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to vindicate Tragedy from the small esteem, or rather infamy, which in the account of many it undergoes at this day, with other common interludes; happening through the poet's error of intermixing comic stuff with tragic sadness and gravity, or introducing trivial and vulgar persons." Here, then, we note that, as in "Paradise Lost," classic forms are used for Christian subject-matter: the hedonist and the Puritan in Milton are again found united. As for the subject itself, while Milton's jottings of 1640-41 prove that it had early been in his mind, the reason of his final choice of it must probably be sought in the influence of personal and national conditions. He saw in Samson the image, it would seem, of many things; of England lured away by the seductions of the Dalila of the Restoration; of the Puritan cause overwhelmed by the Philistines; of himself, blind, disappointed, surrounded by foes to his principles and faith.1 Thus the drama became the vehicle of his bitter grief over his forlorn old age, the blasting of all his hopes, the apostasy of his beloved country. At the same time, it is not bitter grief alone that finds expression in it. "Samson Agonistes " is also a prophecy of judgment to come. Milton's firm faith in the ultimate triumph of righteousness, proclaimed so nobly many years before in 66 Comus," is with him still to console and inspire. This faith is voiced by the Chorus,

In Samson's marriage to the Philistine woman there may even be a reference to his own first marriage.

with the added thought, so pregnant of meaning at the time, that patience may be the only way in which the good man can show his courage and his confidence in God:

Oh, how comely it is, and how reviving
To the spirits of just men long oppressed
When God into the hands of their deliverer
Puts invincible might

To quell the mighty of the earth, the oppressor,
The brute and boist'rous force of violent men,
Hardy and industrious to support

Tyrannic pow'r, but raging to pursue

The righteous and all such as honour Truth !
He all their ammunition

And feats of war defeats,

With plain heroic magnitude of mind
And celestial vigour armed;

Their armouries and magazines contemns,
Renders them useless; while

With winged expedition,

Swift as the lightning glance, He executes
His errand on the wicked, who, surprised,
Lose their defence, distracted and amazed.
But patience is more oft the exercise
Of saints, the trial of their fortitude,
Making them each his own deliverer,
And victor over all

That tyranny or fortune can inflict.

And when, in the final tragedy, Samson has met his death among his foes, the moralising of the Chorus is in an equally characteristic strain :

All is best, though we oft doubt
What the unsearchable Dispose

Of Highest Wisdom brings about,
And ever best found in the close.
Oft He seems to hide His Face,
But unexpectedly returns,

And to His faithful champion hath in place
Bore witness gloriously; whence Gaza mourns,
And all that band them to resist

His uncontrollable Intent.

His servants He, with new acquist

Of true experience, from this great event
With peace and consolation hath dismissed,
And calm of mind, all passion spent.

These last words of the drama form no unfitting conclusion to Milton's poetic work. He wrote no more verse. Busied still with various prose writings and with an edition of his early poems, he passed the three remaining years of his life quietly enough, though he suffered much from recurrent attacks of gout, which gradually undermined his strength. The end came so peacefully that those watching did not know the actual moment of his death. This occurred on Sunday, November 8, 1674. He was buried near his father in the chancel of St. Giles's, Cripplegate.

I

VI

HAVE told my story very clumsily if I have not made it clear that in Milton the man is inseparable from the poet, and that the admiration we feel for his genius as justly be given to his character. are indeed apparent; and I have

may quite

His faults made no

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attempt to minimise or condone them. they were in large measure the faults which Puritanism inevitably tended to foster, especially in its extreme, though natural, reaction against the flippant spirit of the age-this, too, is evident. Austere, uncompromising, exacting, often stern, sometimes stiff-necked, he had too little tolerance for the weaknesses of average humanity; too little of "the quality of mercy which "droppeth as the gentle rain from Heaven "' upon the dry soil of the world; too little of the charity which is careful at all times to distinguish between the sin and the sinner. Large as was his intellectual vision, generous as was his scholarship, his moral outlook was, therefore, narrow; his temper hard and inflexible. Yet, however severely we may judge his shortcomings, his supreme greatness as a man cannot for a moment be questioned even by those who dissent the most profoundly from his politics and his theology. From first to last he lived his life at high moral tension; and his tremendous earnestness, his passionate zeal for righteousness, his ardent partiotism, his neverfailing devotion to duty, combine to make him worthy of our deepest veneration. That we sometimes perhaps seem to be ill at ease in his presence is only another testimony to his nobility. Conscious that his every action was performed beneath his "great Taskmaster's eye," he thought of existence always as service, and strove to the utmost that the work which had been given him to do should be well and

faithfully done. We can feel the spirit of this high idealism in all the stormy activities of his public career. We can feel it equally in all his efforts and achievements as a poet. He realised to the full the greatness of his genius, and he often spoke of it with a frankness which might seem to border on intellectual pride. But this was precisely because he regarded it as a direct gift from God, for the proper use of which he was in turn directly responsible to God. From the beginning, it is very clear, the poetic life meant for him a life of dedication to the purest and noblest of purposes. "" 'I was confirmed in this opinion," he writes in one place," that he who would not be frustrate of his hope to write well hereafter in laudable things, ought himself to be a true poem; that is, a composition and pattern of the best and honourablest things; not presuming to sing high praises of heroic men, or famous cities, unless he have in himself the experience and the practice of all that is praiseworthy." Again, speaking at the age of thirty-three of his ambitions as a poet and of the long and painful preparation which would be necessary for the accomplishment of the great task to which he was presently to set his hand, he uses these remarkable words: "None hath by more studious ways endeavoured, and with more unwearied spirit none shall that I dare almost aver of myself, as far as life and full license will extend. Neither do I think it shame to covenant with any knowing Apology for Smectymnuus."

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