is

in which the poet puts the dramatist aside, ing by "in sceptred pall," the range and we feel that it is not the mere char- wide. There is, however, the same vividacter in the play that speaks, but Shake-ness of imaginative glance in the barnspeare himself who sings there is noth- door strut and in the visioned sweep of Tragedy.

ing in our language to vie with the blank verse of Comus. That of Paradise Lost These early masterpieces of Milton has a martial grandeur all its own, but strike one as combining a true poetic life the long resounding march becomes at with the highest possible degree of ornalength almost monotonous; in Comus the mentation consistent with vitality. The inventive subtlety of modulation is so presence of a genuine poetic inspiration exquisite that the charm of the music is felt, but the hand of conscious and is every moment new. There is perpet-careful elaboration is known to have been ual variation in perpetual unity, like the never far away. The result is beauty in marshalled moving of waves all one way, poise of fine perfection between possible while in each swell of liquid crystal there defects. It is beauty magical in its deis some subtle change of form and light, due to pauses in the wind, reflections from the green deeps below, or gleams in the sky above. The diction and imagery are throughout inventive; there is hardly a conventional epithet in the poem. Surely nothing was ever said in any tongue more beautiful than this, spoken of the raptures of song heard in the night:

How sweetly did they float upon the wings
Of silence through the empty-vaulted night,
At every fall smoothing the raven down
Of darkness, till it smiled!

lightfulness, yet with no cloying sweetness, no mere prettiness or pettiness: it is beauty grave and dignified, yet not rigid. Flowers are beautiful, but Miss Mutrie's or Van Huysum's best flowers are not great art. Crude veracity, on the other hand, goes for nothing. A grasp of truth as firm as Holbein's, a sense of loveliness as refined as Correggio's in his noblest mood, combine in the beauty of Milton's early pieces. Hence their enduring power. The spring flowers would be tiresome if they remained with us all the year; the beauty of a fine mountain line never wearies. In moderation,

to the Greek ideal; these works, therefore, while not stirring us, on a first pe rusal, so strongly as the hectic intensities of modernism, defy the tooth of time, and charm us the more the longer they are known.

Night and darkness always make Milton sublime. He was probably fond of night-in gracious reserve, Milton was faithful walks. He speaks of going abroad to hear the nightingales, and there are lines in Comus which prove that he did not draw on his fancy in painting the scenery of darkness. Take one illustration. "Black, usurping mists" have hidden moon and stars, and the poet invokes a lowlier light to direct him:

Some gentle taper,
Though a rush-candle from the wicker-hole
Of some clay habitation, visit us
With thy long-levelled rule of streaming light!

But, after all, the prime interest of these poems is that which they possess as tones out of the life of Milton, passages, eloquently expressive, in the biography which such a man, in the mere writing down of his thoughts and imagin ings, puts on record. Biography not of No one who has seen, in a moonless the body, but of the soul. In this elenight, when mist shrouded the landscape, ment of melody and beauty dwelt the the glowing spark of village stithy or cot-spirit of John Milton; spreading pinions tage lamp shoot its white beam athwart of learning and imagination, and taking the fog, can doubt that this last line is a transcript from Milton's own observation. It is interesting to find that the poet who is noted among his brethren for imaginative breadth and sublimity should be so sharp of glance. There is a quite masterly little etching in the same style in L'Allegro:

When the cock with lively din,
Scatters the rear of darkness thin,
And to the stack or the barn door,
Stoutly struts his dames before.

its way down the vistas of the past, to the shrines of wisdom and the treasurefields of poetry, to return with glory on its wings. One hears the morning stars singing together in the calm heaven over his head. The ecstacy of high poetic inspiration becomes in these earlier poems a trance-like repose.

