Something Bad is Going to Happen 1st

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 About Something Bad is Going to Happen

Adella is facing the dawn of a new year and the end of her twenties
– and she’s in a psychiatric unit recovering from a mental
breakdown. A decade earlier, her life held such promise; she had
every option in her hand. How did it come to this?

As we go back and walk with Adella through her twenties, she

searches for her grand purpose in love, career and travel. At her side
during the tumultuous highs and lows is her best friend, Jake, facing
his own challenges and opportunities. They both know the future
must have something better to offer – but why does it also always
feel, in the bottom of their stomachs, as though something bad is
going to happen?

Raw and revelatory, Something Bad is Going to Happen is a heart-

stopping new work from one of Australia’s most exciting writers.
Dealing with the weight young women bear through pressure,
anxiety, rejection, this is a generation-defining novel – wise, witty,
deeply compelling.
Also by Jessie Stephens

Heartsick
 Contents

Cover
About Something Bad is Going to Happen
Also by Jessie Stephens
Title page
Dedication
Epigraph

1 Adella
2 Adella
3 Adella
4 Jake
5 Adella
6 Adella
7 Jake
8 Adella
9 Adella
10 Jake
11 Adella
12 Adella
13 Adella
14 Jake
15 Adella
16 Adella
17 Jake
18 Adella
19 Adella
20 Adella
21 Jake
22 Adella
23 Jake
24 Adella
25 Raheem
26 Jake
27 Adella
28 Adella
29 Adella
30 Adella
31 Adella
32 Adella
33 Adella
34 Adella
35 Adella
36 Adella
37 Adella
38 Adella
39 Adella

Acknowledgements
About Jessie Stephens
Copyright page
Newsletter
I dedicate this book to everyone in my life who I wish was happier.
You know who you are.
‘Fiction here is likely to contain more truth than fact.’

– Virginia Woolf
 1

Adella

It’s New Year’s Eve, and life is happening on the other side of
Adella’s bedside window.
The sun has not yet set, and if she looks out the window for too
long the fairy floss sky will tell her she ought to be somewhere else.
The surrounding white gums dance as though there’s a rhythm
outdoors she can’t touch from inside. Energy is carried by the wind,
the brightness of the afternoon sun tickling pink shoulders and
freckled noses.
She can’t see any of those people from inside, of course. But she
knows it. Abigail’s mother came to visit an hour ago and her
powdery perfume still hangs in the air. Her gold bracelets jangled
excitedly, and her lipstick made her whole face look bright and
festive. Before she left, she waved in Adella’s direction, wishing her a
Happy New Year, her eyes looking sorry.
Adella stares at the tops of a line of trees, and imagines the hordes
of people gathering, the women in crisp, spotless linen, and men
laughing gutturally, holding a beer to their pursed lips. She can
almost hear the music. Something she knows the words to.
Everyone sharing A Moment but her.
In parts of Sydney, beaches and shorelines will be overflowing with
people who belong somewhere. Eyeshadow will shimmer on bright
eyes and bronzed legs will interlace on picnic blankets. The wine will
be cold but everything else will be warm, the fireworks marking
another year of possibility.
From next door, she can hear Jia’s wails. Screaming as though
someone has set her skin on fire. Mitch says she enters some kind of
psychotic state at three pm every day, seeing her family brutally
murdered before her eyes. As far as Adella knows, Jia’s family
weren’t murdered. She’s just stuck in a world in which they were.
Which, Adella supposes, is just as bad.
When Adella first arrived in Ward C, adrenaline coursed through
her body, willing her to support a woman who was screaming for
help. She imagines the sensation is similar to mothers who
experience a physiological response when their babies cry – an
innate need to soothe them. She watched, wide-eyed, as Abigail
continued to draw in her notepad, as though she couldn’t even hear
it. She listened to an impatient nurse insist there was nothing to be
afraid of before making her way back to the nurses’ station and
asking the male nurse if he’d been to the new Thai place on the
corner of Princes Road.
Now, Adella doesn’t flinch when the screaming begins. She feels
irritated before she feels compassionate. How quickly we can all turn
into monsters.
She turns her gaze to the wall. If how she felt was a colour, she
thinks, it would be this one. Not quite white. Not quite green. Not
quite grey. The colour of nothing. The colour of sick. The colour of a
human brain she once saw at an exhibition, an object to marvel at,
no longer functioning as a living mind.
Sometimes, lying here, she wonders if she might already be dead.
Trapped inside a concrete box of madness that smells like
disinfectant and box gravy. None of the doors have any locks, so she
has no privacy, not even when she shits. She isn’t allowed her
phone, the only thing that grounds her to the world everyone else
lives in. From the moment she was admitted, it was clear
this wouldn’t be about treatment. It would be about punishment. A
prison, where your sentence is as long as it takes to get better.
When she was admitted, a doctor with a blister below his lip stood
at the edge of her bed, flicking through a manila folder as though it
contained answers. As he spoke it became clear he saw her
aliveness as an indication of potential – a ‘first step’ in recovery. She
did not know how to explain that there was a space between not
wanting to live and not, entirely, wanting to die. She read once in
her ancient history textbook about a form of torture the medieval
Christians used to practise. It was called immurement: entombing
someone inside a wall. That was how the space felt, between not
wanting to live and not wanting to die. There was time, but there
was no future. Could he understand that?
She thought of the man she’d seen stretchered in while she was in
Emergency, his leg in a traction device, his face pale. He begged for
more pain relief. Morphine. Fentanyl. Ketamine.
He didn’t care. ‘More,’ he kept moaning. ‘More.’
That is what Adella wanted too. For the pain to go away. Anything
to make the pain go away.
Today the nurses have been busy decorating. Other patients
helped blow up balloons, and music played from a speaker on
Cathy’s desk. It all contributed to her sense that she was in some
sort of day-care centre for adults. Cathy enunciated her words slowly
and carefully. She spoke to patients who she knew would not speak
back. To herself as she looked for whatever she had mostly recently
misplaced. To family and the doctor on duty and the cleaners and
the other nurses, especially when they were buried in paperwork.
‘Now just because we’re here doesn’t mean that we can’t have a
party, am I right, Malik?’ Malik, as far as Adella knew, had never
spoken a word inside the ward. Cathy had organised pizza, which
Adella suspected was more for her than the patients. She’d been
repeating all day how she was a vegetarian so there would be plenty
of options and ‘garlic bread! Garlic bread is the best bit!’ She’d
clapped her hands together, like a Play School presenter on meth.
A few hours ago Adella had sat opposite the psychiatrist. She could
feel his attempts to coax her into a shared delusion, where the world
is safe and makes sense and is ultimately liveable. Surely they both
know that is not true. But the subject of truth never really comes up
in their sessions. What the psychiatrist wants is for her to be
functional. In some respects, obedient. Easier to deal with. A
contributing member of society. Something like those imagined
people, on the other side of her window, who are celebrating New
Year’s Eve. To her they look like willing participants in some kind of
hypnosis.
And part of her wants that. To learn how to be alive.
But another part thinks that would be to invest in a lie. She had
pretended to be one of them, hadn’t she? And what good had that
done?
Her maturation into adulthood had not been marked by the Big
Moments that others seemed to so effortlessly collect. Her trajectory
– she could see now – had been a descent into madness.
How had things gone so terribly wrong?
 2

