Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

to travel, he visited Paris, Florence, Rome, and Naples. His name had gone before him, and his progress was a triumph. Public dinners and pieces of plate did not abound in those days; but the nobility of the country entertained him at their mansions, and the literati wrote poems in his praise.

We may conceive with what delight he found his dreams of the continent realized-with what kindling rapture his eye met the Alps, gazed on the golden plains of Italy, or perused the masterpieces of Italian art in the halls of Florence, or the palaces of Rome. Milton in the Coliseum, or standing at midnight upon Mount Palatine, with the ruins of Rome dim-discovered around him-it were a subject for a painting or a poem. At this time a little incident of romance occurred. In his youth he was extremely handsome, so much so, that he was called the lady of his college. When in Italy, he had lain down to repose during the heat of the day in the fields. A young lady of high rank was passing with her servant; she was greatly struck with the appearance of the slumberer, who seemed to her eye as one of the angels whom he afterwards described reposing in the vales of heaven. She wrote a few extempore lines in his praise with a pencil, laid them down at his side, and went on her way. When Milton awoke, he found the lines lying, but the fair writer gone. One account says that he spent some time in searching for her, but in vain. Another (on which Bulwer has founded a poem) relates that she, still stung by the recollection of his beauty, followed him to England; and was so mortified at finding him by this time married that she died of a broken heart. Milton had intended to extend his tour to Sicily and Greece, but the state of affairs in England drew him home. "I deemed it dishonorable," he said, "to be lingering abroad, even for the improvement of my mind, while my fellow-citizens were contending for their liberty at home." There spoke the veritable man and hero, John Milton, one who measured every thing by its relation not to delight, but to duty; and felt himself ever in his great Taskmaster's eye." The civil war had by this time broken out in flames which were not to be slaked for twenty years, and into which even a king's blood was to fall like oil. Milton, though an admirable fencer, and as brave as his own

Michael, thought he might serve the popular cause better by the pen than by the sword. He calmly sat down, therefore, to write down royalty, prelacy, and every species of arbitrary power. At the same time, he opened a school for the education of the young. This has actually formed a count of indictment against him. Milton has been thought by some to have demeaned himself by teaching children the first element of knowledge, although it be, in truth, one of the noblest avocations-although the fact of the contempt in which it is held, ought to be a count of indictment against an age foolish enough to entertain it—although it be an avocation rendered illustrious by other names besides that of Milton, the names of Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Buchanan, Parr, Johnson, and Arnold-and although the day is coming when the titles of captain, or colonel, or knight-at-arms-yea, and those of a king, kaiser, and emperor, will look mean and contemptible compared to that of a village-schoolmaster who is worthy of his trade. Louis Philippe, if we are not mistaken, once taught a school; and it is, perhaps, a pity that he ever did any thing else. The ingenious Mr. Punch lately proposed an asylum for discrowned continental monarchs; we think a better idea would be, if they would set up a joint-stock academy in the neighborhood of London-Louis Philippe teaching French and fortification-the Emperor of Austria German and Italian-the King of Prussia metaphysics-and the King of Bavaria, assisted by Lola Montes, the elements of morality and religion; Nicholas might, by and by, be appointed president of the academy-Metternich would make a capital head usher; and the whole might be called the New Royal Institution.

He

Schoolmaster as he was, and afterwards Latin secretary to Cromwell, Milton found time to do and to write much in the course of the eighteen or twenty years which elapsed between his return to England and the Restoration. found time for writing several treatises on divorce, for publishing his celebrated tractate on education, and his still more celebrated discourse on the liberty of unlicensed printing, for collecting his minor poems in Latin and English, and for defending, in various treatises, the execution of Charles I., and the Government of Cromwell, besides commencing an English History, an English Grammar, and a Latin Dic

tionary. Meanwhile, his first wife, who had borne him three daughters, died in child-bed. Meanwhile, too, a disease of the eyes, contracted by intense study, began gradually to eclipse the most intellectual orbs then glowing upon earth. Milton has uttered more than one noble complaint over his completed blindness. We could conceive him to have penned an expostulation to the advancing shadow, equally sublime and equally vain, for it was God's pleasure that this great spirit should, like himself, dwell for a season in the thick darkness. And scarcely had the last glimmer of light been extinguished, than, as if the coming calamities had been stayed and spell-bound hitherto by the calm look of the magician, in one torrent they came upon his head; but although it was a Niagara that fell, it fell like Niagara upon a rock. In an evil hour, as it seemed at the time at least, for Britain, for Milton, for the progress of the human race, the restored Charles arrived. The consequences were disastrous to Milton. His name was proscribed, his books burned, himself obliged to abscond, and it was what some would call a miracle that this blinded Samson was not led forth to give his enemies sport, at the place of common execution, and that the most godlike head in the world did not roll off from the bloody block. But "man is immortal till his work be done." We speak of accidents and possibilities; but, in reality, and looking at the matter upon the God-side of it, Milton could no more have perished then than he could a century before. His future works were as certain, and inevitable, and due at their day, as summer and winter, as seedtime and harvest."

