|$.IU"UU-liIlt>fl| p K 11 ill 3 5 5 2 rANDAHD LITERATURE SERIES iitiiiiitiiiiiiiiiitiiiiiiiiiiiHiii ip'ii! ! I IW I 1 Allep'ro, Lvcidas Pe*isero -o. Com us "Ss Class P£3S - Book OL I Copyright N°. COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. John Milton STANDARD LITERATURE SERIES SELECTED POEMS OF JOHN MILTON L' ALLEGRO, COMUS, IL PENSEROSO, LYCIDAS EDITED WITH AN INTRODUCTION AND NOTES BY CLARA H. WHITMORE, A.M. TEACHER OF ENGLISH IN THE CURTIS HIGH SCHOOL NEW YORK CITY UNIVERSITY PUBLISHING COMPANY NEW YORK • BOSTON . NEW ORLEANS ^$ ' LIBRARY of CONGRESS Two Conies Hycaivdrf AUG 24 «90f Copyright Entry CLASSY XXc./f*o. /S^2S3 COPY Q. ^ CONTENTS. PAGE INTRODUCTION— Life of Milton 9 Versification 31 Suggestions to Teachers 42 L'ALLEGRO 44 IL PENSEROSO 52 COMUS 60 LYCIDAS 103 INTRODUCTION. THE LIFE OF MILTON. John Milton was born in Bread Street, Cheapside, London, December 9, 1608. His grandfather, Richard Milton, was a yeoman of Stanton St. John, a little village about five miles from Oxford. He was so ardent a Catholic, that he disin- herited his son John, the poet's father, for reading the Bible in English. This son went up to London, where he be- came an attorney and law stationer, and by his industry, soon amassed a substantial fortune. But of more importance to the poet was the fact that his father was a man of broad culture, who had won consider- able fame as a musical composer. Milton, in a Latin poem, Ad Patrem, pays this tribute to his father : Now say, what wonder is it if a son Of thine delight in verse, if so conjoined In close affinity, we sympathize In social arts and kindred studies sweet ? Such distribution of himself to us Was Phoebus' choice ; thou hast thy gift and Mine also ; and between us we receive, Father and son, the whole inspiring god. My Father ! who, when I had opened once The stores of Roman rhetoric, and learned The full-toned language of the eloquent Greeks, Whose lofty music graced the lips of Jove, Tli3*self didst counsel me to add the flowers That Gallia boasts, those, too, with which the smooth Italian his degenerate speech adorns, That witnesses his mixture with the Goth ; And Palestine's prophetic songs divine. Cooper's Translation. 9 10 MILTON. Milton passed his early life amid the refinements of his own home. He received part of his education from a Scottish preacher, Thomas Young, and part at the famous school of St. Paul's, which he attended as a day pupil. Here he formed the friendship with Charles Diodati, his letters to whom furnish such an intimate picture of the poet. In 1625, while Milton was in his seventeenth year, he entered Christ's College, Cambridge, where he remained seven years, receiving the degrees of B.A. and M.A During these years, Milton wrote many verses worthy of his genius, among them being the Ode on the Morning of Christ's Nativity. At this time, Milton thus wrote to his friend, Charles Diodati : " But the man who speaks of high matters — the heaven of the full-grown Jove, and pious heroes, and demigod leaders of men, the man who now sings the holy counsels of the gods above, and now the subterranean realms guarded by the fierce dog — let him live sparely, after the manner of the Samian master ; let herbs afford him his innocent diet, let clear water in a beechen cup stand near him, and let him drink sober draughts from a pure fountain ! To this be there added a youth chaste and free from guilt, and rigid morals, and hands without stain. Being such thou shalt rise up, glittering in sacred raiment, and purified by lustral waters, an augur, about to go into the presence of the un- offended gods. " For the poet is sacred and the priest of the gods ; and his heart and his mouth breathe the indwelling Jove. " And now, if you will know what I am myself doing (if indeed you think it is of so much consequence to know if I am doing anything), here is the fact : we are engaged in sing- ing the heavenly birth of the King of Peace, and the happy INTRODUCTION. 31 age promised by the holy books, and the infant cries and cradling in a manger under a poor roof of that God who rules, with his Father, the Kingdom of Heaven, and the sky with the new-sprung star in it, and the ethereal choirs of hymning angels, and the gods of the heathen suddenly fleeing to their endangered fanes. This is the gift which we have presented to Christ's natal day." But at this time of his life, Milton seems not to have ful- filled his own expectations or those of his friends, and in the following sonnet he laments the slow ripening of his powers : ON HIS BEING ARRIVED TO THE AGE OF TWENTY- THREE. How soon hath Time, the subtle thief of youth, Stol'n on his wing my three and twentieth year ! My hasting days fly on with full career, But my late spring no bud or blossom shew'th. Perhaps my semblance might deceive the truth, That I to manhood am arriv'd so near, And inward ripeness doth much less appear, That some more timely-happy spirits indu'th. Yet be it less or more, or soon or slow, It shall be still in strictest measure even To that same lot, however mean or high, Toward which Time leads me, and the will of Heaven. All is, if I have grace to use it so, As ever in my great Task-master's