MILTON

Shakspeare discovers in his writings little religious enthusiasm, and an

indifference to personal reputation; he had none of the bigotry of his

age, and his political prejudices were not very strong. In these respects,

as well as in every other, he formed a direct contrast to Milton. Milton's

works are a perpetual invocation to the Muses; a hymn to Fame. He had his

thoughts constantly fixed on the contemplation of the Hebrew theocracy,

and of a perfect commonwealth; and he seized the pen with a hand just warm

from the touch of the ark of faith. His religious zeal infused its

character into his imagination; so that he devotes himself with the same

sense of duty to the cultivation of his genius, as he did to the exercise

of virtue, or the good of his country. The spirit of the poet, the

patriot, and the prophet, vied with each other in his breast. His mind

appears to have held equal communion with the inspired writers, and with

the bards and sages of ancient Greece and Rome;--

"Blind Thamyris, and blind Maeonides,

And Tiresias, and Phineus, prophets old."

He had a high standard, with which he was always comparing himself,

nothing short of which could satisfy his jealous ambition. He thought of

nobler forms and nobler things than those he found about him. He lived

apart, in the solitude of his own thoughts, carefully excluding from his

mind whatever might distract its purposes, or alloy its purity, or damp

its zeal. "With darkness and with dangers compassed round," he had the

mighty models of antiquity always present to his thoughts, and determined

to raise a monument of equal height and glory, "piling up every stone of

lustre from the brook," for the delight and wonder of posterity. He had

girded himself up, and as it were, sanctified his genius to this service

from his youth. "For after," he says, "I had from my first years, by the

ceaseless diligence and care of my father, been exercised to the tongues,

and some sciences as my age could suffer, by sundry masters and teachers,

it was found that whether aught was imposed upon me by them, or betaken to

of my own choice, the style by certain vital signs it had, was likely to

live; but much latelier, in the private academies of Italy, perceiving

that some trifles which I had in memory, composed at under twenty or

thereabout, met with acceptance above what was looked for; I began thus

far to assent both to them and divers of my friends here at home, and not

less to an inward prompting which now grew daily upon me, that by labour

and intense study (which I take to be my portion in this life), joined

with the strong propensity of nature, I might perhaps leave something so

written to after-times as they should not willingly let it die. The

accomplishment of these intentions which have lived within me ever since I

could conceive myself anything worth to my country, lies not but in a

power above man's to promise; but that none hath by more studious ways

endeavoured, and with more unwearied spirit that none shall, that I dare

almost aver of myself, as far as life and free leisure will extend.

Neither do I think it shame to covenant with any knowing reader, that for

some few years yet, I may go on trust with him toward the payment of what

I am now indebted, as being a work not to be raised from the heat of

youth or the vapours of wine; like that which flows at waste from the pen

of some vulgar amourist, or the trencher fury of a rhyming parasite, nor

to be obtained by the invocation of Dame Memory and her Siren daughters,

but by devout prayer to that eternal spirit, who can enrich with all

utterance and knowledge, and sends out his Seraphim with the hallowed fire

of his altar, to touch and purify the lips of whom he pleases: to this

must be added industrious and select reading, steady observation, and

insight into all seemly and generous arts and affairs. Although it nothing

content me to have disclosed thus much beforehand; but that I trust hereby

to make it manifest with what small willingness I endure to interrupt the

pursuit of no less hopes than these, and leave a calm and pleasing

solitariness, fed with cheerful and confident thoughts, to embark in a

troubled sea of noises and hoarse disputes, from beholding the bright

countenance of truth in the quiet and still air of delightful studies."

So that of Spenser:

"The noble heart that harbours virtuous thought,

And is with child of glorious great intent,

Can never rest until it forth hath brought

The eternal brood of glory excellent."

Milton, therefore, did not write from casual impulse, but after a severe

examination of his own strength, and with a resolution to leave nothing

undone which it was in his power to do. He always labours, and almost

always succeeds. He strives hard to say the finest things in the world,

and he does say them. He adorns and dignifies his subject to the utmost:

he surrounds it with every possible association of beauty or grandeur,

whether moral, intellectual, or physical. He refines on his descriptions

of beauty; loading sweets on sweets, till the sense aches at them; and

raises his images of terror to a gigantic elevation, that "makes Ossa like

a wart." In Milton there is always an appearance of effort: in Shakspeare,

scarcely any.

