Part 52 (1/2)

And so he could not fail to make his arch rebel grand, and even in his last degradation we somehow pity him, while feeling that he is almost too high for pity. Listen to Satan's cry of sorrow and defiance when he finds himself cast out from Heaven:--

”'Is this the region, this the soil, the clime,'

Said then the lost Archangel, 'this the seat That we must change for heaven?--this mournful gloom For that celestial light? Be it so, since he Who now is sovran can dispose and bid What shall be right; farthest from his is best, Whom reason hath equalled, force hath made supreme Above his equals. Farewell, happy fields, Where joy for ever dwells! Hail, horrors! hail, Infernal world! and thou, profoundest h.e.l.l Receive thy new possessor--one who brings A mind not to be changed by place or time, The mind is its own place, and in itself Can make a Heaven of h.e.l.l, a h.e.l.l of Heaven.

What matter where, if I be still the same, And what I should be, all but less than he Whom thunder hath made greater? Here at least We shall be free the Almighty hath not built Here for his envy, will not drive us hence; Here we may reign secure; and, in my choice, To reign is worth ambition, though in h.e.l.l: Better to reign in h.e.l.l than serve in Heaven.'”

Then in contrast to this outburst of regal defiance, read the last beautiful lines of the poem and see in what softened mood of submission Milton pictures our first parents as they leave the Happy Garden:--

”In either hand the hastening Angel caught Our lingering parents, and to the eastern gate Led them direct, and down the cliff as fast To the subjected plain--then disappeared.

They, looking back, all the eastern side beheld Of Paradise, so late their happy seat, Waved over by that flaming brand; the gate With dreadful faces thronged and fiery arms.

Some natural tears they dropped, but wiped them soon; The world was all before them, where to choose Their place of rest, and Providence their guide.

They, hand in hand, with wandering steps and slow, Through Eden took their solitary way.”

Milton worked slowly at this grand poem. Being blind he had now to depend on others to write out what poetry he made in his own mind, so it was written ”in a parcel of ten, twenty, or thirty verses at a time by whatever hand came next.” We are told that when he was dictating sometimes he sat leaning back sideways in an easy-chair, with his leg flung over the arm. Sometimes he dictated from his bed, and if in the middle of the night lines came to him, whatever time it was he would ring for one of his daughters to write them down for him, lest the thought should be lost ere morning.

We are told, too, that he wrote very little in summer. For he said himself that it was in winter and spring that his poetic fancy seemed to come best to him, and that what he wrote at other times did not please him. ”So that in all the years he was about this poem, he may be said to have spent but half his time therein.”*

*Philips.

But now, while Milton's mind was full of splendid images, while in spite of the discomfort and lonliness of his misruled home, he was adding line to line of splendid sounding English, great changes came over the land.

Oliver Cromwell died. To him succeeded his son Richard. But his weak hands could not hold the scepter. He could not bind together a rebel people as great Oliver had done. In a few months he gave up the task, and little more than a year later the people who had wept at the death of the great Protector, were madly rejoicing at the return of a despot.

With a Stuart king upon the throne, there was no safety for the rebel poet who had used all the power of his wit and learning against the Royal cause. Pity for his blindness might not save him. So listening to the warnings of his friends, he fled into hiding somewhere in the city of London, ”a place of retirement and abscondence.”

But after a time the danger pa.s.sed, and Milton crept forth from his hiding-place. It was perhaps pity for his blind helplessness, perhaps contempt for his powerlessness, that saved him, who can tell? His books were burned by the common hangman, and he found himself in prison for a short time, but he was soon released. While others were dying for their cause, the blind poet whose trumpet call had been Liberty! Liberty! was contemptuously allowed to live.

Now indeed had Milton fallen on dark and evil days. He had escaped with his life and was free. But all that he had worked for during the past twenty years he saw shattered as at one blow.

He saw his friends suffering imprisonment and death, himself forsaken and beggared. He found no sympathy at home. His daughters, who had not loved their father in his days of wealth and ease, loved him still less in poverty. They sold his books, cheated him with the housekeeping money, and in every way added to his unhappiness. At length, as a way out of the misery and confusion of his home, Milton married for the third time.

The new wife was a placid, kindly woman. She managed the house, managed too the wild, unruly girls as no one had managed them before. She saw the folly of keeping them, wholly untamed and half-educated as they were, at home, and persuaded her husband to let them learn something by which they might earn a living. So they went out into the world ”to learn some curious and ingenious sorts of manufacture, that are proper for women to learn, particularly embroideries in gold and silver.”

Thus for the last few years of his life Milton was surrounded by peace and content such as he had never before known. All through life he had never had any one to love him deeply except his father and his mother, whose love for him was perhaps not all wise. Those who had loved him in part had feared him too, and the fear outdid the love. But now in the evening of his days, if no perfect love came to him, he found at least kindly understanding. His wife admired him and cared for him. She had a fair face and pretty voice, and it is pleasant to picture the gray-haired poet sitting at his organ playing while his wife sings. He cannot see the sun gleam and play in her golden hair, or the quick color come and go in her fair face, but at least he can take joy in the sound of her sweet fresh voice.

It was soon after this third marriage that Paradise Lost was finished and published. And even in those wild Restoration days, when laughter and pleasure alone were sought, men acknowledged the beauty and grandeur of this grave poem. ”This man cuts us all out, and the ancients too,” said Dryden, another and younger poet.

People now came to visit the author of Paradise Lost, as before they had come to visit great Cromwell's secretary. We have a pleasant picture of him sitting in his garden at the door of his house on sunny days to enjoy the fresh air, for of the many houses in which Milton lived not one was without a garden.

There, even when the sun did not s.h.i.+ne, wrapt in a great coat of coa.r.s.e gray cloth, he received his visitors. Or when the weather was colder he sat in an upstairs room hung with rusty green. He wore no sword, as it was the fas.h.i.+on in those days to do, and his clothes were black. His long, light gray hair fell in waves round his pale but not colorless face, and the sad gray eyes with which he seemed to look upon his visitors were still clear and beautiful.

Life had now come for Milton to a peaceful evening time, but his work was not yet finished. He had two great poems still to write.

One was Paradise Regained. In this he shows how man's lost happiness was found again in Christ. Here is a second temptation, the temptation in the wilderness, but this time Satan is defeated, Christ is victorious.

The second poem was Samson Agonistes, which tells the tragic story of Samson in his blindness. And no one reading it can fail to see that it is the story too of Milton in his blindness. It is Milton himself who speaks when he makes Samson exclaim:--

”O loss of sight, of thee I most complain!

Blind among enemies: O worse than chains, Dungeon, or beggary, or decrepit age!