MILTON

It is outrageous, the way we modern world-children play with words.

How we are betrayed by words! How we betray with words! We

steal from one another and from the spirit of the hour; and with our

phrases and formulas and talismans we obliterate all distinction. One

sees the modern god as one who perpetually apologises and explains;

and the modern devil as one who perpetually apologises and

explains. Everything has its word-symbol, its word-mask, its

word-garment, its word-disgrace. Nothing comes out clear into the open,

unspeakable and inexplicable, and strikes us dumb!

That is what the great artists do--who laugh at our word-play. That is

what Milton does, who, in the science and art of handling words, has

never been equalled. Milton, indeed, remains, by a curious fate, the

only one of the very great poets who has never been "interpreted" or

"appreciated" or "re-created" by any critical modern. And they have

left him alone; have been frightened of him; have not dared to slime

their "words" over him, for the very reason that he is the supreme

artist in words! He is so great an artist that his creations detach

themselves from all dimness--from all such dimness as modern

"appreciation" loves--and stand out clear and cold and "unsympathetic";

to be bowed down before and worshipped, or left unapproached.

Milton is a man's poet. It would be a strange thing if women loved

him. Modern criticism is a half-tipsy Hermaphrodite, in love only

with what is on the point of turning into something else. Milton is

always himself. His works of art are always themselves. He and they

are made of the same marble, of the same metal. They are never

likely to change into anything else! Milton is, like all the greatest

artists, a man of action. He, so learned in words, in their history, in

their weight, in their origin, in their evocations; he, the scholar of

scholars, is a man, not of words, but of deeds. That is why the style

of Milton is a thing that you can touch with your outstretched

fingers. It has been hammered into shape by a hand that could grasp

a sword; it has been moulded into form by a brain that could

dominate a council-chamber. No wonder we word-maniacs fear to

approach him. He repels us; he holds us back; he hides his

work-shop from us; and his art smites us into silent hatred.

For Milton himself, though he is the artist of artists, art is not the

first thing. It is only the first thing with us because we are life's

slaves, and not its masters. Art is what we protect ourselves

with--from life. For us it is a religion and a drug. To Milton it was a

weapon and a plaything.

Milton was more interested in the struggle of ideas, in the struggle

of races, in the struggle of immortal principles, in the struggle of

gods, in the great creative struggle of life and death, than he was

interested in the exquisite cadences of words or their laborious

arrangement. A modern artist's heart's desire is to escape from the

world to some "happy valley" and there, sitting cross-legged, like a

Chinese Idol, between the myrtle-bushes and the Lotus, to make

beautiful things in detachment forever, one by one, with no pause or

pain. Milton's desire was to take the whole round world between his

hands, with all the races and nations who dwell upon it, and mould

_that,_ and nothing less, into the likeness of what he believed. And

in what did he believe, this Lord of Time and Space, this accomplice

of Jehovah? He believed in Himself. He had the unquestioning,

unphilosophical belief in himself which great men of action have;

which the Caesars, Alexanders and Napoleons have, and which

Shakespeare seems to have lacked.

Milton, though people have been misled into thinking of him as very

different from that, was, in reality, the incarnation of the

Nietzschean ideal. He was hard, he was cold, he was contemptuous,

he was "magnanimous," he "remembered his whip" when he went

with women, he loved war for its own sake, and he dwelt alone on

the top of the mountains. To Milton the world presented itself as a

place where the dominant power, and the dominant interest, was the

wrestling of will with will. Why need we always fuss ourselves

about logical _names_? Milton, in reality--in his temperament and

his mood--was just as convinced of _Will_ being the ultimate secret

as Schopenhauer or Nietzsche or Bergson or the modern Pragmatist.

Nothing seemed to him noble, or dramatic, or "true," that did not

imply the struggle to the death of opposing _wills_.

