BOOK XII.

Things are now hastening to the catastrophe. Napoleon flies to London,

and, seating himself on the hearth of the Regent, embraces the household

gods, and conjures him, by the venerable age of George III., and by the

opening perfections of the Princess Charlotte, to spare him. The Prince

is inclined to do so; when, looking on his breast, he sees there the

belt of the Duke of Brunswick. He instantly draws his sword, and is

about to stab the destroyer of his kinsman. Piety and hospitality,

however, restrain his hand. He takes a middle course, and condemns

Napoleon to be exposed on a desert island. The King of France re-enters

Paris; and the poem concludes.

ON MITFORD’S HISTORY OF GREECE.

{172}(_Knight’s Quarterly Magazine_, November 1824.)

This is a book which enjoys a great and increasing popularity: but,

while it has attracted a considerable share of the public attention, it

has been little noticed by the critics. Mr. Mitford has almost succeeded

in mounting, unperceived by those whose office it is to watch such

aspirants, to a high place among historians. He has taken a seat on

the dais without being challenged by a single seneschal. To oppose the

progress of his fame is now almost a hopeless enterprise. Had he been

reviewed with candid severity, when he had published only his first

volume, his work would either have deserved its reputation, or would

never have obtained it. “Then,” as Indra says of Kehama, “then was the

time to strike.” The time was neglected; and the consequence is that

Mr. Mitford, like Kehama, has laid his victorious hand on the literary

Amreeta, and seems about to taste the precious elixir of immortality. I

shall venture to emulate the courage of the honest Glendoveer--

“When now

He saw the Amreeta in Kehama’s hand,

An impulse that defied all self-command,

In that extremity,

Stung him, and he resolved to seize the cup,

And dare the Rajah’s force in Seeva’s sight.

Forward he sprung to tempt the unequal fray."

In plain words, I shall offer a few considerations, {173}which may tend

to reduce an overpraised writer to his proper level.

The principal characteristic of this historian, the origin of his

excellencies and his defects, is a love of singularity. He has no

notion of going with a multitude to do either good or evil. An exploded

opinion, or an unpopular person, has an irresistible charm for him. The

same perverseness may be traced in his diction. His style would

never have been elegant; but it might at least have been manly and

perspicuous; and nothing but the most elaborate care could possibly have

made it so bad as it is. It is distinguished by harsh phrases, strange

collocations, occasional solecisms, frequent obscurity, and, above all,

by a peculiar oddity, which can no more be described than it can be

overlooked. Nor is this all. Mr. Mitford piques himself on spelling

better than any of his neighbours; and this not only in ancient names,

which he mangles in defiance both of custom and of reason, but in the

most ordinary words of the English language. It is, in itself, a matter

perfectly indifferent whether we call a foreigner by the name which he

bears in his own language, or by that which corresponds to it in ours;

whether we say Lorenzo de Medici, or Lawrence de Medici, Jean Chauvin,

or John Calvin. In such cases established usage is considered as law

by all writers except Mr. Mitford. If he were always consistent

with himself, he might be excused for sometimes disagreeing with his

neighbours; but he proceeds on no principle but that of being unlike

the rest of the world. Every child has heard of Linnæus; therefore

Mr. Mitford calls him Linné: Rousseau is known all over Europe as Jean

Jacques; therefore Mr. Mitford bestows on him the strange appellation

of John James. {174}Had Mr. Mitford undertaken a history of any other

country than Greece, this propensity would have rendered his work

useless and absurd. His occasional remarks on the affairs of ancient

Rome and of modern Europe are full of errors: but he writes of times

with respect to which almost every other writer has been in the wrong;

and, therefore, by resolutely deviating from his predecessors, he is

often in the right.

Almost all the modern historians of Greece have shown the grossest

ignorance of the most obvious phenomena of human nature. In their

representations the generals and statesmen of antiquity are absolutely

divested of all individuality. They are personifications; they are

passions, talents, opinions, virtues, vices, but not men. Inconsistency

is a thing of which these writers have no notion. That a man may have

been liberal in his youth and avaricious in his age, cruel to one enemy

and merciful to another, is to them utterly inconceivable. If the facts

be undeniable, they suppose some, strange and deep design, in order to

explain what, as every one who has observed his own mind knows, needs

no explanation at all. This is a mode of writing very acceptable to the

multitude who have always been accustomed to make gods and daemons

out of men very little better or worse than themselves; but it appears

contemptible to all who have watched the changes of human character--to

all who have observed the influence of time, of circumstances, and

of associates, on mankind--to all who have seen a hero in the gout, a

democrat in the church, a pedant in love, or a philosopher in liquor.

This practice of painting in nothing but black and white is unpardonable

even in the drama. It is the great fault of Alfieri; {175}and how much

it injures the effect of his compositions will be obvious to every one

who will compare his Rosmunda with the Lady Macbeth of Shakspeare. The

one is a wicked woman; the other is a fiend. Her only feeling is hatred;

all her words are curses. We are at once shocked and fatigued by the

spectacle of such raving cruelty, excited by no provocation, repeatedly

changing its object, and constant in nothing but in its inextinguishable

thirst for blood.

In history this error is far more disgraceful. Indeed, there is no fault

which so completely ruins a narrative in the opinion of a judicious

reader. We know that the line of demarcation between good and bad men

is so faintly marked as often to elude the most careful investigation

of those who have the best opportunities for judging. Public men, above

all, are surrounded with so many temptations and difficulties that

some doubt must almost always hang over their real dispositions and

intentions. The lives of Pym, Cromwell, Monk, Clarendon, Marlborough,

Burnet, Walpole, are well known to us. We are acquainted with their

actions, their speeches, their writings; we have abundance of letters

and well-authenticated anecdotes relating to them: yet what candid man

will venture very positively to say which of them were honest and which

of them were dishonest men. It appears easier to pronounce decidedly

upon the great characters of antiquity, not because we have greater

means of discovering truth, but simply because we have less means of

detecting error. The modern historians of Greece have forgotten this.

Their heroes and villains are as consistent in all their sayings and

doings as the cardinal virtues and the deadly sins in an allegory. We

should as soon expect a good action from giant Slaygood {176}in Bunyan

as from Dionysius; and a crime of Epaminondas would seem as incongruous

as a _faux-pas_ of the grave and comely damsel, called Discretion, who

answered the bell at the door of the house Beautiful.

This error was partly the cause and partly the effect of the high

estimation in which the later ancient writers have been held by modern

scholars. Those French and English authors who have treated of the

affairs of Greece have generally turned with contempt from the simple

and natural narrations of Thucydides and Xenophon to the extravagant

representations of Plutarch, Diodorus, Curtius, and other romancers

of the same class,--men who described military operations without ever

having handled a sword, and applied to the seditions of little republics

speculations formed by observation on an empire which covered half

the known world. Of liberty they knew nothing. It was to them a

great mystery,--a superhuman enjoyment. They ranted about liberty and

patriotism, from the same cause which leads monks to talk more ardently

than other men about love and women. A wise man values political

liberty, because it secures the persons and the possessions of citizens;

because it tends to prevent the extravagance of rulers, and the

corruption of judges; because it gives birth to useful sciences and

elegant arts; because it excites the industry and increases the comforts

of all classes of society. These theorists imagined that it possessed

something eternally and intrinsically good, distinct from the blessings

which it generally produced. They considered it not as a means but as an

end; an end to be attained at any cost. Their favourite heroes are

those who have sacrificed, for the mere name of freedom, the prosperity

{177}--the security--the justice--from which freedom derives its value.

There is another remarkable characteristic of these writers, in which

their modern worshippers have carefully imitated them,--a great fondness

for good stories. The most established facts, dates, and characters are

never suffered to come into competition with a splendid saying, or a

romantic exploit. The early historians have left us natural and simple

descriptions of the great events which they witnessed, and the great men

with whom they associated. When we read the account which Plutarch

and Rollin have given of the same period, we scarcely know our old

acquaintance again; we are utterly confounded by the melo-dra-matic

effect of the narration, and the sublime coxcombry of the characters. .

These are the principal errors into which the predecessors of Mr.

Mitford have fallen; and from most of these he is free. His faults

are of a completely different description. It is to be hoped that the

students of history may now be saved, like Dorax in Dryden’s play,

by swallowing two conflicting poisons, each of which may serve as an

antidote to the other.

The first and most important difference between Mr. Mitford and those

who have preceded him is in his narration. Here the advantage lies, for

the most part, on his side. His principle is to follow the contemporary

historians, to look with doubt on all statements which are not in

some degree confirmed by them, and absolutely to reject all which are

contradicted by them. While he retains the guidance of some writer in

whom he can place confidence, he goes on excellently. When he loses it,

he falls to the level, or perhaps below the level, of the writers whom

he so much despises: he is {178}as absurd as they, and very much duller.

It is really amusing to observe how be proceeds with his narration when

he has no better authority than poor Diodorus. He is compelled to relate

something; yet he believes nothing. He accompanies every fact with

a long statement of objections. His account of the administration of

Dionysius is in no sense a history. It ought to be entitled--“Historic

doubts as to certain events, alleged to have taken place in Sicily.”

This scepticism, however, like that of some great legal characters

almost as sceptical as himself, vanishes whenever his political

partialities interfere. He is a vehement admirer of tyranny and

oligarchy, and considers no evidence as feeble which can be brought

forward in favour of those forms of government. Democracy he hates with

a perfect hatred, a hatred which, in the first volume of his history,

appears only in his episodes and reflections, but which, in those parts

where he has less reverence for his guides, and can venture to take his

own way, completely distorts even his narration.

In taking up these opinions, I have no doubt that Mr. Mitford was

influenced by the same love of singularity which led him to spell

_island_ without an s, and to place two dots over the last letter of

_idea_. In truth, preceding historians have erred so monstrously on the

other side that even the worst parts of Mr. Mitford’s book may be useful

as a corrective. For a young gentleman who talks much about his country,

tyrannicide, and Epaminondas, this work, diluted in a sufficient

quantity of Rollin and Barthelemi, maybe a very useful remedy.

The errors of both parties arise from an ignorance or a neglect of the

fundamental principles of political science. The writers on one side

imagine popular government {170}to be always a blessing; Mr. Mitford

omits no opportunity of assuring us that it is always a curse. The fact

is, that a good government, like a good coat, is that which fits the

body for which it is designed, A man who, upon abstract principles,

pronounces a constitution to be good, without an exact knowledge of the

people who are to be governed by it, judges as absurdly as a tailor

who should measime the Belvidere Apollo for the clothes of all his

customers. The demagogues who wished to see Portugal a republic, and

the wise critics who revile the Virginians for not having instituted a

peerage, appear equally ridiculous to all men of sense and candour.

That is the best government which desires to make the people happy, and

knows how to make them happy. Neither the inclination nor the knowledge

will suffice alone; and it is difficult to find them together!

