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-The Project Gutenberg EBook of A Day with John Milton, by May Byron
-
-This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
-almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
-re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
-with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org/license
-
-
-Title: A Day with John Milton
-
-Author: May Byron
-
-Release Date: July 3, 2012 [EBook #40130]
-
-Language: English
-
-Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
-
-*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A DAY WITH JOHN MILTON ***
-
-
-
-
-Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Steven Brown and the Online
-Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-[Illustration: Colour plate of book cover]
-
-[Illustration: Byron portrait plate]
-
-
-    PARADISE LOST. BK. XII. _Painting by S. Meteyard._
-
-    "They, hand in hand, with wandering steps and slow,
-    Through Eden took their solitary way."
-
-                           (_Paradise Lost. Bk. XII._)
-
-
-[Illustration: Paradise lost plate]
-
-
-
-
-    A DAY WITH
-    JOHN MILTON
-
-    BY MAY BYRON
-
-
-[Illustration: "Angel" plate]
-
-
-    HODDER & STOUGHTON
-
-
-
-
-    _In the same Series._
-
-    _Tennyson._
-    _Browning._
-    _E. B. Browning._
-    _Burns._
-    _Byron._
-    _Longfellow._
-    _Whittier._
-    _Rossetti._
-    _Shelley._
-    _Scott._
-    _Coleridge._
-    _Morris._
-    _Wordsworth._
-    _Whitman._
-    _Keats._
-    _Shakespeare._
-
-
-
-
-A DAY WITH JOHN MILTON
-
-
-About four o'clock on a September morning of 1665,--when the sun was
-not yet shining upon his windows facing the Artillery Fields, and the
-autumnal dew lay wet upon his garden leaves,--John Milton awoke with
-his customary punctuality, and, true to his austere and abstemious mode
-of life, wasted no time over comfortable indolence. He rose and
-proceeded to dress, with the help of his manservant Greene. For,
-although he was but fifty-four years in age, his hands were partly
-crippled with gout and chalkstones, and his eyes, clear, bright and blue
-as they had always been to outward seeming, were both stone-blind.
-
-Milton still retained much of that personal comeliness which had won
-him, at Cambridge, the nickname of "Lady of Christ's College." His
-original red and white had now become a uniform pallor; his thick,
-light brown hair, parted at the top, and curling richly on his
-shoulders--(no close-cropt Roundhead this!)--was beginning to fade
-towards grey. But his features were noble and symmetrical; he was
-well-built and well-proportioned; and he was justified in priding
-himself upon a personal appearance which he had never neglected or
-despised. In his own words, he was "neither large nor small: at no time
-had he been considered ugly; and in youth, with a sword by his side, he
-had never feared the bravest."
-
-Such was the man who now, neatly dressed in black, was led into his
-study, upon the same floor as his bedroom,--a small chamber hung with
-rusty green,--and there, seated in a large old elbow-chair, received the
-morning salutations of his three daughters.
-
-One after another they entered the room, and each bestowed a
-characteristic greeting upon her father. Anne, the eldest, a handsome
-girl of twenty, was lame, and had a slight impediment in her speech. She
-bade him good-morning with a stammering carelessness, enquired casually
-as to his night's rest, and stared out of window, palpably bored at the
-commencement of another monotonous, irksome day. Mary, the second,
---dark, impetuous, and impatient,--was in a state of smouldering
-rebellion. She addressed him in a tone of almost insolent mock-civility,
---he must needs have been deaf as well as blind not to detect the
-unfilial dislike beneath her words. Ten-year-old Deborah, the most
-affectionate of the three, ventured to kiss her father, even to stroke
-his long, beautiful hair, and to re-tie the tassels of his collar.
-
-"Mary will read to me this morning," said Milton, gravely inclining his
-head in acknowledgment of Deborah's attentions. The dark girl, with a
-mutinous shrug of her shoulders, sat down and began to read aloud, in a
-hard, uninterested voice, out of the great leather-bound Hebrew Old
-Testament which lay upon the table. And not one single sentence did she
-understand--not one word of what she was reading.
