popularity
decorated Sidney's "Arcadia" to that when it adorned Defoe and Bunyan,
would impress us even more powerfully if the interval were not engrossed
by a colossal figure, the last of the old school in the erudite
magnificence of his style in prose and verse; the first of the new,
inasmuch as English poetry, hitherto romantic, became in his hands
classical. This "splendid bridge from the old world to the new," as
Gibbon has been called in a different connection, was John Milton: whose
character and life-work, carefully analyzed, resolve themselves into
pairs of equally vivid contrasts. A stern Puritan, he is none the less a
freethinker in the highest and best sense of the term. The recipient of
direct poetical inspiration in a measure vouchsafed to few, he
notwithstanding studies to make himself a poet; writes little until no
other occupation than writing remains to him; and, in general, while
exhibiting even more than the usual confidence, shows less than the
usual exultation and affluence of conscious genius. Professing to
recognize his life's work in poetry, he nevertheless suffers himself to
be diverted for many a long year into political and theological
controversy, to the scandal and compassion of one of his most competent
and attached biographers. Whether this biographer is right or wrong, is
a most interesting subject for discussion. We deem him wrong, and shall
not cease to reiterate that Milton would not have been Milton if he
could have forgotten the citizen in the man of letters. Happy, at all
events, it is that this and similar problems occupy in Milton's life the
space which too frequently has to be spent upon the removal of
misconception, or the refutation of calumny. Little of a sordid sort
disturbs the sentiment of solemn reverence with which, more even than
Shakespeare's, his life is approached by his countrymen; a feeling
doubtless mainly due to the sacred nature of his principal theme, but
equally merited by the religious consecration of his whole existence. It
is the easier for the biographer to maintain this reverential attitude,
inasmuch as the prayer of Agur has been fulfilled in him, he has been
given neither poverty nor riches. He is not called upon to deal with an
enormous mass of material, too extensive to arrange, yet too important
to neglect. Nor is he, like Shakespeare's biographer, reduced to choose
between the starvation of nescience and the windy diet of conjecture. If
a humbling th