Milton.
While the drama in high places was playing before the world, a more enduring side scene was enacting in a quiet English home. John Milton, in political disgrace, in sorrow of soul, and in total blindness was dictating to his daughters the lines of “Paradise Lost.” Cromwell and his Roundheads, the Merry Monarch and his dissolute court, James II. and his sorrows, passed away; the visions seen by the blind old bard remain.
As literary immortality is the highest prize that fate holds for mortals it is fitting that the cost of attainment should be proportionately high. And in this adjustment fate is inexorable. Heart’s blood and tears wrought into a book give it enduring qualities: much, much; little, little; some, some; none, none. The dictum of Horace in the olden day, Si vis me flere, etc., is still the exponent of an author’s power.
That poem by Mrs. Browning, “A Musical Instrument,” has fixed in rainbow evanescence—a Thoughts’ Niagara Bridal Veil—ten thousand blending, blinding truths and beauties that prose could never hold or catch.
Is the prize worth the price? In itself, No; but in the soul-growth that its mastery implies and in the soul-wealth that it makes one’s own forever and ever, Yes. Then, too, they to whom Fame shines as an ever luring star, urging on, on, incessantly even through blood and tears, are so formed by their fate that the prize seems to them worth while; its winning seems life’s only good, its loss, life’s supreme sorrow. “The attractions are proportional to the destinies.”
So who shall judge his unknown neighbor? Who shall justly say, Thou fool to the man who must needs follow his fate? Who shall justly pity him whose poverty, disgrace, bitterness of heart, and blindness of soul and body—lead to the star-luring heights of literary immortality?
Milton was Latin secretary under Oliver Cromwell and a man of great influence at the court. He shared in the amnesty proclaimed by Charles II. at the Restoration. Milton’s remaining years were spent in retirement and literary labors.
The return of the Stuarts shattered all his hopes, religious and political. He seemed to see in the Stuart restoration the first gathering gloom of a darkness which should overwhelm himself, England, and all the earth. Subjectively this was true. Milton never saw beyond that gathering cloud; and when the culminant blackness of his own blindness closed in upon him, then, too, into a common gloom sank Milton, England and all the earth.
“And darkness shows us worlds by night
We never see by day.”
Would Paradise Lost have been born into literature if Milton had not become blind?
Would we of today find congenial that Milton of the old Puritanical day? Do we admire the Miltonic God? Milton liked best his Lucifer, and that liking elusively throbs through Paradise Lost and elicits response.