i liberty, we should also have wished the people to approve of it when it was done. If any thing more were wanting to the justification of Milton, the book of Salmasius would furnish it. That miserable performance is now with justice considered only as a beacon to wordcatchers who wish to become statesmen. The celebrity of the man who refuted it, the "nex magni dextra," gives it all its fame with the present generation. In that age the state of things was different. It was not then fully understood how vast an interval separates the mere classical scholar from the political philosopher. Nor can it be doubted, that a treatise which, bearing the name of so eminent a critic, attacked the fundamental principles of all free governments, must, if suffered to remain unanswered, have produced a most pernicious effect on the public mind. deposition of the son? What constitutional had not been done, while the people dis maxim is there, which applies to the former approved of it. But, for the sake of public and not to the latter? The king can do no wrong. If so, James was as innocent as Charles could have been. The minister only ought to be responsible for the acts of the sovereign. If so, why not impeach Jeffries and retain James? The person of a king is sacred. Was the person of James considered sacred at the Boyne? To discharge cannon against an army in which a king is known to be posted, is to approach pretty near to regicide. Charles too, it should always be remembered, was put to death by men who had been exasperated by the hostilities of several years, and who had never been bound to him by any other tie than that which was common to them with all their fellow-citizens. Those who drove James from his throne, who seduced his army, who alienated his friends, who first imprisoned him in his palace, and then turned him out of it, who broke in upon his very slumbers by imperious messages, who pursued him with fire and sword from one part of the empire to another, who hanged, drew, and quartered his adherents, and attainted his innocent heir, were his nephew and his two daughters! When we reflect on all these things, we are at a loss to conceive how the same persons who, on the fifth of November, thank God for wonderfully conducting his servant King William, and for making all opposition fall before him until he became our King and Governor, can, on the thirtieth of January, contrive to be afraid that the blood of the Royal Martyr may be visited on themselves and their shildren. We wish to add a few words relative to another subject on which the enemies of Milton delight to dwell-his conduct during the administration of the Protector. That an enthusiastic votary of liberty should accept office under a military usurper, seems, no doubt, at first sight, extraordinary. But all the circumstances in which the country was then placed were extraordinary. The ambition of Oliver was of no vulgar kind. He never seems to have coveted despotic power. He at first fought sincerely and manfully for the parlia ment, and never deserted it, till it had deserted its duty. If he dissolved it by force, it was not till he found that the few members, who remained after so many deaths, secessions, We do not, we repeat, approve of the execu- and expulsions, were desirous to appropriate tion of Charles; not because the constitution to themselves a power which they held only exempts the king from responsibility, for we in trust, and to inflict upon England the know that all such maxims, however excellent, curse of a Venetian oligarchy. But even have their exceptions; nor because we feel when thus placed by violence at the head any peculiar interest in his character, for we of affairs, he did not assume unlimited power. think that his sentence describes him with He gave the country a constitution far more perfect justice as a "tyrant, a traitor, a mur-perfect than any which had at that time been derer, and a public enemy;" but because we are convinced that the measure was most injurious to the cause of freedom. He whom it removed was a captive and a hostage. His heir, to whom the allegiance of every royalist was instantly transferred, was at large. The Presbyterians could never have been perfectly reconciled to the father. They had no such rooted enmity to the son. The great body of the people, also, contemplated that proceeding with feelings which, however unreasonable, no government could safely venture to outrage. But, though we think the conduct of the regicides blamable, that of Milton appears to us in a very different light. The deed was done. It could not be undone. The evil was incurred; and the object was to render it as small as possible. We censure the chiefs of the army for not yielding to the popular opinion but we cannoi censure Milton for wishing to change that opinion. The very feeling, which would have restrained us from committing the act, would have led us, after it had been committed, to defend it against the ravings of servility and superstition. For the ake of public liberty, we wish that the thing known in the world. He reformed the representative system in a manner which