Homes and Haunts of the Most Eminent British Poets Part 5

A story has been repeatedly told as the occasion of Milton's Italian journey, and very generally believed, which Todd has shown to be told also in the preface to "Poesies de Marguerite, Eleanore Clotilde, depuis Madame de Surville, Poete Francaise du xv. Siecle," of another poet, a Louis de Puytendre, exactly agreeing in all the particulars, except that the ladies were on foot. That Milton needed no such romantic incentive to his Italian tour is self-evident, having a sufficient one in his cla.s.sical and poetic tastes; but as it appeared in a newspaper, and obtained general credence, it may be worth transcribing.

"It is well known that in the bloom of youth, and when he pursued his studies at Cambridge, this poet was extremely beautiful. Wandering one day, during the summer, far beyond the precincts of the University, into the country, he became so heated and fatigued that, reclining himself at the foot of a tree to rest, he fell asleep. Before he woke, two ladies, who were foreigners, pa.s.sed in a carriage; agreeably astonished at the loveliness of his appearance, they alighted, and having admired him, as they thought, unperceived, for some time, the youngest, who was very handsome, drew a pencil from her pocket, and having written some lines upon a piece of paper, put it with her trembling hand into his own; immediately afterward they proceeded on their journey. Some of his acquaintances, who were in search of him, had observed this silent adventure, but at too great a distance to discover that the highly-favored party in it was our ill.u.s.trious poet. Approaching nearer, they saw their friend, to whom, being awakened, they mentioned what had happened; Milton opened the paper, and with surprise read these verses from Guarini, Madrigal xii., ed. 1598:

'Occhi, stelle mortali, Ministre de miei mali-- Se chiusi m'uccidete, Aperti che farete?'

"'Ye eyes, ye human stars! ye authors of my liveliest pangs! If thus, when shut, ye wound me, what must have proved the consequence had ye been open?" Eager from this moment to find the fair _incognita_, Milton traversed, but in vain, through every part of Italy. His poetic fervor became incessantly more and more heated by the idea which he had formed of his unknown admirer; and it is in some degree to _her_ that his own times, the present times, and the latest posterity, must feel themselves indebted for several of the most impa.s.sioned and charming compositions of the Paradise Lost."

Now, to say nothing of the incoherence of this story--of the questions that naturally suggest themselves, of how these young men, too far off to recognize their companion as the object of this flattering attention, could know that the ladies were foreigners, and that the one who wrote the paper was the _youngest_, and was very handsome--it is evident that, had a young Cantab found himself awaking, nowadays, under a tree, with a paper of Italian verses in his hand, and his comrades ready with a story of a couple of beautiful young ladies, foreigners, traveling in a carriage, and the _youngest_, who was very handsome, putting this paper into his hand, he would very naturally have deemed himself the subject of a most palpable quiz. Yet did the world, in a simpler age, not only gravely receive this narrative as a fact, but Anna Seward did it into verse.

Returned from Italy, not from the vain quest after an imaginary and romantic fair one, but with his mind stored with knowledge and poetic imagery, which he had not pursued in vain, Milton took up his residence in London, in order to be ready, as occasion presented itself, to serve his country. He had no longer the inducement to return to Horton. He had seen his mother laid in the grave before he went; his father had probably quitted Horton when the civil war broke out, and betaken himself to the security of Reading, a fortified town; for on the surrender of that town to the Earl of Ess.e.x, in 1643, the old man came up to London to his son, with whom he continued to reside till his death, about four years afterward.

