His praise due paid; for swinish gluttony
Ne’er looks to heaven amidst his gorgeous feast
But with besotted, base ingratitude,
Crams and blasphemes his feeder.”
Even now, while we conclude these few pages our pen falters, and we feel disposed to abandon the task. His magnificence overpowers us. How can we point out the excellence of that which commands the admiration of all men, and is beyond the loftiest praise of the most eloquent? Again and again have we turned over the leaves of this work, with the intention of selecting passages worthy of comment and regard, and so thickly have they flowed in upon us, that page after page has been exhausted, and we had not finished. How idle, then, to select from these masterpieces of eloquence and storehouses of truth! How vain to dwell upon his merits, when every line of his splendid composition tells of his measureless learning and infinite purity of thought. His style, at once grand and simple, is happily suited to convey conviction to the mind, and inspire the soul with fervid energy.
While his works are filled with noble conceptions, clothed in language of corresponding state and grandeur, we nowhere find any attempt at fine rhetoric for mere empty display. The whole subject sweeps on with solemn magnificence, but with no idle pomp. From the depths of his soul did he speak, and his words were as fire, scorching to his enemies, and life-giving and cheering to those who love “truth and wisdom, not respecting numbers and big names.”
The most inspiring view that can be taken of the soul of these writings is, that they are, even at this day, far in advance of the social condition that exists in this land of liberal and enlightened principles of government. The precepts by which he would wish us to be guided, are the pure and humane doctrines of the Savior of man. He did not fight only for the liberties of Englishmen, contending for English rights, citing the charters of English liberty—no, not he—all mankind were alike to him, and for man alone he spake. No such Hebrew spirit animated his noble soul.
He proclaimed the rights of man, as man, and asserted his rights, natural and social, without ever launching out into Utopian speculations and visionary conceptions, the practical utility of which no one can affirm, and the application of which would have worked out ills innumerable, rooting up and overthrowing ten thousand times ten thousand social rights, that had grown up with the state itself. He asserted abstractions; but with an intimate knowledge of men and their affairs, he steadily avoided violating those relative rights, to suddenly encroach on which would have been even as great a despotism as the rugged foot of feudal barbarity, with which his country had been oppressed.
From the generous and life-giving precepts of the Gospel did he draw his faith. He there learned charity for the misdoings of men, as well as belief in their power to resist evil and attain truth. He there learned love for mankind, as he imbibed a stern, unyielding hate for tyranny and hypocrisy.
No timid navigator, skirting along the shores and headlands, but a bold, adventurous spirit, he pushed forth upon a wild, tempestuous sea of troubles, with murky night of ignorance and superstition surrounding him. The “Telemachus” of Fénelon, might have been the “first dim promise of a great deliverance, the undeveloped germ of the charter of the code,” for the whole French people. But in these writings of Milton, we have a full and manly assertion of those rights and duties which all men owe one to the other, and all to society, and which are far, far beyond the simple truths conveyed in that beautiful and easy fiction.