The poet,
whatever
be done, is always great.
Samuel Johnson - Lives of the Poets - 1
Yet here incredulity is ready to make a
stand. Many repetitions are necessary to fix in the memory lines not
understood; and why should Milton wish or want to hear them so often?
These lines were at the beginning of the poems. Of a book written in a
language not understood, the beginning raises no more attention than the
end; and as those that understand it know commonly the beginning best,
its rehearsal will seldom be necessary. It is not likely that Milton
required any passage to be so much repeated, as that his daughter could
learn it; nor likely that he desired the initial lines to be read at
all; nor that the daughter, weary of the drudgery of pronouncing unideal
sounds, would voluntarily commit them to memory.
To this gentlewoman Addison made a present, and promised some
establishment, but died soon after. Queen Caroline sent her fifty
guineas. She had seven sons and three daughters; but none of them had
any children, except her son Caleb and her daughter Elizabeth. Caleb
went to Fort St. George, in the East Indies, and had two sons, of whom
nothing is now known. Elizabeth married Thomas Foster, a weaver in
Spital fields; and had seven children, who all died. She kept a petty
grocer's or chandler's shop, first at Holloway, and afterwards in Cock
lane, near Shoreditch church. She knew little of her grandfather, and
that little was not good. She told of his harshness to his daughters,
and his refusal to have them taught to write; and, in opposition to
other accounts, represented him as delicate, though temperate, in his
diet.
In 1750, April 5, Comus was played for her benefit. She had so little
acquaintance with diversion or gaiety, that she did not know what was
intended, when a benefit was offered her. The profits of the night were
only one hundred and thirty pounds, though Dr. Newton brought a large
contribution; and twenty pounds were given by Tonson, a man who is to
be praised as often as he is named. Of this sum one hundred pounds were
placed in the stocks, after some debate between her and her husband, in
whose name it should be entered; and the rest augmented their little
stock, with which they removed to Islington. This was the greatest
benefaction that Paradise Lost ever procured the author's descendants;
and to this he, who has now attempted to relate his life, had the honour
of contributing a prologue[54].
In the examination of Milton's poetical works, I shall pay so much
regard to time as to begin with his juvenile productions. For his early
pieces he seems to have had a degree of fondness not very laudable; what
he has once written he resolves to preserve, and gives to the publick an
unfinished poem, which he broke off, because he was "nothing satisfied
with what he had done," supposing his readers less nice than himself.
These preludes to his future labours are in Italian, Latin, and English.
Of the Italian I cannot pretend to speak as a critick; but I have heard
them commended by a man well qualified to decide their merit. The Latin
pieces are lusciously elegant; but the delight which they afford is
rather by the exquisite imitation of the ancient writers, by the purity
of the diction, and the harmony of the numbers, than by any power of
invention, or vigour of sentiment. They are not all of equal value; the
elegies excel the odes; and some of the exercises on Gunpowder Treason
might have been spared.
The English poems, though they make no promises of Paradise Lost[55],
have this evidence of genius, that they have a cast original and
unborrowed. But their peculiarity is not excellence; if they differ from
the verses of others, they differ for the worse; for they are too often
distinguished by repulsive harshness; the combinations of words are
new, but they are not pleasing; the rhymes and epithets seem to be
laboriously sought, and violently applied.
That, in the early part of his life, he wrote with much care appears
from his manuscripts, happily preserved at Cambridge, in which many
of his smaller works are found, as they were first written, with the
subsequent corrections. Such relicks show how excellence is acquired;
what we hope ever to do with ease, we must learn first to do with
diligence.
Those who admire the beauties of this great poet sometimes force their
own judgment into false approbation of his little pieces, and prevail
upon themselves to think that admirable which is only singular. All that
short compositions can commonly attain, is neatness and elegance. Milton
never learned the art of doing little things with grace; he overlooked
the milder excellence of suavity and softness: he was a lion, that had
no skill "in dandling the kid. "
One of the poems on which much praise has been bestowed is Lycidas;
of which the diction is harsh, the rhymes uncertain, and the numbers
unpleasing. What beauty there is, we must, therefore, seek in the
sentiments and images. It is not to be considered as the effusion of
real passion; for passion runs not after remote allusions and obscure
opinions. Passion plucks no berries from the myrtle and ivy, nor calls
upon Arethuse and Mincius, nor tells of rough "satyrs and fauns with
cloven heel. " Where there is leisure for fiction, there is little grief.
In this poem there is no nature, for there is no truth; there is no art,
for there is nothing new. Its form is that of a pastoral: easy, vulgar,
and, therefore, disgusting; whatever images it can supply are long ago
exhausted; and its inherent improbability always forces dissatisfaction
on the mind. When Cowley tells of Hervey, that they studied together, it
is easy to suppose how much he must miss the companion of his labours,
and the partner of his discoveries; but what image of tenderness can be
excited by these lines?
We drove afield, and both together heard,
What time the grey fly winds her sultry horn,
Batt'ning our flocks with the fresh dews of night.
We know that they never drove afield, and that they had no flocks
to batten; and, though it be allowed that the representation may be
allegorical, the true meaning is so uncertain and remote, that it is
never sought, because it cannot be known when it is found.
Among the flocks, and copses, and flowers, appear the heathen deities;
Jove and Phoebus, Neptune and Aeolus, with a long train of mythological
imagery, such as a college easily supplies. Nothing can less display
knowledge, or less exercise invention, than to tell how a shepherd has
lost his companion, and must now feed his flocks alone, without any
judge of his skill in piping; and how one god asks another god what is
become of Lycidas, and how neither god can tell. He who thus grieves
will excite no sympathy; he who thus praises will confer no honour.
This poem has yet a grosser fault. With these trifling fictions are
mingled the most awful and sacred truths, such as ought never to be
polluted with such irreverend combinations. The shepherd, likewise,
is now a feeder of sheep, and afterwards an ecclesiastical pastor, a
superintendent of a Christian flock. Such equivocations are always
unskilful; but here they are indecent, and, at least, approach to
impiety, of which, however, I believe the writer not to have been
conscious. Such is the power of reputation justly acquired, that its
blaze drives away the eye from nice examination. Surely no man could
have fancied that he read Lycidas with pleasure, had he not known the
author.
Of the two pieces, L'Allegro and Il Penseroso, I believe, opinion is
uniform; every man that reads them, reads them with pleasure. The
author's design is not, what Theobald has remarked, merely to show
how objects derive their colours from the mind, by representing the
operation of the same things upon the gay and the melancholy temper, or
upon the same man, as he is differently disposed; but rather how, among
the successive variety of appearances, every disposition of mind takes
hold on those by which it may be gratified.
The cheerful man hears the lark in the morning; the pensive man hears
the nightingale in the evening. The cheerful man sees the cock strut,
and hears the horn and hounds echo in the wood; then walks, "not
unseen," to observe the glory of the rising sun, or listen to the
singing milkmaid, and view the labours of the ploughman and the mower:
then casts his eyes about him over scenes of smiling plenty, and looks
up to the distant tower, the residence of some fair inhabitant; thus he
pursues rural gaiety through a day of labour or of play, and delights
himself at night with the fanciful narratives of superstitious
ignorance.
The pensive man, at one time, walks "unseen" to muse at midnight; and,
at another, hears the sullen curfew. If the weather drives him home, he
sits in a room lighted only by "glowing embers;" or, by a lonely lamp,
outwatches the north star, to discover the habitation of separate souls,
and varies the shades of meditation, by contemplating the magnificent or
pathetick scenes of tragick or epick poetry. When the morning comes, a
morning gloomy with rain and wind, he walks into the dark, trackless
woods[56], falls asleep by some murmuring water, and with melancholy
enthusiasm expects some dream of prognostication, or some musick played
by aerial performers.
Both mirth and melancholy are solitary, silent inhabitants of the
breast, that neither receive nor transmit communication; no mention is,
therefore, made of a philosophical friend, or a pleasant companion. The
seriousness does not arise from any participation of calamity, nor the
gaiety from the pleasures of the bottle.
The man of cheerfulness, having exhausted the country, tries what
"towered cities" will afford, and mingles with scenes of splendour, gay
assemblies, and nuptial festivities; but he mingles a mere spectator,
as, when the learned comedies of Jonson, or the wild dramas of
Shakespeare, are exhibited, he attends the theatre.
The pensive man never loses himself in crowds, but walks the cloister,
or frequents the cathedral. Milton probably had not yet forsaken the
church.
Both his characters delight in musick; but he seems to think, that
cheerful notes would have obtained, from Pluto, a complete dismission of
Eurydice, of whom solemn sounds only procured a conditional release.
For the old age of cheerfulness he makes no provision; but melancholy he
conducts with great dignity to the close of life. His cheerfulness is
without levity, and his pensiveness without asperity.
Through these two poems the images are properly selected, and nicely
distinguished; but the colours of the diction seem not sufficiently
discriminated. I know not whether the characters are kept sufficiently
apart. No mirth can, indeed, be found in his melancholy; but I am afraid
that I always meet some melancholy in his mirth. They are two noble
efforts of imagination[57].
The greatest of his juvenile performances is the Masque of Comus, in
which may very plainly be discovered the dawn or twilight of Paradise
Lost. Milton appears to have formed very early that system of diction,
and mode of verse, which his maturer judgment approved, and from which
he never endeavoured nor desired to deviate.
Nor does Comus afford only a specimen of his language; it exhibits,
likewise, his power of description and his vigour of sentiment, employed
in the praise and defence of virtue. A work more truly poetical is
rarely found; allusions, images, and descriptive epithets, embellish
almost every period with lavish decoration. As a series of lines,
therefore, it may be considered as worthy of all the admiration with
which the votaries have received it.
As a drama it is deficient. The action is not probable. A mask, in those
parts where supernatural intervention is admitted, must, indeed, be
given up to all the freaks of imagination; but, so far as the action is
merely human, it ought to be reasonable, which can hardly be said of the
conduct of the two brothers; who, when their sister sinks with fatigue
in a pathless wilderness, wander both away together, in search of
berries, too far to find their way back, and leave a helpless lady to
all the sadness and danger of solitude. This, however, is a defect
overbalanced by its convenience.
What deserves more reprehension is, that the prologue spoken in the wild
wood, by the attendant spirit, is addressed to the audience; a mode of
communication so contrary to the nature of dramatick representation,
that no precedents can support it[58].
The discourse of the spirit is too long; an objection that may be made
to almost all the following speeches; they have not the sprightliness
of a dialogue animated by reciprocal contention, but seem rather
declamations deliberately composed, and formally repeated, on a moral
question. The auditor, therefore, listens as to a lecture, without
passion, without anxiety.
The song of Comus has airiness and jollity; but, what may recommend
Milton's morals, as well as his poetry, the invitations to pleasure are
so general, that they excite no distinct images of corrupt enjoyment,
and take no dangerous hold on the fancy.
The following soliloquies of Comus and the Lady are elegant, but
tedious. The song must owe much to the voice, if it ever can delight. At
last, the brothers enter with too much tranquillity; and, when they have
feared, lest their sister should be in danger, and hoped that she is
not in danger, the elder makes a speech in praise of chastity, and the
younger finds how fine it is to be a philosopher.
Then descends the spirit, in form of a shepherd; and the brother,
instead of being in haste to ask his help, praises his singing, and
inquires his business in that place. It is remarkable, that, at this
interview, the brother, is taken with a short fit of rhyming. The spirit
relates that the lady is in the power of Comus; the brother moralizes
again; and the spirit makes a long narration, of no use, because it is
false, and, therefore, unsuitable to a good being.
In all these parts the language is poetical, and the sentiments are
generous; but there is something wanting to allure attention.
The dispute between the lady and Comus is the most animated and
affecting scene of the drama, and wants nothing but a brisker
reciprocation of objections and replies to invite attention and detain
it.
