Milton | Page 9

were almost banish't from the earth??You never were rebellious to the lawes,?Your greatest crime was harmelesse honest mirth;?What fell malignant spirit was there found?To cast your tall _Piramides_ to ground?

And you my native towne, which was of old,?(When as thy Bon-fires burn'd and May-poles stood,?And when thy Wassell-cups were uncontrol'd)?The Summer Bower of Peace and neighbourhood,?Although since these went down, thou ly'st forlorn,?By factious schismes and humours over-borne,?Some able hand I hope thy rod will raise,?That thou maist see once more thy happy daies.
The hopes of the bard of Leeds were fulfilled at the Restoration. Merriment, of a sort, came back to England; but it found no congenial acceptance from Milton. The Court roysterers, the Hectors, Nickers, Scourers, and Mohocks, among whom were numbered Sedley and Rochester, and others of the best poets of the day, are celebrated by him incidentally in those lines, unsurpassable for sombre magnificence, which he appends to his account of Belial--
In courts and palaces he also reigns,?And in luxurious cities, where the noise?Of riot ascends above their loftiest towers,?And injury and outrage; and, when night?Darkens the streets, then wander forth the sons?Of Belial, flown with insolence and wine.
The public festivals of these later days are glanced at in _Samson Agonistes_--
Lords are lordliest in their wine;?And the well-feasted priest then soonest fired?With zeal, if aught religion seem concerned;?No less the people on their holy-days?Impetuous, insolent, unquenchable.
There is no relaxation, no trace of innocent lightheartedness, in any of the later poems. Even the garden of Paradise, where some gentle mirth might perhaps be permissible, is tenanted by grave livers, majestic, but not sprightly. In _L' Allegro_ the morning song of the milk-maid is "blithe," and the music of the village dance is "jocund." But Eve is described as "jocund" and "blithe" only when she is intoxicated by the mortal fruit of the tree; and the note of gaiety that is heard faintly, like a distant echo, in the earlier poems, is never sounded again by Milton.
So it is also with other things. The flowers scattered on the laureate hearse of Lycidas make a brighter, more various, and withal a homelier display than ever meets the eye in the Hesperian wildernesses of Eden. Or take the world of fairy lore that Milton inherited from the Elizabethans--a world to which not only Shakespeare, but also laborious and arrogant poet-scholars like Jonson and Drayton had free right of entry. Milton, too, could write of the fairies--in his youth--
With stories told of many a feat,?How Faery Mab the junkets eat.
But even in _Comus_ the most exquisite passage of fairy description is put into the mouth of Comus himself, chief of the band of ugly-headed monsters in glistering apparel--
The sounds and seas, with all their finny drove,?Now to the moon in wavering morrice move;?And on the tawny sands and shelves?Trip the pert fairies and the dapper elves.?By dimpled brook and fountain-brim,?The wood-nymphs decked with daisies trim,?Their merry wakes and pastimes keep:?What hath night to do with sleep?
The song and the dance are broken off, never to be resumed, when the staid footfall of the lady is heard approaching. Milton cannot draw ugliness; it turns into beauty or majesty on his hands. Satan has a large and enthusiastic party among readers of _Paradise Lost_. Comus, we are told, stands for a whole array of ugly vices--riot, intemperance, gluttony, and luxury. But what a delicate monster he is, and what a ravishing lyric strain he is master of! The pleasure that Milton forswore was a young god, the companion of Love and Youth, not an aged Silenus among the wine-skins. He viewed and described one whole realm of pagan loveliness, and then he turned his face the other way, and never looked back. Love is of the valley, and he lifted his eyes to the hills. His guiding star was not Christianity, which in its most characteristic and beautiful aspects had no fascination for him, but rather that severe and self-centred ideal of life and character which is called Puritanism. It is not a creed for weak natures; so that as the nominal religion of a whole populace it has inevitably fallen into some well-merited disrepute. Puritanism for him was not a body of law to be imposed outwardly on a gross and timid people, but an inspiration and a grace that falls from Heaven upon choice and rare natures--
Nor do I name of men the common rout,?That, wandering loose about,?Grow up and perish as the summer fly,?Heads without name, no more remember'd;
so sings the Chorus in _Samson Agonistes_--
But such as thou hast solemnly elected,?With gifts and graces eminently adorned,?To some great work, thy glory,?And people's safety, which in part they effect.
Under one form or another Puritanism is to be found in almost all religions, and in many systems of philosophy. Milton's Puritanism enabled