by John Milton
8. fondly foolishly.
prevent forestall (OED 5).
9.. murmur complaint (OED 2).
11.. mild yoke Cp. Matt. 11. 30: ‘my yoke is easy’.
state splendour befitting high rank (OED 17b).
12–14. Thousands… wait Cp. Spenser’s angels in A Hymne of Heavenly Love: ‘There they in their trinall triphcities / About him wait, and on his wit depend, / Either with nimble wings to cut the skies, / When he them on his messages doth send, / Or on his owne dread presence to attend’ (64–8). Medieval angelologists distinguished between higher angels, who never leave God’s presence, and lower ones who execute his will. Protestants recognized no such distinction. In PL even the greatest angels carry God’s messages.
14.. wait including ‘be in readiness to receive orders’ (OED 9a) and ‘place one’s hope in God’ (OED 14h).
Sonnet XVII (‘Lawrence of virtuous father virtuous son’)
On 17 December 1651 M. moved from Scotland Yard to a new house in Petty France, Westminster. There, says his nephew and biographer Edward Phillips, he frequently received visitors, including ‘young Laurence (the Son of him that was President of Oliver’s Council) to whom there is a Sonnet among the rest, in his Printed Poems’ (Darbishire 74). Edward Lawrence (1633–57) was the elder son of Henry Lawrence (1600–1664), who became President of Cromwell’s Council of State in 1654. M. praises Henry Lawrence in Defensio Secunda. His studious son became an MP in November 1656 and died the following year, aged twenty-four. M.’s sonnet could have been written in any winter between 1651–2 and 1656–7. The only text is that of 1673.
1.. of virtuous father virtuous son Cp. Horace, Odes I xvi 1: O matre pulchra ilia pulchrior (‘O lovelier daughter of a lovely mother’).
4.. waste both ‘spend time’, referring to day, and ‘diminish one’s store of’, referring to what may be won (both OED 8).
5.. season winter.
gaining advancing.
6.. Favonius Zephyrus, the west wind. Horace invokes Favonius and the delights of spring in Odes I iv. In Odes IV xii he describes spring in a poem of invitation.
re-inspire including ‘breathe upon once more’.
8.. lily… spun Cp. Matt. 6. 28–9: ‘Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin: and yet I say unto you, That even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these’.
9.. neat elegant, tasteful, simple.
10.. Of Attic taste such as the Athenians, with their simple and refined tastes, would have enjoyed.
12.. Tuscan air Italian song.
13–14. spare / To interpose them oft a famous crux. Some take spare to mean ‘forbear’ (OED 6c), and so infer that M. is advising Lawrence to enjoy himself, but not too often. Others take spare to mean ‘spare time for’ (OED 8c), and so infer that M. is advocating frequent delights. Yet others see deliberate ambiguity. Niall Rudd (Hermathena 158, 1995, 109–15) makes a strong case for ‘forbear’ when he points out that no one has ever produced a parallel case of ‘spare’ meaning ‘spare time for’, with the infinitive and without a noun like ‘time’. Rudd sees ‘a judicious invitation’ (in), modelled on the last two lines of Horace, Odes IV xii, which advise Virgil to relax from his serious concerns for ‘a brief moment’ as ‘an occasional holiday’.
Sonnet XVIII (‘Cyriack, whose grandsire on the Royal Bench’)
Date: 1655? Cyriack Skinner (1627–1700) may have been one of M.’s pupils in the 1640s (Aubrey refers to him in his life of Harrington as a ‘scolar to John Milton’). He was certainly M.’s close friend in the 1650s. Edward Phillips singles him out ‘above all’ others that visited M.’s house in Petty France (Darbishire 74). Skinner was prominent in the Rota, a republican debating club set up in 1659. His political views accorded with M.’s. The only complete text of the sonnet is from 1673, but a scribal copy of lines 5–14 survives in TMS. Peter Beal has identified the handwriting as Skinner’s own. Beal also identifies Skinner as the author of the anonymous early life of M. that Darbishire attributed to John Phillips. See Index of English Literary Manuscripts II ii (1993) 85–6.
1. grandsire Skinner’s maternal grandfather was Sir Edward Coke (1552–1664), the most celebrated lawyer of his age, and Chief Justice of the King’s Bench from 1613 to 1616, when he was removed from office for opposing the royal prerogative. Coke was famed for defending Parliament’s privileges against kings and archbishops.
2. Themis Greek goddess of justice.
3. volumes Coke’s legal works included the Reports and Institutes of the Laws of England.
