ACT V.

Adam and Eve driven out of Paradise.

------presented by an angel with

Labour, Grief, Hatred, Envy, War, Famine, }

Pestilence, Sickness, Discontent, Ignorance, } Mutes.

Fear, Death, }

To whom he gives their names. Likewise Winter, Heat,

Tempest, &c.

Faith, }

Hope, }comfort him, and instruct him.

Charity, }

Chorus briefly concludes.

Such was his first design, which could have produced only an allegory,

or mystery. The following sketch seems to have attained more maturity.

Adam unparadised:

The angel Gabriel, either descending or entering; showing, since

this globe was created, his frequency as much on earth as in heaven;

describes Paradise. Next, the chorus, showing the reason of his coming

to keep his watch in Paradise, after Lucifer's rebellion, by command

from God; and withal expressing his desire to see and know more

concerning this excellent new creature, man. The angel Gabriel, as by

his name signifying a prince of power, tracing Paradise with, a more

free office, passes by the station of the chorus, and, desired by them,

relates what he knew of man; as the creation of Eve, with their love

and marriage. After this, Lucifer appears; after his overthrow, bemoans

himself, seeks revenge on man. The chorus prepares resistance at his

first approach. At last, after discourse of enmity on either side, he

departs: whereat the chorus sings of the battle and victory in heaven,

against him and his accomplices: as before, after the first act, was

sung a hymn of the creation. Here again may appear Lucifer, relating and

exulting in what he had done to the destruction of man. Man next, and

Eve, having by this time been seduced by the serpent, appears confusedly

covered with leaves. Conscience, in a shape, accuses him; justice cites

him to the place whither Jehovah called for him. In the mean while, the

chorus entertains the stage, and is informed by some angel the manner of

the fall. Here the chorus bewails Adam's fall; Adam then and Eve return;

accuse one another; but especially Adam lays the blame to his wife; is

stubborn in his offence. Justice appears, reasons with him, convinces

him. The chorus admonisheth Adam, and bids him beware Lucifer's example

of impenitence. The angel is sent to banish them out of Paradise; but

before, causes to pass before his eyes, in shapes, a mask of all the

evils of this life and world. He is humbled, relents, despairs; at last

appears Mercy, comforts him, promises the Messiah; then calls in Faith,

Hope, and Charity; instructs him; he repents, gives God the glory,

submits to his penalty. The chorus briefly concludes. Compare this with

the former draught.

These are very imperfect rudiments of Paradise Lost; but it is pleasant

to see great works in their seminal state, pregnant with latent

possibilities of excellence; nor could there be any more delightful

entertainment than to trace their gradual growth and expansion, and to

observe how they are sometimes suddenly advanced by accidental hints,

and sometimes slowly improved by steady meditation.

Invention is almost the only literary labour which blindness cannot

obstruct, and, therefore, he naturally solaced his solitude by the

indulgence of his fancy, and the melody of his numbers. He had done what

he knew to be necessary previous to poetical excellence; he had made

himself acquainted with "seemly arts and affairs;" his comprehension was

extended by various knowledge, and his memory stored with intellectual

treasures. He was skilful in many languages, and had, by reading and

composition, attained the full mastery of his own. He would have wanted

little help from books, had he retained the power of perusing them.

But while his greater designs were advancing, having now, like many

other authors, caught the love of publication, he amused himself, as he

could, with little productions. He sent to the press, 1658, a manuscript

of Raleigh, called, the Cabinet Council; and next year gratified

his malevolence to the clergy, by a Treatise of Civil Power in

Ecclesiastical Cases, and the Means of removing Hirelings out of the

Church.

Oliver was now dead; Richard was constrained to resign: the system of

extemporary government, which had been held together only by force,

naturally fell into fragments, when that force was taken away; and

Milton saw himself and his cause in equal danger. But he had still hope

of doing something. He wrote letters, which Toland has published, to

such men as he thought friends to the new commonwealth; and, even in the

year of the restoration, he "bated no jot of heart or hope," but was

fantastical enough to think that the nation, agitated as it was, might

be settled by a pamphlet, called, a ready and easy Way to establish a

free Commonwealth: which was, however, enough considered to be both

seriously and ludicrously answered.

The obstinate enthusiasm of the commonwealth-men was very remarkable.

When the king was apparently returning, Harrington, with a few

associates as fanatical as himself, used to meet, with all the gravity

of political importance, to settle an equal government by rotation; and

Milton, kicking when he could strike no longer, was foolish enough

to publish, a few weeks before the restoration, notes upon a sermon

preached by one Griffiths, entitled, the Fear of God and the King.

To these notes an answer was written by L'Estrange, in a pamphlet,

petulantly called, No Blind Guides.

But whatever Milton could write, or men of greater activity could do,

the king was now about to be restored with the irresistible approbation

of the people. He was, therefore, no longer secretary, and was,

consequently, obliged to quit the house which he held by his office;

and, proportioning his sense of danger to his opinion of the importance

of his writings, thought it convenient to seek some shelter, and hid

himself, for a time, in Bartholomew close, by West Smithfield.

I cannot but remark a kind of respect, perhaps unconsciously, paid to

this great man by his biographers: every house in which he resided is

historically mentioned, as if it were an injury to neglect naming any

place that he honoured by his presence.

The king, with lenity of which the world has had, perhaps, no other

example, declined to be the judge or avenger of his own or his father's

wrongs; and promised to admit into the act of oblivion all, except those

whom the parliament should except; and the parliament doomed none to

capital punishment, but the wretches who had immediately cooperated in

the murder of the king. Milton was certainly not one of them; he had

only justified what they had done.

This justification was, indeed, sufficiently offensive; and, June 16, an

order was issued to seize Milton's Defence, and Goodwin's Obstructers of

Justice, another book of the same tendency, and burn them by the common

hangman. The attorney-general was ordered to prosecute the authors; but

Milton was not seized, nor, perhaps, very diligently pursued.

Not long after, August 19, the flutter of innumerable bosoms was stilled

by an act, which the king, that his mercy might want no recommendation

of elegance, rather called an act of oblivion, than of grace. Goodwin

was named, with nineteen more, as incapacitated for any publick trust;

but of Milton there was no exception[43].

Of this tenderness shown to Milton, the curiosity of mankind has not

forborne to inquire the reason. Burnet thinks he was forgotten; but this

is another instance which may confirm Dalrymple's observation, who

says, "that whenever Burnet's narrations are examined, he appears to be

mistaken."

Forgotten he was not; for his prosecution was ordered; it must be,

therefore, by design that he was included in the general oblivion. He is

said to have had friends in the house, such as Marvel, Morrice, and

sir Thomas Clarges: and, undoubtedly, a man like him must have

had influence. A very particular story of his escape is told by

Richardson[44] in his Memoirs, which he received from Pope, as delivered

by Betterton, who might have heard it from Davenant. In the war between

the king and parliament, Davenant was made prisoner and condemned to

die; but was spared at the request of Milton. When the turn of success

brought Milton into the like danger, Davenant repayed the benefit by

appearing in his favour. Here is a reciprocation of generosity and

gratitude so pleasing, that the tale makes its own way to credit. But,

if help were wanted, I know not where to find it. The danger of Davenant

is certain, from his own relation; but of his escape there is no

account[45]. Betterton's narration can be traced no higher; it is

not known that he had it from Davenant. We are told that the benefit

exchanged was life for life; but it seems not certain that Milton's life

ever was in danger. Goodwin, who had committed the same kind of crime,

escaped with incapacitation; and, as exclusion from publick trust is a

punishment which the power of government can commonly inflict, without

the help of a particular law, it required no great interest to exempt

Milton from a censure little more than verbal. Something may be

reasonably ascribed to veneration and compassion; to veneration of his

abilities, and compassion for his distresses, which made it fit to

forgive his malice for his learning. He was now poor and blind; and who

would pursue with violence an illustrious enemy, depressed by fortune,

and disarmed by nature[46]?

The publication of the act of oblivion put him in the same condition

with his fellow subjects. He was, however, upon some pretence, not now

known, in the custody of the serjeant, in December; and when he was

released, upon his refusal of the fees demanded, he and the serjeant

were called before the house. He was now safe within the shade of

oblivion, and knew himself to be as much out of the power of a griping

officer, as any other man. How the question was determined is not known.

Milton would hardly have contended, but that he knew himself to have

right on his side.

He then removed to Jewin street, near Aldersgate street; and being

blind, and by no means wealthy, wanted a domestick companion and

attendant; and, therefore, by the recommendation of Dr. Paget, married

Elizabeth Minshul, of a gentleman's family in Cheshire, probably without

a fortune. All his wives were virgins; for he has declared that he

thought it gross and indelicate to be a second husband: upon what

other principles his choice was made cannot now be known; but marriage

afforded not much of his happiness. The first wife left him in disgust,

and was brought back only by terrour; the second, indeed, seems to have

been more a favourite, but her life was short. The third, as Philips

relates, oppressed his children in his lifetime, and cheated them at his

death.

Soon after his marriage, according to an obscure story, he was offered

the continuance of his employment, and, being pressed by his wife to

accept it, answered: "You, like other women, want to ride in your coach;

my wish is to live and die an honest man." If he considered the Latin

secretary as exercising any of the powers of government, he that had

shared authority, either with the parliament or Cromwell, might have

forborne to talk very loudly of his honesty; and, if he thought the

office purely ministerial, he certainly might have honestly retained

it under the king. But this tale has too little evidence to deserve a

disquisition; large offers and sturdy rejections are among the most

common topicks of falsehood.

He had so much either of prudence or gratitude, that he forbore to

disturb the new settlement with any of his political or ecclesiastical

opinions, and, from this time, devoted himself to poetry and literature.

Of his zeal for learning, in all its parts, he gave a proof by

publishing, the next year, 1661, Accidence commenced Grammar; a little

book, which has nothing remarkable, but that its author, who had been

lately defending the supreme powers of his country, and was then writing

Paradise Lost, could descend from his elevation to rescue children from

the perplexity of grammatical confusion, and the trouble of lessons

unnecessarily repeated[47].

About this time Elwood, the quaker, being recommended to him, as one who

would read Latin to him for the advantage of his conversation, attended

him every afternoon, except on Sundays. Milton, who, in his letter to

Hartlib, had declared, that "to read Latin with an English mouth is as

ill a hearing as law French," required that Elwood should learn and

practise the Italian pronunciation, which, he said, was necessary, if he

would talk with foreigners. This seems to have been a task troublesome

without use. There is little reason for preferring the Italian

pronunciation to our own, except that it is more general; and to teach

it to an Englishman is only to make him a foreigner at home. He who

travels, if he speaks Latin, may so soon learn the sounds which every

native gives it, that he need make no provision before his journey; and

if strangers visit us, it is their business to practise such conformity

to our modes as they expect from us in their own countries. Elwood

complied with the directions, and improved himself by his attendance;

for he relates, that Milton, having a curious ear, knew, by his voice,

when he read what he did not understand, and would stop him, and "open

the most difficult passages."

In a short time he took a house in the Artillery walk, leading to

Bunhill fields; the mention of which concludes the register of Milton's

removals and habitations. He lived longer in this place than in any

other.

He was now busied by Paradise Lost. Whence he drew the original design

has been variously conjectured, by men who cannot bear to think

themselves ignorant of that which, at last, neither diligence nor

sagacity can discover. Some find the hint in an Italian tragedy.

Voltaire tells a wild and unauthorized story of a farce seen by Milton,

in Italy, which opened thus: "Let the rainbow be the fiddlestick of

the fiddle of heaven[48]." It has been already shown, that the first

conception was of a tragedy or mystery, not of a narrative, but a

dramatick work, which he is supposed to have begun to reduce to its

present form about the time (1655) when he finished his dispute with the

defenders of the king.

He, long before, had promised to adorn his native country by some great

performance, while he had yet, perhaps, no settled design, and was

stimulated only by such expectations as naturally arose from the survey

of his attainments, and the consciousness of his powers. What he should

undertake, it was difficult to determine. He was "long choosing, and

began late."

