MILTON.

[1839.]

We have two ideas, which we are anxious to bring under public notice,

with regard to Milton. The reader whom Providence shall send us will

not measure the value of these ideas (we trust and hope) by their bulk.

The reader indeed--that great idea!--is very often a more important

person towards the fortune of an essay than the writer. Even 'the

prosperity of a jest,' as Shakespeare tells us, lies less in its own

merit than 'in the ear of him that hears it.' If _he_ should happen

to be unusually obtuse, the wittiest jest perishes--the most pointed

is found blunt. So, with regard to books, should the reader on whom

we build prove a sandy and treacherous foundation, the whole edifice,

'temple and tower,' must come to the ground. Should it happen, for

instance, that the reader, inflicted upon ourselves for our sins,

belongs to that class of people who listen to books in the ratio of

their much speaking--find no eloquence in 32mo., and little force of

argument except in such a folio as might knock him down upon occasion

of his proving restive against its logic--in that case he will despise

our present essay. _Will_ despise it? He _does_ despise it already:

for already he sees that it is short. His contempt is a high _a priori_

contempt: for he measures us by anticipation, and needs to wait for

no experience in order to vindicate his sentence against us.

Yet, in one view, this brevity of an essayist does seem to warrant his

reader in some little indignation. We, the writer, expect to bring

over the reader to our opinion--else wherefore do we write? But, within

so small a compass of ground, is it reasonable to look for such a

result? 'Bear witness to the presumption of this essay,' we hear the

reader complaining: 'It measures about fourteen inches by

two--twenty-eight square inches at the most--and is it within human

belief that I, simply as I stand here, shall be converted in so narrow

an area? Here am I in a state of nature, as you may say. An acre of

sound argument might do something: but here is a man who flatters

himself--that, before I am advanced seven inches further in my studies,

he is to work a notable change in my creed. By Castor and Pollux! he

must think very superbly of himself, or very meanly of me.'

Too true, we reply, too true; but, perhaps, there are faults on both

sides. The writer is too peremptory and exacting; the reader is too

restive. The writer is too full of his office, which he fancies is

that of a teacher or a professor speaking _ex cathedra_: the rebellious

reader is oftentimes too determined that he will not learn. The one

conceits himself booted and spurred, and mounted on his reader's back,

with an express commission for riding him: the other is vicious, apt

to bolt out of the course at every opening, and resolute in this

point--that he will not be ridden.

There are some, meantime, who take a very different view of the

relations existing between those well-known parties to a book--writer

and reader. So far from regarding the writer as entitled to the homage

of his reader, as if he were some feudal superior, they hold him little

better than an actor bowing before the reader as his audience. The

feudal relation of fealty [_fidelitas_] may subsist between them, but

the places are inverted; the writer is the liegeman--the reader it is

who claims to be the sovereign. Our own opinion inclines this way. It

is clear that the writer exists for the sake of the reader, not the

reader for the sake of the writer. Besides, the writer bears all sorts

of characters, whilst the reader universally has credit for the best

possible. We have all heard of 'the courteous reader,' 'the candid

reader,' 'the enlightened reader.' But which of us ever heard of 'the

discourteous reader,' 'the mulish reader,' 'the barbarous reader?'

Doubtless there is no such person. The Goths and Vandals are all

confined to the writers. 'The reader'--that great character--is ever

wise, ever learned, ever courteous. Even in the worst of times, this

great man preserved his purity. Even in the tenth and eleventh

centuries, which we usually account the very noontide of darkness, he

shone like a mould candle amongst basest dips. And perhaps it is our

duty to presume all other virtues and graces as no less essential to

him than his glorious 'candor,' his 'courtesy,' (surpassing that of

Sir Gawain,) and his truly 'enlightened' understanding. Indeed, we

very much question whether a writer, who carries with him a just feeling

of his allegiance--a truly loyal writer--can lawfully suppose his

sovereign, the reader, peccable or capable of error; and whether there

is not even a shade of impiety in conceiving him liable to the

affections of sleep, or of yawning.

