from St. Andrews, Oct. 20, 1643. "My heart beareth me witness," he there says, "and the Lord who is greater knoweth, my faith was never prouder than to be a common rough barrowman in Anwoth, and that I could not look at the honour of being ane mason to lay the foundations for many generations, and to build the waste places of Sion in another kingdom, or to have ane hand in the carved work in the cedar and almug trees in that new Temple." He went to London along with Baillie in November 1643, his wife and family either accompanying him or following him. He also remained in London three years or more, burying two of his children there. He was a much more frequent speaker in the Assembly than Baillie. LAY COMMISSIONERS. JOHN, LORD MAITLAND (eldest son of the Earl of Lauderdale), _ætat_. 27.--This young nobleman, who had a long and strange career before him, was now one of the most zealous of the Scottish Covenanters, and was selected by the Scottish Kirk, as one of the lay-elders to be sent to the Westminster Assembly, on account of his great ability and learning. He accompanied Henderson and Gillespie, and took his place in the Assembly in August 1645; and, from his first arrival in London, he was much courted by the Parliamentary leaders. Baillie and the rest were proud of their young noble. This was hardly, however, on account of his personal appearance; for he was a large-bodied young fellow, red-haired, of boisterous demeanour, and with a tongue too big for his mouth, so that he spluttered and frothed when he spoke. Ah! could the Scots but have foreseen, could the young fellow himself but have foreseen, what years would bring about! SIR ARCHIBALD JOHNSTONE OF WARRISTON, Knt.: one of the Judges of the Scottish Court of Session (hence by courtesy "Lord Warriston"'): _ætat. circ_. 35.--He had been, as we know, a leader among the Scottish Covenanters since 1637, and his knighthood and judgeship, conferred on him by the King in Edinburgh in 1641, had been the reluctant recognition of his activity during the four preceding years.--Beside Henderson and Argyle there is no man of the Scottish Presbyterians of that time more worthy of mark than Warriston. He had prodigious powers of work, requiring but three hours of sleep out of the twenty-four: and he was mutually crafty and long-headed, always ready with lawyer-like expedients. Bishop Burnet, who was his nephew, adds, "He went into very high notions of lengthened devotions, in which he continued many hours a day: he would often pray in his family two hours at a time, and had an unexhausted copiousness that way. What thought soever struck his fancy during these effusions, he looked on it as an answer of prayer, and was wholly determined by it." Such descriptions, and even parts of his own correspondence, might picture him as a kind of fanatical Machiavelli; but he seems to have been much liked and trusted by all who knew him. Baillie, for instance, addresses him familiarly and heartily as "Archibald" in his more private letters. He had much of his career still before him.--His judgeship and other business in Edinburgh prevented him from going to London along with the other Commissioners; but he took his place in the Westminster Assembly Feb. 1, 1643-4, and was for some time afterwards in England. [Besides Lord Maitland and Lord Warriston, there were admitted into the Westminster Assembly from time to time other Scottish lay-commissioners, either to make up for the absence of the Earl of Cassilis originally appointed, or for other reasons. Thus in September 1643, when Henderson, Gillespie, and Lord Maitland took their places, ROBERT MALDRUM, a confidential agent of the Scots in London, was admitted along with them; and the EARL OF LOUDOUN, LORD BALMERINO and even ARGYLE himself, sat in the Assembly at various times subsequently.] Every respect was paid to the Scottish Commissioners in London. They had Worcester House in the City assigned, or rather re-assigned, them for a residence, with St. Antholin's church again made over to them for their preachings; [Footnote: Memoir of Baillie, by David Laing, in Baillie's Letters and Journals, p. li. In Cunningham's "London," and else where, Worcester House in the Strand, on the site of the present Beaufort Buildings, afterwards Lord Clarendon's house is mad the residence of the Scottish Commissioners; but Mr. Laing points out that it was Worcester House or Worcester Place in the City, which had been the mansion of John Tiptoft, Earl of Worcester.] and they had a special bench of honour in the Assembly. And from that bench, day after day, week after week, month after month, they laboured to direct the Assembly, and, to a great extent, did direct it. For, as the mainly Presbyterian character and composition of the Assembly at its first meeting had been the result of the influence of Scottish example and of continued Scottish action in England for a year or two, so it was to Henderson's Covenant, and to the presence of the Scottish Commissioners in London, that the Assembly, while yet in its infancy, was indebted (if it was a debt) for a new impulse or twist in the strict Presbyterian direction. English Presbyterianism might be willing, but it was vague and uninformed; whereas here, in the Scottish Commissioners, were men who knew all about Presbyterianism, had every detail of it at their fingers' ends, had studied it nearly all their lives, and had worked it practically for five years. What a boon to England to be able to borrow for a year or two such a group of Scottish instructors! It was as if a crowd of Volunteers, right-minded and willing to learn, had secured a few highly-recommended regulars to be their drill-sergeants. DEBATES IN THE ASSEMBLY: PRESBYTERIANISM AND INDEPENDENCY: THE _APOLOGETIC NARRATION_ OF THE INDEPENDENTS. It was not till October 12, 1643, that the real debating in the Assembly began. Till then they had been occupied with matters in which they could be pretty nearly of one mind, including their revision of the Thirty-nine Articles. In that business, where we left them at the Tenth Article (_antè_, p. 6), they had crawled on through five Articles more: viz.- "_XI. Of Justification by Faith_"; "_XII. Of Good Works_"; "_XIII. Of Works before Justification_"; "_XIV. Of Works of Supererogation_"; "_XV. Of Christ alone without Sin_"; and on the 12th of October they were busy over Article XVI. "_Of Sin after Baptism._" But on that day they received an order from the two Houses (and Scottish influence is here visible) to leave for the present their revision of the Thirty-nine Articles, and proceed at once to the stiffer questions of the new form of Church- government and the new Directory of Worship for England. [Footnote: Lightfoot's Notes, p. 17.] Of these questions the Assembly chose the first to begin with. On what a sea of troubles they were then launched! (1) CHURCH OFFICERS AND OFFICES.--Under this heading alone they had debates extending over nearly three months (Oct. 1643--Jan. 1643-4), and labouring successively through such topics as these--Christ's Priesthood, Prophetship, and Kingship, with the nature of his Headship over the Church; the Church officers under Christ mentioned in Scripture (Apostles, Prophets, Pastors, Doctors or Teachers, Bishops or Overseers, Presbyters or Elders, Deacons, and Widows), with the nature of their functions respectively, and the proper discrimination between those of them that were extraordinary and temporary and those that were to be ordinary and permanent in the Church; the settling therefrom of the officers properly belonging to each modern Christian congregation, and especially whether there should be ruling lay-elders along with the pastor or minister, and, if so, what should be their exact duties. Gradually, in the course of this long discussion, carried on day after day in the slowest syllogistic way, the differences of the Independents and the Erastians from the Presbyterian majority of the Assembly came out. On the question of lay-eldership, indeed, there was a more extensive contest. Such English Presbyterians as Mr. Vines, Mr. Palmer, and Mr. Gataker, joined with the Erastian Divines, Lightfoot and Coleman, and with the Independents, in wholly or partially opposing lay-eldership, against the advocacy of their brethren, Marshall, Calamy, Newcomen, Young (four of the Smectymnuans), Seaman, Herle, Walker, Whitaker and others, hacked by the Scottish Commissioners. On the whole, however, the votes were decidedly in favour of the Scottish Presbyterian arrangement of church offices. Henderson occasionally waived a point for the sake of accommodation. (2) ORDINATION:--This subject and its adjuncts occupied the Assembly during some fourteen sittings in January 1643-4. Ordination having been defined to be "the solemn setting apart of a person to some public church office," it was voted, not without opposition, that such ordination is always to be continued in the church, and consequently that there should not be promiscuous preaching by all and sundry, but only preaching by authorized persons. But then who were to ordain? What were to be the qualifications for being ordained to the pastoral office? How far were the congregations or parishioners to have a voice in the election of their pastors? What was to be the ceremonial of ordination? On these points, or on some of them, the Independents fought stoutly, being carefully on their guard against anything that might endanger their main principle of the completeness of every congregation of believers within itself. Selden also interposed with perturbing Erastian arguments. On the whole, however, in this matter also the drift of the Assembly was as the Presbyterians wished. While it was agreed that "in extraordinary cases something extraordinary may be done until a settled order can be had," it was voted that even in such cases there should be a "keeping as near as possibly may be to the rule;" which rule was indicated, so far at least, by the resolution that "preaching Presbyters may ordain," or that Bishops are not required for the act. But, before this subject of Ordination could be carried farther, it melted into a larger one. (3) PRESBYTERIAL GOVERNMENT OR CONGREGATIONALISM:--This controversy, which had been underlying the whole course of the previous debating, emerged in express terms before the end of January 1643-4. Then began the real tug of the verbal war. It is unnecessary to enumerate all the items of the controversy. The battle was essentially between two principles of church-organization. Was every individual assembly, or association of Christians (it might be of hundreds of persons, or it might be of as few as seven persons, voluntarily drawn together), to be an independent ecclesiastical organism, entitled to elect its own pastor and other officers, and to exercise the powers of admonition and excommunication within itself--any action of surrounding congregations upon it being an action of mere observation and criticism, and not of power or jurisdiction; and no authority to belong to meetings of the office- bearers of congregations of the same city or neighbourhood, or to general synods of office-bearers, however useful for various purposes such occasional meetings and synods might be? This was what the Independents maintained; and to this the Presbyterians vehemently said Nay. It was not desirable, they said in the first place, that congregations themselves should be mere gatherings of Christians drawn together by chance affinities. That would be to put an end to the parochial system, with all the advantages of orderliness and effective administration that belonged to it. Let every congregation consist, as heretofore, mainly of the inhabitants of one parish or definitely marked ecclesiastical territory. Then let there be a strict inter-connectedness of all these parochial congregations over the whole land by means of an ascending series of church-judicatories. Let the congregations of the same town or district be connected by a Presbyterial Court, consisting of the assembled ministers and the ruling lay-elders of all the congregations, periodically reviewing the proceedings of the said congregations individually, or hearing appeals from them; and let these Presbyteries or Presbyterial Courts be in like manner under the authority and review of Synods, embracing many Presbyteries within their bounds, and, finally, of National Assemblies of the whole Church. Fierce and hot waxed the war between the two systems. Much turned on the practice of the apostolic churches or primitive Christian communities of Jerusalem Ephesus, Antioch, Corinth, &c., as it could be gathered from various passages of Scripture: and great was the display of learning, Hebraic and Hellenistic, over these passages on both sides. Goodwin as the chief speaker for the Independents; but he was aided by Nye, Burroughs, Bridge, and Simpson; and Selden struck in, if not directly for Congregationalism, at least so as to perplex the Presbyterians. On the other side Marshall and the other Smectymnuans were conspicuous, with Vines, Seaman, Burges, Palmer, Herle, and Whitaker. Henderson looked on and assisted when required. But no one on this side was more energetic than Henderson's young colleague, Gillespie. His countryman Baillie was in raptures with him, and in writing to Scotland and to Holland could not praise him enough. "Of a truth" he says in one letter, "there is no man whose parts in a public debate I do so admire. He has studied so accurately all the points that ever yet came to our Assembly, he has got so ready, so assured, so solid a way of public debating, that, however there be in the Assembly divers very excellent men, yet, in my poor judgment, there is not one who speaks more rationally and to the point than that brave youth has done ever." On one occasion Gillespie, on a question of sheer learning, dared to grapple even with the great Selden, and with such effect, according to tradition (Scottish!), that even Selden reeled. And so on and on, from January 1643-4, through February, March, and April, the debate proceeded, and there seemed to be no likely end to it. For, though Congregationalism was maintained but by a small knot of men in the Assembly, they fought man fully, inch by inch, and there were various reasons why the majority, instead of overwhelming them by a conclusive vote or two, allowed them to struggle on. For one thing, though Baillie thought there was a "woful longsomeness" in the slow English forms of debating at such a time, it was felt by the English members that, in so important a business as the settling of a new constitution for the National Church, hurry would be unbecoming. But, besides this, the Assembly was not a body legislating in its own right. It had been called only to advise the Parliament; and, though its deliberations were with closed doors, was not all that it did from day to day pretty well known, not only in Parliament, but in London and throughout the country? Might not the little knot of Independents fighting within the Assembly represent an amount of opinion out of doors too large to be trifled with? [Footnote: In Lightfoot's Notes of the Assembly and Gillespie's similar Notes, the proceedings which I have endeavoured to summarize in this paragraph and the two preceding may be traced in detail--Lightfoot's Notes traversing, with great minuteness, the whole of the time under notice; and Gillespie's beginning at Feb. 2, 1643-4. Prefixed to Gillespie's Notes, as edited by Meek in 1846, there is, however, a very useful set of official minutes of the proceedings from Oct. 17, 1643, onwards, by the Scribes of the Assembly; which may be compared with Lightfoot's more extensive jottings. There are excellent and luminous notices of the Assembly's proceedings during most of the time indicated in Baillie, II. 106-174. Neal is very confused in his account of the Assembly, and does not seem to have studied its proceedings well. In Hetherington's _History of the Westminster Assembly_ there is a fairish popular account, compiled from Lightfoot and Gillespie, but charged with the author's strong personal Presbyterianism. The traditional part of the story of Gillespie's fight with Selden (which had come down, I believe, through the careful Scottish Church antiquary, Wodrow) is given by Mr. Hetherington in his History of the Assembly, but more fully and interestingly in his Memoir of Gillespie, prefixed to Meek's Edition of Gillespie's Notes.] None knew this better than the little knot of Independents in the Assembly itself. They had already acted on the knowledge. Foreseeing that the determination of the great question in the Assembly would inevitably be against them, they had taken the precaution, before the question came on in its final form, to record an appeal from the Assembly to Parliament and public opinion. This they had done in a so-called _Apologetical Narration_, presented to Parliament, and published and put in circulation not later than the beginning of January 1643-4. [Footnote: I find it registered at Stationers' Hall, Dec. 30, 1643.] It is a tract of some thirty quarto pages, signed openly by the five writers--Thomas Goodwin, Sidrach Simpson, Philip Nye, Jeremiah Burroughs, and William Bridge. Having explained first that they had been in no haste to press their peculiar opinions, and would have preferred to disclose them gradually, but that recent experience had left them no option but to appeal to Parliament as "the supreme judicatory of this kingdom," and "the most sacred refuge and asylum for mistaken and misjudged innocence," they proceed to a historical sketch of their doings while they had been in Holland, and an exposition of their differences from their Presbyterian brethren. Three principles of practical conduct, they say, had taken firm hold of them--_first_, that their supreme rule in church-matters, out of themselves, should be the pattern of the primitive or apostolic churches; _secondly_, that they would not bind themselves by their present judgment in any matter against a possible future change of judgment; and, _thirdly_, that they would study accommodation, as far as they could, to the judgments of others. Acting on these principles, but foreseeing the condemnation of their Congregationalism by the Assembly, they hoped at least that the issue would be so regulated finally by Parliament that they might not be driven into exile again, but might be permitted "to continue in their native country, with the enjoyment of the ordinances of Christ, and an indulgence in some lesser differences," so long as they continued peaceable subjects. [Footnote: Neal, III. 131-133, _Narration_ itself, also Hanbury's _Historical Memorials relating to the Independents_, Vol. II. (1841), pp. 221- 230.] This appeal to Cæsar by the five leading Independents had by no means pleased the rest of the Assembly. Though they acknowledged the great ability and even the moderation of the dissentients, they thought it an unfriendly stroke of policy on their part to have thus sheltered themselves by anticipation under the power outside. But, indeed, it was more than a stroke of personal policy. The five knew that they were speaking not for themselves only, but for all that might adhere to them. Their act reminded the Assembly of what was otherwise becoming apparent-- to wit, that the Assembly was after all but an imperfect representation of contemporary English opinion. It was an ark floating on a troubled sea, with its doors and windows well pitched, and perhaps with Noah on board, but not all Noah's family, and certainly not specimens of all the living creatures, even of non-episcopal kinds, that were to survive into the new order of things. What if, on the subsidence of the waters, the survivors in this ark should find themselves confronted with another population, which, having survived somehow on chance spars and rafts, must be included in the new community, and yet would insist that questions should be kept open in that community that had been settled by votes passed within the ark? That such was likely to be the case the Presbyterians already had proof. What, then, were they to do? In the first place, as they believed Noah to be within _their_ ark, they were to trust to his power, and the veneration that would be accorded to him, when he should re-emerge. In other words, they were to press on the Presbyterian theory in the Assembly, allowing "the Five Dissenting Brethren," as they were now called, the most prolix liberty of speech and reasoning, but always beating them in the final vote so as to secure a thoroughly Presbyterian report to Parliament at the last. But, in the second place, as the Independents had appealed to public opinion against such a contingency, it was necessary not only to carry Presbyterianism within the Assembly, but also to argue for it out of doors. Hence, through the year 1644, among the shoals of pamphlets that came from the London press (including Fast-day Sermons, Sermons before the Lords and Commons, &c., by the most eminent members of Assembly) there were not a few pleas for Presbytery, intended to counteract the effects of the _Apologetical Narration_ and other pleas for Congregationalism. Rutherford's _Temperate Plea for Paul's Presbytery in Scotland, or Modest Dispute touching Independency of particular Congregations_, and the same author's _Peaceable Plea for the Government of the Church of Scotland_, had preceded the _Apologetical Narration_; but the express answers to the _Narration_ were numerous. One of the most celebrated of these was a pamphlet entitled _Some Observations and Annotations upon the Apologetical Narration,_ addressed to the Parliament and the Assembly by a writer who signs himself merely "A. S.," but is known to have been a certain Dr. Adam Steuart, a Scot residing in London, but who soon afterwards received a call to Leyden. To this pamphlet there were replies on the part of the Independents, especially one entitled _M. S. to A. S._ (a title changed in a second edition into "_A Reply of Two of the Brethren to A.S._"); again "A.S." responded; and so the controversy went on, pamphlets thickening on pamphlets. [Footnote: Lowndes's Bibl. Manual, by Bohn, Article "Steuart, Adam;" Baillie, II. 216; and Hanbury's _Hist. Memorials relating to the Independents_, II. 251 _et seq._, and 341 _et seq._, where there are full accounts of the pamphlets, with extracts.] PROCEEDINGS OF PARLIAMENT TO FEB. 1643-4: STATE OF THE WAR: THE SCOTTISH AUXILIARY ARMY. Meanwhile, notwithstanding this ominous difference in the Assembly on the great question of Church-government, all parties in the Assembly were co- operating harmoniously with each other and with Parliament in other important items of the general "Reformation" which was in progress. The chief of these items may be grouped under headings:-- _Simplification of Church Service, and Suppression of unpopular Rites and Symbols_.--This process, which had been going on naturally from the beginning of the Parliament, and more violently and riotously in some places since the beginning of the war, had been accelerated by recent Parliamentary enactments. Thus, in May 1643, just when Milton was preparing to leave London on his marriage holiday, there had been a tearing down, by authority, with the sound of trumpets and amid the huzzas of the citizens, of Cheapside Cross, Charing Cross, and other such street-monuments of too Popish make. At the same time the anti- Sabbatarian "Book of Sports" had been publicly burnt. Then followed (Aug. 27) an ordinance for removing out of churches all "superstitious images, crucifixes, altars," &c.; the effect of which for the next few months was a more or less rough visitation of pickaxing, chipping, and chiselling in all the parish-churches within the Parliament's bounds that had not already been Puritanized by private effort. Then, again, on the 20th of November, the House of Commons recommended to the consideration of the Assembly a new English Version of the Psalms, which had been recently executed, and put into print, by the much-respected member for Truro, Mr. Francis Rous. Ought not Sternhold and Hopkins's Version to be disused among other lumber; and, if so, might not Rous's Version be adopted instead, for use in churches? It would be a merited compliment and also a source of private profit to the veteran Puritan--whom the Parliament, at any rate, were about to appoint to the Provostship of Eton College (worth 800_l_ a year and more), instead of the Malignant, Dr. Stewart, then with his Majesty. The Assembly did actually take up Rous's Psalter, his friends pressing it on the old gentleman's account, but others not thinking it good enough; and we find Baillie regretting, Scot-like, when the subject was first brought up, that he had not with him a copy of another version of the Psalms then in MS., by his friend and countryman, Sir William Mure of Rowallan. This version he liked best of any he had seen, and thought decidedly better than Rous's; and; if he had had a copy, he might have been able to do his friend a good turn! [Footnote: Common Journals, Nov. 20, 1643; Baillie, II. 101 (and note), and 120-121. Baillie, at the very time he was privately wishing he had his friend Rowallan's Psalms to pit against Rous's, was becoming acquainted with Rous; to whom in a month or two he dedicated a sermon of his preached before the Commons. He there calls Rous his "much honoured friend." Rowallan's Psalms remain in MS. to this day; but specimens of them have been published. See Baillie's Letters, pp. 535-6 of Appendix, Vol. III.; where there is an interesting and curious history of English Versions of the Psalms, by the editor, Mr. David Laing.] The adoption of Rous's Psalter was not immediately voted by the Assembly, but lay over along with the general business of the new Directory for Worship. In this business too they were making some private progress in Committee, though retarded by the debates on Church-government; and there was every likelihood of substantial agreement here. Independents and Erastians were pretty sure to agree with Presbyterians on the subjects of the Liturgy, Sabbath-observance, abolition of Festival-days, and the recommendation of a plain and Puritan church-service generally. There were significant proofs of this. Actually on Christmas-day 1643 (who would have thought it?) the Lords and Commons met for business as usual, thus showing the example of contempt of the great holiday--all the more to the delight of the Scottish Commissioners, and of the zealous Puritans of the Assembly and the City, because the Assembly was still weak-hearted enough as a whole to adjourn for that day. It was the Scottish Commissioners, indeed, that had contrived this rebuke to the weaker spirits. And within a week or two thereafter there was this farther Puritan triumph--also the contrivance of the Scottish Commissioners through their friends in Parliament,--that the use of the Liturgy was discontinued in the two Houses, in favour of extempore prayers by Divines appointed for the duty by the Assembly. [Footnote: Baillie, II. 120 and 130.] _Ejection of Scandalous and Malignant Ministers_.--A somewhat wholesale process, described in such terms by the winning side, had been going on, everywhere within the sway of Parliament, for several months. It was part, indeed, of a more general process, for the sequestration to the use of Parliament of the estates of notorious Delinquents of all kinds, which had been the subject of various Parliamentary ordinances. [Footnote: Commons Journals from March 1612-3 onwards. For sequence of proceedings and dates, see Index to Journals, Vol III. _sub cocc._ "Delinquents." See also the main sequestrating ordinances (March 31 and Aug. 19, 1643) in Scobell's collection.] By these ordinances a machinery for the work of sequestration had been established, consisting of a central committee in London, and of committees in all the accessible counties. The special application of this machinery to clerical delinquents had come about gradually. From the very beginning of the Parliament (Nov. 1640) there had been a grand Committee of the Commons, of which Mr. White, member for Southwark, was chairman, for inquiring into the scandalous immoralities of the clergy, and an acting Sub- committee, of which Mr. White also was chairman, for considering how scandalous ministers might be removed, and real preaching ministers put in their places. By the action of these committees month after month-- receiving and duly investigating complaints brought against clergymen, either of scandalous lives or of notoriously Laudian opinions and practices--a very large number of clergymen had been placed on the black books, and some actually ejected, before the commencement of the war. But, after the war began, sharper action became necessary. For now the Parliament had to provide for what were called "the plundered ministers" --_i.e._ for those Puritan ministers who, driven from their parsonages in various parts of the country by the King's soldiers, had to flock into London, with their families, for refuge and subsistence. A special Committee of the Commons had been appointed (Dec. 1642) to devise ways and means for the relief of these "godly and well-affected ministers;" and, as was natural, the proceedings of this Committee had become inter- wound with those of the Committee for the ejection of scandalous ministers--Mr. White at the head of the whole agency. And so, in the Commons, we hear ultimately of such determinations as these respecting "scandalous ministers:"--July 3,1643: "Ordinance to be prepared to enable the Committees (for sequestration) in the several counties to sequester their livings;"--July 27: "the Committee for plundered Ministers to consider of informations against them and to put them to the proof;"-- Sept. 6: "Deputy Lieutenants and Committees in the counties empowered to examine witnesses against them." The result was the beginning of that "great and general purgation of the clergy in the Parliament's quarters" about which there was such an outcry among the Royalists at the time, and which, after having been a rankling memory in the High Church heart for seventy years, became the main text of Walker's famous folio of 1714 on "The Sufferings of the Clergy of the Church of England in the Grand Rebellion." According to that book, and to Royalist tradition, it was a ruthless persecution and spoliation of all the best, the most venerable, and the most learned of the clergy of England. Fuller, however, writing at the time, and corroborated by Baxter, represents the facts more fairly. Not a few of the clergy first ejected, he admits, were really men of scandalous private character, and were turned out expressly on that account; others, who were turned out for what was called their "false doctrine," or obstinate adherence to that Arminian theology and ceremonial of worship which the nation had condemned, might regard themselves as simply suffering in their turn what Puritan ministers had suffered abundantly enough under the rule of Laud; and, if gradually the sequestration extended itself beyond these two categories of "scandalous ministers" and "ministers of unsound faith," and swept in among "malignants" generally, or those whose only fault was that they were prominent adherents to the King, what was that but one of the harsh natural vengeances of a civil war? At the beginning of the purgation, at all events, Parliament professed carefulness and even leniency in its choice of victims. A fifth of the income of every ejected minister was reserved to his wife and family; and, in order that the public, and even the Royalists, might judge of the equity with which Parliament had proceeded in so odious a business, Mr. White, the chairman of the committees on clerical delinquency, put forth in print (Nov. 19, 1643) his "First Century of Scandalous Malignant Priests," or statement of the cases of one hundred of the sequestered clergy, chiefly in London and the adjacent counties, with the reasons of their ejection. At the time when Mr. White (thenceforward known as "Century White") put forth this pamphlet, the number of the ejected must have already considerably exceeded one hundred, or perhaps even three hundred; and, as the war went on, and sequestration became more and more co-extensive with "malignancy," the number swelled till, as is calculated, some 1,500 or 1,600 clergymen in all, or about a sixth part of the total clergy of England, were thrown out of their livings. [Footnote: Commons Journals of dates July 3, July 27, and Sept. 6, 1643; White's _First Century_, Fuller's Church History (ed. 1842), III. 458, 460; Neal's Puritans, III. 23-34. Sec also Hallam's Const. Hist. (10th ed.), II. 164-166.] _Filling up of Vacant Livings by the appointment of New Ministers_.--For the sequestered livings there were, of course, numerous candidates. Not only were there the "plundered" Puritan ministers, most of them congregated in London, to be provided for; but there were the young Divinity scholars growing up, for whom, even in a state of war, or at least for such of them as took the side of Parliament, it was necessary to find employment. Obviously, however, some order or method had to be adopted in the exercise of the large patronage of vacant livings which had thus come suddenly into the hands of Parliament. The plundered ministers could not be thrust promiscuously, or by mere lottery, into such livings as were vacant. They had all, certainly, the qualification of being already ordained; but there were different sorts of persons among them, and some with very little to recommend them except their distress. It was essential that there should be some examination or re-examination of all such petitioners for new livings, in order that the unfit should not be appointed, and that the others might be provided for according to their degrees of fitness. Accordingly, at the request of the two Houses, the Westminster Assembly (Oct. 1643) appointed two-and-twenty of its Divines to be a committee for examining and reporting on the qualifications of all such petitioners for livings as might be referred to it by Parliament. About the same time a provisional arrangement was made for the more difficult matter of ordaining new candidates for the Ministry. The whole question of Ordination having yet to be argued and settled in the Assembly (see _antè_, p. 20), it was felt on all hands that some temporary arrangement was imperative. Accordingly, by the advice of the Assembly, the whole business of deciding who were fit to be ordained, and of duly ordaining such, was entrusted by Parliament to certain committees or associations of godly ministers, themselves already ordained, appointed for certain centres and districts. The chief Ordaining Committee was, of course, that for London and the country round. This committee, to which was assigned not only the ordination of new ministers for its important district, but also the ordination of all chaplains for the army and navy, consisted of twenty-three associated Presbyters (ten Divines of the Assembly and thirteen parish-ministers of London not in the Assembly), of whom seven were to be a quorum. Whosoever, not already ordained, should presume to preach publicly or otherwise exercise the ministerial office without having been ordained by this association, or one of the others, or at least without a certificate of having been approved by the Examining Committee of the Assembly, was to be reported to Parliament for censure and punishment. The London Divines were enjoined to be careful whom they admitted into their pulpits. In short, it was the object of both the Parliament and the Assembly to proclaim their determination that, while the question of Church-government was being considered, some decent rule of practical order should be carefully observed, and England should not be allowed to lapse, as the loyalists were giving out, into a mere anarchy of ranters, preaching cobblers, and every fool his own parson. [Footnote: Neal, III. 88-90, and 138-141.] _Visitation of the University of Cambridge_.--While the scandalous and malignant among the parish clergy were being sequestered and ejected, it was not to be expected that Parliament would spare the Universities. Oxford, for the present, was beyond reach; but Cambridge was within reach. Was it to be endured that, while the town of Cambridge was the very centre of the Associated Eastern Counties, the most zealously Parliamentarian region in all England, the University should be a fortress of malignancy, with many of its Heads of Houses and Fellows notoriously disaffected to Parliament, and showing their disaffection by sermons, publications from the University press, continuance of the forbidden usages and symbolisms in the College chapels, and such other acts of contumacy? For a long time Parliament had been asking itself this question. As early as June 10, 1643, the subject of "some effectual means of reforming" the University of Cambridge, "purging it from all abuses, innovations, and superstitions," and dealing with conspicuous malignants in it, had been under discussion in the Commons. There had been a reluctance, however, to proceed too rapidly, or so as to incur the Royalist reproaches of "invasion of University rights" and "ruin of a great seat of learning." Hence, whatever dealings with the University had been necessary had been left very much to the discretion of the ordinary agencies representing Parliament in the Associated Counties, at the head of which, since Aug. 1643, had been the Earl of Manchester. There was even a Parliamentary ordinance (Jan. 6, 1643-4) explaining that, whatever sequestration there might be of the revenues of individual delinquents in the University, every regard was to be paid to the property of the University as such, and not an atom of _it_ should be alienated. By this time, however, it was felt that the malignancy of the University must be dealt with more expressly. Accordingly, on the 22nd of January there was passed "an Ordinance for regulating the University of Cambridge and for removing of scandalous Ministers in the several Associate Counties." By this ordinance it was provided that, "whereas many complaints are made by the well-affected inhabitants of the associated counties of Essex, Norfolk, Suffolk, Hertford, Cambridge, Huntingdon, and Lincoln, that the service of the Parliament is retarded, the enemy strengthened, the people's souls starved, and their minds diverted from any care of God's cause, by their idle, ill-affected and scandalous clergy of the University of Cambridge and the Associated Counties" and whereas "many that would give evidence against such scandalous ministers are not able to travel to London," therefore the Earl of Manchester should be commissioned to take the necessary steps in the University and the Counties themselves. He was to appoint Committees who were to have "power to call before them all Provosts, Masters, and Fellows of Colleges, all students and members of the University, and all ministers in any county of the Association, and all schoolmasters;" and, after due inquiry by these Committees, he was to have power "to eject such as he shall judge unfit from their places, and to sequester their estates, means and revenues, and to place other fitting persons in their room, such as shall be approved of by the Assembly of Divines." A very important ordinance, as we shall see in due time. [Footnote: Commons Journals, June 10, 1643, and Jan. 20, 1643-4; Lords Journals, Jan. 6 and Jan. 22, 1643-4; and Neal, III. 105-107.] The reader need hardly be reminded by what authority all these acts and changes in the system of England were decreed and carried into effect. Since the beginning of the war the government of England, except where the King's troops were in possession, had been in the two Houses of Parliament sitting at Westminster; but since July 1643 it may be said rather to have been in these two Houses of Parliament _with_ the Assembly of Divines. What the reader requires, however, to be reminded of is the smallness numerically of this governing body. The House of Lords, in particular, though still retaining all its nominal dignity and keeping up all its stately forms, was a mere shred of its former self. About 29 or 30 persons, out of the total Peerage of England, as we reckoned (Vol. II. pp. 430-31), had avowed themselves Parliamentarians; so that, had all these been present, the House of Lords would have been but a very small gathering. But, as a certain number even of these were always absent on military duty or on other occasions, it was seldom that more than 14 or 15 Peers were present in the House around Lord Grey of Wark on the woolsack as elected Speaker. Sometimes, when the business was merely formal, the number sank to 4 or 5; and I do not think the Lords Journals register, during the whole time with which we are now concerned, a larger attendance than 22. That was the number present on the 22nd of January, 1643-4, when the ordinance for visiting Cambridge University was passed. [Footnote: As the Lords Journals give the names of the Peers present each day, very accurate information on this subject is obtainable from them.] In the Commons, of course, the attendance was much larger. When a "whip" was necessary, between 200 and 300 could be got together. Thus on the 25th of September, 1643, which was the day of inaugurating the Covenant, 220 were present; and on the above-mentioned 22nd of January, 1643-4--an important day for various reasons--as many as 280 made their appearance, while it was calculated that 100 were absent in the Parliamentary service. [Footnote: Parl. Hist. III. 199.] Usually, however, the attendance was much less numerous. On a vote taken Nov. 26, 1643, the division showed 59 against 58, or 117 present; and this appears to be rather above the mark of the attendance in general.--On the whole, one may say that the business of the nation in the interest of Parliament was carried on habitually during those important months by some 12 or 15 Parliamentarian Peers, and some 100 Commoners, keeping up the forms of the two Houses, and having for their assessors, and in part for their spurs and tutors, the 60 or 80 Puritan Divines who sat close at hand in the Jerusalem Chamber. Was all this to last? Whether it was to last or not depended not a little on the conduct of the Parliament itself, but greatly more on the conduct of the generals and armies that held up its banners in various parts of England. And how, since our last glimpses of the state of the war in the dark month of Hampden's death and the month following that (June and July 1643), had the war been going on? Much as before. What do we see? A siege here and a siege there, a skirmish here and a skirmish there, ending sometimes for the Parliament, but as often for the King; amid all these sieges and skirmishes no battle of any magnitude, save the first Battle of Newbery (Sept. 20, 1643), where Lord Falkland, weary of his life, was slain, and also the Royalist Earls of Carnarvon and Sunderland, but otherwise the damage to the King was inconsiderable; Essex still heavy and solemn, an excellent man, but a woful commander-in-chief; little Sir William Waller still the favourite and set up against Essex, but confidence in him somewhat shaken by his recent defeats; the Fairfaxes in the north, and others in other parts, doing at best but respectably; Cromwell, it is true, a marked man and always successful wherever he appeared, but appearing yet only as Colonel Cromwell! "For the present the Parliament side is running down the brae," wrote the sagacious Baillie, Sept. 22, 1643; and again, more pithily, Dec. 7, "They may tig- tag on this way this twelvemonth." The only remedy, Baillie thought--the only thing that would change the sluggish "tig-tagging" of Essex and the English into something like what a war should be--was the expected coming-in of the Scots. For this event the English Parliamentarians also longed vehemently. "All things are expected from God and the Scots" is Baillie's description of the feeling in London in the winter of 1643-4. For, though the bringing in of a Scottish force auxiliary to the English army had been arranged for in the autumn--though it was for that end that the English Parliament had sent Commissioners to Edinburgh, had accepted Henderson's "Solemn League and Covenant," and had admitted Scottish Commissioners into the Westminster Assembly--yet the completing of the negotiations, and the getting together and equipping of the Scottish army for its southward march, had been a work of time. About Christmas 1643 it was understood that the Scots were in readiness to march; but the precise time when they might be expected to cross the border was yet in anxious conjecture. [Footnote: Baillie, II. 83, 99, 104-5, and 114-15.] It was an unusually severe winter, cold and snowy. The Londoners, in especial, deprived of their coal from Newcastle, felt it severely. Baillie particularly mentions the comfortable hangings of the Jerusalem Chamber, and the good fire kept burning in it, as "some dainties in London" at that date, and duly appreciated by the members of the Assembly. [Footnote: Ibid. II. 106.] Among the printed broad-sheets of the time that were hawked about London, I have seen one entitled "_Artificial Fire; or, Coal for Rich and Poor: this being the offer of an excellent new Invention_." The invention consists of a proposal to the Londoners of a cheap substitute for coal, devised by a "Mr. Richard Gesling, Ingineer, late deceased." Mr. Gesling's idea was that, if you take brickdust, mortar, sawdust, or the like, and make up pasteballs thereof mingled with the dust of sea-coal or Scotch coal, and with stable-litter, you will have a fuel much more economical than coal itself. But, though this is the practical proposal of the fly-sheet, its main interest lies in its lamentation over the lack of the normal fuel. "Some fine-nosed city dames," it says, "used to tell their husbands, 'O husband! we shall never be well, we nor our children, whilst we live in the smell of this city's sea-coal smoke! Pray, a country-house for our health, that we may get out of this sea-coal smell!' But how many of these fine-nosed dames now cry, 'Would to God we had sea-coal! Oh! the want of fire undoes us! O the sweet sea-coal fires we used to have! how we want them now: no fire to your sea-coal!'... This for the rich: a word for the poor! The great want of fuel for fire makes many a poor creature cast about how to pass over this cold winter to come; but, finding small redress for so cruel an enemy as the cold makes, some turn thieves that never stole before--steal posts, seats, benches from doors, rails, nay, the very stocks that should punish them; and all to keep the cold winter away." [Footnote: Folio sheet dated 1644 (_i.e._ winter of 1643-4), in British Museum Library: Press-mark, 669, f.]--If on no other account than the prospect of a re-opening of the coal-traffic between Newcastle and London, what joy among the Londoners when the news came that, on Friday the 19th of January, 1643-4, the expected Scottish army had entered England by Berwick! They had entered it, toiling through deep snow, 21,500 strong, and were already--God be praised!--spreading themselves over the winter-white fields of the very region where the coal lay black underground. At their head who but old Field-marshall Leslie, now Earl of Leven, Scottish commander-in-chief for the third time, and tolerably well acquainted already with the North of England? Second in command to him, as Lieutenant-general of the Foot, was William Baillie, of Letham, in this post for the second time; and the Major-general, with command of the horse was David Leslie, a third Gustavus-Adolphus man, and, though a namesake of the commander-in-chief, only distantly related to him. The marquis of Argyle accompanied the invaders, nominally as Colonel of a troop of horse; and among the other colonels of foot or horse were the Earls of Cassilis, Lindsay, Loudoun, Buccleugh, Dunfermline, Lothian, Marischal, Eglinton, and Dalhousie. The expenses of the army, averaging 1,000_l._ per diem (6_d._ a day for each common foot-soldier, 8_d._ for a horse-soldier, and so on upwards) were, by agreement, to be charged to England. [Footnote: Rushw. V. 604-7; Parl. Hist. III. 200, 201; Baillie, II. 100 and 137.] The condition on which the Scots had consented thus to aid the English Parliament must not be forgotten. It was the agreement of the two nations in one and the same religious Covenant. In all the negotiations that had been going on between London and Edinburgh, the Scots had always assumed the fulfilment of this condition on the part of the English. And, so far, we have seen, it had already been fulfilled. Since September 1643, when Henderson's Covenant had first been proposed to the English Parliament and the Westminster Assembly, and the Commons and the Westminster Divines had set the example by swearing to it collectively in one of the London churches, "the Covenant" had been a phrase familiar to the English mouth. In all the miscellaneous activity of the Parliament for the detection and disabling of "Malignants," there had been no instrument more effective or more commonly used. There were other tests and oaths by which the "malignants" might be distinguished from the "well-affected"; but the taking or not taking of the Solemn League and Covenant was the test paramount. Wherever the Parliament had power it had been in operation. Since December 20, for example, it had been the law that no one could be a Common Councilman of the City of London who had not subscribed to the Covenant. Still, in this matter of subscription to the Covenant, the English, both as the larger nation and as the less accustomed to Covenants, had remained considerably in arrear of the Scots; and, when the Scots actually did make their appearance in England, there was a sudden refreshing of the memory of the English Parliament on the subject, and a sudden exertion to make up the arrears. "The Scots are among us on the supposition that we have all taken the Covenant; and lo! we have not yet all taken it," was virtually the exclamation of the Parliament. Accordingly, that all might be brought in, that there might be no escape, and that there might remain to all time coming a vast register of the names of the Englishmen then living who had entered into this solemn league with their Scottish neighbours, there was passed, on the 5th of February, 1643-4, a new and conclusive ordinance on the subject. By this ordinance it was enacted that true copies of the Covenant should be sent to the Earl of Essex and other commanders of the army, and to all governors of towns, &c., to the intent that it might be sworn to by every man in the army; also that copies should be sent into all the counties, so that they should punctually reach every parish and every parish- minister--the instructions being that every minister should, the next Lord's day after the certified copy of the Covenant reached him, read it aloud to his congregation, discourse and exhort upon it, and then tender it to all present, who should swear to it with uplifted hands, and afterwards sign it with their names or marks. All men over eighteen years of age, whether householders or lodgers, were to take it in the parishes in which they were resident; and the names of all refusing, whether ministers or laymen, were to be reported. [Footnote: See Ordinance in Lords Journals, Feb. 5, 1643-4.] Nay, by an arrangement about the same time, the action of the Covenant was made to extend to English subjects abroad. Notwithstanding all this stringency, there is reason to believe that not a few soldiers in the army, and not a few ministers and others, contrived, in one way or another, to avoid the Covenant, without being called to account for the neglect. Where a minister otherwise unexceptionable, or an officer or soldier of known zeal and efficiency, had scruples of conscience against signing, the authorities, both civil and military, appear in many places to have exercised a discretion and winked at disobedience or procrastination.--The case of the Earl of Bridgewater may here be of some interest, on its own account, and as illustrating what went on generally. The Earl, known to us so long as "the Earl of Milton's _Comus_" had been living in retirement as an invalid during the war, his wishes on the whole being doubtless with the King, but his circumstances obliging him to keep on fair terms with the Parliament. The test of the Covenant seems to have sorely perplexed the poor Peer. "He says some things in the Covenant his heart goes along with them, and other things are doubtful to him; and therefore desires some time to consider of it." Such was the report to the Lords, Wednesday Feb. 7, 1643-4, by the Earls of Rutland and Bolingbroke, who had been appointed to deal with him and other absent Peers in the matter. "He shall have time till Friday morning next," was the entry ordered to be made. On the Friday named there is no mention of the subject in the Lords Journals; but on Saturday the 10th Lords Rutland and Bolingbroke were able to report that it was all right. Two days had convinced the Earl that signing would be best for him. [Footnote: Lords Journals of dates cited.] Besides this universal imposition of the Covenant by Parliamentary ordinance upon all who had hitherto neglected to take it, there was another immediate effect of the presence of the Scots in England. The two nations being now in arms for the same cause, the fortunes of each nation depending largely on the conduct of the other, and the two national armies indeed having to co-operate strategically, there required to be some common directing power, intermediate between the English Parliament in Westminster and the Scottish Estates in Edinburgh, representing both, and acting for both in all matters of military concern. The Scots, on their part, had made provision accordingly. Besides appointing a stationary Committee of the Estates to manage matters from Edinburgh, and another Committee to be with the Scottish army as a kind of Council to the Earl of Leven, they had nominated (Jan. 9, 1643-4) a Special Commission of four persons to go to London with full powers to represent the views and interests of Scotland in the enterprise in which it was now conjoined with England. These were--the EARL OF LOUDOUN, High Chancellor of Scotland; LORD MAITLAND (already in London as Scottish Commissioner to the Westminster Assembly); SIR ARCHIBALD JOHNSTONE OF WARRISTON (due in London at any rate as a Commissioner to the Assembly); and MR. ROBERT BARCLAY, Provost of Irvine in Ayrshire. These Commissioners having presented their Commission to the English Parliament, Feb. 5, the Parliament were moved to appoint some of its trustiest men from the two Houses to be an English Committee of Consultation with the Scottish Commissioners, and in fact to form, along with them, a joint "Committee of the Two Kingdoms." Such an institution was not at all to the taste of Lord General Essex, inasmuch as it trenched on his powers as commander- in-chief. Some opposition was therefore offered. On the whole, however, the argument that the two kingdoms ought to be "joined in their counsels as well as in their forces" proved overpowering; and on the 16th of February an ordinance was passed appointing the following persons (7 Peers and 14 Commoners) to be a Committee for the purpose named--the EARL OF NORTHUMBERLAND, the EARL OF ESSEX, the EARL OF WARWICK, the EARL OF MANCHESTER, VISCOUNT SAYE AND SELE, LORD WHARTON, LORD EGBERTS, WILLIAM PIERREPOINT, SIR HENRY VANE, Senr., SIR PHILIP STAPLETON, SIR WILLIAM WALLER, SIR GILBERT GERRARD, SIR WILLIAM ARMYN, SIR ARTHUR HASELRIG, SIR HENRY VANE, Junr., JOHN CREWE, ROBERT WALLOP, OLIVER ST. JOHN, SAMUEL BROWNE, JOHN GLYNN, and OLIVER CROMWELL. Six were to be a quorum, always in the proportion of one Lord to two Commoners, and of the Scottish Commissioners meeting with them two were to be a quorum. There can be no doubt that the object was that the management of the war should be less in Essex's hands that it had been. [Footnote: Lords Journals of dates Feb. 5 and 16, 1643-4; and Baillie, II. 141, 142] The name of JOHN PYM may have been looked for in the Committee. Alas! no longer need his name be looked for among the living in this History. He had died on the 8th of December, 1643, when the Scots were expected in England, but had not yet arrived. He was buried magnificently in Westminster Abbey, all the Lords and Commons attending, and Stephen Marshall preaching the funeral sermon. England had lost "King Pym," her greatest Parliamentary man. No one precisely like him was left. But, indeed, he had done his work to the full; and, had he lived longer, he might have been loved the less! [Footnote: Rushworth V. 376; Parl. Hist. III. 186-7; and Baillie, II. 118.] CHAPTER II. MILTON UNHAPPY IN HIS MARRIAGE: HIS FIRST DIVORCE TRACT: TWO EDITIONS OF IT. We left Milton in his house in Aldersgate Street in or about 1643, waiting for the promised return of his recently-wedded wife at Michaelmas, and meanwhile comfortable enough, with his books, his pupils, and the quiet companionship of his old father. We are now seven or eight months beyond that point in our general History. What had happened in the Aldersgate household in the interval? A tremendous thing had happened. Milton had come to desire a divorce from his wife, and had written and published a Tract on Divorce, partly in the interest of his own private case, but really also with a view to suggest to the mind of England, then likely to be receptive of new ideas, certain thoughts on the whole subject of the English law of Marriage which had resulted from reflection on his own experience. Here is the story:-- "Michaelmas [Sept. 29, 1643] being come," says Phillips, "and no news of his wife's return, he sent for her by letter, and, receiving no answer, sent several other letters, which were also unanswered; so that at last he despatched down a foot-messenger [to Forest Hill] with a letter, desiring her return. But the messenger came back not only without an answer, at least a satisfactory one, but, to the best of my remembrance, reported that he was dismissed with some sort of contempt. This proceeding, in all probability, was grounded upon no other cause but this--viz.: that, the family being generally addicted to the Cavalier party, as they called it, and some of them possibly engaged in the King's service, who by this time had his head-quarters at Oxford and was in some prospect of success, they began to repent them of having matched the eldest daughter of the family to a person so contrary to them in opinion, and thought it would be a blot on their escutcheon whenever that Court should come to flourish again. However, it so incensed our author that he thought it would be dishonourable ever to receive her again, after such a repulse; so that he forthwith prepared to fortify himself with arguments for such a resolution, and accordingly wrote," &c. Here Phillips goes on to enumerate Milton's various Divorce Tracts, the first of which in order of time was his _Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce_. Aubrey corroborates Phillips, but has little on the subject but what he may have picked up from gossip. "She was a ... Royalist, and went to her mother near Oxford: he sent for her after some time, and I think his servant was evilly entreated,"--such are Aubrey's brief notes of the facts; after which come his own reflections on the rupture: "Two opinions do not well on the same bolster;" and "What man, especially contemplative, would like to have a young wife environed and stormed by the sons of Mars, and those of the enemy party?" Finally Wood, in his _Fasti_, does little more than repeat Aubrey: "Though he sent divers pressing invitations, yet he could not prevail upon her to come back;" whereupon "he, being not able to bear this abuse, did therefore, upon consideration, after he had consulted many eminent authors, write the said book of Divorce, with intentions to be separated from her." [Footnote: Phillips's Memoir; Aubrey's Lives; and Wood's Fasti Oxon. I. 482-3.] On all grounds Phillips's authority is the best. And yet there are difficulties in his account. According to that account, it was the non- return of Milton's wife at or about Michaelmas (Sept. 29) 1643, and not only her non-return then, but her obstinate and repeated refusal to return after that date, and the insulting conduct of her family to the messenger he finally sent to urge her return, that roused Milton's indignation, put the thought of divorce into his mind, and induced him to write his first Divorce Tract. If so, the tract could hardly have been ready till some weeks after Michaelmas 1643--say, till about Christmas of the same year. There is proof, however (and I do not think it has been observed before), that Milton's first Divorce Tract was already published and in circulation two months _before_ the Michaelmas in question. The proof is not, where we might expect it, in the books of the Stationers' Company; for the Tract, like all Milton's previous pamphlets, was published by him, rather defiantly, without the required legal formalities of licence and registration. But there is a precious copy of it in Thomason's great collection of pamphlets, called "the King's Pamphlets," in the British Museum. The title in that copy is as follows: "_The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce, Restor'd, to the good of both Sexes, from the Bondage of Canon Law and other mistakes, to Christian Freedom, guided by the Rule of Charity; wherein also many places of Scripture have recovered their long-lost meaning: seasonable to be now thought on in the Reformation intended._" Underneath this title there follows on the title-page the quotation "Matth. xiii. 52. Every Scribe instructed to the Kingdome of Heav'n is like the Maister of a house which bringeth out of his treasurie things old and new;" and at the foot of the title-page is the legend "_London, Printed by T. P. and M. S. in Goldsmiths' Alley_: 1643." [Footnote: Copy in British Museum Library Press mark, 12. G.F. 17 119.] This printed legend alone would all but determine the publication to have been prior to Christmas 1643; but the question is set at rest by a manuscript note on the title-page, "_Aug. 1st_." The note was put there by, or by the direction of, the collector, Thomason, to indicate the day on which the copy came into his hands, and is to be relied on implicitly. The Tract, it will be observed, was anonymous; but the words "_Written by J. Milton_," penned on the title-page by the same hand that penned the date "_Aug. 1st_," show that the authorship was no secret from the all-prying Thomason. In short, on evidence absolutely conclusive, Milton's first Divorce Tract was in print and on sale in London on the 1st of August, 1643, or two months before Phillips's fatal Michaelmas. [Footnote: This may be the place for a word or two about the collector of those Pamphlets in the British Museum among which I have had so frequently to range for the purposes of this work, and to which, like other inquiries into English History from 1610 to 1660, I owe more items of information than I can count.--George Thomason was a London bookseller of the Civil War time; his place of business being the "Rose and Crown" in St. Paul's Churchyard. He was of Royalist sympathies; but his hobby was to collect impartially all the pamphlets, broad-sheets, &c., that teemed from the press on both sides, and not only those that teemed from the English press, but also all published abroad that bore on current English questions. He began this labour in 1641, and pursued it indefatigably till after the Restoration; so that, at his death in or about 1666, he left a collection of about 33,000 pamphlets, &c. on English affairs, published between 1638 and 1662. The making of this collection had been the delight of his life; it had been his anxiety that no single tract, or printed scrap of any interest, should escape him. When he began to collect in 1641, he had taken pains to obtain copies of publications of the immediately preceding years; and after that his work had been facilitated by the notoriety of his passion for collecting. Booksellers and authors (Milton for one) seem occasionally to have sent copies of their pamphlets to Thomason. "Exact care hath been taken," he himself tells us in the Introduction to a MS. catalogue of his treasures, "that the very day is written upon most of them that they came out;" and this care of his has fixed the dates of many publications that would else have been unknown or but vaguely known.--For farther particulars of this interesting person, an account of the shifts to which he was put to save his collection from the chances of Parliamentarian pillage, and a history of the fortunes of his collection till it came to be part of the Library of King George III., and so of the British Museum, see Edwards's _Memoirs of Libraries_ (1859), Vol. I pp, 456-460.--I may add that I have seen a pencil jotting in Thomason's hand on one of the fly-leaves of his collection as fresh and legible, after 220 years, as if it had been written yesterday.] One of two suppositions therefore:--(1.) If Phillips is right in his statement that Milton's first Divorce Tract was caused by the obstinate refusal of his wife to return to him, and the insulting conduct of her family in detaining her and laughing at his letters and messages, then Phillips's dates in the whole matter of the marriage must be a little wrong. "About Whitsuntide it was (May 21, 1643) that my uncle left us in Aldersgate Street, on what turned out to be his marriage journey; in about a month's time he returned, bringing his wife, and some of her relations, with him (June 1643); the relations stayed about a week, during which there was much feasting and merriment; for about a month after they were gone the newly-married wife remained with my uncle; but then (late in July or early in August 1643), tired of a philosophical life, and pining for the society of home, she contrived a request from her family to have her with them during the rest of the summer--to which my uncle consented, on the understanding that she was to come hack about Michaelmas (Sept. 29, 1643)." Such, re-expressed in words for the nonce, is Phillips's account as we have already given it. But, as the Divorce Tract was published August 1, 1643, it is clear that, if the cause of that Tract was the persistent, protracted, and contemptuous absence of his wife, then Phillips's memory must have been at fault, and he must have somewhat post-dated the marriage itself. The marriage in that case must have been before Whitsuntide 1643; and the return of the wife to her relations, her refusal to come hack, and Milton's chagrin and anger so occasioned, must have been matters not of after Michaelmas 1643, but of at least a month or two before the August of that year. This is quite a tenable supposition; for there are other inaccuracies in Phillips, and the register of the place and date of Milton's marriage with Mary Powell has not been found. (2) On the whole, however, Phillips's recollections about the marriage are so circumstantial, and there is such a likelihood of their being true, that, until contradictory records shall be produced, it seems right to accept his dating. But then his explanation of the cause of his uncle's speculations about divorce must be wrong. The cause in that case cannot have been the obstinate refusal of his wife to return; for the Divorce Tract must have been written and ready for the press while she was still with him in the Aldersgate Street house (July 1643), and it was actually out (Aug. 1) before she can have reached her father's house at Forest Hill on her granted two months of leave till Michaelmas. What are we to make of this discrepancy? One is puzzled. That a man should have occupied himself on a Tract on Divorce ere his honeymoon was well over--should have written it perseveringly day after day within sound of his newly-wedded wife's footsteps and the very rustle of her dress on the stairs or in the neighbouring room--is a notion all but dreadful. And yet to some such notion, if Phillips's dating is correct, we seem to be shut up. But, if so, more is involved than Phillips knew. The cause of Milton's thoughts about divorce, in that case, must have been the agony of a deadly discovery of his wife's utter unfitness for him when as yet she had not been two months his wife. It must have been the unutterable pain of the dis-illusioned bridegroom, the gnawing sense of his irretrievable mistake, The vision must then pass before our minds of scenes in the Aldersgate Street house, the reverse of the happily connubial, _before_ that sudden departure of the bride back to her father's home, and leading to that incident perhaps rather violently. One seems to hear the sound of differences, of conflicting opinions about this and that, of weeping girlish wilfulness opposed to steady and perhaps too austere prohibitions. "Well, then, I will go back to my mother: I am sure I wish I had never----": "Go": And so the parting may have come about, not wholly by her arrangement, but harshly and with some quarrel on his part. There are not wanting subsequent facts that might lend a plausibility to this version of the story. [Footnote: Milton's mother-in-law, having occasion, seven years afterwards (1651), to advert to her daughter's return home so soon after her marriage, distinctly attributed it to Milton himself. The words are, "He having turned away his wife heretofore for a long space upon some other occasion." I do not think Mrs. Powell was a very accurate lady, and she had no fondness for Milton; but the words seem to imply more than a mere passive consent of Milton to his wife's proposal to revisit her family.] Yet it is the other that one would wish to be true, and that would fit in most naturally with the facts as a whole. That version is that Milton, good-naturedly and perhaps taken by surprise, allowed his wife to go home for two months at her own request, or the request of her relatives, before he had been three months married, and that it was the insult of her nonreturn that revealed to him his mistake in her, and drove him into his speculations about divorce. Only, then, we repeat, Phillips's dating of the marriage and its incidents requires amendment. In any case the first edition of Milton's _Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce_ was out in London on the 1st of August, 1643. [Footnote: The supposition is always open that, by some oversight, Thomason misdated his copy, putting "Aug." for a much later month. But this is the unlikeliest thing of all.] It was a pamphlet of forty-eight small quarto pages, with an extra page supplying two omitted passages. The text was printed continuously, without division into chapters; at the end. Both in matter and in manner the Tract was one of the boldest that had ever been submitted to the reading of England. Its thesis is laid down near the beginning in these terms: "_That indisposition, unfitness, or contrarity of mind, arising from a cause in nature unchangeable, hindering and ever likely to hinder the main benefits of conjugal society, which are solace and peace, is a greater reason of divorce than natural frigidity, especially if there be no children, and that there be mutual consent._" This thesis Milton sets himself to argue in all sorts of ways--from natural reason and expediency; from the Scripture doctrine of marriage as it might be gathered from the Mosaic Law and the right interpretation of texts in the Old and New Testaments, notwithstanding one or two individual texts (like that of Matth. v. 31, 32) that had been hackneyed and misunderstood by mere literalists; and from opinions or indications of opinion on the subject that might be found in the works of some of the Protestant Reformers, and other eminent writers. His conclusion was that the notion of the indissolubility of marriage, or even the modified law of England and of other countries, authorizing divorce only for certain gross reasons, were mere relics of superstitious tradition, the concoction of the Canonists and Sacramentalists in the ages of sacerdotal tyranny, unworthy of more enlarged views of justice and liberty, and a canker and cause of incalculable misery in the heart of modern society. Again and again he indicates his consciousness that in announcing this conclusion, and trying to rouse his fellow-countrymen to the necessity of at once including a revision of the Marriage Law in the general Reformation then in progress, he is performing a great public service. Thus, at the very opening: "By which [the precedent of certain liberal hints on the subject by Hugo Grotius], and mine own apprehension of what public duty each man owes, I conceive myself exhorted among the rest to communicate such thoughts as I have, and offer them now, in this general labour of Reformation, to the candid view both of Church and Magistrate; especially because I see it the hope of good men that those irregular and unspiritual courts have spun their utmost date in this land, and some better course must now be constituted. He, therefore, that by adventuring shall be so happy as with success to ease and set free the minds of ingenuous and apprehensive men from this needless thraldom; he that can prove it lawful and just to claim the performance of a fit and matchable conversation no less essential to the prime scope of marriage than the gift of bodily conjunction, or else to have an equal plea of divorce as well as for that corporal deficiency; he that can but lend us the clue that winds out this labyrinth of servitude to such a reasonable and expedient liberty as this--deserves to be reckoned among the public benefactors of civil and human life, above the inventors of wine and oil." [Footnote: This passage is from the first edition; it is not nearly so full in the second.] As such a benefactor, such a champion of a neglected truth and a suppressed human liberty, the anonymous writer offers himself. He knows that he stands alone at present, but he trusts to the power of demonstration addressed to the mind of England, then newly awakened and examining all institutions to their roots. There is not a word of avowed reference to his own case throughout; and yet from first to last we are aware of young Mary Powell in the background. Inability for "fit and matchable conversation": this is that supreme fault in a wife on which the descant is from first to last, and from which, when it is plainly ingrained and unamendable, the right of divorce is maintained to be, by the law of God and all civil reason, the due deliverance. Hopeless intellectual and spiritual incompatibility between husband and wife: it is on this, though not in these exact words, that Milton harps again and again as in his view the clearest invalidation of marriage, the frustration of the noblest and most divine ends of the institution; an essentially worse frustration, he dares to say in one place, than even that conjugal infidelity which "a gross and boorish opinion, how common soever," would alone resent or recognise. It is marvellous with what richness of varying language he paints to the reader the horrible condition of a man tied for life to a woman with whom he can hold no rational or worthy conversation. "A familiar and co- inhabiting mischief"; "spite of antipathy to fudge together and combine as they may, to their unspeakable weariness and despair of all sociable delight"; "a luckless and helpless matrimony"; "the unfitness and effectiveness of an unconjugal mind"; "a worse condition than the loneliest single life"; "unconversing inability of mind"; "a mute and spiritless mate"; "that melancholy despair which we see in many wedded persons"; "a polluting sadness and perpetual distemper"; "ill-twisted wedlock"; "the disturbance of her unhelpful and unfit society"; "one that must be hated with a most operative hatred"; "forsaken and yet continually dwelt with and accompanied"; "a powerful reluctance and recoil of nature on either side, blasting all the content of their mutual society"; "a violence to the reverend secret of nature"; "to force a mixture of minds that cannot unite"; "two incoherent and uncombining dispositions"; "the undoing or the disheartening of his life"; "the superstitious and impossible performance of an ill-driven bargain"; "bound fast to an uncomplying discord of nature, or, as it oft happens, to an image of earth and phlegm"; "shut up together, the one with a mischosen mate, the other in a mistaken calling"; "committing two ensnared souls inevitably to kindle one another, not with the fire of love, but with a hatred irreconcilable, who, were they severed, would be straight friends in any other relation"; "two carcases chained unnaturally together, or, as it may happen, a living soul bound to a dead corpse"; "enough to abase the mettle of a generous spirit and sink him to a low and vulgar pitch of endeavour in all his actions": such are a few specimens of the phrases with which the tract abounds. [Footnote: Some of the phrases quoted occur in passages added in the second edition; but it is not worth while to distinguish those. Most of the phrases, and those of the same, occur in the third edition.] But one passage may be quoted entire:-- "But some are ready to object that the disposition ought seriously to be considered before. But let them know again that, for all the wariness can be used, it may yet befall a discreet man to be mistaken in his choice, and we have plenty of examples. The soberest and best-governed men are least practised in these affairs; and who knows not that the bashful muteness of a virgin may oft-times hide all the unliveliness and natural sloth which is really unfit for conversation? Nor is there that freedom of access granted or presumed as may suffice to a perfect discerning till too late; and, where any indisposition is suspected, what more usual than the persuasion of friends that acquaintance, as it increases, will amend all? And, lastly, it is not strange though many who have spent their youth chastely are in some things not so quick-sighted while they haste too eagerly to light the nuptial torch: nor is it therefore that for a modest error a man should forfeit so great a happiness, and no charitable means to release him; since they who have lived most loosely, by reason of their bold accustoming, prove most successful in their matches, because their wild affections, unsettling at will, have been as so many divorces to teach them experience; whenas the sober man, honouring the appearance of modesty, and hoping well of every social virtue under that veil, may easily chance to meet ... often with a mind to all other due conversation inaccessible, and to all the more estimable and superior purposes of matrimony useless and almost lifeless; and what a solace, what a fit help, such a consort would be through the whole life of a man is less pain to conjecture than to have experience." Oh! and is it come to this? Then, as now, nothing so common as that such mischances of marriage, heard of by the world, and the rather if published by the sufferers or one of them, should be received only as excellent amusement for people round about. It is as if the one thing intrinsically and unceasingly comic in the world, for most people, were the fact that it consists of man and woman, as if the institution on which human society is built and by which the succession of earth's generations is maintained, were the one only subject, with most people, for nothing else than laughter. Even now perhaps our disposition to jocosity on this subject, not sufficiently entertained by incidents of our own day, will range back to that case of Milton and Mary Powell two hundred and twenty-eight years ago, and join in the gossip which it then began to circulate through the town. In the lobby of the House of Commons it must have been heard of: it may have given a relish to the street-talk of reverend Presbyterian gentlemen talking home together from the Assembly "Only a month or two married; his wife gone home again; and now, instead of proper reticence about what can't he helped, all this hullaballoo of a new doctrine about Divorce! Just like him!" This and such-like is what we seem to overhear; this and such-like is what Milton did overhear; not much more than this and such-like are most of us prepared to say even now when we read the story. And yet the story is surely worth more. One fails to see, after all, that it yields only matter for jest and the repetition of commonplaces. What are the facts? Two human beings, long dead and gone, but then alive and with the, expectation of many years of life before them, had hardly been banded together in church when they found, or thought they found, that their union was for their mutual misery. The one was a poor country-girl in her teens, ruing the fate to which she had committed herself, but with no weapons for her relief but her tears, her terror, and the mitigation of refuge in her father's house. _Her_ case is to be pitied; shame if it is _not_! The other was a man extraordinary--so extraordinary that even now we try to follow him in fancy in his walks through the London streets, and any bit of old wall his arm may have touched is a sacred antiquity, and we regard the series of thoughts that was in his mind through any month, or series of months, as something of prime interest in the spirit of the past, a prize that we would give gold to recover. Well, here was one series of thoughts that was in this man's mind for months and months, and that left effects, indeed, to his life's end. He was moody in his house; he walked moodily in the streets; we can hear him muttering to himself, we can see his teeth clenched. Morning and evening, day after day, he is in a great despair. And why? Because he has made the most fatal mistake a man can make, and is gazing on, morning and evening, day after day, into the consequences. Lo! into that life which he had hoped to make worthy of the God who gave it, a pattern life, a great poem within hose azure fitness other poems should arise to spin their gleaming courses--into this life what had he imported? Not the solace and bliss of a kindred soul's society, which had been his intent and dream; but a darkness, a disturbance, a marring melancholy, a daily and hourly debasement, a coinhabiting mischief! It was enough, he says, to drive a man "at last, through murmuring and despair, to thoughts of Atheism." But was there no remedy? Ah! in the very power of putting this question lay the advantage of the strong man over the weak Oxfordshire girl. He could reason, he could delve into the subject, he could revolve it intellectually. What if the plight in which he found himself were no necessary and irremediable evil? What if the permanence of marriage once contracted between two persons utterly unsuitable for each other were no decree of God, no real requirement of religion or of social well-being, but a mere superstitious and fallacious tradition, a stupid and pernicious convention among men? Once on this track, there was light for Milton. Out of his own private mishap there came the suggestion of a great enterprise. He would thunder, if not the mishap itself, at least its public significance, out upon the world. He would rouse his countrymen on the whole subject of the Law of Marriage. Who knew but his voice might be heard? Who knew but that, were it loud enough, there would be a response of assent from the whole land, and his new idea of Divorce, albeit the proclamation of only one man, might be carried, with other things, in the current Reformation? There ran a touch of this sanguine temper, this faith that any ideal might easily be made actual, through all Milton's life; and it appeared now most conspicuously. His idea, he was aware, was new; but only let his demonstration be sufficiently thorough, only let him succeed in disturbing the existing apathy and setting the thoughts of the nation astir on the subject, "and then," what?--"then I doubt not but with one gentle stroking to wipe away ten thousand tears out of the life of men." [Footnote: This phrase is in one of the inserted passages in the second edition.] Alas! after the hurricane of two hundred years the tear-drops still hang, multitudinous as ever, amid the leaves of that poor forest! "Just like him" I have imagined to have been a comment on this new appearance of Milton by some gossip of the day who may have known a little of him personally. Really, though not as intended, the comment would have been just. This whole action of Milton, consequent on his unhappy marriage, was deeply characteristic. And yet there was perhaps no one then living from whom such a course of action could less have been expected. From all that we know of the youth and early manhood of Milton, we should certainly have predicted of him, with whatever heterodoxy in other matters, yet a life-long orthodoxy on the subject of marriage. Think of him as we have seen him heretofore, the glorious youth, cherishing every high ethical idealism, walking as in an ether of moral violet, disdaining customary vice, building up his character consciously on the principle that he who would be strong or great had best be immaculate. Think of him as the author of _Comus_; or think of him as he had described himself some years later in one of his Italian Sonnets:-- "Young, gentle-natured, and a simple wooer, Since from myself I stand in doubt to fly, Lady, to thee my heart's poor gift would I Offer devoutly: and, by tokens sure, I know it faithful, fearless, constant, pure, In its conceptions graceful, good, and high. When the world roars, and flames the startled sky, In its own adamant it rests secure, As free from chance and malice ever found, And fears and hopes that vulgar minds confuse, As it is loyal to each manly thing And to the sounding lyre and to the Muse. Only in that part is it not so sound Where Love hath set in it his cureless sting." When he wrote thus, to what did he look forward, and to what might others have looked forward for him? A career, it was probable, of speculative dissent from his contemporaries in many things, and of undaunted courage in the vindication of such dissent, but hardly of dissent from the established moralities of the marriage-institution. Had he been happily married, had he found himself united at last to one such as his dreams had figured, who so likely to have persevered fondly in the traditional doctrine of marriage, to have maintained the mystic sanctity and the necessary permanence of the marriage-bond, and to have launched denunciations against all who dared to tamper with this article of the established ethics? But, as it had chanced otherwise, it was not the less characteristic that he himself had been the audacious questioner, the champion of a heresy. Driven by his own experience to investigate, his speculative boldness had brought him at once to a conclusion the novelty of which would have made others hesitate, but had no terrors for him. For (and here was his difference from most men, here was what may be called a Miltonic peculiarity) he would take no benefit from such private dispensation as a man might pass for his own relief in such a case, his neighbours winking at it so long as he did not disturb the forum. He _would_ disturb the forum! What "Milton" did should be done openly, should be avowed, should be lawful! Others, circumstanced as he now was, might, if they liked--and there were examples all round, and especially in that Bohemian world of wits and men of letters with which he might be classed, though he abjured the brotherhood--others might, if they liked, adopt a policy of silence and acquiescence, hypocritically bowing to their fate, but taking out their protest in secret consolations! No such policy for him! The word "illicit" and his name should never be brought into conjunction! Whatever _he_ did should be according to a rule of right, clear to his own conscience, and held aloft in his hand under the whole roof of Heaven! And, if such a rule, ratified between himself and Heaven, should chance to conflict with one of the moralities of the existing code of men, there was but one course for him. He would assail the so-called "morality"; he would blast it out of the beliefs of men; he would perform for his fellows the service of their liberation, along with himself, from a useless and irrational thraldom! Or, if that work should prove too hard and toilsome, at least he should have published his own rule in opposition to the general superstition, and should walk on, as he had resolved always to walk, unabashed in the daylight. It was in August 1643, as we have seen, that Milton put forth anonymously his _Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce_. From that time, on through the rest of the autumn of 1643 and the winter of 1643-4, we are to fancy him in his house in Aldersgate Street, with his father and his pupils for his companions, and his thoughts much occupied, like those of other Englishmen, with the course of public events. On the whole, the Parliament had no greater admirer than Milton; and there were particular men in the Parliament that were after his own heart. From the Westminster Assembly, too, he seems to have expected good. So far as he had formed views as to the desirable form of Church-government for England, these views, as we have seen (Vol. II. pp. 376-382), might be described as an expectant Presbyterianism, not positively fixed and determined at all points, but kept conveniently fluid. Accordingly, his sympathies, at first, may well have been with the Presbyterians of the Assembly; among whom he could reckon, at any rate, his old tutor Young, and his other friends and fellow-labourers in the Smectymnuan controversy. Or, if some things among the tenets of the small Independent minority had begun to gain upon him, he seems still, through the winter of 1643-4, to have looked forward to some compromise that should be acceptable to England and yet tend to that conformity between the two kingdoms which the Scots desired, and to the furtherance of which they had pledged England by Henderson's international League and Covenant. At all events, Milton did, some time after September 1643, subscribe to this League and Covenant with the rest of his Parliamentarian countrymen. There are words of his own which vouch the fact. [Footnote: In the dedication to Parliament of his _Tetrachordon_, published March 1644-5, he uses these words, "That which I saw and was partaker of, your vows and solemn covenants."] A moody time though the autumn of 1643 and the winter of 1643-4 must have been for Milton, there was some relaxation for him in society more general than that of his wife-deserted household. "Our author," says Phillips, "now as it were a single man again, made it his chief diversion now and then in an evening to visit the Lady Margaret Ley, daughter to the--Ley, Earl of Marlborough, Lord High Treasurer of England, and President of the Privy Council to King James the First. This lady, being a woman of great wit and ingenuity, had a particular honour for him, and took much delight in his company; as likewise her husband, Captain Hobson, a very accomplished gentleman." Phillips seems to be sufficiently accurate in this account, but a few details may be added:-- A man still well-remembered in England, though he had been dead fifteen years, was James Ley, first Earl of Marlborough, he had attained to that dignity only in his old age, having advanced to it through a long previous career. Born about 1552, the younger son of a Wiltshire squire, he had passed from Oxford to the study of law at Lincoln's Inn, and had attained to high eminence in his profession before the death of Elizabeth. Emerging from her reign, aged about fifty, he had been appointed by James to an Irish Chief Judgeship (1604); then brought back to England, knighted (1609), baroneted (1620), and made Chief Justice of the Court of King's Bench (1621); and finally raised by the same King to the great office of Lord High Treasurer of England, and to a peerage with the title of Baron Ley of Ley in Devonshire (1624). In recognition of his long services, Charles, in the first year of his reign (Feb. 5, 1626-7), had created for him, when he was almost seventy-four years of age, the Earldom of Marlborough in his native Wiltshire. While thus promoting him, however, Charles appears not to have found him a minister such as he and Buckingham wanted. He had accordingly removed him from the High Treasurership in 1628, on the ground of his old age, but in reality to make way for the more compliant Lord Weston, and had shelved him into the less important office of Lord President of the Council. He had died at Lincoln's Inn, March 14, 1628-9, exactly four days after that ominous dissolution of Charles's third Parliament which announced his determination to have done with Parliaments and begin the reign of "Thorough." The death of the old peer at such a juncture had apparently the less been forgotten by reason of a tradition that the political anxieties of the juncture had had something to do with it. Now, at all events, in the days of the Long Parliament and the Civil War, there was still some respectful recollection of the old Earl of Marlborough as one of the best-liked ministers of James's reign and of the first years of Charles's. "He was a person of great gravity, ability, and integrity; and, as the Caspian Sea is observed neither to ebb nor flow, so his mind did not rise or fall, but continued the same constancy in all conditions." The words are Fuller's, and they probably express the character of the Earl that had come down among his countrymen. [Footnote: Dugdale's Baronage (1676), Vol. II. pp. 451, 452; Wood's Athenæ, II. 441, 443; Clar. Hist. (one vol. ed. 1843), p. 20; Fuller's Worthies, _Wiltshire_ (ed. 1840), III. 328-9.] The Earl had been three times married; but he had left a family only by his first wife--Mary, daughter of John Petty, of Stoke-Talmage, co. Oxon., Esq. Eleven children had been the issue of this marriage:--to wit (according to Dugdale), "three sons--_Henry, James_, and _William_; and eight daughters--_Elizabeth_, married to Morice Carant, of Looner, in com. Somers., Esq.; _Anne_, to Sir Walter Long, of Draycot-Cerne, in com. Wilts., Knight; _Mary_, to Richard Erisy, of Erisy, in com. Cornw., Esq.; _Dionysia_, to John Harington, of Kelneyton, in com. Somers., Esq.; _Margaret_, to ... Hobson, of ... in the Isle of Wight, Esq.; _Hesther_, to Arthur Fuller, of Bradfield, in com. Hertf., Esq.; _Martha_, died unmarried; and _Phoebe_, to ... Biggs, of Hurst, in com. Berks., Esq." [Footnote: Dugdale, _vt. supra_.] All these children, it would appear, had been born, and most of them married and settled in life, before their father's promotion to the peerage, and while he was yet only James Ley, or Sir James Ley, the eminent lawyer. Indeed, his promotion to the Earldom in his old age had been, in part, a compliment to his third wife- -Jane, daughter of Lord Butler of Bramfield, whose mother was a sister of the Duke of Buckingham; and it had been specially provided, in the patent of the Earldom, that it should descend, by preference, to his heirs by that lady. That lady having failed, however, to produce heirs, the benefits of the Earldom had reverted to the Earl's family by his first wife, Mary Petty. His eldest son by that wife, Henry Ley, had, accordingly, succeeded him in the title. But this Henry, second Earl of Marlborough, had died in 1638; and the actual Earl at the time with which we are now concerned (1643) was _his_ son, James, a youth of only some three-and-twenty years, but already serving as a general officer of artillery in the army of the King. He seems, indeed, to have been one of the finest young fellows on that side; and he had a career before him which was to entitle him, at his death in 1665, to this notice in a summary of his character by Clarendon: "He was a man of wonderful parts in all kinds of learning, which he took more delight in than his title." [Footnote: Clar. Life, ed. 184 p. 1141.] For the present, however, it is with the good ladies his aunts, the surviving daughters of the first Earl, that we have to do; or rather only with the fifth of them--the Lady Margaret Ley, the friend of Milton. The husbands of at least two of her sisters (Long of Wilts., and Erisy of Cornwall) being among the Parliamentarians of the Long Parliament, it can hardly be doubted that this lady's husband--Dugdale's "... Hobson of ... in the Isle of Wight, Esq.," and Phillips's "Captain Hobson, a very accomplished gentleman"-- was also a Parliamentarian, though of less wealth and note, and not in Parliament. Otherwise, Lady Margaret's house in London could hardly have been one of Milton's evening resorts. What kind of "Captaincy" her husband held, compatible with his being domiciled in London in 1643-4, it might be difficult now to ascertain. Suffice it that he _was_ so domiciled, and that his wife could receive guests not merely as Mrs. Hobson, "a woman of great wit and ingenuity," but as Lady Margaret Ley, the daughter of a well-remembered Earl. It is not from Phillips alone that we hear of Milton's friendship with the Lady Margaret. Milton has himself commemorated it in one of his Sonnets:-- "TO THE LADY MARGARET LEY. Daughter to that good Earl, once President Of England's Council and her Treasury, Who lived in both unstained by gold or fee, And left them both, more in himself content, Till the sad breaking of that Parliament Broke him, as that dishonest victory At Chæronea, fatal to liberty, Killed with report that old man eloquent: Though later born than to have known the days Wherein your father flourished, yet by you, Madam, methinks I see him living yet; So well your words his noble virtues praise That all both judge you to relate them true And to possess them, honoured Margaret." The "old man eloquent" is Isocrates, the Athenian orator, whose patriotism made him refuse to survive the defeat of the Athenians and Thebans by Philip of Macedon at Chæroncia, This comparison of the lady's father to the famous Greek is perhaps the most poetical turn in the Sonnet. For the rest, it tells us something about the lady herself. She must have been somewhat, if not considerably, older than Milton; for, though Milton had been twenty years old at the time of the good Earl's death, and might therefore well remember his Treasurership and Presidency of the Council, he speaks of knowing the days wherein the old peer had flourished chiefly through the Lady Margaret's talk about him and them. Her conversation, it would therefore seem, ran much upon her father and his private and political virtues; and Milton listened respectfully, seeing much in the lady herself of what she praised in her sire. Perhaps Milton would talk to her freely in return of his own concerns. The Lady Margaret Ley, and her husband, Captain Hobson, were probably in his confidence on the subject of his marriage misfortune. The Sonnet was unquestionably written in 1643 or 1644. [Footnote: It was printed in the first or 1645 edition of Milton's Poems, and it is placed last in the series of Sonnets there contained. The draft of it in the Cambridge Book of Milton's MSS. is in Milton's own hand--the title "To the Lady Margaret Ley" being likewise his hand.] A younger and unmarried lady must then also have been among Milton's acquaintances. How else can we account for this other Sonnet? "Lady, that in the prime of earliest youth Wisely hast shunned the broad way and the green, And with those few art eminently seen That labour up the hill of heavenly truth, The better part, with Mary and with Ruth, Chosen thou hast; and they that overween, And at thy glowing virtues fret their spleen, No anger find in thee, but pity and ruth. Thy care is fixed, and zealously attends To fill thy odorous lamp with deeds of light, And hope that reaps not shame. Therefore be sure Thou, when the Bridegroom with his feastful friends Passes to bliss at the mid hour of night, Hast gained thy entrance, Virgin wise and pure." This Sonnet, to which the heading "_To a Virtuous Young Lady_" is now prefixed in the editions of Milton, had no such heading prefixed in his own copy. [Footnote: In the Cambridge MSS. there is a draft in Milton's own hand immediately before the draft of the Sonnet to Lady Margaret Ley. In the edition of 1645 the Sonnet was printed in the same order and without a heading. In the MS. draft there are several erasures and corrections. Thus Milton had originally written "_blooming virtue_" in as if with reference to the personal appearance of the young lady; but in the margin he substitutes the present reading, "_growing virtues_."] Who the young lady was that so won upon Milton at this critical time, and seemed to him so superior to the more commonplace of her sex, we are left uninformed. There is a conjecture on the subject, which may afterwards appear. It is clear, meanwhile, that the poor absent Mary Powell may have suffered not only from her own defects, but also from the opportunity of some such contrast. The Divorce subject continued to occupy Milton. His tract had been rapidly bought, and had caused a sensation. Through the cold winter of 1643-4, while the Parliament and the Assembly were busy, and the auxiliary Scottish army was expected, a good many people had leisure to read the strange production, or at least to look into it, and be properly shocked. It seems to have been about this time, for example, that James Howell, the letter-writer, came, upon a copy. Or rather the copy must have come upon him; for the poor man, now past fifty years of age, and ousted from his clerkship to the Privy Council, was in the Fleet Prison for debt, and dependent for his subsistence there on translations, dedications and poems to friends, and all sorts of literary odds and ends. [Footnote: Wood's Ath. III. 745, and Cunningham's London Article _Fleet Prison_.] In one of his rambling pieces, afterwards published in the form of Letters, mostly without dates, and addressed to friends from feigned places, he thus gives what I take to be his impression of Milton's tract when it first reached him in the Fleet: "But that opinion of a poor shallow-brained puppy, who, upon any cause of dissatisfaction, would have men to have a privilege to change their wives, or to repudiate them, deserves to be hissed at rather than confuted; for nothing can tend more to usher in all confusion and beggary throughout the world: therefore that wiseacre deserves," &c. [Footnote: Howell's Familiar Letters Book IV, Letter 7, addressed "To Sir Edward Spencer, knight," (pp 453-457 of edit. 1754.) The letter is dated "Lond. 24 Jan.," no year given; but the dates are worthless, being afterthoughts, when the Letters were published in successive batches.] As Mr. Howell's own notions about marriage and its moralities were of the lightest and easiest, his severe virtuousness here is peculiarly representative. More interesting on its own account is the opinion of another contemporary--no other than Milton's late antagonist Bishop Hall. In Hall's _Cases of Conscience_ (not published till 1649) he thus describes the impression which Milton's Divorce pamphlet had made upon him when he first read it in its anonymous form: "I have heard too much of, and once saw, a licentious pamphlet, thrown abroad in these lawless times in the defence and encouragement of Divorces (not to be sued out; that solemnity needed not; but) to be arbitrarily given by the disliking husband to the displeasing and unquiet wife, upon this ground principally, That marriage was instituted for the help and comfort of man: where, therefore, the match proves such as that the wife doth but pull down aside, and, by her innate peevishness and either sullen or pettish and froward disposition, bring rather discontent to her husband, the end of marriage being hereby frustrate, why should it not, saith he, be in the husband's power, after some unprevailing means of reclamation attempted, to procure his own peace by casting off this clog, and to provide for his own peace and contentment in a fitter match? Woe is me! to what a pass is the world conic that a Christian, pretending to Information, should dare to tender so loose a project to the public! I must seriously profess that, when I first did cast my eyes upon the front of the book, I supposed some great wit meant to try his skill in the maintenance of this so wild and improbable a paradox; but, ere I could run over some of those too well-penned pages, I found the author was in earnest, and meant seriously to contribute this piece of good counsel, in way of reformation, to the wise and seasonable care of superiors. I cannot but blush for our age wherein so bold a motion hath been, amongst others, admitted to the light. What will all the Christian Churches through the world, to whose notice these lines shall come, think of our woeful degeneration, &c."? [Footnote: Hall's Works (edit. 1837), VII. 467.] Hall, it will be seen, had noted the literary ability of the pamphlet, while amazed by its doctrine. Neither Howell's nor Bishop Hall's opinion can have reached the author of the pamphlet till long after the date now in view. But other opinions to the same effect had been reaching him. Especially, it seems, the pamphlet had caused a fluttering among the London clergy. The consequence had best be told by himself. "God, it seems, intended to prove me, whether I durst alone take up a rightful cause against a world of disesteem, and found I durst. My name I did not publish, as not willing it should sway the reader either for me or against me. But, when I was told that the style (which what it ails to be so soon distinguishable I cannot tell) was known by most men, and that some of the clergy began to inveigh and exclaim on what I was credibly informed they had not read, I look it then for my proper season both to show a name that could easily contemn such an indiscreet kind of censure, and to reinforce the question with a more accurate diligence, that, if any of them would be so good as to leave railing, and to let us hear so much of his learning and Christian wisdom as will be strictly demanded of him in his answering to this problem, care was had he should not spend his preparations against a nameless pamphlet." [Footnote: This passage, fitting in here with chronological exactness, occurs in Milton's _Judgment of Martin Bucer concerning Divorce_, published in July 1644.] In other words, he resolved to abandon the anonymous. His pamphlet, easily traced to him from the first by its Miltonic style, had been sold out, or nearly so; people generally, but clergymen especially, were saying harsh things about it, and about him as its author; but some of these critics, he authentically knew, had never read the pamphlet, and others were making a point of the fact that it had appeared without its author's name. Well, there should be an end of that! He would put forth a second edition of the pamphlet, and avow the authorship! And this he would do rather because, since the publication of the first edition, he had been looking farther into the literature of the question, and could now fortify his own reasoned opinion with authorities he had been but dimly aware of, or had altogether overlooked. Accordingly, on the 2nd of February, 1643-4, there did come forth a second edition of Milton's first Divorce Tract, with this new title: "_The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce. Restor'd to the good of both Sexes, from the bondage of Canon Law, and other mistakes, to the true meaning of Scripture in the Law and Gospel compar'd. Wherein are set down the bad consequences of abolishing or condemning of Sin, that which the Law of God allowes, and Christ abolisht not. Now the second time revis'd and much augmented. In Two Books: to the Parliament of England with the Assembly. The Author J.M._" Underneath this title, the text Matth xiii. 52 is repeated from the title-page of the first edition; with this new text added, Prov. xviii. 13: "He that answereth a matter before he heareth it, it is folly and shame unto him." Then follows the imprint, "_London, Imprinted in the yeare_ 1644." In the copy in the British Museum which is my authority, the collector Thomason has put his pen through the final figure 4, and has annexed, in ink, the date "Feb. 2, 1643." [Footnote: Brit, Mus. Press-mark, 12. E.e. 5/141.] This fixes the exact date of publication as above, Feb. 2, 1643-4. This second edition is a great enlargement and improvement of the first. The 48 small quarto pages of the first swell into 88 pages; the text is divided into Two Books, each of which is subdivided into Chapters, with carefully-worded headings; and, on the whole, the treatise is made more inviting in appearance. The bold Introductory Letter, addressed "_To the Parliament of England, with the Assembly_," consists of six pages, and is signed not with the mere initials "J.M." which appear on the title-page, but fully "John Milton." The additions in the text consist sometimes of a few words inserted, sometimes of expansions of mere passages of the first edition into two or three pages: in the Second Book they attain to still larger dimensions, so that much of that Book is totally new matter. Thus Chapters I., II., and III., of this Book, forming ten pages, come in lieu of a single paragraph of two pages in the first edition; Chapters IV., V., VI., and VII., forming together six pages, are substituted for about a single page of the first edition; and Chapter XXI., consisting of nearly five pages, is an expansion of about a page and a half in the first edition. The additions and expansions appear to have been made on various principles. Sometimes one can see that a passage has been added for the mere poetic enrichment of the text, and to prove that the hand that was writing was not that of a musty polemic, but of an artist, at home in splendours. There is a striking instance in point in Chap. VI. of Book I., where there is interpolated a gratuitously gorgeous myth or fable, which may be entitled _Eros and Anteros,_ or _Love and Its Reciprocation_. The passage is characteristic and may be quoted:-- Marriage is a covenant the very being whereof consists, not in a forced cohabitation, and counterfeit performance of duties, but in unfeigned love and peace. And of matrimonial love no doubt but that was chiefly meant which by the ancient sages was thus parabled: That Love, if he be not twin-born, yet hath a brother wondrous like him, called Anteros; whom while he seeks all about, his chance is to meet with many false and feigning desires that wander singly up and down in his likeness. By them in their borrowed garb Love, though not wholly blind as poets wrong him, yet having but one eye, as being born an archer aiming, and that eye not the quickest in this dark region here below, which is not Love's proper sphere, partly out of the simplicity and credulity which is native to him, often deceived, embraces and consorts him with these obvious and suborned striplings, as if they were his Mother's own sons, for so he thinks them while they subtly keep themselves most on his blind side. But, after a while, as his manner is, when, soaring up into the high tower of his Apogæum, above the shadows of the Earth, he darts out the direct rays of his then most piercing eyesight upon the impostures and trim disguises that were used with him, and discerns that this is not his genuine brother, as he imagined, he has no longer the power to hold fellowship with such a personated mate. For straight his arrows loose their golden heads and shed their purple feathers; his silken braids untwine and slip their knots; and that original and fiery virtue given him by Fate all on a sudden goes out and leaves him undeified and despoiled of all his force; till, finding Anteros at last, he kindles and repairs the almost faded ammunition of his Deity by the reflection of a coequal and homogeneal fire. Thus mine author sung it to me; and, by the leave of those who would be counted the only grave ones, this is no mere amatorious novel (though to be wise and skilful in these matters men heretofore of greatest name in virtue have esteemed it one of the highest arcs that human contemplation circling upwards can make from the glassy sea whereon she stands); but this is a serious and deep verity, showing us that Love in Marriage cannot live nor subsist unless it be mutual. Unless more is meant than meets the eye by _Anteros_ here in Milton's own case, this interpolation [Footnote: The manner of the interpolation is so curious that it deserves a note. Milton, perceiving that such a poetic Fable might be objected to as fitter for a "mere amatorious novel" than for a controversial treatise, insinuates an apology for its introduction. The apology is that some of the wisest and greatest men had allowed the use on occasion of those "highest arcs that human contemplation, circling upwards, can make from the glassy sea whereon she stands." In this phrase Milton furnished his critics with a weapon which they might have used against himself. Even now the most general objection to his prose writings would be that they contain too many of those gratuitous grandeurs, those upward arcs and circlings from the glassy sea. But, in fact, he had his own theory of prose-writing as of other things, and it was not Addison's, nor any other that has been common since.] was for literary effect only. Very frequently, however, the additions are of new reasonings, or farther interpretations of Scripture. Above all, we have in the second edition the results of Milton's ranging in the literature of the question since he had published the first. In that first edition he had been able to make some reference to Hugo Grotius, having fortunately at the last moment come upon some notes of Grotius on Matth. v. which he thought reasonable. But since then he had lighted on a more thorough-going authority on his side in one of the German theologians of the Reformation period--Paul Fagius (1504- 1550). "I had learnt," he says, "that Paulus Fagius, one of the chief divines in Germany, sent for by Frederic the Palatine to reform his dominion, and after that invited hither in King Edward's days to be Professor of Divinity in Cambridge, was of the same opinion touching Divorce which these men so lavishly traduced in me. What I found I inserted where fittest place was, thinking sure they would respect so grave an author, at least to the moderating of their odious inferences." [Footnote: This explanation, referring to the second edition of the _Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce_, does not occur in that treatise itself, but in the _Judgment of Martin Bucer_, published some months afterwards.] Accordingly, in the second edition, considerable use is made of Fagius, as well as of Grotius, while, as before, other theologians of historical note--Calvin, Beza, Pareus (1548- 1622), Perkins (1558-1602), Rivetus (1572-1651)--are respectfully cited, sometimes as furnishing a favourable hint, but sometimes as requiring reply and correction. Not the least interesting perhaps of the added passages is this in the last chapter: "That all this is true [_i.e._ that Divorce is not to be restricted by Law] whoso desires to know at large with least pains, and expects not here overlong rehearsals of that which is by others already judiciously gathered, let him hasten to be acquainted with that noble volume written by our learned Selden, '_Of the Law of Nature and of Nations_;' a work more useful and more worthy to be perused, whosoever studies to be a great man in wisdom, equity and justice, than all those Decretals and sumless Sums which the Pontifical clerks have doted on." The particular work of Selden's here referred to is his folio, _De Jure Naturali et Gentium juxta Disciplinam Hebræorum_, published in 1640. His work more expressly on Divorce, entitled _Uxor Hebraica, sive De Nuptiis ac Divortiis_, did not appear till 1646--_i.e._ it _followed_ Milton's publications on the subject, and in the main backed the opinion they had propounded. It seems to me not improbable that in 1643-4, when Milton paid Selden the compliment we have quoted, he had just made Selden's personal acquaintance. Selden was then in his sixtieth year; Milton in his thirty- sixth. After the description given of the second edition of the _Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce_ and its differences from the first, it seems necessary to quote only some passages from Milton's opening address in it to the Parliament and the Westminster Assembly:-- ... Error supports Custom, Custom countenances Error; and these two between them would persecute and chase away all truth and solid wisdom out of human life, were it not that God, rather than man, once in many ages, calls together the prudent and religious counsels of men deputed to repress the encroachments, and to work off the inveterate blots and obscurities wrought upon our minds by the subtle insinuating of Error and Custom: who, with the numerous and vulgar train of their followers, make it their chief design to envy and cry down the industry of free reasoning, under the terms of "humour" and "innovation"; as if the womb of teeming Truth were to be closed up if she presume to bring forth aught that sorts not with their unchewed notions and suppositions. Against which notorious injury and abuse of man's free soul to testify, and oppose the utmost that study and true labour can attain, heretofore the incitement of men reputed grave hath led me among others; and now the duty and the right of an instructed Christian calls me through the chance of good or evil report to be the sole advocate of a discountenanced truth: a high enterprise, Lords and Commons, a high enterprise and a hard, and such as every seventh son of a seventh son does not venture on.... You it concerns chiefly, worthies in Parliament, on whom, as on our deliverers, all our grievances and cares, by the merit of your eminence and fortitude, are devolved: me it concerns next, having with much labour and diligence first found out, or at least with a fearless and communicative candour first published to the manifest good of Christendom, that which, calling to witness everything mortal and immortal, I believe unfeignedly to be true.... Mark then, Judges and Lawgivers, and ye whose office it is to be our teachers, for I will now utter a doctrine, if ever any other, though neglected or not understood, yet of great and powerful importance to the governing of mankind. He who wisely would restrain the reasonable soul of man within due bounds must first himself know perfectly how far the territory and dominion extends of just and honest liberty. As little must he offer to bind that which God hath loosened as to loosen that which He hath bound. The ignorance and mistake of this high point hath heaped up one huge half of all the misery that hath been since Adam. In the Gospel we shall read a supercilious crew of Masters, whose holiness, or rather whose evil eye, grieving that God should be so facile to man, was to set straiter limits to obedience than God had set, to enslave the dignity of Man, to put a garrison upon his neck of empty and over-dignified precepts: and we shall read our Saviour never more grieved and troubled than to meet with such a peevish madness among men against their own freedom. How can we expect him to be less offended with us, when much of the same folly shall be found yet remaining where it least ought, to the perishing of thousands? The greatest burden in the world is Superstition, not only of ceremonies in the Church, but of imaginary and scarecrow sins at home. What greater weakening, what more subtle stratagem against our Christian warfare, when, besides the gross body of real transgressions to encounter, we shall be terrified by a vain and shadowy menacing of faults that are not! When things indifferent shall be set to overfront us, under the banners of Sin, what wonder if we be routed, and, by this art of our Adversary, fall into the subjection of worst and deadliest offences! The superstition of the Papist is "Touch not, taste not!" when God bids both; and ours is "Part not, separate not!" when God and Charity both permits and commands. "Let all your things be done with charity," saith St. Paul; and his Master saith "She is the fulfilling of the Law." Yet now a civil, an indifferent, a sometime dissuaded Law of Marriage must be forced upon us to fulfil, not only without Charity, but against her. No place in Heaven or Earth, except Hell, where Charity may not enter; yet Marriage, the ordinance of our solace and contentment, the remedy of our loneliness, will not admit now either of Charity or Mercy to come in and mediate or pacify the fierceness of this gentle ordinance, the unremedied loneliness of this remedy. Advise ye well, Supreme Senate, if charity be thus excluded and expulsed, how ye will defend the untainted honour of your own actions and proceedings. He who marries intends as little to conspire his own ruin as he that swears allegiance; and, as a whole people is in proportion to an ill Government, so is one man to an ill marriage.... Whatever else ye can enact will scarce concern a third part of the British name; but the benefit and good of this your magnanimous example [should they restore liberty of Divorce] will easily spread far beyond the banks of Tweed and the Norman Isles. It would not be the first nor the second time, since our ancient Druids, by whom this Island as the cathedral of philosophy to France, left off their Pagan rites, that England hath had this honour vouchsafed from Heaven--to give out reformation to the world. Who was it but our English Constantine that baptized the Roman Empire? Who but the Northumbrian Willibrod and Winifrid of Devon, with their followers, were the first Apostles of Germany? Who but Alcuin and Wicklif, our countrymen, opened the eyes of Europe, the one in Arts, the other in Religion? Let not England forget her precedence of teaching nations how to live.... Milton's idea of the greatness of his enterprise, it will be seen from these passages, had grown and grown the more he had brooded on it. What if in this Doctrine of Divorce he were to be the discoverer or restorer of a new liberty, not for England alone, but actually for all Christendom? Meanwhile what opposition he would have to face, what storms of scurrilous jest and severer calumny! Might it not have been better to have written his treatise in Latin? This thought had occurred to him. "It might perhaps more fitly have been written in another tongue; and I had done so, but that the esteem I have for my country's judgment, and the love I bear to my native language, to seive it first with what I endeavour, made me speak it thus ere I assay the verdict of outlandish readers." Yet there might have been a propriety, he feels, in addressing such an argument in the first place only to the learned. And what, after all, and in precise practical form, _was_ this tremendous proposition of Milton respecting Divorce? Reduced out of large and cloudy terms, it was simply this,--that marriage, as it respected the continued union of the two married persons, was a thing with which Law had nothing whatever to do; that the two persons who had contracted a marriage were the sole judges of its convenience, and, if they did not suit each other, might part by their own act, and be free again; at all events, that for husbands the Mosaic Law on the subject was still in force: viz. (Deut. xxiv. 1) "When a man hath taken a wife and married her, and it come to pass that she find no favour in his eyes, because he hath found some uncleanness in her [interpreted as including any moral or intellectual incompatibility, any unfitness whatever], then let him write her a bill of divorcement, and give it in her hand, and send her out of his house." Milton avoids as much as possible such reductions of his proposition to harsh practical form, and would have disowned such brief popular summaries of his doctrine as _Divorce at pleasure_, or _Divorce at the Husband's pleasure_; but, in reality, it came to this. The husband, in modern times, had still, he maintained, the old Mosaic right of giving his wife a "bill of divorcement," if she did not satisfy him, and sending her back to her father's house. The right was a purely personal one. Friends, indeed, might interfere with their good offices; nay it would be fitting, and perhaps necessary, that there should be a solemn formality "in presence of the minister and other grave selected elders," who should admonish the man of the seriousness of the step he was about to take. But, if he persisted in taking it--if "he shall have protested, on the faith of the eternal Gospel and the hope he has of a happy resurrection, that otherwise than thus he cannot do, and thinks himself and this his case not contained in that prohibition of divorce which Christ pronounced (Matth. v. 31-32), the matter not being of malice, but of nature, and so not capable of reconciling"--then the Church had done her part to the full, and the man was to be left to his own liberty. This passage, proposing a kind of public oath on the man's part, as a formality to be required in every case of dissolution of marriage, occurs near the end of the treatise in both editions; and it indicates, I think, Milton's recoil from any rough or free and easy version of his doctrine, and his desire to temper it as much as he could. Essentially, however, the proposal mattered little. The husband was still left sole judge of his wife's fitness or unfitness for him, and whether he should exercise his right of putting her away was a matter finally for his private conscience. With reference to Milton's own case, it is worth observing that the causes of divorce on which he still rings the changes throughout the second edition of his treatise, as throughout the first, are the unmatchableness of dispositions, the unfitness of the wife for rational conversation, her intellectual and moral insufficiency or perverseness. There is no word of _desertion_. I cannot but think that this confirms the view that it was not the absence of Milton's wife that caused his dissatisfaction with his marriage, but that the dissatisfaction preceded the absence and had helped to occasion it. Narration, rather than criticism, is my business in this work; and we have not yet done with Milton's Divorce speculation. At this point, however, I may venture on three remarks:-- (1.) What is most noticeable in Milton, underneath his whole conduct here, as in so many other matters, is his intellectual courage. Among men of thought there are, I should say, two grades of honesty. There is passive honesty, or the honesty of never saying, or appearing to say, what one does _not_ think; and it is a rare and high merit to have attained to this. But there is the greater honesty of always saying, or indeed asserting and proclaiming, whatever one _does_ think. The proportion of those who have disciplined themselves to this positive or aggressive honesty, and are at the same time socially sufferable by reason of the importance of what they have to say, has always been wonderfully small in the world. Now, Milton was one of this band of intellectual Ironsides. Even within the band itself he belonged to the extremest section. For he dared to question not only the speculative dogmas and political traditions of his time, which others round him were questioning, but even some of the established "moralities," which few of them were questioning. It is not at all uncommon for men the most free- thinking in matters of religious belief to be immoveably and even fanatically orthodox in their allegiance to all customary moralities. They abide by tradition, and think with the multitude, in ethical questions, if in nothing, else. But on Milton, it appears from his Address to the Parliament and the Assembly, there had dawned the idea that, as there had come down in the bosom of society misbeliefs in science, imperfect views of theology, and conventions of political tyranny, so there had come down things even worse, in the form of cobwebbed sacramentalisms and sanctities for private life, factitious restrictions of individual liberty pretending themselves to be Christian rules of holiness. Among the greatest burdens and impediments in man's life, he says, were such pseudo-moralities, such "imaginary and scarecrow sins," vaunting themselves as suckers and corollaries from the Ten Commandments. This was a daring track to be upon, but Milton was upon it. He did not believe that the world had arrived at a final and perfect system of morals, any more than at a perfect system of science. He believed the established ethical customs of men to be subject to revision by enlarged and progressive reason, and modifiable from age to age, equally with their theories of cosmology, their philosophical creeds, or anything else. There was no terror for him in that old and ever-repeated outcry about "sapping the foundations of society." He believed that the foundations of society had taken, and would still take, a great deal of "sapping," without detriment to the superstructure. He believed that, as we may read in Herodotus of ancient communities established on all sorts of principles, or even whim-principles, and yet managing to get on, and as these crude polities had been succeeded by other and better ones, to the latest known in the world, so these last need not look to be permanent. Of a tendency to this state of feeling Milton had given evidences from early youth; but I do not think I am wrong in fixing on the year 1643 as the time when it became chronic, nor in tracing the sudden enlargement of it then beyond its former bounds to the wrench in his life caused by his unhappy marriage. At all events, henceforward throughout his career we shall see the continuous action of this now avowed Miltonism among others. We shall see him henceforward continually acting on the principle that, in addition to the real sins forbidden to man by an eternal law of right and wrong, revealed in his own conscience and authenticated by the Bible (for Milton did believe in such an eternal law, and, however it is to be reconciled with what we have just been saying, was a transcendental or _a priori_ moralist at his heart's core), the field of human endeavour was overstrewn by a multiplicity of mere "scarecrow sins," one's duty in respect of which was simply to march up to them, one after another, and pluck them up, every stick of them individually, with its stuck-on old hat and all its waving tatters. (2.) One notes in Milton's first Divorce Tract, as in much else of his controversial writing, a preference for the theoretical over what may be called the practical style of argument. The neglect of practical details in his reasoning throughout this particular Tract amounts to what might be called greenness or innocence. What are the questions with which an opponent of the "practical" type would have immediately tried to pose Milton, or which such an one would now object to his doctrine? No one can miss them. In a case where divorce is desired by the man only, what is to become of the divorced wife? Is not the damage of her prospects by the fact that she has once been married, if but for a month, something to be taken into account? It is not in marriage as it may be in other partnerships. The poor girl that has been once married returns to her father or her friends an article of suddenly diminished value in the general estimation. What provision is to be made for this? Then, should there be children, what are to be the arrangements? Or again, suppose the case, under the new Divorce Law, of a man who has a weakness for a succession of wives--a private Henry the Eighth. He marries No. 1, and, after a while, on the plea that he does not find that she suits him, he gives her a bill of divorcement; No. 2 comes and is treated in like manner; and so on, till the brutal rascal, undeniably free from all legal censure, may be living in the centre of a perfect solar system of his discarded wives, moving in nearer or farther orbits round him, according to the times when they were thrown off, and each with her one or two satellites of little darlings! To be sure, there is the public oath which, it is supposed, might have to be taken in every case of divorce; but what would such a blackguard care for any number of such oaths? Besides, you put it to him by his oath to declare that in his conscience he believes the incompatibility between himself and his wife to be radical and irremediable, and that he does not find that he comes within Christ's meaning in that famous passage of the Sermon on the Mount in which he Christianized the Mosaic Law of Divorce. What does such a fellow know of Christ's meaning? He will swear, and according to your new Law he need only swear, according to his own standard of fitness; which may be that variety is a _sine quâ non_ for him, or that No. 2 is intolerable when No. 3 is on the horizon. How, in the terms of the new Law, is such licence to sheer libertinism to be avoided? These and other such questions are suggested here not as necessarily fatal to Milton's doctrine: in fact, in certain countries, since Milton's time, the most thorough practical consideration of them has not impeded modifications of the Marriage Law in the direction heralded by Milton. They are suggested as indicating Milton's rapidity, his impatience, or, if we choose so to call it, his dauntless faith in ideas and first principles. It is remarkable how little, in his first Divorce Tract, he troubles himself with the anticipation of such-like objections of the practical kind. The reason may partly be that, in his own case, some of them, if not all, were irrelevant. There were no children in his case to complicate the affair; Mary Powell was probably as willing to part from him as he to part from Mary Powell; and, if she were to relapse into Mary Powell again and he to be free as before, the social expense of their two or three months' mismatch would hardly be appreciable! Doubtless, however, Milton foresaw many of the practical objections. He foresaw cases, that would be sure to arise under the new law, much more complicated than that of himself and Mary Powell. That he did not discuss such cases may have, therefore, been partly the policy of a controversialist, resolved to establish his main principle in the first place, and leaving the details of practical adjustment for a future time or for other heads. On the whole, however, the inattention to those practical details which would have formed so much of the matter of most men's reasonings on the same subject was very characteristic. (3.) My last remark is that Milton, in his tract, writes wholly from the man's point of view, and in the man's interest, with a strange oblivion of the woman's. The Tract is wholly a plea for the right of a man to give his wife a bill of divorcement and send her home to her father. There is no distinct word about any counterpart right for a woman who has married an unsuitable husband to give him a bill of divorcement and send him back to his mother. On the whole subject of the woman's interests in the affair Milton is suspiciously silent. There is, indeed, one passage, in Chap. XV. of the Tract, bearing on the question; and it is very curious. Beza and Paræus, it seems, had argued that the Mosaic right of divorcement given to the man had been intended rather as a merciful release for afflicted wives than as a privilege for the man himself. On this opinion Milton thinks it necessary to comment. He partly maintains that, if true, it would strengthen his argument for the restoration of the right of divorce to husbands; but partly he protests against its truth. "If divorce wore granted," he says, "not for men, but to release afflicted wives, certainly it is not only a dispensation, but a most merciful law; and why it should not yet be in force, being wholly as needful, I know not what can be in cause but senseless cruelty. But yet to say divorce was granted for relief of wives, rather than for husbands, is but weakly conjectured, and is manifest the extreme shift of a huddled exposition ... Palpably uxorious! Who can be ignorant that woman was created for man, and not man for woman, and that a husband may be injured as insufferably in marriage as a wife. What an injury is it after wedlock not to be beloved, what to be slighted, what to be contended with in point of house-rule who shall be the head, not for any parity of wisdom (for that were something reasonable), but out of a female pride! 'I suffer not,' saith Saint Paul, 'the woman to usurp authority over the man.' If the Apostle could not suffer it, into what mould is he mortified that can? Solomon saith that 'a bad wife is to her husband as rottenness to his bones, a continual dropping: better dwell in a corner of the house-top, or in the wilderness, than with such a one: whoso hideth her hideth the wind, and one of the four mischiefs that the earth cannot bear.' If the Spirit of God wrote such aggravations as these, and, as it may be guessed by these similitudes, counsels the man rather to divorce than to live with such a colleague, and yet, on the other side, expresses nothing of the wife's suffering with a bad husband, is it not most likely that God in his Law had more pity towards man thus wedlocked than towards the woman that was created for another?" [Footnote: This passage occurs in the second edition. There is but the germ of it in the first sentence, "If Divorce were granted ... senseless cruelty." The inference is that Milton, when he wrote the first edition, was rather pleased with the idea of Beza and Paræus that divorce had been given for the relief of the wife, and that his dissatisfaction with the idea, as promoting the woman too much at the man's expense, came afterwards.] Here was doctrine with a vengeance. Man being the superior being, and therefore with the greater capacity of being pained or injured, God had pitied him, if unhappily married, more than the woman similarly situated. For him, therefore, and not for the woman, there had been provided the right of divorce! This is not positively asserted, but it seems to be implied. The woman's relief, in the case of a marriage unhappy for her, consisted apparently, according to Milton, not in her power to cut the knot, but in the likelihood that her husband, finding the marriage unhappy also for him, would desire for his own sake to cut the knot, or might be driven by her management to that extremity. In short, we have here, as another consequence of Milton's unfortunate marriage, the beginning of that peculiarly stern form of the notion of woman's natural and essential inferiority to man which ran with visible effects through his whole subsequent life. If not his ideal of woman, at least his estimate of what was to be expected from actual women, and what was on the average to be accorded to them, had been permanently lowered by a bad first experience. All this while, what of the poor girl whose hard fate it was to occasion this experience in the life of a man too grandly and sternly her superior? One is bound to think also of her, and to remember, in so thinking, how young she was at the time when her offended husband first theorized his feeling of her defects, and published his theorizings, with her image and memory, though not with her name, involved in them, to the talkative world. She had not been seventeen years and a half old when she had married Milton; she was of exactly that age when she left him, and the first edition of his Divorce Treatise was ready; she was just eighteen when the second and fuller edition appeared. Surely, but for that fatal visit back to Forest Hill, contrived by her or her relatives, matters would have righted themselves. As it was, things could not be worse. Restored to her father's house at Forest Hill, amid her unmarried brothers and sisters, and all the familiar objects from which she had parted so recently on going to London, the young bride had, doubtless, _her_ little pamphlets to publish in that narrow but sympathising circle. In particular, her grievances would be poured into the confiding ears of her mother. That lady, as we can see, at once takes the lead in the case. Never with her will shall her daughter go back to that dreadful man in Aldersgate Street! Mr. Powell acquiesces; brothers and sisters acquiesce; Oxford Royalism near at hand acquiesces, so far as it is consulted; the bride herself acquiesces, happy enough again in the routine of home, or perhaps beginning to join bashfully again in such gaieties of officers' balls, and the like, as the proximity of the King's quarters to Forest Hill made inevitable. And is not the King's cause on the whole prospering, and is not that in itself another reason for being at least in no hurry to make it up with Milton? What if it never be made up with him? It is some time since his letters to Forest Hill by the carrier ceased entirely, and since the foot-messenger he sent down expressly all the way from London with his final letter was met at the gate by Mrs. Powell and told her mind in terms which were doubtless duly reported. And now, they hear, he is going about London as usual, and visiting at Lady Margaret Ley's, and giving his own version of his marriage story, and even printing Tracts in favour of Divorce! People generally, they say, are not agreeing with him on that subject; but there is at least one respectable English family that _is_ tempted to agree with him and to wish him all success! BOOK II. MARCH 1644-MARCH 1645. _HISTORY_:--THE YEAR OF MARSTON MOOR: CIVIL WAR, LONG PARLIAMENT, AND WESTMINSTER ASSEMBLY CONTINUED--STRUGGLE OF INDEPENDENCY WITH PRESBYTERIANISM: TOLERATION CONTROVERSY: ENGLISH SECTS AND SECTARIES-- PRESBYTERIAN SETTLEMENT VOTED--NEW MODEL OF THE ARMY. _BIOGRAPHY_:--MILTON AMONG THE SECTARIES: HIS SECOND DIVORCE PAMPHLET, _TRACT ON EDUCATION_, _AREOPAGITICA TETRACHORDON_, AND _COLASTERION_. CHAPTER I. INACTIVITY OF THE SCOTTISH AUXILIARIES--SPREAD OF INDEPENDENCY AND MULTIPLICATION OF SECTS--VISITATION OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE-- BATTLE OF MARSTON MOOR--FORTNIGHT'S VACATION OF THE WESTMINSTER ASSEMBLY (JULY 23-AUGUST 7, 1644).--PRINCIPLE OF TOLERATION AND STATE OF THE TOLERATION CONTROVERSY: SYNOPSIS OF ENGLISH SECTS AND SECTARIES IN 1644.- -RESUMPTION OF ASSEMBLY'S PROCEEDINGS: DENUNCIATION OF PICKED SECTARIES AND HERETICS--CROMWELL'S INTERFERENCE FOR INDEPENDENCY: ACCOMMODATION ORDER OF PARLIAMENT--PRESBYTERIAN SETTLEMENT VOTED--ESSEX BEATEN AND THE WAR FLAGGING: SELF-DENYING ORDINANCE AND NEW MODEL OF THE ARMY-- PARLIAMENTARY VENGEANCES. The English Parliamentarians hoped great things from the Scottish auxiliary army. The Royalists, on the other hand, were both angry and alarmed. In anticipation, indeed, of the coming-in of the Scots, the King had ventured on a very questionable step. He had summoned what may be called an ANTI-PARLIAMENT to meet him at Oxford on the 22nd of January 1643-4, to consist of all members who had been expelled from the two Houses in Westminster, and all that might be willing, in the new crisis, to withdraw from those rebellious Houses. On the appointed day, accordingly, there had rallied round the King at Oxford 49 Peers and 141 Commoners; which was not a bad show against the 22 Peers and 280 Commoners who met on the same day in the two Houses at Westminster. But little else resulted from the convocation of the ANTI-PARLIAMENT. In fact, many who had gone to it had done so with a view to negotiations for peace. Such negotiations were at least talked of. In addition to vehement denunciations of the doings of the Parliament, there were some abortive attempts at friendly intercourse. All which having failed, the ANTI- PARLIAMENT was prorogued April 16, 1644, after having sat nearly three months. Parliaments, even when they were loyalist Parliaments, were not the agencies that Charles found pleasantest. He trusted rather to the arbitrament of the field. INACTIVITY OF THE SCOTTISH AUXILIARY ARMY: SPREAD OF INDEPENDENCY IN ENGLAND: MULTIPLICATION OF SECTS. No sudden blow was struck by the Scots. They had fastened themselves, in proper military fashion, on the north of England, and their presence there was useful; but that was all. It was a great disappointment to Baillie. He had expected that the appearance of his dear countrymen in England would put an end to the mere military "tig-tagging," as he had called it, of Essex and Waller, and quicken immediately the tramp of affairs. His belief all along had been that what was needed in England was an importation of Scottish impetuousness to animate the heavy English, and teach them the northern trick of carrying all things at the double with a hurrah and a yell. It was a sore affliction, therefore, to the good man that, from January 1643-4, on through February, March, April, May, and even June, the 21,000 Scots under Leslie should be in England, and yet be stirring so little. Instead of fighting their way southwards into the heart of the country, they were still squatting in the Northumbrian coal-region, and sticking there, not without some bad behaviour and disorder. Doubtless, it was all right in strategy, and Leslie knew what he was about; but oh, that it could have been otherwise! For of what use a great Scottish victory would have been at that time to the cause of Presbyterianism? Faster, more massively, more resistlessly than all the argumentations of Henderson, Gillespie, and Rutherford, aided by those of the Smectymnuans, with Vines, Palmer, Burges, and the rest of the English Presbyterians, such a victory would have crushed down the contentiousness of the Five Dissenting Brethren, and swept the propositions of complete Scottish Presbytery through the Westminster Assembly. Parliament, receiving these propositions, would have passed them with alacrity; and what could the English nation have done but acquiesce? But, alas! as things were! The Five Dissenting Brethren and the other "thraward wits" in the Assembly could still persevere in their struggle with the Presbyterian majority, debating every proposition that implied a surrender of Congregationalism, and conscious that in so impeding a Presbyterian settlement they were pleasing a growing body of their fellow-countrymen. What, though London was staunchly and all but universally Presbyterian? Throughout the country, and, above all, in the Army, the case was different. The inactivity of the Scots was affording time for the spirit of Independency to spread, and was giving rise to awkward questions. It began actually to be said of the Westminster Assembly, that it "did cry down the truth with votes, and was an Anti- Christian meeting which would erect a Presbytery worse than Bishops." In the Army especially such Anti-Presbyterian sentiments, and questionings of the infallibility of the Scots, had become rife. "The Independents have so managed matters," writes Baillie, April 26, "that of the officers and sojers in Manchester's army, certainly also in the General's (Essex's), and, as I hear, in Waller's likewise, more than two parts are for them, and these of the far most resolute and confident men for the Parliament party." As regarded Essex's army and Waller's, Baillie afterwards found reason to think that this was a great exaggeration; but it appears to have been true enough respecting Manchester's. By that time there was no doubt either who was at the head of these Army Independents. It was Cromwell--now no longer mere "Colonel Cromwell," but "Lieutenant- general Cromwell," second in command in the Associated Counties under Manchester. As early as April 2 Baillie speaks of him as "the great Independent." With such a man to look up to, and with patrons also in the two Houses of Parliament, little wonder that the Independents in the Army began to feel themselves strong, and to regard the drift of the Westminster Assembly and the Londoners towards an absolute Presbyterianism as a movement innocent enough while it consisted in talk only, but to be watched carefully and disowned in due time. All might be retrieved, however! What hope there might yet be in a great Scottish success! With this idea Baillie still hugged himself. "We are exceeding sad and ashamed," he had written, April 19, "that our army, so much talked of, has done as yet nothing at all." But again, May 9, "We trust God will arise, and do something by our Scots army. We are afflicted that, after so long time, we have gotten no hit of our enemy; we hope God will put away that shame. Waller, Manchester, Fairfax, and all, gets victories; but Leslie, from whom all was expected, as yet has had his hands bound. God, we hope, will loose them, and send us matter of praise also." The victories of Waller, Manchester, and Fairfax, here referred to by Baillie, had been nothing very considerable--mere fights in their several districts, heard of at the time, but counting for little now in the history of the war; but they contrasted favourably with what could be told of the Scots. What was that? It was that they had summoned Newcastle to surrender, but had advanced beyond that town, leaving it untaken. When Baillie wrote the last-quoted passage, however, they were more hopefully astir. Fairfax, with his northern-English force, had joined them at Tadcaster in Yorkshire; the Earl of Manchester had been summoned northwards to add what strength he could bring from the Associated Counties; and the enterprise on which the three conjoined forces were to be engaged--the Scots, Fairfax's men, and Manchester's-- was the siege of York. It was a great business on all grounds; and on this amongst others, that the Marquis of Newcastle was shut up in the city. Might not the Scots retrieve their character in this business? It was Baillie's fervent prayer. But a dreadful doubt had occurred to him. What if the Scots, mixed as they now were with the English Parliamentarian soldiers before York, and in contact with the Independents among them under Manchester and Cromwell, should themselves catch the prevailing distemper? Writing, May 19, to his friend Mr. Blair, a chaplain in the Scottish army, Baillie gives him a warning hint on the subject. "We hear," he says, "that their horse and yours are conjoined, and that occasions may fall out wherein more of them may join to you. We all conceive that our silly simple lads are in great danger of being infected by their company; and, if that pest enter in our army, we fear it may spread." [Footnote: Baillie, Vol. II. from p. 128 to p. 197.] Here there must come in an explanation:--The Army-Independency which was alarming the Presbyterians, and of which they regarded Cromwell as the head, was a thing of much larger dimensions, and much more composite nature, than the mild Independency of Messrs. Goodwin, Burroughs, Nye, Simpson, and Bridge, within the Westminster Assembly. The Independency of these five Divines consisted simply in their courageous assertion of the Congregationalist principle of church-organization in the midst of the overwhelming Presbyterianism around them, and in their claim that, should their reasonings for Congregationalism prove in vain, and should the Presbyterian system be established in England, there should be at all events "an indulgence" under that system, for themselves and their adherents, "in some lesser differences." The "lesser differences" for which they thus prospectively craved an indulgence had not been specifically stated; but it is pretty clear that they were not, to any great extent, differences of theological belief, but were rather those differences which would arise from the conscientious perseverance of a minority in Congregationalist practices after a Presbyterian rule had been established nationally. "You know that we do not differ from you in theological doctrines" is what the Five Dissenting Brethren virtually said to the Presbyterians; "your teaching is our teaching, and what you call errors we call errors: our difference lies wholly, or all but wholly, in the fact that _we_ hold every particular congregation of Christians to be a church within itself, whereas _you_ maintain the interconnectedness of congregations, and the right of courts of office- bearers from many congregations to review and control what passes within each: now, as you, being undoubtedly in the majority, are about to establish Presbytery in England, but as we cannot in conscience abandon our Congregationalism, could you not manage at least to allow in the new national system such a toleration of Congregationalist practices as would satisfy us, the minority, and prevent us from going again into exile?" Such was the Independency of the Dissenting Five in the Westminster Assembly. But, as we know, from our previous survey of the history of Independency in England, in Holland, and in America, the word "Independency" had come to have a much larger meaning than that in which it had originated. It had come to mean not merely the principle of Congregationalism, or the Independency of Congregations, but also all that had in fact arisen from the action of that principle, in England, Holland, or America, in the shape of miscellaneous dissent and heterodoxy. It had come to mean the Congregationalist principle _plus_ all its known or conceivable consequences. From policy it was in this wide sense that the Presbyterians had begun to use the term Independency. "You are certainly Independents," the Presbyterians of the Assembly virtually said to Messrs Goodwin, Burroughs, and the rest of the Five; "but you are the best specimens of a class of which the varieties are legion: were all Independency such as yours, and were Independency to end with you, we might see our way to such a toleration as you demand-- which, on personal grounds, we should like to do: but the principle of Congregationalism has already generated on the earth--in England, in Holland, and in America--opinions beyond yours, and some heresies at which even you stand aghast; and it is of these, as well as of you, that we are bound to think when we are asked to tolerate Independency." Now it was of this larger and more terrible Independency that the Presbyterians had begun to see signs in the Parliamentary Army and through England generally. In other words, sects and sectaries of all sorts and sizes had begun to be heard of--some only transmissions or re-manifestations of oddities of old English Puritanism, others importations from Holland and New England, and others products of the new ferment of the English mind caused by the Civil War itself. In especial, it was believed, _Anabaptists_ and _Antinomians_ had begun to abound. Now, though, in politeness, the Presbyterians were willing occasionally to distinguish between the orthodox Independents and the miscellaneous Sectaries, yet, as the Congregationalist principle, which was the essence of Independency, was credited with the mischief of having generated all the sects, and as it was for this Congregationalist principle that toleration was demanded, it was quite as common to huddle all the Sects and the orthodox Congregationalists together under the one name of Independents. Nor could the Congregationalists of the Assembly very well object to this. True, they might disown the errors and extravagancies of the sects, and declare that they themselves were as little in sympathy with them as the Presbyterians. They might also argue, as indeed they anxiously did, that due uniformity in the essentials of Christian belief and practice would be as easily maintained in a community organized ecclesiastically on the Congregationalist principle as in one organized in the Presbyterian mariner. Still, in arguing so, they must have had some latitude of view as to the amount of uniformity desirable. If every congregation were to be independent within itself, and if moreover congregations might be formed on the principle of elective affinities, or the concourse of like-minded atoms, it was difficult to see why Congregationalism should not be expected to evolve sects, and why therefore this progressive evolution of sects should not be accepted as a law of religious life. Had not the Five Independents of the Assembly avowed it as one of their principles that they would not be too sure that the opinions they now held would remain always unchanged? Reserving this liberty of going farther for themselves, how could they refuse toleration for those who had already gone farther? Claiming for themselves a toleration in all such differences as did not affect their character as good subjects, they could not but extend the benefit of the same plea to at least a proportion of the Sectaries. But to what proportion? Where was toleration to stop? At what point, in the course of religious dissent, did a man become a "bad subject?" To these questions no definite answers were given by the Five Dissentients of the Assembly; but they could not but entertain the questions. Hence their Independency, though mild and moderate so far as they were themselves concerned, was really in organic connexion with the larger Independency that had begun to manifest itself in the Army and elsewhere. "The Congregationalist principle and Liberty of Religious Difference to a certain extent," said the Independents of the Assembly. "Yes, Liberty of Religious Difference!" said the Army Independents, simplifying the formula. Throughout the first half of 1644, therefore, we are to think of the Presbyterian majority in the Westminster Assembly as not only fighting against the Independency or Congregationalism proper which was represented within the walls of the Assembly by men whom they could not but respect, though complaining of their obstinacy, but also bent on saving England from that more lax or general Independency, nameable as Army-Independency, which they saw rife through the land, and which included toleration not merely of Congregationalism, but also of Anabaptism, Antinomianism, and other nondescript heresies. Baillie's groanings in spirit over the multiplication of the sectaries, and the growth of the Toleration notion, are positively affecting. "Sundry officers and soldiers in the army," he writes, April 2, "has fallen from their way [_i.e._ from Independency proper] to Antinomianism and Anabaptism." Again, later in the same month, "The number and evil humour of the Antinomians and Anabaptists doth increase;" and more fully, on the 19th, "They [the Independents] over all the land are making up a faction to their own way, the far most part whereof is fallen off to Anabaptism and Antinomianism: sundry also to worse, if worse needs be--the mortality of the soul, the denial of angels and devils; and cast off all sacraments; and many blasphemous things. All these are from New England." By May 9 he had begun to despair of the English altogether: "The humour of this people is very various and inclinable to singularities, to differ from all the world, and one from another, and shortly from themselves: no people had so much need of a Presbytery." According to Baillie, it was precisely owing to the absence of a well-organized Presbyterian system in England that all those wild growths of opinion had been possible; and, while they increased the difficulty of establishing Presbyterianism in England, they were the best demonstration of its necessity. Therefore, he would not despair. There was yet a faint hope that the Independent Divines in the Assembly might be made ashamed of the tag-rag of Anabaptists, Antinomians, and what not, that hung to their skirts, and so might be brought to an accommodation with the Presbyterians. But, failing that, the Presbyterians must stand firm, must face Independency and all its belongings both in Parliament and in the Army, and try at length to beat them down.--Of course, Baillie and his Scottish brethren were doing their best to assist the English Presbyterians in this labour. Anti- Toleration pamphlets had appeared, and more were in preparation. But help was particularly desired from the Reformed Churches abroad, and most particularly from Holland. Had not Holland nursed this very Independency which was troubling England, and was not the example of Holland the greatest argument with the Independents and others for a toleration of sects? Representing all this to his correspondent, William Spang, Scottish preacher at Campvere, Baillie urges him again and again to do what he can to get any eminent Dutch divines of his acquaintance to write treatises against Independency, Heresy, and Toleration. He names several such, as likely to do this great service if duly importuned. There could be no more helpful service to England--except one! Oh if there could yet be a great Scottish victory on English soil! _That_ would be worth all the pamphlets in the world! [Footnote: Baillie, II. 146, 157, 168, 177, 179, 181, 183-4, 191-2, 197, &c.--Several manifestoes against Independency, such as Baillie wanted, did come, in due time, from Divines in Holland and elsewhere on the Continent, and were much made of by the Presbyterians of the Assembly, and put in circulation through England.] VISITATION OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE: BATTLE OF MARSTON MOOR. Notwithstanding all this anarchy of ecclesiastical opinion, the practical or political mastery of affairs remained in the hands of Parliament, and was firmly exercised by Parliament in a direction satisfactory to the Westminster Assembly as a whole. For, whatever might be the ultimate settlement between Independency and Presbyterianism, there was a certain general course of "Reformation" to which meanwhile all were pledged, Independents and Sectaries no less than Presbyterians; and on this course all could advance unanimously, even while battling with each other on the ecclesiastical questions which the Independents desired to keep open. For example, during those very months of 1644 in which Independency had been taking such increased dimensions, there had been fully executed that great Visitation and purgation of the University of Cambridge which had been entrusted to the Earl of Manchester by Parliamentary Ordinance in January. The Earl, going to Cambridge in person in February 1643-4, with his two chaplains, Messrs. Ashe and Good, had been engaged in the work through the months of March and April, summoning refractory Heads of Colleges and Fellows before him, examining complaints against them, and putting them in most cases to the test of the Covenant. The result, when complete (which it was not till 1645), was the ejection, on one ground or another, of about one half of the _Fellows_ of the various Colleges of Cambridge collectively, and of eleven out of the sixteen _Heads of Houses_, and the appointment of persons of Parliamentarian principles to the places thus made vacant.--Of the crowd of those who were turned out of Cambridge _Fellowships_, and the crowd of those who were put in to succeed them, we can take no account in this History. Yet a process which presents us with the vision of about 150 rueful outgoers from comfortable livelihoods in one University, met at the doors by as many radiant comers-in, can have been no unimportant incident, even in a national revolution. What became of all the rueful outgoers is a question that might interest us yet. It interested Fuller ten years after the event. Even then he could give no other answer, he said, than that proverbial one which the survivors of Nicias's unfortunate expedition against the Sicilians used to give at Athens when they were asked about the fate of such or such a comrade who had never returned, [Greek: "E tethnæken hæ didaskei grammata"] "He is either dead or teaching a school somewhere." Schoolmastering, according to Fuller, was the refuge of most of the ejected Cambridge Fellows of 1644-5.--More conspicuous persons, and with resources that probably exempted them from the prospect of so painful a fate, were the ejected _Heads of Houses_. Most of these were ejected at once in March and April 1644; and, apart from our acquired interest in Cambridge University, there are reasons for remembering them individually, and noting those who came in their places:--Of the sixteen Heads of Houses, it is to be premised, one--Dr. Richard Love, of Bennet or Corpus Christi--was a member of the Assembly, and therefore all right; while four others managed, by taking the Covenant, or by other "wary compliance" during the Visitation, to stay in. Among these four, it does not surprise us to learn, was Dr. Thomas Bainbrigge of Christ's, Milton's old _durus magister_, with whom he had had that never-forgotten tiff in his under-graduateship (Vol. I. pp. 135-141); the others were Dr. Eden of Trinity Hall, Dr. Rainbow of Magdalen, and Dr. Batchcroft of Caius. The ejections were as follows:-- TRINITY COLLEGE:--Master ejected, Dr. THOMAS CUMBER (_ob._ 1654); Master put in, Mr. THOMAS HILL, one of the Assembly Divines. ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE:--Master ejected, Dr. WILLIAM BEALE (died at Madrid, 1651); Master put in, Mr. JOHN ARROWSMITH, one of the Assembly Divines. EMANUEL COLLEGE:--Master ejected, Dr. RICHARD HOLDSWORTH (_ob._ 1649); Master put in, Dr. ANTHONY TUCKNEY, one of the Assembly Divines. QUEEN'S COLLEGE:--There was a complete sweep of this College, not a Fellow or Foundationer of any kind being left. President ejected, Dr. EDWARD MARTIN (survived the Restoration and was made Dean of Ely); President put in, Mr. HERBERT PALMER, one of the Assembly Divines. CLARE HALL:--Master ejected, Dr. THOMAS PASKE (survived the Restoration and had his reward); Master put in, RALPH CUDWORTH, B.D., afterwards the celebrated author of the "Intellectual System." He was of Somersetshire birth, and, though now only 27 years of age, had acquired a high Cambridge reputation, as Fellow and Tutor of Emanuel College, where he had been educated. PETERHOUSE:--Master ejected, Dr. JOHN COSINS (already under the ban of Parliament and a refugee in France: he survived the Restoration and became Bishop of Durham); Master put in, Mr. LAZARUS SEAMAN, one of the Assembly Divines. PEMBROKE COLLEGE;--Master ejected, Dr. BENJAMIN LANEY (survived the Restoration and held several Bishoprics in succession); Master put in, Mr. RICHARD VINES, one of the Assembly Divines. KING'S COLLEGE;--Provost ejected, Dr. SAMUEL COLLINS (see Vol. I. pp. 92, 93); Provost put in, Mr. BENJAMIN WHICHCOT, _ætat._ 34. He had been a Fellow of Emanuel College, and was a friend of Cudworth's. A peculiarity in his case was that he was dispensed from taking the Covenant on his appointment, and succeeded, by his interest with the ruling powers, in obtaining a like dispensation for most of the Fellows of the College. He survived the Restoration, conformed then, and is still remembered as one of the chiefs of the English Latitudinarians. SIDNEY-SUSSEX COLLEGE:--Master ejected, Dr. SAMUEL WARD (see Vol. I. p. 95); Master put in, Mr. RICHARD MINSHULL, a Fellow of the College, regularly elected to the Mastership by the other Fellows. He survived the Restoration, conformed then, and retained the Mastership till his death. JESUS COLLEGE:--Master ejected, Dr. RICHARD STERNE (great-grandfather of Laurence Sterne, the novelist). He was a strong Laudian and Royalist, and had already been in prison on that account. He lived in retirement till the Restoration; after which he was made successively Bishop of Chester, and (1664) Archbishop of York. Master put in, Mr. THOMAS YOUNG, one of the Assembly Divines, Milton's old preceptor, and the chief of the "Smectymnuans." It was a special compliment to Young that he, not an English University man at all, but a naturalized Scot, had been chosen for a Cambridge Mastership. CATHERINE HALL:--Master ejected (not till 1645, however, and then on a fresh occasion), Dr. RALPH BROWNRIGGE, nominal Bishop of Exeter since 1642 (_ob._ 1659); Master put in, Mr. WILLIAM SPURSTOW, one of the Assembly Divines, and one of the "Smectymnuans." [Footnote: Authorities for this account of Manchester's Visitation of Cambridge and its results are Fuller's History of the University of Cambridge (edit 1340), pp. 233- 239, and Neal's Puritans, III. 107-119.] Thus began, in 1644, a new era in the history of Cambridge University, which extended to the Restoration. Episcopalian principles were discharged out of the government of the University; and, under the five retained Masters and the eleven new ones, there was inaugurated a system of rule and teaching in accordance, more or less in the different Colleges, with the ascendant State-policy of the Puritans. With the exception of Cudworth, Whichcot, and Minshull, it will have been noted, all the newly-appointed Masters were members of the Westminster Assembly, and leading men among the Presbyterian majority of that body. They do not appear to have ceased attendance on the Assembly in consequence of their appointments, but only to have divided their time thenceforward as well as they could between the Assembly and Cambridge. It is also to be noted that some of them, including Thomas Young, retained their former livings along with their new Masterships. [Footnote: The following is a note furnished to Mr. David Laing by the Rev. John Struthers of Prestonpans, one of an acting Committee recently appointed by the Church of Scotland for transcribing and editing the original Minutes of the Westminster Assembly, preserved in Dr. William's Library, London:--"1643-4, March 15.--A letter read from the Earl of Manchester, stating that he cast out Drs. Beale, Cosins, Sterne, Martin, Laney, masters, from their Masterships in Cambridge University, and, subject to the Assembly's approval, nominated Mr. Palmer, Mr. Arrowsmith, Mr. Vines, Mr. Seaman, and Mr. Young in their places. The Assembly offered their congratulations, but desired that their brethren should meanwhile not be withdrawn from the Assembly." Mr. Struthers adds that, though Dr. Lightfoot, in his Notes of the Assembly, states that Mr. Vines and Mr. Young desired to be excused from the new appointments, there is no notice of any such declinature in the MS. minutes.--See _Biographical Notices of Thomas Young, S.T.D., Vicar of Stowmarket, Suffolk_, by Mr. David Laing (Edin. 1870), p. 39.--These accurate and valuable "Notices" of a man who figures so interestingly in Milton's Biography had not appeared till Vol. II. of this work was quite printed, or they might have saved me some research for that volume as well as for its predecessor. Prefixed to them Mr. Laing gives a portrait of Young, after a photograph taken from the original picture long preserved in the Vicarage of Stowmarket, but now in the possession of H. C. Mathew, Esq. of Felixstow, near Ipswich. The portrait represents Young with hair not at all of the short Puritan cut, but long, and flowing fully on both sides to his shoulders; and the face is really fine, with handsome features, and a rich and mild look. Another interesting insertion in Mr. Laing's little volume is a facsimile of Young's handwriting, from a Latin inscription in a presentation copy of his _Dies Dominica_, still extant. The hand is neat and careful; and, what is rather curious, it has a resemblance to Milton's.] There were similar instances of retention of livings among those appointed to Fellowships, and to other offices throughout the country under the patronage of the Parliament. The excuse was the dearth for the time of fully qualified ministers of the right Parliamentarian strain; but the fact did not escape comment. Was Plurality one of the very few institutions of Prelacy which Presbyterian godliness was willing to preserve? Fresh from his energetic Visitation of Cambridge, the Earl of Manchester was away, as we have seen, in May 1644, with his Lieutenant-general, Cromwell, to add the force of the Associated Eastern Counties to the forces of the Scots and Fairfax, then about to besiege the Marquis of Newcastle in York. The joint forces, numbering some 25,000 men in all, were hopefully conducting the siege when the approach of Prince Rupert out of Lancashire, with a Royalist army of over 20,000, compelled them to raise it, in order to oppose him (June 30). He avoided them, relieved York, and then, having added the Marquis's garrison to his own force, risked all for a great victory. The result was the BATTLE OF MARSTON MOOR, about seven miles to the west of York, fought on the evening of July 2, 1644. It was "the bloodiest battle of the whole war," the number actually slain on the field on both sides in three hours being no fewer than 4,150. But of these by far the most were on the King's side, and the battle was a disastrous rout for that side, and a victory for the Parliamentarians incalculably greater than any they had yet had. Rupert, with a shred of his army, escaped southwards; the Marquis of Newcastle, making his way to the sea-coast, embarked for the Continent, with his two sons, his brother Sir Charles Cavendish, General King, Lord Fauconberg, the Earl of Carnwath, Bishop Bramhall, and about eighty other Royalists of distinction, and was no more seen in England till the Restoration. York surrendered to the victors, July 5; and, save that Newcastle and some other towns remained to be taken, the whole North of England was lost to the King and brought within the sway of Parliament. Seldom had there been such consequences from a battle of three hours. [Footnote: Clar. Hist. 490-492; Parl. Hist. III. 277, 278; Carlyle's Cromwell, I. 151-154; Markham's Fairfax, 151-178, for a detailed modern account.] When the news of the battle reached London (July 5), there was nothing but joy. Within a few days, however, the joy passed into a question between the Independents and the Presbyterians, or at least the Scots among them. Which part of the conjoint army had behaved best in the battle, and to which general did the chief honours of the day belong? Glad would Baillie have been to welcome Marston Moor as at last that great success of the Scots for which he had been longing and praying. No such pleasure could he have. More and more, as detailed accounts of the battle arrived, it became clear that the Scots could claim only a little of the merit of the victory--that the mass of them had behaved rather ill; that the luck or the generalship of Field-marshal Leven had deserted him, and he had been carried far away in a ruck of fugitives; and that, in fact, with the exception of David Leslie, the Scottish Major-general, who really did good service, no Scot in command had shown much head, or been of any considerable use, at Marston Moor. But, worse and worse for Baillie's feelings, not only did it appear that the victory had been gained by the English of the joint army rather than by the Scottish contingent, but gradually the rumour was confirmed, which had been first borne to London on the wings of the wind, that the Englishman by whose conduct, if by that of any one man, the fate of the battle had been decided, was Lieutenant-general Cromwell. "The left wing, which I commanded, being our own horse, saving a few Scots in our rear, beat all the Prince's horse. God gave them as stubble to our swords. We charged their regiments of foot with our horse, and routed all we charged." These sentences of Cromwell's own, written on the third day after the battle in a letter to his brother-in-law, Colonel Valentine Walton, are his private statement of the truth which became public. In vain it was represented in London that Cromwell's paramount prowess in the battle was a fiction of himself and the Independents; in vain did the Presbyterians try to distribute the merit among Fairfax, David Leslie, and Major-general Crawford--another Scot, not in the Scottish contingent, but serving in Manchester's army as next in command under Cromwell, and already known as representing Presbyterianism in that army in opposition to Cromwell's Independency; in vain did this Crawford, when he came to London, asseverate that Cromwell, having been slightly wounded in the neck, had retired before the crisis, and that the real work in Cromwell's part of the battle had devolved on David Leslie and himself. It was a comfort to Baillie to believe all this; but London was persuaded otherwise. For London and for all England Cromwell stood forth as the hero of Marston Moor. The victory to which Baillie had looked forward as a triumph for Presbyterianism had been gained mainly by the "great Independent" of the English army, and went to the credit of Independency. [Footnote: Baillie, II. 201, 203-4, 209, and 211; Carlyle's Cromwell, I. 152-3 and 146-150; Fuller's Worthies, _Yorkshire_; Holles's Memoirs (1699), 15-17.] Three weeks after the battle of Marston Moor (July 23, 1644) the Westminster Assembly, with permission of Parliament, adjourned for a fortnight's vacation. We will share this vacation, and make it the opportunity for some farther inquiry, on our own account, into the two subjects which were of paramount interest at that moment. They were the subjects, if I may so say, that had for some time past been chalked up on the black board for the consideration of all England, and to the discussion of which the Assembly and the Parliament were to address themselves with fresh fervour when the Assembly came together again after their vacation. These were:-- I. The Principle of Toleration. II. The English Sects and Sectaries. THE PRINCIPLE OF TOLERATION: STATE OF THE TOLERATION CONTROVERSY IN 1644. The history of the modern idea of TOLERATION could be written completely only after a larger amount of minute and special research than I am able here to bestow on the subject. Who shall say in the heads of what stray and solitary men, scattered through Europe in the sixteenth century, _nantes rari in gurgite vasto_, some form of the idea, as a purely speculative conception, may have been lodged? Hallam finds it in the "Utopia" of Sir Thomas More (1480-1535), and in the harangues of the Chancellor l'Hospital of France (1505-1573); [Footnote: Hallam's Const. Hist. (10th edit.), T. 122, Note.] and there may have been others. But the history of the idea, as a practical or political notion, lies within a more precise range. Out of what within Europe in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries was the practical form of the idea bred? Out of pain, out of suffering, out of persecution: not pain inflicted constantly on one and the same section of men, or on any two opposed sections alternately; but pain revolving, pain circulated, pain distributed till the whole round of the compass of sects had felt it in turn, and the only principle of its prevention gradually dawned on the common consciousness! In every persecuted cause, honestly conducted, there was a throe towards the birth of this great principle. Every persecuted cause claimed at least a toleration for itself from the established power; and so, by a kind of accumulation, the cause that had been last persecuted had more of a tendency to toleration in it, and became practically more tolerant, than the others. This, I think, might be proved. The Church of England was more tolerant than the Church of Rome, and Scottish Presbyterianism or Scottish Puritanism was more tolerant (though the reverse is usually asserted) than the Church of England prior to 1640. Not to the Church of England, however, nor to Scottish Presbyterianism, nor to English Puritanism at large, does the honour of the first perception of the full principle of Liberty of Conscience, and its first assertion in English speech, belong. That honour has to be assigned, I believe, to the Independents generally, and to the Baptists in particular. The principle of religious liberty is almost logically bound up with the theory of the Independency of particular churches. Every particular church being a voluntary concourse of like-minded atoms, able to declare themselves converts or true Christians, it follows that the world, or civil society, whether called heathen or professedly Christian, is only the otherwise regulated medium or material in which these voluntary concourses or whirls take place. It follows that there must be large expanses or interspaces of the general material always unabsorbed into the voluntary concourses, and that for the secular power, which governs the general medium, to try to stimulate the concourses, or to bring all into them, or to control any part of the procedure of each or any of them, would be a mingling of elements that are incompatible, of necessary worldly order with the spiritual kingdom of Christ. And so it was maintained, against the Roman Catholics, and against the Confessions of all the various established Protestant Churches, that there could be, and ought to be, no Imperial or National Church. This being the principle of some of the early Protestant movements that went beyond Luther, Zuinglius, or Calvin, and perplexed these Reformers, little wonder that flashes of the fullest doctrine of Liberty of Conscience should be found among the records of those movements, whether on the Continent or in England.[Footnote: See notices of such flashes, among English Baptists of the reign of Henry VIII., and among the continental Anabaptists, in Mr. Edward Bean Underhill's "Historical Introduction" to the Reprint of Old Tracts on _Liberty of Conscience_ by the "Hanserd Knollys Society" (1846). Mr. Underhill writes as a zealous Baptist, but with judgment and research.] Little wonder, either, that the principle of Toleration should be discernible in the writings of Robert Brown, the father of the crude English Independency of Elizabeth's reign. [Footnote: Baillie (_Dissuasive_, Part I. 31) expressly makes it a reproach against Brown that he held the Toleration doctrine.] But it is one thing to hold a principle vaguely or latently as implicated in a principle already avowed, and another thing to extricate the implied principle and kindle it, as on the top of a lighthouse, on its own account. It is found, accordingly, that the early English Separatists collectively were much slower in this matter than Brown himself had been. They wanted toleration for themselves, and perhaps a general mildness in the administration of religious affairs; but they could not rid themselves of the notion, held alike by all the established churches, whether Prelatic or Presbyterian, that it is the duty of the prince, or the civil power, in every state to promote true religion and suppress false. Passages which we have already had occasion to quote (Vol. II. 569, 570) from the writings of Barrowe, Greenwood, and even of the liberal Robinson, the father of Congregationalism proper, prove beyond all dispute that these chiefs of the Separatists and Semi-Separatists who followed Brown in the latter part of Elizabeth's reign and in the reign of James had not worked out Toleration into a perfect or definite tenet. They did want something that they called a Toleration; but it was a limited and ill-defined Toleration.--There was, however, _one_ body or band of Separatists in James's reign who had pushed farther ahead, and grasped the idea of Liberty of Conscience at its very utmost. Strangely enough, as it may seem at first sight, they were the Separatists of the most intense and schismatic type then known, the least conciliatory in their relations to other churches and communions. They were the poor and despised Anglo-Dutch Anabaptists who called John Smyth (Vol. II. 539,540) their leader. In a Confession, or Declaration of Faith, put forth in 1611 by the English Baptists in Amsterdam, just after the death of Smyth, this article occurs: "The magistrate is not to meddle with religion, or matters of conscience, nor compel men to this or that form of religion; because Christ is the King and Lawgiver of the Church and Conscience." It is believed that this is the first expression of the absolute principle of Liberty of Conscience in the public articles of any body of Christians. Contact with the Dutch Arminians may have helped Smyth's people to a perception of it; and it certainly did not please the English Pædobaptist Independents of Holland when it appeared among them. Robinson, for example, objected to it, as he was bound to do by the views of the civil magistrate's power which he maintained. He attributed the invention of such an article to the common inability of ignorant men to distinguish between the use of an ordinance and its abuse. In other words, he thought the remnant of Smyth's Baptists had been rather silly in leaping to the conclusion that, because there had been much abuse of the interference of the civil power in matters of religion, and it had led to all sorts of horrors, there was nothing left but to set up the principle of absolute non-interference. The principle of the Anglo-Dutch Baptists, with the same exact difference between the Baptists and the rest of the Independents on the Toleration point, was imported into England. It is supposed that the person who had the chief hand in drawing up the Confession of the English Baptists of Amsterdam, after Smyth's death, was Smyth's successor in the Baptist ministry there, Thomas Helwisse (Vol. II. 540-544). Now, this Helwisse, returning to England shortly after 1611, drew round him, as we saw, the first congregation of General or Arminian Baptists in London; and this obscure Baptist congregation seems to have become the depositary for all England of the absolute principle of Liberty of Conscience expressed in the Amsterdam Confession, as distinct from the more stinted principle advocated by the general body of the Independents. Not only did Helwisse's folk differ from the Independents generally on the subject of Infant Baptism and Dipping; they differed also on the power of the magistrate in matters of belief and conscience. It was, in short, from their little dingy meeting-house, somewhere in Old London, that there flashed out, first in England, the absolute doctrine of Religious Liberty. "_Religious Peace: or, A Plea for Liberty of Conscience_" is the title of a little tract first printed in 1614, and presented to King James and the English Parliament, by "Leonard Busher, citizen of London." This Leonard Busher, there is reason to believe, was a member of Helwisse's congregation; and we learn from the tract itself that he was a poor man, labouring for his subsistence, who had had his share of persecution. He had probably been one of Smyth's Amsterdam flock who had returned with Helwisse. The tract is, certainly, the earliest known English publication in which full liberty of conscience is openly advocated. It cannot be read now without a throb. The style is simple and rather helpless; but one comes on some touching passages. Thus:-- "May it please your Majesty and Parliament to understand that by fire and sword to constrain princes and peoples to receive that one true religion of the Gospel is wholly against the mind and merciful law of Christ." "Persecution is a work well pleasing to all false prophets and bishops, but it is contrary to the mind of Christ, who came not to judge and destroy men's lives, but to save them. And, though some men and women believe not at the first hour, yet may they at the eleventh hour, if they be not persecuted to death before. And no king nor bishop can or is able to command faith. That is the gift of God, who worketh in us both the will and the deed of his own good pleasure. Set him not a day, therefore, in which, if his creature hear not and believe not, you will imprison and burn him.... As kings and bishops cannot command the wind, so they cannot command faith; and, as the wind bloweth where it listeth, so is every man that is born of the Spirit. You may force men to church against their consciences, but they will believe as they did before when they come there." "Kings and magistrates are to rule temporal affairs by the swords of their temporal kingdoms, and bishops and ministers are to rule spiritual affairs by the word and Spirit of God, the sword of Christ's temporal kingdom, and not to intermeddle one with another's authority, office, and function." "I read that Jews, Christians, and Turks are tolerated in Constantinople, and yet are peaceable, though so contrary the one to the other. If this be so, how much more ought Christians not to force one another to religion! And how much more ought Christians to tolerate Christians, whenas the Turks do tolerate them! Shall we be less merciful than the Turks? or shall we learn the Turks to persecute Christians? It is not only unmerciful, but unnatural and abominable, yea monstrous, for one Christian to vex and destroy another for difference and questions of religion." Busher's tract of 1614 was not the only utterance in the same strain that came from Helwisse's conventicle of London Baptists. In 1615 there appeared in print "_Objections answered by way of Dialogue, wherein is proved, by the Law of God, by the Law of our Land, and by His Majesty's many testimonies, that no man ought to be persecuted for his Religion, so he testifie his allegeance by the oath appointed by Law._" The author, or one of the authors, of this Dialogue, which is even more explicit in some respects than Busher's tract, is pretty clearly ascertained to have been John Murton, Helwisse's assistant (Vol. II. 544,581). Helwisse himself is not heard of after 1614, and appears to have died about that time. But his Baptist congregation maintained itself in London side by side with Jacob's congregation of Independents, established in 1616 (Vol. II. 544). As if to signalize still farther the discrepancy of the two sets of Sectaries on the Toleration point, there was put forth, as we saw, in that very year, by Jacob and the Independents, a Confession of Faith, containing this article: "We believe that we, and all true visible churches, ought to be overseen and kept in good order and peace, and ought to be governed, under Christ, both supremely and also subordinately, by the civil magistrate; yea, in causes of religion, when need is." The year 1616 was the year of Shakespeare's death. Who that has read his Sonnet LXVI. can doubt that he had carried in his mind while alive some profound and peculiar form of the idea of Toleration? In Bacon's brain, too, one may detect some smothered tenet of the kind; and even in the talk of the shambling King James himself there had been such occasional spurts about Liberty of Conscience that, though he had burnt two of his subjects for Arianism, Helwisse's poor people were fain, as we have just seen, to cite "His Majesty's many testimonies" for the Toleration they craved. And yet not to any such celebrity as the king, the philosopher, or the poet, had the task of vindicating for England the idea of Liberty of Conscience been practically appointed. To all intents and purposes that honour had fallen to two of the most extreme and despised sects of the Puritans. The despised Independents, or semi-Separatists of the school of Robinson and Jacob, and the still more despised Baptists, or thorough Separatists of the school of Smyth and Helwisse, were groping for the pearl between them; and, what is strangest at first sight, it was the more intensely Separatist of these two sects that was groping with most success. How is this to be explained? Partly it may have been that the Baptists were the sect that had been most persecuted--that they were the ultimate sect, in the English world, in respect of the necessary qualification of pain and suffering accumulated in their own experience, while the Hobinsonian Independents might rank as only the penultimate sect in this respect. But there is a deeper reason. Paradoxical as the statement may seem, there was a logical connexion between the extreme Separatism of the Baptists, the tightness and exclusiveness of their own terms of communion, and their passion for religious freedom, This requires elucidation:--It was on the subject of the Baptism of Infants that the ordinary Congregationalists and the Baptist Congregationalists most evidently stood aloof from each other. There had been vehement controversies between them on the subject. Independent congregations had ejected and excommunicated such of their members as had taken to the doctrine of Antipædobaptism; and Smyth's rigid Baptists, in turn, would not hold communion with Pædobaptist Independents. We are apt now to dwell on the narrow-mindedness, the unseemliness, of those bickerings of the two sects over the one doctrine on which they differed. It is to be observed, however, that even here they illustrated their faith in the principle which was the essence of their common Congregationalism: to wit, that the true security for sound faith and good government in the Church of Christ lay in the power lodged in every particular congregation of judging who were fit to belong to it, and of constant spiritual supervision of each of the members of it by all, so that the erring might be admonished, and the unfit ejected. It was the supreme virtue, the all- sufficient efficacy, of this power of merely spiritual censure, as it might be exercised by congregations or particular churches, each within itself, that both sects were continually trying to demonstrate to Prelatists and Presbyterians. Their very argument was that truth and piety would prosper best in a system of Church-government which trusted all to the vigilance of the members of every particular congregation over each other, their reasonings among themselves, their practice of mutual admonition, and, in last resort, their power of excommunicating the unworthy. Hence perhaps even the excess of the controversial activity of the two sects against each other, and the frequency of their mutual excommunications, are not without a favourable significance. Here, however, it was the Baptists, rather than the Independents collectively, that had pushed their theory of the all-sufficiency of congregational censure to its finest issue. To both sects the world or civil society presented itself as a medium in which there might be Christian vortices, concourses of true Christian souls, that should constitute, when numbered together and catalogued unerringly in the books of heaven, the Church or Kingdom of Jesus. To both sects it seemed a thing to be striven for that as much of civil society as possible should be brought into these vortices or concourses; nay, the aspiration of both was that the whole world should be Christianized. But, looking about them, they knew, in fact, that the vortices or concourses did and could involve but a small proportion of the society in which they occurred. They knew that there must be large tracts of unbelief, profanity, and false worship in every so-called Christian nation, left utterly unaffected by any of the true associations of Christ's real people; besides the huge wilderness of heathenism and idolatry lying all round in the dark lands of the world. It was on the platform of this contemplation that the Independents generally and the Baptist section of them had parted company. The Independents generally held that it was the duty of the civil power in a State to promote the formation of churches in that State, and to see, in some general way, that the churches formed were not wrong in doctrine or in practice. They held that the civil authority might lawfully compel all its subjects to some sort of hearing of the Gospel with a view to their belonging to churches or congregations, and might even assist the preacher by some whip of penalties on those who remained obstinate after a due amount of hearing. They held, in fact, that every State is bound to use its power towards Christianizing all its subjects, and may also institute missions for the propagation of true Christianity in idolatrous or heathen lands. To all this the Baptists, or some of their leaders, had learnt to oppose an emphatic "No." They held that the world, or civil society, and the Church of Christ, were distinct and immiscible. They held that the sword of the Temporal Power must never, under any circumstances, aid the sword of the Spirit. They held that the formation of churches in any State must be a process of the purest spontaneity. They held that, while every person in a civilized State is a subject of that State in all matters of civil order, it ought to be at the option of that person, and of those with whom he or she might voluntarily consort, to determine whether he or she should superadd to this general character of subject the farther character of being a Christian and a member of some particular church. The churches formed spontaneously in any State were to be self-subsisting associations of like-minded units, believing and worshiping, arid inflicting spiritual censures among themselves, without State-interference; and Christianity was to propagate itself throughout the world by its own spiritual might and the missionary zeal of apostolic individuals. [Footnote: Among my authorities for this sketch of the history of the idea of Toleration as far as 1616, I ought to mention Hanbury's _Historical Memorials relating to the Independents_, Vol. I., and more particularly Chapters XIII,--XV.; Fletcher's _History of Independency in England_ (1848), Vol. III., Chapters I. and II.; and the Reprint of Old Tracts on _Liberty of Conscience_ by the Hanserd Knollys (Baptist) Society, with the Introductory Notices there prefixed to Busher's tract and Murton's by Mr. Edward Bean Underhill.] From 1616 onwards this Baptist form of the idea of Liberty of Conscience had been slumbering somewhere in the English heart. Even through the dreadful time of the Laudian terrorism it might be possible for research to discover half-stifled expressions of it. Other and less extreme forms of the Toleration idea, however, were making themselves heard. Holland had worked out the speculation, or was working it out, through the struggle of her own Arminians for equal rights with the prevailing Calvinists; and it was the singular honour of that country to have, at all events, been the first in Europe to exhibit something like a practical solution of the problem, by the refuge and freedom of worship it afforded to the religious outcasts of other nations. Then among the so-called Latitudinarian Divines of the Church of England--Hales, Chillingworth, and their associates--there is evidence of the growth, even while their friend Laud was in power, of an idea or sentiment of Toleration which might have made that Prelate pause and wonder. Not, of course, the Baptist idea; but one which might have had a greater chance practically in the then existing conditions of English life. Might there not be a Toleration _with_ an Established or State Church? While it might be the duty of the civil magistrate, or at least a State- convenience, to set up one Church as the Church of the nation, and so to afford to all the subjects the means of instruction in that theology and of participation in that worship which the State thought the best, might not State-interference with religion stop there, and might not those who refused to conform be permitted to hold their conventicles freely outside the Established Church, and to believe and worship in their own way? Some such idea of Toleration, but still with perplexing limitations as to the _amount_ of deviation that should be tolerated, was, I believe, the idea that had dawned on the minds of men like the loveable Hales and the hardy Chillingworth. It is much the sort of Toleration that accredits itself to the average British mind yet. But how greatly the history of the Church of England might have been altered had such a Toleration been then adopted by the Church itself! As it was, it remained the half- uttered _irenicon_ of a few speculative spirits. Nowhere on earth prior to 1640, unless it were in Holland, was Toleration in any effective form whatsoever anything more than the dream of a few poor persecuted sectaries or deep private thinkers. Less even than in the Church of England is there a trace of the idea in the Scottish Presbyterianism that had then re-established itself, or in the English Presbyterianism that longed to establish itself. Scottish Presbyterianism might indeed plead, and it did plead, that it was so satisfactory a system, kept the souls of its subjects in such a strong grip, and yet without needing to resort, except in extreme cases, to any very penal procedure, that wherever _it_ existed Toleration would be unnecessary, inasmuch as there would be preciously little error to tolerate. Personally, I believe, Henderson was as moderate and tolerant a man as any British ecclesiastic of his time. In no Church where he bore rule could there, by possibility, have been any approach to the tetchy repressiveness, or the callous indifference to suffering for the sake of conscience, that characterized the English Church-rule of Laud. But Henderson, though the best of the Presbyterians, was still, _par excellence,_ a Presbyterian; and therefore the Toleration that lay in his disposition had not translated itself into a theoretical principle. As for the English Presbyterians, what _they_ wanted was toleration for themselves, or the liberty of being in the English Church, or in England out of the Church, without conforming; or, if some of them went farther, what _they_ wanted was the substitution of Presbytery for Prelacy as the system established with the right to be intolerant. Finally, even in the New England colonies, where Congregationalism was the rule, there were not only spiritual censures and excommunications of heretics, but whippings, banishments, and other punishments of them, by the civil power. [Footnote: Hallam's account of the rise and progress of the Toleration idea in England (Hist, of Europe, 6th ed. II. 442, &c.) is very unsatisfactory. He actually makes Jeremy Taylor's "Liberty of Prophesying" (1647), the first substantial assertion of Liberty of Conscience in England--an injustice to a score or two of preceding champions of it, and to one or two entire corporate denominations.] And so we arrive at 1640. Then, immediately after the meeting of the Long Parliament, Toleration rushed into the air. Everywhere the word "Toleration" was heard, and with all varieties of meanings. A certain boom of the general principle runs through Milton's Anti-Episcopal pamphlets, and through other pamphlets on the same side. But this is not all. The principle was expressly argued in certain pamphlets set forth in the interest of the Independents and the Sectaries generally, and it was argued so well that the Presbyterians caught the alarm, foresaw the coming battle between them and the Independents on this subject of Toleration, and declared themselves Anti-Tolerationists by anticipation. It was in May 1641, for example, that Henry Burton published his anonymous pamphlet called _The Protestation Protested_ (Vol. II. 591-2). The main purpose of the pamphlet was to propound Independency in its extreme Brownist form, as refusing any National or State Church whatever; but, on the supposition that this theory was too much in advance of the opinion of the time, and that some National Church must inevitably be set up, a toleration of dissent from that Church was prayed for. "The Parliament now being about a Reformation," wrote Burton, "what government shall be set up in this National Church, the Lord strengthen and direct the Parliament in so great and glorious a work. But let it be what it will, so as still a due respect be paid to those congregations and churches which desire an exemption, and liberty of enjoying Christ's ordinances in such purity as a National Church is not capable of." This is the Toleration principle as it had been transmitted among the Independents generally, or perhaps it is an advance on that. Such as it was, however, Burton's plea for Toleration roused vehement opposition. It was attacked ferociously, as we saw, by an anonymous Episcopal antagonist, believed to be Bishop Hall (Vol. II. p. 593). It was attacked also by Presbyterians, and notably by their champion, Mr. Thomas Edwards, in his maiden pamphlet called "_Reasons against the Independent Government of particular Congregations_" (Vol. II. p. 594). But Edwards did not go unpunished. His pamphlet drew upon him that thrashing from the lady-Brownist, Katharine Chidley, which the reader may remember (Vol. II. p. 595). This brave old lady's idea of Toleration outwent even Burton's, and corresponded more with that absolute idea of Toleration which had been worked out among the Baptists. For example, Edwards having upbraided the Independents with the fact that their Toleration principle had broken down even in their own Paradise of New England, what is Mrs. Chidley's answer? "If they have banished any out of their Patents that were neither disturbers of the peace of the land, nor the worship practised in the land, I am persuaded it was their weakness, and I hope they will never attempt to do the like." Clearly, from whomsoever in 1641 the Parliament and the people of England heard a stinted doctrine of Toleration, they heard the full doctrine from Mrs. Chidley. The Parliament, however, was very slow to be convinced. Petitions of Independent congregations for toleration to themselves were coolly received and neglected; the Presbyterians more and more saw the importance of making Anti-Toleration their rallying dogma; more and more the call to be wary against this insidious notion of Toleration rang through the pulpits of England and Scotland. [Footnote: Hanbury's _Historical Memorials relating to the Independents_, Vol. II. pp. 68-ll7; where ample extracts from the pamphlets mentioned in this paragraph are given. Fletcher gives a good selection of them in his _History of Independency_, Vol. III. Chap. VI.] The debates in 1643 and 1644 between the five Independent or Dissenting Brethren of the Westminster Assembly and the Presbyterian majority of the Assembly brought on a new stage of the Toleration controversy. A notion which might be scorned or ridiculed while it was lurking in Anabaptist conventicles, or ventilated by a she-Brownist like Mrs. Chidley, or by poor old Mr. Burton of Friday Street, could compel a hearing when maintained by men so respectable as Messrs. Goodwin, Burroughs, Bridge, Simpson, and Nye, whom the Parliament itself had sent into the Assembly. The demand for Toleration which these men addressed to the Parliament in their famous _Apologetical Narration_ of January 1643-4 gave sudden dignity and precision to what till then had been vulgar and vague. It put the question in this form, "What amount of Nonconformity is to be allowed in the new Presbyterian Church which is to be the National Church of England?"; and it distinctly intimated that on the answer to this question it would depend whether the Apologists and their adherents could remain in England or should be driven again into exile. Care must be taken, however, not to credit the Apologists at this period with any notion of absolute or universal Toleration. They were far behind Mrs. Chidley or the old Baptists in their views. They were as yet but learners in the school of Toleration. Indulgence for _themselves_ "in some lesser differences," and perhaps also for some of the more reputable of the other sects in _their_ different "lesser differences," was the sum of their published demand. They too, no less than the Presbyterians, professed disgust at the extravagances of the Sectaries. It was not so much, therefore, the Toleration expressly claimed by the Five Dissenting Brethren for themselves, as the larger Toleration to which it would inevitably lead, that the Presbyterians continued to oppose and denounce. As far as the Five Brethren and other such respectable Dissentients were concerned, the Presbyterians would have stretched a point. They would have made arrangements. They would have patted the Five Dissenting Brethren on the back, and said, "It shall be made easy for _you_; we will yield all the accommodation _you_ can possibly need; only don't call it Toleration." The Dissenting Brethren were honest enough and clear-headed enough not to be content with this personal compliment. Nor, in fact, could the policy have been successful. For there were now champions of the larger Toleration with voices that resounded through the land and were heard over those of the Five Apologists. Precisely that middle of the year 1644 at which we have stopped in our narrative was the time when the principle of absolute Liberty of Conscience was proclaimed, for the benefit of all opinions whatsoever, in tones that could never more be silenced. About the middle of 1644 there appeared in London at least three pamphlets or books in the same strain. One of these, "_The Compassionate Samaritan unbinding the Conscience_," need be remembered by its name only; but the other two must be associated with their authors. One bore the striking title "_The Bloudy Tenent_ [i. e. _Bloody Tenet] of Persecution for cause of Conscience, discussed in a Conference between Truth and Peace_," (pp. 247); the other bore, in its first edition, the simple title, "_M. S. to A.S._," and, in its second edition, in the same year, this fuller title "_A Reply of Two of the Brethren to A.S., &c.; with a Plea for Liberty of Conscience for the Apologists' Church-way, against the Cavils of the said A. S_." Though both were anonymous, the authors were known at the time. The author of the first was that Americanized Welshman, ROGER WILLIAMS, whose strange previous career, from his first arrival in New England in 1631, on to his settlement among the Narraganset Bay Indians in 1638, and his subsequent vagaries of opinion and of action, has already been sketched (Vol. II. 560-563, and 600-602). He had been over in England, it will be remembered, since June 1643, in the capacity of envoy or commissioner from the Rhode Island people, to obtain a charter for erecting Rhode Island and the adjacent Providence Plantation into a distinct and independent colony. He had been going about England a good deal, but had been mostly in London, in the society of the younger Vane, and in frequent contact with other leading men in Parliament and in the Westminster Assembly. The _Bloody Tenent_ was an expression, in printed form, of opinions he had been ventilating frankly enough in conversation, and was intended as a parting-gift to England before his return to America. The title must have at once attracted attention to it and given it an advantage over the other tract. The author of that other tract was our other well-known friend Mr. JOHN GOODWIN, Vicar of St. Stephen's, Coleman Street, whom the Presbyterians had put in their black books as an Arminian, Socinian, and what not (Vol. II. 582-584). Goodwill's piece may have been out first, for it is heard of as in circulation in May 1644, while Williams's book is not heard of, I think, till June or July. But, on all grounds, Williams deserves the priority. [Footnote: For statements in this paragraph authorities are-- _Apologetic Narration_ (1644); Hanbury's Historical Memorials, II. 341 _et seq._; Reprint of _The Bloody Tenent_ by the Hanserd Knollys Society (1848), with Mr. Underhill's "Biographical Introduction," pp. xxiii.