ACT V.

Adam and Eve driven out of Paradise.

— — presented by an angel with Labour, Grief, Hatred, Envy, War, Famine,

Pestilence, Sickness, Discontent, Ignorance, Fear, Death } Mutes.

To whom he gives their names. Likewise Winter, Heat, Tempest, etc.

Faith, Hope, Charity, comfort him and instruct him.

Chorus briefly concludes.

* * * * *

Such was his first design, which could have produced only an allegory or

mystery. The following sketch seems to have attained more maturity.

ADAM UNPARADISED.

The angel Gabriel, either descending or entering; showing, since this

globe was created, his frequency as much on earth as in heaven; describes

Paradise. Next the Chorus, showing the reason of his coming to keep his

watch in Paradise, after Lucifer’s rebellion, by command from God; and

withal expressing his desire to see and know more concerning this

excellent new creature, man. The angel Gabriel, as by his name

signifying a prince of power, tracing Paradise with a more free office,

passes by the station of the Chorus, and, desired by them, relates what

he knew of man; as the creation of Eve, with their love and marriage.

After this, Lucifer appears; after his overthrow, bemoans himself, seeks

revenge on man. The Chorus prepare resistance on his first approach. At

last, after discourse of enmity on either side, he departs: whereat the

Chorus sings of the battle and victory in Heaven, against him and his

accomplices: as before, after the first act, was sung a hymn of the

creation. Here again may appear Lucifer, relating and exulting in what

he had done to the destruction of man. Man next, and Eve, having by this

time been seduced by the serpent, appears confusedly covered with leaves.

Conscience in a shape accuses him; Justice cites him to the place whither

Jehovah called for him. In the meanwhile, the Chorus entertains the

stage, and is informed by some angel the manner of the fall. Here the

Chorus bewails Adam’s fall; Adam then and Eve return; accuse one another;

but especially Adam lays the blame to his wife; is stubborn in his

offence. Justice appears, reasons with him, convinces him. The Chorus

admonishes Adam, and bids him beware of Lucifer’s example of impenitence.

The angel is sent to banish them out of Paradise; but before causes to

pass before his eyes, in shapes, a mask of all the evils of this life and

world. He is humbled, relents, despairs; at last appears Mercy, comforts

him, promises the Messiah; then calls in Faith, Hope, and

Charity;—instructs him; he repents, gives God the glory, submits to his

penalty. The Chorus briefly concludes. Compare this with the former

draft.

These are very imperfect rudiments of “Paradise Lost;” but it is pleasant

to see great works in their seminal state, pregnant with latent

possibilities of excellence; nor could there be any more delightful

entertainment than to trace their gradual growth and expansion, and to

observe how they are sometimes suddenly advanced by accidental hints, and

sometimes slowly improved by steady meditation.

Invention is almost the only literary labour which blindness cannot

obstruct, and therefore he naturally solaced his solitude by the

indulgence of his fancy, and the melody of his numbers. He had done what

he knew to be necessarily previous to poetical excellence; he had made

himself acquainted with “seemly arts and affairs;” his comprehension was

extended by various knowledge, and his memory stored with intellectual

treasures. He was skilful in many languages, and had, by reading and

composition, attained the full mastery of his own. He would have wanted

little help from books, had he retained the power of perusing them.

But while his greater designs were advancing, having now, like many other

authors, caught the love of publication, he amused himself, as he could,

with little productions. He sent to the press (1658) a manuscript of

Raleigh, called “The Cabinet Council;” and next year gratified his

malevolence to the clergy, by a “Treatise of Civil Power in

Ecclesiastical Cases, and the Means of removing Hirelings out of the

Church.”

Oliver was now dead; Richard constrained to resign; the system of

extemporary government, which had been held together only by force,

naturally fell into fragments when that force was taken away; and Milton

saw himself and his cause in equal danger. But he had still hope of

doing something. He wrote letters, which Toland has published, to such

men as he thought friends to the new commonwealth; and even in the year

of the Restoration he “bated no jot of heart or hope,” but was

fantastical enough to think that the nation, agitated as it was, might be

settled by a pamphlet, called “A Ready and Easy Way to Establish a Free

Commonwealth;” which was, however, enough considered to be both seriously

and ludicrously answered.

The obstinate enthusiasm of the commonwealth-men was very remarkable.

When the king was apparently returning, Harrington, with a few associates

as fantastical as himself, used to meet, with all the gravity of

political importance, to settle an equal government by rotation; and

Milton, kicking when he could strike no longer, was foolish enough to

publish, a few weeks before the Restoration, Notes upon a Sermon preached

by one Griffiths, entitled, “The Fear of God and the King.” To these

notes an answer was written by L’Estrange, in a pamphlet petulantly

called “No Blind Guides.”

But whatever Milton could write, or men of greater activity could do, the

king was now about to be restored with the irresistible approbation of

the people, he was therefore no longer secretary, and was consequently

obliged to quit the house which he held by his office; the importance of

his writings, thought it convenient to seek some shelter, and hid himself

for a time in Bartholomew Close, by West Smithfield.

I cannot but remark a kind of respect, perhaps unconsciously paid to this

great man by his biographers: every house in which he resided is

historically mentioned, as if it were an injury to neglect naming any

place that he honoured by his presence.

The king, with lenity of which the world has had perhaps no other

example, declined to be the judge or avenger of his own or his father’s

wrongs; and promised to admit into the Act of Oblivion all except those

whom the Parliament should except; and the Parliament doomed none to

capital punishment but the wretches who had immediately co-operated in

the murder of the king. Milton was certainly not one of them; he had

only justified what they had done.

This justification was indeed sufficiently offensive; and (June 16) an

order was issued to seize Milton’s “Defence,” and Goodwin’s “Obstructors

of Justice,” another book of the same tendency, and burn them by the

common hangman. The attorney-general was ordered to prosecute the

authors; but Milton was not seized, nor perhaps very diligently pursued.

Not long after (August 19) the flutter of innumerable bosoms was stilled

by an Act, which the king, that his mercy might want no recommendation of

elegance, rather called an Act of Oblivion than of Grace. Goodwin was

named, with nineteen more, as incapacitated for any public trust; but of

Milton there was no exception.