Milton, in reality, is less of a Christian than any European writer,

since the Gospel appeared. In his heart, like Nietzsche, he regarded

the binding into one volume of those "Two Testaments" an insult to

"the great style." He does, indeed, in a manner find a place for Christ,

but it is the place of one demigod among many other demi-gods; the

conqueror's place possibly, but still the place of one in a hierarchy,

not of one alone. It is absurd to quarrel with Milton's deification of

the Judaic Jehovah. Every man has his own God. The God he _has a

right to_. And the Jewish Jehovah, after all, is no mean figure. He,

like Milton, was a God of War. He, like Milton, found Will--human

and divine Will--the central cosmic fact. He, like Milton, regarded

Good and Evil, not as universal principles, but as arbitrary

_commands_, issued by eternal personal antagonists! It is one of the

absurd mistakes into which our conceptual and categorical minds so

easily fall--this tendency to eliminate Milton's Theology as mere

Puritanical convention, dull and uninteresting. Milton's Theology

was the most _personal creation_ that any great poet has ever dared

to launch upon--more personal even than the Theology of Milton's

favourite Greek poet, Euripides.

Milton's feeling for the more personal, more concrete aspects of

"God" goes entirely well with the rest of his philosophy. At heart he

was a savage Dualist, who lapsed occasionally into Pluralism. He

was, above all, an Individualist of the most extreme kind--an

Individualist so hard, so positive, so inflexible, that for him nothing

in the world really mattered except the clash of definite, clear-cut

Wills, contending against one another.

Milton is the least mystical, the least pantheistic, the least monistic,

of all writers. That magical sense of the brooding Over-Soul which

thrills us so in Goethe's poetry never touches his pages. The

Wordsworthian intimations of "something far more deeply

interfused" never crossed his sensibility; and, as far as he is

concerned, Plato might never have existed.

One feels, as one reads Milton, that his ultimate view of the universe

is a great chaotic battlefield, amid the confused elements of which

rise up the portentous figures of "Thrones, Dominations,

Principalities, and Powers," and in the struggle between these, the

most arbitrary, the most tyrannical, the most despotic, conquers the

rest, and, planting his creative Gonfalon further in the Abyss than

any, becomes "God"; the God whose personal and unrestrained

Caprice creates the Sun, the Moon and the Stars, out of Chaos; and

Man out of the dust of the Earth. Thus it is brought about that what

this God _wills_ is "Good," and what his strongest and most

formidable antagonist wills is "Evil." Between Good and Evil there

is no eternal difference, except in the eternal difference between the

conquering Personality of Jehovah and the conquered Personality of

Lucifer. So, far from it being true that Milton is the dull transcriber

of mere traditional Protestantism, a very little investigation reveals

the astounding fact that the current popular Evangelical view of the

origin of things and the drama of things is based, not upon the Bible

at all, but upon Milton's poem. In this respect he is a true Classic

Poet--a Maker of Mythology--a Delphic Demiurge.

One of the most difficult questions in the world to answer would be

the question how far Milton "believed" simply and directly, in the

God he thus half-created. Probably he did "believe" more than his

daring, arbitrary "creations" would lead us to suppose. His nature

demanded positive and concrete facts. Scepticism and mysticism

were both abhorrent to him; and it is more likely than not that, in the

depths of his strange cold, unapproachable heart, a terrible and

passionate prayer went up, day and night, to the God of Isaac and

Jacob that the Lord should not forget his Servant.

The grandeur and granite-like weight of Milton's learning was fed

by the high traditions of Greece and Rome; but, in his heart of hearts,

far deeper than anything that moved him in Aeschylus or Virgil, was

the devotion he had for the religion of Israel, and the Fear of Him

who "sitteth between the Cherubims." It is often forgotten, amid the

welter of modern ethical ideals and modern mystical theosophies,

how grand and unique a thing is this Religion of Israel--a religion

whose God is at once Personal and Invisible. After all, what do we

know? A Prince of Righteousness, a King of Sion, a Shepherd of his

People--such a "Living God" as David cries out upon, with those

dramatic cries that remain until today the most human and tragic of

all our race's wrestling with the Unknown--is this not a Faith quite

as "possible" and far more moving, than all the "Over-Souls" and

"Immanent All's Fathers" and "Streams of Tendency" which have

been substituted for it by unimaginative modern "breadth of mind"?