eye. In 1632, Milton left the University and retired to Horton, a little village about twenty miles from London, near Windsor. Here he wrote many of his minor poems. Al- though the spirit of these poems is Puritan, yet they show how deeply Milton's mind was imbued with the Greek and Roman classics. He gave to two of his poems, L' Allegro and II Penseroso, Italian names, but modern Italy and France had but little hold upon his imagination. But even at 12 MILTON. this time, while dominated by the influence of Greek and Roman literature, Milton was essentially English, and traces of his reading of English authors can be constantly found in the poems of this period. In September, 1687, just before the writing of Lycidas,. Milton wrote from Horton to his friend Diodati : " What besides God has resolved concerning me, I know not, but this at least : He has instilled into me, if into any one, a vehement love of the beautiful. Not with so much labor, as the fables have it, is Ceres said to have sought her daughter Proserpina, as it is my habit day and night to seek for this idea of the beautiful, as for a certain image of supreme- beauty, through all the forms and faces of things (for many are the shapes of things divine), and to follow it as it leads me on by some sure traces which I seem to recognize. "But now I know you wish to have your curiosity satisfied. You make many anxious enquiries as to what I am at present thinking of. Hearken, Theodotus, but let it be in thy private ear, lest I blush ; and allow me for a little to use big language with you. You ask Avhat I am think- ing of ? So may the good deity help me, of immortality. " Milton's mother died in 1637. He then became anxious- to travel on the Continent. With letters of introduction to many persons of rank and learning, and attended by one servant, he visited Paris, Nice, Genoa, Leghorn, Pisa, Florence, Siena, Rome, and Naples. Again we can turn to Milton's own writings for an account of his travels and their conclusion : " When I was preparing to pass over into Sicily and Greece, the melancholy intelligence which I received of the civil commotions in England made me alter my purpose * for I thought it base to be travelling for amusement abroad,, INTRODUCTION. 13 while my fellow-citizens were fighting for liberty at home. While I was on my way back to Rome, some merchants informed me that the English Jesuits had formed a plot against me, if I returned to Rome, because I had spoken too freely on religion ; for it was a rule which I laid down to myself in those places, never to be the first to begin any conversation on religion ; but if any question were put to me concerning my faith, to declare it without any reserve or fear. I nevertheless returned to Rome. I took no steps to conceal either my person or my character ; and for about the space of two months, I again openly defended, as I had done before, the reformed religion in the very metropolis of popery. By the favour of God, I got safe back to Florence, where I was received with as much affection as if I had returned to my native country." After visiting Venice, Milan and Geneva, Milton returned to England, having been gone a little over a year. There is no grander renunciation in history than that made at this time by Milton. He had consecrated his life to postry, and was not only dreaming of immortality, but was conscious of the power within himself to win it. But greater than his love for the beautiful, was the love of liberty ; and greater than his love of art was his love for his country. For twenty years, he devoted all the strength of his genius to the cause of English freedom. He says of this period of his life : " I saw that a Avay was opening for the establishment of real liberty ; that the foundation was laying for the deliver- ance of man from the yoke of slavery and superstition ; that the principles of religion, which were the first object of our care, Avould exert a salutary influence on the manners and constitution of the republic ; and as I had from my youth studied the distinctions between religious and civil rights, I perceived that if I ever wished to be of use, I ought 14 MILTON. at least not to be wanting to my country, to the Church and to so many of my fellow-Christians, in a crisis of so much clanger ; I therefore determined to relinquish the other pursuits in which I was engaged, and to transfer the whole force of my talents and my industry to this one important object." Early at this time, however, when Milton had taken his stand with the Parliamentarians against the King, in 1643, at the age of thirty-five, he married Mary Powell, aged seventeen, the daughter of a Royalist. After a month's residence in Milton's home she suddenly left him and returned to her father's house. Whether she found the life in a Puritan household too austere, or whether her people feared that they would lose influence at Court through a son-in-law who was a pronounced enemy of the King, is not known. But Milton, thus abandoned by his wife, wrote a pamphlet entitled : " The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce Restored, to the Good of Both Sexes." This brought him into disfavor with his