Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

What Milton's views were of the much-disputed act that interrupted the royal succession, is sufficiently manifest from the treatise presently to be noticed, and from his two Defences of the People of England. This, however, seems the appropriate place in which to present his opinions of the principal actors in that tragic scene. Dr. Johnson observes, with his accustomed injustice, that no man who has written so much as Milton has, is so seldom known to bestow praise. upon others. We have already noticed the cordial respect he repeatedly testified for his Italian friends: the catalogue in refutation of Dr. Johnson's remark will now be increased by the names of Sir Henry Vane, Fairfax, Bradshaw, and Cromwell. His eulogy upon the Protector will be most fitly introduced hereafter. Those upon Fairfax and Vane are contained in the following sonnets:

"TO THE LORD GENERAL FAIRFAX.

Fairfax whose name in arms through Europe rings,
Filling each mouth with envy or with praise,
And all her jealous monarchs with amaze
And rumours loud, that daunt remotest kings;
Thy firm unshaken virtue ever brings

Victory home, though new rebellions raise
Their hydra heads, and the false North displays
Her broken league to imp their serpent wings.
O, yet a noble task awaits thy hand,

(For what can war but endless war still breed?)
Till truth and right from violence be freed,
And public faith clear'd from the shameful brand
Of public fraud. In vain doth Valour bleed,
While Avarice and Rapine share the land."

[ocr errors]

TO SIR HENRY VANE THE YOUNGER.

Vane! young in years, but in sage counsel old,

Than whom a better senator ne'er held

The helm of Rome, when gowns, not arms, repell'd
The fierce Epirot and the Afran bold:

Whether to settle peace, or to unfold

The drift of hollow states hard to be spell'd;

Then to advise how War may, best upheld,

Move by her two main nerves, iron and gold,

In all her equipage: besides to know

Both spiritual power and civil, what each means,

What severs each, thou hast learn'd, which few have done
The bounds of either sword to thee we owe :

Therefore on thy firm hand Religion leans
In peace, and reckons thee her eldest son."

The historical panegyric upon Bradshaw is found in Milton's "Second Defence of the People of England;" and as that work, like the "First Defence," was written in Latin, it is presented in the following translation :-" John Bradshaw * (a name which will be repeated with applause wherever liberty is cherished or is known) was sprung from a noble family. All his early life he sedulously employed in making himself acquainted with the laws of his country; he then practised with singular success and reputation at the bar he showed himself an intrepid and unwearied advocate for the liberties of the people: he took an active part in the most momentous affairs of the State, and occasionally discharged the functions of a judge, with the most inviolable integrity. At last, when he was entreated by the Parliament to preside in the trial of the king, he did not refuse the dangerous office. To a profound knowledge

* An American monumental inscription to the memory of this extraordinary man should not be omitted here. It is said to have been dated from Anapolis, June 21st, 1773, and to have been engraven on a cannon, whence copies were taken and hung up in almost every house in the continent of America :

"STRANGER! ere thou pass, contemplate this cannon, nor regardless be told that near its base lies deposited the dust of JOHN BRADSHAW, who, nobly superior to selfish regards, despising alike the pageantry of courtly splendour, the blast of calumny, and the terror of regal vengeance, presided in the illustrious band of heroes and patriots who fairly and openly adjudged CHARLES STUART, tyrant of England, to a public and exemplary death, thereby presenting to the amazed world, and transmitting down through applauding ages, the most glorious example of unshaken virtue, love of freedom, and impartial justice, ever exhibited on the blood-stained theatre of human action. Oh! reader, pass not on till thou hast blessed his memory, and never, never forget, that rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God."

