Page:The Complete Poetical Works of John Milton.djvu/113

 LATER SONNETS

��brief tranquillity which followed Milton's reconciliation with his wife, a time when he would most have appreciated the deli- cate solace of his friend's art. Certainly a more exquisite word of praise than

" Dante shall give Fame leave to set thee

higher

Than his Casella, whom he wooed to sing, Met in the milder shades of Purgatory "

was never given by one artist to another, unless it be that which Dante himself gave to Casella on the seashore at the foot of the mount of Purgation.

A second group into which the sonnets fall, those dealing with public affairs and public men, includes, besides the lines on the New Forcers of Conscience, the famous tributes to Cromwell, Fairfax, and Vane, and the still more famous outburst upon the Piedmontese massacre. The first of these, written probably in 1646, marks the date of Milton's break with the Presbyte- rians and his adherence to the Indepen- dent party. The Westminster Assembly had made it clear that Presbyterianism, although it had freed England from Laud, her "prelate lord," and had "renounced his liturgy" by supplanting the Prayer Book with the Directory, was no more in- clined to allow real intellectual liberty than Laud had been. Milton's contempt wreaks itself here upon the pamphleteer supporters of Presbyterianism, such as Adam Steward (" mere A. S."), and Edwards, who, in his Gangrcena, had named Milton among the heretics, and upon two members of the Westminster Assembly, Samuel Ruther- ford and George Gillespie (" Scotch what d'ye call," because of his harsh northern name). The contemptuous tone of the sonnet is subtly intensified by a dash of colloquialism in the diction, as if the Muse had forgotten her dignity in her disgust. The peculiar sonnet form used also contri- butes to the same end. The sonnetto colla coda, or tailed sonnet, had been long in use among Italian poets for purposes of satire and burlesque. The addition of the coda,

��by destroying the formal symmetry which gives the sonnet its peculiar distinction, made it a fitter weapon for attack upon a despised foe. It is instructive to read this sonnet in connection with the two on Te- trachordon, in which Milton poured out his contemptuous wrath upon his opponents in the divorce controversy. When he wrote these the iron had entered very deep into his soul. Many times he had used and was still to use poetry as a weapon against his enemies, but always with a biblical majesty of attack. Here he fights for once with the bitter rudeness and blind irritation of his pamphleteering mood, a degradation of his ideal of poetry which could have come only from extreme weariness.

The sonnets to Fairfax and to Cromwell were written on definite occasions, and are to be considered less as eulogies than as appeals. Some misconception has resulted from a failure to note the special juncture of affairs which brought forth these ap- peals. Fairfax, in July, 1648, had just cooped up in Colchester the Kentish insur- gents who had risen to aid the Duke of Hamilton in his invasion from the north. By his skill and valor Fairfax was bringing to a close the " second civil war," as he had broken the force of the first at the battle of Naseby. Looking forward to assured victory, Milton appeals to Fairfax to enter upon the nobler task of cleansing the coun- sels of the nation from those jobbers and self-seekers who, in the national crisis, had taken advantage of the opportunity for fraud. The Lord General was of a char- acter to invite such an appeal. Besides being a great soldier, he was a man of scholarly cultivation, of poetic imagination, of pure and upright life. Milton's admi- ration for Fairfax was staunch enough to survive the defection of the great and gen- tle patriot from the popular cause in 1649, when he drew back in horror from the plan of putting his king to death. As Milton appealed to Fairfax to free the secular power from corruption, so four years later

�� �