-iv.; Jackson's _Life of John Goodwin_, p. 114 _et seq._; Baillie's Letters, II. 180,181, and 211, 212, and Commons Journals, Aug. 9, 1644.] Well may the Americans be proud of Roger Williams. His _Bloody Tenent_ is of a piece with all his previous career. It is a rapid, hurried book, written, as it tells us, during the author's stay in England, "in change of rooms and corners, yea sometimes in variety of strange houses, sometimes in the fields in the midst of travel." One particularly notes the frequent "&c." in its sentences, as if much crowded on the writer's mind from moment to moment which he could indicate only by a contraction. But there is dash in the book, the keenest earnestness and evidence of a mind made up, and every now and then a mystic softness and richness of pity, yearning towards a voluptuous imagery like that of the Song of Solomon. The plan is straggling. First there is a list of twelve positions which the book proves, or heads under which its contents may be distributed. Then there is an address or dedication to "the Right Honourable Both Houses of the High Court of Parliament," followed by a separate address "To every Courteous Reader." Then there comes a copy of" Scriptures and Reasons written long since by a Witness of Jesus Christ, close prisoner in Newgate, against Persecution in cause of Conscience"--in fact, an extract from a tract on Liberty of Conscience by Murton, or some other London Baptist, in 1620. A copy of those Scriptures and Reasons against Persecution had, it seems, been submitted in 1635 to Mr. Cotton of Boston for his consideration; and Mr. Cotton had drawn up a Reply, defending from Scripture, past universal practice, and the authority of Calvin, Beza, and others of the Reformers, the right of the civil magistrate to prosecute and punish religious error. This Reply of Cotton's in favour of persecution is printed at length by Williams; and the first part of the real body of his own book consists of a Dialogue between Truth and Peace over the doctrine which so respectable a New England minister had thus espoused. When this Dialogue is over; there ensues a second Dialogue of Truth and Peace over another New England document in which the same "bloody tenet" of persecution had been defended-to wit a certain "Model of Church and Civil Power" drawn up by some New England ministers in concert, and in which Mr. Cotton had had a hand, though Mr. Richard Mather appears to have been the chief author. [Footnote: Some particulars in this description of the treatise are from Mr. Underhill's Introduction to the Hanserd Knolly's Society's Reprint of it, but the description in the main is from the _Bloody Treatment_ itself.] The texture of Williams's treatise, it will be thus seen, is loose and composite. But a singular unity of purpose and spirit runs through it. Here is the opening of the first Dialogue:-- _Truth_. In what dark corner of the world, sweet Peace, are we two met? How hath this present evil world banished me from all the coasts and corners of it! And how hath the righteous God in judgment taken thee from the earth: Rev. vi. 4. _Peace_. It is lamentably true, blessed Truth: the foundations of the world have long been out of course; the gates of Earth and Hell have conspired together to intercept our joyful meeting and our holy kisses. With what a wearied, tired wing have I flown over nations, kingdoms, cities, towns, to find out precious Truth! _Truth_. The like inquiries in my flights and travels have I made for Peace, and still am told she hath left the Earth and fled to Heaven. _Peace_. Dear Truth, what is the Earth but a dungeon of darkness, where Truth is not? _Truth_. And what is the Peace thereof but a fleeting dream, thine ape and counterfeit? _Peace_. Oh! where is the promise of the God of Heaven, that Righteousness and Peace shall kiss each other? _Truth_. Patience, sweet Peace! These Heavens and Earth are growing old, and shall be changed like a garment: Psalm cii. They shall melt away, and be burnt up with all the works that are therein; and the Most High Eternal Creator shall gloriously create new Heavens and new Earth, wherein dwells righteousness: 2 Pet. iii. Our kisses then shall have their endless date of pure and sweetest joys. Till then both thou and I must hope, and wait, and bear the fury of the Dragon's wrath, whose monstrous lies and furies shall with himself be cast into the lake of fire, the second death: Rev. xx. _Peace_. Most precious Truth, thou knowest we are both pursued and laid for. Mine heart is full of sighs, mine eyes with tears. Where can I better vent my full oppressed bosom than into thine, whose faithful lips may for these few hours revive my drooping, wandering spirits, and here begin to wipe tears from mine eyes, and the eyes of my dearest children. _Truth_. Sweet daughter of the God of peace, begin. And so Truth and Peace hold their long discourse, evolving very much that doctrine of the absolute Liberty of Conscience, as derivable from, or radically identical with, the idea of the utter distinctness of the Church of Christ from the world or civil society, which had been propounded first by the Brownists and Baptists, and had come down as a tradition from them. But it is evolved by Williams more boldly and passionately than by any before him. There is a fine union throughout of warmth of personal Christian feeling with intellectual resoluteness in accepting every possible consequence of his main principle. Here are a few phrases from the marginal summaries which give the substance of the Dialogue, page after page:--"The Church and civil State confusedly made all one"; "The civil magistrates bound to preserve the bodies of their subjects, and not to destroy them for conscience sake"; "The civil sword may make a nation of hypocrites and anti-Christians, but not one Christian"; "Evil is always evil, yet permission of it may in case be good"; "Christ Jesus the deepest politician that ever was, and yet he commands a toleration of anti-Christians"; "Seducing teachers, either Pagan, Jewish, Turkish, or anti-Christian, may yet be obedient subjects to the civil laws"; "Christ's lilies may flourish in his Church, notwithstanding the abundance of weeds in the world permitted"; "The absolute sufficiency of the sword of the Spirit"; "A National Church not instituted by Christ Jesus"; "The civil commonweal and the spiritual commonweal, the Church, not inconsistent, though independent the one on the other"; "Forcing of men to godliness or God's worship the greatest cause of breach of civil peace"; "Master of a family under the Gospel not charged to force all under him from their consciences to his"; "Few magistrates, few men, spiritually and Christianly good: yet divers sorts of goodness, natural, artificial, civil, &c."; "Persons may with less sin be forced to marry whom they cannot love than to worship where they cannot believe"; "Christ Jesus never appointed a maintenance of ministers from the unconverted and unbelieving: [but] they that compel men to hear compel men also to pay for their hearing and conversion"; "The civil power owes _three_ things to the true Church of Christ--(l) Approbation, (2) Submission [i.e. interpreted in the text to be personal submission of the civil magistrate to church-membership, if he himself believes], (3) Protection"; "The civil magistrate owes _two_ things to false worshippers--(1) Permission, (2) Protection."--Whoever has read this string of phrases possesses the marrow of Williams's treatise. At the end of it there is an interesting discussion of the question whether only church-members, or "godly persons in a particular church-estate," ought to be eligible to be magistrates. To Williams, who was a pure democrat in politics, and was founding the new State of Rhode Island on the basis of the equal suffrages of all the colonists, this was an important practical question. He decides it with great good sense, and clearly in the negative. Without denying that the appointment of godly persons to civil offices was a thing to be prayed for, and, wherever possible, peaceably endeavoured, he points out that the principle that only Christian persons should be entrusted with civil rule is practically preposterous. Five-sixths of the world had never heard of Christ, and yet there were lawful enough civil states in those parts of the world. Then, in a Christian monarchy, what a convulsion, what a throwing away of the benefits of hereditary succession, if it had to be inquired, whenever the throne became vacant, whether the next heir was of the right sort religiously. Finally, in any Christian colony or town, would it not be a turning of everything upside down, and a premium upon hypocrisy, to make church-membership a necessary qualification for magistracy, and so, when a magistrate lapsed into what was thought religious error, and had to be excommunicated by his church, to have to turn him out of his civil office also? Williams, it is to be remembered, had held these views while he was yet only a Congregationalist generally, and before he had become a Baptist. Though he found them among the Baptists, therefore, he may be said to have recovered them for Independency at large, and to have been the first to impregnate modern "Independency" with them through and through. Nay, as he had himself gone out of the camp of the mere Baptist Congregationalists when he published his treatise,--as he had begun to question whether there was any true Visible Church in the world at all, any perfect pastorate in any nation, anything else under the sun of a Christian kind than a chance-medley of various preaching and effort into which God might sooner or later send new shafts of light and direction from heaven--in the view of all this, Williams has to be regarded as the father of a speculation that cannot be contained within the name of Independency, even at its broadest. If we were forced to adopt a modern designation for him, we should call him. the father of all that, since his time, has figured, anywhere in Great Britain, or in the United States, or in the British Colonies, under the name of _Voluntaryism_. This involves a restriction on the one hand. Since his time, there has been an abundance of speculation in the world as to the true duties and limits of the power of a State even in civil matters; and the prevailing effect of these speculations has been to hand over more and more of the care of human well-being and human destinies, in everything whatsoever, to the liberty of individuals, the pressure of their competing desires, and their powers of voluntary association, and so to reduce the function of the magistrate or any power of corporate rule to a thing becoming small by degrees and beautifully less. Of late, this tendency, victorious already in many matters, has tried to assert itself in the question of Education. It has been maintained that there should be no attention on the part of the State to the education of the citizens, but that, in the matter of learning to read and write and of all farther learning or mental training, the individuals horn into a community should be left to their hereditary chances, the discretion or kindness of those about them, and their own power of gradually finding out what they need, and buying it or begging it. Now with this direction of modern speculation the intentions of Roger Williams had nothing to do. He was a democrat in politics, and, as such, he might have gone on to new definitions of what, in secular matters, should be left to the individual, and what should be still regulated by the majority; but what these definitions would have been must be left to inference from the records of his farther political life in Rhode Island. Respecting Schools and Universities he did, indeed, hold that they were not to be regarded as the nurseries of a clergy, the appendages of a Church, or the depositaries and supports of any religious creed. "For any depending of the Church of Christ on such schools," he wrote, "I find not a tittle in the Testament of Christ Jesus." He would certainly, therefore, have been for no expenditure of public money on the _religious_ education of the young, and he would have been for the extraction of all theological teaching out of existing schools and universities. But he "honoured schools," he says," for tongues and arts," and I have found no trace in him of a notion that State support of schools and universities for such secular learning is illegitimate. His _Voluntaryism_, so far as it was declared, or, I believe, intended, was wholly Voluntaryism in the matter of Church and Religion. In that sphere, however, his Voluntaryism was absolute, and went as far as anything calling itself Voluntaryism that has since been heard of in the English- speaking world. Williams's _Bloody Tenent_, as I have said, was his parting gift to the English nation before his return to America. It was out in June or July 1644; and in September of the same year Williams, after a stay of about fifteen months in and near London, was on his way back to New England. He had succeeded in the immediate object of his mission. For, during his stay in England, the management of the Colonies, till then in the hands of Commissioners under the Crown, was transferred (Nov. 2, 1643) to a Parliamentary Commission of Lords and Commoners, at the head of which was the Earl of Warwick as Lord High Admiral, and among the members of which were Lord Saye and Sele, Pym, the younger Vane, Sir Arthur Haselrig, and Oliver Cromwell. Before such Commissioners, with Vane as his personal friend. Williams had had little difficulty in making out his case; and he had obtained from them a Patent, dated March 14, 1643-4, associating "the towns of Providence, Portsmouth, and Newport," into one body-politic by the name of "the Incorporation of Providence Plantations in Narraganset Bay in New England." This Patent gave a _carte blanche_ to the colonists to settle their own form of government by voluntary consent, or vote, among themselves; and, having it in his pocket, Williams might hope, on his return to America, to set up, in the polity of Rhode Island and its adjacencies, such an example of complete civil democracy combined with absolute religious individualism as the world had never yet seen. The _Bloody Tenent_ might be left in England as an exposition of his theory in the sphere of Religion until this practical Transatlantic example of it should be ready! He had shrewdly taken care, however, to have the Patent in his pocket before issuing the _Bloody Tenent_. Had that book been out first, he might have had some difficulty in obtaining the Patent even from such Commissioners for the Colonies as he had to deal with. Possibly, however, they granted it with full knowledge of Williams, and were willing, through him, to try a bolder experiment in the American wilds than it was possible to promote or to announce in England. [Footnote: Palfrey's New England, I. 633-4, and II. 215; and Gammell's Life of Williams, 119, 120.] While we have been so long with Roger Williams, his colleague in the Toleration heresy, John Goodwill, has been waiting. He was fifty-one years of age, or six or seven years older than Williams. Rather late in life, he had begun to find himself a much-abused man in London. For, though he had sided with the Parliamentarians zealously from the first, and had even, it appears, taken the Covenant, [Footnote: That Goodwin had taken the Covenant appears from words of his own in a tract of 1646 quoted in Fletcher's Hist, of Independency, IV. 47.] his theology was thought to be lax, [Footnote: The suspicion of Goodwin's Socinianism was as early as November 1613, when he got into trouble with the Assembly on that and other grounds (see Baillie's Letters, II. III, and Lightfoot's Notes, Nov. 8 and 9, 1643).] and the interpretation he was putting on the Covenant was not the common one. He thought that the oath to seek "reformation of religion" and to "endeavour to bring the Church of God in the three kingdoms to the nearest conjunction and uniformity," did not necessarily imply acceptance of the Presbyterian system which the Assembly were bent upon bringing in. Therefore, when the Five Dissenting Brethren of the Assembly appealed to Parliament in their _Apologetical Narration_, they found a champion outside in Goodwin. His championship took the form of that answer to "A. S." (_i.e._ the Scotsman, Adam Steuart, author of the first printed attack on the _Apologetic Narration_) which we have mentioned as appearing with the brief title _M. S. to A. S._, and again, in a second edition, with the fuller title _A Reply of Two of the Brethren to A. S., &c.; with A Plea for Liberty of Conscience, &c_. As the second title implies, Goodwill had associates in the work; but it was principally his, and the part on Toleration wholly his. So far as the tract concerns itself with the question between Presbytery and Congregationalism, Goodwin avows himself a Congregationalist. And yet he was not at one in all points with the five Assembly-men. "I know I am looked upon," he afterwards wrote, "by reason partly of my writings, partly of my practice, as a man very deeply engaged for the Independents' cause against Presbytery. But the truth is, I am neither so whole for the former, nor yet against the latter, as I am, I believe, generally voted in the thoughts of men to be." [Footnote: Quoted, from the Preface to Goodwin's _Anapologesiastes Anapologias_, by Fletcher, IV. 46.] This was written in 1616; but even in 1644 he fought so much for his own hand that the Independents of the Assembly may have but half liked his partnership. His Toleration doctrine, at all events, though uttered in their behalf, was too strong doctrine even for them. Hear what Baillie writes to his friend Spang, at Campvere, in Holland, just after the appearance of Goodwin's tract for the Independents: "_M.S. against A.S._, is John Goodwin of Coleman Street: he names you expressly, and professes to censure the letter of Zeeland. He is a bitter enemy to Presbytery, and is openly for a full liberty of conscience of all sects, even Turks, Jews, Papists, and all to be more openly tolerate than with you [_i.e._ than even in Holland]." [Footnote: Baillie, II. 180, 181. Goodwin's mention of Spang, referred to by Baillie, is as follows:-- "There is a Scottish Church, of which one Spang is a very busy agent, at Trevere [Campvere]... whence the Letter [_i.e._ the Zeeland Letter in favour of Presbytery] came."] Baillie's representation of Goodwin's Toleration doctrine is fair enough. It is not so deep, so exceptionless, and so transcendentally reasoned as Roger Williams's; and indeed there was none of the sap and mystic richness of nature in Goodwin that we find in Williams, but chiefly clear courage, and strong cool sense. For most practical purposes, however, Goodwin's Toleration was thorough. He was for tolerating not merely the orthodox Congregationalists and such more heterodox sects as might be thought respectable, but all religions, sects, and schisms whatsoever, if only the professors of them were otherwise peaceable in the State. Not, of course, that they were not to be reasoned with and proved false publicly; or that heretics in congregations were not to be admonished, and, if obdurate, excommunicated; or that a whole church tainted with a great heresy ought not to be put under a ban by all other churches, and communion with it renounced. All this was assumed in the theory of Church-Independency which was common to Goodwin and Williams. True, Williams, now that he had passed beyond the Baptists and saw no true Church anywhere on earth, must have begun to doubt also the efficacy and validity of even spiritual censures, as exercised by the so-called churches, to regard as a mere agency of troublesome moonshine that incessant watchfulness of each other's errors on which Independency relied, and so to luxuriate in a mood of large charity, sighing over all, and hoping more from prayer and longing and pious well-doing all round than from censures and disputations. To Goodwin, on the other hand, troubled with no such visionary ideas, and fully convinced that a very good model of a Church had been set up in Coleman Street, the right and efficacy of disputation against error, and of ministerial vigilance against error in particular churches, seemed more important, or at least more worth insisting on in a public plea for Toleration. Williams and Goodwill did not differ theoretically, but only practically, over this item in the exposition of their doctrine. The sole difference, of theoretical import, was that Goodwin, in dwelling on the duty of disputation by Christian ministers against false religions and dangerous opinions in society round about them, and of vigilance against minor heresies in their own congregations, talked vaguely of a right on the part of the civil magistrate to admonish ministers in this respect should they be negligent or forgetful of their duty. This, as we know, would have grated on Williams. Perhaps, however, Goodwin, even here, was only throwing a sop to Cerberus. At all events, he comes out finally a thorough Tolerationist. Whatever minister or magistrate may do towards confuting and diminishing error, there is a point at which they must both stop. There is not to be a suppression of false religions, sects and schisms, by fining, imprisoning, disfranchising, banishment, death, or any civil punishment whatsoever; and, when it comes to that, they are all to be tolerated. [Footnote: Jackson's Life of Goodwin. pp. 110, 117; Hanbury's Memorials, II. 341- 365.] We are now prepared to classify the various forms in which the Toleration Doctrine was urged on the English mind in the year 1644. There were three grades of the doctrine:-- I. _Absolute Liberty of Conscience, and No National Church, or State- interference with Religion, of any kind whatsoever._ This was, in fact, more than Toleration, and Toleration is hardly the fit name for it. The advocates of this idea were Roger Williams, perhaps the Baptists generally, also Burton in a certain way; but, above all, Roger Williams. He did not think there could be Liberty of Conscience, in the perfect and absolute sense, where there was a National Church, even if free dissent were allowed from that Church. For, by the establishment of a Church, he held, a substantial worldly premium was put on certain religious beliefs, and an advantage conferred on a portion of the community at the expense of all; and to be compelled to pay for, or even to acknowledge politically, a Church which one did not approve, was in itself inconsistent with true Liberty of Conscience, whatever freedom of nonconformity might be left to individuals. Accordingly, if Roger Williams, at that crisis, had been a statesman of England, instead of a mere commissioner from an infant colony in America, his advice would have been in this strain:--"It is agreed that the Episcopal or Prelatic Church, called hitherto the Reformed Church of England, is no longer to exist. That is settled; and the question is, What Church Reformation shall there now be? My answer is sweeping and simple. Let there be no National Church, no Church of England, at all, of any kind or form whatsoever. Let England henceforth be a civil State only, in which Christianity shall take care of itself, and all forms of Christianity and all other religions shall have equal rights to protection by the police. Confiscate for the use of the State all the existing revenues of the defunct Church and its belongings, giving such compensation for life- interests therein as may seem reasonable; but create no new Church, nor stump of a Church, round which new interests may gather. Do not even implicate the State so far in the future of Religion as to indicate to the subjects any form of Church as esteemed the best, or any range of option among Churches as presumably the safest. Leave the formation and the sustentation of Christ's Church in the English realm, and everywhere else, entirely to the unseen power of the Spirit, and the free action of those whom the Spirit may make its instruments."--For nothing like this was the Long Parliament, or any other legislature in the world, then prepared; and Williams knew it. But he had faith in the future of his speculation. In America, whither he was to carry it back, he hoped to be able to exhibit it in practice on a small scale in the new colony he was founding; and there could be no harm, he thought, in leaving the leaven to ferment in the denser society of England. II. _Unlimited Toleration round an Established National Church._ So we may express a form of Tolerationism in which there was a concurrence of persons, and perhaps of bodies of persons, who yet differed from each other in the motives for their concurrence. Williams, of course, accepted this form of Tolerationism, as next best to his own absolute Voluntaryism, Individualism, and universal Liberty of Conscience. "If there is to be in England a National or State Church of some kind (which I think wrong, and so wrong that I will take no part in the debate what kind of National Church would be best, whether a Prelatic, Presbyterian, or any other), at least, when you have set up such a Church, let there be a perfect toleration for all subjects of the realm round about that Church, no compulsion on any of them to belong to that Church, no pains and penalties for any profession of belief or disbelief, or any form of worship or no-worship, out of that Church." These are not Williams's own words, but they exactly express his meaning; and, in fact, he intended his _Bloody Tenent_ to be a plea for toleration in this practical sense, if it should fail in winning people to his higher and more peculiar idea of real Liberty of Conscience. And a most eloquent plea it was. He insists again and again on the necessity that there should be no limits to the toleration of Religious Difference in a state. He argues expressly that not only orthodox or slightly heterodox dissenters should have the benefit of such toleration, but all kinds of dissentients without exception, Papists, Jews, Mohammedans, Pagans, or Infidels. He knew what a hard battle lie was fighting. "I confess I have little hope," he said, "till those flames are over, that this discourse against the doctrine of persecution for cause of conscience should pass current, I say not amongst the wolves and lions, but even amongst the sheep of Christ themselves. Yet, _liberavi animam meam_: I have not hid within my breast my soul's belief." He trusted, doubtless, that his treatise might have some effect, if not for its highest purpose, at least as a practical plea for unlimited toleration round the new National Church of England that was to be. And here most of the Baptists were in the same predicament with Williams. They would have preferred no National Church at all; but, as there was to be a National Church, they wanted the amplest toleration round it. Burton also was pretty nearly in the same category. He too doubted the lawfulness of a State Church of any kind, but was earnest that, if such must be established, it should not be coercive. He did not formally demand unlimited toleration, and indeed conceded something in words to the effect that in cases of "known heresy, or blasphemy, or idolatry," offenders would have to be "obnoxious to the Civil Power;" but I rather think that the concession was prudential, and that his heart did not go with it. I will retain him therefore among the Unlimited Tolerationists. Far outshining him in this class, however, was John Goodwin.--Well, but were the advocates of unlimited toleration in connexion with an Established Church exclusively persons who would have prevented the formation of such a Church if they could, or doubted its righteousness and propriety, and who only insisted on Toleration _with_ such a Church as a practical necessity to which they were driven? Were there no theorists in that time who positively desired an Established Church on its own account, and for the general good of the community, but who had worked out the conclusion that such a Church might consist, and ought to consist, with universal Religious Toleration, or the freest liberty of Nonconformity and Dissent? In view of the fact that this is the theory of Establishments evolved by some of the best ecclesiastical spirits in our own later times, the question is interesting. My researches do not enable me to give a very precise answer to it applicable to the exact year 1644. If there were such theorists, however, they were, I should say, among those wiser and younger sons of the Episcopal Church of England who would fain have preserved that Episcopal Church, but had privately made up their minds that Laud's basis for that Church was untenable, and that a very different basis must be substituted. One thinks of Chillingworth, Hales, and the rest of that "Latitudinarian" brotherhood; one thinks of Jeremy Taylor; one thinks of the candid Fuller; one thinks even of the Calvinistic Usher. Chillingworth had died at Chichester, Jan. 30, 1643-4, at the age of forty-one, an avowed Royalist, and indeed a Royalist prisoner-at-war, tended on his death-bed by Presbyterians. [Footnote: Wood's Ath. III. 93, 94; and Life of Chillingworth prefixed to the Oxford edition of his Works.] Whatever hardy cogitations had been in his mind, pointing to a revived Episcopal Church of England with an ample toleration within it and round about it, had gone prematurely to the grave. The others were still alive, also pronounced Royalists, and acting or suffering more or less on that side; and whatever thoughts they had in the direction under notice were irrelevant to their immediate duty and opportunities, and had to wait for utterance at a more convenient season. [Footnote: Yet there _had_ been one recent utterance of Hales relating to the idea of Toleration. It was in the form of _A Tract concerning Schism and Schismatics_, which he had prepared in 1636, partly for the use of his friend Chillingworth then engaged on his "Religion of Protestants," but which, in deference to Laud's private objections and remonstrances, he had kept unpublished. In 1642, when Laud was in prison and the state of things wholly changed, the Tract was brought out at the Oxford University Press. It is vague in its conception and expression; but that it is decidedly in favour of toleration and free inquiry will appear from the opening sentences: "Heresy and Schism, as they are in common use, are two theological [Greek: Mosmos], or scarecrows, which they who uphold a party in religion use to fright away such as, making inquiry into it, are ready to relinquish and oppose it if it appear either erroneous or suspicious. For, as Plutarch reports of a painter who, having unskilfully painted a cock, chased away all cocks and hens, that so the imperfection of his art might not appear by comparison with nature, so men, willing for ends to admit of no fancy but their own, endeavour to hinder an inquiry into it, by way of comparison of somewhat with it, peradventure truer, that so the deformity of their own might not appear." Wood's Ath. III. 413, 414, and Tract itself with letter to Laud, Vol. I. pp. 114-144 of "The Works of the ever memorable Mr. John Hales," Glasgow, 1765.] On the whole, however, I judge that any such thoughts in their minds (even in Jeremy Taylor's as yet) fell considerably short of the Unlimited Toleration advocated by Williams and John Goodwin, and, if they could have been ascertained and measured, would have referred their owners rather to the next category than to the present. III. _A Limited Toleration round an Established National Church._ This would probably have sufficed the thoughtful Anglicans of whom we have just been speaking. Their ideal probably was a revived Episcopal Church of England, liberally constituted within itself, and with a toleration of all respectable forms of Dissent round about itself, but still with a right reserved for the Civil Power of preventing and punishing gross errors and schisms. We are more concerned, however, with another set of Limited Tolerationists, then much more conspicuous in England. They were those who had given up all thoughts of the retention of a Prelatic Establishment, and who indeed regarded the deliverance of England from such an Establishment as the noblest accomplished fact of the time. What they were anxious about was the nature of the new National Church, if any, that was to be substituted, and especially the degree of conformity to that Church that was to be required. The chief representatives of this state of feeling in its more moderate form were the Five Independent Divines of the Assembly, Messrs. Thomas Goodwin, Bridge, Nye, Simpson, and Burroughs. They were not, I think, distinctly adverse to a National Church on theoretical grounds, as Williams and Burton were; and probably what they would have liked best would have been a National Church on the Congregationalist principle, like that of New England. For, though Congregationalism and a National Establishment of Religion may seem radically a contradiction in terms, yet in fact the case had not been quite so in America. There may be a State Church without public endowments, or rather there may be endowments and privileges that are not pecuniary. The New England Church, though consisting of a few scores of congregations, mutually independent, self- supporting, and scattered stragglingly over an extensive territory, was really a kind of State Church collectively, inasmuch as the State required, by rule or by custom, membership of some congregation as a qualification for suffrage and office, and also kept some watch and control over the congregations, so as to be sure that none were formed of a very heretical kind, and that none already formed lapsed into decided heresy. How had Mr. Cotton of Boston, the great light of the New England Church, expounded its principle in respect of the power of the civil magistrate in matters of Religion? "We readily grant you," he had written, "liberty of conscience is to be granted to men that fear God indeed, as knowing they will not persist in heresy or turbulent schism when they are convinced in conscience of the sinfulness thereof. But the question is whether an heretic, after once or twice admonition, and so after conviction, or any other scandalous and heinous offender, may be tolerated, either in the Church without excommunication, or in the Commonwealth without such punishment as may preserve others from dangerous and damnable infection." [Footnote: From Cotton's Answer to the old Tract of "Scriptures and Reasons against Persecution" (see _antè_, p. 114). The Answer is printed by Williams in his _Bloody Tenent_: See Hanserd Knollys Society edition (1848), p. 30.] Clearly, with such a principle, and with all the particulars of practice which it implied, the Congregationalist Church of New England was, after all, a State Church, and a pretty strict State Church too. Now, it was probably such a National Congregationalist Church, but with an allowance of toleration somewhat larger than Cotton's, that the Five Independents of the Assembly would have liked to see set up in England. That, however, being plainly out of the question, and the whole current of dominant opinion in Parliament and the Assembly being towards a Presbyterian settlement, what remained for the Five? In the first place, to delay the Presbyterian settlement as long as they could, and to criticise its programme at every stage so as to liberalize its provisions as much as possible; in the second place, to put in a plea for Toleration for Dissent under the settlement when it should be enacted. They had performed, and were performing, both duties. They were fighting the propositions of strict Presbytery inch by inch in the Assembly, if not with success, at least so as to impede progress; and in their _Apologetical Narration_ (Jan. 1643-4) they had lodged with Parliament and the country a demand for Toleration under the coming Presbytery. What they had thus expressed in print they had continued to express in speech and in every other possible way. They were, in a certain sense, the most marked Tolerationists of the time; Toleration was identified with them. And yet it was but a limited Toleration, a very limited Toleration, that they demanded. Indulgence for themselves in Congregationalist practices after Presbytery should be established, and indulgence for other respectable sects and persons in "lesser differences:" that was all. Nothing like Williams's or John Goodwill's toleration: no liberty, or at least none avowedly, for such glaring heresies as Antinomianism, Socinianism, and Arianism, not to mention open Infidelity. Here, I believe, they represented the mass of the ordinary Independents. Whatever more a few strong spirits among the Independents, and especially among the lay Independents, desired, the mass of them were content for the present to be Limited Tolerationists. Such were the three forms of the Toleration Doctrine in England in 1644. They were of unequal strengths and confusedly mixed, but constituted together a powerful and growing force of opinion. And what was the opposition? ANTI-TOLERATION, OR ABSOLUTE AND ENTIRE CONFORMITY OF THE WHOLE NATION TO THE ONE ESTABLISHED CHURCH: this was the category of the opposition. In this category, now that Prelacy was done with, and it was certain that the new National Church was to be on the Presbyterian model, the Presbyterians had succeeded the Laudians. As a body, the Presbyterians of 1644 and subsequent years were absolute Anti-Tolerationists. The proofs are so abundant, collectively they make such an ocean, that it passes comprehension how the contrary could ever have been asserted. From the first appearance of the Presbyterians in force after the opening of the Long Parliament, it was their anxiety to beat down the rising idea of Toleration; and, after the meeting of the Westminster Assembly, and the publication of the _Apologetical Narration_ of the Independents, the one aim of the Presbyterians was to tie Toleration round the neck of Independency, stuff the two struggling monsters into one sack, and sink them to the bottom of the sea. In all the Presbyterian literature of the time,--Baillie's Letters, Rutherford's and Gillespie's Tracts, the pamphlets of English Presbyterian Divines in the Assembly, the pamphlets of Prynne, Bastwick, and other miscellaneous Presbyterian controversialists out of the Assembly,--this antipathy to Toleration, limited or unlimited, this desire to pinion Independency and Toleration together in one common death, appears overwhelmingly. Out of scores of such Presbyterian manifestoes, let us select one, interesting to us for certain reasons apart. Of all the Divines in London, not members of the Assembly, none had come to be better known for his Presbyterian acrimony than the veteran Mr. Thomas Edwards, of whose maiden pamphlet of 1641, called _Reasons against the Independent Government_, with Mrs. Chidley's Reply to the same, we have had occasion to take notice (_antè_, p. 110). The spirited verbosity, as we called it, of that pamphlet of Edwards had procured him a reputation among the Presbyterians, which he felt himself bound to justify by farther efforts. The appearance of the _Apologetical Narration_ of the Five Independents in Jan. 1643-4 gave him a famous opportunity. Various answers were at once or quickly published to that Independent manifesto--not only that by _A. S._ or Adam Steuart (_antè_, p. 25), but various others. When it became known, however, that Mr. Edwards also was preparing an Answer, it was expected to beat them all. There was a flutter of anticipation of it among the Presbyterians; but it was rather slow in coming. "There is a piece of 26 sheets, of Mr. Edwards, against the Apologetick Narration, near printed, which will paint that faction [the Independents] in clearer colours than yet they have appeared," writes Baillie, June 7, 1644; in a later letter, July 5, he says it is expected "within two or three days," but "excresced to near 40 sheets;" and it is not till Aug. 7 that he speaks of it as fairly out: "Mr. Edwards has written a splendid confutation of all the Independents' Apology." [Footnote: Baillie, II. 190, 201-2, and 215.] In fact, it appeared in the end of July, just at the time when the Assembly adjourned for their fortnight's vacation, and almost contemporaneously with John Goodwin's _M. S. to A. S._ and Williams's _Bloody Tenent_. Baillie's measure of "sheets" must have been different from ours, or he had been under some mistake; for the treatise, though long enough, consisted but of 367 small quarto pages, with this title: "_Antapologia: or, A Full Answer to the Apologetical Narration of Mr. Goodwin, Mr. Nye, Mr. Simpson, Mr. Burroughs, Mr. Bridge, members of the Assembly of Divines. Wherein many of the controversies of these times are handled: viz. [&c.]. Humbly also submitted to the Honourable Houses of Parliament. By Thomas Edwards, Minister of the Gospel_." [Footnote: Hanbury's Memorials, II. 366. Mr. Hanbury gives a summary of the _Antapologia_ with extracts (366- 385); but I have before me the book itself in a reprint, of 1646, "by T.R. and E.M. for Ralph Smith, at the signe of the Bible in Cornhill neer the Royall Exchange." It consists of 259 pages of text, besides introductory epistle, and table of contents at the end.] It was a most remarkable treatise, and ran through London at once. For the style, though slovenly, was fluent and popular, and Edwards, having plenty of time on his hands, and having a taste for personalities, had made minute inquiries into the antecedents of the Five Independents in Holland and in England, and had interwoven the results of these inquiries with his arguments against Independency itself. The Five, he tells us in a preliminary epistle, were among his personal acquaintances. "I can truly speak it," he says, "that this present _Antapologia_ is so far from being written out of any malice or ill-will to the Apologists that I love their persons and value them as brethren, yea some of them above brethren; and, besides that love I bear to them as saints, I have a personal love, and a particular love of friendship for some of them; and I can truly speak it, that I writ not this book, nor any part of it, out of any personal quarrel, old grudge, or former difference (for to this day there never was any such difference or unkindness passed between us); but I have writ it with much sorrow, unwillingness, and some kind of conflict." This explanation was certainly necessary; for Mr. Edwards does not spare his friends. He tells all he has found out about them; he quotes their conversations with himself; he gives them the lie direct, and appeals to their consciences whether he is not right in doing so. _They_ martyrs! _they_ poor exiles in Holland, and now whining to Parliament that they would have to go into exile again if Presbyterianism were established without a Toleration! Why, they had been in clover in Holland; they had been living there "in safety, plenty, pomp, and ease," leaving the genuine Puritans at home to fight it out with Prelacy; and, after the battle was won, they had slunk back to claim the rewards they had not earned, to become pets and "grandees" in English society, to secure good appointments and assume leading parts, and to be elected members of the venerable Westminster Assembly! They had not even had the courage to go to New England, though some of them had talked of doing so! And then their prate of this emigration to New England, which they had themselves declined, as the greatest undertaking for the sake of pure Religion, next to Abraham's migration out of his own country, that the world had ever seen! Why, the emigration to New England was no such great affair after all! There had been mixed motives in it; all New England would not make a twentieth part of London; it had but two or three Divines in it worth naming in the same breath with the worthies of Old England, and was on the whole but a kind of outlandish mess; the "Reformation in Church-government and worship" then going on in Old England would be a wonder "to all generations to come far beyond that of New England!" But in Holland, where the cowardly Apologists had preferred to stay, what had they been doing? Quarrelling among themselves, going into all kinds of conceits, anointing people with oil, and the like; respecting all which Edwards had obtained from Rotterdam and Arnheim a budget of information! Then that lie of the Apologists, that they had, since their return to England, been careful not to press their peculiar Congregationalist opinions, or endeavour to make a party, but had waited in patience to see what course affairs would take! Not press their peculiar opinions--not endeavour to make a party! Why, Mr. Edwards could aver (and cite dates, places, and witnesses to prove it) that they had been doing nothing else, since they came to England, than press their peculiar opinions and endeavour to make a party! "Suffer me to deal plainly with you: I am persuaded that, setting aside the Jesuits' acting for themselves and way, you Five have acted for yourselves and way, both by yourselves and by your instruments, both upon the stage and behind the curtain, considering circumstances and laying all things together, more than any five men have done in so short a time this sixty years. And, if it be not so, whence have come all these swarms and troops of Independents in Ministry, Armies, City, Country, Gentry, and amongst the Common People of all sorts, men, women, servants, children?" So, on and on, Edwards goes, decidedly more readable than most pamphleteers of the time, because he writes with some spirit, and mixes a continual pepper of personalities with his arguments against the tenets of the Independents. With these arguments we shall not meddle. Their purpose was to hold up "a true glass to behold the faces of Presbytery and Independency in, with the beauty, order, strength, of the one, and the deformity, disorder, and weakness of the other." In other words, the pamphlet is a digest of everything that could be said against Independency and in favour of Presbyterianism. But the grand tenet of Presbyterianism in which Mr. Edwards revels with most delight, and which he exhibits as the distinguishing honour of that system, and its fitness beyond any other for grappling with the impiety of men in general and the disorderliness of that age in particular, is its uncompromising Anti- Toleration. Throughout the whole pamphlet there runs a vein of declamation to this effect; and at the close some twenty pages are expressly devoted to the subject, in connexion with that claim for a Limited Toleration which the Apologists had advanced. Eight Reasons are stated and expounded why there should not be even this Limited Toleration, why even Congregationalist opinions and practice should not be tolerated in England. It would be against the rule of Scripture as to the duty of the civil magistrate; it would be against the Solemn League and Covenant; it would be against the very nature of a national Reformation, for "a Reformation, and a Toleration are diametrically opposite;" it would be "against the judgment of the greatest lights in the Church, both ancient and modern;" it would be an invitation and temptation to error and "an occasion of many falling who otherwise never would;" &c. &c. Wherever Presbytery and strict Anti-Toleration had prevailed since the Reformation had there not been a marvellous orderliness and freedom from error and heresy? All over the map of Europe would it not be found that error and heresy had been rank precisely in proportion to the deviation of a country from Presbytery or to the relaxation of its grasp where it was nominally professed? What, in particular, had made Scotland the country it was, pure in faith, united in action, and with a Church "terrible as an army with banners"? What but Presbytery and Anti-Toleration? O then let Presbytery and Anti-Toleration reign in England as well! And, while they were proceeding to the great work of establishing Presbytery, let them beware of such an inconsistency as granting the least promise beforehand of a Toleration! On this point Mr. Edwards addresses the Parliament in his own name, telling them that Toleration is the device of the Devil. "I humbly beseech the Parliament," he says, "seriously to consider the depths of Satan in this design of a Toleration; how this is now his last plot and design, and by it would undermine and frustrate the whole work of Reformation intended. 'Tis his masterpiece for England; and, for effecting it, he comes and moves, not in Prelates and Bishops, not in furious Anabaptists, &c., but in holy men, excellent preachers; moderate and fair men, not for a toleration of heresies and gross opinions, but an 'allowance of a latitude to some lesser differences with peaceableness.' This is _Candidus ille Diabolus_ [that White Devil], as Luther speaks, and _meridianus Diabolus_ [mid-day Devil], as Johannes Gersonius and Beza express it, coming under the merits of much suffering and well-deserving, clad in the white garments of innocency and holiness. In a word, could the Devil effect a Toleration, he would think he had gained well by the Reformation and made a good exchange of the Hierarchy to have a Toleration for it. I am confident of it, upon serious thoughts, and long searching into this point of the evils and mischief of a Toleration, that, if the Devil had his choice whether the Hierarchy, Ceremonies, and Liturgy should be established in this kingdom, or a Toleration granted, he would choose and prefer a Toleration before them." Did Mr. Thomas Edwards in all this represent the whole body of the Presbyterians of his time? I am afraid he did. In _his_ very sense, with the same vehemency, and to the same extent, they were all Anti- Tolerationists. Was there no exception? Had no one Presbyterian of that day worked out, in the interest of Presbytery, a conclusion corresponding to that which we have seen reason to think some of the wiser Anglicans then within the Royalist lines were quietly working out in the interest of Episcopacy, in case Episcopacy should ever again have a chance? Was no one Presbyterian prepared to come forth with the proposal of a Toleration in England, either limited or unlimited, round an Established National Church on the Presbyterian model? That there may not have been some such person among those Erastian laymen who favoured Presbytery on the whole for general and political reasons, one would not assert positively. None such, however, is distinctly in historical view; and it is certain that among the real or dominant Presbyterians, the _jure divino_ Presbyterians, English or Scottish, there was no one upon whom the idea in question had clearly dawned or who dared to divulge it. Perhaps it was the belief in the absolute _jus divinum_ of Presbytery that made the idea impossible to them. Yet why should it have been impossible in consistency even with that belief? It may be _jure divino_ that the square on the hypothenuse of a right-angled triangle is equal to the sum of the squares on the sides, that he is a blockhead who believes otherwise, and that a permanent apparatus should be set up in every land for teaching this mathematical faith; and yet it may be equally _jure divino_ that no one shall be compelled to avail himself of that apparatus, or be punished for doubting or denying the proposition. But the Presbyterians of 1644 did not so refine or argue. They stood stoutly to the necessary identity of Presbyterianism and absolute Anti-Toleration. And so Presbyterianism missed the most magnificent opportunity she has had in her history. Had her offer to England been "Presbytery with a Toleration," who knows what a different shaping subsequent events might have assumed? What if Henderson, in whose natural disposition one sees more of room and aptitude for the idea than in that of any other Presbyterian leader, had actually become possessed with the idea and had proclaimed it? Would he have carried the mass of the Presbyterians with him? or would they have deposed him from the leadership? It is useless to inquire. The idea never occurred even to Henderson; and that it did not occur to him constituted his unfitness for leadership, out of Scotland, in the complex crisis which had at last arrived, and was the one weakness of his career near its close. MULTIPLICATION OF HERESIES: SYNOPSIS OF ENGLISH SECTS AND SECTARIES IN 1644. It was all very well, the Presbyterians argued, to propound the principle of Toleration in the abstract. Would its advocates be so good as to think of its operation in the concrete? The society of England was no longer composed merely of the traditional PAPISTS, PRELATISTS, PRESBYTERIANS, and CONGREGATIONALISTS or ORTHODOX INDEPENDENTS. Beyond these last, though sheltering themselves under the unfortunate principle of Church- Independency, there was now a vast chaos of SECTS and SECTARIES, some of them maintaining the most dangerous and damnable heresies and blasphemies! Would the Tolerationists, and especially the Limited Tolerationists, take a survey of this chaos, and consider how their principle of Toleration would work when applied to _its_ ghastly bulk and variety? This matter, of the extraordinary multiplication of Sects and Heresies in England, had been in constant public discussion since the opening of the Long Parliament. It had figured constantly in messages and declarations of the King; who had first charged the fact of the sudden appearance and boldness of the Sects and Sectaries to the abrogation of his Kingly prerogative and Episcopal government by the Parliament, and had then attributed the origin of the Civil War to the lawless machinations of these same Sects and Sectaries. It had figured no less, though with very different interpretations and comments, in the proceedings and appeals of the Parliament. Now, however, the SECTS and SECTARIES had become the objects of a more purely scientific curiosity. Without a survey and study of _them_ as well as of the PAPISTS, the PRELATISTS, the PRESBYTERIANS, and the ORTHODOX INDEPENDENTS, there could, it was argued, be no complete Natural History of Religious Opinion in England in the year 1644. The Presbyterians, for reasons of their own, were earnest for such a survey and study; and they recommended it ironically to the Orthodox Independents in their character of Tolerationists. Not the less did the Presbyterians, with some Prelatists among them, undertake it themselves.- -Coming after these authorities, and availing myself of their inquiries, but with other authorities to aid me, and as much of fresh investigation, and of criticism of my authorities, as I can add, I shall attempt what, even for our own forgetful and self-engrossed time, ought to be a not uninteresting portion of the history of bygone English opinion. This is a case in which the authorities should be mentioned formally at the outset. They are numerous. They include the Lords and Commons Journals, Lightfoot's Notes of the Assembly, Baillie's Letters, Pamphlets of the time _passim_, and even the Registers of the Stationers' Company. Certain particular publications, however (all of the year 1645 or the years immediately following), are of pre-eminent interest, as being attempts at a more or less complete survey of the huge medley or tumult of opinions on religious subjects that had by that time arisen in English society, with some classification of its elements. The reader will remember Dr. DANIEL FEATLEY, Rector of Lambeth and Acton, the veteran Calvinist who had persisted in attending the Assembly in spite of his disapproval of the Covenant and his adhesion to the theory of a modified Episcopacy, but who had at length (Sept. 30, 1643) been ejected for misdemeanour. His misdemeanour had consisted in maintaining a correspondence with Usher, reflecting on the Assembly and the Parliament, and divulging secrets in the King's interest. For this he had not only been ejected from the Assembly by the Commons, and sequestered from his two livings, but also committed to custody in "the Lord Petre's house in Aldersgate Street," then used by Parliament as a prison for such culprits. To beguile his leisure here, he had occupied himself in revising his notes of a dispute he had held, in Oct. 1642, with a Conventicle of Anabaptists in Southwark, where he had knocked over a certain "Scotchman" and one or two other speakers for the Conventicle. But this revision of his notes of that debate had suggested various extensions and additions; so that, in fact, he had written in prison a complete exposure of Anabaptism. It was ready in January 1644-5, and was published with this title: "_The Dippers Dipt; or, The Anabaptists Duck'd and Plung'd over Head and Ears_," &c. It is a virulent tractate of about 186 pages, reciting the extravagances and enormities attributed to the German Anabaptists, and trying to involve the English Baptists in the odium of such an original, but containing also notices of the English Baptists themselves, and their varieties and ramifications. It became at once popular, and passed through several editions. [Footnote: Commons Journals, Sept. 30 and Oct 3, 1613; Wood's Athenæ, III. 156 _et seq._; and Featley's Epistle Dedicatory to his treatise. The copy of the treatise before me at present is one of the sixth edition, published in 1651, six years after the authors death. It contains a portrait of Featley by W. Marshall, and, among other illustrations, a coarse _ad captandum_ print by the same engraver, exhibiting the "dipping" of men and women naked together in a river.] A well-known personage in London, of humbler pretensions than Featley, was a certain EPHRAIM PAGET (or PAGIT), commonly called "Old Father Ephraim," who had been parson of the church of St. Edmund in Lombard Street since 1601, and might therefore have seen, and been seen by, Shakespeare. Besides other trifles, he had published, in 1635, a book called "_Christianographia_" or a descriptive enumeration of the various sorts of Christians in the world out of the pale of the Roman Catholic Church. Perhaps because he had thus acquired a fondness for the statistics of religious denominations, it occurred to him to write, by way of sequel, a "_Heresiography; or, A Description of the Hereticks and Sectaries of these latter times_." It was published in 1645, soon after Featley's book, from which it borrows hints and phrases. There is an Epistle Dedicatory to the Lord Mayor and Aldermen of the City of London, very senile in its syntax and punctuation, and containing this touching appeal: "I have lived among you almost a jubilee, and seen your great care and provision to keep the city free from infection, in the shutting up the sick and in carrying them to your pest-houses, in setting warders to keep the whole from the sick, in making of fires and perfuming the streets, in resorting to your churches, in pouring out your prayers to Almighty God, with fasting and alms, to be propitious to you. The plague of Heresy is greater, and you are now in more danger than when you buried five thousand a week." Then, after an Epistle to the Reader, signed "Old Ephraim Pagit," there follows the body of the treatise in about 160 pages. The Anabaptists are taken first, and occupy 55 pages; but a great many other sects are subsequently described, some in a few pages, some in a single paragraph. There is an engraved title-page to the volume, containing small caricatures of six of the chief sorts of Sectaries--Anabaptism being represented by one plump naked fellow dipping another, much plumper, who is reluctantly stooping down on all fours. The book, like Featley's, seems to have sold rapidly. In the third edition of it, however, published in 1646, there is a postscript in which the poor old man tells us that it had cost him much trouble. The sectaries among his own parishioners had quarrelled with him on account of it, and refused to pay him his tithes; nay, as he walked in the streets, he was hooted at and reviled, and somebody had actually affirmed "Doctor Featley's devil to be transmigrated into Old Ephraim Paget." This seems to have cut him to the quick, though he avows his sense of inferiority in learning to the great Doctor. In short, we can see Father Ephraim as a good old silly body, of whom people made fun. [Footnote: Wood's Athenæ, III. 210 _et seq._; and Paget's own treatise.] Another writer against the Sectaries was the inexhaustible WILLIAM PRYNNE, That grand scripturient paper-spiller, That endless, needless, margin-filler, So strangely tossed from post to pillar. There was, indeed, something preternatural in the persistent vitality and industry of this man. Only forty years of age when the Long Parliament released him from his second imprisonment and restored him to society, a ghoul-like creature with a scarred and mutilated face, hiding the loss of his twice-cropped ears under a woollen cowl or nightcap, and mostly sitting alone among his books and papers in his chamber in Lincoln's Inn, taking no regular meals, but occasionally munching bread and refreshing himself with ale, he had at once resumed his polemical habits and mixed himself up as a pamphleteer with all that was going on. As many as thirty fresh publications, to be added to the two-and-twenty or thereabouts already out in his name, had come from his pen between 1640 and 1645, bringing him through about one-fourth part of the series of some 200 books and pamphlets that were to form the long ink-track of his total life. In these recent pamphlets of his he had appeared as a strenuous Parliamentary Presbyterian, an advocate of the Scottish Presbyterianism which was being urged in the Assembly, but with more of Erastianism in his views than might have pleased most of his fellow-Presbyterians. No man more violent against Independency of all sorts, and the idea of Toleration. And so, after various other pamphlets against Independency in general, and this or that Independent in particular, there came from him, in July 1645, [Footnote: Date from my notes from Stationer's Registers.] a quarto of about 50 pages, with this title: "_A Fresh Discovery of some Prodigious new Wandering-Blazing-Stars and Firebrands, styling themselves New Lights, firing our Church and State into new Combustions._" The pamphlet was dedicated to Parliament; and its purpose was to exhibit all the monstrous things that lay in the bosom of what called itself Independency. Hence "Independency" is used by Prynne as a common name for all the varieties of Sectarians as well as for the Congregationalists proper; and his plan is to shock the public and rouse Parliament to action, by giving a collection of specimens, culled from pamphlets of the day, of the "scurrilous, scandalous, and seditious" views put forth, with impunity hitherto, by some of the "Anabaptistical Independent Sectaries and new-lighted Firebrands," Accordingly his tract contains a jumble of the most wild and extravagant sayings against the Assembly, the Scots, and the Parliament itself, that Prynne could pick out from the contemporary pamphlets of the Anabaptists and other Sectaries.[Footnote: Wood's Athenæ, III. 844 _et seq._; Aubrey's Lives (for a notice of Prynne's habits); and the _Fresh Discovery_ itself. The edition before me is the second, dated 1646, and swollen by added matter at the end to over 80 pages.] Much cleverer and more spirited than Featley, old Ephraim Paget, or Prynne, as a describer and opponent of the Sectaries, was our friend, Mr. Thomas Edwards, of the _Antapologia_ (_antè_, pp. 130-135). That "splendid confutation" of Independency and Tolerationism had so increased Mr. Edwards's fame that the Presbyterians of London had erected a weekly lectureship for him at Christ Church in the heart of the City, that he might "handle these questions and nothing else before all that would come to hear." Thus encouraged, he ranged beyond Independency proper, and employed himself in collecting information respecting the English Sectaries generally; and in about eighteen months, or before the end of 1645, he had ready a treatise (his third in order) entitled "_Gangræna: or, a Catalogue and Discovery of many of the Errors, Heresies, Blasphemies, and Pernicious Practices of the Sectaries of this time_." This treatise, consisting of more than 60 pages, he dedicated to Parliament, in an Epistle of twelve pages, hinting at the remissness of Parliament in its dealings with the Sectaries up to that time, and reminding it of its duty. There is all Edwards's fluency of language in the pamphlet, and some real literary talent; so that not only was Edwards's _Gangræna_ a popular Presbyterian book at the time, but it is still valued by bibliographers and antiquarians. As it has come down to us, however, it is not a pamphlet merely, but a concretion of pamphlets. For it was enlarged by the author, in the course of 1646, to eight or nine times its original bulk, by the addition of a Second Part and then a Third Part, containing "New and Farther Discoveries" of the Sectaries, and their opinions and practices. This was because Mr. Edwards had solicited fresh information from all quarters, and it was poured in upon him superabundantly by Presbyterian correspondents. The First Part, as the skimming of the cream by Mr. Edwards himself, is perhaps the richest essentially. The others consist mainly of verifications and additional details, rumours, and anecdotes. Altogether, the Three Parts of Edwards's _Gangræna_ are a curious Presbyterian repertory of facts and scandals respecting the English Independents and Sectaries in and shortly after the year of Marston Moor. The impression which they leave of Mr. Edwards personally is that he was a fluent, rancorous, indefatigable, inquisitorial, and, on the whole, nasty, kind of Christian. [Footnote: Wood's Fasti, I. 413; Baillie's Letters, II. 180, 193, 201, 215, 251: and _Gangræna_ itself--the copy of which before me consists of the third edition of Parts I. and II. (1646) and the first edition of Part III, (1646) bound in two volumes.] With Featley, Paget, Prynne, and Edwards, as authorities full of detail, though also full of prejudice on the subject of the English Sects and Sectaries of 1644, we may finally name Baillie. We name him now, however, not on account of his "Letters," but on account of two publications of his dealing expressly with this subject. One of these, published in November 1645, in a quarto of 252 pages, was his "_Dissuasive from the Errours of the Time: wherein the Tenets of the Principall Sects, especially of the Independents, are drawn together in one Map, for the most part in the words of their own Authors_;" the other, published in December 1646, in about 180 pages quarto, and intended as a Second Part of the "Dissuasive," was entitled "_Anabaptism, the True Fountain of Independency, Brownisme, Antinomy, &c_." In both publications, but especially in the former, we see Baillie's characteristic merits. He writes, of course, polemically and with strong Presbyterian prejudice; but in clearness of arrangement and statement he is greatly superior to either the senile Paget, or the fluent and credulous Edwards. His _Dissuasive_, indeed, is, in its way, a really instructive book.[Footnote: Both the _Dissuasive_ and its continuation were published in London (by "Samuel Gellebrand at the Brazen Serpent in Paul's Churchyard"), and dedicated to "The Right Honourable the Earle of Lauderdaile, Lord Metellane"--_i.e._ to Baillie's Scottish colleague in the Assembly, Lord Maitland, then become Earl of Lauderdale.] The information from these and other sources may be summed up, from the Presbyterian point of view, under two headings, as follows:-- I. MISCELLANEOUS BLASPHEMIES AND ENTHUSIASMS.--The very air of England, it seemed, was full of such. There had broken loose a spirit of inquiry, a spirit of profanity and scoffing, and a spirit of religious ecstasy and dreaming; and the three spirits together were producing a perfect Babel of strange sayings, fancies, and speculations. From a catalogue of no fewer than 176 miscellaneous "errors, heresies, and blasphemies" collected by Edwards, and which he professes to give as nearly as possible in the very words in which they had been broached by their authors in print, or in public or private discourse, take the following samples:-- "That the Scriptures are a dead letter, and no more to be credited than the writings of men." "That the holy writings and sayings of Moses and the Prophets, of Christ and his Apostles, and the proper names, persons, and things contained therein, are allegories." "That the Scriptures of the Old Testament do not concern nor bind Christians" (in which belief, says Edwards, some Sectaries had ceased to read the Old Testament, or to bind it with the New). "That right Reason is the rule of Faith." "That God is the author not of those actions alone in and with which sin is, but of the very pravity, ataxy, atomy, irregularity, and sinfulness itself, which is in them." "That the magistrate may not punish for blasphemies, nor for denying the Scriptures, nor For denying that there is a God." "That the soul dies with the body, and all things shall have an end, but God only." "That there is but one Person in the Divine Nature." "That Jesus Christ is not very God: no otherwise may he be called the Son of God but as he was man." "That we did look for great matters from one crucified at Jerusalem 1600 years ago, but that does us no good; it must be a Christ formed in us: Christ came into the world to live 32 years, and do nothing else that he [Thomas Webb, of London, ætat. 20] knew." "That the Heathen who never heard of Christ by the Word have the Gospel, for every creature, as the sun, moon, and stars, preach the Gospel to men." "That Christ shall come and live again upon the earth, and for a thousand years reign visibly as an earthly monarch over all the world." "That the least truth is of more worth than Jesus Christ himself." "That the Spirit of God dwells not nor works in any; it is but our conceits and mistakes to think so; 'tis no spirit that works but our own." "That a man baptized with the Holy Ghost knows all things even as God knows all things; which point is a deep mystery and great ocean, where there is no casting anchor, nor sounding the bottom." "That, if a man by the Spirit knew himself to be in the state of grace, though he did commit murder or drunkenness, God did see no sin in him." "That the guilt of Adam's sin is imputed to no man." "That the moral law is of no use at all to believers." "That there ought to be no fasting days under the Gospel." "That the soul of man is mortal as the soul of a beast, and dies with the body." "That Heaven is empty of the Saints till the resurrection of the dead." "That there is no resurrection at all of the bodies of men after this life, nor no Heaven nor Hell after this life, nor no Devils." "That there shall be in the last day a resurrection from the dead of all the brute creatures, all beasts and birds that ever lived upon the earth." "That many Christians in those days have more knowledge than the Apostles." "That there ought to be in these times no making or building of churches, nor use of church-ordinances; but waiting for a church, being in a readiness upon all occasions to take knowledge of any passenger, of any opinion or tenet whatsoever: the Saints, as pilgrims, do wander as in a temple of smoke, not able to find Religion, and therefore should not plant it by gathering or building a pretended supposed House." "That, in points of Religion, even in the Articles of Faith and principles of Religion, there's nothing certainly to be believed and built on; only that all men ought to have liberty of conscience and liberty of prophesying." "That 'tis as lawful to baptize a cat, or a dog, or a chicken, as to baptize the infants of believers." "That the calling and making of ministers are not _jure divino_, but a minister comes to be so as a merchant, bookseller, carter, and such like." "That all settled certain maintenance for ministers of the Gospel is unlawful." "That all days are alike to Christians, and they are bound no more to the observation of the Lord's day, or first day of the week, than of any other." "That 'tis lawful for women to preach; and why should they not, having gifts as well as men?" ("And some of them," adds Edwards, "do actually preach, having great resort to them.") "That there is no need of humane learning, nor of reading authors, for preachers; but all books and learning must go down: it comes from the want of the Spirit that men writ such great volumes." "That 'tis unlawful to preach at all, sent or not sent, but only thus: a man may preach as a waiting disciple, _i.e._ Christians may not preach in a way of positive asserting and declaring things, but all they may do is to confer, reason together, and dispute out things." "That all singing of Psalms is unlawful." "That the gift of miracles is not ceased in these times." "That all the earth is the Saints', and there ought to be a community of goods." "That 'tis unlawful to fight at all, or to kill any man, yea to kill any of the creatures for our use, as a chicken, or on any other occasion." [Footnote: _Gangræna_, Part I. pp. 15-31.] From this little enumeration it will be seen that we have not, even in the nineteenth century, advanced so far as perhaps we had thought beyond English notions of the seventeenth. But there must be added a recollection of the scurrilities against the Covenant, the Assembly as a body, its chief Presbyterian members, and the whole Scottish nation and its agents. These had not reached their height at the time with which we are at present concerned (Aug. 1644); so that the richest specimens of them have to be postponed. But already there were popular jokes about "Jack Presbyter" the "black coats" of the Assembly, and their four shillings a day each for doing what nobody wanted; and already a very rude phrase was in circulation, expressing the growing feeling among the English Independents and Sectaries that England might have managed her Reformation better without the aid of the Scots and their Covenant. Had England come to such a pass, it was asked, that it was necessary to set up a Synod in her, to be "guided by the Holy Ghost sent in a cloak-bag from Scotland"? The author of this profanity, according to Prynne, was a pamphleteer named Henry Robinson. It was, in fact, an old joke, originally applied to one of the Councils of the Catholic Church; and Robinson had stolen it. [Footnote: Prynne's _Fresh Discovery_, p.27 and p.9; and _Gangræna_, Part I. p.32] II. RECOGNISED SECTS AND THEIR LEADERS.--In the general welter or anarchy of opinion there were, of course, vortices round particular centres, forming sects that either had, or might receive, definite names. Edwards, when systematizing his chaos of miscellaneous errors and blasphemies, apportions them among sixteen recognisable sorts of Sectaries; but old Ephraim Paget, who had preceded Edwards had been much more hazy. By jumbling the English Sectaries with all he could recollect of the German Sectaries of the Reformation and all he could hear of the Sects of New England, he had made his list of Sects and subdivisions of Sects mount up to two or three scores. Using Edwards and old Ephraim, with hints from Featley, Prynne, and Baillie, but trying to ascertain the facts for ourselves, we venture on the following synoptical view of English Sects and Sectaries in 1644-5:-- BAPTISTS, OR ANABAPTISTS:--These were by far the most numerous of the Sectaries. Their enemies (Featley, Paget, Edwards, Baillie, &c.) were fond of tracing them to the anarchical German Anabaptists of the Reformation; but they themselves claimed a higher origin. They maintained, as Baptists do still, that in the primitive or Apostolic Church the only baptism practised or heard of was that of adult believers, and that the form of the rite for such was immersion in water; and they maintained farther that the Baptism of Infants was one of those corruptions of Christianity against which there had been a continued protest by pure and forward spirits in different countries, in ages prior to Luther's Reformation, including some of the English Wycliffites, although the protest may have been repeated in a louder manner, and with wild admixtures, by the German Anabaptists who gave Luther so much trouble. Without going back, however, upon the Wycliffites, or even on the Anabaptists that were scattered through England in the reigns of Henry VIII., Edward VI., Mary, and Elizabeth, one may date the Baptists as we have now to do with them from the reign of James.----The first London congregation of _General Baptists_, or Baptists who favoured an Arminian theology, had been formed, as we have seen (Vol. II. p. 544), in 1611 out of the wrecks of John Smyth's English congregation of Amsterdam or Leyden, brought back into their native land by Smyth's successor Thomas Helwisse, assisted by John Murton. Although there are traces of this congregation for several years after that date, it seems to have melted away, or to have been crushed into extinction by the persecution of its members individually; so that the Baptists of whom we hear as existing in London, or dispersed through England, after the opening of the Long Parliament, appear to have been rather of the kind known as _Particular Baptists_, holding a Calvinistic theology, and generated out of the Independent congregations that had been established in London and elsewhere after Helwisse's and on different principles (Vol. II. pp. 544 and 585). In some of these congregations, including that taught by a certain very popular Samuel Howe, called "Cobbler Howe" from his trade, who died in prison and excommunicated some time before 1640, Pædobaptism appears to have become an open question, on which the members agreed to differ among themselves. On the whole, however, the tendency was to the secession of Antipædobaptists from congregations of ordinary Independents, and to the formation of the seceders into distinct societies. Thus we hear of a Baptist congregation in Wapping formed in 1633 by a John Spilsbury, with whom were afterwards associated William Kiffin and Thomas Wilson; of another formed in Crutched Friars in 1639 by Mr. Green, Paul Hobson, and Captain Spencer; and of a third, formed in Fleet Street, in 1640, by the afterwards famous Praise-God Barebone: these three congregations being all detachments from Henry Jacob's original Independent congregation of 1616 during the ministries of his successors, Lathorp and Henry Jessey. In spite of much persecution, continued even after the Long Parliament met, the Baptists of these congregations propagated their opinions with such zeal that by 1644 the sect had attained considerably larger dimensions. In that year they counted seven leading congregations in London, and forty-seven in the rest of England; besides which they had many adherents in the Army. Although all sorts of impieties were attributed to them on hearsay, they differed in reality from the Independents mainly on the one subject of Baptism. They objected to the baptism of infants, and they thought immersion, or dipping under water, the proper mode of baptism: except in these points, and what they might involve, they were substantially at one with the Congregationalists, This they made clear by the publication, in 1644, of a Confession of their Faith in 52 Articles--a document which, by its orthodoxy in all essential matters, seems to have shamed the more candid of their opponents. Even Featley was struck by it, and called it "a little ratsbane in a great quantity of sugar," and became somewhat more civil in consequence. It was signed for the seven Baptist congregations of London by these seven couples of persons--Thomas Gunn and John Mabbit; John Spilsbury and Samuel Richardson; Paul Hobson and Thomas Goare; Benjamin Cox and Thomas Kilcop; Thomas Munden and George Tipping; William Kiffin and Thomas Patience; Hanserd Knollys (Vol. II. 557 and 586) and Thomas Holmes. These fourteen, accordingly, with Praise- God Barebone, were in 1644 the Baptist leaders or chief Baptist preachers in London. We hear, however, of other Baptist preachers and pamphleteers --John Tombes, B.D. (accounted the most learned champion of the sect, and its intellectual head), Francis Cornwall, M.A., Henry Jessey, M.A. (a convert to baptism at last), William Dell, M.A., Henry Denne, Edward Barber, Vavasour Powell, John Sims, Andrew Wyke, Christopher Blackwood, Samuel Oates, &c. Several of these leading Baptists--such as Tombes, Cornwall, Jessey, Cox, and Denne--were University men, who had taken orders regularly; one or two, such as Patience and Knollys, had been preachers in New England; but some were laymen who had recently assumed the preaching office, or been called to it by congregations, on account of their natural gifts. The Presbyterians laid great stress on the illiteracy of some of the Baptist preachers and their mean origin. Barebone was a leather-seller in Fleet Street; and, according to Edwards or his informants, Paul Hobson was a tailor from Buckinghamshire, who had become a captain in the Parliamentary Army; Kiffin had been servant to a brewer; Oates was a young weaver; and so on. The information may be correct in some cases, but is to be received with general caution; as also Edwards's stories of the extravagant practices of the Baptists in their conventicles and at their river-dippings. Any story of the kind was welcome to Edwards, especially if it made a scandal out of some dipping of women-converts by a Baptist preacher. Baillie, who took more trouble in sifting his information, and who distinctly allows that the Anabaptists, like other people, ought to have the benefit of the principle "Let no error be charged upon any man which he truly disclaims," and that the errors of some of the sect ought not to be charged upon all, yet maintains that the Confession of the seven Baptist Churches of London was but an imperfect and ambiguous declaration of the opinions of the English Baptists. He attributes to them collectively the following tenets, in addition to those of mere Antipædobaptism and rigid Separatism:--"They put all church-power in the hand of the people;" "They give the power of preaching and celebrating the sacraments to any of their gifted members, out of all office;" "All churches must be demolished: they are glad of so large and public a preaching place as they can purchase, but of a steeple-house they must not hear;" "All tithes and all set stipends are unlawful; their preachers must work with their own hands, and may not go in black clothes." According to Baillie, also, the Baptists outwent even the Brownists in the power in church matters they gave to women. There were many women-preachers among them; of whom a Mrs. Attaway, "the mistress of all the she-preachers in Coleman Street," was the chief. [Footnote: Crosby's _History of the English Baptists_ (1738), Vol. I. pp. 215-382; Ivimey's _Baptists_, I. 113 _et seq._; Featley's _Dippers Dipt_, and _Animadversions on the Anabaptists' Confession_; _Gangræna passim_; Baillie's _Dissuasive_, Part II. p. 47 _et seq._; Neal's Puritans, III. 147-152, with Toulmin's Supplement to that Vol., 517-530. The Confession of the Baptists is given in Neal; Appendix to the whole work; also in Crosby, Appendix to Vol. I] OLD BROWNISTS:--By this name may be called certain adherents of that vehement Independency, more extreme than mere Congregationalism, which had been propagated in Elizabeth's reign by Robert Brown himself. Brown's writings, we learn from Baillie, had totally disappeared in England; so that the so-called _Brownists_ can hardly have been his direct disciples, but must have been persons who had arrived at some of his opinions over again for themselves. Briefly, without being Baptists, they were more violent Separatists, more fierce in their rejection of the discipline, worship, and ordination of the Church of England than the Independents proper. Henry Burton, minister of Friday Street church, now between fifty and sixty years of age, was one of the chief of them, and his _Protestation Protested_ (Vol. II. 591-2) may be regarded as a manifesto of their views. Even the Independents of the Assembly disowned these views. Mr. Nye had said of the book that "there was in that book gross Brownism which he nor his brethren no way agreed with him in;" and Edwards had heard stories of queer goings-on in Mr. Burton's church, and his quarrel with "a butcher and some others of his church" about prophesying. Among the Brownists, besides Burton, Edwards names prominently "Katherine Chidley, an old Brownist, and her son, a young Brownist, a pragmatical fellow," who preached in London, and occasionally went on circuit into the country. Edwards characterizes Mrs. Chidley as "a brazen-faced audacious old woman;" but we know the motive. He had not forgotten the thrashing in print he had received from Mrs. Chidley in 1641 (Vol. II. 595). [Footnote: Paget's _Heresiography_, pp. 55-82 (a great deal about the Brownists; but with next to no real information); Edwards's _Gangræna_, Part I. pp. 62-64 and Part III. 242-248 (gossip about Burton); and Part III. 170, 171 (about Chidley); Baillie's Letters, II. 184 and 192; Hanbury's Historical Memorials, II. 108 _et seq._] ANTINOMIANS:--The origin of this heresy is attributed to Luther contemporary and fellow townsman, John Agricola, of Eisleben in Saxony (1492-1566); but the Antinomians of New England, and their chief Mrs. Hutchinson, had recently been more heard of. The story of poor Mrs. Hutchinson, the chief of these New England Antinomians, has already been told by us (Vol. II.371-7), as far as to the beginning of 1643, when we left her, a widow with a family of children, including a married daughter and that daughter's husband, beyond the bounds of New England altogether, and seeking rest for her wearied mind, and a home for her little ones, in the Dutch plantations somewhere near what is now New York. The sad end has now to be told. The Indians and the Dutch of those parts were then at feud; and in September 1643, in an inroad of the Indians into the plantation where Mrs. Hutchinson was, she and all her family were murdered, with the exception of a little daughter eight years of age, who was carried into captivity among the Indians, and not recovered till four years afterwards. The news of this tragic end of Mrs. Hutchinson had been brought across the Atlantic, and had added to the interest of pious horror with which her previous career of heresy in Massachusetts had been heard of by the orthodox in England. Mrs. Hutchinson and her Antinomianism, in fact, were already the subjects of a dreadful popular myth. Here, for example, is old Father Ephraim's account of the New England Antinomians, as he had compiled it from information received direct from America:--"Some persons among those that went hence to New England being freighted with many loose and unsound opinions, which they durst not here, they there began to vent them ... working first upon women, traducing godly ministers to be and preach under Covenant of Works, dropping their baits by little and little and angling yet further when they saw them take, and fathering their opinions on those of the best quality in the country; and, by means of Mrs. Hutchinson's double weekly lecture at Boston, under pretence of repeating Mr. Cotton's sermons, these opinions were quickly dispersed before authority was aware." But at length, when the infant church in America had been thus "almost ruinated," the judgments of God overtook the prime fomenters of the heresy in a notorious manner. "As, first, Mistress Hutchinson, the Generalissimo, the high-priestess of the new religion, was delivered at one time of 30 monstrous births, or thereabouts, much about the number of her monstrous opinions; some were bigger, some less, none of them having human shape, but shaped like her opinions: Mistress Dyer also, another of the same crew, was delivered of a large--" [here follows a minute description of a feminine monster that would have made the fortune of any travelling showman, so complexly-horrible was its physiology]. Thus God punished those monstrous "wretches," But the civil authorities of New England, as we know, had punished them too. "God put it into the hearts of the civil magistrates to convent the chief leaders of them; and, after fruitless admonitions given, they proceeded to sentence: some they disfranchised, others they excommunicated, and some they banished. A seditious minister, one Mr. Wheelwright, was one, and Mrs. Hutchinson another; who, going to plant herself on an island, called Rhode Island, under the Dutch, where they could not agree, but were miserably divided into sundry sects, removed from thence to an island called _Hell- gate_ [_Hebgate_, according to Cotton Mather], where the Indians set upon her, and slew her and her daughter, and her daughter's husband, children, and family."--Notwithstanding this dreadful fate of the Antinomians in America, the heresy had broken out in England. Nothing was publicly said of the younger Sir Henry Vane in connexion with it; though, on his return from his Massachusetts governorship, he may have brought back in his speculative head some of the Hutchinsonian ideas. According to Paget, the first Antinomian in London had been "one Master John Eaton," who had been a scholar of his own (_i.e._ at Trinity College, Oxford), and was afterwards curate of a parish near Aldgate. In fact, as we learn from Wood, he became a minister in Suffolk, was "accounted by all the neighbouring ministers a grand Antinomian," and suffered trouble accordingly. But this Eaton had died in 1641, aged about 66, and leaving but an Antinomian book or two, including "_The Honeycomb of Free Justification_;" and the leading Antinomians were new men. One of them was Mr. John Saltmarsh, a Cambridge graduate, and minister in Kent, afterwards well-known as an, army-preacher and pamphleteer; another was "one Randall who preaches about Spittal Yard."--The nature of the Antinomian doctrines, "opening such a fair and easy way to heaven," made them very popular, it appears, in London and elsewhere. Many ran after their preachers, "crowding the churches and filling the doors and windows," for "Oh, it pleaseth people well," adds old Father Ephraim, "to have heaven and their lusts too." Notwithstanding this imputation, and illustrative scandals in Edwards, it really appears that Antinomianism took itself out in high mystic preaching of justification by faith, the doctrine of assurance, and the privileges of saintship. The wild phrases that came in such preaching were the chief offence. [Footnote: Cotton Mather's _Magnalia_, Book VII. p. 19; Palfrey's Hist. of New England, I. 609, Note; Paget, 105-118; Wood's Athenæ, III. 21 (for more about Eaton); _Gangræna_ in several places, for references to Saltmarsh and Randall. Baillie in his _Dissuasive_ (pp. 57-64) has much the same story as Paget about Mrs. Hutchinson and the New England Antinomians, and attributes the rise of that heresy to the evil influence of Independency.--The idiotic and disgusting myth of the monstrous _accouchements_ of the two Antinomian women seems to have found great favour with the orthodox: and it figures in many pious books of the time and afterwards. It seems actually to have originated in America, and to have been widely believed there, while Mrs. Hutchinson was alive; for Cotton Mather, repeating it, with the most abject good faith, and in great detail, as late as 1702 (_Magnalia_, VII. 20), quotes a letter of Mr. Thomas Hooker, to the effect that at the very time of one of the diabolic _accouchements_, Mrs. Dyer's (Oct. 17, 1637), the house in which her and his wife were sitting was violently shaken, as if by an earthquake, for the space of seven or eight minutes. Mather also avers that there was an investigation of the affair by the magistrates at the time.] FAMILISTS:--Probably because there had been a continental sect of this name in the sixteenth century, founded by a David George of Delft, Edwards includes _Familists_ among his leading English sorts of Sectaries, and Paget devotes ten pages to them. Paget, however, admits that they were "so close and cunning that ye shall hardly ever find them out." If there really was such an English sect, their main principle probably was that every society of Christians should be a kind of family- party, jolly within itself in confidential love-feasts and exchanges of sentiment, and letting the general world and its creeds roar around unquestioned and unheeded. Baillie, however, in an incidental notice of Familism in the Second Part of his _Dissuasive_, gives a somewhat different account. It was, according to him, a wild development of Anabaptism, of which not a few once "counted zealous and gracious" were suspected--including "a great man, a peer of the land." It had a public representative in Mr. Randall, who had "for some years preached peaceably in the Spital" (already mentioned among the Antinomians), and of whom Baillie had heard that he entertained such ideas as these, though reserving them probably as esoteric mysteries for the highest class of the Family of Love--"that all the resurrection and glory which Scripture promises is past already, and no other coming of Christ to judgment, or life eternal, is to be expected than what presently in this earth the saints do enjoy; that the most clear historic passages of Scripture are mere allegories; that in all things, Angels, Devils, Men, Women, there is but one spirit and life, which absolutely and essentially is God; that nothing is everlasting but the life and essence of God which now is in all creatures;" &c. We should now call this a kind of Pantheism; but probably it was coupled with that disposition to privacy, and indifference to creeds and controversies, which has been mentioned as the peculiarity of Familism. Even the _Familists_, however, it seems, had their subdivisions. One John Hetherington, a box-maker, had been a kind of Familist, but had recanted. [Footnote: Paget, 92 102, and 137,138; _Gangræna_, Part I. 13; Baillie's _Dissuasive_ Part II. pp. 99-104] MILLENARIES OR CHILIASTS:--"An Heresy," says old Father Ephraim, "frequent at this time. This sect look for a temporary [temporal] kingdom of Christ, that must begin presently and last 1,000 years. Of this opinion are many of our Apocalyptical men, that study more future events than their present only." This is substantially all we have from Paget. In fact, however, the Chiliasts or Millenarians were hardly a mere sect. The expectation of a Millennium near at hand was very prevalent, or was becoming very prevalent, among the English Divines of the Assembly itself. "Many of the Divines here," wrote Baillie, September 5, 1645, "not only Independents, but others, such as Twisse, Marshall, Palmer, and many more, are express Chiliasts." In his _Dissuasive_, however, where he devotes an entire chapter to this heresy of Chiliasm, he attributes the grosser form of the heresy chiefly to the Independents. A kind of Chiliasm or Millenarianism, he says, had been held by some former English Divines, including Joseph Meade; but it had been reserved for two Independents--"Mr. Archer and his colleague at Arnheim, T. G." (_i.e._ Thomas Goodwin)--to invent new dreams on the subject; and these had recently been adopted by Mr. Burroughs. The purport of their doctrine was that in the year 1650, or, at the furthest, 1695, Christ was to reappear in human form at Jerusalem, destroy the existing fabric of things in a conflagration, collect the scattered Jews, raise martyrs and saints from their graves, and begin his glorious reign of a thousand years. [Footnote: Paget, 136, 137; Baillie's Letters, II. 313, and _Dissuasive_, 224-252.] SEEKERS:--"Many have wrangled so long about the Church that at last they have quite lost it, and go under the name of _Expecters_ and _Seekers_, and do deny that there is any Church, or any true minister, or any ordinances; some of them affirm the Church to be in the wilderness, and they are seeking for it there; others say that it is in the smoke of the Temple, and that they are groping for it there--where I leave them praying to God."--So far Old Ephraim; and what he says, combined with one of Edwards's miscellaneous blasphemies already quoted, enables us to fancy the _Seekers_. They were people, it seems, who had arrived at the conclusion that the Supernatural had never yet been featured forth to man in any propositions or symbols that could be accepted as adequate, and who were waiting, therefore, for a possible "Church of the Future;" content, meanwhile, to dwell in a Temple of smoke, or (for there is the alternative figure) to see visions of the Future Church in the smoke of the present Temple.--"Mr. Erbury, that lived in Wales," (but had come to London, and then settled in Ely, whence he made excursions,) and "one Walwyn, a dangerous man, a strong head," who laboured somewhere else, are mentioned by Edwards as men avowing themselves in this predicament. Baillie mentions also one Laurence Clarkson, who had passed from Anabaptism to Seekerism, and he speaks of Mrs. Attaway, the Baptist woman-preacher, and Mr. Saltmarsh, the Antinomian, as tending the same way.----But the chief of the _Seekers_, perhaps the original founder of the Sect, and certainly the bravest exponent of their principles, was a person with whom we are already acquainted. "One Mr. Williams," writes Baillie, June 7, 1644, "has drawn a great number after him to a singular Independency, denying any true Church in the world, and will have every man to serve God by himself alone, without any church at all. This man has made a great and bitter schism lately among the Independents." Again, on the 23rd of July, Baillie refers to the same person as "my good acquaintance Mr. Roger Williams, who says there is no church, no sacraments, no pastors, no church-officers or ordinance, in the world, nor has been since a few years after the Apostles." In short, the arch- representative of this new religion of Seekerism on both sides of the Atlantic was no other than our friend Roger Williams, the Tolerationist (Vol. II. 560-3, and _antè_, pp. 113-120). Through the variations of this man's external adventures we have seen the equally singular series of variations of his mental condition. First an intense Separatist, or Independent of the most resolute type, but conjoining with this Separatism a passion for the most absolute liberty of conscience and the entire dissociation of civil power from matters of religion, then a Baptist and excommunicated on that account by his former friends in America, he had latterly, in his solitude at Providence, outgone Baptism or any known form of Independency, and, still retaining his doctrine of the most absolute liberty of conscience, had worked himself into that state of dissatisfaction with all visible church-forms, and of yearning quest after unattainable truth, for which the name _Seekerism_ was invented by himself or others. Though he did not propose that preaching should be abandoned, he had gradually settled in a notion which he thus expresses: "In the poor small span of my life, I desired to have been a diligent and constant observer, and have been myself many ways engaged, in city, in country, in court, in schools, in universities, in churches, in Old and New England, and yet cannot, in the holy presence of God, bring in the result of a satisfying discovery that either the begetting ministry of the apostles or messengers to the nations, or the feeding and nourishing ministry of pastors and teachers, according to the first institution of the Lord Jesus, are yet restored or extant." It was while he was in this stage of his mental history that Williams came over on his flying visit to England in the matter of the new charter for the Rhode Island plantations. Some whiff of his strange opinions may have preceded him; but it must have been mainly by his intercourse with leading Londoners during his stay in England, which extended over more than a year (June 1643--Sept. 1644), that he diffused the interest in himself and his Seekerism which we certainly find existing in 1644. He can have been no stranger to the chief Divines of the Westminster Assembly. Baillie, we see, was on speaking terms with him; and it is curious to note in Baillie's and other references to him the same vein of personal liking for the man, running through amazement at his heresy, which characterized the criticisms of him by his New England opponents and excommunicants. Incidents of his visit, not less interesting now, were two publications of his in London, his "_Key into the Language of America_," published in 1643, and his _Bloody Tenent of Persecution_, published in 1644.--At least the name of the sect of "The Seekers," I may add, had struck Cromwell himself, and had some fascination for him, whether on its own account, or from his acquaintance with Williams. "Your sister Claypole," he wrote to his daughter Mrs. Ireton, some two years after our present date (Oct. 25,1646), "is, I trust in mercy, exercised with some perplexed thoughts. She sees her own vanity and carnal mind, bewailing it: she seeks after (as I hope also) what will satisfy. And thus to be a Seeker is to be of the best sect next after a Finder; and such an one shall every faithful humble Seeker be in the end. Happy Seeker, happy Finder!" [Footnote: Paget, 150; _Gangræna_, Part I. p. 24, and p. 38; _Dissuasive_, Part II. pp. 96, 97 and Notes; Baillie's Letters, II. 191-2 and 212; Gammell's _Life of Roger Williams_ (Boston, 1846), and Memoir of Williams, by Edward B. Underhill, prefixed to the republication of William's _Bloody Tenent of Persecution_, by the "Hanserd Knollys Society" (1848); Carlyle's Cromwell, I. 212.] DIVORCERS:--"These I term _Divorcers_" says Old Ephraim, "that would be quit of their wives for slight occasions;" and he goes on to speak of MILTON as the representative of the sect. Featley had previously mentioned Milton's Divorce Tract as one of the proofs of the tendency of the age to Antinomianism, Familism, and general anarchy; and Edwards and Baillie followed in the same strain. Milton's Doctrine of Divorce, it thus appears, had attracted attention, and had perhaps gained some following. Among the six caricatures of notable sects on the title-page of Paget's _Heresiography_ is one of "THE DIVORCER"--_i.e._ a man, in an admonishing attitude, and without his hat, dismissing or pushing away his wife, who has her hat on, as if ready for a journey, and is putting her handkerchief to her eyes. We shall have more to say of Milton in this connexion. [Footnote: Paget, pp. 150, 151, p. 87, and Epistle Dedicatory, p. 4; Fentley's _Dippers Dipt_, Epistle Dedicatory, p. 3; Edward's _Gangræna_, Part I. p. 29.] ANTI-SABBATARIANS, AND TRASKITES:--These sects, though distinct, may be named together. The _Anti-Sabbatarians_ were those who denied the obligation of any Lord's Day or Sabbath: they were pretty numerous, but were distributed through the other sects. The _Traskites_, on the other hand, denied the obligation of the Christian Sunday or Lord's Day, but maintained the perpetual obligation of the Jewish Sabbath on the seventh day of the week. They were the followers of one John Traske, a poor eccentric who had been well known to Paget, but was now dead, and remembered only for his heresy, for which he had been whipt, pilloried, and imprisoned, about 1618. His opinions had been revived more ably in certain treatises and discourses, published in 1628 and 1632, by Theophilus Brabourne, a Puritan minister in Norfolk. Both Brabourne and Traske had been obliged to recant their opinions and return to orthodoxy; and indeed Traske had done so in a Tract written against himself, though he again relapsed. Nevertheless the heresy had taken root, and one heard in 1644 of Traskites or Sabbatarians dispersed through England. The sect is continued still in the so-called "Seventh Day Baptists." [Footnote: Paget, pp. 138-141; with more accurate particulars in Cox's _Literature of the Sabbath Question_, I. 153-5, 157-8, and 162.] SOUL-SLEEPERS OR MORTALISTS:--Such was the odd name given to a sect, or supposed sect, represented by the anonymous author of a, Tract called _Man's Mortality_. The Tract is now very scarce, if not utterly forgotten; but, as it made a great stir at the time, and as we shall hear of it and its author rather particularly again in connexion with Milton's life, I may here give some account of it from a copy which I have managed to see. The title in full is as follows: "Man's Mortallitie: or a Treatise wherein 'tis proved, both Theologically and Phylosophically, that whole Man (as a rationall creature) is a compound wholy mortall, contrary to that common distinction of Soule and Body; and that the present going of the Soule into Heaven or Hell is a meer fiction; and that at the Resurrection is the beginning of our immortallity, and then actual Condemnation and Salvation, and not before: With all doubtes and objections answered and resolved both by Scripture and Reason; discovering the multitude of Blasphemies and Absurdities that arise from the fancie of the Soule: Also divers other mysteries, as of Heaven, Hell, Christ's humane residence, the Extent of the Resurrection, the New Creation, &c.: opened and presented to the tryall of better judgments, By R. O. Amsterdam: Printed by John Canne, Anno Dom. 1643." In the British Museum copy, which is the one I have seen, the word "Amsterdam" is erased by the collector's pen, and "London" substituted, with the date "Jan. 19" added; whence I infer that, whatever Canne at Amsterdam had to do with the printing of the tract, it was virtually a London publication, and out in January, 1643-4. On the title-page is quoted the text Ecclesiastes iii. 19, thus--"That which befalleth the sonnes of men befalleth Beasts; even one thing befalleth them all: as the one dyeth so dyeth the other; yea they have all one breath, so that man hath no preheminence above a Beast; for all is vanity." This gives so far the key-note to the 57 pages of matter of the Tract itself. It is a queer mixture of a sort of physiological reasoning, such as we should now call Materialism, with a mystical metaphysics, and with odd whimsies of the author's own--such as that Christ had ascended into the Sun. The leading tenet, however, is that the notion of a soul, or supernatural and immortal essence, in man, distinct from his bodily organism, is a sheer delusion, contradicted both by Scripture and correct physiological thinking, and that from this notion have arisen all kinds of superstitions and practical mischiefs. "The most grand and blasphemous heresies that are in the world, the mystery of iniquity and the kingdom of Antichrist, depend upon it." So says the Tract itself; and in the first of two pieces of verse prefixed to it by an admirer, and entitled "To His worthy Friend the Author, upon his Booke," there occur these lines:-- "The hell-hatched doctrine of th' immortal soul Discovered makes the hungry Furies howl, And teare their snakey haire, with grief appaled To see their error-leading doctrine quailed, Hell undermined and Purgatory blown Up in the air." There are Latin quotations in the Tract; and some of the physiological arguments by which the author seeks to refute the opinion of "the Soulites," as he calls them, are rather nauseous. On the whole, were it not for the appended concession of a Resurrection, or New Creation, and an Immortality somehow to ensue thence, the doctrine of the Tract might be described as out-and-out Materialism. Possibly, in spite of the concession, this is what the author meant to drive at. Among some of his followers, however, a milder version of his doctrine seems to have been in favour, not quite denying the existence of a soul, but asserting that the soul goes into sleep or temporary extinction at death, to be re- awakened at the Resurrection. [Footnote: Paget, pp. 148, 149; _Gangræna_, Part I. pp. 22, 23; Baillie's _Dissuasive_, Part II. 99 and 121; but mainly the Tract cited.] ARIANS, SOCINIANS, AND OTHER ANTI-TRINITARIANS:--Since 1614, when Legate and Wightman had been burnt for Arianism (Vol. I. p. 46), this and other forms of the Anti-Trinitarian heresy had been little heard of in England. But in the ferment of the Civil War they were reappearing. A Thomas Webb, a young fellow of twenty years of age, had been shocking people in London and in country-places by awful expressions against the Trinity; one Clarke had been, doing the same; one Paul Best had been circulating manuscripts in which there were "most horrid blasphemies of the Trinity, of Christ, and of the Holy Ghost;" and John Biddle, of Gloucester, master of the school there, and of whom, from his career at Oxford, high hopes had been formed, had begun to be "free of his discourses in a Socinian direction." Baillie adds Mr. Samuel Richardson, one of the Baptist ministers of London, to the number of those whose Trinitarianism was questionable, and charges the Baptists generally with laxity on that point. In short, there was an alarm of Arianism, and other forms of Anti- Trinitarianism, as again abroad in England. Mr. Nye, the Independent, had been heard to say that "to his knowledge the denying of the Divinity of Christ was a growing opinion, and that there was a company of them met about Coleman Street, a Welshman being their chief, who held this opinion." Coleman Street appears, indeed, to have been a very hotbed of heresy. For here it was that JOHN GOODWIN (Vol. II. 582-4, and _antè_, pp. 120-122) had his congregation. He had not revealed himself fully; but the public had had a taste of him in recent pamphlets. Baillie, on rumour, reports him as a Socinian; and Edwards, who came into conflict with him in due time, and devotes many consecutive pages of Billingsgate to him in the Second Part of his _Gangræna_, tells us that he held "many wicked opinions," being "an Hermaphrodite and a compound of an Arminian, Socinian, Libertine, Anabaptist, & c." From the same authority we learn that the Presbyterians had nicknamed him "the great Red Dragon of Coleman Street." What he really was we have already seen in part for ourselves, and shall yet see more fully.[Footnote: Paget, 132--136; _Gangræna_, Part I. pp. 21, 22, 26, 33, Part II 19- 39, and Part III. 111 and 87; Baillie's _Dissuasive_, Part II. p. 98; also Wood's Athenæ, III. 593 (for Biddle); Baillie's Letters, II. 192, and Jackson's _Life of John Goodwin_ (1822), pp. 3 and 14.] ANTI-SCRIPTURISTS:--"One wicked sect," says Old Ephraim, "denieth the Scriptures both of the Old and New Testament, and account them as things of nought; yea, as I am credibly informed, in public congregations they vent these their damnable opinions." He gives no names; but Edwards mentions "one Marshal, a bricklayer, a young man, living at Hackney," who made a mock of the Scriptures in his harangues, and asserted that he himself "knew the mystery of God in Christ better than St. Paul." A companion of this Marshal's told the people that "the Scripture was their golden calf and they danced round it." A Priscilla Miles had been speaking very shockingly of the Scriptures at Norwich. But the most noted Anti-Scripturist seems to have been a Clement Wrighter, a Worcester man, living in London, of whom Edwards gives this terrible character-- "Sometimes a professor of religion and judged to have been godly, who is now an arch-heretic and fearful apostate, an old wolf, and a subtle man, who goes about corrupting, and venting his errors; he is often in Westminster Hall and on the Exchange; he comes into public meetings of the Sectaries upon occasions of meeting to draw up petitions for the Parliament or other businesses. This man about seven or eight years ago (_i.e._ about 1638) fell off from the communion of our churches to Independency and Brownism; from that he fell to Anabaptism and Arminianism, and to Mortalism, holding the soul mortal (he is judged to be the author, or at least to have had a great hand in the Book of the _Mortality of the Soul_). After that he fell to be Seeker, and is now an Anti-Scripturist, a Questionist and Sceptick, and I fear an Atheist." Specimens of his sayings about the Bible are given; and altogether one has to fancy Wrighter as an oldish man, sneaking about in public places in London on soft-soled shoes, and with bundles of papers under his arm. I have seen a little thing printed by him in Feb. 1615-6, under the title of "_The Sad Case of Clement Writer_," in which he complains of injustice, to the extent of 1,500_l_., done him by the late Lord Keeper Coventry and other judges in some suit that had lasted for twelve years. [Footnote: Paget, 149; _Gangræna_, Part I. pp. 26- -28; Baillie's _Dissuasive_, Part II. 121.] SCEPTICS, OR QUESTIONISTS:--They were those who, according to Edwards, "questioned everything in matters of religion, holding nothing positively nor certainly, saving the doctrine of pretended liberty of conscience for all, and liberty of prophesying." Many besides Wrighter had reached this stage through their anti-Scripturism, and were free-thinkers of the cold or merely rational order, distinct from the devout and enthusiastic Seekers. [Footnote: _Gangræna_, Part I. p. 13.] ATHEISTS:--Although Edwards charitably hints his fear that Mr. Wrighter had at last sunk into this extreme category, it is remarkable that neither he nor Paget ventures to reckon _Atheists_ among the existing Sects. Probably, therefore, there was no body of persons to whom, with any pretext of plausibility, the name could be applied. But we are advised of individuals here and there whom their neighbours suspected of Atheism; and, if Edwards is to be believed, there was alive a certain John Boggis, an apprentice to an apothecary in London, who, though at present only a young Anabaptist preacher, and disciple of Captain Hobson, was to go within a year or two to such unheard-of lengths about Great Yarmouth that even Wrighter must have disowned him. [Footnote: Ibid. Part II. 133, 134; and Baillie's _Dissuasive_, Part II. 99.] Such were the English Sects and Sectaries that had begun to be talked of in 1644. Not that they were bounded off strictly from each other in divisions according with their names. On the contrary, they shaded off into each other; and there were mixtures and combinations of some of them. Moreover, as the chief of them held by the Congregationalist principle in some form, and hoped to flourish by taking advantage of that principle, it was not unusual for Presbyterian writers to include these along with the Congregationalists proper in the one lax designation of Independents. At all events, the Sects hung on to the Independents through that principle of Toleration or Liberty of Conscience which the Independents had propounded, at first mildly, but with a tendency to less and less of limitation. All the Sects, less or more, were TOLERATIONISTS; the heresy of heresies in which they all agreed with each other, and with the Independents, was LIBERTY OF CONSCIENCE. RESUMPTION OF PROCEEDINGS BY THE WESTMINSTER ASSEMBLY: DENUNCIATION OF PICKED SECTARIES AND HERETICS. The foregoing survey of English Sects and Sectaries and of the state of the Toleration Controversy in 1644 has been our employment, the reader must be reminded, during the fortnight's vacation of the Westminster Assembly from July 23 to August 7 in that year. Something of the same kind was the vacation-employment of the members of that Assembly too, and especially of the Presbyterian majority. For they had been driven out of their previous calculations by the battle of Marston Moor (July 2). That battle had been won mainly by Cromwell, the head of the Army- Independents, and it went to the credit of Independency. All the more necessary was it for the Presbyterians of the Assembly to bethink themselves of indirect means of argument against the Independents. The means were not far to seek. Let this horrible Hydra of Sects, all bred out of Independency, be dragged into light; and would not respectable Independency itself stand aghast at her offspring? The word _Toleration_ had been mumbled cautiously within the Assembly, and had made itself heard with some larger liking in Parliament, and still greater applause among the hasty thousands of the Parliamentary soldiers and the populace! Let it be shown what this monstrous notion really meant, what herds of strange creatures and shoals even of vermin it would permit in England; and would England ratify the monstrosity, or the Independency consociated with it, even for twenty Cromwells, or ten Marston Moors? So, in the fort-night's vacation, reasoned Messrs. Marshall, Lightfoot, Calamy, Palmer, Vines, Spurstow, Newcomen, Herle, Burges, and other English Presbyterians, incited rather than repressed by the Scottish anxiety of Rutherford, Gillespie, Baillie, and (I am afraid) Henderson. Accordingly, when the Assembly resumed its sittings (Wednesday, Aug. 7, 1644), its first work was to fall passionately on the Sects and the arch- heresy of Toleration. "The first day of our sitting, after our vacance," says Baillie, "a number of complaints were given in against the Anabaptists' and Antinomians' huge increase and insolencies intolerable. Notwithstanding Mr. Nye's and others' opposition, it was carried that the Assembly should remonstrate it to the Parliament." [Footnote: Baillie's Letters, II. 218; corroborated by Lightfoot's Notes on the very day (p. 299).] And they did remonstrate it, without a day's delay. Friday, May 9, as we learn from the Lords Journals, it was represented to the House of Lords, through Mr. Marshall, by order of the Assembly, "That they have been informed of the great growth and increase of Anabaptists and Antinomians and other Sects; and that some Anabaptists have delivered in private houses some blasphemous passages and dangerous opinions: They have acquainted the House of Commons therewith; and, &c." [Footnote: Lords Journals, Aug. 9, 1644.] Turning to the Commons Journals of the same day we find, accordingly, a column and a half on the same subject, with many details. Dr. Burges and Mr. Marshall had appeared before the Commons on the same errand from the Assembly: had told the Honourable House that many ministers and gentry all through England had long desired to petition it "to prevent the spreading opinions of Anabaptism and Antinomianism;" that they had been persuaded to forbear; but that now "these men have cast off all affection and are so imbitterated" that farther forbearance would be wrong, and the Assembly cannot but represent to the House that "it is high time to suppress them." That the Commons might not be left in the vague, a Mr. Picot in Guernsey, and a Mr. Knolles, recently in Cornwall (Hanserd Knollys?), of the Anabaptist sort, with a Mr. Randall, a Mr. Penrose, and a Mr. Simson, as of a worse sort still (see Randall among the Antinomians and Familists in our synopsis), were denounced by name as proper culprits to begin with. What could the poor House of Commons do? Agreeing with the Lords, they promised to do what they could. They would take the whole subject into their grave consideration; they empowered the Committee for Plundered Ministers, with a certain addition to their number, to arrest and examine the particular culprits named; and, to prove their heartiness meanwhile, they resolved, on that very day, "That Mr. White do give order for the public burning of one Mr. Williams his book, intituled, &c., concerning the Tolerating of all sorts of Religion." [Footnote: Commons Journals, Aug. 9, 1644.] This "one Mr. Williams," as the reader will be aware, was Roger Williams, then on his way back to America; and "his book" was _The Bloody Tenent_. There must have been much hypocrisy, and much cowardice, in the English House of Commons on that day. Where was the younger Sir Harry Vane? Probably he was in the House while they passed the order, and wondering how far Roger Williams had got on his voyage, and meditatively twirling his thumbs. A good stroke of business by the Westminster Assembly in two days after their vacation! But they followed it up. There were frequent Solemn Fasts, by Parliamentary order, in those days, when all London was expected to go to church and listen to sermons by divines from the Westminster Assembly. Tuesday, the 13th of August, 1644, was one of those Solemn Fast-days--an "Extraordinary Day of Humiliation;" and the ministers appointed by the Assembly to preach in chief--_i.e._ to preach before the two Houses of Parliament, and the Assembly itself, in St. Margaret's, Westminster--were Mr. Thomas Hill and Mr. Herbert Palmer. These two gentlemen, it seems, did their duty: They satisfied even Baillie. "Mr. Palmer and Mr. Hill," he says, "did preach that day to the Assembly two of the most Scottish and free sermons that ever I heard anywhere. The way here of all preachers, even the best, has been to speak before the Parliament with so profound a reverence as truly took all edge from their exhortations, and made all applications of them toothless and adulatorious. That style is much changed, however: these two good men laid well about them, and charged public and Parliamentary sins strictly on the backs of the guilty." [Footnote: Baillie's Letters, II. 220, 221.] As the sermons themselves remain in print, we have the means of verifying Baillie's description. It is quite correct. Not only in the "Epistle Dedicatory" to his sermon when it was printed did Mr. Hill denounce the Toleration doctrine, and make a marginal reference to Roger Williams's "_Bloody Tenent_" as a book not too soon burnt; but in the sermon itself, the subject of which was the duty of "advancing Temple-work" (Haggai i. 7, 8), he openly attacked two classes of persons as the chief "underminers of Temple-work." First, he said, there were those who would allow nothing to be _jure divino_ in the Church, but held that all matters of Church-constitution were to be settled by mere prudence and State-convenience--in other words, the Erastians, _They_ are lectured, but are let off more easily than the second sort of underminers: viz. "such who would have a toleration of all ways of Religion in this Church." Parliament is reminded that all tendency to this way of thinking is unfaithfulness to the Covenant, and is told that "to set the door so wide open as to tolerate all religions" would be to "make London an Amsterdam," and would lead to--in fact, would certainly lead to-- Amsterdamnation! So far Mr. Hill; but Mr. Palmer was even more bold. Preaching on Psalm xcix. 8, this delicate little creature laid about him most manfully. Parliament are rebuked for eluding the Covenant, for too great tenderness in their dealings with delinquents, and for remissness in the prevention and punishment of false doctrine. They are exhorted to extirpate heresy and schism, especially Antinomianism and Anabaptism, and, are warned at some length against the snare of Toleration. "Hearken not--I earnestly exhort every one that intends to have any regard at all to his solemn Covenant and oath in this second article--to those that offer to plead for Tolerations; which I wonder how any one dare write or speak for as they do that have themselves taken the Covenant, or know that _you_ have. The arguments that are used in some books, well worthy to be burnt, plead for Popery, Judaism, Turcism, Paganism, and all manner of false religions, under pretence of Liberty of Conscience." This is clearly an allusion to John Goodwin; and in the sequel Mr. Palmer makes another personal allusion of still greater interest. In order to show what a social chaos would result from toleration of error on the plea of Liberty of Conscience, he gives instances of some of the horrible opinions that would claim the benefit of the plea, and among these he names Milton's Divorce doctrine, then circulating in a book which the author had been shameless enough to dedicate openly to Parliament itself. The particulars will be given, and the passage quoted, in due time; the fact is enough at present. [Footnote: The title of Hill's sermon is "_The Season for England's Selfe-Reflection and Advancing Temple-work; discovered in a Sermon preached to the two Houses of Parliament at Margaret's, Westminster, Aug. 13, 1614; being an extraordinary day of Humiliation. By, &c., London: Printed by Richard Cotes, for John Bellamy and Philerion Stephens_ 1644."--The title of Palmer's is "_The Glasse of God's Providence towards his Faithful Ones; Held forth in a Sermon,_ &c. [occasion and date as in Hill's]; _wherein is discovered the great failings that the best are liable unto, upon which God is provoked sometimes to take vengeance. The whole is applyed specially to a more carefull observance of our late Convenant, and particularly against the ungodly Toleration pleaded for under pretence of Liberty of Conscience. By, &c., London: Printed by G.M. for Th. Underhill at the Bible in Wood Street,_ 1644." Neither sermon impresses one now very favourably in respect of either spirit or ability. I expected Palmer's to be better.] Not content with direct remonstrance to Parliament on the subject of the increase of sects and heresies, nor with the power of exhorting it on the subject through the pulpit, the Presbyterians of the Assembly, I find, resorted to other agencies. They had great influence in the City, and it occurred to them, or to some of them, to stir up the Stationers' Company to activity in the matter. The Stationers, indeed, had a commercial interest, as well as a religious interest, in the suppression of the obnoxious books and pamphlets, most of which were published without the legal formalities of licence and registration. It is without surprise therefore that we find this entry in the Commons Journals for Saturday, Aug. 24, 1644: "_Ordered_ that the Petition from the Company of Stationers be read on Monday morning next," followed by this other as the minute of the first business (after prayers) at the next sitting, (Monday, Aug. 26): "The humble Petition of the Company of Stationers, consisting of Booksellers, Printers, and Bookbinders, was this day read, and ordered to be referred to the consideration of the Committee for Printing, to hear all parties and to state the business, and to prepare an Ordinance upon the whole matter and to bring it in with all convenient speed; and they are, to this purpose, to peruse the Bill formerly brought in concerning this matter. They are diligently to inquire out the authors, printers, and publishers of the Pamphlets against the Immortality of the Soul and _Concerning Divorce_." It had been determined, it seems, that Palmer's denunciation of Milton in his sermon a fortnight before should not be a _brutum fulmen_. To the incident, as it affected Milton himself, we shall have to refer again. Meanwhile it belongs to that stage of the action of the Westminster Assembly on English politics which we are now trying to illustrate. The Assembly, we have shown, besides still carrying on within itself the main question between Presbyterianism and Congregationalism, had begun a wider war against Schism, Sectarianism, the whole miscellany of English heresies, and especially the all-including heresy of Toleration. They opened the campaign, by private agreement among themselves, in August 1644; and by the end of that month they had succeeded in rousing Parliament to some action on the subject, and had directed attention to at least nine special offenders, deserving to be punished first of all. These were--the Anabaptists, Picot and Hanserd Knollys; the Antinomians, Penrose and Simson; the Antinomian and Familist, Randall; the Seeker and Tolerationist, Roger Williams; the Independent, semi-Socinian, and Tolerationist, John Goodwin; the Anti-Scripturist and Mortalist, Clement Wrighter; and Mr. John Milton of Aldersgate Street, author of a Treatise on Divorce. For, though the Committee of Parliament had been instructed to inquire out the author of the Divorce Treatise, this was but a form. The second edition, dedicated to the Parliament and the Assembly, and with Milton's name to it in full, had been out more than six months. Of the nine persons mentioned, only Clement Wrighter, the Mortalist (if indeed the tract on _Man's Mortality_ was from his pen), had to be found out. Was there to be no check to this Presbyterian inquisitorship? Whence could a check come? The few Independents in the Assembly, just because they were fighting their own particular battle, had to be cautious against too great an extension of their lines. Not from _them_, therefore, but from the freer Independency of the Army, which was in fact by this time a composition of all or many of the sects, could the check be expected. Thence, in fact, it did come. In short, while the Presbyterians in London were in the flush of their first success against the Sectaries and the Tolerationists, in walked Oliver Cromwell. CROMWELL'S INTERFERENCE FOR TOLERATION: ACCOMMODATION ORDER OF PARLIAMENT. Events had been qualifying Cromwell more and more for the task. His Independency, or let us call it Tolerationism, had been long known. As early as March 1643-4, when he had just become Lieutenant-general in the Earl of Manchester's army, he had been resolute in seeing that the officers and soldiers in that army should not be troubled or kept down for Anabaptism or the like. This had been the more necessary because the next in command under him, the Scottish Major-general Crawford, was an ardent and pragmatic Presbyterian. "Sir," Cromwell had written to Crawford on one occasion, when an Anabaptist colonel had been put under disgrace, "the State, in choosing men to serve it, takes no notice of their opinions; if they be willing faithfully to serve it, that satisfies. I advised you formerly to bear with men of different minds from yourself: if you had done it when I advised you to it, I think you would not have had so many stumbling-blocks in your way. It may be you judge otherwise; but I tell you _my_ mind." [Footnote: Carlyle, Cromwell (ed. 1857), I. p. 148.] Ever since that time there had been a vital difference between the Presbyterian Major-general Crawford and his superior, the Lieutenant-general. Gradually, according to Baillie, Manchester, who was "a sweet, meek man," and greatly led by Cromwell, had been brought over more to the Presbyterian way by Crawford's reasonings. It had come to be a question, in fact, whether Cromwell and comfort or Crawford and precision should prevail in Manchester's army. Marston Moor (July 2) had settled that. Cromwell, as the hero of Marston Moor, was not a man to be farther opposed or thwarted; the Independents, who had mainly won Marston Moor, were not men to submit longer to Presbyterian ascendancy in the regulation of the army, or to see their large-faced English chief pestered and counterworked by a peevish Scot. Yes, but _was_ Cromwell the hero of Marston Moor, or _had_ Marston Moor been won mainly by the Independents? These were the questions which Crawford, ever since the battle, had been trying to keep open. He had been trying, as we have seen, to keep them open in London, though with but small success; and in the Army his tongue had, doubtless, been louder and more troublesome. At last Cromwell made up his mind. Either Crawford must cease to be Major-general of Manchester's army, or _he_ must cease to be Lieutenant-general. It was on this business that, in September 1644, he came up to London. There had been letters on the subject before from both parties in the Army, the Independents pressing for Crawford's dismissal, and the Presbyterians for retaining him. But now Manchester, Cromwell, and Crawford had, all three, come up personally to argue the matter out. Cromwell, it appears, was in one of those moods of ungovernable obstinacy which always came upon him at the right time. "Our labour to reconcile them," writes Baillie, "was vain: Cromwell was peremptor; notwithstanding the kingdom's evident hazard, and the evident displeasure of our [the Scottish] nation, yet, if Crawford were not cashiered, his [Cromwell's] colonels would lay down their commissions." There was a plot in all this, Baillie thought. The real purpose of the Independents was to bring Manchester out of the clutches of Presbyterianism, or, if that could not be done, to get him to resign, so that Cromwell might succeed to the chief command; in which case the Independents would be able to "counterbalance" the Presbyterians, and "overawe the Assembly and Parliament both to their ends."--It was a very proper plot, too, as every day was proving. What was the last news that had reached London? It was that Essex, the General-in-chief, had been totally beaten by the King in Cornwall (Sept. 1)--Essex himself obliged to escape by ship, leaving his army to its fate; the horse, under Sir William Balfour, to fight their way out by desperate exertion; and the foot, under Skippon, to think of doing the same, but at last to surrender miserably. Waller's army, also, was by this time nowhere. It had perished by gradual desertion. Evidently, it had become a question of some moment for the Parliamentarians _who_ had won Marston Moor, and _who_ should be chief in Manchester's army. [Footnote: Baillie's Letters, II. 229, 230; Rushworth V. 699 _et seq._; Whitlocke (ed. 1853), I. 302, 303; Carlyle's Cromwell, (ed., 1857), I. 158.] The special business which had brought Cromwell to London was, in fact, but a metaphor of the general business then occupying the English nation. Whether a pragmatical Presbyterian Scot should regulate the discipline of an English Parliamentarian army, and whether the Westminster Assembly should establish a Presbyterian Inquisitorship over the whole mind of England, were but forms of the same question. Little wonder, then, that Cromwell, finding himself in London on the smaller form of the business, resolved to move also in the larger. And he did. "This day," writes Baillie on Friday the 13th of September 1644, "Cromwell has obtained an Order of the House of Commons to refer to the Committee of both Kingdoms the accommodation or toleration of the Independents--a high and unexpected Order!" Three days afterwards Baillie is still full of the subject. "While Cromwell is here," he says, "the House of Commons, without the least advertisement to any of us [Scottish Commissioners], or of the Assembly, passes an Order that the Grand Committee of both Houses, Assembly, and us, shall consider of the means to unite us and the Independents, or, if that be found impossible, to see how they may be tolerate. This has much affected us." On turning to the Commons Journals we find the actual words of the Order: "_Ordered_, That the Committee of Lords and Commons appointed to treat with the Commissioners of Scotland and the Committee of the Assembly do take into consideration the differences in opinion of the members of the Assembly in point of Church- government, and do endeavour a union if it be possible; and, in case that cannot be done, do endeavour the finding out some ways how far tender consciences, who cannot in all things submit to the common Rule which shall be established, may be borne with, according to the Word, and as may stand with the public peace, that so the proceedings of the Assembly may not be so much retarded." Mr. Solicitor St. John appears as the reporter of the Order. Cromwell, in fact, had quietly formed a little phalanx of the right men to carry the thing through. The younger Vane was one of them. Even Stephen Marshall, the Presbyterian and Smectymnuan, had to some extent aided in the contrivance, without consulting any of his brethren of the Assembly. The Order came upon the Presbyterians like a thunder-clap. For, as they rightly interpreted, it was nothing less than a design to carry in Parliament a Toleration-clause to be inserted in the Bill for establishing Presbytery before that Bill was ready to be drafted. Of this Baillie and his friends complained bitterly. Was it not unfair to Presbyterianism thus to anticipate so ostentatiously that there would be many whom it would not satisfy? Was not this framing of a Toleration- clause, to be inserted into a Bill before the Bill itself was in being, like a solicitation to the English people to prefer the clause to the body of the Bill, and so to continue dubious about Presbytery, instead of cultivating faith in its merits? So argued Baillie and the Presbyterians. But, indeed, they saw more behind the Accommodation Order. The Toleration it sought to provide might seem, from the wording, only a moderate Toleration in the interest of the Independents of the Assembly and their immediate adherents. From what Baillie says, one infers that Mr. Solicitor St. John and Mr. Marshall had been drawing up the Order in this moderate form, and that Cromwell and Vane would fain have had more. "The great shot of Cromwell and Vane," says Baillie, "is to have a liberty for all religions, without any exceptions." And of Vane he distinctly says that he was "offended with the Solicitor" for putting only differences about Church-government into the Toleration Ordinance, and not also differences "about free grace, including liberty to the Antinomians and to all Sects." At all events, he had recently, in the presence of the Scottish Commissioners themselves, been reasoning "prolixly, earnestly, and passionately" for universal Toleration. Probably Cromwell and Vane were content in the meantime with what the long-headed Solicitor saw he could pass. It could be stretched when necessary. The form was St. John's, but the deed was Cromwell's. [Footnote: The authorities for the interesting facts related in this paragraph which seem to have slipped out of view of most modern writers on the history of the period are Baillie, II 226, 229, 231, and 236, 237, and Commons Journal, Sept 13, 1644.] After the check of this Accommodation Order of Sept. 13, 1644, the Presbyterians of the Assembly seem to have proceeded somewhat more temperately. Not that they gave up the fight. Their preachers before Parliament still followed in the strain of Hill and Palmer. In a Fast-day Sermon before the two Houses on Sept. 12, the day before the Order, the Smectymnuan, Matthew Newcomen, had again had a slap at Toleration; on Sept. 25 Lazarus Seaman was again at it, and actually named in his sermon four dangerous books for Liberty of Conscience, including Goodwin's and Williams's--the burning of which lest did not seem enough to the Rabbi, for "the shell is sometimes thrown into the fire when the kernel is eaten;" the respected Calamy, also a Smectymnuan, is at it again, Oct. 22, telling the Parliament that, if they do not put down Anabaptism, Antinomianism, and Tolerationism of all religions, then _they_ are the Anabaptists, the Antinomians, the Tolerationists; Spurstow, a third of the Smectymnuans, is not done with it on Nov. 5. [Footnote: My notes from a volume of the Parliamentary Sermons of 1644, kindly lent me by Mr. David Laing] In the Assembly itself also the question of heresy, blasphemy, and their suppression, occasionally turned up. Oct. 17, for example, there was officially before the Assembly the case of a John Hart, who had been making a reputation for himself in Surrey by this hideous joke:--"Who made you? My Lord of Essex.--Who redeemed you? Sir W. Waller.--Who sanctified and preserved you? My Lord of Warwick." This led to a conversation in the Assembly on the increase of blasphemy, and to a new remonstrance to Parliament on the subject.[Footnote: Lightfoot's Notes at date named] Again, on the 22nd of November, there was a report to the Assembly of some fresh "damnable blasphemies," more of the doctrinal kind, and savouring of Mortalism and Clement Wrighter. [Footnote: Lightfoot's Notes at date named.] Nor had the Assembly agreed to let even ordinary Anabaptism and Antinomianism alone; for they had again memorialized Parliament on the subject, and had had a rather satisfactory response from the Commons, Nov. 15, in the form of a promise to consider the whole matter, and an order meanwhile that no person should be permitted to preach unless he were an ordained minister in the English or some other Reformed Church, or a probationer intending the ministry and duly licensed by those authorized by Parliament to give such licence. [Footnote: Commons Journals, Nov. 15, 1644.] On the whole, however, from September 1644 onwards through October and November, to the end of the year, there was rather an abatement of the inquisitorial zeal of the Assembly. PROGRESS OF THE ASSEMBLY'S MAIN WORK: PRESBYTERIAN SETTLEMENT VOTED BY PARLIAMENT. In those months, indeed, the Assembly was unusually active over its main work. For, though we have seen chiefly the spray of its miscellaneous interferences with affairs, it must be remembered that it had been called together for a vast mass of substantial work, and that it had been steadily prosecuting that work, in Committees, Sub-committees, and the daily meetings of the whole body. The work expected by Parliament from the Assembly consisted of (1) the compilation of a _Confession of Faith_, or _Articles of Religion_, which should supersede the Thirty-nine Articles, and be the Creed of the new National Church of England about to be established; (2) the composition of a _Catechism_ or _Catechisms_, which should be a manual or manuals for the instruction of the people, and especially the young, in the theology of the Articles; (3) the devising of a _Frame of Discipline or Church-government_, to come in lieu of Episcopacy, and form the constitution of the new National Church; and (4) the preparation of a _Directory of Worship_, which should supplant the Liturgy, &c., and settle the methods and forms to be adopted in worship, and on such occasions as baptisms, marriages, and funerals. Here was a mass of work which, at the ordinary rate of business in ecclesiastical councils, might well keep the Assembly together for two or three years. What amount of progress had they made at the date at which we have now arrived? Naturally, on first meeting, they had begun with the business of the new Articles, or Confession of Faith. The particular form in which, by the order of Parliament, they had addressed themselves to this business, was that of a careful revision of the Thirty-nine Articles. With tolerable unanimity (_antè_, pp. 5, 6 and 18,19), they had gone on in this labour for three months, or till Oct. 12,1643; by which time they had Calvinized fifteen of the Articles. [Footnote: Whoever wants to compare the Westminster Assembly's Calvinized Version of the first fifteen Articles with the original Articles will find the two sets printed conveniently in parallel columns in _History of the Westminster Assembly of Divines_ (1842), published at Philadelphia, U.S., by the "Presbyterian Board of Publication."] Then, however, they had been interrupted in this labour. The Scottish League and Covenant having come into action, and the Scottish Commissioners having become an influence at the back of the English Parliament, the Assembly had been ordered to proceed to what seemed the more immediately pressing businesses of the new Model of Church-government and the new Directory of Worship. The business of a Confession of Faith thus lying over till it could be resumed at leisure, the Assembly had, for more than a year, been occupied with the Church-government question and the Directory. What tough and tedious work they had had with the Church-government question we have seen. Still, even in this question they had made progress. Beating the Congregationalists by vote on proposition after proposition, the Presbyterian majority had, by the end of October 1644, carried all the essentials of Presbytery through the Assembly, and referred them confidently to Parliament. [Footnote: Baillie, II. 232.] Add to this that a new Directory of Worship had been drawn up. The Congregationalist Brethren had been far more acquiescent in this business; and, though many points in it had occasioned minute discussion, the Assembly were able, on the 2lst of November, to transmit to Parliament, unanimously, a Directory, in which everything in the shape of Liturgy or Prelatic ceremonial was disallowed, and certain plain forms, like those of the Scottish Presbyterian worship, prescribed instead. [Footnote: Baillie, II. 240 and 242-3] By the end of 1644, therefore, the Westminster Assembly had substantially acquitted itself of two out of four of the pieces of work expected from it by Parliament--the _New Directory of Worship_ and the _New Frame of Church-government_; and it only remained for Parliament to sanction or reject what the Assembly had concluded under these two heads. During November and December 1644, and January 1644-5, accordingly, there was much discussion in both Houses of all the points of Religion and Church-government which the new Directory and the new Frame were to settle. The debates of the Houses during these months, indeed, were very much those of the Assembly over again--the Lords and Commons, though laymen, examining each proposition and each clause for themselves, and insisting on proofs from Scripture and the like. January 1644-5 was the great month. On the 4th of that month an Ordinance from the Commons passed the Lords, abolishing the use of the Prayer-book, adopting and confirming the new Westminster Directory, and ordering it to be printed. On the 23rd of the same month, the following Resolutions were adopted by the Commons:-- "_Resolved_: That there shall be fixed Congregations--that is, a certain company of Christians to meet in one Assembly ordinarily for public worship: when believers multiply to such a number that they cannot conveniently meet in one place, they shall be divided into distinct and fixed Congregations, for the better administration of such ordinances as belong to them, and the discharge of mutual duties. "_Resolved_: That the ordinary way of dividing Christians into distinct Congregations, and most expedient for edification, is by the respective bounds of their dwellings. "_Resolved_: That the minister and other Church-officers in each particular Congregation shall join in the government of the Church in such manner as shall be established by Parliament. "_Resolved_: That these officers shall meet together at convenient and set times for the well-ordering of the affairs of that Congregation, each according to his office. "_Resolved_: That the ordinances in a particular Congregation are Prayer, Thanksgiving, and Singing of Psalms; the Word read, though there follow no immediate explication of what is read; the Word expounded and applied; Catechising; the Sacraments administered; Collection made for the Poor; Dismissing of the people with a Blessing. "_Resolved_: That many particular Congregations shall be under one Presbyterial government. "_Resolved_: That the Church be governed by Congregational, Classical, and Synodical Assemblies, in such manner as shall be established by Parliament. "_Resolved_: That Synodical Assemblies shall consist both of Provincial and National Assemblies." Dry and simple as these Resolutions look, they were the outcome of fifteen months of deliberation, and they were of immense significance. They declared it to be the will of Parliament that England thenceforth should be a Presbyterian country, like Scotland. Just as Scotland was a little country, with her 1,000 parishes or so, the inhabitants of each of which were understood to form a particular congregation, meeting statedly for worship, and taught and spiritually disciplined by one Minister and certain other church-officers called Lay Elders, so England was to be a large country of some 10,000 or 12,000 parishes and parochial congregations, each after the same fashion. As in Scotland the parishes or congregations, though mainly managing each its own affairs, were not independent, but were bound together in groups by the device of Presbyteries, or periodical courts consisting of the ministers and ruling elders of a certain number of contiguous parishes meeting to hear appeals from congregations, and otherwise exercise government, so the ten times more numerous parishes of England were similarly to be grouped into Presbyteries or Classes (Classes was the more favourite English term), each Classis containing some ten or twelve congregations. Thus in London alone, where there were about 120 parishes, there ought to be about twelve Classes or Presbyteries. Finally, the Presbyteries were to be interconnected, and their proceedings supervised, as in, Scotland, by periodical Synods of the ministers and ruling elders of many Presbyteries--say of all the Presbyteries of one large shire, or of several small shires taken as a convenient ecclesiastical district. In Scotland the practice was for all the ministers and ruling elders within the bounds of a Provincial Synod to attend the Synod personally; but in England, on account of her size, the plan of Synods of elected representatives might be advisable--which, however, would not affect the principle. In any case, the annual National Assembly of the whole Church, which, under the new Presbyterian system, would be to England the same Ecclesiastical Parliament that the General Assembly in Edinburgh was to Scotland, must necessarily, like that Assembly, be constituted representatively. Nothing less than all this was implied in the eight Resolutions of the Commons on Friday, Jan. 23, 1644-5. By an order of Monday the 27th, however, Mr. Rous, who had been commissioned to report the Resolutions to the Lords, was instructed to report only four of them,--the 3rd, the 6th, the 7th, and the 8th. The answer of the Lords on the following day was "That this House agrees with the House of Commons in all the Votes now brought up concerning Church-government." In refraining from sending up all the eight Votes, the Commons appear to have thought it best not yet positively to determine against the Congregationalists on one or two points, including that of strict parochialism. But in the four Votes sent up to the Lords and agreed to by them, all the essentials of Presbytery were involved; so that from the 28th of January 1644-5 it stood registered in the Acts of Parliament that England should, be Presbyterianized. [Footnote: Commons and Lords Journals of dates given.] At this stage of the proceedings we may leave the Westminster Assembly for a while. On the 26th of December, Johnstone of Warriston and Mr. Barclay had left it, in order to be present at the Scottish Convention of Estates, which was to meet at Edinburgh on the 7th of January; [Footnote: Baillie, II. 251.] and on the 6th of January Baillie and Gillespie left it, on a weary horse-journey, in order to be present at the General Assembly of the Scottish Kirk, which was to meet at the same place on the 22nd. [Footnote: Baillie, II. 250.] Henderson and Rutherford remained in London. What tidings were carried by the Scottish Commissioners to Edinburgh of the great things which the Lord had up to that time done for the cause of Presbytery and true Religion in England may be read to this day in the records of the Scottish Parliament and the Scottish General Assembly of 1645. Baillie's exulting speech in the Assembly is really worth reading. [Footnote: It is given in Baillie's Letters, II. 255-257. But see also Letter of Scottish Commissioners and Letter of Westminster Assembly to the Scottish General Assembly, both of date Jan. 6, 1645, in Acts of General Assembly of the Kirk.] Suffice it to say here that there was great rejoicing in Edinburgh and in all Scotland; that the General Assembly unanimously ratified the Westminster Directory of Worship (Feb. 3) and the Westminster Frame of Presbyterial government (Feb. 10); and that the Scottish Parliament (Feb. 6) approved and established, for Scotland, the Directory already established for England. Let us add that Baillie had a pleasant holiday, revisited his wife and family in Glasgow, and would fain have been allowed to remain in his own country thenceforth. But this could not be. Both he and Gillespie had to obey orders, and prepare, with sighs, for a return to London in March. STATE OF THE WAR: SELF-DENYING ORDINANCE AND NEW MODEL. During the six months the transactions of which, as far as the Westminster Assembly was concerned, we have thus presented in summary (Sept. 1644-March 1645), the hurry of more general events in England had been very marked. Of what use was the preparation of a Presbyterian Form of Church-government, and a Presbyterian Directory of Worship, for England, so long as it remained uncertain whether England might not be once again the King's, and the Parliament under his feet? And, really, there was this danger. Marston Moor had been a great blow to the King: it had spoilt his cause in the whole of the North. But Essex's defeat in Cornwall (Sept. 1) had come as a terrible set-off, In the confidence of that victory, the King was on the move out of the West back to Oxford (Sept. 30), sending proclamations before him, and threatening a march upon London itself. The taking of Newcastle by the Scots under Leven (Oct. 19) was a return of good fortune for the Parliament at the right moment; at least it provided the Londoners again with their long-missed coals. But it had come now to be a contest between the King's main force and the combined forces of Parliament in the South-English midlands. In the second Battle of Newbury (Sunday, Oct. 27) the issue was tried--the Earl of Manchester's army, with Cromwell second in it, having been joined to the recruited armies of Essex and Waller in order to resist the King. Manchester and Waller were the real Parliamentary commanders, Essex being ill. It was a severe battle. The King had, on the whole, the worst; but he got off, as Cromwell and others thought, less thoroughly beaten than he ought to have been. [Footnote: Rushworth, V. 721-730; Carlyle's Cromwell (ed. 1857), I. l59.] From the date of this second Battle of Newbury, accordingly, Cromwell became the spokesman of a dissatisfaction with the military and political conduct of the cause of Parliament as deep and as wide-spread throughout England as that dissatisfaction with the conduct of the religious question of which he had made himself the spokesman six weeks before. What Cromwell had thought when he moved the Accommodation Order of Sept. 13 had been virtually this: "Here are you discoursing about strict Presbytery and what differences from it may be tolerated, when the real question is whether we shall have a free England for Presbytery or anything else to exist in, and how we can carry with us all honest men who will fight to make such a free England." And now, when, after the second Battle of Newbury, he again reappeared in Parliament, it was in this prolongation, or profounder state, of the same mood:--"The time has come when I must speak out. We, of this nation, must turn over a new leaf. We have been fighting the King now for more than two years, and we are very much as we were when we began. And why? Because the men who command our armies against the King do not want really to beat him; because they want only to _seem_ to be beating him; because the picture they love to look on, as their heaven on earth to come, is a picture of their gracious sovereign, after he has been beaten no more than could be helped, surrounded by themselves as his reconciled and pardoned ministers and chatting pleasantly with them over the deeds of the campaigns. I say nothing personally of my Lord of Essex, or of Sir William Waller: they are most honourable men. But I speak generally as I feel. If the King is to be beaten, it can only be by generals who want to beat him, who will beat him to bits, who will use all means to beat him, who will gladly see in their armies the men who have the right _spirit_ in them for beating him. Are these the Presbyterians only? I trow not. I know my men; and I tell you that many of those that you call Independents, that you call Anabaptists, Sectaries, and what not, are among the stoutest and godliest in England, and will go as far as any. Some weeks ago I complained to you of Major-general Crawford, because he would trouble these men, and would have no soldiers of Parliament in my Lord Manchester's army that did not agree with his own notions of Religion and Church-government. _Now_ I complain of my Lord Manchester himself. In this last Battle of Newbury, I tell you, the King was beaten less than he might have been. He was allowed to get off. I advised pursuing him, and my Lord Manchester would not. It was that over again which has been from the first. And now I speak out what has long been in my mind, and what brave men in thousands are thinking. Before the Lord, we must turn over a new leaf in this War. We must have an Army of the right sort of men, and men of the right sort to command that Army." This is a purely imaginary speech of Cromwell's; but it is an accurate expression of several months of English history. The shrewdest of men at all times, and also the most sincere, he was yet always the most tempestuous when the fit time came, and it was the characteristic of his life that he carried everything before him at such times by his bursts and tempests. There can be no doubt that, after the second Battle of Newbury, Cromwell was in one of his paroxysms. Of his vehemence against Manchester at that time, and of Manchester's recriminations on him, one may read at large in Rushworth and elsewhere. [Footnote: Rushworth, V. 732-736; Carlyle's Cromwell (ed. 1857), I. 159, 160.] The brief account of Baillie, who had not yet left London, and was in the centre of the whole affair, will be sufficient here. "Lieutenant-general Cromwell," writes Baillie, Dec. 1, "has publicly, in the House of Commons, accused my Lord of Manchester of the neglect of fighting at Newbury. That neglect indeed was great; for, as we now are made sure, the King's army was in that posture that they took themselves for lost all-utterly. Yet the fault is most in justly charged on Manchester: it was common to all the general officers then present, and to Cromwell himself as much as to any other. Always my Lord Manchester has cleared himself abundantly in the House of Lords, and there has recriminate Cromwell as one who has avowed his desire to abolish the nobility of England; who has spoken contumeliously of the Scots' intention in coming to England to establish their Church-government, in which Cromwell said he would draw his sword against them; also against the Assembly of Divines; and has threatened to make a party of Sectaries, to extort by force, both from King and Parliament, what conditions they thought meet. This fire was long under the emmers; now it's broken out, we trust, in a good time. It's like, for the interest of our nation, we must crave reason of that darling of the Sectaries [_i.e._ bring Cromwell to a reckoning], and, in obtaining his removal from the army--which himself by his over-rashness has procured--to break the power of that potent faction. This is our present difficile enterprise: we had need of your prayers." [Footnote: Baillie, II. 243-245.] In this account Baillie mixes up the proceedings in the Commons on the 25th of November when Cromwell exhibited his charge against Manchester, and in the Lords a few days after when Manchester gave in his defence and countercharge, with current gossip, apparently true enough, of Cromwell and his awful sayings in private. Evidently Baillie thought Cromwell had ruined himself. Even the hero of Marston Moor could not beard all respectable England in this way, and it should not be the fault of the Scottish Commissioners if he did not find himself shelved! Little did Baillie know with what great things, beyond all Scottish power of resistance or machination, Cromwell's fury was pregnant. While Baillie was writing the passage above quoted, the Scottish Commissioners, along with the Lord-general Essex, and some of Essex's chief adherents, including Denzil Holles and Sir Philip Stapleton, were consulting how they might trip Cromwell up. At a conference late one night at Essex-house, to which Whitlocke and Maynard were invited, the Scottish Chancellor Loudoun moved the business warily in a speech which Whitlocke mischievously tries to report in its native Scotch--"You ken vary weele that Lieutenant-general Cromwell is no friend of ours," &c. "You ken vary weele the accord 'twixt the twa kingdoms" &c. Loudoun wanted to know, especially from the two lawyers, whether the Scottish plan of procedure in such cases would have any chance in England, in other words whether Cromwell could be prosecuted as an _incendiary_; for "you may ken that by our law in Scotland we clepe him an _incendiary_ whay kindleth coals of contention and raiseth differences in the State to the public damage." Whitlocke and Maynard satisfied his lordship that the thing was possible in law, but suggested the extreme difficulty there would be in proof, represented Cromwell's great influence in the Parliament and the country, and in fact discouraged the notion altogether. Holles, Stapleton, and others were still eager for proceeding, but the Scots were impressed and thought delay would be prudent. And so, Whitlocke tells us, the Presbyterian intriguers parted at two in the morning, and he had reason to believe that Cromwell knew all that had passed before many hours were over, and that this precipitated what followed. [Footnote: Whitlocke's Memorials (edit. Oxford, 1853), I. 3l3 _et seq._] On Wednesday the 9th of December, at all events, the Commons having met in grand committee on the condition of the kingdom through the continuance of the war, there was for a time a dead silence, as if something extraordinary was expected, and then Cromwell rose and made a short speech. It was very solemn, and even calm, but so hazy and general that the practical drift of it could not possibly have been guessed but for the sequel. Almost the last words of the speech were, "I hope we have such true English hearts, and zealous affections towards the general weal of our mother-country, as no members of either House will scruple to _deny themselves,_ and their own private interests, for the public good." The words, vague enough in themselves, are memorable as having christened by anticipation the measure for which Cromwell, as he uttered them, was boring the way. For, after one or two more had spoken in the same general strain, Mr. Zouch Tate, member for Northampton, did the duty assigned him, and opened the bag which contained the cat. He made a distinct motion, which, when it had been seconded by young Vane, and debated by others (Cromwell again saying a few words, and luminous enough this time), issued in this resolution, "That no member of either House of Parliament shall during the war enjoy or execute any office or command, military or civil; and that an ordinance be brought in to that effect." This was on the 9th of December; and on the 19th of that month the ordinance itself, having gone through all its stages, passed the Commons. All London was astounded. "The House of Commons," writes Baillie, Dec. 26, "in one hour has ended all the quarrels which was betwixt Manchester and Cromwell, all the obloquies against the General, the grumblings against the proceedings of many members of their House. They have taken all office from all members of both Houses. This, done on a sudden, in one session, with great unanimity, is still more and more admired by some, as a most wise, necessary, and heroic action; by others as the most rash, hazardous, and unjust action that ever Parliament did. Much may be said on both hands, but as yet it seems a dream, and the bottom of it is not understood." To the House of Lords the _Self-denying Ordinance_ was by no means palatable. They demurred, conferred with the Commons about it, and at last (Jan. 15) rejected it. Their chief ground of rejection being that they did not know what was to be the shape of the Army to be officered on the new principle, the Commons immediately produced their scheme in that matter. The existing armies were to be weeded, consolidated, and recruited into one really effective army of 21,000 men (of which 6,000 should be horse in ten regiments, 1,000 should be dragoons in ten single companies, and 14,000 should be foot in regiments of not less than 1,200 each), the whole to cost 44,955_l_. per month, to be raised by assessment throughout the kingdom. This army, it was farther resolved by the Commons (Jan. 21), should be commanded in chief by the trusty and popular Sir Thomas Fairfax, who had done so well in the North, and, under him, by the trusty and popular Major-general Skippon, whose character for bull-headed bravery even the disaster in Cornwall had only more fully brought out. [Footnote: I find, from the Commons Journals, that there was a division on the question whether Fairfax should be appointed commander-in-chief of the New Model--the state of the vote being _Yeas_ 101 against _Noes_ 69, or a majority of 32 _for_ the appointment. The Tellers for the majority were the younger Vane and Cromwell; for the minority, Denzil Holles and Sir Philip Stapleton. There was a subsequent division, Feb. 7, on the question whether Fairfax's choice of officers under him should be subject to Parliamentary revision. Cromwell was one of the Tellers for the _Noes_--_i.e._ he wanted Fairfax to have full powers. The other side, however, beat this time by a majority of 82 against 63. After all it was arranged satisfactorily between Fairfax and Parliament.] On the 28th of January the _New Model_ complete passed the Commons. The Lords hesitated about some parts of it, and were especially anxious for a provision in it incapacitating all from being officers or soldiers in the new army who should not have taken the Covenant: there were conferences on this point, and a kind of compromise on it by the Commons; and on the 15th of February the _Ordinance for New Modelling of the Army_ was finally passed. The _Self-denying Ordinance_ was then re-introduced in a changed form, and it passed the Lords, April 3, 1645. It ordained that all members of either House who had since November 20, 1640, been appointed to any offices, military or civil, should, at the end of forty days from the passing of the Ordinance, vacate these offices, but that all other officers in commission on the 20th of March, 1644-5, should continue in the posts they then held. Thus the year 1645 (beginning, in English reckoning, March 25) opened with new prospects. Essex, Manchester, Waller, and all the officers under them, retired into ordinary life, with thanks and honours--Essex, indeed, with a great pension; and the fighting for Parliament was thenceforward to be done mainly by a re-modelled Army, commanded by Fairfax, Skippon, and officers under them, whose faces were unknown in Parliament, and whose business was to be to fight only and teach the art of fighting. It was high time! For another long bout of negotiations with the King, begun as early as Nov. 20, 1644, and issuing in a formal Treaty of great ceremony, called "The Treaty of Uxbridge," had ended, as usual, in no result. Feb. 22, it had been broken off after such a waste of speeches and arguments on paper that the account of the Treaty occupies ten pages in Clarendon and fifty-six folio pages in Rushworth. It was clear that the year 1645 was to be a year of continued war. [Footnote: For this story of the Self-denying Ordinance and the New Modelling of the Army authorities are--Rushworth, VI. 1-16; Baillie, II. 247; Carlyle's Cromwell (ed. 1857), I. 160-163. The Uxbridge Treaty is narrated in Clarendon's Hist. (one-volume ed. 1843), pp. 520-530, and in Rushworth, V. 787-842.] PARLIAMENTARY VENGEANCES: DEATH OF LAUD. Ere we pass out of the rich general history of this year 1644, the year of Marston Moor, we must take note of a few vengeances and deaths with which it was wound up. The long-deferred trial of poor Laud, begun March 12, 1643-4, after he had been more than three years a prisoner in the Tower, and they might have left him there in quiet, had straggled on through the whole of 1644. The interest in it had run, like a red thread, through the miscellany of other events. The temper of the people had been made fiercer by the length of the war, and there was a desire for the old man's blood. The Presbyterian ministers of the Assembly, I find, fostered this desire. In that very sermon of Herbert Palmer's before Parliament (Aug. 13) in which he had called for the extirpation of heresy and schism, and denounced Milton, there was an express passage on the duty of "doing justice upon Delinquents impartially and without respect of persons." [Footnote: Palmer's Sermon, p. 48.] Calamy in his sermon, Oct. 22, followed, and told the Parliament, "All the guilty blood that God requires you in justice to shed, and you spare, God will require the blood at your hands." [Footnote: Calamy's Sermon, p. 27.] Mr. Francis Woodcock, preaching Oct. 30, was even more decided. His sermon, which was on Rev. xvi. 15, is a very untastefully-worded discourse on the propriety of always being on the watch so as not to be taken by surprise without one's garments; and, among the rather ludicrous images which his literal treatment of the subject suggests, we come upon a passage describing one of four pieces of raiment which the State ought never to be caught without. He calls it the "Robe of Justice," and adds, "Would God this robe were often worn, and dyed of a deeper colour in the blood of Delinquents. It is that which God and man calls for. God repeats it, _Justice, Justice_; we, echoing God, cry _Justice, Justice_; and let me say, perhaps we should not see other garments so much rolled in blood, did we not see these so little." [Footnote: Woodcock's Sermon, pp 30, 31.] Baillie, I am glad to think, was more tender-hearted. There was, indeed, one Delinquent for whom Baillie would have had no mercy--Dr. Maxwell, the Scottish ex-Bishop of Ross, who had published at Oxford, in the King's interest, "a desperately malicious invective" against Scottish Presbytery and its leaders. "However I could hardly consent to the hanging of Canterbury himself, or of any Jesuit," Baillie had written, July 16, 1644, after his first indignant sight of this book, "yet I could give my sentence freely against that unhappy liar's [Maxwell's] life." But, indeed, the Scottish Commissioners and the Scottish nation were conjoined as parties with the English Presbyterians and the English Parliamentarians generally (Prynne ruthlessly busy in getting up the evidence) in the long prosecution of Laud. It was all over on the 10th of January, 1644-5. On that day Laud, aged 72, laid his head upon the block on a scaffold in Tower Hill. Hanging had been commuted, with some difficulty, to beheading. He died brave, raspy, and High-Church to the last. [Footnote: Rushworth's main account of the trial and last days of Laud is in Vol. V. pp, 763-786. The "History of the Troubles and Tryal of William Laud," edited by Wharton, in two vols. folio, appeared in 1695- 1700.]--Minor executions about the same time were those of Hugh Macmahon and Lord Maguire for their concern in the Irish rebellion and massacre, Sir Alexander Carew for treachery at Plymouth, and the Hothams, father and son, for treachery at Hull. One Roger L'Estrange, a younger son of a Norfolk family, had been condemned to be hanged in Smithfield for an underhand attempt to win the town of Lynn for the King; but he was reprieved, lay in Newgate for some years, and lived for sixty years longer, to be known, even in Queen Anne's time, as Sir Roger L'Estrange, the journalist. CHAPTER II. MILTON AMONG THE SECTARIES, AND IN A "WORLD OF DISESTEEM": STORY OF MRS. ATTAWAY--SAMUEL HARTLIB, JOHN DURIE, AND JOHN AMOS COMENIUS: SCHEMES OF A REFORMED EDUCATION, AND PROJECT OF A LONDON UNIVERSITY--MILTON'S _TRACT ON EDUCATION_, AND METHOD WITH HIS PUPILS--HIS SECOND DIVORCE TRACT, OR COMPILATION FROM BUCER--MR. HERBERT PALMER'S ATTACK ON MILTON FROM THE PULPIT--MILTON AND THE STATIONERS' COMPANY: THEIR ACCUSATION OF HIM IN A PETITION TO THE COMMONS--HIS _AREOPAGITICA_, OR SPEECH FOR THE LIBERTY OF UNLICENSED PRINTING--ANGER OF THE STATIONERS, AND THEIR COMPLAINT AGAINST MILTON TO THE LORDS: CONSEQUENCE OF THE COMPLAINT--THE DIVORCE QUESTION CONTINUED: PUBLICATION OF MR. HERBERT PALMER'S SERMON, AND FARTHER ATTACKS ON MILTON BY PRYNNE, DR. FEATLEY, AND AN ANONYMOUS PAMPHLETEER--_TETRACHORDON AND COLASTERION_: THEIR REPLIES TO THE ASSAILANTS. Ever since August 1643, when Milton had published his extraordinary _Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce_, but more especially since Feb. 1643-4, when he had published the second and enlarged edition of it, with his name in full, and the dedication to Parliament and the Westminster Assembly, his reputation with orthodox English society had been definite enough. He was one of those dreadful Sectaries! Nay he was a Sectary more odious than most; for his was a _moral_ heresy. What was Independency, what was Anabaptism, what was vague Antinomianism, compared with this heresy of the household, this loosening of the holy relation on which all civil society depended? How detestable the doctrine that, when two married people found they had made a mistake in coming together, or at least when the husband could declare before God and human witnesses his irreconcilable dissatisfaction with his wife, then it was right that the two should be separated, with liberty to each to find a new mate! True, it was an able man who had divulged this heresy, one who had brought applauses from Cambridge, who was said to have written beautiful English poems, who had served the cause of Parliament by some splendid pamphlets for Church-reformation and against Episcopacy, and who had in these pamphlets encountered even the great Bishop Hall. All this only made the doctrine more dangerous, the aberration more lamentable. This Mr. Milton must be avoided, and denounced as a Sectary of the worst kind! Some said it was all owing to the conduct of his wife, a rank Royalist, who had deserted him and gone back to her friends! If that were the case, he was to be pitied; but perhaps there were two sides to that story too! There must have been much gossip of this kind, about Milton and his Divorce Treatise, in the booksellers' shops near St. Paul's, and even round the Parliament in Westminster, in the early months of 1644. The gossip may have affected Milton's relations with some of his former friends and acquaintances. If Bishop Hall, when he first saw the treatise, and perceived its literary ability, "blushed for his age" that so "scandalous" a thing should have appeared, and if even Howell the letter-writer, in his prison, thought it the impudent production of "a poor shallow-brained puppy," what could Milton's orthodox and reverend Smectymnuan friends--Marshall, Calamy, Young, Newcomen, and Spurstow-- think or say about it? Shocked they must have been; and, knowing Milton's temper, and with what demeanour he would front any remonstrances of theirs, they probably left him alone, and became scarcer in their visits to Aldersgate Street. It would not do to keep up the Smectymnuan connexion too visibly after what had happened. Or, if Young could not break off so easily, but would still call to see his old pupil, and to talk with old Mr. Milton about the Bread Street days, how the good man must have yearned to speak sometimes when the old gentleman was out of the way, and he and Milton were alone. "O my dear Mr. Milton, how much we are all concerned about that pamphlet! I am not going to argue it with you; I know you too well, and how little influence my reasonings could have with you now in any such matter; and it is my comfort at least to be able to tell some of my Assembly friends that, if they knew you as well as I do, they would be sure that nothing you do but is done in a great spirit and with a high intention. But, dear me! it is a terrible opinion you have broached!" To something like this Milton may have listened, more or less patiently; or he may have imagined it in Young's mind, if it was not uttered. The mutual regard between Young and his old pupil did not suffer so much from the trial but that we find Milton still willing to acknowledge publicly the connexion that had subsisted between them. On the whole, it is certain that one consequence of the outcry about Milton's treatise among the London Presbyterians, and especially among the city clergy and the Divines of the Assembly, was to drive Milton more arid more into the society of those who had begun to dislike and to dread the ascendancy of the Presbyterians. Finding himself, almost from the first publication of the treatise, as he tells us, in "a world of disesteem" on account of it, he naturally held intercourse more and more with those who, though they may not have approved of _his_ particular heresy, yet, as being themselves voted heretics on other accounts, were more easy in their judgments of all extreme opinions. I believe, in fact, that, could Milton's acquaintanceships in London from the winter of 1643- 4 onwards be traced and recovered, they would be found to have been chiefly among the Independents, Anabaptists, Antinomians, Seekers, and other Tolerationists. What were the religious opinions of the Lady Margaret Ley, that "woman of great wit and ingenuity," and her husband Captain Hobson, "a very accomplished gentleman," with both of whom he was so intimate about this time, and who, as Phillips tells us, "had a particular honour for him and took much delight in his company," must be left to conjecture. [Footnote: It has been in my mind whether the Captain Hobson who was the Lady Ley's husband, and whom Dagdale describes as "... Hobson of... in the Isle of Wight, Esq.," can by possibility have been the same person as the Baptist preacher, Paul Hobson, who was also a Captain in the Parliamentary Army, and who figures much in Edwards's _Gangræna_ and in other books of the time, under the express name of "Captain Hobson," as a leading Sectary, though Edwards will have it that he was originally "a tailor from Buckinghamshire" (_antè_, p. 148). The supposition seems so absurd that I hardly like to mention that I spent hours in turning over Paul Hobson's published sermons and Baptist treatises in case I might come on any confirmation of it--which I did _not_.] From Milton's Sonnet to the Lady Margaret one may safely infer at least that she was a woman of liberal principles as well as wit. Probably her house was the resort of a good many of what would now be called the "advanced" or "strong-minded" Christians of both sexes then in London; and Milton may there have extended his acquaintance with such, and have even been an object of peculiar interest to some of one sex, as "that handsome, fair gentleman, now talking to Lady Margaret, who is a great scholar and a poet, and whose wife has left him shamefully, so that he wants to be divorced from her, and has written a book which quite proves it." Milton's acquaintance with Roger Williams, at all events, is almost certainly to be dated from Williams's visit to England in 1643-4, when he was writing his _Bloody Tenent_; and if Milton, at the same time, did not become acquainted with John Goodwin of Coleman Street, it would be a wonder. STORY OF MRS. ATTAWAY. We must, I am sorry to say, descend lower in the society of London, in and about 1644, than the Lady Margaret Ley's drawing-room, or the level of marked men like Williams and Goodwin, if we would understand how Milton's Divorce opinion had begun to operate, and with what consequences of its operation his name was associated. The reader may remember a Mrs. Attaway, mentioned by us among both the Baptists and the Seekers, and as perhaps the most noted of all the women-preachers in London (_antè_, pp. 149, 153). She was, it seems, a "lace-woman, dwelling in Bell Alley in Coleman Street," and preaching on week-day afternoons in that neighbourhood, with occasional excursions to other parts of the city where rooms could be had. Sometimes other "preaching-women" were with her, and the gatherings, though at first of her own sex only, soon attracted curious persons of the other. From the descriptions of what passed in some of them, it would appear that, though the meetings were for worship, and there were regular discourses by Mrs. Attaway and others, free talk and criticism was permitted to all present, so that the conventicle took on sometimes the aspect of a religious debating society. Well, Mrs. Attaway, among others, had got hold of Milton's Divorce Treatise, and had been reading it. "Two gentlemen of the Inns of Court, civil and well-disposed men," who had gone "out of novelty" to hear her, afterwards told _Gangræna_ Edwards of some "discourse they had had with her." Among other passages she "spoke to them of Master Milton's _Doctrine of Divorce_, and asked them what they thought of it; saying "it was a point to be considered of, and that she, for her part, would look more into it, for she had an unsanctified husband, that did not walk in the way of Sion, nor speak the language of Canaan." Edwards does not give the date of this conversation with Mrs. Attaway; and, though presumably in 1644, it may have been later. He evidently introduces it, however, in order to implicate Milton in the subsequent break-down, which he also reports, of the poor woman morally. For, if Mr. Edwards is to be believed, Mrs. Attaway did "look more into" Milton's doctrine, and at length acted upon it. Some time in 1645 she abjured her "unsanctified husband" Mr. Attaway, who, besides being unsanctified, was then absent in the army, leaving her alone in her lace-shop, and transferred herself to a man named William Jenney, an occasional preacher, who was much more sanctified, and was also on the spot. Mr. Jenney had, unfortunately, a wife already, some children by her, and one expected; but ho too had been meditating on the Divorce Doctrine, and had used his Christian liberty. Mr. Edwards had been most particular in his investigations. He had actually procured from a sure hand the copies of two letters-taken from the original letters, and compared by a minister with the originals--one of William Jenney to his wife since he went away with Mistress Attaway, the other of Mistress Attaway to William Jenney before his going away." He refrains from printing the letters _verbatim_, as they were too long; but he gives extracts. "I thought good to write to you these few lines," writes Jenney to the deserted Mrs. Jenney, Feb. 15, 1645, "to tell you that, because you have been to me rather a disturber of my body and soul than to be a meet help for me---- but I silence! And, for looking for me to come to you again, I shall never come to you again any more. I shall send unto you never no more concerning anything." If this actually was Jenney's letter, Mrs. Attaway was worth ten of him, and deserved a better second. "Dearest friend and well-beloved in the Lord," so she had begun the letter sent to him while he was still Mrs. Jenney's, and which had got into Mrs. Jenney's hands, "I am unspeakably sorry in respect of thy sufferings, I being the object that occasioned it." The sufferings were Mrs. Jenney's bastings of him because he was always with Mrs. Attaway. In good time, Mrs. Attaway goes on to say, he would be delivered from these. "When Jehoshaphat knew not what to do, he looked to the Lord. Let _us_ look to Him, believing confidently in Him with the faith of Jesus; and no question but we shall be delivered. In the mean season I shall give up my heart and affections to thee in the Lord; and, whatsoever I have or am in Him which is our Head, thou shalt command it." The event, according to Edwards, was that Mr. Jenney and Mrs. Attaway eloped together, Mrs. Attaway having persuaded Jenney that she should never die, but that, in obedience to a heavenly message, they must go to Jerusalem, and repair that city in anticipation of the bringing of all the Saints to it in ships to be sent from Tarshish. I suspect they went only to Jericho. [Footnote: This story of Mrs. Attaway is from Edwards's _Gangræna_, Part II. pp. 31, 32, 113- 115; _Fresh Discovery_, appended to Second Part of _Gangræna_, p. 9; and Third Part of _Gangræna_, pp. 25-27 and 188. See also Baillie's _Dissuasive_, Part II. pp. l00 and 123-4.] All this on the faith of Mr. Edwards's statements in the _Gangræna_. But really one should not judge of even a poor enthusiastic woman, dead two hundred years ago, on that sole authority. Never was there a more nauseous creature of the pious kind than this Presbyterian Paul Pry of 1644-46. He revelled in scandals, and kept a private office for the receipt of all sorts of secret information, by word of mouth or letter, that could be used against the Independents and the Sectaries. [Footnote: Richard Baxter, as he himself tells us, sent communications from the country to Edwards. His correspondents were legion, but he concealed their names.] Yet there was a kind of coarse business-like conscientiousness in the toad; and, though he was credulous and unscrupulous in his collections of scandal, I do not believe he invented documents or lied deliberately. I do not doubt, therefore, that Mrs. Attaway, whether she went ultimately to Jericho or to Jerusalem, did know of Milton's Divorce Doctrine, and had extracted suggestions from it suitable to her circumstances. For, indeed, the Doctrine was likely to find not a few whose circumstances it suited. Mr. Edwards's book is strewn with instances of persons who had even found out a tantamount doctrine for themselves--men who had left their wives, or wanted to do so, and wives who had left their husbands, and who, without having seen Milton's treatise, defended their act or their wish on grounds of religion and natural law. Nay, in the frenzy of inquiry which had taken possession of the English mind, everything appertaining to Marriage and the Marriage-institution was being plucked up for fundamental re- investigation. There were actually persons who were occupying themselves intently with questioning the forbidden degrees of Consanguinity and Affinity in marriage, and who had not only come to the easy conclusion that marriage with a deceased wife's sister is perfectly legitimate, but had worked out a general theologico-physiological speculation to the effect that the marriage of near relatives is in all cases peculiarly proper, and perhaps the more proper in proportion to the nearness of the relationship. This, I imagine, was a very small sect. [Footnote: But, unless Edwards and Baillie were both wrong, there _was_ some such sect. See _Gangræna_, Part III. p. 187, and, more particularly, Baillie's _Dissuasive_, Part II. pp. 100 and 122-3.] Let us re-ascend into more pleasant air. There was one rather notable person in London, of the highly respectable sort, though, decidedly among the free opinionists, whose acquaintance Milton did make about this time, if he had not made it before, and who must be specially introduced to the reader. This was SAMUEL HARTLIB. SAMUEL HARTLIB: JOHN DURIE: JOHN AMOS COMENIUS, AND HIS SPECULATIONS ABOUT A REFORMED EDUCATION--PROJECT OF A LONDON UNIVERSITY. Everybody knew Hartlib. He was a foreigner by birth, being the son of a Polish merchant, of German extraction, who had left Poland when that country fell under Jesuit rule, and had settled in Elbing in Prussia in very good circumstances. Twice married before to Polish ladies, this merchant had married, in Prussia, for his third wife, the daughter of a wealthy English merchant of Dantzic; and thus our Hartlib, their son, though Prussian-born and with Polish connexions, could reckon himself half-English. The date of his birth was probably about the beginning of the century, _i.e._ he may have been eight or ten years older than Milton. He appears to have first visited England in or about 1628, and from that time, though he made frequent journeys to the Continent, London had been his head-quarters. Here, with a residence in the City, he had carried on business as a "merchant," with extensive foreign correspondences, and very respectable family connexions. One of his aunts (sisters of his mother) had married a Mr. Clark, the son of a former Lord Mayor of London, and afterwards a Sir Richard Smith, Knight and Privy Councillor, and again a Sir Edward Savage. The other aunt had married a country gentleman, named Peak. A cousin of Hartlib's, the daughter of the first and wealthier aunt, Lady Smith, became the wife of Sir Anthony Irby, M.P. for Boston in the Long Parliament. But it did not require such family connexions to make Hartlib at home in English society. The character of the man would have made him at home anywhere. He was one of those persons, now styled "philanthropists" or "friends of progress," who take an interest in every question or project of their time promising social improvement, have always some iron in the fire, are constantly forming committees or writing letters to persons of influence, and altogether live for the public. By the common consent of all who have explored the intellectual and social history of England in the seventeenth century, he is one of the most interesting and memorable figures of that whole period. He is interesting both for what he did himself and also on account of the number and intimacy of his contacts with other interesting people. [Footnote: Memoir of Hartlib by H. Dircks, pp 2-6, where there are extracts from an autobiographical letter of Hartlib to Worthington, written in 1660. "The Diary and Correspondence of Dr. John Worthington," edited by James Crossley, Esq., F.S.A. (Chetham Society), contains many letters from Hartlib to Worthington, between 1655 and 1662, but not this one. Mr. Crossley's Diary and Correspondence of Worthington, so far as it has gone, is one of the best edited books known to me, the footnotes being very nuggets of biographical lore; and it is to be regretted that the connected notices of Worthington, Hartlib, and Durie, postponed by Mr. Crossley until the work should be completed, have not yet appeared.] An early friend of Hartlib, associated with him long before the date at which we are now arrived, was that John Durie of whom, and his famous scheme for a union of all the Protestant Churches of Europe, we have already had to take some account (Vol. II. pp. 367-8 and 517-8). Their intimacy must have begun in Hartlib's native town of Elbing in Prussia, where, I now find, Durie was residing in 1628, as minister to the English company of merchants in the town, and where, in that very year, I also now find, Durie had the great idea of his life first suggested to him by the Swedish Dr. Godeman. [Footnote: The proof is in statements of Hartlib's own in a Tract of his published in 1641 under the title of "A Briefe Relation of that which hath been lately attempted to procure Ecclesiasticall Peace amongst Protestants."] Among Durie's first disciples in the idea must certainly have been Hartlib; and it does not seem improbable that, when Hartlib left Prussia, in or about 1628, to settle in England, it was with an understanding that he was to be an agent or missionary for Durie's idea among the English. That he did so act, and that he was little less of an enthusiast for Durie's idea than Durie himself, there is the most positive evidence. Thus, in a series of letters, preserved in the State Paper Office, from Durie abroad to the diplomatist Sir Thomas Roe, of various dates between April 1633 and Feb. 1637-8, there is incessant mention of Hartlib. In the first of these letters, dated from Heilbron April 2/12, 1633, Durie, among other things, begs Roe "to help Mr. Hartlib with a Petition of Divines of those quarters concerning an Edition of a Body of Divinity gathered out of English authors, a work which will be exceeding profitable, but will require divers agents and an exact ordering of the work." In a subsequent letter Durie speaks of having sent Roe, "by Mr. Hartlib, whose industry is specially recommended," an important proposition made by the Swedish Chancellor Oxenstiern; and in still later letters Roe is requested by Durie to show Hartlib not only Durie's letters to himself, but also letters about the progress of his scheme which he has enclosed to Roe for the Archbishop of Canterbury (Abbot) and the Bishop of London (Laud). At this point, accordingly, July 20, 1633, there is a letter of Roe's to the Archbishop, from which it appears that Hartlib was made the bearer of Durie's letter to his Grace. Roe recommends the blessed work in which Durie is engaged, says that it seems to him and Durie that "there is nothing wanting but the public declaration of his Majesty and the Church of England" in its favour, and beseeches the Archbishop "to give his countenance to the bearer," described in the margin as "Mr. Hartlib, a Prussian." As Abbot was then within fifteen days of his death, nothing can have come of the application to him; and, as we already know, his successor Laud was a far less hopeful subject for Durie's idea, even though recommended by Roe and explained by Hartlib. In fact, he thought it mischievous moonshine; and, instead of giving Durie the encouragement which he wanted, he wrote to the English agent at Frankfort, instructing him to show Durie no countenance whatever. Durie felt the rebuff sorely. In England, he writes, he must depend now chiefly on Roe, who could still do much privately, apart from Laud's approbation. "Mr. Hartlib will send anything to Durie which Roe would have communicated to him in a secret way." So in June 1634; and fourteen months later (Aug. 1635) Durie, who had meanwhile removed to the Hague, again writes to Roe and again relies on Hartlib. The Dutch, he says, are slow to take up his scheme; and he can think of nothing better in the circumstances than that Roe in England should collect "all the advices and comments of the best divines of the age" on the subject, and have them printed. His very best agent in such a business would be Hartlib, "a man well known, beloved and trusted by all sides, a man exceeding painful, diligent and cordially affected to these endeavours, and one that for such works had lost himself by too much charity." On independent grounds it would be well to find him "some place suitable for his abilities, which might rid him of the undeserved necessities whereunto his public-heartedness had brought him;" but in this special employment he would be invaluable, being "furnished with the Polish, Dutch, English, and Latin languages, perfectly honest and trusty, discreet, and well versed in affairs." In the same strain in subsequent letters. Thus, from Amsterdam Dec. 7/17, Roe is thanked for having bestowed some gratuity on Hartlib, and Hartlib is described as, next to Roe, "the man in the world whom Durie loves and honours most for his virtues and good offices in Durie's cause." At the same time Durie "prays God to free Hartlib from his straits and set him a little on horseback," and adds, "His spirit is so large that it has lost itself in zeal to good things." Again, from Amsterdam Jan 25/Feb 4, 1635-6, Durie writes to Roe and encloses a letter to be sent to his (Durie's) diocesan in Hartlib's behalf. "Mr. Hartlib," Durie says to Roe, "has furnished his lordship (the diocesan) with intelligence from foreign parts for two or three years, and has not yet got any consideration. Perhaps his lordship knows not how Hartlib has fallen into decay for being too charitable to poor scholars, and for undertaking too freely the work of schooling and education of children. If Hartlib and Roe were not in England, Durie would despair of doing any good." The diocesan referred to is probably Juxon, Bishop of London; but, two years later, we find Roe recommending Durie's business and Hartlib personally to another prelate, Bishop Morton of Durham. Writing from St. Martin's Lane, Feb. 17, 1637-8, Sir Thomas "presents the Bishop with a letter from Mr. Durie, and one from Durie to the writer, from which the Bishop may collect his state, and his constant resolution to pursue his business as long as God gives him bread to eat. Such a spirit the writer has never met, daunted with nothing, and only relying upon Providence. ... Sir Thomas in Michaelmas term sent the Bishop a great packet from Samuel Hartlib, correspondent of Durie, an excellent man, and of the same spirit. If the Bishop like his way, Hartlib will constantly write to him, and send all the passages both of learning and public affairs, no man having better information, especially _in re literariâ_." [Footnote: The quotations in this paragraph are from the late Mr. Brace's accurate abstracts of Durie's and Roe's letters (sixteen in all) given in the six volumes of Calendars of the Domestic State Papers from 1633 to 1638.] These letters enable us to see Hartlib as he was in 1637, a Prussian naturalized in London, between thirty and forty years of age, nominally a merchant of some kind, but in reality a man of various hobbies, and conducting a general news-agency, partly as a means of income and partly from sheer zeal in certain public causes interesting to himself. His zeal in this way, and in private benevolences to needy scholars and inventors, had even outrun prudence; so that, though he could reckon his means at between 300_l_. and 400_l_. a year, [Footnote: This appears from the letter of his to Worthington, of date Aug. 3, 1660, quoted in Dircks's Memoir (p. 4), where he says, "Let it not seem a paradox to you, if I tell you, as long as I have lived in England, by wonderful providences, I have spent yearly out of my own betwixt 300_l._ and 400_l._ sterling a year."] that had not sufficed for his openhandedness. Durie's great project for a reconciliation of the Calvinists and Lutherans, and a union of all the Protestant Churches of Europe on some broad basis of mutual tolerance or concession, had hitherto been his hobby in chief. He had other hobbies, however, of a more literary nature, and of late he had been undertaking too freely some work appertaining to "the schooling and education of children." This last fact, which we learn hazily from Durie's letters and Roe's, we should have known, abundantly and distinctly, otherwise. There are two publications of Hartlib's, of the years 1637 and 1638 respectively, the first of a long and varied series that were to come from his pen. Now, both of these are on the subject of Education. "_Conatuum Comenianorum Præludia, ex Bibliothecâ S. H.: Oxoniæ, Excudebat Gulielmus Turnerus, Academia Typographus_, 1637" ("Preludes of the Endeavours of Comenius, from the Library of S. H.: Oxford, Printed by William Turner, University Printer, 1637")--such is the general title of the first of these publications. It is a small quarto, and consists first of a Preface "_Ad Lectorem_" (to the Reader), signed "Samuel Hartlibius," and then of a foreign treatise which it is the object of the publication to introduce to the attention of Oxford and of the English nation; which treatise has this separate title:--"_Porta Sapientiæ Reserata; sive Pansophiæ Christianæ Seminarium: hoc est, Nova, Compendiosa et Solida omnes Scientias et Artes, et quicquid manifesti vel occulti est quod ingenio humano penetrare, solertiæ imitari, linguae eloqui, datur, brevius, verius, melius, quam hactenus, Addiscendi Methodus: Auctore Reverendo Clarissimoque viro Domino Johanne Amoso Comenio_" ("The Gate of Wisdom Opened; or the Seminary of all Christian Knowledge: being a New, Compendious, and Solid Method of Learning, more briefly, more truly, and better than hitherto, all Sciences and Arts, and whatever there is, manifest or occult, that it is given to the genius of man to penetrate, his craft to imitate, or his tongue to speak: The author that Reverend and most distinguished man, Mr. John Amos Comenius"). So far as I have been able to trace, this is the first publication bearing the name of Hartlib. Copies of it must be scarce, but there is at least one in the British Museum. There also is a copy of what, on the faith of an entry in the Registers of the Stationers' Company, I have to record as his second publication. "Oct. 17, 1638: Samuel Gillebrand entered for his copy, under the hands of Mr. Baker and Mr. Rothwell, warden, a Book called _Comenii Pansophiæ Prodromus et Didactica Dissertatio_ (Comenius's Harbinger of Universal Knowledge and Treatise on Education), published by Sam. Hartlib." [Footnote: My notes from Stationers' Registers.] When the thing actually appeared, in small duodecimo, it had the date "1639" on the title-page. The canvas becomes rather crowded; but I am bound to introduce here to the reader "that reverend and most distinguished man, Mr. John Amos Comenius," who had been winning on Hartlib's heart by his theories of Education and Pansophia, prepossessed though that heart was by Durie and his scheme of Pan-Protestantism. He was an Austro-Slav, born in 1592, at Comnia in Moravia, whence his name Jan Amos Komensky, Latinized into Joannes Amosius Comenius. His parents were Protestants of the sect known as the Bohemian or Moravian Brethren, who traced their origin to the followers of Huss. Left an orphan in early life, he was poorly looked after, and was in his sixteenth year before he began to learn Latin. Afterwards he studied in various places, and particularly at Herborn in the Duchy of Nassau; whence he returned to his native Moravia in 1614, to become Rector of a school at Prerau. Here it was that he first began to study and practise new methods of teaching, and especially of grammatical teaching, induced, as he himself tells us, by the fame of certain speculations on that subject which had recently been put forth by Wolfgang Ratich, an Educational Reformer then very active in Germany. From Prerau Comenius removed in 1618 to Fulneck, to be pastor to a congregation of Moravian Brethren there; but, as he conjoined the charge of a new school with his pastorate, he continued his interest in new methods of education. Manuscripts of schoolbooks which he was preparing on his new methods perished, with his library, in a sack of Fulneck in 1621 by the Spaniards; and in 1624, on an edict proscribing all the Protestant ministers of the Austrian States, Comenius lost his living, and took refuge in the Bohemian mountains with a certain Baron Sadowski of Slaupna. In this retreat he wrote, in 1627, a short educational Directory for the use of the tutor of the baron's sons. But, the persecution waxing furious, and 30,000 families being driven out of Bohemia for their Protestantism, Comenius had to migrate to Poland It was with a heavy heart that lie did so: and, as he and his fellow-exiles crossed the mountain-boundary on their way, they looked back on Moravia and Bohemia, and, falling on their knees, prayed God not to let His truth fail utterly out of those hinds, but to preserve a remnant in them for himself. Leszno in Poland was Comenius's new refuge. Here again he employed himself in teaching; and here, in a more systematic manner than before, he pursued his speculations on the science of teaching and on improved methods for the acquisition of universal knowledge. He read, he tells us, all the works he could find on the subject of Didactics by predecessors or contemporaries, such as Ratich, Ritter, Glaumius, Wolfstirn, Cæcilius, and Joannes Valentinus Andreæ, and also the philosophical works of Campanella and Lord Bacon; but he combined the information so obtained with his own ideas and experience. The results he seems mainly to have jotted down, for future use, in various manuscript papers in his Slavic vernacular, or in German, or in Latin; but in 1631 he was induced by the curators of the school at Leszno to send to the press in Latin one book of a practical and particular nature. This was a so-called "_Janua Linguarum Reserata_," or "Gate of Languages Opened," propounding a method which he had devised, and had employed at Leszno, for rapidly teaching Latin, or any other tongue, and at the same time communicating the rudiments of useful knowledge. The little book, though he thought it a trifle, made him famous. "It happened, as I could not have imagined possible," he himself writes, "that that puerile little work was received with a sort of universal applause by the learned world. This was testified by very many persons of different countries, both by letters to myself congratulating me earnestly on the new invention, and also by translations into the various popular tongues, undertaken as if in rivalry with each other. Not only did editions which we have ourselves seen appear in all the European tongues, twelve in number--viz. Latin, Greek, Bohemian, Polish, German. Swedish, Dutch, English, French, Spanish, Italian, and Hungarian; but it was translated, as we have learnt, into such Asiatic tongues as the Arabic, the Turkish, the Persian, and even the Mongolian." The process which Comenius thus describes must have extended over several years. There are traces of knowledge of him, and of his _Janua Linguarum Reserata_, in England as early as 1633. In that year a Thomas Home, M.A., then a schoolmaster in London, but afterwards Master of Eton, put forth a "_Janua Linguarum_" which is said by Anthony Wood to have been taken, "all or most," from Comenius. An actual English translation or expansion of Comenius's book, by a John Anchoran, licentiate in Divinity, under the title of "The Gate of Tongues Unlocked and Opened: or else A Summary or Seed-Plot of all Tongues and Sciences," reached its "fourth edition much enlarged" in 1639, and may be presumed to have been in circulation, in other forms, some years before. But the great herald of Comenius and his ideas among the English was Samuel Hartlib. Not only may he have had to do with the importation of Comenius's _Janua Linguarum_ and the recommendation of that book to such pedagogues as Home and Anchoran; but he was instrumental in extracting from Comenius, while that book and certain appendices to it were in the flush of their first European popularity, a summary of his reserved and more general theories and intentions in the field of Didactics. The story is told very minutely by Comenius himself. The _Janua Linguarum Reserata_ was only a proposed improvement in the art of teaching Language or Words; and ought not a true system of education to range beyond that, and provide for a knowledge of Things? This was what Comenius was thinking: he was meditating a sequel to his popular little book, to be called "_Janua Rerum Reserata" or "Gate of Things Opened," and to contain an epitome or encyclopædia of all essential knowledge, under the three heads of Nature, Scripture, and the Mind of Man. Nay, borrowing a word which had appeared as the title of a somewhat meagre Encyclopædia of the Arts by a Peter Laurenbergius, Comenius had resolved on _Pansophia_, or _Pansophia Christiana_ ("Universal Wisdom," or "Universal Christian Wisdom"), as a fit alternative name for this intended _Janua Rerum_. But he was keeping the work back, as one requiring leisure, and could only be persuaded to let the announcement of its title appear in the Leipsic catalogue of forthcoming books. By that time, however, Hartlib of London had become so dear a friend to Comenius that he could refuse _him_ nothing. Whether there had been any prior personal acquaintance between Hartlib and Comenius, by reason of their German and Slavic connexions, I cannot say. But, since the publication of the _Janua Linguarum_, Hartlib had been in correspondence with Comenius in his Polish home; and, by 1636, his interest in the designs of Comenius, and willingness to forward them, had become so well known in the circle of the admirers of Comenius that he had been named as one of the five chief Comenians in Europe, the other four being Zacharias Schneider of Leipsic, Sigismund Evenius of Weimar, John Mochinger of Dantzic, and John Docemius of Hamburg. Now, Hartlib, having heard of the intended _Janua Rerum_ or _Pansophia_ of Comenius, not only in the Leipsic catalogue of forthcoming works, but also, more particularly, from some Moravian students passing through London, had written to Comenius, requesting some sketch of it. "Being thus asked," says Comenius, "by the most intimate of my friends, a man piously eager for the public good, to communicate some idea of my future work, I did communicate to him in writing, in a chance way, what I had a thought of prefixing some time or other to the work in the form of a Preface; and this, beyond my hope, and without my knowledge, was printed at Oxford, under the title of _Conatuum Comenianorum Præludia_." Here we have the whole secret of that publication from the Oxford University press, in 1637, which was edited by Hartlib and announced as being from his Library. It was not a reprint of anything that had already appeared abroad, but was in fact a new treatise by the great Comenius which Hartlib had persuaded the author to send him from Poland and had published on his own responsibility. He had apologized to Comenius for so doing, on the ground that the publication would "serve a good purpose by feeling the way and ascertaining the opinions of learned and wise men in a matter of such unusual consequence." Comenius was a little nettled, he says, especially as criticisms of the Pansophic sketch began to come in, which would have been obviated, he thought, if he had been allowed quietly to develop the thing farther before publication. Nevertheless, there the book was, and the world now knew of Comenius not only as the author of the little _Janua Linguarum_, but also as contemplating a vast _Janua Rerum_, or organization of universal knowledge on a new basis.