I have prefaced the poem with this anecdote, because to have
printed it without any remark might well have been understood 205
as implying an unconditional approbation on my part, and this
after many years' consideration. But if it be asked why I
republished it at all, I answer, that the poem had been attributed
at different times to different other persons; and what I had
dared beget, I thought it neither manly nor honourable not to [210]
dare father. From the same motives I should have published
perfect copies of two poems, the one entitled The Devil's
Thoughts, and the other, The Two Round Spaces on the
Tombstone, but that the three first stanzas of the former, which
were worth all the rest of the poem, and the best stanza of the 215
remainder, were written by a friend [Southey] of deserved
celebrity; and because there are passages in both which might
have given offence to the religious feelings of certain readers.
I myself indeed see no reason why vulgar superstitions and
absurd conceptions that deform the pure faith of a Christian 220
should possess a greater immunity from ridicule than stories of
witches, or the fables of Greece and Rome. But there are those
who deem it profaneness and irreverence to call an ape an ape,
if it but wear a monk's cowl on its head; and I would rather
reason with this weakness than offend it. 225

The passage from Jeremy Taylor to which I referred is found
in his second Sermon on Christ's Advent to Judgment; which
is likewise the second in his year's course of sermons. Among
many remarkable passages of the same character in those
discourses, I have selected this as the most so. 'But when this 230
Lion of the tribe of Judah shall appear, then Justice shall strike,
and Mercy shall not hold her hands; she shall strike sore strokes,
and Pity shall not break the blow. As there are treasures of
good things, so hath God a treasure of wrath and fury, and
scourges and scorpions; and then shall be produced the shame [235]
of Lust and the malice of Envy, and the groans of the oppressed
and the persecutions of the saints, and the cares of Covetousness
and the troubles of Ambition, and the insolencies of traitors and
the violences of rebels, and the rage of anger and the uneasiness
of impatience, and the restlessness of unlawful desires; and by 240
this time the monsters and diseases will be numerous and
intolerable, when God's heavy hand shall press the sanies and
the intolerableness, the obliquity and the unreasonableness, the
amazement and the disorder, the smart and the sorrow, the
guilt and the punishment, out from all our sins, and pour them 245
into one chalice, and mingle them with an infinite wrath, and
make the wicked drink off all the vengeance, and force it down
their unwilling throats with the violence of devils and accursed
spirits.'