The songs are vigorous and full of imagery; but they are harsh in their
diction, and not very musical in their numbers.
Throughout the whole the figures are too bold, and the language too
luxuriant, for dialogue. It is a drama in the epick style, inelegantly
splendid, and tediously instructive.
The sonnets were written in different parts of Milton's life, upon
different occasions. They deserve not any particular criticism; for of
the best it can only be said, that they are not bad; and, perhaps, only
the eighth and the twenty-first are truly entitled to this slender
commendation. The fabrick of a sonnet, however adapted to the Italian
language, has never succeeded in ours, which, having greater variety of
termination, requires the rhymes to be often changed.
Those little pieces may be despatched without much anxiety; a greater
work calls for greater care. I am now to examine Paradise Lost, a poem,
which, considered with respect to design, may claim the first place, and
with respect to performance the second, among the productions of the
human mind.
By the general consent of criticks, the first praise of genius is due
to the writer of an epick poem, as it requires an assemblage of all the
powers which are singly sufficient for other compositions. Poetry is the
art of uniting pleasure with truth, by calling imagination to the help
of reason. Epick poetry undertakes to teach the most important truths by
the most pleasing precepts, and, therefore, relates some great event
in the most affecting manner. History must supply the writer with the
rudiments of narration, which he must improve and exalt by a nobler art,
must animate by dramatick energy, and diversify by retrospection and
anticipation; morality must teach him the exact bounds, and different
shades, of vice and virtue; from policy and the practice of life, he
has to learn the discriminations of character, and the tendency of the
passions, either single or combined; and physiology must supply him with
illustrations and images. To put these materials to poetical use, is
required an imagination capable of painting nature, and realizing
fiction. Nor is he yet a poet till he has attained the whole extension
of his language, distinguished all the delicacies of phrase, and all the
colours of words, and learned to adjust their different sounds to all
the varieties of metrical modulation.
Bossu is of opinion, that the poet's first work is to find a moral,
which his fable is afterwards to illustrate and establish. This seems
to have been the process only of Milton; the moral of other poems
is incidental and consequent; in Milton's only it is essential and
intrinsick. His purpose was the most useful and the most arduous:
"to vindicate the ways of God to man;" to show the reasonableness of
religion, and the necessity of obedience to the divine law.
To convey this moral, there must be a fable, a narration artfully
constructed, so as to excite curiosity, and surprise expectation. In
this part of his work, Milton must be confessed to have equalled every
other poet. He has involved, in his account of the fall of man, the
events which preceded, and those that were to follow it; he has
interwoven the whole system of theology with such propriety, that every
part appears to be necessary; and scarcely any recital is wished shorter
for the sake of quickening the progress of the main action.
The subject of an epick poem is naturally an event of great importance.
That of Milton is not the destruction of a city, the conduct of a
colony, or the foundation of an empire. His subject is the fate of
worlds, the revolutions of heaven and of earth; rebellion against
the supreme king, raised by the highest order of created beings; the
overthrow of their host, and the punishment of their crime; the creation
of a new race of reasonable creatures; their original happiness and
innocence, their forfeiture of immortality, and their restoration to
hope and peace.
Great events can be hastened or retarded only by persons of elevated
dignity. Before the greatness displayed in Milton's poem, all other
greatness shrinks away. The weakest of his agents are the highest and
noblest of human beings, the original parents of mankind; with whose
actions the elements consented; on whose rectitude, or deviation of
will, depended the state of terrestrial nature, and the condition of all
the future inhabitants of the globe. Of the other agents in the poem,
the chief are such as it is irreverence to name on slight occasions. The
rest were lower powers;
----of which the least could wield
Those elements, and arm him with the force
Of all their regions;
powers, which only the control of omnipotence restrains from laying
creation waste, and filling the vast expanse of space with ruin and
confusion. To display the motives and actions of beings thus superiour,
so far as human reason can examine them, or human imagination represent
them, is the task which this mighty poet has undertaken and performed.
In the examination of epick poems much speculation is commonly employed
upon the characters. The characters in the Paradise Lost, which admit of
examination, are those of angels and of man; of angels good and evil; of
man in his innocent and sinful state.
Among the angels, the virtue of Raphael is mild and placid, of easy
condescension and free communication; that of Michael is regal and
lofty, and, as may seem, attentive to the dignity of his own nature.
Abdiel and Gabriel appear occasionally, and act as every incident
requires; the solitary fidelity of Abdiel is very amiably painted.
Of the evil angels the characters are more diversified. To Satan, as
Addison observes, such sentiments are given as suit "the most exalted
and most depraved being. " Milton has been censured by Clarke[59], for
the impiety which, sometimes, breaks from Satan's mouth; for there are
thoughts, as he justly remarks, which no observation of character can
justify, because no good man would willingly permit them to pass,
however transiently, through his own mind. To make Satan speak as
a rebel, without any such expressions as might taint the reader's
imagination, was, indeed, one of the great difficulties in Milton's
undertaking; and I cannot but think that he has extricated himself with
great happiness. There is in Satan's speeches little that can give pain
to a pious ear. The language of rebellion cannot be the same with that
of obedience. The malignity of Satan foams in haughtiness and obstinacy;
but his expressions are commonly general, and no otherwise offensive
than as they are wicked.
The other chiefs of the celestial rebellion are very judiciously
discriminated in the first and second books; and the ferocious character
of Moloch appears, both in the battle and the council, with exact
consistency.
To Adam and to Eve are given, during their innocence, such sentiments
as innocence can generate and utter. Their love is pure benevolence and
mutual veneration; their repasts are without luxury, and their diligence
without toil. Their addresses to their maker have little more than the
voice of admiration and gratitude. Fruition left them nothing to ask;
and innocence left them nothing to fear.
But with guilt enter distrust and discord, mutual accusation, and
stubborn self-defence; they regard each other with alienated minds, and
dread their creator as the avenger of their transgression. At last
they seek shelter in his mercy, soften to repentance, and melt in
supplication. Both before and after the fall, the superiority of Adam is
diligently sustained.
Of the probable and the marvellous, two parts of a vulgar epick poem,
which immerge the critick in deep consideration, the Paradise Lost
requires little to be said. It contains the history of a miracle, of
creation and redemption; it displays the power and the mercy of
the supreme being; the probable, therefore, is marvellous, and the
marvellous is probable. The substance of the narrative is truth; and, as
truth allows no choice, it is, like necessity, superiour to rule. To the
accidental or adventitious parts, as to every thing human, some slight
exceptions may be made; but the main fabrick is immovably supported. It
is justly remarked by Addison, that this poem has, by the nature of its
subject, the advantage above all others, that it is universally and
perpetually interesting. All mankind will, through all ages, bear the
same relation to Adam and to Eve, and must partake of that good and evil
which extend to themselves.
Of the machinery, so called from 'theos apo maechanaes', by which
is meant the occasional interposition of supernatural power, another
fertile topick of critical remarks, here is no room to speak, because
every thing is done under the immediate and visible direction of heaven;
but the rule is so far observed, that no part of the action could have
been accomplished by any other means.
Of episodes, I think, there are only two, contained in Raphael's
relation of the war in heaven, and Michael's prophetick account of the
changes to happen in this world. Both are closely connected with the
great action; one was necessary to Adam, as a warning, the other, as a
consolation.
To the completeness or integrity of the design, nothing can be objected;
it has, distinctly and clearly, what Aristotle requires, a beginning, a
middle, and an end. There is, perhaps, no poem, of the same length, from
which so little can be taken without apparent mutilation. Here are no
funeral games, nor is there any long description of a shield. The short
digressions at the beginning of the third, seventh, and ninth books,
might, doubtless, be spared; but superfluities so beautiful, who would
take away? or who does not wish that the author of the Iliad had
gratified succeeding ages with a little knowledge of himself? Perhaps
no passages are more frequently or more attentively read, than those
extrinsick paragraphs; and, since the end of poetry is pleasure, that
cannot be unpoetical with which all are pleased.
The questions, whether the action of the poem be strictly one, whether
the poem can be properly termed heroick, and who is the hero, are raised
by such readers as draw their principles of judgment rather from books
than from reason. Milton, though he entitled Paradise Lost only a poem,
yet calls it himself heroick song. Dryden petulantly and indecently
denies the heroism of Adam, because he was overcome; but there is no
reason why the hero should not be unfortunate, except established
practice, since success and virtue do not go necessarily together. Cato
is the hero of Lucan; but Lucan's authority will not be suffered by
Quintilian to decide. However, if success be necessary, Adam's deceiver
was at last crushed; Adam was restored to his maker's favour, and,
therefore, may securely resume his human rank.
After the scheme and fabrick of the poem, must be considered its
component parts, the sentiments and the diction.
The sentiments, as expressive of manners, or appropriated to characters,
are, for the greater part, unexceptionably just.
Splendid passages, containing lessons of morality, or precepts of
prudence, occur seldom. Such is the original formation of this poem,
that, as it admits no human manners, till the fall, it can give little
assistance to human conduct. Its end is to raise the thoughts above
sublunary cares or pleasures. Yet the praise of that fortitude, with
which Abdiel maintained his singularity of virtue against the scorn of
multitudes, may be accommodated to all times; and Raphael's reproof of
Adam's curiosity after the planetary motions, with the answer returned
by Adam, may be confidently opposed to any rule of life which any poet
has delivered.
The thoughts which are occasionally called forth in the progress, are
such as could only be produced by an imagination in the highest degree
fervid and active, to which materials were supplied by incessant study
and unlimited curiosity. The heat of Milton's mind may be said to
sublimate his learning, to throw off into his work the spirit of
science, unmingled with its grosser parts.
He had considered creation, in its whole extent, and his descriptions
are, therefore, learned. He had accustomed his imagination to
unrestrained indulgence, and his conceptions, therefore, were extensive.
The characteristick quality of his poem is sublimity. He sometimes
descends to the elegant, but his element is the great. He can
occasionally invest himself with grace; but his natural port is
gigantick loftiness[60]. He can please, when pleasure is required; but
it is his peculiar power to astonish.
He seems to have been well acquainted with his own genius, and to know
what it was that nature had bestowed upon him more bountifully than upon
others; the power of displaying the vast, illuminating the splendid,
enforcing the awful, darkening the gloomy, and aggravating the dreadful;
he, therefore, chose a subject on which too much could not be said, on
which he might tire his fancy, without the censure of extravagance.
The appearances of nature, and the occurrences of life, did not satiate
his appetite of greatness. To paint things as they are requires a minute
attention, and employs the memory rather than the fancy. Milton's
delight was to sport in the wide regions of possibility; reality was a
scene too narrow for his mind. He sent his faculties out upon discovery,
into worlds where only imagination can travel, and delighted to form
new modes of existence, and furnish sentiment and action to superiour
beings, to trace the counsels of hell, or accompany the choirs of
heaven.
But he could not be always in other worlds; he must sometimes revisit
earth, and tell of things visible and known. When he cannot raise wonder
by the sublimity of his mind, he gives delight by its fertility.
Whatever be his subject, he never fails to fill the imagination. But his
images and descriptions of the scenes, or operations of nature, do not
seem to be always copied from original form, nor to have the freshness,
raciness, and energy of immediate observation. He saw nature, as Dryden
expresses it, "through the spectacles of books;" and, on most occasions,
calls learning to his assistance. The garden of Eden brings to his mind
the vale of Enna, where Proserpine was gathering flowers. Satan makes
his way through fighting elements, like Argo between the Cyanean
rocks, or Ulysses between the two Sicilian whirlpools, when he shunned
Charybdis on the "larboard. " The mythological allusions have been justly
censured, as not being always used with notice of their vanity; but they
contribute variety to the narration, and produce an alternate exercise
of the memory and the fancy.
