• • 
 
 
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LONGMANS' ENGLISH CLASSICS 
 
 EDITED BY 
 
 GEORGE RICE CARPENTER, A.B. 
 
 PROFESSOR OF RHETORIC AND ENGLISH COMPOSITION IN 
 COLUMBIA COLLEGE 
 
 With Full Notes, Introductions, Bibliographies, and Other 
 Explanatory and Illustrative Matter. Crown Svo. Cloth. 
 
 1. IRVLNG'S TALES OF A TRAVELLER. With Introduction 
 
 by Professor Brander Matthews, of Columbia College, 
 and Notes by the Editor of the Series. 
 
 2. GEORGE ELIOT'S SILAS MARNER. Edited by Professor 
 
 Robert Herrick, of the University of Chicago. 
 
 3. SCOTT'S WOODSTOCK. Edited by Professor Bliss Perry, 
 
 of Princeton College. 
 
 4. DEFOES HISTORY OF THE PLAGUE IN LONDON. 
 
 Edited by Professor G. R. Carpenter, of Columbia Col- 
 lege. 
 
 5. WEBSTER'S FIRST BUNKER HILL ORATION, together 
 
 with other Addresses relating to the Revolution. Edited 
 by Professor F. N. Scott, of the University of Michigan. 
 
 6. MACAULAY'S ESSAY ON MILTON. Edited by J. G. 
 
 Croswell, Esq., Head-Master of the Brearley School, 
 formerly Assistant Professor in Harvard University. 
 
 7. SHAKSPERE'S A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM. Edited 
 
 by Professor G. P. Baker, of Harvard University. 
 
 8. MILTON'S L'ALLEGRO, IL PENSEROSO, COMUS, AND 
 
 LYCIDAS. Edited by Professor W. P. Trent, of the Uni- 
 versity of the South. 
 
 9. SHAKSPERE'S MERCHANT OF VENICE. Edited by Pro- 
 
 fessor Francis B. Gummere, of Haverford College. 
 
 Other volumes are in preparation. 
 

 THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY 
 (After a photograph by Claudet) 
 
Xongmans' lEnglfsb Classics 
 
 MACAULAY'S 
 
 ESSAY ON MILTON 
 
 EDITED 
 
 WITH NOTES AND AN INTRODUCTION 
 
 JAMES GKEENLEAE CROSWELL, A.B. 
 
 HEAD-MASTER OF THE BREARLEY SCHOOL; FORMERLY ASSISTANT PROFESSOR OF 
 GREEK IN HARVARD UNIVERSITY 
 
 1 OF 
 
 ?•*«& 
 
 
 I 
 
 NEW YOEK 
 LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO. 
 
 AND LONDON 
 1895 
 

 Copyright, 1895 
 
 BY 
 
 LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO. 
 
 TROW DIRECTORY 
 
 PRINTING AND BOOKBINDING COMPANY 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
PREFACE 
 
 It is hard for an editor of a book designed for formal 
 study to determine precisely what parts of the learning 
 that has gathered about his subject should be regarded as 
 indispensable to young students. It is harder still for the 
 editor of a book designated, in the new uniform entrance 
 requirements, for current reading and not for formal 
 study, to determine what he may assume as already a part 
 of the pupil's knowledge. Two methods of treatment at 
 once suggest themselves. He may annotate the text very 
 sparingly, on the assumption that an intelligent boy knows 
 enough to read ordinary English prose literature under- 
 standingly, and should be forced to find out for himself the 
 meaning of words or allusions that he does not compre- 
 hend. Or he may annotate profusely, on the much 
 sounder assumption that boys and girls are not living dic- 
 tionaries and encyclopaedias, and scarcely ought to be ex- 
 pected to interrupt reading which they are encouraged to 
 enjoy in order to search various volumes for information 
 that might just as well be put at once before them. Both 
 extremes the editor of the present volume has tried to 
 avoid. He has endeavored to give the pupil such facts 
 as will enable him to read rapidly and understanding^ ; 
 he has endeavored also to stimulate in the pupil an intelli- 
 gent curiosity in regard to matters worth further investi- 
 gation and further knowledge. 
 
 This edition of Macaulay's essay follows the authoritative 
 text of which Longmans, Green, and Co. are the pub- 
 lishers. J. G. C. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Introduction ix 
 
 Suggestions for Teachers and Students . . . xxxviii 
 
 Chronological Table 1-lii 
 
 Essay on Milton 1 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 (Summary of Macaulay's Essay.) 
 
 §§ 1-8. Prefatory Remarks. Description of a theological work by 
 John Milton, lately discovered. 
 
 §§ 8-49. First Division of the Essay: Milton's Poetry. 
 
 §§ 8-18. First topic : Is Milton's place among the greatest masters ? 
 Yes, for he triumphed over the difficulty of writing poetry in the 
 midst of a highly civilized society. A discussion of the relation of 
 poetry to civilization. 
 
 §§ 18-20. Second topic : Milton's Latin poetry. 
 
 %% 20-25. Third topic : Some striking characteristics of Milton's poetic 
 methods. A description of the effect produced by the peculiar sug- 
 gestioeness of the words he uses. Examples, L Allegro and 11 Pen- 
 seroso. 
 
 §§ 25-30. Fourth topic : Milton's dramatic poetry. Like the Greek 
 drama, it has much of the lyric character. The Greek drama and 
 Samson Agonistes ; Comus and the Italian Masques. 
 
 §§ 30-47. Fifth topic : Paradise Lost. Parallel between Milton and 
 Dante. A discussion of Milton s superiority in the management of 
 the agency of supernatural beings. 
 
 §§ 47-49. Sixth topic : The sonnets. 
 
 §§ 49-88. Second Division of the Essay : Milton's conduct as 
 a citizen. The conduct of his party associates. §§ 49-72. 
 First topic : Milton's joining the party of the Parliament in 1642. 
 §§ 49-51. Under the impressions derived from seventeenth and eigh- 
 teenth century literature, many Englishmen fail to see that the Long 
 Parliament was defending principles of government accepted, by all 
 England since 1688, and now struggling for recognition in the rest 
 of the world. §§ 51-57. The rebellion of Parliament against 
 Gharles I. is therefore justified by a comparison, point by point, with 
 the glorious Bevolution dethroning James II. §§ 57-72. Admitting, 
 then, the justice of Parliament's quarrel with the king, was their 
 rebellion too strong a measure f When are revolutions justified f 
 
X INTRODUCTION 
 
 §g 72-78. Second topic : Miltons association with the Regicides and 
 Cromwell. §§ 72-75. The execution of Charles not so very different 
 a measure from the deposition of James. But even if one disap- 
 >j roves <>f the regicide one may admit the necessity of defending it ut 
 that time. §§ 75-78. Discuss. on of CronacelCs good government 
 compared with Parliament' s betrayal of trust on one sine arid the 
 Stuart misgomrnment on the other. 
 
 §§ 78-87. Third topic : Milton's contemporaries classified and described. 
 §§ 79-84. The Puritans. § 84. The Heathens. § 85. The Royal- 
 ists. § 86. Milton's own character compounded of many different 
 strains. 
 
 §§ 87-92. Third Division of the Essay : Milton s Prose-writ - 
 ings. His pamphlets devoted to the emancipation of human 
 thought. 
 
 §§ 92 to End. Conclusion. A vision of Milton. 
 
 1. The Essay on Milton was published in the Edinburgh 
 Review in August, 1825. The author was born in 1800, 
 and was thus at the date of publication just twenty-five 
 years old. Except for some papers in Knight's Quarterly, 
 one of which, " Conversation between Mr. Abraham Cow- 
 ley and Mr. John Milton touching the Great Civil "War," 
 covers some of the ground of this essay, there was prac- 
 tically as yet nothing of Macaulay's in print. Yet 
 though it was thus an experiment from a comparatively 
 untried man, this article proved to be one of those aston- 
 ishing successes which now and then befall new authors. 
 Like Lord Byron, the young Macaulay " awoke one morn- 
 ing and found himself famous." He became at once after 
 the publication of this essay one of the best-known men in 
 England. "The family breakfast-table in Bloomsburv/' 
 says his sister, " was covered with cards of invitation to 
 dinner from every quarter of London." He was made a 
 friend by men of letters, scholars, and statesmen ; and 
 from this time his life ran on in that almost unbroken 
 current of agreeable and well-rewarded industry which 
 has been made the subject of one of the most charming 
 
INTROD TJCTION xi 
 
 biographies in the world, Sir George Trevelyan's "Life 
 and Letters of Lord Macaulay." 
 
 2. As we are thus dealing with what was practically 
 Macaulay's first great work, we might naturally expect to 
 find in it some of the characteristic weaknesses of a novice. 
 Macaulay himself, in the preface to the collection of his 
 essays made in 1843, found this fault with it. "The 
 criticism on Milton/' says he, " which was written when 
 the author was just from college, contains scarcely a para- 
 graph such as his matured judgment approves, and re- 
 mains overloaded with faulty and ungraceful ornament." 
 Now, blemishes of this sort, to be sure, do appear. Mat- 
 thew Arnold, for instance, well objects to the description 
 of Milton's " conception of love" (page 45) that it is, when 
 analyzed, nothing but nonsense ; Frederic Harrison well 
 objects to his description of the Eestoration (page 70) that 
 it is really too much to say of the careless and good-nat- 
 ured Charles II. that he was " a cruel idol propitiated by 
 the best blood of England's children." Any careful 
 reader of the essay will find almost anywhere other similar 
 exaggerations of phrase. It is not true, for instance, that 
 Milton died in a "hovel" or in "disgrace;" nor would 
 Milton's daughters have "contested" with anybody the 
 privilege of reading Greek to him. But, on the whole, 
 considered as the work of a "young man just from col- 
 lege," the essay is particularly free from the faults of 
 youth. Such faults as it has are at worst pleasing faults, 
 characteristic of Macaulay's best writing all his life long. 
 It is full of vivid color, smartly written, and showing 
 already the certain touch of a master of historical compo- 
 sition. 
 
 3. But there are criticisms which have been made upon 
 the essay with more justice than these. For one thing, 
 critics have said that, considered as a literary study, it does 
 not contain a thorough discussion of Milton's work. Very 
 
Xll INTRODUCTION 
 
 important poems are in fact ignored entirely. They com- 
 plain of a memorial of Milton which does not mention 
 "The Ode on the Nativity " at all, that poem which Hal- 
 lam called "the most beautiful poem in the English lan- 
 guage," or even allude to "Lycidas," which Pattison says 
 is "the high- water mark of English Poesy and of Milton's 
 own production." Then again, to other critics, the tone 
 of perpetual eulogy of Milton's conduct seems over-strained 
 and almost too contentious. The thing sounds like an 
 argument in a debate, wherein the reader will finally be 
 expected to give a vote. But there is a special reason in 
 Macaulay's situation not only for the narrow scope of the 
 treatment of Milton but also for the argumentative strain. 
 4. Political prejudice in Macaulay's day still interfered 
 with men's estimate of John Milton. The judgment of 
 society in 1825, which is reflected in the Waverley Novels, 
 like " Woodstock," for instance, was the judgment which 
 might be passed upon Milton's work by a good English 
 Tory, in a day when, " a youth of Tory family," says 
 Lord Cockburn, " who was discovered to have a leaning to 
 the doctrines of the opposition, was considered a lost son." 
 Nothing contributed more to strengthen and to prolong 
 the unjust views of the Tories about Milton than the uni- 
 versal reading of the life of Milton composed by the 
 great eighteenth-century critic, Dr. Samuel Johnson. It 
 was so good a book that in 1825 it was, so to speak, the 
 regular authoritative source of information about Milton. 
 But Dr. Johnson was haunted by the tradition of the cava- 
 liers that any rebel against the king must have been either 
 a self-deceived hypocrite or else "dishonest." Apparently 
 he thought this evil thing about Milton. No one can im- 
 agine without reading the book how readily this extraordi- 
 nary biographer takes any chance to discredit the motives 
 of Milton's acts, and how much this general prejudice 
 against the poet's political conduct blinds him to the liter- 
 
INTRODUCTION Xlll 
 
 ary quality of Milton's work. Furthermore, the Doctor's 
 judgment of Milton's work, even where he forgets his 
 politics, is warped by continual reference to conventional 
 rules which he considered authoritative principles in aes- 
 thetics. There is a Toryism even in his literary sympa- 
 thies. A few quotations from the "Life" will exhibit 
 this odd tone, and will explain why we hear in the Essay 
 so much about Dr. Johnson, as well as about " certain 
 critics," which phrase usually means Dr. Johnson. 
 
 5. First, Dr. Johnson makes all the use he can of doubt- 
 ful notices in Milton's biographers to the possible discredit 
 of the poet's character. A good example is his emphatic, 
 reference to Aubrey's incorrect statement that Milton was 
 " whipt " at college, or, in Johnsonese, " suffered the pub- 
 lic indignity of corporal correction." Secondly, Dr. John- 
 son twists the most innocent and honorable acts into causes 
 of offence and ridicule when he recalls Milton's relations to 
 Church and King. For instance, when the civil war broke 
 out, Milton gave up his journey to Italy, closed the " sweet- 
 scented manuscript of youth," and returned at once to give 
 his life to the Puritan cause. He became, as Macaulay 
 says, "the devoted and eloquent literary champion " of the 
 principles of liberty. While thus contending on the side 
 of Parliament by his pen, he supported himself by teach- 
 ing a few pupils. " He taught," says Philips, one of the 
 scholars, his sister's son, " only relations and the sons of 
 gentlemen that were his friends ; he never set up for a 
 publick school to teach all the young fry of a parish." At 
 the present day this act is justly considered one of his best 
 titles to our respect and admiration. But listen to the 
 Tory Doctor. " Let not our veneration for Milton," says 
 Johnson, f ' forbid us to look with some degree of merri- 
 ment on great promises and small performance, on the 
 man who hastens home because his countrymen are con- 
 tending for their liberty, and when he reaches the scene 
 
 to 
 
xiv INTRODUCTION 
 
 of action vapours away his patriotism in a private boarding 
 school." Again, Milton's pamphlets doubtless were writ- 
 ten in a savage tone. KTo editorial contests in any political 
 controversy of our day could now be conducted so fiercely. 
 " Milton's capacity for emotion/' says Pattison, " when 
 once he became champion of a cause, could not be con- 
 tained within the bounds of ordinary speech. It breaks 
 into terrific blasts of vituperation, beneath which the very 
 language creaks, as the timbers of a ship in a storm." But 
 Johnson's word for this Miltonic wrath is "malignity." 
 "Hell grows darker at his frown," quotes the Doctor. 
 
 6. These hostile feelings might be pardoned to the devout 
 Toryism of Johnson if he had kept them for the life and 
 political acts of Milton. What Macaulay could not pardon 
 was the jealous tone of his literary criticism. Who, in- 
 deed, could accept calmly this remark, applied in Johnson's 
 "Life" to the great Sonnet XXIII. ? "His wife died, 
 and he honoured her memory with a poor sonnet." Or 
 this, of the splendid testimonial to Cromwell ? " Caesar, 
 when he assumed the perpetual dictatorship, had not 
 more servile or more elegant flattery." Or this, about 
 Lycidas ? " The diction is harsh, the rhymes uncertain, 
 the numbers unpleasing. Its form is that of a pastoral ; 
 easy, vulgar, and therefore disgusting." The sonnets Dr. 
 Johnson naturally hated ; they are full of Puritanism. But 
 he might have found better words to say of them than 
 these : "Of the best [sonnets] it can only be said they are 
 not bad, and perhaps only the eighth and twenty-first are 
 truly entitled to this slender commendation." Even over 
 "Paradise Lost," whose excellences are generally com- 
 mended by him, though accounted for rather curiously, 
 Johnson has to quarrel with the poet for what he main- 
 tains to be his illogical confusions of spirit and matter and 
 his incongruous pictures of angelic substance. Finally, 
 Milton's splendid style, which Matthew Arnold named the 
 
INTRODUCTION XV 
 
 only specimen in our literature of the " grand style " of 
 Homer and Dante, Dr. Johnson asserts is founded "on a 
 perverse and pedantic principle."" All this is certainly the 
 product of a critical faculty judging through fogs of polit- 
 ical prejudice and under the iron rules of dogmatic critical 
 tradition. 
 
 7. But the controversial purposes of Macaulay in the 
 article on Milton published in the great Whig review went 
 further than the holding of a critical tournament with Dr. 
 Johnson. All the second half of the essay has little to do 
 with literature. It is devoted to the condemnation of the 
 Stuarts, and the eulogy of the Puritans, and it has a 
 warmth reflected from Macaulay's present political sym- 
 pathies, and from the new-born ardor for freedom of the 
 young English Liberals of 1825. Under cover of a histor- 
 ical study of John Milton, Macaulay has here written a 
 very good Whig party pamphlet. A few words, therefore, 
 in explanation of the contemporary political situation of 
 1825 will make the spirit of the latter part of the essay 
 clearer and perhaps more interesting to readers of the pres- 
 ent day. 
 
 8. The year 1825. was a year full of storm in many quar- 
 ters of the sky. "Those mighty principles which have 
 worked their way into the depths of American forests, 
 which have roused Greece from the slavery and degrada- 
 tion of two thousand years, and which, from one end of 
 Europe to the other, have kindled an unquenchable fire in 
 the hearts of the oppressed and loosed the knees of the 
 oppressors with an unwonted fear/' were likewise working 
 in the hearts of young Englishmen of Macaulay's age. 
 Two opposite ideals of government, likened by Macaulay 
 to the two gods of the Persian theology, Oromasdes 
 and Arimanes, were standing face to face in Europe as 
 they stood in the days of the Stuarts. In England the 
 party of popular government was represented by the 
 
xvi INTRODUCTION 
 
 Whigs and the Liberal section of the Tory party acting 
 under Canning ; the party of firm monarchical principles 
 was represented by the King (George IV. ), the Prime 
 Minister, Lord Liverpool, — the older Tory, party, contain- 
 ing far the larger part of English society. In Europe at 
 large the principle of firm despotic authority was then 
 maintained by the " Holy Alliance." This was a union 
 formed by the monarchs of Russia, Austria, and Prussia, 
 and largely directed by the policy of Prince Metternich, 
 the Austrian minister. This alliance had been first made 
 after Waterloo, when there fell upon all Europe a great 
 desire for peace. Strong government under well-consti- 
 tuted authority seemed desirable then to every nation. All 
 were weary of the upturnings of the French Revolution. 
 These monarchs guaranteed that in all Europe there should 
 be no more disturbance. " Useful or necessary changes 
 in legislation," they said in a famous circular letter, "and 
 in the administration of states ought only to emanate 
 from the free-will and the intelligent and well-weighed 
 conviction of those whom God has rendered responsible 
 for power." This was a tone acceptable even to English 
 policy in that year. But opposition was sure to come soon, 
 and, oddly enough, the first opposition to the principles of 
 the alliance occurred in Spain. Spain had been restored, 
 after the overthrow of Napoleon, to its old Bourbon king, 
 Ferdinand the Seventh. Ferdinand had promptly reversed 
 all measures of progress taken in that kingdom since 
 1812, and thereby quarrelled with his liberal subjects. 
 Serious rioting resulted ; in spite of the efforts of the 
 Holy Alliance in the king's cause, neither side was com- 
 pletely successful. The infection of revolt spread to the 
 Spanish colonies in America. They seized the moment 
 to rebel against Spain, and under the leadership of men 
 like the great Bolivar, in the "depths of the American 
 forests," the colonies broke away from the mother-coun- 
 
ItfTR OB UGTtON xvii 
 
 try and founded the present South American republics, 
 All this movement was watched in England with much 
 sympathy for the insurgents, Young Englishmen even 
 served in the armies and navies of the South American 
 rebels. Next came Italy. In Naples also there was at 
 this time an absolute monarch of Spanish descent. Here, 
 also, the people rebelled and secured a constitution. But, 
 though not successful in Spanish affairs, the Holy Alli- 
 ance succeeded in Italy in crushing the popular move- 
 ment. Austrian troops were sent in and took away, in the 
 name of religion and good government, the hopes of free- 
 dom which the Neapolitans and Sicilians had begun to 
 enjoy. Still another uprising was in Macaulay^s mind as 
 he wrote the story of Milton. Greece had just revolted 
 against her Turkish masters. Even while this essay was 
 penned, the heroic defence of Missolonghi was taking 
 place ; and with the enthusiastic support of many cultured 
 and high-spirited young men from all the nations of the 
 Christian world, Greece was just winning for herself her 
 title to independence. With these great struggles all over 
 the world going on before his eyes, there was a peculiar 
 zest for Macaulay, who loved to identify present politics 
 and past history, in discussing just then the great historic 
 conflicts of the Stuarts and the people of England over the 
 same momentous problems of government which were then 
 agitating the nations of Continental Europe. Lastly, Ma- 
 caulay wrote this essay with a heart full of interest in a 
 great political movement in England itself, namely, the 
 effort making in 1825 for the relief of his Catholic fellow- 
 citizens from their civil disabilities. The laws against 
 Catholics in Great Britain, and still more in Ireland, since 
 the time of William and Anne, had been, as is well known, 
 most severe. Catholics were excluded from the succes- 
 sion to the crown of England after the Revolution of 
 1688. But they were also excluded from the right to sit 
 
xvill INTRODUCTION 
 
 in Parliament, or to hold any magistracy or receive de- 
 grees at the universities. Irish Catholics were practically 
 put in absolute subjection to a Protestant Parliament sup- 
 ported by English arms in Dublin. This Parliament, dur- 
 ing the eighteenth century, ordained that no Catholic might 
 carry arms, buy or inherit real estate, or own a horse worth 
 more than £5. Under such laws the country was almost 
 ruined commercially and socially, though the Catholic 
 church rather increased in numbers. Now in 1825 Ireland 
 was struggling to obtain some relief. The country had 
 been agitated by this effort for a generation. Ireland was 
 now divided into two camps, the Orange lodges of Protest- 
 ants on one side, the Catholic Association and the Eibbon- 
 men on the other. The two sides vied with each other in 
 hatred and outrage. The English nation divided over 
 them. Liberals in both parties took up the cause of 
 Catholic emancipation. Lord Althorp, afterward the 
 champion of the Keform Bill, and the Whig Lord Lans- 
 downe, who, in 1830, helped Macaulay into Parliament, 
 were endeavoring once more to obtain civil equality for 
 their Catholic fellow-citizens. The "unbending Tories," 
 like Wellington and Peel, on the other side, resisted 
 change, quoting, to defend their ideas of the proper 
 method of dealing with Irish Catholics, the example of 
 the great Whig hero, William the Third. But a bill for 
 the relief of the Catholics had just passed the Commons. 
 It was, however, rejected in the Lords under the influ- 
 ence of the Tories. The Eoyal Duke of York, at that 
 time a possible heir to the throne, came down and made a 
 speech on the extreme Protestant side, which was very in- 
 fluential in defeating the bill. The " victory " of the anti- 
 Catholics was celebrated with rejoicing. The Protestants 
 had a public dinner in London in honor of it, at which 
 the Duke of York drank the "glorious and immortal 
 memory of William III." amid wild cheering. 
 
INTRODUCTION XIX 
 
 9. In a year of such political excitement we can imagine 
 the feelings which were animating the young author of this 
 paper. Such are the feelings we must in a measure under- 
 stand if we would appreciate his work rightly. We must 
 not gauge it solely as a contribution to the study of Milton's 
 place in English literature. We must be prepared to find 
 political sympathies getting uppermost in the author's 
 interest in the subject, and we shall consequently find that 
 his political paragraphs, as, for example, the eulogy of the 
 Puritans on page 78, are far the best part of the essay. 
 Let us freely admit that there is much justification for 
 this way of treating Milton. With all due respect to 
 English literature, in which Milton's poetry is so bright a 
 glory, the making of verses has not been the only ser- 
 vice or even the chief service of the English race to man- 
 kind. When the final account of things is made up, Eng- 
 land will be able to say of her history something in the strain 
 of Virgil's proud verses about Eome in the Sixth Book of 
 the "iEneid." Whatever artistic and literary glories other 
 nations may have had, the English have built the greatest 
 political structures of popular representative government 
 in all the world. And it has been again and again due to 
 Anglo-Saxon history, in both hemispheres, especially of 
 the last three hundred years, that "government of the 
 people, for the people, by the people" has not perished 
 from the earth. So that Milton, the Puritan Secretary of 
 the Commonwealth, may well be remembered in any criti- 
 cal account of him as gratefully as Milton the poet and 
 scholar. As Heine, the German poet, said of himself, 
 Macaulay's essay seems justly to say of Milton,." Lay not 
 laurel-leaves on that coffin, but a sword. For he was a 
 good soldier in the warfare of humanity." 
 
 10. John Milton had three threads of three widely dif- 
 ferent destinies spun into one for him by the Fates. The 
 first part of his life, his boyhood and family history, his 
 
xx IN TROD UGT1 ON 
 
 study and private reading, connected him with the Eng- 
 land of his father, with music and song, with the happy 
 singers of Elizabeth's day, whose influence is so plain in 
 his early poetry. The second part of his life, his educa- 
 tion at school and college, tied him to the Puritans, to the 
 "rigorous teachers who seized his youth/' moulding his 
 life by the high religious purposes of that noble but un- 
 happy party ; and the third cord, red and dismal, running 
 through the life and occupations of his manhood, bound 
 him to the troubled life of political dissension in the blood- 
 stained England of Charles and of Cromwell. In " Para- 
 dise Lost" one sees at last these influences erecting to- 
 gether an harmonious whole of unique beauty. That is a 
 great song of a true-born singer relating in the imagery of 
 an immortal epic the origin of all the world's sorrows as a 
 blind Puritan of the lost Commonwealth had had knowl- 
 edge of them. The first part of his life promised him only 
 happiness in the joy of his chosen art of poetry. He was 
 born in 1608, and like Chaucer, Spenser, Cowley, and 
 Keats, in the city of London itself. The name of the 
 house of his birth was the " Spread Eagle." It was in 
 Bread Street, Cheapside ; but like the other houses which 
 Milton lived in, it exists no longer. Though not the eld- 
 est, he was the very dearest son of his father, described as 
 " an ingeniose man delighting in musique," who gave him a 
 careful education at St. Paul's school and at home also. In 
 books John Milton was from the tenderest years a student. 
 His brother relates that "when he went to schoole, w^hen 
 he was very younge, he studied very hard and sate up very 
 late : commonly till twelve or one o'clock at night, and 
 his father ordered the mayde to sitt up for him ; and in 
 those yeares [10] he composed many copies of verses which 
 might well become a ripe age. And was a very hard stu- 
 dent in the University and performed all his exercises there 
 with very good applause." He went to Christ College in 
 
INTR OB UCTION xxi 
 
 the Puritan University of Cambridge at the age of seven- 
 teen, remaining there till he was twenty-four. The boys 
 there called him " The Lady" because of his fair complex- 
 ion, graceful appearance, and a certain haughty delicacy of 
 taste and habit. While here he wrote among other things 
 the great "Ode on the Nativity/' the "Sonnet on arriv- 
 ing at the Age of Twenty-three," and a good deal of Latin 
 verse. After leaving college he had been meaning to take 
 orders. But he felt himself at that time unable to be- 
 come a minister of the English Church, as his family had 
 apparently expected. He was not in harmony with the 
 church government of that day, and he already cherished 
 the purpose of giving his life to the making of great poetry. 
 So he retired to his father's country-house in Horton, and 
 lived in quiet, reading classic and Italian authors, and 
 writing. What he wrote here w^as already of the greatest 
 poetic excellence. If his life had gone on as it began at 
 Horton, he would have ranked among the sweetest of the 
 lyric poets of England, with a strong resemblance to the 
 singers of the previous generation, the beautiful minstrels 
 of the age of Elizabeth. In these days of happiness "L'Al- 
 legro," "II Penseroso," and " Comus " came into being; 
 and the beautiful Latin poem to his father ; and final- 
 ly, just as he was going on his Italian journey, he com- 
 posed, as a memorial to a dead college friend, the great 
 " Lycidas." 
 
 11. After three years in the country at Horton, Milton 
 spent fifteen months in Italy. He enjoyed, we may believe, 
 one of the happiest periods of his life there. He visited 
 Paris, Nice, Genoa, Leghorn, Pisa, stayed two months 
 (August and September) in Florence, where occurred his 
 famous visit to the blind Galileo, " a prisoner to the In- 
 quisition, for thinking in Astronomy otherwise than as the 
 Franciscan and Dominican licensers taught." He met in 
 Florence many young Italian literary men, who became his 
 
xxii INTRODUCTION 
 
 courteous admirers and friends. Prom Florence he went 
 to Eome for two months more. From Eome he went to 
 Naples, where he became the guest of the old Marquis of 
 Villa, Manso. There is an allusion on page 17 of the essay 
 to the beautiful Latin poem he wrote out of gratitude to 
 the marquis. And then he was just going to Sicily and 
 to Greece when the news from England came which, one 
 may say, ended this early joyous chapter in his life, and 
 cost English literature the poet of the " Comus," if it 
 gave her the poet of "Paradise Lost/" and " Samson Ago- 
 nistes." He turned back to his distracted native land to 
 enter the great civil conflict already beginning there. On 
 his way back to England he passed a few weeks again in 
 Eome, and again two months in Florence. Then he went 
 to Geneva by way of Venice, Verona, and Milan, staying a 
 few days with his friends the Diodati family in Switzer- 
 land. In August, 1639, he was at home again, living at 
 first by himself as a quiet student. But he never wrote 
 after this with the sweet tone of the matchless verses of 
 his youth. "His piping took a troubled sound" in the 
 uproar of conflict which was arising in England over the 
 issues between king and parliament. 
 
 12. It is going to be necessary, if we are intelligently to 
 follow Macaulay's discussion of Milton's conduct, which 
 occupies the whole latter half of this essay, to muster up all 
 our information about the English history of the seven- 
 teenth century, which our author treats as a matter of 
 common knowledge. The best book, perhaps, for such a 
 purpose would be Macaulay's own "History of England," 
 reading at least the first two chapters. Macaulay's essay 
 on Hallam's "Constitutional History" is as good. The 
 great work upon this period, too large to read hastily, is to 
 be seen in the stately volumes of Gardiner's "History of 
 the Civil War." If that is inaccessible, one may read Gar- 
 diner's contribution to the Epoch Series, " The Puritan 
 
INTR OB TJOTION xxiii 
 
 Revolution." The two beautiful chapters of John Rich- 
 ard Green's "Short History/' called "Puritan England/' 
 and " The Revolution/' will help one exceedingly who has 
 not much time to give to searching in larger books, and 
 desires the most modern and impartial view. For Macau- 
 lay, whatever he may be, is not impartial in judging of 
 seventeenth-century history. 
 
 Macaulay treats the whole question of Milton's conduct in 
 this period of his life somewhat peculiarly. He does not 
 discuss its details ; he takes up instead the "naked consti- 
 tutional question/' whether that party which resisted and 
 finally executed the king was legally and morally right. 
 This question he does not decide on its merits, but by an 
 appeal to the action of the Englishmen of the next genera- 
 tion, who expelled from the throne James II. If this revo- 
 lution of 1688 was justified (and no Englishman of modern 
 days will deny that it was justified), then, to justify the 
 party which drove Charles I. from the throne, Macaulay 
 has but to show that Charles I. did the same things in 
 1649 that James II. did in 1688. We may here consider 
 for a moment the well-known story of the Great Rebellion 
 in order to follow intelligently, as we have said, Macaulay's 
 argument upon this topic. 
 