own party, and he was denounced as a heretic by his former friends. So little influenced was Milton by the storm his pamphlet had raised, that he was about to put his theories into practice and marry a second time, when, after an absence of two years, his wife returned to him. His treatise on Divorce was followed by a Tract on Educa- tion, and this by his " Areopagitica, a Speech for the Liberty of Unlicensed Printing," in which he made a strong appeal against the censorship of the press. When Charles I. was executed in 1649, Milton at once adhered to the Republic, and published a pamphlet with this heading: "Tenure of Kings and Magistrates, proving that it is lawful, and hath been held so through all ages, for any who have the power to call to account a Tyrant or Wicked King, and, after due conviction, to depose and put him to INTRODUCTION. 15 death, if the ordinary magistrate have neglected to do it." Soon after this, Milton was appointed Latin Secretary to the Commonwealth, a position which he held until the Res- toration. His most important work while holding this office, was his Defensio pro Populo Anglicano, Defence of the English People, written in Latin, in reply to an attack made upon the English Commonwealth by a Leyden professor, Sal- masius, in which he arraigned the English people for regicide. Milton's reply was so powerful that it spread his fame throughout Europe. This last, however, was fraught with serious result to Milton ; for he wrote it while his eyesight was failing, and in 1G52, the year following its publication, he became totally blind. One of the most beautiful of his sonnets was written not long after he had lost his sight. ON HIS BLINDNESS. When I consider how my light is spent Ere half my days, in this dark world and wide, And that one talent which is death to hide, Lodg'd with me useless, though my soul more bent To serve therewith my Maker, and present My true account, lest he returning chide ; " Doth God exact day-labour, light denied ? " I fondly ask : But Patience, to prevent That murmur, soon replies, " God doth not need Either man's work, or his own gifts. Who best Bear his mild yoke, they serve him best : his state Is kingly ; thousands at his bidding speed, And post o'er land and ocean without rest ; They also serve who only stand and wait." In 1653, Milton's wife died, leaving him with three daughters, the eldest not eight years old. In 1656, he mar- ried Catherine Woodcock, who died in childbirth only fifteen months after her marriage. His beautiful sonnet to her, shows the esteem with which he regarded her: Ifi MILTON. ON HIS DECEASED WIFE. Me thought I saw my late espoused saint Brought to me like Alcestis from the grave. Whom Jove's great son to her glad hushand gave, Rescued from death by force though pale and faint. Mine, as whom washed from spot of child-bed taint Purification in the old Law did save, And such as yet once more I trust to have Full sight of her in heaven without restraint, Came vested all in white, pure as her mind. Her face was veiled ; yet to my fancied sight Love, sweetness, goodness, in her person shined So clear as in no face with more delight. But oh ! as to embrace me she inclined, I waked, she fled, and day brought back my night. After the Restoration of Charles II. to the throne of England, Milton thought it wise to remain for a time in con- cealment. He must have had many powerful friends in Par- liament at this time, for in some miraculous manner, he escaped punishment. Masson says of this : "The wonder is that, at the Restoration, Milton was rot hanged. At a time when they brought to the scaffold all the chief living Regicides and their accomplices that were within reach, including even Hugh Peters, and when they dug up Cromwell's body and hanged it at Tyburn, and tore also from the earth at Westminster the body of Crom- well's mother and other Cromwellian bodies that had been buried there with honor, the escape of Milton, the supreme defender of the Regicides through the press, the man who had attacked the memory of Charles I., with a ferocity which even some of the actual Regicides must have thought unne- cessary and outrageous, is all but inexplicable." When he was fifty-four years old, Milton married his third wife, Elizabeth Minshull. She seems to have brought peace and happiness into his disordered household Four INTRODUCTION. 17 years later, in 1G67, his great epic, Paradise Lost, was published. Once more Milton became the hero of the hour. Even his bitterest enemies realized that a poet of the rank of Homer and Dante was living among them. The following lines of P. L., vi. 29-37, to one of the seraphim, are auto- biographical : Servant of God, well done ! Well hast thou fought The better fight, who single hast maintained Against revolted multitudes the cause Of truth, in word mightier than they in arms, And for the testimony of truth hast borne Universal reproach, far worse to bear Than violence ; for this was all thy care — To stand approved in sight of God, though worlds Judged thee perverse. This epic was followed by Paradise Regained, and Samson Agonistes. In the blind Samson, the foe to the Philistines, Milton himself saw many resemblances to his own life. Milton died in Nov. 1674, and was buried beside his father in the Church of St. Giles, Cripplegate. The following lines by Dryden, poet laureate at the time, show how Milton was regarded at his death : MILTON'S ACHIEVEMENT. Three poets in three distant ages born, Greece, Italy, and England did adorn. The first in loftiness of thought surpassed ; The next in majesty ; in both the last. The force of nature could no further go. To make a third, she joined the former two. JOHN DRYDEN. 