--In fact, the fame of Comenius was increased by Hartlib's little indiscretion. In Sweden especially there was an anxiety to have the benefit of the counsels of so eminent a theorist in the business of education. In 1638 the Swedish Government, at the head of which, during the minority of Queen Christina, was the Chancellor Oxenstiern, invited Comenius to Sweden, that he might preside over a Commission for the revision and reform of the schools there. Comenius, however, declined the invitation, recommending that the work should be entrusted to some native Swede, but promising to give his advice; and, at the same time (1638), he began to translate into Latin, for the behoof of Sweden and of other countries, a certain _Didactica Magna_, or treatise on Didactics at large, which he had written in his Bohemian Slavic vernacular nine years before. Hartlib had an early abstract of this book, and this abstract is part of the _Comenii Pansophiæ Prodromus et Didactica Dissertatio_ which he edited in London in the same year, and published in duodecimo in 1639. [Footnote: Bayle's Dictionary: Art. _Coménius (Jean-Amos)_; "Geshichte der Pädagogik," by Karl von Raumer (Stuttgart, 1843), Zweither Theil, pp. 46-49; "Essays on Educational Reformers," by Robert Hebert Quick (1868), pp. 43-47; Wood's Ath. III. 366, and II. 677. The general sketch of Comenius in Bayle, and those by Raumer and Mr. Quick, are very good; but details in the text, and especially the particulars of Hartlib's early connexion with Comenius, have had to be culled by me from the curious autobiographical passages prefixed to or inserted in Comenius's various writings as far as 1642. These form Part I. of his large Folio, _Opera Didactica Omnia_, published by him at Amsterdam in 1657; and the passages in that Part which have supplied particulars for the text will be found at columns 3-4, 318, 326,403,442--444,454-459. Comenius, like most such theoretic reformers, had a vein of egotism, and a strong memory for details respecting the history of his own ideas and their reception.] What, after all, were the new notions propounded from Poland, with such universal European effort, by this Protestant Austro-Slav, Comenius, and sponsored in England by the Prussian Hartlib? We shall try to give them in epitome. Be it understood, however, that the epitome takes account only of those works of Comenius which were written before 1639, without including the mass of his later writings, some of which were to be even more celebrated. The _Didactica Magna_ is perhaps the most pregnant of the early books of Comenius. The full title of this treatise is, in translation, as follows: "Didactics at Large: propounding a universal Scheme for teaching all Things to all persons; or a Certain and Perfect Mode of erecting such Schools through all the communities, towns, and villages of any Christian Kingdom, as that all the youth of both sexes, without the neglect of a single one, may be compendiously, pleasantly, and solidly educated in Learning, grounded in Morals, imbued with Piety, and so, before the years of puberty, instructed in all things belonging to the present and the future life." In the treatise itself there are first some chapters of preliminary generalities. Man, says Comenius, is the last and most perfect of creatures; his destiny is to a life beyond this; and the present life is but a preparation for that eternal one. This preparation involves three things--Knowledge by Man of himself and of all things about him (Learning), Rule of himself (Morals), and Direction of himself to God (Religion). The seeds of these three varieties of preparation are in us by Nature; nevertheless, if Man would come out complete Man, he must be formed or educated. Always the education must be threefold--in Knowledge, in Morals, and in Religion; and this combination must never be lost sight of. Such education, however, comes most fitly in early life. Parents may do much, but they cannot do all; there is need, therefore, in every country, of public schools for youth. Such schools should be for the children of all alike, the poor as well as the rich, the stupid and malicious as well as the clever and docile, and equally for girls as for boys; and the training in them ought to be absolutely universal or encyclopædic, in Letters, Arts, and Science, in Morals, and in Piety. [Footnote: For Miltonic reasons, as well as for others, I cannot resist the temptation to translate here, in a Note, the sub stance of Comenius's views on the Education of Women; as given in Chap. IX. (cols. 42-44) of his _Didactica Magna_:--"Nor, to say something particularly on this subject, can any sufficient reason be given why the weaker sex" [_sequior sexus_, literally "the later or following sex," is his phrase, borrowed from Apuleius, and, though the phrase is usually translated "the inferior sex," it seems to have been chosen by Comenius to avoid that implication], "should be wholly shut out from liberal studies, whether in the native tongue or in Latin. For equally are they God's image; equally are they partakers of grace and of the kingdom to come; equally are they furnished with minds agile and capable of wisdom, yea often beyond our sex; equally to them is there a possibility of attaining high distinction, inasmuch as they have often been employed by God himself for the government of peoples, the bestowing of the most wholesome counsels on kings and princes, the science of medicine and other things useful to the human race, nay even the prophetical office, and the rattling reprimand of Priests and Bishops" [_etiam ad Propheticum munus, et incrependos Sacerdotes Episcoposque_, are the words; and, as the treatise was prepared for the press in 1638, one detects a reference, by the Moravian Brother in Poland, to the recent fame of Jenny Geddes of Scotland]. "Why then should we admit them to the Alphabet, but afterwards debar them from Books? Do we fear their rashness? The more we occupy their thoughts, the less room will there be in them for rashness, which springs generally from vacuity of mind." Some slight limitations as to the reading proper for young women are appended, but with a hint that the same limitations would be good for youth of the other sex; and there is a bold quotation of the Scriptural text (1 Tim. ii. 12),"_I suffer not a woman to teach_," and of two well-known passages of Euripides and Juvenal against learned women or bluestockings, to show that he was quite aware of these passages, but saw nothing in them against his real meaning.] Here, at length, in the eleventh chapter, we arrive at the great question, Has such a system of schools been anywhere established? _No_, answers Comenius, and abundantly proves his negative. Schools of a kind there had been in the world from the days of the Pharaohs and Nebuchadnezzar, if not from those of Shem, but not yet were there schools everywhere; not yet, where schools did exist, were they for all classes; and, at best, where they did exist, of what sort were they? Places, for the most part, of nausea and torment for the poor creatures collected in them; narrow and imperfect in their aims, which were verbal rather than real; and not even succeeding in these aims! Latin, nothing but Latin! And how had they taught this precious and eternal Latin of theirs? "Good God! how intricate, laborious, and prolix this study of Latin has been! Do not scullions, shoeblacks, cobblers, among pots and pans, or in camp, or in any other sordid employment, learn a language different from their own, or even two or three such, more readily than school students, with every leisure and appliance and all imaginable effort, learn their solitary Latin? And what a difference in the proficiency attained! The former, after a few months, are found gabbling away with ease; the latter, after fifteen or twenty years, can hardly, for the most part, unless when strapped up tight in their grammars and dictionaries, bring out a bit of Latin, and that not without hesitation and stammering." But all this might be remedied. There might be such a Reformation of Schools that not only Latin, but all other languages, and all the real Sciences and Arts of life to boot, might be taught in them expeditiously, pleasantly, and thoroughly. What was wanted was right methods and the consistent practical application of these. Nature must supply the principles of the Method of Education: as all Nature's processes go softly and spontaneously, so will all artificial processes that are in conformity with Nature's principles. And what are Nature's principles, as transferable into the Art of Education? Comenius enumerates a good many, laying stress on such as these: nothing out of season; matter before form; the general before the special, or the simple before the complex; all continuously, and nothing _per saltum_. He philosophizes a good deal, sometimes a little quaintly and mystically, on these principles of Nature, and on the hints she gives for facility, solidity, and celerity of learning, and then sums up his deductions as to the proper Method in each of the three departments of education, the Intellectual, the Moral, and the Religious. Things before words, or always along with words, to explain them; the concrete and sensible to prepare for the abstract; example and illustration rather than verbal definition, or to accompany verbal definition: such is his main maxim in the first department. Object-lessons, wherever possible: i.e. if boys are taught about the stars, let it be with the stars over their heads to look at; if about the structure of the human body, let it be with a skeleton before them; if about the action of a pump, or other machine, let it be with the machine actually at hand. "Always let the things which the words are to designate be shown; and again, whatever the pupils see, hear, touch, taste, let them be taught to express the same; so that tongue and intellect may go on together." Where the actual objects cannot be exhibited, there may be models, pictures, and the like; and every school ought to have a large apparatus of such, and a museum. Writing and drawing ought to be taught simultaneously with reading. All should be made pleasant to the pupils; they ought to relish their lessons, to be kept brisk, excited, wide-awake; and to this end there should be emulation, praise of the deserving, always something nice and rousing on the board, a mixture of the funny with the serious, and occasional puzzles, anecdotes, and conundrums. The school-houses ought to be airy and agreeable, and the school-hours not too long. In order that there may be time to teach all that really ought to be taught, there must be a wise neglect of heaps of things not essential: a great deal must be flung overboard, as far as School is concerned, and left to the chance inquisitiveness of individuals afterwards. And what sort of things may be thus wisely neglected? Why, in the first place, the _non necessaria_ (things generally unprofitable), or things that contribute neither to piety nor to good morals, and without which there may be very sufficient erudition--as, for example, "the names of the Gentile gods, their love- histories, and their religious rites," all which may be got up in books at any time by any one that wants them; and, again, the _aliena_ (things that do not fit the particular pupil)--mathematics, for example, for some, and music for those who have no ear; and, again, the _particularissima_, or those excessive minutenesses and distinctions into which one may go without end in any subject whatsoever. So, at large, with very competent learning, no small philosophical acumen, much logical formality and numeration of propositions and paragraphs, but a frequent liveliness of style, and every now and then a crashing shot of practical good sense, Comenius reasons and argues for a new System of Education, inspired by what would now be called Realism or enlightened Utilitarianism. Objections, as they might occur, are duly met and answered; and one notes throughout the practical schoolmaster, knowing what he is talking about, and having before his fancy all the while the spectacle of a hundred or two of lads ranged on benches, and to be managed gloriously from the desk, as a skilled metallurgist manages a mass of molten iron. He is a decided advocate for large classes, each of "some hundreds," under one head-master, because of the fervour which such classes generate in themselves and in the master; and he shows how they may be managed. Emulation, kindliness, and occasional rebuke, are chiefly to be trusted to for maintaining discipline; and punishments are to be for moral offences only. How Comenius would blend moral teaching and religious teaching with the acquisition of knowledge in schools is explained in two chapters, entitled "Method of Morals" and "Method of instilling Piety;" and this last leads him to a separate chapter, in which he maintains that, "if we would have schools thoroughly reformed according to the true rules of Christianity, the books of Heathen authors must be removed from them, or at least employed more cautiously than hitherto." He argues this at length, insisting on the necessity of the preparation of a graduated series of school-books that should supersede the ordinary classics, conserving perhaps the best bits of some of them. If any of the classics were to be kept bodily for school-use, they should be Seneca, Epictetus, Plato, and the like. And so at last he comes to describe the System of Schools he would have set up in every country, viz.: I. THE INFANT SCHOOL, or MOTHER'S OWN SCHOOL, for children under six; II. THE LUDUS LITERARIUS, Or VERNACULAR PUBLIC SCHOOL, for boys and girls up to the age of twelve; III. THE LATIN SCHOOL or GYMNASIUM, for higher teaching up to eighteen or so; and IV. THE UNIVERSITY (with TRAVEL), for the highest possible teaching on to the age of about five- and-twenty. From the little babble of the Infant School about Water, Air, Fire, Iron, Bird, Fish, Hill, Sun, Moon, &c., all on the plan of exercising the senses and making Things and Words go together, up to the most exquisite training of the University, he shows how there might be a progress and yet a continuity of encyclopædic aim. Most boys and girls in every community, he thinks, might stop at the Vernacular School, without going on to the Latin; and he has great faith in the capabilities of any vernacular and the culture that may be obtained within it. Still he would like to see as many as possible going on to the Latin School and the University, that there might never be wanting in a community spirits consummately educated, veritable [Greek: polumatheis] and [Greek: pansophoi]. In the Universities apparently he would allow the largest ranging among the classics of all sorts, though still on some principle for organizing that kind of reading. There is, in fact, a mass of details and suggestions about each of the four kinds of schools, all vital to Comenius, and all pervaded by his sanguine spirit, but which one can hardly now read through. [Footnote: A separate little treatise on the management of "The Infant School," containing advices to parents for home use, was written by Comenius in Bohemian Slavic, and translated thence into German in 1633. It appears in Latin among his _Opera Didactica_ collected. He wrote also, he tells us, six little books for "The Vernacular School," under fancy-titles. These do not seem ever to have been published. His _Janua Linguarum_ (1631), and one or two appendages to it, were contributions to the theory and practice of "The Latin School."] The final chapter is one of the most eloquent and interesting. It is entitled, "Of the Requisites necessary for beginning the practice of this Universal Method." Here he comes back upon his notion of a graduated series of school-books, or rather of an organization of books generally for the purposes of education. "One great requisite," he says, "the absence of which would make the whole machine useless, while its presence would put all in motion, is A SUFFICIENT APPARATUS OF PAMMETHODIC BOOKS." All, he repeats, hinges on the possibility of creating such an apparatus. "This is a work," he adds, "not for one man, especially if he is otherwise occupied, and not instructed in everything that ought to be reduced into the Universal Method; nor is it perhaps a work for one age, if we would have all brought to absolute perfection. There is need, therefore, of a COLLEGIAL SOCIETY (_ergo Societate Collegiali est opus_). For the convocation of such a Society there is need of the authority and liberality of some King, or Prince, or Republic, and also of some quiet place, away from crowds, with a Library and other appurtenances." There follows an earnest appeal to persons of all classes to forward such an association, and the good Moravian winds up with a prayer to God. [Footnote: There is a summary of Comenius's _Didactica Magna_ in Von Reumer's "Geshichte der Pædgogis" (pp. 53-59). It is accurate so far as it goes; but I have gone to the book itself.] A special part of Comenius's system, better known perhaps at the time of which we write than his system as a whole, was his Method for Teaching Languages. This is explained in Chapter XXII. of his _Didactica Magna_, and more in detail in his _Linguarum Janua Rescrata_, and one or two writings added to that book:--Comenius, as we already know, did not overrate linguistic training in education. "Languages are acquired," he says, "not as a part of learning or wisdom, but as instrumental to the reception and communication of learning. Accordingly, it is not _all_ languages that are to be learnt, for that is impossible, nor yet _many_, for that would be useless, as drawing away the time due to the study of Things; but only those that are _necessary_. The necessary tongues, however, are: first, the Vernacular, for home use; next, Neighbouring Tongues, for conversation with neighbours,--as, for example, the German for Poles of one frontier, and the Hungarian, the Wallachian, and the Turkish, for Poles of other parts; next, Latin, as the common language of the learned, admitting one to the wise use of books; and, finally, the Greek and Arabic for philosophers and medical men, and Greek and Hebrew for theologians." Not all the tongues that are learnt, either, are to be learnt to the same nicety of perfection, but only to the extent really needed. Each language should be learnt separately--first, the Vernacular, which ought to be perfectly learnt, and to which children ought to be kept for eight or ten years; then whatever neighbouring tongue might be desirable, for which a year would be long enough; next, Latin, which ought to be learnt well, and might be learnt in two years; and so to Greek, to which he would give one year, and Hebrew, which he would settle in six months. If people should be amazed at the shortness of the time in which he ventured to assert a language like the Latin might be learnt and learnt well, let them consider the principles of his method. Always Things along with Words, and Words associated with new groups of Things, from the most familiar objects to those rarer and farther off, so that the _vocabulary_ might get bigger and bigger; and, all the while, the constant use of the vocabulary, such as it was, in actual talk, as well as in reading and writing. First, let the pupil stutter on anyhow, only using his stock of words; correctness would come afterwards, and in the end elegance and force. Always practice rather than rule, and leading to rule; also connexion of the tongue being learnt with that learnt last. A kind of common grammar may be supposed lying in the pupil's head, which he transfers instinctively to each new tongue, so that he has to be troubled only with variations and peculiarities. The reading-books necessary for thoroughly teaching a language by this method might be (besides Lexicons graduated to match) four in number--I. _Vestibulum_ (The Porch), containing a vocabulary of some hundreds of simple words, fit for babbling with, grouped in little sentences, with annexed tables of declensions and conjugations; II. _Janua_ (The Gate), containing all the common words in the language, say about 8,000, also compacted into interesting sentences, with farther grammatical aids; III. _Palatium_ (The Palace), containing tit-bits of higher discourse about things, and elegant extracts from authors, with notes and grammatical comments; IV. _Thesaurus_ (The Treasury), consisting of select authors themselves, duly illustrated, with a catalogue of other authors, so that the pupils might have some idea of the extent of the Literature of the language, and might know what authors to read on occasion afterwards.--Comenius himself actually wrote a _Vestibulum_ for Latin, consisting of 427 short sentences, and directions for their use; and, as we know, his _Janua Linguarum Reserata_, which appeared in 1631, was the publication which made him famous. It is an application of his system to Latin. On the principle that Latin can never be acquired with ease while its vocabulary is allowed to lie alphabetically in dead Dictionaries, or in multitudinous variety of combination in Latin authors, about 8,000 Latin words of constant use are collected into a kind of Noah's Ark, representative of all Latinity. This is done in 1,000 short Latin sentences, arranged in 100 paragraphs of useful information about all things and sundry, under such headings as _De Ortu Mundi_ (Of the Beginning of the World), _De Elementis_ (Of the Elements), _De Firmamento_ (Of the Firmament), _De Igne_ (Of Fire), and so on through other physical and moral topics. Among these are _De Metallis_ (Of Metals), _De Herbis_ (Of Plants), _De Insectis_ (Of Insects), _De Ulceribus et Vulneribus_ (Of Sores and Wounds), _De Agricultura_ (Of Agriculture), _De Vestituum Generibus (Of Articles of Dress), _De Puerperio_ (Of Childbirth), _De Pace et Bella_ (Of Peace and War), _De Modestia_ (Of Modesty), _De Morte et Sepultura_ (Of Death and Burial), _De Providentia Dei_ (Of the Providence of God), _De Angelis_ (Of Angels). Comenius was sure that due drill in this book would put a boy in effective possession of Latin for all purposes of reading, speaking, and writing. And, of course, by translation, the same manual would serve for any other language. For, the Noah's Ark of _things_ being much the same for all peoples, in learning a new language you have but to fit on to the contents of that permanent Ark of realities a new set of vocables. [Footnote: _Dialectica Magna_ Chap. XXII. first edition of _Janua_, as reprinted in _Comenii Opera Didactica_, 1657 (Part I, cols. 255-302).] Comenius rather smiled at the rush of all Europe upon his _Janua Linguarum_, or Method for Teaching Languages. That was a trifle in his estimation, compared with the bigger speculations of his _Didactica Magna_, and still more with his _Pansophiæ Prodromus_ or _Porta Sapientiæ Reserata_. A word or two on this last little book:--Comenius appears in it as a would-be Lord Bacon, an Austro-Slavic Lord Bacon, a very Austro-Slavic Lord Bacon. He mentions Bacon several times, and always with profound respect ("_illustrissimus Verulamius_" and so on); but it appeared to him that more was wanted than Bacon's _Novum Organum,_ or _Instauratio Magna_, with all its merits. A PANSOPHIA was wanted, nay, a PANSOPHIA CHRISTIANA, or consolidation of all human knowledge into true central Wisdom, one body of Real Truth. O Wisdom, Wisdom! O the knowledge of things in themselves, and in their universal harmony! What was mere knowledge of words, or all the fuss of pedagogy and literature, in view of that! Once attained, and made communicable, it would make the future of the world one Golden Age! Why had it not been attained? What had been the hindrances to its attainment? What were the remedies? In a kind of phrenzy, which does not prevent most logical precision of paragraphing and of numbering of propositions, Comenius discusses all this, becoming more and more like a Bacon bemuddled, as he eyes his PANSOPHIA through the mist. What it is he cannot make plain to us; but we see he has some notion of it himself, and we honour him accordingly. For there are gleams, and even flashes, through the mist. For example, there is a paragraph entitled _Scientiarum Laceratio_, lamenting the state of division, disconnectedness, and piece-meal distribution among many hands, into which the Sciences had fallen. Though there were books entitled Pansophias, Encyclopædias, and the like, he had seen none sufficiently justifying the name, or exhausting the universality of things. Much less had he seen the whole apparatus of human intelligence so constructed from its own certain and eternal principles that all things should appear mutually concatenated among themselves from first to last without any hiatus! "Metaphysicians hum to themselves only, Natural Philosophers chaunt their own praises, Astronomers lead on their dances for themselves, Ethical Thinkers set up laws for themselves, Politicians lay foundations for themselves, Mathematicians triumph for themselves, and for themselves Theologians reign." What is the consequence? Why, that, while each one attends only to himself and his own phantasy, there is no general accord, but only dissonance. "We see that the branches of a tree cannot live unless they all alike suck their juices from a common trunk with common roots. And can we hope that the branches of Wisdom can be torn asunder with safety to their life, that is to truth? Can one be a Natural Philosopher who is not also a Metaphysician? or an Ethical Thinker who does not know something of Physical Science? or a Logician who has no knowledge of real matters? or a Theologian, a Jurisconsult, or a Physician, who is not first a Philosopher? or an Orator or Poet who is not all things at once? He deprives himself of light, of hand, and of regulation, who pushes away from him any shred of the knowable." From such passages one has a glimmer of what Comenius did mean by his Pansophia. He hoped to do something himself towards furnishing the world with this grand desideratum. He had in contemplation a book which should at least show what a proper Encyclopædia or Consolidation of Universal Truth ought to be. But here again he invites co-operation. Many hands in many lands would have to labour at the building of the great Temple of Wisdom. He appeals to all, "of every rank, age, sex, and tongue," to do what they can. Especially let there be an end to the monopoly of Latin. "We desire and protest that studies of wisdom be no longer committed to Latin alone, and kept shut up in the schools, as has hitherto been done, to the greatest contempt and injury of the people at large and the popular tongues. Let all things be delivered to each nation in its own speech, so that occasion may be afforded to all who are men to occupy themselves with these liberal matters rather than fatigue themselves, as is constantly the case, with the cares of this life, or ambitions, or drinking-bouts, or other vanities, to the destruction of life and soul both. Languages themselves too would so be polished to perfection with the advancement of the Sciences and Arts. Wherefore we, for our part, have resolved, if God pleases, to divulge these things of ours both in the Latin and in the vernacular. For no one lights a candle and hides it under a bushel, but places it on a candlestick, that it may give light to all." [Footnote: _Pansophici Libri Delineatio_ (_i.e._ the same treatise which Hartlib had printed at Oxford in 1637) in _Comenii Opera Didactica_, Part I. cols. 403-454.] Such were the varied Comenian views which the good Hartlib strove to bring into notice in England in 1637-9. Durie and Reconciliation of the Churches was still one of his enthusiasms, but Comenius and Reformed Education was another. But, indeed, nothing of a hopeful kind, with novelty in it, came amiss to Hartlib. He, as well as Comenius, had read Lord Bacon. He was a devoted admirer of the Baconian philosophy, and had imbibed, I think, more deeply than most of Bacon's own countrymen, the very spirit and mood of that philosophy. That' the world had got on so slowly hitherto because it had pursued wrong methods; that, if once right methods were adopted, the world would spin forward at a much faster rate in all things; that no one could tell what fine discoveries of new knowledge, what splendid inventions in art, what devices for saving labour, increasing wealth, preserving health, and promoting happiness, awaited the human race in the future: all this, which Bacon had taught, Hartlib had taken into his soul. His sympathy with Durie and Religious Compromise and his sympathy with Comenius and School Reform were but special exhibitions of his general passion for new lights. The cry of his soul, morning and night, in all things, was Phosphore, redde diem! Quid gaudia nostra moraris? Phosphore, redde diem! [Footnote: This is no fancy-quotation. Hartlib himself, in 1659, uses it in a letter to the famous Boyle, as the passionate motto of his life (see Diary of Worthington, edited by Crossley, I, 168, and Boyle's Works, ed. 1744, V. 293).] Naturally this passion had a political side. Through the reign of Thorough, it is true, Hartlib had been as quiet as it became a foreigner in London to be at such a time, and had even been in humble correspondence in Durie's behalf with Bishops, Privy Councillors, and other chiefs of the existing power. But, when the Scottish troubles brought signs of coming change for England, and there began to be stir among the Puritans and the miscellaneous _quidnuncs_ of London in anxiety for that change, Hartlib found himself in friendly contact and acquaintanceship with some of these forward spirits. One is not surprised, therefore, at the fact, previously mentioned in our History (Vol. II. p. 45), that, when Charles was mustering his forces for the First Bishops' War against the Scots, and Secretary Windebank was busy with arrests of persons in London suspected of complicity with the Scots, Hartlib was one of those pounced upon. Here is the exact official warrant:--"These are to will, require, and authorize you to make your repair to the house of Samuel Hartlib, merchant, and to examine him upon such interrogatories as you shall find pertinent to the business you are now employed in; and you are also to take with you one of the messengers of his Majesty's Chamber, who is to receive and follow such order and directions as you shall think fit to give him; and this shall be your sufficient warrant in this behalf.--Dated at my house in Drury Lane, 1 May 1639.--Fran. Windebank. To Robert Reade, my Secretary." [Footnote: Copied by me from the original in the S.P.O.]--The reader may, at this point, like to know where Hartlib's house was. It was in Duke's Place, Aldgate. He had been there for more than a year, if not from his first settling in London; and it was to be his residence for many years to come.[Footnote: Among the Ayscough MSS. in the British Museum there is one (No. 4276) containing a short letter from Joseph Meade to Hartlib, dated from Christ's College, Cambridge, June 18, 1638, and addressed "To his worthie friend Mr. Samuel Hartlib at his house in Duke's Place, London." There is nothing of importance in the letter; which is mainly about books Meade would like Hartlib to send to certain persons named-- one of them Dr. Twisse, afterwards Prolocutor of the Westminster Assembly. Meade died less than four months after the date of this letter.] He was married, and had at least one child.--Reade and the King's officer appear to have discovered nothing specially implicating Hartlib; for he is found living on much as before through the remainder of the Scottish Presbyterian Revolt, on very good terms with his former Episcopal correspondents and others who regarded that Revolt with dread and detestation. The following is a letter of his, of date Aug. 10, 1640, which I found in his own hand in the State Paper Office. It has not, I believe, been published before, and letters of Hartlib's of so early a date are scarce: besides, it is too characteristic to be omitted:-- "Right Hon. [no farther indication of the person addressed: was it Sir Thomas Roe?] "These are to improve the leisure which perhaps you may enjoy in your retiredness from this place. The author of the Schedule of Divers New Inventions [apparently enclosed in the letter] is the same Plattes who about a year ago published two profitable treatises concerning Husbandry and Mines. He is now busy in contriving of some other Tracts, which will more particularly inform all sorts of people how to procure their own and the public good of these countries. [Footnote: Gabriel Plattes, author of "A Discovery of Subterraneall Treasure: viz. of all manner of Mines and Minerals from the Gold to the Coale: London 1639, 4to." This is from Lowndes's _Bibliographer's Manual_ by Bohn; where it is added that "Plattes published several other works chiefly relating to Husbandry, and is said to have dropped down dead in the London streets for want of food." Among other things, he was an Alchemist; and in Wood's Athenæ by Bliss (I. 640-1) there is a curious extract from his Mineralogical book, giving an account of a process of his for making pure gold artificially, though, as he says, not with profit. One thinks kindly of this poor inventive spirit hanging on upon Hartlib with his "Schedule of New Inventions," and of Hartlib's interest in him.] Some of my learned friends in France do highly commend one Palissi to be a man of the like disposition and industry. The books which he hath written and printed (some of them in French) are said to contain a world of excellent matter. [Footnote: This, I think, must be the famous Bernard Palissy, "the Potter," who died in 1590, leaving writings such as Hartlib describes. If so, Hartlib was a little behind time in his knowledge, for one might fancy him speaking of a contemporary.] I wish such like observations, experiments, and true philosophies, were more known to other nations. By this means not only the Heavens, but also the Earth, would declare the glory of God more evidently than it hath done.---As for Mr. Durie, by these enclosed [a number of extracts from letters about Durie's business which Hartlib had received from Bishops and others] your Honour will be able to see how far I am advanced in transactions of his affairs. My Lord Bishop of Exeter [Hall], in one of his late letters unto himself [Durie], uses these following words: '_Perlegi quæ_,' &c. [A long Latin passage, which may be given in English: 'I have read through what you have heretofore written to the most illustrious Sir Thomas Roe respecting the procuring of an ecclesiastical agreement. I like your prudence and most sagacious theological ingenuity in the same: should Princes follow the thread of the advice, we shall easily extricate ourselves from this labyrinth of controversies. The Reverend Bishop of Salisbury has a work on the Fundamentals of Faith, which is now at press, designed for the composing of these disputes of the Christian world; doubtless to the great good of the Church. Proceed busily in the sacred work you have undertaken: we will not cease to aid you all we can with our prayers and counsels, and, if possible, with other helps']: I hear the worthies of Cambridge are at work to satisfy in like manner the Doctors of Bremen: only my Lord Bishop of Durham [Morton] is altogether silent. It may be the northern distractions hinder him from such and the like pacifical overtures. I am much grieved for his book _De [Greek: polutopia] corporis Christi_ [on the Ubiquity of Christ's Body], which is now in the press at Cambridge; for both the Bishop of Lincoln [Williams] and Dr. Hacket told me, from the mouth of him that corrects it (an accurate and judicious scholar), that it was a very invective and bitter railing against the Lutheran tenets on that point, insomuch that Dr. Brownrigg had written unto his lordship about it, to put all into a milder strain. I confess others do blame somewhat Mr. D[urie] for certain phrases which he seems to yield unto in his printed treatise with the Danes, '_De Omnipræsentiâ et orali manducatione_' [Of the Omnipresence and Eating with the Mouth]; yet let me say this much--that Reverend Bucer, that prudent learned man, who was the first man of note that ever laboured in this most excellent work of reconciling the Protestants, even in the very first beginning of the breach, and who laboured more abundantly than they all in it (I mean than all the rest of the Reformers in his time): Bucer, I say, yielded so far for peace' sake to Luther and his followers in some harsh-sounding terms and words that the Helvetians began to be suspicious of him, lest he should be won to the contrary side, although the good man did fully afterwards declare his mind when he saw his yielding would do no good. It is not then Mr. D.'s case alone, when so brave a worthy as Bucer goes along with him, a man of whom great Calvin uttered these words when news was brought him of his death, '_Quam multiplicem in Bucero jacturam fecerit Dei Ecclesia quoties in mentem venit, cor meum prope laccrari sentio_' ['As often as it comes to my mind what a manifold loss the Church of God has had in Bucer, I feel my heart almost lacerated']. So he wrote in an epistle to Viret. But enough of this subject.----I have had these 14 days no letters from Mr. D.; nor do I long much for them, except I could get in the rents from his tenant to pay the 70 rixdollars to Mr. Avery's brother in London. The Bishop of Exeter seems to be a man of excellent bowels; and, if your Honour would be pleased to second his requests towards my Lord's Grace of Canterbury, or to favour Bishop Davenant's advice in your own way, perhaps some comfortable effects would soon follow. My Lady Anna Waller doth highly affect Mr. D. and his endeavours; and, if any donatives or other preferments should be recommended to be disposed this way by my Lord Keeper (who is a near kinsman of her Ladyship), I am confident she would prove a successful mediatrix in his behalf. If your Honour thinks it fit, I can write also to my Lord Primate [Usher] to intercede with my Lord's Grace [Laud] for Mr. D. He is about to bring forth a great universal work, or Ecclesiastical History. The other treatise, put upon him by his Majesty's special command, '_De Authoritate Regum et Officio Subditorum,_' ['On the Authority of Kings and the Duty of Subjects'] will shortly come to light.----Thus, craving pardon for this prolixity of scribbling, I take humbly my leave; remaining always "Your Honour's most obliged and most assured Servant, SAM. HARTLIB. [Footnote: Copied by me from the original in the S.P.O.] London: the 10 of Aug. 1640." Three months after the date of this letter the Long Parliament had met, and there was a changed world, with changed opportunities, for Hartlib, as well as for other people. The following digest of particulars in his life for the years 1641 and 1642 will show what he was about:-- "A Briefe Relation of that which hath been lately attempted to procure Ecclesiasticall Peace amongst Protestants. Published by Samuel Hartlib. London, Printed by J. R. for Andrew Crooke, and are to be sold at his shop in Paul's Churchyard at the sign of the Green Dragon. 1641."--This little tract is an exposition of Durie's idea, and a narrative sketch of his exertions in its behalf from 1628 onwards. "A Description of the famous Kingdom of MACARIA, shewing its excellent Government, wherein the Inhabitants live in great prosperity, health, and happiness; the King obeyed, the Nobles honoured, and all good men respected; Vice punished, and Virtue rewarded: An example to other nations. In a Dialogue between a Scholar and a Traveller. London 1641" (4to. pp. 15).--There is a Dedication to Parliament, dated "25th October 1641," in which it is said that "Honourable Court will lay the cornerstone of the world's happiness." The tract is an attempt at a fiction, after the manner of "More's Utopia" and Bacon's "New Atlantis," shadowing forth the essentials of good government in the constitution of the imaginary Kingdom of MACARIA (Happy-land, from the Greek makarios, happy). The gist of the thing lies in the rather prosaic statement that MACARIA has Five Councils or Departments of State: to wit, _Husbandry_, _Fishery_, _Land-trade_, _Sea-trade_, and _New Plantations_.--Although there is no author's name to the scrap, it is known to be Hartlib's; who, indeed, continued to use the word MACARIA, half-seriously, half- playfully, till the Restoration and beyond, as a pet name for his Ideal Commonwealth of perfect institutions. [Footnote: See Worthington's Diary edited by Crossley (L 163). Hartlib's original _Macaria_ is reprinted in the Harleian Miscellany, Vol. I.] In 1641 Hartlib was in correspondence with Alexander Henderson. The reader already knows how "the Scottish business," or the King's difficulty with the Scots, led to the calling of the Long Parliament, and how for six or seven months (Nov. 1640-June 1641) that business intertwined itself with the other proceedings of the Parliament, and Henderson and the other Scottish Commissioners, lay and clerical, were in London all that time, nominally looking after that business, but really co-operating with Pym and the other Parliamentary leaders for the Reform of both kingdoms, and much lionized by the Londoners accordingly (Vol. II. pp. 189-192). Well, Hartlib, who found his way to everybody, found his way to Henderson. lie probably saw a good deal of him, if not of the other Scottish Commissioners; for, after Henderson had returned to Scotland, at least three letters from Hartlib followed him thither. Here is the beginning of the third: "Reverend and Loving Brother in Christ: I hope my two former letters were safely delivered, wherein I gave you notice of a purpose taken in hand here to make Notes upon the Bible. What concurrence you think fit to give in such a work I leave to your own piety to determine. Now I have some other thoughts to impart to you, which lie as a burthen on my heart." The thoughts communicated to Henderson are about the wretched state of the Palatinate, with its Protestantism and its University of Heidelberg ruined by the Thirty Years' War, and the "sweet-natured Prince Elector" in exile; but Hartlib slips into Durie's idea, and urges theological correspondence of all Protestant divines, in order to put an end to divisions. The letter, which is signed "Your faithful friend and servant in Christ," is dated "London, Octob. 1641." All this we know because Hartlib kept a copy of the letter and printed it in 1643. "The copy of a Letter written to Mr. Alexander Henderson: London, Printed in the yeare 1643," is the title of the scrap, as I have seen it in the British Museum. Even so we should not have known it to be Hartlib's, had not the invaluable Thomason written "_By Mr. Hartlib_" on the title-page, appending "_Feb._ 6, 1642" (_i.e._ 1642-3) as the date of the publication. "A Reformation of Schooles, designed in two excellent Treatises: the first whereof summarily sheweth the great necessity of a generall Reformation of Common Learning, what grounds of hope there are for such a Reformation, how it may be brought to passe. The second answers certaine objections ordinarily made against such undertakings, arid describes the severall parts and titles of workes which are shortly to follow. Written many yeares agoe in Latine by that reverend, godly, learned, and famous Divine, Mr. John Amos Comenius, one of the Seniours of the exiled Church of Moravia; and now, upon the request of many, translated into English and published by Samuel Hartlib for the general good of the Nation. London: Printed for Michael Sparke, Senior, at the Blue Bible in Greene Arbour: 1642" (small ito. pp. 94).--This is, in fact, a reproduction in English of the views of Comenius in his Didactica Magna, &c. As I find it registered in the books of the Stationers' Company "Jan. 12, 1641" (_i.e._ 1641-2), it must have been out early in 1642. These traces of Hartlib in the years 1641 and 1642 are significant, and admit of some comment:--In the _Description_ _of the Kingdom of Macaria_, I should say, Hartlib broke out for himself. He had all sorts of ideas as to social and economic improvements, and he would communicate a little specimen of these, respecting Husbandry, Fishery, and Commerce, to the reforming Parliament. But he was still faithful to Durie and Comenius, and three of his recovered utterances of 1641-2 are in behalf of them. His _Brief Relation_ and his _Letter to Henderson_ refer to Durie and his scheme of Protestant union. It is not impossible that Hartlib was moved to these new utterances in the old subject by Durie's own presence in London; for, as we have mentioned (Vol. II. p. 367), there is some evidence that Durie, who had not been in London since 1633, came over on a flying visit after the opening of the Long Parliament. It is a coincidence, at least, that the publisher of Hartlib's _Brief Relation_ about Durie brought out, at the very same time, a book of Durie's own tending in the same direction. [Footnote: "Mr. Dureus his Eleven Treatises touching Ecclesiastical Peace amongst Protestants" is the title of an entry by Mr. Crooke in the Stationers' Registers, of date Feb. 15, 1640.] Quite possibly, however, Durie may have still been abroad, and Hartlib may have acted for him. In the other case there is no such doubt. When, in Jan. 1641-2, Hartlib sent to the press his new compilation of the views of Comenius under the title of _A Reformation of Schools_, there was good reason for it. Comenius himself was at his elbow. The great man had come to London. Education, and especially University Education, was one of the subjects that Parliament was anxious to take up. In the intellectual world of England, quite apart from politics, there had for some time been a tradition of dissatisfaction with the existing state of the Universities and the great Public Schools. In especial, Bacon's complaints and suggestions on this subject in the Second Book of his _De Augmentis_ had sunk into thoughtful minds. That the Universities, by persistence in old and outworn methods, were not in full accord with the demands and needs of the age; that their aims were too professional and particular, and not sufficiently scientific and general; that the order of studies in them was bad, and some of the studies barren; that there ought to be a bold direction of their endowments and apparatus in the line of experimental knowledge, so as to extract from Nature new secrets, and sciences for which Humanity was panting; that, moreover, there ought to be more of fraternity and correspondence among the Universities of Europe, and some organization of their labours with a view to mutual illumination and collective advance: [Footnote: "De Augmentis:" Bacon's Works, I. 487 _et seq._, and Translation of same, III. 323 _et seq._ (Spedding's edition).] all these Verulamian speculations, first submitted to King James, were lying hid here and there in English intellects, in watch for an opportunity. Then, in a different way, the political crisis had brought Oxford and Cambridge, but especially Oxford, under severe revision. Had they not been the nurseries of Episcopacy, and of other things and principles of which England was now declaring herself impatient? All this, which was to be more felt after the Civil War had begun and Oxford became the King's headquarters, was felt already in very considerable degree during the two-and-twenty months of preliminary struggle between the King and the Parliament (Nov. 1640-Aug. 1642). Why not have a University in London? There was Gresham College in the city, in existence since 1597, and doing not ill on its limited basis; there was Chelsea College, founded by Dean Sutcliffe of Exeter in 1610, "to the intent that learned men might there have maintenance to answer all the adversaries of religion" but which, after a rickety infancy, and laughed at by Laud as "Controversy College," had been lost in lawsuits: why not, with inclusion or exclusion of these and other foundations, set up in London a great University on the best modern principles, abolishing the monopoly of Oxford and Cambridge? Of these rumours, plans, or possibilities, due notice had been sent by the zealous Hartlib to Comenius at Leszno. Ought not Comenius to be on the spot? What had he been hoping for and praying for but a "Collegial Society" somewhere in some European state to prepare the necessary "Apparatus of Pammethodic Books" and so initiate his new system of Universal Didactics, or again (to take the other and larger form of his aspiration), a visible co-operation of kindred spirits throughout Europe towards founding and building the great "Temple of Pansophia" or "Universal Real Knowledge"? What if these Austro-Slavic dreams of his should be realized on the banks of the Thames? People were very willing thereabouts; circumstances were favourable; what was mainly wanted was direction and the grasp of a master-spirit! Decidedly, Comenius ought to come over.--All this we learn from Comenius himself, whose account of the matter and of what followed had better now be quoted. "The _Pansophiæ Prodromus_," he says, "having been published, and copies dispersed through the various kingdoms of Europe, but many learned men who approved of the sketch despairing of the full accomplishment of the work by one man, and therefore advising the erection of a College of learned men for this express business, in these circumstances the very person who had been the means of giving the _Prodromus_ to the world, a man strenuous in practically prosecuting things as far as he can, Mr. S. H. [_strenuus rerum quâ datur [Greek: ergodioktæs], D. S. H._], devoted himself laboriously to that scheme, so as to bring as many of the more forward spirits into it as possible. And so it happened at length that, having won over one and another, he, in the year 1641, prevailed on me also by great entreaties to go to him. My people having consented to the journey, I came to London on the very day of the autumnal equinox [Sept. 22, 1641], and there at last learnt that I had been invited by the order of the Parliament. But, as the Parliament, the King having then gone to Scotland [Aug. 10], was dismissed for a three months' recess [not quite three months, but from Sept. 9 to Oct. 20], I was detained there through the winter, my friends mustering what Pansophic apparatus they could, though it was but slender. On which occasion there grew on my hands a tractate with this title, _Via Lucis: Hoc Est, &c._. [The Way of Light]: That is, A Reasonable Disquisition how the Intellectual Light of Souls, namely Wisdom, may now at length, in this Evening of the World, be happily diffused through all Minds and Peoples. This for the better understanding of these words of the oracle in _Zachariah XIV._ 7, _It shall come to pass that at evening time it shall be light._ The Parliament meanwhile having reassembled, and our presence being known, I had orders to wait until they should have sufficient leisure from other business to appoint a commission of learned and wise men from their body for hearing us and considering the grounds of our design. They communicate also beforehand their thoughts of assigning to us some College with its revenues, whereby a certain number of learned and illustrious men, called from all nations, might he honourably maintained, either for a term of years or in perpetuity. There was even named for the purpose _the Savoy_ in London; _Winchester College_ out of London was named; and again, nearer the city, _Chelsea College_, inventories of which and of its revenues were communicated to us; so that nothing seemed more certain than that the design of the great Verulam, concerning the opening somewhere of a Universal College, devoted to the advancement of the Sciences, could be carried out. But the rumour of the Insurrection in Ireland, and of the massacre in one night of more than 200,000 English [Oct.-Nov.], and the sudden departure of the King from London [Jan. 10, 1641-2], and the plentiful signs of the bloody war about to break out, disturbed these plans, and obliged me to hasten my return to my own people. It happened, however, that letters came to me from Sweden, which had been sent to Poland and thence forwarded to England, in which that magnanimous and energetic man, Ludovicus de Geer, invited me to come to him in Sweden, and offered immediate means of furthering my studies and those of any two or three learned men I chose to associate with me. Communicating this offer to my friends in London, I took my departure, but not without protestations from them that I ought to let my services be employed in nothing short of the Pansophic Design." [Footnote: Autobiographic Introduction to the "Second Part" of the _Opera Didactica_ of Comenius (1657), containing his Didactic writings from 1642 to 1650.] This is very interesting, and, I have no doubt, quite accurate. [Footnote: I have not been able to find in the Lords or Commons Journals for 1641 and 1642 any traces of those communications between Comenius and the Parliament of which he speaks. There may be such, for the Indexes are not perfect; and there is not the least reason to doubt the word of Comenius.] And so, through the winter of 1641-2 and the spring of 1642, we are to imagine Hartlib and Comenius going about London together, Hartlib about forty years of age and Comenius about fifty, the younger man delighted with his famous friend, introducing him to various people, and showing him the chief sights (the law-chambers and house of the great Verulam not omitted, surely), and all the while busy with Pansophic talk and the details of the Pansophic College. We see now the reason of Hartlib's publication in Jan. 1641-2 of Comenius's two treatises jointly in a book called _A Reformation of Schools_. It was to help in the business which had brought Comenius to London. It was a great chagrin to Hartlib when the London plan came to an abrupt end, and Comenius transferred himself to Sweden. Thither we must follow him, for yet one other passage of his history before we leave him:-- "Conveyed to Sweden in August of the year 1642," proceeds Comenius, "I found my new Mæcenas at his house at Nortcoping; and, having been kindly received by him, I was, after some days of deliberation, sent to Stockholm, to the most illustrious Oxenstiern, Chancellor of the Kingdom, and Dr. Johannes Skyte, Chancellor of the University of Upsal. These two exercised me in colloquy for four days; and chiefly the former, that Eagle of the North (_Aquila Aquilonius_). He inquired into the foundations of both my schemes, the Didactic and the Pansophic, so searchingly that it was unlike anything that had been done before by any of my learned critics. In the first two days he examined the Didactics, with at length this conclusion: 'From an early age,' said he, 'I perceived that our Method of Studies generally in use is a harsh and crude one [_violentum quiddam_]; but where the thing stuck I could not find out. At length, having been sent, by my King of glorious memory [Gustavus Adolphus], as ambassador into Germany, I conversed on the subject with various learned men. And, when I had heard that Wolfgang Ratich was toiling at an amended Method, I had no rest of mind till I had got that gentleman into my presence; who, however, instead of a talk on the subject, offered me a big volume in quarto to read. I swallowed that trouble; and, having turned over the whole book, I saw that he detected not badly the maladies of our schools, but the remedies he proposed did not seem sufficient. Yours, Mr. Comenius, rest on firmer foundations. Go on with the work.' I answered that I had done all I could in those matters, and must now go on to others. 'I know said he, 'that you are toiling at greater affairs, for I have read your _Prodromus Pansophiæ_. We will speak of that to-morrow: I must to public business now.' Next day, beginning to examine, but with greater severity, my Pansophic Attempts, he opened with this question, 'Are you a man, Mr. Comenius, that can bear contradiction? [_Potesne contradicentem ferre_?]' 'I can,' replied I, 'and therefore that _Prodromus_ or Preliminary Sketch was (not by me either, but by friends) sent out first, that it might meet with judgment and criticism. Which if we admit from all and sundry, why not from men of mature wisdom and heroic reason?' He began, accordingly, to discourse against the hope of a better state of things conceived as lying in a rightly instituted study of Pansophia, first objecting political reasons of deep import, and then the testimonies of the divine Scriptures, which seem to foretell for the latter days of the world rather darkness and a certain deterioration of things than light and amended institutions. To all which he had such answers from me that he closed with these words, 'Into no one's mind do I think such things have come before. Stand upon these grounds of yours: either so shall we come some time to agreement, or there will be no way at all left. My advice, however, is (added he) that you proceed first to do a good stroke in the School business, and to bring the study of the Latin tongue to a greater facility, and so prepare a broader and clearer way for those bigger matter.' The Chancellor of the University did not cease to urge the same; and he suggested this as well: that, if I were unwilling to remove with my family into Sweden, at all events I should come nearer to Sweden by taking up my abode in Prussia, say in Elbing. As my Mæcenas, to whom I returned at Nortcoping [Ludovicus de Geer], thought that both advices ought to be acquiesced in, and earnestly begged me that nothing should be done otherwise than had been advised, whether in respect of the place of my abode, or of priority to be given to any other task, I agreed at length, always with the hope that within a year or two there would be an end of the hack-work."--In fact, Comenius went to Elbing in Prussia (Hartlib's native place, as the reader may remember), to be supported there by the generosity of Ludovicus de Geer, with subsidies perhaps from Oxenstiern, and to labour on at a completion of his system of School Education, with a view to its application to Sweden.--"But this good- nature of mine in yielding to the Swedes vehemently displeased my English friends; and they sought to draw me back from any bargain by a long epistle, most full of reasons. 'A sufficient specimen,' they argued, 'had been given in Didactics; the path of farther rectification in that department was open enough: not yet so in Real Science. Others could act in the former department, and everywhere there were rising up Schoolmasters provoking each other to industry by mutual emulation; whereas the foundations of Pansophia were not yet sufficiently laid bare. Infinitely more profit would redound to the public from an explanation of the ways of true Wisdom than from little trifles about Latin.' Much more in the same strain; and S. H. [Samuel Hartlib] added, '_Quo, moriture, ruis? minoraque viribus audes_?' in this poetical _solecism_ [Comenius calls the hexameter a solecism, I suppose, on account of the false quantity it contains in the word _minora_], reproaching my inconsiderateness. Rejoiced by this recall into the road-royal, I sent on this letter to Sweden; and, nothing doubting that they would come round to the arguments there expressed, I gave myself up wholly to my Pansophics, whether to continue in them, or that, at all events (if the Swedish folk did wish me to dwell on in my Scholastics and it were my hap to die in that drudgery), the foundations of Pansophia, of the insufficient exposition of which I heard complaints, might be better dug down into, so that they might no longer be ignored. But from Sweden the answer that came was one ordering me to persevere in the proposal of first finishing the Didactics; backed by saws to this effect: 'One would rather the _better_, but the _earlier_ must be done first,' 'One doesn't go from the bigger to the smaller, but _wicey warsey_,' and all the rest of it. Nothing was left me but to obey, and plod on against my will in the clay of logomachies for eight whole years. Fortunately this was not till I had printed at Dantzic, in the year 1643, my already-made efforts at a better detection of the foundations of Pansophia, under the title of '_Pansophiæ Diatyposis Ichnographica et Orthographica_,' reprinted immediately at Amsterdam and Paris." [Footnote: Introd. to Part II. of _Opera Didactica_.] Poor Comenius! He had a long life before him yet; but at this point we must throw him off, shunted into his siding at Elbing, to plod there for four years (1642-1646) at his Didactics, while he would fain have been soaring among his Pansophics. [Footnote: Though, as he has told us, his drudgery at the Didactics continued for _eight_ years in all, there was a break of these eight years in 1646 when he returned to Sweden to report proceedings to his employers.] Letters from his London friend, Hartlib, would reach him frequently in Elbing, and would doubtless encourage him in the humbler labour since he could not be at the higher. For Hartlib himself, we find, also laid aside the Pansophics for a time, seeing no hope for them in London without the presidency of Comenius, but continued to interest himself in the Didactics. In fact, however, he was never without interests of some kind or another. Thus, in Feb. 1642-3, or when Comenius may have been about a year at Elbing, Hartlib was again at the Durie business. "A Faithfull and Seasonable Advice, or the Necessity of a Correspondence for the Advancement of the Protestant Cause: humbly suggested to the Great Councill of England assembled in Parliament: Printed by John Hammond, 1643," is the title of a new tract, of a few pages, which we know to be Hartlib's. [Footnote: In the copy in the King's Library, British Museum, there is the MS. note "Ex dono Authoris, S. Hartlib" with the date "Feb. 6, 1642," (_i.e._ 1642-3).] Then, in July 1643, the Westminster Assembly met; and what an accession of topics of interest that brought to Hartlib may be easily imagined. There was the excitement of _The Solemn League and Covenant_ (Aug.-Sept.), with the arrival in London of the Scottish Commissioners, including Hartlib's friend Henderson, to take part in the Assembly; there was the beginning of the great debate between Independency and Presbyterianism; nay, in Nov. 1643, Durie was himself appointed a member of the Assembly by the Parliament (Vol. II. p. 517), and so drawn over from the Continent for a long period of service and residence in England. That Hartlib _was_ interested in all this, and led into new positions and relationships by it, there is very varied proof.--For example, he was one of the witnesses in Laud's trial, which began Nov. 13,1643, and straggled on through the rest of that year and the next. His evidence was wanted by the prosecution in support of that one of the charges against Laud which alleged that he had "endeavoured to cause division and discord between the Church of England and other Reformed Churches." In proof of this it was proposed to show that he had discouraged and impeded Durie in his Conciliation scheme, on the ground that the Calvinistic Churches were alien from the true faith, and that, in particular, he had "caused letters-patent granted by the King for a collection for the Palatinate ministers to be revoked after they had passed the great seal"; and it was to the truth of both these statements that Hartlib, with others, was required to testify. He was, as we know, a most competent witness in that matter; and he gave his evidence duly, though, as I should fancy, with no real ill-will to Laud. [Footnote: See particulars in Prynne's _Canterburie's Doome_ (1646), pp.539-542. Laud, in this part of his defence, names both Durie and Hartlib. He says he did not discourage Durie, but rather encouraged him, as he could prove by letters of Durie's which he had; to which the prosecution replied that the contrary was notorious, and that Durie had "oft complained to his friends" of Land's coldness.]--Now that Episcopacy was done with, and it was to a Parliament and an Assembly mainly Presbyterian that England was looking for a new system of Church-government, Hartlib's anxiety was, as Durie's also was, to make the best of the new conditions, and to instil into them as much of the Durie idea as possible. Might it not even be that a Reformed Presbyterian Church of England would be a more effective leader in a movement for the union of the Protestant Churches of Europe than the Episcopal Church had been? This explains another short tract of Hartlib's, put forth Nov. 9, 1644, and entitled, "The Necessity of some nearer Conjunction and Correspondency amongst Evangelical Protestants, for the Advancement of the National Cause, and bringing to passe the effect of the Covenant." [Footnote: Though the tract, which consists of but eight small quarto pages, is anonymous, it is verified as Hartlib's by the inscription on the British Museum copy, "By Mr. Hartlib, Novemb. 9th." The tract itself bears only "London Printed 1644."]--Well, but how did Hartlib stand in the great controversy between the Independents and the Presbyterians? This too can be answered. As might be expected, he was in sympathy with the Independents, in as far as their claim for a Toleration was concerned. The reader will remember Edwards's famous _Antapologia_, published in July 1644, in answer to the _Apologetical Narration_ of the Five Independent Divines of the Assembly, and which all the Presbyterian world welcomed as an absolutely crushing blow to Independency and the Toleration principle. Here, then, is the title of a smaller publication which that big one provoked: "A Short Letter modestly entreating a Friend's judgment upon Mr. Edwards his Booke he calleth an Anti-Apologia: with a large but modest Answer thereunto: London, Printed according to order, 1644." Actually it was out on Sept. 14th, or about two months after Edwards's book. The title exactly indicates the structure of the publication. It consists of a short Letter and a longish Reply to that Letter. The Letter begins, "Worthy Sir, I have heard of Mr. Edwards's Anti-Apologeticall Book, as I needs must doe, for all the City and Parliament rings with it," and it goes on to request from the person addressed _his_ opinion of the hook. At the end of the letter we find the writer's name "Sam Hartlib": and the dating "from my house in Duke's Place in great haste, Aug. 5." And who was the friend addressed? He was a Hezekiah Woodward, B.A. (Oxon.), preacher in or near Aldermanbury, about fifty years of age, long a zealous Puritan, latterly a decided Parliamentarian and champion of the Solemn League and Covenant, and already known as an author by some Puritanic books, and one or two of a pedagogic kind, referable to an earlier period of his life when he had been a London schoolmaster. Hartlib had known him, he says in his letter, for sixteen years, that is to say from his first coming to London in 1628 or 1629. It is this long friendship that justifies him in asking Woodward's opinion of Edwards's book. The opinion is given in a reply to Hartlib, signed "Hezekiah Woodward," and dated "from my house in Aldermanbury, 13 Aug. 1644"; and it is, as far as I remember, quite against Edwards, and a real, though hazy and perplexed, reasoning for Toleration.[Footnote: The publication was duly registered, and has a long appended _Imprimatur_ by Joseph Caryl; and the exact date of the publication (Sept 14) is from a MS. note in the British Museum copy, For a sketch of Woodward and a list of his writings see Wood, Ath. III, 1034- 7.] MILTON'S TRACT ON EDUCATION: HIS METHOD WITH HIS PUPILS. It had been Hartlib's chance, he himself tells us, to be "familiarly acquainted with the best of Archbishops, Bishops, Earls, Viscounts, Barons, Knights, Esquires, Gentlemen, ministers, Professors of both Universities, Merchants, and all sorts of learned or in any kind useful men." This he wrote at a considerably later date in his life; [Footnote: In Aug. 1660, See Letter in Dircks's Memoir, p. 4.] but, from what we have already seen, we may vote it substantially true even in 1644. In that year, we know for certain, the circle of Hartlib's friends included Milton. The acquaintanceship may have begun some years before that. It may have begun in 1639 when Milton, on his return from abroad, took lodgings in St. Bride's Churchyard, or in 1640, when he first set up house in Aldersgate Street. At all events, when Milton's Anti-Episcopal pamphlets of the next two years made him a public man, he is not likely to have escaped the cognisance of Hartlib. I should not wonder if Milton were one of those "more forward spirits" whom Hartlib wanted to enlist in the great scheme of a Pansophic University of London to be organized by Comenius, and whom he tried to bring round Comenius personally during the stay of that theorist in London in 1641-2, when the experiment of some such University was really in contemplation by friends in Parliament, and Chelsea had been almost fixed on as the site. But, if so, I rather guess, for reasons which will appear, that Milton gave the whole scheme the cold shoulder, and did not take to the great Comenius. Quite possibly, however, it was not till Comenius was gone, and was fixed down at Elbing in Prussia, that there was any intimacy between Milton and Hartlib. It may have come about after Milton had been deserted by his wife in July 1643, and when a few pupils, besides the two nephews he had till then had charge of, were received into his wifeless household. Would not this in itself be an attraction to Hartlib? Was not Milton pursuing a new method with his pupils, between which and the method of Comenius there were points in common? Might not Comenius himself, in his retirement at Elbing, be interested in hearing of an eminent English scholar and poet who had views about a Reform of Education akin to his own? This is very much fancy, but it is the exact kind of fancy that fits the certainty. That certainty is that, before the middle of 1644, Milton and Hartlib were well acquainted with each other, had met pretty frequently at Milton's house in Aldersgate Street, or at Hartlib's in Duke's Place, and had conversed freely on many subjects, and especially on that of Education. Nay more, Hartlib, trying to indoctrinate Milton with the Comenian views on this subject, had found that Milton had already certain most positive views of his own upon it, in some things agreeing with the Comenian, but in others vigorously differing. Hence, after various colloquies, he had made a request to Milton. Would he put a sketch of his views upon paper--no elaborate treatise, but merely a sketch, such as one could read in half-an-hour or so, and, if permitted, show to a friend, or print for more general use? Urged more and more pressingly, Milton complied; and the result was the appearance, on June 5, 1644, on some booksellers' counters, of a thin little quarto tract, of eight pages in rather small type, with no author's name, and no title-page at all, but simply this heading atop of the text on the first page, "OF EDUCATION: TO MASTER SAMUEL HARTLIB." The publication had been duly registered, and the publisher was the same Thomas Underhill, of Wood Street, who had published Milton's first three Anti-Episcopal pamphlets. The inference is that the thing was printed by Milton himself, and not by Hartlib. It would be handier for Hartlib to have it in print than in manuscript. [Footnote: "June 4, 1644: Tho. Underhill entered for his copy under the hands of Mr. Cranford [the licenser] and Mr. Man, warden, a little tract touching Education of Youth," is the entry in the Stationers' books; without which we should not have known the publisher's name. The date of the publication is fixed, and the fact that the authorship was known at the time is proved, by this MS. note of Thomason on the copy among the King's Pamphlets in the British Museum (Press mark 12. F. e. 12./160) "By Mr. John Milton: 5 June, 1644."--Milton reprinted the tract in 1673, at the end of the second edition of his Minor Poems, with the words "Written above twenty years since" added to the original title.] Hartlib must have been pleased, and yet not altogether pleased, with the opening of the Tract. Here it is:-- "MR. HARTLIB, "I am long since persuaded that to say or do aught worth memory and imitation no purpose or respect should sooner move us than simply the love of God and of Mankind. Nevertheless, to write now the Reforming of Education, though it be one of the greatest and noblest designs that can be thought on, and for the want whereof this Nation perishes, I had not yet at this time been induced, but by your earnest entreaties and serious conjurements; as having my mind for the present half diverted in the pursuance of some other assertions, the knowledge and the use of which cannot but be a great furtherance both to the enlargement of Truth and honest living with much more peace. [Footnote: This passage, the wording of which clearly implies that Milton was prosecuting his Divorce speculation, with whatever else in addition, sets aside a hypothesis (which may have occurred to the reader as well as to myself) that the Tract on Education, though not published till June 1644, may have been written, and in Hartlib's hands, as early as 1641-2, when Comenius was in London. The hypothesis, which might have been otherwise plausible, will not accord with the particular words of the tract now presented; and the conclusion is that, whether Milton knew Hartlib or not as early as 1641- 2, when Comenius was with him, the tract was not written till shortly before its publication in June 1644, when Comenius had been two years in Elbing.] Nor should the laws of any private friendship have prevailed with me to divide thus, or to transpose, my former thoughts, but that I see those aims, those actions, which have won you with me the esteem of a person sent hither by some good providence from a far country to be the occasion and the incitement of great good to this Island. And, as I hear, you have obtained the same repute with men of most approved wisdom, and some of highest authority among us; not to mention the learned correspondence which you hold in foreign parts, and the extraordinary pains and diligence which you have used in this matter both here and beyond the seas, either by the definite will of God so ruling, or the peculiar sway of nature, which also is God's working, Neither can I think that, so reputed and so valued as you are, you would, to the forfeit of your own discerning ability, impose upon me an unfit and over-ponderous argument, but that the satisfaction which you profess to have received from those incidental discourses which we have wandered into hath pressed, and almost constrained, you into a persuasion that what you require from me in this point I neither ought nor can in conscience defer beyond this time, both of so much need at once and of so much opportunity to try what God hath determined. I will not resist, therefore, whatever it is either of divine or human obligement that you lay upon me; but will forthwith set down in writing, as you request me, that voluntary Idea which hath long in silence presented itself to me of a better Education, in extent and comprehension far more large, and yet of time far shorter and of attainment far more certain, than hath been yet in practice. Brief I shall endeavour to be; for that which I have to say assuredly this Nation hath extreme need should be _done_ sooner than _spoken_. To tell you, therefore, what I have benefited herein among old renowned authors, I shall spare; and to search what many modern JANUAS and DIDACTICS, more than ever I shall read, have projected, my inclination leads me not. But, if you can accept of these few observations, which have flowered off, and are as it were the burnishing of, many studious and contemplative years altogether spent in the search of religious and civil knowledge, and such as pleased you so well in the relating, I here give you them to dispose of." What must have pleased Hartlib in this was the tone of respectful compliment to himself; what may have pleased him less was the slighting way in which Comenius is passed over. "To search what many modern JANUAS and DIDACTICS, more than ever I shall read, have projected, my inclination leads me not," says Milton, quoting in brief the titles of the two best-known works of Comenius. It is as if he had said, "I know your enthusiasm for your Pansophic friend; but I have not read his books on Education, and do not mean to do so." This was barely polite; [Footnote: The manner of the allusion to Comenius rather forbids the idea that Milton had met him during his London visit. Like most high-natured men, Milton had a kindly side to the merits of those whom he personally knew.] but Hartlib was a man of sense: and he would be glad, in reading on, to find that, with whatever independence Milton had formed his views, not even Comenius had outgone him in denunciations of the existing system of Education. Thus:-- "Seeing every nation affords not experience and tradition enough for all kind of learning, therefore we are taught chiefly the languages of those people who have at any time been most industrious after wisdom; so that Language is but the instrument conveying to us Things worthy to be known. And, though a linguist should pride himself to have all the tongues that Babel cleft the world into, yet, if he have not studied the solid things in them as well as the words and Lexicons, he were nothing so much to be esteemed a learned man as any yeoman or tradesman competently wise in his mother-dialect only. Hence appear the many mistakes which have made Learning generally so unpleasing and so unsuccessful. First, we do amiss to spend seven or eight years merely in scraping together so much miserable Latin and Greek as might be learnt otherwise easily and delightfully in one year. And that which casts our proficiency therein so much behind is our time lost, partly in too oft idle vacancies given both to Schools and Universities, partly in a preposterous exaction, forcing the empty wits of children to compose themes, verses, and orations, which are the acts of ripest judgment, and the final work of a head filled, by long reading and observing, with elegant maxims and copious invention. These are not matters to be wrung from poor striplings, like blood out of the nose, or the plucking of untimely fruit: besides the ill habit which they get of wretched barbarizing against the Latin and Greek idiom with their untutored Anglicisms, odious to read, yet not to be avoided without a well-continued and judicious conversing among pure authors digested, which they scarce taste; whereas, if, after some preparatory grounds of speech by their certain forms got into memory, they were led to the praxis thereof in some chosen short book lessoned thoroughly to them, they might then forthwith proceed to learn the substance of good Things and Arts in due order, which would bring the whole language quickly into their power. This I take to be the most rational and most profitable way of learning _Languages_, and whereby we may best hope to give account to God of our youth spent herein. And, for the usual method of teaching _Arts_, I deem it to be an old error of Universities, not yet well recovered from the scholastic grossness of barbarous ages, that, instead of beginning with Arts most easy (and these be such as are most obvious to the sense), they present their young unmatriculated novices at first coming with the most intellective abstractions of Logic and Metaphysics; so that they, having but newly left those grammatic flats and shallows where they stuck unreasonably to learn a few words with lamentable construction, and now on the sudden transported under another climate to be tossed and turmoiled with their unballasted wits in fathomless and unquiet deeps of controversy, do for the most part grow into hatred and contempt of Learning, mocked and deluded ail the while with ragged notions and babblements, while they expected worthy and delightful knowledge; till poverty or youthful years call them importunately their several ways, and hasten them, with the sway of friends, either to an ambitious and mercenary or ignorantly zealous Divinity: some allured to the trade of Law, grounding their purposes not on the prudent and heavenly contemplation of justice and equity, which was never taught them, but on promising and pleasing thoughts of litigious terms, fat contentions and flowing fees. Others betake themselves to State affairs, with souls so unprincipled in virtue and true generous breeding that flattery and court-shifts and tyrannous aphorisms appear to them the highest points of wisdom; instilling their barren hearts with a conscientious slavery, if (as I rather think) it be not feigned. Others, lastly, of a more delicious and airy spirit, retire themselves, knowing no better, to the enjoyments of ease and luxury, living out their days in feasts and jollity; which indeed is the wisest and the safest course of all these, unless they were with more integrity undertaken. And these are the errors, and these are the fruits of mis- spending our prime youth at the Schools and Universities as we do, either in learning mere Words, or such Things chiefly as were better unlearnt." Having thus denounced the existing system of Schools and Universities, Milton goes on to explain what he would substitute. As he poetically expresses it, he will detain his readers no longer in the wretched survey of things as they are, but will conduct them to a hill-side where he will point out to them "the right path of a virtuous and noble education, laborious indeed at the first ascent, but else so smooth, so green, so full of goodly prospect and melodious sounds on every side, that the Harp of Orpheus was not more charming." The rest of the tract is a redemption of this promise. To represent it by mere continued quotation would be of small use, and is perhaps unnecessary. We will, therefore, try a stricter method. Milton does not formally concern himself in this tract with the complete problem of National Education. In this respect the passion and the projects of Comenius were a world wider than Milton's. Comenius aimed at, and passionately dreamt of, a system of Education that should, in every country where it was established, comprehend all born in that country, of both sexes, and of every rank or class, and take charge of them from their merest infancy on as far as they could go, from the first or Mother's School through the subsequent routine of the Public Vernacular School, the Latin School or _Ludus Literarius_, and the University. This last stage of the complete routine might extend to the twenty-fourth or twenty-fifth year of life; and, though few could proceed to that stage, and the majority must, from sheer social necessity, drop off in the earlier stages, yet all were to be carried through the stage of the Vernacular Public School, and progress beyond that, where possible, was not to be denied to girls any more than to boys. Compared with this, what Milton contemplates, or at least discusses, is but an important fragment struck off from the total mass. True, he gives a tolerably broad definition of Education at the outset. "I call therefore a complete and generous Education," he says, "that which fits a man to perform, justly, skilfully, and magnanimously, all the offices, both private and public, of Peace and War." This definition, if meant as verbally perfect, would not have been satisfactory to Comenius, whose express notion of Education, as we know, was that it included preparation for the life to come as well as for that which now is. But, if he had known Milton, he might have let the omission pass as certainly and most solemnly implied, and might even have liked, for the sake of effect, the practical and straightforward utilitarianism of the definition. But then, when Milton's precise phrasing of the definition was examined, one could not but guess limits in his mind. "That which fits a _man_ to perform" are the words of the definition; and to perform what? "All the offices, both private and public, of _Peace and War_," are the words that follow. And, as one reads on, the conjecture suggested by this phrasing is confirmed. By _man_ Milton did not mean _Homo_, but _Vir_. When he framed his definition of Education, only one of the sexes was present to his mind; and throughout the whole tract, from first to last, there is not a single recognition of girl, woman, or anything in female shape, as coming within the scheme proposed. But more than that. Not only is it the education of one sex only that Is discussed in the tract, but it is the education only of a portion of that sex, and of that portion only at a particular period of life. There is nothing about the Infant Education, or what we should now call the Primary Education, of male children; and there is nothing about ways and means for the secondary or higher education of any others than those whose parents could pay for such education out of their own resources. In short, the tract is a proposal of a new method for the education of English gentlemen's sons between the ages of twelve and twenty-one. It is this, and nothing more, except in so far as hints in the general philosophy of education may be implied in the particular exposition. Milton himself was careful, ere the close of the tract, to avow that he had so restricted himself. It was a "general view," he said, such as Mr. Hartlib had desired, and meant also "for light and direction" to "such as have the worth in them to make trial," but "not beginning as some have done [_e.g._ Comenius] at the cradle, which might yet be worth many considerations," and omitting also "many other circumstances" that might have been mentioned had not brevity been the scope. All this it is necessary to remember in justice to the tract. It is a tract on the education of gentlemen's sons, or of such boys and youths as had hitherto been accustomed to go to the English Public Schools and Universities. Within his avowed limits, Milton is very like himself, _i.e._ very grand and very bold. At the first start, for example, he tells us that he would abolish Universities altogether, or roll Public Schools and Universities into one. Here is his recipe: "First to find out a spacious house and ground about it fit for an ACADEMY, and big enough to lodge 150 persons (whereof 20 or thereabout maybe attendants), all under the government of one who shall be thought of desert sufficient, and ability either to do all or wisely to direct and oversee it done. This place should be at once both School and University, not needing a remove to any other house of Scholarship, except it be some peculiar College of Law or Physic, where they mean to be practitioners; but, as for those general studies which take up all our time from Lilly to the commencing (as they term it) Master of Art, it should be absolute. After this pattern, as many edifices may be converted to this use as shall be needful in every city throughout this land; which would tend much to the increase of learning and civility everywhere." Milton clearly did not like the deputation of all the higher education of England to two seats of learning, like Oxford and Cambridge, but wanted his Academies to be distributed all over England, in numbers proportionate to the population, and chiefly in cities. He takes one of these imagined Academies as a model, and shows how it might be conducted. He divides the subject into the three heads of STUDIES, EXERCISES AND AMUSEMENTS, and DIET. On this last, however, he is extremely brief. "For their Diet there cannot be much to say, save only that it would be best in the same house; for much time else would be lost abroad, and many ill habits got; and that it should be plain, healthful, and moderate, I suppose is out of controversy:" _i.e._ Milton would prefer that all the pupils should be boarded in the Academy, and have their meals there at a common table. It is to the Studies and the Exercises and Amusements that most space is devoted. I. THE STUDIES:--Here Milton appears decidedly as an innovator, but yet with a curious mixture of what would now be called rank Conservatism. The innovation consists in a total departure from the use and wont of his time, in respect of the nature of the studies to be pursued and the order in which they should be taken. There was to be an end of that wretched torture of Latin and Greek theme-making and versifying, and that dreary toiling amid obsolete subtleties of scholastic Logic and Metaphysics, which he had denounced in a previous passage, and which had made University Education, he says, nothing better than "an asinine feast of sow-thistles and brambles." Instead of these he would have studies useful in themselves and delightful to ingenuous young minds. Things rather than Words; the Facts of Nature and of Life; Real Science of every possible kind: this, together with a persistent training in virtuous and noble sentiment, and a final finish of the highest literary culture, was to compose the new Education. Here Milton and Comenius are very much at one; here Milton and the modern advocates of the Real or Physical Sciences in Education are very much at one. Given a lofty and varied idea of utility, no man has ever been more strenuously utilitarian than Milton was in this tract. The very novelty of the scheme it proposed consisted in the proclamation of utility as the test of the studies to be pursued and as ruling the order in which they should come.--What, then, was that "rank conservatism," as some might call it now, which accompanied the novelty? It was that the medium of liberal education should still be mainly Latin and Greek. A sentence in one of the passages of the tract already quoted has prepared us for this. Language, Milton had there admitted, is valuable in education only as an instrument of real knowledge, a vehicle of "things worthy to be known." But then all languages were not equally fitted for this function, inasmuch as every people could put into its language only what it had in its head or heart, and so different languages had come down freighted with very different weights and worths of matter. Now, what were the languages pointed out by this principle as apt for the purposes of education? They were Greek, Latin, and Italian, with (on religious grounds) Hebrew and one or two of its cognates. These were the tongues to be taught, and to be taught in, and mainly, of these, Latin and Greek. Of English there is not one word. This may partly be accounted for. The acquisition of useful information in all kinds of subjects was to be a great part of the education in each of the proposed Miltonic Academies; and at that time information on all kinds of subjects was locked up chiefly in Latin and Greek books. All modern or mediaeval books of information, all the standard text-books in the Sciences and Arts, that had been written by Englishmen themselves or by Continentals, were in the common Latin; the library of such books, original or translated, in the vernacular was yet but scanty. One could not be _learned_ by means of English alone. Well, but Milton recognised a culture of the feelings, the imagination, the sense of art and nobleness, as also something needed in education, and to be helped by books; and in this respect, if not in the other, were there not available materials and means in the native English Literature? That Literature contained, at all events, the poetry of Chaucer, Spenser, Shakespeare, and not a few others, rated more or less highly by Milton himself. That Milton did not, on this account, include some teaching and reading of the vernacular in the curriculum of his Academy, may have arisen from the fact that the best in English Literature was then all recent, and of such small bulk collectively that acquaintance with it might be expected as a matter of mere chance and delicious odd hours in window-corners. Here he but followed the custom. All Public or Grammar Schools were Latin and Greek Schools: English at that stage was, by common consent, to shift for itself. And yet there were dissentients from the custom, and advocates of the claims of the vernacular. Comenius, as we have seen, had blown a blast on the subject for all lands; and in Milton's own school of St. Paul's there had been a rather remarkable tradition of English. Not only had the elder Gill, the Head-master of the school in Milton's time, been a purist in English, and an inventor of new methods for teaching in and through English (see Vol. I. pp. 60-64), but Gill's predecessor in the school, Mulcaster, had pleaded for English. "Is it not a marvellous bondage," he had written as early as 1582, "to become servants to one tongue, for learning's sake, the most part of our time, whereas we may have the very same treasure in our own tongue with the gain of most time: our own bearing the joyful title of our liberty and freedom; the Latin tongue remembering us of our thraldom and bondage? I love Rome, but London better; I favour Italy, but England more; I honour the Latin, but I worship the English." [Footnote: Richard Mulcaster's "First Part of the Elementarie; which entreateth chiefelie of the Right Writing of our English Ton.," (1582). My quotation, however, is not directly from the book itself, but from an extract in the Appendix to Mr. Quick's "Essays on Educational Reformers" (1868), pp. 301-2.] After this and the tradition of English in St. Paul's, Milton's total omission of English from the curriculum of his Academy is rather remarkable. There are proofs that, when he wrote his Tract on Education, he had settled in a lower estimate of the worth of all the previous English Literature than is common now, and that he thought the greatness of English still to come. This may have had something to do with the omission. Possibly, however, he reserved a large daily use of English in his Academy which does not appear in the programme. What does appear in the programme is that the curriculum of eight years or so was to be arranged, not rigidly but in a general way, in four classes or stages, thus:-- (1) _First Class or Stage_ (ætat. l2-l3?):--The business here was to be Latin, Arithmetic, and Elementary Geometry. The Latin rudiments and rules were to be learnt from "some good Grammar, either that now used [Lilly's], or any better," and the Italian or Continental mode of pronouncing Latin, instead of the customary English, was to be carefully taught from the first; but as to the first reading-books to be used along with the Grammar, or any method for simplifying and accelerating entrance into Latin, whether that of Comenius or any other, there is no hint as yet. Neither is there any hint as to the manner of learning Arithmetic and the Elements of Geometry, save that the latter might be picked up "even playing, as the old manner was." On another part of the training of this First Class, however, Milton is more specific. Most especially at this stage, the boys were to be inured to noble and hardy sentiments and a sense of the importance of the education they were beginning; they were to be "inflamed with the study of Learning and the admiration of Virtue"; nay, they were to be "stirred up with high hopes of living to be brave men and worthy patriots, dear to God, and famous to all ages." This might be done by reading to them aloud, from Greek or Latin, "some easy and delightful Book of Education" not yet accessible to themselves. "CEBES, [Footnote: The Pinax (Table) of CEBES of Thebes, a disciple of Socrates. "This Pinax is a philosophical explanation of a table on which the whole of human life, with its dangers and temptations, was symbolically represented, and which is said to have been dedicated by some one to the temple of Cronos at Athens or Thebes. The author introduces some youths contemplating the table, and an old man who steps among them undertakes to explain its meaning. The whole drift of the book is to show that only the proper development of the mind and possession of real virtues can make us truly happy" (Dr. L. Schmitz in Smith's Dict. of Greek and Roman Biog.: Art. _Cebes_.) There were in Milton's time Latin translations of Cebes, and at least one in English.] PLUTARCH, [Footnote: This must be some such portion of PLUTARCH'S "Moral Works" as that relating to Pedagogy. An English translation of the "Morals," by Philemon Holland, had been published in 1603.] and other Socratic Discourses," are mentioned as fit for the purpose in Greek; and, in Latin, "the two or three first Books of QUINTILIAN." [Footnote: I do not find in Lowndes any early English translation of QUINTILIAN'S "Institutes." The first two or three Books of this work are an excellent dissertation on the importance of Education and survey of what it ought to include; and it gives us an idea of Milton's purpose that he wanted them to be read to pupils at the outset. He wanted to fire them with high notions of that business of education on which they were entering.] Most, however, would depend on the explanations and precepts of the master himself at every opportunity, and on the influence of his own example, "infusing into their young breasts such an ingenuous and noble ardour as would not fail to make many of them renowned and matchless men." Always, too, at evening, there was to be Religious teaching and reading of the Bible. (2) _Second Class or Stage_ (_ætat_. 13-16?):--This stage, it must be presumed, was to be considerably longer than the first; for its business was to consist in Latin continued, with Greek added, and in the acquisition through these tongues, and otherwise, of a knowledge of all the useful Sciences and Arts. Here, indeed, Milton's utilitarian bent, his determination to substitute a pabulum of real knowledge for the studies then customary in schools, asserts itself most conspicuously. Here it is that he approaches most to Comenius in the substance, though with a difference in the manner. For what were the books he would exercise his pupils on at this stage, _i.e._ as soon as they had got through the Latin Grammar, and could make out a bit of Latin? First, CATO, VARRO, and COLUMELLA, the three Latin writers on Agriculture. [Footnote: CATO is the famous "Cato the Censor" of Roman history, or M. Porcius Cato (B.C. 231-141), among whose preserved writing, is an agricultural treatise, _De Re Rustica_; VARRO is M. Terentius Varro (B.C. 116-28), reputed the most learned of all the Romans, and among whose various works is also one _De Re Rustica_; COLUMELLA, the author of a systematic work on Agriculture, in twelve Books, lived in the first century of the Christian era. I do not know that there were any English translations of these Latin works on Agriculture in Milton's time.] If the language of these unusual authors was difficult for the pupils, "so much the better; it is not a difficulty beyond their years." They would, at all events, find the matter useful and interesting, and might, by these readings, and due modern comments, be "incited and enabled" for the great work of "improving the tillage of their country" when they should grow to be men. Hartlib, we may be sure, would like this on its own account; but Milton had an additional reason for it. The pupils, after having read these writers, would have a good grasp of the Latin vocabulary, and would be masters of any ordinary Latin prose. They might then, therefore, learn Geography, with "the use of the Globes and all the Maps," through any good modern (Latin) treatise on that subject, and also the elements of "Natural Philosophy" in the same way. Milton does not specify any manual on either subject. But, about this time, he says, the pupils would be learning Greek. This they would do "after the same manner as was before prescribed in the Latin; whereby, the difficulties of Grammar being soon overcome, all the historical Physiology of ARISTOTLE and THEOPHRASTUS are open before them, and, as I may say, under contribution." In other words, the first Greek readings of the pupils would be in such works of Aristotle as his "History of Animals," his "Meteorology," and parts of his general "Physics," and in the "History of Plants" of Aristotle's disciple, Theophrastus; [Footnote: Lowndes mentions no English translations of ARISTOTLE or THEOPHRASTUS as early as Milton's time.] and the purpose of such readings would be to enlarge their knowledge of the Physical Sciences at the same time that they were breaking themselves into Greek. But now, Latin being thoroughly in their possession, they might be ranging at large, in quest of the same and analogous kinds of information, in VITRUVIUS (Architecture), SENECA's "Natural Questions," MELA (Geography), CELSUS (Medicine), PLINY (Natural History), and SOLINUS (Natural History and Geography). [Footnote: VITRUVIUS and CELSUS do not seem to have been translated into English so early as Milton's time; but there were translations of all the others. The works of SENECA, both Moral and Natural, had been "done into English" by Thomas Lodge (1614); PLINY'S "Natural Historie of the World," translated by Philemon Holland, Doctor of Physic (1601), was a well-known book; and MELA and SOLINUS had been made accessible together in "The rare and singular work of Pomponius Mela, that excellent and worthy Cosmographer of the Situation of the World, most orderly prepared, and divided every parte by it selfe; with the Longitude and Latitude of everie kingdome, &c.; whereunto is added that learned worke of Julius Solinus _Polyhistor_, with a necessarie table for this Booke, right pleasant and profitable for Gentlemen, Merchants, Mariners, and Travellers, Translated into Englyshe by Arthur Golding, gent." (1585-7.)] What next? Why, "having thus passed the principles of Arithmetic, Geometry, Astronomy, and Geography, with a general compact of Physics, they may descend, in Mathematics, to the instrumental science of Trigonometry, and from thence to Fortification, Architecture, Enginry, or Navigation; and, in Natural Philosophy, they may proceed leisurely from the History of Meteors, Minerals, Plants, and Living Creatures, as far as Anatomy. Then also in course might be read to them out of some not tedious writer the Institution of Physic; that they may know the tempers, the humours, the seasons, and how to manage a crudity." Text-books are not mentioned here; and, though some must have been in view for such subjects as Trigonometry, Fortification, Engineering, and Navigation, yet it is clear, from Milton's language, that he meant a good deal of the miscellaneous instruction to be by lectures and digests of books by the teacher. Nay, there were to be more than lectures. "To set forward all these proceedings in Nature and Mathematics, what hinders but that they may procure, as oft as shall be needful, the helpful experiences of Hunters, Fowlers, Fishermen, Shepherds, Gardeners, Apothecaries, and, in the other sciences, Architects, Engineers, Mariners, Anatomists; who, doubtless, would be ready, some for reward, and some to favour such a hopeful Seminary." Hartlib must here have rejoiced again. But there comes in a Miltonic touch at the end. Hitherto he has debarred the pupils of his Academy, it will have been noticed, from all the ordinary classics read in schools. But, just about the end of this, the second stage of their studies, devoted to the Real or Physical Sciences and their applications, he would admit them to such classic readings as would impart a poetic colouring to the knowledge so acquired. In Greek, they might take now to ORPHEUS, HESIOD, THEOCRITUS, ARATUS, NICANDER, OPPIAN, and DIONYSIUS, and in Latin to LUCRETIUS, MANILIUS, and the Georgics of VIRGIL. [Footnote: Of the ORPHIC POEMS Milton must here have intended those relating to Nature and her phenomena. Of the "Works and Days" or "Georgics" of HESIOD, there had been an English translation by George Chapman (1618); and at least some of the Idylls of THEOCRITUS had been in English since 1588. The _Phnomena_ and _Diosemeia_ of Aratus (circ. B.C. 270) were, as we know, a favourite book with Milton, and he had had a copy of the Paris edition of 1559 in his possession since 1631 (see Vol. I. p. 234, Note), with MS. notes of his own in the margin. In looking at the specimens of these MS. notes facsimiled by the late Mr. Leigh Sotheby in his Milton _Ramblings_ from the original book, now in the British Museum, I can see, by my test of the shaping of the letter e (Vol. II. p. 121, Note), that, while some of the notes were written before the journey to Italy, or between 1631 and 1638, others were written after the return from Italy, _i. e._ after 1639. This proves that Milton kept using the book in his manhood. There was, I think, then no English translation of it. Neither was there a translation of the _Theriaca_ and _Alexipharmaka_ (Poems on Venomous Animals and Poisons) of the Greek NICANDER (circ. B.C. 150); nor of the _Halieutics_ and _Kynegetics_ (Poems on Fishing and Hunting) of OPPIAN (circ. A.D. 210). There was, however, as early as 1572, an English translation "by Thomas Irvine, gentl." of the _Periegetes_ or Geographical Poem of DIONYSIUS AFER (third century after Christ). Of the Latin Poems mentioned-- LUCRETIUS _De Rerum Natura_, the _Astronomica_ of MANILIUS, and the Georgics of VIRGIL--only the last had been Englished as yet. They had been Englished in 1589 by an Abraham Fleming, and in 1628 by Thomas May.] Some of these books which were "counted most hard" would be, in the circumstances, facile and pleasant. (3) _Third Class or Stage_ (_ætat_. 16-19?):--The work of this stage was also to be very composite. It was to embrace Ethics, Economics, Politics, Jurisprudence, Theology, Church History and General History, together with Italian, Hebrew, and possibly Chaldee and Syriac, varied throughout by such carefully-arranged readings in Latin and Greek classics as would harmonize with those studies while they relieved them. For by this stage the reason of the pupils would have been so far matured that they might pass from the Physical to the Moral Sciences. For Ethics, they might be led "through all the Moral Works of PLATO, XENOPHON, CICERO, PLUTARCH, LAERTIUS, and those LOCRIAN REMNANTS; [Footnote: There was then no complete English translation of PLATO, but individual Dialogues had been translated, and he had been accessible complete in Latin since 1484. The _Cyropædia_ of XENOPHON had been twice translated into English, the second translation (1632) being by Philemon Holland; but Lowndes mentions no translation yet of the _Memorabilia_. The _De Officiis_ of CICERO had been translated again and again, and others of his writings. The Morals of PLUTARCH, as we have already seen, were accessible in English. The book on the History of Philosophy by the Greek DIOGENES LAERTIUS was not yet in English, but a Latin translation was extant. By the LOCRIAN REMNANTS seem to be meant reputed remains of those LOCRIAN philosophers from whom PLATO had derived instruction.] but still to be reduced, in their nightward studies wherewith they close the day's work, under the determinate sentence of DAVID or SOLOMON, or the EVANGELS and APOSTOLIC SCRIPTURES." For Economics and Politics, to follow the Ethics, no books are named; but the Greek and Latin books in view may be guessed. In Jurisprudence, which was to come next, they would find the substance "delivered first, and with best warrant, by MOSES"; and then, "as far as human prudence can be trusted, in those extolled remains of Grecian Lawgivers, LYCURGUS, SOLON, ZALEUCUS, CHARONDAS, and thence to all the Roman Edicts and Tables, with their JUSTINIAN, and so down to the SAXON AND COMMON LAWS OF ENGLAND and the STATUTES." [Footnote: To put this in other words, Milton, to ground his English students in the Science of Law, would have begun first with the MOSAIC LAWS in the Pentateuch, and would then have led them through a course of: I. _The Greek Legislation_, so far as it could be recovered, of LYCURGUS the Spartan (B.C. 884, according to Aristotle), SOLON the Athenian (_circ._ B.C. 600), ZALEUCUS, the Lawgiver of the Locrians (_circ._ B.C. 660), and CHARONDAS, the Lawgiver of Catana and other Greek cities in Sicily and Italy (_circ._ B.C. 500); II. _The Roman Law_, in all its ancient fragments, and especially in its great compilation and completion by the Emperor JUSTINIAN (A.D. 527-534); III. _Native English Law_, as represented in the preserved codes of the old Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of Kent, Wessex, &c., and in the traditional and written Laws of England since the Conquest.] For History, General or Ecclesiastical, no manuals are spoken of; and, as respects Theology, it is only indicated that this might be the employment of Sundays, though not exclusively so.--The Italian language was to be acquired "at any odd hour" in an early part of this stage, and the Hebrew, with Chaldee and Syriac, farther on; but there is no specification of means, or of the Grammars to be used.--The poetical and oratorical readings interspersed with these various and progressive studies were to be, in the earlier part of the stage, "some choice Comedies, Greek, Latin, and Italian," selected "with wariness and good antidote," and a Tragedy or two of the domestic kind, such as the _Trachiniæ_ of SOPHOCLES, and the _Alcestis_ of EURIPIDES; and so gradually to the chief Historians (HERODOTUS, THUCYDIDES, &c.), the Heroic Poets (HOMER, VIRGIL, &c.), the "Attic Tragedies of stateliest and most regal ornament" (more of SOPHOCLES and EURIPIDES), and "the most famous Political Orations" (DEMOSTHENES and CICERO). [Footnote: Chapman's translation of HOMER into English had been complete in 1616. Nothing of �SCHYLUS, SOPHOCLES, or EURIPIDES, appears to have been translated into English. Two Books of HERODOTUS had been translated into English as early as 1584; and Hobbes' translation of THUCYDIDES had appeared in 1628. There were English translations of some Orations of DEMOSTHENES and CICERO; and of the �neid of VIRGIL, or separate portions of it, there had been many translations, including Caxton's (1480), Gawin Douglas's in Scotch (1553), the Earl of Surrey's (1557), Phær and Irvine's (1573), and Sandys's (1627).] Milton recommends that passages of the Orators and Tragedians should be got by heart and solemnly recited aloud. He does not name �schylus among his Tragedians. Euripides, we know, was his favourite. (4) _Fourth Class or Stage_ (_ætat._ 19-21?):--This was to be the finishing stage, and was to be devoted to Logic, Rhetoric, and Poetics, with practice in Composition. Such training in form and literary theory, Milton argued, would come best after the pupils had acquired a sufficiency of _matter_, or somewhat of "an universal insight into _things_." As to the masters for Logic he says nothing in the tract; but we know otherwise that he had a fancy for Ramus, as qualifying Aristotle. For Rhetoric the masters were to be "PLATO, ARISTOTLE, PHALEREUS, CICERO, HERMOGENES, LONGINUS." [Footnote: PLATO comes in here, I suppose, for his style generally, and for disquisitions on Rhetoric in one or two of his Dialogues; ARISTOTLE, of course, for his _Rhetoric_ (not then translated, I think). PHALEREUS is Demetrius Phalereus, the Athenian orator (B.C. 345--283), and reputed author of a work "On Elocution" (not translated in Milton's time, I think); CICERO is brought in, of course, for his _De Oratore_, &c. (translated into English, I should think, before Milton's time, but I am not sure); HERMOGENES (second century after Christ) is the Greek author of a system of Rhetoric in several Books, all written in his youth (not in English in Milton's time, if yet); and LONGINUS was Longinus' "On the Sublime" (waiting to be put into English).] By Poetics Milton did not mean mere Prosody, which he assumed the pupils to have learnt long ago under the head of Grammar, but "that sublime Art which, in ARISTOTLE'S _Poetics_, in HORACE, and the Italian Commentaries of CASTELVETRO, TASSO, MAZZONI, and others, teaches what the laws are of a true Epic Poem, what of a Dramatic, what of a Lyric, what decorum is, which is the great masterpiece to observe. [Footnote: Lowndes does not mention any very early translation of the _Poetics_ of ARISTOTLE. Of the _De Arte Poetica_ of HORACE there had been at least two translations--one by "Tho. Drant" in 1567, and one by Ben Jonson (published 1640). One work of TASSO referred to in the text is, I suppose, his _La Cavaletta; overo della Poesia Toscana;_ CASTELVETRO (1505--1571) and MAZZONI (_circa_ 1590) were two Italian scholars who had written on Poetry. The omission by Milton here of such English books as Sir Philip Sidney's _Apologie for Poetrie_ (1595) and Puttenham's _Arte of English Poesie_ (1589) is a striking instance of his resolute non-regard of everything English.] This would make them soon perceive what despicable creatures our common Rhymers and Play-writers be, and show them what religious, what glorious and magnificent use, might be made of Poetry both in divine and human things." Observe the contempt which Milton here expresses of the English Literature of his age. It had by this time become one of his habitual feelings. He goes on, however, to express the same contempt of the contemporary English Pulpit. By that practice in speaking and writing which he proposed as the final and crowning discipline in his Academy, he hoped to turn out young men fitted to teach the English Pulpit a new style of preaching, as well as to excel in public and Parliamentary life. II. EXERCISES AND AMUSEMENTS:--These were to be of three kinds: (1) _Gymnastics and Regular Military Drill._ Milton is most emphatic on this subject. He would have the course of Education in his Academy to be as good for war as for peace; and therefore he would blend the Spartan discipline with the Athenian culture. The pupils were to be taught Fencing, so that they might be excellent swordsmen, with "exact use of their weapon, to guard, and to strike safely with edge or point." They were also to be "practised in all the locks and gripes of Wrestling, wherein Englishmen were wont to excel, as need may often be in fight to tug or grapple, and to close." So much for their gymnastics individually. But the main thing was to be their military drill collectively. There was to be no mistake about this; it was to be no mere school-play. The 120 or 130 youths in each Academy, under its head-master, with his twenty attendants, were to be treated sometimes as a single company of Foot, and at other times as two troops of Horse; and they were to be regularly and continually drilled in all the art both of Infantry and Cavalry. As we have already quoted the substance of the passage where this is insisted on (Vol. II. p. 480), we need here note only that portion of the passage in which Milton points out how, by such a system of training, the pupils of his Academy might be expected, "as it were out of a long war," to "come forth renowned and perfect commanders in the service of their country." "Commanders" observe; _i.e._, as we said before, the contemplated Academy was one for gentlemen's sons only. (2) _Music_. There was to be abundance of this in the Academy, both for recreation and for the noble effects of music on the mind. The music was to be both vocal and instrumental; and of the various instruments the organ is named in chief. (3) _Excursions_. "In those vernal seasons of the year when the air is calm and pleasant, it were an injury and sullenness against Nature not to go out and see her riches, and partake in her rejoicing with Heaven and Earth. I should not therefore be a persuader to them of studying much then, after two or three years that they have well laid their grounds, but to ride out in companies, with prudent and staid guides to all the quarters of the land, learning and observing all places of strength, all commodities of building, and of soil for towns and tillage, harbours and ports for trade; sometimes taking sea as far as to our navy, to learn there also what they can in the practical knowledge of sailing and of sea-fight." Dr. Johnson's criticism of Milton's new Method of Education is well known, and is perhaps the criticism most operative to the present day. The scheme is a mere air-hung fancy, the _utinam_ of a sanguine spirit, put forth as a possible institution! But the real question in every such case is, Does the proposal contain some important improvement which _is_ practicable? Does it move in the right direction? This is the question to be asked respecting Milton's plan for a Reformed Education, How does Dr. Johnson answer it? "The truth is that the knowledge of external nature, and the sciences which that knowledge requires or includes, are not the great or the frequent business of the human mind. Whether we provide for action or conversation, whether we wish to be useful or pleasing, the first object is the religious and moral knowledge of right and wrong; the next is an acquaintance with the history of mankind, and with those examples which may be said to embody truth, and prove by events the reasonableness of opinions. Prudence and justice are virtues and excellences of all times and all places; we are perpetually moralists, but are geometricians only by chance. Our intercourse with Intellectual Nature is necessary; our speculations upon Matter are voluntary, and at leisure. Physiological learning is of such rare emergence that one man may know another half his life without being able to estimate his skill in hydrostatics or astronomy; but his moral and prudential character immediately appears. Those authors, therefore, are to be read at schools that supply most axioms of prudence, most principles of moral truth, and most materials for conversation; and these purposes are best served by poets, orators, and historians."[Footnote: Johnson's Life of Milton, in his _Lives of the Poets_ (Cunningham's edit. I.91-93)] What an egregious misrepresentation this is of Milton's project the reader, who already knows the project itself in its completeness, will see at once. Milton included all that Johnson wanted to have included, and more largely and systematically than Johnson would have dared to dream of, and for the same reasons. The introduction of Natural and Physical Science into schools was but a portion, though an emphatic portion, of Milton's project. And, with respect to this portion of his project--a novelty at the time, though Milton had Comenius and Hartlib and all the Verulamians with him--subsequent opinion has more and more pronounced, and is more and more and more pronouncing, for Milton and against Johnson. The fairer criticism now would be as to the _mode_ in which Milton proposed to teach Natural and Physical Science, and knowledge generally. Milton, who himself possessed in really encyclopædic extent all the scientific knowledge of his time, must have been right in supposing that the knowledge _could_ then be taught through Latin and Greek books. Even then, however, he perhaps overrated the necessity of Latin and Greek for this particular business of education, and underrated what could be done in sheer English. And, now that Science has burst all bounds of Latin and Greek, and it would be ludicrous to go merely to the Greek and Latin authors named by Milton for our Geography, or Astronomy, or Natural History, or Physics, or Chemistry, or Anatomy and Physiology, it is clear that the claims of Latin and Greek in education must not rest on their instrumental value in giving access to the stores of science, but on quite another basis. In short, that in Milton's scheme which is now obsolete is its determinate intertwining of the whole business of the acquisition of knowledge with the process of reading in other languages than the vernacular. This taken out of the Scheme, all the rest lasts, and is as good now, and perhaps as needful, as it was in Milton's time. Above all, the noble moral glow that pervades the _Tract on Education_, the mood of magnanimity in which it is conceived and written, and the faith it inculcates in the powers of the young human spirit, if rightly nurtured and directed, are merits everlasting. The plan of the tract was not speculative only. Since 1639, when he lived in the St. Bride's Churchyard lodging, Milton had been teaching his two nephews, and had had the younger nephew, Johnny Phillips, boarding with him entirely; when he removed in 1640 to the house in Aldersgate Street, the elder nephew, Edward Phillips, also came under his roof; and in 1643, after his wife had deserted him, and his father had come to live with him, he had received into his house, as boarders or day-boarders, a few additional pupils. How many there were we do not know: probably, with the two nephews, not more than eight or a dozen at most. Part of his daily work, therefore, at the very time when he wrote the tract to Hartlib, was the teaching of these few boys. Accordingly, it is at this point that we may best quote Edward Phillips's account of his uncle's method with his pupils. He had himself had four or five years' experience of the method, and was now (1644) fourteen years of age. In his account, however, though he inserts it as early as the year 1639 in his Memoir, he inweaves recollections that must span from 1639 to 1646, so as to describe in one passage his uncle's training of boys from the age of ten to that of fifteen or sixteen:-- "And here, by the way, I judge it not impertinent to mention the many authors both of the Latin and Greek which, through his excellent judgment and way of teaching, far above the pedantry of common Public Schools (where such authors are scarce ever heard of), were run over within no greater compass of time than from ten to fifteen or sixteen years of age:--Of the Latin, the four grand authors _De Re Rusticâ_, CATO, VARRO, COLUMELLA, and PALLADIUS; a great part of PLINY'S 'Natural History'; VITRUVIUS his 'Architecture'; FRONTINUS his 'Stratagems'; with the two egregious Poets, LUCRETIUS and MANILIUS: Of the Greek, HESIOD, a poet equal to Homer; ARATUS his _Phænomena_ and _Diosemeia_; DIONYSIUS AFER '_De Situ Orbis_'; OPPIAN'S 'Cynegetics' and 'Halieutics'; QUINTUS CALABER his Poem of the Trojan War continued from Homer; APOLLONIUS RHODIUS his 'Argonautics'; and, in prose, PLUTARCH'S '_Placita Philosophorum_' and [Greek: Peri Paidon Agogias]; GEMINUS'S Astronomy, XENOPHON'S _Cyri Institutio_ and _Anabasis_, �LIAN'S 'Tactics,' and POLY�NUS his 'Warlike Stratagems.' Thus, by teaching, he in some measure increased his own knowledge, having the reading of all these authors as it were by proxy.... Nor did the time thus studiously employed in conquering the Greek and Latin tongues hinder the attaining to the chief Oriental languages, viz. the Hebrew, Chaldee, and Syriac, so far as to go through the Pentateuch, or Five Books of Moses, in Hebrew, to make a good entrance into the Targum, or Chaldee Paraphrase, and to understand several chapters of St. Matthew in the Syriac Testament: besides an introduction into several Arts and Sciences, by reading URSTISIUS his Arithmetic, RIFF'S Geometry, PITISCUS his Trigonometry, JOANNES DE SACRO BOSCO _De Sphæra_; and into the Italian and French tongues, by reading, in Italian, GIOVAN VILLANI'S History of the Transactions between several petty States of Italy, and, in French, a great part of PIEREE DAVITY, the famous geographer of France in his time.----The Sunday's work was for the most part the reading each day a chapter of the Greek Testament and hearing his learned exposition upon the same (and how far this savoured of Atheism in him I leave to the courteous backbiter to judge); the next work after this was the writing from his own dictation some part, from time to time, of a Tractate which he thought fit to collect from the ablest of Divines who had written of that subject (AMESIUS, WOLLEBIUS, &c.)--viz. A Perfect System of Divinity; of which more hereafter." [Footnote: The books named in this extract from Phillips, but not in Milton's tract, may be noted:--The PALLADIUS, who is here added to the three Latin writers on Agriculture mentioned in the tract, lived probably in the fourth century, and left a treatise _De Re Rustica_, very popular through the Middle Ages. It had not been translated into English. FRONTINUS (who had preceded Agricola as Roman Governor of Britain, and died _circ_. A.D. 106) was the author of _Stratagematicon Libri IV._, a kind of anecdotic treatise on the Art of War; �LIANUS (time of the Emperor Hadrian) and POLY�NUS the Macedonian (second century) were Greek writers on the Military Art. Though Milton does not name them in his tract, he doubtless had them in view among Military Books to be read. Two of them had been translated into English--Frontinus, by "Richarde Morysine" (1539), and �lianus by "John Bingham" (1616-31). QUINTUS CALABER, the nature of whose Poem in 14 Books is sufficiently described in the text (really a native of Smyrna, but called "Calaber" because the best known copy of his Poem was found in Calabria), lived late in the fourth century; APOLLONIUS RHODIUS, so called because he lived long in Rhodes, though born in Alexandria, is a much earlier and much better known Greek poet (_circ._ B. C. 200). Neither of these Greek poets seems to have been translated in Milton's time. GEMINUS was a Greek mathematician of the first century, who seems to have lived in Rome, and who left an [Greek: Pisagogæ kis ta phainomena], or treatise on the Sphere. Lowndes mentions no English version of it. URSTISIUS, who is mentioned for his Arithmetic, is CHRISTIAN WURZTICIUS, an Italian mathematician (1544-1588); RIFF I have not farther identified; PITISCUS is Bartholomew Pitiscus (1561-1613); and JOANNES DE SACRO BOSCO is the famous Englishman John Holywood (died 1256), whose treatise _De Sphæra_, often re-edited and re-published, was the most popular manual of Astronomy in the Middle Ages. VILLANI, the Florentine historian, died 1348; DAVITY, the French geographer, is unknown to me; AMESIUS, author of the _Medella Theo logia_ and other theological works, is the William Ames (1576-1633), already known to us (Vol. II. p 579); and WOLLIBIUS (1536- 1626) was a Divine of Basle and author of _Compendium Theologiæ_.] What a busy domicile the wifeless house in Aldersgate Street must have been through the year 1644! Pupils and their lessons through the solid part of the day; only a margin, morning and evening, for Milton's own readings and meditations; the father sometimes with him for an hour or so of music, but oftener in his own room, "retired to his rest and devotion, without the least trouble imaginable;" every hour of the day crammed with work; even on the Sundays those expositions of the Greek Testament to his pupils, and those dictations to them in Latin of portions of a System of Divinity which he had resolved to compile from the Scriptures and the works of the best Protestant theologians! And yet it was out of this quiet and industrious household that there had burst upon the English public that thunderbolt of the Divorce heresy! A SECOND DIVORCE TRACT: COMPILATION FROM BUCER. The Divorce idea still occupied Milton. On the 15th of July, 1644 (five weeks after the publication of the _Tract on Education_ addressed to Hartlib, and five months and a half after the publication of the Second Edition of the _Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce_), there was entered at Stationers' Hall another tract, which appeared on that day, or immediately afterwards, with this title: "_The Judgement of Martin Bucer concerning Divorce. Writt'n to Edward the Sixt, in his Second Book of the Kingdom of Christ. And now Englisht. Wherein a late Book restoring the Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce, is heer confirm'd and justify'd by the authoritie of Martin Bucer. To the Parlament of England_. John 3, 10: Art thou a teacher in Israel, and know'st not these things? _Publisht by Authoritie. London, Printed by Matthew Simmons_, 1644." Martin Bucer [Footnote: The entry in the Stationers' Hall Registeris as follows:--"_July 15, 1614: Matt. Symmons cut. for his copie, under which, of Mr. Downham, and Mr. Parker, warden, the Judgment of Martin Bucer concerning Divorce, written to King Edw. ye 6th in the 2nd Book of the Kingdom of Xt.: Englished by Mr. Milton._"] The tract consists of 40 small quarto pages in all; of which, however, only 24 are numbered. These numbered pages, forming the body of the tract, are abridged translations by Milton of the passages from Martin Bucer which he wished to introduce to the English public. They are preceded by six pages of "Testimonies of the high approbation which learned men have given of Martin Bucer" (viz. quotations by Milton from Calvin, Beza, Sturmius, and others, to show what a man Bucer was), and then by eight pages of closer type, addressed by Milton to the Parliament and signed with his name in full. At the end, after the numbered pages, there is a postscript of two pages, in which Milton again speaks directly, and winds up the tract. The title-page of the tract indicates Milton's purpose in it, His original Divorce treatise had been put forth as the result of his own reasonings and meditations, without the knowledge that any had preceded him in the same track to anything like the same extent. While preparing the second edition he had become aware that strong support from learned authorities might be adduced for his doctrine; in especial, he had become aware that he had had a forerunner in the famous Reformer Paul Fagius. Much of the added matter in the second edition consisted, accordingly, in the citation of Fagius and other witnesses to strengthen his argument. Strangely enough, however, he was still unaware that he might have the benefit of a witness more renowned even than Paul Fagius. Not till May 1644 did he chance to learn this fact. "When the book," he says, "had been now the second time set forth well-nigh three months, as I best remember, I then first came to hear that Martin Bucer had written much concerning Divorce: whom earnestly turning over, I soon perceived, but not without amazement, in the same opinion, confirmed with the same reasons, which in that published book, without the help or imitation of any precedent writer, I had laboured out and laid together." The particular writing of Bucer's in which Milton found this extraordinary coincidence with his own views was the _De Regno Christi ad Edw. VI._, written by Bucer about 1550, but first published at Basle in 1557. There was reason, Milton is careful to impress on his readers, why Bucer, and Fagius along with Bucer, should be remembered with unusual reverence by the Protestants of England. Coming over to England in 1549, each with his great continental fame already won, they had been placed in Cambridge by the young Edward VI., then desirous of completing and perfecting the Reformation of his kingdom--Bucer as Professor of Divinity, and Fagius of Hebrew. Fagius had died in Cambridge in the same year, when he had barely begun to teach; Bucer, after he had taught for about eighteen months, died in the same place, Feb. 28, 1550-51. Both had thus breathed the last strength of their spirits into the Protestantism of England. Nay, they might be reckoned among the martyrs of English Protestantism; for, when Mary had succeeded Edward, had not their bodies been dug up, as the bodies of heretics, and publicly burnt to ashes in the Cambridge market-place? Let all this be remembered, and especially let it be remembered that Bucer had addressed his _De Regno Christi_ to Edward VI., and intended its admonitions and instructions for the use of that monarch and his people. In that writing Bucer, though he had been dead a hundred years, was still speaking to the people of England, and telling them what remained to be done before their national reformation could be called thorough. Well, in that treatise there was a great deal about Divorce. Bucer had evidently made a study of the topic, and attached great importance to it. A large portion of the Second Book of the treatise consisted of nothing else; and it was this portion of the treatise only that Milton, partly in delight and partly in amazement at its accordance with his own doctrine, proposed to recover out of the neglected Latin, and present in plain English. Not that such drudgery of translation was to his taste. "Whether it be natural disposition or education in me, or that my mother bore me a speaker of what God made mine own, and not a translator," is his proud phrase of explanation why he could "never delight in long citations, much less in whole traductions." Even in this case he would only digest and epitomize. Beginning at Chap. XV. of the Second Book of Bucer's treatise, he would go on to Chap. XLVII. inclusively, indicating the contents of the successive chapters by headings, omitting what was irrelevant to his own purpose, and translating the passages that were most relevant. This is what is done in the 24 numbered pages which form the body of Milton's tract. They are a concatenation of dryish morsels from Bucer, duly labelled and introduced; but they make it clear that Bucer's notion of marriage was substantially the same as Milton's. As respects Milton himself, the portion of his new Tract which is of greatest interest is the prefixed Address to the Parliament. It is noteworthy that, whereas the Second Edition of his original Divorce treatise is dedicated to "the Parliament of England _with_ the Assembly," the new tract is dedicated to the Parliament only. The Address makes the reason of this plain. It is here, in fact, that we first hear from Milton himself of the obloquy to which his Divorce Doctrine had subjected him. It had begun, he now tells us (and we have already used the information), almost immediately after the publication of the first, and anonymous, edition of his original treatise--his style then betraying him to be the author, and some of the clergy opening loud cry against him in consequence. This had induced him to bring out the second edition, not anonymous, but openly acknowledged. Though aware of the declared hostility among the clergy, he had not then deemed it proper to descant on that subject, but had, in courtesy, dedicated the Second Edition to the Assembly in conjunction with the Parliament. Even then he had no doubt from which of the two bodies he would receive the fairer treatment. "I was confident," he says in his present address of the Bucer tract to the Parliament, "if anything generous, anything noble and above the multitude, were yet left in the spirit of England, it could be nowhere sooner found, and nowhere sooner understood, than in that House of Justice and true Liberty where ye sit in Council." Here the Assembly is ignored, and the insinuation is that, though he had included _them_ in the dedication, it was rather by way of form than in real trust. This had been in Feb. 1643-4, and now, in July 1644, he knew his position so precisely that there was no need for farther reticence. He had not been disappointed in the Parliament. He had had hope in them; "nor doth the event hitherto, _for some reasons which I shall not here deliver_, fail me of what I conceived so highly." The words I have put in italics can bear no other construction than that Milton had reason to know, from private assurances, which he regarded as confidential, that some leading men in Parliament thought him perfectly entitled to broach his doctrine, and would take care that he should not be troubled for it. He was not uninformed either, he adds, that "divers learned and judicious men," both in and out of Parliament, had "testified their daily approbation" of his treatise. With the Assembly, however, he knew it to be all over. Though from them above all, by reason of "their profession and supposed knowledge," his treatise had deserved a fair hearing, all that he had received was to be "esteemed the deviser of a new and pernicious paradox." He does not, indeed, name the Assembly while intimating this, but only refers to the clergy generally and dispersedly. That he had the Assembly distinctly in view, however, appears not only from the tenor of the whole, but also from a passage in the Postscript, where he hints that such action was at work against him that he might be stopped any day by the official censorship and prevented from printing. If, therefore, this new tract should be permitted to appear, only to the Parliament would he dedicate it. But, while dedicated to the Parliament, it was intended for the Assembly. It was a challenge to _them_. The Reverend gentlemen had refused to consider the Doctrine of Divorce when propounded by their contemporary, a private layman and reasoner. They had thought it worthy only of denunciation as an impious paradox, destructive of morality and social order. What would they now say to the same Doctrine exhibited to them, chapter and verse, as the doctrine of one of the great European Reformers and Divines, whose name was often in their mouths, though they knew so little about him? While the Address to Parliament thus makes clear Milton's consciousness that the Assembly were watching him and might at any time denounce him, there is yet another curious strain in it, interesting as an illustration of the writer's character. Milton was evidently divided between delight in having found Bucer his predecessor in the doctrine and a proud feeling of his own self-earned property in the same. Not even to Bucer would he yield the palm of this discovery; nay, generally, he did not care though it should be known that, while he reverenced Bucer and such men of the past, he did not think that God's power to create and endow exceptional human spirits had so exhausted itself in that time and that group of men but that work higher than aught of mere discipleship to any of them might be reserved for himself. Here Milton is in one of his constitutional moods; and it is interesting to observe with what constancy to it he treats the small fact of a discovered coincidence in opinion between himself and Bucer. The following passage will suffice in this respect, and also as a specimen of the whole tract:-- "I may justly gratulate mine own mind with due acknowledgment of assistance from above, which led me, not as a learner, but as a collateral teacher, to a sympathy of judgment with no less a man than Martin Bucer. And he, if our things here below arrive him where he is, does not repent him to see that point of knowledge which he first, and with an unchecked freedom, preached to those more knowing times of England, now found so necessary, though what he admonished were lost out of our memory, yet that God doth now again create the same doctrine in another unwritten table [the _tabula rasa_ of Milton's mind], and raises it up immediately out of his pure oracle to the convincement of a perverse age, eager in the reformation of names and ceremonies, but in realities as traditional and as ignorant as their forefathers. I would ask now the foremost of my profound accusers whether they dare affirm that to be licentious, new and dangerous, which Martin Bucer so often and so urgently avouched to be moot lawful, most necessary, and most Christian, without the least blemish. to his good name among all the worthy men of that age and since who testify so highly of him. If they dare, they must then set up an arrogance of their own against all those churches and saints who honoured him without this exception. If they dare not, how can they now make _that_ licentious doctrine in another which was never blamed or confuted in Bucer or in Fagius? The truth is, there will be due to them, for this their unadvised rashness, the best donative that can be given them--I mean a round reproof [_a hint to Parliament about the Assembly?_]; now that, where they thought to be most magisterial, they have displayed their own want both of reading and of judgment: first, to be so unacquainted in the writings of Bucer, which are so obvious and so useful in their own faculty; next, to be so caught in a prejudicating weakness as to condemn that for lewd which, whether they knew or not, these elect servants of Christ commended for lawful, and for new that which was taught by these, almost the first and greatest authors of Reformation, who were never taxed for so teaching, and dedicated without scruple to a royal pair of the first Reforming kings in Christendom [Edward VI., for whom Bucer's _De Regno Christi_ was written, and Christian III. of Denmark, to whom it was dedicated when published at Basle in 1557], and confessed in the public Confession of a most orthodoxal Church and State in Germany [the church and community of Strasburg, in whose Confession, according to Milton, Bucer's Divorce Doctrine had been adopted]. This is also another fault which I must tell them--that they have stood now almost this whole year clamouring afar off, while the Book [Milton's _Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce_] hath been twice printed, twice bought up, and never once vouchsafed a friendly conference with the author, who would be glad and thankful to be shown an error, either by private dispute or public answer, and could retract as well as wise men before him: might also be worth the gaining, as one who heretofore hath done good service to the Church, by their own confession. ... However, if we know at all when to ascribe the occurrences of this life to the work of a special Providence, as nothing is more usual in the talk of good men, what can be more like to a special providence of God than in the first Reformation of England that this question of Divorce, as a main thing to be restored to just freedom, was written, and seriously commended to Edward the Sixth, by a man called from another country to be an instructor of our nation, and now, in this present renewing of the Church and Commonwealth, which we pray may be more lasting, that same question should be again treated and presented to this Parliament by one enabled to use the same reasons without the least sight or knowledge of what was done before. It were no trespass, Lords and Commons, though something of less note were attributed to the ordering of a Heavenly Power. This question, therefore, of such prime concernment to Christian and Civil welfare, in such an extraordinary manner not recovered, but plainly twice-born to these latter ages, as from a divine hand, I tender to your acceptance and most considerate thoughts." MR. HERBERT PALMER'S ATTACK ON MILTON FROM THE PULPIT. Whether up to this time (July 1644) there had been any open mention of Milton and his Doctrine in the Westminster Assembly, anything more than muttered thunder among the Divines in their private colloquies, can be but guessed. It is quite possible that he _was_ publicly named, and not by mere implication, among the Sects and Sectaries generally. There may even be record of the fact somewhere, though I have found none in Lightfoot's Notes of the Assembly, nor in Gillespie's, nor in Baillie's Letters. But the peal was coming, and this daring challenge to the Assembly in his Bucer tract may have helped to provoke it. When the tract was published, the Assembly was about to break up for that fortnight's vacation (July 23-Aug. 7) which we have represented as so important a notch in its proceedings. Or, indeed, the Assembly may have been _in_ its vacation when the tract appeared; for, though registered at the Stationers' Hall July 15, it may not have been in circulation till a week later. At all events, when the Assembly met again, and when, as we have seen, it fell, as if by concert, on the subject of the multiplication of the Sectaries and their insolences, then Milton was among the first attacked. He was one of a batch of eleven persons, including also Roger Williams, John Goodwin, Clement Wrighter, and some Anabaptists and Antinomians, whom the Assembly denounced to Parliament as prime offenders. This fact, already noticed in its place in our general history, has now again to be presented more in detail. The first publicly to blow the trumpet against Milton, the reader already knows, was Mr. Herbert Palmer. He did so in his Sermon before the two Houses of Parliament in St. Margaret's, Westminster, on the Extraordinary Day of Humiliation, Tuesday, Aug. 13, six days after the Assembly had resumed its sittings. Here is the particular passage in the Sermon:-- "But against a Toleration in general even the COVENANT itself, in that very Article [Article II.], hath a reason suitable to the Text [Psalm xcix, 8]. 'Lest we partake of other men's sins, and be in danger to receive of their plagues.' saith the Covenant; which in the language of the Text is 'Lest God take vengeance on their inventions' and ours together. It is true that the name of Conscience hath an awful sound unto a conscientious ear. But, I pray, judge but in a few instances whether all pretence of Conscience ought to be a sufficient plea for Toleration and Liberty:--1. There be those that say their conscience is against all taking of an oath before a magistrate. Will you allow an universal liberty of this? What then will become of all our legal and judicial proceedings? which are confined to this way of proof: and so it was by God appointed, and hath been by all nations practised. 2. There be some that pretend Liberty of Conscience to equivocate in an oath even before a magistrate, and to elude all examinations by mental reservations. Will you grant them this liberty; or can you, without destroying all bonds of civil converse, and wholly overthrowing of all human judicature? 3. If any plead Conscience for the lawfulness of Polygamy; or for Divorce for other causes than Christ and His Apostles mention (_of which a wicked look is abroad and uncensured, though deserving to be burnt, whose Author hath been so impudent as to set his name to it and dedicate it to yourselves_); or for liberty to many incestuously--will you grant a toleration for all this?" Palmer goes on to instance four other opinions which might ask for toleration, but which are in their nature so subversive of all authority and all civil order that the bare imagination of their being tolerated is, he thinks, a _reductio ad absurdum_ of the idea of a Universal Toleration. What has been quoted, however, will show whereabouts among the Sectaries he placed Milton. He cited him as the advocate of an opinion so monstrous that no sane person could think of tolerating _it_. And it is to be noted that, though he gives other instances of such monstrous opinions tending to practical anarchy, Milton is the only person openly referred to in this extreme category, and his book the only book. On the same day, Mr. Hill, Palmer's fellow-preacher before Parliament, referred by implication to Roger Williams's _Bloody Tenent_, which had been burnt by the hangman a day or two before; and here was Palmer mentioning with less reserve, Milton's _Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce_ as richly deserving the same fate. Williams, we know, was happily on his way back to America at the time; but Milton was at hand, in his house in Aldersgate Street, whenever he should be wanted. To be preached at before the two Houses of Parliament, on a solemn Fast Day, by an eminent Divine of the Westminster Assembly, was, I should say, a ten times greater trial of a man's equanimity in those days than it would be in these to waken one morning and find oneself the subject of a scathing onslaught in the columns of the leading newspaper. It was positively the worst blast from the black trumpet of the wind-god �olus then possible for any inhabitant of England; and not even that poor company of suitors to whom, in Chaucer's poem, fickle Queen Fame awarded this black blast from the wind-god, instead of the blast of praise from his golden trumpet which they were expecting, can have been more discomfited than most persons would have been had they been in Milton's place a day or two after Palmer's sermon. [Footnote: Cromwell was away with the Arms, but Vane may have heard Palmer's sermon. Baillie was certainly present, with the other Scottish Commissioners; and he was delighted with Palmer's outspokenness. See _antè_, p 162] What did this �olus, but he Took out his black trumpe of brass, That fouler than the Devil was, And gan this trumpe for to blow As all the world should overthrow. Throughout every regioun Went this foule trumpe's soun, As swift as pellet out of gun When tire is in the powder run; And such a smoke gan outwend Out of the foule trumpe's end, Black, blue, greenish, swartish, red, As dote where that men melt lead, Lo! all on high from the tewelle. And thereto one thing saw I well-- That, the farther that it ran, The greater waxen it began, As doth the river from a well; And it stank as the pit of Hell. [Footnote: Chaucer's "House of Fame" III. 516-564. _Teaelle_ is the trumpet's mouth (French _tuyau_, pipe or nozzle).] THE STATIONERS' COMPANY AND ENGLISH BOOK-CENSORSHIP: THE PRINTING ORDINANCE OF JUNE 1643: MILTON COMPLAINED OF TO THE HOUSE OF COMMONS FOR BREACH OF THE SAME. Among the haunts and corners of London into which the smoke of Mr. Palmer's pulpit-blast against Milton had penetrated, and where it had whirled and eddied most persistently, was the Hall of the Stationers' Company, the centre of the London book-trade. Actually, as the reader has been informed Palmer's sermon, and the general frenzy of the Assembly on the subject of the increase of heresy and schism, had so perturbed the whole society of booksellers that, on Saturday the 24th of August, the eleventh day after the sermon, they presented a petition to the Commons, exonerating themselves from all responsibility in the growing evil, and pointing out that the blasphemous and pernicious opinions complained of were ventilated in unlicensed and unregistered pamphlets, grievous to the soul of the regular book-trade, injurious to its pockets, and contrary to the express ordinance of Parliament. That such was the tenor of the Petition of the Stationers, and that they gave instances of illegal pamphlets of the kind described, and laid stress on Milton's _Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce_ as one most flagrant instance, appears from the action of the House of Commons in consequence. Without a day's delay (Aug. 26), the Commons referred the Petition to "the Committee for Printing," with instructions to hear parties, consider the whole business, consult the existing Parliamentary Ordinance for the regulation of Printing, and bring in a new or supplementary Ordinance with all convenient speed. They were likewise "diligently to inquire out" the authors, printers, and publishers of the Divorce Pamphlet, and of another, then in circulation, against the Immortality of the Soul. That the Committee might have fresh energy in it for the purpose, four new members were added, viz. Sir Philip Stapleton, Sir Thomas Widdrington, Mr. Stephens, and Mr. Baynton. [Footnote: See the text of the order, _antè_, pp. 1645, I now add the names of the new members of Committee from the Commons Journal, Aug. 26, 1641.] Here then, in the end of August 1644, Milton was not only within the smoke of infamy blown upon him by Palmer's sermon, but also within the clutches of a Parliamentary Committee. They might call him to account not only for publishing dangerous and unusual opinions, but also for having broken the Parliamentary Ordinance for the regulation of Printing. We must now explain distinctly what that Ordinance was. From the beginning of the Long Parliament, as we know sufficiently by this time, there had been a relaxation, or rather a total breakdown, of the former laws for the regulation of the Press. In the newly-found liberty of the nation to think and to speak, all bonds of censorship were burst, and books of all kinds, but especially pamphlets on the current questions, were sent forth by their authors very much at their own discretion. The proportion of those that went through the legal ceremonial of being authorized by an appointed licenser, and registered in the Stationers' books by the Company's clerk under farther order from one of the Company's wardens, must, I should say, have been quite inconsiderable in comparison with the number that flew about printed anywhere and anyhow. Milton had been conspicuously careless or bold in this respect. Not one of his five Anti-Episcopal pamphlets, published in 1641 and 1642, had been licensed or registered; nor did any one of them bear his name, though he made no real concealment of that, and though each of them bore the printer's or publisher's name, or the address of the shop where it was on sale. Milton's friends, the Smectymnuans, had attended to the legal punctualities in some of _their_ publications; but Milton's practice seems to have been the more general one among authors and pamphleteers. Nor did they need to resort any longer to clandestine presses, or to printers and booksellers who, not being members of the Stationers' Company, had no title to engage in such book- commerce at all, and were liable to prosecution for doing so. Even regular booksellers and printers who _were_ freemen of the Stationers' Company had been infected by the general lawlessness, and had fallen into the habit of publishing books and pamphlets without caring whether they were licensed, and without taking the trouble of registering their copyright; which, indeed, they could hardly do if the books were unlicensed. All Milton's Anti-Episcopal pamphlets, I think, were published by such regular printers or booksellers. But worse and worse. Some of the less scrupulous members of the Stationers' Company had found an undue advantage in this lax conduct of the book-business, and had begun to reprint and vend books the copyright in which belonged to their brethren in the trade. This last being the sorest evil, it was perhaps as much in consequence of repeated representations of its prevalence by the authorities of the Stationers' Company as on any grounds of public damage by the circulation of political libels and false opinions, that the Parliament still kept up the fiction of a law, and made attempt after attempt to regain the control of the Press. That they did so is the fact. Entries on the subject--sometimes in the form of notices of petitions from the Stationers' Company, sometimes in that of injunctions by Parliament to the Stationers' Company to be more vigilant--are found at intervals in the Journals of both Houses through 1641 and 1642. Particular books were condemned, and their authors inquired after or called to account, and offending printers and publishers were also brought to trouble. The Parliament had even tried to institute a new agency of censorship in the form of Committees for Printing, and licensers appointed by these Committees. Such licensers were either members of Parliament selected for the duty, or Parliamentary officials, or persons out-of-doors in whom Parliament could trust. Through 1641 and 1642 I find the following persons, among others. licensing books--John Pym, Sir Edward Deering, the elder Sir Henry Vane, Mr. (Century) White, and a Dr. Wykes, but I find evidence that the Parliament and its Committees for Printing had really, in a great measure, to leave the licensing of books to the Wardens of the Stationers' Company. [Footnote: My MS notes from the Stationers' Register for the years named] In short, the Press had escaped all effective supervision whatsoever. This is most strikingly proved by the Stationers' Registers for 1642. While for the previous year, ending Dec. 31, 1641, the total number of entries on the Register had been 240, the total number in this year, ending Dec. 31, 1642, was only 76; of which 76 less than half fell in the second half of the year, when the Civil War had just commenced. Actually, of all the publications which came out this year in England, not more than at the rate of three a fortnight regularly registered throughout the whole year, and hardly more than one a week during the second half of the year! Clearly, censorship and registration had then become an absolute farce. The same state of things continued into the first half of the year 1643. Between Jan. 1 of that year (Jan. 1, 1642-3, as we now mark it) and July 4, I find the number of entries to have been not more than 35--still a preposterously small number in proportion to the crowd of publications which these six months must have produced. But exactly at the middle of this year the Registers exhibit a remarkable phenomenon. Although in the first half of the year only 35 new publications had been registered, the entries in the second half of the year swell suddenly to 333, or ten times as many as in the first half. In the month of July alone there were 63 entries, or nearly twice as many as in the preceding six months together; in August there were 57; in September 58; in October 48; in November 56; and in December 51. Little wonder that, on going over the Registers long ago, I made this note in connexion with the year 1643: "Curious year: the swelling out in the latter half, so that only 35 in first half and 333 in second: inquire into causes." I ought to have known the chief cause at the time I made the note. It was the parsing, in June 1643, of a new, strict, and minutely framed Ordinance for Printing. Forced by the public necessities of the case, including the necessity of preventing the diffusion of Royalist tracts and sheets of intelligence, or by the trade complaints of the Stationers' Company, or by both combined, the Commons at last addressed themselves to the subject resolutely. On June 10 an "Ordinance to prevent and suppress the Licence of Printing" was read in their House, agreed to, and sent to the Lords; on June 14 the Lords concurred, and signified their concurrence to the Commons; and, certain farther arrangement of detail having been made by the Commons on the 16th, the 20th, and the 21st of the same month, the Ordinance forthwith came into operation. The Ordinance (with the omission of clauses relative to printing of Parliamentary papers and to mere piracy of copyrights) is as follows:-- "Whereas divers good orders have been lately made by both Houses of Parliament for suppressing the late great abuses and frequent disorders in printing many forged, scandalous, seditious, libellous and unlicensed Papers, Pamphlets and Books, to the great defamation of Religion and Government--which orders (notwithstanding the diligence of the Company of Stationers to put them in full execution) have taken little or no effect, by reason the Bill in preparation for the redress of the said disorders hath hitherto been retarded through the present distractions, and very many, as well Stationers and Printers, as others of sundry other professions not free of the Stationers' Company, have taken upon them to set up sundry private printing-presses in corners, and to print, vend, publish and disperse Books, Pamphlets and Papers, in such multitudes that no industry could be sufficient to discover or bring to punishment all the several abounding delinquents.... It is therefore ordered that no ... Book, Pamphlet, Paper, nor part of any such Book, Pamphlet or Paper, shall from henceforth be printed, bound, stitched, or put to sale by any person or persons whatsoever, unless the same be first approved of and licensed under the hands of such person or persons as both or either of the said Houses shall appoint for the licensing of the same, and entered in the Register Book of the Company of Stationers according to ancient custom, and the Printer thereof to put his name thereto.... And the Master and Wardens of the said Company, the Gentleman-Usher of the House of Peers, the Sergeant of the Commons House, and their Deputies ... are hereby authorized and required from time to time to make diligent search in all places where they shall think meet for all unlicensed printing presses ... and to seize and carry away such printing-presses ... and likewise to make diligent search in all suspected printing-houses, warehouses, shops and other places ... and likewise to apprehend all Authors, Printers, and other persons whatsoever employed in compiling, printing, stitching, binding, publishing and dispersion of the said scandalous, unlicensed and unwarrantable Papers, Books and Pamphlets ... and to bring them, afore either of the Houses, or the Committee of Examinations, that so they may receive such farther punishments as their offences shall demerit.... And all Justices of the Peace, Captains, Constables and other officers, are hereby ordered and required to be aiding and assisting to the foresaid persons in the due execution of all and singular the premises, and in the apprehension of offenders against the same, and, in case of opposition, to break open doors and locks.--And it is further ordered that this Order be forthwith printed and published, to the end that notice may be taken thereof, and all contemners of it left inexcusable." Such was the famous _Ordinance for Printing_ of the Long Parliament, dated June 14, 1643. Within a week afterwards it was brought into working trim by the nomination of the persons to whom the business of licensing was to be entrusted. For Books of Divinity a staff of twelve Divines was appointed, the _imprimatur_ of any one of whom should be sufficient--to wit: Mr. THOMAS GATAKER, Mr. CALIBUTE DOWNING, Dr. THOMAS TEMPLE, Mr. JOSEPH CARYL, Mr. EDMUND CALAMY, Mr. CHARLES HEKLE, Mr. OBADIAH SEDGWICK, Mr. CARTER of Yorkshire, Mr. JOHN DOWNHAM, Mr. JAMES CRANFORD, Mr. BACHELER, and Mr. JOHN ELLLS, junior. The first seven of these, it will be noted (if not also the eighth), were members of the Westminster Assembly; the others were, I think, all parish-ministers in or near London. For what we should call Miscellaneous Literature, including Poetry, History, and Philosophy, the licensers appointed were Sir NATHANIEL BRENT (Judge of the Prerogative Court), Mr. JOHN LANGLEY (successor of Gill the younger in the Head-mastership of St. Paul's School), and Mr. FARNABIE. The licensing of Law-Books was to belong to certain designated Judges and Serjeants-at-law; of Books of Heraldry, to the three Herald Kings at Arms; of Mathematical Books, Almanacks, and Prognostications, to the Reader in Mathematics at Gresham College for the time being, or a certain Mr. Booker instead; and for things of no consequence--viz. "small pamphlets, portraitures, pictures and the like" --the Clerk of the Stationers' Company for the time being was to be authority enough.[Footnote: The Ordinance is printed in the Lords Journals under date June 14, 1644. Rushworth prints it under the same date (V. 335-6), and adds the names of the licensers, as appointed by the Commons June 20 and 21.] The effects of this new Ordinance of Parliament were immediately visible. Whether because Parliament itself now seemed in earnest for the control of the Press, or because the new staff of licensers were determined to exercise their powers and earn their perquisites, or because the Master and Wardens of the Stationers' Company then in. office felt their hands strengthened and worked hard (Mr. Samuel Bourne was Master, and Mr. Samuel Man and Mr. Richard Whittaker were Wardens), certain it is that authors, printers, and publishers were brought at once into greater obedience. Ten times as many books, pamphlets and papers, we have shown, were duly licensed and registered in the second half of the year 1643, or from the date of the new Ordinance onwards, as had been licensed and registered in the preceding half-year.[Footnote: I ought to note, however, that the swelling out is caused chiefly by the shoals of _Mercuries, Diurnals, Scouts, Intelligencers_,&c. that were now registered. These news-sheets of the Civil War, the infant forms of our newspapers, had previously appeared at will; and there seems to have been particular activity in bringing them under the operation of the Ordinance, so as to deprive Royalism of the aid of the Press.] Now, it so chanced that the first edition of Milton's _Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce_ had been ready for the press exactly after the new Ordinance had come into operation. What had been his behaviour? He had paid no attention to the Ordinance whatever. He had been one of those "contemners" of it whom the Ordinance itself had taken the precaution of rendering inexcusable by the clause ordering its own publication! The treatise had appeared on or about the 3rd of August, unlicensed and unregistered, just as its predecessors, the Anti-Episcopal pamphlets, had been. Nay, there was this difference, that there was no printer's full name on the title-page of the Divorce treatise, but only the semi- anonymous, declaration "Printed by T. P. and M. S. in Goldsmiths' Alley" [Footnote: See full title-page, _antè_, p. 44. ] That Milton had acted deliberately in all this there can be no doubt. Not that we need suppose him to have made it a point of honour to outbrave the new law in general by continuing to publish without a licence; but because, in this particular case, he had no choice but to do so, and did not mind doing so. He wanted to publish his new Doctrine of Divorce: was he to go the round of the twelve Reverend Gentlemen who had just been appointed licensers of all books of Theology and Ethics, and wait till he found one of them sufficiently obtuse, or sufficiently asleep, to give his _imprimatur_ to a doctrine so shocking? Clearly, nothing remained but to get any printer to undertake the treatise that would print it in its unlicensed state, the printer trusting the author and both running the risk. Whatever hesitations the printer may have had, Milton had none. He had taken no pains to conceal the authorship; and, when he found the doctrine of the treatise in disrepute, he had disdained even the pretence of the anonymous. The second edition, published in February 1643-4, appeared, as the first had done, without licence or registration, and indeed with no more distinct imprint at the foot of the title-page than "_London, Imprinted in the yeare_ 1664"; but, to make up for this informality, it contained Milton's dedication to the Parliament and the Assembly signed with his name. It was as if he said, "I do break your Ordinance for Printing, but I let you know who I am that do so." Since then Milton had published two more pamphlets--his _Tract on Education_, addressed to Hartlib (June 1644), and his _Bucer Tract_, continuing the Divorce subject (July 1644). In both of these he had conformed to the Ordinance. Both are duly registered in the Stationers' Books, the former as having been licensed by Mr. Cranford (_antè_, p. 233), the latter by Mr. Downham (_antè_, p. 255). In licensing the new Divorce Tract, even though it did consist mainly of extracts from Bucer, Mr. Downham must have been either off his guard or very good-natured. Milton's carelessness or contempt of the Ordinance for Printing had now found him out. The charge of heresy, or of monstrous and dangerous opinion, preferred against him by Palmer and the clergy, was one about which there might be much argument _pro_ and _con_, and with which most Parliamentary men might not be anxious to meddle. But here, in aid of that charge, another charge, much more definite, had been brought forward. The officials of the Stationers' Company were chosen from year to year; and the Master for the year beginning in the middle of 1644 was Mr. Robert Mead, with Mr. John Parker and Mr. Richard Whittaker for Wardens. It was these persons, if I mistake not, who thought themselves bound, either by sympathy with the horror caused by Milton's doctrine, or by sheer official duty, to oblige Mr. Palmer and his brethren of the Assembly by pointing out that both the editions of Milton's obnoxious pamphlet had been published in evasion of the law. There can be little doubt that the Assembly divines and the London clergy generally were at the back of the affair; but it was convenient for them to put forward others as the nominal accusers. "The Stationers' Company," these accusers virtually said, "knows nothing of these two publications, and has none of the discredit of them; they are not registered in the Company's books, and do not appear to have been ever licensed; and, if Mr. Milton, who has avowed himself the author, is to be questioned for the doctrine advanced in them, perhaps it would be well that he should at the same time have the imprints on his two title-pages put before him--_'Printed by T. P. and M. S. in Goldsmiths' Alley,'_ and _'London, Imprinted in the yeare_ 1644'--and asked how he dared defy the law in that way, and who the printers are that abetted him." Such, studying all the particulars, is the most exact interpretation I can put on the Petition of the Stationers' Company to the Commons, Aug. 24, as it affected Milton. There was a trade-feeling behind it. There was a resentment against certain printers and booksellers (probably quite well known to the Master and Wardens) for their contempt of trade-discipline, as well as against Milton for his part in the matter. It was really rather hard on Milton. For, doubtless, the new Ordinance for Printing had been passed by Parliament not with a view to any application of it to sound Parliamentarians like him, but as a check upon writers of the other side; and, doubtless, he was not singular in having neglected the Ordinance. Probably scores of Parliamentarian writers had taken the same liberty. Still, as he had offended against the letter of the law, and as those whom his doctrine had shocked now chose to avail themselves of this offence of his against the letter of the law, he found himself in an awkward position. All depended on the discretion of that "Committee of Printing," reinforced by four additional members, to which the Commons (Aug. 26) had entrusted the delicate task of dealing with him, and the farther task of revising the Ordinance of the previous year and seeing whether it could be improved or extended. They might trouble him much, or they might let him alone. They let him alone. The Committee, I find, did indeed proceed so far in the general business assigned to them. They must have even drafted some new or supplementary Ordinance for the regulation of Printing, and obtained the agreement of the House to the draft; for, though I am unable to find any record of such proceeding in the _Commons' Journals_, there is this distinct entry in the _Lords' Journals_ under date Sept. 18, 1644: "A message was brought from the House of Commons by Mr. Rous and others, to desire concurrence in two Ordinances--(1) Concerning Ordination of Ministers, (2) Concerning Printing. The answer returned was, That this House will send an answer to this message by messengers of their own." The Lords, it appears in the sequel, did apply themselves to the Ordination Ordinance, so that the Commons received it back amended, and it passed, Oct. 1. But I find no farther mention of the new Printing Ordinance. Cromwell's great Accommodation or Toleration motion, passed in the Commons, in Solicitor St. John's modified form, on the 13th of September, had, it may be remembered, caused a sudden pause among the Presbyterian zealots. It may have helped indirectly to strangle many things; and I should not wonder if among them was the prosecution of the business prescribed to the Committee of Printing by the Order of Aug. 26. The Accommodation Order was a demand generally for clearer air and breathing-room for everybody, more of English freedom, and less of Scottish inquisitorship. If there had been ever any real intention among the Parliamentary people to proceed against Milton, it had now to be dropped. THE AREOPAGITICA; A SPEECH FOR THE LIBERTY OF UNLICENSED PRINTING. One good effect the incident had produced. It had prescribed for Milton a new piece of work. This Parliamentary Ordinance for Printing with which it had been proposed to crush him; this whole system of Censorship and licensing of books that had prevailed so long in England and almost everywhere else; this delegation of the entire control of a nation's Literature to a state-agency consisting of a few prejudiced parsons and schoolmasters seated atop, to decide what should go into the funnel, and a Company of Stationers seated below, to see that nothing else came out of the funnel:-was not this a subject on which something might be said? Would it not be more than a revenge if Milton were to express his thoughts on this subject? Would it not be a service of moment to England? What might not be hoped for from the Parliament if they were fitly addressed on such a theme? It was the great question of Liberty in all its forms that England was then engaged in. Civil Liberty, Liberty of Worship, Liberty of Conscience, were the phrases ringing in the English air. But in the midst of this general clamour for Liberty no one yet had moved for one form of Liberty, which would be a very substantial instalment of the whole, and yet was practicable and perhaps within sight--the Liberty of Unlicensed Printing. Let this then be Milton's new undertaking! In the fact that it had been so clearly assigned to him, nay, forced upon him by circumstances, he began to discern a certain regulation, not quite dependent on his own forethought, of the recent course of his life. "When the Bishops at length had fallen prostrate, aimed at by the shafts of all, and there was no more trouble from _them_," he afterwards wrote, reviewing this portion of his life, "then I turned my thoughts to other matters--if I might in anything promote the cause of true and solid liberty; which is chiefliest to be sought for not without, but within, and to be gained not by fighting, but by the right basing and the right administration of life. When, therefore, I perceived that there are in all three sorts of liberty, without the presence of which life can hardly anyhow be suitably gone through--Ecclesiastical, Domestic or Private, and Civil--then, as I had already written on the first, and as I saw that the Magistrate was sedulously occupied with the third, I took to myself that which was left second, viz. Domestic Liberty. That also appearing to consist of three parts--whether Marriage were rightly arranged, whether the Education of Children were properly conducted, and whether, finally, there were the power of free Philosophising--I explained what I thought, not only concerning the due contracting of Marriage, but also, if it were necessary, the due dissolution of the same.... On that subject I put forth some books, exactly at that time when husband and wife were often the bitterest enemies, he at home with his children, and she, the mother of the family, busy in the camp of the enemy, threatening death and destruction to her husband.... Then I treated the Education Question more briefly in one little book.... Finally, on the subject of the liberation of the Press, so that the judgment of the true and the false, what should be published and what suppressed, should not be in the hands of a few men, and these mostly unlearned and of common capacity, erected into a censorship over books--an agency through which no one almost either can or will send into the light anything that is above the vulgar taste--on this subject, in the form of an express oration, I wrote my _Areopagitica_." [Footnote: The Latin of the passage will be found in the _Defensio Secunda pro Popalo Anglicano._] In this passage, written in 1654, there is a slight anachronism. _All_ Milton's Marriage and Divorce tracts had not yet been published: two of them were still to come. At the moment at which we have arrived, however, that mapping out of his labours on the Domestic or Private form of the general question of Liberty which the passage explains must have already been in his mind. He had written largely on a Reform in Marriage and Divorce, and more briefly on a Reform in Education. In the Marriage and Divorce subject he had found himself met with an opposition which did not permit him yet to lay it aside; but meanwhile, in consequence of that opposition, nay, of the very form it had taken, there had dawned on him, by way of interlude and yet of strictly continuous industry, a great third enterprise. In any lull of war with the Titans what is Jove doing? Fingering his next thunderbolt. Released from all trouble by the Committee of the Commons, and left at leisure in Aldersgate Street, through September, October, and November, 1644, what was Milton doing? Preparing his _Areopagitica_. It appeared November 24, a month after the Second Battle of Newbury, and the very day before that outbreak by Cromwell, against the Earl of Manchester for slackness in the battle, which led to the Self-Denying Ordinance and the New-Modelling of the Army. It was a small quarto of 40 pages with this title:-- AREOPAGITICA; A Speech of Mr. John Milton for the Liberty of Unlicens'd Printing, to the Parlament of England. [Greek: Touleutheron d'ekeino, ei tis thelei polei Chræston ti bouleum eis meson pherein, echon. Kai tauth o chræzon, lampros esth, o mæ thelon, Siga ti touton estin isaiteron polei;] _Euripid. Hicetid._ This is true Liberty, when free-born men Having to advise the public may speak free, Which he who can, and will, deserv's high praise, Who neither can nor will, may hold his peace; What can be juster in a State than this? _Euripid. Hicetid_. London, Printed in the yeare 1644. There was no printer's or bookseller's name to the pamphlet; and it came forth unlicensed and unregistered. It would have been indeed absurd to ask one of the Censors to license a pamphlet cutting up the whole system of Censorship. Still here was another deliberate breach of the law by Milton. It was probably to soften and veil the offence that the pamphlet was cast into the form of a continuous Speech or Pleading by Milton to Parliament directly, without recognition of the public in preface or epilogue. [Footnote: That Nov. 24, 1644, was the day of the publication of the _Areopagitica_ I learn from Thomason's MS. note "Novemb. 