Lives of the English Poets : Waller, Milton, Cowley

I cannot but remark a kind of respect, perhaps unconsciously paid to this great man by his biographers: every house in which he resided is historically mentioned, as if it were an injury to neglect naming any place that he honoured by his presence.

The king, with lenity of which the world has had perhaps no other example, declined to be the judge or avenger of his own or his father’s wrongs; and promised to admit into the Act of Oblivion all except those whom the Parliament should except; and the Parliament doomed none to capital punishment but the wretches who had immediately co-operated in the murder of the king.  Milton was certainly not one of them; he had only justified what they had done.

This justification was indeed sufficiently offensive; and (June 16) an order was issued to seize Milton’s “Defence,” and Goodwin’s “Obstructors of Justice,” another book of the same tendency, and burn them by the common hangman.  The attorney-general was ordered to prosecute the authors; but Milton was not seized, nor perhaps very diligently pursued.

Not long after (August 19) the flutter of innumerable bosoms was stilled by an Act, which the king, that his mercy might want no recommendation of elegance, rather called an Act of Oblivion than of Grace.  Goodwin was named, with nineteen more, as incapacitated for any public trust; but of Milton there was no exception.

Of this tenderness shown to Milton the curiosity of mankind has not forborne to inquire the reason.  Burnet thinks he was forgotten; but this is another instance which may confirm Dalrymple’s observation, who says, “that whenever Burnet’s narrations are examined, he appears to be mistaken.”

Forgotten he was not; for his prosecution was ordered; it must be therefore by design that he was included in the general oblivion.  He is said to have had friends in the House, such as Marvel, Morrice, and Sir Thomas Clarges: and undoubtedly a man like him must have had influence.  A very particular story of his escape is told by Richardson in his Memoirs, which he received from Pope, as delivered by Betterton, who might have heard it from Davenant.  In the war between the King and Parliament, Davenant was made prisoner and condemned to die; but was spared at the request of Milton.  When the turn of success brought Milton into the like danger, Davenant repaid the benefit by appearing in his favour.  Here is a reciprocation of generosity and gratitude so pleasing, that the tale makes its own way to credit.  But if help were wanted, I know not where to find it.  The danger of Davenant is certain from his own relation; but of his escape there is no account.  Betterton’s narration can be traced no higher; it is not known that he hid it from Davenant.  We are told that the benefit exchanged was life for life; but it seems not certain that Milton’s life ever was in danger.  Goodwin, who had committed the same kind of crime, escaped with incapacitation; and, as exclusion from public trust is a punishment which the power of Government can commonly inflict without the help of a particular law, it required no great interest to exempt Milton from a censure little more than verbal.  Something may be reasonably ascribed to veneration and compassion; to veneration of his abilities, and compassion for his distresses, which made it fit to forgive his malice for his learning.  He was now poor and blind; and who would pursue with violence an illustrious enemy, depressed by fortune and disarmed by nature?

The publication of the “Act of Oblivion” put him in the same condition with his fellow-subjects.  He was, however, upon some pretence now not known, in the custody of the serjeant in December; and when he was released, upon his refusal of the fees demanded, he and the serjeant were called before the House.  He was now safe within the shade of oblivion, and knew himself to be as much out of the power of a griping officer as any other man.  How the question was determined is not known.  Milton would hardly have contended but that he knew himself to have right on his side.

He then removed to Jewin Street, near Aldersgate Street, and, being blind and by no means wealthy, wanted a domestic companion and attendant; and therefore, by the recommendation of Dr. Paget, married Elizabeth Minshul, of a gentleman’s family in Cheshire, probably without a fortune.  All his wives were virgins; for he has declared that he thought it gross and indelicate to be a second husband: upon what other principles his choice was made cannot now be known; but marriage afforded not much of his happiness.  The first wife left him in disgust, and was brought back only by terror; the second, indeed, seems to have been more a favourite, but her life was short.  The third, as Philips relates, oppressed his children in his lifetime, and cheated them at his death.

