REVIEW OF BOOKS. ་་་་་་་་་ Some Account of the Life and Writings of John Milton, derived principally from Documents in his Majesty's State Paper Office, now first published. By the Rev. H. J. Todd, M. A. F. S. A. and R. S. L. London: 1826. 8vo. pp. 450. TAUGHT to venerate the name of Milton before we could understand either his poetry or his prose, we have, from the earliest period of our recollection, approached his writings with a reverence unfelt for any other productions of human genius. This feeling has not been diminished by a closer and more intelligent acquaintance with his works. On the contrary, every fresh perusal brings the discovery of some charm unperceived before, and heightens our admiration of his lofty and matchless powers. At first we only knew him as the poet of Paradise Lost, whose heavenly muse, sung Of man's first disobedience, and the fruit Of that forbidden tree, whose mortal taste Brought death into the world and all our woe. His pictures of primæval innocence, and paradisaical beauty; of diabolic power and malignity; of the battles of angels, and the sublime employments of the heavenly hierarchies; are powerfully fitted to engage the young mind, and possess a freshness and fascination which are calculated to give animation to dulness, and vivacity to age. But the prose of Milton is not less interesting to us than his poetry. Indeed, the best of his prose compositions continually remind us of his happiest efforts in the first of poems. They display all the ardour of his high poetie faucy, and convey the most valuable instruction, in language more like that of angels than of men. The lofty patriotism, the uncompromising love N. S. No. 25. of liberty, the hatred of tyranny and oppression, and the enlightened attachment to all that is calculated to give dignity to man and honour to God, which pervade his leading works, entitle him to the most sacred homage of all the friends of the rights and liberties of mankind.-But, in expressing our early and continued veneration for this distinguished man, we are forgetting, that we are in danger of the folly of attempting to eulogize one, whom all the world has agreed to place on the loftiest pinnacle of earthly glory. No praise of ours can add any thing to the fame of John Milton. That many of the events of his life are lost for ever, and that he died in comparative obscurity, are more matters of regret than wonder. These things have befallen multitudes of whom the world was not worthy; and they are likely to be the fate of the heroes of other times that are yet to come. It is a natural curiosity, that endeavours to explore the concealed, and to revive the forgotten parts of the history of eminent men. It is desirable to discover, if we can, the circumstances which gave rise to their distinguished efforts, the springs which most powerfully operated on their minds and conduct, the processes of thought and application which they pursued, the sources of their information or imagery, the principles which formed their taste or their character, the associates of their enterprise or their glory, the motives which stimulated to exertion, and the success or defeat which followed their efforts. But, alas! how little do we often know on such points, after the most laborious researches. Who can tell us any thing of the author of Job, or of the life or death of Homer? F Happily the history of Milton is not involved in such obscurity; and, all things considered, we have a tolerably fair portion of information respecting him. Still we cannot conceal our opinion, that Milton has not yet met with a biographer in all respects qualified for the task. That task, it must be admitted, is no common one; requiring, in order to its satisfactory accomplishment, a combination of qualities and endowments rarely to be met with in one individual. That we are not pronouncing an opinion at random, will appear by adverting to the leading writers who have exerted themselves to furnish the world with an account of this extraordinary man. It has been attempted by men of various parties, and some of them of no mean distinction in the literary republic; but in all of them, we are much deceived if it will not appear, that some great quality has been wanting to enable them to do justice, (not to the statement of the facts of his life, for this is to be found substantially in them all,) but to the diversified talents, pursuits, and, in short, the entire mind and character of this gifted individual. The first account of Milton was laid before the world by Anthony A. Wood, in the Fasti attached to the first volume of his Athenæ Oxonienses, published in 1691. It was composed by the assistance of a friend, who received the greater part of the statement from Milton himself, and his relations. This friend was Aubrey, whom Wood elsewhere represents as "credulous, roving, and magotieheaded, and sometimes little better than crased." Considering the prejudiced mind of Wood, and his usual method of treating characters, the narrative is on the whole creditable to his impartiality. It contains the chief outline of Milton's life, and a notice of the greater part of his works. The following sentences are very characteristic of the Oxford historian's manner. "At first we find him a Presbyterian, and a most sharp and violent opposer of prelacy, the established ecclesiastical discipline, and the orthodox clergy. Shortly after, he did set on foot, and maintained very odd and novel positions concerning divorce; and then taking part with the Independents, he became a great Antimonarchist, a bitter enemy to King Charles I., and at length arrived to that unparalleled height of monstrous and profligate impudence, as in print to justify the most execrable murder of him, the best of Kings, as I shall anon tell you. Afterwards being made Latin secretary to the Parliament, we find him a commonwealth's-man, a hater of all things that looked towards a single person, a great reproacher of the Universities and scholastical degrees, decency and uniformity in the church. When Oliver ascended the throne, he