"Satan with less toil, and now with ease, …
Weighs his spread wings, at leisure to behold …
This pendent world in bigness as a star
Of smallest magnitude."
(Paradise Lost. Bk. II.)
Dinner despatched, the master of the house, led by his devoted friends, went out into the garden. A garden was the desideratum of his existence, and he had never been without one; for in seventeenth-century London every house was fitly furnished in this respect. Here Milton was in the habit of taking that steady exercise which was a sine quâ non to a sedentary and gouty man. He made a point of walking up and down out of doors, in cold weather, for three or four hours at a time, – sometimes composing his majestic lines, sometimes merely meditating. When weary with walking, he would come in and either dictate what he had conceived, or would take further exercise in a swing. In really warm weather, he received his visitors sitting outside his house door, wrapped in a coarse grey overcoat – gazing out upon the fields of the Artillery ground with those "unblemished eyes" that belied their own clear beauty – "the only point," as he said, "in which I am against my will a hypocrite." To-day, being cool and cloudy, allowed but intermittent periods in the open air. Milton, Lawrence and Skinner paced slowly to and fro, deep in enthralling intercourse, until three o'clock: when the rain and Thomas Elwood arrived simultaneously, and the other two men departed to their respective avocations.
Thomas Elwood was a young Quaker of twenty-three, who was acting in some degree as honorary secretary to Milton. Himself of a defective education, and having been expelled from his father's house on account of his religious opinions, he was only too glad to take a lodging in the neighbourhood, and, by reading aloud to Milton every afternoon, acquire an amount of information and a variety of learning, which by no other means could he have obtained. And there was also a tacit sympathy between them, insomuch as Milton was, more and more, as life went on, inclining towards the Quaker tenets, – in those days, bien entendu, viewed with horror and detestation by the majority of men.
Having re-entered the house, "We will not read as yet, Tom," Milton said, "I desire greatly to comfort myself with sweet sounds. Bring me into the withdrawing-room, and place me at the organ. A little bellows-blowing will not hurt thee, Tom. And let my wife attend me, that we may have song withal. She hath a good voice, though a poor ear."
Seated at his beloved instrument, the blind man steeped himself in the principal pleasure that was left him. Milton's father, stout Puritan though he might be, was an accomplished musician, and had taught his son to play in early youth. The austerities of a narrow dogma had not been able to crush out the inveterate artistry of either father or son: and now the devotee of "divinest Melancholy" was able to solace himself with such lovely concords, such "anthems clear,"
"As may with sweetness, through mine ear,
Dissolve me into ecstasies,
And bring all heaven before mine eyes."
Sometimes he sang as he played; sometimes Mrs. Milton, with her clear unemotional notes, sang to his accompaniment. Presently, that Elwood should not be wearied in his blowing, he quitted the organ for the bass-viol, on which he was no mean performer. At the conclusion of his playing he sat with a rapt, transfigured face, such as might well have called forth the Italian's encomium, thirty years before, – "If thy piety were equal to thy understanding, figure, eloquence, beauty and manners, verily thou wouldest not be an Angle but an Angel!"
And, now, good Tom," quoth Milton to the young man, "let us to work: the day moves on apace." They went upstairs to the study. "Before we read, I have some forty lines to set down," continued the poet, "all day they have been knocking for admission, and with that last music they made entrance. Needs must I house them now in ink and paper."
"I am instant at thy bidding, friend," and Elwood seated himself with dutiful alacrity at the table. Milton, placing himself obliquely athwart his elbow-chair, with one leg thrown across the arm, dictated forty lines, almost in a breath, – they burst from him, as it would seem, in a stream no longer to be restrained.
"Gently, gently, good sir!" exclaimed Elwood, "slow-witted and slow fingered I may be, – but I cannot keep pace with thee!"
A grim smile hovered over Milton's full lips, "Out of practice, Tom," he replied indulgently, "it is a long while since I required this service at thy hands. From the autumnal to the vernal equinox, as I have told thee, my muse lies dumb,
and silent as the moon
When she deserts the night,
Hid in her vacant interlunar cave.
But now the winter is overpast, the singing of birds is heard in our land, and she too awakes and sings. With the vernal equinox my thoughts flow free as Helicon." Then, with slow and deliberate diction, he repeated the lines once more: and, having had them read aloud to him, he compressed, condensed, concentrated every thought and phrase, and reduced them to twenty.
"There is more to come?" queried Elwood, his quill poised ready to write.
"No more. Not one word more at present," replied Milton, sighing as though somewhat exhausted.
His inspiration was entirely intermittent: and sometimes he would lie awake all night, trying, but without success, to complete one single line to his liking. "They please me not wholly, these lines," he continued, "much remains to be done before I set them down to be changed no more."
"Not every man would say so," replied Elwood, "the learning and erudition whereof these few lines alone give witness, would supply many with just cause for boasting throughout a lifetime."
Milton shook his head. "Pomp and ostentation of reading," he remarked, "is admired among the vulgar: but in matters of religion, he is learnedest who is plainest."
"And may at last my weary age
Find out the peaceful hermitage,
The hairy gown and mossy cell,
Where I may sit and rightly spell
Of every star that heaven doth show."
(IL Penseroso.)
"Yet, Mr. Milton, thee hast the reputation of such scope and range of wisdom, as the greatest scholar in Europe might fitly envy. To me, I confess, in my poor unlettered ignorance, it is not conceivable in what manner thee acquired so great and witty powers."