by John Milton
74. Accident both ‘one of the nine categories after Substance’ and ‘mishap’.
76–8. underling… under playing on the etymology of ‘substance’ as that which ‘stands under’ things.
90. loose this Gordian knot resolve the paradoxes of Aristotle’s theory. An oracle proclaimed that whoever untied the Gordian knot would rule all Asia. Alexander (who had been Aristotle’s pupil) cut it with his sword. [Stage direction] spake in prose. The speeches have not survived.
91. Rivers arise. Two brothers named Rivers had been admitted to Christ’s College on 10 May 1628. One of them played the part of Relation. M.’s catalogue of rivers parodies those in Spenser, FQIV xi 24–47 and throughout Drayton’s Polyolbion (1612–22).
92. gulfy full of eddies.
Dun the Don, in Yorkshire.
95. sullen flowing sluggishly (OED 5).
96. maiden’s Sabrina’s. See A Masque 824f.
98. hallowed Dee echoing Drayton, Polyolbion x 215. Drayton explains that changes in the Dee’s course were deemed to be prophetic. Cp. Lycidas 55.
99. Humber… Scythian’s name The river Humber was said to have taken its name from a Scythian invader who drowned in it, after Locrine defeated him.
Sonnet XI (‘A book was writ of late’)
Date: late 1645 or early 1646. This and the next sonnet are a response to the attacks M. suffered after the publication of his four divorce tracts, The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce (1643, 1644), The fudgement of Martin Bucer (1644), Tetrachordon and Colasterion (both 1645). M.’s liberal views on divorce earned him the hostility of the Presbyterians, his old allies against prelacy (see headnote to Sonnet XII). Sonnet XI follows Sonnet XII in TMS, and it is widely agreed that Sonnet XII was written first. The title On the detraction which followed upon my writing certain treatises appears only in TMS, where it covers both sonnets. Sonnet XI is more cool and detached than Sonnet XII, using colloquialisms and comic rhymes to express contempt for an unlearned age.
1–4. Tetrachordon… pored on M.’s rhyme perhaps mocks Wither’s Prince Henry’s Obsequies (1612), Elegy V: ‘Who was himself a book for kings to pore on: / And might have been thy Basilikon Doron’.
1. Tetrachordon Greek, ‘four-stringed’. A ‘tetrachord’ was a four-stringed instrument (OED 1) or a four-note scale (OED 2a). The tract’s title refers to four key biblical passages on marriage and divorce (Gen. 1. 27–8, 2. 18, 23–4; Deut. 24. 1–2; Matt. 5. 31–2, 19. 3–11; I Cor. 7. 10–16) which M. tries to ‘harmonize’ with each other and with his argument for divorce on the grounds of incompatibility.
3. it walked the town Horace (Epistulae I xx) addresses his book as if it were a prostitute walking the streets. But conceits treating books as living things are not uncommon. Cp. M.’s Areopagitica: ‘books are not absolutely dead things, but do contain a potency of life in them’.
4. Numb ‘ring *Comprising (as its readers) and determining the number of (OED 7, 2c).
5. stall-reader reader at booksellers’ stalls. These were mainly in St Paul’s Churchyard.
7. spelling false both ‘misspelling the title’ and ‘failing to understand the argument’ (OED ‘spell’ v2 2b = ‘understand’).
Mile-End Green the eastern limit of London, a mile beyond Aldgate. 8–9. Gordon… Galasp M.’s contempt is less for the bearers of these Scottish names than for the English who accept them, yet balk at Tetrachordon. The names are nevertheless calculated to evoke anti-Scottish feeling harmful to M.’s Presbyterian critics. Galasp is George Gillespie, a Covenanter and member of the Westminster Assembly. Gordon, Macdonnel (Macdonald), and Colkitto (a nickname for Coll Keitache) were officers in Montrose’s Royalist army. By naming a Presbyterian in the same breath as three Royalists, M. implies that there is little to choose between them.
10.. rugged harsh.
like equally harsh.
sleek easy.
11.. Quintilian Roman teacher of rhetoric (late first century AD). His Instituto Oratoria I v 8 condemns the use of foreign words.
12.. Sir John Cheke an English humanist (1514–57). He was the first Professor of Greek at Cambridge and King Edward VI’s tutor. The meaning of lines 12–14 has been much debated. Masson (iii 283) took like ours to mean ‘your age, in contrast to our age, did not hate learning’. Smart (73–4) infers the opposite sense: Cheke’s age and M.’s are alike in that they ‘hated not learning worse than toad or asp, – but as much as they hated either’. In support of this strained reading, Smart cites Cheke’s testimony that his age was hostile to the study of Greek. But M. in Tetrachordon praises Cheke’s age as ‘the purest and sincerest that ever shon yet on the reformation of this Iland’(YP 2. 716).