18 MILTON. *^ eS CD Ph B •d rtl S- o JS t— i H co O cS 6 a; "o >a a M p ^3 a CO n E - to e3 a eS £3 B Bt 43 SlJ CJ a 3> *""■ CD u CD > & CO E£ o a* *S •5? * o u c« J be'- ce -a o . o ~ O 0) o CD OJt-i > o o- 9) 3 o &o ce u Co bCCD ce 3 bX-3 -d-g-2 c ; .2 ^3 o • CD -3 •a Ph . . fcT; .2 -. a'5 -; CD 43 a a CD 43 S -d CD H o-e s-o (h a o CO a o •-a o o •°5 * - KfM « CD .5 CD tO S 4* E-* £ o e ce > o 0) E G ■d o CD ^2 t3 a a £ o 43 a 0) -a CD w CD U bfi _a 3 o a >> O a o a eg js ° O •-9 o3 3 t* CD CD 3 CCO)cZ2»J WW Q O Ph 02 oa e? ed eo id ^95 ,_; CO t- c* c? CO 00 s §s s s co COCO to ■-C CO a < O -a o 43 CD CD CD cS ^ 0) E o -3 42 xn CD -d -d S^ »-H O a-d , c3 a oa . b.8 <» I'd c O Ph i — • ; co •* a> oo i oo oo oo co i CO CO -o o ® be £ c3 O Cu c«Ji^ S o a' gHO ^W 52 a <1 o ."a 3 ^ p!j Pico Ph — 'a .2 CD o' co — o_ CJ cc JJil C CJ 95*2 CD cu >g.2 b«'ce r 2 ^ ce cd cdU ce co bca O CD O CD CD^ co to 3 INTRODUCTION. -^ Milton ! thou shouldst be living at this hour : England hath need of thee : she is a fen Of stagnant waters: altar, sword, and pen, Fireside, the heroic wealth of hall and bower, Have forfeited their ancient English dower Of inward happiness. We are selfish men ; O, raise ns up, return to us again ; And give us manners, virtue, freedom, power ! Thy soul was like a Star, and dwelt apart : Thou hadst a voice whose sound was like the sea ; Pure as the naked heavens, majestic, free, So didst thou travel on life's common way, In cheerful godliness ; and yet thy heart The lowliest duties on herself did lay. William Wordsworth, O mighty-mouth'd inventor of harmonies, O skill'd to sing of Time or Eternity, God-gifted organ-voice of England, Milton, a name to resound for ages, Whose Titan angels, Gabriel, Abdiel, Starr'd from Jehovah's gorgeous armouries, Tower, as the deep-domed empyrean Rings to the roar of an angel onset— Me rather all that bowery loneliness, The brooks of Eden mazily murmuring, And bloom profuse and cedar arches Charm, as a wanderer out in ocean, Where some refulgent sunset of India Streams o'er a rich ambrosial ocean isle, And crimson-hued the stately palm woods Whisper in odorous heights of even. Alfred Tennyson, He left the upland lawns and serene air Wherefrom his soul her noble nurture drew, And reared his helm among the unquiet crew Battling beneath ; the morning radiance rare Of his young brow amid the tumult there Grew grim with sulphurous dust and sanguine clew ; 20 MILTON. Yet through all soilure they who marked him knew The signs of his life's dayspring, calm and fair. But when peace came, peace fouler far than war, And mirth more dissonant than battle's tone, He, with a scornful sign of his clear soul, Back to his mountain clomb, now bleak and frore, And with the awful night he dwelt alone, In darkness, listening to the thunder's roll. Ernest Myers. In the Allegro and Penseroso we have poetry in its most qniet intellectual essence, neither elevated into song by the lyric passion, nor recommended to non-poetic tastes by the occasional interfusion of pungent particles of doctrine. They belong, on the whole, to the idyllic or sensuous-ideal class of compositions, in which we see the poet relaxing himself for his own pleasure in the calmest possible exercise of his peculiar intellectual habit. In few poems in our lan- guage could the nature of the purely poetic or imaginative mode of cogitation be better studied ; and, in the fact that these two poems of such pure and unperturbed phantasy were written by Milton at this particular period of his life, we seem to have an indication that, in his retirement to Horton, he felt himself induced by his new circumstances to lay to sleep for the time certain dogmatic elements in his constitution, which had necessarily appeared in his conduct and in his writings amid the bustle of the University, and to cultivate, in his own compositions, though not exclusively in his reading, the one dear gift which he preferred of all his endowments. Massox, Life of John Milton, vol. I, p. 457. So far as the scenery in the Allegro and Penseroso is taken from any one place, the credit may be given to Horton and its neighborhood. In the morning scene in the Allegro, nearly all the details of the landscape are such as Horton would furnish to this day ; and though other localities in INTRODUCTION. 