74

of Milton's power. It is, however, for its general ideas, calculated to please the modern mind, and for its qualities of style, the most praised prose work of Milton's; and certainly we cannot grudge it its reputation.

Many points in it are of interest for the purposes of this study. At the beginning, Milton complains of the English climate, a grumble that will be re-echoed in Paradise Lost; he speaks of

the industry of a life wholly dedicated to studious labours, and those natural endowments haply not the worst for two and fifty degrees of northern latitude; 74

and later he will sing thus:

Higher argument

Remains, sufficient of itself to raise

That name, unless an age too late, or cold
Climate, or years, damp my intended wing.

The praise of books is famous:

for books are not absolutely dead things, but do contain a progeny of life in them to be as active as that soul was whose progeny they are; nay, they do preserve as in a vial the purest efficacy and extraction of that living intellect that bred them. I know they are as lively, and as vigorously productive, as those fabulous dragon's teeth: and being sown up and down, may chance to spring up armed men. And yet, on the other hand, unless wariness be used, as good almost kill a man as kill a good book: who kills a man kills a reasonable creature, God's image; but he who destroys a good book, kills reason itself, kills the image of God, as it were, in the eye. Many a man lives a burden to the earth; but a good book is the precious life-blood of a master-spirit, embalmed and treasured up on purpose to a life beyond life. It is true, no age can restore a life, whereof, perhaps, there is no great loss; and revolutions of ages do not oft recover the loss of a rejected truth, for the want of which whole nations fare the worse." 75

Thus highly does Milton think of his trade.

74 Prose Works, II, 53.

75 Ibid., II, 55.

Again a principle is expressed which will become one of his chief ideas:

"To the pure, all things are pure "; not only meats and drinks, but all kind of knowledge, whether of good or evil: the knowledge cannot defile, nor consequently the books, if the will and conscience be not defiled.76

Another celebrated formula sets Spenser above Aquinas: our sage and serious poet Spenser, (whom I dare be known to think a better teacher than Scotus and Aquinas)."" Milton is not yet an Arminian, but Arminius already is "the acute and distinct Arminius," 78 and Milton insists on the idea of free will, which is now deeply fixed in him in its definite form." A few months before, in his treatise on divorce Milton stood for predestination and against free will.80 We find here, therefore, in the very year 1644, a new departure in his thought. Milton frees himself at one blow from both Presbyterian discipline and creed. Plato's Republic is treated slightingly," Milton little realizing that most of his ideas were just as baseless as Plato's. Then comes a formal attack against the repressive principles of the Puritans, and a vindication of the rights of nature; here again Milton goes further than ever before, as far as he will ever go:

Wherefore did he [God] create passions within us, pleasures round about us, but that these rightly tempered are the very ingredients of virtue? 82

Here is his opinion of contemporary Italy:

. . when I have sat among their learned men, (for that honour I had,) and been counted happy to be born in such a place of

76 Ibid., II, 65.

77 Ibid., II, 68.

78 Ibid., II, 70.

80 Prose Works, III, 223-25.

81 Ibid., II, 71-72.

82 Ibid., II, 74.

79 Ibid., II, 74. See below, pp. 123-31.

philosophic freedom, as they supposed England was, while themselves did nothing but bemoan the servile condition into which learning amongst them was brought; that this was it which had damped the glory of Italian wits; that nothing had been there written now these many years but flattery and fustian.83

But here is his opinion of England:

Lords and commons of England! consider what nation it is whereof ye are, and whereof ye are the governors: a nation not slow and dull, but of a quick, ingenious, and piercing spirit; acute to invent, subtile and sinewy to discourse, not beneath the reach of any point the highest that human capacity can soar to. Therefore the studies of learning in her deepest sciences have been so ancient, and so eminent among us, that writers of good antiquity and able judgment have been persuaded, that even the school of Pythagoras, and the Persian wisdom, took beginning from the old philosophy of this island. . . .