-
-John Milton's theories of education, which he had expounded at length in
-pamphlets, were a curious blend of the practical and the ideal. Vastly
-in advance of his time in his demand for a practical training, he had
-evolved that "fine definition which has never been improved upon,"--"I
-call a complete and generous education that which fits a man to perform,
-justly, skilfully and magnanimously, all the offices, both private and
-public, of peace and war." But he made no allowances for slowness or
-stupidity: all his schemes were based upon the existence of scholars
-equally gifted with himself. And he entirely left out of all
-calculations, much as a Mahommedan might, that complex organism the
-female mind. He wished it, one must conjecture, to remain a blank. So
-his daughters had received no systematic schooling, only some sort of
-home-instruction from a governess. And he had himself trained them to
-read aloud in five or six languages,--French, Italian, Latin, Greek,
-Hebrew and even Syriac,--in total ignorance of the meaning.
-"One tongue," observed Milton brusquely, almost brutally, "is enough
-for any woman."
-
-Mary read on, steadily, stolidly, sullenly, for a full hour. The others
-had left the room and were busy upon household tasks. At the conclusion
-of two chapters, "Leave me," commanded Milton, "I would be alone now for
-contemplation,"--and Mary willingly escaped to breakfast.
-
-The great poet reclined in his chair,--wrapt in such solemn and
-melancholy meditation as might have served as the model for his own
-_Penseroso_. A severe composure suffused his fine features, a serious
-sadness looked out of his unclouded eyes; his entire expression was
-"that of English intrepidity mixed with unutterable sorrow." For Milton
-was a bitterly disappointed man.
-
-It was not merely his comparative poverty,--because the Restoration,
-besides depriving him of his post as Latin or Foreign Secretary to the
-Commonwealth Council of State, had reduced his means from various
-sources almost to vanishing point.
-
-Nor was his melancholy mainly the result of his affliction; that he had
-deliberately incurred, and was as deliberately enduring. Constant
-headaches, late study, and perpetual recourse to one nostrum after
-another, had eventuated in the certainty of total blindness if he
-persisted in his mode of work.
-
-    "The choice lay before me between dereliction of a supreme duty and
-     loss of eyesight; ... and I therefore concluded to employ the
-     little remaining eyesight I was to enjoy in doing this, the
-     greatest service to the common weal it was in my power to render."
-
-No: it was not a personal matter which could sadden John Milton to the
-very roots of his stern, ambitious, courageous soul. It was the
-contravention of all that he held most dear in life,--the frustration,
-as he conceived it, of that liberty which was his very heart's blood by
-the Restoration of the Stuart monarchy. He had resolved, in his own
-words, to transfer into the struggle for liberty "all my genius and all
-the strength of my industry." It appeared that he had flung away both
-in vain. The Stuart monarchy, to him, lay monstrously black,
-overshadowing all the land, like his own conception of Satan.
-
-The Restoration was not merely the political defeat of his party, it was
-the total defeat of the principles, of the religious and social ideals,
-with which Milton's life was bound up. He had always stood aloof from
-the other salient men of the time. Of Cromwell he had practically no
-personal knowledge: with the bulk of the Presbyterians he was openly at
-enmity. "Shut away behind a barrier of his own ideas," he did not care
-to associate with men of less lofty intellectual standing. But now he
-was even more isolated. Since the downfall of the Puritan régime, he of
-necessity "stood alone, and became the party himself." And he presented,
-in his _Samson Agonistes_, "the intensest utterance of the most intense
-of English poets--the agonised cry of the beaten party," condensed into
-the expression of one unflinching and heroic soul.
-
-Upon the mysterious and inscrutable decrees of Providence, which had
-laid in the dust what seemed to him the very cause of God, Milton sat
-and pondered, in a despondency so profound, a disappointment so
-poignant, that his own great lines had sought in vain to voice it:
-
-    "... I feel my genial spirits droop,
-    My hopes all flat: Nature within me seems
-    In all her functions weary of herself;
-    My race of glory run, and race of shame,
-    And I shall shortly be with them that rest."
-
-                          (_Samson Agonistes_).
-
-Yet his indomitable spirit was by no means quenched in despair: and an
-outlet was now open to him at last, which for eighteen years he had
-foregone,--the outlet of poetic expression. He was conscious of his
-capacity to travel and to traverse the regions which none had dared
-explore save Dante. And with that tremendous chief of pioneers he was
-measuring himself, man to man.