Of this tenderness shown to Milton the curiosity of mankind has not

forborne to inquire the reason. Burnet thinks he was forgotten; but this

is another instance which may confirm Dalrymple’s observation, who says,

“that whenever Burnet’s narrations are examined, he appears to be

mistaken.”

Forgotten he was not; for his prosecution was ordered; it must be

therefore by design that he was included in the general oblivion. He is

said to have had friends in the House, such as Marvel, Morrice, and Sir

Thomas Clarges: and undoubtedly a man like him must have had influence.

A very particular story of his escape is told by Richardson in his

Memoirs, which he received from Pope, as delivered by Betterton, who

might have heard it from Davenant. In the war between the King and

Parliament, Davenant was made prisoner and condemned to die; but was

spared at the request of Milton. When the turn of success brought Milton

into the like danger, Davenant repaid the benefit by appearing in his

favour. Here is a reciprocation of generosity and gratitude so pleasing,

that the tale makes its own way to credit. But if help were wanted, I

know not where to find it. The danger of Davenant is certain from his

own relation; but of his escape there is no account. Betterton’s

narration can be traced no higher; it is not known that he hid it from

Davenant. We are told that the benefit exchanged was life for life; but

it seems not certain that Milton’s life ever was in danger. Goodwin, who

had committed the same kind of crime, escaped with incapacitation; and,

as exclusion from public trust is a punishment which the power of

Government can commonly inflict without the help of a particular law, it

required no great interest to exempt Milton from a censure little more

than verbal. Something may be reasonably ascribed to veneration and

compassion; to veneration of his abilities, and compassion for his

distresses, which made it fit to forgive his malice for his learning. He

was now poor and blind; and who would pursue with violence an illustrious

enemy, depressed by fortune and disarmed by nature?

The publication of the “Act of Oblivion” put him in the same condition

with his fellow-subjects. He was, however, upon some pretence now not

known, in the custody of the serjeant in December; and when he was

released, upon his refusal of the fees demanded, he and the serjeant were

called before the House. He was now safe within the shade of oblivion,

and knew himself to be as much out of the power of a griping officer as

any other man. How the question was determined is not known. Milton

would hardly have contended but that he knew himself to have right on his

side.

He then removed to Jewin Street, near Aldersgate Street, and, being blind

and by no means wealthy, wanted a domestic companion and attendant; and

therefore, by the recommendation of Dr. Paget, married Elizabeth Minshul,

of a gentleman’s family in Cheshire, probably without a fortune. All his

wives were virgins; for he has declared that he thought it gross and

indelicate to be a second husband: upon what other principles his choice

was made cannot now be known; but marriage afforded not much of his

happiness. The first wife left him in disgust, and was brought back only

by terror; the second, indeed, seems to have been more a favourite, but

her life was short. The third, as Philips relates, oppressed his

children in his lifetime, and cheated them at his death.

Soon after his marriage, according to an obscure story, he was offered

the continuance of his employment, and, being pressed by his wife to

accept it, answered, “You, like other women, want to ride in your coach;

my wish is to live and die an honest man.” If he considered the Latin

secretary as exercising any of the powers of government, he that had

shared authority, either with the Parliament or Cromwell, might have

forborne to talk very loudly of his honesty; and if he thought the office

purely ministerial, he certainly might have honestly retained it under

the King. But this tale has too little evidence to deserve a

disquisition; large offers and sturdy rejections are among the most

common topics of falsehood.

He had so much either of prudence or gratitude, that he forbore to

disturb the new settlement with any of his political or ecclesiastical

opinions, and from this time devoted himself to poetry and literature.

Of his zeal for learning in all its parts, he gave a proof by publishing,

the next year (1661), “Accidence commenced Grammar;” a little book which

has nothing remarkable, but that its author, who had been lately

defending the supreme powers of his country, and was then writing

“Paradise Lost,” could descend from his elevation to rescue children from

the perplexity of grammatical confusion, and the trouble of lessons

unnecessarily repeated.

About this time, Elwood the Quaker, being recommended to him as one who

would read Latin to him for the advantage of his conversation, attended

him every afternoon except on Sundays. Milton, who, in his letter to

Hartlib, had declared, that “to read Latin with an English mouth is as

ill a hearing as Law French,” required that Elwood should learn and

practise the Italian pronunciation, which, he said, was necessary, if he

would talk with foreigners. This seems to have been a task troublesome

without use. There is little reason for preferring the Italian

pronunciation to our own, except that it is more general; and to teach it

to an Englishman is only to make him a foreigner at home. He who

travels, if he speaks Latin, may so soon learn the sounds which every

native gives it, that he need make no provision before his journey; and

if strangers visit us, it is their business to practise such conformity

to our modes as they expect from us in their own countries. Elwood

complied with the directions, and improved himself by his attendance; for

he relates, that Milton, having a curious ear, knew by his voice when he

read what he did not understand, and would stop him, and “open the most

difficult passages.”

In a short time he took a house in the Artillery Walk, leading to Bunhill

Fields; the mention of which concludes the register of Milton’s removals

and habitations. He lived longer in this place than any other.

He was now busied by “Paradise Lost.” Whence he drew the original design

has been variously conjectured by men who cannot bear to think themselves

ignorant of that which, at last, neither diligence nor sagacity can

discover. Some find the hint in an Italian tragedy. Voltaire tells a

wild and unauthorised story of a farce seen by Milton in Italy which

opened thus: “Let the Rainbow be the Fiddlestick of the Fiddle of

Heaven.” It has been already shown, that the first conception was a

tragedy or mystery, not of a narrative, but a dramatic work which he is

supposed to have began to reduce to its present form about the time

(1655) when he finished his dispute with the defenders of the king.

He long had promised to adorn his native country by some great

performance, while he had yet perhaps no settled design, and was

stimulated only by such expectations as naturally arose from the survey

of his attainments, and the consciousness of his powers. What he should

undertake it was difficult to determine. He was “long choosing, and

began late.”

While he was obliged to divide his time between his private studies and

affairs of state, his poetical labour must have been often interrupted;

and perhaps he did little more in that busy time than construct the

narrative, adjust the episodes, proportion the parts, accumulate images

and sentiments, and treasure in his memory, or preserve in writing, such

hints as books or meditation would supply. Nothing particular is known

of his intellectual operations while he was a statesman; for, having

every help and accommodation at hand, he had no need of uncommon

expedients.

