The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland Volume II Part 11

Pliny's Panegyric, a Speech in the Senate, wherein public Thanks are presented to the Emperor Trajan, by C. Plenius Caecilius Secundus, Consul of Rome, Oxon, 1644.

Leander's Letter to Hero, and her Answer, printed with the Loves; 'tis taken from Ovid, and has Annotations written upon it by Sir Robert.

A Survey of the Manners and Actions of Mankind, with Arguments, Marginal Notes, and Annotations, clearing the obscure Places, out of the History of the Laws and Ceremonies of the Romans, London, 1647, 8vo. with the author's preface before it. It is dedicated to Henry, Marquis of Dorchester, his patron.

The History of the Low-Country War, or de bello Gallico, &c. 1650, folio, written in Latin by Famia.n.u.s Strada. Our author paid the last debt to nature on the eleventh day of July, 1669, and was buried in the Abbey of St. Peter at Westminster. He was uncle to Dr. Miles Stapleton of Yorkshire, younger brother to Dr. Stapleton, a Benedictine Monk, who was president of the English Benedictines at Delaware in Lorraine, where he died, 1680.

Footnote: 1. Wood's Fasti, vol. ii. p. 23.

Dr. JASPER MAIN.

This poet was born at Hatherleigh, in the Reign of King James I. He was a man of reputation, as well for his natural parts, as his acquired accomplishments. He received his education at Westminster school, where he continued 'till he was removed to Christ Church, Oxon, and in the year 1624 admitted student. He made some figure at the university, in the study of arts and sciences, and was sollicited by men of eminence, who esteemed him for his abilities, to enter into holy orders; this he was not long in complying with, and was preferred to two livings, both in the gift of the College, one of which was happily situated near Oxford.

Much about this time King Charles I. was obliged to keep his court at Oxford, to avoid being exposed to the resentment of the populace in London, where tumults then prevailed, and Mr. Main was made choice of, amongst others, to preach before his Majesty. Soon after he was created doctor of divinity, and resided at Oxford, till the time of the mock visitation, sent to the university, when, amongst a great many others, equally distinguished for their loyalty and zeal for that unfortunate Monarch, he was ejected from the college, and stript of both his livings. During the rage of the civil war, he was patronized by the earl of Devonshire, at whose house he resided till the restoration of Charles II. when he was not only put in possession of his former places, but made canon of Christ's Church, and arch-deacon of Chichester, which preferments he enjoyed till his death. He was an orthodox preacher, a man of severe virtue, a ready and facetious wit.

In his younger years he addicted himself to poetry, and produced two plays, which were held in some esteem in his own time; but as they have never been revived, nor taken notice of by any of our critics, in all probability they are but second rate performances.

The Amorous War. a Tragedy, printed in 4to. Oxon. 1658.

The City Match, a Comedy, acted before the King and Queen in Whitehall, and afterwards on the stage in Black Fryars, with great applause, and printed in 4to. Oxon. 1658. These two plays have been printed in folio, 4to, and 8vo. and are bound together.

Besides these dramatic pieces, our author wrote a Poem upon the Naval Victory over the Dutch by the Duke of York, a subject which Dryden has likewise celebrated in his Annus Mirabilis. He published a translation of part of Lucian, said to be done by Mr. Francis Hicks, to which he added some dialogues of his own, though Winstanley is of opinion, that the whole translation is also his. In the year 1646, --47, --52, --62, he published several sermons, and entered into a controversy with the famous Presbyterian leader, Mr. Francis Cheynel, and his Sermon against False Prophets was particularly levelled at him. Cheynel's Life is written by a gentleman of great eminence in literature, and published in some of the latter numbers of of the Student, in which the character of that celebrated teacher is fully displayed. Dr. Main likewise published in the year 1647 a book called The People's War examined according to the Principles of Scripture and Reason, which he wrote at the desire of a person of quality. He also translated Dr.

