that now riseFrom hill or steaming lake, dusky or gray,Till the sun paint your fleecy skirts with gold;
that now rise
From hill or steaming lake, dusky or gray,
Till the sun paint your fleecy skirts with gold;
--where, a purist might urge, neither of them had any right to be acquainted with paint, or skirts, or gold. But anachronisms like these are, after all, only a part of the great anachronism, or postulate rather, whereby Adam and Eve are made to speakthe English tongue. In the Twelfth Book Michael is guilty of a graver lapse where he mentions baptism without explanation or apology. On the other hand, Raphael, who had a pleasanter occasion and more time for his retrospective summary, explains the military manœuvring of angels by what Adam had already seen of the flight of birds, and after describing the great war in Heaven and the fierce hosting of the opposed forces, ventures, at a later point in his story, to illustrate the flowing together of the congregated waters at the Creation by a simile drawn, with apology, from the massing of troops:--
As armies at the callOf trumpet (for of armies thou hast heard)Troop to their standard, so the watery throng,Wave rolling after wave.
As armies at the call
Of trumpet (for of armies thou hast heard)
Troop to their standard, so the watery throng,
Wave rolling after wave.
In the main Milton studies propriety with regard to the forbidden matters enumerated by Andreini. But he escapes from the full effect of the prohibition by a variety of devices. In the first place, there are the two chief episodes of the poem; Raphael's narration, from the Fifth to the Eighth Book, imparted to Adam as a warning against impending dangers, and conveying an account of the history of the Universe before the Creation of Man; and Michael's narration, in the Eleventh and Twelfth Books, consoling and strengthening Adam, before the Expulsion fromthe Garden, by a rapid survey of the prospective history of the World from that event down to the Millennium. Considered as a narrator, Michael is very subject to dullness; were it not for the unfailing dignity and magniloquence of his diction, his tale would be merely a bleak compendium of the outlines of Scripture history; but to Raphael is committed the story of the war in Heaven and its amazing sequel,--a story containing passages so brilliant, and so little necessary to be narrated at length, that there is some flavour of inconsistency in Milton's apology for his theme, prefixed to the Ninth Book, where he describes himself as--
Not sedulous by nature to inditeWars, hitherto the only argumentHeroic deemed, chief mastery to dissectWith long and tedious havoc fabled knightsIn battles feigned (the better fortitudeOf patience and heroic martyrdomUnsung), or to describe races and gamesOr tilting furniture, emblazoned shields,Impresses quaint, caparisons and steeds,Bases and tinsel trappings, gorgeous knightsAt joust and tournament; then marshalled feastServed up in hall with sewers and seneshals:The skill of artifice and office mean;Not that which justly gives heroic nameTo person or to poem! Me, of theseNor skilled nor studious, higher argumentRemains, sufficient of itself to raiseThat name, unless an age too late, or coldClimate, or years, damp my intended wingDepressed; and much they may if all be mine,Not hers who brings it nightly to my ear.
Not sedulous by nature to indite
Wars, hitherto the only argument
Heroic deemed, chief mastery to dissect
With long and tedious havoc fabled knights
In battles feigned (the better fortitude
Of patience and heroic martyrdom
Unsung), or to describe races and games
Or tilting furniture, emblazoned shields,
Impresses quaint, caparisons and steeds,
Bases and tinsel trappings, gorgeous knights
At joust and tournament; then marshalled feast
Served up in hall with sewers and seneshals:
The skill of artifice and office mean;
Not that which justly gives heroic name
To person or to poem! Me, of these
Nor skilled nor studious, higher argument
Remains, sufficient of itself to raise
That name, unless an age too late, or cold
Climate, or years, damp my intended wing
Depressed; and much they may if all be mine,
Not hers who brings it nightly to my ear.
To depreciate war as a subject for the heroic Muse was ungrateful in Milton, who had devoted the whole of his Sixth Book to a description of the "wild work in Heaven" caused by the great rebellion, and had indulged his imagination with some most extravagant fantasies; such as the digging in the soil of Heaven for sulphur and nitre (where the soil of Hell, it may be remarked, yielded gold to the miner), the invention of artillery, and the use of mountains as missiles,
Hurled to and fro with jaculation dire.
Hurled to and fro with jaculation dire.
He had, moreover, attained to the height of the sublime in that terrific closing scene where the Son, riding forth in single majesty, drives the rebel host over the crystal bounds of Heaven into the wasteful abyss. Wars, in short, hold a conspicuous place in the poem,--conflicts and broils so enormous that--
War seemed a civil gameTo this uproar.
War seemed a civil game
To this uproar.