His similes are less numerous, and more various, than those of his
predecessors. But he does not confine himself within the limits of
rigorous comparison; his great excellence is amplitude; and he expands
the adventitious image beyond the dimensions which the occasion
required. Thus comparing the shield of Satan to the orb of the moon, he
crowds the imagination with the discovery of the telescope, and all the
wonders which the telescope discovers.
Of his moral sentiments it is hardly praise to affirm that they excel
those of all other poets; for this superiority he was indebted to his
acquaintance with the sacred writings. The ancient epick poets, wanting
the light of revelation, were very unskilful teachers of virtue: their
principal characters may be great, but they are not amiable. The reader
may rise from their works with a greater degree of active or passive
fortitude, and sometimes of prudence; but he will be able to carry away
few precepts of justice, and none of mercy.
From the Italian writers it appears, that the advantages of even
Christian knowledge may be possessed in vain. Ariosto's pravity is
generally known; and, though the Deliverance of Jerusalem may be
considered as a sacred subject, the poet has been very sparing of moral
instruction.
In Milton every line breathes sanctity of thought, and purity
of manners, except when the train of the narration requires the
introduction of the rebellious spirits; and even they are compelled
to acknowledge their subjection to God, in such a manner as excites
reverence, and confirms piety.
Of human beings there are but two; but those two are the parents of
mankind, venerable before their fall for dignity and innocence, and
amiable after it for repentance and submission. In the first state,
their affection is tender without weakness, and their piety sublime
without presumption. When they have sinned, they show how discord begins
in mutual frailty, and how it ought to cease in mutual forbearance; how
confidence of the divine favour is forfeited by sin; and how hope of
pardon may be obtained by penitence and prayer. A state of innocence we
can only conceive, if, indeed, in our present misery, it be possible
to conceive it; but the sentiments and worship proper to a fallen and
offending being, we have all to learn, as we have all to practise.
The poet, whatever be done, is always great. Our progenitors, in their
first state, conversed with angels; even when folly and sin had degraded
them, they had not, in their humiliation, "the port of mean suitors;"
and they rise again to reverential regard, when we find that their
prayers were heard.
As human passions did not enter the world, before the fall, there is, in
the Paradise Lost, little opportunity for the pathetick; but what little
there is has not been lost. That passion which is peculiar to rational
nature, the anguish arising from the consciousness of transgression, and
the horrours attending the sense of the divine displeasure, are very
justly described and forcibly impressed. But the passions are moved only
on one occasion; sublimity is the general and prevailing quality of this
poem; sublimity variously modified, sometimes descriptive, sometimes
argumentative.
The defects and faults of Paradise Lost, for faults and defects every
work of man must have, it is the business of impartial criticism to
discover. As, in displaying the excellence of Milton, I have not made
long quotations, because of selecting beauties there had been no end, I
shall, in the same general manner, mention that which seems to deserve
censure; for what Englishman can take delight in transcribing passages,
which, if they lessen the reputation of Milton, diminish, in some
degree, the honour of our country?
The generality of my scheme does not admit the frequent notice of verbal
inaccuracies; which Bentley, perhaps, better skilled in grammar than in
poetry, has often found, though he sometimes made them, and which he
imputed to the obtrusions of a reviser, whom the author's blindness
obliged him to employ; a supposition rash and groundless, if he thought
it true; and vile and pernicious, if, as is said, he, in private,
allowed it to be false.
The plan of Paradise Lost has this inconvenience, that it comprises
neither human actions nor human manners[61]. The man and woman who act
and suffer are in a state which no other man or woman can ever know.
The reader finds no transaction in which he can be engaged; beholds no
condition in which he can, by any effort of imagination, place himself;
he has, therefore, little natural curiosity or sympathy.
We all, indeed, feel the effect of Adam's disobedience; we all sin, like
Adam, and, like him, must all bewail our offences; we have restless and
insidious enemies in the fallen angels; and in the blessed spirits we
have guardians and friends; in the redemption of mankind we hope to be
included; and in the description of heaven and hell we are, surely,
interested, as we are all to reside, hereafter, either in the regions of
horrour or of bliss.
But these truths are too important to be new; they have been taught to
our infancy; they have mingled with our solitary thoughts and familiar
conversations, and are habitually interwoven with the whole texture of
life. Being, therefore, not new, they raise no unaccustomed emotion in
the mind; what we knew before, we cannot learn; what is not unexpected,
cannot surprise.
Of the ideas suggested by these awful scenes, from some we recede with
reverence, except when stated hours require their association; and
from others we shrink with horrour, or admit them only as salutary
inflictions, as counterpoizes to our interests and passions. Such images
rather obstruct the career of fancy than incite it.
Pleasure and terrour are, indeed, the genuine sources of poetry; but
poetical pleasure must be such as human imagination can, at least,
conceive; and poetical terrour, such as human strength and fortitude may
combat. The good and evil of eternity are too ponderous for the wings of
wit; the mind sinks under them, in passive helplessness, content with
calm belief and humble adoration.
Known truths, however, may take a different appearance, and be conveyed
to the mind by a new train of intermediate images. This Milton has
undertaken, and performed with pregnancy and vigour of mind peculiar
to himself. Whoever considers the few radical positions which the
scriptures afforded him, will wonder by what energetick operation he
expanded them to such extent, and ramified them to so much variety,
restrained, as he was, by religious reverence from licentiousness of
fiction.
Here is a full display of the united force of study and genius; of a
great accumulation of materials, with judgment to digest, and fancy to
combine them: Milton was able to select from nature or from story, from
ancient fable or from modern science, whatever could illustrate or
adorn his thoughts. An accumulation of knowledge impregnated his mind,
fermented by study, and exalted by imagination.
It has been, therefore, said, without an indecent hyperbole, by one
of his encomiasts, that in reading Paradise Lost, we read a book of
universal knowledge.
But original deficience cannot be supplied. The want of human interest
is always felt. Paradise Lost is one of the books which the reader
admires and lays down, and forgets to take up again. None ever wished it
longer than it is. Its perusal is a duty rather than a pleasure. We read
Milton for instruction, retire harassed and over-burdened, and look
elsewhere for recreation; we desert our master, and seek for companions.
Another inconvenience of Milton's design is, that it requires the
description of what cannot be described, the agency of spirits. He saw
that immateriality supplied no images, and that he could not show angels
acting but by instruments of action; he, therefore, invested them with
form and matter. This, being necessary, was, therefore, defensible;
and he should have secured the consistency of his system, by keeping
immateriality out of sight, and enticing his reader to drop it from
his thoughts. But he has, unhappily, perplexed his poetry with his
philosophy. His infernal and celestial powers are sometimes pure spirit,
and sometimes animated body. When Satan walks with his lance upon the
"burning marl," he has a body; when, in his passage between hell and the
new world, he is in danger of sinking in the vacuity, and is supported
by a gust of rising vapours, he has a body; when he animates the toad,
he seems to be mere spirit, that can penetrate matter at pleasure; when
he starts "up in his own shape," he has, at least, a determined form;
and, when he is brought before Gabriel, he has "a spear and a shield,"
which he had the power of hiding in the toad, though the arms of the
contending angels are evidently material.
The vulgar inhabitants of Pandaemonium, being "incorporeal spirits,"
are "at large, though without number," in a limited space: yet, in the
battle, when they were overwhelmed by mountains, their armour hurt them,
"crushed in upon their substance, now grown gross by sinning. " This,
likewise, happened to the uncorrupted angels, who were overthrown the
"sooner for their arms, for unarmed they might easily, as spirits,
have evaded by contraction or remove. " Even as spirits they are hardly
spiritual; for "contraction" and "remove" are images of matter; but if
they could have escaped without their armour, they might have escaped
from it, and left only the empty cover to be battered. Uriel, when he
rides on a sunbeam, is material; Satan is material when he is afraid of
the prowess of Adam.
The confusion of spirit and matter, which pervades the whole narration
of the war of heaven, fills it with incongruity; and the book in which
it is related is, I believe, the favourite of children, and gradually
neglected, as knowledge is increased.
After the operation of immaterial agents which cannot be explained, may
be considered that of allegorical persons, which have no real existence.
To exalt causes into agents, to invest abstract ideas with form, and
animate them with activity, has always been the right of poetry. But
such airy beings are, for the most part, suffered only to do their
natural office, and retire. Thus fame tells a tale, and victory hovers
over a general, or perches on a standard; but fame and victory can do no
more. To give them any real employment, or ascribe to them any material
agency, is to make them allegorical no longer, but to shock the mind by
ascribing effects to nonentity. In the Prometheus of Aeschylus, we see
violence and strength, and in the Alcestis of Euripides, we see death
brought upon the stage, all as active persons of the drama; but no
precedents can justify absurdity.
Milton's allegory of sin and death is, undoubtedly, faulty. Sin is,
indeed, the mother of death, and may be allowed to be the portress of
hell; but when they stop the journey of Satan, a journey described as
real, and when death offers him battle, the allegory is broken. That sin
and death should have shown the way to hell, might have been allowed;
but they cannot facilitate the passage by building a bridge, because the
difficulty of Satan's passage is described as real and sensible, and the
bridge ought to be only figurative. The hell assigned to the rebellious
spirits is described as not less local than the residence of man. It
is placed in some distant part of space, separated from the regions of
harmony and order by a chaotick waste and an unoccupied vacuity; but
sin and death worked up "a mole of aggravated soil," cemented with
"asphaltus;" a work too bulky for ideal architects.
This unskilful allegory appears to me one of the greatest faults of the
poem; and to this there was no temptation but the author's opinion of
its beauty.
To the conduct of the narrative some objections may be made. Satan is,
with great expectation, brought before Gabriel in Paradise, and is
suffered to go away unmolested. The creation of man is represented as the
consequence of the vacuity left in heaven by the expulsion of the rebels;
yet Satan mentions it as a report "rife in heaven" before his departure.
To find sentiments for the state of innocence was very difficult; and
something of anticipation, perhaps, is now and then discovered. Adam's
discourse of dreams seems not to be the speculation of a new-created
being. I know not whether his answer to the angel's reproof for curiosity
does not want something of propriety; it is the speech of a man
acquainted with many other men. Some philosophical notions, especially
when the philosophy is false, might have been better omitted. The
angel, in a comparison, speaks of "timorous deer," before deer were yet
timorous, and before Adam could understand the comparison.
Dryden remarks, that Milton has some flats among his elevations. This is
only to say, that all the parts are not equal. In every work, one part
must be for the sake of others; a palace must have passages; a poem must
have transitions. It is no more to be required that wit should always be
blazing, than that the sun should always stand at noon. In a great work
there is a vicissitude of luminous and opaque parts, as there is in the
world a succession of day and night. Milton, when he has expatiated in
the sky, may be allowed, sometimes, to revisit earth; for what other
author ever soared so high, or sustained his flight so long?
Milton, being well versed in the Italian poets, appears to have borrowed
often from them; and, as every man catches something from his companions,
his desire of imitating Ariosto's levity has disgraced his work with
the Paradise of Fools; a fiction not, in itself, ill imagined, but too
ludicrous for its place.
His play on words, in which he delights too often; his equivocations,
which Bentley endeavours to defend by the example of the ancients; his
unnecessary and ungraceful use of terms of art; it is not necessary to
mention, because they are easily remarked, and generally censured; and,
at last, bear so little proportion to the whole, that they scarcely
deserve the attention of a critick.
Such are the faults of that wonderful performance, Paradise Lost; which
he who can put in balance with its beauties must be considered not as
nice but as dull; as less to be censured for want of candour, than pitied
for want of sensibility.