Donne's Latin Epigrams into English, and published them under the t.i.tle of, A Sheaf of Epigrams.

On the 6th of December, 1642, he died, and his remains were deposited on the North side of the choir in Christ's Church. In his will he left several legacies for pious uses: fifty pounds for the rebuilding of St. Paul's; a hundred pounds to be distributed by the two vicars of Ca.s.sington and Burton, for the use of the poor in those parishes, with many other legacies.

He was a man of a very singular turn of humour, and though, without the abilities, bore some resemblance to the famous dean of St.

Patrick's, and perhaps was not so subject to those capricious whims which produced so much uneasiness to all who attended upon dean Swift.

It is said of Dr. Main, that his propension to innocent raillery was so great, that it kept him company even after death. Among other legacies, he bequeathed to an old servant an old trunk, and somewhat in it, as he said, that would make him drink: no sooner did the Dr.

expire, than the servant, full of expectation, visited the trunk, in hopes of finding some money, or other treasure left him by his master, and to his great disappointment, the legacy, with which he had filled his imagination, proved no other than a Red Herring.

The ecclesiastical works of our author are as follow,

1. A Sermon concerning Unity and Agreement, preached at Carfax Church in Oxford, August 9, 1646. 1 Cor. i. 10.

2. A Sermon against False Prophets, preached in St. Mary's Church in Oxford, shortly after the surrender of that garrison, printed in 1697.

Ezek. xxii. 28. He afterwards published a Vindication of this Sermon from the aspersions of Mr. Cheynel.

3. A Sermon preached at the Consecration of the Right Reverend Father in G.o.d, Herbert, Lord Bishop of Hereford, 1662. 1 Tim. iv. 14.

4. Concio ad Academiam Oxoniensem, pro more habita inchoante Jermino, Maii 27, 1662.

As a specimen of his poetry, we present a copy of verses addressed to Ben Johnson.

Scorn then, their censures, who gave't out, thy wit As long upon a comedy did fit, As elephants bring forth: and thy blots And mendings took more time, than fortune plots; That such thy draught was, and so great thy thirst, That all thy plays were drawn at Mermaid[1] first: That the King's yearly b.u.t.t wrote, and his wine Hath more right than those to thy Cataline.

Let such men keep a diet, let their wit, Be rack'd and while they write, suffer a fit: When th' have felt tortures, which outpain the gout; Such as with less the state draws treason out; Sick of their verse, and of their poem die, Twou'd not be thy wont scene--

Footnote: 1. A tavern in Bread-street.

JOHN MILTON.

The British nation, which has produced the greatest men in every profession, before the appearance of Milton could not enter into any compet.i.tion with antiquity, with regard to the sublime excellencies of poetry. Greece could boast an Euripides, Eschylus, Sophocles and Sappho; England was proud of her Shakespear, Spenser, Johnson and Fletcher; but then the ancients had still a poet in reserve superior to the rest, who stood unrivalled by all succeeding times, and in epic poetry, which is justly esteemed the highest effort of genius, Homer had no rival. When Milton appeared, the pride of Greece was humbled, the compet.i.tion became more equal, and since Paradise Lost is ours; it would, perhaps, be an injury to our national fame to yield the palm to any state, whether ancient or modern.

The author of this astonishing work had something very singular in his life, as if he had been marked out by Heaven to be the wonder of every age, in all points of view in which he can be considered. He lived in the times of general confusion; he was engaged in the factions of state, and the cause he thought proper to espouse, he maintained with unshaken firmness; he struggled to the last for what he was persuaded were the rights of humanity; he had a pa.s.sion for civil liberty, and he embarked in the support of it, heedless of every consideration of danger; he exposed his fortune to the vicissitudes of party contention, and he exerted his genius in writing for the cause he favoured.

There is no life, to which it is more difficult to do justice, and at the same time avoid giving offence, than Milton's, there are some who have considered him as a regicide, others have extolled him as a patriot, and a friend to mankind: Party-rage seldom knows any bounds, and differing factions have praised or blamed him, according to their principles of religion, and political opinions.