Races and athletic sports are among the melancholy diversions of the dwellers in Hell during their forced leisure. Even tilts and tournaments are not absent fromParadise Lost, but they areintroduced by the second of the devices which enable Milton to extend the scope of his poem; the free and frequent use, namely, of illustrative and decorative comparisons. Thus the spacious hall of Pandemonium is compared to--
A covered field, where champions boldWont ride in armed, and at the Soldan's chairDefied the best of Panim chivalryTo mortal combat, or career with lance.
A covered field, where champions bold
Wont ride in armed, and at the Soldan's chair
Defied the best of Panim chivalry
To mortal combat, or career with lance.
It is plain that although almost all of the characters of the poem are precluded from making allusion to the events of human history, the poet himself is free; and he uses his freedom throughout. Most of the passages that have gained for Milton the name of a learned poet are introduced by way of simile. At times he employs the simplest epic figure, drawn from the habits of rustic or animal life. But his favourite figure is the "long-tailed simile," or, as it is better called, the decorative comparison, used for its ennobling, rather than for its elucidating virtue. Here he parts company with Homer, and even with Virgil, who could draw on no such vast and various store of history, geography, and romance. From Herodotus to Olaus Magnus, and onward to the latest discoveries in geography and astronomy, the researches of Galileo, and the descriptions given by contemporary travellers of China and the Chinese, or of theNorth American Indians, Milton compels the authors he had read, both ancient and modern, to contribute to the gracing of his work. It is partly this wealth of implicit lore, still more, perhaps, the subtly reminiscent character of much of his diction, that justifies Mr. Pattison in the remark that "an appreciation of Milton is the last reward of consummated scholarship."
A third device, not the least remarkable of those by which he gives elasticity to his theme, is to be found in the tradition that he adopts with regard to the later history of the fallen angels. A misunderstanding of four verses in the fourteenth chapter of Isaiah, and some cryptic allusions in the Book of Revelations are the chief Scriptural authorities for the Miltonic account of the Fall of the Angels, which is not borrowed from the Fathers, but corresponds rather with the later version popularised in England by the cycles of Miracle Plays. According to theDivine Institutesof Lactantius, the nameless Angel, to whom from the first had been given power over the new-created Earth, was alone infected with envy of the Son of God, his elder and superior, and set himself to vitiate and destroy mankind in the cradle. He tempted Eve, and she fell; after the expulsion from Paradise he set himself also to corrupt the guardian angels who were sent down from Heaven for the protection and education of the increasingrace of men. In this attempt also he succeeded; "the sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were fair, and they took them wives of all which they chose." And they forgot their heavenly estate, and made for themselves a Godless dominion upon Earth. This is the Fall of the Angels as it is narrated at greater length in the recently recovered apocryphalBook of Enoch, and alluded to, perhaps in the Epistles of Peter and of Jude, where are mentioned "the angels that sinned," and "the angels which kept not their first estate." Milton's version brings these angels to the earth, not as protectors of mankind, but as conquerors come from Hell, to possess and occupy the spacious world delivered over to them by the victory of Satan. From that point forward, however, he adopts the tradition whereby Jerome, Lactantius, and others had identified the fallen angels with the gods of the heathen. Whether as conquerors or as corrupted guardians of the human race, they seek the same ends,--to divert worship from the true God, and by the destruction of man, to contrive a solace for their own perdition. They are the inventors of astrology, sooth-saying, divination, necromancy, and black magic; they were once the ministers of God, and still have a presentiment of his acts, so that they can sometimes speak truly of the future by means of oracles and magicians, claiming the while the credit of bringingthat to pass which in fact they only foresaw. Milton, in adopting this doctrine, merely followed current belief, and did not, as De Quincey seems to think, hit upon it by a fortunate stroke of genius. He might have found it incidentally but fully set forth in so recent a book as Hooker'sEcclesiastical Polity, I. iv. "The fall of the angels, therefore," says Hooker, "was pride. Since their fall, their practices have been the clean contrary unto those just mentioned. For, being dispersed, some in the air, some in the earth, some in the water, some among the minerals, dens, and caves that are under the earth; they have by all means laboured to effect a universal rebellion against the laws, and as far as in them lieth utter destruction of the works of God. These wicked spirits the heathen honoured instead of Gods, both generally under the name ofdii inferi, 'gods infernal,' and particularly, some in oracles, some in idols, some as household gods, some as nymphs; in a word, no foul or wicked spirit which was not one way or other honoured of men as god, till such time as light appeared in the world, and dissolved the works of the Devil." The argument which Milton himself sets forth for the support of this view was accepted as conclusive in his own age. The Ionian gods, he says, Titan, and Saturn, and Jove, and the rest, the youngest branch of that evil and influential family, were--
HeldGods, yet confessed later than Heaven and EarthTheir boasted parents.