While he was obliged to divide his time between his private studies and

affairs of state, his poetical labour must have been often interrupted;

and, perhaps, he did little more in that busy time than construct the

narrative, adjust the episodes, proportion the parts, accumulate images

and sentiments, and treasure in his memory, or preserve in writing, such

hints as books or meditation would supply. Nothing particular is known

of his intellectual operations while he was a statesman; for, having

every help and accommodation at hand, he had no need of uncommon

expedients.

Being driven from all publick stations, he is yet too great not to be

traced by curiosity to his retirement; where he has been found, by Mr.

Richardson, the fondest of his admirers, sitting "before his door in a

grey coat of coarse cloth, in warm sultry weather, to enjoy the fresh

air; and so, as well as in his own room, receiving the visits of the

people of distinguished parts, as well as quality." His visiters of

high quality must now be imagined to be few; but men of parts might

reasonably court the conversation of a man so generally illustrious,

that foreigners are reported, by Wood, to have visited the house in

Bread street, where he was born.

According to another account, he was seen in a small house, "neatly

enough dressed in black clothes, sitting in a room hung with rusty

green; pale but not cadaverous, with chalkstones in his hand. He said,

that, if it were not for the gout, his blindness would be tolerable."

In the intervals of his pain, being made unable to use the common

exercises, he used to swing in a chair, and sometimes played upon an

organ.

He was now confessedly and visibly employed upon his poem, of which the

progress might be noted by those with whom he was familiar; for he

was obliged, when he had composed as many lines as his memory would

conveniently retain, to employ some friend in writing them, having, at

least for part of the time, no regular attendant. This gave opportunity

to observations and reports.

Mr. Philips observes, that there was a very remarkable circumstance in

the composure of Paradise Lost, "which I have a particular reason," says

he, "to remember; for whereas I had the perusal of it from the very

beginning, for some years, as I went from time to time to visit him, in

parcels of ten, twenty, or thirty verses at a time, which, being written

by whatever hand came next, might possibly want correction, as to the

orthography and pointing; having, as the summer came on, not been showed

any for a considerable while, and desiring the reason thereof, was

answered, that his vein never happily flowed but from the autumnal

equinox to the vernal; and that whatever he attempted at other times was

never to his satisfaction, though he courted his fancy never so much; so

that, in all the years he was about this poem, he may be said to have

spent half his time therein."

Upon this relation Toland remarks, that in his opinion, Philips has

mistaken the time of the year; for Milton, in his elegies, declares,

that with the advance of the spring he feels the increase of his

poetical force, "redeunt in carmina vires." To this it is answered, that

Philips could hardly mistake time so well marked; and it may be added,

that Milton might find different times of the year favourable to

different parts of life. Mr. Richardson conceives it impossible that

"such a work should be suspended for six months, or for one. It may

go on faster or slower, but it must go on." By what necessity it must

continually go on, or why it might not be laid aside and resumed, it is

not easy to discover.

This dependance of the soul upon the seasons, those temporary and

periodical ebbs and flows of intellect, may, I suppose, justly be

derided, as the fumes of vain imagination: "Sapiens dominabitur astris."

The author that thinks himself weather-bound will find, with a little

help from hellebore, that he is only idle or exhausted. But while this

notion has possession of the head, it produces the inability which it

supposes. Our powers owe much of their energy to our hopes: "possunt

quia posse videutur." When success seems attainable, diligence is

enforced; but when it is admitted that the faculties are suppressed by a

cross wind, or a cloudy sky, the day is given up without resistance; for

who can contend with the course of nature?

From such prepossessions Milton seems not to have been free. There

prevailed, in his time, an opinion, that the world was in its decay, and

that we have had the misfortune to be produced in the decrepitude of

nature. It was suspected, that the whole creation languished, that

neither trees nor animals had the height or bulk of their predecessors,

and that every thing was daily sinking by gradual diminution[49]. Milton

appears to suspect that souls partake of the general degeneracy, and is

not without some fear that his book is to be written in "an age too

late" for heroick poesy[50].

Another opinion wanders about the world, and sometimes finds reception

among wise men; an opinion that restrains the operations of the mind to

particular regions, and supposes that a luckless mortal may be born in a

degree of latitude too high or too low for wisdom or for wit. From this

fancy, wild as it is, he had not wholly cleared his head, when he

feared lest the climate of his country might be too cold for flights of

imagination.

Into a mind already occupied by such fancies, another not more

reasonable might easily find its way. He that could fear lest his

genius had fallen upon too old a world, or too chill a climate, might

consistently magnify to himself the influence of the seasons, and

believe his faculties to be vigorous only half the year.

His submission to the seasons was, at least, more reasonable than his

dread of decaying nature, or a frigid zone; for general causes must

operate uniformly in a general abatement of mental power; if less could

be performed by the writer, less, likewise, would content the judges of

his work. Among this lagging race of frosty grovellers he might still

have risen into eminence, by producing something, which "they should not

willingly let die." However inferiour to the heroes who were born in

better ages, he might still be great among his contemporaries, with the

hope of growing every day greater in the dwindle of posterity. He

might still be a giant among the pygmies, the one-eyed monarch of the

blind[51].

Of his artifices of study, or particular hours of composition, we have

little account, and there was, perhaps, little to be told. Richardson,

who seems to have been very diligent in his inquiries, but discovers

always a wish to find Milton discriminated from other men, relates, that

"he would sometimes lie awake whole nights, but not a verse could he

make; and on a sudden his poetical faculty would rush upon him with an

impetus or oestrum, and his daughter was immediately called to secure

what came. At other times he would dictate, perhaps, forty lines in a

breath, and then reduce them to half the number."

These bursts of light, and involutions of darkness, these transient

and involuntary excursions and retrocessions of invention, having some

appearance of deviation from the common train of nature, are eagerly

caught by the lovers of a wonder. Yet something of this inequality

happens to every man in every mode of exertion, manual or mental. The

mechanick cannot handle his hammer and his file at all times with equal

dexterity; there are hours, he knows not why, when "his hand is out."

By Mr. Richardson's relation, casually conveyed, much regard cannot be

claimed. That, in his intellectual hour, Milton called for his daughter

to "secure what came," may be questioned; for unluckily it happens to be

known, that his daughters were never taught to write; nor would he have

been obliged, as is universally confessed, to have employed any casual

visitor in disburdening his memory, if his daughter could have performed

the office.

The story of reducing his exuberance has been told of other authors,

and, though, doubtless, true of every fertile and copious mind, seems

to have been gratuitously transferred to Milton.

What he has told us, and we cannot now know more, is, that he composed

much of this poem in the night and morning, I suppose, before his mind

was disturbed with common business; and that he poured out, with great

fluency, his "unpremeditated verse." Versification, free, like his, from

the distresses of rhyme, must, by a work so long, be made prompt and

habitual; and, when his thoughts were once adjusted, the words would

come at his command.

At what particular times of his life the parts of his work were written,

cannot often be known. The beginning of the third book shows that he had

lost his sight; and the introduction to the seventh, that the return of

the king had clouded him with discountenance: and that he was offended

by the licentious festivity of the restoration. There are no other

internal notes of time. Milton, being now cleared from all effects of

his disloyalty, had nothing required from him but the common duty of

living in quiet, to be rewarded with the common right of protection;

but this, which, when he skulked from the approach of his king, was,

perhaps, more than he hoped, seems not to have satisfied him; for, no

sooner is he safe, than he finds himself in danger: "fallen on evil days

and evil tongues, and with darkness and with danger compass'd round."

This darkness, had his eyes been better employed, had undoubtedly

deserved compassion; but to add the mention of danger was ungrateful

and unjust. He was fallen, indeed, on "evil days;" the time was come in

which regicides could no longer boast their wickedness. But of "evil

tongues" for Milton to complain, required impudence, at least, equal to

his other powers; Milton, whose warmest advocates must allow, that he

never spared any asperity of reproach, or brutality of insolence.

But the charge itself seems to be false; for it would be hard to

recollect any reproach cast upon him, either serious or ludicrous,

through the whole remaining part of his life. He pursued his studies, or

his amusements, without persecution, molestation, or insult. Such is

the reverence paid to great abilities, however misused: they who

contemplated in Milton the scholar and the wit, were contented to forget

the reviler of his king.

When the plague, 1665, raged in London, Milton took refuge at Chalfont,

in Bucks; where Elwood, who had taken the house for him, first saw a

complete copy of Paradise Lost, and, having perused it, said to him:

"Thou hast said a great deal upon Paradise Lost; what hast thou to say

upon Paradise Found?"

Next year, when the danger of infection had ceased, he returned to

Bunhill fields, and designed the publication of his poem. A license was

necessary, and he could expect no great kindness from a chaplain of the

archbishop of Canterbury. He seems, however, to have been treated with

tenderness; for though objections were made to particular passages, and

among them to the simile of the sun, eclipsed in the first book, yet the

license was granted; and he sold his copy, April 27, 1667, to Samuel

Simmons, for an immediate payment of five pounds, with a stipulation to

receive five pounds more, when thirteen hundred should be sold of the

first edition; and again, five pounds after the sale of the same number

of the second edition; and another five pounds after the same sale of

the third. None of the three editions were to be extended beyond fifteen

hundred copies.

The first edition was of ten books, in a small quarto. The titles were

varied from year to year; and an advertisement and the arguments of the

books were omitted in some copies, and inserted in others.

The sale gave him, in two years, a right to his second payment, for

which the receipt was signed April, 26, 1669. The second edition was not

given till 1674; it was printed in small octavo; and the number of books

was increased to twelve, by a division of the seventh and twelfth; and

some other small improvements were made. The third edition was published

in 1678; and the widow, to whom the copy was then to devolve, sold all

her claims to Simmons for eight pounds, according to her receipt given

December 21, 1680. Simmons had already agreed to transfer the whole

right to Brabazon Aylmer, for twenty-five pounds; and Aylmer sold to

Jacob Tonson half, August 17, 1683, and half, March 24, 1690, at a price

considerably enlarged. In the history of Paradise Lost, a deduction thus

minute will rather gratify than fatigue.

The slow sale and tardy reputation of this poem have been always

mentioned as evidences of neglected merit, and of the uncertainty of

literary fame; and inquiries have been made, and conjectures offered,

about the causes of its long obscurity and late reception. But has the

case been truly stated? Have not lamentation and wonder been lavished on

an evil that was never felt?

That in the reigns of Charles and James the Paradise Lost received no

publick acclamations, is readily confessed. Wit and literature were on

the side of the court; and who, that solicited favour or fashion would

venture to praise the defender of the regicides? All that he himself

could think his due, from "evil tongues" in "evil days," was that

reverential silence which was generously preserved. But it cannot be

inferred, that his poem was not read, or not, however unwillingly,

admired.

The sale, if it be considered, will justify the publick. Those who have

no power to judge of past times, but by their own, should always doubt

their conclusions. The call for books was not in Milton's age what it

is in the present. To read was not then a general amusement; neither

traders, nor often gentlemen, thought themselves disgraced by ignorance.

The women had not then aspired to literature, nor was every house

supplied with a closet of knowledge. Those, indeed, who professed

learning, were not less learned than at any other time; but of that

middle race of students who read for pleasure or accomplishment, and

who buy the numerous products of modern typography, the number was

then comparatively small. To prove the paucity of readers, it may be

sufficient to remark, that the nation had been satisfied from 1623 to

1664, that is, forty-one years, with only two editions of the works of

Shakespeare, which, probably, did not together make one thousand copies.

The sale of thirteen hundred copies in two years, in opposition to so

much recent enmity, and to a style of versification new to all, and

disgusting to many, was an uncommon example of the prevalence of genius.

The demand did not immediately increase; for many more readers than were

supplied at first the nation did not afford. Only three thousand were

sold in eleven years; for it forced its way without assistance; its

admirers did not dare to publish their opinion; and the opportunities

now given of attracting notice by advertisements were then very few; the

means of proclaiming the publication of new books have been produced by

that general literature which now pervades the nation through all its

ranks.

But the reputation and price of the copy still advanced, till the

revolution put an end to the secrecy of love, and Paradise Lost broke

into open view with sufficient security of kind reception.

