But whatever were his engagements, civil or domestick, poetry was never long out of his thoughts. About this time (1645) a collection of his Latin and English poems appeared, in which the Allegro and Penseroso, with some others, were first published.
He had taken a large house in Barbican, for the reception of scholars; but the numerous relations of his wife, to whom he generously granted refuge for awhile, occupied his rooms. In time, however, they went away; “and the house again,” says Philips, “now looked like a house of the muses only, though the accession of scholars was not great. Possibly his having proceeded so far in the education of youth may have been the occasion of his adversaries calling him pedagogue and schoolmaster; whereas, it is well known he never set up for a publick school, to teach all the young fry of a parish; but only was willing to impart his learning and knowledge to his relations, and the sons of gentlemen who were his intimate friends, and that neither his writings, nor his way of teaching, ever savoured in the least of pedantry.”
Thus laboriously does his nephew extenuate what cannot be denied, and what might be confessed without disgrace. Milton was not a man who could become mean by a mean employment. This, however, his warmest friends seem not to have found; they, therefore, shift and palliate. He did not sell literature to all comers, at an open shop; he was a chamber milliner, and measured his commodities only to his friends.
Philips, evidently impatient of viewing him in this state of degradation, tells us that it was not long continued; and, to raise his character again, has a mind to invest him with military splendour: “He is much mistaken,” he says, “if there was not, about this time, a design of making him an adjutant-general in sir William Waller’s army. But the new modelling of the army proved an obstruction to the design.” An event cannot be set at a much greater distance than by having been only “designed about some time,” if a man “be not much mistaken.” Milton shall be a pedagogue no longer; for, if Philips be not much mistaken, somebody at some time designed him for a soldier.
About the time that the army was new-modelled, (1645,) he removed to a smaller house in Holborn, which opened backward into Lincoln’s inn fields. He is not known to have published any thing afterwards, till the king’s death, when, finding his murderers condemned by the presbyterians, he wrote a treatise to justify it, and “to compose the minds of the people.”
He made some Remarks on the Articles of Peace between Ormond and the Irish Rebels. While he contented himself to write, he, perhaps, did only what his conscience dictated; and if he did not very vigilantly watch the influence of his own passions, and the gradual prevalence of opinions, first willingly admitted, and then habitually indulged; if objections, by being overlooked, were forgotten, and desire superinduced conviction; he yet shared only the common weakness of mankind, and might be no less sincere than his opponents. But, as faction seldom leaves a man honest, however it might find him, Milton is suspected of having interpolated the book called Icon Basilike, which the council of state, to whom he was now made Latin secretary, employed him to censure, by inserting a prayer taken from Sidney’s Arcadia, and imputing it to the king; whom he charges, in his Iconoclastes, with the use of this prayer, as with a heavy crime, in the indecent language with which prosperity had emboldened the advocates for rebellion to insult all that is venerable or great: “Who would have imagined so little fear in him of the true all-seeing deity, as, immediately before his death, to pop into the hands of the grave bishop that attended him, as a special relique of his saintly exercises, a prayer, stolen word for word, from the mouth of a heathen woman, praying to a heathen god?”
The papers which the king gave to Dr. Juxon, on the scaffold, the regicides took away, so that they were, at least, the publishers of this prayer; and Dr. Birch, who had examined the question with great care, was inclined to think them the forgers. The use of it, by adaptation, was innocent; and they who could so noisily censure it, with a little extension of their malice, could contrive what they wanted to accuse.
King Charles the second, being now sheltered in Holland, employed Salmasius, professor of polite learning at Leyden, to write a defence of his father and of monarchy; and, to excite his industry, gave him, as was reported, a hundred Jacobuses. Salmasius was a man of skill in languages, knowledge of antiquity, and sagacity of emendatory criticism, almost exceeding all hope of human attainment; and having, by excessive praises, been confirmed in great confidence of himself, though he probably had not much considered the principles of society, or the rights of government, undertook the employment without distrust of his own qualifications; and, as his expedition in writing was wonderful, in 1649, published Defensio Regis.