Adella

Eight years ago

The music is so loud Adella can feel it in her chest. She wonders if it
might explode through her throat.
She watches a girl a few spots ahead of her in the line move her
head to the rhythm, as though by accident. She seems entirely
unaware she’s being watched, occupying her own simple world
where once there’s music on, you move to it. Your body has no
choice in the matter.
Adella wishes she were more like that.
Adella wishes she were a lot of things.
Living in the back of her mind is a version of herself she likes much
more. This Adella knows there is room for something funny to be
said, and says it. This Adella moves without the stiffness of someone
being watched and reads books about clever things she effortlessly
recites and doesn’t have an underwear drawer full of undies with
various nondescript stains in the crotch. Every night when she goes
to bed, she sets early alarms and compiles heaving to-do lists, ready
for this new person who possesses none of her flaws or weaknesses.
She spends her last waking moments fantasising that she will be
someone different tomorrow, and as she drifts off to sleep, she
absolutely believes it.
 She becomes aware of the silence hanging between her and
Sophia, but when either tries to say anything they can barely hear
each other. She wonders if Sophia is having fun yet. This would be a
good moment to say something but she doesn’t know what. Instead,
she looks in the opposite direction, as though she’s come across
something very interesting.
By accident, she does. The woman whose head she was watching
a moment ago has turned around and she has a face Adella
recognises from some social media app. She’s not famous or
anything. Just a girl her age who boys at St Luke’s used to talk
about, with a face that makes you want to look at it for longer, from
different angles. Her handle is something like ‘@its_bronte’. She’s
taller than Adella and looks how you’d expect someone to look who
shares their name with an iconic beach. Thin. With Bambi eyes, the
kind that look curious but perpetually disappointed in everything
they happen to come across. Her height makes Adella feel short and
slouched. Her clear, unmade-up eyes make Adella feel tacky. Her
lilac shift dress with its high neckline makes Adella feel cheap and
overexposed. The girl laughs at something and whispers to a friend
to her right, and when Adella catches Sophia staring too, she
wonders if Sophia would rather be here with them.
She stands up straight and imitates the energy they have.
‘Is Daniel still coming?’ Her tone is purposefully light.
‘Yeah, the rest of the St Luke’s boys are coming too. They’ve been
at a uni party, I think . . .’ Sophia pulls her phone out of her black
shoulder bag, using Adella’s question as permission to check if
Daniel has texted her yet. Adella wonders how much time has to
pass since graduating before you stop referring to groups of people
by the school they went to. It’s been two years.
She knows that means Nathan might be coming. That’s who she
was thinking about a few hours ago when she closed her eyes,
letting Sophia swipe fancy colours across her eyelids. The others call
him Nath but she doesn’t feel like she knows him well enough to
shorten his name yet. She likes to imagine she will one day. When
she looks at that group of boys, she cannot understand how anyone,
Sophia included, can be drawn to anyone other than him. She’s met
the girlfriends of the others and wonders if they, deep down, know
they chose the wrong one. Do they notice Nathan when they all go
out together? What happens when these people grow up? Do a
group of married couples know their spouses were not created
equal, with some objectively more desirable than others?
Last time she saw him there had been a series of almost invisible
exchanges, so small she’d been left wondering if they really ever
happened. As they’d sat around the wooden table in Daniel’s
backyard, she could have sworn she’d caught Nathan looking at her.
When Daniel had finished with the barbecue, Nathan had brought
her over a plate full of food. No one else. Just her. He slipped into
the chair beside her and asked: ‘And what’s Adella doing with
herself?’ There was something about how he said her name. Like he
enjoyed it. But she’d thought all this before and ultimately
embarrassed herself when she’d seen those same men with their
tongues down other people’s throats on the dark dance floor at
Fonda. Her sense of things had never been something she could
trust.
Once Adella and Sophia have their vodka raspberries they dance,
looking at an unspecified point in the distance, pretending they’re
not glancing towards the entrance. Again, Adella wonders if it’s
possible that Sophia is genuinely enjoying this moment, while she,
only centimetres away from her, is desperately uncomfortable in it.
She keeps watching the women around her, their bodies moving as
though their brains have stopped speaking to them. Free. Meanwhile
her mind chatters away, suggesting she dance more like that or
move more like her and where should she be looking? At Sophia?
Isn’t that a little intense? Maybe over Sophia’s shoulder. She grabs
two more drinks for each of them. How much does someone need to
drink before their mind falls silent?
‘Oh no,’ Sophia whispers into her ear while turning in the opposite
direction.
‘Wh–’
A man with chest hair that very nearly meets his facial hair grabs
her hand while his two friends, one who is comically short, the other
comically tall, laugh a few steps behind him.
‘No. No,’ she says, glancing at Sophia who has spat out a mouthful
of her drink onto her chin.
He gyrates his hips in too-tight white jeans and just as she clocks
them, Sophia leans into her ear, ‘The shoes.’
How to describe them? A leather dress shoe. Maybe a loafer. The
length of them competing with the length of his shin. Too big for a
short man. She can’t remember why but she and Sophia call them
elf shoes when really they should call them clown shoes. The man
could be Leonardo DiCaprio, but if he is wearing these alligator skin–
looking, olive abominations then they’d agreed no further contact
was allowed. A shoe tells you everything you need to know about a
person, Sophia often says, because it’s what people put on last when
they’ve stopped trying so hard. A shoe will tell you the truth of their
character.
‘Can I get you two a drink?’ the man with the fur on his chest asks,
getting his wallet out of his pocket as though to prove he has access
to money.
Before Adella has opened her mouth, Sophia turns around and
says, ‘Yes please! Two vodka raspberries would be great. What’s
your name?’ She asks this as if she gives a shit.
‘Ro–’ The music cuts off the remaining syllables.
‘Thank you, Ro-naaaaz,’ Sophia exclaims, patting him on the
shoulder for encouragement.
‘You’re a bitch,’ Adella says. She watches Ro go to the bar with his
wallet that looks like it belongs to someone twice his age.
Sophia shrugs her shoulders. ‘I hope he doesn’t spill our drinks
when he trips over his own shoes.’
They have almost forgotten about Ro when he returns with a tray
of drinks, including a shot each.
‘To two beautiful . . .’ he toasts, holding a shot glass in the air.
‘To Ro-aallummuuula,’ Adella and Sophia murmur before pouring
the warm liquid down their throats, burning on the way down.
He asks them both questions they can’t quite hear, something
about where they live maybe, and Sophia peers at him over her nose
even though he’s only a few centimetres shorter than her.
They smile and nod and then Sophia announces that they both
need to pee, leading Adella to the bathroom by the hand.
‘Okay, but what do we do now?’ Adella asks, sitting on a sticky seat
while Sophia stands in the corner of the same cubicle inspecting the
ingrown hairs on her knee.
‘We hide.’
‘I don’t know, it’s like . . . how much of our time are two drinks
worth? Like, do we owe him ten minutes? Half an hour? He looked
so proud with his stupid little tray.’
‘Hurry up, I’m about to piss myself.’ As they swap Sophia runs her
fingers through the front of her hair.
‘The man forced drinks onto us and as much as we’d like to
continue hanging out, unfortunately we’ve lost him.’ She wipes.
 ‘He’ll be where we –’
‘We. Lost. Him.’
As they exit the bathroom, his white pants glow in the dark,
moving to the beat of a remix of an Adele song, and it’s one of the
most unsexy things she thinks she might ever have seen.
‘Hang on.’ Sophia holds her by the shoulders, stepping onto a piece
of wet toilet paper stuck to the back of her black boot.
‘You know, every time I think I might be hot,’ Adella says, ‘I realise
I have wee-soaked toilet paper attached to my fucking shoe.’
‘I feel like that’s a metaphor for life.’ Sophia signals to their left.
They stand behind some kind of indoor hedge, where they can see
white pants but white pants can’t see them.
‘There’s Daniel,’ Adella says, signalling with a nod a few seconds
later, spotting him behind Nathan. They’re right near the door,
shoving their wallets into their back pockets. Nathan’s nose and the
outlines of his eyes are lit up by the screen of his phone. She
wonders who he’s texting.
Sophia puts down her drink and makes her way over to him,
casually mouthing, ‘Hey.’ Adella sees her from Daniel’s point of view.
She smiles up at him, her thin top lip disappearing, exposing the
gum above her front teeth. On anyone else, that might not be
beautiful. Perhaps a different person would make an attempt to hide
it. But not Sophia. On her, it is endearing. It looks like she cannot
help but smile as wide as her mouth will allow.
Everything Sophia detests about her own body is what men love
about it – hips and thighs and breasts she grew years before anyone
else in their class. Whenever she tries to talk about how hard it was
needing to wear a bra in primary school, Adella rolls her eyes. Boys
– and now men – have always looked at her and seen someone
simply beautiful, but women have the superpower of being able to
determine exactly what makes her beautiful. It’s the combination of
this with that, her perfect little nose and the dimple on her left
cheek. They don’t just have the answer. They know exactly how they
got there.
When Adella first met Sophia in Year Seven she wondered if it
might be a burden to have a friend who looked like that. She had
met few people who came across Sophia and didn’t remark on what
was so blatantly obvious. In one of their first classes in Year Seven,
the English teacher had stopped mid roll call to exclaim that Sophia
might have the most beautiful blue eyes she’d ever seen. Adella
looked around the class, noting that Sophia was one of only a
handful to have blue eyes at all, and wondered if that comment
might make other kids feel bad. Like her. Who had brown eyes. ‘Poo
brown’, according to a kid in primary school, who had laughed so
hard he cried. When it got to her name on the roll, the teacher
