MILTON’S HEROIC PROSE
There are many who have wished that Milton were living at this hour,
but not all have taken into account the fact that his great polemical
writings demand an heroic kind of attention which modern education does
not discipline the majority of our citizens to give. Even in the last
century W. E. Channing was moved to lament “the fastidiousness and
effeminacy of modern readers” when faced with Milton’s prose writings.
He went on to say, in a passage which may serve to introduce our topic,
“To be universally intelligible is not the highest merit. A great mind
cannot, without injurious constraint, shrink itself to the grasp of
common passive readers.” It is wrong therefore to expect it to sacrifice
great qualities “that the multitude may keep pace with it.”[128]
The situation which gave rise to Channing’s complaint has grown
measurably worse by our day, when the common passive reader determines
the level of most publications. The mere pursuance of Milton’s meaning
requires an enforcement of attention, and the perception of his judgments
requires an active sensibility incompatible with a state of relaxation.
There is nothing in Milton for the reader who must be put at ease and
treated only to the quickly apprehensible. But along with this turning
away from the difficult, there is another cause at work, a feeling,
quite truly grounded, that Milton’s very arduousness of spirit calls for
elevation on the part of the reader. Milton assumes an heroic stance, and
he demands a similar stance of those who would meet him. An age which
has come to suspect this as evidence of aristocratic tendency will then
avoid Milton also for a moral reason, preferring, even when it agrees
with him, to have the case stated in more plebeian fashion. Therefore
the reading of Milton is more than a problem in communication; it is a
problem also of gaining insight, or even of developing sympathy with the
aristocratic intellectualism which breathes through all he wrote.
It can be shown that all of the features which make up Milton’s arduous
style proceed from three or four sources. The first of these is the
primacy of the concept. What this primacy signifies is that in his prose
Milton wrote primarily as a thinker and not as an artificer. That is
to say, his units of composition are built upon concepts and not upon
conventionalized expository patterns. For him the linguistic sentence was
a means, to be expanded and shaped as the driving force of the thought
required. Or perhaps it would be more meaningful to say that for him the
sentence was an accommodation-form. He will put into it as much or as
little as he needs, and often, as we shall see presently, he needed a
great deal. This use of the sentence as an accommodation-form produces
what is perhaps the most obvious feature of his style, the long period.
What length must a sentence have to be called “long”? Of course our usual
standard is the sentence we are accustomed to, and in present-day writing
that sentence will run 20-30 words, to cite an average range for serious
writing. Milton’s sentences very frequently run 60-80 words, and many
will exceed 100, the length of an average paragraph today.[129]
To examine Milton’s method with the lengthy period, we may well begin
with the second sentence of _Of Reformation in England_, an outstanding
specimen of 373 words.
Sad it is to think how that doctrine of the gospel, planted by
teachers divinely inspired, and by them winnowed and sifted
from the chaff of overdated ceremonies, and refined to such a
spiritual height and temper of purity, and knowledge of the
Creator, that the body, with all the circumstances of time
and place, were purified by the affections of the regenerate
soul, and nothing left impure but sin; faith needing not the
weak and fallible office of the senses, to be either the
ushers or interpreters of heavenly mysteries, save where our
Lord himself in his sacraments ordained; that such a doctrine
should, through the grossness and blindness of her professors,
and the fraud of deceivable traditions, drag so downwards, as
to backslide into the Jewish beggary of old cast rudiments,
and stumble forward another way into the new-vomited paganism
of sensual idolatry, attributing purity or impurity to things
indifferent, that they might bring the inward acts of the
spirit to the outward and customary eye-service of the body,
as if they could make God earthly and fleshly, because they
could not make themselves heavenly and spiritual; they began to
draw down all the divine intercourse between God and the soul,
yea, the very shape of God himself, into an exterior and bodily
form, urgently pretending a necessity and obligement of joining
the body in a formal reverence, and worship circumscribed; they
hallowed it, they fumed it, they sprinkled it, they bedecked
it, not in robes of pure innocency, but of pure linen, with
other deformed and fantastic dresses, in palls and mitres,
gold and gewgaws fetched from Aaron’s old wardrobe, or the
flamins vestry: then was the priest set to con his motions and
his postures, his liturgies and his lurries, till the soul by
this means of overbodying herself, given up justly to fleshly
delights, bated her wing apace downward: and finding the ease
she had from her visible and sensuous colleague the body, in
performance of religious duties, her pinions now broken, and
flagging, shifted off from herself the labor of high soaring
any more, forgot her heavenly flight, and left the dull and
droiling carcase to plod in the old road, and drudging trade of
outward conformity.[130]
With reference to accommodation, let us attend to the scope of this
sentence. It contains nothing less than a history of Christianity
from the Protestant reformer’s point of view. Four stages are given
in this history: the early revelation of true Christianity; its later
misinterpretation through the “grossness and blindness” of its followers;
the growth of institutionalism; and finally the atrophy of true religion
produced by undue attention to outward circumstance. It is, as we see,
a complete narration, dressed out with many illuminating details. We
shall discover that Milton habitually prolongs a sentence thus until it
has covered the unit of its subject. He feels no compulsion to close the
period out of regard for some established norm, since he has his eye on
a different criterion of completeness. In line with the same practice,
some of his sentences are so fitted that they contain complete arguments,
or even an argument preceded by its expository narration. As an example
of the sentence containing a unit of argument, we may note the following
from _The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce_.
