Owing to Morton’s being “old and crazy,” wrote Winthrop, “we thought not fit to inflict corporal punishment on him but thought better to fine him.” What a smug air of self-approval there is in this phrase! It has not been hidden from impartial history, however, the other side of the story. Winthrop and Endecott actually kept the broken old man in prison a year, and caused him to pass through the bitterness of a New England winter without a fire, without bedding, and with fetters on his limbs.
Regaining his liberty only after a piteous plea, he made his way to the little royalist colony at Agamenticus in Maine. Let us hope there were some good souls about to welcome and understand the poet of Merry-Mount.
Two years at Agamenticus, the hill seen afar over the sea as a high blue dome; two years among friendly folk, and then Morton of Merry-Mount wanders from earth to the Elysian fields where Good Queen Bess still reigns, and Shakespeare and Ben Jonson dwell, and no man strives to shape into some petty human scheme the mighty purposes of the Lords of Life.
In Cyrano de Bergerac, De Guiche and Cyrano discuss Don Quixote’s famous battle with the wind mills. “Beware of such a battle,” says De Guiche; “you will be hurled into the mire.” And Cyrano replies—“Or upwards to the stars.”