Milton's care to set his house in order extended to his poetical writings. In 1673 the poems published in 1645, both English and Latin, appeared in a second edition, disclosing novas frondes in one or two of Milton's earliest unprinted poems, and such of the sonnets as political considerations did not exclude; and non sua poma in the Tractate of Education, curiously grafted on at the end. An even more important publication was the second edition of "Paradise Lost" (1674) with the original ten books for the first time divided into twelve as we now have them. Nor did this exhaust the list of Milton's literary undertakings. He was desirous of giving to the world his correspondence when Latin Secretary, and the "Treatise on Christian Doctrine" which had employed so much of his thoughts at various periods of his life. The Government, though allowing the publication of his familiar Latin correspondence (1674), would not tolerate the letters he had written as secretary to the Commonwealth, and the "Treatise on Christian Doctrine" was still less likely to propitiate the licenser. Holland was in that day the one secure asylum of free thought, and thither, in 1675, the year following Milton's death, the manuscripts were taken or sent by Daniel Skinner, a nephew of Cyriack's, to Daniel Elzevir, who agreed to publish them. Before publication could take place, however, a clandestine but correct edition of the State letters appeared in London, probably by the agency of Edward Phillips. Skinner, in his vexation, appealed to the authorities to suppress this edition: they took the hint, and suppressed his instead. Elzevir delivered up the manuscripts, which the Secretary of State pigeon-holed until their existence was forgotten. At last, in 1823, Mr. Robert Lemon, rummaging in the State Paper Office, came upon the identical parcel addressed by Elzevir to Daniel Skinner's father which contained his son's transcript of the State Letters and the "Treatise on Christian Doctrine." Times had changed, and the heretical work was edited and translated by George the Fourth's favourite chaplain, and published at his Majesty's expense.
The "Treatise on Christian Doctrine" is by far the most remarkable of all Milton's later prose publications, and would have exerted a great influence on opinion if it had appeared when the author designed. Milton's name would have been a tower of strength to the liberal eighteenth-century clergy inside and outside the Establishment. It should indeed have been sufficiently manifest that "Paradise Lost" could not have been written by a Trinitarian or a Calvinist; but theological partisanship is even slower than secular partisanship to see what it does not choose to see; and Milton's Arianism was not generally admitted until it was here avouched under his own hand. The general principle of the book is undoubting reliance on the authority of Scripture, with which such an acquaintance is manifested as could only have been gained by years of intense study. It is true that the doctrine of the inward light as the interpreter of Scripture is asserted with equal conviction; but practically this illumination seems seldom to have guided Milton to any sense but the most obvious. Hence, with the intrepid consistency that belongs to him, he is not only an Arian, but a tolerator of polygamy, finding that practice nowhere condemned in Scripture, but even recommended by respectable examples; an Anthropomorphist, who takes the ascription of human passion to the Deity in the sense certainly intended by those who made it; a believer in the materiality and natural mortality of the soul, and in the suspension of consciousness between death and the resurrection. Where less fettered by the literal Word he thinks boldly; unable to conceive creation out of nothing, he regards all existence as an emanation from the Deity, thus entitling himself to the designation of Pantheist. He reiterates his doctrine of divorce; and is as strong an Anti-Sabbatarian as Luther himself. On the Atonement and Original Sin, however, he is entirely Evangelical; and he commends public worship so long as it is not made a substitute for spiritual religion. Liturgies are evil, and tithes abominable. His exposition of social duty tempers Puritan strictness with Cavalier high-breeding, and the urbanity of a man of the world. Of his motives for publication and method of composition he says:—
"It is with a friendly and benignant feeling towards mankind that I give as wide a circulation as possible to what I esteem my best and richest possession.... And whereas the greater part of those who have written most largely on these subjects have been wont to fill whole pages with explanations of their own opinions, thrusting into the margin the texts in support of their doctrines, I have chosen, on the contrary, to fill my pages even to redundance with quotations from Scripture, so that as little space as possible might be left for my own words, even when they arise from the context of revelation itself."
There is consequently little scope for eloquence in a treatise consisting to so large an extent of quotations; but it is pervaded by a moral sublimity, more easily felt than expressed. Particular opinions will be diversely judged; but if anything could increase our reverence for Milton it would be that his last years should have been devoted to a labour so manifestly inspired by disinterested benevolence and hazardous love of truth.
