Milton

ddison, Swift, Steele, and Arbuthnot were already born. Thus his life bridges the gulf between the age of Elizabeth and the age of Anne; and this further examinatio

ace in the legitimate hereditary succession would, on these considerations, be denied to him. When Dryden succeeded to the dictatorship of Jonson, the continuity of literary history was resumed. The great processes of change which affected English letters during the seventeenth century are in no way associated with the name of Milton. Waller and Denham, Davenant

s own, no less striking than the reforms effected by Dryden. Shirley is a good example of a genuine late Elizabethan. But in Shirley's works there is nothing that is not an echo. In Milton's, on the other h

e doubted whether they ever helped any one to an understanding. Yet here, if anywhere, they are in place; for Milton is, by common consent, not only a Classic poet, but the greatest exemplar of the style in the long bead-roll

nd by far the greater part left to the imagination of the reader. A man, for instance, has stature, feature, bones, muscles, nerves, entrails; his eyes, hair, and skin are of certain colours; he stands in a particular attitude at a particular spot on the surface of the earth; he is agitated by certain passions and ideas; every movement that he makes is related to his constitution and his past history; he has affinity with other men by the ties of the family, the s

breadth of view and truth in the larger values, leaving the imagination to supply the more particular and personal details on the barest of hints from you: or you

icture and the truth of the larger relations. He is chary of detail, and what he adds is added for its own immediate impo

bler shape, e

t, with nati

esty, seemed

med; for in th

their gloriou

sanctitude se

true filial f

ue author

y, lordliness, worth, divinity, glory, brightness, truth, wisdom, sanctitude, severity, and purity. In the following lines the poet proceeds to distinguish the one figure from the other, adding a few details with regard to each. The epithets he chooses are still vague. Adam's forehead is "fair" and "large," his eye is "sublime," his locks are "hyacinthine," and (a detail tha

not describe persons, it presents them in action; and a description, where it occurs, is often designed merely to throw light on the character and feelings of the speaker. "Her voice was ever soft, gentle, and low" is a description rather of Lear, as he hangs over the dead body of Cordelia,

wo passages compared by Lessing are not wholly dissimilar in theme, and serve well enough to illustrate the difference of the styles. The first

nd they stood, a

he vast immea

a sea, dark, w

ttom turned by

ves, as mounta

and with the ce

iew from Dover Cliff, descri

fe

, to cast one'

houghs that win

gross as beetle

athers samphire,

ems no bigger

, that walk u

e; and yond tal

her cock; he

l for sight: th

numbered idle

d so high. I'l

turn and the d

down he

appearance of the boats, and other circumstances, are all very good description, but do not impress the mind at once with the horrib

ome years earlier, in his edition of Shakespeare, Johnson had remarked on the same passage, and had indicated the poetic method th

ts these humble means for attaining even to so great an end. It refuses to work by mice and beetles, lest the sudden intrusion of trivial associations should mar the main impression. No sharp discords are allowed, even though they should be resolved the moment after. Every word and every image must help forward the main purpose. Thus, while the besetting sin of the Romantics is the employment of excessive, or irrelevant, or trivial or grotesque detail, the besetting sin of the Classics is so complete an omission of realistic detail that the description becomes inflated, windy and empty, and the strong

nd hear only muffled echoes. Had Milton made unsparing use of abstraction and suggestion, his poem would have fallen into windy chaos. The "philosophical poems" of his age did so fall. Henry More's Platonick Song of the Soul (1642), wherein are treated the Life of the Soul, her Immortality, the Sleep of the Soul, the Unity of Souls, and Memory after Death, is a dust-storm of verbiage. Such words as "calefaction," "exility," "self-reduplication," "tricentreity," "individuation," "circumvolu