Soon after his marriage, according to an obscure story, he was offered the continuance of his employment, and, being pressed by his wife to accept it, answered, “You, like other women, want to ride in your coach; my wish is to live and die an honest man.”  If he considered the Latin secretary as exercising any of the powers of government, he that had shared authority, either with the Parliament or Cromwell, might have forborne to talk very loudly of his honesty; and if he thought the office purely ministerial, he certainly might have honestly retained it under the King.  But this tale has too little evidence to deserve a disquisition; large offers and sturdy rejections are among the most common topics of falsehood.

He had so much either of prudence or gratitude, that he forbore to disturb the new settlement with any of his political or ecclesiastical opinions, and from this time devoted himself to poetry and literature.  Of his zeal for learning in all its parts, he gave a proof by publishing, the next year (1661), “Accidence commenced Grammar;” a little book which has nothing remarkable, but that its author, who had been lately defending the supreme powers of his country, and was then writing “Paradise Lost,” could descend from his elevation to rescue children from the perplexity of grammatical confusion, and the trouble of lessons unnecessarily repeated.

About this time, Elwood the Quaker, being recommended to him as one who would read Latin to him for the advantage of his conversation, attended him every afternoon except on Sundays.  Milton, who, in his letter to Hartlib, had declared, that “to read Latin with an English mouth is as ill a hearing as Law French,” required that Elwood should learn and practise the Italian pronunciation, which, he said, was necessary, if he would talk with foreigners.  This seems to have been a task troublesome without use.  There is little reason for preferring the Italian pronunciation to our own, except that it is more general; and to teach it to an Englishman is only to make him a foreigner at home.  He who travels, if he speaks Latin, may so soon learn the sounds which every native gives it, that he need make no provision before his journey; and if strangers visit us, it is their business to practise such conformity to our modes as they expect from us in their own countries.  Elwood complied with the directions, and improved himself by his attendance; for he relates, that Milton, having a curious ear, knew by his voice when he read what he did not understand, and would stop him, and “open the most difficult passages.”

In a short time he took a house in the Artillery Walk, leading to Bunhill Fields; the mention of which concludes the register of Milton’s removals and habitations.  He lived longer in this place than any other.

He was now busied by “Paradise Lost.”  Whence he drew the original design has been variously conjectured by men who cannot bear to think themselves ignorant of that which, at last, neither diligence nor sagacity can discover.  Some find the hint in an Italian tragedy.  Voltaire tells a wild and unauthorised story of a farce seen by Milton in Italy which opened thus: “Let the Rainbow be the Fiddlestick of the Fiddle of Heaven.”  It has been already shown, that the first conception was a tragedy or mystery, not of a narrative, but a dramatic work which he is supposed to have began to reduce to its present form about the time (1655) when he finished his dispute with the defenders of the king.

He long had promised to adorn his native country by some great performance, while he had yet perhaps no settled design, and was stimulated only by such expectations as naturally arose from the survey of his attainments, and the consciousness of his powers.  What he should undertake it was difficult to determine.  He was “long choosing, and began late.”

While he was obliged to divide his time between his private studies and affairs of state, his poetical labour must have been often interrupted; and perhaps he did little more in that busy time than construct the narrative, adjust the episodes, proportion the parts, accumulate images and sentiments, and treasure in his memory, or preserve in writing, such hints as books or meditation would supply.  Nothing particular is known of his intellectual operations while he was a statesman; for, having every help and accommodation at hand, he had no need of uncommon expedients.

Being driven from all public stations, he is yet too great not to be traced by curiosity to his retirement; where he has been found by Mr. Richardson, the fondest of his admirers, sitting before his door in a grey coat of coarse cloth, in warm sultry weather, to enjoy the fresh air; and so, as in his own room, receiving the visits of people of distinguished parts as well as quality.  His visitors of high quality must now be imagined to be few; but men of parts might reasonably court the conversation of a man so generally illustrious, that foreigners are reported, by Wood, to have visited the house in Bread Street where he was born.