Being driven from all public stations, he is yet too great not to be

traced by curiosity to his retirement; where he has been found by Mr.

Richardson, the fondest of his admirers, sitting before his door in a

grey coat of coarse cloth, in warm sultry weather, to enjoy the fresh

air; and so, as in his own room, receiving the visits of people of

distinguished parts as well as quality. His visitors of high quality

must now be imagined to be few; but men of parts might reasonably court

the conversation of a man so generally illustrious, that foreigners are

reported, by Wood, to have visited the house in Bread Street where he was

born.

According to another account, he was seen in a small house, neatly enough

dressed in black clothes, sitting in a room hung with rusty green; pale

but not cadaverous, with chalkstones in his hands. He said that, if it

were not for the gout, his blindness would be tolerable.

In the intervals of his pain, being made unable to use the common

exercises, he used to swing in a chair, and sometimes played upon an

organ.

He was now confessedly and visibly employed upon his poem, of which the

progress might be noted by those with whom he was familiar; for he was

obliged, when he had composed as many lines as his memory would

conveniently retain, to employ some friend in writing them, having, at

least for part of the time, no regular attendant. This gave opportunity

to observations and reports.

Mr. Philips observes, that there was a very remarkable circumstance in

the composure of “Paradise Lost,” “which I have a particular reason,”

says he, “to remember; for whereas I had the perusal of it from the very

beginning, for some years, as I went from time to time to visit him, in

parcels of ten, twenty, or thirty verses at a time (which, being written

by whatever hand came next, might possibly want correction as to the

orthography and pointing), having, as the Summer came on, not been showed

any for a considerable while, and desiring the reason thereof, was

answered, that his vein never happily flowed but from the autumnal

equinox to the vernal; and that whatever he attempted at other times was

never to his satisfaction, though he courted his fancy never so much; so

that, in all the years he was about this poem, he may be said to have

spent half his time therein.”

Upon this relation Toland remarks, that in his opinion Philips has

mistaken the time of the year; for Milton, in his Elegies, declares, that

with the advance of the spring he feels the increase of his poetical

force, _redeunt in carmina vires_. To this it is answered, that Philips

could hardly mistake time so well marked; and it may be added, that

Milton might find different times of the year favourable to different

parts of life. Mr. Richardson conceives it impossible that “such a work

should be suspended for six months, or for one. It may go on faster or

slower, but it must go on.” By what necessity it must continually go on,

or why it might not be laid aside and resumed, it is not easy to

discover.

This dependence of the soul upon the seasons, those temporary and

periodical ebbs and flows of intellect, may, I suppose, justly be derided

as the fumes of vain imagination. _Sapiens dominabitur astris_. The

author that thinks himself weather-bound will find, with a little help

from hellebore, that he is only idle or exhausted. But while this notion

has possession of the head, it produces the inability which it supposes.

Our powers owe much of their energy to our hopes; _possunt quia posse

videntur_. When success seems attainable, diligence is enforced; but

when it is admitted that the faculties are suppressed by a cross wind, or

a cloudy sky, the day is given up without resistance; for who can contend

with the course of nature?

From such prepossessions Milton seems not to have been free. There

prevailed in his time an opinion, that the world was in its decay, and

that we have had the misfortune to be produced in the decrepitude of

nature. It was suspected that the whole creation languished, that

neither trees nor animals had the height or bulk of their predecessors,

and that everything was daily sinking by gradual diminution. Milton

appears to suspect that souls partake of the general degeneracy, and is

not without some fear that his book is to be written in “an age too late”

for heroic poesy.

Another opinion wanders about the world, and sometimes finds reception

among wise men; an opinion that restrains the operations of the mind to

particular regions, and supposes that a luckless mortal may be born in a

degree of latitude too high or too low for wisdom or for wit. From this

fancy, wild as it is, he had not wholly cleared his head, when he feared

lest the _climate_ of his country might be _too cold_ for flights of

imagination.

Into a mind already occupied by such fancies, another, not more

reasonable, might easily find its way. He that could fear lest his

genius had fallen upon too old a world, or too chill a climate, might

consistently magnify to himself the influence of the seasons, and believe

his faculties to be vigorous only half the year.

His submission to the seasons was at least more reasonable than his dread

of decaying nature, or a frigid zone; for general causes must operate

uniformly in a general abatement of mental power; if less could be

performed by the writer, less likewise would content the judges of his

work. Among this lagging race of frosty grovellers he might still have

risen into eminence by producing something which “they should not

willingly let die.” However inferior to the heroes who were born in

better ages, he might still be great among his contemporaries, with the

hope of growing every day greater in the dwindle of posterity. He might

still be the giant of the pigmies, the one-eyed monarch of the blind.

Of his artifices of study, or particular hours of composition, we have

little account, and there was perhaps little to be told. Richardson, who

seems to have been very diligent in his inquiries, but discovers always a

wish to find Milton discriminated from other men, relates that “he would

sometimes lie awake whole nights, but not a verse could he make; and on a

sudden his poetical faculty would rush upon him with an _impetus_ or

_æstrum_, and his daughter was immediately called to secure what came.

At other times he would dictate perhaps forty lines in a breath, and then

reduce them to half the number.”

These bursts of light, and involutions of darkness, these transient and

involuntary excursions and retrocessions of invention, having some

appearance of deviation from the common train of nature, are eagerly

caught by the lovers of a wonder. Yet something of this inequality

happens to every man in every mode of exertion, manual or mental. The

mechanic cannot handle his hammer and his file at all times with equal

dexterity; there are hours, he knows not why, when _his hand is out_. By

Mr. Richardson’s relation, casually conveyed, much regard cannot be

claimed. That, in his intellectual hour, Milton called for his daughter

“to secure what came,” may be questioned; for unluckily it happens to be

known that his daughters were never taught to write; nor would he have

been obliged, as it is universally confessed, to have employed any casual

visitor in disburdening his memory, if his daughter could have performed

the office.

The story of reducing his exuberance has been told of other authors; and,

though doubtless true of every fertile and copious mind, seems to have

been gratuitously transferred to Milton.

What he has told us, and we cannot now know more, is, that he composed

much of this poem in the night and morning, I suppose before his mind was

disturbed with common business; and that he poured out with great fluency

his “unpremeditated verse.” Versification, free, like this, from the

distresses of rhyme, must, by a work so long, be made prompt and

habitual; and, when his thoughts were once adjusted, the words would come

at his command.

