“Teach the Erring Soul” 1669–1674lyptic ending. The chorus, in terms that seem out of character for them, imagine
Samson with his vision miraculously restored, “dealing dole among his foes” and
walking over “heaps of slaughter’d.” God, they argue, had done as much for Israel
of old and to him “nothing is hard.” The final added line, “Of good or bad so great,
of bad the sooner,” suggests in its proper place that bad news travels faster than
good, but may suggest here that great evil will precede great good. This coda allows
Milton to have it both ways. Within his text these lines describe a false hope for
Samson’s physical restoration; here they project a future possibility of liberation and
also foreshadow Christ’s final victory over the forces of Antichrist.
Milton’s tragedy does not offer an optimistic assessment of the possibilities for
political liberation. The Samson paradigm shows that all human heroes are flawed,
that the signs of God’s action in history are inordinately hard to read, that Israelites
and Englishmen are more disposed to choose “Bondage with ease than strenuous
liberty” (271). Therefore, when God raises up his Samsons, or Gideons, or
Cromwells, their political gains soon collapse under the weight of human sin and
weakness in themselves and the people. Yet in the drama’s historical moment that
future is not yet fixed and choices are still possible. If the Israelites, or the English,
could truly value liberty, could reform themselves, could read the signs and events
with penetration, could benefit from the “new acquist / Of true experience” (1,755–
6), moral and political, that Samson’s story offers to the Danites and that Milton’s
dramatization of it offers his countrymen, liberation might be possible: the chance
is there. Milton’s tragedy implies that liberators must continue to respond to the call
of God if it comes to them, and may always, as Milton argued in The Readie & Easie
Way, reclaim their freedom when they are oppressed, if they have power to do so.
But that can only happen when a virtuous citizenry understands the political stakes
and values liberty. Samson Agonistes is a fit poetic climax to Milton’s lifelong effort
to help create such citizens.
“My Appointed Day of Rendering Up”
During his last years Milton suffered increasingly from gout, especially, Aubrey
reports, during the spring and autumn, but “he would be chearfull even in his
Gowte-fitts; & sing” (EL 5 ). Cyriack Skinner describes, it seems from personal
observation, the ravages of his illness: “hee had bin long troubl’d with that disease,
insomuch that his Knuckles were all callous, yet was hee not ever observ’d to be
very impatient” (EL 33). Such patience and cheerfulness suggests an inner strength
observers found remarkable. Milton’s eldest daughter Anne (the lame one) appar-
ently visited him at least once during 1674.^147 But Milton probably did not hear
about his daughter Deborah’s marriage to Abraham Clarke, a weaver in Ireland, on
June 1 of that year.^148 Milton was happy with his wife Elizabeth and grateful for the
efforts she made to care for him and give him pleasure – gratitude that led him to