Having thus, upon our knees as it were, done feudal homage to our great

_suzerain_, the reader--having propitiated him with Persian adorations

and with Phrygian genuflexions, let us now crave leave to convert him

a little. Convert him!--that sounds '_un pen fort_,' does it not? No,

not at all. A cat may look at a king; and upon this or that

out-of-the-way point a writer may presume to be more knowing than his

reader--the serf may undertake to convert his lord. The reader is a

great being--a great noun-substantive; but still, like a mere

adjective, he is liable to the three degrees of comparison. He may

rise above himself--he may transcend the ordinary level of readers,

however exalted that level be. Being great, he may become greater.

Full of light, he may yet labor with a spot or two of darkness. And

such a spot we hold the prevalent opinion upon Milton in two particular

questions of taste--questions that are not insulated, but diffusive;

spreading themselves over the entire surface of the _Paradise Lost_,

and also of the _Paradise Regained_; insomuch that, if Milton is wrong

once, then he is wrong by many scores of times. Nay, which transcends

all counting of cases or numerical estimates of error, if, in the

separate instances, (be they few or be they many,) he is truly and

indeed wrong--then he has erred, not by the case but by the principle;

and that is a thousand times worse; for a separate case or instance

of error may escape any man--may have been overlooked amongst the press

of objects crowding on his eye; or, if _not_ overlooked, if passed

deliberately, may plead the ordinary privilege of human frailty. The

man erred; and his error terminates in itself. But an error of principle

does _not_ terminate in itself; it is a fountain; it is self-diffusive;

and it has a life of its own. The faults of a great man are in any

case contagious; they are dazzling and delusive by means of the great

man's general example. But his false principles have a worse contagion.

They operate not only through the general haze and halo which invests

a shining example; but even if transplanted where that example is

unknown, they propagate themselves by the vitality inherent in all

self-consistent principles, whether true or false.

Before we notice these two cases of Milton, first of all let us ask--Who

and what _is_ Milton? Dr. Johnson was furiously incensed with a certain

man, by trade an author and manufacturer of books wholesale and retail,

for introducing Milton's name into a certain index thus--'Milton, Mr.

John.' That _Mister_, undoubtedly, was hard to digest. Yet very often

it happens to the best of us--to men who are far enough from 'thinking

small beer of themselves,'--that about ten o'clock, A. M., an official

big-wig, sitting at Bow Street, calls upon the man to account for his

_sprees_ of the last night, for his feats in knocking down lamp-posts

and extinguishing watchmen, by this ugly demand of--'Who and what are

you, sir?' And perhaps the poor man, sick and penitential for want of

soda water, really finds a considerable difficulty in replying

satisfactorily to the worthy _beek's_ apostrophe. Although, at five

o'clock in the evening, should the culprit be returning into the country

in the same coach as his awful interrogator, he might be very apt to

look fierce, and retort this amiable inquiry, and with equal thirst

for knowledge to demand, 'D--your eyes, if you come to _that_, who and

what are _you_?' And the _beek_ in _his_ turn, though so apt to indulge

his own curiosity at the expense of the public, might find it very

difficult to satisfy that of others.

The same thing happens to authors; and to great authors beyond all

others. So accustomed are we to survey a great man through the cloud

of years that has gathered round him--so impossible is it to detach

him from the pomp and equipage of all who have quoted him, copied him,

echoed him, lectured about him, disputed about him, quarrelled about

him, that in the case of any Anacharsis the Scythian coming amongst

us--any savage, that is to say, uninstructed in our literature, but

speaking our language, and feeling an interest in our great men--a man

could hardly believe at first how perplexed he would feel--how utterly

at a loss for any _adequate_ answer to this question, suddenly

proposed-_'Who and what was Milton?'_ That is to say, what is the place

which he fills in his own vernacular literature? what station does he

hold in universal literature?

