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Introductory Note
Introductory Note
Among English men of letters there is none whose life and work stand in
more intimate relation with the history of his times than those of Milton. Not
only was he for a long period immersed in political controversy and public
business, but there are few of his important works which do not become more
significant in the light of contemporary events, and in turn help the
understanding of these events themselves. It is evidence of this intimate
relation, that the periods into which his life naturally falls coincide with
the periods into which English history in the seventeenth century divides
itself. The first of these extends from Milton`s birth to his return from
Italy, and corresponds with that period in the reigns of James I and Charles I
during which the religious and political differences which culminated in the
Civil War were working up to a climax. The second ends with his retirement
into private life, in 1660, and coincides with the period of the Civil War and
the Commonwealth. The third closes with his death in 1674, and falls within
the period of the Restoration.
John Milton was born in Bread Street, London, on the ninth of December,
1608. He was the son of John Milton, a prosperous scrivener (i.e., attorney
and law - stationer), a man of good family and considerable culture,
especially devoted to music. In the education of the future poet the elder
Milton was exceptionally generous. From childhood he destined him for the
Church, and the preparation begun at home was continued at St. Paul`s School
and at Cambridge. We have abundant evidence that the boy was from the first a
quick and diligent student, and the late study to which he was addicted from
childhood was the beginning of that injury to his eyes which ended in
blindness. He entered Christ`s College, Cambridge, in 1625, took the degree of
B. A. in 1629, and that of M. A. in 1632, when he left the University after
seven years` residence. But the development of affairs in the English Church
had overturned his plans, and the interference of Laud with freedom of thought
and preaching among the clergy led Milton "to prefer a blameless silence
before the sacred office of speaking bought with servitude and forswearing."
So he retired to his father`s house at Horton in Buckinghamshire, and devoted
the next six years to quiet study and the composition of a few poems.
In 1638 Milton set out on a journey to Italy. After some days in Paris,
he passed on by way of Nice to Genoa, Leghorn, Pisa, and Florence, in which
last city he spent about two months in the society of wits and men of letters.
After two months more spent in Rome, he visited Naples, and had intended to
cross to Sicily and go thence to Greece, when rumors of civil war in England
led him to turn his face homeward, "inasmuch," he says, "as I thought it base
to be traveling at my ease for intellectual culture while my countrymen at
home were fighting for liberty." His writings produced abroad were all in
Italian or Latin, and seem to have brought him considerable distinction among
the Italian men of letters whom he met.
Yet Milton did not plunge rashly into the political conflict. After he
returned from the Continent, the household at Horton was broken up, and he
went to London to resume his studies, and decide on the form and subject of
his great poem. Part of his time was occupied in teaching his two nephews, and
afterward he took under his care a small number of youths, sons of his
friends. In 1643 he married Mary Powell, the daughter of an Oxfordshire
Royalist. In about a months he left him and remained away for two years, at
the end of which time she sought and obtained a reconciliation. She died in
1653 or 1654, leaving him three little daughters.
The main occupation of his first years in London was controversy. Liberty
was Milton`s deepest passion, and in liberty we sum up the theme of his prose
writings. There are "three species of liberty," he says, "which are essential
to the happiness of social life - religious, domestic, and civil," and for all
three he fought. His most important prose works may, indeed, be roughly
classed under these heads: under religious, his pamphlets against Episcopacy;
under domestic, his works on Education, Divorce, and the Freedom of the Press;
under civil, his controversial writings on the overthrow of the monarchy. In
all of these he strove for freedom and toleration; and when England became a
Republic, he became officially associated with the new government as Secretary
of Foreign Tongues, in which capacity he not only conducted its foreign
correspondence, but also acted as its literary adviser and champion in the
controversies by pamphlet that arose in connection with the execution of the
King and the theory of the Commonwealth. It was in the midst of these
activities that a great calamity overtook him. The defence of the late King
had been undertaken by the famous Dutch Latinist Salmasius in a "Defensio
Regis," and to Milton fell the task of replying to it. His eyesight, weakened
even in childhood by overstudy, was now failing fast, and he was warned by
physicians that it would go altogether if he persisted in this work. But to
Milton the fight he had entered on was no mere matter of professional
employment as it was to his opponent, and he deliberately sacrificed what
remained to him of light in the service of the cause to which he was devoted.
The reply was a most effective one, but it left Milton hopelessly blind. With
the aid of an assistant, however, he retained his office through the
Protectorate of Cromwell, until the eve of the Restoration.
