་ account it, but of my left hand.' This 'left-handedness shows itself in Milton's style in a lack of fluency and ease, in a stiff and cumbrous richness, and in the hyperlatinism not only of its vocabulary, but even more of its whole character and construction. If the object of controversy be, not to silence, but to convince, Milton's style is, except perhaps in the Areopagitica, entirely unsuited to its purpose. There is no methodical argument, no careful examination of evidence, no attempts to appreciate the point of view of an opponent. When he is not writing under the pressure of strong emotion, his prose is dull and colourless; under the spell of passion it catches fire and becomes either scurrilously abusive, or inarticulately sublime. He is an arch-offender among seventeenth century writers in the matter of long and involved sentences, which sometimes forget their own beginning, and defy all rules of grammatical construction. But there are passages in his prose works, the ornate splendour and stately rhythm of which are unsurpassed, even in an age adorned by the florid exuberance of Jeremy Taylor and the stately serenity of Sir Thomas Browne. CHAPTER III. MILTON'S LATER POEMS. IF Milton had retired at the Restoration to a life of leisured ease in the midst of his books and his thoughts, and had in due course produced the three masterpieces of his old age, we might well have wondered that the man, who for twenty years had seemed wholly given up to political interests could thus rise out of the clamour and commotion of the Restoration age to realize and fulfil the dreams of his youth. But our wonder becomes yet further increased when we note the circumstances under which Paradise Lost was actually written. Begun probably in 1658, when the Commonwealth was beginning to totter to its fall, the tremendous imagery of the first two books was shaping itself in the mind of the poet through all the terrible year of disillusionment and anxiety that followed. Rescued from imminent peril of death to pass the remainder of his days in blindness, domestic discord and comparative poverty, he resumed his task, while the men whose cause he had defended were being hunted down as criminals, or their bodies torn from their graves to be suspended on the gibbet. From the allusions in his prose writings it is clear that Milton had at no time lost sight of his great ambition to write something that after ages would not willingly let die. Ever and anon he recurs to it, as the true purpose of his life, postponed only for a time. So, at the very outset of his political life, he had written-'I trust to make it manifest with what small willingness I endure to interrupt the pursuit of no less hopes than these, and leave a calm and pleasing solitariness, fed with cheerful and confident thoughts, to embark in a troubled sea of noises and hoarse disputes; put from beholding the bright countenance of truth in the quiet and still air of delightful studies, to come into the dim reflection of hollow antiquities, sold by the seeming bulk.' But the long silence of nearly twenty years, broken only by the stray trumpet notes' of the sonnets, was not too long for the necessary work of preparation, hindered as it was by political distraction and failing sight. It was the consciousness that the fruit was ripe unto harvest, rather than any change in political or personal matters, that led him to set about the composition of the poem in the autumn of 1658. He had returned from Italy with the idea in his mind of an epic poem on some subject of British history, probably connected with King Arthur. The next year had brought a change in this plan. In the first place, he had turned from British to sacred history, and in the second place he was drawn to dramatic in preference to epic poetry-to the "lofty grave tragedians of Greece." Indeed, Satan's Address to the Sun in the Fourth Book of Paradise Lost was actually written in 1642, as the exordium of a dramatic poem on the fall of man. But when Milton resumed his work sixteen years later, he reverted, for reasons not recorded, to the epic form. In doing so it can hardly be doubted that he was guided by a wise instinct. He had not the self-abandonment needed for the highest dramatic work. The character of his genius was subjective, and as the self-reliance of his youth passed into the involuntary isolation of his maturer years this subjectivity is to be dis cerned asserting itself yet more strongly until it culminated in Samson Agonistes. 6 When once Milton had started on his great poem the work went on rapidly, in spite of all interruptions. It was generally at night that his celestial patroness' visited' him, inspiring the verse that one of his daughters, or any friend that happened to be available, was summoned to take down from his dictation. The period of composition of the various Books can only be conjectured from internal evidence. The invocation at the opening of the Third Book is sometimes regarded as marking the resumption of the poem after the dangers of the Restoration: 'Hail, holy light.... Thee I revisit now with bolder wing, Escaped the Stygian pool, though long detained Through utter and through middle darkness borne.' At the opening of the Seventh Book comes another autobiographical fragment, which, according to this view, belongs to the time when the licentiousness of the Restoration period had begun to show itself, and when the poet's isolation had grown habitual: 'Descend from heaven, Urania, by that name If rightly thou art called, whose voice divine Half yet remains unsung, but narrower bound E Visit'st my slumbers nightly, or when morn Of that wild rout that tore the Thracian bard But as this passage is the first definite and unmistakable reference to the Restoration that occurs in the poem, it seems not improbable that Milton had completed the first six books before the work was interrupted by the political dangers which still menaced him when he resumed his appointed task. If this view be correct, the poem was probably begun some years before the close of the Commonwealth period, and the reference to the poet's blindness at the beginning of Book III. gains an added meaning as having been written soon after his loss of sight had become complete, in 1656. According to Aubrey, the poem was completed by the close of 1663, but two more years were occupied by the work of revision. We know from Ellwood that it was finished by the autumn of 1665. Milton's flight from the plaguestricken city in that year, and the Great Fire that laid London in ashes in the following year, retarded its publication till 1667. In the April of that year the agreement with Mr. Samuel Symons for the issue of Paradise Lost was signed the poet to receive £5 on publication, and £5 for each entire edition disposed of. According to the present value of money,' says Mr. Masson, 'it was as if Milton had received £17 10s. down, and was to receive £70 in all on the supposition of a sale of 3,700 copies.' The 6 |