Of Paradise Regained, the general judgment seems now to be right, that it
is, in many parts, elegant, and everywhere instructive. It was not to be
supposed that the writer of Paradise Lost could ever write without great
effusions of fancy, and exalted precepts of wisdom. The basis of Paradise
Regained is narrow; a dialogue without action can never please, like an
union of the narrative and dramatick powers. Had this poem been written
not by Milton, but by some imitator, it would have claimed and received
universal praise.
If Paradise Regained has been too much depreciated, Sampson Agonistes
has, in requital, been too much admired. It could only be by long
prejudice, and the bigotry of learning, that Milton could prefer the
ancient tragedies, with their encumbrance of a chorus, to the exhibitions
of the French and English stages; and it is only by a blind confidence
in the reputation of Milton, that a drama can be praised, in which the
intermediate parts have neither cause nor consequence, neither hasten nor
retard the catastrophe.
In this tragedy are, however, many particular beauties, many just
sentiments and striking lines; but it wants that power of attracting the
attention, which a well-connected plan produces.
Milton would not have excelled in dramatick writing; he knew human nature
only in the gross, and had never studied the shades of character, nor the
combinations of concurring, or the perplexity of contending passions. He
had read much, and knew what books could teach; but had mingled little
in the world, and was deficient in the knowledge which experience must
confer.
Through all his greater works there prevails an uniform peculiarity of
diction, a mode and cast of expression which bears little resemblance to
that of any former writer; and which is so far removed from common use,
that an unlearned reader, when he first opens his book, finds himself
surprised by a new language.
This novelty has been, by those who can find nothing wrong in Milton,
imputed to his laborious endeavours after words suitable to the grandeur
of his ideas. "Our language," says Addison, "sunk under him. " But the
truth is, that, both in prose and verse, he had formed his style by a
perverse and pedantick principle. He was desirous to use English words
with a foreign idiom. This in all his prose is discovered and condemned;
for there judgment operates freely, neither softened by the beauty, nor
awed by the dignity of his thoughts; but such is the power of his poetry,
that his call is obeyed without resistance, the reader feels himself
in captivity to a higher and a nobler mind, and criticism sinks in
admiration.
Milton's style was not modified by his subject; what is shown with
greater extent in Paradise Lost may be found in Comus. One source of his
peculiarity was his familiarity with the Tuscan poets; the disposition of
his words is, I think, frequently Italian; perhaps, sometimes, combined
with other tongues.
Of him, at last, may be said what Jonson says of Spenser, that "he wrote
no language," but has formed what Butler calls a "Babylonish dialect,"
in itself harsh and barbarous, but made by exalted genius and extensive
learning the vehicle of so much instruction, and so much pleasure, that,
like other lovers, we find grace in its deformity.
Whatever be the faults of his diction, he cannot want the praise of
copiousness and variety; he was master of his language in its full
extent; and has selected the melodious words with such diligence, that
from his book alone the art of English poetry might be learned.
After his diction, something must be said of his versification. The
"measure," he says, "is the English heroick verse without rhyme. " Of
this mode he had many examples among the Italians, and some in his own
country. The earl of Surrey is said to have translated one of Virgil's
books without rhyme[62]; and, beside our tragedies, a few short poems had
appeared in blank verse, particularly one tending to reconcile the nation
to Raleigh's wild attempt upon Guiana, and probably written by Raleigh
himself. These petty performances cannot be supposed to have much
influenced Milton, who, more probably took his hint from Trissino's
Italia Liberata; and, finding blank verse easier than rhyme, was desirous
of persuading himself that it is better.
"Rhyme," he says, and says truly, "is no necessary adjunct of true
poetry. " But, perhaps, of poetry, as a mental operation, metre or musick
is no necessary adjunct: it is, however, by the musick of metre that
poetry has been discriminated in all languages; and, in languages
melodiously constructed with a due proportion of long and short
syllables, metre is sufficient. But one language cannot communicate its
rules to another; where metre is scanty and imperfect, some help is
necessary. The musick of the English heroick lines strikes the ear so
faintly, that it is easily lost, unless all the syllables of every
line cooperate together; this cooperation can be only obtained by the
preservation of every verse unmingled with another, as a distinct system
of sounds; and this distinctness is obtained and preserved by the
artifice of rhyme. The variety of pauses, so much boasted by the lovers
of blank verse, changes the measures of an English poet to the periods
of a declaimer; and there are only a few skilful and happy readers of
Milton, who enable their audience to perceive where the lines end or
begin. "Blank verse," said an ingenious critick, "seems to be verse only
to the eye. " Poetry may subsist without rhyme, but English poetry will
not often please; nor can rhyme ever be safely spared, but where the
subject is able to support itself. Blank verse makes some approach to
that which is called the lapidary style; has neither the easiness
of prose, nor the melody of numbers, and, therefore, tires by long
continuance. Of the Italian writers without rhyme, whom Milton alleges as
precedents, not one is popular; what reason could urge in its defence,
has been confuted by the ear.
But, whatever be the advantage of rhyme, I cannot prevail on myself to
wish that Milton had been a rhymer; for I cannot wish his work to be
other than it is; yet, like other heroes, he is to be admired rather than
imitated. He that thinks himself capable of astonishing may write blank
verse; but those that hope only to please must condescend to rhyme.
The highest praise of genius is original invention. Milton cannot be said
to have contrived the structure of an epick poem, and, therefore, owes
reverence to that vigour and amplitude of mind to which all generations
must be indebted for the, art of poetical narration, for the texture of
the fable, the variation of incidents, the interposition of dialogue, and
all the stratagems that surprise and enchain attention. But, of all the
borrowers from Homer, Milton is, perhaps, the least indebted. He was
naturally a thinker for himself, confident of his own abilities, and
disdainful of help or hindrance: he did not refuse admission to the
thoughts or images of his predecessors, but he did not seek them. From
his contemporaries he neither courted nor received support; there is
in his writings nothing by which the pride of other authors might be
gratified, or favour gained; no exchange of praise, nor solicitation of
support. His great works were performed under discountenance, and in
blindness; but difficulties vanished at his touch; he was born for
whatever is arduous; and his work is not the greatest of heroick poems,
only because it is not the first.
[Footnote 26: In this assertion Dr. Johnson was mistaken. Milton was
admitted a pensioner, and not a sizar, as will appear by the following
extract from the college register: "Johannes Milton, Londinensis, filius
Johannis, institutus fuit in literarum elementis sub Mag'ro Gill Gymnasii
Paulini praefecto, admissus est _Pensionarius Minor_, Feb. 12? , 1624, sub
M'ro Chappell, solvitq. pro Ingr. 0l. 10s. 0d. " R. ]
[Footnote 27: Published 1632. R. ]
[Footnote 28: On this subject, see Dr. Symons's Life of Milton, 71, 72.
ED. ]
[Footnote 29: By the mention of this name, he evidently refers to
Albumazar, acted at Cambridge, in 1614. Ignoramus, and other plays were
performed at the same time. The practice was then very frequent. The
last dramatick performance at either university, was the Grateful Fair,
written by Christopher Smart, and represented at Pembroke college,
Cambridge, about 1747. R. ]
[Footnote 30: It has, nevertheless, its foundation in reality. The earl
of Bridgewater, being president of Wales, in the year 1634, had his
residence at Ludlow castle, in Shropshire, at which time lord Brackly
and Mr. Egerton, his sons, and lady Alice Egerton, his daughter, passing
through a place called the Haywood forest, or Haywood, in Herefordshire,
were benighted, and the lady for a short time lost: this accident, being
related to their father upon their arrival at his castle, Milton, at the
request of his friend, Henry Lawes, who taught music in the family, wrote
this masque. Lawes set it to music, and it was acted on Michaelmas night:
the two brothers, the young lady, and Lawes himself, bearing each a part
in the representation.
The lady Alice Egerton became afterwards the wife of the earl of Carbury,
who, at his seat called Golden grove, in Caermarthenshire, harboured Dr.
Jeremy Taylor in the time of the usurpation. Among the doctor's sermons
is one on her death, in which her character is finely portrayed. Her
sister, lady Mary, was given in marriage to lord Herbert, of Cherbury.
Notwithstanding Dr. Johnson's assertion, that the fiction is derived from
Homer's Circe, it may be conjectured, that it was rather taken from the
Comus of Erycius Puteanus, in which, under the fiction of a dream, the
characters of Comus and his attendants are delineated, and the delights
of sensualists exposed and reprobated. This little tract was published
at Louvain, in 1611, and afterwards at Oxford, in 1634, the very year in
which Milton's Comus was written. H. Milton evidently was indebted to the
Old Wives' Tale of George Peele for the plan of Comus. R. ]
[Footnote 31: This is inaccurately expressed: Philips, and Dr. Newton,
after him, say a garden-house, i. e. a house situated in a garden, and of
which there were, especially in the north suburbs of London, very many,
if not few else. The term is technical, and frequently occurs in the
Athen. and Fast. Oxon. The meaning thereof may be collected from the
article, Thomas Farnaby, the famous schoolmaster, of whom the author
says, that he taught in Goldsmith's rents, in Cripplegate parish, behind
Redcross street, where were large gardens and handsome houses. Milton's
house in Jewin street was also a garden-house, as were, indeed, most of
his dwellings after his settlement in London. H. ]
[Footnote 32: Johnson did not here allude to Philips's Theatrum Poetarum,
as has been ignorantly supposed, but, as he himself informed Mr. Malone,
to another work by the same author, entitled, Tractatulus de carmine
dramatico poetarum veterum praesertim in choris tragicis et veteris
comoediae. Cui subjungitur compendiosa enumeratio poetarum (saltern
quorum fama maxima enituit) qui a tempore Dantis Aligerii usque ad hanc
aetatem claruerunt, etc. J. B. ]
[Footnote 33: Stephen Marshall, Edmund Calamy, Thomas Young, Matthew
Newcomen, William Spurstow. R. ]
[Footnote 34: It was animadverted upon, but without any mention of
Milton's name, by bishop Hall, in his Cases of Conscience, Decade 4, Case
2. J. B. ]
[Footnote 35: He terms the author of it a shallow-brained puppy; and thus
refers to it in his index: "Of a noddy who wrote a book about wiving. "
J. B. ]
[Footnote 36: This charge, as far as regards Milton, is examined by Dr.
Symons with more moderation than usually characterizes his high-sounding
and wordy panegyrics. See Life of Milton. ED. ]
[Footnote 37: The work here referred to is Selectarum de Lingua Latina
Observationum Libri duo. Ductu et cura Joannis Ker, 1719. Ker observes,
that vapulandum is pinguis solaecismus. J. B. ]
[Footnote 38: It may be doubted whether _gloriosissimus_ be here used
with Milton's boasted purity. _Res gloriosa_ is an _illustrious thing_;
but _vir gloriosus_ is _commonly_ a _braggart_, as in _miles gloriosus_.
Dr. J. ]
[Footnote 39: The Cambridge dictionary, published in 4to. 1693, is
no other than a copy, with some small additions, of that of Dr. Adam
Littleton in 1686, by sundry persons, of whom though their names are
concealed, there is great reason to conjecture that Milton's nephew,
Edward Philips, is one: for it is expressly said by Wood, Fasti, vol. i.
p. 266, that Milton's Thesaurus came to his hands; and it is asserted in
the preface thereto, that the editors thereof had the use of three large
folios in manuscript, collected and digested into alphabetical order by
Mr. John Milton. It has been remarked, that the additions, together
with the preface above mentioned, and a large part of the title of
the Cambridge dictionary, have been incorporated and printed with the
subsequent editions of Littleton's dictionary, till that of 1735. Vid.
Biogr. Brit. 2985, in not. So that, for aught that appears to the
contrary, Philips was the last possessor of Milton's manuscripts. H. ]
[Footnote 40: _Id est_, to be the subject of an heroick poem, written by
sir Richard Blackmore. H. ]
[Footnote 41: Trinity college. R. ]
[Footnote 42: The dramas in which Justice, Mercy, Faith, &c. were
introduced, were moralities, not mysteries.
stand. Many repetitions are necessary to fix in the memory lines not
understood; and why should Milton wish or want to hear them so often?