Yet that which is above all this, the favour and the love of Heaven, we have great argument to think in a peculiar manner propitious and propending towards us. Why else was this nation chosen before any other, that out of her, as out of Sion, should be proclaimed and sounded forth the first tidings and trumpet of reformation to all Europe? And had it not been the obstinate perverseness of our prelates against the divine and admirable spirit of Wickliffe, to suppress him as a schismatic and innovator, perhaps neither the Bohemian Husse and Jerome, no, nor the name of Luther or of Calvin, had been ever known: the glory of reforming all our neighbours had been completely ours. . . .

Now once again by all concurrence of signs, and by the general instinct of holy and devout men, as they daily and solemnly express their thoughts, God is decreeing to begin some new and great period in his church, even to the reforming of reformation itself; what does he then but reveal himself to his servants, and as his manner is, first to his Englishmen? 84

Such were the hopes of the time; here is the reason why Milton had left literature, to help to found the coming Kingdom:

Methinks I see in my mind a noble and puissant nation rousing herself like a strong man after sleep, and shaking her invincible locks: methinks I see her as an eagle mewing her mighty youth, and kindling her undazzled eyes at the full midday beam; purging and unscaling her long-abused sight at the fountain itself of heavenly radiance; while the whole noise of timorous and flocking birds, with those also that love the twilight, flutter about, amazed at what she means, and in her envious gabble would prognosticate a year of sects and schisms.85

Milton's former violence against the prelates has turned against the pastors of Presbyterianism; he has scented hypocrisy and greed, and he hits straight out:

There be, who knows not that there be? of protestants and professors, who live and die in as errant and implicit faith, as any lay papist of Loretto.

A wealthy man, addicted to his pleasure and to his profits, finds religion to be a traffic so entangled, and of so many piddling accounts, that of all mysteries he cannot skill to keep a stock going upon that trade. What should he do? Fain he would have the name to be religious, fain he would bear up with his neighbours in that. What does he therefore, but resolves to give over toiling, and to find himself out some factor, to whose care and credit he may commit the whole managing of his religious affairs; some divine of note and estimation that must be. To him he adheres, resigns the whole warehouse of his religion, with all the locks and keys, into his custody; and indeed makes the very person of that man his religion: esteems his associating with him a sufficient evidence and commendatory of his own piety. So that a man may say his religion is now no more within himself, but is become a dividual movable, and goes and comes near him according as that good man frequents the house. He entertains him, gives him gifts, feasts him, lodges him; his religion comes home at night, prays, is liberally supped, and sumptuously laid to sleep; rises, is saluted, and after the malmsey, or some well-spiced bruage, and better breakfasted, than He whose morning appetite would have gladly fed on green figs between Bethany and Jerusalem, his religion walks abroad at eight, and leaves his kind entertainer in the shop trading all day without his religion.86

L

Henceforth the very idea of a priesthood will be repugnant to Milton. Priests will be to him the enemies of intellectual liberty."7 Kings will soon go the same way; Milton will soon come to a point of view best expressed by Diderot, in the following century, in his vulgar but forcible lines (Milton was afraid neither of vulgarity nor of forcibleness):

Des boyaux du dernier des prêtres
Étranglons le dernier des rois.

Priest and king alike will be enemies to Milton.

In June, 1644, Milton dedicated to Hartlib his treatise On Education. Little need be said of this production, so easily accessible to all. The most remarkable thing about it- and that which has been oftenest remarked upon is that Milton is setting their task to colleges of Miltons. He puts upon youths much too heavy a burden, because he himself had carried it lightly. We find here again, therefore, a striking example of that tendency of Milton's, made up of pride, of naïveté, and of a sort of monstrous modesty, to take himself as a normal specimen of human beings, to set down as the rule what fits his case.

Besides, in this whole evolution of his thought, from 1641 to 1645, we must needs notice how complete and absolutely dominant is Milton's egotism. He always follows the most advanced minds of his time; occasionally he precedes them. But it is always for personal motives, on private occasions, in safeguard of his own rights. He attacks the prelates from love of liberty, no doubt, but most of all from love of his own liberty, for he has been "church-outed by the prelates "; " hence may appear the right I have to meddle in these matters," as he puts it.88 87 See below, p. 182 i. 88 Prose Works, II, 482.