6 disloyalty. This identification by statute soon led to some disaffection, though in Elizabeth's reign the political side of Puritanism did not strongly appear, as all parties felt that their strength was bound up with the safety of her person and her throne. But the character of James I. secured no such esteem; and the Puritans began to assume a more decided antagonism, both political and religious. The Hampton Court Conference (1604) was on the whole unfavourable to their party; the doctrine of the divine right of kings was gratifying to James, and the two maxims-Le roy s'avisera, and No bishop, no king-went together. The Millenary Petition was rejected, and the 141 Canons 2 enforced conformity with great rigour. The King's Letters' of 1623, for restraining extravagant preaching on both sides, fell perhaps more heavily on the Puritans, with whom a lengthy exposition of doctrine was a sine qua non, than on the Prelatists who made this a matter of less vital importance, and who were, moreover, content that cate chising on the Sunday afternoons should take the place of sermons (see note on 1. 125). Charles I. (1625) united the pretensions of absolute monarchy with those of a powerful hierarchy, and thus Crown and Church were opposed to People and Puritans. Church and State questions were more closely related than ever; and the influence, first of Bucking+ ham, and then of Strafford and Laud, tended to the same result. The Star Chamber and High Commission Courts went hand in hand; and the resistance of Hampden to an unjust impost was almost coincident with the outcry against the new Liturgy in Scotland. On March 10, 1629, Charles dissolved the parliament, and seemed intent on ruling without one. Now the struggle began in earnest. For some time there had been an anti-Calvinistic spirit in the English Church, which was now spreading among the younger clergy' (see Masson's Life of See Macaulay, Hist. of England, vol. I. ch. i. 2 The Canons assert Royal Supremacy, Authority of Church Sy nods, Episcopacy, Established Order of Services, and condemn all impugners of Church order and discipline as hereby established. Milton, i. p. 309, and also the account of the consecration of St. Katharine Cree Church in Fuller). Laud was Bishop of London, and virtually Primate; the death of Buckingham had given him paramount influence with the king, and the patronage of Church benefices was largely in his hands. He was a man of small intellect, but of great tenacity of purpose; and 'his nature if not great was very tight' (Masson, i. p. 361). All his views centred in divine right of bishops and uniformity in the Church; and he was of opinion that 'unity cannot long continue in the Church when uniformity is shut out at the church-door' (Laud's Diary). In 1633 the period of 'Thorough' began; Wentworth ruled despotically in Ireland, Laud was made Primate, great strictness of Church discipline was enforced, and Prynne was imprisoned for his Histriomastix. In 1637 Prynne, Burton, and Bastwick were pilloried, the question of ship-money was decided against Hampden (June 12), a placard designating Laud 'the arch-wolf of Canterbury' was posted at Cheapside,1 and Williams, Bishop of Lincoln, a friend of the Puritans, was imprisoned (July 11) for alleged libel. On July 23 a tumult arose in Edinburgh about the New Liturgy, and issued in the signing of the Solemn League and Covenant (Feb. 28 or March 1, 1638), which lasted for many weeks. Then the Scotch bishops were deposed, and the Covenanters prepared for war. As to Milton's own religious sentiments, we know that from his father he inherited strict Puritan principles, yet accompanied with refined æsthetic tastes. His early surroundings were Puritan, and Richard Stock, 'a zealous Puritan,' was pastor of the parish in which he lived. The time of his birth (1608) was that in which the Puritan party was gaining strength, though still in the minority. His early training was under his father (cf. Epist. ad Patrem), who doubtless exercised much influence upon his opinions. Next he was under the care of Young, a Puritan minister (Ep. Fam. 1. El. 4), and afterwards at St. 1 See beginning of Appendix II. Paul's School, under the two Gills (Ep. Fam. 2, 3, 5). His reading was very wide, including, besides the classics, French, Italian, Hebrew, and the mass of English literature then existing.1 His early versions of Psalms cxiv. and cxxxvi. show extensive reading. In February 1625 he entered Cambridge, where there was a strong Puritan element, Dr. Preston of Emanuel being the leader. Christ's College was less impregnated with these principles, and Chappell himself was in Laud's interest, who afterwards made him Bishop of Cork. The Latin elegies on Bishops Andrewes and Felton (1626) show that Milton was not then an anti-Prelatist, and the Ode in Quintum Novembris of the same year is laudatory of the 'pious James.' In 1627 his Elegy to Young, who had fled to Hamburg probably because