Having your poem so much loved that it was even quoted by the King was no guarantee that you wouldn't starve to death. Ask Samuel Butler, the author of Hudibras. Samuel Butler may not actually have starved to death. But he did die in a condition of want, so much so that future poets equated his death to a starving death.
Butler died in the reign of Charles the Second, who took the throne when it was restored to England, after the usurpation and protectorship of Oliver Cromwell.
If Samuel Johnson, in his Lives of the Poets, criticizes the harshness of Puritan life which took place under Cromwell, he doesn't seem to be much more positive about licentiousness of life under Charles II. As well as poets like Samuel Butler starving, other poets died from simply living too rowdy a life. Many people, including many of the poets, were addicted to gambling.
It certainly seems, from my understanding of Johnson's view, like the only way to live well after the throne was restored was to have been close to the people who had usurped the throne in the first place.
As far as I can tell, the biggest success story of the first volume of Johnson's Lives is the story of Edmund Waller. Waller, being born in 1605, was also, as far as I can tell, the oldest poet in the first volume (and, therefore, likely the whole opus) of Johnson's Lives.
Waller's father left his family with an annual estate of three-thousand pounds. This is by far the handsomest living that any of the poets has been born with, as far as I can tell. But not only was Waller born well-off. He was also a cousin to Oliver Cromwell.
From the age of eighteen, Waller served at Court. Through his life, he ended up either serving or knowing King James I, Charles I, Oliver Cromwell, and Charles II.
At Court, Waller heard King James ask, "My Lords, cannot I take my subjects' money, when I want it, without all this formality of parliament?"
Before the Civil Wars, Waller led a relatively calm life. He married into more money than he already had. His wife died while in the birth of Waller's second child. Waller spent some time wooing ladies of the court, but wasn't very successful.
Waller mainly wooed women through his poetry. This poetry is largely the poetry by which Waller is known. It's known for its smoothness, elegance, and gaiety. And Johnson believes that Waller's poetry did a lot to give a sense of taste to English poetry.
But it all seems, to me, like it stands a pretty good chance of being all fluff. Waller names one of his women "Sacharissa," or "Sugary." His writes poems on the occasion of being given a pen or having a card torn up by the Queen.
Nevertheless, one of his statements, praising the Queen, has the kind of outrageous style that Johnson finds disgusting and I find tremendously interesting. Waller says the Queen "saves lovers by cutting off hope, as gangrenes are cured by lopping the limb."
In one poem, Waller expresses to a lover his wish that he may come to her, "And banquet sometimes on thy face," which kind of reminds me of something Hannibal Lecter would do.
After being spurned by all these Ladies, Waller ended up marrying a woman who seemed to make him happy. They had thirteen children together.
Waller took a couple of interesting political stands in his life. In 1640, when King Charles I made a call for money to landowners, Waller, representing Admondesham in parliament, made a speech against giving the King money. Waller's arguments were based on those of the great Richard Hooker. Waller stated that before anybody gave the King money, the King should address the grievances of his people.
But Waller soon found himself standing up for the King, and for Episcopacy, when parliament was trying to abolish Episcopacy. Waller gave a very good speech for retaining, but reforming Episcopacy in England. He then went home and, as a landowner, pulled together the money that the King had requested, so that the King could form an army.
The Civil Wars had started, and now the Puritans were demanding money for building an army of their own, against the King. Waller, trying to do what he could to maintain what he believed was the rightful order of the throne, created a plot to spread propaganda that would quell sedition and keep people from funding an army against the King.
Little known to Waller, however, another man, Sir Nicholas Crispe, was forming a plan to stage a provocation in London. This provocation would encourage the King's friends to stand up and fight for the King. Crispe would provide these newly inspired men with a leader.
A few of the main people involved in Waller's plot were also involved in Crispe's plot, although the two plots were largely unknown to each other. In fact, Waller had no idea of Crispe's plot.
Nevertheless, the two plots were discovered, with Waller at the center of them. Waller, who'd so bravely stood up against, and then for, the King, now confessed absolutely everything to his captors. Johnson paints a picture of Waller grovelling and snivelling, as he gives away friend after friend, including a brother-in-law, who was eventually hung near the front door of his own house.
But the more powerful people involved in the plot were let go. And Waller himself was allowed, after having paid out almost all his estate in bribe-money, to "recollect himself in another country."
Waller went to France for a while, then came back to England out of necessity. He needed to live off the remains of his estate.
Thankfully Waller was the cousin of Cromwell, who granted Waller clemency and even held private audience with Waller on a number of occasions. Waller repaid Cromwell with a poem. Many people believe this is Waller's greatest poem.
But when Cromwell was defeated and Charles II restored the throne to England, Waller wrote a poem in praise of Charles II.
The poem in praise of Charles II wasn't as great as the poem in praise of Cromwell. Even Charles II noticed this. King Charles asked Waller why the poem in praise of Cromwell was better. Waller replied that poets write fiction better than truth, and that since Cromwell's poem was a fabulous fiction, and Charles' poem an honest truth, it couldn't help but be less skilfully made.
Johnson feels this is a silly thing to claim. But he figures it's in character for Waller:
"Poets, indeed, profess fiction; but the legitimate end of fiction is the conveyance of truth; and he that has flatter ready for all whom the vicissitudes of the world happen to exalt, must be scorned, as a prostitued mind, that may retain the glitter of wit, but has lost the dignity of virtue."
And Johnson has another argument for the difference in the qualities of the poems to Cromwell and Charles:
"The Congratulations [of Charles] is, indeed, not inferior to the Panegyrick [of Cromwell], either by decay of genius, or for want of diligence; but because Cromwell had done much, and Charles had done little. Cromwell wanted nothing to raise him to heroick excellence but virtue; and virtue his poet thought himself at liberty to supply. Charles had yet only the merit of struggling without success, and suffering without despair. A life of escapes and indigence could supply poetry with no splendid images."
This statement casts a heavy shadow over the character of Charles II. The reign of the Puritans was harsh for the people living under it. In fact, it was absurdly stringent. But the reign of Charles II, through Johnson's imagination of it, was nothing but licentiousness for the rich and misery for the poor. Unfortunately the poets were often among the poor.
Waller was not one of the poor. As soon as parliament was restored, Waller was employed to represent various lands. He represented there basically until the end of his life. He was known for his speeches, which were either filled with gaiety or applaudable arguments. But applause, Johnson claims, was the main motive for any speech Waller gave in parliament. He didn't make speeches for any altruistically political reasons.
What's kind of interesting about this, though, is that Johnson doesn't seem to make any comment about parliament, or government in general, being, in itself, a form of theatre. If Johnson had seen government as theatre, and had seen what general applause Waller had been getting for his speeches, he might have paid a bit more attention to them. Johnson seems to say, over and over again, throughout his Lives, that public approbation, especially in the theatre, should be the writer's first concern, and that technique should aim toward public entertainment.
Waller died when he was eighty-two years old. Johnson's telling of the story of Waller's last days is chillingly told here:
"Towards the decline of his life, he bought a small house, with a little land, at Coleshill; and said, 'he should be glad to die, like the stage, where he was roused.' This, however, did not happen. When he was at Beaconsfield, he found his legs grown tumid; he went to Windsor, where Sir Charles Scarborough then attended the kind, and requested him, as both a friend and a physician, to tell him, 'What that swelling meant.' 'Sir,' answered Scarborogh, 'Your blood will run no longer.' Waller repeated some lines of Virgil, and went home to die."
But after Waller's life, it's hard to find, in Johnson's first volume of the Lives, a story with more success written in it. Many of the poets were, at one time or another, familiar with one or more of the Kings in this period of history. But none were as fortunate, overall, as Waller. Of course, Waller's success had more to do with being born rich, marrying rich, and holding seats in parliament, than it had to do with being a poet.
In fact, if Waller were only a poet, his life story would likely have been a lot more like Dryden's. Dryden, whose life takes up about half the first volume of the Lives, lived from 1631 to 1710. And, from at least 1658, he was constantly writing something. He was writing because he needed the money. And his writing never really gathered that much money for him.
In 1663, Dryden started writing for the stage. And, for a long while, Dryden wrote mostly for the stage. The amount of work he produced for the stage is pretty incredible. Johnson largely dislikes the work of the stage. He calls many of Dryden's plays immoral. In fact, some of Dryden's plays were immoral enough to get taken off the stage. Johnson bewails the times when he mentions the success of Dryden's plays -- the public likes immoral entertainment.
But Dryden was also writing other works. He wrote occasional poems. He wrote Latin translations. And he wrote criticism, including, in 1668, his Essay on Dramatic Poetry, which Johnson really considers to be the birth of English poetic criticism. In addition to this great work of criticism, Dryden wrote prefaces to many of his plays, which, themselves, were more treatises of poetic criticism than actual statements on the dramatic works.
All through the reign of Charles II, Dryden experienced financial difficulty. This was partly due to the fact that the people in charge of distributing Charles' funds often were lax, if not altogether negligent in their duties. As I understand it, Dryden even had to harangue an Exchequer once, after not having received six months of the salary due to him as Poet Laureate.
However, Johnson also implies that Dryden's constant state of want was at least partly due to Dryden simply lived beyond his means:
"Whether by the world's neglect or his own imprudence I am afraid that the greatest part of his life was passed in exigencies. Such outcries were surely never uttered but in severe pain. Of his supplies or his expenses no probable estimate can now made. Except the salary of the Laureate [which was one-hundred pounds and a trice of wine a year, a pretty good sum], to which King James added the office of the Historiographer, perhaps with some additional emoluments, his whole revenue seems to have been casual; and it is well known that he seldom lives frugally, who lives by chance. Hope is always liberal, and they that trust per promises make little scruple of revelling today on the profits of tomorrow."
