Great Men as Prophets of a New Era

by Newell Dwight Hillis

"When I consider how my light is spent
Ere half my days, in this dark world and wide,
And that one talent, which is death to hide,
Lodged with me useless, though my soul more bent
To serve therewith my Maker, and present
My true account, lest he, returning, chide;
'Dost God exact day-labour, light denied?'
I fondly ask: But Patience, to prevent
That murmur, soon replies—'God doth not heed
Either man's work, or his own gifts; who best
Bear his mild yoke, they serve him best; his state
Is kingly; thousands at his bidding speed
And post o'er land and ocean without rest;
They also serve, who only stand and wait.'"

And hard upon this catastrophe came a new turn in the wheel of fortune. Cromwell died; the Commonwealth came to an end; all London threw its cap in the air at the Restoration. The leaders of the Commonwealth had to flee for their lives. Some fled to America for safety and some were caught and executed. Cromwell's body was taken from its grave in Westminster Abbey, suspended from the gallows, and left to dangle there. Past Milton's house, near Red Lion Square, the howling mob went by, dragging the body of his old leader. Milton himself, blind and in hiding, narrowly escaped execution. His head was forfeit, his pamphlets burned by public order. Only chance, and the exertion of influential friends, saved him from discovery and death. His escape from the scaffold is a mystery now, as it was a mystery at the time.

In the evil days that followed—the days of the Restoration, with its revenges and reactions, its return to high Episcopacy and suppression of every form of dissent and sectarianism, its new and shameless royal court—Milton, blind and forgotten by the public, turned to his long-cherished dream of a great poem. For twenty years, through all the storm and stress of political agitation, it had never been banished wholly from his thoughts. In the library of Cambridge University there may be seen to-day a list of over one hundred possible subjects, written in his own hand during some leisure-hour when he was pondering the great project of his heart. Living in retirement, visited only by a few close friends, he now proceeded to compose the masterpiece planned as a young man. Unable to see a book, forced to beg every friend who visited him to read aloud to him, dependent upon the assistance of three rebellious daughters, none of whom understood the many languages he knew so well, he nevertheless drove forward, determined to finish his task. Paradise Lost, begun and brought to completion in the face of every sort of discouragement, was finished in 1665 and published in 1667.

This amazing poem—the glory of English literature—is one of the few monumental works of the world. The English language possesses no other epic poem, nor a poem of any other kind, which approaches it in sustained sublimity. Nothing in modern epic literature is comparable to it save only the Divine Comedy of Dante. It is impossible, in a single page or chapter, to call the roll of the beauties of Milton's poetic style. Much has been written of the organ-music of his verse, its magical, mysterious influence. Speaking generally, the terms mean little; but applied to Milton, both have significance. For his melody, his verse-structure, the very names he employs act like an incantation, with an almost occult power.

James Russell Lowell emphasizes this quality: "It is wonderful how, from the most withered and juiceless hint gathered in his reading, his grand images rise like an exhalation; how from the most battered old lamp, caught in that huge drag-net with which he swept the waters of learning, he could conjure up a tall genii to build his palaces." His words, says Macaulay, in another brilliant summary, "are words of enchantment. No sooner are they pronounced, than the past is present and the distant near. New forms of beauty start at once into existence, and all the burial places of the memory give up their dead. Change the structure of the sentence; substitute one synonym for another, and the whole effect is destroyed. There is large learning in the poem—weighty and recondite; but this spoils no music; great cumbrous names catch sonorous vibrations under his modulating touch, and colossal shields and spheres clash together like symbols. The whole burden of his knowledges—Pagan, Christian, or Hebraic, lift up and sink away upon the undulations of his sublime verse, as heavy-laden ships rise and fall upon some great ground swell making in from outer seas."

Fully to comprehend the peculiar sublimity of Paradise Lost, one must understand the peculiar character of the age in which Milton was living. It was a theological era, as the next century was a political era. In their reaction from the absolutism of Rome, the Puritans hated everything that reminded them of the Roman excesses, and that revulsion extended not only to the ecclesiastical autocracy of Rome, but to the lesser things, the clouds of incense, stained glass and the rich dresses of the clergy, the ecclesiastical holidays. These Puritans are called by Macaulay the most remarkable body of men that the world has ever produced. They had a contempt for all terrestrial distinctions. Confident of the favour of God, they despised the dignities of this world. "Unacquainted with the works of philosophers and poets they were deeply read in the oracles of God. If their names were not found in the registers of heralds, they were recorded in the Book of Life. If their steps were not accompanied by a splendid train of menials, legions of ministering angels had charge over them. Their palaces were houses not made with hands; their diadems crowns of glory which shall never fade away. On the rich and the eloquent, on nobles and priests they looked down with contempt; for they esteemed themselves rich in a more precious treasure, and eloquent in a more sublime language, nobles by right of an earlier creation and priests by the imposition of a mightier hand. Thus the Puritan was made up of two different men—the one all self-abasement, penitence, gratitude, passion; the other proud, calm, inflexible, sagacious. He prostrated himself in the dust before his Maker; but he set his foot on the neck of his King."

It is only to be expected that the literature of such an age—both prose and poetry—should be to a large degree theological. Milton's Paradise Lost is an epic of war between good and evil. Not that, strictly speaking, Milton belonged to the class just described. He was not a Puritan, any more than he was a Freethinker, or a Royalist. In his character the noblest qualities of all three groups were combined. "From the Parliament and from the Court, from the conventicle and from the Gothic cloister, from the gloomy circles of the Roundheads and the Christmas revels of the Cavalier, his nature selected and drew to itself whatever was great and good." But the peculiar religious note that is in his great epic, the serious note, the note of dignity, is the distillation of an atmosphere charged and aquiver with the most intense theological convictions.

Numerous accounts have come down to us of Milton's personal appearance and habits toward the end of his life. By nature a patrician, reserved, clothed with a gentle dignity, he was not without a certain haughty, defiant self-assertion such as Lowell ascribes to Dante and Michael Angelo. He came to be a familiar figure in the neighbourhood of his residence, "a slender figure, of middle stature or a little less, generally dressed in a grey cloak or overcoat, and wearing sometimes a small silver-hilted sword, evidently in feeble health, but still looking younger than he was, with his lightish hair, and his fair, rather than aged or pale, complexion."

He was a very early riser, and regular in the distribution of his day, "spending the first part, to his midday dinner, always in his own room, amid his books, with an amanuensis to read for him and write to his dictation. Usually there was singing in the late afternoon, when there was a voice to sing for him; and instrumental music, when his, or a friendly hand touched the old organ." He loved the out-of-door life, walked much in the fields, loved his garden and his flowers, made his library to be the world of the open air.

From time to time learned and noble visitors, native and foreign, made their way to his modest home. They read in the lines of his noble countenance the proud and mournful history of his glory and his affliction. They listened to his slightest words, they kneeled to kiss his hand and weep upon it, for the neglect of an age that was unworthy of his talents and his virtues. They contested with his daughters the privilege of reading Homer to him, or of taking down the immortal accents which flowed from his lips. But, for the most part, his last days were days of retirement. The grand loneliness of his latter years makes him the most impressive figure in our literary history. Yet it is idle to talk of the loneliness of one, the habitual companions of whose mind were the Past and Future. "I always seem to see him, leaning in his blindness, one hand on the shoulder of each, sure that the Future will guard the song which the Past had inspired."