His prose exhibits him in an interesting light connected with his poetry. The specimens we have adduced, show a great resemblance between his prose and his poetry. Some descriptions are similar, and the prose scarcely yields to the poetry in energy, grace, or music. An instance or two has been pointed out. Another may be added. In his tractate on Education recommended to his scholars the hearing or cultivation of music, he says "The interim of unsweating themselves regularly, and convenient rest before meat, may both with profit and delight be taken up in recreating and composing their travailed spirits with the solemn and divine harmonies of music heard or learned; either while the skilful organist plies his grave and fancied descant in lofty fugues, or the whole symphony, with artful and unimaginable touches, adorn and grace the well studied chords of some choice composer; sometimes the lute or soft organ stop waiting on elegant voices, either to religious, civil, or martial ditties, which, if wise men and prophets be not extremely out have a great power over dispositions and manners, to smooth and make them gentle from rustic hardness and distempered passions." and could be combined and moul- persecution upon this church and ded in the best manner, to form on themselves, perhaps will be either prosaic or poetic expres- found at the last day not to have sion. Shakspeare before him an- read in vain." Many others might ticipated or created several of its be pointed out; but of this there is beauties, and a few writers since enough.' have added somewhat both to its compass and sweetness. But no succeeding author has equalled him throughout, in the magic of words, in fine forms of speech, nor from the nature of the case, can ever be expected to equal him. The greatest possible beauties of the language, as to expression and harmony, seem to have been forestalled. We will not be entirely positive on this subject, not knowing what extraordinary genius may yet arise and throw the language into some new and enchanting forms of beauty: but we are permitted strongly to doubt whether that ever will be done, which has not been effected, during the intermediate cultivation of nearly two centuries. The structure of Milton's sentences, no doubt was faulty in many instances. On this subject something has been before observed-we would add, the age in which he lived was not in this respect remarkable for its correctness. His learned idioms and constructions do not comport with the philosophical precision and simplicity of the language, however they may affect its harmony. Instances may have been observed in the quotations above. Those that follow are of this description. We have his learned idioms in these expressions," For which Britain hears ill abroad." "But it is become a dividual movement." We have his latinized constructions in these sentences. "And me perhaps each of these dispositions as the subject was whereon I entered, have at other times variously affected &c." "True; and he that looks well into the book of God's providence, if he read there that God for this their negligence and halting, brought all that following This is but a counterpart of the exquisite lines; "And ever against eating cares Such as the melting soul may pierce Whether a confidence in one's own powers be an indication of a great mind, or whether it be a want of Christian humility, we will not pretend to say. Milton possessed such a confidence in a high degree, and in him it led to great attainments and beneficial results. This fact we discover from the lofty feeling that told of soaring above the "Aonian mount" and which long before promised to sing an elaborate song to generations." A passage in his apology for the Smectymnuans affords also an instance. His prelatical opposers had decried him as being unread in the councils. Among other things he replied "I have not therefore I confess read more of the councils save here and there; I should be sorry to have been such a prodigal of my time. But that which is better, I can assure this confuter I have read into them all. And if I want any thing yet, I shall reply something toward that, which in the defence of Muraena, was answered by Cicero to Sulpitius the lawyer. If ye provoke me, for at no hand else will I undertake such a frivolous labor, I will in three months be an expert councilist." The controversial character of his prose writings has already been remarked upon. It attaches to all those works of his, of which the subjects were politics and religion, -reformations in state or church. His opinions on varions points touching these great interests differed from those that were commonly received in his day. They were urged with the whole extent of learning and eloquence-their influence was considerable at the time and though the writings that embody them are now not well known to the generality of readers, their effect has been felt ever since in the world. On the political part, including his Areopagitica, the Tenure of Kings and Magistrates, the Iconoclast, and his Defences of the people of England, and of himself, he was in general too powerful to be resisted. Light has beamed from these writings which we trust will never be put out, but will guide mankind through all generations to a knowledge of their most important civil and ecclesiastical rights. On the religious part, including the efforts of the Smectymnuar divines, in the opinion of Symmons, the wit of Hall and the erudition of Usher