more of the way Milton's mind must have worked in conceiving them. 66 66 66 The most considerable of Milton's poems, besides Paradise Lost," are Comus," "Paradise Regained," and Samson Agonistes." In these four poems we shall find that there is a curious unity of theme,1 that Milton had something of the same idea in mind in all of them, varying its presentation in one way or another according to cirWhen we think that 66 cumstances or necessities. Comus "" and "Paradise Regained" are separated by thirty years of time, we may see how strong, how insistent was this idea. It was, to tell the truth, a question which came close home to every earnest Puritan, with a searching power that dominated every other thought. This idea was the continual antagonism in this world between Good and Evil, or we may call it more shortly the problem of Sin. The questions of Sin and of Salvation, the relation of the Individual, of each man, to God—these were matters over which the Puritans in England and in this country suffered agonies which were almost something new in the world. Milton thought and felt with the great body to which he belonged, and, after the fashion of poets, his thoughts and feelings come to our view in his work. man. In "Comus" we have the gallant allegory of a young Milton was writing not for grave and serious men and women, but for a cheerful and splendid festival. He was himself more fond of the joyous and beautiful things of this world than we are apt to remember. The Masque was, in those days, an elaborate spectacular affair, in which the nobles and gentles of two generations took their delight, and Milton must have seen many at the University or in London. The subject was sometimes a fantastic legend, but more often it was allegorical in character, and Milton's temper, which was grave, even while gay, chose this form for ideas which had often been in his mind. He shows us Virtue tempted by Evil in the form of sensual 'Pointed out by Dowden; see p. lxi'. pleasure,-Virtue represented by the chaste and beautiful Lady, Evil by the charming and dissolute young fellow whom Milton calls Comus, the son of the God of Wine and the Goddess of Love. For a time the Lady is in the power of the enchanter; she is in his power but never yields to him, never joins that herd of easy-going worldlings, who dance and sport about, unconscious of their beastliness. Then in time the Spirit of the place (for the masque was in compliment to a noble Earl) asserts her power, Vice is discomfited, the Lady is released from temptation, and the play ends. Couched in the form of a compliment as it is, we see here a light-handed dealing with the problem of Sin and the victory of Righteousness. Not very long after Comus came the Civil War, putting an end to many masques and gayeties, and among other things putting an end to Milton's serious but lighthearted poetry. For almost twenty years he turned, as we have seen,1 to public affairs and to prose. 66 The Puritan Commonwealth rose and fell, and Milton had his part in its rise and fall. And toward the end, when it began to be apparent that his work as a soldier in the church militant was coming to an end, Milton turned again to that other work to which he had long before solemnly devoted himself,2 to the writing of a great poem. He had often before thought of the undertaking, had perhaps conceived some tale of chivalry; at one time, as we have seen, had thought to write of Arthur, the mythical king of legendary England. But now he turned to a different subject. He had seen the Good Cause battle only half successfully against great difficulties; now he reviewed the matter philosophically, or rather theologically, in his mind. Evil days were ahead. Why should there be Evil? How came it ever to exist? And what was the triumphant end to which the zealous lover of Good might with surety look forward? The answer as it stands in the doctrines of the Church assumed a poetic form long existent in his P. xii. 2 See p. xi. 1 1 See 66 mind, and we have in Paradise Lost an exhibition of the origin of Evil, of its victory over man, and of its final defeat and destruction. swer, Somewhat later his mind turned to another poem. Thomas Ellwood, a young Quaker who had often read to Milton, and acted as secretary, tells us that Milton gave him the manuscript of "Paradise Lost" to read. He read it and returned it to Milton with the question, "What hast thou to say of Paradise Found?" Milton made no an"but sat some time in a muse; then brake off that discourse and fell upon another subject." Perhaps he saw that he had not made his idea plain. He had thought to account for the whole action, for the Defeat of Sin as well as for its Victory; 1 but if Ellwood had seen in the poem no hint of Paradise Regained, doubtless there would also be many others equally blind. Whether especially for such, or not, Milton