religious. In the old editions it is commonly enough laid down that,
when writing his plays, he had no desire to fill the Globe Theatre,
but that his intentions were of the following description. ‘In this
play,’ Cymbeline, ‘Shakespeare has strongly depicted the frailties of
our nature, and the effect of vicious passions on the human mind. In
the fate of the Queen we behold the adept in perfidy justly sacrificed
by the arts she had, with unnatural ambition, prepared for others; and
in reviewing her death and that of Cloten, we may easily call to mind
the words of Scripture,’ &c. And of King Lear it is observed with great
confidence, that Shakespeare, ‘_no doubt_, intended to mark particularly
the afflicting character of children’s ingratitude to their parents,
and the conduct of Goneril and Regan to each other; _especially_ in the
former’s poisoning the latter, and laying hands on _herself_, we are
taught that those who want gratitude towards their parents (who gave
them their being, fed them, nurtured them to _man’s_ estate) will not
scruple to commit more barbarous crimes, and easily to forget that, by
destroying their body, they destroy their soul also.’ And Dr. Ulrici,
a very learned and illegible writer, has discovered that in every one
of his plays Shakespeare had in view the inculcation of the peculiar
sentiments and doctrines of the Christian religion, and considers the
‘Midsummer Night’s Dream’ to be a specimen of the lay or amateur sermon.
This is what Dr. Ulrici thinks of Shakespeare; but what would Shakespeare
have thought of Dr. Ulrici? We believe that ‘_Via_, goodman Dull,’ is
nearly the remark which the learned professor would have received from
the poet to whom his very careful treatise is devoted. And yet, without
prying into the Teutonic mysteries, a gentleman of missionary aptitudes
might be tempted to remark that in many points Shakespeare is qualified
to administer a rebuke to people of the prevalent religion. Meeting
a certain religionist is like striking the corner of a wall. He is
possessed of a firm and rigid persuasion that you must leave off this and
that, stop, cry, be anxious, be advised, and, above all things, refrain
from doing what you like, for nothing is so bad for any one as that. And
in quite another quarter of the religious hemisphere, we occasionally
encounter gentlemen who have most likely studied at the feet of Dr.
Ulrici, or at least of an equivalent Gamaliel, and who, when we, or such
as we, speaking the language of mortality, remark of a pleasing friend,
‘Nice fellow, so and so! Good fellow as ever lived!’ reply sternly,
upon an unsuspecting reviewer, with—‘Sir, is he an _earnest_ man?’ To
which, in some cases, we are unable to return a sufficient answer. Yet
Shakespeare, differing, in that respect at least, from the disciples of
Carlyle, had, we suspect, an objection to grim people, and we fear would
have liked the society of Mercutio better than that of a dreary divine,
and preferred Ophelia or ‘that Juliet’ to a female philanthropist of
sinewy aspect. And, seriously, if this world is not all evil, he who
has understood and painted it best must probably have some good. If
the underlying and almighty essence of this world be good, then it is
likely that the writer who most deeply approached to that essence will be
himself good. There is a religion of week-days as well as of Sundays,
of ‘cakes and ale’ as well as of pews and altar cloths. This England lay
before Shakespeare as it lies before us all, with its green fields, and
its long hedgerows, and its many trees, and its great towns, and its
endless hamlets, and its motley society, and its long history, and its
bold exploits, and its gathering power, and he saw that they were good.
To him, perhaps, more than to any one else, has it been given to see that
they were a great unity, a great religious object; that if you could only
descend to the inner life, to the deep things, to the secret principles
of its noble vigour, to the essence of character, to what we know of
Hamlet and seem to fancy of Ophelia, we might, so far as we are capable
of so doing, understand the nature which God has made. Let us, then,
think of him not as a teacher of dry dogmas, or a sayer of hard sayings,
but as
‘A priest to us all,
Of the wonder and bloom of the world’—
a teacher of the hearts of men and women; one from whom may be learned
something of that inmost principle that ever modulates
‘With murmurs of the air,
And motions of the forests and the sea,
And voice of living beings, and woven hymns
Of night and day and the deep heart of man.’