According to another account, he was seen in a small house, neatly enough dressed in black clothes, sitting in a room hung with rusty green; pale but not cadaverous, with chalkstones in his hands.  He said that, if it were not for the gout, his blindness would be tolerable.

In the intervals of his pain, being made unable to use the common exercises, he used to swing in a chair, and sometimes played upon an organ.

He was now confessedly and visibly employed upon his poem, of which the progress might be noted by those with whom he was familiar; for he was obliged, when he had composed as many lines as his memory would conveniently retain, to employ some friend in writing them, having, at least for part of the time, no regular attendant.  This gave opportunity to observations and reports.

Mr. Philips observes, that there was a very remarkable circumstance in the composure of “Paradise Lost,” “which I have a particular reason,” says he, “to remember; for whereas I had the perusal of it from the very beginning, for some years, as I went from time to time to visit him, in parcels of ten, twenty, or thirty verses at a time (which, being written by whatever hand came next, might possibly want correction as to the orthography and pointing), having, as the Summer came on, not been showed any for a considerable while, and desiring the reason thereof, was answered, that his vein never happily flowed but from the autumnal equinox to the vernal; and that whatever he attempted at other times was never to his satisfaction, though he courted his fancy never so much; so that, in all the years he was about this poem, he may be said to have spent half his time therein.”

Upon this relation Toland remarks, that in his opinion Philips has mistaken the time of the year; for Milton, in his Elegies, declares, that with the advance of the spring he feels the increase of his poetical force, redeunt in carmina vires.  To this it is answered, that Philips could hardly mistake time so well marked; and it may be added, that Milton might find different times of the year favourable to different parts of life.  Mr. Richardson conceives it impossible that “such a work should be suspended for six months, or for one.  It may go on faster or slower, but it must go on.”  By what necessity it must continually go on, or why it might not be laid aside and resumed, it is not easy to discover.

This dependence of the soul upon the seasons, those temporary and periodical ebbs and flows of intellect, may, I suppose, justly be derided as the fumes of vain imagination.  Sapiens dominabitur astris.  The author that thinks himself weather-bound will find, with a little help from hellebore, that he is only idle or exhausted.  But while this notion has possession of the head, it produces the inability which it supposes.  Our powers owe much of their energy to our hopes; possunt quia posse videntur.  When success seems attainable, diligence is enforced; but when it is admitted that the faculties are suppressed by a cross wind, or a cloudy sky, the day is given up without resistance; for who can contend with the course of nature?

From such prepossessions Milton seems not to have been free.  There prevailed in his time an opinion, that the world was in its decay, and that we have had the misfortune to be produced in the decrepitude of nature.  It was suspected that the whole creation languished, that neither trees nor animals had the height or bulk of their predecessors, and that everything was daily sinking by gradual diminution.  Milton appears to suspect that souls partake of the general degeneracy, and is not without some fear that his book is to be written in “an age too late” for heroic poesy.

Another opinion wanders about the world, and sometimes finds reception among wise men; an opinion that restrains the operations of the mind to particular regions, and supposes that a luckless mortal may be born in a degree of latitude too high or too low for wisdom or for wit.  From this fancy, wild as it is, he had not wholly cleared his head, when he feared lest the climate of his country might be too cold for flights of imagination.

Into a mind already occupied by such fancies, another, not more reasonable, might easily find its way.  He that could fear lest his genius had fallen upon too old a world, or too chill a climate, might consistently magnify to himself the influence of the seasons, and believe his faculties to be vigorous only half the year.