 13. Charles I. entered upon his reign in 1625, inheriting 
 a fatal legacy from his father, James I. The first two 
 Stuarts held the doctrine of the "divine right of kings" 
 in a peculiarly extravagant form. They believed, as Ma- 
 caulay says in his history, that God "regarded hereditary 
 monarchy, as opposed to other forms of government, with 
 peculiar favour, that the rule of succession through eldest 
 sons was a divine institution, that no human power could 
 deprive the legitimate prince of his rights ; that the laws by 
 which the prerogative was limited were merely concessions 
 which the sovereign had freely made and might at his 
 pleasure resume ; that any treaty into which a king might 
 
XX1Y INTRODUCTION 
 
 enter with his people was merely a declaration of his pres- 
 ent intentions and not a contract of which performance 
 could be demanded." This theory,, says Macaulay, was 
 never one of the "fundamental laws of England." On 
 the contrary, it contradicted many facts of English his- 
 tory. But it found many advocates among those who 
 were at that time about the king, and, in particular, made 
 rapid progress among the clergy of the Established Church. 
 On the other hand, it enraged and disgusted most Eng- 
 lishmen, who, under the influence of the Protestant relig- 
 ions of that century, were coming to have more and more 
 respect for the new divine right of the people, and the 
 right of private judgment. It was the baleful influence of 
 this theory, that a king was a person so above the law that 
 he could not make a binding contract with his people, 
 which stained Charles's name with the reproach of tyranny 
 and faithlessness. He was, though in other relations in 
 life a high-minded gentleman, in the exercise of his office 
 as monarch, as his people soon found, perfidious on princi- 
 ple. When the parties divided over that question in the 
 reign of Charles, the party of the Parliament stood up at 
 first only for the privileges of the subject established by 
 law ; while the party of the king supported only the royal 
 "prerogative," that is, the general powers which a mon- 
 arch possesses, not to be stated or denned by law. Both 
 sides had something of right. The English king certainly 
 had always had such general powers. He could, for exam- 
 ple, convoke and dissolve Parliaments at such dates as he 
 thought fit ; he commanded the armies of England ; he 
 treated alone with foreign powers. Such irresponsible 
 powers are always needed under any form of government 
 and were known in England as the "prerogatives" of 
 the sovereign. But the Parliament rightly maintained 
 that there were limitations to the "prerogative" of very 
 ancient date in England. First, they said, no English 
 
INTRODUCTION xxv 
 
 king ought to legislate without the consent of Parliament ; 
 secondly, the king could impose no taxes without the 
 consent of Parliament ; thirdly, he was, after all, with all 
 his prerogatives, bound to conduct his administration in 
 accordance with the laws of the land, and if he broke these 
 laws, his advisers and agents were responsible. These 
 were the opinions of the young Milton, and of nearly all 
 the Puritan side. But the king held opposite views ; and 
 the difference soon appeared in practical politics. At his 
 first entry into power Charles had quarrelled with his peo- 
 ple over a question of foreign policy ; and the Parliament, 
 to bring him down, refused supplies. Charles then at- 
 tempted to raise money for the expenses of his govern- 
 ment, without any taxes from Parliament, by forced loans, 
 and by other devices, and tried to put down opposition by 
 arbitrary imprisonments. In 1628 Parliament retorted by 
 sending him the " Petition of Right." This document 
 begged (1) prohibition of all forms of taxation, forced 
 loans, "benevolences," and so on, without consent of Par- 
 liament ; (2) that soldiers should not be billeted in private 
 houses ; (3) that there should be no martial law in time of 
 peace ; (4) that no one should be imprisoned except on a 
 specified charge. Charles assented to these proposals, and 
 received as a reward five subsidies from Parliament. But 
 he very soon prorogued Parliament, and went on levying 
 royal taxes without the people's consent. Parliament an- 
 grily met again to resist the king. The speaker, acting 
 under the king's orders, attempted to choke off debate, 
 but the great Eliot offered his famous resolutions, which 
 were passed while the speaker was held down in the chair. 
 The king instantly dissolved the Parliament. For the 
 eleven following years, from 1629 to 1640, while Milton 
 was at college, reading in the country, and in Italy, 
 Charles was governing without Parliament at all. By the 
 exercise of his prerogative the king was raising money, 
 
XXVI INTRODUCTION 
 
 making peace and war, introducing distasteful changes in 
 religious discipline, and imprisoning and fining and put- 
 ting in the pillory men who resisted anything he did. His 
 advisers and helpers were leading him onward in this mis- 
 taken course. In particular, Lord Strafford and Arch- 
 bishop Laud are still remembered for these errors with 
 sorrow and even abhorrence. By a " thorough " policy of 
 repression and enforcement of conformity to the king's 
 will, this party hoped to make the English monarchy just 
 what the Stuart theory of divine right declared it should 
 be, an unlimited despotism. Laud desired to bring the 
 influence of an obedient church, "the handmaid of ar- 
 bitrary authority," to the support of the Stuart throne. 
 Strafford, going over to Ireland as lord deputy, tried to 
 provide, by a ruthless military regime, troops and money 
 to be used in coercing England. To check the rising tide 
 of wrath among his subjects, the advisers of the king de- 
 veloped tribunals, in the name of the "prerogative," to 
 fine, imprison, and pillory such people as they considered 
 dangerous to their policy. The best remembered of these 
 at this day are the "High Commission," a royal commis- 
 sion first created by Elizabeth to help her order ecclesiasti- 
 cal matters, and the "Star Chamber," originally a com- 
 mittee of Council called by the Tudor Kings (and even 
 earlier) to treat of cases not determinable by common law. 
 Then came the invention of "ship-money," and John 
 Hampden's unsuccessful resistance at law. These were 
 dark days for English liberty. 
 
 14. Milton came home from Italy just as the Scotch 
 Presbyterian uprising was forcing Strafford and Charles 
 to abandon their policy of "thorough" repression and call 
 Parliament together again. After a year or two of anxious 
 watching, under the excitement of the acts of the Long Par- 
 liament, Milton entered public life (as we should say) by 
 publishing, in 1641, several pamphlets on the questions of 
 
INTRODUCTION xxvu 
 
 the day. This was his first contribution to the Liberal 
 side of the struggle. In days when there was of course no 
 regular newspaper press, these tracts would have the effect 
 in influencing public opinion which is attained in our time 
 by the works of the great editors and writers of political 
 journals. It was one of Milton's occupations to issue such 
 tracts all through the war. He thus played the part in the 
 Kebellion which would now be given to a great journalist 
 in modern politics. He handled chiefly political subjects, 
 but also some subjects not political. For instance, as he 
 was maintaining himself in part by teaching, this interest 
 induced him to write his famous tractate " On Education : 
 to Mr. Samuel Hartlib," in June, 1644. But in all these 
 years (1638-1649) his main interest was in politics and in 
 the war. Except the sonnets written from time to time to 
 commemorate an occasion of public interest, his poetical 
 compositions almost ceased. He began his prose- writing, 
 as we have said, in 1641 by publishing five pamphlets in a 
 current controversy about "Church Government," advo- 
 cating the abolition of the office of bishop in the Church 
 of England. His next subject was divorce. In the years 
 1643 and 1644 he printed four pamphlets to show that any 
 marriages ought to be dissolved if husband and wife were 
 not suitable mates for each other. This subject was doubt- 
 less brought to his mind by the unlucky experiences of his 
 own sudden marriage in 1643 with Mary Powell, a young 
 girl of seventeen, daughter of a Eoyalist. But the matter 
 took on a public and political importance. These pam- 
 phlets on divorce brought Milton into a quarrel with his po- 
 litical friends of the Presbyterian party. The Westminster 
 Assembly, a body of divines called together by act of the 
 Long Parliament to advise them upon the religious settle- 
 ment of England, took offence at these very independent 
 doctrines about marriage and tried to have Milton "in- 
 vestigated" by a Parliamentary committee. This act of 
 
xxviii TNTR OD UCTION 
 
 theirs separated liim forever from the Presbyterian party. 
 It had the effect, moreover, of stimulating him to write in 
 1644 his greatest pamphlet, " Areopagitica : a Speech of 
 Mr. John Milton for the Liberty of Unlicensed Printing : 
 to the Parliament of England." Macaulay speaks on page 
 84 of this great and beautiful work, which anticipates by 
 more than a hundred years the modern principle of free- 
 dom of the press as it was at last introduced and upheld in 
 England and America. 
 
 15. It will be seen by one who follows his writing care- 
 fully, that as the fight with the king went on, Milton's 
 eager spirit carried him on in the heat of his arguments to 
 separate himself more and more from the moderate sup- 
 porters of Parliament, consisting chiefly of the Presby- 
 terians and the Scotch party, and to join with the Inde- 
 pendents, whose centre was in the army of the military 
 saints commanded by Cromwell. He wrote in their inter- 
 est, after the execution of the king, his famous pamphlet 
 " On the Tenure of Kings and Magistrates : proving that 
 it is lawfull and hath been held so in all ages for any who 
 have the power to call to account a wicked king or tyrant, 
 and after due conviction to depose and put him to death. 
 The author J. M. 1649." This act identified him finally 
 with the "regicides" and the party of Cromwell. He 
 thought he saw the true principles of liberty there main- 
 tained ; and here was a refuge for his own imaginative 
 radicalism, which separated him from most parties in the 
 nation. The king had proved, as even his friends ought 
 to admit, an unfit governor of his country in that stormy 
 time. The issues at stake in religion and policy were too 
 difficult for him even to understand. But to Milton and 
 to the Puritans, Charles Stuart was worse than a mistaken 
 partisan; he was the very incarnation of evil. He had made 
 himself guilty of all the innocent blood shed in the war. 
 "The military saints of the army resolved," says Macaulay 
 
INTRODUCTION xxix 
 
 in his history, " in defiance of the old laws of the realm, 
 and of the almost universal sentiment of the nation, that 
 the king should expiate his crimes with his blood. A 
 revolutionary tribunal was created ; that tribunal pro- 
 nounced Charles a tyrant, a traitor, a murderer, and a pub- 
 lic enemy, and his head was severed from his shoulders 
 before thousands of spectators in front of the banqueting 
 hall of his own palace." So Milton defended this act as a 
 legitimate method of disposing of unsatisfactory " kings 
 and magistrates." 
 
 16. After the king's execution the government of Eng- 
 land was decreed to be "by way of a republic." The ex- 
 ecutive administration was nominally intrusted to a Council 
 of State of forty-one members, though the army and 
 Cromwell actually held supreme power. This council in 
 1649 made John Milton its Secretary for Foreign Tongues. 
 In 1653, when Cromwell dismissed the Rump and founded 
 his Protectorate, according to the "Instrument of Govern- 
 ment," a similar council was established, under which 
 Milton held the same office. His duties in these offices 
 were simply to write in his beautiful Latin (the best Latin 
 in Europe of that day) such documents as the government 
 desired to send to foreign powers, and to interpret such 
 documents as came from abroad. In addition to these 
 regular duties, he had a general oversight of any literary 
 work needed by the commonwealth. Such literary tasks 
 were immediately put into his hands. The regicide had to 
 be apologized for and the king's propaganda to be met. 
 The Royalists in 1649 were reading and circulating a book 
 called " Eikon Basilike " (The King's Image), professing 
 to be a legacy from the dead king, containing the thoughts 
 and prayers of his last hours. Milton was employed to 
 write a book to meet the dangerous popularity of this 
 work. He wrote a tract called " Eikonoclastes : the Im- 
 age Breaker," criticising and sneering in what one must 
 
xxx INTRODUCTION 
 
 say is a rude, brawling tone at the pious sentiments of the 
 king. The Council thought so well of this tract, as to 
 employ Milton again, in 1653, on a similar task. The Roy- 
 alists, desiring to bring the king's cause before the culti- 
 vated and governing classes of Europe, had issued a Latin 
 tract called Defensio regia. It was done for them in 
 Holland by a famous Leyden professor, Claude Saumaise, 
 " Salmasius," as he was known to the reading world. 
 Milton answered it by a tract called Defensio pro populo 
 Anglicano. This book of Milton's is chiefly interesting 
 as an exhibition of the ferocious personalities which passed 
 for controversy at that time. No cross-roads country 
 editors ever abused each other as these great scholars of 
 European dignity and reputation did. The main question 
 in the Defensio about the king is almost lost under a 
 flood of personalities about Salmasius. But the book cre- 
 ated a great stir in the highest circles. Milton is said to 
 have received the compliments of every embassy in Lon- 
 don on account of the book. "The only inducement/' 
 says Aubrey, of this period, "of severall foreigners that 
 came over to England was chiefly to see 0. Protector and 
 Mr. J. Milton." But the book has also the sad interest 
 of costing the author his eyesight. Other pamphlets, 
 including a second Defensio pro populo, which contains 
 interesting portraits of some great commonwealth states- 
 men, were dictated and published by him during his secre- 
 taryship. There are also still in existence many public 
 letters he wrote for the council and for Cromwell himself. 
 In 1653 Milton's wife died, leaving him the three daugh- 
 ters whose education was so curious and whose attitude to 
 their father so very unfilial. In 1656 he married Cath- 
 erine Woodcock. She died in 1657, and is buried in St. 
 Margaret's, Westminster. To her he addressed the famous 
 Sonnet XXIII. 
 
 17. Another misfortune soon befell him. The death of 
 
INTRODUCTION xxxi 
 
 Cromwell, in 1658, changed the whole face of English poli- 
 tics, and with this change began the last chapter of Milton's 
 life. After several unlucky experiments it became plain 
 to the English nation that they had now only the choice 
 between the old Stuart monarchy again and government 
 by the major-generals of the Model Army. The army 
 settled the question by beginning to quarrel for the prize, 
 whereupon the civilians of all parties drew together for 
 protection. A " free Parliament/' supported by General 
 Monk, brought back the Stuarts in 1660. In a last strug- 
 gle for his convictions, Milton issued some English pam- 
 phlets : some on the old subject of " Church Government " 
 and one, in the very year of the Eestoration, called "A. 
 Ready and Easy Way to Establish a Free Commonwealth 
 and the Excellence Thereof." But the day for these efforts 
 had gone by. The king returned, and the secretary of the 
 commonwealth and the defender of regicide was glad to 
 vanish into poverty and private life. Why Milton was 
 not punished among the other chiefs of the Cromwellian 
 party is still very obscure ; but after remaining in hiding 
 for a while he was restored to liberty. His circumstances 
 were much reduced, however, and his circle of friends 
 much diminished. He was a discreditable acquaintance, 
 a " detestable republican," and almost an outlaw. Such 
 people as came about him were chiefly young men of the 
 more devout and persecuted sects. Independent Baptists 
 or Quakers, like young Eliwood, Andrew Marvell, Cyriac 
 Skinner, remained faithful ; Lady Eanelagh and others of 
 his older friends and pupils visited him, and a Dr. Paget, 
 a physician of that neighborhood, came to see him often. 
 By Dr. Paget, Milton was recommended to marry as his 
 third wife Elizabeth Minshull, who cherished and cared for 
 him lovingly till his death. 
 
 Under these circumstances of comparative isolation and 
 defeat he went back to the other and earlier hopes and 
 
xxxil INTRODUCTION 
 
 occupations of his life. He began to write poetry ao-ain, 
 and between 1662 and 1667, at an age when poetical com- 
 position is for most poets over, he wrote "Paradise Lost." 
 The publication of this great poem could not fail to make 
 amends for his disgrace. It won its way slowly but surely, 
 so that in the last years of his life he had many admirers 
 and visitors (among others the court-poet, John Dryden), 
 though he was probably still " more admired abroad than 
 at home." It is of these last years we have the most dis- 
 tinct accounts of his person and occupations. Prom one 
 of them, the notes of the painter Richardson, Macaulay 
 takes the description of him on page 87. In 1671 Milton 
 published " Paradise Regained," and with it " Samson 
 Agonistes," the poem which has a special interest for 
 Milton's admirers, who trace in it a delicate reminiscence 
 of great dramatic scenes in his own life. These were his 
 last poetic works. He died in 1674, at the age of sixty- 
 six, and was buried in St. Giles's, Cripplegate, near the 
 chancel, after a long life nearly coextensive with that of 
 the Stuart monarchy which he tried to overthrow. 
 
 18. It is interesting to notice that in these last years of 
 his life, when his friends were chiefly younger men and his 
 active political life ceased, that Milton's thoughts went 
 back to his early avocation as a school-teacher. He pub- 
 lished at this time, from old manuscript material, a Latin 
 grammar and a logic, and he left behind him some col- 
 lections for a history and for a Latin lexicon. Among 
 other such things he was preparing in his last days a 
 book for the instruction of students, to contain a sum- 
 mary of theology. Apparently the title he meant to give 
 it was "Idea Theologies." It was to follow the scheme 
 of the manuals in which he used to study divinity in col- 
 lege, at least in the division of subjects and the titles of 
 chapters. But the sole authority for its conclusions was 
 to be directly derived from texts of the Bible quoted in ap- 
 
INT ROB UGTION xxxm 
 
 propriate places. This book was left in the hands of one 
 of his young friends, Mr. Daniel Skinner, unfinished. It 
 is a book of curious interest, a sort of summary of the 
 theology of " Paradise Lost " with every particle of poetry 
 evaporated, like the juice out of a dried apple, and yet with 
 poetic suggestion about passages in it. It is this book 
 which Macaulay nominally reviews in the present essay. 
 
 19. A few more remarks about the course of Stuart 
 politics after Milton's death will perhaps help the reader 
 in following the latter paragraphs of the essay. The Ees- 
 toration days were not altogether easy times. England 
 had taken up her Stuart monarchy in 1600, as a refuge 
 from the worse trouble of anarchy, as a man returns, 
 for necessary protection against bad weather, to an old 
 garment once discarded. It did not protect her very well. 
 There were, to be sure, no more sufferings from ostenta- 
 tious tyranny on the part of King Charles, no rebellious 
 Parliaments in arms against royal authority ; but for fifty 
 years more there were continual movements of political 
 parties for the overthrow of government. Protestants sus- 
 pected Catholics, and passed severe penal laws against that 
 religion. Tories suspected Whigs and procured severe 
 laws against Protestant Dissenters. The side which got 
 uppermost in politics condemned and executed its oppo- 
 nents. Such a disturbance was the Papist Plot in 1078, 
 whose story was probably a figment composed by a band of 
 needy adventurers who made their living as witnesses. For 
 some reason the government pretended to believe them, 
 and many wholly innocent Catholics lost their lives as 
 plotters against the king. In 1680 a bill to exclude James, 
 the king's brother, from the throne because he had become 
 a Catholic, passed the House of Commons. The king 
 dissolved the Parliament and summoned a new one at Ox- 
 ford, hoping that the memories of the civil war and the 
 loyalty of that old university might affect the disposition 
 
xxxiv INTRODUCTION 
 
 of the members. The conduct of this Parliament, called 
 the " Oxford Parliament," however, was so stubborn and 
 insolent as to create a reaction in the country in favor of 
 the king. Charles dissolved this Parliament after a session 
 of only a few days, and the reaction continued. By 1683 
 the Tories had won the public confidence again. Some 
 secret party schemes of certain great Whig nobles were dis- 
 covered by the Tories, and at the same time there came out 
 a plot cooked up by gome villainous hangers-on of the 
 Whig party to assassinate the king and his brother near 
 the " Eye-house," a farm on the way from London to New- 
 market. By a malicious confusion of the two " plots," 
 Lord Russell and Algernon Sidney were found guilty of 
 treason and executed. But the death of Charles in 1685 
 brought his Catholic brother to the throne of England. 
 The Eoman danger from which English Protestantism 
 had been safe since the execution of Mary Queen of Scots 
 reappeared in startling form. All other issues were swal- 
 lowed up in this. In three years James had so alarmed all 
 parties by his tyrannical acts in connection with his efforts 
 to re-establish the Catholic religion, that people of all 
 parties joined in inviting the Prince of Orange to enter Eng- 
 land with Dutch troops. Thus came about the revolution of 
 1688, of which Macaulay says so much. Parliament laid 
 before the Prince of Orange, who was a near heir to the 
 crown himself, and whose wife was next heir after James 
 and his children, a "Declaration of Eight." It contains 
 once more an assertion of the principles for which the peo- 
 ple of England had been fighting through the lifetime of 
 Milton. Making or suspending laws without consent of 
 Parliament is to cease; ecclesiastical commissions are not 
 to be made into courts ; levying money without consent of 
 Parliament is illegal ; elections of members of Parliament 
 must be free ; and so on. William and Mary accepted the 
 crown then offered them, and were proclaimed king and 
 
INTRODUCTION xxxv 
 
 queen on condition that they should abide by these princi- 
 ples. Henceforth the Stuart theory of divine right could 
 never be pleaded by any English monarch again. James 
 Stuart and his son, with the adhesion of a smaller number 
 of Englishmen in each generation, represented themselves 
 as kings of England by inheritance till the direct line died 
 out. But the actual monarchs of England have held their 
 authority ever since 1688 not by the law of inheritance 
 but by the consent of the people. The Stuart theory of 
 divine right was dead. 
 
 20. It would be ungrateful to Lord Macaulay not to wish 
 to know anything more of his life than the reading of this 
 essay involves. He went on writing for the Edinburgh 
 Review a succession of brilliant papers. These were col- 
 lected and published in 1843, rather against his wishes. 
 He thought them of temporary interest only, and scarcely 
 worthy of preservation in book-form. They have, how- 
 ever, remained among the most popular books in the Eng- 
 lish language ever since. About six thousand copies a 
 year of them in various editions are sold in his native coun- 
 try alone, and the demand for them is so steady as to be a 
 sort of index from year to year of the country's prosperity. 
 In 1830 Macaulay entered Parliament, being helped to get 
 a seat there by Lord Lansdowne, who did not know him, 
 but was interested in him by reading his essay on Mill. 
 The most famous of these essays on literary subjects are 
 those on Addison, Milton, Bunyan, and Johnson. On his- 
 torical subjects the best essays are on Hallam, Temple 
 (thought the best of all by Morison), Pitt, Clive, and War- 
 ren Hastings. There are famous passages also in the essay 
 on Kanke's " History of the Popes/' and in that on Bacon. 
 
 21. Macaulay remained in Parliament through the great 
 contest for reform in Parliament in 1832. His speeches 
 made about that time on the passage of the great Eeform 
 Bill are very famous. In 1834 he received an honorable 
 
Xxxvi INTRODUCTION 
 
 and lucrative appointment in India. He here lived till 
 1838, doing excellent work for the government, and for 
 himself reading enormously in the Greek and Latin clas- 
 sics, as was the habit of his life. He then returned to Eng- 
 land in 1839 and re-entered political life as member of 
 Parliament for Edinburgh. He continued to write at in- 
 tervals, bringing out, among the other things which every 
 school-boy knows, the " Lays of Ancient Rome," in 1842. 
 He now began also in the intervals of political life to write 
 his great " History of England." The first volumes of 
 this appeared in 1848, followed by two more in 1855. This 
 work may be called the most popular book of the sort ever 
 printed in English. The publishers were able, in March 
 of 1856, to pay him in one single check £20,000, for his 
 share of the profits of one English edition. The number 
 of editions of this great book is now quite beyond compu- 
 tation ; and its sale still often exceeds that of the most 
 popular novel of a year. It made him one of the most 
 famous historians in Europe. But the plan of the work 
 was so great that even with all his wonderful industry it 
 was never finished. It remains, like a broken statue, just 
 as the author left it at his death, not half completed ac- 
 cording to his design. 
 
 22. Macaulay's political life was full of prosperity, 
 checkered with less adversity than falls to the lot of most 
 politicians. He lost his seat at Edinburgh, but was after- 
 wards triumphantly re-elected. In 1839 he was a mem- 
 ber of Lord Melbourne's government. In 1857 he was 
 made Baron Macaulay of Kothley Temple. But the larger 
 part of his interest lay always with his literary and histori- 
 cal work, upon which he labored, till, in 1859, he died, not 
 unprepared by gradually failing health for that event, 
 though it came to him at the early age of fifty-nine. He 
 was buried in Westminster Abbey, in the Poets' Corner, near 
 the statue of Addison. His " Life and Letters" has been 
 
IN TROD UGTION xxxvii 
 
 published by his nephew, Sir George Trevelyan. It is one 
 of the best biographies ever written, and is much to be 
 commended to the general reader who desires to know more 
 of a noble man. 
 
 23. As to Macaulay's position in literature, the question 
 may be said to be still undetermined. We wait for a thorough 
 analysis of his work by the critics, and the critics wait for 
 the final judgment of posterity. During his life he was 
 esteemed even beyond measure by his countrymen. After 
 his death came a sort of reaction against this popularity. 
 The tide, however, seems to be setting again the other way. 
 At any rate, no one has ever denied that his narrative 
 power in history is unapproached. And, as Mr. Saints- 
 bury says in his latest criticism of Macaulay, he is certainly 
 a very great man of letters, and "an unsurpassed leader to 
 reading." 
 
SUGGESTIONS FOR TEACHERS AND 
 STUDENTS 
 
 u To this must be added industrious and select reading, steady observa- 
 tion, and insight into all seemly and generous affairs." — John Milton. 
 
 I. The first object in the mind of the student of this 
 book should be an intelligent reading of the essay on Mil- 
 ton, so as to obtain first of all what might be called a sense 
 of the general structure of the work, and then some suffi- 
 cient acquaintance with the more interesting details of it. 
 By most readers this general reading may conveniently be 
 done, allowing for due attention to hard words which must 
 be looked up or explained, and for reading of necessary 
 foot-notes, in four lessons, as follows : Lesson first, para- 
 graphs one to twenty-fiye ; lesson second, paragraphs twen- 
 ty-five to forty-nine ; lesson third, paragraphs forty-nine to 
 seventy-two ; lesson fourth, paragraphs seventy-two to the 
 end. After finishing his first reading, the student may 
 then go back to the Introduction and the Summary. If 
 classwork in English is contemplated, the instructor may 
 assist at these early processes of study by using the book 
 from time to time as a text-book for question and answer. 
 He may thus help the student to make sure that he is 
 carrying away a sufficient idea of the subject-matter of the 
 essay as a whole, as well as of the special topics handled in 
 each section. An excellent exercise may be given to 
 a class by requiring of the pupils a written summary in 
 one or two sentences of the contents of each paragraph. 
 Such summaries may be composed in class extempore or 
 given from memory. Long summaries may likewise be 
 
SUGGESTIONS FOB TEACHERS xxxix 
 
 asked of the contents of each lesson, and of larger divisions 
 of the essay. 
 
 II. But there is a second object, of even more importance 
 than the acquisition of information about the contents of 
 this essay on Milton. The value of any single bit of read- 
 ing, or even the value of the whole group of books recom- 
 mended for reading by the colleges, will be small if the 
 work thus recommended does not bring suggestions to 
 pupil and teacher of further reading of like books, and 
 thus more and more stimulus, as the work proceeds, to the 
 literary appetite of the young people who engage in it. 
 To offer to teachers suggestions as to the best methods of 
 encouraging this wider reading among their own pupils, 
 and of keeping the whole matter of the English work in 
 our schools as fresh and interesting as possible, would not 
 be very useful or very proper in this place. But there are 
 two or three things one may suggest which must certainly 
 be considered by any teacher who uses Macaulay's books 
 for school reading. 
 
 III. First, the pupil must have time and space enough 
 given him for his English reading. He must not be op- 
 pressed with tasks in " reading" which cannot be accom- 
 plished in the hours at his command, and, on the other 
 hand, he must not be allowed to shirk this work merely 
 because it is not to be recited. Younger children must be 
 followed up in the matter ; their reading process itself 
 must be watched and trained, if necessary. Children often 
 make difficulties for themselves by misunderstanding the 
 nature of such lessons, and attempting monstrous feats of 
 memory-work, or else by reading without any perception of 
 the sense. Time, opportunity, and some skill are needed 
 for all work in English reading and writing, quite as much 
 in the library as in the laboratory or studio. 
 
 Second, there must be at hand sufficient apparatus for 
 the young worker. He ought to have access to a library 
 
xl SUGGESTIONS FOR TEACHERS 
 
 which will give him some freedom in reading and referring 
 from one book to another. For example, in studying this 
 essay the following books should be near : 
 
 (1) On Milton.— Works: " Milton's Poetical Works," 3 
 vols., edited by Masson (Macmillan) ; " Milton's Prose 
 Works," 5 vols., Bonn's Standard Library (Macmillan) ; 
 "Milton's Prose Works," Henry Morley (Carisbrooke Li- 
 brary) ; " Milton's Areopagitica," Clarendon Press Series 
 (Macmillan). Biography and Criticism: Mark Pattison's 
 " Milton," English Men of Letters Series (Macmillan) ; 
 Matthew Arnold's " A French Critic on Milton," in his 
 " Mixed Essays " (Macmillan) ; Lowell's " Milton," in 
 " Among my Books " {Houghton, Mifflin, and Co.). 
 
 (2) On Macaulay, — Works: "Essays," and "History 
 of England" (Longmans, Green, and Co., Houghton, 
 Mifflin, and Co., and Tauchnitz) ; "Lays of Ancient 
 Rome," edited by Rolfe (Harper). Biography and Criti- 
 cism : Trevelyan's " Macaulay's Life and Letters" (Long- 
 mans) ; Morison's "Macaulay," English Men of Letters 
 Series (Macmillan) ; Morley's " Macaulay," in his " Col- 
 lected Works" (Macmillan) ; Walter Bagehot's "Macau- 
 lay," in his " Miscellanies," Vol. I. (Longmans) ; Leslie 
 Stephen's " Macaulay," in his " Hours in a Library," Third 
 Series (Macmillan) ; "Macaulay," in George Saintsbury's 
 "Corrected Impressions" (Heinemann) ; "Macaulay's 
 Place in English Literature," by Frederic Harrison, Fo- 
 rum, September, 1894. 
 
 (3) General Works. — Historical: J. R. Green's "Short 
 History of the English People;" S. R. Gardiner's "His- 
 tory of the Civil War" (Longmans) ; Lord Claren- 
 don's " History of the Civil War," Selections by G. D. 
 Boyle (Macmillan) ; Carlyle's " Cromwell's Letters and 
 Speeches" (Houghton) ; Gardiner's " Puritan Revolution," 
 Hale's " Fall of the Stuarts," McCarthy's " Period of Re- 
 form," Epochs of History Series (Longmans). General 
 
SUGGESTIONS FOB TEACHERS xli 
 
 Literature : " Divine Comedy," translated by C. E. Nor- 
 ton, 3 vols. (Houghton) ; Temple Shakespeare (Macmil- 
 lan) ; Homer's " Odyssey/' translated by Palmer (Hough- 
 ton) ; Browning's" Belaustion's Adventure " and "Aris- 
 tophanes' Apology" (Houghton). The list may be ex- 
 tended much further in this direction. 
 
 (4) General Reference Boohs. — An encyclopaedia, prefer- 
 ably the " Encyclopaedia Britannica ;" the " Century Dic- 
 tionary," especially the supplementary volume on names of 
 persons and places; the "Dictionary of National Biog- 
 raphy" of Stephen and Lee, a great but costly possession 
 among such books ; Ward's " English Poets" (Macmillan) ; 
 Ploetz, " Epitome of Universal History," edited by Til- 
 linghast ; any good atlas, say, " Longmans' School Atlas," 
 or Bartholomew's " Pocket Atlas." 
 
 Third, the pupil must be taught to work, and yet he 
 must not be directed and controlled too much. It would 
 no doubt be better if much of this English work could be 
 left to the private life and the home influences of the pupil. 
 It is a very important thing for a man or woman to know 
 in early youth the satisfaction of planning and carrying on 
 for oneself lines of study and reading suggested but not 
 prescribed by one's regular public work. Even at school, 
 still more at college and in after life, no one can succeed 
 who cannot originate and carry out work for himself with- 
 out the direction of any one. " No one ever rose above 
 mediocrity, through the teaching of any one except him- 
 self." And then English literature is of all subjects most 
 injured by the air of the schoolroom. Who does not know 
 the difference between the books one discovers, for him- 
 self in the benevolent atmosphere of home, or at the sug- 
 gestion of sympathetic comrades, or, best of all, in some 
 astonished moment, in the loneliness of a library, when 
 some " new planet swims into his ken," as he has acciden- 
 tally opened one of the world's great books, and the very 
 
xlii SUGGESTIONS FOR TEACHERS 
 
 same books when one lias seen them vivisected in a class- 
 room by ever so clever and ever so intelligent a pedagogue ? 
 
 But teachers of the present day have taken possession of 
 so much of children's time, and parents of the present day 
 have kept control of so little, that a school now has duties 
 to the general reading of children which may not be easily 
 escaped. One duty a school can perform may be described 
 as the encouraging of thoughtful reading in English, put- 
 ting information from various sources together, and " get- 
 ting ideas " out of books. 
 
 IV. No author will help a young mind, who is just be- 
 ginning to care for the study of the human story, to come 
 to the power of observing and reflecting upon books and 
 men, and to the neat recording of his impressions, better 
 than Macaulay. The clever proverbial "school-boy," who 
 knew so many things, is a good type of the person whom 
 Macaulay's work addresses in this regard most powerfully. 
 For instance, let any pupil who reads this essay select 
 some paragraphs which interest him. It may be that he 
 will choose the paragraphs about Dante. Let him then 
 take the phrases of the essay referring to Dante and look 
 up the allusions in his reference-books. Let him perhaps 
 make some written expanded accounts in place of the short 
 notes he finds in print at the foot of these pages. Let him 
 make new and additional notes. Let him add historical 
 facts about Dante, Farinata, Beatrice, or little criticisms 
 of his own upon the " Divine Comedy." This may lead 
 in the end to much additional reading and information ; 
 at any rate most wholesome habits are forming of turn- 
 ing things over in one's mind and combining one^s new 
 ideas with one's old intellectual possessions. Any school- 
 boy who follows out in this fashion the lines of thought 
 and reading suggested in a very few of Macaulay's essays, 
 will find the circle of his acquaintance with history and 
 literature, " the best that men have thought in the 
 
SUGGESTIONS FOR TEACHERS xliii 
 
 world/' is widening very fast and in a very interesting 
 fashion. 
 
 V. Khetorical analysis and criticism of Macaulay's work 
 will be tempting. The teacher must be guided in this by 
 his sense of what is due to the immaturity of his scholars, 
 by the time at their command, and by the relations of the 
 parts of their schoolwork to each other. Younger pupils 
 may be drilled on the vocabulary of Macaulay, which is 
 carefully chosen and accurately used. Older pupils will 
 profit by a study of his skill in building paragraphs. The 
 paragraph as a unit in meaning and in structure school- 
 children seldom perceive in their reading, and as a conse- 
 quence the paragraphing of children's letters and their 
 school compositions is awkward and naive. Macaulay can 
 show any young writer what a paragraph is as few English 
 writers can. As to the individual tricks of his style, 
 his antitheses, his long and short alternating sentences, 
 his climaxes, and his " stamping emphases/' these things 
 will be even too interesting to young readers, and a little 
 notice of them is quite enough. 
 
