9

though passionate young man: chastity. Milton had
been called by the Cambridge students the "lady of
Christ's "; this homage to his good looks was also a sar-
casm on his purity.13 But he was proud of his chastity.
He boasts of it in the epistle to Deodati we have quoted
above: "Shunning far on my path false Circe's infamous
mansions." We shall find this pride again in the Apology
for Smectymnuus.1 Let us note here the chief reason for
this chastity. It is not religious in our sense, though it is
in a more fundamental meaning; like the great ascetics of
primitive magic, Milton was chaste in order to acquire
supernatural powers. He explains it quite clearly, both
in verse and prose: "He who would not be frustrate of
his hope to write well hereafter in laudable things"
the powers he wishes to acquire are those of the bard
ought to be chaste. And in the sixth elegy:

Additur huic scelerisque vacans, et casta juventus,
Et rigidi mores, et sine labe manus.

for

Comus was to be the glorification of the magic powers of chastity.

We discern several feelings that uphold Milton's purity. No doubt there comes first his hatred of all compromise when an ideal is at stake, the clear, hard domination of intelligence over passion; but there comes also pride: moral pride, as a sense of his own worth which is not to be degraded; intellectual pride also- Milton thinks so highly of his reason, has such trust in his intellect, that he wants his reason to be mistress absolute in himself. He takes himself too seriously he takes his genius and his mission too seriously to allow passion to rule in him. His amorous tendencies, real and deep as they are, 13 Masson, I, 311. 14 See below, pp. 45-46.

remain, for the time being, well in hand, reasonable and obedient almost to the sovereign will. Literary ambition and pride of intellect are the dominant factors in Milton's youth.

Meanwhile, great plans were being meditated. At nineteen, in a college exercise, the poet rises for one moment above grotesque Latin and buffoon English, and binds himself by his first oaths to his future Muse:

Yet I had rather, if I were to choose,

Thy service in some graver subject use,
Such where the deep transported mind may soar
Above the wheeling poles, and at Heaven's door
Look in, and see each blissful deity

How he before the thunderous throne doth lie,
Listening to what unshorn Apollo sings. . . .
Then sing of secret things that came to pass
When beldam Nature in her cradle was.

The subject of Paradise Lost is not yet found, but the plans are drawn: the poet foresees vaguely a universal epic, describing the origin of the world and revealing the secret aims and occupations of divinity. In any religion, Milton would have sung, and his poem would have been substantially what it is. Here we see him ready to write Paradise Lost out of Greek mythology. His subject is inevitable; he is driven by the great force of his sublime pride to the largest and deepest theme imaginable: what else can he sing but the All, the World, the Gods? The compass of his genius is that of the whole Cosmos; he cannot choose a smaller subject.

In 1632, he retired to Horton, where, with the full approval of his father, he devoted himself to deliberate preparation for his high mission. A few years later he wrote

to Deodati: "Do you ask what I am meditating? By the help of Heaven, an immortality of fame." 15

Milton's pride and his plans naturally went together with an imperious need for personal liberty; and that, naturally also, kept him out of the Church his father had meant him to enter. We know well enough what his opinions were about 1632: he was a liberal Anglican, probably without any very definite convictions on points of dogma.16 Thus he remained for many years still. It was neither fanaticism nor even deep religious feeling that kept him out of orders; it was his need to be free to think and do as he liked. His pride would not be curbed under the yoke of the Church. Years later, in the Reason of Church Government he wrote: 17

17

. . coming to some maturity of years, and perceiving what tyranny had invaded the church, that he who would take orders must subscribe slave, and take an oath withal, which, unless he took with a conscience that would retch, he must either straight perjure, or split his faith; I thought it better to prefer a blameless silence before the sacred office of speaking, bought and begun with servitude and forswearing.

From this time onward there entered into his very soul the hatred of priesthood. The Roman Catholic religion, in particular, seemed to him the very type of intolerance and priestly domination. Rome was to him, during the whole of his life, the Whore of Babylon; even in 1673, in his last pamphlet in favor of toleration, he excluded Catholicism from it "as being idolatrous, not to be tolerated, either in public or in private."1 This attitude is all the more characteristic as on many points, as we shall see, Milton came quite near to Roman Catholic

15 Prose Works, Bohn ed., III, 495. 16 Cf. Masson, I, 323, 326.

18

17 Prose Works, II, 482.
18 Ibid., II, 514.

ideas; and that on such important points as, for instance, the freedom of the will. It was not Catholic dogma or ideas that shocked him, but the political and intellectual tyranny he associated with the Church of Rome.

His long stay in Horton was occupied by reading, social intercourse with neighboring wealthy and educated families, and the writing of L'Allegro, Il Penseroso, Arcades, Comus, and Lycidas. He went up to London frequently, took lessons in mathematics and music, and altogether enjoyed himself as fully as he could. His nephew Phillips tells us that in 1640 Milton frequented the beaux of the capital, dressed as elegantly as any of them, and allowed himself "a gaudy-day" in their company once or twice a month.19 In the country, the Countess of Derby, the Earl of Bridgewater, Sir Henry Wotton were among his friends; for their entertainment Arcades and Comus were written and performed.

We are far in all this from the Puritan of popular imagination. We find here an elegant young man, fond of music and of mixing in the choicest society, well known among his friends as a promising poet, keenly alive to all worldly charm, and especially to feminine charm, pure in behavior as in mind.20 But in himself, he has devoted his whole life to a supreme poetical enterprise, and he looks upon the world as from a tower in his pride, strength, and seriousness-a perfect master of himself, his mind set with a sort of grimness on getting out of his great gifts all they can produce.

19 Masson, II, 209.

20 Cf. his letter to Deodati (1637): "... whatever the Deity may have bestowed upon me in other respects, he has certainly inspired me, if any ever were inspired, with a passion for the good and fair. Nor did Ceres, according to the fable, ever seek her daughter Proserpine with such unceasing solicitude, as I have sought this roυ kaλoù idéav, this perfect model of the beautiful in all the forms and appearances of things. . . . I am wont day and night to continue my search" (Prose Works, III, 494).

Such was Milton, as we listen to him in his first poems, as we see him on his travels in Italy.

III. EARLY POEMS

Milton's early poems were only, in his opinion, a trial of his strength, a promise to the world. He published them at a time (1645) when he had given up literature for less familiar but, as he thought, more pressing duties. The modest way in which he presented them, under the Virgilian warning,

Baccare frontem

Cingite, ne vati noceat mala lingua futuro,

tells us that he did not look upon them as a very important work. In his pamphlets, too, on several occasions, he records his promise to do great things yet in literature, without so much as mentioning his early poems. Yet in the history of Milton's ideas, these poems give us a very solid starting-point; at a time when his religion was more or less orthodox, they reveal his dominant characteristics, those general tendencies of his temperament which, acting on his first conceptions, were to dissolve his orthodoxy in the following fifteen years.

For one thing, the poems display an extremely varied sensibility. It is necessary to insist on this variety and, so to speak, "humanity" of the poet's soul. He feels sympathy for all feelings of the human heart, even encompassing apparently contradictory ones. Now Milton is the least dramatic of the poets; he has no skill in creating character; he is essentially lyrical; what he sings is still and ever Milton. And this is quite in harmony with his self-centered character. But it also shows that the poet who has been made out to be a narrow Puritan