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private life, his mighty spirit was to find other and higher work to perform for "the great Task-master's eye." That work will be spoken of in the chapters that follow; here the hope may be expressed that no reader will suffer himself to be so dazzled by the splendor of the poetical achievements of Milton's old age (and dazzled he will be if he approach it with a mind trained in the principles of sound criticism and unaffected by the shallow and uncultured revolt against classical standards of excellence that is so rife at present) as to be blind to the charm, the blended grace and power that mark the noble poems of his youth. Great even to sublimity is the Milton of "Paradise Lost,"

Cut off."

"from the cheerful ways of men,

Great, too, and matchless in charm is the Milton of "Lycidas,"

"With eager thought warbling his Doric lay."

CHAPTER VI

THE PROSE WORKS

QUITE recently Mr. Gosse, in his admirable short history of English literature, has expressed a doubt whether people really can admire Milton's prose. Some years ago Mr. Lowell declared that his prose had "no style, in the higher sense"; that his sentences were often "loutish and difficult"; that he was careless of euphony; that he too often blustered, et cetera. Nearly all critics have admitted the splendor of his best passages, but have hastened immediately to qualify their praises by animadverting upon his clumsy syntax, his lack of coherence, his coarseness, his malignity, his want of humor, and the like. Most of these charges have, indeed, a basis of truth, which makes them difficult to refute; but like much other current criticism they do their object gross injustice. In reality Milton is a great prose

writer, perhaps the greatest in our literature; but his greatness will never emerge from criticism that is chiefly negative. It may be a rash claim to make, yet I will be bold enough to maintain that, when all allowances are made, the prose works of Milton contain the noblest and most virile English that can be found in our literature, and that this is true, not merely of detached passages of the "Areopagitica alone, but of the mass of his writings. Such a claim cannot, of course, be made good here or elsewhere; but it will be disputed with a positiveness inversely proportional to the disputants' study of Milton's controversial tracts.1

The phrase just used contains in itself many of the reasons for Milton's failure to take his proper rank as a prose writer. As a rule Milton wrote as a prose pamphleteer and advocate, and neither his matter nor his manner is calculated to please readers whose minds, indurated by preconception and prejudice, cannot play about the subjects he discusses. A partisan of

1 Unless, of course, the critic has a theory to prove, as was Mr. Pattison's case, who, in his treatment of the prose works, is distinctly biassed.

the Stuarts, a devotee of liturgies, a reader of over-delicate sensibilities, will be almost certainly unable to judge Milton fairly. Even those who agree with him in religious and political matters will be generally incapable of getting rid of the effects of their present environment and dealing with him with that sympathy which is absolutely indispensable to all true criticism. As manners have improved, controversy has ceased to please; therefore it requires considerable effort to shake off our prepossessions sufficiently to get the proper æsthetic effect of Milton's writings. If, however, we can imagine ourselves fighting for an ideal state and an ideal religion, rejoicing in overcoming a doughty adversary, advocating liberty of thought and expression, promulgating a new system of education,—in short, if we can make ourselves ideal partisans of some great cause, we shall then be able to delight, not merely in Milton's exalted passages, but in the general vigor of his style, in the weight and dignity of his learning, in his thunderous wrath, in the sharpness of his satire, in the marvellous variety and abundance of his vocabulary, and in

the thoroughly direct and masculine tone of his thought. In other words, we must steep ourselves in the Miltonic spirit before we can begin to realize how far Milton surpasses all competitors in strength and nobility as well as how far he possesses other qualities of style, such as charm and lucidity, usually denied him. We shall surely not comprehend him if we attempt to judge him from the "Areopagitica" or from a volume of specimens; yet it is to be feared that this is what many critics have unhesitatingly done.

The prose writings divide themselves naturally and easily into four groups. First, the five anti-prelatical tracts of 1641-1642; secondly, the four divorce tracts of 1643-1645; thirdly, the political pamphlets from 1649–1660, eleven in number unless the "Areopagitica" be added to make the full dozen; fourthly, the miscellanies, including the letters, state and private, the Grammar and the Logic, the histories of Britain and Muscovy, the "De Doctrina Christiana," and another ecclesiastical pamphlet, the letter to Hartlib on Education, and one or two short and unimportant publications.

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