28

Chapter - 2

MILTON'S MINOR POEMS

: I :

Milton brought out the first edition of his early poems in

1645 titled Poems of Mr. John Milton both English and Latin,
compos'd at several times. Printed by his true copies. The Virgilian
tag affixed to them,

Baccare frontem
Cingite, ne vati noceat mala lingua futuro

tells us that he did not consider them to be the best fruits of

his labour. Many of the compositions were demanded of him while
he was still in the preparatory stage of his poetic vocation.
In his pamphlets too, he does not mention them. Nevertheless,
they do provide us with a firm basis, a starting point from where
we can trace his development as a poet in the making, his religious
transformation from a fairly orthodox believer to an upholder
of religious Independence. They giveus valuable insight into
his life and mental growth. His orthodoxy is evident when St.
Peter in Lycidas wears a bishop1 s mitre but his aversion to the
present day priesthood is reflected a few lines later in his famous
expression "Blind mouths". By the end of his life, he attended
no church at all and did not even hold family prayers in his
home.

All Milton's work before the Civil War of 1642, when he

took up vituperative pamphleteering can be summed up in the
lines from Friedrich Holderlin's Hyperions Schiksalslied (1798) :
 29

Schiksallos, wie der schlafende

Saugling, atmen die Himmlischen;
Kreusch bewahrt
In bescheidener Knospe,
Bliihet ewig
Ihnen der Geist,
Und die seligen Augen
Blicken in stiller
Ewiger Klarheit.

(Immune as the sleeping Infant the celestials breathe; chaste in

unopening bud it is their spirits that forever flower; and their
blessed eyes gaze still in endless clarity.)'*

"Anno Domini 1619,he was ten years old; and he was then
a Poet" wrote John Aubrey in his "brief life" of Milton, and though
this may sound a little exaggerated, the information is essentially
true. Milton was wedded to literature from early childhood more
consciously and more earnestly thanany other English poet.
In one of his autobiographical asides in his Pro Populo Anglicano
Defensio Secunda (1654), he confides to his reader, "My father
destined me from a child for the pursuits of polite learning, which
I prosecuted with such eagerness,
that after I was twelve years
2
old, I rarely retired to bed from my lucubrations till midnight."

As a young boy, Milton was fully aware of the hard discipline

and relentless reading that formed the pre-requisite for a poet
of the kind that he aspired to be. He was a true classicist
in this-one might say, for he wished to join the society of Homer,
Virgil, and Dante. For him was not the short-lived worldly fame.
He harboured dreams of immortality, of perpetuity where the poet-
priest could claim his place next to none other than the celebrated
Son of God. In The Reason of Church Government (1642), he openly
declares, "I began thus farre to assent ................ to an inward
prompting which now grew daily upon me, that by labour and
intent study (which I take to be my portion in this life) joyn'd
 30

with the strong propensity of nature, I might perhaps leave some­

thing so written to after times as they should not willingly let
it die".^

Milton1 s case was different from Wordsworth1 s revelation

of his poetic gifts as described in Book IV of The Prelude :

I made no vows, but vows

Were then made for me; bond unknown to me
Was given, that I should be, else sinning greatly,
4
A dedicated Spirit.

Although he shared with Wordsworth his high conception of the

poet's mission, for Milton the process was a continuous one, his
early years a period of gradual and intense preparation to be
a great English poet. Milton's Protestant Christian Humanism
led him to declare that the poet's abilities "are of power beside
the office of a pulpit, to imbreed and cherish in a great people
the seeds of vertu, and publick civility, to allay the perturbations
5
of the mind, and set the afflictions in right tune". It would
only be apt, at this point of reference, to recall what Milton
had to say about an ideal poet. The poet was no ordinary man,
"And long it was not after, when I was confirm'd in this opinion,
that he who would not be frustrate of his hope to write well
hereafter in laudable things, ought him selfe to bee a true Poem,
that is, a composition, and patterne of the best and honourablest
things; not presuming to sing praises of heroick men, or famous
Cities, unless he have in himselfe the experience and practice
of all that which is praiseworthy" He believed that the true
poet was divinely inspired, but he also believed in the parable
of the talents, that God expected man to use and improve the
gifts he had been given. His high ambitions required him not
only to be the most learned and talented of men but also the
most virtuous.. His high ideal of virtue is linked to his concept
of the mastery of self : chastity. He was proud of his chastity
and boasts of it to his friend Charles Diodati in Elegia Prima
 31

"to keep far from the infamous halls of the treacherous Circe".
It is not religious in our sense, like that observed by the ascetics.
He was chaste in order to acquire the powers that the Heavenly
Muse conferred on him,

while thou
Visit1 st my slumbers nightly, or when morn
Purples the east.

(Paradise Lost, Book VII, 11. 28 - 30)

Comas ends like Lycidas and the Epitaphium Damonis with

the beatific vision which the young Puritan visualised. It is
temperance and chastity, not their opposites, which are natural
and rational. It further attains fulfilment in the Christian order
of grace. This leads to the possession of beauty, happiness and
freedom which the perverted Comus thinks are to be found in
worshipping sensual pleasures. His youthful ideal of virginity,
which earned him the nickname of the "Lady of Christ's", .was
later to become a richer ideal of wedded love. (Vide Chapter 7)

The greater part of Milton's early writing, which was in

Latin conformed to the university fashion, and we know that he
exercised greater > . . mastery in Latin before he did so in
his native tongue - English, though he displayed an amplitude
and style in At a Vacation Exercise (1628) which were certainly
Miltonic. Oratorical and dialectical compositions in Latin were
a part of the academic curricula. Although he took part in these
Latin prolusions and could lament the death of bishops and celebrate
the fifth of November, this disciple of Ovid used this foreign
tongue to reveal the sensuous and personal side of his character
which he could not do in his own tongue. The beauty of girls
in the park dazzles him and leaves him pining, while the reju­
venation of nature kindles desires, both cosmic andsexual. How­
ever, these disturbing passions do not deter the young Christian
from his righteous path as he clasps at the magical herb, moly.
 32

Later in the sixth elegy, he acknowledges the superiority of the

ascetic poet of truly heroic themes after initially praising, in
a playful manner vinous and amorous verse.

The poems published by Milton in 1645 reveal an extremely

varied sensibility and humanity of the poet's heart. The lines
At a Vacation Exercise and some Latin pieces show that though
he took part in the prescribed work, his heart was elsewhere.
His favourite studies were literary and classical, "grave Orators
& Historians", from whom he moved on to "the smooth Elegiack
Poets whereof ol the Schooles are not scarce". Captured though
at first, by the elegiac poets of Rome, he found "whom both for
the pleasing sound of their numerous writing, which in imitation
I found most easie, .......... and for their matter which what it
is, there be few who know not, I was so allur'd to read, that
no recreation came to me better welcome". He realized that their
sensuality was less fulfilling -than their art. Next he passed
on to "the two famous renowners of Beatrice and Laura who never
7
write but honour of them to whom they devote their verse".
There grew the belief in the necessity of moral integrity to a
life of truly great endeavour. In Elegia Sexta, although he does
not condemn the votaries of Ceres, Bacchus and Venus, but for
a poet of the kind he aspired to be, it was different :

At qui bella refert, et adulto sub love caelum,

Heroasque pios, semideosque duces,
Et nunc sancta canit superum consulta deorum,
Nunc latrata fero regna profunda cane.

(11. 55 - 58)

Such a poet must adhere to a strict discipline. He must live

sparingly, sagely and soberly like the vates — seers of old -

Qualis veste nitens sacra et lustralibus undis.

Surgis ad infensos augur iture Deos.
(11. 65 - 66)
 33

From Dante and Petrarch he turned to the "lofty Fables and

Romances, which recount in solemne canto's the deeds of Knight-
8
hood" , and here mention should be made of Tasso and Spenser
whom he had in mind. Such works inculcated the ideal of virtue
and not incitements to wantonness Thence came Plato with his
ethical idealism, "Thus from the Laureat fraternity of Poets, riper
yeares, and the ceaselesse round of study and reading led me to
the shady places of philosophy, but chiefly to the divine volumes
of Plato, and his equal Xenophon" - his concept of the Eros "produ­
cing those happy twins of her divine generation knowledge and
9
vertue". And lastly, to impress on one and all that he was
above everything else a passionate Christian, he turns to the
precepts of Christian religion - "Last of all not in time, but
as perfection is last .................. having had the ' doctrine of the
holy Scripture unfolding those chaste and high mysteries ......... ..
that thebody is for the Lord and the Lord for the body". Along
with St. Paul, Milton makes special reference to the Book of Reve­
lation: whose presence can be felt in all his works be what it may.

