Originally published in The Leisure Hour (Religious Tract Society) vol.1 #8 (19 Feb 1852).
The beautiful shade of Milton's memory is one of our most frequent and cherished visitants, as we ramble through the streets of old London. He meets us in many a spot, which his name, like a spiritual presence, has hallowed; for from first to last of his earthly history he belonged to the mother-city of his native land. It was the scene of his birth and burial, and in various localities within its precincts he also spent the greater portion of his manhood. His love of the beautiful and sublime in nature was not the outgrowth of scenes that encircled his infant senses, but was itself a living root of poetry in his soul, producing, like leaves and flowers in their spring-tide freshness and abundance, those aspirations after the beautiful and sublime in nature which led him to go forth in quest of them; for he could have said, in the words of one gifted with the like endowments,
"I was reared
In the great city—pent mid cloisters dim,
And saw nought lovely but the sky and stars."
We turn out of the tumultuous traffic of Cheapside into Bread-street—rather comfortless and melancholy looking, as it strikes us—and soon reach, on the left hand, the site of what was the dwelling of John Milton, scrivener; some old house, we fancy, which, like inverted steps, rose story projecting beyond story, till the top, with beetling brows, overshadowed no small portion of the narrow street. We know that a sign hung over the door, bearing the armorial badge of the family, a spread eagle; and under it we seem to stand, on a cold December day, the 20th of the month, in the year of grace 1608, while there issues from the oak-carved doorway, the citizen-inhabitant with his wife, a woman known and loved all round the parish for her benevolence; and a nurse bearing in her arms a boy, of whose high mental destiny no one of the little party—on their way to the church of Allhallows hard by, there to baptize the babe—could ever dream. The Allhallows church of that day was destroyed in the fire of London; and the edifice now in existence is one of Sir Christopher Wren's, of a totally different character from the first; but the parish register remains, exhibiting the record of the poet's baptism; of this a memorial has been inscribed on the wall, by the church door in Watling-street, on which there is this inscription; rarely read, we apprehend, by the passers by:—
Three poets in three distant ages born,
Greece, Italy, and England did adorn;
The first in loftiness of thought surpast;
The next in majesty; in both the last.
The force of nature could no further go,
To make a third she joined the former two.
JOHN MILTON
was born in Bread-street on Friday, the 9th day of December,
1608, and was baptized in the parish church of Allhallows,
Bread-street, on Tuesday, the 20th day of December, 1608;
Leaving the shade of the infant, we meet in the close vicinity of his paternal abode the shade of the school-boy. Every passenger through Saint Paul's Churchyard must have noticed the dark imprisoned court; under the colomnade opposite to the east end of the cathedral. It makes itself known at times as the playing place of the boys in St. Paul's school, by the sportive shouts and the bursts of glee which issue from between the close iron rails. St. Paul's school in the first quarter of the seventeenth century was quite another sort of building. A gothic edifice in the Tudor style then stood there, probably with open courts patched over with a little green; and hither wended from the Spread Eagle, 'with satchel on back,' and there played with his long-since forgotten school-fellows, the bard of Paradise. The boy was studious, and when only twelve years of age, many a time did he sit up till midnight, conning his books, thus not only laying the foundation of his marvellous scholarship, but of his blindness too. Nor was his muse unfledged even then. Ere eleven summers had rolled over him, he would sing of "the golden-tressed sun," "the spangled sisters of the night," and "the thunder-clasping hand of the Almighty." When a youth he must have had a countenance of calm majestic beauty, judging of what he was in manhood; and with this agrees the legend of the Italian lady, who fell in love with him as she saw him asleep one day beneath a tree.
Descending Ludgate-hill to St. Bride's Churchyard, the shade revisits us, now risen into manliness, and just returned from Italy, full of ripe learning and rich taste. He took lodgings there at the house of one Russel, a tailor, and there educated his two nephews. And in that noisy lodging-place, he formed acquaintance with Patrick Young, the librarian of Charles I; the republican and the royalist sympathizing in a common love for literature.