His submission to the seasons was at least more reasonable than his dread of decaying nature, or a frigid zone; for general causes must operate uniformly in a general abatement of mental power; if less could be performed by the writer, less likewise would content the judges of his work.  Among this lagging race of frosty grovellers he might still have risen into eminence by producing something which “they should not willingly let die.”  However inferior to the heroes who were born in better ages, he might still be great among his contemporaries, with the hope of growing every day greater in the dwindle of posterity.  He might still be the giant of the pigmies, the one-eyed monarch of the blind.

Of his artifices of study, or particular hours of composition, we have little account, and there was perhaps little to be told.  Richardson, who seems to have been very diligent in his inquiries, but discovers always a wish to find Milton discriminated from other men, relates that “he would sometimes lie awake whole nights, but not a verse could he make; and on a sudden his poetical faculty would rush upon him with an impetus or æstrum, and his daughter was immediately called to secure what came.  At other times he would dictate perhaps forty lines in a breath, and then reduce them to half the number.”

These bursts of light, and involutions of darkness, these transient and involuntary excursions and retrocessions of invention, having some appearance of deviation from the common train of nature, are eagerly caught by the lovers of a wonder.  Yet something of this inequality happens to every man in every mode of exertion, manual or mental.  The mechanic cannot handle his hammer and his file at all times with equal dexterity; there are hours, he knows not why, when his hand is out.  By Mr. Richardson’s relation, casually conveyed, much regard cannot be claimed.  That, in his intellectual hour, Milton called for his daughter “to secure what came,” may be questioned; for unluckily it happens to be known that his daughters were never taught to write; nor would he have been obliged, as it is universally confessed, to have employed any casual visitor in disburdening his memory, if his daughter could have performed the office.

The story of reducing his exuberance has been told of other authors; and, though doubtless true of every fertile and copious mind, seems to have been gratuitously transferred to Milton.

What he has told us, and we cannot now know more, is, that he composed much of this poem in the night and morning, I suppose before his mind was disturbed with common business; and that he poured out with great fluency his “unpremeditated verse.”  Versification, free, like this, from the distresses of rhyme, must, by a work so long, be made prompt and habitual; and, when his thoughts were once adjusted, the words would come at his command.

At what particular times of his life the parts of his work were written, cannot often be known.  The beginning of the third book shows that he had lost his sight, and the introduction to the seventh, that the return of the king had clouded him with discountenance; and that he was offended by the licentious festivity of the Restoration.  There are no other internal notes of time.  Milton, being now cleared from all effects of his disloyalty, had nothing required from him but the common duty of living in quiet, to be rewarded with the common right of protection; but this, which, when he skulked from the approach of his king, was perhaps more than he hoped, seems not to have satisfied him; for no sooner is he safe, than he finds himself in danger, “fallen on evil days and evil tongues, and with darkness and with danger compassed round.”  This darkness, had his eyes been better employed, had undoubtedly deserved compassion; but to add the mention of danger was ungrateful and unjust.  He was fallen indeed on “evil days;” the time was come in which regicides could no longer boast their wickedness.  But of “evil tongues” for Milton to complain, required impudence at least equal to his other powers; Milton, whose warmest advocates must allow that he never spared any asperity of reproach or brutality of insolence.

But the charge itself seems to be false; for it would be hard to recollect any reproach cast upon him, either serious or ludicrous, through the whole remaining part of his life.  He pursued his studies or his amusements, without persecution, molestation, or insult.  Such is the reverence paid to great abilities, however misused; they, who contemplated in Milton the scholar and the wit, were contented to forget the reviler of his king.

When the plague (1665) raged in London, Milton took refuge at Chalfont, in Bucks; where Elwood, who had taken the house for him, first saw a complete copy of “Paradise Lost,” and, having perused it, said to him, “Thou hast said a great deal upon Paradise Lost; what hast thou to say upon Paradise Found?”