During the five years spent by Milton at Horton, between leaving Cambridge and setting out on his travels, he did not entirely bury himself there in his cla.s.sical books and poetic musings in the woods and fields. He had occasional lodgings in London, in order to cultivate music, for which he had always a great pa.s.sion, to prosecute his mathematics, to procure books, to enjoy the society of his friends, among whom were many of his old college friends, and, no doubt, to perfect himself in the speaking of the French and Italian languages, which it is not to be supposed he could do at Horton. Now, however, duty as well as inclination fixed him almost wholly in London. Great events were transpiring, and he felt a persuasion that he must bear his part in them. There was one circ.u.mstance which drew him for a while from the metropolis, and it was this. He became attached to a young lady in Oxfordshire, and is supposed to have made some abode in the place of her residence. "The tradition," says Todd, "that he did reside at this beautiful village of Forest Hill, near Shotover, is general, though none of his biographers a.s.sert the circ.u.mstance. Madame du Bocage, in her entertaining 'Letters concerning England,' &c., relates that, 'visiting, in June, 1750, Baron Shutz and lady, at their house near Shotover Hill, they showed me, from a small eminence, _Milton's House_, to which I bowed with all the reverence with which that poet's memory inspires me.'" And the same writer quotes this interesting account of the place and circ.u.mstance from a letter of Sir William Jones: "The necessary trouble of correcting the first printed sheets of my history prevented me to-day from paying a proper respect to the memory of Shakspeare, by attending his jubilee. But I resolved to do all the honor in my power to as great a poet, and set out in the morning, in company with a friend, to visit a place where Milton spent some part of his life, and where, in all probability, he composed several of his earliest compositions. It is a small village on a pleasant hill, about five miles from Oxford, called Forest Hill, because it formerly lay contiguous to a forest, which has since been cut down. The poet chose this place of retirement after his first marriage, and he describes the beauties of this retreat in that fine pa.s.sage of his L'Allegro:

'Sometime walking not unseen, By hedgerow elms, on hillocks green,-- While the plowman, near at hand, Whistles o'er the furrowed land, And the milkmaid singeth blithe, And the mower whets his scythe And every shepherd tells his tale Under the hawthorn in the dale.

Straight mine eye hath caught new pleasures, While the landscape round it measures; Russet lawns, and fallows gray, Where the nibbling flocks do stray; Mountains, on whose barren breast The laboring clouds do often rest; Meadows trim with daisies pied, Shallow brooks and rivers wide; Towers and battlements it sees Bosom'd high in tufted trees; Hard by, a cottage chimney smokes From betwixt two aged oaks,' &c.

"It was neither the proper season of the year, nor time of the day, to hear all the rural sounds, and see all the objects mentioned in this description; but, by a pleasing concurrence of circ.u.mstances, we were saluted on our approach to the village with the music of the mower and his scythe; we saw the plowman intent upon his labor, and the milkmaid returning from her country employment.

"As we ascended the hill, the variety of beautiful objects, the agreeable stillness and natural simplicity of the whole scene, gave us the highest pleasure. We at length reached the spot whence Milton undoubtedly took most of his images: it is on the top of a hill, from which there is a most extensive prospect on all sides. The distant mountains, that seemed to support the clouds; the village and turrets, partly shrouded in trees of the finest verdure, and partly raised above the groves that surrounded them; the dark plains and meadows, of a grayish color, where the sheep were feeding at large; in short, the view of the streams and rivers, convinced us that there was not a single useless or idle word in the above-mentioned description, but that it was a most exact and lively representation of nature. Thus will this fine pa.s.sage, which has always been admired for its elegance, receive an additional beauty from its exactness. After we had walked, with a kind of poetical enthusiasm, over this enchanted ground, we returned to the village.

"The poet's house was close to the church; the greatest part of it has been pulled down; and what remains belongs to an adjacent farm. I am informed that several papers, in Milton's own hand, were found by the gentleman who was last in possession of the estate. The tradition of his having lived there is current among the villagers: one of them showed me a ruinous wall that made part of his chamber, and I was much pleased with another who had forgotten the name of Milton, but recollected him by the t.i.tle of The Poet.

"It must not be omitted, that the groves near this village are famous for nightingales, which are so elegantly described in the Penseroso.

Most of the cottage windows are overgrown with sweet-briers, vines, and honey-suckles; and that Milton's habitation had the same rustic ornament, we may conclude from his description of the lark bidding him good-morrow:

Through the sweet-brier, or the vine, Or the twisted eglantine;

for it is evident that he meant a sort of honey-suckle by the eglantine; though that word is commonly used for the sweet-brier, which he could not mention twice in the same couplet.

"If ever I pa.s.s a month or six weeks at Oxford in the summer, I shall be inclined to hire and repair this venerable mansion, and to make a festival for a circle of friends in honor of Milton, the most perfect scholar, as well as the sublimest poet that our country ever produced.

Such an honor will be less splendid, but more sincere and respectful, than all the pomp and ceremony on the banks of the Avon."

That Sir William might be, and probably was mistaken in supposing that the Allegro was written at Forest Hill, I think is apparent from the character of that poem and of the Penseroso, which bear, to me, evident marks of a more youthful muse than the Comus and the Lycidas. They deal more in mere description, and, what is more, the poet himself placed them in his original volume, prior to those poems, as if written prior.