has extorted praise even from Lord Clarendon. For himself, he demanded indeed the first place in the commonwealth; but with powers scarcely so great as those of a Dutch stadtholder, or an American president. He gave the parliament a voice in the appointment of ministers, and left to it the whole legislative authority-not even reserving to himself a veto on its enactments. And he did not require that the chief magistracy should be hereditary in his family. Thus far, we think, if the circumstances of the time, and the opportunities which he had of aggrandizing himself, be fairly considered, he will not lose by comparison with Washington or Bolivar. Had his moderation been met by corresponding moderation, there is no reason to think that he would have overstepped the line which he had traced for himself. But when he found that his parliaments questioned the authority under which they met, and that he was in danger of being deprived of the restrict ed power which was absolutely necessary to his personal safety, then, it must be acknowledged, he adopted a more arbitrary policy. Yet, though we believe that the intentions | vernment, which had just ability enough to of Cromwell were at first honest, though we deceive, and just religion enough to persecute believe that he was driven from the noble The principles of liberty were the scoff of every course which he had marked out for himself | grinning courtier, and the Anathema Maranaby the almost irresistible force of circum- tha of every fawning dean. In every high stances, though we admire, in common with place, worship was paid to Charles and James all men of all parties, the ability and energy-Belial and Moloch; and England propitiated of his splendid administration, we are not those obscene and cruel idols with the blood pleading for arbitrary and lawless power, even of her best and bravest children. Crime sucin his hands. We know that a good constitu- ceeded to crime, and disgrace to disgrace, till tion is infinitely better than the best despot. the race, accursed of God and man, was a But we suspect, that, at the time of which we second time driven forth, to wander on the speak, the violence of religious and political face of the earth, and to be a by-word and a enmities rendered a stable and happy settle- shaking of the head to the nations. ment next to impossible. The choice lay, not between Cromwell and liberty, but between Cromwell and the Stuarts. That Milton chose well, no man can doubt, who fairly compares the events of the protectorate with these of the thirty years which succeeded it-the darkest and most disgraceful in the English_annals. Cromwell was evidently laying, though in an irregular manner, the foundations of an admirable system. Never before had religious liberty and the freedom of discussion been enjoyed in a greater degree. Never had the national honour been better upheld abroad, or the seat of justice better filled at home. And it was rarely that any opposition, which stopped short of open rebellion, provoked the resentment of the liberal and magnanimous usurper. The institutions which he had established, as set down in the Instrument of Government, and the Humble Petition and Advice, were excellent. His practice, it is true, too often departed from the theory of these institutions. But, had he lived a few years longer, it is probable that his institutions would have survived him, and that his arbitrary practice would have died with him. His power had not been consecrated by any ancient prejudices. It was upheld only by his great personal qualities. Little, therefore, was to be dreaded from a second Protector, unless he were also a second Oliver Cromwell. The events which followed his decease are the most complete vindication of those who exerted themselves to uphold his authority. For his death dissolved the whole frame of society. The army rose against the Parliament, the different corps of the army against each other. Sect raved against sect. Party plotted against party. The Presbyterians, in their eagerness to be revenged on the Independents, sacrificed their own liberty, and deserted all their old principles. Without casting one glance on the past, or requiring one stipulation for the future, they threw down their freedom at the feet of the most frivolous and heartless of tyrants. Then came those days, never to be recalled without a blush--the days of servitude without loyalty, and sensuality without love, of dwarfish talents and gigantic vices, the paradise of cold hearts and narrow minds, the golden age of the coward, the bigot, and the slave. The king cringed to his rival that he might trample on his people, sunk into a viceroy of France, and pocketed, with complacent infamy, her degrading insults and her more degrading gold. The caresses of harlots and the jests f buffoons regulated the measures of a go Most of the remarks which we have hitherto made on the public character of Milton, apply to him only as one of a large body. We shall proceed to notice some of the peculiarities which distinguished him from his contemporaries. And, for that purpose, it is necessary to take a short