 The following questions and topics are suggested for 
 oral examinations, for rhetorical study, and for themes 
 and compositions. 
 
 Oral Examination on the Essay. — Numerous ques- 
 tions should be asked in the class-room on parts of the 
 essay previously assigned for the day's reading. Each 
 teacher will naturally • prefer to invent such questions for 
 himself as the pupil seems to need, but the following speci- 
 mens may make clearer the sort of work possible. For in- 
 stance, on the first paragraph, the teacher may ask : 1. 
 What was the date of the essay ? In what journal did it 
 first appear ? What do you know of that Review ? 2. 
 What was the occasion of the composition of this essay ? 
 Title of the work discussed ? 3. How many paragraphs are 
 given by Macaulay to this review ? Is this review favor- 
 
xliv SUGGESTIONS FOR TEACHERS 
 
 able to the work of Milton, or not ? Give in a few words 
 an account of the contents of these paragraphs. 4. "What 
 happened to this book after Milton's death ? 5. What 
 does Macaulay mean by the " Popish Trials ? " 6. What 
 was the " Eye-house Plot ? " etc., etc. Numbers of such 
 questions will occur to anyone. 
 
 Study of Rhetoric. — There will be an advantage in treat- 
 ing a certain number of rhetorical topics in connection 
 with Macaulay's English style. It may be studied by the 
 pupils and results reported to the teacher, orally or in writ- 
 ing. Genung's " Rhetoric, " or Adams Hill's "Principles 
 of Rhetoric/' will be of service in this pursuit. Subjects 
 like these are suggested for study : 1. The "Period 7 ' and 
 the " Loose Sentence/' For typical Loose Sentences, see § 3, 
 " It is, like all his Latin works," etc. ; § 7, " The dexter- 
 ous Capuchins," etc. ; §14, "Perhaps no person," etc. ; 
 §20, " The public has long been," etc. ; §47, " They are 
 simple," etc. ; § 52, " He was not, in name and profession," 
 etc. ; and elsewhere. For Periods, see almost any para- 
 graph ; fine specimens are found in §16, "As the light of 
 knowledge," etc. ; §39, "The peculiar art," etc. ; §45, 
 " Such as it was," etc. ; § 46, " Hence it was," etc. ; § 93, 
 " Nor do we envy," etc. 2. Climaxes. See § 7, " by ex- 
 hibiting some relic of him, a thread of his garment," etc. ; 
 § 7, " John Milton, the poet," etc. ; § 38, " walking among 
 men," etc. ; § 45, " Of the great men," etc. ; § 52, " all its 
 worst vices," etc.; § 81," For his sake empires had risen," to 
 the end ; and in many other places. 3. Iterations of the same 
 idea in many forms. Studied variety of wording. Examples 
 of this characteristic are too numerous to quote. See § 9, 
 entire ; § 21, especially the second sentence ; § 53, entire ; 
 § 60, entire, noting especially the careful variation of the 
 verbs. Compare with this § 23 entire. 4. Repeated illustra- 
 tions of a statement doing duty for proofs of its truth. See 
 in 813 the illustrations of the statement that the "office 
 
SUGGESTIONS FOB TEACHERS xlv 
 
 of the poet is to portray, not to dissect ; " or in § 15, the 
 expansion, by illustration, of the statement that, " in a 
 rude state of society we may expect to find the poetical 
 temperament in its highest perfection/' See also § 26, 
 "Euripides attempted to carry the reform further/' etc. ; 
 §21, " He does not paint/' etc. It will be a useful exer- 
 cise for the pupils^ to determine in other places whether 
 Macaulay is really adducing proofs or only making clear 
 by illustration, or restating in various ways a proposition 
 which needs proof s. 5. Parallel construction. See § 3, the 
 sentences beginning, " The book itself/' " It is," " There 
 's no imitation/' " The author," " He," etc. Notice the 
 slight variations in the subject of each sentence. See also 
 § 17, "He who" to " modern ruin." Notice here that the 
 same subject is maintained from sentence to sentence. See 
 §59, "Were they," etc. ; §61, "We charge," etc. ; §79, 
 "The Puritans," etc. Other instances of this mannerism 
 of Macaulay's will be easily found. 6. "Particularity." 
 See for a description in Macaulay's own words of the lit- 
 erary effects produced by " particularity," § 12. For ex- 
 amples see in § 6 the phrase, "dust and silence of the 
 upper shelf," used to convey the general idea of forgotten 
 obscurity; or §83, " Dunstans, De Montforts," etc., in- 
 stead of some general phrases like "intolerant ecclesias- 
 tics, cruel persecutors," etc. Examples may be found in 
 many paragraphs. Compare also the effects of the figures 
 of speech which follow. 7. Metonymy. See §42, "Hin- 
 dostan bows down to her idols ; " § 49, " roused Greece 
 from slavery ; " § 86, " tasted the cup of Circe ; " and 
 others. 8. Metaphors. See § 20, " innumerable reapers ; 
 § 49," Oromasdes and Arimanes ; " § 49, " kindled a fire ; " 
 § 89, "He never came up in the rear," etc. ; § 89, "the 
 torch of truth." Metaphors are used in every paragraph 
 in profusion. 9. Similes and comparisons. These are also 
 too numerous to mention particularly. See for examples, 
 
xliv SUGGESTIONS FOR TEACHERS 
 
 able to the work of Milton, or not ? Give in a few words 
 an account of the contents of these paragraphs. 4. What 
 happened to this book after Milton's death ? 5. What 
 does Maeaulay mean by the " Popish Trials ? " 6. What 
 was the " Eye-house Plot ? " etc., etc. Numbers of such 
 questions will occur to anyone. 
 
 Study of Rhetoric. — There will be an advantage in treat- 
 ing a certain number of rhetorical topics in connection 
 with Macaulay's English style. It may be studied by the 
 pupils and results reported to the teacher, orally or in writ- 
 ing. Genung's " Khetoric, " or Adams Hill's "Principles 
 of Rhetoric/' will be of service in this pursuit. Subjects 
 like these are suggested for study : 1. The "Period" and 
 the " Loose Sentence." For typical Loose Sentences, see § 3, 
 " It is, like all his Latin works," etc. ; § 7, " The dexter- 
 ous Capuchins," etc. ; §14, "Perhaps no person," etc. ; 
 § 20, " The public has long been," etc. ; § 47, " They are 
 simple," etc. ; § 52, " He was not, in name and profession," 
 etc. ; and elsewhere. For Periods, see almost any para- 
 graph ; fine specimens are found in §16, "As the light of 
 knowledge," etc.; §39, "The peculiar art," etc. ; §45, 
 " Such as it was," etc. ; § 46, " Hence it was," etc. ; § 93, 
 " Nor do we envy," etc. 2. Climaxes. See § 7, " by ex- 
 hibiting some relic of him, a thread of his garment," etc. ; 
 § 7, " John Milton, the poet," etc. ; § 38, " walking among 
 men," etc. ; § 45, "Of the great men," etc. ; § 52, " all its 
 worst vices," etc.; § 81," For his sake empires had risen," to 
 the end ; and in many other places. 3. Iterations of the same 
 idea in many forms. Studied variety of wording. Examples 
 of this characteristic are too numerous to quote. See § 9, 
 entire ; § 21, especially the second sentence ; § 53, entire ; 
 § 60, entire, noting especially the careful variation of the 
 verbs. Compare with this § 23 entire. 4. Repeated illustra- 
 tions of a statement doing duty for proofs of its truth. See 
 in §13 the illustrations of the statement that the "office 
 
SUGGESTIONS FOR TEACHERS xlv 
 
 of the poet is to portray, not to dissect ; " or in § 15, the 
 expansion, by illustration, of the statement that, "in a 
 rude state of society we may expect to find the poetical 
 temperament in its highest perfection." See also § 26, 
 "Euripides attempted to carry the reform further," etc. ; 
 §21, "He does not paint/' etc. It will be a useful exer- 
 cise for the pupils^ to determine in other places whether 
 Macaulay is really adducing proofs or only making clear 
 by illustration, or restating in various ways a proposition 
 which needs proofs. 5. Parallel construction. See § 3, the 
 sentences beginning, " The book itself," " It is," " There 
 's no imitation," " The author," " He," etc. Notice the 
 slight variations in the subject of each sentence. See also 
 § 17, "He who" to " modern ruin." Notice here that the 
 same subject is maintained from sentence to sentence. See 
 § 59, " Were they," etc. ; § 61, " We charge," etc. ; § 79, 
 " The Puritans," etc. Other instances of this mannerism 
 of Macaulay's will be easily found. 6. "Particularity." 
 See for a description in Macaulay's own words of the lit- 
 erary effects produced by " particularity," § 12. For ex- 
 amples see in § 6 the phrase, "dust and silence of the 
 upper shelf," used to convey the general idea of forgotten 
 obscurity; or §83, " Dunstans, De Montforts," etc., in- 
 stead of some general phrases like " intolerant ecclesias- 
 tics, cruel persecutors," etc. Examples may be found in 
 many paragraphs. Compare also the effects of the figures 
 of speech which follow. 7. Metonymy. See §42, "Hin- 
 dostan bows down to her idols ; " § 49, " roused Greece 
 from slavery;" §86, "tasted the cup of Circe;" and 
 others. 8. Metaphors. See § 20, " innumerable reapers ; 
 § 49," Oromasdes and Arimanes ; " § 49, " kindled a fire ; " 
 § 89, "He never came up in the rear," etc. ; § 89, "the 
 torch of truth." Metaphors are used in every paragraph 
 in profusion. 9. Similes and comparisons. These are also 
 too numerous to mention particularly. See for examples, 
 
xlvi SUGGESTIONS FOR TEACHERS 
 
 § 12, " language, the machine of the poet ;" § 16, " as a 
 magic lantern ; " § 19, " as the flower-pots of a hot-house ; " 
 § 22, " as Cassim ; " § 24, " as atar of roses;" § 85, " like 
 the Eed-Cross Knights," etc., etc. 10. Antithesis and pun- 
 gent contrasts ; Balanced expression. This is the most 
 marked characteristic of Macaulay's writing. See for 
 specimens, §8, " extol the poems, dec^y the poet;" §15, 
 entire ; § 28, " He could stoop," to end ; § 37, entire ; 
 § 60, entire ; §§ 74, 75, entire ; § 79, entire. The pupil 
 may make his own selections to illustrate this mannerism 
 of Macaulay. 11. Epigram and Paradox; Exaggerated 
 statement. See § 10, " As civilization advances, poetry 
 declines ;" § 14, " Truth is essential to poetry ; but it is 
 the truth of madness ; " §46, entire ; § 82, " The inten- 
 sity of their feelings," etc. ; 12. Biblical cadences and 
 phraseology. See §45, "Neither blindness," etc. ; and in 
 many other places, which the pupil may himself discover. 
 13. Artistic alternations of long and short sentences. See §§ 
 18, 43, 44, 59, 64, 84. 14. Artistic inversions and interroga- 
 tions. §19, "Never before," etc.; §22, "No sooner," 
 etc. ; § 49, " Then were first proclaimed," etc. ; §§ 57, 58, 
 59, for the interrogative form. 
 
 Many other rhetorical topics will occur to the student 
 of the essay who examines it from this point of view. 
 
 Topics for compositions. — These may easily be drawn 
 from the essay. Summaries may be asked, as described 
 above ; any of the foot-notes may be verified or expanded 
 by the use of books of reference ; or, for longer exercises, 
 topics like some of the following may be given : 1. Char- 
 acter of the work reviewed in this essay, and its relations 
 to Milton's life. 2. Macaulay's and Johnson's estimate of 
 Milton. Which is more rational ? 3. " As civilization 
 advances, poetry declines." Does your knowledge of the 
 classics and English literature lead you to believe this ? 
 Why are there no great poets to-day ? 4. Compare the 
 
SUGGESTIONS FOR TEACHERS xlvii 
 
 "Lays of Ancient Home" and " Chevy Chace." 5. De- 
 scribe the pictures roused in your imagination * by these 
 lines from " II Penseroso : " 
 
 " Or bid the soul of Orpheus sing 
 Such notes as, warbled to the string, 
 Drew iron tears down Pluto's cheek, 
 And made Hell grant what love did seek ; 
 Or call up him that left half -told 
 The story of Cambuscan bold, 
 Of Camball, and of Algarsife, 
 And who had Canace to wife, 
 That owned the virtuous ring and glass, 
 And of the wondrous horse of brass 
 On which the Tartar king did ride ; 
 And if aught else great bards beside 
 In sage and solemn tunes have sung, 
 Of turneys, and of trophies hung, 
 Of forests, and enchantments drear, 
 Where more is meant than meets the ear." 
 
 Or these, from the same poem : 
 
 " I hear the far-off curfew sound, 
 Over some wide-watered shore, 
 Swinging slow with sullen roar ; 
 Or, if the air will not permit, 
 Some still removed place will fit, 
 Where glowing embers through the room 
 Teach light to counterfeit a gloom ; 
 Far from all resort of mirth, 
 Save the cricket on the hearth, 
 Or the bellman's drowsy charm 
 To bless the doors from nightly harm. 
 Or let my lamp, at midnight hour, 
 Be seen in some high lonely tower, 
 Where I may oft outwatch the Bear, 
 With thrice great Hermes, or unsphere 
 
 * For the " magic" power of words on the imagination, to which 
 Macaulay refers, see also Arnold's Essay on Celtic Literature. 
 
xlviii SUGGESTIONS FOB TEACHERS 
 
 The spirit of Plato, to unfold 
 What worlds or what vast regions hold 
 The immortal mind that hath forsook 
 Her mansion in this fleshly nook." 
 
 Or these, from "Lycidas : " 
 
 " Ay me ! whilst thee the shores and sounding- seas 
 Wash far away, where'er thy bones are hurled ; 
 Whether beyond the stormy Hebrides, 
 Where thou perhaps under the whelming tide 
 Visit'st the bottom of the monstrous world ; 
 Or whether thou, to our moist vows denied, 
 Sleep 1 st by the fable of Bellerus old, 
 Where the great Vision of the guarded mount 
 Looks toward Numancos and Bayona's hold : 
 Look homeward, Angel, now, and melt with ruth ; 
 And, O ye dolphins, waft the hapless youth. 
 
 Weep no more, woeful shepherds, weep no more, 
 For Lycidas, your sorrow, is not dead, 
 Sunk though he be beneath the watery floor. 
 So sinks the day-star in the ocean bed, 
 And yet anon repairs his drooping head, 
 And tricks his beams, and with new-^pangled ore 
 Flames in the forehead of the morning sky." 
 
 Or these, from " Paradise Lost : " 
 
 " Nathless he so endured, till on the beach 
 Of that inflamed sea he stood, and called 
 His legions — angel forms, who lay entranced 
 Thick as autumnal leaves that strow the brooks 
 In Vallombrosa, where the Etrurian shades, 
 High over -arched embower ; or scattered sedge 
 Afloat, when with fierce winds Orion armed 
 Hath vexed the Red Sea coast, whose waves overthrew 
 Busiris and his Memphian chivalry, 
 While with perfidious hatred they pursued 
 The sojourners of Goshen, who beheld 
 From the safe shore their floating carcases 
 And broken chariot- wheels. So thick bestrown, 
 Abject and lost, lay these, covering the flood, 
 Under amazement of their hideous change." 
 
SUGGESTIONS FOR TEACHERS xlix 
 
 6. How is Milton's poetry affected by his admiration of 
 the Greek Drama ? 7. Description of the plot and persons 
 of "Samson Agonistes." 8. The " Masque of Comus." 
 
 9. Outline the interview between Dante and Farinata. 
 
 10. Between Dante and Beatrice. 11. Test the accuracy 
 of Macaulay's comparison of Milton and Dante, by compar- 
 ing for yourself Lucifer in the last canto of the " Inferno/' 
 and Satan in the first book of " Paradise Lost." 12. Ac- 
 count for the effect of reality produced by Swift's narra- 
 tive of " Gulliver's Travels/' and Defoe's " Journal of the 
 Plague Year." 13. Sketch Milton's life. 14. Sketch 
 Dante's life (see Lowell's " Essay on Dante"). 14. De- 
 scribe a portrait of Dante. 15. The Sonnets alluded to in 
 § 47 ; describe the occasion of each, and criticise them. In 
 what particulars do they resemble collects ? Prove the 
 truth of your statements by quotations. 16. " Oromasdes 
 and Arimanes : " find similar uses of this metaphor in Mac- 
 aulay's "Essay on Lord Byron," and again in his "Essay 
 on Hallam ; " explain in full. 17. The Principles of the 
 Revolution of 1688. 18. Had Charles I. broken the fun- 
 damental laws of England ? 19. Archbishop Laud. 20. 
 " Strafford/' by Robert Browning. 21. The Long Parlia- 
 ment. 22. Oliver Cromwell. 23. The Independents. 
 24. The freedom of the press is indispensable to political 
 freedom. 25. The prose of Milton ; how does it compare 
 oratorically with Macaulay's prose ? 26. A general criti- 
 cism of Macaulay's essay on Milton. 27. A sketch of the 
 life of Macauiay. 28. The reform of Parliament in 1832. 
 29. Macaulay's " History of England." 30. The changes 
 of ministry in England from 1830 to 1859. 31. The part 
 played by Zachary Macauiay in the abolition of slavery in 
 England. 32. Macaulay's ways with children (see Trevel- 
 yam, Chapter XL). 33. Macaulay's relations to his sisters 
 (see Trevelyan, especially chapters III. and VI.). 
 
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ESSAY ON MILTON 
 
 (Edinburgh Revieio, August, 1825. ) 
 
 Joannis Miltoni, Angli, de Doctrina Christiana Ubri duo 
 posthumi. 1 A Treatise on Christian Doctrine, com- 
 piled from the Holy Scriptures alone. By Johk 
 Milton", translated from the original by Charles E. 
 Sumner, M.A., etc., etc. 1825. 2 
 
 1. Towards the close of the year 1823, Mr. Lemon, 3 
 deputy keeper of the state papers, in the course of his re- 
 searches among the presses 4 of his office, met with a large 
 Latin manuscript. With it were found corrected copies of 
 the foreign despatches written by Milton while he filled the 
 
 §§ 1-8. Prefatory Remarks. Description of a theological work 
 by John Milton, lately discovered. 
 
 1 Literally, Two Posthumous Books of John Milton, Englishman, 
 on Christian Doctrine. Milton's title originally intended for it was 
 probably Idea Theologies or "A Body of Divinity. " 
 
 2 Published in two editions Latin and English, by Dr. Sumner. 
 Both are now rare books The English version, re-edited by J. A. 
 St. John, is to be found in Bonn's Standard Library, Milton's Prose 
 Works, Vols. IV. , V. 
 
 3 Robert Lemon, F.S.A., noted for other discoveries among the 
 state papers. See Appendix to Scott's Rob Roy. Until the beginning 
 of this century the English state papers were much neglected and 
 carelessly kept. Since Mr. Lemon's time, however, they have been 
 carefully studied and calendared. All such records are now kept in 
 the Record-Office under the special charge of the Master of the Rolls 
 through the deputy-keeper of the Records. For some adventures of 
 the English state papers, see Stories from the State -Paper Office, A. C. 
 Ewald (Houghton, Mifflin, and Co., 1882). 
 
 4 Repositories for documents. 
 
2 ESSAY ON MILTON 
 
 office of Secretary/ and several papers relating to the Popish 
 Trials 2 and the Eye-house Plot. 3 The whole was wrapped 
 up in an envelope, superscribed To Mr. Skinner, Merchant. 
 On examination, the large manuscript proved to be the 
 long lost Essay on the Doctrines of Christianity, which, ac- 
 cording to Wood and Toland, 4 Milton finished after the 
 Eestoration, and deposited with Cyriac Skinner. Skinner, 
 it is well known, held the same political opinions with. his 
 illustrious friend. It is therefore probable, as Mr. Lemon 
 conjectures, that he may have fallen under the suspicions 
 of the government during that persecution of the Whigs 
 which followed the dissolution of the Oxford Parliament, 5 
 and that, in consequence of a general seizure of his papers, 
 this work may have been brought to the office in which it 
 has been found. But whatever the adventures of the 
 manuscript may have been, no doubt can exist that it is 
 a genuine relic of the great poet. 6 
 
 1 See Introduction, 16. 
 
 2 Arising from the bogus Popish Plot invented by Dr. Titus Oates, 
 1678. Among other extraordinary lies Dr. Oates testified that " the 
 late John Milton" had been a member of a treasonable Papist Club in 
 London ! 
 
 3 The Whig conspiracy to assassinate Charles II. in 1683. See In- 
 troduction, 19. 
 
 4 Anthony a Wood (1632-1695), in his History of Oxford University 
 {Atlienm Oxonienses, 1691), gives a life of Milton, who took the Mas- 
 ter's degree there in 1635. This life is based largely upon notes fur- 
 nished by one Aubrey, a contemporary of Milton, who knew some of 
 his family and friends very well and drew from them much informa- 
 tion. John Toland (1670-1722), the Deist, wrote an early Life of Mil- 
 ton, published in 1698. 
 
 5 A Parliament summoned to Oxford by Charles II. in 1681. See 
 Introduction, 19. 
 
 6 The adventures of this manuscript are now better known than 
 when this paragraph was written. After the publication of Macau- 
 lay's Essay, more documents were found by Mr. Lemon and others, 
 showing that Mr. Daniel Skinner, a nephew of Cyriac, had been em- 
 ployed under Milton's own direction in preparing this manuscript for 
 
ESSAY OJST MILTON 3 
 
 2. Mr. Sumner, 1 who was commanded by His Majesty 
 to edite and translate the treatise, has acquitted himself of 
 his task in a manner honourable to his talents and to his 
 character. His version is not indeed very easy or elegant 2 ; 
 but it is entitled to the praise of clearness and fidelity. His 
 notes abound with interesting quotations, and have the rare 
 merit of really elucidating the text. The preface is evidently 
 the work of a sensible and candid man, firm in his own 
 religious opinions, and tolerant towards those of others. 
 
 3. The book itself will not add much to the fame of 
 Milton. It is, like all his Latin works, well written— 
 though not exactly in the style of the prize essays of Ox- 
 ford and Cambridge. 3 There is no elaborate imitation of 
 
 publication. It was to be published after Milton's death, which oc- 
 curred in 1674 during the preparation of the book for the press. In 
 1675, accordingly, Mr. Skinner tried to get it printed, along with 
 certain public letters written by Milton as Secretary of the Common- 
 wealth, at the press of Elzevir in Amsterdam. The printer, Daniel 
 Elzevir, looked over the manuscript, and was so alarmed by its con- 
 tents that he notified the English government, saying that "there 
 were many things in it which ought to be suppressed. " The govern- 
 ment thereupon obliged the Skinners to give the manuscript up. It 
 was then thrown aside among other old papers until it was found one 
 hundred and fifty years afterwards, as described above. 
 
 1 Afterwards Lord Bishop of Winchester ; at this time Royal Chaplain 
 and Librarian. " His Majesty " is George the Fourth. 
 
 2 Notice Macaulay's careful use throughout the essay of this word, 
 which is often abused in common speech. 
 
 3 Oxford and Cambridge, the two great English universities, have 
 maintained in England a high standard in Latin style by encouraging- 
 prize compositions in prose and verse. Although Macaulay was him- 
 self an excellent classical scholar at Trinity College, Cambridge, we 
 learn from his biography that Latin composition was never a very 
 attractive exercise to him. "I never practised composition," he says 
 in a letter, u a single hour since I have been at Cambridge." He is 
 therefore a little scornful here about these prize essays ; in fact, as 
 we learn from his nephew, other men of his time wrote better Latin 
 than he did. 
 
4 ESSAY ON MILTON 
 
 classical antiquity, no scrupulous purity, none of the 
 ceremonial cleanness which characterizes the diction of 
 our academical Pharisees. 1 The author does not attempt 
 to polish and brighten his composition into the Ciceronian 2 
 gloss and brilliancy. He does not, in short, sacrifice sense 
 and spirit to pedantic refinements. The nature of his 
 subject compelled him to use many words 
 
 " That would have made Quintilian stare and gasp." 3 
 
 But he writes with as much ease and freedom as if Latin 
 were his mother-tongue ; and where he is least happy, his 
 failure seems to arise from the carelessness of a native, 
 not from the ignorance of a foreigner. What Denham, 4 
 with great felicity, says of Cowley, 5 may be applied to 
 
 1 The Pharisees were a sect of the Jews noted for their overzealous 
 care about outward forms of religion, to the neglect of inward virtue 
 of heart and soul. See Gospel of St. Matthew, Chap, xxiii. Even so 
 the Latin essays of the English universities were beautiful outwardly 
 but had no valuable contents. 
 
 42 Like Cicero, the great Roman orator (100-43 B.C.). whose name 
 is a proverb for the best Latin prose ever composed. 
 
 3 E.g., praedestinatio, electio nationalis, reprobatio, etc. This line 
 is from Milton's Sonnet XL Quintilian (35-96 a.d.) was a famous 
 Roman teacher of Rhetoric. In his work upon The Education of the 
 Orator he discusses many points of interest in Latin diction and style. 
 His own taste was very careful and his admiration of Cicero's Latin 
 was great. 
 
 4 Sir John Denham (see Ward's English Poets), a poet and courtier 
 of the reign of Charles I. In some lines on the Death and Burial of 
 Mr. Abraham Cowley among the ancient Poets, he says : — 
 
 '* Horace's wit and Virgil's state 
 He did not steal but emulate ; 
 And when he would like them appear, 
 Their garb but not their clothes did wear." 
 
 5 Abraham Cowley, the most popular poet of Milton's day ; one of 
 the great men of Macaulav's own college (Trinity College, Cambridge). 
 He wrote many translations and imitations of classic authors, as well 
 
ESSAY ON MILTON 5 
 
 him. He wears the garb but not the clothes of the an- 
 cients. 1 
 
 4. Throughout the volume are discernible the traces of a 
 powerful and independent mind, emancipated from the 
 influence of authority, and devoted to the search of truth. 
 He professes to form his system from the Bible alone ; and 
 his digest 2 of scriptural texts is certainly among the best 
 that have appeared. But he is not always so happy in his 
 inferences as in his citations. 
 
 5. Some of the heterodox 3 opinions which he avows seem 
 to have excited considerable amazement ; particularly his 
 Arianism/ and his notions on the subject of polygamy. 5 
 Yet we can scarcely conceive 4^at any person could have 
 read the Paradise Lost without suspecting him of the 
 former ; nor do we think that any reader, acquainted with 
 the history of his life, ought to be much startled at the 
 latter. The opinions which he has expressed respecting 
 
 as English, odes and prose essays. In politics he took the royalist 
 side with Lord Falkland. Macaulay wrote a charming Conversation 
 between Mr. Abraham Cowley and Mr. John Milton for KnighVs 
 Quarterly in 1823, which anticipates some of the paragraphs in this 
 present essay, and might well be read in connection with it. 
 
 1 I.e., his ideas are clothed in the general form which the ancients 
 would have used ; but not in exactly the same words and phrases. 
 
 2 Digest, a collection and abridgment of literary or scientific matter 
 arranged in some convenient order. 
 
 3 Heterodox, heretical, theologically incorrect. 
 
 4 The theological tenets, upon the nature of Christ, of Arius, an 
 Alexandrian priest of the fourth century. After a fierce battle in the 
 church, these opinions were condemned as heresy by the General 
 Council of Nicsea, 325 a.d. Milton, like Sir Isaac Newton, appears to V* 
 be a semi-Arian, believing that Christ possessed a certain derivative 
 deity, not, however, coeternal with the Father's. p 
 
 5 Milton maintains in his essay that, according to the Old Testament, 
 marriage under polygamy was a genuine marriage. Polygamy, there- 
 fore, though it may be inexpedient, is not a crime like murder and 
 stealing. 
 
6 ESSAY ON MILTON 
 
 the nature of the Deity, the eternity of matter/ and the 
 observation of the Sabbath, 2 might, we think, have caused 
 more just surprise. 
 
 6. But we will not go into the discussion of these points. 
 The book, were it far more orthodox, or far more heretical 
 than it is, would not much edify or corrupt the present 
 generation. The men of our time are not to be converted 3 
 or perverted by quartos. 4 A few more days, and this es^ay 
 will follow the Defensio Populi 5 to the dust and silence 
 of the upper shelf. The name of its author, and the re- 
 markable circumstances attending its publication, will 
 secure to it a certain degree of attention. For a month or 
 two it will occupy a few minutes of chat in every drawing- 
 room, and a few columns in every magazine ; and it will 
 then, to borrow the elegant language of the play -bills, be 
 withdrawn, to make room for the forthcoming novelties. 
 
 7. We wish, however, to avail ourselves of the interest, 
 transient as it may be, which this work has excited. The 
 dexterous Capuchins 6 never choose to preach on the life 
 
 1 " Matter is imperishable and eternal, because it is not only from 
 God, but out of God," who is eternal. Milton would be classed now 
 as a pantheistic materialist. He appears to hold that there is no radi- 
 cal distinction between body and soul, or between matter and spirit. 
 
 2 "The command to keep the Sabbath was given to the Israelites 
 for a variety of reasons, mostly peculiar to themselves;" "the law 
 of the Sabbath having been repealed, it is evident that no day of 
 worship has been appointed in its place," etc., etc. Milton is an Anti- 
 Sabbatarian. 
 
 3 Convert, to turn from one opinion to another ; pervert, to turn 
 from a true opinion to a false one. 
 
 4 Books in the making of which the large sheets of printing paper 
 are folded twice, making four leaves. The book Macaulay is review- 
 ing was a quarto. This shape was a favorite form for important 
 books in Milton's day. It is now little used except for books contain- 
 ing plates and maps like school geographies. 
 
 5 See Introduction, 16. 
 
 6 A younger branch of the Franciscan monks, named from the pecul- 
 
ESSAY ON MILTON 7 
 
 and miracles of a saint, till they have awakened the devo- 
 tional feelings of their auditors, by exhibiting some relic 
 of him — a thread of his garment, a lock of his hair, or a 
 drop of his blood. On the same principle, we intend to 
 take advantage of the late interesting discovery, and, 
 while this memorial of a great and good man is still in 
 the hands of all, to say something of his moral and in- 
 tellectual qualities. Nor, we are convinced, will the se- 
 verest of our readers blame us if, on an occasion like the 
 present, we turn for a short time from the topics of the 
 day, to commemorate, in all love and reverence, the genius 
 and virtues of John Milton, the poet, the statesman, 
 the philosopher, the glory of English literature, the cham- 
 pion and the martyr of English liberty. 1 
 
 8. It is by his poetry that Milton is best known ; and it 
 is of his poetry that we wish first to speak. By the gen- 
 eral suffrage of the civilised world, his place has been as- 
 signed among the greatest masters of the art. His 
 detractors, however, though outvoted, have not been 
 silenced. There are many critics, and some of great name, 
 who contrive in the same breath to extol the poems and to 
 decry the poet. The works, they acknowledge, considered 
 in themselves, may be classed among the noblest produc- 
 tions of the human mind. But they will not allow the 
 
 iar cowl or capuce they wear. They are famous as preachers, as mis- 
 sionaries, and as martyrs. 
 
 §§ 8-49. First Division of the Essay : Milton's Poetry. 
 §§ 8-18. First topic discussed: Is Milton's place among the greatest 
 masters f Yes, for Tie triumphed over the difficulty of writing poetry in 
 the midst of a highly civilised society. A discussion of the relation of 
 poetry to civilisation. 
 
 1 This sentence describes accurately the general subject of the essay. 
 The essay is not a complete analysis of Milton's literary product, nor 
 an elaborate biographical study. It is just a Commemoration of the gen- 
 ius and virtues of John Milton, with a general discussion of some of his 
 moral and intellectual qualities. 
 
8 ESSAY ON MILTON 
 
 author to rank with those great men who, born in the in- 
 fancy of civilisation, supplied, by their own powers, the 
 want of instruction, and, though destitute of models 
 themselves, bequeathed to posterity models which defy im- 
 itation. Milton, it is said, inherited what his predecessors 
 created ; he lived in an enlightened age ; he received a fin- 
 ished education ; and we must therefore, if we would form 
 a just estimate of his powers, make large deductions ior 
 these advantages. 
 
 9. We venture to say, on the contrary, paradoxical 1 as 
 the remark may appear, that no poet has ever had to strug- 
 gle with more unfavourable circumstances than Milton. 
 He doubted, as he has himself owned, whether he had not 
 been born "an age too late." For this notion Johnson 2 
 has thought fit to make him the butt of his clumsy ridi- 
 cule. The poet, Ave believe, understood the nature of his 
 art better than the critic. He knew that his poetical gen- 
 ius derived no advantage from the civilisation which sur- 
 rounded him, or from the learning which he had acquired ; 
 and he looked back with something like regret to the ruder 
 age of simple words and vivid impressions. 
 
