In the course of this life, a dispassionate regard to truth, and an inviolable candour shall be observed. Milton was not without a share of those failings which are inseparable from human nature; those errors sometimes exposed him to censure, and they ought not to pass unnoticed; on the other hand, the apparent sincerity of his intentions, and the amazing force of his genius, naturally produce an extream tenderness for the faults with which his life is chequered: and as in any man's conduct fewer errors are seldom found, so no man's parts ever gave him a greater right to indulgence.
The author of Paradise Lost was descended of an ancient family of that name at Milton, near Abingdon in Oxfordshire. He was the son of John Milton a money-scrivener, and born the 9th of December, 1608. The family from which he descended had been long seated there, as appears by the monuments still to be seen in the church of Milton, 'till one of them, having taken the unfortunate side in the contests between the houses of York and Lancaster, was deprived of all his estate, except [110] what he held by his wife[1]. Our author's grandfather, whose name was John Milton, was under-ranger, or reaper of the forest of Shotover, near Halton in Oxfordshire: but a man of Milton's genius needs not have the circumstance of birth called in to render him illustrious; he reflects the highest honour upon his family, which receives from him more glory, than the longest descent of years can give. Milton was both educated under a domestic tutor, and likewise at St. Paul's school under Mr. Alexander Gill, where he made, by his indefatigable application, an extraordinary progress in learning. From his 12th year he generally sat up all night at his studies, which, accompanied with frequent head-aches, proved very prejudicial to his eyes. In the year 1625 he was entered into Christ's College in Cambridge, under the tuition of Mr. William Chappel, afterwards bishop of Ross in Ireland, and even before that time, had distinguished himself by several Latin and English poems[2]. After he had taken the degree of master of arts, in 1632 he left the university, and for the space of five years lived with his parents at their house at Horton, near Colebrook in Buckinghamshire, where his father having acquired a competent fortune, thought proper to retire, and spend the remainder of his days. In the year 1634 he wrote his Masque of Comus, performed at Ludlow Castle, before John, earl of Bridgwater, then president of Wales: It appears from the edition of this Masque, published by Mr. Henry Lawes, that the principal performers were, the Lord Barclay, Mr. Thomas Egerton, the Lady Alice Egerton, and Mr. Lawes himself, who represented an attendant spirit.
The Prologue, which we found in the General Dictionary, begins with the following lines.
[111] Our stedfast bard, to his own genius true,
Still bad his muse fit audience find, tho' few;
Scorning the judgment of a trifling age,
To choicer spirits he bequeath'd his page.
He too was scorned, and to Britannia's shame,
She scarce for half an age knew Milton's name;
But now his fame by every trumpet blown,
We on his deathless trophies raise our own.
Nor art, nor nature, could his genius bound:
Heaven, hell, earth, chaos, he survey'd around.
All things his eye, thro' wit's bright empire thrown,
Beheld, and made what it beheld his own.
In 1637 Our author published his Lycidas; in this poem he laments the death of his friend Mr. Edward King, who was drowned in his passage from Chester on the Irish seas in 1637; it was printed the year following at Cambridge in 4to. in a collection of Latin and English poems upon Mr. King's death, with whom he had contracted the strongest friendship. The Latin epitaph informs us, that Mr. King was son of Sir John King, secretary for Ireland to Queen Elizabeth, James I. and Charles I. and that he was fellow in Christ's-College Cambridge, and was drowned in the twenty-fifth year of his age. But this poem of Lycidas does not altogether consist in elegiac strains of tenderness; there is in it a mixture of satire and severe indignation; for in part of it he takes occasion to rally the corruptions of the established clergy, of whom he was no favourer; and first discovers his acrimony against archbishop Laud; he threatens him with the loss of his head, a fate which he afterwards met, thro' the fury of his enemies; at least, says Dr. Newton, I can think of no sense so proper to be given to the following verses in Lycidas;
[112] Besides what the grim wolf, with privy paw,
Daily devours apace, and nothing said;
But that two-handed engine at the door,
Stands ready to smite once, and smite no more.
Upon the death of his mother, Milton obtained leave of his father to travel, and having waited upon Sir Henry Wotton, formerly ambassador at Venice, and then provost of Eaton College, to whom he communicated his design, that gentleman wrote a letter to him, dated from the College, April 18, 1638, and printed among the Reliquiæ Wottonianæ, and in Dr. Newton's life of Milton. Immediately after the receipt of this letter our author set out for France, accompanied only with one man, who attended him thro' all his travels. At Paris Milton was introduced to the famous Hugo Grotius, and thence went to Florence, Siena, Rome, and Naples, in all which places he was entertained with the utmost civility by persons of the first distinction.