In the course of this life, a dispa.s.sionate regard to truth, and an inviolable candour shall be observed. Milton was not without a share of those failings which are inseparable from human nature; those errors sometimes exposed him to censure, and they ought not to pa.s.s unnoticed; on the other hand, the apparent sincerity of his intentions, and the amazing force of his genius, naturally produce an extream tenderness for the faults with which his life is chequered: and as in any man's conduct fewer errors are seldom found, so no man's parts ever gave him a greater right to indulgence.

The author of Paradise Lost was descended of an ancient family of that name at Milton, near Abingdon in Oxfordshire. He was the son of John Milton a money-scrivener, and born the 9th of December, 1608. The family from which he descended had been long seated there, as appears by the monuments still to be seen in the church of Milton, 'till one of them, having taken the unfortunate side in the contests between the houses of York and Lancaster, was deprived of all his estate, except what he held by his wife[1]. Our author's grandfather, whose name was John Milton, was under-ranger, or reaper of the forest of Shotover, near Halton in Oxfordshire: but a man of Milton's genius needs not have the circ.u.mstance of birth called in to render him ill.u.s.trious; he reflects the highest honour upon his family, which receives from him more glory, than the longest descent of years can give. Milton was both educated under a domestic tutor, and likewise at St. Paul's school under Mr. Alexander Gill, where he made, by his indefatigable application, an extraordinary progress in learning. From his 12th year he generally sat up all night at his studies, which, accompanied with frequent head-aches, proved very prejudicial to his eyes. In the year 1625 he was entered into Christ's College in Cambridge, under the tuition of Mr. William Chappel, afterwards bishop of Ross in Ireland, and even before that time, had distinguished himself by several Latin and English poems[2]. After he had taken the degree of master of arts, in 1632 he left the university, and for the s.p.a.ce of five years lived with his parents at their house at Horton, near Colebrook in Buckinghamshire, where his father having acquired a competent fortune, thought proper to retire, and spend the remainder of his days. In the year 1634 he wrote his Masque of Comus, performed at Ludlow Castle, before John, earl of Bridgwater, then president of Wales: It appears from the edition of this Masque, published by Mr. Henry Lawes, that the princ.i.p.al performers were, the Lord Barclay, Mr. Thomas Egerton, the Lady Alice Egerton, and Mr. Lawes himself, who represented an attendant spirit.

The Prologue, which we found in the General Dictionary, begins with the following lines.

Our stedfast bard, to his own genius true, Still bad his muse fit audience find, tho' few; Scorning the judgment of a trifling age, To choicer spirits he bequeath'd his page.

He too was scorned, and to Britannia's shame, She scarce for half an age knew Milton's name; But now his fame by every trumpet blown, We on his deathless trophies raise our own.

Nor art, nor nature, could his genius bound: Heaven, h.e.l.l, earth, chaos, he survey'd around.

All things his eye, thro' wit's bright empire thrown, Beheld, and made what it beheld his own.

In 1637 Our author published his Lycidas; in this poem he laments the death of his friend Mr. Edward King, who was drowned in his pa.s.sage from Chester on the Irish seas in 1637; it was printed the year following at Cambridge in 4to. in a collection of Latin and English poems upon Mr. King's death, with whom he had contracted the strongest friendship. The Latin epitaph informs us, that Mr. King was son of Sir John King, secretary for Ireland to Queen Elizabeth, James I. and Charles I. and that he was fellow in Christ's-College Cambridge, and was drowned in the twenty-fifth year of his age. But this poem of Lycidas does not altogether consist in elegiac strains of tenderness; there is in it a mixture of satire and severe indignation; for in part of it he takes occasion to rally the corruptions of the established clergy, of whom he was no favourer; and first discovers his acrimony against archbishop Laud; he threatens him with the loss of his head, a fate which he afterwards met, thro' the fury of his enemies; at least, says Dr. Newton, I can think of no sense so proper to be given to the following verses in Lycidas;

Besides what the grim wolf, with privy paw, Daily devours apace, and nothing said; But that two-handed engine at the door, Stands ready to smite once, and smite no more.

