the old democracy. It was written 'in the beginning of the Philippic times1,' at a critical period in Attic history, rês móλews ἐν κινδύνοις οὔσης ἢ σφαλερῶς αὐτῇ τῶν πραγμάτων καθεστώτων, though men shut their eyes to the perils that encompassed them2; and he urges that the only way to avert future dangers, and deliver themselves from those already present, is to resolve to recall the democracy, 'which Solon, who proved so great a friend of the people ordained by law, and Kleisthenes, who cast out the tyrants and brought back the people, once more established afresh.' This was not perhaps the program of a great statesman, but rather of a visionary, or a 'professor'; for decayed forms of government are not so easily recalled to life. Certainly, the wails of a rhetorician over the pulseless body have no power to re-inspire it. Isokrates proceeds to insist more particularly on the revival and reinstatement of the Court of the Areopagos 3, and hence the name of his discourse. He praises its composition, and the functions it exercised, which he sums up as 'the caring for good order (ἐπιμελεῖσθαι τῆς εὐκοσμίας). Between this speech and that of Milton, as respects subject matter, there is clearly but a slight resemblance; there is rather an opposition; for Isokrates aims at recalling an interfering power, Milton at removing one. What recommended the name to Milton is, as has already been remarked, the likeness between his position and that of the Greek. He too 'wrote' 'from his private house' 'a discourse' on a high political question. As Isokrates addressed the Boulé, so Milton the Parliament. But it cannot be said that Milton was happy in christening his treatise as he did. The name is, and will be, a perpetual stumbling 1 Ἐγράφη δ ̓ ὁ λόγος ἐν ἀρχαῖς τῶν Φιλιππικῶν χρόνων. See the Υπόθεσις ἀνωνύμου γραμματικού. 2 Εὑρίσκω γὰρ ταύτην μόνην ἂν γενομένην καὶ τῶν μελλόντων κινδύνων ἀποτροπὴν καὶ τῶν παρόντων κακῶν ἀπαλλαγὴν, ἣν ἐθελήσωμεν ἐκείνην τὴν δημοκρατίαν ἀναλαβεῖν, ἣν Σόλων μὲν ὁ δημοτικώτατος γενόμενος ἐνομοθέτησε, Κλεισθένης δ' ὁ τοὺς τυράννους ἐκβαλὼν καὶ τὸν δῆμον καταγαγὼν πάλιν ἐξ ἀρχῆς κατέστησεν. Isokrates Areop. 143 3. 3 On the Areopagos see Smith's Dict. of Antiquities; Müller's Dissertations on the Eumenides of Aeschylus; Hermann's Manual of Grecian Antiquities; Grote's Greece, ii. 281, &c. * See a quotation from this same speech in Ascham's Scholemaster, p. 58, ed. Arber. block to the Englishman. How it must have made, and how it makes now, the ordinary Briton 'stare and gasp'! It is essentially an unpopular title, and may be taken as a sign of Milton's indifference to merely popular approval. He cared for 'fit audience, though few' (Par. Lost, vii. 31); to 'be heard only,' if it might be, by the 'elegant and learned reader, to whom principally for a while I shall beg leave I may address myself' (Reason of Church Government, p. 43 of Works); to ‘have the good wishes of here and there some,' 'by whom, ever so few though they be, I, for my part, would rather be approved, than by countless companies of unskilled ones, in whom is nothing of mind, or right reason, or sound judgment' (Prolusion I); 'not to seduce the simple and illiterate,' but 'to find out the choicest and the learnedest, who have this high gift of wisdom to answer solidly or to be convinced.' For the rest there is but little likeness between the styles of the two works. But in this respect, too, a sharp contrast,—that of Isokrates is exquisitely refined and clear. the marble is smoothed to the utmost-'ne quid possit per leve morari.' The immense care he bestowed upon the composition of his orations, and the time he spent in working them out and polishing them, may be inferred from the statement that he was engaged for a period of ten, and, according to others, of fifteen years upon his Panegyric Oration'. The style is the man, and Isokrates' style well reflects Isokrates. Like our poet Pope, he says perspicuously and well what he has to say, but then it is not so very much. The water is pellucid, but then it is not deep. With Milton it was far different. He had more to say than he could say. His thoughts rush upon him in a throng that he can at times scarcely order and control. His utterance is almost choked. He brought to his work an immense mass of knowledge, such as won for him the title of 'learned' in an age of learned men; and at the same time, as we have seen, the profoundest depths of a profound nature were stirred and moved by the character of his enterprise. No wonder then, if at times his eloquence wellnigh overmastered him, bursting forth torrent-like, or 1 See Smith's larger Dict. of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology, s. v. 'Isocrates,' and the reference there given to Quintilian, x. 4. 4. flashing out in a fiery shower that would not be confined. The fact is that for the expression of such a genius as that of Milton, a genius so quick and fertile by nature, so splendidly cultivated and enriched by long and eager study, metre was absolutely necessary, not only as its natural form but for the very restraints it imposed. He judged quite justly of himself, when, called by Duty, as he thought, to write prose, he felt himself comparatively inefficient and maimed. 