Wherever we meet with the memory of Milton in old London, we find the place so changed that we have to bring back the shades of departed scenes, as well as of the departed man, to give anything like vivid reality to our image of him. Manuscripts in the middle ages were defaced and written over again, but antiquaries have deciphered in some cases the under and original writing, and thus restored the book to what it was of old. A like process fancy performs in reference to London streets and houses, in these literary perambulations. Ancient scenes, defaced and covered with modern architecture, we endeavour by a little imaginative power to reproduce. It requires rather an effort to do this in the next locality sacred to Milton. "He made no long stay at his lodging in St. Bride's Churchyard; necessity of having a place to dispose his books in, and other goods fit for the furnishing of a good handsome house, hastening him to take one; and accordingly a pretty garden house he took in Aldersgate-street, at the end of an entry, and therefore the fitter for his turn, by reason of the privacy, besides that there are few streets in London more free from noise than that." Aldersgate-street free from noise! a garden house there! Well, after all we can fancy it, and there we see him plunging into prose authorship, and writing eloquent books on ecclesiastical reform. He unwisely marries a lady "accustomed to a great deal of company, merriment and dancing," and little fitted therefore to sympathize with him in his severe tastes and classic sort of life; so in that garden-house there is domestic strife, over which we sorrowfully draw a veil. But he continues still to write and study, and receives more pupils, when storms assail him from without, aroused by the displeasure of the presbyterian clergy. Then comes domestic reconciliation with Mrs. Milton, at the house of a relation in St. Martin-le-Grand; after which we find him settling in a new house in Barbican. There, where had once stood the watch-tower of the city, many architectural transformations had taken place before Milton's time; but the Barbican of the present day is more altered still. Yet, tradition points to No. 17, now inhabited by a dyer—an altered yet still old-looking house, with bay-windows from bottom to top—as being the identical abode in which Milton dwelt. We have diligently sought out the spot, and been informed by the present inhabitant that it is the veritable residence of the great Commonwealth's poet. A neighbour assured us he had gone over the rooms, many years ago, when they preserved unmistakable traces of the 17th century. They are altered now.
Wandering up High Holborn, again the poet meets us, issuing from his new dwelling, the back of which opened into Lincoln's-inn-fields. His removal there occurred just after the march of the army to London, in 1647, to put down an insurrection which had been excited by Massey and Brown.
Charing-cross, and the region round about, is abundant in associations connected with the Commonwealth. Whitehall was the residence of Cromwell. In 1649 Milton was appointed Latin secretary to the Council of State, and composed those despatches and documents in his favourite tongue, which show what a master he was of its style and rhythm. His biographer Symmons informs us, that, on his appointment, he removed to a lodging in the house of one Thompson, at Charing-cross, and afterwards to apartments in Scotland-yard. Scotland-yard is connected with Whitehall, and perhaps we should identify Milton's residence in the former place with the lodgings in the palace once occupied by Sir J. Hippesley.
This glimpse of the poet is vague and indistinct; but such can hardly be said of our view of Milton in his next abode. He removed to Petty France, to a "house next door to the Lord Scudamore's, and opening into St. James's Park." Petty France is now York-street, and No. 19 is marked in the London Handbook as the place where Milton dwelt. We have been on a pilgrimage to it, expecting to find some remains of an aristocratic-looking mansion; indeed we could not help fancying we had made a mistake when we entered a small cutlery shop. The front is modern, but the back is old, probably as old as the time of Milton. The present occupier politely allowed us to walk into the backroom, with a low ceiling still preserving marks of age—probably a room in which Milton sat. At the back of the house we noticed the inscription, "Sacred to Milton, Prince of Poets," and looked with intense interest on the over-hanging cotton willow tree, which Bentham enclosed in his garden, said to have been planted by the great Latin secretary himself. The garden formerly opened upon the park, in what is now called Bird-cage-walk. It was never a large house, and shows that the illustrious secretary of the foreign department did not then live in much splendour. His salary was only £280 a-year.
Looking over this house, it is touching to remember that here his blindness became complete. A letter dated September 28, 1654, probably written in one of these very rooms, gives an account of the rise and progress of this sad malady. "It is now about ten years," he says, "since I first perceived my sight beginning to grow weak and dim. When I sat down, my eyes gave me considerable pain. If I looked at a candle, it was surrounded with an iris. In a little time a darkness covered the left side of the left eye, which was partially clouded some years before the other intercepted the view of all things in that direction. Objects in front seemed to dwindle in size whenever I closed my right eye. This eye too, for three years gradually failing, a few months previous to my total blindness, while I was perfectly stationary, everything seemed to swim backward and forward, and now thick vapours appear to settle on my forehead and temples, which weigh down my lids with an oppressive sense of drowsiness, especially in the interval between dinner and the evening. I ought not to omit mentioning that before I wholly lost my sight, as soon as I lay down in bed, and turned upon either side, brilliant flashes of light used to issue from my closed eyes; and afterwards, upon the gradual failure of my powers of vision, colours proportionably dim and faint seemed to rush out with a degree of vehemence, and a kind of inward noise. These have now faded into uniform blackness, such as ensues on the extinction of a candle, or blackness varied only and intermingled with a dimmish grey. The constant darkness, however, in which I live day and night inclines more to a whitish than a blackish tinge, and the eye in turning itself round admits, as through a narrow chink, a very small portion of light." How very affecting is this detail, especially the allusion'to the "narrow chink" which remained in the dark shutter folded over the windows of the eye, to admit mementoes of the precious gift he had for ever lost. But his soul bows with Christian patience to the Divine behest:—
"Yet I argue not
Against Heaven's hand or will, nor bate a jot
Of heart or hope; but still bear up, and steer
Right onward."