glanced up, catching her eye, before moving right along. Whenever
Adella brought this memory up, Sophia pretended she couldn’t
remember it. They both knew she did.
The only people who didn’t tend to comment on Sophia’s obvious
beauty were men who didn’t stand a chance. Muttering that they
didn’t know what all the fuss was about was the only power they felt
they had.
Daniel buys a tray of drinks, all vodka-somethings, and Sophia and
Adella continue to dance together as though the others aren’t there,
even though they’re right beside them. Sophia slurs something
about Daniel being weird and Adella quickly dismisses her. ‘He’s
literally watching you right now,’ she whispers. Sophia smiles. Adella
considers telling her how beautiful she looks. The moment passes,
and she doesn’t.
‘Hope you enjoyed your drinks.’ They both look up to see Ro turn
on his too-big heel, the too-tall friend muttering ‘sluts’ or ‘cunts’ or
some hybrid of the two.
‘Who was that?’ Nathan whispers in her ear.
‘No idea,’ she says, glancing at Sophia whose eyes are wet with
tears of laughter.
‘The weirdest thing,’ she leans in towards Sophia, convinced she
has stumbled across an idea that is nothing short of profound, ‘is
that straight men and straight women . . . passionately hate each
other.’ Sophia hisses ‘yesss’ and then starts inconspicuously doing an
elf dance they learned from some viral clip last Christmas.
Nathan disappears from her peripheral vision, and she spots him
sliding into one of the deep red booths in the corner, across from a
friend she doesn’t recognise. She shouts in Sophia’s ear, ‘I’m going
to pee,’ but walks in the opposite direction. She finds herself passing
the booth he’s in, his long legs taking up a seat for two.
‘Adella!’ he shouts over the music, leaning towards her. ‘Come sit.’
He shuffles across on the sticky leather seat and then hunches
himself over, directing a question about how her night has been into
her ear. She tells him she was at Sophia’s before. Even though she’s
fairly sure he can’t hear her, she likes how he leans towards her
when she speaks, and then angles his mouth towards her ear when
he speaks. He smells like Extra peppermint gum and faintly of
cigarettes. The friend stands up and gestures as if to say ‘drink?’.
Nathan nods.
‘I’m glad you’re here tonight,’ he says, pushing his thick brown hair
back off his face. ‘Daniel said you would be.’
‘Why are you glad I’m here?’ She cocks her head to the side with a
grin.
He shrugs.
‘Just am.’ He squeezes her knee closest to him.
 She asks him about his trip to the Philippines, and then remembers
they already had this conversation at the barbecue. She pretends
they didn’t and hopes he has a very bad memory.
The friend brings back drinks. They talk about uni.
‘Sophia was saying you’re really smart?’ the other guy says, raising
his eyebrows, daring her to agree.
‘Don’t know about that,’ she mutters, bringing the short straw to
her lips. It’s a vodka lemonade and she can barely taste the spirits
anymore. She knows the question is a trap. But she’d be lying if she
said she didn’t enjoy it. As much as she wishes she were more
beautiful or outgoing, there is something more noble – more
virtuous perhaps – about being clever. For as long as she can
remember it has been her only point of difference. The extent of her
value. The one thing about herself she has ever felt any gratitude
for. She waits for Nathan to ask a follow-up question. Maybe about
what she’s studying or why Sophia would say that. He doesn’t.
At some point her indoor netball team comes up. Nathan says he’d
love to watch her play.
He leans in and says, ‘I bet you’re really good.’ She smiles and
shakes her head, embarrassed at the thought of him ever watching
her play.
The silence between them makes her itchy so she begins telling
him about the guy from before. ‘You know the one who came over
to us?’ He nods in a way that suggests either he can’t remember or
can’t quite hear her.
She starts laughing and attempting to explain the shoes. ‘They are
like these . . . elf shoes . . . and only a certain kind of guy wears
them and they’re just so big. They can step on your toes even
though they’re on the other side of the room . . .’
Nathan looks at her with a soft smile, and takes her hand mid-
sentence, leading her to the bar. He strokes the back of her hand
with his thumb, his palms soft and warm, nails curved like he cuts
them rather than bites them.
The rest of the night unfolds in a series of flashes, like blurred
polaroids that haven’t quite developed. He kisses her at the table,
his hand holding the back of her head. At one point she knocks her
drink over and it spills onto her dress and thighs. She tells herself
she’ll go and clean herself up, but that thought disappears as quickly
as it came. Sophia mouths something – maybe that she’s going
home. Then there’s a taxi.
A window wound down. Wintery air. A dark street. ‘My parents are
away.’ The smell of rain. An unmade bed. Nathan’s bed. It’s like she
foresaw all this. She knew it would happen. She feels like this is
living.
He brings her water and they sit on the edge of his bed for a while.
He shows her his computer. Apparently he makes music and there’s
some program up with different-coloured squiggles. It occurs to her
that he is trying to impress her, show her things about himself. She
tells herself to remember this in the morning. He presses play on
something and she doesn’t know what to do, so says it’s really cool.
She asks three or so questions and then runs out. Maybe she should
bop her head or something but that feels embarrassing. He must
sense her discomfort, because he turns it off, finding an Apple
playlist and pressing play on something she recognises by Pnau. He
looks at her, his eyes steady, and brings his lips to hers. She lies
down. Her head spins every time she closes her eyes, so she keeps
them slightly open – reminding herself of where she is.
He takes his own shirt off, and she smells his sweat no longer
masked by cologne. It smells like her dad after he mows the lawn.
Musky and stale.
 She grinds against his erection, her bare inner thigh sensing how
hard it is, while her fingers run down his chest. It’s prickly, like her
legs a few days after shaving. He kisses her neck as though he can’t
help himself, licking up towards her ear. He reaches down and
undoes his belt, his mouth hanging open as he focuses. His jeans
and underwear land on the hardwood floor with a clunk, and a part
of her thinks how strange this is. Him completely naked. Her still
clothed.
He rearranges her body like a pillow, then lays himself back on the
bed, with her knees on either side of his hips. She kisses his neck,
grinding harder, and he gently guides her head down the length of
his stubbly torso.
She steadies herself before doing what she knows she’s meant to.
She flinches at the slightly sour taste. He pushes up into her throat,
and she does what her high school boyfriend so patiently taught her
to. She counts down in her head. Twenty more seconds and I’ll stop.
Ten more seconds. But he puts his hand on the back of her head
and she thinks about the essay she needs to finish tomorrow and
how she’s going to get home. Her wrists hurt from holding herself up
and her neck aches. She makes noises with her mouth to feign
pleasure, and then she stops when she realises how ridiculous it
must sound.
She doesn’t know how long it goes on for. A while. She oscillates
between feeling grateful she has Nathan Garcia’s dick in her mouth
to feeling resentful that he hasn’t touched her yet. It’s not even
about her feeling pleasure. She probably couldn’t after this many
drinks anyway. It’s about him wanting to look at her. Her body being
marvelled at and grabbed by a person who can’t help themselves.
Glancing up, she sees that his eyes are closed, and when he opens
them he stares at the ceiling. He speeds up, making noises. She
complies. And then she feels him finish. She swallows, so as not to
make him feel uncomfortable, before wiping her mouth with the
back of her hand.
He sighs and looks up towards the white ceiling, blank except for a
pattern around the edges, and runs both hands through his now-
damp hair. She rolls into the spot between his right arm and his
body, and stares up too, as though they’re both watching the same
blank thing. She pretends she is deep in thought, breathing heavily,
but all she notices is how warm his body is compared to her cold
arms and legs. After a few minutes he gets up to go to the
bathroom. She hears the toilet flush. He comes back in, falls into
bed, and faces the wall.
She waits to see if he will turn over, shaking a little from the cold.
A window must be open and she is on top of the covers. She
breathes through pursed lips and quietly rolls over to the edge of the
bed. She slowly collects her bag and her jacket, and picks up the
shoes she kicked off when she walked in. He doesn’t stir.
As she leaves the room, she closes the door with a thud. Louder
than it needs to be. She wants him to know she left.
She walks down the street, the cold running through the soles of
her bare feet all the way up to her neck. A few times she glances
behind her, as though he might appear and ask her back inside. Her
shoulders creep up towards her ears, and her teeth chatter
uncontrollably. She should put her boots on, but her toes and ankles
hurt, and the cold is a distraction from what’s going on in her head.
She notices that half the streetlights aren’t working, and wonders if
people would complain about the lack of visibility if her body was to
show up, lifeless, the next morning.
Probably not, she thinks.
There would be greater emphasis placed on the fact she was
walking, alone, barefoot, at four o’clock on a Sunday morning in the
middle of June, basically daring a predator to jump out from behind
a suburban bush. If they did, then Nathan would probably feel very
guilty about not even saying goodbye. What an awful thing to think.
She sniffles and hugs her arms into her chest. It’s starting to
drizzle again, as though the clouds can’t entirely commit to raining.
As though they, along with the rest of Sydney, would just like a few
more hours’ sleep.
She looks up ahead and can see the lights of a main road. Finally.
Once she’s there, hopefully she can hail a taxi. Her stomach lurches
at the thought of how much it will cost. She cannot afford to do this.
The thought of being in a car with a stranger makes her feel
suddenly visible. She pulls at the skin beneath her eyes, trying to
erase any smudged mascara. She hates how her body smells. Like
someone else. His sweat has settled into her pores and she rubs
where he licked her neck with the edge of her leather jacket. The
stamp on the inside of her right wrist has turned into an inky blur.
She just wants to be in the shower. A scalding-hot, quiet shower.
Then bed.
Maybe in the morning there will be a message from Nathan.
She smiles at the possibility.
 3

