Part 6

But who is the man who shall do for England what Savonarola did for Florence, and Luther for Germany, and William Tell for Switzerland, and Washington and Lincoln for our own country? Oliver Cromwell was of Celtic stock and noble family. It is a singular coincidence that he was a ninth cousin of that Charles whose death warrant he was to sign; that seventeen of his relatives were in Parliament to sign the Great Remonstrance, and that ten of his blood-relatives joined with him in signing the death warrant of the King. Cromwell was sixteen years of age, and enrolled himself as a student at Cambridge on the very day that great Shakespeare died in Stratford. The greatest thing England ever did in literature ended on the day when perhaps the greatest thing she did in action began. John Milton said that Cromwell nursed his great soul in silence and solitude. He was but a child when the news of the Gunpowder Plot filled his father's house with excitement. He was but a child when a dispatch was laid in his father's hands announcing the death of Henry of Navarre, the founder of Protestantism in France. From boyhood he loved the story of the brave and gallant Sir Walter Raleigh, and the announcement that he was to be executed to please the King of Spain filled him with tumultuous indignation.

In appearance he was above medium stature, built like Daniel Webster and Brougham and Beecher, with great, beautiful head, bronzed face, heavy, projecting eyebrows, large forehead, two eyes burning like flames of fire beneath the overhanging cliffs. He was of sandy complexion, like Alexander and Napoleon. But if he were thick set, he was of finely compacted fiber, and this man, who was to deal a crushing blow at Marston Moor, and sign the King's death warrant and "grasp the scepter of a throne" and raze to the ground the citadels of iniquity, the old strong castles of feudalism, was also strong enough to lift little England with her six millions to a level with the thirty millions of mighty Spain. Not until he was forty years of age did this farmer enter Parliament. One day, in the House of Commons, Sir Philip Warwick, while listening to a sharp voice, said to John Hampden, whose seat was near him: "Mr. Hampden, who is that sloven who spoke just now, for I see he is on our side, by his speaking so warmly?" "That sloven," replied Hampden, "whom you see before you--that sloven, I say--if we ever come to a breach with the King--God forbid--that sloven, I say, would, in that case, be the greatest man in England." But Hampden knew him also as gentle and lovable, tender toward his friends, loved by his rustic neighbours, though this vehement man, with sword stuck close to his side, had stern and uncompromising work, and the most difficult task ever set before an Englishman. "A larger soul, I think," writes Carlyle, "had seldom dwelt in a house of clay than was his."

Much of the criticism of Cromwell that has been so bitter, so rabid and so persistent would at once disappear if it were understood that the central element in Cromwell's life was religion. He was first of all a Puritan, essentially a religious reformer and incidentally a politician. This is the clue to the maze, this is the key to the problem, and the solution to this historical enigma. He was by nature a poet and a prophet, haunted by sublime vision, dreaming of heaven and hell, as did Dante and Bunyan. "Verily," said he, "I think the Lord is with me. I undertake strange things, yet do I go through them to great profit and gladness and furtherance of the Lord's great work. I do feel myself lifted on by a strange force. I cannot tell why. By night and by day I am urged forward in the great work."

Had he lived in the days of Jeremiah, he would have dreamed dreams and seen visions and foretold retribution upon the wrongdoers. Had he lived in the days of Socrates, he would have made much of the voice of God. Had he lived in the time of Bernard the Monk, or Francis of Assisi, he would have dwelt apart from men and fed his soul in solitude. Like John Bunyan, he was a melancholy, brooding, lonely figure, who sometimes fought with Apollyon in the Valley of Humiliation, and sometimes was lifted to the heights of the Delectable Mountains. He was a man of singular sincerity, who confessed like Paul: "Oft have I been in hell, and sometimes have I been caught up into the seventh heaven and heard things not lawful to utter." Blackness of darkness on one day, blinding radiance of light on another--both experiences were his. "I think I am the poorest wretch that lives, but I love God, or rather I am beloved of God." There speaks the religious leader, and not the ambitious politician.

"In the whole history of Europe," writes Frederic Harrison, "Oliver Cromwell is the one ruler into whose presence no vicious man could ever come, into whose service no vicious man might ever enter." What an army was that which he collected! When one of his officers was guilty of profanity and vulgarity in his presence, he was immediately dismissed. Cromwell sought out men like John Milton to be associated with him in diplomatic work. "If I were to choose," he writes, "any servant--the meanest officers of the army of the Commonwealth--I would choose a godly man that hath principle, especially where a trust is to be committed, because I know where to find a man that hath principle." He believed, also, and practiced prayer, for more things are wrought by prayer than are dreamed of in man's philosophy. With Tennyson, he held that "with prayer men are bound as with chains of gold about the feet of God." One day, overpressed with work, he went into the country to spend the night with an old friend. After the Lord Protector had retired, the host heard words, as of one speaking. Standing by the door of Cromwell's room, in which he feared that some enemy might have found entrance, he heard Cromwell pouring out his heart to God, telling Him that this was not a work that he had taken up for himself; that it was God's work; that the people were God's children, and the world God's world. Little wonder that the modern politician cannot understand Oliver Cromwell, and finds his life full of contradictory elements.

