August 18, 2025 • 29 mins
John Milton (1608-1674) was an English poet, classicist, and a bold champion of civil liberty who played a significant role in the Commonwealth of England under Oliver Cromwell. He is perhaps best remembered for his monumental epic poem Paradise Lost (1667), a work that weaves together stunning imagery and profound themes of heresy. In this insightful essay, Macaulay merges literary critique with political history, asserting that Milton, unlike many of his contemporaries, rightfully earned the glory of the battle he fought for the most precious and least understood freedom of all—the freedom of the human mind. (Summary by Pamela Nagami, M.D.)
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Section three of Milton by Thomas Babington Macaulay. This librovox
recording is in the public domain. Read by Pamelinagami Part three.
Perhaps the gods and demons of Eschylus may best bear
a comparison with the angels and devils of Milton. The
style of the Athenian had, as we have remarked, something
(00:24):
of the Oriental character, and the same peculiarity may be
traced in his mythology. It has nothing of the amenity
and elegance which we generally find in the superstitions of Greece.
All is rugged, barbaric, and colossal. The legends of Escylus
seem to harmonize less with the fragrant groves and graceful
(00:45):
porticoes in which his countrymen paid their vows to the
God of Light and Goddess of Desire, than with those
huge and grotesque labyrinths of eternal granite, in which Egypt
enshrined her mystic Osiris, or in which Hindostan still bows
down to her seven headed idols. His favorite gods are
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those of the elder generation, the sons of Heaven and Earth.
Compared with whom Jupiter himself was as stripling in an upstart,
the gigantic Titans and the inexorable Furies. Foremost among his
creations of this class stands Prometheus, half fiend, half redeemer,
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the friend of man, the sullen and implacable enemy of Heaven.
Prometheus bears undoubtedly a considerable resemblance to the Satan of Milton.
In both we find the same impatience of control, the
same ferocity, the same unconquerable pride. In both characters also
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are mingled, though in very different proportions, some kind and
generous feelings. Prometheus, however, is hardly superhuman enough. He too
much of his chains and his uneasy posture. He is
rather too much depressed and agitated. His resolution seems to
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depend on the knowledge which he possesses, that he holds
the fate of his torturer in his hands, and that
the hour of his release will surely come. But Satan
is a creature of another sphere. The might of his
intellectual nature is victorious over the extremity of pain. Amidst
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agonies which cannot be conceived without horror. He deliberates, resolves,
and even exults against the sword of Michael, against the
thunder of Jehovah, against the flaming lake and the marl
burning with solid fire, against the prospect of an eternity
of unintermitted misery. His spirit bears up unbroken, resting on
(02:54):
its own innate energies, requiring no support from anything external,
or even from Hope itself. To return for a moment
to the parallel which we have been attempting to draw
between Milton and Dante, we would add that the poetry
of these great men has, in a considerable degree taken
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its character from their moral qualities. They are not egotists.
They rarely obtrude their idiosyncrasies on their readers. They have
nothing in common with those modern beggars for fame who
extort a pittance from the compassion of the inexperienced by
exposing the nakedness and sores of their minds. Yet it
(03:37):
would be difficult to name two writers whose works have
been more completely, though undesignedly, colored by their personal feelings.
The character of Milton was peculiarly distinguished by loftiness of spirit,
that of Dante by intensity of feeling. In every line
of the Divine comedy, we discern the asperity which is
(04:00):
produced by pride struggling with misery. There is perhaps no
work in the world so deeply and uniformly sorrowful. The
melancholy of Dante was no fantastic caprice. It was not,
as far as at this distance of time can be judged,
the effect of external circumstances. It was from within. Neither
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love nor glory, neither the conflicts of earth nor the
hope of heaven could dispel it. It turned every consolation
and every pleasure into its own nature. It resembled that
noxious Sardinian soil of which the intense bitterness is said
to have been perceptible even in its honey. His mind was,
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in the noble language of the Hebrew poet, a land
of darkness as darkness itself, and where the light was
as darkness. The gloom of his character discolors all the
passions of men and all face of nature, and tinges
with its own livid hue, the flowers of paradise and
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the glories of the eternal throne. All the portraits of
him are singularly characteristic. No person can look on the
features noble even to ruggedness, the dark furrows of the cheek,
the haggard and woeful stare of the eye, the sullen
and contemptuous curve of the lip, and doubt that they
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belonged to a man too proud and too sensitive to
be happy. Milton was like Dante as statesman and a lover.
And like Dante, he had been unfortunate in ambition and
in love. He had survived his health and his sight,
the comforts of his home, and the prosperity of his party.
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Of the great men by whom he had been distinguished
at his entrance into life, some had been taken away
from the evil to come. Some had carried into foreign
climates their unconquerable hatred of oppression. Some were pining in dungeons,
and some had poured forth their blood on scaffolds. Venal
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and licentious scribblers, with just sufficient talent to clothe the
thoughts of a pander in the style of a bellman,
were now the favorite writers of the sovereign and of
the public. It was a loathsome herd which could be
compared to nothing so fitly as to the rabble of Comus.
