to be so reproved, or to hear Him thundering against thy neglect from heaven, as against the Church of Sardis? (Rev. iii. 2.) 3. Consider that if thou neglect this duty, and so fall into temptation, which assuredly thou wilt do, that when thou art entangled, God may withal bring some heavy affliction or judgment upon thee, which, by reason of thy entanglement, thou shalt not be able to look on any otherwise than as an evidence of His anger and hatred; and then what wilt thou do with thy temptation and affliction together? All thy bones will be broken, and thy peace and strength will be gone in a moment. This may seem but as a noise of words for the present, but if ever it be thy condition, thou wilt find it to be full of woe and bitterness. Oh! then, let us strive to keep our spirits unentangled, avoiding all appearance of evil and all ways leading thereunto; especially all ways, businesses, societies, and employments that we have already found disadvantageous to us. 33 JOHN MILTON. JOHN MILTON. JOHN MILTON was born December 9, 1608, at the Spread Eagle in Bread Street, London where his father, a disinherited son of an ancient Oxfordshire family, supported himself as a scrivener, and beguiled his leisure with music, in which he was not only a great enthusiast, but a distinguished composer. Young Milton received his education first in St Paul's School, and afterwards at Christ's College, Cambridge. In the composition of Latin verse he exhibited a mastery rarely attained by modern scholars, and his noble "Hymn on the Nativity," written at one-and-twenty, shews how soon his poetical faculty developed. At the age of thirty he enjoyed the great advantage of an extended continental tour-making the acquaintance of Hugo Grotius at Paris, of Spanheim and Diodati at Geneva, and of Galileo, whom he visited in the prison of the Inquisition at Rome. To a mind like Milton's, the materials were invaluable which he amassed during these fifteen months in the library of the Vatican, among the galleries of Florence, and amidst scenes where the events of history and the beauties of nature impart so much interest to one another. He came back revolving high projects; but, as often happens to men of ardent aspirations, dull realities demanded. his immediate care. He was obliged to do something for a maintenance; and, being neither clergyman nor lawyer, but only a scholar, there was not much choice: and so John Milton commenced a school. But we have no reason to his earlier years without delicacy of choice. In his youth he studied late at night; but afterwards changed his hours, and rested in bed from nine to four in the summer, and five in winter. The course of his day was best known after he was blind. When he first rose, he heard a chapter in the Hebrew Bible, and then studied till twelve; then took some exercise for an hour; then dined; then played on the organ, and sung, or heard another sing; then studied to six; then entertained his visitors till eight; then supped; and, after a pipe of tobacco and a glass of water, went to bed. He composed much in the morning, and dictated in the day, sitting obliquely in an elbowchair, with his leg thrown over the arm."* Every one knows that Milton was a republican, and an eager opponent of Episcopacy; and, thirty years ago, a Latin treatise was discovered and published, with a translation by the present Archbishop of Canterbury, which shews that, latterly at least, on the subject of the Saviour's Godhead, his views were essentially Arian. In this treatise, however, as in "Paradise Lost," the vicarious and atoning character of the Saviour's sacrifice is asserted fully and unequivocally; and, considering how frequently he had committed himself to Trinitarian sentiments in his earlier works, and how constantly he was reappearing in print down to the last year of his life, it is rather remarkable that he himself should never have published any retractation of his well-known early sentiments. Music, opulence, and sublimity strike us as the three grand characteristics of Milton's poetry. Inheriting an exquisite ear, and cradled in the midst of melody, it seemed as if his whole soul had from the first been set to 66 a solemn music." There are poets like Coleridge, Southey, Edgar Allan Poe, who have shewn a mechanical mastery over English vocables not inferior to Milton's own; but with Milton there is more than verbal harmony. It is the hidden man of the heart who sings, * Johnson's "Lives of the Poets."-Art. Milton, and the verse, with its majestic cadence, is a mere accompaniment to the minstrelsy within. Hence, "Chief of organic numbers! For ever and for ever!"* There is a spell in this sphery music which holds us like an immortal mystery, and will not let us go; and after it the greatest feats of artificial rhythm are a mere sounding brass or tinkling cymbal. It may be doubted whether any other poet knew so much. Hebrew, Syriac, Greek, Latin, French, Spanish, and Italian were all familiar languages; and in some of them we know how great was his mastery. Latin he wrote as it is seldom written since there ceased to be Romans; and, lured into the Tuscan by its own beauty and his lover-like enthusiasm for its literature, he became such an adept that he was consulted regarding the niceties of their tongue by the Academy Della Crusca. And with all the treasures which these languages unlocked, and with those which he had amassed in foreign travel and in subsequent intercourse with superior minds, not only stored in his memory but dissolved in his imagination, he poured forth. a stream of thought which charms the reader by its beauty, whilst it startles him by its magical allusions to all that he has ever known, and to much that he had long forgotten. As has been observed by Mr Macaulay-and it is one of the acutest remarks in his glowing eulogy-"The most striking characteristic of the poetry of Milton is the extreme remoteness of the associations by means of which it acts on the reader. Its effect is produced, not so much by what it expresses, as by what it suggests; not so much by the ideas which it directly conveys, as by other ideas which are connected with them. He The most unima- electrifies the mind through conductors. ginative man must understand the Iliad.' no choice, and requires from him no exertion, but takes the whole upon himself, and sets his images in so clear a light that it is impossible to be blind to them. The works of Milton cannot be comprehended or enjoyed, unless the mind of the reader co-operate with that of the writer. He does not paint a finished picture, or play for a mere passive listener. He sketches, and leaves others to fill up the outline. He strikes the key-note, and expects the hearer to make out the melody.... His poetry acts like an incantation. Its merit lies less in its obvious meaning than in its occult power. There would seem, at first sight, to be no more in his words than in other words. But they are words of enchantment. No sooner are they pronounced than the past is present, and the distant near. New forms of beauty start at once into existence, and all the burialplaces of the memory give up their dead.”* The ultimate key, however, to Milton's poetic mastery is the one thus indicated by the most profound and affectionate of Milton's critics :-"Poetry seems to us the divinest of all arts; for it is the breathing or expression of that principle or sentiment which is deepest and sublimest in human nature; we mean, of that thirst or aspiration to which no mind is wholly a stranger, for something purer and lovelier, something more powerful, lofty, and thrilling than ordinary and real life affords. No doctrine is more common among Christians than that of man's immortality; but it is not so generally understood that the germs or principles of his whole future being are now wrapped up in his soul as the rudiments of the future plant in the seed. As a necessary result of this constitution, the soul, possessed and moved by those mighty though infant energies, is perpetually stretching beyond what is present and visible, struggling against the bounds of its earthly prison-house, and * Edinburgh Review, vol. xlii. (1825), p. 313. |