MACAULAY'S MISCELLANIES. MILTON. [EDINBURGH REVIEW. 1825.] ceremonial cleanness which characterize he diction of our academical Pharisees. He does not attempt to polish and brighten his composi tion 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. What Denham with great felicity says of Cowley, may be applied to him. He wears the garb, but not the clothes, of the ancients. TOWARDS the close of the year 1823, Mr. Le- | antiquity, no scrupulous purity, none of the mon, 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 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 had 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 this 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 eucidating the text. The preface is evidently the work of a sensible and candid man, firm in nis 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. l'here is no elaborate imitation of classical • 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, MA.. &c. &c. 1825 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. He 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 opinions which he avows seem to have excited considerable amazement: particularly his Arianism, and his notions 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 thick that any reader, acquainted with the history c 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 mar ter, 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 or thodox, or far more heretical than it is, would not much edify or corrupt the present genera tion. The men of our time are not to be cou verted or perverted by quartos. A few more days, and this Essay will follow the Defensv Populi to the dust and silence of the upper shelf. The name of its author, and the je markable circumstances attending its publis don, 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 mterest, 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, till 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 Jchn 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 out-voted, 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 for 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 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 his 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 rivilization which surrounded him, or from the learning which he had acquired: and he .ooked back with something like regret to the Luder age of simple words and vivid impressions. We think that, as civilization advances, poetry almost necessarily declines. Therefore, though we 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 ral: as if it were the exception. Surely the uni formity of the phenomenon indicates a corres ponding uniformity in the cause. The fact is, that common observers reason from the progress of the experimental sciences to that of the imitative arts. The improve ment of the former is gradual and slow. Ages are spent in collecting materials, ages more ir 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 be. queathed to it by antiquity, and transmits it, augmented by fresh acquisitions, to future ages. In these pursuits, therefore, the firs 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 attain ments. 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 New. ton 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 po etry. 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, a change by which science gains, and poetry loses. Generalization is ne cessary to the advancement of knowledge, but particularly in 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 pre decessors. But analysis is not the business of the poet. His office is to portray, not to dissect. He may believe in a mora, ser.se, like Shaftesbury. He may refer all human action3 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 3 good ones-but little poetry. Men will judge which a painter may have conceived respecting Perhaps no man can be a poet, or can even "As imagination bodies forth The forms of things unknown, the poet's pen These are the fruits of the "fine frenzy" which 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 among 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 be come more and more definite, and the shades of probability more and more distinct, the hues and lineaments of the phantoms which it calls up grow fainter and fainter. We cannot unite the incompatible advantages of reality and deception, the clear discernment of truh 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 of superiority. His very talents will be a hinderance 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 vigour 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 labour, 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 In a rude state of society, men are children only great poet of later times who has been rith a greater variety of ideas. It is there-distinguished by the excellence of his Latir fore in such a state of society that we may verse. The genius of Petrarch was scarcely expect to find the poetical temperament in its of the first order; and his poems in the ancien highest perfection. In an enlightened age language, though much praised by those who there will be much intelligence, much science, have never read them, are wretched com much philosophy, abundance of just classifica- positions. Cowley, with all his admirable wit ion and subtle analysis, abundance of wit and loquence, abundance of verses, and even of See the Dialogue between Socrates and le |