MILTON'S PROSE WRITINGS.* ALL lovers of English literature will be

grateful to Mr. Myers for the delightful little volume of selections from Milton which he has prepared for the "Parchment Series." His introduction is a most able and charmingly-written essay, dealing for the most part with Milton's ideal of human society, and expressing with great sympathy and accuracy the true standpoint of the highest Puritan spirit. It would be difficult to find anywhere the pride of the Puritan saints—that temper which was aristocratic, without being insolent—dealt with in a more appreciative way than it is by Mr. Myers. Not to understand this temper is Mr. Mathew Arnold's difficulty, and makes what he writes of the Puritans so much beside the mark. Let Mr. Myers's Introduction, and especially the following passage, be studied by all those who find the apparent inconsistencies of the Cromwells, the Hutchin- sons, and the Mittens stumbling-blocks in the way of a complete sympathy with the Puritan movement :—

"Perhaps no man has done more than Milton to express the spirit which informs the peculiarly English word gentleman with its in- definable standard of conduct and manners, of maXota7al3ta, and its half-jealous maintenance, half-generous contempt of caste, allowing no stamp of birth or circumstances to guarantee the base metal, yet cautions in overlooking the absence of such stamp upon the true. It is from this position that Milton can despise the imposing pomps of monarchy and prelacy, not only as Knox or Luther might, by opposing greater and deeper things in another kind, but by competent estimate of them in their own mind with regard to their own aims. It is the consciousness of seeing more widely as well as of aiming higher than those about him concerned with the questions of the hour, that gives him his peculiar note of lofty pride, which becomes loftier the more arrogant the pretensions it confronts, as it were Zephon opposing Lucifer. So high, and in some cases so isolated, a pride might, perhaps, have been expected to repel us; yet, instead of that, our sympathy is attracted, and we allow with enthusiasm his amplest claims. This is partly because, with all his independence and pre-eminence of intellect, he is not anxious to claim originality. As the Long Parliament had appealed to historic precedents, so Milton 'Did but prompt the age to quit their clogs By the known rules of ancient liberty.'" This, in Milton's own language, is that "certain niceness of nature," that "honest haughtiness and self-esteem either of what I was or what I might be," which kept him "above those low descents of mind beneath which he might deject and plunge himself, that can agree to saleable and unlawful prosti- tutions."

It is this spirit which made Cromwell half apologise that the officers in his regiment were not men of birth, half glory in the fact that they were something higher in being "godly men." This is the spirit in which Mrs. Hutchinson speaks of the low- born levellers and saints, though she does not scruple to taunt the ungodly with a base origin.

There is no doubt that if we take Milton's prose as a whole it cannot be called good. It did nothing for the development of English style. Full as are his writings of magnificent outbursts of eloquent rhetoric, the instrument he uses is very imperfect and very carelessly handled. It is just the antithesis of his poetic manner. There, one of his greatest glories as a poet is the magnificent equality of style,—an equality not of a medium, bat of a superlative excellence. In prose he is always in danger of falling to the level of the contemporary tract; and though he rises, it is only at intervals. In truth, the pedestrian passages in his prose writings have no style at all. They might, except for the sense and learning, have as well been written by any hack pamphleteer. No human being could read twenty tires of Milton's most ordinary verse—though such a phrase is a mis- nomer—and not recognise, before he recognised any other beauty, that he was reading the works of one of the great masters of expression and style. There are pages of Milton's prose works which those most susceptible to the charm of style may read without an emotion. Of course they will not turn very many pages in this mood. Before long they must come to one of those magnificent outbursts in which the rushing splendour of words bears down all criticism. But to

* Selected Prose Writings of John Milton. With an Introductory Ersay by Ernest Myers. London : Kegau Pant, Trench, and Co. 1883.

have written such passages is not to be a great prose-writer. A great prose-writer must be judged by the ordinary level of his writing. Dryden was a great prose-writer, though he never wrote any passage of really magnificent sound or transcendent appropriateness of expression. Milton's ordinary level of writing was too often in the following strain, which is quoted from the History of England. This work is said to have been forty years in writing, and therefore may more fairly be taken than the hurried compositions which he threw forth in the moment of an instant political need :—

"Nevertheless, there be in others, beside the first supposed author, men not unread, nor unlearned in antiquity, who admit that for approved story, which the former explode for fiction ; and seeing that °Mimes relations heretofore accounted fabulous have been after found to contain in them many footsteps and relics of something true, as what we read in poets of the flood, and giants little believed, till undoubted witnesses taught us that all was not feigned ; I have therefore determined to bestow the telling over even of these reputed tales, be it for nothing else but in favour of our English poets and rhetoricians, who by their art will know how to use them judiciously."

This enormous sentence, which, to use Mr. Mark Pattison's phrase, does not stop with the sense, but only because the writer is out of breath, is by no means an extreme example.

Compare for a moment Dryden's fluent idiom in a few sen- tences from his "Dedication of the ./Eneid :"— " If sounding words are not of our growth and manufacture, who shall hinder me to import them from a foreign country ? I carry not out the treasures of the nation which is never to return ; but what I bring from Italy, I spend in England ; here it remains, and hero it circulates ; for, if the coin be good, it will pass from one hand to another. I trade both with the living and the dead, for the en- richment of our native language. We have enough in England to supply our necessity ; but if we will have things of magnificence and splendour, we must get them by commerce. Poetry requires orna- ment; and that is not to be had from our old Teuton monosyllables. Therefore, if I find any elegant word in a classic author, I propose it to be naturalised, by using it myself ; and if the public approve of it, the bill passes."

