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Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1

S >> Samuel Johnson >> Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1




These bursts of light, and involutions of darkness, these transient
and involuntary excursions and retrocessions of invention, having some
appearance of deviation from the common train of nature, are eagerly
caught by the lovers of a wonder. Yet something of this inequality
happens to every man in every mode of exertion, manual or mental. The
mechanick cannot handle his hammer and his file at all times with equal
dexterity; there are hours, he knows not why, when "his hand is out."
By Mr. Richardson's relation, casually conveyed, much regard cannot be
claimed. That, in his intellectual hour, Milton called for his daughter
to "secure what came," may be questioned; for unluckily it happens to be
known, that his daughters were never taught to write; nor would he have
been obliged, as is universally confessed, to have employed any casual
visitor in disburdening his memory, if his daughter could have performed
the office.

The story of reducing his exuberance has been told of other authors,
and, though, doubtless, true of every fertile and copious mind, seems
to have been gratuitously transferred to Milton.

What he has told us, and we cannot now know more, is, that he composed
much of this poem in the night and morning, I suppose, before his mind
was disturbed with common business; and that he poured out, with great
fluency, his "unpremeditated verse." Versification, free, like his, from
the distresses of rhyme, must, by a work so long, be made prompt and
habitual; and, when his thoughts were once adjusted, the words would
come at his command.

At what particular times of his life the parts of his work were written,
cannot often be known. The beginning of the third book shows that he had
lost his sight; and the introduction to the seventh, that the return of
the king had clouded him with discountenance: and that he was offended
by the licentious festivity of the restoration. There are no other
internal notes of time. Milton, being now cleared from all effects of
his disloyalty, had nothing required from him but the common duty of
living in quiet, to be rewarded with the common right of protection;
but this, which, when he skulked from the approach of his king, was,
perhaps, more than he hoped, seems not to have satisfied him; for, no
sooner is he safe, than he finds himself in danger: "fallen on evil days
and evil tongues, and with darkness and with danger compass'd round."
This darkness, had his eyes been better employed, had undoubtedly
deserved compassion; but to add the mention of danger was ungrateful
and unjust. He was fallen, indeed, on "evil days;" the time was come in
which regicides could no longer boast their wickedness. But of "evil
tongues" for Milton to complain, required impudence, at least, equal to
his other powers; Milton, whose warmest advocates must allow, that he
never spared any asperity of reproach, or brutality of insolence.

But the charge itself seems to be false; for it would be hard to
recollect any reproach cast upon him, either serious or ludicrous,
through the whole remaining part of his life. He pursued his studies, or
his amusements, without persecution, molestation, or insult. Such is
the reverence paid to great abilities, however misused: they who
contemplated in Milton the scholar and the wit, were contented to forget
the reviler of his king.

When the plague, 1665, raged in London, Milton took refuge at Chalfont,
in Bucks; where Elwood, who had taken the house for him, first saw a
complete copy of Paradise Lost, and, having perused it, said to him:
"Thou hast said a great deal upon Paradise Lost; what hast thou to say
upon Paradise Found?"

Next year, when the danger of infection had ceased, he returned to
Bunhill fields, and designed the publication of his poem. A license was
necessary, and he could expect no great kindness from a chaplain of the
archbishop of Canterbury. He seems, however, to have been treated with
tenderness; for though objections were made to particular passages, and
among them to the simile of the sun, eclipsed in the first book, yet the
license was granted; and he sold his copy, April 27, 1667, to Samuel
Simmons, for an immediate payment of five pounds, with a stipulation to
receive five pounds more, when thirteen hundred should be sold of the
first edition; and again, five pounds after the sale of the same number
of the second edition; and another five pounds after the same sale of
the third. None of the three editions were to be extended beyond fifteen
hundred copies.

The first edition was of ten books, in a small quarto. The titles were
varied from year to year; and an advertisement and the arguments of the
books were omitted in some copies, and inserted in others.

