MILTON

(August 1825)

_Joannis Miltoni, Angli, de Doctrina Christiana libri duo posthumi. A

Treatise on Christian Doctrine, compiled from the Holy Scriptures alone.

By JOHN MILTON, translated from the Original by Charles R. Sumner, M.A.,

etc., etc. 1825._

TOWARDS the close of the year 1823, Mr. Lemon, deputy keeper of the

state papers, in the course of his researches among the presses of his

office, met with a large Latin manuscript. With it were found corrected

copies of the foreign despatches written by Milton while he filled the

office of Secretary, and several papers relating to the Popish Trials

and the Rye-house Plot. The whole was wrapped up in an envelope,

superscribed To Mr. Skinner, Merchant. On examination, the large

manuscript proved to be the long-lost Essay on the Doctrines of

Christianity, which, according to Wood and Toland, Milton finished after

the Restoration, and deposited with Cyriac Skinner. Skinner, it is well

known, held the same political opinions with his illustrious friend. It

is therefore probable, as Mr. Lemon conjectures, that he may have fallen

under the suspicions of the Government during that persecution of the

Whigs which followed the dissolution of the Oxford parliament, and that,

in consequence of a general seizure of his papers, this work may have

been brought to the office in which it has been found. But whatever the

adventures of the manuscript may have been, no doubt can exist that it

is a genuine relic of the great poet.

Mr. Sumner who was commanded by his Majesty to edit and translate the

treatise, has acquitted himself of his task in a manner honourable to

his talents and to his character. His version is not indeed very easy or

elegant; but it is entitled to the praise of clearness and fidelity.

His notes abound with interesting quotations, and have the rare merit

of really elucidating the text. The preface is evidently the work of

a sensible and candid man, firm in his own religious opinions, and

tolerant towards those of others.

The book itself will not add much to the fame of Milton. It is, like all

his Latin works, well written, though not exactly in the style of the

prize essays of Oxford and Cambridge. There is no elaborate imitation

of classical antiquity, no scrupulous purity, none of the ceremonial

cleanness which characterises the diction of our academical Pharisees.

The author does not attempt to polish and brighten his composition into

the Ciceronian gloss and brilliancy. He does not in short sacrifice

sense and spirit to pedantic refinements. The nature of his subject

compelled him to use many words

“That would have made Quintilian stare and gasp.”

But he writes with as much ease and freedom as if Latin were his mother

tongue; and, where he is least happy, his failure seems to arise from

the carelessness of a native, not from the ignorance of a foreigner.

We may apply to him what Denham with great felicity says of Cowley: “He

wears the garb, but not the clothes of the ancients.”

Throughout the volume are discernible the traces of a powerful and

independent mind, emancipated from the influence of authority, and

devoted to the search of truth. Milton professes to form his system from

the Bible alone; and his digest of scriptural texts is certainly among

the best that have appeared. But he is not always so happy in his

inferences as in his citations.

Some of the heterodox doctrines which he avows seemed to have excited

considerable amazement, particularly his Arianism, and his theory on the

subject of polygamy. Yet we can scarcely conceive that any person could

have read the Paradise Lost without suspecting him of the former; nor do

we think that any reader, acquainted with the history of his life, ought

to be much startled at the latter. The opinions which he has expressed

respecting the nature of the Deity, the eternity of matter, and the

observation of the Sabbath, might, we think, have caused more just

surprise.

But we will not go into the discussion of these points. The book, were

it far more orthodox or far more heretical than it is, would not much

edify or corrupt the present generation. The men of our time are not to

be converted or perverted by quartos. A few more days, and this essay

will follow the Defensio Populi to the dust and silence of the upper

shelf. The name of its author, and the remarkable circumstances

attending its publication, will secure to it a certain degree of

attention. For a month or two it will occupy a few minutes of chat in

every drawing-room, and a few columns in every magazine; and it will

then, to borrow the elegant language of the play-bills, be withdrawn to

make room for the forthcoming novelties.

