The harangue of Satan to his legions by the Saxon monk cannot fail to
remind us of the first grand scene in the "Paradise Lost," however
these creations of the two poets be distinct. "The swart hell--a land
void of light, and full of flame," is like Milton's--
----yet from these flames
No light, but rather darkness visible.
The locality is not unlike, "There they have at even, immeasurably long,
each of all the fiends a renewal of fire, with sulphur charged; but
cometh ere dawn the eastern wind frost, bitter-cold, ever fire or dart."
This torment we find in the hell of Milton--
The bitter change
Of fierce extremes, extremes by change more fierce,
From beds of raging _fire_ to starve in _ice_.
The parching air
_Burns frore_, and _cold performs the effect of fire_.[6]
The "Inferno" of Dante has also "its eternal darkness for the dwellers
in fierce _heat_ and in _ice_."[7] It is evident that the Saxon, the
Italian, and the Briton had drawn from the same source. The Satan of
Caedmon in "the torture-house" is represented as in "the dungeon of
perdition." He lies in chains, his feet bound, his hands manacled, his
neck fastened by iron bonds; Satan and his crew the monk has degraded
into Saxon convicts. Milton indeed has his
Adamantine chains and penal fire,
and
A dungeon horrible on all sides round.
But as Satan was to be the great actor, Milton was soon compelled to
find some excuse for freeing the evil spirit from the chains which
Heaven had forged, and this he does--
Chain'd on the burning lake, _nor ever thence
Had ris'n or heaved his head, but that the will
And high permission of all-ruling Heaven
Left him at large to his own dark designs_,
That with reiterated crimes he might
Heap on himself damnation, while he sought
Evil to others.
The Saxon monk had not the dexterity to elude the difficult position in
which the arch-fiend was for ever fixed; he was indissolubly chained,
and yet much was required to be done. It is not, therefore, Satan
himself who goes on the subdolous design of wreaking his revenge on the
innocent pair in Paradise; for this he despatches one of his associates,
who is thus described: "Prompt in arms, he had a crafty soul; this chief
set his helmet on his head; he many speeches knew of guileful words:
wheeled up from thence, he _departed through the doors of hell_." We are
reminded of
The infernal doors, that on their hinges grate
Harsh thunder.
The emissary of Satan in Caedmon had "a strong mind, lion-like in air,
_in hostile mood he dashed the fire aside with a fiend's power_."[8]
That demon flings aside the flames of hell with the bravery of his
sovereign, as we see in Milton--
Forthwith upright he rears from off the pool
His mighty stature; _on each hand the flames
Driv'n backward, slope their pointing spires, and roll'd
In billows_, leave in the midst a horrid vale.[9]
Caedmon thus represents Satan:--"Then spoke the haughty king, who of
angels erst was _brightest, fairest in heaven_--beloved of his
master--_so beauteous was his form_, he was like to the light stars."
Milton's conception of the form of Satan is the same.
His form had not yet lost
All her _original brightness_, nor appear'd
Less than archangel ruin'd.[10]
And,
His countenance as the _morning star_ that guides
The starry flock, allured them.[11]
Literary curiosity may be justly excited to account for these apparent
resemblances, and to learn whether similarity and coincidence
necessarily prove identity and imitation; and whether, finally, Caedmon
was ever known to Milton.
The Caedmonian manuscript is as peculiar in its history as its subject.
This poem, which we are told fixed the attention of our ancestors "from
the sixth to the twelfth century," and the genius of whose writer was
"stamped deeply and lastingly upon the literature of our country,"[12]
had wholly disappeared from any visible existence. It was accidentally
discovered only in a single manuscript, the gift of Archbishop Usher to
the learned Francis JUNIUS. During thirty years of this eminent
scholar's residence in England, including his occasional visits to
Holland and Friesland, to recover, by the study of the Friesic living
dialect, the extinct Anglo-Saxon, he devoted his protracted life to the
investigation of the origin of the Gothic dialects. A Saxon poem,
considerable for its size and for its theme, in a genuine manuscript,
was for our northern student a most precious acquisition; and that this
solitary manuscript should not he liable to accidents, Junius printed
the original at Amsterdam in 1655, unaccompanied by any translation or
by any notes.
We must now have recourse to a few dates.
Milton had fallen blind in 1654. The poet began "Paradise Lost" about
1658; the composition occupied three years, but the publication was
delayed till 1667.
If Milton had any knowledge of Caedmon, it could only have been in the
solitary and treasured manuscript of Junius. To have granted even the
loan of the only original the world possessed, we may surmise that
Junius would not have slept through all the nights of its absence. And
if the Saxon manuscript was ever in the hands of Milton, could our poet
have read it?
We have every reason to believe that Milton did not read Saxon. At that
day who did? There were not "ten men to save the city." In Milton's
"History of England," a loose and solitary reference to the Saxon
Chronicle, then untranslated, was probably found ready at hand; for all
his Saxon annals are drawn from the Latin monkish authorities: and in
that wonderful list of one hundred dramatic subjects which the poet had
set down for the future themes of his muse, there are many on Saxon
stories; but all the references are to Speed and Hollinshed. The nephew
of the poet has enumerated all the languages in which Milton was
conversant--"the Hebrew, (and I think the Syriac,) the Greek, the
Latin, the Italian, the Spanish, and French." We find no allusion to any
of the northern tongues, which that votary of classical antiquity and of
Ausonian melody and fancy would deem--can we doubt it?--dissonant and
barbarous. The Northern Scalds were yet as little known as our own
Saxons. A recent discovery that Milton once was desirous of reading
Dutch may possibly be alleged by the Saxonists as an approach to the
study of the Saxon; but at that time Milton was in office as "the
Secretary for Foreign Tongues," and in a busy intercourse with the
Hollanders.[13]
"Secretary Milton" at that moment was probably anxious to con the
phrases of a Dutch state-paper, to scrutinise into the temper of their
style. Had Milton ever acquired the Dutch idiom for literary purposes,
to study Vondel, the Batavian Shakspeare,[14] from whom some foreigners
imagine our poet might have drawn his "Lucifer," it could not have
escaped the nephew in the enumeration of his uncle's philological
acquirements. But even to read Dutch was not to read a Saxon manuscript,
whose strange characters, uncouth abbreviations, and difficult
constructions, are only mastered by long practice. To have known
anything about the solitary Caedmon, the poet must have been wholly
indebted to the friendly offices of its guardian; a personal intimacy
which does not appear. The improbability that this scholar translated
the manuscript phrase by phrase is nearly as great as the supposition
that the poet could have retained ideas and expressions to be reproduced
in that epic poem, which was not commenced till several years after.
The personal habits of Junius were somewhat peculiar; to his last days
he was unrelentingly busied in pursuits of philology, of which, he has
left to the Bodleian such monuments of his gigantic industry. Junius was
such a rigid economist of time, that every hour was allotted to its
separate work; each day was the repetition of the former, and on a
system he avoided all visitors. Such a man could not have submitted to
the reckless loss of many a golden day, in hammering at the obscure
sense of the Saxon monk, which the critics find by his own printed text
he could not always master; nor is it more likely that Milton himself
could have sustained his poetic excitement through the tedious progress
of a verbal or cursory paraphrase of Scripture history by this Gothic
bard. At that day even Junius could not have discovered those "elastic
rhythms," which solicit the ear of a more modern Saxon scholar in his
studies of Caedmon,[15] but which we entirely owe to the skill, and
punctuation, and accentuation of the recent editor, Mr. Thorpe.
Be it also observed, that Milton published his "Paradise Lost" in the
lifetime of Junius, the only judge who could have convicted the bard who
had daringly proposed
-----------to pursue
Things unattempted yet in prose or rhyme--
of concealing what he had silently appropriated.
There are so many probabilities against the single possibility of Milton
having had any knowledge of Caedmon, that we must decide by the numerical
force of our own suggestions.
The startling similarities which have led away critical judgments, if
calmly scrutinised, may be found to be those apparent resemblances or
coincidences which poets drawing from the same source would fall into.
There is a French mystery of "The Conception," where the scene is hell;
Lucifer appeals to its inmates in a long address. This Satan of "The
Conception" strikingly reminds us of the Prince of Darkness of Milton,
and indeed has many creative touches; and had it been written after the
work of Milton, it might have seemed a parody.[16]
Similarity and coincidence do not necessarily prove identity and
imitation. Nor is the singular theme of "the Rebellion of the Angels"
peculiar to either poet, since those who never heard of the Saxon monk
have constructed whole poems and dramas on the celestial revolt.[17]
We may be little interested to learn, among all the dubious inquiries of
"the origin of 'Paradise Lost,'" whether a vast poem, the most elaborate
in its parts, and the most perfect in its completion--a work, in the
words of the great artist--
------who knows how long
Before had been contriving?--P. L., ix. 138.
was or could be derived from any obscure source. The interval between
excellence and mediocrity removes all connexion; it is that between
incurable impotence and genial creation. A great poet can never be
essentially indebted even to his prototype.
If we may still be interested in watching the primitive vigour of the
self-taught, compared with the intellectual ideal of the poetical
character, we must not allow ourselves, as might be shown in one of the
critics of the Saxon school, to mistake nature in her first poverty,
bare, meagre, squalid, for the moulded nudity of the Graces. The nature
of Ennius was no more the nature of Virgil than the nature of Caedmon was
that of Milton, for what is obvious and familiar is the reverse of the
beautiful and the sublime. We have seen the ideal being,
Whose stature reach'd the sky, and on his crest
Sat Horror plumed--
by the Saxon monk sunk down to a Saxon convict, "fastened by the neck,
his hands manacled, and his feet bound."
Caedmon represents Eve, after having plucked the fruit, hastening to Adam
with the apples,--
Some in her hands she bare,
Some in her bosom lay,
Of the unblest fruit.
However natural or downright may be this specification, it is what could
not have occurred with "the bosom" of our naked mother of mankind, and
the artistical conception eluded the difficulty of carrying these
apples--
------------from the tree returning, in her hand
_A bough of fairest fruit_.--ix. 850.
In Caedmon, it costs Eve a long day to persuade the sturdy Adam, an
honest Saxon, to "the dark deed;" and her prudential argument that "it
were best to obey the pretended messenger of the Lord than risk his
aversion," however natural, is very crafty for so young a sinner. In
Milton we find the Ideal, and before Eve speaks one may be certain of
Adam's fall--for
----------in her face excuse
Came prologue, and apology too prompt,
Which with bland words at will, she thus address'd.
A description too metaphysical for the meagre invention of the old Saxon
monk!
We dare not place "the Milton of our forefathers" by the side of the
only Milton whom the world will recognise. We would not compare our
Saxon poetry to Saxon art, for that was too deplorable; but, to place
Caedmon in a parallel with Milton, which Plutarch might have done, for he
was not very nice in his resemblances, we might as well compare the
formless forms and the puerile inventions of the rude Saxon artist,
profusely exhibited in the drawings of the original manuscript of
Caedmon,[18] with the noble conceptions and the immortal designs of the
Sistine Chapel.