BOOKS.

PROFESSOR MASSON'S "MILTON."*

TfITS is the third instalment of what, if completed, will be an important and, in all that relates to the specific facts of Milton's life, a standard work. Professor Masson is a careful, indefatigable, intelligent biographer, and we should consider it in the highest degree improbable that, after he had put his last touch to any period in Milton's life, his statements would be found to require revision. This remark must, however, be restricted to the personal history of Milton. It is inconceivable that Dr. Masson should speak with unerring accuracy of each of the thousand-and-one questions over which he ranges, and this reflection suggests a doubt whether there is not something gravely defective in his plan. Milton was one of the conspicuous and 'characteristic figures of his time, but he cannot be correctly spoken dal, the centre of He political and ecclesiastical, as Well as literary history. If he was not thus central, there can be no organic unity in a delineation of the various political and religious movements of the period "in connection -with" his biography ; and in point of fact, there is no unity in these volumes. There is doubtless a sense in which all things upon earth hang together ; and literature, ',especially imaginative literature, is conditioned by the practical activity of the age in which it blooms : but it would nevertheless be absurd to include, say, a narrative of the Peninsular war in a life of Byron, although it suggested some of his most splendidly vigorous descriptions, or to give an account of the Hundred Days in a life of Scott, although Sir Walter wrote a poem on the battle of Waterloo. There is no practical connection between the Life of Milton and the exact number of books entered at Stationers Hall in a particular year after he was born and before he died, -nor can we affirm that his poems acquire new significance for us, from our having read small-print biographies by Professor Masson of the leading members of the Long Parliament. Nay, conscience will insist upon patting the question, did we read them ? De Quincey suggests that medical statistics are inextric- ably complicated by the circumstance that, in accounting for wonderful cures, you can never know whether the hygienic miracle was brought about by drinking the physic, or by disposing of it is quite a different way when the doctor's back was turned. Professor Masson is himself so painstaking, that he forgets how limited is the patience of readers, and how very few read for * The Life of John Hilton. Narrated in connection with the Political. Ecclesiastical, .ond Literary History of his Time. By David Masson, MIL, LLD Vol. MI. London: Macmillan and Co. 1873.

anything but amusement. He is in some respects a literary disciple and scholar of Carlyle, but he imitates the master in his later rather than his earlier style, the style in which he wrote Frederick rather than the style in which he wrote the Freneh Revolution. Mr. Carlyle's later style has some advantages. It is based on the tacit assumption that the reader will be curious to know about every person, place, and thing mentioned in connec- tion with the subject of the biography. This is partly the fact, and when Mr. Carlyle, the most inventive and piquant prose stylist of the century, executes these subordinate sketches and narratives, they have a raciness which reduces the labour of reading them to a minimum ; but even with Mr. Carlyle for travelling companion, no one probably has ever begun at the beginning of the volumes on Frederick, and gone on without stop- ping to the end. Professor Masson is a good writer, but he is no Carlyle, and it is unfortunate that he has imitated Carlyle in the exhaustiveness of his later, rather than in the selectiveness and com- pression of his earlier manner. A reader ought to take much from an author on trust, and authors ought to know how to throw well into the background all such matters as have not a close and vital connection with their subject. If the writer errs flagrantly in this essential part of his business, the reader will revenge himself by skipping a large proportion of what has been laboriously collected. We have no doubt that many of Professor Maason's carefully pre- pared episodical passages will be left unread by persons who have a sufficient interest in Milton to take up with eagerness a new life of him by an author of reputation.