We wish, however, to avail ourselves of the interest, transient as

it may be, which this work has excited. The dexterous Capuchins never

choose to preach on the life and miracles of a saint, until they have

awakened the devotional feelings of their auditors by exhibiting some

relic of him, a thread of his garment, a lock of his hair, or a drop

of his blood. On the same principle, we intend to take advantage of the

late interesting discovery, and, while this memorial of a great and

good man is still in the hands of all, to say something of his moral and

intellectual qualities. Nor, we are convinced, will the severest of

our readers blame us if, on an occasion like the present, we turn for a

short time from the topics of the day, to commemorate, in all love

and reverence, the genius and virtues of John Milton, the poet, the

statesman, the philosopher, the glory of English literature, the

champion and the martyr of English liberty.

It is by his poetry that Milton is best known; and it is of his poetry

that we wish first to speak. By the general suffrage of the civilised

world, his place has been assigned among the greatest masters of the

art. His detractors, however, though outvoted, have not been silenced.

There are many critics, and some of great name, who contrive in the

same breath to extol the poems and to decry the poet. The works they

acknowledge, considered in themselves, may be classed among the noblest

productions of the human mind. But they will not allow the author to

rank with those great men who, born in the infancy of civilisation,

supplied, by their own powers, the want of instruction, and, though

destitute of models themselves, bequeathed to posterity models which

defy imitation. Milton, it is said, inherited what his predecessors

created; he lived in an enlightened age; he received a finished

education, and we must therefore, if we would form a just estimate of

his powers, make large deductions in consideration of these advantages.

We venture to say, on the contrary, paradoxical as the remark may

appear, that no poet has ever had to struggle with more unfavourable

circumstances than Milton. He doubted, as he has himself owned, whether

he had not been born “an age too late.” For this notion Johnson has

thought fit to make him the butt of much clumsy ridicule. The poet, we

believe, understood the nature of his art better than the critic. He

knew that his poetical genius derived no advantage from the civilisation

which surrounded him, or from the learning which he had acquired; and he

looked back with something like regret to the ruder age of simple words

and vivid impressions.

We think that, as civilisation advances, poetry almost necessarily

declines. Therefore, though we fervently admire those great works of

imagination which have appeared in dark ages, we do not admire them the

more because they have appeared in dark ages. On the contrary, we hold

that the most wonderful and splendid proof of genius is a great poem

produced in a civilised age. We cannot understand why those who believe

in that most orthodox article of literary faith, that the earliest poets

are generally the best, should wonder at the rule as if it were

the exception. Surely the uniformity of the phaenomenon indicates a

corresponding uniformity in the cause.

The fact is, that common observers reason from the progress of the

experimental sciences to that of imitative arts. The improvement of the

former is gradual and slow. Ages are spent in collecting materials,

ages more in separating and combining them. Even when a system has been

formed, there is still something to add, to alter, or to reject. Every

generation enjoys the use of a vast hoard bequeathed to it by antiquity,

and transmits that hoard, augmented by fresh acquisitions, to future

ages. In these pursuits, therefore, the first speculators lie under

great disadvantages, and, even when they fail, are entitled to praise.

Their pupils, with far inferior intellectual powers, speedily surpass

them in actual attainments. Every girl who has read Mrs. Marcet’s little

dialogues on Political Economy could teach Montague or Walpole many

lessons in finance. Any intelligent man may now, by resolutely applying

himself for a few years to mathematics, learn more than the great Newton

knew after half a century of study and meditation.

But it is not thus with music, with painting, or with sculpture. Still

less is it thus with poetry. The progress of refinement rarely supplies

these arts with better objects of imitation. It may indeed improve the

instruments which are necessary to the mechanical operations of the

musician, the sculptor, and the painter. But language, the machine of

the poet, is best fitted for his purpose in its rudest state. Nations,

like individuals, first perceive, and then abstract. They advance

from particular images to general terms. Hence the vocabulary of an

enlightened society is philosophical, that of a half-civilised people is

poetical.

This change in the language of men is partly the cause and partly the

effect of a corresponding change in the nature of their intellectual

operations, of a change by which science gains and poetry loses.

Generalisation is necessary to the advancement of knowledge; but

particularity is indispensable to the creations of the imagination.