The images quoted by Sir William will apply to a thousand other scenes in England, and where Milton himself never was. They are such as a thousand hill-tops in our beautiful pastoral land can show us. They may be found equally in his earlier haunts in Buckinghamshire. Nevertheless, Shotover is not the less interesting, nor do the scenes the less apply to it. There Milton undoubtedly did walk and muse,

"By hedgerow elms on hillocks green,"

and hear the plowman's whistle, the milkmaid's song, and the mower's ringing scythe, and rest his eye on its landscape, tinted and varied as he describes it. There he saw the distant mountains of Wales, and the shepherds under the hawthorns, down in the dales below him, each "telling his tale;" that is, not telling a story to some one, or making love, but "telling the tale," or number of his flock, before penning them for the night, or letting them loose in the morning.

That Milton lived at Forest Hill some time, there is no doubt; but when, and how long, and how often, are points that now can not be very well cleared up. Sir William Jones represents him to have chosen this retirement after his first marriage. Now Milton was not married before 1643, at which time he was in his thirty-fifth year. But Comus and Lycidas were written long before then, and so, no doubt, were L'Allegro and Il Penseroso. Mosely, in his Address to the Reader, in the volume of Milton's poems containing all these pieces, published in 1645, tells us that these poems were known to be written, and that he solicited them to accompany Lycidas and Comus; and Milton, in presenting this volume to his friend Rouse, says plainly that they were the productions of his early youth:

"Gemelle cultu simplici gaudens liber, Fronde licit gemina, Munditiaque nitens non operosa; Quem _ma.n.u.s attulit Juveniles olim_, Secula tamen haud nimii poetae," &c.

This settles the question of the location of the poems; but the question of when, and how long, and how often Milton resided at Forest Hill, still remains. That he did not reside there long, _immediately_ after his marriage, is very clear, from the statement of his nephew and biographer, Phillips. "About Whitsuntide, or a little after, he took a journey into the country: n.o.body about him certainly knowing the reason, or that it was more than a journey of recreation. After a month's stay, home he returns a married man, that went out a bachelor; his wife being Mary, the eldest daughter of Mr. Richard Powell, then a justice of peace, of _Forestil_, near Shotover, in Oxfordshire." This account is confirmed by Anthony Wood, who states that Milton courted, married, and brought his wife to his house in London in one month's time; and that she was very young. She continued, however, as we shall presently see, only a few weeks with her husband, and returned to Forest Hill.

Now, as Milton kept this courtship so profound a secret, it is quite probable that it might be going on much longer than any of his friends were aware of. When he set out on his journey, of which n.o.body knew the cause, he no doubt knew it. Somewhere, and some time before, he had most likely seen this Mary Powell--where, and how long before, who shall now say? It is possible, therefore, that, for aught any one of his friends knew, he might have been at Forest Hill, and sojourning there occasionally, attracted by this attachment; and that he now set out with an intention of bringing his courtship to an end, as he did. As it turned out, his wife was discontented with the dullness of his dwelling, being accustomed to much gayety at home, and left him. Of this we shall speak more anon, but here we are inquiring only into the probability of the extent of his residence or residences at Forest Hill. The marriage took place in the midst of the Revolutionary wars. Soon after, the house and property of Mr. Powell, Milton's father-in-law, were seized by the Parliamentary army, he being a Cavalier; and the wife, who had deserted her husband in her father's prosperity, now, in his adversity, came back, and soon brought her father and family, to seek protection under the roof so coolly abandoned before. The father-in-law and family appear to have lived with Milton till 1647, or about three years.

Mary Powell, Milton's first wife, died in 1652, or about nine years after her marriage. Now, these nine years were all years of the ascendency of the Parliamentary power, and consequently of danger and uncertainty to the Powell family. It must be to Milton's interest with Cromwell that they must look for any kind of security; and during these nine years there would be many occasions when Milton might find it agreeable to spend a certain time in the country, and at Forest Hill. It is said that Mr. Powell, Milton's father-in-law, had, indeed, another mansion in the neighborhood, and allowed Milton and his family occasional occupation of this. Thus, though Milton, from his post as Latin secretary to Cromwell, and from his continual engagements in the cause of the Commonwealth, always had, and must have, his house in London, it is quite likely that during these nine years he resided, in the summer months, not unfrequently at Forest Hill.

