Books: Lives of the Poets: Waller, Milton, Cowley

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From Florence he went to Sienna, and from Sienna to Rome, where he
was again received with kindness by the learned and the great.
Holstenius, the keeper of the Vatican library, who had resided three
years at Oxford, introduced him to Cardinal Barberini: and he, at a
musical entertainment, waited for him at the door, and led him by
the hand into the assembly. Here Selvaggi praised him in a distich,
and Salsilli in a tetrastich: neither of them of much value. The
Italians were gainers by this literary commerce; for the encomiums
with which Milton repaid Salsilli, though not secure against a stern
grammarian, turn the balance indisputably in Milton's favour.

Of these Italian testimonies, poor as they are, he was proud enough
to publish them before his poems; though he says, he cannot be
suspected but to have known that they were said non tam de se, quam
supra se.

At Rome, as at Florence, he stayed only two months: a time indeed
sufficient, if he desired only to ramble with an explainer of its
antiquities, or to view palaces and count pictures; but certainly
too short for the contemplation of learning, policy, or manners.

From Rome he passed on to Naples, in company of a hermit, a
companion from whom little could be expected; yet to him Milton owed
his introduction to Manso, Marquis of Villa, who had been before the
patron of Tasso. Manso was enough delighted with his
accomplishments to honour him with a sorry distich, in which he
commends him for everything but his religion: and Milton, in
return, addressed him in a Latin poem, which must have raised a high
opinion of English elegance and literature.

His purpose was now to have visited Sicily and Greece; but hearing
of the differences between the king and parliament, he thought it
proper to hasten home, rather than pass his life in foreign
amusements while his countrymen were contending for their rights.
He therefore came back to Rome, though the merchants informed him of
plots laid against him by the Jesuits, for the liberty of his
conversations on religion. He had sense enough to judge that there
was no danger, and therefore kept on his way, and acted as before,
neither obtruding nor shunning controversy. He had perhaps given
some offence by visiting Galileo, then a prisoner in the Inquisition
for philosophical heresy; and at Naples he was told by Manse, that,
by his declarations on religious questions, he had excluded himself
from some distinctions which he should otherwise have paid him. But
such conduct, though it did not please, was yet sufficiently safe;
and Milton stayed two months more at Rome, and went on to Florence
without molestation.

From Florence he visited Lucca. He afterwards went to Venice; and,
having sent away a collection of music and other books, travelled to
Geneva, which he probably considered as the metropolis of orthodoxy.

Here he reposed as in a congenial element, and became acquainted
with John Diodati and Frederick Spanheim, two learned professors of
divinity. From Geneva he passed through France; and came home,
after an absence of a year and three months.

At his return he heard of the death of his friend, Charles Diodati;
a man whom it is reasonable to suppose of great merit, since he was
thought by Milton worthy of a poem, entitled "Epitaphium Damonis,"
written with the common but childish imitation of pastoral life.

He now hired a lodging at the house of one Russel a tailor in St.
Bride's Churchyard, and undertook the education of John and Edward
Philips, his sister's sons. Finding his rooms too little, he took a
house and garden in Aldersgate Street, which was not then so much
out of the world as it is now; and chose his dwelling at the upper
end of a passage, that he might avoid the noise of the street. Here
he received more boys, to be boarded and instructed.

Let not our veneration for Milton forbid us to look with some degree
of merriment on great promises and small performance, on the man who
hastens home, because his countrymen are contending for their
liberty, and, when he reaches the scene of action, vapours away his
patriotism in a private boarding-school. This is the period of his
life from which all his biographers seem inclined to shrink. They
are unwilling that Milton should be degraded to a schoolmaster; but
since it cannot be denied that he taught boys, one finds out that he
taught for nothing, and another that his motive was only zeal for
the propagation of learning and virtue; and all tell what they do
not know to be true, only to excuse an act which no wise man will
consider as in itself disgraceful. His father was alive; his
allowance was not ample; and he supplied its deficiencies by an
honest and useful employment

It is told, that in the art of education he performed wonders; and a
formidable list is given of the authors, Greek and Latin, that were
read in Aldersgate Street by youth between ten and fifteen or
sixteen years of age. Those who tell or receive these stories
should consider, that nobody can be taught faster than he can learn.
The speed of the horseman must be limited by the power of his horse.
Every man that has ever undertaken to instruct others can tell what
slow advances he has been able to make, and how much patience it
requires to recall vagrant inattention, to stimulate sluggish
indifference, and to rectify absurd misapprehension.

