the poem has not one but two “pious heroes,” Christ and the poet himself, who is filled with the spirit of Christ; Milton conveys his sense of being filled with the spirit of Christ by breaking down the expected tense-structure of the poem, creating an illusion of timelessness; the poet lives in the timeless moment in which Christ lives. In an autobiographical section of Apology for Smectymnuus, Milton explains that at a certain time in his career he became . . . confirmed in this opinion that he who would not be frustrate of his hope to write well hereafter in laudable things ought himself to be a true poem; that is, a composi tion and pattern of the best and honourablest things: not presuming to sing high praises of heroic men or famous cities, unless he have in himself the experience and the practice of all that which is praisworthy.
At the heart of this confession lies the aesthetic notion, common in much Renaissance literary theory (and commonplace in romantic literary theory) that things are the expression of their inner spirit. Although Milton would not have claimed to have originated this idea (it was at least as old as Longinus), he would have claimed to have understood it from the standpoint of a Puritan Christian: the “best and honourablest things are exemplified in Christ as revealed through the Holy Spirit. For him as for all Puritans, the “relation between the invisible spirit of man and the invisible God was immediate rather than mediate.”32 Milton’s composition of the “Ode on the Morning of Christ’s Nativity” began with a pulse quickened by the invisible Spirit of God: it was the first quickening of a pulse that beat even more rapidly when he came to write his great epics.
^ G. M. Trevelyan as quoted by M. M. Knappen, Tudor Puritanism (Chicago, 1965), p. 489. 2 See Knappen, pp. 339-480, for a general description of the influ ence of Puritanism on English life and culture. 3 Second Defense of the English People. The quotation is from John Milton: Complete Poems and Major Prose, ed. M. Y. Hughes (New York, 1957), p. 828. All quotations from Milton’s works are from this edition, unless otherwise noted. 4 The fact is handed down by Aubrey, one of Milton’s e arly bio graphers. See David Masson, The Life of John Milton, I (New York, 1946), 291.
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