Upon the death of his mother, Milton obtained leave of his father to travel, and having waited upon Sir Henry Wotton, formerly amba.s.sador at Venice, and then provost of Eaton College, to whom he communicated his design, that gentleman wrote a letter to him, dated from the College, April 18, 1638, and printed among the Reliquiae Wottonianae, and in Dr. Newton's life of Milton. Immediately after the receipt of this letter our author set out for France, accompanied only with one man, who attended him thro' all his travels. At Paris Milton was introduced to the famous Hugo Grotius, and thence went to Florence, Siena, Rome, and Naples, in all which places he was entertained with the utmost civility by persons of the first distinction.

When our author was at Naples he was introduced to the acquaintance of Giovanni Baptista Manso, Marquis of Villa, a Neapolitan n.o.bleman, celebrated for his taste in the liberal arts, to whom Ta.s.so addresses his dialogue on friendship, and whom he likewise mentions in his Gierusalemme liberata, with great honour. This n.o.bleman shewed extraordinary civilities to Milton, frequently visited him at his lodgings, and accompanied him when he went to see the several curiosities of the city. He was not content with giving our author these exterior marks of respect only, but he honoured him by a Latin distich in his praise, which is printed before Milton's Latin poems.

Milton no doubt was highly pleased with such extreme condescension and esteem from a person of the Marquis of Villa's quality; and as an evidence of his grat.i.tude, he presented the Marquis at his departure from Naples, his eclogue, ent.i.tled Mansus; which, says Dr. Newton, is well worth reading among his Latin poems; so that it may be reckoned a peculiar felicity in the Marquis of Villa's life to have been celebrated both by Ta.s.so and Milton, the greatest poets of their nation. Having seen the finest parts of Italy, and conversed with men of the first distinction, he was preparing to pa.s.s over into Sicily and Greece, when the news from England, that a civil war was like to lay his country in blood, diverted his purpose; for as by his education and principles he was attached to the parliamentary interest, he thought it a mark of abject cowardice, for a lover of his country to take his pleasure abroad, while the friends of liberty were contending at home for the rights of human nature. He resolved therefore to return by way of Rome, tho' he was dissuaded from pursuing that resolution by the merchants, who were informed by their correspondents, that the English jesuits there were forming plots against his life, in case he should return thither, on account of the great freedom with which he had treated their religion, and the boldness he discovered in demonstrating the absurdity of the Popish tenets; for he by no means observed the rule recommended to him by Sir Henry Wotton, of keeping his thoughts close, and his countenance open.

Milton was removed above dissimulation, he hated whatever had the appearance of disguise, and being naturally a man of undaunted courage, he was never afraid to a.s.sert his opinions, nor to vindicate truth tho' violated by the suffrage of the majority.

Stedfast in his resolutions, he went to Rome a second time, and stayed there two months more, neither concealing his name, nor declining any disputations to which his antagonists in religious opinions invited him; he escaped the secret machinations of the jesuits, and came safe to Florence, where he was received by his friends with as much tenderness as if he had returned to his own country. Here he remained two months, as he had done in his former visit, excepting only an excursion of a few days to Lucca, and then crossing the Appenine, and pa.s.sing thro' Bologna, and Ferrara, he arrived at Venice, in which city he spent a month; and having shipped off the books he had collected in his travels, he took his course thro' Verona, Milan, and along the Lake Leman to Geneva. In this city he continued some time, meeting there with people of his own principles, and contracted an intimate friendship with Giovanni Deodati, the most learned professor of Divinity, whose annotations on the bible are published in English; and from thence returning to France the same way that he had gone before, he arrived safe in England after an absence of fifteen months, in which Milton had seen much of the world, read the characters of famous men, examined the policy of different countries, and made more extensive improvements than travellers of an inferior genius, and less penetration, can be supposed to do in double the time. Soon after his return he took a handsome house in Aldersgate-street, and undertook the education of his sister's two sons, upon a plan of his own. In this kind of scholastic solitude he continued some time, but he was not so much immersed in academical studies, as to stand an indifferent spectator of what was acted upon the public theatre of his country.

