But fail not, above all, to bring the one who comprehends the whole;
whose name is to be found in every school-boy book, written in living
letters--words that breathe; to whom the hearts of multitudes were as
one most simple instrument, which he could tune and tone unto his
pleasure. The birds taught him their language--the forest leaves had
life within their veins, and talked with him of Nature's mysteries. The
broad sea sent its homage by a thousand sprites, fresh from their coral
beds, who watched him in his dreams, or by those sylvan glens wherein he
wandered--riding the salt-sea foam, or the light spray of the wild
cataract, they sung the melodies of river and of ocean into his soul.
The beings of air, that, atom-like, float in the clearest ether, bathe
in the liquid dew, or drink their nectar from the honey-bells of the
wild heather bloom, called him their brother, and prated of their tricks
in gay familiarity. Oh, world! art thou the self-same world that
Shakspeare trod upon?
And there's another too, who stands alone in his sublimity--who dared
the mysteries of Paradise, and communed with angels--angels both of hell
and heaven--a giant-master, yet a man of beauty, wisdom, simplicity,
knowledge. Behold him as he sits, within the tapestried chamber at
Hampton Court! 'Tis the same room in which the Protector sat last night;
but how changed its aspect, just by the presence of that one man! How
different is the feeling with which we regard men of great energy and
men of great talent. Milton, blind--blind, powerless as to his actions,
overwhelming in his genius, grasping all things and seeing into them,
not with the eyes of flesh, but those of mind, altering the very
atmosphere wherein we move, stilling the air that we may hear his
oracles!
The room is one of most curious fashion, and hung with the oldest
tapestry in England, lighted on either side by long and narrow windows,
that are even now furnished as in the time of the old cardinal who built
them. On the low seat formed within the wall the poet sat. Who would
suffer a thought of the ambitious Wolsey or the sensual Henry to intrude
where once they held gay revels and much minstrelsy in their most tyrant
pastimes? Cromwell, the great Protector, even Cromwell is forgotten in
the more glorious company of one both poor and blind! He sat, as we
describe him, within the embrasure of the narrow window; the heat and
brightness of the summer sun came full upon his head, the hair upon
which was full and rich as ever, parted in the centre, and falling in
waving curls quite to his shoulders; his eyes were fixed on vacancy, but
their expression was as if communing with some secret spirit, enlivening
thus his darkness; he seemed not old nor young, for the lines upon his
face could not be considered wrinkles--tokens were they of care and
thought--such care and such thought as Milton might know and feel.