Nevertheless, Dryden's state of want doesn't seem to be due to intemperance, in the same sense as the intemperance of the other poets landed them in troubles. He does seem to have gotten more into drink in his later years. But he was never, as far as I can tell, a real abuser of alcohol. And he didn't seem to be addicted to gambling, like many people were, as Johnson tells the story, under the reign of Charles II.
But as far as I can tell, Dryden's life gains most of its interest, for Johnson, from the fact that Dryden was so focused on his art. And Dryden would likely not have been as interested in his art, according to Johnson, if he'd had more money. For, as Johnson likes to remind us, Dryden was no lover of work.
Dryden died in poverty. In fact, he died from gangrene in his legs. A weird story attends his funeral. A funeral, with great pomp, had been put together for him, but was diverted by a group of drunken Lords who wanted to get Dryden buried at Westminster Abbey. They caused a big scene, and stopped the first funeral from happening. It took three weeks, during which a number of arguments took place between the Lords and Dryden's family, before Dryden's body was finally buried in Westminster Abbey.
Again, looking back on this epidsode, which is not a completely verifiable story, Johnson laments the character of Charles II's reign:
"Supposing the story to be true we may remark that the gradual change of manners, though imperceptible in the process, appears great when different times, and those not very distant, are compared. If at this time a young drunken Lord should interrupt the pompous regularity of a magnificent funeral, what would be the event, but that he should be jostled out of the way, and compelled to be quiet?"
However, most interesting to me in Johnson's relation of the story of Dryden is the story of the rise and fall of Elkanah Settle. In 1663, Dryden became the greatest stage-writer of his time. But a few years later, Dryden's superior position was challenged by a man named Elkanah Settle, whose play The Empress of Morocco was wildly successful.
Dryden was terribly jealous of Settle's success. In some ways, who could blame him? As the most popular stage-writer of his time, Dryden was making only a little money from his writings. If someone took the top spot from Dryden, what would happen to Dryden's money? So, possibly just out of fear, Dryden may have felt like he had to condemn Settle's work.
Dryden wrote a scathing criticism of Settle's work. Dryden's criticisms of Settle were often overdone and, in my opinion, absurd, completely unreasonable.
Settle wrote a vindication of his work, and criticized Dryden's work at the same time. In my opinion, Settle's criticisms of Dryden are much more practical and reasonable than Dryden's criticisms of Settle.
In 1681, Dryden wrote his famous work Absalom and Achitophel, a poem in praise of King Charles II, comparing King Charles to King David. Of this poem, Johnson says:
"Of this poem, in which personal satire was applied in the support of publick principles, and in which therefore every mind was interested, the reception was eager, and the sale so large that my father, an old bookseller, told me he had no known it equalled but by Sacheverell's trial."
What Johnson takes a jab at here, Settle had taken an opportunity to attack, in a poem of his own. Settle was quite successful.
In that same year, Dryden wrote another poem, The Medal. Johnson writes: "Elkanah Settle, who had answered Absalom, appeared with equal courage in opposition to The Medal, and published an answer called The Medal Reversed, with so much success in both encounters that he left the palm doubtful, and divided the suffrages of the nation."
However, Settle had been backed, while fighting for his popularity against Dryden, by an Earl. It appeared later on that this Earl had grown jealous of the popularity Settle was starting to gather. So he took his support away from Settle. Settle's fortune dwindled. Settle was reduced to poverty. And he died, basically forgotten by all, in a hospital.
Johnson, however, seems to wish for a better fate to have befallen Settle:
"The man whose works have not yet been thought to deserve the care of collecting them; who died forgotten in an hospital... -- might with truth have had inscribed upon his stone -- 'Here Lies the Rival and Antagonist of Dryden.'"
Another rival to Dryden on the stage was Thomas Otway. And, as Dryden rivalled Settle on the stage, Otway rivalled Settle in tragic poverty.
Thomas Otway first made his appearance on the stage as an actor for one of Aphra Behn's plays. But he wasn't a very good actor. He turned his attentions to writing, and, in 1675, when he was 24 years old, wrote his first play, Alcibiades.
He seemed to be successful from the moment he started writing plays. And his plays remained popular all the way into Johnson's day. Johnson says of Otway's play, "Venice regained":
"The striking passages are in every mouth; and the publick seems to judge rightly of the faults and excellencies of this play, that it is the work of a man not attentive to decency nor zealous for virtue; but of one who conceived forcibly by consulting nature from his own breast."
Nevertheless, Otway's plays were even more dissolute and licentious than Dryden's. And, in Johnson's time, Otway's play Friendship in Fashion was too much for the audience:
"Whatever might be its first reception [in 1678], was, upon its revival at Drury-Lane, in 1749, hissed off the stage for immorality and obscenity."
But, unlike Dryden, who lived a somewhat quiet life, writing in the daytime, dining at mid-day, and spending the evenings at Will's Coffee-House, acting as an arbiter of dramatic questions, Otway partook in the general character of his times. His life was just as rowdy, it appears, as his plays. This made him popular, as Johnson implies:
"Want of morals or decency did not in these days exclude any man from the company of the wealthy and the gay if he brought with him any powers of entertainment; and Otway is said to have been at this time a favorite companion of the dissolute wits."
But these wealthy people would drop a man, as well, as soon as they were no longer entertained by him. And Otway was often left, empty-handed, as the parties ended and he was no longer of any use.
Despite his success on the stage, Otway was left destitute at the age of thirty-four. Two accounts of his final end are related by Johnson.
In one account, which seems to be more widely related, Otway, loaded down with debt, ended up boarding in a public house on Tower Hill. Otway was so poor, he hadn't eaten in days. As Johnson says: "He went out, as is reported, almost naked, in the rage of hunger, and, finding a gentleman in a neighboring coffee-house, asked him for a shilling. The gentleman gave him a guinea, and Otway going away bought a roll, and was choked with the first mouthful."
The other story that Johnson tells finds Otway in the same state of destitution. Only, in this story, one of Otway's fellow boarders on Tower Hill had been attacked by a thief. Otway pursued and apprehended the thief. Then, hot from running, Otway drank from a river. He contracted some sickness from the river and died.
In either case, Otway died at a point in his life where he couldn't even afford to eat.
Otway's story is probably the most tragic of the first volume of the Lives. However, the story of the Earl of Rochester is likely the most lurid.
John Wilmot, who later became the Earl of Rochester, was an incredible prodigy. At the age of twelve, he entered Wadham College. At the age of 14, he attained his M.A.
From his academic achievements, Wilmot went on to display military bravery. He fought at Bergen for the Earl of Sandwich, and distinguished himself in a sea-battle. As Johnson relates:
"Sir Edward Spragge, who in the heat of the engagement, having a message of reproof to send to one of his captains, could find no man ready to carry it but Wilmot, who, in an open boat, went and returned amidst the storm of shot."
From these auspicious beginnings, Wilmot made his way to Court, where, living as a courtier, for Charles II, he took on the deplorable manners which, according to my understanding of Johnson, natually became the Court in those days.
Johnson's distaste for this age seems reasonable. Probably the most repugnant story Johnson relates in this volume relates, not to Wilmot, but to Samuel Butler. The Duke of Buckingham had actually given an offer to Samuel Butler to be the Duke's Secretary, while the Duke was Chancellor of Cambridge. Butler a friend were supposed to meet the Duke at the Roebuck. And so they did. However, at the Roebuck, as Wycherley tells the story:
"Mr. Butler and his friend attended accordingly: the Duke joined them; but as the d---l would have it, the door of the room where they sat was open, and his Grace, who had seated himself near it, observing a pimp of his acquaintance (the creature too was a knight) trip by with a brace of Ladies, immediately quitted his engagement, to follow another kind of business, at which he was more ready than in doing good offices to men of desert, though no one was better qualified than he, both in regard to his fortune and understanding, to protect them; and from that time to the day of his death, poor Butler never found the least effect of his promise."
But, looking back to our current subject, Johnson says that John Wilmot, later the Earl of Rochester, after coming to court and being introduced to the manners there, took to the teachings quite well, and "was for four or five years together continually drunk."
Wilmot would conduct all kinds of "gay frolicks," which are not widely recorded, and which Johnson says history is better off forgetting.
Which, of course, makes me want to find them all...
One of Wilmot's "frolicks" was, as Johnson says, that he dressed as other people so that he could get away with having love affairs with people who were considered to be "low" at that time. However, while disguising himself in these ways, he'd often act the parts he played, regardless of what they were, so well that not even his friends would be able to tell who he was, and were amazed to hear that they had actually been in Wilmot's presence.
In one of his guises, Wilmot even lived for a while as a practising physician.
Another of Wilmot's pastimes was writing libellous poems. He would employs footmen to follow Ladies he knew were carrying on intrigues. The footmen would gather what information they could while eavesdropping. Once the footmen had passed Wilmot enough information about a number of Ladies, Wilmot would retire into th woods for a couple months. Returning, he'd have a whole body of literature libelling various notable Ladies for their lascivious actitivies.
Again -- this sounds exactly like something I'd like to read.