At what particular times of his life the parts of his work were written,

cannot often be known. The beginning of the third book shows that he had

lost his sight, and the introduction to the seventh, that the return of

the king had clouded him with discountenance; and that he was offended by

the licentious festivity of the Restoration. There are no other internal

notes of time. Milton, being now cleared from all effects of his

disloyalty, had nothing required from him but the common duty of living

in quiet, to be rewarded with the common right of protection; but this,

which, when he skulked from the approach of his king, was perhaps more

than he hoped, seems not to have satisfied him; for no sooner is he safe,

than he finds himself in danger, “fallen on evil days and evil tongues,

and with darkness and with danger compassed round.” This darkness, had

his eyes been better employed, had undoubtedly deserved compassion; but

to add the mention of danger was ungrateful and unjust. He was fallen

indeed on “evil days;” the time was come in which regicides could no

longer boast their wickedness. But of “evil tongues” for Milton to

complain, required impudence at least equal to his other powers; Milton,

whose warmest advocates must allow that he never spared any asperity of

reproach or brutality of insolence.

But the charge itself seems to be false; for it would be hard to

recollect any reproach cast upon him, either serious or ludicrous,

through the whole remaining part of his life. He pursued his studies or

his amusements, without persecution, molestation, or insult. Such is the

reverence paid to great abilities, however misused; they, who

contemplated in Milton the scholar and the wit, were contented to forget

the reviler of his king.

When the plague (1665) raged in London, Milton took refuge at Chalfont,

in Bucks; where Elwood, who had taken the house for him, first saw a

complete copy of “Paradise Lost,” and, having perused it, said to him,

“Thou hast said a great deal upon Paradise Lost; what hast thou to say

upon Paradise Found?”

Next year, when the danger of infection had ceased, he returned to

Bunhill Fields, and designed the publication of his poem. A licence was

necessary, and he could expect no great kindness from a chaplain of the

Archbishop of Canterbury. He seems, however, to have been treated with

tenderness; for, though objections were made to particular passages, and

among them to the simile of the sun eclipsed in the first book, yet the

licence was granted; and he sold his copy, April 27, 1667, to Samuel

Simmons, for an immediate payment of five pounds, with a stipulation to

receive five pounds more when thirteen hundred should be sold of the

first edition; and again, five pounds after the sale of the same number

of the second edition; and another five pounds after the same sale of the

third. None of the three editions were to be extended beyond fifteen

hundred copies.

The first edition was ten books, in a small quarto. The titles were

varied from year to year; and an advertisement and the arguments of the

books were omitted in some copies, and inserted in others.

The sale gave him in two years a right to his second payment, for which

the receipt was signed April 26, 1669. The second edition was not given

till 1674; it was printed in small octave; and the number of books was

increased to twelve, by a division of the seventh and twelfth; and some

other small improvements were made. The third edition was published in

1678; and the widow, to whom the copy was then to devolve, sold all her

claims to Simmons for eight pounds, according to her receipt given

December 21, 1680. Simmons had already agreed to transfer the whole

right to Brabazon Aylmer for £25; and Aylmer sold to Jacob Tonson half,

August 17, 1683, and half, March 24, 1690, at a price considerably

enlarged. In the history of “Paradise Lost” a deduction thus minute will

rather gratify than fatigue.

The slow sale and tardy reputation of this poem have been always

mentioned as evidences of neglected merit, and of the uncertainty of

literary fame; and inquiries have been made, and conjectures offered,

about the causes of its long obscurity and late reception. But has the

case been truly stated? Have not lamentation and wonder been lavished on

an evil that was never felt?

That in the reigns of Charles and James the “Paradise Lost” received no

public acclamations is readily confessed. Wit and literature were on the

side of the court: and who that solicited favour or fashion would venture

to praise the defender of the regicides? All that he himself could think

his due, from “evil tongues” in “evil days,” was that reverential silence

which was generously preserved. But it cannot be inferred that his poem

was not read, or not, however unwillingly, admired.

The sale, if it be considered, will justify the public. Those who have

no power to judge of past times but by their own, should always doubt

their conclusions. The call for books was not, in Milton’s age, what it

is at present. To read was not then a general amusement; neither

traders, nor often gentlemen, thought themselves disgraced by ignorance.

The women had not then aspired to literature, nor was every house

supplied with a closet of knowledge. Those, indeed, who professed

learning, were not less learned than at any other time; but of that

middle race of students who read for pleasure or accomplishment, and who

buy the numerous products of modern typography, the number was then

comparatively small. To prove the paucity of readers, it may be

sufficient to remark, that the nation had been satisfied from 1623 to

1664—that is, forty-one years—with only two editions of the works of

Shakespeare, which probably did not together make one thousand copies.

The sale of thirteen hundred copies in two years, in opposition to so

much recent enmity, and to a style of versification new to all and

disgusting to many, was an uncommon example of the prevalence of genius.

The demand did not immediately increase; for many more readers than were

supplied at first the nation did not afford. Only three thousand were

sold in eleven years; for it forced its way without assistance; its

admirers did not dare to publish their opinion; and the opportunities now

given of attracting notice by advertisements were then very few; the

means of proclaiming the publication of new books have been produced by

that general literature which now pervades the nation through all its

ranks. But the reputation and price of the copy still advanced, till the

Revolution put an end to the secrecy of love, and “Paradise Lost” broke

into open view with sufficient security of kind reception.

Fancy can hardly forbear to conjecture with what temper Milton surveyed

the silent progress of his work, and marked its reputation stealing its

way in a kind of subterraneous current through fear and silence. I

cannot but conceive him calm and confident, little disappointed, not at

all dejected, relying on his own merit with steady consciousness, and

waiting without impatience the vicissitudes of opinion, and the

impartiality of a future generation.

