Liberty; it is easy to perceive that the laments of these mournful Tories would not have been heard had he chaunted the high praises of prelates and kings:-here is a melancholy string of dolorous moanings from Sir Egerton Brydges "Now Milton's evil day began; he entered into the stormy controversies which blind the imagination, and harden and embitter the heart. It was not for sublime talents like his, to entangle themselves in these webs; his mighty genius could not move under the oppressive weight of so much abstruse, and, I will add, useless, though multifarious and astonishing, learning! I cannot help lamenting that Milton spent so many years in these bitter political and sectarian squabbles: coarser minds' would have done for that work. He was always powerful-sometimes splendid; but here his passions were human, and too often mingled with earthly dross. Whatever merit Milton might have in the able and learned discharge of his political services, it is deeply to be lamented that his brilliant and sublime faculties were so employed. How the slumbering fire of his rich and ever-varying fictions must have consumed his heart and his brain. How he must have fretted at the base intrigues of courts and councils, and the turpitude of human ambition. To make a man of business requires nothing but petty and watchful observation, cold reserve and selfish craft: to catch the moment when caution in others is asleep; to raise hopes, yet promise nothing; to seem to give full information, and yet to be so vague that every thing is open to escape.-How can the poet practise such arts as these? He is lost in himself; he is wrapped up in his own He lost nineteen precious years of creations. his middle life, in those irritating occupations, from the age of thirty-two to fifty-one after that age, he occupied the remaining fourteen years of his life principally in poetry. . . . It is melancholy to think how much of grand invention, which he might, in these long years have put forth, has been lost to the world." So also Thomas Warton commenting upon the frustrated intention of Milton to proceed to Sicily and Athens :-"Countries" says he, "connected with his finer feelings, interwoven with his poetic ideas, and impressed upon his imagination by his habits of reading, and by long and intimate converse with the Grecian literature. But so prevalent were his patriotic attachments that, hearing in Italy of the commencement of the national quarrel, instead of proceeding forward to feast his fancy with the contemplation of scenes familiar to Theocritus and Homer, the pines of Etna, and the pastures of Peneus, he abruptly changed his course, and hastily returned home to plead the cause of ideal liberty. Yet in this chaos of controversy, amidst endless disputes concerning religious and political reformation, independency, prelacy, tithes, toleration, and tyranny, he sometimes seems to have heaved a sigh for the peaceable enjoyments of lettered solitude, for his congenial pursuits, and the more mild and ingenuous exercises of the Muse. In a Letter to Henry Oldenburgh, written in 1654, he says,-Hoc cum libertatis adversariis inopinatum certamen, diversis longè et amanioribus omnino me studiis intentum, ad se rapuit invitum.' And in one of his prose tracts, "I may one day hope to have ye again in a still time, when there shall be no chiding. Not in these noises." And in another, having mentioned some of his schemes for epic poetry and tragedy, of highest hope and hardest attempting,' he adds, 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 6 disputes, from beholding the bright countenance of Truth in the quiet and still air of delightful studies,' &c. He still, however, obstinately persisted in what he thought his duty. But surely these speculations should have been consigned to the enthusiasts of that age, to such restless and wayward spirits as Prynne, Hugh Peters, Goodwin, and Baxter. Minds less refined, and faculties less elegantly cultivated, would have been better employed in this task : -'Coarse complexions, And cheeks of sorry grain, will serve to ply This sort of language is disgraceful. It exhibits either strange ignorance of the times in which Milton lived, or servility to despotismperhaps, a disposition towards despotism.Very far from being in unison with the generous spirit of noble minds. In this spirit most of the editors of Milton have regarded him.From this condemnation we must exempt, however, the present Bishop of Winchester, who edited Milton's "Treatise on Christian Doctrine," when he was the courtly librarian to George IV.; and more especially must we exempt Dr. Symmonds, whose life, published as an introduction to the poet's works in 1806, was not only most elegantly, but most generously, written. Milton is charged with indulging in coarseness and severity in his prose writings. Before this judgment is pronounced upon him, we should weigh his times, the character of those whom he refuted, and the events which called him into the field of political disputation. Our readers have not to be informed that he lived in the days of the Stuarts and the Protectorate, but they may not be aware of all the atrocious circumstances of ecclesiastical and civil despotism beneath which the country groaned, until they were cast off by the heroism of the people during the civil war. Charles I. attempted to govern by absolute authority, without the sanction of parliament: he was a lawless king; he acknowledged no right in his people to remonstrate with him, or to refuse him subsidies of money. One of the first of the acts of his reign was to order all persons of £40 per year to receive knighthood; by this means the exchequer was reinforced. Monopolies were granted beyond all prece |