Adella

The wind tangles her hair into stringy knots as she half walks, half
jogs to the cafe on the corner.
She is consumed by envy for Jake, whose weekends are blank
squares on a calendar. Sometimes they’re marked by birthdays or
rugby league games, but never by a sickening sense that he has an
assignment due on Monday, and therefore any joy he feels is stolen.
Laden with guilt. A moment he should’ve spent with his fingers on a
keyboard.
The cafe is on a main road. Outside is a big sign that says ‘Cafe
Luxe’, which always makes them laugh because you can see where
the accent has fallen from above the ‘e’ and the square stainless-
steel tables are always sticky and unstable, a folded-up coaster
lodged under one of the legs.
She finally makes it through the door and collapses into the chair
opposite him, repeating, ‘Sorry sorry sorry, bus was late, I’m the
worst,’ trying to ignore the clock above his head that shows she was
meant to be here twenty-five minutes ago.
‘Nah, nah, I’ve got all the time in the world,’ he says, a grin
indicating he’s annoyed but won’t be for long. ‘Didn’t you say ten
because you’ve got an assignment to finish today?’
‘Yes I did, I’m so sorry. I ended up staying up last night until past
five because I have work tonight . . . then my bus didn’t come.’ She
leans back, catching her breath.
The sound of grinding coffee beans is interrupted by the
commanding rev of an engine, so loud it forces everyone in close
proximity to swing their heads around, brows furrowed.
‘Mum says the worst injuries she sees are from motorbike
accidents,’ she says, nodding towards the doorway. They watch the
road come alive with motorbikes, each revving their engines one
after the other, before speeding down towards the highway. ‘Last
week she said she saw a guy whose patella had been found fifty
metres away from the rest of his body.’
She doesn’t know if it was fifty exactly but it sounds dramatic.
‘That’s messed up.’ Jake takes a sip of his coffee and chocolate
settles on his top lip. ‘Maybe that’s why depressed middle-aged men
buy motorbikes. More socially acceptable to be split into pieces by a
truck than to . . .’ He brings his forefinger to his temple. Bang.
‘Jesus.’
‘It’s the perfect decoy,’ he says, as though concocting a plan. ‘You
look like you’re taking up a new hobby and being spontaneous but
really what you’re saying is, “I’m indifferent to being alive”. So you
get on your lame little bike, between a ten-tonne truck and an SUV,
and maybe feel something for the first time in a decade.’
‘Well, I guess that’s what you have to look forward to.’ She
shouldn’t have said that. It brings up the one thing they do not talk
about.
He must clock her expression.
‘Don’t worry about it, it’s fine.’ He forgives her with a shake of the
head. ‘So, have you heard from that guy then?’
She taps her foot beneath the table. She does not want to talk
about Nathan.
They’ve spoken on the phone a few times over the last fortnight
and the subject of Nathan has come up, mostly because she can’t
help herself. She should’ve just pretended it never happened. By
even mentioning it perhaps she jinxed it. There were some details
she omitted. Others she exaggerated.
‘Yeah. He messaged me on Wednesday night.’ She exhales and
gestures for Jake to wipe his lip. Doesn’t tell him it was 10 pm and
the message said ‘Hey’. Certainly doesn’t tell him what came next.
‘When are you seeing him?’
‘Not sure yet. I think he’s meant to be busy this weekend and
Sophia was saying he works nights at some bottle shop.’
A waitress comes over, and she orders an orange juice.
‘Insane that this Nathan works seven nights a week. Must be the
hardest-working guy in Sydney,’ Jake says, raising his eyebrows.
‘Shut up.’
‘You just . . . know how to pick them.’ He shakes his head.
‘Remember Jono? I was thinking about him the other day.’
She laughs. ‘Why? Did you ejaculate prematurely and then refuse
to speak to the girl who was literally still in your bed? If so I can give
you Jono’s number and maybe you can create a little support group.’
‘But you saw him again!’ He taps the table with his palms, lightly
but it still shifts, losing a serviette. ‘After all that you ended up at his
party, remember? And he blanked you while –’
‘Don’t, I can’t even think about it.’ She plays with the salt and
pepper shakers. She hates that she told anyone any of this.
‘I obviously don’t know Nathan. Could be a great guy. But if it’s
been two weeks and he hasn’t asked you out . . . then you’re not a
girl he wants to date.’
She swallows. ‘Who said I wanted to date him?’ Her voice is high-
pitched.
Jake doesn’t need to know she keeps checking his account. Or that
Another random document with
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 It is the aspect which he presents to this generation, that alone
concerns us. Milton the polemic has lost his popularity long ago; and
if we skip the pages of “Paradise Lost” where “God the Father
argues like a school divine,” so did the next age to his own. But, we
are persuaded, he kindles a love and emulation in us which he did
not in foregoing generations. We think we have seen and heard
criticism upon the poems, which the bard himself would have more
valued than the recorded praise of Dryden, Addison and Johnson,
because it came nearer to the mark; was finer and closer
appreciation; the praise of intimate knowledge and delight; and, of
course, more welcome to the poet than the general and vague
acknowledgment of his genius by those able but unsympathizing
critics. We think we have heard the recitation of his verses by genius
which found in them that which itself would say; recitation which told,
in the diamond sharpness of every articulation, that now first was
such perception and enjoyment possible; the perception and
enjoyment of all his varied rhythm, and his perfect fusion of the
classic and the English styles. This is a poet’s right; for every
masterpiece of art goes on for some ages reconciling the world unto
itself, and despotically fashioning the public ear. The opposition to it,
always greatest at first, continually decreases and at last ends; and a
new race grows up in the taste and spirit of the work, with the utmost
advantage for seeing intimately its power and beauty.
But it would be great injustice to Milton to consider him as enjoying
merely a critical reputation. It is the prerogative of this great man to
stand at this hour foremost of all men in literary history, and so (shall
we not say?) of all men, in the power to inspire. Virtue goes out of
him into others. Leaving out of view the pretensions of our
contemporaries (always an incalculable influence), we think no man
can be named whose mind still acts on the cultivated intellect of
England and America with an energy comparable to that of Milton.
As a poet, Shakspeare undoubtedly transcends, and far surpasses
him in his popularity with foreign nations; but Shakspeare is a voice
merely; who and what he was that sang, that sings, we know not.
Milton stands erect, commanding, still visible as a man among men,
and reads the laws of the moral sentiment to the new-born race.
There is something pleasing in the affection with which we can
regard a man who died a hundred and sixty years ago in the other
hemisphere, who, in respect to personal relations, is to us as the
wind, yet by an influence purely spiritual makes us jealous for his
fame as for that of a near friend. He is identified in the mind with all
select and holy images, with the supreme interests of the human
race. If hereby we attain any more precision, we proceed to say that
we think no man in these later ages, and few men ever, possessed
so great a conception of the manly character. Better than any other
he has discharged the office of every great man, namely, to raise the
idea of Man in the minds of his contemporaries and of posterity,—to
draw after nature a life of man, exhibiting such a composition of
grace, of strength and of virtue, as poet had not described nor hero
lived. Human nature in these ages is indebted to him for its best
portrait. Many philosophers in England, France and Germany, have
formerly dedicated their study to this problem; and we think it
impossible to recall one in those countries who communicates the
same vibration of hope, of self-reverence, of piety, of delight in
beauty, which the name of Milton awakens. Lord Bacon, who has
written much and with prodigious ability on this science, shrinks and
falters before the absolute and uncourtly Puritan. Bacon’s Essays
are the portrait of an ambitious and profound calculator,—a great
man of the vulgar sort. Of the upper world of man’s being they speak
few and faint words. The man of Locke is virtuous without
enthusiasm and intelligent without poetry. Addison, Pope, Hume and
Johnson, students, with very unlike temper and success, of the same
subject, cannot, taken together, make any pretension to the amount
or the quality of Milton’s inspirations. The man of Lord Chesterfield is
unworthy to touch his garment’s hem. Franklin’s man is a frugal,
inoffensive, thrifty citizen, but savors of nothing heroic. The genius of
France has not, even in her best days, yet culminated in any one
head,—not in Rousseau, not in Pascal, not in Fénelon,—into such
perception of all the attributes of humanity as to entitle it to any
rivalry in these lists. In Germany, the greatest writers are still too
recent to institute a comparison; and yet we are tempted to say that
