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now grew daily upon me, that with labour and intense study (which I take to be my portion in this life) joined with the strong propensity of nature, I might perhaps leave something so written to aftertimes, as they should not willingly let die.

"These thoughts at once possessed me; and these other, that if I were certain to write as men buy leases, for three lives and downwards, there ought no regard be sooner had, than to God's glory, by the honour and instruction of mv country.

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"These abilities (in lyric poesy) wheresoever they be found, are the inspired gifts of God, rarely bestowed, but yet to some, though most abused, in every nation; and are of power, beside the office of a pulpit, to imbreed and cherish in a great people, the seeds of virtue and public civility; to allay the perturbations of the mind, and set the affections in right tune; to celebrate in glorious and lofty hymns the throne and equipage of God's almightiness, and what he works, and what he suffers to be wrought with high providence in his church; to sing victorious agonies of martyrs and saints, the deeds and triumphs of just and pious nations, doing valiantly through faith against the enemies of Christ; to deplore the general relapses of kingdoms and states from justice and God's true worship. "Lastly, whatever in religion is holy and sublime; in virtue amiable or grave; whatsoever hath passion or admiration in all the changes of that which is called fortune from without, or the wily subtleties and refluxes of man's thoughts from within; all these things with a solid and treatable smoothness to point out and describe; tracking over the whole book of sanctity and virtue, through all the instances of example, with such delight to those especially of soft and delicious temper, who will not so much as look upon truth herself, unless they see her elegantly dressed: that whereas the paths of honesty and good life appear now rugged and difficult, though they be indeed easy and pleasant, they will then appear to all men easy and pleasant, though they were rugged and difficult indeed. . .

"Neither do I think it shame to covenant with my knowing reader, that for some years yet I may go on trust with him toward the payment of what I am now indebted" (alluding most probably to his Paradise Lost); "as being a work not to be raised from the heat of youth, or the vapours of wine, like that which flows at waste from the pen of some vulgar amourist, or the trencher fury of a rhyming parasite; nor to be obtained from the invocation of dame Memory and her syren daughters; but by devout prayer to that eternal Spirit, who can enrich with all utterance and knowledge, and sends out his seraphim with the hallowed fire of his altar to touch and purify the lips of whom he pleases."

Sublime and touching is the language in which Milton indignantly repels the charge which his enemies basely brought against him, that his blindness was a

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judgment upon him. "I wish that I could with equal facility refute what this barbarous opponent has said of my blindness: but I cannot do it, and I must submit to the affliction. It is not so wretched to be blind, as it is not to be capable of enduring blindness. But why should I not endure a misfortune, which it behoves every one to be prepared to endure if it should happen ; which may, in the common course of things, happen to any man, and which has been known to have happened to the most distinguished and virtuous persons in history. What is reported of Angur Tiresias is well known, of whom Apollonius sung thus in his Argonautics.

To men he dared the will divine disclose,

Nor fear'd what Jove might in his wrath impose.
The gods assign'd him age without decay,
But snatch'd the blessing of his sight away.

"But God himself is truth; in propagating which, as men display a greater integrity and zeal, they approach nearer to the similitude of God, and possess a greater portion of his love. We cannot suppose the Deity envious of his truth, or unwilling that it should be freely communicated to mankind; the loss of sight, therefore, which this inspired sage, who was so eager in promoting knowledge among men, sustained, cannot be considered as a judicial punishment: and did not our Saviour himself declare that that poor man whom he had restored to sight had not been blind, either on account of his own sins, or those of his progenitors.

"And, with respect to myself, though I have accurately examined my conduct, and scrutinized my soul, I cali thee, O God, the searcher of hearts, to witness, that I am not conscious, either in the more early or later periods of my life, of having committed any enormity which might deservedly have marked me out as a fit object for such a calamitous visitation: but since my enemies boast that this affliction is only a retribution for the transgressions of my pen, I again invoke the Almighty to witness that I never, at any time, wrote anything which I did not think agreeable to truth, to justice, and to piety. This was my persuasion then, and I feel the same persuasion now. Thus, therefore, when I was publicly solicited to write a reply to the defence of the royal cause, when I had to contend with the pressure of sickness, and with the apprehension of soon losing the sight of my remaining eye, and when my medical attendants clearly announced that if I did engage in this work it would be irreparably lost, their premonitions caused no hesitation and inspired no dismay; I would not have listened to the voice of Esculapius himself from the shrine of Epidauris, in preference to the suggestions of the heavenly monitor within my breast; my resolution was unshaken, though the alternative was either the loss of my sight, or the desertion of my duty; and I

called to mind those two destinies which the oracle of Delphi announced to the son of Thetis.

"I considered that many had purchased a less good for a greater evil, the meed of glory by the loss of life; but that I might procure great good by little suffering; that, though I am blind, I might still discharge the most honourable duties, the performance of which, as it is something more durable than glory, ought to be an object of superior admiration and esteem; I resolved, therefore, to make the short interval of sight which was left me to enjoy, as beneficial to the public as possible. "But, if the choice were necessary, I would, sir, prefer my blindness to yours; yours is a cloud spread over the mind, which darkens both the light of reason and of conscience; mine keeps from my view only the coloured surfaces of things, while it leaves me at liberty to contemplate the beauty and stability of virtue and of truth. How many things are there besides which I would not willingly see; how many which I must see against my will; and how few which I feel any anxiety to see. There is, as the apostle has remarked, a way to strength through weakness. Let me then be the most feeble creature alive, as long as that feebleness serves to invigorate the energies of my rational and immortal spirit; as long as in that obscurity, in which I am enveloped, the light of the Divine presence more clearly shines! And, indeed, in my blindness, I enjoy in no inconsiderable degree the favour of the Deity; who regards me with more tenderness and compassion in proportion as I am able to behold nothing but himself. Alas! for him who insults me, who maligns and merits public execration. For the Divine law not only shields me from injury, but almost renders me too sacred to attack; not indeed so much from the privation of my sight, as from the overshadowing of those heavenly wings, which seem to have occasioned this security. To this I ascribe the more tender assiduities of my friends, their soothing attentions, their kind visits, their reverential observations."