24" in the copy among the King's Pamphlets in the British Museum; Press Mark 12. G. e.9./182.] The _Areopagitica_ is now by far the best-known of Milton's pamphlets, and indeed the only one of his prose-works generally read. Knowing his other prose-writings, I have sometimes been angry at this choice of one of his pamphlets by which to recollect him as an English prose-writer. I have ascribed it to our cowardly habit of taking delight only in what we already agree with, of liking to read only what we already think, or have been schooled into considering glorious, axiomatic, and British. As there are parts of Milton's prose-writings that would be even now as discomposing and irritating to an orthodox Briton as to an orthodox Spaniard or Russian, a genuine British reader might be expected perhaps to tend to those parts by preference. Hence there is something not wholly pleasing in the exclusive rush in our country now-a-days upon the _Areopagitica_ as representative of Milton's prose. And yet the reasons for the fact are perhaps sufficient. Though the doctrine of the Treatise is now axiomatic, one remembers, as one reads, that the battle for it had then to be fought, that Milton was the first and greatest to fight it, and that this very book did more than any other to make the doctrine an axiom in Britain. But, besides this historical interest, the book possesses an interest of peculiar literary attractiveness. It is perhaps the most skilful of all Milton's prose- writings, the most equable and sustained, the easiest to be read straight through at once, and the fittest to leave one glowing sensation of the power of the author's genius. It is a pleading of the highest eloquence and courage, with interspersed passages of curious information, keen wit, and even a rich humour, such as we do not commonly look for in Milton. He must have taken great pains to make the performance popular. After an exordium of respectful compliment to the Parliament, the rhetorical skill of which is as masterly as the sincerity is obvious, Milton announces his purpose. He thinks so highly of the Parliament that he will pay them the supreme compliment of questioning the wisdom of one of their ordinances and asking them to repeal it. He then quotes the leading clause of the Printing Ordinance of June 14, 1643, enacting that no Book, Pamphlet, or Paper should thenceforth be printed unless it had previously been approved and licensed by the official censors or one of them. He is to challenge, he says, only that part of the Ordinance. He is not to challenge the part for preventing piracy of copyright; which he thinks quite just, though he can see that it may be abused so as to annoy honest men and booksellers. From a passage farther on we learn also that Milton did not object to a prohibition of anonymous publication; for he refers with entire approbation to a previous Parliamentary Ordinance, enacting that no book should be printed unless the names of the author and printer, or at least that of the printer, were registered. If Parliament had stopped at that Order, they would have been well advised; it is the licensing Enactment of the subsequent Order of June 1643 that he is to reason against. Books, indeed, were things of which a Commonwealth ought to take no less vigilant charge than of their living subjects, "For Books are not absolutely dead things, but do contain a potency of life in them to be as active as that soul whose progeny they are." All the more reason to beware of violence against books. "As good almost kill a man as kill a good book. Who kills a man kills a reasonable creature, God's image; but he who destroys a good book kills reason itself, kills the image of God as it were in the eye. Many a man lives a burden to the earth; but a good book is the precious life-blood of a master-spirit, embalmed and treasured up on purpose to a life beyond life." And how had this slaying of books, and even the prevention of their birth, by a Censorship, grown up? After a historical sketch of the state of the law and practice respecting books among the Greeks, the Romans, and the early and mediaeval Christians, Milton arrives at the conclusion that the system of Censorship and Licensing was an invention of the worst age of the Papacy, perfected by the Spanish Inquisition. He gives one or two specimens of the elaborate _imprimaturs_ prefixed to old Italian books, and makes much fun of them. The Papal invention, he continues, had passed on into Prelatic England. "These are the pretty responsories, these are the dear antiphonies that so bewitched our late prelates and their chaplains with the goodly echo they made, and besotted us to the gay imitation of a lordly _imprimatur_, one from the Lambeth House [the Archbishop of Canterbury's Palace, where MSS. had to be left by their authors for revision by his chaplains], another from the west end of Paul's [the site of Stationers' Hall]." Yes! but, whoever were the inventors, might not the invention itself be good? To this question Milton next proceeds, and it leads him into the vitals of the subject. He contends, in the first place, for the scholar's liberty of universal reading at his own peril, his right of unlimited intellectual inquisitiveness. What though there are bad and mischievous books? "Books are as meats and viands are, some of good, some of evil substance, and yet God in that unapocryphal vision said, without exception, 'Rise, Peter, kill and eat.'" Good and evil are inextricably mixed up together in everything in this world; and the very discipline to virtue and strength consists in full walking amid both, distinguishing, avoiding, and choosing. "I cannot praise a fugitive and cloistered virtue, unexercised and unbreathed, that never sallies out to see her adversary, but slinks out of the race where that immortal garland is to be run for notwithstanding dust and heat. Assuredly we bring not innocence into the world, we bring impurity much rather; that which purifies is trial, and trial is by what is contrary." There is much more in the same strain, a favourite one with Milton, with instances of readings in evil books turned to good account. Plato's Censorship of Books, or general regulation of literature by the magistrate, is handled gently, as only Plato's whimsy for his own airy Republic. What if the principle of State- licensing were carried out? "Whatever thing we hear or see, sitting, walking, travelling, or conversing, may be fitly called our book." Well, shall the State regulate singing, dancing, street-music, concerts in the house, looking out at windows, standing on balconies, eating, drinking, dressing, love-making? "It would be better done to learn that the law must needs be frivolous which goes to restrain things uncertainly, and yet equally, working to good and to evil. And, were I the chooser, a dram of well-doing should be preferred before many times as much the forcible hindrance of evil-doing." Besides, suppression even of such tangible things as books by a Censorship was really impracticable, and everybody knew it. In spite of the existing Censorship, were not Royalist libels against the Parliament in everybody's hands in London every week, wet from the press? The system was a monstrous injustice and annoyance, and it did not answer its own end. If the end were honestly the suppression of false and bad books, and if that end were in itself proper, and also practicable with sufficient means, all would still depend on the qualifications of the Licensers. And here Milton frankly lets the existing English licensers of Books, and especially the twelve parish-ministers among them, know his opinion of their office:-- "It cannot be denied but that he who is made judge to sit upon the birth or death of Books, whether they may be wafted into this world or not, had need to be a man above the common measure, both studious, learned, and judicious: there may be else no mean mistakes in the censure of what is passable or not; which is also no mean injury. If he be of such worth as behoves him, there cannot be a more tedious and unpleasing journey-work, a greater loss of time levied upon his head, than to be made the perpetual reader of unchosen books and pamphlets, ofttimes huge volumes. There is no book that is acceptable unless at certain seasons; but to be enjoined the reading of that at all times, and in a hand scarce legible, whereof three pages would not down at any time in the fairest print, is an imposition which I cannot believe how he that values time and his own studies, or is but of a sensible nostril, should be able to endure. In this one thing I crave leave of the present Licensers to be pardoned for so thinking: who doubtless took this office up, looking on it through their obedience to the Parliament, whose command perhaps made all things seem easy and unlaborious to them. But that this short trial hath wearied them out already, their own expressions and excuses to them who make so many journeys to solicit their license (!) are testimony enough. Seeing therefore those who now possess the employment by all evident signs wish themselves well rid of it, and that no man of worth, none that is not a plain unthrift of his own hours, is ever likely to succeed them, except he mean to put himself to the salary of a press-corrector, we may easily foresee what kind of Licensers we are to expect hereafter--either ignorant, imperious, and remiss, or basely pecuniary.... How much it hurts and hinders the Licensers themselves in the calling of their ministry, more than any secular employment, if they will discharge that office as they ought, so that they must neglect either the one duty or the other, I insist not, because it is a particular, but leave it to their own conscience how they will decide it there." Closely following this glance at the Licensers and _their_ business is a description of the true Author and _his_ business, and of the indignities and discomforts put upon him by the Licensing system:-- "When a man writes to the world, he summons up all his reason and deliberation to assist him; he searches, meditates, is industrious, and likely consults and confers with his judicious friends: after all which done he takes himself to be informed in what he writes, as well as any that writ before him. If in this, the most consummate act of his fidelity and ripeness, no years, no industry, no former proof of his abilities, can bring him to that state of maturity as not to be still mistrusted and suspected unless he carry all his considerate diligence, all his midnight watchings and expense of Palladian oil, to the hasty view of an unleisured Licenser--perhaps much his younger, perhaps far his inferior in judgment, perhaps one who never knew the labour of book-writing; and, if he be not repulsed or slighted, must appear in print like a punie [child] with his guardian, and his censor's hand on the back of his title, to be his bail and surety that he is no idiot or seducer;--it cannot be but a dishonour and derogation to the Author, to the Book, to the privilege and dignity of Learning. And what if the Author shall be one so copious of fancy as to have many things well worth the adding come into his mind, after licensing, while the book is yet under the press-- which not seldom happens to the best and diligentest writers, and that perhaps a dozen times in one book? The Printer dares not go beyond his licensed copy: so often then must the Author trudge to his leave-giver, that those his new insertions may be viewed; and many a jaunt will be made ere that Licenser (for it must be the same man) can either be found, or found at leisure. Meanwhile either the press must stand still (which is no small damage) or the Author lose his accuratest thoughts, and send the book forth worse than he had made it; which is the greatest melancholy and vexation that can befall. And how can a man teach with authority, which is the life of teaching, how can he be a _doctor_ in his book, as he ought to be or else had better be silent, whenas all he teaches, all he delivers, is but under the tuition, under the correction, of his patriarchal Licenser, to blot or alter what precisely accords not with the hide-bound humour which he calls his judgment?" The last half of the pamphlet is perhaps more knotty and powerful than the first. Milton's well-known retrospect of what he had seen in Italy, with his reminiscence of Galileo, occurs here. But his drift has now been made sufficiently apparent; and we shall best discharge what remains of our duty by presenting certain pieces of autobiographical information which the pamphlet supplies:-- We learn, for one thing, that Milton did not stand alone in his detestation of the Censorship, but represented a considerable constituency in the matter, and had even been solicited to be their spokesman and write this pamphlet. Those very words of complaint, he says, which he had heard, six years before, uttered by learned men in Italy against the Inquisition, it had been his fortune to hear uttered of late by "as learned men" in England against the Licensing Ordinance of the Parliament. "And that so generally," he adds, "that, when I had disclosed myself a companion of their discontent, I might say, if without envy, that he whom an honest quæstorship had endeared to the Sicilians [Cicero] was not more by them importuned against Verres than the favourable opinion which I had among many who honour ye, and are known and respected by ye, loaded me with entreaties and persuasions that I would not despair to lay together that which just reason should bring into my mind toward the removal of an undeserved thraldom upon Learning. That this is not therefore the disburdening of a particular fancy, but the common grievance of all those who had prepared their minds and studies above the vulgar pitch to advance truth in others, thus much may satisfy." Again, in a pamphlet the subject of which is Books and Authors, we have naturally some incidental indications of Milton's literary tastes and preferences. The most interesting of these are perhaps the following:--He was as fond as ever of Spenser, "our sage and serious poet" as he calls him, "whom I dare be known to think a better teacher than Scotus or Aquinas." He thought Arminius "acute and distinct," though perverted. He would be no slave even to Plato, but would take the liberty of quizzing any of the oddities even of that gorgeous intellect. On moral grounds, he could not bear Aristophanes, and wondered how Plato could have recommended "such trash" as the comedies of that writer to the tyrant Dionysius. His great liking for Euripides is shown by his taking four lines from that poet's _Hiketides_ as the motto for the pamphlet. Lord Bacon is again mentioned reverently, once as "Sir Francis Bacon" and again as "Viscount St. Albans." There is a tribute of high admiration to the Parliamentarian peer, Lord Brooke, so recently lost to England, and to the tract on the _Nature of Episcopacy_ he had left behind him: those last words of his dying charge which "I know will ever be of dear and honoured regard with _ye_, so full of meekness and breathing charity that, next to His last testament who bequeathed love and peace to his disciples, I cannot call to mind where I have read or heard words more mild and peaceful." Selden is again referred to and complimented: "one of your own now sitting in Parliament, the chief of learned men reputed in this land." Acquaintance, on the other hand, is implied or avowed, on Milton's part, with some of the most notoriously ribald writers that the world had produced: with Petronius Arbiter, and him of Arozzo "dreaded and yet dear to the Italian Courtiers," and an Englishman whom he will not name, "for posterity's sake," but "whom Harry the Eighth named in merriment his Vicar of Hell." We may add, that Wycliffe and Knox are both honourably mentioned in the _Areopagitica_: Knox as the "Reformer of a Kingdom," and Wycliffe as an Englishman who had perhaps had potentially in him all that had since come from the Bohemian Huss, the German Luther, or the French Calvin. A more special piece of information supplied, or rather only confirmed, by the _Areopagitica_, is that Milton, when he wrote it, had broken off utterly from the Presbyterians, and regarded the domination of that party in the Westminster Assembly with complete disgust. "If it come to inquisitioning again, and licensing," he says, "and that we are so timorous of ourselves, and so suspicious of all men, as to fear each book, and the shaking of every leaf, before we know what the contents are,--if some, who but of late were little better than silenced from preaching, shall come now to silence us from reading, except what they please,--it cannot be guessed what is intended by some but a second tyranny over Learning; and will soon put it out of controversy that Bishops and Presbyters are the same to us, both name and thing." Again, a little farther on, "This is not, ye Covenants and Protestations that we have made, this is not to put down Prelaty: this is but to chop an Episcopacy; this is but to translate the Palace _Metropolitan_ from one kind of dominion into another." Again, "A man may be a heretic in the Truth; and, if he believe things only because his pastor says so, or the Assembly so determines, without knowing other reason, though his belief be true, yet the very truth he holds becomes his heresy." Again, "He who hears what praying there is for light and clearer knowledge to be sent down among us would think of other matters to be constituted, beyond the discipline of Geneva, framed and fabricked already to our hands." Again, of Ecclesiastical Assemblies in general, and the Westminster Assembly in particular, "Neither is God appointed and confined where and out of what place these his chosen shall be first heard to speak; for He sees not as man sees, chooses not as man chooses, lest we should devote ourselves again to set places, and Assemblies, and outward callings of men, planting our faith one while in the old Convocation House, and another while in the Chapel at Westminster; when all the faith that shall be there canonized is not sufficient, without plain convincement and the charity of patient instruction, to supple the least bruise of conscience, to edify the meanest Christian who desires to walk in the spirit and not in the letter of human trust, for all the number of voices that can there be made--no, though Harry the Seventh himself there, with all his liege tombs about him, should lend them voices from the dead to swell their number," [Footnote: The original meeting-place of the Westminster Assembly, and their meeting-place in the summer months, was Henry the Seventh's Chapel. In winter it was the Jerusalem Chamber--which had been the Convocation House of the English clergy before the Long Parliament.] Again, he says that, if the Presbyterians, themselves so recently released from Episcopal tyranny, should not have been taught by their own suffering, but should continue active in suppressing others, "it would be no unequal distribution in the first place to suppress the suppressors themselves." Milton, however, the _Areopagitica_ proves, had not passed away from Presbyterianism only to become an ordinary Congregationalist or Independent. In the fight between the Presbyterians and the Independents of the Assembly he would now, undoubtedly, have taken part with the Independents; but Messrs. Goodwin, Nye, and the rest of them, had they interrogated him why, would have found him a strange adherent. For he had passed on into an Independency, if it could be called "Independency," more extreme than theirs, and resembling rather the vague Independency that Cromwell represented, and that was rife in the Army. The very notion of an official "minister of Religion," anyhow appointed, had become comical to him. It had come to seem to him supremely ridiculous that there should be anything like a caste of Brahmins or officers of Religion in England, by whatever means that caste should be formed or recruited. To curtail proof under this head, let me give but one extract. It is the richest bit of sheer humour that I have yet found in Milton, and is better and deeper, in that kind, than anything in Sydney Smith:-- BEING RELIGIOUS BY DEPUTY: OR THE USE OF A POPULAR LONDON CLERGYMAN. "There is not any burden that some would gladlier post off to another than the charge and care of their Religion. There be--who knows not that there be?--of Protestants and professors who live and die in as arrant and implicit faith as any lay Papist of Loretto. A wealthy man, addicted to his pleasure and profits, finds Religion to be a traffic so entangled, and of so many piddling accounts, that of all mysteries he cannot skill to keep a stock going on that trade. What should he do? Fain he would have the name to be religious; fain he would bear up with his neighbours in that. What does he therefore but resolves to give over toiling, and to find himself out some factor, to whose care and credit he may commit the whole managing of his religious affairs: some Divine of note and estimation _that_ must be. To him he adheres; resigns the whole warehouse of his Religion, with all the locks and keys, into his custody; and indeed makes the very person of that man his Religion--esteems his associating with him a sufficient evidence and commendatory of his own piety. So that a man may say his Religion is now no more within himself, but is become a dividual movable, and goes and comes near him according as that good man frequents the house. He entertains him, gives him gifts, feasts him, lodges him; his Religion comes home at night, prays, is liberally supt and sumptuously laid to sleep, rises, is saluted; and, after the malmsey or some well-spiced brewage, and better breakfasted than He whose morning appetite would have gladly fed on green figs between Bethany and Jerusalem, his Religion walks abroad at eight, and leaves his kind entertainer in the shop, trading all day without his Religion." What light does the _Areopagitica_ throw on Milton's notion of Toleration, or Liberty of Conscience, and on his feelings towards the Sects and Sectaries generally among whom he was now ranked? It is not uncommon to regard the _Areopagitica_ as one of the first and greatest English pleas for Liberty of Conscience; and, broadly viewed, it is. But strictly it is not a plea for Liberty of Conscience or for Toleration, but only for the liberty of unlicensed Printing. Milton's views of Liberty of Conscience appear only by implication in the course of this one argument. So far as they do appear, it cannot be said that Milton advocated a Liberty of Conscience so complete and absolute as Roger Williams's or John Goodwin's. He even saves himself from the imputation of doing so. "If all cannot be of one mind," he says, "this doubtless is more wholesome, more prudent, and more Christian, that many be tolerated, rather than all compelled. I mean not tolerated Popery and open superstition; which, as it extirpates all religious and civil supremacies, so itself should be extirpate--provided first that all charitable and a compassionate means be used to win and regain the weak and the misled. That also which is impious or evil absolutely, either against faith or manners, no law can possibly permit that intends not to unlaw itself." There are hints also to the effect that, while Milton wanted liberty of unlicensed publication for all kinds of books, he did not deny the right of the magistrate to call writers to account, in certain cases, for the opinions they had published. On the whole, therefore, in his theory of Toleration, Milton was decidedly behind some of his contemporaries. One can see, however, that he was uneasy in his exceptions, and had little care for them in comparison with the principle he meant them to limit. Practically he stands forth in the _Areopagitica_ as the advocate of a Toleration that would have satisfied all the necessities of the juncture, by giving full liberty not only to orthodox Congregationalists, but also to Baptists, so-called Antinomians, and Seekers, and perhaps all other Protestant sects that had any real rooting at that time in English society. His whole oration breathes the full principle rather than the exceptions. "Give me," he says, "the liberty to know, to utter and to argue freely according to my conscience, above all liberties." And he makes a brave defence of the existing Sects, without putting a mark of exclusion on any. Those Sects and Schisms, Sects and Schisms, which weak men were bewailing, and the Presbyterians were calling on Parliament to crush, appeared to Milton not only something that must be permitted because it could not be prevented, but positively the finest English phenomenon of the time, and the richest in promise:-- "The light which we have gained was given us not to be ever staring on, but by it to discover onward things more remote from our knowledge. It is not the unfrocking of a Priest, the unmitring of a Bishop, and the removing him from off the Presbyterian shoulders, that will make us a happy nation. No, if other things as great in the Church, and in the rule of life both economical and political, be not looked into and reformed, we have looked so long upon the blaze that Zuinglius and Calvin hath beaconed up to us that we are stark blind. There be who perpetually complain of Schisms and Sects, and make it such a calamity that any man dissents from _their_ maxims.... Lords and Commons of England, consider what Nation it is whereof ye are, and whereof ye are the governors: a Nation not slow and dull, but of a quick, ingenious, and piercing spirit, acute to invent, subtle and sinewy to discourse, not beneath the reach of any point the highest that human capacity can soar to.... Now once again, by all concurrence of signs, and by the general instinct of holy and devout men, as they daily and solemnly express their thoughts, God is decreeing to begin some new and great period in his Church, even to the reforming of Reformation itself. What does He then but reveal himself to his servants, and, as his manner is, first to his Englishmen--I say, as his manner is, first to us, though we mark not the method of his counsels and are unworthy? Behold now this vast City, a city of refuge, the mansion-house of Liberty, encompassed and surrounded with His protection. The shop of war hath not there more anvils and hammers working, to fashion out the plates and instruments of armed Justice in defence of beleaguered Truth, than there be pens and heads there, sitting by their studious lamps, musing, searching, revolving new notions and ideas, wherewith to present, as with their homage and their fealty, the approaching Reformation: others as fast reading, trying all things, assenting to the force of reason and convincement. What could a man require more from a Nation so pliant and so prone to seek after knowledge? What wants there to such a towardly and pregnant soil, but wise and faithful labourers, to make a knowing people, a Nation of prophets, of sages, and of worthies?... Where there is much desire to learn, there of necessity will be much arguing, much writing, many opinions; for Opinion in good men is but Knowledge in the making. Under these fantastic terrors of Sect and Schism we wrong the earnest and zealous thirst after knowledge and understanding which God hath stirred up in this city. What some lament of we rather should rejoice at, should praise rather this pious forwardness among men to reassume the ill- deputed care of their Religion into their own hands again.... As in a body, when the blood is fresh, the spirits pure and vigorous, not only to vital, but to rational faculties, and those in the acutest and the pertest operations of art and subtlety, it argues in what good plight and constitution the body is, so, when the cheerfulness of the people is so sprightly up as that it has not only wherewith to guard well its own freedom and safety, but to spare, and to bestow upon the solidest and sublimest points of controversy and new invention, it betokens us not degenerated, nor drooping to a fatal decay, but casting off the old and wrinkled skin of corruption to outlive these pangs and wax young again, entering the glorious ways of Truth and prosperous virtue destined to become great and honourable in these latter ages. Methinks I see in my mind a noble and puissant Nation rousing herself like a strong man after sleep, and shaking her invincible locks; methinks I see her as an eagle mewing her mighty youth, and kindling her undazzled eyes at the full midday beam; purging and unsealing her long-abused sight at the fountain itself of heavenly radiance, while the whole noise of timorous and flocking birds, with those also that love the twilight, flutter about, amazed at what she means, and in their envious gabble would prognosticate a year of Sects and Schisms." After this it is bathos to speak of the Stationers' Company; but we must do so. For, at the end of the _Areopagitica_ there is a distinct insinuation by Milton that the Ordinance he was asking the Parliament to repeal was less the invention of Parliament itself than of some cunning Stationers. "If we may believe those men," he says, "whose profession gives them cause to inquire most [_i.e._ some worthy booksellers of Milton's acquaintance] it may be doubted there was in it the fraud of some old patentees and monopolisers in the trade of bookselling; who, under pretence of the poor in their Company not to be defrauded, and the just retaining of each man his several copy--which God forbid should be gainsaid--brought divers glozing colours to the House, which were indeed but colours, and serving to no end except it be to exercise a superiority over their neighbours." Milton makes a farther and worse insinuation. "Another end," he says, "is thought was aimed at by some of them in procuring by petition this order--that, having power in their hands, malignant books might easier scape abroad [_i.e._ get about the country], as the event shows." Here was a hit for some of the good people about Paternoster Row. SECOND PROSECUTION OF MILTON BY THE STATIONERS' COMPANY: CONDUCT OF THE HOUSE OF LORDS IN THE CASE. It might have been safer for Milton to let the Stationers alone. For, within five weeks after the publication of the _Areopagitica_, I find him again in trouble, and all by the doing of the Stationers' Company, in revenge for his past offences and this new insult. The story, as I have dug it out of the _Lords' Journals_, with some help from old pamphlets, is as follows:-- Monday the 9th of December, 1644, there being twenty-one Peers present, and Lord Grey of Wark in the chair, "a scandalous printed libel against the Peerage of this realm was brought into the House and read; and this House ordered, that the Master and Wardens of the Company of Stationers shall attend this House at four of the clock this afternoon, to know of them whether they do know of the print and can discover the author of it." That same afternoon, accordingly, there being now but fifteen peers present, the three gentlemen who had been sent for--Messrs. Mead, Parker, and Whittaker--appeared, and with this result: "The Master and Wardens of the Company of Stationers desired some longer time, and they will do their best endeavours to find out the printer that printed the scandalous libel brought into this House this day; and this House gave two or three days longer." On Friday the 13th of December they have not yet found either the author or the printer; but they have caught a poor fellow, George Jeffrey, apprentice to a hosier in Cornhill, who had been dispersing copies of the libel in London. Examined by the Earls of Salisbury and Kent, aided by the Judges, this George Jeffrey confesses all about it. On Monday morning last (the very day on which the Lords first discussed the subject) he had found two-and-twenty copies of the thing between the stall-boards of his master's stall, put there by he knew not whom. He had taken them into the shop, read one of them, and been so greatly amused by it that he had told his neighbours of the prize. Some of the more unruly of the neighbours had snatched at copies and carried them off, so that he had only two left. When he found that there was a hue and cry on the matter, and that he had got himself into trouble, he had done what he could. He had sent his own two remaining copies to the Lord Mayor, and had recovered six of the other copies and sent them to the Mayor too, naming the persons from whom he got them back. One was an exciseman, one an oilman; and one or two were apprentices like himself; but there was also one Thomas Heath, who was actually the Lord Mayor's kinsman. This was positively all he knew of the matter; and he could not tell where the papers came from, nor where any more were to be found. Apparently the Peers believed him, for he was discharged on his own promise to attend again if he should be called for. The libel, however, seems to have been unusually flagrant. The Peers sent a copy of George Jeffrey's examination to the Lord Mayor, with instructions that he should both give an account of what he had already done in the business and also prosecute it farther. It is not till Dec. 26 that we hear more. On that day, two-and-twenty Peers being present, and nothing having been farther reported either by the Lord Mayor or the Stationers, it was ordered "that the Lord Mayor of London and the Printers be sent to, to give an account of the scandalous paper printed and dispersed, what they have done in discovering the Author, Printer, and Publisher." The Mayor and the Stationers still not responding, the order was repeated more peremptorily on Saturday, Dec. 28, one-and-twenty Peers being present. The gentleman-usher of the House went there and then for the two Wardens of the Stationers' Company, who forthwith appeared and gave this account: "They have used their best endeavours to find out the printer and author of the scandalous libel, but they cannot yet make any discovery thereof, the letter [type] being so common a letter; and further _complained of the frequent printing of scandalous Books by divers, as Hezekiah Woodward and Jo. Milton._"--Here was an extremely clever trick of Messrs. Parker and Whittaker! They were themselves in trouble for not being good detectives: what if they diverted the attention of the Peers, while they were in this angry mood, upon other objects? It is as if they said to the Peers, "It is a very hard matter sometimes to find out the authors and printers of scandalous tracts; but really the abuse has attained to frightful dimensions, and perhaps the leniency of your Lordships in cases where the authors of scandalous tracts are well enough known encourages others. Last August, for example, we took the liberty of calling the attention of the House of Commons to a Tract on Divorce by Mr. John Milton, which the Assembly unanimously condemns as containing horrid doctrine, and which Mr. Palmer denounced on that ground in the hearing of your Lordships. It was our duty to do so, because the Tractate, in any case, was unlicensed and unregistered, and therefore a violation of the Printing Ordinance. The Commons referred the subject to their Committee for Printing, but nothing appears to have been done. And now, as your Lordships have sent for us on this other matter, in which we are sorry not to have succeeded as we could have wished, allow us to mention that the same Mr. Milton has since then--in fact, only last month-put forth another pamphlet, called _Areopagitica_, with his name to it certainly and addressed to your Lordships and the other House, but with no printer's name, and unlicensed and unregistered, like most of its predecessors. The pamphlet contains some very injurious personal reflections on us; but we should not think of mentioning it merely on that ground. It is very bold and strange altogether, very disrespectful to the Assembly, and is an attack on the whole Ordinance for Printing which it wilfully breaks. Besides Mr. Milton there are others as bad: for instance, Mr. Hezekiah Woodward." Who Mr. Hezekiah Woodward was the reader already, in some degree, knows. He was that old friend of Samuel Hartlib's to whom Hartlib, in Aug. 1644, had addressed a letter requesting his opinion of Edwards's _Antapologia_, and who had furnished that opinion, which was published, with Hartlib's letter, in the following month (_antè_). He must have been fond of using his pen; for I find him to have been the author of at least seven other pamphlets, published before our present date, viz. _The Kings Chronicle_ (1643); _Three Kingdoms made One_ (1643); _The Cause, Use, and Cure of Fear_ (1643); _A Good Soldier maintaining his Militia_ (1644); _The Sentence from Reason and Scripture against Archbishops and Bishops, with their Curates_ (1644); _As you were_ (1644); _Inquiries into the Causes of our Miseries_ (1644). The last-named but one of these pamphlets gives at least one additional particular about Woodward. Its full title is "_As you were: or a Reducing (if possibly any) seduc't ones to facing-about, turning head-front against God, by the Recrimination (so intended) upon Mr. J. G. (Pastor of the Church in Coleman Street) in point of fighting against God. By an unworthy auditor of the said (Juditious pious Divine) Master John Goodwin._" This may have been the very pamphlet, or one of the pamphlets, of Woodward which the Stationers had in view when they complained of him; for it was published Nov. 13, 1644, or exactly eleven days before the _Areopagitica_, and it appeared anonymously and without a licence. Out of the confused wording of the title we gather that Woodward was a hearer and admirer of John Goodwin, and that the tract was intended as in some sort a vindication of that Sectary against attacks that had been made upon him in connexion more especially with a pamphlet of his entitled _Theomachia_. All this, though slight, is not uninteresting. It presents to us Woodward as a London citizen of what maybe called the Hartlib-Goodwin connexion, and possibly therefore known to Milton personally. He lived in Aldermanbury, and was addicted to writing pamphlets. From what I have read of them I judge him to have been a mild, hazy-headed person, with a liking for indefiniteness and elbow-room rather than Presbyterian strictness, and therefore ranking among the Sectaries, but of such small mark individually that, but for his incidental association with Milton in the business under notice, we should not now have had any particular interest in inquiring about him. For some reason or other, however, the Stationers thought him worth their hostility. Had they any trade dislike to Hartlib? It is somewhat curious that the two persons they selected to be complained against were two of Hartlib's friends. [Footnote: For particulars here about Woodward, in addition to those already given (_antè_ pp. 230-1), my authorities are (1) The British Museum Library Catalogue: _Woodward, Hezekiah_; (2) The two publications named as consulted by myself, viz., Woodward's _As You Were_, and his joint-tract with Hartlib, _A Short Letter, &c., with a large but modest answer_, which last is not given in the Museum Catalogue among Woodward's publications, but came in my way in my researches for Hartlib; (3) MS. notes of Thomason in Museum copies of these two publications: viz., in the first the words "suposed to be Ezech. Woodward's," and the date "Novemb. 13, London;" in the second the date "Sept 14."] To resume our story from the _Lords' Journals_:--The device of the two Wardens for diverting the attention of the Peers was for the moment successful. The Peers on the same day (Sat. Dec. 28), as soon as the Wardens had withdrawn, passed this order: "Hereupon it is ordered, that it be referred to Mr. Justice Reeves and Mr. Justice Bacon to examine the said Woodward and Milton, and such others as the Master and Wardens of the Stationers' Company shall give information of, concerning the printing and publishing their Books and Pamphlets, and to examine also what they know concerning the Libel [the Libel against the Peers of which George Jeffrey had dispersed copies], who was the author, printer, and contriver of it; and the Gentleman-Usher shall attach the parties, and bring them before the Judges; and the Stationers are to be present at their examinations, and give evidence against them." This was clearly a tighter action against Milton than the former one by the Commons. What came of it?--Woodward's business came up on the next Tuesday, Dec. 31, when Mr. Justice Bacon informed this House of some papers which Ezechiell Woodward [it was "Hezekiah" before] confessed he made: "Hereupon it is ordered, that Mr. Serjeant Whitfield shall peruse them over, and report them to this House; and, because the said Woodward is now in custody of the Gentleman-Usher, it is ordered, He shall be released, giving his own bond to appear before this House when he shall be summoned." Woodward's offence, it would therefore seem, was considered venial. He had nothing to do with the Libel that was the special subject of inquiry; and, though he had confessed to the authorship of some anonymous papers recently published, there seemed to be nothing formidable in them. He might go back to his house in Aldermanbury on his own recognisances. [Footnote: "_Soft Answers unto Hard Censures_, London 1645," is the title of a tract of Woodward's subsequent to the incident of the text, and possibly referring to it; after which I find him, so far as there is evidence, totally silent till 1656. In that year he published four new religious or politico religious pamphlets; which is the last I know of him at present.] But what of Milton? Not a word about _him_ in the Journals of the same day. He was not in the custody of the Gentleman-Usher then at all events; and so far he had been more fortunate than Woodward. Possibly, he had had a call from the Usher in his house in Aldersgate Street on the Saturday or Monday, had accompanied him to the chambers of Mr. Justice Reeve or Mr. Justice Bacon, had confronted the Master and Wardens of the Stationers' Company there, and had there given such a satisfactory and straightforward account of his questioned pamphlets that there was no need for detaining him, or troubling him farther. Some report may have been made to the Peers by the Justices; but if so, it was of such a kind, and the Peers themselves had such information about Milton, that they thought it best to let the matter drop without the least farther mention of it. If even two or three of them had read the _Areopagitica_ (and probably even more had), that alone would have honourably acquitted him. It appears, however, from a subsequent allusion by Milton himself, as if the _Doctrine and Discipline_ of Divorce was still the real stumbling-block. On that subject too the Peers may have been a little liberal by this time. Was not the great Mr. Selden understood to hold opinions on Marriage and Divorce very much the same as those Mr. Milton had published? So the Peers may have reasoned for themselves; and it is not at all improbable that Selden, Vane, and others of the Lower House may have given them a hint what to do. And so the Booksellers were baulked again. Baillie and Gillespie, who did not leave London for their Scottish holiday till Jan. 6, 1644-5, may have been a little disappointed, and the Presbyterians generally. [Footnote: Authorities for this curious story are the entries in the Lords' Journals of the dates named--Vol. VII. pp. 91, 92, 97, 115, 116, and 118. The one-and-twenty Peers who were present on Saturday, Dec. 28, when the order for Milton's examination was issued were--Lord Grey of Wark, as Speaker; the Lord General the Earl of Essex; the Lord High Admiral the Earl of Warwick; Earls Rutland, Kent, Pembroke, Salisbury, Bolingbroke, Manchester, Nottingham, Northumberland, Denbigh, and Stamford; Viscount Saye and Sele; and Lords North, Montague, Howard of Escrick, Berkeley, Bruce, Willoughby of Parham, and Wharton. The same Peers, with the omission of the Earl of Northumberland and Lord Wharton, and the addition of the Earl of Suffolk (_i.e._ twenty Peers in all), were present on Dec. 31, when a report was made on Woodward's case, but none on Milton's.--Selden's _Uxor Ebraica_ was published in 1646, and was then much welcomed by Milton.--That the Divines of the Westminster Assembly were at the back of this second prosecution of Milton, though the authorities of the Stationers' Company were the nominal accusers, is not only probable in itself, but is distinctly implied by Anthony Wood's reference to the affair (Fasti I. 483). "Upon the publication of the said three books of marriage and divorce," says Wood, with a slight error as to the number of the books on that subject then published, "the Assembly of Divines then sitting at Westminster took special notice of them; and thereupon, though the author had obliged them by his pen in his defence of _Smectymnuus_, and other their controversies had with the Bishops, they, impatient of having the clergy's jurisdiction (as they reckoned it) invaded, did, instead of answering or disproving what those books had asserted, cause him to be summoned before the House of Lords: but that House, whether approving the doctrine, or not favouring the accusers, did soon dismiss him."] THE DIVORCE CONTROVERSY CONTINUED: HERBERT PALMER'S SERMON PUBLISHED: OTHER ATTACKS ON MILTON. And now we are in the winter of 1644-5, when Parliament and all London, and all England, were astir with the two great businesses of the New- Modelling of the Parliamentary Army and the Self-Denying Ordinance. It was with public talk about these matters, and about such contemporary matters as the execution of Laud, the death of Century White, and the abortive Treaty of Uxbridge, that any immediate influence from Milton's _Areopagitica_ must have mingled. In the midst of it all he had other labours on hand. They were still on the woful subject of Divorce. Not only had the subject fastened on Milton with all the force of a propagandist passion, urging him to repeated expositions of it; there were, moreover, fresh external occasions calling on him not to desist. Of four such external occasions, amid others now unknown to us, we may here take note:--[Footnote: Palmer's Dedication of the Sermon.] Herbert Palmer's sermon, with the attack on Milton still remaining in it, had now been published. "Some bodily indispositions" had prevented Palmer from at once complying with the request of the two Houses that he would print the sermon; but at length, in September or October 1644, it had appeared. [Footnote: "By William Prynne, of Lincoln's Inn, Esquier: London, Printed for Michael Sparke, Sem., and are to be sold at the Blew Bible in Green Arbour, 1644." The Exact date of publication I ascertain from Thomason's note, "Sept. 16," in a copy in the British Museum.] About the same time (more precisely the 16th of September, 1644) there appeared one of Prynne's interminable publications, entitled "_Twelve considerable serious Questions touching Church government: sadly propounded (out of a Reel Desire of Unitie and Tranquillity in Church and State) to all sober- minded Christians, cordially affecting a speedy settled Reformation and Brotherly Christian Union in all our Churches and Dominions, now miserably wasted with Civill Unnaturall Wars, and deplorably lacerated with Ecclesiastical Dissensions._" Though with so long a title, the thing consists but of eight largish quarto pages, with a bristle of marginal references. "Having neither leisure nor opportunity," says Prynne, "to debate the late unhappy differences sprung up amongst us touching Church-government (disputed at large by Master Herle, Doctor Steward, Master Rutherford, Master Edwards, Master Durey, Master Goodwin, Master Nye, Master Sympson, and others), ... I have (at the importunity of some Reverend friends) digested my subitane apprehensions of these distracting controversies into the ensuing considerable Questions." Accordingly, the Tract consists of 12 Queries propounded for consideration, each numbered and beginning with the word "Whether." We are concerned mainly with Query 11. It runs as follows:--"Whether that Independent Government which some contend for ... be not of its own nature a very seminary of schisms and dangerous divisions in the Church and State? a floodgate to let in an inundation of all manner of heresies, errors, sects, religions, destructive opinions, libertinism and lawlessness, among us, without any sufficient means of preventing or suppressing them when introduced? Whether the final result of it (as Master Williams, in his late dangerous licentious work, _A Bloudy Tenent_, determines) will not really resolve itself into this detestable conclusion, that every man, whether he be Jew, Turk, Pagan, Papist, Arminian, Anabaptist, &c., ought to be left to his own free liberty of conscience, without any coercion or restraint, to embrace or publicly to profess what Religion, Opinion, Church government, he pleaseth and conceiveth to be truest, though never so erroneous, false, seditious, detestable in itself? And whether such a government as this ought to be embraced, much less established among us (the sad effects whereof we have already experimentally felt by the late dangerous increase of many Anabaptistical, Antinomian, Heretical, Atheistical opinions, as of _The Soul's Mortality, Divorce at Pleasure_, &c., lately broached, preached, printed in this famous city; which I hope our Grand Council will speedily and carefully suppress), &c." Here, and by no less a man than Prynne, Milton's Divorce Doctrine is publicly referred to as one of the enormities of the time, and coupled, as of coequal infamy, with the contemporary doctrine of the Mortality of the Soul vented in an anonymous tract. (3) Farther, in the month of November, or while the _Areopagitica_ was in the press, there had appeared the first distinct Reply to Milton's original Divorce Treatise. It was a pamphlet, in 44 pages of small quarto, with this title:--"_An Answer to a Book, Intituled, The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce, or A Plea for Ladies and Gentlewomen, and all other Married Women, against Divorce. Wherein Both Sexes are vindicated from all bondage of Canon Law, and other mistakes whatsoever: And the Unsound Principles of the Author are examined and fully confuted by Authority of Holy Scripture, the Laws of this Land, and Sound Reason. London, Printed by G. M. for William Lee at the Turk's-Head in Fleet Street, next to the Miter Taverne._ 1644." [Footnote: Entered at Stationers' Hall, Oct. 31, 1644 (my notes from the Registers); Licensed Nov. 14 (the pamphlet itself); out in London, Nov. 19 (Thomason's note in copy in British Museum, Press Mark 12 G. o. 12/181)] Milton had now his wish: one of his adversaries had written a book, and could be wrestled with. Nay more, though the writer had not given his name, the licenser, Mr. Joseph Caryl, had, in his prefixed "Imprimatur," applauded the sentiments of the tract, and spoken slightingly of Milton. Mr. Caryl, therefore, on his own account, might deserve a word. (4) Finally, in January 1644-5, Dr. Daniel Featley, from his prison in "the Lord Peter's house in Aldersgate Street," close to Milton's own dwelling, had sent forth his "_Dippers Dipt, or the Anabaptists Duck'd and Plung'd over Head and Eares_" [Footnote: See _antè, p._ 138.] dedicating it publicly to the Parliament and privately to his "Reverend and much-esteemed friend, Mr. John Downam,"-- the very person, by the bye, who had good-naturedly licensed Milton's Bucer pamphlet. Now, Featley, in this book, had been at Milton among others. Denouncing the Anabaptists on all sorts of grounds in his Epistle Dedicatory to the Parliament, he charges them especially with originating odious heresies beyond their own. "For they print," he says, "not only Anabaptism, from whence they take their name, but many other most damnable doctrines, tending to carnal liberty, Familism, and a medley and hodge-podge of all Religions. Witness the Book, printed 1644, called _The Bloudy Tenent_, which the author affirmeth he wrote in milk; and, if he did so, he hath put some ratsbane in it [Footnote: Featley blunders here. Roger Williams did not say he had written his book in milk, but that the Baptist Tract of 1620 which he reprints in his book was said to have been written in milk in prison on pieces of paper sent to the writer as stoppers to his milk-bottle--his friends outside deciphering the writing by heating the papers.]--as, namely, 'that it is the will and command of God that, since the coming of his son the Lord Jesus, a permission of the most Paganish, Jewish, Turkish, or Anti- Christian consciences and worships, be granted to all men in all nations and countries,' ... Witness a Tractate on Divorce, in which the bonds of marriage are let loose to inordinate lust and putting away wives for many other causes besides that which our Saviour only approveth, viz. in case of Adultery. Witness a Pamphlet newly come forth, entitled _Man's Mortality_, in which the soul is cast into an Endymion sleep from the hour of death to the day of Judgment. Witness," &c. One other dreadful pamphlet is mentioned; but it is worthy of note that the persons with whom Milton now, as before, is most pertinaciously associated are Roger Williams and the author of _Man's Mortality_. These external occasions and provocations co-operating with his unabated interest in the Divorce doctrine on personal and general grounds, Milton was busy, through the winter of 1644-5, on two new Divorce Treatises. They both appeared on the same day--March 4, 1644-5. The one was his TETRACHORDON; the other was his COLASTERION. Neither was licensed, and neither was registered. [Footnote: The date of publication is ascertained from copies of both among the King's Pamphlets in the British Museum-- both with the Press Mark 19. G. e. 11/195. In both the printed year of publication on the title-page is 1645; but in both Thomason, the Collector, has put his pen through the 5, and has annexed in manuscript the date "March 4, 1644." Books published near the 25th of March were generally dated in the year then to begin.] Some account of these two Treatises must conclude our present section of Milton's Biography. TETRACHORDON. We shall take the TETRACHORDON first. It is a bulky treatise, consisting, in the original edition, of 104 small quarto pages; of which 6, not numbered, are occupied with a Dedication to Parliament, and the remaining 98 are numbered and form the body of the work. The following is the complete title:-- TETRACHORDON: Expositions upon the foure chief places in Scripture, which treat of Marriage, or nullities in Marriage. On: Gen. i. 27-28, compar'd and explain'd by Gen. ii. 18, 23, 24 Dent. xxiv. 1-2. Matth. v. 31-32, with Matth. xix., from the 3 v. to the 11th. 1 Cor vii., from the 10th to the 16th. Wherein the Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce, as was lately publish'd, is confirm'd by explanation of Scripture, by testimony of ancient Fathers, of civill lawes in the Primitive Church, of famousest Reformed Divines, and lastly, by an intended Act of the Parlament and Church of England in the last yeare of Edward the Sixth. By the former Author J. M.-- [Greek: skaioisi kaina prospheron sopha doxeis achreios k oy sophos pephykenai ton d ay dokounton eidenai ti poikilon kreisson nomistheis en polei lupros phanæ.] _Euripid. Medea_ London: Printed in the yeare 1645. As the title indicates, the body of the Treatise consists mainly of an elaborate examination and comparison of the four chief passages of Scripture relating to Marriage and Divorce, viz. _Genesis_ i. 27-28, with ii. 18, 23, 24; _Deuteronomy_ xxiv. 1-2; _Matthew_ v. 31-32, with xix. 3-11; and 1 Corinth, vii. 10-16. This labour of Biblical exegesis Milton had undertaken, he tells us, in consequence of the representations of some judicious friends, who thought that, while there was "reason to a sufficiency" in his first Divorce Treatise, a fuller discussion of the texts of Scripture there alleged might be desirable. How he performed the labour--how he plods through the four passages in succession, explaining, commenting, answering objections, and in the end construing each and all together into a ratification of his own Doctrine of Divorce, or at least into consistency with it--must be learnt, if it is learnt at all, from the _Tetrachordon_ itself. Very few now-a-days will care to read it. For it is decidedly, according to our modern ideas, a heavy pamphlet. The _Areopagitica_ bites into modern interests and the constitution of the modern intellect; the _Tetrachordon_, though it must have occupied the author longer, has, I should say, quite lost its bite, except for students of Milton, and for reasoners who would debate his Divorce Doctrine over again by the same method of the interpretation of Biblical texts. For Milton is most submissive to the Bible throughout. Clearly it was his opinion that whatever the Bible could be found to have ruled on any point must be accepted as the decision. There is no sign of any dissent by him from the most orthodox idea of the verbal inspiration of Scripture. Not the less he contrives that the Bible shall support his own free conclusions. It is evident that the method of his exegesis was not so much to extract positive injunctions from particular texts as to let the doctrine of the Bible as a whole invade and pervade his mind, uniting there with whatever of clear sense or high views of affairs it could find, and so forming a kind of organ of large and enlightened Christian reason, by which the Bible itself could then, in all mere particulars, be safely interpreted. Once and again, in the course of his _Tetrachordon_, he expresses his contempt for the grubbing literalists, who, in their microscopic infatuation over one text at a time, miss the view of the whole waving field of all the texts together. Yet he shows much ingenuity in parts of the verbal proof, and produces also commentators of repute who agreed with him. There is, and doubtless purposely, in order to give weight to the new book, a large display of learning in its pages. Besides the motto from Euripides to begin with, there are references, in the course of the commentary, to Plato, Philo, Josephus, Cicero, Horace, Cellius, Justin Martyr, Eusebius, Tertullian, St. Augustine, Beza, Paræus, Rivetus, Vatablus, Dr. Ames, Spanheim, Diodati, Marinaro, Cameron, and many more. At the end of the commentary on the Texts, also, there is an express synopsis of testimonies, for the benefit, as Milton is careful to explain, of the weaker sort who are led by authorities, and not because he sets much store on that style of proof himself. Here we have Justin Martyr again, Tertullian again, Origen, Lactantius, several early Councils, Basil, Epiphanius, Ambrose, Jerome, Augustine again, the Laws of Theodosius and Valentinian, Leo, Wycliffe, Luther, Melanchthon, Erasmus, Bucer of course, Fagius of course, the Confession of the Church of Strasburg, Peter Martyr, Musculus, Gualter of Zurich, Hemingius, Hunnius, Bidenbachius, Harbardus, Wigandus, Beza again, Aretius of Berne, Alciat of Milan, Corasius, Wesembechius, and Grotius. When he quotes one of the Fathers, I may observe in passing, Milton is true to the Puritan instinct, and never prefixes to the name the title of Saint; it is always "Austin," for example, and not "St. Austin." Also it may be noted that he is punctual in making it clear whether he quotes from his own knowledge or at second hand. Thus, referring to Wycliffe's view of Marriage as put forth in one of his writings, he says, "This book, indeed, through the poverty of our Libraries, I am forced to cite from Arnisæus of Halberstadt on the Right of Marriage, who cites it from Corasius of Toulouse, _c._ 4., _Cent. Set._, and he from Wicklef _l._ 4. _Dial c._ 2l."--Appended to the collation of Testimonies, and winding up the whole treatise, is a historical statement to which Milton attached great importance, and which is really interesting. It was only by chance, he says, that a notion of Divorce not far short of his own was not then actually part and parcel of the Law of England. For, when young Edward VI. had abolished the Canon Law out of his dominions, a Committee of two- and-thirty select persons, Divines and Lawyers, had been appointed by Parliament--Cranmer, Peter Martyr, Walter Haddon, and Sir John Cheke, the King's tutor, being members of this Committee--to frame a new set of ecclesiastical laws. The draft was actually finished, and it included a law of Divorce substantially such as Bucer had then recommended to the English. It allowed complete Divorce not only for the causes usually esteemed grave and capital, but for such causes as desertion, cruel usage, or even continued contentiousness and wrangling. The untimely death of the young King alone had prevented this Law from coming into effect. This fact in English history, it is evident, together with the knowledge of such an amount of scattered opinion in his favour lying in the works of other authors besides his formerly quoted Bucer, Fagius, Erasmus and Grotius, had been acquired by Milton by fresh research since he had published his Bucer Tract. And here again there is the curious struggle between Milton's delight in finding auxiliaries and his feeling of property in his own idea. "God, I solemnly attest him," he says, "withheld from my knowledge the consenting judgment of these men so late until they could not be my instructors, but only my unexpected witnesses to partial men that in this work I had not given the worst experiment of an industry joined with integrity, and the free utterance though of an unpopular truth." Again, in a passage where he points out that a truth is never thoroughly sifted out in one age, and that some of those who had preceded him in the Divorce notion had only hinted it in vague terms, and others who had been more explicit in the assertion of it had still left it to be fully argued, he concludes with a gentle remark that perhaps, after all, it will be his fortune "to meet the praise or dispraise of being something first." There is no abatement in the _Tetrachordon_ of the bitterness of Milton's feeling on the subject of an unsuitable marriage. Rather the bitterness is more concentrated and intense. It is as if eighteen months of rumination over his own unhappy condition had made him savage. There is careful abstinence still from all direct allusion to his own case; but there are again the repeated phrases of loathing with which he contemplates, chiefly from the man's side, the forced union of two irreconcileable or ill-matched minds:--"a creature inflicted on him to the vexation of his righteousness"; "a carnal acrimony without either love or peace"; "a ransomless captivity"; "the dungeon-gate as irrecoverable as the grave"; "the mere carcase of a marriage"; "the disaster of a no-marriage"; "counter-plotting and secret wishing one another's dissolution"; "a habit of wrath and perturbation"; "heavenly with hellish, fitness with unfitness," &c. "God commands not impossibilities," he bursts out, "and all the ecclesiastical glue that Liturgy or Laymen can compound is not able to sodder up two such incongruous natures into the one flesh of a true beseeming marriage." Or take this remarkable passage, repeating an opinion we have already had from him, "No wise man but would sooner pardon the act of adultery once and again committed by a person worth pity and forgiveness than to lead a wearisome life of unloving and unquiet conversation with one who neither affects nor is affected, much less with one who exercises all bitterness, and would commit adultery too, but for envy lest the persecuted condition should thereby get the benefit of his freedom." This assertion that adultery is more venial than mental unfitness is reiterated in another place, with a bold addition: "Adultery does not exclude her other fitness, her other pleasingness; she may be otherwise loving and prevalent." Occasionally, it may be added, in a less startling way than this, Milton leaves the man's point of view and tries to be considerate about the woman. Not that he recants his doctrine of the inferiority of her sex to man's. On the contrary he repeats it, extracting out of Genesis the absolute certainty that it was Man that was made primarily and immediately in the image of God, and that the image of God is in Woman only by derivation from Man. But he qualifies the doctrine at once gallantly and shrewdly. "Nevertheless," he says, "man is not to hold woman as a servant, but receives her into a part of that empire which God proclaims him to,--though not equally, yet largely, as his own image and glory; for it is no small glory to him that a creature so like him should be made subject to him. Not but that particular exceptions may have place, if she exceed her husband in prudence and dexterity, and he contentedly yield; for then a superior and more natural law comes in, that the wiser should govern the less wise, whether male or female." This may be taken as the summary of Milton's doctrine about Woman's Rights. Incidentally also the Treatise furnishes us with his opinion on Teetotalism and the Permissive Bill. It comes in thus:--The Mosaic Law (Deut. xxiv. 1-2) allowing a man to give his wife a writing of divorcement and send her away, if he did not like her, had been interpreted by some, in consequence of Christ's comment upon it (Matt. xix. 8), as only a Permissive Bill on this subject to the hard-hearted Jews. To continue it in modern times would be to open the door to license: it would be abused; everybody would be putting away his wife; there must therefore be no longer any such Permissive Bill, but a strict Law of indissoluble marriage. Well then, by the same reasoning, Milton argues, there ought to be a great many more strict laws, that nobody had ever thought of. "What more foul and common sin among us than drunkenness; and who can be ignorant that, if the importation of wine, and the use of all strong drink, were forbid, it would both clean rid the possibility of committing that odious vice, and men might afterwards live happily and healthfully without the use of those intoxicating liquors? Yet who is there, the severest of them all, that ever propounded to lose his sack, his ale, toward the certain abolishing of so great a sin; who is there of them, the holiest, that less loves his rich canary at meals, though it be fetched from places that hazard the religion of them who fetch it, and though it make his neighbour drunk out of the same tun? While they forbid not, therefore, the use of that liquid marchandise, which forbidden would utterly remove a most loathsome sin, and not impair either the health or the refreshment of mankind, supplied many other ways, why do they forbid a Law of God, the forbidding whereof brings into an excessive bondage oft-times the best of men, and betters not the worse? He, to remove a national vice, will not pardon his cups, nor think it concerns him to forbear the quaffing of that outlandish grape in his unnecessary fulness, though other men abuse it never so much; nor is he so abstemious as to intercede with the magistrate that all manner of drunkenness be banished the Commonwealth: and yet, for the fear of a less inconvenience, unpardonably requires of his brethren in their extreme necessity to debar themselves the use of God's Permissive Law, though it might be their saving, and no man's endangering the more! Thus, this peremptory strictness, we may discern of what sort it is, how unequal and how unjust." Lest the meaning of this passage should be mistaken, we may point out that the Permissive Bill in the matter of drinking which it defends by implication is a Permissive Bill to drink and not a Permissive Bill to prevent drinking. The passage, therefore, cannot be quoted as Milton's testimony in favour of the so-called modern Permissive Bill. It is dead the reverse. And yet there is a lurking kindness in the passage towards a Permissive Bill of that sort, contemplated as possible, though yet unheard of; and, though Milton's principle of Liberty would have bound him to oppose it, he would perhaps have done so reluctantly. The idea of a country cleared of all its apparatus of Bacchus, and in which wine, or ale, or any other form of intoxicating fluid, ruby, amber, or crystal at its purest, should be unattainable by any mortal breathing on its surface, had, so far as his personal tastes and habits were concerned, no terrors for Milton. Had it been a matter of personal preference, instead of principle, he would gladly, I doubt not, have consented to a Permissive Bill in England to prevent absolutely the drinking of intoxicating liquors, if it had been accompanied by a ratification of Moses's Permissive Bill in quite the contrary sense, by which the sobered nation should have the right of divorcing. Nothing has been said yet about the few pages prefixed to the _Tetrachordon_, in which Milton dedicates the treatise, as he had done three already (the _Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce_, the _Buear Tract_, and the _Areopagitica_), to the Parliament of England. These pages, though put first, were doubtless written last. They are signed with the writer's name in full. In respect of biographical information, of the external kind at least, they are more interesting than the treatise itself. Most of the information, however, will now be sufficiently intelligible, if given in the form of mere extracts, without more of explanation than may be supplied by Italic headings:-- _Thanks to Parliament for Past Favour and Protection_:--"Although it be generally known how and by whom ye have been instigated to a hard censure of that former Book entitled _The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce_--an opinion held by some of the best among Reformed writers without scandal or confinement, though now thought new and dangerous by some of our severe Gnostics, whose little reading and less meditating holds ever with hardest obstinacy that which it took up with easiest credulity--I do not find yet that aught, for the furious incitements that have been used, hath issued by your appointment that might give the least interruption or disrepute either to the Author or the Book. Which he who will be better advised than to call your neglect, or connivance at a thing imagined so perilous, can attribute it to nothing more justly than to the deep and quiet stream of your direct and calm deliberations, that gave not way either to the fervent rashness or the immaterial gravity of those who ceased not to exasperate without cause. For which uprightness, and incorrupt refusal of what ye were incensed to, Lords and Commons-- though it were done to justice, not to me, and was a peculiar demonstration how far your ways are different from the rash vulgar-- besides those allegiance of oath and duty which are my public debt to your public labours, I have yet a store of gratitude laid up which cannot be exhausted; and such thanks perhaps they may live to be as shall more than whisper them to the next ages." _Punishment for Mr. Herbert Palmer_:--"I shall here briefly single one of them [his detractors], because he hath obliged me to it--who, I persuade me, having scarce read the book, nor knowing him who writ it, or at least feigning the latter [!], hath not forborne to scandalize him, unconferred with, unadmonished, undealt with by any pastorly or brotherly convincement, in the most open and invective manner, and at the most bitter opportunity that drift or set design could have invented. And this, whenas the Canon Law, though commonly most favouring the boldness of their priests, punishes the naming or traducing of any person in the Pulpit, was by him made no scruple. If I shall therefore take licence by the right of nature, and that liberty wherein I was born, to defend myself publicly against a printed calumny, and do willingly appeal to those Judges to whom I am accused, it can be no immoderate or unallowable course of seeking so just and needful reparations. Which I had done long since, had not these employments which are now visible deferred me.--It was preached before ye, Lords and Commons, in August last, upon a special Day of Humiliation, that 'there was a wicked book abroad;' and ye were taxed of sin. that it was yet 'uncensured, the book deserving to be burnt;' and 'impudence' also was charged upon the Author, who durst 'set his name to it, and dedicate it to yourselves.' First, Lords and Commons, I pray to that God before whom ye then were prostrate so to forgive ye those omissions and trespasses which ye desire most should find forgiveness, as I shall soon show to the world how easily ye absolve yourselves of that which this man calls your sin, and is indeed your wisdom and your nobleness, whereof to this day ye have done well not to repent. He terms it 'a wicked book,' and why but 'for allowing other causes of Divorce than Christ and his Apostles mention;' and with the same censure condemns of wickedness not only Martin Bucer, that elect instrument of Reformation, highly honoured and had in reverence by Edward the Sixth and his whole Parliament--whom also I had published in English, by a good providence, about a week before this calumnious digression was preached, so that, if he knew not Bucer then, as he ought to have known, he might at least have known him some months after, ere the Sermon came in print; wherein, notwithstanding, he persists in his former sentence, and condemns again of wickedness, either ignorantly or wilfully, not only Martin Bucer, and all the choicest and holiest of our Reformers, but the whole Parliament and Church of England in those best and purest times of Edward the Sixth. All which I shall prove with good evidence at the end of these Explanations. And then let it be judged and seriously considered with what hope the affairs of our Religion are committed to one among others [the Westminster Assembly] who hath now only left him which of the twain he will choose--whether this shall be his palpable ignorance, or the same 'wickedness' of his own Book which he so lavishly imputes to the writings of other men; and whether this of his, that thus peremptorily defames and attaints of wickedness unspotted Churches, unblemished Parliaments, and the most eminent Restorers of Christian Doctrine, deserve not to be 'burnt' first. And, if his heat had burst out only against the _opinion_, his wonted passion had no doubt been silently borne with wonted patience. Eut, since, against the charity of that solemn place and meeting, it served him further to inveigh opprobriously against the _person_, traducing him with no less than 'impudence,' only for setting his name to what he had written, I must be excused not to be so wanting to the defence of an honest name, or to the reputation of those good men who afford me their society, but to be sensible of such a foul endeavoured disgrace--not knowing aught, either in mine own deserts or the laws of this land, why I should be subject, in such a notorious and illegal manner, to the intemperancies of this man's preaching choler. ... But, if only to have writ my name must be accounted 'impudence' how doth this but justify another, who might affirm, with as good warrant, that the late Discourse of _Scripture and Reason_, which is certain to be chiefly his [Palmer's] own draft, was published without a name out of base fear, and the sly avoidance of what might follow if the party at Court should hap to reach him! And I, to have set my name where he accuses me to have set it, am so far from recanting that I offer my hand also, if need be, to make good the same opinion which I there maintain by inevitable consequences drawn parallel from his own principal arguments in that of _Scripture and Reason_; which I shall pardon him if he can deny without shaking his own composition to pieces. The 'impudence,' therefore, since he weighed so little what a gross revile that was to give his equal, I send him back again for a phylactery to stitch upon his arrogance, that censures not only before conviction so bitterly without so much as one reason given, but censures the Congregation of his Governors to their faces, for not being so hasty as himself to censure." [Footnote: The discourse _Scripture and Reason_, which Milton here ascribes to Palmer, charging him with cowardice in having published it anonymously, was a quarto pamphlet of 80 pages, published in April 1643, and purporting to be "by divers Reverend and Learned Divines." More fully its title was _Scripture and Reason Pleaded for Defensive Armes: or the whole Controversie about Subjects taking up Armes_. It was, in fact, an elaborate proof, from Scripture and Reason, of the right of the English Parliament and People to make war upon the King. Doubtless Milton had ascertained that Palmer was its chief author: hence, rather unnecessarily, his taunt. Palmer had also published more recently (Dec. 1644), but _with_ his name, the First Part of a Book called _Memorials of Godliness and Christianity_. It was afterwards completed by two additional Parts, also with his name, Part II. containing, among other things, a set of aphorisms entitled "The character of a Christian in Paradoxes and seeming Contradictions." It had so chanced, however, that, before he had published this Part II. of his _Memorials_, a surreptitious edition of the aforesaid Aphorisms had found its way into print, with no author's name attached (July 1645). Hence a strange result. Palmer died in 1647, _ætat _. 46; and in the following year--though his _Memorials_, containing the "Christian Paradoxes," were in circulation with his name--the "Christian Paradoxes" by themselves, as they had been published anonymously in the surreptitious edition of July 1645, were published as Lord Bacon's in a quarto volume of Bacon's "Remaines." The blunder was probably then detected; but it was again committed in 1730, when the "Paradoxes" were included in Blackburn's Edition of Bacon's works. From that date till 1864 the "Paradoxes" were printed as Bacon's, and, though suspected by some, yet often written about as Bacon's; but in the last-mentioned year the mistake was rectified, and Herbert Palmer reinstated in the authorship of the "Paradoxes," by the Rev. Alexander B. Grosart (See his little volume _Lord Bacon not the Author of "The Christian Paradoxes:"_ see also Spedding's _Bacon_, VII. 289 _et seq._).] _Punishment for Dr. Featley_:--"Some whose necessary shifts have long inured them to cloak the defects of their unstudied years and hatred now to learn under the appearance of a grave solidity--which estimation they have gained among weak perceivers--find the ease of slighting what they cannot refute, and are determined, as I hear, to hold it not worth the answering. In which number I must be forced to reckon that Doctor who, in a late equivocating Treatise plausibly set afloat against the _Dippers_, diving the while himself with a more deep prelatical malignance against the present State and Church Government, mentions with ignominy the 'Tractate of Divorce;' yet answers nothing, but instead thereof (for which I do not commend his _marshalling_), sets Moses also among the crew of his Anabaptists, as one who to a holy nation, the Commonwealth of Israel, gave laws 'breaking the bonds of marriage to inordinate lost' These are no mean surges of blasphemy--not only 'dipping' Moses the Divine Lawgiver, but dashing with a high hand against the justice and purity of God Himself; as these ensuing Scriptures, plainly and freely handled, shall verify to the lancing of that old apostemated error. Him, therefore, I leave now to his repentance." [Footnote: Poor Dr. Featley died April 17, 1645 (_ætat_ 65), only six weeks after this punishment of him was published. He had then been restored to liberty, for he died in his house at Chelsea. Milton knew him perfectly when he characterized him as one of those who had gained among "weak perceivers" a reputation for "grave solidity." And yet it is touching to have before me, as I now have in a copy of the Sixth Edition of the _Dippers Dipt_ (1651), not only an elaborate portrait of Featley by the engraver Marshall, done in the ordinary way, but also an engraving representing the old man most painfully as he looked when lying in his winding-sheet before they put him into his coffin. Over the corpse are these words, "I have fought a good fight; I have finished my course; I have kept the faith;" and underneath is Featley's Latin Epitaph, telling that he was "Impugnator Papismi, Propugnator Reformationis," and "Theologus Insignis, Disputator Strenuus, Conscionator Egregius."--The word "_marshalling_" which I have italicised in the extract from Milton about Featley is, no doubt, a punning allusion to an engraving by Marshall in the _Dippers Dipt_, giving caricatures of different kinds of Sectaries, with a representation of men and women bathing in the centre (see _antè_, p. 188, Note). ] A fact which might have been guessed independently, but which it is interesting to have told us by Milton himself, is that there were some persons who were particularly courteous in acknowledging the ability shown in the Divorce treatise, the "wit and parts" of the author, his "elocution," and the more than ordinary "industry, exactness, and labour" he had expended on the subject, but who made all this only an excuse for not discussing his proposition seriously. On this class of his critics Milton is very severe. They were like those, he said, who used to get off from Socrates, when they could not resist the force of his truths, by saying that Socrates could at any time make the worse cause seem the better. To what would the world, to what would England, come, if this habit of regarding all novelty as sophistry, of making the very ability and learning bestowed upon a doctrine an objection to the receipt of that doctrine, were to become general? "Ignorance and illiterate presumption," he says, "which is yet but our disease, will turn at length into our very constitution, and prove the hectic evil of this age." He hoped better of the Parliament; he hoped that they would not overlook the necessity of a change of the Law in this matter of Divorce. At all events he had done his part. "Henceforth, except new cause be given, I shall say less and less. For, if the Law make not a timely provision, let the Law, as reason is, bear the censure of those consequences which her own default now more evidently produces. And, if men want manliness to expostulate the right of their due ransom, and to second their own occasions, they may sit hereafter and bemoan themselves to have neglected, through faintness, the only remedy of their sufferings, which a seasonable and well-grounded speaking might have purchased them. And perhaps in time to come others will know how to esteem what is not every day put into their hands, when they have marked events, and better weighed how hurtful and unwise it is to hide a secret and pernicious rupture under the ill counsel of a bashful silence." Here Milton seems to be speaking for himself. He seems to be giving warning what he means to do without leave of the Law if the Law will not give him leave, COLASTERION. COLASTERION is Greek for "Punishment." Now Mr. Herbert Palmer and Dr. Featley had each had his _colasterion_ in the Dedication prefixed to the TETRACHORDON. Three other persons were waiting for their turn of the lash. These were the anonymous author of that Answer to Milton's Treatise which had been published in the preceding November; [Footnote: See its full title, _antè_, pp. 299-300.] the Rev. Mr. Joseph Caryl, the licenser of that Answer; and the famous Mr. Prynne. The COLASTERION, expressly so called, published by Milton on the same day with the TETRACHORDON, settled accounts with these gentlemen. It is a short tract of twenty-seven pages, without preface. Its full title was as follows;-- "_Colasterion: A Reply to a Nameles Answer against 'The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce,' Wherein the trivial Author of that Answer is discovver'd, the licenser conferr'd with, and the Opinion which they traduce defended. By the former author, J. M._ Prov. xxvi. 5. Answer a Fool according to his folly, lest hee bee wise in his own conceit. _Printed in the year_ 1645." First for Mr. Caryl. What was _his_ offence? It was that, not content with merely licensing the anonymous answer to Milton, he had become godfather to it by expressing the license thus:-- "To preserve the strength of the Marriage-bond and the Honour of that estate against those sad breaches and dangerous abuses of it which common discontents (on this side Adultery) are likely to make in unstaid minds and men given to change, by taking in or grounding themselves upon the opinion answered and with good reason confuted in this Treatise, I have approved the printing and publishing of it.--November 14, 1644. Joseph Caryl." Now Caryl was not a nobody. He was one of the Assembly of Divines, and in that Assembly was tending by this time to the side of the Independents. He was also Lincoln's Inn preacher, had published some sermons, and was known to be engaged on an exposition of the Book of Job; which attained at length, when it was published (1648-66), the vast dimensions of twelve quarto volumes. [Footnote: Lowndes's Bibliographer's Manual, by Bohn: Art. _Caryl_; and Wood's Athenæ, III. 979--983.] He was about four years older than Milton; who thus "confers with" him:-- _Punishment for Mr. Caryl_:-"A Licenser is not contented now to give his single "Imprimatur," but brings his chair into the title-leaf; there sits and judges up or judges down what book he pleases. If this be suffered, what worthless author, or what cunning printer, will not be ambitious of such a stale to put off the heaviest gear?--which may in time bring in round fees to the Licenser, and wretched mis-leading to the people. But to the matter. He approves 'the publishing of this Book, to preserve the strength and honour of Marriage against those sad breaches and dangerous abuses of it.' Belike then the wrongful suffering of all these sad breaches and abuses in marriage to a remediless thraldom is 'the strength and honour of Marriage!' A boisterous and bestial strength, a dishonourable honour, an infatuated doctrine, worse than the _salvo jure_ of tyrannizing which we all fight against! Next he saith that 'common discontents make these breaches in unstaid minds and men given to change.' His words may be apprehended as if they disallowed only divorce for 'common discontents in unstaid minds,' having no cause but a 'desire for change;' and then we agree. But, if he take all discontents 'on this side adultery' to be common, that is to say, not difficult to endure, and to affect only 'unstaid minds,' it might administer just cause to think him the unfittest man that could be to offer at a comment upon Job, as seeming by this to have no more true sense of a good man in his afflictions than those Edomitish friends had, of whom Job complains, and against whom God testifies his anger. Shall a man of your coat, who hath espoused his flock, and represents Christ more in being the true husband of his congregation than an ordinary man doth in being the husband of his wife--and yet this representment is thought a chief cause why marriage must be inseparable--shall this spiritual man, ordinarily for the increase of his maintenance, or any slight cause, forsake that wedded cure of souls that should be dearest to him, and marry another and another; and shall not a person wrongfully afflicted, and persecuted even to extremity, forsake an unfit, injurious, and pestilent mate, tied only by a civil and fleshly covenant? If you be a man so much hating change, hate that other change; if yourself be not guilty, counsel your brethren to hate it; and leave to be the supercilious judge of other men's miseries and changes, that your own be not judged. The reasons of your licensed pamphlet, you say, 'are good.' They must be better than your own then . ... Mr. Licenser ... you are reputed a man discreet enough, religious enough, honest enough--that is, to an ordinary competence in all these. But now your turn is to hear what your own hand hath earned ye, that when you suffered this nameless hangman to cast into public such a despiteful contumely upon a name and person deserving of the Church and State equally to yourself, and one who hath done more to the present advancement of your own tribe than you or many of them have done for themselves, you forgot to be either honest, religious, or discreet." [Footnote: In 1645, according to Wood (Ath. III. 979), Mr. Caryl was appointed to the living of St. Magnus near London Bridge. It is probably with this readiness of his to leave one congregation and wed another that Milton twits him. Evidently Milton would not spare an Independent, any more than a Presbyterian or Prelatist, who had given him offense.] The punishment for Mr. Prynne is milder, and it comes in incidentally at the very beginning of the _Colasterion:_-- _Punishment for Mr. Prynne_:--"After many rumours of confutations and convictions forthcoming against _The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce_, and now and then a bye-blow from the Pulpit, feathered with a censure, strict indeed, but how true more beholding to the authority of that devout place which it borrowed to be uttered in than to any sound reason which it could oracle,--while I still hoped, as for a blessing, to see some piece of diligence or learned discretion come from them--it was my hap at length, lighting on a certain parcel of _Queries_ that seek and find not, to find not seeking, at the tail of 'Anabaptistical,' 'Antinomian,' 'Heretical,' 'Atheistical' epithets, a jolly slander called '_Divorce at Pleasure_.' [Footnote: See the quotation from Prynne's "Queries" antè, pp. 298-9.] I stood a while and wondered what we might do to a man's heart, or what anatomy use, to find in it sincerity; for all our wonted marks every day fail us, and where we thought it was we see it is not--for alter and change residence it cannot sure. And yet I see no good of body or of mind secure to a man for all his past labours, without perpetual watchfulness and perseverance, whenas one above others [_i.e._ Prynne] who hath suffered much and long in the defence of Truth shall, after all this, give her cause to leave him so destitute, and so vacant of her defence, as to yield his mouth to be the common road of Truth and Falsehood, and such falsehood as is joined with the rash and heedless calumny of his neighbour. For what book hath he ever met with, as his complaint is, 'printed in the city,' maintaining, either in the title or in the whole persuance, '_Divorce at Pleasure?_' 'Tis true that to divorce upon extreme necessity, when, through the perverseness or the apparent unaptness of either, the continuance can be to both no good at all, but an intolerable injury and temptation to the wronged and the defrauded, to divorce then there is a book that writes it lawful. And that this law is a pure and wholesome national law, not to be withheld from good men because others likely enough may abuse it to their pleasure, cannot be charged upon that book, but must be entered a bold and impious accusation against God himself, who did not for this abuse withhold it from his own people. It will be just, therefore, and best for the reputation of him who in his _Subitanes_ hath thus censured, to recall his sentence. And if, out of the abundance of his volumes, and the readiness of his quill, and the vastness of his other employments, especially in the great Audit for Accounts, he can spare us aught to the better understanding of this point, he shall be thanked in public, and what hath offended in the book shall willingly submit to his correction-- provided he be sure not to come with those old and stale suppositions, unless he can take away clearly what that discourse hath urged against them, by one who will expect other arguments to be persuaded the good health of a sound answer than the gout and dropsy of a big margent, littered and overlaid with crude and huddled quotations." But it is the anonymous author of the pamphlet which Mr. Caryl had licensed that comes in for the most ferocious and protracted punishment. On the evidence of the pamphlet itself one can see that he was some very insignificant person, not worth Milton's while on his own account, but only because Milton wanted to toss and gore somebody publicly for a whole hour, by way of deterring others. The Answerer begins by announcing that he is first to show what the Doctrine or Discipline of Divorce really is, then to give some reasons "why a man may not put away his wife for indisposition, unfitness, or contrariety of mind, although manifested in much sharpness," and finally to reply to the arguments to the contrary brought forward in Milton's book. Nine pages having sufficed for the first two divisions, the remaining thirty-five are devoted to Milton. They are dull and plodding, the punctuation and expression showing that the author was ill-educated and little accustomed to write; and, from the frequent use of scrivener- like or attorney-like phrases and illustrations, one soon comes to conjecture the pamphlet to have been written by some one in a small way of law-business. Occasionally there is a little hit of personal reference, proving that the writer knew something about Milton and his reputed habits. Thus, speaking of Milton's complaint of a wife "to all due conversation inaccessible," he says, "It is true, if every man were of your breeding and capacity, there were some colour for this plea; for we believe you to count no woman to due conversation accessible as to you, except she can speak Hebrew, Greek, Latin and French, and dispute against the Canon Law as well as you, or at least be able to hold discourse with you. But other gentlemen of good quality are content with fewer and meaner endowments, as you know well enough." Sometimes he criticises Milton's phraseology. "The rankest politician," Milton had said in one of his sentences; on which this is the comment: "Is this the fine language that your book is commended for? Good your worship, look a little more upon your rhetoric in this one piece, shall I say of nonsense? However, I am sure it is contrary to all laws and customs of speaking. 'Rankest politician!' Wonderful!" Milton's phrase describing a dull woman as "an image of earth and phlegm" likewise attracts notice. "We confess," he says, "this is something of a sad case; but yet I believe you speak but hyperbolically (as they use to say): for women are usually more than earth and phlegm; they have many times spirit enough to wear the breeches, if they meet not with a rare wit to order them. I wonder you should use such phrases: I know nor hear of maids or women that are all earth and phlegm, much less images of earth and phlegm. If there be any such, yet you need take no thought for them; there are enough dull enough to own them; and, for yourself or any other who desire them, there are spirited dames enough who are something besides mere images of earth and phlegm." Here is a specimen of the argumentation:-- "Suppose you should covenant with a man at Hackney that he should dwell in your house at Aldersgate Street, and you in requital should dwell in his house at Hackney, for a time: I doubt not but your main end in this your covenant was your own solace, peace, refreshing. Well, but suppose, when you came there, the Cavaliers or other soldiers should trouble you, and should be quartered there; who, peradventure, if they did not quite put you out, yet would lie in your most pleasant chamber, best situate for your solace, peace, and refreshing, and divers other ways would annoy you, by means whereof you could not enjoy that pleasure and delight which you intended in your covenant when you changed houses with the other. Think you in this case it would be lawful or accepted on by the other party if now you should come to him and say 'Sir, I covenanted for your house at Hackney for my own refreshing, comfort, and solace; but I am disturbed of it, I do not enjoy the end of my covenant: give me my own house again, and go you and live there.' He would tell you, and so he might justly, 'Stay, Sir; take your own fortune; a bargain is a bargain; you must even stand to it.'" Sometimes the writer thinks he will rebuke sharply. Thus:--"This is a wild, mad, and frantic Divinity, just like to the opinions of the maids of Aldgate [some Antinomian young women that had been making themselves notorious]. 'Oh,' say they, 'we live in Christ and Christ doth all for us: we are Christed in Christ and Godded in God, and at the same time that we sin here we, joined to Christ, do justice in him.' ... Fie, fie, blush for shame, and publish no more of this loose Divinity." But the choicest bit shall come last. Criticising the conclusion of a passage in Milton's treatise, the language of the first portion of which is pronounced "too sublime and angelical for mortal creatures to comprehend it," the Answerer declares, "This frothy discourse, were it not sugared over with a little neat language, would appear so immeritous, so contrary to all humane learning, yea truth and common experience itself, that all that read it must needs count it worthy to be burnt by the hangman." Milton's first glance at the anonymous pamphlet, he tells us, had shown him the sort of person he had to deal with. He could be no educated man, for in the very first page of his pamphlet, where he quotes Greek and Hebrew words, he misspells them. This was no serious crime in itself; only a man falsely pretending to know a language would do worse! "Nor did I find this his want of the pretended languages alone, but accompanied with such a low and homespun expression of his mother-English all along, without joint or frame, as made me, ere I knew further of him, often stop and conclude that this author could for certain be no other than some mechanic." It was singular also that, while the Second Edition of the _Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce_ had been out for months before the publication of this Answer, only the First Edition was referred to in the Answer. This, indeed, had enabled Milton to find out who the Answerer was, and the whole history of his pamphlet. For, in the course of the preceding summer, he had been amused by hearing that there was in the press, half printed, an Answer to the First Edition of his Divorce Book, concocted by a committee of heads, in the centre of whom was--"let the reader hold his laughter," he says, and hear the story out--"an actual serving-man." At least, he _had_ been a serving-man, waiting at table, cleaning trenchers, and the like; but he was ambitious of rising in the world, and had turned Solicitor. Zeal for public morality, or some farther ambition for literary distinction, had put it into his head to answer the First Edition of Milton's treatise; and, taking into his confidence one or two raw young Divines of his acquaintance, he had actually composed something, and sent it to the press. Milton had resolved that, if the thing did appear, he would leave it unnoticed. For some months, during which it had been lying unfinished in the press, he had quite dismissed it from his mind. But lo! here it was at length, stitched and published--this precious composition of the Serving-man turned Solicitor. Not quite as it had come from his pen, however! A Divine of note--no other, in fact, than Mr. Caryl himself, the Licenser-- had looked over the thing, and "stuck it here and there with a clove of his own calligraphy to keep it from tainting." This, and Caryl's approbation prefixed, had rather altered the state of matters; and Milton had resolved that, when he had leisure for a little recreation, his man of law "should not altogether lose his soliciting." Nor does he. Never was poor wretch so mauled, so tumbled and rolled, and kept on tumbling and rolling, in ignominious mire. Milton indeed pays him the compliment of following his reasonings, restating them in their order, and quoting his words; but it is only, as it were, to wrap up the reasoner in the rags of his own bringing, and then kick him along as a football through a mile of mud. We need not trouble ourselves with the reasonings, or with the incidental repetitions of Milton's doctrine to which they give rise; it will be enough to exhibit the emphasis of Milton's foot administered at intervals to the human bundle it is propelling. "I mean not to dispute Philosophy with this Pork." he says near the beginning; "this clod of an antagonist," he calls him at the next kick; "a serving-man both by nature and function, an idiot by breeding, and a solicitor by presumption," is the third propulsion; after which we lose reckoning of the number of the kicks, they come sometimes so ingeniously fast. "Basest and hungriest inditer," "groom," "rank pettifogger," "mere and arrant pettifogger," "no antic hobnail at a morris but is more handsomely facetious;" "a boar in a vineyard," "a snout in this pickle," "the serving-man at Addlegate" (suggested by 'the maids at Aldgate'), "this odious fool," "the noisome stench of his rude slot," "the hide of a varlet," "such an unswilled hogshead," "such a cock-brained solicitor;" "not a golden, but a brazen ass;" "barbarian, the shame of all honest attorneys, why do they not hoist him over the bar and blanket him?"--such are a few of the varied elegancies. Two or three of them break the bounds within which modern taste permits quotation. "I may be driven," he says in the end, "to curl up this gliding prose into a rough Sotadic, that shall rime him into such a condition as, instead of judging good books to be burnt by the executioner, he shall be readier to be his own hangman. So much for this nuisance." After which, as if feeling that he had gone too far, he begs any person dissenting from his Doctrine, and willing to argue it fairly, not to infer from this _Colasterion_ that he was displeased at being contradicted in print, or that he did not know how to receive a fair antagonist with civility. Practically, however, I should fancy that, after the _Colasterion_, most people would be indisposed to try the experiment of knowing what Milton meant by being civil to an antagonist. BOOK III. April 1645-August 1646. _HISTORY_.--SIXTEEN MONTHS OF THE NEW MODEL, AND OF THE LONG PARLIAMENT AND WESTMINSTER ASSEMBLY CONTINUED.--BATTLE OF NASEBY AND ITS CONSEQUENCES: EPISODE OF MONTROSE IN SCOTLAND: FLIGHT OF THE KING TO THE SCOTS AND CONCLUSION OF THE CIVIL WAR.--PROGRESS OF THE TOLERATION CONTROVERSY AND OF THE STRUGGLE BETWEEN THE PRESBYTERIANS AND THE INDEPENDENTS--LONDON AND LANCASHIRE PRESBYTERIANIZED. _BIOGRAPHY_:--RETURN OF MILTON'S WIFE: HIS REMOVAL FROM ALDERSGATE STREET TO BARBICAN: FIRST EDITION OF HIS POEMS: THREE MORE SONNETS: CONTINUED PRESBYTERIAN ATTACKS ON MILTON: HIS RETALIATION: TROUBLES OF THE POWELL FAMILY. CHAPTER I. COMPOSITION OF THE NEW MODEL, AND VIEW OF THE WORK LYING BEFORE IT--FIRST ACTIONS OF THE NEW MODEL--CROMWELL RETAINED IN COMMAND: BATTLE OF NASEBY: OTHER SUCCESSES OF THE NEW MODEL--POOR PERFORMANCE OF THE SCOTTISH AUXILIARY ARMY--EPISODE OF MONTROSE IN SCOTLAND--FAG-END OF THE WAR IN ENGLAND, AND FLIGHT OF THE KING TO THE SCOTS--FALLEN AND RISEN STARS. By the Ordinance for New-Modelling the Parliamentarian Army, passed February 15, 1644-5, and by the Self-Denying Ordinance, which followed April 3, 1645, excluding all members of either House from commands in the New Army, the prospects of the war had been completely altered. From these dates people everywhere were talking of the _New Model_, and what it was likely to accomplish, the only difference being that the bulk of the Parliamentarians expected great things from it, while the Royalists, and perhaps also those of the Parliamentarians who resented the removal of Essex from the chief command, and their own removal from commands under him, regarded the whole experiment rather sneeringly, and ridiculed it as the _New Noddle_. Which of these sets of prophets were in the right will appear presently; meanwhile it is desirable that we should know as exactly as possible what the _New Model_ or _New Noddle_ really was. COMPOSITION OF THE NEW MODEL, AND VIEW OF THE WORK LYING BEFORE IT. The following is an account of the organization of the New Model, with a list of its chief Officers when it was first organized:-- TOTAL ARMY ESTIMATED AT 22,000. _Commander-in-Chief_: SIR THOMAS FAIRFAX (_ætat._ 33). _Second-in-Command_ (for the present): PHILIP SKIPPON, with the rank of Serjeant Major-General. _Chief of Ordnance_: THOMAS HAMMOND. He was a brother of the Royalist Divine and King's faithful Chaplain, Dr. Henry Hammond (see Vol. II. 519 and 526, Note); and the split of the Hammond family into Royalists and Parliamentarians was much noticed. _Scout-Master-General_: LEONARD WATSON, "originally a goldsmith in Lincoln." _Chaplain to the Commander-in-Chief_: Mr. EDWARD BOWLES. _Secretary to the Commander-in-Chief_: JOHN RUSHWORTH. I. FOOT = 14,400. These consisted of twelve Regiments, each of 1,200 men, and each divided into ten Companies, The officers of the Regiments, respectively, were as follows:-- 1. (The Commander-in-Chief's Regiment):--Colonel SIR THOMAS FAIRFAX; Lieutenant-Colonel JACKSON; Major COOKE; and seven Captains. 2. (The Serjeant-Major-General's Regiment):--Colonel PHILLIP SKIPPON; Lieutenant-Colonel FRANCIS; Major ASHFIELD; and seven Captains. 3. Colonel HOLBORN; Lieutenant-Colonel COTTESWORTH; Major SMITH; and seven Captains. 4. Colonel CRAWFORD or CRAYFORD, succeeded soon by young Colonel ROBERT HAMMOND (_ætat._ 24), a nephew of the chief of the Ordnance and of the Royalist Dr. Henry Hammond; Lieutenant-Colonel ISAAC EWER (reported to have been "a serving man"); Major SAUNDERS; and seven Captains. 5. Colonel BARCLAY; Lieutenant-Colonel EWINS (INNES?); Major COWELL; and seven Captains. 6. Colonel EDWARD MONTAGUE (_ætat._ only 20: he was cousin of the Earl of Manchester, being son of the Earl's brother, Sir Sidney Montague, who had been M.P. for Hunts, but was now dead); Lieutenant-Colonel ELLIS GRIMES; Major KELSEY; and seven Captains. 7. Colonel ALDRIDGE; Lieutenant-Colonel WALTER LLOYD (who succeeded to the Colonelcy); Major READ; and seven Captains. 8. Colonel JOHN PICKERING (of the family of the Pickerings, of Tichmarsh, Northamptonshire, "a little man," quite young, and cousin of the boy who was to be known as the poet Dryden); Lieutenant-Colonel JOHN HEWSON (originally a shoemaker in Westminster, but who had risen from the ranks by his valour); Major JUBBS; and seven Captains, one of whom was a Captain AXTELL. 9. Colonel FORTESCUE; Lieutenant-Colonel BULSTRODE; Major RICHBELL; and seven Captains. 10. Colonel RICHARD INGOLDSBY (_ætat._ 23: his father was Sir Richard Ingoldsby of Lenthenborough, and his mother was a cousin of Cromwell's); Lieutenant-Colonel FARRINGTON; Major PHILIP CROMWELL (a cousin of Cromwell's: second son of his uncle Sir Philip Cromwell); and seven Captains. 11. (Artillery) Colonel THOMAS RAINSBOROUGH (once "a skipper of Lynn," who had seen service at sea); Lieutenant-Colonel OWEN; Major DOVE; and seven Captains. 12. (Artillery) Colonel RALPH WELDEN, a veteran; whose under-officers I have not ascertained, save that one of them seems to have been ROBERT LILBURNE (brother of John Lilburne), who in time succeeded to the Colonelcy. II. HORSE AND DRAGOONS = 7,600. The Horse (6,600) consisted of eleven Regiments, each of 600, divided into six troops; the Dragoons consisted of one Regiment (1,000), in ten troops of 100 each. They were officered thus:-- 1. (The Commander-in-Chiefs Regiment):--Colonel SIR THOMAS FAIRFAX; Major JOHN DESBOROUGH (a brother-in-law of Oliver Cromwell's: married to his younger sister, Jane Cromwell); and four Captains, one of them a Captain BERRY. 2. Colonel MIDDLETON; Major RICHARD NORTON; and four Captains. 3. Colonel THOMAS SHEFFIELD (a younger son of the aged Earl of Mulgrave, and uncle of Sir Thomas Fairfax); Major SHEFFIELD (the Colonel's son or brother?); and four Captains. 4. Colonel CHARLES FLEETWOOD (a young man of a good Buckinghamshire family, and well known to Milton from his childhood, as Milton himself tells us: he had served first as a private trooper in the Earl of Essex's guards, and had rapidly distinguished himself); Major THOMAS HARRISON (formerly an attorney's clerk in London); and four Captains. 5. Colonel EDWARD ROSSITER; Major TWISTLETON; and four Captains. 6. Colonel VERMUYDEN (a Dutchman, who resigned after a month or two of good service, and returned to Holland, where his father, Sir Cornelius Vermuyden, was engaged in engineering works); Major HUNTINGDON (who succeeded Vermuyden in the Colonelcy); and four Captains. 7. Colonel ALGERNON SIDNEY (famous long afterwards for his death: now _ætat._ 23: third son of the Earl of Leicester: had served as a Captain in Manchester's army--he and his eldest brother, Philip, Lord Lisle, being more actively Parliamentarian than their father); Major ALFORD; and four Captains. 8. Colonel SIR ROBERT PYE, junior (son of the Sir Robert Pye who had been M.P. for Woodstock, as colleague with Speaker Lenthall, since the beginning of the Long Parliament, and was now a conspicuous man in the House); Major MATTHEW TOMLINSON (said to have been "a gentleman-usher to a lady"); and three Captains, one of whom was HENRY IRETON (a B.A. of Oxford, and barrister of the Middle Temple, _ætat._ 35, who had taken to soldiering: described as of "a melancholic, reserved, dark nature," and great ability). 9. Colonel EDWARD WHALLEY (rumoured by the Royalists to have been "a woollen-draper or petty merchant in London," who had got into debt and migrated to Scotland for a time; but certainly of a Nottinghamshire family of mark, and certainly a cousin of Cromwell's; recently also known for excellent service under Cromwell as Major in Cromwell's own regiment); Major BETHELL; and four Captains. 10. Colonel RICHARD GRAVES; Major ADRIAN SCROOP; and four Captains. 11. Colonel Sir MICHAEL LIVESEY, Bart., of Co. Kent; Major SEDASOUE; and four Captains. _Regiment of Dragoons_: Colonel JOHN OKEY (originally, it is said, a "drayman," then "stoker in a brewhouse at Islington," and next a "most poor chandler in Thames Street;" said also to have been "of more bulk than brains;" but certainly of late an invincible dragoon-officer); Major WILLIAMS or GWILLIAMS; and eight Captains. N.B. Some of the above-mentioned officers (such as Colonels Middleton, Livesey, Holborn, and Barclay) do not seem to have taken the places assigned them in the New Model. Others therefore had to be brought in by Fairfax almost at once. Among these were:--1. As _Colonels of Horse_: Colonel BUTLER; the Hon. JOHN FIENNES (third son of Viscount Saye and Sele); CHARLES RICH (he had been nominated in the Commons for a Colonelcy Feb. 28 and March 1, 1644-5, and rejected both times; but must have been appointed soon afterwards). 2. As _Colonels of Foot_: EDWARD HARLEY (whose Lieutenant-Colonel was THOMAS PRIDE, a foundling who had been a drayman); JOHN LAMBERT (who had been a Colonel under Fairfax in the North); SIR HARDRESS WALLER (_ætat._ 41, cousin of Sir William Waller). [Footnote: In the Lords Journals, date March 18, 1644-5, there is a list of the intended officers of the New Model as then agreed to, after a month or two of choosing, between the Lords and the Commons. This has been my chief authority; but it has been aided and checked by the _Anglia Rediviva_ of the New Model chaplain Sprigge (pp. 8-10 _et seq._ of Oxford Edition of 1854) and by Rushworth (VI.13-17 _et seq._). Mr. Clements Markham's account of the New Model Army in his life of Fairfax (pp. 188-202) has likewise been of use, though it does not profess to be more than general, nor to be calculated for the very commencement of the New Model. Some particulars of information respecting persons I have taken from Mr. Markham; others I have had to gather miscellaneously from the Parliamentary Journals, Wood, Carlyle's _Cromwell_, Walker's Hist. of Independency, Reprint of _The Mystery of the Good Old Cause_ (a satirical tract of 1660) at end of Vol. III. of Parl. Hist., &c. I have had to rectify the spellings of some of the names in the original Lords Journals list, and to find out the Christian names where possible. It is not always so easy as one might suppose to ascertain the Christian name of a man who may have been of considerable note in his day and have left his mark.] Such was the famous New Model. [Footnote: In the New Model the reader ought to note three things:--(1) The comparative youth of the officers. There _were_ veterans; but the Commander-in-chief was but thirty three years of age, and most of the Colonels were still younger. (2) The blending of different ranks of society in the body of the officers. The majority were decidedly from the ranks of the aristocracy and gentry-- peers' younger sons, knights, sons of knights and country-gentlemen, &c.; but in men like Skippon, Colonel Okey, Colonel Rainsborough, Lieutenant- Colonel Ewer, Lieutenant-Colonel Hewson, Lieutenant-Colonel Pride, Major Harrison, and Major Tomlinson, there was a conspicuous sprinkling of stout representatives of a lower and more popular stratum. The Royalists, and even the Presbyterians, fastened on this fact and exaggerated it. All the army, from the general to the meanest sentinel, could not muster £1,000 a year in lands among them; so it was laxly said. (3) Another fact, of which the Presbyterians and the Royalists, and other anti- Cromwellians, afterwards made the most, was the unusual number of relatives of Cromwell that there were among the officers. To those who regarded the whole invention and organization of the New Model as a deep design of Cromwell's craft, with Fairfax as his temporary tool, this fact was blackly significant. But, apart altogether from that theory, the fact _is_ important, and ought to be borne in mind. There was not only much of the Cromwell spirit in the New Model from the first, but a large leaven of the Cromwell _kin_.] Where was it first to be employed? This was an anxious question; and, to understand it, we must have the map of England before us as it appeared to the Parliamentarians in the early months of 1645. England then, in the eyes of the Parliamentarians, consisted of four regions, as follows:--(I.) The _Pre-eminent and assured Parliamentarian Region_. This included London and Middlesex, with the Eastern and South-Eastern counties at their back, or immediately flanking them north and south--viz.: Herts, Essex, Cambridge, Bedford, Northamptonshire, Hunts, Suffolk, Norfolk, and almost all Lincoln, together with Kent, Surrey, and Sussex. All this sweep of country was now thoroughly in the possession of the Parliament, and constituted the region whence it drew its main strength. The services of the New Model were not required in it; for it was the main feeder and support of the New Model. (II.) _The Northern Counties_. Here, beyond the Humber and Mersey, or perhaps even beyond the Trent, the cause of Parliament was also in the ascendant. Since Marston Moor Royalism lingered here only in a few towns and garrisons. In Cumberland, Carlisle still held out for the King, and the siege of this city, together with the preservation of the North generally, was the work now specially expected from the Scottish auxiliary army. In Yorkshire, the castles of Skipton, Pontefract, Scarborough, Sandal, and Bolton, and, in Lancashire, Latham House and Greenhaugh Castle, kept up the King's flag, but were surrounded by local Parliamentary besiegers. On the whole there was no reason for anxiety now about the North within itself; and the hope was that the Scottish Army and other stray forces in those parts might be able soon to move southwards and co-operate with the New Model. (III.) _The South-West and Mid-Southern Counties._ Here the King was vastly in the ascendant. Cornwall was absolutely his; Devon was wholly his, with the exception of the port of Plymouth, still held for the Parliament, but besieged by the King's forces; Somerset was wholly his, save that Taunton was holding out for Parliament in great distress; all Wilts was his, except Malmesbury Castle; in Dorset he was nearly master, though the three port-towns of Poole, Lyme, and Weymouth (Melcombe) had Parliamentary garrisons; and even in Hants, where the Parliament divided the power with him more equally, he held the two strong places of Winchester and Basing. The King's field-forces in all this southwestern and southern region were extremely numerous, apart from the garrisons, and were commanded by Lords Goring and Hopton, Sir Richard Greenville, Major-General Sir John Digby, and others. With them was the Prince of Wales, now fifteen years of age. He had been recently sent from Oxford into those parts, with a view both to his own safety and to the effects of his influence. (IV.) _The English Midlands, backed by Wales._ Here also the King was firmly established. Here it was that, with the Princes Rupert and Maurice as his chiefs in command, he directly faced the massed Parliamentarianism of London and the Eastern Counties. In Bucks and Berks, indeed, his forces and those of the Parliament overlapped each other. Aylesbury, the chief town in Bucks, was the Parliament's, while Boarstall House, ten or twelve miles east from it, was the King's; and, similarly, the east of Berks, with Windsor, Reading, and Abingdon, were mainly held by Parliament, while in the same county the King had some strong garrisons. Oxford, however, the county of the King's head-quarters, was wholly in his possession, with the exception of Henley on the Berks border. To the north of Oxfordshire was Warwickshire, all the King's except Warwick Castle, though bordered by Northamptonshire, which was all the Parliament's; and farther north were the shires of Leicester, Nottingham, and Stafford, in each of which, though the Parliament held the county- town, the King had countervailing strongholds. Then, at the back of this row of central counties facing the massed Parliamentarianism of the East, there were the shires of Gloucester, Worcester, Salop, and Chester, in which Parliament had scarcely any hold; that of Hereford, in which it had no hold; and the whole bulk of Wales, in which the two castles of Pembroke and Montgomery were the sole Parliamentarian specks. Leaning back upon Wales, and the English counties of the Welsh border, the King, from Oxford, with its flanking counties north and south, fronted Parliament very formidably. [Footnote: In this survey of the state of the war over all England in April 1645, I have availed myself of the introductory Tables in Sprigge (pp. xi-xvi, Edit. 1854), repeated in Rushworth, VI. pp. 18-22. The geographical information in the Tables is, however, somewhat confused, and I have recast it.] FIRST ACTIONS OF THE NEW MODEL. Clearly, it was against one or other of the two last-mentioned regions that the New Model must first show its prowess. Which of the two should it be? The West had many claims. Besides the importance of relieving the besieged Parliamentary garrisons in that direction, there was the necessity of taking precaution against the possible advance from it of Goring's forces towards London. Accordingly, even before the Self-Denying Ordinance had become law, Cromwell and Sir William Waller had been ordered on a special expedition into the West (February 27), "for relief of Melcombe and the garrisons and places adjacent, and for preventing and breaking the enemy's levies and recruits." Cromwell's men were very reluctant to go on this expedition, probably because they did not like to serve with Waller. But, Cromwell having managed them, he and Waller did go into the West as far as Dorset and Somerset, and, after as much success as was possible, returned about the middle of April. The Self- Denying Ordinance was then law; and on the 22nd of April Cromwell was at Windsor, to resign his command, and take leave of Fairfax. Suddenly, on the following morning, a message from the Committee of the two Kingdoms came to Windsor ordering Fairfax to employ Cromwell on a new enterprise of pressing moment. [Footnote: This "Committee of the two Kingdoms" originally appointed in Feb. 1643-4, after the coming in of the Scots Auxiliary Army (see list of members _antè_, p. 41) is found very active after the organization of the New Model--a quorum always sitting in Derby House, Canon Row, Westminster, close to Parliament (the house in which Pym had died) and sending orders, &c., to Fairfax. Manchester, Saye and Sele, Wharton, and Vane the younger, of the English members of the Committee, and Loudoun and Sir Archibald Johnstone of the Scottish members, signed most such orders and letters in May and June 1645 (see Rushworth, VI. 27-33).] He was to ride with all haste into Oxfordshire, to intercept, if possible, a convoy of 2,000 horse, which Prince Rupert was to detach from Worcester, then the head-quarters of the King's main army, for the purpose of fetching off the King and his Artillery-train from Oxford. As the forty days of grace fixed by the Self-Denying Ordinance did not expire till the 13th of May, Cromwell would have time to perform this service before the exact day on which his resignation was required! In fact, he performed it thoroughly in two days. On the 24th of April he met the enemy, consisting of the Queen's own regiment, the Earl of Northhampton's, and Lord Wilmot's, at Islip Bridge, routed them utterly, slew many, and took about 200 prisoners and 400 horses, besides the Queen's standard. Not only so; but, some of the fugitives having taken refuge in Bletchington House, then commanded by Colonel Thomas Windebank, son of the ex-Secretary, with a garrison of 200 men, Cromwell had summoned the house to surrender, and, though a defence might easily have been made, Windebank had actually surrendered that same night, giving up all his stores. Such were the first actions of the New Model; and, as they carried joy into the Parliamentarian heart, so in the King's quarters they caused rage and vexation. Windebank was tried by court-martial for cowardice, and, notwithstanding his connexions, was shot to death in the court of Merton College, Oxford (May 3). [Footnote: For facts in the preceding three paragraphs see _Commons Journals_, Feb. 27 and 28, and March 4 and at 20, 1644-5; Sprigge's _Angliæ Reduc._ (1854) 11-13: Carlyle's _Cromwell_ (ed. 1857) I. 163-167; Rushworth, VI. 23-25. We had a glimpse of young Windebank at an earlier period, when he little foresaw this end. See Vol. II. p. 70.] CROMWELL RETAINED IN COMMAND: BATTLE OF NASEBY: OTHER SUCCESSES OF THE NEW MODEL. On the 1st of May, while Cromwell was still absent in Oxfordshire, the main body of the New Model, under Fairfax and Skippon, was on the move in another direction. It had seemed on the whole that it would be of most use in the South-West. In especial, there was great anxiety for the relief of Taunton. But, when Fairfax had got as far as into Dorset, on his way to Taunton, he was overtaken by an Ordinance of the two Houses, in conformity with a resolution of the Committee of both Kingdoms (May 6), recalling him and Skippon, with the bulk of the New Model, for service, after all, in the Mid-English Counties. For Goring had carried much of the South-Western force thither, and had joined Rupert and Maurice, so that there was a great stir of something new intended about Oxford and round the King's person. Accordingly, detaching only a brigade of some 7,000, consisting of Welden's, Lloyd's, Fortescue's, and Ingoldsby's foot-regiments, and Graves's horse-regiment, with some other district forces, all under Welden's chief command, to push on for the relief of Taunton, Fairfax wheeled his main force back north-east, and, after forced cross-country marching, found himself (May 14) at the well- known Newbury, on his way to Oxford. By this time he knew, if he had not known it before, that he was to have the help of other generalship under him than that of Skippon. If it had ever been really intended that Cromwell should retire from the Army with the others, according to the strict terms of the Self-Denying Ordinance, the successes at Islip Bridge and Bletchington House had put it into all men's minds to inquire how the Army could get on without him. The Army itself had but one opinion on the subject. For many months past he had been the darling of the entire force, so that, whenever he appeared unexpectedly on the field, there were shouts of "_A Cromwell! A Cromwell!_" Willingly or unwillingly, Parliament had to defer to this sentiment; and on May 10, three days before the expiry of the forty days of grace fixed by the Self-Denying Ordinance, a special ordinance of the Commons continuing Cromwell in his employment for forty days longer, i.e. till June 22, was agreed to by the Lords. There was murmuring among the Presbyterians and the friends of the late generals, Essex, Manchester, and Waller; but the thing was inevitable. Nay, when Fairfax and other officers of the New Model, not content with the vague and brief additional use of Cromwell's services thus offered, petitioned distinctly for his appointment as Lieutenant- general, with chief command of the horse, that also had to be conceded. The petition was read in the Commons and agreed to, June 10; on which day a letter was drawn up, signed by the Speaker, and despatched to Fairfax, "to desire him, if he shall so think fit, to appoint Lieutenant-general Cromwell to command the horse during so long time as the House shall dispense with his absence." [Footnote: Commons Journals of days named.] Within four days after the formal appointment of Cromwell to the Lieutenant-generalship under Fairfax there came that great action of the year which more than justified the appointment. The circumstances were these:--While Fairfax had been on the march towards Taunton, the King, with his Artillery-train, &c., had left Oxford (May 7) and taken the field with his main army of the Midlands under Prince Rupert. Cromwell, who had remained in Oxfordshire, kept hovering after him and watching his movements. These were uncertain; but it appeared as if he were tending northwards, to relieve Chester, then besieged by a Parliamentarian force from Lancashire and Cheshire under Sir William Brereton. [Footnote: It is to be remembered that, apart from the New Model, there were still English Parliamentary garrisons, and field forces, here and there, doing necessary district work. Sir William Brereton, M.P. for Cheshire, had had in his hands much of the management of the war in those parts; and as he was still useful, Parliament had exempted him as well as Cromwell, from the same hate operation of the Self Denying Ordinance, extending his command (May 12) for forty days. The same extension, on the same day, was given to Sir Thomas Middleton, M.P. for Denbighshire, at work on the Welsh border, but with a reserve that, after the forty days his command was to be resigned to a Colonel Mitton Common Journal.] When, therefore, Fairfax had wheeled back from his South-Western expedition, and was once more in the Midlands, the question arose whether he and his New Model should besiege Oxford in the King's absence, or whether they should pursue his Majesty and fight him in the field. The siege of Oxford seemed the preferable course; and, accordingly (May 22), Fairfax, now rejoined by Cromwell, sat down before that city. Soon, however, it became questionable whether the war-committee had judged rightly. For discomfiting the King's design for the relief of Chester the Parliament had trusted to the Scottish Army, aided by the English Parliamentarians of the Northern Counties, and by a band of the New Model horse despatched north under Colonel Vermuyden. But the Scots, out of humour with the New Model altogether, had been backward or careless; the King, through Warwickshire, Worcestershire and Shropshire, had made his way into Cheshire; his approach had relieved Chester; he had then turned eastwards into Staffordshire, had crossed that county, entered Leicestershire, and (May 30) taken the town of Leicester by storm. He was thus on the very verge of the Parliament's own faithful Association of the Eastern Counties, and might be expected to break into that Association. Immediately, therefore, the plans of the Parliament were changed. On the very day on which the news of the storming of Leicester arrived, Cromwell was off from Oxford into the Eastern Counties, and on the 5th of June, Fairfax, with the rest of the New Model, raised the siege of Oxford and marched north. June 13, he was in the north-west of Northamptonshire, within sight of the King's main force, which had advanced out of Leicestershire into that county. Early on that morning, while he was holding a council of war, Cromwell came in, fresh from his work in the Association, and welcomed as the man most wanted. He at once assumed his Lieutenant-generalship; and on the next day, Saturday, June 14, 1645, there was fought the great BATTLE OF NASEBY. There had been nothing like it since Marston Moor. The King's Army, commanded by the King in person, Prince Rupert, Prince Maurice, Sir Jacob Astley (now Lord Astley), Lord Barnard Stuart, Sir George Lisle, Sir Marmaduke Langdale, and Colonel Howard, was utterly defeated and ruined. The prisoners taken amounted to 5,000, and included many of the King's chief officers; all the artillery was captured, and much baggage, including the King's cabinet, with his private papers and correspondence. These papers were speedily published by Parliament under the title of _The Kings Cabinet Opened_; and, by the revelations they made of the King's duplicity, his absolute subjection to the Queen, and his secret dealings with the Irish and Papists, they did as much to discredit his cause as the battle itself. [Footnote: Sprigge, 21-51; Rushworth, VI. 29-48; and Carlyle's _Cromwell_, I. 169-l76.--Here is a note from the Stationers' Registers, July 9 (1645): "Robert Bostock entered for his copy, by special command, under the hands of Mr. Henry Parker and Mr. Thomas May, Secretaries, and Mr. Miller, Warden, a Book entitled _The King's Cabinet Opened, or certain Packets of Secret Letters and Papers, written by the King's own hand, taken in his Cabinet at Naseby Field_." For an account of Naseby battle and review of previous accounts, see Markham's _Fairfax_, 213- 230.] Though Fairfax was voted everywhere the brave and worthy commander-in- chief at Naseby, and though Skippon had behaved like himself and kept his post after having been seriously wounded, much of the credit of the battle, as of that of Marston Moor, went to Cromwell. He had commanded the Horse on the right wing, and his success there against the enemy's left had been effectual and decisive. Moreover, in the whole marshalling of the battle, and in what had prepared for it, people saw, or thought they saw, Cromwell's influence. The horse regiments engaged were, on the right wing, Fairfax's Life-guards, Cromwell's Ironsides, Colonel Whalley's, Colonel Sir Robert Pye's, Colonel Rossiter's, Colonel Sheffield's, and Colonel Fiennes's, and, on the left wing, Colonel Butler's, Colonel Vermuyden's (now Huntingdon's), Colonel Rich's, Colonel Fleetwood's, and another; and the foot regiments engaged were Fairfax's own, Skippon's, Colonel Sir Hardress Waller's, young Colonel Pickering's, young Colonel Montague's, young Colonel Hammond's, Colonel Rainsborough's, and Lieutenant-colonel Pride's. Fairfax in person, with Skippon, commanded the foot or main body; Cromwell, as we have seen, commanded the right wing; but who commanded the left wing? It was the Colonel of that horse-regiment which we have left anonymous. And who was he? No other than that HENRY IRETON, the melancholic, reserved lawyer of the Middle Temple, who was only a Captain in Sir Robert Pye's regiment at the formation of the New Model three months before (_antè_, p. 327). He had been recently promoted to a Colonelcy, and on the eve of the battle Fairfax had made him Commissary-general of Horse, with command of the left wing, over the heads of the other Colonels. This was at Cromwell's request, who had reason to know Ireton, and had special confidence in him. Nor did the result belie Cromwell's judgment. Ireton's wing, indeed, had given way and fled under the shock of Rupert's charges, but not till Ireton himself had had his horse shot under him, received two wounds, and been taken prisoner in a counter-attack. Rescued by the turn of the battle, he came in for a share of the praise. [Footnote: Rushworth, VI. 42, 43. Carlyle's _Cromwell_, I. 176.--It came to be an assertion with the Presbyterians, thought I do not believe they believed it themselves, that Cromwell's military fame had been gained by systematic puffing on the part of the Independents. "The news books taught to speak no language but Cromwell and his party, and were mute on such actions as he and they could claim no share in," wrote Clement Walker a year or two after Naseby (Hist. of Indep. Part I, 30). We have see Baillie writing rather in the same way after Marston Moor.]--When the news of the victory reached London, the Parliament, amid their various rejoicings, and their voting of a day of public thanksgiving to God, a jewel worth 500_l_. to Fairfax, and the like, did not forget one practical inference from what had happened. That same day (June 16) the Commons signified to the Lords their desire that Cromwell's exceptional Lieutenant-generalship should be prolonged; and, accordingly, on June 18 it was agreed by both Houses "That Lieutenant-general Cromwell shall continue as Lieutenant-general of the Horse, according the established pay of the Army, for three months from the end of the forty days formerly granted to him." This extended his command under Fairfax only to Sept. 22; but, that we may not have to refer to the matter again, we may here state that, before that date arrived, the term of his service was stretched for other four months, with an understanding in fact that it was to be indefinitely elastic. [Footnote: Commons and Lords Journals of days named.] Naseby proved the beginning of the end. It was the shivering of the central mass of Royalism in England, and the subsequent events of the war may be regarded as only so much provincial addition, and tedious pursuit of the fragments. A sketch of these events will suffice. The beaten King having fled, with the wrecks of his army, back through Leicestershire, Staffordshire, and Shropshire, into Wales, and the Midlands thus being safe, Fairfax was at liberty to transfer his victorious New Model to the part of England where its presence was then most sorely needed, i.e. the West and South-West.--The brigade which he had detached, under Colonel Welden, for the relief of Taunton, when recalled himself from his former march westward, had successfully accomplished that object (May 12), but only itself to be shut up in Taunton by a second and severer siege by Goring's forces, returned into those parts. By way of a temporary arrangement for action in the West in these circumstances, Parliament had by an ordinance, May 24, entrusted a separate command in chief of whatever forces could be raised for the West to Major-general Edward Massey, an officer well acquainted with that part of the country, and distinguished by his previous services in it throughout the war. [Footnote: The Ordinance is in the Lords Journals under the date named.] But Massey was to hold the separate command only till Fairfax could assume it in person. Accordingly, when Fairfax, after seeing the King fairly chased away from Naseby, turned once more southwards, and, by rapid marches through Warwickshire and Gloucestershire, arrived in Wilts (June 27), the conduct of the war in the South-West became the regular work of the New Model, with Massey as but an auxiliary. The progress was rapid. July 3, Taunton was relieved the second time, and Goring's forces obliged to retire: July 10, Lamport Battle was fought, in which Goring was defeated with great loss; July 23, Bridgewater was taken by storm; July 30, the city of Bath surrendered. Thus in one month the King's power was broken all through Somersetshire. August sufficed for the same result in Dorsetshire, where Sherborne Castle was battered and stormed on the 15th. On the 10th of September came the splendid success of the storming of Bristol. This great city was defended by Prince Rupert, who had made his way again into the South-West for the purpose, and who had assured the King that he would hold it to the last. Nevertheless, after a siege of eighteen days, he was glad to surrender--himself and his men marching out with their personal baggage and the honours of war, but leaving all the ordnance, arms, and ammunition in the city as the spoil of the Parliament. [Footnote: Young Major Bethell was mortally wounded in the storming of Bristol; and here is a touching little incident of the same action from Mr. Markham's _Life of Fairfax_. "Among the slain (in one of the attacks) was a young officer named Pugsley, who was buried by Fairfax's order, with military honours in a field outside the fort. He was just married, and his wife survived him for 60 years. On her death, in 1705, she was buried, according to her expressed wishes, without a coffin, in her wedding dress, and with girls strewing flowers and fiddlers playing before her. In this way she was borne to her final resting place by the side of her husband, and the place is still known as Pugsley's Field."] It was the greatest blow the King had received since Naseby; and he was so enraged with Rupert that he revoked all his commands, and ordered him to leave England. Rupert, however, having gone to the King, a reconciliation was brought about; and, though he held no high command again during the rest of this war, he remained in the King's service. The surrender of Bristol was followed by that of Devizes Castle (Sept. 23) and that of Laycock House (Sept. 24) in Wilts, and by the storming of Berkeley Castle (Sept. 23) in Gloucestershire. [Footnote: This summary is chiefly from Sprigge; where, in addition to the text there is an excellent chronological table of actions and sieges: one or two of the facts are from Clarendon, and Carlyle's _Cromwell_.] POOR PERFORMANCE OF THE SCOTTISH AUXILIARY ARMY. Let us leave the West and South-West for a time, and turn to the North.-- As late as May and June 1645, Baillie, then back in London and again on duty in the Westminster Assembly, had still been hoping great things from his beloved Scottish Army in the North. Since the taking of Newcastle (Oct. 1644), indeed, the services of this army had been mainly dumb-show, so that the English had begun to despise it and to ask whether it was worth its wages. Baillie's hope, however, was that, somehow or other after all, it would be the Scottish Army, and not this New Model, the invention of the Independents and the Sectaries, that would perform the finishing action, and reap the final credit. What then were his thoughts when the news of Naseby reached him? "This accident," he writes, June 17, 1645, three days after the Battle, "is like to change much the face of affairs here. We hope the back of the Malignant [Royalist] Party is broken; [but] some fears the insolence of others, to whom alone the Lord has given the victory of that day." The news of the taking of Carlisle at last by the Scots (June 28) may have helped to revive his spirits; but that also may have been an indirect consequence of Naseby, and the subsequent small success of the Scots during those months when Fairfax, Cromwell, and the New Model were succeeding so splendidly in the South- West, again threw Baillie into despondency. The taking of Pontefract Castle (July 21) and of Scarborough (July 25) in Yorkshire, and finally that of Latham House in Lancashire, after its two years' defence by the Countess of Derby (Dec. 4), were the work of the English Parliamentarians of the Northern Counties; and all the Scots did was very disappointing. From Carlisle they did, indeed, march south, to keep a watch on the King's movements in the Midlands after Naseby, and, after hovering about in those parts, they laid siege to the town of Hereford, by the desire of Parliament (July 31). But early in September they raised the siege, Leven pleading that he had not received the promised support and was unable to remain. With such grumblings and complaints of arrears in their pay, the Scots returned northwards, through the mid-counties, to Yorkshire, the English Parliament thinking worse and worse of them, but still speaking them fair, and desiring to retain them for minor service somewhere in England while the New Model was doing the real work. [Footnote: Rushworth, VI. 118-127; and Baillie, II. 286-316.] THE EPISODE OF MONTROSE IN SCOTLAND. It was not only the small performance and continued grumbling of the Scottish Auxiliary Army in England that had begun, by September 1645, to disgust the English Parliamentarians with their friends of the Scottish nation. In Scotland itself there had been an extraordinary outbreak of Royalism, which had not only perturbed that country throughout, but had latterly advanced to the very borders of England, threatening to connect itself with all of English Royalism that was not already beaten, and so undo the hard work and great successes of the New Model. Who that has read Scott's _Legend of Montrose_ but must be curious as to the facts of real History on which that romance was founded? They are romantic enough in themselves, and they form a very important episode in the general history of the Civil War. Our last sight of the young Earl of Montrose was in November 1641, when the King, during his visit to Scotland, procured his release, and that of his associates in the Merchiston House Compact, from their imprisonment in Edinburgh Castle (Vol. II. p. 307). The life of the young Earl had then been given back to him, but in what circumstances! Not only had all his expectations from the Merchiston House Compact been falsified, expectations of the overthrow of the Argyle supremacy in Scotland, and of the establishment of a new government for the King on an aristocratic basis; but, by the King's own acts, Argyle was left doubly confirmed in the supremacy, with the added honour of the Marquisate, and the Presbyterian clergy dominant around him. Such a Scotland was no country for Montrose. Away from Edinburgh, therefore, on one or other of his estates, in Perthshire, Forfarshire, Stirlingshire, or Dumbartonshire, and only occasionally in the society of his wife and his four little boys, we see him for some months, thrown back moodily upon himself, hunting now and then, corresponding with his friends Napier and Keir, but finding his chief relief in bits of Latin reading, dreams of Plutarch's heroes, and the writing of scraps of verse. Thus:-- "An Alexander I will reign, And I will reign alone; My thoughts did evermore disdain A rival on my throne: He either fears his fate too much, Or his deserts are small, That dares not put it to the touch To gain or lose it all." Alas! in a Scotland abject under a squint-eyed Argyle, with Loudoun and Warriston for his lieutenants, and a thousand rigid and suspicious black- coats giving the law singly in their pulpits and parishes, and thundering it collectively from their Assemblies, what room or opening was there for any such Plutarchian life? It was little better in England, from which anyhow he was debarred. He would go abroad. Were there not great strifes in Europe, struggles other than Presbyterian, into which a young Scottish Earl might fling himself, to win a glorious name, or die sword in hand? [Footnote: Napier's _Montrose_ (1856), 371-3, and Appendix to Vol. I. p. xxxiv.; Wishart's Memoirs of Montrose (translation of 1819 from the original Latin of 1648), Preface, p. vi.] So till August 1642, when the King raised his standard for the Civil War in England. Then there was again hope. The King remembered the fiery young Scottish Earl, and communications had passed between them. Montrose went into England; saw the Queen immediately after her landing at Burlington Bay (February 1642- 3); and pressed upon her his views as to the way in which Scotland might be roused in the King's behalf. He seemed to her Majesty but a brave young enthusiast; and, the Marquis of Hamilton having hastened from Scotland to counteract him, and to promise that he himself and his brother Lanark would keep Scotland firm to the King's interest without that open rising against the Argyle government which Montrose recommended, the cooler counsel had prevailed, Hamilton and Montrose had thus gone back into Scotland together, Hamilton with the new title of Duke (April 12, 1643) to encourage him in his difficult labour, and Montrose disappointed, watched, and in fresh danger. Again, however, as months had passed on, the chance of some such bold enterprise for Montrose as he himself had projected had become more likely. How ill Hamilton and Lanark had succeeded in _their_ milder undertaking we already know. They had not been able to check the tide of sympathy in Scotland with the English Parliamentarians; they had not been able to prevent that sudden Convention of the Scottish Estates which Argyle thought necessary in the crisis (June 1643); they had not been able to prevent the cordial reception there of the Commissioners from the English Parliament, nor the offer of armed aid from Scotland to the cause of the Parliament on the terms of Henderson's _Solemn League and Covenant_ (August 1643). Montrose, who had foreseen this result, and had been trying in vain to engage the Marquis of Huntley and other Scottish nobles in an independent coalition for the King, had not gone near the Convention, but, while it was yet deliberating in Edinburgh, had taken care to be again in England, on his way to the King with his budget of advices. A Scottish Covenanting army would certainly invade England in the cause of the Parliament: let their Majesties be in no doubt about that! He had himself the best reason to know the fact; for had not the Covenanting chiefs been secretly negotiating with him, and offering to forgive him all the past, if only now he would return to his allegiance to the Covenant, and accept the Lieutenant-generalship of their projected army under the Earl of Leven? If he had seemed to dally with this temptation, it had only been that he might the better fathom the purposes of the Argyle government, and report all to their Majesties! No service, however eminent, under Argyle, or with any of the crafty crew of the Covenant, was that on which his soul was bent, but a quite contrary enterprise, already explained to the Queen, by which the Argyle government should be laid in the dust, Scotland recovered for the King, and all her resources put at his disposal for the recovery of his power in England also! Hitherto their Majesties had not seen fit to confide in him, but had trusted rather the Hamiltons, with their middle courses and their policy of compromise! Were their Majesties aware what grounds might be shown for the belief that these Hamiltons, with all their plausibilities and fair seeming, were in reality little better than traitors, who had wilfully mismanaged the King's affairs in Scotland for interests and designs of their own? So, through the autumn of 1643, had Montrose been reasoning with the King and Queen, as yet to little purpose. But, when the autumn had passed into winter, and there had gathered round the King, in his head-quarters at Oxford, other refugee Scottish Royalists, driven from their country by the stress of the new League and Covenant, and bringing intelligence that Leven's invading army was actually levied and ready to march, then the tune of the Royal mind did somewhat change. The Duke of Hamilton and his brother Lanark, coming to Oxford, December 16, to clear themselves, were immediately arrested on charges suggested by Montrose and the other Scots at Court. To wait trial on these charges, the Duke was sent as a prisoner to Pendennis Castle; whence he was removed to St. Michael's Mount in the same county of Cornwall. Lanark, escaping from his arrest at Oxford, took refuge for a time in London, was cordially received there by the Scottish Commissioners and the English Parliamentarians, and returned thence to Scotland, converted by the King's treatment of him into an anti-Royalist and Covenanter to all temporary appearance, whatever he might still be at heart. [Footnote: Baillie, II. 73, 74; Wishart, 31-47; Napier, 373-384; Burnet's _Hamiltons_ (edit. 1852), 280-349. Burnet gives the charges against the Hamiltons, with their answers, at length, and narrates events anxiously in their behalf.] The Hamiltons being out of the way, Montrose obtained a better hearing for his plan. In the main, it was that the King should openly commission him as his Majesty's Lieutenant in Scotland, and furnish him with some small force with which to cut his way back into the heart of the country, and there rouse the elements, whether Lowland or Highland, that were ready for revolt against the Argyle supremacy. In connexion with this, however, there was the scheme of an Irish contingent. Was not the Earl of Antrim then with his Majesty at Oxford--that very Randal Macdonnell, Earl of Antrim, whom it had been proposed, as far back as 1638, to send secretly into Argyleshire with a force of Irishry, to aid the King in his first strife with the Covenanters (Vol. II. p. 23)? Six years had elapsed since then; but there was still extant in Antrim, as the head of the great Scoto-Irish clan of the Macdonnells and Macdonalds, that power for mischief in Scotland which consisted in the hereditary feud between this clan and all the family of the Campbells. Let Antrim go back to Ireland, raise a force of his Macdonnells and Macdonalds and whatever else, and make a landing with these on the West Scottish coast; and then, if the time could be so hit that Montrose should be already in Scotland as his Majesty's commissioned Lieutenant, might there not be such a junction of the two movements that the Argyle government would be thrown into the agonies of self-defence, and the recall of Leven's army from England would be a matter of immediate necessity? So much at least might be surely anticipated; but Montrose promised still larger results. Listening to his arguments, iterated and reiterated at Oxford through January 1643- 4, the King and Queen hardly knew what to think. Montrose's own countrymen round about the King were consulted. What thought Traquair, Carnwath, Annandale, and Roxburgh? They would have nothing to do with Montrose's plan, and talked of him as a would-be Hotspur. Only a few of the younger Scottish lords at Oxford, including Viscount Aboyne (the Marquis of Huntley's second son) and Lord Ogilvy (the Earl of Airlie's son and heir), adhered to him. Among the King's English counsellors, of course, there were few that could judge of his enterprise. One of these, however, whom a kindred daring of spirit drew to Montrose, helped him all he could. This was the young Lord Digby. Chiefly by his means, the King's hesitations were at length overcome. Late in January, Antrim, created a Marquis for the occasion, did go over to Ireland, vowing that, by the 1st of April 1644, he would land so many thousands of men in Scotland with himself at their head; and on the 1st of February 1643-4, or when Leven's Scottish army had been ten days in England, a commission was made out appointing Montrose Lieutenant-general of all his Majesty's forces in Scotland. It had been proposed to name him Viceroy and Commander-in- chief; but he had himself suggested that this nominal dignity should be conferred rather on the King's nephew, Prince Maurice. For his own work in Scotland the subordinate commission, with some small force of volunteer Scots and English troopers to assist him in displaying it, would in the meantime be quite enough. [Footnote: Wishart, 47-52; Baillie, II.73, 74, and 164; Clarendon, 533-537; Rushworth, V. 927; and Napier, 385-388.] Leaving Oxford, with a slender retinue of Scots, among whom were Aboyne and Ogilvy, Montrose went to York, and thence to Durham, where he attached himself to the Marquis of Newcastle, then engaged in resisting the advance of Leven's army. From that nobleman he implored, in the King's name, some troops for his convoy into Scotland. Newcastle, himself ill-supplied, could spare him but 200 horse, with two brass field-pieces. There was an accession from the Cumberland and Northumberland militia, so that the band with which Montrose entered Scotland (April 13, 1644) was about 1,000 strong. Hardly, however, had he entered Scotland when most of the English mutinied and went back. With what force he had left he pushed on to Dumfries, surprised that town into surrender, and displayed his standard in it with a flourish of trumpets. But nothing more could be done. Of Antrim's Irish contingent, which was to have been in the West Highlands by the 1st of April, there were no tidings; and Scotland all to the north of Dumfries was full of Covenanters now alarmed and alert. To try to dash through these at all hazards, so as to lodge himself in the Highlands, was his thought for a moment; but he had to give up the attempt as impossible. From Dumfries, therefore, he backed again, most reluctantly, into the North of England, pursued by the execration of all Presbyterian Scotland, and by a sentence of excommunication pronounced against him in the High Church of Edinburgh. [Footnote: Wishart, 52-55, Napier, 385-397, Rushworth, V. 927-9.] "Montrose's foolish bravado is turned to nothing," Baillie was able to write early in May 1644. This was the general impression. True, in recognition of his bravery, a patent for his elevation to the Marquisate had been made out at Oxford. It was fitting that, if ever he did come to represent the King in Scotland, it should be a Marquis of Montrose that should contend with the Marquis of Argyle. But would there ever be such a contest? Few can have entertained the belief besides Montrose himself. For some weeks after his retreat into England we hear of him as mingling actively in the war in Northumberland and Durham, taking and pillaging Morpeth, and the like; then we hear of him hurrying southwards to join Prince Rupert in his effort to raise the siege of York, but only to meet the Prince beaten and fugitive from the field of Marston Moor (July 2). "Give me a thousand of your horse; only give me a thousand of your horse for another raid into Scotland," was the burthen of his talk with Rupert. The Prince promised, and then retracted. Though a younger man than Montrose, he had more faith in what he could himself do with a thousand horse in England than in what any Scot could do with them in Scotland. And so, though Lord Digby, Endymion Porter, and some others still spoke manfully for Montrose with the King, he is found back in Carlisle, late in July, with only his little band of Scottish adherents. Then ensued the strangest freak of all. With this very band he set out again distinctly southwards, as if all thought of entering Scotland were over, and nothing remained but to rejoin the King at Oxford. The band, however, had been but two days on their march when they found that their leader had given them the slip, and left the duty of taking them to Oxford to his second, Lord Ogilvy. He himself had returned to Carlisle. It was barely known that he had done so when he mysteriously disappeared (Aug. 18). No one, except Lord Aboyne, whom he had left in Carlisle with certain secret instructions, could tell what had become of him; but it was afterwards remembered, like the beginning of a novel, that on such an autumn day three persons had been seen riding from Carlisle towards the Scottish border, two gentlemen in front, one of whom had a club foot, and the third behind, as their groom, mounted on a sorry nag, and leading a spare horse. The two gentlemen were a Colonel Sibbald and a lame Major Rollo, intimate friends of Montrose, and the supposed groom was Montrose himself. [Footnote: Wishart, 56-64; Napier 396-413; Rushworth, V. 928] There was a distinct cause for Montrose's entry into Scotland in this furtive manner. The Scottish Parliament (a regular Parliament, and not an informal Convention of Estates like that of the previous year) had met on the 4th of June, with Argyle, Loudoun, and twenty other Peers, more than forty lesser Barons, and about the same number of Commissioners from Burghs, present at the opening. On the 12th of July, when they were approaching the end of their business, there had been this occurrence: "Five several letters read in the House from divers persons of credit, showing of the arrival of fifteen ships, with 3,000 rebels in them, from Ireland, in the West Isles, with the Earl of Antrim's brother, and the sons of Coll Kittoch, and desiring the States with all expedition to send the Marquis of Argyle there by land, with some ships likewise by sea, and powder and ammunition." On subsequent days there were corrections of this intelligence, bringing it nearer to the exact fact. That fact was that Antrim's invasion of Scotland, arranged by him with the King and Montrose at Oxford six months before, had at last come to pass, not indeed in the shape of that full Irish army with Antrim himself in command which had been promised, but in the shape of a miscellany of about 2,000 Irish and Scoto-Irish who had landed at Ardnamurchan in the north of Argyleshire under the command of a redoubtable vassal of Antrim's, called (and here, for Miltonic reasons, the name must be given in full) Alastair Mac Cholla-Chiotach, Mhic-Ghiollesbuig, Mhic-Alastair, Mhic-Eoin Chathanaich, _i.e._ Alexander, son of Coll the Left-Handed, son of Gillespie, son of Alexander, son of John Cathanach. This long-named Celt was already pretty well known in Scotland by one or other of the abbreviations of his name, such as Mac-Coll Mac-Gillespie, or Alaster Mac-Colkittoch, or Alexander Macdonald the younger of Colonsay. His father, Alexander Macdonald the elder, was a chief of the Scottish Island of Colonsay, off the Argyleshire coast, but nearly related by blood to the Earl of Antrim, professing himself therefore of the same race, kin, and religion as the Irish Macdonnells, and sharing their ancient grudge against the whole race of the Campbells. He had the personal peculiarity of being ambidexter, or able to wield his claymore with his left hand as well as with his right; and hence his Gaelic name of Coll Kittoch, or Coll the Left-Handed. The peculiarity having been transmitted to his son Alaster, it was not uncommon to distinguish the two as old Colkittoch and young Colkittoch. The old gentleman had for some time been in durance in Edinburgh; but his sons had remained at large, and Alaster had been recently figuring in Antrim's train in Ulster, and acting for Antrim among the Irish rebels, with great repute for his bravery, and his huge stature and strength. Not inclined at the last moment for the command of the Scottish expedition himself, Antrim had done his best by sending this gigantic kinsman as his substitute. It was certainly but a small force, and most raggedly equipped, that he led; but, thrown as it was into the territories of King Campbell, and with a hundred miles of Highland glens before it, all rife and explosive with hatred to the name of Campbell, it might work havoc enough. So the Parliament in Edinburgh thought. On the 16th of July, or four days after the first rumour of the invasion, the Marquis of Argyle received a full commission of military command against the invaders, and left Edinburgh for the region of danger. [Footnote: Balfour's Annals, III. 215 _et seq._; Napier, 416-7 and 504; Wishart, 67; Baillie, II. 217; Rushworth, V. 928. There is a curious, but confused, story of the wrongs which old Colkittoch and his family had received at the hands of Argyle in Walker's Hist. of Independency (1660), Appendix to Part I. pp. 3-6.] This was what had caused Montrose's inexplicable restlessness about Carlisle through the latter part of July, and at length, on the 18th of August, his desperate plunge into Scotland in disguise, and with only two companions. By what route the three adventurers rode one does not know; but on the 22nd of August they turned up at the house of Tullibelton in Perthshire, near Dunkeld. It was the seat of Patrick Graham of Inchbrakie, a kinsman of Montrose. Received here by Inchbrakie himself, and by his eldest son, Patrick Graham the younger, locally known as "Black Pate," Montrose lay close for a few days, anxiously collecting news. As respected Scottish Royalism, the reports were gloomy. The Argyle power everywhere was vigilant and strong; no great house, Lowland or Highland, was in a mood to be roused. Only among the neighbouring Highlanders of Athole, or North Perthshire, known to Montrose from his childhood and knowing him well, could he hope to raise the semblance of a force. All this was discouraging, and made Montrose more eager for intelligence as to the whereabouts of Colkittoch and his Irish. He had not long to wait. Since their landing at Ardnamurchan (July 8) they had been making the most of their time in a wild way, roving hither and thither, ravaging and destroying, taking this or that stronghold, sending out the fiery cross and messages of defiance to Covenanting Committees. They had come inland at length as far as Badenoch, the wildest part of Inverness-shire, immediately north of Athole and the Grampians; and there were reasons now why they should be inquiring as anxiously after Montrose as he was inquiring after them. For their condition was becoming desperate. The great clan of the Seaforth Mackenzies, north of Argyleshire, from whom they had expected assistance, had failed to give any; other clans refused to be led by a mere Macdonald of Colonsay; the fleet of vessels in which they had landed had been seized and burnt by Argyle; that nobleman was following them; and orders were out for a general arming for the Covenant north of the Grampians. Accordingly, Colkittoch, imagining that Montrose was still in Carlisle, had written to him there. The rude postal habits of those parts being such that the letters came into the hands of Black Pate, Montrose received them sooner than the writer could have hoped. His reply, dated from Carlisle by way of precaution, was an order to Macdonald to descend at once into Athole and make his rendezvous, if possible, at Castle Blair. [Footnote: Napier, 413-419; Wishart, 64-68; Rushworth, V. 928-9. I have had the satisfaction of rectifying a portion of the tale of Montrose's romantic adventure into Scotland as it is told by his biographers. Wishart distinctly makes him first hear of the landing of Colkittoch and his Irish _after_ he had come into Scotland and was hiding about Tullibelton; and Mr. Napier's narrative conveys the same impression. But the idea is absurd. As the landing of Colkittoch and his Irish at Ardnamurchan on the 8th of July was known in Edinburgh, and discussed in the Parliament there, on the 12th of the same month, it must have been well known about Tullibelton at that time too, or six weeks before Montrose appeared there; and the news must have reached Montrose about July 13 or 14, when he was yet in the North of England, and must have been, in fact, the cause of his resolution to make his way into the Highlands. It is possible, of course, that, after Montrose came to Tullibelton, he may have been uncertain for a time of Colkittoch's exact whereabouts; and there is a seemingly authentic anecdote to the effect that Montrose himself related that he first learnt that Colkittoch had broken into Athole by meeting in the wood of Methven a man running with a fiery cross to carry the dreadful news to Perth. A misconstruction of this anecdote, with inattention to dates, has led to the larger, and intrinsically absurd, hypothesis.] A walk of twenty miles over the hills brought Montrose and Black Pate to the rendezvous. They found there a mixed crowd, comprising, on the one hand, the Irish, with a few Badenoch Highlanders, whom Colkittoch had brought with him, and on the other, the native Athole Highlanders, looking askance at the intruders, and, though willing enough to rise for King Charles, having no respect for an outlandish Macdonald from Colonsay. The appearance of Montrose put an end to the discord. He had put on the Highland dress, and looked "a very pretty man," fair-haired, with a slightly aquiline nose, grey eyes, a brow of unusual breadth, and an air of courage and command; but the Irish, noting his rather small stature, could hardly believe that he was the great Marquis. The wild joy of the Athole-men and the Badenoch-men on recognising him removed their doubts; and, amid shouts from both sides, Montrose assumed his place as Lieutenant-general for his Majesty, adopting the tall Macdonald as his Major-general. The standard was raised with all ceremony on a spot near Castle Blair, now marked by a cairn; and, when all was ready, the troops were reviewed. They consisted of about 1,200 Irish, with a following of women and children, and 1,100 Scottish Highlanders (Stuarts, Robertsons, Gordons, &c.). Artillery there was none; three old hacks, one of them for the lame Major Rollo, were the cavalry; money there was none; arms and ammunition were, for the most part, to seek, even clothing was miserably deficient. So began Montrose's little epic of 1644-5. He was then thirty- two years of age. [Footnote: Rushworth, V. 928-9; Napier, 419-422.] It was the track of Mars turned into a meteor. Marches and battles, battles and marches: this phrase is the summary of the story. Flash the phrase through the Highlands, flash it through the Lowlands, for a whole year, and you have an epitome of this epic of Montrose and his triumph. Our account of the details shall be as rapid as possible. Breaking forth southwards from Athole, to avoid Argyle's advance from the west, Montrose crossed the Tay, and made for Perth. Having been joined by his kinsman, Lord Kilpont, eldest son of the Earl of Menteith, Sir John Drummond, son of the Earl of Perth, and David Drummond of Maderty, he gave battle, at Tippermuir, near Perth, on Sunday, Sept. 1, 1644, to a Covenanting force of some 6,000 men, gathered from the shires of Perth and Fife, and under the command of Lord Elcho, the Earl of Tullibardine, Lord Drummond and Sir John Scot. The rout of the Covenanters, horse and foot, was complete. They were chased six miles from the field, and about 2,000 were slain. Perth then lying open for the victors, Montrose entered that town, and lie remained there three days, issuing proclamations, exacting fines and supplies, and joined by two of his sons, the elder of whom, Lord Graham, a boy of fourteen, accompanied him from that time. But movement was Montrose's policy. Recrossing the Tay, and passing north- eastwards, he came in sight of Dundee; but, finding that town too well defended, he pushed on, still north-east, joined on the way by the Earl of Airlie, and his two younger sons, Sir Thomas and Sir David Ogilvy, and came down upon Aberdeen. That city, too familiar with him in the days of his Covenanting zeal, was now to experience the tender mercies of his Royalism. Defeating (Sept. 12) a Covenanting force of Forbeses, Erasers, and others, who opposed him at the Bridge of Dee under Lord Burleigh and Lord Lewis Gordon (third son of the Marquis of Huntley, and for the time on this side), he let his Irish and Highlanders loose for four days on the doomed Aberdonians. Then, as Argyle was approaching with a considerable army, and no reinforcement was forthcoming from Aberdeenshire and Banffshire, he withdrew west, into the country of the upper Spey. Thence again, on finding himself hopelessly confronted by a muster of Covenanters from the northern shires of Moray, Ross, Sutherland, and Caithness, he plunged, for safety, into the wilder Highlands of Badenoch, and so back into Athole (Oct. 4). Not, however, to remain there! Again he burst out on Angus and Aberdeenshire, which Argyle had meanwhile been traversing on behalf of the Covenant. For a week or two, having meanwhile despatched his Major-general, Macdonald, into the West Highlands to fetch what recruits he could from the clans there, he made it his strategy, with the small force he had left, to worry and fatigue Argyle and his fellow-commander the Earl of Lothian, avoiding close quarters with their bigger force, and their cannon and horse. Once at Eyvie Castle, which he had taken October 14, they did surprise him; but, with his 1,500 foot and 50 horse, he made a gallant stand, so that they, with their 2,500 foot and 1,500 horse, had no advantage. As much of this time as he could give was spent by him in the Marquis of Huntley's own domain of Strathbogie, still in hopes of rousing the Gordons. At length, winter coming on, and the distracted Gordons refusing to be roused, and Argyle's policy of private dealings with Montrose's supporters individually having begun to tell, so that even Colonel Sibbald had deserted him, and few people of consequence remained to face the winter with him except the faithful Ogilvies, Montrose, after a council of war held in Strathbogie, retired from that district (Nov. 6), again by Speyside, into savage Badenoch. But here, ere he could take any rest, important news reached him. Argyle had certainly sent his horse into winter-quarters; but he had gone with all his foot to Dunkeld, whence the more easily to ply his craft of seduction among Montrose's trustiest adherents, the men of Athole. No sooner had Montrose heard this than, clambering the Grampian barrier between Badenoch and Athole, he brought his followers, by one tremendous night-march of twenty-four miles, over rocks and snow, down into the region in peril. He was yet sixteen miles off, when Argyle, bidding his men shift for themselves, fled from Dunkeld, and took refuge with the Covenanting garrison of Perth, on his way to Edinburgh. [Footnote: Wishart, 71-105; Napier, 426- 469; Rushworth, V. 929-931.] Argyle's soldiering, it had been ascertained, was not the best part of him. He knew this himself, and, on his return to Edinburgh in the end of November, insisted on resigning his military commission. It was difficult to find another commander-in-chief; but at length it was agreed that the fit man was William Baillie, the Lieutenant-general, under Leven, of the auxiliary Scottish army in England. He had recently been in Edinburgh on private business, and was on his way back to England when he was recalled by express. Not without some misgivings, arising from his fear that Argyle would still have the supreme military direction, he accepted the commission. [Footnote: Baillie, II. 262: also at 416 _et seq._, where there is an interesting letter of General Baillie to his namesake and kinsman.] Then Argyle went off to his own castle of Inverary, there to spend the rest of the winter. It was time that Argyle should be at Inverary. Montrose, left in assured possession of his favourite Athole, had been rejoined by his Major- general, Mac-Colkittoch, bringing reinforcements from the Highland clans. There was the chief of Clanranald with 500 of his men; there were Macdonalds from Glengarry, Glencoe, and Lochaber; there were Stuarts of Appin, Farquharsons of Braemar, Camerons from Lochiel, Macleans, Macphersons, Macgregors. What was winter, snow more or less upon the mountains, ice more or less upon the lakes, to those hardy Highlanders? Winter was their idlest time; they were ready for any enterprise: only what was it to be? On this point Montrose held a council of war. "Let us winter in the country of King Campbell," was what the Macdonalds and other clans muttered among themselves; and Montrose, who would have preferred a descent into the Lowlands, listened and pondered. "But how shall we get there, gentlemen? It is a far cry to Lochawe, as you know; how shall we find the passes, and where shall we find food as we go?" Then up spoke Angus MacCailen Duibh, a warrior from dark Glencoe. "I know," he said, "every farm in the land of MacCallummore; and, if tight houses, fat cattle, and clean water will suffice, you need never want." And so it was resolved, and done. From Athole, south-west, over hills and through glens, the Highland host moves, finding its way somehow--first through the braes of the hostile Menzieses, burning and ravaging; then to Loch Tay (Dec. 11); and so through the lands of the Breadalbane Campbells, and the Glenorchy Campbells, still burning and ravaging, till they break into the fastnesses of the Campbell in chief, range over Lorne, and assault Inverary. Argyle, amazed by the thunder of their coming, had escaped in a fishing-boat and made his way to his other seat of Roseneath on the Clyde; but Inverary and all Argyleshire round it lay at Montrose's mercy. And, from the middle of December 1644 to about the 18th of the January following, his motley Highland and Irish host ranged through the doomed domain in three brigades, dancing diabolic reels in their glee, and wreaking the most horrible vengeance. No one knows what they did. One sees Inverary in flames, the smoke of burning huts and villages for miles and miles, butcheries of the native men wherever they are found, drivings-in of cattle, and scattered pilgrimages of wailing women and children, with relics of the men amongst them, fugitive and starving in side glens and corries, where even now the tourist shudders at the wildness. [Footnote: Rushworth, V. 930, 931; Baillie, II. 262; Wishart, 106-108; Napier, 470-473.] The Scottish Parliament had reassembled for another Session on the 7th of January, without Argyle in it, but in constant communication with him; and about the same time General Baillie and a Committee of the Estates had gone to consult with Argyle at Roseneath. About the middle of the month they became aware that Montrose was on the move northward, out of Arglyeshire by Lorne and Lochaber in the direction of the great Albyn chain of lakes, now the track of the Caledonian Canal. They knew, moreover, that directly ahead of him in this direction there was a strong Covenanting power, under the Earl of Seaforth, and consisting of the garrison of Inverness and recruits from Moray, Ross, Sutherland and Caithness. Evidently it was Montrose's intention to meet this power and dispose of it, so as to have the country north of the Grampians wholly his own. In these circumstances the arrangements of Baillie and Argyle seemed to be the best possible. Baillie, instead of going on to Argyleshire, as he had intended, went to Perth, to hold that central part of Scotland with a sufficient force; and Argyle, with 1,100 seasoned infantry, lent him by Baillie, and with what gathering of his own broken men he could raise in addition, went after Montrose, to follow him along the chain of lakes. Of this army Argyle was to be nominally commander; but he had wisely brought over from Ireland his kinsman Sir Duncan Campbell of Auchinbreck, a brave and experienced soldier, to command under him. The expectation was that between Seaforth, coming in strength from the north end of the trough of lakes, and Argyle, advancing cautiously from the south end, Montrose would be caught and crushed, or that, if he did break eastward out of the trough between them, he would fall into the meshes of Baillie from his centre at Perth. [Footnote: Balfour's Annals, III. 246 _et seq._; Wishart, 109, 110; Napier, 475-477; and General Baillie's letter to his cousin Robert Baillie, in Baillie's Letters, II. 417t.] Then it was that Montrose showed the world what is believed to have been his most daring feat of generalship. On the 29th and 30th of January he was at Kilchuilem on Loch Ness near what is now Fort Augustus. Thence it was his purpose to advance north to meet Seaforth, when he received news that Argyle was thirty miles behind him in Lochaber, at the old cattle of Inverlochy, at the foot of Ben Nevis, near what is now Fort William. He saw at once the device. Argyle did not mean to fight him directly, but to keep dogging him at a distance and then to come up when he should be engaged with Seaforth! Instantly, therefore, he resolved not to go on against Seaforth, but to turn back, and fall upon Argyle first by himself. Setting a guard on the beaten road along the lakes, to prevent communication with Argyle, he ventured a march, where no march had ever been before, or could have been supposed possible, up the rugged bed of the Tarf, and so, by the spurs of big Carryarick and the secrets of the infant Spey, now in bog and wet, now knee-deep in snow, over the mountains of Lochaber. It was on Friday the 31st of January that he began the march, and early in the evening of Saturday the 1st of February they were down at the foot of Ben Nevis and close on Inverlochy. It was a frosty moonlight night; skirmishing went on all through the night; and Argyle, with the gentlemen of the Committee of Estates who were with him, went on board his barge on Loch Eil. Thence, at a little distance from the shore, he beheld the battle of the next day, Sunday, Feb. 2. It was the greatest disaster that had ever befallen the House of Argyle. There were slain in all about 1,500 of Argyle's men, including brave Auchinbreck and many other important Campbells, while on Montrose's side the loss was but of a few killed, and only Sir Thomas Ogilvy, among his important followers, wounded mortally. And so, with a heavy heart, Argyle sailed away in his barge, wondering why God had not made him a warrior as well as a statesman; and Montrose sat down to write a letter to the King. "Give me leave," he said, "after I have reduced this country to your Majesty's obedience and conquered from Dan to Beersheba, to say to your Majesty then, as David's general did to his master, 'Come thou thyself, lest this country be called by _my_ name.'" [Footnote: Rushworth, V. 931-2; Wishart, 110-114; Napier, 477-484. Mr. Napier winds up his account of the Battle of Inverlochy by quoting entire (484-488) Montrose's supposed letter to the King on the occasion. The letter, he says, was first "obscurely printed by Dr. Welwood in the Appendix to his Memoirs, 1699;" but he adds an extract from the _Analecta_ of the Scottish antiquary Wodrow, to the effect that Wodrow had been told, by a person who had seen the original letter, that Welwood's copy was a "vitiated" one. No other copy having been found among the Montrose Papers, Mr. Napier has had to reprint Welwood's; which he does with great ceremony, thinking it a splendid Montrose document. It certainly is a striking document; but I cannot help suspecting the genuineness of it as it now stands. There are anachronisms and other slips in it, suggesting posthumous alteration and concoction.]----The Battle of Inverlochy was much heard of throughout England, where Montrose and his exploits had been for some time the theme of public talk. The King was greatly elated; and it was supposed that the new hopes from Scotland excited in his mind by the success of Montrose had some effect in inducing him to break off the Treaty of Uxbridge then in progress. The Treaty was certainly broken off just at this time (Feb. 24, 1644-5). On Wednesday the 12th of February, ten days after Inverlochy, the Marquis of Argyle was in Edinburgh, and presented himself in the Parliament, "having his left arm tied up in a scarf." The day before, the Parliament had unanimously found "James, Earl of Montrose" (his title of Marquis not recognised) and nineteen of his chief adherents, including the Earl of Airlie, Viscount Aboyne, Alexander Macdonald MacColkittoch, and Patrick Graham younger of Inchbrakie, "guilty of high treason," and had forfaulted "their lives, honours, titles, lands and goods;" also ordering the Lyon King of Arms, Sir James Balfour, to "delete the arms of the traitors out of his registers and books of honour." The General Assembly of the Kirk was then also in session, rather out of its usual season (Jan. 22-Feb. 13), on account of important ecclesiastical business arising out of the proceedings of the Westminster Assembly; and Baillie and Gillespie had come from London to be present. Of course, the rebellion of Montrose was much discussed by that reverend body; and, in a document penned by Mr. Gillespie, and put forth by the Assembly (Feb. 12), there was this passage:--"In the meantime, the hellish crew, under the conduct of the excommunicate and forfaulted Earl of Montrose, and of Alaster Macdonald, a Papist and an outlaw, doth exercise such barbarous, unnatural, horrid, and unheard-of cruelty as is beyond expression." But, though Parliament might condemn and proscribe Montrose, and the General Assembly might denounce him, the real business of bringing him to account rested now with General Baillie. To assist Baillie, however, there was coming from England another military Scot, to act as Major-general of horse. He was no other than the renegade Urry, or Hurry, who had deserted from the English Parliament to the King, and been the occasion of Hampden's death in June 1643 (Vol. II. 470-1). Though the King had made him a knight, he had again changed sides. [Footnote: Sir James Balfour's Annals, III. 270-273; Baillie's Letters II. 258-263; Acts of General Assembly of the Church of Scotland (edition of 1843), p. 126.] After Inverlochy, Montrose had resumed his northward march along the chain of lakes to meet Seaforth. That nobleman, however, had been cured of any desire to encounter him. Feb. 19, Elgin surrendered to Montrose; and here, or at Gordon Castle, not far off, he remained some little time, issuing Royalist proclamations, and receiving new adherents, among whom were Lord Gordon and his younger brother Lord Lewis Gordon, nay Seaforth himself! Lord Gordon remained faithful; Lord Lewis Gordon was more slippery; Seaforth had yielded on compulsion, and was to break away as soon as he could. At Gordon Castle Montrose's eldest son and heir, who had been with him through so many hardships, died after a short illness. Hardly had the poor boy been buried in Bellie church near, when his father, now reinforced by the Gordons, so that he could count 2,000 foot and 200 horse, was on his "fiery progress" south through Aberdeenshire, "as if to challenge Generals Baillie and Urry." March 9, he was at Aberdeen; March 21, he was at Stonehaven and Dunnottar in Kincardineshire, burning the burgh and its shipping, and the barns of Earl Marischal's tenants under the Earl's own eyes. Baillie and Urry kept zig-zagging in watch of him; but, though he skirmished with Urry's horse and tried again and again to tempt on battle, they waited their own time. Once they nearly had him. He had pushed on farther south through Forfarshire, and then west into Perthshire, meaning to cross the Tay at Dunkeld on his way to the Forth and the Lowlands. The desertion of Lord Lewis Gordon at this point with most of the Gordon horse obliged him to desist from this southward march; but, having been informed that Baillie and Urry had crossed the Tay in advance of him to guard the Forth country, he conceived that he would have time for the capture of Dundee, and that the sack of so Covenanting a town would be a consolation to him for his forced return northwards. Starting from Dunkeld at midnight, April 3, he was at Dundee next morning, took the town by storm, and set fire to it in several places. But lo! while his Highlanders and Irish were ranging through the town, still burning and plundering, and most of them madly drunk with the liquors they had found, Baillie and Urry, who had not crossed the Tay after all, were not a mile off. How Montrose got his drunken Highlanders and Irish together out of the burning town is an inexplicable mystery; but he did accomplish it somehow, and whirled them, by one of his tremendous marches, of three days and two nights, himself in the rear and the enemy's horse close in pursuit all the while, past Arbroath, and so, by dexterous choice of roads and passes, in among the protecting Grampians. "Truly," says his biographer Wishart, "I have often heard those who were esteemed the most experienced officers, not in Britain only, but in France and Germany, prefer this march of Montrose to his most celebrated victories." [Footnote: Wishart, 115-127; Rushworth, VI. 2.8; Napier, 490-497.] Except Inverlochy, his most celebrated victories were yet to come. There were to be three of them. The first was the Battle of Auldearn in Nairnshire (May 9, 1645), in which Montrose's tactics and MacColl's mad bravery beat to pieces the regular soldier-craft of Urry, assisted by the Earls of Seaforth, Sutherland, and Findlater. [Footnote: Rushworth, VI. 229; Wishart, 128-138; Napier, 500-506.] The second was the Battle of Alford in Aberdeenshire (July 2, 1645), where Montrose defeated Baillie himself. MacColkittoch was not present in this battle, the commanders in which, under Montrose, were Lord Gordon, Nathaniel Gordon, Lord Aboyne, Sir William Rollo, Glengarry, and Drummond of Balloch, while Baillie was assisted in chief by the Earl of Balcarres. Montrose's loss was trifling in comparison with Baillie's, but it included the death of Lord Gordon [Footnote: Wishart, 133-152; Napier, 526-536]. To the Covenanting Government the defeat of Alford was most serious. The Parliament, which had adjourned at Edinburgh on the 8th of March, was convoked afresh for two short sessions, at Stirling (July 8-July 11), and at Perth (July 24- Aug. 5); and the chief business of these sessions was the consideration of ways for retrieving Baillie's defeat and prosecuting the war [Footnote: Balfour's Annals, III. 292 307.]. Baillie, chagrined at the loss of his military reputation, wanted to resign, throwing the blame of his disaster partly on Urry for his selfish carelessness, and partly on the great Covenanting noblemen, who had disposed of troops hither and thither, exchanged prisoners, and granted passes, without regard to his interests or orders. The Parliament, having exonerated and thanked him, persuaded him at first to retain his commission, appointing a new Committee of Estates, with Argyle at their head, to accompany and advise him (July 10). Not even so was Baillie comfortable; and on the 4th of August he definitively gave in his resignation. It was then accepted, with new exoneration and thanks, but with a request that, to allow time for the arrival of his intended successor (Major-general Monro) from Ireland, he would continue in the command a little longer. Goodnaturedly he did so, but unfortunately for himself. He was in the eleventh day of his anomalous position of command and no-command, when he received from Montrose another thrashing, more fatal than the last, in the Battle of Kilsyth in Stirlingshire (Aug. 15, 1645). On both sides there had been great exertion in recruiting, so that the numbers in this battle were, according to the estimate of Montrose's biographers, 6,000 foot and 1,000 horse under Baillie against 4,400 foot and 500 horse under Montrose. Baillie would not have allowed this estimate, for he complains that the recruiting for him had been bad. Anyhow, his defeat was crushing. In various posts of command under Montrose were the aged Earl of Airlie, Viscount Aboyne, Colonel Nathaniel Gordon, Maclean of Duart, the chief of Clanranald, and MacColkittoch with his Irish. Acting under Baillie, or, as he would have us infer, above him and in spite of him, were Argyle, the Earls of Crawfurd and Tullibardine, Lords Elcho, Burleigh, and Balcarres, Major-general Holborn, and others. Before the battle, Montrose, in freak or for some deeper reason, made all his army, both foot and horse, strip themselves, above the waist, to their shirts (which, with the majority, may have implied something ghastlier); and in this style they fought. The battle was not long, the Macleans and Clanranald Highlanders being conspicuous in beginning it, and the old Earl of Airlie and his Ogilvies in deciding it. But, after the battle, there was a pursuit of the foe for fourteen miles, and the slaughter was such as to give rise to the tradition of thousands slain on Baillie's side against six men on Montrose's. Many prisoners were taken, but the chief nobles escaped by the swiftness of their horses. Argyle was one of these. Carried by his horse to Queens-ferry, he got on board a ship in the Firth of Forth (the third time, it was noted, of his saving himself in this fashion), sailed down the Firth into the open sea, and did not come ashore till he was at Newcastle. [Footnote: Wishart, 162-171; Napier, 542-541. But see General Baillie's touching and instructive vindication of himself in three documents, printed in his cousin Baillie's Letters and Correspondence (II. 4l7-424). Baillie goes over the whole of his unfortunate commandership against Montrose, from his meeting with Argyle at Roseneath after Inverlochy (Jan. 1644-5) to the Battle of Kilsyth (Aug. 15. 1645); and the pervading complaint is that he had never been allowed to be real commander-in-chief, but had been thwarted and overridden by Argyle, Committees of Estates, and conceited individual nobles.] The Battle of Kilsyth placed all Scotland at Montrose's feet. He entered Clydesdale, took the city of Glasgow under his protection, set up his head-quarters at Bothwell, and thence issued his commands far and wide. Edinburgh sent in its submission on summons; other towns sent in their submissions; nobles and lairds that had hitherto stood aloof gathered obsequiously round the victor; and friends and supporters, who had been arrested and imprisoned on charges of complicity with him during his enterprise, found themselves released. Dearest among these to Montrose were his relatives of the Merchiston and Keir connexion--the veteran Lord Napier, Montrose's brother-in-law and his Mentor from his youth; Sir George Stirling of Keir, and his wife, Lord Napier's daughter; and several other nieces of Montrose, young ladies of the Napier house. In fact, so many persons of note from all quarters gathered round Montrose at Bothwell that his Leaguer there became a kind of Court. The great day at this Court was the 3rd of September, eighteen days after the victory of Kilsyth. On that day there was a grand review of the victorious army; a new commission from the King, brought from Hereford by Sir Robert Spotswood, was produced and read, appointing Montrose Lord Lieutenant and Captain-general of Scotland with those Viceregal powers which had till then been nominally reserved for Prince Maurice; and, after a glowing speech, in which Montrose praised his whole army, but especially his Major-general, Alaster Macdonald MacColkittoch, he made it his first act of Viceroyalty to confer on that warrior the honour of knighthood. On the following day proclamations were issued for the meeting of a Parliament at Glasgow on the 20th of October. Montrose then broke up his Leaguer, to obey certain instructions which had come from the King. These were that he should plant himself in the Border shires, co-operating there with the Earls of Traquair, Hume, and Roxburgh, and other Royalists of those parts, so as to be ready to receive his Majesty himself emerging from England, or at least such an auxiliary force of English as Lord Digby should be able to despatch. For Montrose's triumph in Scotland had been reported all through England and had altered the state and prospects of the war there. Kilsyth (Aug. 15) had come as a considerable compensation even for Naseby (June 14) and the subsequent successes of the New Model. The King's thoughts had turned to the North, and it had become his idea, and Digby's, that, if the successes of the New Model still continued, it would be best for his Majesty to transfer his own presence out of England for the time, joining himself to Montrose in Scotland. [Footnote: Baillie, II. 313-314; Rushworth, VI. 231; Wishart, 190; Napier, 552-569.] In obedience to his Majesty's instructions Montrose did advance to the Border. For about a week he prowled about, on the outlook for the expected aid from England, negotiating at the same time with some of the Border lords, and in quest of others with whom to negotiate. On the 10th of September he was encamped at Kelso; thence he went to Jedburgh; and thence to Selkirk. [Footnote: Napier, 570-575.] While he is at this last place, let us pause a little to ask an important question. What was Montrose's meaning? What real political intention lay under the meteor-like track of his marches and battles? What did he want to make of Scotland? This is not a needless question. For, as we know, Montrose was not, after all, a mere military madman. He was an idealist in his way, a political theorist (Vol. II. 296-298). Fortunately, to assist our guesses, there is extant a manifesto drawn up under Montrose's dictation at that very moment of his triumph at which we have now arrived. The document is in the handwriting of Lord Napier, his brother-in-law and closest adviser, and consists of some very small sheets of paper, in Napier's minutest autograph, as if it had been drawn up where writing materials were scarce. It was certainly written after Kilsyth, and in all probability at one of Montrose's halts on the Border. In short, it was that vindication of himself and declaration of his policy which Montrose meant to publish in anticipation of the meeting of a Scottish Parliament at Glasgow which he had summoned for the 20th of October. The document is vague, and much of it is evidently a special pleading addressed to those who remembered that Montrose had formerly been an enthusiastic Covenanter Still there are interesting points in it. His defence is that it was not _he_ that had swerved from the original Scottish Covenant of 1638. He had thoroughly approved of that Covenant, and had gone on with Argyle and the rest of the Covenanters, perhaps "giving way to more than was warrantable," till their deviation from the true purposes of the Covenant had passed all legal hounds. He had seen this to be the ease at the time of the Treaty of Ripon at the conclusion of the Second Bishops' War; and at that point he had left them, or rather they had finally parted from him (Oct. 1640). He had since then gone on in perfect consistency with his former self; and they had gone on, in their pretended Parliaments and pretended General Assemblies, from bad to worse. The State was in the grasp of a few usurpers at the centre and their committees through the shires; finings and imprisonings of the loyal were universal; and all true liberty for the subject was gone. The Church too had passed into confusion, "the Brownistical faction" overruling it, joined "in league with the Brownists and Independents in England, to the prejudice of Religion." [Footnote: Several times in the course of the document this accusation of Brownism or Independency comes in--an absurdly selected accusation at the very time when the most patent fact about the Presbyterian Kirk of Scotland was its deadly antagonism to Independency and all forms of Brownism. Montrose and Napier were probably a little behind-hand in their knowledge of English Ecclesiastical History, and merely clutched "Brownism" as a convenient phrase of reproach, much sanctioned by the King in his English proclamations against Parliament.] So much for a review of his past acts; but what were his _present_ grounds? Here one listens with curiosity. One of his "grounds" he lays down definitely enough, and indeed with extraordinary and repeated emphasis. Let his countrymen be assured that he retained his hatred of Episcopacy and would never sanction its restoration in Scotland! He would not, indeed, be for uprooting Episcopacy in England, inasmuch as the King and his loyal subjects of that country did not desire it; nor was he pledged to that by any right construction of the Scottish Covenant of 1638. That Covenant referred to Scotland only, and it was that Covenant, and not the later League and Covenant of 1643, that he had signed. But he had not forgotten that the very cause of that original Scottish Covenant was the woe wrought by Prelacy in Scotland. "It cannot be denied," says the document, "neither ever shall be by us, that this our nation was reduced to almost irreparable evil by the perverse practices of the sometime pretended Prelates; who, having abused lawful authority, did not only usurp to be lords over God's inheritance, but also intruded themselves in the prime places of civil government, and, by their Court of High Commission, did so abandon themselves, to the prejudice of the Gospel, that the very quintessence of Popery was publicly preached by Arminians, and the life of the Gospel stolen away by enforcing on the Kirk a dead Service-book, the brood of the bowels of the Whore of Babel." For the defence, therefore, of genuine old Scottish Presbyterianism, he protests "in God's sight" he would be "the first should draw a sword." But a spurious Presbyterianism had been invented, and "the outcasting of the locust" had been the "inbringing of the caterpillar." As he abjured Episcopacy, so he thought the system that had been set up instead "no less hurtful;" wherefore, he concludes, "resolving to eschew the extremities, and keep the middle way of our Reformed Religion, we, by God's grace and assistance, shall endeavour to maintain it with the hazard of our lives and fortunes, and it shall be no less dear to us than our own souls."--Allowing for the fact that Montrose, or Napier for him, must have considered it politic to conciliate the anti-Prelatic sentiment, we cannot but construe these passages into a positive statement that Montrose really was, and believed himself to be, a moderate Presbyterian. His programme for Scotland, in fact, was Moderate Presbyterianism together with a restoration of the King's prerogative. In this, of course, was implied the annihilation of every relic of the Argyle-Hamilton machinery of government and the substitution of another machinery under the permanent Viceroyalty of the Marquis of Montrose. [Footnote: The document described and extracted from in the text is printed entire by Mr. Napier, who seems first to have deciphered it (Appendix to Vol. I. of his Life of Montrose, pp. xliv.- liii.), and whose historical honesty in publishing it is the more to be commended because it must have jarred on his own predilections about his hero. Many of Montrose's admirers still accept him in ignorance as a champion and hero of high Episcopacy; and for these Mr. Napier's document must be unwelcome news.] Ah! how Fortune turns her wheel! This manifesto of Montrose was to remain in Lord Napier's pocket, not to be deciphered till our own time, and the Parliament for which it was a preparation was never actually to meet. In England there had been amazement and grief over the news of Montrose's triumph. The Parliament had appointed Sept. 5 to be a day of public fast and prayer in all the churches on account of the calamity that had befallen Scotland; and on that day the good Baillie, walking in London to and from church, was in the deepest despondency. Never, "since William Wallace's days," he wrote, had Scotland been in such a plight; and "What means the Lord, so far against the expectation of the most clear-sighted, to humble us so low?" But he adds a piece of news, "On Tuesday was eight days" (_i.e._ Aug. 27), in consequence of letters from Scotland, David Leslie, the Major-general of Leven's Scottish army in England, had gone in haste from Nottingham towards Carlisle and Scotland, taking with him 4,000 horse. This was the wisest thing that could have been done. David Leslie was the very best soldier the Scots had, better by far than Lieutenant-general Baillie, whom Montrose had just extinguished, and better even than Monro, whom the Scottish Estates had resolved to bring from Ireland as Baillie's successor. [Footnote: Baillie, II. 313-315.] Actually, on the 6th of September, Leslie passed the Tweed, with his 4,000 Scottish horse from Leven's army, and some 600 foot he had added from the Scottish garrison of Newcastle. He and Montrose were, therefore, in the Border counties together, watching each other's movements, but Leslie watching Montrose's movements more keenly than Montrose watched Leslie's. Montrose does not seem to have known Leslie's full strength, and he was himself in the worst possible condition for an immediate encounter with it. It was the custom of the Highlanders in those days, when they had served for a certain time in war, to flock back to their hills for a fresh taste of home-life; and, unfortunately for Montrose, his Highlanders had chosen to think the review at Bothwell a proper period at which to take leave. They had been encouraged in this, it is believed, by Colkittoch, who, having had the honorary captaincy-general of the clans bestowed upon him by Montrose in addition to knighthood, had projected for himself, and for his old father and brothers, the private satisfaction of a war all to themselves in the country of the Campbells. Montrose had submitted with what grace he could; and the Highlanders, with some of the Irish among them, had marched off with promises of speedy return. But, at the same critical moment, Viscount Aboyne, hitherto the most faithful of the Gordons, had "taken a caprice," and gone off with his horse. He had been lured away, it was suspected, by his uncle Argyle, who had come back from his sea-voyage to Newcastle, and was busy in Berwickshire. Then Montrose's negotiations with the Border lords had come to nearly nothing, David Leslie's presence and Argyle's counter- negotiations having had considerable influence. Finally, of the King himself or the expected forces from England there was no appearance. It was, therefore, but with a shabby little army of Irish and Lowland foot and a few horse that Montrose, with his group of most resolute friends-- Lord Napier, the Marquis of Douglas, the Earls of Airlie, Crawfurd, and Hartfell, Lords Ogilvy, Erskine, and Fleming, Colonel Nathaniel Gordon, Sir John Dalziel, Drummond of Balloch, Sir Robert Spotswood, Sir William Rollo, Sir Philip Nisbet, the young master of Napier, and others--found himself encamped, on the 12th of September, at Philiphaugh near Selkirk. His intention was not to remain in the Border country any longer, but to return north and get back among his Grampian strongholds. But somehow his vigilance, when it was most needed, had deserted him. The morning of Saturday, Sept. 13, had risen dull, raw, and dark, with a thick grey fog covering the ground; and Montrose, ill-served by his scouts, was at early breakfast, when Leslie sprang upon him out of the fog, and in one brief hour finished his year of splendour. Montrose himself, the two Napiers, the Marquis of Douglas, the Earls of Airlie and Crawfurd, with others, cut their way out and escaped; but many were made prisoners, and the places where the wretched Irish were shot down and buried in heaps, and the tracks of the luckier fugitives for miles from Philiphaugh, are now among the doleful memories of the Braes of Yarrow. [Footnote: Rushworth, VI. 231-2; Wishart, 189-207; Napier, 557-580. I have seen, in the possession of the Rev. Dr. David Aitken, Edinburgh, a square-shaped bottle of thick and pretty clear glass, which was one of several of the same sort accidentally dug up some few years ago at Philiphaugh, in a place where there were also many buried gunflints. There were traces, I am told, from which it could be distinctly inferred that the bottles had contained some kind of Hock or Rhenish wine; and the belief of the neighbourhood was that they had been part of Montrose's tent-stock, on the morning when he was surprised by Leslie.] Montrose and his fellow-fugitives found their way back to their favourite Athole, and were not even yet absolutely in despair. The venerable Napier, indeed, had come to his journey's end. Worn out by fatigue, he died in Athole, and was buried there. Montrose's wife died about the same time in the eastern Lowlands, and Montrose, at some risk, was present at her funeral. To these bereavements there was added the indignant grief caused by the vengeances taken by the restored Argyle Government upon those of his chief adherents who had fallen into their hands. Sir William Rollo (the same Major Rollo who had crossed the Border with Montrose in his disguise), Sir Philip Nisbet, young Ogilvy of Innerquharity, and others, were beheaded at Glasgow; and Colonel Nathaniel Gordon, Captain Andrew Guthrie, President Sir Robert Spotswood, and William Murray, the young brother of the Earl of Tullibardine, were afterwards executed at St. Andrews--Lord Ogilvy, who had been condemned with these last, having contrived to escape. The desire of retaliation for these deaths co- operating with his determination to make his Captaincy-general in Scotland of some avail still for the King's cause, Montrose lurked on perseveringly in his Highland retirement, trying to organize another rising, and for this purpose appealing to MacColkittoch and every other likely Highland chief, but above all to the Marquis of Huntley and his fickle Gordons. In vain! To all intents and purposes Montrose's Captaincy-general in Scotland was over, and the Argyle supremacy was reestablished. All that could be said was that he was still at large in the Highlands, and that, while he was thus at large, the Argyle Government could not reckon itself safe. And so for the present we leave him, humming to himself, as one may fancy, a stanza of one of his own lyrics:-- "The misty mounts, the smoking lake, The rock's resounding echo, The whistling winds, the woods that shake, Shall all with me sing _Heigho_! The tossing seas, the tumbling boats, Tears dripping from each oar, Shall tune with me their turtle notes: 'I'll never love thee more!'" [Footnote: Rushworth, VI. 232; Wishart, 208-258; Napier, 581-630, with Montrose's Poems in Appendix to Vol. I.] FAG-END OF THE WAR IN ENGLAND: FLIGHT OF THE KING TO THE SCOTS. Montrose's defeat at Philiphaugh (Sept. 13, 1645) having relieved the English Parliament from the awkwardness of the Royalist uprising in Scotland while the New Model was crushing Royalism in England, and the storming of Bristol by the New Model (Sept. 10) having just been added as a most important incident in the process of the crushing, the war in England had reached its fag-end. The West and the Southern Counties were still the immediate theatre of action for the New Model. Cromwell, fresh from his share with Fairfax in the recent successes in Somersetshire, Gloucestershire, and Wilts, was detached into Hants; and here, by his valour and skill, were accomplished the surrender of Winchester (Oct. 8), and the storming of Basing House, the magnificent mansion of the Marquis of Winchester, widower of that Marchioness on whom Milton had written his epitaph in 1631, but now again married (Oct. 14). Thus, by the middle of October, Royalism had been completely destroyed in Hants, as well as in Wilts, Dorset, and Somerset, and what relics of it remained in the south-west were cooped up in the extreme shires of Devon and Cornwall, whither the Prince of Wales had retired with Lord Hopton. Here they lingered through the winter. [Footnote: Chronological Table in Sprigge.] Meanwhile the King had been steadily losing ground in the Midlands and throughout the rest of England. Not even after Philiphaugh had he given up all hopes of a junction with Montrose in Scotland; and a northward movement, from Hereford through Wales, which he had begun before the news of that battle reached him, was still continued. He had got as far as Welbeck in Nottinghamshire (Oct. 13) when he was induced to turn back, only sending 1,500 horse under Lord Digby and Sir Marmaduke Langdale to make their way into Scotland if possible. Though defeated by the Parliamentarians in Yorkshire, Digby and Langdale did get as far as the Scottish border; but, finding farther progress hopeless, they left their men to shift for themselves, and escaped to the Isle of Man, whence Digby went to Dublin. The King himself had gone first to Newark, on the eastern border of Nottinghamshire, which was one of the places yet garrisoned for him; but, after a fortnight's stay there, he returned once more to his head-quarters at Oxford (Nov. 5). Here he remained through the winter, holding his court as well as he could, issuing proclamations, and observing the gradual closing in upon him of the Parliamentarian forces. The position of the Scottish auxiliary army in particular had then become of considerable importance to him.--We have seen (_antè_, p. 339) how, in September, that army had raised the siege of Hereford, and had sulkily gone northward as far as Yorkshire, as if with the intention of leaving England altogether. There was some excuse for them in the state of Scotland at the time, where all the resources of the Argyle Government had failed in the contest with Montrose; but not the less were the English Parliamentarians out of humour with them. Angry messages had been interchanged between the English Parliament and the Scottish military and political leaders; and a demand had been put forth by the Parliament that the Scots should hand over into English keeping Carlisle and other northern towns where they had garrisons. At length, Montrose having been suppressed by David Leslie's horse, and great exertions having been made by the Scottish Chancellor Loudoun to restore a good feeling between the two nations, Leven's army did come back out of Yorkshire, to undertake a duty which the English Parliament had been pressing upon it, as a substitute for its late employment at Hereford. This was the siege of Newark. About the 26th of November, 1645, or three weeks after the King had left Newark to return to Oxford, the Scottish army sat down before Newark and began the siege. The direct distance between Oxford and Newark is about a hundred miles.