became Latin secretary, and proved to him very serviceable, when employed in business of weight and moment, and did great matters to attain a name and wealth. conclude, he was a person of wonderful parts, of a very sharp biting and satyrical wit. He was a good philosopher and historian, an excellent poet, Latinist, Grecian, and Hebraician, a good mathematician and musician, and so rarely endowed by nature, that had he been but honestly principled, he might have been highly useful to that party against which he all along appeared with much malice and bitterness." To Thus far this snarling but useful writer. The next account of Milton was from the pen of his nephew, Edward Philips, It was published in 1694, prefixed to an edition, in 12mo. of Milton's Letters of State. It is short, but being written by one who had passed a good deal of time with the poet, furnishes some information respecting his domestic circumstances which can be relied on, and which could not otherwise be obtained. By him was first communicated the curious fact, that Milton's poetical vein never flowed freely, but from the autumnal equinox to the vernal, and that whatever he attempted at other times was never to his satisfaction, though he courted his fancy ever so much." Johnson laughs at this; but Johnson was no poet. We do not know whether any discovery has ever been made of the tract referred to in the following sentence of Philips's account. "He (Milton) had, as I remember, prepared for the press an answer to some little scribing quack in London, who had written a scurrilous libel against him; but whether by dissuasion of friends, as thinking him a fellow not worth his notice, or for what other excuse, I know not, this answer was never published." What a precious morsel this would be to some black letter hunter;-to such a man as Mr. Todd. It would be worth all his discoveries in the State Paper Office. The next, and indeed the first extended life of the poet, came from the pen of John Toland, the infidel. It was prefixed to the edition of Milton's works, published in three volumes folio, and was also published by itself in 8vo. in 1699. To the 8vo. edition was annexed "Amyntor; or, a Defence of Milton's Life," by the same individual. He tells us, that besides the poet's own writings, "I learnt some particulars of him from a person that had been once his amanuensis, which were confirmed to me by his daughter now dwelling in London, and by a letter written to me at my desire by his last wife, who is still alive. I perused the papers of one of his nephews, learnt what I could in discourse with the other; and lastly, consulted such of his acquaintance as, after the best inquiry, I was able to discover." It is evident from the work, that Toland took considerable pains to ascertain the truth, and was quite fearless in stating it. His love of liberty was evident; but his hostility to revealed religion unfitted him for being the faithful biographer of such a man as Milton. He first laid before the world strong proof, especially in the declaration of Charles II., that Dr. Gauden, and not Charles I., was the author of the Eikon Basilike-a discovery which the researches of Mr. Todd, in his Life of Bishop Walton, has since confirmed and set at rest. We concur, on the whole, in Dr. Symmon's account of Toland. "It is an able and spirited work. Whatever may be the demerits of this author in some essential respects, his merit as the biographer of our great poet, is certainly considerable, and entitles him to an honourable station among the asserters of historic truth. The admirers of Milton are under great obligations to him." Addison's critique on Paradise Lost, in the Spectator, contributed more largely than any thing which had previously been done to establish the poetical fame of Milton. But it could scarcely be known from that production that Milton had ever written in prose, And indeed, of the great majority of Milton's biographers it must be affirmed, that, while they glory in the poet, they are almost ashamed of the man. They love the author of Paradise Lost, but scarcely like to be found in company with the writer of Areopagitica. Dr. Birch, in 1738, prefixed a life of Milton to his edition of his works; and Doctor, afterwards Bishop Newton, furnished another in the same circumstances. Both these lives supply some additional information respecting the poet. Dr. Birch was a man of research and candour, but could not do justice to the poetical genius and ardent temperament of Milton. New ton was a rising churchman, and was therefore incapable of sympathizing with the stern and uncompromising principles, of a civil and religious nature, which distinguished the Secretary of the Commonwealth. Both works, though fairly written, are dull, and are deficient in those enlarged and philosophic views which the interesting and peculiar nature of their subject required. If Newton had reflected on Milton's stinging remarks on the "marginal stuffings" for which some of his cotemporaries were distinguished, he would have added fewer notes to the exquisite production of the immortal bard. Could the Poet arise from the dead, he would be greatly amazed to find himself loaded with such a mass of annotation. Hayley, as possessed of some poetical talent, though not of a very high order, was so far better qualified than some of his predecessors to do justice to the muse of Milton. He therefore produced a more elegant book. But he was a vain man, and as unfit to be his biographer as he was to do that office for Cowper. In both cases he appears to have been ashamed of the religion of his authors. But what shall we say of Johnson? No one will question his capability of estimating the literary and poetical merits of Milton; and yet he has produced the most imperfect and unjust of all the lives of Milton. It is insolent, malicious, and unfair. It prefers charges without proof, and reiterates refuted slander. He hated his politics, he hated his religion, he hated his prose, and it is even doubtful whether he did not hate his poetry. Johnson had before lent himself to