SURVEY

OF THE

POLITICAL CHARACTER OF MILTON.

[Continued from Page 305.]

THE differences between the king and parliament increased, and the subsequent conduct of Charles rendered all his former concessions of little avail. In vain had he consented to the abridgment of various articles of prerogative; in vain had he revoked the sentence of Hampden, and the council of the star chamber; and in vain had he agreed to the establishment of a triennial parliament :the dreadful massacre in Ireland, the act of impeaching five leading members of the commons, and his hostile march to the house on the succeeding day, led to all his succeeding misfortunes. The indignation of the commons was so great, that they immediately insisted upon being put in possession of the command of the army. Upon the king's refusing to disband or 'deliver up the army, the parliament immediately declared war; and upon this subject the virtuous Lord Clarendon has an honest remark. "It is singular (says he) and an instance of God's justice, that the same principles should be used to the extorting all sovereign power from the crown, which the crown had a little before used to extend its authority beyond its just bounds, to the prejudice of his subjects." It was, therefore, not in *contempt of the laws, not a false conception of virtue or glory, or a foolish emulation of antiquity, but the rectitude of principle, which armed them in the defence of their religion and laws. The nation in general beheld the arbitrary and insidious conduct of their sovereign with horror and disgust.

Ergo omnis furiis surrexit Etruria justis,

Regem ad supplicium præsenti marte reposcunt.

Notwithstanding these lessons, which would have taught any other less obstinate and self-willed than his majesty, the idea of the divinity of the regal authority still haunted him, as we learn from a poem written by him at Oxford.

"Great monarch of the world! from whose power springs "The potency and power of kings !"

Of this revolution we may exclaim with Tully, "Quæ enim res unquam prob savete Jupiter! in omnibus terris est gesta major, quæ gloriosior, quæ commendatior hominum memoriæ sempiterna."

+ Defensio Secunda.

Eneid, 1. 8, 494.

This ludicrous and fatal idea, which led him to disregard all contracts with his subjects, was the real cause of his weak and faithless conduct during the whole period of his campaigns and imprisonment, and takes from that awe which would otherwise strike us, upon contemplating the catastrophe of this instructive tragedy.

The violent proceedings of condemning and executing the king, and changing the government to a democracy, by no means pleased the presbyters, who, it appears, were more irritated at the faction by which they were executed, than at the deed itself. They declared even from their pulpits, that the act of decapitation was not conformable to the tenets of the reformed church. This hypocrisy on their part, notwithstanding their previous conduct, was well known, and their opinions respecting the divine right of presbytery, and their animosity to the liberty of conscience, was very acceptable to the opposite party, and in consequence of which Milton published his Tenure of Kings and Magistrates. The ridiculous tenderness of the presbyters is finely exposed in this tract, and the justice of the sentence upon the king supported with great plausibility and address. His sentiments upon royalty seem to have been just and great, that "the good, ease, liberty, and safety of the multitude, ought to be the magistrate's chief aim; and when he deviates from that, to usurp a false grandeur, he becomes a public enemy."

This principle fully establishes the majesty of the people, and infers the right of deposing a king when he acts contrary to established laws. The principal crimes for which a king may be punished, are,

*I. For squandering the money of the subject.

+II. For breaking the covenants or constitutional promises to his subjects.

III. For being guilty of murder, tho' he does nothing with his own hands, but consent to employ instruments.

Of these crimes few can deny but that they may severally be laid to the charge of King Charles; the legality of deposing him must consequently be evident.

The tenure of kings and magistrates was admired by all the kingdom, and the force with which it was written, recommended him to the directors of the new commonwealth; who, without soli

Feuardentius, Com. in Esther, p. 95.

+ Mart. Besanus, Controv. Angl. p. 135.

Feuardentius, p. 92. Hist. Popish Treasons, p. 109.

citation, or any expectancy on his part, conferred upon him the place of secretary to the council for foreign affairs. Hitherto Mil fon's exertions had been confined to the duty which he thought every man of sufficient capacity owed to his country. He expected no emolument for fulfilling what he considered an indispensible obliga tion; and when the reward for his unmasking the bigotry of the clergy, and for his able exposure of the false glitter of the presbyterian faction, was intimated to him, he was no less pleased than surprised. His gratification chiefly arose from the prospect which now opened upon him, of conferring a higher obligation on his country. For the office of Latin secretary, Milton was peculiarly adapted, as, independent of his dispatch of business, his knowledge of the Latin language was superior to that of any man's in Europe. About this time he wrote that fine sonnet to Cromwel, in which he exhorts him to cultivate the milder arts of peace; (for, says he, justly,)

Peace hath her victories

No less renown'd than War)

and to save the church from the hirelings who had decried the liberty of conscience, and endeavoured to overwhelm his government with the basest calumnies.

OMENS.

WITH HISTORICAL EXAMPLES,

NUMBER II.