-
-He was able, above the turmoil of faction and the tumult of conflicting
-troubles, to weigh
-
-    "... his spread wings, at leisure to behold
-    Far off the empyreal Heaven, extended wide
-    In circuit, undetermined square or round,
-    With opal towers and battlements adorned
-    Of living sapphire, once his native seat."
-
-                           (_Paradise Lost_).
-
-That Milton had been silent for so long a period was due, firstly to his
-preoccupation with political and polemical questions, into which he had
-thrown the whole weight of his mind; and, secondly, to the effect of his
-own firm resolve that the great epic, which, he had always secretly
-intended, should be the outcome of matured and ripened powers: the
-apotheosis of all that was worthiest in him: the full fruit of his
-strenuous life. He had long since arrived at that conclusion, never
-surpassed in its terseness and truth, that true poetry must be "simple,
-sensuous, impassioned,"--words which might serve as the text and
-touchstone of art. "And long it was not after" when he
-
-    "was confirmed in this opinion, that he who would not be frustrate of
-     his hope to write well hereafter in laudable things, ought himself to
-     be a true poem."
-
-For poetry, to John Milton, was no sounding brass or tinkling cymbal; in
-his hand "the thing became a trumpet," apt to seraphic usages and the
-rallying of celestial cohorts.
-
-Therefore, when he ceased to touch the "tender stops of various quills"
-that trembled into silence in _Lycidas_, it was not as one discomfited
-of his attainment. Rather it was as one convinced of a mighty purpose,
-and patiently awaiting the just time of its fulfilment. The "woodnotes
-wild" of _Comus_, the exquisitely stippled _genre_ painting of
-_Allegro_ and _Penseroso_, were mere childish attempts compared with
-that monumental work to which Milton firmly proposed to devote the
-fruition of his genius. And now, having become a man through mental and
-physical experience even more than through the passage of years, he had
-put away childish things. He had resolved at last upon, and had at last
-undertaken, the one subject most congenial to his taste, and most
-suitable to his style and diction. _Paradise Lost_ was the triumphant
-offspring of his brain. It had sprung, like light, from chaos. Out of
-the darkness of poverty, blindness and defeat arose the poem which was
-to set him on the pinnacles of Parnassus.
-
-"You make many enquiries as to what I am about" he wrote in bygone years to
-his old schoolfellow, Charles Diodati. "What am I thinking of? Why with
-God's help, of immortality! Forgive the word, I only whisper it in your
-ear. Yes, I am pluming my wings for a flight." Nor was this the idle
-boasting of an egotist, the empty imagination of a dreamer.
-
-Consumed by "the desire of honour and repute and universal fame,
-seated," as he put it, "in the breast of every true scholar," Milton
-sedulously and assiduously had prepared himself for the achievement of
-his aims. That he should "strictly meditate the thankless Muse" required
-a certain self-control. "To scorn delights and live laborious days" is
-not the customary delight of a handsome young scholar, expert in
-swordsmanship as in languages. To equip himself for his self-chosen
-task, still a misty, undefined prospect in the remotest future, required
-strenuous and disciplined study; and necessitated his forgoing too
-frequently the scenes of rustic happiness which he had pictured so
-charmingly in _L'Allegro_,--absenting himself from "The groves and
-ruins, and the beloved village elms ... where I too, among rural scenes
-and remote forests, seemed as if I could have grown and vegetated
-through a hidden eternity."
-
-And this, though Milton had neither the eye nor the ear of a born
-nature-lover, was in itself a sufficient deprivation and sacrifice. For
-beauty appealed to him with a most earnest insistence,--and the purer,
-the more abstract form it took, the more urgent was that appeal. "God
-has instilled into me, at all events," he declared, "a vehement love of
-the beautiful. Not with so much labour is Ceres said to have sought
-Proserpine, as I am wont, day and night, to search for the idea of the
-beautiful through all forms and faces of things, and to follow it
-leading me on with certain assured traces."
-
-Yet not alone among "forms and faces" was he predestined to discover
-that Absolute Beauty. The passionate love of music, so frequently
-characteristic of a great linguist, which led him into sound-worlds as
-well as sight-worlds, was fated to remain with him, an incalculable
-consolation, when "forms and faces" could be no more seen. And into the
-vocabulary of _Paradise Lost_, that incomparably rich vocabulary, with
-its infallible ear for rhythm, for phrase, for magnificent consonantal
-effects and the magic of great names that reverberate through open
-vowels,--into this he poured forth his whole sense of beautiful sound,
-
-         "as the wakeful bird
-    Sings darkling, and in shadiest covert hid,
-    Tunes her nocturnal note."