When our author was at Naples he was introduced to the acquaintance of Giovanni Baptista Manso, Marquis of Villa, a Neapolitan nobleman, celebrated for his taste in the liberal arts, to whom Tasso addresses his dialogue on friendship, and whom he likewise mentions in his Gierusalemme liberata, with great honour. This nobleman shewed extraordinary civilities to Milton, frequently visited him at his lodgings, and accompanied him when he went to see the several curiosities of the city. He was not content with giving our author these exterior marks of respect only, but he honoured him by a Latin distich in his praise, which is printed before Milton's Latin poems. Milton no doubt was highly pleased with such extreme condescension and esteem from a person of the Marquis of [113] Villa's quality; and as an evidence of his gratitude, he presented the Marquis at his departure from Naples, his eclogue, entitled Mansus; which, says Dr. Newton, is well worth reading among his Latin poems; so that it may be reckoned a peculiar felicity in the Marquis of Villa's life to have been celebrated both by Tasso and Milton, the greatest poets of their nation. Having seen the finest parts of Italy, and conversed with men of the first distinction, he was preparing to pass over into Sicily and Greece, when the news from England, that a civil war was like to lay his country in blood, diverted his purpose; for as by his education and principles he was attached to the parliamentary interest, he thought it a mark of abject cowardice, for a lover of his country to take his pleasure abroad, while the friends of liberty were contending at home for the rights of human nature. He resolved therefore to return by way of Rome, tho' he was dissuaded from pursuing that resolution by the merchants, who were informed by their correspondents, that the English jesuits there were forming plots against his life, in case he should return thither, on account of the great freedom with which he had treated their religion, and the boldness he discovered in demonstrating the absurdity of the Popish tenets; for he by no means observed the rule recommended to him by Sir Henry Wotton, of keeping his thoughts close, and his countenance open. Milton was removed above dissimulation, he hated whatever had the appearance of disguise, and being naturally a man of undaunted courage, he was never afraid to assert his opinions, nor to vindicate truth tho' violated by the suffrage of the majority.
Stedfast in his resolutions, he went to Rome a second time, and stayed there two months more, neither concealing his name, nor declining any [114] disputations to which his antagonists in religious opinions invited him; he escaped the secret machinations of the jesuits, and came safe to Florence, where he was received by his friends with as much tenderness as if he had returned to his own country. Here he remained two months, as he had done in his former visit, excepting only an excursion of a few days to Lucca, and then crossing the Appenine, and passing thro' Bologna, and Ferrara, he arrived at Venice, in which city he spent a month; and having shipped off the books he had collected in his travels, he took his course thro' Verona, Milan, and along the Lake Leman to Geneva. In this city he continued some time, meeting there with people of his own principles, and contracted an intimate friendship with Giovanni Deodati, the most learned professor of Divinity, whose annotations on the bible are published in English; and from thence returning to France the same way that he had gone before, he arrived safe in England after an absence of fifteen months, in which Milton had seen much of the world, read the characters of famous men, examined the policy of different countries, and made more extensive improvements than travellers of an inferior genius, and less penetration, can be supposed to do in double the time. Soon after his return he took a handsome house in Aldersgate-street, and undertook the education of his sister's two sons, upon a plan of his own. In this kind of scholastic solitude he continued some time, but he was not so much immersed in academical studies, as to stand an indifferent spectator of what was acted upon the public theatre of his country. The nation was in great ferment in 1641, and the clamour against episcopacy running very high, Milton who discovered how much inferior in eloquence and learning the puritan teachers were to the bishops, [115] engaged warmly with the former in support of the common cause, and exercised all the power of which he was capable, in endeavouring to overthrow the prelatical establishment, and accordingly published five tracts relating to church government; they were all printed at London in 4to. The first was intitled, Reformation touching Church Discipline in England, and the Causes that have hitherto hindered it: two books written to a friend. The second was of Prelatical Episcopacy, and whether it may be deducted from Apostolical Times, by virtue of those Testimonies which are alledged to that purpose in some late treatises; one whereof goes under the name of James Usher archbishop of Armagh. The third was the Reason of Church Government urged against the Prelacy, by Mr. John Milton, in two books. The fourth was Animadversions upon the Remonstrants Defence against Smectymnuus; and the fifth an Apology for a Pamphlet called, a Modest Confutation of the Animadversions upon the Remonstrants against Smectymnuus; or as the title page is in some copies, an Apology for Smectymnuus, with the Reason of Church Government, by John Milton.
In the year 1643 Milton married the daughter of Richard Powel, Esq; of Forrest-hill in Oxfordshire; who not long after obtaining leave of her husband to pay a visit to her father in the country, but, upon repeated messages to her, refusing to return, Milton seemed disposed to marry another, and in 1644 published the Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce; the Judgment of Martin Bucer concerning Divorce, and the year following his Tetrachordon and Colasterion. Mr. Philips observes, and would have his readers believe, that the reason of his wife's aversion to return to him was the contrariety of their state principles. The lady being educated in loyal notions, [116] possibly imagined, that if ever the regal power should flourish again, her being connected with a person so obnoxious to the King, would hurt her father's interest; this Mr. Philips alledges, but, with submission to his authority, I dissent from his opinion. Had she been afraid of marrying a man of Milton's principles, the reason was equally strong before as after marriage, and her father must have seen it in that light; but the true reason, or at least a more rational one, seems to be, that she had no great affection for Milton's person.