Nevertheless, Johnson wasn't impressed. And his discussion of Rochester's career is almost like a Satanic opposite of the praiseworthy-checklists he spouted off while discussing Milton:
"Thus in a course of drunken gaiety and gross sensuality, with intervals of study perhaps more criminal, with an avowed contempt of all decency and order, a total disregard for every moral, and a resolute denial of every religious obligation, he lived worthless and useless, and blazed out his youth and health in lavish voluptuousness, till, at the age of one and thirty, he had exhausted the fund of life, and reduced himself to a state of weakness and decay."
However, Rochester met Dr. Burnet, who helped Rochester mend his ways and take a more Christian mindset. Rochester maintained this mindset until he died at the age of thirty-four.
Charles Sackville, later Earl of Dorset, was also a member of Charles II's dissolute court. He was, like Rochester, a favorite of Charles. And he was part of the same circle of riotous friends as the Earl of Rochester.
These friends had the habit of stripping naked and running through the town, harrassing people. This habit eventually got Sackville in trouble. Sedley, one of Dorset's circle, got drunk at The Cock, in Barn-Street. He stripped naked, ran into the street, and harangued the crowd. The crowd wasn't taking it on this night. They forced Sedley, Dorset, and the rest back into The Cock. Dorset and his friends were arrested.
Dorset wasn't punished, but Sedley was fined five-hundred pounds. So Dorset and his friends went all around town, begging for the money, until they had the five-hundred pounds they needed for the fine.
However, Dorset shaped up not long after all this. He fought in the Dutch War in 1665, and even composed one of his most famous songs, tradition says, on the night before the great Battle of June 3rd, where Britain took eighteen Dutch ships and destroyed fourteen more.
When King James II took the throne, Dorset was given good notices. However, James' reign was soon seen to be a bad rule, and Dorset took part in the revolution against him.
King William succeeded King James, and Dorset was just as popular with him as he had been with James and Charles. However, as Johnson says, Dorset "happened to be among those that were tossed with the king in an open boat sixteen hours, in very rough and cold weather, on the coast of Holland." Dorset got sick and passed away in January of 1706.
Wentworth Dillon, the Earl of Roscommon is known, like Waller, for having improved the elegance of English poetry, though not so much as Waller had.
Roscommon's family's lands were in Ireland. Roscommon was removed from his lands when he was young, as the wars were making life there unsafe. Interestingly, Roscommon seems to have had a telepathic episode, where he saw that his father had died. Johnson included this episode of paranormal perception. He seems to have thought that "by preserving such relations that we may at last judge how much they are to be regarded.
After graduating from Caen in Ireland, Roscommon went to Italy. After Charles II restored the throne, Roscommon went to England. Roscommon was made Captain of a band of pensioners. Here Roscommon became addicted to gambling. Roscommon's gambling addiction led not only to poverty, but also to plenty of physical fights.
At one time, Roscommon's family lands in Ireland came into dispute. So Roscommon had to go back home to see to matters. The Duke of Ormond gave Roscommon the employment of Captain of Guards while he was in Ireland.
However, while in Dublin, Roscommon succumbed again to his gambling habit. He had a fight with three men, who then decided to stalk him and attack him near where he was staying for the night. All three men assailed Roscommon. Thankfully another man was nearby and took Roscommon's side. Roscommon and the man took care of two of the attackers, while the third fled.
Roscommon asked the Duke of Ormond to make this helping man Captain of the Guards in his place. The Duke of Ormond allowed this. Three years later this man died. Roscommon took the position back until he left Ireland.
In England, Roscommon, now having mended his ways, took on various offices for the Crown and court. He also made attempts at forming a society for refining the English language. Roscommon also wrote an Essay on Translated verse. John Dryden supported Roscommon in the attempts to form a society for refining the English language. But the attempts weren't very successful.
In this connection, Johnson, instead of only railing the times of Charles II, actually says something terrific about the times he himself lived in:
"We live in an age in which it is a kind of publick sport to refuse all respect that cannot be enforced. The edicts of an English academy would probably be read by many, only that they might be sure to disobey them."
Roscommon's dreams were further hampered when King James' accession to the throne was accompanied by an almost complete suppression of literary institutions. Roscommon saw that things in England were only going to get worse under King James.
So Roscommon decided to go back to Italy, to Rome. Roscommon seems to have thought that King James' Catholic leanings would make Rome a good place to take refuge. Johnson relates that Roscommon "alleged that it ws best to sit near the chimney when the chamber smoked, a sentence of which the application seems not very clear."
However, as Johnson states, Roscommon's "departure was delayed by the gout, and he was so impatient either of hindrance or pain that he submitted himself to a French empirick, who is said to have repelled the disease into his bowels." And, from this, Roscommon died, in 1684.
But of all the poets in the first volume of Johnson's Lives, the strangest one to me seems to have been John Philips. He seems to have been a golden child -- the only one in the whole volume. He must have been quite beautiful. At least his hair was. For as Johnson says:
"It is related that while he was at school he seldom mingled in play with the other boys, but retired to his chamber, where his sovereign pleasure was to sit hour after hour while his hair was combed by somebody, whose service he found means to procure."
During these hours of sitting and having his hair combed, Philips would read John Milton's Paradise Lost.
Philips later went to Christ Church, Oxford, where he was recognized as a genius. He studied phsyic and loved botany. But he also wrote poetry
The work for which he is most famous is called The Splendid Shilling, a kind of parody of Milton centered around a shilling-piece. This work itself created a whole genre of imitation-poems. He went on to write the poem Cider, about cultivating trees. For all its faults (and Johnson can find faults), Johnson seems to have liked this poem.
Philips suffered from consumption and asthma, and he died in 1708.
Philips also gets praise that not a lot of poets get from Johnson, after Milton: "Philips has always been praised without contradiction as a man modest, blameless, and pious; who bore narrowness of fortune without discontent, and tedious and painful maladies without impatioence; beloved by those that knew him, but not ambitious to be known. He was probably not formed for a wider circle."
It strange to imagine that there was this almost ethereal being floating around England at the same time that all this riotous behavior was going on. But I think Philips matches the environment somehow: an enshrined golden-boy. A mild genius, cloistered with another boy combing his hair, like a Lady and her Maid. And, after producing a few sweet works of genius, the boy passes away from a disease of the breath. His spirit leaves him.
Showing posts with label poetry. Show all posts
Showing posts with label poetry. Show all posts
Thursday, November 3, 2011
Saturday, October 29, 2011
The Usurper's Illustrious Secretary -- Johnson's Milton
One of the very few moments of levity in Samuel Johnson's essay on John Milton is when Johnson asks why every biographer has to make such a big deal about every single house that John Milton ever stayed in. It's almost as if, Johnson says, the act of reciting the places where Milton stayed is a ritual in itself.
If a biographer were to forget one of Milton's houses, Johnson guesses, that biographer would be charged by the other biographers with something akin to heresy.
This is one of the few points in Johnson's narrative of Milton's life where Johnson seems a little bit perplexed by his subject. Nevertheless, even before John Milton died, in 1674, his birthplace was already an attraction for foreign visitors to London. People would come to see Milton's birthplace and then go visit Milton himself.
Another point where Johnson seems to be a bit perplexed is where Milton seems to escape punishment for serving Oliver Cromwell, once Cromwell has been executed and King Charles II returns to London to restore the throne.
In 1649, Oliver Cromwell executed King Charles I. John Milton, whose public activity had been scanty at best, on either side of the Civil War, had become Cromwell's Latin Secretary. Cromwell, who had gained such strength in England at first by stating that he was helping the country fight against Monarchy and for Democracy, now dissolved parliament and took on sole rulership of England, basically as -- not a King, but an Emperor, really -- but under the title of "Protector."
Nevertheless, John Milton, who seems to have been against Monarchy and for Liberty, remained under Cromwell as his Latin Secretary. When certain groups in England had protested against Cromwell's execution of Charles I, Milton actually wrote an essay to try and get the people back on Cromwell's side. Charles II wrote an essay called "Defensio Regis," stating that murdering Royalty is abominable, regardless of the situation. Milton wrote an argument against Charles II's essay, again defending Cromwell for having committed the execution.
In addition, once Cromwell was firmly entrenched as "Protector" of England, John Milton, being Latin Secretary, wrote many of Cromwell's resolutions (official resolutions at that time being written in the basically international language of Latin).
But Milton didn't just defend Cromwell's actions against Royalty and write the laws promoting the "Protector's" policies; he also wrote propaganda-like tracts of praise for Cromwell. In one of these essays Milton even said, "Nothing is more pleasing to God or more agreeable to reason than that the highest mind should have the sovereign power."
This in itself is rather a strange thing to hear. Milton had for most of his life been staunchly against authority. Johnson says, "Milton's republicanism was, I am agraid, founded in an envious hatred of greatness, and a sullen desire of independence; in petulance impatient of controul, and pride disdainful of superiority."
And yet Milton was willing to defend everything Cromwell did.
When Cromwell was killed in 1658 and it became very evident that Monarchy would be restored to England with the return of Charles II to the throne, it also became evident that those people who had been involved with the execution of Charles I would likely be put to death.
England was surprised with Charles II's announcement of the Act of Oblivion, which pardoned everybody who had sided with the rebels, except for those who had been directly involved with the execution of Charles I. However, many people who had had less of a role than Milton in defending the execution were being put to death. Milton was in danger of his life.
Milton had escaped. But he was in bad health, suffering from the gout, and already blind. He couldn't have hidden, Johnson argues, very effectively. And yet he wasn't really pursued, and, except for a rather minor run-in with the law, he was allowed to remain in the shadows until it finally became clear that he would not be penalized at all for anything he'd done.