4. others other judges.
5. resolve an imperative (‘Today resolve to drench deep thoughts with me’), drench drown (OED 2), with wine.
6. that after no repenting draws that doesn’t entail any regrets.
7. Let… pause ‘put aside, for the moment, your studies of mathematics and physics’.
8. what… the French referring to Skinner’s political interests. The Swede is probably Charles X, who invaded Poland in 1655. (The mode of designation was idiomatic, as in ‘Hamlet the Dane’.) The French alludes to the war between France and Spain, and perhaps to the Treaty of Westminster (24 October 1655), by which Cromwell established friendly relations with France. Editors compare Horace, Odes II xi 1–4. Cp. also Horace’s advice to Maecenas in III xxix 25–9: ‘concerned for the City, you fear / what the Seres may do next, or Bactra / (once ruled by Cyrus), or the dissident Don’.
intend] 1673; intends TMS. 1673’s subjunctive is more suggestive of Coffee House conjectures.
9.. betimes while there is yet time.
11.. a time ordains Cp. Eccles. 3. 1: ‘To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven’.
Sonnet XIX (‘Methought I saw’)
Date: 1658? Modern critics have debated the identity of the wife described in this sonnet. The traditional view (unquestioned until 1945) holds that the sonnet is about M.’s second wife, Katherine Woodcock, who died in February 1658 after giving birth in October 1657 to a daughter Katherine (who died six weeks after her mother). Some critics think that the subject is Mary Powell, M.’s first wife, who died in May 1652, three days after giving birth to her third daughter, Deborah. The reference to ritual purification (5–6) can support either identification. Only Katherine lived long enough to be purified, but M.’s simile might be a dream-reversal of fact. A likely pun on ‘Katherine’ (see 9n) supports the traditional identification. M.’s second marriage was happy. His first marriage was unhappy, at least in its beginnings. Those who see Mary as the sonnet’s subject assume that she and M. were reconciled.
1.. Methought I saw Cp. Ralegh’s sonnet on Spenser’s Faerie Queene, ‘Methought I saw the grave where Laura lay’ (1590), and William Smith’s ‘Methought I saw the nymph I would embrace’ (Chloris, 1596, no. 13). Cp. also Adam’s dream of Eve beginning ‘methought I saw’ (PL viii 462f.), and see below 13–14n.
late espouséd either ‘recently married’ or ‘recently deceased wife’, or both. The first meaning could not apply to Mary Powell.
2.. Alcestis In Euripides’ Alcestis, Admetus is permitted to escape death if he can persuade someone else to die for him. His wife Alcestis volunteers, on condition that Admetus never remarry. While the palace mourns, Heracles (Jove’s great son) arrives as a guest. Admetus hides his loss and plays host. Heracles discovers the truth, wrestles with Death, and rescues Alcestis. He then restores her, veiled, to Admetus, who receives her, not knowing who she is. Admetus is overjoyed when he lifts the veil, but Alcestis must remain silent until she is ritually cleansed.
5. as whom as one whom.
6. old Law See Lev. 12. 4–8. After the birth of a daughter, a woman was deemed to be unclean for eighty days. She could not enter the Temple during that period.
did save The Mosaic ritual included ‘atonement’ (Lev. 12. 7), but M. plays on the higher sense of Christian salvation.
7.. yet once more See Lycidas 1n.
9.. all in white Cp. the Church as bride of Christ: ‘to her was granted that she should be arrayed in fine linen, clean and white: for the fine linen is the righteousness of saints’.
pure as her mind E. S. Le Comte (N&Q 1, 1954, 245–6) hears a pun on ‘Katherine’ (Greek katharos, ‘pure’).
10.. Her face was veiled like that of Alcestis; but M. (unlike Admetus) recognizes his wife in spite of the veil. M. was blind throughout his second marriage, so a veil would have special poignancy if Katherine were the poem’s subject. M. had seen her only with fancied sight (Smart).
13–14. But O… she fled M.’s failed embrace has numerous epic precedents, the closest being Aeneas’s three attempts to embrace the shade of his wife Creusa (Virgil, Aen. ii 789–95) and Achilles’ one attempt to embrace the shade of Patroclus, who appears to him in a dream (Homer, II. xxiii 99–107). Cp. also Od. xi 204–9 (Odysseus and his mother), Aen. vi 700–702 (Aeneas and Anchises), and Purg. ii 80–81 (Dante and Casella). Cp. also PL viii 478, where Eve ‘disappeared, and left [Adam] dark’. Adam wakes expecting to be alone, ‘When out of hope, behold her, not far off, / Such as I saw her in my dream’ (481–2).