Held
Gods, yet confessed later than Heaven and Earth
Their boasted parents.
They ruled the middle air and had access to no higher or purer heaven. Howsoever Milton came by the doctrine, it was of enormous use to him; it gave him names for his devils, and characters, and a detailed history of the part they had played in human affairs; it was, in short, a key to all the mythologies.
By these devices the author ofParadise Lostescapes the impoverishment of imagination that his subject seemed to impose upon him. On looking once more over Andreini's list of prohibited topics, we are surprised to find how many of them Milton has found a place for. He does introduce points of history, sacred and profane; he relates fictions of fabulous deities; he rehearses loves, furies, triumphs, conflagrations, and things of a like nature. The principal conflagration that he describes is on a very large scale; and the majestic ascent of the Son--
Up to the Heaven of Heavens, his high abode,* * * * *Followed with acclamation, and the soundSymphonious often thousand harps, that tunedAngelic harmonies,
Up to the Heaven of Heavens, his high abode,
* * * * *
Followed with acclamation, and the sound
Symphonious often thousand harps, that tuned
Angelic harmonies,
is the grandest triumphal procession in all literature. On the other hand, he manages to dispense withsome of the institutions and implements "introduced by the necessities of sin." He has swords and spears, trumpets and drums in plenty. But he has no knives, nor hatchets, nor bellows; and no theatres nor exchequers. There are no urns nor funeral piles, because there is no death; or rather, because the only Death that there is increases the number of persons in the poem by one. Sports of hunting and fishing there are, of course, none; and, although it is an heroic poem, the horse takes little part in the celestial war, is hardly known in hell, and is unheard of on earth until Adam beholds in vision the armed concourse of his corrupt descendants. Nevertheless, the general impression left by the poem is one of richness rather than poverty of poetic ornament. The wealth is most profusely displayed in the books treating of Satan and his followers, but it is not absent from Eden nor from the empyreal Heaven, although in the one case the monotony of the situation, and in the other the poet's evident anxiety to authorise his every step from Scripture, prevent the full display of his power. But Milton is a difficult poet to disable; he is often seen at his best on the tritest theme, which he handles after his own grave fashion by comprehensive statement, measured and appropriate, heightened by none save the most obvious metaphors, and depending for almost all its charm on the quietcolouring of the inevitable epithet, and the solemn music of the cadence:--
Now came still Evening on, and Twilight grayHad in her sober livery all things clad;Silence accompanied; for beast and birdThey to their grassy couch, these to their nests,Were slunk, all but the wakeful nightingale.She all night long her amorous descant sung:Silence was pleased. Now glowed the firmamentWith living sapphires; Hesperus, that ledThe starry host, rode brightest, till the Moon,Rising in clouded majesty, at lengthApparent queen, unveiled her peerless light,And o'er the dark her silver mantle threw.
Now came still Evening on, and Twilight gray
Had in her sober livery all things clad;
Silence accompanied; for beast and bird
They to their grassy couch, these to their nests,
Were slunk, all but the wakeful nightingale.
She all night long her amorous descant sung:
Silence was pleased. Now glowed the firmament
With living sapphires; Hesperus, that led
The starry host, rode brightest, till the Moon,
Rising in clouded majesty, at length
Apparent queen, unveiled her peerless light,
And o'er the dark her silver mantle threw.
Darkness, silence, rest, the nightingale's song, the stars, the rising of the moon--these are all the material of this wonderful passage. Yet did ever such beauty fall with night upon such peace, save in Paradise alone?
Once he had got his story, based on his few authorities, with hints unconsciously taken and touches added, perhaps, from his reading of other poets--of Cædmon, Andreini, and Vondel, of Spenser, Sylvester, Crashaw, and the Fletchers--Milton's first task was to reduce it to the strict relations of time and space. His blindness probably helped him by relieving him from the hourly solicitations of the visible world, and giving him a dark and vacant space in which to rear his geometric fabric. Against this background thefigures of his characters are outlined in shapes of light, and in this vacancy he mapped out his local Heaven and Hell.