Fancy can hardly forbear to conjecture with what temper Milton surveyed

the silent progress of his work, and marked its reputation stealing its

way in a kind of subterraneous current, through fear and silence. I

cannot but conceive him calm and confident, little disappointed, not at

all dejected, relying on his own merit with steady consciousness, and

waiting, without impatience, the vicissitudes of opinion, and the

impartiality of a future generation.

In the mean time he continued his studies, and supplied the want of

sight by a very odd expedient, of which Philips gives the following

account:

Mr. Philips tells us, "that though our author had daily about him one or

other to read, some persons of man's estate, who, of their own accord,

greedily catched at the opportunity of bring his readers, that they

might as well reap the benefit of what they read to him, as oblige him

by the benefit of their reading; and others of younger years were sent

by their parents to the same end; yet excusing only the eldest daughter

by reason of her bodily infirmity, and difficult utterance of speech,

(which, to say truth, I doubt was the principal cause of excusing her,)

the other two were condemned to the performance of reading, and exactly

pronouncing of all the languages of whatever book he should, at one

time or other, think fit to peruse, viz. the Hebrew, (and I think the

Syriac,) the Greek, the Latin, the Italian, Spanish, and French. All

which sorts of books to be confined to read, without understanding one

word, must needs be a trial of patience almost beyond endurance. Yet

it was endured by both for a long time, though the irksomeness of this

employment could not be always concealed, but broke out more and more

into expressions of uneasiness; so that, at length, they were all, even

the eldest also, sent out to learn some curious and ingenious sorts

of manufacture, that are proper for women to learn, particularly

embroideries in gold or silver."

In the scene of misery which this mode of intellectual labour sets

before our eyes, it is hard to determine whether the daughters or the

father are most to be lamented. A language not understood can never be

so read as to give pleasure, and, very seldom, so as to convey

meaning. If few men would have had resolution to write books with such

embarrassments, few, likewise, would have wanted ability to find some

better expedient.

Three years after his Paradise Lost, 1667, he published his History

of England, comprising the whole fable of Geoffrey of Monmouth, and

continued to the Norman invasion. Why he should have given the first

part, which he seems not to believe, and which is universally rejected,

it is difficult to conjecture. The style is harsh; but it has something

of rough vigour, which, perhaps, may often strike, though it cannot

please.

On this history the licenser again fixed his claws, and, before he would

transmit it to the press, tore out several parts. Some censures of the

Saxon monks were taken away, lest they should be applied to the modern

clergy; and a character of the long parliament, and assembly of divines,

was excluded; of which the author gave a copy to the earl of Anglesea,

and which, being afterwards published, has been since inserted in its

proper place.

The same year were printed Paradise Regained; and Sampson Agonistes, a

tragedy written in imitation of the ancients, and never designed by

the author for the stage. As these poems were published by another

bookseller, it has been asked, whether Simmons was discouraged from

receiving them by the slow sale of the former? Why a writer changed

his bookseller a hundred years ago, I am far from hoping to discover.

Certainly, he who in two years sells thirteen hundred copies of a volume

in quarto, bought for two payments of five pounds each, has no reason to

repent his purchase.

When Milton showed Paradise Regained to Elwood, "this," said he, "is

owing to you; for you put it in my head by the question you put to me at

Chalfont, which otherwise I had not thought of."

His last poetical offspring was his favourite. He could not, as Elwood

relates, endure to hear Paradise Lost preferred to Paradise Regained.

Many causes may vitiate a writer's judgment of his own works. On that

which has cost him much labour he sets a high value, because he is

unwilling to think that he has been diligent in vain; what has been

produced without toilsome efforts, is considered with delight, as a

proof of vigorous faculties and fertile invention; and the last work,

whatever it be, has, necessarily, most of the grace of novelty. Milton,

however it happened, had this prejudice, and had it to himself.

To that multiplicity of attainments, and extent of comprehension, that

entitled this great author to our veneration, may be added a kind

of humble dignity, which did not disdain the meanest services to

literature. The epick poet, the controvertist, the politician, having

already descended to accommodate children with a book of rudiments,

now, in the last years of his life, composed a book of logick, for the

initiation of students in philosophy; and published, 1672, Artis Logicae

plenior Institutio ad Petri Rami Methodum concinnata; that is, a new

scheme of logick, according to the method of Ramus. I know not whether,

even in this book, he did not intend an act of hostility against the

universities; for Ramus was one of the first oppugners of the old

philosophy, who disturbed with innovations the quiet of the schools.

His polemical disposition again revived. He had now been safe so long,

that he forgot his fears, and published a Treatise of true Religion,

Heresy, Schism, Toleration, and the best means to prevent the growth of

Popery.

But this little tract is modestly written, with respectful mention of

the church of England, and an appeal to the thirty-nine articles.

His principle of toleration is, agreement in the sufficiency of the

scriptures; and he extends it to all who, whatever their opinions are,

profess to derive them from the sacred books. The papists appeal to

other testimonies, and are, therefore, in his opinion, not to be

permitted the liberty of either publick or private worship; for, though

they plead conscience, "we have no warrant," he says, "to regard

conscience, which is not grounded in scripture."

Those who are not convinced by his reasons, may be, perhaps, delighted

with his wit. The term "Roman catholick is," he says, "one of the pope's

bulls; it is particular universal, or catholick schismatick."

He has, however, something better. As the best preservative against

popery, he recommends the diligent perusal of the scriptures, a duty,

from which he warns the busy part of mankind not to think themselves

excused.

He now reprinted his juvenile poems, with some additions.

In the last year of his life he sent to the press, seeming to take

delight in publication, a collection of Familiar Epistles in Latin;

to which, being too few to make a volume, he added some academical

exercises, which, perhaps, he perused with pleasure, as they recalled to

his memory the days of youth, but for which nothing but veneration for

his name could now procure a reader.

When he had attained his sixty-sixth year, the gout, with which he had

been long tormented, prevailed over the enfeebled powers of nature. He

died by a quiet and silent expiration, about the tenth of November,

1674, at his house in Bunhill fields; and was buried next his father in

the chancel of St. Giles at Cripplegate. His funeral was very splendidly

and numerously attended.

Upon his grave there is supposed to have been no memorial; but in our

time a monument has been erected in Westminster Abbey "to the author of

Paradise Lost," by Mr. Benson, who has, in the inscription, bestowed

more words upon himself than upon Milton.

When the inscription for the monument of Philips, in which he was said

to be "soli Miltono secundus," was exhibited to Dr. Sprat, then dean

of Westminster, he refused to admit it; the name of Milton was, in his

opinion, too detestable to be read on the wall of a building dedicated

to devotion. Atterbury, who succeeded him, being author of the

inscription, permitted its reception. "And such has been the change of

publick opinion," said Dr. Gregory, from whom I heard this account,

"that I have seen erected in the church a statue of that man, whose name

I once knew considered as a pollution of its walls."

Milton has the reputation of having been, in his youth, eminently

beautiful, so as to have been called the lady of his college. His hair,

which was of a light brown, parted at the foretop, and hung down upon

his shoulders, according to the picture which he has given of Adam. He

was, however, not of the heroick stature, but rather below the middle

size[52], according to Mr. Richardson, who mentions him as having

narrowly escaped from being "short and thick." He was vigorous and

active, and delighted in the exercise of the sword, in which he is

related to have been eminently skilful. His weapon was, I believe, not

the rapier, but the backsword, of which he recommends the use in his

book on education.

His eyes are said never to have been bright; but, if he was a dexterous

fencer, they must have been once quick.

His domestick habits, so far as they are known, were those of a severe

student. He drank little strong drink of any kind, and fed without

excess in quantity, and, in his earlier years, without delicacy of

choice. In his youth he studied late at night; but afterwards changed

his hours, and rested in bed from nine to four in the summer, and five

in the winter. The course of his day was best known after he was blind.

When he first rose, he heard a chapter in the Hebrew Bible, and then

studied till twelve; then took some exercise for an hour; then dined,

then played on the organ, and sang, or heard another sing; then studied

to six; then entertained his visiters till eight; then supped, and,

after a pipe of tobacco and a glass of water, went to bed.

So is his life described: but this even tenour appears attainable only

in colleges. He that lives in the world will, sometimes, have the

succession of his practice broken and confused. Visiters, of whom

Milton is represented to have had great numbers, will come and stay

unseasonably; business, of which every man has some, must be done when

others will do it.

When he did not care to rise early, he had something read to him by his

bedside; perhaps, at this time, his daughters were employed. He composed

much in the morning, and dictated in the day, sitting obliquely in an

elbowchair, with his leg thrown over the arm.

Fortune appears not to have had much of his care. In the civil wars he

lent his personal estate to the parliament; but when, after the contest

was decided, he solicited repayment, he met not only with neglect, but

"sharp rebuke;" and, having tired both himself and his friends, was

given up to poverty and hopeless indignation, till he showed how able he

was to do greater service. He was then made Latin secretary, with two

hundred pounds a year; and had a thousand pounds for his Defence of

the People. His widow, who, after his death, retired to Namptwich, in

Cheshire, and died about 1729, is said to have reported, that he lost

two thousand pounds by intrusting it to a scrivener; and that, in the

general depredation upon the church, he had grasped an estate of about

sixty pounds a year belonging to Westminster Abbey, which, like other

sharers of the plunder of rebellion, he was afterwards obliged to

return. Two thousand pounds, which he had placed in the excise-office,

were also lost. There is yet no reason to believe that he was ever

reduced to indigence. His wants, being few, were competently supplied.

He sold his library before his death, and left his family fifteen

hundred pounds, on which his widow laid hold, and only gave one hundred

to each of his daughters.

His literature was unquestionably great. He read all the languages

which are considered either as learned or polite: Hebrew, with its two

dialects, Greek, Latin, Italian, French, and Spanish. In Latin his skill

was such as places him in the first rank of writers and criticks; and he

appears to have cultivated Italian with uncommon diligence. The books

in which his daughter, who used to read to him, represented him as most

delighting, after Homer, which he could almost repeat, were Ovid's

Metamorphoses and Euripides. His Euripides is, by Mr. Cradock's

kindness, now in my hands: the margin is sometimes noted; but I have

found nothing remarkable.

Of the English poets, he set most value upon Spenser, Shakespeare, and

Cowley. Spenser was apparently his favourite; Shakespeare he may easily

be supposed to like, with every other skilful reader; but I should not

have expected that Cowley, whose ideas of excellence were so different

from his own, would have had much of his approbation. His character of

Dryden, who sometimes visited him, was, that he was a good rhymist,

but no poet. His theological opinions are said to have been first

Calvinistical; and afterwards, perhaps, when he began to hate the

presbyterians, to have tended towards Arminianism. In the mixed

questions of theology and government, he never thinks that he can recede

far enough from popery, or prelacy; but what Bandius says of Erasmus

seems applicable to him, "magis habuit quod fugeret, quam quod

sequeretur." He had determined rather what to condemn, than what

to approve. He has not associated himself with any denomination of

protestants; we know rather what he was not, than what he was. He was

not of the church of Rome; he was not of the church of England.

To be of no church is dangerous. Religion, of which the rewards are

distant, and which is animated only by faith and hope, will glide by

degrees out of the mind, unless it be invigorated and reimpressed by

external ordinances, by stated calls to worship, and the salutary

influence of example. Milton, who appears to have had full conviction of

the truth of Christianity, and to have regarded the holy scriptures with

the profoundest veneration, to have been untainted by any heretical

peculiarity of opinion, and to have lived in a confirmed belief of the

immediate and occasional agency of providence, yet grew old without any

visible worship. In the distribution of his hours, there was no hour of

prayer, either solitary or with his household; omitting publick prayers,

he omitted all.

