H MILTON UMPHREY MOSELEY was a London book seller in the seventeenth century who made up his mind to take a line of his own. It was the great age of pamphlets and sermons, but he was content to leave these to rival publishers: he would publish literature, and in the course of his life he brought out nearly all the best volumes of poetry of the time, buying old copyrights as he could and finding out undiscovered genius. In 1645 he published a small but neat little volume of "Poems of Mr John Milton, both English and Latin, compos'd at several times. Printed by his true Copies." He wrote a preface to the Reader, from which a sentence or two deserve to be remembered. "I know not thy palate, how it relishes such dainties, nor how harmonious thy soul is perhaps more trivial airs may please thee better. . . . Let the event guide itself which way it will, I shall deserve of the age by bringing into the light as true a birth as the Muses have brought forth since our famous SPENSER wrote; whose Poems in these English ones are as rarely imitated as sweetly excelled. Reader, if thou art eagle-eyed to censure their worth, I am not fearful to expose them to thy exactest perusal. Thine to command, Humph. Moseley." "Perhaps more trivial airs may please thee better." There lies the secret of the comparative unpopularity of Milton. He is admired, of course, for Tradition says he should be admired, but perhaps he is not so often read as he is praised. In his famous sonnet Wordsworth says in his own way the same thing as Moseley. Thy soul was like a Star, and dwelt apart : So didst thou travel on life's common way. He compares Milton to sea, star and sky, and does it with the fine insight that marks his judgments upon English poets. Sea, star and sky are not amusing things, as the practical people at watering-places know. To be amused we want something more trivial." The solitary companionship of sea, star and sky has in it something awful. And there again they are like Milton, as Wordsworth saw Soul awful-if the earth has ever lodged An awful soul.1 It is this likeness which makes him so easy to neglect, and yet so permanent. He moves like a planet, unhasting, unresting; he sees his orbit; he is to be a poet and he will write his great poem, not now, but when the time comes, "slow choosing and beginning late." (P. L. ix. 26.) Like Cervantes and Defoe he was well over fifty when he wrote the work on which his fame chiefly rests, and yet manuscript notes are still extant which show that the theme had been in his mind for many years. Milton is serious. Inheritance and environment combined to make him serious. His father had been bred a Catholic and became Protestant for conscience sake, though it cut him off from father and home. We can imagine how he trained his eldest boy 2 (born 9 Dec. 1608), and how he spoke to him of what had come to England, and what had come to himself, in the new freedom of these times-what gladness and what know1 Prelude, iii. 289. * "God," says Milton, "can stir up rich fathers to bestow exquisite education upon their children, and so dedicate them to the service of the Gospel."Animadversions, Prose i. 97. ledge of God-and what was yet to break out of God's word. Or if we cannot imagine it, here is what Milton wrote of it years after.1 "When I recall to mind at last, after so many dark Ages, wherein the huge overshadowing Train of Error had almost swept all the Stars out of the firmament of the Church; how the bright and blissful Reformation (by Divine Power) strook through the black and settled Night of Ignorance and Antichristian Tyranny, methinks a sovereign and reviving Joy must needs rush into the Bosom of him that reads or hears; and the sweet Odour of the returning Gospel imbath his Soul with the fragrancy of Heaven. Then was the sacred BIBLE sought out of the dusty Corners where profane Falshood and Neglect had thrown it, the Schools opened, Divine and Humane Learning rak'd out of the Embers of forgotten Tongues, the Princes and Cities trooping apace to the new-erected Banner of Salvation; the Martyrs, with the unresistable might of Weakness, shaking the Powers of Darkness, and scorning the fiery Rage of the old red Dragon." 2 It is a high seriousness-this spirit of Milton, on fire with joy. Take the nouns of this passage, and watch how he sees in turn the things and is thrilled. There is passion in his prose-enthusiasm and hero-worship. He lives in a great age, an age of freedom and of victoryand round about him are men for whom it is all commonplace. How can it be? How can they not feel the same "sovereign and reviving joy"? It was perhaps long before Milton realized that they felt nothing of it, and this was one of the problems of his life a great question to be explained to himself if he is to "justify the ways of God to men." It is the inconceivable com The quotations from Milton's prose works are uniformly taken from the folio edition in two volumes, printed for A. Millar, London, 1738. References will be made to them, as in the previous footnote, to the volume and page of this edition. 2 Of Reformation in England, Prose i. 2. Compare Defensio Secunda, Prose ii. 315. monplaceness of the men and women round them that makes tragedy of the lives of uncommon men. In the meantime let us look at his country and let us do it with his eyes. Is it the England we know, of which he speaks? It is a familiar passage, but I do not apologize for transcribing it again. "Lords and Commons of England, consider what Nation it is whereof ye are, and whereof ye are the Governours: a Nation not slow and dull, but of a quick, ingenious, and piercing spirit, acute to invent, suttle and sinewy to discourse, not beneath the reach of any point the highest that human capacity can soar to. . . . God is decreeing to begin some new and great period in his Church, even to the reforming of Reformation it self; what does he then but reveal Himself to his servants, and as his manner is, first to his English-men ?1 I say as his manner is, first to us, though we mark not the method of his counsels and are unworthy. Behold now this vast City; a City of refuge, the mansion-house of liberty, encompast and surrounded with his protection; the shop of War hath not there more anvils and hammers waking, to fashion out the plates and instruments of armed Justice in defence of beleaguer'd Truth, than there be pens and heads there, sitting by their studious lamps, musing, searching, revolving new notions and ideas wherewith to present as with their homage and their fealty the approaching Reformation others as fast reading, trying all things, assenting to the force of reason and convincement. What could a man require more from a Nation so pliant and so prone to seek after knowledge? What wants there to such a towardly and pregnant soil, but wise and faithful Labourers, to make a knowing People, a Nation of Prophets, of Sages, and of Worthies? We reckon more than five months 1 1 Cf. Animadversions, Prose i. 90, "For he being equally near to his whole Creation of Mankind. . . hath yet ever had this Island under the special indulgent eye of his Providence; and pitying us first of all other Nations. ..." He refers to Wiclif. yet to harvest; there need not be five weeks, had we but eyes to lift up, the fields are white already, Where there is much desire to learn, there of necessity will be much arguing, much writing, many opinions, for opinion in good men is but knowledge in the making. Under the fantastic terrours of sect and schism, we wrong the earnest and zealous thirst after knowledge and understanding which God hath stirr'd up in this City. What some lament of, we should rather rejoice at, should rather praise this pious forwardness among men, to reassume the ill deputed care of their Religion into their own hands again. A little generous prudence, a little forbearance of one another, and some grain of charity might win all these diligencies to join, and unite into one general and brotherly search after Truth." 1 Can these bright and eager men, "revolving new notions and ideas," be after all our ancestors? Or were they all driven over seas by Archbishop Laud? Could we claim anything of this description for ourselves, but the sects? Yet it is true of the England of Milton's boyhood, youth and middle age, for England was never so full of "seekers" and idealists, of "notions and ideas," of men who believed so intensely in first hand experience of God, nor ever perhaps so full of "sects and schisms," though not everybody saw into the heart of the matter as Milton did. On the 12th of February 1624-5, John Milton was entered at Christ's College, Cambridge. In Cambridge he was nicknamed "the Lady of Christ's." His life was one of dignity, and study, aloof, pure and high. Wordsworth, who used long after to visit a friend "in the very room honoured by Milton's name," pictures him: I seemed to see him here Familiarly, and in his scholar's dress Bounding before me, yet a stripling youth Areopagitica, Prose i. 156-7. |