That this Tartarean drench displays the imagination rather [250]
than the discretion of the compounder; that, in short, this
passage and others of the same kind are in a bad taste, few will deny
at the present day. It would, doubtless, have more behoved
the good bishop not to be wise beyond what is written on
a subject in which Eternity is opposed to Time, and a Death [255]
threatened, not the negative, but the positive Opposite of Life;
a subject, therefore, which must of necessity be indescribable
to the human understanding in our present state. But I can
neither find nor believe that it ever occurred to any reader to
ground on such passages a charge against Bishop Taylor's [260]
humanity, or goodness of heart. I was not a little surprised
therefore to find, in the Pursuits of Literature and other works,
so horrible a sentence passed on Milton's moral character, for
a passage in his prose writings, as nearly parallel to this of
Taylor's as two passages can well be conceived to be. All his [265]
merits, as a poet, forsooth—all the glory of having written the
Paradise Lost, are light in the scale, nay, kick the beam,
compared with the atrocious malignity of heart, expressed in the
offensive paragraph. I remembered, in general, that Milton had
concluded one of his works on Reformation, written in the [270]
fervour of his youthful imagination, in a high poetic strain, that
wanted metre only to become a lyrical poem. I remembered
that in the former part he had formed to himself a perfect ideal
of human virtue, a character of heroic, disinterested zeal and
devotion for Truth, Religion, and public Liberty, in act and in [275]
suffering, in the day of triumph and in the hour of martyrdom.
Such spirits, as more excellent than others, he describes as
having a more excellent reward, and as distinguished by a
transcendant glory: and this reward and this glory he displays and
particularizes with an energy and brilliance that announced the 280
Paradise Lost as plainly, as ever the bright purple clouds in the
east announced the coming of the Sun. Milton then passes to
the gloomy contrast, to such men as from motives of selfish
ambition and the lust of personal aggrandizement should, against
their own light, persecute truth and the true religion, and 285
wilfully abuse the powers and gifts entrusted to them, to bring
vice, blindness, misery and slavery, on their native country, on
the very country that had trusted, enriched and honoured them.
Such beings, after that speedy and appropriate removal from
their sphere of mischief which all good and humane men must 290
of course desire, will, he takes for granted by parity of reason,
meet with a punishment, an ignominy, and a retaliation, as
much severer than other wicked men, as their guilt and its
consequences were more enormous. His description of this
imaginary punishment presents more distinct pictures to the [295]
fancy than the extract from Jeremy Taylor; but the thoughts
in the latter are incomparably more exaggerated and horrific.
All this I knew; but I neither remembered, nor by reference
and careful re-perusal could discover, any other meaning, either
in Milton or Taylor, but that good men will be rewarded, and 300
the impenitent wicked, punished, in proportion to their
dispositions and intentional acts in this life; and that if the
punishment of the least wicked be fearful beyond conception, all words
and descriptions must be so far true, that they must fall short
of the punishment that awaits the transcendantly wicked. Had 305
Milton stated either his ideal of virtue, or of depravity, as an
individual or individuals actually existing? Certainly not!
Is this representation worded historically, or only
hypothetically? Assuredly the latter! Does he express it as his own
wish that after death they should suffer these tortures? or as [310]
a general consequence, deduced from reason and revelation, that
such will be their fate? Again, the latter only! His wish is
expressly confined to a speedy stop being put by Providence to
their power of inflicting misery on others! But did he name
or refer to any persons living or dead? No! But the [315]
calumniators of Milton daresay (for what will calumny not dare say?)
that he had Laud and Strafford in his mind, while writing of
remorseless persecution, and the enslavement of a free country
from motives of selfish ambition. Now what if a stern
anti-prelatist should daresay, that in speaking of the insolencies of [320]
traitors and the violences of rebels, Bishop Taylor must have
individualised in his mind Hampden, Hollis, Pym, Fairfax,
Ireton, and Milton? And what if he should take the liberty of
concluding, that, in the after-description, the Bishop was feeding
and feasting his party-hatred, and with those individuals before 325
the eyes of his imagination enjoying, trait by trait, horror after
horror, the picture of their intolerable agonies? Yet this
bigot would have an equal right thus to criminate the one good
and great man, as these men have to criminate the other.
Milton has said, and I doubt not but that Taylor with equal 330
truth could have said it, 'that in his whole life he never spake
against a man even that his skin should be grazed.' He asserted
this when one of his opponents (either Bishop Hall or his
nephew) had called upon the women and children in the streets
to take up stones and stone him (Milton). It is known that [335]
Milton repeatedly used his interest to protect the royalists;
but even at a time when all lies would have been meritorious
against him, no charge was made, no story pretended, that he
had ever directly or indirectly engaged or assisted in their
persecution. Oh! methinks there are other and far better feelings 340
which should be acquired by the perusal of our great elder
writers. When I have before me, on the same table, the works
of Hammond and Baxter; when I reflect with what joy and
dearness their blessed spirits are now loving each other; it
seems a mournful thing that their names should be perverted to [345]
an occasion of bitterness among us, who are enjoying that happy
mean which the human too-much on both sides was perhaps
necessary to produce. 'The tangle of delusions which stifled
and distorted the growing tree of our well-being has been torn
away; the parasite-weeds that fed on its very roots have been 350
plucked up with a salutary violence. To us there remain only
quiet duties, the constant care, the gradual improvement, the
cautious unhazardous labours of the industrious though
contented gardener—to prune, to strengthen, to engraft, and one
by one to remove from its leaves and fresh shoots the slug and 355
the caterpillar. But far be it from us to undervalue with light
and senseless detraction the conscientious hardihood of our
predecessors, or even to condemn in them that vehemence, to
which the blessings it won for us leave us now neither
temptation nor pretext. We antedate the feelings, in order to [360]
criminate the authors, of our present liberty, light and
toleration.' (The Friend, No. IV. Sept. 7, 1809.) [1818, i. 105.]