Greece and Rome had been the model for England not only
in her art of government but also in the creative arts. It was
Milton's lifelong ambition to rival their literary achievement.
We know very well by now how he spent his time at Cambridge,
and at Horton sedulously pouring over the Greek and Latin classics,-
dreaming of perpetuity. In a letter written to Charles Diodati
on September 23rd, 1637, he confesses his innermost urge, "You
ask what I am thinking of? So help me God, an immortality of
fame. What I am doing? Growing my wings and practising flight.
But my Pegasusstill raises himself on very tender wings. Let
me be wise on my humble level".

Milton's ceaseless endeavour to assimilate whatever he considered

in classical and foreign literature to be permanent and beautiful,
not only links him with Spenser and the Elizabethans but makes
him stand apart as an age by himself. As apoet, he tried to
blend the spirit of the Renaissance and the Reformation which
 34

makes him transcend even the Spenserian experiment with similar

ideas. Milton was the first to conceive a work which would combine
the perfection of ancient art with the doctrinal . purity of the
Bible. He had experienced within his own self the conflict between
good and bad, paganism and Christianity, nature and religion -
and had tried to resolve it in his own way. The proportion
in which the two elements are present in his work varies with
his years and we are conscious throughout of how harmoniously
he mingles the two.^

The boy's preparation was intensely laborious. From the

age of twelve, he rarely retired to bed until midnight. He becstme
a passionate humanist while at the same time being devoutly Christian.

Humanism - a widely used term, is associated with the

movement towards the recovery of all that was best in the thought,
expression and style of the Greek and Latin classics. It was
also directed towards finding a synthesis between Christianity
and classical philosophies. Neoplatonism helped to bridge the
two ideologies.. The fourteenth century poet and classical scholar
Petrarch, was among the first to claim that the 1,000 years preceding
his own age had gradually brought about the extinction of excellence
in both literary culture and public virtue. Hence he called for
a revival of the study of antiquity, especially its speech, literary
style and moral thought. A true imitatioof the classics would
be no superficial aping of their ways but a grasping of the mystery
of their genius, thus, leading to recovery in the true sense. The
focus, therefore, was on language; this meant studying the languages
of antiquity as the ancients had used them and not as vehicles
for carrying modern thoughts. Thus grammar was given the place
of prime importance. From the- mastery of language • the next
step was the attainment of eloquence. Both for .Petrarch and for
Cicero, eloquence was not the mere possession of an elegant style,
nor yet the power of persuasion, but the union of elegance and
power with virtue. Language and rhetoric studied in the tradition
of the great orators of antiquity was done for a moral purpose
 35

- to persuade men to the good life.

To the Renaissance humanist the study of rhetoric was an

integral part of the"complete" man who could use his knowledge
and virtue for the common weal.The completeRenaissance man
had to be trained in public affairs, and to be able to maintain
his position in public assembly, a proper grooming in rhetoric
was essential. The notion that rhetoric was an essential pre­
requisite for a citizen of a free state encouraged the Renaissance
humanist in his study of Cicero as an orator and of Quintilian
as a literary critic.

It will be worth our while to pause here and consider the

young Milton's view of rhetoric and how it changed radically -
under the impact of the changing politico - socio - religious scenario
of his time. ' This had its repercusions on his poetry to a very-
significant extent. The great debate in Hell in Paxadise Lost
has Milton using all the tricks of the orator's trade quite ruthlessly
showing its perversion of public debate. Earlier the same thing
had been attempted by him in Comus though on a different scale.
The conflict between Comus and the Lady can be seen to some
degree as a clash between logic and rhetoric. It is precisely
for these persuasive nuances that the Romantics acclaimed Satan
as a hero. The best arguments Milton has placed in the mouths
of both Comus and Satan. With Milton's humanistic background,
he is justified in doing so because he considered it as an essential
weapon for a democratic man. This does not prevent us from
acknowledging the equally forceful potential of the rhetoric used
for a useful purpose in Paradise Lost.

No study of Milton is complete without taking into consideration

his Christianity and his humanism, and their effect on his poetic
ideals and his poetry. His high idealistic bent of mind always
upheld the Greek notion of epic poetry as paideia, that is, being
educative, as also its Renaissnace modification of combinig the
life of action and the life of contemplation. In The Reason of
 36

Church Government he states over and over again the edification

of mankind by "our Magistrates..................... would take into their
care ....................... the managing of our publick sports, and festival
pastimes, that they might ........... civilize, adorn and make
discreet our minds by the learned and affable meeting of frequent
Academies, and the procurement of wise and artfull recitations
sweetned with eloquent and gracefuU inticements to the love and
practice of justice, temperance and fortitude, instructing and bettering
the Nation at all opportunities, that the call of wisdom and vertu
12
may be heard every where". This clearly shows how Milton
viewed art and morality as two sides of the same coin - the aesthetic
and the ethical implications of a piece of art were inseparable.
He furtherbelieved that an artbased on classical models should
aim at encouraging a life of Christian virtue. His Christianity
always occupied the foremost place in his life and his works.
No art could be greater than his faith. in Paradise Regained
Christ rejects Satan's temptation - the art and philosophy of
Athens - claiming the superiority of the Hebrew writers who surpass
the Greeks in' both. Sufficient evidence to support 'his views can
be seen in the TheReason of Church Government Urged where
he describes the Book of Revelation as "a high and stately tragedy"
complete with the Chorus of angels; the Book of Job he describes
as a brief epic, while the poetic sections of the Old Testament
as the finest lyric poetry ever written. This ideal of art as
nurturing a life of high Christian morality is reflected in Lycidas,
where the poet andpriest are assimilated in the image of the
shepherd, the pastor wholooks after his flock. T.his placed
Milton1 s poetry on a scale where few other poets could reach.
It is often said about him that he was a poet who wrote for the
cathedral and not for the coffee house.

There has been a recent trend among critics to decry Milton's

verse as lacking in spontaneity and poetic exuberance. It is
suggested that very often the sound rather than the image influences
the choice of words. But we must not overlook the supreme musical
cadence of his verse, where the ear is attuned over and over
 37

again to a fine perfection of harmony. His poetry displays superb

mastery of rhythm and sound, an unusual richness of image and
myth, a variety of genres and a vastness of scope.

The lyrical and dramatic poetry of the Elizabethan - Jacobean

period was over and verse was beginning to change. The movement
was geared towards greater elegance, more control and balance
and this was to reach its zenith in Pope. At the same time, there
was a trend towards a more intimate and personal kind of poetry
with its closeness to everyday speech and rhythm. The court
poets like Thomas Carew, Suckling and Lovelace produced more
of the "elegant" type of poetry; the Metaphysicals like John Donne,
Herbert and Vaughan more of the intimate and personal kind of
poetry. Both these styles were "witty"
character using the in
13
most improbable and unlikely comparisons and metaphors.

Milton stands quite outside this milieu. It is true that his

verse is elegant, but this is largely due to his fascination with
the Latin authors rather than because of the influence of his con­
temporaries. To gauge just how far removed he was from the
poetic tendencies of his time, one need glance at Thomas Carew1 s
lines on the death of John Donne. He maintains that Donne had
saved English poetry from the "servile imitation" of the classics,
its hackneyed subject matter and obtrusive language. But now
that he was gone the new generation of poets would undo all his
accomplishments. And we do notice a decided movement towards
a more classical poetry already afoot before the Restoration.
This was partly due to the influence of French literature and
literary theory. This was however, not Milton's kind of classicism.
The poets of the Restoration and early eighteenth century retained
the traits of the metaphysicals, their colloquialism and urbanity,
even as they thought they were improving on the crude versifica­
tion and complex scansion. In their serious poems they imitated
Milton, but his influence was felt most pronouncedly in the mock-
heroic tradition.
 38

Milton's verse is not intimate, nor does it give the impression

of a natural speaking voice. It is public and majestic. He could
use classical myths inwritingChristian poetry and this quality
links him with the other Renaissance poets, espcially Spenser,
whose Faerie Queene places the Greek Tantalus and the biblical
Pilate side by side in a classical hell. He refers to him as
"our sage and serious Spenser" whom Areopagitica also claims
"a better teacher than Scotus or Aquinas". He is indebted to
him not only for much of the subject matter of Comus (the enchanter,
the Sabrina story, and the Garden of Adonis) but also for many
references in Paradise Lost. The scene where Pandemonium and
the Garden of Eden are contrasted, is similar to Spenser's treatment
of the House of Busirane and the Garden of Adonis. Milton's
early poetry we can say, belongs to this Spenserian tradition
of sensuous beauty, musical pattern and the use of allegory to
combine pagan and Christian themes.

