an amalgamation, but never with complete success. The Greek drama, on
the model of which the Samson was written, sprang from the ode. The
dialogue was ingrafted on the chorus, and naturally partook of its
character. The genius of the greatest of the Athenian dramatists
co-operated with the circumstances under which tragedy made its first
appearance. Aeschylus was, head and heart, a lyric poet. In his time,
the Greeks had far more intercourse with the East than in the days of
Homer; and they had not yet acquired that immense superiority in war, in
science, and in the arts, which, in the following generation, led them
to treat the Asiatics with contempt. From the narrative of Herodotus it
should seem that they still looked up, with the veneration of disciples,
to Egypt and Assyria. At this period, accordingly, it was natural that
the literature of Greece should be tinctured with the Oriental style.
And that style, we think, is discernible in the works of Pindar and
Aeschylus. The latter often reminds us of the Hebrew writers. The Book
of Job, indeed, in conduct and diction, bears a considerable resemblance
to some of his dramas. Considered as plays, his works are absurd;
considered as choruses they are above all praise. If, for instance, we
examine the address of Clytemnestra to Agamemnon on his return, or the
description of the seven Argive chiefs, by the principles of dramatic
writing, we shall instantly condemn them as monstrous. But if we forget
the characters, and think only of the poetry, we shall admit that it
has never been surpassed in energy and magnificence. Sophocles made the
Greek drama as dramatic as was consistent with its original form. His
portraits of men have a sort of similarity; but it is the similarity,
not of a painting, but of a bass-relief. It suggests a resemblance; but
it does not produce an illusion. Euripides attempted to carry the reform
further. But it was a task far beyond his powers, perhaps beyond any
powers. Instead of correcting what was bad, he destroyed what was
excellent. He substituted crutches for stilts, bad sermons for
good odes.
Milton, it is well known, admired Euripides highly, much more highly
than, in our opinion, Euripides deserved. Indeed, the caresses which
this partiality leads our countryman to bestow on "sad Electra's poet"
sometimes remind us of the beautiful Queen of Fairy-land kissing the
long ears of Bottom. At all events, there can be no doubt that this
veneration for the Athenian, whether just or not, was injurious to the
Samson Agonistes. Had Milton taken Aeschylus for his model, he would
have given himself up to the lyric inspiration, and poured out profusely
all the treasures of his mind, without bestowing a thought on those
dramatic properties which the nature of the work rendered it impossible
to preserve. In the attempt to reconcile things in their own nature
inconsistent he has failed, as every one else must have failed. We
cannot identify ourselves with the characters, as in a good play. We
cannot identify ourselves with the poet, as in a good ode. The
conflicting ingredients, like an acid and an alkali mixed, neutralize
each other. We are by no means insensible to the merits of this
celebrated piece, to the severe dignity of the style, the graceful and
pathetic solemnity of the opening speech, or the wild and barbaric
melody which gives so striking an effect to the choral passages. But we
think it, we confess, the least successful effort of the genius
of Milton.
The Comus is framed on the model of the Italian Masque, as the Samson is
framed on the model of the Greek Tragedy. It is certainly the noblest
performance of the kind which exists in any language. It is as far
superior to The Faithful Shepherdess, as The Faithful Shepherdess is to
the Aminta, or the Aminta to the Pastor Fido. It was well for Milton
that he had here no Euripides to mislead him. He understood and loved
the literature of modern Italy. But he did not feel for it the same
veneration which he entertained for the remains of Athenian and Roman
poetry, consecrated by so many lofty and endearing recollections. The
faults, moreover, of his Italian predecessors were of a kind to which
his mind had a deadly antipathy. He could stoop to a plain style,
sometimes even to a bald style; but false brilliancy was his utter
aversion. His muse had no objection to a russet attire; but she turned
with disgust from the finery of Guarini, as tawdry and as paltry as the
rags of a chimney-sweeper on May-day. Whatever ornaments she wears are
of massive gold, not only dazzling to the sight, but capable of standing
the severest test of the crucible.