In the meantime he continued his studies, and supplied the want of sight

by a very odd expedient, of which Phillips gives the following account:—

Mr. Philips tells us, “that though our author had daily about him one or

other to read, some persons of man’s estate, who, of their own accord,

greedily catched at the opportunity of being his readers, that they might

as well reap the benefit of what they read to him, as oblige him by the

benefit of their reading; and others of younger years were sent by their

parents to the same end; yet excusing only the eldest daughter by reason

of her bodily infirmity and difficult utterance of speech (which, to say

truth, I doubt was the principal cause of excusing her), the other two

were condemned to the performance of reading and exactly pronouncing of

all the languages of whatever book he should, at one time or other, think

fit to peruse, viz., the Hebrew (and I think the Syriac), the Greek, the

Latin, the Italian, Spanish, and French. All which sorts of books to be

confined to read, without understanding one word, must needs be a trial

of patience almost beyond endurance. Yet it was endured by both for a

long time, though the irksomeness of this employment could not be always

concealed, but broke out more and more into expressions of uneasiness; so

that at length they were all, even the eldest also, sent out to learn

some curious and ingenious sorts of manufacture, that are proper for

women to learn, particularly embroideries in gold or silver.”

In the scene of misery which this mode of intellectual labour sets before

our eyes, it is hard to determine whether the daughters or the father are

most to be lamented. A language not understood can never be so read as

to give pleasure, and very seldom so as to convey meaning. If few men

would have had resolution, to write books with such embarrassments, few

likewise would have wanted ability to find some better expedient.

Three years after his “Paradise Lost” (1667) he published his “History of

England,” comprising the whole fable of Geoffrey of Monmouth, and

continued to the Norman Invasion. Why he should have given the first

part, which he seems not to believe, and which is universally rejected,

it is difficult to conjecture. The style is harsh; but it has something

of rough vigour, which perhaps may often strike, though it cannot please.

On this history the licenser again fixed his claws, and before he could

transmit it to the press tore out several parts. Some censures of the

Saxon monks were taken away, lest they should be applied to the modern

clergy; and a character of the Long Parliament, and Assembly of Divines,

was excluded; of which the author gave a copy to the Earl of Anglesea,

and which, being afterwards published, has been since inserted in its

proper place.

The same year were printed “Paradise Regained;” and “Samson Agonistes,” a

tragedy written in imitation of the ancients, and never designed by the

author for the stage. As these poems were published by another

bookseller, it has been asked whether Simmons was discouraged from

receiving them by the slow sale of the former. Why a writer changed his

bookseller a hundred years ago, I am far from hoping to discover.

Certainly, he who in two years sells thirteen hundred copies of a volume

in quarto, bought for two payments of five pounds each, has no reason to

repent his purchase.

When Milton showed “Paradise Regained” to Elwood, “This,” said he, “is

owing to you; for you put it in my head by the question you put to me at

Chalfont, which otherwise I had not thought of.”

His last poetical offspring was his favourite. He could not, as Elwood

relates, endure to hear “Paradise Lost” preferred to “Paradise Regained.”

Many causes may vitiate a writer’s judgment of his own works. On that

which has cost him much labour he sets a high value, because he is

unwilling to think that he has been diligent in vain; what has been

produced without toilsome efforts is considered with delight, as a proof

of vigorous faculties and fertile invention; and the last work, whatever

it be, has necessarily most of the grace of novelty. Milton, however it

happened, had this prejudice, and had it to himself.

To that multiplicity of attainments, and extent of comprehension, that

entitled this great author to our veneration, may be added a kind of

humble dignity, which did not disdain the meanest services to literature.

The epic poet, the controvertist, the politician, having already

descended to accommodate children with a book of rudiments, now, in the

last years of his life, composed a book of logic for the initiation of

students in philosophy; and published (1672) “Artis Logicæ plenior

Institutio ad Petri Rami Methodum concinnata;” that is, “A new Scheme of

Logic, according to the method of Ramus.” I know not whether, even in

this book, he did not intend an act of hostility against the

universities; for Ramus was one of the first oppugners of the old

philosophy, who disturbed with innovations the quiet of the schools.

His polemical disposition again revived. He had now been safe so long

that he forgot his fears, and published a “Treatise of True Religion,

Heresy, Schism, Toleration, and the Best Means to Prevent the Growth of

Popery.”

But this little tract is modestly written, with respectful mention of the

Church of England and an appeal to the Thirty-nine Articles. His

principle of toleration is, agreement in the sufficiency of the

Scriptures; and he extends it to all who, whatever their opinions are,

profess to derive them from the sacred books. The Papists appeal to

other testimonies, and are therefore, in his opinion, not to be permitted

the liberty of either public or private worship; for though they plead

conscience, “we have no warrant,” he says, “to regard conscience which is

not grounded in Scripture.”

Those who are not convinced by his reasons, may perhaps be delighted with

his wit. The term “Roman Catholic is,” he says, “one of the Pope’s

Bulls; it is particular universal, or Catholic schismatic.”

He has, however, something better. As the best preservative against

Popery, he recommends the diligent perusal of the Scriptures, a duty from

which he warns the busy part of mankind not to think themselves excused.

He now reprinted his juvenile poems, with some additions.

In the last year of his life he sent to the press, seeming to take

delight in publication, a collection of “Familiar Epistles in Latin;” to

which, being too few to make a volume, he added some academical

exercises, which perhaps he perused with pleasure, as they recalled to

his memory the days of youth; but for which nothing but veneration for

his name could now procure a reader.

When he had attained his sixty-sixth year, the gout, with which he had

been long tormented, prevailed over the enfeebled powers of nature. He

died by a quiet and silent expiration, about the 10th of November, 1674,

at his house in Bunhill Fields; and was buried next his father in the

chancel of St. Giles at Cripplegate. His funeral was very splendidly and

numerously attended.

Upon his grave there is supposed to have been no memorial; but in our

time a monument has been erected in Westminster Abbey “To the Author of

‘Paradise Lost,’” by Mr. Benson, who has in the inscription bestowed more

words upon himself than upon Milton.

When the inscription for the monument of Philips, in which he was said to

be _soli Miltono secundus_, was exhibited to Dr. Sprat, then Dean of

Westminster, he refused to admit it; the name of Milton was, in his

opinion, too detestable to be read on the wall of a building dedicated to

devotion. Atterbury, who succeeded him, being author of the inscription,

permitted its reception. “And such has been the change of public

opinion,” said Dr. Gregory, from whom I heard this account, “that I have

seen erected in the church a statue of that man, whose name I once knew

considered as a pollution of its walls.”

