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Milton and the English
Revolution
Christopher Hill
The only reason for my being here this evening, suspeet, is that
onee wrote a book ealled Mitton and
th
English Revolution shall
assume that none ofyou have read it. However, one item in it may
be
of
relevanee to our diseussions. eited Chekhov s letters in
whieh we see that great (and relatively non-politieal)
artist
haggling
with the
eensor about
what he
was permitted to say,
sometimes deeiding to omit a passage in order to get the rest
published, at other times deeiding
that
it was
not worth
it: a
partieular story must be saerifieed rather than emaseulated.
Milton s relationship to the eensor was
rather
similar,
only
Milton
was a mueh
more
politieally involved
eharaeter than
Chekhov,
and after 1660 he was marked down as a notorious enemy of the
regime. A seeond
item
of
possible relevanee:
Mauriee
Baring s
report during the Russo-Japanese War
of
1905-6 that one ofthe
most
popular
books
with
the peasant soldiers
in the
tsar s army was
a Russian translation
of
Paradise Lost
am
not quite sure
what
to
eonclude from this unexpeeted faet, but it helps to link the English
and
Russian Revolutions.
Milton
is England s greatest
poet who
was also a
revolutionary
and
her greatest revolutionary who was also a poet.
want
to plaee
him in
the
eontext
ofthe
17th-eentury
English Revolution.
But
first
Iet me
clear
away some possible miseoneeptions. Milton was
t -
as his popular image sometimes suggests-a dour Puritan, iron
grey in clothes and ideas; 17th-eentury Puritans in general were
not like that; they were not killjoys.
When
we think of main-line
Puritans,
those who
made
the English Revolution, we should think
not ofZeal-of-the-Land
Busy
but ofOliver
Cromwell,
with
his Iove
of
musie
and
wine,
of
Major-General Harrison strutting about in
his searlet cloak,
of
Luey Apsley,
who
teils us
that when the
very
Puritan Thomas
Hutehinsan eame
to
courther
he found withall
that
though she was modest yet was she aeeostable .
What
exaetly
aeeostable implies is not clear;
but Mrs Hutehinsan
was
no prude:
she
thought that
Edward the Confessor had been sainted for his
3
G. A. Hosking et al. (eds.), Perspectives on Literature and Society in Eastern and Western Europe
School of Slavonic and East European Studies, University of London 1989
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24
Milton
and the
nglish Revolution
ungodly chastity .
1
We should recail too the Russian ambassador
who came
to London in 1645, after the city
had
been under
Puritan
domination
for four years.
Writing
in 1646 to the
Tsar
to
describe
what he
found
particularly
impressive
about
the city
he
picked
out
the beautiful stained glass in church-windows and the
merry
pealing ofthe church beils.
Ifhe had
only been able to
read
some 20th-century textbooks he would
have
known that by 1646
Puritans had smashed ail the church windows
and
melted down
the beils to
make cannon.
The Russian
who
described what
he
thought he saw and heard was clearly the victim
of
revolutionary
propaganda.
Milton
wore his
hair
long, like most gentlemanly
Roundheads .
The man
who
insisted on short haircuts for Oxford undergraduates
was Archbishop Laud. Milton, like ail his contemporaries, expres
sed his political ideas in religious idiom. There
are
plenty of
revolutionary ideas in
the
Bible, which were used in furtherance of
secular political aims. Nor was
Milton
the
woman-hater whom
Robert Graves depicted. One line in Paradise Lost s often quoted
against him:
Milton
wrote ofAdam and Eve, He for God only, she
for
God in him .
That
sexist Statement was
of
course a totaily
conventional 17th-century view.
Hardly a clergyman in the land
would
have queried
it. But
did Milton
query it? The notorious line
s part
of
a description of Adam and Eve as seen y
Satan
Milton
sometimes attributed his
own
views to
Satan,
as we shail see: but in
this instance he may weil have been deliberately ambiguous.
3
Milton
was
denounced
by his contemporaries as a libertine.
Certainly he
was
no
austere
Puritan . When
his
undergraduate
contemporaries wanted a
bawdy
speech for a riotous
party, they
turned to
Milton to make
i t and he obliged. Tbat
migbt bave
happened to any
ofus
in
our
unregenerate youth,
but
not all
ofus
would keep tbe speecb for nearly 50 years, as Milton did, and
tben
publisb it.