We, if abruptly called upon in that summary fashion to convey a

_commensurate_ idea of Milton, one which might at once correspond to

his pretensions, and yet be readily intelligible to the savage, should

answer perhaps thus:--Milton is not an author amongst authors, not a

poet amongst poets, but a power amongst powers; and the _Paradise Lost_

is not a book amongst books, not a poem amongst poems, but a central

force amongst forces. Let us explain. There is this great distinction

amongst books; some, though possibly the best in their class, are still

no more than books--not indispensable, not incapable of supplementary

representation by other books. If they had never been--if their place

had continued for ages unfilled--not the less, upon a sufficient

excitement arising, there would always have been found the ability,

either directly to fill up the vacancy, or at least to meet the same

passion virtually, though by a work differing in form. Thus, supposing

Butler to have died in youth, and the _Hudibras_ to have been

intercepted by his premature death, still the ludicrous aspects of the

Parliamentary war, and its fighting saints, were too striking to have

perished. If not in a narrative form, the case would have come forward

in the drama. Puritanical sanctity, in collision with the ordinary

interests of life, and with its militant propensities, offered too

striking a field for the Satiric Muse, in any case, to have passed in

total neglect. The impulse was too strong for repression--it was a

volcanic agency, that, by some opening or, other, must have worked a

way for itself to the upper air. Yet Butler was a most original poet,

and a creator within his own province. But, like many another original

mind, there is little doubt that he quelled and repressed, by his own

excellence, other minds of the same cast. Mere despair of excelling

him, so far as not, after all, to seem imitators, drove back others

who would have pressed into that arena, if not already brilliantly

filled. Butler failing, there would have been another Butler, either

in the same or in some analogous form.

But, with regard to Milton and the Miltonic power, the case is far

otherwise. If the man had failed, the power would have failed. In that

mode of power which he wielded, the function was exhausted in the

man--species was identified with the individual--the poetry was

incarnated in the poet.

Let it be remembered, that, of all powers which act upon man through

his intellectual nature, the very rarest is that which we moderns call

the _Sublime_. The Grecians had apparently no word for it, unless it

were that which they meant by [Greek Text: to ogchodes]: for [Greek

Text: upsos] was a comprehensive expression for all qualities which

gave a character of grace or animation to the composition, such even

as were philosophically opposed to the sublime. In the Roman poetry,

and especially in Lucan, at times also Juvenal, there is an exhibition

of a moral sublime, perfectly distinct from anything known to the Greek

poetry. The delineations of republican grandeur, as expressing itself

through the principal leaders in the Roman camps, or the trampling

under foot of ordinary superstitions, as given in the reasons assigned

to Labienus for passing the oracle of the Lybian Jupiter unconsulted,

are in a style to which there is nothing corresponding in the whole

Grecian literature, nor would they have been comprehensible to an

Athenian. The famous line--'Jupiter est quodcunque vides, quodcunque

moveris,' and the brief review of such questions as might be worthy

of an oracular god, with the summary declaration, that every one of

those points we know already by the light of nature, and could not

know them better though Jupiter Ammon himself were to impress them on

our attention--

'Scimus, et haec nobis non altius inseret Ammon:' all this is truly

Roman in its sublimity; and so exclusively Roman, that there, and not

in poets like the Augustan, expressly modelling their poems on Grecian

types, ought the Roman mind to be studied.

On the other hand, for that species of the sublime which does not rest

purely and merely on moral energies, but on a synthesis between man

and nature--for what may properly be called the Ethico-physical

Sublime--there is but one great model surviving in the Greek poetry,

viz. the gigantic drama of the Prometheus crucified on Mount Elborus.

And this drama differs so much from everything else, even in the poetry

of Aeschylus, as the mythus itself differs so much from all the rest

of the Grecian mythology, (belonging apparently to an age and a people

more gloomy, austere, and nearer to the _incunabula mundi_, than those

which bred the gay and sunny superstitions of Greece,) that much

curiosity and speculation have naturally gathered round the subject

of late years. Laying this one insulated case apart, and considering

that the Hebrew poetry of Isaiah and Ezekiel, as having the benefit

of inspiration, does not lie within the just limits of competition,

we may affirm that there is no human composition which can be challenged

as constitutionally sublime--sublime equally by its conception and

by its execution, or as uniformly sublime from first to last, excepting

the _Paradise Lost_. In Milton only, first and last, is the power of

the sublime revealed. In Milton only does this great agency blaze and

glow as a furnace kept up to a white heat--without intermission and

without collapse.