We must pause, lest our readers reject us, as the Bishop of Durham the
poor curate, because he was ‘mystical and confused.’
Yet it must be allowed that Shakespeare was worldly, and the proof of it
is, that he succeeded in the world. Possibly this is the point on which
we are most richly indebted to tradition. We see generally indeed in
Shakespeare’s works the popular author, the successful dramatist; there
is a life and play in his writings rarely to be found, except in those
who have had habitual good luck, and who, by the tact of experience,
feel the minds of their readers at every word, as a good rider feels
the mouth of his horse. But it would have been difficult quite to make
out whether the profits so accruing had been profitably invested—whether
the genius to create such illusions was accompanied with the care and
judgment necessary to put out their proceeds properly in actual life.
We could only have said that there was a general impression of entire
calmness and equability in his principal works, rarely to be found where
there is much pain, which usually makes gaps in the work and dislocates
the balance of the mind. But happily here, and here almost alone, we
are on sure historical ground. The reverential nature of Englishmen has
carefully preserved what they thought the great excellence of their
poet—that he made a fortune.[28] It is certain that Shakespeare was
proprietor of the Globe Theatre—that he made money there, and invested
the same in land at Stratford-on-Avon, and probably no circumstance
in his life ever gave him so much pleasure. It was a great thing that
he, the son of the wool-comber, the poacher, the good-for-nothing, the
vagabond (for so we fear the phrase went in Shakespeare’s youth), should
return upon the old scene a substantial man, a person of capital, a
freeholder, a gentleman to be respected, and over whom even a burgess
could not affect the least superiority. The great pleasure in life is
doing what people say you cannot do. Why did Mr. Disraeli take the
duties of the Exchequer with so much relish? Because people said he was
a novelist, an _ad captandum_ man, and—_monstrum horrendum!_—a Jew, that
could not add up. No doubt it pleased his inmost soul to do the work of
the red-tape people better than those who could do nothing else. And so
with Shakespeare: it pleased him to be respected by those whom he had
respected with boyish reverence, but who had rejected the imaginative
man—on their own ground and in their own subject, by the only title
which they would regard—in a word, as a moneyed man. We seem to see him
eying the burgesses with good-humoured fellowship and genial (though
suppressed and half-unconscious) contempt, drawing out their old stories,
and acquiescing in their foolish notions, with everything in his head
and easy sayings upon his tongue,—a full mind and a deep dark eye, that
played upon an easy scene—now in fanciful solitude, now in cheerful
society; now occupied with deep thoughts, now, and equally so, with
trivial recreations, forgetting the dramatist in the man of substance,
and the poet in the happy companion; beloved and even respected, with a
hope for every one and a smile for all.
_JOHN MILTON._[29]
(1859.)
The ‘Life of Milton,’ by Professor Masson, is a difficulty for the
critics. It is very laborious, very learned, and in the main, we believe,
very accurate. It is exceedingly long,—there are 780 pages in this
volume, and there are to be two volumes more: it touches on very many
subjects, and each of these has been investigated to the very best of
the author’s ability. No one can wish to speak with censure of a book on
which so much genuine labour has been expended; and yet we are bound, as
true critics, to say that we think it has been composed upon a principle
that is utterly erroneous. In justice to ourselves we must explain our
meaning.
There are two methods on which biography may consistently be written.
The first of these is what we may call the exhaustive method. Every fact
which is known about the hero may be told us; every thing which he did,
every thing which he would not do, every thing which other people did to
him, every thing which other people would not do to him,—may be narrated
at full length. We may have a complete picture of all the events of his
life; of all which he underwent, and all which he achieved. We may, as
Mr. Carlyle expresses it, have a complete account ‘of his effect upon
the universe, and of the effect of the universe upon him.’ We admit
that biographies of this species would be very long and generally very
tedious, we know that the world could not contain very many of them; but
nevertheless the principle on which they may be written is intelligible.
