From The Modern Review. THE Completion of Professor Masson's can never be enlisted in favor of any scheme which does not rest upon the The Life of John Milton: Narrated in Connection with the Political, Ecclesiastical, and Literary History of his Time. By David Masson, M.A., LL.D., Professor of Rhetoric and English Literature in the University of Edinburgh. 6 vols., 1859-1880. London: Macmillan and Co. broadest grounds of personal liberty of both thought and action; and the time is fast approaching when an unlimited universality will be acknowledged as the only possible area for the exhibition of Milton's genius. As soon as he emerged from the strife of parties and the odium of the Restoration, his poetical genius was acknowledged on all sides, and his name placed second in the roll of English poets. His col A century later, when men looked back to the English Commonwealth for the rise of the principles of civil and religious liberty, Milton's political writings attracted the attention they deserved. lected prose works were first published in 1698, with Toland's biography prefixed. These volumes are folios, and though bearing the name of Amsterdam on their title-pages, were really printed in London. Birch's editions followed in 1738 and 1753; and Dr. Symmons's edition, with a translation of the "Defensio Secunda " by Robert Fellowes, M.A., was published in 1806, in seven handsome 8vo volumes, with a life by Dr. Symmons, in many respects, and from a Whig-Revolution point of view, very admirable. A popular edition appeared in 1838 with a fine "Introductory Review," by Robert Fletcher; and now the whole of the prose works, including Bishop Sumner's translation of the "Treatise on Christian Doctrine," forms part of Bohn's Standard Library. It may, therefore, be fairly said that the a literature in body of Milton's works themselves is in every library, and is an element in the intellectual life-blood of England. Still, there is one characteristic feature of Milton's mind which removes him from the admiration and sympathy of a considerable section of the religious world. This is his rigid, anti-sacerdotal spirit. Milton is essentially Protestant, and, therefore, repugnant to all ritualists, whether Roman or Anglican. Even our great statesman, whose Homeric studies have won for him a high place in literature, cannot give ungrudging welcome to Milton. Homer and Shakespeare claim universal homage without limitation or Milton is both a Puritan and a reserve. heretic, and draws from his countrymen | did not begin until after his return, in the a less complete, though perhaps an in- July of 1639, from his visit to the Contitenser, worship. Shakespeare was happy in filling the imagination of mankind with a flood of light unobscured by a cloud or even a transient vapor from the political and ecclesiastical turmoils of his age. So might it have been with the great poet of the seventeenth century, had he not fallen "on evil days." In preparing for the work of his life as that of a poet in the highest sense, the purposes of Milton were so pure and so lofty that there can be no doubt he would, but for adverse circumstances, have shone as a luminary in literature without admixture of mundane things. Until his thirty-first year, Milton was only a son of the Muses. His stores of learning and observation, his aspiring genius, his chaste life, and his devout spirit were being trained and directed into the sphere of the imagination for the production of works which should win an immortality of fame. It is difficult to conjecture what the results of his genius might have been without the interruptions of political conflict and the modifications of religious controversy. But surely no soaring spirit was ever so clogged and hindered by circumstances as that wandering student, who was drawn by events from the fields of Italy and the mountains of Greece to yoke Pegasus to the task of dragging his country out of the sloughs of despotism and anarchy before he could be allowed to rise from the earth and traverse the "realms of gold." Thus it happens that there are two Miltons with whom we have to deal, and until both of them shall be completely presented to us we have a difficulty in estimating the whole man. Professor Masson has made this presentation, and in his volumes we have all the materials before us. The difficulty of the work seems to have pressed itself on the mind of the biographer with especial force as soon as he had completed his first volume. This volume covers the period of Milton's life from his birth in 1608 until his thirty-first year, and is almost purely a narrative biography; and for this reason: that the disturbing influences of the poet's career nent. He would gladly have remained abroad much longer than he did; and, indeed, he intended to pursue his travels into Greece, and he would doubtless have spent more time in the cities and among the societies most congenial to his tastes and his lofty literary aims. When he was enjoying all the delights of foreign travel and society, he had already brought his education to a perfect maturity; and by his writings up to that time he had satisfied the best judges as well as himself of his powers and capacities for poetry. Nothing had been omitted or left incomplete in his work of self-culture and preparation. He