Milton's bodily appearance at this time was in brilliant correspondence with the ideal which imagination might form of a youthful poet. Perfect in all bodily proportions, an accomplished fencer, with From this to "gorgeous Tragedy," sweep- delicate flowing hair, and beautiful fea

controversial battle-field. "Lie thou there, my laurel-bough; here is other work."

tures through which genius, still half in slumber, shed its mystic glow, he was all that the imagination of Greece saw in the This fact is significant in relation both young Hyperion or Apollo. Greek, in- to Puritanism and to Milton. It is one deed, he was during this period in a very of the chief among a multitude of proofs deep sense, -a sense which may well that the general Puritan movement, as have been overlooked in connection with contrasted with the Catholic reaction inthe great Puritan poet. There was a spired by Loyola, the Anglican compromcomposure in his nature, a self-sufficience ise incarnated in Laud, and the Renaisand calm joyfulness, of the kind which sance as distinct from both, was, in Goethe imputes to the Greeks. The pre- Milton's early period, the main current vailing tone of his mind, intellectual of England's and the world's progress. rather than emotional, was Hellenic; his Milton perceived that the mediæval habit of viewing man in the type rather Church ad played its part, and that the than in the individual, his high abstract human mind had outgrown its tutelage. conception of the race, without consum- Turning with peremptory decision from ing ardour of affection for men in the Rome, he was sensible of no fascination concrete, was Hellenic. Now and always in that Anglican Church which could not his view of woman was Hellenic rather give her whole heart either to Rome or than Christian. From this mainly is de- to the Reformation. In halfness he rived that unmelodious fibre, harsh and could not dwell. Compromise in essenhard, which runs through his life and his tial matters was to his nature as frost to poetry. He fixedly regarded woman as fire. The melodious effeminacy, the inferior to man; the tenderness of chiv- quaint sweetness, of the Anglican bards, alry, the piercing, wailing tenderness of from Herbert to Keble, had no attraction Dante, the glorious transporting tender- for this strong man. But had not the ness of Shakespeare, were beyond him. Renaissance a legitimate claim on his His literary enthusiasm was for the an- homage? Ought he not to have cast in cients. Nor can we err in affirming that his lot with that purely intellectual and the source of his liberalism, of his devo- artistic movement, which went its own tion to freedom and strong Republican way, independently both of Catholicism bent, was to a large extent Hellenic. and Protestantism? Vane's democratic faith was drawn directly out of the New Testament; Crom-greatest even in that part of his inspirawell, a sturdy Englishman, did not go tion which Milton drew from Greece much upon theories of any kind, but would have impelled him to choose as was prepared to die rather than that his we know him to have chosen. The fittest country should forfeit liberty and prove company for the poet of a great period is false to the Reformation; Milton was that of the practical men of his time. animated by a fervour akin to that of Whatever the Renaissance might have those ancient patriots who stood with told Milton, living Greece would have Demosthenes against Philip, or with told him to be in the throng of living Brutus against Cæsar. There were other men. The truth is that, though we have and mightier elements in his character, been told a thousand times that Greece but we shall have no right idea of the worshipped beauty and art, Greece did personality of Milton unless we under- nothing of the kind. The Greeks, as stand his strong affinity for the genius of compared with the Orientals, perhaps Greece and of Rome. even as compared with the Romans, And yet he was from the first Puritan. were not a superstitious people; but, in When his brother Christopher declared the living period of their history, they for prerogative, he leaned towards the were religious, earnest, eminently practistruggling patriots. Rather than tie him- cal; and their supreme works of art, their self up with subscriptions, and accept best temples and statues, were not prothe rule of bishops, he declined to take duced merely to be looked at and admired, orders in the Church. When the Revo- but in reverent affection for the gods, lution broke out, he at once waived the literary ambition which was to him what the conquest of Asia had been to the young Alexander, hastened home from Italy where he had been starring it in Academies, put his garland and singing robes aside, and took his place in the