Grotesque monsters, half bestial, half human, dropping with wine, bloated
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with gluttony, and reeling in obscene dances. Amidst these, that
fair Muse was placed, like the chaste lady of the mask, lofty, spotless,
and serene, to be chattered at and pointed at and
grinned at by the whole rout of satds and goblins.
If ever despondency and asperity could be excused in any man,
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they might have been excused in Milklton. But the strength
of his mind overcame. Every calamity. Neither blindness nor gout,
nor age, nor penury, nor domestic afflictions, nor political disappointments,
nor abuse, nor proscription nor neglect had power to disturb
his sedate and majestic patience. His spirits do not seem
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to have been high, but they were singularly equable. His
temper was serious, perhaps stern, but it was a temper
which no sufferings could render sullen or fretful, Such as
it was when, on the eve of great events he
returned from his travels in the prime of health and
manly beauty, loaded with literary distinctions, and glowing with patriotic hopes.
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Such it continued to be when, after having experienced every
calamity which is incident to our nature, old, poor, sightless
and disgraced, he retired to his hovel to die. Hence
it was that, though he wrote the Paradise Lost at
a time of life when images of beauty and tenderness
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are in general beginning to fade, even from those minds
in which they have not been effaced by anxiety and disappointment,
he adorned it with all that is most lovely and
delightful in the physical and in the moral world. Neither
Theocritus nor Ariosto had a finer or more healthful sense
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of the pleasantness of external objects, or loved better to
luxuriate amidst sunbeams and flowers, the songs of nightingales, the
juice of summer fruits, and the coolness of shady fountains.
His conception of love unites all the voluptuousness of the
Oriental harem, and all the gallantry of the chivalric tournament,
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with all the pure, unquiet affection of an English fireside.
His poetry reminds us of the miracles of alpine scenery.
Knooks and dells beautiful as fairyland, are embosomed in its
most rugged and gigantic elevations. The roses and myrtles bloom
unchilled on the verge of the Avalanche. Traces, indeed, of
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the peculiar character of Milton may be found in all
his works, but it is most strongly displayed in the sonnets.
Those remarkable poems have been undervalued by critics who have
not understood their nature. They have no epigrammatic point. There
is none of the ingenuity of Filacaja in the thought,
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none of the hard and brilliant enamel of Petrarch in
the style. They are simple, but majestic records of the
feelings of the poet, as little tricked out for the
public eye, as his diary would have been. A victory,
an unexpected attack upon the city, a momentary fit of
depression or exaltation, a jest thrown out against one of
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his books, a dream which for a short time restored
to him that beautiful face over which the grave had closed,
forever led him to musings which without effort shape themselves
into verse. The unity of sentiment and severity of style
which characterizes these little pieces reminds us of the Greek anthology,
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or perhaps still more of the collects of the English liturgy.
The Noble poem on the Massacres of Piedmont is strictly
a collect in verse. The Sonnets are more or less striking,
according as the occasions which gave birth to them are
more or less interesting. But they are almost without exception,
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dignified by a sobriety and greatness of mind to which
we know not where to look for a parallel. It
would indeed be scarcely safe to draw any decided inferences
as to the character of a writer from passages directly egotistical.
But the qualities which we have ascribed to Milton, though
perhaps most strongly marked in those parts of his works
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which treated his personal feelings, are distinguishable in every page,
and in part to all his writings prose and poetry, English,
Latin and Italian, a strong family likeness. His public conduct
was such as was to be expected from a man
of spirit so high and of an intellect so powerful.
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He lived at one of the most memorable eras in
the history of mankind, at the very crisis of the
great conflict between oromasdes and arimanes, liberty and despotism, reason
and prejudice. That great battle was fought for no single generation,
for no single land. The destinies of the human race
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were staked on the same caste with the freedom of
the English people. Then were first proclaimed those mighty principles
which have since worked on the way into the depths
of the American forests, which have roused Greece from the
slavery and degradation of two thousand years, and which from
one end of Europe to the other, have kindled an
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unquenchable fire in the hearts of the oppressed, and loosed
the knees of the oppressors with an unwonted fear of
those principles then struggling for their infant existence. Milton was
the most devoted and eloquent literary champion. We need not
say how much we admire his public conduct, but we
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cannot disguise from ourselves that a large portion of his
countrymen still think it unjustifiable. The Civil War, indeed, has
been more discussed and is less understood than any event
in English history. The friends of liberty labored under the
disadvantage of which the lion in the fable complained so bitterly.
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Though they were the conquerors, their enemies were the painters.
As a body, the round Heads had done their utmost
to decry and ruin literature, and literature was even with them,
as in the long run it always is with its enemies.
The best book on their side of the question is
the charming narrative of Missus Hutchinson. May's History of the
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Parliament is good, but it breaks off at the most
interesting crisis of the struggle. The performance of Luod Low
is foolish and violent, and most of the later writers
who have espoused the same cause, Old Mixon, for instance,
and Catherine Macaulay, have to say the least been more
distinguished by zeal than either by candor or by skill.
