|
Milton attended in the Comus to the distinction which he afterwards 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 cedar 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 towards 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 traveler. 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 specter 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, 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 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 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 understanding 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 daemons, 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 daemons 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 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 Hindustan 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 woeful 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 favorite 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
in 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 fairyland, 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 unexpected
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 characterize 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.
His public conduct was such as was to be expected from a man of a spirit so high
and of an intellect so powerful. He lived at one of the most memorable eras in
the history of mankind, at the very crisis of the great conflict between
Oromasdes and Arimanes, liberty and despotism, reason and prejudice. That great
battle was fought for no single generation, for no single land. The destinies of
the human race were staked on the same cast with the freedom of the English
people. Then were first proclaimed those mighty principles which have since
worked their way into the depths of the American forests, which have roused
Greece from the slavery and degradation of two thousand years, and which, from
one end of Europe to the other, have kindled an unquenchable fire in the hearts
of the oppressed, and loosed the knees of the oppressors with an unwonted fear.
Of those principles, then struggling for their infant existence, Milton was the
most devoted and eloquent literary champion. We need not say how much we admire
his public conduct. But we cannot disguise from ourselves that a large portion
of his countrymen still think it unjustifiable. The civil war, indeed, has been
more discussed, and is less understood, than any event in English history. The
friends of liberty labored under the disadvantage of which the lion in the fable
complained so bitterly. Though they were the conquerors, their enemies were the
painters. As a body, the Roundheads had done their utmost to decry and ruin
literature; and literature was even with them, as, in the long-run, it always is
with its enemies. The best book on their side of the question is the charming
narrative of Mrs. Hutchinson. May's History of the Parliament is good; but it
breaks off at the most interesting crisis of the struggle. The performance of
Ludlow is foolish and violent; and most of the later writers who have espoused
the same cause, Oldmixon for instance, and Catherine Macaulay, have, to say the
least, been more distinguished by zeal than either by candor or by skill. On the
other side are the most authoritative and the most popular historical works in
our language, that of Clarendon, and that of Hume. The former is not only ably
written and full of valuable information, but has also an air of dignity and
sincerity which makes even the prejudices and errors with which it abounds
respectable. Hume, from whose fascinating narrative the great mass of the
reading public are still contented to take their opinions, hated religion so
much that he hated liberty for having been allied with religion, and has pleaded
the cause of tyranny with the dexterity of an advocate, while affecting the
impartiality of a judge.
The public conduct of Milton must be approved or condemned according as the
resistance of the people to Charles the First shall appear to be justifiable or
criminal. We shall therefore make no apology for dedicating a few pages to the
discussion of that interesting and most important question. We shall not argue
it on general grounds. We shall not recur to those primary principles from which
the claim of any government to the obedience of its subjects is to be deduced.
We are entitled to that vantage ground; but we will relinquish it. We are, on
this point, so confident of superiority, that we are not unwilling to imitate
the ostentatious generosity of those ancient knights, who vowed to joust without
helmet or shield against all enemies, and to give their antagonists the
advantage of sun and wind. We will take the naked constitutional question. We
confidently affirm, that every reason which can be urged in favor of the
Revolution of 1688 may be urged with at least equal force in favor of what is
called the Great Rebellion.
Previous |
Critical and Historical Essays, Volume I
| Next
Critical And Historical Essays, Volume I, Thomas Babbington Macaulay,
1843 |
|
Add/Correct a Link