If ever two great men might seem, during their whole lives,
to have moved in direct opposition, though neither of them has
at any time introduced the name of the other, Milton and 365
Jeremy Taylor were they. The former commenced his career
by attacking the Church-Liturgy and all set forms of prayer.
The latter, but far more successfully, by defending both.
Milton's next work was against the Prelacy and the then
existing Church-Government—Taylor's in vindication and [370]
support of them. Milton became more and more a stern republican,
or rather an advocate for that religious and moral aristocracy
which, in his day, was called republicanism, and which, even more
than royalism itself, is the direct antipode of modern jacobinism.
Taylor, as more and more sceptical concerning the fitness of 375
men in general for power, became more and more attached to
the prerogatives of monarchy. From Calvinism, with a still
decreasing respect for Fathers, Councils, and for Church-antiquity
in general, Milton seems to have ended in an indifference,
if not a dislike, to all forms of ecclesiastic government, and to [380]
have retreated wholly into the inward and spiritual church-communion
of his own spirit with the Light that lighteth every
man that cometh into the world. Taylor, with a growing
reverence for authority, an increasing sense of the insufficiency of
the Scriptures without the aids of tradition and the consent of [385]
authorized interpreters, advanced as far in his approaches (not
indeed to Popery, but) to Roman-Catholicism, as a conscientious
minister of the English Church could well venture. Milton
would be and would utter the same to all on all occasions: he
would tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the [390]
truth. Taylor would become all things to all men, if by any
means he might benefit any; hence he availed himself, in his
popular writings, of opinions and representations which stand
often in striking contrast with the doubts and convictions
expressed in his more philosophical works. He appears, indeed, [395]
not too severely to have blamed that management of truth
(istam falsitatem dispensativam) authorized and exemplified by
almost all the fathers: Integrum omnino doctoribus et coetus
Christiani antistitibus esse, ut dolos versent, falsa veris
intermisceant et imprimis religionis hostes fallant, dummodo 400
veritatis commodis et utilitati inserviant.

The same antithesis might be carried on with the elements
of their several intellectual powers. Milton, austere, condensed,
imaginative, supporting his truth by direct enunciation of lofty
moral sentiment and by distinct visual representations, and in 405
the same spirit overwhelming what he deemed falsehood by
moral denunciation and a succession of pictures appalling or
repulsive. In his prose, so many metaphors, so many allegorical
miniatures. Taylor, eminently discursive, accumulative,
and (to use one of his own words) agglomerative; still more [410]
rich in images than Milton himself, but images of fancy, and
presented to the common and passive eye, rather than to the
eye of the imagination. Whether supporting or assailing, he
makes his way either by argument or by appeals to the
affections, unsurpassed even by the schoolmen in subtlety, [415]
agility, and logic wit, and unrivalled by the most rhetorical of
the fathers in the copiousness and vividness of his expressions
and illustrations. Here words that convey feelings, and words
that flash images, and words of abstract notion, flow together,
and whirl and rush onward like a stream, at once rapid and full [420]
of eddies; and yet still interfused here and there we see a tongue
or islet of smooth water, with some picture in it of earth or sky,
landscape or living group of quiet beauty.