survey of the parties into which the political world was at that time divided. We must premise, that our observations are intended to apply only to those who adhered, from a sincere preference, to one or to the other side. At a period of public commotion, every faction, like an Oriental army, is attended by a crowd of camp followers, a useless and heartless rabble, who prowl round its line of march in the hope of picking up something under its protection, but desert it in the day of battle, and often join to exterminate it after a defeat. England, at the time of which we are treating, abounded with such fickle and selfish politicians, who transferred their support to every government as it rose,-who kissed the hand of the king in 1640, and spit in his face in 1649,-who shouted with equal glee when Cromwell was inaugurated in Westminster Hall, and when he was dug up to be hanged at Tyburn-who dined on calves' heads or on broiled rumps, and cut down oak branches or stuck them up as circumstances altered, without the slightest shame or repugnance. These we leave out of the account. We take our estimate of parties from those who really deserved to be called partisans. We would speak first of the Puritans, the most remarkable body of men, perhaps, which the world has ever produced. The odious and ridiculous parts of their character lie on the surface. He that runs may read them; nor have there been wanting attentive and malicious observers to point them out. For many years after the Restoration, they were the theme of unmeasured invective and derision. They were exposed to the utmost licentiousness of the press and of the stage, at the time when the press and the stage were most licentious. They were not men of letters; they were, as a body, unpopular; they could not defend themselves; and the public would not take them under its protection. They were therefore abandoned, without reserve, to the tender mercies of the satirists and dramatists. The ostentatious simplicity of their dress, their sour aspect, their nasal twang, their stiff posture, their long graces, their Hebrew names the Scriptural phrases which they introduced on every occasion, their contempt of human learning, their detestation of polite arouse ments, were indeed fair game for the laughers. "Ecco il fonte del riso, ed ecco il rio with hands: their diadems crowns cf glory which should never fade away! On the rich and the eloquent, on nobles and priests, they looked down with contempt: for they esteemed themselves rich in a more precious treasure, and eloquent in a more sublime language, nobles by the right of an earlier creation, and priests by the imposition of a mightier hand. The very meanest of them was a being to whose fate a mysterious and terrible import anxious interest-who had been destined, bespirits of light and darkness looked with fore heaven and earth were created, to enjoy a felicity which should continue when heaven and earth should have passed away. Events which short-sighted politicians ascribed to earthly causes had been ordained on his acflourished, and decayed. For his sake the count. For his sake empires had risen, and of the evangelist and the harp of the prophet. Almighty had proclaimed his will by the pen He had been rescued by no common deliverer from the grasp of no common foe. He had been ransomed by the sweat of no vulgar been ransomed by the sweat of no vulgar It was for him that the sun had been darkened, agony, by the blood of no earthly sacrifice. that the rocks had been rent, that the dead had arisen, that all nature had shuddered at the sufferings of her expiring God! Those who roused the people to resistance-ance belonged-on whose slightest actions the who directed their measures through a long series of eventful years-who formed, out of the most unpromising materials, the finest army that Europe had ever seen-who trampled down King, Church, and Aristocracy who, in the short intervals of domestic sedition and rebellion, made the name of England terrible to every nation on the face of the earth, were no vulgar fanatics. Most of their absurdities were mere external badges, like the signs of freemasonry or the dresses of friars. We regret that these badges were not more attractive. We regret that a body, to whose courage and talents mankind has owed inestimable obligations, had not the lofty elegance which distinguished some of the adherents of Charles I., or the easy good breeding for which the court of Charles II. was celebrated. But, if we must make our choice, we shall, like Bassanio in the play, turn from the specious caskets which contain only the Death's head and the Fool's head, and fix our choice on the plain leaden chest which conceals the treasure. The Puritans were men whose minds had ent men, the one all self-abasement, penitence, Thus the Puritan was made up of two different men, the one all self-abasement, penitence, gratitude, passion; the other proud, calm, inthe dust before his Maker; but he set his foot flexible, sagacious. He prostrated himself in derived a peculiar character from the daily tirement, he prayed with convulsions, and on the neck of