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MILTON'S PROSE WORKS

CONSIDERABLE number of tracts which constitute the bulk of Milton's prose works have been referred to in the preceding chapter. There are but few of his productions in this form which will be attractive to the ordinary English reader. Their interest is now mainly due to the fact that he wrote them, and that they throw light upon the stirring movements of his tumultuous times. They are, as a whole, strongly aggressive, written in an intensely partisan spirit, and many of them are crowded with personal abuse. They generally set at naught, as has been wisely said, "every dictate of good taste and controversial fairness," but the extraordinary feature of them is the ability of the author to turn suddenly from an acrimonious and surly attack upon an opponent, in which petulant language appears in every paragraph, to some magnificent utterance full of devotional spirit, and almost sublime in its imagery. This quality no other writer of the time possessed. Milton was like every other pamphleteer, when he appeared as the infuriated champion, full of angry vituperation; but he stood alone in the passages of lucid eloquence to which he would 58

occasionally rise, and which were, as a rule, inspired by some thought which appealed to his spiritual nature, and sent him off in a torrent of impassioned language. A prose Ode in favour of Prayer, which appears at the close of his tract on "Church Discipline,"1 1641, is a striking instance of this versatility of the author. It is really a sublime appeal to God to defend the right, and is like the utterance of an Old Testament Prophet, while the contrast between this portion of the pamphlet and the indignant contempt and abusive epithets which precede it, is marked and startling.

2

The only one of the tracts having little of the pamphleteer about it, and written with calm dignity, is the "Areopagitica," 1644, a piece of careful reasoning in favour of the liberty of the Press, in which the cause of freedom of thought and freedom of utterance, is stated in thoughtful deliberate language, and in simple style marked by occasional touches of humour. Milton's idea was that the Press should be quite free, but the author of each work held responsible for any evils he may promulgate. He pointed out that if nothing was issued but what Civil authority had previously approved, power would always be the standard of truth, but he declined to accept the popular notion that there can be no settlement if every dreamer of innovations may promulgate his projects, no peace if every murmurer at Government may diffuse discontent, 2 E 18 (9) B. M.

E 208 (3) B. M.

and no religion if every sceptic may teach folly; believing emphatically in the triumph of right, and allowing the publication of all opinions free and unrestrained.

The following is a typical passage from "Areopagitica."

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 burthen 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 want of which whole nations fare worse. We should be wary, therefore, what persecution we raise against the living labours of public men;-how we spill that seasoned life of man, preserved and stored up in books; since we see a kind of homicide may be thus committed, sometimes a martyrdom; and, if it extend to the whole impression, a kind of massacre, whereof the execution ends not in the slaying of an elemental life, but strikes at the ethereal and fifth essence, the breath of reason itself,―slays an immortality rather than a life.

In many places this book is salted by pungent wit, but in Milton's other prose works his wit takes more the form of teasing his opponent, and stinging him by caustic remarks. It is to be feared that some of Milton's opposition to the

Monarchy arose from a dislike to obey any authority, and his political pamphlets are marked by a sullen desire for independence, and a predominant wish to destroy rather than to establish. His domestic relations show that he was a severe and arbitrary man; his political work emphasizes this side of his character, but we owe a good deal in the present day to the strenuous supporters of liberty, of which Milton was so typical an example, and whether agreeing or disagreeing with the contentions for which he fought, we are grateful for the stern determination which enabled him to arouse and contend for the spirit of liberty, while no theory respecting the aim of his writings must ever be allowed to blind our eyes to the magnificent use of the English language for which Milton was pre-eminently remarkable. Professor Masterman wisely points out that although he is an arch offender in the matter of long and involved sentences,' defying all rules of grammatical construction, and although at times his prose is dull and colourless, and at other times scurrilously abusive, yet there are passages which are sublime in their ornate splendour and stately rhythm, and unsurpassed in the prose works of any age.

Pattison considers, however, that the great and special feature of Milton's prose works is the fact that through the whole series of them runs the redeeming characteristic that they are all written on the side of liberty. It may be

1 There is one of 39 lines containing 336 words.

religious liberty, or civil, or domestic, or the liberty of the Press, or the liberty of the conscience, but liberty is the main spirit that distinguishes them. This is none the less true of the tracts on divorce than the political tracts, and Milton's dislike of restraint binding his domestic relations was no less emphatic than his hatred of certain political regulations. The curious feature, however, of the tracts on divorce, is the absolute inability of the author to conceive the converse of his arguments. They were entirely written from the man's point of view, and he treats the woman as a subordinate and inferior being. Woman was, he declared, made only for obedience, and this very unsatisfactory and most dangerous doctrine he carried out to a logical extreme in his own household, with the result that his daughters rebelled against him, his first wife pined away, and his home life was very largely of an unhappy character. The spirit of the age was, to a certain extent, with him, and woman, in the Stuart times, had not attained to the position of dignity to which she was by right entitled. One would, however, have anticipated from Milton, a man so much in advance of the times in many respects, a better understanding of the rights of womanhood, but he was quite unable to grant either by right, or through the virtue of chivalry, that position to the wife in the household to which she is entitled.

His tracts carried with them their own protests for the liberty of the Press, for, as a rule, they were issued unlicensed, and unregistered, and

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