It is by his poetry that Milton is best known; and it is of his poetry
that we wish first to speak. By the general suffrage of the civilised
world, his place has been assigned among the greatest masters of the
art. His detractors, however, though outvoted, have not been silenced.
There are many critics, and some of great name, who contrive in the
same breath to extol the poems and to decry the poet. The works they
acknowledge, considered in themselves, may be classed among the noblest
productions of the human mind. But they will not allow the author to
rank with those great men who, born in the infancy of civilisation,
supplied, by their own powers, the want of instruction, and, though
destitute of models themselves, bequeathed to posterity models which
defy imitation. Milton, it is said, inherited what his predecessors
created; he lived in an enlightened age; he received a finished
education; and we must therefore, if we would form a just estimate of
his powers, make large deductions in consideration of these advantages.
We venture to say, on the contrary, paradoxical as the remark may
appear, that no poet has ever had to struggle with more unfavourable
circumstances than Milton. He doubted, as he has himself owned, whether
he had not been born "an age too late." For this notion Johnson has
thought fit to make him the butt of much clumsy ridicule. The poet,
we believe, understood the nature of his art better than the critic.
He knew that his poetical genius derived no advantage from the
civilisation which surrounded him, or from the learning which he had
acquired; and he looked back with something like regret to the ruder
age of simple words and vivid impressions.
We think that, as civilisation advances, poetry almost necessarily
declines. Therefore, though we fervently admire those great works of
imagination which have appeared in dark ages, we do not admire them the
more because they have appeared in dark ages. On the contrary, we hold
that the most wonderful and splendid proof of genius is a great poem
produced in a civilised age. We cannot understand why those who believe
in that most orthodox article of literary faith, that the earliest
poets are generally the best, should wonder at the rule as if it were
the exception. Surely the uniformity of the phenomenon indicates a
corresponding uniformity in the cause.
The fact is, that common observers reason from the progress of the
experimental science to that of the imitative arts. The improvement of
the former is gradual and slow. Ages are spent in collecting materials,
ages more in separating and combining them. Even when a system has
been formed, there is still something to add, to alter, or to reject.
Every generation enjoys the use of a vast hoard bequeathed to it by
antiquity, and transmits that hoard, augmented by fresh acquisitions,
to future ages. In these pursuits, therefore, the first speculators lie
under great disadvantages, and, even when they fail, are entitled to
praise. Their pupils, with far inferior intellectual powers, speedily
surpass them in actual attainments. Every girl who has read Mrs.
Marcet's little dialogues on Political Economy could teach Montague
or Walpole many lessons in finance. Any intelligent man may now, by
resolutely applying himself for a few years to mathematics, learn more
than the great Newton knew after half a century of study and meditation.
But it is not thus with music, with painting, or with sculpture. Still
less is it thus with poetry. The progress of refinement rarely supplies
these arts with better objects of imitation. It may indeed improve the
instruments which are necessary to the mechanical operations of the
musician, the sculptor, and the painter. But language, the machine of
the poet, is best fitted for his purpose in its rudest state. Nations,
like individuals, first perceive, and then abstract. They advance
from particular images to general terms. Hence the vocabulary of an
enlightened society is philosophical, that of a half-civilised people
is poetical.
This change in the language of men is partly the cause and partly the
effect of a corresponding change in the nature of their intellectual
operations, of a change by which science gains and poetry loses.
Generalisation is necessary to the advancement of knowledge; but
particularly is indispensable to the creations of the imagination.
In proportion as men know more and think more, they look less at
individuals and more at classes. They therefore make better theories
and worse poems. They give us vague phrases instead of images, and
personified qualities instead of men. They may be better able to
analyse human nature than their predecessors. But analysis is not the
business of the poet. His office is to portray, not to dissect. He may
believe in a moral sense, like Shaftesbury; he may refer all human
actions to self-interest, like Helvetius; or he may never think about
the matter at all. His creed on such subjects will no more influence
his poetry, properly so called, than the notions which a painter may
have conceived respecting the lacrymal glands, or the circulation of
the blood, will affect the tears of his Niobe, or the blushes of his
Aurora. If Shakespeare had written a book on the motives of human
actions, it is by no means certain that it would have been a good one.
It is extremely improbable that it would have contained half so much
able reasoning on the subject as is to be found in the Fable of the
Bees. But could Mandeville have created an Iago? Well as he knew how
to resolve characters into their elements, would he have been able to
combine those elements in such a manner as to make up a man, a real,
living, individual man?
Perhaps no person can be a poet, or can even enjoy poetry, without a
certain unsoundness of mind, if anything which gives so much pleasure
ought to be called unsoundness. By poetry we mean not all writing in
verse, nor even all good writing in verse. Our definition excludes many
metrical compositions which, on other grounds, deserve the highest
praise. By poetry we mean the art of employing words in such a manner
as to produce an illusion on the imagination, the art of doing by means
of words what the painter does by means of colours. Thus the greatest
of poets has described it, in lines universally admired for the vigour
and felicity of their diction, and still more valuable on account of
the just notion which they convey of the art in which he excelled.