 10. We think that, as civilisation advances, poetry al- 
 most necessarily declines. Therefore, though we admire 
 those great works of imagination which have appeared in 
 dark ages, we do not admire them the more because they 
 have appeared in dark ages. On the contrary, we hold 
 
 1 Paradox, an apparently absurd but true statement. 
 
 2 Dr. Samuel Johnson (1709-1784), the dictator of literary opinion 
 to the England of his time. The allusion is to his Life of Milton in 
 his Lives of the Poets. On this subject Johnson says in this work 
 that Milton was a " victim to the fumes of vain imagination'' in that 
 he thought he depended on seasons and climates ; Johnson assures us 
 that, however inferior to the heroes of better ages, c, he might still 
 be great among his contemporaries " "a giant among pygmies.'' For 
 the relations of Johnson's Life to Macaulay's Essay, see Introduction, 
 4. 5, and 6. 
 
ESSAY ON MILTON 9 
 
 that the most wonderful and splendid proof of genius is a 
 great poem produced in a civilised age. We cannot under- 
 stand why those who believe in that most orthodox l article 
 of literary faith, that the earliest poets are generally the 
 best, should wonder at the rule as if it were the exception. 
 Surely the uniformity of the phenomenon 2 indicates a cor- 
 responding uniformity in the cause. 
 
 11. The fact is, that common observers reason from the 
 progress of the experimental sciences to that of the imita- 
 tive arts. The improvement of the former is gradual and 
 slow. Ages are spent in collecting materials, ages more in 
 separating and combining them. Even when a system has 
 been formed, there is still something to add, to alter, 
 or to reject. Every generation enjoys the use of a vast 
 hoard bequeathed to it by antiquity, and transmits it, 
 augmented by fresh acquisitions, to future ages. In 
 these pursuits, therefore, the first speculators lie under 
 great disadvantages, and, even when they fail, are en- 
 titled to praise. Their pupils, with far inferior intellec- 
 tual powers, speedily surpass them in actual attainments. 
 Every girl who has read Mrs. Marcet's 3 little dialogues 
 on Political Economy, could teach Montague 4 or Wal- 
 
 1 Orthodox, correct theologically ; lience, correct in general. 
 
 2 Now usually spelled phenomenon ; u a thing appearing," something 
 whose appearing requires explanation, 
 
 3 Mrs. Marcet wrote a text-book for children called Conversations 
 on Political Economy. The conversation is carried on by Mrs. B . , 
 who expounds the principles of Adam Smith, Malthus, Say, and Sis- 
 mondi, to Caroline, who asks the questions u which would be likely 
 to arise in the mind of an intelligent young person." A letter of 
 Maria Edge worth's, written from the house of Mr. Ricardo in 1822, 
 says: "It is now high fashion with blue ladies to talk political 
 economy and make a great jabbering on the subject, while others 
 who have more sense, like Mrs. Marcet, hold their tongues and listen.'' 
 
 4 Charles Montague (1661-1715), afterwards Earl of Halifax; like 
 Cowley a graduate of Trinity College ; an intimate friend of Sir Isaac 
 Newton. He became famous as Chancellor of the Exchequer under 
 
10 ESSAY ON MILTON 
 
 pole * many lessons in finance. Any intelligent man may 
 now, by resolutely applying himself for a few years to 
 mathematics, learn more than the great Newton 2 knew 
 after half a century of study and meditation. 
 
 12. But it is not thus with music, with painting, or 
 with sculpture. Still less is it thus with poetry. The 
 progress of refinement rarely supplies these arts with bet- 
 ter objects of imitation. It may indeed improve the in- 
 struments which are necessary to the mechanical opera- 
 tions of the musician, the sculptor, and the painter. But 
 language, the machine of the poet, is best fitted for his 
 purpose in its rudest state. Nations, like individuals, 
 first perceive, and then abstract. They advance from par- 
 ticular images to general terms. Hence the vocabulary of 
 an enlightened society is philosophical, that of a half-civil- 
 ized people is poetical. 
 
 13. This change in the language of men is partly the 
 cause and partly the effect of a corresponding change in 
 the nature of their intellectual operations, a change by 
 which science gains and poetry loses. Generalisation is 
 necessary to the advancement of knowledge, but particu- 
 larly is indispensable to the creations of the imagination. 
 
 William III. for his extraordinary skill in finance. Under his advice 
 and guidance the Bank of England was founded, and he took the 
 measures also which began the national debt of England. See Macau- 
 lay, History of England, vol. vii. , chap. xix. 
 
 2 Sir Robert Walpole (1676-1745), the great finance minister of 
 George II., who developed especially the excise duties. His policy 
 was devoted to preserving peace abroad and establishing principles of 
 sound finance and of economical taxation at home. 
 
 2 Sir Isaac Newton (1642-1727), another Fellow of Trinity, an unri- 
 valled genius in mathematical speculation. His most famous book 
 was entitled Philosophiae Naturalis Princlpia Mathematica. His great 
 discoveries were in optics, in gravitation, and in the invention of 
 mathematical processes. See Hawthorne's True Stories for a little 
 biography of this famous man. 
 
ESSAY ON MILTON 11 
 
 In proportion as men know more and think more, tliey 
 look less at individuals and more at classes. They there- 
 fore make better theories and worse poems. They give us 
 vague phrases instead of images, and personified qualities 
 instead of men. They may be better able to analyse hu- 
 man nature than their predecessors. But analysis is not 
 the business of the poet. His office is to portray, not to 
 dissect. He may believe in a moral sense, like Shaftes- 
 bury. 1 He may refer all human actions to self-interest like 
 Helvetius, 2 or he may never think about the matter at all. 
 His creed on such subjects will no more influence his 
 poetry, properly so called, than the notions which a painter 
 may have conceived respecting the lacrymal 3 glands, or the 
 circulation of the blood, will affect the tears of his Niobe, 4 
 
 1 The third Lord Shaftesbury (1671-171?)), an amiable and shy young 
 man, for whom public-school life was too rough, and who therefore 
 learned his Greek from Eliza Birch by the ''natural method." His 
 fame as a writer is chiefly due to a book on human actions entitled 
 Characteristics. He maintains that men have a special sense which 
 sees right and wrong as the eye sees light. He invented for this the 
 term "moral sense," which phrase he may be said to have contributed 
 to the English language. 
 
 2 Helvetius (1715-1771), a popular philosopher in Parisian society 
 about a generation before the French Revolution. He was a curious 
 person, so vain of popular applause that he appeared once as a stage- 
 dancer. His chief work, entitled Be V Esprit {On the Human Mind), 
 maintained that self -interest was the spring of all human action, that 
 there was no such thing as right and wrong apart from what is pleas- 
 ant and painful. This, he says, is u Le secret de tout le nionde." 
 His book made a great stir, incurring even the notice of the Sorbonne 
 and the Parliament of Paris. 
 
 3 Lacrymal, secreting tears. 
 
 4 In Greek mythology a queen whose pride in her children led her 
 to make impious comparisons of them to Apollo and Artemis, the 
 children of Latona. Her children were therefore slain by the arrows 
 of these gods, while Niobe, after vainly trying to defend them, became 
 changed into a rock, weeping forever. 
 
12 ESSAY ON MILTON 
 
 or the blushes of his Aurora. 1 If Shakespeare had written 
 a book on the motives of human actions, it is by no means 
 certain that it would have been a good one. It is ex- 
 tremely improbable that it would have contained half so 
 much able reasoning on the subject as is to be found in the 
 Fable of the Bees. But could Mandeville 2 have created 
 an Iago ? 3 Well as he knew how to resolve characters 
 into their elements, would he have been able to combine 
 those elements in such a manner as to make up a man — a 
 real, living, individual man ? 
 
 14. Perhaps no person can be a poet, or can even enjoy 
 poetry, without a certain unsoundness of mind, if anything 
 which gives so much pleasure ought to be called unsound- 
 ness. By poetry we mean, not, of course, all writing in 
 verse, nor even all good writing in verse. Our definition 
 excludes many metrical compositions which, on other 
 grounds, deserve the highest praise. By poetry we mean, 
 the art of employing words in such a manner as to produce 
 an illusion on the imagination, the art of doing by means 
 of words what the painter does by means of colours. Thus 
 the greatest of poets has described it, in lines universally 
 admired for the vigour and felicity of their diction, and 
 
 i Aurora, the goddess of dawn, always rosy and blushing, according 
 to Greek and Latin poetic fancy. 
 
 2 Bernard de Mandeville (1670-1733), a satirical writer. The Fable 
 of the Bees appeared in 1705. The moral of the fable is that it is the 
 selfishness and extravagance, and even the vices of society, which make 
 the market for labor. Thus luxury is the root of all civilisation, and 
 " Private Vices, Publick Benefits" The fable narrates that certain 
 Bees left their busy hive and went off to live a frugal life in a hollow 
 tree, where by their injudicious temperance and virtue they all 
 starved. 
 
 41 . . . Fools only strive 
 To make a great, an honest hive." 
 
 3 A principal character in Shakespeare's Othello, a famous villain. 
 
ESSAY ON MILTON 13 
 
 still more valuable on account of the just notion which 
 they convey of the art in which he excelled : 
 
 11 As imagination bodies forth 
 The forms of things unknown, the poet's pen 
 Turns them to shapes, and gives to airy nothing 
 A local habitation and a name," l 
 
 These are the fruits of the " fine frenzy " which he ascribes 
 to the poet — a fine frenzy, doubtless, but still a frenzy. 
 Truth, indeed, is essential to poetry ; but it is the truth of 
 madness. The reasonings are just ; but the premises 2 are 
 false. After the first suppositions have been made, every- 
 thing ought to be consistent ; but those first suppositions 
 require a degree of credulity which almost amounts to a 
 partial and temporary derangement of the intellect. Hence, 
 of all people, children are the most imaginative. They 
 abandon themselves without reserve to every illusion. 
 Every image which is strongly presented to their mental 
 eye produces on them the effect of reality. No man, what- 
 ever his sensibility 3 may be, is ever affected by Hamlet 
 or Lear, 4 as a little girl is affected by the story of poor 
 Eed Eicling-hood. She knows that it is all false, that 
 wolves cannot speak, that there are no wolves in England. 
 Yet, in spite of her knowledge, she believes ; she weeps, 
 she trembles ; she dares not go into a dark room lest she 
 should feel the teeth of the monster at her throat. Such 
 is the despotism of the imagination over uncultivated 
 minds. 
 
 1 Midsummer Nighfs Dream, Act V. , Sc. I. 
 
 2 Premises, a term in logic; better "premisses." It means a prop- 
 osition, belief in which leads to belief in another proposition called a 
 conclusion. 
 
 3 In current English we are apt to use "sensitiveness" instead of 
 " sensibility," in this meaning of " capncity for acute feeling." But 
 notice the title of Jane Austen's novel, Sense and Sensibility. 
 
 4 Shakespeare's well-known plays. 
 
14 ESSAY ON MILTON 
 
 15. In a rude state of society, men are children with a 
 greater variety of ideas. It is therefore in such a state of 
 society that we may expect to find the poetical tempera- 
 ment in its highest perfection. In an enlightened age 
 there will be much intelligence, much science, much 
 philosophy, abundance of just classification and subtle 
 analysis, abundance of wit and eloquence, abundance of 
 verses, and even of good ones ; but little poetry. Men 
 will judge and compare ; but they will not create. They 
 will talk about the old poets, and comment on them, and 
 to a certain degree enjoy them. But they will scarcely be 
 able to conceive the effect which poetry produced on their 
 ruder ancestors, the agony, the ecstasy, the plenitude of 
 belief. The Greek Ehapsodists, according to Plato, could 
 not recite Homer without almost falling into convulsions. 1 
 The Mohawk hardly feels the scalping-knife while he 
 shouts his death-song. 2 The power which the ancient bards 3 
 
 1 Plato's Ion, pp. 535, 536. Socrates says to Ion, who was a Khapso- 
 dist, or professional reciter of poetry, " When you produce your great 
 effects, in the recitation of some striking passage, are you in your right 
 mind ? Does not your soul in an ecstasy seem to be among the per- 
 sons and places of which she is speaking?" — u Yes," says Ion, "I 
 must confess that at the tale of pity my eyes are filled with tears, and 
 when I speak of heroes my hair stands on end and my heart beats." — 
 "Strictly speaking such a one is not in his right mind." Plato (429- 
 347 B.C.), the great Athenian philosopher, views poets exactly as Ma- 
 caulay does here, as beings of an abnormal structure akin to mania. 
 " Poets are winged and holy things," he says, "not be allowed to live 
 in a well-ordered state." 
 
 2 Mohawks, a tribe of Indians in what is now the State of New York. 
 They were the first tribe of this region to obtain firearms, and they 
 were so conspicuous in the history of the early settlers that their name 
 was used by the English for the Iroquois in general, and therefore be- 
 came a proverbial expression for the fiercest Indians. 
 
 3 A Celtic word for the national poets in Wales and Ireland. These 
 singers of the deeds of heroes, of victories of the nation and tribe, and 
 chanters of pedigrees, continue to be found in historic times. 
 
ESSAY ON MILTON 15 
 
 of Wales and Germany exercised over their auditors seems 
 to modern readers almost miraculous. Such feelings are 
 very rare in a civilised community, and most rare among 
 those who participate most in its improvements. They 
 linger longest among the peasantry. 
 
 16. Poetry produces an illusion on the eye of the mind, as 
 a magic lantern produces an illusion on the eye of the body. 
 And, as the magic lantern acts best in a dark room, poetry 
 effects its purpose most completely in a dark age. As the 
 light of knowledge breaks in upon its exhibitions, as the 
 outlines of certainty become more and more definite, and 
 the shades of probability more and more distinct, the hues 
 and lineaments of the phantoms which it calls up, grow 
 fainter and fainter. We cannot unite the incompatible 
 advantages of reality and deception, the clear discernment 
 of truth and the exquisite enjoyment of fiction. 
 
 17. He who, in an enlightened and literary society, as- 
 pires to be a great poet, must first become a little child. 
 He must take to pieces the whole web of his mind. He 
 must unlearn much of that knowledge which has perhaps 
 constituted hitherto his chief title to superiority. His 
 very talents will be a hindrance to him. His difficulties 
 will be proportioned to his proficiency in the pursuits which 
 are fashionable among his contemporaries ; and that pro- 
 ficiency will in general be proportioned to the vigour and 
 activity of his mind. And it is well if, after all his sacri- 
 fices and exertions, his works do not resemble a lisping man, 
 or a modern ruin. We have seen in our own time * great 
 talents, intense labour, and long meditation, enrployed in 
 
 iThe allusion here is probably to the poets of tlie " Lake School,' 7 
 especially to Wordsworth, whose effort to abandon the lofty diction 
 which had grown fashionable in English poetry, and to return in his 
 verses to the simple language of life's simple feelings was at first very 
 offensive to his contemporaries. The Lyrical Ballads came out in 
 1798. 
 
16 ESSAY ON MILTON 
 
 this struggle against the spirit of the age, and employed, 
 we will not say absolutely in vain, but with dubious success 
 and feeble applause. 
 
 18. If these reasonings be just, no poet has ever tri- 
 umphed over greater difficulties than Milton. He received 
 a learned education. He was a profound and elegant clas- 
 sical scholar ; he had studied all the mysteries of Rabbini- 
 cal l literature ; he was intimately acquainted with every 
 language of modern Europe from which either pleasure or 
 information was then to be derived. 2 He was perhaps the 
 only great poet of later times who has been distinguished 
 by the excellence of his Latin verse. The genius of Pe- 
 trarch 3 was scarcely of the first order ; and his poems in 
 the ancient language, though much praised by those who 
 have never read them, are wretched compositions. Cow- 
 ley, with all his admirable wit and ingenuity, had little 
 imagination ; nor indeed do we think his classical diction 
 comparable to that of Milton. The authority of Johnson 4 
 is against us on this point. But Johnson had studied the 
 bad writers of the middle ages till he had become utterly 
 insensible to the Augustan 5 elegance, and was as ill quali- 
 
 §§ 18-20. Second topic : Milton's Latin Poetry. 
 
 1 Jewish, writings composed chiefly after the Christian era by the 
 Rabbis or masters expounding the law. They enjoyed an authority 
 almost equal to that of the sacred Scriptures. 
 
 2 Milton read not only Latin, Greek, and Hebrew, but also French, 
 Italian, Dutch, and Spanish. 
 
 3 Francesco Petrarca (1304-1374), the first true reviver of classical 
 learning in Europe after the middle ages. He wrote a Latin epic, 
 Africa, and was crowned with a laurel wreath for it in Rome. He 
 wrote also Latin eclogues and epistles. His Latin was, however, 
 mediseval ; he was devoted to the ideal of restoring classic Latin to 
 the world, but he had little direct knowledge of classic authors him- 
 self. 
 
 4 See Introduction, 6. 
 
 5 The Augustan age was the time of the Emperor Augustus, when 
 Virgil, Horace, Ovid, Livy, and other great Roman writers lived. 
 
ESSAY ON MILT OK 17 
 
 fiecl to judge between two Latin styles., as a habitual drunk- 
 ard to set up for a wine-taster. 
 
 19. Versification in a dead language is an exotic, a far- 
 fetched, costly, sickly imitation of that which elsewhere 
 may be found in healthful and spontaneous perfection. 
 The soils on which this rarity flourishes are, in general, 
 as ill-suited to the production of vigorous native poetry as 
 the flower -pots of a hothouse to the growth of oaks. That 
 the author of the Paradise Lost should have written the 
 Epistle to Manso 1 was truly wonderful. Never before 
 were such marked originality and such exquisite mimicry 
 found together. Indeed, in all the Latin poems of Milton, 
 the artificial manner indispensable to such works is ad- 
 mirably preserved ; while, at the same time, the richness 
 of his fancy and the elevation of his sentiments give to 
 them a peculiar charm, an air of nobleness and freedom, 
 which distinguishes them from all other writings of the 
 same class. They remind us of the amusements of those 
 angelic warriors who composed the cohort of Gabriel : 
 
 " About him exercised heroic games 
 
 The unarmed youth of heaven". Brit o'er their heads 
 
 Celestial armoury, shield, helm, and spear, 
 
 Hung bright, with diamond flaming and with gold." 2 
 
 We cannot look upon the sportive exercises for which the 
 genius of Milton ungirds itself, without catching a glimpse 
 of the gorgeous and terrible panoply which it is accus- 
 tomed to wear. The strength of his imagination tri- 
 
 The word became proverbial for any epoch when good taste prevailed 
 in literature. 
 
 1 Manso, Marquis of Villa, was the great man of Naples when Mil- 
 ton visited it. The old man was very kind to the young poet, making 
 much of him and introducing him to other literary people. For this 
 Milton wrote him on his return a beautiful epistle in Latin hexame- 
 ters, one of his best-known Latin poems. See Introduction, 11. 
 
 2 Paradise Lost, IV., 551-554. 
 
18 ESSAY ON MILTON 
 
 umphed over every obstacle. So intense and ardent was 
 the fire of his mind, that it not only was not suffocated 
 beneath the weight of its fuel, but penetrated the whole 
 superincumbent mass with its own heat and radiance. 1 
 
 20. It is not our intention to attempt anything like a 
 complete examination of the poetry of Milton. The public 
 has long been agreed as to the merit of the most remarkable 
 passages, the incomparable harmony of the numbers, and 
 the excellence of that style which no rival has been able to 
 equal, and no parodist 2 to degrade, which displays in their 
 highest perfection the idiomatic 3 powers of the English 
 tongue, and to which every ancient and every modern 
 language has contributed something of grace, of energy, 
 or of music. In the vast field of criticism on which we 
 are entering, innumerable reapers have already put their 
 sickles. Yet the harvest is so abundant that the negli- 
 gent search of a straggling gleaner may be rewarded with a 
 sheaf. 
 
 21. The most striking characteristic of the poetry of 
 Milton is the extreme remoteness of the associations by 
 means of which it acts on the reader. 5 Its effect is pro- 
 duced, not so much by what it expresses as by what it 
 suggests, not so much by the ideas which it directly con- 
 veys, as by other ideas which are connected with them. 
 He electrifies the mind through conductors. 4 The most 
 unimaginative man must understand the Iliad. Homer 
 gives him no choice, and requires from him no exertion ; 
 
 1 For Milton's Latin Poems, see Milton's Poems in the edition of 
 Masson, 3 vols. (Macmillan). Perhaps the best of them all is the 
 Epitaphium Damonis, dedicated to his friend, Charles Diodati. 
 
 2 Parodist, a writer of ludicrous imitations of poetry. 
 
 3 Idiomatic, peculiar to a certain language. 
 
 4 As electricity is carried to any remote place by a good conductor, 
 so Milton's vocabulary brings ideas from a vast distance into the mind 
 of the reader. 
 
ESS AT ON MILTON 19 
 
 but takes the whole upon himself,, and sets his images in 
 so clear a light that it is impossible to be blind to them. 
 The works of Milton cannot be comprehended or enjoyed, 
 unless the mind of the reader co-operate with that of the 
 writer. He does not paint a finished picture or play for 
 a mere passive listener. He sketches, and leaves others to 
 fill up the outline. He strikes the keynote, and expects 
 his hearer to make out the melody. 
 
 22. We often hear of the magical influence of poetry. 
 The expression in general means nothing, but, applied to 
 the writings of Milton, it is most appropriate. His poetry 
 acts like an incantation. Its merit lies less in its obvious 
 meaning than in its occult * power. There would seem, at 
 first sight, to be no more in his words than in other words. 
 But they are words of enchantment. No sooner are they 
 pronounced, than the past is present, and the distant near. 
 New forms of beauty start at once into existence, and all 
 the burial-places of the memory give up their dead. 
 Change the structure of the sentence ; substitute one 
 synonym for another, and the whole effect is destroyed. 
 The spell loses its power ; and he who should then hope 
 to conjure with it, would find himself as much mistaken 
 as Cassim in the Arabian tale, when he stood crying : 
 " Open Wheat/' " Open Barley/' to the door which obeyed 
 no sound but " Open Sesame ! " 2 The miserable failure of 
 Dryden, 3 in his attempt to rewrite some parts of the 
 Paradise Lost, is a remarkable instance of this. 
 
 §§ 20-25. Third topic: Some striking characteristics of Milton's 
 poetic methods. A description of the effect produced by the peculiar sug- 
 gestiveness of the words he uses. Examples, D Allegro, and II Penseroso. 
 
 1 Occult, concealed, " where more is meant than meets the ear." 
 
 2 In old versions of the Arabian Nights was included a famous 
 Turkish tale, " Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves." " Sesame "is a 
 kind of grain. 
 
 3 John Dryden (1631-1700), the great poet of the next generation in 
 England. He composed an opera called The State of Innocence, 
 
20 ESSAY ON MIL TOW 
 
 23. In support of these observations, we may remark 
 that scarcely any passages in the poems of Milton are more 
 generally known, or more frequently repeated, than those 
 which are little more than master-rolls of names. 1 They 
 are not always more appropriate or more melodious than 
 other names. But they are charmed names. Every one 
 of them is the first link in a long chain of associated ideas. 
 Like the dwelling-place of our infancy revisited in man- 
 hood, like the song of our country heard in a strange land, 
 they produce upon us an effect wholly independent of their 
 intrinsic value. One transports us back to a remote pe- 
 riod of history. Another places us among the novel scenes 
 and manners of a distant country » A third evokes all the 
 dear classical recollections of childhood, the school-room, 
 the dog-eared Virgil, the holiday, and the prize. A fourth 
 brings before us the splendid phantoms of chivalrous ro- 
 mance, the trophied lists, 2 the embroidered housings, 3 the 
 quaint devices, the haunted forests, the enchanted gar- 
 dens, the achievements of enamoured knights, and the 
 smiles of rescued princesses. 
 
 of which, the libretto was manufactured out of Paradise Lost. Here 
 are some verses : 
 
 u If thou art he, but O, how changed from him, 
 Companion of my Arms, how wan, how dim, 
 How faded all thy glories are ! I see 
 Myself too well, and my own change in thee." 
 
 Milton is said to have given Dryden leave to do this work, saying, 
 good-naturedly, "Ay, ay, you may tag my verses." A "tag" was a 
 silver ornament worn on the ends of ribbons in those days for show. 
 Milton's allusion is to the tinkling rhymes on the ends of Dryden' s verses. 
 
 1 Specimens of these "muster-rolls of names'* are found in Par- 
 adise Lost, I., 580-585; II, 525-545 ; IV., 276-283 ; and elsewhere. 
 
 2 Lists, the space enclosed by the ropes or barriers at a tournament. 
 Trophied, adorned with trophies, the spoils taken from conquered ene- 
 mies. 
 
 3 Housings, the trappings of the horses, especially cloths or covers, 
 more or less ornamental, laid over the saddle. 
 
ESSAY ON MILTON 21 
 
 24. In none of the works of Milton is his peculiar man- 
 ner more happily displayed than in the Allegro and the 
 Penseroso. It is impossible to conceive that the mech- 
 anism of language can be brought to a more exquisite degree 
 of perfection. These poems differ from others as atar l of 
 roses differs from ordinary rose water, the close packed es- 
 sence from the thin diluted mixture. They are, indeed, 
 not so much poems as collections of hints, from each of 
 which the reader is to make out a poem for himself. Every 
 epithet is a text for a stanza. 2 
 
 25. The Comus and the Samson Agonistes are works 
 which, though of very different merit, offer some marked 
 points of resemblance. They are both lyric poems in 
 the form of plays. There are perhaps no two kinds of 
 composition so essentially dissimilar as the drama and the 
 ode. 3 The business of the dramatist is to keep himself out 
 of sight, and to let nothing appear but his characters. As 
 soon as he attracts notice to his personal feelings, the illu- 
 sion is broken. The effect is as unpleasant as that which 
 is produced on the stage by the voice of a prompter, or the 
 entrance of a scene-shifter. Hence it was that the trage- 
 dies of Byron 4 were his least successful performances. 
 
 §§ 25-30. Fourth tjpic : Milton's dramatic poetry. Like the Greek 
 drama, it has much of the lyric character. The Greek drama and 
 Samson Agonistes ; Comus and the Italian masques. 
 
 1 Atar of roses, usually written " attar," " otto " ; an essential oil of 
 roses made in Turkey. It takes one hundred and fifty pounds of rose- 
 leaves to make an ounce of the atar. 
 
 2 Macaulay wrote " canto " in the first edition. A stanza is a series of 
 lines grouped together in a fixed order, composing a part of a poem. A 
 canto is a much larger thing, a division of some length in a long poem 
 
 3 Lyric, delineating the poet's own thoughts and feelings. Drama, a 
 story of passions and feelings not belonging to the poet, conveyed by 
 action and representation of persons. Ode, a lyric poem of the most 
 exalted kind, expressing the highest feelings of the poet. 
 
 4 Byron (1788-1824) was reviewed in the Edinburgh in 1830 by Ma- 
 
22 ESSAY ON MILTON 
 
 They resemble those pasteboard pictures invented by the 
 friend of children, Mr. Newbery, in which a single mova- 
 ble head goes round twenty different bodies ; so that the 
 same face looks out upon us successively, from the uniform 
 of a hussar, the furs of a judge, and the rags of a beggar. 
 In all the characters, patriots and tyrants, haters and 
 lovers, the frown and sneer of Harold x were discernible in 
 an instant. But this species of egotism, though fatal to 
 the drama, is the inspiration of the ode. It is the part of 
 the lyric poet to abandon himself, without reserve, to his 
 town emotions. 
 
 26. Between these hostile elements many great men have 
 endeavored to effect an amalgamation, but never with com- 
 plete success. The Greek Drama, on the model of which 
 the Samson was written, sprang from the Ode. The dia- 
 logue was engrafted on the chorus, 2 and naturally partook 
 of its character. The genius of the greatest of the Athe- 
 nian dramatists co-operated with the circumstances under 
 which tragedy made its first appearance. iEschylus 3 was, 
 
 caulay. The idea here expressed about Byron is in that paper ex- 
 panded and explained. 
 
 1 Byron's first and best-known poem, Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, 
 describes in the character of the hero his own melancholy spirit jour- 
 neying over Europe. 
 
 2 The Greek Drama was evolved from choruses sung by bands of 
 dancing villagers around the altars of harvest gods. During these 
 hymns they imitated the actions of the gods and heroes which their 
 songs described. Afterwards a narrator and actor joined in dialogue 
 with them. Finally several actors and a regular stage were intro- 
 duced and the Drama was thus created. But, as Macaulay says, the 
 dramatic element was to the end subordinated to the lyric. 
 
 3 ^Eschylus (525-456 B.C.), the first of the three great Greek trage- 
 dians. As to the " Oriental tincture " in his poetry, it cannot be true 
 that he borrowed anything from Asia. Rather was his spirit a kindred 
 one to that of the Orient, for in common with the poets and prophets 
 of the Hebrew race he had a deep sense of the mystical meaning in 
 human life, while in common with the Greek race he could express 
 
H 88 AT ON MILTON 23 
 
 head and hearty a lyric poet. In his time, the Greeks had 
 far more intercourse with the East than in the days of 
 Homer ; and they had not yet acquired that immense 
 superiority in war, in science, and in the arts, which, in 
 the following generation, led them to treat the Asiatics 
 with contempt. From the narrative of Herodotus, 1 it 
 should seem that they still looked up with the veneration 
 of disciples to Egypt and Assyria. At this period, accord- 
 ingly, it was natural that the literature of Greece should 
 be tinctured with the Oriental style. And that style, we 
 think, is clearly discernible in the works of Pindar 2 and 
 iEschylus. The latter often reminds us of the Hebrew 
 writers. The Book of Job, indeed, in conduct and diction, 
 bears a considerable resemblance to some of his dramas. 
 Considered as plays, his works are absurd : considered as 
 choruses, they are above all praise. (If, for instance, we 
 examine the address of Clytaemnestra to Agamemnon on 
 his return, 3 or the description of the seven Argive chiefs, 4 
 by the principles of dramatic writing, we shall instantly 
 condemn them as monstrous. But, if we forget the charac- 
 
 his ideas under beautiful plastic forms. Milton resembles iEschylus 
 in his fondness for imagining vast incorporeal personages and allegori- 
 cal beings. 
 
 Herodotus (484-424 B.C.), one of the earliest writers of Greek His- 
 tory. He depicts, as in a drama, the evolution of the struggle, cen- 
 turies old, between Asia and Europe for control of the Mediterranean 
 world. His history culminates in the victory of Greece at Marathon 
 and Salamis. In the course of his work he has much to say in long 
 digressions upon Egypt and Assyria. 
 
 2 Pindar (522-443 B.C.) writer of odes, chiefly in honor of victors at 
 various sacred national games. 
 
 3 In the greatest play of iEschylus, called the Agamemnon, translated 
 into English by Robert Browning (Aristophanes' Apology) and by 
 Edward Fitzgerald ( The Agamemnon). 
 
 4 In the Seven Chiefs against Thebes, telling how in the quarrel of 
 the house of Cadmus for the sovereignty of Thebes, that city was 
 besieged by seven Argive champions, 
 
24 ESSAY ON MILTON 
 
 ters, and think only of the poetry* we shall admit that it 
 has never been surpassed in energy and magnificence* 
 Sophocles made the Greek drama as dramatic as was Con- 
 sistent with its original form. His portraits of men have 
 a sort of similarity ; but it is the similarity, not of paint- 
 ing, but of a bas-relief. It suggests a resemblance, but it 
 does not produce an illusion. 1 Euripides attempted to 
 carry the reform further. But it was a task far beyond 
 his powers, perhaps beyond any powers. Instead of cor- 
 recting what was bad, he destroyed what was excellent. He 
 substituted crutches for stilts, bad sermons for good odes. 2 
 27. Milton, it is well known, admired Euripides highly 
 — much more highly than, in our opinion, Euripides de- 
 served. Indeed the caresses which this partiality leads 
 him to bestow on " sad Electra's poet/' 3 sometimes remind 
 us of the beautiful Queen of Fairyland kissing the long 
 ears of Bottom. 4 At all events, there can be no doubt 
 
 Sophocles (495-406 B.C.), the second and greatest of the Greek 
 tragedians. He excelled in sharp and delicate character-drawing ; and 
 he knew, in spite of tragedy's " sceptred pall," how to exhibit the com- 
 plexities of human life as it is. Of course all his work was done under 
 the traditions of the Greek stage. The Greek drama is always suggest- 
 ive of sculpture rather than of painting ; it aims at symmetry, rhythm, 
 and equipoise, rather than at vivacity and color. The art of Sopho- 
 cles in particular is characterized by a refined and balanced perfection 
 wrought quietly out in harmonious and beautiful details. But it is 
 quite too much to say that it u does not produce an illusion." 
 
 2 Euripides (480-406 B.C.), the third of the Greek tragedians. Ma- 
 ■caulay modified this unfavorable judgment of Euripides in his later 
 years. He wrote in his copy of Euripides in 1835, u I can hardly ac- 
 count for the contempt which. I felt, at school and college, for Eu- 
 ripides. I own I like him better now than Sophocles." But there is 
 some justice nevertheless in these strictures on the art of Euripides. 
 In trying to adapt the form of Greek tragedy to the representation of 
 scenes from life Euripides overpassed the limits of possibility. 
 