_And yet there follows upon this a worse temptation: for if he be such
as hath spent his youth unblameably, and laid up his chiefest earthly
comforts in the enjoyments of a contented marriage, nor did neglect that
furtherance which was to be obtained therein by constant prayers; when he
shall find himself bound fast to an uncomplying discord of nature, or, as
it often happens, to an image of earth and phlegm, with whom he looked
to be the copartner of a sweet and gladsome society, and sees withal
that his bondage is now inevitable; though he be almost the strongest
Christian, he will be ready to despair in virtue, and mutiny against
Divine Providence; and this doubtless is the reason of those lapses, and
that melancholy despair, which we see in many wedded persons, though
they understand it not, or pretend other causes, because they know no
remedy; and is of extreme danger: therefore when human frailty surcharged
is at such a loss, charity ought to venture much, lest an overtossed
faith endanger to shipwreck.[131]_ This sentence contains a complete
hypothetical syllogism, which can be abstracted as follows:
If the rigidity of the marriage relationship is not relaxed by
charity, Christians will despair of finding their solace in
that relationship.
The rigidity of the marriage relationship is not at present
relaxed by charity.
Christians do despair of finding solace within that
relationship (as shown by “those lapses and that melancholy
despair, which we see in many wedded persons”).
Thus the argument prescribes the content of the sentence and marshals it.
Let us look next at a specimen from the _Areopagitica_ embodying not only
the full syllogism but also a preparatory exposition.
When a man writes to the world, he summons up all his reason
and deliberation to assist him; he searches, meditates, is
industrious, and likely consults and confers with his judicious
friends; after all which done, he takes himself to be informed
in what he writes, as well as any that writ before him; if
in this most consummate act of his fidelity and ripeness, no
years, no industry, no former proof of his abilities can bring
him to that state of maturity, as not to be still mistrusted
and suspected, unless he carry all his considerate diligence,
all his midnight watchings, and expense of Palladian oil, to
the hasty view of an unleisured licenser, perhaps much his
younger, perhaps far his inferior in judgment, perhaps one who
never knew the labor of bookwriting; and if he be not repulsed,
or slighted, must appear in print like a puny with his
guardian, and his censor’s hand on the back of his title to be
his bail and surety, that he is no idiot or seducer; it cannot
be but a dishonor and derogation the author, to the book, to
the privilege and dignity of learning.[132]
In this utterance of 197 words, every detail pertains to the one concept
of the responsibility and dignity of learning; yet closer inspection
reveals that a two-part structure is accommodated. First there is the
“narration,” a regular part of the classical oration, here setting forth
the industry and conscientiousness of authors. This is followed by a
hypothetical argument saying, in effect, that if all these guarantees
of sober and honest performance are not enough to entitle authors to
liberty, there can be no respect for learning or learned men in the
commonwealth. Thus the sentence is prolonged, one might say, until
the speech is made, and the speech is not a series of loosely related
assertions but a structure defined by standard principles of logic and
rhetoric.