The second method on which the life of a man may be written is the
selective. Instead of telling everything, we may choose what we will
tell. We may select out of the numberless events, from among the
innumerable actions of his life, those events and those actions which
exemplify his true character, which prove to us what were the true limits
of his talents, what was the degree of his deficiencies, which were his
defects, which his vices,—in a word, we may select the traits and the
particulars which seem to give us the best idea of the man as he lived
and as he was. On this side the flood, as Sydney Smith would have said,
we should have fancied that this was the only practicable principle on
which biographies can be written about persons of whom many details are
recorded. For ancient heroes the exhaustive method is possible. All
that can be known of them is contained in a few short passages of Greek
and Latin, and it is quite possible to say whatever can be said about
every one of these: the result would not be unreasonably bulky, though
it might be dull. But in the case of men who have lived in the thick of
the crowded modern world, no such course is admissible; overmuch _may_
be said, and we must choose what we will say. Biographers, however, are
rarely bold enough to adopt the selective method consistently. They
have, we suspect, the fear of the critics before their eyes. They do
not like that it should be said that ‘the work of the learned gentleman
contains serious omissions: the events of 1562 are not mentioned; those
of October 1579 are narrated but very cursorily:’ and we fear that in any
case such remarks will be made. Very learned people are pleased to show
that they know what is _not_ in the book; sometimes they may hint that
perhaps the author did not know it, or surely he would have mentioned
it. But a biographer who wishes to write what most people of cultivation
will be pleased to read must be courageous enough to face the pain of
such censures. He must choose, as we have explained, the characteristic
parts of his subject; and all that he has to take care of besides, is
so to narrate them that their characteristic elements shall be shown:
to give such an account of the general career as may make it clear what
these chosen events really were; to show their respective bearings to one
another; to delineate what is expressive in such a manner as to make it
expressive.
This plan of biography is, however, by no means that of Mr. Masson. He
has no dread of overgrown bulk and overwhelming copiousness. He finds,
indeed, what we have called the exhaustive method insufficient. He not
only wishes to narrate in full the life of Milton, but to add those of
his contemporaries likewise: he seems to wish to tell us not only what
Milton did, but also what every one else did in Great Britain during
his lifetime. He intends his book to be not ‘merely a biography of
Milton, but also in some sort a continuous history of his time.... The
suggestions of Milton’s life have indeed determined the tracks of these
historical researches and expositions, sometimes through the literature
of the period, sometimes through its civil and ecclesiastical politics;
but the extent to which I have pursued them, and the space which I have
assigned to them, have been determined by my desire to present, by their
combination, something like a connected historical view of British
thought and British society in general prior to the Revolution.’ We need
not do more than observe that this union of heterogeneous aims must
always end, as it has in this case, in the production of a work at once
overgrown and incomplete. A great deal which has only a slight bearing
on the character of Milton is inserted; much that is necessary to a true
history of ‘British thought and British society’ is of necessity left
out. The period of Milton’s life which is included in the published
volume makes the absurdity especially apparent. In middle life Milton
was a great controversialist on contemporary topics; and though it would
not be proper for a biographer to load his pages with a full account
of all such controversies, yet some notice of the most characteristic
of them would be expected from him. In this part of Milton’s life some
reference to public events would be necessary; and we should not severely
censure a biographer, if the great interest of those events induced him
to stray a little from his topic. But the first thirty years of Milton’s
life require a very different treatment. He passed those years in the
ordinary musings of a studious and meditative youth; it was the period of
‘Lycidas’ and of ‘Comus;’ he then dreamed the
‘Sights which youthful poets dream
On summer eve by haunted stream.’
We do not wish to have this part of his life disturbed, to a greater
extent than may be necessary, with the harshness of public affairs.
Nor is it necessary that it should be so disturbed. A life of poetic
retirement requires but little reference to anything except itself. In
a biography of Mr. Tennyson we should not expect to hear of the Reform
Bill, or the Corn Laws. Mr. Masson is, however, of a different opinion.
He thinks it necessary to tell us, not only all which Milton did, but
every thing also that he might have heard of.
The biography of Mr. Keightley is on a very different scale. He tells
the story of Milton’s career in about half a small volume. Probably this
is a little too concise, and the narrative is somewhat dry and bare. It
is often, however, acute, and is always clear; and even were its defects
greater than they are, we should think it unseemly to criticise the last
work of one who has performed so many useful services to literature with
extreme severity.
