by Will Durant
But bowed his comely head
Down, as upon a bed. 3
Marvell became assistant to Milton as Latin secretary to Cromwell, was elected to Parliament in 1659, helped to save Milton from the vengeance of the triumphant royalists, lived through eighteen years of the Restoration, and condemned its immorality, corruption, and incompetence in satires that he carefully refrained from publishing.
John Bunyan’s classics, like Milton’s epics, were written after the Restoration, but both men were molded under the Puritan regime. “I was of a low and inconsiderable generation [birth],” he tells us, “my father’s house being of that rank that is meanest and most despised of all families in the land.” 4 The father was a tinker—a mender of pots and kettles—in the village of Elstow, near Bedford. Thomas Bunyan earned enough to send John to Bedford School, where the boy learned at least to read and write—enough to “search the Scriptures” and write the most famous of all English books. At home he served as apprentice to his father, who taught him the catechism on Sunday afternoons. From the boys of the town he learned to lie and blaspheme; in these arts, he assures us, “I had but few equals.” 5 Moreover, he was guilty of dancing, playing games, and taking a glass of ale in the tavern—all condemned by the Puritans, who in his youth (1628–48) were not yet in power. “I was the very ringleader . . . in all manner of vice and ungodliness.” 6 Such confessions of mighty sins were popular among the Puritans, since they made their reform all the more remarkable, and showed the power of God’s saving grace. As the Puritan teaching spread around him, Bunyan’s deviltry was disturbed by thoughts of death, the Last Judgment, and hell. Once he dreamed that he saw all the sky on fire, and the earth splitting beneath him. He woke in terror, and frightened the family with his cries: “O Lord, have mercy on me! . . . The Day of Judgment is come, and I am not prepared!” 7
At sixteen he was drafted into the Parliamentary army, and he served for thirty months in the Civil War. As a soldier, “I sinned still, and grew more and more rebellious against God, and careless of my own salvation.” 8 Demobilized, he married (1648) an orphan girl whose only dowry was two religious books and her oft-repeated memories of her father’s piety. Bunyan, having succeeded to his father’s shop, supported her by tinkering. He prospered, went to church regularly, and abandoned one by one his youthful sins. Almost daily he read the Bible, whose simple English became his own. Elstow talked of him as a model citizen.
But (he tells us) theological doubts harassed him. He had no conviction that God’s grace had been extended to him, and without that grace he would be damned. He suspected that nearly all the inhabitants of Elstow and Bedford were already lost to everlasting hell. He was troubled with the thought that his Christian beliefs were a geographical accident. “How can you tell,” he asked himself, “but that the Turks had as good scriptures to prove their Mahomet the Saviour, as we have to prove our Jesus is?” 9 “Whole floods of blasphemies against God, Christ, and the Scriptures was poured upon my spirit. . . questions in me against the very being of God and of his only beloved Son, as whether there was in truth a God or Christ? And whether the Holy Scriptures were not rather a fable and cunning story than the holy and pure Word of God?” 10 He concluded that these doubts were due to a devil that had lodged in him. “I beheld the condition of the dog and toad, and counted the estate of everything that God had made far better than this dreadful state of mine . . . , for they had no souls to perish under the everlasting weight of hell or sin, as mine was like to do.” 11
Then one day, as he was walking into the countryside, musing on the wickedness of his heart, he remembered a line of St. Paul’s: “He hath made peace through the blood of His cross.” 12 The thought that Christ had died for him as well as for others grew stronger in his mind, until “I was ready to swoon . . . with solid joy and peace.” 13 He joined a Baptist church in Bedford (1653), was baptized, and entered upon two years of spiritual happiness and tranquillity. In 1655 he moved to Bedford and became a deacon in this church, and in 1657 he was commissioned to preach. His message was Luther’s: that unless a man had firm faith that he had been redeemed from his natural sinfulness by the death of Christ the Son of God, he would—no matter what were his virtues—join the great majority of mankind in going to hell. Only Christ’s divine self-sacrifice could balance the enormity of man’s sins. Children, he thought, should be told this very clearly:
