JOHN MILTON.

BORN in London, 1608, nine years after the birth of Cromwell and eight years before the death of Shakespeare. Took his Bachelor's degree in 1629 and his Master's degree in 1632 at Christ's College, Cambridge; Cromwell was at the same University, 1616-17. Wrote his most famous minor poems at his father's home at Horton in Buckinghamshire, 1632-8. Visited Italy, 1638-9. The next twenty years were devoted chiefly to serving the Commonwealth. Lost his eyesight about 1652. Paradise Lost did not appear till 1667. Milton died in 1674; two years later was produced Etheredge's The Man of Mode - the first good English Comedy of Manners- and the transition from the Puritan to the Restoration Period is complete.

FRIENDS AND ASSOCIATES

Cromwell.

Diodati, Cyriack Skinner, Marvell; Vane,

OTHER CONTEMPORARIES- Galileo, Mazarin, Bunyan, Dryden.

BIBLIOGRAPHY.

LIFE AND TIMES. — Masson's Life of John Milton Narrated in Connection with the Political, Ecclesiastical and Literary History of His Time. 6 vols. (Macmillan).

For the advanced student this book is invaluable as a storehouse of material. Better for the beginner are the shorter lives by Pattison (E. M. L.) and by Garnett (Gt. Wr.) The former is useful on the literary side; the latter on the political and religious. Green's 'Puritan England' (being the 8th chapter of his Short History) may also be consulted with much profit.

TEXT.-Masson's (Macmillan).

CRITICISM.-Addison; Spectator, Nos. 267, 273, 279, 285, 291, 297, 303, 309, 315, 321, 327, 333, 339, 345, 351, 357, 363, 369. the fault of Addison's Miltonic criticism, once so celebrated [is that] it rests almost entirely upon convention.' Matthew Arnold.

Macaulay; Essay on Milton. — Astonishing as a piece of rhetoric, but extremely superficial as criticism.

DeQuincey; Essay on Johnson's Life of Milton. Chiefly a correction of Johnson's prejudiced view.

Emerson; Essays from the North Am. Rev.; John Milton. Dwells on the heroic side of Milton's character.

Bagehot; Literary Studies, Vol. I.; John Milton. Calls attention, not unjustly, to Milton's unlovely side, but is also appreciative and sympathetic.

Lowell; Essay on Milton. Largely a criticism, in Lowell's inimitable style, of Masson's mountainous book and defective literary method. Contains, also, invaluable remarks on Milton's versification.

Matthew Arnold; Essays in Criticism, Second Series; Milton. Also, Mixed Essays; A French Critic on Milton. The most sane and judicious estimate we have.

Mark Pattison; The Sonnets of John Milton. (Appleton).

L'ALLEGRO AND IL PENSEROSO.

INTRODUCTION. - These two poems were probably written at Horton between 1632 and 1637. In them, Milton looks at Nature rather with the eyes of an Elizabethan of the Ben Jonson type than with those of a Wordsworthian. Man and the life of Man are what chiefly interest him; Nature is secondary and interesting only so far as it reflects the emotions of L'Allegro (The Cheerful Man) and Il Penseroso [Pensieroso] (The Thoughtful Man). The student, the classical scholar, the solitary thinker, the poet whose generous soul is open to every kind of beautiful impression - this is what we find here. We do not find such close observation of Nature, such accurate recording of natural phenomena and such spiritual interpretations of them as characterize a Shelley and a Wordsworth.

Each of the poems describes a period of about twelve hours. In the Allegro it is from morn till evening; in the Penseroso from evening till morn. The student should notice the frequent and studied contrasts of thought and expression; after a careful comparative study of the two poems, let him ask himself which of them affords the deeper and truer insight into the soul of the man, John Milton. And why?

L'ALLEGRO.

1-4. Notice the omission of the verb, the idea of action being implied in the adverb. Cerberus; the three-headed dog who guarded the entrance to the Underworld. Stygian; dark or gloomy, from Styx, one of the rivers bounding the Underworld; Cl. Myths, § 48. The story here referred to is not found in the Greek mythology.

5-10. uncouth; literally unknown,' hence foreign, strange, barbarous. brooding; wrapt in gloomy thought. literal meaning? Of what is Darkness jealous?

What is the low-browed;

compare Milton's peculiar use of 'brow,' as a verb, in Comus, 531-2;

hard by the hilly crofts

That brow this bottom glade.

Cimmerian. Is the epithet 'dark' tautological? The famous lines in Odyssey XI. tell us of the mythical Cimmerii that, "Never on them does the shining sun look down but deadly night is

spread abroad over these hapless men." They were fabled to dwell by the Ocean-stream, at the limits of the earth.

11-16. yclept; the y in this word is derived from ge, regularly used in Old English as a prefix of the past participle and still so used in German. Compare ypointing, in Milton's lines On Shakespeare (p. 15), where the y is incorrectly prefixed to the present participle. Euphrosyne (εv øpýv); from the Greek eu, well or Venus (Aphrodite); the goddess two sister Graces; Aglaia

easy, and phrēn, the mind. of love and beauty; Cl. Myths, § 40. (The Bright One), and Thalia (The Blooming One). The Graces presided over social pleasures. Bacchus (Dionysus); the god

of wine; Cl. Myths, § 46.

17-24. Some sager; i.e., the poet himself. Notice Milton's characteristic (Puritan) preference for calling Mirth the daughter of the West Wind and the Dawn-fresh and pure influences of Nature rather than of Bacchus and Venus (Wine and Love). Zephyr; the west wind. Aurora (Eos); goddess of the dawn. a-Maying; the 'a' here is a corruption of 'on,' as in ashore, afloat, aboard. buxom; literally easily bent,' hence 'pliant,' 'obedient.' As obedience (in woman) was long considered a cardinal virtue (by man) the word may in this way have acquired the meanings of 'charming,' 'comely,' 'cheerful and healthy.'