Differing then so widely and almost contrariantly, wherein
did these great men agree? wherein did they resemble each 425
other? In genius, in learning, in unfeigned piety, in blameless
purity of life, and in benevolent aspirations and purposes for
the moral and temporal improvement of their fellow-creatures!
Both of them wrote a Latin Accidence, to render education
more easy and less painful to children; both of them composed 430
hymns and psalms proportioned to the capacity of common
congregations; both, nearly at the same time, set the glorious
example of publicly recommending and supporting general
toleration, and the liberty both of the Pulpit and the press!
In the writings of neither shall we find a single sentence, like [435]
those meek deliverances to God's mercy, with which Laud
accompanied his votes for the mutilations and loathsome
dungeoning of Leighton and others!—nowhere such a pious prayer
as we find in Bishop Hall's memoranda of his own life, concerning
the subtle and witty atheist that so grievously perplexed [440]
and gravelled him at Sir Robert Drury's till he prayed to the
Lord to remove him, and behold! his prayers were heard: for
shortly afterward this Philistine-combatant went to London,
and there perished of the plague in great misery! In short,
nowhere shall we find the least approach, in the lives and 445
writings of John Milton or Jeremy Taylor, to that guarded
gentleness, to that sighing reluctance, with which the holy
brethren of the Inquisition deliver over a condemned heretic
to the civil magistrate, recommending him to mercy, and
hoping that the magistrate will treat the erring brother with [450]
all possible mildness!—the magistrate who too well knows what
would be his own fate if he dared offend them by acting on their
recommendation.

The opportunity of diverting the reader from myself to
characters more worthy of his attention, has led me far beyond my 455
first intention; but it is not unimportant to expose the false
zeal which has occasioned these attacks on our elder patriots.
It has been too much the fashion first to personify the Church
of England, and then to speak of different individuals, who in
different ages have been rulers in that church, as if in some [460]
strange way they constituted its personal identity. Why should
a clergyman of the present day feel interested in the defence
of Laud or Sheldon? Surely it is sufficient for the warmest
partisan of our establishment that he can assert with
truth,—when our Church persecuted, it was on mistaken principles [465]
held in common by all Christendom; and at all events, far less
culpable was this intolerance in the Bishops, who were
maintaining the existing laws, than the persecuting spirit afterwards
shewn by their successful opponents, who had no such excuse,
and who should have been taught mercy by their own sufferings, 470
and wisdom by the utter failure of the experiment in their own
case. We can say that our Church, apostolical in its faith,
primitive in its ceremonies, unequalled in its liturgical forms; that
our Church, which has kindled and displayed more bright and
burning lights of genius and learning than all other protestant 475
churches since the reformation, was (with the single exception
of the times of Laud and Sheldon) least intolerant, when all
Christians unhappily deemed a species of intolerance their
religious duty; that Bishops of our church were among the first
that contended against this error; and finally, that since the [480]
reformation, when tolerance became a fashion, the Church of
England in a tolerating age, has shewn herself eminently
tolerant, and far more so, both in spirit and in fact, than
many of her most bitter opponents, who profess to deem
toleration itself an insult on the rights of mankind! As to [485]
myself, who not only know the Church-Establishment to be
tolerant, but who see in it the greatest, if not the sole safe
bulwark of toleration. I feel no necessity of defending or
palliating oppressions under the two Charleses, in order to
exclaim with a full and fervent heart, Esto perpetua! [490]

FOOTNOTES:

[1097:1] First published in Sibylline Leaves in 1817: included in 1828, 1829, and 1834. The 'Apologetic Preface' must have been put together in 1815, with a view to publication in the volume afterwards named Sibylline Leaves, but the incident on which it turns most probably took place in the spring of 1803, when both Scott and Coleridge were in London. Davy writing to Poole, May 1, 1803, says that he generally met Coleridge during his stay in town, 'in the midst of large companies, where he was the image of power and activity,' and Davy, as we know, was one of Sotheby's guests. In a letter to Mrs. Fletcher dated Dec. 18, 1830 (?), Scott tells the story in his own words, but throws no light on date or period. The implied date (1809) in Morritt's report of Dr. Howley's conversation (Lockhart's Life of Scott, 1837, ii. 245) is out of the question, as Coleridge did not leave the Lake Country between Sept. 1808 and October 1810. Coleridge set great store by 'his own stately account of this lion-show' (ibid.). In a note in a MS. copy of Sibylline Leaves presented to his son Derwent he writes:—'With the exception of this slovenly sentence (ll. 109-19) I hold this preface to be my happiest effort in prose composition.'