But
Milton never let himself go for a moment. As other poets are possessed by
their theme, so is he _self_-possessed, his great theme being John
Milton, and his great duty that of interpreter between him and the world.
I say it with all respect, for he was well worthy translation, and it is
out of Hebrew that the version is made. Pope says he makes God the Father
reason "like a school divine." The criticism is witty, but inaccurate. He
makes Deity a mouthpiece for his present theology, and had the poem been
written a few years later, the Almighty would have become more heterodox.
Since Dante, no one had stood on these visiting terms with heaven.
Now it is precisely this audacity of self-reliance, I suspect, which goes
far toward making the sublime, and which, falling by a hair's-breadth
short thereof, makes the ridiculous. Puritanism showed both the strength
and weakness of its prophetic nurture; enough of the latter to be scoffed
out of England by the very men it had conquered in the field, enough of
the former to intrench itself in three or four immortal memories. It has
left an abiding mark in politics and religion, but its great monuments
are the prose of Bunyan and the verse of Milton. It is a high inspiration
to be the neighbor of great events; to have been a partaker in them and
to have seen noble purposes by their own self-confidence become the very
means of ignoble ends, if it do not wholly depress, may kindle a passion
of regret deepening the song which dares not tell the reason of its
sorrow.
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