Of this omission the reason has been sought upon a supposition, which

ought never to be made, that men live with their own approbation, and

justify their conduct to themselves. Prayer certainly was not thought

superfluous by him, who represents our first parents as praying

acceptably in the state of innocence, and efficaciously after their

fall. That he lived without prayer can hardly be affirmed; his studies

and meditations were an habitual prayer. The neglect of it in his family

was, probably, a fault for which he condemned himself, and which he

intended to correct, but that death, as too often happens, intercepted

his reformation. His political notions were those of an acrimonious and

surly republican, for which it is not known that he gave any better

reason than that "a popular government was the most frugal; for the

trappings of a monarchy would set up an ordinary commonwealth." It is

surely very shallow policy that supposes money to be the chief good; and

even this, without considering that the support and expense of a court

is, for the most part, only a particular kind of traffick, by which

money is circulated, without any national impoverishment.

Milton's republicanism was, I am afraid, founded in an envious hatred of

greatness, and a sullen desire of independence; in petulance impatient

of control, and pride disdainful of superiority. He hated monarchs in

the state, and prelates in the church; for he hated all whom he was

required to obey. It is to be suspected, that his predominant desire was

to destroy, rather than establish, and that he felt not so much the love

of liberty, as repugnance to authority.

It has been observed, that they who most loudly clamour for liberty do

not most liberally grant it. What we know of Milton's character, in

domestick relations, is, that he was severe and arbitrary. His family

consisted of women; and there appears in his books something like a

Turkish contempt of females, as subordinate and inferiour beings. That

his own daughters might not break the ranks, he suffered them to be

depressed by a mean and penurious education. He thought women made only

for obedience, and man only for rebellion.

Of his family some account may be expected. His sister, first married to

Mr. Philips, afterwards married Mr. Agar, a friend of her first husband,

who succeeded him in the crown-office. She had, by her first husband,

Edward and John, the two nephews whom Milton educated; and, by her

second, two daughters.

His brother, sir Christopher, had two daughters, Mary and Catharine[53];

and a son, Thomas, who succeeded Agar in the crown-office, and left a

daughter living, in 1749, in Grosvenor street.

Milton had children only by his first wife; Anne, Mary, and Deborah.

Anne, though deformed, married a master-builder, and died of her first

child. Mary died single. Deborah married Abraham Clark, a weaver in

Spital fields, and lived seventy-six years, to August, 1727. This is the

daughter of whom publick mention has been made. She could repeat the

first lines of Homer, the Metamorphoses, and some of Euripides, by

having often read them. Yet here incredulity is ready to make a

stand. Many repetitions are necessary to fix in the memory lines not

understood; and why should Milton wish or want to hear them so often?

These lines were at the beginning of the poems. Of a book written in a

language not understood, the beginning raises no more attention than the

end; and as those that understand it know commonly the beginning best,

its rehearsal will seldom be necessary. It is not likely that Milton

required any passage to be so much repeated, as that his daughter could

learn it; nor likely that he desired the initial lines to be read at

all; nor that the daughter, weary of the drudgery of pronouncing unideal

sounds, would voluntarily commit them to memory.

To this gentlewoman Addison made a present, and promised some

establishment, but died soon after. Queen Caroline sent her fifty

guineas. She had seven sons and three daughters; but none of them had

any children, except her son Caleb and her daughter Elizabeth. Caleb

went to Fort St. George, in the East Indies, and had two sons, of whom

nothing is now known. Elizabeth married Thomas Foster, a weaver in

Spital fields; and had seven children, who all died. She kept a petty

grocer's or chandler's shop, first at Holloway, and afterwards in Cock

lane, near Shoreditch church. She knew little of her grandfather, and

that little was not good. She told of his harshness to his daughters,

and his refusal to have them taught to write; and, in opposition to

other accounts, represented him as delicate, though temperate, in his

diet.

In 1750, April 5, Comus was played for her benefit. She had so little

acquaintance with diversion or gaiety, that she did not know what was

intended, when a benefit was offered her. The profits of the night were

only one hundred and thirty pounds, though Dr. Newton brought a large

contribution; and twenty pounds were given by Tonson, a man who is to

be praised as often as he is named. Of this sum one hundred pounds were

placed in the stocks, after some debate between her and her husband, in

whose name it should be entered; and the rest augmented their little

stock, with which they removed to Islington. This was the greatest

benefaction that Paradise Lost ever procured the author's descendants;

and to this he, who has now attempted to relate his life, had the honour

of contributing a prologue[54].

In the examination of Milton's poetical works, I shall pay so much

regard to time as to begin with his juvenile productions. For his early

pieces he seems to have had a degree of fondness not very laudable; what

he has once written he resolves to preserve, and gives to the publick an

unfinished poem, which he broke off, because he was "nothing satisfied

with what he had done," supposing his readers less nice than himself.

These preludes to his future labours are in Italian, Latin, and English.

Of the Italian I cannot pretend to speak as a critick; but I have heard

them commended by a man well qualified to decide their merit. The Latin

pieces are lusciously elegant; but the delight which they afford is

rather by the exquisite imitation of the ancient writers, by the purity

of the diction, and the harmony of the numbers, than by any power of

invention, or vigour of sentiment. They are not all of equal value; the

elegies excel the odes; and some of the exercises on Gunpowder Treason

might have been spared.

The English poems, though they make no promises of Paradise Lost[55],

have this evidence of genius, that they have a cast original and

unborrowed. But their peculiarity is not excellence; if they differ from

the verses of others, they differ for the worse; for they are too often

distinguished by repulsive harshness; the combinations of words are

new, but they are not pleasing; the rhymes and epithets seem to be

laboriously sought, and violently applied.

That, in the early part of his life, he wrote with much care appears

from his manuscripts, happily preserved at Cambridge, in which many

of his smaller works are found, as they were first written, with the

subsequent corrections. Such relicks show how excellence is acquired;

what we hope ever to do with ease, we must learn first to do with

diligence.

Those who admire the beauties of this great poet sometimes force their

own judgment into false approbation of his little pieces, and prevail

upon themselves to think that admirable which is only singular. All that

short compositions can commonly attain, is neatness and elegance. Milton

never learned the art of doing little things with grace; he overlooked

the milder excellence of suavity and softness: he was a lion, that had

no skill "in dandling the kid."

One of the poems on which much praise has been bestowed is Lycidas;

of which the diction is harsh, the rhymes uncertain, and the numbers

unpleasing. What beauty there is, we must, therefore, seek in the

sentiments and images. It is not to be considered as the effusion of

real passion; for passion runs not after remote allusions and obscure

opinions. Passion plucks no berries from the myrtle and ivy, nor calls

upon Arethuse and Mincius, nor tells of rough "satyrs and fauns with

cloven heel." Where there is leisure for fiction, there is little grief.

In this poem there is no nature, for there is no truth; there is no art,

for there is nothing new. Its form is that of a pastoral: easy, vulgar,

and, therefore, disgusting; whatever images it can supply are long ago

exhausted; and its inherent improbability always forces dissatisfaction

on the mind. When Cowley tells of Hervey, that they studied together, it

is easy to suppose how much he must miss the companion of his labours,

and the partner of his discoveries; but what image of tenderness can be

excited by these lines?

We drove afield, and both together heard,

What time the grey fly winds her sultry horn,

Batt'ning our flocks with the fresh dews of night.

We know that they never drove afield, and that they had no flocks

to batten; and, though it be allowed that the representation may be

allegorical, the true meaning is so uncertain and remote, that it is

never sought, because it cannot be known when it is found.

Among the flocks, and copses, and flowers, appear the heathen deities;

Jove and Phoebus, Neptune and Aeolus, with a long train of mythological

imagery, such as a college easily supplies. Nothing can less display

knowledge, or less exercise invention, than to tell how a shepherd has

lost his companion, and must now feed his flocks alone, without any

judge of his skill in piping; and how one god asks another god what is

become of Lycidas, and how neither god can tell. He who thus grieves

will excite no sympathy; he who thus praises will confer no honour.

This poem has yet a grosser fault. With these trifling fictions are

mingled the most awful and sacred truths, such as ought never to be

polluted with such irreverend combinations. The shepherd, likewise,

is now a feeder of sheep, and afterwards an ecclesiastical pastor, a

superintendent of a Christian flock. Such equivocations are always

unskilful; but here they are indecent, and, at least, approach to

impiety, of which, however, I believe the writer not to have been

conscious. Such is the power of reputation justly acquired, that its

blaze drives away the eye from nice examination. Surely no man could

have fancied that he read Lycidas with pleasure, had he not known the

author.

Of the two pieces, L'Allegro and Il Penseroso, I believe, opinion is

uniform; every man that reads them, reads them with pleasure. The

author's design is not, what Theobald has remarked, merely to show

how objects derive their colours from the mind, by representing the

operation of the same things upon the gay and the melancholy temper, or

upon the same man, as he is differently disposed; but rather how, among

the successive variety of appearances, every disposition of mind takes

hold on those by which it may be gratified.

The cheerful man hears the lark in the morning; the pensive man hears

the nightingale in the evening. The cheerful man sees the cock strut,

and hears the horn and hounds echo in the wood; then walks, "not

unseen," to observe the glory of the rising sun, or listen to the

singing milkmaid, and view the labours of the ploughman and the mower:

then casts his eyes about him over scenes of smiling plenty, and looks

up to the distant tower, the residence of some fair inhabitant; thus he

pursues rural gaiety through a day of labour or of play, and delights

himself at night with the fanciful narratives of superstitious

ignorance.

The pensive man, at one time, walks "unseen" to muse at midnight; and,

at another, hears the sullen curfew. If the weather drives him home, he

sits in a room lighted only by "glowing embers;" or, by a lonely lamp,

outwatches the north star, to discover the habitation of separate souls,

and varies the shades of meditation, by contemplating the magnificent or

pathetick scenes of tragick or epick poetry. When the morning comes, a

morning gloomy with rain and wind, he walks into the dark, trackless

woods[56], falls asleep by some murmuring water, and with melancholy

enthusiasm expects some dream of prognostication, or some musick played

by aerial performers.

Both mirth and melancholy are solitary, silent inhabitants of the

breast, that neither receive nor transmit communication; no mention is,

therefore, made of a philosophical friend, or a pleasant companion. The

seriousness does not arise from any participation of calamity, nor the

gaiety from the pleasures of the bottle.

The man of cheerfulness, having exhausted the country, tries what

"towered cities" will afford, and mingles with scenes of splendour, gay

assemblies, and nuptial festivities; but he mingles a mere spectator,

as, when the learned comedies of Jonson, or the wild dramas of

Shakespeare, are exhibited, he attends the theatre.

The pensive man never loses himself in crowds, but walks the cloister,

or frequents the cathedral. Milton probably had not yet forsaken the

church.

Both his characters delight in musick; but he seems to think, that

cheerful notes would have obtained, from Pluto, a complete dismission of

Eurydice, of whom solemn sounds only procured a conditional release.

For the old age of cheerfulness he makes no provision; but melancholy he

conducts with great dignity to the close of life. His cheerfulness is

without levity, and his pensiveness without asperity.

Through these two poems the images are properly selected, and nicely

distinguished; but the colours of the diction seem not sufficiently

discriminated. I know not whether the characters are kept sufficiently

apart. No mirth can, indeed, be found in his melancholy; but I am afraid

that I always meet some melancholy in his mirth. They are two noble

efforts of imagination[57].

The greatest of his juvenile performances is the Masque of Comus, in

which may very plainly be discovered the dawn or twilight of Paradise

Lost. Milton appears to have formed very early that system of diction,

and mode of verse, which his maturer judgment approved, and from which

he never endeavoured nor desired to deviate.

Nor does Comus afford only a specimen of his language; it exhibits,

likewise, his power of description and his vigour of sentiment, employed

in the praise and defence of virtue. A work more truly poetical is

rarely found; allusions, images, and descriptive epithets, embellish

almost every period with lavish decoration. As a series of lines,

therefore, it may be considered as worthy of all the admiration with

which the votaries have received it.

As a drama it is deficient. The action is not probable. A mask, in those

parts where supernatural intervention is admitted, must, indeed, be

given up to all the freaks of imagination; but, so far as the action is

merely human, it ought to be reasonable, which can hardly be said of the

conduct of the two brothers; who, when their sister sinks with fatigue

in a pathless wilderness, wander both away together, in search of

berries, too far to find their way back, and leave a helpless lady to

all the sadness and danger of solitude. This, however, is a defect

overbalanced by its convenience.

