classical antiquity, no scrupulous purity, none of the ceremonial cleanness which characterizes the diction of our academical Pharisees.1 The author does not attempt to polish and brighten his composition into the Ciceronian 2 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

"3

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,1 with great felicity, says of Cowley,5 may be applied to

The Pharisees were a sect of the Jews noted for their overzealous care about outward forms of religion, to the neglect of inward virtue of heart and soul. See Gospel of St. Matthew, Chap. xxiii. Even so the Latin essays of the English universities were beautiful outwardly but had no valuable contents.

"Like Cicero, the great Roman orator (106-43 B.C.), whose name is a proverb for the best Latin prose ever composed.

E.g., praedestinatio, electio nationalis, reprobatio, etc. This line is from Milton's Sonnet XI. Quintilian (35-96 A.D.) was a famous Roman teacher of Rhetoric. In his work upon The Education of the Orator he discusses many points of interest in Latin diction and style. His own taste was very careful and his admiration of Cicero's Latin was great.

4 Sir John Denham (see Ward's English Poets), a poet and courtier of the reign of Charles I. In some lines on the Death and Burial of Mr. Abraham Cowley among the ancient Poets, he says:—

"Horace's wit and Virgil's state

He did not steal but emulate;

And when he would like them appear,

Their garb but not their clothes did wear."

5 Abraham Cowley, the most popular poet of Milton's day; one of the great men of Macaulay's own college (Trinity College, Cambridge). He wrote many translations and imitations of classic authors, as well

him. He wears the garb but not the clothes of the ancients.1

4. 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.

2

3

5. Some of the heterodox 3 opinions which he avows seem to have excited considerable amazement; particularly his Arianism, and his notions on the subject of polygamy.5 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

as English odes and prose essays. In politics he took the royalist side with Lord Falkland. Macaulay wrote a charming Conversation between Mr. Abraham Cowley and Mr. John Milton for Knight's Quarterly in 1823, which anticipates some of the paragraphs in this present essay, and might well be read in connection with it.

1I.e., his ideas are clothed in the general form which the ancients would have used; but not in exactly the same words and phrases. 2 Digest, a collection and abridgment of literary or scientific matter arranged in some convenient order.

Heterodox, heretical, theologically incorrect.

The theological tenets, upon the nature of Christ, of Arius, an Alexandrian priest of the fourth century. After a fierce battle in the church, these opinions were condemned as heresy by the General Council of Nicæa, 325 A.D. Milton, like Sir Isaac Newton, appears to be a semi-Arian, believing that Christ possessed a certain derivative deity, not, however, coeternal with the Father's.

5 Milton maintains in his essay that, according of the Old Testament, marriage under polygamy was a genuine marriage. Polygamy, therefore, though it may be inexpedient, is not a crime like murder and stealing.

the nature of the Deity, the eternity of matter,1 and the observation of the Sabbath,2 might, we think, have caused more just surprise.

6. 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 3 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 drawingroom, 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.

7. 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

6

1 "Matter is imperishable and eternal, because it is not only from God, but out of God," who is eternal. Milton would be classed now as a pantheistic materialist. He appears to hold that there is no radical distinction between body and soul, or between matter and spirit.

2 "The command to keep the Sabbath was given to the Israelites for a variety of reasons, mostly peculiar to themselves; 'the law of the Sabbath having been repealed, it is evident that no day of worship has been appointed in its place," etc., etc. Sabbatarian.

Milton is an Anti

3 Convert, to turn from one opinion to another; pervert, to turn from a true opinion to a false one.

4 Books in the making of which the large sheets of printing paper are folded twice, making four leaves. The book Macaulay is review. ing was a quarto. This shape was a favorite form for important books in Milton's day. It is now little used except for books containing plates and maps like school geographies.

5 See Introduction, 16.

A younger branch of the Franciscan monks, named from the pecul

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 John Milton, the poet, the statesman, the philosopher, the glory of English literature, the champion and the martyr of English liberty.1

8. 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

iar cowl or capuce they wear. They are famous as preachers, as missionaries, and as martyrs.

$$ 8-49. FIRST DIVISION OF THE ESSAY: MILTON'S POETRY. SS 8-18. First topic discussed: Is Milton's place among the greatest masters? Yes, for he triumphed over the difficulty of writing poetry in the midst of a highly civilised society. A discussion of the relation of poetry to civilisation.

1 This sentence describes accurately the general subject of the essay. The essay is not a complete analysis of Milton's literary product, nor an elaborate biographical study. It is just a Commemoration of the genius and virtues of John Milton, with a general discussion of some of his moral and intellectual qualities.

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 estimate of his powers, make large deductions for these advantages.

9. We venture to say, on the contrary, paradoxical 1 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 2 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 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.

10. We think that, as civilisation 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

1 Paradox, an apparently absurd but true statement.

2 Dr. Samuel Johnson (1709-1784), the dictator of literary opinion to the England of his time. The allusion is to his Life of Milton in his Lives of the Poets. On this subject Johnson says in this work that Milton was a "victim to the fumes of vain imagination" in that he thought he depended on seasons and climates; Johnson assures us that, however inferior to the heroes of better ages, "he might still be great among his contemporaries,' 'a giant among pygmies." For the relations of Johnson's Life to Macaulay's Essay, see Introduction, 4, 5, and 6.

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