Heaven, as Milton portrays it, is a plain of vast extent, diversified with hills, valleys, woods and streams. In the Second Book he speaks of it as--
Extended wideIn circuit, undetermined square or round;
Extended wide
In circuit, undetermined square or round;
in the Tenth Book it is determined, and is square. It is bounded by battlements of living sapphire, and towers of opal. In the midst is situated a Mount, the dwelling place of the Most High, surrounded by golden lamps, which diffuse night and day alternately--for without twilight and dawn, his dearest memories, Heaven would have been no Heaven to Milton. On a mountain far to the north of this great plain, Satan erects his pyramids and towers of diamond and gold, and establishes his empire, which lasts exactly three days. At his final overthrow the crystal wall of Heaven rolls back, disclosing a gap into the abyss; the rebels, tortured with plagues and thunder, fling themselves in desperation over the verge. They fall for nine days, through Chaos. Chaos is the realm of a king of the same name, who reigns over it with his consort Night. It is of immeasurable extent, quite dark, and turbulent with the raw material of the Cosmos. Just as Milton, for thepurposes of his poem, followed the older astronomy, and gave to it a new lease of life in the popular imagination, so also he abides by the older physics. The orderly created World, or Cosmos, is conceived as compounded of four elements, Earth, Air, Fire, and Water. None of these four is to be found in Chaos, for each of them is composed of the simpler atoms of Hot, Cold, Moist, and Dry, symmetrically arranged in pairs. Thus Air is Hot and Moist, Fire is Hot and Dry, Water is Cold and Moist, Earth is Cold and Dry. Before they are separated and blended by Divine command, the four rudimentary constituents of creation are crowded in repulsive contiguity; they bubble and welter, fight and jostle in the dark, with hideous noises. In its upper strata Chaos is calmer, and is faintly lighted by the effulgence from the partially transparent walls of Heaven.
Below is Hell, newly prepared for the rebels. Like Heaven it is a vast plain; a bituminous lake, played over by livid flames, is one of its principal features; and hard by stands a volcanic mountain, at the foot of which the devils build their palace, and hold their assembly. The nine-fold gates of Hell, far distant, are guarded by Sin and Death, the paramour and the son of Satan. No one has plausibly explained how they came by their office. It was intended to be a perfect sinecure; there was no one to be let in and no one to be let out. Thesingle occasion that presented itself for a neglect of their duty was by them eagerly seized.
During the nine days while the rebels lay on the burning lake, drowsed by its fumes, the World was created. It consists, according to the astronomy followed by Milton, of ten concentric spheres fitted, like Chinese boxes, one within another, and the Earth in the centre. Nine of these are transparent, the spheres, that is to say, of the seven planets (the Sun and the Moon being reckoned as planets), the sphere of the fixed stars, and the crystalline sphere. The outermost sphere, orprimum mobile, is opaque and impervious. The whole orbicular World hangs by a golden chain from that part of the battlements of Heaven whence the angels fell. It is connected with Heaven by richly jewelled stairs, to be let down or taken up at pleasure, and can be entered only through an orifice or passage at the top. Between the foot of the stairs and the entrance to the World is a sea or lake of jasper and liquid pearl.
All the interest and meaning of the World is centred in one favoured spot of Earth. Eden is a district of Mesopotamia, and the happy garden, called Paradise, is situated in the east of Eden. It is a raised table-land, surrounded on all sides by a high ridge of hill, thickly wooded, and impenetrable. Its single gate, hewn out of a rock of alabaster, faces eastward, and is accessible onlyby a pass leading up from the plain and overhung by craggy cliffs. Through Eden runs a river which passes by a tunnel under Paradise, and, rising through the porous earth, waters the garden with springs. It was by this underground passage that Satan entered the garden a second time, when, having been discovered by Ithuriel, and expelled by Gabriel, he had circled the Earth seven times, keeping on the shady side to avoid the gaze of Uriel, and at the end of the week had resolved on another attempt.
The Fall of Man wrought some few changes in the physical configuration of the Universe. Sin and Death built the mighty causeway that connects the orifice of the World with Hell-gates. Provision had to be made under the new dispensation for the peopling of the whole surface of the Earth; so the axis was turned askew, and the beginning ordained of extremes of cold and heat, of storms and droughts, and noxious planetary influences. Night and day were known to man in his sinless state, but the seasons date from his transgression.
The time-scheme of the poem is less carefully defined; indeed, it is not certain that Milton intended accurately to define it. The recurrence of the numbers three and nine, numbers traditionally honoured by poetry, throws suspicion on the efforts of the exact commentators. Even in his statements with regard to spatial relations the poetwas not always minutely consistent with himself. The distance from the plain of Heaven to the plain of Hell is said in the First Book to be three times the radius of the World, or, in his own words, the prison of Hell is
As far removed from God and light of HeavenAs from the centre thrice to the utmost pole.
As far removed from God and light of Heaven
As from the centre thrice to the utmost pole.