Apart from mere length, which as Whatley and other writers on style
observe, imposes a burden upon the memory too great to be expected of
everyone, there is in the longer Miltonic sentence the additional tax of
complexity. Of course Milton was somewhat influenced by Latin grammar,
but here we are less interested in measuring literary influences than in
analyzing the reading problem which he presents in our day. That problem
is created largely by his intricate elaboration within the long period.
For an especially apt illustration of this I should like to return to _Of
Reformation in England_ and follow the sentence which introduces that
work.
Amidst those deep and retired thoughts, which, with every man
Christianly instructed, ought to be most frequent, of God and
of his miraculous ways and works among men, and of our religion
and works, to be performed to him; after the story of our
Saviour Christ, suffering to the lowest bent of weakness in the
flesh, and presently triumphing to the highest pitch of glory
in the spirit, which drew up his body also; till we in both be
united to him in the revelation of his kingdom, I do not know
of anything more worthy to take up the whole passion of pity
on the one side, and joy on the other, than to consider first
the foul and sudden corruption, and then, after many a tedious
age, the long deferred, but much more wonderful and happy
reformation of the church in these latter days.[133]
It will be agreed, I feel, that the following features require a more
than ordinary effort of attention and memory: (1) The rhetorical
interruptions, whereby _which_ is separated from its verb _ought to be_,
and _thoughts_ is separated from its prepositional modifier _of God
and of his miraculous works and ways among men_.—(2) The progressive
particularization of _our Saviour Christ_, wherein the substantive is
modified by two participial constructions, _suffering to the lowest
bent of weakness in the flesh_ and _triumphing to the highest pitch
of glory in the spirit_; wherein again the substantive _spirit_ takes
a modifier in the clause _which drew up his body also_, and the verb
_drew up_ of the clause is qualified by the adverbial clause _till we in
both be united to him in the revelation of his kingdom_. This is a type
of elaboration in which, as the account unfolds, each detail seems to
require a gloss, which is offered in a construction of some weight or
length.—(3) The extensive parallelism of the last part, beginning with
_the whole passion of pity on the one side_.—(4) The suspended structure
which withholds the topic phrase of the tract, _happy reformation of the
church_, until almost the end of the sentence.
All of these qualities of length, scope, and complexity made the Miltonic
sentence a formidable construction, and we are curious to know why he
was able to use it with public success. The first circumstance we must
take into account is that he lived in a tough-minded period of Western
culture. It was a time when the foundations of the state were being
searched out; when the relationship between religion and political
authority was being re-defined, to the disregard of old customs; and
when sermons were powerful arguments, beginning with first principles
and moving down through a long chain of deductions. It was a time in
which every thinking man virtually had to be either a revolutionary or
a counter-revolutionary; and there is something in such intellectual
climate which scorns prettification and mincing measure. The public
therefore met Milton’s impassioned interest with an equal passion. But by
public we do not mean here the half-educated masses of today; Milton’s
public was rather a sternly educated minority, which had been taught to
recognize an argument when it saw one, and even to analyze its source.
Further evidence of the absorbing interest in the argumentative burden
of prose expression may be seen in the way he employs the extended
metaphor. Milton grew up in the age of the metaphysical conceit. We
now understand that for Elizabethans and Jacobeans a metaphor went far
beyond mere ornamentation to enter into the very heart of a predication.
Rosemund Tuve in particular has shown that for the poets of the period an
image was an argument, so understood and so used.[134] We would hardly
expect it to be any less so in prose. When Milton brings in a metaphor,
he makes full use of its probative value, and this involved, along with
confidence in the architectonic power of the image, a belief that it
affirmed something about the case in point. Thus the metaphor was not
idle or decorative merely, and it dominated the passage to the eclipse of
sentence units. This will explain why, when Milton begins a metaphor, he
will scarcely abandon it until the last appropriate application has been
made and the similitude established beyond reasonable question.
The _Areopagitica_ teems with brilliant extended figures, of which two
will be cited. Here is an image of truth, carried through three sentences.