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On the other side, are the most authoritative and the
most popular historical works in our language, that of Clarendon
and that of Hume. The former is not only ably
written and full of valuable information, but has also an
air of dignity and sincerity which makes even the prejudices
and errors with which it abounds respectable. Hume, from whose
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fascinating narrative the great mass of the reading public are
still contented to take their opinions, hated religion so much
that he hated liberty for having been allied with religion,
and has pleaded the cause of tyranny with the dexterity
of an advocate, while affecting the impartiality of a judge.
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The public conduct of Milton must be approved or condemned,
according as the resistance of the people to Charles the
first shall appear to be justifiable or criminal. We shall
therefore make no apology for dedicating a few pages to
the discussion of that interesting and most important question. We
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shall not argue it on general grounds. We shall not
recur to those primary principles from which the claim of
any government to the obedience of its subjects is to
be deduced. We are entitled to that vantage ground, but
we will relinquish it. We are, on this point so
confident of superiority that we are not unwilling to imitate
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the ostentatious generosity of those ancient knights who vowed to
joust without helmet or shield against all enemies, and to
give their antagonists the advantage of sun and wind. We
will take the naked constitutional question. We confidently affirm that
every reason which can be urged in favor of the
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Revolution of sixteen eighty eight may be urged with at
least equal force in favor of what is called the
Great Rebellion in one respect. Only, we think, can the
warmest admirers of Charles venture to say that he was
a better sovereign than his son. He was not, in
name and profession, a papist. We say, in name and profession,
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because both Charlesarls himself and his creature laud while they
abjured the innocent badges of popery, retained all its worst vices.
A complete subjection of reason to authority, a weak preference
of form to substance, a childish passion for mummeries, an
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idolatrous veneration for the priestly character, and above all a
merciless and tolerance this, however, we wave. We will concede
that Charles was a good Protestant, but we say that
his Protestantism does not make the slightest distinction between his
case and that of James. The principles of the Revolution
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have often been grossly misrepresented, and never more than in
the course of the present year. There is a certain
class of men, who, while they profess to hold in
reverence the great names and great actions of former times,
never look at them for any other purpose than in
order to find in them some excuse for existing abuses.
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In every venerable precedent. They pass by what is essential
and take only what is accidental. They keep out of
sight what is beneficial, and hold up to public imitation
all that is defective. If in any part of any
great example there be anything unsound, these flesh flies detect
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it with an unerring instinct, and dart upon it with
a ravenous delight. If some good end has been attained
in spite of them, they feel with their prototype that
their labor must be to pervert that end, and out
of good still to find means of evil. To the
blessings which England has derived from the revolution, these people
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are utterly insensible. The expulsion of a tyrant, the solemn
recognition of popular rights, liberty, security, toleration, all go for
nothing with them. One sect there was which, from unfortunate
temporary causes, it was thought necessary to keep under close restraint.
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One part of the empire there was so unhappily circumstanced
that at that time its misery was necessary to our happiness,
and its slavery to our freedom. These are the parts
of the revolution which the politicians of whom we speak
loved to contemplate, and which seem to them not indeed
to vindicate, but in some degree to palliate the good
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which it has produced. Talk to them of Naples, of
Spain or of South America. They stand forth zealots for
the doctrine of divine right, which has now come back
to us like a thief from transportation under the alias
of legitimacy. But mention the miseries of Ireland, then William
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is a hero, than Summers and Shrewsbury are great men.
Then the revolution is a glorious era. The very same persons,
who in this country never omit an opportunity of reviving
every wretched Jacobite slander, respecting the Whigs of that period,
have no sooner crossed Saint George's channel than they begin
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to fill their bumpers to the glorious and immortal memory.
They may truly boast that they look not at men,
but at measures, so that evil be done. They care
not who does it, the arbitrary Charles or the liberal William,
Ferdinand the Catholic, or Frederick the Protestant. On such occasions
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their deadliest opponents may reckon upon their candid construction. The
bold assertions of these people have of late impressed a
large portion of the public with an opinion that James
the second was expelled simply because he was a Catholic,
and that the revolution was essentially a Protestant revolution. But
this certainly was not the case. Nor can any person
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who has acquired more knowledge of the history of those
times than is to be found in Goldsmith's abridgment believed
that if James had held his own religious opinions without
wishing to make proselytes, or if wishing even to make proselytes,
he had contented himself with exerting only his constitutional influence
for that purpose, the Prince of Orange would ever have
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been invited over our ancestors. We suppose knew their own meaning,
and if we may believe them, their hostility was primarily
not to popery but to tyranny. They did not drive
out a tyrant because he was a Catholic, but they
excluded Catholics from the crown because they thought them likely
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to be tyrants. The ground on which day, in their
famous resolution, declared the throne vacant was this, that James
had broken the fundamental laws of the kingdom. Every Man, therefore,
who approves of the Revolution of sixteen eighty eight must
hold that the breach of fundamental laws on the part
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of the sovereign justifies resistance. The question, then, is this,
had Charles the First broken the fundamental laws of England?
No person can answer in the negative unless he refuses
credit not merely to all the accusations brought against Charles
by his opponents, but to the narratives of the warmest
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royalists and to the confessions of the King himself. If
there be any truth in any historian of any party
who has related the events of that reign, the conduct
of Charles from his accession to the meeting of the
Long Parliament had been a continued course of oppression and treachery.