What deserves more reprehension is, that the prologue spoken in the wild

wood, by the attendant spirit, is addressed to the audience; a mode of

communication so contrary to the nature of dramatick representation,

that no precedents can support it[58].

The discourse of the spirit is too long; an objection that may be made

to almost all the following speeches; they have not the sprightliness

of a dialogue animated by reciprocal contention, but seem rather

declamations deliberately composed, and formally repeated, on a moral

question. The auditor, therefore, listens as to a lecture, without

passion, without anxiety.

The song of Comus has airiness and jollity; but, what may recommend

Milton's morals, as well as his poetry, the invitations to pleasure are

so general, that they excite no distinct images of corrupt enjoyment,

and take no dangerous hold on the fancy.

The following soliloquies of Comus and the Lady are elegant, but

tedious. The song must owe much to the voice, if it ever can delight. At

last, the brothers enter with too much tranquillity; and, when they have

feared, lest their sister should be in danger, and hoped that she is

not in danger, the elder makes a speech in praise of chastity, and the

younger finds how fine it is to be a philosopher.

Then descends the spirit, in form of a shepherd; and the brother,

instead of being in haste to ask his help, praises his singing, and

inquires his business in that place. It is remarkable, that, at this

interview, the brother, is taken with a short fit of rhyming. The spirit

relates that the lady is in the power of Comus; the brother moralizes

again; and the spirit makes a long narration, of no use, because it is

false, and, therefore, unsuitable to a good being.

In all these parts the language is poetical, and the sentiments are

generous; but there is something wanting to allure attention.

The dispute between the lady and Comus is the most animated and

affecting scene of the drama, and wants nothing but a brisker

reciprocation of objections and replies to invite attention and detain

it.

The songs are vigorous and full of imagery; but they are harsh in their

diction, and not very musical in their numbers.

Throughout the whole the figures are too bold, and the language too

luxuriant, for dialogue. It is a drama in the epick style, inelegantly

splendid, and tediously instructive.

The sonnets were written in different parts of Milton's life, upon

different occasions. They deserve not any particular criticism; for of

the best it can only be said, that they are not bad; and, perhaps, only

the eighth and the twenty-first are truly entitled to this slender

commendation. The fabrick of a sonnet, however adapted to the Italian

language, has never succeeded in ours, which, having greater variety of

termination, requires the rhymes to be often changed.

Those little pieces may be despatched without much anxiety; a greater

work calls for greater care. I am now to examine Paradise Lost, a poem,

which, considered with respect to design, may claim the first place, and

with respect to performance the second, among the productions of the

human mind.

By the general consent of criticks, the first praise of genius is due

to the writer of an epick poem, as it requires an assemblage of all the

powers which are singly sufficient for other compositions. Poetry is the

art of uniting pleasure with truth, by calling imagination to the help

of reason. Epick poetry undertakes to teach the most important truths by

the most pleasing precepts, and, therefore, relates some great event

in the most affecting manner. History must supply the writer with the

rudiments of narration, which he must improve and exalt by a nobler art,

must animate by dramatick energy, and diversify by retrospection and

anticipation; morality must teach him the exact bounds, and different

shades, of vice and virtue; from policy and the practice of life, he

has to learn the discriminations of character, and the tendency of the

passions, either single or combined; and physiology must supply him with

illustrations and images. To put these materials to poetical use, is

required an imagination capable of painting nature, and realizing

fiction. Nor is he yet a poet till he has attained the whole extension

of his language, distinguished all the delicacies of phrase, and all the

colours of words, and learned to adjust their different sounds to all

the varieties of metrical modulation.

Bossu is of opinion, that the poet's first work is to find a moral,

which his fable is afterwards to illustrate and establish. This seems

to have been the process only of Milton; the moral of other poems

is incidental and consequent; in Milton's only it is essential and

intrinsick. His purpose was the most useful and the most arduous:

"to vindicate the ways of God to man;" to show the reasonableness of

religion, and the necessity of obedience to the divine law.

To convey this moral, there must be a fable, a narration artfully

constructed, so as to excite curiosity, and surprise expectation. In

this part of his work, Milton must be confessed to have equalled every

other poet. He has involved, in his account of the fall of man, the

events which preceded, and those that were to follow it; he has

interwoven the whole system of theology with such propriety, that every

part appears to be necessary; and scarcely any recital is wished shorter

for the sake of quickening the progress of the main action.

The subject of an epick poem is naturally an event of great importance.

That of Milton is not the destruction of a city, the conduct of a

colony, or the foundation of an empire. His subject is the fate of

worlds, the revolutions of heaven and of earth; rebellion against

the supreme king, raised by the highest order of created beings; the

overthrow of their host, and the punishment of their crime; the creation

of a new race of reasonable creatures; their original happiness and

innocence, their forfeiture of immortality, and their restoration to

hope and peace.

Great events can be hastened or retarded only by persons of elevated

dignity. Before the greatness displayed in Milton's poem, all other

greatness shrinks away. The weakest of his agents are the highest and

noblest of human beings, the original parents of mankind; with whose

actions the elements consented; on whose rectitude, or deviation of

will, depended the state of terrestrial nature, and the condition of all

the future inhabitants of the globe. Of the other agents in the poem,

the chief are such as it is irreverence to name on slight occasions. The

rest were lower powers;

----of which the least could wield

Those elements, and arm him with the force

Of all their regions;

powers, which only the control of omnipotence restrains from laying

creation waste, and filling the vast expanse of space with ruin and

confusion. To display the motives and actions of beings thus superiour,

so far as human reason can examine them, or human imagination represent

them, is the task which this mighty poet has undertaken and performed.

In the examination of epick poems much speculation is commonly employed

upon the characters. The characters in the Paradise Lost, which admit of

examination, are those of angels and of man; of angels good and evil; of

man in his innocent and sinful state.

Among the angels, the virtue of Raphael is mild and placid, of easy

condescension and free communication; that of Michael is regal and

lofty, and, as may seem, attentive to the dignity of his own nature.

Abdiel and Gabriel appear occasionally, and act as every incident

requires; the solitary fidelity of Abdiel is very amiably painted.

Of the evil angels the characters are more diversified. To Satan, as

Addison observes, such sentiments are given as suit "the most exalted

and most depraved being." Milton has been censured by Clarke[59], for

the impiety which, sometimes, breaks from Satan's mouth; for there are

thoughts, as he justly remarks, which no observation of character can

justify, because no good man would willingly permit them to pass,

however transiently, through his own mind. To make Satan speak as

a rebel, without any such expressions as might taint the reader's

imagination, was, indeed, one of the great difficulties in Milton's

undertaking; and I cannot but think that he has extricated himself with

great happiness. There is in Satan's speeches little that can give pain

to a pious ear. The language of rebellion cannot be the same with that

of obedience. The malignity of Satan foams in haughtiness and obstinacy;

but his expressions are commonly general, and no otherwise offensive

than as they are wicked.

The other chiefs of the celestial rebellion are very judiciously

discriminated in the first and second books; and the ferocious character

of Moloch appears, both in the battle and the council, with exact

consistency.

To Adam and to Eve are given, during their innocence, such sentiments

as innocence can generate and utter. Their love is pure benevolence and

mutual veneration; their repasts are without luxury, and their diligence

without toil. Their addresses to their maker have little more than the

voice of admiration and gratitude. Fruition left them nothing to ask;

and innocence left them nothing to fear.

But with guilt enter distrust and discord, mutual accusation, and

stubborn self-defence; they regard each other with alienated minds, and

dread their creator as the avenger of their transgression. At last

they seek shelter in his mercy, soften to repentance, and melt in

supplication. Both before and after the fall, the superiority of Adam is

diligently sustained.

Of the probable and the marvellous, two parts of a vulgar epick poem,

which immerge the critick in deep consideration, the Paradise Lost

requires little to be said. It contains the history of a miracle, of

creation and redemption; it displays the power and the mercy of

the supreme being; the probable, therefore, is marvellous, and the

marvellous is probable. The substance of the narrative is truth; and, as

truth allows no choice, it is, like necessity, superiour to rule. To the

accidental or adventitious parts, as to every thing human, some slight

exceptions may be made; but the main fabrick is immovably supported. It

is justly remarked by Addison, that this poem has, by the nature of its

subject, the advantage above all others, that it is universally and

perpetually interesting. All mankind will, through all ages, bear the

same relation to Adam and to Eve, and must partake of that good and evil

which extend to themselves.

Of the machinery, so called from 'theos apo maechanaes', by which

is meant the occasional interposition of supernatural power, another

fertile topick of critical remarks, here is no room to speak, because

every thing is done under the immediate and visible direction of heaven;

but the rule is so far observed, that no part of the action could have

been accomplished by any other means.

Of episodes, I think, there are only two, contained in Raphael's

relation of the war in heaven, and Michael's prophetick account of the

changes to happen in this world. Both are closely connected with the

great action; one was necessary to Adam, as a warning, the other, as a

consolation.

To the completeness or integrity of the design, nothing can be objected;

it has, distinctly and clearly, what Aristotle requires, a beginning, a

middle, and an end. There is, perhaps, no poem, of the same length, from

which so little can be taken without apparent mutilation. Here are no

funeral games, nor is there any long description of a shield. The short

digressions at the beginning of the third, seventh, and ninth books,

might, doubtless, be spared; but superfluities so beautiful, who would

take away? or who does not wish that the author of the Iliad had

gratified succeeding ages with a little knowledge of himself? Perhaps

no passages are more frequently or more attentively read, than those

extrinsick paragraphs; and, since the end of poetry is pleasure, that

cannot be unpoetical with which all are pleased.

The questions, whether the action of the poem be strictly one, whether

the poem can be properly termed heroick, and who is the hero, are raised

by such readers as draw their principles of judgment rather from books

than from reason. Milton, though he entitled Paradise Lost only a poem,

yet calls it himself heroick song. Dryden petulantly and indecently

denies the heroism of Adam, because he was overcome; but there is no

reason why the hero should not be unfortunate, except established

practice, since success and virtue do not go necessarily together. Cato

is the hero of Lucan; but Lucan's authority will not be suffered by

Quintilian to decide. However, if success be necessary, Adam's deceiver

was at last crushed; Adam was restored to his maker's favour, and,

therefore, may securely resume his human rank.

After the scheme and fabrick of the poem, must be considered its

component parts, the sentiments and the diction.

The sentiments, as expressive of manners, or appropriated to characters,

are, for the greater part, unexceptionably just.

Splendid passages, containing lessons of morality, or precepts of

prudence, occur seldom. Such is the original formation of this poem,

that, as it admits no human manners, till the fall, it can give little

assistance to human conduct. Its end is to raise the thoughts above

sublunary cares or pleasures. Yet the praise of that fortitude, with

which Abdiel maintained his singularity of virtue against the scorn of

multitudes, may be accommodated to all times; and Raphael's reproof of

Adam's curiosity after the planetary motions, with the answer returned

by Adam, may be confidently opposed to any rule of life which any poet

has delivered.

The thoughts which are occasionally called forth in the progress, are

such as could only be produced by an imagination in the highest degree

fervid and active, to which materials were supplied by incessant study

and unlimited curiosity. The heat of Milton's mind may be said to

sublimate his learning, to throw off into his work the spirit of

science, unmingled with its grosser parts.

He had considered creation, in its whole extent, and his descriptions

are, therefore, learned. He had accustomed his imagination to

unrestrained indulgence, and his conceptions, therefore, were extensive.

The characteristick quality of his poem is sublimity. He sometimes

descends to the elegant, but his element is the great. He can

occasionally invest himself with grace; but his natural port is

gigantick loftiness[60]. He can please, when pleasure is required; but

it is his peculiar power to astonish.

He seems to have been well acquainted with his own genius, and to know

what it was that nature had bestowed upon him more bountifully than upon

others; the power of displaying the vast, illuminating the splendid,

enforcing the awful, darkening the gloomy, and aggravating the dreadful;

he, therefore, chose a subject on which too much could not be said, on

which he might tire his fancy, without the censure of extravagance.