The sale gave him, in two years, a right to his second payment, for
which the receipt was signed April, 26, 1669. The second edition was not
given till 1674; it was printed in small octavo; and the number of books
was increased to twelve, by a division of the seventh and twelfth; and
some other small improvements were made. The third edition was published
in 1678; and the widow, to whom the copy was then to devolve, sold all
her claims to Simmons for eight pounds, according to her receipt given
December 21, 1680. Simmons had already agreed to transfer the whole
right to Brabazon Aylmer, for twenty-five pounds; and Aylmer sold to
Jacob Tonson half, August 17, 1683, and half, March 24, 1690, at a price
considerably enlarged. In the history of Paradise Lost, a deduction thus
minute will rather gratify than fatigue.

The slow sale and tardy reputation of this poem have been always
mentioned as evidences of neglected merit, and of the uncertainty of
literary fame; and inquiries have been made, and conjectures offered,
about the causes of its long obscurity and late reception. But has the
case been truly stated? Have not lamentation and wonder been lavished on
an evil that was never felt?

That in the reigns of Charles and James the Paradise Lost received no
publick acclamations, is readily confessed. Wit and literature were on
the side of the court; and who, that solicited favour or fashion would
venture to praise the defender of the regicides? All that he himself
could think his due, from "evil tongues" in "evil days," was that
reverential silence which was generously preserved. But it cannot be
inferred, that his poem was not read, or not, however unwillingly,
admired.

The sale, if it be considered, will justify the publick. Those who have
no power to judge of past times, but by their own, should always doubt
their conclusions. The call for books was not in Milton's age what it
is in the present. To read was not then a general amusement; neither
traders, nor often gentlemen, thought themselves disgraced by ignorance.
The women had not then aspired to literature, nor was every house
supplied with a closet of knowledge. Those, indeed, who professed
learning, were not less learned than at any other time; but of that
middle race of students who read for pleasure or accomplishment, and
who buy the numerous products of modern typography, the number was
then comparatively small. To prove the paucity of readers, it may be
sufficient to remark, that the nation had been satisfied from 1623 to
1664, that is, forty-one years, with only two editions of the works of
Shakespeare, which, probably, did not together make one thousand copies.

The sale of thirteen hundred copies in two years, in opposition to so
much recent enmity, and to a style of versification new to all, and
disgusting to many, was an uncommon example of the prevalence of genius.
The demand did not immediately increase; for many more readers than were
supplied at first the nation did not afford. Only three thousand were
sold in eleven years; for it forced its way without assistance; its
admirers did not dare to publish their opinion; and the opportunities
now given of attracting notice by advertisements were then very few; the
means of proclaiming the publication of new books have been produced by
that general literature which now pervades the nation through all its
ranks.

But the reputation and price of the copy still advanced, till the
revolution put an end to the secrecy of love, and Paradise Lost broke
into open view with sufficient security of kind reception.

Fancy can hardly forbear to conjecture with what temper Milton surveyed
the silent progress of his work, and marked its reputation stealing its
way in a kind of subterraneous current, through fear and silence. I
cannot but conceive him calm and confident, little disappointed, not at
all dejected, relying on his own merit with steady consciousness, and
waiting, without impatience, the vicissitudes of opinion, and the
impartiality of a future generation.

In the mean time he continued his studies, and supplied the want of
sight by a very odd expedient, of which Philips gives the following
account:

Mr. Philips tells us, "that though our author had daily about him one or
other to read, some persons of man's estate, who, of their own accord,
greedily catched at the opportunity of bring his readers, that they
might as well reap the benefit of what they read to him, as oblige him
by the benefit of their reading; and others of younger years were sent
by their parents to the same end; yet excusing only the eldest daughter
by reason of her bodily infirmity, and difficult utterance of speech,
(which, to say truth, I doubt was the principal cause of excusing her,)
the other two were condemned to the performance of reading, and exactly
pronouncing of all the languages of whatever book he should, at one
time or other, think fit to peruse, viz. the Hebrew, (and I think the
Syriac,) the Greek, the Latin, the Italian, Spanish, and French. All
which sorts of books to be confined to read, without understanding one
word, must needs be a trial of patience almost beyond endurance. Yet
it was endured by both for a long time, though the irksomeness of this
employment could not be always concealed, but broke out more and more
into expressions of uneasiness; so that, at length, they were all, even
the eldest also, sent out to learn some curious and ingenious sorts
of manufacture, that are proper for women to learn, particularly
embroideries in gold or silver."