"As imagination bodies forth
The forms of things unknown, the poet's pen
Turns them to shapes, and gives to airy nothing
A local habitation and a name."
These are the fruits of the "fine frenzy" which he ascribes to the
poet,--a fine frenzy doubtless, but still a frenzy. Truth, indeed, is
essential to poetry; but it is the truth of madness. The reasonings
are just; but the premises are false. After the first suppositions
have been made, everything ought to be consistent; but those first
suppositions require a degree of credulity which almost amounts to a
partial and temporary derangement of the intellect. Hence of all people
children are the most imaginative. They abandon themselves without
reserve to every illusion. Every image which is strongly presented
to their mental eye produces on them the effect of reality. No man,
whatever his sensibility may be, is ever affected by Hamlet or Lear,
as a little girl is affected by the story of poor Red Riding-hood. She
knows that it is all false, that wolves cannot speak, that there are
no wolves in England. Yet in spite of her knowledge she believes; she
weeps; she trembles; she dares not go into a dark room lest she should
feel the teeth of the monster at her throat. Such is the despotism of
the imagination over uncultivated minds.
In a rude state of society men are children with a greater variety of
ideas. It is therefore in such a state of society that we may expect
to find the poetical temperament in its highest perfection. In an
enlightened age there will be much intelligence, much science, much
philosophy, abundance of just classification and subtle analysis,
abundance of wit and eloquence, abundance of verses, and even of good
ones; but little poetry. Men will judge and compare; but they will
not create. They will talk about the old poets, and comment on them,
and to a certain degree enjoy them. But they will scarcely be able to
conceive the effect which poetry produced on their ruder ancestors, the
agony, the ecstasy, the plenitude of belief. The Greek Rhapsodists,
according to Plato, could scarce recite Homer without falling into
convulsions. The Mohawk hardly feels the scalping knife while he
shouts his death-song. The power which the ancient bards of Wales and
Germany exercised over their auditors seems to modern readers almost
miraculous. Such feelings are very rare in a civilised community, and
most rare among those who participate most in its improvements. They
linger longest among the peasantry.
Poetry produces an illusion on the eye of the mind, as a magic lantern
produces an illusion on the eye of the body. And, as the magic lantern
acts best in a dark room, poetry effects its purpose most completely in
a dark age. As the light of knowledge breaks in upon its exhibitions,
as the outlines of certainty become more and more definite, and the
shades of probability more and more distinct, the hues and lineaments
of the phantoms which the poet calls up grow fainter and fainter. We
cannot unite the incompatible advantages of reality and deception, the
clear discernment of truth and the exquisite enjoyment of fiction.
He who, in an enlightened and literary society, aspires to be a great
poet, must first become a little child. He must take to pieces the
whole web of his mind. He must unlearn much of that knowledge which
has perhaps constituted hitherto his chief title to superiority. His
very talents will be a hindrance to him. His difficulties will be
proportioned to his proficiency in the pursuits which are fashionable
among his contemporaries; and that proficiency will in general be
proportioned to the vigour and activity of his mind. And it is
well if, after all his sacrifices and exertions, his works do not
resemble a lisping man or a modern ruin. We have seen in our own time
great talents, intense labour, and long meditation, employed in this
struggle against the spirit of the age, and employed, we will not say,
absolutely in vain, but with dubious success and feeble applause.
If these reasonings be just, no poet has ever triumphed over greater
difficulties than Milton. He received a learned education; he was
a profound and elegant classical scholar; he had studied all the
mysteries of Rabbinical literature; he was intimately acquainted
with every language of modern Europe, from which either pleasure or
information was then to be derived. He was perhaps the only great poet
of later times who has been distinguished by the excellence of his
Latin verse. The genius of Petrarch was scarcely of the first order;
and his poems in the ancient language, though much praised by those who
have never read them, are wretched compositions. Cowley, with all his
admirable wit and ingenuity, had little imagination; nor indeed do we
think his classical diction comparable to that of Milton. The authority
of Johnson is against us on this point. But Johnson had studied the bad
writers of the middle ages till he had become utterly insensible to the
Augustan elegance, and was as ill qualified to judge between two Latin
styles as a habitual drunkard to set up for a wine-taster.
Versification in a dead language is an exotic, a far-fetched, costly,
sickly, imitation of that which elsewhere may be found in healthful
and spontaneous perfection. The soils on which this rarity flourishes
are in general as ill-suited to the production of vigorous native
poetry as the flower-pots of a hothouse to the growth of oaks. That the
author of the Paradise Lost should have written the Epistle to Manso
was truly wonderful. Never before were such marked originality and such
exquisite mimicry found together. Indeed in all the Latin poems of
Milton the artificial manner indispensable to such works is admirably
preserved, while, at the same time, his genius gives to them a peculiar
charm, an air of nobleness and freedom, which distinguishes them from
all other writings of the same class. They remind us of the amusements
of those angelic warriors who composed the cohort of Gabriel:
"About him exercised heroic games
The unarmed youth of heaven. But o'er their heads
Celestial armory, shield, helm, and spear,
Hung high, with diamond flaming and with gold."