Johnson assumes that the reason Milton had gotten away with everything he'd gotten away with was simply because he was so talented, as well as being blind and in poor health. Johnson writes, "Something may be reasonably ascribed to veneration and compassion -- to veneration of his abilities and compassion for his distresses, which made it fit to forgive his malice for his learning."
English veneration may be the reason that Milton was let go. It may also have been Milton's international reputation. At the age of thirty, Milton spend fifteen months travelling through Europe, going through France, Italy, and Switzerland, and receiving magnificent acclaim wherever he went. He really was a celebrity. And it seems that he was remembered this way through the years.
But I also think that Milton was let go because of what he stood for. Not his republicanism, or his support for the acts of Cromwell, but the ideals of life that manifested themselves in Milton's career and in what is arguably his greatest work, Paradise Lost.
Milton may actually have taken more time on his travels through Europe. In fact, he had probably, on his travels, been hoping to set himself up for constant work as some kind of an ambassador. He was, among the English, the most elegant speaker of Latin. And Latin was, at that time, basically the international language. But because of the Civil War in England, Milton decided to return home.
However, once Milton returned home, he didn't join an army. He didn't even commit himself to civil service. In fact, he set up a boarding school and spent the years up until the execution of Charles I as a schoolmaster. This is a fact which Johnson relates to us with an air of characteristic disgust.
But, as much as I think Johnson would like us to think he is disgusted with Milton's choice to be a schoolmaster, it seems pretty obvious throughout Johnson's essay that Johnson believes Milton would not have been able to write Paradise Lost had he not given himself opportunity after opportunity for taking the leisure to study just about any subject that had piqued his curiosity. Milton had to develop a colossal mind in order to write the colossal Paradise Lost.
However, I also think there was a kind of ideal developing -- domestication. As nobility had basically fallen in England, and as republicanism seemed to be rising, I would imagine, a class of people was coming to be recognized as a new type of elite mind: a mind that could live a somewhat social life, while also remaining somewhat "cloistered."
This type of elite mind would be akin to a monk, or a professor. But it would not be tied to the church or the academy. Indeed, in Milton's case, it would not even be tied to the crown, while it could be tied to a political cause -- through the political controversies in which Milton involved himself through is tracts.
The revolution which had tried to carry itself out in England simply carried itself over to America, where it became the foundation for the Democratic Republic of the United States. And it seems to me, although it may not be stated implicitly anywhere, that the ultimate ideal for American life is a kind of domestic life, where a person may be involved to a certain degree with social ideals, while also carrying out a personal, internal, home-based life.
The domestic aspect of life would be, then, more important than the broader aspect of social life. In fact, the domestic aspect of life would be the kind of source from which an individual's methods of action within the larger social realm of life would be drawn. And social life would, for the individual, be directed at two aims: first, to secure a broader social framework for the perpetuation of a continued comfortable domestic life; and second, to secure the individual means (i.e. money) for a comfortable domestic life.
I would argue that as mankind became more conscious of itself on all social levels, the domestic man became more of an ideal -- as something that could achieved by a much larger portion of the population than, say, the noble or the courtier.
And Milton stood for the domestic man, as any kind of domestic man could be. Milton was allowed to live his life because, in spite of its glaring imperfections, it was a representative life, an example of what life could be for all men, if conditions were such that all men could engage themselves in careers such as Milton's.
Milton's Paradise Lost is a domestic drama. I'm influenced by Camille Paglia in my assessment of Milton's Paradise as a Spenserian Bower. The backstory is in some ways like the glittering travels of Milton through Europe, except with the horrific episodes of darkness, which must stand for Milton's eventual descent into blindness (Milton began going blind in 1644, at the age of only 36, and was totally blind by 1652). But, just like in Milton's life, the backstory, as glittering as it is, is only the basis for the main dramatic impetus of the story, that of Adam and Eve being expelled from their Spenserian Bower.
As many people have argued, from John Dryden onward, the real hero of Paradise Lost is the Devil. But it might be possible to think of Adam as all men's conceptions of themselves before they "lose their innocence." Every man has an ideal of raising a family and having a good home. The Devil would, however, be the social man, the "business traveler," let's call him, who has to go out and conduct the dirty work to keep his family going.
When the Devil gets home and gets to play Adam again, he finds he's not as innocent as he used to be. And he can't act as innocent as he used to act. He finds the sin of the outer world has tainted the domestic world. And this knowledge translates to his wife, Eve. God, the greatest ideal of man, ushers Adam and Eve out of Paradise. Adam and Eve, if they want to keep living, have to accept the dirty realities of the world.
But Christ, God's Son, who is the Son of Man, and therefore the ideal son of all couples, is the promise of redemption for the nuclear family. This ideal keeps husband and wife living in the broader social world in order to provide for their smaller, domestic world. Thus Paradise Lost is an allegory for the life that was developing itself through the recent events in England, and that would be the main impetus for the development of American life.
There are plenty of modern American works of art that share this theme, though on a more human level. One of the best is probably the film It's a Wonderful Life. But a more interesting one is the 1967 TV movie The Trap of Solid Gold, the screenwriter for which was best-selling mystery novelist John D. MacDonald.
(I learned about John D. MacDonald through reading Stephen King -- the novel Christine, to be precise. I agree with King that MacDonald deserves tons and tons of attention and adulation.)
By the standards of the day, and according to Johsnon's reckoning of them, Paradise Lost was a major success. "The call for books," Johnson tells us, "was not in Milton's age what it is in the present." Milton illustrates this by pointing out that the demands for the plays of Shakespeare, who, tradition relates, was wildly popular, did not call for the publication of more than 1,000 copies of the collected works from 1623 to 1664.
So, for over 41 years, 1,000 copies of the collected works of Shakespeare were sold. (This, of course, doesn't count the bootleg copies, of which, I've been told in many a Theatre class, there were plenty.) But in two years, the first edition of Milton's Paradise Lost, a total of 1,300 copies, had sold out. This seems to count, for those times, as a great success.
Johnson really only gives positive critical attention to three of Milton's works: L'Allegro, Il Penseroso, and Paradise Lost. L'Allegro and Il Penseroso are short poems, about which Johsnon says, "Every one that reads them reads them with pleasure." Both poems take the attitude of an academic intellectual. L'Allegro looks at the more joyful side of life. Il Penseroso looks at the more contemplative side of life.
Every once in a while I get the idea in my head that I can actually make a habit out of memorizing poetry. And about ten years ago, when I got this idea, I memorized L'Allegro and Il Penseroso, which I found to be delightful poems -- both of them. Johnson says, "No mirth can, indeed, be found in his Melancholy; but I am afraid that I always meet some melancholy in his mirth." I disagree. Both poems seem joyful to me. Il Penseroso is too colorful to be too melancholy.
However, I will state this one thing about Il Penseroso. It presents the life of a student as very similar to the life of a monk. And -- I'm not claiming to have anything like even a rudimentary knowledge of history -- but it seems to me that, in the Middle Ages and maybe for a while after that, when families had smart sons, and they wanted their sons to distinguish themselves, they sent them to monasteries.
But the life of the monastery was followed up by the life of the academician. In the reign of Queen Elizabeth I, it seems to me, nobility was decaying and a new kind of social structure was allowing people from a wider run of life to work their way up through the world -- in the court. In addition, commerce was becoming a more and more important force in social life.
I'd believe that L'Allegro and Il Penseroso are Italianate, joyful farewells to the previous form of social life, while Paradise Lost is a kind of looking forward to the new form of social life. The social structure of Elizabeth I's reign was a kind of bridge to what would follow through and then after the reign of Oliver Cromwell.
Johnson's praise of Paradise Lost is the praise of awe. In fact, Johnson seems to have been stunned by Milton's work. Johnson, overall, seems to have two reactions to Milton as a person: indifference and loathing. As a schoolmaster, Johnson seems to regard Milton as inconsequential. Milton was born as a gentleman. He traveled Europe and was a celebrity. He came back to England during the Civil War and became a schoolmaster. Why didn't he act like a gentleman? Well -- he didn't. And, as a schoolmaster, he was, to Johnson, inconsequential.
But as Cromwell's Latin Secretary, Milton was loathsome to Johnson. It wasn't just as Cromwell's Latin Secretary, but as the writer of venomous, spiteful essays. These essays, Johnson argues, show Milton as being quite learned, but rather self-centered and, really, pusilanimous.
One of the two best examples of how Milton's tracts raised Johnson's ire would be the essays Milton wrote in favor of divorce. These treatises were written after Milton's first wife ran off from home and wouldn't return. Milton wanted a divorce, but wasn't granted one by the Presbyterians. So he wrote (without having the then-required license to do so) a series of tracts in favor of divorce. Johnson felt this kind of action was totally unnecessary.
The Presbyterians didn't allow Milton to get his divorce. But the parliament did. Milton, who'd supported the Presbyterians, now turned his back on them, saying that "New Presbyter is but Old Priest writ large." Milton ended up not getting his divorce. He took his first wife back, and, in fact, taking good care of her family when, in the midst of the Reformation, the Royalist family experienced hardships.
Nevertheless, barring Milton's noble charity toward his wife and family, Johnson found this whole episode a repulsive example of Milton's spitefulness and narrow-mindedness.
The other great example of Johnson's distaste for Milton's overall character in public life was his reaction to the series of treatises Milton put out in defense of Cromwell's actions against Charles I, especially his retort to Charles II.
Probably the most exemplary statements by Johnson is, "The rights of nations and of kings sink into questions of grammar, if grammarians discuss them."