In the scene of misery which this mode of intellectual labour sets
before our eyes, it is hard to determine whether the daughters or the
father are most to be lamented. A language not understood can never be
so read as to give pleasure, and, very seldom, so as to convey
meaning. If few men would have had resolution to write books with such
embarrassments, few, likewise, would have wanted ability to find some
better expedient.

Three years after his Paradise Lost, 1667, he published his History
of England, comprising the whole fable of Geoffrey of Monmouth, and
continued to the Norman invasion. Why he should have given the first
part, which he seems not to believe, and which is universally rejected,
it is difficult to conjecture. The style is harsh; but it has something
of rough vigour, which, perhaps, may often strike, though it cannot
please.

On this history the licenser again fixed his claws, and, before he would
transmit it to the press, tore out several parts. Some censures of the
Saxon monks were taken away, lest they should be applied to the modern
clergy; and a character of the long parliament, and assembly of divines,
was excluded; of which the author gave a copy to the earl of Anglesea,
and which, being afterwards published, has been since inserted in its
proper place.

The same year were printed Paradise Regained; and Sampson Agonistes, a
tragedy written in imitation of the ancients, and never designed by
the author for the stage. As these poems were published by another
bookseller, it has been asked, whether Simmons was discouraged from
receiving them by the slow sale of the former? Why a writer changed
his bookseller a hundred years ago, I am far from hoping to discover.
Certainly, he who in two years sells thirteen hundred copies of a volume
in quarto, bought for two payments of five pounds each, has no reason to
repent his purchase.

When Milton showed Paradise Regained to Elwood, "this," said he, "is
owing to you; for you put it in my head by the question you put to me at
Chalfont, which otherwise I had not thought of."

His last poetical offspring was his favourite. He could not, as Elwood
relates, endure to hear Paradise Lost preferred to Paradise Regained.
Many causes may vitiate a writer's judgment of his own works. On that
which has cost him much labour he sets a high value, because he is
unwilling to think that he has been diligent in vain; what has been
produced without toilsome efforts, is considered with delight, as a
proof of vigorous faculties and fertile invention; and the last work,
whatever it be, has, necessarily, most of the grace of novelty. Milton,
however it happened, had this prejudice, and had it to himself.

To that multiplicity of attainments, and extent of comprehension, that
entitled this great author to our veneration, may be added a kind
of humble dignity, which did not disdain the meanest services to
literature. The epick poet, the controvertist, the politician, having
already descended to accommodate children with a book of rudiments,
now, in the last years of his life, composed a book of logick, for the
initiation of students in philosophy; and published, 1672, Artis Logicae
plenior Institutio ad Petri Rami Methodum concinnata; that is, a new
scheme of logick, according to the method of Ramus. I know not whether,
even in this book, he did not intend an act of hostility against the
universities; for Ramus was one of the first oppugners of the old
philosophy, who disturbed with innovations the quiet of the schools.

His polemical disposition again revived. He had now been safe so long,
that he forgot his fears, and published a Treatise of true Religion,
Heresy, Schism, Toleration, and the best means to prevent the growth of
Popery.

But this little tract is modestly written, with respectful mention of
the church of England, and an appeal to the thirty-nine articles.
His principle of toleration is, agreement in the sufficiency of the
scriptures; and he extends it to all who, whatever their opinions are,
profess to derive them from the sacred books. The papists appeal to
other testimonies, and are, therefore, in his opinion, not to be
permitted the liberty of either publick or private worship; for, though
they plead conscience, "we have no warrant," he says, "to regard
conscience, which is not grounded in scripture."

Those who are not convinced by his reasons, may be, perhaps, delighted
with his wit. The term "Roman catholick is," he says, "one of the pope's
bulls; it is particular universal, or catholick schismatick."

He has, however, something better. As the best preservative against
popery, he recommends the diligent perusal of the scriptures, a duty,
from which he warns the busy part of mankind not to think themselves
excused.

He now reprinted his juvenile poems, with some additions.