If, therefore, Milton occupies this unique position--and let the reader

question himself closely whether he can cite any other book than the

_Paradise Lost_, as continuously sublime, or sublime even by its

prevailing character--in that case there is a peculiarity of importance

investing that one book which belongs to no other; and it must be

important to dissipate any erroneous notions which affect the integrity

of that book's estimation. Now, there are two notions countenanced by

Addison and by Dr. Johnson, which tend greatly to disparage the

character of its composition. If the two critics, one friendly, the

other very malignant, but both meaning to be just, have in reality

built upon sound principles, or at least upon a sound appreciation of

Milton's principles--in that case there is a mortal taint diffused

over the whole of the _Paradise Lost_: for not a single book is clear

of one or other of the two errors which they charge upon him. We will

briefly state the objections, and then as briefly reply to them, by

exposing the true philosophy of Milton's practice. For we are very

sure that, in doing as he did, this mighty poet was governed by no

carelessness or oversight, (as is imagined,) but by a most refined

theory of poetic effects.

I. The first of these two charges respects a supposed pedantry, or too

ambitious a display of erudition. It is surprising to us that such an

objection should have occurred to any man; both because, after all,

the quantity of learning cannot be great for which any poem can find

an opening; and because, in any poem burning with concentrated fire,

like the Miltonic, the passion becomes a law to itself, and will not

receive into connection with itself any parts so deficient in harmony,

as a cold ostentation of learned illustrations must always have been

found. Still, it is alleged that such words as _frieze, architrave,

cornice, zenith,_ &c., are words of art, out of place amongst the

primitive simplicities of Paradise, and at war with Milton's purpose

of exhibiting the Paradisaical state.

Now, here is displayed broadly the very perfection of ignorance, as

measured against the very perfection of what may be called poetic

science. We will lay open the true purpose of Milton, by a single

illustration. In describing impressive scenery, as occurring in a hilly

or a woody country, everybody must have noticed the habit which young

ladies have of using the word _amphitheatre_: 'amphitheatre of

woods'--'amphitheatre of hills,'--these are their constant expressions.

Why? Is it because the word _amphitheatre_ is a Grecian word? We

question if one young lady in twenty knows that it is; and very certain

we are that no word would recommend itself to her use by that origin,

if she happened to be aware of it. The reason lurks here:--In the word

_theatre_, is contained an evanescent image of a great audience--of

a populous multitude. Now, this image--half withdrawn, half-flashed

upon the eye--and combined with the word _hills_ or _forests_, is

thrown into powerful collision with the silence of hills--with the

solitude of forests; each image, from reciprocal contradiction,

brightens and vivifies the other. The two images act, and react, by

strong repulsion and antagonism.

This principle we might exemplify, and explain at great length; but

we impose a law of severe brevity upon ourselves. And we have said

enough. Out of this one principle of subtle and lurking antagonism,

may be explained everything which has been denounced under the idea

of pedantry in Milton. It is the key to all that lavish pomp of art

and knowledge which is sometimes put forward by Milton in situations

of intense solitude, and in the bosom of primitive nature--as, for

example, in the Eden of his great poem, and in the Wilderness of his

_Paradise Regained_. The shadowy exhibition of a regal banquet in the

desert, draws out and stimulates the sense of its utter solitude and

remotion from men or cities. The images of architectural splendor,

suddenly raised in the very centre of Paradise, as vanishing shows by

the wand of a magician, bring into powerful relief the depth of silence,

and the unpopulous solitude which possess this sanctuary of man whilst

yet happy and innocent. Paradise could not, in any other way, or by

any artifice less profound, have been made to give up its essential

and differential characteristics in a form palpable to the imagination.

As a place of rest, it was necessary that it should be placed in close

collision with the unresting strife of cities; as a place of solitude,

with the image of tumultuous crowds; as the centre of mere natural

beauty in its gorgeous prime, with the images of elaborate architecture

and of human workmanship; as a place of perfect innocence in seclusion,

that it should be exhibited as the antagonist pole to the sin and

misery of social man.

Such is the covert philosophy which governs Milton's practice, and

which might be illustrated by many scores of passages from both the

_Paradise Lost_ and the _Paradise Regained_. [Footnote: For instance,

this is the key to that image in the _Paradise Regained_, where Satan,

on first emerging into sight, is compared to an old man gathering

sticks 'to warm him on a winter's day.' This image, at first sight,

seems little in harmony with the wild and awful character of the supreme

fiend. No: it is _not in_ harmony; nor is it meant to be in harmony.