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Let those who applaud the revolution and condemn the rebellion
mention one act of James the Second, to which a
parallel is not to be found in the history of
his father. Let them lay their fingers on a single
article in the Declaration of Right presented by the two
Houses to William and Mary, which Charles is not acknowledged
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to have violated. He had, according to the testimony of
his own friends, usurped the functions of the legislature, raised
taxes without the consent of parliament and quartered troops on
the people in the most illegal and vexatious manner. Not
a single session of Parliament had passed without some unconstitutional
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attack on the freedom of debate. The right of petition
was grossly violated. Arbitrary judgments, exorbitant fines, and unwarranted imprisonments
were grievances of daily occurrence. If these things do not
justify resistance, the revolution was treason. If they do, the
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great rebellion was laudable, But it is said, why not
adopt milder measures? Why after the King had consented to
so many reforms and renounced so many oppressive prerogatives, did
the parliament continue to rise in their demands at the
risk of provoking a civil war. The ship money had
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been given up, the Star Chamber had been abolished, provision
had been made for the frequent convocation and secure deliberation
of parliaments. Why not pursue an end confessedly good by
peaceable and regular means. We recur again to the analogy
of the revolution. Why was James driven from the throne?
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Why was he not retained upon conditions? He too, had
offered to call a free parliament and to submit to
its decision all the matters in dispute. Yet we are
in the habit of praising our forefathers, who preferred a revolution,
a disputed succession, a dynasty of strangers, twenty years of
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foreign as, an intestine war, a standing army in a
national debt to the rule, however, restricted of a tried
and proved tyrant. The Long Parliament acted on the same
principle and is entitled to the same praise. They could
not trust the king. He had, no doubt passed salutary laws,
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but what assurance was there that he would not break them.
He had renounced oppressive prerogatives, but where was the security
that he would not resume them. The nation had to
deal with a man whom no tie could bind, a
man who made and broke promises with equal facility, a
man whose honor had been a hundred times pawned and
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never redeemed. Here, indeed, the Long Parliament stands on still
stronger ground than the Convention of sixteen eighty eight. No
action of James can be compared to the conduct of
charals with respect to the petition of right lords and
commons present him with a bill in which the constitutional
limits of his power are marked out, He hesitates, he evades.
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At last he bargains to give his assent for five subsidies.
The bill receives his solemn assent. The subsidies are voted,
But no sooner as the tyrant relieved when he returns
at once to all the arbitrary measures which he had
bound himself to abandon, and violates all the clauses of
the very act which he has been paid to pass.
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For more than ten years, the people had seen the
rights which were theirs by double claim, by immemorial inheritance,
and by recent purchase, infringed by the perfidious king, who
had recognized them at length. Circumstances compelled Charles to summon
another parliament. Another chance was given to our fathers. Were
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they to throw it away as they had thrown away
the former? Were they again to be caused by Lerois Leuvaux.
Were they again to advance their money on pledges which
had been forfeited over and over again. Were they to
lay a second petition of right at the foot of
the throne, to grant another lavish aid in exchange for
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another unmeaning ceremony, and then to take their departure till
after ten years more of fraud and oppression, their prince
should again require a supply and again repay it with
a perjury. They were compelled to choose whether they would
trust a tyrant or conquer him. We think that they
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chose wisely and nobly. The advocates of Charles, like the
advocates of other malefactors against womb overwhelming evidences produced, generally
decline all controversy about the facts and content themselves with
calling testimony to character. He had so many private virtues,
and had James. The second no private virtues was Oliver Cromwell,
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his bitterest enemies themselves being judges destitute of private virtues.
And what, after all are the virtues ascribed to Charles?
A religious zeal not more sincere than that of his son,
and fully as weak and narrow minded, and a few
of the ordinary household decencies which half the tombstones in
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England claim for those who lie beneath them, A good father,
a good husband, ample apologies. Indeed, for fifteen years of persecution, tyranny,
and falsehood, we charge him with having broken his coronation oath,
and we are told that he kept his marriage vow.
We accuse him of having given up his people to
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the merciless inflictions of the most hot headed and hard
hearted of prelates, and the defenses that he took his
little son on his knees and kissed him. We censure
him for having violated the articles of the petition of right,
after having, for good and valuable consideration promise to observe them.
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And we are informed that he was accustomed to hear
prayers at six o'clock in the morning. It is to
such considerations as these, together with his van Dyke dress,
his handsome face, and his peaked beard, that he owes
we verily believe most of his popularity with the present generation.
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For ourselves, we own that we do not understand the
common phrase a good man but a bad king. We
can as easily conceive a good man and an unnatural father,
or a good man and a treacherous friend. We cannot,
in estimating the character of an individual, leave out of
our consideration his conduct in the most important of all
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human relations. And if in that relation we find him
to have been selfish, cruel, and deceitful, we shall take
the liberty to call him a bad man. In spite
of all his temperance at table, and all his regularity
at chapel, And of Section three
Section three of Milton by Thomas Babington Macaulay. This librovox
recording is in the public domain. Read by Pamelinagami Part three.