The appearances of nature, and the occurrences of life, did not satiate

his appetite of greatness. To paint things as they are requires a minute

attention, and employs the memory rather than the fancy. Milton's

delight was to sport in the wide regions of possibility; reality was a

scene too narrow for his mind. He sent his faculties out upon discovery,

into worlds where only imagination can travel, and delighted to form

new modes of existence, and furnish sentiment and action to superiour

beings, to trace the counsels of hell, or accompany the choirs of

heaven.

But he could not be always in other worlds; he must sometimes revisit

earth, and tell of things visible and known. When he cannot raise wonder

by the sublimity of his mind, he gives delight by its fertility.

Whatever be his subject, he never fails to fill the imagination. But his

images and descriptions of the scenes, or operations of nature, do not

seem to be always copied from original form, nor to have the freshness,

raciness, and energy of immediate observation. He saw nature, as Dryden

expresses it, "through the spectacles of books;" and, on most occasions,

calls learning to his assistance. The garden of Eden brings to his mind

the vale of Enna, where Proserpine was gathering flowers. Satan makes

his way through fighting elements, like Argo between the Cyanean

rocks, or Ulysses between the two Sicilian whirlpools, when he shunned

Charybdis on the "larboard." The mythological allusions have been justly

censured, as not being always used with notice of their vanity; but they

contribute variety to the narration, and produce an alternate exercise

of the memory and the fancy.

His similes are less numerous, and more various, than those of his

predecessors. But he does not confine himself within the limits of

rigorous comparison; his great excellence is amplitude; and he expands

the adventitious image beyond the dimensions which the occasion

required. Thus comparing the shield of Satan to the orb of the moon, he

crowds the imagination with the discovery of the telescope, and all the

wonders which the telescope discovers.

Of his moral sentiments it is hardly praise to affirm that they excel

those of all other poets; for this superiority he was indebted to his

acquaintance with the sacred writings. The ancient epick poets, wanting

the light of revelation, were very unskilful teachers of virtue: their

principal characters may be great, but they are not amiable. The reader

may rise from their works with a greater degree of active or passive

fortitude, and sometimes of prudence; but he will be able to carry away

few precepts of justice, and none of mercy.

From the Italian writers it appears, that the advantages of even

Christian knowledge may be possessed in vain. Ariosto's pravity is

generally known; and, though the Deliverance of Jerusalem may be

considered as a sacred subject, the poet has been very sparing of moral

instruction.

In Milton every line breathes sanctity of thought, and purity

of manners, except when the train of the narration requires the

introduction of the rebellious spirits; and even they are compelled

to acknowledge their subjection to God, in such a manner as excites

reverence, and confirms piety.

Of human beings there are but two; but those two are the parents of

mankind, venerable before their fall for dignity and innocence, and

amiable after it for repentance and submission. In the first state,

their affection is tender without weakness, and their piety sublime

without presumption. When they have sinned, they show how discord begins

in mutual frailty, and how it ought to cease in mutual forbearance; how

confidence of the divine favour is forfeited by sin; and how hope of

pardon may be obtained by penitence and prayer. A state of innocence we

can only conceive, if, indeed, in our present misery, it be possible

to conceive it; but the sentiments and worship proper to a fallen and

offending being, we have all to learn, as we have all to practise.

The poet, whatever be done, is always great. Our progenitors, in their

first state, conversed with angels; even when folly and sin had degraded

them, they had not, in their humiliation, "the port of mean suitors;"

and they rise again to reverential regard, when we find that their

prayers were heard.

As human passions did not enter the world, before the fall, there is, in

the Paradise Lost, little opportunity for the pathetick; but what little

there is has not been lost. That passion which is peculiar to rational

nature, the anguish arising from the consciousness of transgression, and

the horrours attending the sense of the divine displeasure, are very

justly described and forcibly impressed. But the passions are moved only

on one occasion; sublimity is the general and prevailing quality of this

poem; sublimity variously modified, sometimes descriptive, sometimes

argumentative.

The defects and faults of Paradise Lost, for faults and defects every

work of man must have, it is the business of impartial criticism to

discover. As, in displaying the excellence of Milton, I have not made

long quotations, because of selecting beauties there had been no end, I

shall, in the same general manner, mention that which seems to deserve

censure; for what Englishman can take delight in transcribing passages,

which, if they lessen the reputation of Milton, diminish, in some

degree, the honour of our country?

The generality of my scheme does not admit the frequent notice of verbal

inaccuracies; which Bentley, perhaps, better skilled in grammar than in

poetry, has often found, though he sometimes made them, and which he

imputed to the obtrusions of a reviser, whom the author's blindness

obliged him to employ; a supposition rash and groundless, if he thought

it true; and vile and pernicious, if, as is said, he, in private,

allowed it to be false.

The plan of Paradise Lost has this inconvenience, that it comprises

neither human actions nor human manners[61]. The man and woman who act

and suffer are in a state which no other man or woman can ever know.

The reader finds no transaction in which he can be engaged; beholds no

condition in which he can, by any effort of imagination, place himself;

he has, therefore, little natural curiosity or sympathy.

We all, indeed, feel the effect of Adam's disobedience; we all sin, like

Adam, and, like him, must all bewail our offences; we have restless and

insidious enemies in the fallen angels; and in the blessed spirits we

have guardians and friends; in the redemption of mankind we hope to be

included; and in the description of heaven and hell we are, surely,

interested, as we are all to reside, hereafter, either in the regions of

horrour or of bliss.

But these truths are too important to be new; they have been taught to

our infancy; they have mingled with our solitary thoughts and familiar

conversations, and are habitually interwoven with the whole texture of

life. Being, therefore, not new, they raise no unaccustomed emotion in

the mind; what we knew before, we cannot learn; what is not unexpected,

cannot surprise.

Of the ideas suggested by these awful scenes, from some we recede with

reverence, except when stated hours require their association; and

from others we shrink with horrour, or admit them only as salutary

inflictions, as counterpoizes to our interests and passions. Such images

rather obstruct the career of fancy than incite it.

Pleasure and terrour are, indeed, the genuine sources of poetry; but

poetical pleasure must be such as human imagination can, at least,

conceive; and poetical terrour, such as human strength and fortitude may

combat. The good and evil of eternity are too ponderous for the wings of

wit; the mind sinks under them, in passive helplessness, content with

calm belief and humble adoration.

Known truths, however, may take a different appearance, and be conveyed

to the mind by a new train of intermediate images. This Milton has

undertaken, and performed with pregnancy and vigour of mind peculiar

to himself. Whoever considers the few radical positions which the

scriptures afforded him, will wonder by what energetick operation he

expanded them to such extent, and ramified them to so much variety,

restrained, as he was, by religious reverence from licentiousness of

fiction.

Here is a full display of the united force of study and genius; of a

great accumulation of materials, with judgment to digest, and fancy to

combine them: Milton was able to select from nature or from story, from

ancient fable or from modern science, whatever could illustrate or

adorn his thoughts. An accumulation of knowledge impregnated his mind,

fermented by study, and exalted by imagination.

It has been, therefore, said, without an indecent hyperbole, by one

of his encomiasts, that in reading Paradise Lost, we read a book of

universal knowledge.

But original deficience cannot be supplied. The want of human interest

is always felt. Paradise Lost is one of the books which the reader

admires and lays down, and forgets to take up again. None ever wished it

longer than it is. Its perusal is a duty rather than a pleasure. We read

Milton for instruction, retire harassed and over-burdened, and look

elsewhere for recreation; we desert our master, and seek for companions.

Another inconvenience of Milton's design is, that it requires the

description of what cannot be described, the agency of spirits. He saw

that immateriality supplied no images, and that he could not show angels

acting but by instruments of action; he, therefore, invested them with

form and matter. This, being necessary, was, therefore, defensible;

and he should have secured the consistency of his system, by keeping

immateriality out of sight, and enticing his reader to drop it from

his thoughts. But he has, unhappily, perplexed his poetry with his

philosophy. His infernal and celestial powers are sometimes pure spirit,

and sometimes animated body. When Satan walks with his lance upon the

"burning marl," he has a body; when, in his passage between hell and the

new world, he is in danger of sinking in the vacuity, and is supported

by a gust of rising vapours, he has a body; when he animates the toad,

he seems to be mere spirit, that can penetrate matter at pleasure; when

he starts "up in his own shape," he has, at least, a determined form;

and, when he is brought before Gabriel, he has "a spear and a shield,"

which he had the power of hiding in the toad, though the arms of the

contending angels are evidently material.

The vulgar inhabitants of Pandaemonium, being "incorporeal spirits,"

are "at large, though without number," in a limited space: yet, in the

battle, when they were overwhelmed by mountains, their armour hurt them,

"crushed in upon their substance, now grown gross by sinning." This,

likewise, happened to the uncorrupted angels, who were overthrown the

"sooner for their arms, for unarmed they might easily, as spirits,

have evaded by contraction or remove." Even as spirits they are hardly

spiritual; for "contraction" and "remove" are images of matter; but if

they could have escaped without their armour, they might have escaped

from it, and left only the empty cover to be battered. Uriel, when he

rides on a sunbeam, is material; Satan is material when he is afraid of

the prowess of Adam.

The confusion of spirit and matter, which pervades the whole narration

of the war of heaven, fills it with incongruity; and the book in which

it is related is, I believe, the favourite of children, and gradually

neglected, as knowledge is increased.

After the operation of immaterial agents which cannot be explained, may

be considered that of allegorical persons, which have no real existence.

To exalt causes into agents, to invest abstract ideas with form, and

animate them with activity, has always been the right of poetry. But

such airy beings are, for the most part, suffered only to do their

natural office, and retire. Thus fame tells a tale, and victory hovers

over a general, or perches on a standard; but fame and victory can do no

more. To give them any real employment, or ascribe to them any material

agency, is to make them allegorical no longer, but to shock the mind by

ascribing effects to nonentity. In the Prometheus of Aeschylus, we see

violence and strength, and in the Alcestis of Euripides, we see death

brought upon the stage, all as active persons of the drama; but no

precedents can justify absurdity.

Milton's allegory of sin and death is, undoubtedly, faulty. Sin is,

indeed, the mother of death, and may be allowed to be the portress of

hell; but when they stop the journey of Satan, a journey described as

real, and when death offers him battle, the allegory is broken. That sin

and death should have shown the way to hell, might have been allowed;

but they cannot facilitate the passage by building a bridge, because the

difficulty of Satan's passage is described as real and sensible, and the

bridge ought to be only figurative. The hell assigned to the rebellious

spirits is described as not less local than the residence of man. It

is placed in some distant part of space, separated from the regions of

harmony and order by a chaotick waste and an unoccupied vacuity; but

sin and death worked up "a mole of aggravated soil," cemented with

"asphaltus;" a work too bulky for ideal architects.

This unskilful allegory appears to me one of the greatest faults of the

poem; and to this there was no temptation but the author's opinion of

its beauty.

To the conduct of the narrative some objections may be made. Satan is,

with great expectation, brought before Gabriel in Paradise, and is

suffered to go away unmolested. The creation of man is represented as the

consequence of the vacuity left in heaven by the expulsion of the rebels;

yet Satan mentions it as a report "rife in heaven" before his departure.

To find sentiments for the state of innocence was very difficult; and

something of anticipation, perhaps, is now and then discovered. Adam's

discourse of dreams seems not to be the speculation of a new-created

being. I know not whether his answer to the angel's reproof for curiosity

does not want something of propriety; it is the speech of a man

acquainted with many other men. Some philosophical notions, especially

when the philosophy is false, might have been better omitted. The

angel, in a comparison, speaks of "timorous deer," before deer were yet

timorous, and before Adam could understand the comparison.

Dryden remarks, that Milton has some flats among his elevations. This is

only to say, that all the parts are not equal. In every work, one part

must be for the sake of others; a palace must have passages; a poem must

have transitions. It is no more to be required that wit should always be

blazing, than that the sun should always stand at noon. In a great work

there is a vicissitude of luminous and opaque parts, as there is in the

world a succession of day and night. Milton, when he has expatiated in

the sky, may be allowed, sometimes, to revisit earth; for what other

author ever soared so high, or sustained his flight so long?

