of sensibility over principle, an excess of what Coleridge called the spiritual over what he called the moral part of man. A nature built on quicksands, an organization of nerve languid or tempestuous with occasion, a soul falling and soaring, now subject to ecstasies and now to remorses - such, it is supposed, and on no small induction of actual instances, is, the appropriate constitution of the poet. Mobility, absolute and entire destitution of principle, properly so called, capacity for varying the mood indefinitely rather than for retaining and keeping up one moral gesture or resolution through all moods - this, say the theorists, is the essential thing in the structure of the artist. Against the truth of this, as a maxim of universal application, the character of Milton, like that of Wordsworth after him, is a remarkable protest. Were it possible to place before the theorists all the materials that exist for judging of Milton's personal disposition as a young man, without exhibiting to them at the same time the actual and early proofs of his poetical genius, their conclusion, were they true to their theory, would necessarily be, that the basis of his nature was too solid and immovable, the platform of personal aims and aspirations over which his thoughts moved and had footing too fixed and firm, to permit that he should have been a poet. Nay, whosoever, even appreciating Milton as a poet, shall come to the investigation of his writings, armed with that preconception of the poetical character which is sure to be derived from an intimacy with the character of Shakspeare, will hardly escape some feeling of the same kind. Seriousness, we repeat, - a solemn and even austere demeanor of mind, - was the characteristic of Milton even in his youth."

Connected with this austerity may be noted, as a peculiarity in Milton at the same period, a certain haughty, yet not immodest self-esteem. Throughout all Milton's works there may be discerned a vein of noble egotism, of unbashful self-assertion. Often, in arguing with an opponent, he falls back out of the mere πίστις λογική, οι logical species of argument, into what Aristotle calls the πίστις ἠθικὴ, or argument from his own character; saying, as it were: "Besides all my other reasonings, take this as the chief and conclusive one, that it is I, a man of such and such antecedents and with such and such powers, who affirm and maintain this." In his earlier life, of course, this feeling existed rather as an undefined consciousness of his superiority, a tendency silently and with satisfaction to compare his intellectual measure with that of others, a resolute ambition to be and to do something great. "Was esteemed to be a virtuous and sober person," is Wood's account of the impression made by Milton at the University, "yet not to be ignorant of his

own parts." Wherever Wood picked up the last particular, it hits the truth exactly.

Here again I may be allowed to quote from myself. “One cannot help thinking,” I have said, " that this particular form of selfesteem goes along with that moral austerity of character which has been alleged to be discernible in Milton even in his youth, rather than with that temperament of varying sensibility, which is, according to the general theory, regarded as characteristic of the poet. Men of this latter type, as they vary in the entire mood of their mind, vary also in their estimate of themselves. No permanent consciousness of their own destiny, or of their own worth in comparison with others, belongs to them. In their moods of elevation they are powers to move the world ; but while the impulse that has gone forth from them in one of these moods, may be still thrilling its way onward in wider and wider circles through the hearts of myriads they have never seen, they, the fountains of the impulse, the spirit being gone from them, may be sitting alone in the very spot and amid the ashes of their triumph, sunken and dead, despondent and self-accusing. It requires the evidence of positive results, the assurance of other men's praises, the visible presentation of effects which they cannot but trace to themselves, to convince such men that they are or can do anything. Whatever manifestations of egotism, whatever strokes of self-assertion come from such men, come in the very burst and frenzy of their passing resistlessness. The calm, deliberate, and unshaken knowledge of their own superiority is not theirs. Not so is it with Milton. As a Christian, humiliation before God was a duty the meaning of which he knew full well; but, as a man moving among other men, he possessed in that moral seriousness and stoic scorn of temptation which characterized him, a spring of ever-present pride, dignifying his whole bearing among his fellows, and at times arousing him to a kingly intolerance. In short, instead of that dissatisfaction with self which we trace as a not unfrequent feeling with Shakspeare, we find in Milton, even in early youth, a recollection firm and habitual that he was one of those servants to whom God had entrusted the stewardship of ten talents."

We may now go a little farther. If there is this natural connection between personal strictness of character and that courageous self-reliance and habitual power of self-assertion which we see in Milton and in men of his type, — if, in this peculiar sense, it is conscience that makes “cowards” (i. e. diffident men) of us all, — then, according to Milton's theory, there ought to be based on this fact a rule of self-conduct for all those who meditate great enterprises, and mean, as he did, to accomplish good before they die. In studying any character, it is above all satisfactory, when, from the man's own recorded sayings, whether in speeches or in writings, there can be gathered certain recurring propositions, certain favorite trains of thought and phraseology, expressing what were evidently “fixed ideas” in his mind, fundamental articles in his moral creed. Whereever this is possible (and, perhaps, biography ought to find it possible universally), we have the man defining himself. Now Milton's deepest “fixed idea," from his youth upwards, was that of the necessity of moral integrity to a life of truly great work or truly great endeavor of whatever kind. There is no idea which occurs oftener, or is more emphatically stated in the course of his writings. We have already seen it recur very strikingly several times in the course of those of his writings as a student, which we have had already occasion to quote. Lest these passages, however, should be taken as mere gleams of vicarious rhetoric occurring where they might be supposed fitting, let us cite a passage, the personal reference of which is avowed and undoubted. In a controversial pamphlet written in 1642, and already more than once cited by us, as containing references to his early life, Milton, after speaking of his juvenile readings, and saying that his favorite authors at first were “ the smooth elegiac poets," proceeds as follows:

“Whence, having observed them to account it the chief glory of their wit, in that they were ablest to judge, to praise, and by that could esteem themselves worthiest to love, those high perfections which under one or other name they look to celebrate, I thought with myself, by every instinct and presage of nature, which is not wont to be false, that what emboldened them to this task might, with such diligence as they used, embolden me, and that what judgment, wit or elegance was my share, would herein best appear and best value itself, by how much more wisely and with more love of virtue I should choose (let rude ears be absent !) the object of not unlike praises. * * By the firm settling of these persuasions I became, to my best memory, so much a proficient, that, if I found those authors (Horace and Ovid, for example) anywhere speaking unworthy things of themselves, or unchaste of those names which before they had extolled, this effect it wrought with me: From that time forward their art I still applauded, but the men I deplored, and above them all preferred the two famous renowners of Beatrice and Laura [Dante and Petrarch), who never write but honor of them to whom they devote their verse, displaying sublime and pure thoughts without transgression. And long it was not after when I was confirmed in this opinion, that he who would not be frustrate of his hope to write well hereafter in laudable things, ought himself to be a true poem — that is, a composition and pattern of the best and honorablest things; not presuming to sing high praises of heroick men or famous cities, unless he bave in himself the experience and the practice of all that which is praiseworthy. These

reasonings, together with a certain niceness of nature, an honest haughtiness, and self-esteem either of what I was or what I might be (which let envy call pride), and lastly, that modesty whereof, though not in the title-page, yet here I may be excused to make some beseeming profession - all these, uniting the supply of their natural aid together, kept me still above those low descents of mind, beneath which he must deject and plunge himself that can agree to saleable and unlawful prostitutions.

"Next (for hear me out now, readers, that I may tell ye whither my younger feet wandered) I betook me among those lofty fables and romances [Spenser, etc.], which recount in solemn cantos the deeds of knighthood founded by our victorious kings, and from hence had a renown over all Christendom. There I read it in the oath of every knight that he should defend, to the expense of his best blood, or of his life, if it so befell him, the honor and chastity of virgin or matron. From whence even then I learnt what a noble virtue chastity sure must be, to the defence of which so many worthies, by such a dear adventure of themselves, had sworn. And, if I found in the story afterward any of them by word or deed breaking that oath, I judged it the same fault of the poet as that which is attributed to Homer - to have written undecent things of the gods. Only this my mind gave me, that every free and gentle spirit, without that oath, ought to be born a knight, nor needed to expect the gilt spur, or the laying of a sword upon his shoulder, to stir him up both by his counsel and his arm to secure and protect the weakness of any attempted chastity. So that even those books which to many others have been the fuel of wantonness and loose living - I cannot think how unless by Divine indulgence - proved to me so many incitements, as you have heard, to the love and steadfast observation of that virtue which abhors the society of bordelloes.

"Thus, from the laureate fraternity of poets, riper years and the ceaseless round of study and reading led me to the shady spaces of philosophy, but chiefly to the divine volumes of Plato and his equal Xenophon. Where if I should tell ye what I learnt of chastity and love, - I mean that which is truly so, whose charming-cup is only virtue, which she bears in her hand to those who are worthy: the rest are cheated with a thick intoxicating potion which a certain sorceress, the abuser of Love's name, carries about, - and how the first and chiefest office of love begins and ends in the soul, producing those happy twins of her divine generation, Knowledge and Virtue, with such abstracted sublimities as these, it might be worth your listening. ** This that I have hitherto related, hath been to show that, though Christianity had been but slightly taught me, yet a certain reservedness of natural disposition, and moral discipline learnt out of the noblest philosophy, was enough to keep me in disdain of far less incontinencies than this. But having had the doctrine of holy Scripture, unfolding these chaste and high mysteries, with timeliest care infused, that "the body is for the Lord and the Lord for the body," thus also I argued to myself - that, if unchastity in a woman, whom St. Paul terms the glory of man, be such a scandal and dishonor, then certainly in a man, who is both the image and glory of God, it must, though commonly not so thought, be much more deflowering and dishonorable. * * Thus large I have purposely been, that, if I have been justly taxed with this crime, it may come upon me after all this my confession with a tenfold shame.” 1

Whoever would understand Milton must take the substance of this passage along with him, whether he has cause to like it or not. Popularly it may be expressed by saying that whatever other authorities may be cited in support of the “wild oats” theory, Milton's authority is dead against it. It was his fixed idea that he who would not be frustrate of his hope of being great, or doing good hereafter, ought to be on his guard from the first against sensuality as a cause of spiritual incapacitation; and he was careful to regulate his own conduct by a recollection of this principle. As to the effects of the principle itself on his general career, and especially on his place and character among English poets, we shall have better opportunities of speaking hereafter; meanwhile, the fact that he held it with such tenacity is to be noted as the most characteristic circumstance of his youth, and as explaining, among other things, his self-confident demeanor.

But it is not only Milton's erect and manly demeanor that is explained by the fact in question. It helps to explain also another remarkable feature in his character, which the reader even of such specimens of his youthful writing as have hitherto been quoted cannot fail to have remarked, — the prevailing ideality of his conceptions, his tendency to the high and magnificent and contemplative, rather than to what might be called the common and practical and precise. Ideality, indeed, is the intellectual characteristic of the poet as such ; but there may be an ideality of the meaner and more ordinary as well as of the grander and more sublime. For some poets, accordingly, as Milton says, it might be no disqualification to be votaries of Ceres, Bacchus, and Venus. But for a poet such as he aspired to be it was different!

“At qui bella refert, et adulto sub Jove cælum,

Heroasque pios, semideosque duces,
Et nunc sancta canit superùm consulta Deorum,

Nunc latrata fero regna profunda cane,

for such a poet there must be peculiar regimen. Let him live sagely, soberly, austerely, like the anchorets and seers of old

“Qualis, veste nitens sacrâ et lustralibus undis,

Surgis ad infensos augur iture deos.”