Milton
feit it necessary to apologise
later
for some
ofhis
early poems, wbicb in
tbe
words of Professor
Tillyard
are full of
sex .
Milton s nepbew
teils us tbat bis uncle used in bis 30 s
regularly to keep a gaudy day
witb
some young sparks
of
bis
acquaintance,
tbe beaux of tbose times . I
bope my
nepbew
will be equally tactful
if
tbe time ever comes.
Milton
smoked,
drank,
frequented tbe theatre, wore a sword
and was skilled
in
its use wbile
be
still
retained
bis sigbt. On bis
journey to Italy in 1638-9
Milton
was received
witb
enthusiasm in
literary circles. One ofbis friends, Antonio Malatesti, dedicated a
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hristopherHili 25
volume of poems to him. When
Victorian
scholars discovered that
the volume consisted ofmildly indecent sonnets, they were shocked
at
Malatesti s failure to
understand
Milton.
But Milton
was not
shocked. He continued tosend good wishes to Malatesti, and may
ha
ve
adopted
some ofhis tricks
ofward-pla
y for the hilarious double
entendres
and rude
jokes in
one
of his official ifences
ri the People ri
England
ofthe
1650s. One ofMilton s friends, who left him [1 in
his will, was Sir Peter Wentworth, whom Oliver Cromwell
denounced
as a
whoremaster .
Milton s
reputation as a libertine derived in part from the
pamphlets of the 1640s in which
he
defended divorce for incom-
patibility
oftemperament-a
suggestion which seems less start ling
now
than it did
then. What was especially shocking was
Milton s
offhand references to the only possible grounds for
divorce
marital
misconduct. He referred to casual
adultery ,
as but a
transient injury , soon repented, soon amended . In another
pamphlet he
referred to Iove
not
in Paradise
tobe
resisted ,
andin
Paradise
Lost to the
happier
Eden
Adam and
Eve
emparadised
in one another s arms . Adam and Eve had sex before
the
Fall,
whatever
hypocrites austerely talk .
Many
of
Milton s
Contern-
pararies thought sexual relations impossible in the
state of
innocence. The Fall itself was for Milton the result
of romantic
Iove:
How can I live
without
thee, how forgo
Thy sweet converse and Iove so dearly joined,
To live alone in these wild woods forlorn?
Flesh of flesh,
Bane
of
my hone
thou art,
and
from
thy
state
Mine
never shall be
parted,
bliss or woe.
lt s one ofthe problems ofMiltonian criticism thatjust after those
marvellous lines Milton wagged a disapproving fingerat Adam for
having
been fondly overcome with female
charm . Milton
was
never sure
whether
the Fall had been a fortunate occurrence or
not. You see now
why
I was
uncertain whether
Satan or
Milton
thought
Adam
was for
God
only, and Eve for God in him.
Milton
picked
up
a
lotofradical
ideas in Garnbridge in
the
1620s
andin
ltaly in
the
1630s. In
England
in the revolutionary 1640s
censorship totally broke down in this hitherto strictly supervised
society; freedom
of
assembly, freedom ofdiscussion, freedom
of
the
press-all
established themselves. There was a ferment
of debate
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Christopher
ili
27
own views on bishops, divorce, pre-publication censorship and
responsibility ofkings to their subjects. No man who knows aught
can be so stupid to deny that all men
naturally
were born free , he
proclaimed briskly in 1649,
at
a time when most
of
official
Europe
was denying precisely that. Kingsand magistrates, Milton insisted,
are deputies and commissioners of the people .
Milton
had one
foot in the camp
of
the successful revolution,
another in the camp
of
the radicals. When he became a govern
ment spokesman under the Commonwealth after
it
had broken
with the radicals,
he
defended the achievements
ofthe
Revolution
and
attacked its royalist opponents. He never attacked the
Levellers, even when his employers instructed
him
to
do
so
In
return
the Levellers continued to speak with respect of learned Mr
Milton
while
attacking
the
government
he served.
There
were
thus contradictions in Milton s
attitude
towards the English
Revolution, which are perhaps reflected in the tensions within his
poetry.
Milton s political career
ran
parallel with that
of
many
of
the
radicals. Originally intended for the church,
he
early decided
that
he
could
not
become a priest
und er
Laudianism, which
he attacked
in Lycidas He later described hirnself as church-outed by the
prelates ,
but
his decision was, I think, voluntary.