In proportion as men know more and think more, they look less at

individuals and more at classes. They therefore make better theories

and worse poems. They give us vague phrases instead of images, and

personified qualities instead of men. They may be better able to analyse

human nature than their predecessors. But analysis is not the business

of the poet. His office is to portray, not to dissect. He may believe in

a moral sense, like Shaftesbury; he may refer all human actions to

self-interest, like Helvetius; or he may never think about the matter at

all. His creed on such subjects will no more influence his poetry,

properly so called, than the notions which a painter may have conceived

respecting the lacrymal glands, or the circulation of the blood will

affect the tears of his Niobe, or the blushes of his Aurora. If

Shakespeare had written a book on the motives of human actions, it is by

no means certain that it would have been a good one. It is extremely

improbable that it would have contained half so much able reasoning on

the subject as is to be found in the Fable of the Bees. But could

Mandeville have created an Iago? Well as he knew how to resolve

characters into their elements, would he have been able to combine those

elements in such a manner as to make up a man, a real, living,

individual man?

Perhaps no person can be a poet, or can even enjoy poetry, without a

certain unsoundness of mind, if anything which gives so much pleasure

ought to be called unsoundness. By poetry we mean not all writing in

verse, nor even all good writing in verse. Our definition excludes

many metrical compositions which, on other grounds, deserve the highest

praise. By poetry we mean the art of employing words in such a manner as

to produce an illusion on the imagination, the art of doing by means of

words what the painter does by means of colours. Thus the greatest of

poets has described it, in lines universally admired for the vigour and

felicity of their diction, and still more valuable on account of the

just notion which they convey of the art in which he excelled:

“As the imagination bodies forth The forms of things unknown, the poet’s

pen Turns them to shapes, and gives to airy nothing A local habitation

and a name.”

These are the fruits of the “fine frenzy” which he ascribes to the

poet--a fine frenzy doubtless, but still a frenzy. Truth, indeed, is

essential to poetry; but it is the truth of madness. The reasonings are

just; but the premises are false. After the first suppositions have been

made, everything ought to be consistent; but those first suppositions

require a degree of credulity which almost amounts to a partial and

temporary derangement of the intellect. Hence of all people children are

the most imaginative. They abandon themselves without reserve to every

illusion. Every image which is strongly presented to their mental eye

produces on them the effect of reality. No man, whatever his sensibility

may be, is ever affected by Hamlet or Lear, as a little girl is affected

by the story of poor Red Riding-hood. She knows that it is all false,

that wolves cannot speak, that there are no wolves in England. Yet in

spite of her knowledge she believes; she weeps; she trembles; she dares

not go into a dark room lest she should feel the teeth of the monster at

her throat. Such is the despotism of the imagination over uncultivated

minds.

In a rude state of society men are children with a greater variety of

ideas. It is therefore in such a state of society that we may expect

to find the poetical temperament in its highest perfection. In an

enlightened age there will be much intelligence, much science, much

philosophy, abundance of just classification and subtle analysis,

abundance of wit and eloquence, abundance of verses, and even of good

ones; but little poetry. Men will judge and compare; but they will not

create. They will talk about the old poets, and comment on them, and to

a certain degree enjoy them. But they will scarcely be able to conceive

the effect which poetry produced on their ruder ancestors, the agony,

the ecstasy, the plenitude of belief. The Greek Rhapsodists, according

to Plato, could scarce recite Homer without falling into convulsions.

The Mohawk hardly feels the scalping knife while he shouts his

death-song. The power which the ancient bards of Wales and Germany

exercised over their auditors seems to modern readers almost miraculous.

Such feelings are very rare in a civilised community, and most rare

among those who participate most in its improvements. They linger

longest amongst the peasantry.

Poetry produces an illusion on the eye of the mind, as a magic lantern

produces an illusion on the eye of the body. And, as the magic lantern

acts best in a dark room, poetry effects its purpose most completely in

a dark age. As the light of knowledge breaks in upon its exhibitions, as

the outlines of certainty become more and more definite, and the shades

of probability more and more distinct, the hues and lineaments of the

phantoms which the poet calls up grow fainter and fainter. We cannot

unite the incompatible advantages of reality and deception, the clear

discernment of truth and the exquisite enjoyment of fiction.