Milton's crossing swords with the Metaphysicals can also

be attributed to the difference in his attitude towards women
and God. Both Donne and Herbert were conscious of the relationship
between the love of woman and the love of God. The love poetry
and religious poetry of the metaphysicals is grounded on conflict,
arising out of an apprehension of sin. The poet is a lover but
despises his mistress, or himself or the world for its apathy
towards his love. His love for God is tinged with fear; his
faith is overcome by his fear that his sins may be too great
for forgiveness. Man's mortal state is their chief concern, hence
they talk of graves, of worms, of epitaphs. Their stress on
the gruesome physical reality of death divides them from the
Greek and Latin poets whose "carpe diem" ("seize the day" or
enjoy life while you
though can) based on a strong awareness
14
of death, keeps it at a distance.

Milton's sense of the dignity of man and of the whole human

race prevents him from writing of human beings as worms and
miserable creatures born to die. His animosity to the Anglican
 39

Church government was based on his conviction that man was capable
of his own redemption without needing to be coaxed or terrorized
into it by a member of the church. Such inner conflicts as find
their way into Milton's work differ from those of the metaphysicals.
His clash is always with an unjust social system, be it a corrupt
clergy, or the act of licensing or the question of incompatible
wedded life. The conflicts are hardly with his own weaknesses
and vices. His personal and poetic development was marked by
consistency and stability so that, unlike Donne, he did not feel
compelled to suppress any of his earlier works except, for a
few sonnets related to occurences during the Commonwealth. The
meticulous manner in which he arranged and published his poems
in the 1645 and 1673 editions shows that he considered his works
to be a continuous whole. His youthful poems of love change
into poems of friendship as the poet grows older, showing a steady
progression of the poet's personality, unaccompanied by remorse
or self - loathing.

Milton' s earliest English poem written about the same time

as his first Latin Elegy is on the death of his niece, On the
Death of a Fair Infant Dying of a Cough. This excludes his two Psalm
paraphrases produced while he was still in school. This is an
enterprising effort in an Elizabethan rhetorical tradition. The
writing of such a piece was natural for one who had already four
Latin poems on the death of prominent persons. . There are echoes
of Sylvester, Ovid and Phineas Fletcher from whom he most probably
adopted the stanza form. The poem, though often not given much
importance, is a reflection of the poet's mature technique. It
represents an intermediate stage between the supposedly simple
texture of Elegy III and the elegy On the Death of the Bishop
of Ely, and the complex pattern of the Nativity Ode. The Fair
Infant is an occasional poem, celebrating an unimportant event,
within the conventions of a tradition, designed to enhance the
significance of that occasion. As in the two earlier Latin poems
mentioned above, Milton has been able to use meaningfully classical
and Christian images and ideas, and to establish the primacy
 40

of the latter. After an initial stage of grief expressed in terms

of classical imagery, he reaches a final stage of Christian joy.
Christian images overshadow the classical vision but do not dislodge
them completely. The presence of the classical elements strength­
ens the Christian victory. Another remarkable feature of this
poem is the complete absence of sound which is all the more
striking when we contrast it with the arsenal of aural passages
scattered from an early date in Milton's work. The hasty and
subdued ending of the poem may be the result of the poet's sense
15
of failure leading to its exclusion in the 1645 edition. It is
unlikely that the pattern of the Nativity Ode was already there
in his mind when he composed the Fair Infant, but the problems
he encountered here were effectively resolved in the Nativity
Ode. The prelude to the Ode takes up images present in the
closing stanzas of the ■ Fair Infant, and works them to a higher
plane of significance. In brief, the earlier poem finds Milton
grappling with elements which will be resolved only after he
reaches the fusion of poetic power and religious experience expressed
in the Ode. An example of the classical element giving way to
the Christian can be seen in stanza VI where after having accepted
Apollo, Hyacinth and the other mythological figures■, Milton's Chris­
tianity expresses itself in the mention of the Elysian fields -

Resolve me then, 0 Soul most surely blest

(If so it be that thou these plaints dost hear),
Tell me, bright Spirit, where'er thou hoverest,
Whether above that high first-moving sphere,
Or in the Elysian fields (if such there were);
Oh say me true if thou wert mortal wight,
And why from us so quickly thou didst take
thy flight.

(11. 36 - 42)

Though Spenserian in tone the line "Whether above that high first
- moving sphere" is truly Miltonic in tone and reminds us of lines
 41

in Comus and Lycidas.

The earliest mingling of the classical and Christian elements

can be seenin his relating the music of the spheres and the
twin concepts of virtue and chastity. In his second Latin prolusion,
he discusses the idea of the music of the spheres. Though
Pythagorean and Platonic in origin he gives it an individual twist.
"But if our souls were pure, chaste, and white as snow, as was
Pythagoras' of old, then indeed our ears would ring and be filled
with that exquisite music of the stars in their orbits; then would
all things turn back to the Age of Gold, and we ourselves, free
from every grief, would pass our lives in a blessed peace which
even the gods might envy".^ He believed that the planetary

spheres produced a perfect harmony symbolizing the divine order

of things. Music, divine order and chastity were deeply ingrained
in his mind and we find him dealing with them in the more important
minor poems, in Nativity Ode, in Arcades and in Comus. It was
his innermost belief that if he kept himself chaste nothing could
prevent him from listening to and partaking in the divine music
of the spheres. He gives expression to his high ideal of chastity
in the Apology for Smectymnuus where he defends himself against
false allegations of loose living :

"This that I have hitherto related, hath bin to shew, that

though Christianity had bin but slightly taught me, yet a certain
reserv1 dnesse of naturall disposition, and morall discipline learnt
out of the noblest Philosophy was anough to keep me in disdain
of farre lesse incontinences then this of the Burdello. But having
had the doctrine of holy Scripture unfolding those chaste and
high mysteries with timeliest care infus'd, that the body is for
the Lord and the Lord for the body, thus also I argu'd to my selfe;
'that if unchastity in a woman whom St. Paul tfermes the glory of man;
be such a scandall and dishonour, then certainly in a man who
is both the image and glory of God, it must, though commonly
not so thought, be much more deflouring and dishonourable .........
Nor did I slumber over that place expressing such high rewards
 42

of ever accompanying the Lambe, with those celestiall songs to

others inapprehensible, but not to those who were not difil'd
with women, which doubtlesse meanes fornication : For mariage
17
must not be call'd a defilement”.

This view finds full expression in At a Solemn Music; but

whereas earlier in the second prolusion, he affirms the myth
that it was Prometheus, who by his theft of fire from heaven,
was responsible for man's being deprived of the privilege of hearing
the divine symphony, later he attributes it to the Fall of Man.
The Pythagorean harmonies meant for him

That undisturbed song of pure concent,

Aye sung before the sapphire-colored throne
To him that sits thereon,
With saintly shout and solemn jubilee,
Where the bright Seraphim in burning row
Their loud uplifted angel-trumpets blow,
And the Cherubic host in thousand quires
' Touch their immortal harps of golden wires.

(11. 6 - 13)

But alas! Man's disobedience and his fall from his angelic state
has alienated him from partaking in this orchestral celebration.
This condition is amply stated in the lines following

That we on earth with undiscording voice

May rightly answer that melodious noise;
As once we did, till disproportioned sin
Jarred against Nature's chime, and with harsh
din.
Broke the fair music that all creatures made
To their great Lord, whose love their motion
swayed
In perfect diapason, whilst they stood
 43

In first obedience and their state of good.