He
decided to
dedicate
himselfto
poetry. Originally he
planned
anational epic,
an Arthuriad, though
it
did
not
turn out quite like that.
He had
the
familiar guilt-feelings of a privileged intellectual in an unequal
society. Ease
and
pleasure were given thee , he told himself,
out
of
the sweat
of
other men -men not
just
his father.
Thus, he feit he
had
responsibilities to his society.
When the Revolution came he joined the campaign against
bishops.
We
should not think of 17th-century bishops as benign
rosy-cheeked old gentlemen. They were hard civil servants of an
autocratic arbitrary government. Archbishop
Laud
was virtual
prime minister and he packed the government with his supporters.
In
Star Chamber and High
Commission he tended to
support
the
most savage penalties for his opponents, such as flogging and
maiming. In 1639 the Archbishop of York thought it would be
good for
the church torevive
the practice
ofburning
heretics.
It
is
disgraceful and disgusting , Milton commented, that the Chris
tian religion should be supported by violence . In a pamphlet
of
1642 he consigned all bishops, ex o fficio and irrespective
of
their
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8 Milton and the English Revolution
private
virtues, to
an
eternity
ofhell.
Sofaras I know,
he
put
no
one else in hell, unlike
other
writers of epics such as his
contemporary Cowley or his predecessor Dante.
Milton
was especially severe against the dull conformity which
the ecclesiastical censorship enforced.
In
1637
he
had hirnself
suppressed some lines
of
social criticism from his masque
Comus:
they were restored only in the liberty of 1645:
If
every
just man that
now pines
with want
Had
but
a
moderate and
beseeming share
Ofthat which lewdly-pampered luxury
Now heaps
upon
some
f w
with vast excess
The giver would be better
thanked.
From the time of his earliest pamphlets Milton insisted on the
necessity
of
toleration.
Most
early spokesmen for toleration
excluded extremists like the Familists-a dissident sect roughly
analogaus to Maoists today. Milton said casually
that
Familists
reminded
him of the early Christians.
He
became a nationally
known figure thanks
to
Areopagitica to his divorce
pamphlets
and
to his defence
of
regicide
written
before
the
trial
and
execution
of
Charles I;
and
because
ofhis
scornful demolition of Eikon Basilike
the
fraudulent pamphlet
which
purported
to record Charles s
reflections in imprisonment.
So it was
natural
for Milton to be offered,
and
to accept, the
office
ofSecretary
for Foreign
Tongues
under the
Commonwealth.
He
wrote a series ofbooks, in
Latin,
defending the republic against
its traducers, in the face ofall Europe. The wit and brilliance ofhis
style gained
him an international reputation. Nothing of
such
quality
from
an Englishman
was expected , said
an
astonished
Dutchman.
Visitors to England in the 1650s
wanted
to see first
Oliver
Cromwell,
then John
Milton.
In
the
process
Milton
lost the use ofhis sight. His enemies
did
not
fail to declare this a
judgement
on him for defending regicide.
Milton
was convinced that he had sacrificed his eyes to the cause in
which he believed. He attributed to the English Revolution the
most heroic
and exemplary
achievements since
the
foundation
of
the world
a
most
remarkable
statement.
Did Milton
really
believe that the English Revolution was more heroic
and
exem
plary
than the life and death
of
Christ?
Or had
he just forgotten
him in the excitement ofeulogy? Either
explanation
prepares us for
the fact that Milton was unsound on the Trinity.
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3
ilton and the English Revolution
ted.) The practice
ofthe
saints interprets the commandments. f
the Bible appears to enjoin things contrary to the good of man,
including his temporal good,
our
understanding
of it
must be
mistaken.
Milton
was strongly opposed to
the
Superstition
of
scarecrow sins . All men can become sons
ofGod
upon earth. Hell
is not a place,
but
an internal state
of
mind.
As
Satan found,
it
accompanied him wherever he went. Mankind
can
attain on earth
to a Paradise within,
happier
far than that
of
Adam s Eden.
Ultimately,
when
all men are sons of God, God hirnself will
abdicate, for he will be all in all.
These doctrines could not be openly expressed in Paradise Lost
Paradise
Regained
or
Samsan
Agonistes.
Like Chekhov,
Milton
had
to
decide
what
he could get away with saying. But he knew that
Paradise Lost was a great poem, which had tobe published. We must
read
it
with these facts in mind.