In one word, this work is not in tree literary perspective. The author did not rightly determine, before commencing, what should be his main object, and in how far secondary objects might be combined with his central purpose. As a history of the Puritan period, the book is over-loaded with facts about Milton ; as a life of Milton, it is encumbered with historical discussions. Professor Masson has as strong an enthusiasm for Cromwell as for Milton, and the volume before us might be described as part of a life of Cromwell written in connection with the history of his time. We doubt whether he laid down for himself any principle of discrimination between leading subject and subordinate subject in the conception of the work. If he has proceeded upon a principle, we cannot guess what it was. A simple and rational one would have been that of stating every- thing which readers might legitimately expect, or intelligently require, in elucidation of the character, fortune, opinions, or pro- ductions of Milton. But is it necessary that a reader, in order to gain a perfect apprehension of the fact that Milton's views on divorce appeared to the Presbyterians to be scandalous, should master the history of the Westminster Assembly? And is it neces- sary, because Milton took on many important questions the same view with Cromwell, and was for some time Cromwell's Latin Sec- retary, that we should be asked to listen to an account of the bickerings between Lieutenant-General Cromwell and Major- General Crawford? Milton alludes, in a famous sonnet, to Colkitto, Commander of the Irish in Montrose's army, but do we really understand even this sonnet better from reading an account of Montrose's campaign, which account occupies many pages, and specifies, with more or less of detail, all the engagements ?

"When I first undertook this work," says Dr. Masson, "it was my deliberate purpose to make it not only a complete biography of Milton, but also, in a certain studied connection therewith, the channel of which might widen or narrow itself on occasion, a con- tinuous Political, Ecclesiastical, and Literary History of England through Milton's whole time." What we object to is the inde- finable and, as it seems to us, indefensible nature of the " connec- tion " which the words we have put in italics announce, but do not explain. "While it is the right of the public," observes Professor Masson (for, ia preface to vol. ii., he anticipates these objections), "to say what they want in the shape of a book, it is equally the right of an author to say what he means to offer, and accordingly, I repeat that this work is not a Biography only, but a Biography together with a History." An author has a right to offer what he pleases, but it is part of the critic's duty to tell him whether his offer will be accepted with thankfulness, and to point out wherein his plan is wrong or his execution defective. Even if it is admitted that the author's success has been as great as under the conditions which he has imposed upon himself could be reasonably looked for, it may be incumbent on the critic to warn others from following his

example. "It was not in human nature," Professor Masson says, " to confine the historical inquiries, once they were in progress, within the precise limits of their demonstrable bearing on the biography, even had it been possible to determine these limits before-hand ; and so the history assinned a co-ordinate importance with me, was pursued often for its own sake, and became, though always with a sense of organic relation to the biography, continuous in itself." We submit that it is not "in human nature" to produce, on Pro- fessor Masson's principles, a work to which serious and valid exception may not be taken. Whatever he was " sensible " of in composing this book, we expressly deny that there is an "organic relation" between the history and the biography. The history is valuable and the biography is valuable, but they are:apart. "I should wish it to be distinctly understood,"—we once more quote from Professor Masson,—" that the history is not offered as a mere popular complication, to serve as stuffing or setting for the bio- graphy, but as a work of independent search and method from first to last, which has cost more labour by fat than the biography, and for which I accept equal responsibility." It is entirely modest and graceful in Professor Masson to say this ; he does justice to himself, and not more than justice ; but he has given us two valuable works bound within the same boards, not one book, organic and complete.

We have dwelt upon this point, because we consider it of import- ance, and because its importance requires to be insisted on at present. Our literature is becoming encumbered with fragments. Some of them, like the histories of Macaulay and Froude, are noble frag- ments, but their incompleteness must be registered as a defect. The essential cause of the failure of such writers to finish what they begin is their inability to deny themselves the use of tempt- ing materials. Gibbon would not have completed his Decline and Fall, had he worked at it to this hour, if he had made as exhaustive a use of his materials as Mr. Fronde. He took off the cream of world-history during many interesting centuries, and presented it to us, after his own felicitous manipulation, in the form of butter in a lordly dish. We have already named Mr. Carlyle's French RevOlu- tion, condensed, with superb imaginative power and masterly dis- crimination between essential and non-essential, into three short volumes. His Letters and Speeches of Oliver Cromwell can be re- garded only as a biography of the Protector ; the book places Oliver before us as he moved on the stage of his time, and not an event or circumstance essential to our understanding him and his history is omitted,—but the first edition, which has undergone no important modification, was in two octavo volumes. When Mr. Carlyle interwove with the Life of Frederick a history of the Prussian monarchy and much of the general history of Europe, the intellectual and imaginative strength which had formerly attested itself in magnificent brevity was beginning to decay. The artistic method and the encyclopmdic method of literary composition are different and incompatible, and the penalty which overtakes the artist when he writes encyclopmdically is that his work becomes a book of reference, to be left on its library shelf, while the work of literary art is a household treasure. Genius, indeed, triumphs over all difficulties and pays compara- tively slight penalties; but this only makes the mistakes of genius more dangerous as examples; and if readers of Mr. Carlyle grumbled at being required to read a history of Germany in conjunction with a life of Frederick the Great, readers of Professor Masson will posi- tively refuse to wade through a history of England, Scotland, and Ireland in getting at the biography of Milton.