Perhaps the gods and demons of Eschylus may best bear
a comparison with the angels and devils of Milton. The
style of the Athenian had, as we have remarked, something
(00:24):
of the Oriental character, and the same peculiarity may be
traced in his mythology. It has nothing of the amenity
and elegance which we generally find in the superstitions of Greece.
All is rugged, barbaric, and colossal. The legends of Escylus
seem to harmonize less with the fragrant groves and graceful
(00:45):
porticoes in which his countrymen paid their vows to the
God of Light and Goddess of Desire, than with those
huge and grotesque labyrinths of eternal granite, in which Egypt
enshrined her mystic Osiris, or in which Hindostan still bows
down to her seven headed idols. His favorite gods are
(01:07):
those of the elder generation, the sons of Heaven and Earth.
Compared with whom Jupiter himself was as stripling in an upstart,
the gigantic Titans and the inexorable Furies. Foremost among his
creations of this class stands Prometheus, half fiend, half redeemer,
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the friend of man, the sullen and implacable enemy of Heaven.
Prometheus bears undoubtedly a considerable resemblance to the Satan of Milton.
In both we find the same impatience of control, the
same ferocity, the same unconquerable pride. In both characters also
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are mingled, though in very different proportions, some kind and
generous feelings. Prometheus, however, is hardly superhuman enough. He too
much of his chains and his uneasy posture. He is
rather too much depressed and agitated. His resolution seems to
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depend on the knowledge which he possesses, that he holds
the fate of his torturer in his hands, and that
the hour of his release will surely come. But Satan
is a creature of another sphere. The might of his
intellectual nature is victorious over the extremity of pain. Amidst
(02:30):
agonies which cannot be conceived without horror. He deliberates, resolves,
and even exults against the sword of Michael, against the
thunder of Jehovah, against the flaming lake and the marl
burning with solid fire, against the prospect of an eternity
of unintermitted misery. His spirit bears up unbroken, resting on
(02:54):
its own innate energies, requiring no support from anything external,
or even from Hope itself. To return for a moment
to the parallel which we have been attempting to draw
between Milton and Dante, we would add that the poetry
of these great men has, in a considerable degree taken
(03:14):
its character from their moral qualities. They are not egotists.
They rarely obtrude their idiosyncrasies on their readers. They have
nothing in common with those modern beggars for fame who
extort a pittance from the compassion of the inexperienced by
exposing the nakedness and sores of their minds. Yet it
(03:37):
would be difficult to name two writers whose works have
been more completely, though undesignedly, colored by their personal feelings.
The character of Milton was peculiarly distinguished by loftiness of spirit,
that of Dante by intensity of feeling. In every line
of the Divine comedy, we discern the asperity which is
(04:00):
produced by pride struggling with misery. There is perhaps no
work in the world so deeply and uniformly sorrowful. The
melancholy of Dante was no fantastic caprice. It was not,
as far as at this distance of time can be judged,
the effect of external circumstances. It was from within. Neither
(04:24):
love nor glory, neither the conflicts of earth nor the
hope of heaven could dispel it. It turned every consolation
and every pleasure into its own nature. It resembled that
noxious Sardinian soil of which the intense bitterness is said
to have been perceptible even in its honey. His mind was,
(04:45):
in the noble language of the Hebrew poet, a land
of darkness as darkness itself, and where the light was
as darkness. The gloom of his character discolors all the
passions of men and all face of nature, and tinges
with its own livid hue, the flowers of paradise and
(05:06):
the glories of the eternal throne. All the portraits of
him are singularly characteristic. No person can look on the
features noble even to ruggedness, the dark furrows of the cheek,
the haggard and woeful stare of the eye, the sullen
and contemptuous curve of the lip, and doubt that they
(05:27):
belonged to a man too proud and too sensitive to
be happy. Milton was like Dante as statesman and a lover.
And like Dante, he had been unfortunate in ambition and
in love. He had survived his health and his sight,
the comforts of his home, and the prosperity of his party.
(05:50):
Of the great men by whom he had been distinguished
at his entrance into life, some had been taken away
from the evil to come. Some had carried into foreign
climates their unconquerable hatred of oppression. Some were pining in dungeons,
and some had poured forth their blood on scaffolds. Venal
(06:11):
and licentious scribblers, with just sufficient talent to clothe the
thoughts of a pander in the style of a bellman,
were now the favorite writers of the sovereign and of
the public. It was a loathsome herd which could be
compared to nothing so fitly as to the rabble of Comus.
Grotesque monsters, half bestial, half human, dropping with wine, bloated
(06:37):
with gluttony, and reeling in obscene dances. Amidst these, that
fair Muse was placed, like the chaste lady of the mask, lofty, spotless,
and serene, to be chattered at and pointed at and
grinned at by the whole rout of satds and goblins.
If ever despondency and asperity could be excused in any man,
(06:58):
they might have been excused in Milklton. But the strength
of his mind overcame. Every calamity. Neither blindness nor gout,
nor age, nor penury, nor domestic afflictions, nor political disappointments,
nor abuse, nor proscription nor neglect had power to disturb
his sedate and majestic patience. His spirits do not seem
(07:21):
to have been high, but they were singularly equable. His
temper was serious, perhaps stern, but it was a temper
which no sufferings could render sullen or fretful, Such as
it was when, on the eve of great events he
returned from his travels in the prime of health and
manly beauty, loaded with literary distinctions, and glowing with patriotic hopes.