-
-_Paradise Lost_ remains, as has been observed, "The elaborated outcome
-of all the best words of all antecedent poetry--the language of one who
-lives in the companionship of the great and the wise of all past time,
-equally magnificent in verbiage, whether describing man, or God, or the
-Arch-Enemy visiting" this pendent world, when
-
-    Thither, full fraught with mischievous revenge,
-    Accursed, and in a cursed hour, he lives.
-
-At seven o'clock the body-servant Greene re-entered, followed by Mrs.
-Milton, the poet's third wife, and by Mary Fisher, their maid-servant,
-bringing in his breakfast, a light, slight repast. Mrs. Milton, _née_
-Elizabeth Minshull, of Nantwich, was a comely, active, capable woman,
-"of a peaceful and agreeable humour," so far at least as her husband was
-concerned: for she shared the traditional destiny of a stepmother in not
-"hitting it off" with the first wife's daughters. Her golden hair and
-calm commonsense were in striking contrast, alike with the dark beauty
-and petulant spirit of Mary Powell, and with the fragile sweetness of
-Catherine Woodcock, Milton's former spouses. If she did not in her heart
-confirm her husband's celebrated theory of the relative position of man
-and wife,--"He for God only, she for God in him,"--(which, it has been
-said, "condenses every fallacy about woman's true relation to her
-husband and to her Maker"), she managed very adroitly to convey an
-impression of entire acquiescence in the will of her lord. And at least
-she was entirely adequate as a housewife.
-
-Had Milton ever encountered that "not impossible She" whom he portrayed
-in his ideal Eve? or was this latter a mere visionary abstract of great
-qualities, "to show us how divine a thing a woman may be made"? Neither
-of his three wives, nor yet that "very handsome and witty gentlewoman,"
-Miss Davis, to whom he had at one time paid his addresses, conformed to
-this description: one cannot even conjecture that it was a _pasticcio_
-of their respective fine attributes.
-
-Mrs. Milton, third of that name, as she bustled and busied herself about
-the study, was by no means a new Eve. She regarded her husband's
-ambitions and achievements with that good natured tolerance so
-characteristic of the materially-minded. Only genius can appreciate
-genius; and the man who shut himself away from his _confrères_ in
-scholarship and literature was not likely to unbosom himself to his
-housewifely, provincial wife.
-
-
-    COMUS.   _Painting by S. Meteyard._
-
-    Sabrina rises attended by water nymphs,
-        "By the rushy-fringed bank,
-        Where grows the willow and the osier dank,"
-
-                                         (_Comus_).
-
-
-[Illustration: Comus colour plate]
-
-
-The manservant Greene, breakfast being concluded, read aloud, or wrote
-to his master's dictation for some hours. This had formerly been the
-girls' daily office, but they were revolting more and more,--the whole
-position was becoming untenable, for they resented the presence of their
-stepmother as much as they disliked the duties which fettered them to
-their father's side, and forced them to parrot-like, futile drudgery in
-unknown tongues. To-day, however, Greene was relieved of the task, for
-which he was manifestly but ill-fitted, by the entrance of Milton's two
-favourite visitors.
-
-No celebrity ever had fewer friends. From all who might have called
-themselves such, he was separated by hostility of party, rancour of
-sect or by that almost repellent isolation of character to which
-reference has already been made. When at the highest of his political
-fame, he had almost boasted himself of this "splendid isolation,"--"I
-have very little acquaintance with those in power, inasmuch as I keep
-very much to my own house, and prefer to do so." At heart a Republican
-beyond the conception of any Roundhead,--cherishing a form of religion
-so recondite that it could be classed under no heading, since he ignored
-both public worship and family prayer,--having given offence to all and
-sundry by his outspoken theories upon divorce and divine right,--Milton
-presented to most men a dangerous personality. And most of all now, when
-the wits of the Restoration roués could be sharpened upon him, and when
-the heathen, as he considered them, roistered and ruffled it through the
-city that had "returned to her wallowing in the mire."