Milton has the reputation of having been in his youth eminently

beautiful, so as to have been called the lady of his college. His hair,

which was of a light brown, parted at the fore-top, and hung down upon

his shoulders, according to the picture which he has given of Adam. He

was, however, not of the heroic stature, but rather below the middle

size, according to Mr. Richardson, who mentions him as having narrowly

escaped from being “short and thick.” He was vigorous and active, and

delighted in the exercise of the sword, in which he is related to have

been eminently skilful. His weapon was, I believe, not the rapier, but

the back-sword, of which he recommends the use in his book on education.

His eyes are said never to have been bright; but, if he was a dexterous

fencer, they must have been once quick.

His domestic habits, so far as they are known, were those of a severe

student. He drank little strong drink of any kind, and fed without

excess in quantity, and in his earlier years without delicacy of choice.

In his youth he studied late at night; but afterwards changed his hours,

and rested in bed from nine to four in the summer and five in the winter.

The course of his day was best known after he was blind. When he first

rose, he heard a chapter in the Hebrew Bible, and then studied till

twelve; then took some exercise for an hour; then dined, then played on

the organ, and sang, or heard another sing, then studied till six; then

entertained his visitors till eight; then supped, and, after a pipe of

tobacco and a glass of water, went to bed.

So is his life described; but this even tenour appears attainable only in

colleges. He that lives in the world will sometimes have the succession

of his practice broken and confused. Visitors, of whom Milton is

represented to have had great numbers, will come and stay unseasonably;

business, of which every man has some, must be done when others will do

it.

When he did not care to rise early, he had something read to him by his

bedside; perhaps at this time his daughters were employed. He composed

much in the morning, and dictated in the day, sitting obliquely in an

elbow-chair, with his leg thrown over the arm. Fortune appears not to

have had much of his care. In the civil wars, he lent his personal

estate to the Parliament; but when, after the contest was decided, he

solicited repayment, he met not only with neglect, but “sharp rebuke;”

and, having tired both himself and his friends, was given up to poverty

and hopeless indignation, till he showed how able he was to do greater

service. He was then made Latin Secretary, with two hundred pounds a

year; and had a thousand pounds for his “Defence of the People.” His

widow, who, after his death, retired to Nantwich, in Cheshire, and died

about 1729, is said to have reported that he lost two thousand pounds by

entrusting it to a scrivener; and that, in the general depredation upon

the Church, he had grasped an estate of about sixty pounds a year

belonging to Westminster Abbey, which, like other sharers of the plunder

of rebellion, he was afterwards obliged to return. Two thousand pounds

which he had placed in the Excise Office were also lost. There is yet no

reason to believe that he was ever reduced to indigence. His wants,

being few, were competently supplied. He sold his library before his

death, and left his family fifteen hundred pounds, on which his widow

laid hold, and only gave one hundred to each of his daughters.

His literature was unquestionably great. He read all the languages which

are considered either as learned or polite: Hebrew, with its two

dialects, Greek, Latin, Italian, French, and Spanish. In Latin his skill

was such as places him in the first rank of writers and critics; and he

appears to have cultivated Italian with uncommon diligence. The books in

which his daughter, who used to read to him, represented him as most

delighting, after Homer, which he could almost repeat, were Ovid’s

“Metamorphoses” and Euripides. His Euripides is, by Mr. Cradock’s

kindness, now in my hands: the margin is sometimes noted; but I have

found nothing remarkable.

Of the English poets he set most value upon Spenser, Shakespeare, and

Cowley. Spenser was apparently his favourite; Shakespeare he may easily

be supposed to like, with every other skilful reader; but I should not

have expected that Cowley, whose ideas of excellence were different from

his own, would have had much of his approbation. His character of

Dryden, who sometimes visited him, was, that he was a good rhymist, but

no poet.

His theological opinions are said to have been first Calvinistical; and

afterwards, perhaps when he began to hate the Presbyterians, to have

tended towards Arminianism. In the mixed questions of theology and

government, he never thinks that he can recede far enough from Popery, or

Prelacy; but what Baudius says of Erasmus seems applicable to him,

“_Magis habuit quod fugeret_, _quam quod sequeretur_.” He had determined

rather what to condemn, than what to approve. He has not associated

himself with any denomination of Protestants: we know rather what he was

not than what he was. He was not of the Church of Rome; he was not of

the Church of England.

To be of no Church is dangerous. Religion, of which the rewards are

distant, and which is animated only by faith and hope, will glide by

degrees out of the mind, unless it be invigorated and reimpressed by

external ordinances, by stated calls to worship, and the salutary

influence of example. Milton, who appears to have had a full conviction

of the truth of Christianity, and to have regarded the Holy Scriptures

with the profoundest veneration, to have been untainted by any heretical

peculiarity of opinion, and to have lived in a confirmed belief of the

immediate and occasional agency of Providence, yet grew old without any

visible worship. In the distribution of his hours, there was no hour of

prayer, either solitary or with his household; omitting public prayers,

he omitted all.

Of this omission the reason has been sought upon a supposition which

ought never to be made, that men live with their own approbation, and

justify their conduct to themselves. Prayer certainly was not thought

superfluous by him, who represents our first parents as praying

acceptably in the state of innocence, and efficaciously after their fall.

That he lived without prayer can hardly be affirmed; his studies and

meditations were an habitual prayer. The neglect of it in his family was

probably a fault for which he condemned himself, and which he intended to

correct; but that death, as too often happens, intercepted his

reformation.

His political notions were those of an acrimonious and surly Republican;

for which it is not known that he gave any better reason than that “a

popular government was the most frugal; for the trappings of a monarchy

would set up an ordinary commonwealth.” It is surely very shallow policy

that supposes money to be the chief good; and even this, without

considering that the support and expense of a court is, for the most

part, only a particular kind of traffic, for which money is circulated,

without any national impoverishment.

Milton’s Republicanism was, I am afraid, founded in an envious hatred of

greatness, and a sullen desire of independence; in petulance impatient of

control, and pride disdainful of superiority. He hated monarchs in the

State, and prelates in the Church; for he hated all whom he was required

to obey. It is to be suspected that his predominant desire was to

destroy rather than establish, and that he felt not so much the love of

liberty as repugnance to authority.

