Platonica quemadodum Aristoteles intellexit," (" Of the Platonic Idea, as Aristotle understood it.") In what year or in what circumstances it was composed, there is nothing to indicate; but it may be inserted here as an appendage to the series of the prose exercises. It is interesting as showing the nature of Milton's affection for Plato and his philosophy. The following is a literal version: "Say, ye guardian goddesses of the sacred groves; and thou, O Memory, thrice blessed mother of the nine deities; and thou, Eternity, who reclinest at leisure in thy immense and far distant cave, preserving the archives and the fixed laws of Jove, and the annals of heaven and the anniversaries of the gods; - who was that Original after whose type cunning Nature shaped the human race, that eternal, incorrupt being, the coëval of the skies, one and universal, the copy of God? Not as the twin brother of virgin Pallas does he dwell, an internal product, in the mind of Jove; but, although of more general essence than Nature, yet he exists apart in the fashion of one distinct being, and, wonderful to tell, is bound within a definite local space-whether, as an eternal companion of the stars, he roams the ranks of the tenfold heaven, or inhabits that part of the moon's globe which neighbors the earth, or lies sluggish among the souls waiting for the bodies they are to enter by the oblivious waters of Lethe, or, mayhap, in some remote region of the earth, stalks, a huge giant, the archetype of man, and, larger than Atlas, the sustainer of the stars, raises his lofty head to the terror of the gods. Never did even the Dircæan Augur [Tiresias of Thebes], on whom his blindness conferred the gift of inner sight, behold him in secret vision; never did the offspring of Pleione [Mercury], descending in the silent night, show him to the sagacious prophet-choir: never was he known to the Assyrian priest, though he commemorates the long ancestry of ancient Ninus, and primeval Belus, and renowned Osiris; nay, nor has thrice great Hermes, glorious with his triple name, indicated, with all his occult science, any such object to the worshippers of Isis. But thou, perennial ornament of the groves of Academe, if thou wert really the first to introduce this monster of the fancy into the schools, wilt surely either straightway recall the banished poets into thy republic, as being the biggest fabler of them all, or wilt thyself migrate beyond the walls of the city thou hast founded. "At, tu perenne ruris Academi decus, (Hæc monstra si tu primus induxti scholis,) Jam jam poetas urbis exules tuæ This poem of Milton was reprinted, Warton tells us, in a burlesque book of the year 1715, as "a specimen of unintelligible metaphysics;" but the drift of it, it is to be hoped, will be clear enough to all who have heard of Plato and his ideas. The phrase "as understood by Aristotle," in the title, seems to indicate that Milton did not mean to commit himself to the representation as an absolutely fair one. The reader will now, I think, agree with me that these Academic exercises of Milton possess a singular autobiographic value. They throw light upon much connected with Milton's career at Cambridge the extent and nature of his reading; his habits and tastes as a student; the relation in which he stood to the University system of his time, and to the new intellectual tendencies which were gradually affecting that system. They also settle in the most conclusive manner the fact, independently ascertained, that Milton passed through two stages in his career at the University-a stage of decided unpopularity, in his own College at least, which lasted till about 1628; and a final stage of triumph, when his powers were recognized, and he was treated, as he himself states, with quite unusual respect by the authorities of the House and by all who knew him. These same essays, however, taken along with the materials previously exhibited, afford us the means of now attempting, by way of summary, some more exact sketch of Milton's character as a whole, at the point of his life to which we have brought him. very When Milton left Cambridge in July, 1632, he was twenty-three years and eight months old. In stature, therefore, at least, he was already whatever he was to be. "In stature," he says himself at a later period when driven to speak on the subject, "I confess I am not tall, but still of what is nearer to middle height than to little; and what if I were of little; of which stature have often been great men both in peace and war - though why should that be called little which is great enough for virtue? ("Staturâ, fateor, non sum procerâ, sed quæ mediocri tamen quàm parvæ propior sit; sed quid si parvâ, quâ et summi sæpe tum pace tum bello viri fuere -quanquam parva cur dicitur, quæ ad virtutem satis magna est?") This is precise enough; but we have Aubrey's words to the same effect. "He was scarce so tall as I am," says Aubrey; to which, to make it more intelligible, he appends this marginal note: "Qu. Quot feet I am high? Resp. of middle stature.” — i. e. Milton was a little under middle height. "He had light brown hair," continues Aubrey,-putting the word "abrown" (" auburn ") in the margin by way of synonym for "light brown;"-"his complexion exceeding fair; oval face; his eye a dark gray." As Milton himself says that his complexion, even in later life, was so much "the reverse of bloodless or pallid," that, on this ground alone, he was generally taken for ten years younger than he really was, Au 1 Defensio Secunda (written 1654): Works, VI. 266. |