Truth indeed came once into the world with her divine master,
and was a perfect shape most glorious to look on: but when he
had ascended, and his apostles after him were laid asleep,
then straight arose a wicked race of deceivers, who, as that
story goes of the Egyptian Typhon with his conspirators, how
they dealt with the good Osiris, took the virgin Truth, hewed
her lovely form into a thousand pieces, and scattered them to
the four winds. From that time ever since, the sad friends
of Truth, such as durst appear, imitating the careful search
that Isis made after the body of Osiris, went up and down
gathering limb by limb still as they could find them. We have
not found them all, lords and commons, nor ever shall do, till
her master’s second coming; he shall bring together every
joint and member, and shall mold them into an immortal feature
of loveliness and perfection. Suffer not these licensing
prohibitions to stand at every place of opportunity forbidding
and disturbing them that continue seeking, that continue to do
our obsequies to the torn body of our martyred saint.[135]
And here is Milton’s defense of the intellectually free community,
rendered in a military metaphor.
First, when a city shall be as it were besieged and blocked
about, her navigable river infested, inroads and incursions
round, defiance and battle oft rumored to be marching up,
even to her walls and suburb trenches; that then the people,
or the greater part, more than at other times, wholly taken
up with the study of highest and most important matters to be
reformed, should be disputing, reasoning, reading, inventing,
discoursing, even to a rarity and admiration, things not before
discoursed or written of, argues first a singular good will,
contentedness, and confidence in your prudent foresight, and
safe government, lords and commons; and from thence derives
itself to a gallant bravery and well grounded contempt of
their enemies, as if there were no small number of as great
spirits among us, as was his who, when Rome was nigh besieged
by Hannibal, being in the city, bought that piece of ground
at no cheap rate, whereupon Hannibal himself encamped his own
regiment.[136]
Milton’s concept of church government according to Scripture is thus
presented in _The Reason of Church Government Urged Against Prelaty_:
Did God take such delight in measuring out the pillars,
arches, and doors of a material temple? Was he so punctual and
circumspect in lavers, altars and sacrifices soon after to be
abrogated, lest any of these should have been made contrary to
his mind? Is not a far more perfect work, more agreeable to his
perfections, in the most perfect state of the church militant,
the new alliance to God to man? Should not he rather now by his
own prescribed discipline have cast his line and level upon the
soul of man, which is his rational temple, and, by the divine
square and compass thereof, form and regenerate in us the
lovely shapes of virtues and graces, the sooner to edify and
accomplish that immortal stature of Christ’s body, which is his
church, in all her glorious lineaments and proportions?[137]
What we are especially called upon to note in these examples is the
boldness of figuration, by which the concept survives the pressure of
many, and sometimes rather concrete, tests of correspondence, as the
analogy enlarges. The author’s faith in the figure as an organizing
principle is likely evidence that he sees the world as form, the more
of which can be drawn out the better. To a later day, any figure
carried beyond modest length runs the danger of turning into an ironic
commentary upon its analogue, but to Milton, as to the seventeenth
century generally, it was a window to look through. Now quite literally
the conceit is a concept, and we have found it to be another organizing
medium of this intellectual prose, and a second proof that some texture
of thought precedes the mere linguistic expression, and holds itself
superior to it.
While the primacy of the concept is responsible for these formal features
of style, we must look elsewhere for the source of its vigor. Certainly
another reason that Milton is a taxing author to read is the restless
energy that permeates his substance. He never allows the reader to
remain inert, and this is because there were few things toward which
Milton himself was indifferent. One revelation of the active mind is
the zeal and completeness with which it sorts things according to some
scale of values; and judged by that standard Milton’s mind is active
in the extreme. To approach this a little more systematically, what
one discovers with one’s first reading of the prose is that Milton
is constantly attentive to the degrees of things, and his range of
valuations, extending from those things which can be described only
through his elegant curses to those which require the language of
religious or poetic eulogy, is very great. Indeed, “things indifferent,”
to employ a phrase used by Milton himself, play a very small part in his
writing, which rather tends to be juridical in the highest measure. And
the vitality contributed by this awareness of difference he increased
by widening the gulf between the bad and the good. These contrarieties
are managed in various ways: sometimes they are made up of single nouns
of opposed meaning; sometimes of other parts of speech or of phrases;
but always it would take a dull reader to miss the opposed valuations.
A sentence from The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce will afford some
good examples.