He alludes to this misfortune in the following magnificent opening of the third book of his Paradise Lost:

Hail, holy light! offspring of Heaven first born,

Or of the Eternal co-eternal beam,

May I express thee unblam'd? since God is light,
And never but in unapproached light
Dwelt from eternity; dwelt then in thee,
Bright effluence of bright essence increate.
Or hear'st thou rather pure ethereal stream,
Whose fountain who shall tell? Before the sun,
Before the heavens thou wert, and at the voice
Of God, as with a mantle, did'st invest
The rising world of waters dark and deep,
Won from the void and formless infinite.

MILTON.

Thee I revisit now with bolder wing,

Escaped the Stygian pool, though long detain'd
In that obscure sojourn; while in my flight

Through utter, and through middle darkness borne,
With other notes than to the Orphean lyre,

I sung of Chaos and eternal night;

Taught by the heavenly muse to venture down

The dark descent, and up to re-ascend
Though hard and rare; thee I revisit safe,
And feel thy sovran vital lamp; but thou
Revisit'st not these eyes, that roll in vain
To find thy piercing ray, and find no dawn;
So thick a drop serene hath quench'd their orbs,
Or dim suffusion veil'd. Yet not the more
Cease I to wander where the muses haunt
Clear spring, or shady grove, or sunny hill,
Smit with the love of sacred song; but chief
Thee, Sion, and the flowery brooks beneath,
That wash thy hallow'd feet, and warbling flow,
Nightly I visit: nor sometimes forget
Those other two equall'd with me in fate,
So were I equall'd with them in renown,
Blind Thamyris and blind Mæonides,*
And Tiresias and Phineas, prophets old:
Then feed on thoughts, that voluntary move
Harmonious numbers; as the wakeful bird
Sings darkling, and in shadiest covert hid
Tunes her nocturnal note. Thus with the year
Seasons return, but not to me returns
Day, or the sweet approach of even or morn,
Or sight of vernal bloom, or summer's rose,
Or flocks, or herds, or human face divine,
But cloud instead, and ever-during dark
Surrounds me, from the cheerful ways of men
Cut off, and for the book of knowledge fair
Presented with a universal blank

Of nature's works, to me expung'd and ras d,

And wisdom at one entrance quite shut out.

So much the rather thou, celestial light,

Shine inward, and the mind through all her powers
Irradicate; there plant eyes, all mist from thence
Purge and disperse, that I may see and tell
Of things invisible to mortal sight.

29

Enough has been said of the poetry of Milton. To the initiated further remarks are unnecessary, and the bare recital of the outward events of his life is to be found in the biographies prefixed to the numerous editions of his poems. His character has been so eloquently portrayed by one of the most distinguished

• Homer.

VOL. III.

writers of the present day that we cannot forbear transferring some of his concluding remarks to our pages.

"There is no more hazardous enterprize than that of bearing the torch of truth into those dark and infected recesses in which no light has ever shone. But it was the choice and the pleasure of Milton to penetrate the noisome vapours, and to brave the terrible explosion. Those who most disapprove of his opinions must respect the hardihood with which he maintained them. He, in general, left to others the credit of expounding and defending the popular parts of his religious and political creed. He took his own stand upon those which the great body of his countrymen reprobated as criminal, or derided as paradoxical. He stood up for divorce and regicide. He attacked the prevailing systems of education. His radiant and beneficent career resembled that of the god of light and fertility.

Nitor in adversum; nec me, qui cætera, vincit

Impetus, et rapido contrarius evehor orbi.

It is to be regretted that the prose writings of Milton should, in our time, be so little read. As compositions, they deserve the attention of every man who wishes to become acquainted with the full power of the English language. They abound with passages, compared with which the finest declamations of Burke, sink into insignificance. They are a perfect field of cloth of gold. The style is stiff with gorgeous embroidery. Not even in the earlier books of the Paradise Lost has he ever risen higher than in those parts of his controversial works in which his feelings, excited by conflict, find a vent in the bursts of devotional and lyrical rapture. It is, to borrow his own majestic language, "a sevenfold of hallelujahs and harping symphonies."

We are not much in the habit of idolizing either the living or the dead; and we think there is no more certain indication of a weak and ill-regulated intellect than that propensity which, for want of a better name, we will venture to christen Boswellism. But there are a few characters which have stood the closest scrutiny and the severest tests, which have been tried in the furnace and have not been found wanting, which have been declared stirling by the general voice of mankind, and which are visibly stamped with the image and superscription of the Most High. These great men we trust that we know how to prize, and of these was Milton. The sight of his books, the sound of his name, are refreshing to us. His thoughts resemble those celestial fruits and flowers which the virgin martyr of Massinger sent down from the gardens of Paradise to the earth, distinguished from the productions of other soils, not only by their superior bloom and sweetness, but by their miraculous efficacy to invigorate and to heal. They are powerful, not only to delight, but to elevate and purify. Nor do we envy the man who can

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