Milton and Mirabeau

Abstract

Though Milton and Mirabeau were devoted to almost identical ideals of civil liberty, their personalities offer a peculiar contrast. Milton was an idealist, a theorist, a poet; he was abstemious in food and drink, inclined to seclusion, religious by nature. Mirabeau, on the other hand, was a soldier, an orator, a political leader. Whereas Milton was thoughtful and reserved, Mirabeau was animated, impulsive, ever seeking the center of action, forever restless and impatient. Sensual and gluttonous, he was as much a slave to his passions as any of the Englishmen Milton condemned for being so; and in his last moments he turned away, more in kindness than in derision, the priest who sought to shrive him. Notwithstanding these essential differences, Mirabeau found in Milton a kindred spirit; he found in him that flaming love of liberty, that passion for essential freedoms, that lofty and unselfish devotion to country to which he himself aspired. Milton's influence on Mirabeau, many times suggested but never evaluated, is one of significant interest to students of Milton's politics. A close study of two Mirabeau tracts, Théorie de la Royauté après la Doctrine de Milton and De la liberté de la Presse, reveals not only that Mirabeau's reading of Milton strikingly verified his own political conclusions: it presents evidence that Milton's voice at a critical period of the Revolution became the weapon of its most powerful leader. French cries for liberty found expression in the tracts of the Puritan poet.