art and not life seems to be the end of their effort. But the idea of a
purer existence than any he saw around him, to be realized in the life
and conversation of men, inspired every act and every writing of
John Milton. He defined the object of education to be, “to fit a man to
perform justly, skilfully and magnanimously all the offices, both
private and public, of peace and war.” He declared that “he who
would aspire to write well hereafter in laudable things, ought himself
to be a true poem; that is, a composition and pattern of the best and
honorablest 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 praiseworthy.” Nor is there in literature a
more noble outline of a wise external education, than that which he
drew up, at the age of thirty-six, in his Letter to Samuel Hartlib. The
muscles, the nerves and the flesh with which this skeleton is to be
filled up and covered, exist in his works and must be sought there.
For the delineation of this heroic image of man, Milton enjoyed
singular advantages. Perfections of body and of mind are attributed
to him by his biographers, that, if the anecdotes had come down
from a greater distance of time, or had not been in part furnished or
corroborated by political enemies, would lead us to suspect the
portraits were ideal, like the Cyrus of Xenophon, the Telemachus of
Fénelon, or the popular traditions of Alfred the Great.
Handsome to a proverb, he was called the lady of his college.
Aubrey says, “This harmonical and ingenuous soul dwelt in a
beautiful and well-proportioned body.” His manners and his carriage
did him no injustice. Wood, his political opponent, relates that “his
deportment was affable, his gait erect and manly, bespeaking
courage and undauntedness.” Aubrey adds a sharp trait, that “he
pronounced the letter R very hard, a certain sign of satirical genius.”
He had the senses of a Greek. His eye was quick, and he was
accounted an excellent master of his rapier. His ear for music was so
acute, that he was not only enthusiastic in his love, but a skilful
performer himself; and his voice, we are told, was delicately sweet
and harmonious. He insists that music shall make a part of a
generous education.
With these keen perceptions, he naturally received a love of
nature and a rare susceptibility to impressions from external beauty.
In the midst of London, he seems, like the creatures of the field and
the forest, to have been tuned in concord with the order of the world;
for, he believed, his poetic vein only flowed from the autumnal to the
vernal equinox; and, in his essay on Education, he doubts whether,
in the fine days of spring, any study can be accomplished by young
men. “In those vernal seasons of the year when the air is calm and
pleasant, it were an injury and sullenness against nature not to go
out and see her riches and partake in her rejoicing with heaven and
earth.” His sensibility to impressions from beauty needs no proof
from his history; it shines through every page. The form and the
voice of Leonora Baroni seemed to have captivated him in Rome,
and to her he addressed his Italian sonnets and Latin epigrams.
To these endowments it must be added that his address and his
conversation were worthy of his fame. His house was resorted to by
men of wit, and foreigners came to England, we are told, “to see the
Lord Protector and Mr. Milton.” In a letter to one of his foreign
correspondents, Emeric Bigot, and in reply apparently to some
compliment on his powers of conversation, he writes: “Many have
been celebrated for their compositions, whose common conversation
and intercourse have betrayed no marks of sublimity or genius. But,
as far as possible, I aim to show myself equal in thought and speech
to what I have written, if I have written anything well.”
These endowments received the benefit of a careful and happy
discipline. His father’s care, seconded by his own endeavor,
introduced him to a profound skill in all the treasures of Latin, Greek,
Hebrew and Italian tongues; and, to enlarge and enliven his elegant
learning, he was sent into Italy, where he beheld the remains of
ancient art, and the rival works of Raphael, Michael Angelo and
Correggio; where, also, he received social and academical honors
from the learned and the great. In Paris, he became acquainted with
Grotius; in Florence or Rome, with Galileo; and probably no traveller
ever entered that country of history with better right to its hospitality,
none upon whom its influences could have fallen more congenially.
Among the advantages of his foreign travel, Milton certainly did not
count it the least that it contributed to forge and polish that great
weapon of which he acquired such extraordinary mastery,—his
power of language. His lore of foreign tongues added daily to his
consummate skill in the use of his own. He was a benefactor of the
English tongue by showing its capabilities. Very early in life he
became conscious that he had more to say to his fellow-men than
they had fit words to embody. At nineteen years, in a college
exercise, he addresses his native language, saying to it that it would
be his choice to leave trifles for a grave argument,
“Such as may make thee search thy coffers round,
Before thou clothe my fancy in fit sound;
Such where the deep transported mind may soar
Above the wheeling poles, and at Heaven’s door
Look in, and see each blissful deity,
How he before the thunderous throne doth lie.”
Michael Angelo calls “him alone an artist, whose hands can
execute what his mind has conceived.” The world, no doubt,
contains many of that class of men whom Wordsworth denominates
“silent poets,” whose minds teem with images which they want words
to clothe. But Milton’s mind seems to have no thought or emotion
which refused to be recorded. His mastery of his native tongue was
more than to use it as well as any other; he cast it into new forms.
He uttered in it things unheard before. Not imitating but rivalling
Shakspeare, he scattered, in tones of prolonged and delicate
melody, his pastoral and romantic fancies; then, soaring into
unattempted strains, he made it capable of an unknown majesty, and
bent it to express every trait of beauty, every shade of thought; and
searched the kennel and jakes as well as the palaces of sound for
the harsh discords of his polemic wrath. We may even apply to his
performance on the instrument of language, his own description of
music:
“—Notes, with many a winding bout
Of linkëd sweetness long drawn out,
With wanton heed and giddy cunning,
The melting voice through mazes running,
Untwisting all the chains that tie
The hidden soul of harmony.”
But, whilst Milton was conscious of possessing this intellectual
voice, penetrating through ages and propelling its melodious
undulations forward through the coming world, he knew that this
mastery of language was a secondary power, and he respected the
mysterious source whence it had its spring; namely, clear
conceptions and a devoted heart. “For me,” he said, in his “Apology
for Smectymnuus,” “although I cannot say that I am utterly untrained
in those rules which best rhetoricians have given, or unacquainted
with those examples which the prime authors of eloquence have
written in any learned tongue, yet true eloquence I find to be none
but the serious and hearty love of truth; and that whose mind soever
is fully possessed with a fervent desire to know good things, and with
the dearest charity to infuse the knowledge of them into others, when
such a man would speak, his words, by what I can express, like so
many nimble and airy servitors, trip about him at command, and in
well-ordered files, as he would wish, fall aptly into their own places.”
But, as basis or fountain of his rare physical and intellectual
accomplishments, the man Milton was just and devout. He is rightly
dear to mankind, because in him, among so many perverse and
partial men of genius,—in him humanity rights itself; the old eternal
goodness finds a home in his breast, and for once shows itself
beautiful. His gifts are subordinated to his moral sentiments. And his
virtues are so graceful that they seem rather talents than labors.
Among so many contrivances as the world has seen to make
holiness ugly, in Milton at least it was so pure a flame, that the
foremost impression his character makes is that of elegance. The
victories of the conscience in him are gained by the commanding
charm which all the severe and restrictive virtues have for him. His
virtues remind us of what Plutarch said of Timoleon’s victories, that
they resembled Homer’s verses, they ran so easy and natural. His
habits of living were austere. He was abstemious in diet, chaste, an
early riser, and industrious. He tells us, in a Latin poem, that the lyrist
may indulge in wine and in a freer life; but that he who would write
an epic to the nations, must eat beans and drink water. Yet in his
severity is no grimace or effort. He serves from love, not from fear.
He is innocent and exact, because his taste was so pure and
delicate. He acknowledges to his friend Diodati, at the age of twenty-
one, that he is enamored, if ever any was, of moral perfection: “For,
whatever the Deity may have bestowed upon me in other respects,
he has certainly inspired me, if any ever were inspired, with a
passion for the good and fair. Nor did Ceres, according to the fable,
ever seek her daughter Proserpine with such unceasing solicitude,
as I have sought this τοῦ καλοῦ ἰδέαν, this perfect model of the
