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Never did Milton express more powerfully what evil was for him than in the celebrated words "blind mouths": "blind," that is to say, without intelligence; "mouths," that is to say, full of avidity; men whose passions only live in them, and whose reason is blind. For it is the domination of passion in man that is the source of all evil and creates slaves as well as tyrants.

These ideas were elaborated and systematized during the passionate struggles from 1641 to 1658, under the Long Parliament and Commonwealth; they were applied to politics and to theology, and became the center of an explanation of the Cosmos. But they existed from 1637 onwards, growing unavoidably from the deeper strata of Milton's character, amid the interplay of his fundamental tendencies- a passionate sensibility and pride of intellect.

When Milton returned from Italy, in August, 1639, he was ready to face the problems of public life. All his powers were about to be tested in furious action, in real experience tested and broken. In his trials and failures, the Miltonic conception of life was definitely molded.

80 Line 119.

CHAPTER II

THE MAN OF ACTION AND OF PASSION

T

I. MILTON, MAN OF ACTION

HE religious situation in England had called Milton back from his travels. Two great parties divided the country.

The Puritan party had been gradually developing since the time of Elizabeth. At the Reformation, the Bible had spread through all classes, and a new culture had thus been acquired by part of the English people. Englishmen had learned that all men were equals before God and that every man had a right to think for himself, with the sole help of the Holy Word. They had acquired a passion for discussing religious questions, and a horror of the Roman Catholic Church, which was to them as the bondage of Egypt, from which they had just escaped. Their external appearance had hardened, but their inner life had grown tenfold. Family life had become dearer to them than before, and had taken on a sacred character: the head of the family was a priest who read and explained the Book. The expression "holy wedlock" came to have a real meaning. The great Puritan ideal was the domination of the soul over the flesh, the mastery of one's self, and, in public life, Justice inexorable.

Such were the best among the Puritans, and many of their traits are in Milton. But in inferior minds, and largely among the masses that came, more or less, to the

party when it triumphed, these precious qualities changed into unloveable faults; hypocrisy, fanaticism, austerity, and narrow-mindedness spread only too rapidly among the Puritans. Milton consequently soon parted company with the majority who wanted to set up in England a tyranny worse than the Episcopalian rule. Cromwell had to govern against the Puritan majority and practically with the sole backing of his army, and it was owing to Cromwell that intolerance and fanaticism did not completely conquer the country.

The other party

the party of the King and of Laud - was, at bottom, though often unconsciously, turned toward the Catholic ideal. For Laud, ecclesiastical discipline was the essence of religion, and the basis of the Church was the apostolic succession that took all bishops back to Peter. The clergy was encouraged to remain celibate; a fixed ritual and complicated and pompous ceremonies (which reminded the Puritans of the Whore of Babylon) flourished in the Church. The Anglican establishment was completely separated from the Protestants on the Continent, and had a tendency to become an insular and but slightly modified branch of the Church of Rome. The Puritans, who read the Bible instead of receiving instructions from their superiors, and who hated surplices, were driven out of their churches. Calvinism was openly combated, and Arminianism—the belief in free-will encouraged. Passive obedience to the King in all things was taught; Laud and his Church became a powerful instrument at the disposal of the Crown.

On the other hand, a spirit of toleration reigned in the King's party, both as to ideas and morals. As long as you obeyed the King and the Bishop, you were free to

think and to act as you pleased. On many points, Milton was at one with these enemies of his party. He also ended by rejecting predestination, and made of free-will the very center of his system. He also fought for toleration, like Chillingworth, like Hales, like the Anglican liberals. He also inclined to think that people ought to be allowed to enjoy themselves on Sundays, instead of being driven into the churches.

But Milton rebelled first of all against the Episcopalian tyranny, and the majority of his countrymen went with him. The fear of a return to Catholicism made Scotland and England rise against the Crown. Charles I waged two ridiculous wars to force Bishops on Scotland, and succeeded only in wrecking his finances. The English, who feared the King's plans of personal domination perhaps even more than his Church policy, took their opportunity and obliged Charles to call the Parliament of 1640, which was to become the Long Parliament. This Parliament first attacked the political enemy, and in 1641, Strafford, abandoned by a master he had served not without genius, perished on the scaffold. Then came the onslaught on the Bishops. But the King, who had not been able to defend Strafford, fought for the Church, and found a party to fight for it. In 1642, the Civil War began. Before that, Milton had already published five pamphlets on the Parliamentary side; leaving alone for the time being the political question, he had joined with his whole soul in the struggle against the Bishops.

Milton's pamphlets must not be looked upon as literature, but as action.

The Puritan ideal was shaping into a generous vision that attracted invincibly the noblest minds of England.

2

But the

Those that went farthest were awaiting the Fifth Monarchy, the triumphant coming of Christ on earth"shortly expected," as Milton says - and the foundation of an earthly Kingdom of Christ, that was to last a thousand years and end with the world itself.1 Milton certainly held this view at the end of his life, and possibly from 1640, though we cannot tell precisely. Millenarians were only expressing in a more precise manner the sublime hope of the great Puritan party. Who could tell whether or when Christ would come? Meanwhile, the English were going to set to work; they were going to suppress tyranny, political and ecclesiastical; they were going to reorganize their country on a rational basis in harmony with the will of God. The English were the people chosen of God, who reveals Himself, says Milton, first to his Englishmen." They were devoted to His service, from 1643, by a Solemn League and Covenant; they were going to found on earth the visible Kingdom of God.

3

Milton fully shared that hope, that pride, that enthusiasm. And besides his high idea of the English people, he had his high idea of himself. He believed himself capable of real and decisive action; he felt in himself a great power that was to weigh heavily in the destiny of the Church and of the country. His pride rose to sacrifice. He gave up the aims which had so far filled his life. What mattered literature now? The will of God had to be carried out; the Earthly Paradise was to be founded, and Paradise Lost or Paradise Regained could wait. That same ardor which had urged Milton towards what had then seemed to him the highest aim of man,

1 See Masson, III, 152.

2 See below, pp. 196-97.

3 Areopagitica, in Prose Works, II, 91.