--Through the winter, though the New Model had not quite completed its work of victory in the South-west, the chief business of the King at Oxford consisted in looking forward to the now inevitable issue, and thinking with which party of his enemies it would be best to make his terms of final submission. Negotiations were actually opened between him and the Parliament, with offers on his part to come to London for a personal Treaty; and there was much discussion in Parliament over these offers. The King, however, being stubborn for his own terms, the negotiations came to nothing; and by the end of January 1645-6 it was the general rumour that he meant to baulk the Parliament, and take refuge with the Scottish army at Newark. Till April 1646, nevertheless, he remained irresolute, hoping against hope for some good news from the South-west. No good news came from that quarter. Operations having been resumed there by the New Model, there came, among other continued successes of the Parliament, the raising of the siege of Plymouth (Jan. 16, 1645-6), the storming of Dartmouth (Jan. 19), and the storming of Torrington (Feb. 16). The action then came to be chiefly in Cornwall, where (March 14) Lord Hopton surrendered to Fairfax, giving up the cause as hopeless, and following the Prince of Wales, who had taken refuge meanwhile in the Scilly Isles. On the 15th of April, 1646, the picturesque St. Michael's Mount yielded, and the Duke of Hamilton, the King's prisoner there, found himself again at liberty. The surrender of Exeter (April 13) and of Barnstaple (April 20) having then cleared Devonshire, the war in the whole South-west was over, save that the King's flag still waved over far Pendennis Castle at Falmouth. [Footnote: Chronological Table in Sprigge] The New Model having thus perfected its work in the South-west and being free for action in the Midlands, and Cromwell being back in London, and a body of Royalist troops under Lord Astley (the last body openly in the field) having been defeated in an attempt to reach Oxford from the west, and Woodstock having just set even the Oxfordshire garrisons the example of surrendering, procrastination on the King's part was no longer possible. His last trust had been in certain desperate schemes for retrieving his cause by help to be brought from beyond England. He had been intriguing in Ireland with a view to a secret agreement with the Irish Rebels and the landing at Chester or in Wales of an army of 10,000 Irish Roman Catholics to repeat in England the feat of MacColkittoch and his Irish in Scotland; he had been trying to negotiate with France for the landing of 6,000 foreign troops at Lynn; as late as March 12 he had fallen back on a former notion of his, and proposed to invoke the aid of the Pope by promising a free toleration of the Roman Catholic Religion in England on condition that his Holiness and the English Roman Catholics would "visibly and heartily engage themselves for the re-establishment" of his Crown and of the Church of England. All these schemes were now in the dust. He was in a city in the heart of England, without chance of Irish or foreign aid, and hemmed round by his English subjects, victorious at length over all his efforts, and coming closer and closer for that final siege which should place himself in their grasp. What was he to do? A refuge with the Scottish army at Newark had been for some time the plan most in his thoughts, and actually since January there had been negotiations on his part, through the French Ambassador Montreuil, both with the Scottish Commissioners in London and with the chiefs of the Scottish army, with a view to this result. Latterly, however, Montreuil had reported that the Scots refused to receive him except on conditions very different from those he desired. The most obvious alternative, though the boldest one, was that he should make his way to London somehow, and throw himself upon the generosity of Parliament and on the chances of terms in his favour that might arise from the dissensions between the Presbyterians and the Independents. But, should he resolve on an escape out of England altogether, even that was not yet hopeless. Roads, indeed, were guarded; but by precautions and careful travelling some seaport might be reached, whence there might be a passage to Scotland, to Ireland, to France, or to Denmark. [Footnote: Twenty-two Letters from Charles at Oxford to Queen Henrietta Maria in France, the first dated Jan. 4, 1645-6 and the last April 22, 1646, forming pp. 1-37 of a series of the King's Letters edited by the late Mr. John Bruce for the Camden Society (1856) under the title of "_Charles I. in_ 1646." See also Mr. Bruce's "Introduction" to the Letters. They contain curious facts and indications of Charles's character.] It was apparently with all these plans competing in Charles's mind, that, on Monday the 27th of April, his Majesty, with his faithful groom of the bedchamber Mr. John Ashburnham and a clergyman named Dr. Hudson for his sole companions, slipped out of Oxford, disguised as a servant and carrying a cloak-bag on his horse. He rode to Henley; then to Brentford; and then as near to London as Harrow-on-the-Hill. He was half-inclined to ride on the few more miles that would have brought him to the doors of the Parliament in Westminster. At Harrow, however, as if his mind had changed, he turned away from London, and rode northwards to St. Alban's; thence again by crossroads into Leicestershire; and so eastwards to Downham in Norfolk. Here he remained from April 30 to May 4; and it is on record that he had his hair trimmed for him here by a country barber, who found much fault with its unevenness, and told him that the man who had last cut it had done it very badly. It was now known in London that his Majesty was at large; it was thought he might even be in hiding in the city; and a Parliamentary proclamation was issued forbidding the harbouring of him under pain of death. On the 5th of May, however, he ended all uncertainty by presenting himself at the Scottish Leaguer at Newark. He had made up his mind at last that he would remain in England and that he would be safer with the Scots there than with the English Parliament.--It was a most perilous honour for the Scots. The English Parliament were sure to demand possession of the King. Indeed the Commons did vote for demanding him and confining him to Warwick Castle; and, though the vote was thrown out in the Lords, eight Peers protested against its rejection (May 8). In these circumstances the resolution of the Scots was to keep his Majesty until the course of events should be clearer. Newark, however, being too accessible, in case the Parliament should try to seize him, Leven persuaded the King to give orders to the Royalist governor of that town to surrender it to the Parliament; and, the siege being thus over, the Scottish army, with its precious charge, withdrew northward to the safer position of Newcastle (May 13). [Footnote: Iter _Carolinum_ in Gulch's, Collectanea Curiosa(178l), Vol. II. pp. 445-448; Rushworth, VI. 267-2/1; Clar 601-2; Baillie, II. 374-5.] On the 10th of June the King issued orders from Newcastle to all the commanders yet holding cities, towns, or fortresses, in his name, anywhere in England, to surrender their trusts. Accordingly, on the 24th of June, the city of Oxford, which the King had left two months before, was surrendered to Fairfax, with all pomp and ceremony, by Sir Thomas Glenham. The surrender of Worcester followed, July 22; that of Wallingford Castle in Berks, July 27; that of Pendennis Castle in Cornwall, Aug. 17; and that of Raglan Castle in Monmouthshire, Aug. 19. Thus the face of England was cleared of the last vestiges of the war. The defender of Raglan Castle, and almost the last man in England to sustain the King's flag, was the aged Marquis of Worcester. [Footnote: Rushworth, VI. 276-297; and Sprigge's Table of Battle, and Sieges.] FALLEN AND RISEN STARS. In August 1646, therefore, the long Civil War was at an end. The King being then at Newcastle with the Scots, where were the other chief Royalists? I. _The Royal Family._ The Queen had been abroad again for more than two years. In July 1644, having just then given birth at Exeter to her youngest child, the Princess Henrietta Maria, she had escaped from that city as Essex was approaching it with his army, and had taken ship for France, leaving the child at Exeter. Richelieu, who had kept her out of France in her former exile, being now dead, and Cardinal Mazarin and the Queen Regent holding power in the minority of Louis XIV., she had been well received at the French Court, and had been residing for the two past years in or near Paris, busily active in foreign intrigue on her husband's behalf, and sending over imperious letters of advice to him. It was she that was to be his agent with the Pope, and it was she that had procured the sending over of the French ambassador Montreuil to arrange between the Scots and Charles. The destination of the Prince of Wales had for some time been uncertain. From Scilly he had gone to Jersey, accompanied or followed thither by Lords Hopton, Capel, Digby, and Colepepper, Sir Edward Hyde, and others (April 1646). Digby had a project of removing him thence into Ireland, and Denmark was also talked of for a refuge; but the Queen being especially anxious to have him with her in Paris, her remonstrances prevailed. The King gave orders from Newcastle that her wishes should be obeyed, and to Paris the Prince went (July). The young Duke of York, being in Oxford at the time of the surrender, came into the hands of the Parliament; who committed the charge of him, and of his infant brother the Duke of Gloucester, with the Princesses Mary and Elizabeth, to the Earl of Northumberland in London. The baby Princess Henrietta, left at Exeter, had also come into the hands of the Parliament on the surrender of that city (April 1646), but had been cleverly conveyed into France by the Countess of Morton. The King's fighting nephews, Rupert and Maurice, who had been in Oxford when it surrendered, were allowed to embark at Dover for France, after an interview with their elder brother, the Prince Elector Palatine, who had been for some time in England as an honoured guest of the Parliament; and an occasional visitor in the Westminster Assembly. II. _Chief Royalist Peers and Counsellors._ Some of these, including the Duke of Richmond, the Marquis of Hertford, the Marquis of Worcester, and the Earl of Southampton, remained in England, submitting moodily to the new order of things, and studying opportunities of still being useful to their sovereign. Others, and perhaps the majority, either disgusted with England, or being under the ban of Parliament for delinquency of too deep a dye, dispersed themselves abroad, to live in that condition of continental exile which had already for some time been the lot of the Marquis of Newcastle and other fugitives of the earlier stage of the war. Some, such as Digby and Colepepper, accompanied the Prince of Wales to Paris; others, among whom was Hyde, remained some time in Jersey. The Queen's conduct and temper, indeed, so much repelled the best of the Royalist refugees that, when they did go to France (as most of them were obliged to do at last), they avoided her, or circled round her at a respectful distance. While these were the descending or vanishing stars of the English firmament, who were the stars that had risen in their places? As the question interests us now, so it interested people then; and, to assist the public judgment, printers and booksellers put forth lists of those who, either from the decisiveness and consistency of their Parliamentarianism from the first, or from its sufficiency on a total review, were entitled, at the end of the war, to be denominated _The Great Champions of England._ [Footnote: One such fly sheet, published July 30, 1646 by "Francis Leach at the Falcon in Shoe Lane," has been already referred to (see Vol. II, p. 480, _Note,_ and p. 433, _Note_). The lists there given, though very useful to us now, contain a great many errors--misspellings of names, entries of persons as still alive who were dead some time, &c. In those days of scanty means of publicity, it was far more difficult to compile an accurate conspectus of contemporaries for any purpose than it would be now.] There were two classes of these Champions, though not a few individuals belonged to both classes:--I. _The Political Champions, or Champion Peers and Commoners._ The Champion Peers were reckoned as exactly twenty-nine; and, if the reader desires to know who these twenty-nine were, let him repeat here the list already given of those who were Parliamentarian Peers at the outset (Vol. II. pp. 430-1), only deleting from that list the heroic Lord Brooke and the Earls of Bolingbroke and Middlesex as dead, and the Earls of Bedford, Clare, and Holland, as having proved themselves fickle and untrustworthy, and adding a new Earl of Middlesex (son and successor of the former), an Earl of Kent, an Earl of Nottingham, and a Lord Montague of Boughton (successors of the deceased Royalists or Non-effectives who had borne these titles), and Lord Herbert of Cherbury, once a Royalist, but now passing as a Parliamentarian. The Champion Commoners were, of course, a much larger multitude. At the beginning of the war, as we saw (Vol. II. pp. 431-4). about three-fifths of the Commons House as then constituted, or 300 of the members in all, might be regarded as declared or possible Parliamentarians. Of these, however, death or desertion to the other side in the course of four years had carried off a good few, so that, with every exertion to swell the list of the original Commoners who at the end of the war might be reckoned among the faithful, not more than about 250 could be enumerated in this category. On the other hand, it has to be remembered that, since August 1645, when the New Model was in its full career of victory, the House of Commons had been increased in numerical strength by the process called Recruiting, _i.e._ by the issue of writs for the election of new members in the places of those who had died, and of the much larger host who had been disabled as Royalists. Of this process of Recruiting, and its effects on the national policy, we shall have to take farther account; meanwhile it is enough to say that, between Aug. 1645, when the first new writs were issued, and Aug. 1646, when the war ended, as many as 179 Recruiters had been elected, and were intermingled in the roll of the House with the surviving original members. [Footnote: This is my calculation from the Index of new Writs in the Commons Journals between August 21, 1645, and August 1, 1646. See also Godwin's _Commonwealth_, II. 84-39.] Now, most of these Recruiters, from the very conditions of their election, were Parliamentarians, and some had even attained eminence in that character since their election. About 140 of them, I find, were reckoned among the "Champions;" and, if these are added to the 250 original members also reckoned as such, the total number of the Champion Commoners will be about 390. [Footnote: In Leach's fly-sheet the exact number of Champion Commoners given is 397. Among these he distinguishes the Recruiters from the original members by printing the names of the Recruiters in italics. In at least _eleven_ cases, however, I find he has put a Recruiter among the original members. Also I am sure, from a minute examination of his list throughout, that he admitted into it, from policy or hurry, a considerable number whose claims were dubious.] It must not be supposed that they had all earned this distinction by their habitual presence in the House. Only on one extraordinary occasion since the beginning of the war had as many as 280 been in the House together; very seldom had the attendance exceeded 200; and, practically, the steady attendance throughout the war had been about 100. Employment in the Parliamentary service, in various capacities and various parts of the country, may account for the absence of many; but, on the whole, I fancy that, if England allowed as many as 390 original members and Recruiters together to pass as Champion Commoners at the end of the war, it was by winking hard at the defects of some scores of them. II. _Military Champions_. Here, from the nature of the case, there was less doubt. In the first place, although the Army had been remodelled in Feb. 1644-5, and the Self-Denying Ordinance had excluded not a few of the officers of the First Parliamentary Army from commands in the New Model, yet the services of these officers, with Essex, Manchester, and Sir William Waller, at their head, were gratefully remembered. Undoubtedly, however, the favourite military heroes of the hour were the chief officers of the victorious New Model, at the head of whom were Fairfax, Cromwell, Skippon, Thomas Hammond, and Ireton. For the names of the Colonels and Majors under these, the reader is referred to our view of the New Model at the time of its formation (_antè_ pp. 326-7). Young Colonel Pickering, there mentioned, had died in Dec. 1645, much lamented; Young Major Bethell, there mentioned, had been killed at the storming of Bristol, Sept. 1645, also much lamented; but, with allowance for the shiftings and promotions caused by these deaths, and by the retirement of several other field-officers, or their transference to garrison-commands, the New Model, after its sixteen months of hard service, remained officered much as at first. While, with this allowance, our former list of the Colonels and Majors of the New Model proper yet stands good, there have to be added, however, the names of a few of the most distinguished military coöperants with the New Model: _i.e._ of those surviving officers of the old Army, or persons of later appearance, who, though not on our roll of the New Model proper, had yet assisted its operations as outstanding generals of districts or commanders of garrisons. Such were Sir William Brereton, M.P. for Cheshire, and Sir Thomas Middleton, M.P. for Denbighshire, in favour of whom, as well as of Cromwell, the Self-Denying Ordinance had been relaxed, so as to allow their continued generalship in Cheshire and Wales respectively (_antè_, p. 334, Note); such was General Poyntz, who had been appointed to succeed Lord Ferdinando Fairfax in the chief command of Yorkshire and the North; such were Major-general Massey, who had held independent command in the West (_antè_, p. 337), and Major-general Browne, who had held similar command in the Midlands; and such also were Colonel Michael Jones (Cheshire), Colonel Mitton (Wales), Colonel John Hutchinson (Governor of Nottingham), Colonel Edmund Ludlow (Governor of Wardour Castle, Wilts), and Colonel Robert Blake (the future Admiral Blake, already famous for his Parliamentarian activity in his native Somersetshire, his active governorship of Taunton, and his two desperate defences of that town against sieges by Lord Goring). Several of these distinguished coöperants with the New Model, as well as several of the chief officers of the New Model itself, had already been honoured by being elected as Recruiters for the House of Commons. [Footnote: My authorities for this list of the military stars in August 1646, besides those already cited for the New Model at its formation (_antè_, p. 327, _Note_) and an imperfect list in Leach's fly-sheet (_antè_, p. 376, _Note_) are stray passages in the Lords Journals, in Whitelocke, and in more recent Histories. I think I have picked out the chief coöperants with the New Model, but cannot vouch that I have done so. When one has done one's best, one still stumbles on a Colonel _this_ or a Lieut-colonel _that_, evidently of some note, perplexing one's lists and allocations.] If one were to write out duly the names of all the Englishmen that have been described or pointed to in the last paragraph as the risen stars of the new Parliamentary world of 1646, whether for political reasons or for military reasons, there would be nearly five hundred of them. Now, as History refuses to recollect so many names in one chapter, as the eye almost refuses to see so many stars at once in one sky, it becomes interesting to know which were the super-eminent few, the stars of the highest magnitude. Fortunately, to save the trouble of such an inquiry for ourselves, we have a contemporary specification by no less an authority than the Parliament itself. In December 1645, when Parliament was looking forward, with assured certainty, to the extinction of the few last remains of Royalism, and was preparing Propositions to be submitted to the beaten King, it was anxiously considered, among other things, who were the persons whose deserts had been so paramount that supreme rewards should be conferred upon them, and the King should be asked to do his part by admitting some of them, and promoting others, among the English aristocracy. This was the result:-- THE EARL OF ESSEX:--King to be asked to make him a Duke. The Commons had already voted him a pension of £10,000 a year. THE EARL OF NORTHUMBERLAND:--To be made a Duke, and provision for him to be considered. THE EARL OF WARWICK (Parliamentary Lord High Admiral):--To be made a Duke, with provision; but the dukedom to descend to his grandchild, passing over his eldest son, Lord Rich, who had taken the wrong side. THE EARL OF PEMBROKE AND MONTGOMERY:--To be made a Duke, and all his debts to the public to be cancelled. THE EARL OF MANCHESTER:--To be made a Marquis, and provision to be considered for him. THE EARL OF SALISBURY:--To be made a Marquis. VISCOUNT SAYE AND SELE:--To be made an Earl, LORD ROBERTS:--To be made an Earl. LORD WHARTON:--To be made an Earl. LORD WILLOUGHBY OF PARHAM:--To be made an Earl. DENZIL HOLLES:--To be made a Viscount. GENERAL SIR THOMAS FAIRFAX:--To be made an English Baron and an Estate of £5,000 a year in lands to be settled on him and his heirs for ever: his father LORD FERDINANDO FAIRFAX at the same time to be made an English Baron. LIEUTENANT-GENERAL CROMWELL:--To be made an English Baron, and an Estate of £2,500 a year to be settled on him and his heirs for ever. SIR WILLIAM WALTER:--To be made an English Baron, with a like Estate of £2,500 a year. SIR HENRY VANE, SEN.:--To be made an English Baron. As the peerage would descend to his son, SIR HENRY VANE THE YOUNGER, the honour included _him_. SIR ARTHUR HASELRIG:--£2,000 a year to him and his heirs for ever. SIR PHILIP STAPLETON:--£2,000 a year to him and his heirs for ever. SIR WILLIAM BRERETON:--£1,500 a year to him and his heirs for ever. MAJOR-GENERAL PHILIP SKIPPON:--£l,000 a year to him and his heirs for ever. [Footnote: Commons Journals, Dec 1, 1645.] Had Pym and Hampden been alive, what would have been the honours voted for them? They had been dead for two years, and the sole honour for Pym had been a vote of £10,000 to pay his debts, It mattered the less because these Dukedoms, Earldoms, Viscountcies, and Baronages were all to remain _in nubibus_. They were contemplated on the supposition of a direct Peace with the King; and such a peace had not been brought to pass, and had been removed farther off in prospect by the King's escape at the last moment to the Scottish Army. It remained to be seen whether Parliament could arrange any treaty whatever with him in his new circumstances, and, if so, whether it would be worth while to make the proposed new creations of peers and promotions in the peerage a feature of the treaty, or whether it would not be enough for the Commons to make good the honours that were in their own power--viz. the voted estates and pensions. For Essex, who was at the head of the list, the suspense (if he cared about the matter at all) was to be very brief. He died at his house in the Strand, September 14, 1646, without his dukedom, and having received little of his pension. Parliament decreed him a splendid funeral. CHAPTER II. WORK IN PARLIAMENT AND THE WESTMINSTER ASSEMBLY DURING THE SIXTEEN MONTHS OF THE NEW MODEL--THE TWO CONTINUED CHURCH CONTROVERSIES--INDEPENDENCY AND SECTARIANISM IN THE NEW MODEL: TOLERATION CONTROVERSY CONTINUED: CROMWELL'S PART IN IT: LILBURNE AND OTHER PAMPHLETEERS: SION COLLEGE AND THE CORPORATION OF LONDON: SUCCESS OF THE PRESBYTERIANS IN PARLIAMENT-- PRESBYTERIAN FRAME OF CHURCH-GOVERNMENT COMPLETED: DETAILS OF THE ARRANGEMENT--THE RECRUITING OF THE COMMONS: EMINENT RECRUITERS--EFFECTS OF THE RECRUITING: ALLIANCE OF INDEPENDENCY AND ERASTIANISM: CHECK GIVEN TO THE PRESBYTERIANS: WESTMINSTER ASSEMBLY REBUKED AND CURBED-- NEGOTIATIONS ROUND THE KING AT NEWCASTLE--THREATENED RUPTURE BETWEEN THE SCOTS AND THE ENGLISH: ARGYLE'S VISIT TO LONDON: THE NINETEEN PROPOSITIONS--PARLIAMENT AND THE ASSEMBLY RECONCILED: PRESBYTERIANIZING OF LONDON AND LANCASHIRE: DEATH OF ALEXANDER HENDERSON. During the sixteen months of those New Model operations in the field which had brought the war so decisively to an end (April 1645--August 1646), there had been a considerable progress in Parliament, in the Westminster Assembly, and in the public mind of England, on the seemingly interminable Church-business and its collaterals. THE TWO CONTINUED CHURCH CONTROVERSIES. That the Church of England should be Presbyterian had been formally decided in January 1644-5 (_antè_, pp. 172--175). Not even then, however, could the Presbyterians consider their work over. There were two reasons why they could not. (1) Although the essentials of Presbytery had been adopted, the details remained to be settled. What were to be the powers of the parochial consistories and the other church courts respectively? What discretion, for example, was to be left to each minister and his congregational board of elders in the matter of spiritual censure, and especially in the exclusion of offenders from the communion? Was there to be any discretion; or was the State to regulate what offences should be punished by excommunication? Again, were the various Church-courts, once established, to act independently of the Civil courts and the State; or was there to be an appeal of ecclesiastical questions at any point from Presbytery, or Synod, or the entire National Assembly, to the Civil courts and Parliament? (2) Another great question which remained undetermined was that of Toleration. Should the new Presbyterian State Church of England be established with or without a liberty of dissent from it? A vast mass of the English people, represented by the Army-Independents and some leading Sectaries, demanded an absolute, or at least a very large, freedom of religious belief and practice; the Independent Divines of the Assembly claimed a certain amount of such freedom; nay, Parliament itself, by its Accommodation Order of September 1644, had recognised the necessity of some toleration, and appointed an inquiry on the subject. In the universal belief of the Presbyterians, on the other hand, Toleration was a monster to be attacked and slain. Toleration was a demon, a chimera, the Great Diana of the Independents, the Daughter of the Devil, the Mother and Protectress of blasphemies and heresies, the hideous Procuress of souls for Hell! Such were the questions for continued controversy between the Presbyterians and their opponents in England in the beginning of 1645, when the New Model took the field. What progress had been made in these questions, and what changes had occurred in the attitudes of the two parties mainly concerned, during the victorious sixteen months of the New Model? INDEPENDENCY AND SECTARIANISM IN THE NEW MODEL: TOLERATION CONTROVERSY CONTINUED: CROMWELL'S PART IN IT: LILBURNE AND OTHER PAMPHLETEERS: SION COLLEGE AND THE CORPORATION OF LONDON: SUCCESS OF THE PRESBYTERIANS IN PARLIAMENT. The New Model itself, as we know, had been a great chagrin to the Presbyterians. Fairfax, indeed, was understood to be Presbyterian enough personally; but the Army was full of Independents and Sectaries, it was largely officered by Independents, and its very soul was the Arch- Independent Cromwell. For a while, accordingly, it was the secret hope of the Presbyterians that this Army might fail. But, when evidently it was not to fail, when NASEBY was won (June 14, 1645), and when all the while the Scottish Presbyterian army in England was doing so ill in comparison, a sense of departing superiority sank on the spirits of the Presbyterians. "Honest men served you faithfully in this action," were Cromwell's words to Speaker Lenthall in his letter from Naseby field: "Sir, they are trusty; I beseech you, in the name of God, not to discourage them. I wish this action may beget thankfulness and humility in all that are concerned in it. He that ventures his life for the liberty of his country, I wish he may trust God for the liberty of his conscience, and you for the liberty he fights for." [Footnote: Carlyle's Cromwell, I. 176.] This immediate use by Cromwell of the victory of Naseby as an argument for Toleration did not escape the notice of the Presbyterians. "My Lord Fairfax," writes Baillie, June 17, "sent up, the last week, an horrible Anti-Triastrian [Anti-Trinitarian]: the whole Assembly went in a body to the Houses to complain of his blasphemies. It was the will of Cromwell, in his letter of his victory, to desire the House not to discourage those who had ventured their life for them, and to come out expressly with their much-desired Liberty of Conscience. You will see the letter in print, by order, as I think, of the Houses." [Footnote: Baillie, II. 280] The horrible Anti-Trinitarian here mentioned was Paul Best (see _antè_, p. 157). He was accused of "divers prodigious blasphemies against the deity of our Saviour and the Holy Ghost." Parliament, informed thereof by the Assembly, had been appalled, and had committed the culprit to close confinement in the Gatehouse to await his trial (June 10). The next day (June 11) the impression had been deepened by a complaint in the Commons against another culprit on similar grounds, and the House had instructed Mr. Millington, member for Nottingham, to prepare an ordinance on the subject of blasphemy generally. [Footnote: Commons Journals of dates given. Paul Best's case lasted two years.] All this only a day or two before Naseby; and now from the field of Naseby, in Cromwell's hand, a pleading of that victory on behalf of Toleration! Would Cromwell tolerate a Paul Best? What Cromwell and the Army-Independents would have said about Paul Best must be left to conjecture. What they were saying about the state of things in general we learn from the Presbyterian Richard Baxter. Being at Coventry at the time of the battle of Naseby, Baxter, then a pious preacher of twenty-nine years of age, with a lean cadaverous body, and the gauntest hook-nosed face ever seen in a portrait, paid a visit of curiosity to the field immediately after the battle, and went thence to the quarters of the victorious army at Leicester, to seek out some of his acquaintances. "When I came to the army, among Cromwell's soldiers," he says, "I found a new face of things which I never dreamt of: I heard the plotting heads very hot upon that which intimated their intention to subvert both Church and State. Independency and Anabaptistry were most prevalent; Antinomianism and Arminianism were equally distributed; and Thomas Moor's followers (a weaver of Wisbeach and Lynn, of excellent parts) had made some shifts to join these two extremes together. Abundance of the common troopers, and many of the officers, I found to be honest, sober, orthodox men, and others tractable, ready to hear the Truth, and of upright intentions; but a few proud, self-conceited, hot- headed sectaries had got into the highest places, and were Cromwell's chief favourites, and by their heat and activity bore down the rest, or carried them along with them, and were the soul of the Army. ... They said, What were the Lords of England but William the Conqueror's colonels, or the Barons but his majors, or the Knights but his captains? They plainly showed me that they thought God's providence would cast the trust of Religion and the Kingdom upon them as conquerors." They were full of railings and jests, Baxter adds, against the Scots or _Sots_, the Presbyterians or _Priest-biters_, and the Assembly of Divines or _Dry- vines_; and all their praises were of the Separatists, Anabaptists, and Antinomians.--Grieved at what he found, and thinking he might be of some use by way of antidote, Baxter at once gave up his charge at Coventry, to become chaplain to Col. Whalley's regiment. He had the more hope of being useful because he had some previous acquaintance with Cromwell. But his reception was far from satisfactory. "As soon as I came to the army," he says, "Oliver Cromwell coldly bid me welcome, and never spoke one word to me more while I was there, nor once all that time vouchsafed me an opportunity to come to the headquarters, where the councils and meetings of the officers were." Baxter never forgave that coolness of Cromwell to him. Hugh Peters, who was constantly with Cromwell as his chaplain, and would make camp-jokes at Baxter's expense, was never forgiven either. [Footnote: Baxter's Autobiography (_Reliquiæ Baxterianæ), 1696, pp. 50, 51.] Not only in the New Model Army was there this ferment of Anti- Presbyterianism, Anti-Scotticism, Independency, and Tolerationism, passing on into a drift of universally democratic opinion. Through English society, and especially in London, there was much of the same. Since the publication of Edwards's _Antapologia_ in July 1644 the war of pamphlets on the questions of Independency and Toleration had been increasingly virulent. The pamphleteers were numberless; but the chief of them, on the side of Presbyterianism and Anti-Toleration, were perhaps Prynne, Bastwick, and John Vicars, and, on the side of Independency and Toleration, Henry Burton, John Goodwin, and Hanserd Knollys, If Bibliography were to apply itself to the investigation of the popular English Literature of the latter half of the year 1644 and the first half of the year 1645, it would come upon these, and other controversialists whose names have been long forgotten, writhing together like a twisted knot of serpents, not to be uncoiled except by a distinct enumeration of several scores or hundreds of the most quaintly-entitled pamphlets, in the exact order of their publication, and with an account of the nature of each. London contained so many of these pamphleteers that the most deadly antagonists in print could not avoid each other in the streets, and Burton, for example, meeting Dr. Bastwick, would ask him with irritating politeness when his new book was coming out. Many of the pamphlets, however, and these the most daring and intemperate in expression, were anonymous. Such was _The Arraignment of Persecution_, purporting to be "printed by Martin Claw-Clergy for Bartholomew Bang-Priest," and to be on sale at "his shop in Toleration Street, right opposite to Persecution Court." In this and other popular squibs, to which neither authors nor printers dared to put their names, the toleration which Goodwin and Burton argued for gravely and logically was demanded with passionate vehemence, and with the most unsparing abuse of the Presbyterians, the Scots, and the Westminster Assembly. [Footnote: Wood's Ash. III. 860 (Prynne) and 308-9 (Vicars); Jackson's Life of John Goodwin, 61--79; Hanbury's Memorials, II. 385 et seq. (Prynne and Burton), and III. 68, 69 (Bastwick, Burton, and others). Notes of my own from the Stationers' Registers.]--One Tolerationist, here deserving a notice by himself, was John Lilburne. An avowed Independent even before the meeting of the Long Parliament, and forward as a Parliamentary captain from the very beginning of the war (Vol. II. 175, 458, and 588- 9), Lilburne had been one of those who regarded the Solemn League and Covenant of 1643 as incompatible with Liberty of Conscience, and whom no persuasions could induce to sign that document. He had risen, nevertheless, by Cromwell's arrangement, to be Lieutenant-colonel in Manchester's own dragoon regiment, and he had served bravely at Marston Moor. Between him and Cromwell there was the most friendly understanding. Lilburne looked upon Cromwell as "the most absolute single-hearted great man in England;" and Cromwell owned a kindly feeling for Lilburne. But there was a pig-headedness in Lilburne's honesty which even Cromwell could not control. "If only John Lilburne were left in the world, then John would quarrel with Lilburne and Lilburne with John" was Henry Marten's witty, and yet perfectly true, description of him. Having been a witness for Cromwell in Cromwell's impeachment of Manchester, he thought Cromwell culpably weak in allowing the impeachment to drop and not bringing Manchester to the scaffold; and he had himself brought a charge against a superior officer, named King. Then he had become utterly disgusted with the general conduct of affairs and the subservience of Parliament to the Presbyterians. He would leave the army; he would "dig for turnips and carrots before he would fight to set up a power to make himself a slave." His two brothers, Robert and Henry, continued to hold commands in the New Model; but not all Cromwell's arguments could induce Lilburne himself to come into it. On the 30th of April, 1645, he had resigned his commission, presenting at the same time a petition to the Commons for his arrears of pay, amounting to £880 2_s_. He had resolved to be thenceforward a political agitator, a link between the Independency of the Army and what Independency there was already in London itself. Accordingly, from the beginning of 1645, Lilburne, still not more than twenty-seven years of age, is to be reckoned as one of the most prominent Anti-Presbyterians in London, an especial favourite of all the sectaries, and even of the populace generally, on account of his boundlessly libertarian sentiments and his absolute fearlessness of consequences. There was talk of trying to get him into Parliament on a convenient opportunity. Meanwhile he took to pamphleteering, selecting as his first object of attack his old master, Prynne. In the first half of 1645 Lilburne and Prynne were seen wrestling with each other, Lilburne for toleration and Independency, and Prynne for coercion and Presbyterianism, with a ferocity hardly paralleled in any contemporary duel, and made more piquant to the public by the recollection of the former intimacy of the duellists. [Footnote: Godwin's Hist. of the Commonwealth, II. 1-24, and 418-19; Wood's Ath. III. 353-4, and 860; Edwards's _Gangræna,_ Part I. 46, 47, Part II. 38, and Part III. 153 _et seq._; Commons Journals, Jan. 17, 1644-5; Prynne's _Fresh Discovery._] The denunciation of Paul Best (June 10, 1645) was a Presbyterian masterstroke. Even moderate people stood aghast at the idea of tolerating opinions like his; and that the wretched owner of them could plead his liberty of conscience (which Best did in prison) was more likely than anything else to put people out of patience with Conscience and its Liberty. But, about the same time that Paul Best was put in prison to be tried for his life for Blasphemy, there were persecutions and punishments of others, whose offence was far less theological heterodoxy than mere Independency or Anti-Presbyterianism. "Blessed be God," writes Baillie, July 8, 1645, "all the London ministers are with us: Burton and Goodwin, the only two that were Independent, are by the Parliament removed from their places." In other words, John Goodwin had just been ejected from his vicarage of St. Stephen's, Coleman Street, and Henry Burton for the second time from his living in Friday Street, nominally for irregular practices in their ministry, but really because they were in the way of Prynne and the Presbyterians. Mr. Goodwin, who had a large following in the City, had little difficulty in setting up an Independent meeting- house of his own in Coleman Street; but poor old Mr. Burton seems to have been in sad straits for some time. [Footnote: Baillie, II. 299; Jackson's Life of Goodwin, 79 _et seq._; Hanbury's Memorials, III. 78, note.-- Burton, I believe, migrated to Stepney.]----Burton and Goodwin having been called to account, the next blow was at John Lilburne. With characteristic bluntness Lilburne had been for some months pressing the business of his own petition for arrears of pay upon the House of Commons, going to the House personally, waiting on the Speaker, circulating printed copies of his petition among the members, and always with outspoken comments on affairs, and attacks on this person and on that. On one occasion he and Prynne had met by chance, and there had been a violent altercation between them. Twice, in consequence, Lilburne had been in custody for examination as to his concern in certain Anti- Presbyterian pamphlets, but on each occasion he had been discharged. He had then gone down to the Army, and procured a letter from Cromwell, recommending his case to the House. "He hath done both you and the kingdom good service," wrote Cromwell, "and you will not find him unthankful." Returning to London, Lilburne had caused this letter to be printed and had circulated copies of it. No effect followed, and Lilburne still haunted Westminster Hall, waylaying members as they went into the House, till they abhorred the sight of him. On the 19th of July he was in the Hall, and was overheard by his enemies Colonel King and Dr. Bastwick taking part in a conversation in which dreadful things were said of the Speaker, his brother, and other public men. The information was immediately reduced to writing by King and Bastwick, and sent in to the Speaker, with this result: "_Resolved_, That Lieutenant-colonel Lilburne be taken into custody, and so kept till the House take further order." Questioned in custody by a committee of the House, Lilburne refused to answer, stood on his rights as a freeborn citizen, &c. He also caused to be printed _A Letter to a Friend_, stating his case in his own way; this Letter, as increasing his offence, was reported to the House, Aug. 9; and, on the 11th of August, having been again contumacious in private examination and committed to Newgate, he was ordered to remain there for trial at Quarter Sessions. He remained in Newgate till Oct. 14, when he was discharged, by order of the House, without trial. [Footnote: Godwin's Hist. of the Commonwealth, II. l5-21; Commons Journals of dates given; Wood's Ath. III. 860.] Such prosecutions of individuals formed an avowed part of the method of the Presbyterians for suppressing the Toleration heresy. Cromwell, away with the Army, could only continue to hint his remonstrances to Parliament in letters; but this he did. The greatest success of the New Model after Naseby was the storming of Bristol, Sept. 10, 1645; and in the long letter which Cromwell wrote to the Speaker, giving an account of this success (Sept. 14), he recurred to his Toleration argument. "Presbyterians, Independents, all," he wrote, "have here the same spirit of faith and prayer, the same presence and answer; they agree here, have no names of difference: pity it is it should be otherwise anywhere! All that believe have the real unity, which is most glorious, because _in_ the Body and _to_ the Head. For being united in forms, commonly called Uniformity, every Christian will, for peace sake, study and do as far as conscience will permit. And for brethren, in things of the mind, we look for no compulsion but that of light and reason." By order of Parliament this Letter was read in all the churches of London on Sunday, Sept. 21, and also circulated in print. It does not seem, however, to have sunk very deep. [Footnote: Carlyle's Cromwell, I. 188.--As late as 1648 I find this passage of Cromwell's letter quoted and largely commented on by the Scottish Presbyterian Rutherford (_A Survey of the Spiritual Antichrist._ 1648, p. 250 _et seq._) in proof of Cromwell's dangerousness, and his sympathy with Familism, Antinomianism, and other errors.] Cromwell's hints from the field in favour of Liberty of Conscience may be regarded as little "Accommodation Orders" in his own name, reminding Parliament and the Westminster Assembly of that formal "Accommodation Order" which he had moved in the House a year before, and which had then been passed (_antè,_ pp. 168-9). What had become of this Accommodation Order? The story may be given in brief:--The Grand Accommodation Committee had immediately appointed a small Sub-Committee, consisting of Dr. Temple and Messrs. Marshall, Herle, and Vines, for the Presbyterians, and Messrs. Thomas Goodwin and Philip Nye for the Independents. The business of this Sub-Committee, called "The Sub-Committee of Agreements," was to reduce into the narrowest compass the differences between the Independents and the rest of the Assembly. The Sub-Committee did their best, and reported to the Grand Committee; but for various reasons the Grand Committee postponed the subject. Meanwhile these proceedings had obtained for the Independents a re-hearing in the Assembly itself. The five original Independents in the Assembly, Messrs. Goodwin, Nye, Bridge, Burroughs, and Simpson, with Mr. William Carter and Mr, William Greenhill now added to their number, presented in writing (Nov. 14, 1644) their Reasons of Dissent from the propositions of Presbytery most disagreeable to them; [Footnote: The increase of the number of avowed Independents in the Assembly at this point from Five to Seven is worth noting. From the very first, however, there must have been a few in sympathy to some variable extent with the leading Five. Thus Baillie, as early as Dec. 7, 1643 (Letters, II. 110), speaks of "the Independent men, whereof there are some _ten_ or _eleven_ in the Synod, many of them very able men," and mentions Carter, Caryl, Phillips, and Sterry, as of the number. (See our List of the Assembly, Vol. II. 516-524,) There had been efforts on the part of the Independents in Parliament to bring more representatives of Independency into the Assembly. Actually, on the 2nd of Nov. 1643, the very day on which the Lords agreed with the Commons in the nomination of John Durie to succeed the deceased Calibute Downing, the Lords on their own account nominated John Goodwin of Coleman Street to ho of the Assembly, and with him "Dr. Homes of Wood Street, and Mr. Horton, Divinity Lecturer at Gresham College" (Lords Journals of date). The Commons, whose concurrence was necessary, seem quietly to have withheld it, and thus the Assembly missed having John Goodwin in it as well as Thomas. "Homes" (Nathaniel Holmes: Wood's Ath. III. 1, 168) was also an Independent, and probably "Horton" leant that way (Thomas Horton: Wood's Fasti, II. 172).] and the Assembly produced (Dec. 17) an elaborate Answer. Copies of both documents were furnished to Parliament; but, without reference to the objections of the Independents, the essential parts of the Frame of Presbyterial Government had been ratified by Parliament in January 1644-5. [Footnote: The Reasons of Dissent by the Seven Independents and the Assembly's Answer were not published till 1648. They then appeared by order of Parliament; and they were republished in 1652 under the title of _The Grand Debate concerning Presbytery and Independency_.] Affairs then took a new turn in the Assembly. The Independents having often been taunted with being merely critical and never bringing fully to light their own views, one of them was led in a moment of heat to declare that they were quite willing to prepare their own complete Model of Congregationalism, to be contrasted with that of Presbytery. The Assembly eagerly caught at the imprudent offer, and the Seven Independents were appointed to be a committee for bringing in a Frame of Congregational Church Government, with reasons for the same. This was in March 1645; and from that time the Seven, supposed to be busy in Committee upon the work assigned them, had a dispensation from attendance at the general meetings. Spring passed, summer passed, September arrived; and still the Independents had not brought in their Model. The Assembly became impatient, and insisted on expedition. At length, on the 13th of October, the Seven presented to the Assembly-- what? Not the Model on which they were supposed to have been engaged for seven months, but a brief Paper of Reasons for not bringing in a Model at all! "Upon these considerations," they said in concluding the Paper, "we think that this Assembly hath no cause to require a Report from us; nor will that Report be of any use: seeing that Reports are for debates, and debates are for results to be sent up to the Honourable Houses; who have already voted another Form of Government than that which we shall present."--It was the astutest policy that the Independents could possibly have adopted; and the Presbyterians, feeling themselves outwitted, were furious. The machinery of the Accommodation Order had again to be put in motion by Parliament (Nov. 14). There were conferences of the Divines with members of the two Houses. What was the upshot? "The Independents in their last meeting of our Grand Committee of Accommodation," writes Baillie, Nov. 25, "have expressed their desires for toleration, not only to themselves, but to other sects." That was the upshot! Army Independency and Assembly Independency had coalesced, and their one flag now was Indefinite Toleration. [Footnote: Hetherington's Hist. of the Westminster Assembly (1843), pp. 220-236; Hanbury's Memorials, II. 548-559, and III. 1-32; Baillie, II. 270-326; Commons Journals, Nov. 14, 1645.] The Presbyterians behaved accordingly. There was an end to their endeavours to reason over the few Independents in the Assembly, or arrange a secret compromise with them; and there was a renewed onset on the Toleration principle by the whole Presbyterian force. As if on a signal given, there was a fresh burst of Anti-Toleration pamphlets from the press. Prynne published one; Baillie sent forth his _Dissuasive_ (_antè_, p. 142); and Edwards was printing his immortal _Gangræna_ (_antè_, p. 141). But appeals to the public mind through the press were not enough. The real anxiety was about the action of Parliament. The expectation of the Presbyterians, grounded on recent experience, as that Parliament, even if left to itself, would see its duty clearly, and repudiate Toleration once and for ever. Still it would only be prudent to bring to bear on Parliament all available external pressure. Through December 1645 and January 1645-6, accordingly, the Presbyterians were ceaseless in contriving and promoting demonstrations in their favour. And with signal success:--Only a certain selected number of the parish-clergy of London and the suburbs, it is to be remembered, were members of the Assembly: the mass of them remained outside that body. But this mass, being Presbyterian almost to a man, had organized itself in such a way as both to act upon the Assembly and to obey it. Since 1623 there had been in the city, in the street called London Wall, a building called SION COLLEGE, with a library and other conveniences, expressly for the use of the London clergy, and answering for them most of the purposes of a modern clubhouse. Here, as was natural, the London clergy had of late been in the habit of meeting to talk over the Church-question, so that at length a weekly conclave had been arranged, and Sion College had become a kind of discussion forum, apart from the Assembly, and yet in connexion with it. At Sion College the London Presbyterians could concoct what was to be brought forward in the Assembly, and a hint from the Assembly to Sion College in any moment of Presbyterian difficulty could summon all the London clergy to the rescue. At the moment at which we have arrived such a hint was given; and on the 18th of December, 1645, there was drawn up at Sion College a Letter to the Assembly by all the ministers of the City of London expressly against Toleration. "These are some of the many considerations," they say in the close of the Letter, "which make a deep impression upon our spirits against that Great Diana of Independents and all the Sectaries, so much cried up by them in these distracted times, namely, A Toleration--A Toleration. And, however none should have been more rejoiced than ourselves in the establishment of a brotherly, peaceable, and Christian _accommodation_, yet, this being utterly rejected by them, we cannot dissemble how, upon the fore- mentioned grounds, we detest and abhor the much-endeavoured _Toleration_. Our bowels, our bowels, are stirred within us, &c." The Letter was presented to the Assembly Jan. 1, 1645-6, and the Assembly took care that it should be published that same day.[Footnote: Cunningham's London, Art. _Sion College_; Hanbury's Memorials, III. 97-99; Stationers' Registers, Jan. 1, 1645-6.]--The Corporation of London was as staunchly Presbyterian as the clergy, and they too were stirred up. "We have gotten it, thanks to God, to this point," writes Baillie, Jan. 15, "that the Mayor, Aldermen, Common Council, and most of the considerable men, are grieved for the increase of sects and heresies and want of government. They have yesterday had a public Fast for it, and solemnly renewed their Covenant by oath and subscription, and this day have given in a strong Petition for settling Church-government, and suppressing all sects, without any toleration." The Petition was to the Commons; and it was particularly represented to that House, by Alderman Gibbs, as the spokesman for the Petitioners, that "new and strange doctrines and blasphemies" were being vented in the City by women-preachers. [Footnote: Baillie, II. 337; Hanbury, III. 99, 100; Commons Journals, January 15, 1645-6.] Environed by such a sea of Presbyterian excitement, what could the Parliament do? They did what was expected. They shook off Toleration as if it had been a snake. Not only did they assure the Aldermen and Common Council that there would be due vigilance against the sects and heretics; but on the 29th of January, or within a fortnight after they had received the City Petition, they took occasion to prove that their assurance was sincere. The two Baptist preachers Cox and Richardson, it seems, had been standing at the door of the House of Commons, distributing to members printed copies of the Confession of Faith of the Seven Baptist Congregations in London (see _antè_, p. 148). It was as if they had said, "Be pleased to look for yourselves, gentlemen, at the real tenets of those poor Anabaptists who are described as such monsters." But the Commons were in a Presbyterian panic; Cox and Richardson were taken into custody; and orders were issued for seizing and suppressing all copies of the Baptist Confession that could be found. This alone would prove that as late as the end of January, 1645-6, the Presbyterians, in their character of Anti-Tolerationists, were still masters of the field. [Footnote: Commons Journals, Jan. 29, 1645-6.] PRESBYTERIAN FRAME OF CHURCH-GOVERNMENT COMPLETED: DETAILS OF THE ARRANGEMENT. Hardly less successful had the Presbyterians been in their more proper task of perfecting their Frame of Church-government. Here, indeed, they had encountered little or no opposition from the Independents. The essentials of the Presbyterian scheme having been voted by Parliament, the Independents had quietly accepted that fact; and, though they tended, as was natural, more and more to doubts whether there ought to be any National Church at all, they had left Parliament and the Presbyterians of the Assembly to construct the detailed machine of the future English Presbytery very much as they pleased. [Footnote: Absolute Voluntaryism, as we know, was already represented in Roger Williams. The _Seekers_, his followers, were bound to the same conclusion; and accordingly, I find a little tract of six pages, in 1645, by John Saltmarsh, the Seeker and Antinomian (_antè_, p. 151-3), entitled "A New Quere, at this time seasonably to be considered, &c.. viz. Whether it be fit, according to the principles of true Religion and State to settle any Church-government over the Kingdom hastily or not." Burton was already in the same mood of hypothetical Voluntaryism (_antè_, p. 109), and I think it was spreading now among the Independents. Certainly, however, the perception of the necessary identity of the principle of Independency with absolute Voluntaryism, or the doctrine of No State Church, was not universal among them.] It was the Erastians rather than the Independents that were here the clogs upon the thorough-going Presbyterians. Selden especially was their torment. He was quite willing, O yes! that the Church of England should be thenceforward Presbyterian; but then what about the rights of the individual subject and the relations of the Church to the State? The State or central Power in every community must be, in the last resort, the guardian of all the rights and liberties of the individual subjects; there had been but one Sanhedrim in the Jewish Commonwealth, supreme in causes ecclesiastical as well as in causes civil; but the Presbyterian Divines of the Assembly, with the Scots for their advisers, wanted the Church in England to be a separate Sanhedrim, supreme in ecclesiastical causes, and irresponsible to the State! Plying his learning in this fashion, and assisted by Whitlocke, St. John, and the other lawyers in the Assembly and in Parliament, Selden had, throughout 1645, kept up an Erastian obstruction to the Presbyterians. Now, as Prynne out of doors, with all his Presbyterianism, was also lawyer-like, and therefore staunchly Erastian, and as the Independents in Parliament made common cause with the Erastians wherever they could, the obstruction had been very formidable. "The Erastian party in the Parliament is stronger than the Independent, and is like to work us much woe," wrote Baillie in May 1645; "Mr. Prynne and the Erastian lawyers are now our _remora_" he wrote in September; and he kept repeating the complaint throughout the year. [Footnote: Baillie, II. 277, 315, and also in intermediate and following pages.] Nevertheless great progress had been made in devising and settling the details of the Presbyterian system. What it was will be best exhibited in a dated series of paragraphs, digesting the proceedings of the Assembly and the Parliament:-- _May 1645: Presbyterian Arrangements for all England prospectively, and for London to begin with_:--That every English Congregation or Parish have its lay-elders along with its minister, just after the Scottish fashion; That the meetings of the Presbyterians be once a month; That the ecclesiastical provinces of England be about sixty in number (about co- numerous with the shires, and, in most cases, identical with them), and that the Synods of these provinces be held twice a-year, and consist of delegates from the Presbyteries; That the National Assembly be held once a year, and consist of delegates from the sixty Synods, at the rate of three ministers and two ruling elders from each, so as to form a House of about 300 members.--That London, reckoned by a radius of ten miles from its centre, be one of the Synodical Provinces, and that the number of Classes or Presbyteries in the Synod of London be fourteen.-- _Baillie_, II. 271, 272. _Aug._ 23: Ordinance of Parliament, calling in all copies of the old Liturgy, enforcing the use of the new Westminster Directory of Worship, and forbidding any use of the Liturgy, even in private houses, under penalties.--_Commons Journals._ _July-Sept. 1645; Directions for the Election of Ruling Elders in Congregations, and for the Division of the English Counties into Presbyteries._ July 23, the Commons resolved that Ruling Elders in congregations should be chosen by the ministers and all members duly qualified by having taken the Covenant and being of full age, save that servants without families were not to have votes: no man to be a ruling elder in more than one congregation, and that in the place of his usual residence. July 25, they appointed a committee of forty-seven of their own body to find out the fittest persons to be a committee for superintending the elections of Elders for the Congregations and Presbyteries of London, and at the same time to prepare a letter to be sent down into the counties by the Speaker, giving instructions for the formation of County-Committees to consider the best division of the counties respectively into Presbyteries. The letter was ready Sept. 17, when it was ordered to be sent down into the counties, with a copy of the Votes and Ordinances on the subject of the election of Elders that had then passed and been concurred in by the Lords.--_Commons Journals._ _Sept.-Dec. 1645: Special Presbyterian Arrangements for London._ It having been resolved by the Commons (Sept. 23) that there should be a choice of Elders forthwith in London, the aforesaid Committee of forty- seven reported to the House (Sept. 26) the names of the persons judged most suitable to be TRIERS of the ability and integrity of the Elders that should be elected, and of the validity of their election according to the Parliamentary regulations. In each of the twelve London Classes or Presbyteries (there were only _twelve_ as yet) there were to be nine of these Triers--three ministers and six lay citizens; and they were to decide all questions by a majority of votes. Thus there were to be 108 Triers in all in London. Their names are all registered. The machinery being thus ready, the Lord Mayor was requested, Oct. 8, to intimate to all the London ministers the desire of Parliament that Congregations should at once proceed to the election of their Elders.--Dec. 5, it was ordered that the whole world of the lawyers--_i.e._ the Chapel of the Rolls, the two Serjeants' Inns, and the four Inns of Court--should be constituted into a Presbytery by itself, but divided into two Classes. Triers were also appointed for the Elders in this peculiar Presbytery, one of them being William Prynne.--_Commons Journals of dates cited._ _Nov._ 8, 1645: _New Ordinance for the Ordination of Ministers._ In this long Ordinance the original identity of Bishop and Presbyter is asserted, and consequently the right of Presbyters, without any so-called Bishop among them, to ordain; nevertheless the ordinations by the late Bishops are recognised as valid. Directions are then given to Presbyters for the examination of candidates for the ministry in future, and for the formalities to be observed in their ordination. Every candidate must be twenty-four years of age at least, and must be tried not only in respect of piety, character, preaching ability, and knowledge of divinity, but also in respect of skill in the tongues and in Logic and Philosophy; and congregations were to have full opportunity of stating exceptions against ministers offered them. From a clause in the Ordinance it appears that certified ordination in Scotland was to be accepted in England.--_Lords Journals._ _Powers of the Congregational Elderships in suspending from Church- membership, and excluding from the Communion._ This was perhaps the most important subject of all, for it involved the mode of the action of the new Presbyterian system at the heart of social life and its interferences with the liberties of the individual. Parliament was naturally slow and jealous on this subject, so that the discussion of it, part by part, extended over the whole year 1645. The briefest sketch of results must suffice here:--The Assembly having sent in to Parliament a Paper concerning the exclusion of ignorant and scandalous persons from the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper, the Parliament had desired a more particular definition by the Assembly of what they included in the terms _ignorant_ and _scandalous_. The Assembly having then sent in an explanation, in which, under the head of the _ignorance_ that should exclude from the Lord's Table, they mentioned "the not having a competent understanding concerning the Trinity," the Commons (March 27, 1645) had desired to know what the Assembly considered to be a competent understanding concerning the Trinity, The Assembly having farther declared, under the same head of _ignorance_, that no persons ought to be admitted to the Lord's Table who had not a "competent understanding" of the Deity, of the state of Man by Creation and by his Fall, of Redemption by Jesus Christ and the means to apply Christ and his benefits, of the necessity of Faith, Repentance and a Godly life, of the Nature and Use of Sacraments, and of the Condition of Man after this Life, the Commons had still demurred about the "competent understanding," and had begged the Assembly to be more precise and business-like (April 1). At length, some resolutions having been come to about the "competent understanding," and there being less difficulty in deciding who should come under the category of the _scandalous_, the Commons had before them a pretty extensive index of the kinds of persons, whether _ignorant_ or _scandalous_, whom the Congregational Elderships were to be empowered to suspend or debar from the Communion. The index was not complete, I think, till January 1645-6; by which time, after numerous discussions, it included, in addition to the grossly ignorant in the elementary articles of Christianity, and to murderers, notorious drunkards, swearers, _et hoc genus omne_, a considerable list of such varieties of offenders as these-- makers of images of the Trinity, worshippers of saints, persons sending or accepting challenges, persons playing at games selling wares or unnecessarily travelling on Sunday, persons consulting witches, persons assaulting magistrates or their own parents, persons legally convicted of perjury or bribery, persons consenting to the marriage of their children with Papists, and, finally, the maintainers of errors that subvert the prime Articles of Religion. To provide, moreover, for cases not positively enumerated, there were to be commissioners in every ecclesiastical province authorized to decide on such cases, when represented to them by ministers and the elderships. All this, with much more of the same kind, was partly agreed upon, partly still under Parliamentary consideration, in the beginning of 1646.--_Commons Journals, with references there to the Lords Journals_. THE RECRUITING OF THE COMMONS; EMINENT RECRUITERS. January 1645-6, I think, was the month in which Presbyterianism was in fullest tide. After that month, and through the spring and early summer of 1646, there was a visible ebb. The cause may have been partly that continued triumph everywhere of the New Model Army which had brought the War obviously to its fag-end, and now, perhaps, suggested to Parliament and the Londoners the uncomfortable idea that the marching mass of Independency, relieved from its military labours, would soon be re- approaching the capital, and at leisure to review the proceedings of its masters. There was, however, a more obvious cause. This was the increase of the Independent Vote in the House of Commons by the gradual coming in of the RECRUITERS. By the outbreak of the Civil War in August 1642, and the consequent desertion of the House of Commons by two-thirds of its members, most of whom were then or afterwards formally disabled, the House, as we know, had been reduced to a mere stump of what it ought to have been constitutionally. There had been complaints about this outside, and regrets within the House itself; but it was felt that a time of Civil War could not be a time for Parliamentary elections. How could there be such elections while the King's forces were in possession of large regions of England, and these the very regions where most seats were vacant? For three years, therefore, the House had allowed the vacant seats in it to remain vacant, and had persisted in the public business in the state to which it had been reduced, _i.e._, with a nominal strength at the utmost of about 280, and a constant working attendance of only 100 or thereabouts. Not till after Naseby, and the recovery of more and more of English ground for Parliament by the successes of the New Model, was it deemed prudent to begin the issue of new writs; and even then the process was careful and gradual. The first new writs issued were in Aug. 1645, and were for Southwark, St. Edmundsbury, and Hythe; in September there followed 95 additional new writs for boroughs or counties; in October there were 27 more; and so on by smaller batches in succeeding months, until, by the end of the year, 146 new members in all had been elected. This did not complete the process; for 89 new members more remained to be elected in the course of 1646, bringing the total number of the Recruiters up to about 235. Now, among these Recruiters, all of them Parliamentarians in the main sense, there were both Presbyterians and Independents. As Presbyterians, more or less, may be reckoned, among those elected before January 1645-6, Major- general RICHARD BROWNE (Wycombe), Major-general EDWARD MASSEY (Wootton Bassett), WALTER LONG, Esq. (Ludgershall, Wilts), and CLEMENT WALKER, Esq. (Wells): this last a very peculiar-tempered person from Somersetshire, a friend of Prynne's, and described by himself as an "elderly gentleman, of low stature, in a grey suit, with a little stick in his hand." Decidedly more numerous among the Recruiters, however, were men who might be called Independents, or were at least Tolerationists. Among such, all elected before January 1645-6, or not later than that month, may be named Colonel ROBERT BLAKE (Taunton), Sir JOHN DANVERS, brother of the late Earl of Danby (Malmesbury), the Hon. JOHN FIENNES, third son of Viscount Saye and Sele (Morpeth), GEORGE FLEETWOOD, Esq. (Bucks), Colonel CHARLES FLEETWOOD (Marlborough), Sir JAMES HARRINGTON (Rutland), the Hon. JAMES HERBERT, second son of the Earl of Pembroke (Wilts), Colonel JOHN HUTCHINSON (Notts), Commissary-general HENRY IRETON (Appleby), HENRY LAWRENCE, Esq., a gentleman of property and some taste for learning and speculation (Westmoreland), Sir MICHAEL LIVESEY (Queenborough), Colonel EDMUND LUDLOW (Wilts), SIMON MAYNE, Esq. (Aylesbury), young Colonel EDWARD MONTAGUE (Hants), Colonel RICHARD NORTON (Hants), Colonel CHARLES RICH (Sandwich), Colonel EDWARD ROSSITER (Great Grimsby), THOMAS SCOTT (Aylesbury), young Colonel ALGERNON SIDNEY (Cardiff), Colonel WILLIAM SYDENHAM (Melcombe Regis), and PETER TEMPLE, Esq. (Leicester). Of this list, nearly half, it may be noted, were or had been officers in the New Model. The fact was very significant. It was still more significant that among these New Model officers elected among the first Recruiters there was a knot of men who were already recognised as in a special sense Cromwellians. Almost all the New Model officers were devoted to Cromwell; but Ireton was his _alter ego_, and young Fleetwood, young Montague, young Sidney, and young Sydenham, belonged to a group known in the Army as Cromwell's passionate admirers and disciples. [Footnote: The statistics of the Recruiting in this paragraph are from my own counting of the New Writs from Aug. 1645 onwards in the Commons Journals, checked by Godwin's previous counting or calculation (Hist. of Commonwealth, II. 38, 39), and by the noting of new writs in the list of members of the Long Parliament given in the Parl. Hist. (II. 599-629). Among the individual Recruiters named I have tried not to include any whose election was _later_ than Jan. 1645-6, and have trusted, in that particular, to the notices of new writs in the Commons Journals and the Parl. Hist.; but one cannot be perfectly sure that in each case an election immediately followed the new writ. My often-cited fly-sheet authority, Leach's _Great Champions of England_, has been of use. It distinguishes 131 Recruiters as of Parliamentary note before the end of July, 1646; but its list of Recruiters up to that date is neither complete nor accurate.--The description of Clement Walker is from his own _Hist. of Independency_ (edit. 1660), Part I. p. 53.--The county in which there had to be most Recruiting, _i.e._in which there were most vacant seats, was Somersetshire. Nearly all the seats were vacant there. A large proportion of the seats was vacant in Notts, Yorkshire, Sussex, Westmoreland, and Wales.--The Recruiting went on not only through 1646, but also in stray cases through subsequent years; and FAIRFAX, SKIPPON, HARRISON, INGOLDSBY, among military men, and PRYNNE himself among civilians, came at length into the House.] Not _called_ Recruiters, but practically such for the Independents, were two original members who, after having been out of the House for a long while, were now restored to their places. These were Nathaniel Fiennes, _alias_ "Young Subtlety," and the witty and freethinking Henry Marten. Fiennes, having been tried by court-martial and sentenced to death in December 1643, for his surrender of Bristol (_antè_, p. 6), had been forgiven and allowed to go abroad; but opinion of his conduct in that affair had meanwhile become more favourable, and before the end of 1645 he returned and resumed his seat. Marten (Vol. II. p. 166) had been expelled from the House by vote, Aug. 16, 1643, for words too daringly disrespectful of Royalty--in fact, for premature Republicanism; but, the House having become less fastidious in that matter, and his presence being greatly missed, the vote was rescinded January 6, 1645-6, and the record of it expunged from the Journals. [Footnote: Godwin's Commonwealth, II. 77, 78; Wood's Ath. III. 878 and 1238; and Commons Journals of dates given.] Although as many as 146 Recruiters had been elected before the end of the year, they appear to have taken their places but slowly. Not till January 26, 1645-6, does one perceive any considerable effect on the numbers of the House. On that day there was a House of at least 183, the largest there had been for many a day--larger by 13 than the House that had made Fairfax commander-in-chief twelve months before. And thenceforward the numbers keep well up. On two occasions early in February there were Houses of 203 and 202 respectively; and before the summer of 1646 there were members enough at hand to form on great field-days Houses of from 250 to 270. By that time some of the military men among the Recruiters were able to be present. [Footnote: My notes of Divisions, from the Commons Journals.] EFFECTS OF THE RECRUITING: ALLIANCE OF INDEPENDENCY AND ERASTIANISM: CHECK GIVEN TO THE PRESBYTERIANS: WESTMINSTER ASSEMBLY REBUKED. As soon as the Recruiting had begun to tell upon the _numbers_ of the House, an effect on the _policy_ of the House is also perceptible. Thus on Feb. 3, the very day when the Commons mustered a House of 203, a division took place involving Toleration in a subtle form. The question was whether in a Declaration setting forth the true intentions of the House in Church-matters this clause should be inserted: "A fitting care shall be taken of tender consciences, so far as may stand with the Word of God and the Peace of the Kingdom." This, though mild enough, displeased the Presbyterians, and was proposed from their side that the words "Church and" should be inserted before the word "Kingdom." On a division the _Yeas_ (for adding the words and so making the pledge of a toleration weaker) were 105, and had for their tellers the Presbyterian party-chiefs, Denzil Holles and Sir Philip Stapleton; but 98 _Noes_ rallied round Sir Arthur Haselrig and Sir Henry Mildmay, the tellers for the Opposition. [Footnote: Commons Journals of date.] A wavering of the balance towards Independency and Toleration was indicated by this vote; but it was not till the following month that the balance was decisively turned, and then not directly on the Toleration question, but on that great related question of the "Power of the Keys" which the Presbyterians of the Assembly wanted to see settled in their favour before they could consider the Presbyterian establishment perfect. If the phrase "Power of the Keys" should seem a mystic one to English readers now, it will perhaps be cleared up by the following story of what happened in March 1645-6. On the 5th of that month the Commons passed and sent up to the Lords one all-comprehensive Ordinance, recapitulating in twenty-three Propositions the substance of their various Presbyterian enactments up to that date. [Footnote: See the Ordinance in the Commons Journals of the date. It is a clear and excellent summary of what had been done and what was intended in the matter of Presbyterian Establishment.] What these were we have just seen (_antè_, pp. 397-400). They amounted, as one might now think, to a sufficiently strict Presbyterianizing of all England, with London first by way of example. The Presbyterian Divines were not ill satisfied on the whole; but they had not succeeded to the full extent of their wishes, and there were various matters in the Recapitulating Ordinance that they hoped yet to see amended. In particular, notwithstanding all their efforts for months past to indoctrinate the Parliament with the right Presbyterian theory of the independent spiritual jurisdiction of the Church, the natural Erastianism of the lay mind had been so strong in the Commons that the 14th Proposition of the Recapitulating Ordinance stood as follows:-- "XIV. That, in every Province, persons shall be chosen by the Houses of Parliament that shall be Commissioners to judge of scandalous offences (not enumerated in any Ordinance of Parliament) to them presented: And that the Eldership of that Congregation where the said offence was committed shall, upon examination and proof of such scandalous offence (in like manner as is to be done in the offences enumerated), certify the same to the Commissioners, together with the proof taken before them: And before the said certificate the party accused shall have liberty to make such defence as he shall think fit before the said Eldership, and also before the Commissioners before any certificate shall be made to the Parliament: And, if the said Commissioners, after examination of all parties, shall determine the offence, so presented and proved, to be scandalous, and the same shall certify to the Congregation, the Eldership thereof may suspend such person from the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper, in like manner as in cases enumerated in any Ordinance of Parliament." Here was wormwood for the Presbyterians; and over this 14th Article, and one or two subsequent articles, settling farther details of the superiority of the proposed Parliamentary Commissioners over the Church Courts, and also reserving the appeal of ecclesiastical questions to Parliament, they prepared to fight a most strenuous battle. The Assembly, the City Corporation, the City ministers in their Sion College conclave, and the Scottish Commissioners, all flew to arms. Their first hope was with the Lords; and _them_ they nearly conquered. On the 13th of March there was a long debate in that House on the whole Ordinance, and especially its 14th Article; and, out of twenty-one Peers present, _nine_ were so opposed to that Article that, before the vote was taken, they begged leave to be allowed to register their protest if the vote went against them. These Peers were the Earls of Essex, Manchester, Warwick, Bolingbroke, and Suffolk, and Lords Willoughby, Roberts, Dacres, and Bruce. There were, however, _twelve_ Peers in favour of the Erastian Article: viz. the Earls of Northumberland, Kent, Pembroke, Salisbury, Denbigh, Nottingham, Stamford, and Middlesex, and Lords North, Howard of Escrick, Wharton, and Grey of Wark. Pour of the minority, viz. Essex, Manchester, Bolingbroke, and Bruce, did then protest, on the ground that they considered the institution of Parliamentary Commissioners apart from the Church Courts inconsistent with the Solemn League and Covenant. The entire Ordinance, with insignificant amendments, thus passed the Lords; and, the Commons having accepted the amendments, it became law on the 14th of March. [Footnote: Commons Journals, Feb. 27, and March 3, 5, and 14, 1645-6; and Lords Journals, March 13 and 14.] Was it, then, such a mongrel Presbytery as this, an Erastian Presbytery, a Presbytery controlled and policed by Parliamentary Commissioners, that was to be set up in England? Not if the Presbyterian clergy of England, with all Scotland to aid them, could prevent it! "We, for our part [the Scottish Commissioners]," writes Baillie, March 17, "mind to give in a remonstrance against it; the Assembly will do the like; the City ministers will give the third; but that which, by God's help, may prove most effectual is the zeal of the City itself. Before the Ordinance came out, they petitioned against some materials of it. This both the Houses voted to be a breach of their privilege, to offer a petition against anything that is in debate before them, till once it be concluded and come abroad. This vote the City takes very evil: it's likely to go high betwixt them. Our prayers and endeavours are for wisdom and courage to the City." [Footnote: Baillie, II. 361.] Within a fortnight, however (March 31), Baillie writes, in a postscript to the same letter, in a much more downcast mood. "The leaders of the people," he says, "seem to be inclined to have no shadow of a King, to have liberty for all Religions, to have but a lame Erastian Presbytery, to be so injurious to us [the Scots] as to chase us home with the sword. ... Our great hope on earth, the City of London, has played _nipshot_ [_i.e._ miss-fire or burnt priming]: they are speaking of dissolving the Assembly." [Footnote: Ibid. II. 362.]--To understand this wail of Baillie's we have again to turn to the Journals of the Commons. Having passed the all-conclusive Ordinance for Presbytery, the two Houses had resolved to stand on their dignity, and resent the attempted dictation of the City, the Sion College conclave, the Assembly, and the Scottish Commissioners. They had already, as Baillie informs us, made a beginning, while the Ordinance was yet in progress, by voting a petition of the City against some parts of it to be a breach of privilege. At this, as late as March 17, the City was in proper dudgeon, and vowed that Parliament should hear from it again on the subject. Before a fortnight had elapsed, however, there was a wonderful change. News had come to London of Hopton's final surrender to the New Model in Cornwall, of the defeat of Astley in Gloucestershire with the last shred of the King's field-force, and in fact of the absolute ending of the war, except for the few Royalist towns and garrisons that had yet to make terms. In the midst of the universal joy, why dwell on a difference between the City and Parliament as to the details of the Presbyterian mechanism? Accordingly, on Friday, March 27, divers Aldermen and others were at the door of the House of Commons, not to remonstrate farther this little difference, but to beg that the House would "so far honour" the City as to dine with the Corporation at Grocers' Hall on the following Thursday, being Thanksgiving Day, after the two usual sermons! The House was most gracious, and accepted the invitation; and this restoration of good feeling between Parliament and the City was probably the "nipshot" or miss-fire which Baillie lamented on the 3lst.--The City being out of the business for the time, it was easier for the Parliament to deal with the other parties. To the Scottish Commissioners hints were conveyed, as politely as possible, that Parliament would prefer having less of their valuable assistance in the governing of England. With the Westminster Assembly and the London Divines there was less ceremony. The Assembly _had_ drawn up a Petition or Remonstrance against the Articles of the conclusive Ordinance of March 14, providing for an agency of Parliamentary Commissioners to aid and supervise the Church judicatories. "The provision of Commissioners," they said, "to judge of scandals not enumerated appears to our consciences to be contrary to that way of government which Christ hath appointed in his Church, in that it giveth a power to judge of the fitness of persons to come to the Sacrament unto such as our Lord Jesus Christ hath not given that power unto;" and they added that the provision was contrary to the Solemn League and Covenant, and besought Parliament to cancel it and put due power into the hands of the Elderships. This Petition, signed by the Prolocutor, one of the Assessors, and the to Scribes of the Assembly, was presented to the two Houses, most imposingly, March 23, When Baillie wrote his lamentation he did not know the precise result, but he guessed what it was to be. It was worse than Baillie could have guessed. After much inquiry and consultation about the Assembly's Petition, the Commons, on the 11th of April 1646, came to two sharp votes. The first was on the question "Whether the House shall first debate the point concerning the Breach of Privilege in this Petition;" and it was carried in the affirmative by 106 _Yeas_, told by Evelyn of Wilts and Haselrig, against 85 _Noes_, told by Holles and Stapleton. The question was then put "Whether this Petition, thus presented by the Assembly of the Divines, is a Breach of Privilege of Parliament;" and on this question, the tellers on both sides being the same, 88 voted _Yea_ and 76 _No_: _i.e._ it was carried by a majority of 12 that the Assembly, in their Petition, had been guilty of a grave political offence, for which they might be punished individually, by fine or imprisonment or both. No such punishment, of course, was intended. It was enough to shake the rod over the Assembly. A Committee, including Haselrig, Henry Marten, the younger Vane, and Selden, was appointed to prepare a Narrative on the whole subject, with a statement of the particulars; and this Narrative, ready April 21, was discussed clause by clause, and adopted. It is a striking document, quiet and tight in style, but most pungent in matter. It begins with an assertion of the supremacy of Parliament in all matters whatsoever; it recites the specific purposes for which the Assembly had been called by Parliament, and the limitations imposed upon it by the Ordinance to which it owed its being; and it proceeds to this rebuke: "The Assembly are not authorized, as an Assembly, by any Ordinance or Order of Parliament, to interpret the Covenant, especially in relation to any law made or to be made; nor, since the Law passed both Houses concerning the Commissioners, have [the Assembly] been required by both or either of the Houses of Parliament, or had any authority before from Parliament, to deliver their opinions to the Houses on matters already judged and determined by them. Neither have they the power to debate or vote whether what is passed as a Law by both Houses be agreeing or disagreeing to the Word of God, unless they be thereunto required." On the day on which the Narrative containing this passage of rebuke was adopted (April 21) a Committee was appointed to communicate it, with the appertaining Vote of the Commons, "in a fair manner," to the Assembly. Actually, on the 27th of April the communication was made most ceremoniously, and from that day the Assembly knew itself to be under curb. [Footnote: For the facts of this and the preceding paragraph the authorities are Commons and Lords Journals, March 23, 1645-6, and Commons Journals of April 1, 3, 8, 11, 16, 18, 21, and 24, 1646. The Lords Journals give the Assembly's Petition; the Narrative of the Commons is in their Journals for April 21.--It is strange, in modern times, to note the frequency with which the Parliament, and even the popular party in it, resorted to the fiction of Breach of Privilege in order to quash opposition to their proceedings. Sometimes, as in the Vote about the City Petition recently mentioned, it was the Breach of Privilege to assume to know what was going on in Parliament or petition against any measure while it was pending; at other times, as now, it was a Breach of Privilege to question by petition a measure already determined. In the present case, however, the Commons seem to have founded on the fact that the Assembly, "as an Assembly," had transgressed its powers. Individually, they seem to say, the Divines might have petitioned, but not as an Assembly, the creature of the Parliament whose acts they censured.] Not only under curb, but thrown to the ground, and baited with sarcasms and interrogatories! Thus, on the 17th of April, six days after the Vote of Breach of Privilege, but four days before the Vote and the accompanying Narrative had been communicated officially to the Assembly, there was finally agreed upon by the Commons that Declaration as to their true intentions on the Church question which had been in preparation since February 3, and in this Declaration there was a double-knotted lash at the prostrate Assembly. Parliament, it was explained, had adopted most of the Assembly's recommendations as to the Frame of Church-government to be set up, with no exception of moment but that of the Commissioners; in which exception Parliament had only performed its bounden duty, seeing it could not "consent to the granting of an arbitrary and unlimited power and jurisdiction to near 10,000 judicatories to be erected in this kingdom." Farther it was announced that Parliament reserved the question of the amount of toleration to be granted under the new Presbyterial rule to "tender consciences that differ not in fundamentals of Religion." But there was more to come. Selden and the Erastians, and Haselrig, Vane, Marten, with the Independents and Free Opinionists, had been nettled by those parts of the Assembly's Petition which assumed that the whole frame of the Presbyterian Government scheme by the Assembly was _jure divino_. They resolved to put the Assembly through an examination about this _jus divinum_. On the 22nd of April, therefore, there was presented to the House, by the same Committee that had prepared the Narrative of the Breach of Privilege, a series of nine questions which it would be well to send to the Assembly. "Whether the Parochial and Congregational Elderships appointed by Ordinance of Parliament, or any other Congregational or Presbyterial Elderships, are _jure divino_, and by the will and appointment of Jesus Christ; and whether any particular Church- government be _jure divino_, and what that government is?"--such is the first of the nine queries; and the other eight are no less incisive. They were duly communicated to the Assembly; it was requested that the Answers should be precise, with the Scripture proofs for each, in the express words of the texts; every Divine present at a debate on any of the Queries was to subscribe his name to the particular resolution he might vote for; and the dissentients from any vote were to send to Parliament their own positive opinions on the point of that vote, with the Scripture proofs. Selden's hand is distinctly visible in this ingenious insult to the Assembly. [Footnote: Commons Journals, April 17 and April 22, 1646; Baillie, II. 344.] It was a more stinging punishment than adjournment or dissolution would have been, though that also had been thought of, and Viscount Saye and Sele had recommended it in the Lords. In the midst of these firm dealings of the Parliament with the Assembly, Cromwell was back in London. He was in the House on the 23rd of April 1646, and received its thanks, through the Speaker, for his great services. He probably brought a train of his young Cromwellians with him (Ireton, Fleetwood, Montague, &c.) to swell the number of Recruiters that had already taken their seats. In the course of May, at all events, there were Houses of 269, 241, 261, 259, and 248, and the Recruiters had so increased the strength of the Independents and Erastians that a relapse into the policy of ultra-Presbyterianism and No Toleration appeared impossible. [Footnote: Baillie, II. 369, and Commons Journals for several days in May 1646.] NEGOTIATIONS ROUND THE KING--AT NEWCASTLE: THREATENED RUPTURE BETWEEN THE SCOTS AND THE ENGLISH: ARGYLE'S VISIT TO LONDON. Suddenly, by the King's flight to the Scottish Army at Newark (May 5), and by the retreat of that army, with the King in their possession, to the safer position of Newcastle (May 13), the whole condition of things was changed. The question between Independency and Presbyterianism, and the included question of Toleration or No Toleration, were thrown, with all other questions, into the crucible of the negotiations, between the English and the Scots, round the King at Newcastle. It was known that the strife between the Independents and the Presbyterians had long been a solace to Charles, and a fact of great importance in his calculations. Should he fail to rout both parties and reimpose both Kingship and Episcopacy on England by force of arms, did there not remain for him, at the very worst, the option of allying himself with that one of the parties with which he could make the best bargain? Now that he had been driven to the detested alternative, he had, it appeared, though not without hesitation, and indeed partly by accident, given the Presbyterians the first chance. He had done so, it was true, in a circuitous way, but perhaps in the only way open to him. To have surrendered himself to the English Presbyterians was hardly possible; for, had he gone to London with that view, how could the Presbyterians of the Parliament and the City have protected him, or kept him to themselves, when the English Army that would then instantly have closed round London was an Army of Independents? By placing himself in the hands of the Scottish Army, had he not cleverly avoided this difficulty, receiving temporary protection, and yet intimating that it was with the Presbyterians that he preferred to treat? So, in fact, the King's flight to the Scots was construed by the English Presbyterians. They were even glad that it had fallen to the Scots to represent for the moment English Presbyterianism as well as Scottish, advising Charles in his new circumstances, and ascertaining his intentions. And the Scots, on their part, it appeared, had accepted the duty. Hardly was the King at Newcastle when there were round him not only General Leven, Major-general Leslie, and the Earls of Lothian, Balcarres, and Dunfermline, all of whom had chanced to be at Newark on his reception there, but also other Scots of mark, expressly sent from Edinburgh and from London. The Earl of Lanark was among the first of these. Argyle himself, who had been excessively busy in Scotland and in Ireland since the defeat of Montrose, thought his presence now essential in England, and hastened to be with his Majesty. The Chancellor Loudoun made no delay, but was off from London to Newcastle on the 16th of May. Above all, however, it was thought desirable that Alexander Henderson should be near his Majesty at such a crisis. Accordingly, some days before Loudoun's departure, Henderson had taken leave of his brother-divines, Baillie, Rutherford, and Gillespie, with Lauderdale and Johnstone of Warriston, in their London quarters at Worcester House, and, though in such a state of ill-health as to be hardly fit to travel, had gone bravely and modestly northwards to the scene of duty. How much was expected of him may be inferred from a jotting in one of Baillie's letters just after he had gone. "Our great perplexity is for the King's disposition," wrote Baillie on the 15th of May: "how far he will be persuaded to yield we do not know: I hope Mr. Henderson is with him this night at Newcastle." [Footnote: Baillie, II. 370 _et seq._] The immediate object of the Scots round Charles was to induce him to take the Covenant. That done, they had little doubt that they would be able to bring him and the English Parliament amicably together.--Charles, however, at once showed by his conduct that the current interpretation of the meaning of his flight to the Scots had been too hasty. It was not because he wanted to bargain with the Presbyterians as against the Independents that he had come to the Scots; it was because he had the more subtle idea that he might be able to bargain with the Scots as such against the English as such. He hoped to wrap himself up in the nationality of the Scots; he hoped to appeal to them as peculiarly their sovereign, born forty-six years before in their own Dunfermline, once or twice their visitor since, always remembering them with affection, and now back among them in his distress. [Footnote: On the verge of a wooded dell or glen close to the burgh of Dunfermline, in Fife, there still stands one fine length of ruined and ivy-clad wall, the remains of the palace in which, on the 19th of November 1600, Charles I. was born. The dell, with the adjacent Abbey, is sacred with legends and stony memorials of the Scottish royal race, from the days of Malcom Canmore and his Queen Margaret.] Of course, in such a character, concessions to _their_ Presbyterianism would have to be made; but these concessions had all, in fact, been made already, and involved no new humiliation. It was about Episcopacy in England, his English coronation oath, his English sovereignty, that he was mainly anxious; and what if, from his refuge among the Scots, and even with the Scots as his instruments, he could recommence, in some way or other, his struggle with the English? Charles did labour under this delusion. When he had come among the Scots it was actually with some absurd notion that Montrose, who still lurked in the Highlands, might be forgiven all the past and brought back, as one of his Majesty's most honoured servants, though recently erratic, into the society of Argyle, Loudoun, Lanark, and the rest of the faithful. [Footnote: See in Rushworth (VI. 266-7) a Letter of the King's to the Marquis of Ormond in Ireland, dated from Oxford, April 13, 1646, and explaining his reasons for his then meditated flight to the Scots. "We are resolved to use our best endeavours, with their assistance," says Charles, speaking of the Scottish Army, "and with the conjunction of the forces under the Marquis of Montrose and such of our well-affected subjects as shall rise for us, to procure, if it may be, an honourable and speedy peace." At the same time (April 18) Charles had written to Montrose himself to the same effect. The infatuation that could believe in the possibility of such a combination was monstrous.]--A day or two among the Scots had undeceived him. They repudiated at once any supposed arrangement with him arising out of the negotiations of Montreuil; they repudiated expressly the notion that they could by possibility have been so false to the English Parliament as to have pledged themselves to a separate treaty. Charles, they maintained, had come among them voluntarily and without any prior compact. Most willingly, however, would they do their best for him in the circumstances. If he would declare his renunciation of Episcopacy and acceptance of Presbyterianism for England, and especially if he would do this in the best mode of all, by personally taking the Covenant, then they did not doubt but a way would be opened for a final treaty with England in which they could assist. Perforce Charles had now to disguise the real motive of his coming among the Scots, and let the interpretation at first put upon it continue current. Not, of course, that he would take the Covenant, or in any way commit himself even now to Presbytery. But, while he stood firm against the proposal that he should himself take the Covenant (which would have been to abjure Episcopacy personally), and while he refrained from committing himself to an acceptance of Presbytery for his English realm, he does not appear to have objected to the impression that on this second matter he might yield to time and reason. And so, while writing in cipher to Queen Henrietta Maria, complaining of the "juggling" of the Scots, because they would not break with the English Parliament in his behalf, and while urging the Queen in the same letters to press upon Cardinal Mazarin, and through him on the Pope, the scheme of a restitution of Episcopacy in England by Roman Catholic force, on condition of "free liberty of conscience" for the Catholics in England and "convenient places for their devotions," he was patiently polite to the Presbyterians around him, and employed part of his leisure in penning, from the midst of them, letters of a temporizing kind to the two Houses of Parliament, and the Mayor, Aldermen, and Common Council of London. The letter to the City (May 19) was short and general, but cordial. That to the Parliament (May 18) was a proposal of terms. A speedy settlement of the Religious Question by the wisdom of Parliament with the advice of the Assembly (no word of Episcopacy or Presbytery, but some compromise with Presbytery implied); the Militia to be as proposed in the Treaty of Uxbridge-- _i.e._ to be for seven years in the hands of Parliament, and after that a fresh agreement to be made; Ireland to be managed as far as possible as Parliament might wish: such were his Majesty's present propositions. [Footnote: Letters of Charles numbered XXV. XXVI. and XXVII. (pp. 39-43) in Mr. Bruce's _Charles I. in_ 1646; Parl. Hist. III. 471 _et seq._] He would be glad, however, to receive those of Parliament. There was a Presbyterian ecstasy in London on the receipt of these letters. The Corporation, which had, to Baillie's grief, so inopportunely played "nipshot" in the end of March, and left the Assembly and Sion College to bear the brunt, now hastened to make amends. Headed by Alderman Foot, a famous City orator, they presented, May 26, a Remonstrance to both Houses of Parliament, couched in terms of the most unflinching Presbyterianism, Anti-Toleration, and confidence in the Scots. "When we remember," they said, "that it hath been long since declared to be far from any purpose or desire to let loose the golden reins of discipline and government in the Church, or to leave private persons or particular congregations to take up what form of divine service they please; when we look upon what both Houses have resolved against Brownism and Anabaptism, properly so called; when we meditate upon our Protestation and Covenant; and, lastly, when we peruse the Directory and other Ordinances for Presbyterial government; and yet find private and separate congregations daily erected in divers parts of the city and elsewhere, and commonly frequented, and Anabaptism, Brownism, and almost all manner of schisms, heresies, and blasphemies, boldly vented and maintained by such as, to the point of Church-government, profess themselves to be Independents: we cannot but be astonished." After more complaints, they end with petitions for Presbyterian Uniformity, the suppression of Independent congregations, the punishment of Anabaptists and other sectaries, strict union with the Scots, &c., all to be combined with immediate "Propositions to his Majesty for settling a safe and well-grounded Peace." There was but one meaning in this. The City was the mouthpiece; but in reality it was the united ultra- Presbyterianism of the City, the Assembly, Sion College, and some of the Presbyterian leaders in Parliament, trying to turn the King's presence with the Scots into an occasion for any practicable kind of peace whatsoever that would involve the overthrow of Independency, the Sects, and Toleration. The House of Lords bowed before the blast, and returned a gracious answer. The Commons, after two divisions, of 148 to 113, and 151 to 108, in favour of returning some kind of answer, returned one which was curt and general. The divisions indicate the gravity of the crisis. The Independents, thinned perhaps in numbers by the action of the Newcastle peace-chances upon weaker spirits, but with Cromwell, Haselrig, and Vane as their leaders, formed now what was avowedly the Anti-Scottish party, profoundly suspicious of the doings at Newcastle, and taking precautions against a treaty that should be merely Presbyterian. The Presbyterians, on the other hand, with Holles, Stapleton, and Clotworthy as their chiefs, were as avowedly the Pro-Scottish party, anxious for a peace on such terms as the King might be brought to by the help of the Scots. [Footnote: Parl. Hist. III. 474-480; Lords Journals, May 26, 1646; Commons Journals of same date; Whitlocke's Memorials (ed. 1853), II. 27.] Through June the struggle of the parties was continued in this new form. At Newcastle the Scottish Commissioners, with Henderson among them, were still plying the King with their arguments for his acceptance of the Covenant and Presbytery. To these, in their presence, he opposed only the most stately politeness and desire for delay; but in his letters to the Queen he characterized them as "rude pressures on his conscience." The phrase is perfectly just in so far as there was pressure upon him to accept Presbytery and the Assembly's Directory of Worship for himself and his family, and it might win our modern sympathies even beyond that range but for the evidences of incurable Stuartism which accompanied it. He amuses the Queen in the same letters with an analysis he had made of the Scots from his Newcastle experience of their various humours. He had analysed them into the four factions of the "Montroses" or thorough Royalists, the "Neutrals," the "Hamiltons," and the "Campbells" or thorough Presbyterians of the Argyle following. He estimates the relative strengths of the factions, and has no doubt that the real management of Scotland lies between the Hamiltons, leading most of the nobility, and the Campbells, commanding the votes of the gentry, the ministers, and the burghs; he refers individual Scots about him to the classes to which he thinks, from their private talk, they belong respectively; he tells how they are all "courting" him, and how he is behaving himself "as evenly to all as he can;" and his "opinion upon this whole business" is that they will all have to join him in the end, or, which would be quite as satisfactory to himself and the Queen, go to perdition together. What could be done with such a man? Quite unaware of what he was writing about them, the Scots were toiling their best in his service. There were letters from Edinburgh (where the General Assembly of the Kirk had met Jun. 3) to Newcastle and London; there were letters from Newcastle to Edinburgh and London; there were letters from London back to Newcastle and Edinburgh. And still, in the English Parliament, the Pro-Scottish party laboured for the result they desired, and the Anti-Scottish or Independent party maintained their jealous watch. Pamphlets and papers came forth, violently abusive of the Scottish nation; and more than once there were discussions in the Commons in which Haselrig and the more reckless Independents pushed for conclusions that would have been offensive to the Scots to the point of open quarrel. It did not seem impossible that there might be a new and most horrible form of the Civil War, in which the English Army and the Independents should be fighting the Scottish Army and the Presbyterians. [Footnote: King's Letters, xxix.-xxxiv. in Bruce's _Charles I. in_ 1646; Baillie, II. 374-5; Acts of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland for 1646. Parl. Hist. III. 482-488; and Commons Journals of various days in May and June, when there were divisions.] What mainly averted such a calamity was the prudent behaviour of the much-abused Scots. Anxious as they naturally were to save their Scottish Charles from too severe a reckoning from his English subjects, and very desirous, as was also natural, that the issue of the present dealings with him should be one favourable to Presbytery and Religious Conformity, they do not seem to have permitted these feelings to disturb their sense of obligation to the English Parliament, and of a general British responsibility. That this was the case arose, I believe, from the fact that Argyle had come to England to take the direction, and that he imparted a deep touch or two of his own to their purely Presbyterian policy. It is interesting, at all events, to have a glimpse of the great Marquis at this point, not as a fugitive from Montrose, not in the military character which suited him so ill, but in his more proper character as a British politician. He had been at Newcastle for some time, "very civil and cunning," as the King wrote to the Queen; but on the 15th of June he went to London. He was received there with the greatest respect by the English Parliament. A Committee of 20 of the Lords and 40 of the Commons, composed indifferently of Presbyterians and Independents, was appointed to meet him in the Painted Chamber to hear the communication which, it was understood, he desired to make. Accordingly, to this Committee, on the 25th of June, the Marquis addressed a speech, which was immediately printed for general perusal. Here are portions of the first half of it, with one or two passages Italicised which seem peculiarly pregnant, or peculiarly characteristic of Argyle himself:-- "MY LORDS AND GENTLEMEN,--Though I have had the honour to be named by the Kingdom of Scotland in all the Commissions which had relation to this Kingdom since the beginning of the war, yet I had never the happiness to be with your lordships till now; wherein I reverence God's providence, that He hath brought me hither at such an opportunity, when I may boldly say it is in the power of the two Kingdoms, yea I may say in your lordships' power, to make us both happy, if you make good use of this occasion, by settling of Religion and the Peace and Union of these Kingdoms. .. .As the dangers [in the way of the first enterprise, 'Reformation' or the 'settling of Religion'] are great, we must look the better to our duties; and the best way to perform these is to keep us by the Rules which are to be found in our National Covenant,--principally the Word of God, and, in its own place, the Example of the best Reformed Churches; and in our way we must beware of some rocks, which are temptations both upon the right and left hand, so that we must hold the middle path. Upon the one part we should take heed not to settle lawless liberty in Religion, whereby, instead of uniformity, we should set up a thousand heresies and schisms; which is directly contrary and destructive to our Covenant. _Upon the other part, we are to look that we persecute not piety and peaceable men who cannot, through scruple of conscience, come up in all things to the common Rule; but that they may have such a forbearance as may be according to the Word of God, may consist with the Covenant, and not be destructive to the Rule itself, nor to the peace of the Church and Kingdom._--As to the other point, the Peace and Union of these Kingdoms [here the mutual good services of the two Kingdoms since 1640 are recited]: let us hold fast that union which is so happily established betwixt us; and let nothing make us again two who are so many ways one; all of one language, in one island, all under one King, one in Religion, yea one in Covenant; so that, in effect, we differ in nothing but in name (as brethren do): _which I wish were also removed, that we might be altogether one, if the two Kingdoms think fit_.... I will forbear at this time to speak of the many jealousies I hear are suggested; for, as I do not love them, so I delight not to mention them: only one I cannot forbear to speak of,--as if the Kingdom of Scotland were too much affected with the King's interest. I will not deny but the Kingdom of Scotland, by reason of the reigns of many kings, his progenitors, over them, hath a natural affection to his Majesty, whereby they wish he may be rather reformed than ruined: _yet experience may tell that their personal regard to him hath never made them forget that common rule, 'The Safety of the People is the Supreme Law._'" Altogether Argyle's speech in the Painted Chamber, June 25, 1646, produced a great impression in London; and, as he remained in town till the 15th of July, he was able to deepen it, see all sorts of people, and make observations. He may not have met Cromwell at this time, who was away all June looking after the siege and surrender of Oxford, and the marriage, in that neighbourhood, of his eldest daughter Bridget to General Ireton; but be must have renewed acquaintance with Vane. He renewed acquaintance, at all events, with an older friend--no other than the Duke of Hamilton, recently released from his captivity in Cornwall, and now again busy with affairs. He also took his place in the Westminster Assembly for a few days by leave of the parliament. [Footnote: King's Letter xxii. in Bruce's _Charles I, in_ 1646; Baillie, II. 374-378; Lords Journals, June 23 and July 7, and Commons Journals, June 25; and Parl. Hist. III. 488-491, where Argyle's Speech is reprinted from the original edition, published by authority, at London, by Laurence Chapman, June 27, 1646.] Part of Argyle's purpose in coming to London had been to co-operate with the resident Scottish Commissioners there in moderating as much as possible, or at least delaying, the _ultimatum_ which the English Parliament were preparing to send to the King. For, though the Parliament had taken small notice hitherto of the King's letters from Newcastle, they had been anxiously constructing such an _ultimatum_. in the form of a series of Propositions exhibiting in one viev, all the terms which they required Charles to accept at once and completely if he would retain the sovereignty of England. Without being much influenced, apparently, by the appeals of Scottish Commissioners for moderation and clemency to the King in the purely English portions of this document, and having the perfect concurrence of these Commissioners in the other portions, Parliament did at length complete it, and, on the 14th of July, send it to Charles. The document is remembered by the famous name of "The Nineteen Propositions," and was altogether most comprehensive and stringent. All the late Royal Acts and Ordinances were to be annulled; the King was to take the Covenant and consent to an Act enjoining it afresh on all the subjects of the three kingdoms; he was to consent to the abolition of Episcopacy, root and branch, in England, Wales, and Ireland; he was to approve of the proceedings of the Westminster Assembly, and of the establishment of Presbytery as Parliament had ordained or might yet ordain; he was to surrender to Parliament the entire control of the Militia for 20 years, sea-forces as well as land- forces; he was to let Parliament have its own way in Ireland; and he was to submit to various other requirements, including the outlawing and disqualification of about 120 persons of both nations named as Delinquents--the Marquis of Newcastle, the Earls of Derby and Bristol, Lords Cottington, Digby, Hopton, Colepepper and Jermyn, with Hyde, Secretary Nicholas, and Bishops Wren and Bramhall, in the English list, and the Marquises of Huntly and Montrose, the Earls of Traquair, Nithsdale, Crawford, Carnwath, Forth, and Airlie, Bishop Maxwell, and MacDonald MacColkittoch, in the Scottish list. As bearers of these fell Propositions to the King the Lords appointed the Earls of Pembroke and Suffolk, and the Commons appointed four of their number. These six persons were at Newcastle on Thursday the 23rd of July; and the next day they had their first interview with the King, Argyle and Loudoun being also present. The rough Pembroke took the lead and produced the Propositions. Before letting them be read, Charles, who had had a copy in his possession privately for some time, asked Pembroke and the rest whether they had powers to treat with him on the Propositions or in any way discuss them. On their answering that they had no such powers, and had only to request his Majesty's _Ay_ or _No_ to the Propositions as they stood, "Then, but for the honour of the business," said the King testily, "an honest trumpeter might have done as much." Recovering himself, he listened to the Propositions duly read out, and then said he was sure they could not expect an immediate answer in so large a business. They told him that their instructions were not to remain in Newcastle more than ten days, and so the interview ended. Charles, in fact, in anticipation of their coming, had been planning how to act. "All my endeavours," he had written to the Queen, "must be the delaying of my answer till there be considerable parties visibly formed; to which end I think my proposing to go to London, if I may be there with safety, will be the best put-off, if (which I believe to be better) I cannot find a way to come to thee." And so, day after day, though it was the effort of all who had access to him, and especially of Argyle and Loudoun, to persuade him to accept the inevitable, he remained stubborn. When the Commissioners at length told him they must return to London, all the answer they could obtain from him was a letter, dated Aug. 1, and addressed to the Speaker of the House of Peers _pro tempore_, in which he said a positive and immediate answer was impossible, but offered to come to London or its neighbourhood to treat personally, if his freedom and safety were guaranteed, and also to send for the Prince of Wales from France. With this answer the Commoners left Newcastle on Sunday, Aug. 2, and they reported their success to the two Houses on Wednesday, Aug. 12. And here, so far as the King is concerned, we shall for the present stop. [Footnote: King's Letters, xxxiv.-xl. (June 24--July 3) in Bruce's _Charles I. in_ 1646; Baillie, II. 379; Lords Journals, July 11, and Commons Journals, July 6; Rushworth, VI. 309-321; and Parl. Hist. III. 499-516. Both Rushworth and the Parl Hist. give the text of the nineteen Propositions.] PARLIAMENT AND THE WESTMINSTER ASSEMBLY RECONCILED: PRESBYTERIANIZING OF LONDON AND LANCASHIRE. Not the less, while the two Houses had thus been watching the King at Newcastle and corresponding with him, had they been acting as the real Government of England without him. The King's flight to the Scots having, as we have seen, turned the balance once more in favour of Presbyterianism, the combined Erastians and Independents had not been able to keep Parliament steady to that mood of sharp mastership over the Assembly and the London Divines in which we left it in the months of March and April (_antè_, pp. 407-411). It had been necessary to make a compromise in that question of "The Power of the Keys" on which the Parliament and the Assembly had been so angrily at variance. The compromise was complete in June. On the 3rd of that month the two Houses agreed on an Ordinance modifying, in a somewhat complicated fashion, their previous device of Parliamentary Commissioners to assist and control the Congregational Elderships. Instead of the contemplated sets of Commissioners in each ecclesiastical Province, there was now to be one vast general Commission for all England, consisting of about 180 Lords and Commoners named (Cromwell, Vane, and everybody else of any note among them); which Commissioners, or any nine of them, should be a Court for judging of non-specified offences, after and in conjunction with the Congregational Elderships, with right of reference in certain cases to Justices of the Peace, and with the reserve of a final appeal from excommunicated persons to Parliament itself. It does not very well appear why this arrangement, as Erastian in principle as that which it superseded, should have pleased the London Presbyterians better. Perhaps it was made palatable by an accompanying increase of the list of scandalous offences for which the Elderships were to be entitled to suspend or excommunicate without interference by the Commissioners. At all events, when Parliament again required the London ministers and congregations by a new Ordinance (June 9) to proceed in the work which had been interrupted, and elect Elders in all the parishes of the province of London, there was no reluctance. At a meeting at Sion College, June 19, the London ministers, the Assembly Presbyterians in their counsels, agreed to proceed. They contented themselves with a paper of _Considerations and Cautions_, explaining that the Parliamentary Rule for Presbyterianism was not yet in all points satisfactory to their consciences. [Footnote: Commons Journals, June 3 and 9, 1646; Baillie, II. 377; Neal's _Puritans_ (ed. 1795) III. 106.] Nothing now hindered the establishment of Presbytery in London; and, actually, through the months of July and August 1646, while the King was making his solitary personal stand for Episcopacy at Newcastle, the Presbyterian machinery was coming into operation in the capital. "Matters here," writes Baillie, July 14, "look better upon it, blessed be God, than sometimes they have. On Sunday, in all congregations of the city, the Elders are to be chosen. So the next week church-sessions in every paroch; and twelve Presbyteries within the City, and a Provincial Synod, are to be set up, and quickly, without any impediment that we apprehend. The like is to be done over all the land." On the 13th of August Baillie was able to report that the Elders had been elected in almost all the parishes, and approved by the Triers; and he adds, "We expect classical meetings speedily." These "classical meetings," or meetings of the twelve London Presbyteries and the two Presbyteries of the Inns of Court, were somewhat later affairs, and the crowning exultation of the first meeting of the Provincial Synod of London did not come for some months; but from August 1646 the city of London was ecclesiastically a Scotland condensed.--Though there was, and continued to be, a general Presbyterian stir throughout England, only in Lancashire was the example of London followed in effective practice. The division of that shire into classes or Presbyteries was already under consideration, with the names of the persons fit to be lay-elders in each Presbytery. There were to be nine Presbyteries. Manchester parish, Oldham parish, and four other parishes, were to form the first; Rochdale parish came into the second; Preston parish into the seventh; Liverpool did not figure by name as a distinct Lancashire parish at all, but it had one minister, Mr. John Fogg, and he was put into the fifth Presbytery. The names of all the Lancashire ministers thus classified, and of the Lancashire gentlemen, yeomen, and tradesmen, to the number of some hundreds, thought fit to be lay-elders in the different Presbyterial districts, may be read yet in the Commons Journals. [Footnote: Baillie, II. 378 and 388; Neal, III. 307-310 (List of classes or Presbyteries of London). The division of Lancashire into Presbyteries is given in the Commons Journals, Sept. 15,1646. See also Halley's "Lancashire: its Puritanism and Nonconformity" (1869), Vol. I. pp. 432 et seq., where there are many details concerning the first introduction of the Presbyterial system into Lancashire. According to Dr. Halley, the system was set up more rigidly in Lancashire than in London itself, chiefly in consequence of the activity and energy of Richard Heyricke, or Herrick, M.A., warden of the Collegiate Church, Manchester. He was one of the Divines of the Westminster Assembly (see Vol. II. p. 510); but he had returned to Lancashire, prefering Presbyterian leadership in that county to second rank in London.] The compromise in the matter of "The Power of the Keys" having been accepted, with such practical consequences, the Assembly might consider the long and laborious business of _The Frame of Church Government_ out of its hands, and laid on the shelf of finished work beside the _New Directory of Worship_ concluded and passed eighteen months before. It was free, therefore, to turn to the other great pieces of business for which it had been originally called: viz. _The Confession of Faith_ and _The Catechisms_. Notwithstanding interruptions, good progress had already been made in both. Incidentally, too, the Assembly had concluded a work which might be regarded as an appendage to their Directory. They had discussed, revised, and finally approved Mr. Rous's Metrical Version of the Psalms, referred to them by Parliament for criticism as long ago as Nov. 1643. Their revised copy of the Version for the purposes of public worship had been in the hands of the Commons since Nov. 1645; the Commons had ratified the same, with a few amendments, April 15, 1646; and it only wanted the concurrence of the Lords to add this "Revised Rous's Psalter" (which Rous meanwhile had printed) to the credit of the Assembly, as a third piece of their finished work. The Lords were too busy, or had hesitations in favour of a rival Version by a Mr. William Barton, so that their concurrence was withheld; but that was not the fault of the Assembly. Rous's Psalter, therefore, as well as the Directory and the Frame of Government being done with, what was to hinder them longer from the Confession and Catechisms? Only one impediment-- those dreadful _jus divinum_ interrogatories which the Parliament, by Selden's mischief, had hung round their necks! Here also a little management sufficed. "I have put some of my good friends, leading men in the House of Commons," says Baillie, July 14, "to move the Assembly to lay aside our Questions for a time, and labour that which is most necessar and all are crying for, the perfecting of the Confession of Faith and Catechise." The order thus meritoriously procured by Baillie passed the Commons July 22. The Assembly, in terms of this order, were to lay aside other business, and apply themselves to the _Confession of Faith_ and _Catechisms_. And so at this point the Assembly had come to an end of one period of its history and entered on a second. As if to mark this epoch in its duration, the Prolocutor, Dr. Twisse, had just died. He died July 19, 1646, and there is a record of the fact in the Commons Journals for that same July 22 on which the Assembly was ordered to change the nature of its labours. Mr. Herle was appointed his successor. [Footnote: Baillie, II. 378-9; Commons Journals, July 22, 1646; and Mr. David Laing's Notices of Metrical Versions of the Psalms in Appendix to Baillie, Vol. III. pp. 537-540.] DEATH OF ALEXANDER HENDERSON. There was a death about this time more important than that of Dr. Twisse:--The health of Henderson had for some time been causing anxiety to his friends in London; and, when he left them, early in May, on his difficult mission to Newcastle, they had followed him in their thoughts with some foreboding. Actually, from the middle of May to the end of July, these two strangely-contrasted persons--the wise, modest, and massive Henderson, the chief of the Scottish Presbyterian clergy, and the sombre, narrow, and punctilious Charles I., the beaten sovereign of three Kingdoms--were much together at Newcastle, engaged in an encounter of wits and courtesies. Charles had seen a good deal of Henderson before (at Berwick in 1639, in Edinburgh during the royal visit to Scotland in 1641, and more recently during the Uxbridge Treaty of Feb. 1644-5), and had always singled him out as not only the most able, but also the most likeable, man of his perverse tribe. He had therefore received him graciously on his coming to Newcastle; and, though there arrived subsequently from Scotland three other Presbyterian ministers, Mr. Robert Blair, Mr. Robert Douglas, and Mr. Andrew Cant, all commissioned by the General Assembly to work upon his Majesty's conscience, it was still with Henderson that he preferred to converse. The main subject of their conversations was, of course, the question between Presbytery and Episcopacy. Could the King lawfully do what was required of him? Could he lawfully now, on any mere plea of State-necessity, give up that Church of England in the principles of which he had been educated, which he had sworn at his coronation to maintain, and which he still believed in his conscience to be the true and divinely-appointed form of a Church? If Mr. Henderson could prove to his Majesty even now that Episcopacy was not of divine appointment, then the plea of State-necessity might avail, and his Majesty might see his way more clearly! It was on this point that the repeated conversations of the King and Henderson at Newcastle did undoubtedly turn. Nay, there was more than mere conversation: there was an elaborate discussion in writing. The King, it is said, would fain have had a little council of Anglican Divines called to assist him; but, as that could not be, he was willing to adopt Henderson's suggestion of a paper debate between themselves. Accordingly, there is yet extant, in the _Reliquiæ Sacræ Carolinæ_ or Printed Works of Charles I., what purports to be the actual series of Letters exchanged between the King and Henderson. The King opens the correspondence on the 29th of May; Henderson answers June 3; the King's second letter is dated June 6; Henderson's reply does not come till June 17; the King's third letter is dated June 22; Henderson replies July 2; and two short letters of the King, being the fourth and fifth on his side, are both dated July 16. There the correspondence ends, Henderson having, it is believed, thought it fit that his Majesty should have the last word. In the King's letters, as they are printed, one observes a stately politeness to Henderson throughout, with very considerable reasoning power, and sometimes a really smart phrase; in Henderson's what strikes one is the studied respectfulness and delicacy of the manner, combined with grave decision in the matter.--The controversy, whether in speech or in writing, was unreal on the King's part, and for the purpose of procrastination only; and Henderson, while painfully engaging in it, had known this but too well. His heart was already heavy with approaching death. He had been ill when he came to Newcastle; and in July, when he is said to have let the King have the last word in the written correspondence, he was hardly able to go about. His friends in London, hearing this, were greatly concerned. "It is part of my prayer to God." Baillie writes to him affectionately on the 4th of August, "to restore you to health, and continue your service a time: we never had so much need of you as now." In the same letter, referring to the King's obstinacy, and to the grief on that account which he believes to be preying on Henderson, he implores him to take courage, shake off "melancholious thoughts," and "digest what cannot be gotten amended." But Baillie knew what was coming. "Mr. Henderson is dying, most of heartbreak, at Newcastle," he wrote, three days later, to Spang in Holland. No! it was not to be at Newcastle. "Give me back one hour of Scotland: let me see it ere I die." Some such wish was in Henderson's mind, and they managed to convey him by sea to Edinburgh. He arrived there on the 1lth of August, and was taken either to his own house, in which he had not been for three years, or to some other that was more convenient. He rallied a little, so as to be able to dine with one friend and talk cheerfully, but never again left his room. There his brother- ministers of the city, and such others as were privileged, gathered round him, and took his hands; and the rest of the city lay around, making inquiries; and prayers went up for him in all the churches. On the 19th of August, eight days after his return, he died, aged sixty-three years, and there began a mourning in the Scottish Israel over the loss of their greatest man. They buried him in the old churchyard of Greyfriars, where his grave and tombstone are yet to be seen. [Footnote: Baillie, II. 381- 387; Burnet's Memoirs of the Hamiltons (ed. 1852), 356-7; Wodrow's Correspondence (Wodrow Society), III. 33, 34; Life of Mr. Robert Blair, by Row (Wodrow Society), 185-188; and "_Reliquiæ Sacræ Carolinæ_: or, The works of that great Monarch and glorious Martyr King Charles the I." (Hague edition of 1651), where the Letters are given in full. There is a fair abstract of them in Neal's _Puritans_ (ed. 1795), III. 311-324. The death of Henderson at so critical a moment, and so closely after his conferences with the King at Newcastle, made a deep impression at the time, and became an incident of even mythical value to the Royalists. Hardly was the breath out of his body when there began to run about a lying rumour to the effect that he had died of remorse, acknowledging that the King had convinced him, and confessing his repentance of all he had said or done against that wisest and best of monarchs. Baillie, in London, was indignant. "The false reports which went here of Mr. Henderson," he wrote to Spang in Holland, Oct. 2, 1646, or less than six weeks after Henderson's death, "are, I see, come also to your hand. Believe me (for I have it under his own hand a little before his death) that he was utterly displeased with the King's ways, and over the longer the more; and whoever say otherwise, I know they speak false. That man died as he lived, in great modesty, piety, and faith." But the lie could not be extinguished; it circulated among the Royalists; and within two years it was turned into cash or credit by some scoundrel Scot in England, who forged and published a document entitled _The Declaration of Mr. Alexander Henderson, principall Minister of the Word of God at Edinburgh, and chief Commissioner from the Kirk of Scotland to the Parliament and Synod of England, made upon his death-bed._ This forgery was immediately denounced by the General Assembly of the Scottish Church in a solemn Declaration set forth by them Aug. 7, 1648, stating particulars of Henderson's last days, and vindicating his memory. Nevertheless the fiction was too convenient to be given up: it lasted; was embalmed by Clarendon in his History (605); and still leaves its odour in wretched compilations.--The genuineness of the series of Letters on Episcopacy between the King and Henderson, first printed in 1649, immediately after Charles's death, and included since then in all editions of Charles's works, does not seem to have been questioned by contemporaries on either side, or by subsequent Presbyterian critics. In the year 1826, however, the eminent and acute Godwin, in an elaborate note in his _History of the Commonwealth_ (II. 179-185), did challenge the genuineness of the correspondence. He was inclined to the opinion that there had been no interchange of written Papers between the King and Henderson at all, but only "discourses and conferences," and that the whole thing was a Royalist forgery of 1649, contemporary with the _Eikon Basilike_, and for the same purpose. In venturing on so bold an opinion, Godwin, besides undervaluing other evidence to the contrary, seems to have dismissed too easily Burnet's information, in his _Lives of the Hamiltons_ in 1673, as to the manner in which the Letters were written and kept. No less eminent a man than Sir Robert Moray, one of the founders of the Royal Society, and its first President, and of whom Burnet elsewhere says, "He was the wisest and worthiest man of his age, and was as another father to me," had told Burnet, "a few days before his much-lamented death" (June 1673), that he had been the amanuensis employed in the correspondence. Being with the King at Newcastle in 1646, then only as Mr. Robert Moray, it had fallen to him, as a person much in his Majesty's confidence, to receive each letter of the King's as it was written in his own royal hand, and make the copy of it which was to be given to Henderson, and also, Henderson's hand being none of the most legible, to transcribe Henderson's replies for the King's easier perusal; and with his Majesty's permission he had "kept Mr. Henderson's papers and the copies of the King's." After all, however, Godwin's sceptical inquiry leaves a shrewd somewhat behind it. For, granted that a written correspondence did take place, "the question remains," as Godwin asserts, "whether the papers now to be found in King Charles's works are the very papers that were so exchanged at Newcastle. The suspicion here suggested tells, in my mind, more against the King's letters as we now have them than against Henderson's. The King's letters, we may be sure, would be pretty carefully _edited_ in 1649; and what may have been the amount and kind of _editing_ thought allowable?"] The last of Baillie's letters to Henderson, dated Aug. 13, 1646, contains a curious passage, "Ormond's Pacification with the Irish," writes Baillie, "is very unseasonable; the placing of Hopes (a professed Atheist, as they speak) about the Prince as his teacher is ill taken." The _Hopes_ here mentioned is no other than THOMAS HOBBES, then just appointed tutor to the Prince of Wales in Paris. As the letter must have reached Edinburgh after Henderson was dead, he was not troubled with this additional piece of bad news before he left the world. Doubtless, however, he had heard of Hobbes, and formed some imagination of that dreadful person and his opinions. Hobbes indeed was now in his fifty- eighth year, or not much younger than the dying Henderson himself. But he was of slower constitution, and had begun his real work late in life, as if with a presentiment that he had plenty of time before him, and did not need to be in a hurry. He was to outlive Henderson thirty-three years. CHAPTER III. EFFECTS OF MILTON'S _AREOPAGITICA_--HIS INTENTION OF ANOTHER MARRIAGE: HIS WIFE'S RETURN AND RECONCILIATION WITH HIM--REMOVAL FROM ALDERSGATE STREET TO BARBICAN--FIRST EDITION OF MILTON'S COLLECTED POEMS: HUMPHREY MOSELEY THE BOOKSELLER--TWO DIVORCE SONNETS AND SONNET TO HENRY LAWES--CONTINUED PRESBYTERIAN ATTACKS ON MILTON: HIS ANTI-PRESBYTERIAN SONNET OF REPLY--SURRENDER OF OXFORD: CONDITION OF THE POWELL FAMILY--THE POWELLS IN LONDON: MORE FAMILY PERPLEXITIES: BIRTH OF MILTON'S FIRST CHILD. The effect of Milton's _Areopagitica_, immediately after its publication in November 1644, and throughout the year 1645, seems to have been very considerable. Parliament, indeed, took no formal notice of the eloquent pleading for a repeal of their Licensing Ordinance of June 1643. As a body, they were not ripe for the discussion of the question of a Free Press, and the Ordinance remained in force, at least as an instrument which might be applied in cases of flagrant transgression. But public opinion was affected, and the general agitation for Toleration took more and more the precise and practical form into which Milton's treatise had directed it: viz. an impatience of the censorship, and a demand for the liberty of free philosophising and free printing. "Such was the effect of our author's _Areopagitica_," says Toland, in his sketch of Milton's life, "that the following year Mabol, a licenser, offered reasons against licensing, and, at his own request, was discharged that office." [Footnote: Toland's Memoir of Milton prefixed to the Amsterdam (1698) edition of Milton's Prose Works, p. 23.] Toland is in a slight mistake here, at least in his dating. The person whom he means--Gilbert Mabbott, _not_ 'Mabol'--was Rushworth's deputy in the office of Clerk to the House of Commons, doing duty for him while he was away with the New Model as Secretary to Fairfax: and not only did this Mabbott occasionally license pamphlets and newspapers, as it would have been Rushworth's part to do, through the year 1645, but he was expressly recommended to be licenser of "weekly pamphlets" or newspapers, Sept. 30, 1647, and he continued to act in this capacity till May 22, 1649, at which time it was, and not in 1645, that he was released from the business at his own request.[Footnote: My notes from the Stationers' Registers of 1645 and subsequent years; Lords Journals, Sept. 30, 1647; and Commons Journals, May 22, 1649. There is some evidence, however, that, before this last date, Mabbott had found the duty irksome (see Commons Journals, Aug. 31, 1648).] The effect of Milton's argument on Mabbott in particular, therefore, was not so immediate as Toland represents. There can be no doubt, however, that as Milton, in his _Areopagitica_, had tried to make the official licensers of books, and especially those of them who were ministers, ashamed of their office, so his reasons and sarcasms, conjoined with the irksomeness of the office itself, did produce an immediate effect among those gentlemen, and modify their official conduct. Several of them, among whom appears to have been Mr. John Downham, who had licensed Milton's own Bucer Tract (_antè_, p. 255, note), became more lax in their censorship than the Presbyterians thought right; and there was at least one of them, Mr. John Bachiler, who became so very lax, from personal proclivity to Independency, that he was denounced by the Presbyterians as "the licenser-general not only of Books of Independent Doctrine, but of Books for a general Toleration of all Sects, and against Pædo-Baptism." [Footnote: _Gangræna_: Part I. (ed. 1646), pp. 38, 39. In Part III. Edwards devotes three pages (102-- 105) to a castigation of Mr. Bachiler for his offences as a licenser. Bachiler, he says, "hath been a man-midwife to bring forth more monsters begotten by the Devil and born of the Sectaries within the last three years than ever were brought into the light in England by all the former licensers, the Bishops and their Chaplains, for fourscore years." He was in the habit, Edwards adds, of not only licensing sectarian books, but also recommending them; and among the Toleration pamphlets he had licensed was the reprint of Leonard Busher's tract of 1614 called _Religious Peace_ (see _antè_, p. 102). "I am afraid," says Edwards, "that, if the Devil himself should make a book and give it the title _A Plea for Liberty of Conscience, with certain Reasons against Persecution for Religion_, and bring it to Mr. Bachiler, he would license it, and not only with a bare _imprimatur_, but set before it the commendations of 'a useful treatise' or 'a sweet and excellent book.'"] The _Areopagitica_, in fact, found out, even among the official licensers of books, men who sympathised with its views; and it established prominently, as one of the practical questions between the Independents and the Presbyterians, the question of the liberty of Unlicensed Printing. It was Milton that had taught the Independents, and the Anti-Presbyterians generally, to bring to the front, for present purposes, this form of the Toleration tenet. For example, one finds that John Lilburne had been a reader of the _Areopagitica_, and had imbibed its lesson, and even its phraseology. "If you had not been men that had been afraid of your cause," is one of Lilburne's addresses to the Presbyterians and the Westminster Assembly Divines, "you would have been willing to have fought with us upon even ground and equal terms--namely, that the Press might be as open for us as for you, and as it was at the beginning of this Parliament; which I conceive the Parliament did of purpose, that so the free-born English subjects might enjoy their Liberty and Privilege, which the Bishops had learnt of the Spanish Inquisition to rob them of, by locking it up under the key of an _Imprimatur_." [Footnote: Lilburne, as quoted by Prynne in his _Fresh Discovery of Blazing Stars_, p. 8.] There is proof, in the writings of other Independents and Sectaries, that Milton's jocular specimens of the _imprimaturs_ in old books had taken hold of the popular fancy. It became a common form of jest, indeed, in putting forth an unlicensed pamphlet, to prefix to it a mock licence. Thus, at the beginning of the anonymous _Arraignment of Persecution_, the author of which was a Henry Robinson (_antè_, p. 387), there is a mock order by the Westminster Assembly, with the names of the two Scribes appended, to the effect that the author, "Young Martin Mar-Priest," be thanked for his excellent treatise, and authorized to publish it, and that no one except "Martin Claw-Clergy," appointed by the author to print the same, presume to do so. [Footnote: Quoted by Prynne in his _Fresh Discovery_, p. 8.] Prynne quotes this as an example of the contempt into which the Ordinance for Licensing had fallen with the Sectaries, and of their supreme effrontery, Robinson, he says, was one of the chief publishers of scandalous libels, having brought printers from Amsterdam, and set up a private printing press for the purpose. [Footnote: I may take this opportunity of announcing a rather curious fact, of which I have ample and incontestable proof, thought the proper place for stating it in detail is yet to come. It is that Milton, the denouncer of the Licensing System, and the satirist of the official licensers of 1644, was himself afterwards an official censor of the Press. He was one of the licensers of newspapers through 1651 and a portion of 1652, doing the very work from which Mabbott had begged to be excused. The fact, however, is susceptible of an easy explanation, which will save Milton's consistency.] On the whole, then, Milton's position among his countrymen from the beginning of 1645 onwards may be defined most accurately by conceiving him to have been, in the special field of letters, or pamphleteering, very much what Cromwell was in the broader and harder field of Army action, and what the younger Vane was, in Cromwell's absence, in the House of Commons. While Cromwell was away in the Army, or occasionally when he appeared in the House and his presence was felt there in some new Independent motion, or some arrest of a Presbyterian motion, there was no man, outside of Parliament, who observed him more sympathetically than Milton, or would have been more ready to second him with tongue or with pen. Both were ranked among the Independents, as Vane also was; but this was less because they were partisans of any particular form of Church- government, than because they were agreed that, whatever form of Church- government should be established, there must be the largest possible liberty under it for nonconforming consciences. If this was Independency, it was a kind of large lay Independency; and of Independency in this sense Milton was, undoubtedly, the literary chief. Only, when he was thought of by the Independents as one of their champions, it was always with a recollection that his championship of the common cause was qualified by a peculiar private crotchet. He figured in the list of the chiefs of Independency, if I may so express it, with an asterisk prefixed to his name. That asterisk was his Divorce Doctrine. He was an Independent with the added peculiarity of being the head of the Sect of Miltonists or Divorcers. INTENTION OF ANOTHER MARRIAGE: HIS WIFE'S RETURN AND RECONCILIATION WITH HIM. In 1645 Milton still gloried in the asterisk. All the copies of the second and augmented edition of _The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce_ having been sold, there was a reprint of it in this year, forming substantially the third edition of the original treatise. None of his writings hitherto had been in such popular demand; and as, besides the three editions of the original Divorce treatise, there were also in circulation his _Bucer Tract_, his _Tetrachordon_, and his _Colasterion_, he had identified himself with the Divorce subject by a total mass of writing larger than he had yet devoted to any other. While his five Anti-Episcopal pamphlets, of 1641-42, make together 326 pages of his prose works in Pickering's edition, the four Divorce treatises, of 1643-45, make 378 pages of the same; so that, in mere quantity, Milton was 52 pages more a Divorcer than an Anti-Prelatist. He had now, however, as he had announced in his dedication of the _Tetrachordon_ to Parliament, done all that he meant to do on the subject through the medium of mere pamphleteering. But he had hinted to Parliament, while making that announcement, that a man with his opinions might do more than write pamphlets in their behalf. "If the Law make not a timely provision," he had said, "let the Law, as reason is, bear the censure of the consequences." There was a covert threat here that Milton, if the Law would not allow him to marry again, might marry again in defiance of the Law. Early in 1645, at all events, Milton did think of marrying again. His wife had been away from him for the better part of two years; and she was now nothing more in his memory than a girl who had been in his house in Aldersgate Street as his bride for a few weeks, whom he had found out in that short experience to be stupid and uncompanionable, who had then left him on some pretence, and gone back to her father's house, and whose only communications with him since had been a message or two of contempt and insult. Law or no law, it was all over between him and that girl! All the circumstances where known: his unfortunate position was the talk of neighbours; often, as we have imagined, kindly souls of women, young and older, must have had their colloquies and whispers about his pitiable bachelorhood caused by the shameful desertion of his wife. Kindly talk was all very well: but was there any unmarried lady willing to take the place of the deserter, if asked to do so? This was really the question in Aldergate Street, and in all the round of Milton's acquaintances. Candidates were not likely to be numerous, even among those freer Christian opinionists among whom Milton principally moved; and there was, moreover, a complication in the general difficulty. Milton, having blundered in his choice once, and having principled himself now with very high notions of feminine fitness, was very likely to be careful in a second choice. Was there accessible any lady in whom the two indispensable conditions of fitness and willingness could be found united? This was the problem for Milton, and it is on record that he tried to solve it. One remembers his sonnet "_To a Virtuous Young Lady_," written about the same time as that to the Lady Margaret Ley, and wonders whether the "virgin wise and pure" there commemorated for her excellencies of mind and character was thought of by him as the possible successor of Mary Powell. Can her name have been Miss Davis? That, at all events, was the name of the lady who _was_ thought of as Mary Powell's probable successor. It is from Phillips that we have the particulars of the story:-- "Not very long after the setting forth of these treatises," says Phillips, referring to the Divorce Treatises, "having application made to him by several gentlemen of his acquaintance for the education of their sons, as understanding haply the progress he had infixed by his first undertakings of that nature, he laid out for a larger house, and soon found it out. But, in the interim, before he removed, there fell out a passage which, though it altered not the whole course he was going to steer, yet it put a stop, or rather an end, to a grand affair, which was more than probably thought to be then in agitation: it was indeed a design of marrying one of Dr. Davis's daughters, a very handsome and witty gentlewoman, but averse, as it is said, to this motion. However, the intelligence hereof, and the then declining state of the King's cause, and consequently of the circumstances of Justice Powell's family, caused them to set all engines on work to restore the late married woman to the station wherein they a little before had planted her. At last this device was pitched upon:--There dwelt in the Lane of St. Martin's-le- Grand, which was hard by, a relation of our author's, one Blackborough, whom it was known he often visited; and upon this occasion the visits were the more narrowly observed, and possibly there might be a combination between both parties, the friends on both sides concentring in the same action, though on different behalfs. One time above the rest, he making his usual visit, the wife was ready in another room, and on a sudden he was surprised to see one whom he thought to have never seen more, making submission and begging pardon on her knees before him. He might probably at first make some show of aversion and rejection; but partly his own generous nature, more inclinable to reconciliation than to perseverance in anger and revenge, and partly the strong intercession of friends on both sides, soon brought him to an act of oblivion, and a firm league of peace for the future; and it was at length concluded that she should remain at a friend's house, till such time as he was settled in his new house at Barbican, and all things for her reception in order. The place agreed on for her present abode was the Widow Webber's house in St. Clement's Churchyard, whose second daughter had been married to the other brother [Christopher Milton] many years before." Phillips tells the story very clearly, and a little annotation is all that is wanted:--The lady whom Milton thought of, and had perhaps been thinking of for some time, as a possible substitute for Mary Powell, was "one of Dr. Davis's daughters." Who this Dr. Davis was, Phillips, writing at a time when the mere name was probably enough for Londoners, does not inform us; nor have I been able, with any certainty, to identify him. [Footnote: There had been a Thomas Davies, M.D., born about 1564, and educated at Christ's College, Cambridge, where he had graduated in medicine in 1591, and who was afterwards a medical practitioner in London, and Licentiate and Censor of the Royal College of Physicians there. As he had died in 1615, the youngest of any surviving daughters of his in 1645 must have been past her thirtieth year. But, on the whole, Phillips's words suggest that the Dr. Davis he means was alive in 1645 or had recently been alive; so that this is not likely to have been the one. There was a Nicholas Davis, or Davys, M.D., who had taken that degree at Leyden in 1638, had been incorporated in the same degree at Oxford in 1642, and may have been afterwards in practice in London (Munk's Roll of the Royal College of Physicians of London, and Wood's Fasti, II. 9). The date of his graduation at Leyden, however, seems rather late for the hypothesis that he was Phillips's Dr. Davis. After all, there may have been some other conspicuous Dr. Davis among Milton's acquaintances, and he need not have been a medical doctor.] Dr. Davis, at all events, dead or living, had daughters, one of them "a very handsome and witty gentlewoman," between whom and Milton there was some attempt to arrange a marriage. She herself, however, was naturally "averse to this motion;" and, indeed, one can hardly understand what kind of proposition could have been made to her or her friends. That something was in agitation, nevertheless, and that it was talked of more particularly in the spring and early summer of 1645, Phillips had a positive recollection, more by token because at that very time, he also remembered, his uncle had offers of more pupils than he could accommodate in the house in Aldersgate Street. He had consequently been looking about for a larger house, and had found one suitable close at hand, in the street called Barbican. Was Miss Davis to be persuaded to be mistress of this new house? Would the "several gentlemen" of Milton's acquaintance who meant to board or half-board their sons with him, or would the spouses of those gentlemen, have been satisfied with that arrangement? The experiment was not to be tried. The house in Barbican had been taken, but Milton had not yet removed into it, when, to Miss Davis's relief, another arrangement was brought about. Rumours of what was going on, and of the new house in Barbican, had been borne to Oxford, and the Foresthill mansion of the Powells. In any case the news of the Miss Davis project, the "grand affair," as Phillips calls it, could not but have caused some excitement there. But the news came at a time when the family-fortunes were no longer what they had been when Mary Powell had left her Parliamentarian husband and taken refuge again under the maternal wing, amid her Royalist relatives and acquaintances, close to the King's head-quarters. Crippled already, like other Royalist families, by necessary contributions to the King's cause, the Powells had begun to be aware, and more poignantly than others because of their more straitened means, that their sacrifices were likely to be all in vain-- that Parliament was to be master, and to have the power of pains and penalties over those whom it called Delinquents. Especially after the shattering blow to the King at Naseby (June 14, 1645), doubt on the subject was nearly at an end. What was then more natural than that distressed Royalist families should be looking forward anxiously to the amount of new distress which the final triumph of Parliament would inflict upon them? And so in the Foresthill mansion there had been grave consultations between Mr. and Mrs. Powell and between Mrs. Powell and her daughter, ending in a resolution, in which Mrs. Powell was perhaps the last to acquiesce--for the daughter afterwards pleaded that her mother all along had been "the chief promoter of her frowardness" [Footnote: Wood, Fasti, I. 482.]--that it would be best for the daughter to return to London and try to make it up with Mr. Milton. At least one member of the family would thus have a roof over her head in the hard time coming; and might not Milton, with his Parliamentarian connexions, be able to befriend the family generally when the time did come? Soon after Naseby, accordingly, we are to imagine the poor young wife taking the journey to London, accompanied by her mother or some other relative, on her humiliating and dubious errand. How were they to manage when they were in London? It was not a simple matter of going straight to the house in Aldersgate Street and obtaining admission. Ingenuity was necessary, and preparation of a mode for approaching Milton. But that, too, had been thought of. Communications were opened or had already been opened, with those of Milton's friends who, it was supposed, would be willing to co-operate in the intended reconciliation, if not in the wife's interest, at least in his. And which of all Milton's friends was _not_ willing? In such cases, it is in the man himself that the storm rages; he alone passionately feels: the friends that stand by, even most sympathisingly, are cool and collected, regarding the principal only as a difficult patient, who must be soothed and humoured till he can be brought to reason. To Milton's friends his Divorce notion may have seemed a just enough speculation, or one at least about which _they_ would not quarrel with him; the real question with them was as to the continued practical implication of his own life and prospects with such a speculation, infamous as it seemed to respectable society and to the leaders of religious opinion. Let him hold it, if he would, and even write for it still; but was he, at the age of thirty-seven, to wrap up his whole future life in it, and proceed as if he and it must be dashed to pieces together? Was not this reconciliation between him and his wife, of which there seemed now to be a chance, the best thing that could happen for him as well as for her? If once it were brought about, would not things adjust themselves so that the public would hear no more of the perilous stuff of the Divorce Doctrine, or hear of it only in dying echoes? So reasoned Milton's friends then, just as people would reason now in a similar case; and the friendly plot was arranged. Milton, it appears, was in the habit of dropping in, almost daily, in his walk City-wards from Aldersgate Street, on a kinsman of his, named Blackborough, whose house was in St. Martin's-le-Grand Lane-- _i.e._ in that bend of Aldersgate Street which was _within_ the Gate, and where now the General Post-Office of London stands. Here, some day in July or August 1645, he was surprised into an interview with his girl-wife. The good Blackborough had consented to aid and abet, and had lent his house for the purpose; and, other friends being at hand to second him, he had opened, let us say, the door of the room in which Mary Powell was waiting, had ushered Milton in, and had left them together. Then, as Phillips imagines, had come Milton's two moods in succession,-- the first his instinctive mood of anger and rejection, and the second that mood of his slow relenting which was witnessed and helped through by the in-bustling friends:-- _Mood First._ _Samson_. My wife, my traitress! let her not come near me! _Chorus_. Yet on she moves; now stands and eyes thee fixt, About to have spoke; but now, with head declined, Like a fair flower surcharged with dew, she weeps, And words addressed seem into tears dissolved, Wetting the borders of her silken veil: But now again she makes address to speak. _Dalila._ With doubtful feet and wavering resolution I came, still dreading thy displeasure, Samson, Which to have merited, without excuse, I cannot but acknowledge: yet, if tears May expiate (though the fact more evil drew In the perverse event than I foresaw), My penance hath not slackened, though my pardon No way assured. But conjugal affection, Prevailing over fear and timorous doubt, Hath led me on desirous to behold Once more thy face, and know of thy estate; If aught in my ability may serve To lighten what thou suffer'st, and appease Thy mind with what amends is in my power, Though late, yet in some part to recompense My rash, but more unfortunate, misdeed. _Samson._ Out, out! hyæna! _Samson Agonistes_, 725-747. _Mood Second._ She ended weeping, and her lowly plight, Immoveable till peace obtained from fault Acknowledged and deplored, in Adam wrought Commiseration: soon his heart relented Towards her, his life so late and sole delight, Now at his feet submissive in distress, Creature so fair his reconcilement seeking, His counsel whom she had displeased, his aid; As one disarmed, his anger all he lost, And thus with peaceful words upraised her soon. _Paradise Lost_, X. 937-946. Was this Milton's idealized history long afterwards of his own two moods in Blackborough's house in St. Martin's-le-Grand Lane some time in July or August 1645? So far as it was autobiography at all, I should not say that it was much idealized, except in so far as Dalila in the land of the Philistines, and Eve in Paradise, had to be represented poetically as beautiful, eloquent, and fascinating, while of poor Mary Powell's claims to beauty we know little, and our information as to her eloquence and fascination consists in our irremovable impression that it was of her that Milton had been thinking in that passage in his first Divorce Tract in which he described the hard fate of a man bound fast by marriage to "an image of earth and phlegm." From the side of Milton there was, I think, no idealizing: hardly else than as his own Samson, or his own Adam, in his poems, did Milton feel or speak on any important occasion of his own real experience. If, then, the second mood now prevailed, and he yielded, it was only, I believe, because despair for himself and pity for another overcame him jointly, and what was alone possible was accepted as disastrously fated. So much by way of necessary anticipation, and that there may not be a mistake, even for a moment, as to the real nature of the reconciliation that had been effected. Meanwhile, the friends of both wife and husband were delighted with their success; and, till the new house in the Barbican should be ready, young Mrs. Milton went to lodge in the house of the Widow Webber, Christopher Milton's mother-in-law, near St. Clement's Church in the Strand. REMOVAL FROM ALDERSGATE STREET TO BARBICAN. September 1645, when the New Model Army had stormed Bristol and was otherwise carrying all before it in the English South-west, when Montrose in Scotland had been extinguished by David Leslie at Philiphaugh, and when the Presbyterian system had been so far arranged for England that the first order of Parliament for the election of Elders in all the London parishes had gone out, and Triers of the competency of these Elders had been appointed in all the London Presbyteries: then it was, as near as one can calculate, that the interesting house in Aldersgate Street was left by Milton, and he, his wife, his father, the two boys Phillips, and the other pupils, entered together into the new house in Barbican. It was no great remove. The street called Barbican derived its name, according to Stow, from the fact that at one time there had stood there "a _burgh-kenning_, or watch-tower of the city, called in some language a _barbican_;" and modern etymologists perfect Stow's observation by tracing the name, through the mediæval Latin _barbacana_, to the Persian _bála khaneh_, meaning "upper chamber," whence our less corrupt form _balcony_, actually identical with barbican. [Footnote: Stow, as quoted in Cunningham's _London_, Art. "Barbican;" and Wedgwood's _Dict. of English Etymology_, Art. "Balcony."] There had, in short, been a barbican, or outer defence of the city, at this spot, a little beyond the particular gate called Aldersgate, just as there were such things beyond others of the city-gates; but the name had lingered only here as applied to the street or site where a barbican had been. The street, retaining its warlike name, still exists--a short street going off from Aldersgate Street at right angles on one side, and within a walk of not more than two or three minutes from the site of Milton's Aldersgate Street house. The house in Barbican was larger, and so much farther off from the city- gate; but that was all. There was no real change of neighbourhood or of street-associations. A dingy street now, dingier even than the main thoroughfare of Aldersgate Street, Barbican was then a fair enough bit of suburban London towards the north; and it boasted, as we already know, of at least one aristocratic mansion in which Milton had some interest--the town-house of the Earl of Bridgewater, ex-President of Wales, and the peer of _Comus_. The name "Bridgewater Gardens" still designates, without a shred of garden left there, but only grimy printing-offices and the like instead, the portion of the street which the mansion occupied. Nay more, till within a few years ago; Milton's own house in Barbican, with some modern change of frontage, and some filling-up of interstices right and left, was extant and known. Somehow, while the more important house in Aldersgate Street had perished from the memory of the neighbourhood (probably because the fabric itself had perished), the tradition of Milton still clung around this house in Barbican, I have passed it many a time, stopping to look at it, when it was occupied, if I remember rightly, by a silk-dyer, or other such tradesman, exhibiting on his sign the peculiar name of "Heaven," and using the lower part of it for his shop. Though jammed in with other houses and undistinguished in the line of bustling street, it had the appearance of having once been a commodious enough house in the old fashion; and I have been informed that some of the old windows, consisting of thick bits of dim glass lozenged in lead, still remained in it at the back, and that the occupants knew one of the rooms in it as "the Schoolroom" where Milton had used to teach his pupils. But alas! one of the city railways took it into its head that it required to run through this precise bit of Barbican, and the house, with others near it, was doomed to demolition. When I was last in Barbican part of the shell of the house was still standing, roofless, disfloored, diswindowed, and pickaxed into utter raggedness, as so much rubbish yet waiting to be removed from the new railway gap. The inscription yet remained on the front-door--"This was Milton's House," or to that effect--which had been very properly put there by the contractor or his workmen to lure people to a last look at the interior before the demolition was complete. [Footnote: My information about the interior of the house is from a friend who visited it just when it was doomed. Though I had passed it often when it was yet complete, I had unfortunately, not expecting its doom, deferred going in till it was too late; and my last homage to it had to be a lingering saunter near and in the railway gap behind, when there was only the remnant of it described in the text.] FIRST EDITION OF MILTON'S COLLECTED POEMS: HUMPHREY MOSELEY THE BOOKSELLER. Among Milton's first employments in his new and larger house in Barbican, while his wife was resuming her duties and the schoolroom was getting gradually into use, we are able to distinguish one of particular interest. It was nothing else than the revision for the press of the proof-sheets of the first collected edition of his Miscellaneous Poems. By his dealings with the Press hitherto, it is to be remembered, Milton had made himself known to most people chiefly as a prose pamphleteer. Except his lines _On Shakespeare_, written in 1630, and prefixed anonymously to the Second Folio Shakespeare in 1632; his _Comus_, written and acted in 1634, and sent to the press, also without the author's name, by his friend Henry Lawes in 1637; and his _Lycidas_, written in 1637, and printed in 1638, in the Cambridge University volume of Verses on Edward King's death, but only with the initials "J.M.":-- except these, and perhaps another scrap or two of Latin or English verse that had been printed in a semi-private manner, all Milton's poems, written at intervals over a period of more than twenty years, had remained in his own keeping in manuscript, and had been communicated to friends only in that form. In consequence of what had been thus printed, or privately circulated, a certain reputation for Milton as a poet had, indeed, been established; but the voice of this reputation was hardly heard amid the much louder uproar caused by his eleven prose-pamphlets between 1641 and 1645. Now, to a man who believed Poesy to be his true calling, who had consented reluctantly to put aside "his garland and singing robes" in order that he might engage in the work of politics, and who had announced while doing so that in that work it was but the strength of his left hand he could lend and not the nobler cunning of his right, this state of public opinion about himself must have begun to be a little disagreeable. It was the most natural thing in the world that, as soon as there should be a lull in the political tumult, the least leisure of the public for a return to purer and blander literature, Milton should make some sign of resuming his garland, so as to remind those about him of his original vocation. But, precisely in the year 1045, when Naseby had assured the victory of Parliament, there did come, for the first time since the war had begun, or indeed since the Long Parliament had met, such a lull of the polemical tumult. The statistics of the English book- trade, as they are presented in the Registers of the Stationers' Company, verify and illustrate this statement. Even in the year 1640, when there was political agitation enough in England, but the Long Parliament had not yet met, there was still so much leisure for the purer forms of literature in English society that London publishers were bringing out such things as Masques and other remains of Ben Jonson, the Works of Thomas Carew, various Plays by Shirley, Glapthorne, Habington, Heywood, Killigrew, and Brome, an edition of Herrick's Poems, and Thomas May's Supplement to Lucan. As soon, however, as we pass beyond 1640, and the real work of the Long Parliament is begun, such books almost entirely cease to appear. The matter then provided for the reading of the English public consisted of a huge jumble of Pamphlets on the Church-question, Sermons, semi-controversial Treatises of Theology, Political Speeches, fragments of Ecclesiastical History, Prose Invectives and Satires, and latterly, when the Civil War was in progress, an abundance of Diurnals, Intelligencers, Mercuries, and other news-sheets. Between 1640 and 1645 one does indeed discern twinkling in this jumble some gems or would-be gems of the purer ray serene. The "Epigrams Divine and Moral" of Sir Thomas Urquhart, the translator of Rabelais, were published in April 1641; Howell's "Instructions for Foreign Travel" came out in September in the same year; Baker's "Chronicle of the Kings of England" in the following December; in April 1642 there was a London edition of Thomas Randolph's Poems, which had appeared originally at Oxford in 1638; and the publication of Denham's "Cooper's Hill" and his "Tragedy called The Sophy" is a rather notable event of August 1642, the very month in which the King raised his standard. In the same month one London publisher, Francis Smethwick, registered for his copies a number of books of the poetical kind which had been the property of his late father, including "Mr. Drayton's Poems," "Euphues's Golden Legacy," Meres's "Witt's Commonwealth," and also "Hamblett, a Play," "The Taming of the Shrew," "Romeo and Juliet," and "Love's Labour's Lost." This transaction, however, hardly implied that these books were in demand, but only that Smethwick wanted to secure his interest in them on succeeding to his father's business. Afterwards, while the war was actually raging, it is not till December 1644 that one comes upon anything of the finer sort worth mentioning. On the 14th of that month there was registered for publication the first edition of "Poems, &c., written by Mr. Edmund Waller, of Beckonsfield, Esq., lately a member of the Honourable House of Commons," but then, as we know, a disgraced plotter, who, having, by great favour, been permitted to carry his dear-bought life, and his remaining wealth, into exile in France, left this parting gift to his countrymen, that they might think of him meanwhile as kindly as they could. Except that I have not taken notice of a publication or two of the voluminous Scotchman Alexander Rosse, Chaplain to his Majesty, [Footnote: This Alexander Rosse, or "Dr. Alexander Ross," made famous in _Hudibras_, was one of the singular characters of the time, and a memoir of him, with a complete list of his writings, would be a not uninstructive curiosity. He was a native of Aberdeen, born about 1590, but had migrated to England, where he became Master of the Free School at Southampton, and Chaplain in Ordinary to King Charles. By a succession of publications of all kinds, in Latin and in English., he acquired the reputation of being "a divine, a poet, and an historian." He made a good deal of money, and, at his death in 1654, left bequests, for educational purposes, to Aberdeen, Southampton, Oxford, and Cambridge. ] the foregoing enumeration fairly represents, I believe, the amount of book-production of the purer or non-controversial kind that went on in London in the four loud-roaring years between 1640 and 1645. In 1645, however, and especially after Naseby, there are symptoms of a slightly revived leisure for other kinds of reading than were supplied by Diurnals, Sermons, Pamphlets, and books of Polemical Theology, and of a willingness among the London booksellers to cater for this leisure. In that year, interspersed amid the still continuing tide of Pamphlets, Diurnals, Sermons, and other ephemerides, were such novel appearances in the London book-world as these--two Treatises, one physical, the other metaphysical, by Sir Kenelm Digby, then abroad; an edition of Buxtorf's Hebrew Grammar; an Essay by Lord Herbert of Cherbury; some metrical religious remains of Francis Quarles, then just dead; some attempts to introduce the mystic Jacob Bohme, by specimens of his works; a translation of �sop's Fables and those of Phædrus; the issue of the second and third parts of the _Epistolæ Hoelianæ_ or James Howell's Letters, with a re-issue of his "Dodona's Grove;" and a re-issue of Randolph's comedy of "The Jealous Lovers." Clearly, as the Civil War was drawing to a close, the Muses of pure History, pure Speculation or Philosophy, Scholarship for its own sake, and even lighter Phantasy, did hover over England again, timidly seeking some spots where they might rest themselves in the all-prevailing controversy between Independency and Presbyterianism. Almost always, in such cases, a social tendency is represented in the activity of some particular person. Nor is it otherwise here. So far as Poetry and so-called Light Literature are concerned, one has no difficulty in pointing to the particular London publisher who in 1645, and from that year onwards, stood out from all his fellows by his alertness in the trade. This was HUMPHREY MOSELEY, who had his shop at the sign of the Prince's Arms in St Paul's Churchyard. Something in his personal tastes, I am inclined to think, must have determined him to the line of business which he selected; so marked is his avoidance of all dealings in sermons, ephemeral treatises on theology, and pamphlets either way on the present crisis, and his preference for poetry and books of general culture. He had been in the trade, in partnership with a Nicholas Fussel, in St. Paul's Churchyard, as early as 1634, [ Footnote: Wood's Ath. II 503.] and shortly after that is heard of as in business for himself. I have a note of him as registering for his copyright, on March 16, 1639-40, Howell's "Dodona's Grove;" and thenceforward, in worse times, he stuck to Howell. He not only published Howell's "Instructions for Foreign Travel" in September 1641, and again the second and third parts of Howell's "Letters" in 1645, with a re-issue of "Dodona's Grove;" but he acquired, in the same year, the copyright of the first part of the "Letters," which had been originally brought out by another publisher. More significant still is the fact that it was Moseley that was the publisher of Waller's Poems in December 1644. [Footnote: "Poems &c. written by Mr. Ed. Waller of Beckonsfield, Esquire; lately a member of the Honourable House of Commons. All the Lyrick Poems in this Booke were set by Mr. Henry Lawes, Gent. of the King's Chappell, and one of his Majestie's Private Musick. Printed and Published according to Order. London. Printed by T.W. for Humphrey Mosley at the Princes Armes in Paul's Churchyard: 1645:" pp.96 small 8vo. My authority for the date of the publication of the volume--December 1644--is the Stationers' Registers.] After that date his tendency to trade-dealings in Poetry and the like is so manifest in the Stationers' records that I find appended to my MS. notes, from these records, for the London Bibliography of the year 1646, this memorandum:--"_Poetry and Pure Literature looking up again this year, and chiefly through the medium of Moseley's shop._" By that time Moseley had distinguished himself as the publisher of original editions of books, not only by Howell and Waller, but also by Milton, Davenant, Crashaw, and Shirley, and moreover as the ready purchaser of whatever copyrights were in the market of poems and plays by Beaumont and Fletcher, Webster, Ludwick Carlell, Shirley, Davenant, Killigrew, and other celebrities dead or living. To this group of Moseley's authors Cowley and Cartwright were soon added; and it was not long before he snapped out of the hands of duller men Denham's Poems, Carew's Poems, various things of Sir Kenelm Digby, and every obtainable copyright in any of the plays of Shakespeare, Massinger, Ford, Rowley, Middleton, Tourneur, or any other of the Elizabethan and Jacoban dramatists. For at least the ten years from 1644 onwards there was, I should say, no publisher in London comparable to Moseley for tact and enterprise in the finer literature. Moseley was only on the way to make all this reputation for himself, and indeed Waller's volume of Poems, published in Dec. 1644, was yet the principal advertisement of his shop, when he and Milton came together. Pleased with the success of the Waller, it appears, Moseley thought of a collection of Mr. Milton's Poems as a likely second experiment of the same kind, and applied to Milton for the copy. The application was not disagreeable to Milton; and, accordingly, some time after the middle of 1645, or just while he was preparing to remove from Aldersgate Street to Barbican, and there came upon him the great surprise of his wife's re- appearance, Moseley and he were busy in arrangements for the new volume. Milton's acknowledged London publishers hitherto had been these three-- "Thomas Underhill, of the Bible in Wood Street" (_Of Reformation_, 1641, _Of Prelatical Episcopacy_, 1641, and _Animadversions on Remonstrant's Defence_, 1641), "John Rothwell, at the sign of the Sun in Paul's Churchyard" (_Reason of Church Government_, 1641, and _Apology for Smectymnuus, 1642), and "Matthew Symmons" (the _Bucer Tract_, 1644); and this last-mentioned Symmons, who does not give the locality of his shop, had been probably the printer also of those pamphlets of Milton which bore no publisher's name (_Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce_, 1643, 1644, and 1645, _Of Education_, 1644, _Areopagitica_, 1644, and _Tetrachordon_ and _Colasterion_, 1645). Now, however, these were forsaken for the moment, and for bringing out the Volume of Poems the conjunction was Milton and Humphrey Moseley. The revisal of the proof- sheets may have been begun in Aldersgate Street, but it must mainly, as I have said, have been among Milton's first employments at the new house in Barbican. Here, at all events, is Moseley's entry of the new volume in the Stationers' Registers: "_Oct._ 6 [1645], _Mr. Moseley ent. for his copie, under the hand of Sir Nath. Brent and both the Wardens, a booke called Poems in English and Latyn by Mr. John Milton._" Usually the entry of a book in the Stationers' Registers was about simultaneous with its publication. In this case, however, there was a delay of nearly three months between the registration and the actual appearance. The precise day of the publication of the new volume was Jan. 2, 1645-6. [Footnote: This is ascertained by a MS. note of the collector Thomason's, or by his direction, on a copy among the King's Pamphlets in the British Museum; Press-mark E. 1126. "Jan. 2" is inserted before the word "London" in the title-page.] Either, therefore, Moseley had registered the volume before the printing had proceeded far, or after the sheets were printed there was some little cause of delay. The following is the title-page of this interesting and now very rare volume:-- "Poems of Mr. John Milton, both English and Latin, compos'd at several times. Printed by his true Copies. The Songs were set in Musick by Mr. Henry Lawes, Gentleman of the King's Chappel, and one of His Majestie's Private Musick. 'Baccare frontem Cingite, ne vati noceat mala lingua futuro.' VIRGIL, _Eclog._ vii. Printed and publish'd according to Order. London, Printed by Ruth Raworth, for Humphrey Moseley; and are to be sold at the signe of the Princes Arms in Paul's Churchyard. 1645." The volume is a very tiny octavo, divided into two parts in the paging. First come the ENGLISH POEMS, occupying 120 pages, and arranged thus:-- _On the Morning of Christ's Nativity, compos'd_ 1629; _A Paraphrase on Psalm CXIV. _; _Psalm CXXXVI. _; _The Passion_; _On Time_; _Upon the Circumcision_; _At a Solemn Music_; _An Epitaph on the Marchioness of Winchester_; _Song on May Morning_; _On Shakespear_, 1630; _On the University Carrier who, &c. _; _Another on the Same_; _L'Allegro_; _Il Penseroso_; _Sonnets_, English and Italian--ten in number (I. "O Nightingale;" II. "Donna leggiadra;" III. "Qual in colle," with the attached "Canzone;" IV. "Diodati e te'l;" V. "Per certo i bei;" VI. "Giovane piano;" VII. "How soon hath Time;" VIII. "Captain or Colonel;" IX. "Lady that in the prime;" X. "Daughter to that good Earl");-- _Arcades_; _Lycidas_; _Comus_. [Footnote: To this enumeration of the English pieces in the volume of 1645 I may append three bibliographical notes--(1) Of the 28 pieces the original drafts of 10 still exist in the volume of Milton MSS. in Trinity College, Cambridge--viz.: _On Time_, _Upon the Circumcision_, _At a Solemn Music_, Sonnets 7, 8, 9, and 10, _Arcades_, _Lycidas_, and _Comus_. All these drafts are in Milton's own hand, except that of Sonnet 8, only the heading of which is in his hand. Of the other 18 pieces, the most important of which are _L'Allegro_ and _Il Penseroso_, the original MSS. have not come down to us. (2) It will be seen that two of the known early English Poems are omitted in the volume: viz. the piece _On the Death of a Fail Infant dying of a Cough_-- _i.e._ the poem on the death of his niece, the infant girl Phillips, written in 1626; and the College piece of 1628 entitled _At a Vacation Exercise_. These pieces first appeared in the Second Edition of the Poems in 1673. (3) It may also be noted that the latest written pieces which appear in the volume of 1645 are Sonnets 9 and 10--the one to the anonymous young lady, the other to the Lady Margaret Ley. We have assigned them to the year 1644, but they _may_ have been as late as 1645.] As if to call attention to _Comus_ as the longest and chief of the poems, it has a separate title-page, thus, "_A Mask of the same Author, presented at Ludlow Castle, 1634, before the Earl of Bridgewater, then President of Wales, Anno Dom. 1645;_" but, though there is this break of a new title-page, the paging runs on without interruption, _Lycidas_ ending p. 65, and _Comus_ taking up the rest to p. 120. Here, however, there is a _complete_ break, as if it were intended that the English Poems, there ending, might be bound by themselves. The LATIN POEMS follow as a separate collection, paged separately from p. 1 to p. 88, and with this new title-page prefixed to them: "_Joannis Miltoni Londinensis Poemata: quorum pleraque intra annum oetatis vigesimum conscripsit: nunc primum edita. Londini, Typis R.R., Prostant ad Insignia Principis, in Coemeterio D. Pauli, apud Humphredum Moseley, 1645._" There is, however, a double arrangement of the Latin Poems, or a distribution of them into two classes. First come those which constitute the so-called ELEGIARUM LIBER; viz., the "Elegies" proper, numbered from I. to VII., as they now stand in all editions of Milton, together with the eight little scraps in the same elegiac verse (five of them on the subject of the Gunpowder Plot, and three on the Italian singer Leonora) which some modern editors have preferred to detach from the Elegies, and put under the separate heading of "Epigrams." This is contrary to Milton's intention; for the phrase "Elegiarum Finis" _follows_ those scraps in the volume, showing that he meant them to go with the Elegies, and that, in fact, he thought it permissible to call anything an Elegy that was written in the ordinary elegiac verse of alternate Hexameter and Pentameter. Accordingly, all his Latin poems in that kind of verse having been included in the _Elegiarum Liber_, all his other Latin poems, not in that kind of verse, but either in Hexameter pure or in rarer metres, together with two fragments of Greek verse, are regarded as "Sylvæ," and constitute the distinct SYLVARUM LIBER which ends the volume. First among the "Sylvæ" come the six Latin poems of the Cambridge period--_In obitum Procancellarii Medici, In Quintum Novembris, In obitum Præsulis Eliensis, Naturam non pati Senium, De Ideâ Platonicâ quemadmodum Aristoteles intellexit, and Ad Patrem_; then, by way of typographic interruption, come the two scraps of Greek verse--viz. _Psalm LXIV_. and the scrap entitled _Philosophus ad Regem Quendam_, &c.; after which are the two Latin pieces, _Ad Salsillum_ and _Mansus_, written in Italy, and the _Epitaphium Damonis_, written immediately after the return to England. This last stands a little apart from the body of the "Sylvæ," as if Milton attached a peculiar sacredness to it. Such is a general description of the First or 1645 Edition of Milton's Miscellaneous Poems. The volume, however, presents some points of additional interest:----Has the reader noticed the motto on the title- page from Virgil's seventh Eclogue? It is peculiarly significant of the mood in which the volume was published. Milton, who had called himself Thyrsis in the _Epitaphium Damonis_, here adopts in the happiest manner the words of the young poet-shepherd Thyrsis in Virgil's pastoral. Thyrsis there, contending with Corydon for the prize in poetry, begs from his brother shepherds, if not the ivy of perfectly approved excellence, at least "Some green thing round the brow, Lest ill tongues hurt the poet yet to be." Could anything more gracefully express Milton's intention in the volume? This collection of his Poems, written between his sixteenth year and his thirty-eighth, was a smaller collection by much, he seems to own, than he had once hoped to have ready by that point in his manhood; but it might at least correct the impression of him common among those who knew him only as a prose pamphleteer. Something green round his brow for the present, were it only the sweet field-spikenard, would attest that he had given his youth to Poesy, and would re-announce, amid the clamour of evil tongues which his polemical writings had raised, that he meant to return to Poesy before all was done, and to die, when he did die, a great Poet of England. This feeling, which is the motive of the publication, appears curiously in all the details of its arrangement. The order in which the poems are printed, within each division or class, is, as nearly as possible, the order in which they were written; the deviations being only such as proper editorial art required. To almost every juvenile piece, too, whether in English or in Latin, there is prefixed some indication of the exact date of its composition; and the title-page of the Latin Poems distinctly solicits attention to the fact that most of them were composed before the author was twenty. Even more remarkable than this care in the dating is the introduction into the volume of all the eulogiums which Milton had already received from private friends on account of the Poems, or of any portion of them. To the _Comus_ there is prefixed Henry Lawes's eulogistic Dedication of it, in the edition of 1637, to Viscount Brackley, and also Sir Henry Wotton's cordial letter to Milton, with its praise of the poem in that edition, when Milton was on the start for his continental tour in the spring of 1638. To the Latin Poems as a whole there is even a more formal vestibule of encomiums. First of all, there is a little preface by Milton in Latin apologizing to the reader for troubling him with them. "Though these following testimonies concerning the Author," he says, "were understood by himself to be pronounced not so much _about_ him as _over_ him, by way of subject or occasion-- it being the general habit of men of brilliant genius, if they are at the same time one's friends, to fashion their praises too eagerly rather by the standard of their own excellencies than by truth--yet he was unwilling that the singular goodwill of such persons towards him should remain unknown, and the rather because others advised him strongly to the step he is now taking. While therefore he puts from him with all his strength the imputation of desiring overpraise, and would rather not have attributed to him more than is due, he cannot deny but he considers the opinion of him meantime by wise and celebrated men a very high honour." Accordingly there here follow the encomiums of his various Italian friends, known to us long ago, and which had been carefully preserved by him till now among his papers--the Latin distich by the famous Marquis Manso of Naples; the outrageously complimentary Latin verses of the two Romans, Salzilli and Selvaggi; and the more interesting Italian ode of compliment and Latin Dedication by the two Florentines, Francini and Carlo Dati. (See Vol. I. pp. 732-4, 753-4, and 768.) One has to remember that the insertion of such commendatory verses in new volumes of poetry was a fashion of the day. But, besides, there was really the anxiety for "something green round the brow." In short, it is as if Milton said to his countrymen--"Here is plenty of greenery, and to spare, with florid stuff intermixed, of which I am rather ashamed: pick out as much or as little of it as you like; only, at this date in my life, to prevent mistake, let me have _some_ kind of garland." The publisher, Humphrey Moseley, for one, was most willing to oblige Milton. Prefixed to the volume, on the blank space before the poems themselves begin, is this most interesting preface in Moseley's own name:-- "THE STATIONER TO THE READER. "It is not any private respect of gain, gentle Reader--for the slightest Pamphlet is nowadays more vendible than the works of learnedest men--but it is the love I have to our own language, that hath made me diligent to collect and set forth such pieces, both in prose and verse, as may renew the wonted honour and esteem of our English tongue; and it's the worth of these both English and Latin Poems, not the flourish of any prefixed encomions, that can invite thee to buy them--though these are not without the highest commendations and applause of the learnedest Academicks, both domestick and foreign, and amongst those of our own country the unparalleled attestation of that renowned Provost of Eton, Sir Henry Wootton. I know not thy palate, how it relishes such dainties, nor how harmonious thy soul is: perhaps more trivial Airs may please thee better. But, howsoever thy opinion is spent upon these, that encouragement I have already received from the most ingenious men, in their clear and courteous entertainment of Mr. Waller's late choice pieces, hath once more made me adventure into the world, presenting it with these ever- green and not to be blasted laurels. The Author's more peculiar excellency in these studies was too well known to conceal his papers or to keep me from attempting to solicit them from him. Let the event guide itself which way it will, I shall deserve of the age by bringing into the light as true a birth as the Muses have brought forth since our famous Spenser wrote; whose poems in these English ones are as rarely imitated as sweetly excelled. Reader, if thou art eagle-eyed to censure their worth, I am not fearful to expose them to thy exactest perusal. "Thine to command, HUMPH. MOSELEY." This is most creditable to Moseley, and confirms the impression of him which is to be derived from all the known facts of his publishing life. One notices, with real respect, his introductory statement about himself, that, in an age when only pamphlets were thought vendible, he was resolved, from his own liking for good literature, to keep to a finer line of business; one observes with interest the admission that it was Moseley who had solicited the copy from Milton, and not Milton who had offered the copy; and one is struck with the justness of taste shown in the hint that, however choice Mr. Waller's late Pieces might be, here was a poet of "more peculiar excellency." Above all, nothing could be critically truer than the assertion that since Spenser's death there had been no English poetry of Spenser's kind equal to that contained in this volume. Another feature of the volume, for which Moseley, without doubt, is also responsible, is a prefixed portrait of the Author. There was then living in London a certain William Marshall, an engraver and sketcher of designs for books. He had been some fourteen or fifteen years in this employment; and among the many heads he had done, separately, or as frontispieces to books, ere those of Richard Brathwayte the Poet, Dr. Donne, Archbishop Abbot, Laud, and Dr. Daniel Featley. Very probably Moseley had already had dealings with Marshall, as he had certainly had with the more celebrated engraver Hollar, who had done a frontispiece for him for Howell's "Instructions for Foreign Travel." At all events, Hollar being now out of the way and in trouble (he and Inigo Jones were in the Marquis of Winchester's house at Basing when it was taken by Cromwell), it was Marshall that came in for most such pieces of engraving work as Moseley and other London publishers required. The connexion between him and Moseley became, indeed, a permanent one, so that Marshall is perhaps best remembered now by Horace Walpole's description of him as "the graver of heads for Moseley's books of poetry." If the first head he did for Moseley was this for the edition of Milton's Poems in 1645, it was an unlucky beginning of the connexion. It turned out, at all events, to be an unfortunate piece of work for Marshall's own memory with posterity:-- Moseley, we are to suppose, insisted on a portrait of Milton as a proper ornament to be prefixed to such a volume, chose Marshall to do it, and sent him to Milton. Now Milton, as we know, had some recollection of Marshall, and not a very respectful one. It was Marshall that had done not only Dr. Featley's portrait, but also the caricature of the different sorts of Anabaptists and Sectaries, including a river-scene with bathers of both sexes, which had been inserted in the Doctor's treatise entitled _The Dippers Dipt_. Milton, as we have seen (_antè_, p. 311), while administering punishment to Dr. Featley in his _Tetrachordon_ on account of a passage in this treatise, had not allowed the vulgarity of the engraving in Featley's book to escape. "For which I do not commend his _marshalling_" had been Milton's punning notice of it in a parenthesis of the punishment. When, therefore, Mr. Marshall came to Milton from Moseley, Milton must have remembered him as the caricaturist for Dr. Featley's book. Nevertheless, he seems to have given him every facility for the portrait wanted. Marshall's habit, in such cases, was to take a sketch from the life when he could get it, but to assist himself with whatever was at hand in the shape of a picture or former engraving. Milton, therefore, may have given him a sitting or two, but perhaps avoided unnecessary trouble by referring to that portrait of himself at the age of 21, now celebrated as "the Onslow Portrait," which then hung in some room in the house in Barbican. As the forthcoming volume consisted largely of Milton's juvenile Poems, an engraving from that portrait, touched up a little, would be the very thing. And so Marshall set to work. His dilatoriness over the plate may have been the cause of the unusual delay in the publication of the volume after it had been registered. In due time, however, the result was presented to Moseley and to Milton. And what a result! How they must have both stared! The general design of the plate was, indeed, pretty enough--an oval containing the portrait, with a background partly of curtain and low wall or window- sill, partly of an Arcadian scene of trees and meadow beyond, in which a shepherd is piping under one of the trees, and a shepherd and shepherdess are dancing; and then, outside the oval, in the four corners, the Muses Melpomene, Erato, Urania, and Clio, with their names. All this was passable; it was the portrait within the oval that gave the shock. The face is that of a grim, gaunt, stolid gentleman of middle age, looking like anybody or nobody, with long hair parted in the middle and falling down on both sides to the lace collar round the neck; one shoulder is cloaked, and the other shown tight in the buttoned tunic or coat; and the arms meet clumsily across the breast, the left arm uppermost. Round the oval was the legend, "_Joannis Miltoni Angli Effigies, anno ætatis vigess: pri. W. M. Sculp._"--i.e. "Portrait of John Milton, Englishman, in the 2lst year of his age: W. M. Sculp." The legend _said_ twenty-one years of age; the portrait _looked_ somewhere about fifty. What was to be done? What _ought_ to have been done was to cancel the plate and print the book without it. Perhaps not to vex Moseley, Milton did not insist on this, but allowed the engraving, just as it was, to be prefixed to the volume. But he took his revenge in one of the most malicious practical jokes ever perpetrated. "Mr. Marshall," he must have said to the unfortunate engraver, "here are a few lines of Greek which I should like to have carefully engraved on the plate under the portrait," at the same time handing him the following:-- [Greek: Amathei gegraphthai cheiri tænde men eikona Phaiæs tach an, pras eidos autophues blepon. Ton d'ektupoton ouk epignontes, philoi, Gelate phaulou dusmimæma xographou.] Away went Mr. Marshall, and duly, and with some pains, engraved these letters on the plate, utterly ignorant of their meaning. Accordingly, when the volume appeared (Jan. 2, 1645-6), purchasers of it did indeed find Marshall's portrait of Milton in it, but those among them who knew Greek could read, underneath it, inscribed by Marshall's own graving tool, this damning criticism of his handiwork:-- "That an unskilful hand had carved this print You'd say at once, seeing the living face; But, finding here no jot of me, my friends, Laugh at the botching artist's mis-attempt." [Footnote: This was very savage in Milton; but really, as it turned out, it was a prudent precaution. For, till 1670, Marshall's botch prefixed to the Poems was the only published portrait of Milton-the only guide to any idea of his personal appearance for those, whether friends or foes, whether in Britain or abroad, who were not acquainted with himself. Especially among enemies on the Continent, as we shall find, both Marshall's portrait and Milton's sarcastic disavowal of it were eagerly scanned and interpreted for the worst. As late as 1655, Milton, in his _Pro se Defendio contra Alexandrum Morion_, had to refer to both portrait and disavowal as follows:--"Now I am a Narcissus with you, because I would not be the Cyclops you paint me from your sight of the most unlike portrait of me prefixed to my Poems. Really, if, in consequence of the persuasion and importunity of my publisher, I allowed myself to be clumsily engraved by an unskilful engraver, because there was not another in the city in that time of war, this argued rather my entire indifference in the affair than the too great care with which you upbraid me." The passage quite confirms the view taken in the text of the way in which the portrait came to be published. In justice to Marshall, it is right to say that he had done much better things, and did better things afterwards for Moseley, than this head of Milton. "Marshall," says Bliss (Wood's Ath. III. 518, Note), "though in general a coarse and hasty performer, is not to be despised, since his heads, though often very rough sketches, bear evident marks of authenticity and resemblance to the originals. The best head he ever engraved, in my opinion, is one of Dr. Donne when young." I can confirm this by saying that his head of Featley really gives one an idea of that obstinate and consequential old divine. I only wish he had done Milton half as well. About Marshall's engraving of Milton see Mr. J. F. Marsh's tract on the _Engraved and Pretended Portraits of Milton_ (Liverpool, 1860). Mr. Marsh thinks, with me, that Marshall based his engraving partly on the Onslow picture, and that that picture suggested the date, _ætat_. 