Milton's “Two-Handed Engine”

Abstract

Few of Milton's lines have called forth more comment and interpretation than lines 130-131 of Lycidas, which form the climax of the denunciation of corruption in the clergy:But that two-handed engine at the doorStands ready to smite once, and smite no more.For example, Professor C. G. Osgood has suggested that an allusion to “the iron flail of Talus” was intended—a supposition that would link the “two-handed engine” in an interesting way to Milton's avowed admiration for Spenser and to the uprooting of the hills in the war in heaven. This interpretation, however, while it might enrich the metaphor, would make Milton's words voice only a vague hope that some agency, as yet unknown, would punish the corruption of the clergy. And such vagueness in Milton's mind hardly agrees with his deliberate confidence in the accomplishment of the reforms he advocated—a confidence which he maintained, even in the face of an obviously changing popular attitude, until the Restoration was fully wrought.