To this Milton was required to write a sufficient answer; which he performed (1651) in such a manner, that Hobbes declared himself unable to decide whose language was best, or whose arguments were worst. In my opinion, Milton’s periods are smoother, neater, and more pointed; but he delights himself with teasing his adversary, as much as with confuting him. He makes a foolish allusion of Salmasius, whose doctrine he considers as servile and unmanly, to the stream of Salmacis, which, whoever entered, left half his virility behind him. Salmasius was a Frenchman, and was unhappily married to a scold: “Tu es Gallus,” says Milton, “et, ut aiunt, minium gallinaceus.” But his supreme pleasure is to tax his adversary, so renowned for criticism, with vitious Latin. He opens his book with telling that he has used persona, which, according to Milton, signifies only a mask, in a sense not known to the Romans, by applying it as we apply person. But, as Nemesis is always on the watch, it is memorable that he has enforced the charge of a solecism by an expression in itself grossly solecistical, when, for one of those supposed blunders, he says, as Ker, and, I think, some one before him, has remarked, “propino te grammatistis tuis vapulandum.” From vapulo, which has a passive sense, vapulandus can never be derived. No man forgets his original trade: the rights of nations, and of kings, sink into questions of grammar, if grammarians discuss them.
Milton, when he undertook this answer, was weak of body and dim of sight; but his will was forward, and what was wanting of health was supplied by zeal. He was rewarded with a thousand pounds, and his book was much read; for paradox, recommended by spirit and elegance, easily gains attention; and he, who told every man that he was equal to his king, could hardly want an audience.
That the performance of Salmasius was not dispersed with equal rapidity, or read with equal eagerness, is very credible. He taught only the stale doctrine of authority, and the unpleasing duty of submission; and he had been so long not only the monarch, but the tyrant, of literature, that almost all mankind were delighted to find him defied and insulted by a new name, not yet considered as any one’s rival. If Christina, as is said, commended the Defence of the People, her purpose must be to torment Salmasius, who was then at court; for neither her civil station, nor her natural character, could dispose her to favour the doctrine, who was by birth a queen, and by temper despotick.
That Salmasius was, from the appearance of Milton’s book, treated with neglect, there is not much proof; but to a man, so long accustomed to admiration, a little praise of his antagonist would be sufficiently offensive, and might incline him to leave Sweden, from which, however, he was dismissed, not with any mark of contempt, but with a train of attendance scarcely less than regal.
He prepared a reply, which, left as it was imperfect, was published by his son in the year of the restoration. In the beginning, being probably most in pain for his Latinity, he endeavours to defend his use of the word persona; but, if I remember right, he misses a better authority than any that he has found, that of Juvenal in his fourth satire:
Quid agas, cum dira et foedior omni
Crimine persona est?
As Salmasius reproached Milton with losing his eyes in the quarrel, Milton delighted himself with the belief that he had shortened Salmasius’s life, and both, perhaps, with more malignity than reason. Salmasius died at the spa, Sept. 3, 1653; and, as controvert
ists are commonly said to be killed by their last dispute, Milton was flattered with the credit of destroying him.
Cromwell had now dismissed the parliament by the authority of which he had destroyed monarchy, and commenced monarch himself, under the title of protector, but with kingly, and more than kingly, power. That his authority was lawful, never was pretended: he himself founded his right only in necessity; but Milton, having now tasted the honey of publick employment, would not return to hunger and philosophy, but, continuing to exercise his office, under a manifest usurpation, betrayed to his power that liberty which he had defended. Nothing can be more just than that rebellion should end in slavery; that he, who had justified the murder of his king, for some acts which seemed to him unlawful, should now sell his services, and his flatteries, to a tyrant, of whom it was evident that he could do nothing lawful.
