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Joannis Miltoni, Angli, de Doctrina Christiana libri duo posthumi. A Treatise on
Christian Doctrine, compiled from the Holy Scriptures alone. By John Milton,
translated from the Original by Charles R. Sumner, M.A., etc., etc. 1825.
Towards the close of the year 1823, Mr. Lemon, deputy keeper of the state
papers, in the course of his researches among the presses of his office, met
with a large Latin manuscript. With it were found corrected copies of the
foreign dispatches written by Milton while he filled the office of Secretary,
and several papers relating to the Popish Trials and the Rye-house Plot. The
whole was wrapped up in an envelope, superscribed To Mr. Skinner, Merchant. On
examination, the large manuscript proved to be the long-lost Essay on the
Doctrines of Christianity, which, according to Wood and Toland, Milton finished
after the Restoration, and deposited with Cyriac Skinner. Skinner, it is well
known, held the same political opinions with his illustrious friend. It is
therefore probable, as Mr. Lemon conjectures, that he may have fallen under the
suspicions of the Government during that persecution of the Whigs which followed
the dissolution of the Oxford parliament, and that, in consequence of a general
seizure of his papers, this work may have been brought to the office in which it
has been found. But whatever the adventures of the manuscript may have been, no
doubt can exist that it is a genuine relic of the great poet.
Mr. Sumner who was commanded by his Majesty to edit and translate the treatise,
has acquitted himself of his task in a manner honorable to his talents and to
his character. His version is not indeed very easy or elegant; but it is
entitled to the praise of clearness and fidelity. His notes abound with
interesting quotations, and have the rare merit of really elucidating the text.
The preface is evidently the work of a sensible and candid man, firm in his own
religious opinions, and tolerant towards those of others.
The book itself will not add much to the fame of Milton. It is, like all his
Latin works, well written, though not exactly in the style of the prize essays
of Oxford and Cambridge. There is no elaborate imitation of classical antiquity,
no scrupulous purity, none of the ceremonial cleanness which characterizes the
diction of our academical Pharisees. The author does not attempt to polish and
brighten his composition into the Ciceronian gloss and brilliancy. He does not
in short sacrifice sense and spirit to pedantic refinements. The nature of his
subject compelled him to use many words
"That would have made Quintilian stare and gasp."
But he writes with as much ease and freedom as if Latin were his mother tongue;
and, where he is least happy, his failure seems to arise from the carelessness
of a native, not from the ignorance of a foreigner. We may apply to him what
Denham with great felicity says of Cowley: "He wears the garb, but not the
clothes of the ancients."
Throughout the volume are discernible the traces of a powerful and independent
mind, emancipated from the influence of authority, and devoted to the search of
truth. Milton professes to form his system from the Bible alone; and his digest
of scriptural texts is certainly among the best that have appeared. But he is
not always so happy in his inferences as in his citations.
Some of the heterodox doctrines which he avows seemed to have excited
considerable amazement, particularly his Arianism, and his theory on the subject
of polygamy. Yet we can scarcely conceive that any person could have read the
Paradise Lost without suspecting him of the former; nor do we think that any
reader, acquainted with the history of his life, ought to be much startled at
the latter. The opinions which he has expressed respecting the nature of the
Deity, the eternity of matter, and the observation of the Sabbath, might, we
think, have caused more just surprise.
But we will not go into the discussion of these points. The book, were it far
more orthodox or far more heretical than it is, would not much edify or corrupt
the present generation. The men of our time are not to be converted or perverted
by quartos. A few more days, and this essay will follow the Defensio Populi to
the dust and silence of the upper shelf. The name of its author, and the
remarkable circumstances attending its publication, will secure to it a certain
degree of attention. For a month or two it will occupy a few minutes of chat in
every drawing-room, and a few columns in every magazine; and it will then, to
borrow the elegant language of the play-bills, be withdrawn to make room for the
forthcoming novelties.
We wish, however, to avail ourselves of the interest, transient as it may be,
which this work has excited. The dexterous Capuchins never choose to preach on
the life and miracles of a saint, until they have awakened the devotional
feelings of their auditors by exhibiting some relic of him, a thread of his
garment, a lock of his hair, or a drop of his blood. On the same principle, we
intend to take advantage of the late interesting discovery, and, while this
memorial of a great and good man is still in the hands of all, to say something
of his moral and intellectual qualities. Nor, we are convinced, will the
severest of our readers blame us if, on an occasion like the present, we turn
for a short time from the topics of the day, to commemorate, in all love and
reverence, the genius and virtues of John Milton, the poet, the statesman, the
philosopher, the glory of English literature, the champion and the martyr of
English liberty.