These lines were at the beginning of the poems. Of a book written in a
language not understood, the beginning raises no more attention than the
end; and as those that understand it know commonly the beginning best,
its rehearsal will seldom be necessary. It is not likely that Milton
required any passage to be so much repeated, as that his daughter could
learn it; nor likely that he desired the initial lines to be read at
all; nor that the daughter, weary of the drudgery of pronouncing unideal
sounds, would voluntarily commit them to memory.
To this gentlewoman Addison made a present, and promised some
establishment, but died soon after. Queen Caroline sent her fifty
guineas. She had seven sons and three daughters; but none of them had
any children, except her son Caleb and her daughter Elizabeth. Caleb
went to Fort St. George, in the East Indies, and had two sons, of whom
nothing is now known. Elizabeth married Thomas Foster, a weaver in
Spital fields; and had seven children, who all died. She kept a petty
grocer's or chandler's shop, first at Holloway, and afterwards in Cock
lane, near Shoreditch church. She knew little of her grandfather, and
that little was not good. She told of his harshness to his daughters,
and his refusal to have them taught to write; and, in opposition to
other accounts, represented him as delicate, though temperate, in his
diet.
In 1750, April 5, Comus was played for her benefit. She had so little
acquaintance with diversion or gaiety, that she did not know what was
intended, when a benefit was offered her. The profits of the night were
only one hundred and thirty pounds, though Dr. Newton brought a large
contribution; and twenty pounds were given by Tonson, a man who is to
be praised as often as he is named. Of this sum one hundred pounds were
placed in the stocks, after some debate between her and her husband, in
whose name it should be entered; and the rest augmented their little
stock, with which they removed to Islington. This was the greatest
benefaction that Paradise Lost ever procured the author's descendants;
and to this he, who has now attempted to relate his life, had the honour
of contributing a prologue[54].
In the examination of Milton's poetical works, I shall pay so much
regard to time as to begin with his juvenile productions. For his early
pieces he seems to have had a degree of fondness not very laudable; what
he has once written he resolves to preserve, and gives to the publick an
unfinished poem, which he broke off, because he was "nothing satisfied
with what he had done," supposing his readers less nice than himself.
These preludes to his future labours are in Italian, Latin, and English.
Of the Italian I cannot pretend to speak as a critick; but I have heard
them commended by a man well qualified to decide their merit. The Latin
pieces are lusciously elegant; but the delight which they afford is
rather by the exquisite imitation of the ancient writers, by the purity
of the diction, and the harmony of the numbers, than by any power of
invention, or vigour of sentiment. They are not all of equal value; the
elegies excel the odes; and some of the exercises on Gunpowder Treason
might have been spared.
The English poems, though they make no promises of Paradise Lost[55],
have this evidence of genius, that they have a cast original and
unborrowed. But their peculiarity is not excellence; if they differ from
the verses of others, they differ for the worse; for they are too often
distinguished by repulsive harshness; the combinations of words are
new, but they are not pleasing; the rhymes and epithets seem to be
laboriously sought, and violently applied.
That, in the early part of his life, he wrote with much care appears
from his manuscripts, happily preserved at Cambridge, in which many
of his smaller works are found, as they were first written, with the
subsequent corrections. Such relicks show how excellence is acquired;
what we hope ever to do with ease, we must learn first to do with
diligence.
Those who admire the beauties of this great poet sometimes force their
own judgment into false approbation of his little pieces, and prevail
upon themselves to think that admirable which is only singular. All that
short compositions can commonly attain, is neatness and elegance. Milton
never learned the art of doing little things with grace; he overlooked
the milder excellence of suavity and softness: he was a lion, that had
no skill "in dandling the kid. "
One of the poems on which much praise has been bestowed is Lycidas;
of which the diction is harsh, the rhymes uncertain, and the numbers
unpleasing. What beauty there is, we must, therefore, seek in the
sentiments and images. It is not to be considered as the effusion of
real passion; for passion runs not after remote allusions and obscure
opinions. Passion plucks no berries from the myrtle and ivy, nor calls
upon Arethuse and Mincius, nor tells of rough "satyrs and fauns with
cloven heel. " Where there is leisure for fiction, there is little grief.
In this poem there is no nature, for there is no truth; there is no art,
for there is nothing new. Its form is that of a pastoral: easy, vulgar,
and, therefore, disgusting; whatever images it can supply are long ago
exhausted; and its inherent improbability always forces dissatisfaction
on the mind. When Cowley tells of Hervey, that they studied together, it
is easy to suppose how much he must miss the companion of his labours,
and the partner of his discoveries; but what image of tenderness can be
excited by these lines?
We drove afield, and both together heard,
What time the grey fly winds her sultry horn,
Batt'ning our flocks with the fresh dews of night.
We know that they never drove afield, and that they had no flocks
to batten; and, though it be allowed that the representation may be
allegorical, the true meaning is so uncertain and remote, that it is
never sought, because it cannot be known when it is found.
Among the flocks, and copses, and flowers, appear the heathen deities;
Jove and Phoebus, Neptune and Aeolus, with a long train of mythological
imagery, such as a college easily supplies. Nothing can less display
knowledge, or less exercise invention, than to tell how a shepherd has
lost his companion, and must now feed his flocks alone, without any
judge of his skill in piping; and how one god asks another god what is
become of Lycidas, and how neither god can tell. He who thus grieves
will excite no sympathy; he who thus praises will confer no honour.
This poem has yet a grosser fault. With these trifling fictions are
mingled the most awful and sacred truths, such as ought never to be
polluted with such irreverend combinations. The shepherd, likewise,
is now a feeder of sheep, and afterwards an ecclesiastical pastor, a
superintendent of a Christian flock. Such equivocations are always
unskilful; but here they are indecent, and, at least, approach to
impiety, of which, however, I believe the writer not to have been
conscious. Such is the power of reputation justly acquired, that its
blaze drives away the eye from nice examination. Surely no man could
have fancied that he read Lycidas with pleasure, had he not known the
author.
Of the two pieces, L'Allegro and Il Penseroso, I believe, opinion is
uniform; every man that reads them, reads them with pleasure. The
author's design is not, what Theobald has remarked, merely to show
how objects derive their colours from the mind, by representing the
operation of the same things upon the gay and the melancholy temper, or
upon the same man, as he is differently disposed; but rather how, among
the successive variety of appearances, every disposition of mind takes
hold on those by which it may be gratified.
The cheerful man hears the lark in the morning; the pensive man hears
the nightingale in the evening. The cheerful man sees the cock strut,
and hears the horn and hounds echo in the wood; then walks, "not
unseen," to observe the glory of the rising sun, or listen to the
singing milkmaid, and view the labours of the ploughman and the mower:
then casts his eyes about him over scenes of smiling plenty, and looks
up to the distant tower, the residence of some fair inhabitant; thus he
pursues rural gaiety through a day of labour or of play, and delights
himself at night with the fanciful narratives of superstitious
ignorance.
The pensive man, at one time, walks "unseen" to muse at midnight; and,
at another, hears the sullen curfew. If the weather drives him home, he
sits in a room lighted only by "glowing embers;" or, by a lonely lamp,
outwatches the north star, to discover the habitation of separate souls,
and varies the shades of meditation, by contemplating the magnificent or
pathetick scenes of tragick or epick poetry. When the morning comes, a
morning gloomy with rain and wind, he walks into the dark, trackless
woods[56], falls asleep by some murmuring water, and with melancholy
enthusiasm expects some dream of prognostication, or some musick played
by aerial performers.
Both mirth and melancholy are solitary, silent inhabitants of the
breast, that neither receive nor transmit communication; no mention is,
therefore, made of a philosophical friend, or a pleasant companion. The
seriousness does not arise from any participation of calamity, nor the
gaiety from the pleasures of the bottle.
The man of cheerfulness, having exhausted the country, tries what
"towered cities" will afford, and mingles with scenes of splendour, gay
assemblies, and nuptial festivities; but he mingles a mere spectator,
as, when the learned comedies of Jonson, or the wild dramas of
Shakespeare, are exhibited, he attends the theatre.
The pensive man never loses himself in crowds, but walks the cloister,
or frequents the cathedral. Milton probably had not yet forsaken the
church.
Both his characters delight in musick; but he seems to think, that
cheerful notes would have obtained, from Pluto, a complete dismission of
Eurydice, of whom solemn sounds only procured a conditional release.
For the old age of cheerfulness he makes no provision; but melancholy he
conducts with great dignity to the close of life. His cheerfulness is
without levity, and his pensiveness without asperity.
Through these two poems the images are properly selected, and nicely
distinguished; but the colours of the diction seem not sufficiently
discriminated. I know not whether the characters are kept sufficiently
apart. No mirth can, indeed, be found in his melancholy; but I am afraid
that I always meet some melancholy in his mirth. They are two noble
efforts of imagination[57].
The greatest of his juvenile performances is the Masque of Comus, in
which may very plainly be discovered the dawn or twilight of Paradise
Lost. Milton appears to have formed very early that system of diction,
and mode of verse, which his maturer judgment approved, and from which
he never endeavoured nor desired to deviate.
Nor does Comus afford only a specimen of his language; it exhibits,
likewise, his power of description and his vigour of sentiment, employed
in the praise and defence of virtue. A work more truly poetical is
rarely found; allusions, images, and descriptive epithets, embellish
almost every period with lavish decoration. As a series of lines,
therefore, it may be considered as worthy of all the admiration with
which the votaries have received it.
As a drama it is deficient. The action is not probable. A mask, in those
parts where supernatural intervention is admitted, must, indeed, be
given up to all the freaks of imagination; but, so far as the action is
merely human, it ought to be reasonable, which can hardly be said of the
conduct of the two brothers; who, when their sister sinks with fatigue
in a pathless wilderness, wander both away together, in search of
berries, too far to find their way back, and leave a helpless lady to
all the sadness and danger of solitude. This, however, is a defect
overbalanced by its convenience.
What deserves more reprehension is, that the prologue spoken in the wild
wood, by the attendant spirit, is addressed to the audience; a mode of
communication so contrary to the nature of dramatick representation,
that no precedents can support it[58].
The discourse of the spirit is too long; an objection that may be made
to almost all the following speeches; they have not the sprightliness
of a dialogue animated by reciprocal contention, but seem rather
declamations deliberately composed, and formally repeated, on a moral
question. The auditor, therefore, listens as to a lecture, without
passion, without anxiety.
The song of Comus has airiness and jollity; but, what may recommend
Milton's morals, as well as his poetry, the invitations to pleasure are
so general, that they excite no distinct images of corrupt enjoyment,
and take no dangerous hold on the fancy.
The following soliloquies of Comus and the Lady are elegant, but
tedious. The song must owe much to the voice, if it ever can delight. At
last, the brothers enter with too much tranquillity; and, when they have
feared, lest their sister should be in danger, and hoped that she is
not in danger, the elder makes a speech in praise of chastity, and the
younger finds how fine it is to be a philosopher.
Then descends the spirit, in form of a shepherd; and the brother,
instead of being in haste to ask his help, praises his singing, and
inquires his business in that place. It is remarkable, that, at this
interview, the brother, is taken with a short fit of rhyming. The spirit
relates that the lady is in the power of Comus; the brother moralizes
again; and the spirit makes a long narration, of no use, because it is
false, and, therefore, unsuitable to a good being.
In all these parts the language is poetical, and the sentiments are
generous; but there is something wanting to allure attention.
The dispute between the lady and Comus is the most animated and
affecting scene of the drama, and wants nothing but a brisker
reciprocation of objections and replies to invite attention and detain
it.
