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But our great poet, as may sometimes be seen in men more native to state questions, was to evince greater skill in demolishing bad things, than in constructing the better things which should come into their place. According to the general apprehension, Milton was a stern republican; but, in fact, he was for government as placed in the hands of the wisest and the best; and whether the wisest and the best might be most probably found in a republic, in an oligarchy, in a monarchy, or in such elements combined, were subordinate questions—questions simply concerning the relations of means to ends. Judging of monarchy from what it had commonly been, and from what it had been recently in this country, he saw no hope for the nation in that direction. Hence the great point with him came to be, how to adjust the machinery of a popular government so as to secure from it the greatest measure of advantage, and to guard the most effectively against the disadvantages incident to it. Nothing was further from his thoughts than that the best rule would be the rule of the multitude. He would have had each country town a city, and every such city a sort of Florence or Venice, entrusted with large legislative and administrative powers. Above these he would have placed, not a house of commons, but a grand council, which should be permanent, and possessed of supreme authority; and in giving existence to this council, he says, it would "be well to qualify and refine elections; not committing all to the noise and shouting of a rude multitude, but permitting those of them who are rightly qualified to nominate as many as they will; and out of that number, others of a better breeding to choose a less number more judiciously; till, after a third or fourth sitting and refining of exactest choice, they only be left chosen who are the due number, and seem by most voices the worthiest." 1

It is in vain to say that Milton did not know human nature. But it is clear from these speculations that he had failed duly to estimate some of the most rooted and characteristic tendencies of the English people. Their institutions, like all institutions of a natural and healthy description, had been a growth from their social life. Nothing in them had found a place there simply from its having commended itself to abstract thought, or from its promising well upon paper. Everything had come with an exigency, and things had been retained purely from their adaptation to exigencies. But to adjust themselves to Milton's republic, the nation needed to forget nearly all the traditions, forms, and feelings of the past, and to substitute an order of things which should be made, in the place of an order of things which had grown. To expect a course of this nature from an intelligent man would be to expect much; to expect it from a people, and, above all, from a people so attached to their old paths as the English, was to expect unreasonably. As a politician our great bard enunciated many grand truths; but the application of those truths to the actual circumstances of mankind demanded a more flexible habit of thought, and a more flexible temper, than Milton brought to the science of politics. Cromwell knew the majority of the nation to be, in some form or other, Royalists, and that to leave the future of government to the suffrage of the nation would be to vote the destruction of the republic. But Milton beguiled himself with the notion of what the nation might do, or ought to do. Cromwell, from his stronger

political insight, saw what the nation would do, if left to itself, and he acted accordingly. In regard to religious belief, Milton was in substantial agreement with his age and his some free elements of it some free elements of its own, as the natural result of his special intelligence and culture, never ceased to be mainly of the Puritan spirit and complexion. At his decease he left two works in manuscript—a History of Muscovy, published soon afterwards; and an elaborate treatise on

Christian Doctrine, which remained unknown to the world until published, with a translation from the Latin, in the first quarter of the present century. It is certain, that until nearly forty years of age, Milton was a Trinitarian and Calvinist. On the doctrine of the Trinity his opinion was to undergo some change; but we have no evidence of that change until the publication of the Paradise Lost, when his age was verging upon sixty. In that poem there were some obscure and unusual expressions concerning the persons commonly regarded as Co-equal and One in the Godhead. But it was left to the publication of the volume on Christian Doctrine to show that the ideas which seemed to be expressed in those passages were the ideas intended. In that work the Son is represented as the highest of created natures, but still as created; and the Holy Spirit, while represented as a person, is supposed to be next in being to the Son. But it should be distinctly remembered, that this conception did not at all affect the opinions of Milton on other points of theology. When this change came all beside remained as it was. He still believed in the Fall of man, and in its consequences in relation to the race; in Redemption by Christ, in pardon through his atonement, in justification by his Righteousness, and in the Regenerating power of the Holy Spirit. Redemption came, in his view, from a trinity of persons, though not of co-equal persons; and from a trinity of offices, though not of offices sustained by persons of the same nature and authority.

Milton's critics often express their wonder that so marvellous a drama as Paradise Lost should have been found under the very faint jottings transmitted to us in the earlier chapters of Genesis. But the truth is, Milton did not find the materials for his poem within that compass. He believed, as all sound critics believe still, that the earlier portions of Revelation find their true exposition in the later. Paradise Lost is not founded on Genesis: it rests, in common with the theology of the seventeenth century, on the Scriptures as a whole. Until some time after Milton's day, nearly every one who believed in Christianity at all, believed in it very much after his manner.

It has been brought as a serious charge against Milton, that in his later years he was not known to be connected with any church, nor as engaging in any form of public worship. But those who prefer this accusation seem to forget that Milton's ecclesiastical quarrel had been with the great Presbsterian party, hardly less than with the Church of England men; that, in his later years, the only church permitted to exist was the Church of England; that to have taken part in any worship not of that church would have been to violate the law, and to have incurred the hazard of fine and imprisonment. It is true, had liberty of worship been granted, Milton would hardly have found a church with a creed the strict counterpart of his own. But had such liberty been ceded, we have little doubt but occasions would have come in which he would have availed himself of it. Worshippers may be agreed sufficiently to become one in worship without being agreed in everything.

Of Dr. Johnson's critique on Milton we have said little. The man who could tell his readers that he judges Milton to have been capable of forging a prayer to be interpolate in the Eikon Basilike, that he might found upon it a malignant charge against the king, had put himself out of court as a witness on any question in which the reputation of the author of Paradise Lost is concerned. Mr. De Quincey, himself a Tory, and far enough removed from Puritanism, has given expression to his judgment and feeling as to the conduct of Johnson towards Milton in words of studied severity, and we can hardly say with more severity than truth. "As regards Dr. Johnson," he writes, "am I the man that would suffer him to escape under the trivial impeachment of 'prejudice?' Dr. Johnson, viewed in relation to Milton, was a malicious, mendacious, and dishonest man. He was met by temptations many and strong to falsehood, and these temptations be

^&lt;sup>1</sup> The Ready and Easiest Way to Establish a Free Commonwealth.