I venture to hold that all that was

and with a view to their propitiation. The highest Greek works are beautiful, because the Greeks were more richly gifted than any other race with the æsthetic sense, but their æsthetic sense, instead of superseding their religion, ministered to it. The Renaissance attempted a re

vival of Greece; but it got no further than his case a moral act. Goethe would not restoring the grave of Greece, than deck- have admitted that the æsthetic sense is ing with a few cold brilliants the corpse capable, under any circumstances, of honof Greece. Great art has always hitherto ourably and beneficently taking the place been connected with the life of a great of the moral imperative. If Milton had nation, with the grand utilities of its do- sequestered himself in the culture of the mestic and social life, and the mightier beautiful when duty called him to the ser interests of its spiritual life; and the vice of his country, he would never have Renaissance, in so far as it was an at- been one of the poets of the world. We tempt to resuscitate the art of Greece, might have had from him a miracle of was destined to be a fleeting phase in learning and elaboration, "pencilled historical evolution, just as Loyalism or over," to use his own language, "with all Anglicanism, attempts to resuscitate the curious touches of art, even to the Medieval religion, are sure to be fleeting phases in historical evolution. "Er gräcisirt nirgends," says Goethe of Raphael, with one of those pen-strokes by which it is his way to strike out a great truth, "fühlt, denkt, handelt aber durchaus wie ein Grieche." Had Raphael been a man to set about reviving the antique Greecizing, as Goethe says better in German than we can in English-he would by the very fact have shown that he could not feel, think, act as a Greek. Serene, whole-hearted activity, in unison with the great tones of the life of the times, is the true Hellenism.

perfection of a faultless picture;" but the inspiration of a great time would not have thrilled through it with the modu lation of the long-rolling thunder peal, nor would it have taught many genera tions how lofty was the enthusiasm, how mighty the fervour, that dwelt in the Puritans of England.

Opening the earliest of his prose works, we feel that we have entered the second of those periods into which Milton's his tory naturally divides itself. We are aware of a gigantic strength, an emotional force and agitation, a clash and clang of militant energy, which suggest that the delicate preludings of his earlier poetry were but the flute-music before the Spartan charge. Who would have thought that, in the fine spirit-spun reins of that harmony, feelings so impetuous and inpatient, seer-like intuitions so keen, intense, and vivid, had been disciplined to a movement soft and measured as that of Cytherea's doves?

But Milton continues a poet although he now writes in prose. Almost the whole of his two Books on Reformation in England, published in 1641, when Strafford had fallen, when king and nation seemed to be reconciled, when it still ap peared an easy thing to reform the Church on the Puritan model, might be

It was the highest art instinct, therefore, which impelled Milton, after expatiating on the delights and ambitions of "calm and pleasing solitariness, fed with cheerful and confident thoughts," to add these memorable words: but were it the meanest under-service, if God by His secretary conscience enjoins it, it were sad for me if I should draw back." It was a lower art instinct which prompted Winckelmann to make an insincere profession of the Roman Catholic religion in order that he might study the antique in Rome. Shakespeare, in the same circumstances, would have done as Milton did. With somewhat more doubtfulness, I venture to believe that Goethe would have done as Milton did. Goethe de-arranged in line and stanza as a magnif fends Winckelmann, but on the ground cent dithyrambic poem. In the first sen that Winckelmann was essentially a born heathen (einen gründlich geborenen Heiden), out of whom baptism could not make a Christian. Goethe was a universalist, worshipping in the temple of all time, discerning and prizing the excellencies of all schools of art, and of all religions; Winckelmann, as Goethe depicts to take up the whole passion of pity on him, was a particularist, with a special the one side and joy on the other" than organ for Greek art, and as such Goethe the corruption of the early Church, and comprehended his whole nature and could after many a tedious age, the "wonderful make allowance for it. His apology for and happy Reformation." Launching out Winckelmann is at bottom that a Chris- then into one of those wide circuits of intian conscience did not exist in the man, tellectual survey, which, both in poetry and that pretended conversion was not in 'and in prose, were habitual with Milton,

tence there is a fervent intrepidity of imaginative glance which comes upon us as something new. He strikes the key-note of the treatise by expressing unbounded enthusiasm for the Reformation. After the story of the death and resurrection of Christ, nothing, he says, is "more worthy

religion conform to his politic interests; and this was the sin that watched over the Israelites till their final captivity."