It has been observed that they who most loudly clamour for liberty do not

most liberally grant it. What we know of Milton’s character, in domestic

relations, is, that he was severe and arbitrary. His family consisted of

women; and there appears in his books something like a Turkish contempt

of females, as subordinate and inferior beings. That his own daughters

might not break the ranks, he suffered them to be depressed by a mean and

penurious education. He thought woman made only for obedience, and man

only for rebellion.

Of his family some account may be expected. His sister, first married to

Mr. Philips, afterwards married Mr. Agar, a friend of her first husband,

who succeeded him in the Crown office. She had, by her first husband,

Edward and John, the two nephews whom Milton educated; and by her second,

two daughters.

His brother, Sir Christopher, had two daughters, Mary and Catharine, and

a son, Thomas, who succeeded Agar in the Crown office, and left a

daughter living in 1749 in Grosvenor Street.

Milton had children only by his first wife: Anne, Mary, and Deborah.

Anne, though deformed, married a master-builder, and died of her first

child. Mary died single. Deborah married Abraham Clark, a weaver in

Spitalfields, and lived seventy-six years, to August, 1727. This is the

daughter of whom public mention has been made. She could repeat the

first lines of Homer, the “Metamorphoses,” and some of Euripides, by

having often read them. Yet here incredulity is ready to make a stand.

Many repetitions are necessary to fix in 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 now is known. Elizabeth married Thomas Foster, a weaver in

Spitalfields, 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 5th, _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.

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 public 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 critic; 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,” 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 parts 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 relics 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,

Battening 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 Phœbus, Neptune and Æolus, 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 irreverent 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

real 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

pathetic scenes of tragic and epic poetry. When the morning comes—a

morning gloomy with rain and wind—he walks into the dark, trackless

woods, falls asleep by some murmuring water, and with melancholy

enthusiasm expects some dream of prognostication, or some music played by

aërial 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 music; but he seems to think that cheerful

notes would have obtained from Pluto a complete dismission of Eurydice,

of whom solemn sounds procured only 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.

The greatest of his juvenile performances is the “Mask 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 over-balanced 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 dramatic representation, that

no precedents can support it.

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 moralises 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 epic 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 twenty-first are truly entitled to this slender commendation.

The fabric 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 critics the first praise of genius is due to

the writer of an epic 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. Epic 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 dramatic 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 those materials to poetical use, is

required an imagination capable of painting nature and realising 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

intrinsic. 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 epic 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 superior,

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 epic 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, 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 expression 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 epic poem

which immerge the critic 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, superior to rule. To the

accidental or adventitious parts, as to everything human, some slight

exceptions may be made; but the main fabric 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 Θεòς ὰπò μηχανης, by which is meant

the occasional interposition of supernatural power, another fertile topic

of critical remarks, here is no room to speak, because everything 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 prophetic 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 attentively read than those extrinsic 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 _heroic_, 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 “heroic 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 fabric 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

characteristic 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 gigantic loftiness. 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 superior 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 epic 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 pathetic; 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 horrors 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 in 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 and

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. 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 effects 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; in the description of heaven and hell we are surely interested,

as we are all to reside hereafter either in the regions of horror or

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 horror, or admit them only as salutary inflictions,

as counterpoises to our interests and passions. Such images rather

obstruct the career of fancy than incite it.

Pleasure and terror are indeed the genuine sources of poetry; but

poetical pleasure must be such as human imagination can at least

conceive, and poetical terrors 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 energetic 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 an

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 deficiency 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 overburdened, 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 more 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 Pandæmonium, 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 Æschylus, 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 chaotic 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 critic.

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 a union of the narrative and dramatic 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, “Samson 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 dramatic 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 a 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, “sank under him.” But the

truth is, that, both in prose and verse, he had formed his style by a

perverse and pedantic 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 heroic 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; 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 music

is no necessary adjunct: it is, however, by the music 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 music of the English heroic lines strikes the ear so

faintly, that it is easily lost, unless all the syllables of every line

co-operate together; this co-operation can only be 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 critic, “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 advantages 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 epic 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 heroic poems,

only because it is not the first.

COWLEY.

THE Life of Cowley, notwithstanding the penury of English biography, has

been written by Dr. Sprat, an author whose pregnancy of imagination and

elegance of language have deservedly set him high in the ranks of

literature; but his zeal of friendship, or ambition of eloquence, has

produced a funeral oration rather than a history: he has given the

character, not the life, of Cowley; for he writes with so little detail,

that scarcely anything is distinctly known, but all is shown confused and

enlarged through the mist of panegyric.

* * * * *

ABRAHAM COWLEY was born in the year one thousand sir hundred and

eighteen. His father was a grocer, whose condition Dr. Sprat conceals

under the general appellation of a citizen; and, what would probably not

have been less carefully suppressed, the omission of his name in the

register of St. Dunstan’s parish gives reason to suspect that his father

was a sectary. Whoever he was, he died before the birth of his son, and

consequently left him to the care of his mother: whom Wood represents as

struggling earnestly to procure him a literary education, and who, as she

lived to the age of eighty, had her solicitude rewarded by seeing her son

eminent, and, I hope, by seeing him fortunate, and partaking his

prosperity. We know at least, from Sprat’s account, that he always

acknowledged her care, and justly paid the dues of filial gratitude.

In the window of his mother’s apartment lay Spenser’s “Fairy Queen,” in

which he very early took delight to read, till by feeling the charms of

verse, he became, as he relates, irrecoverably a poet. Such are the

accidents which, sometimes remembered, and perhaps sometimes forgotten,

produce that particular designation of mind, and propensity for some

certain science or employment, which is commonly called Genius. The true

Genius is a mind of large general powers, accidentally determined to some

particular direction. Sir Joshua Reynolds, the great painter of the

present age, had the first fondness for his art excited by the perusal of

Richardson’s treatise.

By his mother’s solicitation he was admitted into Westminster school,

where he was soon distinguished. He was wont, says Sprat, to relate,

“that he had this defect in his memory at that time, that his teachers

never could bring it to retain the ordinary rules of grammar.”

This is an instance of the natural desire of man to propagate a wonder.