Warton has said that he composed some of his later productions there. It would be just the retreat for such purposes, when he required close and unbroken retirement from the excitements and personal interruptions of town. Mr. Richards, a sub-commissioner under a recent commission of the reign of George III., gave Mr. Todd this intelligence: "Milton married a daughter of Justice Powell, of Sandhurst, in the vicinity of Oxford, and lived in a house at Forest Hill, about three miles from Sandhurst, where the late laureate Warton told me Milton wrote a great part of his Paradise Lost. Warton found a number of papers of Milton's own writing in that house, and also many of Justice Powell's, which the late Mr.

Crewe, father to the late Viscountess Falmouth, permitted him to take, and make what use of them he thought proper. The late Mr. Mickle translated part of Camoens' Luciad in the same house, he being, at the time I visited him, a lodger in that house. Mr. Mickle married the daughter of Mr. Tomkins, a farmer, the tenant to Mr. Crewe. The time I allude to of visiting my worthy friend Mickle was in 1772 and 1773; and my conversations had with Mr. Warton and Mr. Crewe were from 1781 to 1786."

Having now clearly settled the fact that Forest Hill, near Shotover, was a residence of Milton, and probably through a course of nine years, at various times, and the scene of some of those great literary and political works on which he was arduously engaged during those years; and that while his birth-place in Bread-street, and his parental home at Horton, were both destroyed, this has been nearly so, we will now notice a little more closely the condition of his home during those nine years of his first marriage. That marriage appears to have been a great mistake; to have destroyed to a great degree his domestic comfort, and to have occasioned the world to entertain a very unfavorable idea of Milton's disposition. The facts, drawn from his various biographers, are briefly these.

At Whitsuntide, in 1643, and in his thirty-fifth year, as we learn from his nephew Phillips, in the pa.s.sage quoted, he married Mary, the daughter of Richard Powell, living at Forest Hill, near Shotover, and a justice of peace for Oxfordshire. He brought his wife to London. She was very young, and had been accustomed to a gay life. According to Aubrey, "she was brought up and bred where there was a great deal of company and merriment, as dancing, &c.; and when she came to live with her husband, she found it solitary, no company coming to her; and she often heard her nephews cry and be beaten. This life was irksome to her, and so she went to her parents." Phillips says the same; that she was averse to the philosophic life of Milton, and sighed for the mirth and jovialness to which she had been accustomed in Oxfordshire. It was a great mistake altogether. Milton was now a man of a sober age; he was yet but a schoolmaster, though he had a large and handsome house in Aldersgate-street, in a garden. This was necessary for the accommodation of his pupils, as well as for his quiet study, and prosecution of those great questions of the age in which he was engaged, writing for the Republican cause, and against its enemies. All this must have been immensely dull to a young girl, who, from all the glimpses we can get of her, was, though perhaps handsome and fascinating, but of an ordinary nature, and one who had been educated to frivolity and mere enjoyment of the fashionable gayeties of life. What was more, the very work on which Milton was zealously engaged, the defense of the Parliamentary cause, and the defeat of the kingly, and which abstracted him from her society, was perfect poison to her and her family--all high Royalists.

"Her relations," says Phillips, "being generally addicted to the Cavalier party, and some of them possibly engaged in the king's service, who at this time had his headquarters at Oxford, and was in some prospect of success, they began to repent them of having matched the eldest daughter of the family to a person so contrary to them in opinion; and thought it would be a blot in their escutcheon, whenever that events should come to flourish again."

It was these circ.u.mstances, operating together, which induced his young wife to desert Milton. All that we can learn confirms the idea that her family was a regularly worldly-minded one; and the only wonder is that they should ever have agreed to the match at all. Milton was then comparatively unknown. He was but a schoolmaster, and must have been pretty well known to all that came in contact with him to hold very liberal opinions. However, scarcely was the match made, than the family began to suspect they had made a great blunder. The wife asked leave, after a week, to go home and see her parents; and the whole affair reminds us of the matrimonial history of a great poet of our own day.