(11. 17 - 24)

The last line immediately brings to our mind the opening

line of Paradise Lost and reminds us of all that we have lost
by sinning : "Of. Man's first disobedience ............" These associations
of pagan and Christian elements can also be seen in the association
of Christ with Pan in the Nativity Ode. Before we take up the
Nativity Ode we must remember that at this stage Milton was writing
many more Latin than English poems and his first resolve to write
in his native language is voiced at the end of the sixth prolusion
where he breaks off from Latin and moves into English verse :

Hail, native language, that by sinews weak

Didst move my first endeavoring tongue to speak,
And mad'st imperfect words with childish trips,
Half unpronounced, slide through my infant lips,
Driving dumb Silence from the portal door,
Where he had mutely sat two years before:

I pray thee then deny me not thy aid

For this same small neglect that I have made;
But haste thee straight to do me once a pleasure,
And from thy wardrobe bring thy chiefest treasure;
Not those new-fangled toys and trimming slight
Which takes our later fantastics with delight,
But cull those richest robes and gay1 st attire
Which deepest spirits and choicest wits desire.
I have some naked thoughts that rove about
And loudly knock to have their passage out.

(11. 1 - 24)

One must not forget that Latin was spoken throughout Europe
and Milton had established a place for himself as a poet of Latin
 44

verse outside England. The audience for English verse was restricted
to this small island. Milton would have craved to achieve the
reputation of a Mantuan or George Buchanan, but he prefers to
write henceforth in' his own tongue, in which he can express his
"naked thoughts11 more fully. By the dismissal of "those new­
fangled toys and trimming slight", Milton might have meant the
Metaphysical style. As we move along the poem, we find that
Milton wishes to compose more serious work in this vein and to
be able to move to tears his audience, just as Demodocus moved
Ulysses to tears.

: II :

Edward Phillips in his Life of Milton wrote that "his Vein

never happily' flow1 d, but from the Autumnal Equinoctial to the
19
Vernal," which suggests that he composed his verses most easily
in the winter. However, this rule is not strictly applicable to
all his writings. The lyric On May Morning depicts a mood of
freshness and vitality. It is in the best tradition of Elizabethan
choral song. It is a prologue to the Jonsonian vein displayed
in the Epitaph on the Marchioness of Winchester and L1 Allegro
and II Penseroso. Compared to the rich colour and detail of
Spenser, Milton’s manner here is of restrained elegance and simplicity.

Milton's first great English poem, one of the greatest English

odes, was written at Christmas 1629. It announces not only the
coming of Christ but also Milton1 s coming of age literally and
poetically. Masson feels that On the Morning of Christ's Nativity
was not just a college exercise for the Christmas season of 1629.
It was a voluntary composition written for his own pleasure, because
it formed part of a group of religious poems Milton was to write
to mark the different occasions in the Christian year. He began
The Passion a poem for the Easter (1630), after the Christmas
for which he wrote the Nativity Ode. It was left incomplete
 45

with the author's appendix "This subject the author finding to

be above the years he had when he wrote it, and nothing satisfied
with what was begun, left it unfinished". As we have noted earlier,
Milton derived his poetic inspiration from classical literature
and Biblical Christianity, and its finest expression of these is
the tender and pristine ode On the Morning of Christ's Nativity.
This poem marks a turning point in Milton's life, it sealed his
fate as a poet, and the ensuing clash between Christ and the
Muses is perfectly resolved. Milton is seen here working within
the Spenserian tradition, and like his mature poems, this poem
suggests many sources. There are distinct echoes of Spenser him­
self, of Giles Fletcher, a canzone of Tasso, Virgil's Messianic
Eclogue; its Italianate beginning nonetheless, bears the unmistakable
mark of its author in its sweet and melodious music, its freshness
and purity of feeling and its thematic andarchitectural unity.
It records a self-consecration which will be renewed three years
later in Sonnet VII. Milton elected to write on a traditional theme.
The ode is divided into two parts, the stanzaic form used in
the prelude is that of the Fair Infant,’ while the hymn is in a
lighter, eight - lined ■ stanza which may be Milton's own invention.
Both stanzas end with a Spenserian alexandrine. Although the
internal music of the stanzas varies a good deal, the regularity
and solidity of its pattern is justly suited to a song of jubilation.

The artist and the Christian are interfused as the Pythagorean

and Platonic music of the spheres is blended with the angelic
choir symbolising the divine order and harmony of earth and heaven.
Milton invokes the Heavenly Muse :

Say, Heav'nly Muse, shall not thy sacred vein

Afford a present to the infant God?

and wonders whether he has anything new to say which his great
masters have not said before. He wants to be the first to welcome
the. saviour. He runs to prevent the "star-led wizards" upon
the eastern road from arriving before him. This is totally his
 46

own invention. The Heavenly Muse certainly does not belong to

his age. If anything, she can be called an Elizabethan. The
French poet Du Bartas relates how she appeared to him after
he had been yearning for worldly fame through his mundane writings:

I am Urania (then aloud she said)

Who humankind above the poles transport,
Teaching their hands to touch, and eyes to see
20
All the intercourse of the Celestial Court.

Inspired by her, he turned to writing on religious subjects

and the most famous of them was his Divine Works and Days. Other
writers of religious poetry also dedicated their works to Urania,
and their subject matter was usually derived from the Scriptures.
(Vide. Chapter - 7, Section - II)

After the prelude, the ode describes three movements that

of presenting the setting, the angelic song, and the disarrayed
flight of the pagan gods at the birth of this new Godhead. Milton
exploits the traditional notion of the eastern gods as demons with
visible joy in their sonorous names and exotic associations and
with grim satisfaction in their overthrow :

Peor and Baalim

Forsake, their temples dim,
With that twice-battered god of Palestine ...
The Libyc Iiammon shrinks his horn,
In vain the Tyrian maids their wounded
Thammuz mourn'.

(11. 197 - 199)

The next stanza continues

■ And sullen Moloch, fled, .........

The brutish gods of Nile as fast,
 47

Isis and Orus, and the dog Anubis haste.

(11. 205 - 212)

Here is the Christian victory; he presents the effect on paganism

as ruin, not enlightenment, unlike the orthodox tradition of epi­
phany which considers the appearance of Christ as the moment
of revelation to the gentiles.

The only beings actually to come down to earth in Milton1 s

Ode are Peace, Mercy and Truth. To personify abstractions was
to conform to the theory of Ut pictura poesis. His only reference
to the Incarnation is :

And here with us to be,

Forsook the courts of everlasting day,
And chose with us a darksome house of mortal clay.

(11. 12 - 14)

Another parallel can be found in 'The Passion1 :

He sov'ran Priest, stooping his regal head,

That dropped with odorous oil down his fair eyes,
Poor fleshly tabernacle entered,
His starry front low-roofed beneath the skies;
0 what a mask was there, what a disguise!

(11. 15 - 19)

The Ode has a complex of images connected with light. Lycidas

has a complex of images connected with water. It appears obvious
that when Milton set out to write about grief and lament, the
water image presented itself; and when he started writing of birth
21
and divinity, the light image appeared to come naturally to him.
And as true light begins to shine the abuses of idolatry's half-
 48

light and deceptive beauty begin to fade. Milton follows the

Spenserian convention of associating Christ with "The mighty
Pan" - an early classical - Christian synthesis, and for a moment,
he lures us away from the celestial vision to look at the partakers
of this divine play :

The shepherds on the lawn,

Or ere the point of dawn,
Sat simply chatting in a rustic row;

(11. 85 - 87)

The pastoral element willfind greater expression in the

twin poems of L1 Allegro and 11 Penseroso and Lycidas.

While Milton was widening his English range, writing poems

which were at once deeply original and at the same time, steeped
in the glory of the past, he was engaged in compositions of lesser
literary importance, and in a totally foreign tongue. It was pro­
bably around 1630 that hewrote a group of poems, many of them
in Italian, which reflect a special feeling for Nature and love.
The nightingale sonnet is Milton's first English sonnet, akin tb
Elegy VII but more an experimental prelude to amatory exercises
in Italian. The six Italian poems link themselves in theme with
Elegy VII and the English sonnet I. Milton was, by this time,
fairly fluent in Italian. It was also the language of friendship
between him and Diodati. In his Apology for Smectymnuus, he
tells us how he moved away from the sensuality of Ovid and his
fellows to the idealism of Dante and Petrarch. He was also influ­
enced by the sixteenth century Italian poets like Bembo, Della Casa
and Tasso.

Donna leggiadra, il cui bel none onora

L'erbosa val di Reno.