Our estimate of Professor Masson' ii volumes is, however, with these qualifications, very high. His powers of research are great, and his style is not only expressive and forcible, but not unfre- quently picturesque. This is our main opinion of the book, —emphatically favourable. But we have noted one or two slips in statement, and here and there a linguistic haziness, which is irritating in these days of passionate practicality and universal haste. Professor Masson's steadiness and circumspectness of judgment momentarily forsake him in dealing with the well-known anecdote of Cromwell and Ireton having intercepted a letter of Charles's to the Queen, in which the royal plan of flattering and ultimately destroying the army chiefs was revealed. "Who does not know," says Professor Masson, "the picturesque popular myth at this point of Cromwell's biography? Cromwell and Ireton, says the myth, sat one night in the Blue Boar Tavern, Holborn, disguised as common troopers, and calling for cans of beer, till the sentinel they had placed outside came in and told them the man with the saddle had arrived ; whereupon, going out, they collared the man, got possession of the saddle he carried, and ripping up the skirt of it, found the King's letter to the Queen, in which he quite agreed with her opinion of the two army villains he was then obliged to cajole, and assured her they should have their deserts at last." In a note, the following words are added :—" The story professes to have come from Cromwell's own lips in conversation, in 1649, with Roger Boyle, Lord Broghill, afterwards Earl of Orrery ; but its mythical character is obvious." This, we maintain, is far too off-

hand a mode of dealing with a tale which relates to one of the most interesting and critical junctures in the life of Cromwell. We shall not imitate Professor Masson's peremptory dogmatism, and say that the story is indubitably true, but we absolutely deny that it is "obviously " false. Nay, we have difficulty in con- ceiving any respect in which Dr. Masson can attach " obvious- ness " to its falsity. Cromwell had been engaged in delicate and perilous negotiations with Charles. He knew the man with whom he had to deal sufficiently well to make him exercise the utmost caution in trusting the King's professions. The means which the history of Cromwell before and after this period suggests as likely to be employed by him in order to get at the real mind of Charles are exactly such as are specified in the anecdote. Is it possible that some notion of historic dignity has led Dr. Masson to fancy that Cromwell could not employ spies or waylay messengers ? If so, be has formed a quite erroneous idea of Oliver. The earliest records we possess of him as a soldier exhibit him adroitly managing the department of secret iutelligence, a most im- portant department in war ; and the latest we possess of him as Protector demonstrate that, by the vast reticulation of his spy-system, he had exact information of all that people wanted specially to hide from him, whether in the circle of the exiled Princes, in the French Court, or in the dens of con- spiracy in London. If Lord Broghill's story was an invention, it was the work of one who thoroughly understood both Cromwell and Charles. As for the specific evidence of the "obvious myth," there is as much of it, and of as good quality, as is to be expected in any such case. To examine that evidence in detail is forbidden by the limits of our space, but it is sufficient for our purpose to refer to what Godwin says on the subject. Professor Masson cannot object to Godwin as a reference, for he not only speaks of Godwin with the respect he deserves, but actually quotes him in the notes as an authority, a proceeding which, seeing that Godwin is a modern, seems to us too flattering. Instead of putting aside the "obvious myth," Godwin incorporates into his history, verbatim, the account of the matter which Lord Broghill

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said to have received from Cromwell's lips, and does not suggest that the narrative is doubtful. In a note, after stating that "the letter, or something to the same purpose, is frequently alluded to- by contemporary writers," Godwin adds that the painter Jonathan Richardson the younger declared himself to have heard Bolingbroke say that Lord Oxford bad often told him "that he had seen and had in his hand" the original letter of Charles, in which he told the Queen that he designed a hempen cord, and not- e garter, for the villains. In one word, this story, in itself char- acteristic and probable, is supported by excellent independent evidence. To pronounce it " obviously " mythical is absurd.

