an adversary of no mean repute; to whom should I address what I still publish on the same argument, but to you, whose magnanimous councils first opened and unbound the age from a double bondage under prelatical and legal tyranny?... And if I have prosperously, God so favouring me, defended the public cause of this commonwealth to foreigners, I request that ye would not think the reason and ability, wherein ye trusted once (and repent not) your whole reputation to the world, either grown less by more maturity and longer study, or less available in English than in another tongue.'1 It is not strange that report should have induced you to believe that I had perished among the numbers of my countrymen who fell in a year so fatally visited by the ravages of the plague. If that rumour sprung, as it seems, out of solicitude for my safety, I consider it as no unpleasing indication of the esteem in which I am held among you. But by the goodness of God, who provided for me a place of refuge in the country, (Chalfont St. Giles,) I yet enjoy both life 1 'Considerations touching removing hirelings out of the Church,' Works, vol. iii. p. 2. DESERTED BY HIS DAUGHTERS. 169 and health; which as long as they continue, I shall be happy to employ in any useful undertaking. I will conclude after first begging you, if there be any errors in the diction or the punctuation, to impute it to the boy who wrote this, who is quite ignorant of Latin, and to whom, with no little vexation, I was obliged to dictate not the words, but one by one the letters of which they are composed.'1 'I devoted myself to the study of the Christian religion because nothing else can so effectually rescue the lives and minds of men from these two detestable curses, slavery and superstition. I resolved not to repose on the faith or judgment of others in matters relating to God; but on the one hand, having taken the grounds of my faith from Divine revelation alone, and on the other, having neglected nothing which depended on my own industry, I thought fit to scrutinize and ascertain for myself the several points of my religious belief, by the most careful perusal and meditation of the Holy Scriptures themselves. I entered upon an assiduous course of study in my youth, beginning 1 Letter XXXI. To Peter Heimbach, 1666. with the books of the Old and New Testament in their original languages. It was a great solace to me to have laid up for myself a treasure which would be a provision for my future life, and would remove from my mind all grounds for hesitation, as often as it behoved me to render an account of the principles of my belief. . . . Since I enrol myself among the number of those who acknowledge the Word of God alone as the rule of faith, and freely advance what appears to me much more clearly deducible from the Holy Scriptures than the commonly received opinion, I see no reason why any one who belongs to the same Protestant or Reformed Church, and professes to acknowledge the same rule of faith as myself, should take offence at my freedom, particularly as I impose my authority on no one, but merely propose what I think more worthy of belief than the creed in general acceptation.'1 'Let us, therefore, using this last means, last here spoken of but first to be done, amend our lives with all speed; lest through impenitency we 1 Posthumous work, A Treatise on Christian Doctrine, discovered in the State Paper Office in 1823. HIS LAST WRITTEN WORDS. 171 run into that stupidity which we now seek all means so warily to avoid, the worst of superstitions, and the heaviest of all God's judgments-Popery.'1 AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL PASSAGES FROM MILTON'S POETRY. A little onward lend thy guiding hand For yonder bank hath choice of sun or shade : The breath of Heav'n fresh blowing, pure and sweet, 1 The last words of his last prose work, Of True Religion, Heresy, Schism, and Toleration, published in 1673, a year before his death. 2 Samson Agonistes, I-II. Richardson says in his Remarks on Milton, 1734:-' I have heard many years since, that he used to sit in a grey coarse cloth coat at the door of his house, near Bunhill Fields, in warm sunny weather, to enjoy the fresh air, and so, as well as in his room, received the visits of people of distinguished parts, as well as quality. And very lately I had the good fortune to have another picture of him from an ancient clergyman in Dorsetshire, Dr. Wright; he found him in a small house, he thinks but one room on a floor, in that, up one pair of stairs, which was hung with a rusty green, he found John Milton, sitting in an elbow-chair, black cloaths, and neat enough, pale, but not cadaverous, his hands and fingers gouty, and with chalk-stones. Among other discourse he expressed himself to this purpose, that was he free from the pain this gave him, his blindness would be tolerable.' Samson Agonistes, his last poem, published in 1671, together with Paradise Regained, is throughout painfully autobiographical. In it he gives vent to his long pent-up feelings of sorrow, indignation, and resignation. But chief of all, O loss of sight, of thee I most complain! Blind among enemies, O worse than chains, Light, the prime work of God, to me is extinct, Annull'd, which might in part my grief have eas'd, Of man or worm; the vilest here excel me, In power of others, never in my own; Scarce half I seem to live, dead more than half.1 Without all hope of day! O first created beam, and thou great Word, And silent as the moon, When she deserts the night Hid in her vacant interlunar cave. Since light so necessary is to life, There is evidence that his children were undutiful and unkind to him, and combined with his maid-servant to cheat him in marketings, and sold his books, and even wished his death. |