Milton has borrowed more than any other writer, and exhausted every source

of imitation, sacred or profane; yet he is perfectly distinct from every

other writer. He is a writer of centos, and yet in originality scarcely

inferior to Homer. The power of his mind is stamped on every line. The

fervour of his imagination melts down and renders malleable, as in a

furnace, the most contradictory materials. In reading his works, we feel

ourselves under the influence of a mighty intellect, that the nearer it

approaches to others, becomes more distinct from them. The quantity of art

in him shews the strength of his genius: the weight of his intellectual

obligations would have oppressed any other writer. Milton's learning has

all the effect of intuition. He describes objects, of which he could only

have read in books, with the vividness of actual observation. His

imagination has the force of nature. He makes words tell as pictures.

"Him followed Rimmon, whose delightful seat

Was fair Damascus, on the fertile banks

Of Abbana and Pharphar, lucid streams."

The word _lucid_ here gives to the idea all the sparkling effect of the

most perfect landscape.

And again:

"As when a vulture on Imaus bred,

Whose snowy ridge the roving Tartar bounds,

Dislodging from a region scarce of prey,

To gorge the flesh of lambs and yeanling kids

On hills where flocks are fed, flies towards the springs

Of Ganges or Hydaspes, Indian streams;

But in his way lights on the barren plains

Of Sericana, where Chineses drive

With sails and wind their cany waggons light."

If Milton had taken a journey for the express purpose, he could not have

described this scenery and mode of life better. Such passages are like

demonstrations of natural history. Instances might be multiplied without

end.

We might be tempted to suppose that the vividness with which he describes

visible objects, was owing to their having acquired an unusual degree of

strength in his mind, after the privation of his sight; but we find the

same palpableness and truth in the descriptions which occur in his early

poems. In Lycidas, he speaks of "the great vision of the guarded mount,"

with that preternatural weight of impression with which it would present

itself suddenly to "the pilot of some small night-foundered skiff;" and

the lines in the Penseroso, describing "the wandering moon,

"Riding near her highest noon,

Like one that had been led astray

Through the heaven's wide pathless way,"

are as if he had gazed himself blind in looking at her. There is also the

same depth of impression in his descriptions of the objects of all the

different senses, whether colours, or sounds, or smells--the same

absorption of his mind in whatever engaged his attention at the time. It

has been indeed objected to Milton, by a common perversity of criticism,

that his ideas were musical rather than picturesque, as if because they

were in the highest degree musical, they must be (to keep the sage

critical balance even, and to allow no one man to possess two qualities at

the same time) proportionably deficient in other respects. But Milton's

poetry is not cast in any such narrow, common-place mould; it is not so

barren of resources. His worship of the Muse was not so simple or

confined. A sound arises "like a steam of rich distilled perfumes;" we

hear the pealing organ, but the incense on the altars is also there, and

the statues of the gods are ranged around! The ear indeed predominates

over the eye, because it is more immediately affected, and because the

language of music blends more immediately with, and forms a more natural

accompaniment to, the variable and indefinite associations of ideas

conveyed by words. But where the associations of the imagination are not

the principal thing, the individual object is given by Milton with equal

force and beauty. The strongest and best proof of this, as a

characteristic power of his mind, is, that the persons of Adam and Eve, of

Satan, etc. are always accompanied, in our imagination, with the grandeur

of the naked figure; they convey to us the ideas of sculpture. As an

instance, take the following:

"He soon

Saw within ken a glorious Angel stand,

The same whom John saw also in the sun:

His back was turned, but not his brightness hid;

Of beaming sunny rays a golden tiar

Circled his head, nor less his locks behind

Illustrious on his shoulders fledge with wings

Lay waving round; on some great charge employ'd

He seem'd, or fix'd in cogitation deep.

Glad was the spirit impure, as now in hope

To find who might direct his wand'ring flight

To Paradise, the happy seat of man,

His journey's end, and our beginning woe.