Pure democracy, and pure democracy alone, satisfies the former condition

of this great problem. That the governors may be solicitous only for

the interests of the governed, it is necessary that the interests of the

governors and the governed should be the same. This cannot be often the

case where power is intrusted to one or to a few. The privileged part of

the community will doubtless derive a certain degree of advantage from

the general prosperity of the state; but they will derive a greater from

oppression and exaction. The king will desire an useless war for his

glory, or a _parc-aux-cerfs_ for his pleasure. The nobles will demand

monopolies and _lettres-de-câchet_. In proportion as the number of

governors is increased the evil is diminished. There are fewer to

contribute, and more to receive. The dividend which each can obtain of

the public plunder becomes less and less tempting. But the interests

{180}of the subjects and the rulers never absolutely coincide till the

subjects themselves become the rulers, that is, till the government be

either immediately or mediately democratical.

But this is not enough. “Will without power,” said the sagacious Casimir

to Milor Beefington, “is like children playing at soldiers.” The people

will always be desirous to promote their own interests; but it may be

doubted, whether, in any community, they were ever sufficiently educated

to understand them. Even in this island, where the multitude have long

been better informed than in any other part of Europe, the rights of the

many have generally been asserted against themselves by the patriotism

of the few. Free trade, one of the greatest blessings which a government

can confer on a people, is in almost every country unpopular. It may

be well doubted, whether a liberal policy with regard to our commercial

relations would find any support from a parliament elected by universal

suffrage. The republicans on the other side of the Atlantic have

recently adopted regulations of which the consequences will, before

long, show us,

“How nations sink, by darling schemes oppressed,

When vengeance listens to the fool’s request."

The people are to be governed for their own good; and, that they may

be governed for their own good, they must not be governed by their

own ignorance. There are countries in which it would be as absurd to

establish popular government as to abolish all the restraints in a

school, or to untie all the strait-waistcoats in a madhouse.

Hence it may be concluded that the happiest state of society is that in

which supreme power resides in {181}the whole body of a well-informed

people. This is an imaginary, perhaps an unattainable, state of things.

Yet, in some measure, we may approximate to it; and he alone deserves

the name of a great statesman, whose principle it is to extend the power

of the people in proportion to the extent of their knowledge, and to

give them every facility for obtaining such a degree of knowledge as may

render it safe to trust them with absolute power. In the mean time, it

is dangerous to praise or condemn constitutions in the abstract; since,

from the despotism of St. Petersburg to the democracy of Washington,

there is scarcely a form of government which might not, at least in some

hypothetical case, be the best possible.

If, however, there be any form of government which in all ages and all

nations has always been, and must always be, pernicious, it is certainly

that which Mr. Mitford, on his usual principle of being wiser than all

the rest of the world, has taken under his especial patronage--pure

oligarchy. This is closely, and indeed inseparably, connected with

another of his eccentric tastes, a marked partiality for Lacedæmon, and

a dislike of Athens. Mr. Mitford’s book has, I suspect, rendered these

sentiments in some degree popular; and I shall, therefore, examine them

at some length.

The shades in the Athenian character strike the eye more rapidly than

those in the Lacedaemonian: not because they are darker, but because

they are on a brighter ground. The law of ostracism is an instance

of this. Nothing can be conceived more odious than the practice of

punishing a citizen, simply and professedly, for his eminence;--and

nothing in the institutions of Athens is more frequently or more justly

censured. Lacedaemon; was free from this. And why? Lacedæmon {182}did

not need it. Oligarchy is an ostracism of itself,--an ostracism not

occasional, but permanent,--not dubious, but certain. Her laws prevented

the development of merit, instead of attacking its maturity. They did

not cut down the plant in its high and palmy state, but cursed the

soil with eternal sterility. In spite of the law of ostracism, Athens

produced, within a hundred and fifty years, the greatest public men that

ever existed. Whom had Sparta to ostracise? She produced, at most, four

eminent men, Brasidas, Gylip-pus, Lysander, and Agesilaus. Of these, not

one rose to distinction within her jurisdiction. It was only when

they escaped from the region within which the influence of aristocracy

withered everything good and noble, it was only when they ceased to be

Lacedæmonians, that they became great men. Brasidas, among the cities

of Thrace, was strictly a democratical leader, the favourite minister

and general of the people. The same may be said of Gylippus, at

Syracuse. Lysander, in the Hellespont, and Agesilaus, in Asia, were

liberated for a time from the hateful restraints imposed by the

constitution of Lycurgus. Both acquired feme abroad; and both returned

to be watched and depressed at home. This is not peculiar to Sparta.

Oligarchy, wherever it has existed, has always stunted the growth of

genius. Thus it was at Rome, till about a century before the Christian

era: we read of abundance of consuls and dictators who won battles,

and enjoyed triumphs; but we look in vain for a single man of the first

order of intellect,--for a Pericles, a Demosthenes, or a Hannibal.

The Gracchi formed a strong democratical party; Marius revived it; the

foundations of the old aristocracy were shaken; and two generations

fertile in really great men appeared. {183}Venice is a still more

remarkable instance: in her history we see nothing but the state;

aristocracy had destroyed every seed of genius and virtue. Her dominion

was like herself, lofty and magnificent, but founded on filth and weeds.

God forbid that there should ever again exist a powerful and civilised

state, which, after existing through thirteen hundred eventful years,

shall not bequeath to mankind the memory of one great name or one

generous action.

Many writers, and Mr. Mitford among the number, have admired the

stability of the Spartan institutions; in fact, there is little to

admire, and less to approve. Oligarchy is the weakest and most stable

of governments; and it is stable because it is weak. It has a sort of

valetudinarian longevity; it lives in the balance of Sanctorius; it

takes no exercise; it exposes itself to no accident; it is seized with

an hypochondriac alarm at every new sensation; it trembles at every

breath; it lets blood for every inflammation: and thus, without ever

enjoying a day of health or pleasure, drags on its existence to a doting

and debilitated old age.

The Spartans purchased for their government a prolongation of its

existence by the sacrifice of happiness at home and dignity abroad. They

cringed to the powerful; they trampled on the weak; they massacred their

Helots; they betrayed their allies; they contrived to be a day too

late for the battle of Marathon; they attempted to avoid the battle of

Salamis; they suffered the Athenians, to whom they owed then-lives

and liberties, to be a second time driven from their country by the

Persians, that they might finish their own fortifications on the

Isthmus; they attempted to take advantage of the distress to which

exertions {184}in their cause had reduced their preservers, in order to

make them their slaves; they strove to prevent those who had abandoned

their walls to defend them, from rebuilding them to defend themselves;

they commenced the Peloponnesian war in violation of their engagements

with Athens; they abandoned it in violation of their engagements with

their allies; they gave up to the sword whole cities which had placed

themselves under their protection; they bartered, for advantages

confined to themselves, the interest, the freedom, and the lives

of those who had served them most faithfully; they took with equal

complacency, and equal infamy, the stripes of Elis and the bribes of

Persia; they never showed either resentment or gratitude; they abstained

from no injury; and they revenged none. Above all, they looked on a

citizen who served them well as their deadliest enemy. These are the

arts which protract the existence of governments.

Nor were the domestic institutions of Lacedæmon less hateful or less

contemptible than her foreign policy. A perpetual interference with

every part of the system of human life, a constant struggle against

nature and reason, characterised all her laws. To violate even

prejudices which have taken deep root in the minds of a people is

scarcely expedient; to think of extirpating natural appetites and

passions is frantic: the external symptoms may be occasionally

repressed; but the feeling still exists, and, debarred from its natural

objects, preys on the disordered mind and body of its victim. Thus it

is in convents--thus it is among ascetic sects--thus it was among the

Lacedæmonians.

Hence arose that madness, or violence approaching to madness, which, in

spite of every external {185}restraint, often appeared among the most

distinguished citizens of Sparta. Cleomenes terminated his career of

raving cruelty by cutting himself to pieces. Pausanias seems to have

been absolutely insane: he formed a hopeless and profligate scheme; he

betrayed it by the ostentation of his behaviour, and the imprudence of

his measures; and he alienated, by his insolence, all who might have

served or protected him. Xenophon, a warm admirer of Lacedaemon,

furnishes us with the strongest evidence to this effect. It is

impossible not to observe the brutal and senseless fury which

characterises almost every Spartan with whom he was connected. Clearchus

nearly lost his life by his cruelty. Chirisophus deprived his army

of the services of a faithful guide by his unreasonable and ferocious

severity. But it is needless to multiply instances. Lycurgus, Mr.

Mitford’s favourite legislator, founded his whole system on a mistaken

principle. He never considered that governments were made for men, and

not men for governments. Instead of adapting the constitution to the

people, he distorted the minds of the people to suit the constitution, a

scheme worthy of the Laputan Academy of Projectors. And this appears

to Mr. Mitford to constitute his peculiar title to admiration. Hear

himself: “What to modern eyes most strikingly sets that extraordinary

man above all other legislators is, that in so many circumstances,

apparently out of the reach of law, he controlled and formed to his own

mind the wills and habits of his people.” I should suppose that this

gentleman had the advantage of receiving his education under the ferula

of Dr. Pangloss; for his metaphysics are clearly those of the castle

of Thunder-ten-tronckh: “Remarquez bien epie les nez ont été faits pour

porter des lunettes, {186}aussi avons nous des lunettes. Les jambes sont

visiblement instituées pour être chaussées, et nous avons des chausses.

Les cochons étant faits pour être mangés, nous mangeons du porc toute

l’année.”

At Athens the laws did not constantly interfere with the tastes of

the people. The children were not taken from their parents by that

universal step-mother, the state. They were not starved into thieves, or

tortured into bullies; there was no established table at which every

one must dine, no established style in which every one must converse. An

Athenian might eat whatever he could afford to buy, and talk as long as

he could find people to listen. The government did not tell the people

what opinions they were to hold, or what songs they were to sing.

Freedom produced excellence. Thus philosophy took its origin. Thus were

produced those models of poetry, of oratory, and of the arts, which

scarcely fall short of the standard of ideal excellence. Nothing is more

conducive to happiness than the free exercise of the mind in pursuits

congenial to it. This happiness, assuredly, was enjoyed far more at

Athens than at Sparta. The Athenians are acknowledged even by their

enemies to have been distinguished, in private life, by their courteous

and amiable demeanour. Their levity, at least, was better then Spartan

sullenness, and their impertinence, than Spartan insolence. Even

in courage it may be questioned whether they were inferior to the

Lacedæmonians. The great Athenian historian has reported a remarkable

observation of the great Athenian minister. Pericles maintained that his

countrymen, without submitting to the hardships of a Spartan education,

rivalled all the achievements of Spartan valour, and that therefore the

pleasures and {187}amusements which they enjoyed were to be considered

as so much clear gain. The infantry of Athens was certainly not equal to

that of Lacedæmon; but this seems to have been caused merely by want

of practice; the attention of the Athenians was diverted from the

discipline of the phalanx to that of the trireme. The Lacedæinonians, in

spite of all their boasted valour, were, from the same cause, timid and

disorderly in naval action.