Bat if we insist on the fact that Milton was not a great prose- writer because he did not create for himself a great prose manner which he could use indifferently for common subjects, it is not to disparage Milton, but only to show that the develop- ment of English style runs from Bacon and Hooker through Dryden, and leaves Milton a side-eddy in the stream. This granted, we are willing to admit that Milton's writings contain passages which for splendour of sound, for grandeur of thought, and for appropriateness of expression, have no equals in the English language. Even the peroration of Mr. Bright's speech on the Crimean War, magnificent as is the flow of its period, will not stand in comparison with the passage in "Areopagitica," which contains the metaphors of the strong man rousing himself after Bleep, and of the eagle mewing her mighty youth. The "Areopagitica," indeed, abounds with such passages. How spirit-stirring is the invocation—for the " Areopagitica" is really an oration—which begins,—" Lords and Commons of England, consider what nation it is whereof ye are, and whereof ye are the governors "—an kivocation which continues with the praises of our country conceived in the highest vein of patriotism and of oratory. Proud is the Puritan spirit which, after reciting the praises of that learning which "has been so ancient and so emi- nent among us," goes on,—" Yet that which is above all this, the favour and the love of Heaven, we have great argument to think in a peculiar manner propitious and propending toward us." Then follows the famous regret that, but for the " obstinate perverse- ness" of our prelates in suppressing Wicklif, "the glory of reforming our neighbours had been completely ours ;" and the boast that God is now again revealing himself to his servants, "and, as his manner is, first to his Englishmen." The address to London—perhaps the one instance in which the great city has inspired a feeling in a poet akin to that which Athens, Rome, and Florence inspired—is conspicuous even in the eloquent passages of the " Areopagitica " for its lofty vehe- mence :—

"Behold now this vast city, a city of refuge, the mansion-house of Liberty, encompassed and surrounded with his protection, the shop of war bath not there more anvils and hammers working, to fashion out the plates and instruments of armed justice in defence of beleaguered truth, than there be pens and heads there, sitting by their studious lamps, musing, searching, revolving new notions and ideas wherewith to present, as with their homage and their fealty, the approaching Reformation ; others as fast reading, trying all things, assenting to the force of reason and convincement."

Milton's irony is not generally conspicuous, for his temper was too thoroughly English. In one place, however, in this tract he indulges it. He tells the Parliament that if they license

printing they must also license music. "It will ask more than the works of twenty licencers to examine all the lutes, the violins, and the guitars in every house ; they must not be suffered to prattle as they do, but must be licensed what they may say." "Who," he goes on, "shall silence all the airs and madrigals that whisper softness in chambers ?" Perhaps one of the most remarkable characteristics of Milton's prose when compared with that of his contemporaries, is the number of short, telling phrases which are only not epigrams because they have no after-thought. For instance, the celebrated definition, "Poetry which is simple, sensuous, and passionate ;" the declara- tion that the poet "ought himself to be a true poem," or the dicta,—" Opinion is but knowledge in the making," "As good almost kill a man as a good book ;" or "The State shall be my governors, but not my critics." But Milton's fine passages are not composed solely of happy phrases or outbursts of glowing rhetoric. Every now and then, the crabbed and parenthetical stream of some pedantic diatribe will be lit up by a passage of such exquisite grace, that our delight for the moment overweighs all the regret that the magic at his com- mand was not used less sparingly. Milton, in his apology against a pamphlet called "A Modest Confutation," has given us his Biographia Literaria, and told us how he learned to prefer "the two famous renowners " of Beatrice and Laura :—

"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 lendable things, ought himself to be a true poem, that is, a composi- tion and pattern of the best and houourablest things, not presuming to sing high praises of heroic men or famous cities, unless he have in himself the experience and the practice of all that which is praise- worthy 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 which recount in solemn cantos the deeds of knighthood founded by our victorious kings, and from hence had in re- noun over all Chrisendom. There I read it in the oath of every knight, that ha should defend to the expense of his best blood, or of his life, if it so befell him, the honour and chastity of virgin or matron. From whence even then I learnt what a noble virtue chastity ever 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 afterwards any of them by word or deed breaking that oath, I judged it the same fault of the poet as that which is attribated to Homer to have written nndecent things of the Gods. Only this my mind gave me, that every free and gentle spirit without that oath ought to be borne a knight, nor needed to expect the gilt spur, or the laying of a sword upon his shoulder, 0 stir him up, both by his counsel and his arm, to serve and protect the weakness of any attempted chastity. So that even those books which to many others have been the food of wantonness and loose living, I cannot think how, unless by divine indulgence, proved to me so many incitements to the love and steadfast observation of virtue."

To read these flowing and graceful sentences is to call up the true Miltonic ideal of that to which a poet should attain. With him the poet is never to fall to be the author. Before all things he must be the good citizen, not presuming to praise high deeds, unless he is himself a sharer in their accomplishment.

His life must be of the real world and a true poem ; and though singing and the lore that strives to make life harmonious is his duty, yet he must not flinch, if the love of his country and of what is right and dear to him in the fabric of society prompt him, to take his share in the strife of the world. This was Milton's ideal. This he fearlessly put before him and followed.

Milton was a man first—a man of noble courage and of high

resolve—who, though he WRS born with the divinest gift of verse, yet saw clearly that not by sinking the man for the singer, but

by claiming and using all his duties as a man, would he make his life that true poem which is the poet's. And this is why Milton's fame as a man and fame as a poet can never be separated, but unite to give him that incomparable renown which he was too truthful ever to doubt his due.