 3 See Milton's Sonnet VIII. 
 
 4 See Shakespeare's Midsummer Night's Dream, Act iv., Sc. 1. 
 
ESS AT ON MILTON 25 
 
 that his veneration for the Athenian, whether just or not, 
 was injurious to the Samson Agonistes. Had he taken 
 iEschylus for his model, he would have given himself up 
 to the lyric inspiration, and poured out profusely all the 
 treasures of his mind, without bestowing a thought on 
 those dramatic proprieties which the nature of the work 
 rendered it impossible to preserve. In the attempt to 
 reconcile things in their own nature inconsistent, he has 
 failed, as every one else must have failed. We cannot 
 identify ourselves with the characters as in a good play. 
 We cannot identify ourselves with the poet, as in a good 
 ode. The conflicting ingredients, like an acid and an 
 alkali l mixed, neutralize each other. We are by no means 
 insensible to the merits of this celebrated piece, to the 
 severe dignity of the style, the graceful and pathetic solem- 
 nity of the opening speech, or the wild and barbaric mel- 
 ody which gives so striking an effect to the choral passages. 
 Bat we think it, we confess, the least successful effort of 
 the genius of Milton. 
 
 28. The Comus is framed on the model of the Italian 
 Masque, 2 as the Samson is framed on the model of the 
 Greek Tragedy. It is certainly the noblest performance of 
 the kind which exists in any language. It is as far supe- 
 rior to the Faithful Shepherdess as the Faithful Shep- 
 
 1 Two groups of substances of which each group possesses the qual- 
 ity of destroying the characteristic chemical properties of the members 
 of the other group. 
 
 2 A Masque or mask, a form of dramatic spectacle much in vogue in 
 the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. It contained spoken verse, music, 
 and dancing. "The origin of the dramatic masque of the sixteenth 
 century has been traced by antiquaries as far back as the time of Ed- 
 ward III. But in its perfected shape it was a genuine offspring of the 
 English Renaissance, a cross between the English mystery-play and 
 the Greek drama." As the taste for open-air pageant died out, 
 masques yielded to operas, their modern equivalent. They nourished 
 most in the reigns of Henry VIII., Elizabeth, James L, and Charles I. 
 
26 ESS AT ON MILTON 
 
 herdess is to the Aminta, or the Aminta to the Pastor 
 Eido. 1 It was well for Milton that he had here no Euri- 
 pides to mislead him. He understood and loved the lit- 
 erature of modern Italy. But he did not feel for it the 
 same veneration which he entertained for the remains of 
 Athenian and Eoman poetry, consecrated by so many lofty 
 and endearing recollections. The faults, moreover, of his 
 Italian predecessors were of a kind to which his mind had 
 a deadly antipathy. He could stoop to a plain style, some- 
 times even to a bald style ; but false brilliancy was his 
 utter aversion. His muse had no objection to a russet 
 attire ; but she turned with disgust from the finery of 
 Guarini, as tawdry and as paltry as the rags of a chimney- 
 sweeper on May-day. 2 Whatever ornaments she wears are 
 of massive gold, not only dazzling to the sight, but capable 
 of standing the severest test of the crucible. 3 
 
 29. Milton attended in the Comus to the distinction 
 which he neglected in the Samson. He made his Masque 
 what it ought to be ? essentially lyrical, and dramatic 
 only in semblance.; He has not attempted a fruitless 
 struggle against a defect inherent in the nature of that 
 species of composition ; and he has therefore succeeded 
 
 1 The Faithful Shepherdess, by John Fletcher (1579-1625), the liter- 
 ary partner of Beaumont. "It is a lyric poem, in semi-dramatic 
 shape, to be judged only as such, and as such almost faultless." 
 Swinburne. The Aminta is by Tasso (1544-1595). The Pastor 
 Fido is by Guarini (1537-1612). These three pastoral dramas are all 
 of about the same date, depicting the loves of swains and shepherd- 
 esses. 
 
 ' 2 See Charles Lamb's essay on Chimney-sweepers, Essays of Mia. 
 May- day was the great holiday for the poor little wretches, who were 
 forced in Macaulay's youth to climb up the inside of English chim- 
 neys to clean out the soot. They went about decorated on this day 
 with ribbons and garlands. 
 
 3 Crucible, a vessel or melting pot for chemical tests. The word is 
 connected with "crock, crockery." 
 
ESSAY ON MILTON 27 
 
 wherever success was not impossible. The speeches must 
 be read as majestic soliloquies ; and he who so reads them 
 will be enraptured with their eloquence, their sublimity,, 
 and their music. The interruptions of the dialogue, how- 
 ever, impose a constraint upon the writer, and break the 
 illusion of the reader. The finest passages are those which 
 are lyric in form as well as in spirit. "I should much 
 commend," says the excellent Sir Henry Wotton/ in a let- 
 ter to Milton, "the tragical part, if the lyrical did not 
 ravish me with a certain Dorique 2 delicacy in your songs 
 and odes, whereunto I must plainly confess to you I have 
 seen yet nothing parallel in our language." The criticism 
 was just. It is when Milton escapes from the shackles of 
 the dialogue, when he is discharged from the labor of unit- 
 ing two incongruous styles, when he is at liberty to indulge 
 his choral raptures without reserve, that he rises even 
 above himself. Then, like his own good Genius bursting 
 from the earthly form and weeds 3 of Thyrsis, 4 he stands 
 forth in celestial freedom and beauty ; he seems to cry ex- 
 
 ultingly — 
 
 " Now my task is smoothly done 
 I can fly or I can run," 
 
 1 Sir Henry Wotton (1568-1639), a wit and scholar of James the 
 First's court. Admired and trusted by the King, he might have had 
 high place in English history had he been willing to become one of 
 the courtiers and advisers of James. But he chose pleasanter paths 
 of literary and political life. He was made at his own request ambas- 
 sador to Venice, as he said, " to tell lies for the good of his country." 
 He was promoted thence to be Provost of Eton, becoming a neighbor 
 and friend of Milton. See Walton's Lives for a beautiful account of him. 
 
 2 Greek pastoral poetry was written in Doric Greek of Sicily. Hence 
 " Doric " means "pastoral or rural in sound." " The tragical part" 
 means simply the dialogue. 
 
 3 An old Saxon word for a garment, now disused except in the 
 phrase " widow's weeds." 
 
 4 Thyrsis, a name for shepherds in Greek pastoral poetry. The 
 verses are lines 1012, 1013 of Comus. 
 
28 ESSAY ON MILTON 
 
 to skim the earth, to soar above the clouds, to bathe in the 
 Elysian 1 dew of the rainbow, and to inhale the balmy 
 smells of nard and cassia, 2 which the musky wings of the 
 zephyr scatter through the cedared alleys of the Hespe- 
 rides. 3 
 
 30. There are several of the minor poems of Milton on 
 which we would willingly make a few remarks. 4 Still 
 more willingly would we enter into a detailed examina- 
 tion of that admirable poem, the Paradise Regained, 
 which, strangely enough, is scarcely ever mentioned except 
 as an instance of the blindness of that parental affection 
 which men of letters bear towards the offspring of their 
 intellects. That Milton, was mistaken in preferring this 
 work, excellent as it is, to the Paradise Lost, we must 
 readily admit. 5 But we are sure that the superiority of 
 the Paradise Lost to the Paradise Regained is not more 
 decided than the superiority of the Paradise Regained to 
 
 §§ 30-47. Fifth topic: Paradise Lost. Parallel between Milton 
 and Dante. A discussion of Milton's superiority in the management 
 of the agency of supernatural beings. 
 
 1 Elysium, the abode of the blessed, according to Greek mythology. 
 All these pretty phrases are quoted from the same song in Comus, vss. 
 774 to the end. 
 
 2 " All thy garments smell of myrrh and aloes and cassia." Psalms 
 xlv. 8. Milton's phrases are often culled from the English Bible. 
 
 3 Hesperides, daughters of Hesperus, who dwell in some mysterious 
 earthly paradise, lying in the unknown West (in Greek, Hesperos). 
 
 4 Macaulay dismisses in this little sentence Lycidas, and the great 
 Ode on the Nativity, without further allusion, together with a large 
 number of other interesting short poems. The student of Milton 
 must be prepared to supplement Macaulay's essay with many other 
 books. See Suggestions for Teachers and Students, iii. (2). 
 
 5 There is no evidence that Milton thought this work superior to 
 Paradise Lost. His nephew, Philips, simply says that when people 
 said it was inferior, " he could not hear with patience any such thing 
 related to him." It is a short poem of three books, telling very simply 
 of Christ's temptation. 
 
 
ESSAY ON MILTON 29 
 
 every poem which has since made its appearance. But 
 our limits prevent us from discussing the point at length. 
 We hasten on to that extraordinary production which the 
 general suffrage of critics has placed in the highest class 
 
 & 
 
 of human compositions. 
 
 y31. The only poem of modern times which can be 
 compared with the Paradise Lost is the Divine Com- 
 edy. 1 The subject of Milton in some points resembled 
 that of Dante ; but he has treated it in a widely differ- 
 ent manner. We cannot, we think, better illustrate our 
 opinion respecting our own great poet than by contrasting 
 him with the father of Tuscan 2 literature. 
 
 32. The poetry of Milton differs from that of Dante as 
 the hieroglyphics 3 of Egypt differed from the picture- 
 writing of Mexico. The images which Dante employs 
 speak for themselves . they stand simply for what they 
 are. . Those of Milton have a signification which is often 
 discernible only to the initiated. Their value depends 
 less on what they directly represent than on what they 
 remotely suggest. However strange, however grotesque 4 
 may be the appearance which Dante undertakes to describe, 
 he never shrinks from describing it. He gives us the shape, 
 the colour, the sound, the smell, the taste ; he counts the 
 
 1 The English name by which Dante's great poem is known. Dante 
 called it Commedia, because the ending is not tragical. His admirers 
 called it ll Divine." 
 
 -Dante was a citizen of Florence of Tuscany, and was the first fa- 
 mous writer in the native Italian of that land. 
 
 3 The picture-writing of the Indians is always a rude representation 
 of the thing signified. Even so Dante repres?nts things directly. But 
 the Egyptian hieroglyphics represent words or syllables, or it may be 
 letters only. So Milton's words suggest ideas remote from themselves, 
 and his descriptions are not intelligible unless you know the inner 
 meanings of his words. 
 
 4 Grotesque, "found in a grotto ; " fantastic, like the grotto-work of 
 the Renaissance. Compare '* antic," like the antique.. 
 
30 E8SAY ON MILTON 
 
 numbers ; he measures the size. His similes are the illus- 
 trations of a traveller. Unlike those of other poets, and 
 especially of Milton, they are introduced in a plain, busi- 
 ness-like manner, not for the sake of any beauty in the 
 objects from which they are drawn, not for the sake of 
 any ornament which they may impart to the poem, but 
 simply in order to make the meaning of the writer as 
 clear to the reader as it is to himself. The ruins of the 
 precipice which led from the sixth to the seventh circle of 
 hell x were like those of the rock which fell into the Adige 
 on the south of Trent. 2 The cataract of Phlegethon 3 was 
 like that of Aqua Oheta at the monastery of St. Benedict. 4 
 The place where the heretics were confined in burning 
 tombs resembled the vast cemetery of Aries. 5 
 
 33. Now, let us compare with the exact details of Dante 
 the dim intimations of Milton. We will cite a few examples. 
 The English poet has never thought of taking the measure 
 of Satan. He gives us merely a vague idea of vast bulk. 
 In one passage, the fiend lies stretched out huge in length, 
 floating many a rood, equal in size to the earth-born ene- 
 mies of Jove, or to the sea-monster which the mariner mis- 
 
 1 Dante's poem represents hirn as descending, circle after circle, 
 round the sides of the pit of hell. In each round he meets different 
 scenes of punishment arranged for different sorts of crime, the lowest 
 being the worst. 
 
 2 The Adige, a foaming mountain torrent, full of wild bowlders, 
 running between the lofty hills of the Brenner pass. On it stands the 
 city of Trent. 
 
 3 u The Fire-river," one of the streams of the under-world in 
 Greek myth. 
 
 4 Near Naples. 
 
 5 Aries is in France, near the mouth of the Rhone. " As at Aries, 
 where the Rhone stagnates, sepulchres make all the places uneven ; 
 so did they here. . . . Among the tombs flames were scattered. 
 All their lids were lifted and dire laments were issuing f ortji. "-^iH- 
 fe? t no 1 Canto IX. 
 
ESSAY ON MILTON 31 
 
 takes for an island. 1 When he addresses himself to battle 
 against the guardian angels, -he stands like Teneriffe 2 or 
 Atlas; 3 his stature reaches the sky. Contrast with these 
 descriptions the lines in which Dante has described the 
 gigantic spectre of Nimrod. 4 " His face seemed to me as 
 long and as broad as the ball 5 of St. Peter's at Rome, and 
 his other limbs were in proportion ; so that the bank, which 
 concealed him from the waist downwards, nevertheless 
 showed so much of him that three tall Germans 6 would in 
 vain have attempted to reach to his hair." We are sensible 
 that we do no justice to the admirable style of the Floren- 
 tine poet. But Mr. Cary's translation 7 is not at hand ; and 
 our version, however rude, is sufficient to illustrate our 
 meaning. 
 
 34. Once more, compare the lazar-house 8 in the eleventh 
 book of the Paradise Lost with the last ward of Male- 
 bolge in Dante. Milton avoids the loathsome details, and 
 takes refuge in indistinct but solemn and tremendous image- 
 ry — Despair hurrying from couch to couch to mock the 
 wretches with his attendance ; Death shaking his dart over 
 
 1 Paradise Lost, Book I., verse 194 ; Book IV., verse 985. 
 
 2 The Peak of Teneriffe is on the largest of the Canary Islands, off 
 the coast of Africa. It is 12,200 feet high. Atlas is a mountain in 
 Morocco, more than 12,000 feet high. 3 Inferno, Canto XXXI. 
 
 4 The a pine cone " of bronze, from the Mausoleum of Hadrian, in 
 Dante's time stood in the fore court of St. Peter's. It is now in the 
 Vatican Garden. " Ball " is a mistranslation. 
 
 5 " Frieslanders," supposed to be very tall. 
 
 6 Cary's translation remains the standard poetical translation of the 
 Divine Comedy. For students the prose translation of Charles Eliot 
 Norton (3 vols., octavo. Houghton, Mifflin & Co.) is rather to be com- 
 mended 
 
 7 Lazar house, Italian lazaretto, a hospital for those diseased, named 
 for Lazarus in the parable. 
 
 8 Paradise Lost, Book XL, verse 567 ; Inferno, Canto XXIX. " Male- 
 bolge is a place in Hell, all of stone, and of an iron color.''— Canto 
 XVIII. 
 
32 ESSAY ON MILTON 
 
 them, but, in spite of supplications, delaying to strike. 
 What says Dante ? " There was such a moan there as 
 there would be if all the sick who, between July and Sep- 
 tember, are in the hospitals of Valdichiana, and of the Tus- 
 can swamps, and of Sardinia, 1 were in one pit together ; 
 and such a stench was issuing forth as is wont to issue from 
 decayed limbs. " 
 
 35. AVe will not take upon ourselves the invidious office of 
 settling precedency between two such writers. Each, in his 
 own department, is incomparable ; and each, we may re- 
 mark, has, wisely or fortunately, taken a subject adapted to 
 exhibit his peculiar talent to the greatest advantage. The 
 Divine Comedy 2 is a personal narrative, Dante is the 
 eye-witness and ear- witness of that which he relates. He 
 is the very man who has heard the tormented spirits cry- 
 ing out for the second death, 3 who has read the dusky char- 
 acters on the portal within which there is no hope, 4 who 
 has hidden his face from the terrors of the Gorgon, 5 who 
 has fled from the hooks and the seething pitch of Barbaric- 
 cia and Draghignazzo. 6 His own hands have grasped the 
 shaggy sides of Lucifer. 7 His own feet have climbed the 
 mountain 8 of expiation. His own brow has been marked 
 
 1 These geographical names are all of unhealthy places belonging 
 to Italy. 
 
 2 " The personages of Dante are all from real life. They are men 
 and women undergoing actual experiences. Their characters and fates 
 are, what all human characters and fates really are, types of spiritual 
 law." 3 Inferno, Canto I. 
 
 4 On the doors of Hell were written, " All ye that enter here leave 
 Hope behind."— Canto III. 5 Canto IX. 
 
 6 The names of two of the fiends in the weird scene in Canto XXL, 
 who plunge sinners into a pit full of burning pitch. 
 
 7 Dante climbs out of Hell by clinging to and crawling up the body 
 of the giant Lucifer.— Canto XXXIV. 
 
 8 The Mount of Purgatory, up which Dante climbs on the way from 
 the Pit of Hell to the Heights of Heaven. 
 
ESSAY OiY MILTON 33 
 
 by the purifying angel. 1 The reader would throw aside 
 such a tale in incredulous disgust unless it were told 
 with the strongest air of veracity, with a sobriety even in 
 its horrors, with the greatest precision and multiplicity in 
 its details. The narrative of Milton in this respect differs 
 from that of Dante, as the adventures of Amadis 2 differ 
 from those of Gulliver. 3 The author of Amadis would 
 have made his book ridiculous if he had introduced those 
 minute particulars which give such a charm to the work of 
 Swift, the nautical observations, the affected delicacy about 
 names, the official documents transcribed at full length, and 
 all the unmeaning gossip and scandal of the court, spring- 
 ing out of nothing, and tending to nothing. We are not 
 shocked at being told that a man, who lived nobody knows 
 when, saw many very strange sights ; and we can easily 
 abandon ourselves to the illusion of the romance. But 
 when Lemuel G-ulliver, surgeon, resident at Eotherhithe, 4 
 tells us of pygmies, 5 and giants, flying islands and philos- 
 ophising horses, nothing but such circumstantial touches 
 could produce for a single moment a deception on the im- 
 agination. 
 
 36. Of all the poets who have introduced into their 
 works the agency of supernatural beings, Milton has suc- 
 
 1 The angel who, at the entrance to Purgatory, marks Dante's brow 
 with seven P's for the seven deadly sins (peccata). These marks dis- 
 appear as he goes upward. 
 
 2 The hero of a popular romance of chivalry, Amadis of Gaul. 
 
 3 In Gulliver's Travels, the best known work of Dean Swift (1667- 
 1745). 
 
 4 An English village, to which Gulliver retired after his travels. 
 
 5 Pygmy, a Greek word, describing a people of dwarfs in ancient 
 Greek legend, who were supposed to measure one cubit (pygme) and 
 to live in Africa. Such dwarf people have been found by recent ex- 
 plorers all the way from Egypt to the Cape of Good Hope. Macaulay 
 uses the word here, as it is often used in English, as a general term 
 for dwarfs. 
 
 3 
 
34 ESSAY ON MILTON 
 
 ceeded best. Here Dante decidedly yields to him ; and as 
 this is a point on which many rash and ill-considered judg- 
 ments have been pronounced, we feel inclined to dwell on 
 it a little longer. The most fatal error which a poet can 
 possibly commit in the management of his machinery, is 
 that of attempting to philosophise too much. Milton has 
 been often censured for ascribing to spirits many functions 
 of which spirits must be incapable. But these objections, 
 though sanctioned by eminent names, originate, we vent- 
 ure to say, in profound ignorance of the art of poetry. 
 
 37. What is spirit ? What are our own minds, the por- 
 tion of spirit with which we are best acquainted ? We 
 observe certain phenomena. We cannot explain them 
 into material causes. AVe therefore infer that there exists 
 something which is not material. But of this something 
 we have no idea. We can define it only by negatives. We 
 can reason about it only by symbols. We use the word, 
 but we have no image of the thing ; and the business of 
 poetry is with images, and not with words. The poet uses 
 words indeed ; but they are merely the instruments of his 
 art, not its objects. They are the materials which he is to 
 dispose in such a manner as to present a picture to the 
 mental eye. And if they are not so disposed, they are no 
 more entitled to be called poetry than a bale of canvass 
 and a box of colours to be called a painting. 
 
 38. Logicians may reason about abstractions. But the 
 great mass of mankind can never feel an interest in them. 
 They must have images. The strong tendency of the mul- 
 titude, in all ages and nations, to idolatry, can be ex- 
 plained on no other principle. The first inhabitants of 
 Greece, there is every reason to believe, worshipped one 
 invisible deity. 1 But the necessity of having something 
 
 1 All this is a doubtful speculation. The first inhabitants of Greece 
 never were worshippers of one God. It is true that, as civilisation ad- 
 vances in Greece, the number of Greek deities seems to us to increase. 
 
ESSAY ON MILTON 35 
 
 more definite to adore produced, in a few centuries, the 
 innumerable crowd of Gods and Goddesses. In like man- 
 ner, the ancient Persians thought it impious to exhibit the 
 Creator under a human form. Yet even these transferred 
 to the sun the worship which, speculatively, they con- 
 sidered due only to the Supreme Mind. The history of 
 the Jews is the record of a continued struggle between 
 pure Theism, supported by the most terrible sanctions, 
 and the strangely fascinating desire of having some visible 
 and tangible object of adoration. Perhaps none of the 
 secondary causes which Gibbon x has assigned for the rapid- 
 ity with which Christianity spread over the world, while 
 Judaism scarcely ever acquired a proselyte, operated more 
 powerfully than this feeling. God, the uncreated, the in- 
 comprehensible, the invisible, attracted few worshippers. 
 A philosopher might admire so noble a conception, but the 
 crowd turned away in disgust from words which presented 
 no image to their minds. It was before Deity embodied 
 in a human form — walking among men, partaking of their 
 infirmities, leaning on their bosoms, weeping over their 
 graves, slumbering in the manger, bleeding on the cross — 
 that the prejudices of the Synagogue, 2 and the doubts of 
 the Academy, 3 and the pride of the Portico, 4 and the fasces 
 
 But this was because the Greek religious and aesthetic imagination 
 deepened, so that the national power to represent deity in visible form 
 increased. The national imaginative gifts, as well as the gradual 
 grouping of many local deities in one Olympus, produced the " idola- 
 trous" results described in the text. It was only slowly that the 
 thinkers of the Greek race reached the idea of one invisible Godhead 
 manifested in all gods. 
 
 1 See, for the famous Five Causes of the Growth of Christianity, 
 Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire^ ch. xv. 
 
 2 The Jewish congregation of worshippers. 
 
 3 The most skeptical school of Greek Philosophy. It was named 
 from the sacred grove of the hero Academos, m which Plato and Aris- 
 totle held their schools. 
 
 4 Portico, i.e., the Stoa Pcecile or Painted Porch, whence the Stoic 
 
36 ESS AT ON MILTON 
 
 of the Lictor, 1 and the swords of thirty legions, were 
 humbled in the dust ! Soon after Christianity had achieved 
 its triumph, the principle which had assisted it began to 
 corrupt it. It became a new Paganism. Patron saints 
 assumed the offices of household gods. St. George 2 took 
 the place of Mars ; St. Elmo 3 consoled the mariner for the 
 loss of Castor and Pollux ; the Virgin Mother and Cecilia 4 
 succeeded to Venus and the Muses. The fascination of 
 sex and loveliness was again joined to that of celestial 
 dignity, and the homage of chivalry was blended with that 
 of religion. Eeformers have often made a stand against 
 these feelings, but never with more than apparent and 
 partial success. The men who demolished the images in 
 cathedrals have not always been able to demolish those 
 which were enshrined in their minds. It would not be 
 difficult to show that in politics the same rule holds good. 
 
 philosophers took their name. They were disciples of Zeno (about 
 300 B.C.). That part of their philosophy which has been remembered 
 best gives rules for conduct of life. A haughty superiority to the sor- 
 rows and joys of life and an aristocratic aloofness from the common 
 herd of mankind marked their ethical practice. 
 
 1 The authority of the executive officers of Roman State was sym- 
 bolised by the fasces or the axe and bundle of rods carried by an 
 attendant called a Lictor. 
 
 2 St. George of Cappadocia. the warrior saint and dragon -slayer, a 
 great saint of the Eastern Church. His fame was carried to Europe 
 by the Crusaders ; his day was made a holiday in the Western Church 
 in 1222. After Edward III. he is noted specially as the patron-saint of 
 England. The historical matter in his legend is very obscure, but lie 
 is said to have been martyred in Diocletian's persecution in 303 a.d. 
 
 3 St. Elmo, a patron of Italian sailors. "St. Elmo's fire" is the 
 name given to the electric flames often seen about the masts and yards 
 of ships. This was attributed to Castor and Pollux in ancient times. 
 
 4 St. Cecilia (230 A.D.), patron-saint of church music. Her legend 
 says that she sang praises to God just before her execution. St. 
 Cecilia's Day is the occasion in England of yearly musical festivals. 
 Handel's Messiah was written for such a celebration. 
 
ESSAY ON MILTON 37 
 
 Doctrines, we are afraid, must generally be embodied be- 
 fore they can excite a strong public feeling. The multi- 
 tude is more easily interested for the most unmeaning 
 badge, or the most insignificant name, than for the most 
 important principle. 
 
 39. From these considerations, we infer that no poet who 
 should affect that metaphysical accuracy, for the want of 
 which Milton has been blamed, would escape a disgraceful 
 failure. Still, however, there was another extreme which, 
 though far less dangerous, was also to be avoided. The 
 imaginations of men are in a great measure under the con- 
 trol of their opinions. The most exquisite art of poetical 
 colouring can produce no illusion, when it is employed to 
 represent that which is at once perceived to be incongruous 
 and absurd. Milton wrote in an age of philosophers and 
 theologians. It was necessary, therefore, for him to ab- 
 stain from giving such a shock to their understandings as 
 might break the charm which it was his object to throw 
 over their imaginations. This is the real explanation of 
 the indistinctness and inconsistency with which he has 
 often been reproached. Dr. Johnson acknowledges that it 
 was absolutely necessary that the spirits should be clothed 
 with material forms. " But/' says he, "the poet should 
 have secured the consistency of his system by keeping im- 
 materiality out of sight, and seducing the reader to drop it 
 from his thoughts ? " This is easily said ; but what if 
 Milton could not seduce the reader to drop it from his 
 thoughts ? What if the contrary opinion had taken so full 
 a possession of the minds of men as to leave no room even 
 for the half belief which poetry requires ? Such we sus- 
 pect to have been the case. It was impossible for the poet 
 to adopt altogether the material or the immaterial system. 
 He therefore took his stand on the debatable ground : he 
 left the whole in ambiguity. He has doubtless, by so do- 
 ing, laid himself open to the charge of inconsistency ; but, 
 
38 ESSAY ON MILTON 
 
 though philosophically in the wrong, we cannot but believe 
 that he was poetically in the right. This task, which al- 
 most any other writer would have found impracticable, was 
 easy to him. The peculiar art which he possessed of 
 communicating his meaning circuitously, through a long 
 succession of associated ideas, and of intimating more than 
 he expressed, enabled him to disguise those incongruities 
 which he could not avoid. 
 
 40. Poetry which relates to the beings of another world 
 ought to be at once mysterious and picturesque. That of 
 Milton is so. That of Dante is picturesque indeed, be- 
 yond any that ever was written. Its effect approaches to 
 that produced by the pencil or the chisel ; but it is pict- 
 uresque to the exclusion of all mystery. This is a fault, 
 indeed, on the right side, a fault inseparable from the 
 plan of his poem, which, as we have already observed, 
 rendered the utmost accuracy of description necessary. 
 Still, it is a fault. His supernatural agents excite an in- 
 terest, but it is not the mysterious interest which is proper 
 to supernatural agents. We feel that we could talk with 
 his ghosts and daemons, 1 without any emotion of unearthly 
 awe. We could, like Don Juan, 2 ask them to supper, and 
 eat heartily in their company. Dante's angels are good 
 men with wings. His devils are spiteful, ugly execution- 
 ers. His dead men are merely living men in strange sit- 
 uations. The scene which passes between the poet and 
 Farinata 3 is justly celebrated. Still Farinata in the burn- 
 ing tomb is exactly what Farinata would have been at an 
 
 1 Now spelled, demons. 
 
 2 In Mozart's opera Don Juan, the hero invites to sup with him the 
 statue of the dead Commendatore whom he had slain. A devil ani- 
 mates the statue ; it accepts the invitation ; a weird banquet is given, 
 and in the midst of it the statue fetches away the sinful hero to hell. 
 
 3 Farinata speaks to Dante from the interior of a burning tomb. 
 Inferno, Canto X. 
 
ESSAY OJY MILTON 39 
 
 auto dafe. 1 Nothing can be more touching than the first 
 interview of Dante and Beatrice. 2 Yet what is it but a 
 lovely woman chiding, with sweet, austere composure, the 
 lover for whose affection she is grateful, but whose vices 
 she reprobates ? The feelings which give the passage its 
 charm would suit the streets of Florence as well as the 
 summit of the Mount of Purgatory. 
 
 41. The spirits of Milton are unlike those of almost all 
 other writers. His fiends, in particular, are wonderful 
 creations. They are not metaphysical abstractions. They 
 are not wicked men. They are not ugly beasts. They 
 have no horns, no tails, none of the fee-faw-fum of Tasso 3 
 and Klopstock. 4 They have just enough in common with 
 human nature to be intelligible to human beings. Their 
 characters are, like their forms, marked by a certain dim 
 resemblance to those of men, but exaggerated to gigantic 
 dimensions, and veiled in mysterious gloom. 
 
 42. Perhaps the gods and daemons of ^Eschylus may best 
 bear a comparison with the angels and devils of Milton. 5 
 
 1 Literally " act of faith," a Portuguese phrase for a public act of 
 punishment of heretics, e.g., by burning them alive. 
 
 2 Beatrice Portinari was a maiden of Florence whom Dante wor- 
 shipped with a highly idealised poet's love. She died, a young 
 girl, ten years before the writing of the Divine Comedy. She figures, 
 however, in the poem as a visionary being who guides Dante through 
 Paradise. This celestial creature symbolises the highest thoughts and 
 aspirations of the poet himself. The poet's lower aims are called 
 with the same symbolism his "lesser loves." For these "lesser loves " 
 Beatrice chides him when she first meets him in the other world. See 
 Purgatorio, Canto XXX. 
 
 3 Tasso, a celebrated Italian epic poet (1544-1595). He wrote Bi- 
 naldo and Jerusalem Delivered. 
 
 4 Klopstock, a German poet (1729-1803), wrote a poem called The 
 Messiah. Both Tasso and Klopstock portray evil spirits in a some- 
 what crude fashion. 
 
 5 Daemon, a Greek word meaning a spirit. Here Macaulay uses 
 it for those incorporeal creations of iEschylus, neither gods nor mor- 
 
40 ESSAY ON MILTON 
 
 The style of the Athenian had, as we have remarked, some- 
 thing of the Oriental character ; and the same peculiarity 
 may be traced in his mythology. It has nothing of the 
 amenity 1 and elegance which we generally find in the 
 superstitions of Greece. All is rugged, barbaric, and 
 colossal. His legends seem to harmonise less with the 
 fragrant groves and graceful porticoes in which his coun- 
 trymen paid their vows to the God of Light and God- 
 dess of Desire, than with those huge and grotesque 
 labyrinths of eternal granite, in which Egypt enshrined her 
 mystic Osiris, 2 or in which Hindostan still bows down to 
 her seven-headed idols. 3 His favourite gods are those of the 
 elder generations — the sons of heaven and earth, compared 
 with whom Jupiter himself was a stripling and an upstart 
 — the gigantic Titans 4 and the inexorable Furies. Fore- 
 most among his creations of this class stands Prometheus, 5 
 half fiend, half redeemer, the friend of man, the sullen 
 and implacable enemy of heaven. He bears undoubtedly a 
 considerable resemblance to the Satan of Milton. In both 
 we find the same impatience of control, the same ferocity, 
 
 tals, like the personages called * 'Force" and "Might," or the "Fu- 
 ries," or u Prometheus." 
 J Amenity, pleasing quality. 
 
 2 Osiris, a chief god of Egypt, god of the dead in the after-life, a 
 deity personifying the triumph of the human soul over death. He 
 was worshipped with mystical ceremonies in the Egyptian funeral cus- 
 toms. 
 
 3 In the Hindu mythology the gods symbolise their power by the 
 number of their heads and limbs. 
 
 4 The Titans, a mysterious group of deities in Greek mythology, 
 considered to have preceded and to have been dethroned by the 
 reigning deities of the Olympian dynasty. 
 
 5 Prometheus, a Titan who befriended man against the rjurp° ses of 
 Zeus by the gift of fire, stolen from heaven, which fire symbolises also 
 the inventive intelligence. For this he was punished by Zeus by im- 
 prisonment in chains on a lonely rock where vultures tore him and 
 sun and cold beat on him without mercy. 
 