But we are told that crimes of great enormity were perpetrated by the

Athenian Government, and the democracies under its protection. It is

true that Athens too often acted up to the full extent of the laws of

war, in an age when those laws had not been mitigated by causes which

have operated in later times. This accusation is, in fact, common to

Athens, to Lacedæmon, to all the states of Greece, and to all states

similarly situated. Where communities are very large, the heavier evils

of war are felt but by few. The plough-boy sings, the spinning-wheel

turns round, the wedding-day is fixed, whether the last battle were lost

or won. In little states it cannot be thus; every man feels in his own

property and person the effect of a war. Every man is a soldier, and a

soldier fighting for his nearest interests. His own trees have been cut

down--his own corn has been burnt--his own house has been pillaged--his

own relations have been killed. How can he entertain towards the enemies

of his country the same feelings with one who has suffered nothing; from

them, except perhaps the addition of a small sum to the taxes which he

pays. Men in such circumstances cannot be generous. They have too much

at stake. It is when they are, if I may so express myself, playing

for love, it is when war is a mere game at chess, it is when they are

contending for a remote colony, a frontier town, {188}the honours of

a flag, a salute, or a title, that they can make fine speeches, and do

good offices to their enemies. The Black Prince waited behind the chair

of his captive; Villars interchanged repartees with Eugene: George II.

sent congratulations to Louis XV., during a war, upon occasion of

his escape from the attempt of Damien: and these things are fine and

generous, and very gratifying to the author of the Broad Stone of

Honour, and all the other wise men who think, like him, that God made

the world only for the use of gentlemen. But they spring in general

from utter heartlessness. No war ought ever to be undertaken but under

circumstances which render all interchange of courtesy between the

combatants impossible. It is a bad thing that men should hate each

other; but it is far worse that they should contract the habit of

cutting one another’s throats without hatred. War is never lenient, but

where it is wanton; when men are compelled to fight in self-defence,

they must hate and avenge: this may be bad; but it is human nature: it

is the clay as it came from the hand of the potter.

It is true that among the dependencies of Athens seditions assumed

a character more ferocious than even in France, during the reign of

terror--the accursed Saturnalia of an accursed bondage. It is true

that in Athens itself, where such convulsions were scarcely known,

the condition of the higher orders was dis agreeable; that they were

compelled to contribute large sums for the service or the amusement

of the public; and that they were sometimes harassed by vexatious

informers. Whenever such cases occur, Mr. Mitford’s scepticism vanishes.

The “if,” the “but,” the “it is said,” the “if we may believe,” with

which he qualifies every charge against a tyrant or an aristocracy, are

at {189}once abandoned. The blacker the story, the firmer is his belief;

and he never fails to inveigh with hearty bitterness against democracy

as the source of every species of crime.

The Athenians, I believe, possessed more liberty than was good for

them. Yet I will venture to assert that, while the splendour, the

intelligence, and the energy of that great people were peculiar to

themselves, the crimes with which they are charged arose from causes

which were common to them with every other state which then existed.

The violence of faction in that age sprung from a cause which has always

been fertile in every political and moral evil, domestic slavery.

The effect of slavery is completely to dissolve the connection which

naturally exists between the higher and lower classes of free citizens.

The rich spend their wealth in purchasing and maintaining slaves. There

is no demand for the labour of the poor; the fable of Menenius ceases to

be applicable; the belly communicates no nutriment to the members; there

is an atrophy in the body politic. The two parties, therefore, proceed

to extremities utterly unknown in countries where they have mutually

need of each other. In Rome the oligarchy was too powerful to be

subverted by force; and neither the tribunes nor the popular assemblies,

though constitutionally omnipotent, could maintain a successful contest

against men who possessed the whole property of the state. Hence the

necessity for measures tending; to unsettle the whole frame of society,

and to take away every motive of industry; the abolition of debts, and

the agrarian laws--propositions absurdly condemned by men who do

not consider the circumstances from which they sprung. They were

the desperate remedies of a desperate disease. In {190}Greece the

oligarchical interest was not in general so deeply rooted as at Rome.

The multitude, therefore, often redressed by force grievances which, at

Rome, were commonly attacked under the forais of the constitution. They

drove out or massacred the rich, and divided their property. If the

superior union or military skill of the rich rendered them victorious,

they took measures equally violent, disarmed all in whom they could not

confide, often slaughtered great numbers and occasionally expelled the

whole commonalty from the city, and remained, with their slaves, the

sole inhabitants.

From such calamities Athens and Laeedæmon alone were almost completely

free. At Athens the purses of the rich were laid under regular

contribution for the support of the poor; and this, rightly considered,

was as much a favour to the givers as to the receivers, since no other

measure could possibly have saved their houses from pillage and

their persons from violence. It is singular that Mr. Mitford should

perpetually reprobate a policy which was the best that could be pursued

in such a state of things, and which alone saved Athens from the

frightful outrages which were perpetrated at Coreyra.

Lacedæmon, cursed with a system of slavery more odious than has ever

existed in any other country, avoided this evil by almost totally

annihilating private property. Lycurgus began by an agrarian law. He

abolished all professions except that of arms; he made the whole of his

community a standing army, every member of which had a common right to

the services of a crowd of miserable bondmen; he secured the state from

sedition at the expense of the Helots. Of all the parts of his system

this is the most creditable to his head, and the most disgraceful to his

heart. {191}These considerations, and many others of equal importance,

Mr. Mitford lias neglected; but he has yet a heavier charge to answer.

He has made not only illogical inferences, but false statements. While

he never states, without qualifications and objections, the charges

which the earliest and best historians have brought against his

favourite tyrants, Pisistratus, Hip-pias, and Gelon, he transcribes,

without any hesitation, the grossest abuse of the least authoritative

writers against every democracy and every demagogue. Such an accusation

should not be made without being supported; and I will therefore select

one out of many passages which will fully substantiate the charge,

and convict Mr. Mitford of wilful misrepresentation, or of negligence

scarcely less culpable. Mr. Mitford is speaking of one of the greatest

men that ever lived, Demosthenes, and comparing him with his rival,

Æschines. Let him speak for himself.

“In earliest youth Demosthenes earned an opprobrious nickname by

the effeminacy of his dress and manner.” Does Mr. Mitford know that

Demosthenes denied this charge, and explained the nickname in a

perfectly different manner? (1) And if he knew it, should he not

have stated it? He proceeds thus:--“On emerging from minority, by the

Athenian law, at five-and-twenty, he earned another opprobrious

nickname by a prosecution of his guardians, which was considered as a

dishonourable attempt to extort money from them.” In the first place,

Demosthenes was not five-and-twenty years of age. Mr. Mitford might have

learned, from so common a book as the Archæologia of Archbishop Potter,

that at twenty Athenian citizens were freed from the control of their

guardians,

(1) See the speech of Æschines against Timarchus.

{192}and began to manage their own property. The very speech of

Demosthenes against his guardians proves most satisfactorily that he

was under twenty. In his speech against Midias, he says that when

he undertook that prosecution he was quite a boy. His youth might,

therefore, excuse the step, even if it had been considered, as

Mr. Mitford says, a dishonourable attempt to extort money. But who

considered it as such? «Not the judges, who condemned the guardians. The

Athenian courts of justice were not the purest in the world; but their

decisions were at least as likely to be just as the abuse of a deadly

enemy. Mr. Mitford refers for confirmation of his statement to Æschines

and Plutarch..Æschines by no means beat’s him out; and Plutarch directly

contradicts him. “Hot long after,” says Mr. Mitford, “he took blows

publicly in the theater” (I preserve the orthography, if it can be

so called, of this historian) “from a petulant youth of rank, named

Meidias.” Here are two disgraceful mistakes. In the first place, it was

long after; eight years at the very least, probably much more. In the

next place, the petulant youth, of whom Mr. Mitford speaks, was fifty

years old. (2) Really Mr. Mitford has less reason to censure the

carelessness of his predecessors than to reform his own. After this

monstrous inaccuracy, with regard to facts, we may be able to judge what

degree of credit ought to be given to the vague abuse of such a writer.

“The cowardice of Demosthenes in the field afterwards became notorious.”

Demosthenes was a civil character; war was

(2)Whoever will read the speech of Demosthenes against

Midias will find the statements in the text confirmed, and

will have, moreover, the pleasure of becoming acquainted

with one of the finest compositions in the world.

{193}not his business. In his time the division between military

and political offices was beginning to be strongly marked; yet the

recollection of the days when every citizen was a soldier was still

recent. In such states of society a certain degree of disrepute always

attaches to sedentary men; but that any leader of the Athenian democracy

could have been, as Mr. Mitford says of Demosthenes, a few lines before,

remarkable for “an extraordinary deficiency of personal courage,” is

absolutely impossible. What mercenary warrior of the time exposed his

life to greater or more constant perils? Was there a single soldier at

Chæronea who had more cause to tremble for his safety than the orator,

who, in case of defeat, could scarcely hope for mercy from the people

whom he had misled or the prince whom lie had opposed? Were not the

ordinary fluctuations of popular feeling enough to deter any coward from

engaging in political conflicts? Isocrates, whom Mr. Mitford extols,

because he constantly employed all the flowers of his school-boy

rhetoric to decorate oligarchy and tyranny, avoided the judicial and

political meetings of Athens from mere timidity, and seems to have hated

democracy only because he durst not look a popular assembly in the face.

Demosthenes was a man of a feeble constitution: his nerves were weak;

but his spirit was high: and the energy and enthusiasm of his feelings

supported him through life and in death.

So much for Demosthenes. Now for the orator of aristocracy. I do not

wish to abuse Æschines. He may have been an honest man. He was certainly

a great man; and I feel a reverence, of which Mr. Mitford seems to have

no notion, for great men of every party. But, when Mr. Mitford says

that the private character {194}of Æscliines was without stain, does

he remember what Æschines has himself confessed in his speech against

Timarchus? I can make allowances, as well as Mr. Mitford, for persons

who lived under a different system of laws and morals; but let them be

made impartially. If Demosthenes is to be attacked on account of some

childish improprieties, proved only by the assertion of an antagonist,

what shall we say of those maturer vices which that antagonist has

himself acknowledged? “Against the private character of Æschines,”

says Mr. Mitford, “Demosthenes seems not to have had an insinuation

to oppose.” Has Mr. Mitford ever read the speech of Demosthenes on the

Embassy? Or can he have forgotten, what was never forgotten by any one

else who ever read it, the story which Demosthenes relates with such

terrible energy of language concerning the drunken brutality of his

rival? True or false, here is something more than an insinuation; and

nothing can vindicate the historian, who has overlooked it, from the

charge of negligence or of partiality. But Æschines denied the story.

