poetry, now urged him to a greater and more real aim when such a one appeared to him. Behind Milton's literary ambition, there was a higher one: to be great. When greatness seemed to lie elsewhere than in literature, he sought for it elsewhere. There is therefore no contradiction, no inconsistency, between the two parts of Milton's life. They are not two; they come together from his character; they are one: the search for the glory of God, which is the same as the search for the glory of Milton. But Milton, in his pride, preferred the inner glory of his own approbation to the applause of the literary public. It is fine and noble to sing the ways of God; it is finer and nobler to fulfil them. Therefore, in that earnest soul of Milton's, there was little hesitation. And he knew perfectly well -and this is all-important that he was sacrificing himself. He knew well enough he was not made for that struggle; there was but little of the sort of glory he cared for to be acquired from it. He said it openly: "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." And again: "If I hunted after praise, by the ostentation of wit and learning, I should not write thus out of mine own season when I have neither yet completed to my mind the full circle of my private studies. . But the work was urgent and needed all hands. And Milton gave up his throne of poetical glory, and eagerly became an obscure workman in the service of God. "When God commands to take the trumpet, and blow a dolorous or a jarring 4 The Reason of Church Government, in Prose Works, II, 477. Ibid., II, 476. blast, it lies not in man's will what he shall say, or what he shall conceal." He foresaw clearly, from the very start, the consequences of a failure to respond: But this I foresee, that should the church be brought under heavy oppression, and God have given me ability the while to reason against that man that should be the author of so foul a deed; or should she, by blessing from above on the industry and courage of faithful men, change this her distracted estate into better days, without the least furtherance or contribution of those few talents, which God at that present had lent me; I foresee what stories I should hear within myself, all my life after, of discourage and reproach. Timorous and ungrateful, the church of God is now again at the foot of her insulting enemies, and thou bewailest. What matters it for thee, or thy bewailing? When time was, thou couldst not find a syllable of all that thou hast read, or studied, to utter in her behalf. Yet ease and leisure was given thee for thy retired thoughts, out of the sweat of other men. Thou hast the diligence, the parts, the language of a man, if a vain subject were to be adorned or beautified; but when the cause of God and his church was to be pleaded, for which purpose that tongue was given thee which thou hast, God listened if he could hear thy voice among his zealous servants, but thou wert dumb as a beast; from henceforward be that which thine own brutish silence hath made thee. Or else I should have heard on the other ear: Slothful, and ever to be set light by, the church hath now overcome her late distresses after the unwearied labors of many her true servants that stood up in her defence; thou also wouldst take upon thee to share amongst them of their joy: but wherefore thou? Where canst thou shew any word or deed of thine which might have hastened her peace? Whatever thou dost now talk, or write, or look, is the alms of other men's active prudence and zeal. Dare not now to say or do anything better than thy former sloth and infancy; or if thou darest, thou dost impudently to make a thrifty purchase of boldness to thyself, out of the painful merits of other men; what before was thy sin is now thy duty, to be abject and worthless. These, and suchlike lessons as these, I know would have been my matins duly, and my even-song." • Ibid., II, 474. Thus, in the fullest consciousness of what he was doing, Milton gave up the aims of his life. He trusted in God, and, so to speak, ran up a debit account against God's name, hoping that one day God would pay up. He trusted that once the work was done God would grant him life and force and courage to sing of the great triumph, and would allow him to be the trumpet of victory as he had been the trumpet of the fighting. In the middle of his pamphlets, he takes aside "the elegant and learned reader" and makes his private arrangements for the future-for "after the war." And surely such trust was as sublime as the pride that inspired it, as the spirit of sacrifice that made it necessary: Neither do I think it shame to covenant with any knowing reader, that for some few years yet I may go on trust with him toward the payment of what I am now indebted, as being a work not to be raised from the heat of youth, or the vapors of wine; like that which flows at waste from the pen of some vulgar amourist, or the trencher fury of a rhyming parasite; nor to be obtained by the invocation of dame memory and her siren daughters, but by devout prayer to that eternal Spirit, who can enrich with all utterance and knowledge, and sends out his seraphim, with the hallowed fire of his altar, to touch and purify the lips of whom he pleases: to this must be added industrious and select reading, steady observation, insight into all seemly and generous arts and affairs; till which in some measure be compassed, at mine own peril and cost, I refuse not to sustain this expectation from as many as are not loth to hazard so much credulity upon the best pledges that I can give them. Although it nothing content me to have disclosed thus much beforehand, but that I trust hereby to make it manifest with what small willingness I endure to interrupt the pursuit of no less hopes than these, and leave a calm and pleasing solitariness, fed with cheerful and confident thoughts, to embark 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, to come into the dim reflection of hollow an tiquities sold by the seeming bulk, and there be fain to club quotations with men whose learning and belief lies in marginal stuffings, who, when they have, like good sumpters, laid ye down their horseloads of citations and fathers at your door, with a rhapsody of who and who were bishops here or there, ye may take off their packsaddles, their day's work is done, and episcopacy, as they think, stoutly vindicated. Let any gentle apprehension, that can distinguish learned pains from unlearned drudgery imagine what pleasure or profoundness can be in this, or what honor to deal against such adversaries. But were it the meanest under-service, if God by his secretary conscience enjoin it, it were sad for me if I should draw back. . . 8 Milton proved to be right; his trust in destiny was not vain. From that struggle which was so bitter to his heart, he drew the very substance of Paradise Lost. Without knowing it, he prepared in his sacrifice the richest harvest of his future glory. His ideas shaped themselves in the rough and painful contact with reality. The greatness of Paradise Lost, like that of the Divina Commedia, lies in this, that neither of the two European epics was written by mere literary men, but by men who had fought and suffered in the greatest enterprises of their time, and through many years, and who put into their poetry the result of their experience of life and struggle, problems and hopes, passions and despair and ultimate certainty. That is why Paradise Lost, like the Divina Commedia, is a universal and human poem and not merely a work of rhetoric. Milton desired, above everything else, the coming of the Kingdom of the Saints. He wanted to help God; he believed he was able to. His pamphlets have been judged as literature and found wanting. That is a complete error. They are deeds, and must be judged as such. He 8 Prose Works, II, 481-82. adapted his form to the end in view, which was to impress his contemporaries. Hence, first of all, the negligence of his style; he had to produce quickly, at the proper moment; the only quality he looked for was forcibleness. Hence also the personalities, the insolence, the frequent grossness and vulgarity of his attacks: such were the weapons which left a mark on the adversary, even more than argument or erudition, highly valued as these were. Hence again his pedantry: the opponent had to be crushed under texts and authorities, and proved wrong before a tribunal which admitted that sort of proof. Milton believed in the efficacy of his efforts in this field; his contemporaries did also, and therefore he was right: he produced much of the impression he wanted to produce. In after life, he looked back upon his pamphleteering career as a success. Eikonoklastes and the Defences gave him fame. Much of his work was done at the request of the best political heads of his time. It is not therefore for us to decide that he lost his pains as a man of action. Such was not the opinion of his century, which surely knew best. Besides, this character of being a deed, an action in the world of real fact, is found in Paradise Lost. After the fall of all his hopes and his country's hopes, the problem was, no longer for an ignorant public, but for the very conscience of mankind itself, not to give way to despair, but to find out the causes of the failure, and to discern therein reasons for eternal hope. Between 1642 and 1657, Milton learned that reality only too often refuses to adapt itself to abstract ideas; he learned what stuff human nature was made of. The great question and the great answer became clear to him. It was Milton's turn of |