In his brief incidental characterisation of remarkable men whom he does not describe at length, Professor Masson is generally care.; fal and trustworthy ; but we wonder that he should have dismissed Richard Baxter with the words, "the good, though narrow and hypochondriac Baxter." Tried by any fair standard, Baxter was one of the largest-minded men of his age. He had his weaknesses. He was interminably argumentative, he was egotistic, he had little practical sagacity. But in faithfulness to principle he was heroic, and in moral elevation he was saintly. His. was one of the first voices raised against slavery. In his opinions, and what is more, in his practice, he was tolerant and comprehensive beyond all but a select few of his contemporaries. He misunderstood Cromwell, but so did Vane and Hutchinson,. men who had better means of knowing Cromwell than he ; and of all the testimonies which Oliver's genius and nobleness wrung from opponents, none is more expressive than Baxter's.

It would be unjust to Professor Masson to deny that he intends., to be fair, and endeavours to enter sympathetically into the views of persons whose proceedings appear to him surprising or culpable ; but it is not in the case of Baxter alone that he deviatet into momentary hardness and dogmatism. In commenting, for example, on the Parliamentary Ordinance for the Suppression of Blasphemies and heresies, of May, 1648, he exclaims as follows :— " One wonders that the army did not wheel in mass round Westminster, haul the legislating idiots from their seats,. and then undertake in their own name both the war and the general business of the nation." Dr. Masson furnishes abundant details of the controversial tumult which at that period filled the atmosphere of England with "heresies" and "blasphemies." In the nineteenth century the wildest of these extravagances might be regarded with tolerant equanimity, but one who writes on the seventeenth century ought to know its temper better than b speak contemptuously even of its intolerance. The "legislating idiots," moreover, knew particularly well what they were about in

issuing, at that particular juncture, an edict in favour of what the great body of Puritans held to be sound doctrine. Presbyterian in- surrection was breaking out in many quarters in England, invasion was threatened from Scotland, and it was of the highest importance for the English Parliament to put into the mouths of their adherents an authoritative reply to the accusation of the Presbyterians that they were bringing in a chaos of blasphemy, infidelity, and heresy. We have no doubt that, at the date of the Ordinance, Cromwell and Vane assented to it. In the nineteenth century, and in ordinary circumstances, it would be a proof of legislative idiocy ; at the time when it was issued, it was nothing of the sort.

Mat we have referred to as a haziness of expression, occasion- ally—by no means often—characteristic of Professor Masson's =style, arises from his habit of extreme elaboration. The plain and easy way of saying a thing seems to be avoided by him as if by instinct. The Independent Church theory, admitting no 'visible unity of congregations in an ecclesiastical whole, no eccle- siastical jurisdiction whatever, except that of the congregation, is manifestly unfavourable to the notion of a National Church. Such a statement might have been left without expository defence. Pro- fessor Masson, however, enlarges upon it. "Every particular Church, being a voluntary concourse of like-minded atoms, able to declare themselves converts or true Christians, it follows that the world, or civil society, whether called heathen or pro- fessedly Christian, is only the otherwise regulated medium -or material in which these voluntary concourses or whirls take place. It follows that there must be large expanses or interspaces of the general material always unabsorbed into the voluntary concourses, and that for the secular power, which governs the general medium, to try to stimulate the con- courses, or to bring all into them, or to control any part of the procedure of each or any of them, would be a mingling of elements that are incompatible, of necessary worldly order with the spiritual kingdom of Christ." Does not all this about con- courses, and whirls, and expanses, and interspaces tend to -obscure rather than to elucidate a proposition which required am elucidation ?