My judgment is that men go the wrong way to learn their children to pray. It seems to me a better way for people to tell their children betimes what cursed creatures they are, how they are under the wrath of God by reason of original and actual sin; also to tell them the nature of God’s wrath, and the duration of misery. 14
Amid these exhortations there was, in Bunyan’s sermons, much wise counsel on the rearing of children and the treatment of employees. Like other preachers he was subjected to heckling by the Quakers, who told him that not the Scriptures but the Inner Light brought understanding and salvation. In 1656 he wrote two books against the troublesome new sect; they replied by accusing him of being a Jesuit, a highwayman, an adulterer, and a witch. 15 Worse difficulties came with the Restoration. The old Elizabethan law was renewed which required all Englishmen to attend Anglican services, and only those; all non-Anglican houses of worship were closed; all non-Anglican ministers were forbidden to preach. Bunyan obeyed to the extent of closing his conventicle in Bedford, but he met his congregation in secret places, and preached to it. He was arrested; he was offered release if he would promise not to preach publicly; he refused; he was committed to Bedford jail (November, 1660). There, with some intervals of limited liberty, he remained for twelve years. At different times the offer of release was renewed, on the same conditions and eliciting the same reply: “If you let me out today I will preach tomorrow.” 16
Perhaps domestic life had become a burden. His first wife had died in 1658, leaving him four children, one blind; and his second wife was pregnant. The neighbors helped to support the family, and Bunyan contributed by making laces in prison and arranging for their sale. His wife and children were allowed to visit him daily, and he was permitted to preach to his fellow prisoners, to leave the jail as he pleased, even to travel to London. 17 But he resumed his clandestine sermons, and was put in closer confinement. In jail he read and reread the Bible, and Foxe’s Book of Martyrs; he warmed his faith at the pyres of Protestant heroes, and reveled in visions of the Apocalypse. He must have been well supplied with pen and paper, for in the first six years of his incarceration he wrote and published eight religious tracts, and one major work, Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners. This is his spiritual autobiography, an almost frightening revelation of the Puritan mind.
In 1666, under Charles II’s first Declaration of Indulgence, he was released. He preached again, and was returned to jail. In 1672 Charles’s second Declaration of Indulgence allowed nonconformist ministers to preach. Bunyan was freed, and was at once elected pastor of his old church. In 1673 this declaration was withdrawn; the old prohibitions were renewed, Bunyan disobeyed them, he was again imprisoned (1675), but he was soon released.
It was in this third and final term that he wrote Part I of The Pilgrim’s Progress from This World to That Which Is to Come. This was published in 1678; Part II followed in 1684. (In an amusing doggerel preface Bunyan claimed that he had written the book to divert himself, without thought of publication.) He presented the story disarmingly in the form of fantasy:
As I walked through the wilderness of this world, I lighted on a certain place where was a Den, and I laid me down in that place to sleep; and as I slept I dreamed a dream. 18
Christian, in this vision, is obsessed with the thought that he must abandon and forget everything else, and seek only Christ and Paradise. He leaves his wife and children, and begins his progress toward the “Celestial City.” He is joined by Hopeful, who expresses the Puritan faith succinctly:
One day I was very said, I think sadder than at any time in my life, and this sadn
ess was through a fresh sight of the greatness and vileness of my sins. And as I was then looking for nothing but hell, and the everlasting damnation of my soul, suddenly, as I thought, I saw the Lord Jesus Christ look down from heaven upon me, and saying “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved.” 19 But I replied, I am a great, a very great, sinner. And he answered, “My grace is sufficient for thee.” . . . And now was my heart full of joy. 20
The pilgrims, after much tribulation and disputation, reach the Celestial City, and we learn what it is they had hoped for so fervently:
And lo, as they entered, they were transfigured, and they had raiment put on that looked like gold. There were also that met them with harps and crowns, and gave them to them—the harps to praise withal, and the crowns in token of honor. . . . And behold, the City shone like the sun; the streets also were paved with gold, and in them walked many men, with crowns on their heads, palms in their hands, and golden harps to sing praises withal. 21