wrote his second great poem, not as a conclusion or completion to "Paradise Lost," but as a pendent, a smaller picture, as it were, to hang below a greater, reflecting or complementing its scheme of colour or its composition. But whereas in "Paradise Lost" he had taken for his subject a whole action, in "Paradise Regained" he took a single event, and yet an event so typical of the whole, that the whole was in a manner bound up in it. In the Temptation Christ and Satan meet, and the old victor over Adam finds in the Son of God his eternal Conqueror. Both poems deal with the same subject, the strife with Evil, but they present it to us in different ways. At the same time as "Paradise Regained," Milton published another poem, "Samson Agonistes," Samson the Striver, or the Combatant. With something doubtless of a thought of himself, blind and beaten, and yet confident and in a manner triumphant, Milton conceives of Samson, the hero of the Chosen People, a hero typical in some ways of the Chosen People, powerful, misled, deluded, blinded, and yet finally victorious, although not with such a victory 'See Bk. i. 4, 5, and Bks. xi. and xii. as in the days of prosperity they had conceived. The death of Samson was an episode in the great strife so constantly in the poet's mind. In these four poems, then, in four different ways, does Milton bring before his readers the question which had such an insistent reality to him and to those of his time and of his way of thought. There is still one more point of interest in the matter. Besides his poems, Milton wrote much prose. His prose writings are no longer read, except by students: they were of a temporary character, written chiefly for immediate effect, political pamphlets as one might say; they had not the eternal element about them, nor, we must add, was prose so much in the direct line of Milton's genius as poetry. Still they are the chief fruit of fifteen years and more of Milton's life, and it becomes interesting to see whether they have any relation to the great subject of his poetry. He has himself given us an account of his prose works and told us how they arranged themselves in his mind. "When, therefore, I perceived that there were three species of liberty which are essential to the happiness of social life; religious, domestic, and civil; and as I had already written concerning the first, and the magistrates were strenuously active in obtaining the third, I determined to turn my attention to the second or domestic species. As this seemed to involve three material questions, the conditions of the conjugal tie, the education of the children, and the free publication of the thoughts, I made them objects of distinct consideration.1 On the last species, of civil liberty, I said nothing; because I saw that sufficient attention was paid to it by the magistrates, nor did I write anything on the prerogative of the crown, till the king, voted an enemy by the parliament, and vanquished in the field, was summoned before the tribunal which condemned him to lose his head.' [and 1 Areopagitica, 1664, On Education, 1644, Divorce Pamphlets, 1643, 1644. in a passage too long to quote here, he goes on to speak of the pamphlets which he thought of as devoted to civil liberty]. Liberty then was the subject of Milton's prose, and the strife between Sin and Righteousness the subject of his poetry. It seems at once a little strange that a man should treat one subject in a series of prose works, and a wholly different one in a series of poems. It would be hardly possible in the space at hand to show just how Milton thought of these matters. But when we try to con ceive of Liberty not as license to do whatever we please, but as a freedom even from temptation to do what we cannot do rightly, we can see that Milton's ideal Liberty was that to which man can only come when, in the heat of the strife between Sin and Righteousness, the Evil has been thoroughly burned and purged away, so that He reigns whose right it is to reign, and whose service is perfect freedom. 2. Relation of the First Two Books to the Whole Action. Thus, if we think of Milton's work as a whole, we may readily see the part that "Paradise Lost" plays therein. And that we may be able to look upon our two books, not merely as a fragment giving an account of the deliberations of the Fallen Angels and the Flight of Satan, but as part of a great whole, we must know a little more of the poem of which it makes the beginning. The subject of "Paradise Lost" is the Temptation and Fall of Man. That event itself, however, was the end of a long series of events which førm the action of the poem. First in order of time is the rebellion of Satan against God. Satan, one of the chief of the Angels, but weak through his pride and ambition, is eaten up through his rage and envy, when the Father proclaims the Lordship and Power |