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ambushments, to keep a narrow bridge of licencing where the challenger should passe, though it be valour enough in shouldiership, is but weaknes and cowardise in the wars of Truth. For who knows not that Truth is strong next to the Almighty; she needs no policies, no strategems, no licen cings to make her victorious; those are the shifts and the defences tha error uses against her power." In this little book, Milton uttered nobly his own soul and the soul of England on behalf of that free interchange of thought which Englishmen, permitted or not, have always practised, and by which they have labored safely forward as a nation.

Milton published also, in 1644, his short letter on tion," addressed to Samuel Hartlib.

"Educa

In 1645, Milton's wife, alarmed by the probability that he would put into practice his theory of divorce, returned to him, and was forgiven; and for the subsequent four years, Milton took no part in public controversies. He was living the life of a quiet scholar, and was writing his "History of Britain," when the execution of Charles I., Jan. 30, 1649, raised, not only before England, but before the civilized world, questions in the discussion of which Milton's learning, and logic, and eloquence were needed. Within a month after the death of the king, Milton published his "Tenure of Kings and Magistrates," which he began to write during the struggle between the Presbyterians and Independents. The Presbyterians brought Charles to the block, and the Independents executed him. The Presbyterians sought mastery over the Independents by separating themselves from the act. As a Royalist said, their grief was "that the head was not struck off to the best advantage and commodity of them that held it by the hair." Since the deed was done, Milton's desire was that it should not have been done in vain, but that it should be held to signify what was for him the central truth of the great struggle; that the chief magistrate of a nation, whatever he be called, has no power to dispense with laws which are the birthright of the people; that he is bound to govern in accordance with them, is himself under them, and answerable for the breach of them. Milton sought

to give to so momentous an act its true interpretation, as a violent expression of the principle towards which the question of the limit of authority was tending, the principle that, forty years later, was to be finally established at the Revolution.

This principle, the essence of the struggle, was what Milton kept in mind, and for this, throughout his prose-writing under the Commonwealth, he sought chiefly to win assent from wise and simple. He "wrote nothing," he said in a later book, "respecting the regal jurisdiction, till the king, proclaimed an enemy by the Senate, and overcome in arms, was brought captive to his trial and condemned to suffer death. . . . Neither did I then direct my argument or persuasion personally against Charles; but, by the testimony of many of the most eminent divines, I proved what course of conduct might lawfully be observed towards tyrants in general. . . . This work was not published till after the death of the king; and was written rather to tranquillize the minds of men than to discuss any part of the question respecting Charles, a question the decision of which belonged to the magistrates, and not to me, and which had now received its final determination."

Early in 1649, Milton also published "Observations upon the Articles of Peace with the Irish Rebels."

These two works had been published, when the Council of State called upon Milton to write an answer to "Eikon Basi like," which was producing a powerful impression on the public. Later in the same year, Milton's answer came, entitled "Eikonoklastes." In his preface Milton said, "I take it on me as a work assign'd rather than by me chosen or affected, which was the cause both of beginning it so late, and finishing it so leisurely in the midst of other employments and diversions." He treated the book as the king's, and said, "As to the author of these soliloquies, whether it were undoubtedly the late king, as is vulgarly believ'd, or any secret coadjutor, and some stick not to name him, it can add nothing, nor shall take from the weight, if any be, of reason which he brings." It was a time for forbearance, but if the king left this new appeal behind him to truth and the world, the adversaries of his cause were compelled to meet the force of his reason in any field whatsoever, the force and equipage of whose arms they have so often met victoriously." Milton accordingly replied, section by section, to each of the twenty-eight parts of the Eikon Basilike."

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CHAPTER VIII.

SECOND HALF OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY: POETS, WITS, AND DRAMATISTS.

1. John Milton; his Life and Writings from the Year 1650.—2. Beginning of the
Era of French Literary Influence in England.-3. The New Criticism; Thomas
Rymer. 4. Edmund Waller.-5. Abraham Cowley; Henry Vaughan. — 6.
Samuel Butler.-7. Andrew Marvel.-8. Sir William Davenant.-9. Dryden's
Earlier Contemporaries.-10. Thomas Killigrew; Sir Charles Sedley. - 11.
Buckingham.-12. Dorset; Rochester.-13. Roscommon.-14. Mulgrave. -
15. Thomas D'Urfey.—16. Sir George Etherege.-17. Samuel Pordage. - 18.
Thomas Shadwell.-19. Elkanah Settle.-20. John Crowne.-21. Nathaniel
Lee.-22. Thomas Otway.-23. Aphra Behn.-24. Catherine Philips. - 25.
John Dryden's Life and Writings.-26. Dryden's Later Contemporaries;
William Wycherley.-27. William Congreve.-28. John Vanbrugh. — 29.
George Farquhar.-30. Thomas Southern.-31. John Oldham.—32. Nahum
Tate.-33. George Stepney. -34. Thomas Creech; Richard Duke.-35. Samuel
Garth.-
.—36. John Pomfret; William Walsh; William King; Thomas Brown;
George Granville.

1. MILTON had been appointed Foreign Secretary to the Council of the Commonwealth, when, late in the year 1649, appeared a book, written in Latin, with the royal arms of England on its title-page, and entitled "Salmasius's Royal Defence of Charles I., addressed to his legitimate heir, Charles II.” The author was Claude Salmasius, one of the most renowned scholars in Europe; and his book was an artful and powerful arraignment of the people of England for the crime of murdering their king.

Milton was called upon by the Council of State to reply to Salmasius. His health was already weak, the sight of his left eye already gone, and he was told he would lose his eyesight altogether if he undertook this labor. But to maintain before Europe in Latin, as he had maintained before his countrymen in English, what was for him, and, as he believed, for England, the living truth involved in the great struggle, with all its passions and misdeeds, was the next duty in his intellectual war.

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