In the last year of his life he sent to the press, seeming to take
delight in publication, a collection of Familiar Epistles in Latin;
to which, being too few to make a volume, he added some academical
exercises, which, perhaps, he perused with pleasure, as they recalled to
his memory the days of youth, but for which nothing but veneration for
his name could now procure a reader.

When he had attained his sixty-sixth year, the gout, with which he had
been long tormented, prevailed over the enfeebled powers of nature. He
died by a quiet and silent expiration, about the tenth of November,
1674, at his house in Bunhill fields; and was buried next his father in
the chancel of St. Giles at Cripplegate. His funeral was very splendidly
and numerously attended.

Upon his grave there is supposed to have been no memorial; but in our
time a monument has been erected in Westminster Abbey "to the author of
Paradise Lost," by Mr. Benson, who has, in the inscription, bestowed
more words upon himself than upon Milton.

When the inscription for the monument of Philips, in which he was said
to be "soli Miltono secundus," was exhibited to Dr. Sprat, then dean
of Westminster, he refused to admit it; the name of Milton was, in his
opinion, too detestable to be read on the wall of a building dedicated
to devotion. Atterbury, who succeeded him, being author of the
inscription, permitted its reception. "And such has been the change of
publick opinion," said Dr. Gregory, from whom I heard this account,
"that I have seen erected in the church a statue of that man, whose name
I once knew considered as a pollution of its walls."

Milton has the reputation of having been, in his youth, eminently
beautiful, so as to have been called the lady of his college. His hair,
which was of a light brown, parted at the foretop, and hung down upon
his shoulders, according to the picture which he has given of Adam. He
was, however, not of the heroick stature, but rather below the middle
size[52], according to Mr. Richardson, who mentions him as having
narrowly escaped from being "short and thick." He was vigorous and
active, and delighted in the exercise of the sword, in which he is
related to have been eminently skilful. His weapon was, I believe, not
the rapier, but the backsword, of which he recommends the use in his
book on education.

His eyes are said never to have been bright; but, if he was a dexterous
fencer, they must have been once quick.

His domestick habits, so far as they are known, were those of a severe
student. He drank little strong drink of any kind, and fed without
excess in quantity, and, in his earlier years, without delicacy of
choice. In his youth he studied late at night; but afterwards changed
his hours, and rested in bed from nine to four in the summer, and five
in the winter. The course of his day was best known after he was blind.
When he first rose, he heard a chapter in the Hebrew Bible, and then
studied till twelve; then took some exercise for an hour; then dined,
then played on the organ, and sang, or heard another sing; then studied
to six; then entertained his visiters till eight; then supped, and,
after a pipe of tobacco and a glass of water, went to bed.

So is his life described: but this even tenour appears attainable only
in colleges. He that lives in the world will, sometimes, have the
succession of his practice broken and confused. Visiters, of whom
Milton is represented to have had great numbers, will come and stay
unseasonably; business, of which every man has some, must be done when
others will do it.

When he did not care to rise early, he had something read to him by his
bedside; perhaps, at this time, his daughters were employed. He composed
much in the morning, and dictated in the day, sitting obliquely in an
elbowchair, with his leg thrown over the arm.

Fortune appears not to have had much of his care. In the civil wars he
lent his personal estate to the parliament; but when, after the contest
was decided, he solicited repayment, he met not only with neglect, but
"sharp rebuke;" and, having tired both himself and his friends, was
given up to poverty and hopeless indignation, till he showed how able he
was to do greater service. He was then made Latin secretary, with two
hundred pounds a year; and had a thousand pounds for his Defence of
the People. His widow, who, after his death, retired to Namptwich, in
Cheshire, and died about 1729, is said to have reported, that he lost
two thousand pounds by intrusting it to a scrivener; and that, in the
general depredation upon the church, he had grasped an estate of about
sixty pounds a year belonging to Westminster Abbey, which, like other
sharers of the plunder of rebellion, he was afterwards obliged to
return. Two thousand pounds, which he had placed in the excise-office,
were also lost. There is yet no reason to believe that he was ever
reduced to indigence. His wants, being few, were competently supplied.
He sold his library before his death, and left his family fifteen
hundred pounds, on which his widow laid hold, and only gave one hundred
to each of his daughters.