-
-Yet those who had sat at his feet as pupils, retained a singular
-affection for their former master. For all such young folk as adopted
-the disciple's attitude, the stern self-contained man had a very soft
-spot in his heart. With such, he was not only instructive, but genial,
-almost cheerful; and they alone could move him to the only utterances
-which were neither "solemn, serious or sad." Chief among his former
-pupils were those who now made entrance--Henry Lawrence and Cyriac
-Skinner.
-
-It may be guessed, therefore, with what pleasure the blind poet received
-these loyal and affectionate men. His pensive face became transformed
-with interest and animation, as with gentle courtesy and unfeigned
-delight he turned his sightless eyes from one speaker to another. Upon
-every subject he had a ready flow of easy, colloquial conversation,
-seasoned with shrewd satire: his deep and musical voice ran up and down
-the whole gamut of worthy topics. Sometimes he fell into the stately,
-almost stilted diction of his great prose pamphlets,--sometimes he spoke
-in racy English vernacular,--sometimes, warming to his subject, he
-assumed an almost fiery eloquence. But when, at twelve o'clock, he was
-escorted downstairs to dinner in the parlour, the metamorphosis was
-complete. This was no longer the brooding introspective man of the early
-morning, but one "extreme pleasant in his conversation," almost merry in
-society so congenial,--the life of the party: abstinent, but not ascetic,
-having a healthy, human enjoyment of the dishes set before him.
-
-"These are the victuals most to my liking," he observed as he ate,
-"being seasonable and withal of no great cost. For that which is of great
-rarity or richness, and must be procured with care or toil, hath no
-temptation for me."
-
-"I do always my best, Mr. Milton," replied his wife, "that you shall be
-well satisfied: and methinks to-day I have hit your taste right fairly."
-
-"God ha' mercy, Betty," said Milton, regarding her with an air of kindly
-tolerance, "I see thou wilt perform according to thy promise in providing
-me such dishes as I think fit while I live; and when I die, thou knowest
-I have left thee all." Here Anne, Mary and Deborah sat up very straight,
-and directed looks of fury and astonishment towards their stepmother.
-
-"Talk not o' dying, in God's name, man," responded the embarrassed Betty,
-"we have enough to do to make shift to live, nowadays," and she hastily
-pressed her good but simple fare, homely Cheshire dishes well-prepared,
-upon the two guests. "Such a many learned foreign folk have visited our
-poor house these latter days,--time hath failed me for my
-cheese-cakes,--and of the havercakes I made two days agone, why, not a
-crumb is left. But eat, my masters, eat and drink. Though these be but
-country victuals, none of your Court kickshaws, I warrant you they are
-fresh and savoury. I would commend you, now, to this rabbit pie--"
-
-"Peace, Betty, peace. The woman prates o' pies like a pie (magpie)
-herself. What saith the Apostle? _I suffer not a woman to speak_ in
-presence of the man's authority. Ha' done, good Betty, with thy harping
-on kitchen matters,--let thy savoury messes be companioned with a sauce
-of silence."
-
-Temporary eclipse of Mrs. Milton: obvious and malevolent satisfaction of
-Anne and Mary: desperately suppressed inclination to giggle on the part
-of little Deborah: and a desire to cover up the situation with talk, as
-regards kindly Lawrence and courtly Skinner.
-
-The "foreign folk" were no new thing. Milton's fame, indeed, was European:
-as a prose-writer and pamphleteer, be it understood, not as a poet. Had
-he not refuted and put to shame the most erudite scholars of the day?
-Foreign _savants_ of note, therefore, who might be visiting London, were
-desirous to acquaint themselves with so powerful a personality: and the
-little house in the Artillery Walk was the rendezvous for many
-distinguished persons. They found their host no such recluse as town-talk
-might have led them to imagine, but one ready and willing to converse
-with them,--an English gentleman to the backbone, a scholar and artist
-to the finger-tips. His Continental tours and Italian sojourns had made
-him less insular than most of his compatriots, and his vast range of
-reading had imparted a certain cosmopolitanism to his exceedingly
-individual lines of thought. The visitors found him, moreover, employed
-upon a work so important, and of a theme so lofty, as might well give
-them pause, considering the circumstances under which it was being
-accomplished: and whatever their particular religious tenets might be,
-they could not fail to admire the magnitude of his aim in composing
-_Paradise Lost_,--"To justify the ways of God to men."
-
-
-    PARADISE LOST. BK. II   _Painting by S. Meteyard._
-
-    "Satan with less toil, and now with ease, ...
