date
it near the middle of 1655. But,
indeed, we should miss much of the biographic interest
of the last two sonnets by detaching them from the
two first. In No. 1 we have a plaintive soliloquy
of Milton on his blind and disabled condition, ending
with that beautiful expression of his resignation
to God’s will in which, under the image of the
varieties of service that may be required by some great
monarch, he contrasts his own stationariness and inactivity
with the energy and bustle of so many of his contemporaries.
In No. 2, addressed to Cyriack Skinner, he treats
of the same topic, only reverting with pride, as he
had done several times in prose, to the literary labour
that had brought on his calamity. In both the
intimation is that he has disciplined himself to live
on as cheerfully as possible, taking daily duties,
and little pleasures too, as they come. What
more natural, therefore, than that, some little while
after those two affecting sonnets on his blindness
had been written, there should be two others, in which
not a word should be said of his blindness, but young
Lawrence and Cyriack Skinner should find themselves
invited, in a more express manner than usual, to a
day in Milton’s company? For that is the
proper construction of the Sonnets. They are
cards of invitation to little parties, perhaps to
one and the same little party, in Milton’s house
in the winter of 1655-6. It is dull, cold, weather;
the Parks are wet, and the country-roads all mire;
and for some days Milton has been baulked of his customary
walk out of doors, tended by young Lawrence or Cyriack.
To make amends, there shall be a little dinner in the
warm room at home—“a neat repast”
says Milton temptingly, adding “with wine,”
that there may be no doubt in that particular—to
be followed by a long talk and some choice music.
So young Lawrence is informed in the metrical missive
to
him; and the same day (unless, as we may
hope, the little dinner became a periodical institution
in Milton’s house), Cyriack is told to come
too. Altogether they are model cards of invitation.[1]
[Footnote 1: More detailed reasons for the dating
of Sonnets 1, 3, and 4 (for Sonnet 2 dates itself)
will be found in the Introductions to those Sonnets
in the Cambridge Edition of Milton. In line 12
of No. 2 I have substituted the word “talks”
for the word “rings,” now always printed
in that place. “Of which all Europe rings
from side to side,” is the reading in the copy
of the Sonnet as first printed by Phillips in 1694
at the end of his memoir of Milton; but that copy
is corrupt in several places. The original dictated
draft of the Sonnet among the Milton MSS. at Cambridge
is to be taken as the true text; and there the word
is “talks.” Phillips had doubtless
the echo of “rings” in his ear from the
Sonnet to Fairfax. The more sonorous reading,
however, has found such general acceptance that an
editor hardly dares to revert to “talks.”]