his king. In his devotional recontemplation of superior beings and external interests. Not content with acknowledging, in groans, and tears. He was half maddened by general terms, an overruling Providence, they glorious or terrible illusions. He heard the habitually ascribed every event to the will of lyres of angels or the tempting whispers of the Great Being, for whose power nothing was fiends. He caught a gleam of the Beatific too vast, for whose inspection nothing was too Vision, or woke screaming from dreams of minute To know him, to serve him, to enjoy self intrusted with the sceptre of the millennial everlasting fire. Like Vane, he thought himhim, was with them the great end of existence. They rejected with contempt the ceremonious year. Like Fleetwood, he cried in the bitterhomage which other sects substituted for the ness of his soul that God had hid his face from homage which other sects substituted for the him. But when he took his seat in the counpure worship of the soul. Instead of catching cil, or girt on his sword for war, these temoccasional glimpses of the Deity through an obscuring veil, they aspired to gaze full on the pestuous workings of the soul had left no intolerable brightness, and to commune with perceptible trace behind them. People who him face to face. Hence originated their consaw nothing of the godly but their uncouth tempt for terrestrial distinctions. The differ- visages, and heard nothing from them but their ence between the greatest and meanest of man- groans and their whining hymns, might laugh kind seemed to vanish, when compared with who encountered them in the hall of debate or at them. But those had little reason to laugh, the boundless interval which separated the in the field of battle. These fanatics brought whole race from him on whom their own eyes to civil and military affairs a coolness of judgwere constantly fixed. They recognised no ment and an immutability of purpose which title to superiority but his favour; and, confident of that favour, they despised all the ac- their religious zeal, but which were in fact the some writers have thought inconsistent with complishments and all the dignities of the world. If they were unacquainted with the necessary effects of it. The intensity of their works of philosophers and poets, they were feelings on one subject made them tranquil on deeply read in the oracles of God. If their every other. One overpowering sentiment had names were not found in the registers of he- and fear. Death had lost its terrors and plea subjected to itself pity and hatred, ambition ralds, they felt assured that they were recorded in the Book of Life. If their steps were not their tears, their raptures and their sorrows, sure its charms. They had their smiles and accompanied by a splendid train of menials, but not for the things of this world. Enthusiasm legions of ministering angels had charge over had made them stoics, had cleared their minds them Their palaces were houses not made from every vulgar passion and prejudice, and raised them above the influence of danger and * Gerusalemme Liberata, xv. 57. of corruption. It sometimes might lead them | machines for destruction dressed up in unito pursue unwise ends, but never to choose un- forms, caned into skill, intoxicated into valour, wise means. They went through the world defending without love, destroying without like Sir Artegale's iron man Talus with his hatred. There was a freedom in their subserflail, crushing and trampling down oppressors, viency, a nobleness in their very degradation. mingling with human beings, but having nei- The sentiment of individual independence was ther part nor lot in human infirmities; insensi- strong within them. They were indeed misble to fatigue, to pleasure, and to pain; not to led, but by no base or selfish motive. Combe pierced by any weapon, not to be withstood passion and romantic honour, the prejudices by any barrier. of childhood, and the venerable names of history, threw over them a spell potent as that of Duessa; and, like the Red-Cross Knight, they thought that they were doing battle for an inloathsome sorceress. In truth, they scarcely entered at all into the merits of the political question. It was not for a treacherous king or an intolerant church that they fought; but for the old banner which had waved in so many battles over the heads of their fathers, and for the altars at which they had received the hands of their brides. Though nothing could be more erroneous than their political opinions, they possessed, in a far greater degree than their adversaries, those qualities which are the grace of private life. With many of the vices of the Round Table, they had also many of its virtues, courtesy, generosity, veracity, tenderness, and respect for woman. They had far more both of profound and of polite learning than the Puritans. Their manners were more engaging, their tempers more amiable, their tastes more elegant, and their households more cheerful. Such we believe to have been the character of the Puritans. We perceive the absurdity of their manners. We dislike the sullen gloom of their domestic