But we are tired of pointing out blemishes. Our readers may think that we have searched for them with a microscope, and we -can only say in defence that the defects of the book—except- ing always He great and conspicuous defect of form—are, for the most part, microscopic, while its excellences are on quite a different -scale. In important respects this third volume strikes us as better than the two which preceded it. There is more action, animation, in one word, go, in it. Montrose's meteoric campaign is sketched with sauch vigour, although Professor Masson, like Mr. Carlyle, omits to point out the circumstance which rendered Montrose's success pos- aible, namely, the absence from Scotland, at the time, of the regular Scottish army. An interesting account is given of Milton's relations with his first wife and of his doctrine of divorce. Professor Masson's severence for Milton approaches the weakness of hero-worship, but *does not quite reach it, and he clearly perceives that a good deal is to be said for Mary Powell. He admits also that Milton, in his doctrine of divorce, left the husband "sole judge of his wife's fitness or unfit- sesa for him," his right of putting her away being "a matter finally for his private conscience." It is satisfactory that Milton's latest and most elaborate biographer should thus, as we understand him, explicitly concede the untenability of the great poet's opinions on tlivorce. We agree with Professor Masson in admiring the honesty with which Milton proclaimed his startling theories, and in believing -that, though the circumstances of his own marriage probably led laim to the subject, and coloured his thinking thereupon, he was actuated by no base or selfish motive, and was enthusiastically aura that the adoption of his principles would benefit society.

This volume concludes with the death of Charles I. in January, 1649, and we may quote, as one of its most interesting descrip- tive passages, the account of Charles's last night :—

" In the King's last hours he had offers of the spiritual services of Messrs. Calamy, Vines, Caryll, Dell, and other Presbyterian ministers; and hardly had these gone, when Mr. John Goodwin, of Coleman Street, came to St. James's, all by himself, with the like offer. They were all dismissed with thanks, the King intimating that he desired no other attendance than that of Bishop Juxon. Late iuto the night of the 29th, accordingly, the Bishop remained with the King in private. After he had gone, Charles spent about two hours more in reading and praying, and then lay down to sleep, Mr. Herbert lying on the pallet-bed close to his. For about four hours he slept soundly ; but very early in the morning, when it was still dark, be awoke, opened the curtain of his bed, and called Mr. Herbert. The call disturbed Herbert suddenly from a dreamy dose into which he bad fallen after a very restless night ; and when he got up and was assisting the King to dress by the light of the wax-cake that had been kept burning in the chamber as usual, :the King observed a peculiarly scared look on his face. Herbert, on being asked the cause, told his Majesty he had had an extra- ordinary dream., The King desiring to know what it was, Herbert

related it. In hia doze, he said, he had heard some one knock at the chamber-door. Thinking it might be Colonel Hacker, and not willing to disturb the King till he himself heard the knock, he had lain still. A second time, however, the knock came, and this time, he thought, his Majesty had heard the knock, and told him to open the door and see who it was. He did go to the door, and on opening it, was surprised to see a figure standing there in pontifical habits, whom he knew to be the late Lord Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr. Laud. He knew him well, having often seen him in his life. The figure said he had something to say to the King, and desired to enter. Then, as Herbert thought, the King having been told who it was, and having given per- mission, the Archbishop had entered, making a profound obeisence to the King in the middle of the room, a second on coming nearer, and at last falling on his knees as the King gave him his hand to kiss. Then the King raised him, and the two went to the window together, and dis- coursed there, Herbert keeping at a distance, and not knowing of what they talked, save that he noticed the King's face to be very pensive, and heard the Archbishop give a deep sigh. After a little they ceased to talk, and the Archbishop, again kissing the King's hand, retired slowly, with his face still to the King, making three reverences as before. The third reverence was so low that, as Herbert thought, the Archbishop had fallen prostrate on his face, and he had been in the act of stepping to help him up when he ha I been awakened by the King's call. The impression had been so lively, that he had still looked about the room as if all had been real. Herbert having thus told his dream, the King said it was remarkab'.e, the rather because, if Land had been alive, and they had been t Liking together as in the dream, it was very likely, albeit he loved the Arch- bishop well, he might have said something to him that would have occasioned his sigh. There was yet more conversation between the King and Herbert by themselves, the King selecting with some care the dress he was to wear, and especially requiring an extra under- garment, because of the sharpness of the weather, lost he should shake from cold, and people should attribute it to fear."

This cannot be called brilliant or imaginative description, but there is in it a combination of circumstantiality and vividness which brings the scene forcibly before the eye of the reader ; and our last word on this book is that, though the reader for mere entertainment may find Professor Masson's pages less pictorial and exciting than suits him, the student of the Puritan period and of the greatest of English revolutions will set a high value upon his labours.