Take
for instance the invocation to
Book VII:
I sing . . .
unchanged
To
hoarse
or
mute, though
fallenon
evil days,
On evil days
though
fallen and evil tongues,
In
darkness,
and
with dangers compassed
round,
And solitude.
What would the force
of
unchanged
be
for informed readers in
1667?
They
would know Milton, not as a great poet
but
as a
leading republican spokesman, defender of regicide, ofa free press,
of
divorce for incompatibility, and
of
religious toleration. Some
of
his readers
at
least would grasp
that
Milton was
unchanged
in
these principles. One good critic argued recently
that
Milton
could
have written an anti-
Trinitarian
poem in Paradise
Lost.
Since he
did not
do
so, we
can
disregard the evidence
of
the heretical De
Doctrina Christiana. This seems to me like saying
that
a Czech poet
today
could attack communism. In one sense, yes; but the
consequences for him if he were so foolish as to try to publish it
would be disastrous. The heresies are there in Paradise Lost
if
we
look for them carefully. Daniel
Defoe-a
trained
theologian
spotted anti-Trinitarianism there long before the De
Doctrina
Christiana
was published.
Milton
held
that
baptism
should be
performed in
running
water.
He
puts this
unorthodox doctrine
into Paradise Regained
but
in the
mouth of
Satan.
Who could hold
Milton responsible?
Many 19th-century critics eulogised the great hymn to wedded
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Christopher
Hill
33
Iove
in
Book
IV
of
Paradise Lost
What Milton hailed was wedded
Iove as saints
and patriarchs
used . What are
patriarchs
doing
there? The point was missed by 19th- and
early 20th-century
critics,
but
in 17th-century
discussions
on marriage
patriarchs
mean
t
only one
th in polygamy. They were very holy, they were
models for us all; and they
had
many wives. Milton approved of
polygamy, as the
e
Doctrina makes clear.
He also-together
with
many
of
the radicals-
rejected
the
ceremony of church
marriage.
He
was careful to
make
it clear
that
Adam and Eve underwent no
such ceremony.
What
mattered was the mutual Iove
and
consent of
the partners:
that s why
divorce should be
permitted ifmutuallove
ceased.
God equals history equals fact.
The brutal
realities of the
restoration had forced Milton to rethink both God, and
man
as
an
agent ofhistorical change. Books
XI
and
XII
of
Paradise
Lostshow
the re-education offallen
Adam
by means of a preview of world
history,
just
as (Milton, no doubt, hoped) readers would be re
educated
by
his poem. Adam concluded
that
the way forward was:
By small
Accomplishing
great
things,
by
things
deemed weak
Subverting
worldly strong, and worldly wise
By simply meek.
Why,
we might ask, should Adam, Iord of the world,
undisputed
ruler
of his family of two, want to subvert worldly strong?
The
answer s clear as soon as we ask the question. Adam s words
are
directed
at
Milton s generation: teil them how to behave.
Key words
in Milton s great
poems
are
free and
stand .
The
rebel angels
and Adam
fell when they were free to stand.
In
Paradise Regained the
Son of God personifies all
men,
res1stmg
temptation to
wrong
action-mostly to
premature
political
action.
Victorious deeds
Flamed
in my
heart,
heroic acts, one while
To
rescue Israel from the Roman yoke,
Thence
to
subdue
and
quell all
the
earth
Brute violence
and proud
tyrannic power,
Till
truth
were freed,
and
equity restored.
But
that
people victor once was now vile
and
base, Deservedly
made servile .
The
Son ofGod does not reject political action: it s a
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34
Mitton
and the
nglish
Revolution
matter of
choosing the right time. His final triumph in standing
alone on the pinnacle of the temple s followed
by
his descent to
resume his job
of
preaching, of re-education.
The hero
of Samson
Agonistes s a failed national Ieader,
imprisoned and blinded
. . . Promise was that
I
Should Israel from Philistian yoke deliver:
Ask for this great deliverer now, and find him
Eyeless
in
Gaza, at the mill with slaves,
Hirnself in bonds und er Philistian yoke
In
this
he
is like Milton, like his cause. Samson alone
s
to
blame
for
his failure. He s carefully associated with the Good Old Cause ,
with the New Model Army, and the Philistian yoke with the
Norman
yoke
of monarchy and
aristocracy, which
had
been a
leading myth
of the
Parliamentarian revolutionaries. Samson
learns from his
degradation
how to act correctly
when
the time for
political action
comes-just
as
Milton
seized his
opportunity
in
1673 (two years after
Samson
Agonistes was published) and as he was
simultaneously
preparing
the
De Doctrina
Christiana
for publication.