Sonnet XII (‘I did but prompt the age’)
Date: see previous headnote. M. in 1641–2 had allied himself with the Presbyterians against the bishops, so the Presbyterian hostility to his divorce tracts came as a shock. William Prynne, Herbert Palmer, Daniel Featley, Thomas Edwards and Robert Baillie all called for the suppression of M.’s divorce tracts, and M. was summoned to the House of Lords for examination (see below, 8n). Despite this hostility, some have doubted whether Sonnet XII is aimed at the Presbyterians. N. H. Henry, MLN 66 (1951) 509–13, thinks that the owls and other animals of line 4 are the radicals who embraced M.’s doctrines all too eagerly (e.g. Mrs Attaway, who cited M. when she left her husband). M. may have been embarrassed by this enthusiasm, but his sonnet is aimed against those who Railed (6) against him. The TMS title On the detraction which followed upon my writing certain treatises also tells for the traditional interpretation. Some have thought that M.’s main attack is against the Presbyterians, but that lines 9–11 extend the attack ‘from those who ignorantly rejected his doctrine to those who, with equal ignorance, accepted and misapplied it as a sanction of licence’ (Var. 2. 2. 396). But licence (11) and revolt (10) are puns aimed at the Presbyterians.
1. quit their clogs rid themselves of their encumbrances. A ‘clog’ was a heavy piece of wood attached to a prisoner’s leg or neck to prevent escape (OED 2).
2. known rules of ancient liberty the Mosaic divorce law; also the natural law of right reason, which M. believed to be ‘of more antiquity’ than ‘marriage it selfe’ (YP 2. 237).
4.. owls a symbol of benighted ignorance. In Areopagitica (1644) M. likens England to an eagle gazing at the sun, while those ‘timorous’ birds ‘that love the twilight, flutter about, amazed at what she means, and in their envious gabble would prognosticate a year of sects and schisms’ (YP 2. 558).
cuckoos a symbol of ingratitude.
asses a symbol of obstinate stupidity.
apes a symbol of empty mockery.
dogs a symbol of quarrelsomeness.
6.. Latona’s twin-born progeny Apollo and Diana. Fleeing Juno, and suffering from thirst, Latona tried to drink from a pool, but some peasants (hinds) prevented her by muddying the water. She turned them into frogs (Ovid, Met. vi 317–81). Twin-born glances at M.’s tracts Tetrachordon and Colasterion, which were published on the same day, 4 March 1645 (Parker 897, n118).
7.. fee absolute and rightful possession (OED 2b).
8.. casting pearl to hogs Cp. Matt. 7. 6: ‘Give not that which is holy unto the dogs, neither cast ye your pearls before swine’. Honigmann (117) thinks that hogs may also play on the name ‘Bacon’. A Judge Bacon examined M. in December 1644, and another Bacon, a member of the Commons, helped prepare an ordinance against heresy in 1646.
10.. And still revolt when truth would set them free] TMS, 1673; And hate the truth whereby they should be free; TMS 1st reading. Cp. John 8. 32: ‘And the truth shall make you free’, still continually.
revolt draw back from a course of action, return to one’s allegiance (OED 2b). M.’s Presbyterian detractors ‘revolt’ by backsliding into conservative traditions. M. also plays on the other sense of ‘revolt’ to imply that the Presbyterians are rebels against Truth. He employs the same pun in his prose, always at the Presbyterians’ expense. See John Leonard,
‘Revolting as Backsliding in Milton’s Sonnet XII’, N&Q 241, n.s. 43 (September 1996), 269–73.
11. Licence licentiousness and licence to print (recalling the Licensing Order of 14 June 1643). The pun is very common in M.’s prose.
12. For who… good Cp. TKM: ‘None can love freedom heartilie, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but licence; which never hath more scope or indulgence then under Tyrants’ (YP 3. 190).
13. mark target.
rove shoot (with arrows) away from a mark; hence, wander from the point (OED v1 2).
14.. For all in spite of. Some editors take For to mean ‘from’, but M. is not condemning the Civil War. He is blaming the Presbyterians for making it futile.
Sonnet XIII. To Mr. H. Lawes, on his Airs
There are three drafts of the sonnet in TMS, the first being dated 9 February 1645 (i.e. 1646). M. had long been a friend of Henry Lawes, who had written the music for A Masque and played the part of the Attendant Spirit. Lawes may also have collaborated with M. in producing Arcades. The two friends had opposing political views. Lawes had been a member of the King’s Music, and remained a Royalist. M.’s sonnet was first published in Lawes’s Choice Psalmes (1648), which was dedicated to Charles I (then a prisoner) and commemorated Henry’s brother William who had died fighting for the King. Henry Lawes died in 1662.