peedy

mouths the so

y names that lend themselves to de

the grisl

el, at the call of

m a

celestial

uffing the distant scent of

e grim Featur

wide into th

d in the First Book of Paradise Regained, where is described how Sa

ing

ssimulation

in air

f power. The same vagueness is habitually studied by Milton in such phrases as "the vast abrupt," "the palpable obscure," "the void immense,"

llow the opposite course: they are much concerned with abstract conceptions and general truths, but they bring them home by the employment of concrete and specific terms, and figures so familia

mortal a

rtune, death,

r an eg

le of the objections urged against the Romantic method--a method whereby, says Johnson, poetry

thick

in the dunnest

ife see not the

through the blan

"Hold,

notice but contempt." A knife, again, is "an instrument used by butchers and cooks in the meanest employments; we do not immediately conceive that any crime of importance is to be committed with a knife." In the third place, alt

y Macbeth shows her sense of this when she uses the word. Again, the darkness that she invokes is not the solemn shadow of night, but the stifling, opaque smoke of Hell. The blanket was perhaps suggested to Shakespeare by the black canopy that hung over the Elizabethan stage to represent night; but, in any case, it gives the notion of an artificial privac

ale of human experience, and is, in that sense, unreal. His descriptions do not so much remind us of what we have seen as create for us what we are to see. He is bound, therefore, to avoid the slightest touch of unworthy association; the use of even a few domestic f

n a cloud most

day Sun pierced t

ks a lively b

morning beaut

aming Meteor s

his shoulders w

silk Mantle

prightly azure p

starry vapour

ime ere they gro

of Belinda's toilet in The Rape of the Lock. Such a Gabriel should add the last tou

a team of l

noses as the

and human feeling. When the feast is spread in Eden he remarks, it is true,--"No fear lest dinner cool"; but a lapse like this is of the rarest. His success--and he knew it--depended on the untiring maintenance of a superhuman elevation. His

t frequently employs. Almost all his figures and comparisons illustrate concrete objects by concrete objects, and occurrences in time by other

gasp of Love's

failing, Passion

neeling by his

is closing u

d'st, when all ha

fe thou might'st

val, describe a perfectly definite outward object or scene by a figure drawn from the most complex ab

et h

ight of

the rainbow over a w

Madness with u

into Pandemonium, to a swarm of bees. But he perceived clearly enough that he could not, for the reasons already explained, afford to deal largely in this class of figure: he prefers to maintain dignity and distance by choosing comparisons from ancient history and mythology, or from those great and strange things in Nature which repel intimacy--the sun, the moon,

." He transforms his proper names, both to make them more melodious, and to make them more unfamiliar to the ear. No praise is too high for his art and skill in this matter. An e

u, to our mois

the fable of

t Vision of th

Namancos and

disliked the sound, for in this case it can hardly have been that the name was too familiar

his Memphi

ad associations too numerous, familiar, and misleading. Vulcan is mentioned, by that name, in Comus; but in Paradise Lost, where the story of his

sonia

ed him M

works, unless it had been put in a description of the God's smithy, or, perhap

or Macdonne

rina fair"--with its rich stores of marine mythology? History, not philosophy, was the source that he drew on for his splendours; and history, according to Milto

on enumeration and detail. Of vegetables, only the vine, the gourd, and the corn are mentioned by name; of the inhabitants of the sea only the seal, the dolphin, and the whale. Natural knowledge, although he made a fair place for it in his scheme of education, was not one of his dearer studies. It was enough for him, as for Raphael, that Adam knew the natures of the beasts, and gave them appropriate names. The mere mention, on the other hand, of histo

effectively. There is enough of his philosophy in Milton's Heaven to damp our desire for more of it on his Earth or in his Hell. And when once we have given him license to deal only in persons, we are amply rewarded. His management of the poetic figure of personification is superb. It is a figure difficult to handle, and generally fails of effect through falling into one of two extremes. Either the quality, or the person, is forgotten. The figures in the Romaunt of the Rose are good examples of the one type, of the minute materialistic personifications of the Middle Ages, pictorial rath