Not all present-day politicians could stand the prayer test. Cromwell was a God-intoxicated man. He believed that the Sermon on the Mount and the law of Sinai were the basis of all political creeds. "We think," writes the historian, "that religion is a part of life; the Puritan thought it was the whole of life." That which was morally right could not be politically wrong, that which was politically right could not be morally wrong. The principles of justice and honesty that made the individual life worthy were one with the principles that made national life worthy. Between man and man you expected truth. Was it a matter of indifference for the King to lie to his ministers, his people, and his Parliament? Is a king to be excused who broke all pledges, and laid dishonest taxes on his people? These questions were incidentally political questions, but primarily moral problems. And they thrust Cromwell, the religious recluse, into the whirl and turmoil of politics, and made him a soldier and a statesman.

What a study in contrasts is the story of this farmer of Huntingdon! One day Parliament makes remonstrance; it sends the King word that he must call Parliament at regular intervals; that taxes must be voted by Parliament; that in the event of the King's refusing to call a Parliament for the correction of injustice, the peers may issue the call; that if the peers refuse, the judges may issue it, and if the judges play false, the people may come together for election. Hampden, Pym and Cromwell indict the King for wrong and tyranny. Charles gives orders that the five leaders of Parliament shall be delivered to the Keeper of the Tower. The King flees to Hampton Court, and sends the gold plate and the crown jewels to Paris, hires foreign troops, lands them upon English shores and England is plunged into civil war.

For the time being, Parliament is stunned, and the leaders seem paralyzed. But one man is equal to the emergency. This farmer, in rural England, assembles the gentlemen who live in his neighbourhood. They crowd under the trees in his orchard, he reads a psalm, kneels down and prays with them, then tells them that on the morrow a representative of the King is to be in Cambridge to call for troops. Cromwell announces that to-morrow he proposes to hang the King's representative at the crossroads, and to seize the gold plate of the university to hire troops. "I want no tapsters, or gamesters or cowards, but only gentlemen who fear God and keep His commandments." A few weeks later, Prince Rupert and Charles meet Lord Essex and the Parliamentary forces at Marston Moor, and at first are overwhelmingly successful. When the Puritans are defeated, Lord Essex orders Cromwell to bring up his regiment, and the stroke of Cromwell's Ironsides is the stroke of an earthquake. The farmer turns defeat into victory.

Then comes the overthrow of Charles at Naseby, and "God's crowning mercy" at Worcester. When Scotland tries to force the Presbytery upon England, Cromwell leads his troops north to Edinburgh. When the Irish rise up at Drogheda, he marches into Ireland. When Charles breaks all his pledges, and his private correspondence is discovered, exhibiting him in the light of traitor to the liberties of England, Oliver Cromwell becomes executioner, for he has to decide between the head of the King, or the neck of the Parliament. Offered the throne, with the right of descent passing over to his son, he refuses the crown, for he wishes to be the protector, to guard the precious seeds of liberty until such time as a worthy successor for the throne shall appear. If for a time he rules as military dictator, it grows out of the necessities of the times, for Parliament is weak, divided into hostile camps, refusing to correct the laws, investigate the abuses of judges, revise the principles of taxation, do anything for the navy, lighten the burdens of the common people. Divided into little cliques, Parliament wastes weeks and months, and at last Oliver Cromwell enters the House of Commons and dissolves Parliament, charging them with having thrown away a great opportunity. "May God choose between you and me!" exclaims the one man who understands the emergency. He is the true king who can do the thing that needs to be done!

What were the qualities that made Cromwell the great hero that he was? Lord Morley tells us that Cromwell was first of all a practical man, tactful, straightforward, and going straight to his object. With the instincts of the true general, for soldiers he selected sturdy farmers, country gentlemen, men of iron nerve, who did not drink nor gamble, but with whom war meant business. He gave to each of his soldiers a pocket-Bible, and when he hurled his regiments against the jaunty and dapper youths who made up the army of Prince Rupert, his troops swept through the royalist army "as a cannon ball goes through a heap of egg-shells." "Pray, but keep your powder dry," was his motto. He had also the genius of hard work, and the love of detail. He could toil terribly. Nothing escaped his vigilance.

