that I never wrote any thing of the kind alluded to, which I did not at the time, and do not now, firmly believe to have been right and true and acceptable to God: and that, impelled not by ambition, or the thirst of gain or of glory, but simply by duty and honour and patriotism ;* nor with a view singly to the emancipation of the State, but still more particularly to that of the Church. So that when the office of replying to The Royal Defence' was publicly assigned to me, though I had to struggle with ill health, and having already lost nearly one of my eyes was expressly fore-warned by my physicians that, if I undertook the laborious work in question, I should soon be deprived of both; undeterred by the warning, I seemed to hear the voicenot of a physician, or from the shrine of Esculapius at Epidaurus,† but of an internal and more divine monitor: and conceiving that by some decree of the fates the alternative of two lots was proposed to me, either to lose my • The honesty of this avowal is strongly attested by the story, which the elder Richardson relates (and Johnson, for the pleasure of rejecting it, repeats) of his having refused the offer of his old department, of Latin Secretary, from Charles II. after the Restoration. Why Milton, in 1673, should be unwilling to own his connexion in 1634 with the Bridgewater family, conspicuous as it was for it's unshaken loyalty, and at that time in high favour at court, Warton ought to have explained (ib. 117. not. §). + Epidaurus was a town of Argolis, in Peloponnesus, where the heathen God of Medicine was chiefly worshipped. F sight or to desert a high duty, I remembered the twin destinies, which the son of Thetis informs us his mother brought back to him from the oracle of Delphi : Διχθαδίας κήρας Φερέμεν θανάτοιο τελοςδι E μεν κι αυθι μενών Τρωων πολιν αμφιμάχωμαι, Έσσεται. * -As the Goddess spake, who gave me birth, If I return, beneath my native sky My days shall flourish long, my glory die.' C. S. Reflecting therefore with myself that many had purchased less good with greater evil, and had even paid life as the price of glory, while to me the greater good was offered at the expense of the less evil, and an opportunity furnished, simply by incurring blindness, of satisfying the demand of the most honourable duty-a result more substantial, and therefore what ought to be by every one considered as more satisfactory and more eligible, than glory itself I determined to dedicate the brief enjoyment of my eye-sight,† so long as it might * Hom. Il. ix. 411, &c. + If poets, like painters, were not a privileged class-to the extent of quidlibet audendi-this passage would justify some rigorous criticism upon the beautiful stanza relative to Milton, be spared me, with as much effect as I could to the public service. You see then what I in Gray's Ode on the Progress of Poesy,' as to the cause of his loss of sight. Some, indeed, it has already incurred: See a note on the passage, in Mason's Edition, 12mo. I. PP. 114117. Count Algarotti might truly say, Non puo essere più poetica la ragione, ch'egli (sc. Gray) fabrica della cecità del Miltono; il quale, 'oltrepassati i fiammante confine dello spazio e del tempo, ebbe ardire di fissare lo sguardo colà dove gli Angioli stessi paventano di rimirare, e gli occhi suoi affuocati in quel pelago di luce si chiusero tosto in una notte sempiterna: ” for poetry delights in fiction. But it is generally known, that he suffered the loss of his eyes in a less brilliant, though in his own apprehension most dignified, pursuit. He himself informs us, He lost them, overplied In liberty's defence, his noble task, Of which all Europe talks from side to side. (Sonn. xxii.) And this early in 1652, as Dr. S. accurately concludes, most probably soon after the publication of his answer to Saumaise (p. 400). That Johnson, in his Life of Milton, should not have noticed this prominent fact, is extraordinary; and, with his peculiar hostility, almost proves that he envied him the glory of so painful a surrender to public duty. In his biography of Gray, written also with a most unfriendly hand, he states it as "a supposition surely allowable, that Milton's blindness was caused by study in the formation of his poem!" and even permits himself to pay the lyrist a compliment on the stanza above alluded to, as "poetically true, and happily imagined!" But it was "to the employment of writing elaborate though perishable dissertations, Warton informs us (Pref. to Min. Poem. p. xiii.) in defence of innovation and anarchy, that he sacrificed his eyes, his health, his repose, his native propensities, his elegant studies. Smit with the deplorable polemics of puritanism, he suddenly ceased to gaze on such sights as youthful preferred, what I sacrificed, and what were my motives. Let these slanderers of the divine judgements, therefore, desist from their calumnies, nor any longer make me the subject of their visionary fantasies: let them learn, in fine, that I neither regret my lot, nor repent my choice; that my opinions continue inflexibly the same, and that I neither feel nor fear for them the anger of God, but on the contrary experience and acknowledge in the most momentous events of my life his mercy and paternal kindness-in nothing more particularly, however, than in his having soothed and strengthened me into an acquiescence in his divine will; led me to reflect rather upon what he has bestowed, than what he has withheld; and determined me to prefer the consciousness of my own achievements to the best deeds of my adversaries, and con poets dream" not, however, as he subjoins, "without sometimes heaving a sigh for the peaceable enjoyments of lettered solitude, for his congenial pursuits, and the more mild and ingenuous exercises of the Muse" (xiv.); though he, still, obstinately persisted in what he thought his duty. (xv.) Well might the annotator, under this latter conviction, transcribe with abhorrence (p. 358) his quotation from the 'Decretum Oxoniense' (Mus. Anglic. i. 180. Ed. 1714) consigning Milton, as cælo terrisque inamabile nomen, to the flames, in which part of his writings were consumed, July 21, 1683! Why does he not always treat his author with the tenderness, which such a conviction should have inspired ? stantly to cherish the cheering and silent remembrance of them in my breast: finally, in respect of blindness, to think my own (if it must be borne) more tolerable than either theirs, More, or yours. Yours, affecting the inmost optics of the mind, prevents the perception of any thing sound or solid: mine, which you so much abuse, only deprives me of the hue and * And yet how beautifully does he deplore this privation, in the sequel of the passage above-quoted! Thus, with the year, Seasons return; but not to me returns Of nature's works-to me expunged and rased, He then pursues a train of thought, similar to what follows in the text: So much the rather thou, Celestial Light, Shine inward,' &c. (P. L. iii. 40, &c.) In the former part, he almost seems to address himself in the Sophoclean line, Κρείσσον γαρ ήσθα μηκέτ' ων, η ζων τυφλος. His necessities toward the close of his life, it is to be feared, gave him an opportunity of proving the inefficacy of the Chaldean oupas papaxor, barley-bread. (Lucian. Maxpeb.) |