1.. *well-measured composed in good measure or rhythm (OED 1).
2–3. First… accent ‘First taught our English musicians how to give each word its proper measure of length and stress’. Lawes was not original in this regard, but he was famous for the degree to which he subordinated the music to the words. Cp. Waller’s ‘To Mr. Henry Lawes, Who Had Then Newly Set a Song of Mine, in the Year 1635’ (printed 1686): ‘But you alone may truly boast / That not a syllable is lost, / The writer’s and the setter’s skill / At once the ravished ears do fill’ (21–4).
2. span measure (OED 2b).
3. accent a technical term in prosody and music: the ‘rhythm or measure of the verse’ (OED 6) and ‘the marks placed over words to show the various notes or turns of phrases to which they were sung’ (OED 7). Lawes respects both kinds of accent.
scan both ‘pass judgement’ (OED 2b) and ‘determine the number and nature of poetic feet’.
4.. Midas’ ears King Midas was given ass’s ears when he preferred Pan’s pipe to Apollo’s lyre (Ovid, Met. xi 146–79). Cp. Phineas Fletcher, The Purple Island i 17: ‘Our Midas eares’.
committing short and long matching a long syllable with a short note, or a short syllable with a long note. ‘Commit’ means *‘place in a state of hostility or incongruity’ (OED 9b).
5. exempts singles out.
6. wan healthily pale.
8.. air melody.
humour fit, suit (OED 2).
10. Phoebus’ choir the Muses (i.e. the poets whose verses Lawes set to music).
11. story ‘The story of Ariadne set by him in music’ (marginal note in Choice Psalmes, 1648). William Cartwright’s Complaint of Ariadne was set by Lawes in his Ayres and Dialogues (1653).
12–14. Dante… Purgatory In Purg. ii 76–117, Dante meets the shade of his friend Casella the musician, and asks him to sing. Casella responds by singing one of Dante’s canzoni, that he had set to music in life.
14.. milder shades Dante met Casella on the threshold of Purgatory, which was less dark than Purgatory itself.
Sonnet XIV (‘When Faith and Love which parted from thee never’)
Date: December 1646. There are three drafts of the poem in TMS. One, struck through, is titled ‘On the religious memory of Mrs Catharine Thomason my Christian friend deceased 16 December 1646’. Mrs Thomason was the wife of M.’s friend George Thomason, a London bookseller and collector of contemporary pamphlets. The Thomason tracts (now in the British Library) number over 22,000, and include several of M.’s pamphlets, inscribed Ex dono authoris. Mrs Thomason also loved to read. George Thomason’s will bequeaths books from ‘my late dear wife’s library’ (Smart 70).
4.. Of death, called life Cp. John 12. 25: ‘he that hateth his life in this world shall keep it unto life eternal’.
8. Followed thee up Cp. Rev. 14. 13: ‘Blessed are the dead which die in the Lord… their works do follow them’. In CD i 13 M. argues that the soul dies with the body and is resurrected with it. Either he was not yet a mortalist in 1646, or he chose not to obtrude his views into this sonnet.
9. knew them best best knew them to be.
12.. spake] TMS (all three drafts); speak 1673.
on glorious themes] 1673 and TMS fair copy; in glorious themes TMS first two drafts. H. J. C. Grierson, in TLS (15 January 1925) 40, prefers ‘in’ to ‘on’ and argues that themes has the musical sense ‘strains’. Most editors follow him. There may be a musical pun, but M. has spake (not ‘sang’). Since the speakers are Catharine Thomason’s good works, M. may pun on theme as ‘a subject treated by action (instead of by discourse)’ (OED ib).
14.. And drink… streams Ps. 36. 8–9, Rev. 22. 1 and 17.
Sonnet XV. On the Late Massacre in Piedmont
Date: May? 1655. The sect known as the Vaudois or Waldensians had been persecuted since its foundation in the twelfth century. Protestants in M.’s time believed that the sect was even older, and that it retained Apostolic purity. The Vaudois lived in Alpine villages in France and Italy. On the Italian side they lived in the territories of the Duke of Savoy. In 1561 the Duke had granted them the right to dwell in the valleys of the Pellice and the Angrogna, in Piedmont, but they had spread to other villages excluded by the treaty. In April 1655 an army was sent to expel the encroaching Vaudois, who fled to the hills. The army pursued, razing villages in the tolerated area. On 24 April the Duke’s Piedmontese, French and Irish troops massacred the villagers and committed such atrocities as hurling women and children from precipices. Over 1,700 Vaudois were killed. Protestant Europe was outraged and Cromwell contemplated a military expedition. This became unnecessary when the Vaudois defeated their oppressors in July, and the Duke reaffirmed the 1561 treaty (18 August). As Cromwell’s Secretary, M. composed several letters in which Cromwell voiced his protest and urged other Protestant powers to intervene. The only text of the sonnet is that of 1673.