habits. We acknowledge | jured beauty, while they defended a false and that the tone of their minds was often injured by straining after things too high for mortal reach. And we know that, in spite of their hatred of Popery, they too often fell into the worst vices of that bad system, intolerance and extravagant austerity-that they had their anchorites and their crusades, their Dunstans and their De Montforts, their Dominics and their Escobars. Yet when all circumstances are taken into consideration, we do not hesitate to pronounce them a brave, a wise, an honest, and a useful body. The Puritans espoused the cause of civil überty, mainly because it was the cause of reigion. There was another party, by no means aumerous, but distinguished by learning and ability, which co-operated with them on very different principles. We speak of those whom Cromwell was accustomed to call the Heathens, men who were, in the phraseology of that time, doubting Thomases or careless Gallios with regard to religious subjects, but passionate worshippers of freedom. Heated by the study of ancient literature, they set up their country as their idol, and proposed to themselves the heroes of Plutarch as their examples. They seem to have borne some resemblance to the Brissotines of the French Revolution. But it is not very easy to draw the line of distinction between them and their devout associates, whose tone and manner they sometimes found it convenient to affect, and sometimes, it is probable, imperceptibly adopted. Milton did not strictly belong to any of the classes which we have described. He was not a Puritan. He was not a Freeininker. He was not a Cavalier. In his character the noblest qualities of every party were combined in harmonious union. From the parliament and from the court, from the conventicle and from the Gothic cloister, from the gloomy and sepulchral circles of the Roundheads and from the Christmas revel of the hospitable Cavalier, his nature selected and drew to itself whatever was great and good, while it rejected all the base and pernicious ingredients by which those fine elements were defiled. Like the Puritans, he lived But We e now come to the Royalists. We shall attempt to speak of them, as we have spoken of their antagonists, with perfect candour. We "As ever in his great Taskmaster's eye.' shall not charge upon a whole party the profligacy and baseness of the horseboys, gamblers, Like them, he kept his mind continually fixed and bravoes, whom the hope of license and on an Almighty Judge and an eternal reward. plunder attracted from all the dens of White- And hence he acquired their contempt of exfriars to the standard of Charles, and who dis-ternal circumstances, their fortitude, their graced their associates by excesses which, tranquillity, their inflexible resolution. under the stricter discipline of the Parliamentary armies, were never tolerated. We will select a more favourable specimen. Thinking, as we do, that the cause of the king was the cause of bigotry and tyranny, we yet cannot refrain from looking with complacency on the character of the honest old Cavaliers. We feel a national pr.de in comparing them with the instruments which the despots of other countries are compelled to employ, with the mutes who throng their antechambers, and the Janissaries who mount guard at their gates. Our royalist countrymen were not heartless, dangling courtiers, bowing at every step, and simpering at every word. They were not mere not the coolest sceptic or the most profane scoffer was more perfectly free from the contagion of their frantic delusions, their savage manners, their ludicrous jargon, their scorn of science, and their aversion to pleasure. Hating tyranny with a perfect hatred, he had nevertheless all the estimable and ornamental qualities, which were almost entirely monopolized by the party of the tyrant. There was none who had a stronger sense of the value of literature, a finer relish for every elegant amusement, or a more chivalrous delicacy of honour and love. Though his opinions were democratic, his tastes and his associates were such as harmonize best with monarchy and aristo He saw that they, like those whom they had vanquished, were hostile to the liberty of thought. He therefore joined the Independents, and called upon Cromwell to break the secular chain, and to save free conscience from the paw of the Presbyterian wolf.