He had now been blind for some years; but his vigour of intellect was such, that he was not disabled to discharge his office of Latin secretary, or continue his controversies. His mind was too eager to be diverted, and too strong to be subdued.
About this time his first wife died in childbed, having left him three daughters. As he probably did not much love her, he did not long continue the appearance of lamenting her; but, after a short time, married Catharine, the daughter of one captain Woodcock, of Hackney; a woman, doubtless, educated in opinions like his own. She died, within a year, of childbirth, or some distemper that followed it; and her husband honoured her memory with a poor sonnet.
The first reply to Milton’s Defensio Populi was published in 1651, called Apologia pro Rege et Populo Anglicano, contra Johannis Polypragmatici, alias Miltoni, Defensionem destructivam Regis et Populi. Of this the author was not known; but Milton and his nephew, Philips, under whose name he published an answer, so much corrected by him that it might be called his own, imputed it to Bramhal; and, knowing him no friend to regicides, thought themselves at liberty to treat him as if they had known what they only suspected.
Next year appeared Regii Sanguinis Clamor ad Coelum. Of this the author was Peter du Moulin, who was afterwards prebendary of Canterbury; but Morus, or More, a French minister, having the care of its publication, was treated as the writer by Milton in his Defensio Secunda, and overwhelmed by such violence of invective, that he began to shrink under the tempest, and gave his persecutors the means of knowing the true author. Du Moulin was now in great danger; but Milton’s pride operated against his malignity; and both he and his friends were more willing that Du Moulin should escape than that he should be convicted of mistake.
In this second defence he shows that his eloquence is not merely satirical; the rudeness of his invective is equalled by the grossness of his flattery. “Deserimur, Cromuelle, tu solus superes, ad te summa nostrarum rerum rediit, in te solo consistit, insuperabili tuae virtuti cedimus cuncti, nemine vel obloquente, nisi qui aequales inaequalis ipse honores sibi quaerit, aut digniori concessos invidet, aut non intelligit nihil esse in societate hominum magis vel Deo gratum, vel rationi consentaneum, esse in civitate nihil aequius, nihil utilius, quam potiri rerum dignissimum. Eum te agnoscunt omnes, Cromuelle, ea tu civis maximus et gloriosissimus, dux publici consilii, exercituum fortissimorum imperator, pater patriae gessisti. Sic tu spontanea bonorum omnium, et animitus missa voce salutaris.”
Caesar, when he assumed the perpetual dictatorship, had not more servile or more elegant flattery. A translation may show its servility; but its elegance is less attainable. Having exposed the unskilfulness or selfishness of the former government, “We were left,” says Milton, “to ourselves: the whole national interest fell into your hands, and subsists only in your abilities. To your virtue, overpowering and resistless, every man gives way, except some who, without equal qualifications, aspire to equal honours, who envy the distinctions of merit, greater than their own, or who have yet to learn, that, in the coalition of human society, nothing is more pleasing to God, or more agreeable to reason, than that the highest mind should have the sovereign power. Such, sir, are you by general confession; such are the things achieved by you, the greatest and most glorious of our countrymen, the director of our publick councils, the leader of unconquered armies, the father of your country; for by that title does every good man hail you with sincere and voluntary praise.”
Next year, having defended all that wanted defence, he found leisure to defend himself. He undertook his own vindication against More, whom he declares, in his title, to be justly called the author of the Regii Sanguinis Clamor. In this there is no want of vehemence or eloquence, nor does he forget his wonted wit: “Morus est? an Momus? an uterque idem est?” He then remembers that Morus is Latin for a mulberry-tree, and hints at the known transformation:
”Poma alba ferebat
Quae post nigra tulit Morus.”
With this piece ended his controversies; and he, from this time, gave himself up to his private studies and his civil employment.
