“Between Private Walls” 1645–1649He thereby removed this commendatory poem from the realm of politics and es-
tablished personal terms for its inclusion in Lawes’s 1648 volume, which he dedi-
cated with heartfelt emotion to the then defeated and imprisoned king.^13 In praising
Lawes as the “first” in England to set a poet’s lyrics “with just note & accent,”
Milton’s sonnet exaggerates somewhat, though many contemporaries agreed that
his settings “best” honored the English tongue and Lawes later made the same
claims for himself, somewhat more modestly.^14 Lawes along with some others in his
generation produced settings that eschewed harmony and counterpoint in favor of
recitative and declamatory song, accommodating musical stress and quantity to ver-
bal values so as to set off the poet’s words and sense.^15 Milton’s sonnet has affinities
with the Italian sonnet tradition of Della Casa in its blend of formality and intimacy.
It also imports many features of the Jonsonian epigram: the judicious tone, the very
precise terms of the compliment, the praises offered as from one worthy to another.
Yet within the decorum of praise for Lawes, Milton’s sonnet deftly enforces the
priority of poet over composer, and of verse over music, that is implicit in Lawes’s
own method. Lawes is a “Preist of Phoebus quire” (the poets) and his role is to tune
“thir happiest lines in hymn or story,” implying that he serves poets, and that they
belong to Apollo himself. In the final tercet Milton likens himself to Dante meeting
his composer friend – affectionately addressed as “Casella mio” – at the threshold of
Purgatory:
Dante shall give Fame leav to set thee higher
Then his Casella, whom he woo’d to sing
Met in the milder shades of Purgatory.The implied comparison is brilliantly apt: Casella, it was said, was especially gifted
in the art of setting words to music, and he answered Dante by singing one of
Dante’s own canzoni which he had presumably set, even as Lawes had set Milton’s
songs in A Maske.^16
Despite the optimism prompted by the New Model Army’s successes, Milton
had cause for alarm as threats to religious toleration increased. Presbyterianism was
being settled by law. On August 19, 1645 an ordinance was passed providing for
the election of elders and the organization of parishes “under the Government of
Congregational, Classical, Provincial, and National Assemblies,” beginning with
London, and further details were worked out in a series of ordinances in March,
1646.^17 Independent and sectarian congregations sought some accommodation or
toleration within this establishment and the army pressed for wider toleration.
Cromwell took the occasion of his striking victory at Naseby to plead their cause
before parliament: “He that ventures his life for the liberty of his country, I wish he
[may] trust God for the liberty of his conscience, and you for the liberty he fights
for.”^18 But the Presbyterian leadership mounted an all-out campaign against tolera-
tion and the tolerationists as the Devil’s progeny, responsible for unleashing a swarm