Next year, when the danger of infection had ceased, he returned to Bunhill Fields, and designed the publication of his poem.  A licence was necessary, and he could expect no great kindness from a chaplain of the Archbishop of Canterbury.  He seems, however, to have been treated with tenderness; for, though objections were made to particular passages, and among them to the simile of the sun eclipsed in the first book, yet the licence was granted; and he sold his copy, April 27, 1667, to Samuel Simmons, for an immediate payment of five pounds, with a stipulation to receive five pounds more when thirteen hundred should be sold of the first edition; and again, five pounds after the sale of the same number of the second edition; and another five pounds after the same sale of the third.  None of the three editions were to be extended beyond fifteen hundred copies.

The first edition was ten books, in a small quarto.  The titles were varied from year to year; and an advertisement and the arguments of the books were omitted in some copies, and inserted in others.

The sale gave him in two years a right to his second payment, for which the receipt was signed April 26, 1669.  The second edition was not given till 1674; it was printed in small octave; and the number of books was increased to twelve, by a division of the seventh and twelfth; and some other small improvements were made.  The third edition was published in 1678; and the widow, to whom the copy was then to devolve, sold all her claims to Simmons for eight pounds, according to her receipt given December 21, 1680.  Simmons had already agreed to transfer the whole right to Brabazon Aylmer for £25; and Aylmer sold to Jacob Tonson half, August 17, 1683, and half, March 24, 1690, at a price considerably enlarged.  In the history of “Paradise Lost” a deduction thus minute will rather gratify than fatigue.

The slow sale and tardy reputation of this poem have been always mentioned as evidences of neglected merit, and of the uncertainty of literary fame; and inquiries have been made, and conjectures offered, about the causes of its long obscurity and late reception.  But has the case been truly stated?  Have not lamentation and wonder been lavished on an evil that was never felt?

That in the reigns of Charles and James the “Paradise Lost” received no public acclamations is readily confessed.  Wit and literature were on the side of the court: and who that solicited favour or fashion would venture to praise the defender of the regicides?  All that he himself could think his due, from “evil tongues” in “evil days,” was that reverential silence which was generously preserved.  But it cannot be inferred that his poem was not read, or not, however unwillingly, admired.

The sale, if it be considered, will justify the public.  Those who have no power to judge of past times but by their own, should always doubt their conclusions.  The call for books was not, in Milton’s age, what it is at present.  To read was not then a general amusement; neither traders, nor often gentlemen, thought themselves disgraced by ignorance.  The women had not then aspired to literature, nor was every house supplied with a closet of knowledge.  Those, indeed, who professed learning, were not less learned than at any other time; but of that middle race of students who read for pleasure or accomplishment, and who buy the numerous products of modern typography, the number was then comparatively small.  To prove the paucity of readers, it may be sufficient to remark, that the nation had been satisfied from 1623 to 1664—that is, forty-one years—with only two editions of the works of Shakespeare, which probably did not together make one thousand copies.

The sale of thirteen hundred copies in two years, in opposition to so much recent enmity, and to a style of versification new to all and disgusting to many, was an uncommon example of the prevalence of genius.  The demand did not immediately increase; for many more readers than were supplied at first the nation did not afford.  Only three thousand were sold in eleven years; for it forced its way without assistance; its admirers did not dare to publish their opinion; and the opportunities now given of attracting notice by advertisements were then very few; the means of proclaiming the publication of new books have been produced by that general literature which now pervades the nation through all its ranks.  But the reputation and price of the copy still advanced, till the Revolution put an end to the secrecy of love, and “Paradise Lost” broke into open view with sufficient security of kind reception.

Fancy can hardly forbear to conjecture with what temper Milton surveyed the silent progress of his work, and marked its reputation stealing its way in a kind of subterraneous current through fear and silence.  I cannot but conceive him calm and confident, little disappointed, not at all dejected, relying on his own merit with steady consciousness, and waiting without impatience the vicissitudes of opinion, and the impartiality of a future generation.