ESSAY ON MILTON 41 
 
 the same unconquerable pride. In both characters also 
 are mingled, though in very different proportions, some 
 kind and generous feelings. Prometheus, however, is 
 hardly superhuman enough. He talks too much of his 
 chains and his uneasy posture : he is rather too much de- 
 pressed and agitated. His resolution seems to depend on 
 the knowledge which he possesses that he holds the fate of 
 his torturer * in his hands, and that the hour of his release 
 will surely come. But Satan is a creature of another 
 sphere. The might of his intellectual nature is victorious 
 over the extremity of pain. Amidst agonies which cannot 
 be conceived without horror, he deliberates, resolves, and 
 even exults. Against the sword of Michael, 2 against the 
 thunder of Jehovah, against the flaming lake, and the 
 marl burning with solid fire, against the prospect of an 
 eternity of unintermittent misery, his spirit bears up un- 
 broken, resting on its own innate energies, requiring no 
 support from anything external, nor even from hope itself ! 3 
 43. To return for a moment to the parallel which we 
 have been attempting to draw between Milton and Dante, 
 we would- add, that the poetry of these great men has in a 
 considerable degree taken its character from their moral 
 qualities. They are not egotists. 4 They rarely obtrude 
 
 1 The myth relates that Prometheus knew some secret ordinance of 
 Fate, under which some one was to arise who should cast out Zeus from 
 sovereign power in heaven and release Prometheus from punishment. 
 Zeus sent the god Hermes, in the play, to extort the secret from Pro- 
 metheus, but Prometheus refused to reveal what might enable his 
 enemy Zeus to escape his doom. 
 
 2 u Michael, of celestial armies prince," battles with Satan when he 
 rebels against God in heaven. The story of the fearful contest is told 
 to Adam by the angel Raphael in Paradise Lost, Book VI. Satan is 
 beaten finally by the intervention of the Messiah armed with the 
 thunders of Jehovah. 
 
 3 See Paradise Lost, Book I. 
 
 4 Egotist, one who is absorbed in himself. 
 
42 ESSAY ON MILTON 
 
 their idiosyncracies l on their readers. They have nothing 
 in common with those modern beggars for fame,, who ex- 
 tort a pittance from the compassion of the inexperienced,, 
 by exposing the nakedness and sores of their minds. Yet 
 it would be difficult to name two writers whose works have 
 been more completely, though undesignedly, coloured by 
 their personal feelings. 
 
 44. The character of Milton was peculiarly distinguished 
 by loftiness of thought ; that of Dante by intensity of feel- 
 ing. In every line of the Divine Comedy we discern the 
 asperity which is produced by pride struggling with misery. 
 There is perhaps no work in the world so deeply and uni- 
 formly sorrowful. The melancholy of Dante was no 
 fantastic caprice. It was not, as far as at this distance of 
 time can be judged, the effect of external circumstances. 
 It was from within. Neither love nor glory, neither the 
 conflicts of earth, nor the hope of heaven, could dispel it. 
 It turned every consolation and every pleasure into its own 
 nature. It resembled that noxious Sardinian soil of which 
 the intense bitterness is said to have been perceptible, even 
 in its honey. His mind was, in the noble language of the 
 Hebrew poet, " a land of darkness, as darkness itself, and 
 where the light was as darkness \"' 2 The gloom of his 
 character discolours all the passions of men and all the 
 face of nature, and tinges with its own livid hue the 
 flowers of Paradise and the glories of the eternal throne ! 
 All the portraits of him are singularly characteristic. No 
 person can look on the features, noble even to ruggedness, 
 the dark furrows of the cheek, the haggard and woful 
 stare of the eye, the sullen and contemptuous curve of the 
 lip, and doubt that they belong to a man too proud and too 
 sensitive to be happy. 3 
 
 1 Idiosyncracy, special peculiarity of temper or constitution. 
 
 2 Job x. 22. 
 
 3 The most famous picture of Dante is that attributed to his 
 
ESSAY ON MILTON 43 
 
 45. Milton 1 was, like Dante, a statesman and a lover — 
 and, like Dante, he had been unfortunate in ambition and 
 in loye. He had survived his health and his sight, the 
 comforts of his home, and the prosperity of his party. 
 Of the great men by whom he had been distinguished at 
 his entrance into life, some had been taken away from 
 the evil to come ; some had carried into foreign climates 
 their unconquerable hatred of oppression ; some were pin- 
 ing in dungeons ; and some had poured forth their blood 
 on scaffolds. Venal and licentious scribblers, with just 
 sufficient talent to clothe the thoughts of a pandar in the 
 style of a bellman, 2 were now the favourite writers of the 
 sovereign and of the public. It was a loathsome herd — 
 which could be compared to nothing so fitly as to the 
 rabble of Comus, grotesque monsters, half bestial, half 
 human, dropping with wine, bloated with gluttony, and 
 reeling in obscene dances. Amidst these his Muse was 
 placed, like the chaste lady of the Masque, lofty, spotless, 
 and serene — to be chattered at, and pointed at, and grinned . 
 at, by the whole rabble of Satyrs and Goblins. 3 If ever 
 despondency and asperity could be excused in any man, it 
 might have been excused in Milton. But the strength of 
 his mind overcame every calamity. Neither blindness, 
 nor gout, nor age, nor penury, nor domestic afflictions, 
 nor political disappointments, nor abuse, nor proscription, 
 nor neglect, had power to disturb his sedate and majestic 
 
 contemporary, Giotto, a fresco on a wall in the Bargello at Flor- 
 ence. 
 
 1 For Milton's story see the Introduction, 10-19. Paradise Lost was 
 written chiefly, if not wholly, after the restoration of Charles II. to 
 the throne in 1660. 
 
 2 In the vociferous style of one who, like the old-fashioned bellman 
 or town crier, forced the public to listen to what he said. 
 
 3 Satyrs, in ancient classic myth, sylvan deities, becoming bestial in 
 the fancies of the later ages. Goblins, knavish spirits of the mediaeval 
 legends haunting woods and dark places. 
 
44 ESSAY ON MILTON 
 
 patience. His spirits do not seem to have been high, but 
 they were singularly equable. His temper was serious, 
 perhaps stern ; but it was a temper which no sufferings 
 could render sullen or fretful. Such as it was, when, on 
 the eve of great events, he returned from his travels, in 
 the prime of health and manly beauty, loaded with liter- 
 ary distinctions, and glowing with patriotic hopes, such it 
 continued to be — when, after having experienced every 
 calamity which is incident to our nature, old, poor, sight- 
 less, and disgraced, he retired to his hovel to die ! l 
 
 46. Hence it was, that, though he wrote the Paradise 
 Lost at a time of life 2 when images of beauty and tender- 
 ness are in general beginning to fade, even from those minds 
 in which they have not been effaced by anxiety and dis- 
 appointment, he adorned it with all that is most lovely and 
 delightful in the physical and in the moral world. Neither 
 Theocritus 3 nor Ariosto 4 had a finer or more healthful sense 
 of the pleasantness of external objects, or loved better to 
 luxuriate amidst sunbeams and flowers, the songs of night- 
 
 1 The contrasts in this paragraph are rather over-emphasized for 
 rhetorical effect. The first period alluded to, the "eve of great 
 events," is 1639. For the historical situation then, see Introduction, 
 8. His "domestic afflictions" were the want of harmony existing 
 between his first wife and himself, the many deaths in his immediate 
 family, and the unfilial conduct of his daughters. Milton died in 
 1674, not, however, in a "hovel," nor too poor to leave £1,500. Nor 
 was he "disgraced." His last years, though poor, were not without 
 comfort, happiness, and respect. See Introduction, 17. 
 
 2 This poem was written in the years from 1658 to 1667. Milton 
 would then be fifty to sixty years of age during its composition. He 
 had planned it for many years before. 
 
 3 Theocritus, the greatest and the first pastoral poet in the world, 
 was a Sicilian Greek of the latter part of the third century B.C. An- 
 drew Lang has made a beautiful English version of his idylls and 
 poems describing country life and landscape. 
 
 4 Ariosto, a great Italian poet (1474-1533), wrote Orlando Furioso 
 and many lyric poems. 
 
ESSAY ON MILTON 45 
 
 ingales, the juice of summer fruits,, and the coolness of 
 shady fountains. His conception of love unites all the 
 voluptuousness of the Oriental harem, and all the gallantry 
 of the chivalric tournament, with all the pure and quiet 
 affection of an English fireside. 1 His poetry reminds us of 
 the miracles of Alpine scenery. Nooks and dells, beauti- 
 ful as fairy-land, are embosomed in its most rugged and 
 gigantic elevations. The roses and- myrtles bloom un- 
 chilled on the verge of the avalanche. 
 
 47. Traces indeed of the peculiar character of Milton 
 may be found in all his works ; but it is most strongly dis- 
 played in the sonnets. Those remarkable poems have been 
 undervalued by critics who have not understood their nat- 
 ure. They have no epigrammatic point. There is none 
 of the ingenuity of Filicaja 2 in the thought, none of the 
 hard and brilliant enamel of Petrarch in the style. They 
 are simple but majestic records of the feelings of the poet ; 
 as little tricked out for the public eye as his diary would 
 have been. A victory, an expected attack upon the city, 
 a momentary fit of depression or exultation, a jest thrown 
 out against one of his books, a dream which for a short 
 time restored to him that beautiful face 3 over which the 
 grave had closed forever, led him to musings which, with- 
 out effort, shaped themselves into verse. The unity of 
 sentiment and severity of style which characterize these 
 
 §§ 47-49. Sixth topic : The Sonnets. 
 
 1 Read Matthew Arnold's judgment on this sentence, in his Essay on 
 Milton See Suggestions for Teachers, iii., (1). 
 
 2 Filicaja (1642-1707), an Italian poet and jurist, especially noted 
 for his sonnets. Petrarch, the Italian scholar who is chiefly remem- 
 bered for famous sonnets written in praise of his Laura. 
 
 3 This refers to his second wife, Catherine Woodcock, who lived 
 only fifteen months after their marriage. His dream of her is com- 
 memorated in Sonnet XXII T. Milton was totally blind before their 
 marriage ; very possibly he never saw her face, and Macaulay had per- 
 haps forgotten too that her face is veiled in the sonnet. 
 
46 ESSAY ON MILTON 
 
 little pieces remind us of the Greek Anthology, 1 or perhaps 
 still more of the Collects, of the English Liturgy. The 
 noble poem on the massacres of Piedmont is strictly a 
 collect in verse. 2 
 
 48. The sonnets are more or less striking, according as 
 the occasions which gave birth to them are more or less 
 interesting. But they are, almost without exception, dig- 
 nified by a sobriety and greatness of mind to which we 
 know not where to look for a parallel. 3 It would indeed 
 be scarcely safe to draw any decided inferences as to the 
 character of a writer, from passages directly egotistical. 
 But the qualities which we have ascribed to Milton, though 
 perhaps most strongly marked in those parts of his works 
 which treat of his personal feelings, are distinguishable in 
 every page, and impart to all his writings, prose and poetry, 
 English, Latin, and Italian, a strong family likeness. 
 V 49A His public conduct was such as was to be expected 
 from a man of a spirit so high, and an intellect so powerful. 
 He lived at one of the most memorable eras in the history of 
 mankind, at the very crisis of the great conflict between Oro- 
 masdes and Arimanes, 4 liberty and despotism, reason and 
 prejudice. That great battle was fought for no single gene- 
 y ration, for no single land. The destinies of the human 
 race were staked on the same cast with the freedom of the 
 
 1 The Greek Anthology is a monster collection of short occasional 
 poems, written through many centuries by many hands. 
 a Sonnet XVIII. 
 
 3 Milton published twenty-three sonnets. Some of them are in 
 deed the most beautiful sonnets in English, if not in the world. See 
 Wordsworth's Sonnet upon Milton. 
 
 4 In the Zoroastrian religion there are two deities, Ahuro Mazdao 
 and Angro Mainyusha, called here Oromasdes and Arimanes. The 
 first is creator of light, life, good ; the second, of darkness, filth, death. 
 Both are eternal, and they are eternally contending for the mastery of 
 the universe. For objections to this comparison of Macaulay s, see 
 Matthew Arnold, A French Critic on Milton. 
 
ESSAY ON MILTON 47 
 
 English people. Then were first proclaimed those mighty 
 principles which have since worked their way into the 
 depths of the American forests/ which have roused Greece 
 from the slavery and degradation of two thousand years, 2 
 and which, from one end of Europe to the other, have 
 kindled an unquenchable fire in the hearts of the oppressed, 
 and loosed the knees of the oppressors with a strange and 
 unwonted fear. 
 
 50. Of those principles, then struggling for their infant 
 existence, Milton was the most devoted and eloquent liter- 
 ary champion. We need not say how much we admire his 
 public conduct. But we cannot disguise from ourselves 
 that a large portion of his countrymen still think it unjus- 
 tifiable. 3 The civil war, indeed, has been more discussed, 
 and is less understood, than any event in English his- 
 tory. The friends of liberty laboured under the disadvan- 
 tage of which the lion in the fable 4 complained so bitterly. 
 
 1 Macaulay has in his mind the recent setting up of the South Amer- 
 ican republics— Colombia (1819), Peru (1821), Mexico (1823), and 
 others. They had been hitherto colonies of Spain. 
 
 2 Greece had lost her independence by the conquest of the Romans, 
 146 B.C. She won it again, in 1829 a.d. , from the Turks. The War 
 of Grecian Independence (1821-1829) was going on while Macaulay 
 was writing. For the movements of politics in Europe at the time 
 when Macaulay wrote this essay, see Introduction, 8. 
 
 3 The estimation in which Milton was held by Englishmen long de- 
 pended on the critic's party politics. It still depended, in Macaulay's 
 day, somewhat on the critic's political sympathies. As therefore Mil- 
 ton's public conduct is always judged from the party standpoint, 
 Macaulay labors to justify the action of the whole Roundhead party, 
 Milton included. 
 
 4 The fable is this A man and a lion, travelling through a forest, and 
 boasting of their strength and prowess, came to a statue of a man 
 strangling a lion, on which the man remarked, " See how strong we 
 are, and how we can prevail over even the king of beasts." To this 
 the lion replied, "Yes, but if the lions knew bow to erect statues, the 
 man would have been under the lion's paw." 
 
48 ESSAY ON MILTON 
 
 Though they were the conquerors, their enemies were the 
 painters. As a body, the Roundheads 1 had done their utmost 
 to decry and ruin literature ; and literature was even with 
 them, as, in the long run, it always is with its enemies. The 
 best book on their side of the question is the charming nar- 
 rative of Mrs. Hutchinson. 2 May's History of the Parlia- 
 ment 3 is good ; but it breaks off at the most interesting 
 crisis of the struggle. The performance of Ludlow is foolish 
 and violent ; and most of the later writers who have espoused 
 the same cause, Oldmixon, for instance, and Catherine 
 Macaulay, have, to say the least, been more distinguished 
 by zeal than either by candour or by skill. 4 On the other 
 side are the most authoritative and the most popular his- 
 torical works in our language, that of Clarendon, 5 and that 
 of Hume. 6 The former is not only ably written and full 
 of valuable information, but has also an air of dignity and 
 sincerity which makes even the prejudices and errors with 
 which it abounds respectable. Hume, from whose fasci- 
 nating narrative the great mass of the reading public are 
 still contented to take their opinions, hated religion so 
 much that he hated liberty for having been allied with 
 
 1 Puritans, so called in contempt, because they did not wear their 
 hair in long " love locks " like the Cavaliers. 
 
 2 Memoirs of the Life of Colonel Llutcldnson by his Widow, Lucy. It 
 is published in Bonn's Standard Library. It has also been edited by 
 C. H. Firth. 
 
 3 Breviary of the Parliament of England by Thomas May, Esq. , 
 1650. 
 
 4 Critical History of England, John Oldmixon ; Memoirs of General 
 Ludlow, C. H. Firth ; History of England from the Accession of 
 James I. to that of the House of Brunswick, by Catherine Macaulay. 
 
 6 The History of the Rebellion, etc., begun in the year 1641, by Ed- 
 ward Hyde, Earl of Clarendon. An edition by W. D. Macray is pub- 
 lished in the Clarendon Press Series. 
 
 6 History of England from the Invasion of Julius Ccesar to the Revo- 
 lution of 1688, by David Hume. 
 
ESSAY ON MILTON 49 
 
 religion, and has pleaded the cause of tyranny with the 
 dexterity of an advocate, while affecting the impartiality 
 of a judge. 
 
 51. The public conduct of Milton must be approved or ^ 
 condemned, according as the resistance of the people to 
 Charles I. shall appear to be justifiable or criminal. We "/ 
 shall therefore make no apology for dedicating a few pages 
 to the discussion of that interesting and most important 
 question. We shall not argue it on general grounds. We 
 shall not recur to those primary principles from which the 
 claim of any government to the obedience of its subjects is 
 to be deduced. We are entitled to that vantage-ground ; 
 but we will relinquish it. We are, on this point, so confi- 
 dent of superiority that we have no objection to imi- 
 tate the ostentatious generosity of those ancient knights 
 who vowed to joust 1 without helmet or shield against all 
 enemies, and to give their antagonists the advantage of sun 
 and wind. We will take the naked constitutional question. ^-> 
 We confidently affirm that every reason which can be urged 
 in favour of the Eevolution of 1688 may be urged with at 
 least equal force in favour of what is called the Great Ee- p 
 bellion. 2 
 
 §§ 49-88. Second Division of the Essay : Milton's conduct 
 as a citizen. The conduct of his party associates, gg 49-72. 
 First topic : Milton's joining the party of the Parliament in 1642. 
 §§ 49-51. Under the impressions derived from seventeenth and eigh- 
 teenth century literature, many Englishmen fail to see that the Long 
 Parliament icas defending principles of government accepted by all 
 England since 1688, and now struggling for recognition in the rest of the 
 world. 
 
 §§ 51-57. The rebellion of Parliament against Charles I. is therefore 
 justified by a comparison, point by point, with the glorious Revolution 
 dethroning James II. 
 
 1 To take part in a military spectacle where knights attacked each 
 other as if in warfare. 
 
 2 For a brief review of all these events, see the Introduction, 13-16. 
 
 4 
 
t 
 
 50 ESSAY ON MILTON 
 
 52. In one respect only, we think, can the warmest ad- 
 mirers of Charles venture to say that he was a better sov- 
 
 .> ereign than his son. He was not, in name and profession, 
 a Papist ; we say in name and profession, because both 
 Charles himself and his miserable creature Laud, 1 while 
 they abjured the innocent badges of Popery, retained all 
 its worst vices, a complete subjection of reason to author- 
 ity, a weak preference of form to substance, a childish 
 passion for mummeries, an idolatrous veneration for a 
 priestly character, and, above all, a stupid and ferocious 
 intolerance. This, however, we waive. We will concede 
 that Charles was a good Protestant ; but we say that his 
 Protestantism does not make the slightest distinction 
 between his case and that of James. 
 
 53. The principles of the Revolution have often been 
 grossly misrepresented. There is a certain class of men 2 
 who, while they profess to hold in reverence the great 
 names and great actions of former times, never look at 
 them for any other purpose than in order to find in them 
 some excuse for existing abuses. In every venerable pre- 
 cedent, they pass by what is essential, and take only what 
 is accidental : they keep out of sight what is beneficial, and 
 hold up to public imitation all that is defective. If, in 
 any part of any great example, there be anything unsound, 
 these flesh-flies detect it with an unerring instinct, and 
 
 1 William Laud (1573-1645), the celebrated Archbishop of Canter- 
 bury, and one of the foremost statesmen in the King's party. For a 
 more judicial estimate of him than Macaulay's, see his Life by Hutton, 
 in the Leaders of Religion Series (Houghton, Mifflin & Co., 1895). 
 
 2 Macaulay is here attacking his own political enemies. He was of 
 those who were trying at this time to relieve their Catholic fellow- 
 citizens in Great Britain of all political disabilities. This was accom- 
 plished in 1829. Macaulay pauses here in the current of his essay 
 to attack those hypocritical Protestants of his own day who pretended 
 to cite the example of the great Whigs of 1688 to cover a bigoted 
 hatred of Catholics in 1825, See Introduction, 8, 
 
ESSAY OJV MILTON 51 
 
 dart upon it with a ravenous delight. If some good end 
 has been attained in spite of them, they feel, with their 
 prototype, that 
 
 " Their labour must be to pervert that end, 
 And out of good still to find means of evil." 1 
 
 54. To the blessings which England has derived from the 
 Eevolution, these people are utterly insensible. The ex- 
 pulsion of a tyrant, the solemn recognition of popular 
 rights, liberty, security, toleration, all go for nothing with 
 them. One sect 2 there was which, from unfortunate tem- 
 porary causes, it was thought necessary to keep under close 
 restraint. One part of the empire there was, so unhappily 
 circumstanced that at that time its misery was necessary to 
 our happiness, and its slavery to our freedom. These are 
 the parts of the Eevolution which the politicians of whom 
 we speak love to contemplate, and which seem to them, 
 not indeed to vindicate, but in some degree to palliate the 
 good which it has produced. Talk to them of Naples, of 
 Spain, or of South America. They stand forth, zealots for 
 the doctrine of Divine Eight which has now come back to 
 us, like a thief from transportation, under the alias of 
 Legitimacy. 3 But mention the miseries of Ireland. Then 
 William 4 is a hero. Then Somers and Shrewsbury are 
 great men. 5 Then the Eevolution is a glorious era. The 
 
 1 Paradise Lost, Book I., 164, 165. 
 
 2 The Roman Catholics, especially in Ireland. See Introduction, 17. 
 
 3 See Introduction, 8. 
 
 4 William, Prince of Orange, afterwards William III. of England. 
 
 5 John Somers (1652-1716) first became famous as counsel for the 
 Seven Bishops ; he took a leading part in framing the great Declara- 
 tion of Right ; under William he held high offices of state, especially 
 those of Attorney General and Lord Chancellor. For his character 
 see Macaulay's History, vol. vii., chap. xx. Charles, Earl of Shrews- 
 bury (1660-1718), one of the seven Whigs who invited William to 
 England; he afterwards helped to proclaim George I. His his- 
 
52 ESSAY ON MILTON 
 
 very same persons who, in this country, never omit an 
 opportunity of reviving every wretched Jacobite 1 slander 
 respecting the Whigs of that period, have no sooner crossed 
 St. George's Channel 2 than they begin to fill their bumpers 
 to the glorious and immortal memory. 3 They may truly 
 boast that they look not at men but at measures. So that 
 evil be done, they care not who does it ; the arbitrary 
 Charles, or the liberal William, Ferdinand the Catholic, 
 or Frederic the Protestant. 4 On such occasions their 
 deadliest opponents may reckon upon their candid con- 
 struction. The bold assertions of these people have of late 
 impressed a large portion of the public with an opinion 
 that James the Second was expelled simply because he was 
 a Catholic, and that the Ke volution was essentially a Prot- 
 estant Revolution. 
 
 55. But this certainly was not the case. Nor can any per- 
 son who has acquired more knowledge of the history of 
 those times than is to be found in Goldsmith's Abridg- 
 ment B believe that, if James had held his own religious 
 opinions without wishing to make proselytes, 6 or if, wish- 
 
 tory is very curious and characteristic of the time. See Macaulay's 
 History, 
 
 1 Jacobite, a supporter of the Stuarts. Jacobus, Latin for James, 
 would be the king's name in Latin documents and on the coins of 
 James II. 
 
 2 St. George's Channel separates England and Ireland. 
 
 3 The traditional toast of the Whigs: ''To the glorious and im- 
 mortal memory of King William." 
 
 4 Charles means, of course, the Stuart King. William is the Prince 
 of Orange. But Macaulay means to taunt his own contemporaries, not 
 only with their affected admiration for past heroes, but also for their 
 actual sympathy with despots of the present. So the kings of Spain 
 and of Prussia, named Ferdinand and Frederic, most unpopular in 
 1825 in England, must be alluded to here. See Introduction, 8. 
 
 5 Oliver Goldsmith (1728-1774), author of the Vicar of Wakefield, 
 wrote an abridged history of England. 
 
 6 One who changes from one opinion or sect to another. 
 
ESSAY ON MILTON 53 
 
 ing even to make proselytes, he had contented himself with 
 exerting only his constitutional influence for that purpose, 
 the Prince of Orange would ever have been invited over. 
 Our ancestors, we suppose, knew their own meaning ; and, 
 if we may believe them, their hostility was primarily, not 
 to popery, but to tyranny. They did not drive out a 
 tyrant because he was a Catholic ; but they excluded Cath- 
 olics from the crown, because they thought them likely to 
 be tyrants. The ground on which they, in their famous 
 resolution, declared the throne vacant, was this, " that 
 James had broken the fundamental laws of the king- 
 dom." 1 Every man, therefore, who approves of the Revo- 
 lution of 1688, must hold that the breach of fundamental 
 laws on the part of the sovereign justifies resistance. The 
 question then is this : Had Charles the First broken the 
 fundamental laws of England ? 
 
 56. No person can answer in the negative, unless he re- 
 fuses credit, not merely to all the accusations brought 
 against Charles by his opponents, but to the narratives of 
 the warmest Royalists, and to the confessions of the King 
 himself. If there be any truth in any historian of any v 
 party who has related the events of that reign, the conduct 
 of Charles, from his accession to the meeting of the Long 
 Parliament, had been a continued course of oppression and 
 treachery. 2 x Let those who applaud the Revolution andy 
 condemn the Rebellion, mention one act of James the Sec- 
 ond to which a parallel is not to be found in the history of 
 his father. Let them lay their fingers on a single article in 
 
 1 Resolution of Parliament in 1689 : " that King James, having en- 
 deavored to subvert the Constitution of this kingdom by breaking the 
 original contract between King and People, and by the advice of 
 Jesuits and other wicked persons, having violated the fundamental 
 laws and having withdrawn himself out of the kingdom, has abdi- 
 cated the government, and the throne is thereby vacant." 
 
 2 See Introduction, 13. 
 
54 ESSAY ON MILTON 
 
 the Declaration of Right/ presented by the two houses to 
 William and Mary, which Charles is not acknowledged to 
 have violated. He had, according to the testimony of his 
 own friends, usurped the functions of the legislature, 
 raised taxes without the consent of parliament, and quar- 
 tered troops on the people in the most illegal and vexatious 
 . manner. JSTot a single session of parliament had passed 
 without some unconstitutional attack on the freedom of 
 debate. The right of petition was grossly violated ; arbi- 
 trary judgments, exorbitant fines, and unwarranted im- 
 prisonments, were grievances of daily occurrence. If these 
 things do not justify resistance, the Revolution was treason ; 
 if they do, the Great Rebellion was laudable. 2 
 
 57. But, it is said, why not adopt milder measures ? 
 Why, after the king had consented to so many reforms, 
 and renounced so many oppressive prerogatives, 3 did the 
 parliament continue to rise in their demands at the risk 
 of civil war ? The ship money 4 had been given up. The 
 Star Chamber 5 had been abolished. Provision had been 
 made for the frequent convocation and secure deliberation 
 of parliaments. Why not pursue an end confessedly good, 
 by peaceable and regular means ? We recur again to the 
 
 §§57-72. Admitting, then, the justice of Parliament's quarrel with 
 the king, was their rebellion too strong a measure? When are revolutions 
 justified f 
 
 1 Declaration of Right presented by the two Houses to William and 
 Mary, February, 1689, on the occasion of Parliament's declaring them 
 to be King and Queen of England. See Introduction, 17. 
 
 2 See Introduction, 13. 
 
 3 Prerogatives, privileges sovereign and exclusive, subject to no 
 restriction or interference, belonging specially to the king. See Intro- 
 duction, 13. 
 
 4 Ship money. See Introduction, 13. 
 
 5 A peculiar court of Charles I. It had been developed from a 
 sort of committee of the king's council, originating under the Tudor 
 monarchy. See Introduction, 13. 
 
ESS AY ON MILTON 55 
 
 analogy of the Revolution. Why was James driven from 
 the throne ? Why was he not retained upon conditions ? 
 He, too, had offered to call a free parliament, and to sub- 
 mit to its decision all the matters in dispute. Yet we are in 
 the habit of praising our forefathers, who preferred a revolu- 
 tion, a disputed succession, a dynasty of strangers, twenty 
 years of foreign and intestine war, a standing army, and a 
 national debt, to the rule, however restricted, of a tried and 
 proved tyrant. 1 The Long Parliament acted on the same 
 principle, and is entitled to the same praise. They could not 
 trust the king. He had, no doubt, passed salutary laws. 
 But what assurance had they that he would not break 
 them ? He had renounced oppressive prerogatives. But 
 where was the security that he would not resume them ? 
 They had to deal with a man whom no tie could bind, a 
 man who made and broke promises with equal facility, a 
 man whose honor had been a hundred times pawned, and 
 never redeemed. 
 
 58. Here, indeed, the Long Parliament stands on still 
 stronger ground than the Convention of 1688. No action of 
 James can be compared, for wickedness and impudence, to 
 the conduct of Charles with respect to the Petition of Eight. 2 
 The Lords and Commons present him with a bill in which 
 the constitutional limits of his power are marked out. He 
 hesitates ; he evades ; at last he bargains to give his assent 
 
 1 See Introduction, 17. In fact from 1668 to 1748 the disputes over 
 the English succession were incessant. It involved England in quar- 
 rels with the French King, and furnished pretexts for constant 
 quarrels at home. As to the dynasty, William was a stranger in Eng- 
 land to the end of his life, and the first two Georges never spoke 
 English well, and preferred Hanover as a residence. The national 
 debt was created by Montague's borrowing on bonds at 10 per cent, for 
 the expenses of William's government in 1692. It may therefore be 
 said to be due to the Revolution. 
 
 2 Presented in 1628 to Charles I. by his third parliament. It forbade 
 taxation without consent of a parliament. See Introduction, IB. 
 
56 ESSAY ON MILTON 
 
 for five subsidies. The bill receives his solemn assent. 
 The subsidies are voted. But no sooner is the tyrant re- 
 lieved , than he returns at once to all the arbitrary measures 
 which he had bound himself to abandon, and violates all 
 the clauses of the very Act which he had been paid to pass. 
 
 59. For more than ten years the people had seen the 
 rights, which were theirs by a double claim, by immemo- 
 rial inheritance and by recent purchase, infringed by the 
 perfidious king who had recognized them. At length cir- 
 cumstances compelled Charles to summon another parli- 
 ament : another chance was given to our fathers : were 
 they to throw it away*as they had thrown away the former? 
 Were they again to be cozened by le Roi le veut ? * Were 
 they again to advance their money on pledges which had 
 been forfeited over and over again ? Were they to lay a 
 second petition of right at the foot of the throne, to grant 
 another lavish aid in exchange for another unmeaning 
 ceremony, and then to take their departure, till, after ten 
 years more of fraud and oppression, their prince should 
 again require a supply, and again repay it with a perjury ? 
 They were compelled to choose whether they would trust 
 a tyrant or conquer him. We think that they chose wisely 
 and nobly. 
 
 60. The advocates of Charles, like the advocates of other 
 malefactors against whom overwhelming evidence is pro- 
 duced, generally decline all controversy about the facts, 
 and content themselves with calling testimony to character. 
 He had so many private virtues ! And had James the Sec- 
 ond no private virtues ? Was even Oliver Cromwell, 2 his 
 
 1 " The king wills it." This is the form of consent by which an Act 
 of Parliament is accepted by the monarch and made law at the present 
 day. It comes down from the time when French was the language of 
 the Kings of England. 
 
 2 The character of Oliver Cromwell is not even yet properly esti- 
 mated. Since Macaulay wrote, however, the drift of opinion has grown 
 
ESSAY ON MILTON 57 
 
 bitterest .enemies themselves being judges, destitute of pri- 
 vate virtues ? And what, after all, are the virtues ascribed 
 to Charles ? A religious zeal, not more sincere than that of 
 his son, and fully as weak and narrow-minded, and a few of 
 the ordinary household decencies which half the tombstones 
 in England claim for those who lie beneath them. A good 
 father ! A good husband ! Ample apologies indeed for 
 fifteen years of persecution, tyranny, and falsehood. 
 
 61. We charge him with having broken his coronation 
 oath ; and we are told that he kept his marriage vow ! We 
 accuse him of having given up his people to the merciless 
 inflictions of the most hot-headed and hard-hearted of pre- 
 lates ; and the defence is, that ho took his little son on his 
 knee and kissed him ! We censure him for having vio- 
 lated the articles of the Petition of Right, after having, 
 for good and valuable consideration, promised to observe 
 them ; and we are informed, that he was accustomed to 
 hear prayers at six o'clock in the morning ! It is to such 
 considerations as these, together with his Vandyke 1 dress, 
 his handsome face, and his peaked beard, that he owes, we 
 verily believe, most of his popularity with the present gen- 
 eration. 
 
 more and more favorable even among those who may consider them- 
 selves his political opponents. The curious may read Carlyle's great 
 Life of Cromwell and Gardiner's recently published volumes on the 
 Commonwealth in his great series on the history of England. See, 
 for a good short history, Frederic Harrison's Oliver Cromwell (Mac- 
 millan, 1888). 
 
 1 Named from Anthony Van Dyck (1599-1641), the great Flemish 
 portrait-painter. He was knighted and made court painter by Charles 
 I. , who sat tq him many times. King Charles may be said to be known 
 to posterity exclusively by these pictures, which kt once seen are im- 
 possible to forget." He painted also a famous picture of the children 
 of Charles I. The beautiful ''Vandyke dress" appears in most of 
 these portraits ; it is specially characterized by the collar and trimmings 
 of lace. 
 