Milton, being well versed in the Italian poets, appears to have borrowed

often from them; and, as every man catches something from his companions,

his desire of imitating Ariosto's levity has disgraced his work with

the Paradise of Fools; a fiction not, in itself, ill imagined, but too

ludicrous for its place.

His play on words, in which he delights too often; his equivocations,

which Bentley endeavours to defend by the example of the ancients; his

unnecessary and ungraceful use of terms of art; it is not necessary to

mention, because they are easily remarked, and generally censured; and,

at last, bear so little proportion to the whole, that they scarcely

deserve the attention of a critick.

Such are the faults of that wonderful performance, Paradise Lost; which

he who can put in balance with its beauties must be considered not as

nice but as dull; as less to be censured for want of candour, than pitied

for want of sensibility.

Of Paradise Regained, the general judgment seems now to be right, that it

is, in many parts, elegant, and everywhere instructive. It was not to be

supposed that the writer of Paradise Lost could ever write without great

effusions of fancy, and exalted precepts of wisdom. The basis of Paradise

Regained is narrow; a dialogue without action can never please, like an

union of the narrative and dramatick powers. Had this poem been written

not by Milton, but by some imitator, it would have claimed and received

universal praise.

If Paradise Regained has been too much depreciated, Sampson Agonistes

has, in requital, been too much admired. It could only be by long

prejudice, and the bigotry of learning, that Milton could prefer the

ancient tragedies, with their encumbrance of a chorus, to the exhibitions

of the French and English stages; and it is only by a blind confidence

in the reputation of Milton, that a drama can be praised, in which the

intermediate parts have neither cause nor consequence, neither hasten nor

retard the catastrophe.

In this tragedy are, however, many particular beauties, many just

sentiments and striking lines; but it wants that power of attracting the

attention, which a well-connected plan produces.

Milton would not have excelled in dramatick writing; he knew human nature

only in the gross, and had never studied the shades of character, nor the

combinations of concurring, or the perplexity of contending passions. He

had read much, and knew what books could teach; but had mingled little

in the world, and was deficient in the knowledge which experience must

confer.

Through all his greater works there prevails an uniform peculiarity of

diction, a mode and cast of expression which bears little resemblance to

that of any former writer; and which is so far removed from common use,

that an unlearned reader, when he first opens his book, finds himself

surprised by a new language.

This novelty has been, by those who can find nothing wrong in Milton,

imputed to his laborious endeavours after words suitable to the grandeur

of his ideas. "Our language," says Addison, "sunk under him." But the

truth is, that, both in prose and verse, he had formed his style by a

perverse and pedantick principle. He was desirous to use English words

with a foreign idiom. This in all his prose is discovered and condemned;

for there judgment operates freely, neither softened by the beauty, nor

awed by the dignity of his thoughts; but such is the power of his poetry,

that his call is obeyed without resistance, the reader feels himself

in captivity to a higher and a nobler mind, and criticism sinks in

admiration.

Milton's style was not modified by his subject; what is shown with

greater extent in Paradise Lost may be found in Comus. One source of his

peculiarity was his familiarity with the Tuscan poets; the disposition of

his words is, I think, frequently Italian; perhaps, sometimes, combined

with other tongues.

Of him, at last, may be said what Jonson says of Spenser, that "he wrote

no language," but has formed what Butler calls a "Babylonish dialect,"

in itself harsh and barbarous, but made by exalted genius and extensive

learning the vehicle of so much instruction, and so much pleasure, that,

like other lovers, we find grace in its deformity.

Whatever be the faults of his diction, he cannot want the praise of

copiousness and variety; he was master of his language in its full

extent; and has selected the melodious words with such diligence, that

from his book alone the art of English poetry might be learned.

After his diction, something must be said of his versification. The

"measure," he says, "is the English heroick verse without rhyme." Of

this mode he had many examples among the Italians, and some in his own

country. The earl of Surrey is said to have translated one of Virgil's

books without rhyme[62]; and, beside our tragedies, a few short poems had

appeared in blank verse, particularly one tending to reconcile the nation

to Raleigh's wild attempt upon Guiana, and probably written by Raleigh

himself. These petty performances cannot be supposed to have much

influenced Milton, who, more probably took his hint from Trissino's

Italia Liberata; and, finding blank verse easier than rhyme, was desirous

of persuading himself that it is better.

"Rhyme," he says, and says truly, "is no necessary adjunct of true

poetry." But, perhaps, of poetry, as a mental operation, metre or musick

is no necessary adjunct: it is, however, by the musick of metre that

poetry has been discriminated in all languages; and, in languages

melodiously constructed with a due proportion of long and short

syllables, metre is sufficient. But one language cannot communicate its

rules to another; where metre is scanty and imperfect, some help is

necessary. The musick of the English heroick lines strikes the ear so

faintly, that it is easily lost, unless all the syllables of every

line cooperate together; this cooperation can be only obtained by the

preservation of every verse unmingled with another, as a distinct system

of sounds; and this distinctness is obtained and preserved by the

artifice of rhyme. The variety of pauses, so much boasted by the lovers

of blank verse, changes the measures of an English poet to the periods

of a declaimer; and there are only a few skilful and happy readers of

Milton, who enable their audience to perceive where the lines end or

begin. "Blank verse," said an ingenious critick, "seems to be verse only

to the eye." Poetry may subsist without rhyme, but English poetry will

not often please; nor can rhyme ever be safely spared, but where the

subject is able to support itself. Blank verse makes some approach to

that which is called the lapidary style; has neither the easiness

of prose, nor the melody of numbers, and, therefore, tires by long

continuance. Of the Italian writers without rhyme, whom Milton alleges as

precedents, not one is popular; what reason could urge in its defence,

has been confuted by the ear.

But, whatever be the advantage of rhyme, I cannot prevail on myself to

wish that Milton had been a rhymer; for I cannot wish his work to be

other than it is; yet, like other heroes, he is to be admired rather than

imitated. He that thinks himself capable of astonishing may write blank

verse; but those that hope only to please must condescend to rhyme.

The highest praise of genius is original invention. Milton cannot be said

to have contrived the structure of an epick poem, and, therefore, owes

reverence to that vigour and amplitude of mind to which all generations

must be indebted for the, art of poetical narration, for the texture of

the fable, the variation of incidents, the interposition of dialogue, and

all the stratagems that surprise and enchain attention. But, of all the

borrowers from Homer, Milton is, perhaps, the least indebted. He was

naturally a thinker for himself, confident of his own abilities, and

disdainful of help or hindrance: he did not refuse admission to the

thoughts or images of his predecessors, but he did not seek them. From

his contemporaries he neither courted nor received support; there is

in his writings nothing by which the pride of other authors might be

gratified, or favour gained; no exchange of praise, nor solicitation of

support. His great works were performed under discountenance, and in

blindness; but difficulties vanished at his touch; he was born for

whatever is arduous; and his work is not the greatest of heroick poems,

only because it is not the first.

[Footnote 26: In this assertion Dr. Johnson was mistaken. Milton was

admitted a pensioner, and not a sizar, as will appear by the following

extract from the college register: "Johannes Milton, Londinensis, filius

Johannis, institutus fuit in literarum elementis sub Mag'ro Gill Gymnasii

Paulini praefecto, admissus est _Pensionarius Minor_, Feb. 12°, 1624, sub

M'ro Chappell, solvitq. pro Ingr. 0l. 10s. 0d." R.]

[Footnote 27: Published 1632. R.]

[Footnote 28: On this subject, see Dr. Symons's Life of Milton, 71, 72.

ED.]

[Footnote 29: By the mention of this name, he evidently refers to

Albumazar, acted at Cambridge, in 1614. Ignoramus, and other plays were

performed at the same time. The practice was then very frequent. The

last dramatick performance at either university, was the Grateful Fair,

written by Christopher Smart, and represented at Pembroke college,

Cambridge, about 1747. R.]

[Footnote 30: It has, nevertheless, its foundation in reality. The earl

of Bridgewater, being president of Wales, in the year 1634, had his

residence at Ludlow castle, in Shropshire, at which time lord Brackly

and Mr. Egerton, his sons, and lady Alice Egerton, his daughter, passing

through a place called the Haywood forest, or Haywood, in Herefordshire,

were benighted, and the lady for a short time lost: this accident, being

related to their father upon their arrival at his castle, Milton, at the

request of his friend, Henry Lawes, who taught music in the family, wrote

this masque. Lawes set it to music, and it was acted on Michaelmas night:

the two brothers, the young lady, and Lawes himself, bearing each a part

in the representation.

The lady Alice Egerton became afterwards the wife of the earl of Carbury,

who, at his seat called Golden grove, in Caermarthenshire, harboured Dr.

Jeremy Taylor in the time of the usurpation. Among the doctor's sermons

is one on her death, in which her character is finely portrayed. Her

sister, lady Mary, was given in marriage to lord Herbert, of Cherbury.

Notwithstanding Dr. Johnson's assertion, that the fiction is derived from

Homer's Circe, it may be conjectured, that it was rather taken from the

Comus of Erycius Puteanus, in which, under the fiction of a dream, the

characters of Comus and his attendants are delineated, and the delights

of sensualists exposed and reprobated. This little tract was published

at Louvain, in 1611, and afterwards at Oxford, in 1634, the very year in

which Milton's Comus was written. H. Milton evidently was indebted to the

Old Wives' Tale of George Peele for the plan of Comus. R.]

[Footnote 31: This is inaccurately expressed: Philips, and Dr. Newton,

after him, say a garden-house, i.e. a house situated in a garden, and of

which there were, especially in the north suburbs of London, very many,

if not few else. The term is technical, and frequently occurs in the

Athen. and Fast. Oxon. The meaning thereof may be collected from the

article, Thomas Farnaby, the famous schoolmaster, of whom the author

says, that he taught in Goldsmith's rents, in Cripplegate parish, behind

Redcross street, where were large gardens and handsome houses. Milton's

house in Jewin street was also a garden-house, as were, indeed, most of

his dwellings after his settlement in London. H.]

[Footnote 32: Johnson did not here allude to Philips's Theatrum Poetarum,

as has been ignorantly supposed, but, as he himself informed Mr. Malone,

to another work by the same author, entitled, Tractatulus de carmine

dramatico poetarum veterum praesertim in choris tragicis et veteris

comoediae. Cui subjungitur compendiosa enumeratio poetarum (saltern

quorum fama maxima enituit) qui a tempore Dantis Aligerii usque ad hanc

aetatem claruerunt, etc. J. B.]

[Footnote 33: Stephen Marshall, Edmund Calamy, Thomas Young, Matthew

Newcomen, William Spurstow. R.]

[Footnote 34: It was animadverted upon, but without any mention of

Milton's name, by bishop Hall, in his Cases of Conscience, Decade 4, Case

2. J.B.]

[Footnote 35: He terms the author of it a shallow-brained puppy; and thus

refers to it in his index: "Of a noddy who wrote a book about wiving."

J.B.]

[Footnote 36: This charge, as far as regards Milton, is examined by Dr.

Symons with more moderation than usually characterizes his high-sounding

and wordy panegyrics. See Life of Milton. ED.]

[Footnote 37: The work here referred to is Selectarum de Lingua Latina

Observationum Libri duo. Ductu et cura Joannis Ker, 1719. Ker observes,

that vapulandum is pinguis solaecismus. J.B.]

[Footnote 38: It may be doubted whether _gloriosissimus_ be here used

with Milton's boasted purity. _Res gloriosa_ is an _illustrious thing_;

but _vir gloriosus_ is _commonly_ a _braggart_, as in _miles gloriosus_.

Dr. J.]