On the contrary, it is meant to be in antagonism and intense repulsion.

The household image of old age, of human infirmity, and of domestic

hearths, are all meant as a machinery for provoking and soliciting the

fearful idea to which they are placed in collision, and as so many

repelling poles.] In fact, a volume might be composed on this one

chapter. And yet, from the blindness or inconsiderate examination of

his critics, this latent wisdom--this cryptical science of poetic

effects--in the mighty poet, has been misinterpreted, and set down to

the account of defective skill, or even of puerile ostentation.

II. The second great charge against Milton is, _prima facie_, even

more difficult to meet. It is the charge of having blended the Pagan

and Christian forms. The great realities of angels and archangels are

continually combined into the same groups with the fabulous

impersonations of the Greek mythology. Eve is interlinked in comparisons

with Pandora; sometimes again with Eurynome. Those impersonations,

however, may be thought to have something of allegoric meaning in their

conceptions, which in a measure corrects this Paganism of the idea.

But Eve is also compared with Ceres, with Hebe, and other fixed forms

of Pagan superstition. Other allusions to the Greek mythologic forms,

or direct combination of them with the real existences of the Christian

heavens, might be produced by scores, were it not that we decline to

swell our paper beyond the necessity of the case. Now, surely this at

least is an error. Can there be any answer to this?

At one time we were ourselves inclined to fear that Milton had been

here caught tripping. In this instance, at least, he seems to be in

error. But there is no trusting to appearances. In meditating upon the

question, we happened to remember that the most colossal and Miltonic

of painters had fallen into the very same fault, if fault it were. In

his _Last Judgment_, Michael Angelo has introduced the Pagan deities

in connection with the hierarchy of the Christian heavens. Now, it is

very true that one great man cannot palliate the error of another great

man, by committing the same error himself. But, though it cannot avail

as an excuse, such a conformity of ideas serves as a summons to a much

more vigilant examination of the case than might else be instituted.

One man might err from inadvertency; but that two, and both men trained

to habits of constant meditation, should fall into the same error--makes

the marvel tenfold greater.

Now we confess that, as to Michael Angelo, we do not pretend to assign

the precise key to the practice which he adopted. And to our feelings,

after all that might be said in apology, there still remains an

impression of incongruity in the visual exhibition and direct

juxtaposition of the two orders of supernatural existence so potently

repelling each other. But, as regards Milton, the justification is

complete; it rests upon the following principle: In all other parts

of Christianity, the two orders of superior beings, the Christian

heaven and the Pagan pantheon, are felt to be incongruous--not as the

pure opposed to the impure, (for, if that were the reason, then the

Christian fiends should be incongruous with the angels, which they are

not,)--but as the unreal opposed to the real. In all the hands of other

poets, we feel that Jupiter, Mercury, Apollo, Diana, are not merely

impure conceptions, but that they are baseless conceptions, phantoms

of air, nonentities; and there is much the same objection, in point

of just taste, to the combination of such fabulous beings in the same

groups with glorified saints and angels, as there is to the combination,

by a painter or a sculptor, of real flesh-and-blood creatures with

allegoric abstractions.

This is the objection to such combination in all other poets. But this

objection does not apply to Milton: it glances past him; and for the

following reason: Milton has himself laid an early foundation for his

introduction of the Pagan pantheon into Christian groups:--_the false

gods of the heathen world were, according to Milton, the fallen angels_.

They are not false, therefore, in the sense of being unreal, baseless,

and having a merely fantastical existence, like our European fairies,

but as having drawn aside mankind from a pure worship. As ruined angels

under other names, they are no less real than the faithful and loyal

angels of the Christian heavens. And in that one difference of the

Miltonic creed, which the poet has brought pointedly and elaborately

under his reader's notice by his matchless catalogue of the rebellious

angels, and of _their Pagan transformations_ in the very first book

of the _Paradise Lost_, is laid beforehand the amplest foundation for

his subsequent practice; and at the same time, therefore, the amplest

answer to the charge preferred against him by Dr. Johnson, and by so

many other critics, who had not sufficiently penetrated the latent

theory on which he acted.