The great globe, therefore, that hangs from the floor of Heaven reaches two-thirds of the way down to Hell. Yet in the Second Book Satan, after a long and perilous journey from Hell, comes in view of
This pendent World, in bigness as a starOf smallest magnitude close by the moon.
This pendent World, in bigness as a star
Of smallest magnitude close by the moon.
So small is the World, compared with the wide extent of the empyreal Heaven. But it is not easy to conceive how, in the limited space between Heaven and Hell, the World could so appear to Satan.
A like curious consideration of the passages where time is mentioned reveals a gap in the tale of days enumerated by Milton. We are not told how long it took Satan to reach the Earth. Driven back on precedents and analogies we find them conflicting. The outcast angels took nine days to fall the same distance. But falling, as Moloch points out in his speech at the Infernal Council, was to them less natural than rising; and Raphael,who was subsequently sent to guard the gates of Hell during the Creation, made the ascent easily in part of a day. If we allow a day and a night for Satan's exploratory voyage, the action of the poem, from the heavenly decree which occasioned the rebellion, to the expulsion of Adam and Eve from Paradise, has been found to occupy thirty-three days, some measured by a heavenly, some by an earthly standard. This would make Adam and Eve about ten days old when they fell. But St. Augustine says that they spent six years in the Earthly Paradise, and the question is better left open.
A graver inconsistency is brought to light by a close study of the framework of the poem. Milton seems to have hesitated as to which of two theories he would adopt concerning the Creation of Man. After their fall both Satan and Beelzebub mention a rumour which had long been current in Heaven of a new race, called Man, shortly to be created. That rumour could hardly have reached the rebels during the progress of the war. Yet in the Seventh Book the Creation appears as a compliment paid to Satan, a counter-move devised after the suppression of the great rebellion. The Omnipotent thus declares his intention:--
But, lest his heart exalt him in the harmAlready done, to have dispeopled Heaven--My damage fondly deemed,--I can repairThat detriment, if such it be to loseSelf-lost, and in a moment will createAnother world; out of one man a raceOf men innumerable.
But, lest his heart exalt him in the harm
Already done, to have dispeopled Heaven--
My damage fondly deemed,--I can repair
That detriment, if such it be to lose
Self-lost, and in a moment will create
Another world; out of one man a race
Of men innumerable.
This last is the account we must accept. Milton no doubt was attracted by the dramatic superiority of this version, which makes the Creation of Man a minor incident in the great war, so that the human race comes, a mere token and pawn--
Between the pass and fell incensed pointsOf mighty opposites.
Between the pass and fell incensed points
Of mighty opposites.
But he was probably also aware that this view had not the highest warrant of orthodoxy.
There is something absurd, perhaps even something repulsive, to the modern mind in this careful, matter-of-fact anatomy of Milton's poem. But it is a useful and necessary exercise, for all his greatest effects are achieved in the realm of the physical and moral sublime, where the moral relations are conditioned chiefly by the physical. There is no metaphysic, nothing spiritual, nothing mysterious, except in name, throughout the whole poem. The so-called spiritual beings are as definitely embodied as man. The rules that Milton followed in dealing with his heavenly essences are very fully laid down in theTreatise of Christian Doctrine. He consigned the Fathersto limbo, and built up his entire system from the words of Scripture. Now the Scriptures, in a hundred passages, attribute human passions and actions to Divine beings. We have no choice, said Milton, but to accept these expressions as the truest to which we can attain. "If after the work of six days it be said of God that 'He rested and was refreshed,'Exodus, xxxi. 17; if it be said that 'He feared the wrath of the enemy,'Deuteronomy, xxxii. 27; let us believe that it is not beneath the dignity of God ... to be refreshed in that which refresheth Him, or to fear in that He feareth." Milton had here the sharp logical dilemma that he loved. Either these expressions are literally true, or they are not. If they are, well and good; if they are not, how can we hope to frame for ourselves better and truer notions of the Deity than those which he has dictated to us as within the reach of our understanding, and fit and proper for us to entertain? So also with angelic beings: Milton dismisses the nine orders of the apocryphal hierarchy--although he enumerates five of them, in the wrong order, in the roll of that recurring verse--
Thrones, Dominations, Princedoms, Virtues, Powers--
Thrones, Dominations, Princedoms, Virtues, Powers--
and bases himself upon Scripture. There he finds mention of seven chief angels, with some kind of pre-eminence enjoyed by Michael. In the poemhe finds employment for only four, Michael, Gabriel, Raphael, and Uriel, with a few Seraphim and Cherubim, to whom he invariably, and very improperly, assigns a subordinate position.