21 southern England would furnish most of them quite as well, one or two might be claimed by Horton as not so common. The "towers and battlements" "Bosomed high in tufted trees," are almost evidently Windsor Castle ; and a characteristic morning sound at Horton to this day, we are told, is that of " the hounds and horn " from Windsor Park, when the royal huntsmen are out. That Milton, however, did not adhere and did not mean to adhere to local truth of detail, — in other words, that the poem was intended not as the description of any actual scene, but as the generalized visual illustration of a mood, and so as something higher in kind than any mere description, — is seen from his Mountains, on whose barren breast The laboring clouds do often rest," — a feature for which the scenery of Horton furnishes no original. So, in the Penseroso, the sound of the distant roar of the sea is, as regards any part of Buckinghamshire, equally ideal The Gothic cathedral, in whose cloisters the pensive man walks in the morning, is also, of course, an addition to Horton from recollections of other places. With these exceptions, the landscape of the Penseroso may be that of the Allegro made melancholy by moonlight. Masson, Life of Milton, vol. I, p. 459. COMUS. A castle in massive ruins, situated on a rocky height, and commanding, especially to the north, a beautiful and ex- tensive prospect, and, adjoining this castle, though separated from it by a wall, a town of clean, and somewhat (plaint streets, descending the gentle slopes of the hill or winding at its base, and crowned by a large and lofty parish church — such is Ludlow now ; and such was Ludlow two hundred and thirty years ago, save that then the castle was not in 22 MILTON. ruins, that there were barracks for soldiers in the court- yard, and that the town exhibited the bustle attendant on the presence in it of the Lord President and his retinue. The castle is now a crumbling ruin, along the ivy-clad walls and through the dark passages of which the visitor clambers or gropes his way, disturbing the crows and the martlets in their recesses ; but one can stand yet in the door- way through which the parting guests of that night de- scended into the inner court ; and one can see where the stage was, on which the sister was lost by her brothers, and Comus revelled with his crew, and the lady was fixed as marble by enchantment, and Sabrina arose with her water- nymphs, and the swains danced in welcome of the earl, and the Spirit gloriously ascended to its native heavens. More mystic it is to leave the ruins, and, descending one of the Avinding streets that lead from the castle into the valley of the Teme, to look upwards to castle and town seen as one picture, and, marking more expressly the three long pointed windows that gracefully slit the chief face of the wall to- wards the north, to realize that it was from that ruin, and from those windows in the ruin, that the verse of Comus Avas first shook into the air of England. " Masson's Life of Milton, pp. 482-497. But it is in Comus that, if I have any skill of criticism, Milton's poetical power is at its greatest height. Those who judge poetry on the ground of bulk, or of originality of theme, or of anything else extra-poetical, — much more those (the greater number) who simply vary transmitted ideas, — may be scandalized at this assertion, but that will hardly matter much. And indeed the indebtedness of Comus in point of subject (it is probably limited to the Odyssey, which . is public property, and to George Peele's Old Wives'' Tale, which gave little but a few hints of story) INTRODUCTION. 93 is scarcely greater than that of Paradise Lost ; while the form of the drama, a kind nearly as venerable and majestic as that of the epic, is completely filled. And in Comns there is none of the stiffness, none of the longueurs, none of the almost ludicrous want of humour, which mar the larger poem. Humour indeed was what Milton always lacked; had he had it, Shakespeare himself might hardly have been greater. The plan is not really more artificial than that of the epic ; though in the latter case it is masked to us by the scale, by the grandeur of the personages, and by the familiarity of the images to all men who have been brought up on the Bible. The versification, as even Johnson saw, is the versification of Paradise Post, and to my fancy at any rate it has a spring, a variety, a sweep and rush of genius, which are but rarely present later. As for its beauty in parts, quis vituperavit? It is impossible to single out passages, for the whole is golden. The entering address of Com us, the song " Sweet Echo," the descriptive speech of the Spirit, and the magnificent eulogy of the " sun-clad power of chastity," would be the most beautiful things where all is beautiful, if the unapproachable " Sabrina fair " did not come later, and were not sustained before and after, for nearly two hundred lines of pure nectar. If poetry could be taught by the reading of it, then indeed the critic's advice to a poet might be limited to this: "Give your days and nights to the reading of Comus. Saixtsbury's hlizabeihtown Literature. LYCIDAS. Of all Milton's smaller poems, P^ijoidas is the greatest favourite with me. I cannot agree to the charge which Dr. Johnson has brought against it of pedantry and Avant of feeling. It is the fine emanation of classical sentiment in a youthful scholar — "most musical, most melancholy." A 24, MILTON. certain tender gloom overspreads it, a wayward abstraction, a forgetfulness of his subject in the serious