Milton attended in the Comus to the distinction which he afterward
neglected in the Samson. He made his Masque what it ought to be,
essentially lyrical, and dramatic only in semblance. He has not
attempted a fruitless struggle against a defect inherent in the nature
of that species of composition; and he has therefore succeeded, wherever
success was not impossible. The speeches must be read as majestic
soliloquies; and he who so reads them will be enraptured with their
eloquence, their sublimity, and their music. The interruptions of the
dialogue, however, impose a constraint upon the writer, and break the
illusion of the reader. The finest passages are those which are lyric in
form as well as in spirit. "I should much commend," says the excellent
Sir Henry Wotton in a letter to Milton, "the tragical part if the
lyrical did not ravish me with a certain Dorique delicacy in your songs
and odes, whereunto, I must plainly confess to you, I have seen yet
nothing parallel in our language." The criticism was just. It is when
Milton escapes from the shackles of the dialogue, when he is discharged
from the labor of uniting two incongruous styles, when he is at liberty
to indulge his choral raptures without reserve, that he rises even
above himself. Then, like his own good Genius bursting from the earthly
form and weeds of Thyrsis, he stands forth in celestial freedom and
beauty; he seems to cry exultingly,
"Now my task is smoothly done,
I can fly or I can run,"
to skim the earth, to soar above the clouds, to bathe in the Elysian dew
of the rainbow, and to inhale the balmy smells of nard and cassia, which
the musky winds of the zephyr scatter through the cedared alleys of the
Hesperides.
There are several of the minor poems of Milton on which we would
willingly make a few remarks. Still more willingly would we enter into a
detailed examination of that admirable poem, the Paradise Regained,
which, strangely enough, is scarcely ever mentioned except as an
instance of the blindness of the parental affection which men of letters
bear toward the offspring of their intellects. That Milton was mistaken
in preferring this work, excellent as it is, to the Paradise Lost, we
readily admit. But we are sure that the superiority of the Paradise Lost
to the Paradise Regained is not more decided than the superiority of the
Paradise Regained to every poem which has since made its appearance. Our
limits, however, prevent us from discussing the point at length. We
hasten on to that extraordinary production which the general suffrage of
critics has placed in the highest class of human compositions.
The only poem of modern times which can be compared with the Paradise
Lost is the Divine Comedy. The subject of Milton, in some points,
resembled that of Dante; but he has treated it in a widely different
manner. We cannot, we think, better illustrate our opinion respecting
our own great poet than by contrasting him with the father of Tuscan
literature.
The poetry of Milton differs from that of Dante as the hieroglyphics of
Egypt differed from the picture-writing of Mexico. The images which
Dante employs speak for themselves; they stand simply for what they are.
Those of Milton have a signification which is often discernible only to
the initiated. Their value depends less on what they directly represent
than on what they remotely suggest. However strange, however grotesque,
may be the appearance which Dante undertakes to describe, he never
shrinks from describing it. He gives us the shape, the color, the sound,
the smell, the taste; he counts the numbers; he measures the size. His
similes are the illustrations of a traveller. Unlike those of other
poets, and especially of Milton, they are introduced in a plain,
business-like manner; not for the sake of any beauty in the objects from
which they are drawn; not for the sake of any ornament which they may
impart to the poem; but simply in order to make the meaning of the
writer as clear to the reader as it is to himself. The ruins of the
precipice which led from the sixth to the seventh circle of hell were
like those of the rock which fell into the Adige on the south of Trent.
The cataract of Phlegethon was like that of Aqua Cheta at the Monastery
of St. Benedict. The place where the heretics were confined in burning
tombs resembled the vast cemetery of Arles.
Now let us compare with the exact details of Dante the dim intimations
of Milton. We will cite a few examples. The English poet has never
thought of taking the measure of Satan. He gives us merely a vague idea
of vast bulk. In one passage the fiend lies stretched out huge in
length, floating many a rood, equal in size to the earth-born enemies of
Jove, or to the sea-monster which the mariner mistakes for an island.
When he addresses himself to battle against the guardian angels he
stands like Teneriffe or Atlas: his stature reaches the sky. Contrast
with these descriptions the lines in which Dante has described the
gigantic spectre of Nimrod. "His face seemed to me as long and as broad
as the ball of St. Peter's at Rome; and his other limbs were in
proportion; so that the bank, which concealed him from the waist
downwards, nevertheless showed so much of him that three tall Germans
would in vain have attempted to reach to his hair." We are sensible
that we do no justice to the admirable style of the Florentine poet. But
Mr. Cary's translation is not at hand; and our version, however rude, is
sufficient to illustrate our meaning.