majesty, and no names that do not help the music of his poem; by the vivid outlines of the concrete imaginations that he imposes on us for real, and the cloudy brilliance that he weaves for them out of all great historical memories, and all far-reaching abstract conceptions, he attained to a finished style of perhaps a more consistent and unflagging elevation than is to be found elsewhere in literature. There is nothing to put besid

cholas Rowe produced the first critical edition of Shakespeare. The literary world quickly came to the opinion expressed by Dryden in the year of Milton's death, that the Paradise Lost was "one of the greatest, most noble, and most sublime poems which either this age or nation has produced." Barely twenty years later the editors of the Athenian Mercury were asked to determine "Whether Milton and Waller were not the best English Poets; and which the better of the two?" Their verdict, reflecting, no doubt, the average opinion of the time, ran thus: "They were both excellent in their kind, and exceeded each other, and all besides. Milton was the fullest and loftiest; Waller the neatest and most correct poet we ever had." Long before Addison wrote the papers on Paradise Lost in the Spectator, Milton had received full recognition in the literary handbooks of that age. Langbaine, in his Account of the English Dramatick Poets (1

nslation of a Story out of the Third Aeneid, Broome's experiment in the translation of the Eleventh Odyssey, Fenton's fragments of two books of the Iliad, and Christopher Pitt's paraphrase of Psalm cxxxix. In the first year of the eighteenth century John Philips showed, in his Splendid Shilling, how the style of Milton might be applied, for the purposes of burlesque, to humble subjects, a lesson which he further illustrated, with no ostensible comic intent, in his later poems, Cyder and Blenheim. Gay, in Wine, a Poem, Somerville in The Chase, Armstrong in The Oeconomy of Love and The Art of Preserving Health, Christopher Smart in The Hop-Garden, Dyer in The Fleece, and Grainger in The Sugar-Cane, all followed where Philips' Cyder h

oetic Spirit,

nce thy holy

nd dews to spri

e lies, be prese

come; on her

en thousa

orates Shakespeare, Akenside goes to Milton for his mater

s rig

en thousan

Lytte

e to my adve

invoke, that

ud monument o

orious

ps had already chanted the battle of Blenheim in like Miltonic fashio

piration, tha

poet to the

m all the precep

ven, and guide m

nal dome, wher

l Dyer, where

Somervile in v

lore convey

d, and from the

e, which though

tous to my co

he passage where he addresses the Avon, at

, young Shakespea

bled his first

*

ed, another t

e Muses emu

rains your prai

na speeds your

ut since it is the omnipresence of this Miltonic influence that is asserted, passages like these, which catch the eye

s, if they were forced to choose, would readily give up the three major poems to save the five best of the minor. But it is going far to appropriate the name of "Miltonic" to imitators of the earlier poems. Perhaps the study of L'Allegro and Il Penseroso and Comus helped forward the Romantic Revival; but the chief influence of Milton on the development of English poetry was not this. It was nat

sought to destroy. Johnson attributes the invention to Dryden. "There was therefore," he says, "before the time of Dryden no poetical diction, no system of words, at once ref

ence of Milton. Since handbooks of literature are commonly formed by a process of attrition from such works as Johnson's Lives, his opinions on a point like this persist in epidemic fashion; they are detached from their authority, and repeated so often that at last they become orthodox. But no ignoring of Milton can alter the fact that English verse went Milton-mad during the earlier half of the eighteenth century. Miltonic cadences became a kind of patter, and the diction that Milton had invented for the rendering of his colossal imaginations was applied indifferently to all subjects--to apple-growing, sugar-boiling, the drainage of the Bedford level, the breeding of negroes, and the distempers of sheep. Milton's shadowy grandeur, his avoidance of plain concrete terms, his manner of linking adjective with substantive, were all necessary to him for the describing of his strange world;

in the treatment of large parts of his subject, are yet maintained by him in the description of things comparatively familiar. When Sin is descri