(07:46):
Such it continued to be when, after having experienced every
calamity which is incident to our nature, old, poor, sightless
and disgraced, he retired to his hovel to die. Hence
it was that, though he wrote the Paradise Lost at
a time of life when images of beauty and tenderness
(08:06):
are in general beginning to fade, even from those minds
in which they have not been effaced by anxiety and disappointment,
he adorned it with all that is most lovely and
delightful in the physical and in the moral world. Neither
Theocritus nor Ariosto had a finer or more healthful sense
(08:27):
of the pleasantness of external objects, or loved better to
luxuriate amidst sunbeams and flowers, the songs of nightingales, the
juice of summer fruits, and the coolness of shady fountains.
His conception of love unites all the voluptuousness of the
Oriental harem, and all the gallantry of the chivalric tournament,
(08:51):
with all the pure, unquiet affection of an English fireside.
His poetry reminds us of the miracles of alpine scenery.
Knooks and dells beautiful as fairyland, are embosomed in its
most rugged and gigantic elevations. The roses and myrtles bloom
unchilled on the verge of the Avalanche. Traces, indeed, of
(09:15):
the peculiar character of Milton may be found in all
his works, but it is most strongly displayed in the sonnets.
Those remarkable poems have been undervalued by critics who have
not understood their nature. They have no epigrammatic point. There
is none of the ingenuity of Filacaja in the thought,
(09:36):
none of the hard and brilliant enamel of Petrarch in
the style. They are simple, but majestic records of the
feelings of the poet, as little tricked out for the
public eye, as his diary would have been. A victory,
an unexpected attack upon the city, a momentary fit of
depression or exaltation, a jest thrown out against one of
(09:58):
his books, a dream which for a short time restored
to him that beautiful face over which the grave had closed,
forever led him to musings which without effort shape themselves
into verse. The unity of sentiment and severity of style
which characterizes these little pieces reminds us of the Greek anthology,
(10:21):
or perhaps still more of the collects of the English liturgy.
The Noble poem on the Massacres of Piedmont is strictly
a collect in verse. The Sonnets are more or less striking,
according as the occasions which gave birth to them are
more or less interesting. But they are almost without exception,
(10:42):
dignified by a sobriety and greatness of mind to which
we know not where to look for a parallel. It
would indeed be scarcely safe to draw any decided inferences
as to the character of a writer from passages directly egotistical.
But the qualities which we have ascribed to Milton, though
perhaps most strongly marked in those parts of his works
(11:05):
which treated his personal feelings, are distinguishable in every page,
and in part to all his writings prose and poetry, English,
Latin and Italian, a strong family likeness. His public conduct
was such as was to be expected from a man
of spirit so high and of an intellect so powerful.
(11:28):
He lived at one of the most memorable eras in
the history of mankind, at the very crisis of the
great conflict between oromasdes and arimanes, liberty and despotism, reason
and prejudice. That great battle was fought for no single generation,
for no single land. The destinies of the human race
(11:50):
were staked on the same caste with the freedom of
the English people. Then were first proclaimed those mighty principles
which have since worked on the way into the depths
of the American forests, which have roused Greece from the
slavery and degradation of two thousand years, and which from
one end of Europe to the other, have kindled an
(12:12):
unquenchable fire in the hearts of the oppressed, and loosed
the knees of the oppressors with an unwonted fear of
those principles then struggling for their infant existence. Milton was
the most devoted and eloquent literary champion. We need not
say how much we admire his public conduct, but we
(12:35):
cannot disguise from ourselves that a large portion of his
countrymen still think it unjustifiable. The Civil War, indeed, has
been more discussed and is less understood than any event
in English history. The friends of liberty labored under the
disadvantage of which the lion in the fable complained so bitterly.
(12:55):
Though they were the conquerors, their enemies were the painters.
As a body, the round Heads had done their utmost
to decry and ruin literature, and literature was even with them,
as in the long run it always is with its enemies.
The best book on their side of the question is
the charming narrative of Missus Hutchinson. May's History of the
(13:19):
Parliament is good, but it breaks off at the most
interesting crisis of the struggle. The performance of Luod Low
is foolish and violent, and most of the later writers
who have espoused the same cause, Old Mixon, for instance,
and Catherine Macaulay, have to say the least been more
distinguished by zeal than either by candor or by skill.
(13:42):
On the other side, are the most authoritative and the
most popular historical works in our language, that of Clarendon
and that of Hume. The former is not only ably
written and full of valuable information, but has also an
air of dignity and sincerity which makes even the prejudices
and errors with which it abounds respectable. Hume, from whose
(14:06):
fascinating narrative the great mass of the reading public are
still contented to take their opinions, hated religion so much
that he hated liberty for having been allied with religion,
and has pleaded the cause of tyranny with the dexterity
of an advocate, while affecting the impartiality of a judge.
