It should not be forgotten that there is one Power which has not merely a preponderating interest, but an interest compared with which that of all other states is insignificant, in promoting combined action in China, and that power is Great Britain.

ART. IV.-The Life of John Milton, narrated in Connexion with the Political, Ecclesiastical and Literary History of his Time. By David Masson, M.A. Vols. I. and II. London, 1871.

IF

F Biography, next after poetry of the highest class, be that form of literature which gives mankind the most intense and enduring pleasure, no excuse is required for a student who, two centuries after Milton's death, endeavours once more, and more perfectly, to tell the oft-told story of that great and eventful life. In its general outlines it is familiar to every one: and, although much might be said on the details of Milton's poetry, yet the main scope and character of it has been, on the whole, adequately made known by a long series of criticisms, from Addison to Macaulay and Landor. Thus we shall not here attempt to add one more to the many essays on Milton; proposing rather to give some account of what Mr. Masson has brought before us, or has himself added to our knowledge, and of the plan which he has pursued in the work, so far as the portion yet published enables us to form a judgment. What he has already done, we may say at once, entitles Mr. Masson to the hearty gratitude of those who care for our history, and those who study our literature. But the scheme of the book, as described in its title, is a large one; and, we think, one not free from rather serious faults, both in its plan and in its details. And as one-half, or perhaps more, of the whole is as yet unpublished, we shall touch here and there on these defects: feeling sure, from the tone of the book, that Mr. Masson is not one of those authors, sensitiveness and egotism all over, to whom nothing is praise but all praise; and that, whether our criticisms should strike him as well-founded or not, he will recognise in them our sincere wish to aid in perfecting a work of national importance.

A word of explanation is, perhaps, due also to the reader when an incomplete book, like that before us, is made the subject of review. One reason of our notice is, that a book published by instalments is apt to miss the notice which it may deserve; reader and reviewer alike deferring the matter till it be com

pleted, and thus (unconsciously) discouraging in many ways the completion of it. A second reason is that, in this case, Mr. Masson has both given us already a substantive work of value, and has sufficiently defined the sphere of his labour. What he has done, and what he promises (we may add), alike make us hope, for our own sakes, that, with some needful alteration in the plan, he may be able to crown the edifice' without those delays which have too often proved fatal to human good intentions.

Let us here, also, in justice to the writer before us, briefly point out certain special difficulties which will impede or circumscribe the biographer who deals with the life, not of a man of action, but of an artist. What do we ask from biography? It may be briefly answered, 'to enable us to live with a man for a few days.' If the author can effect this for us, we shall then truly and delightfully follow the whole course of a life, but not otherwise. Now, in the case of the poet or the painter, the first, the natural (though the mistaken) impression is that, in order to 'live with him,' we must penetrate into the secret of his soul, unlock the innermost enchanted chamber of his genius, and know, in short, what he never knew himself,-why he thought of that phrase, or laid on that colour. This desire, of course, cannot be gratified by any biographer. The artist, probably, could not have satisfied it for his nearest friends,-not even for himself. Nor, could the secret of genius be laid bare, would this be a desirable revelation. The poet, as such, expresses himself in the finished work; he has said in it all that he could say, or desired to say, in relation to poetry. It would destroy the charm, could he analyse the fine processes of creation; it would seem to him perfectly ludicrous that any one should trouble himself about the sketch and the scaffolding. Hence some have contended that biography has no place in regard to the creative artist. Mr. Tennyson, in some vigorous lines, argues, or seems to argue, that the poet's works are all of his life which the world is entitled to ask for. But the sentiment of the world, from Homer's day downwards, has been wholly against such a silence, and, we think, with perfect justice. No craving can be more inevitable, or connected with higher impulses of the soul, than that which leads us to ask what manner of man he was, who has moved us to our best tears and our most poignant admiration, and how far his own nature was the true reflex or mould of his creations. And the biographies of many artists, in each class, have, as a matter of fact, placed us in this desired position. We do know men such as Dante, Michel Angelo, Dürer, Spenser, Beethoven, Schiller, enough for a much more satisfactory enjoyment of their works

than

than if we had their works alone ;-if we do not and cannot learn why their genius led them to this or that, we have learned how it led them.

It will easily be seen that this is, however, no easy task which we assign to the poet's biographer. Much tact, much delicacy of critical power, must be his, or he will fall short of success; either giving the external aspect of a life only, or creating a false impression of the inner genius. Scott (to make our meaning clearer by an example) has suffered from the error first-named; Shelley from the second. He has been placed before us too much as the world's regenerating philosopher and prophet: Scott as the man of the world. Milton has hitherto suffered a fate somewhat similar to Scott's. His numerous biographers* have rendered mainly the active, the external, incidents in a life which, like Dante's, was, in truth, shared between a double allegiance to poetry and to politics. Johnson's larger mind and clear knowledge of what biography should be, led him, indeed, to a truer idea; but, in his famous Life of Milton, he has allowed his own political creed to alloy and obscure his poetical insight. That Life is, indeed, a masterpiece of ability and monumental weight: the 'grand style' of a genuine, if not a refined, artist is written on every page. As an example of reserve and largeness in the treatment of details, and a magazine of powerful though partial criticism, it stands as a model to be studied by biographers. Yet throughout we hear the growl with which Boswell has familiarized us: The dog is a Whig!—and dog's justice, it must be owned, was too often all that Milton himself found from that 'Great Bear' into whose muscular grasp he had fallen.