The lustre of his dark grey eye did not fade after blindness had smitten it. His portrait brings him before us, with light brown hair parted in the middle and clustering on the shoulders, and a countenance which, till manhood was advanced, retained its youthful ruddy hue. The remembrance that his stature was of the middle height; that he was not at all corpulent, but muscular and compact; his gait erect and manly, bespeaking courage and dauntlessness; places in our sight the full-length shade of that illustrious personage. Then when we add to it the little anecdote, that he wore, as was the custom of the day, a rapier by his side, we seem to have the living man, walking in at his garden gate out of St. James's Park, leaning on the hand of a servant. The loss of sight was, in a measure, compensated by the exquisite acuteness of his hearing. He judged, as blind men are wont to do, of people's appearance by their voice. "His ears," says Richardson, "were now eyes to him." No doubt, in that home next Lord Scudamore's, Milton had his organ and bass viol, and would cheer the hours of his unintermitting darkness by music, for which he had a taste by nature. Milton's voice is said to have been sweet and harmonious, and he would frequently accompany the instruments on which he played.
No longer able to guide the pen, he dictated in this same house some of his famous prose works, which, in the nineteenth century, are beginning to attract that notice and study too long denied them. His Defence of the People of England was probably written in Scotland-yard; but his Second Defence, his Treatise of Civil Power in Ecclesiastical Causes, his Likeliest Means to remove Hirelings out of the Church, his Present Means and Brief Delineation of a Free Commonwealth, and some smaller pieces, were all produced in the house we are speaking of. We may add, that in this same house he lost his second wife, to whom he was so tenderly attached.
But it is time to turn eastward. Changes come, and Milton can no longer tarry near the palaces of old England. Too deeply implicated in the proceedings of the Commonwealth, he is forced to hide himself after the Restoration. And as we come near Bartholomew-close, looking out of Smithfield, we are not far from the place of his temporary concealment. Some friend guided and sheltered the blind man from the storm. Its fury past, or turned aside by the influence of some who venerated his genius and character, Milton goes to live in Holborn, near Red Lion-square, and then in Jewin-street. Probably, it was early after the Restoration, and while living in these abodes, that he was not only in darkness, but "with dangers compassed round," fearing assassination from some royalist hand, sleeping ill, and restlessly. Tn the latter place he marries his third wife; and there Ellwood, the Quaker, is introduced to him—the kind, patient Ellwood, who sits for hours reading Latin with a foreign accent, and sometimes little understanding what he reads, for the recreation of his now poor but illustrious friend. But highly honoured was that same Ellwood, when the great poet put into his hands a manuscript, asking his opinion of it—which proved to be the Paradise Lost. That scene was a little cottage at Chalfont, in Buckinghamshire, where Milton had gone during the plague; but in Jewin-street, probably, the great poem was nearly brought to its completion. It was the work of years. Every former strain prepared for it. Prelusive touches had there been from boyhood of rich, sweet, solemn harmony; but in Paradise Lost came out the prolonged oratorio, swelling forth from the organ of his soul in notes of bird-like sweetness, in tones of deep-pealed thunder. The history of it is, probably, associated with most of the previous residences of Milton, but in Jewin-street it was nearly perfected; and in our mind wakens some echo of the poet's song whenever we walk along the pavement of that most unpoetic region
He leaves Jewin-street—for he was strangely changeful in his liking of a residence—and goes to live, we know not where, except that it was to lodge awhile in the house of Millington, the celebrated auctioneer, whom we greatly love and honour, for the story told of his leading the bard by the hand when he walked about the streets.
Two doors from the corner of Milton-street, running out of Fore-street, there is a shop kept by a confectioner, with over-hanging stories rising above it, evidently more than 200 years old. That, and the adjoining one, were originally united, and there, according to local tradition, we have another of Milton's numerous habitations. The house is now mean enough, and never could have been very much better; but that circumstance throws no doubt on the tradition, as the lot of our bard after the Restoration was poor and lowly.
