01d. Life of John Milton by Sir Richard C. Jebb. Part 4/4.
This aspect of the question is emphasised by Milton himself The man, he says, “who would not be frustrate of his hope to write well hereafter in laudable things, ought himself to be a true poem, that is, a composition and pattern of the best and honourablest things; not presuming to sing high praises of heroic men, or famous cities, unless he have in himself the experience and the practice of all that which is praiseworthy .” Again, in estimating the qualifications which the writer of an epic such as he contemplated should possess, he is careful to include “insight into all seemly and generous arts and affairs .”
Truth usually lies half-way between extremes: perhaps it does so here. No doubt, Milton did gain very greatly by breathing awhile the larger air of public life, even though that air was often tainted by much impurity. No doubt, too, twenty years of contention must have left their mark even on Milton. In one of the very few places where he “abides our question,” Shakespeare writes (Sonnet cxi. ):
“O! for my sake do you with Fortune chide,
The guilty goddess of my harmful deeds,
That did not better for my life provide,
Than public means, which public manners breeds:
Thence comes it that my name receives a brand;
And almost thence my nature is subdued
To what it works in, like the dyer's hand” Milton's genius was subdued in this way. If we compare him, the Milton of the great epics and of Samson Agonistes, with Homer or Shakespeare—and none but the greatest can be his parallel—we find in him a certain want of humanity, a touch of narrowness. He lacks the large-heartedness, the genial, generous breadth of Shakespeare; the sympathy and sense of the lacrimæ rerum that even in Troilus and Cressida or Timon of Athens are there for those who have eyes wherewith to see them. Milton reflects in some degree the less gracious aspects of Puritanism, its intolerance, want of humour, one-sided intensity; and it seems natural to assume that this narrowness was to a great extent the price he paid for twenty years of ceaseless special pleading and dispute. The real misfortune of his life lay in the fact that he fell on evil, angry days when there was no place for moderate men. He had to be one of two things: either a controversialist or a student: there was no via media. Probably he chose aright; but we could wish that the conditions under which he chose had been different. And he is so great, so majestic in the nobleness of his life, in the purity of his motives, in the self-sacrifice of his indomitable devotion to his ideals, that we could wish not even to seem to pronounce judgment at all.
The last part of Milton's life, 1660-74, passed quietly. At the age of fifty-two he was thrown back upon poetry, and could at length discharge his self-imposed obligation. The early poems he had never regarded as a fulfilment of the debt due to his Creator. Even when the fire of political strife burned at its hottest, Milton did not forget the purpose which he had conceived in his boyhood. Of that purpose Paradise Lost was the attainment. Begun about 1658, it was finished in 1663, the year of Milton's third marriage; revised from 1663 to 1665; and eventually issued in 1667. Before its publication Milton had commenced (in the autumn of 1665) its sequel Paradise Regained, which in turn was closely followed by Samson Agonistes. The completion of Paradise Regained may be assigned to the year 1666—that of Samson Agonistes to 1667. Some time was spent in their revision; and in January, 1671, they were published together, in a single volume.
In 1673 Milton brought out a reprint of the 1645 edition of his Poems, adding most of the sonnets written in the interval. The last four years of his life were devoted to prose works of no particular interest. He continued to live in London. His third marriage had proved happy, and he enjoyed something of the renown which was rightly his. Various well-known men used to visit him—notably Dryden1 , who on one of his visits asked and received permission to dramatise Paradise Lost. It does not often happen that a university can point to two such poets among her living sons, each without rival in his generation.
Milton died in 1674, November 8th. He was buried in St Giles' Church, Cripplegate. When we think of him we have to think of a man who lived a life of very singular purity and devotion to duty; who for what he conceived to be his country's good sacrificed—and no one can well estimate the sacrifice—during twenty years the aim that was nearest to his heart and best suited to his genius; who, however, eventually realised his desire of writing a great work “in gloriam Dei.” End of “The Life of Milton” by Sir Richard C. Jebb. Recording by Thomas( A.) Copeland.