As secretary to the protector, he is supposed to have written the declaration of the reasons for a war with Spain. His agency was considered as of great importance; for, when a treaty with Sweden was artfully suspended, the delay was publickly imputed to Mr. Milton’s indisposition; and the Swedish agent was provoked to express his wonder, that only one man in England could write Latin, and that man blind.
Being now forty-seven years old, and seeing himself disencumbered from external interruptions, he seems to have recollected his former purposes, and to have resumed three great works, which he had planned for his future employment; an epick poem, the history of his country, and a dictionary of the Latin tongue.
To collect a dictionary, seems a work of all others least practicable in a state of blindness, because it depends upon perpetual and minute inspection and collation. Nor would Milton probably have begun it, after he had lost his eyes; but, having had it always before him, he continued it, says Philips, “almost to his dying-day; but the papers were so discomposed and deficient, that they could not be fitted for the press.” The compilers of the Latin dictionary, printed at Cambridge, had the use of those collections in three folios; but what was their fate afterwards is not known.
To compile a history from various authors, when they can only be consulted by other eyes, is not easy, nor possible, but with more skilful and attentive help than can be commonly obtained; and it was probably the difficulty of consulting and comparing that stopped Milton’s narrative at the conquest; a period at which affairs were not yet very intricate, nor authors very numerous.
For the subject of his epick poem, after much deliberation, long choosing, and beginning late, he fixed upon Paradise Lost; a design so comprehensive, that it could be justified only by success. He had once designed to celebrate king Arthur, as he hints in his verses to Mansus; but “Arthur was reserved,” says Fenton, “to another destiny.”
It appears, by some sketches of poetical projects left in manuscript, and to be seen in a library at Cambridge, that he had digested his thoughts on this subject into one of those wild dramas which were anciently called Mysteries; and Philips had seen what he terms part of a tragedy, beginning with the first ten lines of Satan’s address to the sun. These mysteries consist of allegorical persons; such as Justice, Mercy, Faith. Of the tragedy or mystery of Paradise Lost, there are two plans:
The Persons.
Michael.
Chorus of Angels.
Heavenly Love.
Lucifer.
Adam, }
Eve, } with the Serpent.
Conscience.
Death.
Labour, }
Sickness, }
Discontent, } Mutes.
Ignorance, }
with others; }
Faith.
Hope.
Charity.
The Persons.
Moses.
Divine Justice, Wisdom, Heavenly Love.
The Evening Star, Hesperus.
Chorus of Angels.
Lucifer.
Adam.
/> Eve.
Conscience.
Labour, }
Sickness, }
Discontent, } Mutes.
Ignorance, }
Fear, }
Death, }
Faith.
Hope.
Charity.
PARADISE LOST.
The Persons.
Moses [Greek: prologizei], recounting how he assumed his true body; that it corrupts not, because it is with God in the mount: declares the like of Enoch and Elijah; besides the purity of the place, that certain pure winds, dews, and clouds, preserve it from corruption; whence exhorts to the sight of God; tells they cannot see Adam in the state of innocence, by reason of their sin.
Justice, } debating what should become of man, if he fall.
Mercy, }
Wisdom, }
Chorus of angels singing a hymn of the creation.
ACT II.
Heavenly Love.
Evening Star.
Chorus sings the marriage song, and describes Paradise.
ACT III.
Lucifer contriving Adam’s ruin.
Chorus fears for Adam, and relates Lucifer’s rebellion and fall.
ACT IV.
Adam, } fallen.
Eve, }
Conscience cites them to God’s examination.
Chorus bewails, and tells the good Adam has lost.
ACT V.
Adam and Eve driven out of Paradise.
—— — presented by an angel with
Labour, Grief, Hatred, Envy, War, Famine, }
Pestilence, Sickness, Discontent, Ignorance, } Mutes.
Fear, Death, }
To whom he gives their names. Likewise Winter, Heat,
Tempest, &c.
Faith, }
Hope, }comfort him, and instruct him.
Charity, }
Chorus briefly concludes.
Complete Works of Samuel Johnson Page 425