58 ESSAY ON MILTON 
 
 62. For ourselves, we own that we do not understand the 
 common phrase, a good man but a bad king. We can as 
 easily conceive a good man and an unnatural father, or a 
 good man and a treacherous friend. We cannot, in esti- 
 mating the character of an individual, leave out of our con- 
 sideration his conduct in the most important of all human 
 relations. And if, in that relation, we find him to have 
 been selfish, cruel, and deceitful, we shall take the liberty 
 to call him a bad man, in spite of all his temperance at 
 table, and all his regularity at chapel. 
 
 63. AVe cannot refrain from adding a few words respect- 
 ing a topic on which the defenders of Charles are fond of 
 dwelling. If, they say, he governed his people ill, he at 
 least governed them after the example of his predeces- 
 sors. If he violated their privileges, it was because those 
 privileges had not been accurately defined. No act of op- 
 pression has ever been imputed to him, which has not a 
 parallel in the annals of the Tudors. 1 This point Hume 
 has laboured, with an art which is as discreditable in a his- 
 torical work as it would be admirable in a forensic address. 
 The answer is short, clear, and decisive. Charles had as- 
 sented to the Petition of Eight. He had renounced the 
 oppressive powers said to have been exercised by his prede- 
 cessors, and he had renounced them for money. He was 
 not entitled to set up his antiquated claims against his own 
 recent release. 
 
 64. These arguments are so obvious that it may seem 
 superfluous to dwell upon them. But those who have 
 observed how much the events of that time are misrepre- 
 sented and misunderstood will not blame us for stating 
 the case simply. It is a case of which the simplest state- 
 ment is the strongest. 
 
 1 The house of Tudor (Henry VII. , Henry VIII., Edward VI., Mary 
 and Elizabeth) was named from Owen Tudor, Earl of Richmond, 
 father of Henry VII. 
 
ESSAY ON MILTON 59 
 
 65. The enemies of the Parliament, indeed, rarely choose 
 to take issue on the great points of the question. They con- 
 tent themselves with exposing some of the crimes and follies 
 to which public commotions necessarily give birth. They 
 bewail the unmerited fate of Strafford. 1 They execrate the 
 lawless violence of the army. They laugh at the Scriptural 
 names of the preachers. 2 Major-generals fleecing their dis- 
 tricts ; soldiers revelling on the spoils of a ruined peas- 
 antry ; upstarts, enriched by the public plunder, taking 
 possession of the hospitable firesides and hereditary trees of 
 the old gentry ; boys smashing the beautiful windows of 
 cathedrals ; Quakers 3 riding naked through the market- 
 place ; Fifth-monarchy-men shouting for King Jesus 4 ; 
 agitators lecturing from the tops of tubs on the fate of 
 Agag 5 — all these, they tell us, were the offspring of the 
 Great Eebellion. 
 
 66.. Be it so. We are not careful to answer in this matter. 
 These charges, were they infinitely more important, would 
 not alter our opinion of an event which alone has made us 
 
 1 Thomas Wentworth, Earl of Strafford, the adviser of Charles I. See 
 Introduction, 13. He was '* attainted," that is condemned to death for 
 high treason by a bill in Parliament, instead of by regular legal pro- 
 ceedings before a court, and executed in 1641. 
 
 2 For the Puritan and his ways, see Macaulay, History of England, 
 vol. i. , chap. 1. 
 
 3 George Fox first preached "the breaking forth of God's power'' in 
 1648. His disciples were identified with many extravagances of the 
 time, some of them making violent appeals to the emotions of the 
 multitude. The extraordinary excesses here alluded to were in- 
 tended by these Quaker prophets as an imitation of the symbolical 
 actions of the Prophet Isaiah. Isaiah xx. 2. The " Quakers " had 
 no regular organization as a sect before 1666. 
 
 4 Fifth-monarchy-men (1657), believing in the immediate coming of 
 Christ, and also that it was their duty to inaugurate his kingdom by 
 force. The other four monarchies alluded to were Assyria, Persia, 
 Greece, Rome. 
 
 5 1 Samuel xv. 32. 
 
60 ESSAY ON MILTON 
 
 to differ from the slaves who crouch beneath despotic scep- 
 tres. 1 Many evils, no doubt, were produced by the civil 
 war. They were the price of our liberty. Has the ac- 
 quisition been worth the sacrifice ? It is the nature of the 
 Devil of tyranny to tear and rend the body which he leaves. 
 Are the miseries of continued possession less horrible than 
 the struggles of the tremendous exorcism ? 2 
 
 67. If it were possible that a people brought up under 
 an intolerant and arbitrary system could subvert that sys- 
 tem without acts of cruelty and folly, half the objections 
 to despotic power would be removed. We should, in that 
 case, be compelled to acknowledge that it at least produces 
 no pernicious effects on the intellectual and moral charac- 
 ter of a people. We deplore the outrages which accom- 
 pany revolutions. But the more violent the outrages, the 
 more assured we feel that a revolution was necessary. The 
 violence of those outrages, will always be proportioned to 
 the ferocity and ignorance of the people ; and the ferocity 
 and ignorance of the people will be proportioned to the 
 oppression and degradation under which they have been 
 accustomed to live. Thus it was in our civil war. The 
 heads of the church and state reaped only that which they 
 had sown. The government had prohibited free discus- 
 sion : it had done its best to keep the people unacquainted 
 with their duties and their rights. The retribution was 
 just and natural. If our rulers suffered from popular ig- 
 norance, it was because they had themselves taken away 
 the key of knowledge. If they were assailed with blind 
 fury, it was because they had exacted an equally blind sub- 
 mission. 
 
 1 In the first publication of this essay Macaulay wrote " the sceptres 
 of Brandenburgh and Braganza," i.e., Prussia and Portugal, referring 
 especially to the " despots" of his own day, as above noted. 
 
 9 The process of expelling evil spirits by religious or magical cere- 
 monies. 
 
ESSAY OJST MILTON 61 
 
 68. It is the character of such revolutions that we al- 
 ways see the worst of them at first. Till men have been 
 for some time free, they know not how to use their free- 
 dom. The natives of wine countries are always sober. In 
 climates where wine is a rarity, intemperance abounds. A 
 newly liberated people may be compared to a northern 
 army encamped on the Rhine or the Xeres. 1 It is said 
 that, when soldiers in such a situation first find themselves 
 able to indulge without restraint in such a rare and expen- 
 sive luxury, nothing is to be seen but intoxication. Soon, 
 however, plenty teaches discretion ; and after wine has 
 been for a few months their daily fare, they become more 
 temperate than they had ever been in their own country. 
 In the same manner, the final and permanent fruits of lib- 
 erty are wisdom, moderation, and mercy. Its immediate 
 effects are often atrocious crimes, conflicting errors, skep- 
 ticism on points the most clear, dogmatism on points the 
 most mysterious. It is just at this crisis that its enemies 
 love to exhibit it. They pull clown the scaffolding from 
 the half -finished edifice : they point to the flying dust, the 
 falling bricks, the comfortless rooms, the frightful irregu- 
 larity of the whole appearance ; and then ask in scorn 
 where the promised splendour and comfort is to be found. 
 If such miserable sophisms 2 were to prevail, there would 
 never be a good house or a good government in the world. 
 
 69. Ariosto tells a pretty story of a fairy, 3 who, by some 
 mysterious law of her nature, was condemned to appear, at 
 certain seasons, in the form of a foul and poisonous snake. 
 Those wlio injured her during the period of her disguise 
 
 1 The Rhine country in. Germany is full of vineyards where Hock 
 and Moselle wines are made. Xeres, or Jerez de la Frontera, is not a 
 river but a town in Andalusia, near Cadiz, in Spain, where Sherry 
 wine was first made and named. 
 
 2 A false argument devised to show ingenuity or to deceive. 
 
 3 See Orlando Furioso, Canto XLIII. 
 
62 ESSAY ON MILTON 
 
 were forever excluded from participation in the blessings 
 which she bestowed. But to those who, in spite of her 
 loathsome aspect, pitied and protected her, she afterwards 
 revealed herself in the beautiful and celestial form which 
 was natural to her, accompanied their steps, granted all 
 their wishes, filled their houses with wealth, made them 
 happy in love and victorious in war. Such a spirit is Lib- 
 erty. At times she takes the form of a hateful reptile. 
 She grovels, she hisses, she stings. But woe to those who 
 in disgust shall venture to crush her ! And happy are 
 those who, having dared to receive her in her degraded 
 and frightful shape, shall at length be rewarded by her in 
 the time of her beauty and her glory ! 
 
 70. There is only one cure for the evils which newly 
 acquired freedom produces, and that cure is freedom. 
 When a prisoner first leaves his cell, he cannot bear the 
 light of day : he is unable to discriminate colours or to 
 recognize faces. But the remedy is, not to remand him 
 into his dungeon, but to accustom him to the rays of the 
 sun. The blaze of truth and liberty may at first dazzle 
 and bewilder nations which have become half blind in the 
 house of bondage. But let them gaze on, and they will 
 soon be able to bear it. In a few years men learn to 
 reason. The extreme violence of opinions subsides. Hos- 
 tile theories correct each other. The scattered elements 
 of truth cease to conflict, and begin to coalesce. And at 
 length a system of justice and order is educed out of the 
 chaos. 
 
 71. Many politicians of our time are in the habit of lay- 
 ing it down as a self-evident proposition that no people 
 ought to be free till they are fit to use their freedom. The 
 maxim is worthy of the fool in the old story who resolved 
 not to go into the water till he had learnt to swim. If 
 men are to wait for liberty till they become wise and good 
 in slavery, chey may indeed wait forever. 
 
ESSAY ON MILTON 63 
 
 ,72. Therefore it is that we decidedly approve of the con- V 
 duct of Milton and the other wise and good men who, in 
 spite of much that was ridiculous and hateful in the con- 
 duct of their associates, stood firmly by the cause of Public / 
 Liberty. We are not aware that the poet has been charged 
 with personal participation in any of the blameable excesses 
 of that time. The favourite topic of his enemies is the line 
 of conduct which he pursued with regard to the execution of 
 the King. Of that celebrated proceeding we by no means 
 approve. Still we must say, in justice to the many emi- 
 nent persons who concurred in it, and in justice more par- 
 ticularly to the eminent person who defended it, that 
 nothing can be more absurd than the imputations which, 
 for the last hundred and sixty years, it has been the 
 fashion to cast upon the Kegicides. 1 We have throughout 
 abstained from appealing to first principles. We will not 
 appeal to them now. We recur again to the parallel case 
 of the Kevolution. What essential distinction can be 
 drawn between the execution of the father and the deposi- 
 tion of the son ? What constitutional maxim is there 
 which applies to the former and not to the latter ? The 
 king can do no wrong. If so, James was as innocent as 
 Charles could have been. The minister only ought to be 
 responsible for the acts of the Sovereign. If so, why not 
 impeach Jeffreys 2 and retain James ? The person of a 
 King is sacred. Was the person of James considered 
 
 §§ 72-78. Second topic : Milton's association tcith the Regicides and 
 Cromwell. §§ 72-75. The execution of Charles not so very different a 
 measure from the deposition of James. But even if one disapproves of 
 the regicide, one may admit the necessity of defending it at that time. 
 
 Commonly, the members of the High Court of Justice, who sen 
 tenced Charles I. Also, as an abstract noun in the singular, regicide 
 is the act of killing a king. 
 
 2 The wicked Chief Justice (1G48-1689), minister, and adviser of 
 James II., notorious for flagrant injustice and brutality on the bench. 
 See Macaulay's History, Vols. II., III. 
 
64 ESSAY ON MILTON 
 
 sacred at the Boyne ? l To discharge cannon against an 
 army in which a King is known to be posted, is to approach 
 pretty near to regicide. Charles, too, it should always be 
 remembered, was put to death by men who had been exas- 
 perated by the hostilities of several years, and who had 
 never been bound to him by any other tie than that which 
 was common to them with all their fellow-citizens. Those 
 who drove James from his throne, who seduced his army, 
 who alienated his friends, who first imprisoned him in his 
 palace, and then turned him out of it, who broke in upon 
 his various slumbers by imperious messages, who pursued 
 him with fire and sword from one part of the empire to 
 another, who hanged, drew, and quartered his adherents, and 
 attainted his innocent heir, were his nephew and his two 
 daughters ! 2 When we reflect on all these things, we are 
 at a loss to conceive how the same persons who, on the 
 fifth of November, 3 thank God for wonderfully conducting 
 
 1 The battle of the Boyne, a river in the north of Ireland, fought 
 July 1st, 1690, between the Dutch and English troops, under King 
 William, and the English, French, and Irish, under King James See 
 Gardiner's Student's History of England. 
 
 2 William, Prince of Orange, who headed the attack on the King, was 
 the son of Mary, sister of James II., and thus his nephew. Mary, 
 William's wife, and Anne, his successor, were daughters of James II. 
 by Anne Hyde. The kt innocent heir" of James II. was his son by 
 Mary of Este, his wife. This heir, after James's death, was called 
 James III. by the Jacobites, and the " Old Pretender" by the parti- 
 sans of the House of Hanover. 
 
 3 The English Prayer Book, when Macaulay wrote, contained a 
 " Form of Prayer and Thanksgiving" for use on November fifth, cele- 
 brating the delivery of England from " Popish Tyranny and Arbitrary 
 Power." It was the anniversary of the discovery of the Gunpowder 
 Plot and also of the arrival of William in England. The thirtieth 
 day of January was kept as a il Day of Prayer and Fasting for the 
 Martyrdom of the Blessed King Charles the First." Both these ser- 
 vices were taken out of the Prayer Book by Royal Warrant of Queen 
 Victoria in 1859. From these services Macaulay is quoting. 
 
ESSAY ON MILTON 65 
 
 his servant, William, and for making all opposition fall 
 before him until he became our King and Governor, can 
 on the thirtieth of January, contrive to be afraid that 
 the blood of the Eoyal Martyr may be visited on them- 
 selves and their children. 
 
 73. We disapprove, we repeat, of the execution of 
 Charles ; not because the constitution exempts the King 
 from responsibility, for we know that all such maxims, 
 however excellent, have their exceptions ; nor because we 
 feel any peculiar interest in his character, for we think 
 that his sentence describes him with perfect justice as " a 
 tyrant, a traitor, a murderer, and a public enemy ; " but 
 because we are convinced that the measure was most in- 
 jurious to the cause of freedom. He whom it removed 
 was a captive and a hostage : his heir, to whom the alle- 
 giance of every Koyalist was instantly transferred, was at 
 large. The Presbyterians 1 could never have been perfectly 
 reconciled to the father : they had no such rooted enmity 
 to the son. The great body of the people, also, contem- 
 plated that proceeding with feelings which, however un- 
 reasonable, no government could safely venture to outrage. 
 
 74. But, though we think the conduct of the Eegicides 
 blameable, that of Milton appears to us in a very different 
 light. The deed was done. It could not be undone. The 
 evil was incurred ; and the object was to render it as small 
 as possible. We censure the chiefs of the army for not 
 yielding to the popular opinion ; but we cannot censure 
 Milton for wishing to change that opinion. The very feel- 
 ing which would have restrained us from committing the 
 act would have led us, after it had been committed, to de- 
 
 1 Those who desired to introduce into England church government 
 by bodies of Elders or Presbyters instead of by Bishops, After 
 Charles's death this party did support Charles II. , as they feared and 
 disliked the religious theories of the Independents of the Army more 
 than they feared royal tyranny. 
 5 
 
66 ESSAY ON MILTON 
 
 fend it against the ravings of servility and superstition. 
 For the sake of public liberty, we wish that the thing had 
 not been done, -while the people disapproved of it. But, 
 for the sake of public liberty, we should also have wished 
 the people to approve of it when it was done. If anything 
 more were wanting to the justification of Milton, the book of 
 Salmasius ] would furnish it. That miserable performance 
 is now with justice considered only as a beacon to word- 
 catchers who wish to become statesmen. The celebrity of 
 the man who refuted it, the "iEnese magni dextra," 2 gives 
 it all its fame with the present generation. In that age 
 the state of things was different. It was not then fully 
 understood how vast an interval separates the mere classi- 
 cal scholar from the political philosopher. Nor can it be 
 doubted that a treatise which, bearing the name of so 
 eminent a critic, attacked the fundamental principles of 
 all free governments, must, if suffered to remain unan- 
 swered, have produced a most pernicious effect on the pub- 
 lic mind. 
 
 75. We wish to add a few words relative to another sub- 
 ject on which the enemies of Milton delight to dwell, 
 his conduct during the administration of the Protector. 3 
 That an enthusiastic votary of liberty should accept office 
 under a military usurper seems, no doubt, at first sight, 
 extraordinary. But all the circumstances in which the 
 
 §§ 75-78. Discussion of GromweWs good government compared with 
 Parliament's betrayal of trust on one side and Stuart misgovemment 
 on the other. 
 
 1 Claudius Salmasius (1588-1653), the most famous scholar of Mil- 
 ton's day, professor at the University of Leyden. For this pamphlet 
 controversy over the execution of Charles between Milton and Sal- 
 masius, see the Introduction, 16. 
 
 2 " Thou fallest by the right hand of great ^neas," a line from 
 Virgil's JEneid (X. , 830). This now proverbial phrase describes the 
 death of a person wholly unknown falling by the sword of a great hero. 
 
 3 For the Protectorate, see the Introduction, 16. 
 
ESSAY ON MILTON 67 
 
 country was then placed were extraordinary. The ambi- 
 tion of Oliver was of no vulgar kind. He never seems to 
 have coveted despotic power. He at first fought sincerely 
 and manfully for the Parliament, and never deserted it, 
 till it had deserted its duty. If he dissolved it by force, it 
 was not till he found that the few members who remained 
 after so many deaths, secessions, and expulsions, were de- 
 sirous to appropriate to themselves a power which they held 
 only in trust, and to inflict upon England the curse of a 
 Venetian oligarchy. 1 ! But even when thus placed by vio- 
 lence at the head of affairs, he did not assume unlimited 
 power. He gave the country a constitution far more per- 
 fect than any which had at that time been known in the 
 world. 2 He reformed the representative system in a man- 
 ner that has extorted praise even from Lord Clarendon. 
 For himself he demanded indeed the first place in the com- 
 monwealth ; but with powers scarcely so great as those of a 
 Dutch stadtholder, 3 or an American President. He gave 
 the Parliament a voice in the appointment of ministers, and 
 left to it the whole legislative authority — not even reserv- 
 ing to himself a veto on its enactments ; and he did not 
 require that the chief magistracy should be hereditary in his 
 family. Thus far, we think, if the circumstances of the 
 time, and the opportunities which he had of aggrandising 
 
 1 " Not a dog barked at their going," said Cromwell afterwards. An 
 oligarchy is the government of a state by a few of its citizens. Venice 
 was always called a republic, because it was not governed by one king 
 or other monarch. But its government shrunk slowly from govern- 
 ment by general meetings of citizens into an oligarchy governed by 
 Councils (Great Council, Small Council, Council of Ten), and at last 
 supreme power fell into the hands of only Three. 
 
 2 The " Instrument of Government," the first and last time England 
 ever had a written constitution. See the Introduction, 16. 
 
 3 The chief magistrate of the Dutch Republic. The word "stat- 
 houder " originally meant "governor of a province," "stead-holder," 
 or lieutenant. But it came to mean the chief magistrate of the 
 United Provinces. 
 
68 ESSAY ON MILTON 
 
 himself, be fairly considered, he will not lose by comparison 
 with Washington or Bolivar. 1 Had his moderation been 
 met by corresponding moderation, there is no reason to 
 think that he would have overstepped the line which he had 
 traced for himself. But when he found that his parlia- 
 ments questioned the authority under which they met, 
 and that he was in danger of being deprived of the re- 
 stricted power which was absolutely necessary to his per- 
 sonal safety, then, it must be acknowledged, he adopted a 
 more arbitrary policy. 
 
 76. Yet, though we believe that the intentions of Crom-, 
 well were at first honest, though we believe that he was 
 driven from the noble course which he had marked out for 
 himself, by the almost irresistible force of circumstances ; 
 though we admire, in common with all men of all parties, 
 the ability and energy of his splendid administration, 
 we are not pleading for arbitrary and lawless power, even 
 in his hands. We know that a good constitution is in- 
 finitely better than the best despot. But we suspect that, 
 at the time of which we speak, the violence of religious 
 and political enmities rendered a stable and happy settle- 
 ment next to impossible. The choice lay, not between 
 Cromwell and liberty, but between Cromwell and the 
 Stuarts. 2 That Milton chose well, no man can doubt who 
 fairly compares the events of the protectorate with those 
 of the thirty years which succeeded it, 3 the darkest and 
 
 1 Bolivar (1783-1830), the " Liberator," who emancipated the col- 
 onies of Spain, and created the great republic of Bolivia in South 
 America, which, however, fell to pieces after his death into several 
 states. He was a popular hero to young Liberals of this time. See 
 Introduction, 8. 
 
 2 The Stuarts, James I., Charles L, Charles II. , James II., sat on 
 the English throne from 1603-1688 For their general history, see 
 Macaulay's History of England. 
 
 3 1660-1688, the reigns of Charles II. and James II., often called 
 the ''Restoration." 
 
ESSAY ON MILTON 69 
 
 most disgraceful in the English annals. Cromwell was 
 evidently laying, though in an irregular manner, the 
 foundations of an admirable system. Never before had 
 religious liberty and freedom of discussion been enjoyed 
 in a greater degree. Never had the national honour been 
 better upheld abroad, or the seat of justice better filled at 
 home. And it was rarely that any opposition, which 
 stopped short of open rebellion, provoked the resentment of 
 the liberal and magnanimous usurper. The institutions 
 which he had established, as set down in the Instrument 
 of Government, and the Humble Petition and Advice, 1 
 were excellent. His practice, it is true, too often departed 
 from the theory of these institutions. But, had he lived 
 a few years longer, it is probable that his institutions would 
 have survived him, and that his arbitrary practice would 
 have died with him. His power had not been consecrated 
 by ancient prejudices. It was upheld only by his great 
 personal qualities. Little, therefore, was to be dreaded 
 from a second protector, unless he were also a second 
 Oliver Cromwell. The events which followed his decease 
 are the most complete vindication of those who exert- 
 ed themselves to uphold his authority. His death dis- 
 solved the whole frame of society. The army rose against 
 the parliament, the different corps of the army against 
 each other. Sect raved against sect. Party plotted 
 against party. The Presbyterians, in their eagerness to 
 be revenged on the Independents, 2 sacrificed their own 
 liberty, and deserted all their old principles. Without 
 casting one glance on the past, or requiring one stipula- 
 
 1 See Introduction, 16. 
 
 2 The Independents were distinguished from the Presbyterians in 
 that they desired no general church government in the nation, but 
 that each congregation of worshippers should be independent of every 
 other. 
 
70 ESSAY ON MILTON 
 
 tion for the future, they threw down their freedom at the 
 feet of the most frivolous and heartless of tyrants. 1 
 
 77. Then came those days, never to be recalled without 
 a blush, the days of servitude without loyalty, and sen- 
 suality without love, of dwarfish talents and gigantic vices, 
 the paradise of cold hearts and narrow minds, the golden 
 age of the coward, the bigot, and the slave. The King 
 cringed to his rival 2 that he might trample on his people, 
 sank into a viceroy of France, and pocketed, with com- 
 placent infamy, her degrading insults and her more de- 
 grading gold. The caresses of harlots, and the jests of buf- 
 foons, regulated the policy of the state. The government 
 had just ability enough to deceive, and just religion enough 
 to persecute. The principles of liberty were the scoff of 
 every grinning courtier, and the Anathema Maranatha 3 
 of every fawning dean. 4 In every high place, worship 
 was paid to Charles and James, Belial and Moloch, 5 and 
 England propitiated those obscene and cruel idols with 
 
 1 But Charles II. was not known to be a u frivolous and heartless 
 tyrant." He was only thirty years old at that time, and might be 
 supposed to have learned something from his father's fate. This 
 part of the essay, as well as the next few paragraphs, is rather too 
 strongly stated by Macaulay. Bead Matthew Arnold, A French Critic 
 on Milton. 
 
 2 Louis XIV. of France. 
 
 3 1 Corinthians xvi. 22. Anathema, anything devoted to evil, " an 
 accursed thing." Maranatha, "The Lord hath come,'' means only 
 " Amen ! " 
 
 4 A dean in England is the Lead of the corporation of a Cathedral. 
 The place is very honorable and has been held by the best of the 
 English clergy. The word is used here by Macaulay to stand for the 
 upper clergy in general of these reigns. 
 
 5 The allusion here is to the two fiends in Paradise Lost ; Belial 
 (Book II., verse 108), the graceful and humane but false and hollow 
 angel, is of course Charles II.; Moloch (Book II., verse 43), the cruel, 
 is King James II. 
 
ESSAY ON MILTON 71 . 
 
 the blood of her best and bravest children. Crime suc- 
 ceeded to crime, and disgrace to disgrace, till the race ac- 
 cursed of God and man was a second time driven forth, to 
 wander on the face of the earth, and to be a by- word and 
 a shaking of the head to the nations. 
 
 78. Most of the remarks which we have hitherto made 
 on the public character of Milton apply to him only as 
 one of a large body. We shall proceed to notice some of 
 the peculiarities which distinguished him from his con- 
 temporaries. And*, for that purpose, it is necessary to take 
 a short survey of the parties into which the political world 
 was at that time divided. We must premise that our ob- 
 servations are intended to apply only to those who adhered, 
 from a sincere preference, to one or to the other side. At 
 a period of public commotion, every faction, like an Orien- 
 tal army, is attended by a crowd of camp-followers, a useless 
 .and heartless rabble, who prowl round its line of march in 
 the hope of picking up something under its protection, 
 but desert it in the day of battle, and often join to exter- 
 minate it after a defeat. England, at the time of which 
 we are treating, abounded with such fickle and selfish poli- 
 ticians, who transferred their support to every government 
 as it rose, who kissed the hand of the king in 1640, 1 and 
 spat in his face in 1649, who shouted with equal glee when 
 
 §§ 78-87. Third topic : Milton's contemporaries classified and de- 
 scribed. -§§ 79-84. The Puritans. 
 
 1 The Long Parliament assembled in 1640; the king was executed in 
 1649. Cromwell was inaugurated " Lord Protector" in 1653; his 
 body was disinterred and treated with indignity in 1661. Calves' 
 heads were set on the table by the fiercer rebels to commemorate the 
 beheading of the king. In the festivities celebrating the return of 
 Charles II. in 1660 broiled rumps were cooked and eaten in the streets 
 of London to ridicule the "rump" Parliament. In the flight of 
 Charles II. , after his defeat at Worcester, he was said to have found a 
 hiding-place in an oak tree. The oak was the Royalist symbol there- 
 after. 
 
72 ESSAY ON MILTON 
 
 Cromwell was inaugurated in Westminster Hall, and when 
 he was dug up to be hanged at Tyburn ; who dined on 
 calves' heads or on broiled rumps, and cut down oak- 
 branches or stuck them up, as circumstances altered, with- 
 out the slightest shame or repugnance. These we leave 
 out of the account. We take our estimate of parties from 
 those who really deserved to be called partisans. 
 V 79. We would speak first of the Puritans, the most re- 
 markable body of mem, perhaps, which the world has ever 
 )( produced. The odious and ridiculous parts of their char- 
 acter lie on the surface. He that runs may read them ; nor 
 have there been wanting attentive and malicious observers 
 to point them out. For many years after the Kestoration, 
 they were the theme of unmeasured invective and derision. 
 They were exposed to the utmost licentiousness of the 
 press and the stage, at the time when the press and stage 
 were most licentious. They were not men of letters ; they 
 were as a body unpopular ; they could not defend them- 
 selves ; and the public would not take them under its pro- 
 tection. They were therefore abandoned, without reserve, 
 to the tender mercies of the satirists and dramatists. 1 The 
 ostentatious simplicity of their dress, their sour aspect, 
 their nasal twang, their stiff posture, their long graces, 
 their Hebrew names, the Scriptural phrases, which they 
 introduced on every occasion, their contempt of human 
 learning, their detestation of polite amusements, were in- 
 deed fair game for the laughers. But it is not from the 
 laughers alone that the philosophy of history is to be 
 learnt. And he who approaches this subject should care- 
 fully guard against the influence of that potent ridicule 
 which has already misled so many excellent writers. 2 
 
 1 For example, Butler's Htidibras. 
 
 2 Such as Scott's Woodstock and Peveril of the Peak, which are a 
 good deal affected by this view of the Puritans. Scott represents the 
 current opinion of Macaulay's Tory contemporaries. 
 
ESSAY ON MILTON . 73 
 
 u Ecco il fonte del riso, ed ecco il rio 
 Che mortali perigli in se coiitiene : 
 Hor qui tener a fren nostro desio, 
 Ed esser cauti molto a noi conviene." 1 
 
 80. Those who roused the people to resistance, who l— 
 directed their measures through a long series of eventful 
 years, who formed, out of the most unpromising materials, 
 the finest army that Europe had ever seen, who trampled 
 down King, Church, and Aristocracy, who, in the short 
 intervals of domestic sedition and rebellion, made the name 
 of England terrible to every nation on the face of the earth, 
 were no vulgar fanatics. 2 Most of their absurdities were ^ 
 mere external badges, like the signs of freemasonry, or the 
 dresses of friars. We regret that these badges were not 
 more attractive. We regret that a body, to whose courage 
 and talents mankind has owed inestimable obligations, had 
 not the lofty elegance which distinguished some of the ad- 
 herents of Charles the First, or the easy good-breeding for 
 which the court of Charles the Second was celebrated. 
 But, if we must make our choice, we shall, like Bassanio 
 in the play, turn from the specious caskets, which contain 
 only the Death's head and the Pool's head, and fix our 
 choice on the plain leaden chest which conceals the treas- 
 ure. 3 
 
 1 " This is the source of laughter and this the stream 
 Which contains mortal perils in itself : 
 Now here to hold in check our desire, 
 And to be very cautious, becomes us." 
 
 See Tasso, Jerusalem Delivered, XV., 57ff. In the island of the 
 witch Armida, two knights find the river of Laughter. Their guide 
 warns them in these words. 
 
 2 Oliver Cromwell's strong policy made England a menace to her 
 opponents and a power of the first rank on the Continent, whereas 
 under Charles II. and James II. she dropped into a second-rate power. 
 
 3 The well-known story in the Merchant of Venice, 
 
74 ESSAY ON MILTON 
 
 81. The Puritans were men whose minds had derived a 
 peculiar character from the daily contemplation of superior 
 beings and eternal interests. Not content with acknowl- 
 edging, in general terms, an overruling Providence, they 
 habitually ascribed every event to the will of the Great 
 Being, for whose power nothing was too vast, for whose 
 inspection nothing was too minute. To know him, to 
 serve him, to enjoy him, was with them the great end of 
 existence. 1 They rejected with contempt the ceremonious 
 homage which other sects substituted for the pure worship 
 Vof the soul. Instead of catching occasional glimpses of the 
 Deity through an obscuring veil, they aspired to gaze full 
 on the intolerable brightness, and to commune with him 
 face to face. Hence originated their contempt for terres- 
 trial distinctions. The difference between the greatest 
 and meanest of mankind seemed to vanish, when compared 
 with the boundless interval which separated the whole race 
 from him on whom their own eyes were constantly fixed. 
 They recognized no title to superiority but his favour ; and, 
 confident of that favour, they despised all the accomplish- 
 ments and all the dignities of the world. If they were 
 unacquainted with the works of philosophers and poets, 
 they were deeply read in the oracles of God. If their 
 names were not found in the registers of heralds, they felt 
 assured that they were recorded in the Book of Life. If 
 their steps were not accompanied by a splendid train of 
 menials, legions of ministering angels had charge over 
 them. Their palaces were houses not made with hands ; 
 their diadems, crowns of glory which shall never fade 
 away. On the rich and the eloquent, on nobles and 
 priests, they looked down with contempt : for they es- 
 teemed themselves rich in a more precious treasure, and 
 
 1 An allusion to the first question and answer in the Westminster 
 Catechism : " What is the chief end of man ? To glorify God and to 
 enjoy him forever." 
 
ESSAY ON MILTON 75 
 
 # 
 eloquent in a more sublime language, nobles by the right 
 
 of an earlier creation, and priests by the imposition of a 
 mightier hand. The very meanest of them was a being 
 to whose fate a mysterious and terrible importance belonged, 
 on whose slightest action the spirits of light and darkness 
 looked with anxious interest, who had been destined, be- 
 fore heaven and earth were created, to enjoy a felicity which 
 should continue when heaven and earth should have passed 
 away. Events which short-sighted politicians ascribed to 
 earthly causes, had been ordained on his account. For his 
 sake empires had risen, and flourished, and decayed. For 
 his sake the Almighty had proclaimed his will by the pen 
 of the Evangelist, and the harp of the prophet. 1 He had 
 been wrested by no common deliverer from the grasp of no 
 common foe. He had been ransomed by the sweat of no 
 vulgar agony, by the blood of no earthly sacrifice. It was 
 for him that the sun had been darkened, that the rocks 
 had been rent, that the dead had arisen, that all nature had 
 shuddered at the sufferings of her expiring God. 
 
