in his declining years. "An ancient clergyman of Dorsetshire, Dr. Wright, found John Milton in a small chamber hung with rusty green, sitting in an elbowchair, and dressed neatly in black; pale, but not cadaverous; his hands and feet gouty and with chalk-stones. . . . He used also to sit in a grey coarse cloth coat, at the door of his house near Bunhill Fields, in warm sunny weather, to enjoy the fresh air; and so, as well as in his room, received the visits of people of distinguished parts as well as quality." In his mode of living, Milton, as might be anticipated, was moderate and temperate. At his meals he never took much of wine or any other fermented liquor, and he was not fastidious in his food; yet his taste seems to have been delicate and refined like his other senses, and he had a preference for such viands as were of an agreeable flavour. In his early years he used to sit up late at his studies, and perhaps he continued this practice while his sight was good; but in his latter years he retired every night at nine o'clock, and lay till four in summer, till five in winter, and if not disposed then to rise, he had some one to sit at his bedside and read to him. When he rose he had a chapter of the Hebrew Bible read for him, and then, with of course the intervention of breakfast, studied till twelve.* He then dined, took some exercise for an hour,-generally in a chair, in which he used to swing himself,-and afterwards played on the organ or the bass-viol, and either 66 * Aubrey says he had a man who read to him and wrote for him. He first read to him when he rose, and then returned at seven o'clock and read and wrote till dinner-time. The writing was as much as the reading." We are to recollect that his daughters were not with him for the last four or five years of his life. sang himself or made his wife sing, who, as he said, had a good voice but no ear. He then resumed his studies till six, from which hour till eight he conversed with those who came to visit him.* He finally took a light supper, smoked a pipe of tobacco, and drank a glass of water, after which he retired to rest. Thus calmly, thus gently, quietly, and unostentatiously glided away the closing days in the life of a man who possessed a secret consciousness that he had well performed the part assigned him on earth; had well employed the talents committed to him; had achieved a name among the most illustrious of the sons of men, which was to last perhaps coevally with the world itself. All these cheering thoughts and anticipations were illumed and gilded by the light that beamed on his inward sense from the future world, in which he was to enjoy the fulness of bliss. Surely such a man could not have been unhappy, however narrow his circumstances, however undutiful his children, however disappointed his religious and political aspirations. Nor should be omitted in enumerating the blessings bestowed on this illustrious man, his total exemption at all periods of his life from the miseries of a dependence on and solicitation of courts and ministers and the worldly great,+-miseries * "He was visited by the learned," says Aubrey, "much more than he did desire." Among his visitors was John Dryden: see Preface to State of Innocence and Fables. Aubrey tells us that he asked permission to dramatize Paradise Lost in rime, and that Milton replied that he might tag his verses if he liked. Milton, his widow said, looked on Dryden as a mere rimester, and no poet. We must however say that there is something very gratifying to the feelings in the contemplation of the friendship-for it was not mere patronage—which prevailed between Lord Lonsdale and his family and the late William Wordsworth. It was alike honourable to both parties; the dignity of genius was acknowledged, and rank and wealth appeared in their proper lustre. described by his great poetic sire, from bitter experience, so truly, so vividly, and so feelingly: "Full little knowest thou, that hast not tried, To lose good days that might be better spent ; Mother Hubbard's Tale, 895 seq. : Like many other poets Milton found the stillness, warmth, and recumbency of bed favourable to composition; and his wife said that before rising of a morning, he often dictated to her twenty or thirty verses. A favourite position of his when dictating his verses, we are told, was that of sitting with one of his legs over an arm of his chair. His wife related that he used to compose chiefly in the winter, which account is confirmed by the following passage in his Life by Phillips :- "There is a remarkable passage in the composition of Paradise Lost which I have a particular occasion to remember; for, whereas I had the perusal of it from the very beginning, for some years, as I went from time to time to visit him, in a parcel of ten, twenty, or thirty verses at a time, which, being written by whatever hand came next, might possibly want correction as to the orthography and pointing; having, as the summer came on, not been shown any for a considerable while, and desiring to know the reason thereof, was answered that his veins never happily flowed but from the autumnal equinox to the vernal, and that whatever he attempted [at other times] was never to his satisfaction, though he courted his fancy never so much;' so that in all the years he was about this poem, he may be said to have spent but half his time therein."* Milton's conversation is stated to have been of a very agreeable nature. His daughter Deborah said that he was "delightful company, the life of the conversation, and that on account of a flow of subject, and an unaffected cheerfulness and civility." Richardson, to whom we are indebted for the preservation of this testimony, adds that "he had a gravity in his temper, not melancholy, or not till the latter part of his life, not sour, not morose or ill-natured, but a certain severity of mind; a mind not condescending to little things." His temper however was warm, perhaps somewhat overbearing, as some places of his controversial writings may appear to indicate, and we have the testimony of probably an indifferent person that he was looked on as “a harsh and choleric man;" but all this is perfectly compatible with the highest moral excellence, and with general urbanity and kindness of nature and manner. Thus the meaning of these last words may be that he was one who would not tamely submit to injustice and imposition. Heinsius writing to Gronovius in 1651, says of Milton, "virum esse miti comique ingenio aiunt." His opinion of his own powers was naturally high, and he speaks of his * There seems to be some foundation in the poems themselves for this notion. His best Latin poems, such as the Mansus, the Epitaphium Damonis, etc., must have been composed in the period specified; so also was the Ode on the Nativity, and Lycidas, and probably Paradise Regained. In fact the only one of his longer poems of which we can assert the contrary is Comus. In his Latin elegy In Adventum Veris however he would seem to say that it was with the Spring that his poetic powers revived. "honest haughtiness and self-esteem," joined however, he adds, with a becoming modesty. With respect to the worldly circumstances of this great man, little is known with certainty. It is evident that during his travels, and after his return, the allowance made him by his father was liberal. It was adequate, we may see, to the support of himself and his two nephews, for it is not likely that his sister paid him anything for them. He must also have considered himself able to support a family, without keeping school, when he married Miss Powell. He of course inherited the bulk of his father's property, but of the amount of it we are ignorant; all we know is that it included the interest in his house in Bread-street. His losses were not inconsiderable. A sum of £2000, which he had invested in the Excise Office, was lost at the Restoration, as the Government refused to recognize the obligations of the Commonwealth; according to the account of his granddaughter, he lost another sum of £2000 by placing it in the hands of a money-scrivener; and he also lost at the Restoration a property of £60 a year out of the lands of the Dean and Chapter of Westminster, which he very probably had purchased. His house in Bread-street was destroyed by the Great Fire. The whole property which he left behind him, exclusive of his claim on the Powell family for his first wife's fortune, and of his household goods,* did not exceed £1500, including the produce of his library, a great part of which he is said to have disposed of before his death. Two charges have been made against the memory of Milton,―the one, that he was unkind and unjust to his children; the other, that he attended no place of worship, *Toland. |
