The Portland daily press., 1881-01-04
Milton.
tFortnightly Reyiew.1

tfoftulSntly REVIEW.
1t is the fashion of our day to look for the
typical man or representative figure of the
English Commonwealth not so much in the
poet who glorifed as in the Dictator who de-
stroyed it. This is but natural and consistent
in such historians as see nothing in the record
Of our short-lived Republic worth admiration
or regret, but the triumph of 4 more harsh
and earnest form of superstition over one
somewhat less hellish IN its cast OF creed and
greatly more graceful in It's tone of life ac-
oompanied by the substitution of q stern and
steady system OF dictatorial rule for the lax
and trustees impulse of treacherous and
shifting tyranny; but those whose faith or
feeling i'll the matter of historic patriotism
lies deeper than mere preference for compe-
tent over incompetent autocracy must per-
ceive, or at least will believe, that the Resto
ration which they admire as little as any mill
tary-minded Neo- Calvinist or Muscovite i'm
perialist of their time was not SO much the
doing OF James Monk as the work OF Oliver
Cromwell; q consummation Of catastrophe
directly rather than Indirectly due to the
weakness and selfshness OF the nominal aud
temporary Protector, the actual and final de-
stroyer, of the Commonwealth OF England.
For surely the dying hand which put into
Richard Cromwells the scepter OF its sway
put by that act the crown of England into
Monks for delivery TO Charles Ii. And this
il we never have learned ii from the evidence
of Milton himself, we may learn with equal
confidence from Landor's that Milton surely
saw. "He had grown ealmer at the close OF
life, and saw in Cromwell as fault what he
has seen before as a necessity or q virtue"
And, therefore, is IL rather in the loftier
purer, more loyal and moro liberal virtue OF
its poet, than in the dubious and double-faced
majesty of its august and imperious Dictator,
that we should salute the highest and most
perfect typo of tho English republic; dragged
down into its own grave by the fatal dead
hand of Cromwell, yet surviving, after sort
in the figure of the blind man left upright
in the phrase of a poet as glorious and Q re.
publican IS faithful Us himself-on the verge
aud IN tbs shadow OF her sepulcher. Iu pri-
Yato matters, or such as belong to the range
ot ethics rather than OF politics, the instinct
OF Milton seems 10 me as much truer and timer
than the instinct OF Dante as his Judgment
and his conscience We're juster, sounder
purer than the conscience and the Judgment of
Cromwell Only those disciples in whom
congenital idolatry has passed into the stage
OF acute monomania can maintain that the
quality of Dante's great work is never in any
considerable degree impaired by the incessant
invasion OF merely personal polemics; that the
reader is never or but rarely fatigued and
nauseated by the ohtrpsion and obsession of
''verminous fellows" whom the higher MUSES.
at Ieas, should be content to leave In the
native and natural shelter OF that obscene
obscurity which alone is proper 10 such auto
coprophagous animalcules as make the filth
they iced on. There are others besides the
'hrothel lackeys' OF bastard empire, who as
Victor Hugo said once, would desire us TO shut
our eyes, but compel ms to stop our noses