-    Weighs his spread wings, at leisure to behold ...
-      This pendent world in bigness as a star
-    Of smallest magnitude."
-
-                            (_Paradise Lost. Bk. II._)
-
-
-[Illustration: Satan in paradise colour plate]
-
-
-Dinner despatched, the master of the house, led by his devoted friends,
-went out into the garden. A garden was the desideratum of his existence,
-and he had never been without one; for in seventeenth-century London
-every house was fitly furnished in this respect. Here Milton was in the
-habit of taking that steady exercise which was a _sine quâ non_ to a
-sedentary and gouty man. He made a point of walking up and down out of
-doors, in cold weather, for three or four hours at a time,--sometimes
-composing his majestic lines, sometimes merely meditating. When weary
-with walking, he would come in and either dictate what he had conceived,
-or would take further exercise in a swing. In really warm weather, he
-received his visitors sitting outside his house door, wrapped in a
-coarse grey overcoat--gazing out upon the fields of the Artillery ground
-with those "unblemished eyes" that belied their own clear beauty--"the
-only point," as he said, "in which I am against my will a hypocrite."
-To-day, being cool and cloudy, allowed but intermittent periods in the
-open air. Milton, Lawrence and Skinner paced slowly to and fro, deep in
-enthralling intercourse, until three o'clock: when the rain and Thomas
-Elwood arrived simultaneously, and the other two men departed to their
-respective avocations.
-
-Thomas Elwood was a young Quaker of twenty-three, who was acting in some
-degree as honorary secretary to Milton. Himself of a defective education,
-and having been expelled from his father's house on account of his
-religious opinions, he was only too glad to take a lodging in the
-neighbourhood, and, by reading aloud to Milton every afternoon, acquire
-an amount of information and a variety of learning, which by no other
-means could he have obtained. And there was also a tacit sympathy
-between them, insomuch as Milton was, more and more, as life went on,
-inclining towards the Quaker tenets,--in those days, _bien entendu_,
-viewed with horror and detestation by the majority of men.
-
-Having re-entered the house, "We will not read as yet, Tom," Milton said,
-"I desire greatly to comfort myself with sweet sounds. Bring me into the
-withdrawing-room, and place me at the organ. A little bellows-blowing
-will not hurt thee, Tom. And let my wife attend me, that we may have
-song withal. She hath a good voice, though a poor ear."
-
-Seated at his beloved instrument, the blind man steeped himself in the
-principal pleasure that was left him. Milton's father, stout Puritan
-though he might be, was an accomplished musician, and had taught his
-son to play in early youth. The austerities of a narrow dogma had not
-been able to crush out the inveterate artistry of either father or
-son: and now the devotee of "divinest Melancholy" was able to solace
-himself with such lovely concords, such "anthems clear,"
-
-    "As may with sweetness, through mine ear,
-     Dissolve me into ecstasies,
-     And bring all heaven before mine eyes."
-
-Sometimes he sang as he played; sometimes Mrs. Milton, with her clear
-unemotional notes, sang to his accompaniment. Presently, that Elwood
-should not be wearied in his blowing, he quitted the organ for the
-bass-viol, on which he was no mean performer. At the conclusion of his
-playing he sat with a rapt, transfigured face, such as might well have
-called forth the Italian's encomium, thirty years before,--"If thy piety
-were equal to thy understanding, figure, eloquence, beauty and manners,
-verily thou wouldest not be an Angle but an Angel!"
-
-"And, now, good Tom," quoth Milton to the young man, "let us to work: the
-day moves on apace." They went upstairs to the study. "Before we read, I
-have some forty lines to set down," continued the poet, "all day they
-have been knocking for admission, and with that last music they made
-entrance. Needs must I house them now in ink and paper."
-
-"I am instant at thy bidding, friend," and Elwood seated himself with
-dutiful alacrity at the table. Milton, placing himself obliquely athwart
-his elbow-chair, with one leg thrown across the arm, dictated forty
-lines, almost in a breath,--they burst from him, as it would seem, in a
-stream no longer to be restrained.
-
-"Gently, gently, good sir!" exclaimed Elwood, "slow-witted and slow
-fingered I may be,--but I cannot keep pace with thee!"