And did not Demosthenes also deny the story respecting his childish

nickname, which Mr. Mitford has nevertheless told without any

qualification? But the judges, or some part of them, showed, by their

clamour, their disbelief of the relation of Demosthenes. And did not

the judges, who tried the cause between Demosthenes and his guardians,

indicate, in a much clearer manner, their approbation of the

prosecution? But Demosthenes was a demagogue, and is to be slandered.

Æscliines was an aristocrat, and is to be panegyrised. Is this a

history, or a party pamphlet?

These passages, all selected from a single page of Mr. Mitford’s work,

may give some notion to those {195}readers, who have not the means of

comparing his statements with the original authorities, of his extreme

partiality and carelessness. Indeed, whenever this historian mentions

Demosthenes, he violates all the laws of candour and even of decency;

he weighs no authorities; he makes no allowances; he forgets the best

authenticated facts in the history of the times, and the most generally

recognised principles of human nature. The opposition of the great

orator to the policy of Philip he represents as neither more nor less

than deliberate villainy. I hold almost the same opinion with Mr.

Mitford respecting the character and the views of that great and

accomplished prince. But am I, therefore, to pronounce Demosthenes

profligate and insincere? Surely not. Do we not perpetually see men of

the greatest talents and the purest intentions misled by national or

factious prejudices? The most respectable people in England were, little

more than forty years ago, in the habit of uttering the bitterest abuse

against Washington and Franklin. It is certainly to be regretted that

men should err so grossly in their estimate of character. But no person

who knows anything of human nature will impute such errors to depravity.

Mr. Mitford is not more consistent with himself than with reason. Though

he is the advocate of all oligarchies, he is also a warm admirer of

all kings, and of all citizens who raised themselves to that species of

sovereignty which the Greeks denominated tyranny. If monarchy, as Mr.

Mitford holds, be in itself a blessing, democracy must be a better

form of government than aristocracy, which is always opposed to the

supremacy, and even to the eminence, of individuals. On the other hand,

it is {196}but one step that separates the demagogue and the sovereign.

If this article had not extended itself to so great a length, I

should offer a few observations on some other peculiarities of this

writer,--his general preference of the Barbarians to the Greeks,--his

predilection for Persians, Carthaginians, Thracians, for all nations,

in short, except that great and enlightened nation of which he is the

historian. But I will confine myself to a single topic.

Mr. Mitford has remarked, with truth and spirit, that “any history

perfectly written, but especially a Grecian history perfectly written,

should be a political institute for all nations.” It has not occurred to

him that a Grecian history, perfectly written, should also be a complete

record of the rise and progress of poetry, philosophy, and the arts.

Here his work is extremely deficient. Indeed, though it may seem a

strange thing to say of a gentleman who has published so many quartos,

Mr. Mitford seems to entertain a feeling, bordering on contempt,

for literary and speculative pursuits. The talents of action almost

exclusively attract his notice; and he talks with very complacent

disdain of “the idle learned.” Homer, indeed, he admires; but

principally, I am afraid, because he is convinced that Homer could

neither read nor write. He could not avoid speaking of Socrates; but he

has been far more solicitous to trace his death to political causes, and

to deduce from it consequences unfavourable to Athens, and to popular

governments, than to throw light on the character and doctrines of the

wonderful man,

“From whose mouth issued forth

Mellifluous streams that watered all the schools

Of Academics, old and new, with those

Surnamed Peripatetics, and the sect

Epicurean, and the Stoic severe."

{197}He does not seem to be aware that Demosthenes was a great orator;

he represents him sometimes as an aspiring demagogue, sometimes as an

adroit negotiator, and always as a great rogue. But that in which the

Athenian excelled all men of all ages, that irresistible eloquence,

which at the distance of more than two thousand years stirs our blood,

and brings tears into our eyes, he passes by with a few phrases of

commonplace commendation. The origin of the drama, the doctrines of the

sophists, the course of Athenian education, the state of the arts

and sciences, the whole domestic system of the Greeks, he lias almost

completely neglected. Yet these things will appear, to a reflecting man,

scarcely less worthy of attention than the taking of Sphaeteria or the

discipline of the targeteers of Iphierates.

This, indeed, is a deficiency by no means peculiar to Mr. Mitford.

Most people seem to imagine that a detail of public occurrences--the

operations of sieges--the changes of administrations--the treaties--the

conspiracies--the rebellions--is a complete history. Differences of

definition are logically unimportant; but practically they sometimes

produce the most momentous effects. Thus it has been in the present

ease. Historians have, almost without exception, confined themselves

to the public transactions of states, and have left to the negligent

administration of writers of fiction a province at least equally

extensive and valuable.

All wise statesmen have agreed to consider the prosperity or adversity

of nations as made up of the happiness or misery of individuals, and to

reject as chimerical all notions of a public interest of the community,

distinct from the interest of the component parts. It {198}is therefore

strange that those whose office it is to supply statesmen with examples

and warnings should omit, as too mean for the dignity of history,

circumstances which exert the most extensive influence on the state of

society. In general, the under current of human life flows steadily on,

unruffled by the storms which agitate the surface. The happiness of the

many commonly depends on causes independent of victories or defeats, of

revolutions or restorations,--causes which can be regulated by no laws,

and which are recorded in no archives. These causes are the things which

it is of main importance to us to know, not how the Lacedæmonian phalanx

was broken at Leuctra--not whether Alexander died of poison or by

diseased History, without these, is a shell without a kernel; and

such is almost all the history which is extant in the world. Paltry

skirmishes and plots are reported with absurd and useless minuteness;

but improvements the most essential to the comfort of human life extend

themselves over the world, and introduce themselves into every cottage,

before any annalist can condescend, from the dignity of writing about

generals and ambassadors, to take the least notice of them. Thus the

progress of the most salutary inventions and discoveries is buried in

impenetrable mystery; mankind are deprived of a most useful species of

knowledge, and their benefactors of their honest fame. In the meantime

every child knows by heart the dates and adventures of a long line of

barbarian kings. The history of nations, in the sense in which I use

the word, is often best studied in works not professedly historical.

Thucydides, as far as he goes, is an excellent writer; yet he affords

ns far less knowledge of the most important particulars relating {199}to

Athens than Plato or Aristophanes. The little treatise of Xenophon on

Domestic Economy contains more historical information than all the seven

hooks of his Hellenics. The same may be said of the Satires of Horace,

of the Letters of Cicero, of the novels of Le Sage, of the memoirs of

Marin on tel. Many others might be mentioned; but these sufficiently

illustrate my meaning.

I would hope that there may yet appear a writer who may despise the

present narrow limits, and assert the ‘rights of history over every part

of her natural domain. Should such a writer engage in that enterprise,

in which I cannot but consider Mr. Mitford as having failed, he will

record, indeed, all that is interesting and important in military and

political transactions; but he will not think anything too trivial for

the gravity of history which is not too trivial to promote or diminish

the happiness of man. He will portray in vivid colours the domestic

society, the manners, the amusements, the conversation of the Greeks. He

will not disdain to discuss the state of agriculture, of the mechanical

arts, and of the conveniences of life. The progress of painting, of

sculpture, and of architecture, will form an important part of his

plan. But, above all, his attention will be given to the history of that

splendid literature from which has sprung all the strength, the wisdom,

the freedom, and the glory, of the western world.

Of the indifference which Mr. Mitford shows on this subject I will not

speak; for I cannot speak with fairness. It is a subject on which I love

to forget the accuracy of a judge, in the veneration of a worshipper

and the gratitude of a child. If we consider merely the subtlety of

disquisition, the force of imagination, {200}the perfect energy and

elegance of expression, which characterise the great works of Athenian

genius, we must pronounce them intrinsically most valuable; but what

shall we say when we reflect that from hence have sprung, directly or

indirectly, all the noblest creations of the human intellect; that from

hence were the vast accomplishments, and the brilliant fancy of Cicero;

the withering fire of Juvenal; the plastic imagination of Dante; the

humour of Cervantes; the comprehension of Bacon; the wit of Butler;

the supreme and universal excellence of Shakspeare? All the triumphs of

truth and genius over prejudice and power, in every country and in every

age, have been the triumphs of Athens. Wherever a few great minds have

made a stand against violence and fraud, in the cause of liberty and

reason, there has been her spirit in the midst of them; inspiring,

encouraging, consoling;--by the lonely lamp of Erasmus; by the restless

bed of Pascal; in the tribune of Mirabeau; in the cell of Galileo; on

the scaffold of Sidney. But who shall estimate her influence on private

happiness? Who shall say how many thousands have been made wiser,

happier, and better, by those pursuits in which she has taught mankind

to engage; to how many the studies which took their rise from her

have been wealth in poverty,--liberty in bondage,--health in sickness,

--society in solitude? Her power is indeed manifested at the bar, in the

senate, in the field of battle, in the schools of philosophy. But these

are not her glory. Wherever literature consoles sorrow, or assuages

pain,--wherever it brings gladness to eyes which fail with wakefulness

and tears, and ache for the dark house and the long sleep,--there

is exhibited, in its noblest form, the immortal influence of Athens.

{201}The dervise, in the Arabian tale, did not hesitate to abandon to

his comrade the camels with their load of jewels and gold, while he

retained the casket of that mysterious juice which enabled him to behold

at one glance all the hidden riches of the universe. Surely it is no

exaggeration to say that no external advantage is to be compared with

that purification of the intellectual eye which gives us to contemplate

the infinite wealth of the mental world, all the hoarded treasures of

its primeval dynasties, all the shapeless ore of its yet unexplored

mines. This is the gift of Athens to man. Her freedom and her power

have for more than twenty centuries been annihilated; her people have

degenerated into timid slaves: her language into a barbarous jargon;

her temples have been given up to the successive depredations of Romans,

Turks, and Scotchmen; but her intellectual empire is imperishable. And

when those who have rivalled her greatness shall have shared her fate;

when civilisation and knowledge shall have fixed their abode in distant

continents; when the sceptre shall have passed away from England;

when, perhaps, travellers from distant regions shall in vain labour to

decipher on some mouldering pedestal the name of our proudest chief;

shall hear savage hymns chaunted to some misshapen idol, over the ruined

dome of our proudest temple; and shall see a single naked fisherman wash

his nets in the river of the ten thousand masts;--her influence and

her glory will still survive,--fresh in eternal youth, exempt from

mutability and decay, immortal as the intellectual principle from which

they derived their origin, and over which they exercise their control.

MILTON.(1)

{202}(_Edinburgh Review_, August 1825.)