(Sonnet II)
 49

"Beautiful Lady whose fair name honors the green valley

22
of the Reno ......... " is Emilia. Milton is apparently celebrating
his love for a dark-eyed lady singer called . Emily or Emilia,
a foreign beauty, "pellegrina bellezza11. The love affair was no
more serious than the attack by Cupid which he celebrates in
Ovidian elegiacs in his Elegia Septima. The sonnets are an inter­
lacing together of Petrarchan elements with an occasional bout
of original phrasing and perception. They are more calm and
gentle than the Latin poem. In the canzone he tells us that it
is only the Italian language in which he can pour out his youthful
adoration for the young lady and describe her charms, even though
his fellow countrymen will not understand what he is saying.
Young men and women ask him why he composes in a strange tongue
when greater rewards await him is his own tongue. He replies :

Dice mia Donna, e 'I suo dir e il mio cuore,

"Questa h lingua di cui si vanta Amore ".

"My Lady says - and her

words are my heart - 'This is the
23
language of which Love boasts1 ." His friend Diodati understands
and that is all that matters. In Sonnet IV, he confides to his
friend the thrill of being in love :

Diodati - e te 'I diro con maraviglia -

In SonnetVI, "Giovane piano, e semplicetto amante" , he displays

a mixture of conventional Petrarchan imagery with a keen original
self-portrait of the poet as faithful, fearless and steadfast in
his actions, and gracious, discreet and courteous in his thoughts
and manner.

Milton1 s interest in Italian poetry extended beyond the sonnet­

eers, especially Petrarch. It was in the Italian poets like Bembo,
Della Casa and Tasso that Milton found the most interesting ex­
amples of experiment within the conventions of rhyme. The unusual
form of Lycidas with its lines and stanzas of irregular length and
 50

its equally irregular rhyme - scheme is that of the Italian canzone.

There are some interesting examples of Milton's minor compo­

sitions during his last years at Cambridge. The epitaph on Sha­
kespeare was published and written for the Second Folio of Shakes­
peare (1632). The first half of the poem has Jonsonian formality
combined with deep personal affection. The concept of Shakespeare
as an untutored natural genius "For whilst to th' shame of slow
- endeavouring art / Thy easy numbers flow," was current quite
early and is also found in Jonson's poem in the First Folio (1623).
Milton certainly remembered Jonson's line (22) : "Thou art a monu­
ment, without a tomb". Tillyard has called this "the one poem
of Milton that can be called metaphysical". And this is true
in the development of the conceit in the second half of the poem - that
Shakespeare1 s best monument is the wonder and astonishment of
his readers in whose hearts are deeply engraved "those Delphic
lines" not to be erased because the imagination has been numbed
by the excessive demands made on it by the plays. "Then thou,
our fancy of itself bereaving, / Dost make us marble with too
much conceiving". ^

Milton joined with the other Cambridge men in lamenting

the passing ‘ away of Thomas Hobson, the University carrier, who
died on January 1, 1631. The second of the two poems shows
a mild metaphysical twist, but the puns are more a seventeenth
century poetic device. Milton pays tribute to him by playfully
drawing images from his occupation as a carrier :

Death was half glad when he had got him down;

For he had any time this ten years full
Dodged with him betwixt Cambridge and The Bull.
And surely Death could never have prevailed,
Had not his weekly course of carriage failed;
But lately finding him so long at home,
And thinking now his journey1 s end was come,
 51

Showed Mm his room where he must lodge that night,

Pulled off his boots, and took away the light.
If any ask for him, it shall be said,
'Hobson has supped, and's newly gone to bed*.

(11. 6 - 18)

His other elegy of this date and more accomplished and diffe­
rent in tone is "An Epitaph on the MarcMoness of Winchester.
Milton1 s poem on the premature death of a noble and young wife
and mother has lines of comparable tenderness and poignancy.
It displays a quiet and firm control and a Jonsonian simplicity.
This was his first poem, written in couplets of seven or eight
syllables with interesting variations of iams and trochaics in its
metrical pattern. The style was handled with greater felicity
in L1 Allegro and II Penseroso. ‘It may not be as polished and
poised as William Browne's poem on the Countess of Pembroke
yet it inaugurates a new phase in the evolution of Milton's style :

This rich marble doth inter

The honored wife of Winchester,
A viscount's daughter, an earl's heir,
Besides what her virtues fair
Added to her noble birth,
More than she could own from earth.

(11. 1 - 6)

The twin lyrics L1 Allegro and II Penseroso must be included

with the poems written at Cambridge, as they were probably written
during Milton's last long vacation during his last years at the
University. They are the best products of the young poet's Jon­
sonian phase which had begun with the Epitaph on the MarcMoness
of Winchester. A first clear evidence of a gift finer than Jonson's
is seen in the poet's achieving a purity of feeling, ^ delicacy
of tone and rhythm as also flowing numbers, despite the master's
 52

classical symmetry, clarity and urbanity. The contrasting images

of light and darkness, used by the poet to define the pattern
of an ideal day and night may be said to have some links with
his first Academic Prolusion on the comparative superiority of
day or night. Milton had suggested that the theme was more
appropriate for verse than prose.

L*Allegro and II Penseroso are the highest kinds of sanguine

and melancholy temperaments respectively, showing that neither
was incompatible to a life of innocence and happiness. The lively,
social man and the contemplative, solitary man are very alike
in their pleasures, since they are the two sides of the author.
The twin poems, or rather, the poet makes a diptych to represent
the two aspects in which pleasure appears to him at different >
times, which are linked by constant parallels and contrast, and
are handled with perfect decorum in keeping with the unity of
the whole. Each poem builds its own mood by appropriate imagery
and rhythm. There is no element of the tragic. Nowhere else
does the poet show himself so sportive. There is not, as in
Hercules1 choice, in the fable of Prodicus, conflict between duty
and desire.

"Hence, loathed Melancholy" - the first of these poems L1 Allegro

begins with a dramatic mock - dismissal of the so called disease
melancholy. The poem thereafter trips along happily as the poet
describes a day in the life of the cheerful man with appropriate
mythological, pastoral imagery to create a mood of contentment.
The stylized picture has the description of Euphrosyne, mirthful
daughter of the west wind and the dawn, the lark's song, the
milkmaid "singeth blithe", a rustic' vine-clapped cottage, mowers
whetting their scythes, and the shepherd telling "his tale I Under
the hawthorn in the dale". Its structure gives the impression
of not merely a day but the joys freed of all cares. The poem,
however, begins with the "dappled dawn", followed by the sun
rising from "the eastern gate" to the accompaniment of ,the lark's
song, and a burst of rural activity across the unending stretches
 53

of green. Finally, the knell of parting day turns L1 Allegro's

thoughts to tournaments, pageants, poetry and music :

Till the livelong daylight fail : ................

With stories told of many a feat, ................
Towered cities please us then,
And the busy hum of men,
Where throngs of knights and barons bold
In weeds of peace high triumphs hold, ..............
There let Hymen oft appear ................
And pomp, and feast, and revelry,
With masque and antique pageantry; ..............
Then to the well-trod stage anon,
If Jonson's learned sock be on,
Or sweetest Shakespeare, Fancy's child,
Warble his native wood-notes wild;
And ever against eating cares
Lap me in soft Lydian airs,
Married to immortal verse, ................■

(11. 99 -137)

Milton has made full use of classical mythology, English folklore

and medieval romance in the course of the variegated poem. The
entire rustic lore and the people inhabiting that world are invested
with a certain decorum, dignity and orderliness, thus contributing
certain weight and significance to the pastoral imagery which
retains its light-hearted and mirthful tone :

While the ploughman near at hand

Whistles o'er the furrowed land,
And the milkmaid singeth blithe,
And the mower whets his scythe,
And every shepherd tells his tale
Under the hawthorn in the dale.

(11. 63 - 68)
 54

The poet uses the same metrical pattern with suitable modu­
lations as that of the preceding Epitaph. The rhyming couplets
give movement and impetus to the poem. The outdoor meal of
Adam and Eve and Raphael in Book V of Paradise Lost is in the
same tradition as the country scene in L1 Allegro :

Where Corydon and Thyrsis met

Are at their savory dinner set
Of herbs and other country messes,
Which the neat-handed Phillis dresses;
And then in haste her bow'r she leaves,
With Thestylis to bind the sheaves,1

(11. 83 - 88)

The parallel holds even in the fact that in both cases the woman
departs early, leaving the men to their conversation.