One day he was asked whether he knew that Charles II, then living in Paris, had a representative in England? "Certainly," he replied. "He has one representative who sleeps in such a house, and another who sleeps near the palace. The correspondence of the first is in a trunk under his bed. The letters of the second are in a certain inn."

When he came at length to live in a palace, Oliver Cromwell was simple in his tastes, pure in his morals, tireless in his pursuit of duty. It is said that he was a Philistine, and the enemy of culture. But he loved music and encouraged the opera. He loved literature, and his warmest friend was John Milton, the greatest poet and author of the age. If he levelled the castles of England to the ground, that feudalism might have no stronghold to which it could flee, it cannot be said that he hated art, for Cromwell bought the cartoons of Raphael for England, and preserved the art treasures of Charles the First. It stirs our sense of wonder that men should think that Cromwell represents opposition to culture, and that Charles the Second stands for the refinements of life. Charles the Second, the royalist, was a king who endeavoured to sell the cartoons of Raphael that Cromwell had preserved, to the King of France, to obtain money for his court. He encouraged bull-baiting and cock-fighting and pleasures steeped in animalism and vulgarity. No one claims that Cromwell himself was a piece of granite, unhewn and unpolished. The fact is, neither the Puritan nor the royalist stood for full culture and refinement. But of the two men, a thousand times preferable is the Cromwell who maintained friendship with John Milton, who represented genius united to the noblest character.

But great as was Cromwell, the ruler, he was greater still as father, citizen and Christian. Alone, amid conspiracies and plots, the weary Titan staggered on. At last the burden broke his heart. He held the realm in order by his will, gave law to Europe, and defended the weak, crushed the bigot, so that far away in Rome the Pope trembled at his name, and the sons of the martyrs blessed him. Suddenly he realized that his great work was done. On his death-bed he lay with one hand upon the breast of Christ, and the other stretched out toward Washington and Lincoln. For hours he lay, speaking great and noble words. The storm that passed over London that day and uprooted the trees in Hyde Park was the fitting dirge for the passing of this noble soul. "God is good," he murmured. Urged to take a potion and find sleep, he answered: "It is not my design to drink and sleep, but my wish is to make what haste I can to be gone." An hour later he lay calm and speechless. His work was done. He had shattered that citadel of iniquity, the Divine Right of Kings, and secured for the people of England the rights of conscience and religion. When the King returned, he returned to reign in accordance with the people's will. When the Church was restored, it was restored upon the basis of the Act of Toleration, and the concession that no church can coerce the conscience of the people. Cromwell had compacted Scotland and England. He had outlined the movement of the reform bill of 1832. He had brought in an epoch when, for the first and only time in Europe, morality and religion were qualifications insisted upon in a court. Much of that which is best in the life and thought of America and England, the republic and the great monarchy alike owe to that stern workman of God, Oliver Cromwell.

V

JOHN MILTON

(1608-1674)

_The Scholar in Politics_

By common consent, critics acclaim John Milton the greatest Latin scholar, the foremost man of letters and one of the two first literary artists England has produced. Historians have united to give him a place among the ten great names in English history. Take out of our institutions Milton's plea for the liberty of the printing press, his views on education, and all modern society would be changed. Tennyson called Milton "the God-gifted organ-voice of England, the mighty-mouthed inventor of harmonies; an angel skilled to sing of time and of eternity; a seer who spent his days and nights listening to the sevenfold _Hallelujah Chorus_ of Almighty God." Voltaire was not an Englishman, but Voltaire characterized Milton's poems as "the noblest product of the human imagination." Many American statesmen believe that the principles of the Compact signed in the cabin of the _Mayflower_ and the final Constitution, are none other than the reproduction in political terms of the dreams of freedom that haunted the soul of John Milton all his life long. But it remained for Wordsworth to pay the supreme tribute to this immortal singer:

"Thy soul was like a star and dwelt apart; Thou hadst a voice that sounded like the sea; Pure as the native heavens, majestic, free. We must be free or die that speak the tongue That Shakespeare spoke; the faith and morals hold Which Milton held."

Poet, statesman, philosopher, champion and martyr of English literature, John Milton was born at one of the critical moments in the history of mankind. His era, says Macaulay, "was one of the memorable eras--the very crisis of the great conflict between liberty and despotism, reason and prejudice. The battle was fought for no single generation, for no single land. The destinies of the human race were staked on the same cast with the freedom of the English people. Then were first proclaimed those mighty principles which have since worked their way into the depth of the American forests . . . and from one end of Europe to the other have kindled an unquenchable fire in the hearts of the oppressed. Of those principles, then struggling for their existence, Milton was the most devoted and eloquent champion."