Towards the close of the year 1823, Mr. Lemon, deputy keeper of the

state papers, in the course of his researches among the presses of his

office, met with a large Latin manuscript. With it were found corrected

copies of the foreign despatches written by Milton, while he filled the

office of Secretary, and several papers relating to the Popish Trials

and the Rye-house Plot. The whole was wrapped up in an envelope,

superscribed _To Mr. Skinner, Merchant_. On examination, the large

manuscript proved to be the long lost Essay on the Doctrines of

Christianity, which, according to Wood and Toland, Milton finished after

the Restoration, and deposited with Cyriac Skinner. Skinner, it is well

known, held the same political opinions with his illustrious friend. It

is therefore probable, as Mr. Lemon conjectures, that he may have fallen

under the suspicions of the government during that persecution of the

Whigs which followed the dissolution of the Oxford parliament, and that,

in consequence of a general seizure of his papers, this work may have

been

(1) _Jonnis Miltoni, Angli, de Doctrinâ Cliristicinâ libri

duo posthumi_. A Treatise on Christian Doctrine, compiled

from the Holy Scriptures alone, by John Milton, translated

from the Original by Charles R. Sumner, M.A. &c. &c. 1825.

{203}brought to the office in which it has been found. But whatever the

adventures of the manuscript may have been, no doubt can exist that it

is a genuine relic of the great poet.

Mr. Sumner, who was commanded by his Majesty to edite and translate the

treatise, has acquitted himself of his task in a manner honourable to

his talents and to his character. His version is not indeed very easy or

elegant; but it is entitled to the praise of clearness and fidelity.

His notes abound with interesting quotations, and have the rare merit

of really elucidating the text. The preface is evidently the work of

a sensible and candid man, firm in his own religious opinions, and

tolerant towards those of others.

The book itself will not add much to the fame of Milton. It is, like all

his Latin works, well written, though not exactly in the style of the

prize essays of Oxford and Cambridge. There is no elaborate imitation

of classical antiquity, no scrupulous purity, none of the ceremonial

cleanness which characterizes the diction of our academical Pharisees.

The author does not attempt to polish and brighten his composition into

the Ciceronian gloss and brilliancy. He does not in short sacrifice

sense and spirit to pedantic refinements. The nature of his subject

compelled him to use many words

“That would have made Quintilian stare and gasp."

But he writes with as much ease and freedom as if Latin were his mother

tongue; and, where he is least happy, his failure seems to arise from

the carelessness of a native, not from the ignorance of a foreigner.

We may apply to him what Denham with great felicity says of Cowley. He

wears the garb, but not the clothes of the ancients. {204}Throughout the

volume are discernible the traces of a powerful and independent mind,

emancipated from the influence of authority, and devoted to the search

of truth. Milton professes to form his system from the Bible alone; and

his digest of scriptural texts is certainly among the best that have

appeared. But he is not always so happy in his inferences as in his

citations.

Some of the heterodox doctrines which he avows seemed to have excited

considerable amazement, particularly his Arianism, and his theory on the

subject of polygamy. Yet we can scarcely conceive that any person could

have read the Paradise Lost without suspecting him of the former; nor do

we think that any reader, acquainted with the history of his life, ought

to be much startled at the latter. The opinions which he has expressed

respecting the nature of the Deity, the eternity of matter, and the

observation of the Sabbath, might, we think, have caused more just

surprise.

But we will not go into the discussion of these points. The book, were

it far more orthodox or far more heretical than it is, would not much

edify or corrupt the present generation. The men of our time are not to

be converted or perverted by quartos. A few more days, and this essay

will follow the _Defensio Populi_, to the dust and silence of the

upper shelf. The name of its author, and the remarkable circumstances

attending its publication, will secure to it a certain degree of

attention. For a month or two it will occupy a few minutes of chat in

every drawing-room, and a few columns in every magazine; and it will

then, to borrow the elegant language of the play-bills, be withdrawn, to

make room for the forthcoming novelties. {205}We wish however to avail

ourselves of the interest, transient as it may he, which this work has

excited. The dexterous Capuchins never choose to preach on the life and

miracles of a saint, till they have awakened the devotional feelings of

their auditors by exhibiting some relic of him, a thread of his garment,

a lock of his hair, or a drop of his blood. On the same principle, we

intend to take advantage of the late interesting discovery, and, while

this memorial of a great and good man is still in the hands of all,

to say something of his moral and intellectual qualities. Nor, we are

convinced, will the severest of our readers blame us if, on an occasion

like the present, we turn for a short time from the topics of the day,

to commemorate, in all love and reverence, the genius and virtues of

John Milton, the poet, the statesman, the philosopher, the glory of

English literature, the champion and the martyr of English liberty.

It is by his poetry that Milton is best known; and it is of his poetry

that we wish first to speak. By the general suffrage of the civilised

world, his place has been assigned among the greatest masters of the

art. His detractors, however, though outvoted, have not been silenced.

There are many critics, and some of great name, who contrive in the

same breath to extol the poems and to decry the poet. The works they

acknowledge, considered in themselves, may be classed among the noblest

productions of the human mind. But they will not allow the author to

rank with those great men who, born in the infancy of civilisation,

supplied, by their own powers, the want of instruction, and, though

destitute of models themselves, bequeathed to posterity models which

defy imitation. Milton, it is said, inherited what his predecessors

created: he lived {206}in an enlightened age; he received a finished

education; and we must therefore, if we would form a just estimate of

his powers, make large deductions in consideration of these advantages.

We venture to say, on the contrary, paradoxical as the remark may

appear, that no poet has ever had to struggle with more unfavourable

circumstances than Milton. He doubted, as he has himself owned, whether

he had not been born “an age too late.” For this notion Johnson has

thought fit to make him the butt of much clumsy ridicule. The poet, we

believe, understood the nature of his art better than the critic. He

knew that his poetical genius derived no advantage from the civilisation

which surrounded him, or from the learning which he had acquired; and he

looked back with something like regret to the ruder age of simple words

and vivid impressions.

We think that, as civilisation advances, poetry almost necessarily

declines. Therefore, though we fervently admire those great works of

imagination which have appeared in dark ages, we do not admire them the

more because they have appeared in dark ages. On the contrary, we hold

that the most wonderful and splendid proof of genius is a great poem

produced in a civilised age. We cannot understand why those who believe

in that most orthodox article of literary faith, that the earliest poets

are generally the best, should wonder at the rule as if it were

the exception. Surely the uniformity of the phænomenon indicates a

corresponding uniformity in the cause.

The fact is, that common observers reason from the progress of the

experimental sciences to that of the imitative arts. The improvement of

the former is gradual and slow. Ages are spent in collecting materiales

{207}more in separating and combining them. Even when a system has been

formed, there is still something to add, to alter, or to reject. Every

generation enjoys the use of a vast hoard bequeathed to it by antiquity,

and transmits that hoard, augmented by fresh acquisitions, to future

ages. In these pursuits, therefore, the first speculators lie under

great disadvantages, and, even when they fail, are entitled to praise.

Their pupils, with far inferior intellectual powers, speedily surpass

them in actual attainments. Every girl who has read Mrs. Marcet’s little

dialogues on Political Economy could teach Montague or Walpole many

lessons in finance. Any intelligent man may now, by resolutely applying

himself for a few years to mathematics, learn more than the great Newton

knew after half a century of study and meditation.

But it is not thus with music, with painting, or with sculpture. Still

less is it thus with poetry. The progress of refinement rarely supplies

these arts with better objects of imitation. It may indeed improve the

instruments which are necessary to the mechanical operations of the

musician, the sculptor, and the painter. But language, the machine of

the poet, is best fitted for his purpose in its rudest state. Nations,

like individuals, first perceive, and then abstract. They advance

from particular images to general terms. Hence the vocabulary of an

enlightened society is philosophical, that of a half-civilised people is

poetical.

This change in the language of men is partly the cause and partly the

effect of a corresponding change in the nature of their intellectual

operations, of a change by which science gains and poetry loses.

Generalisation is necessary to the advancement of knowledge; but

particularly is indispensable to the creations {208}of the imagination.

In proportion as men know more and think more, they look less at

individuals and more at classes. They therefore make better theories

and worse poems. They give us vague phrases instead of images, and

personified qualities instead of men. They may be better able to analyse

human nature than their predecessors. But analysis is not the business

of the poet. His office is to portray, not to dissect. He may believe

in a moral sense, like Shaftesbury; he may refer all human actions to

self-interest, like Helvetius; or he may never think about the matter

at all. His creed on such subjects will no more influence his poetry,

properly so called, than the notions which a painter may have conceived

respecting the lacrymal glands, or the circulation of the blood,

will affect the tears of his Niobe, or the blushes of his Aurora. If

Shakespeare had written a book on the motives of human actions, it is

by no means certain that it would have been a good one. It is extremely

improbable that it would have contained half so much able reasoning

on the sulbject as is to be found in the Fable of the Bees. But

could Mandeville have created an Iago? Well as he knew how to resolve

characters into their elements, would he have been able to combine

those elements in such a manner as to make up a man, a real, living,

individual man?

Perhaps no person can be a poet, or can even enjoy poetry, without a

certain unsoundness of mind, if any thing which gives so much pleasure

ought to be called unsoundness. By poetry we mean not all writing in

verse, nor even all good writing in verse. Our definition excludes

many metrical compositions which, on other grounds, deserve the highest

praise. By poetry we mean the art of employing words in such a manner

{209}as to produce an illusion on the imagination, the art of doing

by means of words what the painter does by means of colours. Thus the

greatest of poets has described it, in lines universally admired for the

vigour and felicity of their diction, and still more valuable on account

of the just notion which they convey of the art in which he excelled:

“As imagination bodies forth

The forms of things unknown, the poet’s pen

Turns them to shapes, and gives to airy nothing

A local habitation and a name."

These are the fruits of the “fine frenzy” which he ascribes to the

poet,--a fine frenzy doubtless, but still a frenzy. Truth, indeed, is

essential to poetry; but it is the truth of madness. The reasonings are

just; but the premises are false. After the first suppositions have been

made, every thing ought to be consistent; but those first suppositions

require a degree of credulity which almost amounts to a partial and

temporary derangement of the intellect. Hence of all people children are

the most imaginative. They abandon themselves without reserve to every

illusion. Every image which is strongly presented to their mental eye

produces on them the effect of reality. No man, whatever his sensibility

may be, is ever affected by Hamlet or Lear, as a little girl is affected

by the story of poor Red Riding-hood. She knows that it is all false,

that wolves cannot speak, that there are no wolves in England. Yet in

spite of her knowledge she believes; she weeps; she trembles; she dares

not go into a dark room lest she should feel the teeth of the monster at

her throat. Such is the despotism of the imagination over uncultivated

minds.