21, so absurdly given to the engraving.] TWO DIVORCE SONNETS, AND SONNET TO HENRY LAWES. Moseley's precious little volume, with the engraver Marshall thus grimly immortalized in it, brings Milton to the beginning of 1646, or twelve months beyond his _Tetrachordon_ and _Colasterion_. His wife having been for some months back with him, for better or worse, in the house at Barbican, he had dropped the Divorce argument, or at least its public prosecution. That he did so with a certain reluctance, and in no spirit of recantation, appears from two of his Sonnets, which must have been written about the time of the publication of his volume of Poems (Oct. 1645--Jan. 1645-6), but which are not included in that volume, either because they were too late to come in their places after the Ten Sonnets contained in it, or because Milton thought it better not then to print them. "_On the Detraction which followed upon my writing certain Treatises_" is the title given by Milton himself in MS. to the two Sonnets together; but they may have been written separately. I. I did but prompt the age to quit their clogs, By the known rules of ancient liberty, When straight a barbarous noise environs me Of Owls and Cuckoos, Asses, Apes, and Dogs; As when those hinds that were transformed to frogs Railed at Latona's twin-born progeny, Which after held the sun and moon in fee. But this is got by casting pearl to hogs, That bawl for freedom in their senseless mood, And still revolt when Truth would set them free. Licence they mean when they cry Liberty; For who loves that must first be wise and good: But from that mark how far they rove we see, For all this waste of wealth and loss of blood. II. A book was writ of late called _Tetrachordon_, And woven close, both matter, form, and style; The subject new. It walked the town a while Numbering good intellects; now seldom pored on. Cries the stall-reader "Bless us! what a word on A title-page is this!" and some in file Stand spelling false while one might walk to Mile- End Green. Why is it harder, Sirs, than _Gordon_, _Colkitto_, or _Macdonnell_, or _Galasp_? Those rugged names to our like mouths grow sleek, That would have made Quintilian stare and gasp. Thy age, like ours, O soul of Sir John Cheke, Hated not learning worse than toad or asp, When thou taught'st Cambridge and King Edward Greek. The second of these Sonnets is printed first in all the editions of Milton, but there is proof that it was written second. [Footnote: It stands first in the Second or 1673 Edition of Milton's Poems; but in the Cambridge MSS, it comes second in Milton's own hand.] And, while the two together form what may be called Milton's poetical farewell to the Divorce subject, the mood in the second, it may be noted, is more humorous than in the first. In the first Milton, still angry, clenches his fist in the face of his generation, as a generation of mere hogs and dogs, unable to appreciate any real form of the liberty for which they are howling and grunting; in the second the spleen is less, and he is content with a rigmarole of rhyme about the queer effects among the illiterate of the Greek title of his last Divorce Pamphlet. And here what is chiefly interesting in the rigmarole is the evidence that Milton had been recently attending to the news from Scotland. The "_Colkitto_, or _Macdonnell_, or _Galasp_" of the Sonnet is no other than our friend Alexander MacDonnell, _alias_ MacColkitto, _alias_ MacGillespie, Montrose's gigantic Major-general; and the "Gordon" is either Lord Aboyne, the eldest son of the Marquis of Huntly, who adhered to Montrose till Philiphaugh, or it is a general name for the many Gordons who were with him (see _antè_, pp. 348, 358, 367). The odd Scottish and Gaelic names had amused Milton's delicate ear; _Gordon_ rhymed aptly to _Tetrachordon_; and hence the notion of the Sonnet. [Footnote: Those annotators on Milton who have tried to identify _Galasp_ at all have supposed him to be the Mr. George Gillespie who was one of the Scottish Divines in the Westminster Assembly. There _may_ be a side-reference to him, for Milton must have heard much of him; but the primary reference is not to the Presbyterian minister, but to the huge Colonsay Highlander, recently heard of everywhere as Montrose's comrade in arms, and who was _Colkitto_, _MacDonnell_, and _Galasp_, all in one.] A third Sonnet, written about the same time, shows even more distinctly the calming effect on Milton's mind produced by his changed mode of life in the house in Barbican, after his wife's return and the publication of his little Volume of Poems. It is the well-known Sonnet to his friend Henry Lawes, the musician. So far as the two artists, William and Henry Lawes, concerned themselves in the politics of the time, they were, of course, Royalists. Officially attached to his Majesty's household and service, what else could they be? The elder of the two, indeed, William Lawes, had gone into the Royalist army, taken captain's rank there, and been slain quite recently at the siege of Chester (October 1645), much regretted by the King, who is said to have put on private mourning for him. Henry, the younger, and much the more celebrated as a composer, had remained in London, exercising his art as much as might be at such a time, and kept by it in acquaintance with many who, differing in other things, were at one in their love of music. Everybody liked and admired the gentle Harry Lawes, and he was welcome everywhere. But there was still no family with which he was on more intimate terms than with his old patrons of the accomplished Bridgewater group, and there can have been no house where his visits were more frequent than at their house in Barbican. True, the family was greatly reduced from what it had been in the old days of the _Arcades_ and _Comus_, when Lawes was teacher of music to its budding girls and boys, and the master and stage-director of their tasteful masques and private concerts. The Countess had been ten years dead; Lord Brackley, the heir of the house, and the elder of the boy-brothers in _Comus_, had wedded, in July 1642, when only nineteen years of age, the Lady Elizabeth Cavendish, daughter of the powerful Royalist Earl, afterwards Marquis and Duke, of Newcastle; and one or two of his sisters, unmarried in the _Comus_ year, had since found husbands. With the widower Earl, however, inhabiting now his town-house in Barbican, and visiting but seldom his country mansion at Ashridge, Herts, there still remained his youngest daughter, the Lady Alice of _Comus_, verging on her twenty-fifth year, and Mr. Thomas Egerton, the younger of the boy- brothers in _Comus_, now a youth of about twenty. Probably elder and married members of the family gave the Earl their occasional company; for he was now about sixty-five years of age, in an infirm state of health, sorely impoverished, and in the unfortunate condition of a Peer who would have been with the King if he could, and whom the King had expected to be with him, but who was obliged to plead his infirm health and his poverty for a kind of semi-submission to Parliament. He had reluctantly taken the Covenant (_antè_, pp. 39,40), and there are entries in the Lords Journals proving that his excuses for non-attendance in the House were barely allowed to pass. Music and books were among the invalid Earl's chief recreations; and some of his happiest moments in his old age may have been in listening to the Lady Alice, or another of his daughters, singing one of Lawes's songs, with Lawes, now the privileged artist- friend rather than the professional tutor, standing by or accompanying. What if it were the Lady Alice, and the song were that well-remembered one of _Comus_ which she had sung, when a young girl, eleven years before, in the Hall of Ludlow Castle, before the assembled guests of her father's Welsh Presidency, her proud mother then among the listeners,-- "Sweet Echo, sweetest nymph that liv'st unseen Within thy airy shell"? If so, the sound of her voice might have almost reached Milton in _his_ house close by in the same street. At all events, here, in the street called Barbican, by a strange chance, were assembled, within a few yards of each other, at the very time when _Comus_ was first published by Milton himself, and acknowledged among his other poems, at least five of the persons chiefly concerned in the masque on its first production--the Earl in whose honour it had been composed; the Lady Alice, and Mr. Thomas Egerton, two of the chief actors: the musician Lawes, who had directed all, composed the music, and sustained the parts of Thyrsis and the Attendant Spirit in the, performance; and the poet who had written the words. When Lawes was in Barbican of an evening, it was but a step for him from the Earl's house to Milton's. And then would there not be more music, mingled with talk perhaps about the Bridgewater family, while Mrs. Milton sat by and listened? And would not the old Scrivener come down from his room to see Mr. Lawes, and bring out his choicest old music-books, and almost set aside his son in managing the visit for musical delight? So one fancies, and therefore keeps to the interrogative form as the safest; but the fancy here is really the most exact possible apprehension of the facts as they are on record. Lawes's friendship with Milton had been uninterrupted since 1634; but it so chances that the third point in Milton's life at which his intimacy with Lawes emerges into positive record is precisely the winter of 1645-6, when Milton was the Earl of Bridgewater's neighbour in Barbican, and his Volume of Poems was going through the press. Not only was there reprinted in this volume Lawes's Dedication of the _Comus_ in 1637, "To the Right Honourable John, Lord Brackley, son and heir-apparent to the Earl of Bridgewater;" but in the very title-page of the volume, as arranged by Moseley, Lawes's name is associated with Milton's. "_The Songs were set in musick by Mr. Henry Lawes, &c._," says the title-page; and this may mean that not only the songs in _Arcades_ and _Comus_, but other lyrical pieces in the volume, had been set to music by Lawes. If so, a good deal more of Lawes's music to Milton's words may have been in existence about 1645 than his settings of the five songs in _Comus_, which are all that have come down to us in his own hand. Songs of Milton set by Lawes may have been in circulation in MS. copies, and may have been as well known in musical families as the numerous songs by Carew, Herrick, Waller and others, which had been set by the same composer; and it may be to this that Moseley alludes by the prominent mention of Lawes in the title-page of the collected Poems. And, if Lawes had done so much for Milton's verse, it was fitting that Milton should make some return in kind. He had indeed introduced skilful compliments to Lawes personally in his _Comus_; but something more express might be now appropriate. Accordingly, on the 9th of February, 1645-6, or five weeks after the publication of the Poems, Milton wrote the following:-- "TO MY FRIEND MR. HENRY LAWES. "Harry, whose tuneful and well-measured song First taught our English music how to span Words with just note and accent, not to scan With Midas ears, committing short and long, Thy worth and skill exempts thee from the throng, With praise enough for Envy to look wan: To after-age thou shalt be writ the man That with smooth air could humour best our tongue. Thou honour'st Verse, and Verse must lend her wing To honour thee, the priest of Phoebus' quire, That tun'st their happiest lines in hymn or story. Dante shall give Fame leave to set thee higher Than his Casella, whom he wooed to sing, Met in the milder shades of Purgatory." The original draft of this Sonnet, entitled as above, and with the date "Feb. 9, 1645," attached, and a corrected transcript underneath, both in Milton's own hand, are in the Cambridge volume of Milton MSS. The Sonnet was prefixed by Lawes, with the same title, in 1648 to a publication of some of his own and his deceased brother's compositions, entitled _Choice Psalmes put into Musick for Three Voices_; but in the Second or 1673 Edition of Milton's Poems it reappeared with the title which it has retained in all subsequent editions: viz. "To Mr. Henry Lawes on his Airs." For biographical purposes it is well to remember the first title and the dating. The Sonnet is, in fact, a memorial of a time when Milton and Lawes must have been much together. [Footnote: The details about the state of the Bridge water family in the text are partly from Todd's Note prefixed to _Comus_ (Todd's Milton, ed. 1852, IV 38-44), partly from entries in the _Lords Journals_ already referred to in this volume. Todd has also (_ibid._ 45-54) an elaborate, though ill-digested, note on Lawes, with particulars of his continued connexion, to 1653 and beyond, with various members of the Bridgewater family. In the Stationers' Registers there is this entry:--"Nov. 16, 1647, Rich. Woodnoth entered for his copy under the hands of Mr. Downham and Mr. Bellamy, warden, a book called 'Compositions of Three Parts,' by Henry and William Lawes, servants to his Majesty." I suppose this was the book published in 1648 with the title "_Choice Psalmes_," &c.] CONTINUED PRESBYTERIAN ATTACKS ON MILTON: HIS ANTI-PRESBYTERIAN SONNET OF REPLY. Altogether it was beginning to be a more placid time with Milton. With his book out, his wife restored to him, the Divorce argument dropped, and his pupils to teach, he might look about him quietly on the state of public affairs, and expect what should be the next call on him. There did not seem to be any immediate call. In the month when his volume of Poems appeared Presbyterianism was at its fullest tide in Parliament; but in the succeeding months, what with the increase of Recruiters in the Commons, what with the tramp of Independency in the field growing louder and nearer as the New Model ended its work, he could see the political power of the Presbyterians gradually waning, until, in April 1646, when Cromwell reappeared in London, Anti-Toleration was abashed and the Westminster Assembly itself under control. The spectacle must have been quite to Milton's mind; but, as he had already expressed himself sufficiently on the main question between the Independents and the Presbyterians, and as nobody doubted on which side he was to be ranked, he was disposed to take his ease on this subject too, and to leave the issue to the Parliament and the Army. He was too marked a man, however, to be quite let alone. The Presbyterian writers, true to their policy of publicly naming all prominent heretics and sectaries, and painting their opinions in the most glaring colours, with a view to disgust people with the idea of a Toleration, could not part with Milton and his Divorce Doctrine. After he and his wife were in the Barbican house together, he was still pursued by the hue and cry. Here are two specimens:-- _Mr. Baillie on Milton._--"Mr. Milton permits any man to put away his wife upon his mere pleasure without any fault, and without the cognisance of any judge," writes Baillie in the Table of Contents to the First Part of his _Dissuasive_, published in November 1645; and in the text of the work (p. 116) the statement is amplified as follows:--"Concerning Divorces, some of them [the Independents] go far beyond any of the Brownists; not to speak of Mr. Milton, who in a large treatise hath pleaded for a full liberty for any man to put away his wife, whenever he pleaseth, without any fault in her at all, but for any dislike or dyssympathy of humour. For I do not certainly know whether this man professeth Independency, albeit all the heretics here whereof ever I heard avow themselves Independents. Whatever therefore may be said of Mr. Milton, yet Mr. Gorting and his company were men of renown among the New English Independents before Mistress Hutchinson's disgrace; and all of them do maintain that it is lawful for every woman to desert her husband when he is not willing to follow her in her church-way." In other words, Baillie is not sure that it is fair to charge Milton's extreme opinion upon Independency as such, inasmuch as it may be the crotchet of a solitary heretic; but he is inclined to think that Milton _is_ an Independent, and he knows at least that Mr. Gorting and other Independents have broached a milder form of the same heresy. In his Notes (pp. 144,145) he quotes sentences to the amount of a page from Milton's _Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce_ to prove that he does not misrepresent him.--The "Gorting" here mentioned by Baillie is the "Samuel Gorton" who had been such a sore trouble to the New Englanders, and even to Roger Williams at Providence, by his anarchical opinions and conduct (Vol. II. 601). He had returned or been ejected from America, and was making himself notorious in London. "This I am assured of from various hands," wrote Edwards (_Gangr._ Part II. p. 144), "that Gorton is here in London, and hath been for the space of some months; and I am told also that he vents his opinions, and exercises in some of the meetings of the sectaries, as that he hath exercised lately at Lamb's Church, and is very great at one Sister Stagg's, exercising there too sometimes." This will explain Baillie's allusion to Gorton in connexion with Milton's Divorce Doctrine. Strange that Gorton should be cited as holding a _milder_ form of the heresy than Milton's! _Mr. Edwards on Milton._--Of course, Milton got into the _Gangræna._ Everybody that deviated in anything, to the right or left, from the path of Presbyterian orthodoxy, got into that register of scandals; and we have already availed ourselves of information incidentally supplied in the Second and Third Parts of it as to the horror caused by Milton's Divorce Doctrine among the Presbyterians (_antè_, pp. 189-192). We have still to present, however, Edwards's direct notice of Milton in the First Part of his scandalous medley. It was published in January or February 1645-6; so that, at the very time when Milton's volume of Poems was out, and he was writing his Sonnet to Lawes, he found himself pilloried again in the new book which all London was reading greedily. A leading portion of the book, as we know (_antè_, pp. 143-5), consisted of a catalogue of 176 "Errors, Heresies, and Blasphemies" that had been vented by divers Sectaries and were then distracting and corrupting the soul of England. Well, the 154th Error, Heresy, and Blasphemy in this catalogue is this:-- "That 'tis lawful for a man to put away his wife upon indisposition, unfitness, or contrariety of mind, arising from a cause in nature unchangeable; and for disproportion and deadness of spirit, or something distasteful and averse in the immutable bent of nature; and man, in regard of the freedom and eminency of his creation, is a law to himself in this matter, being head of the other sex, which was made for him; neither need he hear any judge therein above himself." To this summary by Edwards of Milton's Doctrine, partly in Milton's own words, the reference is appended in the margin: "_Vide Milton's Doctrine of Divorce._" (_Gangræna_, Part I. p. 29.) And so for the moment Edwards dismisses Milton, very much as Baillie had done, to return to him again in the Second and Third Parts of his _Gangræna_, as Baillie was to do in the Second Part of his _Dissuasive_. Milton was provoked. It was not in his nature to let any attack upon him, from whatever quarter, pass without notice; and attacks by persons of such popular celebrity as Baillie and Edwards could hardly be ignored. But, as he had given up the public prosecution of the Divorce argument, his punishment for Edwards and Baillie came in a different form from that which he had administered in the _Tetrachordon_ and _Colasterion_ to Herbert Palmer, Dr. Featley, Mr. Caryl, Mr. Prynne, and the anonymous attorney. It came in verse, thus-- "ON THE FORCERS OF CONSCIENCE. "Because you have thrown off your Prelate lord, And with stiff vows renounced his Liturgy, To seize the widowed whore Plurality From them whose sin ye envied, not abhorred, Dare ye for this adjure the civil sword To force our consciences that Christ set free, And ride us with a Classic Hierarchy, Taught ye by mere _A. S._ and _Rutherford?_ Men whose life, learning, faith, and pure intent Would have been held in high esteem with Paul, Must now be named and printed heretics By _shallow Edwards_ and _Scotch What d'ye call._ But we do hope to find out all your tricks, Your plots and packing, worse than those of Trent, That so the Parliament May, with their wholesome and preventive shears, Clip your phylacteries, though baulk your ears, And succour our just fears, When they shall read this clearly in your charge-- New PRESBYTER is but old PRIEST writ large." Milton, we are to suppose, having already written two Divorce Sonnets, did not care to write a third, but preferred to punish Edwards and Baillie in a general Anti-Presbyterian Sonnet. It turned out, however, not a Sonnet proper, but a _Sonetto con coda_, as the Italians call it, or "Sonnet with a tail"--the Anti-Presbyterian rhythm prolonging itself beyond the fourteen lines that would have completed the normal Sonnet, and demanding the scorpion addition of six lines more. Into this peculiar "tailed Sonnet" Milton condenses metrically all the rage against Presbytery, the Westminster Assembly, and the Anti-Tolerationists, which had already broken forth at large in his later prose pamphlets. The piece is unusually full of historical allusions. It breathes throughout his acquired hatred of the Presbyterians for their opposition to Liberty of Conscience, and their determination that the "Classic Hierarchy," or system of Presbyterian _classes_ which they were establishing in England, should be as compulsory on all as the Prelacy they had thrown off; and there is a palpable side-hit at the recent acquisition by some of the leading Presbyterian Divines in the Assembly of University posts and the like in addition to their previous livings, notwithstanding their outcries against Pluralities in the time of Episcopacy. In this side-hit not a few known Divines are slashed; and among them, I fear, Milton's old tutor Thomas Young, now Master of Jesus College, Cambridge, as well as Vicar of Stowmarket. But the open personal references are four. The "A. S." selected as one prominent expounder of Presbytery is the Scotchman, Dr. Adam Steuart, who, under his initials "A. S.," had been one of the first to rush into print in behalf of strict Presbytery and Anti- Toleration against the _Apologetical Narrative_ of the Independents of the Assembly, and who had been replied to by John Good win, but had since gone into Holland (_antè_, p. 25). The "Rutherford" coupled with him is the celebrated Scottish divine, and Commissioner to the Assembly, Samuel Rutherford, who had set forth several expositions of strict Scottish Presbytery for the enlightenment of the English. "Shallow Edwards" is obvious enough: he is Mr. Edwards of the _Gangræna_, once far from a nobody in London, but who will now, through Milton's mention of him, be "Shallow Edwards" to the world's end. In Milton's draft of the Sonnet he was "hair-brained Edwards;" but "hair-brained" was erased, and "shallow" substituted. The "Scotch What d'ye call" has cost the commentators more trouble. Most of them have identified him with George Gillespie, whom they also, though erroneously, suppose to be the "Galasp" of one of the Divorce Sonnets. There can be little doubt now, I think, that I have detected the real "What d'ye call" in Gillespie's fellow- Commissioner from Scotland, our good friend Baillie, whose _Dissuasive_, with its reference to Milton as one of the heretics of the time, had just preceded Edwards's _Gangræna_. I am sorry for this, but it cannot be helped. There was, I ought to add, in the original draft of the Sonnet, a fifth personal allusion, which Milton saw fit, on second thoughts, to omit. Line 17, which now stands "_Clip your phylacteries, though baulk your ears_" (_i.e._" though pass over your ears and leave them undipped"), was originally "_Crop ye as close as marginal P--'s ears_." As Milton had already, in his _Colasterion_, said enough about Prynne and the heavy margins of his many pamphlets, and as the circumstances in which Prynne had lost his ears made the subject hardly a proper one for a public joke, it was but good taste in Milton to make the change. It is from internal evidence that I assign this famous Anti-Presbyterian outburst of Milton to some early month of the year 1646. [Footnote: The lines were first published in the Second or 1673 Edition of Milton's Poems, and not there among the Sonnets, but as a piece apart, with the title, since always given to it, _On the New Forcers of Conscience under the Long Parliament_. The draft of it among the Milton MSS. at Cambridge has the simpler title _On the Forcers of Conscience_. This draft, however, is not in Milton's own hand, but is a transcript by an amanuensis. Hence we have not the means of determining the date so exactly as if Milton's own draft had been preserved. I am pretty confident that the date cannot be later than 1646, and I fancy copies may have been in private circulation in that year.] It fits in exactly with the state of public affairs and of Milton himself at that time; all the motives to it, public and private, were in existence by the March of that year; and it is difficult to suppose that the composition was of much later date. Or, if it was a little later, the lines fairly represent Milton's feeling at the time to which I assign them. In March, April, and May, 1646, Milton was one of those Englishmen who had done for ever with Presbyterianism, who rejoiced over the curb imposed at length upon the Westminster Assembly by the Independents and Erastians of the Parliament, and who longed to see that conclave dismissed, and the Scots sent packing home. SURRENDER OF OXFORD: CONDITION OF THE POWELL FAMILY. That the Scots should be sent packing home, but that they should leave the King behind them in English custody, was the result for which all the Independents were anxious. Through May and June 1646, it was for Milton, among the rest, to watch the progress of the negotiations with the Scots at Newcastle round the person of the King, and at the same time to observe the surrender of one after another of the few remaining Royalist garrisons, including the great Royalist capital of Oxford. The siege of this city by Fairfax, begun May 1, a week after the King had left it, and continued for seven or eight weeks with the help of Cromwell and Skippon, must have been a matter of considerable personal interest to Milton, and of more interest to his wife. She was now in a state of health requiring as much freedom from anxiety as possible; but, while the siege was going on, there was good reason for anxiety in the fact that her father and mother, with the rest of her family, or some of them, were in the besieged city and undergoing its dangers. They had taken refuge there on the approach of the Parliamentarian troops into Oxfordshire, leaving their house at Forest-hill to take its chance. What might that chance be, and what worse chances might come of the siege itself? It was a relief when the news came of the actual surrender of the city (June 24), on terms exceedingly liberal to the garrison, the citizens, and all the resident Royalists. The terms, indeed, were thought far too liberal by the Presbyterians. "The scurvy base propositions which Cromwell has given to the Malignants at Oxford has offended many," writes Baillie, June 26; [Footnote: Baillie, II. 376] the reason for the offence being that it was but too clear that the Independents had been in haste to obtain Oxford on any terms whatever, in order that the army might be free to act, if necessary, against the Scots in the north. Anyhow the surrender had taken place. The Princes Rupert and Maurice had left the city with a retinue and promise of liberty to go abroad; the garrison, to the number of 7,000 men, had marched out honourably, with arms and baggage; security for the property of the citizens and the colleges had been guaranteed; and all the miscellaneous crowd of Royalists of various ranks that had been cooped up so long in Oxford were at liberty to disperse themselves on certain stipulated conditions. To one of the Articles of the Treaty of Surrender I must ask special attention, as it came to be of much domestic consequence to Milton in future years:-- "XI. That all lords, gentlemen, clergymen, officers, soldiers, and all other persons in Oxford, or comprised in this capitulation, who have estates real or personal under or liable to sequestrations according to the Ordinance of Parliament, and shall desire to compound for them (except persons by name excepted by Ordinance of Parliament from pardon), shall at any time within six months after the rendering of the garrison of Oxford be admitted to compound for their estates; which composition shall not exceed two years' revenue for estates of inheritance, and for estates for lives, years, and other real and personal estates, shall not exceed the proportion aforesaid for inheritances, according to the value of them: And that all persons aforesaid whose dwelling-houses are sequestered (except before-excepted) may after the rendering of the garrison repair to them, and there abide, convenient time being allowed to such as are placed there under the sequestrations for their removal. And it is agreed that all the profits and revenues arising out of their estates after the day of entering their names as Compounders shall remain in the hands of the tenants or occupiers, to be answered to the Compounders when they have perfected their agreements for their compositions; And that they shall have liberty, and the General's pass and protection, for their peaceable repair to and abode at their several houses or friends, and to go to London to attend their compositions, or elsewhere upon their necessary occasions, with freedom of their persons from oaths, engagements, and molestations during the space of six months, and after so long as they prosecute their compositions without wilful default or neglect on their part, except an engagement by promise not to bear arms against the Parliament, nor wilfully to do any act prejudicial to their [Parliament's] affairs so long as they remain in their quarters. And it is further agreed that, from and after their compositions made, they shall be forthwith restored to and enjoy their estates, and all other immunities, as other subjects, together with the rents and profits, from the time of entering their names, discharged from sequestrations, and from fifths and twentieth parts, and other payments and impositions, except such as shall be general and common to them with others." [Footnote: Whitlocke (ed. 1853), II. 38; also in Rushworth, VI. 282, 283.] Some hundreds of persons in Oxford at the time of its surrender must have had their movements for the next few months determined by this article. Among these was Milton's father-in-law, Mr. Richard Powell. The view we arrived at as to the condition of the Powell family before the Civil War was (Vol. II. p. 499) that they were then "an Oxfordshire family of good standing, keeping up appearances with the neighbour- gentry, and probably more than solvent if all their property had been put against their debts, but still rather deeply in debt, and their property heavily mortgaged." During the war, we have now to record, on the faith of a statement afterwards made by Mr. Powell himself, the losses of the family in one way or another had amounted to at least 3,000_l_. Remembering this heavy item, I will try to present in figures the state of Mr. Powell's affairs while he was shut up in Oxford:-- I. PROPERTY. 1. Lease, till 1672, of the Forest-hill mansion and £ estate, worth about . . . . . . . . 270 a year. 2. Furniture, household-stuff, and corn in the Forest- hill mansion and appurtenances, valued at . 500 3. Wood and timber stacked about the Forest-hill premises, worth . . . . . . . . . 400 4. Property in land and cottages at Wheatley, valued at . . . . . . . . . . . 40 a year. 5. Debts owing to Mr. Powell . . . . . . . . 100 II. DEBTS AND OBLIGATIONS. 1. Due to Mr. John Milton, by recognisance since 1627, as unpaid part of an original debt of £500 . . . . . . . . . . . . . 300 2. Promised to the said Mr. Milton, when he married Mr. Powell's eldest daughter, a marriage portion of. . . . . . . . . 1,000 3. Due to Mr. Edward Ashworth, or his representatives, in redemption of a mortgage on the Wheatley property since 1631, a capital sum (besides arrears of interest) of . . . . 400 4. Due to Sir Robert Pye, in redemption of a mortgage on the Forest-hill mansion and property since 1640, a capital sum (besides arrears of interest) of . . . . . . . . . . . 1,400 5. Other debts, as estimated by Mr. Powell . . . 1,200 It is difficult to square this ragged account (which, however, is the best one can produce); [Footnote: My authorities for it are--(1) My own previous accounts of the state of Mr. Powell's affairs before the ware, Vol. II. pp. 492-9, based on authorities there cited. (2) "A Particular of the Real and Personal Estate of Richard Powell of Forest-hill," after the surrender of Oxford, attested by himself Nov. 21, 1646, and given in the Appendix to Hamilton's _Milton's Papers_. (3) Other papers in the same Appendix, especially an attestation of Milton himself at p. 95. (4) The documents relative to Milton's Nuncupative Will printed by Todd and others.] but the general effect is that Mr. Powell's affairs were in a woful condition. It was almost mockery now to style him Mr. Powell of Forest-hill and Wheatley; for, before he could call these Oxfordshire properties his own, with their joint revenue of 310_l._ a year, he had to clear off a debt of 1,400_l._ to Sir Robert Pye, and another of 400_l._ to one Ashworth, each with heavy arrears of interest. Actually, in furniture, goods, corn, and timber in the house at Forest-hill and its premises, and in debts owing to him, he fancied himself worth 1,000_l._; but his debts, apart from those to Pye and Ashworth, and apart also from the 300_l_. legally owing to his son-in-law Milton (which, with the promised marriage-portion of 1,000_l._, might stand over to a convenient time), amounted to 1,200_l._ Nay, this is too favourable a view; for, while the siege of Oxford had been going on, incidents had happened which much increased Mr. Powell's difficulties:--(l) The terms of the mortgage of the Forest-hill mansion and estate to Sir Robert Pye had been that the mortgage was to be void if Mr. Powell should pay Sir Robert a sum of 1,510_l._ by the 1st of July, 1641. This not having been done, Sir Robert had had, ever since that date, a legal right to eject Mr. Powell from the mansion and lands and take possession of them for his debt. A friendly compromise appears to have been arranged on the subject in May, 1642, by the payment to Sir Robert of l10_l._, being the difference between the original debt and the higher sum which was to void the mortgage. Nevertheless the right to take possession remained with Sir Robert; and that he had not exercised it may have been as much owing to the fact that Oxford was difficult of access to a Parliamentarian creditor during the war as to neighbourly forbearance. But, now that Parliament was at the gates of Oxford, and its troops quartered in and about Forest-hill, it was but common prudence in Sir Robert to use the only method left of saving himself from the loss of his 1,400_l._ with the unpaid interest. Some time in May, accordingly, or early in June, while the siege of Oxford was in progress, he caused his servant, or agent, Laurence Farre, to take formal possession of the Forest-hill premises. At the date of the surrender of Oxford, therefore, Mr. Powell was no longer owner of the Forest-hill manor and mansion; they belonged to his neighbour, Sir Robert Pye. There was, perhaps, a temporary convenience in this for Mr. Powell. If he had lost the property, his debt to Sir Robert was cancelled by the loss in the meantime; and, if at any future time he or his heirs should be in a position to re-acknowledge the debt with arrears, arrangements for the redemption of the property would be easier with the Pye family than with strangers. Besides, Sir Robert had taken possession of the property just in time to anticipate its sequestration by Parliament as part of the estate of a Delinquent; and in this too there may have been some intention of neighbourly service, or saving of future trouble, to Mr. Powell. Still it was a hard thing for the Powells to know that their lease of their family residence and estate was gone, and they were no longer the Powells of Forest-hill. [Footnote: The vouchers for the statements in the text about the transfer of Forest-hill to Sir Robert Pye in May or June, 1646, are in various documents printed in Mr. Hamilton's _Milton Papers_. See especially p. 56 and Documents xxii., xli., xlii., and xlv. in the Appendix. The Forest-hill property, we shall find, did eventually come back to the Powell family; but it is worthy of remark that in Mr. Powell's own "Particular" of the state of his property in 1646 the Forest-hill lease is not mentioned, but only the goods and household stuff on the premises. On the other hand, of course, the 1,400_l_. and arrears of interest due to Sir Robert Pye are omitted from the list of debts, as cancelled by the loss of the property.] (2). But not only was the lease of the family house and lands gone. There had come a sequestration, and worse than a sequestration, upon the goods, household stuff, and timber on the Forest-hill premises, which formed now the best part of Mr. Powell's worldly all. The order for the sequestration was issued by the Committee of Parliamentary Sequestrations for the County of Oxford just after Sir Robert Pye had possessed himself of the premises; and, on the 16th of June, while Mr. Powell and his family were in Oxford with the rest of the besieged, three of the sequestrators, John Webb, Richard Vivers, and John King, with assistants and spectators, were rummaging the rooms and offices at Forest-hill, and taking an inventory and valuation of all the furniture, goods, and stock of every kind contained in them. The inventory still exists, and has been used in our description of the house when Milton went to fetch his bride from it (Vol. II. pp. 500, 501). Now, however, it comes in more sadly. _A copy of the Inventory, with the prices of the goods as they were appraysed the 16th of June 1646_, is the title of the document; and, as we read it, we see the sequestrators, with their pens behind their ears, going round the house, and through the house, and in among the wood- yards, attended by gaping country-people, and jotting down particulars. A trunk of linen first attracts them, and they set down its contents, including "1 pair of sheets, 3 napkins, 6 yards of broad tiffany," at 16_s._ Next is a heavier entry--to wit, "240 pieces of tymber, 200 loades of firewood, 4 carts, 1 wain, 2 old coaches, 1 mare colt, 3 sows, 1 boar, 2 ewes, 3 parcels of boards," valued in the aggregate at 156_l_. l2_s_. And so on they go, pell-mell, putting down "hops in the wool-house" at 2_l_., "a bull" at 1_l._ 10_s._, "14 quarters of mastline" at l4_l._, "5 quarters of malt" at 5_l._, "6 bushels of wheat" at 1_l._ 2_s._, two more parcels of wood at 100_l._ and 60_l._ respectively, a piece of growing corn at 42_l._, a piece of growing wheat at 6_l._ l3_s._ 4_d._, and even two fields of meadow, which they leave unappraised for the good reason that they had been "eaten up by the souldiers." At this point also are mentioned, as also unappraised, some bit of land at Forest-hill, apparently not included in the lease that had gone to Sir Robert Pye, and also Mr. Powell's property at Wheatley. Then, having concluded the outer survey, and brought the total, so far as appraised, up to 400_l._ or a little more, the sequestrators proceed to a separate and special inventory of the household goods. "In the hall" they find furniture which they value at 1_l._ 4_s._; "in the great parlour" 7_l._; "in the little parlour" 3_l._; "in the study or boys' chamber" 2_l._ l3_s._; and so on through the other rooms--"Mrs. Powell's chamber," as the best furnished of all, counting for 8_l._ 4_s._, while "Mr. Powell's study" goes for only 1_l._ l4_s._ Altogether the household stuff amounts in their estimate to a little over 70_l._ It was a monstrously good bargain to any one who would give that sum for it. Nor, in fact, had the sequestrators been taking all the trouble of the inventory without inducement. Going about with them all the while, and possibly haggling with them over the values, was an intending purchaser in the person of a certain Matthew Appletree from London--one of those dealers who followed in the wake of the Parliamentary forces as they advanced into Royalist districts, with a view to pick up good bargains for ready money in the confiscated property of Delinquents. To this Appletree the aforesaid sequestrators, Webb, Vivers, and King, did sell all the household stuff they had inventoried, together with the best part of the out-of-door-stock, including the carts, wain, and old coaches, the mare, the bull, and other animals, and all of the timber except 100%, worth in keeping of a Mr. Eldridge. The sum which Appletree was to give for the whole was 335_l._, whereas the real value may have been about 800_l._ or 900_l._; and no sooner had he concluded his bargain than he began to cart some of the lighter things away. We can tell what went off in the first cart. They were: "1 arras work chayre, 6 thrum chayres, 6 wrought stooles, 2 old greene carpetts, 1 tapestry carpett, 1 wrought carpett, 1 carpett greene with fringe, 3 window curtaines." [Footnote: Document xxvi. in Appendix to Hamilton's _Milton Papers_, with references to other Documents in same Appendix.] All this took place on the 16th of June, 1646, eight days before the surrender of Oxford. On the preceding day, June 15, Cromwell had been at Halton, close to Forest-hill, seeing his daughter Bridget married to Ireton. The reader now understands the state of Mr. Powell's affairs, when he was released from Oxford, as well as he did himself, if not better. It was all very well that the Articles of Capitulation had provided for the liberty of all persons among the besieged to return to their several places of abode and resume their estates and callings, subject only to composition with Parliament within six months according to the fixed rates of fine for Delinquency. This may have been a privilege for many; but it was poor comfort for the Powells. In the first place, they had now no home of their own to go to. Forest-hill was in possession of their old friend, Sir Robert Pye, who was preparing to fit up the mansion afresh for himself or some of his family, its redemption by Mr. Powell being now out of the question. But what remained was worse. Though the house and manor of Forest-hill were gone, Mr. Powell, by the terms of the Treaty, might still hope to compound for the wreck of his other property which lay under sequestration--viz. the small Wheatley estate; the goods, furniture, timber, &c., which he had left on the Forest-hill premises; and also, it appears, some odd bits of land about Forest-hill not included in the mortgage to Sir Robert Pye. With what grief and anger, then, must the family, on the surrender of Oxford, have learnt that even this poor remainder of their property was for the most part irrecoverable--that not only had it been sequestrated by the County Commissioners, but most of it sold and some actually dispersed. There appears, indeed, to have been some very harsh, if not unfair and underhand, dealing on the part of the sequestrating Commissioners in this matter of the hurried sale of Mr. Powell's goods to Matthew Appletree. It became afterwards, as we shall find, the subject of legal complaint by the Powells, and of a long and tedious litigation on their behalf. Only two facts need at present be noted. One is the significant fact that among the members of the County Committee who issued the order for the sequestration was a "Thomas Appletree," clearly a relative of the "Matthew Appletree" who purchased the goods, while a third Appletree, named Richard, was also concerned somehow in the transaction. [Footnote: Hamilton's _Milton Papers_: Appendix, Documents xlv. and xlvii.] One suspects some collusion between the public sequestrators and the private purchaser. Then again, when the transaction came to be litigated, one observes a discrepancy between the two parties as to its alleged date. The preserved copy of the inventory and valuation, signed by the sequestrators, Webb, Vivers, and King, is distinctly dated "the 16 of June 1646," and as distinctly declares that day to have been the date of the sale to Appletree. [Footnote: _Ibid._ Document xxvi.] If this is correct, the sale had occurred while the Treaty for the surrender of Oxford was in progress, but exactly four days before it was completed and the Articles of Surrender signed (June 20). On the other hand, the Powells afterwards invariably represented the sale as a violation of the Articles; they quoted June 17, and not June 16, as the date of the order for sequestration issued by "the Committee for the County of Oxford sitting at Woodstock;" and they laid stress on the fact that the sequestrators Webb, Vivers, and King had sold the goods to Appletree "within few days after the granting of the said Articles." [Footnote: Hamilton's Milton Papers: Appendix, Documents xxviii. and xiv.] How the discrepancy is to be accounted for one does not very well see; but one again suspects over-eagerness to injure Powell by obliging Appletree. Can the sequestrators possibly have inventoried and sold the goods, as they themselves declared, on the 16th, though the sequestrating Order was not formally issued till the 17th? If so, they were evidently in a hurry to push through the business before the Treaty for the Surrender of Oxford was signed, so as to deprive Mr. Powell, if possible, of any advantage from it. Or, after all, can there have been any contrivance of ante- dating, to disguise the fact that the sale, though intended on the 16th, was really pushed through between Saturday the 20th of June, when the Articles were signed, and Wednesday the 24th, when the surrender took place? In either case it must have been a sore sight to Mr. Powell, when, on this latter day, or the day after, he was free to walk over to Forest- hill, to find some of his goods already gone and Mr. Matthew Appletree superintending the carting away of the rest-all except the timber, which remained upon the premises till its removal should be convenient. [Footnote: This appears from an extract from "the Certificate of the Solicitor for Sequestration in the County of Oxford," not given in Mr. Hamilton's Milton Papers, but in Hunter's Milton Gleanings, pp. 31, 32.] THE POWELLS IN LONDON: MORE FAMILY PERPLEXITIES: BIRTH OF MILTON'S FIRST CHILD. What was to be done? Only one thing was possible. Mr. Powell must go to London to compound for what shreds of his sequestrated property survived the sale to Appletree, and at the same time to see whether he could have any redress at head-quarters against the Oxfordshire Committee of Sequestrations. On other grounds, too, a removal to London was advisable or necessary. There, in Mr. Milton's house, the family would have a roof over their heads until some new arrangement could be made and while Mr. Powell prosecuted the composition business. Accordingly, on the 27th of June, or three days after the surrender of Oxford, Mr. Powell obtained Fairfax's pass, as follows:-"Suffer the bearer hereof, Mr. Richard Powell, of Forest-hill in the county Oxon., who was in the city and garrison of Oxford at the surrender thereof, and is to have the full benefit of the Articles agreed unto upon the surrender, quietly and without let or interruption to pass your guards, with his servants, horses, arms, goods, and all other necessaries, and to repair unto London or elsewhere upon his necessary occasions: And in all places where he shall reside, or whereto he shall remove, to be protected from any violence to his person, goods, or estate, according to the said Articles, and to have full liberty, at any time within six months, to go to any convenient port and to transport himself, with his servants, goods, and necessaries, beyond the seas: And in all other things to enjoy the benefit of the said Articles. Hereunto due obedience is to be given by all persons whom it may concern, as they will answer the contrary. Given under my hand and seal the 27th day of June, 1646. (Signed) T. FAIRFAX." [Footnote: From the Composition Papers: Document i. in Hamilton's Appendix VOL. III.] Provided with this pass, Mr. Powell and Mrs. Powell, with some of their sons and daughters, arrived in London some time early in July, and took up their abode for the while at their son-in-law Milton's in the Barbican. That they were there, and a pretty large party of them too, we learn from Phillips. "In no very long time after her [the wife's] coming [back to Milton] she had a great resort of her kindred with her in the house: viz. her father and mother and several of her brothers and sisters, which were in all pretty numerous." The surrender of Oxford and the loss of Forest-hill were the immediate causes of this crowding of the Barbican house with the Powell kindred, unless we are to suppose that some of them had preceded Mr. Powell thither. Poor Mr. Powell's perplexities were never to have an end. He cannot have been more than a fortnight in London when he became aware not only that he had small chance of redress at head-quarters against the injury already done him by the Oxfordshire sequestrators, but that Parliamentarian public opinion in Oxfordshire was pursuing him to London with fell intent of farther damage. July 15, 1646, we read in the _Lords Journals_, "A Petition of the inhabitants of Banbury was read, complaining that the one half of the town is burnt down, and part of the church and steeple pulled down; and, there being some timber and boards at one Mr. Powell's house, a Malignant, near Oxford, they desire they may have these materials assigned them for the repair of their church and town. It is Ordered, that this House thinks fit to grant this Petition, and to desire the concurrence of the House of Commons therein, and that an Ordinance may be drawn up to that purpose." The Commons concurred readily; for, in the _Commons Journals_ of the very next day, July 16, we read, "The humble Petition of the inhabitants of Banbury was read; and it is thereupon Ordered: That the Timber and Boards cut down by one Mr. Powell, a Malignant, out of Forest Wood near Oxford, and sequestered, being not above the value of 300%., be bestowed upon the inhabitants of the town of Banbury, to be employed for the repair of the Church and Steeple, and rebuilding of the Vicarage House and Common Gaol there; and that such of the said Timber and Boards as shall remain of the uses aforesaid shall be disposed, by the members of both Houses which are of the Committee for Oxfordshire, to such of the well-affected persons of the said town, for the rebuilding of their houses, as to the said members, or major part of them, shall seem meet." Here was a confiscation by Parliament itself of every moveable thing belonging to Mr. Powell that had been left at Forest-hill after the sale to Appletree. All the precious timber, including that bought by the harpy Appletree, but not yet removed by him, was voted to these cormorants of the town of Banbury: Mr. Powell's condition was to be that of Job at his worst. He had come to London to plead the benefit of the Articles of Surrender; and behold, enemies in Oxfordshire and Parliament in London had conspired to strip him totally bare! One sees the poor gentleman in his son-in-law's house utterly broken down with the accumulation of his misfortunes, hanging his head in a corner of the room where they all met, letting his wife and daughters come round him and talk to him, but refusing to be comforted. What mattered it to him to be told of better times that might be coming, or even of the new little creature of his own blood that was then daily expected into the world? To Mrs. Powell, however, this expected event was of more consequence. She was a person of some temper and spirit; and, even in her troubles, there was some spur upon her in her present motherly duty. And so, when, on the 29th of July, 1646, being Wednesday, and the day of the monthly Fast, Milton's first-born child saw the light, at about half-past six in the morning, and was reported to be a daughter, what could they do but agree to name the little thing ANNE in honour of her grandmother? [Footnote: Pedigree of the Milton Family by Sir Charles Young, Garter King at Arms, prefixed to Pickering's edition of Milton's Works, 1851. But the original authority was an inscription in Milton's own hand on a blank leaf of his wife's Bible:--"Anne, my daughter, was born July the 29th, the day of the monthly Fast, between six and seven, or about half an hour after six in the morning, 1646." This, with subsequent entries on the same leaf, was copied by Birch, Jan. 6, 1749-50, when the Bible was shown him by Mrs. Foster, granddaughter to Milton (daughter to his youngest daughter Deborah), then keeping a chandler's shop in Cock Lane, near Shoreditch Church. It was the Bible in which Milton had written the dates of his children's births. It was, however, his wife's book: "I am the book of Mary Milton" was written on it in her hand.--The fact that the 29th of July, 1846, on which Milton's first child was born, was Wednesday and a day of public Fast, is verified by a reference to the _Commons Journals_. The Commons had but a brief sitting that day after hearing Fast-day sermons by Mr. Caryl and Mr. Whittaker; and their chief business was to pass thanks to these two preachers for the same.] It was the name also of Milton's sister, once Mrs. Phillips, now Mrs. Agar; but there is little doubt that this can have been thought of only incidentally, and that the real compliment was to Mrs. Powell. The babe was, of course, shown to Mr. Powell in his sadness, and also to its other grandfather, then in the house, who could be cheerier over it, as having less reason for melancholy. "A brave girl," is Phillips's description of the new-born infant; "though, whether by ill constitution, or want of care, she grew up more and more decrepit." The poor girl, in fact, turned out a kind of cripple. This, however, was not foreseen, and for the present there was nothing but the misfortunes of the Powells to mar the joy in the Barbican household over the appearance of this little pledge of the reconciliation of Milton and his wife about a year before. After the little girl was born, they did rouse Mr. Powell to take the necessary steps for the recovery of what could be recovered of his property, if that should prove to be anything whatsoever. The first of these steps consisted in appearing personally, or by petition, before a certain Committee at Goldsmiths' Hall, in Foster-lane, Cheapside, to whom had been entrusted by Parliament the whole business of arranging the compositions with Delinquents whose estates had been sequestrated. To this Committee, which must have had a very busy time of it at the end of the war, when would-be compounders were flocking in from north, south, and west, Mr. Powell, among others, addressed his petition on the 6th of August, 1646, in these terms: "To the Honourable the Committee sitting at Goldsmiths' Hall for Compositions, the humble Petition of Richard Powell, of Forest-hill, in the County of Oxon., Esq., sheweth--That your Petitioner's estate for the most part lying in the King's quarters, he did adhere to his Majesty's party against the forces raised by Parliament in this unnatural war; for which his Delinquency his estate lieth under sequestration. He is comprised within those Articles at the surrender of Oxford; and humbly prays to be admitted to his composition according to the said Articles. And he shall pray, &c.--RICHARD POWELL." [Footnote: Hamilton's Milton Papers Appendix, Document ii.] This was all he could do in the meantime. As soon as the Committee should have leisure to attend to his case, he could take the other necessary steps. Among these would be the preparation of the most perfect schedule of his estate, real and personal, which he could draw up, the verification of every item of the same, and (which would be the most difficult part of the business) his argument with the Committee that, by the Articles of Oxford, he ought to be reinstated both in the goods and furniture which had been sold, at an under value, by the Oxford sequestrators to Appletree, and in the 300_l._, worth of his timber which had been hastily bestowed by Parliament on the people of Banbury. To these matters it would be time enough to attend when the Committee at Goldsmiths' Hall had returned their answer to his Petition. Not till then either need he go through the formality of subscribing the Covenant in the presence of a parish- minister or other authorized person. That was, indeed, an indispensable formality for any Delinquent who would sue out his composition, or otherwise signify his submission to Parliament. But it was a formality which a Delinquent in Mr. Powell's circumstances would willingly put off to the last moment. Milton's father-in-law was not the only one of his relatives who were engaged about this time in the disagreeable business of compounding for their Delinquency. His younger brother, Christopher Milton, was in the same predicament. Our last glimpse of this gentleman was after the surrender of Reading to the Parliamentarian Army under Essex, in April 1643. He was then, we found (Vol. II. pp. 488-490), a householder in Reading, and decidedly a Royalist; and, after the siege, when his father came from Reading to London, to reside with his Parliamentarian brother, he himself remained at Reading, a Royalist still. In the interim he had even been rather active as a Royalist, having been "a Commissioner for the King, under the great seal of Oxford, for sequestering the Parliament's friends of three Counties." Latterly, in some such capacity, he had gone to Exeter; and he had been residing in that city, if not in 1644, when Queen Henrietta Maria was there, at least some time before its siege by the New Model Army. On the surrender of Exeter (April 10, 1646), on Articles similar to those afterwards given to Oxford, he had come to London on very much the same errand as that on which Mr. Powell came three months later. More forward in one respect than Mr. Powell, he had at once begun his submission to Parliament by taking the Covenant. He did so before William Barton, minister of John Zachary, in Alders-gate Ward, on the 20th of April, or almost immediately on his arrival in London. That preliminary over, he had been residing, most probably, in the house of his mother-in-law. Widow Webber, in St. Clement's Churchyard, Strand, where Milton had boarded his wife while the house in Barbican was getting ready. Not till August 7, the day after Mr. Powell had sent in his Petition for compounding to the Goldsmiths' Hall Committee, did Christopher Milton send in _his_ petition to the same body. Then, still styling himself "Christopher Milton, of Reading, in the county of Berks, Esq., a Councillor at Law," he acknowledged his Delinquency in having served as a Commissioner of Sequestrations for the King, but prayed that he might have the benefit of the Exeter Articles of Surrender, so as to be allowed to compound for his little property now sequestered in turn. "I am seized in fee, to me and to my heirs," he said in his accompanying statement, "in possession of and in a certain messuage or tenement situate, standing, and being within St. Martin's parish, Ludgate, called the sign of the Cross Keys, and was of the yearly value, before these troubles, 40_l._ Personal estate I have none but what hath been seized and taken from me and converted to the use of the State. This is a true particular of all my estate, real and personal, for which I only desire to compound to free it out of sequestration, and do submit unto and undertake to satisfy and pay such fine as by this Committee for Compositions with Delinquents shall be imposed and set to pay for the same in order to the freedom and discharge of my person and estate." Two years' value of an estate was about the ordinary fine for Delinquency; but different grades of Delinquency were recognised, and the fines for very pronounced Delinquency were heavier. [Footnote: Particulars about Christopher Milton and his Delinquency are from Hamilton's _Milton Papers_, pp. 62-64, and from Documents lxii. and lxiii. in Appendix.] We have arrived, biographically as well as historically, at August 1646. In this month, while Mr. Powell and Christopher Milton had begun severally to sue out their compositions for Delinquency, it is on a rather crowded domestic tableau round Milton in Barbican that the curtain drops. On one side of him was his own old father, on the other was his father-in-law; the mother-in-law, Mrs. Powell, was there, with her married daughter Mrs. Milton, and the little baby Anne; how many of Mrs. Milton's brothers and sisters were in the group can hardly be guessed; the two boys Phillips, and one knows not how many other pupils, fill up the interstices between the larger people in front; and one sees Christopher Milton, his wife Thomasine, their children, and perhaps the Widow Webber, as visitors in the background. Of the whole company, I should say, the mother-in law, Mrs. Powell, was, for the time being, and whether to Milton's private satisfaction or not, the chief in command. BOOK IV. AUGUST 1646--JANUARY 1648-9. _HISTORY_:--THE LAST TWO YEARS AND A HALF OF THE REIGN OF CHARLES I.:-- I. HIS CONTINUED CAPTIVITY WITH THE SCOTS AT NEWCASTLE, AND FAILURE OF HIS NEGOTIATIONS WITH THE PRESBYTERIANS; II. HIS CAPTIVITY AT HOLMBY HOUSE, AND THE QUARREL BETWEEN THE ENGLISH PARLIAMENT AND THE ENGLISH ARMY; III. HIS CAPTIVITY WITH THE ENGLISH ARMY, AND THEIR PROPOSALS TO HIM; IV. HIS CAPTIVITY IN THE ISLE OF WIGHT, AND THE SECOND CIVIL WAR; V. HIS TRIAL AND DOOM. _BIOGRAPHY_:-MILTON IN BARBICAN AND IN HIGH HOLBORN.--PRIVATE AND PUBLIC ANXIETIES: ODE TO ROUS, TWO MORE SONNETS, AND TRANSLATION OF NINE PSALMS: OTHER WORKS IN PROGRESS: LETTERS TO AND FROM CARLO DATI. CHAPTER I. CHARLES IN HIS CAPTIVITY. Charles himself becomes now the central object. For now, one may say, he was left to think and act wholly for himself, and to work out by his own cogitations and conduct the rest of the long problem between him and his subjects. From this point, therefore, one follows him with a more sympathetic interest than can be accorded to any part of his previous career. When his captivity began (which may be said to have been when the Scots withdrew with him to Newcastle, May 1646) he was forty-five years and six months old. His hair was slightly grizzled; but otherwise he was in the perfect strength and health of a man of spare and middle-sized frame, whose habits had been always careful and temperate. Henrietta-Maria was nine years younger than her husband. For two years they had not seen each other, her co-operation during that time having been given from her residence at or near Paris. There her effort had been to induce the French Queen Regent and Cardinal Mazarin to interfere actively for Charles, with or without the help of the Pope; and, when she had not succeeded in that, she had contented herself with sending to Charles from time to time her criticisms of his procedure and her notions of the kind of arrangement he ought to try to make with his subjects in the last extremity. The influence she had acquired over him was so great that these missives were perfectly efficient substitutes for her black eyes and French-English tongue when she had been with him. Unfortunately, however, the co-agency with his absent Queen to which he thus felt himself obliged, and to which indeed he had solemnly pledged himself, had become the more perplexing because, in the particular of greatest practical moment to both, he and she tended different ways. Of the two main concessions involved in any possible treaty with the Parliament, that of the abandonment of Episcopacy and that of the surrender of the Militia, Charles was most tenaciously predetermined against the first. It was a matter of conscience with him. Next to the death of Strafford, the thing in his past life which caused him the most continued private remorse was his assent, in Feb. 1641-2, to the Bill excluding Bishops from Parliament: whatever happened, he would sin no more in that direction. He would consent to any restriction of his kingly power in the Militia and other matters, rather than do more in repudiation of Episcopacy. Nay, he had reasoned himself into a belief that the course thus most to his conscience would be also the most expedient. Buoying himself up with a hope that, though Parliament demanded both concessions, they might let him off with one, he was of opinion that kingly power in the Militia and other matters might be more easily fetched back by a retained Episcopacy than a lost Episcopacy could be restored by any remnant of his power in the Militia. With Queen Henrietta-Maria the reasoning was different. To her, a Roman Catholic, back now among her co- religionists, what were all the disputes of British Episcopalians, Presbyterians, and Independents, but battles of kites and crows? If her husband's kind of Protestant Church could have been retained, that of course would have been well; but, as things were, she had no patience with those scruples of conscience for which he would sacrifice the most substantial interests of himself and his family. His main object ought to be to retain as much of real kingly power as possible, to be enjoyed by himself and her, and transmitted to their descendants; and might not this be attained by a frank concession to the English of the Presbyterian settlement, only with a personal dispensation to the King if he desired it very much, a reservation of liberty for the Roman Catholics of Ireland and England, and, of course, a toleration for the Queen herself in her private Roman Catholic worship? Actually, with all the King's firmness within himself on the Episcopacy question, the Queen's influence had so far prevailed as to bring him into a position where her views rather than his had chances in their favour. That he was now a captive at all, that he was still in Great Britain to maintain passively the struggle in which he had failed actively, was very much the Queen's doing. Again and again since the blow of Naseby, or at least since Montrose's ruin at Philiphaugh, it had been in the King's mind to abandon the struggle for the time, and withdraw to Holland, Denmark, or some other part of the Continent. That he had not, while the sea was open to him, adopted this course, was owing in part to his own irresolution, but very considerably to his dread of the Queen's displeasure. She did not want him to be on the Continent with her, a dependent on her relatives of the French Court or on the Dutch Stadtholder; she wanted him to remain in Britain and struggle on, somehow, anyhow. Nay, she had devised a particular way for him, and almost compelled him to it. A flight to the Scots and a pact with them on the basis of some acceptance of their Presbyterianism even for England: this was the course which she had urged on him ever since his defeat by Parliament had become certain; this was the course she had arranged for him by causing the French Court to send over Montreuil to negotiate for his reception among the Scots; and, though things had not turned out quite as she expected, and the Scots had shown no disposition to save Charles from the tremendous Nineteen Propositions of the English Parliament, still she did not regret that the course had been taken. It was for the King now to extricate himself from the Nineteen Propositions by his utmost ingenuity, and she did not doubt that this would be most easily done by adhering to the Scots, humouring them in all those parts of the Propositions that related to Presbytery, and evading or refusing the rest. [Footnote: For this and last paragraph see _Charles I. in_ 1646, Introduction by Mr. Bruce, and the King's own Letters _passim_; Clar. 591-600 (Hist.) and 961 (Life); Hallam's Const. Hist. (10th ed.), II. 182-188, with notes.] Irritating as the Queen's conduct in the main had been to Hyde, Hopton, and others of the Royalist exiles, there were particulars of selfishness in it which positively disgusted them. Having persisted in her determination that the Prince of Wales should reside with herself, and nowhere else, she had carried that point, as she did every other, with Charles; and since July the Prince, as well as his infant sister, the Princess Henrietta-Maria, had been under her charge. Rather than accompany the Prince to Paris, and undertake the responsibility of advising him in matters in which it would be necessary to detach him from his mother, Hyde, Hopton, and Lord Capel had remained in Jersey, happy for a time in their mutual society, and Hyde, as he tells us, passing the pleasantest hours of his life in the composition of parts of his History. Others of the King's late counsellors, such as Cottington, the Earl of Bristol, and Secretary Nicholas, had domiciled themselves in Rouen, Caen, or elsewhere in France, away from Paris. But round the Queen, in Paris or at St. Germains, there _had_ gathered not a few of the exiles, gratifying the King more, as it proved, by this compliance than the others did by their prudery. Among these were Lord Jermyn, Lord Digby, Lord Percy, Lord Wilmot, and even Lord Colepepper, though he had at first agreed with Hyde in opposing the removal of the Prince from Jersey. Conspicuous in the same group of refugees was the veteran Thomas Hobbes, Not that he had gone to Paris at that time, as the others had done, in the mere course of Royalist duty. He had been there for several years on his own account, that he might be out of the turmoil of affairs at home, and free to pursue his speculations in quiet, with the relaxation of walks about Notre Dame and the Sorbonne, and much of the agreeable company of M. Gassendi. But the Prince could not be without a tutor, and Hobbes was chosen to instruct him in mathematics and whatever could be brought under that head. If what Clarendon says is true, the philosopher must have had curious remarks to make on the relations between his royal pupil and his mother, and on that lady's own behaviour. Though the Prince was sixteen years of age, she governed him with a high hand. "He never put his hat on before the Queen," says Clarendon; "nor was it desired that he should meddle in any business, or be sensible of the unhappy condition the royal family was in. The assignation which was made by the Court of France for the better support of the Prince was annexed to the monthly allowance given to the Queen, and received by her and distributed as she thought fit; such clothes and other things provided for his Highness as were necessary; her Majesty desiring to have it thought that the Prince lived entirely upon her, and that it would not consist with the dignity of the Prince of Wales to be a pensioner to the King of France. Hereby none of his Highness's servants had any pretence to ask money, but they were contented with what should be allowed them; which was dispensed with a very sparing hand; nor was the Prince himself ever master of ten pistoles to dispose as he liked. The Lord Jermyn was the Queen's chief officer, and governed all her receipts; and he loved plenty so well that he would not be without it, whatever others suffered who had been more acquainted with it." In this last sentence there is an insinuation of more than meets the eye. Henry Jermyn, originally one of the members for Bury St. Edmunds in the Long Parliament, and created Baron Jermyn by Charles (Sept. 8, 1643) for his conspicuous Royalism, had long been the special favourite of the Queen and the chief of her household; after Charles's death he became the Queen's second husband by a secret marriage; and so cautious a writer as Hallam does not hesitate to countenance the belief that his relations to the Queen were those of a husband while Charles was yet alive. [Footnote: Clar. 594-602 and 640; Hallam, Const. Hist. (10th ed.), II. 183 and 188, with footnotes; and Letters of the King, to the Queen, numbered xxvii., xxviii., xxxii., xxxv., and xxxviii. in Brace's _Charles I. in_ 1646. In the last of these letters, dated Newcastle, July 23, Charles writes:--"Tell Jermyn, from me, that I will make him know the eminent service he hath done me concerning Pr. Charles his coming to thee, as soon as it shall please God to enable me to reward honest men. Likewise thank heartily, in my name, Colepepper, for his part in that business; but, above all, thou must make my acknowledgments to the Queen of England (for none else can do it), it being her love that maintains my life, her kindness that upholds my courage; which makes me eternally hers, CHARLES R."] Such were Charles's circumstances, such was his real isolation, when his captivity began. It was to last all the rest of his life, or for more than two years and a half. The form and place of his captivity were indeed to be varied. There were to be four stages of it in all, the first only being his detention among the Scots at Newcastle. At the point which we have reached in our narrative, viz. the conclusion of the Civil War, three months of this first stage of the long captivity (May-August 1646) had already elapsed. We have now, therefore, to follow the King, with an eye also for the course of events round him, through the remainder of this stage of his captivity, and through the three stages which succeeded it. FIRST STAGE OF THE CAPTIVITY: STILL WITH THE SCOTS AT NEWCASTLE: AUG. 1646--JAN. 1646-7. Balancings of Charles between the Presbyterians and the Independents--His Negotiations in the Presbyterian direction: The Hamiltons his Agents among the Scots--His Attempt to negotiate with the Independents: Will Murray in London--Interferences of the Queen from France: Davenant's Mission to Newcastle--The Nineteen Propositions unanswered: A Personal Treaty offered--Difficulties between the Scots and the English Parliament--Their Adjustment: Departure of the Scots from England, and Cession of Charles to the English--Westminster Assembly Business, and Progress of the Presbyterian Settlement. Three months of Scottish entreaty and argumentation had failed to move Charles. He would not take the Covenant; he would not promise a pure and simple acceptance of Presbytery; and to the Nineteen Propositions of the English Parliament he had returned only the vaguest and most dilatory answer. The English Parliamentarians, as a body, were furious, and the milder of them, with the Scots, were in despair. "We are here, by the King's madness, in a terrible plunge," Baillie writes from London, Aug. 18; "the powerful faction desires nothing so much as any colour to call the King and all his race away." In another letter on the same day he says, "We [the Scots in London] strive every day to keep the House of Commons from falling on the King's answer. We know not what hour they will close their doors and declare the King fallen from his throne; which if they once do, we put no doubt but all England would concur, and, if any should mutter against it, they would be quickly suppressed." And again and again in subsequent letters, through August, September, and October, the honest Presbyterian writes in the same strain, breaking his heart with the thought of the King's continued obstinacy. [Footnote: Baillie, II. 389 _et seq._] It must not be supposed that Charles was merely idle or inert in his obstinacy. In the wretched phrase of those who regard politics as a kind of game, he was "playing his cards" as well as he could. What was constantly present to his mind was the fact that his opponents were a composite body distracted by animosities among themselves. He saw the Presbyterians on the one wing and the Independents on the other wing of the English or main mass, and he saw this main mass variously disposed to the smaller and very sensitive Scottish mass, to whose keeping he had meanwhile entrusted himself. Hence he had not even yet given up the hope, which he had been cherishing and expressing only a month before his flight to the Scots, that he "should be able so to draw the Presbyterians or the Independents to side with him for extirpating one the other, that he should really be King again." [Footnote: From a letter to Lord Digby, dated March 26, 1646, quoted by Godwin (II. 132-3) from Carte.] He could not now, of course, pursue that policy in a direct manner or with the expectation of immediate success. But he could pursue it indirectly. He could extract from the Nineteen Propositions the two main sets of concessions which they demanded--the concession of Presbytery and what went along with that, and the concession of the Militia and what went along with that; and, holding the two sets of concessions in different hands, he could alternate between that division of his opponents which preferred the one set and that which preferred the other, so as to find out with which he could make the best arrangement. By a good deal of yielding on the Episcopacy question, coupled with a promise to suppress Sects and Heresy, might he not bribe the Scots and Presbyterians to join him against the Independents? By a good deal of yielding on the Militia question, coupled with a promise of Toleration for the Sects, might he not bribe the Independents to join him against the Presbyterians, and perhaps even save Episcopacy? Which course would be the best? Might not that be found out most easily by trying both? In accordance so far with the advices from France, Charles had begun with the Presbyterian "card," and had played it first among the Scots. We have seen the classification he had made of the Scots, from his observation of them at Newcastle, into the four parties of the Montroses, the Neutrals, the Hamiltons, and the Campbells. The Montroses, or absolute Royalists, were now nowhere. After having lurked on in his Highland retreat, with the hope of still performing some feat of Hannibal in the service of his captive Majesty, Montrose had reluctantly obeyed the orders to capitulate and disband which had been sent to him as well as to all the Royalist commanders of garrisons in England, and, without having been permitted the consolation of going to Newcastle to kiss his Majesty's hand, had embarked, with a few of his adherents, at Stonehaven, Sept. 3, in a ship bound to Norway. The first of the four parties of Scots in the King's reckoning of them being thus extinct, and the second or Neutrals making now no separate appearance, the real division, if any, was into the Hamiltons and the Campbells. The division was not for the present very apparent, for Hamilton and his brother Lanark had not been ostensibly less urgent than Argyle and Loudoun that his Majesty would accept the Nineteen Propositions. But underneath this apparent accord his Majesty had discerned the slumbering rivalry, and the possibility of turning it to account. He had regained the Hamiltons. When the Duke, indeed, came to Newcastle in July to kiss the hand of his royal kinsman from whom he had been estranged, and by whose orders he had been in prison for more than two years, the meeting had been rather awkward. Both had "blushed at once." But forgiveness had passed between them; and, though the King in his letters to the Queen continued to speak of the "bragging" of the Hamiltons, and of his "little belief" in them, the two black-haired brothers did not know that, but were glad to hear themselves again addressed familiarly by the King as "Cousin James" and "Lanark." Through these Hamiltons might not a party among the Scots be formed that should be less stiff than Argyle, Loudoun, and the others were for concurrence with the English in all the Nineteen Propositions? The experiment was worth trying, and in the course of September the King did try it in a very curious manner. The Duke of Hamilton, who had meanwhile paid a visit to Scotland, had then returned to Newcastle at the head of a new deputation from the Committee of the Scottish Estates, charged with the duty of reasoning with his Majesty. Besides the Duke, there were in the deputation the Earls of Crawford and Cassilis, Lords Lindsay and Balmerino, three lesser barons, and three burgesses. They had had an interview with the King, and had pressed upon him the Covenant and the Nineteen Propositions by all sorts of new arguments, but without effect. The next day, however, they received a communication from his Majesty in writing. After expressing his regret that his conversation with them the day before had not been satisfactory, he explains more fully an arrangement which he had then proposed. Whatever might be his own opinion of the Covenant, he by no means desired from the Scots anything contrary to their Covenant. But was it not the main end of the Covenant that Presbyterial Government should be legally settled in England? Well, he was willing to consent to this after a particular scheme. "Whereas I mentioned that the Church- government should be left to my conscience and those of my opinion, I shall be content to restrict it to some few dioceses, as Oxford, Winchester, Bristol, Bath and Wells, and Exeter, leaving all the rest of England fully under the Presbyterian Government, with the strictest clauses you shall think upon against Papists and Independents." In other words, Charles offered a scheme by which Presbytery and Episcopacy should share England between them on a strict principle of non-toleration of anything else, Presbytery taking about four-fifths, and Episcopacy about one-fifth. He argues eagerly for this scheme, and points out its advantages. "It is true," he says, "I desire that my own conscience and those that are of the same opinion with me might be preserved; which I confess doth not as yet totally take away Episcopal Government: but then consider withal that this [scheme] will take away all the superstitious sects and heresies of the Papists and Independents; to which you are no less obliged by your Covenant than the taking away of Episcopacy." How far this scheme of the King was discussed or even published does not appear. It was one which the Scottish Commissioners collectively could not even profess to entertain; and, however well disposed Hamilton may have been privately to abet it, he dared not give it any countenance openly. [Footnote: Authorities for this and the last paragraph are-- Napier's Montrose, 631 _et seq._; Burnet's Lives of the Hamiltons (ed. 1852), 359-375; Rushworth, VI. 232, and 327-329; King's Letters l. and lxiii. in _Brace's Charles I_, in 1646. The remarkable Paper of the King proposing a compromise between Episcopacy and Presbytery is given entire both by Rushworth and by Burnet It is not dated, but is one of several letters given by both these authorities as written by the King in September 1646. Burnet, who had a copy before him in Lanark's hand, notes the absence of the date. In a postscript to the letter, however, as given in Rushworth, the King says: "I require you to give a particular and full account hereof to the General Assembly in Scotland;" and in Burnet's copy the words are "to the General Assembly _now sitting in Scotland_." This phrase would refer the Paper to some time between June 3 and June 18 when the Assembly was last in session, its next meeting not being till August 4, 1647. In that case the Paper must have been delivered not to the deputation mentioned in the text, but to the prior deputation from Scotland. of which Lanark was one (_antè_, pp. 412-418), This is possible; but it does not lessen the significance of the document in connexion with the King's dealings with the Hamiltons in September, The extant copy of the Paper seen by Burnet was in Lanark's hand; it must therefore have been mainly through the Hamiltons that Charles wanted to feel the pulse of Scotland respecting his proposal; and the proposal, if first made in June, must have been a topic between the King and the Hamiltons in subsequent months. Altogether, however, I suspect, the proposal did not go far beyond the King and the Hamiltons, I have found no distinct cognisance of it in Baillie or in the Acts of the Assembly of 1646.] And so, with a heavy heart, Hamilton, in the end of September, returned to Scotland. Foreseeing the King's ruin, he had resolved to withdraw altogether from the coil of affairs, and retire to some place on the Continent. In vain did his brother Lanark fight against this resolution; and not till he had received several affectionate letters from the King did he consent to remain in Britain on some last chance of being useful. Actually, from this time onwards, Hamilton and Lanark, though not yet daring a decidedly separate policy from that of Argyle and his party in Scotland, did work for the King as much as they could within limits. He continued to correspond with both, but chiefly with Lanark. Not the less, while the King was trying to bargain with the Presbyterians through the Hamiltons, was he intriguing in the opposite direction. His agent here was a certain Mr. William Murray, son of the parish-minister of Dysart in Scotland, and known familiarly as Will Murray. He had been page or "whipping-boy" to Charles in his boyhood, had been in his service ever since, had been recently in France, but had returned early in 1646. His connexions with the King being so close, and his wiliness notorious, he had been arrested by Parliament and committed to the Tower as a spy; and it had cost the Scottish Commissioners some trouble--Baillie for one, but especially Gillespie, who was related to Murray by marriage--to procure his release on bail. This having been accomplished in August, he had been allowed to go to his master in Newcastle, the Scottish Commissioners vouching that he would use all his influence to bring the King into the right path. He had been well instructed by Baillie as to all the particulars of the duty so expected from him, not the least of which, in Baillie's judgment, was that he should get the King to dismiss Hobbes from the tutorship of the Prince at Paris. Once with the King, however, Murray had forgotten Baillie's lectures, and relapsed into his wily self. "Will Murray is let loose upon me from London," the King writes to the Queen Sept. 7; but on the 14th he writes that Murray has turned out very reasonable, and that, though he will not absolutely trust him, the rather because he is not a client of the Hamiltons, but "plainly inclines more to Argyle," yet he hopes to make good use of him. On the 2lst we hear of "a private treaty" he has made with Murray; and the result was that, in October, Murray, created Earl of Dysart in prospect, was back in London on a secret mission, the general aim of which was the conciliation of the Independents. On the condition that the King should surrender on the Militia question, give up the Militia even for his whole life, would the Parliamentary leaders consent to the restoration of a Limited Episcopacy after three or five years? It was a dangerous mission for Murray, "so displeasing that it served only to put his neck to a new hazard;" and he was obliged to keep himself and his proposals as much within doors as he could. [Footnote: Baillie, II. 391-396, and Appendix to same vol., 509, 510; Burnet's Hamiltons, 378; and Hallam, II. 187-8, and Notes.] To the Queen at Paris her husband's continued hesitation on the Episcopacy question seemed positively fatuous. Her letters, as well as Jermyn's and Colepepper's, had not ceased to urge bold concession on that question, and a paction with the Scots for Presbytery. Now, accordingly, their counsels to this effect became more emphatic. The Queen thought the King perfectly right in refusing his personal signature to the Covenant, and advised him to remain steady to that refusal, and also to his resolution not to let the Covenant be imposed upon others; she was moreover sure that he ought not to abandon Ireland or the English Roman Catholics to the mercies of Parliament; but, with these exceptions, she would close with the Scots and Presbyterians in the matter of Church- government, if by that means she could save the Militia and the real substance of kingly prerogative. "We must let them have their way in what relates to the Bishops," she wrote to Charles, Oct. 9/19; "which thing I know goes quite against your heart, and, I swear to you, against mine too, if I saw any one way left of saving them and not destroying you. But, if you are lost, they are without resource; whereas, if you should be able again to head an army, we shall restore them. Keep the Militia, and never give it up, and by that all will come back--(_Conservez-vous la Militia, et n'abandonnez jamais, et par cela tout reviendra_)." Colepepper, always rough-speaking, used more decided language. Nothing remained for the King, he wrote, but a union with the Scottish nation and the English Presbyterians against the Independents and Anti-monarchists; and to secure such a union Episcopacy must go overboard. His Majesty's conscience! Did his Majesty really believe that Episcopacy only was _jure divino_, and that there could be no true Church without Bishops? If so, Colepepper personally did not agree with him, and doubted whether there were six Protestants in the world that did. "Come," he breaks out at last, "the question in short is whether you will choose to be a King of Presbytery, or no King and yet Presbytery or perfect Independency to be." [Footnote: Baillie, II. 389 _et seq._; Rushworth VI. 327 _et seq._; Clarendon, 605; Hallam, II. 185-6; and Queen's Letter in the original French in Appendix to Mr. _Bruce's Charles I. in_ 1646.] It was not only by letter that such counsels from France reached Charles. Bellievre, who had succeeded Montreuil as French ambassador in England, and had been much with the King at Newcastle, plying him with the same counsels, had reported to Mazarin that some person of credit among the English exiles should be sent over, expressly to reason with Charles on the all-important point. They seem to have had some difficulty at Paris in finding a proper person for the mission. To have sent Hobbes, even if he would have gone, would have been too absurd. Hobbes a successor of Alexander Henderson in the task of persuading the King to accept Presbytery! The person sent, however, was the one next to Hobbes in literary repute among the Royalist exiles, the one most liked by Hobbes, and oftenest in his company. He was no other than the laureate and dramatist Will Davenant, known on the London boards by that name for a good many years before the war, but now Sir William Davenant, knighted by the King in Sept. 1643 for his Army-plotting and his gallant soldiering. He was over forty years of age, and had just turned, or was turning, a Roman Catholic in Paris, or perhaps rather a Roman Catholic Hobbist. Clarendon, with a sneer at Davenant's profession of play-writer, makes merry over the choice of such an agent by the Queen, Jermyn, and Colepepper, and relates the result with some malice. Arrived at Newcastle late in September, or early in October, Davenant had delivered his letters to the King, and proceeded to argue according to his instructions. Charles had heard him for a while with some patience, but in a manner to show that he did not like the subject of his discourse. Determined, however, to do his work thoroughly, Davenant had gone on, becoming more fluent and confidential, It was the advice of all his Majesty's friends that he should yield on the question of Episcopacy! "What friends?" said the King. "My Lord Jermyn," replied Davenant. His Majesty was not aware that Lord Jermyn had given his attention to Church questions. "My Lord Colepepper," said Davenant, trying to mend his answer. "Colepepper has no religion," said the King, bluntly; and then he asked whether the Chancellor of the Exchequer (_i.e._ Clarendon himself, then Sir Edward Hyde) agreed with Colepepper and Jermyn. Davenant could not say he did, for Sir Edward was not in Paris with the Prince, as he ought to have been, but in Jersey: and he proceeded to convey from the Queen some insinuations to Hyde's discredit. The King, Clarendon is glad to tell, had defended him, and said he had perfect trust in him, and was sure _he_ would never desert the Church. Something of the wit, or of the Roman Catholic Hobbist and freethinker, had then flashed out in the speech of the distressed envoy. He "offered some reasons of his own in which he mentioned the Church slightingly." On this the King had blazed into proper indignation, given poor Davenant "a sharper reprehension than he ever did to any other man," told him never to show his face again, and frowned him to the door. And so, says Clarendon, "the poor man, who had indeed very good affections," returned to Paris crestfallen. [Footnote: Clar. 606, and Wood's Ath. III. 801, 805. The King's Letters mention Davenant's presence at Newcastle and the purport of his argument, but without tolling of any such _scene_ between him and Davenant as Clarendon describes. Davenant had not arrived at Newcastle Sept. 26, but was there Oct. 3. He was back in Paris in November.] Perturbed by the Queen's difference from him on the matter he had most at heart, and saddened by the failure of his own schemings in opposite directions, Charles appears to have sunk for a time into a state of sullen passiveness, varied by thoughts of abdication or escape. By December, however, he had again roused himself. By that time, Will Murray having returned to him with fresh suggestions from London, he had made up his mind to send to the English Parliament an Answer to their Nineteen Propositions in detail. He had prepared such an Answer, and on the 4th of December he sent a draft of it to the Earl of Lanark in Edinburgh. In this draft he goes over the Propositions one by one, signifying his agreement where it is complete, or the amount of his agreement where it is only partial. In such matters as the management of Ireland, laws against the Roman Catholics, &c., he will yield to Parliament; but he would like an act of general oblivion for Delinquents. In the matter of the Militia his offer is to resign all power for ten years. In the matter of the Church he offers his consent to Presbytery for three years, as had been settled by Parliament, with these provisions--(l) that there be "such forbearance to those who through scruple of conscience cannot in everything practise according to the said rules as may consist with the rule of the Word of God and the peace of the kingdom;" (2) "that his Majesty and his household be not hindered from that form of God's service which they have formerly done;" and (3) that he be allowed to add twenty persons of his own nomination to the Westminster Assembly, to aid that body and Parliament in considering what Church-government shall be finally adjusted after the three years' trial of Presbytery. Altogether, the concessions were the largest he had yet offered, and an elated consciousness of this appears in the letter which conveyed the Draft to Lanark for the consideration of him and his friends in Scotland. Only on one point is he dubious. The clause promising a toleration for scrupulous consciences may not please the Scots! He explains, however, that that clause had been inserted "purposely," to make the whole "relish the better" with the English Independents, and adds, "If my native subjects [the Scots] will so countenance this Answer that I may be sure they will stick to me in what concerns my temporal power, I will not only expunge that clause, but likewise make what declarations I shall be desired against the Independents, and that really without any reserve or equivocation." This was Charles all over!--Alas! Lanark's reply was unfavourable. The Toleration clause, he wrote, was but one of the stumbling-blocks. As far as he could ascertain Scottish opinion, he dared not "promise the least countenance" to the King's proposals about the Church, omitting as they did all mention of the Covenant, and contemplating an entire re-opening of the debate on Presbytery. Nor was it from Lanark only that the Draft met discouragement. From the Queen, to whom also a copy had been sent, the comments that came, though from a point of view different from Lanark's, were far more cutting. The surrender of the Militia for ten years amazed her. "By that you have also confirmed them the Parliament for ten years; which is as much as to say that we shall never see an end to our misfortunes. For while the Parliament lasts you are not King; and, for me, I shall never again set foot in England. And with this shift of your granting the Militia you have cut your own throat (_Et avec le biais que vous avez accordé la Milice, vous vous este coupé la gorge_)." On the promised concession with respect to Ireland she remarks: "I am astonished that the Irish do not give themselves to some foreign king; you will force them to it at last, seeing themselves made a sacrifice."--The result was that, though the terms of Charles's draft Answer got about, and he was in a manner committed to them, the message which he did formally send to Parliament, on the 20th of December, was quite different from the Draft. It explained that, though he had bent all his thoughts on the preparation of a written Answer to the Nineteen Propositions, "the more he endeavoured it he more plainly saw that any answer he could make would be subject to misinformations and misconstructions." He repeats, therefore, his earnest desire for a personal treaty in London. [Footnote: Burnet's Hamiltons, 381-389 (for the interesting correspondence between the King and Lanark); King's Letters, liii.-lxii. in Bruce's _Charles I. in_ 1646, and Queen's Letters in Appendix to the same: Rushworth, VI. 393; and Parl. Hist. III. 537.] Meanwhile, quite independently of the King, his messages, or his wishes, matters had been creeping on to a definite issue. For four months now there had been a most intricate debate between the Scots and the English Parliament on the distinct and yet inseparable questions of the Disposal of the King's Person and the Settlement of Money Accounts. Though the reasoning on both sides on the first question was from Law and Logic, it was heated by international animosity. Lord Loudoun was the chief speaker for the Scottish Commissioners in the London conferences; the great speech on the English side was thought to be that of Mr. Thomas Challoner, a Recruiter for Richmond in Yorkshire; but the speeches, published and unpublished, were innumerable, and a mere abstract of them fills forty pages in Rushworth. Not represented by so much printed matter now, but as prolix then, was the dispute on the question of Accounts. The claim of the Scots for army-arrears and indemnity was for a much vaster sum than the English would acknowledge. This item and that item were contested, and the Accounts of the two nations could not be brought to correspond. Not even when the Scots consented to a composition for a slump sum roughly calculated was there an approach to agreement. The Scots thought 500,000_l_. little enough; the English thought the sum exorbitant. Equally on this question as on the other it was the Independents that were fiercest against the Scots and the most careless of their feelings; and again and again the Presbyterians had to deprecate the rudeness shown to their "Scottish brethren." And so on and on the double dispute had wound its slow length between the two sets of Commissioners, the English Parliament looking on and interfering, and the Scottish Parliament, after its meeting on the 3rd of November, contributing its opinions and votes from Edinburgh. [Footnote: Rushworth, VI. 322-372.] To Charles in Newcastle all this had been inexpressibly interesting. A rupture between the English and the Scots, such as would occasion the retreat of the Scots into their own country, carrying him with them, was the very greatest of his chances; and it was in the fond dream of such a chance that he had procrastinated his direct dealings with the English Parliament. But from this dream there was to be a rude awakening. It came in December, precisely at the time when he was corresponding with the Queen and Lanark over his proposed compromises on all the Nineteen Propositions. Already, indeed, there had been signs that the dispute between the two nations was working itself to an end. By laying entirely aside the question of the Disposal of the King's person, and prosecuting the question of Accounts by itself, difficulties had been removed and progress made. It had been agreed that the sum to be paid to the Scots should be 400,000_l._ in all, one-half to be paid before they left England, and the rest in subsequent instalments; and actually on the 16th of December the first moiety of 200,000_l._ was off from London in chests and bags, packed in thirty-six carts, to be under the charge of Skippon in the North till it should be delivered to the Scots. Yes! but would it ever be delivered to the Scots? Not a word was in writing as to the surrender of the King by the Scots, but only about their surrender of the English towns and garrisons held by them; and, so far as appeared, the money was to be theirs even if they kept the King. Here, however, lay the very skill of the policy that had been adopted. Instead of persisting in the theoretical question of the relative rights of the two nations in the matter of the custody of the King, and wrangling over that question in its unfortunate conjunction with a purely pecuniary question, it had been resolved to close the pecuniary question by putting down the money in sight of the Scots as undisputedly theirs on other grounds, and allowing them to decide for themselves, under a sense of their duty to all the three kingdoms, whether they would let Charles go to Scotland with them or would leave him in England. Precisely in this way was the issue reached. But oh! with what trembling among the Scots, what wavering of the balance to the very last! Dec. 16, the very day when the money left London, there was a debate in the Scottish Parliament or Convention of Estates in Edinburgh, the result of which was a vote that the Scottish Commissioners in London should be instructed to "press his Majesty's coming to London with honour, safety, and freedom," for a personal treaty, and that resolutions should go forth from the Scottish nation "to maintain monarchical government in his Majesty's person and posterity, and his just title to the crown of England." This vote, passing over altogether the question of the surrender of the King, and pledging the Scots to his interests generally, was a stroke in his favour by the Hamilton party in the Convention, carried by their momentary preponderance. But the flash was brief. There was in Edinburgh another organ of Scottish opinion, more powerful at that instant than even the Convention of Estates. This was the Commission of the General Assembly of the Kirk, or that Committee of the last General Assembly whose business it was to look after all affairs of importance to the Kirk till the next General Assembly should meet. The Commission then in power, by appointment of the Assembly of June 1646, consisted of eighty-nine ministers and about as many lay-elders; and among these latter were the Marquis of Argyle, the Earls of Crawford, Marischal, Glencairn, Cassilis, Dunfermline, Tullibardine, Buccleuch, Lothian, and Lanark, besides many other lords and lairds. It was in fact a kind of ecclesiastical Parliament by the side of the nominal Parliament, and with most of the Parliamentary leaders in it, but these so encompassed by the clergy that the Hamilton influence was slight in it and the Argyle policy all- prevailing. Now, on the very day after that of the Hamilton resolutions in Parliament for the King (Dec. 17), and when Parliament was again in debate, the Commission spoke out. In "A Solemn and Seasonable Warning to all Estates and Degrees of Persons throughout the Land" they proclaimed their view of the national duty. Nothing could be more dangerous, they said, than that his Majesty should be allowed to come into Scotland, "he not having as yet subscribed the League and Covenant, nor satisfied the lawful desires of his loyal subjects in both nations;" and they therefore prayed that this might be prevented, and that, in justice to the English, to whom the Scots were bound by the Covenant, the King should not be withdrawn at that moment from English influence and surroundings. This opinion of the Commission at once turned the balance in the Convention. The resolutions of the previous day were rescinded; and on that and the few following days it was agreed, Hamilton and Lanark protesting, that nothing less than the King's absolute consent to the Nineteen Propositions would be satisfactory, and that, unless he made his peace with the English, he could not be received in Scotland. When the letters with this news reached Charles at Newcastle, he was playing a game of chess. He read them, it is said, and went on playing. He had a plan of escape on hand about the time, and the very ship was at Tynemouth. But it could not be managed. [Footnote: Rushworth, VI. 389-393; Burnet's Hamiltons, 389-393; Baillie, III. 4, 5; Parl. Hist. III. 533-536.] January 1646-7 was an eventful month. On the 1st it was settled by the two Houses that Holdenby House, usually called Holmby House, in Northamptonshire, should be the King's residence during farther treaty with him; and on the 6th the Commissioners were appointed who should receive him from the Scots, and conduct him to Holmby. The Commissioners for the Lords were the Earls of Pembroke and Denbigh and Lord Montague; those for the Commons were Sir William Armyn (for whom Sir James Harrington was substituted), Sir John Holland, Sir Walter Earle, Sir John Coke, Mr. John Crewe, and General Browne. On the 13th these Commissioners set out from London, with two Assembly Divines, Mr. Stephen Marshall and Mr. Caryl, in their train, besides a physician and other appointed persons. On the 23rd they were at Newcastle. On the whole, the King seemed perfectly content. When the English Commissioners first waited on him and informed him that they were to convey him to Holmby, he "inquired how the ways were." On Saturday, Jan. 30, the Scots marched out of Newcastle, leaving the King with the English Commissioners, and Skippon marched in. Within a few days more, the 200,000_l._ having been punctually paid, and receipts taken in most formal fashion, as prescribed by a Treaty signed at London Dec. 23, the Scots were out of England. The Scottish political Commissioners (Loudoun, Lauderdale, and Messrs. Erskine, Kennedy, and Barclay) had left London immediately after the conclusion of the Treaty. [Footnote: Commons Journals, Jan. 7 and 12, 1646-7; Rushworth, VI. 393-398; Parl. Hist. III. 533-536; Burnet's Hamiltons, 393-397. Burnet has a curious blunder here, and founds a joke on it. Before the Scottish Commissioners left London, he says, there was a debate in the Commons as to the form of the thanks to be tendered to them. It was proposed, he says, to thank them for their _civilities and good offices_, but the Independents carried it by 24 votes to strike out the words _good offices_ and thank them for their _civilities_ only. "And so all those noble characters they were wont to give the Scottish Commissioners on every occasion concluded now in this, that they were _well-bred gentlemen_." On turning to the Commons Journals for the day in question (Dec. 24, 1646), one finds what really occurred. It was reported that Loudoun, Lauderdale, and the other Scottish Commissioners, were about to take their leave, and that they desired to know whether they could do any service for the English Parliament with the Parliament of Scotland. The vote was on the question whether thanks should be returned to them _for all their civilities and for this their last kind offer_. The Independents (Haselrig and Evelyn, tellers) wanted it to stand so; the Presbyterians (Stapleton and Sir Roger North, tellers) wanted an _addition_ to be made, _i.e._, I suppose, wanted some particular use to be made of the offer of the Commissioners to convey a message to the Scottish Parliament. Actually it was carried by 129 to 105 that the question should stand as proposed by the Independents; and, the Lords concurring next day, the Commissioners were thanked in those terms.] With the Scottish lay Commissioners, there returned to Scotland at this time a Scot who has been more familiar to us in these pages than any of them. For a long time, and especially since Henderson had gone, Baillie had been anxious to return home. Having now obtained the necessary permission, he had packed up his books, had taken a formal farewell of the Westminster Assembly, in which he had sat for more than three years, had received the warmest thanks of that body and the gift of a silver cup, and so, in the company of Loudoun and Lauderdale, had made his journey northwards, first to Newcastle, thence to Edinburgh, and thence to his family in Glasgow. On the whole, he had left the Londoners, and the English people generally, at a moment when the state of things among them was pleasing to his Presbyterian heart. For, both in the Parliament and in the Westminster Assembly, notwithstanding the engrossing interest of the negotiations with and concerning the King, there had been, in the course of the last five months, a good deal of progress towards the completion of the Presbyterian settlement. Thus, in Parliament, there had been (Oct. 9) "An Ordinance for the abolishing of Archbishops and Bishops within the Kingdom of England and the Dominion of Wales, and for settling their lands and possessions upon Trustees for the use of the Commonwealth." It was an Ordinance the first portion of which may seem but the unnecessary execution of a long-dead corpse; but the second portion was of practical importance, and prepared the way for another measure (Nov. 16), entitled "An Ordinance for appointing the sale of the Bishops' lands for the use of the Commonwealth." Then in the Westminster Assembly there had been such industry over the _Confession of Faith_ that nineteen chapters of it had been presented to the Commons on Sept. 25, a duplicate of the same to the Lords Oct. 1, and so with the residue, till on Dec. 7 and Dec. 12 the two Houses respectively had the text of the entire work before them. The Houses had not yet passed the work, or permitted it to be divulged, but had only ordered a certain number of copies to be printed for their own use; nay they had, with what seemed an excess of punctiliousness, required the Assembly to send in their Scriptural proofs for all the Articles of the Confession; but still, when Baillie left London, that great business might be considered off the Assembly's hands. A good deal also had been done in the _Catechisms_ by the Assembly; and, if the Assembly's revised edition of Rous's _Metrical Version of the Psalms_ had not received full Parliamentary enactment, that was because the Lords still stood out for Mr. Barton's competing Version. It was satisfactory to Baillie that, on his return to Scotland, he could report to his countrymen that so much had been done for the Presbyterianizing of England. There were, indeed, drawbacks. Both in London and in Lancashire, where the machinery of Presbytery was already in operation, the procedure was a little languid; and in other parts of England, "owing to the sottish negligence of the ministers and gentry of the shires more than the Parliament," they were wofully slow in setting up the Elderships and the Presbyteries. Even worse than this was the unchecked abundance of Sects and Heresies throughout England, and the prevalence of the poisonous tenet of Toleration. An Ordinance for the suppression of Blasphemies and Heresies, which had been occupying a Grand Committee of the Commons through September, October, November, and December, had not yet emerged into light. These were certainly serious causes of regret to Baillie, but his mood altogether was one of thankfulness and hope. "This is the incomparably best people I ever knew if they were in the hands of any governors of tolerable parts," had been his verdict on the English in a letter of Dec. 7, when he was preparing to take leave of them. An Ordinance against Heresies and Blasphemies would make them perfect, and till that came were there not substitutes? Had not a number of the orthodox ministers of London put forth a famous treatise, called _Jus Divinum Regiminis Ecclesiastici_, arguing for the Divine Right of Presbytery in a manner which left nothing to be desired? The Second Part of Baillie's own _Dissuasive from the Errors of the Time_, published just as he was leaving London (Dec. 28, 1646), and intended as a parting-gift to the English, might also do some good! And, though he himself was no longer to sit in the Westminster Assembly, had he not left there his excellent colleagues, Samuel Rutherford and George Gillespie? [Footnote: Baillie, II. 397-403, 406-7, 410-416, and III. 1-5; Rushworth, VI. 373-388; Parl. Hist. III. 518; Commons and Lords Journals of dates given; Neal's Puritans III. 350-51.] SECOND STAGE OF THE CAPTIVITY: AT HOLMBY HOUSE: FEB. 1646-7--JUNE 1647. The King's Manner of Life at Holmby--New Omens in his favour from the Relations of Parliament to its own Army--Proposals to disband the Army and reconstruct part of it for service in Ireland--Summary of Irish Affairs since 1641--Army's Anger at the proposal to disband it--View of the State of the Army: Medley of Religious Opinions in it: Passion for Toleration: Prevalence of Democratic Tendencies: The Levellers-- Determination of the Presbyterians for the Policy of Disbandment, and Votes in Parliament to that effect--Resistance of the Army: Petitions and Remonstrances from the Officers and Men: Regimental Agitators--Cromwell's Efforts at Accommodation: Fairfax's Order for a General Rendezvous-- Cromwell's Adhesion to the Army--The Rendezvous at Newmarket, and Joyce's Abduction of the King from Holmby--Westminster Assembly Business: First Provincial Synod of London: Proceedings for the Purgation of Oxford University. Holmby or Holdenby House in Northamptonshire had been built by Lord Chancellor Hatton in Elizabeth's time, but afterwards purchased by Queen Anne for her son Charles while he was but Duke of York. It was a stately mansion, with gardens, very much to the King's taste. It was not till the 16th of February that he arrived there, the journey from Newcastle having been broken by halts at various places, at each of which crowds had gathered respectfully to see him, and poor people had begged for his royal touch to cure them of the king's evil. Near Nottingham he had been met by General Fairfax, who had dismounted, kissed his hand, and then turned back, conveying him through that town, and conversing with him. [Footnote: Rushworth, VI. 398; Whitlocke (ed. 1853), II. 115; Sir Thomas Herbert's _Memoirs of the last Two Years of the Reign of King Charles I._.(1813), 13-15. Herbert was a kinsman and _protégé_ of the Pembroke family, who had travelled much in the East, published an account of his travels, and had acquired quiet and æsthetic tastes. He had been in various posts of Parliamentary employment, procured for him by Philip, Earl of Pembroke; but, having accompanied that Earl when he went to Newcastle as one of the Commissioners to take charge of the King, he had attracted the King's regard, so that, on the dismissal of some of the King's attendants at Holmby, _he_ was selected to be one of the grooms of the bedchamber. He remained faithfully with the King to his death, cherished his memory afterwards, was made a baronet by Charles II. after the Restoration, and died in 1681. Two or three years before his death he wrote, at a friend's request, the above-mentioned _Memoirs_, containing interesting reminiscences and anecdotes of Charles in his captivity. They were reprinted in 1702 and again in 1813 (see a memoir of Herbert in Wood's Ath. IV. 15-42).] During the four months of the King's stay at Holmby his mode of life was very regular and pleasant. The house and its appurtenances, being large, easily accommodated not only the King and all his permitted servants, but also the Parliamentary Commissioners and their retinue, besides Messrs. Marshall and Caryl, Colonel Graves as military commandant, and the under- officers and soldiers of the guard. The allowance of Parliament for the King's own expenses was 50_l._ a day, so that "all the tables were as well furnished as they used to be when his Majesty was in a peaceful and flourishing state." At meal-times the Commissioners always waited upon his Majesty, and the two chaplains were generally also present. It was almost his only complaint that Parliament persisted in keeping these two reverend gentlemen about him, and would not let him have chaplains of his own persuasion. But, though he declined the religious services of Messrs. Marshall and Caryl, and said grace at table himself rather than ask them to do so, he was civil to them personally, and allowed such of his servants as chose to attend their sermons. On Sundays Charles kept himself quite retired to his private devotions and meditations, and on other days two or three hours were always spent in reading and study. Among his favourite English books were Bishop Andrewes's Sermons, Hooker's Ecclesiastical Polity, Herbert's Poems, Fairfax's Tasso, Harrington's Ariosto, Spenser's Faery Queene, and, above all, Shakespeare's Plays, his copy of the Second Folio Edition of which is still in extant, with the words "_Dum spiro spero: C. R._" written on it by his own hand. But he read also in Greek and Latin, and fluently in French, Italian, and Spanish. At dinner and supper he ate of but a few dishes, and drank sparingly of beer, or wine and water mixed by himself. He disliked tobacco extremely, and was offended by any whiff of it near his presence. His chief relaxations were playing at chess after meals, and walking much in the garden; but, not unfrequently, as he was fond of bowls and there was no good bowling-green at Holmby, he would ride to Lord Spencer's house at Althorp, about three miles off, or even to Lord Vaux's at Harrowden, nine miles off, at both of which places there were excellent bowling-greens and beautiful grounds. In these rides, of course, he was well attended and watched, but still not so strictly but that a packet could sometimes be conveyed to him by a seeming country- bumpkin on a bridge, or a letter in cipher entrusted to a sure hand. Always through the night at Holmby a light was kept burning in the King's chamber, in the form of a wax-cake and wick inside a large silver basin on a low table by the bed, on which also were placed the King's two watches and the silver bell with which he called his grooms. This custom had begun at Oxford and had become invariable. [Footnote: Rushworth, VI. 452-4; Parl. Hist. III. 551 and 557-9; Clar. 608; but chiefly Herbert's Memoirs, 15-25, 61-65, 124-126, and 131. It is remarkable that Herbert, who mentions the other favourite English books of Charles named in the text, does not mention Shakespeare; for Charles's copy of the Second Folio, now in the Royal Library at Windsor, was given to Herbert himself by Charles before his death, and bears, in addition to the inscription in Charles's hand, this in Herbert's, "_Ex dono Serenissimi Regis Car. servo suo humiliss. T. Herbert_" (Lowndes by Bohn, 2,257). Herbert mentions that _Dum spiro spero_ was a favourite motto with Charles, inscribed by him on many books. But that Shakespeare was a prime favourite of Charles we have Milton's authority in the well-known phrase in the [Greek: Gakonoklastæs]--"one whom we well know was the closet companion of these his solitudes, William Shakespeare."] Of course there were continued negotiations between Charles and the Parliament. Anything done in this way, however, during the four months of the stay at Holmby, hardly deserves notice. For at that time there was a huge new clouding of the air in England, pregnant with no one knew what changes, and making the postponement of conclusions between the King and the Parliament quite natural on both sides. All the world has heard of the extraordinary quarrel between the Long Parliament and its own victorious Army. The war being over, and the troublesome Scots out of England at last, what remained but to disband the Parliamentarian Army, and enter on a period of peace, retrenched expense, and renewed industry? This was what all the orthodox politicians, and especially all the Presbyterians, were saying. In the very act of saying it, however, they faltered and explained. By disbanding they did not mean complete disbanding; some force must still be kept up in England for garrison duty, as a police against fresh Royalist attempts; they meant the disbanding of all beyond the moderate force needed for such use; nay, they did not even then mean actual disbanding of all the surplus; they contemplated the immediate re- enlistment and re-organization of a goodly portion of the surplus for service in another employment. What that was, who needed to be told? Did there not remain for England a tremendous and long-postponed duty beyond her own bounds? Now at length, now at length, was there not leisure to attend to the case of unhappy Ireland? Unhappy Ireland! Her history at any time is hard to write; but no human intellect could make a clear story of those five particular years of triple distractedness which intervene between the murderous Insurrection of 1641-2 (Vol. II. pp. 308-314) and the beginning of 1647. One can but note a few points. Through the first year or more of the Insurrection there seemed to be but two parties in Ireland. There was the vast party of the Insurgents, or Confederates, including the whole Roman Catholic population of the island, both the old Irish natives, who had mainly begun the Rebellion, and the Catholics of English descent who had joined in it. Gradually the mere spasmodic atrocity of the first Rebels had been changed into something like an organized warfare, commanded in chief by Generals Preston and Owen Roe O'Neile, while the political conduct of the Rebellion and the government of Confederate Ireland had been provided for by the assembling at Kilkenny of a Parliament of Roman Catholic lords, prelates, and deputies from towns and counties, and by the appointment by that body of county-councils, provincial councils, and a supreme executive council. The other party in Ireland was the small Protestant party, consisting of the mixed English and Scottish population of certain districts of the east and north coasts, with the surviving Protestants from other parts amongst them, and with Dublin and other strongholds still in their possession. At their head ought to have been the Earl of Leicester, Stafford's successor in the Irish Lord-Lieutenancy. But, as Leicester had been detained in England by the King, the management had devolved on the Lords Justices and Councillors resident in Dublin, and on their military assessor, James Butler, 12th Earl of Ormond, who had been Lieutenant-General of the Irish forces under Strafford. In fact it was this able Ormond that had to fight the Rebellion. Though supplies and forces, with some good officers, were sent over from England, and a special army of Scots under General Monro had been lent to the English Parliament for service in Ulster, it was still Ormond that had to direct in chief. His success had been very considerable. In the course of 1643, however, after the Civil War had begun in England, Ireland and the Rebellion there had become related in a strangely complex manner to the struggle between the King and the Parliament. Whatever share the King may have had, through the Queen, in first exciting the Roman Catholics, he had come to regard the Irish distraction as a magazine of chances in his favour. If he could get into his own hands the command of the Protestant forces employed in putting down the Rebellion, he would have an army in Ireland ready for his service generally, and the policy would then be to come to an arrangement with the Roman Catholic Insurgents, so as to free that army, and perhaps the Insurgents too, for his service in England. Now, though the Lords Justices and most of the Councillors in Dublin were Parliamentarian in their sympathies, Ormond was a Royalist, of a family old in Ireland, far from fanatical in his own Protestantism, and with many relatives and friends among the Roman Catholics. Willing enough, therefore, to fight on against the Confederates, he was yet as willing, on instructions from Oxford, to make an arrangement with them in the King's interests. Actually, on the 15th of September, 1643, he did make a year's truce with the Rebels, which permitted the despatch of some portions of his own force, mixed with Irish Roman Catholics, to the King's assistance in England. Vehement had been the outcry of the English Parliamentarians over this breach of the King's compact with them to leave the conduct of the Irish war wholly to the Parliament; and from that moment there were two Protestant powers or trusteeships for the management of the Irish Rebellion. Ormond, made a Marquis, and raised to the Lord-Lieutenancy in Leicester's place (Jan. 1643-4), was trustee for the King, and continued to rule in Dublin, bound by his truce. In other parts of Ireland, however, the war was maintained in the interests of Parliament and by instructions from London--in Munster by Lord Inchiquin; in Connaught by Sir Charles Coote; and in Ulster by Monro and his Scots, in conjunction with English officers and advisers. So the imbroglio had gone on, a mere chaos of mutual sieges and skirmishes in bogs, and Ireland in fact, through the stress of the Civil War at home, all but abandoned to herself in the meantime. The Confederates were stronger after the end of Ormond's year of truce than they had been before; and in 1645 they were up again against Ormond, as well as against Inchiquin, Coote, and Monro. They had already received help from France and Spain, and in Oct. 1645 there arrived among them no less than a Papal nuncio, Archbishop Rinuccini, with a retinue of other Italians, to take possession of the tumult in the name of his Holiness, and regulate it sacerdotally. In this complexity Ormond had still kept his footing. He had kept it even in the midst of a sudden shock given to his Vice-royalty by Charles himself. Without Ormond's knowledge, Charles had been trafficking for months with the Confederate Irish Catholics through another plenipotentiary. In Jan. 1645-6 it came out, by accident, that the Roman Catholic Earl of Glamorgan, to whose presence in Ireland for some months no particular significance had been attached, had been treating, in Charles's name, for a Peace with the Confederates on the basis not merely of a repeal of all penal laws against their Religion, but even of its establishment in Ireland. All Britain and Ireland were aghast at the discovery, and even Ormond reeled. Recovering himself, however, he did what he could to save Charles from the results of his own double-dealing. Glamorgan was imprisoned for a time, with tremendous threats; all publicity was given to Charles's letters authorizing proceedings against him as "one who either out of falseness, presumption, or folly, hath so hazarded the blemishing of his Majesty's reputation with his good subjects, and so impertinently framed these Articles out of his own head;" and meanwhile Charles's letters of consolation to Glamorgan, with his thanks, and promises of "revenge and reparation," remained private. One consequence of the Glamorgan exposure, happening as it did when the King had been all but completely beaten in England, was a resolution of Parliament that Irish affairs should be managed thenceforward not by the mere Committee for these affairs meeting at Derby House, Westminster, and communicating with Inchiquin, Coote, and others in Ireland, but by "a single person of honour," in fact a Parliamentary Lord-Lieutenant. For this high post there was chosen Philip Sidney, Viscount Lisle, M.P. for Yarmouth in the Isle of Wight. This was partly a tribute to Lord Lisle's own zeal and to service he had already rendered in Ireland, partly a compliment to his father, the Earl of Leicester, whom Charles had displaced from the Lord-Lieutenancy to make way for Ormond. Accordingly, from April 1646, while Ormond remained in power for Charles at Dublin, it was in the name of Lord Lisle, as "Lord Lieutenant-General," that all commissions for Parliament respecting Ireland were issued. Lord Lisle, however, had not gone over to Ireland, but had been waiting till he could take troops with him. It remained, therefore, for Ormond to do what he finally could in Ireland for the fallen King. He had been in negotiation with the Confederates for a Peace on more respectable terms than Glamorgan's, and yet valuable for the King; and though, after Charles's flight to the Scots, letters had come from Newcastle (June 11) countermanding previous instructions, Ormond had persevered. On the 28th of July, 1646, _Ormond's Articles of Peace with the Irish Rebels_ were signed at Dublin and published for general information. They promised the repeal of all acts against the Roman Catholic Religion in Ireland, and admission of Roman Catholics to a proportion of all places of public trust; and the recompense was to be an army of 10,000 Irish for his Majesty's assistance in England. The indignation among the Parliamentarians in Ireland, and throughout England and Scotland, was immense, and Ormond was the best-abused man living. Fortunately for him, he was extricated from the consequences of his own Treaty. The Papal Nuncio disowned it as insulting to the Church after Glamorgan's; the Roman Catholic clergy gathered round the Nuncio; there were riots wherever it was proclaimed; excommunications were thundered against its adherents; the Confederate Commissioners who had made the Treaty were imprisoned; the Nuncio himself became generalissimo, and, with Owen Roe O'Neile's army on one side of him and General Preston's on the other, declared war afresh against Ormond, and marched in his robes upon Dublin. For Ormond then there remained one plain duty. To save English rule and the existence of Protestantism in Ireland, he must hand over Dublin and the entire management of the war to the English Parliament. Having procured the King's full consent, he began a treaty with Parliament to this effect in Nov. 1646. As he was staunch in his desire to make the best bargain for the King he could, he was in no hurry; so that in February 1646-7, when the King was taken to Holmby, Ormond was still in Dublin, going on with the Treaty. In reality, however, by that time Ireland was as good as transferred to the Parliament. They had acted on the knowledge. Dec. 23,1646, "Resolved that this House doth declare that they will prosecute and carry on an offensive war in Ireland for the regaining of that kingdom to the obedience of the kingdom of England;" Jan. 4, 1646-7, "Resolved that an Ordinance be forthwith prepared and brought in for establishing and settling the same Form of Church- government in the kingdom of Ireland as is or shall be established in the kingdom of England;" such were two momentous votes of the Commons when the King was about to leave Newcastle. Nay, on the 28th of January, when the Scots were handing over the King to the English, Lord Lisle had left London for Ireland to assume his Lord-Lieutenancy. A new sword of State had been made for him; his Irish Council, of nine members at £500 a year each, had been nominated; and, at his special request, Major Thomas Harrison of the New Model had accompanied him. [Footnote: Authorities for the summary of Irish affairs from 1641 to 1647 given in the text are-- Rushworth, VI. 238-249; Clar. 641, and at various other points; Whitlocke under Jan. 25 and 28 and March 9, 1646-7; Godwin, I. 245 _et seq._, and II. 102 _et seq._; Commons Journals of dates given, with other entries from Dec. 1646 to Feb. 1646-7; and Carte's Ormond. Carte's large book is of some value from the abundance of information that was at his disposal, but is intrinsically silly.] What could Lord Lisle do without troops? Now was the time for England to perform fully for "the gasping and bleeding Island" that duty of which, with all the excuse of her own pressing needs, she had been long too negligent. Now was the time to revenge the massacre of 1641, and re- subject Ireland to English rule and the one only right faith and worship. And were not the means at hand? An army of 25,000 or 30,000 Englishmen was now standing idle: why not disband and cashier part of them, and recast the rest into a new army for the service of Ireland? The question was obvious and natural to all; but it was put most loudly by the Presbyterians, because of a peculiar interest in it. They had never liked the Army of the New Model; all its victories had not reconciled them to it, or made them cease to regret the Army of the Old Model, That had been a respectable army, with the Earl of Essex at its head; this was an army of Independents, Sectaries, Tolerationists. Might not the disbanding of this army be so managed as to be at once a deliverance of England from a great danger and the salvation of Ireland? What was necessary in the process was to get rid of Cromwell, his followers among the officers, and the most peccant parts of the soldiery, so as to leave a sufficient mass to be re-formed, with additions, into an army of the Old Model type, the command of which might be given to Fairfax if he would take it, or perhaps to honest Skippon, or, best of all, to Sir William Waller. This had been the understanding between the English Presbyterians and their Scottish friends since the close of the war. [Footnote: In a letter of Baillie's October 2, 1646, he expects "the Sectarian Army disbanded and that party humbled."] There was, however, another party likely to have a voice in the business. This was the Army itself. Never under the sun had there been such an army before. It was not large according to our modern ideas of armies: only some 25,000 or 30,000 men, four-fifths of them foot-soldiers and the rest horse-troopers and dragoons. But imagine these all hardy men, thoroughly drilled and disciplined, and conscious that it was they who had done the work, they who had fought the battles, they who had saved England. Imagine farther that this Army had somehow come to be constituted, through its entire mass, on Cromwell's extraordinary principle, announced by him to Hampden at the beginning of the war, that the power of an army depends ultimately on the "spirit," or intrinsic moral mood, of the individuals composing it. Imagine that the atoms of this army were all "men of a spirit," men who had not fought as hirelings, but as earnest partakers in a great cause. Imagine them, if you like, as an army of fanatics. This phrase, however, might mislead, unless qualified. The common conception of an army of fanatics is that of an army mad for one set of tenets. Now the Parliamentary Army was really, as the Presbyterians called it, an Army of Sectaries. It was a miscellany of all the forms of Puritan belief known in England, with forms of belief included that were not Puritan. The much largest proportion, after Presbyterians, of whom there were many, and ordinary Independents, of whom there were more, were Sectaries of the fervid and devout sorts, such as Baptists, Old Brownists, and Antinomians, with mystical Millenaries and Seekers, all passionately Scriptural, saturated with the language and history of the Old Testament, and zealously Anti-Romanist and Anti- prelatic; and these, on the whole, were the men after Cromwell's heart. Such, among others, was Harrison--whom Baxter, who had seen much of him, classes at this time among the Anabaptists and Antinomians, telling us "he would not dispute at all [with Baxter], but he would in good discourse very fluently pour out himself in the extolling of Free Grace, which was savoury to those that had right principles, though he had some misunderstandings of Free Grace himself:" a man, adds Baxter, "of excellent natural parts for affection and oratory, but not well seen in the principles of his Religion; of a sanguine complexion; naturally of such a vivacity, hilarity, and alacrity, as another man hath when he hath drunken a cup too much;" and whom Baxter had once heard, in a battle, when the enemy began to flee, "with a loud voice break forth into the praises of God, with fluent expressions, as if he had been in a rapture." But there were also in the army Sectaries of a cooler or easier order-- Arminians, Anti-Sabbatarians, Anti-Scripturists, Familists, and Sceptics. Hardly a form of odd opinion mentioned in our conspectus of English Sects in a former chapter but had representatives in the Army; nay, new speculative oddities had broken out in some regiments; and it may be doubted whether even in the English mind of our own time there is any form of speculation so peculiar as not to have had its prototype or lineal progenitor in that mass of steel-clad theorists contemporary with the Westminster Assembly. Nor did each man keep his theory to himself. There were constant prayer-meetings in companies and regiments, and meetings for theological debate; troopers or foot-soldiers off duty would expound or harangue to their fellows in camp, or even from the pulpits of parish-churches when such were convenient; whenever the Army halted there was a hum of holding-forth. There were army-chaplains, it is true, and some of them, such as Peters, Dell, and Saltmarsh, great favourites; but, on the whole, the regular cloth was in disrepute: those who belonged to it were spoken of as the _Levites_ or priests by profession; the need for such a profession was voted obsolete; and any man was held to be as good for the preaching office as any other, if he had the preaching gift. And with the respect for ordination had vanished the respect for most of the regular Church-forms and symbols. Not only did preaching officers and troopers, when they chanced to enter parish-churches, often eject the regular ministers from the pulpits, and hold forth themselves instead--in which kind of practice Colonel Hewson and Major Axtell are reported to have been conspicuous; but the contempt for established decencies of worship had vented itself, at least in occasional instances, in very profane humours. Soldiers had scandalized country-congregations by sitting with their hats on during prayer and singing; and Hewson's men were said once to have kept possession of a parish-church for eight days, having a fire in the chancel, and smoking tobacco _ad libitum_. Such were, doubtless, mere excesses here and there, which would have been rebuked by the more serious men who formed the bulk of the Army; but it is quite certain that even among these that extreme kind of Independency had become common which repudiated a National Church of any kind whatsoever, nay denied that there was any Church on earth at all, any system of spiritual ordinances visibly from God, anything but a great invisible brotherhood of Saints, walking in this life's darkness, passionately using meanwhile this symbol and that to feature forth the unimaginable, glad above all in the great glow of the present Bible, but expecting also, each soul for itself, rays and shafts from the Light beyond. Of this kind of indifferency to all competing forms of external worship, and even of doctrine, combined with either a mystical and dreamy piety, or a wildly-fervid enthusiasm, Dell and Saltmarsh, among the army- chaplains, seem to have been the most noted exponents; but it was really a modification of that which is already known to us as the _Seekerism_ of Roger Williams. At all events, that absolute doctrine of Toleration which Roger Williams had propounded, and which was logically inseparable in his mind from Independency at its purest, had found its largest discipleship in the Parliamentary Army. Toleration to some extent was the universal Army tenet; even the Presbyterians of the Army, with some exceptions, had learnt to be Tolerationists in some degree. But a very full principle of Toleration had possessed most, and the most absolute possible principle was avowed by many. "If I should worship the Sun or Moon. like the Persians, or that pewter-pot on the table, nobody has anything to do with it," one sectary had been heard to say; and some even had "justified the Irish Rebellion," on the ground that the Irish "did it for the liberty of their consciences and for their country." If this last extreme application of the Toleration doctrine did actually come from the mouth of a sectary serving in the Army (which is not quite clear from the report), it must be regarded, I suspect, as one of those eccentricities of mess-table debate which, when Baxter talked of them to Colonel Purefoy, vouching that he had heard such things himself, that officer indignantly refused to credit, saying, "If Noll Cromwell should hear any soldier speak but such a word, he would cleave his crown." Precisely the Toleration doctrine, however, was that in which Cromwell himself was most thorough-going and most distinctly the representative of the whole Army. Even Baxter, after his two years of army-chaplaincy, spent in observing the medley of sects around him and combating their errors, could not refer Cromwell with positive certainty to any one of the Sects. He seemed most for the Anabaptists, Antinomians, and Seekers, but "did not openly profess what opinion he was of himself." But on Toleration of Religious Differences he was explicit and decided. All that were most to his mind in the Army "he tied together by the point of Liberty of Conscience, which was the common interest in which they did unite." [Footnote: This description of the Parliamentary Army is a digest of the best knowledge I have been able to form from various readings in contemporary books and study of Army documents; but particulars of it are from Baxter's Autobiography (1696), Part I. 52-57, and Edwards's _Gangræna_, Parts II. and III. _passim_. The good, though narrow and hypochondriac, Baxter may be thoroughly relied on for whatever he vouches as a fact known to himself; otherwise, _cum grano_. Edwards has to be put into the witness- box and cross-examined unmercifully, not as a wilful liar, but as an incredibly spiteful collector of gossip for the Presbyterians. After all, many of the so-called ribaldries and profanities reported by him of the Army Sectaries turn out innocent enough, or only very rough jokes, as when a soldier told a godly old woman that, if she did not believe in universal redemption, she would be damned. Perhaps his most horrible story is that of some soldiers taking a horse into a village church in Hunts and baptizing him in all due form at the font, giving him the name of _Esau_ because he was hairy. The story, with a certificate of its truth by seven of the villagers, will be found in Gangræna, Part III. 17, 18. But, if the atrocity ever did occur, its date, according to Edwards himself, was June 2, 1644, _i.e._ in the time of the Old Model Army, to which the very objection of Cromwell and others was that it did not consist sufficiently of "men of a spirit."] There were three reasons why this extraordinary Army should object to being disbanded:--(1) They had large and long-deferred claims upon the Parliament for arrears of pay, compensation for losses, provision for the wounded and disabled and for widows and orphans, indemnity also for illegal or questionable acts done in the time of war. Was the Army to let itself be disbanded without due security on these points? (2) There was the unsettled question of Religious Toleration. The whole drift of things in the Parliament and in the Westminster Assembly seemed to be to a uniform and compulsory Presbyterianism; and was that a prospect to which the Army, or nine-tenths of it, could look forward placidly? The Army did not want to undo the Presbyterian settlement as already decreed, but they were unwilling to disband before a Toleration under that settlement had been arranged. (3) Over and above these two reasons, and in powerful conjunction with them, was another. The Army, although an Army, had not ceased to regard itself as a portion of the English people; nay, it had come to regard itself as a select portion of that people, whose opportunities of thinking and reasoning on political affairs had been peculiarly good. It had come to be, in its own belief, an organ of political opinion, representing wishes and feelings of large parts of the population which were not represented in Parliament, and representing these in the form of conclusions for the future more radical and more definite than any that Parliament alone was ever likely to work out. In short, those democratic ideas the prevalence of which in the Army had so surprised Baxter when he first joined it had now become paramount. It was not only that the Army had formed views more severe than those of the Presbyterians as to the proper terms of the settlement to be made with the King; it was that the Army thought the present the time for discussing the whole subject of the constitution of the country. The House of Lords, for example! Whether there should be a Peerage at all, legislating in a separate House by mere hereditary right, might be a very fair question, and was one on which the Army had pretty decided opinions But that the House of Lords then sitting--not the assembled Peerage of England at all, but a mere fifth-part of that Peerage, in the shape of some twenty-eight persons meeting from day to day, sometimes as few as half-a-dozen of them at a time, and not only partaking with the other House in the legislation, but often obstructing that House, thwarting it, throwing out its measures,--that this should continue who would maintain? No! the House of Lords must go, and the sole House in England must be the other House, the "House of Representers." But here too there was room for improvement. The House of Commons then sitting was numerically substantial enough, now that it had been Recruited; and no one could look back on the great things which the House had done without gratitude and admiration. But were there not signs of exhaustion, debility, and wrong- headedness, even in that House, arising partly from its long independence of the People, partly from the imperfect system of suffrage under which it had been elected. Only in an imperfect sense could the existing House be called a "House of Representers;" and, as soon as should be convenient, it must be dissolved and succeeded by a House fully deserving that name. For the election of such a House there must be a reform of the details of the electoral system, including the abolition of such anomalies as the return of one-twelfth of the whole House by the single and remote county of Cornwall, and a redistribution of seats in accordance with the proportions of population and property in the various parts of England. All these ideas, and many more, anticipating with surprising exactness the Parliamentary Reform movements of much later times, were agitating the Parliamentary Army while the King was in his captivity at Holmby. Pamphlets from London, actively circulated among the regiments, aided the discussion and supplied it with topics and catch- words. Especially popular among the soldiers, and keeping up their excitement more particularly against the House of Lords, were the pamphlets that came from John Lilburne and an associate of his named Richard Overton.--Lilburne, whom we left in October 1645, just released from the short imprisonment to which he had been committed by the Commons (_antè_, p. 390), had gone on again in his old pugnacious way, till, by Prynne's contrivance, he found himself in the clutches of the Lords. Called before that House, in June 1646, for a Letter he had printed, called _The Just Man's Justification_, he had amazed the Peers by conduct such as they had never seen before. He had refused to kneel, refused to take off his hat, refused to hear the charges against him, stopped his ears while they were read, denied the jurisdiction of the Peers, stamped at them, glared at them, told them his whole mind about them, appealed to the Commons as the sole power in the State, and altogether behaved like a mad ox. They had consequently fined him £4,000, and committed him to Newgate for seven years. For similar offences to the Peers, and similar contumacy when charged with them, Richard Overton, a printer and assiduous publisher of pamphlets, had also been sent to prison two months afterwards (Aug. 1646). There was considerable sympathy with both among the Londoners, and the Independents in the Commons had taken up Lilburne's case and procured the appointment of a Committee on it. Nor even in Newgate, it appears, had he been debarred the use of pen and ink; for, in addition to his former pamphlets, there had come from him fiercer and fresh ones--_Anatomy of the Lords' Tyranny_, _London's Liberty in Chains_, _The Free Man's Freedom_, _The Oppressed Man's Oppressions_, _The Resolved Man's Resolution_, &c. These were the pamphlets of Lilburne which, together with Overton's, one of which was _An Arrow Shot into the Prerogative Bowels of the Arbitrary House of Lords_, were popular with the common soldiers of the Parliamentary Army, and nursed that especial form of the democratic passion among them which longed to sweep away the House of Lords and see England governed by a single Representative House.--Baxter, who reports this growth of democratic opinion in the Army from his own observation, distinctly recognises in it the beginnings of that rough ultra-Republican party which afterwards became formidable under the name of THE LEVELLERS. All the while, however, there was also a quiet formation, in some of the superior and more educated minds of the Army, of sentiments essentially Republican, but more reserved and tentative in the style of their Republicanism. Among these minds too it had become a question whether a mere settlement with the King even on the basis of the Nineteen Propositions would suffice, and whether the hour had not come for organic changes in the Constitution of England. Perhaps the leader of Army thought in this direction was Cromwell's son-in-law Ireton. [Footnote: Baxter _ut supra_; Gangræna, part III. _passim_; Lords Journals, June 10, 11, 23, and July 11, 1646 (Lilburne's case), and Aug. 11 (Overton's); Godwin, II. 407 _et seq._; Wood's Ath. III. 353] That the English Presbyterians, bereft now even of that overrated support which had been afforded them by the presence of a Scottish Army in England, should have rushed into a struggle with the English Army, such as it has been described, without trying so much as a compromise on the Toleration question, is one of the greatest examples of political stupidity on record. They seem to have calculated mainly on the fact that they had a majority in Parliament. Of the few Lords forming the Upper House they could count nearly all as decidedly with them. In the Commons, too, where the balance had always been more nearly equal, Presbyterianism had of late been gaining force. Why it had been so is not very obvious. The latest Recruiters may have been politicians of a more Presbyterian type than the earlier ones; and of these earlier Recruiters some who had come in as Independents may have veered round. Men whose opinions are not very decided tend naturally to the winning side, and the King's flight to the Scots and their long possession of him had put Presbyterianism in the likelihood to win. However it had happened, the Presbyterians had of late been preponderating in the Commons. In a vote on Sept. 1, 1646, affecting the relations of the Parliament to the Scots, the Presbyterians had beaten the Independents by 140 to 101; in another vote on Dec. 25, on the question whether the words "according to the Covenant" should be added to a Resolution, the _Yeas_ or Presbyterians had beaten by 133 to 91; and in an interesting vote on Dec. 31, on the question whether the words "or expound the Scriptures" should be added to a Resolution forbidding unordained persons to preach, the _Yeas_ or Presbyterians had beaten by no fewer than 105 to 57. In this last vote Cromwell was one of the Tellers for the _Noes_ or Independents. In testing divisions these numbers may be taken as representing the relative strengths of the two parties in the end of 1646 and the beginning of 1647. But, even with a considerable majority in the Commons, and with the Lords all but wholly a Presbyterian House, the confidence of the Presbyterians in confronting the Army can be accounted for only by reckless leadership. Holles and Stapleton, their most forward men in the Commons, appear to have been men of but ordinary faculty and decidedly rash temper, incomparably inferior to their great opponents. One argument they had, of which they did not fail to make the most. The City of London was eminently and staunchly Presbyterian; and would that great city, the central money-power of the nation, allow the Government to be dictated to by an Army of Sectaries? [Footnote: Commons Journals of dates given, with divisions generally between Aug. 1646 and Feb. 1646-7; Godwin, II. 263 _et seq._] The struggle, long foreseen, began actually in the first two months and a half of the King's stay at Holmby, _i.e._ in February, March, and April, 1646-7. The gauntlet was thrown down by Parliament. Feb. 19, in an unusually full House, it was carried by 158 (Holles and Stapleton tellers) against 148 (Haselrig and Evelyn tellers), that no force of Foot beyond what was necessary for garrisons should be kept up in England, but only a certain force of Horse. On the 5th of March there came a vote on the important question who should be the Commander-in-chief of the retained Army, and so jealous had the Presbyterians become even of Fairfax, because of his connexion with the existing Army, that the Independents, though going for him to a man, carried his appointment but by a majority of 12. Subsequent resolutions, carried without division, were that no member of the House should hold a military command (Cromwell's Self-denying Ordinance cleverly repeated against himself), that no officer in the future Army under Fairfax should be above the rank of Colonel, and that all officers should take the Covenant; and when, on the farther and more outrageous proposition, that all officers must conform to the Presbyterian Church-government, the Independents forced a division; they lost by 108 _Noes_ (Haselrig and Evelyn), against 136 _Yeas_ (Holies and Stapleton). By additional Resolutions of March 29 and April 8 the arrangements were completed. It was formally resolved that all the Foot of the existing Army not required for the garrisons should be disbanded, and that the future Army of Horse under Fairfax should consist of nine regiments of 600 each, or 5,400 in all, recruited out of the existing Army or otherwise. The Colonels for the nine re- modelled regiments were named, some of them cavalry Colonels of the existing Army, but not all. Cromwell's own regiment, or the regiment that should be built out of any safe shred of it with other materials, was to go to the Presbyterian Major Huntingdon.----So much for England and Wales; but what of the new Army for Ireland? That also had been arranged for. March 6, it was voted by the Commons that the Army for Ireland should consist of 8,400 foot, 3,000 horse, and 1,200 dragoons, to be recruited as far as possible from the existing English Army. But how about the command of this Army and the government of Ireland while it should be serving there? Lord Lisle, then in Ireland as Lord-Lieutenant for the Parliament, was one of Cromwell's disciples, and had been appointed by Cromwell's influence. It would not do to leave _him_ in command. Fortunately, he had been appointed but for a year; and, to avoid re-appointing him, it was resolved (April 1) that the previous vote of the Houses for the management of Ireland through "a single person of honour" should be rescinded, and that, while the Civil Government should revert to the two Lords-Justices in Dublin, the military command should be in the hands of a Field-Marshal, attended by Parliamentary Commissioners. Sir William Waller was named for this Field-Marshalship; but the Presbyterians did not go to the vote for him; and Skippon, then at Newcastle, and unaware of the honour intended for him, was unanimously chosen (April 2). The Presbyterian Massey was to be his Lieutenant- General. As an inducement to officers and soldiers of the English Army to re-enlist for the Irish service, high pay was promised, with an option of taking part of it in the valuable form of Irish lands. [Footnote: Commons Journals of the dates given.] 0, if you had been at Saffron Walden in Essex, where the bulk of the English Army was quartered, when the news of these votes of the Commons reached them! What murmurs among the common soldiers, what consultations among the officers! The officers, as was fitting, took the lead. A deputation of four Colonels and five Lieutenant-colonels had already gone to London (March 22) with a Petition and Remonstrance. They had been received graciously enough by the Lords, but coldly and with rebuke by the Commons. Then, a great Petition being in preparation throughout the Army, to be signed by both officers and men, and addressed to Fairfax as Commander-in-chief, there had come, on a hasty motion by Holles, a Declaration of the two Houses (March 29-30) voting the same dangerous and mutinous, and threatening proceedings against such as should go on with it. With vast self-control on the part of the Army, and much good management on the part of Fairfax, the offensive Petition had been suppressed; and through a great part of April the dispute took the form of conferences between Fairfax and his officers and five Commissioners sent down to the Army from Parliament (Waller and Massey among them) to argue for the disbandment and promote re-enlistment for Ireland. At these conferences the questions of arrears, indemnity, the rate of pay in Ireland, &c., were all discussed, and the Commissioners tried to give satisfactory explanations. It was a great point with the Army whether Skippon would accept the Irish Field-Marshalship; and at one of the conferences, when Colonel Hammond was expressing this for his comrades, and saying that nothing would be more likely to induce them to enlist for Ireland than the knowledge that that "great soldier" was to be in command, "_All, all!_" cried the assembled officers, "_Fairfax and Cromwell, and we all go!_" No real conciliation, however, was effected; and on the 26th of April the Commissioners, in their "perfect list" of officers who had agreed individually to go to Ireland, could report but three Colonels, and a proportionate following of Captains and subalterns. Among the men it was worse. In one company, eight score strong, twenty-six had volunteered to go with their Captain; in another the Captain could not get a single man to join him. Parliament was taken aback by this ill success; but Holles and his party were undaunted. It was a gleam in their favour that Skippon, coming to London from Newcastle, did at length (April 27) accept the Irish Field-Marshalship. The Houses voted him their thanks and a gift of 1,000_l._and on the same day it was carried in the Commons, by the overwhelming majority of 114 to 7 (the Independents evidently abstaining from the vote), that the Army, horse and foot, should be immediately disbanded with payment of six weeks of arrears. Orders were also issued for the appearance at the bar of the House of some of the most refractory superior officers and the arrest of several subalterns; and at the same moment the Common Council of the City of London proved their Presbyterian zeal by ejecting Alderman Pennington and other prominent Independents from the Committee of the City Militia. On the very day of this concurrence of Presbyterian demonstrations (April 27) there was presented to the Commons a "Humble Petition of the Officers in behalf of themselves and the Soldiers," with an accompanying "Vindication" of their recent conduct. Lieutenant-general Thomas Hammond headed the list of Petitioners; next came Colonels Whalley, Lambert, Robert Lilburne, Rich, Hewson, Robert Hammond, and Okey; then Lieutenant-colonels Pride, Kelsay, Reade, Jubbs, Grimes, Ewer, and Salmon; then Majors Rogers, Axtell, Cowell, Smith, Horton, and Desborough; and there followed about 130 captains and inferior officers. Such an Officers' Petition might well have given the Presbyterians pause; but three days afterwards (April 30) there came something more extraordinary. It was a Letter brought to town, and delivered to Skippon and Cromwell for presentation to the House, by three private troopers, professing to be "agents" or "agitators" or "adjutators" for some regiments in the Army. It used very high language indeed. It complained of the "scandalous and false suggestions" current against the Army, spoke darkly of "a plot contrived by some men who had lately tasted of sovereignty," and declared flatly that the soldiers "would neither be employed for the service of Ireland nor suffer themselves to be disbanded till their desires were granted, and the rights and liberties of the subjects should be vindicated and maintained." The amazed House ordered the three troopers who had brought the Letter, and who were waiting outside, to be brought in. They came in, gave their names as Edward Saxby, William Allen, and Thomas Sheppard, and stood stoutly to their business. Holles and his clique were for committing them to prison; but, Skippon certifying that they were honest men, and another member suggesting that, if they were committed at all, it should be "to the best inn of the town, and sack and sugar provided for them," the more good- humoured counsel prevailed, and they were dismissed. Nay, their appearance and their Letter had produced an impression. In Holles's own words, "the House flatted," began to think it had been too peremptory, and resolved that Skippon, Cromwell, Ireton, and Fleetwood, should go at once to Saffron Walden, as mediators between it and the Army. [Footnote: Commons Journals of all the cited dates; Rushworth, VI. 444-475; Whitlocke, II. 121-137; Parl. Hist. III. 560-576; Holles's Memoirs by himself (1699), pp. 88-90.] Agents, or Agitators, or Adjutators, the three bold troopers had called themselves; and it was the first time the Houses had heard the name. It announced, however, an important reality. The common soldiers had made up their minds that they could not leave the struggle for the Army's rights wholly in the hands of the officers, and that it might assist these officers if they, the rank and file, with the corporals and sergeants, formed an organization among themselves for the same ends. Accordingly, trusty men in each regiment had been chosen to meet and consult with others of other regiments, and the name "Agitators" or "Adjutators" had been given to these deputies. Very soon the organization was so perfect that every troop or company had its two Agitators, every regiment its distinct Agitatorship composed of the Agitators of the several troops or companies, and so by gradation upwards to general meetings of the Agitators of the whole Army and special meetings of Committees for maturing business more privately. Too obvious a connexion between this association and the higher army-officers was inconvenient; but it was useful to have connecting links in officers of the lower ranks; and the Presidency of the Agitators came, at length, to be vested in one such officer. This was James Berry, one of the captains of Fairfax's own horse-regiment, in which Desborough was Major. He had been a clerk in some iron-works in the west of England, and was "of very good natural parts, especially mathematical and mechanical." Before the war he and Richard Baxter had been bosom friends; but, since he had come into the Army and been much in the society of Cromwell, he had become, says Baxter, a man of new lights in religion, regarding the old Puritans of his acquaintance as "dull, self-conceited men of a lower form." During Baxter's two years of army-chaplaincy, Berry had never visited him, nor even seen him, except once or twice accidentally. [Footnote: Rushworth, VI. 485: Holles, 86, 87; Baxter's Autobiography, Part I. 57 and 97.] Through the greater part of May, Fairfax being then in London, Cromwell, and his fellow-commissioners, Skippon, Ireton, and Fleetwood, remained at Saffron Walden, busy in their work of mediation. Three successive letters to Speaker Lenthall reported the amount of their success. It was next to nothing. They had obtained, they say in the last of the three letters (May 17), a complete statement of the grievances of the Army, in the form of papers which they would bring to town; but meanwhile they found the soldiers so unsettled that they did not think it safe to leave them. Skippon and Ireton, in fact, did remain; but Cromwell and Fleetwood returned to town, May 21, to report to the House in greater detail. Among the documents they brought with them, representing the opinions and demands of the Army, was one which had been prepared with extraordinary care. The various votes relating to the Army having been read to each regiment by its commanding officer, the regimental Agitatorships (apparently now first fully constituted) had reported the opinions and demands of the regiments severally, and these opinions and demands had been digested into one Draft at a conference of the chief officers, on the principle of including only such demands as were made unanimously by all the regiments. Rushworth does not give the document, but describes it as fair and moderate, and tells us in particular that, while it complained of misrepresentations and ill-treatment, and desired reparation, it denounced only one person by name. One is not surprised to learn that this was the Rev. Mr. Edwards. His _Gangræna_, it was said, had been written expressly to make the Army odious. [Footnote: Letters in Appendix IX. to Carlyle's Cromwell; Commons Journals of May 21; and Rushworth, VI. 485-6.] Moderate or not, the Army's _ultimatum_ obtained but an unfriendly hearing in the two Houses; and, between the 22nd and the 28th of May, Fairfax having meanwhile returned to the Army, they issued their opposed _ultimatum_ in a sharp series of orders. The entire army of Foot was to be disbanded, willing or unwilling, on the terms fixed: Fairfax's own regiment at Chelmsford on June 1, Hewson's at Bishop's Stortford on June 3, Lambert's at Saffron Walden on June 5, and so on regiment by regiment, each on a named day and at a named place, a Committee of the two Houses to be present at each disbanding, and Skippon also to be present to enlist such of the disbanded men as would go to Ireland. These orders reached Fairfax at Bury St. Edmund's in Suffolk, to which he had removed his head-quarters. They threw the Army into an ungovernable uproar, which subsided in a day or two into an ominous calm. For a great resolution had been taken. The Agitators, at a meeting on Saturday, May 29, had drawn up a petition to Fairfax for a speedy Rendezvous of the whole Army at one place for united action; and a council of officers, to the number of 200, with Ireton among them, had declared themselves on the same day to the same effect. They advised Fairfax to grant the Rendezvous, telling him that, if he did not, the men would hold one themselves and it was sure then to end in tumult. Fairfax had taken the advice; and in the last days of May orders were out for the "contraction of the Army's quarters" by drawing the dispersed regiments closer together, and for a general "Rendezvous" at Kentford Heath, close to Newmarket, on Friday the 4th of June. [Footnote: Parl. Hist. III. 582-588, and Rushworth, VI. 494-500.] Fairfax, with whatever hesitation, had thus thrown in his lot with the Army. Skippon, though he had accepted the Irish Field-Marshalship, almost repented having done so, and was one at heart with his old comrades. Of the other officers only a small minority, whether from Presbyterian predilections or out of mere respect for authority, wavered towards Parliament. The chief of these were Colonels Harley, Herbert, Fortescue, Sheffield, Butler, Sir Robert Pye, and Graves, this last being the Colonel in charge of the King at Holmby. On the other side, round Fairfax, and sustaining him, were Generals Ireton and Hammond, as next in rank; with Whalley, Rich, Okey, Rainsborough, Robert Lilburne, Sir Hardress Waller, Robert Hammond, Lambert, Hewson, Ewer, Kelsay, Ingoldsby, Pride, Axtell, Jubbs, Desborough, and other Colonels, Lieutenant-Colonels, and Majors, among whom is not to be forgotten the enthusiast Harrison, back from Ireland just at the right moment. But what of Fleetwood and Cromwell, left in their places in the House of Commons? Which way they would go nobody could doubt; but the question was whether they might not be seized as hostages by the Presbyterians and detained in London. As far as Fleetwood was concerned, the danger was over on the 2nd of June; on which day he had leave from the House "to go into the country," and went we can imagine whither. For Cromwell the danger was greater. He too, however, had made his arrangements. On the evening of the 3rd of June, or early on the following morning, just in time to avoid the arrest and impeachment which Holles and the Presbyterians were preparing for him, he rode quietly out of London in the direction of the Army. As far as can be ascertained, he had waited purposely to cover Fleetwood's departure, and be himself the last army-man to leave the Commons. [Footnote: Commons Journals, June 2; Whitlocke, May 31; Rushworth, VI. 464-8 and 495; Holles 85, 86; Clar. 611; Godwin, II. 311, 312. Cromwell's so-called "Flight to the Army" is an incident made much of by Royalist and Presbyterian writers, and Clarendon's account of it and what preceded it is a perfect jumble of incompatible dates and confused rumours. What all those writers (Holles, Clement Walker, Clarendon, Baxter, Burnet, &c.) wanted to make out, and really succeeded in transmitting as a fact, was that Cromwell's whole conduct through the dispute between the Army and Parliament, up to the moment of his flight, had been a tissue of the profoundest craft and hypocrisy. He had pushed on the policy of disbandment in the Parliament on the one hand, and on the other he had fomented the mutiny in the Army through the Agitators; to lull suspicion when it was roused, he had at the last moment protested in the House in the presence of Almighty God that he knew the Army would lay down their arms; and not till his flight was the whole depth of his dissimulation known! On these statements, and the disposition of mind that could invent them or believe in them, see Mr. Carlyle's impressive words (Cromwell's Letters and Speeches, I. 220-222). The real facts are to be gathered or inferred from the Commons Journals. Cromwell had been in London through February, March, and April, while the votes for disbandment, &c. were passed, unable to resist those votes, but anxious to prevent a rupture, and doing his best to that end: and not till after his return from his mission of mediation to the Army (May 21), or even till after the Army's resolution for a Rendezvous (May 29), were his hopes of a reconciliation utterly gone.] The general Rendezvous of the Army was duly held, as appointed, near Newmarket, in Cambridgeshire, on Friday the 4th of June. There were present seven foot-regiments and six regiments of horse--a full representation of the Army, though not the whole. There was the utmost display of resolution. One great general Petition was agreed to; a solemn engagement was drawn up and signed by officers and soldiers; Fairfax rode from regiment to regiment, addressed each, and was received with outcries of applause. The proceedings were not over on the 4th, but protracted themselves into the next day. On that day it was that a strange excitement or suspense, which had been visible in all faces from the very beginning of the Rendezvous, in consequence of news then received, was relieved by the arrival of farther news. "Joyce has done it! Joyce has done it!" were the words that might then have been heard through the assembled Army, caught up and repeated by group after group of talking soldiers over the heath. [Footnote: Rushworth, VI. 504-512.] Who was Joyce, and what had he done? These questions take us back to the King at Holmby.--His Majesty, watching the course of the struggle between the Parliament and the Army, had at last, on the 12th of May, sent in his long-deferred Answer to the Nineteen Propositions. It was substantially the Draft which he had submitted to the Queen and the Earl of Lanark in the preceding December, but had suppressed (_antè_, pp. 505-6). He offered the surrender of the Militia for ten years, and assent to Presbytery for three years, but with a reserve of the Liturgy for himself and his household, and the right of adding twenty divines to the Westminster Assembly to assist in the final settlement of the Church- question. The clause about a toleration for tender consciences, inserted in the former Draft as a bait for the Independents, was now totally omitted. In other words, Charles had thought the moment favourable for re-opening negotiations with the Presbyterians. The reception of his Letter by Parliament had been encouraging. It had been read in the Lords, May 18; and it had then been carried in that House by a majority of 15 to 9 that his Majesty should be brought at once from Holmby to some place nearer London, for the convenience of treating with him. Oatlands in Surrey had been named, and the concurrence of the Commons requested. Actually on May 21, the very day when Cromwell and Fleetwood returned to the Commons from their mission to the Army, the matter had been mentioned in that House. Although no decision had been come to, the Independents and the Army had taken alarm. Colonel Graves, commanding the guard at Holmby, was a Presbyterian; some of those everlasting Scottish Commissioners were back in London, in their old quarters at Worcester House; nay, one of them, the Earl of Dunfermline, had obtained leave from the two Houses (May 13) to visit the King at Holmby! What might not be in agitation under this proposal of a removal of the King to Oatlands? What so easy as for the Presbyterians, with Colonel Graves for their agent, to secure the King wholly to themselves, and so, having bargained with him on their own terms, to invite back the Scots and defy the Army? Such had been questions gossiped over in the Army at the very time when for other reasons the resolution was taken for a general Rendezvous. This very danger of some Presbyterian plot for removing the King from Holmby was an additional reason for the Rendezvous and the contraction of the Army's quarters. But the Rendezvous was not enough. Simultaneously with the Rendezvous, and to turn it to full account, something else was necessary. What that was had also been discussed among the Agitators with every precaution of secrecy; select parties of troopers from different regiments had been told off for the enterprise; and a George Joyce, once a tailor, but now cornet in Fairfax's lifeguard, had been appointed to take the lead. [Footnote: Lords and Commons Journals of dates given; and Parl. Hist. III. 577-581, containing the King's Letter.] As early as Wednesday June 2, or two days before the Rendezvous at Newmarket, there had been a suspicious appearance of parties of horse gathering to a body near Holmby. That night there was no doubt about it; and Colonel Graves, who had reasons for thinking that he was their main object, had just made his escape, when, about one in the morning of June 3, the troopers were in the park and meadows surrounding the house. Before daylight they were within the gates, Graves's men having let them in and at once fraternized with them. The whole of that day was spent by the troopers, Joyce acting as their spokesman, in a parley with the Commissioners in charge of the King--viz.: Lord Montague of Boughton, Sir John Coke, Mr. Crewe, and General Browne--the King meanwhile aware of what was going on, but keeping his privacy. Messengers had been sent off from the Commissioners to London; where, accordingly, on Friday the 4th, there was great excitement in the two Houses. That same morning the news was known in the Army at Newmarket, just before the proceedings of the Rendezvous began, not much to the surprise of some there perhaps, but certainly to the surprise of Fairfax himself. He could not then countermand the Rendezvous; but at once he detached Whalley and his horse-regiment, to gallop to Holmby, take Colonel Graves's place, and see that no harm was done. By that time, however, Joyce had completed his business. Passing from his first topic with the Commissioners, which had been Colonel Graves and his plot, he had insisted on seeing the King; had compelled the Commissioners late at night on the 3rd to introduce him into his Majesty's bedchamber; had there apologized, talked with his Majesty, answered his questions, and distinctly informed him that he had authority from the Army to carry him away from Holmby. The King, amused and interested, as it seemed, rather than displeased, had taken the night to think over the matter; and by six o'clock next morning he had left his chamber, and was again in colloquy with Joyce, who had his troopers all mounted and ready where they could be seen. His Majesty did not seem disinclined to go, but was naturally inquisitive as to the authority by which Joyce acted. Had he a commission from Fairfax? Mr. Joyce could not say he had. Had he any commission at all? "_There_ is my commission, your Majesty," said Joyce at last, pointing to his mounted troopers. "A fair commission and well-written," said the King, smiling: "a company of as handsome, proper gentlemen as ever I saw in my life." In short, as there was no help for it, he supposed he must go. And so, actually, after vain protests and solemn threats by the Commissioners, and especially by General Browne, to all which Joyce listened unmoved, the party did set off at a trot from Holmby, about two o'clock in the afternoon of June 4, with Joyce at their head, and the King in their charge, accompanied by the Commissioners. The Scottish Earl of Dunfermline, who had witnessed much of the affair, had posted off to London, The Rendezvous at Newmarket was then going on. [Footnote: Original accounts of Joyce's conduct at Holmby and abduction of the King are (1) Letters of the Commissioners from Holmby, June 3 and 4, and from Childersley June 8, addressed to Manchester as Speaker of the Lords, and given in the Lords Journals; (2) Fairfax's Letters to Speaker Lenthall, of June 4 and 7, in the Commons Journal giving Fairfax's account of the information he had collected, and of his own proceedings in consequence; (3) A very curious and interesting contemporary account called "_An Impartial Narration, &c._," reprinted by Rushworth in five folio pages (VI. 513-517). On reading this paper, one soon finds, from lapses from the third into the first personal pronoun, that the writer is Joyce himself. The narrative, though by a man stiff at the pen and rather elated by the importance of his act, appears perfectly trustworthy, and supplies, many particulars. Clarendon's version of the incident is very loose and inaccurate. He huddles into one day what was really an affair of two, &c.] Joyce having given the King the option, within a certain extent, of the place to which he would be conveyed, his Majesty himself had suggested Newmarket. Thither, accordingly, they were bound. The evening of the 4th brought them to Huntingdon, where his Majesty rested that night in the mansion-house of Hinchinbrook, once the property of Cromwell's uncle, Sir Oliver, but now of Colonel Edward Montague. Next day (Saturday, June 5) they were again on their march for Newmarket, when they were met, about four miles from Cambridge, by Whalley and his regiment of horse. Joyce, of course, then retired from the management. Whalley, in accordance with his instructions, was willing to convey the King and the Commissioners back to Holmby; but this his Majesty positively declined. Till there should be farther deliberation, therefore, his Majesty was quartered at the nearest convenient house, which chanced to be Sir John Cutts's at Childersley, near Cambridge. Here he remained over Sunday the 6th and Monday the 7th. Meanwhile both in London and at Newmarket the commotion was boundless. The full news had reached the two Houses on Saturday the 5th. Next day, though it was Sunday, they re-assembled for prayer and business; but nothing practical could be thought of; all was panic, passing into a mood of submissiveness to the Army. The only show of anger, even in words, up to the mark of the occasion, was in a paper given in to a Committee of the two Houses by the Scottish Commissioners, with a speech in their name by the Earl of Lauderdale. The Scottish nation had been insulted; its resentment might be expected; it would co- operate at once with the Parliament for "the rescuing and defending his Majesty's person," &c.! It was easier for the Scottish Commissioners to speak in this strain than for the Parliament to take corresponding action. The opportunity was now wholly with the Army. That they would adopt Joyce's deed, and take the full benefit of it, could not be doubted; or, if it could, the procedure of Fairfax at once put an end to the doubt. On Saturday and Sunday he was lifting his Rendezvous from Newmarket; by Monday the 7th he had brought his army bodily round about Cambridge, so as to encircle the King; and on that day he, Cromwell, Treton, and Hammond, with Whalley, Waller, Lambert, and other chief officers, were assembled in interview with the King and the Commissioners at Childersley House. No persuasion could induce his Majesty to go back to Holmby. Much of the conversation turned on Joyce's daring act and his authority for it; and Joyce, having been called in, underwent a long examination and cross-examination on this point. Very little could be got out of him, except that he had had no commission from Fairfax, and yet that he considered his authority perfectly sufficient. Let the question, he said, be put to the Army itself whether they approved of what he had done, and, if three-fourths or four-fifths did not approve with acclamations, he would be hanged with pleasure. The Commissioners thought Joyce deserved hanging in any case; but the King, who had taken a liking for him, told him that, though it was a great treason he had done, he might consider himself pardoned. Joyce having then withdrawn, and the King, having consented to remain with the Army, it was agreed that he should be conveyed to Newmarket next day. [Footnote: Lords and Commons Journals of June 5 and 6; Parl. Hist. III. 591-594; Rushworth, VI. 545- 550, with the previously-mentioned "Impartial Narration" of Joyce. To this day nothing more is positively known of the real origin of the scheme of the King's abduction than Joyce allowed himself to reveal. We have Fairfax's own solemn word "as in the presence of God" that he was utterly ignorant of the transaction till it was over; and in the same Letter (June 7) he "dares be confident" the officers and the body of the Army were equally ignorant. Royalist and Presbyterian writers attribute the act directly to Cromwell. It was planned, says Holles, at a meeting at Cromwell's house in London, May 30; and Clarendon and others lay stress on the fact that the very day of Cromwell's flight from London "was the day of Joyce's appearance at Holmby. The Presbyterian Major Huntingdon, Cromwell's own Major, afterwards distinctly declared, Aug. 1648, that Joyce had his instructions from Cromwell, and that Joyce himself averred this to excuse himself from Fairfax's displeasure (Parl. Hist. III. 967-8). I suspect that, whatever Cromwell and Ireton may have privately sanctioned, the thing was managed among the Agitators; and it does not seem impossible that the original design was to seize Graves at Holmby, quash his supposed plotting there with Lord Dunfermline, and take possession of the King for the Army without removing him. As to the abduction, Joyce may have been left a discretion.] Before we pass on, with the King, into the third stage of his captivity, we have to report briefly the progress that had been made, during his stay at Holmby, in one or two matters of public concern, not directly involved in the feud between the Parliament and the Army. In April 1647, there had been a vigorous resumption of the Church- question in the Commons, in consequence of the Report of a Committee on obstructions which had arisen to the Presbyterian settlement. There was great sluggishness all over the country in establishing elderships and classes; returns from counties were deficient; even in London the Provincial Synod had not yet met! To remove these obstructions various orders were passed, the Lords concurring (April 20-29). The most important of these was one for the immediate meeting of the FIRST PROVINCIAL PRESBYTERIAN SYNOD OF LONDON. It met in the Convocation House of St. Paul's, on Monday, May 3, 1647, and consisted of 108 representatives of the London classes or Presbyteries, in the proportion of three ministers and six lay-elders from each. Dr. Gouge, of Blackfriars, was chosen Prolocutor or Moderator of this first Synod, and the term of the Moderatorship and of the Synod itself was to be for half a year, or till November 1647; after which the Second Synod, similarly elected, was to meet, with a new Moderator; and so on, every six months, Synod after Synod, in Presbyterian London for ever. Of the First Synod, under Dr. Gouge, we need only say that they arranged to meet twice a week, and that, with the leave of the Parliament, they transferred their meeting-place from St. Paul's to Sion College. The discussions there may have been a little crippled by the fact that the new Presbyterian Church of England was not yet provided with an authorized _Confession of Faith_. The text of such a document, as prepared by the Westminster Assembly, had been before the two Houses since Dec. 1646 (_antè_, p. 512); the Lords on the 16th of February had urged the Commons in almost reproachful terms to quicken their pace in that business; the Commons on the 22nd of April had at length roused themselves so far as to order the Westminster Assembly to send in the Scriptural proofs which they had been preparing according to a previous order; but, though on the 29th of April these proofs were actually received and the Assembly thanked, it was not till the 19th of May that the Commons did begin, Math printed copies of the Confession before them, to examine the work, paragraph by paragraph. On that day and May 28 they considered and passed, without division, and apparently without much debate, the three first chapters of the Confession--viz.: Chap. I. _Of the Holy Scriptures_ (ten paragraphs); Chap. II. _Of God and the Holy Trinity_ (three paragraphs); Chap. III. _Of God's Eternal Decrees_. The next chapter, entitled _Of Creation_, was to be proceeded with punctually on Wednesday next, June 2; but, when that day came, Fairfax's orders for the Army Rendezvous were out, Joyce was prowling about Holmby, and the "Creation" had to be postponed. [Footnote: Commons and Lords Journals of the days given (also a curious entry in Commons Journals of April 27); Rushworth, VI. 476; Neal, III. 356-358.] A matter on which the Parliament had been intent for some time was the purgation and regulation of the University of Oxford. If Parliamentary purgation had been found necessary for Cambridge three years before (_antè_, pp. 92-96), how much more was this process needed in Oxford, always the more Prelatic University of the two, and recently, as the King's head-quarters through the Civil War, more deep-dyed in Prelacy than ever! Where but in Oxford, amid courtiers and cavaliers, had ex- bishops, Anglican doctors, and other dangerous persons, found house-room for the last few years? Whence but from the colleges at Oxford had come all the Prelatic sermons, pamphlets, and squibs against the Parliament, the Covenant, and Presbytery, including the official Royalist newspaper, the _Mercurius Aulicus_, edited by Mr. John Birkenhead and a society of his brother-wits? Accordingly, since the surrender of Oxford in June 1646, punishment for the University had been in preparation. For various reasons, however, it had been administered first in a didactic form. Preachers of the right Presbyterian type had been sent down to Oxford by authority in Aug. 1646; and these had been followed by such a rush of volunteer zealots of all varieties that the loyal Oxford historian, Anthony Wood, shuddered to his life's end at the recollection. "Hell was broke loose," he says, "upon the poor remnant" of the scholars, so that most of them "did either leave the University or abscond in their respective houses till they could know their doom." That doom came at length in the form of an Ordinance of the two Houses for the Visitation of the University (May 1, 1647). It empowered twenty-four persons, not members of Parliament, among whom were Sir Nathaniel Brent, William Prynne, and thirteen other lawyers, the rest being divines, to visit Oxford, inquire into abuses and delinquencies, impose the Covenant on Heads of Houses, Fellows, &c., and report the results to a standing Committee of both Houses, consisting of twenty-six Peers and fifty-two of the Commons. Under this Ordinance the Visitors issued a citation to the Heads of Houses and others to meet them in the Convocation House at Oxford on the 4th of June. That was the day of the Army Rendezvous and of the King's abduction; beyond which point we do not go at present. Suffice it to say that there was to be a most strenuous resistance by the Oxonians, headed by their Vice-Chancellor Dr. Fell. [Footnote: Wool's Fasti Oxon. II 100-1 and 106-7; Lords Journals, May 1; Neal, III. 395 _et seq._] THIRD STAGE OF THE CAPTIVITY: THE KING WITH THE ARMY, JUNE-NOV. 1647. Effects of Joyce's Abduction of the King--Movements of the Army: their Denunciation of Eleven of the Presbyterian Leaders: Parliamentary Alarms and Concessions--Presbyterian Phrenzy of the London Populace: Parliament mobbed, and Presbyterian Votes carried by Mob-law: Flight of the two Speakers and their Adherents: Restoration of the Eleven--March of the Army upon London: Military Occupation of the City: The Mob quelled, Parliament reinstated, and the Eleven expelled--Generous Treatment of the King by the Army: His Conferences with Fairfax, Cromwell, and Ireton--The Army's _Heads of Proposals,_ and Comparison of the same with the _Nineteen Propositions_ of the Parliament--King at Hampton Court, still demurring privately over the _Heads of Proposals,_ but playing them off publicly against the _Nineteen Propositions:_ Army at Putney--Cromwell's Motion for a Recast of the _Nineteen Propositions_ and Re-application to the King on that Basis: Consequences of the Compromise: Intrigues at Hampton Court: Influence of the Scottish Commissioners there: King immoveable--Impatience of the Army at Putney: Cromwell under Suspicion: New Activity of the Agitatorships: Growth of Levelling Doctrines among the Soldiers: _Agreement of the People--_ Cromwell breaks utterly with the King: Meetings of the Army Officers at Putney: Proposed Concordat between the Army and Parliament: The King's Escape to the Isle of Wight, The effects of Joyce's abduction of the King from Holmby may be summed up by saying that for the next five months the Army and the Independents were in the ascendant, and the Presbyterians depressed. There were to be vibrations of the balance, however, even during this period. What the Presbyterians dreaded was an immediate march of the Army upon London, to occupy the city and coerce Parliament. With no wish to resort to such a policy so long as it could be avoided, the Army-leaders, for a time, kept moving their head-quarters from spot to spot in the counties north and west of London, now approaching the city and again receding, and paying but slight respect to the injunctions of the Parliament not to bring the Army within a distance of forty miles. On the 10th of June there was a Rendezvous 21,000 strong at Triplow Heath, near Royston; thence, on the 12th, they came to St. Alban's, only twenty miles from London, spreading such alarm in the City by this movement that guards were posted, shops shut, &c.; and they remained at St. Alban's till the 24th, when they withdrew to Berkhampstead. Through this fortnight negotiations had been going on between the Army-leaders and Parliamentary Commissioners who had been sent down expressly; letters had also passed between the Army-leaders and the City; and certain general "Representations" and "Remonstrances" had been sent forth by the Army, penned by Ireton and Lambert, but signed by Rushworth in the name of Fairfax and the whole Council of War. In these it was distinctly repeated that the Army had no desire to overturn or oppose Presbyterian Church- government as it had been established, and only claimed Liberty of Conscience under that government; but there were also clear expressions of the opinion that a dissolution of the existing Parliament and the election of a new one on a more popular system ought to be in contemplation. Nay, till the time should come for a dissolution, one thing was declared essential. In order that the existing Parliament might be brought somewhat into accord with public necessities and interests, and so made endurable, it must be purged of its peccant elements. Not only must Royalist Delinquents who still lurked in it be ejected, but also those conspicuous Presbyterian enemies of the Army who had occasioned all the recent troubles! That there might be no mistake, eleven such members of the House of Commons were named--to wit, Holles, Stapleton, Sir William Lewis, Sir John Clotworthy, Sir William Waller, John Glynn, Esq., Anthony Nichols, Esq. (original members), and Sir John Maynard, Major-general Massey, Colonel Walter Long, and Colonel Edward Harley (Recruiters). This Army denunciation of eleven chiefs of the Commons, dated from St. Alban's June 14, had greatly perplexed the House; but in the course of their debates on it they recovered spirit, and in a vote of June 25 they stood out for Parliamentary privilege. As there had been votes of the two Houses about bringing the King to Richmond for a treaty, and other more secret signs of Presbyterian activity, the Army then again applied the screw. They advanced to Uxbridge, some of the regiments showing themselves even closer to the City (June 26). This had the intended effect. The eleven consented to withdraw from their places in the Commons, for a time at least (June 26); votes favourable to the Army were passed by both Houses (June 26-29); and, though these were mingled with others not quite so satisfactory, the Army had no pretext for a severer pressure. They withdrew, therefore, to Wycombe in Bucks. Here, at a Council of War (July 1), a Commission of ten officers (Cromwell, Ireton, Fleetwood, Lambert, Rainsborough, Sir Hardress Waller, Rich, Robert Hammond, Desborough, and Harrison) was appointed to treat farther with new Commissioners of the Parliament (the Earl of Nottingham, Lord Wharton, Vane, Skippon, &c.). Then surely all seemed in a fair way. [Footnote: Parl. Hist. III. 591-662; Rushworth, VI. 545-597; Godwin, II. 323-354; Carlyle's Cromwell, I. 226-232.] While Parliament, however, was thus yielding to the Army, the dense Presbyterianism of the City and the district round was more reckless and indignant. Whatever Parliament might do, the great city of London would be true to its colours! Accordingly, in addition to various Petitions already presented to the two Houses from the Lord Mayor, Aldermen, and Common Council, all of an anti-Army character, a new one in the same sense, but purporting to be simply "for payment of the soldiery and a speedy settlement of the Nation," was presented July 2. A public and responsible body like the Common Council could express itself only in such general terms; but the Presbyterian "young men and apprentices of the City," the number of whom was legion, and whose ranks and combinations could easily be put in motion by the higher powers, were able to speak out boldly. On the 14th of July a Petition, said to be signed by 10,000 such, was presented to both Houses, praying for strict observance of the Covenant, the defence of his Majesty's person and just power and greatness, the disbandment of the Army, the thorough settlement of Presbyterian Government, the suppression of Conventicles, and defiance to the crotchet of Toleration. This audacious document having been received even with politeness by the Lords, and only with cautious reserve by the Commons, the City was stirred through all its Presbyterian depths, made no doubt it could control Parliament, and grew more and more violent to that end. Crowds came daily to Palace Yard and Westminster Hall, signifying their anger at the seclusion of the Presbyterian Eleven, and at all the other concessions made to the Army and the Independents. What roused the City most, however, was the acquiescence of Parliament in a demand of the Army that the Militia of London should be restored to the state in which it had been before the 27th of April last. On that day the Common Council, in whose trust the business was, had placed the direction of the Militia in a Committee wholly Presbyterian, excluding Alderman Pennington and other known Independents; and what was desired by the Army was that Parliament, resuming the power, should bring back the Independents into the Committee. An Ordinance to that effect had no sooner passed the two Houses,--carried in the Commons by a majority of 77 to 46 (July 22), and accepted by the Lords without a division (July 23), --than the City broke out in sheer rebellion. By this time there had been formed in the City and its purlieus a vast popular association, called "A Solemn Engagement of the Citizens, Officers, and Soldiers of the Trained Bands and Auxiliaries, Young Men and Apprentices of the Cities of London and Westminster, Sea-Commanders, Seamen, and Watermen, &c. &c.," all pledged by oath to an upholding of the Covenant and the furthering of a Personal Treaty between King and Parliament, without interference from the Army. A copy of this Engagement, said by Presbyterian authorities to have been signed by nearly 100,000 hands, with an accompanying Petition in the same sense, which had been addressed by the Engagers to the Lord Mayor, Aldermen, and Common Council, was brought before both Houses on the 24th of July. They declared it insolent and dangerous, and adjudged all who should persevere in it guilty of high treason. That day was Saturday, and the next day's Sabbath stood between the Houses and the wrath they were provoking. But on Monday the 26th they were called to a mighty reckoning. A Petition came in upon them from the Lord Mayor, Aldermen, and Common Council, praying for a revocation of the Militia Ordinance of the 23rd, and enclosing Petitions to the same effect which the Common Council had received from "divers well-affected Citizens" and from the "Young Men, Citizens and others, Apprentices." That was not all. Another Petition came in, from "the Citizens, Young Men, and Apprentices" themselves, complaining of the "pretended Declaration" of the 24th against their Engagement, and of the seclusion of the Eleven. Even that was not all. While the Petitions were under consideration, the Young Men, Citizens, and Apprentices, with Seamen, Watermen, Trained-Bands, and others, their fellow-Engagers, were round the Houses in thousands in Palace Yard, and swarming in the lobbies, and throwing stones in upon the Lords through the windows, and kicking at the doors of the Commons, and bursting in with their hats on, all to enforce their demands. The riot lasted eight hours. Speaker Lenthall, trying to quit the House, was forced back, and was glad to end the uproar by putting such questions to the vote as the intruders dictated. The unpopular Ordinance of the 23rd and the Declaration of the 24th having thus been revoked under mob- compulsion, the Houses were allowed to adjourn. They met next day, Tuesday the 27th, but only to adjourn farther to Friday the 30th. [Footnote: Parl. Hist. III. 664-723; Lords and Commons Journals; Whitlocke, II. 182-185.] When the Houses did re-assemble on that day, their appearance was most woe-begone. Neither Manchester, the Speaker of the Lords, was to be found, nor Lenthall, the Speaker of the Commons; there were but eight Lords in the one House; and the benches in the other were unusually thin. Nevertheless they proceeded in all due form. Each House elected a new Speaker--the Peers Lord Willoughby of Parham for the day, and the Commons Henry Pelham, Esq., M.P. for Grantham, in permanence; each took notice of its absentees, and commanded their immediate re-attendance--the Commons also restoring the Eleven, Ly special enumeration, to their places; and each went on for six or seven days, transacting business or trying to transact it. A good deal of the business related to military preparations to make good the position the City had taken. Sir William Waller and General Massey, two of the Eleven, were added to a Committee for consultation with the City Committee of the Militia; this City Committee was empowered to choose a commander-in-chief and other commanders of the London forces; and, when the Committee named Massey for the command-in- chief, and Waller for the command of the Horse, the Houses gave their cordial assent. In short, the two Houses, as they met during this extraordinary week from July 30 to Aug. 5, consisted mainly of a forlorn residue of the most fanatical Presbyterians in each, regarding the riots of the 26th as a popular interposition for right principles, and anxiously considering whether, with such a zealous London round them, and with Massey, Waller, Poyntz, and perhaps Browne, for their generals, they might not be able to face and rout the Army of Fairfax. There may, however, have been some who remained with the residuary Houses on lazier or more subtle principles. The restored Eleven, with Sir Robert Pye, Sir Robert Harley, and a few other typical Presbyterians, certainly led the business of the Commons in this extraordinary week; but among those that remained in that House how are we to account for Selden? [Footnote: Lords and Common Journals, July 30-Aug. 5, 1647.] The City-tumults, intended as such a brave stroke for Presbytery, had been, in fact, a suicidal blunder. Manchester and Lenthall, the missing Speakers, though themselves Presbyterians, had withdrawn in disgust from the dictation of a London mob of mixed Presbyterian young men and Royalist intriguers, and had been joined by about fourteen Peers, some of them also eminently Presbyterian, and a hundred Commoners, mostly Independents. Deliberating what was to be done, these seceders had resolved to place themselves under the protection of Fairfax, make common cause with him and the Army, and act as a kind of Parliamentary Council to him until they could resume their places in a Parliament free from mob-law. Meanwhile Fairfax, acting for himself, was on the march towards London. On the day of the tumults in London his headquarters had been as far off as Bedford; but, starting thence on the 30th of July, he had reached Colnbrook on Sunday Aug. 1. Next day he came on to Hounslow; and here it was that, at an imposing Review of his Army, horse, foot, and artillery, over 20,000 strong, the seceding Peers and Commoners came in, and were received by the soldiers with acclamations, and cries of "_Lords and Commons, and a Free Parliament_!" Only ten miles now intervened between the Army and the Common Council of the City of London consulting with their Militia commanders at Guildhall, and somewhat less than that distance between the Army and the presumptuous fragment of the two Houses at Westminster. Both these bodies, but especially the citizens, had begun to come to their senses. The tramp, tramp, of Fairfax's approaching Army had cooled their courage. At Guildhall, indeed, as Whitlocke tells us, whenever a scout brought in the good news that the Army had halted, the people would still cry "_One and all_;" but the cry would be changed into "_Treat, Treat_" a moment afterwards, when they heard that the march had been resumed. At Hounslow, therefore, Fairfax received the most submissive messages and deputations, with entreaties to spare the City. His reply, in effect, was that the City need fear no unnecessary harshness from the Army, but that the late "prodigious violence" had brought things into such a crisis that the Army must and would set them right. Nothing more was to be said: the rest was action. On the morning of Wednesday, Aug. 4, a brigade of the Army under Rainsborough, which had been despatched across the Thames to approach London on the south side, was in peaceable possession of the borough of Southwark, and had two cannon planted against the fort on London Bridge till the citizens thought good to yield it up. That day and the next other defences on the Thames, eastwards and westwards, were seized or surrendered. On Friday the 6th, Fairfax with his main Army, all with laurel-leaves in their hats, and conducting the Lords and Commoners in their coaches, marched in from Hammersmith by Kensington to Hyde Park, where the Lord Mayor and Aldermen joined them, and so to Charing Cross, where the Common Council made their obeisances, and thence to Palace Yard, Westminster. There the two Speakers were ceremoniously reinstated, the Houses properly reconstituted, and Fairfax and the Army thanked. Finally, on Saturday the 7th, the grand affair was wound up by another deliberate march of the Army through the main streets of the City itself, all the more impressive to the beholders from the perfect order kept, and the abstinence from every act, word, or gesture, that could give offence. The Tower was made over to Fairfax on the 9th; and his head-quarters for some time continued to be in London or its immediate neighbourhood. [Footnote: Parl. Hist. III. 723-756; Whitlocke, II, 187-193; Godwin, II. 371-387.] By the Army's march through the City events were brought back so far into the channel of regular Parliamentary debate, but with Independency naturally more powerful than ever. All acts done by the two Houses during the week's Interregnum of riot were voted null; and there were measures of retaliation against those who had been most prominent in that Interregnum. Six of the culpable Eleven--viz. Holles, Stapleton, Sir William Waller, Clotworthy, Lewis, and Long--having fled abroad together, had been chased at sea and overtaken, but let escape; and Stapleton had died at Calais immediately after his landing. Massey had gone to Holland, with Poyntz; but Glynn and Maynard, remaining behind, were expelled the House, impeached, and sent to the Tower (Sept. 7). Seven out of the nine Peers who had formed the Lords' House through the wrong-headed week were similarly impeached and committed--viz. the Earls of Suffolk, Lincoln, and Middlesex, and Lords Willoughby, Hunsdon, Berkeley, and Maynard. The Lord Mayor and four Aldermen were disabled, impeached, and imprisoned (Sept. 24); several officers of the City Trained Bands were called to account; and one result of inquiries respecting culprits of a lower grade was an order by the Commons (Sept. 28 and Oct. 1) for the arrest and indictment for high treason of twelve persons, most of them young men and apprentices, ascertained to have been ringleaders in the dreadful outrage on the two Houses on the 26th of July. As there was a "John Milton, junior" among these young rioters, one would like to have known whether they were found and how they fared. In truth, however, nothing very terrible was intended by such indictments and arrests. As the Army's treatment of the conquered City had been studiously magnanimous, so what was chiefly desired by the leaders now in power was that, by the removal from public sight of persons like the Seven in the one House, the Eleven in the other, and their City abettors, there might be a Parliament and Corporation reasonably in sympathy with the Army. As respected the Parliament, this object had been attained. From the reinstatement of the two Houses by Fairfax, Aug. 6, on through the rest of that month and the months of September and October, what we see at Westminster is a small Upper House of from half-a-dozen to a dozen Peers, most of them moderately Presbyterian, but several of them avowed Independents, co- operating with a Commons' House from which the Presbyterians had withdrawn in large numbers, so that the average voting-attendance ranged from 90 to 190, and the divisions were mainly on new questions arising among the Independents themselves. [Footnote: Lords and Commons Journals of dates given, and generally from Aug. 6 to the beginning of November.