Poor Ignorance, who has followed them haltingly, not having quite the true faith, comes to the gates of the Celestial City, knocks, is asked for his passport, cannot find it, and is bundled off to hell. 22—The story is engagingly told, but sometimes we sympathize with Obstinate, who says of Christian and his fellows, “There is a company of these crazy-headed coxcombs, that, when they take a fancy by the end, are wiser in their own eyes than even men that can render a reason.” 23
The idea of the soul’s pilgrimage from earthly temptations to heavenly bliss was old; so was the medieval allegorical form; presumably Bunyan had read some of these earlier works. 24 They were now forgotten in the extraordinary success of the new story. Fifty-nine editions were printed in its first century of life; it sold 100,000 copies before Bunyan’s death; it has sold millions since; it has been translated into 108 languages; in Puritan America it was in almost every home. Some of its phrases—the Slough of Despond, Vanity Fair, Mr. Worldly Wiseman—entered into common speech. In the twentieth century its popularity has rapidly declined; the Puritan mood is gone; the book is now less a part of man’s belief and furniture; but it is still a well of simple English fresh and clear.
Bunyan wrote some sixty books; they are not required reading today. After his final release in 1675 he became one of the most prominent preachers of his time, the recognized leader of the Baptists in England. He expressed admiration for Charles II, and bade his followers be loyal to the Stuart King as the defender of England against the pope. 25 Three years after Charles declared his deathbed acceptance of Catholicism, Bunyan finished his own career. His end was strangely like Luther’s. A quarrel at Reading having alienated a father and son of whom Bunyan was very fond, he journeyed thither on horseback from Bedford. He reconciled the parties; but on the ride back he was caught in a storm, and was wetted through before he could find shelter on the way. A fever seized him, from which he never recovered. He was buried in the cemetery of the Dissenters at Bunhill Fields, where he still lies, in stone, on his tomb.
II. THE YOUNG POET: 1608–40
Milton’s grandfather was a Roman Catholic, who was fined sixty pounds in 1601 for skipping Anglican services, and who disinherited his son for abandoning the Roman Church. This disowned John Milton earned a good living as a London scrivener—a penman skilled in writing or copying manuscripts, charters, and legal documents. He loved music, composed madrigals, had many musical instruments, including an organ, in his home; and this feeling for music passed down to the poet, who would have agreed that to write well one must have music in his soul and in his mental ear. The mother, Sarah Jeffrey, daughter of a merchant tailor, gave her husband six children, of whom our John was the third. A younger brother, Christopher, became a Stuart royalist and High Church man; John became a Cromwellian Puritan republican. The home in Bread Street was a Puritan establishment, serious and devout but not puritanic; the Renaissance love of the beautiful mingled here with the Reformation passion for the good.
John senior bought realty, prospered, engaged tutors (Puritan) for John junior, and sent him, aged eleven, to St. Paul’s School. There the boy learned Latin, Greek, French, Italian, and some Hebrew. He read Shakespeare, but preferred Spenser; we note in passing that he was much impressed by an English translation of Du Bartas’ La Semaine (1578), an epic describing the creation of the world in seven days.
My appetite for knowledge was so voracious that from twelve years of age I hardly ever left my studies, or went to bed before midnight. This primarily led to my loss of sight. My eyes [like his mother’s] were naturally weak, and I was subject to frequent headaches, which, however, could not chill the ardor of my curiosity, or retard the progress of my improvement. 26
At sixteen he passed to Christ’s College, Cambridge. There his quarrel with a tutor led to fisticuffs. Samuel Johnson was “ashamed to relate what I fear is true, that Milton was one of the last students in either university that suffered the public indignity of corporal correction.” 27 Milton was expelled for a term, then was allowed to return. Already he was writing good poetry. In 1629, aged twenty-one, he celebrated with a magnificent ode “the Morning of Christ’s Nativity,” and a year later he composed a sixteen-line “Epitaph,” which was later accepted for publication in the Second Folio edition (1632) of Shakespeare’s works:
What needs my Shakespeare for his honoured bones
The labour of an Age in pilèd stones,
Or that his hallow’d Reliques should be hid
Under a Star-ypointing Pyramid?