Hence it is, that error supports custom, custom countenances
error: and these two between them would persecute and chase
away all truth and solid wisdom out of human life, were it not
that God, rather than man, once in many ages calls together
the prudent and religious counsels of men, deputed to repress
the encroachments, and to work off the inveterate blots and
obscurities wrought upon our minds by the subtle insinuating
of error and custom; who, with the numerous and vulgar train
of their followers, make it their chief design to envy and cry
down the industry of free reasoning, under the terms of humor
and innovation; as if the womb of teeming truth were to be
closed up, if she presume to bring forth aught that sorts not
with their unchewed notions and suppositions.[138]
The vigor of this passage arises from a continuing series of contrasts,
comprising the following: _error and custom_ with _truth and solid
wisdom; God_ with _man_; _prudent and religious counsels_ with
_encroachments_ and also with _inveterate blots and obscurities; subtle
insinuating of error and custom_ with _industry of free reasoning_; and
_womb of teeming truth_ with _unchewed notions and suppositions_.
Here is another passage, from _Of Reformation in England_.
So that in this manner the prelates, both then and ever since,
coming from a mean and plebeian life on a sudden to be lords of
stately palaces, rich furniture, delicious fare, and princely
attendance, thought the plain and homespun verity of Christ’s
gospel unfit any longer to hold their lordships’ acquaintance,
unless the poor threadbare matron were put into better clothes;
her chaste and modest vail, surrounded with celestial beams,
they overlaid with wanton tresses, and in a staring tire
bespeckled her with all the gaudy allurements of a whore.[139]
In this the clash is between _plebeian life_ and _stately palaces_,
_rich furniture_, etc.; _homespun verity_ and _lordship’s acquaintance_;
_threadbare matron_ and _better clothes_; _chaste and modest vail_ and
_wanton tresses_, _staring tire_, and _gaudy allurements of a whore_.
Lastly I should like to take a sentence from the same work, which has
been admired by Aldous Huxley for its energy.
Thus then did the spirit of unity and meekness inspire and
animate every joint and sinew of the mystical body; but now
the gravest and worthiest minister, a true bishop of his
fold, shall be reviled and ruffled by an insulting and only
canon-wise prelate, as if he were some slight paltry companion:
and the people of God, redeemed and washed with Christ’s blood,
and dignified with so many glorious titles of saints and sons
in the gospel, are now no better reputed than impure ethnics
and lay dogs; stones, pillars, and crucifixes, have now the
honour and the alms due to Christ’s living members; the table
of communion, now become a table of separation, stands like
an exalted platform on the brow of the quire, fortified with
bulwark and barricado, to keep off the profane touch of the
laics, whilst the obscene and surfeited priest scruples not
to paw and mammock the sacramental bread as familiarly as his
tavern biscuit.[140]
In this typical specimen of Milton’s vehemence, _gravest and worthiest
minister, a true bishop_ contrasts with _insulting and only canon-wise
prelate_ and with _slight paltry companion_; _the people of God, redeemed
and washed with Christ’s blood, and dignified with so many glorious
titles of saints and sons in the gospel_ with _impure ethnics_ and _lay
dogs_; _stones, pillars, and crucifixes_ with _Christ’s living members_;
_communion_ with _separation_; _fortified with bulwark and barricado_
with the earlier _unity and meekness_; _obscene_, _surfeited_, _paw_, and
_mammock_ with _priest_; and _sacramental bread_ with _tavern biscuit_.
The effect of such sustained contrast is to produce a high degree of
tonicity, and here in a word is why Milton’s prose seems never relaxed.
His pervading consciousness of the combat of good and evil caused him to
engage in constant projections of that combat. In a manner of speaking,
Milton always writes from a “prejudice,” which proves to be on inspection
his conviction as a Christian and as a political and moral preacher,
that, as the good has been judged, the duty of a publicist is to show
it separated with the utmost clearness of distinction from the bad.
Accordingly Milton’s expositions, if one follows them intently, cause one
to accept one thing and reprobate another unceasingly.
In consequence there appears in many passages a quality of style which
I shall call the superlative mode. His very reaching out toward the two
extremes of a gauge of value drives him to couch expression in terms
raised to their highest degree. Often we see this in the superlative
form of the adjective. But we see it also in his employment of words
which even in their grammatically positive forms have acquired a kind
of superlative sense. Finally we see it on occasion in a pattern
of incremental repetition which he uses to impress us with his most
impassioned thoughts. The wonderful closing prayer from _Of Reformation
in England_ contains examples of all of these superlatives. Here are the
closing paragraphs.