The preceding considerations may at once seem to point out the general difficulties of Mr. Masson's task, and his justification for attempting it. In perceiving the necessity for combining the story of Milton's life with that of England herself during his manhood, he has simply followed the necessities of the case. Much of the poet's life was unreservedly devoted to politics; and politics, in turn, colour much of his poetry. These historical elements have, therefore, mingled largely in previous lives. Mr. Masson's plan, however, differs very much from those of his predecessors in the degree wherein he inserts a narrative of contemporary history; and here we think it more than doubtful

*The principal may be here named, without attempting a bibliographical catalogue:-Phillips, Milton's nephew; Aubrey, the antiquary; and Wood, the annalist of Oxford, are the contemporary sources. Toland and Dr. Birch published in 1698 and 1733. Dr. Newton and Dr. Johnson follow during the latter half of the century; Symmons and Todd at the beginning of this. There are other lesser attempts innumerable, and many valuable contributions of detail have been made recently.

whether

t

whether he has chosen the scheme most likely to further his own purposes. It is true that no period of English and Scottish history is of more interest than that lying between 1625 and 1674, and true also that, while we have many admirable subsidiary books and essays upon it, we have as yet no adequate history, as such, of any portion. The vast amount of materials, the greatness of the interests involved, the peculiarly partisan character of those interests, explain the deficiency, but explain also the hopelessness of endeavouring to supply it as an appendage to, or grouped around, the life of Milton. If properly executed, the history of this period would obviously be out of all proportion to a single life, presented as a parallel work. The poet would be wholly crushed beneath the vast robes and wrappings of his biography.

In some degree this is the case with Mr. Masson's work, and we are sorry to see, in a rapidly-increasing proportion.

'It is intended,' he said in his preface to the first volume, to exhibit Milton's Life in its connexions with all the more notable phenomena of the period of British history in which it was cast,- its state-politics, its ecclesiastical variations, its literature and speculative thought.'

Hence Mr. Masson proposed at the outset to give a general history of the contemporary literature, with those incidents and tendencies of the great Puritan Revolution which illustrate Milton's life especially.'

This scheme, even if strictly carried out, by presenting the politics and literature of the time in clear but condensed sketches, was a sufficiently large one; and we are not surprised that Mr. Masson should have anticipated that he would fill not less than three volumes (vol. i. p. vi.). As, however, he has advanced with his work, the history becomes far more prominent than the biography. Thus, in the second volume, he has cast aside the attempt to preserve a continuity of interest, and the book now presents a history, interleaved with chapters referring to Milton. Barely one-third (183 pages among 608) falls to the poet's share; and so far from reaching 1660, the volume closes with the summer of 1643. Now, as the seventeen following years are even more rich in events than the four or five which fill this volume, and infinitely more closely connected with Milton's personal history, it is obvious that Mr. Masson's book will either become one of the longest biographies in existence, or that the

*Mr. Masson's scale of work may be partly measured by a comparison with Mr. Todd, in the latest edition of whose 'Life' thirty-six pages include the greater part of the time covered by his successor's two bulky volumes.

fulness

fulness of treatment now adopted must be abandoned, and a whole thus produced which it will be impossible to preserve from the appearance of disproportion and arbitrary selection of contents.

Mr. Masson, conscious that his plan is open to some objection, in the preface to the second volume has given the reasons under which he has acted :

No one can study the Life of Milton as it ought to be studied without being obliged to study, extensively and intimately, the contemporary history of England, and even, incidentally, of Scotland and Ireland.'

To follow his author fully, he has also found no little original investigation necessary :

6

• Thus . . . . a History grew on my hands. It was not in human nature to confine the historical inquiries, once they were in progress, within the precise limits of their demonstrable bearing on the Biography. .. .; and so the History assumed a co-ordinate importance with me, was pursued often for its own sake, and became, though always with a sense of organic relation to the Biography, continuous in itself. I venture to think that this incessant connexion of the History and the Biography in my own thoughts through many years, the History always sending me back more fully informed for the Biography, and the Biography again suggesting new tracks for the History, is a sufficient warrant for the form of the publication.'

We must confess ourselves, with reluctance, wholly unconvinced by Mr. Masson's argument. His remarks, indeed, incidentally prove that he has approached his work as a student of Milton's life in a true historical spirit, and with a thoroughness for which every student will respect him. Yet he has fallen, we think, into a serious error as an author when he argues that because, in order to grasp his subject, he was compelled to cover a wide field of interesting investigation, he was therefore entitled to carry his reader also over the area of his researches. A historical painter might as justly conceive himself warranted in exhibiting, together with his finished picture, the first studies and sketches for it, together with the models who sat for the figures, and the dresses and armour from which he painted. Mr. Masson has embodied the results of his labour in his book, and this gives it its great value; but we do not think he has made out any case, theoretically, for embodying also so much of his processes.

Nor, when we look at the practical effects of this peculiar theory, can we regard it as satisfactory, either in reference to the 'Life' as a work of biographical art, or to its probable success with the public. Its 'too much learning' encumbers it. Those who read and re-read it (as we have done) may, indeed, rise from the perusal with a much clearer idea of the circumstances which

environed