predominated in the contest. But this the biographer would very naturally believe as a member of the establishment. In speaking of his religious controversial writings we refer not to his theological opinions strictly understood, for these so far as was known or believed in his life time were orthodox, or consistent with the creed of the church of England. The peculiarity of the poet's religious opinions had respect to church government and the external parts of devotion. He certainly possessed some levelling notions respecting the Christian ministry, and hardly did justice to it as an arrangement of divine wisdom in relation to the interests of the church. We are confident that he too greatly underrated, though not from design, its character and its influence, together with the credentials proper or necessary to substantiate a claim to its authority, privileges, or duties. In his zeal against prelates and in his indignation at their tyranny and corruptions, he was propelled too far towards the opposite extreme. He allowed that ministers should be competently supported, but that support he wished to leave to the mere charity or generosity of those who reap the benefits of ministerial care, to their sense of duty expressed, (to use the language of certain sects,) by free will offerings. And as to that which constituted the ministry it was, if we understand him, nothing more than the possession of Christian knowledge and character in a professor of religion, with the designation of a particular church authorizing him to exercise his gifts. In his view, all Christians were in an important sense priests or ministers, and little difference existed between them and others, so far as office was concerned. Heretofore, in the first evangelic times," he says, " and it would be happy for Christendom if it were so again, ministers of the gospel were nothing else distinguished from other Christians but by their spiritual knowledge and sanctity of life, for which the church elected them to be her teachers and overseers, though not thereby to separate them from whatever calling she then found them following besides, as the example of St. Paul declares, and the first times of Christianity. When once they affected to be called a clergy, and became as it were, a peculiar tribe of Levites, a party, a distinct order in the commonwealth, bred up for divines in babbling schools, and fed at the public cost, good for nothing else but what was good for nothing, they soon grew idle; that idleness, with fulness of bread, begat pride and perpetual contention with their feeders, the despised laity, through all ages ever since, to the perverting of religion, and the disturbance of all Christendom." His theological opinions are not fully expressed in the publications under review. There are incidental notices of them indeed, and he is always the strenuous advocate of the Christian faith. Though not delivered in a didactic form, or in a set discourse, we find in them much that is edifying to Christians, and calculated to impress us favorably in respect to his sincerity and honesty in religion. Still these productions are not complete expositions of his faith. More even of this expository description, as well as of his ordinary religious feelings may be discovered in his great epic, than here. With some objectional points and more than we could wish, there are yet in that work high and prevailing excellencies of the moral and spiritual kind. Its influence we believe, has been generally favorable in regard to the precious interests of truth and piety. Nor could we with correctness, express ourselves very differently in respect to his prose works. Their features are very markedtheir character is strongly delineated. Both the worthy and faulty portions are distinct and prominent, but the good preponderates greatly over the bad. The same also is the estimate which has been commonly formed of his personal character as to morality and religion. Some suspicions have been indulged respecting its soundness, and certain biographers have discovered and affected to lament several inconsistencies in his conduct. This was the case particulary with Johnson who treated the character of Milton with reprehensible severity. Yet the religious public have, we believe, hitherto pronounced on the whole a favorable verdict. Some of his biographers, however, will not admit at all the justice of the allegations brought against him, as for instance those respecting his obstinacy, moroseness, or ill-treatment of his daughters. They consider them only as the slanderous reports of enemies, of whom it was the unhappiness and the distinction of the poet, in those turbulent times, to have had an abundance. We are not therefore without authority or excuse, for attaching very little credit to those accounts which are designed to affect injuriously the character of this great man. That he did not frequent any place of public worship during the latter period of his life-a relation which depends on the single testimony of Toland-may, if we must give credit to it, be accounted for from the fact that he was "In darkness, and with dangers compass ed round." The helpless condition of blindness, its perils, together with the fear of personal violence from his exasperated enemies, confined him, as his biographers assert, almost entirely to his house. That he had been disposed to attend public worship antecedently to the period of his infirmities, though often to his inconvenience, will appear