It is surely very difficult to tell anything as it was heard, when Sprat

could not refrain from amplifying a commodious incident, though the book

to which he prefixed his narrative contained its confutation. A memory

admitting some things, and rejecting others, an intellectual digestion

that concocted the pulp of learning, but refused the husks, had the

appearance of an instinctive elegance, of a particular provision made by

nature for literary politeness. But in the author’s own honest relation,

the marvel vanishes: he was, he says, such “an enemy to all constraint,

that his master never could prevail on him to learn the rules without

book.” He does not tell that he could not learn the rules; but that,

being able to perform his exercises without them, and being an “enemy to

constraint,” he spared himself the labour.

Among the English poets, Cowley, Milton, and Pope might be said “to lisp

in numbers;” and have given such early proofs, not only of powers of

language, but of comprehension of things, as to more tardy minds seems

scarcely credible. But of the learned puerilities of Cowley there is no

doubt, since a volume of his poems was not only written, but printed in

his thirteenth year; containing, with other poetical compositions, “The

tragical History of Pyramus and Thisbe,” written when he was ten years

old; and “Constantia and Philetus,” written two years after.

While he was yet at school he produced a comedy called “Love’s Riddle,”

though it was not published till he had been some time at Cambridge.

This comedy is of the pastoral kind, which requires no acquaintance with

the living world, and therefore the time at which it was composed adds

little to the wonders of Cowley’s minority.

In 1636 he was removed to Cambridge, where he continued his studies with

great intenseness; for he is said to have written, while he was yet a

young student, the greater part of his “Davideis;” a work of which the

materials could not have been collected without the study of many years,

but by a mind of the greatest vigour and activity.

Two years after his settlement at Cambridge, he published “Love’s

Riddle,” with a poetical dedication to Sir Kenelm Digby, of whose

acquaintance all his contemporaries seem to have been ambitious; and

“Naufragium Joculare,” a comedy written in Latin, but without due

attention to the ancient models; for it is not loose verse, but mere

prose. It was printed, with a dedication in verse to Dr. Comber, master

of the college; but having neither the facility of a popular, nor the

accuracy of a learned work, it seems to be now universally neglected.

At the beginning of the civil war, as the prince passed through Cambridge

in his way to York, he was entertained with the representation of “The

Guardian,” a comedy which Cowley says was neither written nor acted, but

rough-drawn by him, and repeated by the scholars. That this comedy was

printed during his absence from his country he appears to have considered

as injurious to his reputation; though, during the suppression of the

theatres, it was sometimes privately acted with sufficient approbation.

In 1643, being now master of arts, he was, by the prevalence of the

Parliament, ejected from Cambridge, and sheltered himself at St. John’s

College in Oxford; where, as is said by Wood, he published a satire,

called “The Puritan and Papist,” which was only inserted in the last

collection of his works; and so distinguished himself by the warmth of

his loyalty, and the elegance of his conversation, that he gained the

kindness and confidence of those who attended the king, and amongst

others of Lord Falkland, whose notice cast a lustre on all to whom it was

extended.

About the time when Oxford was surrendered to the Parliament, he followed

the Queen to Paris, where he became secretary to the Lord Jermyn,

afterwards Earl of St. Albans, and was employed in such correspondence as

the royal cause required, and particularly in ciphering and deciphering

the letters that passed between the king and queen; an employment of the

highest confidence and honour. So wide was his province of intelligence,

that for several years it filled all his days and two or three nights in

the week.

In the year 1647, his “Mistress” was published; for he imagined, as he

declared in his preface to a subsequent edition, that “poets are scarcely

thought freemen of their company, without paying some duties, or obliging

themselves to be true to love.”

This obligation to amorous ditties owes, I believe, its original to the

fame of Petrarch, who, in an age rude and uncultivated, by his tuneful

homage to his Laura refined the manners of the lettered world, and filled

Europe with love and poetry. But the basis of all excellence is truth:

he that professes love ought to feel its power. Petrarch was a real

lover, and Laura doubtless deserved his tenderness. Of Cowley, we are

told by Barnes, who had means enough of information, that, whatever he

may talk of his own inflammability, and the variety of characters by

which his heart was divided, he in reality was in love but once, and then

never had resolution to tell his passion.

This consideration cannot but abate in some measure the reader’s esteem

for the works and the author. To love excellence is natural; it is

natural likewise for the lover to solicit reciprocal regard by an

elaborate display of his own qualifications. The desire of pleasing has

in different men produced actions of heroism, and effusions of wit; but

it seems as reasonable to appear the champion as the poet of an airy

“nothing,” and to quarrel as to write for what Cowley might have learned

from his master Pindar to call “the dream of a shadow.”

It is surely not difficult, in the solitude of a college, or in the

bustle of the world, to find useful studies and serious employment. No

man needs to be so burdened with life as to squander it in voluntary

dreams of fictitious occurrences. The man that sits down to suppose

himself charged with treason or peculation, and heats his mind to an

elaborate purgation of his character from crimes which he was never

within the possibility of committing, differs only by the infrequency of

his folly from him who praises beauty which he never saw; complains of

jealousy which he never felt; supposes himself sometimes invited, and

sometimes forsaken; fatigues his fancy, and ransacks his memory for

images which may exhibit the gaiety of hope or the gloominess of despair;

and dresses his imaginary Chloris or Phyllis sometimes in flowers fading

as her beauty, and sometimes in gems lasting as her virtues.

At Paris, as secretary to Lord Jermyn, he was engaged in transacting

things of real importance with real men and real women, and at that time

did not much employ his thoughts upon phantoms of gallantry. Some of his

letters to Mr. Bennet, afterwards Earl of Arlington, from April to

December, in 1650, are preserved in “Miscellanea Aulica,” a collection of

papers published by Brown. These letters, being written like those of

other men whose minds are more on things than words, contribute no

otherwise to his reputation, than as they show him to have been above the

affectation of unseasonable elegance, and to have known that the business

of a statesman can be little forwarded by flowers of rhetoric.

One passage, however, seems not unworthy of some notice. Speaking of the

Scotch treaty then in agitation:

“The Scotch treaty,” says he, “is the only thing now in which we are

vitally concerned; I am one of the last hopers, and yet cannot now

abstain from believing that an agreement will be made; all people upon

the place incline to that opinion. The Scotch will moderate something of

the rigour of their demands; the mutual necessity of an accord is

visible; the king is persuaded of it. And to tell you the truth (which I

take to be an argument above all the rest), Virgil has told me something

to that purpose.”