.

25-32. Notice the light and rapid effect of the trochaic measure. thee; reflexive object, as 'me' in

I look and long, then haste me home
Still master of my secret rare.

cranks; turns or twists (of speech). gods.

Lowell. The Foot-Path. 13-14.

Hebe; cup-bearer of the

33-36. trip it. Notice the colloquial use of an intransitive verb with a kind of impersonal object, the pronoun probably representing a cognate noun-object; Whitney, § 362, c. Mountain-nymph.

Your historical reading may suggest to you the reason for this epithet applied to Liberty.

37-52. The three infinitives in this passage may depend upon admit, or the second may depend upon the first and the third upon the second. If we take lark as the subject of to come (45), we are committed to the absurdity of the soaring lark coming to a window; if we take me as the subject, we are puzzled to know to whom the poet bids good morrow. Bonus dormitat Homerus. twisted eglantine; the eglantine is not twisted and is the same as the sweet briar. Milton may have mistaken it for the honeysuckle. fore. Is this an adverb or a preposition?

be

53-68. listening (53) and walking (57) are grammatically connected with lines 38-9. liveries; in Middle English' lyverey' (from the Middle Latin (res) liberata, a thing delivered) signified a regular allowance of food or clothes, delivered to the servants of a household. dight; 'arrayed,' from the Middle English 'dighten,' to set in order, arrange. This is cognate with the modern German word Dichter meaning Poet: he who sets in order and arranges (verses). tells his tale, not 'makes love,' but (literally) 'counts his number,' that is, numbers his flock. The original meaning of 'tell' is 'count,' preserved in the expression 'She tells her beads;' tale in the sense of 'number' or 'sum' is very common in the 1611 version of the Bible and is so used by George Eliot, Mill on the Floss, VI. 13.

6

daisies

69-80. lawns; open spaces between woods. In Par. Lost, IV. 252, we have, Betwixt them lawns or level downs.' pied; this is evidently a reminiscence of Shakespeare's

ton.

When daisies pied and violets blue
And lady-smocks all silver white,

And cuckoo-buds of yellow hue

Do paint the meadows with delight

Love's Labor's Lost, v. 2. (near the end). Lines 77-8 were probably suggested by Windsor Castle, which is not far from Horlies. In Othello iii. 4. Desdemona uses this word and interprets it for the clown as lodges, which is the meaning here. Cynosure; a word whose figurative meaning is extraordinarily different from the literal one. With the aid of the dictionary trace the process by which the Greek kunosúra (kvvócovpa), dog's-tail, has come to be a possible epithet for "some beauty."

81-90. Corydon and Thyrsis; Vergilian names for shepherds; Eclogue VII. 2. met; notice the condensation in this construction expand it. Phillis; The stylis; common names in the Greek poets, for rustic maidens. bower inner room. Chaucer's Nonne Prestes Tale we find that the poor widow had only two rooms in her house, a 'halle' and a 'bour.'

=

In

91-103. rebecks; the rebeck was a musical instrument with a pear-shaped body and two or three strings. It is supposed to be of Moorish origin. Faery Mab; see Mercutio's famous lines in Feat; eat. As late as Pope 'ea' was

Romeo and Juliet, i. 4.

doubtless pronounced like a in ‘fate.’

Here thou, great Anna! whom three realms obey,

Dost sometimes counsel take

and sometimes tea.

Rape of the Lock, III. 7–8.

She was pinched and pulled; lazy servant girls, according to the story, were so punished by Robin Good Fellow (Puck). There are innumerable references to this in English Literature, the best known of course being in the Midsummer Night's Dream, ii. 1. In Butler's Hudibras, III. 1. line 1407 et seq. we have another :

Thou art some paltry, blackguard sprite
Condemned to drudgery in the night;

You dare not be so troublesome
To pinch the slatterns black and blue
For leaving you their work to do.

66

104-116. Some commentators, who seem to regard mythology as an exact science, are greatly distressed over the 'confusion' which Milton has here introduced into the fairy world. Since mythology in general is the creation of the poetic mind of primitive peoples, and since fairy mythology in particular is fantasy thin of substance as the air," let us not share the grief of Dryasdust at the poet's error.' Those who would be learned in these matters may consult Keightley's Fairy Mythology, where they will find given the exact difference between Friar Rush, the house-spirit, and Will o' the Wisp, the field-spirit. the drudging goblin; see the quotation from Hudibras, above. lubber awkward. This old

word is now seldom heard except in the conversation of sailors, where land-lubber' and 'lubber's-hole' have well understood meanings. Consult the Dict. chimney, in its original sense of hearth. What is the syntax of length? crop-full with full stomach. Crop signifies originally ‘a rounded, projecting mass, a protuberance' (Cent. Dict.); from this are derived its numerous other meanings.

117-124. Weeds:

garments. This, the original meaning of the Old English waed, survives in the expression "widow's weeds." In Chaucer's Knight's Tale (147-9) it is used (as here) of men's attire:

To ransack in the tas of bodyes dede
Hem for to strepe of harneys and of wede

The pilours diden bisynesse and cure.

store, literally 'that which is provided or furnished for use as needed,' hence, an abundance. rain influence; an allusion to the astrological belief that the radiation of power from the stars affects the fate of men; compare 'influenza.'

126-134. Hymen; the god of marriage. He is represented as carrying, in the bridal procession, the bridal veil (saffron robe) and a torch. The symbolic meanings of the saffron and of the torch