Then we come to his last abode in Artillery-walk, now Artillery-place west, Bunhill-fields, in whose vicinity, for Milton's sake alone, we love to linger. While living here, he published both his Paradise Lost and his Paradise Regained, as also the Samson Agonistes, and other works. But we are thinking now more of the man than the author. We see him sitting before his door in a grey coat of coarse cloth in warm, sultry weather, to enjoy the fresh air; or, walking in with Dr. Wright, an ancient clergyman from Dorsetshire, we find him in a room up one pair of stairs, hung with rusty green, sitting in an elbow chair, clothed in black, and neat enough, pale, but not cadaverous, his hands and fingers gouty and covered with chalk stones. Were he free from the pain he feels, he tells us his blindness would be tolerable. Or we listen to him, as he talks with the Laureate Dryden, who admires the Paradise Lost, and asks leave to put it into a drama in rhyme. Milton, with much civility, tells him, "he will give him leave to tag his verses."
Milton's biographers enable us to trace his daily life. He rises early; has a chapter in the Hebrew Bible read to him; then meditates till seven; till twelve he listens to reading, in which he employs his daughters; then takes exercise, and sometimes swings in his little garden. After a frugal dinner, he enjoys some musical recreation; at six he welcomes friends; takes supper at eight; and then, having smoked a pipe, and drunk a glass of water, he retires to repose. That repose is sometimes broken by poetic musings, and he rouses up his daughter that he may dictate to her some lines before they are lost.
Although neglected by the great among his countrymen, illustrious foreigners search out the man whose literary fame is heard through Europe; and many who came before the fire of London, ere they left our shores, found the house in Breadstreet, with the sign of the spread eagle, for even then it was thought a privilege to enter Milton's birth-place. One Englishman of rank, however, is said to have visited him, but the visit was most unworthy in its motive. The Duke of York, as the story goes, expressed a wish to his brother Charles II, to see old Milton, of whom so much was said. The king had no objection, and soon the duke was on his way to the poet's house, where, on introducing himself, a free conversation took place between these very "discordant characters." 'The duke asked Milton whether he did not consider his blindness to be a judgment inflicted on him for writing against the late king. "If your highness thinks," he replied, "that the calamities which befall us here are indications of the wrath of heaven, in what manner are we to account for the fate of the king, your father? The displeasure of heaven must, upon this supposition, have been much greater against him than against me; for I have only lost my eyes, but he has lost his head." The duke, disconcerted by the answer, went his way, and exclaimed on reaching the court: "Brother, you are greatly to blame that you don't have that old rogue Milton hanged." "Why, what is the matter, James?" said the monarch; "you seem in a heat. What! have you seen Milton?" "Yes," answered James, "I have seen him." "Well," said the king, "in what condition did you find him?" "Condition—why, he is very old, and very poor." "Old and poor, well; and he is blind, too, is he not?" "Yes, blind as a beetle." "Why, then," observed the merry monarch, "you are a fool, James, to have him hanged as a punishment; to hang him will be doing him a service; it will be taking him out of his miseries. If he be old, poor, and blind, he is miserable enough: in all conscience let him live."
But it is time to approach Milton's last resting-place. St. Giles's church, Cripplegate, is one of the old ecclesiastical structures which escaped the fire of London. It contains the ashes of John Fexe, the martyrologist, and John Speed, the historian: the mural tablet to the memory of the former, and the effigy which brings before us the grave face and quaint costume of the latter, adorn the right side of the chancel within the altar rails. But from these and other monuments we turn, to look at the bust of Milton, placed to the left as you enter the church, on the third pillar from the east end. The spot beneath, now covered with a spacious pew, has been pretty well identified as the poet's grave. To this last earthly home he was borne on the 12th November, 1674, "the funeral being attended," according to Toland, "by the author's learned and great friends in London, not without a friendly concourse of the vulgar." Milton's funeral must, indeed, have been a solemn sight! One fancies it slowly winding down from Artillery-walk, through the picturesque streets of the seventeenth century. We have just visited his grave with deep emotion; and we learn is with Milton dead, as it was with Milton living, that more foreigners than Englishmen visit the church in honour of his memory.
We have thus taken a wide sweep round London to the west, following in Milton's footsteps; and now, not far from the spot whence we commenced our rambles, we would bid a reverent farewell to that illustrious shade, giving thanks unto the Father of spirits for such a gift unto the children of men.