His literature was unquestionably great. He read all the languages
which are considered either as learned or polite: Hebrew, with its two
dialects, Greek, Latin, Italian, French, and Spanish. In Latin his skill
was such as places him in the first rank of writers and criticks; and he
appears to have cultivated Italian with uncommon diligence. The books
in which his daughter, who used to read to him, represented him as most
delighting, after Homer, which he could almost repeat, were Ovid's
Metamorphoses and Euripides. His Euripides is, by Mr. Cradock's
kindness, now in my hands: the margin is sometimes noted; but I have
found nothing remarkable.

Of the English poets, he set most value upon Spenser, Shakespeare, and
Cowley. Spenser was apparently his favourite; Shakespeare he may easily
be supposed to like, with every other skilful reader; but I should not
have expected that Cowley, whose ideas of excellence were so different
from his own, would have had much of his approbation. His character of
Dryden, who sometimes visited him, was, that he was a good rhymist,
but no poet. His theological opinions are said to have been first
Calvinistical; and afterwards, perhaps, when he began to hate the
presbyterians, to have tended towards Arminianism. In the mixed
questions of theology and government, he never thinks that he can recede
far enough from popery, or prelacy; but what Bandius says of Erasmus
seems applicable to him, "magis habuit quod fugeret, quam quod
sequeretur." He had determined rather what to condemn, than what
to approve. He has not associated himself with any denomination of
protestants; we know rather what he was not, than what he was. He was
not of the church of Rome; he was not of the church of England.

To be of no church is dangerous. Religion, of which the rewards are
distant, and which is animated only by faith and hope, will glide by
degrees out of the mind, unless it be invigorated and reimpressed by
external ordinances, by stated calls to worship, and the salutary
influence of example. Milton, who appears to have had full conviction of
the truth of Christianity, and to have regarded the holy scriptures with
the profoundest veneration, to have been untainted by any heretical
peculiarity of opinion, and to have lived in a confirmed belief of the
immediate and occasional agency of providence, yet grew old without any
visible worship. In the distribution of his hours, there was no hour of
prayer, either solitary or with his household; omitting publick prayers,
he omitted all.

Of this omission the reason has been sought upon a supposition, which
ought never to be made, that men live with their own approbation, and
justify their conduct to themselves. Prayer certainly was not thought
superfluous by him, who represents our first parents as praying
acceptably in the state of innocence, and efficaciously after their
fall. That he lived without prayer can hardly be affirmed; his studies
and meditations were an habitual prayer. The neglect of it in his family
was, probably, a fault for which he condemned himself, and which he
intended to correct, but that death, as too often happens, intercepted
his reformation. His political notions were those of an acrimonious and
surly republican, for which it is not known that he gave any better
reason than that "a popular government was the most frugal; for the
trappings of a monarchy would set up an ordinary commonwealth." It is
surely very shallow policy that supposes money to be the chief good; and
even this, without considering that the support and expense of a court
is, for the most part, only a particular kind of traffick, by which
money is circulated, without any national impoverishment.

Milton's republicanism was, I am afraid, founded in an envious hatred of
greatness, and a sullen desire of independence; in petulance impatient
of control, and pride disdainful of superiority. He hated monarchs in
the state, and prelates in the church; for he hated all whom he was
required to obey. It is to be suspected, that his predominant desire was
to destroy, rather than establish, and that he felt not so much the love
of liberty, as repugnance to authority.

It has been observed, that they who most loudly clamour for liberty do
not most liberally grant it. What we know of Milton's character, in
domestick relations, is, that he was severe and arbitrary. His family
consisted of women; and there appears in his books something like a
Turkish contempt of females, as subordinate and inferiour beings. That
his own daughters might not break the ranks, he suffered them to be
depressed by a mean and penurious education. He thought women made only
for obedience, and man only for rebellion.

Of his family some account may be expected. His sister, first married to
Mr. Philips, afterwards married Mr. Agar, a friend of her first husband,
who succeeded him in the crown-office. She had, by her first husband,
Edward and John, the two nephews whom Milton educated; and, by her
second, two daughters.

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