1.. Avenge Cp. Rev. 6. 9–10: ‘the souls of them that were slain for the word of God… cried with a loud voice, saying, How long, O Lord, holy and true, dost thou not judge and avenge our blood?’ Cp. also Luke 18. 17: ‘shall not God avenge his own elect?’
saints true believers.
1–2. bones / Lie scattered Cp. Ps. 141. 7: ‘Our bones are scattered at the grave’s mouth’.
3.. kept… of old So in Likeliest Means M. praises ‘those ancientest reformed churches of the Waldenses, if they rather continu’d not pure since the apostles’ (YP 7. 291).
4. stocks and stones gods of wood and stone. Cp. Jer. 2. 27 and 3. 29 (but the phrase had long been proverbial, OED ‘stock’ sb1 id).
5. thy book Cp. Rev. 20. 12: ‘the dead were judged out of those things which were written in the books, according to their works’.
6. thy sheep Cp. Rom. 8. 35–6 (citing Ps. 44. 22): ‘Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution… or peril, or sword? As it is written, For thy sake we are killed all the day long; We are accounted as sheep for the slaughter’.
7–8. rolled / Mother with infant Sir Samuel Morland, who carried Cromwell’s protest to the Duke of Savoy, confirms the atrocity in his History of the Evangelical Churches of the Valleys of Piedmont (1658) 363, 368, 374.
10.. martyred blood… sow Cp. Tertullian’s famous maxim that ‘the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church’. The hundredfold (13) crop also recalls the parable of the sower, some of whose seeds fell onto good soil and brought forth fruit ‘an hundredfold’ (Matt. 13. 3). Editors also see an allusion to Cadmus, who sowed dragons’ teeth from which grew armed men.
11.. sway implying ‘tyranny and instability’ (Hill 209).
&nbs
p; 12.. triple Tyrant the Pope with his three-tiered crown.
14.. Early *before it is too late (OED 5a).
Babylonian woe Protestants commonly identified the Babylon of Revelation with papal Rome. Jay Ruud (MQ26, October 1992, 80–81) compares Ps. 137. 8–9: ‘O daughter of Babylon, who art to be destroyed; / Happy shall he be, that rewardeth thee / As thou hast served us. / Happy shall he be, that taketh and dasheth thy little ones / Against the stones’. Ruud infers that M. is advocating ‘appropriate “eye for an eye” justice’ (see lines 7–8) ‘rather than a universal Armageddon’. The allusion does imply counter-atrocities, but M. does not say who should inflict them. He counsels the Vaudois to fly, not fight. Cp. Rom. 12. 19: ‘Dearly beloved, avenge not yourselves, but rather give place unto wrath: for it is written, Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord’.
Sonnet XVI (‘When I consider how my light is spent’)
Date: much debated, but M. obviously wrote the sonnet after he had lost his sight in 1652. The only text is that of 1673.
1.. When I consider a common sonnet opening. Cp. Henry Lok’s ‘When I consider of the holy band’, and Shakespeare, Sonnet XV: ‘When I consider every thing that grows’.
light eyesight (OED 4).
spent extinguished.
2. Ere half my days M. was forty-three in 1652 – more than halfway through the biblical lifespan of seventy years. Critics have suggested that days means ‘working days’, or conjectured that M. may have expected to live as long as his father, who had been eighty-four when he died in 1647.
3. that one talent literary talent, with a punning allusion to the parable of the talents (Matt. 25. 14–30). M. modestly claims only one talent, not five or two. The man who received one talent hid it, and was cast into ‘outer darkness’.
4. useless including a pun on ‘usury’. Cp. the Lord’s rebuke of the man who hid his talent: ‘I should have received mine own with usury’ (Matt.25. 27).
7. light both ‘eyesight’ and ‘daylight’. Notice day-labour and cp. John 9. 4: ‘I must work the works of him that sent me, while it is day: the night cometh, when no man can work’. Jesus spoke these words just before curing a blind man. Cp. also the parable of the vineyard (Matt. 20. 1–16). Some day-labourers worked for a full day, others for only part of the day, yet all received the same wages.