wove with G

aided

Raphael, in conversation with Adam,

rive

petual draw the

re drawing near to the "poetic diction" of t

rops that

heir crys

iately precede, where Milton says the word, and ther

y a gentle

, and wiped the

at times to the poetic diction banned by Wordsworth. "Vernal bloom" for "spri

ror under pe

itous phrases are justified by considerations of dramatic propriety. When Raphael describes the artillery used in Heaven, he speaks of cannon balls as "iron globes" and "balls of missive ruin," and calls the linst

ental re

d exhal

h which he confesses himself to be fam

ic diction" into vogue. When the curse has fallen in Eden he makes a long speech for the comfort of Eve, in the course of which he alludes to "the gracef

is gathe

y with matte

sion of two

attrite

of science lecturing to some Philosoph

s accumulated stores of literary reminiscence, and using them for his own special purpose, Milton invented "poetic diction," and bore a main part in the founding of the English school of poetry which is called "Classical." His diction is called "poetic," because it was absolutely fitted to his purpose, which coul

od a sedulous student of Milton, and a frequent borrower. The mock-heroics of the Dunciad are stilted on Miltonic phrases; and in the translation of Homer, above all, reminiscences of Milton abo

use I felt his

downward from th

ry of the original. In place of it, to eke out the syllables, he inserts the idle, if not foolish, substitute "downw

so long const

reluctant, a

w context becomes stark nonsense. It is Ulysses who is "reluctant," and Caly

conceals it under Miltonic lendings. The trail of Paradise Lost runs all through The Season

ile th

eaking through th

visage in the

Sun direct, he

rise, umbrageo

eep, as optic

h, gives all h

ame, and sheds

of Milton's stately Latin vocabulary. W

lower

ous valley spr

follow

winding vale i

ous sp

ibes how Satan, wo

to and fro

a description of the

ortive

at convolved, i

frolic

and emblem of those descriptive poets of the eig

tonic reminiscence. He frequently borrows; and, like Pope, almost alwa

ong her amorous

the Sonnet on the Dea

in their amorou

ong of the nightingale; but the addition of the verb "join" robs it of all meaning. Again,

the s

and the to

s to pe

memory when he ad

courge and t

right, affl

een emptied of its meaning. It affrights one class of persons, and afflicts another, which anything that is "torturing" might easily do. In Milton the most awful property of Ti

the mark!) of Chaucer? And yet it remains a paradox that Milton's, of all styles in the world, unapproachable in its loftiness, invented by a temper of the most burning zeal and the profoundest gravity for the treatment of a subject wildly intractable by ordinary methods, should have been chosen by a generati

IL

devotional ecstasy, and love-lyric, and romance. The English genius in poetry is essentially metaphysical and romantic. Milton was neither. He could not have excelled in any of these kinds; nor have come near to Suckling, or Crashaw, or Vaughan, or Herrick, or Marvell, in their proper realms. It is a permissible indulgence, therefore, in taking leave of Milton, to turn f

in God,

zzling darkne

te and dusky

t all

night! wh

e invisib

ilton. If Milton persuades us to a willing suspension of disbelief for the moment, Vaughan thrills us

les, and light,

all the chambe

t posting inter

Angels glori

whispers, busie

oly talk fill

t the last gre

robes to seek

them, mark thei

h them, wing'd wi

ctance the world seems only a turbulent passing pa

st

ong mu

, swift streame

oth as

ief sic

s night I

f tossings

l when thou

y get me

orld is full of voices, but its sights and sounds appeal to him

ceptions, g

, phantasti

ce before him

r of

doth trample

are at best but

mering an

in passionate desire for t

ll it come? When

me's comming!