'If I were wise only to mine own ends,' he wrote, 'I should not choose this manner of writing, wherein knowing myself inferior to myself, led by the genial power of nature to another task, I have the use, as I may account, but of my left hand'.' It was not natural for him to write in 'the pedestrian manner.' Of him Quintilian's words of Plato are true, but they scarcely say enough: 'Plato multo supra prosam orationem et quam pedestrem (Teóv) Graeci vocant surgit.' Beneath all his prose periods the fire of his poetry may be seen gleaming, and ever and anon it breaks through and blazes up supreme. It is an incalculable loss to our poetical literature that Milton's part in it is comparatively so scanty. Poetry was his 'calling'; he had, in his very youth, recognised it to be so; with a singular devotion and an unparalleled industry he had striven to ripen himself for his work; his 'clear spirit' raised 'To scorn delights and live laborious days; She came to Milton not to 'slit the thin-spun life,' but to appoint him a far different lot from that of which he had fondly dreamt. With 'small willingness' he ventured 'to interrupt the pursuit of no less hopes than these, and leave a calm and pleasing solitariness, fed with cheerful and confident thoughts, to em、 bark in a troubled sea of noises and hoarse disputes, put from beholding the bright countenance of truth in the quiet and still air of delightful studies.' Occasionally the difficulty found in the style of the Areopagitica 1 Reason of Church Government. is due to Milton's attempting a Greek arrangement of the words; but, most commonly, it is due to the obscurity to which Elizabethan prose, with its periodic structure, was signally liable in the hands of a writer so impetuous and so abundant as Milton. In his use of this periodic structure Milton was no doubt encouraged by the example of Isokrates, who was famous for his full-flowing expanded sentences. 'In his earlier labours,' says Müller, 'he took as much pains with this symmetrical structure [the antithetical, previously most cultivated] as any Sophist could have done; but in the more flourishing period of his art he contrived to melt down the rigidity and stiffness of the antithesis, by breaking through the direct and immediate opposition of sentences, and by marshalling them in successive groups and a longer series.' With him the result, thanks partly to his own nature, as we have said above, and partly to the character of the language in which he wrote-a language in which, through the variety of its inflexions, and, still more, through its richness in particles, or links (déoμo), as they were called, complexity is possible without intricacy is not obscurity but clearness. With Milton, it must be allowed, the danger of obscurity is not always avoided. The reader had needs be careful, or he will lose the main path, and find himself in what seems at first a hopeless labyrinth. It is easy, however, to exaggerate this peril. Perhaps all that is really needed by the student is great care. Milton's periods are not really mere confused tangles of ornate phraseology, as listening to some critics one might be led to suppose. Milton is the last great writer in the old periodic style. Not a greater change came over our poetry than over our prose in the latter half of the seventeenth century. Dryden's Essays differ in style from Milton's pamphlets as much as his Fables from Paradise Lost. There is no one who does not admire the brilliant transparency of the style of the later writer, and the good service he did for us in impressing that virtue upon our literature. It would be a narrow criticism, that, fascinated by that sovereign charm, should fail to recognise what is worthy and noble in the older writer. Milton's sentences possess a stately majesty that belongs to a different sphere from that which gave birth to Dryden. 'Another race hath been, and other palms are won.' 'There were giants in those days'; and let not the generation that succeeds disparage their mighty predecessors. In a sense Milton was the last of the Titans, and his style is Titanic. Thou hadst a voice whose sound was like the Sea. A SECTION IV. THE RESULT. It was not till 'after many days'-not till after his own eyes were closed in death-that the bread Milton cast upon the waters was seen. The Press was not delivered from Licensers till 1694— just twenty years after the decease of their great opponent; just half a century after the publication of the Areopagitica. From the Presbyterians indeed, who were in power in 1644, there was nothing to be hoped. Mention has already been made of the bitter discovery which Milton and kindred free spirits were to have forced upon them—that, in exchanging Convocation for Synod, they had but substituted one tyranny for another. And thus, for all the impassioned appeals of the Areopagitica, the Parliament did not relax the Ordinance, which was, in fact, as we have seen, but an old Star-Chamber decree re-enacted1. This Ordinance was in some sort repealed or re-inforced in 1647, 1649, and 1652. A warrant of Lord-General Fairfax, dated January 9, directs Captain Richard Lawrence, Marshal-General of 'the Army under my command,' in virtue of the Parliamentary Ordinance of 1649 (dated January 5), to put in execution the previous enactments concerning 'scandalous and unlicensed pamphlets.' The Marshal-General is 'required and authorized to take into custody any person or persons who have offended or shall hereafter offend, against the said Ordinances, and inflict upon them such corporal punishments, and levy such penalties upon them for each offence, as are therein mentioned, and not discharge them till they have made full payment thereof, and received the said punishment accordingly.' And he is further authorized and required to make diligent search 'from time to 1 See Kerr's Blackstone, iv. 161, note; Scobell's Acts and Ordinances. C 2 |