important poems are in fact ignored entirely. They com plain of a memorial of Milton which does not mention "The Ode on the Nativity" at all, that poem which Hallam called "the most beautiful poem in the English language," or even allude to "Lycidas," which Pattison says is "the high-water mark of English Poesy and of Milton's own production." Then again, to other critics, the tone of perpetual eulogy of Milton's conduct seems over-strained and almost too contentious. The thing sounds like an argument in a debate, wherein the reader will finally be expected to give a vote. But there is a special reason in Macaulay's situation not only for the narrow scope of the treatment of Milton but also for the argumentative strain.

4. Political prejudice in Macaulay's day still interfered with men's estimate of John Milton. The judgment of society in 1825, which is reflected in the Waverley Novels, like "Woodstock," for instance, was the judgment which might be passed upon Milton's work by a good English Tory, in a day when, "a youth of Tory family," says Lord Cockburn, "who was discovered to have a leaning to the doctrines of the opposition, was considered a lost son. Nothing contributed more to strengthen and to prolong the unjust views of the Tories about Milton than the universal reading of the life of Milton composed by the great eighteenth-century critic, Dr. Samuel Johnson. It was so good a book that in 1825 it was, so to speak, the regular authoritative source of information about Milton. But Dr. Johnson was haunted by the tradition of the cavaliers that any rebel against the king must have been either a self-deceived hypocrite or else "dishonest." Apparently he thought this evil thing about Milton. No one can imagine without reading the book how readily this extraordinary biographer takes any chance to discredit the motives of Milton's acts, and how much this general prejudice against the poet's political conduct blinds him to the liter

ary quality of Milton's work. Furthermore, the Doctor's judgment of Milton's work, even where he forgets his politics, is warped by continual reference to conventional rules which he considered authoritative principles in æsthetics. There is a Toryism even in his literary sympathies. A few quotations from the "Life" will exhibit this odd tone, and will explain why we hear in the Essay so much about Dr. Johnson, as well as about "certain critics," which phrase usually means Dr. Johnson.

5. First, Dr. Johnson makes all the use he can of doubtful notices in Milton's biographers to the possible discredit of the poet's character. A good example is his emphatic reference to Aubrey's incorrect statement that Milton was "whipt" at college, or, in Johnsonese, "suffered the public indignity of corporal correction." Secondly, Dr. Johnson twists the most innocent and honorable acts into causes of offence and ridicule when he recalls Milton's relations to Church and King. For instance, when the civil war broke out, Milton gave up his journey to Italy, closed the "sweetscented manuscript of youth," and returned at once to give his life to the Puritan cause. He became, as Macaulay says, "the devoted and eloquent literary champion" of the principles of liberty. While thus contending on the side of Parliament by his pen, he supported himself by teaching a few pupils. "He taught," says Philips, one of the scholars, his sister's son, "only relations and the sons of gentlemen that were his friends; he never set up for a publick school to teach all the young fry of a parish." At the present day this act is justly considered one of his best. titles to our respect and admiration. But listen to the Tory Doctor. "Let not our veneration for Milton," says Johnson, "forbid us to look with some degree of merriment on great promises and small performance, on the man who hastens home because his countrymen are contending for their liberty, and when he reaches the scene

of action vapours away his patriotism in a private boarding school." Again, Milton's pamphlets doubtless were written in a savage tone. No editorial contests in any political controversy of our day could now be conducted so fiercely. "Milton's capacity for emotion," says Pattison, "when once he became champion of a cause, could not be contained within the bounds of ordinary speech. It breaks into terrific blasts of vituperation, beneath which the very language creaks, as the timbers of a ship in a storm." But Johnson's word for this Miltonic wrath is "malignity." "Hell grows darker at his frown," quotes the Doctor.

