All this is frankly farcical but has a certain historical basis. The Venner here mentioned was a Fifth Monarchist cooper whose followers held a rendezvous at Mile-End Green, and who issued a pamphlet entitled “A Standard Set Up,” adopting as his ensign the Lion of the Tribe of Judah, with the motto, “Who shall rouse him up?” The passage furthermore seems to allude to one John Davy, to whom in 1654 the spirit revealed that his true name was Theauro John; and who was arrested at the door of the Parliament House for knocking and laying about him with a drawn sword. “Poor Davy,” comments Carlyle, “his labors, life-adventures, financial arrangements, painful biography in general, are all unknown to us; till, on this ‘Saturday, 30th December, 1654,’ he very clearly knocks loud at the door of the Parliament House, as much as to say, ‘what is this you are upon?’ and ‘lays about him with a drawn sword.’ ”
The dialogue abounds in the biblical phrases and the peculiar cant of the later Puritanism, familiar in “Hudibras.” Brother Abednego is joined to Tabitha in the holy bond of sanctified matrimony at a zealous shoemaker’s habitation by that chosen vessel, Brother Zephaniah Fats, an opener of revelations to the worthy in Mary White-Chapel. But as soon as they are safely married, the newly converted Cutter throws off his Puritan disguise and dons a regular Cavalier costume, hat and feather, sword and belt, broad laced band and periwig, and proceeds to pervert his bride. He makes her drink healths in sack, and sing and dance home after the fiddlers, under the threat of taking coach and carrying her off to the opera. Tabitha, after a faint resistance, falls into his humor and proves an apt pupil in the ways of worldliness. For it is a convention of seventeenth century, as it is of twentieth century, comedy that all Puritans are hypocrites and that
Every woman is at heart a rake.
| [5] | An earlier version, entitled “The Guardian,” had been acted in 1641. |
| [6] | An Anabaptist preacher. See Carlyle’s “Cromwell’s Letters and Speeches,” iv. 3. |
MILTON’S TERCENTENARY
IT is right that this anniversary should be kept in all English-speaking lands. Milton is as far away from us in time as Dante was from him; destructive criticism has been busy with his great poem; formidable rivals of his fame have arisen—Dryden and Pope, Wordsworth and Byron, Tennyson and Browning, not to speak of lesser names—poets whom we read perhaps oftener and with more pleasure. Yet still his throne remains unshaken. By general—by well-nigh universal—consent, he is still the second poet of our race, the greatest, save one, of all who have used the English speech.
The high epics, the Iliad, the Divine Comedy, do not appear to us as they appeared to their contemporaries, nor as they appeared to the Middle Ages, or to the men of the Renaissance or of the eighteenth century. These peaks of song we see foreshortened or in changed perspective or from a different angle of observation. Their parallax varies from age to age, yet their stature does not dwindle; they tower forever, “like Teneriffe or Atlas unremoved.” “Paradise Lost” does not mean the same thing to us that it meant to Addison or Johnson or Macaulay, and much that those critics said of it now seems mistaken. Works of art, as of nature, have perishable elements, and suffer a loss from time’s transshifting. Homer’s gods are childish, Dante’s hell grotesque; and the mythology of the one and the scholasticism of the other are scarcely more obsolete to-day than Milton’s theology. Yet in the dryest parts of “Paradise Lost” we feel the touch of the master. Two things in particular, the rhythm and the style, go on victoriously as by their own momentum. God the Father may be a school divine and Adam a member of parliament, but the verse never flags, the diction never fails. The poem may grow heavy, but not languid, thin, or weak. I confess that there are traits of Milton which repel or irritate; that there are poets with whom sympathy is easier. And if I were speaking merely as an impressionist, I might prefer them to him. But this does not affect my estimate of his absolute greatness.
All poets, then, and lovers of poetry, all literary critics and students of language must honor in Milton the almost faultless artist, the supreme master of his craft. But there is a reason why, not alone the literary class, but all men of English stock should celebrate Milton’s tercentenary. There have been poets whose technique was exquisite, but whose character was contemptible. John Milton was not simply a great poet, but a great man, a heroic soul; and his type was characteristically English, both in its virtues and its shortcomings. Of Shakespeare, the man, we know next to nothing. But of Milton personally we know all that we need to know, more than is known of many a modern author. There is abundance of biography and autobiography. Milton had a noble self-esteem, and he was engaged for twenty years in hot controversies. Hence those passages of apologetics scattered through his prose works, from which the lives of their author have been largely compiled. Moreover he was a pamphleteer and journalist, as well as a poet, uttering himself freely on the questions of the day. We know his opinions on government, education, religion, marriage and divorce, the freedom of the press, and many other subjects. We know what he thought of eminent contemporaries, Charles I, Cromwell, Vane, Desborough, Overton, Fairfax. It was not then the fashion to write critical essays, literary reviews, and book notices. Yet, aside from his own practice, his writings are sown here and there with incidental judgments of books and authors, from which his literary principles may be gathered. He has spoken now and again of Shakespeare and Ben Jonson, of Spenser, Chaucer, Euripides, Homer, the book of Job, the psalms of David, the Song of Solomon, the poems of Tasso and Ariosto, the Arthur and Charlemagne romances: of Bacon and Selden, the dramatic unities, blank verse vs. rhyme, and similar topics.