In the meantime he continued his studies, and supplied the want of sight by a very odd expedient, of which Phillips gives the following account:—

Mr. Philips tells us, “that though our author had daily about him one or other to read, some persons of man’s estate, who, of their own accord, greedily catched at the opportunity of being his readers, that they might as well reap the benefit of what they read to him, as oblige him by the benefit of their reading; and others of younger years were sent by their parents to the same end; yet excusing only the eldest daughter by reason of her bodily infirmity and difficult utterance of speech (which, to say truth, I doubt was the principal cause of excusing her), the other two were condemned to the performance of reading and exactly pronouncing of all the languages of whatever book he should, at one time or other, think fit to peruse, viz., the Hebrew (and I think the Syriac), the Greek, the Latin, the Italian, Spanish, and French.  All which sorts of books to be confined to read, without understanding one word, must needs be a trial of patience almost beyond endurance.  Yet it was endured by both for a long time, though the irksomeness of this employment could not be always concealed, but broke out more and more into expressions of uneasiness; so that at length they were all, even the eldest also, sent out to learn some curious and ingenious sorts of manufacture, that are proper for women to learn, particularly embroideries in gold or silver.”

In the scene of misery which this mode of intellectual labour sets before our eyes, it is hard to determine whether the daughters or the father are most to be lamented.  A language not understood can never be so read as to give pleasure, and very seldom so as to convey meaning.  If few men would have had resolution, to write books with such embarrassments, few likewise would have wanted ability to find some better expedient.

Three years after his “Paradise Lost” (1667) he published his “History of England,” comprising the whole fable of Geoffrey of Monmouth, and continued to the Norman Invasion.  Why he should have given the first part, which he seems not to believe, and which is universally rejected, it is difficult to conjecture.  The style is harsh; but it has something of rough vigour, which perhaps may often strike, though it cannot please.

On this history the licenser again fixed his claws, and before he could transmit it to the press tore out several parts.  Some censures of the Saxon monks were taken away, lest they should be applied to the modern clergy; and a character of the Long Parliament, and Assembly of Divines, was excluded; of which the author gave a copy to the Earl of Anglesea, and which, being afterwards published, has been since inserted in its proper place.

The same year were printed “Paradise Regained;” and “Samson Agonistes,” a tragedy written in imitation of the ancients, and never designed by the author for the stage.  As these poems were published by another bookseller, it has been asked whether Simmons was discouraged from receiving them by the slow sale of the former.  Why a writer changed his bookseller a hundred years ago, I am far from hoping to discover.  Certainly, he who in two years sells thirteen hundred copies of a volume in quarto, bought for two payments of five pounds each, has no reason to repent his purchase.

When Milton showed “Paradise Regained” to Elwood, “This,” said he, “is owing to you; for you put it in my head by the question you put to me at Chalfont, which otherwise I had not thought of.”

His last poetical offspring was his favourite.  He could not, as Elwood relates, endure to hear “Paradise Lost” preferred to “Paradise Regained.”  Many causes may vitiate a writer’s judgment of his own works.  On that which has cost him much labour he sets a high value, because he is unwilling to think that he has been diligent in vain; what has been produced without toilsome efforts is considered with delight, as a proof of vigorous faculties and fertile invention; and the last work, whatever it be, has necessarily most of the grace of novelty.  Milton, however it happened, had this prejudice, and had it to himself.

To that multiplicity of attainments, and extent of comprehension, that entitled this great author to our veneration, may be added a kind of humble dignity, which did not disdain the meanest services to literature.  The epic poet, the controvertist, the politician, having already descended to accommodate children with a book of rudiments, now, in the last years of his life, composed a book of logic for the initiation of students in philosophy; and published (1672) “Artis Logicæ plenior Institutio ad Petri Rami Methodum concinnata;” that is, “A new Scheme of Logic, according to the method of Ramus.”  I know not whether, even in this book, he did not intend an act of hostility against the universities; for Ramus was one of the first oppugners of the old philosophy, who disturbed with innovations the quiet of the schools.