Those writings and the life of their author form an oasis in the dreary desert of that epoch. Milton, in his youth, saw, instead of kings and heroes, 'phantasms' and 'histrios' everywhere around him. The strong force of Elizabeth's reign had passed. Bacon, Cecil, and Shakespeare were departed. In the King then seated on the throne, he saw nothing which he could reverence, nothing to which he could cling. Nor could his fealty be given to Charles's adherents. In such men as Clarendon and Laud, what could he see of noble and good? When Cromwell emerged from obscurity, he beheld something real and true. With that reality and that truth he connected himself. He took the only side which an earnest man could take in those times. Bravely and nobly he waged war with his pen for the cause he had espoused; faithfully and truly he taught the mentally blind; till on himself fell a physical blindness, and the brighter period of his life passed away, bearing him to "evil days and evil tongues."
"Yet," he says, in his sonnet to Cyriac Skinner:—
—"yet I argue not
Against Heaven's hand or will, or bate one jot
Of heart or hope; but still bear up, and steer
Right onward. What supports me, dost thou ask?
The conscience, friend, to have lost them overplied
In Liberty's defence, my noble task,
With which all Europe rings from side to side.
This thought might lead me through the world's vain mask,
Content, though blind, had I no better guide."
And now a very different picture presents itself. John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester, was a chosen companion and favourite of Charles the second. We know the wise old proverb about birds of a feather. I think it was here exemplified,
"Nature form'd the poet for the king."
Those who have not seen the uncastrated edition of Rochester's poems can, I suppose, form no adequate conception of what they are. Nor is it necessary that they should.
