IT is right that this anniversary should be kept in all
English-speaking lands. Milton is as far away from us in time as Dante
was from him; destructive criticism has been busy with his great poem;
formidable rivals of his fame have arisen—Dryden and Pope, Wordsworth
and Byron, Tennyson and Browning, not to speak of lesser names—poets
whom we read perhaps oftener and with more pleasure. Yet still his
throne remains unshaken. By general—by well-nigh universal—consent, he
is still the second poet of our race, the greatest, save one, of all who
have used the English speech.
The high epics, the Iliad, the Divine Comedy, do not appear to us as
they appeared to their contemporaries, nor as they appeared to the
Middle Ages, or to the men of the Renaissance or of the eighteenth
century. These peaks of song we see foreshortened or in changed
perspective or from a different angle of observation. Their parallax
varies from age to age, yet their stature does not dwindle; they tower
forever, “like Teneriffe or Atlas unremoved.” “Paradise Lost” does not
mean the same thing to us that it meant to Addison or Johnson or
Macaulay, and much that those critics said of it now seems mistaken.
Works of art, as of nature, have perishable elements, and suffer a loss
from time’s transshifting. Homer’s gods are childish, Dante’s hell
grotesque; and the mythology of the one and the scholasticism of the
other are scarcely more obsolete to-day than Milton’s theology. Yet in
the dryest parts of “Paradise Lost” we feel the touch of the master. Two
things in particular, the rhythm and the style, go on victoriously as by
their own momentum. God the Father may be a school divine and Adam a
member of parliament, but the verse never flags, the diction never
fails. The poem may grow heavy, but not languid, thin, or weak. I
confess that there are traits of Milton which repel or irritate; that
there are poets with whom sympathy is easier. And if I were speaking
merely as an impressionist, I might prefer them to him. But this does
not affect my estimate of his absolute greatness.
All poets, then, and lovers of poetry, all literary critics and students
of language must honor in Milton the almost faultless artist, the
supreme master of his craft. But there is a reason why, not alone the
literary class, but all men of English stock should celebrate Milton’s
tercentenary. There have been poets whose technique was exquisite, but
whose character was contemptible. John Milton was not simply a great
poet, but a great man, a heroic soul; and his type was
characteristically English, both in its virtues and its shortcomings. Of
Shakespeare, the man, we know next to nothing. But of Milton personally
we know all that we need to know, more than is known of many a modern
author. There is abundance of biography and autobiography. Milton had a
noble self-esteem, and he was engaged for twenty years in hot
controversies. Hence those passages of apologetics scattered through his
prose works, from which the lives of their author have been largely
compiled. Moreover he was a pamphleteer and journalist, as well as a
poet, uttering himself freely on the questions of the day. We know his
opinions on government, education, religion, marriage and divorce, the
freedom of the press, and many other subjects. We know what he thought
of eminent contemporaries, Charles I, Cromwell, Vane, Desborough,
Overton, Fairfax. It was not then the fashion to write critical essays,
literary reviews, and book notices. Yet, aside from his own practice,
his writings are sown here and there with incidental judgments of books
and authors, from which his literary principles may be gathered. He has
spoken now and again of Shakespeare and Ben Jonson, of Spenser, Chaucer,
Euripides, Homer, the book of Job, the psalms of David, the Song of
Solomon, the poems of Tasso and Ariosto, the Arthur and Charlemagne
romances: of Bacon and Selden, the dramatic unities, blank verse vs.
rhyme, and similar topics.
In some aspects and relations, harsh and unlovely, egotistical and
stubborn, the total impression of Milton’s personality is singularly
imposing. His virtues were manly virtues. Of the four cardinal moral
virtues,—the so-called Aristotelian virtues,—temperance, justice,
fortitude, prudence, which Dante symbolizes by the group of stars—