Or

"Cæsar,

6. These hostile feelings might be pardoned to the devout Toryism of Johnson if he had kept them for the life and political acts of Milton. What Macaulay could not pardon was the jealous tone of his literary criticism. Who, indeed, could accept caimly this remark, applied in Johnson's "Life" to the great Sonnet XXIII. ? "His wife died, and he honoured her memory with a poor sonnet." this, of the splendid testimonial to Cromwell ? when he assumed the perpetual dictatorship, had not more servile or more elegant flattery." Or this, about Lycidas? "The diction is harsh, the rhymes uncertain, the numbers unpleasing. Its form is that of a pastoral; easy, vulgar, and therefore disgusting." The sonnets Dr. Johnson naturally hated; they are full of Puritanism. But he might have found better words to say of them than these "Of the best [sonnets] it can only be said they are not bad, and perhaps only the eighth and twenty-first are truly entitled to this slender commendation." Even over "Paradise Lost," whose excellences are generally commended by him, though accounted for rather curiously, Johnson has to quarrel with the poet for what he maintains to be his illogical confusions of spirit and matter and his incongruous pictures of angelic substance. Finally, Milton's splendid style, which Matthew Arnold named the

only specimen in our literature of the "grand style" of Homer and Dante, Dr. Johnson asserts is founded " on a perverse and pedantic principle." All this is certainly the product of a critical faculty judging through fogs of political prejudice and under the iron rules of dogmatic critical tradition.

井

7. But the controversial purposes of Macaulay in the article on Milton published in the great Whig review went further than the holding of a critical tournament with Dr. Johnson. All the second half of the essay has little to do with literature. It is devoted to the condemnation of the Stuarts, and the eulogy of the Puritans, and it has a warmth reflected from Macaulay's present political sympathies, and from the new-born ardor for freedom of the young English Liberals of 1825. Under cover of a historical study of John Milton, Macaulay has here written a very good Whig party pamphlet. A few words, therefore, in explanation of the contemporary political situation of 1825 will make the spirit of the latter part of the essay clearer and perhaps more interesting to readers of the present day.

√8. The year 1825 was a year full of storm in many quarters of the sky. "Those mighty principles which have worked their way into the depths of American forests, which have roused Greece from the slavery and degradation of two thousand years, and which, from one end of Europe to the other, have kindled an unquenchable fire in the hearts of the oppressed and loosed the knees of the oppressors with an unwonted fear," were likewise working in the hearts of young Englishmen of Macaulay's age. Two opposite ideals of government, likened by Macaulay to the two gods of the Persian theology, Oromasdes and Arimanes, were standing face to face in Europe as they stood in the days of the Stuarts. In England the party of popular government was represented by the

Whigs and the Liberal section of the Tory party acting under Canning; the party of firm monarchical principles was represented by the King (George IV.), the Prime Minister, Lord Liverpool,-the older Tory party, containing far the larger part of English society. In Europe at large the principle of firm despotic authority was then maintained by the "Holy Alliance." This was a union formed by the monarchs of Russia, Austria, and Prussia, and largely directed by the policy of Prince Metternich, the Austrian minister. This alliance had been first made after Waterloo, when there fell upon all Europe a great desire for peace. Strong government under well-constituted authority seemed desirable then to every nation. All were weary of the upturnings of the French Revolution. These monarchs guaranteed that in all Europe there should be no more disturbance. "Useful or necessary changes in legislation," they said in a famous circular letter, "and in the administration of states ought only to emanate from the free-will and the intelligent and well-weighed conviction of those whom God has rendered responsible for power." This was a tone acceptable even to English policy in that year. But opposition was sure to come soon, and, oddly enough, the first opposition to the principles of the alliance occurred in Spain. Spain had been restored, after the overthrow of Napoleon, to its old Bourbon king, Ferdinand the Seventh. Ferdinand had promptly reversed all measures of progress taken in that kingdom since 1812, and thereby quarrelled with his liberal subjects. Serious rioting resulted; in spite of the efforts of the Holy Alliance in the king's cause, neither side was completely successful. The infection of revolt spread to the Spanish colonies in America. They seized the moment to rebel against Spain, and under the leadership of men like the great Bolivar, in the "depths of the American forests," the colonies broke away from the mother-coun