in the ev

rds and wor

y all-surp

at mid

thing else is present to

nity the o

ing of calm an

n of mankind may close at any moment, in t

eep and night; t

th o'er th

trumpet's that,

rust in t

to find Love enjoying his just supremacy in poetry, we cannot do better than seek him among the lyrists of the Court of Charles II. Milton

urt a

wanton mask, o

hich the starv

ir, best quitte

iable, he remarks:--"It is not strange though many, who have spent their youth chastely, are in some things not so quick-sighted while they haste too eagerly to light the nuptial torch; nor is it therefore that for a modest error a man should forfeit so great a happin

well-governed. Roystering libertines like Sir Charles Sedley were more edifying lovers than the austere husbands

ply those

think beyon

reach the G

to come

o see the F

the Knav

assion of two or three of Sedley's

that I j

r than t

hange each ho

my hear

ty'd to

thought

I only ca

rt I on

in woman

ear self

ole sex ca

some and

then seek f

l make l

itself can g

sie to

ter the didactic endearments of A

od and Man, i

rt, from sin an

om his own lips, alleges--and he died at the age of thirty-two. Like Sedley, he professes no virtues, and holds no f

hat is to

it then

t moment's

as fast as

, is on

not of i

rts, and

miracl

ong minute

that Heav

innacle of achievement in that kind. None has ever

ed with a w

fe bosom

d peace and t

tented th

e wandering fr

ome base he

thee, false

my everla

and too intense to be cited as a sudde

shade thy love

lipsing hand

of the Sun's

e made a great trench about the altar, and he put the wood in order, and loaded the altar with rich exotic offerings, cassia and nard, odorous gums and balm, a

rature he is seen once more singular and a stranger. We bred Shakespeare in our Midlands; he was nourished from the soil that still grows our daily bread. But Milton was an alien conqueror. The crowd of native-born Puritans, who sometimes (not without many searchings of heart and sharp misgivings) attempt to claim him for their leader, have no title in him. It is a proof of his dominating power, and no credit to their intelligence, that they accept him as their representative. His influence on the destinies and history of our literature might be compared to the

N

kindness of three of my pupils, Miss F. Mars

2, 138-39

s, Milton's u

6, 105, 112, 115, 122, 141-45, 148-50,

mo,

eph, 157-58,

Virgi

de, Ma

figures, Mil

Theodora,

, 95-7,

, Mich

Remonstrant's Defence

mectymnuus, 1

not, J

46, 48, 49, 52,

nism

sto,

ong, J

sh Poetry, B

ng Health, The,

Legend, 23

Day, Vau

sian C

n Mercu

ne, Sai

Francis

ay, J

Richar

t, Fran

t, Jose

zebu

40, 211-1

, Pie

Richard

edy of, Cha

Rober

, Lyttel

, Philip

ir Thomas

Sir Th

, Nicol

f Spor

Charl

Zachar

Thoma

, Will

John,

und, 40, 4

Dr. Th

amuel, 44

rge Gordon

she

mon

e, Milto

, Will

Thoma

, Milton's

llus

George,

emagn

les

., Court o

e, Somerv

eoffrey, 1

field,

ine, Treatise o

gland, 17, 1

h, The, M

School,

and, J

nt-Sorlin's

Taylor, 127, 151,

2-63, 182, 184, 1

William,

John Gil

, Shakespe

yrists,

m, 72, 177, 20

, Geor

Richard

Oliver, 62

Philips

ymn to, Jo

51, 14

, Samu

lliam, 177,

Cowley's,

tica, Blo

air Infant,

People of Engla

ople of England,

r, Jo

John,

Thomas, 82,

solved Soul and Created

Satire, Dryde

tutes of Lac

and Workes,

16, 19, 48, 52, 5

John, 1

uence of, on Mil

ichael, 27

, 180, 202, 203, 206-208,

, Guillau

d, Pop

John,

tical Pam

al Polity, H

Shensto

ove, The, Ar

ion, O

-century p

of Milton

lastes,

oetry, 116, 1

ation to, 15

Thomas,

oets, Account of th

ogues, Mil

e, Geor

2, 121-22, 142-50, 154-59, 160,

, The, Ma

ne, Spenser

, Elij

The, Dye

er, Gi

r, Phin

John

2, 129, 13

leo,

Joh

, Edwa

, Rich

, Will

hann Wolfg

t, Daven

, Sackvi

, James,

he, Blai

omas, 23

Hill, Dy

, Jo

Shakespe

ourt Conf

del

the Church,

, Willi

t, Geo

dotu

Robert,

y, Lo

f Britain

Thomas

71, 206,

Pope'