beautiful in all forms and appearances of things.”
When he was charged with loose habits of living, he declares, that
“a certain niceness of nature, an honest haughtiness and self-
esteem either of what I was or what I might be, and a modesty, kept
me still above those low descents of mind beneath which he must
deject and plunge himself, that can agree” to such degradation. “His
mind gave him,” he said, “that every free and gentle spirit, without
that oath of chastity, ought to be born a knight; nor needed to expect
the gilt spur, or the laying of a sword upon his shoulder, to stir him
up, by his counsel and his arm, to secure and protect” attempted
innocence.
He states these things, he says, “to show, that, though Christianity
had been but slightly taught him, yet a certain reservedness of
natural disposition and moral discipline, learned out of the noblest
philosophy, was enough to keep him in disdain of far less
incontinences than these,” that had been charged on him. In like
spirit, he replies to the suspicious calumny respecting his morning
haunts. “Those morning haunts are where they should be, at home;
not sleeping, or concocting the surfeits of an irregular feast, but up
and stirring, in winter, often ere the sound of any bell awake men to
labor or devotion; in summer, as oft with the bird that first rouses, or
not much tardier, to read good authors, or cause them to be read, till
the attention be weary, or memory have its perfect fraught; then with
useful and generous labors preserving the body’s health and
hardiness, to render lightsome, clear, and not lumpish obedience to
the mind, to the cause of religion and our country’s liberty, when it
shall require firm hearts in sound bodies to stand and cover their
stations. These are the morning practices.” This native honor never
forsook him. It is the spirit of “Comus,” the loftiest song in the praise
of chastity that is in any language. It always sparkles in his eyes. It
breathed itself over his decent form. It refined his amusements,
which consisted in gardening, in exercise with the sword, and in
playing on the organ. It engaged his interest in chivalry, in courtesy,
in whatsoever savored of generosity and nobleness. This
magnanimity shines in all his life. He accepts a high impulse at every
risk, and deliberately undertakes the defence of the English people,
when advised by his physicians that he does it at the cost of sight.
There is a forbearance even in his polemics. He opens the war and
strikes the first blow. When he had cut down his opponents, he left
the details of death and plunder to meaner partisans. He said, “he
had learned the prudence of the Roman soldier, not to stand
breaking of legs, when the breath was quite out of the body.”
To this antique heroism, Milton added the genius of the Christian
sanctity. Few men could be cited who have so well understood what
is peculiar in the Christian ethics, and the precise aid it has brought
to men, in being an emphatic affirmation of the omnipotence of
spiritual laws, and, by way of marking the contrast to vulgar opinions,
laying its chief stress on humility. The indifferency of a wise mind to
what is called high and low, and the fact that true greatness is a
perfect humility, are revelations of Christianity which Milton well
understood. They give an inexhaustible truth to all his compositions.
His firm grasp of this truth is his weapon against the prelates. He
celebrates in the martyrs “the unresistible might of weakness.” He
told the bishops that “instead of showing the reason of their lowly
condition from divine example and command, they seek to prove
their high preëminence from human consent and authority.” He
advises that in country places, rather than to trudge many miles to a
church, public worship be maintained nearer home, as in a house or
barn. “For, notwithstanding the gaudy superstition of some still
devoted ignorantly to temples, we may be well assured, that he who
disdained not to be born in a manger, disdains not to be preached in
a barn.” And the following passage, in the “Reason of Church
Government,” indicates his own perception of the doctrine of
humility. “Albeit I must confess to be half in doubt whether I should
bring it forth or no, it being so contrary to the eye of the world, that I
shall endanger either not to be regarded, or not to be understood.
For who is there, almost, that measures wisdom by simplicity,
strength by suffering, dignity by lowliness?” Obeying this sentiment,
Milton deserved the apostrophe of Wordsworth:—
 “Pure as the naked heavens, majestic, free,
So didst thou travel on life’s common way
In cheerful godliness; and yet thy heart
The lowliest duties on itself did lay.”
He laid on himself the lowliest duties. Johnson petulantly taunts
Milton with “great promise and small performance,” in returning from
Italy because his country was in danger, and then opening a private
school. Milton, wiser, felt no absurdity in this conduct. He returned
into his revolutionized country, and assumed an honest and useful
task, by which he might serve the state daily, whilst he launched
from time to time his formidable bolts against the enemies of liberty.
He felt the heats of that “love” which “esteems no office mean.” He
compiled a logic for boys; he wrote a grammar; and devoted much of
his time to the preparing of a Latin dictionary. But the religious
sentiment warmed his writings and conduct with the highest affection
of faith. The memorable covenant, which in his youth, in the second
book of the “Reason of Church Government,” he makes with God
and his reader, expressed the faith of his old age. For the first time
since many ages, the invocations of the Eternal Spirit in the
commencement of his books are not poetic forms, but are thoughts,
and so are still read with delight. His views of choice of profession,
and choice in marriage, equally expect a divine leading.
Thus chosen, by the felicity of his nature and of his breeding, for
the clear perception of all that is graceful and all that is great in man,
Milton was not less happy in his times. His birth fell upon the agitated
years when the discontents of the English Puritans were fast drawing
to a head against the tyranny of the Stuarts. No period has
surpassed that in the general activity of mind. It is said that no
opinion, no civil, religious, moral dogma can be produced, that was
not broached in the fertile brain of that age. Questions that involve all
social and personal rights were hasting to be decided by the sword,
and were searched by eyes to which the love of freedom, civil and
religious, lent new illumination. Milton, gentle, learned, delicately
bred in all the elegancy of art and learning, was set down in England
in the stern, almost fanatic society of the Puritans. The part he took,
the zeal of his fellowship, make us acquainted with the greatness of
his spirit as in tranquil times we could not have known it. Susceptible
as Burke to the attractions of historical prescription, of royalty, of
chivalry, of an ancient church illustrated by old martyrdoms and
installed in cathedrals,—he threw himself, the flower of elegancy, on
the side of the reeking conventicle; the side of humanity, but
unlearned and unadorned. His muse was brave and humane, as well
as sweet. He felt the dear love of native land and native language.
The humanity which warms his pages begins as it should, at home.
He preferred his own English, so manlike he was, to the Latin, which
contained all the treasures of his memory. “My mother bore me,” he
said, “a speaker of what God made mine own, and not a translator.”
He told the Parliament, that “the imprimaturs of Lambeth House had
been writ in Latin; for that our English, the language of men ever
famous and foremost in the achievements of liberty, will not easily
find servile letters enow to spell such a dictatory presumption.” At
one time he meditated writing a poem on the settlement of Britain,
and a history of England was one of the three main tasks which he
proposed to himself. He proceeded in it no further than to the
Conquest. He studied with care the character of his countrymen, and
once in the “History,” and once again in the “Reason of Church
Government,” he has recorded his judgment of the English genius.
Thus drawn into the great controversies of the times, in them he is
never lost in a party. His private opinions and private conscience
always distinguish him. That which drew him to the party was his
love of liberty, ideal liberty; this therefore he could not sacrifice to any
party. Toland tells us, “As he looked upon true and absolute freedom
to be the greatest happiness of this life, whether to societies or
single persons, so he thought constraint of any sort to be the utmost
misery; for which reason be used to tell those about him the entire
satisfaction of his mind, that he had constantly employed his strength
and faculties in the defence of liberty, and in direct opposition to
slavery.” Truly he was an apostle of freedom; of freedom in the
house, in the state, in the church; freedom of speech, freedom of the
press, yet in his own mind discriminated from savage license,
because that which he desired was the liberty of the wise man,
containing itself in the limits of virtue. He pushed, as far as any in
that democratic age, his ideas of civil liberty. He proposed to
establish a republic, of which the federal power was weak and
loosely defined, and the substantial power should remain with