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 civilized 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
civilization, 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 unfavorable 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 civilization 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 civilization 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 civilized 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
sciences to that of 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-civilized
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. Generalization is necessary to
the advancement of knowledge; but particularity 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 analyze 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 colors.
Thus the greatest of poets has described it, in lines universally admired for
the vigor 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 the 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 civilized community, and
most rare among those who participate most in its improvements. They linger
longest amongst 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 vigor 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 labor, 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
hot-house 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, shields, helms, and spears Hang high, with diamond
flaming, and with gold."
We cannot look upon the sportive exercises for which the genius of Milton
ungirds itself, without catching a glimpse of the gorgeous and terrible panoply
which it is accustomed to wear. The strength of his imagination triumphed over
every obstacle. So intense and ardent was the fire of his mind, that it not only
was not suffocated beneath the weight of fuel, but penetrated the whole
superincumbent mass with its own heat and radiance.
It is not our intention to attempt anything like a complete examination of the
poetry of Milton. The public has long been agreed as to the merit of the most
remarkable passages, the incomparable harmony of the numbers, and the excellence
of that style, which no rival has been able to equal, and no parodist to
degrade, which displays in their highest perfection the idiomatic powers of the
English tongue, and to which every ancient and every modern language has
contributed something of grace, of energy, or of music. In the vast field of
criticism on which we are entering, innumerable reapers have already put their
sickles. Yet the harvest is so abundant that the negligent search of a
straggling gleaner may be rewarded with a sheaf.
The most striking characteristic of the poetry of Milton is the extreme
remoteness of the associations by means of which it acts on the reader. Its
effect is produced, not so much by what it expresses, as by what it suggests;
not so much by the ideas which it directly conveys, as by other ideas which are
connected with them. He electrifies the mind through conductors. The most
unimaginative man must understand the Iliad. Homer gives him no choice, and
requires from him no exertion, but takes the whole upon himself, and sets the
images in so clear a light, that it is impossible to be blind to them. The works
of Milton cannot be comprehended or enjoyed, unless the mind of the reader
co-operate with that of the writer. He does not paint a finished picture, or
play for a mere passive listener. He sketches, and leaves others to fill up the
outline. He strikes the keynote, and expects his hearer to make out the melody.
We often hear of the magical influence of poetry. The expression in general
means nothing: but, applied to the writings of Milton, it is most appropriate.
His poetry acts like an incantation. Its merit lies less in its obvious meaning
than in its occult power. There would seem, at first sight, to be no more in his
words than in other words. But they are words of enchantment. No sooner are they
pronounced, than the past is present and the distant near. New forms of beauty
start at once into existence, and all the burial-places of the memory give up
their dead. Change the structure of the sentence; substitute one synonym for
another, and the whole effect is destroyed. The spell loses its power: and he
who should then hope to conjure with it would find himself as much mistaken as
Cassim in the Arabian tale, when he stood crying, "Open Wheat," "Open Barley,"
to the door which obeyed no sound but "Open Sesame." The miserable failure of
Dryden in his attempt to translate into his own diction some parts of the
Paradise Lost, is a remarkable instance of this.
In support of these observations we may remark, that scarcely any passages in
the poems of Milton are more generally known or more frequently repeated than
those which are little more than muster-rolls of names. They are not always more
appropriate or more melodious than other names. Every one of them is the first
link in a long chain of associated ideas. Like the dwelling-place of our infancy
revisited in manhood, like the song of our country heard in a strange land, they
produce upon us an effect wholly independent of their intrinsic value. One
transports us back to a remote period of history. Another places us among the
novel scenes avid manners of a distant region. A third evokes all the dear
classical recollections of childhood, the schoolroom, the dog-eared Virgil, the
holiday, and the prize. A fourth brings before us the splendid phantoms of
chivalrous romance, the trophied lists, the embroidered housings, the quaint
devices, the haunted forests, the enchanted gardens, the achievements of
enamored knights, and the smiles of rescued princesses.
In none of the works of Milton is his peculiar manner more happily displayed
than in the Allegro and the Penseroso. It is impossible to conceive that the
mechanism of language can be brought to a more exquisite degree of perfection.
These poems differ from others, as attar of roses differs from ordinary rose
water, the close packed essence from the thin diluted mixture. They are indeed
not so much poems, as collections of hints, from each of which the reader is to
make out a poem for himself. Every epithet is a text for a stanza.