But first he casts to change his proper shape,

Which else might work him danger or delay:

And now a stripling cherub he appears,

Not of the prime, yet such as in his face

Youth smiled celestial, and to every limb

Suitable grace diffus'd, so well he feign'd:

Under a coronet his flowing hair

In curls on either cheek play'd; wings he wore

Of many a colour'd plume sprinkled with gold,

His habit fit for speed succinct, and held

Before his decent steps a silver wand."

The figures introduced here have all the elegance and precision of a Greek

statue; glossy and impurpled, tinged with golden light, and musical as

the strings of Memnon's harp!

Again, nothing can be more magnificent than the portrait of Beelzebub:

"With Atlantean shoulders fit to bear

The weight of mightiest monarchies:"

Or the comparison of Satan, as he "lay floating many a rood," to "that sea

beast,"

"Leviathan, which God of all his works

Created hugest that swim the ocean-stream!"

What a force of imagination is there in this last expression! What an idea

it conveys of the size of that hugest of created beings, as if it shrunk

up the ocean to a stream, and took up the sea in its nostrils as a very

little thing! Force of style is one of Milton's greatest excellences.

Hence, perhaps, he stimulates us more in the reading, and less afterwards.

The way to defend Milton against all impugners, is to take down the book

and read it.

Milton's blank verse is the only blank verse in the language (except

Shakspeare's) that deserves the name of verse. Dr. Johnson, who had

modelled his ideas of versification on the regular sing-song of Pope,

condemns the Paradise Lost as harsh and unequal. I shall not pretend to

say that this is not sometimes the case; for where a degree of excellence

beyond the mechanical rules of art is attempted, the poet must sometimes

fail. But I imagine that there are more perfect examples in Milton of

musical expression, or of an adaptation of the sound and movement of the

verse to the meaning of the passage, than in all our other writers,

whether of rhyme or blank verse, put together, (with the exception already

mentioned). Spenser is the most harmonious of our stanza writers, as

Dryden is the most sounding and varied of our rhymists. But in neither is

there anything like the same ear for music, the same power of

approximating the varieties of poetical to those of musical rhythm, as

there is in our great epic poet. The sound of his lines is moulded into

the expression of the sentiment, almost of the very image. They rise or

fall, pause or hurry rapidly on, with exquisite art, but without the least

trick or affectation, as the occasion seems to require.

The following are some of the finest instances:

"His hand was known

In Heaven by many a tower'd structure high;--

Nor was his name unheard or unador'd

In ancient Greece; and in the Ausonian land

Men called him Mulciber; and how he fell

From Heaven, they fabled, thrown by angry Jove

Sheer o'er the crystal battlements; from morn

To noon he fell, from noon to dewy eve,

A summer's day; and with the setting sun

Dropt from the zenith like a falling star

On Lemnos, the AEgean isle: thus they relate,

Erring."--

"But chief the spacious hall

Thick swarm'd, both on the ground and in the air,

Brush'd with the hiss of rustling wings. As bees

In spring time, when the sun with Taurus rides,

Pour forth their populous youth about the hive

In clusters; they among fresh dews and flow'rs

Fly to and fro; or on the smoothed plank,

The suburb of their straw-built citadel,

New rubb'd with balm, expatiate, and confer

Their state affairs. So thick the airy crowd

Swarm'd and were straiten'd; till the signal giv'n,

Behold a wonder! They but now who seem'd

In bigness to surpass earth's giant sons,

Now less than smallest dwarfs, in narrow room

Throng numberless, like that Pygmean race

Beyond the Indian mount, or fairy elves,

Whose midnight revels by a forest side

Or fountain, some belated peasant sees,

Or dreams he sees, while over-head the moon

Sits arbitress, and nearer to the earth

Wheels her pale course: they on their mirth and dance

Intent, with jocund music charm his ear;

At once with joy and fear his heart rebounds."

I can give only another instance, though I have some difficulty in leaving

off.

"Round he surveys (and well might, where he stood

So high above the circling canopy

Of night's extended shade) from th' eastern point

Of Libra to the fleecy star that bears

Andromeda far off Atlantic seas

Beyond the horizon: then from pole to pole

He views in breadth, and without longer pause

Down right into the world's first region throws

His flight precipitant, and winds with ease

Through the pure marble air his oblique way

Amongst innumerable stars that shone

Stars distant, but nigh hand seem'd other worlds;

Or other worlds they seem'd or happy isles," etc.