primary assemblies. He maintained, that a nation may try, judge, and
slay their king, if he be a tyrant. He pushed as far his views of
ecclesiastical liberty. He taught the doctrine of unlimited toleration.
One of his tracts is writ to prove that no power on earth can compel
in matters of religion. He maintained the doctrine of literary liberty,
denouncing the censorship of the press, and insisting that a book
shall come into the world as freely as a man, so only it bear the
name of author or printer, and be responsible for itself like a man. He
maintained the doctrine of domestic liberty, or the liberty of divorce,
on the ground that unfit disposition of mind was a better reason for
the act of divorce than infirmity of body, which was good ground in
law. The tracts he wrote on these topics are, for the most part, as
fresh and pertinent to-day as they were then. The events which
produced them, the practical issues to which they tend, are mere
occasions for this philanthropist to blow his trumpet for human rights.
They are all varied applications of one principle, the liberty of the
wise man. He sought absolute truth, not accommodating truth. His
opinions on all subjects are formed for man as he ought to be, for a
nation of Miltons. He would be divorced when he finds in his consort
unfit disposition; knowing that he should not abuse that liberty,
because with his whole heart he abhors licentiousness and loves
chastity. He defends the slaying of the king, because a king is a king
no longer than he governs by the laws; “it would be right to kill Philip
of Spain making an inroad into England, and what right the king of
Spain hath to govern us at all, the same hath the king Charles to
govern tyrannically.” He would remove hirelings out of the church,
and support preachers by voluntary contributions; requiring that such
only should preach as have faith enough to accept so self-denying
and precarious a mode of life, scorning to take thought for the
aspects of prudence and expediency. The most devout man of his
time, he frequented no church; probably from a disgust at the fierce
spirit of the pulpits. And so, throughout all his actions and opinions,
is he a consistent spiritualist, or believer in the omnipotence of
spiritual laws. He wished that his writings should be communicated
only to those who desired to see them. He thought nothing honest
was low. He thought he could be famous only in proportion as he
enjoyed the approbation of the good. He admonished his friend “not
to admire military prowess, or things in which force is of most avail.
For it would not be matter of rational wonder, if the wethers of our
country should be born with horns that could batter down cities and
towns. Learn to estimate great characters, not by the amount of
animal strength, but by the habitual justice and temperance of their
conduct.”
Was there not a fitness in the undertaking of such a person to
write a poem on the subject of Adam, the first man? By his sympathy
with all nature; by the proportion of his powers; by great knowledge,
and by religion, he would reascend to the height from which our
nature is supposed to have descended. From a just knowledge of
what man should be, he described what he was. He beholds him as
he walked in Eden:—
“His fair large front and eye sublime declared
Absolute rule; and hyacinthine locks
Round from his parted forelock manly hung
Clustering, but not beneath his shoulders broad.”
And the soul of this divine creature is excellent as his form. The tone
of his thought and passion is as healthful, as even, and as vigorous,
as befits the new and perfect model of a race of gods.
The perception we have attributed to Milton, of a purer ideal of
humanity, modifies his poetic genius. The man is paramount to the
poet. His fancy is never transcendent, extravagant; but, as Bacon’s
imagination was said to be “the noblest that ever contented itself to
minister to the understanding,” so Milton’s ministers to the character.
Milton’s sublimest song, bursting into heaven with its peals of
melodious thunder, is the voice of Milton still. Indeed, throughout his
poems, one may see under a thin veil, the opinions, the feelings,
even the incidents of the poet’s life, still reappearing. The sonnets
are all occasional poems. “L’Allegro” and “Il Penseroso” are but a
finer autobiography of his youthful fancies at Harefield; the “Comus”
a transcript, in charming numbers, of that philosophy of chastity,
which, in the “Apology for Smectymnuus,” and in the “Reason of
Church Government,” he declares to be his defence and religion.
The “Samson Agonistes” is too broad an expression of his private
griefs to be mistaken, and is a version of the “Doctrine and Discipline
of Divorce.” The most affecting passages in “Paradise Lost” are
personal allusions; and, when we are fairly in Eden, Adam and
Milton are often difficult to be separated. Again, in “Paradise
Regained,” we have the most distinct marks of the progress of the
poet’s mind, in the revision and enlargement of his religious
opinions. This may be thought to abridge his praise as a poet. It is
true of Homer and Shakspeare that they do not appear in their
poems; that those prodigious geniuses did cast themselves so totally
into their song, that their individuality vanishes, and the poet towers
to the sky, whilst the man quite disappears. The fact is memorable.
Shall we say that in our admiration and joy in these wonderful poems
we have even a feeling of regret that the men knew not what they
did; that they were too passive in their great service; were channels
through which streams of thought flowed from a higher source, which
they did not appropriate, did not blend with their own being? Like
prophets, they seem but imperfectly aware of the import of their own
utterances. We hesitate to say such things, and say them only to the
unpleasing dualism, when the man and the poet show like a double
consciousness. Perhaps we speak to no fact, but to mere fables, of
an idle mendicant Homer, and of a Shakspeare content with a mean
and jocular way of life. Be it how it may, the genius and office of
Milton were different, namely, to ascend by the aids of his learning
and his religion,—by an equal perception, that is, of the past and the
future,—to a higher insight and more lively delineation of the heroic
life of man. This was his poem; whereof all his indignant pamphlets
and all his soaring verses are only single cantos or detached
stanzas. It was plainly needful that his poetry should be a version of
his own life, in order to give weight and solemnity to his thoughts; by
which they might penetrate and possess the imagination and the will
of mankind. The creations of Shakspeare are cast into the world of
thought to no further end than to delight. Their intrinsic beauty is their
excuse for being. Milton, fired “with dearest charity to infuse the
knowledge of good things into others,” tasked his giant imagination
and exhausted the stores of his intellect for an end beyond, namely,
to teach. His own conviction it is which gives such authority to his
strain. Its reality is its force. If out of the heart it came, to the heart it
must go. What schools and epochs of common rhymers would it
need to make a counterbalance to the severe oracles of his muse:
“In them is plainest taught and easiest learnt,
What makes a nation happy, and keeps it so.”
The lover of Milton reads one sense in his prose and in his
metrical compositions; and sometimes the muse soars highest in the
former, because the thought is more sincere. Of his prose in general,
not the style alone but the argument also is poetic; according to Lord
Bacon’s definition of poetry, following that of Aristotle, “Poetry, not
finding the actual world exactly conformed to its idea of good and
fair, seeks to accommodate the shows of things to the desires of the
mind, and to create an ideal world better than the world of
experience.” Such certainly is the explanation of Milton’s tracts. Such
is the apology to be entered for the plea for freedom of divorce; an
essay, which, from the first until now, has brought a degree of
obloquy on his name. It was a sally of the extravagant spirit of the
time, overjoyed, as in the French Revolution, with the sudden
victories it had gained, and eager to carry on the standard of truth to
new heights. It is to be regarded as a poem on one of the griefs of
man’s condition, namely, unfit marriage. And as many poems have
been written upon unfit society, commending solitude, yet have not
been proceeded against, though their end was hostile to the state;
so should this receive that charity which an angelic soul, suffering
more keenly than others from the unavoidable evils of human life, is
entitled to.
We have offered no apology for expanding to such length our
commentary on the character of John Milton; who, in old age, in
solitude, in neglect, and blind, wrote the Paradise Lost; a man whom
labor or danger never deterred from whatever efforts a love of the
supreme interests of man prompted. For are we not the better; are
not all men fortified by the remembrance of the bravery, the purity,
the temperance, the toil, the independence and the angelic devotion
of this man, who, in a revolutionary age, taking counsel only of
himself, endeavored, in his writings and in his life, to carry out the life
of man to new heights of spiritual grace and dignity, without any
abatement of its strength?