The songs are vigorous and full of imagery; but they are harsh in their
diction, and not very musical in their numbers.
Throughout the whole the figures are too bold, and the language too
luxuriant, for dialogue. It is a drama in the epick style, inelegantly
splendid, and tediously instructive.
The sonnets were written in different parts of Milton's life, upon
different occasions. They deserve not any particular criticism; for of
the best it can only be said, that they are not bad; and, perhaps, only
the eighth and the twenty-first are truly entitled to this slender
commendation. The fabrick of a sonnet, however adapted to the Italian
language, has never succeeded in ours, which, having greater variety of
termination, requires the rhymes to be often changed.
Those little pieces may be despatched without much anxiety; a greater
work calls for greater care. I am now to examine Paradise Lost, a poem,
which, considered with respect to design, may claim the first place, and
with respect to performance the second, among the productions of the
human mind.
By the general consent of criticks, the first praise of genius is due
to the writer of an epick poem, as it requires an assemblage of all the
powers which are singly sufficient for other compositions. Poetry is the
art of uniting pleasure with truth, by calling imagination to the help
of reason. Epick poetry undertakes to teach the most important truths by
the most pleasing precepts, and, therefore, relates some great event
in the most affecting manner. History must supply the writer with the
rudiments of narration, which he must improve and exalt by a nobler art,
must animate by dramatick energy, and diversify by retrospection and
anticipation; morality must teach him the exact bounds, and different
shades, of vice and virtue; from policy and the practice of life, he
has to learn the discriminations of character, and the tendency of the
passions, either single or combined; and physiology must supply him with
illustrations and images. To put these materials to poetical use, is
required an imagination capable of painting nature, and realizing
fiction. Nor is he yet a poet till he has attained the whole extension
of his language, distinguished all the delicacies of phrase, and all the
colours of words, and learned to adjust their different sounds to all
the varieties of metrical modulation.
Bossu is of opinion, that the poet's first work is to find a moral,
which his fable is afterwards to illustrate and establish. This seems
to have been the process only of Milton; the moral of other poems
is incidental and consequent; in Milton's only it is essential and
intrinsick. His purpose was the most useful and the most arduous:
"to vindicate the ways of God to man;" to show the reasonableness of
religion, and the necessity of obedience to the divine law.
To convey this moral, there must be a fable, a narration artfully
constructed, so as to excite curiosity, and surprise expectation. In
this part of his work, Milton must be confessed to have equalled every
other poet. He has involved, in his account of the fall of man, the
events which preceded, and those that were to follow it; he has
interwoven the whole system of theology with such propriety, that every
part appears to be necessary; and scarcely any recital is wished shorter
for the sake of quickening the progress of the main action.
The subject of an epick poem is naturally an event of great importance.
That of Milton is not the destruction of a city, the conduct of a
colony, or the foundation of an empire. His subject is the fate of
worlds, the revolutions of heaven and of earth; rebellion against
the supreme king, raised by the highest order of created beings; the
overthrow of their host, and the punishment of their crime; the creation
of a new race of reasonable creatures; their original happiness and
innocence, their forfeiture of immortality, and their restoration to
hope and peace.
Great events can be hastened or retarded only by persons of elevated
dignity. Before the greatness displayed in Milton's poem, all other
greatness shrinks away. The weakest of his agents are the highest and
noblest of human beings, the original parents of mankind; with whose
actions the elements consented; on whose rectitude, or deviation of
will, depended the state of terrestrial nature, and the condition of all
the future inhabitants of the globe. Of the other agents in the poem,
the chief are such as it is irreverence to name on slight occasions. The
rest were lower powers;
----of which the least could wield
Those elements, and arm him with the force
Of all their regions;
powers, which only the control of omnipotence restrains from laying
creation waste, and filling the vast expanse of space with ruin and
confusion. To display the motives and actions of beings thus superiour,
so far as human reason can examine them, or human imagination represent
them, is the task which this mighty poet has undertaken and performed.
In the examination of epick poems much speculation is commonly employed
upon the characters. The characters in the Paradise Lost, which admit of
examination, are those of angels and of man; of angels good and evil; of
man in his innocent and sinful state.
Among the angels, the virtue of Raphael is mild and placid, of easy
condescension and free communication; that of Michael is regal and
lofty, and, as may seem, attentive to the dignity of his own nature.
Abdiel and Gabriel appear occasionally, and act as every incident
requires; the solitary fidelity of Abdiel is very amiably painted.
Of the evil angels the characters are more diversified. To Satan, as
Addison observes, such sentiments are given as suit "the most exalted
and most depraved being. " Milton has been censured by Clarke[59], for
the impiety which, sometimes, breaks from Satan's mouth; for there are
thoughts, as he justly remarks, which no observation of character can
justify, because no good man would willingly permit them to pass,
however transiently, through his own mind. To make Satan speak as
a rebel, without any such expressions as might taint the reader's
imagination, was, indeed, one of the great difficulties in Milton's
undertaking; and I cannot but think that he has extricated himself with
great happiness. There is in Satan's speeches little that can give pain
to a pious ear. The language of rebellion cannot be the same with that
of obedience. The malignity of Satan foams in haughtiness and obstinacy;
but his expressions are commonly general, and no otherwise offensive
than as they are wicked.
The other chiefs of the celestial rebellion are very judiciously
discriminated in the first and second books; and the ferocious character
of Moloch appears, both in the battle and the council, with exact
consistency.
To Adam and to Eve are given, during their innocence, such sentiments
as innocence can generate and utter. Their love is pure benevolence and
mutual veneration; their repasts are without luxury, and their diligence
without toil. Their addresses to their maker have little more than the
voice of admiration and gratitude. Fruition left them nothing to ask;
and innocence left them nothing to fear.
But with guilt enter distrust and discord, mutual accusation, and
stubborn self-defence; they regard each other with alienated minds, and
dread their creator as the avenger of their transgression. At last
they seek shelter in his mercy, soften to repentance, and melt in
supplication. Both before and after the fall, the superiority of Adam is
diligently sustained.
Of the probable and the marvellous, two parts of a vulgar epick poem,
which immerge the critick in deep consideration, the Paradise Lost
requires little to be said. It contains the history of a miracle, of
creation and redemption; it displays the power and the mercy of
the supreme being; the probable, therefore, is marvellous, and the
marvellous is probable. The substance of the narrative is truth; and, as
truth allows no choice, it is, like necessity, superiour to rule. To the
accidental or adventitious parts, as to every thing human, some slight
exceptions may be made; but the main fabrick is immovably supported. It
is justly remarked by Addison, that this poem has, by the nature of its
subject, the advantage above all others, that it is universally and
perpetually interesting. All mankind will, through all ages, bear the
same relation to Adam and to Eve, and must partake of that good and evil
which extend to themselves.
Of the machinery, so called from 'theos apo maechanaes', by which
is meant the occasional interposition of supernatural power, another
fertile topick of critical remarks, here is no room to speak, because
every thing is done under the immediate and visible direction of heaven;
but the rule is so far observed, that no part of the action could have
been accomplished by any other means.
Of episodes, I think, there are only two, contained in Raphael's
relation of the war in heaven, and Michael's prophetick account of the
changes to happen in this world. Both are closely connected with the
great action; one was necessary to Adam, as a warning, the other, as a
consolation.
To the completeness or integrity of the design, nothing can be objected;
it has, distinctly and clearly, what Aristotle requires, a beginning, a
middle, and an end. There is, perhaps, no poem, of the same length, from
which so little can be taken without apparent mutilation. Here are no
funeral games, nor is there any long description of a shield. The short
digressions at the beginning of the third, seventh, and ninth books,
might, doubtless, be spared; but superfluities so beautiful, who would
take away? or who does not wish that the author of the Iliad had
gratified succeeding ages with a little knowledge of himself? Perhaps
no passages are more frequently or more attentively read, than those
extrinsick paragraphs; and, since the end of poetry is pleasure, that
cannot be unpoetical with which all are pleased.
The questions, whether the action of the poem be strictly one, whether
the poem can be properly termed heroick, and who is the hero, are raised
by such readers as draw their principles of judgment rather from books
than from reason. Milton, though he entitled Paradise Lost only a poem,
yet calls it himself heroick song. Dryden petulantly and indecently
denies the heroism of Adam, because he was overcome; but there is no
reason why the hero should not be unfortunate, except established
practice, since success and virtue do not go necessarily together. Cato
is the hero of Lucan; but Lucan's authority will not be suffered by
Quintilian to decide. However, if success be necessary, Adam's deceiver
was at last crushed; Adam was restored to his maker's favour, and,
therefore, may securely resume his human rank.
After the scheme and fabrick of the poem, must be considered its
component parts, the sentiments and the diction.
The sentiments, as expressive of manners, or appropriated to characters,
are, for the greater part, unexceptionably just.
Splendid passages, containing lessons of morality, or precepts of
prudence, occur seldom. Such is the original formation of this poem,
that, as it admits no human manners, till the fall, it can give little
assistance to human conduct. Its end is to raise the thoughts above
sublunary cares or pleasures. Yet the praise of that fortitude, with
which Abdiel maintained his singularity of virtue against the scorn of
multitudes, may be accommodated to all times; and Raphael's reproof of
Adam's curiosity after the planetary motions, with the answer returned
by Adam, may be confidently opposed to any rule of life which any poet
has delivered.
The thoughts which are occasionally called forth in the progress, are
such as could only be produced by an imagination in the highest degree
fervid and active, to which materials were supplied by incessant study
and unlimited curiosity. The heat of Milton's mind may be said to
sublimate his learning, to throw off into his work the spirit of
science, unmingled with its grosser parts.
He had considered creation, in its whole extent, and his descriptions
are, therefore, learned. He had accustomed his imagination to
unrestrained indulgence, and his conceptions, therefore, were extensive.
The characteristick quality of his poem is sublimity. He sometimes
descends to the elegant, but his element is the great. He can
occasionally invest himself with grace; but his natural port is
gigantick loftiness[60]. He can please, when pleasure is required; but
it is his peculiar power to astonish.
He seems to have been well acquainted with his own genius, and to know
what it was that nature had bestowed upon him more bountifully than upon
others; the power of displaying the vast, illuminating the splendid,
enforcing the awful, darkening the gloomy, and aggravating the dreadful;
he, therefore, chose a subject on which too much could not be said, on
which he might tire his fancy, without the censure of extravagance.
The appearances of nature, and the occurrences of life, did not satiate
his appetite of greatness. To paint things as they are requires a minute
attention, and employs the memory rather than the fancy. Milton's
delight was to sport in the wide regions of possibility; reality was a
scene too narrow for his mind. He sent his faculties out upon discovery,
into worlds where only imagination can travel, and delighted to form
new modes of existence, and furnish sentiment and action to superiour
beings, to trace the counsels of hell, or accompany the choirs of
heaven.
But he could not be always in other worlds; he must sometimes revisit
earth, and tell of things visible and known. When he cannot raise wonder
by the sublimity of his mind, he gives delight by its fertility.
Whatever be his subject, he never fails to fill the imagination. But his
images and descriptions of the scenes, or operations of nature, do not
seem to be always copied from original form, nor to have the freshness,
raciness, and energy of immediate observation. He saw nature, as Dryden
expresses it, "through the spectacles of books;" and, on most occasions,
calls learning to his assistance. The garden of Eden brings to his mind
the vale of Enna, where Proserpine was gathering flowers. Satan makes
his way through fighting elements, like Argo between the Cyanean
rocks, or Ulysses between the two Sicilian whirlpools, when he shunned
Charybdis on the "larboard. " The mythological allusions have been justly
censured, as not being always used with notice of their vanity; but they
contribute variety to the narration, and produce an alternate exercise
of the memory and the fancy.