The purpose of Milton, as it seems, was to teach something more
solid than the common literature of schools, by reading those
authors that treat of physical subjects, such as the Georgic, and
astronomical treatises of the ancients. This was a scheme of
improvement which seems to have busied many literary projectors of
that age. Cowley, who had more means than Milton of knowing what
was wanting to the embellishments of life, formed the same plan of
education in his imaginary college.

But the truth is, that the knowledge of external nature, and the
sciences which that knowledge requires or includes, are not the
great or the frequent business of the human mind. Whether we
provide for action or conversation, whether we wish to be useful or
pleasing, the first requisite is the religious and moral knowledge
of right and wrong; the next is an acquaintance with the history of
mankind, and with those examples which may be said to embody truth,
and prove by events the reasonableness of opinions. Prudence and
justice are virtues and excellences of all times and of all places;
we are perpetually moralists, but we are geometricians only by
chance. Our intercourse with intellectual nature is necessary; our
speculations upon matter are voluntary, and at leisure.
Physiological learning is of such rare emergence, that one may know
another half his life without being able to estimate his skill in
hydrostatics or astronomy; but his moral and prudential character
immediately appears.

Those authors, therefore, are to be read at schools that supply most
axioms of prudence, most principles of moral truth, and most
materials for conversation; and these purposes are best served by
poets, orators, and historians.

Let me not be censured for this digression as pedantic or
paradoxical; for, if I have Milton against me, I have Socrates on my
side. It was his labour to turn philosophy from the study of Nature
to speculations upon life; but the innovators whom I oppose are
turning off attention from life to nature. They seem to think that
we are placed here to watch the growth of plants, or the motions of
the stars. Socrates was rather of opinion that what we had to learn
was how to do good and avoid evil.

[Greek text]

Of institutions we may judge by their effects. From this wonder-
working academy I do not know that there ever proceeded any man very
eminent for knowledge: its only genuine product, I believe, is a
small History of Poetry, written in Latin by his nephew Philips, of
which perhaps none of my readers has ever heard.

That in his school, as in everything else which he undertook, he
laboured with great diligence, there is no reason for doubting. One
part of his method deserves general imitation. He was careful to
instruct his scholars in religion. Every Sunday was spent upon
theology, of which he dictated a short system, gathered from the
writers that were then fashionable in the Dutch universities.

He set his pupils an example of hard study and spare diet; only now
and then he allowed himself to pass a day of festivity and
indulgence with some gay gentlemen of Gray's Inn.

He now began to engage in the controversies of the times, and lent
his breath to blow the flames of contention. In 1641 he published a
treatise of Reformation in two books, against the Established
Church, being willing to help the Puritans, who were, he says,
"inferior to the Prelates in learning."

Hall, Bishop of Norwich, had published an Humble Remonstrance, in
defence of Episcopacy; to which, in 1641, five ministers, of whose
names the first letters made the celebrated word Smectymnuus, gave
their answer. Of this answer a confutation was attempted by the
learned Usher; and to the confutation Milton published a reply,
entitled, "Of Prelatical Episcopacy, and whether it may be deduced
from the Apostolical Times, by virtue of those Testimonies which are
alleged to that purpose in some late Treatises, one whereof goes
under the Name of James, Lord Bishop of Armagh."

I have transcribed this title to show, by his contemptuous mention
of Usher, that he had now adopted the Puritanical savageness of
manners. His next work was, "The Reason of Church Government urged
against Prelacy," by Mr. John Milton, 1642. In this book he
discovers, not with ostentatious exultation, but with calm
confidence, his high opinion of his own powers, and promises to
undertake something, he yet knows not what, that may be of use and
honour to his country. "This," says he, "is not to be obtained but
by devout prayer to that Eternal Spirit that 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, and insight into all seemly and generous arts
and affairs till which in some measure be compassed, I refuse not to
sustain this expectation." From a promise like this, at once
fervid, pious, and rational, might be expected the "Paradise Lost."

