Milton was made Latin secretary to the council of state, which was to supply the office of Royalty. In 1652, Milton had lost his eyesight, yet he still clung to polemic and political life, and was a gladiator on the arena until after his friend Oliver Cromwell's death, and the restoration of Charles II, when he gave it up. When the storm had blown over, Milton retired to contemplate his immortal work-" Paradise Lost." Johnson says that "he fixed upon this subject, a design so comprehensive, that it could only be justified by its success." More than this can be said; it was a design so vast, and one which entered so far into eternity, and the destinies of man, connected with a machinery so weighty and awful, that no one who was not armed with the panoply of that deep religious feeling that is ready to venture on martyrdom, and felt the possession of a genius that gained strength by every obstacle, would have ventured upon. To any other man it would have been not only a failure, but his destruction. If he had not been prepared by faith to pass the burning ploughshare, the attempt would have been considered as allied to blasphemy. But Milton scaled the battlements of Heaven by privilege, and was allowed to take with him all his human knowledge. In this poem is to be found all the learning of the ancients, strained and purified for the occasion. The seraphim he mentions seems to have touched the heathen Apollo, and to have changed his lyre to a burning harp of eternal praise; and the god of taste and wisdom to a ministering angel of revelation. FROM THE MASK OF COMUS. The Lady enters. This way the noise was, if mine ear be true, Such as the jocund flute, or gamesome pipe, They left me then, when the grey hooded even, Rose from the hindmost wheels of Phoebus' wain. That nature hung in Heav'n, and fill'd their lamps To the misled and lonely traveller ? Of calling shapes, and beck'ning shadows dire, That he, the Supreme Good, t' whom all things ill Was I deceived, or did a sable cloud Turn forth her silver lining on the night? I did not err; there does a sable cloud SONG. Sweet Echo, sweetest nymph, that liv'st unseen By slow Meander's margent green, And in the violet embroider'd vale, Where the love-lorn nightingale Nightly to thee her sad song mourneth well; That likest thy Narcissus are? O, if thou have Hid them in some flow'ry cave, Sweet queen of Parley, daughter of the sphere! Comus. Can any mortal mixture of earth's mould How sweetly did they float upon the wings Of darkness till it smil'd! I have oft heard Culling their potent herbs, and baleful drugs, Who, as they sung, would take the prison'd soul, And lap it in Elysium; Scylla wept, And chid her barking waves into attention, And fell Charybdis murmur'd soft applause: Yet they in pleasing slumber lull'd the sense, I never heard till now. I'll speak to her, And she shall be my queen. Hail, foreign wonder! Dwell'st here with Pan, or Sylvan, by blest song To touch the prosp'rous growth of this tall wood. Not any boast of skill, but extreme shift [thus? Comus. What chance, good lady, hath bereft you Lady. They left me weary on a grassy turf. turn. Comus. Perhaps forestalling night prevented them. Lady. How easy my misfortune is to hit! Comus. Imports their loss, besides the present need? Lady. No less than if I should my brothers lose. Comus. Were they of manly prime, or youthful bloom? |