A MILTON HANDBOOK

CHAPTER I

MATERIALS FOR MILTON'S BIOGRAPHY

HE life of Milton is known to us in far more full

The site of all than that

ness of detail than that of any other major English poet before the eighteenth century. The reasons for this fact are various. In the first place, he was in his own time a public figure, concerned in political events of a sensational character. His pamphlets in defense of liberty made his name one with which, to use his own extravagant but not wholly unjustifiable phrase, “all Europe rang from side to side." His service as Latin Secretary to the Council of State for eleven momentous years entitled him to the attention, favorable and unfavorable, which was accorded to the other members of the Commonwealth government. Then, too, he was a scholar in the days when scholarship was still held in high esteem. As such he was in communication with many distinguished men at home and on the Continent and was noticed as he never would have been in the capacity of a mere man of letters. Yet Milton also laid claim to the attention of his contemporaries as a poet. Although the seventeenth century possessed no such curiosity in literary biography as we have to-day, the modern interest in such matters was

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beginning to develop, and before the generation of those who had known Milton personally had passed away it was thought worth while to set down regarding him many of those intimate details of personality and habit which we wish for in vain in the case of Chaucer, Spenser, or Shakespeare.

Finally, and this perhaps is most important of all, Milton was intensely concerned to have his own image stand in the public eye as he himself conceived it. He inherited the Renaissance thirst for enduring fame and he combined with this desire an enthusiasm for self-portraiture akin to that of the romantic poets of modern times. He often had occasion to justify himself in his controversial writings against attacks upon his private life and he did so with the greatest gusto. Like all humanists he preserved and published a number of his private letters. Carrying, finally, the same conscious interest in his own personality into the field of creative art, he made his poetry as well as his prose an intimate though dignified record of his own experience.

We have, then, the material for a life of Milton, as abundant in its detail of his outward career as it is vital in its human interest. There remain of course, problems of interpretation. Everyone agrees that Milton was no ordinary person; but the judgments that have been passed on his personality and character have varied with the political sympathies, the moral attitude, and the personal temperament of each biographer. Every age, and, indeed, every individual, will, in a measure, have his own Milton, and since this is so it is desirable to have before us the actual materials, in the words of Milton himself and those who knew him, on which our estimates are

based. The most important of these, excepting the poetry itself, are given as fully as possible in the ensuing pages.

Of the individual documents from which citation has been made Milton's Second Defence of the English People contains the fullest statement he ever made of the facts of his private and public career. The general credibility of this and other utterances about himself cannot be questioned. If, looking back upon his actions from a later period, he puts his motives in the most ideal light, it is because he actually so interpreted them, and who shall determine the exact degree to which, in any particular instance, he deceived himself? It has been argued1 that his remark in Areopagitica about visiting Galileo in Italy must be a fabrication, since Galileo was at that time sick and forbidden all communication with foreigners by the Inquisition. But the evidence is too inconclusive to stand against Milton's express statement.

The most complete of the contemporary biographies is that of Edward Phillips, first printed as an introduction to a translation of Milton's State Letters in 1694. Phillips was Milton's nephew and pupil. As an actual intimate of his uncle's household during his boyhood and a frequent visitor till Milton's death, his opportunity for knowing the circumstances of his public and domestic life were practically unlimited. Yet we must remember, in reading, for example, his detailed account of Milton's first marriage, that he was a boy of twelve when these events took place. He was, moreover, obviously a person of smaller mould, proud of Milton but incapable of comprehending his greatness, and he was not, I think, con1 Liljegren, Studies in Milton.

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stitutionally a truth-teller. In spite of occasional romancing, however, his narrative is authentic.

Almost equally valuable is the Anonymous Biography discovered in 1889 among the papers of Anthony Wood and first published by Parsons in 1902 under the title of The Earliest Life of Milton. The writer is unknown. He may have been Milton's friend and physician, Dr. Paget, or he may, as the late John Smart suggested,2 have been Cyriack Skinner. He writes from an intimate and sympathetic understanding, evidently sharing Milton's political and religious ideas and seeming particularly well informed about such matters as his literary habits and use of amanuensis assistance. The exactness with which he describes Milton's disease of the eyes and the scene of his deathbed shows that he must have stood very close to him. This biography, which, by the way, was not used by Masson, supplies comparatively few facts unknown from other sources; but it is important as furnishing a systematic account of Milton parallel to, and independent of, that of Phillips.

Still further first-hand material is given by John Aubrey in the notes which he collected for Anthony Wood's use in his Athenae and Fasti Oxoniensis. Aubrey had not only known Milton himself but had inquired diligently about him from his widow, from his brother Christopher Milton, from Edward Phillips, and from others. In many cases he gives the sources of his information. Though much of it is gossip it is just such gossip as we wish to have, and it appears to be on the whole trustworthy. His notes on Milton were published by William Godwin in his Life of E. and J. Phillips and subsequently by Andrew

2 In a letter to the author.