Part 1 (1/2)

Milton

by Mark Pattison

FIRST PERIOD 1608-1639

CHAPTER I

FAMILY-SCHOOL-COLLEGE

In the seventeenth century it was not the custom to publish two volumes upon every e Nor, where lives of authors ritten, were they written with the redundancy of particulars which is now allowed Especially are the lives of the poets and drarely recorded Of Milton, however, we know e Edward Phillips, the poet's nepheas brought up by his uncle, and lived in habits of intercourse with him to the last, wrote a life, brief, inexact, superficial, but valuable from the nearness of the writer to the subject of his memoir A cotemporary of Milton, John Aubrey (b1625), ”a very honest man, and accurate in his accounts of matters of fact,” as Toland says of him, made it his business to learn all he could about Milton's habits Aubrey was hiently catechised thepoet's , his brother, and his nephew, scrupulously writing down each detail as it came to him, in the minutee of lives which he supplied to Antony Wood to be worked up in his Athenae and Fasti Aubrey was only an antiquarian collector, and was mainly dependent on what could be learned from the family None of Milton's family, and least of all Edward Phillips, were of a capacity to apprehend moral or s out and his cos in, of the clothes he wore, the dates of events, the names of his acquaintance In compensation for the want of observation on the part of his own kith and kin, Milton hiotiss in nus From what he directly communicates, and from what he unconsciously betrays, we obtain an internal life of the mind, more ample than that external life of the bodily machine, which e to Aubrey and Phillips

In our own generation all that printed books or written docuht together by Professor David Masson, in whose Life of Milton we have the lishman It is a noble and final monument erected to the poet's me to write of Milton alter Mr Masson is that his life is in six volues The present outline is written for a different class of readers, those, namely, who cannot afford to know more of Milton than can be told in soes

A fa the name in all probability from the parish of Great Milton near Thame, is found in various branches spread over Oxfordshi+re and the adjoining counties in the reign of Elisabeth The poet's grandfather was a substantial yeo at Stanton St John, about five miles from Oxford, within the forest of Shotover, of which he was also an under-ranger The ranger's son John was at school in Oxford, possibly as a chorister, conformed to the Established Church, and was in consequence cast off by his father, who adhered to the old faith The disinherited son went up to London, and by the assistance of a friend was set up in business as a scrivener A scrivener discharged some of the functions which, at the present day, are undertaken for us in a solicitor's office John Milton the father, being a man of probity and force of character, was soon on the way to acquire ”a plentiful fortune” But he continued to live over his shop, which was in Bread Street, Cheapside, and which bore the sign of the Spread Eagle, the fale that his eldest son, John Milton, was born, 9th Dece thus exactly contemporary with Lord Clarendon, who also died in the sa roll of our poets who have been natives of the city which now never sees sunlight or blue sky, along with Chaucer, Spenser, Herrick, Cowley, shi+rley, Ben Jonson, Pope, Gray, Keats Besides attending as a day-scholar at St Paul's School, which was close at hand, his father engaged for hile not only enjoyed civic prosperity, but some share of that liberal cultivation, which, if not ie ever confers The scrivener was not only an as, and airs found their way into the best collections of h master of St Paul's at that tie, Oxford, as ”estee up youth, that none in his ti, as, or had been, curate to Mr Gataker, of Rotherhithe, itself a certificate of ratitude Milton's fourth elegy is addressed to Young, when, in 1627, he was settled at Ha first infused into his pupil a taste for classic literature and poetry Biographers have derived Milton's Presbyterianism in 1641 fro, a Scotchman, and one of the authors of the S of Milton's anic whole-”whose seed was in itself,” self-deterion or casual impact