In II Penseroso, the images are arranged to present a mood of

contemplation and deep meditative activity. The poem takes on
a darker hue than that of the earlier one : midnight, dark woods,
the melodious music of the nightingale, the sound of the far-off
curfew, the half-lit gloomy room, the midnight lamp of the lonely
student in the tower are all stylized images to create an atmo­
sphere quite contrary to that of the L'Allegpro. Each poem begins
with a banishing of the travesty of what is highlighted in the
other, which is a rhetorical device :

Hence, vain deluding Joys,

The brood of Folly without father bred,
How little you bestead,
Or fill the fixed mind with all your toys;
Dwell in some idle brain. •

(11. 1-5)
 55

In each case, what is banished is quite real but not the subject
of the other poem seen in a different mood. "Loathed Melancholy",
child of death and night, was a disease pertaining to a serious
mental condition. Both these banishing - beginnings have the
wit of contrast in bringing forth the paradoxical doubleness of
that for which we have the same name. It is a "Goddess sage
and holy" of "saintly visage" - "divinest Melancholy11 - who
is really the true subject of II Penseroso.

We know from L‘Allegro, that, unlike the conventional Puritan,

Milton did indulge himself by visiting the play-houses, and
that here he is thinking of the comedies of the playwrights.
Whereas in II Penseroso, he is in the mood for "gorgeous Tragedy",
and it is to the Greeks and Romans that he turns, with a slight
mention of :

Sometime let gorgeous Tragedy

In sceptered pall come sweeping by,
Presenting Thebes, or Pelops1 line,
Or the tale of Troy divine,
Or what (though rare) of later age
Ennobled hath the buskined stage.

(11. 97 - 102)

In these twin poems, we find Milton celebrating at one end,

for the * first and last time, "Merry England" and the Anglican
ritual, while at the other end, he presents the ascetic ecstasy
of mystical contemplation.
 56

; III :

Though a brilliant student at Christ's, Milton was not elected

to a fellowship as his junior, Edward King, had been. He was
himself not inclined to enter the Church. Taking his M.A. degree
in July 1632, he retired to his father's estate at Horton, Buck­
inghamshire to continue his self-preparation for a poet's vocation.
He spent the next six years studiously perusing the Greek and
Latin classics as well as reading history, both ecclesiastical and
political. His entries in a Commonplace Book which he kept
at this time reveal not only the kind of books he read at Horton
but also his growing interest in civil and religious freedom.
He describes this phase of his leisurely preparation in the Defensio
Secunda where he states, "At my father's country house, to which
he had retired to pass the remainder of his days, being perfectly
at my ease, I gave myself up entirely to reading the Greek and
Latin writers; exchanging, however, sometimes, the country for
the town, either for the purchase of books, or to learn something
new in mathematics, or in music, which at that time furnished
25
the source of my amusement".

Milton was in no hurry to produce poems before he was

completely ready. He was conscious of .a certain "belatedness in
me" while his contemporaries were forging ahead. Diodati wrote
from Oxford reproaching Milton for studying all the time : "Why
such inexcusable perseverance, bending over books and studies
day and night? Live, laugh, enjoy your youth and the hours,
and stop reading the serious, the light, and the indolent works
of ancient wise men, wearing yourself out the while." Milton de­
fended himself on several occasions. He justified himself against
admonishments of the nature that he was whiling his time away;
he protested that he was not dreaming. It was not mere love
of learning and "a poor regardlesse and unprofitable sin of curio­
sity" that was holding him back, rather it was God who had
bestowed on him the responsibility of writing immortal verses.
It was "this very consideration of that great commandment" which
 57

"does not presse forward .............. but keeps off ........... not taking
thought of being late, so it give advantage to be more fit."
He expresses these thoughts in his Sonnet VII, written on his
twenty-fourth birthday (December 9, 1632). In a letterwritten
in 1633 to a friend (perhaps his old tutor, Thomas Young) who
had warned him against over-indulgence in study with a plea for
more active life, Milton enclosed a copy of this sonnet :

How soon hath Time, the subtle thief of youth,

Stol'n on his wings my three and twentieth year!

"The sonnet is perfect Puritanism", Hanford has remarked, "in

its soul-searching and its resignation, equally so in its assumption
that God demands of his servants strerlousness as well as wor-
27 *
ship". Compared with the later sonnets,this one is more
regular in its formal divisions. Its careful phrasing of words
displays a Miltonic ease and confidence with the sonnet form de­
rived from the study of Italian sonnets by Giovanni della Casa.

Following close upon Sonnet VII, we have the poems titled

On Time and Upon the Circumcision and At a Solemn Music. The
first was intended, as the subtitle in the Cambridge Manuscript
shows, "To be set on a clock case". In most Renaissance poets
the idea of time spurred various reactions of gaiety or sobriety
based on the Horatian text "carpe diem". Some, however, gave
it a religious colouring. Milton belongs to this latter group in
his contrast between earthly flux and sin, "And glut thyself with
what the womb devours, / Which is no more than what is false
and vain" and eternal purity and joy of the soul's life in heaven,
"we shall for ever sit, / Triumphing over Death, and Chance,
and thee, 0 Time". F.T. Prince has pointed out that its form
derives from the Italian madrigal as practised by Tasso and oth-
28
ers. Milton did not follow the Italian form exactly but his
modulated verse - paragraph of twenty two lines tries to achieve
similar effects by varying the line lengths in his own way.

At a Solemn Music employs similar cunning variations of line-

 58

length and modulation of tone. Song and organ music together build
up the crescendo of the Music of the Spheres and then the verse
gradually assumes a higher and ethereal tone. Although these two
poems have not the complexity of his later verse, they do depict
his control over verse movement and the "architectonic" power
which marks his greatest work.

The early 1630s were probably the period of his keenest

theatre going and it was at this time that he knew the composer,
Henry Lawes who was the court musician and the musical tutor
in the family of the Earl of Bridgewater. Lawes asked Milton
to provide a script for a dramatic entertainment to be presented
at Harefield, some ten miles from Horton, to celebrate the birthday
of the Countess Dowager of Derby, step-mother of the Earl of
Bridgewater. Milton's contribution was published in the 1645
volume under the title Arcades, with the sub-title, "Part of an
entertainment presented to the Countess Dowager of Derby at Hare-
field by some noble persons of her family, who appear on the
scene in pastoral habit, moving toward the seat of state, with
this song".

Milton must have reviewed Ben Jonson, who had written things
for the family often; there ■ was that entertainment of his, The
Satyr, performed for the Countess' father at Althorp nearly thirty
years before :

This is she,
This is she,
In whose world of grace
Every season, person, place,
That receive her, happy be ...........

Milton came up with :

Look, nymphs, and shepherds, look,

What sudden blaze of majesty
Is that which we from hence descry,
 59

Too divine to be mistook;

This, this is she
To whom our vows and wishes bend;
Here our solemn search hath end.

(11. 1 - 7)
The songs of Arcades have the mark of pastiche, so much
are they in the manner of the Jonsonian masque as well as Eliza­
bethan pastoral. The blank verse is light yet formal. Though
an aristocratic art, courtly in tone and Elizabethan in feeling,
it is essentially simple in manner.

The success of Arcades led Henry Lawes to give Milton a

bigger assignment this time - the writing of a masque for the inau­
guration of the Earl of Bridgewater as Lord President of Wales.
The title page of the anonymous first edition of 1637, published
by Lawes reads, "Presented at Ludlow Castle, 1634 : On Michael-
masse night, before the Right Honorable, John Earle of Bridgewater,
Vicount Brackly, LordPresident of Wales, And one of His Maje­
sties most honorable Privie Counsell.11 This commission was a
more serious one than that which he had executed in the earlier
miniature poem Arcades. The Ludlow Castle Mask - its popular
title Comus (the Greek word for revelry) was first adopted in
the eighteenth century for stage performances - was directed by
Lawes who also composed the music and acted the role of the
Attendant Spirit. The parts of the Elder and Second Brother
and the Lady were acted by the Earl's children..