In a rude state of society men are children with a {210}greater variety

of ideas. It is therefore in such a state of society that we may expect

to find the poetical temperament in its highest perfection. In an

enlightened age there will be much intelligence, much science, much

philosophy, abundance of just classification and subtle analysis,

abundance of wit and eloquence, abundance of verses, and even of good

ones; but little poetry. Men will judge and compare; but they will not

create. They will talk about the old poets, and comment on them, and to

a certain degree enjoy them. But they will scarcely be able to conceive

the effect which poetry produced on their ruder ancestors, the agony,

the ecstasy, the plenitude of belief. The Greek Rhapsodists, according

to Plato, could scarce recite Homer without falling into convulsions.

The Mohawk hardly feels the scalping knife while he shouts his

death-song. The power which the ancient bards of Wales and Germany

exercised over their auditors seems to modern readers almost miraculous.

Such feelings are very rare in a civilised community, and most rare

among those who participate most in its improvements. They linger

longest among the peasantry.

Poetry produces an illusion on the eye of the mind, as a magic lantern

produces an illusion on the eye of the body. And, as the magic lantern

acts best in a dark room, poetry effects its purpose most completely in

a dark age. As the light of knowledge breaks in upon its exhibitions, as

the outlines of certainty become more and more definite and the shades

of probability more and more distinct, the hues and lineaments’ of the

phantoms which the poet calls up grow fainter and fainter. We cannot

unite the incompatible advantages of reality and deception, the clear

discernment of truth and the exquisite enjoyment of fiction. {211}He

who, in an enlightened and literary society, aspires to be a great poet,

must first become a little child. He must take to pieces the whole web

of his mind. He must unlearn much of that knowledge which has perhaps

constituted hitherto his chief title to superiority. His very talents

will be a hindrance to him. His difficulties will be proportioned to

his proficiency in the pursuits which are fashionable among his

contemporaries; and that proficiency will in general be proportioned to

the vigour and activity of his mind. And it is well if, after all his.

sacrifices and exertions, his works do not resemble a lisping man or a

modern ruin. We have seen in our own time great talents, intense labour,

and long meditation, employed in this struggle against the spirit of the

age, and employed, we will not say absolutely in vain, but with dubious

success and feeble applause.

If these reasonings be just, no poet has ever triumphed over greater

difficulties than Milton. He received a learned education: he was a

profound and elegant classical scholar: he had studied all the mysteries

of Rabbinical literature: he was intimately acquainted with every

language of modern Europe, from which either pleasure or information was

then to be derived. He was perhaps the only great poet of later times

who has been distinguished by the excellence of his Latin verse. The

genius of Petrarch was scarcely of the first order; and his poems in the

ancient language, though much praised by those who have never read

them, are wretched compositions. Cowley, with all his admirable wit and

ingenuity, had little imagination: nor indeed do we think his classical

diction comparable to that of Milton. The authority of Johnson is

against us on this point. But Johnson had studied {212}the bad writers

of the middle ages till he had become utterly insensible to the Augustan

elegance, and was as ill qualified to judge between two Latin styles as

a habitual drunkard to set up for a wine-taster.

Versification in a dead language is an exotic, a farfetched, costly,

sickly, imitation of that which elsewhere may be found in healthful and

spontaneous perfection. The soils on which this rarity flourishes are in

general as ill suited to the production of vigorous native poetry as the

flower-pots of a hot-house to the growth of oaks. That the author of

the Paradise Lost should have written the Epistle to Manso was truly

wonderful. Never before were such marked originality and such exquisite

mimicry found together. Indeed in all the Latin poems of Milton the

artificial manner indispensable to such works is admirably preserved,

while, at the same time, his genius gives to them a peculiar charm, an

air of nobleness and freedom, which distinguishes them from all other

writings of the same class. They remind us of the amusements of those

angelic warriors who composed the cohort of Gabriel:

“About him exercised heroic games

The unarmed youth of heaven. But o’er their heads

Celestial armoury, shield, helm, and spear,

Hung high, with diamond flaming and with gold."

We cannot look upon the sportive exercises for which the genius of

Milton ungirds itself, without catching la glimpse of the gorgeous and

terrible panoply which it is accustomed to wear. The strength of his

imagination triumphed over every obstacle. So intense and ardent was the

fire of his mind, that it not only was not suffocated beneath the weight

of fuel, but penetrated the whole superincumbent mass with its own heat

and radiance. {213}It is not our intention to attempt any thing like a

complete examination of the poetry of Milton. The public has long been

agreed as to the merit of the most remarkable passages, the incomparable

harmony of the numbers, and the excellence of that style, which no rival

has been able to equal, and no parodist to degrade, which displays In

their highest perfection the idiomatic powers of the English tongue,

and to which every ancient and every modern language has contributed

something of grace, of energy, or of music. In the vast field of

criticism on which we are entering, innumerable reapers have already put

their sickles. Yet the harvest is so abundant that the negligent search

of a straggling gleaner may be rewarded with a sheaf.

The most striking characteristic of the poetry of Milton is the extreme

remoteness of the associations by means of which it acts on the reader.

Its effect is produced, not so much by what it expresses, as by what

it suggests; not so much by the ideas which it directly conveys, as

by other ideas which are connected with them. He electrifies the mind

through conductors. The most unimaginative man must understand the

Iliad. Homer gives him no choice, and requires from him no exertion, but

takes the whole upon himself, and sets the images in so clear a light,

that it is impossible to be blind to them. The works of Milton cannot be

comprehended or enjoyed, unless the mind of the reader co-operate with

that of the writer. He does not paint a finished picture, or play for

a mere passive listener. He sketches, and leaves others to fill up the

outline. He strikes the key-note, and expects his hearer to make out the

melody.

We often hear of the magical influence of poetry. The expression in

general means nothing: but applied {214}to the writings of Milton, it

is most appropriate. His poetry acts like an incantation. Its merit lies

less in its obvious meaning than in its occult power. There would seem,

at first sight, to be no more in his words than in other words. But they

are words of enchantment. No sooner are they pronounced, than the past

is present and the distant near. New forms of beauty start at once into

existence, and all the burial-places of the memory give up their dead.

Change the structure of the sentence; substitute one synonyme for

another, and the whole effect is destroyed. The spell loses its power;

and he who should then hope to conjure with it would find himself as

much mistaken as Cassim in the Arabian tale, when he stood crying, “Open

Wheat,” “Open Barley,” to the door which obeyed no sound but “Open

Sesame.” The miserable failure of Dryden in his attempt to translate

into his own diction some parts of the Paradise Lost, is a remarkable

instance of this.

In support of these observations we may remark, that scarcely any

passages in the poems of Milton are more generally known or more

frequently repeated than those which are little more than muster-rolls

of names. They are not always more appropriate or more melodious than

other names. But they are charmed names. Every one of them is the first

link in a long chain of associated ideas. Like the dwelling-place of our

infancy revisited in manhood, like the song of our country heard in a

strange land, they produce upon us an effect wholly independent of their

intrinsic value. One transports us back to a remote period of history.

Another places us among the novel scenes and manners of a distant

region. A third evokes all the dear classical recollection of childhood,

the school-room, {215}the dog-eared Virgil, the holiday, and the prize.

A fourth brings before us the splendid phantoms of chivalrous romance,

the trophied lists, the embroidered housings, the quaint devices, the

haunted forests, the enchanted gardens, the achievements of enamoured

knights, and the smiles of rescued princesses.

In none of the works of Milton is his peculiar manner more happily

displayed than in the Allegro and the Penseroso. It is impossible

to conceive that the mechanism of language can be brought to a more

exquisite degree of perfection. These poems differ from others, as atar

of roses differs from ordinary rose water, the close packed essence

from the thin diluted mixture. They are indeed not so much poems, as

collections of hints, from each of which the reader is to make out a

poem for himself. Every epithet is a text for a stanza.

The Comus and the Sampson Agonistes are works which, though of very

different merit, offer some marked points of resemblance. Both are

lyric poems in the form of plays. There are perhaps no two kinds of

composition so essentially dissimilar as the drama and the ode. The

business of the dramatist is to keep himself out of sight, and to let

nothing appear but his characters. As soon as he attracts notice to his

personal feelings, the illusion is broken. The effect is as unpleasant

as that which is produced on the stage by the voice of a prompter or the

entrance of a scene-shifter. Hence it was, that the tragedies of Byron

were his least successful performances. They resemble those pasteboard

pictures invented by the friend of children, Mr. Newbery, in which a

single moveable head goes round twenty different bodies, so that the

same face looks out upon us successively, from the uniform of a

hussar, the furs of a judge, and the rags of a beggar. {216}In all the

characters, patriots and tyrants, haters and lovers, the frown and sneer

of Harold were discernible in an instant. But this species of egotism,

though fatal to the drama, is the inspiration of the ode. It is the

part of the lyric poet to abandon himself, without reserve, to his own

emotions.

Between these hostile elements many great men have endeavoured to effect

an amalgamation, but never with complete success. The Greek Drama, on

the model of which the Samson was written, sprang from the Ode. The

dialogue was ingrafted on the chorus, and naturally partook of its

character. The genius of the greatest of the Athenian dramatists

co-operated with the circumstances under which tragedy made its first

appearance. Æschylus was, head and heart, a lyric poet. In his time, the

Greeks had far more intercourse with the East than in the days of

Homer; and they had not yet acquired that immense superiority in war, in

science, and in the arts, which, in the following generation, led them

to treat the Asiatics with contempt. From the narrative of Herodotus it

should seem that they still looked up, with the veneration of disciples,

to Egypt and Assyria. At this period, accordingly, it was natural that

the literature of Greece should be tinctured with the Oriental style.

And that style, we think, is discernible in the works of Pindar and

Æschylus. The latter often reminds us of the Hebrew writers. The book of

Job, indeed, in conduct and diction, bears a considerable resemblance

to some of his dramas. Considered as plays, his works are absurd;

considered as choruses, they are above all praise. If, for instance, we

examine the address of Clytemnestra to Agamemnon on his return, or the

description of the seven Argive chiefs, by the principles of dramatic

{217}writing, we shall instantly condemn them as monstrous. But if we

forget the characters, and think only of the poetry, we shall admit that

it has never been surpassed in energy and magnificence. Sophocles made

the Greek drama as dramatic as was consistent with its original form.

His portraits of men have a sort of similarity; but it is the similarity

not of a painting, but of a bas-relief. It suggests a resemblance; but

it does not produce an illusion. Euripides attempted to carry the reform

further. But it was a task far beyond his powers, perhaps beyond any

powers. Instead of correcting what was bad, he destroyed what was

excellent. He substituted crutches for stilts, bad sermons for good

odes.