probable from the following sentence in his Tractate on Education, though the proof may possibly imply the secret reasons why he ever abandoned the practice. "There would then (that is, when his scholars should be fraught with an universal insight into things,) appear in pulpits other visages, other gestures, and stuff otherwise wrought than what we now sit under, oft-times to as great a trial to our patience, as any other that they preach to us." A person of his refined and enlarged mind, might have been disgusted with the performances which he was accustomed to hear, and on this account, most unwarrantably have forsaken the institution of public worship. But we trust it was not thus with Milton, nor are we obliged to recur to that, or to any less favorable supposition. If he neglected family worship, as has also been alleged, we could offer no apology for him on the grounds above stated, nor indeed scarcely on any other ground whatever, unless absolute disability. That he did neglect this form of worship is a supposition, however, which as Symmons remarks, is "by no means supported by sufficient testimony." It "rests upon nothing more than the weakness of negative evidence." On the whole, so far as appears from his works hitherto, from their influence on the interests of public virtue and the Christian faith, and from the more candid and consistent accounts of his biographers, making due allowances for the faults of the age and the uncommon difficulties in which he was placed, we are permitted to think with great partiality of him as a defender of important truth and a friend of the human race. As one instance out of many, of Christian approbation and the feelings of Christians in respect to Milton, we will quote a paragraph from one of Foster's Essays. "In applying the censure to the poets (of hostility to the Christian scheme, or omission of its peculiarities) it is very gratifying to meet with so much to applaud in the greatest of all their tribe. Milton's genius might harmoniously have mingied with the angels who announced the Savior to be come, or who on the spot or at the moment of his departure predicted his coming again might have shamed to silence the Muses of Paganism, or softened the pains of a Christian Martyr." We would not, however, speak very decisively at this time of his character, so far as experimental piety is concerned, either as commented on by his biographers, or deduced from his writings. We would not be so presumptuous as to pronounce a definitive sentence of this kind at any time; though we should feel perfectly free to express our opinion according to evidence actually and fairly made out. If, from the late discovered work on Christian Doctrine, before alluded to, affirmed to be his and the same as Wood speaks of under the title of "Idea Theologiæ," and asserts to have been lost, Milton is destined to be regarded by the friends of evangelical religion, in a light different from that in which he has been heretofore contemplated, we would not by any act of ours gratuitous and uncalled for, aid in hastening that destiny. As lovers of his name and his fame-of his long acknowledged and admired works both prose and poetry,-especially of the song prompted by the muse of" Sion hill" and "Siloa's brook" as having formerly been estab lished in a favorable opinion of his religious character and the useful tendency of his writings, an opinion fortified by the decision of the wise and good, we shall surely feel reluctant to forego our fondly cherished hope of him, as a friend of God and his holy cause and truth. It would exceedingly pain us to come so near to viewing him as "amerced Of heaven, and from eternal splendors all the glory of his name among 70 lief in the dogmas he had avowed, may have been shaken before his death, that in the long intervening period of infirmity and affliction when unable to use his pen, he may have felt a penitential remorsethat as trials often purge away the dross of sins, Milton, who from having been the idol of his countrymen, loaded with the favor of princes and applauded throughout Europe-who, from having been crowned with every garland, and bright with every hope, and warm with irrepressible desires of executing yet more glorious achievements, was left to neglect, proscription, poverty, blindness, and at length old age,-may have been purified by means of his vicissitudes and his sufferings ere he quit the world, and prepared for a nobler and a holier state of being. We hope that passing from time into eternity as he did and when he did, weary with cares and exertions and conflicts, like the hard-fighting warrior carried off from the battle ground, covered with scars, and wounds, and paleness; or the weather-beaten mariner escaping from the scene of his perils, drenched with the surge and exhausted with anxiety and toil; the spirit of Milton may have been found among those who "came out of great tribulation and have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb." We hope-but perhaps we have already said too much -we must here leave him to instruct the nations in the knowledge of their civil rights, and reform the church in many things that concern her external order and inward puri. ty-we must leave him to be forever admired for the transcendency of his genius, and to charm each coming age with the majesty and loveliness of song, should neither we nor those that come after us be permitted to revere him as a saint,. or to believe that his memorial is on high. |