The wife goes home in good humor, and then sends her husband word that she does not mean to come back again. It does not appear that the wife or wife's friends ever set up the plea that Milton was mad, however they might think so. Luckily, Milton was a sober, moderate man, and not accustomed to run into debt. Had he, like Lord Byron, been pretty well dipped in debt, and expecting a large property with his wife, and not immediately getting it, but, on the contrary, all his creditors on his back in the expectation of it, he might have been quite as mad as he was. Like Lord Byron, however, he had not nine executions in his house in one week--enough to craze the sanest creature; and so Milton went on for a good while, calmly and manfully laboring at his _Areopagitica_, or Speech for the Liberty of Unlicensed Printing, one of the n.o.blest works in our language. His wife had gone home, at the invitation of her friends, to spend the remaining part of the summer with them: we have seen _why_ they invited her. The good, easy man gave her leave to stay till Michaelmas. Michaelmas came, but no wife; the visit had only been a pretense for desertion. He sent for her, and she refused to come. He sent letter after letter; these remained unanswered. He dispatched a messenger to bring her home; the messenger was dismissed from her father's house with contempt. This very properly moved his spirit, and he resolved to repudiate her. To justify this bold step, he published four treatises on divorce: The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce; The Judgment of Martin Bucer concerning Divorce; his famous _Tetrachordon_, or Expositions upon the four chief places of Scripture which treat of Marriage, or Nullities of Marriage; and _Colasterion_. It is probable that the lady and her friends would have thanked him for the divorce, had the world gone well with them; and that, like the great poet of our time, he might have lived and died without further sight of his pretty runaway; but the political scene was now fast changing. The royal power was rapidly waning; the Powells were getting into trouble, or foresaw it fast approaching, from their active partic.i.p.ation in the royal cause.

Milton, on the other hand, was fast rising into popular note. He was the very man that they were likely to need in the coming storm; and, with true worldly policy, they forgot all their pride and insults--were willing to forget the offended husband's public exposure of his wife's conduct, and his active measures for repudiation; and a plan was laid for retaking him. The plot was thus laid: Milton was accustomed to visit a relative in St. Martin's-le-Grand; and here, as it had been concerted on her part, he was astonished to see his wife come from another apartment, and, falling on her knees before him, beg forgiveness for her conduct. After some natural astonishment, and some reluctance on his part to a reconciliation, after what had pa.s.sed, he at length gave way to her tears, and forgave and embraced her.

"Soon his heart relented Toward her, his life so late, and sole delight, Now at his feet submissive in distress."

It has been supposed that the impression made upon his imagination and his feelings, on this occasion, contributed no little to his description of the scene in Paradise Lost, in which Eve addresses herself to Adam for pardon and peace.

And certainly Milton, on this occasion, displayed no little magnanimity and n.o.bility of character. His domestic peace and reputation had been most remorselessly attacked, yet, says Fenton, "after this reunion, so far was he from retaining an unkind memory of the provocations which he had received from her ill conduct, that when the king's cause was entirely oppressed, and her father, who had been active in his loyalty, was exposed to sequestration, Milton received both him and his family to protection and free entertainment in his own house, till his affairs were accommodated by his interest with the victorious faction." The old father-in-law had to smart for his attachment to the royal cause. He was publicly announced as a delinquent, and fined 576, 12_s._, 3_d._; besides that his house was seized by the Parliamentary party.

It would be agreeable if from this time we could find data for believing that the returned wife and her friends showed a generous sense of the kindness of the poet. But we can not. It appears from Milton's nuncupative will, that the old man never paid him a penny of the promised marriage portion of 1000; and that the three daughters, too true daughters of such a mother, had behaved to him very undutifully.

The whole of the view that we obtain of the Powell family is of a piece.

After the royal power was restored, and Milton was in danger and disgrace, we hear of no protection afforded by them to him; no protecting roof extended, no countenance even to the daughters, their mother now being dead; but the father being poor, and out of favor, the daughters were suffered to take their fate. One died early, having married a master-builder; one died single; and the third married a weaver in Spitalfields. It should be recollected that all three daughters survived their father as well as mother, yet it does not appear that they received the slightest notice or a.s.sistance from their rich relations of Shotover. Yet his third daughter, Deborah, had great need of it, and, in many respects, well deserved it. She lived to the age of seventy-six. This is the daughter that used to read to her father, and was well known to Richardson and Professor Ward: a woman of a very cultivated understanding, and not inelegant of manners. She was generously patronized by Addison, and by Queen Caroline, who sent her a present of fifty guineas. She had seven sons and three daughters, of whom Caleb and Elizabeth are remembered. Caleb emigrated to Fort Saint George, where, perhaps, he died. Elizabeth, the youngest daughter, married Thomas Foster, a weaver in Spitalfields, as her mother had done before her, and had seven children, who all died. She is said to have been a plain, sensible woman, and kept a petty grocer's or chandler's shop, first at Lower Holloway, and afterward at c.o.c.k-lane, near Sh.o.r.editch Church. In April, 1750, Comus was acted for her benefit: Doctor Johnson, who wrote the prologue, says, "She had so little acquaintance with diversion or gayety, that she did not know what was intended when a benefit was offered her." The profits of the performance were only 67, the expenses being deducted, although Dr. Newton contributed largely, and Jacob Tonson gave 20. On this trifling augmentation to their small stock, she and her husband removed to Islington, where they both soon died.