And now we know, O thou our most certain hope and defence,
that thine enemies have been consulting all the sorceries of
the great whore, and have joined their plots with that sad
intelligencing tyrant that mischiefs the world with his mines
of Ophir, and lies thirsting to revenge his naval ruins that
have larded our seas: but let them all take counsel together,
and let it come to nought; let them decree, and do thou cancel
it; let them gather themselves, and be scattered; let them
embattle themselves, and be broken, for thou art with us.
Then, amidst the hymns and hallelujahs of saints, some one
may perhaps be heard offering at high strains in new and
lofty measures, to sing and celebrate thy divine mercies and
marvellous judgments in this land throughout all ages; whereby
this great and warlike nation, instructed and inured to the
fervent and continual practice of truth and righteousness,
and casting far from her the rags of her old vices, may
press on hard to that high and happy emulation to be found
the soberest, wisest, and most Christian people at that day,
when thou, the eternal and shortly-expected King, shalt open
the clouds to judge the several kingdoms of the world, and
distributing national honours and rewards to religious and
just commonwealths, shalt put an end to all earthly tyrannies,
proclaiming thy universal and mild monarchy through heaven and
earth; where they undoubtedly, that by their labors, counsels
and prayers, have been earnest for the common good of religion
and their country, shall receive above the inferior orders of
the blessed, the regal addition of principalities, legions,
and thrones into their glorious titles, and in supereminence
of beatific vision, progressing the dateless and irrevoluble
circle of eternity, shall clasp inseparable hands with joy and
bliss, in overmeasure, for ever.
But they contrary, that by the impairing and diminution of the
true faith, the distresses and servitude of their country,
aspire to high dignity, rule, and promotion here, after a
shameful end in this life (which God grant them), shall be
thrown down eternally into the darkest and deepest gulf of
hell, where under the despiteful control, the trample and spurn
of all the other damned, that in the anguish of their torture,
shall have no other ease than to exercise a raving and bestial
tyranny over them as their slaves and negroes, they shall
remain in that plight for ever, the basest, the lowermost,
the most dejected, most underfoot, and downtrodden vassals of
perdition.[141]
Let us mark the bristling superlatives. Of adjectives in superlative
form we find _most certain_, _soberest_, _wisest_, _most Christian_,
_darkest_, _deepest_, _basest_, _lowermost_, _most dejected_, _most
underfoot_, and _[most] downtrodden_. Of those words which have a
superlative force or meaning, I would list—allowing that this must be a
matter of judgment—_naught_, _cancel_, _broken_, _marvellous_, _fervent_,
_eternal_, _universal_, _undoubtedly_, _supereminence_, _beatific_,
_dateless_, _irrevoluble_, _eternity_, _inseparable_, _overmeasure_, _for
ever_, and _eternally_. But the most interesting form of the superlative
mode is the pattern of repetition by which Milton, through a progressive
accumulation of substantives and adjectives, builds up a crescendo.
First there will be one or more groups of two, then perhaps a group of
three, and finally, for the supreme effect, a breathtaking collocation of
five. Such a pattern appears in the concluding sentence of the prayer:
_impairing_ and _diminution_; _distresses_ and _servitude_; _dignity_,
_rule_, and _promotion_; _darkest_ and _deepest_; _control_, _trample_,
and _spurn_; _raving_ and _bestial_; _slaves_ and _negroes_; _basest_,
_lowermost_, _most dejected_, _most underfoot and downtrodden_. Here, it
will be noticed, the sequence is 2-2-3-2-3-2-2-5. The pattern in itself
is revealing. First there are two pairs which ready us for attaining the
group of three; then another pair to rest upon before we attain the group
of three again; then two more pairs for a longer respite while we ready
ourselves for the supreme effort of the group of five.
The prayer is not, of course, an ordinary passage; yet what is seen here
is discoverable in some measure in all of Milton’s prose. He wrote in
this superlative vein because his principal aim was the divorcement of
good and evil. To show these wide apart, he had to talk in terms of best
and worst, and being a rhetorician of vast resources, he found ways of
making the superlative even more eminent than our regular grammatical
forms make it, which naturally marks him as a great creative user of the
language.
The topic of grouping appropriately introduces another aspect of Milton’s
style which I shall refer to more specifically as systematic collocation.
