3

studied all the mysteries of Rabbinical literature:1 he was intimately acquainted with every language of modern Europe, from which either pleasure or information was then to be derived.2 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.4 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.5 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

1 This is a rhetorical way of saying that Milton knew Hebrew. A more judicial estimate of Milton's learning is given by Mark Pattison in his "Life of Milton" (English Men of Letters Series), p. 210.

2 Did Milton know Spanish?

Francesco Petrarca, 1304-1374, the illustrious poet, was a devout worshipper of antiquity, and tried to revive the study of Latin and Greek literature. He diligently cultivated a classical Latin style in prose and verse. Hallam passes a more favourable judgment than Macaulay's on Petrarch's Latin poems (Literature of Europe, part i., ch. i.).

4"The products of his vernal fertility have been surpassed by many poets, particularly by his contemporary, Cowley" ("Life of Milton ").

5 But Latin was scarcely a dead language in the first half of the seventeenth century. It was habitually written and spoken by the learned class in civilised Europe. See Professor Masson's remarks on this subject in his Introduction to Milton's Latin poems: "I should say that the expectation of coequality between the intrinsic worth of the Latin poetry of any educated Englishman of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and the intrinsic worth of the same writer's English poetry, if he wrote any, is the proper rule in the examination of any specimens of the forgotten Anglo-Latin poetry of that period" (Milton's Poetical Works, edited by D. Masson, vol. i., p. 249).

6 Giovanni Battista Manso, Marquess of Villa, 1561-1645, a Neapolitan nobleman of high and amiable character and many accomplishments, the friend of Tasso and Marini, and himself an author, showed peculiar courtesy to Milton when he visited Naples in 1638. Milton, before quitting Naples, returned him thanks in a poetic epistle.

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 armoury, shield, helm, and spear,

Hung high, with diamond flaming and with gold." 1

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 any thing 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

1 Paradise Lost, book iv., lines 551-554.

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 key-note, 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 synonyme 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.1

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. But they are charmed 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 and 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

1 In his drama entitled "The State of Innocence and Fall of Man.'

haunted forests, the enchanted gardens, the achievements of enamoured knights, and the smiles of rescued princesses.1

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 atar 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

It may be permissible to illustrate these words of Macaulay by quoting at random a few out of many most beautiful and suggestive lines :

Or againOr

Thence to the famous orators repair
Those ancient whose resistless eloquence
Wielded at will that fierce democracy,
Shook the Arsenal and fulmined over Greece
To Macedon and Artaxerxes' throne."

"To Agra and Lahor of Great Mogul."

"Him followed Rimmon, whose delightful seat
Was fair Damascus on the fertile banks
Of Abbana and Pharpar, lucid streams.'

Or the line so much admired by Matthew Arnold

"And Teiresias and Phineus, prophets old."

Or the comparison of the fallen angels weltering on the lake of fire to autumnal leaves that strew the brooks

"In Vallombrosa where the Etrurian shades
High over-arched embower."

Or the lines in which their muster is said to surpass in its immensity what resounds

"In fable or romance of Uther's son
Begirt with British and Armoric knights
And all who since, baptised or infidel,
Jousted in Aspramont or Montalban
Damasco or Marocco or Trebisond
Or whom Biserta sent from Afric shore
When Charlemain with all his peerage fell
By Fontarabbia."

VOL. I.-2

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 endeavoured 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 ingrafted on the chorus, and naturally partook of its character. The genius of the greatest of the Athenian dramatists co-operated with the circumstances under which tragedy made its first appearance. Eschylus 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; 2 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 Eschylus. 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 ad

1 John Newbery, 1713-1767, a well-known publisher, "the first to make the issue of books specially intended for children an important branch of publishing business" (Dictionary of National Biography, xl., 313).

2 We do not know enough about the age of Homer to justify this assertion. Eschylus was probably born about 525 B. C.; fought at Marathon 490 B.C.; celebrated the repulse of Xerxes 480 B.C. in his Perse and was living and composing in 461 B.C. when Athens was at the height of its successes against Persia. Pindar was roughly his contemporary, so that the remarks in the text are scarcely justified. There is no evidence for the belief that Eschylus or Pindar was under an Oriental influence.