The nation was in great ferment in 1641, and the clamour against episcopacy running very high, Milton who discovered how much inferior in eloquence and learning the puritan teachers were to the bishops, engaged warmly with the former in support of the common cause, and exercised all the power of which he was capable, in endeavouring to overthrow the prelatical establishment, and accordingly published five tracts relating to church government; they were all printed at London in 4to. The first was int.i.tled, Reformation touching Church Discipline in England, and the Causes that have hitherto hindered it: two books written to a friend. The second was of Prelatical Episcopacy, and whether it may be deducted from Apostolical Times, by virtue of those Testimonies which are alledged to that purpose in some late treatises; one whereof goes under the name of James Usher archbishop of Armagh.

The third was the Reason of Church Government urged against the Prelacy, by Mr. John Milton, in two books. The fourth was Animadversions upon the Remonstrants Defence against Smectymnuus; and the fifth an Apology for a Pamphlet called, a Modest Confutation of the Animadversions upon the Remonstrants against Smectymnuus; or as the t.i.tle page is in some copies, an Apology for Smectymnuus, with the Reason of Church Government, by John Milton.

In the year 1643 Milton married the daughter of Richard Powel, Esq; of Forrest-hill in Oxfordshire; who not long after obtaining leave of her husband to pay a visit to her father in the country, but, upon repeated messages to her, refusing to return, Milton seemed disposed to marry another, and in 1644 published the Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce; the Judgment of Martin Bucer concerning Divorce, and the year following his Tetrachordon and Colasterion. Mr. Philips observes, and would have his readers believe, that the reason of his wife's aversion to return to him was the contrariety of their state principles. The lady being educated in loyal notions, possibly imagined, that if ever the regal power should flourish again, her being connected with a person so obnoxious to the King, would hurt her father's interest; this Mr. Philips alledges, but, with submission to his authority, I dissent from his opinion. Had she been afraid of marrying a man of Milton's principles, the reason was equally strong before as after marriage, and her father must have seen it in that light; but the true reason, or at least a more rational one, seems to be, that she had no great affection for Milton's person.

Milton was a stern man, and as he was so much devoted to study, he was perhaps too negligent in those endearments and tender intercourses of love which a wife has a right to expect. No lady ever yet was fond of a scholar, who could not join the lover with it; and he who expects to secure the affections of his wife by the force of his understanding only, will find himself miserably mistaken: indeed it is no wonder that women who are formed for tenderness, and whose highest excellence is delicacy, should pay no great reverence to a proud scholar, who considers the endearments of his wife, and the caresses of his children as pleasures unworthy of him. It is agreed by all the biographers of Milton, that he was not very tender in his disposition; he was rather boldly honourable, than delicately kind; and Mr. Dryden seems to insinuate, that he was not much subject to love. "His rhimes, says he, flow stiff from him, and that too at an age when love makes every man a rhymster, tho' not a poet. There are, methinks, in Milton's love-sonnets more of art than nature; he seems to have considered the pa.s.sion philosophically, rather than felt it intimately."

In reading Milton's gallantry the breast will glow, but feel no palpitations; we admire the poetry, but do not melt with tenderness; and want of feeling in an author seldom fails to leave the reader cold; but from whatever cause his aversion proceeded, she was at last prevailed upon by her relations, who could foresee the dangers of a matrimonial quarrel, to make a submission, and she was again received with tenderness.