He published the same year two more pamphlets, upon the same
question. To one of his antagonists, who affirms that he was
"vomited out of the university," he answers in general terms: "The
fellows of the college wherein I spent some years, at my parting,
after I had taken two degrees, as the manner is, signified many
times how much better it would content them that I should stay.--As
for the common approbation or dislike of that place, as now it is,
that I should esteem or disesteem myself the more for that, too
simple is the answerer, if he think to obtain with me. Of small
practice were the physician who could not judge by what she and her
sister have of long time vomited, that the worser stuff she strongly
keeps in her stomach, but the better she is ever kecking at, and is
queasy; she vomits now out of sickness; but before it will be well
with her, she must vomit with strong physic. The university, in the
time of her better health, and my younger judgment, I never greatly
admired, but now much less."

This is surely the language of a man who thinks that he has been
injured. He proceeds to describe the course of his conduct, and the
train of his thoughts; and, because he has been suspected of
incontinence, gives an account of his own purity: "That if I be
justly charged," says he, "with this crime, it may come upon me with
tenfold shame."

The style of his piece is rough, and such perhaps was that of his
antagonist. This roughness he justifies by great examples, in a
long digression. Sometimes he tries to be humorous: "Lest I should
take him for some chaplain in hand, some squire of the body to his
prelate, one who serves not at the altar only, but at the court-
cupboard, he will bestow on us a pretty model of himself; and sets
me out half-a-dozen phthisical mottoes, wherever he had them,
hopping short in the measure of convulsion fits; in which labour the
agony of his wit having escaped narrowly, instead of well-sized
periods, he greets us with a quantity of thumb-ring posies.--And
thus ends this section, or rather dissection, of himself." Such is
the controversial merriment of Milton; his gloomy seriousness is yet
more offensive. Such is his malignity, "that hell grows darker at
his frown."

His father, after Reading was taken by Essex, came to reside in his
house, and his school increased. At Whitsuntide, in his thirty-
fifth year, he married Mary, the daughter of Mr. Powel, a justice of
the peace in Oxfordshire. He brought her to town with him, and
expected all the advantages of a conjugal life. The lady, however,
seems not much to have delighted in the pleasures of spare diet and
hard study; for, as Philips relates, "having for a month led a
philosophic life, after having been used at home to a great house,
and much company and joviality, her friends, possibly by her own
desire, made earnest suit to have her company the remaining part of
the summer, which was granted, upon a promise of her return at
Michaelmas."

Milton was too busy to much miss his wife; he pursued his studies,
and now and then visited the Lady Margaret Leigh, whom he has
mentioned in one of his sonnets. At last Michaelmas arrived; but
the lady had no inclination to return to the sullen gloom of her
husband's habitation, and therefore very willingly forgot her
promise. He sent her a letter, but had no answer; he sent more with
the same success. It could be alleged that letters miscarry; he
therefore despatched a messenger, being by this time too angry to go
himself. His messenger was sent back with some contempt. The
family of the lady were Cavaliers.

In a man whose opinion of his own merit was like Milton's, less
provocation than this might have raised violent resentment. Milton
soon determined to repudiate her for disobedience; and, being one of
those who could easily find arguments to justify inclination,
published (in 1644) "The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce," which
was followed by the "Judgment of Martin Bucer concerning Divorce,"
and the next year his "Tetrachordon, Expositions upon the four chief
Places of Scripture which treat of Marriage."

This innovation was opposed, as might be expected, by the clergy,
who, then holding their famous assembly at Westminster, procured
that the author should be called before the Lords; "but that house,"
says Wood, "whether approving the doctrine, or not favouring his
accusers, did soon dismiss him."

There seems not to have been much written against him, nor anything
by any writer of eminence. The antagonist that appeared is styled
by him, "A Serving Man turned Solicitor." Howel, in his Letters,
mentions the new doctrine with contempt; and it was, I suppose,
thought more worthy of derision than of confutation. He complains
of this neglect in two sonnets, of which the first is contemptible,
and the second not excellent.