His life's work was now finished, and finished with entire success as far as depended upon his own will and power. He had left nothing unwritten, nothing undone, nor was he ignorant what manner of monument he had raised for himself, It was only the condition of the State that afflicted him, and this, looking forward, he saw in more gloomy colours than it appears to us who look back. Had he attained his father's age his apprehensions would have been dispelled by the Revolution: but he had evidently for some time past been older in constitution than in years. In July, 1674, he was anticipating death; but about the middle of October, "he was very merry and seemed to be in good health of body." Early in November "the gout struck in," and he died on November 8th, late at night, "with so little pain that the time of his expiring was not perceived by those in the room." On November 12th, "all his learned and great friends in London, not without a concourse of the vulgar, accompanied his body to the church of St. Giles, near Cripplegate, where he was buried in the chancel." In 1864, the church was restored in honour of the great enemy of religious establishments. "The animosities die, but the humanities live for ever."
Milton's resources had been greatly impaired in his latter years by losses, and the expense of providing for his daughters. He nevertheless left, exclusive of household goods, about £900, which, by a nuncupative will made in July, 1674, he had wholly bequeathed to his wife. His daughters, he told his brother Christopher (now a Roman Catholic, and on the road to become one of James the Second's judges, but always on friendly terms with John), had been undutiful, and he thought that he had done enough for them. They naturally thought otherwise, and threatened litigation. The interrogatories administered on this occasion afford the best clue to the condition of Milton's affairs and household. At length the dispute was compromised, the nuncupative will, a kind of document always regarded with suspicion, was given up, and the widow received two-thirds of the estate instead of the whole, probably the fairest settlement that could have been arrived at. After residing some years in London she retired to Nantwich in her native county, where divers glimpses reveal her as leading the decent existence of a poor but comfortable gentlewoman as late as August or September, 1727. The inventory of her effects, amounting to £38 8s. 4d., is preserved, and includes: "Mr. Milton's pictures and coat of arms, valued at ten guineas;" and "two Books of Paradise," valued at ten shillings. Of the daughters, Anne married "a master-builder," and died in childbirth some time before 1678; Mary was dead when Phillips wrote in 1694; and Deborah survived until August 24, 1727, dying within a few days of her stepmother. She had married Abraham Clarke, a weaver and mercer in Dublin, who took refuge in England during the Irish troubles under James the Second, and carried on his business in Spitalfields. She had several children by him, one of whom lived to receive, in 1750, the proceeds of a theatrical benefit promoted by Bishop Newton and Samuel Johnson. Deborah herself was brought into notice by Addison, and was visited by Professor Ward of Gresham College, who found her "bearing the inconveniences of a low fortune with decency and prudence." Her last days were made comfortable by the generosity of Princess Caroline and others: it is more pleasant still to know that her affection for her father had revived. When shown Faithorne's crayon portrait (not the one engraved in Milton's lifetime, but one exceedingly like it) she exclaimed, "in a transport, ''Tis my dear father, I see him, 'tis him!' and then she put her hands to several parts of her face, ''Tis the very man, here! here!'"
Milton's character is one of the things which "securus judicat orbis terrarum." On one point only there seems to us, as we have frequently implied, to be room for modification. In the popular conception of Milton the poet and the man are imperfectly combined. We allow his greatness as a poet, but deny him the poetical temperament which alone could have enabled him to attain it. He is looked upon as a great, good, reverend, austere, not very amiable, and not very sensitive man. The author and the book are thus set at variance, and the attempt to conceive the character as a whole results in confusion and inconsistency. To us, on the contrary, Milton, with all his strength of will and regularity of life, seems as perfect a representative as any of his compeers of the sensitiveness and impulsive passion of the poetical temperament. We appeal to his remarkable dependence upon external prompting for his compositions; to the rapidity of his work under excitement, and his long intervals of unproductiveness; to the heat and fury of his polemics; to the simplicity with which, fortunately for us, he inscribes small particulars of his own life side by side with weightiest utterances on Church and State; to the amazing precipitancy of his marriage and its rupture; to his sudden pliability upon appeal to his generosity; to his romantic self-sacrifice when his country demanded his eyes from him; above all, to his splendid ideals of regenerated human life, such as poets alone either conceive or realize. To overlook all this is to affirm that Milton wrote great poetry without being truly a poet. One more remark may be added, though not required by thinking readers. We must beware of confounding the essential with the accidental Milton—the pure vital spirit with the casual vesture of the creeds and circumstances of the era in which it became clothed with mortality:—
"They are still immortal
Who, through birth's orient portal
And death's dark chasm hurrying to and fro,
Clothe their unceasing flight
In the brief dust and light
Gathered around their chariots as they go.
New shapes they still may weave,
New gods, new laws, receive."