MUCH of the criticism on Milton, if not hostile, is apologetic, and it is
considered quite correct to say we “do not care” for him. Partly this
indifference is due to his Nonconformity. The “superior” Englishman who
makes a jest of the doctrines and ministers of the Established Church
always pays homage to it because it is _respectable_, and sneers at
Dissent. Another reason why Milton does not take his proper place is
that his theme is a theology which for most people is no longer vital. A
religious poem if it is to be deeply felt must embody a living faith.
The great poems of antiquity are precious to us in proportion to our
acceptance, now, as fact, of what they tell us about heaven and earth.
There are only a few persons at present who perceive that in substance
the account which was given in the seventeenth century of the relation
between man and God is immortal and worthy of epic treatment. A thousand
years hence a much better estimate of Milton will be possible than that
which can be formed to-day. We attribute to him mechanic construction in
dead material because it is dead to ourselves. Even Mr. Ruskin who was
far too great not to recognise in part at least Milton’s claims, says
that “Milton’s account of the most important event in his whole system of
the universe, the fall of the angels, is evidently unbelievable to
himself; and the more so, that it is wholly founded on, and in a great
part spoiled and degraded from, Hesiod’s account of the decisive war of
the younger gods with the Titans. The rest of his poem is a picturesque
drama, in which every artifice of invention is visibly and consciously
employed; not a single fact being for an instant conceived as tenable by
any living faith” (_Sesame and Lilies_, section iii.).
Mr. Mark Pattison, quoting part of this passage, remarks with justice,
“on the contrary, we shall not rightly apprehend either the poetry or the
character of the poet until we feel that throughout _Paradise Lost_, as
in _Paradise Regained_ and _Samson_, Milton felt himself to be standing
on the sure ground of fact and reality” (_English Men of Letters_—Milton,
p. 186, ed. 1879).
St. Jude for ages had been sufficient authority for the angelic revolt,
and in a sense it was a reasonable dogma, for although it did not explain
the mystery of the origin of evil it pushed it a step further backwards,
and without such a revolt the Christian scheme does not well hold
together. So also with the entrance of the devil into the serpent. It
is not expressly taught in any passage of the canonical Scriptures, but
to the Church and to Milton it was as indisputable as the presence of sin
in the world. Milton, I repeat, _believed_ in the framework of his poem,
and unless we can concede this to him we ought not to attempt to
criticise him. He was impelled to turn his religion into poetry in order
to bring it closer to him. The religion of every Christian if it is real
is a poem. He pictures a background of Holy Land scenery, and he creates
a Jesus who continually converses with him and reveals to him much more
than is found in the fragmentary details of the Gospels. When Milton
goes beyond his documents he does not imagine for the purpose of filling
up: the additions are expression.
Milton belonged to that order of poets whom the finite does not satisfy.
Like Wordsworth, but more eminently, he was “powerfully affected” only by
that “which is conversant with or turns upon infinity,” and man is to him
a being with such a relationship to infinity that Heaven and Hell contend
over him. Every touch which sets forth the eternal glory of Heaven and
the scarcely subordinate power of Hell magnifies him. Johnson, whose
judgment on Milton is unsatisfactory because he will not deliver himself
sufficiently to beauty which he must have recognised, nevertheless says
of the _Paradise Lost_, that “its end is to raise the thoughts above
sublunary cares,” and this is true. The other great epic poems worthy to
be compared with Milton’s, the Iliad, Odyssey, Æneid, and Divine Comedy,
all agree in representing man as an object of the deepest solicitude to
the gods or God. Milton’s conception of God is higher than Homer’s,
Virgil’s, or Dante’s, but the care of the Miltonic God for his offspring
is greater, and the profound truth unaffected by Copernican discoveries
and common to all these poets is therefore more impressive in Milton than
in the others.
There is nothing which the most gifted of men can create that is not
mixed up with earth, and Milton, too, works it up with his gold. The
weakness of the _Paradise Lost_ is not, as Johnson affirms, its lack of
human interest, for the _Prometheus Bound_ has just as little, nor is
Johnson’s objection worth anything that the angels are sometimes
corporeal and at other times independent of material laws. Spirits could
not be represented to a human mind unless they were in a measure subject
to the conditions of time and space. The principal defect in _Paradise
Lost_ is the justification which the Almighty gives of the creation of
man with a liability to fall. It would have been better if Milton had
contented himself with telling the story of the Satanic insurrection, of
its suppression, of its author’s revenge, of the expulsion from Paradise,
and the promise of a Redeemer. But he wanted to “justify the ways of God
to man,” and in order to do this he thought it was necessary to show that
man must be endowed with freedom of will, and consequently could not be
directly preserved from yielding to the assaults of Satan.
_Paradise Regained_ comes, perhaps, closer to us than _Paradise Lost_
because its temptations are more nearly our own, and every amplification
which Milton introduces is designed to make them more completely ours
than they seem to be in the New Testament. It has often been urged
against _Paradise Regained_ that Jesus recovered Paradise for man by the
Atonement and not merely by resistance to the devil’s wiles, but inasmuch
as Paradise was lost by the devil’s triumph through human weakness it is
natural that _Paradise Regained_ should present the triumph of the
Redeemer’s strength. It is this victory which proves Jesus to be the Son
of God and consequently able to save us.
He who has now become incarnated for our redemption is that same Messiah
who, when He rode forth against the angelic rebels,
“into terror chang’d
His count’nance too severe to be beheld,
And full of wrath bent on his enemies.”