From this time it is observed that he became an enemy to the
Presbyterians, whom he had favoured before. He that changes his
party by his humour is not more virtuous than he that changes it by
his interest; he loves himself rather than truth.

His wife and her relations now found that Milton was not an
unresisting sufferer of injuries; and perceiving that he had begun
to put his doctrine in practice, by courting a young woman of great
accomplishments, the daughter of one Doctor Davis, who was, however,
not ready to comply, they resolved to endeavour a reunion. He went
sometimes to the house of one Blackborough, his relation, in the
lane of St. Martin's-le-Grand, and at one of his usual visits was
surprised to see his wife come from another room, and implore
forgiveness on her knees. He resisted her entreaties for a while;
"but partly," says Philips, "his own generous nature, more
inclinable to reconciliation than to perseverance in anger or
revenge, and partly the strong intercession of friends on both
sides, soon brought him to an act of oblivion and a fair league of
peace." It were injurious to omit that Milton afterwards received
her father and her brothers in his own house, when they were
distressed, with other Royalists.

He published about the same time his "Areopagitica, a speech of Mr.
John Milton for the liberty of unlicensed Printing." The danger of
such unbounded liberty, and the danger of bounding it, have produced
a problem in the science of government, which human understanding
seems hitherto unable to solve. If nothing may be published but
what civil authority shall have previously approved, power must
always be the standard of truth; if every dreamer of innovations may
propagate his prospects, there can be no settlement; if every
murmurer at government may diffuse discontent, there can be no
peace; and if every sceptic in theology may teach his follies, there
can be no religion. The remedy against these evils is to punish the
authors; for it is yet allowed that every society may punish, though
not prevent, the publication of opinions which that society shall
think pernicious; but this punishment, though it may crush the
author, promotes the book; and it seems not more reasonable to leave
the right of printing unrestrained because writers may be afterwards
censured, than it would be to sleep with doors unbolted, because by
our laws we can hang a thief.

But whatever were his engagements, civil or domestic poetry was
never long out of his thoughts.

About this time (1645) a collection of his Latin and English poems
appeared, in which the "Allegro," and "Penseroso," with some others,
were first published.

He had taken a larger house in Barbican for the reception of
scholars; but the numerous relations of his wife, to whom he
generously granted refuge for a while, occupied his rooms. In time,
however, they went away; "and the house again," says Philips, "now
looked like a house of the Muses only, though the accession of
scholars was not great. Possibly his having proceeded so far in the
education of youth may have been the occasion of his adversaries
calling him pedagogue and schoolmaster; whereas it is well known he
never set up for a public school, to teach all the young fry of a
parish, but only was willing to impart his learning and knowledge to
his relations, and the sons of gentlemen who were his intimate
friends, and that neither his writings nor his way of teaching
savoured in the least of pedantry."

Thus laboriously does his nephew extenuate what cannot be denied,
and what might be confessed without disgrace. Milton was not a man
who could become mean by a mean employment. This, however, his
warmest friends seem not to have found; they therefore shift and
palliate. He did not sell literature to all comers at an open shop;
he was a chamber-milliner, and measured his commodities only to his
friends.

Philips, evidently impatient of viewing him in this state of
degradation, tells us that it was not long continued; and, to raise
his character again, has a mind to invest him with military
splendour: "He is much mistaken," he says, "if there was not about
this time a design of making him an adjutant-general in Sir William
Waller's army. But the new-modelling of the army proved an
obstruction to the design." An event cannot be set at a much
greater distance than by having been only "designed, about some
time," if a man "be not much mistaken." Milton shall be a pedagogue
no longer; for, if Philips be not much mistaken, somebody at some
time designed him for a soldier.

About the time that the army was new-modelled (1645), he removed to
a smaller house in Holborn, which opened backward into Lincoln's Inn
Fields. He is not known to have published anything afterwards till
the king's death, when, finding his murderers condemned by the
Presbyterians, he wrote a treatise to justify it, "and to compose
the minds of the people."

