The Poetics of Milton

Part 7 – on his three and twentieth year

It was now the autumn of 1631, and the beginning of Milton’s last year of study at Cambridge University, and he was still thinking about his future – whether it was to be in the ministry, or was to be somewhere else in the world of arts and letters. While Milton would later eventually decide not to enter the ministry, he does give us hints of where he might want to venture towards.

In ‘Il Penseroso’, we saw the lines:

“… Or call up him that left half told
The story of Cambuscan bold,
Of Camball, and of Algarsife,
And who had Canace to wife,
That owned the virtuous ring and glass,
And of the wondrous horse of brass,
On which the Tartar king did ride;
And if aught else great bards beside
In sage and solemn tunes have sung
Of tourneys and of trophies hung,
Of forests, and enchantments drear,
Where more is meant than meets the ear.”

[Note: Cambuscan is Genghis Khan, Camball and Algarsife are his two sons, and Canace is his daughter.]

Milton here is talking of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales and about ‘The Squire’s Tale’ that was ‘left half told’ – that while telling his tale, the Squire was interrupted by the Franklin who began to tell his tale.

Perhaps Milton is wishing that he could one day be able to write wonder-filled tales and stories like Chaucer or like Spenser.

And then also, in ‘L’Allegro’, we saw Milton talking about hearing –

“sweetest Shakespeare, Fancy's child,

Warble his native wood-notes wild …”

And perhaps Milton is wishing that someday maybe he could write plays like Shakespeare, and his love of Shakespeare must have led to his writing this poem:

“AN EPITAPH ON THE DRAMATICK POET W. SHAKESPEARE”

What needs my Shakespeare, for his honoured bones.

The labour of an age in piled stones?

Or that his hallowed relics should be hid

Under a star-ypointing pyramid?

Dear son of Memory, great heir of Fame,

What need'st thou such weak witness of thy name ?

Thou, in our wonder and astonishment

Hast built thyself a livelong monument.

For whilst, to the shame of slow-endeavouring art,

Thy easy numbers flow, and that each heart

Hath, from the leaves of thy unvalued book,

Those Delphic lines with deep impression took;

Then thou, our fancy of itself bereaving,

Dost make us marble, with too much conceiving;

And, so sepulchred, in such pomp dost lie.

That kings for such a tomb would wish to die.

And ‘that kings for such a tomb would wish to die’ shows that Milton saw that those great writers of such stories and tales that touch ‘our wonder and astonishment’, will be long remembered. Was this Milton’s simple wish for his life - to be remembered?

The following year, in 1632, the Second Folio of Shakespeare’s collected plays would be published, and in it, the folio would contain among a number of poetic tributes, this sonnet - written by an ‘anonymous’ poet – that would later be revealed to have been our young twenty-three-year-old poet, John Milton.

At that time, a person who was planning a future in the church, would usually wait until the age of twenty-four – after graduating, before becoming a minister in the Church of England. Milton had just turned twenty-three, and we see his contemplation of all this, in a sonnet he wrote – ‘On His Being Arrived to the Age of Twenty-Three’, that he sent to a friend with these words of explanation:

“That you may see that I am something suspicious of myself, and do take notice of a certain belatedness in me, I am the bolder to send you some of my nightward thoughts some little while ago, because they come in not altogether unfitly, made up in a Petrarchian stanza.”

“ON HIS BEING ARRIVED TO THE AGE OF TWENTY-THREE”

How soon hath Time, the subtle thief of youth,

Stol’n on his wing my three-and-twentieth year!

My hasting days fly on with full career,

But my late spring no bud or blossom shew’th.

Perhaps my semblance might deceive the truth

That I to manhood am arrived so near;

And inward ripeness doth much less appear,

That some more timely-happy spirits endu’th.

Yet be it less or more, or soon or slow,

It shall be still in strictest measure even

To that same lot, however mean or high,

Toward which Time leads me, and the will of Heaven;

All is, if I have grace to use it so,

As ever in my great Task-Master’s eye.

Milton writes that as he sees his lot – however mean or high, and towards which time and the will of heaven leads him – he hopes that he has the grace, to use his life as his great Task-Master [God] wished for him to use it.

And that reminds me of something that I once heard a wise old man say, that God had a reason for making everything, and a special reason for bringing each and every one of us into the world, and we get to spend the rest of our lives trying to learn that reason.

[next week - part 8 - in Defence of the Liberal Arts]