Dear Sonne of Memory, great Heire of Fame,
What need’st thou such dull witnesse of thy Name?*
Milton stayed eight years at Cambridge, taking the bachelor’s degree in 1628, the master’s in 1632; then he left without the usual affection for the scene of one’s college years. His father had expected him to enter the ministry, but the proud youth refused to take the oath of loyalty to the Anglican creed and liturgy:
Perceiving what tyranny had invaded the Church—that he who would take orders must subscribe slave, and take an oath withal, which unless he took with a conscience that would retch, he must either straight perjure or split his faith—I thought it better to prefer a blameless silence before the sacred office of speaking, bought . . . with servitude and forswearing. 29
He retired to his father’s country house at Horton, near Windsor; there, apparently, he was paternally maintained while he pursued his studies, chiefly classical. He became familiar with even the most minor of the Latin authors. He wrote Latin poems that won the praise of a Roman Catholic cardinal; soon he was to make Europe resound with his Latin defenses of Cromwell’s policies. Even when he wrote English prose he wrote Latin, bending the English to classical inversions and convolutions, but achieving a strange and fascinating sonority.
Probably it was at Horton, amid the lush fields and greenery of an English countryside, that he composed (1632?) the companion pieces that celebrated in turn the careless joys and melancholy moods of his passing youth. Almost every line of “L’Allegro” cries out to be sung. Allegro is the “daughter fair, . . . buxom, blithe, and debonair,” born of “Zephyr with Aurora playing.” Everything in the rural scene now delights the poet: the lark startling the night, the cock strutting before his dames, the hounds leaping at the blowing of the hunter’s horn, the sun rising “in flames and amber light,” the singing milkmaid and the nibbling flocks, the dance of youth and maiden on the grass, the evening by the hearth or at the theater.
If Jonson’s learnèd sock be on,
Or sweetest Shakespeare, Fancy’s child,
Warble his native wood-notes wild;
and music
Untwisting all the chains that tie
The hidden soul of harmony; . . .
These delights if thou canst give,
Mirth, with thee I mean to live.
Here was as yet no grim or joyless Puritan, but a healthy English youth in whose veins ran some ichor of the Elizabethan bards.
But there came at times anot
her mood, when these pleasures seemed trivial to the pensive mind remembering tragedy, seeking significance, and finding in philosophy no answers, but only questions unfelt before. Then “II Penseroso,” the thoughtful one, walks unseen
To behold the wand’ring Moon
Riding near her highest noon,
Like one that had been led astray
Through the Heav’ns’ wide pathless way;
or he sits solitary by the fire
Where glowing embers through the room
Teach light to counterfeit a gloom,
Far from all resort of mirth,
Save the cricket on the hearth;
or he is in “some high lonely tower,” humbled by the stars, turning Plato’s leaves, and wondering where heaven is—
What worlds, or what vast regions hold
The immortal mind that hath forsook
Her mansion in this fleshly nook
—or recalling the griefs of lovers and the sad deaths of kings. Then better than dour philosophy are the “studious cloister’s pale” of the great cathedral, its storied windows and shadowed light;
There let the pealing organ blow
To the full-voiced choir below,
In service high, and anthems clear,
As may with sweetness, through mine ear,
Dissolve me into ecstasies,
And bring all Heav’n before mine eyes.
These are the pleasures that come to “the pensive one,” and if they seem tied to Melancholy, then with Melancholy will the poet live. In these two lovely poems Milton reveals himself at twenty-four: a youth atremble with life’s beauties and unashamed of happiness, but already touched with puzzled reveries on life and death, feeling in himself the conflict of religion with philosophy.