WHEN Paulus Æmilius was appointed to the command of the forces designed against Persius, king of Macedon, the former, seeing his little daughter Tertia in tears, enquired the reason of her distress.The child, throwing her arms round his neck, answered "that she was crying for the death of Persius ;" which was the name of her favourite dog, who had just breathed his last. I cannot think that Æmilius discovered any mental weakness, in replying as follows:"An auspicious circumstance, my daughter! I embrace the favourable omen."

Before the incomparable Timoleon sailed on his glorious expepedition to Sicily, he visited the oracle of Delphos, and sacrificed to Apollo. It was customary, at that place, for rich and religious visitants to leave some valuable or elegant donation behind them, which

was, thenceforward, appropriated to decorate the walls or ceiling of the temple. One of the votive presents, which had been thus suspended, and which represented a triumphal wreath, suddenly fell, from the place where it was fixed, directly on Timoleon's head.--"So that," (says Plutarch) " Apollo himself seemed to crown the hero for his future triumphs."

Pyrrhus, the celebrated king of Epirus, had been forewarned by an oracle, that, "When he should see a wolf and a bull engaged in fight, his death would quickly ensue." Many years after, he attempted to take the city of Argos by storm, and actually penetrated into the town. Among the consecrated statues which decorated the market-place, were the figures, in brass, of a wolf and a bull in combat. The prediction immediately occurred to his mind, and filled him with all the gloom of anxious distress. He took off the regal diadem, which adorned his helmet, that his person might not be noticed and exposed by so dangerous a distinction: when, in a few minutes, one of the meaner citizens pierced him in the breast with a spear. The wound being but slight, Pyrrhus turned with redoubled fury on his assailant, whose mother (a very old and very poor woman) beholding, from the top of an house, the imminent peril her son was in, made shift, with the help of both hands, to hurl a massy tile on the head of Pyrrhus, who immediately sunk from his horse to the ground, where he was soon completely dispatched by some Argive soldiers that knew him.

The prophecy respecting Pyrrhus reminds me of a similar one recorded in our own English history. King Henry IV. had been told that he would finish his days at Jerusalem. He supposed the meaning of this prediction to be, that he was destined of God to emancipate the city of that name from the Turkish dominion, and should terminate his life there, amidst the flattering glories of conquest. But he received the omen of his death much nearer home. While paying his devotions at the shrine of Edward the Confessor, in Westminster Abbey, he was seized with his last illness, and borne from thence to the Abbot's apartments. On coming to himself, he asked where he was? "In the Jerusalem Chamber, Sir," replied his attendants. On which he recollected the intimation given him so long before, and resigned himself to his fate.

Many inauspicious portents ushered in, and accompanied, the terrible commotions which desolated Rome, under the conflicting interests of Marius and Sylla.

*

Mithridates, king of Pontus, had been long and remarkably successful, in his efforts to stem the torrent of the Roman power. Being at Pergamus, the inhabitants of that city, desirous to pay him a very elegant compliment, contrived, that a statue of Victory holding a triumphal crown in its hand, should (by pullies) descend over him as he sat, and deposit the crown on his head. Just as the image had almost reached him, it suddenly burst asunder into several pieces, and the crown, falling likewise to the ground, strewed the area with its fragments. From that period Mithridates's affairs began to decline, though they had, until then, been signally flourishing and prosperous.

From my own part, I cannot smile at the prodigies and omens which are affirmed to have preceded the assassination of Julius Cæsar, por even at the crows that fluttered at the outside of Cicero's chamber window, (and one of which birds found its way into the room, and proved extremely troublesome) on the morning of the day in which he was murdered by Marc Antony's soldiers,

Crassus's invasion of the Parthians (an invasion, the sole motives to which were lust of money and lust of power) was attended by various unfavourable symptoms, strongly pre-noting the loss of glory which should result to Rome, from that ill-concerted, unjust, and calamitous expedition. Two thunderbolts fell on the place which had been marked out for the army's encampment. An horse of Crassus's, sumptuously caparisoned, broke with sudden violence from the man who was holding him; and plunging into the Eu phrates, was no more seen or heard of, Part of a bridge, which Crassus had thrown across that river, was broken down by a storm, on which occasion he was so unguarded as to tell his troops, that the loss of the bridge was no misfortune, for not one of them should go back again that way. This speech was deemed ominous by the army, and Crassus was advised, but in vain, to compose their apprehensions, by explaining himself in a favourable sense. At one of the last sacrifices, the priest, according to custom, offering the entrails of the victim to the general, he took them, and they fell from his hand. "This comes," said he, laughingly, "of my being an old man; but I will take care to grasp my sword sufficiently fast." On the morning of the day of battle he appeared, not habited in scarlet, as was usual with the Roman generals, but (through inadvertency) in black. And it proved to him the blackest day he had 3 B-YOL. Xiy.`