Samson stood, alone, in the temple, exposed to the jeering
of
the
Philistine aristocracy and priests;
and
God helped him to pull
down the temple on their heads. The vulgar only scaped who
stood without ,
added
Milton, in a line which has no Biblical
authority
whatsoever. The aristocracy and priests were the
principal enemies
ofthe Good Old
Cause in restoration England,
and Milton thought it a religious duty to hate God s enemies. Hell
s the destiny
of
all bishops. Those modern critics who shrink from
the vengefullesson of
Samson
Agonistes and suggest
that
Milton does
not intend us to approve of Samson, miss this bitter political
context. We should think
ofSamson in
terms ofa resistance Ieader
in occupied Europe under the Nazis, or of a black Ieader in
South
Africa today.
The
only time Milton asked hirnself how he could
prove the existence of God, he replied:
l t
s intolerable and
incredible that evil should be stronger than good; therefore God
exists . It s perhaps
not
a very good proof;
but it
teils us a lot
about
Milton.
After 1660 he was a revolutionary facing the utter and final
defeat ofhis revolution. We know better than he did how complete
the defeat was, so final
that
it s difficult for us to think back to a
time when hatred of bishops, of aristocracy and clergy, was a
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Chris
topher ill
5
relig
ious duty
The virt
ues which
Milton m
ost admi
red are po
st-
lapsaria
n-courag
e, forti tude,
steadfast
ness in a
dversity,
hope
when h
ope seems
i mpossib
le . Milton
no dou
bt thoug
ht ofhim
self
among o
thers whe
n he wrot
e of
Abdie
l:
A m o n
g th e faith
less, faith
ful only h
e,
A m o n g
innumerab
le false un
m oved,
U nshaken
, unseduc
ed, unterr
ified,
H is
l oyal ty h
e kept, hi
s Iove, his
z eal;
No
r
num
ber
nor example
w ith
him wrough t
To swerve f
rom trut
h, o
r
chang
e his con
s tan t min
d
Th
ough sing
le . . . . H
is back
he turne
d
On th
ose p
roud towers, t
o swift de
struct ion
doomed.
Ala
s: the des
truct ion d
id not co
m e swiftly
.
W e
do not o
ften refle
ct what
out s t andi
ng courag
e Mi l ton
showed in
the t imi
ng
ofhis attack
s-on bishops
in M
arch 1641,
w h
en they ha
donly just
ceased
tobe the rul
ing power
s;on kings
hip
in D
ecem ber
1648, befo
reC harles
I was
brought to t
rial; and
on
monarchy
aga in i
n April 16
60, a month
before
Charles
II was
restored to hisfather s t hrone. At a t ime w hen other radicals w ere
prese
rving a
prudent sil
ence, Mil
ton publi
shed, ove
r his own
name,
TheRe
ady and asy W
ay to establ
ish a Fr
ee Commo
nwealth. s he
m
ust have
known,
it was a for
lorn hope
. If I be
no
t h
eard o
r
believ
ed , he w r
ote towar
ds the e
nd of he pam
phlet ,
the eve nt wil
l
bear
m e w itne
ssto have
spoken tr
uth; and I
in t he mea
nwhi le ha
ve
bo rne m y
witness,
not out
of season,
to the ch
urch
and to my
cou
n t ry . Som
e yea
rs la
ter
he
could sti
ll, in the
conclusion
of
Samson
A
gonistes
see the G
ood Old C
ause as
an undying
Phoenix,
which
Revives, r
eflourishe
s, then vig
orous mo
st
When
most u
nact ive d
eemed,
And
thoug
h
her
body d
ie, her fa
m e surviv
es
A se
cu lar bird
, ages
of
l
ives.
M il ton n
ever gave
u p.
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6
M ilt
on an
d
the Engli
sh Re
voluti
on
N
OTE
S
1.
Lucy
H utc
hinso
n , Me
moirs o
the
Life o
C
olonel Hu
tchinso
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D a
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an
d
M arri
age ',
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, H od
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Soci
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158
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