Milton, it is well known, admired Euripides highly, much more highly

than, in our opinion, Euripides deserved. Indeed the caresses which

this partiality leads our countryman to bestow on “sad Electra’s poet,”

sometimes remind us of the beautiful Queen of Fairy-land kissing the

long ears of Bottom. At all events, there can be no doubt that this

veneration for the Athenian, whether just or not, was injurious to the

Samson Agonistes. Had Milton taken Æschylus for his model, he would have

given himself up to the lyric inspiration, and poured out profusely all

the treasures of his mind, without bestowing a thought on those dramatic

proprieties which the nature of the work rendered it impossible to

preserve. In the attempt to reconcile things in their own nature

inconsistent, he has failed, as every one else must have failed. We

cannot identify ourselves with the characters, as in a good play.

We cannot identify ourselves with the poet, as in a good ode. The

conflicting ingredients, like an acid and an alkali mixed, neutralise

each other. {218}We are by no means insensible to the merits of this

celebrated piece, to the severe dignity of the style, the graceful

and pathetic solemnity of the opening speech, or the wild and barbaric

melody which gives so striking an effect to the choral passages. But

we think it, we confess, the least successful effort of the genius of

Milton.

The Comus is framed on the model of the Italian Masque, as the Samson

is framed on the model of the Greek Tragedy. It is certainly the noblest

performance of the kind which exists in any language. It is as far

superior to the Faithful Shepherdess, as the Faithful Shepherdess is

to the Aminta, or the Aminta to the Pastor Fido. It was well for Milton

that he had here no Euripides to mislead him. He understood and loved

the literature of modern Italy. But he did not feel for it the same

veneration which he entertained for the remains of Athenian and Roman

poetry, consecrated by so many lofty and endearing recollections. The

faults, moreover, of his Italian predecessors were of a kind to which

his mind had a deadly antipathy. He could stoop to a plain style,

sometimes even to a bald style; but false brilliancy was his utter

aversion. His muse had no objection to a russet attire; but she turned

with disgust from the finery of Guarini, as tawdry and as paltry as the

rags of a chimney-sweeper on May-day. Whatever ornaments she wears are

of massive gold, not only dazzling to the sight, but capable of standing

the severest test of the crucible.

Milton attended in the Comus to the distinction which he afterwards

neglected in the Samson. He made his Masque what it ought to be,

essentially lyrical, and dramatic only in semblance. He has not

{219}attempted a fruitless struggle against a defect inherent In the

nature of that species of composition; and he has therefore succeeded,

wherever success was not impossible. The speeches must be read as

majestic soliloquies; and he who so reads them will be enraptured with

their eloquence, their sublimity, and their music. The interruptions of

the dialogue, however, impose a constraint upon the writer, and break

the illusion of the reader. The finest passages are those which are

lyric in form as well as in spirit. “I should much commend,” says the

excellent Sir Henry Wotton in a letter to Milton, “the tragical part if

the lyrical did not ravish me with a certain Dorique delicacy in your

songs and odes, whereunto, I must plainly confess to you, I have seen

yet nothing parallel in our language.” The criticism was just. It

is when Milton escapes from the shackles of the dialogue, when he is

discharged from the labour of uniting two incongruous styles, when he is

at liberty to indulge his choral raptures without reserve, that he rises

even above himself. Then, like his own good Genius bursting from the

earthly form and weeds of Thyrsis, he stands forth in celestial freedom

and beauty; he seems to cry exultingly,

“Now my task is smoothly done,

I can fly or I can run,"

to skim the earth, to soar above the clouds, to bathe in the Elysian dew

of the rainbow, and to inhale the balmy smells of nard and cassia, which

the musky winds of the zephyr scatter through the cedared alleys of the

Hesperides.

There are several of the minor poems of Milton on which we would

willingly make a few remarks. Still more willingly would we enter into a

detailed examination {220}of that admirable poem, the Paradise Regained,

which, strangely enough, is scarcely ever mentioned except as an

instance of the blindness of the parental affection which men of letters

bear towards the offspring of their intellects. That Milton was mistaken

in preferring this work, excellent as it is, to the Paradise Lost, we

readily admit. But we are sure that the superiority of the Paradise Lost

to the Paradise Regained is not more decided, than the superiority of

the Paradise Regained to every poem which has since made its appearance.

Our limits, however, prevent us from discussing the point at length. We

hasten on to that extraordinary production which the general suffrage of

critics has placed in the highest class of human compositions.

The only poem of modern times which can be compared with the Paradise

Lost is the Divine Comedy. The subject of Milton, in some points,

resembled that of Dante; but he has treated it in a widely different

manner. We cannot, we think, better illustrate our opinion respecting

our own great poet, than by contrasting him with the father of Tuscan

literature.

The poetry of Milton differs from that of Dante, as the hieroglyphics of

Egypt differed from the picturewriting of Mexico. The images which Dante

employs speak for themselves; they stand simply for what they are. Those

of Milton have a signification which is often discernible only to the

initiated. Their value depends less on what they directly represent than

on what they remotely suggest. However strange, however grotesque, may

be the appearance which Dante undertakes to describe, he never shrinks

from describing it. He gives us the shape, the colour, the sound, the

smell, the taste; he counts the numbers; he measares {221}the size.

His similes are the illustrations of a traveller. Unlike those of

other poets, and especially of Milton, they are introduced in a plain,

business-like manner; not for the sake of any beauty in the objects from

which they are drawn; not for the sake of any ornament which they may

impart to the poem; but simply in order to make the meaning of the

writer as clear to the reader as it is to himself. The ruins of the

precipice which led from the sixth to the seventh circle of hell were

like those of the rock which fell into the Adige on the south of Trent.

The cataract of Phlegethon was like that of Aqua Cheta at the monastery

of St. Benedict. The place where the heretics were confined in burning

tombs resembled the vast cemetery of Arles.

Now let us compare with the exact details of Dante the dim intimations

of Milton. We will cite a few examples. The English poet has never

thought of taking the measure of Satan. He gives us merely a vague

idea of vast bulk. In one passage the fiend lies stretched out huge in

length, floating many a rood, equal in size to the earth-born enemies

of Jove, or to the sea-monster which the mariner mistakes for an island.

When he addresses himself to battle against the guardian angels, he

stands like Teneriffe or Atlas: his stature reaches the sky. Contrast

with these descriptions the lines in which Dante has described the

gigantic spectre of Nimrod. “His face seemed to me as long and as

broad as the ball of St. Peter’s at Rome; and his other limbs were

in proportion; so that the bank, which concealed him from the waist

downwards, nevertheless showed so much of him, that three tall Germans

would in vain have attempted to reach to his hair.” We are sensible that

we do no {222}justice to the admirable style of the Florentine poet. But

Mr. Cary’s translation is not at hand; and our version, however rude, is

sufficient to illustrate our meaning.

Once more, compare the lazar-house in the eleventh book of the Paradise

Lost with the last ward of Malebolge in Dante. Milton avoids the

loathsome details, and takes refuge in indistinct but solemn and

tremendous imagery, Despair hurrying from couch to couch to mock the

wretches with his attendance, Death shaking his dart over them, but, in

spite of supplications, delaying to strike. What says Dante? “There was

such a moan there as there would be if all the sick who, between July

and September, are in the hospitals of Valdichiana, and of the Tuscan

swamps, and of Sardinia, were in one pit together; and such a stench was

issuing forth as is wont to issue from decayed limbs.”

We will not take upon ourselves the invidious office of settling

precedency between two such writers. Each in his own department is

incomparable; and each, we may remark, has wisely, or fortunately,

taken a subject adapted to exhibit his peculiar talent to the greatest

advantage. The Divine Comedy is a personal narrative. Dante is the

eye-witness and ear-witness of that which he relates. He is the very man

who has heard the tormented spirits crying out for the second death,

who has read the dusky characters on the portal within which there is

no hope, who has hidden his face from the terrors of the Gorgon, who

has fled from the hooks and the seething pitch of Barbariccia and

Drag-hignazzo. His own hands have grasped the shaggy sides of Lucifer.

His own feet have climbed the mountain of expiation. His own brow has

been {223}marked by the purifying angel. The reader would throw aside

such a tale in incredulous disgust, unless it were told with the

strongest air of veracity, with a sobriety even in its horrors, with

the greatest precision and multiplicity in its details. The narrative of

Milton in this respect differs from that of Dante, as the adventures of

Amadis differ from those of Gulliver. The author of Amadis would have

made his book ridiculous if he had introduced those minute particulars

which give such a charm to the work of Swift, the nautical observations,

the affected delicacy about names, the official documents transcribed

at foil length, and all the unmeaning gossip and scandal of the court,

springing out of nothing, and tending to nothing. We are not shocked

at being told that a man who lived, nobody knows when, saw many very

strange sights, and we can easily abandon ourselves to the illusion of

the romance. But when Lemuel Gulliver, surgeon, resident at Rotherhithe,

tells us of pygmies and giants, flying islands, and philosophising

horses, nothing but such circumstantial touches could produce for a

single moment a deception on the imagination.

Of all the poets who have introduced into their works the agency of

supernatural beings, Milton has succeeded best. Here Dante decidedly

yields to him: and as this is a point on which many rash and

ill-considered judgments have been pronounced, we feel inclined to dwell

on it a little longer. The most fatal error which a poet can possibly

commit in the management of his machinery, is that of attempting to

philosophise too much. Milton has been often censured for ascribing to

spirits many functions of which spirits must be incapable. But these

objections, though sanctioned by eminent names, originate, we venture

to say, in profound ignorance of the art of poetry. {224}What is spirit?

What are our own minds, the portion of spirit with which we are best

acquainted? We observe certain phænomena. We cannot explain them into

material causes. We therefore infer that there exists something which

is not material. But of this something we have no idea. We can define

it only in negatives. We can reason about it only by symbols. We use the

word: but we have no more of the things; and the business of poetry

is with images, and not with words. The poet uses words indeed; but they

are merely the instruments of his art, not its objects. They are the

materials which he is to dispose in such a manner as to present a

picture to the mental eye. And if they are not so disposed, they are

no more entitled to be called poetry than a bale of canvas and a box of

colours to be called a painting.