14.. day brought back my night night and day are reversed for a blind man who sees only in his dreams.
The Fifth Ode of Horace
Date: guesses range from 1629 to 1655. Critics also disagree about the poem’s quality. Some find it stiff, but Martindale (42–6) sees signs of M.’s mature mastery. The only text is that of 1673.
1.. odours perfumes (OED 2).
8.. admire wonder at.
9.. credulous, all gold credulously believing that you are all gold (all beauty and virtue).
10. vacant without other lovers (modifying thee).
11. flattering of the weather: delusively encouraging hope (OED 2b). gales winds, possibly breezes (cp. PL iv 156).
13–14. vowed / Picture votive tablet, containing the poet’s image, and hung as a thanks-offering on the wall of Neptune’s temple. The poet is grateful for having survived the shipwreck of his love for Pyrrha.
15.. weeds clothing.
On the New Forcers of Conscience under the Long Parliament
Date: spring or summer 1646? In 1643 the Long Parliament had decided to replace episcopacy with a new form of Church government. Parliament established the Westminster Assembly of Divines to reorganize the Church. A large majority of the Assembly were Presbyterians. The Independent minority pleaded for the rights of the individual conscience, but the majority refused to grant liberty of dissent. The issue was debated from 1644 to 1646, both in the Assembly and in pamphlets. On 28 August 1646 Parliament established the ordination of ministers by Classical Presbyteries. M.’s poem was probably written in anticipation of that event, rather than as a response to it (see below, 15n).
The poem is a sonetto caudato (‘tailed sonnet’), M.’s only example of the form. M.’s sonnet has two ‘tails’, each consisting of a half-line and a couplet. Italian poets used tailed sonnets for humorous or satirical subjects. Texts: 1673 and TMS.
Title. The TMS title is ‘On the Forcers of Conscience’.
1.. thrown off Episcopacy was not formally abolished until 9 October 1646, but Parliament had resolved to abolish it in 1643, declaring that government by archbishops and bishops ‘is evil’ and shall ‘be taken away’.
lord Honigmann (197) hears a pun on ‘Laud’, referring to Archbishop William Laud.
2. renounced his liturgy The Assembly forbade use of the Book of Common Prayer in 1645.
3. widowed whore plurality Pluralism was the practice of securing income from more than one benefice at a time. Presbyterians had condemned Anglican ministers for the abuse, but were quick to practise it themselves.
4. abhorred playing on whore.
5. adjure entreat, with overtones of ‘impose an oath upon another’ (OED 1). civil sword authority of the state.
7.. ride tyrannize over.
classic referring to the classis or presbytery, a body of elders acting as a disciplinary court in the Presbyterian system. Presbyterians had called episcopacy ‘the hierarchy’, so classic hierarchy implies that there is little to choose between the two systems.
8.. A.S. Adam Stewart, a Scottish Presbyterian resident in London in the 1640s. He signed his pamphlets with his initials.
Rutherford Samuel Rutherford, one of four Scottish members on the Assembly of Divines.
11. named declared to be (OED 2c).
12. shallow] 1673; ‘hare-brained’ corr. to ‘shallow’ TMS.
Edwards Thomas Edwards, an English Presbyterian. He attacked M.’s divorce pamphlets in Gangraena (1646).
Scotch What-d’ye-call often identified (without evidence) as Robert Baillie, a Scottish Commissioner on the Assembly who had attacked M.’s divorce pamphlets in Dissuasive from the Errors of the Time (1645).
14.. packings] TMS; packing 1673. M. may mean packed votes or more general ‘fraudulent dealings’ (OED sb21).
Trent the Council of Trent (1545–63), notorious among all Protestants.
15.. Parliament The Presbyterians in Parliament had lost ground to the Independents between August 1645 and May 1646, so in the spring of 1646 M. had some cause to hope that Parliament might succour our just fears (18), even though Parliament had established the Westminster Assembly. On 21 April 1646 the Commons rebuked the Assembly and resolved that Parliament alone could grant or withhold toleration. M. may have hoped for more, but the Presbyterians began to recover their domination after 5 May 1646, when the King took refuge with the Scots. The Westminster Assembly was eventually abolished by the Rump Parliament on 22 February 1649.