FOOTNOTES:

[4] Reprinted from the North American Review, July, 1838.

PAPERS FROM THE DIAL.

The tongue is prone to lose the way;

Not so the pen, for in a letter
We have not better things to say,
But surely say them better.
 PAPERS FROM THE DIAL.

I.

THOUGHTS ON MODERN LITERATURE. [5]

In our fidelity to the higher truth we need not disown our debt, in
our actual state of culture, in the twilights of experience, to these
rude helpers. They keep alive the memory and the hope of a better
day. When we flout all particular books as initial merely, we truly
express the privilege of spiritual nature, but alas, not the fact and
fortune of this low Massachusetts and Boston, of these humble
Junes and Decembers of mortal life. Our souls are not self-fed, but
do eat and drink of chemical water and wheat. Let us not forget the
genial miraculous force we have known to proceed from a book. We
go musing into the vault of day and night; no constellation shines, no
muse descends, the stars are white points, the roses brick-colored
leaves, and frogs pipe, mice cheep, and wagons creak along the
road. We return to the house and take up Plutarch or Augustine, and
read a few sentences or pages, and lo! the air swims with life,
secrets of magnanimity and grandeur invite us on every hand, life is
made up of them. Such is our debt to a book. Observe moreover that
we ought to credit literature with much more than the bare word it
gives us. I have just been reading poems which now in memory
shine with a certain steady, warm, autumnal light. That is not in their
grammatical construction which they give me. If I analyze the
sentences it eludes me, but is the genius and suggestion of the
whole. Over every true poem lingers a certain wild beauty,
immeasurable; a happiness lightsome and delicious fills the heart
and brain, as they say every man walks environed by his proper
atmosphere, extending to some distance around him. This beautiful
result must be credited to literature also in casting its account.
In looking at the library of the Present Age, we are first struck with
the fact of the immense miscellany. It can hardly be characterized by
any species of book, for every opinion, old and new, every hope and
fear, every whim and folly has an organ. It exhibits a vast carcass of
tradition every year with as much solemnity as a new revelation.
Along with these it vents books that breathe of new morning, that
seem to heave with the life of millions, books for which men and
women peak and pine; books which take the rose out of the cheek of
him that wrote them, and give him to the midnight a sad, solitary,
diseased man; which leave no man where they found him, but make
him better or worse; and which work dubiously on society and seem
to inoculate it with a venom before any healthy result appears.
In order to any complete view of the literature of the present age,
an inquiry should include what it quotes, what it writes and what it
wishes to write. In our present attempt to enumerate some traits of
the recent literature, we shall have somewhat to offer on each of
these topics, but we cannot promise to set in very exact order what
we have to say.
In the first place it has all books. It reprints the wisdom of the
world. How can the age be a bad one which gives me Plato and Paul
and Plutarch, St. Augustine, Spinoza, Chapman, Beaumont and
Fletcher, Donne and Sir Thomas Browne, beside its own riches? Our
presses groan every year with new editions of all the select pieces of
the first of mankind,—meditations, history, classifications, opinions,
epics, lyrics, which the age adopts by quoting them. If we should
designate favorite studies in which the age delights more than in the
rest of this great mass of the permanent literature of the human race,
one or two instances would be conspicuous. First; the prodigious
growth and influence of the genius of Shakspeare, in the last one
hundred and fifty years, is itself a fact of the first importance. It
almost alone has called out the genius of the German nation into an
activity which spreading from the poetic into the scientific, religious
and philosophical domains, has made theirs now at last the
paramount intellectual influence of the world, reacting with great
energy on England and America. And thus, and not by mechanical
diffusion, does an original genius work and spread himself.
The poetry and speculation of the age are marked by a certain
philosophic turn, which discriminates them from the works of earlier
times. The poet is not content to see how “Fair hangs the apple from
the rock,” “What music a sunbeam awoke in the groves,” nor of
Hardiknute, how “Stately steppes he east the way, and stately
steppes he west,” but he now revolves, What is the apple to me?
and what the birds to me? and what is Hardiknute to me? and what
am I? And this is called subjectiveness, as the eye is withdrawn from
the object and fixed on the subject or mind.
We can easily concede that a steadfast tendency of this sort
appears in modern literature. It is the new consciousness of the one
mind, which predominates in criticism. It is the uprise of the soul, and
not the decline. It is founded on that insatiable demand for unity, the
need to recognize one nature in all the variety of objects, which
always characterizes a genius of the first order. Accustomed always
to behold the presence of the universe in every part, the soul will not
condescend to look at any new part as a stranger, but saith,—“I
know all already, and what art thou? Show me thy relations to me, to
all, and I will entertain thee also.”
There is a pernicious ambiguity in the use of the term subjective.
We say, in accordance with the general view I have stated, that the
single soul feels its right to be no longer confounded with numbers,
but itself to sit in judgment on history and literature, and to summon
all facts and parties before its tribunal. And in this sense the age is
subjective.
But, in all ages, and now more, the narrow-minded have no
interest in anything but in its relation to their personality. What will
help them to be delivered from some burden, eased in some
circumstance, flattered or pardoned or enriched; what will help to
marry or to divorce them, to prolong or to sweeten life, is sure of their
interest; and nothing else. Every form under the whole heaven they
behold in this most partial light or darkness of intense selfishness,
until we hate their being. And this habit of intellectual selfishness has
acquired in our day the fine name of subjectiveness.
Nor is the distinction between these two habits to be found in the
circumstance of using the first person singular, or reciting facts and
feelings of personal history. A man may say I, and never refer to
himself as an individual; and a man may recite passages of his life
with no feeling of egotism. Nor need a man have a vicious
subjectiveness because he deals in abstract propositions.
But the criterion which discriminates these two habits in the poet’s
mind is the tendency of his composition; namely, whether it leads us
to nature, or to the person of the writer. The great always introduce
us to facts; small men introduce us always to themselves. The great
man, even whilst he relates a private fact personal to him, is really
leading us away from him to an universal experience. His own
affection is in nature, in what is, and, of course, all his
communication leads outward to it, starting from whatsoever point.
The great never with their own consent become a load on the minds
they instruct. The more they draw us to them, the farther from them
or more independent of them we are, because they have brought us
to the knowledge of somewhat deeper than both them and us. The
great never hinder us; for their activity is coincident with the sun and
moon, with the course of the rivers and of the winds, with the stream
of laborers in the street and with all the activity and well-being of the
race. The great lead us to nature, and in our age to metaphysical
nature, to the invisible awful facts, to moral abstractions, which are
not less nature than is a river or a coal-mine,—nay, they are far more
nature,—but its essence and soul.
But the weak and wicked, led also to analyze, saw nothing in
thought but luxury. Thought for the selfish became selfish. They
invited us to contemplate nature, and showed us an abominable self.
Would you know the genius of the writer? Do not enumerate his
talents or his feats, but ask thyself, What spirit is he of? Do gladness