[Footnote 39: The Cambridge dictionary, published in 4to. 1693, is

no other than a copy, with some small additions, of that of Dr. Adam

Littleton in 1686, by sundry persons, of whom though their names are

concealed, there is great reason to conjecture that Milton's nephew,

Edward Philips, is one: for it is expressly said by Wood, Fasti, vol. i.

p. 266, that Milton's Thesaurus came to his hands; and it is asserted in

the preface thereto, that the editors thereof had the use of three large

folios in manuscript, collected and digested into alphabetical order by

Mr. John Milton. It has been remarked, that the additions, together

with the preface above mentioned, and a large part of the title of

the Cambridge dictionary, have been incorporated and printed with the

subsequent editions of Littleton's dictionary, till that of 1735. Vid.

Biogr. Brit. 2985, in not. So that, for aught that appears to the

contrary, Philips was the last possessor of Milton's manuscripts. H.]

[Footnote 40: _Id est_, to be the subject of an heroick poem, written by

sir Richard Blackmore. H.]

[Footnote 41: Trinity college. R.]

[Footnote 42: The dramas in which Justice, Mercy, Faith, &c. were

introduced, were moralities, not mysteries. MALONE.]

[Footnote 43: Philips says expressly, that Milton was excepted and

disqualified from bearing any office; but Toland says he was not excepted

at all, and consequently included in the general pardon, or act of

indemnity, passed the 29th of August, 1660. Toland is right, for I find

Goodwin and Ph. Nye, the minister, excepted in the act, but Milton not

named. However, he obtained a special pardon in December, 1660, which

passed the privy seal, but not the great seal. MALONE.]

[Footnote 44: It was told before by A. Wood in Ath. Oxon. vol. ii. p.

412. second edition.]

[Footnote 45: That Milton saved Davenant, is attested by Aubrey, and by

Wood, from him; but none of them say that Davenant saved Milton: this is

Richardson's assertion merely. MALONE.]

[Footnote 46: A different account of the means by which Milton secured

himself, is given by an historian lately brought to light: "Milton,

Latin secretary to Cromwell, distinguished by his writings in favour of

the rights and liberties of the people, pretended to be dead, and had a

publick funeral procession. The king applauded his policy in escaping

the punishment of death, by a seasonable show of dying." Cunningham's

History of Great Britain, vol. i. p. 14. R.]

[Footnote 47: Gildon, in his continuation of Langbaine's account of the

dramatick poets, 8vo. 1693, says, that he had been told that Milton,

after the restoration, kept a school at or near Greenwich. The

publication of an Accidence at that period gives some countenance to this

tradition. MALONE]

[Footnote 48: It is scarcely necessary to inform the reader, that this

relation of Voltaire's was perfectly true, as far as relates to the

existence of the play which he speaks of, namely, the Adamo of Andreini;

but it is still a question whether Milton ever saw it. J.B.]

[Footnote 49: This opinion is, with great learning and ingenuity,

refuted in a book now very little known, an Apology or Declaration of

the Power and Providence of God in the Government of the World, by Dr.

George Hakewill, London, folio, 1635. The first who ventured to propagate

it in this country was Dr. Gabriel Goodman, bishop of Gloucester, a man

of a versatile temper, and the author of a book entitled, the Fall of Man,

or the Corruption of Nature proved by Natural Reason. Lond. 1616, and

1624. quarto. He was plundered in the usurpation, turned Roman catholick,

and died in obscurity. See Athen, Oxon. vol. i. p. 727. H.]

[Footnote 50:

--Unless _an age too late_, or cold

Climate, or years damp my intended wing.

Par. Lost. b. ix. l. 44.]

[Footnote 51: Johnson has, in many places of

his Rambler and Idler, ridiculed the notion of a dependance of our mental

powers on the variations of atmosphere. In Boswell's life, however,

there are some recorded instances of his own subjection to this

common infirmity. We cannot refrain from denouncing, as unfeeling and

ungenerous, Johnson's sarcasms at Milton's distempered imagination, when

old age, disease, and darkness had come upon him. Dr. Symons runs into

the diametrically opposite extreme. ED.]

[Footnote 52: "Statura fateor non sum procera: seel quae mediocri tamen

quam parvae propior sit: sed quid si parva, qua et summi saepe tum pace

tum bello viri fuere, quanquam parva cur dicitur, quae ad virtutem satis

magna est." Defensio Secunda. ED.]

[Footnote 53: Both these persons were living at Holloway, about the year

1734, and, at that time, possessed such a degree of health and strength,

as enabled them, on Sundays and prayer-days, to walk a mile up a steep

hill to Highgate chapel. One of them was ninety-two at the time of her

death. Their parentage was known to few, and their names were corrupted

into Melton. By the crown-office, mentioned in the two last paragraphs,

we are to understand the crown-office of the court of Chancery. H.]

[Footnote 54: Printed in the first volume of this collection.]

[Footnote 55: With the exception of Comus, in which, Dr. J. afterwards

says, may very plainly be discovered the dawn or twilight of Paradise

Lost. C.]

[Footnote 56: Here, as Warton justly observes, "Johnson has confounded

two descriptions!"

The melancholy man does not go

out while it rains, but waits, till----the sun begins to fling

His flaring beams. J. B.]

[Footnote 57: Mr. Warton intimates, and there can be little doubt of the

truth of his conjecture, that Milton borrowed many of the images in these

two fine poems from Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy, a book published

in 1621, and, at sundry times since, abounding in learning, curious

information, and pleasantry. Mr. Warton says, that Milton appears to have

been an attentive reader thereof; and to this assertion I add, of my own

knowledge, that it was a book that Dr. Johnson frequently resorted to,

as many others have done, for amusement after the fatigue of study.

H.--Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy, Johnson said, was the only book

that ever took him out of bed two hours sooner than he wished to rise.

Boswell's Life, ii. 120.]

[Footnote 58: Surely there are precedents enough for the practice,

though pessimi exempli, in Milton's favourite tragedian Euripides. ED.]

[Footnote 59: Author of the Essay on Study.]

[Footnote 60: Algarotti terms it, "gigantesca sublimità Miltoniana."

Dr.J.]

[Footnote 61: But, says Dr. Warton, it has, throughout, a reference to

human life and actions. C.]

[Footnote 62: The earl of Surrey translated two books of Virgil without

rhyme; the second and the fourth. J.B.]

BUTLER.

Of the great author of Hudibras there is a life prefixed to the later

editions of his poem, by an unknown writer, and, therefore, of disputable

authority; and some account is incidentally given by Wood, who confesses

the uncertainty of his own narrative; more, however, than they knew

cannot now be learned, and nothing remains but to compare and copy them.

Samuel Butler was born in the parish of Strensham, in Worcestershire,

according to his biographer, in 1612. This account Dr. Nash finds

confirmed by the register. He was christened Feb. 14.

His father's condition is variously represented: Wood mentions him as

competently wealthy; but Mr. Longneville, the son of Butler's principal

friend, says he was an honest farmer, with some small estate, who made a

shift to educate his son at the grammar school of Worcester, under Mr.

Henry Bright[63], from whose care he removed, for a short time, to

Cambridge; but, for want of money, was never made a member of any college.

Wood leaves us rather doubtful whether he went to Cambridge or Oxford;

but, at last, makes him pass six or seven years at Cambridge, without

knowing in what hall or college; yet it can hardly be imagined that he

lived so long in either university but as belonging to one house or

another; and it is still less likely that he could have so long inhabited

a place of learning with so little distinction as to leave his residence

uncertain. Dr. Nash has discovered that his father was owner of a house

and a little land, worth about eight pounds a year, still called Butler's

tenement.

Wood has his information from his brother, whose narrative placed him at

Cambridge, in opposition to that of his neighbours, which sent him to

Oxford. The brother's seems the best authority, till, by confessing his

inability to tell his hall or college, he gives reason to suspect that he

was resolved to bestow on him an academical education; but durst not name

a college, for fear of detection.

He was, for some time, according to the author of his life, clerk to Mr.

Jefferys, of Earl's Croomb, in Worcestershire, an eminent justice of

the peace. In his service he had not only leisure for study, but for

recreation: his amusements were musick and painting; and the reward of

his pencil was the friendship of the celebrated Cooper. Some pictures,

said to be his, were shown to Dr. Nash, at Earl's Croomb; but, when he

inquired for them some years afterwards, he found them destroyed, to stop

windows, and owns that they hardly deserved a better fate.

He was afterwards admitted into the family of the countess of Kent, where

he had the use of a library; and so much recommended himself to Selden,

that he was often employed by him in literary business. Selden, as is

well known, was steward to the countess, and is supposed to have gained

much of his wealth by managing her estate.

In what character Butler was admitted into that lady's service, how long

he continued in it, and why he left it, is, like the other incidents of

his life, utterly unknown. The vicissitudes of his condition placed him

afterwards in the family of sir Samuel Luke, one of Cromwell's officers.

Here he observed so much of the character of the sectaries, that he is

said to have written or begun his poem at this time; and it is likely

that such a design would be formed in a place where he saw the principles

and practices of the rebels, audacious and undisguised in the confidence

of success.

At length the king returned, and the time came in which loyalty hoped

for its reward. Butler, however, was only made secretary to the earl of

Carbury, president of the principality of Wales; who conferred on him the

stewardship of Ludlow castle, when the court of the marches was revived.

In this part of his life, he married Mrs. Herbert, a gentlewoman of a

good family; and lived, says Wood, upon her fortune, having studied

the common law, but never practised it. A fortune she had, says his

biographer, but it was lost by bad securities.

In 1663 was published the first part, containing three cantos, of the

poem of Hudibras, which, as Prior relates, was made known at court by

the taste and influence of the earl of Dorset. When it was known, it was

necessarily admired: the king quoted, the courtiers studied, and the

whole party of the royalists applauded it. Every eye watched for the

golden shower which was to fall upon the author, who certainly was not

without his part in the general expectation.

In 1664 the second part appeared; the curiosity of the nation was

rekindled, and the writer was again praised and elated. But praise was

his whole reward. Clarendon, says Wood, gave him reason to hope for

"places and employments of value and credit;" but no such advantages did

he ever obtain. It is reported that the king once gave him three hundred

guineas; but of this temporary bounty I find no proof.

Wood relates that he was secretary to Villiers, duke of Buckingham, when

he was chancellor of Cambridge: this is doubted by the other writer, who

yet allows the duke to have been his frequent benefactor. That both these

accounts are false there is reason to suspect, from a story told by

Packe, in his account of the life of Wycherley; and from some verses

which Mr. Thyer has published in the author's Remains.

"Mr. Wycherley," says Packe, "had always laid hold of an opportunity

which offered of representing to the duke of Buckingham how well Mr.

Butler had deserved of the royal family, by writing his inimitable

Hudibras; and that it was a reproach to the court, that a person of his

loyalty and wit should suffer in obscurity, and under the wants he did.

The duke always seemed to hearken to him with attention enough; and,

after some time, undertook to recommend his pretensions to his majesty.

Mr. Wycherley, in hopes to keep him steady to his word, obtained of his

grace to name a day, when he might introduce that modest and unfortunate

poet to his new patron. At last an appointment was made, and the place of

meeting was agreed to be the Roebuck. Mr. Butler and his friend attended

accordingly; the duke joined them; but, as the d--l would have it, the

door of the room where they sat was open, and his grace, who had seated

himself near it, observing a pimp of his acquaintance (the creature too

was a knight) trip by with a brace of ladies, immediately quitted his

engagement to follow another kind of business, at which he was more ready

than in doing good offices to men of desert, though no one was better

qualified than he, both in regard to his fortune and understanding, to

protect them; and, from that time to the day of his death, poor Butler

never found the least effect of his promise!"

Such is the story. The verses are written with a degree of acrimony, such

as neglect and disappointment might naturally excite; and such as it

would be hard to imagine Butler capable of expressing against a man who

had any claim to his gratitude.

Notwithstanding this discouragement and neglect, he still prosecuted his

design; and, in 1678, published the third part, which still leaves the

poem imperfect and abrupt. How much more he originally intended, or with

what events the action was to be concluded, it is vain to conjecture. Nor

can it be thought strange that he should stop here, however unexpectedly.

To write without reward is sufficiently unpleasing. He had now arrived

at an age when he might think it proper to be in jest no longer, and,

perhaps, his health might now begin to fail.