It is time that it was made clear that the alternative at present for all

noble souls is between the reign of "crass Casuality" and the reign of

Him "who maketh the clouds His chariot and walketh upon the

wings of the wind." Those who, "with Democritus, set the world

upon Chance" have a right to worship their Jesus of Nazareth, and,

in him, the Eternal Protest against the Cruelty of Life. But if Life is

to be deified, if Life is to be "accepted," if Life is to be worshipped;

if Courage, not Love, be the secret of the cosmic system, then let us

call aloud upon it, under personal and palpable symbols, in the old

imaginative, _poetic_ way, rather than fool ourselves with thin

mysticities, vague intuitions, and the "sounding brass" of "ethical

ideals"!

The earlier poems of Milton are among the most lovely in the

English language. Lycidas is, for those who understand what poetry

means, the most lovely of all. There is nothing, anywhere, quite like

this poem. The lingering, elaborate harmonies, interrupted in pause

after pause, by lines of reverberating finality; and yet, sweetly,

slowly leading on to a climax of such airy, lucid calm--it is one's

"hope beyond hope" of what a poem should be.

The absence of vulgar sentiment, the classic reserve, the gentle

melancholy, the delicate gaiety, the subtle interweaving of divine,

rhythmic cadences, the ineffable lightness of touch, as of cunning

fingers upon reluctant clay; is there anything in poetry to equal these

things? One does not even regret the sudden devastating apparition

of that "two-handed engine at the door." For one remembers how

wickedly, how mercilessly, the beauty of life is even now being

spoiled by these accursed "hirelings"--and now, as then, "nothing

said."

The Nativity Hymn owes half the charm of its easy, natural grace to

the fact that the victory of Mary's infant son over the rest is treated

as if it were the victory of one pagan god over another--the final

triumph being to him who is the most "gentle" and "beautiful" of all

the gods. In the famous argument between the Lady and her

Tempter, in Comus, we have an exquisite example of the sweet,

grave refinement of virginal taste which shuns grossness as "a false

note." The doctrine of Comus--if so airy a thing can be supposed to

have a doctrine--is not very different from the doctrine of Marius the

Epicurean. One were foolish to follow the bestial enchanter; not so

much because it is "wrong" to do so, as because, then, one would

lose the finer edge of that heavenly music which turns the outward

shape "to the soul's essence."

Milton's Sonnets occupy a place by themselves in English Literature,

and they may well be pondered upon by those who think that the

relinquishing of the "old forms" makes it easier to express one's

personality. It makes it, as a matter of fact, much harder, just as the

stripping from human beings of their characteristic "outer garments"

makes them so dreadfully, so devastatingly, alike! Nothing could be

more personal than a Miltonic Sonnet. The rigid principles of form,

adhered to so scrupulously in the medium used, intensify, rather

than detract from, his individualistic character. That Miltonic wit, so

granite-like and mordant, how well it goes with the magical

whispers that "syllable men's names"!

All Milton's personal prejudices may be found in the Sonnets, from

his hatred of those frightful Scotch appellations that would "make

Quintlian gasp" to his longing for Classic companionship and "Attic

wine" and "immortal notes" and "Tuscan airs"! As one reads on,

laughing gently at the folly of those who have so misunderstood him,

one is conscious more and more of that high, cold, clear, lonely

tenderness, which found so little satisfaction in the sentiment of the

rabble and still less in the endearments of women! As in the case of

"sad Electra's poet," his own favorite, it is easy to grow angry about

his "Misogyny" and take Christian exception to his preference for

mistresses over wives. It is true that Milton's view of marriage is

more than "heathen." But one has to remember that in these matters

of purely personal taste no public opinion has right to intervene.

When the well-married Brownings of our age succeed in writing

poetry in the "grand style," it will be time--and, perhaps, not even

then--to let the dogs of democratic domesticity loose upon this

austere lover of the classic way.

What a retort was "Paradise Lost" to the lewd revellers who would

have profaned his aristocratic isolation with howlings and brutalities

and philistine uproar! Milton despised "priests and kings" from the

heights of a pride loftier than their own--and he did not love the

vulgar mob much better. In Paradise Lost he can "feel himself" into

the sublime tyranny of God, as well as into the sublime revolt of

Lucifer. Neither the one or other stoops to solicit "popular voices."

