both periods, he produced the 'Paradise Lost as by an after-throe of
nature. "There are some persons (observes a divine, a contemporary of
Milton's) of whom the grace of God takes early hold, and the good spirit
inhabiting them, carries them on in an even constancy through innocence
into virtue, their Christianity bearing equal date with their manhood,
and reason and religion, like warp and woof, running together, make up
one web of a wise and exemplary life. This (he adds) is a most happy
case, wherever it happens; for, besides that there is no sweeter or more
lovely thing on earth than the early buds of piety, which drew from our
Saviour signal affection to the beloved disciple, it is better to have
no wound than to experience the most sovereign balsam, which, if it work
a cure, yet usually leaves a scar behind." Although it was and is my
intention to defer the consideration of Milton's own character to the
conclusion of this Lecture, yet I could not prevail on myself to
approach the Paradise Lost without impressing on your minds the
conditions under which such a work was in fact producible at all, the
original genius having been assumed as the immediate agent and efficient
cause; and these conditions I find in the character of the times and in
his own character. The age in which the foundations of his mind were
laid, was congenial to it as one golden era of profound erudition and
individual genius;--that in which the superstructure was carried up, was
no less favourable to it by a sternness of discipline and a show of
self-control, highly flattering to the imaginative dignity of an heir of
fame, and which won Milton over from the dear-loved delights of academic
groves and cathedral aisles to the anti-prelatic party. It acted on him,
too, no doubt, and modified his studies by a characteristic
controversial spirit, (his presentation of God is tinted with it)--a
spirit not less busy indeed in political than in theological and
ecclesiastical dispute, but carrying on the former almost always, more
or less, in the guise of the latter. And so far as Pope's censure [1] of