Logicians may reason about abstractions. But the great mass of men

must have images. The strong tendency of the multitude in all a^es and

nations to idolatry can be explained on no other principle. The first

inhabitants of Greece, there is reason to believe, worshipped one

invisible Deity. But the necessity of having something more definite to

adore produced, in a few centuries, the innumerable crowd of Gods and

Goddesses. In like manner the ancient Persians thought it impious to

exhibit the Creator under a human form. Yet even these transferred to

the Sun the worship which, in speculation, they considered due only to

the Supreme Mind. The History of the Jews is the record of a continued

struggle between pure Theism, supported by the most terrible sanctions,

and the strangely fascinating desire of having some visible and tangible

object of adoration. Perhaps none of the secondary causes which Gibbon

has assigned for the rapidity with which Christianity spread over the

world, {225}while Judaism scarcely ever acquired a proselyte,

operated more powerfully than this feeling. God, the uncreated,

the incomprehensible, the invisible, attracted few worshippers. A

philosopher might admire so noble a conception: but the crowd turned

away in disgust from words which presented no image to their minds. It

was before Deity embodied in a human form, walking among men, partaking

of their infirmities, leaning on their bosoms, weeping over their

graves, slumbering in the manger, bleeding on the cross, that the

prejudices of the Synagogue, and the doubts of the Academy, and the

pride of the portico, and the fasces of the Lictor, and the swords of

thirty legions, were humbled in the dust. Soon after Christianity had

achieved its triumph, the principle which had assisted it began to

corrupt it. It became a new Paganism. Patron saints assumed the offices

of household gods. St. George took the place of Mars. St. Elmo consoled

the mariner for the loss of Castor and Pollux. The Virgin Mother and

Cecilia succeeded to Venus and the Muses. The fascination of sex and

loveliness was again joined to that of celestial dignity; and the homage

of chivalry was blended with that of religion. Reformers have often made

a stand against these feelings; but never with more than apparent and

partial success. The men who demolished the images in Cathedrals have

not always been able to demolish those which were enshrined in their

minds. It would not be difficult to show that in politics the same rule

holds good. Doctrines, we are afraid, must generally be embodied before

they can excite a strong public feeling. The multitude is more easily

interested for the most unmeaning badge, or the most insignificant name,

than for the most important principle. {226}From these considerations,

we infer that no poet, who should affect that metaphysical accuracy for

the want of which Milton has been blamed, would escape a disgraceful

failure. Still, however, there was another extreme, which, though far

less dangerous, was also to be avoided. The imaginations of men are in

a groat measure under the control of their opinions. The most exquisite

art of poetical colouring can produce no illusion, when it is employed

to represent that which is at once perceived to be incongruous and

absurd. Milton wrote in an age of philosophers and theologians. It was

necessary, therefore, for him to abstain from giving such a shock to

their understandings as might break the charm which it was his object

to throw over their imaginations. This is the real explanation of

the indistinctness and inconsistency with which he has often been

reproached. Dr. Johnson acknowledges that it was absolutely necessary

that the spirit should be clothed with material forms. “But,” says he,

“the poet should have secured the consistency of his system by keeping

immateriality out of sight, and seducing the reader to drop it from his

thoughts.” This is easily said; but what if Milton could not seduce his

readers to drop immateriality from their thoughts? What if the contrary

opinion had taken so full a possession of the minds of men as to leave

no room even for the half belief which poetry requires? Such we

suspect to have been the case. It was impossible for the poet to adopt

altogether the material or the immaterial system. He therefore took his

stand on the debatable ground. He left the whole in ambiguity. He

has, doubtless, by so doing, laid himself open to the charge of

inconsistency. But, though philosophically in the wrong, we cannot

but believe that he was poetically {227}in the right. This task, which

almost any other writer would have found impracticable, was easy to

him. The peculiar art which he possessed of communicating his meaning

circuitously through a long succession of associated ideas, and of

intimating more than he expressed, enabled him to disguise those

incongruities which he could not avoid.

Poetry which relates to the beings of another world ought to be at

once mysterious and picturesque. That of Milton is so. That of Dante

is picturesque indeed beyond any that ever was written. Its effect

approaches to that produced by the pencil or the chisel. But it is

picturesque to the exclusion of all mystery. This is a fault on the

right side, a fault inseparable from the plan of Dante’s poem, which,

as we have already observed, rendered the utmost accuracy of description

necessary. Still it is a fault. The supernatural agents excite an

interest; but it is not the interest which is proper to supernatural

agents. We feel that we could talk to the ghosts and dæmons without any

emotion of unearthly awe. We could, like Don Juan, ask them to supper,

and eat heartily in their company. Dante’s angels are good men with

wings. His devils are spiteful ugly executioners. His dead men are

merely living men in strange situations. The scene which passes between

the poet and Farinata is justly celebrated. Still, Farinata in the

burning tomb is exactly what Farinata would have been at an _auto da

fe_. Nothing can be more touching than the first interview of Dante and

Beatrice. Yet what is it, but a lovely woman chiding, with sweet austere

composure, the lover for whose affection she is grateful, but whose

vices she reprobates? The feelings which give the passage its charm

would suit the streets of {228}Florence as well as the summit of the

Mount of Purgatory.

The spirits of Milton are unlike those of almost all other writers.

His fiends, in particular, are wonderful creations. They are not

metaphysical abstractions. They are not wicked men. They are not ugly

beasts. They have no horns, no tails, none of the fee-faw-fum of Tasso

and Klopstock. They have just enough in common with human nature to be

intelligible to human beings. Their characters are, like their forms,

marked by a certain dim resemblance to those of men, but exaggerated to

gigantic dimensions, and veiled in mysterious gloom.

Perhaps the gods and dæmons of Æschylus may best bear a comparison with

the angels and devils of Milton. The style of the Athenian had, as

we have remarked, something of the Oriental character; and the same

peculiarity may be traced in his mythology. It has nothing of the

amenity and elegance which we generally find in the superstitions of

Greece. All is rugged, barbaric, and colossal. The legends of Æschylus

seem to harmonize less with the fragrant groves and graceful porticoes

in which his countrymen paid their vows to the God of Light and Goddess

of Desire, than with those huge and grotesque labyrinths of eternal

granite in which Egypt enshrined her mystic Osiris, or in which

Hindostan still bows down to her seven-headed idols. His favourite

gods are those of the elder generation, the sons of heaven and earth,

compared with whom Jupiter himself was a stripling and an upstart, the

gigantic Titans, and the inexorable Furies. Foremost among his creations

of this class stands Prometheus, half fiend, half redeemer, the friend

of man, the sullen and implacable enemy of heaven. Prometheus {229}bears

undoubtedly a considerable resemblance, to the Satan of Milton. In both

we find the same impatience of control, the same ferocity, the same

unconquerable pride. In both characters also are mingled, though in

very different proportions, some kind and generous feelings. Prometheus,

however, is hardly superhuman enough. He talks too much of his chains

and his uneasy posture: he is rather too much depressed and agitated.

His resolution seems to depend on the knowledge which he possesses that

he holds the fate of his torturer in his hands, and that the hour of his

release will surely come. But Satan is a creature of another sphere.

The might of his intellectual nature is victorious over the extremity

of pain. Amidst agonies which cannot be conceived without horror, he

deliberates, resolves, and even exults. Against the sword of Michael,

against the thunder of Jehovah, against the flaming lake, and the

marl burning with solid fire, against the prospect of an eternity of

unintermitted misery, his spirit bears up unbroken, resting on its own

innate energies, requiring no support from any thing external, nor even

from hope itself.

To return for a moment to the parallel which we have been attempting

to draw between Milton and Dante, we would add that the poetry of these

great men has in a considerable degree taken its character from their

moral qualities. They are not egotists. They rarely obtrude their

idiosyncrasies on their readers. They have, nothing in common with those

modern beggars for fame, who extort a pittance from the compassion of

the inexperienced by exposing the nakedness and sores of their minds.

Yet it would be difficult to name two writers whose works have been more

completely, though undesignedly, coloured by their personal feelings.

{230}The character of Milton was peculiarly distinguished by loftiness

of spirit; that of Dante by intensity of feeling. In every line of

the Divine Comedy we discern the asperity which is produced by pride

struggling with misery. There is perhaps no work in the world so deeply

and uniformly sorrowful. The melancholy of Dante was no fantastic

caprice. It was not, as far as at this distance of time can be judged,

the effect of external circumstances. It was from within. Neither love

nor glory, neither the conflicts of earth nor the hope of heaven could

dispel it. It turned every consolation and every pleasure into its own

nature. It resembled that noxious Sardinian soil of which the intense

bitterness is said to have been perceptible even in its honey. His mind

was, in the noble language of the Hebrew poet, “a land of darkness, as

darkness itself, and where the light was as darkness.” The gloom of

his character discolours all the passions of men, and all the face of

nature, and tinges with its own livid hue the flowers of Paradise

and the glories of the eternal throne. All the portraits of him are

singularly characteristic. No person can look on the features, noble

even to ruggedness, the dark furrows of the cheek, the haggard and woful

stare of the eye, the sullen and contemptuous curve of the lip, and

doubt that they belong to a man too proud and too sensitive to be happy.

Milton was, like Dante, a statesman and a lover; and, like Dante, he had

been unfortunate in ambition and in love. He had survived his health and

his sight, the comforts of his home, and the prosperity of his party.

Of the great men by whom he had been distinguished at his entrance into

life, some had been taken away from the evil to come; some had carried

into foreign climates their unconquerable hatred of oppression;

{231}some were pining in dungeons; and some had poured forth their blood

on scaffolds. Venal and licentious scribblers, with just sufficient

talent to clothe the thoughts of a pandar in the style of a bellman,

were now the favourite writers of the Sovereign and of the public. It

was a loathsome herd, which could be compared to nothing so fitly as

to the rabble of Cornus, grotesque monsters, half bestial half human,

dropping with wine, bloated with gluttony, and reeling in obscene

dances. Amidst these that fair Muse was placed, like the chaste lady of

the Masque, lofty, spotless, and serene, to be chattered at, and pointed

at, and grinned at, by the whole rout of Satyrs and Goblins. If ever

despondency and asperity could be excused in any man, they might have

been excused in Milton. But the strength of his mind overcame every

calamity. Neither blindness, nor gout, nor age, nor penury, nor domestic

afflictions, nor political disappointments, nor abuse, nor proscription,

nor neglect, had power to disturb his sedate and majestic patience. His

spirits do not seem to have been high, but they were singularly equable.

His temper was serious, perhaps stern; but it was a temper which no

sufferings could render sullen or fretful. Such as it was when, on

the eve of great events, he returned from his travels, in the prime of

health and manly beauty, loaded with literary distinctions, and glowing

with patriotic hopes, such it continued to be when, after having

experienced every calamity which is incident to our nature, old, poor,

sightless and disgraced, he retired to his hovel to die.

Hence it was that, though he wrote the Paradise Lost at a time of life

when images of beauty and tenderness are in general beginning to

fade, even from those minds in which they have not been effaced by

{232}anxiety and disappointment, he adorned it with all that is most

lovely and delightful in the physical and in the moral world. Neither

Theocritus nor Ariosto had a finer or a more healthful sense of the

pleasantness of external objects, or loved better to luxuriate amidst

sunbeams and flowers, the songs of nightingales, the juice of summer

fruits, and the coolness of shady fountains. His conception of love

unites all the voluptuousness of the Oriental harem, and all the

gallantry of the chivalric tournament, with all the pure and quiet

affection of an English fireside. His poetry reminds us of the miracles

of Alpine scenery. Nooks and dells, beautiful as fairy land, are

embosomed in its most rugged and gigantic elevations. The roses and

myrtles bloom unchilled on the verge of the avalanche.