His angels fight and play games, as they were doing at the gate of Paradise on the evening when Satan first appeared there. They wear solid armour, and so fall a ready prey to the artillery of their foes--
Unarmed they mightHave easily, as spirits, evaded swiftBy quick contraction or remove; but nowFoul dissipation followed, and forced rout.
Unarmed they might
Have easily, as spirits, evaded swift
By quick contraction or remove; but now
Foul dissipation followed, and forced rout.
They eat and drink and digest; they even--and here, though we be armed with triple brass, we cannot avoid a sense of shock--they even blush when an indiscreet question is asked of them. When Raphael colours at the inquisitive demands of Adam, it gives a melancholy force to his earlier suggestion--
What if EarthBe but the shadow of Heaven, and things thereinEach to other like more than on Earth is thought?
What if Earth
Be but the shadow of Heaven, and things therein
Each to other like more than on Earth is thought?
This is the scheme of things, and these are the actors, that Milton sets in motion. We shall do well to accept the limitations he assigns, and to look in his poem only for what is to be found there. It would be a wearisome and fruitless quest to journey through theParadise Lostin search ofthose profound touches of humanity, and those sudden felicities of insight, which abound in the Elizabethans. Subtleties of thought, fine observation of truths that almost evade the attempt to express them, sentences and figures illuminative of the mysteries of human destiny and the intricacies of human character--of all these there is none. If an author's works are to be used as a treasury or garner of wise and striking sayings, the harvest of sensibility and experience,Paradise Lostwill yield only a poor handful of gleanings. One such reflection, enforced by a happy figure, occurs in the Third Book, where Satan, disguised as a youthful Cherub, deceives the Archangel Uriel--
So spake the false dissembler unperceived;For neither man nor angel can discernHypocrisy--the only evil that walksInvisible, except to God alone,By His permissive will, through Heaven and Earth;And oft, though Wisdom wake, Suspicion sleepsAt Wisdom's gate, and to SimplicityResigns her charge, while Goodness thinks no illWhere no ill seems.
So spake the false dissembler unperceived;
For neither man nor angel can discern
Hypocrisy--the only evil that walks
Invisible, except to God alone,
By His permissive will, through Heaven and Earth;
And oft, though Wisdom wake, Suspicion sleeps
At Wisdom's gate, and to Simplicity
Resigns her charge, while Goodness thinks no ill
Where no ill seems.
Milton plainly had known hypocrisy, and had been deceived by it. But it would be difficult to match this reflection with any single other passage in the whole poem. To say that such reflections are common in Shakespeare would be too moderate a statement; they are the very air he breathes.And even in the lesser dramatists the happy embodiment of observation in a telling figure is to be found on every page. An acute criticism, for instance, is condensed in a dramatic form by Ford, where he describes what may be called low politeness--
Smooth formalityIs usher to the rankness of the blood,But impudence bears up the train.
Smooth formality
Is usher to the rankness of the blood,
But impudence bears up the train.
The peculiar combination of formality and impudence that marks ill-breeding was never more happily described than in this figure; the mock solemnity of the usher comes first, and is soon followed by the grimacing antics of the page, while each in his own way implies that the advances of courtesy are a pomp and a deceit. Metaphors of the same kind abound in the work of more modern analytic poets. Here is another parable of a door-keeper, more poetic than Milton's:--
They say that Pity in Love's service dwells,A porter at the rosy temple's gate.I missed him going; but it is my fateTo come upon him now beside his wells;Whereby I know that I Love's temple leave,And that the purple doors have closed behind.
They say that Pity in Love's service dwells,
A porter at the rosy temple's gate.
I missed him going; but it is my fate
To come upon him now beside his wells;
Whereby I know that I Love's temple leave,
And that the purple doors have closed behind.
In Milton's poetry we find ourselves in a remote atmosphere; far indeed from the shrewd observation of daily life, farther even from that wonderful analysis of emotion which is the pastimeof Shakespeare and of Meredith. Beautiful figured writing and keen psychological observation of this kind are beside the purpose of Milton, and beyond his power.
For the time we must forego the attempt to see into the life of things, and must accept in imagination our position as citizens in this strange majestic commonwealth of angels and men. It is no mean city. Noble shapes pass before our eyes. High language is held, and great wars are waged. Events of tremendous import roll on to their destined accomplishment. Golden processions move across the dim expanse of Chaos. Worlds are blown and broken like bubbles. There is concerted song, feasting, and gratulation; dire plots are hatched and blaze forth into light; will clashes with will; Heaven opens, and a torrent of flaming ruin is poured forth into the deep. The Victor, ensconced in his omnipotence, is fiercely triumphant; and in the dark below there is the dull gleam of unconquered pride, deadly courage, and immortal despair. But in the midst of all this vast rivalry of interests and jar of opposed systems, a cry is heard, like that muffled cry which caught Macbeth's ear as he nerved himself for his last fight. It is the cry of the human soul, left homeless and derelict in a universe where she is the only alien. For her the amaranth of the empyreal Heaven is as comfortless as the adamant of Hell.She has lost her Paradise even while Adam's was building--the Paradise where the flowers fade, and loves and hates are mortal.