From the time of King James-I accession in 1603 till two

years before the outbreak of the Civil War (1642), masques were
performed at court and at great houses to celebrate a variety
of occasions from weddings to the arrival of distinguished visitors.
It was a popular form of entertainment - aristocratic and expen­
sive. In its simplest form, masquing originated in the surprise
visit, like that of Romeo and his friends' masked visit to the
Capulets' party in Romeo and Juliet, to a banquet or revel.
 60

Gradually, it assumed more elaborate forms with the dancers

giving their performance on stage with scenery. Music, song,
dance and spectacle were often more important than the dialogue;
dance symbolising the order and harmony of a hierarchical universe.
The total effect was the union of all arts, much like the Italian
opera. But the masque differed from both the opera and the
drama in two ways : it was built around the dance rather than
the spoken word, and the chief performers were not professionals
but noble lords and ladies. Comus was a great success and it
was soon in demand for reading. Lawes in his dedication of the
1637 edition wrote : "Although not openly acknowledged by the
■author, yet it is a legitimate offspring, so lovely, and so much
desired, that the often copying of it hath tired my pen ...........".
The reason why Milton did not openly acknowledge the work is
suggested by a quotation from Virgil's Eclogues which appears
on the title page of 1637 edition :

Ehue quid volui misero mihi! floribus austrum

Pereditus .........

(Alas, what wretchedness have I brought upon myself 1 I have

let loose the south wind upon my flowers ..............). Milton had
written the masque but he did not feel ready, anymore than he
was to feel ready when he was asked to write Lycidas to comme­
morate the death of Edward King. In a letter written to Charles
Diodati in September, 1637, he describes the state he was in
"You ask me what I am thinking of? So help me God, an immortality
of fame. What am I doing? Growing my wings and practising flight.
But my Pegasus still raises himself on very tender wings. Let
me be wise on my humble level."

The masque was given artistic unity through the efforts and
partnership of Ben Jonson and the great stage designer and architect
Inigo Jones. The mode became so popular that it attracted other
poets and dramatists like Samuel Daniel and Thomas Campion to
Thomas Carew and James Shirley. Comus is one of the last English
 61

works of its kind and echoes many other works. . George Peele's
Old Wives' Tale, Fletcher's The Faithful Shepherdess, the Latin
Comus (1608) by the Dutch Erycius Puteanus, The Tempest, William
Browne's Inner Temple Masque (1618), Jonson's Hymenaei and Pleasure
Reconciled to Virtue, Tasso's pastoral play Aminta and an Italian
musical drama La Catena
d'Adone (1626) each appear to have
29
suggested something to Milton. More important was the influence
of Homer, Ovid and Spenser. Homer's tale of Odysseus and Circe
was the great exemplar of heroic virtue confronted by sensual
temptation. Spenser had used the idea in The Faerie Queene.
Milton went beyond Homer and gave a new twist to the story by
making Comus the son of Circe. It might have been a deliberate
reply to the libertine philosophy expounded by his fellow student,
Thomas Randolph, in The Muse's Looking Glass.

In Comus, it is chastity and temperance, not their opposites,

which are natural, true and rational.These automatically lead
to the bestowing of Christian grace and give:; joy and freedom
to ' the devout soul, unlike the blind and perverted Comus who
thinks, are to be found in slavery to the senses. Comus does
not present a’ mere negative exposition of chastity as abstinence
from vice, but a positive acclamation of Platonic and Christian
love of the good :

Virtue may be assailed, but never hurt,

Surprised by unjust force, but not enthralled.

(11. 689 - 590)

Milton followed the conventions of the genre : he provided

the required amount of spectacle, singing and dancing along with
the "antimasque" in his treatment of the grotesque in dealing with
Comus and his monstrous crew, who were in sharp contrast to
the ordered beauty of the whole. But in his treatment of a subject
with serious implications and in the texture of his verse, he
far excels the normal masque. Not merely in the epilogue, where
 62

more is implied than meets the ear, Milton's vision of heavenly beauty
far exceeds that of Jonson or Spenser. The idea is clinched
in the concluding couplet :

Or if virtue feeble were,

Heav'n itself would stoop to her.

as also the poetic magic in the Lady's first song with a marked
Ovidian Echo, is "translated to the skies". In Comus, we do find
traces of descriptive sensuousness underlying the unity and harmony
of feeling and style especially in Comus1 speech on the bounties
of nature. Milton's sense of decorum made him delete some lines
from the-first speech by the- ^Attendant Spirit;. The speech is a Euripi-
dean prologue about angels and the souls of the good who reside
on the Olympus of Homer and Lucretius, above the "fumum et opes
strepitumque" of Horace's Rome. After-the fourth1 line of this speech,
there is, in the Trinity College Manuscript, a passage of fourteen
lines beginning :

Amidst th' Hesperian gardens, on whose banks

Bedewed with nectar and celestial songs
Eternal roses grow, and hyacinth
And fruits of golden rind, on whose fair tree
The scaly-hamessed dragon ever keeps
His unenchanted eye ........................... ^

Milton's artistic conscience forced him to forego these beautiful

lines becuase their sensuous luxuriance would interfere with, his prese­
ntation of the contrasting worlds, that of the pure -world of angelic
spirits and the other, the frivolous and wholly sensual world
of Comus.

Comus, it must be added, is a gentleman of cultivated sensi­

bility; his inner corruption is brought out, as in the case of
Satan, by the ironic method of self-revelation. Most of Comus
is written in blank verse and it varies in the movement of its.
 63

lines from the smooth and lyrical to the irregular and colloquial.
It can be termed a mosaic of different styles which range from
Elizabethan pastoral to Augustan classicism, with the mark of
its author on every line although, with a not too successful imi­
tation of the Greek stichomythia. Nevertheless, its freshness,
variety, sureness of touch, and mastery of the different styles
show how far Milton had gone in achieving high technical skill.
In this context, one might quote Sir Henry Wotton's eulogy, included
in the letter of advice on travel which he sent to Milton in April,
1638, and which was prefixed to Comus in the Poems of 1645 :
"Wherein I should much commend the Tragical part, if the Lyrical
did not ravish me with a certain Dorique delicacy in your Songs
and Odes, whereunto I must plainly confess to have seen yet nothing
31
parallel in ouy Language : Ipsa mollifies".

: IV :

So far Milton's poetry has embodied a youthful idealism

unmarred by an outward or inward upheavel. The natural and
supernatural works of the poet - priest have been a celestial
harmony. Milton's letter to Diodati in 1637 shows that this moral­
ist and an upholder of all the highest virtues was no doubt a sensuous
lover of Beauty : "though I do not know what else God may have
decreed for me, this certainly is true : He has instilled into
32
me, if into anyone, a vehement love of the beautiful". In
this same year, 1637, we have the first testimony of spiritual
turmoil in Lycidas. Keats discerned in Milton a conflict between
the pleasures and the ardours of song, and in Lycidas it becomes
a harsh reality. The poem may be called "A Faith of Trial".

In August, 1637, Edward King, his former fellow student

at Christ's was drowned in a shipwreck in the Irish Sea. His
youth and character, and the manner of his death evoked from
his Cambridge friends a volume of elegies in Latin, Greek and
English, Justa Edouardo King (1638). Milton, who was studiously
 64

immersed in perusing the Greek and Latin classics at Horton, was

asked to contribute. He had not written anything since Comus
except for a Greek version of Psalm 114, as he was taking his
time in preparing himself to become a poet who would "leave
something so written to aftertimes, as they should not willingly
let die". Lycidas too was wrung from him before he felt himself
ready. The opening lines of the poem state this :

Yet once more, 0 ye laurels, and once more,

Ye myrtles brown, with ivy never sere,
I come to pluck your berries harsh and crude,
And with forced fingers rude
Shatter your leaves before the mellowing year.

(11. 1 - 5)

The anthology of poems with Lycidas, Milton's elegy, signed

J.M., appeared in two parts in 1638, the first and larger part
containing Latin and Greek poems, and the second containing poems
in English, of which Milton's was the last and longest poem.
The poem is not primarily the author's sorrow for Edward King,
rather the shock of seeing a promising and dedicated contemporary
cut off in his youth, crystalized and released Milton's thoughts
and feelings about his own past, present and future, and about
the great Task-Master's will. This zealous student, who had spent
five long years of hard study, was assailed with doubts about
the utility of all this toil. What is all this worth if this laborious
and consecrated life of learning is to be cut off before fame is
won. The answer will be found later in the poem.

Milton's elegy is by far the best of the collection as it

stands out for its gravity of utterance, its artistic control and
its formal use of the conventions of the pastoral elegy. Henry
King' s poem begins :

No Death! I'le not examine Gods decree,

 65

Nor question providence, in chiding thee :

Discreet Religion binds us to admire
The wayes of providence, and not enquire.

