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 colour,
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,
businesslike 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 pygmies and
giants, dying islands, and philosophising 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 philosophise 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 colours 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 the 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 colouring
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. Doctor 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 fully 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 was ever 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 fe_. 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 Æschylus 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
Æschylus seem to harmonise less with the fragrant groves and graceful
porticoes 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
favourite 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, coloured 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 characters discolours 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.
Milton was, like Dante, a statesman and a lover; and, like Dante, he
had been unfortunate in ambition and in love. He had survived his
health and his sight, the comforts of his home, and the prosperity of
his party. Of the great men by whom he had been distinguished at his
entrance into life, some had been taken away from the evil to come;
some had carried into foreign climates their unconquerable hatred of
oppression; some were pining in dungeons; and some had poured forth
their blood on scaffolds. Venal and licentious scribblers, with just
sufficient talent to clothe the thoughts of a pandar in the style of
a bellman, were now the favourite writers of the Sovereign and of the
public. It was a loathsome herd, which could be compared to nothing
so fitly as to the rabble of Comus, grotesque monsters, half bestial,
half human, dropping with wine, bloated with gluttony, and reeling
in obscene dances. Amidst these that fair Muse was placed, like the
chaste lady of the Masque, lofty, spotless, and serene, to be chattered
at, and pointed at, and grinned at, by the whole rout of Satyrs and
Goblins. If ever despondency and asperity could be excused in any man,
they might have been excused in Milton. But the strength of his mind
overcame every calamity. Neither blindness, nor gout, nor age, nor
penury, nor domestic afflictions, nor political disappointments, nor
abuse, nor proscription, nor neglect, had power to disturb his sedate
and majestic patience. His spirits do not seem to have been high,
but they were singularly equable. His temper was serious, perhaps
stern; but it was a temper which no sufferings could render sullen or
fretful. Such as it was when, on the eve of great events, he returned
from his travels, in the prime of health and manly beauty, loaded
with literary distinctions, and glowing with patriotic hopes, such it
continued to be when, after having experienced every calamity which is
incident to our nature, old, poor, sightless, and disgraced, he retired
to his hovel to die.
Hence it was that, though he wrote the Paradise Lost at a time of life
when images of beauty and tenderness are in general beginning to fade,
even from those minds in which they have not been effaced by anxiety
and disappointment, he adorned it with all that is most lovely and
delightful in the physical and in the moral world. Neither Theocritus
nor Ariosto had a finer or a more healthful sense of the pleasantness
of external objects, or loved better to luxuriate amidst sunbeams and
flowers, the songs of nightingales, the juice of summer fruits, and
the coolness of shady fountains. His conception of love unites all
the voluptuousness of the Oriental harem, and all the gallantry of
the chivalric tournament, with all the pure and quiet affection of
an English fireside. His poetry reminds us of the miracles of Alpine
scenery. Nooks and dells, beautiful as fairy-land, are embosomed in
its most rugged and gigantic elevations. The roses and myrtles bloom
unchilled on the verge of the avalanche.
Traces, indeed, of the peculiar character of Milton may be found
in all his works; but it is most strongly displayed in the Sonnets.
Those remarkable poems have been undervalued by critics who have not
understood their nature. They have no epigrammatic point. There is
none of the ingenuity of Filicaja in the thought, none of the hard and
brilliant enamel of Petrarch in the style. They are simple but majestic
records of the feelings of the poet; as little tricked out for the
public eye as his diary would have been. A victory, an expected attack
upon the city, a momentary fit of depression or exultation, a jest
thrown out against one of his books, a dream which for a short time
restored to him that beautiful face over which the grave had closed for
ever, led him to musings, which, without effort, shaped themselves
into verse. The unity of sentiment and severity of style which
characterise these little pieces remind us of the Greek Anthology, or
perhaps still more of the Collects of the English Liturgy. The noble
poem on the Massacres of Piedmont is strictly a Collect in verse.
The Sonnets are more or less striking according as the occasions which
gave birth to them are more or less interesting. But they are, almost
without exception, dignified by a sobriety and greatness of mind to
which we know not where to look for a parallel. It would, indeed, be
scarcely safe to draw any decided inferences as to the character of
a writer from passages directly egotistical. But the qualities which
we have ascribed to Milton, though perhaps most strongly marked in
those parts of his works which treat of his personal feelings, are
distinguishable in every page, and impart to all his writings, prose
and poetry, English, Latin, and Italian, a strong family likeness.