The verse, in this exquisitely modulated passage, floats up and down as if

it had itself wings. Milton has himself given us the theory of his

versification--

"Such as the meeting soul may pierce

In notes with many a winding bout

Of linked sweetness long drawn out."

Dr. Johnson and Pope would have converted his vaulting Pegasus into a

rocking-horse. Read any other blank verse but Milton's,--Thomson's,

Young's, Cowper's, Wordsworth's,--and it will be found, from the want of

the same insight into "the hidden soul of harmony," to be mere lumbering

prose.

To proceed to a consideration of the merits of Paradise Lost, in the most

essential point of view, I mean as to the poetry of character and

passion. I shall say nothing of the fable, or of other technical

objections or excellences; but I shall try to explain at once the

foundation of the interest belonging to the poem. I am ready to give up

the dialogues in Heaven, where, as Pope justly observes, "God the Father

turns a school-divine;" nor do I consider the battle of the angels as the

climax of sublimity, or the most successful effort of Milton's pen. In a

word, the interest of the poem arises from the daring ambition and fierce

passions of Satan, and from the account of the paradisaical happiness, and

the loss of it by our first parents. Three-fourths of the work are taken

up with these characters, and nearly all that relates to them is unmixed

sublimity and beauty. The two first books alone are like too massy pillars

of solid gold.

Satan is the most heroic subject that ever was chosen for a poem; and the

execution is as perfect as the design is lofty. He was the first of

created beings, who, for endeavouring to be equal with the highest, and to

divide the empire of heaven with the Almighty, was hurled down to hell.

His aim was no less than the throne of the universe; his means, myriads of

angelic armies bright, the third part of the heavens, whom he lured after

him with his countenance, and who durst defy the Omnipotent in arms. His

ambition was the greatest, and his punishment was the greatest; but not so

his despair, for his fortitude was as great as his sufferings. His

strength of mind was matchless as his strength of body; the vastness of

his designs did not surpass the firm, inflexible determination with which

he submitted to his irreversible doom, and final loss of all good. His

power of action and of suffering was equal. He was the greatest power that

was ever overthrown, with the strongest will left to resist or to endure.

He was baffled, not confounded. He stood like a tower; or

"As when Heaven's fire

Hath scathed the forest oaks or mountain pines!"

He is still surrounded with hosts of rebel angels, armed warriors, who own

him as their sovereign leader, and with whose fate he sympathises as he

views them round, far as the eye can reach; though he keeps aloof from

them in his own mind, and holds supreme counsel only with his own breast.

An outcast from Heaven, Hell trembles beneath his feet, Sin and Death are

at his heels, and mankind are his easy prey.

"All is not lost; th' unconquerable will,

And study of revenge, immortal hate,

And courage never to submit or yield,

And what else is not to be overcome,"

