The Poetics of Milton
Part 14 - On Education
Milton’s thoughts on church reform and on marriage were followed by his thoughts on education, that he had been slowly developing in his own small academy.
“Next, in one small volume, I discussed the education of children, a brief treatment, to be sure, but sufficient, as I thought, for those who devote to the subject the attention it deserves. For nothing can be more efficacious than education in moulding the minds of men to virtue (whence arises true and internal liberty), in governing the state effectively, and preserving it for the longest possible space of time.”
[from ‘Second Defence of the English People’, (translated by Helen North) pg. 90]
a portrait of Milton (from the British Museum)
June 1644 – ‘On Education, To Master Samuel Hartlib’, (8 pgs)
Addressed to Samuel Hartlib, Milton tries to ‘set down in writing, as you request me, that voluntary Idea, which hath long in silence presented it self to me, of a better education’:
“First we do amisse to spend seven or eight yeers meerly in scraping together so much miserable Latin, and Greek, as might be learnt otherwise easily and delightfully in one yeer … [that] they might then forthwith proceed to learn the substance of good things, and Arts in due order, which would bring the whole language quickly into their power.”
[i.e. Milton’s ‘protest against delaying the study of authors for their content, through unnecessarily prolonged study of grammar alone’ – note by Donald Dorian]
“For their studies, First they should begin with the chief and necessary rules of some good Grammar … and while this is doing, their speech is to be fashion’d to a distinct and cleer pronunciation, as neer as may be to the Italian, especially in the vowels. For we Englishmen being farre northerly, doe not open our mouthes in the cold air, wide enough to grace a Southern tongue; but are onserv’d … to speak exceeding close and inward.”
“At the same time, some other hour of the day, might be taught them the rules of Arithmetick, and soon after the elements of Geometry even playing, as the old manner was.’
[as Plato says in the Laws (VII, 819b-20d) and the Republic (VII, 536de)]
“By this time, yeers and good general precepts will have furnish them more distinctly with that act of reason which in Ethics is called Proairesis: that they may with some judgement contemplate upon morall good and evil … instructing them more amply in the knowledge of virtue and the hatred of vice: while their young and pliant affections are led through all the morall works of Plato, Xenophon, Cicero, Plutarch, [Diogenes] Laertius, and those Locrian remnants [i.e. Timaeus of Locri].”
“The next remove must be to the study of Politics; to know the beginning, end, and reasons of political societies; that they may not in a dangerous fit of the commonwealth be such poor, shaken, uncertain reeds, of such tottering conscience, as many of our great counsellers have lately shewn themselves, but steadfast pillars of the State.”
“When all these employments are well conquer’d, then will the choise Histories, heroic poems, and Attic tragedies of stateliest, and most regal arguments, with all the famous Politicall orations offer themselves”
“And now lastly will be the time to read them those organic arts which inable men to discourse and write perspicuously, elegantly, and according to the fitted stile of lofty, mean, or lowly ...”
This refers to what Milton had earlier complained of, that:
‘the usual method of teaching Arts … an old errour of universities not yet well recover’d from the Scholastick grosnesse of barbarous ages, that instead of beginning with Arts most easie, and those be such as are most obvious to the sence, they present their young unmatriculated novices at first coming, with the most intellective abstractions of Logick and metaphysicks …”
He now finishes his sketch on education with the teaching of poetry:
“To which Poetry would be made subsequent, or indeed precedent, as being lesse suttle and fine, but more simple, sensuous, and passionate … This would make them soon perceive what despicable creatures our common rimers and play-writes be, and shew them, what Religious, what glorious and magnificent use might be made of Poetry both in divine and humane things.”
Next, Milton wrote a tract regarding Parliament’s new law to regulate printing:
“Lastly I wrote, on the model of a genuine speech, the Areopagitica, concerning freedom of the press, that the judgement of truth and falsehood, what should be printed and what suppressed, ought not to be in the hands of a few men (and these mostly ignorant and of vulgar discernment) charged with the inspection of books, at whose will or whim virtually everyone is prevented from publishing aught that surpasses the understanding of the mob.”
[‘Second Defence of the English People’, pgs 91-92]
November 1644 – ‘Areopagitica, A Speech of Mr. John Milton for the Liberty of Unlicenc’d Printing, to the Parliament of England’, (40 pgs)
“For this is not the liberty which wee can hope, that no grievance ever should arise in the Commonwealth. That let no man in this World expect; but when complaints are freely heard. Deeply consider’d, and speedily reform’d, then is the utmost bound of civill liberty attain’d, that wise men looke for.” [Areopagitica, pg. 1]
“I deny not, but that it is of greatest concernment in the Church and Commonwealth, to have a vigilant eye how Bookes demeane themselves as well as men; and thereafter to confine, imprison, and do sharpest justice on them as malefactors.
For Books are not absolutely dead things, but doe contain a potencie of life in them to be as active as that soule was whose progeny they are; nay, they do preserve as in a violl the purest efficacie and extraction of that living intellect that bred them. I know they are as lively, and as vigorously productive, as those fabulous Dragons teeth; and being sown up and down, may chance to spring up armed men.
And yet, on the other hand, unlesse warinesse be us’d, as good almost kill a Man as kill a good Book; who kills a Man kills a reasonable creature, Gods Image; but he who destroys a good Booke, kills reason it selfe, kills the Image of God, as it were in the eye. Many a man lives a burden to the earth; but a good Booke is the pretious life-blood of a master spirit, imbalm’d and treasur’d up on purpose to a life beyond life.
’Tis true, no age can restore a life, whereof perhaps there is no great losse; and revolutions of ages doe not oft recover the losse of a rejected truth, for the want of which whole Nations fare the worse.
We should be wary therefore what persecution we raise against the living labours of publick men, how we spill that season’d life of man, preserv’d and stor’d up in Books; since we see a kinde of homicide may be thus committed, sometimes a martyrdome, and if it extend to the whole impression, a kind of massacre; whereof the execution ends not in the slaying of an elemental life, but strikes at that ethereal and fifth essence, the breath of reason it selfe, slaies an immortality rather then a life.” [Ibid, pg. 4]
The next year, 1645, Milton would reconcile with his wife, and their daughter, Anne, would be born in July 1646, and they would settle into their new (bigger) home, with his eighty-two-year-old loving father (who would die in March 1647), along with his two nephews, and with his other students.
And with all that on his mind, in October 1645, Milton would publish his ‘Poems of Mr. John Milton, both English [120 pgs] and Latin [87 pgs], Compos’d at Several Times’ – the poems from his carefree days – at Cambridge, in self-study and of his Italian trip.
Now, with his growing family (his second daughter, Mary would be born October 1648) and with his poems-of-youth now in print for posterity, he would (temporarily) pause his dream of a literary career. But those literary skills would soon be called upon, as he entered into the political arena.
[next week - part 15 - On joining the fight]