ing and beginning late," at last fixes upon Paradise Lost. Surely he chose wisely and well! He did not wait in vain ; he did not wait a moment too long. It was well for him and well for us that he had "Fall'n on evil days, On evil days had fall'n, and evil tongues, In darkness, and with dangers compass'd round, or he might have gone on writing prose to the end of his days. Would this have been a calamity? Yes, if it had deprived the world of his immortal poem, which is not the greatest of heroic poems, only because it was not the first.' But then perhaps his prose works would have been better appreciated, for, after all, they are worthier of a deeper study than they have usually met with. They are full of magnificent passages, such as no one but himself could have written, resplendent with the magic touch and stamp of genius, and, in the words of a competent judge, 'written as if an angel had held the pen.' We will proceed to cull from his prose works, arranged in their chronological order, the most striking of these 'disjecta membra poetæ,' these prose-poems, what he himself so well calls "sentences of a venturous edge, uttered in the height of zeal; and who knows whether they might not be the dictates of a Divine Spirit ?" Our extracts will necessarily be somewhat fragmentary and unconnected, but we trust that they will include all that ordinary readers would consider as valuable, interesting, and worthy of preservation in the prose works of John Milton, the friend and lover, the champion and martyr of "white-robed truth"-" sincerely good and perfectly divine." It only remains to say that we have given entire, and without multilation, his great masterpiece, the Areopagitica a Speech for the Liberty of Unlicensed Printing. The glory of this battle is all his own. Thousands among his contemporaries raised their voices against ship-money and the star-chamber. But there were few indeed who discerned the more fearful evils of moral and intellectual slavery, and the benefits which would result from the liberty of the press and the unfettered exercise of private judgment. These were the objects which Milton had in view when he attacked the licensing system, in that sublime treatise which every statesman should wear as a sign upon his hand, and as frontlets between his eyes.' 18 MILTON'S PROSE WORKS ARRANGED IN CHRONOLOGICAL ORDER. THERE is great advantage to be derived from reading and studying the works of an author in the order in which they have been written. Editors have long made this discovery, and our best editions of the classics are those in which this chronological order is observed; such as Bentley's Horace, Scholefield's Eschylus, and Bekker's Aristophanes. To read the ancient tragedies and comedies in the order in which they were acted, as far as it can be ascertained, must add very much to their interest and historical value. And in nothing is the benefit of chronological arrangement more evident than in St. Paul's Epistles, which, as arranged by Bishop Wordsworth in his scholarly and invaluable Greek Testament, are seen to form one connected and consistent whole, setting forth a complete system of Doctrine and Discipline, which they can hardly be said to do in their disjointed and usual order. These remarks will be found true with regard to Milton's controversial writings, and in some measure with regard to his poetry. 1641. Of Reformation in England. 1641. Of Prelatical Episcopacy. 1641. The Reason of Church Government urged against Prelaty. 1641. Animadversions upon the Remonstrant's Defence. 1642. An Apology for Smectymunus. 1644. The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce. 1644. On Education. 1644. Areopagitica. 1645. The Judgment of Martin Bucer concerning Divorce. 1645. 1645. Tetrachordon. Colasterion. 1650. The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates. 1650. The History of Britain to the Norman Conquest. First Four 1651. A Defence of the People of England. In Latin. 1654. The Second Defence. In Latin. 1655. Authoris pro se Defensio. 1655. Authoris ad Alexandri Mori Supplementum Responsio. 1655. A Manifesto of the Lord Protector. 1659. Considerations to remove Hirelings out of the Church. 1659. Of Civil Power in Ecclesiastical Causes. 1659. Letter on the Ruptures of the Commonwealth. 1649-1659. Letters of State. 1660. Mode of Establishing a Commonwealth. 1660. Brief Notes on Dr. Griffith's Sermon. 1625-1666. Familiar Letters. In Latin. 1670. Remainder of the History of Britain. 1672. Artis Logica Plenior Institutio. 1673. Of True Religion, Heresy, Schism, Toleration. Posthumous Treatise on the Christian Doctrine. In Two Books. In Latin. Discovered, in 1823, by Mr. Lemon, deputy keeper of the state papers, among the presses of his office, and translated by C. R. Sumner, late Bishop of Winchester. With regard to the chronology of Milton's great Poems, it may be interesting to bear in mind that he wrote his Ode on the Nativity at twenty-one, his Comus at twenty-six, his Lycidas at twenty-nine, his Paradise Lost at fifty-seven, his Paradise Regained and Samson Agonistes at sixty-one. Milton's three marriages took place in his thirtyfifth, fiftieth, and fifty-fourth year. He also fell in love when he was nineteen. See his seventh elegy, and Cowper's beautiful translation. It was love at first sight. That is the one face for me. He saw, but never spoke to the beloved object. "She was gone, and vanish'd, to appear no more." He proceeded to solace himself with his Latin Muse. The one face that was for Milton was Catharine Woodcock's, whom he married and lost in childbed within the year. If his sounets mean anything, and are faithful records of the feelings of the poet, he was and would have been happy with her. Witness the eighteenth, like that on the Martyrs of Piedmont, a 'collect in verse.' "Methought I saw my late espoused saint Brought to me, like Alcestis, from the grave, And such as yet once more I trust to have But, O! as to embrace me she inclined I waked; she fled; and day brought back my night!" |