Of Milton's boyish exercises two have bean preserved They are English paraphrases of two of the Davidic Psalht by hi in the sa about them No words are so commonplace but that they can be rapher And even in these school exercises we think we can discern that the future poet was already a diligent reader of Sylvester's Du Bartas (1605), the patriarch of Protestant poetry, and of Fairfax's Tasso (1600) There are other indications that, from very early years, poetry had assumed a place in Milton's mind, not merely as a juvenile pasti Gill, son of the high master, a school-fellow of Milton, went up to Trinity, Oxford, where he got into trouble by being inforworth, who reported incautious political speeches of Gill to his Godfather, Laud With Gill Milton corresponded; they exchanged their verses, Greek, Latin, and English, with a confession on Milton's part that he prefers English and Latin coe is to sing to the deaf Gill, Milton finds ”a severe critic of poetry, however disposed to be lenient to his friend's atteenius did not announce itself in his paraphrases of Psal, ”which I seized with such eagerness that froe, I scarce ever went to bed before ht” Such is his own account And it is worthnotice that we have here an incidental test of the trustworthiness of Aubrey's re he studied very hard, and sate up very late, coht; and his father ordered the e at sixteen, not earlier than the usual age at that period As his school was of St Andrew's), itscholar would have been placed at Oxford However, it was detere, where he was admitted a pensioner of Christ's, 12th February, 1625, and co Perhaps his father feared the growing High Church, or, as it was then called, Arminianism, of his own university It so happened, however, that the tutor to whoned was specially noted for Arminian proclivities This was William Chappell, then Fellow of Christ's, who so recommended himself to Laud by his party zeal, that he was advanced to be Provost of Dublin and Bishop of Cork

Milton was one of those pupils who are ainst a tutor than to take a ply fro divine-Chappell co-a narrow ecclesiastic of the type loved by Land, was exactly the man ould drive Milton into opposition But the tutor of the seventeenth century was not able, like the easy-going tutor of the eighteenth, to leave the young rebel to pursue the reading of his choice in his own cha the scholastic highway of exercises Milton, returning to Caer for the acquisition of wisdoed fro some frivolous declamation!” Indocile, as he confesses hiainst either the discipline or the exercises exacted by college rules He was punished Aubrey had heard that he was flogged, a thing not iives an instance of corporal chastisement as late as 1667 Aubrey's statement, however, is a dubitative interlineation in his MS, and Milton's age, seventeen, as well as the silence of his later detractors, who raked up everything which could be told to his disadvantage, concur to make us hesitate to accept a fact on so slender evidence Anyhow, Milton was sent away froe for a ti unpleasant which had occurred That it was so of which he was not asha to it himself in the lines written at the tiistri Caeteraque ingenio non subeunda meo

And that the tutor was not considered to have been wholly free from blame is evident from the fact that the master transferred Milton fro Whatever the nature of the punishment, it was not what is known as rustication; for Milton did not lose a terular course, at the earliest date from his matriculation permitted by the statutes The one outbreak of juvenile petulance and indiscipline over, Milton's force of character and unusual attainments acquired him the esteeiven him in derision by his fellow-students, is an attestation of virtuous conduct Ten years later, in 1642, Milton takes an opportunity to ”acknowledge publicly, with all grateful mind, that more than ordinary respect which I found, above many of my equals, at the hands of those courteous and learned e wherein I spent sorees, as the nified many ways how much better it would content them that I would stay; as byrespect, both before that tiood affection towards me”

The words ”how much better it would content theht to hint at the offer of a fellowshi+p at Christ's It is highly improvable that such an offer was ever made There had been two vacancies in the roll of fellows since Milton had becoree, and he had been passed over in favour of juniors It is possible that Milton was not statutably eligible, for, by the statutes of Christ's, there could not be, at one time, more than two felloere natives of the sa, as Milton's junior, was put in, not by college election, but by royal enerally, it is not literature or general acquirements which recommend a candidate for endowed posts, but technical skill in the prescribed exercises, and a pedagogic intention

Further than this, had a fellowshi+p in his college been attainable, it would not have had s, residence in college, with teaching, and orders in the church With neither of these two conditions was Milton prepared to coree, Milton enty-four, he had been seven years in college, and had therefore sufficient experience what college life was like He as so ientum prava” in the Bodleian library, could not have patiently consorted with the vulgar-es of that day Even Mede, though the author of Clavis Apocalyptica was steeped in the soulless clericalise, could not support his brother-felloithout frequent retire to be joined with such coe's (the Master of Christ's) good pleasure for a supply of pupils; to have to live in daily intercourse with the Powers and the Chappells, such as we know them from Mede's letters, was an existence to which only the want of daily bread could have driven Milton Happily his father's circumstances were not such as to make a fellowshi+p pecuniarily an object to the son If he longed for ”the studious cloister's pale,” he had been, now for seven years, near enough to college life to have dispelled the dream that it was a life of lettered leisure and philosophic retiree tutor finally supplanted the university professor, a system which implied the substitution of excercises perforiven by the teacher Whatever advantages this systeradation of the teacher, as thus dispensed fro only to attend to forrossed by the details of scholastic superintendence, and the frivolous worry of academical business Admissions, matriculations, disputations, declarees, public reception of royal and noble visitors, filled every hour of his day, and left no time, even if he had had the taste, for private study To teaching, as we shall see, Milton was far fro as he understood it, a teaching which should expand the intellect and raise the character, not dexterity in playing with the verbal formulae of the disputations of the schools