of the law, he added the most comprehensive views, the most generous sentiments, manners the most obliging and the most pure. Hence he discharged that office with a propriety almost without a parallel; he inspired both respect and awe; and, though menaced by the daggers of so many assassins, he conducted himself with so much consistency and gravity—with so much presence of mind, and so much dignity of demeanour, that he seems to have been purposely destined by Providence for that part which he so nobly acted on the theatre of the world. And his glory is as much exalted above that of all other tyrannicides, as it is more humane, more just, and more strikingly grand, judicially to condemn a tyrant, than to put him to death without a trial. In other respects there was no forbidding austerity, no moroseness in his manner; he was courteous and benign; but the great character which he then sustained, he with perfect consistency still sustains, so that you would suppose that not only then, but in every future period of his life, he was sitting in judgment upon the king. In the public business his activity is unwearied; and he alone is equal to a host. At home his hospitality is as splendid as his fortune will permit: in his friendships there is the most inflexible fidelity; and no one more readily discerns merit, or more liberally rewards it. Men of piety and learning, ingenious persons in all professions, those who have been distinguished by their courage or their misfortunes, are free to participate his bounty; and if they want not his bounty, they are sure to share his friendship and esteem. He never ceases to extol the merits of others, or to conceal his own; and no one was ever more ready to accept the excuses, or to pardon the hostility, of his political opponents. If he undertake to plead the cause of the oppressed, to solicit the favour or deprecate the resentment of the powerful, to reprove the public ingratitude towards any particular individual, his address and his perseverance are beyond all praise. On such occasions no one could

desire a patron or a friend more able, more zealous, or more eloquent. No menace could divert him from his purpose! no intimidation on the one hand, and no promise of emolument or promotion on the other, could alter the serenity of his countenance, or shake the firmness of his soul. By these virtues, which endeared him to his friends, and commanded the respect even of his enemies, he, sir, has acquired a name which, while you and such as you are mouldering in oblivion, will flourish in every age, and in every country in the world."*

:

The title of the treatise now under notice is as follows:"The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates: proving that it is lawful, and hath been held so through all ages, for any, who have the power, to call to account a tyrant, or wicked king, and, after due conviction, to depose, and put him to death, if the ordinary magistrate have neglected or denied to do it. And that they who of late so much blame deposing, are the men that did it themselves." Milton commences with laying down what are the true moral principles with relation to political tyranny, affirming that "none can love freedom heartily but good men ;† the rest love not freedom, but licence, which never hath more scope or more indulgence than under tyrants;" and, with pointed reference to the presbyterian apostacy, he adds, “And although sometimes for shame, and when it comes to their own grievances, of purse especially, they would seem good patriots, and side with the better cause, yet when others, for the deliverance of their country endued with fortitude and heroic

* Prose Works, vol. i., pp. 267, 268.

+ Robert Hall, in his sermon on the death of Dr. Ryland, observes that it has been alleged against the Christian religion, that it does not prescribe the duties of patriotism and friendship; but argues, in reply, that it supplies the only system of morals from which those virtues can result. With respect to friendship, Cicero affirmed, in his treatise "De Amicitiâ," that it could only subsist between virtuous men ; and Milton here maintains that general moral excellence must engender that sentiment which alone deserves the name of patriotism.

virtue to fear nothing but the curse written against those 'that do the work of the Lord negligently,' would go on to remove, not only the calamities and thraldoms of a people, but the roots and causes whence they spring; straight these men, and sure helpers at need, as if they hated only the miseries, but not the mischiefs, after they have juggled and paltered with the world, bandied and borne arms against their king, divested him, disanointed him, nay, cursed him all over in their pulpits, and their pamphlets, to the engaging of sincere and real men beyond what is possible or honest to retreat from, not only turn revolters from those principles, which only could at first move them, but lay the strain of disloyalty, and worse, on those proceedings which are the necessary consequences of their own former actions; nor disliked by themselves, were they managed to the entire advantages of their own faction; not considering the while that he toward whom they boasted their new fidelity, counted them accessory; and by those statutes and laws, which they so impotently brandish against others, would have doomed them to a traitor's death for what they have done already."*

* Mr. St. John, in his edition of the prose works of Milton, makes the following comment upon this passage:-" Dr. Zachary Grey, the learned, but partial and prejudiced editor of Hudibras, has, with the diligence of one who performs a labour of love, scraped together in his notes everything the paltry literature of the Restoration could supply against the preachers and soldiers of the Commonwealth. He, however, corroborates Milton's charge against the Presbyterians, of having at the outset preached a crusade against royalty; but is far from joining with the poet in reprehending their backwardness to fight it out, mordicus-to death.' 'The Presbyterians (many of whom, before the war, had got, he observes, into parish churches) preached the people into rebellion; incited them to take up arms and fight the Lord's battles, and destroy the Amalekites, root and branch, hip and thigh, and to root out the wicked from the earth; that was, in their sense, all that loved the king, the bishops, and the common prayer.' 'It has been fully made out, that many of the regicides were drawn into the grand rebellion by the direful imprecations of seditious

« AnteriorContinuar »