Such is the history of Milton's posterity; that of Shakspeare was sooner terminated, though the descendants of his sister Joan still exist, in a poverty disgraceful to the nation.

With his two succeeding wives, Milton appears to have lived in great harmony and affection. His second wife, a daughter of Captain Woodc.o.c.k, of Hackney, died in child-birth within a year of their marriage; and his sonnet to her memory bears testimony to his tender regard for her. His third wife, Elizabeth Minshull, of Cheshire, survived him, and went to reside in her native county, among her own relatives.

From this melancholy review of Milton's domestic history, let us now return to his homes in London after his return from Italy. He came back with great intentions, but to the humble occupation of a schoolmaster; and here we encounter one of the most disgraceful pieces of chuckling over his lowly fate, to be found in that most disgraceful life of our great poet and patriot, by Dr. Johnson. The Lives of the Poets, by Johnson, in the aggregate, do him no credit. In point of research, even, they are extremely deficient; but the warped and prejudiced spirit in which they are written destroy them as authority. On Milton's head, however, Johnson poured all the volume of his collected bile. Such a piece of writing upon the greatest epic poet, as well as one of the most ill.u.s.trious patriots of the nation, is a national insult of the grossest kind. Take this one pa.s.sage as a specimen of the whole. "Let not our veneration for Milton forbid us to look with some degree of merriment on great promises and small performances; on the man who hastens home because his countrymen are contending for their liberty, and, when he reaches the scene of action, vapors away his patriotism in a private boarding-school." The pa.s.sage is as false as it is malicious. Milton did not promise to come home and put himself at the head of armies or of senates. He knew where his strength lay, and he came to use it, and did use it most effectually. He did not say, "I will be another Cromwell,"

but he became the Cromwell of the pen. It was precisely because he was poor--that he had no interest or connections to place him in the front ranks of action, that he showed the greatness of his resolve, in hastening to the scene of contest, and standing ready to seize such opportunity as should offer, to strike for his country and for liberty.

He desired to do his duty in the great strife, whatever might be the part he could gain to play; and had he only sincerely desired to do that, and had yet not done it for want of opportunity, he would still have been worthy of praise for his laudable desire.

But every thing that Milton promised he performed: who performed so much? He did not make great promises, and show small performances; he did not vapor away his patriotism in a private boarding-school. He took to a school, because he must live; but he soon showed that every moment not required for teaching his private pupils was ardently and unceasingly devoted to teaching the nation and the world. His pen was worth a thousand swords; his thoughts flew about and slew faster than bullets or cannon-b.a.l.l.s; his word became the word of exhortation and command to his country. In his hand lay victory, not for the day and the time only, but for all time. Shame to the old bigoted lexicographer!

must every true son of his country and lover of truth exclaim, when he reads what Milton wrote and what he did. To say nothing of his Tractate of Education, and a number of other works; to say nothing of his Paradise Lost, and all his other n.o.ble poems; all breathing the most lofty and G.o.dlike sentiments--those sentiments which create souls of fire, of strength and truth, in every age as it arises; what are his _Areopagitica_? his Tenure of Kings and Magistrates? his _Eiconoclastes_? his _Defensio Populi_? his _Defensio Secunda_? his Treatise on the Means of Removing Hirelings out of the Church? his Civil Power in Ecclesiastical Cases? his State Letters, written at the command of Cromwell and the Parliament? Are these nothing? If ever there was a magnificent monument of human genius, of intellectual power, and glorious patriotism, built up by one man, it exists in these immortal works. Vapored away his patriotism in a private boarding-school! There was no private boarding-school which could long hold such vaporing as this; it was of a kind that did, or it needs must, come forth to the face of the government, the country, and mankind. The poor schoolmaster, who on the plains of Italy heard the cry of his country for help, flew to her rescue as confidently as if he had been a prince, with fleets and armies at his command. In a poor hired dwelling he prepared his missiles and warlike machines. Men like Johnson, in the bigotry of despotism, might despise him and them; for they were but a few quires of paper and a gray goose-quill; but he soon shot that quill higher against the towers of royalty, deeper into the ranks of the oppressors, than ever the bullets of Cromwell and Fairfax could pierce. His papers flew abroad, the unfurled banners of liberty, before which kings trembled, and the stoutest myrmidons dropped their arms. The poor schoolmaster became speedily the oracle of the government. His Tenure of Kings and Magistrates vindicated in unanswerable eloquence the right of nations to call their monarchs to account for their offenses against the laws. His Defense of the People from the accursed charges of the hireling Salmasius flew through Europe, and struck kings and servile senates dumb. By the side of Cromwell the visage of the blind but divine old man was seen, with awe and wonder; the learned and the wise from distant realms came to gaze upon the unequaled twain; and when the inspired secretary exclaimed,

