John Milton - Poet, Essayist, Man of Action
XVIII. JOHN
MILTON (1608-1674)
Today most readers know John Milton as John Milton the poet, and all this
because most colleges and universities focus on this part of his work. The
reality is that John Milton was a superb essayist with many seminal political
ideas.
In the struggle between Puritans and
Royalists in England —in the middle of the seventeenth century— the proponents
of republican ideas followed their own instincts about politics based on general
principles of fair play and political justice. The fact that there existed
ample statutory and common English law did not deter them.
Pamphleteers and essayist argued for the rights of the people. Slowly but
surely a body of doctrine began to take shape, with human rights as their guiding
star.
John Milton distinguished himself for his original political essays. Not
only were his essays serious and accessible, but he wrote them with a depth of
philosophy. Not only did Milton write, but he was also an activist, not
unwilling to tangle with established authority.
Controversy followed him. First he tangled with church government. Of
this entanglement he drew the conclusion that there ought to be a definite separation
of church and estate. Milton was also an advocate of free expression, even of
the right to privacy which included the right to divorce. His arguments were so
convincing that the American founding fathers’ considered them in drafting the
Constitution of the United States.
Charged with contempt and embittered by it he published an essay entitled
Areopagitica: a Speech of
Mr. John Milton for the Liberty of Unlicensed Printing, to the Parliament of
England. In this essay he wrote about the evil
of censorship
of the press, going beyond into a defense of liberty.
After Charles I was executed Milton immediately aligned himself with the
republican group, expressing the justification of the execution in a pamphlet
on The Tenure of
Kings and Magistrates; proving, that it is lawful and hath been so held through all ages, for
any, who have the power, to call to account a Tyrant, or wicked King, and after
due conviction, to depose, and put him to death, if the ordinary magistrate
have neglected, or denied to do it, and that they, who of late, so much blame
deposing are the men that did it themselves.
In 1660 he wrote
another essay: The Ready and Easy
Way to Establish a Free Commonwealth, and the Excellence thereof compared with
the inconveniences and dangers of readmitting kingship in this nation.
The Eikonoklastes (" ImageSmasher")
was another piece written in reply to the Eikon Basilike (" Royal Image" an anonymous pamphlet believed
by many to have been penned by the King himself).
John Milton was an indefatigable man of letters and action; not just an
idle poet. Besides his popular works, he also wrote scholarly essays in Latin. |

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