Life of John Milton | Page 9

long
refused to make a bishop because "he could not see when matters were
well." But if Laud was infatuated as a statesman, he was astute as a
manager; he had the Church completely under his control, he was fast
filling it with his partisans and creatures, he was working it for every
end which Milton most abhorred, and was, in particular, allying it with

a king who in 1632 had governed three years without a Parliament. The
mere thought that he must call this hierarch his Father in God, the mere
foresight that he might probably come into collision with him, and that
if he did his must be the fate of the earthen vessel, would alone have
sufficed to deter Milton from entering the Church.
Even so resolute a spirit as Milton's could hardly contemplate the
relinquishment of every definite calling in life without misgiving, and
his friends could hardly let it pass without remonstrance. There exists
in his hand the draft of a letter of reply to the verbal admonition of
some well-wisher, to whom he evidently feels that he owes deference.
His friend seems to have thought that he was yielding to the
allurements of aimless study, neglecting to return as service what he
had absorbed as knowledge. Milton pleads that his motive must be
higher than the love of lettered ease, for that alone could never
overcome the incentives that urge him to action. "Why should not all
the hopes that forward youth and vanity are afledge with, together with
gain, pride, and ambition, call me forward more powerfully than a poor,
regardless, and unprofitable sin of curiosity should be able to
withhold?" And what of the "desire of honour and repute and immortal
fame seated in the breast of every true scholar?" That his correspondent
may the better understand him, he encloses a "Petrarchean sonnet,"
recently composed, on his twenty-third birthday, not one of his best,
but precious as the first of his frequent reckonings with himself:--
"How soon hath Time, the subtle thief of youth, Stolen on his wing my
three-and-twentieth year! My hasting days fly on with full career; But
my late spring no bud or blossom shew'th. Perhaps my semblance
might deceive the truth, That I to manhood am arrived so near; And
inward ripeness doth much less appear, Than some more timely-happy
spirits indu'th. Yet be it less or more, or soon or slow, It shall be still in
strictest measure even To that same lot, however mean or high,
Towards which Time leads me, and the Will of Heaven. All is, if I have
grace to use it so, As ever in my great Taskmaster's eye."
The poetical temperament is especially liable to misgiving and
despondency, and from this Milton evidently was not exempt. Yet he is

the same Milton who proclaimed a quarter of a century afterwards--
"I argue not Against Heaven's hand or will, nor bate a jot Of heart or
hope; but still bear up and steer Right onward."
There is something very fine in the steady resolution with which, after
so fully admitting to himself that his promise is yet unfulfilled, and that
appearances are against him, he recurs to his purpose, frankly owning
the while that the gift he craves is Heaven's, and his only the
application. He had received a lesson against over-confidence in the
failure of his solitary effort up to this time to achieve a work on a large
scale. To the eighth and last stanza of his poem, "The Passion of
Christ," is appended the note: "This subject the author finding to be
above the years he had when he wrote it, and nothing satisfied with
what was begun, left it unfinished." It nevertheless begins nobly, but
soon deviates into conceits, bespeaking a fatigued imagination. The
"Hymn on the Nativity," on the other hand, begins with two stanzas of
far-fetched prettiness, and goes on ringing and thundering through
strophes of ever-increasing grandeur, until the sweetness of Virgin and
Child seem in danger of being swallowed up in the glory of Christianity;
when suddenly, by an exquisite turn, the poet sinks back into his
original key, and finally harmonizes his strain by the divine repose of
concluding picture worthy of Correggio:--
"But see, the Virgin blest Hath laid the Babe to rest; Time is our
tedious song should here have ending; Heaven's youngest-teemed star
Hath fixed her polished car, Her sleeping Lord with handmaid lamp
attending; And all about the courtly stable Bright harnessed Angels sit
in order serviceable."
In some degree this magnificent composition loses force in our day
from its discordance with modern sentiment. We look upon religions as
members of the same family, and are more interested in their
resemblances than their antagonisms. Moloch and Dagon themselves
appear no longer