The bare outline of Milton’s life is very well known. We have all heard
that he was born in the latter years of King James, just when Puritanism
was collecting its strength for the approaching struggle; that his father
and mother were quiet good people, inclined, but not immoderately, to
that persuasion; that he went up to Cambridge early, and had some kind of
dissension with the authorities there; that the course of his youth was
in a singular degree pure and staid; that in boyhood he was a devourer of
books, and that he early became, and always remained, a severely studious
man; that he married, and had difficulties of a peculiar character with
his first wife; that he wrote on Divorce; that after the death of his
first wife, he married a second time a lady who died very soon, and a
third time a person who survived him more than fifty years; that he wrote
early poems of singular beauty, which we still read; that he travelled
in Italy, and exhibited his learning in the academies there; that he
plunged deep in the theological and political controversies of his
time; that he kept a school, or rather, in our more modern phrase, took
pupils; that he was a republican of a peculiar kind, and of ‘no church,’
which Dr. Johnson thought dangerous; that he was Secretary for Foreign
Languages under the Long Parliament, and retained that office after
the coup-d’état of Cromwell; that he defended the death of Charles the
First, and became blind from writing a book in haste upon that subject;
that after the Restoration he was naturally in a position of some danger
and much difficulty; that in the midst of that difficulty he wrote
‘Paradise Lost;’ that he did not fail in heart or hope, but lived for
fourteen years after the destruction of all for which he had laboured,
in serene retirement, ‘though fallen on evil days, though fallen on evil
times;’—all this we have heard from our boyhood. How much is wanting to
complete the picture—how many traits, both noble and painful, might be
recovered from the past—we shall never know, till some biographer skilled
in interpreting the details of human nature shall select this subject for
his art.
All that we can hope to do in an essay like this is, to throw together
some miscellaneous remarks on the character of the Puritan poet, and on
the peculiarities of his works; and if in any part of them we may seem
to make unusual criticisms, and to be over-ready with depreciation or
objection, our excuse must be that we wish to paint a likeness, and that
the harsher features of the subject should have a prominence, even in an
outline.
There are two kinds of goodness conspicuous in the world, and often
made the subject of contrast there; for which, however, we seem to want
exact words, and which we are obliged to describe rather vaguely and
incompletely. These characters may in one aspect be called the sensuous
and the ascetic. The character of the first is that which is almost
personified in the poet-king of Israel, whose actions and whose history
have been ‘improved’ so often by various writers, that it now seems trite
even to allude to them. Nevertheless, the particular virtues and the
particular career of David seem to embody the idea of what may be called
sensuous goodness far more completely than a living being in general
comes near to an abstract idea. There may have been shades in the actual
man which would have modified the resemblance; but in the portrait which
has been handed down to us, the traits are perfect and the approximation
exact. The principle of this character is its sensibility to outward
stimulus; it is moved by all which occurs, stirred by all which happens,
open to the influences of whatever it sees, hears, or meets with. The
certain consequence of this mental constitution is a peculiar liability
to temptation. Men are, according to the divine, ‘put upon their trial
through the senses.’ It is through the constant suggestions of the outer
world that our minds are stimulated, that our will has the chance of
a choice, that moral life becomes possible. The sensibility to this
external stimulus brings with it, when men have it to excess, an unusual
access of moral difficulty. Everything acts on them, and everything has
a chance of turning them aside; the most tempting things act upon them
very deeply, and their influence, in consequence, is extreme. Naturally,
therefore, the errors of such men are great. We need not point the moral—
‘Dizzied faith and guilt and woe,
Loftiest aims by earth defiled,
Gleams of wisdom sin-beguiled,
Sated power’s tyrannic mood,
Counsels shared with men of blood,
Sad success, parental tears,
And a dreary gift of years.’
But, on the other hand, the excellence of such men has a charm, a kind
of sensuous sweetness, that is its own. Being conscious of frailty,
they are tender to the imperfect; being sensitive to this world, they
sympathise with the world; being familiar with all the moral incidents of
life, their goodness has a richness and a complication: they fascinate
their own age, and in their deaths they are ‘not divided’ from the
love of others. Their peculiar sensibility gives a depth to their
religion; it is at once deeper and more human than that of other men.