I am

There is a

he returns at its close to the point from | which he set out, and repeats, with more than lyric exultation, the opening stave. "When I recall to mind at last, after so Vividly illuminative in relation to Pumany dark ages, wherein the huge over- ritanism as a living thing is Milton's atshadowing train of error had almost swept titude towards the Laudian ceremonies. all the stars out of the firmament of the In respect of logic, his position is that Church; how the bright and blissful the Church should not curtail the liberty Reformation (by Divine power) struck of Christians, that there should be no through the black and settled night of imposition of anything not enjoined in In respect of feelignorance and anti-Christian tyranny, the Word of God. methinks a sovereign and reviving joy ing, he is the impassioned devotee, who must needs rush into the bosom of him requires no sensuous imagery to express He will not that reads or hears; and the sweet the fervour of his soul. odour of the returning Gospel imbathe suffer imagination, in her well-meaning his soul with the fragrancy of heaven. play, to insult with ornament the ausThen was the sacred Bible sought out of tere loveliness of truth. When the rethe dusty corners where profane false-ligious ardour is in its first fiery glow, it hood and neglect had thrown it, the disdains the aid of the allegorizing facThe Purischools opened, Divine and human ulty and the aesthetic sense. learning raked out of the embers of for- tans had returned to the fervour of the gotten tongues, the princes and cities early Christians, and were under the introoping apace to the new-erected ban-spiration which had thrilled St. Paul ner of salvation; the martyrs, with the when he wrote to the Galatians, "How unresistible might of weakness, shaking turn ye again to the weak and beggarly the powers of darkness, and scorning elements, whereunto ye desire again to be in bondage? Ye observe days, and the fiery rage of the old red dragon." The Reformed Church, with primitive months, and times, and years. bishops, chosen by the testimony of afraid of you, lest I have bestowed their colleagues and the suffrage of the upon you labour in vain.” people, was to be worthy of her "eternal mood of imagination in which it throws and shortly-expected King." "Shortly-out imagery, as there is a stage in the expected," this is a characteristic note heating of iron when it throws out of Puritanism. Vane and Cromwell both sparks; but there is an imaginative ferthought it likely that Christ was about to vour which corresponds to the blinding appear and to be visible King of His glow of iron molten into liquid fire, and saints. Apart from Christ's personal this requires no metaphoric sparkling. reign, Milton believed in the power of The religious ecstasy which manifests itthe Church to maintain herself. "I am self, as the religious ecstacy of Cromnot of opinion to think the Church a well's soldiers manifested itself, in tears vine in this respect, because, as they and agonized prayer, turns from music take it, she cannot subsist without clasp-and picture. But it is equally true that ing about the elm of worldly strength religious rapture so high-wrought is natand felicity, as if the heavenly city urally fleeting, and that music and paintcould not support itself without the ing and solemn architecture may be so props and buttresses of secular authori- applied as to promote that reverent inty." His conception of the nation as a terest in religious truth, that mildly emowhole is pointedly Miltonic. "A com- tional participation in acts of public monwealth ought to be but as one huge worship, which are better than apathy, Christian personage, one mighty growth and which average people prefer to imand stature of an honest man." Woe passioned feeling. This consideration betide the commonwealth if the Church is to be taken into account in estimating is denied freedom and self-government. the force of Laud's pleading on behalf of "Must Church-government, that is appointed in the Gospel, and has chief respect to the soul, be conformable and pliant to civil, that is, arbitrary, and chiefly conversant about the visible and external part of man? This is the very maxim that moulded the calves Bethel and of Dan; this was the quintessence of Jeroboam's policy, he made

of

what he called the beauty of holiness. Feeling may be sincere although not intense, and if all men, except dishonest and affected men, have a claim to freedom in respect of emotional moods, the majestic trimming of a Hooker, the melodious moderation of a Keble, must not be denied an appreciative sympathy. Say that their songs are songs of the sick