No one can read him with the object of forming some descriptive image of
his prose without being impressed by his frequent use of pairs of words
similar in meaning to express a single object or idea. These pairs will
be comprised, in a roughly equal number of instances, of nouns and of
adjectives, though fairly often two verbs will make up the collocation
and occasionally two adverbs. It seems probable that these pairs, more
than any other single feature of the style, give the impression of
thickness, which is in turn the source of the impression of strength. Or
to present this in another way, what the pairs create is the effect of
dimension. It needs no proving at this stage that Milton had too well
stored a mind and too genuine a passion to coast along on mere fluency.
If he used two words where another author would use one, that fact
affords presumption that his second word had its margin of meaningful
addition to contribute. And so we find it: these pairs of substantives
give his prose a dimensional quality, because this one will show one
aspect of the thing named and that one another. It would require a rather
long list to include the variety of aspects which Milton will bring out
by his practice of double naming; sometimes it is in form and substance,
or the conceptual and the material nature of the thing; sometimes it is
appearance and meaning; sometimes process and tendency; sometimes one
modifier will express the active and another the passive nature of the
thing described. Always the practice causes his subject matter to convey
this sensation of depth and realness, which is a principal factor in the
vitality of his style.
We shall look at some examples of this highly interesting method. The
first is from the _Areopagitica_. I have italicized the pairs.
Methinks I see in my mind a _noble_ and _puissant_ nation
rousing herself like a strong man after a sleep, and shaking
her invincible locks: methinks I see her as an eagle mewing
her mighty youth, and kindling her undazzled eyes at the full
midday beam, _purging_ and _unscaling_ her long abused sight at
the fountain itself of heavenly radiance; while the whole noise
of _timorous_ and _flocking_ birds, with those also that love
the twilight, flutter about, amazed at what she means, and in
their envious gabble, would prognosticate a year of _sects_ and
_schisms_.[142]
_Noble_ and _puissant_ direct attention to ethical and to physical
attributes; _purging_ and _scaling_ do not form so complementary a
pair but perhaps denote two distinct phases of a process; _timorous_
and _flocking_ is an excellent pair to show inward nature and outward
behavior, and must be accounted one of the most successful uses of
the method; _sects_ and _schisms_ would seem to refer to social or
ecclesiastical and to theological aspects of division.
In a sentence from _Of Reformation in England_, he says: “But what do I
stand reckoning upon _advantages_ and _gains_ lost by the _misrule_ and
_turbulency_ of the prelates?”[143] _Advantages_ and _gains_ stand for
two sorts of progress made prior to the _misrule_ and _turbulency_ of the
prelates, which in turn signify the formal outward policies and the inner
spirit of ambition and presumption. From the _Doctrine and Discipline of
Divorce_: “The _ignorance_ and _mistake_ of this high point hath heaped
up one huge half of all the misery that hath been since Adam.”[144] Here
_ignorance_ would seem to describe a passive lack of awareness, whereas
_mistake_ describes active misapprehension or misapplication. Finally
here are examples from _Animadversions upon the Remonstrant’s Defence
Against Smectymnuus_.
We all know that in _private_ or _personal_ injuries, yea,
in public sufferings for the cause of Christ, his _rule_ and
_example_ teaches us to be so far from a readiness to speak
evil, as not to answer the reviler in his language, though
never so much provoked: yet in the _detecting_ and _convincing_
of any notorious enemy to _truth_ and his _country’s peace_,
especially that is conceited to have a _voluble_ and _smart_
fluence of tongue, and in the vain confidence of that, and out
of a more tenacious cling to worldly respects, stands up for
all the rest to justify a _long usurpation_ and _convicted
pseudepiscopy_ of prelates, with all their ceremonies,
liturgies and tyrannies, which _God_ and _man_ are now ready to
_explode_ and _hiss out of the land_: I suppose, and more than
suppose, it will be nothing disagreeing from Christian meekness
to handle such a one in a rougher accent, and to send home his
haughtiness well bespurted with his own holy water.[145]
Here _private_ and _personal_ may be taken as giving us two aspects of
the individual; _rule_ and _example_ differ as abstract and concrete;
_detecting_ and _convincing_ (the latter apparently in the older sense of
“overcoming”) denote two stages of a process; _truth_ and _his country’s
peace_ may be taken to express the metaphysical and the embodied forms
of the same thing; _voluble_ and _smart_ seem to refer to what is
perceivable by the senses and by the intellect respectively; _long
usurpation_ and _convicted pseudepiscopy_ differ as simple action and
action which has been judged: _God_ and _man_ bring together the divine
and the human; _explode_ and _hiss out of the land_ again express two
stages of a process.