Joseph Beaumont writes :

When first this news, rough as the sea

From whence it came, began to be
Sigh1 d out by fame and generall tears
Drown'd him again .............................

Cleveland mourns :

I like not tears in tune; nor will I prise

His artificiall grief, that scannes his eyes :
Mine weep down pious beads; but why should I
33
Confine them to the Muses Rosarie ?

Milton's excels all these as he declares :

For Lycidas is dead, dead ere his prime
Young Lycidas, and hath not left his peer.
Who would not sing for Lycidas? He knew
Himself to sing, and build the lofty rhyme.
He must not float upon his wat'ry bier
Unwept, and welter to the parching wind,
Without the meed of some melodious tear.

(11. 8 - 14)

Lycidas is set in the tradition of pastoral elegy which had

its great model in Virgil's fifth Eclogue. During the Renaissance
the original Greek elegies of the Alexandrine or earlier Hellenistic
period exercised their influence - Theocritus' first Idyll, Bion's
Epitaph for Adonis and Moschus' Epitaph for Bion. It was an
extremely literary and sophisticated kind of poem written about
shepherds which was essentially a way of talking about something
 66

else. The shepherds, besides being poets, might be at the time

of the Renaissance, courtiers or lovers or parsons, who could
discuss in doric allegory a range of topics from politics, theology
to church government. Christian belief gave new depth to the
revived pastoral elegy which, apart from retaining some set conven­
tions such as the appeal to local divinities or the Muses who
had not saved the dead poet, the lament of nature for its departed
bard, the procession of individual mourners and the flower catalogue,
added the Christian optimism - the banishment of grief by the
thought of resurrection and immortality.

There are clear echoes from Spenser's Shepheardes Calender.

Dryden had remarked that Spenser, Fairfax and Milton formed
a single poetic family. Spenser's November eclogue urges :

Cease now my Muse, now cease thy sorrowes sourse ....

Milton has a similar turn towards the end :

Weep no more, woeful Shepherds, weep no more.1

Similarly the flower passage owes to both Perdita's lovely

catalogue of flowers in Act IV of The Winter's Tale and Spenser's
catalogue in his April eclogue.

4
The quiet close ^Lycidas is one of its triumphs. It is quite
clear that Milton had no strong personal feelings of grief for Edward
King. Personal grief does not express itself in this way. Bossuet's
oraisons funfebres are works of art comparable to Lycidas, but
one does not doubt that Bossuet had no feelings for Madame or
the Prince. For him, Madame ceases to be a person and becomes
simply the Great Lady; the Prince becomes the Hero. It is an
emotion of the baroque kind that we must look for in Milton.
Lycidas is not lamenting King as a person; he is mourning the
Young Poet, who, because of the veryroots of the pastoral elegy,
is the Dying God, the forerunner of Christ, who alone has conquered
 67

Death and gives us hope. Orpheus comes in at a key point in

the poem. He is the prototype of all poets. But he is also
the pre-figuration of' Christ. Like Christ, he descends into Hell,
but whereas Christ harrows Hell, Orpheus loses Eurydice. Like
Christ who is Logos, Orpheus unifies the natural world with his
music. They are both sacrificed but for Orpheus, there is no
resurrection. The Muse who bore him cannot give life to him
again. She is not only "golden-haired Calliope", she is "Universal
nature". Nature isthe feminine principle which gives life but
cannot conquer death. To attain eternal life, we have to depend
on something above Nature - on the "dear might of him that walked
the waves". This
fusion of pagan and Christian ideas is the
34
strength of the. poem. Lycidas, according to Professor R.L.
Brett, was the last poem in which Milton was able to fuse Christian
and pagan imagery and to view Nature as sacramental. Milton
was steadily moving towards a greater austerity. In Paradise
Lost, the images and figures of pagan mythology lose their semblance
to Christian concepts and become demons or distorted echoes of
truth around the Garden of Eden.

Professor Brett suggests that :

Tomorrow to fresh woods, and pastures new

is a farewell to the whole pastoral mode.

We find here Milton wrestling with one of the oldest questions

before mankind : "Why should the just man suffer? How can the
premature death of the good and the existence of evil be reconciled
to God's providence?" The poet tries to console himself by making
Phoebus give the answer :

"Fame is no plant that grows on mortal soil,

Not-. in the glistering foil
Set off to th1 world, nor in broad rumour lies,
But lives and spreads aloft by those pure eyes
 68

And perfect witness of all-judging Jove;

As he pronounces lastly, on each deed,
Of so much fame in heav'n expect thy meed "

(11. 78 - 84)

The poet's conflicting emotions as they move back and forth

are held together by the mastery of high technical style. For
this, Milton owes much to the Italian canzone in the use of para­
graphs and lines of irregular length and an equally irregular
rhyming pattern. Amidst all this, Milton does not hesitate to
lash out at the Anglican clergy "Blind mouths"! The concluding
address of his poem, the ottava rima is a formal element of the
canzone. No style could hold Milton captive. His quiet ending
has much more to say than what it actually does. He is the,
master of his own style, the propogator of his own beliefs and
above all, a highly individual poet who adopted the genres to
suit his own requirements.

In the Cambridge Manuscript, Lycidas is dated November,

1637. Milton must, in all probability, have been planning his
tour abroad at this time and may be "pastures new" is a reference
to it. He left England in April, 1638 in what was to be the
last phase of his self-preparation as a poet, on a visit to the
Mediterranean centre of European culture. It, however, turned
out to be largely a tour of Italy as events at home wrested him
back while he was about to embark to Sicily and Greece.
 69

NOTES AND REFERENCES

All quotations from Milton's English, Latin and Italian poems

are from POETICAL WORKS, D. Bush.

1. Broadbent, J.B., ODES, PASTORALS, MASQUES, Cambridge,

1975, p. 3.

2. WORKS OF MILTON, Columbia, vol. VIII, p. 119.

3. PROSE WORKS, Yale, vol. I, p. 810.

4. Maxwell, J.C., (ed.), WILLIAM WORDSWORTH, THE PRELUDE,

Penguin, 1978, p. 156.

5. PROSE WORKS, Yale, vol. I, pp. 816 - 817.

6. Ibid., vol. I, p. 890.

7. Ibid., vol. I, pp. 889 - 890.

8. Ibid., vol. I, p. 891.

9. Ibid., vol. I, pp. 891 - 892.

10. Ibid., vol. I, p. 327.

11. Daiches, David, MILTON, London, 1968, pp. 7 - 30, passim.

12. PROSE WORKS, Yale, vol.I, p. 819.

13. Phillips, Ann, JOHN MILTON - MINOR POEMS, London, 1966.

14. Potter, Loi§, A PREFACE TO MILTON, London, Longman, 1971,

pp. 81 - 84, passim.
 70

15. MacLean, Hugh.'N., MILTON'S FAIR INFANT in MILTON : MODERN

ESSAYS IN CRITICISM, ed. by Barker, A.E. , Oxford, 1967, pp.
21 - 29.

16. PROSE WORKS, Yale, vol. I, p. 239.

17. Ibid, vol. I, pp. 892 - 893.

18. Daiches, David, op. cit., pp. 31 - 34, passim.

19. Phillips, Edward, p. 394.

20. Potter, Lois, op. cit., p. 84.

21. Phillips, Ann, op. cit., passim.

22. POETICAL WORKS, D. Bush, p. 79.

23. Ibid, p. 80.

24. Daiches, David, op. cit., pp. 50 - 51.

25. WORKS OF MILTON, Columbia, vol. VIII, p. 121.

26. PROSE WORKS, Yale, vol. I, p. 337.

27. Hanford, J.H., A MILTON HANDBOOK, 1926, 5th ed., New

York, 1970.

28. Prince, F.T., THE ITALIAN ELEMENT IN MILTON'S VERSE,

1954.

29. POETICAL WORKS, D. Bush, p. 110.

30. Ibid. , p. 114.

 71

31. PROSE WORKS,Yale, vol. I, p. 341.

32. Ibid., vol. I, p. 326.

33. Daiches, David, op. cit., p. 74.

34. Fraser, G.S., APPROACHES TO LYCIDAS in THE LIVING MILTON,

ed. by Kermode, Frank, London, 1960, pp. 32 - 54, passim.