Once more, compare the lazar-house in the eleventh book of the Paradise
Lost with the last ward of Malebolge in Dante. Milton avoids the
loathsome details, and takes refuge in indistinct but solemn and
tremendous imagery--Despair hurrying from couch to couch to mock the
wretches with his attendance, Death shaking his dart over them, but, in
spite of supplications, delaying to strike. What says Dante? "There was
such a moan there as there would be if all the sick who, between July
and September, are in the hospitals of Valdichiana, and of the Tuscan
swamps, and of Sardinia, were in one pit together; and such a stench was
issuing forth as is wont to issue from decayed limbs."
We will not take upon ourselves the invidious office of settling
precedency between two such writers. Each in his own department is
incomparable; and each, we may remark, has wisely, or fortunately, taken
a subject adapted to exhibit his peculiar talent to the greatest
advantage. The Divine Comedy is a personal narrative. Dante is the
eye-witness and ear-witness of that which he relates. He is the very man
who has heard the tormented spirits crying out for the second death,
who has read the dusky characters on the portal within which there is no
hope, who has hidden his face from the terrors of the Gorgon, who has
fled from the hooks and the seething pitch of Barbariccia and
Draghignazzo. His own hands have grasped the shaggy sides of Lucifer.
His own feet have climbed the mountain of expiation. His own brow has
been marked by the purifying angel. The reader would throw aside such a
tale in incredulous disgust, unless it were told with the strongest air
of veracity, with a sobriety even in its horrors, with the greatest
precision and multiplicity in its details. The narrative of Milton in
this respect differs from that of Dante as the adventures of Amadis
differ from those of Gulliver. The author of Amadis would have made his
book ridiculous if he had introduced those minute particulars which give
such a charm to the work of Swift, the nautical observations, the
affected delicacy about names, the official documents transcribed at
full length, and all the unmeaning gossip and scandal of the court,
springing out of nothing, and tending to nothing. We are not shocked at
being told that a man who lived, nobody knows when, saw many very
strange sights, and we can easily abandon ourselves to the illusion of
the romance. But when Lemuel Gulliver, surgeon, resident at Rotherhithe,
tells us of pigmies and giants, flying islands, and philosophizing
horses, nothing but such circumstantial touches could produce for a
single moment a deception on the imagination.
Of all the poets who have introduced into their works the agency of
supernatural beings, Milton has succeeded best. Here Dante decidedly
yields to him; and as this is a point on which many rash and
ill-considered judgments have been pronounced, we feel inclined to dwell
on it a little longer. The most fatal error which a poet can possibly
commit in the management of his machinery is that of attempting to
philosophize too much. Milton has been often censured for ascribing to
spirits many functions of which spirits must be incapable. But these
objections, though sanctioned by eminent names, originate, we venture to
say, in profound ignorance of the art of poetry.
What is spirit? What are our own minds, the portion of spirit with which
we are best acquainted? We observe certain phenomena. We cannot explain
them into material causes. We therefore infer that there exists
something which is not material. But of this something we have no idea.
We can define it only by negatives. We can reason about it only by
symbols. We use the word, but we have no image of the thing; and the
business of poetry is with images, and not with words. The poet uses
words, indeed; but they are merely the instruments of his art, not its
objects. They are the materials which he is to dispose in such a manner
as to present a picture to the mental eye. And if they are not so
disposed, they are no more entitled to be called poetry than a bale of
canvas and a box of colors to be called a painting.
Logicians may reason about abstractions. But the great mass of men must
have images. The strong tendency of the multitude in all ages and
nations to idolatry can be explained on no other principle. The first
inhabitants of Greece, there is reason to believe, worshipped one
invisible Deity. But the necessity of having something more definite to
adore produced, in a few centuries, the innumerable crowd of gods and
goddesses. In like manner the ancient Persians thought it impious to
exhibit the creator under a human form. Yet even these transferred to
the sun the worship which, in speculation, they considered due only to
the Supreme Mind. The history of the Jews is the record of a continued
struggle between pure Theism, supported by the most terrible sanctions,
and the strangely fascinating desire of having some visible and tangible
object of adoration. Perhaps none of the secondary causes which Gibbon
has assigned for the rapidity with which Christianity spread over the
world, while Judaism scarcely ever acquired a proselyte, operated more
powerfully than this feeling. God, the uncreated, the incomprehensible,
the invisible, attracted few worshippers. A philosopher might admire so
noble a conception; but the crowd turned away in disgust from words
which presented no image to their minds. It was before Deity embodied in
a human form, walking among men, partaking of their infirmities, leaning
on their bosoms, weeping over their graves, slumbering in the manger,
bleeding on the cross, that the prejudices of the Synagogue, and the
doubts of the Academy, and the pride of the Portico, and the fasces of
the Lictor, and the swords of thirty legions, were humbled in the dust.