This reaction is to Milton's preponderance to judge Charles II's arguments by the grammar and style he employed, rather than by the logic and force of the arguments themselves.
However, I'd argue that the righs of nations and of kings are, in fact, questions of grammar, at least on some level. In the United States, anyway, our set of laws is known as the U.S. Code. A Code is a language. Even if our set of laws weren't a code, they'd be a morality. And a morality is a social technology. It might not be a material technology, but it is a social one. All technologies are built out of the language used by the people who have created the technologies. And so the questions of technologies, including social technologies, are, in fact, a question of language -- especially of grammar.
I'd argue that a better understanding of grammar would not only improve the understanding of our laws and rights, but that an improved development of grammar would be one of the few things that could actually help us continue to improve our laws and enhance our rights. So questions of grammar are extremely important when dealing with questions of the rights of nations and of kings.
Not that I can say much in this regard. I know how bad my grammar is.
It really surprises me, anyway, that Johnson, who seems so adverse to any sort of entry Milton makes into the public sphere, would be so angry at him for having chosen such a reclusive career as a schoolteacher. I'd think that Johnson would consider it to be quite fortuitous -- that Milton busied himself so much with prattling at little boys that he couldn't spend even more time prattling at Britain.
Then again, perhaps Johnson simply felt that if Milton had only involved himself in public life as much as he should have felt obliged to do, as a gentleman, his understanding of the situation in England would have led him to hold an opposite opinion regarding what his role should have been in that situation.
This seems to make itself felt in one of Johnson's sole criticisms of Paradise Lost, which as I said, was a work that seemed to have stunned Johnson with awe. Johnson says that since "human passions did not enter the world before the Fall", "the plan of Paradise Lost has this inconvenience, that it comprises neither human actions nor human manners."
Johnson really doesn't see Paradise Lost to be a drama of humanity at all. In fact, any drama Milton creates, Johnson sees as inhuman -- sometimes, as in "Comus," to be absurdly inhuman.
I think Johnson looked up to Milton, because Milton held so firmly to an ideal -- the ideal, the Protestant ideal of logic and rationality as the basis for spiritual principles. I think Johnson saw Milton as being so inhumanly devoted to these principles that he was blind to the very human flaws in Cromwell. And so, in a sense, Johnson would have seen Milton as so elevated and idealistic that he simply couldn't see how the ideals he was acting on had such a dangerous human effect.
Again, Johnson says, "The want of human interest is always felt."
This is Johnson's only major criticism of Milton's work. And it mellows down a bit, into a quote which I believe is even more telling of Johnson's attitude toward Milton. Johnson says that the perusal of Paradise Lost "is a duty rather than a pleasure. We read Milton for instruction, retire harrassed and overburdened, and look elsewhere for recreation; we desert our master, and seek for companions."
In fact, Johnson's awe-struck criticism of Milton can be seen to merge with his awe-struck praise of Milton's work. "Reality was a scene too narrow for his mind. He sent his faculties out upon discovery, into worlds where only imagination can travel, and delighted to form new modes of existence, and furnish sentiment and action to superior beings, to trace the councils of hell, or accompany the choirs of heaven."
This is only one in a whole series of sparkling panegyrics Johnson devotes to Milton as the creator of Paradise Lost. I'd like to give a couple more, as I think that they not only evince the idea Johnson seemed so obstinately to hold to regarding Milton's greater personality, but that they also give some of the basic elements of what Johnson believe makes a good poem and a good poet.
"The thoughts which are occasionally called forth in the progress (of the poem) are such as could only be produced by an imagination in the highest degree fervid and active, to which materials were supplied by incessant study and unlimited curiosity. The heat of Milton's mind might be said to sublimate his learning, to throw off into his work the spirit of science, unmingled with its grosser parts."
And:
"From policy and the practice of life he has to learn the discriminations of character and the tendency of the passions, whether singly or combined; and physiology must supply him with illustrations and images."
And:
"Nor yet is he a poet till he has attained the whole expression of his language, distinguished all the delicacies of phrase, and all the colors of words, and learned to adjust their different sounds to all the varieties of metrical modulation."
Of course, in Paradise Lost, Milton is assumed by Johnson to have attained this goal. However, the greatest, most beautiful passage on Milton's achievements, is, in my opinion, the one below:
"He had done what he knew to be necessarily previous to poetical excellence: he had made himself acquainted with 'seemly arts and affairs," his comprehension was extended by various knowledge, and his memory stored with intellectual treasures. He was skillful in many languages, and had by reading and composition attained the full mastery of his own."
How Milton was supposed to have reached this level of almost sorcerer-like mastery without taking such a long time before going out into public life, and without affording himself the advantages of study which being a schoolmaster would provide him, I certainly don't know, and I'm not sure if Johnson knew, either.
Nevertheless, I think the greatest testament to Milton was the fact that people would come -- from other countries! -- to visit Milton, to read to him in his blindness, for the advantages, not only of being able to say they'd read to him, but of knowing what it was he'd read, and of being able to talk to him about it. Milton, who sat there, sideways in his elbow chair, leg slung over the arm of the chair, talking with all kinds of people, a schoolmaster for the whole world.
It wasn't just Johnson who was in this perplexed awe regarding Milton -- there were nations full of people who felt the same way Johnson did.
Well -- here's an interesting quote by Johnson. "All mankind will, through all ages, bear the same relation to Adam and Eve."
And I think this is what says it about Milton. He was writing the future. He was writing what social conditions were bringing to light. It may not have been the world people wanted to see in the future. But it was the world of the future. And people were already beginning to relate to it, to be a part of it. Milton was their spokesperson. And people honored him for it.
If a biographer were to forget one of Milton's houses, Johnson guesses, that biographer would be charged by the other biographers with something akin to heresy.
This is one of the few points in Johnson's narrative of Milton's life where Johnson seems a little bit perplexed by his subject. Nevertheless, even before John Milton died, in 1674, his birthplace was already an attraction for foreign visitors to London. People would come to see Milton's birthplace and then go visit Milton himself.
Another point where Johnson seems to be a bit perplexed is where Milton seems to escape punishment for serving Oliver Cromwell, once Cromwell has been executed and King Charles II returns to London to restore the throne.
In 1649, Oliver Cromwell executed King Charles I. John Milton, whose public activity had been scanty at best, on either side of the Civil War, had become Cromwell's Latin Secretary. Cromwell, who had gained such strength in England at first by stating that he was helping the country fight against Monarchy and for Democracy, now dissolved parliament and took on sole rulership of England, basically as -- not a King, but an Emperor, really -- but under the title of "Protector."
Nevertheless, John Milton, who seems to have been against Monarchy and for Liberty, remained under Cromwell as his Latin Secretary. When certain groups in England had protested against Cromwell's execution of Charles I, Milton actually wrote an essay to try and get the people back on Cromwell's side. Charles II wrote an essay called "Defensio Regis," stating that murdering Royalty is abominable, regardless of the situation. Milton wrote an argument against Charles II's essay, again defending Cromwell for having committed the execution.
In addition, once Cromwell was firmly entrenched as "Protector" of England, John Milton, being Latin Secretary, wrote many of Cromwell's resolutions (official resolutions at that time being written in the basically international language of Latin).
But Milton didn't just defend Cromwell's actions against Royalty and write the laws promoting the "Protector's" policies; he also wrote propaganda-like tracts of praise for Cromwell. In one of these essays Milton even said, "Nothing is more pleasing to God or more agreeable to reason than that the highest mind should have the sovereign power."
This in itself is rather a strange thing to hear. Milton had for most of his life been staunchly against authority. Johnson says, "Milton's republicanism was, I am agraid, founded in an envious hatred of greatness, and a sullen desire of independence; in petulance impatient of controul, and pride disdainful of superiority."
And yet Milton was willing to defend everything Cromwell did.
When Cromwell was killed in 1658 and it became very evident that Monarchy would be restored to England with the return of Charles II to the throne, it also became evident that those people who had been involved with the execution of Charles I would likely be put to death.
England was surprised with Charles II's announcement of the Act of Oblivion, which pardoned everybody who had sided with the rebels, except for those who had been directly involved with the execution of Charles I. However, many people who had had less of a role than Milton in defending the execution were being put to death. Milton was in danger of his life.
Milton had escaped. But he was in bad health, suffering from the gout, and already blind. He couldn't have hidden, Johnson argues, very effectively. And yet he wasn't really pursued, and, except for a rather minor run-in with the law, he was allowed to remain in the shadows until it finally became clear that he would not be penalized at all for anything he'd done.
Johnson assumes that the reason Milton had gotten away with everything he'd gotten away with was simply because he was so talented, as well as being blind and in poor health. Johnson writes, "Something may be reasonably ascribed to veneration and compassion -- to veneration of his abilities and compassion for his distresses, which made it fit to forgive his malice for his learning."
English veneration may be the reason that Milton was let go. It may also have been Milton's international reputation. At the age of thirty, Milton spend fifteen months travelling through Europe, going through France, Italy, and Switzerland, and receiving magnificent acclaim wherever he went. He really was a celebrity. And it seems that he was remembered this way through the years.
But I also think that Milton was let go because of what he stood for. Not his republicanism, or his support for the acts of Cromwell, but the ideals of life that manifested themselves in Milton's career and in what is arguably his greatest work, Paradise Lost.
Milton may actually have taken more time on his travels through Europe. In fact, he had probably, on his travels, been hoping to set himself up for constant work as some kind of an ambassador. He was, among the English, the most elegant speaker of Latin. And Latin was, at that time, basically the international language. But because of the Civil War in England, Milton decided to return home.