are still his. The sense of his punishment seems lost in the magnitude of

it; the fierceness of tormenting flames, is qualified and made innoxious

by the greater fierceness of his pride; the loss of infinite happiness to

himself is compensated in thought, by the power of inflicting infinite

misery on others. Yet Satan is not the principle of malignity, or of the

abstract love of evil--but of the abstract love of power, of pride, of

self-will personified, to which last principle all other good and evil,

and even his own, are subordinate. From this principle he never once

flinches. His love of power and contempt for suffering are never once

relaxed from the highest pitch of intensity. His thoughts burn like a hell

within him; but the power of thought holds dominion in his mind over every

other consideration. The consciousness of a determined purpose, of "that

intellectual being, those thoughts that wander through eternity," though

accompanied with endless pain, he prefers to nonentity, to "being

swallowed up and lost in the wide womb of uncreated night." He expresses

the sum and substance of all ambition in one line: "Fallen cherub, to be

weak is miserable, doing or suffering!" After such a conflict as his, and

such a defeat, to retreat in order, to rally, to make terms, to exist at

all, is something; but he does more than this--he founds a new empire in

hell, and from it conquers this new world, whither he bends his undaunted

flight, forcing his way through nether and surrounding fires. The poet has

not in all this given us a mere shadowy outline; the strength is equal to

the magnitude of the conception. The Achilles of Homer is not more

distinct; the Titans were not more vast; Prometheus chained to his rock

was not a more terrific example of suffering and of crime. Wherever the

figure of Satan is introduced, whether he walks or flies, "rising aloft

incumbent on the dusky air," it is illustrated with the most striking and

appropriate images: so that we see it always before us, gigantic,

irregular, portentous, uneasy, and disturbed--but dazzling in its faded

splendour, the clouded ruins of a god. The deformity of Satan is only in

the depravity of his will; he has no bodily deformity to excite our

loathing or disgust. The horns and tail are not there, poor emblems of the

unbending, unconquered spirit, of the writhing agonies within. Milton was

too magnanimous and open an antagonist to support his argument by the

bye-tricks of a hump and cloven foot; to bring into the fair field of

controversy the good old catholic prejudices of which Tasso and Dante have

availed themselves, and which the mystic German critics would restore. He

relied on the justice of his cause, and did not scruple to give the devil

his due. Some persons may think that he has carried his liberality too

far, and injured the cause he professed to espouse by making him the chief

person in his poem. Considering the nature of his subject, he would be

equally in danger of running into this fault, from his faith in religion,

and his love of rebellion; and perhaps each of these motives had its full

share in determining the choice of his subject.

Not only the figure of Satan, but his speeches in council, his

soliloquies, his address to Eve, his share in the war in heaven; or in the

fall of man, show the same decided superiority of character. To give only

one instance, almost the first speech he makes:

"Is this the region, this the soil, the clime,

Said then the lost archangel, this the seat

That we must change for Heaven; this mournful gloom

For that celestial light? Be it so, since he

Who now is sov'rain can dispose and bid

What shall be right: farthest from him is best,

Whom reason hath equal'd, force hath made supreme

Above his equals. Farewell happy fields,

Where joy for ever dwells: Hail horrors, hail

Infernal world, and thou profoundest Hell,

Receive thy new possessor; one who brings

A mind not to be chang'd by place or time.

The mind is its own place, and in itself

Can make a Heav'n of Hell, a Hell of Heav'n.

What matter where, if I be still the same,

And what I should be, all but less than he

Whom thunder hath made greater? Here at least

We shall be free; th' Almighty hath not built

Here for his envy, will not drive us hence:

Here we may reign secure, and in my choice,

To reign is worth ambition, though in Hell:

Better to reign in Hell, than serve in Heaven."

The whole of the speeches and debates in Pandemonium are well worthy of

the place and the occasion--with Gods for speakers, and angels and

archangels for hearers. There is a decided manly tone in the arguments and

sentiments, an eloquent dogmatism, as if each person spoke from thorough

conviction; an excellence which Milton probably borrowed from his spirit

of partisanship, or else his spirit of partisanship from the natural

firmness and vigour of his mind. In this respect Milton resembles Dante,

(the only modern writer with whom he has any thing in common) and it is

remarkable that Dante, as well as Milton, was a political partisan. That

approximation to the severity of impassioned prose which has been made an

objection to Milton's poetry, and which is chiefly to be met with in these

bitter invectives, is one of its great excellences. The author might here

turn his philippics against Salmasius to good account. The rout in Heaven

is like the fall of some mighty structure, nodding to its base, "with

hideous ruin and combustion down." But, perhaps, of all the passages in

Paradise Lost, the description of the employments of the angels during the

absence of Satan, some of whom "retreated in a silent valley, sing with

notes angelical to many a harp their own heroic deeds and hapless fall by

doom of battle" is the most perfect example of mingled pathos and

sublimity.--What proves the truth of this noble picture in every part, and

that the frequent complaint of want of interest in it is the fault of the

reader, not of the poet, is that when any interest of a practical kind

takes a shape that can be at all turned into this, (and there is little

doubt that Milton had some such in his eye in writing it,) each party

converts it to its own purposes, feels the absolute identity of these

abstracted and high speculations; and that, in fact, a noted political

writer of the present day has exhausted nearly the whole account of Satan

in the Paradise Lost, by applying it to a character whom he considered as

after the devil, (though I do not know whether he would make even that

exception) the greatest enemy of the human race. This may serve to show

that Milton's Satan is not a very insipid personage.