The Comus and the Samson Agonistes are works which, though of very different
merit, offer some marked points of resemblance. Both are lyric poems in the form
of plays. There are perhaps no two kinds of composition so essentially
dissimilar as the drama and the ode. The business of the dramatist is to keep
himself out of sight, and to let nothing appear but his characters. As soon as
he attracts notice to his personal feelings, the illusion is broken. The effect
is as unpleasant as that which is produced on the stage by the voice of a
prompter or the entrance of a scene-shifter. Hence it was, that the tragedies of
Byron were his least successful performances. They resemble those pasteboard
pictures invented by the friend of children, Mr. Newbery, in which a single
moveable head goes round twenty different bodies, so that the same face looks
out upon us successively, from the uniform of a hussar, the furs of a judge, and
the rags of a beggar. In all the characters, patriots and tyrants, haters and
lovers, the frown and sneer of Harold were discernible in an instant. But this
species of egotism, though fatal to the drama, is the inspiration of the ode. It
is the part of the lyric poet to abandon himself, without reserve, to his own
emotions.
Between these hostile elements many great men have endeavored to effect an
amalgamation, but never with complete success. The Greek Drama, on the model of
which the Samson was written, sprang from the Ode. The dialogue was engrafted on
the chorus, and naturally partook of its character. The genius of the greatest
of the Athenian dramatists cooperated with the circumstances under which tragedy
made its first appearance. Aeschylus was, head and heart, a lyric poet. In his
time, the Greeks had far more intercourse with the East than in the days of
Homer; and they had not yet acquired that immense superiority in war, in
science, and in the arts, which, in the following generation, led them to treat
the Asiatics with contempt. From the narrative of Herodotus it should seem that
they still looked up, with the veneration of disciples, to Egypt and Assyria. At
this period, accordingly, it was natural that the literature of Greece should be
tinctured with the Oriental style. And that style, we think, is discernible in
the works of Pindar and Aeschylus. The latter often reminds us of the Hebrew
writers. The book of Job, indeed, in conduct and diction, bears a considerable
resemblance to some of his dramas. Considered as plays, his works are absurd;
considered as choruses, they are above all praise. If, for instance, we examine
the address of Clytemnestra to Agamemnon on his return, or the description of
the seven Argive chiefs, by the principles of dramatic writing, we shall
instantly condemn them as monstrous. But if we forget the characters, and think
only of the poetry, we shall admit that it has never been surpassed in energy
and magnificence. Sophocles made the Greek Drama as dramatic as was consistent
with its original form. His portraits of men have a sort of similarity; but it
is the similarity not of a painting, but of a bas-relief. It suggests a
resemblance; but it does not produce an illusion. Euripides attempted to carry
the reform further. But it was a task far beyond his powers, perhaps beyond any
powers. Instead of correcting what was bad, he destroyed what was excellent. He
substituted crutches for stilts, bad sermons for good odes.
Milton, it is well known, admired Euripides highly, much more highly than, in
our opinion, Euripides deserved. Indeed the caresses which this partiality leads
our countryman to bestow on "sad Electra's poet," sometimes remind us of the
beautiful Queen of Fairy-land kissing the long ears of Bottom. At all events,
there can be no doubt that this veneration for the Athenian, whether just or
not, was injurious to the Samson Agonistes. Had Milton taken Aeschylus for his
model, he would have given himself up to the lyric inspiration, and poured out
profusely all the treasures of his mind, without bestowing a thought on those
dramatic proprieties which the nature of the work rendered it impossible to
preserve. In the attempt to reconcile things in their own nature inconsistent he
has failed, as every one else must have failed. We cannot identify ourselves
with the characters, as in a good play. We cannot identify ourselves with the
poet, as in a good ode. The conflicting ingredients, like an acid and an alkali
mixed, neutralize each other. We are by no means insensible to the merits of
this celebrated piece, to the severe dignity of the style, the graceful and
pathetic solemnity of the opening speech, or the wild and barbaric melody which
gives so striking an effect to the choral passages. But we think it, we confess,
the least successful effort of the genius of Milton.
The Comus is framed on the model of the Italian Masque, as the Samson is framed
on the model of the Greek Tragedy. It is certainly the noblest performance of
the kind which exists in any language. It is as far superior to the Faithful
Shepherdess as the Faithful Shepherdess is to the Aminta, or the Aminta to the
Pastor Fido. It was well for Milton that he had here no Euripides to mislead
him. He understood and loved the literature of modern Italy. But he did not feel
for it the same veneration which he entertained for the remains of Athenian and
Roman poetry, consecrated by so many lofty and endearing recollections. The
faults, moreover, of his Italian predecessors were of a kind to which his mind
had a deadly antipathy. He could stoop to a plain style, sometimes even to a
bald style; but false brilliancy was his utter aversion. His muse had no
objection to a russet attire; but she turned with disgust from the finery of
Guarini, as tawdry and as paltry as the rags of a chimney-sweeper on May-day.
Whatever ornaments she wears are of massive gold, not only dazzling to the
sight, but capable of standing the severest test of the crucible.
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