In the poem itself signs are not wanting that Milton felt the terrible strain imposed upon him by the intense and prolonged abstraction of his theme--its unreality and superhuman elevation. Some of the comparisons that he chooses to illustrate scenes in Hell are taken from the incidents of simple rustic life, and by their contrast with the lurid creatures of his imagination come like a draught of cold water to a traveller in a tropical waste of sand and thorns. It is almost as if the poet himself were oppressed by the suffocation of the atmosphere that he has created, and, gasping for breath, sought relief by summoning up to remembrance the sweet security of pastoral life. So, when the devils are shrunk to enter Pandemonium, they are compared to
Faery elvesWhose midnight revels, by a forest-sideOr fountain, some belated peasant sees,Or dreams he sees, while overhead the MoonSits arbitress, and nearer to the EarthWheels her pale course.
Faery elves
Whose midnight revels, by a forest-side
Or fountain, some belated peasant sees,
Or dreams he sees, while overhead the Moon
Sits arbitress, and nearer to the Earth
Wheels her pale course.
The rejoicings, again, at the end of the infernal consultation, are described in a figure that makes a like impression, and brings the same momentary relief--
As, when from mountain-tops the dusky cloudsAscending, while the North-wind sleeps, o'erspreadHeaven's cheerful face, the louring elementScowls o'er the darkened landskip snow or shower,If chance the radiant sun, with farewell sweet,Extend his evening beam, the fields revive,The birds their notes renew, and bleating herdsAttest their joy, that hill and valley rings.
As, when from mountain-tops the dusky clouds
Ascending, while the North-wind sleeps, o'erspread
Heaven's cheerful face, the louring element
Scowls o'er the darkened landskip snow or shower,
If chance the radiant sun, with farewell sweet,
Extend his evening beam, the fields revive,
The birds their notes renew, and bleating herds
Attest their joy, that hill and valley rings.
The splendid artifice of contrast, noted by De Quincey as one of the subtlest of Milton's devices, is illustrated, perhaps, by both these passages. De Quincey instances neither, but chooses, as examples of the way in which two images may act and react, heightening each other by contrast--first, the use of architectural terms in describing Paradise; next, the exhibition of a banquet in the desert inParadise Regained--"stimulating the sense of its utter solitude and remotion from men and cities"; and, last and best, the comparison of Satan, in the same poem, to an old man gathering sticks upon a winter's day. "The household image of old age, of human infirmity, and of domestic hearths, are all meant as a machinery for provoking and soliciting the fearful idea to which they are placed in collision, and as so many repelling poles."
This is clever criticism and true philosophy. But the chief effect from the more elaborate figures of this kind is to be found merely in the reprieve and refreshment that they bring. Thereis a sense of pathos, almost of tears, in being allowed, for one moment only, to taste reality again, to revisit familiar scenes, before we are once more bound on the slow wheel of unnatural events that is urged forward by the poet. Nothing in Eden comes home to the feelings more directly than the simile used to describe Satan as he watches Eve on the morning of the temptation--
As one who, long in populous city pent,Where houses thick and sewers annoy the air,Forth issuing on a summer's morn, to breatheAmong the pleasant villages and farmsAdjoined, from each thing met conceives delight--The smell of grain, or tedded grass, or kine,Or dairy, each rural sight, each rural sound--If chance with nymph-like step fair virgin pass,What pleasing seemed for her now pleases more,She most, and in her look sums all delight:Such pleasure took the Serpent to beholdThis flowery plot, the sweet recess of Eve.
As one who, long in populous city pent,
Where houses thick and sewers annoy the air,
Forth issuing on a summer's morn, to breathe
Among the pleasant villages and farms
Adjoined, from each thing met conceives delight--
The smell of grain, or tedded grass, or kine,
Or dairy, each rural sight, each rural sound--
If chance with nymph-like step fair virgin pass,
What pleasing seemed for her now pleases more,
She most, and in her look sums all delight:
Such pleasure took the Serpent to behold
This flowery plot, the sweet recess of Eve.
The Serpent is glad to escape from Hell, to breathe the morning air of Eden. But how glad we are to escape from Eden
To breatheAmong the pleasant villages and farms!
To breathe
Among the pleasant villages and farms!