-
-A grim smile hovered over Milton's full lips, "Out of practice, Tom," he
-replied indulgently, "it is a long while since I required this service
-at thy hands. From the autumnal to the vernal equinox, as I have told
-thee, my muse lies dumb,
-            and silent as the moon,
-    When she deserts the night,
-    Hid in her vacant interlunar cave.
-
-
-But now the winter is overpast, the singing of birds is heard in our
-land, and she too awakes and sings. With the vernal equinox my thoughts
-flow free as Helicon." Then, with slow and deliberate diction, he
-repeated the lines once more: and, having had them read aloud to him, he
-compressed, condensed, concentrated every thought and phrase, and
-reduced them to twenty.
-
-"There is more to come?" queried Elwood, his quill poised ready to write.
-
-"No more. Not one word more at present," replied Milton, sighing as
-though somewhat exhausted.
-
-His inspiration was entirely intermittent: and sometimes he would lie
-awake all night, trying, but without success, to complete one single
-line to his liking. "They please me not wholly, these lines," he
-continued, "much remains to be done before I set them down to be changed
-no more."
-
-"Not every man would say so," replied Elwood, "the learning and
-erudition whereof these few lines alone give witness, would supply many
-with just cause for boasting throughout a lifetime."
-
-Milton shook his head. "Pomp and ostentation of reading," he remarked,
-"is admired among the vulgar: but in matters of religion, he is
-learnedest who is plainest."
-
-
-    IL PENSEROSO.   _Painting by S. Meteyard._
-
-        "And may at last my weary age
-        Find out the peaceful hermitage,
-        The hairy gown and mossy cell,
-        Where I may sit and rightly spell
-        Of every star that heaven doth show."
-
-                           (_Il Penseroso._)
-
-
-[Illustration: Il Penseroso colour plate]
-
-
-"Yet, Mr. Milton, thee hast the reputation of such scope and range of
-wisdom, as the greatest scholar in Europe might fitly envy. To me, I
-confess, in my poor unlettered ignorance, it is not conceivable in what
-manner thee acquired so great and witty powers."
-
-"I gathered them not of mine own strength," said Milton, "but they were
-mine for the asking and endeavour, and any man may obtain them in like
-fashion. I ceased not, nor will cease, in devout prayer to the Holy
-Spirit, that can enrich with all utterance and knowledge, and send out
-his Seraphim with the hallowed fire of His altar, to touch and purify
-the lips of whom He pleases. To this must be added select reading, and
-steady observation, and insight into all seemly and generous acts and
-affairs.... And now, good Tom, to reading."
-
-Elwood took up the Latin author which he was at present engaged upon,
-and proceeded with it. Whenever the preternaturally acute ear of Milton
-detected, by Elwood's intonation, that he did not quite understand a
-sentence, he would stop him, examine him, and elucidate the difficult
-passage. By and by, "You will find a saying very similar to that," he
-observed, "in Virgil his Fourth Eclogue. Fetch down the book, and let us
-hear what the Mantuan hath written therein."
-
-Elwood searched along the bookshelves, but to no avail. "Friend," said
-he, "thy Virgil is no longer here. Yesterday I handled it myself,--to-day
-it is vanished. So is the Lucretius." A frown contracted Milton's
-splendid brow. "These women-kind," he muttered like rumbling thunder,
-"they are verily the root of all evil. Bid me hither my wife and
-daughters, and Mary Fisher the maid moreover." The first and the last,
-being summoned, arrived in all haste, and disavowed any knowledge of the
-missing books. Anne and Mary Milton, it appeared, were gone out
-marketing: but little Deborah, being strictly cross-examined, confessed
-that she had seen sister Anne carrying books away from the study last
-night when their father had retired: the wherewithal for "marketing"
-was easily obtained in this way.
-
-Milton groaned in his ineptitude. "How have I deserved this treacherous
-dealing at their hands? Lord, how long shall I be
-
-              dark in light exposed
-    To daily fraud, contempt, abuse, and wrong,
-    Within doors and without, still as a fool
-    In power of others, never in my own?
-
-                          (_Samson Agonistes_).