Oliver Cromwell died in 1658, his son Richard succeeded him for a short
time, and in 1660 Charles II was restored to the throne. To the last Milton
fought with tremendous earnestness against this catastrophe. For, to him, it
was indeed a catastrophe. The return of the Stuarts meant to him not only
great personal danger, but, what was far more important, it meant the
overthrow of all that he had for twenty years spent himself to uphold. It
meant the setting up in government, in religion, and in society, of ideals and
institutions that he could not but regard as the extreme of reaction and
national degradation. Almost by a miracle he escaped personal violence, but he
was of necessity forced into obscure retirement; and there, reduced in
fortune, blind, and broken - hearted, he devoted himself to the production of
"Paradise Lost" and "Paradise Regained." The great schemes which in his early
manhood he had planned and dreamed over had for years been laid aside; but now
at last he had a mournful leisure, and with magnificent fortitude he availed
himself of the opportunity.
"Paradise Lost" had been begun even before the King`s return; in 1665 it
was finished, and in 1667 the first edition appeared. "Paradise Regained" and
"Samson Agonistes" were published in 1671.
In 1657 Milton`s second wife, Catherine Woodcock, had died. For about
seven years after, he lived alone with his three daughters, whom he trained to
read to him not merely in English, but in Latin, Greek, Italian, French,
Spanish, and Hebrew, though they did not understand a word of what they read.
What little we know of their relations to their father is not pleasant. They
seem to have been rebellious and undutiful, though doubtless there was much
provocation. In 1663 Milton took a third wife, Elizabeth Minshull, who did
much to give ease and comfort to his last years, and who long survived him.
The retirement in which he lived during this third period, when public
affairs seemed to him to have gone all wrong, was not absolutely solitary. The
harshness that appears in his controversial writings, and the somewhat
unsympathetic austerity that seems to be indicated by his relations with his
first wife and his children, are to be counterbalanced in our minds by the
impression of companionableness that we derive from the picture of the old
blind poet, sought out by many who not merely admired his greatness, but found
pleasure in his society, and counted it a privilege to talk with him and read
to him. Stern and sad he could hardly fail to be, but his old age was peaceful
and not bitter. He died on November 8, 1674, and was buried in the Church of
St. Giles, Cripplegate, London.
In spite of Milton`s association with the Puritan party in the political
struggles of his time, the common habit of referring to him as "the Puritan
Poet" is seriously misleading. The Puritans of the generation of Milton`s
father were indeed often men of culture and love of the arts, but the Puritans
of the Civil War, the Puritans whom we think of to - day in our ordinary use
of the term, were, in general, men who had not only no interest in art, but
who regarded beauty itself as a temptation of the evil one. Even a slight
study of Milton`s works will convince the reader that to this class Milton
could never have belonged. Side by side with his love of liberty and his
enthusiasm for moral purity - qualities in which even then the Puritans had no
monopoly - Milton was passionately devoted to beauty; and the reason why his
work survives to - day is not because part of it expresses the Puritan
theology, but because of its artistic qualities - above all because it is at
once more faultless and more nobly sustained in music than that of any other
English poet.
The Argument
Samson, made captive, blind, and now in the prison at Gaza, there to
labour as in a common workhouse, on a festival day, in the general cessation
from labour, comes forth into the open air, to a place nigh, somewhat retired,
there to sit awhile and bemoan his condition. Where he happens at length to be
visited by certain friends and equals of his tribe, which make the Chorus, who
seek to comfort him what they can; then by his old father, Manoa, who
endeavours the like, and withal tells him his purpose to procure his liberty
by ransom; lastly, that this feast was proclaimed by the Philistines as a day
of thanksgiving for their deliverance from the hands of Samson - which yet
more troubles him. Manoa then departs to prosecute his endeavour with the
Philistian lords for Samson`s redemption: who, in the meanwhile, is visited by
other persons, and, lastly, by a public officer to require his coming to the
feast before the lords and people, to play or shew his strength in their
presence. He at first refuses, dismissing the public officer with absolute
denial to come; at length, persuaded inwardly that this was from God, he
yields to go along with him, who came now the second time with great
threatenings to fetch him. The Chorus yet remaining on the place, Manoa
returns full of joyful hope to procure ere long his son`s deliverance; in the
midst of which discourse an Ebrew comes in haste, confusedly at first, and
afterwards more distinctly, relating the catastrophe - what Samson had done to
the Philistines, and by accident to himself; wherewith the Tragedy ends.
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