“With New Acquist / of True Experience”: The Failed Revolutionary in the Letter to Heimbach and Samson Agonistes

Abstract

I should like to return briefly to Donatello’s fifteenth-century sculpture, The Prophet Jeremiah (see figure 1.4). Donatello’s light yet powerful sculpture presents a statesman who stands upright, holding a paper or a small book in his left hand (perhaps one of the books he has composed), his right arm and part of his chest uncovered as he is draped in a long, flowing cloak, an icon out of classical antiquity. No melancholy subject here, he bears himself nobly, remaining proud and defiant even, we might assume, as the people do not heed his call and as Jerusalem falls. Knowing of Milton’s own sense of pride and defiance, we might imagine he would naturally fashion the self after this type of Jeremiah. A prophet, after all, is a politician. But the biblical Jeremiah is not this type of politician. Nor is Milton, who believed the English, like the Israelites before them, betrayed themselves into bondage. Like Jeremiah and like Samson—a biblical politician who happened to be a warrior—Milton placed the blame on the English people themselves. He probably did not feel he had failed in his duties, yet he must have wondered about the effectiveness of a prophet or a judge to whom few listen. He must have recognized, as well, that Jeremiah and Samson themselves are not blameless for their own failures.