Rufus Wilmot Griswold

“ The career of no ruler was ever marked by more justice, wisdom, or genuine love of country; and though Milton may have disapproved of some acts of his administration, it was not inconsistent with any of his professions or principles, or with anything that has been said in praise of him, that he continued to be his associate in office and his friend. ”

“ Sir Edgerton Brydges remarks of this proposition, that it is so objectionable as in these days to require no refutation; but in the United States, where the divine right of any man to oppress his fellows is not held, we think differently; and our admiration of Milton suffers no abatement, but rather is greater, for this and other works of like spirit which have been the prime causes of the unjust estimation in which he continues to be held in his own country. ”

“ Milton had acted too conspicuous a part to live openly with safety in the capital, and before Charles entered London, therefore, he concealed himself in the house of an acquaintance, where he remained until the passage of the act of oblivion, in the exceptions of which his name was happily omitted, through the intercessions of some of his friends. Soon after returning to society, he was a third time married, in consequence of the neglect and unkindness of his daughters, upon whom he had depended for the management of his domestic affairs. ”

“ In the same year in which Milton wrote his works on divorce, he also produced his remarkable Tractate on Education, in which are embodied all the best ideas of the next two centuries on the subject; and that Speech for the Liberty of Unlicensed Printing, which in the splendour of its diction and the irresistible force of its reasoning, continues to be without a parallel in the literature of the world. He was the first to assert the unlimited right of discussion, and has left nothing to be said on this question by succeeding ages. “Who knows not,” he exclaims, “that truth is strong! ”

“ In the mornings of winter he was “up and stirring ere the sound of any bell awoke men to labour or devotion; in summer as oft, with the bird that first rouses, to read good authors till the attention was weary or the memory had its fraught;” ”

“ Paradise Lost was published in 1667; in 1671 appeared Paradise Regained, and Samson Agonistes; in 1672 his Artis Logicæ Plenior Institutio; and in 1673 the Treatise on True Religion, Heresy and Schism.
On Sunday, the eighth day of November, 1674, one month before completing his sixty-sixth year, John Milton died.
He was the greatest of all human beings: the noblest and the ennobler of mankind. He has steadily grown in the world’s reverence, and his fame will still increase with the lapse of ages. ”

“ In this he attempts to show that prelacy is incompatible with civil liberty, and to the support of this proposition he brings learning more various and profound, a power of reasoning, and an impassioned eloquence, unprecedented in English controversy. The treatise ends with the following prayer, “piously laying the sad condition of England before the footstool of the Almighty;” than which, as Sir Edgerton Brydges well observes, “there is not a more sublime and patriotic ode in any language.” ”

“ But under the Protectorate, when this Speech was read by Cromwell, whose genuine greatness triumphed over enslaving precedents, its lofty eloquence and faultless argument induced him to establish by law that perfect freedom of the intellect without which all other liberty is a mockery.
For a while Milton returned to those more elegant pursuits to which he was led by the genial power of nature, and in 1645 brought out a collection of his early poems. ”

“ The instruction of Milton was carefully attended to: his private tutor was Thomas Young, a Puritan minister, who remained with him until compelled on account of his religious opinions to leave the kingdom. In 1624, soon after entering upon his sixteenth year, he was sent to Cambridge, where he was committed to the tuition of Mr. Chappell, afterwards a bishop, and the reputed author of The Whole Duty of Man. He had already made astonishing progress in learning. He was familiar with several languages, and with the most abstruse books in philosophy. ”

“ Next to the Almighty, she needs no policies, no stratagems, no licensings, to make her victorious.” “Though all the winds of doctrine were let loose upon the earth, so Truth be in the field, we injure her to misdoubt her strength. ”

“ His reasons for wishing to travel, as quaintly expressed by his biographer Toland, were, that “he could not better discern the preëminence and defects of his own country, than by observing the customs and institutions of others; and that the study of never so many books, without the advantages of conversation, serves either to render a man a fool or a pedant.” ”

“ Since from my childhood I had been devoted to the more liberal studies, and was always more powerful in my intellect than in my body, avoiding the labours of the camp, in which any robust soldier would have surpassed me, I betook myself to those weapons which I could wield with the most effect ”

“ Until the close of the Protectorate, Milton’s leisure hours were principally devoted to the collection of materials for a Latin Thesaurus, the composition of two additional books of his History of England, and the laying of the foundation of his immortal epic poem. In the autumn of the year 1658 Oliver Cromwell died; and the extraordinary conflict of parties which followed, resulted in the restoration of the monarchy. ”

“ The mention of this city brings to my recollection the slandering More, and makes me again call the Deity to witness, that in all those places, in which vice meets with so little discouragement, and is practised with so little shame, I never once deviated from the paths of integrity and virtue, and perpetually reflected that, though my conduct might escape the notice of men, it could not elude the inspection of God. ”

“ Milton was a silent and calm, but careful and far seeing spectator of the general agitation. The outrageous abuses of power by the weak minded and passionate king, and the despotism of the episcopal officers, caused the popular heart to beat as the sea heaves in a storm; and the restraints of established authority, made weaker every day by over exertion, were soon altogether to cease. The Long Parliament was in session ”

“ In the interval between the death of the great Englishman and the return of Charles the Second, Milton was not inactive. In the year 1659 he published a Treatise of Civil Power in Ecclesiastical Causes, showing that it is not lawful for any authority to compel in matters of religion; Considerations touching the likeliest Means to remove Hirelings out of the Church, in which be contended for the voluntary system of supporting religion, which has since so successfully obtained in the United States but which was then everywhere regarded as impracticable or dangerous ”

“ The best account of his travels is contained in the brief autobiography which opens his Second Defence of the People of England. He soon set out for Italy, and taking ship at Nice, visited Genoa, Leghorn, Pisa and Florence. “In the latter city,” he says, “which I have always more particularly esteemed for the elegance of its dialect, its genius, and its taste, I stopped about two months; when I contracted an intimacy with many persons of rank and learning ”

“ To this, and other attacks of the Puritan writers, Bishops Hall and Usher soon after replied; the first in An humble Remonstrance to the High Court of Parliament, and the last in The Apostolical Institution of Episcopacy. Milton had commenced the controversy, and he did not shrink from its prosecution. He thought that on subjects to the consideration of which he was early led solely by his love of truth and reverence for Christianity, he should not reason worse than they who were contending only for their emoluments and usurpations. ”

“ With this and two subsequent answers to More, he closed his controversial labours, though he still continued to serve the state as foreign secretary. The greatness of his intellect and the purity of his heart are too conspicuous in all his works for any one to doubt the inherent grandeur of his character ”