66

Even after the heat of persecution had abated, and his life was, by sufferance, secure-it was never more- -the prospects of Milton were aught but cheering. He was poor, he was blind, he was solitary-his second wife dead; his daughters, it would appear, were not the most congenial of companions; his country was enslaved; the hopes of the Church and of the world seemed blasted ;-one might have expected that disappointment, regret, and vexation would have completed their work. Probably his enemies expected. so too. Probably they said, "We'll neglect him, and see if that does not break his heart--we'll bring down on his head the silence of a world, which was wont to ring with his name."

-They did not know their man. They knew not that here was one of the immortal coursers, who fed on no vulgar or earthly food. He "had meat to eat that the world knew not of."

It was the greatest crisis in the history of the individual man. Napoleon survived the loss of his empire; and men call him great, because he survived it. Sir Walter Scott not only survived the loss of his fortune, but he struggled manfully amid the sympathy of the civilized species to repair it. But Milton, amidst the loss of friends, fortune, fame, sight, safety, domestic comfort, long cherished hopes, not only survived, but stood firm as a god above the ruins of a world; and not only stood firm, but built, alone and unaided, to himself an everlasting monument. Whole centuries of every-day life seem condensed in those few years in which he was constructing his work; and it is too daring a conception-that of the Great Spirit watching from on high its progress, and saying of it, as he did of his own creation, when finished, "It is very good?"

But, indeed, his own work it was. For, strong as this hero felt himself in his matured learning-in his genius, so highly cultured, yet still so fresh and young, in his old experience, he did not venture to put his hand to the task till, with strong crying and tears, he had asked the inspiration and guidance of a higher power. Nor were these denied him. As Noah into the ark of old, the Lord "shut" Milton in within the darkened tabernacle of his own spirit, and that tabernacle being filled with light from heaven, "Paradise Lost" arose, the joint work of human genius and of divine illumination.

We have seen the first edition of this marvellous poem —a small, humble duodecimo, in ten books, which was the original number; but to us it seemed rich all over, as a summer's sunset with glory. Every one has heard, probably, of the price, the goodly price, at which it was prized and bought five pounds, with a contingency of fifteen more in case of sale. For two years before it seems to have slumbered in manuscript, and very likely was the while carried round the trade, seeking for one hardy enough to be its literary. accoucheur. But let us not imagine that in our day it would have met with a different reception. We can well fancy Adam Black, or John Murray, saying to Milton, "Splendid poem,

sir great genius in it; but it won't sell, we fear-far too long-too many learned words in it-odd episode that on sin and death. If you could rub it down into a tragedy, and secure Macready for Satan, and Helen Faucit for Eve, it might take; or, if you could write a few songs on the third French Revolution, or something in the style of 'Dombey and Son.' Good morning, Mr. Milton." It appeared in 1667, but was a long time of rising to its just place in public estimation. The public preferred Waller's insipid commonplaces, and Dryden's ranting plays, to the divine blank verse of Milton. Waller himself spoke of it as a long, dull poem in blank verse; if its length could not be considered a merit, it had no other. The case is not singular. Two of the greatest poems in English of this century are, in our judgment, Wordsworth's "Excursion" and Bailey's "Festus." Both were for years treated with neglect, although we are certain that both will survive the "Course of Time" and the "Pickwick Papers." Between his masterpiece and his death, little occurred except the publication of some minor, but noble productions, including "Paradise Regained," "Samson Agonistes," "A system of Logic," "A Treatise of True Religion," and a collection of his familiar epistles in Latin. At last, in November, 1647, at the age of sixtysix, under an exhaustion of the vital powers, Milton expired, and that spirit, which was only a little lower than the angels," went away to mingle with his starry kindred. It is with a certain severe satisfaction that we contemplate the death of a man like Milton. We feel that tears and lamentations are here unbecoming, and would mar the solemn sweetness of the scene. With serenity, nay, joy, we witness this majestic man-child caught up to God and his throne, soaring away from the many shadows which surrounded him on earth, into that bright element of eternity, in which he seemed already naturalized. Who seeks to weep, as he sees the river, rich with the spoils of its long wandering, and become a broad mirror for the heavens, at length sinking in the bosom of the deep? Were we permitted to behold a star re-absorbed into its source, melted down in God, would it not generate a delight, graver, indeed, but as real, as had we stood by its creation; and although there were no shouting, as on its natal morn, might there not be silence-the silence

66

« AnteriorContinuar »