The life of a nation was of less
importance to him than that it should be conformed to certain principles
of belief and conduct. Burke could distill political wisdom out of
history because he had a profound consciousness of the soul that
underlies and outlives events, and of the national character that gives
them meaning and coherence. Accordingly his words are still living and
operative, while Milton's pamphlets are strictly occasional and no longer
interesting except as they illustrate him. In the Latin ones especially
there is an odd mixture of the pedagogue and the public orator. His
training, so far as it was thorough, so far, indeed, as it may be called
optional, was purely poetical and artistic. A true Attic bee, he made
boot on every lip where there was a trace of truly classic honey.
Milton, indeed, could hardly have been a match for some of his
antagonists in theological and ecclesiastical learning. But he brought
into the contest a white heat of personal conviction that counted for
much. His self-consciousness, always active, identified him with the
cause he undertook. "I conceived myself to be now not as mine own person,
but as a member incorporate into that truth whereof I was persuaded and
whereof I had declared myself openly to be the partaker."[361]
Accordingly it does not so much seem that he is the advocate of
Puritanism, Freedom of Conscience, or the People of England, as that all
these are _he_, and that he is speaking for himself.
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