HALLAM'S CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY SOUTHEY'S COLLOQUIES ON SOCIETY SOUTHEY'S EDITION OF THE PILGRIM'S PROGRESS CIVIL DISABILITIES OF THE JEWS CROKER'S EDITION OF BOSWELL'S LIFE OF JOHNSON CRITICAL AND HISTORICAL ESSAYS CONTRIBUTED TO THE EDINBURGH REVIEW. MILTON. (AUGUST, 1825.) Joannis Miltoni, Angli, de Doctrina Christianá 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. &c. &c. 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 despatches 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 illustrions 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 edite and translate the treatise, has acquitted himself of his task in a manner honourable 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 characterises the diction of our academical Pharisees. The author does not attempt to polish and brighten his composition into the Ciceronian gloss and brilliancy. IIe 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 starę and gasp." B But he writes with as much case 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. 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 prinThroughout the volume are discern- ciple, we intend to take advantage of ible the traces of a powerful and inde- the late interesting discovery, and, pendent mind, emancipated from the while this memorial of a great and good influence of authority, and devoted to man is still in the hands of all, to say the search of truth. Milton professes something of his moral and intellectual to form his system from the Bible alone; qualities. Nor, we are convinced, will and his digest of scriptural texts is cer- the severest of our readers blame us tainly among the best that have ap-if, on an occasion like the present, we peared. But he is not always so happy turn for a short time from the topics in his inferences as in his citations. of the day, to commemorate, in all Some of the heterodox doctrines love and reverence, the genius and virwhich he avows seemed to have ex- tues of John Milton, the poet, the cited considerable amazement, parti-statesman, the philosopher, the glory of cularly his Arianism, and his theory English literature, the champion and on the subject of polygamy. Yet we the martyr of English liberty. 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 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 civilised 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 civilisation, 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 estimateofhis 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 unfavourable circumstances than Milton. He doubted, as he has century of study and meditation. himself owned, whether he had not been | years to mathematics, learn more than born" an age too late." For this no- the great Newton knew after half a tion 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 civilisation 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 civilisation 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 civilised 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 phænomenon indicates a corresponding uniformity in the cause. 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-civilised 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. Generalisation is necessary to the advancement of knowledge; but particularity is indispensible to the creations of the imagination. In proportion as men know more and think more, they look less at individuals and The fact is, that common observers more at classes. They therefore make reason from the progress of the expe- better theories and worse poems. They rimental sciences to that of the imitative give us vague phrases instead of images, arts. The improvement of the former and personified qualities instead of men. is gradual and slow. Ages are spent They may be better able to analyse in collecting materials, ages more in human nature than their predecessors. separating and combining them. Even But analysis is not the business of the when a system has been formed, there poet. His office is to portray, not to is still something to add, to alter, or to dissect. He may believe in a moral reject. Every generation enjoys the sense, like Shaftesbury; he may refer use of a vast hoard bequeathed to it all human actions to self-interest, like by antiquity, and transmits that hoard, Helvetius; or he may never think about augmented by fresh acquisitions, to the matter at all. His creed on such future ages. In these pursuits, there- subjects will no more influence his fore, the first speculators lie under great poetry, properly so called, than the disadvantages, and, even when they notions which a painter may have confail, are entitled to praise. Their ceived respecting the lacrymal glands, pupils, with far inferior intellectual or the circulation of the blood will affect powers, speedily surpass them in actual the tears of his Niobe, or the blushes attainments. Every girl who has read of his Aurora. If Shakespeare had Mrs. Marcet's little dialogues on Poli-written a book on the motives of human tical Economy could teach Montague actions, it is by no means certain that or Walpole many lessons in finance. it would have been a good one. Any intelligent man may now, by re- extremely improbable that it would solutely applying himself for a few have contained half so much able rea It is 1 |