Soon after Christianity had achieved its triumph, the principle which
had assisted it began to corrupt it. It became a new paganism. Patron
saints assumed the offices of household gods. St. George took the place
of Mars. St. Elmo consoled the mariner for the loss of Castor and
Pollux. The Virgin Mother and Cecilia succeeded to Venus and Muses. The
fascination of sex and loveliness was again joined to that of celestial
dignity; and the homage of chivalry was blended with that of religion.
Reformers have often made a stand against these feelings; but never with
more than apparent and partial success. The men who demolished the
images in cathedrals have not always been able to demolish those which
were enshrined in their minds. It would not be difficult to show that in
politics the same rule holds good. Doctrines, we are afraid, must
generally be embodied before they can excite a strong public feeling.
The multitude is more easily interested for the most unmeaning badge, or
the most insignificant name, than for the most important principle.
From these considerations, we infer that no poet who should affect that
metaphysical accuracy for the want of which Milton has been blamed would
escape a disgraceful failure. Still, however, there was another extreme
which, though far less dangerous, was also to be avoided. The
imaginations of men are in a great measure under the control of their
opinions. The most exquisite art of poetical coloring can produce no
illusion when it is employed to represent that which is at once
perceived to be incongruous and absurd. Milton wrote in an age of
philosophers and theologians. It was necessary, therefore, for him to
abstain from giving such a shock to their understandings as might break
the charm which it was his object to throw over their imaginations. This
is the real explanation of the indistinctness and inconsistency with
which he has often been reproached. Dr. Johnson acknowledges that it was
absolutely necessary that the spirit should be clothed with material
forms. "But," says he, "the poet should have secured the consistency of
his system by keeping immateriality out of sight, and seducing the
reader to drop it from his thoughts." This is easily said; but what if
Milton could not seduce his readers to drop immateriality from their
thoughts? What if the contrary opinion had taken so full a possession
of the minds of men as to leave no room even for the half-belief which
poetry requires? Such we suspect to have been the case. It was
impossible for the poet to adopt altogether the material or the
immaterial system. He therefore took his stand on the debatable ground.
He left the whole in ambiguity. He has doubtless, by so doing, laid
himself open to the charge of inconsistency. But, though philosophically
in the wrong, we cannot but believe that he was poetically in the right.
This task, which almost any other writer would have found impracticable,
was easy to him. The peculiar art which he possessed of communicating
his meaning circuitously through a long succession of associated ideas,
and of intimating more than he expressed, enabled him to disguise those
incongruities which he could not avoid.
Poetry which relates to the beings of another world ought to be at once
mysterious and picturesque. That of Milton is so. That of Dante is
picturesque, indeed, beyond any that ever was written. Its effect
approaches to that produced by the pencil or the chisel. But it is
picturesque to the exclusion of all mystery. This is a fault on the
right side, a fault inseparable from the plan of Dante's poem, which, as
we have already observed, rendered the utmost accuracy of description
necessary. Still it is a fault. The supernatural agents excite an
interest; but it is not the interest which is proper to supernatural
agents. We feel that we could talk to the ghosts and demons without any
emotion of unearthly awe. We could, like Don Juan, ask them to supper,
and eat heartily in their company. Dante's angels are good men with
wings. His devils are spiteful, ugly executioners. His dead men are
merely living men in strange situations. The scene which passes between
the poet and Farinata is justly celebrated. Still, Farinata in the
burning tomb is exactly what Farinata would have been at an
_auto-da-fé_. Nothing can be more touching than the first interview of
Dante and Beatrice. Yet what is it but a lovely woman chiding, with
sweet, austere composure, the lover for whose affection she is grateful,
but whose vices she reprobates? The feelings which give the passage its
charm would suit the streets of Florence as well as the summit of the
Mount of Purgatory.