There are no villages and farms in Eden, no smell of hay, no sheaves of corn, no cottages, no roads, and no trace of that most human of symbols, the thin blue scarf of smoke rising froma wayside encampment. Even when we are privileged to assist at the first festal celebration of hospitality on Earth, the dinner given to the Angel, for which Eve gathers
Fruit of all kinds, in coatRough or smooth rined, or bearded husk, or shell,
Fruit of all kinds, in coat
Rough or smooth rined, or bearded husk, or shell,
and heaps them, with bountiful hand, on the table of raised turf, we are not perfectly at ease with our hosts. Not all the dignity of Adam, nor all the beauty of Eve, can make us forget that they are nut-eaters, that they have not the art of cooking, and do not ferment the juice of the grape. A short stay in Eden teaches us the sad truth that we are dependent, not only for the pleasures of our life, but even for many of the dearest pleasures of our imagination, on the devices "introduced by the necessities of sin." We cannot settle down in the midst of this "enormous bliss"; we wander through the place, open-mouthed with wonder, like country visitors admiring the Crown jewels, and then--we long to be at home.
There are no children in any of Milton's poems. The introduction, inParadise Lost, of a real human child, such as Shakespeare brings intoCoriolanusorMacbeth, would be like the bringing of a spark of fire into a powder magazine. None of these edifying speeches could be made in thepresence of such an auditor, or such a critic. The whole system would be blown into fragments; the artificial perspective that Milton preserves with so great care would lose its glamour at a touch. Hell and Heaven and Eden would dissolve away like the baseless fabric of a vision, a scholar's nightmare, if once they were subjected to the free scrutiny of a child.
Paradise Lostwill not bear--it could at no time, not even in the most theological of ages, have borne--the more searching tests of realism, of verisimilitude, and credibility. It is all the greater skill in the poet that by his careful handling of our imagination and feelings he actually does produce "that willing suspension of disbelief for the moment which constitutes poetic faith." The less it will endure the trial as a system or theory of the universe, the more wonderful does it appear as a work of art. By the most delicate skill of architecture this gigantic filamented structure has been raised into the air. It looks like some enchanted palace that has lighted on the ground for a moment, resting in its flight. It is really the product of the most elaborate and careful engineering science; the strains and stresses put on every part of the material have been calculated and allowed for. The poise and balance are so minutely exact that it just stands, and no more. But that it should stand at all is themarvel, seeing that it is spanned on frail arches over the abyss of the impossible, the unnatural, and the grotesque. Let it be granted that, in its main features, the system ofParadise Lostdoes correspond with what was and is the religious creed of not a few people. There is many a religious creed, strongly held, which is convincing enough until the imagination begins to work it out in detail, to try to realise it, in a clear light, as a connected whole. Then either the imagination or the creed must give way. The remarkable thing about Milton's achievement is thatParadise Lostis both a creed and a cosmical scheme of imagination, and that, except here and there, it is impossible to point to parts of the poem and say, "Here he ceased to believe," or "Here he gave up the effort to imagine." He both imagined and believed throughout; he projected himself, like a sleep-walker, into the mammoth caves of his antediluvian dreams, and lived among his own radiant and shadowy creations. We need not, therefore, be surprised to find that, in the first place, his daughters ran wild, and neither liked nor understood their father; and that, in the second place, for the rendering of his thought he invented a system of preternaturally majestic diction, perfectly fitted for the utterance of his own conceptions, but, when divorced from those conceptions, so monstrously artificial ineffect, that his imitators and followers, hoisting themselves on the Miltonic stilts, brought the very name of "poetic diction" into a contempt that has lasted for more than a century, and is not yet wholly extinct.
The difficulties which Milton felt and conquered in the making of his epic masterpiece had their origin, for the most part, in the intractable and barren nature of his chosen theme. The dangers that beset him, and sometimes tripped his feet, arose, on the other hand, from his own declared intention in the handling of that theme:--
That, to the highth of this great argument,I may assert Eternal ProvidenceAnd justify the ways of God to men.
That, to the highth of this great argument,
I may assert Eternal Providence
And justify the ways of God to men.
The pursuit of this argumentative end led him through strange passes. A less courageous or a more sensitive man might well have hesitated at the entrance. But Milton hesitated at nothing. The ultimate mysteries of human existence and Divine government were no mysteries to him.
The living Throne, the sapphire blaze,Where angels tremble, while they gaze,He saw;
The living Throne, the sapphire blaze,
Where angels tremble, while they gaze,
He saw;
--and he did not tremble. His persons are visible, their characters are known, the nature of their relations is easily ascertained and expounded. