[AFTER THE MANNER OF THE "NATION."]
Milton's Paradise Lost.--The demand for a new edition of this cumbrous
piece of blank verse, proves what we have often said, that the want, in
CROMWELLS time, of a literary journal of the character of the Nation has
had a permanent effect upon literature. Had we been in existence when
that obstinate and pedantic old Puritan wrote, we might have suppressed
him. Still, there is no knowing what women and children will not read.
While MILTON'S lines certainly measure generally about the same length,
it is preposterous to call by the name of poetry what could be written
in prose with so little modification. It is true that the same objection
might be applied to HOMER and SHAKSPEARE. The former has the advantage
of being written in Greek, so that very few people can read it.
SHAKSPEARE has a popularity that is partly accounted for by the low
taste of the people who have gone to the theatre to hear SIDDONS rave
and GARRICK declaim, or who will persist in admiring MACREADY and BOOTH.
As to MILTON, we have detected, with the aid of foot-notes to an old
edition, a multitude of the most absolute plagiarisms from various
authors. From the Bible mainly, and also from the Greek and Latin poets,
he has taken nearly all his ideas; and every one of the words he uses
are to be found in the dictionary. Talk of originality, after that! His
conceptions also are sometimes absurd; for instance, the Address to
Light. No one, who has not been stultified by theological nebulosities,
ought to fail to know, as we knew when we first began to go to school,
that a blind man cannot see anything at all. Therefore it is an insult
to the understanding, and paltering with all the rational inductions of
modern science, for an educated writer, stone blind, to say a word about
light.
In fact, the whole plot of the poem flies in the face of the cultivation
of the Nineteenth Century. Such ideas as Paradise, Adam and Eve, and
angels, are getting obsolete. While it is not to be expected that
ordinary persons should have the intelligence or learning of the Editor
and contributors of the Nation, we yet wonder that they are not always
ready to abide by the instruction we are prepared to give them, at the
small price of five dollars a year. Subscriptions received at this
office.
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