Such an occupation could have no attractions for one as even nowIl Penseroso (composed 1633) At twenty he had already confided to his schoolfellow, the younger Gill, the secret of his discontent with the Cae, ”are barely one or tho do not flutter off, all unfledged, into theology, having gotten of philology or of philosophy scarce so y they are content with just what is enough to enable the towards his Alma Mater in 1641, when he wrote (Reason of Church Governe, which as in the tireatly admired, so now much less”

On a review of all these indications of feeling, I should conclude that Milton never had serious thoughts of a college fellowshi+p, and that his antipathy arose from a sense of his own incompatibility of temper with academic life, and was not, like Phineas Fletcher's, the result of disappointed hopes, and a sense of injury for having been refused a fellowshi+p at King's One consideration which remains to be mentioned would alone be decisive in favour of this view A fellowshi+p required orders Milton had been intended for the church, and had been sent to college with that view By the tie, at twenty-four, it had become clear, both to himself and his fa to the trammels of church formularies His later mind, about 1641, is expressed by himself in his own forcible style,-”The church, to whose service by the intention of my parents and friends I was destined of a child, and into so what tyranny had invaded in the church, that he ould take orders ht it better to prefer a blaht and begun with servitude and forswearing” When he took leave of the university, in 1632, he had perhaps not developed this distinct antipathy to the establishe, and written in the winter of 1631-32, he does not put forward any conscientious objections to the clerical profession, but only apologises to the friend to who choice of so from an unconscious distaste In a mind of the consistent texture of Milton's, e in consciousness We shall not be wrong in asserting that when he left Cae in 1632, it was already is, that he should have taken orders in the Church of England, or a fellowshi+p of which orders were a condition

CHAPTER II

RESIDENCE AT HORTON-L'ALLEGRO-IL PENSEROSO-ARCADES-COMUS-LYCIDAS

Milton had been sent to college to quality for a profession The church, the first intended, he had gradually discovered to be incompatible Of the law, either his father's branch, or soht, but to have speedily dise of twenty-four he returned to his father's house, bringing nothing with him but his education and a silent purpose The elder Milton had now retired froh John was the eldest son, there were two other children, a brother, Christopher, and a sister, Anne To have no profession, even a nominal one, to be above trade and below the status of squire or yeo an idle life, was conduct which required justification Milton felt it to be so In a letter addressed, in 1632, to soe, naood watchht pass on, for so I call my life as yet obscure and unserviceable to mankind, and that the day with me is at hand, wherein Christ cos He knows that what he is doing with himself is the best he can do His ai, and therefore his probationin the garden of Armida His is a ”reatest things” He knows that the looker-on will hardly accept his apology for ”being late,” that it is in order to being ”y he can offer And he is dissatisfied with his own progress ”I a suspicious of myself, and do take notice of a certain belatedness in me”

Of this frame of mind the record is the second sonnet, lines which are an inseparable part of Milton's biography-

How soon hath Tidays fly on with full career, Butno bud or blossoht deceive the truth That I to manhood am arrived so near, And inward ripeness doth much less appear, That some more timely-happy spirits endu'th

Yet, be it less or more, or soon or slow, It shall be still in strictest h, Tohich Tirace to use it so, As ever in reat Taskh unforreatest deeds,” Milton retired to his father's house in the country Five more years of self-education, added to the seven years of academical residence, were not too much for theYears reat events and distracting interests, were to pass over before the body and shape of Paradise Lost was given to these is

The country retirement in which the elder Milton had fixed hie of Horton, situated in that southernham, which insinuates itself between Berks and Middlesex Though London was only about seventeen miles distant, it was the London of Charles I, with its population of some 300,000 only; before coaches and h the village, was still a river, and not the kennel of a paper-mill There was no lack of water and woods al towers of Windsor-”bosoh in tufted trees,” to crown the landscape Unbroken leisure, solitude, tranquillity of ht indispensable to poetical meditation (Epist910), no poet's career was ever commenced undercontrast with the le with poverty, or abandonhted the early years of so many of our men of letters