of his non-conformity, expresses affection for him and sympathy with his doctrines. In July 1628 he writes to A. Gill, deploring the ignorance of the clergy; and in the same year he wrote the Academic Prolusion on the compatibility of sportive exercise with the study of philosophy' (Masson, i. p. 250 foll.), which contains specimens of outrageous license and even of coarse obscenity, for which, however, he apologises on the ground of long-standing custom. He there designates the students generally as 'calf-heads,' 'rams,' 'Irish birds,' &c. &c., and by other titles quite unmentionable; all which shows that he could at times throw off his habitual seriousness. The general idea we gather of Milton's University life is that he was serious and earnest, reading with unusual vigour, but, being thrown among companions for the most part uncongenial, he had little affection for the place. In the Apol. Smect. (1642) he says of the University-' In the time of her better health and mine own younger judgment I never greatly admired (her), so now much less.' In 1629 he took his B.A., and subscribed the Articles (a ceremony which he repeated in 1632 on taking his M.A.); and in the same year he wrote his 6th Elegy to Diodati, in praise of wine and mirth, though he says that the higher poesy demands pure life and spare living. The Nativity Ode contains a decided opinion in favour of Church music, and this is expressed again in the ode At a Solemn Musick and towards the end of the Penseroso; but in the later treatise on Christian Doctrine, bk. jii. c. 4, he inveighs against all external worship, quoting Amos vi. 5, 'Woe to them...that chaunt to the sound of the viol,' &c. In a letter to a friend, December 1631, inclosing the 7th sonnet, he declares his unwillingness to take holy orders, chiefly on the ground of unfitness; but in the Reason of Church Government (1641) he stated his objections more clearly thus'I thought it better to prefer a blameless silence before the sacred office of speaking, bought and begun with servitude and forswearing.' L'Allegro and Il Penseroso, written in or near 1632, are both far from Puritanical-the one being a joyous outburst of mirth and fancy, free from the least sensuous taint, and the other expressing the melancholy of a studious mood without sourness or austerity. The Masques of Arcades and Comus (1634) represent a kind of amusement which he afterwards, in his Free Commonwealth, disapproved because of its licentiousness. But Comus is itself a protest against this very thing, and thereby, instead of inveighing at the immorality of the stage after the usual Puritanical manner, he showed practically how to turn such things to good account. By birth and education then Milton was in every respect a Puritan, notwithstanding his classical learning and his genuine æstivum (the Long Vacation) in otium alte literarium recedere cogi tarem, et quasi claustris musarum delitescere.' (See note on 1. 34.) love for the beautiful. He was a man of few convictions, but these were strong and lasting, the uppermost feeling of his mind being that a ceaseless and determined struggle must be maintained against the evil that is in the world. In both his prose and his poetry liberty stands forth as the ideal; and this yearning after freedom fostered in him a resolute dislike of that religious and civil formality, which had displaced the healthy and genial life of the preceding Elizabethan times. Moreover the impulse of an indwelling poetic life, and an exalted idea of human duties and responsibilities, 'as ever underneath the great Taskmaster's eye,' would often bear him beyond the narrow range of party conflict. His mission was to be a poet first, and a statesman or theologian afterwards. He had also a power of foresight and of self-discipline, which imparted a kind of set purpose to all his works, and caused an absence of those 'strains of unpremeditated art,' which he was himself foremost to appreciate in Shakspere.1 All along he seems to have consciously nursed his inborn powers, unwilling before the full growth of his genius to begin the lofty poetic task of which he felt himself capable, 'though of highest hope and hardest attempting.' It may be that the self-consciousness of the student ever accompanying the poet in Milton has produced an artificial semblance in some of his poetry which may reasonably lead to the question-How far is Lycidas an expression of genuine sorrow?' In reply to Dr. Johnson's coarse criticism, that it is 'not the effusion of real passion, which runs not after remote allusions and obscure opinions,' that 'where there is leisure for fiction there is little grief,' that 'there is no nature, for there is no truth,' and that 'no image of tenderness can be excited by the lines "we drove afield,"" &c.-the opinions of some other critics have already been quoted, to which may be added L'Allegro, 133'And sweetest Shakspere, Fancy's child, Warble his native wood-notes wild.' |