The spirits of Milton are unlike those of almost all other writers. His
fiends, in particular, are wonderful creations. They are not
metaphysical abstractions. They are not wicked men. They are not ugly
beasts. They have no horns, no tails, none of the fee-faw-fum of Tasso
and Klopstock. They have just enough in common with human nature to be
intelligible to human beings. Their characters are, like their forms,
marked by a certain dim resemblance to those of men, but exaggerated to
gigantic dimensions, and veiled in mysterious gloom.
Perhaps the gods and demons of Aeschylus may best bear a comparison with
the angels and devils of Milton. The style of the Athenian had, as we
have remarked, something of the Oriental character; and the same
peculiarity may be traced in his mythology. It has nothing of the
amenity and elegance which we generally find in the superstitions of
Greece. All is rugged, barbaric, and colossal. The legends of Aeschylus
seem to harmonize less with the fragrant groves and graceful porticos in
which his countrymen paid their vows to the God of Light and Goddess of
Desire than with those huge and grotesque labyrinths of eternal granite
in which Egypt enshrined her mystic Osiris, or in which Hindostan still
bows down to her seven-headed idols. His favorite gods are those of the
elder generation, the sons of heaven and earth, compared with whom
Jupiter himself was a stripling and an upstart, the gigantic Titans, and
the inexorable Furies. Foremost among his creations of this class
stands Prometheus, half fiend, half redeemer, the friend of man, the
sullen and implacable enemy of heaven. Prometheus bears undoubtedly a
considerable resemblance to the Satan of Milton. In both we find the
same impatience of control, the same ferocity, the same unconquerable
pride. In both characters also are mingled, though in very different
proportions, some kind and generous feelings. Prometheus, however, is
hardly superhuman enough. He talks too much of his chains and his uneasy
posture; he is rather too much depressed and agitated. His resolution
seems to depend on the knowledge which he possesses that he holds the
fate of his torturer in his hands, and that the hour of his release will
surely come. But Satan is a creature of another sphere. The might of his
intellectual nature is victorious over the extremity of pain. Amidst
agonies which cannot be conceived without horror, he deliberates,
resolves, and even exults. Against the sword of Michael, against the
thunder of Jehovah, against the flaming lake, and the marl burning with
solid fire, against the prospect of an eternity of unintermitted misery,
his spirit bears up unbroken, resting on its own innate energies,
requiring no support from anything external, nor even from hope itself.
To return for a moment to the parallel which we have been attempting to
draw between Milton and Dante, we would add that the poetry of these
great men has in a considerable degree taken its character from their
moral qualities. They are not egotists. They rarely obtrude their
idiosyncrasies on their readers. They have nothing in common with those
modern beggars for fame who extort a pittance from the compassion of the
inexperienced by exposing the nakedness and sores of their minds. Yet
it would be difficult to name two writers whose works have been more
completely, though undesignedly, colored by their personal feelings.
The character of Milton was peculiarly distinguished by loftiness of
spirit; that of Dante by intensity of feeling. In every line of the
Divine Comedy we discern the asperity which is produced by pride
struggling with misery. There is perhaps no work in the world so deeply
and uniformly sorrowful. The melancholy of Dante was no fantastic
caprice. It was not, as far as at this distance of time can be judged,
the effect of external circumstances. It was from within. Neither love
nor glory, neither the conflicts of earth nor the hope of heaven, could
dispel it. It turned every consolation and every pleasure into its own
nature. It resembled that noxious Sardinian soil of which the intense
bitterness is said to have been perceptible even in its honey. His mind
was, in the noble language of the Hebrew poet, "a land of darkness, as
darkness itself, and where the light was as darkness." The gloom of his
character discolors all the passions of men, and all the face of nature,
and tinges with its own livid hue the flowers of Paradise and the
glories of the eternal throne. All the portraits of him are singularly
characteristic. No person can look on the features, noble even to
ruggedness--the dark furrows of the cheek, the haggard and woful stare
of the eye the sullen and contemptuous curve of the lip--and doubt that
they belong to a man too proud and too sensitive to be happy.