(14:27):
The public conduct of Milton must be approved or condemned,
according as the resistance of the people to Charles the
first shall appear to be justifiable or criminal. We shall
therefore make no apology for dedicating a few pages to
the discussion of that interesting and most important question. We
(14:48):
shall not argue it on general grounds. We shall not
recur to those primary principles from which the claim of
any government to the obedience of its subjects is to
be deduced. We are entitled to that vantage ground, but
we will relinquish it. We are, on this point so
confident of superiority that we are not unwilling to imitate
(15:13):
the ostentatious generosity of those ancient knights who vowed to
joust without helmet or shield against all enemies, and to
give their antagonists the advantage of sun and wind. We
will take the naked constitutional question. We confidently affirm that
every reason which can be urged in favor of the
(15:35):
Revolution of sixteen eighty eight may be urged with at
least equal force in favor of what is called the
Great Rebellion in one respect. Only, we think, can the
warmest admirers of Charles venture to say that he was
a better sovereign than his son. He was not, in
name and profession, a papist. We say, in name and profession,
(15:59):
because both Charlesarls himself and his creature laud while they
abjured the innocent badges of popery, retained all its worst vices.
A complete subjection of reason to authority, a weak preference
of form to substance, a childish passion for mummeries, an
(16:19):
idolatrous veneration for the priestly character, and above all a
merciless and tolerance this, however, we wave. We will concede
that Charles was a good Protestant, but we say that
his Protestantism does not make the slightest distinction between his
case and that of James. The principles of the Revolution
(16:43):
have often been grossly misrepresented, and never more than in
the course of the present year. There is a certain
class of men, who, while they profess to hold in
reverence the great names and great actions of former times,
never look at them for any other purpose than in
order to find in them some excuse for existing abuses.
(17:06):
In every venerable precedent. They pass by what is essential
and take only what is accidental. They keep out of
sight what is beneficial, and hold up to public imitation
all that is defective. If in any part of any
great example there be anything unsound, these flesh flies detect
(17:30):
it with an unerring instinct, and dart upon it with
a ravenous delight. If some good end has been attained
in spite of them, they feel with their prototype that
their labor must be to pervert that end, and out
of good still to find means of evil. To the
blessings which England has derived from the revolution, these people
(17:53):
are utterly insensible. The expulsion of a tyrant, the solemn
recognition of popular rights, liberty, security, toleration, all go for
nothing with them. One sect there was which, from unfortunate
temporary causes, it was thought necessary to keep under close restraint.
(18:14):
One part of the empire there was so unhappily circumstanced
that at that time its misery was necessary to our happiness,
and its slavery to our freedom. These are the parts
of the revolution which the politicians of whom we speak
loved to contemplate, and which seem to them not indeed
to vindicate, but in some degree to palliate the good
(18:38):
which it has produced. Talk to them of Naples, of
Spain or of South America. They stand forth zealots for
the doctrine of divine right, which has now come back
to us like a thief from transportation under the alias
of legitimacy. But mention the miseries of Ireland, then William
(19:00):
is a hero, than Summers and Shrewsbury are great men.
Then the revolution is a glorious era. The very same persons,
who in this country never omit an opportunity of reviving
every wretched Jacobite slander, respecting the Whigs of that period,
have no sooner crossed Saint George's channel than they begin
(19:21):
to fill their bumpers to the glorious and immortal memory.
They may truly boast that they look not at men,
but at measures, so that evil be done. They care
not who does it, the arbitrary Charles or the liberal William,
Ferdinand the Catholic, or Frederick the Protestant. On such occasions
(19:42):
their deadliest opponents may reckon upon their candid construction. The
bold assertions of these people have of late impressed a
large portion of the public with an opinion that James
the second was expelled simply because he was a Catholic,
and that the revolution was essentially a Protestant revolution. But
this certainly was not the case. Nor can any person
(20:06):
who has acquired more knowledge of the history of those
times than is to be found in Goldsmith's abridgment believed
that if James had held his own religious opinions without
wishing to make proselytes, or if wishing even to make proselytes,
he had contented himself with exerting only his constitutional influence
for that purpose, the Prince of Orange would ever have
(20:29):
been invited over our ancestors. We suppose knew their own meaning,
and if we may believe them, their hostility was primarily
not to popery but to tyranny. They did not drive
out a tyrant because he was a Catholic, but they
excluded Catholics from the crown because they thought them likely
(20:50):
to be tyrants. The ground on which day, in their
famous resolution, declared the throne vacant was this, that James
had broken the fundamental laws of the kingdom. Every Man, therefore,
who approves of the Revolution of sixteen eighty eight must
hold that the breach of fundamental laws on the part
(21:10):
of the sovereign justifies resistance. The question, then, is this,
had Charles the First broken the fundamental laws of England?
No person can answer in the negative unless he refuses
credit not merely to all the accusations brought against Charles
by his opponents, but to the narratives of the warmest
(21:31):
royalists and to the confessions of the King himself. If
there be any truth in any historian of any party
who has related the events of that reign, the conduct
of Charles from his accession to the meeting of the
Long Parliament had been a continued course of oppression and treachery.