As their sympathetic knowledge of those whom they have seen is great,
so it is with their knowledge of Him whom they have not seen; and as is
their knowledge, so is their love; it is deep, from their nature; rich
and intimate, from the variety of their experience; chastened by the
ever-present sense of their weakness and of its consequences.
In extreme opposition to this is the ascetic species of goodness.
This is not, as is sometimes believed, a self-produced ideal—a simply
voluntary result of discipline and restraint. Some men have by nature
what others have to elaborate by effort. Some men have a repulsion from
the world. All of us have, in some degree, a protective instinct; an
impulse, that is to say, to start back from what may trouble us, to shun
what may fascinate us, to avoid what may tempt us. On the moral side of
human nature this preventive check is occasionally imperious; it holds
the whole man under its control,—makes him recoil from the world, be
offended at its amusements, be repelled by its occupations, be scared by
its sins. The consequences of this tendency, when it is thus in excess,
upon the character are very great and very singular. It secludes a man in
a sort of natural monastery; he lives in a kind of moral solitude; and
the effects of his isolation for good and for evil on his disposition
are very many. The best result is a singular capacity for meditative
religion. Being aloof from what is earthly, such persons are shut up with
what is spiritual; being unstirred by the incidents of time, they are
alone with the eternal; rejecting this life, they are alone with what
is beyond. According to the measure of their minds, men of this removed
and secluded excellence become eminent for a settled and brooding piety,
for a strong and predominant religion. In human life too, in a thousand
ways, their isolated excellence is apparent. They walk through the
whole of it with an abstinence from sense, a zeal of morality, a purity
of ideal, which other men have not. Their religion has an imaginative
grandeur, and their life something of an unusual impeccability. And these
are obviously singular excellences. But the deficiencies to which the
same character tends are equally singular. In the first place, their
isolation gives them a certain pride in themselves, and an inevitable
ignorance of others. They are secluded by their constitutional δαίμων
from life; they are repelled from the pursuits which others care for;
they are alarmed at the amusements which others enjoy. In consequence,
they trust in their own thoughts; they come to magnify both them and
themselves—for being able to think and to retain them. The greater the
nature of the man, the greater is this temptation. His thoughts are
greater, and, in consequence, the greater is his tendency to prize them,
the more extreme is his tendency to overrate them. This pride, too, goes
side by side with a want of sympathy. Being aloof from others, such a
mind is unlike others; and it feels, and sometimes it feels bitterly, its
own unlikeness. Generally, however, it is too wrapt up in its own exalted
thoughts to be sensible of the pain of moral isolation; it stands apart
from others, unknowing and unknown. It is deprived of moral experience
in two ways,—it is not tempted itself, and it does not comprehend the
temptations of others. And this defect of moral experience is almost
certain to produce two effects, one practical and the other speculative.
When such a man is wrong, he will be apt to believe that he is right.
If his own judgment err, he will not have the habit of checking it by
the judgment of others; he will be accustomed to think most men wrong;
differing from them would be no proof of error, agreeing with them would
rather be a basis for suspicion. He may, too, be very wrong, for the
conscience of no man is perfect on all sides. The strangeness of secluded
excellence will be sometimes deeply shaded by very strange errors. To
be commonly above others, still more to think yourself above others, is
to be below them every now and then, and sometimes much below. Again,
on the speculative side, this defect of moral experience penetrates
into the distinguishing excellence of the character,—its brooding and
meditative religion. Those who see life under only one aspect, can see
religion under only one likewise. This world is needful to interpret
what is beyond; the seen must explain the unseen. It is from a tried and
a varied and a troubled moral life that the deepest and truest idea of
God arises. The ascetic character wants these; therefore in its religion
there will be a harshness of outline, a bareness, so to say, as well as a
grandeur. In life we may look for a singular purity; but also, and with
equal probability, for singular self-confidence, a certain unsympathising
straitness, and perhaps a few singular errors.