However, once Milton returned home, he didn't join an army. He didn't even commit himself to civil service. In fact, he set up a boarding school and spent the years up until the execution of Charles I as a schoolmaster. This is a fact which Johnson relates to us with an air of characteristic disgust.
But, as much as I think Johnson would like us to think he is disgusted with Milton's choice to be a schoolmaster, it seems pretty obvious throughout Johnson's essay that Johnson believes Milton would not have been able to write Paradise Lost had he not given himself opportunity after opportunity for taking the leisure to study just about any subject that had piqued his curiosity. Milton had to develop a colossal mind in order to write the colossal Paradise Lost.
However, I also think there was a kind of ideal developing -- domestication. As nobility had basically fallen in England, and as republicanism seemed to be rising, I would imagine, a class of people was coming to be recognized as a new type of elite mind: a mind that could live a somewhat social life, while also remaining somewhat "cloistered."
This type of elite mind would be akin to a monk, or a professor. But it would not be tied to the church or the academy. Indeed, in Milton's case, it would not even be tied to the crown, while it could be tied to a political cause -- through the political controversies in which Milton involved himself through is tracts.
The revolution which had tried to carry itself out in England simply carried itself over to America, where it became the foundation for the Democratic Republic of the United States. And it seems to me, although it may not be stated implicitly anywhere, that the ultimate ideal for American life is a kind of domestic life, where a person may be involved to a certain degree with social ideals, while also carrying out a personal, internal, home-based life.
The domestic aspect of life would be, then, more important than the broader aspect of social life. In fact, the domestic aspect of life would be the kind of source from which an individual's methods of action within the larger social realm of life would be drawn. And social life would, for the individual, be directed at two aims: first, to secure a broader social framework for the perpetuation of a continued comfortable domestic life; and second, to secure the individual means (i.e. money) for a comfortable domestic life.
I would argue that as mankind became more conscious of itself on all social levels, the domestic man became more of an ideal -- as something that could achieved by a much larger portion of the population than, say, the noble or the courtier.
And Milton stood for the domestic man, as any kind of domestic man could be. Milton was allowed to live his life because, in spite of its glaring imperfections, it was a representative life, an example of what life could be for all men, if conditions were such that all men could engage themselves in careers such as Milton's.
Milton's Paradise Lost is a domestic drama. I'm influenced by Camille Paglia in my assessment of Milton's Paradise as a Spenserian Bower. The backstory is in some ways like the glittering travels of Milton through Europe, except with the horrific episodes of darkness, which must stand for Milton's eventual descent into blindness (Milton began going blind in 1644, at the age of only 36, and was totally blind by 1652). But, just like in Milton's life, the backstory, as glittering as it is, is only the basis for the main dramatic impetus of the story, that of Adam and Eve being expelled from their Spenserian Bower.
As many people have argued, from John Dryden onward, the real hero of Paradise Lost is the Devil. But it might be possible to think of Adam as all men's conceptions of themselves before they "lose their innocence." Every man has an ideal of raising a family and having a good home. The Devil would, however, be the social man, the "business traveler," let's call him, who has to go out and conduct the dirty work to keep his family going.
When the Devil gets home and gets to play Adam again, he finds he's not as innocent as he used to be. And he can't act as innocent as he used to act. He finds the sin of the outer world has tainted the domestic world. And this knowledge translates to his wife, Eve. God, the greatest ideal of man, ushers Adam and Eve out of Paradise. Adam and Eve, if they want to keep living, have to accept the dirty realities of the world.
But Christ, God's Son, who is the Son of Man, and therefore the ideal son of all couples, is the promise of redemption for the nuclear family. This ideal keeps husband and wife living in the broader social world in order to provide for their smaller, domestic world. Thus Paradise Lost is an allegory for the life that was developing itself through the recent events in England, and that would be the main impetus for the development of American life.
There are plenty of modern American works of art that share this theme, though on a more human level. One of the best is probably the film It's a Wonderful Life. But a more interesting one is the 1967 TV movie The Trap of Solid Gold, the screenwriter for which was best-selling mystery novelist John D. MacDonald.
(I learned about John D. MacDonald through reading Stephen King -- the novel Christine, to be precise. I agree with King that MacDonald deserves tons and tons of attention and adulation.)
By the standards of the day, and according to Johsnon's reckoning of them, Paradise Lost was a major success. "The call for books," Johnson tells us, "was not in Milton's age what it is in the present." Milton illustrates this by pointing out that the demands for the plays of Shakespeare, who, tradition relates, was wildly popular, did not call for the publication of more than 1,000 copies of the collected works from 1623 to 1664.
So, for over 41 years, 1,000 copies of the collected works of Shakespeare were sold. (This, of course, doesn't count the bootleg copies, of which, I've been told in many a Theatre class, there were plenty.) But in two years, the first edition of Milton's Paradise Lost, a total of 1,300 copies, had sold out. This seems to count, for those times, as a great success.
Johnson really only gives positive critical attention to three of Milton's works: L'Allegro, Il Penseroso, and Paradise Lost. L'Allegro and Il Penseroso are short poems, about which Johsnon says, "Every one that reads them reads them with pleasure." Both poems take the attitude of an academic intellectual. L'Allegro looks at the more joyful side of life. Il Penseroso looks at the more contemplative side of life.
Every once in a while I get the idea in my head that I can actually make a habit out of memorizing poetry. And about ten years ago, when I got this idea, I memorized L'Allegro and Il Penseroso, which I found to be delightful poems -- both of them. Johnson says, "No mirth can, indeed, be found in his Melancholy; but I am afraid that I always meet some melancholy in his mirth." I disagree. Both poems seem joyful to me. Il Penseroso is too colorful to be too melancholy.
However, I will state this one thing about Il Penseroso. It presents the life of a student as very similar to the life of a monk. And -- I'm not claiming to have anything like even a rudimentary knowledge of history -- but it seems to me that, in the Middle Ages and maybe for a while after that, when families had smart sons, and they wanted their sons to distinguish themselves, they sent them to monasteries.
But the life of the monastery was followed up by the life of the academician. In the reign of Queen Elizabeth I, it seems to me, nobility was decaying and a new kind of social structure was allowing people from a wider run of life to work their way up through the world -- in the court. In addition, commerce was becoming a more and more important force in social life.
I'd believe that L'Allegro and Il Penseroso are Italianate, joyful farewells to the previous form of social life, while Paradise Lost is a kind of looking forward to the new form of social life. The social structure of Elizabeth I's reign was a kind of bridge to what would follow through and then after the reign of Oliver Cromwell.
Johnson's praise of Paradise Lost is the praise of awe. In fact, Johnson seems to have been stunned by Milton's work. Johnson, overall, seems to have two reactions to Milton as a person: indifference and loathing. As a schoolmaster, Johnson seems to regard Milton as inconsequential. Milton was born as a gentleman. He traveled Europe and was a celebrity. He came back to England during the Civil War and became a schoolmaster. Why didn't he act like a gentleman? Well -- he didn't. And, as a schoolmaster, he was, to Johnson, inconsequential.
But as Cromwell's Latin Secretary, Milton was loathsome to Johnson. It wasn't just as Cromwell's Latin Secretary, but as the writer of venomous, spiteful essays. These essays, Johnson argues, show Milton as being quite learned, but rather self-centered and, really, pusilanimous.
One of the two best examples of how Milton's tracts raised Johnson's ire would be the essays Milton wrote in favor of divorce. These treatises were written after Milton's first wife ran off from home and wouldn't return. Milton wanted a divorce, but wasn't granted one by the Presbyterians. So he wrote (without having the then-required license to do so) a series of tracts in favor of divorce. Johnson felt this kind of action was totally unnecessary.
The Presbyterians didn't allow Milton to get his divorce. But the parliament did. Milton, who'd supported the Presbyterians, now turned his back on them, saying that "New Presbyter is but Old Priest writ large." Milton ended up not getting his divorce. He took his first wife back, and, in fact, taking good care of her family when, in the midst of the Reformation, the Royalist family experienced hardships.
Nevertheless, barring Milton's noble charity toward his wife and family, Johnson found this whole episode a repulsive example of Milton's spitefulness and narrow-mindedness.
The other great example of Johnson's distaste for Milton's overall character in public life was his reaction to the series of treatises Milton put out in defense of Cromwell's actions against Charles I, especially his retort to Charles II.
Probably the most exemplary statements by Johnson is, "The rights of nations and of kings sink into questions of grammar, if grammarians discuss them."
This reaction is to Milton's preponderance to judge Charles II's arguments by the grammar and style he employed, rather than by the logic and force of the arguments themselves.
However, I'd argue that the righs of nations and of kings are, in fact, questions of grammar, at least on some level. In the United States, anyway, our set of laws is known as the U.S. Code. A Code is a language. Even if our set of laws weren't a code, they'd be a morality. And a morality is a social technology. It might not be a material technology, but it is a social one. All technologies are built out of the language used by the people who have created the technologies. And so the questions of technologies, including social technologies, are, in fact, a question of language -- especially of grammar.
I'd argue that a better understanding of grammar would not only improve the understanding of our laws and rights, but that an improved development of grammar would be one of the few things that could actually help us continue to improve our laws and enhance our rights. So questions of grammar are extremely important when dealing with questions of the rights of nations and of kings.
Not that I can say much in this regard. I know how bad my grammar is.