Of Adam and Eve it has been said, that the ordinary reader can feel little

interest in them, because they have none of the passions, pursuits, or

even relations of human life, except that of man and wife, the least

interesting of all others, if not to the parties concerned, at least to

the by-standers. The preference has on this account been given to Homer,

who, it is said, has left very vivid and infinitely diversified pictures

of all the passions and affections, public and private, incident to human

nature,--the relations of son, of brother, parent, friend, citizen, and

many others. Longinus preferred the Iliad to the Odyssey, on account of

the greater number of battles it contains; but I can neither agree to his

criticism, nor assent to the present objection. It is true, there is

little action in this part of Milton's poem; but there is much repose, and

more enjoyment. There are none of the every-day occurrences, contentions,

disputes, wars, fightings, feuds, jealousies, trades, professions,

liveries, and common handicrafts of life; "no kind of traffic; letters are

not known; no use of service, of riches, poverty, contract, succession,

bourn, bound of land, tilth, vineyard none; no occupation, no treason,

felony, sword, pike, knife, gun, nor need of any engine." So much the

better; thank Heaven, all these were yet to come. But still the die was

cast, and in them our doom was sealed. In them

"The generations were prepared; the pangs,

The internal pangs, were ready, the dread strife

Of poor humanity's afflicted will,

Struggling in vain with ruthless destiny."

In their first false step we trace all our future woe, with loss of Eden.

But there was a short and precious interval between, like the first blush

of morning before the day is overcast with tempest, the dawn of the world,

the birth of nature from "the unapparent deep," with its first dews and

freshness on its cheek, breathing odours. Theirs was the first delicious

taste of life, and on them depended all that was to come of it. In them

hung trembling all our hopes and fears. They were as yet alone in the

world, in the eye of nature, wondering at their new being, full of

enjoyment and enraptured with one another, with the voice of their Maker

walking in the garden, and ministering angels attendant on their steps,

winged messengers from heaven like rosy clouds descending in their sight.

Nature played around them her virgin fancies wild; and spread for them a

repast where no crude surfeit reigned. Was there nothing in this scene,

which God and nature alone witnessed, to interest a modern critic? What

need was there of action, where the heart was full of bliss and innocence

without it! They had nothing to do but feel their own happiness, and "know

to know no more." "They toiled not, neither did they spin; yet Solomon in

all his glory was not arrayed like one of these." All things seem to

acquire fresh sweetness, and to be clothed with fresh beauty in their

sight. They tasted as it were for themselves and us, of all that there

ever was pure in human bliss. "In them the burthen of the mystery, the

heavy and the weary weight of all this unintelligible world, is

lightened." They stood awhile perfect, but they afterwards fell, and were

driven out of Paradise, tasting the first fruits of bitterness as they had

done of bliss. But their pangs were such as a pure spirit might feel at

the sight--their tears "such as angels weep." The pathos is of that mild

contemplative kind which arises from regret for the loss of unspeakable

happiness, and resignation to inevitable fate. There is none of the

fierceness of intemperate passion, none of the agony of mind and

turbulence of action, which is the result of the habitual struggles of the

will with circumstances, irritated by repeated disappointment, and

constantly setting its desires most eagerly on that which there is an

impossibility of attaining. This would have destroyed the beauty of the

whole picture. They had received their unlooked-for happiness as a free

gift from their Creator's hands, and they submitted to its loss, not

without sorrow, but without impious and stubborn repining.

"In either hand the hast'ning angel caught

Our ling'ring parents, and to th' eastern gate

Led them direct, and down the cliff as fast

To the subjected plain; then disappear'd.

They looking back, all th' eastern side beheld

Of Paradise, so late their happy seat,

Wav'd over by that flaming brand, the gate

With dreadful faces throng'd, and fiery arms:

Some natural tears they dropt, but wip'd them soon;

The world was all before them, where to choose

Their place of rest, and Providence their guide."