He made some remarks on the Articles of Peace between Ormond and the
Irish rebels. While he contented himself to write, he perhaps did
only what his conscience dictated; and if he did not very vigilantly
watch the influence of his own passions, and the gradual prevalence
of opinions, first willingly admitted, and then habitually indulged;
if objections, by being overlooked, were forgotten, and desire
superinduced conviction, he yet shared--only the common weakness of
mankind, and might be no less sincere than his opponents. But, as
faction seldom leaves a man honest, however it might find him,
Milton is suspected of having interpolated the book called "Icon
Basilike," which the council of state, to whom he was now made Latin
Secretary, employed him to censure, by inserting a prayer taken from
Sidney's "Arcadia," and imputing it to the king, whom he charges, in
his "Iconoclastes," with the use of this prayer, as with a heavy
come, in the indecent language with which prosperity had emboldened
the advocates for rebellion to insult all that is venerable or
great: "Who would have imagined so little fear in him of the true
all-seeing deity--as, immediately before his death, to pop into the
hands of the grave bishop that attended him, as a special relic of
his saintly exercises, a prayer stolen word for word from the mouth
of a heathen woman praying to a heathen god?"

The papers which the king gave to Dr. Juxon on the scaffold the
regicides took away; so that they were at least the publishers of
this prayer; and Dr. Birch, who had examined the question with great
care, was inclined to think them the forgers. The use of it by
adaptation was innocent, and they who could so noisily censure it,
with a little extension of their malice could contrive what they
wanted to accuse.

King Charles the Second, being now sheltered in Holland, employed
Salmasius, professor of polite learning at Leyden, to write a
defence of his father and of monarchy; and, to excite his industry,
gave him, as was reported, a hundred Jacobuses. Salmasius was a man
of skill in languages, knowledge of antiquity, and sagacity of
emendatory criticism, almost exceeding all hope of human attainment;
and having, by excessive praises, been confirmed in great confidence
of himself, though he probably had not much considered the
principles of society or the right of government, undertook the
employment without distrust of his own qualifications; and, as his
expedition in writing was wonderful, in 1649 published "Defensio
Regis."

To this Milton was required to write a sufficient answer; which he
performed (1651) in such a manner, that Hobbes declared himself
unable to decide whose language was best, or whose arguments were
worst. In my opinion, Milton's periods are smoother, neater, and
more pointed; but he delights himself with teasing his adversary as
much as with confuting him. He makes a foolish allusion of
Salmasius, whose doctrine he considers as servile and unmanly, to
the stream of Salmasius, which, whoever entered, left half his
virility behind him. Salmasius was a Frenchman, and was unhappily
married to a scold. Tu es Gallus, says Milton, et, ut aiunt, nimium
gallinaceus. But his supreme pleasure is to tax his adversary, so
renowned for criticism, with vicious Latin. He opens his book with
telling that he has used Persona, which, according to Milton,
signifies only a MASK, in a sense not known to the Romans, by
applying it as we apply PERSON. But as Nemesis is always on the
watch, it is memorable that he has enforced the charge of a solecism
by an expression in itself grossly solecistical, when for one of
those supposed blunders, he says, as Ker, and I think some one
before him, has remarked, propino te grammatistis tuis vapulandum."
From vapulo, which has a passive sense, vapulandus can never be
derived. No man forgets his original trade: the rights of nations,
and of kings, sink into questions of grammar, if grammarians discuss
them.

Milton, when he undertook this answer, was weak of body and dim of
sight; but his will was forward, and what was wanting of health was
supplied by zeal. He was rewarded with a thousand pounds, and his
book was much read; for paradox, recommended by spirit and elegance,
easily gains attention; and he, who told every man that he was equal
to his king, could hardly want an audience.

That the performance of Salmasius was not dispersed with equal
rapidity, or read with equal eagerness, is very credible. He taught
only the stale doctrine of authority, and the unpleasing duty of
submission; and he had been so long not only the monarch, but the
tyrant of literature, that almost all mankind were delighted to find
him defied and insulted by a new name, not yet considered as any
one's rival. If Christina, as is said, commended the defence of the
people, her purpose must be to torment Salmasius, who was then at
court; for neither her civil station, nor her natural character,
could dispose her to favour the doctrine, who was by birth a queen,
and by temper despotic.

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