It really surprises me, anyway, that Johnson, who seems so adverse to any sort of entry Milton makes into the public sphere, would be so angry at him for having chosen such a reclusive career as a schoolteacher. I'd think that Johnson would consider it to be quite fortuitous -- that Milton busied himself so much with prattling at little boys that he couldn't spend even more time prattling at Britain.
Then again, perhaps Johnson simply felt that if Milton had only involved himself in public life as much as he should have felt obliged to do, as a gentleman, his understanding of the situation in England would have led him to hold an opposite opinion regarding what his role should have been in that situation.
This seems to make itself felt in one of Johnson's sole criticisms of Paradise Lost, which as I said, was a work that seemed to have stunned Johnson with awe. Johnson says that since "human passions did not enter the world before the Fall", "the plan of Paradise Lost has this inconvenience, that it comprises neither human actions nor human manners."
Johnson really doesn't see Paradise Lost to be a drama of humanity at all. In fact, any drama Milton creates, Johnson sees as inhuman -- sometimes, as in "Comus," to be absurdly inhuman.
I think Johnson looked up to Milton, because Milton held so firmly to an ideal -- the ideal, the Protestant ideal of logic and rationality as the basis for spiritual principles. I think Johnson saw Milton as being so inhumanly devoted to these principles that he was blind to the very human flaws in Cromwell. And so, in a sense, Johnson would have seen Milton as so elevated and idealistic that he simply couldn't see how the ideals he was acting on had such a dangerous human effect.
Again, Johnson says, "The want of human interest is always felt."
This is Johnson's only major criticism of Milton's work. And it mellows down a bit, into a quote which I believe is even more telling of Johnson's attitude toward Milton. Johnson says that the perusal of Paradise Lost "is a duty rather than a pleasure. We read Milton for instruction, retire harrassed and overburdened, and look elsewhere for recreation; we desert our master, and seek for companions."
In fact, Johnson's awe-struck criticism of Milton can be seen to merge with his awe-struck praise of Milton's work. "Reality was a scene too narrow for his mind. He sent his faculties out upon discovery, into worlds where only imagination can travel, and delighted to form new modes of existence, and furnish sentiment and action to superior beings, to trace the councils of hell, or accompany the choirs of heaven."
This is only one in a whole series of sparkling panegyrics Johnson devotes to Milton as the creator of Paradise Lost. I'd like to give a couple more, as I think that they not only evince the idea Johnson seemed so obstinately to hold to regarding Milton's greater personality, but that they also give some of the basic elements of what Johnson believe makes a good poem and a good poet.
"The thoughts which are occasionally called forth in the progress (of the poem) are such as could only be produced by an imagination in the highest degree fervid and active, to which materials were supplied by incessant study and unlimited curiosity. The heat of Milton's mind might be said to sublimate his learning, to throw off into his work the spirit of science, unmingled with its grosser parts."
And:
"From policy and the practice of life he has to learn the discriminations of character and the tendency of the passions, whether singly or combined; and physiology must supply him with illustrations and images."
And:
"Nor yet is he a poet till he has attained the whole expression of his language, distinguished all the delicacies of phrase, and all the colors of words, and learned to adjust their different sounds to all the varieties of metrical modulation."
Of course, in Paradise Lost, Milton is assumed by Johnson to have attained this goal. However, the greatest, most beautiful passage on Milton's achievements, is, in my opinion, the one below:
"He had done what he knew to be necessarily previous to poetical excellence: he had made himself acquainted with 'seemly arts and affairs," his comprehension was extended by various knowledge, and his memory stored with intellectual treasures. He was skillful in many languages, and had by reading and composition attained the full mastery of his own."
How Milton was supposed to have reached this level of almost sorcerer-like mastery without taking such a long time before going out into public life, and without affording himself the advantages of study which being a schoolmaster would provide him, I certainly don't know, and I'm not sure if Johnson knew, either.
Nevertheless, I think the greatest testament to Milton was the fact that people would come -- from other countries! -- to visit Milton, to read to him in his blindness, for the advantages, not only of being able to say they'd read to him, but of knowing what it was he'd read, and of being able to talk to him about it. Milton, who sat there, sideways in his elbow chair, leg slung over the arm of the chair, talking with all kinds of people, a schoolmaster for the whole world.
It wasn't just Johnson who was in this perplexed awe regarding Milton -- there were nations full of people who felt the same way Johnson did.
Well -- here's an interesting quote by Johnson. "All mankind will, through all ages, bear the same relation to Adam and Eve."
And I think this is what says it about Milton. He was writing the future. He was writing what social conditions were bringing to light. It may not have been the world people wanted to see in the future. But it was the world of the future. And people were already beginning to relate to it, to be a part of it. Milton was their spokesperson. And people honored him for it.
Thursday, October 20, 2011
Fire without Heat -- The Scholars' Cowley
The most interesting comment I've ever found in favor (it seems to me) of Paradise Lost is from Michael Aquino, former Magus in the Church of Satan and then founder of the Temple of Set. As I remember it, Aquino says that Paradise Lost is Satanism in disguise.
That at least makes reading Paradise Lost an intriguing proposition.
Yesterday I found another interesting statement in the Cambridge History of English Literature, which says that Milton used a pagan style to explore a Christian theme. This was said to explain the kind of through-line from Spenser's poetry to Milton's poetry, and it was in an essay about Spenser.
When I'd posted my earlier entry, my reactions to Johnson's awesome and hilarious essay on Abraham Cowley, I'd tried to draw a parallel between Cowley's life and Spenser's life. Anybody so attached to Spenser as Johnson paints him to have been is of interest to me, since I was also attached to Spenser for a while. My first big "own initiative" project in life, about fourteen years ago, was to read and take notes on the six and change books of Spenser's romance, The Faerie Queene. My second was to read the Nicomachean Ethics, since Spenser said at one point that he had based his poem on Aristotle's Ethics.
At that point in time I'd read a life of Spenser -- in fact, I believe, the very one I read yesterday: the Cambridge one. And when I made my previous post, I was working with whatever shadowy knowledge of Spenser's life I still retained after fourteen years.
The biggest two mistakes I made were to call The Faerie Queene an epic -- which is sheer ignorance; and to say that Spenser had been exiled to Ireland. Spenser had not been exiled to Ireland. He went with a Lord on a campaign to Ireland, and his career basically kept him in Ireland.
Spenser had been involved in a controversy at Cambridge, whic roiled with Catholic-Protestant controversy in his day. But he didn't stand against the Protestants during the controversy -- though he didn't stand for them, either. So Spenser was basically a marked man, doomed to the glass ceiling of custom, for not rooting for the winning team.
So Spenser went to Ireland with Lord Grey, where, while engaged in a number of political offices, he wrote his poetry. He came back to England twice, bringing his poetry with him, and hoping to get preferments, specifically in England. He was never given his preferments. In fact, tradition even says that the Queen herself ordered Spenser his preferments, but that the Lords who disliked Spenser refuted them so powerfully, that Spenser was never given them.
So Colin Clout went back home to Ireland. And, in his poetry, he spoke of himself as an exile.
My weak, little mind thought of Spenser as actually having been an exile. But he wasn't.
But in this way, Colwey's story parallels very much with Spenser's story, and I think it really reinforces the idea that Spenser was a hero-figure, if not a father-figure, for Cowley. Cowley went to Cambridge. He was often a bit bombastic about "turning Puritan," he went into a foreign country to serve a Lord (Lord Jermyn, in France, where Cowley encoded letters from the Queen to the King), he was involved in a Protestant-Catholic controversy which put a glass ceiling on his career, he wasn't given preferments, and he considered himself an exile.
Now, after reading the Cambridge history, I consulted another work: The English Poets, edited by T.H. Wood. This book is basically a selection of poetry by the notable poets in British history. There T.H. Wood contributed a critical essay to preface the selection of Cowley's poems.
The essay is basically a re-hash of Johnson's essay, minus any of the whimsical asperity which makes Johnson's bitchy essay so fun. The most interesting thing, to me, though, about the essay is that it mentions, like Johnson mentioned, the fact that Cowley did more than a little, if not to inspire, than at least to lay the groundwork for the possibility of Milton's creation of Paradise Lost.
Johnson's essay actually seems to lump Milton together with the metaphysical poets, even though Johnson goes on to point out that Milton despised the metaphysical poets. But Johnson also shows how Milton's description of Satan's spear as a tree tall enough to have been used as the mast of a ship comes directly from lines in Cowley's poem of the Davideis, where Goliath's spear is described as big enough to have been used as the mast of a ship.
You'd think that Ward, whose essay is not much more than a toned-down facsimile of Johnson, would simply have used the same example. But he doesn't. Instead, Ward uses a different example to play up the fact that Milton had greater powers of poetic condensation than Cowley. He uses Cowley's description of hell, which is almost like a circus of horror, counterpoised, with similarities, by Milton's more succinct description.
This description of Milton's, though, I think, is important to note, however, because it talks of the fires of hell being without heat and light. Milton's hell is full of cold fire and visible darkness. And this is the attitude, I believe, a lot of scholars try to take when presenting the "good" works of Cowley.
However, Ward goes even further than Johnson in connecting the ideas of Cowley with Milton's covertly Satanic verses. I think that everybody has always wondered *why* Cowley tried to write his poem, the Davideis. Most people seem to find the Bible an unfit subject for epic poetry. But the exceptions have been Milton, whose poem was a pagan re-telling of the Bible story, and Cowley, whose decision nobody understands.