His similes are less numerous, and more various, than those of his
predecessors. But he does not confine himself within the limits of
rigorous comparison; his great excellence is amplitude; and he expands
the adventitious image beyond the dimensions which the occasion
required. Thus comparing the shield of Satan to the orb of the moon, he
crowds the imagination with the discovery of the telescope, and all the
wonders which the telescope discovers.
Of his moral sentiments it is hardly praise to affirm that they excel
those of all other poets; for this superiority he was indebted to his
acquaintance with the sacred writings. The ancient epick poets, wanting
the light of revelation, were very unskilful teachers of virtue: their
principal characters may be great, but they are not amiable. The reader
may rise from their works with a greater degree of active or passive
fortitude, and sometimes of prudence; but he will be able to carry away
few precepts of justice, and none of mercy.
From the Italian writers it appears, that the advantages of even
Christian knowledge may be possessed in vain. Ariosto's pravity is
generally known; and, though the Deliverance of Jerusalem may be
considered as a sacred subject, the poet has been very sparing of moral
instruction.
In Milton every line breathes sanctity of thought, and purity
of manners, except when the train of the narration requires the
introduction of the rebellious spirits; and even they are compelled
to acknowledge their subjection to God, in such a manner as excites
reverence, and confirms piety.
Of human beings there are but two; but those two are the parents of
mankind, venerable before their fall for dignity and innocence, and
amiable after it for repentance and submission. In the first state,
their affection is tender without weakness, and their piety sublime
without presumption. When they have sinned, they show how discord begins
in mutual frailty, and how it ought to cease in mutual forbearance; how
confidence of the divine favour is forfeited by sin; and how hope of
pardon may be obtained by penitence and prayer. A state of innocence we
can only conceive, if, indeed, in our present misery, it be possible
to conceive it; but the sentiments and worship proper to a fallen and
offending being, we have all to learn, as we have all to practise.
The poet, whatever be done, is always great. Our progenitors, in their
first state, conversed with angels; even when folly and sin had degraded
them, they had not, in their humiliation, "the port of mean suitors;"
and they rise again to reverential regard, when we find that their
prayers were heard.
As human passions did not enter the world, before the fall, there is, in
the Paradise Lost, little opportunity for the pathetick; but what little
there is has not been lost. That passion which is peculiar to rational
nature, the anguish arising from the consciousness of transgression, and
the horrours attending the sense of the divine displeasure, are very
justly described and forcibly impressed. But the passions are moved only
on one occasion; sublimity is the general and prevailing quality of this
poem; sublimity variously modified, sometimes descriptive, sometimes
argumentative.
The defects and faults of Paradise Lost, for faults and defects every
work of man must have, it is the business of impartial criticism to
discover. As, in displaying the excellence of Milton, I have not made
long quotations, because of selecting beauties there had been no end, I
shall, in the same general manner, mention that which seems to deserve
censure; for what Englishman can take delight in transcribing passages,
which, if they lessen the reputation of Milton, diminish, in some
degree, the honour of our country?
The generality of my scheme does not admit the frequent notice of verbal
inaccuracies; which Bentley, perhaps, better skilled in grammar than in
poetry, has often found, though he sometimes made them, and which he
imputed to the obtrusions of a reviser, whom the author's blindness
obliged him to employ; a supposition rash and groundless, if he thought
it true; and vile and pernicious, if, as is said, he, in private,
allowed it to be false.
The plan of Paradise Lost has this inconvenience, that it comprises
neither human actions nor human manners[61]. The man and woman who act
and suffer are in a state which no other man or woman can ever know.
The reader finds no transaction in which he can be engaged; beholds no
condition in which he can, by any effort of imagination, place himself;
he has, therefore, little natural curiosity or sympathy.
We all, indeed, feel the effect of Adam's disobedience; we all sin, like
Adam, and, like him, must all bewail our offences; we have restless and
insidious enemies in the fallen angels; and in the blessed spirits we
have guardians and friends; in the redemption of mankind we hope to be
included; and in the description of heaven and hell we are, surely,
interested, as we are all to reside, hereafter, either in the regions of
horrour or of bliss.
But these truths are too important to be new; they have been taught to
our infancy; they have mingled with our solitary thoughts and familiar
conversations, and are habitually interwoven with the whole texture of
life. Being, therefore, not new, they raise no unaccustomed emotion in
the mind; what we knew before, we cannot learn; what is not unexpected,
cannot surprise.
Of the ideas suggested by these awful scenes, from some we recede with
reverence, except when stated hours require their association; and
from others we shrink with horrour, or admit them only as salutary
inflictions, as counterpoizes to our interests and passions. Such images
rather obstruct the career of fancy than incite it.
Pleasure and terrour are, indeed, the genuine sources of poetry; but
poetical pleasure must be such as human imagination can, at least,
conceive; and poetical terrour, such as human strength and fortitude may
combat. The good and evil of eternity are too ponderous for the wings of
wit; the mind sinks under them, in passive helplessness, content with
calm belief and humble adoration.
Known truths, however, may take a different appearance, and be conveyed
to the mind by a new train of intermediate images. This Milton has
undertaken, and performed with pregnancy and vigour of mind peculiar
to himself. Whoever considers the few radical positions which the
scriptures afforded him, will wonder by what energetick operation he
expanded them to such extent, and ramified them to so much variety,
restrained, as he was, by religious reverence from licentiousness of
fiction.
Here is a full display of the united force of study and genius; of a
great accumulation of materials, with judgment to digest, and fancy to
combine them: Milton was able to select from nature or from story, from
ancient fable or from modern science, whatever could illustrate or
adorn his thoughts. An accumulation of knowledge impregnated his mind,
fermented by study, and exalted by imagination.
It has been, therefore, said, without an indecent hyperbole, by one
of his encomiasts, that in reading Paradise Lost, we read a book of
universal knowledge.
But original deficience cannot be supplied. The want of human interest
is always felt. Paradise Lost is one of the books which the reader
admires and lays down, and forgets to take up again. None ever wished it
longer than it is. Its perusal is a duty rather than a pleasure. We read
Milton for instruction, retire harassed and over-burdened, and look
elsewhere for recreation; we desert our master, and seek for companions.
Another inconvenience of Milton's design is, that it requires the
description of what cannot be described, the agency of spirits. He saw
that immateriality supplied no images, and that he could not show angels
acting but by instruments of action; he, therefore, invested them with
form and matter. This, being necessary, was, therefore, defensible;
and he should have secured the consistency of his system, by keeping
immateriality out of sight, and enticing his reader to drop it from
his thoughts. But he has, unhappily, perplexed his poetry with his
philosophy. His infernal and celestial powers are sometimes pure spirit,
and sometimes animated body. When Satan walks with his lance upon the
"burning marl," he has a body; when, in his passage between hell and the
new world, he is in danger of sinking in the vacuity, and is supported
by a gust of rising vapours, he has a body; when he animates the toad,
he seems to be mere spirit, that can penetrate matter at pleasure; when
he starts "up in his own shape," he has, at least, a determined form;
and, when he is brought before Gabriel, he has "a spear and a shield,"
which he had the power of hiding in the toad, though the arms of the
contending angels are evidently material.
The vulgar inhabitants of Pandaemonium, being "incorporeal spirits,"
are "at large, though without number," in a limited space: yet, in the
battle, when they were overwhelmed by mountains, their armour hurt them,
"crushed in upon their substance, now grown gross by sinning. " This,
likewise, happened to the uncorrupted angels, who were overthrown the
"sooner for their arms, for unarmed they might easily, as spirits,
have evaded by contraction or remove. " Even as spirits they are hardly
spiritual; for "contraction" and "remove" are images of matter; but if
they could have escaped without their armour, they might have escaped
from it, and left only the empty cover to be battered. Uriel, when he
rides on a sunbeam, is material; Satan is material when he is afraid of
the prowess of Adam.
The confusion of spirit and matter, which pervades the whole narration
of the war of heaven, fills it with incongruity; and the book in which
it is related is, I believe, the favourite of children, and gradually
neglected, as knowledge is increased.
After the operation of immaterial agents which cannot be explained, may
be considered that of allegorical persons, which have no real existence.
To exalt causes into agents, to invest abstract ideas with form, and
animate them with activity, has always been the right of poetry. But
such airy beings are, for the most part, suffered only to do their
natural office, and retire. Thus fame tells a tale, and victory hovers
over a general, or perches on a standard; but fame and victory can do no
more. To give them any real employment, or ascribe to them any material
agency, is to make them allegorical no longer, but to shock the mind by
ascribing effects to nonentity. In the Prometheus of Aeschylus, we see
violence and strength, and in the Alcestis of Euripides, we see death
brought upon the stage, all as active persons of the drama; but no
precedents can justify absurdity.
Milton's allegory of sin and death is, undoubtedly, faulty. Sin is,
indeed, the mother of death, and may be allowed to be the portress of
hell; but when they stop the journey of Satan, a journey described as
real, and when death offers him battle, the allegory is broken. That sin
and death should have shown the way to hell, might have been allowed;
but they cannot facilitate the passage by building a bridge, because the
difficulty of Satan's passage is described as real and sensible, and the
bridge ought to be only figurative. The hell assigned to the rebellious
spirits is described as not less local than the residence of man. It
is placed in some distant part of space, separated from the regions of
harmony and order by a chaotick waste and an unoccupied vacuity; but
sin and death worked up "a mole of aggravated soil," cemented with
"asphaltus;" a work too bulky for ideal architects.
This unskilful allegory appears to me one of the greatest faults of the
poem; and to this there was no temptation but the author's opinion of
its beauty.
To the conduct of the narrative some objections may be made. Satan is,
with great expectation, brought before Gabriel in Paradise, and is
suffered to go away unmolested. The creation of man is represented as the
consequence of the vacuity left in heaven by the expulsion of the rebels;
yet Satan mentions it as a report "rife in heaven" before his departure.
To find sentiments for the state of innocence was very difficult; and
something of anticipation, perhaps, is now and then discovered. Adam's
discourse of dreams seems not to be the speculation of a new-created
being. I know not whether his answer to the angel's reproof for curiosity
does not want something of propriety; it is the speech of a man
acquainted with many other men. Some philosophical notions, especially
when the philosophy is false, might have been better omitted. The
angel, in a comparison, speaks of "timorous deer," before deer were yet
timorous, and before Adam could understand the comparison.
Dryden remarks, that Milton has some flats among his elevations. This is
only to say, that all the parts are not equal. In every work, one part
must be for the sake of others; a palace must have passages; a poem must
have transitions. It is no more to be required that wit should always be
blazing, than that the sun should always stand at noon. In a great work
there is a vicissitude of luminous and opaque parts, as there is in the
world a succession of day and night. Milton, when he has expatiated in
the sky, may be allowed, sometimes, to revisit earth; for what other
author ever soared so high, or sustained his flight so long?
Milton, being well versed in the Italian poets, appears to have borrowed
often from them; and, as every man catches something from his companions,
his desire of imitating Ariosto's levity has disgraced his work with
the Paradise of Fools; a fiction not, in itself, ill imagined, but too
ludicrous for its place.
His play on words, in which he delights too often; his equivocations,
which Bentley endeavours to defend by the example of the ancients; his
unnecessary and ungraceful use of terms of art; it is not necessary to
mention, because they are easily remarked, and generally censured; and,
at last, bear so little proportion to the whole, that they scarcely
deserve the attention of a critick.
Such are the faults of that wonderful performance, Paradise Lost; which
he who can put in balance with its beauties must be considered not as
nice but as dull; as less to be censured for want of candour, than pitied
for want of sensibility.
Of Paradise Regained, the general judgment seems now to be right, that it
is, in many parts, elegant, and everywhere instructive. It was not to be
supposed that the writer of Paradise Lost could ever write without great
effusions of fancy, and exalted precepts of wisdom. The basis of Paradise
Regained is narrow; a dialogue without action can never please, like an
union of the narrative and dramatick powers. Had this poem been written
not by Milton, but by some imitator, it would have claimed and received
universal praise.