He who, in an enlightened and literary society, aspires to be a great

poet must first become a little child, he must take to pieces the

whole web of his mind. He must unlearn much of that knowledge which has

perhaps constituted hitherto his chief title to superiority. His

very talents will be a hindrance to him. His difficulties will be

proportioned to his proficiency in the pursuits which are fashionable

among his contemporaries; and that proficiency will in general be

proportioned to the vigour and activity of his mind. And it is well

if, after all his sacrifices and exertions, his works do not resemble

a lisping man or a modern ruin. We have seen in our own time great

talents, intense labour, and long meditation, employed in this struggle

against the spirit of the age, and employed, we will not say absolutely

in vain, but with dubious success and feeble applause.

If these reasonings be just, no poet has ever triumphed over greater

difficulties than Milton. He received a learned education: he was a

profound and elegant classical scholar: he had studied all the mysteries

of Rabbinical literature: he was intimately acquainted with every

language of modern Europe, from which either pleasure or information was

then to be derived. He was perhaps the only great poet of later times

who has been distinguished by the excellence of his Latin verse. The

genius of Petrarch was scarcely of the first order; and his poems in the

ancient language, though much praised by those who have never read

them, are wretched compositions. Cowley, with all his admirable wit and

ingenuity, had little imagination: nor indeed do we think his classical

diction comparable to that of Milton. The authority of Johnson is

against us on this point. But Johnson had studied the bad writers of

the middle ages till he had become utterly insensible to the Augustan

elegance, and was as ill qualified to judge between two Latin styles as

a habitual drunkard to set up for a wine-taster.

Versification in a dead language is an exotic, a far-fetched, costly,

sickly, imitation of that which elsewhere may be found in healthful and

spontaneous perfection. The soils on which this rarity flourishes are in

general as ill suited to the production of vigorous native poetry as the

flower-pots of a hot-house to the growth of oaks. That the author of

the Paradise Lost should have written the Epistle to Manso was truly

wonderful. Never before were such marked originality and such exquisite,

mimicry found together. Indeed in all the Latin poems of Milton the

artificial manner indispensable to such works is admirably preserved,

while, at the same time, his genius gives to them a peculiar charm, an

air of nobleness and freedom, which distinguishes them from all other

writings of the same class. They remind us of the amusements of those

angelic warriors who composed the cohort of Gabriel:

“About him exercised heroic games The unarmed youth of heaven. But o’er

their heads Celestial armoury, shields, helms, and spears Hang high,

with diamond flaming, and with gold.”

We cannot look upon the sportive exercises for which the genius of

Milton ungirds itself, without catching a glimpse of the gorgeous and

terrible panoply which it is accustomed to wear. The strength of his

imagination triumphed over every obstacle. So intense and ardent was the

fire of his mind, that it not only was not suffocated beneath the weight

of fuel, but penetrated the whole superincumbent mass with its own heat

and radiance.

It is not our intention to attempt anything like a complete examination

of the poetry of Milton. The public has long been agreed as to the

merit of the most remarkable passages, the incomparable harmony of the

numbers, and the excellence of that style, which no rival has been able

to equal, and no parodist to degrade, which displays in their highest

perfection the idiomatic powers of the English tongue, and to which

every ancient and every modern language has contributed something of

grace, of energy, or of music. In the vast field of criticism on which

we are entering, innumerable reapers have already put their sickles.

Yet the harvest is so abundant that the negligent search of a straggling

gleaner may be rewarded with a sheaf.

The most striking characteristic of the poetry of Milton is the extreme

remoteness of the associations by means of which it acts on the reader.

Its effect is produced, not so much by what it expresses, as by what

it suggests; not so much by the ideas which it directly conveys, as

by other ideas which are connected with them. He electrifies the mind

through conductors. The most unimaginative man must understand the

Iliad. Homer gives him no choice, and requires from him no exertion, but

takes the whole upon himself, and sets the images in so clear a light,

that it is impossible to be blind to them. The works of Milton cannot be

comprehended or enjoyed, unless the mind of the reader co-operate with

that of the writer. He does not paint a finished picture, or play for

a mere passive listener. He sketches, and leaves others to fill up the

outline. He strikes the keynote, and expects his hearer to make out the

melody.