had submitted himself to the judgment of the most learned and most noble of his contemporaries in England, France, Switzerland, and Italy, and had won from every quarter approval and encouragement. Grotius, Galileo, and Manso, and many other poets, scholars, and divines, received the young Englishman, and recognized his talent. His English poetry sounded with strains unheard since Shakespeare sang. "L'Allegro" and "Il Penseroso," " Comus" and "Lycidas," fell on the ears of his countrymen with a delight which none but the strains of the age of Spenser could awaken. In Latin verse, and in the complimentary sonnets which he wrote in the Italian tongue, he had approved himself a master in the opinion of foreigners. It might seem that nothing remained but to wait for time to mature his mind for some supreme expression of his imagination which the world would not willingly let die. But the career he longed for and expected was suddenly checked, and it might have been forever. It is this change from an even tenor to an interrupted life which has led his biographer to adopt the method of placing the history of the times and the biography of his subject before the reader in such a way as to do full justice to both. The first volume, as we said, was out in December, 1858. The second volume came out in March, 1871; and in his preface of that date, Professor Masson felt himself called upon to explain the plan of Now, while it is the right of the public to say what they want in the shape of a book, it is equally the right of an author to say what he means to offer; and accordingly I repeat that this work is not a Biography only, but a Biography together with a History. . . . No one can study the life of Milton as it ought to be studied without being obliged to study, extensively and intimately, the contemporary history of England and even, incidentally, of Scotland and Ireland too. Experience has confirmed my previous conviction that it must be so. Again and again in order to understand Milton, his position, his motives, his thoughts by himself, his public words to his countrymen and the probable effects of those words, I have had to stop in the mere Biography and range round largely and windingly in the History of his Time, not only as it is presented in well-known books, but as it had to be rediscovered by express and laborious investigation in original and forgotten records. Thus on the very compulsion, or at least by the suasion, of the Biography, a History grew his work- a plan partly adopted in the | into "books," and every book devoted to first volume, but not so necessary to it as distinct portions of "history" and "biogto the volumes which were to follow. He raphy;" while the chapters into which the books are subdivided take the por. says: tions of the history and the biography in the order of convenience; one book being divided into two or three chapters only, and another into as many as eight. Take, for instance, the second volume. The first book is classified into "History - The Scottish Presbyterian Revolt," and "Biography - Milton Back in England." Chapter I. The Scottish Covenanters and the First Bishops' War. Chapter II. Milton Back in England Old Friends - Epitaphium Damonis Lodgings, etc. - Literary Projects, etc. Chapter III. returns to history, and is about Bishop Hall's "Episcopacy," "The Short Parliament and the Second Bishops' War." In the volume in question, one book is devoted to the history of English Presbyterianism and Independency up to 1643-a chapter by itself, but of great importance, and following immediately upon a very careful account of the Westminster Assembly of Divines. If we regard Vol. II., as we have briefly deWith the plan of the author thus clearly scribed it, as a specimen of the whole indicated, we have no right to complain work, we shall get an idea of the amount that Professor Masson's six volumes are of labor bestowed in bringing together both a history and a biography; and when such a vast accumulation of materials. once we have discovered his method, we In fact, we have a minute biography and find it a very useful one. Milton's life an elaborate history so arranged as to and writings were so mixed up with pub- afford the advantages of each. We lic affairs that any adequate account of might further distribute the historical porhim implies what Masson describes as tions into civil, ecclesiastical, social, and the "incessant connection of the history literary history; and for everything of inand the biography — the history always terest in all of these departments the work sending me back more fully informed for will be consulted by students of each the biography, and the biography again subject. What a well-furnished library suggesting new tracks for the history." could scarcely yield to the most diligent Nor are the intercalary portions of the after a laborious search, the reader can work confined to the ordinary history of now find within the compass of Masson's the period. In the first volume we have six volumes. A seventh with an index is a comprehensive survey of British litera- promised, and is very much needed; and ture, giving a view of it generally at the the more complete the apparatus, the bettime when Milton resolved to connect ter for future readers. Though we read himself with it. And in