introduce the villanous work of Lauder, accusing Milton of the grossest plagiarism. He appears rather to have regretted his failure than to have repented of his crime; for he seems all his life to have been better pleased to ex pose the faults than to illustrate the beauties of the poet. His praise is often faint, and his epithets qualified or reproachful, where, had a courtly bard been the subject, he would have been extolled with all the pomp and rotundity of Johnsonian hyperbole. Johnson's life called forth a most severe, but well-merited castigation from the pen of Archdeacon Blackburn, who, in his Memoirs of Thomas Hollis, Esq. exposes with great effect the malice and misrepresentations of Johnson. Of this production, Symmons expresses himself with just indignation, when he says "We have seen a new Salmasius, unimpelled by those motives which actuated the hirelings of Charles, revive in Johnson; and have beheld the virtuous and the amiable, the firm and the consistent Milton, who appears to have acted, from the opening to the close of his hife, As ever in his great Taskmaster's eye,' exhibited in the disguise of a morose and a malevolent being; of a man, impatient himself of the social subordination, yet oppressive to those within his power; of a wretch who, from pride, austerity, and prudence, was at once a rebel, a tyrant, and a sycophant. This atrocious libel has long since reflected discredit on its author alone; and its falsehood has been so clearly demonstrated by many able pens, and particularly by those of Blackburn and Hayley, that a new biographer of Milton might well be excused from honouring it with his notice." This extract from Symmons naturally leads us to speak of his life of the poet, which is, without all question, the ablest, the most consistent, and the most candid of all the lives of Milton. Dr. Symmons evidently wrote con amore. loved the man, as well as admired the poet, and had no inducements, from bis political bias, to sacrifice. He the patriot to the manes of his and his country's enemies. He was an elegant scholar, and if not a poet himself, he was no contemptible judge of poetic merit; a staunch asserter of the rights and liberties of men, and capable of fearlessly maintaining what he firmly believed. He was, with two exceptions, the very man to write the life of Milton; but these are very important. "Strongly attached," as he himself tells us, "to the Church of England, from whose lap he sprang, and at whose bosom he was fostered," regarding "her spiritual worship as remote from the rude and unsightly devotion of Calvin, as from the childish mummery of Rome;" admiring the gradations of her hierarchy and her "mild and liberal conduct," he eannot be expected to do full justice to the character of a man, whose mind, in those respects, was the very opposite of his own. fear, also, Dr. Symmons was no puritan in his religious views. Differing, as we do, from Milton in some very important particulars, it is impossible not to perceive, in all his works, even in his last, the most injurious of all to his fame, his deep respect for the supreme authority of revelation, the devotional tone of his mind, and his great familiarity with the Scriptures. It We is difficult for a person, not in earnest about religion himself, to enter fully into the views and feelings of such a man. Our readers, we are afraid, will suppose we have lost sight of Mr. Todd in this circumnavigation among the biographers of Milton. We assure them this has not been the case, and that we have been forced on this long voyage of discovery to our no small inconvenience, from the disappointment we have met with. We took up Mr. Todd's volume with no ordinary feelings of excitement. Announced to "contain much new matter," derived principally from his Majesty's State Paper Office, we cried out cureka, and proceeded to devour the choice provision. We fondly hoped to have some new light thrown on Milton and his times, to be furnished with much interesting illustration of his associates and occupations, and to be gratified with some at least of his unpublished correspondence. We never even dreamed that the State Paper Office would be found to contain little more than a few entries in the books of council respecting Milton, and some items of accounts in which his name occurs. Yet this is literally the fact; and, with the exception of the following letter, not before published, we cannot extract another fragment of any interest from the volume before us. It is addressed to Bradshaw on behalf of Andrew Marvell. "My Lord,-But that it would be an interruption to ye publick, wherein yor studies are perpetually imployed, I should now and then venture to supply this my enforced absence wth a line or two, though it were my onely busines, and that would be noe slight one, to make my due acknowledgments of yr many favoures; wch I both doe at this time, and ever shall; and have this farder, wch I thought my parte to let you know of, that there will be wth you to morrow, upon some occasion of busines, a Gentleman, whose name is Mr Marvile; a man whom both by report, and ye converse I have had with him, of singular desert for ye State to make use of; who alsoe offers himselfe if yere be any imployment for him. His father was ye Minister of Hull, and he hath spent foure yeares abroad in Holland, France, Italy, and Spaine, to very good purpose, as I beleeve, and ye gaineing of those four languages; besides he is a scholler, and well read in ye Latin and Greek authors; and noe he com's now lately out of ye house of doubt of an approved conversation, for ye Lord Fairelax, who was Generall, where he was intrusted to give some instructions in ye languages to ye Lady and his Daughter. If upon ye death of Mr. Wakerley, ye Councell shall thinke yt I shall need any assistant in ye performance of my place (though for my pt I find noe encumbrances of that wch belongs to me, except it be in point of attendance at conferences wth Ambassadors, wch I must confesse, in my Condition, I am not fit for,) it would be hard for them to find a man soe |