-- The Peers who formed the Lords' House through this period were the Earl of Manchester (Speaker), the Earls of Northumberland, Pembroke (whose error in remaining in the House through the week of intimidation had been condoned), Kent, Salisbury, Mulgrave, Nottingham, and Denbigh, Viscount Saye and Sele, and Lords Wharton, Grey of Wark, Howard of Escrick, and Delawarr, with occasionally Lords Montague, North, and Herbert of Cherbury. In the Commons I find one division (Sept. 25) when only 41 voted, and another (Nov. 3) when the number rose to 264. At a call of the House, Oct. 9, note was taken of about 240 absentees; and of these 59, whose excuses were not considered sufficient, were fined 20_l._ each. A good few of these were Independents.] It was on these two Houses that the duty devolved of hammering out, if possible, a new Constitution for England that should satisfy the Army and yet be accepted by the King. It had been a halcyon time with his Majesty since he had come into the keeping of the Army. He was still a captive, but his captivity was little more than nominal. Subject to the condition that he should accompany the Army's movements, and not range beyond their grasp, he had been allowed to vary his residence at his pleasure. From his own house or hunting- lodge at Newmarket, whither he had gone from Childersley (June 7), he had made visits in his coach or on horseback to various noblemen's houses near; thence he had gone to his smaller hunting-seat at Royston; thence (June 26) to the Earl of Salisbury's mansion at Hatfield; thence (July 1) to Windsor; thence (July 3) to Lord Craven's at Caversham, near Beading; thence (July 15) to Maidenhead; thence (July 20) to the Earl of Bedford's at Woburn; thence to Latimers in Bucks, a mansion of the Earl of Devonshire; and so by other stages, always moving as the Army moved, till, on the 14th of August, he was at Oatlands, and on the 24th at his palace of Hampton Court. At all these places the freest concourse to him had been permitted, not only of Parliamentarian noblemen and gentlemen, and Cambridge scholars desiring to pay their respects, but even of noted Royalists and old Councillors, such as the Duke of Richmond. His three young children--the Duke of York, the Princess Elizabeth, and the Duke of Gloucester--had been brought to see him, in charge of their guardian the Earl of Northumberland, and had spent a day or two with him at Caversham, to the unbounded delight of the country-people thereabouts. But, what was the most agreeable change of all for Charles, he had been permitted, since his first coming to the Army, to have his own Episcopal chaplains, Dr. Hammond, Dr. Sheldon, and others, in constant attendance upon him. These civilities and courtesies had been partly yielded to him by the personal generosity of the Army chiefs, Fairfax, Cromwell, and Ireton, acting on their own responsibility, partly procured for him by their mediation with the Parliament. There had been grumblings in the Houses, indeed, at the too great indulgence shown to his Majesty in his choice of chaplains and other company. [Footnote: Herbert's Memoirs (ed. 1813), pp. 37-49; Godwin, II. 349-361.] What one dwells on as most interesting in the changed circumstances of his Majesty is that, amid all the concourse of people round him, it was Fairfax, Cromwell, Ireton, and the other Army chiefs, that could now come closest to him for purposes of real conference. They were now, indeed, frequently with him, conversing with him, studying him face to face, considering within themselves whether it would be possible after all to come to an arrangement with that man. In their interviews with him they were most studious of external respect, though Cromwell and Ireton, it seems, never offered to follow Fairfax in the extreme ceremony of kissing the royal hand. The King, on his side, showed them every attention, and would be "sometimes very pleasant in his discourse with them." What was to come of it all? [Footnote: Herbert, 36, 37; Clar. 614.] The meetings of the Army-chiefs with Charles were not purposeless. Since he had been in their keeping they had been carefully drawing up, and putting into exact expression, certain _Heads of Proposals_, to be submitted both to him and to Parliament as a basis for Peace, better in its own nature, and certainly more to the mind of the Army, than those _Nineteen Propositions_ of July 1646 which had hitherto been the vexed subject of debate. What these _Heads of Proposals_ were, or came to be in their complete shape, we know from a final redaction of them put forth on the 1st of August when the Army was at Colnbrook on its march upon refractory London. The document is signed by Rushworth, "by the appointment of his Excellency Sir Tho. Fairfax and the Council of War," but the penning is Ireton's, and probably much of the matter too. It is a document of consummate political skill and most lawyerlike precision. It consists of sixteen Heads, some of them numerically subdivided, each Head propounding the Army's desires on one of the great questions in dispute between the nation and the King. Biennial Parliaments in a strictly guaranteed series for the future, each to sit for not less than 120 days and not more than 240, and the Commons House in each to have increased powers and to be elected by constituencies so reformed as to secure a fair and equable representation of population and property all over England: this is the substance of the first Head. Entire control by Parliament of the Militia for ten years, with a voice in subsequent arrangements, and farther, for security on this matter, the exclusion from places of public trust for the next five years of persons who had borne arms against the Parliament, unless in so far as Parliament might see fit to make individual exceptions: such is the provision under the second Head. Of the remaining Articles, one or two refer to Ireland, and others to law-reforms in England. Articles XI.-XIII. treat of the Religious Question, and are remarkably liberal. They say nothing about Episcopacy or Presbytery as such, but stipulate for the abolition of "all coercive power, authority and jurisdiction of Bishops and all other ecclesiastical officers whatsoever extending to any civil penalties upon any," and also for the repeal of all Acts enforcing the Book of Common Prayer, or attendance at church, or prohibiting meetings for worship apart from the regular Church; and they expressly stipulate for non- enforcement of the Covenant on any. In other words, the Army, as a whole, neither advised an Established Church, nor objected to one, nor would indicate a preference for Presbytery or Episcopacy in the rule of such a Church, but stood out, in any case and all cases, for Liberty of Religious Dissent. How far they went on this negative principle may be judged from the fact that they do not haggle on even the Roman Catholic exception, but hint that, so far as it might be necessary to discover Papists and Jesuits and prevent them from disturbing the State, other means than enforced church-attendance might be devised for that end. Article XIV. proposes the restoration of the King, Queen, and their issue, to full "safety, honour, and freedom," when the preceding Articles shall have been settled, and with no limitation of the regal power except as therein provided. The remaining two Articles appear therefore supernumerary. One refers to Compositions by Delinquents, and urges a generous relaxation of the rates on such, so as not to ruin people for past faults. So also the last Article recommends a general Act of Oblivion of past offences, and a restoration of all Royalists to their full civil rights and privileges, after composition, or, in cases of good desert, without composition, with only the exception provided in the second Article. These _Heads of Proposals_ of the Army strike one as not only inspired by a far wiser and deeper political philosophy than the _Nineteen Propositions_ of the Parliament, but really also as magnanimously considerate of the King in comparison. They are so generous that we can account for them only by supposing that the Army-chiefs were really prepared for a fresh trial of government by King, Lords, and Commons, with the security against renewed despotism furnished by the Article about the Militia, combined with the Article for a succession of Biennial Parliaments. Two things are to be observed, however. One is that the _Heads of Proposals_ were tendered for the English kingdom alone, "leaving the terms of Peace for the kingdom of Scotland to stand as in the late [Nineteen] Propositions of both kingdoms, until that kingdom shall agree to any alteration." But farther, even as respected England, there was no promise by the Army that the King could avoid the establishment of Presbytery. Things had gone so far in that direction, and the majority seemed so determined in it, that the Army neither could nor did desire to resist a Presbyterian establishment, were it persevered in by Parliament. Only they were resolved that the creed, discipline, or worship of that establishment, or of any other, should not be compulsory either on the King or on any of his subjects. [Footnote: See the _Heads of Proposals_ complete in Parl. Hist. III. 738-745, and Rushworth, VII. 731-736 (the paging in this vol. beginning p. 731). Sufficient attention has not been paid by historians, except perhaps Godwin (II. 373-378), to this great document. Even Godwin resorts to the extraordinary hypothesis the Proposals were not in good faith, but only a Machiavellian device of Cromwell and Ireton for detaching Charles from the Presbyterians and bringing him over to the Army, who could then laugh at him and the Proposals too. Godwin remarks in particular that, as Ireton, who penned the Proposals, was "the most inflexible Republican that ever existed," his self-repression in drawing up such a document, accepting restored Royalty, and casting away the chance of a Republic, must have been colossal. In Royalist historians of the seventeenth century this kind of reasoning was natural, but one is surprised to find it affecting a mind so able and candid as Godwin's. There is no reason to doubt that, when the _Heads of Proposals_ were settled, they expressed the real and deliberate conclusions of the Army chiefs as to those terms the honest acceptance of which by Charles would satisfy them. Nay, the publication of them was a service to Charles, by instructing the nation generally on a better means of dealing with him than the Nineteen Propositions. See Denzil Holles's amazed opinion of them as "a new platform of government, an Utopia of their own." (Memoirs, p. 176 _et seq._). As for Ireton's suppression of his Republicanism, Ireton's Republicanism, like other people's, probably _grew_.] The Army Proposals, or the main substance of them, had been the subject of conversations between Charles and the Army-chiefs, and even of a formal conference between him and them, on or about July 24, when he was at Woburn. He had fumed and stormed at the Proposals, telling the deputation he would have Episcopacy established by law, the Army could not do without him, its chiefs would be ruined if they had not his support, and so on. The secret of this behaviour seems to have been that Charles was at that moment building great hopes on the recent demonstrations of the City of London in favour of a Personal Treaty with him in the Presbyterian interest, and was even aware of the attempted revolution then about to break forth in the form of the London tumults. It says much for the forbearance of the Army-leaders that they did not withdraw the Proposals after this first rejection of them by the King. On the contrary, they were resolved that the King should still have the option of agreeing with them; they modified them in some points to suit him; and they were willing that the whole world should know what they were. Hence the formal redaction of them into the Paper of Aug. 1, at Colnbrook. Copies of the Paper were then and there delivered to the Parliamentary Commissioners with the Army; and it was with that Paper carried before it that the Army continued its march into London. Accordingly, on the first day of the meeting of the reconstituted Houses (Aug. 6), the Army's _Heads of Proposals_ were officially tabled in both (in the Commons by Sir Henry Vane), in order that the Houses might, if they saw fit, adopt them in future dealings with the King, instead of the _Nineteen Propositions_. [Footnote: Major Huntingdon's Paper accusing Cromwell, Parl. Hist. III. 970; Sir John Berkley's _Memoirs of Negotiations_ (1699), reprinted in Harleian' Miscellany, IX 466-488; Godwin (quoting Bamfield), II. 378-380; Parl. Hist. III. 737; Commons Journals, Aug. 6. There is evidence that, between the submission of the Proposals to the King at Woburn on or about July 24 and their complete redaction for publication Aug. 1; additions had been made to accommodate the King. Such additions may have been the two supernumerary Articles providing for lenity to compounders and a general Act of Oblivion.] September and October were the months of the complicated negotiation thus arising. The King was then at Hampton Court, whither he had removed Aug. 24, and where he was surrounded by such state and luxury that it seemed as if the old days of Royalty had returned. Not only had he his chaplains about him, and favourite household servants brought together again from different parts of England; not only could he ride over when he liked to see his children at the Earl of Northumberland's seat of Sion House; but, as if an amnesty had already been passed, Royalists of the most marked antecedents, some of them from their places of exile abroad, were permitted to gather round him, permanently or for a day or two at a time, so as to form a Court of no mean appearance. Such were (in addition to the Duke of Richmond) the Marquis of Hertford, the Earls of Southampton and Dorset, Lord Capel from Jersey, Sir John Berkley and Mr. Legge and Mr. Ashburnham from France, and, not least, the Marquis of Ormond, now at last, by his surrender of Dublin to Parliament, free from his long duty in Ireland. Save that Colonel Whalley and his regiment of horse kept guard at Hampton Court, "captivity" was hardly now a word to be applied to Charles's condition. Whalley's horse, it is true, were but the outpost at Hampton Court of the greater force near at hand. On the 27th of August, or three days after the King had removed to Hampton Court, the Army's head-quarters had been shifted to Putney, and they continued to be at Putney all the while the King was at Hampton Court. From Hampton Court to Westminster is twelve miles, and Putney lies exactly half way between; and the complex problem then trying to work itself out may be represented to the memory by the names and relative positions of these three places. At Westminster was the regular Parliament, moving for that policy which could command the majority in a body of mixed Presbyterians and Independents of various shades, with Army officers among them; at Putney midway was the Army, containing its military Parliament, of which the generals and colonels were the Upper House, while the under-officers, with the regimental agitators, were the Commons; and at Hampton Court, in constant communication with both powers, and entertaining proposals from both, was Charles with his revived little Court. Scotland in the distance must not be forgotten. Her emissaries and representatives were on the scene too, running from Parliament to Hampton Court and from Hampton Court to Parliament, as busy as needles, but rather avoiding Putney. [Footnote: Rushworth, VII. 789 _et seq._; Herbert, 47-51.] A very considerable element, indeed, in the now complex condition of affairs was the interference from Scotland. As the Presbyterian Rising in London had occasioned great joy in Scotland, so the collapse of that attempt had been a sore disappointment. Baillie's comments, written from Edinburgh, where he chanced to be at the time, are very instructive. The impression in Edinburgh was that there had been great cowardice among the London Presbyterians, and stupid mismanagement of a splendid opportunity. Had the Parliament put on a bolder front, had the City stood to their "brave Engagement," had Massey and Waller shown "any kind of masculous activity," and above all had not Mr. Stephen Marshall and seventeen of the London ministers with him separated themselves at the critical moment from the body of their brethren, and put forth a childish Petition disavowing all sympathy with the tumults, what a different ending there might have been! As it was, "a company of silly rascals" (Fairfax's Army to wit) had "made themselves masters of the King and Parliament and City, and by them of all England." So wrote Baillie privately, and the public organs of Scottish opinion had spoken out to the same effect. There had been Letters and Remonstrances from the Scottish Committee of Estates to the reconstituted English Parliament, severely criticising the general state of affairs in England, and complaining especially of the monstrous insolence of the Army in possessing themselves of the King, and the expulsion at their instance of the eleven Presbyterian leaders from the Commons. Were not these acts, though done in England, outrages on Scotland as well, and against the obligations of the Covenant? The England with which Scotland had consented to league herself by the Covenant was a very different England from that which seemed now to be coming into fashion--an England in which constituted authority seemed to be at an end, and an Army ruled all! And what an Army! An Army of Sectaries, driving on for a principle of Liberty of Conscience which would lead to a "Babylonish confusion," and impregnated also (as could be proved by extracts from their favourite pamphlets) with ideas actually anti-monarchical and revolutionary! So, in successive letters, from Aug. 13 onwards, the Scottish Government remonstrated from Edinburgh, intermingling political criticisms with special complaints, which they had a better right to make, of insults done by officers and soldiers of Fairfax's Army to the Scottish envoys in England, and especially to the Earl of Lauderdale. Nor was the Scottish Kirk more backward. The regular annual Assembly of the Kirk had met at Edinburgh Aug. 4; and in a long document put forth by that body Aug. 20, in the form of "A Declaration and Brotherly Exhortation to their Brethren of England," the anarchy of England on the religious question is largely bewailed. "Nevertheless," they say, after recounting the steps of the happy progress made by England to conformity with Scotland in one and the same Presbyterian Church-rule, "we are also very sensible of the great and imminent dangers into which this common cause of Religion is now brought by the growing and spreading of most dangerous errors in England, to the obstructing and hindering of the begun Reformation: as namely (besides many others) Socinianism, Arminianism, Anabaptism, Antinomianism, Brownism, Erastianism, Independency, and that which is called, by abuse of the word, Liberty of Conscience, being indeed liberty of error, scandal, schism, heresy, dishonouring God, opposing the truth, hindering reformation, and seducing others; whereunto we add those Nullifidians, or men of no religion, commonly called Seekers." [Footnote: Baillie, III. 9- 22; Acts of Scottish General Assembly of 1647; Rushworth, VII. 768-771; and correspondence of Scottish Commissioners in Lords Journals of Aug. and Sept. 1647. For the escapade of Stephen Marshall and his friends, referred to by Baillie, see Neal, III. 375-6. While these few of the city ministers disavowed the tumults, the Westminster Divines as a body merely mediated in a neutral style to avoid bloodshed (Commons Journals, Aug. 2).] Great as was the influence of the Army on the Parliament it had reinstated, the extreme Tolerationism of the Army Proposals would have made their chance hopeless with that body even if left to itself. But with such blasts coming from Scotland, and repeated close at hand by the key-bugles of Lauderdale and the other Scottish Commissioners in London, the Parliament did not dare even to consider the Proposals. To have done so would have been at once to sever the two nations, enrage the Scots, and drive them to no one could tell what revenge. To fall back on the Nineteen Propositions was, therefore, the only possible policy. Accordingly, on the 7th of September, the Nineteen Propositions, with but one or two slight alterations, were again ceremoniously tendered to Charles on the part of the English Parliament and the Scottish Commissioners conjointly. They desired his answer within six days at the utmost. "Six or sixteen, it was equal to him," he said to the Earl of Pembroke, who presented them; and in fact his Majesty's Answer, dated Hampton Court, was returned Sept. 9. It was that he retained all his former objections to those now familiar Propositions, and that, having seen certain "Proposals of the Army," to which "he conceived his two Houses not to be strangers," he was of opinion that _they_ would be "a fitter foundation for a lasting Peace." In other words, though Charles had rejected the Army Proposals when first offered to him, he now played them against the Nineteen Propositions, ironically asking the Parliament not to persevere in terms of negotiation that might be regarded as obsolete, but to agree to a Treaty with him on the much better terms which had been suggested by their own Army, but which apparently they wanted to keep out of sight. This for England; and, for what concerned Scotland, he would willingly have a separate Treaty with the Scottish Commissioners, if they chose, on those parts of the Nineteen Propositions which were of interest to the Scottish nation. [Footnote: Rushworth, VII. 796, 802-3, and 810-11; and Lords Journals, Sept. 8 and Sept. 14.] Parliament was in a dilemma. Was Charles to be taken at his word? Were the Nineteen Propositions to be flung overboard, and the Army Proposals publicly brought forward instead? The Presbyterian dread of Toleration, if not Presbyterianism itself, was still too strong in the Parliament, and the prospect of a rupture with the Scots was still too awful with many, to admit of such a course. What was actually done, after twelve days of hesitation and consultation, appears from three entries in the Commons Journals of Sept. 21, Sept. 22, and Sept. 23, respectively. Sept. 21: "_Resolved_, That the King, in this Answer of the 9th Sept., given at Hampton Court, hath denied to give his consent to the Propositions: "such is the first entry. The second, on the following day, runs thus:" The question being put, That the House be forthwith resolved into a Grand Committee, to take into consideration the whole matter concerning the King, according to the former order, the House was divided. The _Yeas_ went forth: (Lieut.-General Cromwell, Sir John Evelyn of Wilts, tellers for the _Yea_) with the _Yea_ 84; (Sir Peter Wentworth, Colonel Rainsborough, tellers for the _No_) with the _No_ 34; so that the question passed with the affirmative." On the following day, accordingly, we find "The question was propounded, That the House will once again make application to the King for those things which the Houses shall judge necessary for the welfare and safety of the kingdom; and, the question being put, Whether this question shall be now put, the House was divided: (Sir Arthur Haselrig, Sir John Evelyn of Wilts, tellers for the _Yea_) with the _Yea_ 70; (Sir Peter Wentworth, Colonel Marten, tellers for the _No_) with the _No_ 23: so that the question passed with the affirmative." As far as one can construe what lies under these entries, the state of the case was this:--By the King's new rejection of the Nineteen Propositions (the Army-chiefs aware of the rejection beforehand and much approving [Footnote: Berkley's Memoirs, Harl. Misc. IX. 478. "We [Berkley, Ashburnham, &c.] gave our friends in the Army a sight of this [the King's] Answer the day before it was sent, with which they seemed infinitely satisfied."]), the Presbyterians were checkmated. Unless they would vote the King dethroned, they had no move left. The power of moving then lay with the Independents. Now the more strenuously Republican of these, including Colonel Rainsborough and Henry Marten, were for not using the power, either because they desired to break with Charles entirely, or because they wanted to shut up him and Parliament together to the Army Proposals absolutely. Cromwell, however, though faithful to the Army Proposals as the plan ideally best, was not prepared to take the responsibility of bringing on the crash at once. Might there not be a temporizing method? Might not the two Houses be asked to cease thinking of the Nineteen Propositions as a perfected series to which they were bound in all its parts and items, and to go over the whole business afresh, selecting the most essential questions of the Nineteen Propositions and expressing present conclusions on these in new Propositions to be offered to the King? Haselrig, Evelyn of Wilts, and others of the Independent leaders, agreeing with this view, and a good few of the Presbyterians perhaps accepting it gladly in their dilemma, Cromwell divided the Commons upon it, and obtained his decisive majority of Sept. 22, confirmed by the as decisive majority of the next day. [Footnote: Commons Journals of days named.] The Lords having concurred, Sept. 30, in this motion for a new application to the King, and the Scottish Commissioners having been duly informed, the two Houses went on busily, framing the new Propositions, and, where any differences arose, adjusting them at conferences with each other. By the 28th of October a good many important propositions had been agreed to; but, on the whole, one does not see that the terms for Charles were to be much easier by this route than they had been by the other. In one matter, however, the Commons _had_ proposed a change. On the 13th of October, a committee having reported on that one of the intended Propositions which concerned Church-government, and the resolution before the House being that the King be asked to give his consent to the Acts for settling the Presbyterian Government, Cromwell had forced the House to three divisions. First he tried to limit the term of such settlement to three years, and lost in a small House by a minority of 35 to 38; then he insisted that _some_ limit of time should be mentioned, and won by 44 to 30; then he proposed that seven years should be the term, and lost by 33 to 41, Finally it was agreed that the Presbyterian Settlement to which the King's consent should be asked should be till the end of the Parliament next after that then sitting. But on the same day and the following the question of Toleration also came up, and with these results: Toleration to be granted of separate worship for Nonconformists of tender consciences, but not for Roman Catholics, nor any toleration of the use of the Book of Common Prayer, nor of preaching contrary to the main principles of the Christian Religion, nor yet of absence on the Lord's day from worship and hearing of the word of God somewhere. This was all the amount of Toleration that Cromwell and the Independents even in October 1647, with an Army at Putney all aflame for Toleration, could extract from the reluctant Commons at Westminster. The Lords appear to have hesitated about even so much as this; for it was not till the 2nd of November that the two Houses came to an understanding on the subject, and even on the 9th of that month the Lords wanted some additional security in the form of a "Proposition for suppressing innovations in Religion." [Footnote: Lords and Commons Journals of dates named; and Rushworth, VII. 843-4 and 853-4.] Here, to bring the history of the English Church-question to a period for the present, we may notice one or two contemporary incidents.----On Saturday, Oct. 2, the Commons had resumed their examination of the Westminster Assembly's _Confession of Faith_, at the point where they had left off that work in the preceding May, viz. at Chap. IV. "Of Creation," (_antè_, p. 545). They passed that chapter and also the first paragraph of Chap. V., "Of Providence," that day, and resolved to continue the business next Wednesday and punctually every following Wednesday till it should be despatched. But Wednesday after Wednesday came; other business was too pressing; and so the matter hung. This was the more inconvenient because on the 22nd of October the Assembly presented to the two Houses their _Larger Catechism_ completed. It was ordered that 600 copies should be printed for consideration, and that matter too lay over. In the midst of such delays in Parliament it was something on the credit side that the SECOND PROVINCIAL PRESBYTERIAN SYNOD OF LONDON duly met in Sion College on the 8th of November, with Dr. Seaman for Moderator. It was, indeed, time now for English Presbyterianism to be walking alone. Gillespie, one of the two Scottish Divines left last in the Westminster Assembly, had returned to Scotland in the preceding August; and on the 9th of November it was announced in the Lords that Mr. Rutherford too was going. In bidding farewell to his brethren of the Assembly he took care to have it duly recorded in their books that the Scottish Commissioners, all or some, had been present to that point and had constantly taken part in the proceedings. The Assembly was still to linger on, he meant to say, but its best days were over. [Footnote: Lords and Commons Journals of the dates given; and Neal, III. 354 and 358-9.] There was no greater mystery all this while than the conduct of Cromwell and Ireton. Since the King had come to Hampton Court he had been in continual intercourse with them, either in direct conferences, or by messages through Mr. Ashburnham and others. The intercourse had been kept up even after Cromwell's motion of Sept. 22 for re-approaching the King on the whole question in a Parliamentary way, and while Cromwell was constantly attending the House and taking part in the proceedings consequent on his motion. [Footnote: "Sir, I pray excuse my not- attendance upon you. I feared to miss the House a day, where it's very necessary for me to be." So wrote Cromwell to Fairfax Oct. 13, the very day of his three divisions of the House on the duration of Presbytery, and of the compromise there on Toleration (Carlyle's Cromwell, f. 239).] What did it all mean? We have little difficulty now in seeing what it meant. Cromwell, even while urging on the re-application to the King in a Parliamentary way, had not given up hope that the King might be constrained into an extra-Parliamentary pact on some basis like that of the Army Proposals. Might not Charles be wise now in the extremity to which he saw himself reduced, and accept the prospect, which the Army scheme held out, of a restoration of his Royalty, under inevitable constitutional restrictions, but those less galling in many respects, and especially in the religious respect, than the restrictions demanded by Parliament? Such, we can see now, were the reasonings of Cromwell and Ireton, and to such an end were their labours directed. But the world at the time was suspicious and saw much more. What the English Presbyterians and the Scots saw was Cromwell wheedling his Majesty into the possession of himself and his Sectaries, so as to be able to overthrow Parliament and Presbytery immediately, and then reserve his Majesty for more leisurely ruin. What the Royalists round the King saw was more. A blue riband, the Earldom of Essex, the Captaincy-general of all the forces, the permanent premiership in England under the restored Royalty, and the Lieutenancy of Ireland for his son-in-law Ireton--how could the Brewer resist such temptations? Mean rumours of this kind ran about, or were mischievously circulated, till they affected the Army itself and roused suspicions of Cromwell's integrity even among his own Ironsides. It was not only that Colonel Rainsborough, who had opposed Cromwell's motion for re-opening negotiations with Charles, had since then stood out against his policy of conciliation, and had been joined by other officers, such as Colonel Ewer. Despite this opposition in the Council of the chief officers at Putney, Cromwell and Ireton still ruled in that body. But among the inferior officers and the Agitatorships a spirit had arisen outgoing the control of the chiefs, critical of their proceedings, and impatient for a swifter and rougher settlement of the whole political question than seemed agreeable to Cromwell. [Footnote: Berkley's Memoirs (Harl. Misc.) 476, 478; Holles, 184; Baxter, Book I. p.60; Clar. 620; Godwin, II. 400 _et seq._ See also Major Huntington's Paper of Accusations against Cromwell and Ireton in Aug. 1648 (Parl. Hist. III. 966-974). Duly interpreted, it is very instructive.] At Putney the Army, having little to do, had resolved itself into a great daily debating-society, holding meetings of its own Agitatorships and receiving deputations from the similar but civilian Agitatorships that had sprung up in London. Hence a rapid increase among the common soldiers of the political school of THE LEVELLERS. Of this school John Lilburne, still in his prison in the Tower, but with the freedom of pen and ink there, was now conspicuously one of the chiefs. "That the House of Commons should think of that great Murderer of England (meaning the King), for by the impartial Law of God there is no exemption of Kings, Princes, Dukes, Earls, more than cobblers, tinkers, or chimney-sweepers;" "That the Lords are but painted puppets and Dagons, no natural issue of Laws, but the mushrooms of prerogative, the wens of just government, putting the body of the People to pain,"--such were opinions and phrases collected from Lilburne's and other pamphlets by the Scottish Government as early as Aug. 13, and then publicly presented in the name of Scotland for the rebuke of the English Parliament and the horror of the whole British world. In such phrases we have the essence of the doctrine of the Levellers, as distinct from the more tentative Democracy of many contemporary minds. The _Army Proposals_ of Aug. 1 were not for a total subversion of the English Constitution of King, Lords, and Commons, but only for a great limitation of the Royal Power, a reduction also of the power of the House of Lords, a corresponding increase of the power of the Commons or Representative House, and a broader basing of that House in a popular suffrage. But, now that the King had rejected the Proposals, the Levelling Doctrine burst up from its secret beds, and rushed more visibly through the whole Army. There began to be comments among the Agitators on the dilatoriness of Cromwell, and especially on his coquettings with the King. "I have honoured you, and my good thoughts of you are not yet wholly gone, though I confess they are much weakened," Lilburne had written to Cromwell Aug. 13, kindly offering him a chance of redeeming his character, but otherwise threatening to pull him down from all his "present conceived greatness" before he was three months older. Cromwell not having mended his ways, Lilburne had been endeavouring to fulfil his threat; and by the end of October there was a wide-spread mutiny through the regiments at Putney. The Army, having its own printers, had by that time made its designs known in two documents. One, entitled _The Case of the Army_, was signed by the agents of five regiments, Cromwell's and Ireton's own included (Oct. 18); the other, entitled _An Agreement of the People_ (Nov. 1), emanated from the same regiments and eleven others. Both documents pledged the regiments not to disband until the Army had secured its rights; and among these rights were the speedy dissolution of the existing Parliament, and the reconstitution of the Government of England in a single Representative House, elected by a reformed system of suffrage, and meeting biennially. This House was to be supreme in all matters, except five specified fundamentals which were to be regarded as settled _ab initio_ beyond disturbance or even reconsideration by any corporate authority whatever. One of them was absolute freedom to all "in the matter of Religion and the ways of God's worship"; but this was not to prevent the State from setting up any "public way of instructing the Nation, so it be not compulsive." In fact, here was the accurate essence of the _Army Proposals_ over again, only distilled to a higher strength and more fiercely flavoured. [Footnote: Rushworth, VII. 769, 770, 845-6, and 859, 860; Godwin, II. 423-428, and 436-450. One of the numerous incredible and contradictory hypotheses about Cromwell is that it was he who, while in treaty with the King for a restoration of his Royalty, was all the while, by his secret grip of the Army-Agitatorships, hounding them on in their ultra democratic tendencies. The Levelling Principle itself would be a useful force in his hands, and he could well consent to being abused by the Agitators while they were really working for his ends!!] Cromwell's preserved Letters of this period are few, but one of them contains a reference to the misconstructions to which he was then subject. "Though, it may be, for the present," he says, "a cloud may lie over our actions to those who are not acquainted with the grounds of them, yet we doubt not but God will clear our integrity, and innocency from any other ends we aim at but His glory and the Public Good." [Footnote: Letter to Colonel Jones, Governor of Dublin, dated Sept 14, 1647; Carlyle's Cromwell, I. 237-8.] At length, however, he had to let it be seen that he had broken off from Charles utterly. Who does not know the picturesque popular myth at this point of Cromwell's biography? Cromwell and Ireton says the myth, sat one night in the Blue Boar Tavern, Holborn, disguised as common troopers and calling for cans of beer, till the sentinel they had placed outside came in and told them the man with the saddle had arrived; whereupon, going out, they collared the man, got possession of the saddle he carried, and, ripping up the skirt of it, found the King's letter to the Queen in which he quite agreed with her opinion of the two Army-villains he was then obliged to cajole, and assured her they should have their deserts at last. [Footnote: The story professes to have come from Cromwell's own lips in conversation in 1649 with Roger Boyle, Lord Broghill, afterwards Earl of Orrery; but its mythical character is obvious.]. It needed no such interception of a letter in the yard of a tavern to convince Cromwell at last that Charles could not be trusted even in a negotiation for his own benefit. All the while that he had been treating with Cromwell and Ireton, in the sense of the Army Proposals, with a Religious Toleration included, he had been treating with the Scots, both by messages through the Earl of Lauderdale and by letters in his own hand to the Earl of Lanark in Edinburgh, in a sense directly the opposite: _i.e._ on the terms of a paction with the Scots for compulsory Presbytery and suppression of the Sects in England, in return for the armed assistance of the Scottish nation towards a restoration of his kingship in all other respects. Late in October, Lanark and Loudoun had come from Scotland to help Lauderdale in finishing this negotiation; and the three Lords together, in conferences at Hampton Court, had assured Charles that, "if he would give satisfaction in the point of Religion, he was master of Scotland on what terms as to other things he would demand." He had not quite given them all the satisfaction they wanted; but the three Lords still remained loyally about him, with plans for his escape to Berwick. Nothing of all this appeared, of course, in the public communications of the Scottish Commissioners with the English Parliament. The purport, however, had been entrusted to Ormond, Capel, and others of the Royalists who were chief in the King's counsels; and Cromwell had his means of guessing. [Footnote: For the interesting and instructive correspondence of Charles with Lanark from June 1647 onwards, with details of the negotiations after Lanark and Loudoun joined Lauderdale at Hampton Court, see Burnet's Hamiltons, 401-412. See also Clar. 622-3; Rushworth, VII, 850; and Lords Journals, Nov. 6.] The mutinous disposition of so many Regiments, and its manifestation in such tracts as _The Case of the Army_ and the _Agreement of the People_, had greatly alarmed Parliament. The investigation of the matter had been substantially left, however, in the hands of Fairfax and the Council of War at Putney. That Council, with Fairfax and Cromwell present in it, had appointed a special Committee of Inquiry, consisting of twenty officers with Ireton at their head; and in a series of meetings of this Committee and of the collective Council itself, extending from Oct. 22 to Nov. 8, things were brought to a kind of adjustment. There was to be a general Rendezvous of the Army for ending of disorder; and meanwhile certain new Proposals were sketched out, to be presented to Parliament as a summary of what might now be considered the opinions of the chief representatives of the Army, reviewing their former Proposals of Aug. 1 in the light of all that had since occurred. So far as the Proposals _were_ sketched out, one observes in them a curious combination of compromises. There is decidedly greater severity in them to the King than in the original Army Proposals. On the other hand, there is nothing about the abolition of Kingship or of the House of Lords, no concession on these points to the ultra-democratic tendency of the Levellers. The question of King or No King had been raised, it is said, in the Council meetings by the Agitators, but had been quashed by the chief officers. Again, rather strangely, the question of Liberty of Conscience and the terms of the establishment of Presbytery is entirely waived, unless we regard the provision that Delinquents should be obliged to take the Covenant before being admitted to compound as a sign that on this question too there was a recession from former liberality. On the whole, the new Army Proposals look like a jumble of incongruities, and rather disappoint one after the clear political comprehensiveness of the original Proposals which Ireton had drafted, or even the rude simplification of the same put forth by the democratic Agitators. The reason probably was that the Army-chiefs desired at the moment to patch up a concordat, suppressing all unnecessary appearance of difference between the Parliament and the Army, and bringing both as amicably as possible into the one direct track of the new set of Parliamentary Propositions to the King. [Footnote: Rushworth, VII. 849-866; Godwin, II, 450-454.] On the 10th of November, all the Propositions being ready, a very emphatic Preamble to them was agreed upon by the two Houses. It was intended that they should be presented to the King formally at Hampton Court within the next few days. Before that could be done, however, his Majesty had vanished. The vicinity of Putney, with exasperated Levellers and Agitators all about, had become really unsafe for Charles; and, after some meditation and hesitation, he had himself arranged a plan of escape. It was put in execution on Thursday the 11th of November. On the evening of that day his Majesty, accompanied by Mr. Ashburnham, Mr. William Legge, and Sir John Berkley, contrived to slip out of Hampton Court Palace, by the back garden, unobserved. It was supper-time before he was missed by Whalley and the guard; the night was excessively dark and stormy; and, though it was ascertained that he and his companions had mounted horses near the Palace, the route they had taken could not be guessed. For the next two or three days, therefore, London was all anxiety. Meanwhile the fugitives, guided by the King himself through the New Forest, had reached the south coast, near Southampton, and in sight of the Isle of Wight. The King's reasons for taking this direction appear to have been the vaguest; nor is it certainly known that the Isle of Wight had been in his mind when he left Hampton Court. No ship, however, having been provided for a more distant voyage, and the King being in any case irresolute about yet leaving England altogether, the island did now, if not before, occur to him as suitable for his purpose. One inducement may have been that the Governor, young Colonel Robert Hammond, was a person whom the King had reason to believe as well disposed to him as any Parliamentarian officer. Hammond, indeed, was the nephew of the King's favourite chaplain, Dr. Henry Hammond; and, though he was one of Cromwell's admiring disciples, and had married a daughter of Hampden, his uncle's reasonings, or other influences, had begun of late to weaken his ardour. It had been with undisguised pleasure that, but a week or two before, he had left his post in the Army and gone to this quiet and distant governorship, where he might live in retirement and without active duty. What, then, was his horror when, on the morning of Saturday, Nov. 13, as he was riding along the road near his residence of Carisbrooke Castle, in the centre of the island, Sir John Berkley and Mr. Ashburnham presented themselves, and told him that the King had fled in their company from Hampton Court and desired to be his guest! "He grew so pale," says Berkley, "and fell into such a trembling, that I did really believe he would have fallen from his horse; which trembling continued with him at least an hour after, in which he broke out into passionate and distracted expressions, sometimes saying 'O gentlemen, you have undone me.'" He collected himself at length, however, and accepted the duty which fate had sent him. Crossing over, with Berkley and Ashburnham, to the earl of Southampton's house of Titchfield on the mainland, where Charles had meanwhile been waiting with Legge, he paid his homage gravely enough; and, after some conversation, in which he promised to do all for his Majesty that might be consistent with his obedience to Parliament, he returned to the island, with the King in his charge, and Berkley, Ashburnham, and Legge in attendance. His letter, narrating what had happened, and asking instructions, was read in the two houses of Parliament on Monday, Nov. 15. [Footnote: Berkley's Memoir, Harl. Miscell. IX. 479-483; Rushworth, VII. 871-874; Clar. 624-7; Parl. Hist. III. 785-791. As usual, in the later Royalist accounts, it is Cromwell that had contrived the whole affair of the King's escape both matter and form. Hammond's appointment to the Governorship of the island (Sept. 9) was Cromwell's doing, in anticipation of what might be needed; then he had stirred up the Agitators at Putney to threaten the King's life at Hampton Court; then he had warned the King, through Whalley, of the designs of the Agitators, so as to frighten him into flight; then, through Ashburnham or otherwise, he had suggested the Isle of Wight as the very place for the King to go to, and so had caught him in the prepared trap.] FOURTH STAGE OF THE CAPTIVITY: IN THE ISLE OF WIGHT: NOV. 1647-NOV. 1648. Carisbrooke Castle, and the King's Letters thence. Parliament's New Method of the _Four Bills_. Indignation of the Scots; their Complaints of Breach of the Covenant--Army Rendezvous at Ware: Suppression of a Mutiny of Levellers by Cromwell, and Establishment of the Concordat with Parliament--Parliamentary Commissioners in the Isle of Wight: Scottish Commissioners also there: the King's Rejection of the Four Bills--Firmness of Parliament: their Resolutions of No Further Addresses to the King: Severance of the Scottish Alliance--_The Engagement_, or Secret Treaty between Charles and the Scots in the Isle of Wight--Stricter guard of the King in Carisbrooke Castle: His Habits in his Imprisonment--First Rumours of _The Scottish Engagement_: Royalist Programme of a SECOND CIVIL WAR--Beginnings of THE SECOND CIVIL WAR: Royalist Risings: Cromwell in Wales: Fairfax in the South-east: Siege of Colchester--Revolt of the Fleet: Commotion among the Royalist Exiles abroad: Holland's attempted Rising in Surrey--Invasion of England by Hamilton's Scottish Army: Arrival of the Prince of Wales off the Southeast Coast: Blockade of the Thames--Consternation of the Londoners: Faintheartedness of Parliament: New Hopes of the Presbyterians: their Ordinance against Heresies and Blasphemies: their Leanings to the King: Independents in a struggling minority: Charge of Treason against Cromwell in his absence--The Three Days' Battle of Preston and utter Defeat of the Scots by Cromwell: Surrender of Colchester to Fairfax: Return of the Prince of Wales to Holland: Virtual End of THE SECOND CIVIL WAR--Parliamentary Treaty with the King at Newport: Unsatisfactory Results--Protests against the Treaty by the Independents--Disgust of the Army with the Treaty: Revocation of their Concordat with Parliament, and Resolution to seize the Political Mastery: Formation of a Republican Party--Petitions for Justice on the King: The _Grand Army Remonstrance_--Cromwell in Scotland: Restoration of the Argyle Government there: Cromwell at Pontefract: His Letter to Hammond--The King removed from the Isle of Wight to Hurst Castle--The Army again in possession of London. Carisbrooke Castle, now mostly a ruin, but in Charles's time the chief fortified place in the Isle of Wight, stands almost in the centre of the island, close to the village of Carisbrooke, and near the town of Newport, which, although really an inland town, communicates with the sea by a navigable river. Here, with the verdant island all round him, and fine views both of land and sea, Charles was to live for a whole year. Though it was November when he came into the island, a lady, as he passed through Newport on his way to Carisbrooke, could present him with a damask-rose just picked from her garden; and he was to see all the circle of seasons in that mild South-English climate, till November came round again. [Footnote: Herbert, 55, 56.] In a letter which Charles had left at Hampton Court, to be communicated to the two Houses, he had avowed that, though security from threatened violence was the immediate reason for his disappearance for a time into a place of retirement, yet another reason was his desire to extricate himself from a negotiation in which he felt that the "chief interests" concerned were not all represented. In the same spirit of eclecticism, with a word for each of the "chief interests," and a special show of solicitude for the Army, is a Letter sent by the King to the two Houses only four days after he had been in the Isle of Wight (Nov. 17). It gives his Majesty's view of what would be the right kind of negotiation, and conveys his definite offers. He cannot consent to the abolition of Episcopacy, but he will assent to the experiment of Presbytery for three years, if accompanied by a Toleration, but not for Papists, Atheists, and Blasphemers; he will surrender the Militia for his own life, on condition that it shall afterwards revert to the Crown; he will undertake for the Arrears of the Army; and on other matters he will be ready to do his utmost in a conclusive Personal Treaty in London. [Footnote: Rushworth, VII. 871-2 and 880-833; Parl. Hist. III. 786-7 and 799-802; and King Charles's Works (1651), 117-125.] The two Houses retained their own ideas of the negotiation necessary; and, while giving orders for the despatch of a sufficient guard to the Isle of Wight, to be under Hammond's command, and also for the King's household they were re-adjusting _their_ battery of negotiation for the changed circumstances of its object. At first the notion was to pursue the King to the Isle of Wight with the whole series of Propositions which the Houses had so carefully drawn out for presentation to him at Hampton Court. Here, however, they encountered the most obstinate opposition from the Scottish Commissioners. The mood of these gentlemen (Loudoun, Lanark, Lauderdale, Sir Charles Erskine, Hugh Kennedy, and Robert Barclay), sufficiently irritable before the King's flight from Hampton Court, was now that of the Thistle in full bloom. The King, they declared, had done right in fleeing from the hard usage of the English. Could his Majesty be expected to endure longer the insults, terrors, indignities, to which he had been of late subjected, ending actually in danger to his life from the ruffians of an ill-managed Army? Moreover, was not Charles also the sovereign of Scotland! Could the Scottish nation be expected to bear the contempt shown it in these "tossings" to and fro of their King, aggravated by the studied neglect of all the previous Remonstrances of the Scottish Commissioners and Estates on this very subject? No! let those Propositions which the English Parliament had been preparing be thrown aside, and let the King be invited to come to London, in safety and honour, for a Personal Treaty with Parliament, in which all might be "voluntary and free"!--Partly to please the angry Scottish Commissioners, partly to shake them off if they would not be pleased, the two Houses did make an alteration in their procedure. Instead of the entire prepared series of Propositions, or rather as antecedent to them, it was resolved to send to the King "Four Bills," embodying the Propositions "absolutely necessary for present security." Bill 1 was for the power of Parliament over the Militia for twenty years, or longer if necessary; Bill 2 was for confirmation of all acts of the Parliament in the late war; Bill 3 was for the cancelling of all Peerages conferred by the King since the beginning of the war, and the creation of new Peers only with consent of the two Houses; and Bill 4 was for giving the two Houses the right of adjournment at their own pleasure.--This change of procedure was first proposed in the Lords Nov. 25 (fifteen Peers present); there were divisions on it in the Commons Nov. 26 and 27, in the last of which it was carried by 115 to 106 (an unusually full House) to concur generally with the Peers in the matter; and then, after debates and conferences on details, the Bills, as above indicated, passed the Commons finally Dec. 11, and the Lords finally Dec. 14. It was also then arranged that the Earl of Denbigh and Lord Montague, for the Lords, and Mr. John Bulkeley, Mr. John Lisle, Mr. John Kemp, and Mr. Robert Goodwin, for the Commons, should be the Commissioners for carrying the Four Bills, and the Propositions too, so far as not superseded by the Bills, to the King in the Isle of Wight. They were to require his Majesty's consent to the Four Bills within ten days at the utmost; but the remaining Propositions were to be delivered to his Majesty only as containing matters on which the Houses would send another Commission to treat with him after he had assented to the Four Bills. [Footnote: Parl. Hist. II. 799-804 and 823-826; Lords and Commons Journals of days named; also (for a special Letter of the Scottish Commissioners) Lords Journals, Nov. 18. For this Letter Charles thanked Lanark, saying, "Seriously, it is as full to my sense as if I had penned it myself." Burnet's Hamiltons, 416.] If the two Houses had resorted at first to this changed method of procedure with any idea of pleasing the Scots, they had found reason to abandon that idea. The very day the Four Bills were finally passed (Dec. 14), the Scottish Commissioners, knowing well enough privately what they were, applied formally to the Committee of the Two Kingdoms for a copy of them. This being reported to the Commons, a discussion ensued, and Mr. Selden (particularly active about this time, and at any rate always eager for a brush with the Scots) was appointed chairman of a Committee to prepare an Answer. The Answer, adopted by the Commons Dec. 16, was taken up by Mr. Selden to the Lords the same day, and by them adopted also. It was to the effect that, as it was against the custom of the English kingdom to communicate Bills ready for the King's assent to "any other whomsoever" until his Majesty's reply had been received, the Four Bills could not be communicated to the Scottish Commissioners, but that, as for the rest, it was intended to send these Bills to the King on Monday next, together with those Propositions of which the Scottish Commissioners were already cognisant, and that, if the Scottish Commissioners desired to add any Propositions concerning Scotland, they had better make haste. As if to increase the irony of this Answer, there was frankly included in it a copy of the Instructions to the English envoys as to their procedure both with the Bills concealed from the Scots and the Propositions known to them. Matter and manner both, the Answer drove the Scottish Commissioners mad. There may be yet read in the Lords Journals of Dec. 18 the Reply, in nineteen printed folio columns, which they thundered in upon the two Houses. We do not see such documents now-a-days, and even then it was a marvel. The whole soul of Scotland, past and present, seemed to launch itself upon the Londoners in this tremendous lecture, issued from Worcester House "by command of the Commissioners for the Parliament of Scotland," and signed by John Chiesley, their clerk. After a hint of the indebtedness of England to the Scots for some years past, there was a recapitulation of all the recent acts of contumely sustained by Scotland at the hands of the English, followed by a summary of the reasons for preferring the Scottish plan of a free Personal Treaty with the King to the English plan of prosecuting him with peremptory and ready-made Propositions. But, as the English Parliament _had_ communicated to the Scottish Commissioners their new set of Propositions (though not the Four Bills), there was a criticism of these Propositions, from the Scottish point of view, collectively and _seriatim_. The largest criticism was on the Religious question. Nearly one half of the entire document was occupied with this subject. Was not the Religious question the main one, the _unum necessarium,_ deserving the first place in any national negotiation? Yet was it not made secondary in the Propositions, brought in anywhere in the middle of them, as if to show that the two Houses did not really care much about it, and would not be so stiff in it as in matters of civil import? Tenacious in one's own concerns, and "liberal in the matters of God"! Again, not a word in the Propositions, or hardly a word, respecting the Solemn League and Covenant itself, a vow that had been sworn to with uplifted hands by nearly the whole generation of living Englishmen! Oh! what an omission was that! Was the Covenant to be voted out of date, and buried in the ashes of oblivion? But, apart from the Covenant, how did the Propositions treat the cause of Presbyterial government in England and of conformity of Church-rule in the two kingdoms? Most miserably! No pressing of Presbytery to full purity and completeness, but rather a cynical acquiescence in the imperfect Presbytery that had already been set up, and a glee in not being committed even to that beyond three years! Finally, even this Presbytery was turned into a present mockery by an accompanying concession to the cry for Liberty of Conscience! The Commissioners had never desired that "pious and peaceable men should be troubled because in everything they cannot conform themselves to Presbyterial government;" but they did "from their very souls abhor such a general and vast Toleration" as one of the Propositions seemed to provide. Unless they were mistaken, it was a Toleration to "all the sectaries of the time," whether they were "Anabaptists, Antinomians, Arminians, Familists, Erastians, Brownists, Separatists, Libertines, or Independents;" yea it extended to "those Nullifidians the Seekers, to the new sect of Shakers, and divers others;" and, though it professed not to include "Antitrinitarians, Arians, and Antiscripturists," where was the security that these might not at least print and publish their blasphemies and errors? "Our minds are astonished, and our bowels are moved, &c.!"--There is a story of an irascible and fluent man who, after a torrent of abusive words addressed to a cool-tempered friend with whom he had a difference, was brought to a stop by the calm request of his friend that he would be so good as to repeat his observations. Something of the kind happened now. The reply of the two Houses to the portentous Paper of the Scottish Commissioners was that its length prevented immediate attention to it; but that they were sensible of the "aspersions" it cast upon them, and begged that such might be "forborne for the future." This drew from the Commissioners a shorter letter (Dec. 20), in which they disavowed any intention of disrespect, and assigned the gravity of the crisis as a reason why their expressions had been "more pathetique than ordinarily." Nevertheless from that moment the connexion between the English Parliament and the Scottish Commissioners was totally severed. [Footnote: Lords and Commons Journals of Dec. 15- 21.] What had become of the third party concerned, the English Army?--The general Rendezvous resolved on by the Council of War at Putney, in consequence of the Concordat between the Army and Parliament (_antè_, p. 573), had been cleverly changed into a tripartite Rendezvous, or distribution of the regiments into three brigades, to be reviewed on different days and at different places. The first of these Reviews was held near Ware in Herts, Nov. 15, the very day on which the King's arrival in the Isle of Wight was known. At the head of each of seven regiments then present according to order there was read a Remonstrance by Fairfax, pointing out the evils of relaxed discipline, condemning the recent excesses of the Agitators and their attempts to make the men disaffected to their officers, declaring the resolution of himself and the chief officers to maintain all the Army's just rights, but protesting that he could not continue to head an Army which was mutinous, and requiring therefore that the officers and men of each regiment should subscribe an engagement of future obedience, As nothing was said in the document about either King or House of Lords, but mention only made of a guarantee of future Parliaments and a Reformed Representative House, no offence was given to the Democratic instincts of the regiments, and they at once acquiesced in what was but a fit soldierly compact. There were, however, two regiments on the field that had come without orders--Colonel Harrison's horse-regiment and Colonel Robert Lilburne's foot-regiment. They had come in a wild state of excitement, with copies of the _Agreement of the People_ stuck in their hats. John Lilburne, recently released from the Tower, had come down to Ware to see the result. It was decisive, but not in the way John had expected. Harrison's regiment, on being reasoned with by Fairfax and the other officers, at length good-humouredly gave way, tore the mutinous emblem from their hats, and broke into cheers. Lilburne's, which had driven away most of its officers, remained sulky and vociferous, till Cromwell, riding up to them, ordered them also to remove that thing from their hats, and, on their refusing, had fourteen of them dragged from the ranks, three of these tried on the spot and condemned to death, and one of the three shot. After this turn given to the first Review, the others passed off pleasantly enough, and all that was farther needed was the minor punishment of one or two of the mutineers among the common soldiers, with temporary restraint or rebuke for Colonel Rainsborough, Colonel Ewer, Major Scott, Major Cobbet, and Lieutenant Bray, the officers who had been most implicated in the revolt.--So, at the expense of but one life, had a dangerous Mutiny been quelled, and the ultra- Democrats of the Army taught the lesson of the Concordat. That lesson was that, in the opinion of Cromwell and Ireton as well as of Fairfax, it was best for England that the Army should still serve the constituted authority of Parliament, and not raise any political banner of its own. No sooner had this lesson been taught, however, than Cromwell and Ireton had hastened to obliterate all traces of the occasion there had been for teaching it. Their intention had not been to struggle with the Democratic spirit itself, but only with its mutinous manifestation; and they knew, in fact, that the political tenets of the poor fellow whom it had been necessary to shoot remained, and would remain, not the less the tenets of two-thirds of the Army. Accordingly, through November and December the great aim of Cromwell and Ireton, in the new Army head-quarters at Windsor, had been to soothe ruffled spirits and restore harmony. Rainsborough, Ewer, Scott, and the other ultra-Democratic officers had been restored to their places, with even studied respect; and strong recommendations had gone to Parliament that Rainsborough, who, before the Mutiny, had been named for the post of Vice-Admiral of the Fleet (in recollection of his original profession), should be confirmed in that high appointment. At Windsor there had been Army-dinners and great prayer-meetings of officers and men, in which Cromwell and Ireton took a conspicuous part, winning all back by their zeal and graciousness into a happy frame of concord, which the Parliamentary Commissioners with the Army described as "a sweet and comfortable agreement, the whole matter of the kingdom being left with Parliament." And so, while the two Houses were arranging to send their Four Bills and the Propositions to the Isle of Wight, the Army only looked on approvingly. [Footnote: Parl. Hist. III. 791-799 and 805-822; Godwin, II. 462-8; Carlyle's Cromwell, I. 254; Rushworth, VII. 951.] On Friday, Dec. 24, the Earl of Denbigh and the other Commissioners of the two Houses arrived in the Isle of Wight and delivered the Four Bills and the Propositions to his Majesty. Next day (Christmas Day) Loudoun, Lanark, Lauderdale, and the other Scottish Commissioners, arrived, and delivered to his Majesty, in the name of the Kingdom of Scotland, a Protest against the English Bills and Propositions. For the day or two following, these Scottish Commissioners were more with his Majesty than the English Commissioners; but on the 28th the English Commissioners received from him in writing his Answer to the two Houses. It was utterly unfavourable, declining to assent to the Bills or anything else except after a complete and deliberate Treaty, and assigning the Protest of the Scottish Commissioners as a sufficient reason for this had there been no other. With this Answer the English Commissioners returned to London, and it was read in both Houses on the 3lst. The effects were extraordinary. On the 3rd of January, 1647-8, it was resolved in the Commons, by a majority of 141 to 92, that no farther applications or addresses should be made to the King by that House, that no addresses or applications to him by any person whatsoever should be made without leave of the Houses under the penalties of High Treason, that no messages from the King should be received, and that no one should presume to bring or carry such. On the 15th the Lords agreed in these Resolutions, only Manchester and Warwick dissenting out of sixteen Peers present. Negotiation was thus declared to be at an end; and the Army, delighted with the news, burst into applauses of Parliament, and vowed to live or die with it in the common cause. One consequence of what had occurred was the dissolution of the peculiar body which, under the name of "The Committee of the two Kingdoms," had hitherto exercised so much power, and been in fact a common executive for the Parliaments of England and Scotland (_antè_, p. 41). As Scotland had broken off from England, this body had become an absurdity; and so, on the same days on which the two Houses adopted the No-Address Resolution, they resolved "That the powers formerly granted by both Houses to the Committee of both Kingdoms, relating to the kingdoms of England and Ireland, be now granted and vested in the members of both Houses only that are of that Committee." In other words, Lords Loudoun and Lauderdale and the other Scottish Commissioners were no longer wanted in England, and might go home. These gentlemen, being themselves of the same opinion, sent a letter to the Lords, Jan. 17, intimating that they were about to take their leave. With great civility the Lords sent Manchester and Warwick "to wish them a good journey," assure them that any arrears of business between England and Scotland would be attended to, and express a desire for "the continuance of the brotherly union and good correspondency between the two nations." Actually, a few days afterwards, the Commissioners left London; and on the 29th the Houses appointed six Commissioners of their own to follow them to Edinburgh, and allay, if possible, any ill feeling that might be caused there by their representation of recent occurrences. Had the two Houses known all, their politeness would have been less! It had not been only to give in a protest in the name of Scotland against the English Bills and Propositions that Lanark, Loudoun, and Lauderdale had made their Christmas journey to Carisbrooke in the wake of the English Commissioners. The King had been in correspondence with them for some time before on the subject begun with them at Hampton Court; and, when they came to Carisbrooke, they had brought with them not only the Protest against the English Bills, but also a secret document of a more momentous nature, prepared for the King's signature. Actually on the 26th of December, or two days before the English Commissioners were dismissed with the unfavourable Answer to the English Parliament, this document had been signed in Carisbrooke Castle by the King on the one part, and by Loudoun, Lauderdale, and Lanark on the other. Not daring to bring it out of the island with them, the Commissioners, Clarendon says, had it wrapt up in lead and buried in a garden whence they could recover it afterwards. And little wonder! It was A SECRET TREATY BETWEEN CHARLES AND THE SCOTTISH COMMISSIONERS, in which his Majesty bound himself, on the word of a King, to confirm the Covenant for such as had taken it or might take it (without forcing it on the unwilling), also to confirm Presbyterian Church-government and the Westminster Directory of Worship in England for three years (with a reservation of the Liturgy, &c., for himself and his household), and moreover to see to the suppression of the Independents and all other sects and heresies; while the Scots, in return, were to send an Army into England for the purpose of restoring him, on these conditions, to his full Royalty in that kingdom! Thus at last Charles had made a conclusive Treaty with one section of his adversaries; and, as Queen Henrietta Maria had always advised, it was with the Scots, all but absolutely on their own terms of the abolition of Episcopacy and the establishment of strict Presbytery in England!! [Footnote: Lords and Commons Journals; Parl. Hist. III. 827-837; Burnet's Hamiltons (for correspondence between the King and Lanark) 412-423; Stevenson's Hist. of the Church of Scotland, ed. 1840, p. 586 (for Loudoun's account of the substance of the Treaty); Clarendon, 634-637. Clarendon's account of the Treaty is full; and, though he condemns it as "monstrous," he gives the apology that had reconciled the King to it in his despair. It was that Lanark, Loudoun, and Lauderdale had themselves argued that the Treaty would turn out mere waste paper. After the Scottish Army should be in England, and the Royalists in England roused, "there would be nobody to exact all those particulars, but everybody would submit to what his Majesty should think fit to be done!"] Until the decisive rupture with Parliament on the Four Bills, Charles had been permitted to range about the Isle of Wight very much at his pleasure, and the concourse of visitors to him had been as free as at Hampton Court. From the moment of the rupture, however, all was changed. Aware that an escape abroad was now meditated by Charles, and warned by some stir about Carisbrooke itself for the King's rescue, Colonel Hammond had at once taken precautions, but implored Parliament at the same time either to remove the King to some other place or else to discharge himself from an office the burden of which he found insupportable. With this last request Parliament did not comply, and Hammond had to continue in his painful trust, obeying the instructions sent him. His Majesty was not to be allowed any longer to ride about the island, or to receive unauthorized visitors; he was to be restrained to Carisbrooke Castle and the line round it; Ashburnham, Legge, and other suspicious persons in his service, including his chaplains Hammond and Sheldon, were to be dismissed; and his remaining household were to be under very strict regulation. These instructions having been carried into effect, Charles's life in the Isle of Wight from January 1647-8 onwards was one of straiter captivity and seclusion than he had experienced even at Holmby. He had the liberty only of the Castle and its precincts; which, however, were sufficiently large and convenient for the exercise of walking, with "good air and a delightful prospect both to the sea and land." For his solace and recreation in his favourite game, the barbican of the Castle, a spacious parading ground beyond the walls but within the line, was converted by Hammond into "a bowling-green scarce to be equalled," at one side of which there was built "a pretty summer-house for retirement." This at vacant hours became the King's chief resort both forenoon and afternoon, there being "no gallery, nor rooms of state nor garden," within the Castle walls. Occasionally, notwithstanding the strict guard, some poor stray creature troubled with scrofula, who had come to the Isle of Wight for the Royal touch, would contrive to beguile the sentries and obtain admission to the barbican. As at Holmby, however, the King had his set times in-doors for his devotions and for reading and writing; and his favourite books, catalogued and placed in the charge of Mr. Herbert, were again in request. Though he still declined the services of any Presbyterian clergyman, he rather liked the society of young Mr. Troughton, the governor's chaplain, and had arguments with him daily on theological points. Once, when a half-crazed minister, nicknamed Doomsday Sedgwick, came all the way from London to present him with a book he had written, suitable for his comfort and entitled "Leaves from the Tree of Life for the healing of the Nations," he ordered him to be admitted, received the book, glanced at some pages of it, and then returned it to the author with the observation that surely he must need some sleep after having written a book like that. And so day by day the routine flowed on, and always at night the wax-lamp was kept burning in the silver basin close to his Majesty's bed. [Footnote: Lords Journals, Dec. 31, 1647, and of subsequent dates; Herbert's Memoirs of the Last Years of Charles, 57- 67 and 95-98; Wood's Ath. III. 894-6. Doomsday Sedgwick was not Obadiah Sedgwick of the Assembly, but William Sedgwick of Ely.] The Treaty with the Scots could not remain long secret. No sooner had the Scottish Commissioners who had framed it returned to Edinburgh than they were obliged to let the substance of it become known. This was done in the Committee of Estates on the 15th of February, when Loudoun and Lauderdale formally reported the result of their visit to the Isle of Wight. Then ensued a most perplexed agitation in Scotland on the whole subject. THE ENGAGEMENT, as the Secret Treaty was called, was universally discussed, and with great diversity of opinion. In the Committee of Estates, the Hamiltons, who had been the real authors of the Engagement, carried all their own way. Nay in the Parliament, or full Convention of the Estates, which met on the 2nd of March, the majority went passionately with the Hamiltons. Four-fifths of the nobles went with them; more than half the lairds; and nearly half the burgesses, including most of the representatives of the larger Scottish towns. These were the HAMILTONIANS or ENGAGERS. Not the less in Parliament itself was there a strong opposition party, headed by Argyle, Eglinton, Lothian, Cassilis, and some half-dozen other nobles, aided by Johnstone of Warriston; and, as this party rested on the nearly unanimous support of the Scottish clergy, it had a powerful organ of expression, apart from Parliament, in the Commission of the Kirk. It was argued, on their side, that the Commissioners to the Isle of Wight had exceeded their powers, that the conditions made with Charles were too slippery, that he had in reality evaded the Covenant, and that, though Scotland might have a just cause for war against the English Sectaries, no good could come of a war, nominally against them, in which Presbyterians would be allied with Malignants, Prelatists, and perhaps even Papists. Declarations embodying these views were published by the Commission; the pulpits rang with denunciations of the Engagement; petitions against it from Provincial Synods and Presbyteries of the Kirk were poured in upon Parliament; had the entire population been polled, the PROTESTERS or ANTI-ENGAGERS would have been found in the majority. Even Loudoun detached himself from the Hamiltons, and publicly, in the High Church of Edinburgh, submitted to ecclesiastical rebuke, professing repentance of his handiwork. Nevertheless the Hamiltons persevered; two-thirds of the Parliament adhered to them; and by the end of April 1648 it was understood, not in England only, but also on the Continent, that an Army of 40,000 Scots was to be raised somehow, in spite of Argyle and the Scottish clergy, for an invasion of England in the King's behalf. The Army was to be commanded in chief by the Duke of Hamilton himself, with the Earl of Callander for his Lieutenant-general. [Footnote: Baillie, III. 24-46; Stevenson, 582-595; Burnet's Hamiltons, 424-435.] Thus out of the Scottish Engagement with the King in the Isle of Wight there grew what is called THE SECOND CIVIL WAR, It was a much briefer affair than the first. That had spread over four years; but the real substance of this was to be crushed into as many months (May-Aug. 1648). The military story of these months shall concern us here only in so far as it is interwoven with the political narrative. The Engagement with the Scots had been communicated to Queen Henrietta Maria at St. Germains, and gradually, with more or less precision, to all those dispersed Royalists, at home or abroad, who might be expected to take leading parts in co-operation with the promised Scottish invasion. The programme, so far as it could be settled, was something after this fashion:--(1) Risings were to be promoted in all parts of England and Wales, to coalesce at last, if possible, into a great general rising in which London should be involved. All the conditions seemed favourable for such an attempt. Not only in every county were there eager and revengeful remains of the old Episcopal Royalism, but the tendency even of the Presbyterians throughout England had been of late decidedly Royalist. The Presbyterians had never been anti-monarchical in theory; and large numbers of them had begun of late to pity the King, and to question whether the excessively hard terms imposed upon him by Parliament were altogether necessary. Even if he were to be restored to larger powers in some things than might be quite desirable, would not that be better than continuing in the present state of uproar and confusion, with a Democratic Army fastened vampire-like on the land, preying on its resources, and poisoning its principles? For people in this state of mind the promised invasion of the Scots in Charles's behalf was the very pretext needed. Much of the Presbyterianism of England, including the City of London, might be whirled, along with the readier Old Royalism, into a rising for the King. To promote and manage risings in particular districts, however, there must be leaders authorized from St. Germains. Such leaders were found among eminent Royalists either already in England or able to transfer themselves thither without delay. In the North, where immediate co-operation with the Scots would be necessary, Sir Marmaduke Langdale and Sir Philip Musgrave were to be the chief agents; and for the West, the Midlands, and the South, there were the Earl of Norwich (formerly Lord Goring), the Earl of Peterborough, Lord Byron, Lord Capel, and others. The young Duke of Buckingham, and his brother Lord Francis Villiers, who had not been concerned in the first Civil War, being then but boys and on their travels abroad, had recently returned to their great estates in England, and were anxious to figure as became the name they bore. Strangely enough, in the midst of all these, as the commissioned generalissimo of the King's forces in England when they should be in the field, was to be the Earl of Holland. His veerings in the first war had not been to his credit; but his long seclusion had done him good; he had always been in favour with the Queen; and his Parliamentary and Presbyterian connexions were an advantage. (2) There was to be a gathering of all the Royalist exiles to accompany or follow the Prince of Wales in a landing on the British shores. As early as Feb. 8, when only the vaguest rumour of the Scottish Engagement can have been in circulation on the Continent, the report from the Hague had been that it would be "no wonder to see 10,000 merry souls, then lying there, and cursing the Parliament in every cup they drank, venturing over to make one cast more for the King." Certain it is that in the following months there was a stir in all the nests of English refugees in France and Holland, and in the Channel Islands. Not only Prince Rupert, Percy, Wilmot, Jermyn, Colepepper, Ormond, and others round the Queen and the Prince in Paris, but the Earl of Bristol, Lord Cottington, Secretary Nicholas, and others, in Rouen or Caen, and Hopton and Hyde in Jersey, were all in motion. Money was the great want; they were all so wretchedly poor; but that difficulty might be overcome so far as to make an expedition to England at least possible. Mazarin might lend help; or, if he did not, the Prince of Orange, the husband of Charles's eldest daughter, and now Stadtholder of Holland, might be expected to do all he could for his father-in-law consistently with the limited powers of his Stadtholdership. A Dutch port might be more convenient than a French one for the embarkation of the refugees collectively or in detachments. Most would be bound for England; but the true sphere of some, as for example Ormond, would be in Ireland. For the Prince of Wales himself what was specially destined by the Queen was a voyage to Scotland. It was by being among the Scots personally till their Army could be got ready, and either remaining in Scotland afterwards or accompanying the Army into England, that his Royal Highness would be of most use. On this point the Queen was emphatic. [Footnote: Clarendon, Book XI., where the pre-arrangement of the new Civil War from head-quarters, and the parts assigned to different persons, are set forth more lucidly, and with better information, than anywhere else. Dates are deficient, but the sketching is masterly. See also Rushworth for Feb., March, and April, 1648.] Such being the programme, what was the performance? It did not quite come up to the programme, but it was sufficiently formidable. The first rising was in Wales. There a certain drunken Colonel Poyer, governor of Pembroke Castle, with a Colonel Powell and a Colonel Laughern, also in Parliamentary employment, revolted as early as the end of February. Ostensibly it was in resentment of an order of Parliament for disbanding supernumeraries; but, before the end of April, the affair became a Royalist outbreak of all Pembrokeshire, Carmarthenshire, and Cardiganshire, spreading through the rest of South Wales. To suppress this rising Cromwell was to go from London, May 1, with two regiments of horse and three of foot; which, with the forces already in the region, would make an army of about 8,000 men. Before he went, risings of less importance had been heard of in Cornwall and Dorsetshire, and there had been one tremendous tumult in London itself, to the cry of "For God and King Charles!" (Sunday, April 9.) It had been suppressed only by street- charges of the regiments quartered at Whitehall and Charing Cross. Significant incidents of the same month were the revolt to the Irish Rebels of Lord Inchiquin, hitherto one of the most zealous Parliamentarians in Ireland, and the escape from London of the young Duke of York. By the contrivance of a Colonel Bamfield the Duke was whisked away from St. James's Palace (April 21), and conveyed, in girl's clothes, to Holland. He was not quite fifteen years of age; but his father had instructed him to escape when he could, and the fact that he had been designated for the command of the Navy was likely to be useful. All this before Cromwell had gone into Wales; but hardly had he gone when there came the news that Berwick had been seized for the King by Sir Marmaduke Langdale (April 30), and Carlisle by Sir Philip Musgrave and Sir Thomas Glenham (May 6). Langdale and Musgrave had been staying in Edinburgh, and the seizure of these two towns was by arrangement with the Duke of Hamilton and in preparation for his invasion. Langdale, indeed, announced himself as commissioned General for the King in the five northern counties, and the business of watching against his advance lay with Lambert, the Parliamentarian General in those parts, assisted by Sir Arthur Haselrig, now Governor of Newcastle. Meanwhile the preservation of the peace in and near London was in the hands of Fairfax, Ireton, and Skippon--Fairfax now no longer mere Sir Thomas, but Lord Fairfax of the Scottish Peerage, as successor to his father Lord Ferdinando, who had died March 13. These three were soon as hard at work in their south-eastern region as Cromwell in Wales and Lambert in the north. For the county of Surrey having followed the counties of Norfolk and Suffolk in sending in a petition for the disbanding of the Army and the restoration of the King "to the splendour of his ancestors" (May 16), a new riot in London "For God and King Charles" was the consequence, and in a short time there was more or less of Royalist commotion north and south of London, through Norfolk, Suffolk, Cambridge, Herts, Essex, Surrey, and Kent. The insurrection in Kent was of independent origin, and was the most extensive and hence It had been begun by the Kentish people themselves, roused by Roger L'Estrange and a young Mr. Hales; but the Earl of Norwich had come into Kent to take the lead. Canterbury, Dover, Sandwich, and the castles of Deal and Walmer, had been won for the King; there were communications between the insurgents and the Londoners, and in the end of May some 10,000 or 12,000 men of Kent, with runaway citizens and apprentices from London in their ranks, were marching towards the City with drums and banners. To meet these Fairfax and Ireton, with seven regiments, went out to Blackheath, May 29; and, the insurgents then drawing back, the two were at Gravesend May 31, and at Maidstone June 1. A few days of their hard blows, struck right in the heart of Kent, sufficed for that county; and the Earl of Norwich, with the Kentish fugitives, crossed the Thames into Essex. Insurgents from other parts, including Lord Capel, Lord Loughborough, and Sir Charles Lucas, having at the same time gathered into that county, there was a junction of forces, with the intention of a roundabout march upon London, by Suffolk, Norfolk, and Cambridge, The swift approach of Fairfax out of conquered Kent (June 11) compelled them to change their plan. They threw themselves into Colchester (June 12), adding some 4,000 or 5,000 armed men to the population of that doomed town. Doomed! for Fairfax, having failed to take it on the first assault, resolved to reduce it by starvation, and so, the insurgents on their side resolving to hold out to the last, inasmuch as the detention of Fairfax in Essex till the Scots should be in England was the best hope, both for themselves and for the general cause, the SIEGE OF COLCHESTER (June l2-- Aug. 28) turned out one of the most horrible events of the war. An important episode of the Kentish Insurrection was the Revolt of the Fleet. The main station of the Fleet being in the Downs, just off the Kentish coast, Royalist emissaries had been busy among the sailors, and with such effect that, when Vice-Admiral Rainsborough, who had been ashore Defending Deal Castle against the insurgents, tried to go on board his own ship, he was laid hold of and sent back. This was about the 27th of May; and, though the Parliament immediately re-appointed the Presbyterian Earl of Warwick to his old post of Lord High Admiral, and sent him down to pacify the Fleet (May 29), the effort failed. The cry of the sailors was, "We will go to our own Admiral," meaning the young Duke of York in Holland. Actually, some ten warships, having ejected all their Parliamentarian officers, did put to sea, and, after cruising about the coasts of Kent, Essex, Suffolk, and Norfolk, till the insurrection in those parts was quashed, did cross to Helvoetsluys in Holland, early in June, in search of the young Duke. It was a splendid accident for the world of Royalist exiles on the Continent, for it supplied them with the wooden bridge they needed for transit into the mother-country. Accordingly, though the royal boy-admiral came at once from the Hague to Helvoetsluys, went on board the Fleet, and was for a week or two the pet of the sailors, the higher powers at Paris hastened to turn the accident to the largest account. Mazarin refusing all help, some money was raised otherwise, so as to enable the Prince of Wales, with Prince Rupert, Hopton, Colepepper and others, to embark at Calais for Helvoetsluys. He arrived there early in July, was received with acclamations by the Fleet, and immediately relieved his younger brother in the command. The Prince and Princess of Orange coming from the Hague to welcome him, there was a joyful family-meeting, with much consultation, but a good deal of difference, among all concerned, as to the ways and means. About the time of the Revolt of the Fleet, Parliament had received other bad news. Pontefract had been seized for the King, June 2, and other important places in Yorkshire were taken or attempted soon after. Through the rest of June there were risings or threats of rising in the Midlands, so that in the beginning of July things looked very ill. There had been successes, it was true, against the insurgents in Wales, and Cromwell was hopefully besieging Pembroke; Lambert was doing well with his small forces against Langdale in the north; Colchester was beginning to be distressed in the grip of Fairfax; but still, with the whole of England in Royalist or semi-Royalist palpitation, and the City of London actually heaving with suppressed revolt, what could be expected when Hamilton and his army of Scottish Presbyterians did cross the border? There had been delays in the levy of this army, owing to the continued resistance of the Argyle party, the clergy, and the western shires; and it had only been by the most tyrannic exercise of power that it had been got together. At last, however, it _had_ been got together; and now England was full of the rumour of its coming. Lo! at the rumour the Earl of Holland, the designated generalissimo of the English army of co-operation, could not choose but start from his lethargy! With the young Duke of Buckingham, young Lord Francis Villiers, the Earl of Peterborough, and the Dutch Colonel Dalbier, in his company, and a following of 500 horse, he started up at Kingston-on-Thames on the 6th of July; addressed a formal Declaration of his motives to Parliament and the City of London, as well as a letter of encouragement to the besieged at Colchester; and called on all Surrey, Sussex and Middlesex, to join him. That bravado, however, lasted but two days. On the 8th of July, a Parliamentary force under Sir Michael Livesey attacked Holland's horse and routed them utterly. Lord Francis Villiers and Dalbier were slain; the Duke of Buckingham and the Earl of Peterborough escaped to London, and thence abroad; but Holland himself, pursued into Hunts, was taken prisoner. On the very day of the defeat of Holland in Surrey (Saturday, July 8) the Scots did come into England. They came from Annan on the Solway Firth, marching to Carlisle. They were not the expected 40,000, but the advanced portion of an army which, when it had all come in, may have numbered about 20,000. The Duke himself led the van with his Lifeguards in great state, preceded by trumpeters "all in scarlet cloaks full of silver lace;" Generals Thomas Middleton and William Baillie came next with horse and foot; and the Earl of Callander brought up the rear. Joined by Sir Marmaduke Langdale and his English, they marched on, or rather sauntered on, to Penrith (July 15), and thence to Kendal (Aug. 1?), the wary Lambert retreating before them, but watching their every motion, skirmishing when he could, and waiting anxiously for the arrival of Cromwell, who, having at length taken Pembroke and so far settled Wales (July 11), was hurrying to the new scene of action in the north. Off Kendal, a body of about 3,000 Scots, brought over from Ireland by Major- general Sir George Monro, attached itself to Hamilton, with an understanding that Hamilton's orders to it were to be directly from himself to Monro. There was then a debate whether it would be best to advance straight south into Lancashire, or to strike east into Yorkshire. It was decided for Lancashire. On into Lancashire, therefore, they moved, the poor people in the track behind them grieving dreadfully over their ravages, but dignified papers of the Scottish Parliament preceding them to explain the invasion. Scotland had made an Engagement to rescue the King, free England from the tyranny of an Army of Sectaries, establish Presbytery, and put down "that impious Toleration settled by the two Houses contrary to the Covenant!" While the Scots were thus advancing into the north-west of England, the Prince of Wales had brought his Fleet from Holland, and (the Queen's idea that he should go to Scotland having been postponed) was hovering about the south-east coast. By fresh accessions the fleet had been increased to nineteen sail; it had been provisioned by the Prince of Orange; and there were 2,000 soldiers on board. On the 25th of July the Prince was off Yarmouth, where a landing of the soldiers was attempted with a view to relieve Colchester. That failing, he removed to the mouth of the Thames, to obstruct the commerce of the Londoners, and make prizes of their ships. Precisely at the time when the Westmorland and Lancashire people were grieving over the ravages of the invading Scots, the Londoners were in consternation over the capture by the Prince of an Indiaman and several other richly-laden vessels. For the ransom of these by their owners the Prince demanded huge sums of money, intimating at the same time (Aug 8) that the block of the Thames would be kept up until the Londoners declared for the King, or Parliament agreed to a cessation of arms on certain loyal conditions. [Footnote: In the summary given in the text of the incidents of the Civil War from March to August 1648, I have tried to reduce into chronological connexion the information given disconnectedly in Rushworth, VII. 1010-1220, and at large in Clarendon, Book XI. There have been references, for dates and facts, to the Parliamentary History and Journals, Burnet's Hamiltons, Godwin's Commonwealth, and Carlyle's Cromwell.] Through these four or five months of Royalist risings coalescing at last in a Civil War as extensive as the first had been, and much more entangled (April-Aug. 1648), what had been the conduct of Parliament? It had been very odd indeed. Nothing could have been bolder than the attitude of the two Houses, and especially of the Commons, for a month or so after their famous No- Address Resolutions of Jan. 1-15. Thus, on the 11th of February, the Commons adopted, by a majority of 80 to 50, a Declaration, which had been prepared in Committee, and chiefly by Nathaniel Fiennes and Henry Marten, setting forth their Reasons for breaking off communication with the King. They published the document without consulting the other House. It was the severest criticism of the King personally that had yet been put forth by either House of Parliament, severe even to atrocity. His whole reign was reviewed remorselessly from its beginning, and characterized as "a continued track of breach of trust to the three kingdoms," and there was even the horrible insinuation that he had connived with the Duke of Buckingham in poisoning his own father. After this tremendous document-- so tremendous that two Answers to it were published, one from the King himself, and the other written anonymously by Hyde in Jersey--who could have expected that the Commons would again make friendly overtures to his Majesty? Yet such was the fact. The tergiversation, however, was gradual. Through the rest of February, the whole of March and most of April, the Commons were still in their austere fit, utterly ignoring the King, and prosecuting punctiliously such pieces of business as the Reply to the recent Declarations and Protests of the Scots, and the Revision of the Westminster Assembly's _Confession of Faith and Larger Catechism_. [Footnote: The Revision of the _Confession of Faith_ by the two Houses was completed June 20, 1648, when, with the exception of certain portions about Church-government held in reserve, it was passed and ordered to be printed: not, however, with the title "Confession of Faith," but as "Articles of Christian Religion approved and passed by both Houses of Parliament after advice had with the Assembly of Divines by authority of Parliament sitting at Westminster." The Revision, though detailed, was much a matter of form, paragraph after paragraph passing without discussion. On at least one point, however, there was a division in the Commons (Feb. 18, 1647-8). It related to Chap. XXIV. of the Confession, entitled _Of Marriage and Divorce_. The question was whether the House should agree to the last clause of the 4th paragraph of that Chapter--"The man may not marry any of his wife's kindred nearer in blood than he may of his own, nor the woman of her husband's kindred nearer in blood than of her own." For the _Yea_ there voted 40 (Sir Robert Pye and Sir Anthony Irby, tellers); for the _No_ 71 (Sir William Armyn and Mr. Knightley, tellers); in other words, the House by a majority of 31 doubted the ecclesiastical doctrine of forbidden degrees of _affinity_ in marriage.] The attendance during these months ranged from about 70 to 190, and the Independents, or friends of the Army, seemed still to command the majority. On the 24th of April, however, on a call of the House, occasioned by the prospect of the Scottish invasion and the signs of Royalist movement in England, no fewer than 306 members appeared in their places, Many of these seem to have been Presbyterian members, long absent, but now whistled back by their leaders for a fresh effort in behalf of Royalty in connexion with Presbytery. At all events, from this call of the House on April 24 the tide is turned, and we find vote after vote showing renewed Presbyterian ascendency with an inclination to the King. Thus, on the 28th of April, it was carried by 165 votes to 99, that the House should declare that it would not alter the fundamental government of the kingdom, by King, Lords, and Commons; also, by 108 to 105, that "the matter of the Propositions sent to the King at Hampton Court by consent of both kingdoms" should be the ground of a new debate for the settlement of the kingdom; also, by 146 to 101, that the No-Address Resolutions of January should not hinder any member from propounding in the debate anything that might tend to an improvement of the said Propositions. Here certainly was a change of policy; and, if there could be any doubt that it was effected by a sudden influx of Presbyterians, that doubt would be removed by a stupendous event which followed, appertaining wholly to the Religious question. On the 1st of May (the very day on which Cromwell was ordered off to South Wales by Fairfax and the Council of War) there was brought up in the Commons an "_Ordinance for the Suppression of Blasphemies and Heresies_," which the Presbyterians had been long urging and labouring at in committees, but which the Independents and Tolerationists had hitherto managed to keep back. Without a division it passed the House that day; next day it passed the Lords; and, accordingly, under date May 2, 1648, this is what stands in the Lords Journals as thenceforward to be the Law of England:-- "For the preventing of the growth and spreading of Heresy and Blasphemy: Be it ordained ... That all such persons as shall, from and after the date of this present Ordinance, willingly, by preaching, teaching, printing, or writing, maintain and publish that there is no God, or that God is not present in all places, doth not know and foreknow all things, or that He is not Almighty, that He is not perfectly Holy, or that He is not Eternal, or that the Father is not God, the Son is not God, or that the Holy Ghost is not God, or that They Three are not One Eternal God; or that shall in like manner maintain and publish that Christ is not God equal with the Father, or shall deny the Manhood of Christ, or that the Godhead and Manhood of Christ are several natures, or that the Humanity of Christ is pure and unspotted of all sin; or that shall maintain and publish, as aforesaid, that Christ did not die, nor rise from the dead, nor is ascended into Heaven bodily, or that shall deny His death is meritorious in the behalf of Believers; or that shall maintain and publish, as aforesaid, that Jesus Christ is not the Son of God; or that the Holy Scripture, _videlicet_ [here comes in the entire list of the Canonical Books of the Old and New Testaments], is not the Word of God; or that the bodies of men shall not rise again after they are dead; or that there is no Day of Judgment after death:--All such maintaining and publishing of such Error or Errors, with obstinacy therein, shall, by virtue hereof, be adjudged Felony: And all such persons [here is explained the process by which they are to be accused and brought to trial].. and in case the indictment be found and the party upon his trial shall not abjure the said Error, and defence and maintenance of the same, he SHALL SUFFER THE PAINS OF DEATH, AS IN CASE OF FELONY, WITHOUT BENEFIT OF CLERGY..." "Be it further ordained, by the authority aforesaid, That all and every person or persons that shall publish or maintain, as aforesaid, any of the several Errors hereafter ensuing, _videlicet_ [here a long enumeration of _minor_ forms of Religious Error, such as "that man by nature hath free will to turn to God," that God may be worshipped by pictures and images, that there is a Purgatory, "that man is bound to believe no more than by his reason he can comprehend," "that the baptizing of infants is unlawful," that the observation of the Lord's Day is not obligatory, or "that the Church-government by Presbytery is Anti- Christian or unlawful"], shall be [ordered to renounce their Error or Errors in public congregation, and, in case of refusal,] COMMITTED TO PRISON...." Imagine _that_ going forth, just as the Second Civil War had begun, as the will and ordinance of Parliament! One wonders that the Concordat between Parliament and the Army, arranged by Cromwell and the other Army- chiefs in the preceding November, was not snapped on the instant. One wonders that the Army did not wheel in mass round Westminster, haul the legislating idiots from their seats, and then undertake in their own name both the war and the general business of the nation. The behaviour of the Army, however, was more patient and wise. Parliament could be reckoned with afterwards; meanwhile let it pass what measures it liked, so long as it did not absolutely throw up its trust and abandon all to the King! Till Parliament should do that, the fighting which the Army had to do at any rate might as well be done in the name of the Parliament! Really there seemed a chance that even the last extremity of faint- heartedness would be reached, and that Parliament _would_ throw up its national trust. Here, for example, were some of its proceedings in June and July, of which Cromwell must have heard, with rather strange feelings, in the midst of his hard work in Wales, Lambert in his watch against the Scots in the north, and Fairfax and Ireton in their siege of Colchester. June 3, 7, and 8, the two Houses, of their own accord, or on earnest Petitions from the City, agreed to drop all the impeachments and other proceedings voted in the preceding year at the instance of the Army against members of their own body, and against City officials implicated in the Presbyterian tumults in London, and in particular to invite the Seven peccant Peers and the survivors of the Eleven peccant Commoners to return to their places. June 30 and July 3 the proposal to re-open a Treaty with the King was after much intermediate debating, brought to a bearing by a formal agreement of the two Houses to rescind their No- Address Resolutions of January, and by a vote of the Commons that the Propositions to be submitted to the King for his assent before farther treaty should be these three--Presbytery for three years, the Militia with Parliament for ten years, and the Recall by the King of all Proclamations and Declarations against the Parliament. Even this, so much more favourable to the King than former offers, the Lords thought too harsh; and they refused (July 5) to make the Treaty conditional on the King's prior assent to the three Propositions. Nor was this the only proof that the bravery of the Lords had evaporated even more completely than that of the Commons. On July 14, when it was known that Hamilton's Army of Scots was actually in England, the Commons did vote that the invaders were public enemies, and that all Englishmen who should abet them should be accounted traitors; but the Lords (July 18) refused to concur in that vote. Were the soldiers of Parliament, then, to be fighting against invaders whom one of the Houses did not regard as public enemies?--In short, the fact had come to be that, in the beginning of August, the forces of Fairfax, Lambert, and Cromwell, were conducting a war in the name of Parliament which Parliament and the City of London were taking every means to stop. A Petition of the Lord Mayor, Aldermen, and Common Council of the City, presented to the Lords Aug. 8 (the last of scores of Petitions in the same sense that had for a month or two been poured in), expressed the general Presbyterian feeling. "The government of the Church still unsettled; blasphemy, heresy, schism, and profaneness increased; the relief of bleeding Ireland obstructed; the war, to their great astonishment, renewed; the people of England thereby miserably impoverished and oppressed; the blood of our fellow-subjects spilt like water upon the ground; our Brethren of Scotland now entered into this kingdom in a hostile manner, his Highness the Prince of Wales commanding at sea a considerable part of the Navy, and other ships under his power, having already made stay of many English ships with merchandise and provisions to a very great value:"--these were the complaints; and the Petitioners humbly conceived there was no visible remedy but the "speedy freeing of his Majesty" from restraint, and "a Personal Treaty" with him for "restoring him to his just rights." The City was to have its will. The Commons (July 28) had abandoned, by a majority of 71 to 64, their intention to require assent to the three Propositions in preparation for a Treaty, and had agreed to a general and open Treaty, such as the Lords desired; communications on the subject had been made to the King; and, though his Majesty would have preferred to treat in London, he consented (Aug. 10) that the place should be Newport in the Isle of Wight.--Note also two contemporary incidents of deep significance. On the 2nd of August Major Robert Huntingdon, Cromwell's former Major, presented to the Lords, in the form of a Paper of "Sundry Reasons inducing him to lay down his Commission," what was really a series of charges of High Treason against Cromwell; the Paper was that day duly entered in the Lords Journals for future occasion; and it was with the utmost difficulty, and much contrivance of the Speaker, that the same Paper was kept out of the Commons. Such was the first incident; the other is thus given by Rushworth under date Aug. 14: "Colonel Denzil Holles came this day to the House and sat." This means that the chief of the Eleven, the Arch- Presbyterian of the House, the man who hated Cromwell worse than poison, had come back at this juncture to re-assume the Presbyterian leadership. After that Major Huntingdon's charges against Cromwell were not likely to be kept long out of the Commons by any contrivance of the Speaker. [Footnote: The facts in this account of the conduct of Parliament from Feb. to Aug. 1648 are from the Parliamentary History, the Lords and Commons Journals, and Rushworth. The dates given will indicate the exact places in these authorities.] If ever a General fought for his country with the rope round his neck, that General was Cromwell, as he now fought for England. No one knew this better than himself, when, with his hardy troops hurried north from their severe service in Wales, he joined Lambert among the Yorkshire hills (Aug. 10 or thereabouts), to deal with the army of Hamilton and Langdale. Let him fail in this enterprise, let him succeed but doubtfully in it, and, in the relapse into Royalism which would then be universal, the first uproar of execration would be against _him_, and London would either never see him again or see him dragged to death. Fail!-succeed but doubtfully! When the wicked plot against the just and gnash upon him with their teeth, doth not the Lord laugh at them and see that their day is coming? It was in this faith that Cromwell, descending westward from the Yorkshire hills after his junction with Lambert, hurled himself, with his little army of not more than 9,000 in all, right athwart the track of Hamilton and his 24,000 of mixed Scots and English advancing through Lancashire. The result was THE THREE DAYS' BATTLE OF PRESTON (Aug. 17- 19), in which the Scots and their English allies were totally ruined. About 3,000 were slain; 10,000 were taken prisoners; of the host of fugitives only a portion succeeded in attaching themselves to Monro, who had been lying considerably to the rear of the main battle and now picked up its fragments for a retreat northwards; the rest were dispersed miserably hither and thither, so that for weeks afterwards poor Scots were found begging about English farmhouses, either pretending to be dumb lest their speech should betray them, or trying vainly to pass for Yorkshiremen. Hamilton, with a fraction of the fugitives, made his way into Staffordshire, but had to surrender himself a prisoner Aug. 25. The collapse of the King's cause, begun in Lancashire Aug. 17-19, was to be absolute within the next fortnight. On the 28th of August the Prince of Wales withdrew from his useless hovering about the south-east coast and sailed back with his fleet to Holland; whence most of the ships were recovered in due time, the officers remaining in exile, but the crews only too glad to return to their allegiance to Parliament. On the same day the town of Colchester, after a siege of more than six weeks, during which the most hideous extremities of famine had been endured by the poor townsmen, surrendered at mercy to Fairfax. Above 3,000 soldiers, with their officers, thus became prisoners. Two of the chief officers, Sir Charles Lucas and Sir George Lisle, selected for special reasons, were shot immediately after the surrender by order of the Council of War; the others, including the Earl of Norwich and Lord Capel, were reserved for the disposal of Parliament. [Footnote: Rushworth, VII. 1225-1248; Parl. Hist. III. 992-1002; Lords and Commons Journals; Carlyle's Cromwell, I. 279-299.] Thus, in the end of August 1648, the SECOND CIVIL WAR, with the exception of a few relics, was trampled out. Events then resolved themselves into two distinct courses, running parallel for a time, but one of which proved itself so much the more powerful that at last it disdained the pretence of parallelism with the other and overflooded the whole level. In the first place, there was the progress of that TREATY OF NEWPORT to which the two Houses had pledged themselves while the war was going on. Delays had occurred in arranging particulars with the King, and it was not till Sept. 1 that the Commissioners of the two Houses were appointed. They were, for the Lords, the Earls of Northumberland, Pembroke, Salisbury, and Middlesex, and Viscount Saye and Sele, and, for the Commons, Viscount Wenman (of the Irish Peerage), Denzil Holles, Glynn, Vane the younger, William Pierrepoint, Sir Harbottle Grimstone, Sir John Potts, John Crewe, Samuel Browne, and John Bulkley. Their instructions were to proceed to the Isle of Wight, and there, all together or any eight of them (of whom two must be lords), to treat with the King for forty days on the Propositions formerly presented to him at Hampton Court, taking these Propositions in a fixed order and doing their best to get his Majesty to agree to them, but receiving any counter-proposals he might make, and transmitting these to the two Houses. All demands on the King and all answers or proposals from him were to be in writing; but the debates might be oral between the Commissioners and his Majesty. Not to partake in these debates, but to be present at them by permission, and to form a kind of Council with whom the King might retire to consult on difficult points, were to be a largish body of Royalist lords, divines, lawyers, and others, to whom, at his special request, leave had been given to repair to the island and to be in attendance on him throughout the Treaty. Among these were the Duke of Richmond, the Marquis of Hertford, the Earls of Lindsey and Southampton, Bishops Juxon, Duppa, and Dr. Saunderson, Sir Orlando Bridgman, Sir Thomas Gardiner, and Mr. Geoffrey Palmer. Finally, the King was to be on his parole not to attempt an escape during the Treaty, nor for twenty days afterwards. More than one attempt of the kind had been made during the four months of the Civil War. The wonder is that, while the Prince of Wales was off the English coast with his fleet, a rescue of the King had not somehow been effected. [Footnote: Parl. Hist III. 1001-4; Commons Journals, Sept. 1.] Not till Friday Sept. 15 did the Parliamentary Commissioners arrive in the Isle of Wight. They were accompanied by Messrs. Marshall, Nye, Vines, Seaman, and Caryl, from the Assembly of Divines. The Treaty began on Monday the 18th, in a house in the town of Newport selected as the most suitable for the purpose. At the head of a table, under a canopy of state, sat the King; the lords, divines, and lawyers, permitted to be present as listeners in his behalf, stood grouped behind his chair; the Parliamentary Commissioners sat at the sides of the table, with a space between them and his Majesty. It was hoped at first by the Commissioners that the Treaty would be a short one. That the King would accept the Propositions one by one, without criticism or demur, as fast as they could be tabled, was the desire, above all, of Holles, Glynn, and the other Presbyterian Commissioners. To their surprise, even to their horror, Charles had never been more captious or guarded in his highest kingliness than he was now found in the depths of his doubled ruin. Over the Proposition first presented--that for annulling all declarations and acts against Parliament--he was so dilatory that not till Sept. 25 was it completely passed, and then only with the proviso that his assent to it should have no force until the whole Treaty should be concluded. On the Church question, also brought forward the first day, he was more hopelessly unimpressible. The Proposition on this question being complex, he framed his first Answer so as to include only some of the points and evade the others. He consented to the establishment of Presbytery for three years, but not to the perpetual alienation of the Bishops' lands; and as to the abolition of Episcopacy and the obligation of the Covenant he said not a word. Then, these points being pressed, he argued and re- argued, day after day, conceding only that Episcopacy should be limited, and the like, till the Commissioners, despairing of any full agreement on that Proposition, left it, and passed to others (Oct. 9). On some of these others, including that on the Militia, he chose to acquiesce at once; but a second block occurred on the Proposition relating to Delinquents (Oct. 13-17). All this while, the King was the sole speaker on his side, retiring now and then to consult with his advisers, and of course framing his written Papers with their advice, but always resuming the oral debate himself, and showing an ability both in actual reasoning and in the conduct of the business generally which surprised some of the Commissioners. The necessity of continual reference to the two Houses increased the delay. There had been various debates in both on the progress of the Treaty as reported by the Commissioners, and on the 12th of October the Commons had voted the King's answer on the Church question unsatisfactory. The King, in consequence, revised his Answer on this question, and offered, among other things, to consent to the abolition of Archbishops and all other grades of the hierarchy, if the single office of Bishops were preserved. This revised Answer the Commons voted unsatisfactory, Oct. 26, the Lords agreeing substantially next day; and on the 30th of October the Commons passed a similar vote respecting the Answer on Delinquents. At this point, therefore, the Treaty may be considered to have come to a stop. At the same time there came to a stop a written controversy on the Church question, which had been going on collaterally between his Majesty and the Divines of the Assembly attending the Commissioners. The controversy was a repetition of that between the King and Henderson at Newcastle. It had begun Oct. 2, and it was wound up by his Majesty in a long last Paper Nov. 1. It was mainly on the Episcopacy question that the Treaty was wrecked; or rather it was on this question that the King had chosen that there should be the appearance of wreck. For, in truth, the Treaty on his side, like his former Treaties, had been all along a pretence. Though his doom was staring him in the face, he could not see it, but had again been mustering up wild hopes of some great turn of the wheel in his favour if he could but procrastinate enough. Had not the Marquis of Ormond, for example, effected a landing in Wexford, with a view to a junction with the Irish Roman Catholic Confederates? Might not something come out of that? Or might there not be some help yet from the Prince of Wales in Holland, or from the Queen's and Jermyn's plottings at Paris, or from the Scots after all? To take advantage of any or all of these contingencies, a temporary refuge on the Continent might be necessary; and so, when the time of his parole should be over, a means of escape must be devised! Such having been Charles's mood when he began the Treaty, one does not wonder at finding that he had been behaving with his usual duplicity while it was in progress. "To deal freely with you," he had secretly written to one correspondent on the day when he had accepted the Proposition on the Militia question, "the great concession I made this day was merely in order to my escape, of which if I had not hope, I would not have done it." Again to the Marquis of Ormond in Ireland, "Though you will hear that this Treaty is near, or at least most likely to be, concluded, yet believe it not; but pursue the way you are in with all possible vigour: deliver also that my command to all your friends, but not in public way." With such a man, now as ever, a Treaty was absurd. Parliament did not break off the Treaty, even when its failure had become apparent, but allowed it to straggle on. The term of forty days first fixed had been prolonged to Nov. 4, and on that day most of the Commissioners left Newport on their return to London. Six of them, however, remained behind, on the chance that his Majesty might yet see his way to more complete concessions on the Church question. On this mere chance the Treaty was prolonged to Nov. 18, and again to Nov. 25; and, as his Majesty had begged Parliament that he might have the assistance of such new advice on the Church question as could be given by Usher, ex- Bishops Brownrigg, Prideaux, and Warner, and Drs. Ferne and Morley, leave had been granted to these divines to proceed to Newport. Nothing to the purpose came of their advice; for in the King's final letters from Newport to the two Houses, dated Nov. 18 and Nov. 21, he is as firm as ever on the necessity and Apostolical origin of the order of Bishops, quotes 1 Timothy v. 22 and Titus i. 5 in that behalf, and protests that he can go no farther than his previous offer of a reduction of Episcopacy to its barest Apostolical simplicity. On Friday the 24th of November these letters were voted unsatisfactory by both Houses, but it was resolved (not without a division in the Commons) to allow the King two days more. The Treaty was to be considered at an end on the night of Monday the 27th, and on the next day, with or without satisfaction, the Commissioners still on duty were to take their leave. By the King's parole he would be bound not to attempt an escape from the island till twenty days after that. Colonel Hammond, observing signs that the King meant to assume that the terms of his original parole had ceased to be binding, had prudently insisted on its public renewal. [Footnote: For the account of the treaty of Newport my authorities have been--Parl. Hist III. 1013-1133, with references at the chief dates to Rushworth and the Lords and Commons Journals; Works of King Charles I. (1651), pp. 191-286 of third paging; Godwin, II. 608-618.] Meanwhile, in utter disgust at this protracted play of negotiation between Parliament and the King in the Isle of Wight, there had been forming itself that other agency which was to interpose irresistibly, and hurry all to a real catastrophe. The reader knows the nature of the paction between the Parliament and the Army-chiefs which we have taken the liberty of calling by the name of _The Concordat (antè_, pp. 573-4, 583-4). It was the agreement of the Army-chiefs, in Nov. 1647, to suppress for the time the democratic manifestations of the Army and its pretensions to political dictation, leaving the conduct of affairs wholly to Parliament. This Concordat, as we saw, though it saved the country from the peril of an immediate democratic revolution, was theoretically a clumsy one. The political views of the Army were singularly clear and direct. A strictly constitutional government of King, Lords, and Commons, with a large increase of the power of the Commons, guaranteed Biennial Parliaments, and a thoroughly Reformed System of Representation--such had been the ideal of the Army-chiefs in their _Heads of Proposals_ of August 1647; the Levellers had gone a good deal farther in their _Agreement of the People_ in Nov. 1647, and had proposed the abolition of hereditary privileges, and the concentration of supreme power in a single Representative House; but in both documents alike Liberty of Conscience and Worship was laid down as axiomatic, with a demand that it should be so recognised in the future law of England, for the benefit of Episcopalian and Papist no less than of Presbyterian, Independent, and Sectary. How could an Army burning with these notions bind itself to be the silent servant of a Parliament whose behaviour hitherto, on the religious question generally, and on the political question very often, had been so muddled and fatuous? Better surely for the Army to raise its own political flag and coerce Parliament into the right way! That this had not been done had been owing partly to the unwillingness of Cromwell, Ireton, and the other chiefs to take the responsibility all at once of heading a movement in which the Levelling Principle would be let loose, but partly also because hopes had been conceived that the balance in Parliament had been turned in favour of the Independents. For several months, accordingly, the Army had not repented of the Concordat. Especially in January 1647-8, when the two Houses broke off their abortive Treaty with the King on the Four Bills, and passed their No- Address Resolutions, their boldness won renewed confidence from the Army. But, in the succeeding months, when the rumour of the Scottish Engagement with the King began to rouse Royalists and Presbyterians alike for a new war, and the absent Presbyterians of the Commons came back to their places to turn the votes, and these votes tended to a renewed Treaty with the King on the basis of a strict Presbytery, the disbandment of the Army, and the suppression of Sects,--then what could the Army do but spurn the Concordat? Like their own previous dealings with the King himself in the hope of winning him over, had not this Concordat been, after all, but a piece of carnal and crooked policy? To hold certain beliefs in the heart, and yet to consent to be the dumb instrument of those whose views were wholly different, or only half the same, could not be right in a reasoning body of free men, merely because they were called an Army! What had become of Cromwell's principles, avowed so frequently that the whole Army had them by heart--the principle "That every single man is judge of just and right as to the good or ill of a kingdom," and the principle "That the interest of honest men is the interest of the kingdom"? Nay, had not the Levellers had more of the real root of the matter in them than it had been convenient to allow, and had not the poor fellow who had been shot as a mutineer at the Rendezvous at Ware been in some sense a martyr? Now, at all events, would it not be necessary that at least _something_ of the spirit of the Levellers, _some_ of those proposals of theirs which had been lately suppressed as harsh and premature, should be revived with new credit, and adopted into the general creed of the Army? That such self-reproaches for past mistakes, and such questionings as to the course of future duty, had become universal in the Army before the outbreak of the Second Civil War, is proved by very abundant evidence, but nowhere more strikingly than in the record of the famous Prayer- meeting of the Officers, with Cromwell among them, held at Windsor Castle in March or April 1648. Adjutant-general Allen, the writer of this record, had a vivid recollection of this meeting eleven years afterwards, and could then look back upon it as an undoubted turning-point in the history of the Army and of the nation. At that time, he says, the Army was "in a low, weak, divided, perplexed condition in all respects" and there were even some who, in the prospect of the Scottish invasion and a new war at such vast odds, argued that the Army ought to resist no longer, but break up, and change the policy of collective action into one of individual passive endurance. Others, however, still thought that more remained to be done in the way of active duty, and it was at their instance that the meeting was called. It lasted three days, and with most remarkable results. The first day was spent in prayer for light as to the causes of God's renewed anger and their own perplexities. On the second day Cromwell proposed, as the best method of inquiry among themselves, that they should all simultaneously engage in silent retrospection, both upon their own past "ways particularly as private Christians," and also upon their "public actions as an Army." If they should each and all be led, in such retrospection, to fasten on some one precise point of time as that at which the Lord had withdrawn His former countenance and things had begun to go wrong, might there not be a lesson in that unanimity? And lo! on the third day it was so. They had all, in their silent review of the past, fastened on one and the same point, as that at which their departure from the straight path of truth and simplicity had begun. It was a point beyond their Concordat with the Parliament, and lay among those prior negotiations of the Army-chiefs with the King personally out of which the Concordat had seemed a natural escape. It lay, says Allen, in "those cursed carnal conferences our conceited wisdom, our fears, and want of faith, had prompted us, the year before, to entertain with the King and his Party." And with this unanimous agreement on the question where the steps of error had begun there came a unanimous consent as to the right course of future duty. "We were led and helped," says Allen, "to a clear agreement amongst ourselves, not any dissenting, That it was the duty of our day, with the forces we had, to go out and fight against those potent enemies which that year in all places appeared against us...; and we were also enabled then, after serious seeking His face, to come to a very clear and joint resolution, on many grounds at large there debated amongst us, That it was our duty, if ever the Lord brought us back again in peace, to call Charles Stuart, that man of blood, to an account for that blood he had shed and mischief he had done to his utmost against the Lord's Cause and People in these poor Nations." [Footnote: See Allen's striking narrative (written in 1659) quoted at length in Carlyle's Cromwell, I. 263-266.] This momentous resolution of the Army Officers, formed at Windsor most probably in April 1648, or just before Cromwell went off to suppress the Royalist rising in Wales, had lain dormant, but not wholly secret, in the bosom of the Army through all the four months of the renewed Civil War (May-Aug.). Not till the war was over, however, was the resolution formally announced. Even then it was done gradually. The first hints came from those Independents in the Commons who were in the confidence of the Armychiefs. In the debates preceding the Treaty of Newport some of these Independents had spoken with significant boldness, Mr. Thomas Scott for one declaring that "a peace with so perfidious and implacable a prince" was an impossibility; and, in fact, the Treaty was carried by the Presbyterians against the implied protest of the Independents. Then, just as the Treaty was beginning, there was presented to the House (Sept. 11) an extraordinary document purporting to be "The humble Petition of Thousands of well-affected Persons inhabiting the City of London, Westminster, the Borough of Southwark, Hamlets, and places adjacent." This Petition, said to have been penned by Henry Marten, was not merely a denunciation of the Treaty; it was a detailed democratic challenge. It proclaimed the House of Commons to be "the Supreme Authority of England," and declared that it was for this principle, and nothing short of this, that England had fought and struggled for six years; and, after a severe lecture to the House for its pusillanimity in never yet having risen to the full height of this principle, it enumerated twenty-seven things which were expected from it when it should do so. Among these were the repudiation of any sham of a power either in the King or in the Lords to resist the will of the Commons, the passing of a Bill for Annual Parliaments, the execution of justice on criminals of whatever rank, the "exemption of matters of Religion and God's worship from the compulsive or restrictive power of any authority upon earth," and the consequent repeal of the recent absurd Ordinance "appointing punishments concerning opinions on things supernatural, styling some Blasphemies, others Heresies." Such a Petition, signed by about 40,000 persons, in or near London, hitherto pre-eminently the Presbyterian city, was a signal for similar Petitions from other parts. On the 30th of September there came a Petition in the same sense from "many thousands" of the well-affected in Oxfordshire, and on the 10th of October there were Petitions from Newcastle, York, and Hull, and from Somerset. [Footnote: Parl. Hist, III. 1005-11; Whitlocke, II. 413, 419.] These civilian Petitions having prepared the way, the Army itself spoke out at last. Since Sept. 16 the headquarters of the Army had been at St. Alban's; and it was thence that on the 18th of October letters from Fairfax announced to the House of Commons that Petitions from the Officers and Soldiers of different regiments had been presented to him, or were in preparation, some of which were of a political nature. One, in particular, from General Ireton's regiment, called for "impartial and speedy justice" upon public criminals, and demanded "that the same fault may have the same punishment in the person of King or Lord as in the poorest Commoner." Such petitions to Fairfax appear to have dropped in upon him from regiment after regiment at St. Alban's during the next fortnight. One Petition, however, heard of in London Oct. 30, was from Colonel Ingoldsby's regiment, then in garrison at Oxford. It also demanded "immediate care that justice should be done upon the principal invaders of our liberties, namely the King and his party;" it demanded, moreover, that "sufficient caution and strait bonds should be given to future Kings for the preventing the enslaving of the people;" and it went on to say that, as the Petitioners were almost past hope of these things from Parliament, and regarded the Treaty then in progress as a delusion, they could only pray his Excellency to "re-establish a General Council of the Army" to consider of some effectual remedies. This, in fact, was the practical conclusion on which the whole Army was bent, and to which all the regimental Petitions pointed. If Fairfax had yet any hesitations about complying, they must have been ended by what occurred in Parliament immediately afterwards. Not only were the two Houses still looking for some last chance from the Treaty of Newport, and extending the time of the Treaty again and again in the vain chose of this last chance; but in another matter, which lay wholly in their own power, their "half- heartedness" became apparent. At the very time when the Independents of London and other places, and the several regiments of Fairfax's Army, were calling for exemplary justice on the chief Delinquents in the late war, what were the punishments with which the Presbyterian majority in the Parliament proposed to let off those of the Delinquents who were then in custody? For the Duke of Hamilton (Earl of Cambridge in the English Peerage, and so liable to the pains of English treason) a fine of 100,000_l._, with imprisonment till it should be paid; and for the Earls of Holland and Norwich, Lord Capel, Lord Loughborough, and four others, simple banishment! Resolutions to this effect passed the Commons Nov. 10, and were sent up for the approval of the Lords. The Army, though prepared for almost anything from the "half-heartedness" of the Parliament, heard of this last exhibition of it with positive "amazement." What else, it was asked, now remained than that the Army itself as a whole should step forward, call its masters to a reckoning, and either compel them to be the instruments of a better policy, or take affairs into its own hands? Fairfax, with all his prudence, could not decline the responsibility: and accordingly a General Council of the Officers of the Army was held at St. Alban's under his presidency. It had sat about a week when (Nov. 16) a GRAND ARMY REMONSTRANCE, to be presented to the House of Commons, was unanimously adopted. [Footnote: Rushworth, VII. 1297-8, 1811-12, and 1830; Commons Journals, Nov. 10 1618, Whitlocke, II. 436.] This GRAND ARMY REMONSTRANCE of Nov. 1648 is another of those documents from the pen of Ireton which deserve to be rescued from the contemporary lumber with which they are associated, and to be carefully studied on account of their supreme interest in English History. The document is of most elaborate composition, and of a length about equal to fifty pages of this volume; for, in fact, though formally addressed to the House of Commons, it was intended as a kind of Pamphlet to the English nation, setting forth the Army's views in a reasoned shape, and the programme of action on which they had resolved:--There is first an exposition of the rule _Salus Populi lex suprema_, a rule admitted to be capable of abuse and misapplication, but declared nevertheless to have a real meaning. Then there is a review of the relations between the Parliament and the Army from the time of what we have called the Concordat. Fain, it is added, would the Army have seen that Concordat perpetual; most reluctant were they to break it. But what had happened? Had not Parliament itself lapsed from those honest No-Address Resolutions of ten months ago which expressed the true sense of the Concordat? Had they not, within a few months after passing those Resolutions, utterly forgotten them, and run after that wretched rag of delusive hope called "A Personal Treaty with the King"? Nay, though events had again proved that the fears that had partly swayed them in this direction were groundless--though the Lord had again laid bare His arm, and that small Army which they had ceased to trust and had well-nigh deserted and cast off, had been enabled to shiver all the banded strength of a second English Insurrection, aided by an invasion from Scotland--even after this rebuke from God, were they not still pursuing the same phantom of an Accommodation? Here the Remonstrants argue the whole subject most earnestly. Having laid down the principle that in every State the care of all matters of public concern must be in a Supreme Representative Council or Parliament, freely elected by the whole people, they maintain that any Kingship or other such office instituted in any State must be regarded as a creation of such Supreme Council for special ends and within special limits, and that any one holding such office who shall have been proved to have perseveringly abused his trust, or sought to convert it into a personal possession, may justly be called to account. They appeal to the entire recollection of Charles's reign whether he had not been such a false King, a cause of woe and war from first to last, a functionary guilty of the highest treason. But, if the past could be considered alone, and there were reasonable chance for the present and the future, they would not be relentless. "If there were good evidence of a proportionable remorse in him, and that his coming in again were with a new or changed heart," then, they say, "his person might be capable of pity, mercy, and pardon, and an accommodation with him, with a full and free yielding on his part to all the aforesaid points of public and religious interest in contest, might, in charitable construction, be just, and possibly safe and beneficial." But no such ground for charity, leniency, or tenderness had been afforded by Charles. Even now, while actually treating with the Parliament after his complete second ruin, was he not the same man as ever, dissembling, prevaricating, secretly expecting something from Ormond and the Irish Rebels? If such a man were restored to power, under whatever bonds, promises, guarantees, the consequences were but too obvious. All the credit, all the huzzas, of the new situation would be his; he would figure for a while as the Father of his People, the Restorer of would be forgotten, or would be remembered only as implicated in the confusion that had ceased; and in a short time there would be parties, factions, divisions, and the beginnings of a new spider-web of Court-government and Absolutism. "Have you not found him at this play all along? And do not all men acknowledge him most exquisite at it?" So the Remonstrance proceeds, page after page, in long, complex, wave-like sentences, every sentence vital, and the whole impressing one with the grave seriousness of spirit, and also the political thoughtfulness, with which it was drawn up.--Towards the end come the specific demands which the Army made on the Commons, and which they were resolved to enforce. These are divided into two sets:--I. _Immediate Demands_. These are five. First of all, it is demanded "That the capital and grand author of our troubles, the Person of the King, by whose commissions, commands, or procurement, and in whose behalf and for whose interest only, of will and power, all our wars and troubles have been, with all the miseries attending them, may be specially brought to justice for the treason, blood, and mischief he is therein guilty of." Next it is demanded that a limited time be set wherein the Prince of Wales and the Duke of York may return to England and render themselves: with the proviso that, if they do not so return, they are to be declared incapable for ever of any government or trust in the kingdom, and are to be treated without mercy as enemies and traitors if ever afterwards they are found in England; and also that, if they do return within the limited time, their cases are to be severally considered, and their past delinquencies (the Prince's being greatest, and "in appearance next unto his father's") either remitted or remembered for penalty as may be found fit; but that in any case all the estates and revenue of the Crown be sequestered for a good number of years, and applied to public uses, with reserve of a reasonable provision for the Royal Family and for old Crown- servants. Then it is demanded that a competent number of the King's chief instruments in the two Civil Wars may be brought, with him, in capital punishment. With this satisfaction to justice the Remonstrants would be content; and they recommend that there should be moderate and clement treatment of other Delinquents willing to submit, but with perpetual banishment and the confiscation of estates for those of them who should remain obdurate. Finally, the special claims of the Army are brought forward, and it is demanded that there shall be full payment of their damages and arrearages.--II. _Prospective Demands_. These point to the future Political Constitution of England. Under this head the Army demand (1) a termination of the existing Parliament within a reasonable time; (2) a guaranteed succession of subsequent Parliaments, annual or biennial, to be elected on such a system of suffrage and of redistribution of constituencies as should make them really representative of the whole people; (3) the temporary disfranchisement and disqualification of the King's adherents; and (4) a strict provision that Parliament, as the representative body of the people, should henceforth be supreme in all things, except such as would requestion the policy of the Civil War itself, and such as might trench on the foundations of common Right, Liberty, and Safety. In this last provision it is definitely stipulated as a necessary item that, should Kingship be kept up in England, it should be as an elective office merely, every successive holder of which should be chosen expressly by Parliament, and should have no veto or negative voice on laws passed by the Parliament. [Footnote: See the entire Remonstrance (well worth reading) in Parl. Hist. III. 1077] This vast document, signed officially by John Rushworth, "by the appointment of his Excellency the Lord General and his General Council of Officers," was brought to the Commons, with a brief note from Fairfax himself, on Monday, Nov. 20. It was presented in all form by a deputation of officers, consisting of Colonel Ewer, Lieutenant-colonels Kelsay, Axtell, and Cooke, and three Captains. The House was thunderstruck, and for some hours there was a high and fierce debate. Some of the Independents among the members spoke manfully in favour of the Remonstrance; others were for temporizing; but the more resolute Presbyterians, among whom Prynne was conspicuous, resented the Remonstrance as an insolence "subversive of the law of the land and the fundamental constitutions of the kingdom," and protested that "it became not the House of Commons, who are a part of the Supreme Council of the Nation, to be prescribed to, or regulated and baffled by, a Council of Sectaries in Arms." Nothing of all this appears in the Journals of the House, but only this entry: "Ordered, That the debate upon the Remonstrance of the General and his General Council of Officers be resumed on Monday next." That "Monday next" was the 27th of November, the very day on which the Houses had agreed that the negotiations with the King at Newport should finally cease. [Footnote: Commons Journals, Nov. 20, 1648; Whitlocke, same date; Parl. Hist. III. 1127-8 (where extracts are given from a contemporary account of the in the _Mercurius Pragmaticus_).] Cromwell, it is to be remembered, was not at this time in the immediate scene of action. After his victory over Hamilton at Preston (Aug. 17-19), he had remained in the north, to recover Berwick and Carlisle from the Scots, dispose of the remnant of the Scottish invading forces under Monro, and take such other measures against the Scottish Government as that no more should be feared from that quarter. His task had been easy. The "Engagement" with the King, and the consequent invasion of England by a Scottish army in the King's interest, had been, as we know (_antè_, p. 589), the acts only of the Scottish party then in power, the party of Hamilton and Lanark; and they had been vehemently opposed and disowned by the party of Argyle and Loudoun, backed by the popular sentiment and by nearly the entire body of the Scottish clergy. When, therefore, the news of the disaster at Preston reached Scotland, the "Anti-Engagers" rose everywhere against the Government of the existing Committee of Estates, assailed it with reproaches and execrations, and prepared to call it to account. Lanark, who had been left as the chief of the Government after the capture of his brother, endeavoured for a while to hold his ground. He recalled Monro and the relics of the Scottish army from England, and took the field with their joint forces. Meanwhile, the zealous Covenanting peasantry of the western shires, nicknamed _Whigs_ or _Whigamores_, having obeyed the summons of Argyle, Loudoun, and the Earls of Eglinton and Cassilis, and marched eastward to assist their brethren round Edinburgh, the forces of the Anti-Engagers had swelled into an army of more than 6,000 men, the command of which was assumed by old Leslie, Earl of Leven, with David Leslie under him. For some time the two armies, or portions of them, moved about in East Lothian, and between Edinburgh and Stirling; there were some skirmishes; and a conflict seemed imminent. In reality, however, most of the noblemen of the Committee of Estates had no heart for the enterprise into which Lanark was leading them. They saw it to be desperate, not only from the strength of the Whigamore rising in Scotland itself, but also because Cromwell was at hand in the north of England, in communication with Argyle and the other Whigamore chiefs, and ready to cross the borders for their help, if necessary. Accordingly, after some negotiation, a Treaty was arranged (Sept. 26). By the terms of this Treaty, Monro was to return to Ireland with his special portion of the troops; but otherwise both armies were to be disbanded, Lanark and all who had been concerned with him in the Engagement retiring from all places of trust, and the government of Scotland to be confirmed in the hands of Argyle and the Whigamores, who had already constituted themselves the new Committee of Estates _de facto_. Although this arrangement had been effected without Cromwell's direct interference, he was actually in Scotland when it was made, having crossed the Tweed on the 2lst of September with an army of horse and foot. The next day he had been met by Argyle, Lord Elcho, and others, as a Deputation from the new Committee of Estates, bearing letters signed in the name of the Committee by their Chancellor Loudoun. The new Government of Scotland most handsomely surrendered to Cromwell the towns of Carlisle and Berwick, with apologies for the conduct of their predecessors in having seized them; and Cromwell, delaying some days about Berwick to see all duly performed there, was able to write letters thence to Fairfax and Speaker Lenthall (Oct. 2), praising Argyle and Elcho, and announcing that there was a very good understanding between "the Honest Party of Scotland" and himself. It was involved in this understanding, however, that Cromwell should visit Edinburgh, and add the weight of his personal presence to the re-establishment of the Argyle Government on the ruins of that of the Hamiltons. On Wednesday, Oct. 4, therefore, he did enter Edinburgh, with his officers and guard, and with Sir Arthur Haselrig in their company. They were escorted into the city with all ceremony by the authorities, and lodged by them in Moray House in the Canongate, the finest mansion at hand for their reception. For four days the people of Edinburgh, waiting in crowds outside Moray House, had the opportunity of studying the features of the great English Independent as he came out or went in, passing the English sentries on guard at the gate. For the Whigamore nobles and those select citizens, including the magistrates and city clergy, who had the privilege of calling on him, the opportunities were, of course, still closer; and on the fourth day (Saturday, Oct. 7) there was a sumptuous banquet in the Castle to him and his officers, at which the old Earl of Leven presided, and the Marquis of Argyle and other lords of the Committee of Estates were present. So ended Cromwell's memorable first visit to Edinburgh; and, his real object having been accomplished (which was to pledge, the new Government of Scotland, and especially Argyle, to alliance in future with the advanced English party), he began his return journey southwards on the same day, only leaving Lambert, with two regiments of horse and two troops of dragoons, to be at the service of the Argyle Government so long as they might be wanted. A week later (Oct. 14) he was at Carlisle, seeing after the surrender of that town; and in the beginning of November he was at Pontefract in Yorkshire. Here he was to be delayed a while. The Castle of Pontefract, a very strong place, commanded by one Morris, still held out for the King, and was the refuge of much of the fugitive Cavalierism of the surrounding district, now in a mood of actual desperation. Sallies from the Castle for robbery and revenge had been frequent; and, just as Cromwell was expected in the neighbourhood, a party of the desperadoes, riding out in disguise, had gone as far as Doncaster, obtained admission to the lodging of Colonel Rainsborough there, under pretence of bringing him letters from Cromwell, and left him stabbed dead (Sunday, Oct. 29). The business of pacifying Yorkshire, which otherwise might have been left to Bainsborough, thus devolved upon Cromwell. He summoned Pontefract Castle to surrender Nov. 9; and, the surrender having been refused, he remained at Pontefract all the rest of that month, superintending the siege. [Footnote: Burnet's Hamiltons (edit. 1852), 465-482; Carlyle's Cromwell, I. 299-333; Rushworth, VII. 1314-15. The first open occurrence of the word _Whig_ in British History was, I believe, in the circumstances described in the text at p.621. The original _Whigs_ were the zealous Covenanting peasants, or true-blue Presbyterians, of Ayrshire, Lanarkshire, and other western Scottish counties; and the nickname was derived, it is supposed, either from the sound _Whigh_ (meaning _Gee-up_) used by the peasantry of those parts in driving their horses, or simply from the word _Whey_ (in Anglo-Saxon _hwæg_), by comparison to the solemn Presbyterians to the sour watery part of milk separated from the curd in making cheese.] Thus, through the three months in which the English Army and Independents were waxing more and more indignant at the Treaty with the King at Newport, and determining to break it down, and to bring the King to trial for his life with or without the concurrency of Parliament, Cromwell, as we said, was away from the immediate scene of action. There is not the least doubt, however, that he was aware generally of the proceedings of his friends in the south, and that one of their encouragements was the knowledge that Cromwell was with them. There are, however, actual proofs. Thus, about the middle of September, or just after the presentation to the Commons of the great London Petition asking the Commons to declare themselves the supreme authority of England, one finds Henry Marten, the framer of that Petition, on a journey to the north, for the purpose of consulting with Cromwell, then on his way to Scotland. Their consultation cannot have boon for nothing. At all events, after Cromwell returned into England and engaged in the siege of Pontefract Castle, his letters attest his interest in the proceedings of Ireton and the other Army officers at St. Alban's. In one letter, dated "near Pontefract," Nov. 20, he expresses his own anger and that of his officers at the recent lenient votes of the Commons in the case of the Duke of Hamilton and the other eminent Delinquents. On the same day he writes in the same sense to Fairfax, and forwards Petitions from the regiments under his command in aid of those which Fairfax had already received from the southern regiments. When these letters were written Cromwell had not heard of the adoption at St. Alban's of the Grand Army Remonstrance drawn up by his son-in-law, or at least did not know that on that very day it had been presented to the Commons. Before the 25th of November, however, he had received this news too, and had a full foresight of what it portended. For that is the date of one of the most remarkable letters he ever wrote, his letter from "Knottingley near Pontefract "to Colonel Robert Hammond, Governor of the Isle of Wight. This young Colonel, upon whom the sore trial had fallen of having the King for his prisoner, was, as we have said, one of Cromwell's especial favourites, and the long letter which Cromwell now addressed to him was in reply to one just received from Hammond, imparting to Cromwell his doubts respecting the recent proceedings of the Army, and his own agony of mind in the difficult and complicated duties of his office in the Isle of Wight. Cromwell's letter, so occasioned, begins "Dear Robin," and is conceived throughout in terms of the most anxious affection, struggling with a half-expressed purpose. He reasons earnestly with Hammond on his doubts and scruples, sympathizing with them so far, but at the same time combating them, and suggesting such queries as these--"_first_, Whether _Salus Populi_ be a sound position? _secondly_, Whether in the way in hand [_i.e._ the Parliamentary rule as then experienced], really and before the Lord, before whom Conscience has to stand, this be provided for?... _thirdly_, Whether this Army be not a lawful Power, called by God to oppose and fight against the King upon some stated grounds, and, being in power to such ends, may not oppose one Name of Authority, for these ends, as well as another Name?" [_i.e._ may not oppose Parliament itself as well as the King.] He refers to the Grand Army Remonstrance, of the publication of which he has just heard. "We could perhaps have wished the stay of it till after the Treaty," he says, for himself and the officers of his northern part of the Army; "yet, seeing it is come out, we trust to rejoice in the will of the Lord, waiting His further pleasure." Again returning to the main topic, Hammond's scruples, he pleads almost yearningly with him: "Dear Robin, beware of men; look up to the Lord." Had Hammond really reasoned himself, with other good men, into that excess of the passive-obedience principle which maintained that as much good might come to England by an accommodation with the King as by breaking with him utterly? "Good by this Man," Cromwell exclaims, "against whom the Lord has witnessed, and whom _thou_ knowest!" Then, after a few more sentences: "This trouble I have been at," he concludes, "because my soul loves thee, and I would not have thee swerve, or lose any glorious opportunity the Lord puts into thy hand." [Footnote: Rushworth, VII. 1265; Lords Journals, Nov. 21 (Hammond's Letter); Carlyle's Cromwell, I. 333-345.] Cromwell's letter to Hammond was too late for its purpose. At Fairfax's head-quarters at St. Alban's it had been resolved that, until there should be a satisfactory answer from the Commons to the Army's Remonstrance, the Army must secure the main object of that Remonstrance by taking the King's person into its own custody. For the management of this business it was most important that the officer in command in the Isle of Wight should be one of unflinching Army principles. Hence, as the amiable Hammond's scruples were well known, and had indeed been communicated by him to Fairfax as well as to Cromwell, it had been resolved, partly in pity to him, partly in the interest of the business itself, to withdraw him from the Isle of Wight at that critical moment. Accordingly, on the 2lst of November, Fairfax had penned a letter to Hammond from St. Alban's, requiring his presence with all possible speed at head-quarters, and ordering him to leave the island meanwhile in charge of Colonel Ewer, the bearer of the letter. This letter did not reach Hammond till Nov. 25 (the very day when Cromwell was writing to him from Yorkshire); and it was not then delivered to him by Colonel Ewer in person, but by a messenger. The next day, Sunday, Nov. 26, Hammond wrote from Carisbrooke Castle to the two Houses of Parliament, informing them of what had happened, enclosing a copy of Fairfax's letter, and signifying his intention of obeying it. This communication was brought to London with all haste by Major Henry Cromwell, Oliver's second son, then serving under Hammond, and was the subject of discussion in both Houses on the 27th. Fairfax's intervention between Parliament and one of its servants was condemned as unwarrantable; a letter to that effect, but in mild terms, was written to Fairfax; and Major Cromwell was sent back with a despatch from both Houses to Hammond, instructing him to remain at his post. Before this despatch reached Hammond, however, there had been a meeting between him and Ewer, and some intricate negotiations, the result of which was that he and Ewer left the island together, Nov. 28, bound for the Army's head-quarters (then removed to Windsor)--Hammond entrusting the charge of the island in his absence, with strict care of the King's person, to Major Rolph and Captain Hawes, his subordinates at Newport, in conjunction with Captain Bowerman, the commandant at Carisbrooke Castle. Ewer having thus succeeded in withdrawing Hammond from his post, and having doubtless made other necessary arrangements while he hovered about the island, the execution of what remained was left to other hands, and principally to Lieutenant-colonel Cobbet and a Captain Merryman. [Footnote: Lords Journals, Nov. 27 and 30; Parl. Hist. III. 1133 _et seq._; Rushworth. VII. 1338 _et seq._ In most modern accounts Ewer simply comes to the Isle of Wight, displaces Hammond, and removes the King. Not so by any means. It was a complicated transaction of seven or eight days; Ewer was _in_ the trans-action, and perhaps the principal in it; but, except in his interview with Hammond, he keeps in the background.] Not till the evening of Thursday, Nov. 30, does any suspicion of what was intended seem to have been aroused in the mind of the King. He was then still in his lodgings in Newport. The Treaty had come to an end three days before; the Parliamentary Commissioners for the Treaty had returned to London; most of the Royalist Lords and other Counsellors who had been assisting the King in the Treaty had also gone; only the Duke of Richmond, the Earls of Lindsey and Southampton, and some few others, remained. The stir through the island attending the close of the Treaty and the departure of so many persons had probably covered the coming and going of Ewer, his interview with Hammond, and certain arrivals and shiftings of troops which he had managed. But on the Thursday evening, about eight o'clock, the Duke of Richmond, the Earl of Lindsey, and a certain Colonel Cook, who was with them, were summoned from their lodgings in the town to the King's. A warning had that moment been conveyed to his Majesty that there were agents of the Army at hand to carry him off. Immediately Colonel Cook went to Major Rolph's room, and interrogated him on the subject. The answers were cautious and unsatisfactory. The fact was, though Major Rolph dared not then divulge it, that he and his fellow-deputies, Captain Hawes and Captain Bowerman, knew themselves to be superseded by Lieutenant-colonel Cobbet and Captain Merryman, who had arrived that day with a fresh warrant from Fairfax and the Army Council, empowering them to finish what Ewer had begun. Only inferring from Rolph's uneasiness that something was wrong, Colonel Cook returned to the King and the two Lords. There was farther consultation, and a second call on Rolph; after which Cook volunteered to go to Carisbrooke Castle for farther information. It was an excessively dark night, with high wind and plashing rain; and the King consented to the Colonel's going only after observing that he was young and might take no harm from it. The Colonel, accordingly, groped his way through the dark and rain over the mile and a half of road or cross-road intervening between Newport and the Castle. His object was to see the commandant, Captain Bowerman. After some considerable time, spent under the shelter of the gateway, he was admitted and did see Captain Bowerman, but only to find him sitting sulkily with about a dozen strange officers, who were evidently his masters for the moment, and prevented his being in the least communicative. Nothing was left for the Colonel but to grope his way back to Newport. It was near midnight when, with his clothes drenched with wet, he reached the King's lodgings; and there, what a change! Guards all round the house; guards at every window; sentinels in the passages, and up to the very door of the King's chamber, armed with matchlocks and with their matches burning! Major Rolph, glad to be out of the business, had gone to bed. They managed to rouse him, and to get the sentinels, with their smoke, removed to a more tolerable distance from the King's chamber-door. Then, for an hour or more, there was an anxious colloquy in the King's chamber, the Duke of Richmond and the Earl of Lindsey urging some desperate attempt to escape, but the King dubious and full of objections. Nothing could be done; and, about one o'clock, the Earl and the Colonel retired, leaving the King to rest, with the Duke in attendance upon him. There were then several hours of hush within, disturbed by sounds of moving and tramping without; but between five and six in the morning there came a loud knocking at the door of the King's dressing-room. When it had been opened, after some delay, a number of officers entered, headed by Colonel Cobbet. Making their way into the King's chamber, they informed him that they had instructions to remove him. On his asking whither, they answered, "To the Castle;" and, on his farther asking whether they meant Carisbrooke Castle, they answered, after some hesitation, that their orders were to remove him out of the island altogether, and that the place was to be Hurst Castle on the adjacent Hampshire mainland. Remarking that they could not have named a worse place, the King rose, was allowed to summon the Earl of Lindsey and all the rest of his household, and had breakfast. At eight o'clock coaches and horses were ready, and the King, having chosen about a dozen of his most confidential servants to accompany him, and taken a farewell of the rest of the sorrowing company, placed himself in charge of Colonel Gobbet and the troop of horse waiting to be his escort. Having seated himself in his coach, he invited Mr. Harrington, Mr. Herbert, and Mr. Mildmay to places beside him. Colonel Gobbet, as the commander of the party, was about to enter the coach also, when his Majesty put up his foot by way of barrier; whereupon Cobbet, somewhat abashed, contented himself with his horse. The cavalcade then set out, gazed after by all Newport, the Duke of Richmond allowed to accompany it for two miles. A journey of some eight miles farther brought them to the western end of the island, a little beyond Yarmouth; whence a vessel conveyed them, over the little strip of intervening sea, to Hurst Castle that same afternoon (Dec. 1). The so-called Castle was a strong, solitary, stone blockhouse, which had been built, in the time of Henry VIII., at the extremity of a long narrow spit of sand and shingle projecting from the Hampshire coast towards the Isle of Wight. It was a rather dismal place; and the King's heart sank as he entered it, and was confronted by a grim fellow with a bushy black beard, who announced himself as the captain in command. The possibility of private assassination flashed on the King's mind at the sight of such a jailor. But, Colonel Cobbet having superseded the rough phenomenon, the King was reassured, and things were arranged as comfortably as the conditions would permit. [Footnote: Rushworth, VII. 1344-8 (narrative of Colonel Cook); _Ib._ 1351 and Parl. Hist. III. 1147-8 (Letter to Parliament from Major Rolph and Captains Hawes and Bowerman); and Sir Thomas Herbert's Memoirs of Charles I. 112-124. The day of the King's abduction from Newport has been variously dated by historians. It was really Friday, Dec. 1.] Meanwhile Fairfax and the Army, by whose orders, all punctually written and dated, this abduction of the King had been effected, were on the move to take advantage of it. On Monday the 27th of November, the Commons, instead of taking up the consideration of the Grand Army Remonstrance as they had proposed, had again adjourned the subject. On Wednesday the 29th, accordingly, there was a fresh manifesto from Fairfax and his Council of Officers at Windsor. After complaining of the delays over the Remonstrance and of the continued infatuation of the Commons over the farce of the Newport Treaty, they proceeded. "For the present, as the case stands, we apprehend ourselves obliged, in duty to God, this kingdom, and good men therein, to improve our utmost abilities, in all honest ways, for the avoiding those great evils we have remonstrated, and for prosecution of the good things we have propounded;" and they concluded with this announcement, "For all these ends we are now drawing up with the Army to London, there to follow Providence as God shall clear our way." This document, signed by Rushworth, reached the Commons on the 30th. They affected to ignore it, and still refused, by a majority of 125 to 58, to proceed to the consideration of the Army's Remonstrance. Next day, Friday Dec. 1, the tune was somewhat changed. The advanced guards of the Army were then actually at Hyde Park Corner, and the City and the two Houses were in terror. Saturday, Dec. 2, consummated the business. Despite an order bidding him back, Fairfax was then in Whitehall, his head-quarters close to the two Houses, and his regiments of horse and foot distributed round about. London and Westminster were, in fact, once more in the Army's possession. Nevertheless both Houses met that day in due form, and there was a violent debate in the Commons over the Treaty as affected by the new turn of affairs. The debate broke off late in the afternoon, when it was adjourned till Monday by a majority of 132 to 102. The news of the abduction of the King to Hurst Castle had not yet reached London, and Cromwell was still believed to be at Pontefract. [Footnote: Commons and Lords Journals of Nov. 27 to Dec. 2, 1648: Parl. Hist. III. 1134-1146; Rushworth, VII. 1349-59.] CHAPTER II. TROUBLES IN THE BARBICAN HOUSEHOLD: CHRISTOPHER MILTON'S COMPOSITION SUIT: MR. POWELL'S COMPOSITION SUIT: DEATH OF MR. POWELL: HIS WILL: DEATH OF MILTON'S FATHER--SONNET XIV. AND ODE TO JOHN ROUS-ITALIAN REMINISCENCES: LOST LETTERS FROM CARLO DATI OF FLORENCE: MILTON'S REPLY TO THE LAST OF THEM--PEDAGOGY IN THE BARBICAN: LIST OF MILTON'S KNOWN PUPILS: LADY RANELAGH--EDUCATIONAL REFORM STILL A QUESTION: HARTLIB AGAIN: THE INVISIBLE COLLEGE: YOUNG ROBERT BOYLE AND WILLIAM PETTY-- REMOVAL FROM BARBICAN TO HIGH HOLBORN--MEDITATIONS AND OCCUPATIONS IN THE HOUSE IN HIGH HOLBORN: MILTON'S SYMPATHIES WITH THE ARMY CHIEFS AND THE EXPECTANT REPUBLICANS--STILL UNDER THE BAN OF THE PRESBYTERIANS: TESTIMONY OF THE LONDON MINISTERS AGAINST HERESIES AND BLASPHEMIES: MILTON IN THE BLACK LIST--ANOTHER LETTER FROM CARLO DATI: TRANSLATION OF NINE PSALMS FROM THE HEBREW--MILTON THROUGH THE SECOND CIVIL WAR: HIS PERSONAL INTEREST IN IT, AND DELIGHT IN THE ARMY'S TRIUMPH: HIS SONNET TO FAIRFAX--BIRTH OF MILTON'S SECOND CHILD: ANOTHER LETTER FROM CARLO DATI. The two years and four months of English History traversed in the last chapter were of momentous interest to Milton at the time, were preparing an official career of eleven years for him at the very centre of affairs, and were to furnish him with matter for comment, and indeed with risk and responsibility, to the end of his days. While they were actually passing, however, his life was rather private in its tenor, and we have to seek him not so much in public manifestations as in his household and among his books. PROBLEMS IN THE BARBICAN HOUSEHOLD: CHRISTOPHER MILTON'S COMPOSITION SUIT: MR. POWELL'S COMPOSITION SUIT: DEATH OF MR. POWELL: HIS WILL: DEATH OF MILTON'S FATHER We left the household in Barbican a rather overcrowded one, consisting not merely of Milton, his wife, their newly-born little girl, his father, and his two nephews, but also of his Royalist father-in-law Mr. Powell, with Mrs. Powell, and several of their children, driven to London by the wreck of the family fortunes at Oxford. For some months, we now find, the state of poor Mr. Powell's affairs continued to be a matter of anxiety to all concerned. On the 6th of August, 1646, or as soon as possible after Mr. Powell's arrival in London, he had applied, as we saw, to the Committee at Goldsmiths' Hall for liberty to compound for that portion of his sequestered Oxfordshire estates which was yet recoverable. Milton's younger brother, Christopher, we saw, was at the same time engaged in a similar troublesome business. Ho too was suing out pardon for his delinquency on condition of the customary fine on his property; and, according to his own representation to the Goldsmiths' Hall Committee, the sole property he had consisted of a single house in the city of London, worth 40_l._ a year. The Goldsmiths' Hall Committee being then overburdened with similar applications of Delinquents from all parts of England, the cases of Mr. Powell and Christopher Milton had waited their turn. The case of Christopher Milton came on first. His delinquency had been very grave. He had actually served as one of the King's Commissioners for sequestrating the estates of Parliamentarians in three English counties. There seems, therefore, to have been a disposition at head-quarters to be severe with him. On the 24th of September the Committee at Goldsmiths' Hall did fix his fine for his London property at 80_l._ (_i.e._ a tenth of its whole value calculated at twenty years' purchase), receiving the first moiety of 40_l._ down, and accepting "William Keech, of Fleet Street, London, goldbeater," as Christopher's co-surety for the payment of the second moiety within three months. But they do not seem to have been satisfied that the young barrister had given a correct account of his whole estate; and it was intimated to him that, while the 80_l_. would restore to him his London property, the House of Commons would look farther into his case, and he might have more to pay on other grounds. In fact, his case was protracted not only through the rest of 1646, but for five years longer, the Goldsmiths' Hall Committee never letting him completely off all that while, but instituting inquiries repeatedly in Berks and Suffolk, with a view to ascertain whether he had not concealed properties in those counties in addition to the small London property for which he had compounded. [Footnote: It is rather difficult to follow Christopher Milton's case through the Composition Records and other notices respecting it; but here is the substance of the first of them:-- _Aug._ 7, 1646, Delinquent's Application to Compound, with statement of his property, referred to Sub-Committee (Hamilton's Milton Papers, 128, 129); _Aug. and Sept._ 1646, Various proposals of the Committee as to the amount of his fine--at 80_l._ or "a tenth," at 200_l._ or "a third"-- ending, ending Sept. 24, in the imposition of a fine of 80_l._ for his London property, with a hint that there might be farther demand (Hamilton, 62 and 129-30, and Todd. I. 162-3); _Undated, but seemingly after Dec._ 1646, Note of Christopher Milton as a defaulter for the latter moiety of his fine (Hamilton, 62). The case runs on through subsequent years to 1652; nay, as late as Feb. 1657-8 there is trace of it (Hamilton, 130, Document lxvi.).] Mr. Powell's case, for different reasons, was more complex. On the 2lst of Nov. 1646, or somewhat more than three months after he had petitioned the Goldsmiths' Hall Committee for leave to compound, he sent in the necessary "Particular of Real and Personal Estate" by which his composition was to be rated. He had been living all the while in his son- in-law's house in Barbican; and the delay may have arisen from those circumstances of perplexity, already known to the reader (_antè_, pp. 473-483), which rendered it difficult for him to estimate what the amount of his remaining property might really be. In the "Particular" now sent in, though he still designates himself "Richard Powell of Forest-hill," the Forest-hill mansion and lands are totally omitted, as no longer his property in any practical sense, but transferred by legal surrender to his creditor Sir Robert Pye. All that he can put on paper as his own is now (1) his small Wheatley property of 40_l._ a year; (2) his "personal estate in corn and household stuff," left at Forest-hill before the siege of Oxford, and estimated at 500_l._ if it could be properly recovered and sold; (3) his much more doubtful stock of "timber and wood," also left at Forest-hill, and worth 400_l._ on a similar supposition; and (4) debts owing to him to the amount of 100_l._ Against these calculated assets, of about 1,800_l._ altogether, he pleads, however, a burden of 400_l._, with arrears of interest, due to Mr. Ashworth by mortgage of the Wheatley property, and also 1,200_l._ of debts to various people, and a special debt of 300_l._ "owing upon a statute" to his son-in-law Mr. John Milton. As a reason for leniency, the fact is moreover stated that he had lost 3,000_l._ by the Civil War. Actually, if his account is correct, he was insolvent; or, if his debt to his son-in-law were regarded as cancelled, he had but about 200_l._ left in the world. In criticising his account, however, the Committee would be sharp-sighted. They would remember that it was his interest, on the one hand, to rate his debts and losses at the highest figure, and, on the other hand, to represent at the lowest figure all his remaining property, except those items of "corn and household stuff," and "timber and wood," which he held to have been illegally disposed of by Parliamentary officials, and for the recovery of which he might bring forward a claim against Parliament. How the Committee, or the sub-Committee to whom the case was referred Nov. 26, did proceed in their calculations can only be conjectured; but the result was that they charged Mr. Powell on his whole returned property, without any allowance whatever for his debts. This appears from three documents in the State Paper Office, all of date Dec. 1646. On the 4th of that month Mr. Powell went through the two formalities required by law of every Delinquent before composition. He subscribed the National Covenant in the presence of "William Barton, minister of John Zachary" (the same clergyman who had administered the Covenant to Christopher Milton seven months before); and he took the so-called "Negative Oath" in presence of another witness. On the same day, before a third witness, he took another and more special oath, to the effect that the debts mentioned in his return to the Goldsmiths' Hall Committee were genuine debts, "truly and really owing by him," and that the estimate of his losses by the Civil War there set down was also just. Nevertheless, in the paper drawn up on the 8th of December by two of the Goldsmiths' Hall officials, containing an abstract of Mr. Powell's case, in which his own statements are accepted, and notice is taken of a request he had made for an allowance of 400_l._ off the value of the Wheatley property on account of the mortgage to that amount with which it was burdened, the fine is fixed by these ominous words at the close: "Fine at 2 yeeres value, 180_l._" The officials had been strict as Shylock. Taking the Wheatley property at Mr. Powell's own valuation of 40_l._ a year, without allowing his claim of a half off for the Ashworth mortgage, they had added 50_l._ a year as the worth of the remaining 1,000_l._ made up by the three other capital items in his return, and thus appraised him as worth 90_l._ a year in all. At the customary rate of two years' value, his fine therefore was to be 180_l._ The debts of the Delinquent might amount to more than his estimated property, as he said they did; but that was a matter between himself and the world at large, and not between him and the Commissioners for Compositions. [Footnote: The documents the substance of which is here given will be found in the Appendix to Hamilton's Milton Papers (pp. 76-78).--The Rev. William Barton seems to be the person of that name already known to us as author of that Metrical Version of the Psalms which the Lords favoured against Rous's (_antè_, pp. 425 and 512). He may have been an acquaintance of Milton's; at all events, as minister of a church in Aldergate Ward, he was conveniently near to Barbican.] Either the decision of the Goldsmiths' Hall Committee broke Mr. Powell down unexpectedly, or he had been ailing before it came. It is possible, indeed, that he had been confined to Milton's house during the negotiation, signing the Covenant and other necessary documents there, and unable to walk even the little distance between Barbican and Goldsmiths' Hall. Certain it is that he died there on or about the 1st of January, 1646-7, leaving the following will, executed but a day or two before:-- "In the name of God, Amen!--I, Richard Powell, of Forresthill, _alias_ Forsthill, in the countie of Oxon, Esquire, being sick and weak of bodie, but of perfect minde and memorie, I praise God therefore, this thirtieth daie of December in the yeare of our Lord God one thousand six hundred fortie and six, doe make and declare this my will and testament in manner and forme following:--First and principallie, I comend my soule to the hands of Almighty God my Maker, trusting by the meritts, death, and passion of his sonn Jesus Christ, my Redeemer, to have life everlasting; and my bodie I comitt to the earth from whence it came, to be decentlie interred according to the discretion of my Executor hereafter named.--And, for my worldlie estate which God hath blessed rue withall, I will and dispose as followeth:--_Imprimis_, I give and bequeathe unto Richard Powell, my eldest son, my house at Forresthill, _alias_ Forsthill, in the countie of Oxford, with all the household stuffe and goods there now remaining, and compounded for by me since at Goldsmiths' Hall, together with the woods and timber there remaining; and all the landes to my said house of Forresthill belonging and heretofore therewith used, together with the fines and profitts of the said landes and tenements, to the said Richard Powell and his heires and assignes for ever: to this intent and purpose, and it is the true meaning of this my last will, that my landes and goods shalbe first employed for the satisfieing of my debts and funerall expenses, and afterwards for the raiseing of portions for his brothers and sisters soe far as the estate will reach, allowing as much out of the estate abovementioned unto my said sonn Richard Powell as shall equal the whole to be devided amongst his brothers and sisters, that is to saie the one halfe of the estate to himselfe and the other halfe to be devided amongst his brothers and sisters that are not alredie provided for; in which devision my will is that his sisters have a third parte more than his brothers.--My will and desire is that my said sonn Richard doe, out of my said landes and personall estate herein mentioned, satisfy his mother, my dearely-beloved wife Ann Powell, that bond I have entered into for the makeing her a joynture, which my estate is not in a condition now to dischardge.--And, lastlie, I doe by this my last will and testament make and ordaine my sonn Richard Powell my sole executor of this my last will, and I doe hereby revoke all former wills by me made whatsoever. And my will farther is that, in case my sonn Richard Powell shall not accept the executorshipp, then I doe hereby constitute and appointe, and doe earnestly desire, my dearely beloved wife Ann Powell to be my sole executrix, and to take upon her the mannageing of my estate abovementioned to the uses and purposes herein expressed. And, in case she doe refuse the same, then I desire my loveing friend Master John Ellston of Forresthill to take the executorshipp uppon him and to performe this my will as is herebefore expressed; to whom I give twentie shillings, to buy him a ring. And my earnest desire is that my wife and my sonn have no difference concerning this my will and estate.-- _Item_, I give and bequeathe to my sonn Richard Powell all my houses and landes at Whately in the countie of Oxford, and all other my estate reall and personall in the kingdom of England and dominion of Wales, to the use, intent, and purpose above herein expressed: And my desire is that my daughter Milton be had a reguard to in the satisfieing of her portion, and adding thereto in case my estate will beare it. And, for this estate last bequeathed, in case my sonn take not upon him the executorshipp, then my will is my beloved wife shall be sole executrix, unto whom I give the landes and goods last abovementioned, to the uses and purposes herein mentioned. In case she refuses, then I appoint Master John Ellstone my executor, to the uses and purposes above-mentioned.--In witness hereof I have hereto put my hand and seale the daie and yeare first above-written.--For the further strengthening of this my last will, I doe constitute and appoint my loveing friends, Sir John Curson and Sir Robert Pye the elder, Knights, to be overseers of this my last will, desireing them to be aiding and assisting to my executor to see my last will performed, according to my true meaning herein expressed, for the good and benefitt of my wife and children; and I give them, as a token of my love, twentie shillings apiece, to buy them each a ring, for their paines taken to advise and further my executor to performe this my will. "RICHARD POWELL. "Subscribed, sealed, and acknowledged to be his last will, in the presence of "JAMES LLOYD, JOHN MILTON, HENRY DELAHAY." [Footnote: Found by me at Doctors' Commons.--The date assigned for Mr. Powell's death depends on his widow's statement on oath, four years afterwards (Feb. 27, 1650-1), that "said Richard Powell, her late husband, died near the first day of January, in the year of our Lord 1646, at the house of Mr. John Milton situate in Barbican, London." (Todd, I. 57.)] While this is clearly the will of a dying man whose property is in such a state of wreck and confusion that he knows not whether any provision whatever will arise out of it for his wife and family, there are certain suggestions in it of a contrary tenor. It is evident, for example, that Mr. Powell had not given up all hope that his main property, the mansion and lands of Forest-hill, might ultimately be recovered. Though these are entirely omitted in the Particular of his Estate given in a month before to the Goldsmiths' Hall Committee for Compositions, they figure in his will so expressly that one sees the testator did not consider them quite lost. This, followed by the kindly mention of Sir Robert Pye in the end of the will, and the appointment of that knight as one of the overseers to assist the executor in carrying out the will, confirms a guess which we have already hazarded (_antè_, pp. 475-6): viz. that the entry of Sir Robert Pye into possession of the Forest-hill estate during the siege of Oxford was not the harsh exercise of his legal right to do so, nor even only the natural act of a prudent creditor seeing no other way of recovering a large sum lent to a neighbour, but in part also a friendly precaution in the interests of that neighbour himself and his family. That Forest-hill, if it were to be alienated from the Powells, should pass into the possession of Sir Robert Pye, an old friend of the family, might be for their advantage in the end. Though nominally proprietor, he would regard himself as interim possessor for the Powells; and, should they ever be able to reclaim their property, and to pay the 1,400_l._ and arrears of interest for which it had been pledged, they would find Sir Robert or his family more accommodating than strangers would have been. Something of this kind must have been in Mr. Powell's mind when he made his will. He clung to the Forest-hill property; it was worth much more really than the sum for which it had been alienated; he looked forward to some arrangement in that matter between his heir and Sir Robert Pye, in which Sir Robert himself would advise and assist. Then, as the smaller Wheatley property was also really worth more than the 40_l._ a year at which it was rated, and as, besides other chances only vaguely hinted, the family had immediate claims for 500_l._ on account of goods left at Forest-hill, 400_l._ on account of timber, and l00_l._ in miscellaneous debts, why, on the whole, with patience and good management, should there not be enough to discharge all obligations, and still leave something over for the heir, the widow, and the other eight or nine children, in the proportions indicated? Alas! if this were the possibility, it had to be arrived at, the testator foresaw, through a dense medium of present difficulties. The very items of most importance in the meantime, if his widow and children were to be saved from actual straits, were the items of greatest uncertainty. The household goods, the timber, and the debts due, were estimated together at 1,000_l._ of cash; but it was cash which had to be rescued from the four winds. Nay, most of it had to be rescued from worse than the four winds--from the Parliamentary Government itself, and from its agents in Oxfordshire. The household stuff and goods at Forest-hill! Had they not been sold in June last by the Oxfordshire sequestrators to Matthew Appletree of London, carted off by that dealer, and dispersed no one knew whither? The timber at Forest-hill! Had not that also vanished, most of it voted in July last by the two Houses of Parliament themselves to the people of Banbury for repairs of their church and other buildings? To be sure, the Goldsmiths' Hall Committee, by accepting these portions of Mr. Powell's property at his own valuation and including them in their calculation of his fine for Delinquency, had virtually pledged Government that they should be restored. But then the fine had not been paid. Notwithstanding the statement in Mr. Powell's will that he had compounded for his property, the case was not really so. The Committee had fixed his composition at 180_l.,_ and so had admitted him to compound; but, as he had not yet paid the usual first moiety, the transaction was really incomplete at his death. Who was to pursue the matter to completeness, undertaking on the one hand to pay the composition to Government, and on the other obliging Government to reproduce the value of the goods and timber that had been made away with by itself or by its Oxfordshire agents? All this too was in the testator's mind, and hence his difficulty in fixing on an executor. His eldest son and heir, Richard, then a youth of five-and-twenty, was to have the first option of this office; if he shrank from it, then the widow was to be the sole executrix; but, if she also shrank from it, a certain "Master John Ellston of Forest-hill," in whom Mr. Powell had confidence, was entreated to take it up. This Ellston, it is implied, understood the business, and, as acting for the family, might expect the advice of Sir Robert Pye and Sir John Curzon. [Footnote: The "Ellston" of the will may be the "Eldridge" mentioned in a previously quoted document (_antè_, p. 478) as having 100_l._ worth of Mr. Powell's timber on his premises. If so, Mr. Hamilton (92) has miscopied "Eldridge" for "Ellston" or "Ellstone" in that document.] The eldest son did shrink from the hard post of executor under the will; but the widow did not. This appears from the probate of the will, dated March 26, 1647, when she appeared as executrix before Sir Nathaniel Brent of the Prerogative Court, took the oath, and had the administration committed to her. [Footnote: Probate attached to the will in Doctors' Commons. There is a _second_ Probate in the margin, dated May 10, 1662, showing that then the eldest son, Richard Powell, at the age of forty-one, reclaimed the executorship, and was admitted to it, the former Probate being set aside. This fact does not concern us at present.] It was, as we shall find, a legacy of trouble and vexation to her, and collaterally to Milton as her son-in-law, for many years; and, as we shall also find, she fought in it perseveringly and bravely. The trouble and vexation, however, so far as records revive it, do not begin within our limits in this volume. For the present it is enough to add that, some time after Mr. Powell's death and burial, his widow and children removed from Milton's house in the Barbican, and quartered themselves elsewhere. They can hardly have gone back to Oxfordshire. Not only was Forest-hill no home for them now, but the smaller tenement and grounds at Wheatley in the same county seem to have been equally unavailable. There is documentary proof, at least, that immediately after Mr. Powell's death, in the same month of January 1646-7, his relative Sir Edward Powell, Bart., took formal possession of that property in consequence of his legal title to it from non-payment of the sum of £300 which he had advanced to Mr. Powell, on that security, five years before (see Vol. II. p. 497). [Footnote: Document, dated Aug. 28, 1650, among the Composition Papers given by Hamilton (86, 87).] This transaction, by a relative, may, like the similar transaction by Sir Robert Pye, have had some meaning in favour of the Powells; but, on the whole, though Mrs. Powell may have managed to dispose of some of her children, especially the elder boys, by appeal to relatives, the probability is that she remained in London and kept most of them with her. There is evidence that she had to live on in most straitened circumstances. Relatives probably did something for her; and Milton, as we shall find, performed his part. Little more than two months after the burial of Mr. Powell, and possibly before the removal of his widow and children from the house in Barbican, there was another funeral from that house. It was that of Milton's own father. Father-in-law and father had gone almost together, and the house was in double mourning. Who can part with this father of one of the greatest of Englishmen without a last look of admiration and regret? Nearly fifty years ago, in the last years of Elizabeth's reign, we saw him, an "ingeniose man" from Oxfordshire, detached from his Roman Catholic kindred there, and setting up in London in the business of scrivenership, with music for his private taste, and a name of some distinction already among the musicians and composers of the time. Then came the happy days of his married life in Bread Street, all through James's reign, his business prospering and music still his delight, but his three surviving children growing up about him, and his heart full of generous resolves for their education, and especially of pride in that one of them on whose high promise teachers and neighbours were always dilating. Then to Cambridge University went this elder son, followed in time by the younger, the father consenting to miss their presence, and instructing them to spare no use of his worldly substance for their help in the paths they might choose. It had been somewhat of a disappointment to him when, after seven years, the elder had returned from the University with his original destination for the Church utterly forsworn, and with such avowed loathings of the whole condition of things in Church and State as seemed to bar the prospect of any other definite profession. There had been the recompense, indeed, of that son's graceful and perfected youth, of the haughty nobleness of soul that blazed through his loathings, and of his acquired reputation for scholarship and poetry. And so, in the country retreat at Horton, as age was beginning to come upon the good father, and he was releasing himself from the cares of business, how pleasant it had been for him, and for the placid and invalid mother, to have their elder son wholly to themselves, their one daughter continuing meanwhile in London after her first husband's decease, and then younger son also mainly residing there for his law-studies. What though the son so domiciled with them was plowing up to manhood, still without a profession, still absorbed in books and poetry, doing exactly as he liked, and in fact more the ruler of them than they were of him? Who could interfere with such a son, and why had God given them abundance but that such a son might have the leisure he desired? All in all, one cannot doubt that those years of retirement at Horton had been the most peaceful on which the old man could look back. But those years had come to an end. The sad spring of 1637 had come; the invalid wife had died; and he had been left in widowhood. Little in the ten years of his life since then but a succession of shiftings and troubles! For a while still at Horton, sauntering about the church and in daily communion with the grave it contained, his younger son and that son's newly-wedded wife coming to keep him company while the elder was on his travels. Then, after the elder son's return, the outbreak of the political tumults, and the sad convulsion of everything. In this convulsion his two sons had taken opposite sides, the elder even treasuring up wrath against himself by his vehement writings for the Parliamentarians. How should an old man judge in such a case? The Horton household now broken up, he had gone for a time with Christopher and his wife to Reading, but only to be tossed back to London and the safer protection of John. We have seen him under that protection in Aldersgate Street, all through the time of Milton's marriage--misfortune and the Divorce pamphlets. There was some comfort, on the old man's account, in the picture given of him by his grandson Phillips, then in the same house, as living through all that distraction "wholly retired to his rest and devotion, without the least trouble imaginable." All the same one fancies him having his own thoughts in his solitary upper room, contrasting the now with the then, and feeling that he had become feeble and superfluous. A cheerful change for him may have been the larger house in Barbican, with his son's forgiven wife in her proper place in it and more numerous pupils going in and out, and at last the birth of the infant-girl that made his grandfatherhood complete in all its three branches. He had been about eighteen months in this house. The Civil War had come to an end, and the King had been surrendered by the Scots at Newcastle and shifted to the second stage of his captivity at Holmby House, and Christopher Milton had returned ruefully to London from Exeter to sue out pardon for his delinquency, and the impoverished Powells also had come to the house from Oxford. Old Mr. Powell and old Mr. Milton had been a good deal together, and at length, when Mr. Powell was dying, old Mr. Milton may have assisted, scrivener-like, in the framing of his will. Only two months afterwards his own turn came. No will of his has been found, and probably he had made a will unnecessary by previous arrangements. His Bible and music-books left in his room may have been the mementoes of his last occupations. He was buried, March 15, 1646-7, in the chancel of the Church of St. Giles, Cripplegate, not far from Barbican; and the entry "John Milton, Gentleman, 15" among the "Burialls in March 1646" may be still looked at with interest in the Registers of that parish. [Footnote: To the courtesy of the Rev. P. P. Gilbert, M.A., Vicar of the parish, I owe a certified copy of the burial- entry.] Nothing came from Milton's pen on the occasion; but one remembers his Latin poem "_Ad Patrem,_" written fifteen years before, and the lines with which that poem closes may stand fitly here as the epitaph for the dead:-- "At tibi, care Pater, postquam non aqua merenti Posse referre datur, nec dona rependere factis, Sit memorasse satis, repetitaque munera grato Percensere animo, fidæque reponere menti. Et vos, O nostri, juvenilia carmina, lusus, Si modo perpetuos sperare audebitis annos, Nec spisso rapient oblivia nigra sub Orco, Forsitan has laudes decantatumque parentis Nomen, ad exmplum, sero servabitis ævo." [Footnote: It seems to me not improbable that the poem, as originally written, ended at the word "menti." and that the last six lines, beginning "Et vos," were an addition when Milton published his Poems in 1645 his father then residing with him.] SONNET XIV, AND ODE TO JOHN ROUS. Since the removal from the Aldersgate Street house to that in Barbican, Milton, as we know, had ceased from prose pamphleteering; and all that he had done of a literary kind, besides publishing his volume of collected Poems, had been his two Divorce Sonnets, his Sonnet to Henry Lawes, and his Sonnet with the scorpion tail, entitled _On the Forcers of Conscience_. To these have now to be added, as written since Aug. 1646, two other scraps--viz.: the Sonnet marked XIV. in most of our modern editions of his Poems, and the Latin Ode to John Rous which generally appears at or near the end of the Latin portion of these editions. Sonnet XIV., though printed without a heading by Milton himself in the Second or 1673 edition of his Poems, and often so printed still, exists fortunately in two drafts in his own hand (one of them erased) among the Milton MSS. at Cambridge, and bears there this heading, also in his own hand: "_On the Religious memory of Mrs. Catherine Thomson, my Christian friend, deceased 16 Decemb._ 1646." We have no other information about this Mrs. Catherine Thomson than is conveyed by these words and the Sonnet itself; and the fact that we know of her existence only by chance suggests to us how many friends and acquaintances of Milton there may have been in London whose very names have perished. One may suppose her to have been a neighbour of Milton's, and rather elderly. That he had no ordinary respect for her appears from the fact that he felt moved to write something in her memory. If written exactly at the time of her death, it was while his house was full of the Powells, and Mr. Powell was grieving over the state of his affairs and perhaps known to be dying. There is a suggestion, however, in the wording, that it may have been written later. "When Faith and Love, which parted from thee never, Had ripened thy just soul to dwell with God, Meekly thou didst resign this earthy load Of death, called life, which us from Life doth sever. Thy works, and alms, and all thy good endeavour, Stayed not behind, nor in the grave were trod; But, as Faith pointed with her golden rod, Followed thee up to joy and bliss for ever. Love led them on; and Faith, who knew them best Thy handmaids, clad them o'er with purple beams And azure wings, that up they flew so drest, And speak the truth of thee on glorious themes Before the Judge, who thenceforth bid thee rest And drink thy fill of pure immortal streams." Certainly written in Barbican between the death of Mr. Powell and that of Milton's father, but in a very different strain from the foregoing, is the Latin Ode to Rous, the Oxford Librarian. The circumstances were these:-- Milton, we have had proof already, cared enough both about his opinions and about his literary reputation to adopt the common practice of sending presentation-copies of his books to persons likely to be interested in them. He had sent out, we have seen, such presentation-copies of Lawes's 1637 edition of his "Comus," and of some of his pamphlets individually. We find, however, that in 1645 or 1646, when he had published no fewer than eleven pamphlets in all, and when moreover his English and Latin Poems had been issued by Moseley, he must have taken some pains to secure that copies of the entire set of his writings, as then extant, should be in the hands of eminent book-collectors and scholars. Thus, in the Library of Trinity College, Dublin, there is a small quarto volume containing ten of the pamphlets bound together in this order--"Of Reformation," "Of Prelatical Episcopacy," "The Reason of Church- government," "Animadversions upon the Remonstrant's Defence," "An Apology against a modest Confutation," "The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce," "The Judgment of Martin Bucer," "Colasterion," "Tetrachordon," "Areopagitica;" and the volume exhibits (in a slightly mutilated form, owing to clipping in the re-binding) this inscription in Milton's autograph: "_Ad doctissimum virum, Patricium Junium, Joannes Miltonius hæc sua, unum in fasciculum conjecta, mittit, paucis hujusmodi lectoribus contentes_" ("To the most learned man, Patrick Young, John Milton sends these things of his, thrown together into one volume, content with few readers were they but of his sort") The volume, therefore, though it has found its way to Dublin, originally belonged to the Scotchman Patrick Young, better known by his Latinized name of Patricius Junius, one of the most celebrated scholars of his time, especially in Greek, and for more than forty years (1605?