66

room; is the sick-room to have no mu- | looseness and riot, then do they as much sic? Of the highest inspiration, how- as if they laid down their necks for some ever, in all forms, whether of the poeti- wild tyrant to get up and ride." The cal inspiration or the more potent reli- principles of discrimination between State gious inspiration, whether of the inspira- rule and Church rule, laid down in this tion of Lear and Othello or the inspira- treatise, are perfectly and permanently tion of the prophecies of Isaiah and the sound. The authority of the Church letters of Paul, intensity is a character-"which Christ, and St. Paul in his name, istic; and in times of revolution the inspiration which goes deepest down towards the fire-fountains will prevail. In the treatise before us we see Milton's puritan fervour combined with the exultant hope and faith of a spirit still in its youth. He knows no moderation. "We must not run, they say "thus he scornfully exclaims- "into sudden extremes." Away with such a rule except as applied to things indifferent! "If it be found that those two extremes be vice and virtue, falsehood and truth, the greater extremity of virtue and superlative truth we run into, the more virtuous and the more wise we become; and he that, flying from degenerate and traditional corruption, fears to shoot himself too far into the meeting embraces of a divinely warranted reformation, had better not have run at all." A courage so high is fitly associated with the faith of youth. "Lordship and victory," says Milton, "are but the pages of justice and virtue." It is a faith which nature gives a man when she has still to get his life's work out of him. Goethe, in a mood rare with him but terrible when it came, wrote this:

Jeglichen Schwärmer schlagt mir ans Kreuz

im dreissigsten Jahre; Kennt er nun einmal die Welt, wird der Betrogne der Schelm.

All the disenchantment of the Restoration, which turned so many an enthusiast into a scoundrel, did not infect Milton with the bitter badness that despairs of man; but at sixty he would have put something more of qualification and reserve than at thirty into his view of the connection between lordship and victory on the one hand and justice and virtue on the other.

confers," has absolutely no material strength to support it. The pains and penalties by which it is enforced are purely spiritual. The utmost the Church can do is to excommunicate; and if the excommunicated man "can be at peace in his own soul," if he firmly believes that the ecclesiastical sentence has not been ratified by God, he "may have fair leave to tell all his bags over undimin ished of the least farthing, may eat his dainties, drink his wine, use his delights, enjoy his land and liberties, not the least skin raised, not the least hair misplaced, for all that excommunication has done." It is only for him who believes that the Church carries the keys of the kingdom of heaven that excommunica tion becomes the "dreadful and inviolable prerogative of Christ's diadem." Even then the severity is to be accom panied with infinite tenderness. "As a tender mother takes her child and holds it over the pit with scaring words, that it may learn to fear where danger is; so doth excommunication as dearly and as freely, without money, use her wholesome and saving terrors: she is instant, she beseeches, by all the dear and sweet promises of salvation she entices and woos; by all the threatenings and thunders of the law and rejected gospel, she charges and adjures; this is all her armoury, her munition, her artillery." Of course Milton rejects absolutely the notion that the clergy constitute the Church. The clergy are but the minis ters of the Church, and it is by "full and free election " that they are chosen to hold, in their several charges, the "pastorly rod and sheep-hook of Christ."

Such is Milton's, such, in its purest form, is the Puritan, theory of Church discipline. Christians are viewed as a His conception of Church discipline is company of brothers and fellow-soldiers characteristically Puritan. The liberty loyal to Christ their king. As in all he loves shrinks contemptuously from brotherhoods animated and bound to license. "Well knows every wise nation, gether by the sympathy of a great purthat their liberty consists in manly and pose, by the enthusiasm of a mighty honest labours, in sobriety and rigorous affection, offence against the fundamental honour to the marriage-bed, which in principles of the Christian society, that both sexes should be bred up from. is of the Church, entails discipline upon chaste hopes to loyal enjoyments; and the offender, and, in the last resort, when the people slacken, and fall to exclusion. This is all. In such Church