THE New Zealand Herald. AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS. SATURDAY, DECEMBER 5, 1908. A GREAT ENGLISHMAN.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLV, Issue 13925, 5 December 1908, Page 4

THE New Zealand Herald. AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS. SATURDAY, DECEMBER 5, 1908. A GREAT ENGLISHMAN.

Three hundred years ago next Wednesday December 9, 1608 there was born in the heart of the then comparatively rural city of London one John Milton, destined to play an important part in stirring scenes of his country's history; to be a great moulder of public opinion, and one of the few really great poets of the world ; to exercise a lasting influence on English character and to lift its whole literature on to a higher plane. He is not read now as he used to be, more's the pity! His themes do not appeal to the busy worldlings of to-day as they did to their more religiouslyminded and leisured ancestors. But to those with eyes to 'see literary beauty and exquisite finish, . and whose ears are attuned to the music of a stately diction, he can never be anything less than truly great. Indeed, his nobility as a poet has never been seriously impugned, except by a French critic, who sometimes sacrificed truth to brilliancy, and was, besides, too utterly alien to Milton, nationally, religiously, and temperamentally, to be a fair judge. Dryden's judgment that Milton combined Homer's loftiness of thought with Virgil's sublimity of diction was practically endorsed j by Tennyson, who, though he spoke ! of Virgil as " lord of language," as " wieldcr of the stateliest measure ever moulded by the lips of man," as one in whom all the charm of all the Muses often flowered in a lonely word, nevertheless, in conversation, often emphasised the opinion that in "the grand style" of. poetic diction Milton was Virgil's superior. In dignity of theme the English poet's muse engaged in far loftier flights than the Virgilian soared, indeed, nearer the empyrean than any other. As Gray beautifully puts it': "The living theme, the sapphire blaze, Where angels tremble as they gaze, He saw ; but, blasted with excess of light, Closed his eyes in endless night." Besides his great epics, " Paradise Lost," " Paradise Regained," and " Samson Agonistes" Milton left us what was for long the finest elegiac verse in our language, and his " Lycidas" is today unapproached by anything of the kind in English except Shelley's " Adonais" and Tennyson's profoundly beautiful "In Memoriam." Had he never written anything besides " Lycidas," " Comus," and the hymn on the " Nativity," he would have been assuredly hailed as a great poet. But it is not merely as such that he commands our esteem. His i prose writings, despite the facts that they arc in the main controversial and often marred by bitterness and abusive personalities, reflect the thoroughness and single-

heartedness, of his character. . He was the uncompromising opponent of all policies of mere expediency. To him a thing was right or wrong, and if right it must be done, be the consequences what they might. There could be no half measures, no paltering with truth. His vehemence in the cause of righteousness is the explanation of his bitterness to opponents. It was their opinions he detested, not the men, or at least only so far as they were idenfied with them. In this, of course, he displayed his own limitations all too plainly. He could not admit the possibility of his view of political truth being incomplete. He thought he saw all round it, and everyone else's differing view was, therefore, a distortion. But, however much we may differ from him politically, now that the burning questions have ; been settled * long enough to let us review the old controversies impersonally, we cannot but realise the invaluable services Milton rendered to his party, and the whole-hearted recklessness with which he ©spoused the cause of liberty as he understood it. We may not endorse Wordsworth's personal appeal: "Milton! Thou should'st be living at this hour. England hath need of thee," but whole-souled, righteous men such as he was are certainly always in demand—men prepared, if necessary, to stand alone, resolute to speak out what is in them, true to themselves and their consciences whatever may come of it. At the age of twenty-three, commenting on his growing power, Milton's high resolve was:— .

it shall bo still in strictest measure even To that same lot however mean or high, Towards which Time leads me, and the will of Heaven ; All is, if I have grace to use it so, As ever in my great task-master's eye.

».- That was his life motto, and he loyally carried it out. He embodied the same sentiment in Michael's advice to Adam: " Nor love thy life, nor hate ; but what thou livest live well." The poet honestly tried to do it, and plunged into controversy with a sincere desire to serve truth, and with a sublime disregard of personal consequences. Of all his controversial work none, in the long run, . did England nobler service than his fight for the freedom of the Press, his great speech for the Liberty of Unlicensed Printing. It must have cost a, good deal, for it was directed against his own friends that very Long Parliament whose cause he had erstwhile so warmly espoused, a Parliament which, to check the circulation c f books it disapproved of, and whose principles Milton just as heartily abhorred, proposed to establish licensers of the Press. To the man " whose soul was as a star and dwelt apart" this policy of expediency was wrong, and he proclaimed in. ringing tones his opposition to it: "We should not affect a vigour contrary to the manner of God's nature by abridging or scanting those means, which books freely permitted are, both to the trial of virtue and to the exercise of truth." "Were I the chooser," he says, "a dram of well-doing should be preferred before many times as much the forcible hindrance of evildoing."

Another of his prose works which showed him greatly in advance of his time was his "Letter to Mr. Hartlibb, on Education." His theories, long ridiculed, are now recognised as in the main sound, and his principles are embodied as quite new and wonderful discoveries in schemes of modern educational reform. His attempt to put his theories into practice was certainly not a success, but it was his own personal temperament that was at fault. The Latin secretary to the Commonwealth was the ripest scholar of his day, and one of its soundest educationists, but he lived too much in a world of his own to develop the sympathy essential to success as a schoolmaster. The absence of this made him generally rather a difficult person -to get on with His domestic relations were not of > the happiest. In his own strength of character and loftiness. of soul he had no patience with the lower aims and the little frailties of others, and while he commanded their reverence he does not seem to have in-, spired their love. When : his sad blindness drove him more and more into himself, so to speak, and closed permanently to him one main avenue of access to the outer world, his metaphysical tendencies were, naturally strengthened, and he became a more and more difficult companion.- The infinite pathos of his "Sonnet on His Own Blindness" nevertheless reveals very strikingly the grandeur of his character under affliction, and as we read the tragedy of Samson Agonistes we encounter many little indications of the extent to which the fact that he had himself suffered "total eclipse," and had been shorn of his strength, increased his ' sympathy with his subject. That he was one who lived on a higher plane than his fellows, and reflected in his own life the best features of the Puritanism in which he was brought up, and which left so indelible an impress for good on the English character in many directions, that his whole heart and soul were given to England and to the championship of what he deemed best for her, none can deny. It is seen in all he did, or wrote, or said. The extraordinary extent of his reading, his deep insight into the heart of things, his love for and close study of Nature, as its Maker's objective revelation, are equally apparent. When to these merits as a poet are added an unrivalled sublimity of thought, an exquisite play of fancy, and a musical diction entirely his own, enough is said to invest the three hundredth anniversary of Milton's birth with' the interest inseparable from association with a man of the noblest aims and,purest character, a fearless champion <-f truth and righteousness against all odds, however heavy, a dear lover of England, and for all time °."-.,qf her chiefest literary glories. ?