reflections that arise out of it. The gusts of passion come and go like the sounds of music borne on the wind. The loss of the friend whose death the lament seems to have recalled, with double force, the reality of those speculations which they had in- dulged together ; we are transported to classic ground, and a mysterious strain steals responsive on the ear, while we listen to the poet, " With eager thought warbling liis Doric lay.'' I shall proceed to give a few passages at length in support of my opinion. The first I shall quote is as remarkable for the truth and sweetness of the natural descriptions as for the characteristic elegance of the allusions. [Lines 25-49 quoted.] After the line apostrophe on Fame which Phoebus is in- volved to utter, the poet proceeds : [Lines 85-99 quoted.] If this is art, it is perfect art ; nor do w r e wish for anything better. The measure of the verse, the very sound of the names, would almost produce the effect here described. To ask the poet not to make use of such allusions as these is to ask the painter not to dip in the colours of the rainbow, if he could. — In fact, it is the common cant of criticism to consider every allusion to the classics, and particularly in a mind like Milton's, as pedantry and affec- tation. Habit is a second nature ; and, in this sense, the pedantry (if it is to be so called) of the scholastic enthusiast, who is constantly referring to images of which his mind is full, is as graceful as it is natural. It is not affectation in him to recur to ideas and modes of expression with which he has the strongest associations, and in which he takes the greatest delight. Milton was as conversant with the world of genius before him as with the world of nature about him; the fables of the ancient mythology were as familiar INTRODUCTION. 25 to him as his dreams. To be a pedant is to see neither the beauties of nature nor of art. Milton saw both; and he made use of the one only to adorn and give interest to the oilier, lie was a passionate admirer of nature; and, in a single couplet of his, describing the moon, — " Like one that had been led astray Through the heaven's wide pathless way,"— there is more intense observation, and intense feeling of nature (as if he had gazed himself blind in looking at her,) than in twenty volumes of descriptive poetry. But he added in his own observation of nature the splendid fictions of ancient genius, enshrined her in the mysteries of ancient religion, and celebrated her with the pomp of ancient names. Hazlitt's Lectures on th>> English Poets. And now, merely for example's sake, I will, with your permission, read a few lines of a true book with you care- fully, and see what will come out of them. I will take a book perfectly known to you all. No English words are more familiar to us, yet few perhaps have been read with less sincerity. I will take these few following lines of " Lycidas " :— " Last came, and last did go, The pilot of the Galilean lake. Two massy keys he bore of metals twain, (The golden opes, the iron shuts amain,) He shook his mitred locks, and stern bespake : ' How well could I have spared for thee, young swain, Enow of such as for their bellies' sake Creep, and intrude, and climb into the fold ! Of other care they little reckoning make Than how to scramble at the shearers' feast, And shove away the worthy bidden guest ; Blind mouths ! that scarce themselves know how to hold A sheep-hook, or have learned aught else, the least That to the faithful herdsman's art belongs ! What recks it them ? What need they ? They are sped ; 26 MILTON. Arid when they list, their lean and flashy songs Grate on their scrannel pipes of wretched straw. The hungry sheep look up, and are not fed, But swoln with wind, and the rank mist they draw, Rot inwardly, and foul contagion spread, Besides what the grim wolf with privy paw Daily devours apace, and nothing said.'" Let us think over this passage, and examine its words. First, is it not singular to find Milton assigning to Saint Peter not only his full episcopal function, but the very- types of it which Protestants usually refuse most passion- ately ? His " mitred " locks ! Milton was no bishop-lover ; how comes Saint Peter to be " mitred " ? " Two massy keys he bore." Is this, then, the power of the keys claimed by the bishops of Rome, and is it acknowledged here by Milton only in a poetical license, for the sake of its picturesqueness, that he may get the gleam of the golden keys to help his effect ? Do not think it. Great men do not play stage tricks with the doctrines of life and death ; only little men do that. Milton means what he says, and means it with his might, too, — is going to put the whole strength of his spirit presently into the saying of it. For though not a lover of false bishops, he was a lover of true ones ; and the Lake-pilot is here, in his thoughts, the type and head of true episcopal power. For Milton reads that text, " I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of Heaven " quite honestly. Puritan though he be, he would not blot it out of the book because there have been bad bishops, — nay, in order to understand him, we must under- stand that verse first ; it will not do to eye it askance, or whisper it under our breath, as if it were a weapon of an adverse sect. It is a solemn, universal assertion, deeply to be kept in mind by all sects. But perhaps we shall be better able to reason on it if Ave go a little farther, and come back to it. For clearly this marked insistence on the power of the true episcopate is to make us feel more weightily INTRODUCTION. 