In the manner here indicated, these collocations serve to give the style
a wonderful richness of thought. The reader feels that he is being shown
both the _esse_ and the _potesse_ of the object named. At least, he gets
a look at its manifold nature. The way in which Milton fills out the
subject for his reader is at once lavish and perspicuous. Just as his
figures were seen to have a prolonged correspondence, beyond what the
casual or unthinking writer would bring to view, so his substantives and
predicates are assembled upon a principle of penetration or depth of
description.
Our general impression of Milton—an impression we get in some degree
of all the great writers of his period and of the Elizabethan period
before it—is that his thought dominates the medium. While the distinction
between what is said and the form of saying it can never be drawn
absolutely, it is yet to be remarked that some writers seem to compose
with an awareness of how their matter will look upon the page, or how
it will sound in the parlor; others seem to keep their main attention
upon currently preferred terms and idioms. Again, some writers seem to
accept the risk of suspension, transposition, and involution out of
conscious elegance; Milton seems rather to require them out of strength
of purpose. He was not a writer of writing, but consistently a writer of
substance, and the language was his instrumentality, which he used with
the familiar boldness of a master. One would go far to find a better
illustration of the saying of John Peale Bishop that the English language
is like a woman; it is most likely to yield after one has shown it a
little violence. All of the great prose writers of the Elizabethan age
and the Seventeenth century were perfectly capable of showing it that
violence, and I believe this is the true reason that a lover of eloquence
today reacts their works with irrepressible admiration. The tremendous
suspensions and ramifications they were willing to create; their
readiness to make function the test of grammar and to coin according
to need, through all of which a rational, though not always a formal
or codified syntax survives—these things bespeak a sort of magisterial
attitude toward language which has been lost in the intervening centuries.
It is quite possible that long years of accumulated usage tend to act
as a deterrent to a free and imaginative use of language. So many
stereotypes have had time to form themselves, and so many manuals
of usage have been issued that the choice would seem to lie between
simple compliance and open rebellion. Either one uses the language as
the leaders of one’s social and business world use it, or one makes a
decisive break and uses it in open defiance of the conventionalized
patterns. We may remember in this connection that when the new movement
in modern literature got underway in the second decade of this century,
its leaders proved themselves the most defiant and brash kind of rebels
as they embarked upon the work of resuscitation and refurbishment, and
it was to the Elizabethans especially that they looked for sanction and
guidance. But the rebel with this program faces a dilemma: he cannot
infuse life into the old forms that he knows are depriving expression of
all vitality, and he exhausts himself in the campaign to smash and get
rid of them.
That is partly an historical observation, and our interest is in laying
bare the movement of a great eloquence. Yet if we had to answer whether
some heroic style like that of Milton cannot be formed for our own day,
when millions might rejoice to hear a sonorous voice speaking out of a
deep learning in our traditions, our answer would surely be, yes. And if
asked how, we would begin our counsel by telling the writer to heed the
advice in Emerson’s _American Scholar_—better indeed than Emerson heeded
it himself—to look upon himself not as a writer but as a man writing, and
to try to live in that character. As long as one does that, it is most
likely that the concept will dominate the medium, and that one will use,
with inventive freedom, such conventionality as is necessary to language.
A timid correctness, like perfect lucidity, sometimes shows that more
attention has been devoted to the form than to the thought, and this may
give the writing a kind of hard surface which impedes sympathy between
writer and reader. Finally, one should remember that people like to feel
they are hearing of the solid fact and substance of the world, and those
epithets which give us glimpses of its concreteness and contingency
are the best guarantors of that. The regular balancing of abstract and
concrete modifiers, which we meet regularly in Shakespeare, mirrors,
indeed, the situation all of us face in daily living, where general
principles are clear in theory but are conditioned in their application
to the concrete world. The man of eloquence must be a lover of “the
world’s body” to the extent of being able to give it a fond description.
With these conditions practically realized, we might again have orators
of the heroic mold. But the change would have to include the public also,
for, on a second thought suggested by Whitman, to have great orators
there must be great audiences too.