The thing to avoid, as one reads this great poem, are the paraphrases

from the book of Genesis. Here some odd scrupulousness of

scholarly conscience seems to prevent him launching out into his

native originality. But, putting this aside, what majestic

Pandemoniums of terrific Imagination he has the power to call up!

The opening Books are as sublime as the book of Job, and more

arresting than Aeschylus. The basic secrets of his blank verse can

never be revealed, but one is struck dumb with wonder in the

presence of this Eagle of Poetry as we attempt to follow him, flight

beyond flight, hovering beyond hovering, as he gets nearer and

nearer to the Sun.

It is by single paragraphs, all the same, and by single lines, that I

would myself prefer to see him judged. Long poems have been

written before and will be written again, but no one will ever

write--no one but Dante has ever written--such single lines as one reads

in Milton. Curiously enough, some of the most staggering of these

superb passages are interludes and allusions, rather than integral

episodes in the story, and not only interludes, but interludes in the

"pagan manner." Second only to those Luciferan defiances, which

seem able to inspire even us poor worms with the right attitude

towards Fate, I am tempted to place certain references to Astarte,

Ashtoreth and Adonis.

"Astarte, queen of Heaven, with crescent horns,

To whose bright Image nightly, by the moon,

Sidonian virgins paid their vows and songs."

Or of Adonis:

"Whose annual wound, in Lebanon, allured

The Syrian damsels to lament his fate

In amorous ditties all a Summer's day--"

That single line, "Whose annual wound, in Lebanon, allured," seems

to me better than any other that could be quoted, to evoke the awe

and the thrill and the seduction of all true poetry.

Then those great mysterious allusions to the planetary orbits and the

fixed stars and the primeval spaces of land and sea; what a power

they have of spreading wide before us the huge horizons of the

world's edge! Who can forget "the fleecy star that bears Andromeda

far off Atlantic seas"? Or that phrase about the sailors "stemming

mightly to the pole"? Or the sudden terror of that guarded Paradisic

Gate--"with dreadful faces thronged and fiery arms"? The same

extraordinary beauty of single passages may be found in "Paradise

Regained," a poem which is much finer than many guess. The

descriptions there of the world-cities, Athens, Rome, Jerusalem,

have the same classic thrill of reserved awe and infinite reverence

that some of Dante's lines possess--only, with Milton, the thing is

longer drawn out and more grandiloquent. Satan's speech about his

own implacable fatality, "his harbour, and his ultimate repose," and

that allusion to Our Lord's gentleness, like "the cool intermission of

a summer's cloud" are both in the manner we love.

It is only, however, when one comes to Samson Agonistes that the

full power of Milton's genius is felt. Written in a style which the

devotees of "free verse" in our time would do well to analyse, it is

the most complete expression of his own individual character that he

ever attained. Here the Captain of Jehovah, here the champion of

Light against Darkness, of Pride against Humility, of Man against

Woman, finds his opportunity and his hour. Out of his blindness, out

of his loneliness, out of the welter of hedonists and amorists and

feminists and fantasists who crowded upon him, the great, terrible

egoist strikes his last blow! No one can read Samson Agonistes

without being moved, and those who look deepest into our present

age may well be moved the most! One almost feels as if some great

overpowering tide of all the brutalities and crudities and false

sentiments and cunning hypocrisies, and evil voluptuousness, of all

the Philistias that have ever been, is actually rushing to overwhelm

us! Gath and Askalon in gross triumph--must this thing be? Will the

Lord of Hosts lift no finger to help his own? And then the end

comes; and the Euripidean "messenger" brings the great news! He is

dead, our Champion; but in his death he slew more than in his life.

"Nothing is here" for unworthy sorrow; "nothing" that need make us

"knock the breast;"--"No weakness, no contempt, dispraise or

blame--nothing but well and fair, and what may quiet us in a death

so noble."

And the end of Samson Agonistes is as the end of Milton's own life.

Awaited in calm dignity, as a Roman soldier might wait for Caesar's

word, Death has claimed its own. But let not the "daughters of the

uncircumsized" triumph! Grandeur and nobility, beauty and heroism,

live still; and while these live, what matter though our bravest and

our fairest perish? It only remains to let the thunderbolt, when it

does fall, find us prepared; find us in calm of mind, "all passion

spent."