United States or Mauritius ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Its phraseology colours his prose; his mind was built upon it, as Milton's was upon the Bible. We hardly require his own confession to assure us of the debt. "The name of Godwin," he wrote in 1812, "has been used to excite in me feelings of reverence and admiration. I have been accustomed to consider him a luminary too dazzling for the darkness which surrounds him.
In any case, but for Ellwood, we should never have known the softer side of Milton's character, never have known of what gentleness, patience, and courtesy he was capable.
While the first eight sonnets, written before 1645, are sonnets of reminiscence and intention, like those of the Italians, or the ordinary English sonnet, the eleven sonnets of Milton's silent period, from 1645 to 1658, are records of present feeling kindled by actual facts.
Unchang'd, ....Though Fall'n on evil days, On evil days though fall'n, and evil tongues; In darkness, and with dangers compass'd round, And solitude. Paradise Lost, vii. 24. Poetry thus generated we should naturally expect to meet with more admiration than sympathy. And such, on the whole, has been Milton's reception.
The fact that Herbert's reputation was greater, at times, than Milton's, and that his poems when published after his death had a large sale and influence, shows certainly that he appealed to the men of his age; and his poems will probably be read and appreciated, if only by the few, just so long as men are strong enough to understand the Puritan's spiritual convictions.
Before the end of the 17th century the squeak of the oaten pipe had become a burden, and the only poem of the kind which it is easy to read without some impatience is Milton's wonderful Lycidas. The Shepheard's Calendar, however, though it belonged to an artificial order of literature, had the unmistakable stamp of genius in its style.
We want an advocate of helpless humanity whose task it shall be, in the words of Milton, "To justify the ways of God to man." We have heard Milton's argument, but for the realization of his vision of the time "When Hell itself shall pass away, And leave her dolorous mansions to the peering day," our suffering race must wait in patience.
The chief want is books, and of these, for Milton's style of reading, select rather than copious, a large collection is superfluous. There were in 1640 no public libraries in London, and a scholar had to find his own store of books or to borrow from his friends. Milton never can have possessed a large library. At Horton he may have used Kederminster's bequest to Langley Church.
We have only to compare Milton's magnanimous assumption of the first place with the paltry conceit with which, in the following age of Dryden and Pope, men spoke of themselves as authors, to see the wide difference between the professional vanity of successful authorship and the proud consciousness of a prophetic mission.
His enthusiasm needs the contagion of other minds to arouse it; but his strong sense, his command of the happy word, his wit, which is distinguished by a certain breadth and, as it were, power of generalization, as Pope's by keenness of edge and point, were his, whether he would or no. Viewed from one side, he justifies Milton's remark of him, that "he was a good rhymist, but no poet."
Word Of The Day