If it be true, as Macaulay would have us believe, that as civilization advances, poetry necessarily declines, and that in an enlightened and literary society the poet's difficulties are "in proportion to his proficiency" as a scholar, then it may truly be said that few poets have triumphed over greater difficulties than John Milton. He was born at the end of the heroic age in English literature, and he enjoyed all the benefits and advantages that travel and culture could bestow upon him. If, however, as others of us believe, great literature is like a spring of clear water, bubbling out of the soil, and no man can say what mysterious elements give it its crystal purity, then it behooves us to examine somewhat into the nature of Milton's parentage, the character of his environment and the significance of the training he received as a young man.

The great poet was born in London, eight years before the death of Shakespeare. The first sixteen years of his life were the last sixteen of the reign of James I. In Cheapside, within a block of his father's house, stood the old "Mermaid" tavern of Marlow, Ben Jonson, Dekker and Philip Massinger. His father was a scrivener, who drew deeds, made wills, invested money for his clients, and, in general, fulfilled for many families the tasks that now devolve upon the modern trust company. The father's skill and probity won for him an increasing number of clients, and with money came leisure for study and travel. He was a musician, a man of culture, a composer of considerable note; and he made his home an all-round center for young artists and authors. From the beginning, he recognized the unique genius of his son, and made the development of that genius to be the chief object of his life. He never tired of telling the boy that his first duty was to make the most possible out of himself. He held to those ideals that were outlined in Plato's and Aristotle's books on education. Whatever development could come through music, art, lectures, books, teachers, travel, was given the young poet. Just as misers pursue the accumulation of gold, just as ambitious statesmen pursue office and honour, so this father, by day and by night, toiled upon the education of his son; first teaching the child in his own library; then calling to his aid wise and experienced tutors; then sending the boy to a great London grammar school and thence to Cambridge University. The boy showed promise from the first. His exercises, "in English or other tongue, prosing or versing, but chiefly the latter," early attracted attention. He studied hard, at school and at home; often studying till twelve at night. He loved books, "and he loved better to be foremost." He was only fifteen years of age when he wrote:

"Let us blaze his name abroad, For of gods, he is the God,

Who by wisdom did create Th' painted heavens so full of state,

He the golden tressèd sun Caused all day his course to run, Th' hornèd moon to hang by night 'Mid her spangled sisters bright;

For his mercies aye endure, Ever faithful, ever sure."

Throughout his youth, Milton's enthusiasm for reading and learning burned like a fire, by day and by night. He was one of the few students outside of Italy who could think in Latin, debate in Latin, and write verse in Latin quite as readily as in English. "He was a profound and elegant classical scholar; he had studied all the mysteries of Rabbinical literature; he was intimately acquainted with every language of modern Europe from which either pleasure or information was then to be derived." He fulfilled his own definition of education:--"I call a complete and generous education that which fits a man to perform justly, skillfully and magnanimously all the offices, both private and public, of peace and war." And he believed that culture and character should have an aggressive note. "I take it to be my portion in this life, by labour and intense study, to leave something so written to after time, that they should not willingly let it die." Faithfully did he seek to live up to these high ideals. He sowed no wild oats, cut no bloody gashes in his conscience and memory, dwelt apart from vice and sensualism, and, at last, left the university with the approbation of the good and with no stain upon his soul.

Upon entering Cambridge it had been his intention to become a clergyman, but that intention he soon abandoned. The reasons he gives us are "the tyranny that had invaded the church," and the fact that, finding he could not honestly subscribe to the oaths and obligations required, he "thought it better to preserve a blameless silence before the sacred office of speaking, begun with servitude and forswearing." His father, meantime, had retired from business, and taken a country house in a small village near Windsor, about twenty miles from London. Few fathers have ever been as generous in meeting and encouraging a son's desire to devote himself to literature. For the next five years and eight months, in that country quietude, within sight of the towers of Windsor, Milton describes himself as "wholly intent, through a period of absolute leisure, on a steady perusal of the Greek and Latin writers." His father, of course, had provided the funds. His biographer Masson says: "Not until Milton was thirty-two years of age, if even then, did he earn a penny for himself." Such a life would have ruined ninety-nine out of every hundred talented young men; but it is the genius of Milton that he put those years to good use. Believing himself to be one dedicated to a high purpose, he not only completed his studies in classical literature but produced, at the same time, those early immortal classics known as his "minor" poems. There he wrote the "Lycidas," one of the world's great elegies; there the "Comus," which alone of all the masques of that time and preceding time, "has gone in its entirety into the body of living English literature." And there he wrote those two exquisite, airy fancies known to every schoolboy under the titles of "L'Allegro," and "Il Penseroso."