17.. Clip your… ears] TMS at first had: ‘Crop ye as close as marginal P—’s ears’, thus clearly alluding to William Prynne, whose ears had twice been cropped (most recently, in 1637 for attacking the bishops). M. had once admired Prynne, but he became disillusioned when Prynne opposed toleration and M.’s divorce pamphlets (YP 2. 722–3).
phylacteries small boxes containing sacred scriptures, worn on the forehead by pious Jews; here (as in Matt. 23. 5) a metaphor for self-righteous ostentation.
balk pass over. Lines 15–17 mean: ‘so that Parliament will put an end to your pharisaical hypocrisy, though they won’t cut your ears off (as Laud would have done)’.
19. they Parliament. TMS at first had ‘you’.
20. *writ large written out in full (OED ‘large’ adv. 4). Etymologically, priest is a contracted form of Presbyter.
PSALM PARAPHRASES ADDED IN 1673
Psalms I–VIII
Date: 1653. M. translated these psalms from the Hebrew in 1653, when he had been blind for a year and a half. His blindness clearly influenced his rendering of Psalm VI 14, where he says his eye ‘is waxen old and dark’. No other versifier of this psalm uses the word ‘dark’. A.V. has ‘Mine eye is consumed’. The Terzetti of Psalm II are terza rima.
Psalms LXXX–LXXXVIII
M. translated these psalms in April 1648, when there was much controversy over the metrical psalter. M.’s marginal notes supply the literal Hebrew, or a translation of it, at points where his own translation paraphrases. The following notes attempt to elucidate M.’s notes.
Psalm LXXX
97–11. Awake Gnorera means ‘arouse’.
97–19. smoking wrath Gnashanta means ‘you are smoking’.
98–23. largely Shalish means ‘third of a measure’.
27–8. laugh… throw jfilgnagu means ‘mock’.
Psalm LXXXI
29.. in thunder deep Besether ragnam means ‘in the secret place of thunder’.
Psalm LXXXII
1.. great assembly Bagnadath-el means ‘assembly of God’.
3.. Among… hands Bekerev means ‘in the midst of.
5–6. pervert… wrong Tishphetu gnavel means ‘judge falsely’.
9–10. regard… cause Shiphtu-dal means ‘judge the poor’.
19–20. moved… out of order gone Jimmotu means ‘moved’.
25–6. ju
dge… redress Shophta means ‘judge’.
Psalm LXXXIII
5–6. swell… storm outrageously Jehemajun means ‘are in tumult’.
9–10. contrive… plots and counsels Jagnarimu Sod means ‘deliberate cunningly’.
11. Them to ensnare jfithjagnatsu gnal means ‘conspire against’.
12. Whom… hide and keep Tsephuneca means ‘your hidden things’.
17. with all their might Lev jachdau means ‘together with one heart’. 47–8. God’s houses… stately palaces M.’s note (Neoth Elohim bears both) means that the Hebrew phrase can be rendered by either English phrase. This is true of Elohim, which means ‘God’, and can also be used as a superlative. Neoth, however, means ‘pastures’ (as in Ps. 23).
Psalm LXXXVIII
31–2. Thou break’st… break me M.’s note (The Heb. bears both) claims that either line 31 or line 32 would be a correct translation. Only line 31 is correct.
59.. shake The meaning of the Hebrew word is disputed. M.’s Latin note (Prae Concussione) translates his own English text. The Hebrew word can be taken to mean ‘youth’, as in A.V. ‘from my youth up’.
UNCOLLECTED ENGLISH POEMS
The four sonnets included here express republican views and so may have been unpubhshable in 1673. All four appear in TMS (the text followed here). They were published (in a mangled form) after M.’s death in Letters of State (1694), edited by Edward Phillips. I have noted the 1694 variants only when they would significantly alter the meaning.
On the Lord General Fairfax at the Siege of Colchester
Date: July-August 1648. Sir Thomas Fairfax won many victories for Parliament in the Civil War. After commanding the right wing at Marston Moor (July 1644), he was made Commander-in-Chief of the New Model Army (January 1645). He crushed the King’s forces at Naseby (June 1645), capturing a Royalist standard with his own hands. In 1648 several concerted Royalist risings initiated the Second Civil War. Fairfax drove the Royalists out of Kent, and laid siege to Colchester (13 June). The town fell on 27 August. M.’s sonnet was evidently written after the Scots invaded England (8 July) and probably before news came of their defeat by Cromwell at Preston (17 August). Fairfax’s star waned in later months. Though a commissioner for the King’s trial, he disapproved of his execution, and resigned as Commander-in-Chief when he was ordered to lead the army against Charles II in 1650.