-1649) keeper of the King's Library in St. James's, London. Milton, it is clear, did not intend the gift for the Royal Library, unless Young chose to put it there. He meant it for Young himself, with whom he had probably some personal acquaintance, and who was of Presbyterian sympathies, and in fact then under the orders of Parliament. [Footnote: There is a facsimile of the inscription to Young in Sotheby's Milton Ramblings, p. 121; but I am indebted for a more particular account of the volume, with a tracing of the inscription, to the Rev. Andrew Campbell of Dublin. There is a memoir of Young in Wood's Fasti, I. 308-9] About the time when Milton sent this collection of his pamphlets to Patrick Young, or perhaps a little later, he sent a similar gift to another librarian, expressly in his official capacity. This was John Rous, M.A., chief Librarian of the Bodleian at Oxford from 1620 to 1652, Milton, there is reason to believe, had known Rous since the year 1635 (see Vol. I. p. 590); at all events an acquaintance had sprung up between them, as could hardly fail to be the case between a reader like Milton and the keeper of the great Oxford Library; and, as Rous's political leanings, Oxonian though he was, were distinctly Parliamentarian, there was no reason for coolness on that ground. Accordingly, Rous, it appears, had asked Milton for a complete copy of his writings for the Bodleian, and had even been pressing in the request. Milton at length had despatched the required donation in the form of a parcel containing two volumes--the Prose Pamphlets bound together in one volume, and the Poems by themselves in the tinier volume as published by Moseley. On a blank leaf at the beginning of the larger volume he had written very carefully with his own hand a long Latin inscription, "_Doctissimo viro, proloque librorum æstimatori, Joanni Rousio_" &c.; which may be given in translation as follows: "To the most learned man, and excellent judge of books, John Rous, Librarian of the University of Oxford, on his testifying that this would be agreeable to him, John Milton gladly forwards these small works of his, with a view to their reception into the University's most ancient and celebrated Library, as into a temple of perpetual memory, and so, as he hopes, into a merited freedom from ill- will and calumny, if satisfaction enough has been given at once to Truth and to Good Fortune. They are--'Of Reformation in England,' 2 Books; 'Of Prelatical Episcopacy,' 1 Book; 'Of the Reason of Church-government,' 2 Books; 'Animadversions on the Remonstrant's Defence,' 1 Book; 'Apology against the same,' 1 Book; 'The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce,' 2 Books; 'The Judgment of Bucer on Divorce,' 1 Book; 'Colasterion,' 1 Book; 'Tetrachordon: An Exposition of some chief places of Scripture concerning Divorce,' 4 Books; 'Areopagitica, or a Speech for the Freedom of the Press;' 'An Epistle on Liberal Education;' and 'Poems, Latin and English,' separately." Here, it will be seen, Milton sends to Rous the same pamphlets he had sent to Patrick Young, and in the same order, only adding the Letter on Education to Hartlib, and the Moseley volume of Poems. Now, all the pieces so enumerated, with the inscription, had duly reached Rous in the Bodleian, with one exception. In the carriage of the parcel to Oxford the tiny volume of Poetry had somehow dropped out or been abstracted; so that Rous, counting over the pieces by the inventory, found himself in possession only of the eleven prose-pamphlets. He had intimated this to Milton, and petitioned for another copy of the Poems to make good the loss of the first. Milton complied; but, as the loss of the first copy had amused him, he took the trouble of writing a mock-heroic Latin ode on the subject to Rous, and causing this ode, transcribed on a sheet of paper in a secretary hand of elaborate elegance, to be inserted by the binder in the new copy, between the English and the Latin portions of the contents. This is the _Ode to Rous_ of which we have spoken as, with the exception of _Sonnet XIV.,_ the sole known production of Milton's muse during those eight months of his Barbican life which have brought us to our present point. When he printed it in the second or 1673 edition of his Poems, he prefixed the exact date, "Jan. 23, 1646" (_i.e._ 1646-7). It was written, therefore, in the interval between Mr. Powell's death and his father's--three weeks after the one, and six or seven weeks before the other. The manuscript copy sent to Rous still exists in the Bodleian in the volume into which it was inserted; and in the same library they show also the volume of the eleven collected prose pamphlets, with the previous inscription to Rous in Milton's autograph. [Footnote: Warton's Note on the Ode to Rous (Todd's Milton, IV. 507-9); Milton's Poems ed. 1678, Latin portion, p. 90; Sotheby's Milton Ramblings, pp. 113-121, where there is a fac-simile of the inscription in the Bodleian volume of the prose pamphlets, and also a fac-simile of a considerable portion of the Latin Ode to Rous from the MS. copy in the other Bodleian volume. The "inscription" is indubitably Milton's autograph; Mr. Sotheby thinks the "ode" also to be in his penmanship, though not in his usual hand, but in a "beautiful secretary hand" which he assumed for the special purpose. Judging from the fac-simile, I doubt this, and think the transcript may have been by some professional scribe.--According to Warton's account, it is by accident that these two precious volumes have been preserved in the Bodleian. In 1720 a number of books, whether as being duplicates or as being thought useless, were weeded out of the Library and thrown aside, and a Mr. Nathaniel Crynes, one of the Esquire Bidels and a book collector, was permitted to have the pick of these for himself on the understanding that he was to leave the Library a valuable bequest. Fortunately Mr. Crynes did not care for the Milton volumes, and so they went back to the shelves.] The ode is headed "_Ad Joannem Rousium, Oxoniensis Academiæ Bibliothecarium: de Libro Poematum amisso, quem ille sibi denuo mitti postulabat, ut cum aliis nostris in Bibliothecâ publicâ reponeret, Ode_" ("To John Rous, Librarian of the University of Oxford: An Ode on a lost Book of Poems, of which he asked a fresh copy to be sent him, that he might replace it beside our other books in the Public Library"). What strikes one first in reading the Ode is the strange metrical structure. Evidently in a whim, and to suit his mock-heroic purpose, Milton chose a peculiar form of mixed verse, distantly suggested by the choruses of the Greek dramatists, and more closely by some precedents in Latin poetry. There are three Strophes, each followed by an Antistrophe, and the whole is wound up by a closing Epodos. In an appended prose note Milton calls attention to this novelty, and explains moreover that he had taken considerable liberties with the verse throughout, pleasing his own ear, and regarding rather the convenience of modern reading than ancient prosodic rules. Altogether, in this respect, the poem was a bold experiment, for which Milton has been taken to task by purists among his commentators down to our own time. It is the _matter_, however, that interests us most here. The ode opens half-humorously with an address to the little book he was sending to Rous. It is described as a pretty little book enough, with two sets of contents and a double arrangement of paging to match, neatly but simply bound (_fronde licet geminâ, munditieque nitens non operosâ_), and containing the juvenile productions of a certain Poet of no superlative merit (_haud nimii poetæ_), written partly in Britain and partly in Italy, partly in English and partly in Latin. [Footnote: Critics have objected to Milton's volume, phrase "_fronde licet geminâ_," on the ground that "_fronte_" would be the better Latin word for "title- page." But Milton did not mean only that there were two title pages in the volume, one to the English and one to the Latin poems; he meant also that these two sets of poems were paged separately throughout. His phrase "_fronde geminâ_," ("with double leafing") was therefore perfectly exact.] Then the Antistrophe asks what had become of the former copy of the same, on its way to the sources of the Thames and the great seat of learning there established. The second Strophe and Antistrophe continue the strain, with a hope that now at length the wretched civil tumults may cease in England and Peace and Literature come back, but still with a return of the query what could possibly have become of the missing volume between London and Oxford, and into what clownish hands it might have fallen. In the third Strophe and Antistrophe there is a compliment to Rous as the faithful keeper of one of the most splendid libraries in the world, with acknowledgment of his kindness in seeking to have the missing volume replaced, so that it might have a chance of readers in such glorious company and in all-famous Oxford. The closing Epode may be given in the skilful, though rather lax, rendering of Cowper:-- "Ye, then, my Works, no longer vain And worthless deemed by me, Whate'er this sterile genius has produced, Expect at last, the rage of envy spent, An unmolested happy home, Gift of kind Hermes and my watchful friend, Where never flippant tongue profane Shall entrance find, And whence the coarse unlettered multitude Shall babble far remote. Perhaps some future distant age, Less tinged with prejudice, and better taught, Shall furnish minds of power To judge more equally. Then, malice silenced in the tomb, Cooler heads and sounder hearts, Thanks to Rous, if aught of praise I merit, shall with candour weigh the claim." ITALIAN REMINISCENCES: LOST LETTERS FROM CARLO DATI OF FLORENCE: MILTON'S REPLY TO THE LAST OF THEM. Our next trace of Milton, through anything written by himself in his Barbican abode, belongs to April 1647, the month after his father's death. We owe it also perhaps to the fact that the publication of his Poems by Moseley had given him an opportunity of distributing presentation-copies of some of his former writings. A feature in that volume, it may be remembered, was its richness in Italian reminiscences. Not only were there included among the English Poems the five Italian Sonnets and the Italian Canzone which Milton is believed to have written in Italy; not only were the encomiums of his Italian friends, Manso of Naples, Salzilli and Selvaggi of Rome, and Francini and Dati of Florence, prefixed to the Latin Poems, with a note of explanation; not only among these Latin poems did he print the three pieces to the singer Leonora, the Scazontes to Salzilli, and the fine farewell to Manso; but in the _Epitaphium Damonis_, or pastoral on Charles Diodati's death, which ended the volume, and which had been written immediately after his return to England, there were references throughout to his Italian experiences, and passages of express mention of Dati, Francini, the Florentine group generally, and the venerable Manso. What more natural than to have sent copies of such a volume to the various Italian friends named in it, to remind them of the Englishman to whom they had been so kind. The venerable Manso, indeed, was by this time dead; Salzilli seems to have been dead; the great Galileo, whom Milton had at least once visited near Florence, had died in 1642; but most of the Florentine group were still alive. To these last, all of them poets themselves more or less, Milton might have been expected to send copies of his volume. Or, if he did not trouble them with the English part, which they could not read, he might have sent them at least the Latin part, which had been separately paged, and provided with a separate title and imprint, precisely in order that it might be so detached. For a reason which will appear Milton did not even do this. He seems, however, to have procured from the printer some copies of the last eleven pages of the Latin part, which contained the _Epitaphium Damonis_ by itself, and to have sent these to Florence. Either so, or by some prior transmission of this particular poem to his Florentine friends, unaccompanied by any letter, copies of it _had_ reached them. This we learn from the sequel. Of all Milton's Florentine friends none had remembered him more faithfully than young Carlo Dati (see Vol. I. pp. 724-5). Only nineteen years of age when Milton had visited Florence in 1638-9, but then a leading spirit in the literary Academies of the city, and especially enthusiastic in his attentions to strangers, he had outgone all the others, except Francini, in his admiration of the Englishman who had come among them, and in the extravagance of his parting adieu. The admiration was real; and, after Milton had gone, young Dati had often thought of him, often talked of him among his companions of the Delia Crusca and of Gaddi's more private Academy of the Svogliati, often wondered what he was doing in his native land. Three times at intervals he had written to Milton; but all the letters had miscarried. Conceive, then, Dati's pleasure, when, some time in 1646 (if that is the correct supposition), a copy of the _Epitaphium Damonis_ reached him from London, and he read the passage there in which Milton had made such affectionate mention of his Florentine friends of 1638-9, and of himself and Francini in particular. Immediately he wrote to Milton a fourth time; and this letter, more fortunate than its predecessors, did arrive at its destination. Milton, on his part, though the letter must have reached him about the time of his father's death, had peculiar pleasure in receiving it and returning an answer. The answer was in Latin, and may be translated as follows:-- "To CHARLES DATI, Nobleman of Florence. "With how great and what new pleasure I was filled, my Charles, on the unexpected arrival of your letter, since it is impossible for me to describe it adequately, I wish you may in some degree understand from the very pain with which it was dashed, such pain as is almost the invariable accompaniment of any great delight yielded to men. For, on running over that first portion of your letter, in which elegance contends so finely with friendship, I should have called my feeling one of unmixed joy, and the rather because I see your labour to make friendship the winner. Immediately, however, when I came upon that passage where you write that you had sent me three letters before, which I now know to have been lost, then, in the first place, that sincere gladness of mine at the receipt of this one began to be infected and troubled with a sad regret, and presently a something heavier creeps in upon me, to which I am accustomed in very frequent grievings over my own lot: the sense, namely, that those whom the mere necessity of neighbourhood, or something else of a useless kind, has closely conjoined with me, whether by accident or by the tie of law (_sive casu, sive lege, conglutinavit_), _they_ are the persons, though in no other respect commendable, who sit daily in my company, weary me, nay, by heaven, all but plague me to death whenever they are jointly in the humour for it, whereas those whom habits, disposition, studies, had so handsomely made my friends, are now almost all denied me, either by death or by most unjust separation of place, and are so for the most part snatched from my sight that I have to live well nigh in a perpetual solitude. As to what you say, that from the time of my departure from Florence you have been anxious about my health and always mindful of me. I truly congratulate myself that a feeling has been equal and mutual in both of us, the existence of which on my side only I was perhaps claiming to my credit. Very sad to me also, I will not conceal from you, was that departure, and it planted stings in my heart which now rankle there deeper, as often as I think with myself of my reluctant parting, my separation as by a wrench, from so many companions at once, such good friends as they were, and living so pleasantly with each other in one city, far off indeed, but to me most dear. I call to witness that tomb of Damon, ever to be sacred and solemn to me, whose adornment with every tribute of grief was my weary task, till I betook myself at length to what comforts I could, and desired again to breathe a little--I call that sacred grave to witness that I have had no greater delight all this while than in recalling to my mind the most pleasant memory of all of you, and of yourself especially. This you must have read for yourself long ere now, if that poem reached you, as now first I hear from you it did. I had carefully caused it to be sent, in order that, however small a proof of talent, it might, even in those few lines introduced into it emblem-wise, [Footnote: See the lines themselves in the translation of the _Epitaphium Damonis_, Vol. II. p. 90.] be no obscure proof of my love towards you. My idea was that by this means I should lure either yourself or some of the others to write to me; for, if I wrote first, either I had to write to all, or I feared that, if I gave the preference to any one, I should incur the reproach of such others as came to know it, hoping as I do that very many are yet there alive who might certainly have a claim to this attention from me. Now, however, you first of all, both by this most friendly call of your letter, and by your thrice-repeated attention of writing before, have freed the reply for which I have been some while since in your debt from any expostulation from the others. [Footnote: Although I have supposed that the copies of the _Epitaphium Damonis_ sent by Milton to Italy were from the sheets of the Moseley volume of 1645 as it was passing through the press, the reader ought to note, with me, the _possibility_ (already hinted, and now implied in this passage of the letter to Dati) that Milton had sent copies in some form at an earlier date--say immediately after the poem was written, and when his parting from his Italian friends was quite recent.] There was, I confess, an additional cause for my silence in that most turbulent state of our Britain, subsequent to my return home, which obliged me to divert my mind shortly afterwards from the prosecution of my studies to the defence anyhow of life and fortune. What safe retirement for literary leisure could you suppose given one among so many battles of a civil war, slaughters, flights, seizures of goods? Yet, even in the midst of these evils, since you desire to be informed about my studies, know that we have published not a few things in our native tongue; which, were they not written in English, I would willingly send to you, my friends in Florence, to whose opinions I attach very much value. The part of the Poems which is in Latin I will send shortly, since you wish it; and I would have done so spontaneously long ago, but that, on account of the rather harsh sayings against the Pope of Rome in some of the pages, I had a suspicion they would not be quite agreeable to your ears. Now I beg of you that the indulgence you were wont to give, I say not to your own Dante and Petrarch in the same case, but with singular politeness to my own former freedom of speech, as you know, among you, the same you, Dati, will obtain (for of yourself I am sure) from my other friends whenever I may be speaking of your religion in our peculiar way. I am reading with pleasure your description of the funeral ceremony to King Louis, in which I recognise your style (_Mercurium tuum_)--not that one of street bazaars and mercantile concerns (_compitalem ilium et mercimoniis ad dictum_) which you say jestingly you have been lately practising, but the right eloquent one which the Muses like, and which befits the president of a club of wits (_facundum ilium, Musis acceptum, et Mercurialium virorum præsidem_). [Footnote: The production of Dati to which Milton refers, and of which a copy had probably accompanied Dati's letter, was an Italian tract or book, entitled "Esequie del la Maestà Christianiss: di Luigi XIII. il Giusto, Re di Francia e di Navarra, celebrate in Firenze dall altezza serenissima di Ferdinando Granduca di Tose., e discritte da Carlo Dati: 1644." Louis XIII. of France had died May 14, 1643, and the Grand Duke of Tuscany had ordered a celebration in his honour at Florence.--The hint that Dati was now engaged in mercantile business is confirmed by subsequent evidence.] It remains that we agree on some method and plan by which henceforth our letters may go between us by a sure route. This does not seem very difficult, when so many of our merchants have frequent and large transactions with you, and their messengers run backwards and forwards every week, and their vessels sail from port to port not much seldomer. The charge of this I shall commit, rightly I hope, to Bookseller James (_Jacobo Bibliopolæ_), or to his master, my very familiar acquaintance (_vel ejus hero mihi familiarissimo_). [Footnote: I have translated this as well as I can, but it is obscure. Did Milton refer to some Florentine "Jacopo," a bookseller (the publisher of Dati's _Esequie_?), and playfully entrust the arrangement of the future means of correspondence to Dati himself, as master of the services of this person?] Meanwhile farewell, my Charles; and give best salutations in my name to Coltellini, Francini, Frescobaldi, Malatesta, Chimentelli the younger, anyone else you know that remembers me with some affection, and, in fine, to the whole Gaddian Academy. Again farewell! London: April 21, 1617." [Footnote: This letter to Dati is the tenth of Milton's _Epistolæ Familiares_, as published by himself in 1674, and reprinted in the collected editions of his works. By a curious chance, however, a MS. copy of it exists in Milton's own hand--either a draft which Milton kept at the time, or perhaps the actual copy sent to Dati. It is one of some valuable Milton documents in the possession of Mr. John Fitchett Marsh of Warrington, who has described it in his _Milton Papers_, printed for the Chetham Society in 1851, and given there a fac-simile of the beginning and end of it. There is a copy of this fac- simile in Mr. Sotheby's _Milton Ramblings_ (p. 122). Mr. Marsh, who is inclined to think that the MS. is the actual letter as it reached Dati, has favoured me with an exact list of some verbal variations in it from the printed copy. They are slight, but rather confirm the idea that the printed copy is from the draft which Milton kept and that the MS. was the transcript actually dispatched to Italy. Thus, while the printed copy is headed merely "_Carolo Dato, Patricio Florentino_," the MS. is headed "Carolo Dato, Patricio Florentino, Joannes Miltonius, Londinensis, S.P.D." Again, at the close, instead of the printed dating "_Londino, Aprilis 21, 1647_," the MS. presents the dating "_Londini: Pascatis feria tertia, MDCXLVII_," ("London: the third feast day of Easter, 1647.") On this Mr. Marsh, in a note to me, remarks ingeniously, "Dating from the feast-day, according to the Roman Catholic usage, in writing to an Italian friend, indicates a tolerance and politeness worth noticing." Easter in 1647 fell on Sunday, April 18, so that the third day, or Easter-Tuesday, was April 20. The printed copy is dated a day later.] There are passages in this letter which we can interpret now better than Dati can have done then. The sentences in which Milton speaks of his hard fate in being tied by accident or law to the constant companionship of people with whom he had no sympathy, while those whom he really cared for were distant or dead, may have been read by Dati with only a vague general construction of their meaning, and perhaps would not have been written by Milton to any one capable of a more exact construction from knowledge of the circumstances. We can now discern in them, however, a reference by Milton to his domestic troubles, to the worry brought on him by the whole Powell connexion, and perhaps also to the recent loss of his father. Altogether the letter is a melancholy one. One sees Milton, as he wrote it in Barbican in the spring of 1647, the gloomy master of an uncomfortable household. PEDAGOGY IN THE BARBICAN: LIST OF MILTON'S KNOWN PUPILS: LADY RANELAGH. Yet precisely this spring of 1647, if we are to believe his nephew Phillips, was Milton's busiest time with his pupils. "And now," says Phillips, after mentioning the death of Milton's father, and the departure at last of the Powell kindred from the house in Barbican, "the house looked again like a house of the Muses only, though the accession of scholars was not great. Possibly his proceeding thus far in the education of youth may have been the occasion of some of his adversaries calling him Pedagogue and Schoolmaster; whereas it is well known he never set up for a public school to teach all the young fry of a parish, but only was willing to impart his learning and knowledge to relations, and the sons of some gentlemen that were his intimate friends, besides that neither his converse, nor his writings, nor his manner of teaching ever savoured in the least anything of pedantry; and probably he might have some prospect of putting in practice his academical institution, according to the model laid down in his sheet Of Education!" Taking this passage in connexion with prior passages already quoted from the same memoir, we are to conclude that, though Milton's practice in teaching had begun as far back as 1639-40, when he gave lessons to his two nephews in his lodgings in St. Bride's Churchyard, and although the practice had been kept up all through the time of his residence in Aldersgate Street, when his nephews boarded with him and other pupils were gradually added (1640-45), yet it was in the Barbican house, and there more especially in 1647, that his employment in pedagogy was most engrossing. The house had been taken expressly that there might be accommodation for additional pupils, and such pupils had come in--not in any considerable number, nor yet miscellaneously from the neighbourhood, but rather by way of favour on Milton's part to select boys whose parents knew him well, and were anxious that they should have the benefit of his instructions. As to Milton's theories and methods of education we are already sufficiently informed. This may be the place, however, for a list of those who can be ascertained to have had the honour of being his pupils. Perhaps that honour may have been shared by as many as twenty or thirty youths in all, afterwards distributed through English society in the seventeenth century, and some of them living even into the eighteenth; but I have been able to recover only the following:--[Footnote: It is to be understood that Milton may have continued the practice of pedagogy, in individual cases at least, after the Barbican period of its fullest force, and hence that one or two of the pupils in my present list may not have been in the Barbican house, but may be strays afterwards undertaken by him, on special request, in those later days and those other houses into which we have yet to follow him. As it is not worth while, however, to break up such a list, I present all Milton's known pupils, of whatever date, in one cluster.] EDWARD PHILLIPS (the elder nephew):--Not ten years old when he first received lessons from Milton in the St. Bride's Churchyard lodging, this elder nephew, after five years of board in Aldersgate Street, and about a year and a half in Barbican, had reached his seventeenth year. He had received the full benefit so far of his uncle's method of teaching; and, if he were to go to the University, it was about time that he should be preparing. About two years after our present date, or in March 1648-9, by whatever management of his uncle, or of his mother and step-father, Mrs. and Mr. Agar, he did enrol himself in Magdalen Hall, Oxford. The rest of his life will concern us hereafter. [Footnote: Wood's Ath., IV. 760, and Godwin's Lives of the Phillipses, p. 12.] JOHN PHILLIPS (the younger nephew):--This nameson of Milton's, first committed to his entire charge in the St. Bride's Churchyard lodging, had been as long under training as his elder brother, and had now reached his sixteenth year. He was to remain a more unmixed example of his uncle's training, for he never went to any University. He also will reappear in the subsequent course of his uncle's life. [Footnote: Wood's Ath., IV. 764, and Godwin.] RICHARD HEATH, OR HETH:--That a person of this name was among Milton's pupils, rests on the evidence of one of Milton's own _Epistolæ Familiares_, dated Dec. 1652, and addressed "Richardo Hetho." As he was then a minister of the Gospel somewhere, it is to be inferred that he was one of the earliest pupils of the Aldersgate Street days. I have not been able to identify him farther. ----PACKER:--"Mr. Packer, who was his scholar," is one of Aubrey's Jottings about Milton, written in 1680 or thereabouts. This is a very insufficient clue. A John Packer, who had taken the degree of Doctor of Physic at Padua, was incorporated in the same degree at Oxford, Feb. 19, 1656-7. [Footnote: Aubrey's Notes on Milton's Life (Godwin's reprint, p. 349); Wood's Fasti, II. 196.] CYRIACK SKINNER:--He was the third son of William Skinner, a Lincolnshire squire (son and heir of Sir Vincent Skinner, Knt., of Thornton College, co. Lincoln) who had married Bridget Coke, second daughter of the famous lawyer and judge, Sir Edward Coke. As his father died in 1627, Cyriack must have been at least twenty years of age in 1647: he had, therefore, been one of the Aldersgate Street pupils. The fact that he was a grandson of the great Coke was one of his distinctions through life; but he was to become of some note in London society on his own' account. The connexion formed between him and Milton continued, as we shall find, unbroken and affectionate through future years. Indeed, there came to be associations, presumably through Cyriack, between Milton and other persons of the name of Skinner. A Daniel Skinner, and a Thomas Skinner, presumably relatives of Cyriack's, are heard of as merchants in Mark Lane, London, from 1651 onwards. This Daniel Skinner, merchant, had a son, Daniel Skinner, junior, whose acquaintance with Milton in the end of his life led to curious and important results. Care must be taken, even now, not to confound this far future Daniel Skinner, junior (not born till about 1650), with our present Cyriack, his senior, and probable kinsman. [Footnote: Aubrey's Notes; Wood's Ath., III. 1119; Skinner's Pedigree in Introd. to Bishop Sumner's Translation of Milton's Treatise on Christian Doctrine (1825); Hamilton's Milton Papers, 29 _et seq._ and 131-2. Wood (Fasti, I. 486) has confounded Cyriack Skinner in one particular with the much later Daniel Skinner junior, and the mistake has been kept up.] HENRY LAURENCE:--There is no positive attestation, as in the other cases, that this person, certainly intimate with Milton in subsequent years, began acquaintance with him as one of his pupils. The presumption is so strong, however, that I risk including him. He was the second son of Henry Laurence, of St. Ives, Hunts, member for Westmoreland in the Long Parliament, known in 1647 as a thoughtful man, and author of "A Treatise of our Communion and War with Angels," and afterwards a staunch Oliverian, President of Cromwell's Council (1654), and one of his Lords (1657). He had an elder son, Edward, who was fourteen years of age in 1647, and died in 1657, when Henry became the heir. Therefore, if we are right in supposing Henry to have been Milton's pupil in the Barbican, he cannot have been older than twelve or thirteen at the time. [Footnote: Wood's Ath., IV. 63, 64; note by Bliss.] SIR THOMAS GARDINER, OF ESSEX:--That a person of this name was among Milton's pupils in the Barbican, either with the title already, or having it to come to him, seems to be implied in a statement of Wood, quoted in the next paragraph. RICHARD BARRY, 2ND EARL OF BARRIMORE:--"To this end that he might put it in practice," says Wood, after describing Milton's system of education as explained in his Letter to Hartlib, "he took a larger house, where the Earl of Barrimore sent by his aunt the Lady Ranelagh, Sir Thomas Gardiner of Essex, to be there with others (besides his two nephews) under his tuition." [Footnote: Wood's Fasti (edit. by Bliss), I. 483. The sentence is exactly in the same form in earlier editions.] The pointing and structure of the sentence make it obscure; but I take the meaning to be that Wood had heard of two of Milton's pupils in the Barbican house specially worth naming on account of their rank--the Earl of Barrimore and Sir Thomas Gardiner--and that he had also been informed that it was the Earl of Barrimore's aunt, the Lady Ranelagh, that had placed that young Irish nobleman under Milton's charge. The full significance of this was clear when Wood wrote, for Lady Ranelagh was then still alive, and known as one of the most remarkable women of her century; but readers now may need to be informed who Lady Ranelagh was.--Her husband was Arthur Jones, 2nd Viscount Ranelagh in the Irish peerage; but that was not her chief distinction. By birth she was a Boyle, one of the daughters of that Richard Boyle, an Englishman of Kent, who, having gone over to Ireland in 1588, had risen there, by his prudence and integrity through three reigns, to be successively Sir Richard Boyle, Lord Boyle of Youghall, Viscount Dungarvan, and Earl of Cork, with the office of Lord High Treasurer of Ireland, and with vast estates both in Ireland and England. This great Earl, dying in good old age in 1643, after some final service against the Irish Rebellion, left four sons mid six daughters surviving out of a total family of fifteen. The eldest surviving son, Richard, till then Viscount Dungarvan, succeeded to the Earldom of Cork, and was afterwards created Lord Clifford of Lanesborough (1644) and Earl of Burlington (1664) in the English peerage; the second, Roger, created Baron Broghill in his father's lifetime, bore that title till the Restoration, with a high character for wisdom and literary talent, which he maintained afterwards as Earl of Orrery; the next, Francis, after giving proof of his Royalism both in England and in exile, received a place with his brothers in the Irish peerage as Viscount Shannon; and the fourth and youngest, born Jan. 25, 1626-7, was called to the end of his days merely "The Hon. Mr. Robert Boyle," but became the most famous of them all as "the divine philosopher," and founder of English Chemistry. So also, among the daughters, though all were "ladies of great piety and virtue and an ornament to their sex," one was the paragon. This was Catharine, Viscountess Ranelagh, born March 22, 1614-15, or twelve years before her brother Robert. Of her reputation for "vast reach both of knowledge and apprehension," "universal affability," and liberality both of mind and of purse, there is the most glowing tradition, interspersed with facts and anecdotes; and the singularly strong mutual affection that subsisted between her and her brother Robert till the close of their lives runs like a silver thread through that philosopher's biography. At our present date she was yet a young woman, but her influence among the members of her family was already recognised. Since the Irish Rebellion the fixed residence of herself and her husband had been in (Pall Mall?) London. Here her relatives from Ireland and elsewhere gathered round her; and here in 1644 her youngest brother, the future chemist, turning up brown and penniless, a foreign-looking lad of eighteen, after his six years of travel abroad, had been received with open arms. He had remained in her house about five months, and then had retired to his estate of Stalbridge in Dorsetshire, where he continued mainly till 1650, corresponding with her from amid his speculative studies and his apparatus for chemical experiments.--One other service, if Anthony Wood's information is correct, Lady Ranelagh must have rendered about the same time to another member of her family. Most of her sisters had married into noble English or Irish houses; but the eldest of them, Alice, Lady Barrimore, had been left a widow with three young children by the death of her husband, David, first Earl of Barrimore. This death had occurred before that of her father the great Earl of Cork, and in that Earl's will, dated Nov. 24, 1642, he had shown his concern for this unexpected widowhood of his eldest daughter by special bequests to her three children. Two of them, being daughters, were to receive 1,000_l._ apiece; and for the behoof of the only son there was this provision: "For that I have ever cordially desired the restitution and recovery of the Earl of Barrimore's noble and anciently honourable house, that his posterity may raise the same to its former lustre and greatness again, and in regard that in my judgment there is no way so likely and probable (God blessing it) to redeem and bring home the encumbered and disjointed estate of the said Earl, and his house and posterity, as by giving a noble, virtuous, and religious education to the said now young Earl, my grandchild, who, by good and honourable breeding, may (by God's grace) either by the favour of the prince, or by his service to the King and country, or a good marriage, redeem and bring home that ancient and honourable house, which upon the marriage of my daughter unto the late Earl I did with my own money freely clear: I do hereby, for his lordship's better maintenance and accommodation in the premises, bequeath unto my said grandchild, Richard, now Earl of Barrimore, from the time of my decease, for, during, and until he shall attain the full age of 22 years, one yearly annuity of 200_l._" This was the boy who, a year or two afterwards, was sent to Milton's in the Barbican for tuition. His aunt Ranelagh had heard of Milton, or had come to know him personally; and she thought he was the very man to give the boy the training which his wise grandfather had desired for him.--There will be proof in time that Lady Ranelagh did know Milton well, saw him often, and entertained a high regard for him, which he reciprocated. Meanwhile we may anticipate so far as to say that she was not content with having obtained Milton's instructions for her nephew, the Earl of Barrimore, but secured them also for her only son, Richard Jones, afterwards third Viscount and first Earl of Ranelagh. This nobleman, who lived to as late as 1712 with considerable distinction of various kinds, and on the site of whose last house at Chelsea Ranelagh Gardens were established, is also to be reckoned, we shall find, in the list of Milton's pupils. It is just possible he may have begun his lessons, with his cousin Barrimore, in the Barbican house; but, as he was but seven years of age in 1647, this is hardly probable. [Footnote: Birch's Life of Robert Boyle, prefixed to the 1714 edition of Boyle's Works in five volumes folio (pp. 1-20); Collins's Peerage by Brydges, VII. 134 _et seq. (Boyle, Lord Boyle)_, and VI. l84; Irish Compendium or Rudiments of Honour (1756), for Barrimore family, Debrett's Peerage, for Ranelagh family; Worthington's Diary, by Crossley, I, 164-7; Cunningham's Handbook of London, 373 and 418; Phillips' Memoir of Milton; and four letters "_Nobili Adolescenti Richardo Jonslo_" in Milton's _Epistolæ Familiares._] EDUCATIONAL REFORM STILL A QUESTION: HARTLIB AGAIN: THE INVISIBLE COLLEGE: YOUNG ROBERT BOYLE AND WILLIAM PETTY. There may be something in Phillips's guess that his uncle, about 1647, had some idea of putting in practice his system of Pedagogy on a larger scale than a mere private house permitted, by becoming the head of some such public Academy as that which he had described three years before in his Letter to Hartlib. The question of a Reform of the apparatus for national Education had never quite vanished from the public mind even in the midst of the engrossing struggle between the Presbyterians and the Independents, and a fresh interest was imparted to the subject by the Ordinance of Parliament in May 1647 for a Visitation and Purgation of the University of Oxford (_antè_, pp. 545-6). Hartlib, for one, was again on the top of the wave. The claims of this indefatigable man to some reward for his long and various services had at length been brought before Parliament. On the 25th of June, 1646, on the report of a Committee, the House of Commons had voted him 100_l._ and in April 1647 the two Houses farther agreed in a resolution to pay him 300_l._ "in consideration of his good deserts and great services to the Parliament," with a recommendation that, on account of his special merits "from all that are well-wishers to the advancement of learning," he should be provided with some post of emolument at Oxford. [Footnote: Commons Journals of June 25, 1646, and March 31, 1647; and Lords Journals of April 1, 1647.] Nothing came of the last suggestion, and Hartlib lived on in London as before, still only ventilating his ideas of Educational Reform in a general way, amid the other novelties of all sorts which he patronized. Hartlib's hero-in-chief on the Educational subject, the great Comenius, though doubtless remembered, had practically gone out of view. Labouring at Elbing on that piece of mere drudgery for which Oxenstiern and others had persuaded him to lay aside his Pansophic dreams (_antè_, p. 228), he had indeed compiled, in four years, a large recast of his Latin Didactics under the title of _Novissima Linguarum Methodus_, and had returned to Sweden in 1646 to present the mass of manuscript to his employer Ludovicus de Geer. The Swedish critics do not seem to have yet been satisfied with the performance, and Comenius had carried it away with him again for corrections and additions, not any longer in Elbing, but in his old Polish home. [Footnote: Comenius's Preface to the Second Part of his _Opera Didactica_, between 1627 and 1657.] No chance for Hartlib, then, of co-operating again with Comenius in the foundation of a Pansophic College in London! Hartlib's faculty of making new acquaintances, however, was as versatile as his passion for new lights; and a certain "_Invisible College_" which had already some habitat in London, had become the substitute in his fancies for the unbuilt Pansophic Temple of the distant Slavonian sage. Since 1645 there had been held, sometimes in Wood Street, sometimes in Cheapside, and sometimes in Gresham College, those humble weekly meetings of a few "worthy persons inquisitive into Natural Philosophy," out of which there grew at length the great Royal Society of London. Theodore Haak, a naturalized German, had originated the club; and among the first members were Dr. John Wallis (the clerk of the Westminster Assembly, but with other things in his head than what went on there), the afterwards famous Wilkins, and the physician Dr. Jonathan Goddard. If Hartlib, the fellow-countryman and friend of Haak, was not an original member, he knew of the meetings from the first; and the _Invisible College_ of his imagination seems to have been that enlarged future association of all earnest spirits for the prosecution of real and fruitful knowledge of which this club might be the symbol and promise. The _Invisible College_, at all events, was the temporary form of his ever-varying, and yet indestructible, zeal for progress. It figures much in his correspondence at this time with one new friend, who, though not more than twenty years of age, had that in him which made his friendship as precious to Hartlib as any he had yet formed. This was young Robert Boyle, recently returned to England from his foreign travels, and dividing his time between philosophical retirement at his house in Dorsetshire and occasional visits to London. In a letter to a Cambridge friend written in Feb. 1646-7, during one of those London visits, Boyle says: "I have been every day these two months upon visiting my own ruined cottage in the country; but it is such a labyrinth, this London, that all my diligence could never yet find my way out on't.... The cornerstones of the _Invisible_, or, as they term themselves, _Philosophical College_, do now and then honour me with their company, which makes me as sorry for those pressing occasions that urge my departure as I am at other times angry with that solicitous idleness that I am necessitated to during my stay: men of so capacious and searching spirits that school-philosophy is but the lowest region of their knowledge, and yet, though ambitious to lead the way to any generous design, of so humble and teachable a genius as they disdain not to be directed by the meanest, so he can but plead reason for his opinion,--persons that endeavour to put narrowmindedness out of countenance, by the practice of so extensive a charity that it reaches unto everything called man, and nothing less than an universal goodwill can content it. ... I will conclude their praises with the recital of their chiefest fault, which is very incident to almost all good things; and that is that there is not enough of them." The first extant letters of Boyle to Hartlib were written from his Dorsetshire retreat immediately after this visit to London, and are in reply to letters received there from Hartlib. A new system of Real characters or Universal Writing; Pneumatical Engines or Wind-guns; Mr. Durie, his Church-conciliation Scheme, and a Discourse on the Teaching of Logic he had brought out; the ingenious Utopian Speculations of a certain young Mr. Hall; the Copernican Astronomy (to which Mr. Boyle was "once very much inclined"); the French mathematicians, Mersenne and Gassendi; Oughtred's _Clavis Mathematica_; a Cure for the Stone suggested by Hartlib, or rather by Mrs. Hartlib: such are some of the topics of the correspondence, but with the _Invisible College_ irradiating all. Thus, May 8, 1647, Boyle, writing to Mr. Hartlib, to congratulate him on the 300_l._ he had been voted by Parliament, says: "You interest yourself so much in the _Invisible College_, and that whole society is so highly concerned in all the accidents of your life, that you can send me no intelligence of your own affairs that does not, at least relationally, assume the nature of Utopian." In the same letter Boyle expresses his anxiety to have a copy of a pamphlet of Hartlib's which had just appeared. He names it rather vaguely; but I have ascertained it to be "_A Briefe Discourse concerning the Accomplishment of our Reformation: tending to shew that by an Office of Publicke Address in spirituall and temporall matters the Glory of God and the Happiness of this Nation may be greatly advanced._" It consisted of a preface, addressed by Hartlib to Parliament, and 59 pages of text, explaining the said Office of Public Address to be a kind of universal Register House "whereunto all men might freely come to give information of the commodities they have to be imparted to others." The pamphlet was out in May 1647. [Footnote: Birch's Life of Boyle, pp. 20-25; Worthington's Diary by Crossley, 1. 313; and copy of Hartlib's pamphlet in the British Museum, with MS. note of date of publication.] While Hartlib was writing on all things and sundry to young Boyle, the Education subject included, there was another new acquaintance of his, only three years older than Boyle, with whom he seems to have been discussing the Education subject more expressly. William Petty, afterwards so famous as "the universal genius, Sir William Petty," had returned from France at the age of twenty-three. The considerable stock of knowledge which he had taken abroad with him when he left his native Hampshire, eight years before, a pushing boy of fifteen, had been increased by his studies at foreign Universities, his readings with Hobbes in Paris, his commercial dealings, and his inquisitiveness into the processes of all trades and handicrafts by which men earn their livings. He came back a tall, slender youth, with a very large head, to be spoken of in London as an encyclopædia of information, a wonderful mathematician and mechanician, teeming with schemes of all sorts, and yet shrewd, practical, and business-like. He was an invaluable addition to the Invisible College, and a delightful discovery for Hartlib; and he took to Hartlib at once, as every one else did. What occupied him especially at the moment was a machine for double writing, _i.e._ for making two copies of any writing at once. He hoped to obtain a patent for this invention from Parliament; and such a patent, for seventeen years, he did obtain in March 1647-8. While the thing was in progress, however, Hartlib was his chief confidant. This appears from a tract of his, of 26 pages, published Jan. 8, 1647-8, and entitled "_The Advice of W. P. to Mr. Samuel Hartlib for the advancement of some particular parts of Learning._" The invention for double writing is described in the tract, but it also sets forth Petty's ideas on Hartlib's favourite subject of a Reformation of Schools. In fact, in any collection of seventeenth-century tracts on that subject, it ought to be bound up with Hartlib's own older tracts in exposition of Comenius, and with the Letter on Education which Hartlib had elicited from Milton in 1644. Petty's notions, as may be supposed, differ considerably from Milton's. He is for a universal education in what he calls _Ergastula Literaria_ or Literary Workhouses, "where children may be taught as well to do something toward their living as to read and write;" and, though he does not undervalue reading and writing, or book-culture generally, he lays the stress rather on mathematical and physical science, manual dexterity, and acquaintance with useful arts and inventions. Besides reading and writing, he would have all children taught drawing and designing; he would rather discourage the learning of languages, both because people may have all the books they want in their mother-tongue, and because the use of real characters, or an ideographic system of writing, would lessen the necessity of knowing foreign tongues; but, so far as languages might have to be learnt, their acquisition, as well as that of the simple arts of reading and writing, might be much facilitated by improved methods. In short, in Petty's project of Education, with much of the same general spirit of innovation, utilitarianism, contempt of tradition, as in Milton's, there is a characteristic difference of detail and even of principle. You are to be made expert in "graving, etching, carving, embossing, and moulding in sundry matters," in "grinding of glasses dioptrical and catoptrical," in "navarchy and making models for building and rigging of ships," in "anatomy, making skeletons, and excarnating bowels;" but you miss all that Milton would have taught you of Latin and Greek, Poetry and Philosophy, Italian and Hebrew, moral magnanimity and spiritual elevation, the History of Nations, and the ways of God to men. [Footnote: Wood's Ath., IV. 214; Worthington's Diary by Crossley, I. 294- 8; and Pett's own Tract. On its title-page are the words "London: Printed anno Dom 1648;" but a copy in the British Museum bears the MS. note "London, 8 January, 1647-8."] REMOVAL FROM BARBICAN TO HIGH HOLBORN. It would have been no surprise if Milton, on the skirts of the Invisible College as he was, and in sympathy with many of their aims, had exerted himself about this time in setting up a great Academy for young gentlemen, embodying some of the new utilitarian fancies even to the satisfaction of Petty, but fulfilling also his own higher ideal. He was peculiarly fond of Pedagogy; and his notion of an institution combining the School with the University, and so tending to the abolition of Universities, seems to have been coming more and more into favour. Not only, however, did Milton abandon the experiment of which Phillips thinks there was then some prospect; but, precisely in 1647, he broke up his actual pedagogic establishment in Barbican, and went into a new house, where he either ceased to teach altogether, or had no pupils remaining but his two nephews. What may have been his reasons for the step we do not know; but it is not unlikely that the change of his circumstances by his father's death had something to do with it. No will of the ex-scrivener having been found, it is not known what property he left; but there is reason to believe that he left something considerable, and that, whatever it was, it came more completely to the two sons, and their sister Mrs. Agar, than while the old man lived. [Footnote: We may remember here Phillips's and Aubrey's hints as to the scrivener's prosperity in business. Phillips's information is that he "gained a competent estate, whereby he was enabled to make a handsome provision both for the education and maintenance of his children;" and he adds such particulars as that his mother, Mrs. Phillips, "had a considerable dowry given her" on her first marriage, and that the lease of the scrivener's house in Bread Street--the Spread Eagle, where he had carried on his business, and where his children had been born (or at least of some house in that street)--became in time part of the poet's estate. Aubrey distinctly reckons the Spread Eagle house as the scrivener's property, besides another house in the same street called The Rose," and other houses in other places." Christopher Milton, as we know, owned a house in London called the Cross Keys, worth 40_l._ a year, while his father was alive.] At all events, the fact of Milton's change of residence within a few months after his father's death is certified by Phillips. "It was not long," says Phillips, "after the march of Fairfax and Cromwell through the City of London, with the whole Army, to quell the insurrections Browne and Massey, now malcontents also, were endeavouring to raise in the City against the Army's proceedings, ere he left his great house in Barbican, and betook himself to a smaller in High Holborn, among those that open backward into Lincoln's-Inn Fields." The date of that famous march of the Army through London, to tame the tumultuous Presbyterianism of the City, rescue Parliament from its domination, and compel a policy more favourable to Independency and Toleration, was August 6 and 7, 1647 (see _antè,_ pp. 553-4). Milton's removal from Barbican may be assigned, therefore, to September or October in the same year. Change we, then, from those eastern purlieus of Aldersgate Street and Barbican, where we have been observing Milton for seven years, to a scene farther west, more within the cognisance of Londoners generally, and nearer to those two Houses of Parliament which the Army had rescued for the time from Presbyterian leadership within and Presbyterian mob-law without. Holborn was not then the dense continuity of houses it is now; there were more spaces in it of gardens and greenery, and the houses had not crept as far as Oxford Street; but it was, as now, the familiar thoroughfare of relief from the narrower and noisier Fleet Street and Strand, and the part of it which Milton had chosen was the most convenient. The actual house which he took may be still extant, wedged somewhere in the labyrinthine block between Great Turnstile and Little Turnstile; but one could judge but poorly from present appearances how pleasant may have been its old outlook to the rear. The fine open area of Lincoln's-Inn Fields was then only partly built round, and was used as a lounge and bowling-green by the lawyers and citizens. The houses in the neighbourhood were mostly new ones. [Footnote: Cunningham's London: _Holborn_ and _Lincoln's-Inn Fields_.] MEDITATIONS AND OCCUPATIONS IN THE HOUSE IN HIGH HOLBORN: MILTON'S SYMPATHIES WITH THE ARMY CHIEFS AND THE EXPECTANT REPUBLICANS. When Milton removed to High Holborn, with his wife, their infant daughter, and the two nephews, the King was in the third and least disagreeable stage of his captivity. His detention with the Scots at Newcastle, and his subsequent residence under Parliamentary custody at Holmby House, were affairs of the Barbican period; and, by Joyce's act of the previous June, his Majesty had been for some months in the keeping of the Army, very generously treated, and permitted at last to reside, with much of restored state-ceremony, at his own palace of Hampton Court. Fairfax, Cromwell, Ireton, and the other Army-chiefs, from their head- quarters at Putney, were negotiating with him; and, the march of the Army through London having disabled the ultra-Presbyterians for the moment and transferred the ascendancy to the Independents, people were looking forward to a settlement on the basis of an established Presbyterian Church for the nation at large, but with liberty of conscience and of worship for Dissenters. For Milton, among others, this was a pleasant prospect. His sympathies, nay his personal interests, were wholly with the Independents; all that the Army had done had his approbation; and, whatever he might have had to say now (with the strong new lights he had obtained since 1641) as to the propriety of a Presbyterian Establishment on its own merits, he was probably prepared to accept such an Establishment, if with a sufficient guarantee of Toleration. Now, although he cannot have retained, more than other people, any strong confidence in Charles personally, any real hope of his voluntary and unreserved assent to a system of kingly government limited by great constitutional checks, yet a Treaty with Charles by the Independents rather than the Presbyterians must have seemed to him the most feasible way of reaching the end in view. Hence, while the King was at Hampton Court, and the Army-chiefs, with Cromwell most prominent among them, were plying his royal mind with arguments to bring him round, there can have been no private person more interested in their endeavours, more willing to believe them in the right, than Milton. Hardly had he been settled in his new house in High Holborn, however, when there came the snap of all those negotiations by the King's flight from Hampton Court to the Isle of Wight (Nov. 11, 1647). Then, I conceive, Milton's mood changed, in exact unison with the change of mood at the same time among the Army-chiefs and other leading Independents. For a month or two, indeed, there may have been some interest, some faint prolongation of hope, in attending to the proceedings of Parliament in pursuit of the King, and their attempt to obtain his assent to the Four Bills. But, from the moment when that attempt failed, and the two Houses passed their indignant resolutions that there should be no more communications with the King (Jan. 1647-8), all hesitation must have ceased. From that moment Milton was a Republican at heart. From that moment he was one of those who, with Vane, Marten, Cromwell, Ireton, and the Army officers generally, had forsworn all future allegiance to the Man in the Isle of Wight, and looked forward, through whatever intermediate difficulties, to his deposition and punishment, and the conversion of England iinto some kind of free Commonwealth. In such a matter, it could not, of course, be expected that a private citizen like Milton, who had no ambition to rank with Lilburne and other London Levellers of the coarser order, would anticipate Cromwell, Vane, and Ireton. He expressly says himself that, though he had been so prominent as a speculative politician, had made certain great questions of the time more peculiarly his own, had written largely on them and publicly identified his name with them, yet he had not hitherto taken any direct part in the immediate practical question of the future constitution of the State, but had left it to the appointed authorities [Footnote: _Df. Sec. pro Pop. Angl._, published in 1654]. Not the less are we to imagine that the time of his residence in High Holborn, while the King was a prisoner in the Isle of Wight, was the time when those high and semi-poetic Republican sentiments which seem always to have been congenial to him, and which his classic readings may have nurtured, took a definite shape applicable to England. From the end of 1647, I should say, Milton has to be reckoned as a foremost spirit in the band of expectant English Republicans. Whether the issue was to be a Republic or not was a question which Milton had to leave in the hands of the Army and Parliament. While they were slowly working it out, what could he do but occupy himself, as patiently as possible, with his books and studies? There is evidence, accordingly, that three pieces of work, already begun or projected by him in Aldersgate Street or Barbican, were prosecuted with some increased diligence in his house in High Holborn. One of these was the collection of materials for a _Thesaurus Linguæ Latinæ_, or _Latin Dictionary_, which he hoped some time to complete. Another was the composition of a _History of England_, or _History of Britain_, from the earliest times to the Norman Conquest:--nay, though that was the form it ultimately took, the original project was nothing less than Hume anticipated, or a complete _History of England_, brought down in a continuous thread from the remotest origins of the nation to Milton's own time. The third was the long-meditated _Body of Divinity_, or _Methodical Digest of Christian Doctrine_. Here, surely, were three huge enough tasks of sheer hackwork hung round the neck of a poet! Milton's liking all his life for such labours of compilation, however, is as remarkable as his liking for pedagogy. Nor, though we may regard the tasks as hackwork now, were they so regarded by Milton. To amass gradually by readings in the Latin classics a collection of idioms and choice references, with a view to a Dictionary that should be an improvement even on that of Stephanus, was a side-labour to which a scholar, who was also a poet, might well dedicate a bit of each day or a week or two at intervals. To write a complete History of England, or even to compile, from Geoffrey of Monmouth, Bede, and the old chroniclers, a popular summary of the early legendary History of Britain, and of the History of the Saxon Kings and Church, was a blending of daily recreation with useful labour. Above all, the compilation of a System of Divinity was no mere dry drudgery for Milton, but a business of serious personal interest. From an early date he had resolved on some such compendium for his own use; he had ever since kept it in view and made notes for it; but his notions of the form it should take had undergone a change. "I entered," he says, "upon an assiduous course of study in my youth, beginning with the books of the Old and New Testament in their original languages, and going diligently through a few of the shorter Systems of Divines, in imitation of whom I was in the habit of classing under certain heads whatever passages of Scripture occurred for extraction, to be made use of hereafter as occasion might require. At length I resorted with increased confidence to some of the more copious Theological Treatises, and to the examination of the arguments advanced by the conflicting parties respecting certain disputed points of faith." Apparently he was still in this stage of his design in the Aldersgate period; for then, as we have seen (_antè_, pp. 254-5), one of his exercises with his pupils on Sundays was the dictation to them of a Tractate on Christian Divinity digested from such approved Protestant Divines as Amesius and Wollebius. But this method, he tells us, had ceased to satisfy him. Often he had found the theologians quibbling and sophistical, more anxious to "evade adverse reasonings" and establish foregone conclusions than to arrive at the truth. "According to my judgment, therefore," he adds, "neither my creed nor my hope of salvation could be safely trusted to such guides; and yet it appeared highly requisite to possess some methodical Tractate of Christian Doctrine, or at least to attempt such a disquisition as might be useful in establishing my faith or assisting my memory. I deemed it therefore safest and most advisable to compile for myself, by my own labour and study, some original treatise which should be always at hand, derived solely from the Word of God itself, and executed with all possible fidelity, seeing I could have no wish to practise any imposition on myself in such a matter." In all probability the preparations for the work on this new plan began in the house in High Holborn. For some years England had been in such a state of theological ferment that it was impossible not to inquire how much of the traditional Orthodoxy had real warrant in the Bible and how much was mere matter of inveterate opinion; in one important particular Milton, to his own surprise, had found himself standing out publicly as the champion of what was thought a horrible heresy; might it not be well to go over the whole ground, and fix one's whole Christian creed so as to be able to give an account of it, when called upon, in every other particular? The Westminster Assembly, like other Assemblies before it, had laboured out a Confession of Faith which it wished to impose on the entire community; but, as "it was only to the individual faith of each man that God had opened up the way of eternal salvation," was it not the duty of every Englishman to examine that Confession before accepting it as his own, or even to compile his own private Confession first and let the comparison follow at leisure? [Footnote: Phillips's Memoir at several points; Milton's _Def. Sec_.; and Preface to his posthumous "Treatise on Christian Doctrine" (Sumner's Translation, 1825). Phillips mentions expressly the _History of England_ as occupying Milton in High Holborn; but the most interesting allusion to it is Milton's own in his _Def. Sec._, where the words are "Ad historiam gentis, ab ultimâ origine repetitam, ad hæc usque tempora, si possem, perpetuo filo deduoendam, me converti."] STILL UNDER THE BAN OF THE PRESBYTERIANS: TESTIMONY OF THE LONDON MINISTERS AGAINST HERESIES AND BLASPHEMIES: MILTON IN THE BLACK LIST. Alas! Milton, busy with these occupations in his room looking out upon Lincoln's-Inn Fields, could not shut out the continued hue and cry after him on account of his Divorce heresy. It was more than two years since his wife had returned to him; he had then closed the controversy so far as it was a personal one; he was now respectably in routine, as a married man with one child. But the world round about, more especially the clerical part of it, had not forgiven him his Divorce Pamphlets. Were they not still in circulation, doing infinite harm? Had not their infamous doctrine become one of the heresies of the age, counting other unblushing exponents, and not a few practical adherents? Keep silence as he now might, move as he might from Aldersgate Street to Barbican and from Barbican to High Holborn, would not his dark reputation dog him, sit at his doorstep, and gaze in at his windows? Actually it did. The series of attacks on Milton for his Divorce Doctrine, begun by Herbert Palmer and other mouthpieces of the Westminster Assembly in 1644, and continued in that and subsequent years by the Stationers' Company, Featley, Paget, Prynne, Edwards, Baillie, and others, had not ceased at the close of 1647. One fresh attack, of some significance in itself, may be instanced as a sample of the rest. London, it is to be remembered, was now under Presbyterian Church- government. In every parish there was the Parochial or Congregational Court, consisting of the minister and lay-elders, charged with all the ecclesiastical concerns of the parish, and with the right of spiritual censure over the parishioners. The parishes were also grouped into Classes of ministers and lay-elders. At last there had come into operation even the crowning device of Provincial Synods for all London, in which representative ministers and elders met to discuss metropolitan Church affairs generally and to revise the proceedings of Classes and Congregations. The first of these Provincial Synods, with Dr. Gouge for Prolocutor, had met in St. Paul's in May 1647, and had continued its sittings twice a week in Sion College till November 8, 1647, when its half-year of office expired, and it was succeeded by the Second Provincial Synod, under the Prolocutorship of Dr. Lazarus Seaman. Now, had London been perfect in its Presbytery according to the extreme rigour of the Scottish model, Milton could not possibly have escaped the clutch of one or other of these Church-judicatories. As a resident in Barbican, he had been, I think, in the parish of St. Botolph without Aldersgate; and, when he removed to High Holborn, he came into the parish of St. Andrew, Holborn. Had the Scottish strictness prevailed in London, the minister of either of these parishes would have felt himself bound to bring Milton before the parochial consistory for his Divorce heresy [Footnote: From Newcourt's _Repertorium_ and Wood's Ath. III. 812, I learn that the Curate or Vicar of St. Botolph's, Aldersgate, "in the late rebellious times," was George Hall, a son of Bishop Hall and himself promoted to the Bishopric of Chester after the Restoration; and the Rector of St. Andrew's, Holborn, before the civil troubles was Dr. John Hacket, already well known to us (Vol. II. 225-8), and also afterwards a Bishop. Both of these, as strenuous Prelatists, must have been dispossessed from their charges long before the time with which we are now concerned; and I have not been able to ascertain who were their Presbyterian successors at this exact date.--There may be some significance in the fact that the parish minister before whom Milton's brother Christopher and his father-in-law Mr. Powell performed the necessary ceremony of taking the Covenant, with a view to their admission to compound for their Delinquency, was William Barton, minister of John Zachary (_antè_, p. 485 and p. 634). The parish of St. John Zachary was one of the parishes of Aldersgate Ward, and the church stood at the north-west corner of Maiden Lane, till it was burnt down in the Great Fire of 1666; after which it was not rebuilt, and the parish of St. John Zachary was united to that of St. Ann in the same ward. Had Milton found Mr. Barton of John Zachary's a more convenient minister to have dealings with than other ministers of the Aldersgate Street and Barbican neighbourhood; and did he attend Mr. Barton's church when he attended any? If so, and if we are right in identifying this William Barton with the minister of the same name whose Metrical Version of the Psalms was preferred by the Lords to Rous's (see _antè_, p. 425), their metrical sympathies may have had something to do with the connexion.--The fact that a son of Bishop Hall's was Curate or Vicar of St. Botolph's, Aldersgate, at the time when the Bishop and another son of his were attacking Milton for his part in the Smectymnuan controversy, and speaking of him as then living in a "suburb sink about London," and collecting gossip about him, was not known to me when I was engaged on that part of the Biography (Vol. II. p. 390 et seq.); but it may be worth remembering even now.]; or, if the duty had been neglected, Classis IV., to which the parish of St. Botolph belonged, or Classis VIII., to which the parish of St. Andrew belonged, would have interfered; or, finally, in the case of so notorious an offender, the Provincial Synod itself would not have been asleep. True, the censure that could have been inflicted would only have been spiritual; but, by zealous management, especially if the culprit were obstinate, such spiritual censure might have led to farther prosecution by the secular courts. Certainly, if Milton had been in Scotland, this would have happened. Certainly it would have happened in London if the English Presbyterians had succeeded in subjecting that city to the grip of their absolute or ideal Presbytery. But they had not succeeded, and it was their constant lamentation that they had not. Though the Presbyterian organization of London had been voted on trial, the Congregationalist principle still asserted itself in the existence of many independent congregations and meeting-houses; though sometimes interfering with the less respectable of these, Parliament and the law- courts had taken no steps for their general suppression; and, by belonging to one of them, a Londoner of peculiar opinions might have the comfort and respectability of being a church-goer like his neighbours, and yet avoid unpleasant inquisitorship. Then, again, through what the ultra-Presbyterians regarded as the Erastian backwardness of Parliament, those offences for which the parochial or other Church-judicatories might inflict even spiritual censures had been very strictly defined. Only for certain faults of ignorance or of scandalous life, enumerated and specified by Act of Parliament, could the Presbyterian Church- judicatories debar from the communion; in any case lying beyond that range they could not act without reference to the superior authority of a great Parliamentary Commission (_antè_, pp. 399, 405, 423). Sore had been the complaints of the Presbyterians over this limitation of the powers of Church discipline, as well as over the negligence of Parliament in not having yet passed such an Act against Heresies and Blasphemies as might enable the State to use the sterner discipline of fines, imprisonment, scourging, and hanging, in aid of true Christianity. Even as things were, however, it may be wondered that some zealot did not try to bring Milton's case within the powers actually assigned to the Church-courts, or to push it on the notice of the secular judges in virtue of such Acts as did exist against Heresy. There was very good reason, however, for not making the experiment. It had already been tried and bad failed. Twice had Milton's case been brought before Parliament, and Parliament had distinctly declined to trouble him. Evidently, whatever the hotter Presbyterians desired, Milton was safe in the respect entertained for him personally by some of those who were at the head of affairs, or in an opinion prevailing in high quarters that the publication of a new speculation on Divorce was not an offence for which a man otherwise eminent ought to be questioned at law. What cannot be done in one way, however, may sometimes be done in another. Not only was London the central stronghold of English Presbyterianism; the power of Presbyterianism there centralized was a kind of Proteus. One of its forms was the Westminster Assembly, a large nucleus of which consisted of ministers from London and the suburbs; another, since May 1647, was the London Provincial Synod. But, in aid of these two bodies, and including many that belonged to both, there was a third, of vaguer character, in that Sion College conclave which the London clergy had instituted of their own accord for the concoction of notions that might take shape in the Assembly or the Synod (_antè_, p. 394). Now, in December 1647, this Sion College conclave, "since they could do no more," sent forth a Presbyterian manifesto of some magnitude. It was "_A Testimony to the Truth of Jesus Christ, and to our Solemn League and Covenant; as also against the Errors, Heresies, and Blasphemies of these times, and the Toleration of them: wherein is inserted a Catalogue of the said Errors, &c.: subscribed by the Ministers of Christ within the Province of London, Dec. 14, 1647._" This Testimony, which was immediately published, [Footnote: London: Printed by A. M. for Tho. Underhill at the Bible in Wood Street: 1648.] bore the signatures of 58 London ministers in all, of whom 41 signed to the whole document, while 17, being members of Assembly, abstained from signing to those parts that related particularly to the Confession of Faith and the Directory of Worship, not because they did not thoroughly approve of those parts, but because they thought themselves precluded, by constitutional etiquette, from publicly affirming portions of the Assembly's work which still waited full Parliamentary sanction. All the 58, however, subscribed to that main portion of the Testimony which consisted in an enumeration, and condemnation of certain "abominable errors, damnable heresies, and horrid blasphemies." Among the seventeen members of Assembly so subscribing were Dr. Lazarus Seaman of Allhallows, Bread Street (Milton's native parish), then Prolocutor of the London Provincial Synod; Dr. Gouge of Blackfriars, ex-Prolocutor of the same; Dr. Hoyle of Stepney, Dr. Tuckney, and Messrs. Gataker, Calamy, Ashe and Case; and among the forty-one others were Samuel Clarke of Benetfink, Christopher Love of Anne's, Aldersgate, John Downam of Allhallows, Thames Street, Henry Roborough, one of the scribes of the Assembly and minister of Leonard's, Eastcheap, and John Wallis, sub-clerk of the Assembly, now uniting as well as he could the duties of that office and the parish-cure of Gabriel's, Fenchurch Street, with his mathematical proclivities and his association with the "physicists" of the Invisible College. And what were the errors, heresies, and blasphemies, thus publicly certified against by these London divines and the rest? They were classified with great punctuality under nineteen heads, each head being subdivided into specific varieties of error, and the chief heretics under each openly named. First came Anti-Scripturism, or "Errors against the divine authority of Holy Scriptures," associated with the names of John Goodwill and Laurence Clarkson; then, in four heads and their subdivisions, came Anti-Trinitarianism, or "Errors against the nature and essence of God, against the Trinity, against the Deity of the Son of God, and against the Deity and divine worship of the Holy Ghost," the culprits named for chief condemnation in this department being Biddle and Paul Best; and so on the catalogue proceeds through various forms of Arminianism, Antinomianism, Seekerism, Anti-Sabbatarianism, Antipædobaptism, Anabaptism, Materialism or Mortalism, ending in Tolerationism. Among the Arminians denounced as notorious are Paul Best again, Paul Hobson, but especially John Goodwin again, and the Episcopalian and Royalist Dr. Henry Hammond, whose _Practical Catechism_, published in 1644, is cited as full of Arminian error. Among the Antinomians are denounced Randall, Simson, Eaton, Crisp, and Erbury; among the Seekers, Saltmarsh and Jos. Salmon; among the Anti- Sabbatarians, Saltmarsh again; among the Antipædobaptists and Anabaptists, Saltmarsh again, Tombes, and Webb. In a special group, as opposing magistracy and lawful oaths, are mentioned Roger Williams, Samuel Gorton, and Dr. Henry Hammond again; the chief representative of the tremendous doctrine of Materialism or the Denial of the Immortality of the Soul is R. O., the anonymous author of the tract on _Man's Mortality_; and among the leading Tolerationists or representatives of the grand error of Liberty of Conscience, "patronizing and promoting all other errors, heresies, and blasphemies whatsoever," are named Roger Williams again and Paul Best again.--One head or department in this long black list we have reserved. It is the 17th in order, including "Errors touching Marriage and Divorce." Here the anonymous author of a pamphlet called _Little Nonsuch_, published in 1646, bears the brunt of the obloquy, on account of the opinion that, as "that marriage is most just which is made without any ambitious or covetous end," so, "if this liking and mutual correspondency happen betwixt the nearest of kindred, then it is also the most natural, the most lawful, and according to the primitive (Patriarchal) purity and practice." But Milton comes in company with this _Little Nonsuch_, as hardly less worthy of execration on account of his Divorce Doctrine. The main proposition of his _Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce_ is extracted textually from page 6 of the Second or 1644 Edition of that treatise, to show what a dreadful doctrine had been there maintained; but, in case this should not seem enough, the Testifying Divines, in the marginal note where they give the reference, add the words, "Peruse the whole book." They do not name Milton fully, but only by his initials "J. M.," as on the title-page of his Treatise. [Footnote: There is a general account of this _Testimony_ of the London ministers in Dec. 1647 in Neal's Puritans, III. 359-363; but the account in the text is from the published copy of the Testimony itself.] Sold at the shop of that very Underhill in Wood Street who had been the publisher of three of Milton's own pamphlets in the Smectymnuan Controversy in 1641 (_antè_, p. 450), this _Testimony_ of the London ministers had an extensive circulation. It was adopted, in fact, as the authorized manifesto of all the English Presbyterianism then most militant for that full right of ecclesiastical and civil control over heresy and its dissemination which Parliament hitherto had refused to recognise. In a short time, accordingly, it received the adhesion of 64 ministers in Gloucestershire, 84 in Lancashire, 83 in Devonshire, and 71 in Somersetshire. Nor was this subscription of the same printed document by 360 of the most active Presbyterian ministers throughout England a mere appeal to public opinion. It was intended as an aid to Presbyterianism in its anxious endeavour to obtain even yet all it wanted from Parliament. One observes, for example, that, within a month after the manifesto of the London ministers had gone forth from Sion College, _i.e._ on the 12th of January, 1647-8, a petition was presented to Parliament by the London Provincial Synod itself, praying for various extensions and amendments of the Presbyterian system in the City, among which was the better establishment of Church censures for notorious and scandalous offenders. [Footnote: Neal's Puritans, III. 359-363; and Lords Journals, Jan. 12, 1647-8; but see also Halley's _Lancashire and its Puritanism_ (1869), I. 467 _et seq._] At least two of the heretics denounced in the Sion College manifesto published replies. The Royalist Dr. Henry Hammond thought it worth while to defend his _Practical Catechism_ in a tract called _Views of some Exceptions, &c._ [Footnote: Wood's Ath. III. 494-5.] John Goodwin of Coleman Street, who had been more largely attacked, and who indeed had reason to believe that the manifesto was mainly directed against himself, replied with his usual cool stoutness in a pamphlet called _Sion College Visited_. He there rebukes his accusers for their uncharitableness, unfairness, and malice in seeking to "exasperate the sword of the civil magistrate" against pious and peaceable citizens who had done them no injury. [Footnote: Jackson's Life of Goodwin. 172-175.] In effect, this reply of Goodwin's answered for the others as well as for himself. Milton, at all events, let the thing pass unnoticed. Entering his house in High Holborn, it may have been enough for him to repeat to himself, by way of comment, the lines he had already written-- "I did but prompt the age to quit their clogs By the known rules of ancient liberty, When straight a barbarous noise environs me Of owls and cuckoos, asses, apes, arid dogs;" or perhaps, by way of more determinate conclusion, his other and ever famous line, "New _Presbyter_ is but old _Priest_ writ large." ANOTHER LETTER FROM CARLO DATI: TRANSLATION OF NINE PSALMS FROM THE HEBREW. Exactly at this time, when the repeated attentions of _New Presbyter_ in England must have been annoying Milton, he had a friendly gleam from the land of the _Old Priest_. Carlo Dati had duly received his Latin Epistle of the previous April, and had acknowledged it in a long Italian letter, dated Nov. 1, 1647, but which may not have reached Milton till Jan. 1647- 8, or even later. The letter still exists in Dati's own hand, and the following is a translation of as much of it as can interest us here:-- _All Illmo. Sig. Gio. Miltoni, Londra_ [meaning literally "To the most illustrious Signor John Milton, London;" but this is merely the polite Italian form of correspondence, and implies no more than "To Mr. John Milton, London."] When all hope of receiving letters from you was dead in me, most keen as was my desire for such, lo! there arrives one to delight me more than I can express with this most grateful pen. O what feelings of boundless joy that little paper raise in my heart--a paper written by a friend so admirable and so dear; bringing to me, after so long a time and from so distant a land, news of the welfare of one about whom I was as anxious as I was uncertain, and assuring me that there remains so fresh and so kind a remembrance of myself in the noble soul of Signor John Milton! Already I knew what regard he had for my country; which reckons herself fortunate in having in great England (separated, as the Poet said, from our world) one who magnifies her glories, loves her citizens, celebrates her writers, and can himself write and discourse with such propriety and grace in her beautiful idiom. And precisely this it is that moves me to reply in Italian to the exquisite Latin letter of my honoured friend, who has such a very singular faculty of reviving dead tongues and making foreign ones his own; hoping that there may be something agreeable to him in the sound of a language which he speaks and knows so well. I will take the same opportunity of earnestly begging you to be please to honour with your verses the glorious memory of Signor Francesco Rovai, a distinguished Florentine poet prematurely dead, and, to the best of my belief, well known to you: this having already been done at my request by the very eminent Nicolas Heinsius and Isaac Vossius of Holland, peculiarly intimate and valued friends of mine, and famous scholars of our age. [Footnote: About Nicolas Heinsius (1620-1681) and his intimacy with Dati and the other Florentine wits, see Vol. I. 721 2. Both he and Isaac Vossius (1618-1688) will reappear in closer connexion with Milton himself.] Signor Francesco was noble by birth, endowed by nature with a genius of the highest kind, which was enriched by culture and by unwearied study of the finest sciences. He understood Greek excellently, spoke French, and wrote Latin and Italian wonderfully. He composed Tragedies, and excelled also in lyrical Canzoni, in which he praised heroes and discountenanced all vice, particularly in one set of seven made against the seven capital sins. He was well-bred, courteous, a favourite with our Princes, or uncorrupted manners, and most religious. He died young, without having published his works: a splendid obituary ceremonial is being prepared for him by his friends, faulty only in the fact that the charge of the funeral oration has been imposed upon me. Should you be pleased to send me, as I hope, some fruit of your charming genius for such a purpose, you will oblige me not only, but all my country; and, when the Poems of Signor Francesco are published, with the eulogisms upon him, I will see that copies are sent you.--But, since I have begin to speak of our language and our poets, let me communicate to you one of the observations which, in the leisure-hours left me from my mercantile business, I occasionally amuse myself with making on our writers. The other day, while I was reflecting on that passage in Petrarch's _Triomf' d'Amor_, C. 3: "Dura legge d'Amor! mà benchè obliqua, Servar conviensi, però ch' ella aggiunge Di cielo in terra, universale, antiqua," [Footnote: "Hard law of Love! but, however unjust, it must be kept, because it reaches from heaven to earth, universal, eternal."] I perceived that already the gifted Castelvetro had noted in it some resemblance to the lines in Horace, Ode I. 33: "Sic visum Veneri; cui placet impares Formas atque animos sub juga ahenea Sævo mittere cum joco,"-- [Footnote: "So it seemed good to Venus; whose pleasure it is, in savage jest, to bind unlike forms and minds in a brazen yoke of union."] excellently imitated by the reviver of Pindaric and Anacreontic poesy, Gabriello Chiubrera, in Canzonetta 18: "Ah! che vien cenere Penando un amator benche fedele! Cosi vuol Venere, Nata nell' ocean, nume crudele." [Footnote: "Ah that there should be ashes from the torture of a lover, though faithful! So Venus wills it, the ocean-born, a cruel deity."] To me these verses look like a little bit taken from Horace, as the remainder is taken from Tibullus, not without a notable improvement; for in Tibullus, Eleg. I. 2, one reads this threat against the revealers of Love's secrets:-- "Nam, fuerit quicumque loquax, is sanguine natam, Is Venerem e rapido sentiet esse mari." [Footnote: "For whosoever is indiscreet with his tongue, he shall feel that Venus was born of blood and came from the rapid sea."] [Dati then suggests the reading of _rabido_ in the last line and discusses the subject in six folio pages, with passages from Catullus, Ovid, Virgil, Horace, Seneca, Claudian, Homer, Tasso, &c.; and then proceeds as follows]: I communicate to you these considerations of mine, sure of being excused, and kindly advised by your exquisite learning in such matters as I submit, urgently begging you to pardon me if excess of affection, the sense of being so long without you, and our great intimacy, have made me exceed the limits proper for a letter.--It is an extreme grief to me that the convulsions of the kingdom have disturbed your studies; and I anxiously await your Poems, in which I believe I shall have large room for admiring the delicacy of your genius, even if I except those which are in depreciation of my Religion, and which, as coming from a friendly mouth, may well be excused, though not praised. This will not hinder me from receiving the others, conscious as I am of my own zeal for freedom. Meanwhile I beg Heaven to make and keep you happy, and to keep me in your remembrance, giving me proofs thereof by your generous commands. All friends about me send you salutations and very affectionate respects. Your most devoted, Florence, 1st Nov. 1647. CARLO DATI [Footnote: The original of this letter is in the possession of Mr. J. Fitchett Marsh of Warrington, who has printed facsimiles of the opening and closing words ("_All' Illmo. Sig. Gio. Miltoni, Londra_," and "_Ser. Devotino. Carlo Dati_") in his Milton Papers. To Mr. Marsh's kindness I owe the transcript from which I have made the translation; and the words within brackets, describing the omitted portion in the middle, are Mr. Marsh's own.] Circumstanced as Milton was when he received this letter, he can hardly have been in a mood to respond sufficiently to its minute and overflowing _dilettantismo._ The amiability and polite affectionateness, perceptible even yet through the dilettantism, may have been pleasant to him; and he may have noted the subtle and delicate expression of sympathy with his domestic unhappiness which seems to be conveyed in the passages quoted, as if by accident, from Petrarch, Horace, Chiabrera, and Tibullus. Dati may have been there replying to that portion of Milton's letter in which he had vaguely intimated his private melancholy in being doomed to unfit companionship; or he may have heard more particular rumours in Florence of Milton's marriage-mishap and its consequences. At all events, there is no trace of any answer by Milton to this long epistle from Dati, or of any poetical contribution sent by him, as Dati had requested, to the exequies of the interesting Rovai. About the time when Milton should have been answering Dati's epistle, enclosing the requested tribute to the memory of Rovai, and also the exquisite comments which Dati expected on his quotations from Petrarch, Horace, Chiabrera, and Tibullus, his occupation, we find, was very different. "_April_, 1648, _J. M. Nine of the Psalms done into Metre, wherein all but what is in a different character are the very words of the Text translated from the Original;_" such is the heading prefixed by Milton himself to the Translations of Psalms LXXX.-LXXXVIII. which are now included among his Poetical Works. [Footnote: The heading stands so in the Second Edition of Milton's Miscellaneous Poems, published by himself in 1678.] Through some mornings and evenings of that month, therefore, we can see him, in his house in High Holborn, with the Hebrew Bible before him, making it his effort to translate, as literally as possible, these nine Psalms into English verse. On looking at the result, as it now stands among his Poems, with Hebrew words printed occasionally in the margin, and every phrase for which there is not a voucher in the original printed carefully in italics, one has little difficulty in perceiving one of the motives of Milton in this metrical experiment. It was his knowledge of the interest then felt in the chance of some English metrical version of the Psalms that should supersede, for popular purposes and in public worship, the old version of Sternhold and Hopkins. Rous's version, with amendments, had been recommended by the Westminster Assembly, and approved by the Commons (_antè,_ 425); the Lords were still standing out for Barton's competing version (_antè,_ 512); other versions were in the background, but had been heard of. In these circumstances, might not a true poet, attending to all the essential conditions, and especially to the prime one of exactness to the Hebrew original, exhibit at least a specimen of a better version than any yet offered? Unfortunately, if this was Milton's intention, it cannot be said that he succeeded. By all the critics it is admitted that his version of those Nine Psalms is inferior to what we should have expected from him; nor is it, I think, the mere prejudice of habit that leads those that have been accustomed to one particular revision of Rous's version--that which has been the Scottish authorized Psalter since 1650--to prefer Psalms LXXX.- LXXXVIII. as there given, rude though the versification is, to the Translations of the same Psalms proposed even by Milton. Something of this impression may have prevailed even in 1648, if, as is likely enough, Milton took the trouble of showing his translations to some who were interested in the question of the new Psalter, and wavering between Rous's and Barton's. On the faith of dates, however, there is another interest to us now in these careful translations by Milton of Psalms LXXX.-LXXXVIII. in April 1648. Why did he choose those particular Psalms? Not for metrical experiment only, but also because their mood fitted him. He needed the strong Hebrew of those Psalms himself, and he drank it in afresh from the text that he might reproduce it for himself and others. Petrarch, Tibullus, Horace, Chiabrera! silence all such for the time, and let the Hebrew Psalmist speak! Thus (Psalm LXXX.):-- "Turn us again; thy grace divine To us, O God, vouchsafe; Cause thou thy face on us to shine, And then we shall be safe." Or again, with reference to the dangers then gathering round Parliamentary England (Psalm LXXXIII.):-- "For they consult with all their might, And all as one in mind Themselves against thee they unite, And in firm union bind. The tents of Edom, and the brood Of scornful Ishmael, Moab, with them of Hagar's blood That in the desert dwell, Gebal and Ammon, there conspire, And hateful Amalec, The Philistims, and they of Tyre, Whose bounds the sea doth check. With them great Asshur also bands And doth confirm the knot All these have lent their armed hands To aid the sons of Lot. Do to them as to Midian bold That wasted all the coast, To Sisera, and, as is told Thou didst do to Jabin's host, When at the brook of Kishon old They were repulsed and slain, At Endor quite cut off, and rolled As dung upon the plain." Or perhaps, with closer personal reference, such lines as these (Psalm LXXXVII.):-- "The Lord shall write it in a scroll That ne'er shall be outworn, When He the nations doth enroll, That this man there was born: Both they who sing and they who dance With sacred songs are there; In thee fresh brooks and soft streams glance, And all my fountains clear." MILTON THROUGH THE SECOND CIVIL WAR: HIS PERSONAL INTEREST IN IT, AND DELIGHT IN THE ARMY'S TRIUMPH: HIS SONNET TO FAIRFAX. While these translations were being written, there was the ominous rumour of the Engagement between the Scots and the King in the Isle of Wight, terrifying all men's minds with the prospect of a Second Civil War. We have seen what effects this prospect had on the English Parliament--how the resolute mood of the winter of 1647-8 was changed into a mood of timidity; how negotiations with the King were again talked of; how the Presbyterians recovered from their temporary submission to the Independents, and began to turn on them rather than on the King; how, in order to repudiate the Republican sentiments appearing in the Army and elsewhere, the Commons pledged themselves to a continuance of Royalty and the House of Lords, and, in order to please the English Presbyterians and the Scots, the two Houses passed at length the tremendous Ordinance against Heresies and Blasphemies, making the least of them punishable with imprisonment and the graver punishable with death. This last Ordinance, passed May 2, 1648, the very day before the meeting of the Third Provincial Synod of London in Sion College, must have given great satisfaction to that body, but may well have spread alarm through general society. Beyond a doubt, most of those persons who had been denounced as notorious heretics and blasphemers in the Sion College manifesto of the preceding December were, by this Ordinance, liable to death if they did not recant. With due zeal on the part of the prosecution, nothing could have saved from the scaffold such of Milton's co-heretics as Biddle, Paul Best, the anonymous Mortalist R. 0. (Richard Overton, or Clement Wrighter?), or even perhaps John Goodwin. Milton's particular heresy not being specifically named in the Ordinance, it would have been more difficult to apply it to him; but, if the terrible Presbyterian discipline which the Ordinance favoured were once imposed upon London, there would have been ingenuity enough to include Milton somehow among those worthy of minor punishment. The comfort was that, before the Ordinance could come into real effect, before the terrible Presbyterian discipline it promised could be set up, the SECOND CIVIL WAR had to be fought through. How would that war end? Would it end in a triumph of Presbyterianism in hypocritical reconciliation with Royalty; or, despite the ugly mustering of forces in all parts of England to aid Duke Hamilton and his Scottish invasion, would it end, after all, in the triumph of that little English Army of Independents and Sectaries which had always beaten before, and might now, though distrusted and discountenanced by its own masters, prove once more its matchless mettle? With what anxiety, through May, June, July, and August 1648, must Milton, with myriads of other Englishmen, have revolved these questions! With what anxiety must he have watched Fairfax's movements round London, his preliminary smashings of the Royalist Insurrection in Kent and Essex, and then the concentration of his efforts (June 12) on the siege of Colchester! With what anxiety must he have followed Cromwell into Wales, heard of his doings against the insurgents there, and then of his rapid march into the north (Aug. 3--10), to meet the invading Scottish Army under Duke Hamilton! But O the relief at last! O the news upon news of that glorious month of August 1648! Hamilton and the Scots utterly routed by Cromwell in the three days' battle of Preston (Aug. 17-19); Colchester at last surrendered to Fairfax (Aug 28); the Prince of Wales a fugitive back to Holland with his useless fleet (Aug. 28); the little English Army of Independents and Sectaries were more everywhere the victor, and the Parliament and the Presbytery-besotted Londoners ruefully accepting the victory when they would have been nearly as glad of a defeat! No fear now of any very violent execution of the Ordinance against Heresies and Blasphemies, or of a Presbyterian discipline of absolutely intolerable stringency! The Army and the Independents were once more supreme. The sole piece of Milton's verse that has come down to us from the time of the Second Civil War is an expression of his joy at its happy conclusion. It is in the form of a Sonnet to Fairfax. The Sonnet is generally printed with the mere heading "_To the Lord General Fairfax_;" but in the original in Milton's own hand among the Cambridge MSS. one reads this heading through a line of erasure; "_On ye Lord Gen. Fairfax at ye seige of Colchester_." This assigns the Sonnet to the end of August, or to September, 10-48. "Fairfax, whose name in arms through Europe rings, And fills all mouths with envy or with praise, And all her jealous monarchs with amaze, And rumours loud that daunt remotest kings, Thy firm unshaken virtue ever brings Victory home, though new rebellions raise Their Hydra-heads, and the false North displays Her broken League to imp their serpent wings: O yet a nobler task awaits thy hand, For what can War but endless war still breed, Till Truth and Right from Violence be freed, And public Faith cleared from the shameful brand Of public Fraud! In vain doth Valour bleed, While Avarice and Rapine share the land." [Footnote: For obvious reason, Milton could not print this Sonnet in the Second or 1673 Edition of his Minor Poems. It was first printed by Phillips at the end of his Memoir of Milton prefixed to the English translation of Milton's State Letters in 1688; and Toland inserted it in his Life of Milton in 1698.] Through the later months of 1648 Milton's heart must have been wholly with Fairfax and the other Army-chiefs, as he saw them driving things, cautiously at first, but more and more boldly by degrees, into the exact course marked out by this Sonnet. Their very professions were that, having finished the war and crushed the Hydra-heads of the new rebellions, they must and would proceed to the yet nobler task of preventing future wars, by freeing Truth and Right once for all from Violence, and clearing the public Faith of England from the brand of public Fraud. Hence, from September to December, the adoption by the Army of that peculiarly intrepid policy which has been described in our last chapter. Though the Parliament began their new Treaty with the King in the Isle of Wight, there were significant signs from the first that the Army regarded the Treaty with utter disdain; as the Treaty proceeded, regiment after regiment spoke out, each with its manifesto calling for justice on the King, and otherwise more or less democratic; and so till the Army rose at last collectively, issued its great Remonstrance and programme of a Democratic Constitution (Nov. 16), dragged the King from his unfinished Treaty at Newport to safer keeping in Hurst Castle (Dec. 1), and itself marched into London to superintend the sequel (Dec. 2). Nominally in the centre of all this was the Lord General Fairfax, with Ireton as his chief adviser. Cromwell had not yet returned from his work in the north. BIRTH OF MILTON'S SECOND CHILD: ANOTHER LETTER FROM CARLO DATI. In the very midst of these thrilling public events there inserts itself a little domestic incident of Milton's life in Holborn. Oct. 25, 1648, his second child was born, two years and three months after the first. This also was a daughter, and they called her Mary after her mother. From that date on to our limit of time in the present volume we have no distinct incident of the Holborn household to record, unless it be the receipt of another letter from Carlo Dati. Although the amiable young Italian had received no answer to his last, of Nov. 1647, there had meantime readied him, by some slow conveyance, those copies of the Latin portion of Milton's published volume of Poems which had been promised him as long ago as April of the same year. This occasioned the following letter:-- _Illmo. Sig. e Pron Osso_ [literally, "Most Illustrious Sir and Most Honoured Master," but the phrase is merely one of custom]. As far back as the end of last year I replied to your very courteous and elegant letter, thanking you affectionately for the kind remembrance you are pleased to entertain of me. I wrote, as I do now, in Italian, knowing my language to be so dear and familiar to you that in your mouth it scarcely appears like a foreign tongue. Since then I have received two copies of your most erudite Poems, and there could not have reached me a more welcome gift; for, though small, it is of infinite value, as being a gem from the treasure of Signor John Milton. And, in the words of Theocritus:-- [Greek: hæ megala chariz eoro xiyn holigo, panta de gimanta ta par' philon.] "Great grace may be In a slight gift: all from a friend is precious." I return you therefore my very best thanks, and pray Heaven to put it in my power to show my devoted appreciation of your merit. There are some pieces of news which I will not keep from you, because I am sure, from your kindness, they will be agreeable to you. The most Serene Grand Duke my master has been pleased to appoint me to the Chair and Lectureship of Humanity in the Florentine Academy, vacant by the death of the very learned Signor Giovanni Doni of Florence. This is a most honourable office, and has always been held by gentlemen and scholars of this country, as by Poliziano, the two Vettori, and the two Adriani, luminaries in the world of letters. Last week, on the death of the Most Serene Prince Lorenzo of Tuscany, uncle of the reigning Grand Duke, I made the funeral oration; when it is published, it shall be my care to send you a copy. I have on hand several works, such as, please God, may lead to a better opinion of me among my learned and kind friends. Signor Valerio Chimentelli has been appointed by his Highness to be Professor of Greek Literature in Pisa, and there are great expectations from him. Signors Frescobaldi, Coltellini, Francini, Galilei, and many others unite in sending you affectionate salutations; and I, as under more obligation to you than any of the others, remain ever yours to command. [No signature, but addressed on the outside, _All Illmo. Signor e Pron Osso, Il Signor Giovanni Miltoni, Londra._] [Footnote: The Italian of this letter is printed in the Appendix to Mr. Mitford's Life of Milton prefixed to Pickering's edition of Milton's Works, and was communicated, I believe, by the late Mr. Watts of the British Museum from the original in that collection. It is doubtless the copy which Milton received. Of the Doni mentioned in the letter, as Dati's predecessor in the chair of Belles Lettres at Florence, we had a glimpse Vol. I. p. 746. He died, Mr. Watts says, in Dec. 1647, and left to Dati the charge of publishing his works. Frescobaldi, Coltellini, and Francini are already known (Vol. I. 725-9); the Galilei mentioned is not the great Galileo, who had died in 1642, but his natural son Vincenzo Galilei, also a man of talent.--As we take leave of Dati at this point, for some time at least, I may quote an interesting sentence, respecting one of his intentions in later life, from the notices of him in Salvini's _Fasti Consolari dell' Accademia Fiorentina_ (1717): "He had particularly in view the publication of the letters which he had received from various literary men, such as John Milton, Isaac Vossius, Paganino Gaudenzio, Giovanni Rodio, Valerio Chimentelli, and Nicolas Heinsius: from the last he had a very large number." When he died, Jan. 11, 1675, a few months after Milton, he had not fulfilled this intention; but it is likely, as we have seen (_antè_, p.655), that there has survived from among his papers only the one letter of Milton to him which Milton himself published. ] Florence, Dec. 4, 1648. While this letter was on its way to Milton, and possibly before it could have reached him, there had enacted itself, close within his view in High Holborn, that final catastrophe of a great political drama the boom of which was not to stop within the British Islands, but was to be heard in Italy itself and all the foreign world. CHAPTER III. THE TWO HOUSES IN THE GRASP OF THE ARMY: FINAL EFFORTS FOR THE KING: PRIDE'S PURGE AND ITS CONSEQUENCES--THE KING BROUGHT FROM HURST CASTLE TO WINDSOR: ORDINANCE FOR HIS TRIAL PASSED BY THE COMMONS ALONE: CONSTITUTION OF THE COURT--THE TRIAL IN WESTMINSTER HALL: INCIDENTS OF THE SEVEN SUCCESSIVE DAYS: THE SENTENCE--LAST THREE DAYS OF CHARLES'S LIFE: HIS EXECUTION AND BURIAL. In taking the King out of the Isle of Wight, and lodging him for a time in the solitary keep of Hurst Castle on the Hampshire coast, the Army had proclaimed their intention of bringing him to public justice, and it was that they might compel this result that they had marched into London with Fairfax at their head. As they desired that the proceedings should be regular, they had resolved that the two Houses of Parliament, or at least one of them, should conduct the business. THE TWO HOUSES IN THE GRASP OF THE ARMY: THEIR FINAL EFFORTS FOR THE KING: PRIDE'S PURGE AND ITS CONSEQUENCES. Here was their difficulty. On Dec. 2, 1648, when the Army took possession of London, there were nineteen Peers present in their places in the House of Lords: viz. the Earl of Manchester, as Speaker; the Earls of Pembroke, Rutland, Salisbury, Suffolk, Lincoln, Mulgrave, Middlesex, Stamford, Northumberland, and Nottingham; Viscount Save and Sele; and Lords Howard, Maynard, Dacres, Montague, North, Hunsdon, and Berkeley. From such a body the Army could not hope much. Three or four of them might be reckoned on as thorough-going; but to most a crisis had come which was too terrible. Ah! had they foreseen it six years before, had they then foreseen that their own order and all the pleasantness of their aristocratic lives would go down in the contest to which they were lending themselves, would their choice between the two sides have been the same? To have sat on through those six years, a mere residuary rag of the English Peerage, at variance with the King and the vast majority of their own order; to have figured through the struggle as nominally the superior House, but really the mere ciphers of the Commons; to have had to throw all their aristocratic dignity and all their permissible conservatism at last into the miserable form of partisanship with a despotic Presbyterianism and zeal for the suppression of Sects, Heresies, and Independency:--here was a retrospect for men of rank, men of ambition, men of pride in their pedigrees! And now to have an Army of these Independents, Sectaries, and Heretics, holding them by the throat, and prepared to dictate to them the alternative of their own annihilation or their assent to a deed of horror!--Such being the position of the Lords, how was it with the Commons? In that House about 260 members were still giving attendance, or were at hand to attend when wanted. On the 2nd of December there were 232 in the House. A staunch minority of these were Independents in league with the Army; but the decided majority were men of the Presbyterian party, full of regrets at the failure of the Treaty of Newport, but ready to resume negotiations with the King on the basis of the terms offered him in that Treaty, or indeed now on any other basis on which there could be agreement. Detestation of the Army was, therefore, the ruling feeling in this House too: but the detestation was mingled with dread. With regiments at their doors, with regiments posted here and there on the skirts of the City, all alert against any symptom of a rising of the Presbyterian Londoners, they could not hope now for any chance of seeing the Army overmastered for them by the only means left-popular tumult and a carnage in the streets. All that the Commons could do, therefore, was to be sullen, and offer a passive resistance. [Footnote: Lords and Commons Journals of Dec. 2, 1648; and Records of Divisions in Commons Journals through the previous month. There were thirteen divisions in that month, showing an attendance ranging from 80 to 261.] It was on Monday the 4th and Tuesday the 5th of December that the attitude which the two Houses meant to take towards the Army was definitely ascertained. On the first of these days, the news of the King's removal to Hurst Castle having meanwhile arrived, there was a fierce debate in the Commons over that act of the Army, the Presbyterians protesting against its "insolency," and at length carrying, by a majority of 136 votes to 102, a Resolution that it had been done "without the knowledge or consent" of the House. On the same day the House proceeded to a debate, continued all through the night, and till nine o'clock next morning, on the results of the Treaty of Newport. The Presbyterian speakers, such as Sir Robert Harley, Sir Benjamin Rudyard, Harbottle Grimstone, Sir Simonds D'Ewes, and Clement Walker, contended that the King's concessions were satisfactory; the negative was maintained by a succession of speakers, among whom were the two Vanes. The Presbyterians, having originally put the question in this form, "Whether the King's Answers to the Propositions of both Houses be satisfactory," did not risk a division on so wide an issue, but thought it more prudent to divide on the previous question, "Whether this question shall now be put." Having carried this in the negative by 144 to 93, they were enabled to shape the question in this likelier form, "That the Answers of the King to the Propositions of both Houses are a ground for the House to proceed upon for the Settlement of the Peace of the Kingdom;" and it was on the question in this form that the debate was protracted through the night of the 4th and into the 5th. The most extraordinary incident of the debate on the 5th was the appearance made by Prynne. He had been a member of the House only a month, having taken his seat for Newport in Cornwall on the 7th of November; and he now came forward, the poor indomitable man, with a speech of vast length and most elaborate composition, in favour of that sovereign whose reign had been to him of all men ruinous and horrible. With his face muffled to hide the scars of his old mutilations by the hangman's knife, he stood up, and, after a touching recitation of all that he had suffered, denounced the Army and its outrages on Parliamentary freedom, expounded his views of Presbyterianism and right constitutional government, and pleaded earnestly for a reconciliation with Charles. His speech, if it was actually delivered as it is printed, must have occupied four or five hours in the delivery; but one must suppose he gave only part of it and reserved the rest for the press. He was heard, he says, with great attention, and had the satisfaction not only of pleasing his own party, but also of making converts. At one time or another during the debate there had been, he says, as many as 340 members present; but many of these had been wearied out by the long night-sitting. Accordingly in the final vote on Tuesday morning there were 129 for the affirmative in the question, and only 83 for the negative: _i.e._ in a House of 212 there were three-fifths for a reconciliation with the King, and two-fifths for complying with the Army and bringing the King to justice. The concurrence of the Lords with the majority in the Commons was a matter of course. It was given the same day, _nem. con._, Manchester being in the chair, and only fourteen other Peers present. By way of tempering the whole result as much as possible, a Committee was appointed by the Commons to wait on Fairfax and his officers that afternoon, with a view to "the keeping and preserving a good correspondence" between Parliament and the Army. [Footnote: Commons and Lords Journals of the days named; Clement Walker's Hist, of Indep. Part. II. pp. 28, 29; and Parl. Hist. III. 1147-1239. Of these 92 closely printed columns of the Parl. Hist. 86 are taken up with a reprint of Prynne's speech, as published by himself in the end of Jan. 1648-9. The editor remarks on the fact that, with the exception of Clement Walker, none of the contemporary writers mention Prynne's speech at all. This confirms the supposition that it cannot have been so large in delivery as it is in print. Yet that it must have been very large appears not only from Prynne's own account, but also from who says: "This he held on the affirmative with so many strong and solid reasons, arguments, and precedents both out of Divinity, Law, History, and policy, and with so clear a confutation of the opposite argument, that no man took up the bucklers against him."] The Army had their own plan for bringing about a "good correspondence," and they put it in operation on the two following days, Dec. 6 and 7. Not troubling themselves with the Lords--who met for mere form on each of these days (only seven present on the first and eight on the other)--they applied their plan to the Commons. It consisted in what was called PRIDE'S PURGE, the style of which was as follows:--On the morning of the 6th, when the members were going into the House, they found all the entrances blocked by two or three regiments of soldiers, under the command of Colonels Pride, Hewson, and Sir Hardress Waller. Every member, as he came up, was scrutinized by these armed critics, and especially by Colonel Pride, who had a list of names in his hand, and some people about him to point out members he did not know. If a member passed this scrutiny, they let him in; if not, they begged him not to think of taking his place in the House, and, if he persisted, hauled him back, and locked him up in one of the empty law-courts conveniently near. Mr. Prynne, who made a conspicuous resistance, was locked up in this way; Sir Robert Harley, Sir William Waller, Sir Samuel Luke, Sir Robert Pye, General Massey, Clement Walker, Sir Simonds D'Ewes, Sir Benjamin Rudyard, and others and others, including even Nathaniel Fiennes, who had shown momentary weakness, were similarly disposed of; till at length the members who had presented themselves were sifted into two divisions--a goodly band regularly within the House, and forty-one fuming outside as prisoners in the law-courts. Messages passed and repassed between the two divisions, and the House made some faint show of protest and of anxiety for the release of the arrested. Any decided motion to this effect, however, was prevented by a communication to the House from Fairfax and his General Council of Officers. Colonel Axtell and some other officers, being admitted, announced the message verbally, and it was subsequently presented in writing by Colonel Whalley. Under the name of "Humble Proposals and Desires," this paper reminded the House of their former votes for expelling and disabling Denzil Holles, General Massey, and the rest of the Presbyterian Eleven impeached by the Army in 1647, and demanded that these members, irregularly and scandalously re-admitted to their places, should be again excluded and held to trial. It farther demanded that about 90 members, alleged to have been more or less in complicity with the Scots in their late invasion of England, should be disabled; it prayed for an immediate repeal of the Votes on which the Treaty of Newport had proceeded, and of the Vote of the previous day for reliance on that Treaty; and it begged all truly patriotic members to form themselves visibly into a phalanx, apart from the others, that they might be counted and known. In fact, the message not only adopted Pride's rough measure of that day as authorized by the whole Army, but represented it as only a friendly interposition, doing for the House in part what the House must be anxious to do more fully for itself. So the afternoon passed, the forty-one, still remaining in durance, visited by various persons who had Fairfax's or Pride's permission, and especially by Hugh Peters. He took a list of their names, discoursed with them, released Rudyard and Fiennes, and promised the rest that they should be removed to fit quarters for the night in Wallingford House. As night came on, however, and Wallingford House was not available, they were taken, under guard, to a common victualling-house near, jocularly called _Hell_; and here, some of them walking about, and others stretched on benches and chairs, or on the floor, in two upper rooms, they spent the night "reading and singing psalms to God." Next day there were again requests from the House to Fairfax for their release. It could not be granted; but they were marched through the streets to better accommodation in two inns in the Strand, called the Swan and the King's Head. Meanwhile Pride's watch at the doors of the House had been effectively continued. There were several new arrests on the 7th; many members, not arrested, were forcibly turned back; and many more, among whom was Denzil Holies, kept prudently out of the way. Altogether, the number of the arrested was 47, and that of the excluded 96. It was a purgation quite sufficient for the Army's purpose. This was proved by a vote actually taken in the House on the 7th, after the purgation was complete. "The question being propounded, That the House proceed with the Proposals of the Army," it was carried by 50 to 28 that the question should be put and the Proposals proceeded with. As most of the minority in this division withdrew in consequence, the House was reduced from that moment to just such a tight little Parliamentary body as the Army desired. [Footnote: Lords and Commons Journals of days named; Rushw. VII. 1353-1356; Parl. Hist. III. 1240-1249 (a careful compilation of contemporary accounts).] Cromwell was again among them. He had returned to town on the evening of the 6th, and he was in his place in the Commons on the 7th, receiving the thanks of the House, through the Speaker, for his "very great and eminently faithful services" in Wales, Scotland, and the North of England. He had not been concerned in the design of Pride's Purge, and the business was half over before his arrival in town; but he quite approved of what had been done, and said he would maintain it. The younger Vane, on the other hand, had been so staggered by the proceeding that he had withdrawn from the scene, to avoid further responsibility. [Footnote: Commons Journals, Dec. 7; Parl. Hist. III. 1246; and Godwin, III. 31.] For a fortnight after Pride's Purge, the two Houses, reduced now to such dimensions as might suit the Army's purpose, went on transacting various business. The attendance in the Lords had dwindled to five, four, and even to three, raised on one occasion to seven. In the Commons the attendance does not seem to have ever exceeded 50 or 60. It is in the proceedings of this House, of course, that one sees the steady direction of affairs towards the end prescribed by the Army. There were all kinds of items of employment during the fortnight, including orders about the Navy, orders in mercantile matters, discharges of some of the secluded and imprisoned members, votes condemning those who continued contumacious and had ventured on protests in print, receptions of petitions and addresses of confidence from various public bodies, and attendance by such as chose on a special Fast-day Sermon preached by Hugh Peters. But through these miscellaneous proceedings one notes the main track in such votes as these:--Dec. 12, Vote for repealing all former votes and acts condoning the faults of Denzil Holles and the rest of the impeached Presbyterian leaders, and on the same day a Vote declaring the re-opening of a Treaty with the King in the Isle of Wight to have been dishonourable and apparently destructive to the good of the kingdom; Dec. 13, A farther Vote, in compliance with the Army's Proposals, disowning entirely the Treaty in the Isle of Wight, and repealing the Vote of the previous week for proceeding to a settlement on the grounds supplied by the King's Answers in that Treaty; Dec. 23, Resolution, "That it be referred to a Committee to consider how to proceed in a way of justice against the King and other capital offenders, and that the said Committee do present their opinions thereupon to the House with all convenient speed." The Committee so appointed consisted of 38 members of the House, among whom were St. John, Whitlocke, Skippon, Lord Grey, Lord Lisle, Sir Henry Mildmay, Pennington, and Henry Marten. [Footnote: Lords and Commons Journals from Dec. 8 to Dec. 23; Parl. Hist. III. 1247-1253; Whitlocke, Dec. 23.] Cromwell was not of the Committee, and some of those put upon it were not likely to attend. Indeed, though the Resolution passed without a division, the reluctance of some who were present had appeared in the course of the debate. They argued that there was no precedent in History for the judicial trial of a King, and that, if the Army were determined that Charles should be punished capitally, the business should be left to the Army itself as an exceptional and irregular power. THE KING BROUGHT FROM HURST CASTLE TO WINDSOR: ORDINANCE FOR HIS TRIAL PASSED BY THE COMMONS ALONE: CONSTITUTION OF THE COURT. Some days before the Resolution of Dec. 23 was adopted by the Commons, the Army had taken steps for bringing the King nearer to London, to abide the issue. He had been in Hurst Castle for about a fortnight, rather poorly lodged in the old apartments of the keep, and complaining of the fogs that rose from the salt-water marshes around, with their beds of ooze and sea-kelp. His amusement had been in the sight of the passing ships, in his daily walk along the narrow neck of shingle connecting the castle with the mainland, and in the companionship of his select attendants in the evenings, when the drawbridge was up, the guard set, the woodfires blazing indoors, and the candles lit. He had brought with him from Newport fourteen personal attendants in all, including his two gentlemen of the bedchamber, Mr. James Harrington (afterwards known as the author of _Oceana_) and Mr. Thomas Herbert. Both these gentlemen, though their principles and connexions were originally Parliamentarian, had, in the course of their long attendance on the royal captive, contracted a respectful affection for him. Harrington, indeed, had been speaking out so openly in praise of his Majesty's conduct in the Newport Treaty, and of the talent he had shown in his debates with the Presbyterian divines, that those who were in charge had thought it unsafe to let him remain in the service. He had therefore been dismissed, and the duty of immediate waiting on the King had been left entirely to Mr. Herbert. It was at midnight on the 16th or 17th of December that this gentleman, asleep in the little room he occupied next to the King's chamber, was roused by hearing the drawbridge outside let down, and some horsemen enter the Castle. Next morning he found that the King had heard the noise too, and was curious to know the cause. Mr. Herbert went out to inquire, and came back with the information that Major Harrison had arrived in the night. Nothing more was said at the moment, and the King went to prayers; but later in the day the King seemed very much discomposed, and told Herbert that Harrison was the very man against whom he had most frequently received private warnings. He had never, to his knowledge, seen the Major, but he had heard much of the wild enthusiasm of his character; and, if assassination were intended, and this man were to be the agent, what likelier place than the lonely sea-keep where they then were? To relieve his Majesty's mind if possible, Mr. Herbert went out to make farther inquiries. He soon returned with the intelligence that the purpose of Harrison's visit was to arrange for his Majesty's removal to Windsor Castle. Nothing could be more agreeable to the King than the prospect of "leaving the worst to enjoy the best Castle in England;" and all fear vanished. After two nights, Major Harrison left the Castle mysteriously as he had come, and without having seen the King or spoken to any of his attendants. He had made the necessary arrangements, and the actual removal of the King was to be superintended by the same Colonel Cobbet who had managed his abduction from the Isle of Wight. This officer, arriving two days afterwards, formally announced his business; and, his Majesty being very willing, there was no delay. Passing along the spit of land from Hurst Castle to Milford, they found a body of horse there waiting; and, under this convoy, they rode inland through Hampshire, gradually leaving the sea behind. By a route through the New Forest and past Romsey, they reached Winchester, where they made some stay, the Mayor, Aldermen, and Clergymen of the City, and many of the gentry round, coming in dutifully to pay their respects. Thence to New Alresford, and so to Farnham in Surrey. It was on the road between these two towns that they passed another troop of horse drawn up in good order, which immediately closed up in the rear and went on with them. The King was particularly struck with the appearance of the commander of this troop, a man gallantly mounted, with a velvet montero on his head, a new buff- coat, and a crimson silk scarf round his waist, who, as the King passed at an easy pace, saluted him splendidly "_alia soldado_" and received a gracious bow in return. Inquiring of Mr. Herbert who he was, the King was greatly surprised to learn he was the dreadful Major Harrison. He looked a real soldier, the King said, and, if there might be trust in men's faces, was not the man to be an assassin. On arriving at Farnham, where they spent the night in a private house, the King took care to pay considerable attention to Harrison. Standing by the fire before supper, in a large wainscoted room full of people, he singled out Harrison at the other end, beckoned him to come up, took him by the arm, and led him to a window-recess, where they conversed for half an hour. Apparently Harrison's words were not so satisfactory as his looks. He disowned indignantly any such design against the King as had been imputed to him, but added something to the effect that great and small alike must be subject to Law, and that Justice could pay no respect to persons. The King, who had never yet brought himself to imagine the possibility of his public trial in any form, saw no particular significance in Harrison's words, but thought them "affectedly spoken," and broke off the conversation. He was very cheerful at supper, greatly to the delight of his suite. Next day, taking Bagshot on the way and dining at Lord Newburgh's house there, they arrived at Windsor, and were received by Colonel Whichcot, the officer in command. It was the very day, Saturday Dec. 23, on which the Commons had appointed their Committee for considering the means of bringing the King to justice, and the Committee were holding their first meeting in Westminster that afternoon. The news had probably not yet reached Windsor, or it remained unknown to the King. He took up his abode in his royal apartments in the Castle; and the next day, as he paused in his Sunday walk round the exterior, he looked with no especial anxiety Londonwards, but rejoiced once more in the view of the Thames flowing by Eton, and the far expanse of lull and valley, villages and fair houses, noble even in its wintry leaflessness and the dull gloom of the December air. [Footnote: Herbert's Memoirs, 126-145; Rushworth VII. 1371; Parl. Hist. III. l26.] Christmas-week having passed, and the Committee for justice on the King having had several meetings, the Commons, on the 1st of January 1648-9, passed a Resolution and an Ordinance. The Resolution was "That, by the fundamental laws of this kingdom, it is Treason in the King of England for the time being to levy war against the Parliament and Kingdom of England;" the Ordinance was one beginning "Whereas it is notorious that Charles Stuart, the now King of England," and ending with the appointment of a High Court of Justice for the Trial of the King, to consist of about 150 persons named as Commissioners and Judges expressly for the purpose. Five Peers were named first on this Commission; then Chief Justices Rolle and St. John and Chief Baron Wylde; then Fairfax, Cromwell, Ireton, and many more members of the Commons and Army Officers; but a considerable proportion of those named were Lawyers, Aldermen, and Citizens, not members of the House. Any twenty of the Commissioners were to be a quorum.--On the following day (Jan. 2), the Resolution and Ordinance having been sent up to the Lords for their concurrence, there was a scene of agony in that House. As many as twelve Peers had mustered for the occasion, including four of the five whom the Commons had named first in the dreadful Commission. Unanimously and passionately all the Peers present rejected both Resolution and Ordinance, the Earl of Denbigh declaring he "would be torn in pieces rather than have any share in so infamous a business," and the Earl of Pembroke, who came nearest to neutrality, saying he "loved not businesses of life and death." Having hurled this defiance at the Commons, the Lords were powerless for more, and adjourned for a week. It was a week of rapid action and counter-defiance by the Commons. Not a few of the feebler spirits, indeed, had taken leave of absence. Whitlocke, for one, had gone into the country. The Clerk of the House, Mr. Elsyng, had feigned ill-health and resigned. Nevertheless, with a temporary substitute to do Mr. Elsyng's duty, the House pushed on. Jan. 3, they sent two of their number to inspect the Journals of the Lords and ascertain formally the proceedings of that House on the preceding day. When these were reported, some were for impeaching the twelve Peers as co-Delinquents with the King. To the majority, however, such a course appeared quite unnecessary; it was enough to declare that, as the Lords would not concur, the Commons would act without their concurrence. Jan. 4, after a debate with locked doors, this momentous Resolution was passed: "That the Commons of England in Parliament assembled do declare, That the People are, under God, the original of all just power; and do also declare, That the Commons of England in Parliament assembled, being chosen by and representing the People, have the supreme power in this nation; and do also declare, That whatsoever is enacted, or declared for law, by the Commons in Parliament assembled hath the force of a law, and all the People of this nation are concluded thereby, although the consent and concurrence of the King, or House of Peers, be not had thereunto." The Ordinance for a High Court of Justice for the King's trial had meanwhile been re-introduced, with the omission of the five Peers, the three Judges, and some other reluctant persons named in the original Ordinance, and with the addition of two eminent lawyers not there named; so that Fairfax, Cromwell, and Treton now stood at the top of a total list of 135 judicial Commissioners. Hurried through the proper three stages, this Bill became law by the authority of the Commons alone, Jan. 6,--On the 9th of January, when the Peers re-assembled after their adjournment, seven being present, they made a faint attempt to recover influence. They sketched out an Ordinance to the effect that whatsoever King of England should _in future_ levy war against the Parliament and the Kingdom should be guilty of High Treason, and they appointed a Committee to prepare such an Ordinance. At the same time, ignoring the virtual abolition of their House by the Commons, they endeavoured to renew communications between the two Houses in the usual manner, by sending a message about various matters of mere ordinary business that had been pending between the two. This led to a curious proof that even in the thoroughgoing body that now constituted the Commons there was still a difference between most thoroughgoing and moderately thoroughgoing. There was first a division on the question whether the messengers from the Lords should he received at all; and, while 31 voted for admitting them, a minority of 18, with Henry Marten and Ludlow for their tellers, voted _No_. Then, after the messengers had been received and had delivered their message, it was debated whether they should be dismissed with the customary answer that the House would reply in due course by messengers of their own. Out of 52 present, 19 voted _No_ (Ireton one of the tellers), and 33 voted for keeping up the usual courtesy. But, though a majority were thus for treating the Lords as still extant, practically the whole House was in the same ultra- democratic temper. That very day, for example, on the report of a Committee, orders were given for the engraving of a new Great Seal, with instructions that on one side there should be a map of England and Ireland, with the Islands of Jersey and Guernsey, also the English and Irish arms, and the words "The Great Seal of England: 1648," and on the reverse a representation of the House of Commons sitting, and the motto "In the First Year of Freedom by God's blessing restored: 1648." The deviser of these emblems was the Republican Henry Marten. [Footnote: Lords and Commons Journals of days named; Rushworth, VII. 1379 _et seq._; Parl. Hist. III. 1253-1258; Whitlocke under dates given.] Not even yet did Charles realize the extent of his danger. Well-treated at Windsor, and allowed the liberty of walking on the terrace and in the grounds, he had kept up his spirits wonderfully, and had been heard to say he "doubted not but within six months to see peace in England, and, in case of not restoring, to be righted from Ireland, Denmark, and other places." Even after information of the proceedings of the Commons and their rupture with the Lords had reached him, he scouted the idea of the public trial which was threatened. They dared not do such a thing! At the utmost, he expected that the Commons might venture to depose him, confine him in the Tower or elsewhere, and call upon the Prince of Wales, or perhaps the Duke of York or the Duke of Gloucester, to assume the succession! [Footnote: Herbert's Memoirs, 145-156; Whitlocke, II. 488.] Meanwhile the Court appointed to try the King had met to constitute itself. Formal proclamation of its authority and of its business had been made in various public places in London; and, in a series of meeting held in the Painted Chamber in Westminster, preliminaries had been arranged. Not so many as half of the Commissioners appointed by the Ordinance seem to have attended at any of these meetings. Fairfax, who was present at the first (Jan. 8), recoiled then and there, and never went back. [Footnote: In Notes and Queries for July 6, 1872, Mr. William J. Thorns gave a carefully prepared list of the 135 persons named King's Judges by the Second Ordinance for the Trial, so printed as to show which of them really took part in the business thus assigned them, and to what extent, and which of them abstained wholly or withdrew before the close of the proceedings.] For President of the Court, with the title "Lord High President," there was chosen John Bradshaw, one of the lawyers added in the second form of the Ordinance, to make up for the omission there of the three Judges from the regular Law-Courts who had been appointed in the first Ordinance, but had been excused. He was over sixty years of age; had been eminent for some time in his profession; and had recently been one of a group of lawyers raised to the serjeantcy, with a view to their promotion to the Bench. As counsel for the prosecution, four lawyers, not on the Commission, were appointed, one of them John Cook, and another the learned Dutchman Dr. Dorislaus. Although these arrangements had been made before the 12th of January, another week elapsed before the Court was quite ready. The vaults under the Painted Chamber, which was to be the ordinary place of meeting of the Court, when not sitting in Westminster Hall for the open trial, had to be searched and secured against any attempt of the Guy Fawkes kind; a bullet-proof hat, it is said, had to be made for Bradshaw: the Mace and Sword of State had to be brought from their usual repositories; &c. The two Houses of Parliament meanwhile met from day to day, four or five Peers still keeping up the pretence of their corporate existence, and about 50 Commoners transacting this or that business as it happened, without the least reference to the Peers. Prynne, from his confinement in the King's Head Tavern in the Strand, had issued a defence of the King in the form of _A Brief Memento to the Present Unparliamentary Juncto_; and a good deal of the time of the Commons was taken up with notices of this pamphlet and votes for the prosecution of its author. [Footnote: Rushworth, VII, 1389-1394; Lords and Commons Journals; and Godwin's Hist. of the Commonwealth, II. 621 and 664-668.] THE TRIAL IN WESTMINSTER HALL: INCIDENTS OF THE SEVEN SUCCESSIVE DAYS: THE SENTENCE. On Friday, Jan. 19, Charles was brought from Windsor in a coach, guarded by a body of horse under Harrison's command, and conveyed through Brentford and Hammersmith to St. James's Palace. That same night he was removed to Whitehall; and, on the afternoon of Saturday the 20th, he was taken thence to Cotton House, adjoining Westminster Hall. This great hall, used for Strafford's trial, had now been fitted up for the King's, and the High Court of Justice were already assembled in it, waiting their prisoner. Bradshaw was in the chair, and sixty-six more of the Commissioners were present. Among them were Cromwell, Ireton, Henry Marten, Edmund Ludlow, General Hammond, Lord Grey of Groby, several Baronets and Knights, Colonels Ewer, Hawson, Robert Lilburne, Okey, Pride, Hutchinson, Purefoy, Sir Hardress Waller, and Whalley, with Major Harrison, Alderman Pennington of London, and three barristers. The hall was crowded with spectators, both on the floor and in the galleries; and order was kept by a guard of red-coats under Colonel Axtell. As the Court was forming itself, there had been a rather startling interruption by a woman's voice from one of the galleries. It was that of Lady Fairfax, who had gone in indignant curiosity, and, on hearing her husband's name read in the Commission, called out loudly to this effect, "He is not here, and will never be; you do him wrong to name him." This interruption was over, and the Court composed, when Charles was brought in by Colonel Hacker, and a select guard of officers armed with halberts. The Serjeant-at-Arms receiving him, and preceding him with the mace, he was conducted to the bar, where a chair of crimson velvet had been set for him. Some of his own servants followed him and stood round him. He looked sternly at the Court and at the people in the galleries; then sat down, keeping on his hat; then stood up, and turned round to look at the soldiers and the multitude; then sat down again, still with his hat on. He was now face to face with his judges. He looked at them carefully, and recognised about eight as personally known to him. [Footnote: Rushworth, VII. 1394-1399, and Herbert, 150-161. It is strange to find some points of contradiction between these two trustworthy accounts. Herbert, after apparently implying that the King had been brought from Windsor to St James's _before_ the 19th, makes his removal from St. James's to Whitehall occur on that day. Rushworth brings him to St. James's exactly on the 19th, and removes him to Whitehall next morning. Again, Herbert makes the King conveyed from Whitehall to Cotton House "in a sedan or close chair," and describes the walk through the posted guards, along King Street and Palace Yard, adding that only he himself was allowed to go with the King that way; whereas Rushworth says that the King was brought to Cotton House from Whitehall by water, "guarded by musketeers in boats." Rushworth's accounts, written at the moment, ought to be more accurate in such particulars, and especially in dates, than Herbert's, written from recollection; but Herbert can hardly have been wrong in the matter of the sedan chair. Perhaps, while the King went in such a chair, Herbert accompanying him, most of the King's servants went by water. For the names of all the sixty-seven King's Judges present on the first day of the Trial see Mr. Thomb's list in _Notes and Queries_, July 6, 1872. The figure 20 there appended to a name intimates presence that day.-- Among those of the 135 appointed Judges who did not attend on that day or on any subsequent one, and therefore must be supposed to have agreed with Fairfax in disowning the entire business, we may note Skippon, Sir Arthur Haselrig, Sir William Brereton, Desborough, Lambert, Overton, Lord Lisle, and Algernon Sidney.] The proceedings of the Trial will be best exhibited in the following condensed account of the particulars of each day:-- _Saturday, Jan. 20_:--The President, in a brief address to the King, informed him of the business on which the Court had met, and called on him to hear the Charge against him. Solicitor Cook, standing within the bar, on the King's right, then began to state the Charge, but was interrupted by the King, who held out a stick which he had in his hand, and laid it softly twice or thrice on the Solicitor's shoulder, bidding him stop. Bradshaw having interfered, the Solicitor continued his statement, and delivered in his Charge in writing, which Bradshaw called on the Clerk of the Court to read. Charles again interrupted, and continued to interrupt; but, Bradshaw telling him that he would be heard afterwards if he had anything to say, the document was at length read. It accused Charles Stuart, King of England, of having "traitorously and maliciously levied war against the present Parliament and the People therein represented;" and it supported the Charge by a recitation of specific acts of the King done in the First Civil War from June 1642 to 1646, and again more generally of acts done in 1648 before and during the Second Civil War. Charles had smiled often as the Charge was read; and, when the President at the close asked what answer he had to give, begged to know by what authority he had been brought thither. He had been in treaty with Parliament in the Isle of Wight; he had been forcibly taken thence; he saw no Lords present; the crown of England was hereditary and not elective; in whose name was this Court held? "In that of the Commons of England," Bradshaw replied; and there ensued a skirmish between him and the King on the question of authority, which Bradshaw ended by adjourning the Court till Monday at ten o'clock. _Monday, Jan. 22_:-After a consultation in the Painted Chamber, the Court met in Westminster Hall, _seventy_ members present, and answering to their names. The skirmish between Bradshaw and the King was renewed: Bradshaw requiring the King's Answer to the Charge "either by confessing or denying," and the King refusing the Court's jurisdiction, not for his own sake alone, he said, but "for the freedom and liberty of the people of England," imperilled by the assumption of the Court's legality. "Sir, I must interrupt you," said Bradshaw; "which I would not do, but that what you do is not agreeable to the proceedings of any Court of Justice." No Court, he said, could permit its own authority to be questioned; the King must not go out into such wide discourses; he must give a punctual and direct answer. No such answer would the King give; he would have law and reason for his being in that place at all. "Sir, you are not to dispute our authority," again interrupted Bradshaw; "you are told it again by the Court: Sir, it will be taken notice of you that you stand in contempt of the Court, and your contempt will be recorded accordingly." The King "did not know how a King might be a delinquent by any law he ever heard of;" but any Delinquent might put in a demurrer. And so on and on for a considerable time, the Clerk of the Court reading out the Resolution of the Court that the King should give his answer, and the King still insisting on giving reasons why he would not. "Serjeant, take away the prisoner," said the Lord President at last; and the King, still talking, was removed to Cotton House.----He left in writing, for subsequent publication, the reasons he wanted to state to the Court that day. The chief of them was that no earthly power could justly call a King to account. He quoted, as Scripture authority, Eccles. viii. 4: "Where the word of a King is, there is power; and who may say unto him, What dost thou?" But he appealed also to the Law and Custom of England. _Tuesday, Jan. 23_:-The Court again met in Westminster Hall, 63 Commissioners present. Solicitor Cook moved that, the King having refused to plead either Guilty _or_ Not Guilty, the rule for such cases of contumacy should be applied to him, his refusal taken _pro confesso_, and judgment pronounced. The Lord President, calling the King's attention to this motion, offered him another opportunity of pleading, which he used only to return to the discourses of the two previous days. "Clerk, do your duty!" said Bradshaw at last. "Duty, Sir!" exclaimed the King; and, the Clerk having again read out a paper requiring the King's positive answer to the Charge, and the King still refusing, "Clerk, record "the default," said Bradshaw, "and, gentlemen, you that took "charge of the prisoner, take him back again." That night, like the preceding, was spent in Cotton House. _Wednesday, Jan. 24, and Thursday, Jan. 25_:--No public meetings of the Court in Westminster Hall on these days; but more private sessions in the Painted Chamber for the purpose of receiving the depositions of witnesses,--the Court having determined that, though not obliged to that course, they would adopt it for their own satisfaction. Accordingly there were examined more than thirty witnesses from various parts of England-- "W. C., of Patrington in Holderness, in the county of York, gentleman, aged 42;" "W. B., of Wixhall, in the county of Salop, gentleman;" "H. H., of Stratford-upon-Avon in Warwickshire;" "R. L., of Cotton in Nottinghamshire, tiler;" "J. W., of Ross in Herefordshire, shoemaker;" "S. L., of Nottingham, maltster, aged 30 years;" "A. Y., citizen and barber-surgeon of London, aged 29;" "H. G., of Gray's Inn, in the county of Middlesex, gentleman;" &c. &c. They deposed to various acts of the King seen by themselves, from the setting up of his standard at Nottingham onwards. Papers in the King's own hand, or by his authority, were also produced and read. Finally, the Court, "taking into consideration the whole matter," resolved to proceed to sentence on the King as "a tyrant, traitor, and murderer," and as "a public enemy to the Commonwealth of England." _Friday, Jan. 26_:--A private sitting of the Court in the Painted Chamber, in which the Sentence was drafted, agreed to, and ordered to be engrossed. _Saturday, Jan. 27_:--First another private meeting in the Painted Chamber to settle the procedure of the Court for the day, and give President Bradshaw instructions for his behaviour in any contingency that might arise, one of them being that he "should hear the King say what he would before the sentence, and not after." Then, about one o'clock, an adjournment to full state in Westminster Hall. The Lord President was now robed in scarlet, and there were 67 Commissioners present. The Court having been opened, Charles, whose presence had not been required on the three preceding days, was brought in. As he went to his place, the soldiers in the Hall called out "Justice," "Justice," and "Execution!" till the Court commanded silence. The King, in his usual posture, with his hat on, immediately began to speak. The President told him he would have liberty to do so, but must hear the Court first. After some farther attempts to speak then, the King submitted; and Bradshaw, reminding him of what had passed in the first three meetings of the Court, related the subsequent action of the Court, and their conclusion on the whole matter, and called upon him to say anything he pleased in bar of judgment, provided it were in his own defence, and not in renewed challenge of the Court's jurisdiction. With difficulty keeping off the forbidden topic, Charles dwelt on the dangers of a hasty sentence, and urged a special request which he had reserved for the occasion. It was that, before sentence was read, he should be permitted to have a conference with the Lords and Commons in the Painted Chamber. Bradshaw, though he gave it as his opinion that the request only tended to delay, and was in fact a farther declining of the jurisdiction of the Court, yet announced that the Court would withdraw to consider it. There was therefore a private consultation for half an hour in the Court of Wards, the King meanwhile being removed from the Great Hall. When the Court had returned thither, and the King had been brought back, Bradshaw intimated that the consultation had been _pro forma_ only, that the request could not be granted, that the Court must proceed to sentence. There was another painful altercation, the King pressing his request for delay, and seeming to hint he had some important proposal to make to the Lords and Commons (abdication in favour of the Prince of Wales, it was afterwards guessed); and Bradshaw trying to stop him. At length, the King ceasing to interrupt, Bradshaw's words took continuous form for a minute or two in that kind of address which a Judge makes to a capital criminal before passing sentence. "Make an _O yes,_" he said in conclusion to the officers, "and command silence while the Sentence is read." The Clerk then read out the sentence as it had been engressed on parchment, as follows:--"_Whereas the Commons of England in Parliament, &c._ [a statement of the purpose of the Court, an insertion of the Charge against Charles, and a record of his refusal to plead and the consequent proceedings of the Court], _ this Court doth adjudge that the said Charles Stuart, as a Tyrant, Traitor, Murderer, and a Public Enemy, shall be put to death by the severing of his head from his body._ "The President then said, "The sentence now read and published is the act, sentence, judgement, and resolution of the whole Court;" whereupon all the Commissioners stood up to express their assent. "His Majesty then said, Will you hear me a word, Sir? _President_: Sir, you are not to be heard after the sentence. _King_: No, Sir? _President_: No, Sir, by your favour. Sir. Guard, withdraw your prisoner. _King_: I _may_ speak after sentence, by your favour, Sir; I _may_ speak after sentence, ever. By your favour, hold [the guard, one must suppose, now hustling around Charles]. The sentence, Sir--I say Sir, I do--I am not suffered to speak; Expect what justice other people will have." As he passed out with the guard, there were again cries from the soldiers of "Justice," "Justice," and some brutes among them puffed their tobacco-smoke in front of him, and threw their pipes in his way. He was taken to Whitehall and thence to St. James's. [Footnote: Abridged mainly from Rushworth's collection of accounts in 30 folio pages (VII. 1395-1425). The _sixty-seven_ of the King's judges who were present in Westminster Hall on the 27th, when the sentence was pronounced, are to be regarded as the men most resolute in the business, the committed Regicides. Two of these (George Fleetwood and Thomas Wayte) came in at the last moment, not having attended any of the previous meetings of the Court from the beginning of the Trial on the 20th. On the other hand, some nine or ten who had been present on one, two, or even all of the three previous public days of the Trial (the 20th, 22nd, and 23rd), had dropped off before the sentence; among them whome I note Alderman Isaac Pennington. He had been present all the three previous days; but could not reconcile himself to the conclusion. Of the sixty-seven who did reconcile themselves to it, _fifty-one_, as I reckon, are conspicuous for their unswerving steadiness throughout the proceedings, never having missed a day in their attendance from the 20th to the 27th inclusively. Among these are Bradshaw, Cromwell, Ireton, Marten, General Hammond, Ludlow, Lord Grey of Groby, Sir John Danvers, Pride, Purefoy, Hewson, Hutchinson, Robert Lilburne, Okey, Sir Hardress Waller, Whalley, Harrison, Sir M. Livesy, and Thomas Scott. Several of those, however, who had missed one or even two of the days of the Trial had done so accidentally, or for some reason of business, and not from flinching. Finally, of the sixty-seven who were present at the sentence, and stood up when it was pronounced to signify their concurrence, several were either reluctant at the time, or at all events afterwards wished people to believe that they were.] LAST THREE DAYS OF CHARLES'S LIFE: HIS EXECUTION AND BURIAL. The last two days and three nights of Charles's life were spent by him in the utmost possible privacy. From the first day of his trial, by an order of the Commons, procured by the intercession of Hugh Peters, he had been allowed to have Dr. Juxon, ex-Bishop of London, constantly in attendance upon him; and there was a fresh order continuing this favour after the sentence. Except Juxon and the faithful gentleman of the bedchamber, Thomas Herbert, the King did not desire company; and it was a relief to him when, on the remonstrances of these two with Hacker, that officer desisted from his intention of placing two musketeers on guard in his chamber. [Footnote: Commons Journals of the 20th and the 27th, and Herbert, 182-3.] On the evening of the 27th, the day of the sentence, the King's nephew, the Prince Elector, who had special permission to see him, came for the purpose, accompanied by the Duke of Richmond, the Marquis of Hertford, the Earls of Southampton and Lindsey, and some other noblemen. They had to be content with a message of thanks through Herbert, and went sorrowfully away. The same evening there also arrived Mr. Henry Seymour, with a letter from the Prince of Wales, dated from the Hague a few days before. This messenger, having been admitted by Colonel Hacker, did see the King, and knelt passionately at his feet, while he read the letter, and returned some verbal answer. There then remained only Herbert and Juxon with the King; but, as the night came on, Herbert was sent out on a message. He was to take a ring which the King gave him, an emerald between two diamonds, and deliver it to a lady living in Channel Row, who would know what it meant. The night was very dark; but Herbert, having got the pass-word from Colonel Tomlinson, who was in command outside, made his way through the sentries to the house indicated. He saw the lady, and, on delivering the ring, received from her a sealed cabinet. It was a box of diamonds and other jewels, chiefly broken Georges and Garters, which had been deposited with the lady, who was the King's laundress and wife of Sir William Wheeler. Returning with it to St. James's, Herbert found Juxon just gone to his lodging near, and the King alone. Herbert slept that night in the King's chamber, as he had done since the beginning of the trial, a pallet-bed having been brought in for the purpose by the King's order, and placed near his own bed. As always, the wax-light in the silver basin was kept faintly burning. [Footnote: Herbert, 170-178; and Wood's Ath. IV. 28-31. Wood's account was derived from Herbert himself, and substantially is the same as Herbert's own in his published _Memoirs_, but with additional particulars, of which some are peculiarly interesting.] Of the next day, Sunday the 28th, there is nothing to record, save that in the morning the King opened the cabinet of jewels, and that the rest of the day was passed in hearing a sermon from Juxon on Romans ii. 16, and in private readings and devotions. Clement Walker, indeed, foists into this day a myth he had heard about a certain "paper-book" tendered to the King by "some of the grandees of the Army and Parliament," offering him his "life and some shadow of regality" on conditions of such a portentous character, so "destructive to the fundamental Government, Religion, Laws, Liberties, and Properties of the People," that his Majesty firmly refused them. The air was full of such myths. [Footnote: Clement Walker's Hist. of Independency, Part II, 109, 110.] On Monday, the 29th, the two royal children then in England, the Princess Elizabeth, thirteen years old, and the Duke of Gloucester, a boy of eight, came to St. James's to bid their father farewell. The Princess, as the elder, and the more sensible of her father's condition, was weeping excessively; the younger boy, seeing his sister weep, took the like impression, and sobbed in sympathy and fright. He sat with them for some time at a window, taking them on his knees and kissing them, and talking with them of their duty to their mother, and to their eldest brother the Prince of Wales, who should be rightful King of England in long future years, when they would hardly remember their dead father. He distributed to them most of the jewels from the recovered casket; and at last, when the time allotted for the interview was over, and the door was opened from without, he rose hastily, again kissed them and blessed them, and then turned about to hide his own tears, while they departed crying miserably. [Footnote: Herbert, 178-180. In one particular there is a discrepancy between Herbert's account of the two days immediately succeeding Charles's sentence and the account found in Rushworth and others. Herbert says that on Saturday, after the sentence, Charles was taken from Westminster Hall back to Whitehall, "whence after two hours' space he was removed to St. James's." Accordingly it is at St. James's, as in the text, that Herbert represents Charles as passing the Saturday night and the Sunday and Monday. In Rushworth, on the other hand, the King remains at Whitehall through Saturday night and Sunday; and it is not till Monday that he is removed to St. James's, where he sees his children. Herbert's surely is the better authority in this matter.] And what of surrounding London, what of England, what of the three kingdoms, and the world beyond the seas? A King condemned as a Traitor and a Murderer by a fraction of his subjects; his children taking farewell of him; his time on earth now measured by hours, and the hours by the ticks of a clock; the hum close at hand of carpenters at work in hideous, unnameable preparations! Was there then to be no arrest, might there be no delay? Would not the very stones of London rise and mutiny; might not the land around, even if led but by popular fury, surge in to the rescue; from beyond the seas might there not come execration sufficient, and some foreign voice to stop? Nearly eight weeks, it is to be remembered, had elapsed since the Army had assumed the absolute political mastery by Pride's Purge of the Commons; and somewhat more than three weeks since the small stump of the Commons which they had fitted for their purpose had voted the Peers a farce, declared all power to reside in itself, and appointed the High Court of Justice for the Trial of the King. If there was to be interposition for Charles, from within Great Britain or from abroad, there had therefore been time for it before his Trial actually began, or at least before his Sentence. What had been the appearances? Among foreign powers and potentates a mere curious amazement, a feeling that the strange Islanders had gone mad, too mad to be meddled with: in France perhaps, where Mazarin had his own notions, even a pleasure in the sense of being unable to interfere and a willingness to see the English fury burn itself out in its own way. The French Ambassador in England had, indeed, conveyed a letter from Queen Henrietta Maria, addressed to the Speaker of the House of Commons; but the House had passed it by, and left it unanswered. Then, among the English Royalists abroad! Among _them,_ of course, a phrenzy unutterable,--passionate pacings of rooms and courtyards in the foreign towns that quartered them; wild clamours of grief wherever a few of them were gathered together; mingled sobbings, curses, prayers, gnashings of teeth, at the thought of what was passing in the home-island beyond their reach! But what within that island itself? What of England and London? The population, as we know, consisted of three sections--the numerous Independents and Sectaries; the multitudinous Presbyterians; and the suppressed and all but silenced Prelatists, or adherents of the old Church of England, What had been the signs from these three sections? Well, while petitions had come in to the Commons from the "well-affected," _i.e._ the Independents and Sectaries, of various counties, praying for justice on Delinquents of whatever rank, and therefore virtually adhering to the Army; while the Independents of the City of London itself had bestirred themselves in the same sense, and, in spite of the opposition of the Lord Mayor and most of the Aldermen, had carried at a Guildhall meeting an Address from the Common Council to the Commons, which the Commons received with great form and much expression of thanks; while all this had been done in the Army's interest, there had been much fainter counter-demonstrations, from either the Prelatists or the Presbyterians, than might have been expected. The Prelatists, believing their interference would do harm, had remained in dumb horror: only Dr. John Gauden and Dr, Henry Hammond had ventured on protestations in the King's behalf, addressed to Fairfax and the Army Council. The Presbyterians, having more liberty in the way of speech, had certainly not been silent. What indignation among them, what outcries, during the last seven weeks, over the suppression of all legal authority, and the monstrous usurpation of power by the Army-Grandees and their heretical adherents! Among the Presbyterian multitudes of London there had been no protester in this sense more brave than Prynne. Whatever could be done with pen and ink, or by vehement verbal messages, in addition to his published _Brief Memento_, from his durance in the King's Head Tavern, he had done, and continued to do. Clement Walker was hardly less active. From the Presbyterian Clergy of the City also, notwithstanding the exertions of Hugh Peters and others, in private conferences with them, to keep them from interfering, there did come voices of remonstrance. The Westminster Assembly, or what of the body then remained sitting, had signified their unanimous desire for the King's release; and forty-seven ministers, meeting at Sion College, had drawn up and signed a document, addressed to Fairfax, in which they protested most earnestly, in the name of Religion and general morality, and also of the Solemn League and Covenant, against the usurpation of power by the Army and the violence intended to the King's person. There had been manifestations to the same effect from Presbyterian ministers in various parts of the country, in which, it appears, even some of the Independent ministers had joined. Finally, there was all Presbyterian Scotland. What of it? The Scottish Parliament had met in Edinburgh on the 4th of January, and had been greatly agitated by the news, received from the Earl of Lothian, Sir John Chiesley, and William Glendinning, then acting as Scottish Commissioners in London, "how that above 160 members of the House of Commons were extrudit the House by the blasphemous Army," and how there was no doubt but the King's life was in peril. There had been an express to London in consequence, with instructions to the Commissioners to do their best, by every form of entreaty and remonstrance, to avert the dreaded catastrophe. Both before and during the Trial, accordingly, these Commissioners, aided by Mr. Blair and other Commissioners of the Scottish Kirk, had been going to and fro in London, reasoning, threatening, and imploring. Charles Stuart was King of Scotland; the whole Scottish nation was loyal to Monarchy in him and in his race; from all the pulpits in Scotland there were prayers for him, and forgiveness of his past errors in pity of his present state; would the English nation dare, in defiance of all this, and in outrage of the League and Covenant, to put him to death? [Footnote: Commons Journals, Jan. 15, 1648-9; Neal's Puritans, III. 490-6; Whitlocke Jan. 3; Walker's History of Independency, Part II. 61-87; Balfour's Annals, III. 373 _et seq._ Life of Robert Blair (Wodrow Society), pp. 213-215.] All this before the King's trial had actually begun, or at least before his sentence. And what now that the sentence had been pronounced, and Charles in St. James's was making ready for his doom? The Trial had been swift; hardly more than the expectation of it can have reached foreign shores; of the actual sentence many parts of England were yet ignorant. Only at the centre, only in London itself, could there be interference at this last moment. To the last there were some efforts. After the sentence the pleadings and protests of the Scottish Commissioners became nearly frantic in their vehemence, the Presbyterianism of London too numb for farther expression itself, but speaking through the Scots. All to no effect. Nor was greater attention paid to the intercession of the only foreign Power that then made an effort to save Charles. The States- General of Holland had sent over a special embassy for the purpose; but, though the Ambassadors were in London on the 29th and were received that day with most ceremonious respect by the Commons as well as by the Lords, they knew that they had come on a vain errand. Why was all in vain? For one very simple and yet very sufficient reason. At the centre of England was a will that had made itself adamant, by express vow and deliberation beforehand, for the very hour which had now arrived, and that, amid all entreaties and pleadings of men, women, classes, corporations, and nations, would go through with the business that had been begun. Relentings there were near the centre, but not at the very centre. Fairfax had relented; Pennington had relented; others who had taken part in the Trial had relented; Vane, St. John, Skippon, Fiennes, leaders hitherto, had withdrawn from the work, and were looking on moodily; there was an agony over what was coming among many that had helped to bring it to pass. Only some fifty or sixty governing Englishmen, with OLIVER CROMWELL in the midst of them, were prepared for every responsibility, and stood inexorably to their task. _They_ were the will of England now, and they had the Army with them. What proportion of England besides went with them it might be difficult to estimate. One private Londoner, at all events, can be named, who approved thoroughly of their policy, and was ready to testify the same. While the sentenced King was at St. James's there were lying on Milton's writing- table in his house in High Holborn at least the beginnings of a pamphlet on which he had been engaged during the King's Trial, and in which, in vehement answer to the outcry of the Presbyterians generally, but with particular references also to the printed protests of Prynne, the appeals of the Prelatists Hammond and Gauden, and the interferences of the Scots and the Dutch, he was to defend all the recent acts of the Army, Pride's Purge included, justify the existing government of the Army-chiefs and the fragment of Parliament that assisted them, inculcate Republican beliefs on his countrymen, and prove to them above all this proposition: "_That it is lawful, and hath been held so through all ages, for any who have the power, to call to account a Tyrant, or wicked King, and, after due conviction, to depose and put him to death, if the ordinary Magistrate have neglected or denied to do it!_" The pamphlet was not to come out in time to bear practically on the deed which it justified; but, while the King was yet alive, it was planned, sketched, and in part written. [Footnote: Commons Journals, Jan, 22 and 29; Lords Journals, Jan. 29; Rushworth, VII. 1426-7; Milton's _Tenure of Kings and Magistrates_, and his _Def. Sec_.--That Milton's _Tenure of Kings and Magistrates_, though not published till after the King's death, had been on hand before, if not completed, might be inferred from the pamphlet itself, the language and _tense_ of some parts of which are scarcely explicable otherwise. But see his account of the composition of the pamphlet in his _Def. Sec_. He there says that the book did not come out till after the King's death, and consequently had no direct influence in bringing about that fact; but this very statement, and the sentences which precede it, confirm what is said in the text as to the time when the pamphlet was schemed and begun.] Actually on Monday, Jan. 29, while the Dutch Ambassadors were having their audiences with the two Houses, the Death-Warrant was out, as follows:-- "At the High Court of Justice for the Trying and Judging of Charles Stuart, King of England, January XXIXth, Anno Dom. 1648. "Whereas Charles Stuart, King of England, is and standeth convicted, attainted, and condemned of High Treason and other high Crimes, and sentence upon Saturday last was pronounced upon him by this Court to be put to death by the severing of his head from his body; of which sentence execution yet remaineth to be done: These are therefore to will and require you to see the said sentence executed in the open street before Whitehall upon the morrow, being the Thirtieth day of this instant month of January, between the hours of Ten in the morning and Five in the afternoon of the said day, with full effect. And for so doing this shall be your sufficient warrant. And these are to require all Officers and Soldiers and other the good people of this Nation to be assisting unto you in this service. Given under our hands and seals:-- "Jo. Bradshawe Ri. Deane Thos. Horton Tho. Grey Robert Tichborne J. Jones O. Cromwell H. Edwardes John Moore Edw. Whalley Daniel Blagrave Gilb. Millington M. Livesey Owen Rowe G. Fleetwood John Okey William Perfoy J. Alured J. Danvers Ad. Scrope Rob. Lilburne Jo. Bourchier James Temple Will. Say H. Ireton A. Garland Anth. Stapley Tho. Mauleverer Edm. Ludlowe Gre. Norton Har. Waller Henry Marten Tho. Challoner John Blakiston Vint. Potter Thomas Wogan J. Hutchinson Wm. Constable John Venn Willi. Goffe Rich. Ingoldesby Gregory Clements Tho. Pride Will. Cawley Jo. Downes Pe. Temple J. Barkestead Tho. Wayte T. Harrison Isaa. Ewer Tho. Scot J. Hewson John Dixwell Jo. Carew Hen. Smyth Valentine Wauton Miles Corbet. Per. Pelham Simon Mayne "To Colonel Francis Hacker, Colonel Huncks, and Lieutenant-Colonel Phayre; and to every of them." [Footnote: The original of this Warrant, a parchment eighteen inches wide and ten inches deep, is in the possession of the House of Lords, having been produced before that body by Colonel Hacker in 1660, and then retained. Mr. William J. Thorns, who has minutely inspected it, made it the subject of a curious and interesting inquiry in _Notes and Queries_, July 6 and July 13, 1872. He observes that the date of the Warrant itself, and the words "upon Saturday last" for the day of the sentence, are written over erasures and in a different hand from the rest, and that the word "Thirtieth" for the day of execution is inserted in a space too large for it; and, for this and other reasons, he arrives at the conclusion that we see the document now in its second state, and that a good number of the signatures were not attached to it on the 29th, but had been attached to it on an earlier day when it was in its first state. His conjecture, on the whole, is that it had been expected, at the private meeting of the Court on Friday the 2eth, when the sentence was _agreed upon,_ that it might be _pronounced_ that same day, and _executed_ the next day (Saturday the 27th), and that a warrant to that effect had then been drawn up and signed; but that, this idea having been abandoned, for whatever reason, and the Sentence not having been pronounced till Saturday, it was thought better, at the meeting on Monday the 29th, still to use the first Warrant with its signatures, only with the dates altered, and with additional signatures then obtained, than to write out a fresh warrant and apply for second signatures from absentees who had signed the first.--It is noteworthy that, though sixty-seven of the Commissioners had, as we have seen, virtually constituted themselves "the Regicides" by being present in Westminster Hall on Saturday when the Sentence was pronounced, and then standing up in assent to it, nine of these did not attach their names to the Warrant. They were Francis Allen, Thomas Andrews, General Hammond, Edmund Harvey, William Heveningham, Cornelius Holland, John Lisle, Nicholas Love, and Colonel Matthew Tomlinson. Subtract these _nine_ from the _sixty-seven,_ and the number of the signers to the Warrant ought to be _fifty-eight._ But they are _fifty-nine_. Who, then, is the _fifty- ninth_? Cromwell's young kinsman, Colonel Richard Ingoldsby, who, though a member of the Court, had attended none of its meetings till precisely that of the 29th, the date of the Warrant. Here comes in Clarendon's famous story, a distortion of some convenient rigmarole of Ingoldsby's own in later times. Ingoldsby, says Clarendon, "always abhorring the action in his heart," had purposely kept away from every meeting of the Court, till, chancing to look into the Painted Chamber on the fatal 29th, he was clutched by Cromwell, dragged to the table on which the Warrant lay, and compelled to sign it, Cromwell forcibly holding his hand and tracing the letters for him, with loud laughter at the joke! More by token, as Clarendon reports him, if his name on the Warrant "were compared with what he had ever writ himself," the difference would be seen! Unfortunately, Mr. Thoms, who has made this comparison, vouches that no difference can be detected, and that the name "Rich. Ingoldsby" in the Warrant "is as bold and free as signature can be," and could never have been written by a hand held by another's. _Ex uno omnes_. In the hard straits that were coming eleven years hence, there were to be others of the signers of the Warrant, besides Ingoldsby, who were to aver that they did it under compulsion, Cromwell and Henry Marten sitting beside each other, smearing each other's faces with ink in their fun, and overbearing the scrupulous with jeers or threats. The simple fact I believe to be (and this I do believe) that Cromwell was anxious that the Warrant should be well signed, and reasoned, or perhaps remonstrated, with some waverers, as he had done with young Hammond of the Isle of Wight in a similar case two months before. Cromwell was now in his fiftieth year.] In the King's last hours he had offers of the spiritual services of Messrs. Calamy, Vines, Caryl, Dell, and other Presbyterian ministers, and hardly had these gone when Mr. John Goodwin of Coleman Street came to St. James's, all by himself, with the like offer. They were all dismissed with thanks, the King intimating that he desired no other attendance than that of Bishop Juxon. Late into the night of the 29th, accordingly, the Bishop remained with the King in private. After he had gone, Charles spent about two hours more in reading and praying, and then lay down to sleep, Mr. Herbert lying on the pallet-bed close to his. For about four hours he slept soundly; but very early in the morning, when it was still dark, he awoke, opened the curtain of his bed, and called Mr. Herbert. The call disturbed Herbert suddenly from a dreamy doze into which he had fallen after a very restless night; and, when he got up and was assisting the King to dress by the light of the wax-cake that had been kept burning in the chamber as usual, the King observed a peculiarly scared look on his face. Herbert, on being asked the cause, told his Majesty he had had an extraordinary dream. The King desiring to know what it was, Herbert related it. In his doze, he said, he had heard some one knock at the chamber-door. Thinking it might be Colonel Hacker, and not willing to disturb the King till he himself heard the knock, he had lain still. A second time, however, the knock came; and this time, he thought, his Majesty had heard the knock, and told him to open the door and see who it was. He did go to the door, and, on opening it, was surprised to see a figure standing there in pontifical habits whom he knew to be the late Lord Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr. Laud. He knew him well, having often seen him in his life. The figure said he had something to say to the King, and desired to enter. Then, as Herbert thought, the King having been told who it was, and having given permission, the Archbishop had entered, making a profound obeisance to the King in the middle of the room, a second on coming nearer, and at last falling on his knees as the King gave him his hand to kiss. Then the King raised him, and the two went to the window together, and discoursed there, Herbert keeping at a distance, and not knowing of what they talked, save that he noticed the King's face to be very pensive, and heard the Archbishop give a deep sigh. After a little they ceased to talk, and the Archbishop, again kissing the King's hand, retired slowly, with his face still to the King, making three reverences as before. The third reverence was so low that, as Herbert thought, the Archbishop had fallen prostrate on his face, and he had been in the act of stepping to help him up when he had been awakened by the King's call. The impression had been so lively that he had still looked about the room as if all had been real.--Herbert having thus told his dream, the King said it was remarkable, the rather because, if Laud had been alive, and they had been talking together as in the dream, it was very likely, albeit he loved the Archbishop well, he might have said something to him that would have occasioned his sigh. There was yet more conversation between the King and Herbert by themselves, the King selecting with some care the dress he was to wear, and especially requiring an extra under-garment because of the sharpness of the weather, lest he should shake from cold, and people should attribute it to fear. While they were still conversing, poor Herbert in such anguish as may be imagined, Dr. Juxon arrived, at the precise hour the King had appointed the night before. An hour or two still had to elapse before the last scene. Charles arranged with Herbert about the distribution of some of his favourite books, with some trinkets. His Bible, with annotations in his own hand, and some special accompanying instructions, was to be kept for the Prince of Wales; a large silver ring-sundial of curious device was to go to the Duke of York; a copy of King James's Works, with another book, was left for the Duke of Gloucester; for the Princess Elizabeth Hooker's Ecclesiastical Polity, Bishop Andrewes's Sermons, and some other things. These arrangements made, the King was for an hour alone with Juxon, during which time he received the Communion. Then, Herbert having been re-admitted, the Bishop again went to prayer, and read the 27th chapter of Matthew; which, by a coincidence in which the King found comfort, chanced to be one of the lessons in the Rubric for that day. While they were yet thus religiously engaged, there came Colonel Hacker's knock. They allowed him to knock twice before admitting him; and then, entering with some trepidation, he announced that it was time to go to Whitehall. The King told him to go forth, and he would follow presently. It was about ten o'clock in the morning (Tuesday, Jan. 30) when the procession was formed, from St. James's, through the Park, to Whitehall. With Bishop Juxon on his right hand, Colonel Tomlinson on his left, Herbert following close, and a guard of halberdiers in front and behind, the King walked, at his usual very fast pace, through the Park, soldiers lining the whole way, with colours flying and drums beating, and such a noise rising from the gathered crowd that it was hardly possible for any two in the procession to hear each other speak. Herbert had been told to bring with him the silver clock or watch that hung usually by the King's bedside, and on their way through the Park the King asked what o'clock it was and gave Herbert the watch to keep. A rude fellow from the mob kept abreast with the King for some time, staring at his face as if in wonder, till the Bishop had him turned away. There is a tradition that, when the procession came to the end of the Park, near the present passage from Spring Gardens, the King pointed to a tree, and said that tree had been planted by his brother Henry. Arrived at last at the stairs leading into Whitehall, he was taken, through the galleries of the Palace, to the bed- chamber he had usually occupied while residing there; and here he had some farther time allowed him for rest and devotion with Juxon alone. Having sent Herbert for some bread and wine, he ate a mouthful of the bread and drank a small glass of claret. Here Herbert broke down so completely that he felt he could not accompany the King to the scaffold, and Juxon had to take from him the white satin cap he had brought by the King's orders to be put on at the fatal moment. At last, a little after twelve o'clock, Hacker's signal was heard outside, and Juxon and Herbert went on their knees, affectionately kissing the King's hands. Juxon being old and feeble, the King helped him to rise, and then, commanding the door to be opened, followed Hacker. With soldiers for his guard, he was conveyed, along some of the galleries of the old Palace, now no longer extant, to the New Banqueting Hall, which Inigo Jones had built, and which still exists. Besides the soldiers, many men and women had crowded into the Hall, from whom, as his Majesty passed on, there was heard a general murmur of commiseration and prayer, the soldiers themselves not objecting, but appearing grave and respectful. Through a passage broken in the wall of the Banqueting Hall, or more probably through one of the windows dismantled for the purpose, Charles emerged on the scaffold, in the open street, fronting the site of the present Horse Guards. The scaffold was hung with black, and carpeted with black, the block and the axe in the middle; a number of persons already stood upon it, among whom were several men with black masks concealing their faces; in the street in front, all round the scaffold, were companies of foot and horse; and beyond these, as far as the eye could reach, towards Charing Cross on the one side and Westminster Abbey on the other, was a closely-packed multitude of spectators. The King, walking on the scaffold, looked earnestly at the block, and said something to Hacker as if he thought it were too low; after which, taking out a small piece of paper, on which he had jotted some notes, he proceeded to address those standing near him. What he said may have taken about ten minutes or a quarter of an hour to deliver, and appears, from the short-hand report of it which has been preserved, to have been rather incoherent. "Now, Sirs," he said at one point, "I must show you both how you are out of the way, and I will put you in the way. First, you are out of the way; for certainly all the way you ever have had yet, as I could find by anything, is in the way of conquest. Certainly this is an ill way; for conquest, Sirs, in my opinion, is never just, except there be a good just cause, either for matter of wrong, or just title; and then, if you go beyond it, the first quarrel that you have to it, _that_ makes it unjust at the end that was just at first." A little farther on, when he had begun a sentence, "For the King indeed I will not," a gentleman chanced to touch the axe. "Hurt not the axe," he interrupted; "_that_ may hurt me," and then resumed. "As for the King, the Laws of the Land will clearly instruct you for that; therefore, because it concerns my own particular, I only give you a touch of it. For the People: and truly I desire their liberty and freedom as much as anybody whomsoever; but I must tell you that their liberty and freedom consists in having of Government those laws by which their life and their goods may be most their own. It is not having _share_ in Government, Sirs; that is nothing pertaining to them. A subject and a sovereign are clean different things; and therefore, until they do that--I mean, that you put the People in that liberty, as I say--certainly they will never enjoy themselves." In conclusion he said he would have liked to have a little more time, so as to have put what he meant to say "in a little more order and a little better digested," and gave the paper containing the heads of his speech to Juxon. As he had said nothing specially about Religion, Juxon reminded him of the omission. "I thank you very heartily, my Lord," said Charles, "for that I had almost forgotten it. In truth, Sirs, my conscience in Religion, I think it very well known to the world; and therefore I declare before you all that I die a Christian, according to the profession of the Church of England as I found it left me by my father; and this honest man (the Bishop) I think will witness it." There were some more words, addressed particularly to Hacker and the other officers; and once more, seeing a gentleman go too near the axe, he called out, "Take heed of the axe; pray, take heed of the axe." Then, taking the white satin cap from Juxon, he put it on, and, with the assistance of Juxon and the chief executioner, pushed his hair all within it. Some final sentences of pious import then passed between the King and Juxon, and the King, having taken off his cloak and George, and given the latter to Juxon, with the word "Remember," knelt down, and put his neck on the block. After a second or two he stretched out his hands, and the axe descended, severing the head from the body at one blow. There was a vast shudder through the mob, and then a universal groan. [Footnote: Herbert's Memoirs, 183--194; Wood's Ath. (repeating Herbert), IV. 32--36; Rushworth, VJI 1428-1431; Fuller's Church Hist. (ed. 1842) TTI. 500, 501; Disraeli's Charts J. (ed. 1831) V. 449-50; Cunningham's London, _Whitehall_. Herbert only mentions the fact of his dream in the body of his Memoir; but the detailed account of it in his own words, written in 1680, is given in the Appendix, 217-222, and in a note in Wood's Ath. as above.--The coherance of Charles's last speech seems to have struck Fuller, who says that, "though taken in shorthand by one eminent therein," it is done defectively. I rather think it is punctually literal. I find in the Stationers' Registers this entry, under date Jan. 31, 1648-9: "Peter Cole entered for his copy, under the hand of Mr. Mabbott, King Charles his Speech upon the Scaffold, with the manner of his Suffering, on Jan. 30, 1648." I suppose this is the Report afterwards repeated by Rushworth, though objected to by Fuller. Was Rush worth the reporter?] Immediately after the execution Juxon and the sorrowing Herbert were allowed to take charge of the corpse. Embalmed, coffined in wood and lead, and covered with a velvet pall, it lay for some days in St. James's Palace, where crowds came to see it. There was some difficulty about the place of burial. Charles himself having left no directions on the subject, Juxon and Herbert thought that the fittest place would be King Henry the Seventh's Chapel, in Westminster Abbey, containing as it did the tombs of his four immediate predecessors, and those of his grandmother Mary, Queen of Scots, and his brother Prince Henry. The authorities, however, considering that this place was too public and would attract inconvenient crowds, Juxon and Herbert next proposed the Royal Chapel in Windsor, where some of his earlier predecessors had been buried, and among them Henry VIII. To this no objection was made, and on the 7th of February the body was conveyed from St. James's to Windsor in a hearse drawn by six horses, and followed by four mourning coaches. Colonel Whichcot, the Governor of the Castle, having been shown the order, allowed Herbert and those with him to select whatever spot they chose. They thought first of what was called "the tomb-house," built by Cardinal Wolsey, and intended by him as a splendid sepulchre for his master, Henry VIII.; but they decided against it, partly because it was not within the Royal Chapel, but only adjoining it, and partly because they were uncertain whether Henry VIII. (of whose exact place of burial the tradition had been lost) might not actually have been buried in the "tomb-house," and they recollected that this particular predecessor of Charles was not one of his favourites. He had been heard, in occasional discourses, to express dislike of Henry's conduct in appropriating Church revenues and demolishing religious edifices. They therefore fixed on the vault where Edward IV. was interred, on the north side of the choir, near the altar. The vault was opened for the purpose, and preparations for the interment there were going on, when (Feb. 8) the Duke of Richmond, the Marquis of Hertford, and the Earls of Southampton and Lindsey, with Dr. Juxon, arrived from London, specially authorized by the House of Commons to attend the funeral, and the Duke empowered to arrange all wholly as he thought fit. Herbert and those with him having then resigned the duty into the hands of these great persons, there was a new inquiry as to the best spot for the grave. The "tomb-house" was again looked at, and the choir of the Chapel diligently re-investigated. At length, a spot in the choir having been detected where the pavement sounded hollow when struck- -"being about the middle of the choir, over against the eleventh seat on the Sovereign's side"--the stones and earth were removed, and a vault was disclosed; in which there were two leaden coffins close together, one very large and the other small. From the velvet palls covering them, some portions in their original purple colour, and others turned into fox- tawny or coal-black by the damp, there was no doubt that they were the coffins of Henry VIII. and his third wife, Lady Jane Seymour. As there was just room for one coffin more in the vault, it was determined that the fact of its being the vault of Henry VIII, now accidentally discovered after so long a time, should be no bar to the burial of Charles in the otherwise suitable vacancy. Accordingly, on Friday the 9th of February, the body was brought from the royal bed-chamber, where it had been meanwhile lying, to St. George's Hall, and thence, with slow and solemn pace, to the Chapel. It was borne on the shoulders of some gentlemen in mourning; the noblemen in mourning held up the pall; and Colonel Whichcot, with several gentlemen, officers, and attendants, followed. As they were moving from the Hall to the Chapel, the sky, which had been previously clear, darkened with snow, which fell so fast that, before they reached the Chapel, the black velvet pall was white with the flakes. The coffin having been set down near the vault, ex-Bishop Juxon would have read the burial-service over it according to the form of the Book of Common Prayer; but, though permission to do so seemed to be implied in the wording of the order granted to the Duke of Richmond by the House of Commons, and though the noblemen present were desirous that it should be done, Colonel Whichcot did not think himself entitled to allow any service except that of the new Presbyterian Directory. Without any service at all, therefore, save what may have been rendered by the tears and muttered words of those who stood by, the coffin was deposited, about three o'clock in the afternoon, in the vacant space in the vault. A kind of scarf or scroll of lead, about five inches broad, had been soldered to it, bearing this inscription in capital letters: "KING CHARLES, 1648." At the time of his death, King Charles was forty-eight years, two months, and eleven days old, and he had reigned twenty-three years and ten months. [Footnote: Herbert's Memoirs, 194-216; Commons Journals, Feb. 8; Fuller's, Church Hist,. III. 501-4.--In March 1813 some workmen, employed in making a passage from under the choir of the Royal Chapel at Windsor to a mausoleum erected by George III. in the "tomb- house" described in the text, accidentally broke into the vault containing the bodies of Charles I., Henry VIII., and Queen Jane Seymour. The fact having been reported to the Prince Regent, a careful examination was ordered. It was made April 1, 1813, in the presence of the Prince Regent himself, the Duke of Cumberland, Count Munster, the Dean of Windsor, Sir Henry Halford (Physician to the King and the Prince Regent), and Mr. B. C. Stevenson. The coffin of Charles I. was examined with great minuteness, and corresponded in every particular with the account given by Herbert. When the black velvet pall had been removed, the coffin was found to be of plain lead, with the leaden scroll encircling it, bearing the inscription "KING CHARLES, 1648," in large legible characters. A square opening was then cut in the upper lid, so that the contents might be clearly seen. An internal wooden coffin was found to be very much decayed, and the body was found to be carefully wrapped up in cerecloth, into the folds of which there had been poured abundantly some unctuous substance mixed with resin. With considerable difficulty the cerecloth was removed from the face, and then, despite the discolouring and the decay of some parts, the features of Charles I., as represented in coins and busts, and especially in Vandyke's portraits of him, could be distinctly recognised. There was the oval face, with the peaked beard. When, by farther removal of the cerecloth, they had disengaged the entire head, they found it to be loose from the body. On taking it out, they saw that "the muscles of the neck had evidently retracted themselves considerably, and the fourth cervical vertebra was found to be cut through its substance transversely, leaving the surfaces of the divided portions perfectly smooth and even--an appearance which could have been produced only by a heavy blow indicted by a very sharp instrument." The hair, which was thick at the back, looked nearly black; but, when a portion of it was afterwards cleaned and dried, the colour was found to be a beautiful dark brown,--that of the beard a redder brown. The body was not examined below the neck; and, the head having been replaced, the coffin was soldered up again and the vault closed. (See account by Sir Henry Halford, quoted by Bliss in his edition of Wood's Ath. IV. 39-42.)]