Personally I feel that Cowley's decision to write the Davideis makes a lot of sense. He was fatherless and somehwat poor, as Johnson likes to paint him. But he was also a poetic prodigy, and known for his skills by the age of fifteen. King David was also a poetic prodigy, and known for both his poetic and martial abilities from a young age. But the difference between Cowley and King David is that King David's life was abolutely replete with father figures! Not only did King Davidb have his father Jesse: he had Samuel, Saul, Goliath, Jonathan, Uriah, and Nathan!
David even had God as a father figure. It's obvious that Cowley was moved by this relationship, as his severe metaphors and constant calling out to loved ones who are absent is very much like King David's thundering expressions of pain and suffering and his constant calling out to a God who seems to ignore more often than he answers.
Plus, although Spenser may have been Cowley's father figure, I think Cowley identified with King David. King David might be the prototype for what Camille Paglia calls the male heroine. King David really is like a male diva. And Cowley is also quite a diva.
So I think the sensational life of the male heroine King David appealed as a dramatic subject for the diva Cowley. But scholars must feel differently than I. Cowley himself seems to have felt different. Ward notes a statement by Cowley that he feels the epic verse has been too long in the hands of pagan poets, and that now the Christians must take it for their own uses. Cowley's statement was made later in his life, as a preface to this poem, which had been written in his youth. Cowley, in fact, says that he is only publishing this poem because he wants to leave the door open for poets who wish to use his poem as an example for how to take the pagan form and use it for Christian ends.
Ward comments ominously that only eleven years after Cowley published this preface, Milton published his Paradise Lost.
However, Ward's selection of poetry includes the elegy for Mr. Crashaw. I could absolutely be mistaken in this assumption, but it appears to me that in the last lines of the quote below can be found the inspiration for the title of Milton's great poem:
"Nay with the worst of heathen dotage we
(Vain men!) the monster woman deify;
Find stars, and tie our fates there in a face,
And paradise in them, by whom we lost it, place."
The concept of a paradise lost is as old as human consciousness, I'd imagine. But consider these other lines, from Cowley's poem on Solitude:
"Oh Solitude, first state of human-kind!
Which blest remain'd till man did find
Even his own helper's company.
As soon as two, alas! together join'd,
The serpent made up three."
Combine these two verses and, for all Ward's praising of Milton's gifts of condensation, you have title and summary (up to redemption) of Milton's epic.
Why would Milton despise the metaphysical poets? Probably because he didn't want to recognize the influence they had on him? Why? Because he didn't want to have to admit the influence Cowley's poetic ideas had on him. Again, why? Well... that will wait until my next post.
Theoretical cliffhanger? I certainly hope so.
That at least makes reading Paradise Lost an intriguing proposition.
Yesterday I found another interesting statement in the Cambridge History of English Literature, which says that Milton used a pagan style to explore a Christian theme. This was said to explain the kind of through-line from Spenser's poetry to Milton's poetry, and it was in an essay about Spenser.
When I'd posted my earlier entry, my reactions to Johnson's awesome and hilarious essay on Abraham Cowley, I'd tried to draw a parallel between Cowley's life and Spenser's life. Anybody so attached to Spenser as Johnson paints him to have been is of interest to me, since I was also attached to Spenser for a while. My first big "own initiative" project in life, about fourteen years ago, was to read and take notes on the six and change books of Spenser's romance, The Faerie Queene. My second was to read the Nicomachean Ethics, since Spenser said at one point that he had based his poem on Aristotle's Ethics.
At that point in time I'd read a life of Spenser -- in fact, I believe, the very one I read yesterday: the Cambridge one. And when I made my previous post, I was working with whatever shadowy knowledge of Spenser's life I still retained after fourteen years.
The biggest two mistakes I made were to call The Faerie Queene an epic -- which is sheer ignorance; and to say that Spenser had been exiled to Ireland. Spenser had not been exiled to Ireland. He went with a Lord on a campaign to Ireland, and his career basically kept him in Ireland.
Spenser had been involved in a controversy at Cambridge, whic roiled with Catholic-Protestant controversy in his day. But he didn't stand against the Protestants during the controversy -- though he didn't stand for them, either. So Spenser was basically a marked man, doomed to the glass ceiling of custom, for not rooting for the winning team.
So Spenser went to Ireland with Lord Grey, where, while engaged in a number of political offices, he wrote his poetry. He came back to England twice, bringing his poetry with him, and hoping to get preferments, specifically in England. He was never given his preferments. In fact, tradition even says that the Queen herself ordered Spenser his preferments, but that the Lords who disliked Spenser refuted them so powerfully, that Spenser was never given them.
So Colin Clout went back home to Ireland. And, in his poetry, he spoke of himself as an exile.
My weak, little mind thought of Spenser as actually having been an exile. But he wasn't.
But in this way, Colwey's story parallels very much with Spenser's story, and I think it really reinforces the idea that Spenser was a hero-figure, if not a father-figure, for Cowley. Cowley went to Cambridge. He was often a bit bombastic about "turning Puritan," he went into a foreign country to serve a Lord (Lord Jermyn, in France, where Cowley encoded letters from the Queen to the King), he was involved in a Protestant-Catholic controversy which put a glass ceiling on his career, he wasn't given preferments, and he considered himself an exile.
Now, after reading the Cambridge history, I consulted another work: The English Poets, edited by T.H. Wood. This book is basically a selection of poetry by the notable poets in British history. There T.H. Wood contributed a critical essay to preface the selection of Cowley's poems.
The essay is basically a re-hash of Johnson's essay, minus any of the whimsical asperity which makes Johnson's bitchy essay so fun. The most interesting thing, to me, though, about the essay is that it mentions, like Johnson mentioned, the fact that Cowley did more than a little, if not to inspire, than at least to lay the groundwork for the possibility of Milton's creation of Paradise Lost.
Johnson's essay actually seems to lump Milton together with the metaphysical poets, even though Johnson goes on to point out that Milton despised the metaphysical poets. But Johnson also shows how Milton's description of Satan's spear as a tree tall enough to have been used as the mast of a ship comes directly from lines in Cowley's poem of the Davideis, where Goliath's spear is described as big enough to have been used as the mast of a ship.
You'd think that Ward, whose essay is not much more than a toned-down facsimile of Johnson, would simply have used the same example. But he doesn't. Instead, Ward uses a different example to play up the fact that Milton had greater powers of poetic condensation than Cowley. He uses Cowley's description of hell, which is almost like a circus of horror, counterpoised, with similarities, by Milton's more succinct description.
This description of Milton's, though, I think, is important to note, however, because it talks of the fires of hell being without heat and light. Milton's hell is full of cold fire and visible darkness. And this is the attitude, I believe, a lot of scholars try to take when presenting the "good" works of Cowley.
However, Ward goes even further than Johnson in connecting the ideas of Cowley with Milton's covertly Satanic verses. I think that everybody has always wondered *why* Cowley tried to write his poem, the Davideis. Most people seem to find the Bible an unfit subject for epic poetry. But the exceptions have been Milton, whose poem was a pagan re-telling of the Bible story, and Cowley, whose decision nobody understands.
Personally I feel that Cowley's decision to write the Davideis makes a lot of sense. He was fatherless and somehwat poor, as Johnson likes to paint him. But he was also a poetic prodigy, and known for his skills by the age of fifteen. King David was also a poetic prodigy, and known for both his poetic and martial abilities from a young age. But the difference between Cowley and King David is that King David's life was abolutely replete with father figures! Not only did King Davidb have his father Jesse: he had Samuel, Saul, Goliath, Jonathan, Uriah, and Nathan!
David even had God as a father figure. It's obvious that Cowley was moved by this relationship, as his severe metaphors and constant calling out to loved ones who are absent is very much like King David's thundering expressions of pain and suffering and his constant calling out to a God who seems to ignore more often than he answers.
Plus, although Spenser may have been Cowley's father figure, I think Cowley identified with King David. King David might be the prototype for what Camille Paglia calls the male heroine. King David really is like a male diva. And Cowley is also quite a diva.
So I think the sensational life of the male heroine King David appealed as a dramatic subject for the diva Cowley. But scholars must feel differently than I. Cowley himself seems to have felt different. Ward notes a statement by Cowley that he feels the epic verse has been too long in the hands of pagan poets, and that now the Christians must take it for their own uses. Cowley's statement was made later in his life, as a preface to this poem, which had been written in his youth. Cowley, in fact, says that he is only publishing this poem because he wants to leave the door open for poets who wish to use his poem as an example for how to take the pagan form and use it for Christian ends.
Ward comments ominously that only eleven years after Cowley published this preface, Milton published his Paradise Lost.
However, Ward's selection of poetry includes the elegy for Mr. Crashaw. I could absolutely be mistaken in this assumption, but it appears to me that in the last lines of the quote below can be found the inspiration for the title of Milton's great poem:
"Nay with the worst of heathen dotage we
(Vain men!) the monster woman deify;
Find stars, and tie our fates there in a face,
And paradise in them, by whom we lost it, place."
The concept of a paradise lost is as old as human consciousness, I'd imagine. But consider these other lines, from Cowley's poem on Solitude:
"Oh Solitude, first state of human-kind!
Which blest remain'd till man did find
Even his own helper's company.
As soon as two, alas! together join'd,
The serpent made up three."
Combine these two verses and, for all Ward's praising of Milton's gifts of condensation, you have title and summary (up to redemption) of Milton's epic.
Why would Milton despise the metaphysical poets? Probably because he didn't want to recognize the influence they had on him? Why? Because he didn't want to have to admit the influence Cowley's poetic ideas had on him. Again, why? Well... that will wait until my next post.
Theoretical cliffhanger? I certainly hope so.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)