* With a view to the same great object, he attacked the licensing system in that sublime treatise which every statesman should wear as a sign upon his hand, and as frontlets between his eyes. His attacks were, in general, directed less against particular abuses than against those deeply-seated errors on which almost all abuses are founded, the servile worship of eminent men and the irrational dread of innovation. cracy. He was under the influence of all the | Presbyterians-for this he forsook them. He feelings by which the gallant cavaliers were fought their perilous battle; but he turned misled. But of those feelings he was the mas- away with disdain from their insolent triumph. ter and not the slave. Like the hero of Homer, he enjoyed all the pleasures of fascination; but he was not fascinated. He listened to the song of the Sirens; yet he glided by without being seduced to their fatal shore. He tasted the cup of Circe; but he bore about him a sure antidote against the effects of its bewitching sweetness. The illusions which captivated his imagination never impaired his reasoning powers. The statesman was a proof against the splendour, the solemnity, and the romance which enchanted the poet. Any person who will contrast the sentiments expressed in his Treatises on Prelacy, with the exquisite lines on ecclesiastical architecture and music in the Penseroso, which were published about the same time, will understand our meaning. This is an inconsistency which, more than any thing else, raises his character in our estimation; because it shows how many private tastes and feelings he sacrificed, in order to do what he considered his duty to mankind. It is the very struggle of the noble Othello. His heart relents; but his hand is firm. He does naught in hate, but all in honour. He kisses the beautiful deceiver before he destroys her. That he might shake the foundations of these debasing sentiments more effectually, he always selected for himself the boldest literary services. He never came up to the rear when the outworks had been carried and the breach entered. He pressed into the forlorn hope. At the beginning of the changes, he wrote with incomparable energy and eloquence against the bishops. But, when his opinion seemed likely to prevail, he passed on to other subjects, and abandoned prelacy to the crowd of writers who now hastened to insult a falling party. There is no more hazardous enterprise than that of bearing the torch of truth into those dark and infected recesses in which no light has ever shone. But it was the choice and the pleasure of Milton to penetrate the noisome vapours and to brave the terrible ex plosion. Those who most disapprove of his opinions must respect the hardihood with which he maintained them. He, in general, left to others the credit of expounding and defending the popular parts of his religious and political creed. He took his own stand upon those which the great body of his countrymen reprobated as criminal, or derided as para doxical. He stood up for divorce and regicide. He ridiculed the Eikon. He attacked the prevailing systems of education. His radiant and beneficent career resembled that of the god of light and fertility, That from which the public character of Milton derives its great and peculiar splendour still remains to be mentioned. If he exerted himself to overthrow a foresworn king and a persecuting hierarchy, he exerted himself in conjunction with others. But the glory of the battle, which he fought for that species of free dom which is the most valuable, and which was then the least understood, the freedom of the human mind, is all his own. Thousands and tens of thousands among his contemporaries raised their voices against ship-money and the star-chamber. But there were few indeed who discerned the more fearful evils of moral and intellectual slavery, and the benefits which would result from the liberty of the press and the unfettered exercise of private judgment. These were the objects which Milton justly conceived to be the most important. He was desirous that the people should think for themselves as well as tax themselves, and be emancipated from the dominion of prejudice as well as from that of Charles. HeIt is to be regretted that the prose writings knew that those who, with the best intentions, overlooked these schemes of reform, and contented themselves with pulling down the king and imprisoning the malignants, acted like the heedless brothers in his own poem, who, in their eagerness to disperse the train of the sor cerer, neglected the means of liberating the captive. They thought only of conquering wher they should have thought of disenchanting. "Oh, ye mistook! You should have snatched the wand! And backward mutters of dissevering power, "Nitor in adversum; nec me, qui cætera, vincit Impetus, et rapido contrarius evehor orbi.” of Milton should, in our time, be so little read. As compositions, they deserve the attention of every man who wishes to become acquainted with the full power of the English language. They abound with passages compared with which the finest declamations of Burke sink into insignificance. They are a perfect field of cloth of gold. The style is stiff, with gorgeous embroidery. Not even in the earlier books of the Paradise Lost has he ever risen higher than in those parts of his controversial works in which his feelings, excited by conflict, find a vent in bursts of devotional and lyric rapture. It is. to borrow his own majestic language, "a symphonies."+ To reverse the rod, to spell the charm back-sevenfold chorus of hallelujahs and har ping ward, to break the ties which bound a stupefied people to the seat of enchantment, was the noble aim of Milton. To this all his public conduct was directed. For this he joined the * Sonnet to Cromwell. + The Reason of Church Government urged against Prelacy, Book II. |