Volume I Part 24 (2/2)
_Giovane, piano, e semplicetto amante, &c._
Enamour'd, artless, young, on foreign ground, Uncertain whither from myself to fly, To thee, dear lady, with an humble sigh, Let me devote my heart, which I have found, By certain proofs not few, intrepid, sound, Good, and addicted to conceptions high: When tempests shake the world, and fire the sky, It rests in adamant, self-wrapt around, As safe from envy and from outrage rude, From hopes and fears that vulgar minds abuse, As fond of genius and fixt solitude, Of the resounding lyre and every muse.
Weak you will find it in one only part, Now pierc'd by Love's immedicable dart.
Milton was three times married. The relations of his first wife, (Mary Powell,) who were violent Royalists, and ashamed or afraid of their connection with a republican, persuaded her to leave him. She absolutely forsook her husband for nearly three years, and resided with her family at Oxford, when that city was the head-quarters of the King's party. ”I have so much charity for her,” says Aubrey, ”that she might not wrong his bed; but what man (especially contemplative,) would like to have a young wife environed and stormed by the sons of Mars, and those of the ennemie partie?”
Milton, though a suspicion of the nature hinted at by Aubrey never rose in his mind, was justly incensed at this dereliction. He was on the point of divorcing this contumacious bride, and had already made choice of another[147] to succeed her, when she threw herself, impromptu, at his feet and implored his forgiveness. He forgave her; and when the republican party triumphed, the family who had so cruelly wronged him found a refuge in his house. This woman embittered his life for fourteen or fifteen years.
A remembrance of the reconciliation with his wife, and of his own feelings on that occasion, are said to have suggested to Milton's mind the beautiful scene between Adam and Eve, in the tenth book of the Paradise Lost.
She ended weeping; and her lowly plight, Immoveable, till peace obtained for faults Acknowledged and deplored, in Adam wrought Commiseration; soon his heart relented Tow'rds her, his life so late and sole delight, Now at his feet submissive in distress, Creature so fair, his reconcilement seeking; As one disarmed, his anger all he lost, &c.
Milton's second and most beloved wife (Catherine Woodc.o.c.k) died in child-bed, within a year after their marriage. He honoured her memory with what Johnson (out upon him!) calls a _poor_ sonnet; it is the one beginning
Methought I saw my late espoused saint Brought to me, like Alcestis from the grave;
which, in its solemn and tender strain of feeling and modulated harmony, reminds us of Dante. He never ceased to lament her, and to cherish her memory with a fond regret:--she must have been full in his heart and mind when he wrote those touching lines in the Paradise Lost--
How can I live without thee? how forego Thy sweet converse and love so dearly joined, To live again in these wild woods forlorn?
Should G.o.d create another Eve, and I Another rib afford, yet loss of thee Would never from my heart!
After her death,--blind, disconsolate, and helpless--he was abandoned to petty wrongs and domestic discord; and suffered from the disobedience and unkindness of his two elder daughters, like another Lear.[148] His youngest daughter, Deborah, was the only one who acted as his amanuensis, and she always spoke of him with extreme affection:--on being suddenly shown his picture, twenty years after his death, she burst into tears.[149]
These three daughters were grown up, and the youngest about fifteen, when Milton married his third wife, Elizabeth Minshull. She was a gentle, kind-hearted woman,[150] without pretensions of any kind, who watched over his declining years with affectionate care. One biographer has not scrupled to a.s.sert, that to her,--or rather to her tender reverence for his studious habits, and to the peace and comfort she brought to his heart and home,--we owe the Paradise Lost: if true, what a debt immense of endless grat.i.tude is due to the memory of this un.o.btrusive and amiable woman!
FOOTNOTES:
[137] What Dr. Johnson _wrote_ is known;--he was accustomed to _say_ that the admiration expressed for Milton was all _cant_.
[138] I have before me the pamphlet, ent.i.tled ”A Narrative of the disinterment of Milton's coffin, on Wednesday the 4th of August, 1790, and of the treatment of the Corpse during that and the following day.”
The circ.u.mstances are too revolting to be dwelt upon.
[139] Si les Anges, (said Madame de Stal) n'ont pas t represents sous les traits de femme, c'est parceque l'union de la force avec la puret, est plus belle et plus celeste encore que la modestie mme la plus parfaite dans un tre faible.
[140] See his life by Dr. Symmons, Dr. Todd, Newton, Hayley, Aubrey, Richardson, Warton.
”She (his daughter Deborah) spoke of him with great tenderness; she said he was delightful company, the life of the conversation, and that on account of a flow of subject, and an unaffected cheerfulness and civility,” &c.--RICHARDSON.
[141] She was Catherine Boyle, the daughter of the Great Earl of Cork, one of the most excellent and most distinguished women of that time.--_See Hayley's Life of Milton._
[142] Miss Let.i.tia Hawkins.
[143] Otherwise Amphiaraus: his story is told by Ovid. Met. B. 9.
[144] As Milton felt when he wrote--
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