books which no one wished longer: we fear, in this irreverent generation,
some wish it shorter. Hardly any reader would be sorry if some portions
of the later books had been spared him. Coleridge, indeed, discovered
profound mysteries in the last; but in what could not Coleridge find a
mystery if he wished? Dryden more wisely remarked that Milton became
tedious when he entered upon a ‘tract of Scripture.’ Nor is it surprising
that such is the case. The style of many parts of Scripture is such that
it will not bear addition or subtraction. A word less, or an idea more,
and the effect upon the mind is the same no longer. Nothing can be more
tiresome than a sermonic amplification of such passages. It is almost
too much when, as from the pulpit, a paraphrastic commentary is prepared
for our spiritual improvement. In deference to the intention we bear it,
but we bear it unwillingly; and we cannot endure it at all when, as
in poems, the object is to awaken our fancy rather than to improve our
conduct. The account of the creation in the book of Genesis is one of the
compositions from which no sensitive imagination would subtract an iota,
to which it could not bear to add a word. Milton’s paraphrase is alike
copious and ineffective. The universe is, in railway phrase, ‘opened,’
but not created; no green earth springs in a moment from the indefinite
void. Instead, too, of the simple loneliness of the Old Testament,
several angelic officials are in attendance, who help in nothing, but
indicate that heaven must be plentifully supplied with tame creatures.
There is no difficulty in writing such criticisms, and, indeed, other
unfavourable criticisms on _Paradise Lost_. There is scarcely any book
in the world which is open to a greater number, or which a reader who
allows plain words to produce a due effect will be less satisfied with.
Yet what book is really greater? In the best parts the words have a magic
in them; even in the inferior passages you are hardly sensible of their
inferiority till you translate them into your own language. Perhaps no
style ever written by man expressed so adequately the conceptions of a
mind so strong and so peculiar; a manly strength, a haunting atmosphere
of enhancing suggestions, a firm continuous music, are only some of its
excellences. To comprehend the whole of the others, you must take the
volume down and read it,—the best defence of Milton, as has been said
most truly, against all objections.
Probably no book shows the transition which our theology has made since
the middle of the seventeenth century, at once so plainly and so fully.
We do not now compose long narratives to ‘justify the ways of God to
man.’ The more orthodox we are, the more we shrink from it; the more
we hesitate at such a task, the more we allege that we have no powers
for it. Our most celebrated defences of established tenets are in the
style of Butler, not in that of Milton. They do not profess to show a
satisfactory explanation of human destiny; on the contrary, they hint
that probably we could not understand such an explanation if it were
given us; at any rate, they allow that it is not given us. Their course
is palliative. They suggest an ‘analogy of difficulties.’ If our minds
were greater, so they reason, we should comprehend these doctrines:
now we cannot explain analogous facts which we see and know. No style
can be more opposite to the bold argument, the boastful exposition of
Milton. The teaching of the eighteenth century is in the very atmosphere
we breathe. We read it in the teachings of Oxford; we hear it from the
missionaries of the Vatican. The air of the theology is clarified. We
know our difficulties, at least; we are rather prone to exaggerate the
weight of some than to deny the reality of any.
We cannot continue a line of thought which would draw us on too far for
the patience of our readers. We must, however, make one more remark, and
we shall have finished our criticism on _Paradise Lost_. It is analogous
to that which we have just made. The scheme of the poem is based on an
offence against positive morality. The offence of Adam was not against
nature or conscience, nor against any thing of which we can see the
reason, or conceive the obligation, but against an unexplained injunction
of the Supreme Will. The rebellion in heaven, as Milton describes it,
was a rebellion, not against known ethics, or immutable spiritual laws,
but against an arbitrary selection and an unexplained edict. We do not
say that there is no such thing as positive morality: we do not think
so; even if we did, we should not insert a proposition so startling at
the conclusion of a literary criticism. But we are sure that wherever a
positive moral edict is promulgated, it is no subject, except perhaps
under a very peculiar treatment, for literary art. By the very nature of
it, it cannot satisfy the heart and conscience. It is a difficulty; we
need not attempt to explain it away. There are mysteries enough which
will never be explained away. But it is contrary to every principle of
criticism to state the difficulty as if it were not one; to bring forward
the puzzle, yet leave it to itself; to publish so strange a problem, and
give only an untrue solution of it: and yet such, in its bare statement,
is all that Milton has done.
Of Milton’s other writings we have left ourselves no room to speak; and
though every one of them, or almost every one of them, would well repay a
careful criticism, yet few of them seem to throw much additional light on
his character, or add much to our essential notion of his genius, though
they may exemplify and enhance it. _Comus_ is the poem which does so the
most. Literature has become so much lighter than it used to be, that we
can scarcely realise the position it occupied in the light literature
of our forefathers. We have now in our own language many poems that are
pleasanter in their subject, more graceful in their execution, more
flowing in their outline, more easy to read. Dr. Johnson, though perhaps
no very excellent authority on the more intangible graces of literature,
was disposed to deny to Milton the capacity of creating the lighter
literature: ‘Milton, madam, was a genius that could cut a colossus from a
rock, but could not carve heads upon cherry-stones.’ And it would not be
surprising if this generation, which has access to the almost indefinite
quantity of lighter compositions which have been produced since Johnson’s
time, were to echo his sentence. In some degree, perhaps, the popular
taste does so. _Comus_ has no longer the peculiar exceptional popularity
which it used to have. We can talk without general odium of its defects.
Its characters are nothing, its sentiments are tedious, its story is not
interesting. But it is only when we have realised the magnitude of its
deficiencies that we comprehend the peculiarity of its greatness. Its
power is in its style. A grave and firm music pervades it: it is soft,
without a thought of weakness; harmonious and yet strong; impressive, as
few such poems are, yet covered with a bloom of beauty and a complexity
of charm that few poems have either. We have, perhaps, light literature
in itself better, that we read oftener and more easily, that lingers more
in our memories; but we have not any, we question if there ever will be
any, which gives so true a conception of the capacity and the dignity of
the mind by which it was produced. The breath of solemnity which hovers
round the music attaches us to the writer. Every line, here as elsewhere,
in Milton excites the idea of indefinite power.
And so we must draw to a close. The subject is an infinite one, and if
we pursued it, we should lose ourselves in miscellaneous commentary, and
run on far beyond the patience of our readers. What we have said has at
least a defined intention. We have wished to state the impression which
the character of Milton and the greatest of Milton’s works are likely to
produce on readers of the present generation—a generation different from
his own almost more than any other.
_LADY MARY WORTLEY MONTAGU._[30]
(1862.)
Nothing is so transitory as second-class fame. The name of Lady Mary
Wortley Montagu is hardly now known to the great mass of ordinary
English readers. A generation has arisen which has had time to forget
her. Yet only a few years since, an allusion to the ‘Lady Mary’ would
have been easily understood by every well-informed person; young ladies
were enjoined to form their style upon hers; and no one could have
anticipated that her letters would seem in 1862 as different from what
a lady of rank would then write or publish as if they had been written
in the times of paganism. The very change, however, of popular taste and
popular morality gives these letters now a kind of interest. The farther
and the more rapidly we have drifted from where we once lay, the more
do we wish to learn what kind of port it was. We venture, therefore, to
recommend the letters of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu as an instructive and
profitable study, not indeed to the youngest of young ladies, but to
those maturer persons of either sex ‘who have taken all knowledge to be
their province,’ and who have commenced their readings in ‘universality’
by an assiduous perusal of Parisian fiction.
It is, we admit, true that these letters are not at the present day very
agreeable reading. What our grandfathers and grandmothers thought of them
it is not so easy to say. But it now seems clear that Lady Mary was
that most miserable of human beings, an ambitious and wasted woman; that
she brought a very cultivated intellect into a very cultivated society;
that she gave to that society what it was most anxious to receive, and
received from it all which it had to bestow;—and yet that this all was to
her as nothing. The high intellectual world of England has never been so
compact, so visible in a certain sense, so enjoyable, as it was in her
time. She had a mind to understand it, beauty to adorn it, and wit to
amuse it; but she chose to pass a great part of her life in exile, and
returned at last to die at home among a new generation, whose name she
hardly knew, and to whom she herself was but a spectacle and a wonder.
Lady Mary Pierrepont—for that was by birth her name—belonged to a
family which had a traditional reputation for ability and cultivation.
The _Memoirs of Lucy Hutchinson_—(almost the only legacy that remains
to us from the first generation of refined Puritans, the only book,
at any rate, which effectually brings home to us how different
they were in taste and in temper from their more vulgar and feeble
successors)—contains a curious panegyric on _wise William_ Pierrepont, to
whom the Parliamentary party resorted as an oracle of judgment, and whom
Cromwell himself, if tradition may be trusted, at times condescended to
consult and court. He did not, however, transmit much of his discretion
to his grandson, Lady Mary’s father. This nobleman, for he inherited from
an elder branch of the family both the marquisate of Dorchester and the
dukedom of Kingston, was a mere man ‘about town,’ as the homely phrase
then went, who passed a long life of fashionable idleness interspersed
with political intrigue, and who signalised his old age by marrying
a young beauty of fewer years than his youngest daughter, who, as he
very likely knew, cared nothing for him and much for another person.
He had the ‘grand air,’ however, and he expected his children, when he
visited them, to kneel down immediately and ask his blessing, which,
if his character was what is said, must have been _very_ valuable. The
only attention he ever (that we know of) bestowed upon Lady Mary was
a sort of theatrical outrage, pleasant enough to her at the time, but
scarcely in accordance with the educational theories in which we now
believe. He was a member of the Kit-Cat, a great Whig club, the Brooks’s
of Queen Anne’s time, which, like Brooks’s, appears not to have been
purely political, but to have found time for occasional relaxation and
for somewhat unbusiness-like discussions. They held annually a formal
meeting to arrange the female toasts for that year; and we are told that
a whim seized her father to nominate Lady Mary, ‘then not eight years
old, a candidate; alleging that she was far prettier than any lady on
their list.’ The other members demurred, because the rules of the club
forbade them to elect a beauty whom they had never seen. ‘Then you shall
see her,’ cried he; and in the gaiety of the moment sent orders home to
have her finely dressed and brought to him at the tavern, where she was
received with acclamations, her claim unanimously allowed, her health
drunk by every one present, and her name engraved in due form upon a
drinking-glass. The company consisting of some of the most eminent men
in England, she went from the lap of one poet, or patriot, or statesman,
to the arms of another, was feasted with sweetmeats, overwhelmed with
caresses, and what perhaps already pleased her better than either, heard
her wit and beauty loudly extolled on every side. Pleasure, she said,
was too poor a word to express her sensations; they amounted to ecstasy:
never again, throughout her whole future life, did she pass so happy
a day. Nor, indeed, could she; for the love of admiration, which this
scene was calculated to excite or increase, could never again be so fully
gratified; there is always some alloying ingredient in the cup, some
drawback upon the triumphs, of grown people. Her father carried on the
frolic, and we may conclude, confirmed the taste, by having her picture
painted for the club-room, that she might be enrolled a regular toast.
Perhaps some young ladies of more than eight years old would not much
object to have lived in those times. Fathers may be wiser now than they
were then, but they rarely make themselves so thoroughly agreeable to
their children.
This stimulating education would leave a weak and vain girl still
more vain and weak; but it had not that effect on Lady Mary. Vain she
probably was, and her father’s boastfulness perhaps made her vainer; but
her vanity took an intellectual turn. She read vaguely and widely; she
managed to acquire some knowledge—how much is not clear—of Greek and
Latin, and certainly learned with sufficient thoroughness French and
Italian. She used to say that she had the worst education in the world,
and that it was only by the ‘help of an uncommon memory and indefatigable
labour’ that she had acquired her remarkable attainments. Her father
certainly seems to have been capable of any degree of inattention and
neglect; but we should not perhaps credit too entirely all the legends
which an old lady recounted to her grandchildren of the intellectual
difficulties of her youth.
She seems to have been encouraged by her grandmother, one of the
celebrated Evelyn family, whose memory is thus enigmatically but still
expressively enshrined in the diary of the author of _Sylva_:—‘Under this
date,’ we are informed, ‘of the 2d of July 1649, he records a day spent
at Godstone, where Sir John’ (this lady’s father) ‘was on a visit with
his daughter;’ and he adds, ‘Mem. The prodigious memory of Sir John of
Wilts’s daughter, since married to Mr. W. Pierrepont.’ The lady who was
thus formidable in her youth deigned in her old age to write frequently,
as we should now say,—to open a ‘regular commerce’ of letters, as was
said in that age—with Lady Mary when quite a girl, which she always
believed to have been beneficial to her, and probably believed rightly;
for she was intelligent enough to comprehend what was said to her, and
the old lady had watched many changes in many things.
Her greatest intellectual guide, at least so in after life she used to
relate, was Mr. Wortley, whom she afterwards married. ‘When I was young,’
she said, ‘I was a great admirer of Ovid’s _Metamorphoses_, and that was
one of the chief reasons that set me upon the thoughts of stealing the
Latin language. Mr. Wortley was the only person to whom I communicated
my design, and he encouraged me in it. I used to study five or six hours
a day for two years in my father’s library; and so got that language,
whilst everybody else thought I was reading nothing but novels and
romances.’ She perused, however, some fiction also; for she possessed,
till her death, the whole library of Mrs. Lennox’s _Female Quixote_, a
ponderous series of novels in folio, in one of which she had written, in
her fairest youthful hand, the names and characteristic qualities of ‘the
beautiful Diana, the volatile Clemene, the melancholy Doris, Celadon the
faithful, Adamas the wise, and so on, forming two columns.’
Of Mr. Wortley’s character it is not difficult, from the materials before
us, to decipher the features; he was a slow man, with a taste for quick
companions. Swift’s diary to Stella mentions an evening spent over a
bottle of old wine with Mr. Wortley and Mr. Addison. Mr. Wortley was
a rigid Whig, and Swift’s transition to Toryism soon broke short that
friendship. But with Addison he maintained an intimacy which lasted
during their joint lives, and survived the marriages of both. With Steele
likewise he was upon the closest terms, is said to have written some
papers in the _Tatler_ and _Spectator_; and the second volume of the
former is certainly dedicated to him in affectionate and respectful terms.
Notwithstanding, however, these conspicuous testimonials to high ability,
Mr. Wortley was an orderly and dull person. Every letter received by him
from his wife during five-and-twenty years of absence, was found, at
his death, carefully endorsed with the date of its arrival, and with a
_synopsis_ of its contents. ‘He represented,’ we are told, ‘at various
times, Huntingdon, Westminster, and Peterborough in Parliament, and
appears to have been a member of that class who win respectful attention
by sober and business-like qualities; and his name is constantly found in
the drier and more formal part of the politics of the time.’ He answered
to the description given more recently of a similar person: ‘Is not,’ it
was asked, ‘Sir John —— a very methodical person?’ ‘Certainly he is,’
was the reply, ‘he files his invitations to dinner.’ The Wortley papers,
according to the description of those who have inspected them, seem to
contain the accumulations of similar documents during many years. He
hoarded money, however, to more purpose, for he died one of the richest
commoners in England; and a considerable part of the now marvellous
wealth of the Bute family seems at first to have been derived from him.
Whatever good qualities Addison and Steele discovered in Mr. Wortley,
they were certainly not those of a good writer. We have from his pen and
from that of Lady Mary a description of the state of English politics
during the three first years of George III., and any one who wishes to
understand how much readability depends upon good writing would do well
to compare the two. Lady Mary’s is a clear and bright description of
all the superficial circumstances of the time; Mr. Wortley’s is equally
superficial, often unintelligible and always lumbering, and scarcely
succeeds in telling us more than that the writer was wholly unsuccessful
in all which he tried to do. As to Mr. Wortley’s contributions to the
periodicals of his time, we may suspect that the jottings preserved
at Loudon are all which he ever wrote of them, and that the style and
arrangement were supplied by more skilful writers. Even a county member
might furnish headings for the _Saturday Review_. He might say: ‘Trent
British vessel—Americans always intrusive—Support Government—Kill all
that is necessary.’
What Lady Mary discovered in Mr. Wortley it is easier to say and shorter,
for he was very handsome. If his portrait can be trusted, there was
a placid and business-like repose about him, which might easily be
attractive to a rather excitable and wild young lady, especially when
combined with imposing features and a quiet sweet expression. He attended
_to her_ also. When she was a girl of fourteen, he met her at a party,
and evinced his admiration. And a little while later, it is not difficult
to fancy that a literary young lady might be much pleased with a
good-looking gentleman not uncomfortably older than herself, yet having a
place in the world, and well known to the literary men of the age. He was
acquainted with the classics too, or was supposed to be so; and whether
it was a consequence of or a preliminary to their affections, Lady Mary
wished to know the classics also.
Bishop Burnet was so kind as to superintend the singular studies—for
such they were clearly thought—of this aristocratic young lady; and the
translation of the _Enchiridion_ of Epictetus, which he revised, is
printed in this edition of her works. But even so grave an undertaking
could not wholly withdraw her from more congenial pursuits. She commenced
a correspondence with Miss Wortley, Mr. Wortley’s unmarried sister,
which still remains, though Miss Wortley’s letters are hardly to be
called hers, for her brother composed, and she merely copied them. The
correspondence is scarcely in the sort of English or in the tone which
young ladies, we understand, now use.
‘It is as impossible,’ says Miss Wortley, ‘for my dearest
Lady Mary to utter thought that can seem dull as to put on a
look that is not beautiful. Want of wit is a fault that those
who envy you most would not be able to find in your kind
compliments. To me they seem perfect, since repeated assurances
of your kindness forbid me to question their sincerity. You
have often found that the most angry, nay, the most neglectful
air you can assume, has made as deep a wound as the kindest;
and these lines of yours, that you tax with dulness (perhaps
because they were writ when you was not in a right humour,
or when your thoughts were elsewhere employed), are so far
from deserving the imputation, that the very turn of your
expression, had I forgot the rest of your charms, would be
sufficient to make me lament the only fault you have—your
inconstancy.’
To which the reply is:
‘I am infinitely obliged to you, my dear Mrs. Wortley, for the
wit, beauty, and other fine qualities, you so generously bestow
upon me. Next to receiving them from Heaven, you are the person
from whom I would choose to receive gifts and graces: I am very
well satisfied to owe them to your own delicacy of imagination,
which represents to you the idea of a fine lady, and you have
good nature enough to fancy I am she. All this is mighty well,
but you do not stop there; imagination is boundless. After
giving me imaginary wit and beauty, you give me imaginary
passions, and you tell me I’m in love: if I am, ’tis a perfect
sin of ignorance, for I don’t so much as know the man’s name:
I have been studying these three hours, and cannot guess who
you mean. I passed the days of Nottingham races [at] Thoresby
without seeing, or even wishing to see, one of the sex. Now,
if I am in love, I have very hard fortune to conceal it so
industriously from my own knowledge, and yet discover it so
much to other people. ’Tis against all form to have such a
passion as that, without giving one sigh for the matter. Pray
tell me the name of him I love, that I may (according to
the laudable custom of lovers) sigh to the woods and groves
hereabouts, and teach it to the echo.’
After some time Miss Wortley unfortunately died, and there was an obvious
difficulty in continuing the correspondence without the aid of an
appropriate sisterly screen. Mr. Wortley seems to have been tranquil and
condescending; perhaps he thought placid tactics would be most effective,
for Lady Mary was not so calm. He sent her some _Tatlers_, and received,
by way of thanks, the following tolerably encouraging letter:
‘_To Mr. Wortley Montagu._