Milton | Page 8

not long for the world in which these poems move with so ineffable a native grace. They are the poems of his youth, instinct with the sensibility of youth, and of a delicate and richly nurtured imagination. But they are also the poems of an age that was closing, and they have a touch of the sadness of evening. "I know not," says Dr. Johnson, speaking of _L'Allegro_ and _Il Penseroso_, "whether the characters are kept sufficiently apart. No mirth can indeed be found in his melancholy, but I am afraid that I always meet some melancholy in his mirth." It is true; for both characters are Milton himself, who embodies in separate poems the cheerful and pensive elements of his own nature--and already his choice is made. There is something disinterested and detached about his sketches of the merriment which he takes part in only as a silent onlooker, compared with the profound sincerity of the lines--
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 shew,?And every herb that sips the dew,?Till old experience do attain?To something like prophetic strain.
The rising tide of political passion submerged the solemn Arcadia of his early fancies. Like Lycidas, he was carried far from the flowers and the shepherds to visit "the bottom of the monstrous world." Hence there may be made a whole index of themes, touched on by Milton in his early poems, as if in promise, of which no fulfilment is to be found in the greater poems of his maturity. His political career under the Commonwealth is often treated, both by those who applaud and by those who lament it, as if it were the merest interlude between two poetic periods. It was not so; political passion dominates and informs all his later poems, dictating even their subjects. How was it possible for him to choose King Arthur and his Round Table for the subject of his epic, as he had intended in his youthful days; when chivalry and the spirit of chivalry had fought its last fight on English soil, full in the sight of all men, round the forlorn banner of King Charles? The policy of Laud and Stratford kept Milton out of the Church, and sent him into retirement at Horton; the same policy, it may be plausibly conjectured, had something to do with the change in the subject of his long-meditated epic. From the very beginning of the civil troubles contemporary events leave their mark on all his writings. The topical bias (so to call it) is very noticeable in many of the subjects tentatively jotted down by him on the paper that is now in the library of Trinity College, Cambridge. The corrupted clergy, who make so splendid and, as some think, so irrelevant an appearance in _Lycidas_, figure frequently, either directly or by implication, in the long list of themes.
Without misgiving or regret, when the time came, Milton shut the gate on the sequestered paradise of his youth, and hastened downward to join the fighters in the plain. Before we follow him we may well "interpose a little ease" by looking at some of the beauties proper to the earlier poems, and listening to some of the simple pastoral melodies that were drowned when the organ began to blow. _L'Allegro_ is full of them--
Sometimes, with secure delight,?The upland hamlets will invite,?When the merry bells ring round,?And the jocund rebecks sound?To many a youth and many a maid?Dancing in the chequered shade,?And young and old come forth to play?On a sunshine holiday.
That is Merry England of Shakespeare's time. But already the controversy concerning the _Book of Sports_ had begun to darken the air. Already the Maypole, that "great stinking idol," as an Elizabethan Puritan called it, had been doomed to destruction. Some years before _L'Allegro_ was written, a bard, who hailed from Leeds, had lamented its downfall in the country of his nativity--
Happy the age, and harmelesse were the dayes,?(For then true love and amity was found)?When every village did a May-pole raise,?And Whitson Ales and May games did abound;?And all the lusty Yonkers in a rout?With merry Lasses danced the rod about;?Then friendship to their banquets bid the guests,?And poor men far'd the better for their feasts.
The next verse recalls that scene in _The Winter's Tale_ where Shakespeare draws a vivid picture of Elizabethan country merrymaking--
The Lords of Castles, Manners, Townes, and Towers?Rejoyc'd when they beheld the Farmers flourish,?And would come down unto the Summer-Bowers?To see the Country gallants dance the Morrice,?And sometimes with his tenant's handsome daughter?Would fall in liking, and espouse her after?Unto his Serving-man, and for her portion?Bestow on him some farme, without extortion.
Alas poore Maypoles, what should be the cause?That you