We often hear of the magical influence of poetry. The expression in

general means nothing: but, applied to the writings of Milton, it is

most appropriate. His poetry acts like an incantation. Its merit lies

less in its obvious meaning than in its occult power. There would seem,

at first sight, to be no more in his words than in other words. But they

are words of enchantment. No sooner are they pronounced, than the past

is present and the distant near. New forms of beauty start at once into

existence, and all the burial-places of the memory give up their

dead. Change the structure of the sentence; substitute one synonym for

another, and the whole effect is destroyed. The spell loses its power:

and he who should then hope to conjure with it would find himself as

much mistaken as Cassim in the Arabian tale, when he stood crying,

“Open Wheat,” “Open Barley,” to the door which obeyed no sound but “Open

Sesame.” The miserable failure of Dryden in his attempt to translate

into his own diction some parts of the Paradise Lost, is a remarkable

instance of this.

In support of these observations we may remark, that scarcely any

passages in the poems of Milton are more generally known or more

frequently repeated than those which are little more than muster-rolls

of names. They are not always more appropriate or more melodious than

other names. Every one of them is the first link in a long chain of

associated ideas. Like the dwelling-place of our infancy revisited in

manhood, like the song of our country heard in a strange land, they

produce upon us an effect wholly independent of their intrinsic value.

One transports us back to a remote period of history. Another places us

among the novel scenes avid manners of a distant region. A third evokes

all the dear classical recollections of childhood, the schoolroom, the

dog-eared Virgil, the holiday, and the prize. A fourth brings before

us the splendid phantoms of chivalrous romance, the trophied lists,

the embroidered housings, the quaint devices, the haunted forests, the

enchanted gardens, the achievements of enamoured knights, and the smiles

of rescued princesses.

In none of the works of Milton is his peculiar manner more happily

displayed than in the Allegro and the Penseroso. It is impossible

to conceive that the mechanism of language can be brought to a more

exquisite degree of perfection. These poems differ from others, as attar

of roses differs from ordinary rose water, the close packed essence

from the thin diluted mixture. They are indeed not so much poems, as

collections of hints, from each of which the reader is to make out a

poem for himself. Every epithet is a text for a stanza.

The Comus and the Samson Agonistes are works which, though of very

different merit, offer some marked points of resemblance. Both are

lyric poems in the form of plays. There are perhaps no two kinds of

composition so essentially dissimilar as the drama and the ode. The

business of the dramatist is to keep himself out of sight, and to let

nothing appear but his characters. As soon as he attracts notice to his

personal feelings, the illusion is broken. The effect is as unpleasant

as that which is produced on the stage by the voice of a prompter or the

entrance of a scene-shifter. Hence it was, that the tragedies of Byron

were his least successful performances. They resemble those pasteboard

pictures invented by the friend of children, Mr. Newbery, in which a

single moveable head goes round twenty different bodies, so that the

same face looks out upon us successively, from the uniform of a hussar,

the furs of a judge, and the rags of a beggar. In all the characters,

patriots and tyrants, haters and lovers, the frown and sneer of Harold

were discernible in an instant. But this species of egotism, though

fatal to the drama, is the inspiration of the ode. It is the part of the

lyric poet to abandon himself, without reserve, to his own emotions.

Between these hostile elements many great men have endeavoured to effect

an amalgamation, but never with complete success. The Greek Drama, on

the model of which the Samson was written, sprang from the Ode. The

dialogue was ingrafted on the chorus, and naturally partook of its

character. The genius of the greatest of the Athenian dramatists

cooperated with the circumstances under which tragedy made its first

appearance. Aeschylus was, head and heart, a lyric poet. In his time,

the Greeks had far more intercourse with the East than in the days of

Homer; and they had not yet acquired that immense superiority in war, in

science, and in the arts, which, in the following generation, led them

to treat the Asiatics with contempt. From the narrative of Herodotus it

should seem that they still looked up, with the veneration of disciples,

to Egypt and Assyria. At this period, accordingly, it was natural that

the literature of Greece should be tinctured with the Oriental style.