27 what is to be charged against the false claimants of epis- copate, or generally, against false claimants of power and rank in the body of the clergy, they who " for their bellies' sake creep, and intrude, and climb into the fold." Never think Milton uses those three words to fill up his verse, as a loose writer would. He needs all the three, — specially those three, and no more than those, — " creep " and "intrude" and "climb"; no other words would or could serve the turn, and no more could be added. For they exhaustively comprehend the three classes, corre- spondent to the three characters, of men who dishonestly seek ecclesiastical power. First, those who " creep " into the fold, who do not care for office, nor name, but for secret influence, and do all things occultly and cunningly, consent- ing to any servility of office or conduct, so only that they may intimately discern, and unawares direct, the minds of men. Then those who "intrude" (thrust, that is) them- selves into the fold, who by natural insolence of heart, and stout eloquence of tongue, and fearlessly perse ve rant self- assertion, obtain hearing and authority with the common crowd. Lastly, those who "climb," who, by labor and learn- ing both stout and sound, but selfishly exerted in the cause of their own ambition, gain high dignities and authorities, and become " lords over the heritage," though not " en- samples to the flock." Now go on : " Of other care they little reckoning make Than how to scramble at the shearers' feast. Blind mouths — " I pause again, for this is a strange expression, — a broken metaphor, one might think, careless and unscholarly. Not so ; its very audacity and pithiness are intended to make us look close at the phrase and remember it. Those two monosyllables express the precisely accurate contraries S MILTON. of right character in the two great offices of the Church, — those of bishop and pastor. A "bishop" means "a person who sees." A "pastor" means "a person who feeds. 11 The most unhishoply character a man can have is there- fore to he blind. The most unpastoral is, instead of feeding, to want to be fed, — to be a mouth. Take the two reverses together, and you have "blind mouths." We may advisably follow out this idea a little. Nearly all the evils in the Church have arisen from bishops desiring power more than light. They want authority, not outlook ; whereas their real office is not to rule, though it may be vigorously to exhort and rebuke. It is the king's office to rule ; the bishop's office is to oversee the flock, to number it, sheep by sheep, to be ready always to give full account of it. Now, it is clear lie cannot give account of the souls, if he has not so much as numbered the bodies, of his flock. The first tiling, therefore, that a bishop has to do is at least to put himself in a position in which, at any mo- ment, he can obtain the history, from childhood, of every living soul in his diocese, and of its present state. Down in that back street, Bill and Nancy knocking each other's teeth out, — does the bishop know all about it? Has he his eye upon them? Has he had his eye upon them ? Can he circumstantially explain to us how Bill got into the habit of beating Nancy about the head? If he cannot, he is no bishop^ though he had a mitre as high as Salisbury steeple; he is no bishop, — he has sought to be at the helm instead of the masthead ; he has no sight of things. " Nay," you say, " it is not his duty to look after Bill in the back street." What ! the fat sheep that have full fleeces, — you think it is only those he should look after while (go back to your Milton) " the hungry sheep look up, and are not fed, besides what the grim wolf, with privy INTRODUCTION. 29 paw" (bishops knowing nothing about it) "d:iily devours apace, and nothing said " ? k * But that's not our idea of a bishop." Perhaps not ; but it was St. Paul's, and it was Milton's. They may be right, or we may be; but we must not think we arc reading either one or the other by putting our meaning into their words. I go on. " But swoln with wind, and the rank mist they draw." This is to meet the vulgar answer that "if the poor are not looked after in their bodies, they are in their souls; they have spiritual food." And Milton says, "They have no such thing as spiritual food ; they are only swollen with wind." At first you may think that is a coarse type, and an obscure one. But again, it is a quite literally accurate one. Take up your Latin and Greek dictionaries and find out the meaning of " Spirit." It is only a contraction of the Latin word " breath," and an indistinct translation of the Greek word for " wind." The same word is used in writing, "The wind bloweth where it listeth," and in writing, " So is every one that is born in the Spirit; " born of the