In the year 1674—he being then sixty-five years old—on a Sunday, late at night, he died; and with so little pain that those who were with him did not know when the end came. He was buried—not in the great cemetery of Bunhill Fields, close by his house—but beside his father, in the old parish church of St. Giles, Cripplegate, where he had been used to go as a boy, and where he had been used to hear the old burial Office for the Dead—now intoned over his grave—“Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.” There was no need for the monument erected to him there in recent years. His poems make a monument that is read of all the world, and will be read in all times of the world.
CHAPTER V.
As we launched upon the days of Charles I., in our last talk, we had somewhat to say of the King’s advisers, lay and ecclesiastic; we came to quick sense of the war-clouds, fast gathering, through which Jeremy Taylor shot his flashes of pious eloquence; we heard a strain of Suckling’s verse, to which might have been added other, and may be better, from such Royalist singers as Carew or Lovelace;[69] but we cannot swoop all the birds into our net. We had glimpse of the crop-eared Prynne of the Histriomastix; and from Cowley, that sincere friend of both King and Queen in the days of their misfortunes, we plucked some “Poetical Blossoms;” also a charming “Rose,” from the orderly parterres of that great gardener, and pompous, time-serving man, Edmund Waller.
Then came Milton with the fairy melodies, always sweet, of “Comus”—the cantankerous pamphleteering—the soured home-life—the bloody thrusts at the image of the King, and the grander flight of his diviner music into the courts of Paradise.
Charles II. and his Friends.
Some fourteen years or so before the death of Milton, the restoration of Charles II. had come about. He had drifted back upon the traces of the stout Oliver Cromwell, and of the feebler Richard Cromwell, on a great tide of British enthusiasm. Independents, Presbyterians, Church of England men, and Papists were all by the ears; and it did seem to many among the shrewdest of even the Puritan workers that some balance-wheel (of whatever metal), though weighted with royal traditions and hereditary privileges, might keep the governmental machinery to the steady working of old days.
So the Second Charles had come back, with a great throwing up of caps all through the London streets; Presbyterians giving him welcome because he was sure to snub the Independents; the Independents giving him welcome because he was sure to snub the Presbyterians; the Church of England men giving him welcome because he was sure to snub both (as he did); and finally, the Papists giving him high welcome because all other ways their hopes were lean and few.
You know, or should know, what manner of man he was: accomplished—in his way; an expert swordsman; an easy talker—capable of setting a tableful of gentlemen in a roar; telling stories inimitably, and a great many of them; full of grimaces that would have made his fortune on the stage; saying sweetest things, and meaning the worst things; a daredevil who feared neither God nor man; generous, too—most of all in his cups; and liberal—with other people’s money; hating business with all his soul; loving pleasure with all his heart; ready always to do kindness that cost him nothing; laughing at all Puritans and purity; yet winning the maudlin affection of a great many people, and the respect of none.