And that style, we think, is discernible in the works of Pindar and

Aeschylus. The latter often reminds us of the Hebrew writers. The book

of Job, indeed, in conduct and diction, bears a considerable resemblance

to some of his dramas. Considered as plays, his works are absurd;

considered as choruses, they are above all praise. If, for instance, we

examine the address of Clytemnestra to Agamemnon on his return, or the

description of the seven Argive chiefs, by the principles of dramatic

writing, we shall instantly condemn them as monstrous. But if we forget

the characters, and think only of the poetry, we shall admit that it

has never been surpassed in energy and magnificence. Sophocles made the

Greek Drama as dramatic as was consistent with its original form. His

portraits of men have a sort of similarity; but it is the similarity not

of a painting, but of a bas-relief. It suggests a resemblance; but it

does not produce an illusion. Euripides attempted to carry the reform

further. But it was a task far beyond his powers, perhaps beyond any

powers. Instead of correcting what was bad, he destroyed what was

excellent. He substituted crutches for stilts, bad sermons for good

odes.

Milton, it is well known, admired Euripides highly, much more highly

than, in our opinion, Euripides deserved. Indeed the caresses which

this partiality leads our countryman to bestow on “sad Electra’s poet,”

sometimes remind us of the beautiful Queen of Fairy-land kissing the

long ears of Bottom. At all events, there can be no doubt that this

veneration for the Athenian, whether just or not, was injurious to the

Samson Agonistes. Had Milton taken Aeschylus for his model, he would

have given himself up to the lyric inspiration, and poured out profusely

all the treasures of his mind, without bestowing a thought on those

dramatic proprieties which the nature of the work rendered it impossible

to preserve. In the attempt to reconcile things in their own nature

inconsistent he has failed, as every one else must have failed. We

cannot identify ourselves with the characters, as in a good play.

We cannot identify ourselves with the poet, as in a good ode. The

conflicting ingredients, like an acid and an alkali mixed, neutralise

each other. We are by no means insensible to the merits of this

celebrated piece, to the severe dignity of the style, the graceful

and pathetic solemnity of the opening speech, or the wild and barbaric

melody which gives so striking an effect to the choral passages. But

we think it, we confess, the least successful effort of the genius of

Milton.

The Comus is framed on the model of the Italian Masque, as the Samson

is framed on the model of the Greek Tragedy. It is certainly the noblest

performance of the kind which exists in any language. It is as far

superior to the Faithful Shepherdess as the Faithful Shepherdess is to

the Aminta, or the Aminta to the Pastor Fido. It was well for Milton

that he had here no Euripides to mislead him. He understood and loved

the literature of modern Italy. But he did not feel for it the same

veneration which he entertained for the remains of Athenian and Roman

poetry, consecrated by so many lofty and endearing recollections. The

faults, moreover, of his Italian predecessors were of a kind to which

his mind had a deadly antipathy. He could stoop to a plain style,

sometimes even to a bald style; but false brilliancy was his utter

aversion. His muse had no objection to a russet attire; but she turned

with disgust from the finery of Guarini, as tawdry and as paltry as the

rags of a chimney-sweeper on May-day. Whatever ornaments she wears are

of massive gold, not only dazzling to the sight, but capable of standing

the severest test of the crucible.

Milton attended in the Comus to the distinction which he afterwards

neglected in the Samson. He made his Masque what it ought to be,

essentially lyrical, and dramatic only in semblance. He has not

attempted a fruitless struggle against a defect inherent in the nature

of that species of composition; and he has therefore succeeded, wherever

success was not impossible. The speeches must be read as majestic

soliloquies; and he who so reads them will be enraptured with their

eloquence, their sublimity, and their music. The interruptions of the

dialogue, however, impose a constraint upon the writer, and break the

illusion of the reader. The finest passages are those which are lyric in

form as well as in spirit. “I should much commend,” says the excellent

Sir Henry Wotton in a letter to Milton, “the tragical part if the

lyrical did not ravish me with a certain Dorique delicacy in your songs

and odes, whereunto, I must plainly confess to, you, I have seen yet

nothing parallel in our language.” The criticism was just. It is when

Milton escapes from the shackles of the dialogue, when he is discharged

from the labour of uniting two incongruous styles, when he is at liberty

to indulge his choral raptures without reserve, that he rises even above

himself. Then, like his own good Genius bursting from the earthly form

and weeds of Thyrsis, he stands forth in celestial freedom and beauty;

he seems to cry exultingly,

“Now my task is smoothly done,