breath, that is, for it means the breath of God in soul and body. We have the true sense of it in our words " inspiration" and " expire." Now, there are two kinds of breath with which the flock may be filled, — God's breath and man's. The breath of God is health and life and peace to them, as the air of heaven is to the flocks on the hills; but man's breath — the word which he calls spiritual — is disease and contagion to them, as the fog of the fen. They rot inwardly with it ; they are putted up by it, as a dead body by the vapors of its own decompo- sition. This is literally true of all false religious teaching; the first and last and fatalest sign of it is that " puffing up." Your converted children, who teach their parents; your converted convicts, who teach honest men; your con- 30 MILTON. verte dunces, who, having lived in cretinous stupefaction half their lives, suddenly awaking to the fact of there being a God, fancy themselves therefore His peculiar people and messengers ; your sectarians of every species, small and great, Catholic or Protestant, of High Church or Low, in so far as they think themselves exclusively in the right and others wrong ; and pre-eminently, in every sect, those who hold that men can be saved by thinking rightly instead of* doing rightly, by work instead of act, and wish instead of work, — these are the true fog children ; clouds, these, with- out water ; bodies, these, of putrescent vapor and skin without blood or flesh, blown bagpipes for the fiends to pipe with, corrupt and corrupting, " Swoln with wind, and the rank mist they draw," Lastly, let us return to the lines respecting the power of the keys, for now we can understand them. Note the dif- ference between Milton and Dante, in their interpretation of this power ; for once the latter is weaker in thought. He supposes both the keys to be of the gate of heaven ; one is of gold, the other of silver. They are given by Saint Peter to the sentinel angel ; and it is not easy to determine the meaning either of the substances of the three steps of the gate, or of the two keys. But Milton makes one, of gold, the key of heaven, the other, of iron, the key of the prison in which the wicked teachers are to be bound avIio "have taken away the key of knowledge, yet entered not in themselves." We have seen that the duties of bishop and pastor are to see and feed, and of all who do so it is said, " He that water- eth, shall be watered also himself." But the reverse is truth also. He that watereth not, shall be withered himself ; and he that seeth not, shall himself be shut out of sight, — shut into the perpetual prison-house. And that prison opens here as well as hereafter ; he who is to be bound in heaven must first be bound on earth. That command to INTRODUCTION. 31 the strong angels, of which the rock-apostle is the image, " Take him, and land him hand and foot, and cast him out," issues, in its measure, against the teacher, for every help withheld, and for every truth refused, and for every false- hood enforced ; so that he is more strictly fettered the more he fetters, and farther outcast as he more and more mis- leads, till at last the bars of the iron cage close upon him, and as " the golden opes, the iron shuts amain." Ruskin's Sesame and Lilies. VERSIFICATION. There is music in speech as well as in song. Poetry is superior to prose in so far as it has this additional quality of music. Milton knew how to play upon this instrument of English language, and to bring from it sounds as varied as Orpheus could strike from his lyre or St. Cecilia could draw from her organ. He knew the musical quality hidden in words better even than Shakespeare. The student of Milton cannot comprehend the beauty of his poetry, nor the genius of the poet, without studying the art of Milton's ver- sification. " There are five requisites to English poetry : accent, the cassural pause, number of syllables to the line, quantity, and the adaptation of words to sense. These will be considered in their due order. In all speech, there is rhythm, or a succession of accented and unaccented syllables. This is true of prose as well as of poetry, as can be shown by marking the accented syllables of any printed page, or by observing the stressed syllables in ordinary conversation. In English poetry, accented and unaccented syllables follow each other in regular succession according to established laws. The verse is the unit in poetry. A verse is one poetic line, so called from the Latin verb, verto (pp. versus), to 32 MILTON. turn, since at the end of the line, the reader turns hack while prose comes from Latin prosus, straight ahead. Each verse is made up of a certain number of parts called feet. A foot consists of two or three syllables. Feet are divided into seven classes, depending upon the number of syllables, and place of accent. An iambus is a foot of two syllables with the accent on the last, as forlorn. About live sixths of all English poetry is written in the iambic measure. A trochee is a foot of two syllables with the accent on the first, as blackest. A 8}><>ubserve the abrupt transition. 32 lawn. ,k Laund, or lawn, in a park, plain untilled ground." Kersey's Diet. e