If Paradise Regained has been too much depreciated, Sampson Agonistes
has, in requital, been too much admired. It could only be by long
prejudice, and the bigotry of learning, that Milton could prefer the
ancient tragedies, with their encumbrance of a chorus, to the exhibitions
of the French and English stages; and it is only by a blind confidence
in the reputation of Milton, that a drama can be praised, in which the
intermediate parts have neither cause nor consequence, neither hasten nor
retard the catastrophe.
In this tragedy are, however, many particular beauties, many just
sentiments and striking lines; but it wants that power of attracting the
attention, which a well-connected plan produces.
Milton would not have excelled in dramatick writing; he knew human nature
only in the gross, and had never studied the shades of character, nor the
combinations of concurring, or the perplexity of contending passions. He
had read much, and knew what books could teach; but had mingled little
in the world, and was deficient in the knowledge which experience must
confer.
Through all his greater works there prevails an uniform peculiarity of
diction, a mode and cast of expression which bears little resemblance to
that of any former writer; and which is so far removed from common use,
that an unlearned reader, when he first opens his book, finds himself
surprised by a new language.
This novelty has been, by those who can find nothing wrong in Milton,
imputed to his laborious endeavours after words suitable to the grandeur
of his ideas. "Our language," says Addison, "sunk under him. " But the
truth is, that, both in prose and verse, he had formed his style by a
perverse and pedantick principle. He was desirous to use English words
with a foreign idiom. This in all his prose is discovered and condemned;
for there judgment operates freely, neither softened by the beauty, nor
awed by the dignity of his thoughts; but such is the power of his poetry,
that his call is obeyed without resistance, the reader feels himself
in captivity to a higher and a nobler mind, and criticism sinks in
admiration.
Milton's style was not modified by his subject; what is shown with
greater extent in Paradise Lost may be found in Comus. One source of his
peculiarity was his familiarity with the Tuscan poets; the disposition of
his words is, I think, frequently Italian; perhaps, sometimes, combined
with other tongues.
Of him, at last, may be said what Jonson says of Spenser, that "he wrote
no language," but has formed what Butler calls a "Babylonish dialect,"
in itself harsh and barbarous, but made by exalted genius and extensive
learning the vehicle of so much instruction, and so much pleasure, that,
like other lovers, we find grace in its deformity.
Whatever be the faults of his diction, he cannot want the praise of
copiousness and variety; he was master of his language in its full
extent; and has selected the melodious words with such diligence, that
from his book alone the art of English poetry might be learned.
After his diction, something must be said of his versification. The
"measure," he says, "is the English heroick verse without rhyme. " Of
this mode he had many examples among the Italians, and some in his own
country. The earl of Surrey is said to have translated one of Virgil's
books without rhyme[62]; and, beside our tragedies, a few short poems had
appeared in blank verse, particularly one tending to reconcile the nation
to Raleigh's wild attempt upon Guiana, and probably written by Raleigh
himself. These petty performances cannot be supposed to have much
influenced Milton, who, more probably took his hint from Trissino's
Italia Liberata; and, finding blank verse easier than rhyme, was desirous
of persuading himself that it is better.
"Rhyme," he says, and says truly, "is no necessary adjunct of true
poetry. " But, perhaps, of poetry, as a mental operation, metre or musick
is no necessary adjunct: it is, however, by the musick of metre that
poetry has been discriminated in all languages; and, in languages
melodiously constructed with a due proportion of long and short
syllables, metre is sufficient. But one language cannot communicate its
rules to another; where metre is scanty and imperfect, some help is
necessary. The musick of the English heroick lines strikes the ear so
faintly, that it is easily lost, unless all the syllables of every
line cooperate together; this cooperation can be only obtained by the
preservation of every verse unmingled with another, as a distinct system
of sounds; and this distinctness is obtained and preserved by the
artifice of rhyme. The variety of pauses, so much boasted by the lovers
of blank verse, changes the measures of an English poet to the periods
of a declaimer; and there are only a few skilful and happy readers of
Milton, who enable their audience to perceive where the lines end or
begin. "Blank verse," said an ingenious critick, "seems to be verse only
to the eye. " Poetry may subsist without rhyme, but English poetry will
not often please; nor can rhyme ever be safely spared, but where the
subject is able to support itself. Blank verse makes some approach to
that which is called the lapidary style; has neither the easiness
of prose, nor the melody of numbers, and, therefore, tires by long
continuance. Of the Italian writers without rhyme, whom Milton alleges as
precedents, not one is popular; what reason could urge in its defence,
has been confuted by the ear.
But, whatever be the advantage of rhyme, I cannot prevail on myself to
wish that Milton had been a rhymer; for I cannot wish his work to be
other than it is; yet, like other heroes, he is to be admired rather than
imitated. He that thinks himself capable of astonishing may write blank
verse; but those that hope only to please must condescend to rhyme.
The highest praise of genius is original invention. Milton cannot be said
to have contrived the structure of an epick poem, and, therefore, owes
reverence to that vigour and amplitude of mind to which all generations
must be indebted for the, art of poetical narration, for the texture of
the fable, the variation of incidents, the interposition of dialogue, and
all the stratagems that surprise and enchain attention. But, of all the
borrowers from Homer, Milton is, perhaps, the least indebted. He was
naturally a thinker for himself, confident of his own abilities, and
disdainful of help or hindrance: he did not refuse admission to the
thoughts or images of his predecessors, but he did not seek them. From
his contemporaries he neither courted nor received support; there is
in his writings nothing by which the pride of other authors might be
gratified, or favour gained; no exchange of praise, nor solicitation of
support. His great works were performed under discountenance, and in
blindness; but difficulties vanished at his touch; he was born for
whatever is arduous; and his work is not the greatest of heroick poems,
only because it is not the first.
[Footnote 26: In this assertion Dr. Johnson was mistaken. Milton was
admitted a pensioner, and not a sizar, as will appear by the following
extract from the college register: "Johannes Milton, Londinensis, filius
Johannis, institutus fuit in literarum elementis sub Mag'ro Gill Gymnasii
Paulini praefecto, admissus est _Pensionarius Minor_, Feb. 12? , 1624, sub
M'ro Chappell, solvitq. pro Ingr. 0l. 10s. 0d. " R. ]
[Footnote 27: Published 1632. R. ]
[Footnote 28: On this subject, see Dr. Symons's Life of Milton, 71, 72.
ED. ]
[Footnote 29: By the mention of this name, he evidently refers to
Albumazar, acted at Cambridge, in 1614. Ignoramus, and other plays were
performed at the same time. The practice was then very frequent. The
last dramatick performance at either university, was the Grateful Fair,
written by Christopher Smart, and represented at Pembroke college,
Cambridge, about 1747. R. ]
[Footnote 30: It has, nevertheless, its foundation in reality. The earl
of Bridgewater, being president of Wales, in the year 1634, had his
residence at Ludlow castle, in Shropshire, at which time lord Brackly
and Mr. Egerton, his sons, and lady Alice Egerton, his daughter, passing
through a place called the Haywood forest, or Haywood, in Herefordshire,
were benighted, and the lady for a short time lost: this accident, being
related to their father upon their arrival at his castle, Milton, at the
request of his friend, Henry Lawes, who taught music in the family, wrote
this masque. Lawes set it to music, and it was acted on Michaelmas night:
the two brothers, the young lady, and Lawes himself, bearing each a part
in the representation.
The lady Alice Egerton became afterwards the wife of the earl of Carbury,
who, at his seat called Golden grove, in Caermarthenshire, harboured Dr.
Jeremy Taylor in the time of the usurpation. Among the doctor's sermons
is one on her death, in which her character is finely portrayed. Her
sister, lady Mary, was given in marriage to lord Herbert, of Cherbury.
Notwithstanding Dr. Johnson's assertion, that the fiction is derived from
Homer's Circe, it may be conjectured, that it was rather taken from the
Comus of Erycius Puteanus, in which, under the fiction of a dream, the
characters of Comus and his attendants are delineated, and the delights
of sensualists exposed and reprobated. This little tract was published
at Louvain, in 1611, and afterwards at Oxford, in 1634, the very year in
which Milton's Comus was written. H. Milton evidently was indebted to the
Old Wives' Tale of George Peele for the plan of Comus. R. ]
[Footnote 31: This is inaccurately expressed: Philips, and Dr. Newton,
after him, say a garden-house, i. e. a house situated in a garden, and of
which there were, especially in the north suburbs of London, very many,
if not few else. The term is technical, and frequently occurs in the
Athen. and Fast. Oxon. The meaning thereof may be collected from the
article, Thomas Farnaby, the famous schoolmaster, of whom the author
says, that he taught in Goldsmith's rents, in Cripplegate parish, behind
Redcross street, where were large gardens and handsome houses. Milton's
house in Jewin street was also a garden-house, as were, indeed, most of
his dwellings after his settlement in London. H. ]
[Footnote 32: Johnson did not here allude to Philips's Theatrum Poetarum,
as has been ignorantly supposed, but, as he himself informed Mr. Malone,
to another work by the same author, entitled, Tractatulus de carmine
dramatico poetarum veterum praesertim in choris tragicis et veteris
comoediae. Cui subjungitur compendiosa enumeratio poetarum (saltern
quorum fama maxima enituit) qui a tempore Dantis Aligerii usque ad hanc
aetatem claruerunt, etc. J. B. ]
[Footnote 33: Stephen Marshall, Edmund Calamy, Thomas Young, Matthew
Newcomen, William Spurstow. R. ]
[Footnote 34: It was animadverted upon, but without any mention of
Milton's name, by bishop Hall, in his Cases of Conscience, Decade 4, Case
2. J. B. ]
[Footnote 35: He terms the author of it a shallow-brained puppy; and thus
refers to it in his index: "Of a noddy who wrote a book about wiving. "
J. B. ]
[Footnote 36: This charge, as far as regards Milton, is examined by Dr.
Symons with more moderation than usually characterizes his high-sounding
and wordy panegyrics. See Life of Milton. ED. ]
[Footnote 37: The work here referred to is Selectarum de Lingua Latina
Observationum Libri duo. Ductu et cura Joannis Ker, 1719. Ker observes,
that vapulandum is pinguis solaecismus. J. B. ]
[Footnote 38: It may be doubted whether _gloriosissimus_ be here used
with Milton's boasted purity. _Res gloriosa_ is an _illustrious thing_;
but _vir gloriosus_ is _commonly_ a _braggart_, as in _miles gloriosus_.
Dr. J. ]
[Footnote 39: The Cambridge dictionary, published in 4to. 1693, is
no other than a copy, with some small additions, of that of Dr. Adam
Littleton in 1686, by sundry persons, of whom though their names are
concealed, there is great reason to conjecture that Milton's nephew,
Edward Philips, is one: for it is expressly said by Wood, Fasti, vol. i.
p. 266, that Milton's Thesaurus came to his hands; and it is asserted in
the preface thereto, that the editors thereof had the use of three large
folios in manuscript, collected and digested into alphabetical order by
Mr. John Milton. It has been remarked, that the additions, together
with the preface above mentioned, and a large part of the title of
the Cambridge dictionary, have been incorporated and printed with the
subsequent editions of Littleton's dictionary, till that of 1735. Vid.
Biogr. Brit. 2985, in not. So that, for aught that appears to the
contrary, Philips was the last possessor of Milton's manuscripts. H. ]
[Footnote 40: _Id est_, to be the subject of an heroick poem, written by
sir Richard Blackmore. H. ]
[Footnote 41: Trinity college. R. ]
[Footnote 42: The dramas in which Justice, Mercy, Faith, &c. were
introduced, were moralities, not mysteries.