-
-
-Here, by a happy coincidence, there was a sturdy hammering heard at the
-front door, and Andrew Marvell was ushered in, "I am out of my due
-time," said he, "for it is not yet gone six,"--(six to eight P.M. being
-Milton's best time for receiving visitors). "Yet to so old an offender
-as myself, John, I know thou wilt make an exception." Marvell was the
-one friend of his own type and standing, the one constant and
-inalienable comrade, upon whose fidelity the blind man could rely. He had
-formerly been Milton's colleague under the Cromwellian Government: and
-was his kindred spirit, so far as anyone could claim such relationship
-with the frozen heights of the poet's intellect.
-
-With him, during the next two hours--the learned physician Paget joining
-them, and Elwood listening in respectful silence to the converse of these
-mighty men--Milton forgot the vexations of his ill-assorted household. He
-assured his friends that he was truly far happier now, in poverty,
-infirmity and neglect, occupied solely upon his long-projected
-masterpiece, than during the eighteen years of his manly prime, when his
-mind and pen were solely employed upon the controversies which he now
-professed to hate. "Never again," he declared, "shall earthly ambitions
-interrupt and thwart me: never now shall I endure to leave a calm and
-pleasing solitariness, fed with cheerful and confident thoughts, to
-embark in a tumbled sea of noises and hoarse disputes. Cast out of my
-fool's Paradise of fame not worth the finding, shall, not I and the hope
-whereunto I am wedded explore some fair and fragrant tract of outer
-Eden? Even as I have set forth the banishment of our first parents:
-
-    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.
-
-                                       (_Paradise Lost_).
-
-
-I and my espoused hope indeed do tread through Eden."
-
-The four men now, at eight o'clock, went down to supper: a very spare and
-frugal meal, so far as Milton was concerned: for all he consumed was a
-little light wine, a piece of bread and a few olives. His flow of speech
-was still unwearied, his spirits as near vivacity as they could approach
-it, when his friends rose to take leave. "The night is yet young," said
-Paget, "but I know that nowadays you seek rest early." "That is so,"
-Milton assented, "since I am no longer able to study o' nights, and
-since the best of secretaries,"--he smiled towards Elwood--"must needs
-grow weary of a blind man's whims, I were as well in bed as out of it.
-Moreover, I can compose my lines to better advantage lying down."
-
-"One thing, at least, you are spared," Marvell told him, "darkness
-cannot discommode your doings, nor doth the eye-weariness of the
-midnight student afflict you with grievous brow-aches in the morning as
-of old."
-
-Milton answered, "My darkness hitherto, by the singular kindness of God,
-amid rest and studies, and the voices and greetings of friends, has been
-much easier to bear than that deathly one. What should prevent me from
-resting in the belief that eyesight lies not in eyes alone, but enough
-for all purposes in God's leading and providence? And to you now I bid
-farewell, with a mind not less brave and steadfast than if I were
-Lynceus himself for keenness of sight."
-
-In a short space of time he was at rest in his darkened room; not as yet
-drowsy, but revolving great phrases, and deriving a greater joy from
-these lonely silences of the night-watches than could ever accrue to him
-by day. Gradually the aisles and bowers of the Paradise which his mental
-eyes enjoyed took upon them more and more the lovely similitude of rural
-England. The greennesses and sweetnesses of his childhood's home, the
-Buckinghamshire village, were fused into the "eternal spring" of the
-primeval garden. And from the "glassy, cool, translucent wave" of the
-river that ran through Eden,
-
-    "by the rushy-fringed bank
-     Where grows the willow and the osier dank,"
-
-arose "Sabrina, attended by water-nymphs" as once he saw her rise in
-_Comus_, and sang the sightless bard to sleep with the plashing of
-water-music.
-
-
-[Illustration: "Rose"]
-
-
-    _Printed by Percy Lund, Humphries & Co., Ltd._
-    _Bradford and London._
-
-                                          _10322_
-
-
-                       ====================
-
-
-Transcriber's Notes:
-
-Some illustration's captions have been moved out of the paragraph.
-
-The following captions have been added:
-  Illustration: Colour plate of book cover;
-  Illustration: Byron portrait plate;
-  Illustration: Paradise lost plate;
-  Illustration: "Angel" plate;
-  Illustration: Comus colour plate;
-  Illustration: Satan in paradise colour plate;
-  Illustration: Il Penseroso colour plate;
-  Illustration: "Rose".
-
-The following noted Illustration was removed:
-  Dropped Cap "A" at start of text - "About ..."
-
-Spelling has been made consistent throughout.
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of A Day with John Milton, by May Byron
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