 82. Thus the Puritan was made up of two different men, / 
 the one all self-abasement, penitence, gratitude, passion ; 
 the other proud, calm, inflexible, sagacious. He prostrated 
 himself in the dust before his Maker ; but he set his foot 
 on the neck of his king. In his devotional retirement, he 
 prayed with convulsions, and groans, and tears. 2 He was 
 half -maddened by glorious or terrible illusions. He heard 
 the lyres of angels, or the tempting whispers of fiends. He 
 
 1 Evangelists are supposed to write, as historians, with pens ; but 
 according to classic tradition, oracles and prophets are supposed to 
 speak in song, to musical accompaniment. The Psalms and the 
 Prophecy of the Hebrew Scriptures are of the nature of poetry and 
 therefore are sung to the harp. 
 
 2 This exalted temper appears in the letters and biographies of 
 many Puritans. See for example Bunyan's Life, and the Pilgrim's 
 Progress. 
 
 
76 ESSAY ON MILTON 
 
 caught a gleam of v the Beatific Vision/ or woke screaming 
 from dreams of everlasting fire. Like Vane, 2 he thought 
 himself intrusted with the scepter of the millennial year. 
 Like Fleetwood, he cried in the bitterness of his soul that 
 God had hid his face from him. 3 But when he took his 
 seat in the council, or girt on his sword for war, these tem- 
 pestuous workings of the soul had left no perceptible trace 
 behind them. People who saw nothing of the godly but 
 their uncouth visages, and heard nothing from them but 
 their groans and their whining hymns, might laugh at 
 them. But those had little reason to laugh who encoun- 
 tered them in the hall of debate or in the field of battle. 4 
 These fanatics brought to civil and military affairs a cool- 
 ness of judgment and an immutability of purpose which 
 some writers have thought inconsistent with their religious 
 
 1 The Visio beatified of the school-men, the philosophers of the Mid- 
 dle Ages, meaning the direct sight of God himself which makes the 
 happiness of the blessed. See Dante, Paradiso, Canto XXXIII. See 
 also Paradise Lost, Book I., v. 613. The idea is drawn from one 
 of Jesus' beatitudes, "Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall 
 see God." 
 
 2 Sir Harry Vane (1612-1662), Puritan and mystic, was a republi- 
 can by conviction and therefore leader of the theoretic republicans 
 in Parliament against the protectorate of Cromwell. Cromwell him- 
 self, in the act of expelling the Parliament in 1653, uttered the historic 
 exclamation, " The Lord deliver me from Sir Harry Vane ! " Vane 
 was governor of Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1636-7, where he illus- 
 trated his impracticable idealism in the controversy with Winthrop 
 and the clergy over the matter of Anne Hutchinson. He was executed 
 by Charles II. as a regicide in 1662. 
 
 3 Fleetwood, one of the officers of the army, married Cromwell's 
 daughter. For this story of his weakness and religious mania when 
 called upon to control the army after Cromwell's death, see Claren- 
 don's History (XVI. , 108). "God had spit in his face" were the wild 
 words Fleetwood used. 
 
 4 The "New Model Army " of 1646 was formed by Cromwell of re- 
 ligious volunteers, chiefly drawn from the Independents. It was 
 never defeated. 
 
ESSAY ON MILTON 77 
 
 zeal, but which were in fact the necessary effects of it. 
 The intensity of their feelings on one subject made them 
 tranquil on every other. One overpowering sentiment had 
 subjected to itself pity and hatred, ambition and fear. 
 Death had lost its terrors and pleasure its charms. They 
 had their smiles and their tears, their raptures and their 
 sorrows, but not for the things of this world. Enthusiasm 
 had made them Stoics, had cleared their minds from every 
 vulgar passion and prejudice, and raised them above the 
 influence of danger and corruption. It sometimes might 
 lead them to pursue unwise ends, but never to choose un- 
 wise means. They went through the world like Sir Arte- 
 gal's iron man Talus 1 with his flail, crushing and tramp- 
 ling down oppressors, mingling with human beings, but 
 having neither part nor lot in human infirmities ; insensi- 
 ble to fatigue, to pleasure, and to pain, not to be pierced 
 by any weapon, not to be withstood by any barrier. 
 
 83. Such we believe to have been the character of the 
 Puritans. We perceive the absurdity of their manners. We 
 dislike the sullen gloom of their domestic habits. We 
 acknowledge that the tone of their minds was often injured 
 by straining after things too high for mortal reach : and we 
 know that, in spite of their hatred of Popery, they too often 
 fell into the worst vices of that bad system, intolerance and 
 extravagant austerity ; that they had their anchorites 2 and 
 their crusades, 3 their Dunstans and their De Montforts, 
 their Dominies and their Escobars. 4 Yet, when all cir- 
 
 1 Spenser's Faerie Queene, Book V. 
 
 2 Anchorite, a Greek word meaning one who has retired from the 
 world, a hermit. 
 
 3 The wars waged in the eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth centuries 
 by the European Christians under the badge of the cross, to rescue 
 the holy places of Palestine from the possession of Mohammedans. 
 The word is now used of any warfare with a religious or even with any 
 high moral purpose. 
 
 4 Dunstan, Archbishop of Canterbury (959 A.D.), generally famous for 
 
78 ESSAY ON MILTON 
 
 cumstances are taken into consideration, we do not hesi- 
 tate to pronounce them a brave, a wise, an honest, and a 
 useful body. 
 V 84. The Puritans espoused the cause of civil liberty mainly 
 because it was the cause of religion. There was another 
 party, by no means numerous, but distinguished by learn- 
 ing and ability, which co-operated with them on very dif- 
 ferent principles. We speak of those whom Cromwell 
 was accustomed to call the Heathens, men who were, in 
 the phraseology of that time, doubting Thomases or care- 
 less Gallios x with regard to religious subjects, but passion- 
 f( ate worshippers of freedom. Heated by the study of 
 ancient literature, they set up their country as their idol, 
 and proposed to themselves the heroes of Plutarch 2 as 
 their examples. They seem to have borne some resem- 
 blance to the Brissotines 3 of the French ^Revolution. But 
 
 his ruthlessness in putting Lis king, Edgar, under the power of the 
 church. De Montfort was famous for the fierce cruelty with which 
 he put down the religious heresy of the Albigenses in Provence in 1208. 
 This is not Simon de Montfort, the great English earl. Dominic (1170- 
 1221), a Spaniard who founded the great Dominican order of monks, 
 famed for their vigor in pursuit of heresy, and as preachers and 
 teachers. Escobar (1589-1669), a Spanish Jesuit, a writer on morals, 
 celebrated for his alleged doctrine that purity of intention justifies 
 actions in themselves wrong. 
 §84. The Heathens. 
 
 1 See Matthew Arnold's essay on Lord Falkland. For Thomas the 
 Doubter read St. John xx. 24 ; for Gallio, Acts xviii. 17. 
 
 2 Plutarch (46 A. D.), author of a work containing parallel lives of 
 forty-six Greeks and Romans, grouped in pairs. The inspiring tone 
 of these famous biographies and the abundance of maxims and exam- 
 ples of lofty political conduct contained therein, have made Plutarch 
 stimulating to the patriotism of young men of the poetic type in many 
 great crises of the modern world's history. " Plutarch's men" is a 
 by- word for the greatest men of antiquity. The best translation is 
 North's (Tudor Translations : David Nutt). 
 
 3 Brissotines, or Girondists, the moderate republicans who were 
 
ESSAY ON MILTON 79 
 
 it is not very easy to draw the line of distinction between 
 them and their devout associates, whose tone and manner 
 they sometimes found it convenient to affect, and some- 
 times, it is probable, imperceptibly adopted. 
 
 85. We now come to the Royalists. We shall attempt 
 to speak of them, as we have spoken of their antagonists, 
 with perfect candour. We shall not charge upon a whole 
 party the profligacy and baseness of the horse-boys, gam- 
 blers, and bravoes, whom the hope of license and plunder 
 attracted from all the dens of Whitefriars x to the standard 
 of Charles, and who disgraced their associates by excesses 
 which, under the stricter discipline of the Parliamentary 
 armies, were never tolerated. We will select a more favour- 
 able specimen. Thinking, as we do, that the cause of the V^* 
 King was the cause of bigotry and tyranny, we yet cannot 
 refrain from looking with complacency on the character of 
 the honest old Cavaliers. 2 We feel a national pride inv/ 
 comparing them with the instruments which the despots' 
 of other countries are compelled to employ, with the 
 mutes who throng their ante-chambers, and the Janissa- 
 ries 3 who mount guard at their gates. Our royalist 
 countrymen were not heartless, dangling courtiers, bowing 
 
 overthrown by the Jacobins of the u Mountain " in the National con- 
 vention. Their chiefs were executed in the Reign of Terror of 1793. 
 § 85. The Royalists. 
 
 1 Whitefriars, a district in London, named from the monastery es- 
 tablished there in 1241. This district had certain privileges defend- 
 ing its residents against arrest by any law-officers until Charles II. 
 abolished them. See Scott's Fortunes of Nigel for a picture of the in- 
 habitants of Whitefriars in the reign of James I. 
 
 2 Cavaliers, the party of Charles I. 
 
 3 Janissaries, a Turkish word meaning "New Troops, 11 a body of 
 Turkish infantry, the Sultan's guard, originally composed of children 
 kidnapped from Christian parents. This famous guard, becoming too 
 powerful for the Sultan to control, was abolished in 1826 after a 
 frightful conflict and massacre. 
 
80 ESSAY ON MILTON 
 
 at every step,, and simpering at every word. They were 
 not mere machines for destruction dressed up in uniforms, 
 caned into skill, intoxicated into valour, defending without 
 
 Move, destroying without hatred. There was a freedom in 
 their subserviency, a nobleness in their very degradation. 
 The sentiment of individual independence was strong 
 
 % within them. They were indeed misled, but by no base or 
 selfish motive. Compassion and romantic honour, the 
 prejudices of childhood, and the venerable names of his- 
 tory, threw over them a spell potent as that of Duessa ; 1 
 and like the Ked- Cross Knight, they thought that they 
 were doing battle for an injured beauty, while they de- 
 fended a false and loathsome sorceress. In truth they 
 scarcely entered at all into the merits of the political ques- 
 
 ytion. It was not for a treacherous king or an intolerant 
 church that they fought ; but for the old banner which 
 had waved in so many battles over the heads of their 
 fathers, and for the altars at which they had received the 
 
 y4iands of their brides. Though nothing could be more 
 erroneous than their political opinions, they possessed, in 
 a far greater degree than their adversaries, those qualities 
 which are the grace of private life. With many of the 
 vices of the Bound Table 2 they had also many of its vir- 
 
 1 Faerie Queene, Book I. In Spenser's allegory Duessa typifies False- 
 hood. There is a reference in this allegory to Mary of Scotland, one 
 of whose extraordinary gifts it was to win the loyal attachment of all 
 who saw her, while on the other hand she brought into shame and 
 dishonor all who devoted themselves to her service. 
 
 2 Allusion to King Arthur of Britain and his Round Table of cham- 
 pions. See Tennyson's Idylls of the King for modern versions of these 
 old romances, and, for careful study, The Legends of King Arthur and 
 his Knights of the Round Table, by J. T. Knowles (F. Warne & Co. , 1895). 
 In the legend Merlin, the enchanter, made the Round Table, at which 
 were held the solemn feasts of Arthur's band of knights. The Ro- 
 mances of the Round Table reflect the customs and character of the 
 times during which they were composed. 
 
ESSAY ON MILTON 81 
 
 tues, courtesy, generosity, veracity, tenderness and re- 
 spect for women. They had far more both of profound 
 and polite learning than the Puritans. Their manners 
 were more engaging, their tempers more amiable, their 
 tastes more elegant, and their households more cheerful. 
 
 86. Milton did not strictly belong to any of the classes *S 
 which we have described. He was not a Puritan. He was not 
 a freethinker. He was not a Royalist. In his character the 
 noblest qualities of every party were combined in harmo- 
 nious union. From the Parliament and from the Court, 
 from the conventicle 1 and from the Gothic 2 cloister, 3 from 
 the gloomy and sepulchral circles of the Roundheads, and 
 from the Christmas 4 revel of the hospitable Cavalier, his 
 nature selected and drew to itself whatever was great and 
 good, while it rejected all the base and pernicious ingredi- 
 ents by which those finer elements were defiled. Like the v j> 
 Puritans, he lived 
 
 " As ever in his great task-master's eye." 5 
 
 § 86. Milton's own character composed of many different strains. 
 
 1 Conventicle, a place of meeting, secret or unauthorized, for relig- 
 ious worship. In England it was specially used of the meetings of 
 Dissenters. 
 
 2 Gothic, the name of a form of architecture characterized by pointed 
 arches and clustered columns, which belongs especially to mediaeval 
 churches and abbeys. 
 
 3 Cloister, a place of monastic retirement. 
 
 4 The keeping of Christmas was made almost a party badge by 
 the Royalists. Christmas was made a fast by Parliament in Decem- 
 ber, 1644. See Butler, in Hudibras : 
 
 "Rather than fail they will defy, 
 That which they love most tenderly ; 
 Quarrel with Mince-pies and disparage - 
 Their best and dearest friend, Plum porridge, 
 Fat pig and goose itself oppose, 
 And blaspheme Custard through the nose." 
 
 5 Sonnet VII 
 
 6 
 
82 ESSAY OiY MILTON 
 
 Like them, he kept his mind continually fixed on an 
 Almighty Judge and an eternal reward. And hence he 
 acquired their contempt of external circumstances, their 
 fortitude, their tranquillity, their inflexible resolution. But 
 not the coolest sceptic or the most profane scoffer was more 
 perfectly free from the contagion of their frantic delusions, 
 their savage manners, their ludicrous jargon, 1 their scorn 
 ^ of science, and their aversion to pleasure. Hating tyranny 
 with a perfect hatred, he had nevertheless all the estimable 
 and ornamental qualities which were almost entirely 
 monopolised by the party of the tyrant. There was none 
 who had a stronger sense of the value of literature, a finer 
 relish for every elegant amusement, or a more chivalrous 
 delicacy of honour and love. Though his opinions were 
 democratic, his tastes and his associations were such as har- 
 V Y monise best with monarchy and aristocracy. He was under 
 the influence of all the feelings by which the gallant Cavaliers 
 were misled. But of those feelings he was the master and 
 not the slave. Like the hero of Homer, he enjoyed all the 
 '^pleasures of fascination ; but he was not fascinated. 2 He 
 4 listened to the song of the Sirens ; yet he glided by with- 
 out being seduced to their fatal shore. He tasted the cup 
 of Oirce ; but he bore about him a sure antidote against 
 the effects of its bewitching sweetness. The illusions which 
 captivated his imagination never impaired his reasoning 
 
 1 Jargon, confused,^anintelligible talk. This refers to their peculiar 
 diction, drawn so largely from misapplied phrases of the Old Testa- 
 ment of the English Bible. Macaulaj has described this peculiarity 
 above. Read some of Cromwell's letters for specimens. 
 
 - Ulysses, who, having had himself lashed to the mast of his ship, 
 sailing by, heard the Sirens singing without the danger of being at- 
 tracted to them. Circe, the enchantress, offered to all who entered 
 her magic palace a cup to drink which changed them to beasts. 
 Ulysses was previously provided with a more powerful magical herb, 
 which secured its possessor against this disaster. He was untouched 
 by the spell. The stories are in Homer's Odyssey, Books X. and XII, 
 
ESSAY ON MILTON 83 
 
 powers. The statesman was proof against the splendour, 
 the solemnity, and the romance which enchanted the poet. 
 Any person who will contrast the sentiments expressed in 
 his treatises on Prelacy x with the exquisite lines on ecclesi- 
 astical architecture and music in the Penseroso, which was 
 published about the same time/ will understand our mean- 
 ing. This is an inconsistency which, more than anything 
 else, raises his character in our estimation, because it 
 shows how many private tastes and feelings he sacrificed, 
 in order to do what he considered his duty to mankind. It 
 is the very struggle of the noble Othello. 2 His heart re- 
 lents ; but his hand is firm. He does nought in hate, but 
 all in honour. He kisses the beautiful deceiver before he 
 destroys her. 
 
 87. That from which the public character of Milton de- 
 rives its great and peculiar splendour still remains to be 
 mentioned. If he exerted himself to overthrow a iov-\/ 
 sworn 3 king and a persecuting hierarchy, 4 he exerted him- 
 self in conjunction with others. But the glory of the v 
 battle which he fought for that species of freedom which 
 is the most valuable, and which was then the least under- 
 stood, the freedom of the human mind, is all his own. v 
 Thousands and tens of thousands among his contempora- 
 ries raised their voices against Ship-money and the Star 
 Chamber. But there were few indeed who discerned the 
 more fearful evils of moral and intellectual slavery, and 
 the benefits which would result from the liberty of the 
 
 §§ 87-92. Third division of the essay. Milton's prose writ- 
 ings. His pa?nphlets devoted to the emancipation of human thought. 
 
 1 See the Introduction, 14. Compare the well-known lines in II 
 Penseroso beginning, " Let my due feet never fail." 
 
 9 See Shakespeare's Othello, Act V., Scene ii. 
 
 3 Forsworn, perjured. 
 
 4 Hierarchy, a body of persons organized in ranks and orders for 
 rule over sacred things. Here the archbishops and bishops, the 
 priests and deacons of the English church. 
 
84 ESSAY OJV MILTON 
 
 press l and the unfettered exercise of private judgment. 
 These were the objects which Milton justly conceived to 
 be the most important. He was desirous that the people 
 should think for themselves as well as tax themselves, and 
 be emancipated from the dominion of prejudice as well as 
 from that of Charles. He knew that those who, with the 
 best intentions, overlooked these schemes of reform, and 
 contented themselves with pulling down the King and im- 
 prisoning the malignant, 2 acted like the heedless brothers 
 in his own poem, who, in their eagerness to disperse the 
 train of the sorcerer, neglected the means of liberating the 
 captive. They thought only of conquering when they 
 should have thought of disenchanting. 
 
 * c Oh, ye mistook ! Ye should have snatched his wand 
 And bound him fast. Without the rod reversed, 
 And backward mutters of dissevering power, 
 We cannot free the lady that sits here 
 Bound in strong fetters fixed and motionless." 3 
 
 88. To reverse the rod, to spell the charm backward, to 
 break the ties which bound a stupefied people to the seat 
 of enchantment, was the noble aim of Milton. To this all 
 V/his public conduct was directed. For this he joined the 
 Presbyterians ; for this he forsook them. He fought their 
 perilous battle ; but he turned away with disdain from 
 their insolent triumph. He saw that they, like those 
 whom they had vanquished, were hostile to the liberty of 
 thought. He therefore joined the Independents, and 
 called upon Cromwell to break the secular 4 chain, and to 
 
 1 This subject is discussed in the best known of Milton's prose works, 
 the Areopagitica. It is published in the Clarendon Press Series ; also 
 in Bonn's Milton's Prose Works, Vol. II. 
 
 2 Malignant, a term applied by friends of the Parliament to all who 
 took sides with the king. 
 
 3 Comus, 815-819. 
 
 4 Sonnet XVI. " Secular chain," church government by state-offi- 
 cials, who are called secular, i.e., not religious or spiritual, 
 
 
ESSAY ON MILTON 85 
 
 save free conscience from the paw of the Presbyterian >? 
 wolf. With a view to the same great object, he attacked 
 the licensing system/ in that sublime treatise which every 
 statesman should wear as a sign upon his hand and as 
 frontlets 2 between his eyes. His attacks were, in general, 
 directed less against particular abuses than against those 
 deeply seated errors on which almost all abuses are founded, 
 the servile worship of eminent men, and the irrational 
 dread of innovation. 
 
 89. That he might shake the foundations of these debas- 
 ing sentiments more effectually, he always selected for 
 himself the boldest literary services. He never came up 
 in the rear when the outworks had been carried and the 
 breach entered. He pressed into the forlorn hope. 3 At 
 the beginning of the changes, he wrote with incomparable 
 energy and eloquence against the bishops. But, when his 
 opinion seemed likely to prevail, he passed on to other 
 subjects, and abandoned prelacy to the crowd of writers 
 who now hastened to insult a falling party. There is no 
 more hazardous enterprise than that of bearing the torch 
 of truth into those dark and infected recesses in which no 
 light has ever shone. But it was the choice and the pleas- 
 ure of Milton to penetrate the noisome vapours, and to 
 brave the terrible explosion. 4 Those who most disapprove 
 of his opinions must respect the hardihood with which he 
 
 1 The law requiring all publications in print to be licensed bj gov- 
 ernment. 
 
 2 Frontlet, a band on the forehead, worn during prayers, on wliicli 
 devout Jews inscribe sacred texts of their law. See Deuteronomy vi. 
 8 ; xi. 18. The treatise alluded to is the Areopagitica. See Intro- 
 duction, 14. 
 
 3 A body of troops put upon a desperate service is called in mili- 
 tary language a " forlorn hope." 
 
 4 Allusion to the dangers of miners exploring the unventilated re- 
 cesses of a coal-mine, from the presence of explosive gases which, take 
 fire from a lantern, 
 
86 ESSAY ON MILTON 
 
 maintained them. He^ in general, left to others the credit 
 of expounding and defending the popular parts of his 
 religious and political creed. He took his own stand upon 
 those which the great body of his countrymen reprobated 
 as criminal, or derided as paradoxical. He stood up for 
 divorce and regicide. 1 He attacked the prevailing systems 
 of education. 2 His radiant and beneficent career resembled 
 that of the god of light and fertility. 
 
 Nitor in adversum ; nee me, qui caetera, vincit 
 Impetus, et rapido contrarius evehor orbi. 3 
 
 V 90. It is to be regretted that the prose writings of Milton 
 should, in our time, be so little read. As compositions, 
 they deserve the attention of every man who wishes to be- 
 come acquainted with the full power of the English lan- 
 guage. They abound with passages compared with which 
 the finest declamations of Burke sink into insignificance. 4 
 They are a perfect field of cloth of gold. 5 The style is stiff 
 with gorgeous embroidery. Not even in the earlier books 
 of the Paradise Lost has the great poet ever risen higher 
 than in those parts of his controversial works in which his 
 
 1 The first edition adds : " He ridiculed the Eikon." See Introduc- 
 tion, 16. 
 
 2 In his Tractate : Of Education. See Milton's Prose Works, Vol. 
 III. 
 
 3 Ovid's Metamorphoses, II., 72, 73. These are the words of the 
 Sun god, describing his climbing up against the motion of the sky, 
 which is supposed in ancient astronomy to revolve in a direction con- 
 trary to the sun and the planets, and with a different speed. "I 
 struggle against opposition : nor can I be conquered by the force 
 which conquers all else ; against the swift motion of the heavens 
 I ride on." For a beautiful account of these heavenly motions, see 
 Cicero's de Republica, Book VI. 
 
 4 Edmund Burke (1729-1797), a writer of English prose, who was 
 noted for the splendor of his diction. 
 
 5 Allusion to the famous pageant of Henry VIII. and Francis I. 
 
ESSAY ON MILTON 87 
 
 feelings, excited by conflict, find a vent in bursts of de- 
 votional and lyric rapture. It is, to borrow his own majes- 
 tic language, "a, sevenfold chorus of hallelujahs and harp- 
 ing symphonies/' 1 
 
 91. We had intended to look more closely at these per- 
 formances, to analyse the peculiarities of the diction, to 
 dwell at some length on the sublime wisdom of the Areo- 
 pagitica, and the nervous rhetoric of the Iconoclast, and 
 to point out some of those magnificent passages which 
 occur in the Treatise of Keformation, and the Animadver- 
 sions on the Eemonstrant. But the length to which our 
 remarks have already extended renders this impossible. 2 
 
 92. We must conclude. And yet we can scarcely tear 
 ourselves away from the subject. The days immediately 
 following the publication of this relic of Milton appear to 
 be peculiarly set apart, and consecrated to his memory. 
 And we shall scarcely be censured if, on this his festival, 
 we be found lingering near his shrine, how worthless so- 
 ever may be the offering which we bring to it. While 
 this book lies on our table, we seem to be contemporaries 
 of the great poet. We are transported a hundred and fifty 
 years back. 3 We can almost fancy that we are visiting 
 him in his small lodging ; that we see him sitting at the 
 old organ beneath the faded green hangings ; that we can 
 catch the quick twinkle of his eyes, rolling in vain to find 
 the day ; that we are reading in the lines of his noble 
 countenance the proud and mournful history of his glory 
 
 §§ 92 to End. Conclusion : A vision of Milton. 
 
 1 For estimates of Milton's prose style, see the essays on Milton by 
 Arnold and Lowell mentioned in the Introduction. Also consult Pat- 
 tison's Milton. This phrase is from The Reason of- Church Govern- 
 ment, Milton's Prose Works, Vol. II. 
 
 2 For some account of these works, see the Introduction, p. 14. 
 
 3 This description is based upon an account given by a clergyman 
 named Dr. Wright, who visited Milton in his lodgings. This account 
 is preserved by Richardson, the painter, in his Notes on Milton. 
 
88 ESSAV ON MILTON 
 
 and his affliction. We image to ourselves the breathless 
 silence in which we should listen to his slightest word, 
 the passionate veneration with which we should kneel to 
 kiss his hand and weep upon it, the earnestness with 
 which we should endeavour to console him, if indeed such 
 a spirit could need consolation, for the neglect of an age 
 unworthy of his talents and his virtues, the eagerness 
 with which we should contest with his daughters, or with 
 his Quaker friend El wood, 1 the privilege of reading Homer 
 to him, or of taking down the immortal accents which 
 flowed from his lips. 
 
 93. These are perhaps foolish feelings. Yet we cannot 
 be ashamed of them ; nor shall we be sorry if what we 
 have written shall in any degree excite them in other 
 minds. We are not much in the habit of idolizing either 
 the living or the dead. And we think that there is no 
 more certain indication of a weak and ill-regulated intel- 
 lect than that propensity which, for want of a better 
 name, we will venture to christen Boswellism. 2 But there 
 are a few characters which have stood the closest scrutiny 
 and the severest tests, which have been tried in the fur- 
 nace and have proved pure, which have been weighed in 
 the balance and have not been found wanting, which have 
 been declared sterling by the general consent of mankind, 
 
 1 Thomas Elwood, a young Quaker, one of the friends and disciples 
 who frequented the house of Milton in his old age. His biography, a 
 very interesting book, is published in the Great Biography Series, 
 edited by Howells (Houghton, Mifflin & Co.). 
 
 2 After James Bos well, who wrote the famous life of his idol, Samuel 
 Johnson. In it he records devoutly the most minute particulars of 
 Johnson's life and personal habits. Macaulay reviews Croker's edition 
 of this great book in a very amusing but not very just article {Edinburgh 
 Review, 1831). In it he says: "Boswell was one of the smallest men 
 that ever lived, and he has beaten all biographies." " His work is 
 universally allowed to be interesting, instructive, and original, yet it 
 has brought the author nothing but contempt." 
 
ESSAY ON MILTON 89 
 
 and which are visibly stamped with the image and super- 
 scription of the Most High. 1 These great men Ave trust 
 that we know how to prize ; and of these was Milton. The 
 sight of his books, the sound of his name, are pleasant to 
 us. His thoughts resemble those celestial fruits and flow- 
 ers which the Virgin Martyr of Massinger 2 sent down from, 
 the gardens of Paradise to the earth, distinguished from 
 the productions of other soils, not only by their superior 
 bloom and sweetness, but by their miraculous efficacy to 
 invigorate and to heal. They are powerful, not only to 
 delight, but to elevate and purify. Nor do we envy the 
 man who can study either the life or the writings of the 
 great poet and patriot, without aspiring to emulate, not 
 indeed the sublime w T orks with which his genius has en- 
 riched our literature, but the zeal with which he laboured 
 for the public good, the fortitude with which he endured 
 every private calamity, the lofty disdain with which he 
 looked down on temptation and dangers, the deadly hatred 
 which he bore to bigots and tyrants, and the faith which 
 he so sternly kept with his country and with his fame. 3 
 
 1 Phrases from the English Bible. See Daniel v. 27 ; Matthew 
 xxii. 20. It would be an interesting inquiry to trace the Biblical 
 phraseology all through this essay. 
 
 2 Philip Massinger (1583-1640), an English dramatist, who edited or 
 wrote largely a very popular play with this title, of which the heroine 
 is a Christian martyr. The miracle described here was performed for 
 the benefit of the scoffing persecutor, who challenges his victim, the 
 Virgin Martyr, to send him back a flower from that Paradise to which 
 she says she is going. Accordingly after her death, an angel appears 
 on the stage bearing flowers and fruits from that celestial world. 
 
 3 For a discussion of Macaulay's florid rhetoric in these and similar 
 paragraphs, read Matthew Arnold's essay entitled A French Critic on 
 Milton. 
 
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 A STUDENT'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND, from 
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 LONGMANS' SCHOOL GRAMMAR. 
 
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 PREFACE TO AMERICAN EDITION. 
 
 It seems to be generally conceded that English grammar is worse taught 
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 The author's simplicity of method, the clear statement of facts, the orderly 
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 sented that its perusal is at once pleasurable, suggestive, and of substantial 
 value. ' This is perfectly true. . . . On the whole the book is remarkably 
 successful." — Nation, N. Y. 
 
 " This book is the forerunner of a change which must speedily be effected 
 in geographical teaching, and is itself a product of the movement for reform in 
 England, which originated with the Geographical Society." 
 
 — Wisconsin Journal of Education. 
 
 " . . . Probably the best book of the kind ever published in our language, 
 and ought to help in improving the instruction of our schools in geography. 
 Messrs, Chisholm and Leete's book is valuable for its method, and it is this fact 
 which entitles it to the attention of teachers. " — Boston Beacon. 
 
 " It has a system of cross references that is very valuable and constantly 
 reminds the pupil that all are parts of a whole. It does not merely state 
 facts, but attempts to show a cause for each phenomenon, so that the study of 
 geography is not mere memoriter work." — Educational Courant. 
 
 LONGMANS, GREEN, & CO., 15 East Sixteenth Street, New York, 
 
LONGMANS, GREEN, 6- CO.' 'S PUBLICATIONS. 
 
 LONGMANS' NEW SCHOOL ATLAS. Consisting 
 of 28 quarto and 10 octavo Colored Maps (and 20 In- 
 sets). 
 
 Edited by G. G. Chisholm, M.A., B.Sc, and C. H. Leete, A.M., 
 Ph.D. Engraved by Edward Stanford. With a very full Index of 
 over 100,000 Names. Imp. 8vo. $1.50. 
 
 Longmans' New School Atlas is intended, as its name implies, for use in 
 schools. It offers a series of maps which it is believed will be found fully ade- 
 quate for the most advanced school work, affording the material for careful and 
 prolonged study, and a basis for a broad knowledge of geographic principles 
 and facts. 
 
 With this end in view three groups of maps have been prepared : first, nine 
 maps exhibiting the leading facts of physical geography and human distribution 
 as pertaining to the world as a whole ; second, eleven maps pertaining to North 
 A?nerica, and more particularly to the United States and Canada, physical, 
 political, geological, climatic, industrial, historical, and on population ; and 
 third, twenty-one maps (and seventeen insets) of other parts of the world in 
 their physical and political aspects. 
 
 The Geological Map of the United States and Canada was revised by Mr. 
 W. J. McGee, of the U. S. Geological Survey, and in this map the standard 
 Color scheme now adopted for the maps of that Survey has been followed. 
 
 * # * A prospectus more fully describing the Atlas, with a Specimen Map, may be 
 had on application to the Publishers. 
 
 " We heartily commend this Atlas as of very superior excellence." 
 
 — New York Churchman. 
 
 " Much the best Atlas to be had for a dollar and a half that has ever come 
 to our notice. . . The maps are clear, the physical features being remark- 
 ably well defined.'' — Journal of Pedagogy. 
 
 " Longmans' ' New School Atlas ' is a thoroughly prepared and accurate 
 work. In scope it embraces a great variety of subjects, including, in addition 
 to those generally embodied, maps indicating magnetic variation, navigability of 
 rivers, and other showings of interest to the student of physical, racial, social, 
 or commercial facts concerning all countries." — The Chautauquan. 
 
 "A commendable piece of work. The maps are not covered with a mass 
 of detail or blackened with the names of insignificant towns. In addition to 
 the usual geographical details, there are maps to illustrate the ocean currents, 
 magnetic variation, density of population, and geological structure. No atlas 
 of equal practical value has been issued." 
 
 — Professor Nicholas Murray Butler, Educational Review, N. Y. 
 
 " The work of presenting the physical and political features of the different 
 countries has been done most thoroughly and admirably. The value in the 
 school-room of those, however, that give the density of population, vegetation, 
 isothermal lines, atmospheric pressure, rainfall, commerce, etc., is just as 
 great. For a school atlas we doubt if there is anything to surpass it. " 
 
 — School Journal, 
 
 LONGMANS, GREEN, & CO., 15 East Sixteenth Street, New York.