described by his great poetic sire, from bitter experience, so truly, so vividly, and so feelingly: "Full little knowest thou, that hast not tried, To lose good days that might be better spent ; Mother Hubbard's Tale, 895 seq. Like many other poets Milton found the stillness, warmth, and recumbency of bed favourable to composition; and his wife said that before rising of a morning, he often dictated to her twenty or thirty verses. A favourite position of his when dictating his verses, we are told, was that of sitting with one of his legs over an arm of his chair. His wife related that he used to compose chiefly in the winter, which account is confirmed by the following passage in his Life by Phillips :-"There is a remarkable passage in the composition of Paradise Lost which I have a particular occasion to remember; for, whereas I had the perusal of it from the very beginning, for some years, as I went from time to time to visit him, in a parcel of ten, twenty, or thirty verses at a time, which, being written by whatever hand came next, might possibly want correction as to the orthography and pointing; having, as the summer came on, not been shown any for a considerable while, and desiring to know the reason thereof, was answered that his veins never happily flowed 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 never so much;' so that in all the years he was about this poem, he may be said to have spent but half his time therein."* Milton's conversation is stated to have been of a very agreeable nature. His daughter Deborah said that he was "delightful company, the life of the conversation, and that on account of a flow of subject, and an unaffected cheerfulness and civility." Richardson, to whom we are indebted for the preservation of this testimony, adds that "he had a gravity in his temper, not melancholy, or not till the latter part of his life, not sour, not morose or ill-natured, but a certain severity of mind; a mind not condescending to little things." His temper however was warm, perhaps somewhat overbearing, as some places of his controversial writings may appear to indicate, and we have the testimony of probably an indifferent person that he was looked on as "a harsh and choleric man;" but all this is perfectly compatible with the highest moral excellence, and with general urbanity and kindness of nature and manner. Thus the meaning of these last words may be that he was one who would not tamely submit to injustice and imposition. Heinsius writing to Gronovius in 1651, says of Milton, "virum esse miti comique ingenio aiunt." His opinion of his own powers was naturally high, and he speaks of his * There seems to be some foundation in the poems themselves for this notion. His best Latin poems, such as the Mansus, the Epitaphium Damonis, etc., must have been composed in the period specified; so also was the Ode on the Nativity, and Lycidas, and probably Paradise Regained. In fact the only one of his longer poems of which we can assert the contrary is Comus. In his Latin elegy In Adventum Veris however he would seem to say that it was with the Spring that his poetic powers revived. "honest haughtiness and self-esteem," joined however, he adds, with a becoming modesty. With respect to the worldly circumstances of this great man, little is known with certainty. It is evident that during his travels, and after his return, the allowance made him by his father was liberal. It was adequate, we may see, to the support of himself and his two nephews, for it is not likely that his sister paid him anything for them. He must also have considered himself able to support a family, without keeping school, when he married Miss Powell. He of course inherited the bulk of his father's property, but of the amount of it we are ignorant; all we know is that it included the interest in his house in Bread-street. His losses were not inconsiderable. A sum of £2000, which he had invested in the Excise Office, was lost at the Restoration, as the Government refused to recognize the obligations of the Commonwealth; according to the account of his granddaughter, he lost another sum of £2000 by placing it in the hands of a money-scrivener; and he also lost at the Restoration a property of £60 a year out of the lands of the Dean and Chapter of Westminster, which he very probably had purchased. His house in Bread-street was destroyed by the Great Fire. The whole property which he left behind him, exclusive of his claim on the Powell family for his first wife's fortune, and of his household goods,* did not exceed £1500, including the produce of his library, a great part of which he is said to have disposed of before his death. Two charges have been made against the memory of Milton, the one, that he was unkind and unjust to his children; the other, that he attended no place of worship, *Toland. prayers and never appears to have had social in his family. We will consider the former when we come to speak of his daughters; the latter we will notice in this place. It is but too prevalent an opinion that religion consists chiefly in a regular attendance at some place of worship, and at the bottom of this persuasion there seems to be an idea, apparently derived from the language of the Old Testament, that God is more in one place than in another, or that devotions offered in such a place are more acceptable than if offered elsewhere. Hence we may see persons who are so deaf as to be unable to hear any part of the service most regular attendants at church. Such however we know could never have been the belief of Milton, and therefore he may have regarded his blindness as a sufficient excuse for not frequenting any place of worship. This and other reasons have been assigned by Toland, Newton, and others; but the discovery of his work on Christian Doctrine enables us to see more clearly into the grounds of his not joining himself to any religious society. From his opinions as there developed, we may discern that he differed in his theologic views from every sect then in existence. He says, no doubt, quoting the well-known passage Heb. x. 25, that "it is the duty of believers to join themselves, if possible, to a church duly constituted;" but he did not regard any society of Christians that he knew of as forming "a church duly constituted" in his eyes, and therefore it was not possible for him to join any. He further defines the universal Church as consisting of those who worship God through Christ anywhere, and either individually or in conjunction with others; and he adds, that those who cannot do this last "conveniently or with full satisfaction of conscience," are not to be sup posed not to partake of the blessings bestowed on the Church. As to his not having social prayer in his family, this we think may be elucidated by the remark he makes respecting our Lord, who, he says, "appears seldom to have prayed in conjunction with his disciples, or even in their presence, but either wholly alone or at some distance from them." This was probably the model which he set before himself, and he may have deemed it sufficient to give his family an example of true and rational devotion. He commenced every day with the reading of the Scriptures, and spent some time in silent and serious meditation thereon, saying thus, as it were, to those around him, "Go and do thou likewise." He did not seek apparently to impress his own peculiar views on his family. He must have been married to his last wife according to the rites of the Church of England, and it is very probable that she frequented some place of worship, as she died a member of the Baptist society. To judge by one of the interrogatories put to the witnesses in the case of his will, and probably suggested by the malicious Mary Milton, his daughters were regular in their attendance at church.* In what precedes we have endeavoured to arrange and narrate all the circumstances relating to the life, manners, pursuits, and occupations of the ever-illustrious John Milton. Scanty as they may appear to be, they are, in reality, more copious than those which have reached us of any other distinguished man anterior to the 18th century. Thus, what do we know of the lives of Dante, *See Note H. at end of this Part. |