(21:52):
Let those who applaud the revolution and condemn the rebellion
mention one act of James the Second, to which a
parallel is not to be found in the history of
his father. Let them lay their fingers on a single
article in the Declaration of Right presented by the two
Houses to William and Mary, which Charles is not acknowledged
(22:12):
to have violated. He had, according to the testimony of
his own friends, usurped the functions of the legislature, raised
taxes without the consent of parliament and quartered troops on
the people in the most illegal and vexatious manner. Not
a single session of Parliament had passed without some unconstitutional
(22:34):
attack on the freedom of debate. The right of petition
was grossly violated. Arbitrary judgments, exorbitant fines, and unwarranted imprisonments
were grievances of daily occurrence. If these things do not
justify resistance, the revolution was treason. If they do, the
(22:54):
great rebellion was laudable, But it is said, why not
adopt milder measures? Why after the King had consented to
so many reforms and renounced so many oppressive prerogatives, did
the parliament continue to rise in their demands at the
risk of provoking a civil war. The ship money had
(23:15):
been given up, the Star Chamber had been abolished, provision
had been made for the frequent convocation and secure deliberation
of parliaments. Why not pursue an end confessedly good by
peaceable and regular means. We recur again to the analogy
of the revolution. Why was James driven from the throne?
(23:37):
Why was he not retained upon conditions? He too, had
offered to call a free parliament and to submit to
its decision all the matters in dispute. Yet we are
in the habit of praising our forefathers, who preferred a revolution,
a disputed succession, a dynasty of strangers, twenty years of
(23:59):
foreign as, an intestine war, a standing army in a
national debt to the rule, however, restricted of a tried
and proved tyrant. The Long Parliament acted on the same
principle and is entitled to the same praise. They could
not trust the king. He had, no doubt passed salutary laws,
(24:22):
but what assurance was there that he would not break them.
He had renounced oppressive prerogatives, but where was the security
that he would not resume them. The nation had to
deal with a man whom no tie could bind, a
man who made and broke promises with equal facility, a
man whose honor had been a hundred times pawned and
(24:44):
never redeemed. Here, indeed, the Long Parliament stands on still
stronger ground than the Convention of sixteen eighty eight. No
action of James can be compared to the conduct of
charals with respect to the petition of right lords and
commons present him with a bill in which the constitutional
limits of his power are marked out, He hesitates, he evades.
(25:09):
At last he bargains to give his assent for five subsidies.
The bill receives his solemn assent. The subsidies are voted,
But no sooner as the tyrant relieved when he returns
at once to all the arbitrary measures which he had
bound himself to abandon, and violates all the clauses of
the very act which he has been paid to pass.
(25:33):
For more than ten years, the people had seen the
rights which were theirs by double claim, by immemorial inheritance,
and by recent purchase, infringed by the perfidious king, who
had recognized them at length. Circumstances compelled Charles to summon
another parliament. Another chance was given to our fathers. Were
(25:54):
they to throw it away as they had thrown away
the former? Were they again to be caused by Lerois Leuvaux.
Were they again to advance their money on pledges which
had been forfeited over and over again. Were they to
lay a second petition of right at the foot of
the throne, to grant another lavish aid in exchange for
(26:15):
another unmeaning ceremony, and then to take their departure till
after ten years more of fraud and oppression, their prince
should again require a supply and again repay it with
a perjury. They were compelled to choose whether they would
trust a tyrant or conquer him. We think that they
(26:37):
chose wisely and nobly. The advocates of Charles, like the
advocates of other malefactors against womb overwhelming evidences produced, generally
decline all controversy about the facts and content themselves with
calling testimony to character. He had so many private virtues,
and had James. The second no private virtues was Oliver Cromwell,
(27:02):
his bitterest enemies themselves being judges destitute of private virtues.
And what, after all are the virtues ascribed to Charles?
A religious zeal not more sincere than that of his son,
and fully as weak and narrow minded, and a few
of the ordinary household decencies which half the tombstones in
(27:22):
England claim for those who lie beneath them, A good father,
a good husband, ample apologies. Indeed, for fifteen years of persecution, tyranny,
and falsehood, we charge him with having broken his coronation oath,
and we are told that he kept his marriage vow.
We accuse him of having given up his people to
(27:44):
the merciless inflictions of the most hot headed and hard
hearted of prelates, and the defenses that he took his
little son on his knees and kissed him. We censure
him for having violated the articles of the petition of right,
after having, for good and valuable consideration promise to observe them.
(28:04):
And we are informed that he was accustomed to hear
prayers at six o'clock in the morning. It is to
such considerations as these, together with his van Dyke dress,
his handsome face, and his peaked beard, that he owes
we verily believe most of his popularity with the present generation.
(28:26):
For ourselves, we own that we do not understand the
common phrase a good man but a bad king. We
can as easily conceive a good man and an unnatural father,
or a good man and a treacherous friend. We cannot,
in estimating the character of an individual, leave out of
our consideration his conduct in the most important of all
(28:50):
human relations. And if in that relation we find him
to have been selfish, cruel, and deceitful, we shall take
the liberty to call him a bad man. In spite
of all his temperance at table, and all his regularity
at chapel, And of Section three
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