CHAP. X.

MILTON AND HIS LITERARY CONTEMPORARIES.

THE life and writings of John Milton constitute an epoch in the literary history of his country. No other writer ever attained such a height of sublimity, and only one, Shakspeare, surpassed him in variety. No man ever more completely embodied his expressed principles in his life. Many great thinkers have failed to carry their theories into practice; but a complete harmony between the thought and deed marked Milton during the whole of his eventful career. There are, and probably ever will be, great differences of opinion as to the abstract truth of some of his sentiments on religion and politics; but no one doubts Milton's consistency with himself, his stainless integrity, and perfect sincerity. Hence our great contemplative poet Wordsworth has justly and beautifully said of him:

"Thy soul was as a star, and dwelt apart,

Pure as the naked heavens, unstain'd and free."

Milton's mental history, apart from his genius, has been considered very remarkable, from the

fact of his having laid aside his favourite pursuit, poetic composition, in which he had attained high and acknowledged reputation, for political studies and controversial writings, during the most important period of England's history; and, after an interval of twenty years, returning to his first pursuit not only without any diminution, but with an accession, of power and majesty.

He is, perhaps, the only very great writer who attained to equal excellence in prose and poetry. In every kind of composition that he used he raised the English language to a dignity and grace it had never, if we except Shakspeare, reached before. His productions are so many models in their different departments. His masque of "Comus," his " Allegro" and "Penseroso," are each not only unrivalled for power of imagination, play of fancy, appropriateness of imagery, and delicious harmony of versification, but also for a delicate, unsullied purity that no other writer of that age had attained to, and none in any subsequent time has surpassed. No longer could the English language be pronounced rugged, when the tripping melody of the "Allegro," the slow harmony of the "Penseroso," and the matchless sweetness of the " Comus," were given to the world. These poems were the product of his ripe youth and early manhood. The elegy of "Lycidas" is no less beautiful, and has

a tender origin that marks the depth of Milton's affections. His young friend and fellow student, Edward King, of Christ's College, Cambridge, the son of Sir John King, secretary for Ireland, was on his way to join his father, when suddenly, in a calm sea and not far from the English coast, the vessel foundered, and all on board perished. Milton was twenty-nine, and his lamented friend twenty-five, when this calamity occurred. He commemorated his friend's death and his own affection by the exquisite poem of "Lycidas," modelled on the structure of the pastoral. called on the shepherds and on all nature to mourn with him.

"Yet once more, O ye laurels, and once more
Ye myrtles brown, with ivy never sere,

I come to pluck your berries harsh and crude;
And, with forc'd fingers rude,

Scatter your leaves before the mellowing year:
Bitter constraint and sad occasion dear,
Compels me to disturb your season due :
For Lycidas is dead, dead ere his prime,
Young Lycidas, and hath not left his peer:
Who would not sing for Lycidas? He knew
Himself to sing, and build the lofty rhyme.
He must not float upon his watery bier
Unwept, and welter to the parching wind,
Without the meed of some melodious tear.

Fame is the spur that the clear spirit doth raise
(That last infirmity of noble mind)

He

To scorn delights, and live laborious days;
But the fair guerdon when we hope to find,
And think to burst out into sudden blaze,
Comes the blind Fury, with abhorred shears,
And slits the thin-spun life. 'But not the praise,'
Phoebus replied, and touch'd my trembling ears ;
'Fame is no plant that grows on mortal soil,
Nor in the glistering foil

Set off to the world, nor in broad rumour lies;
But lives and spreads aloft by those pure eyes,
And perfect witness of all-judging Jove;
As he pronounces lastly on each deed,

Of so much fame in heaven expect thy meed.'

Weep no more, vocal shepherds, weep no more,
For Lycidas your sorrow is not dead,

Sunk though he be beneath the watery floor;

So sinks the day-star in the ocean bed,

And yet anon repairs his drooping head,

And tricks his beams, and with new spangled ore
Flames in the forehead of the morning sky:

So Lycidas sunk low, but mounted high,

Through the dear might of Him that walk'd the waves;
Where, other groves and other streams along,
With nectar pure his oozy locks he laves,
And hears the unexpressive nuptial song,
In the blest kingdoms meek of joy and love.
There entertain him all the saints above,
In solemn troops, and sweet societies,
That sing, and singing in their glory move,
And wipe the tears for ever from his eyes."

The reader, from these brief extracts, will readily imagine the noble tribute paid by genius to affection. Milton's "melodious tears" have em

balmed the memory of his friend to all generations. It was reserved for a poet of the present time successfully to emulate Milton in tender and sweet elegiac stanzas.*

Like Chaucer and Surrey, Milton went to Italy, for the purpose not only of seeing evermemorable cities, but of studying the works of poetry and art in their native home. Here the sound reached him of the troubles in his own land, the king and the parliament having come not only to a rupture but to open war. Milton left the studies and the land he loved at duty's call, and returned to render service by his mind to the sore troubled state. He did not take the sword- the pen was his implement. And while he settled down to the instruction of his nephews and a few other gentlemen's sons as his honourable pursuit, he employed his leisure from the exhausting work of instruction in aiding by his writings the cause he deemed just.

Undoubtedly his "Areopogetica," or Essay on the Liberty of the Press, is the most sustained and magnificent of all his admirable prose writings. It was addressed, be it remembered, to the republican parliament of England, then professing greatly to favour liberty, but evidently not prepared to adopt Milton's view. His opinions were far in advance of his age and party on that Tennyson's "In Memoriam."

*