n, The, S

ace

ton

Sir Ro

Patric

n, Keat

he King, Te

, The

, 22, 62, 18

57-8, 127, 149, 175, 216, 224

18, 27, 185-8

nal,

, Joh

Edwa

John

tius,

22, 24-5, 2

Charle

r Savage, 137

ne, Ger

, Milton'

chbishop

n move

ce, He

Shakespear

s, Glov

otthold Ep

e, Sir R

sing

amous English Poets

e Poets, Jo

nour, Shens

etiu

, 33, 57, 63,

e, Joh

ton, L

espeare's, 16

e, Sir G

rétien Guill

, Davi

n, 14

oa,

so,

Christo

Cleme

drew, 67, 7

rofessor

h, Geor

ton's use of,

129, 135, 156

ics," t

e play

h, 14

iment of Wome

Michel Ey

de Secondat, Baron

Henr

r Thomas

Alexa

n, Fyn

the Morning of

pocryphal Go

ughts, Yo

e, Sonnet

e, Tho

Gray

Magn

' Tale, P

, Dr. Joseph B

, 20

133, 140, 143, 150, 153, 158-64, 168, 176, 179, 188, 191, 195, 206,

ers of,

ogy of,

aphy of

of, by Addi

ley,

e, 127,

y, 82, 10

den

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137, 212

son,

e,

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nes in, 120-22,

of, 18

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, 85-7, 126

, 179 se

6, 120, 146-47, 158-

, Samu

t, the Lo

on, T

Mark, 54

George,

, John,

s, Edwa

of Edward and Jo

hical po

rogress, Bu

hristop

g of the Soul

e Imagination,

ancholy, The, Wa

arch

, Boile

141, 203, 242,

ary, 7, 5

mony, The, C

al contr

etical use of, b

, Will

Beaumo

ilton's

ton's, 28-31, 9

rism,

, Franc

Lock, The,

, 130, 144, 146, 202,

Government urged

in England,

nsposed, The,

s poetry

, the, 19,

lican

n, the, 26

., Shakesp

I., Shakes

, Samu

55, 220, 226,

of the R

Nichol

y, The, She

Thoma

s, 49, 6

-1, 79, 143, 146, 158-59, 162, 1

09, 110-11, 129, 130, 132-39, 146, 152

, Thomson's,

Sir Char

Ben Jon

, Thom

eca

ntury poetry,

relation

hony Ashley Coop

Lines on, M

22, 25, 116, 118, 171, 175, 190, 198, 214, 2

Percy B

ne, Wil

y, Jam

the Stage, C

Sir Ph

ilton's u

s, Sam

Christo

le, Will

ocle

ll, Rob

The, Addi

17, 18, 106, 18

lling, The,

, Thom

Richard,

ld, Tho

m, 29,

rd, Ear

ir John, 14

, The, Gra

Jonat

Algernon

r, Thoma

of D

wo Swanne

d, Th

The, Ste

eace, Chap

Alfred,

ings and Ma

ames, 243,

son, J

he Eleventh Odys

ry out of the Third

te system

Exercise,

, Henry

onis, Shakes

71, 202-2

ure,

aire

Joost va

mund, 206,

Thomas,

the Death of Ric

Assembly of

Earl of Roch

Poem, Ga

ey, Will

e, Shakespea

, Geor

Anthon

illiam, 214,

Sir He

Thomas,