the sixth vol- the volumes as they came out, when we ume a chapter of one hundred and thirty-look into them again with the intention of two pages is devoted to a survey of the giving some account of them, we cannot first seven years of the literature of the but feel dismayed at the extent of the field Restoration. From the second volume which lies open before us. It is impossionwards we find every volume divided | ble for us to do more than to invite others on my hands. into the field, and to try to say a few words about the new interest in a great name which Mr. Masson has awakened. We have referred to the change which the English Revolution effected in Milton's career; and we will endeavor to carry the thought further and to suppose that he had disregarded the call of duty which came to him while in Italy, and had made literature and especially poetry the sole work of his life. What poem, what "strains of an unknown strength," such as he promises in the "Epitaphium Damonis" if life should be spared him, and which should be read by the dwellers beside the English rivers, could even Milton have produced if his literary ambition | had been the sole object of his life? In his "Defensio Secunda,” he says: 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 while my fellow-citizens were fighting for liberty at home. . . . I returned to my native country when Charles was renewing the Episcopal War with the Scots, and the necessity of his affairs obliged him to convene a Parliament. I hired a spacious house in the city for myself and my books; where I again with rapture renewed my literary pursuits, and where I calmly awaited the issue of the contest. . . . I saw that a way was opening for the establishment of real liberty; that the foundation was laying for the deliverance of man from the yoke of slavery and superstition; that the principles of our religion which were the first objects of our care would exert a salutary the republic; and as I had from my youth studied the distinctions between religious and civil rights, I perceived that if ever I wished to be of use, I ought 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 danger. 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. influence on the manners and constitution of To be deaf to this high calling, to be unprepared to respond to it, was not possible to a spirit like that of Milton. He who had from his youth studied "the distinctions between religious and civil rights" was already equipped for the fight in which he determined to engage. A life withdrawn from the public life of his country at such a time, and selfishly devoted to literary aims however high and praiseworthy in themselves, could not have issued in the production of "Paradise Lost," could at best but have produced an idle song even out of the legen dary stories of Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table, and have added to the many forgotten epics of second-rate poets, whose utterances have no connection with the spirit of their own or any other age. From the beginning of the Long Parlia ment until the Restoration, Milton's pen was busy with the topics of the day or with the preparation of State papers and popular vindications of the acts of the great statesmen and soldiers of the Commonwealth. An occasional sonnet, worthy of its origin from the stirred affections or noble admirations of its author, broke now and then from the heart of the poet. The pen was fertile in a series of contributions to the controversies of the time. His earliest publications were concerning reformation, prelatical episcopacy, and ecclesiastical government. It has been objected to many of these writings that they were disfigured by coarse personalities and undignified terms of abuse. But it is not by these portions of them that Milton's pamphlets ought to be judged. They contain passages of the noblest eloand encouragement of those who set pure quence which must forever be the comfort religion above every attempt to degrade and enslave it. Anti-sacerdotalism is the key-note of Milton's first effort to warn and arm his fellow-citizens against the things that have hindered the cause of reformation in religion. Speaking of the acts of the priest party, he says: "They began to draw down all the divine intercourse betwixt God and the soul — yea, the very shape of God himself — into an exterior and bodily form, urgently pretending a necessity and obligement of joining the body in a formal reverence, and worship circumscribed; they hallowed it, they fumed it, they sprinkled it, they bedecked it, not in robes of pure innocency, but of pure linen, with other deformed and fantastic dresses, in palls and mitres, gold and gew-gaws fetched from Aaron's old wardrobe or the flamens' vestry; then was the priest set to con his motions and his postures, his liturgies and his lurries, till the soul by this means of overbodying herself, given up justly to fleshly delights, bated her wing apace downward; and finding the ease she had from her visible and sensuous colleague the body, in performance of religious duties, her pinions now broken and flagging, shifted off from herself the labor of high soaring any more, forgot her heavenly flight, and left the dull and droiling carcass to plod on in the old road and drudg ing trade of conformity." |