"Avenge, O Lord, thy slaughtered saints, whose bones Lie scatter'd on the Alpine mountains cold,"

the guilty persecutors shrunk aghast, for they knew that where the voice of Milton could reach, the arm of Cromwell could reach too. Who shall say how much of the renown of England at that day sprung from the pen and soul of John Milton! how much he inspired of that which Cromwell did! and how much of the grand march of political and social renovation, which is now going on throughout the world, originated in the vaporings of the poor schoolmaster! Before his fame how pales that of him who has dared thus to revile him! What are all the works of Johnson--and we are inclined to give them their fullest due--when compared with those of Milton, and their consequences? Before him

"Whose soul was like a star, and dwelt apart,"

it became the man who so worthily chastised the meanness of a Chesterfield, to have bowed with humility and reverential love. As it is, we turn with disgust from this humiliating spectacle, of Johnson, the reviler of the n.o.ble dead, to Johnson, the friend of Goldsmith, the vindicator of Savage, and the sympathizer with the poor and suffering.

Of all the various residences of Milton in London, as I have remarked, scarcely one has escaped the ravages of the fire, and the progress of improvement and population. The habit which he had of selecting houses standing in gardens, on account of their quietness, has more than any thing else tended to sweep them away. These places, as population increased, were naturally crowded, and the detached houses pulled down to make way for regular streets. His first lodging was in St. Bride's Church-yard, Fleet-street, on his return from Italy. Here he began educating his two nephews, John and Edward Phillips. Of this lodging nothing now remains. The house, as I learn from an old and most respectable inhabitant of St. Bride's parish, who lives in the church-yard, and very near the spot, was on the left hand, as you proceed toward Fleet-street through the avenue. It was a very small tenement, very old, and was burned down on the 24th of November, 1824, at which time it was occupied by a hair-dresser. It was--a proof of its age--without party walls, and much decayed. The back part of the Punch-office now occupies its site.

These lodgings were too small, and he took a garden-house in Aldersgate-street, situated at the end of an entry, that he might avoid the noise and disturbance of the street. To his nephews he here added a few more pupils, the sons of his most intimate friends. This house was large and commodious, affording room for his library and furniture. Here he commenced his career of pure authorship, all he did having public reform and improvement for its object. Here he wrote, as a fitting commencement, a treatise Of Reformation, to a.s.sist the Puritans against the bishops, as he deemed the Puritans deficient in learning for the defense of the great principles they were contending for. That Milton would turn out a stern reformer of church matters, might be clearly seen from a pa.s.sage in his Lycidas, written before he was twenty-nine years old. In this he is said even to antic.i.p.ate the execution of Laud. The pa.s.sage is curious:

"How well could I have spared for thee, young swain.

Enow of such as for their bellies' sake Creep, and intrude, and climb into the fold?

Of other care they little reckoning make Than how to scramble at the shearers' feast, And shove away the worthy bidden guest; Blind mouths! that scarce themselves know how to hold A sheep-hook, or have learn'd aught else the least That to the faithful herdman's art belongs!

What recks it them? What need they? They are sped; And when they list, their lean and flashy songs Grate on their scrannel pipes of wretched straw; The hungry sheep look up and are not fed, But swoln with wind, and the rank mist they draw, Rot inwardly, and foul contagion spread: Besides what the grim wolf with privy paw Dayly devours apace, and nothing said; But that two-handed engine at the door Stands ready to smite once, and smites no more."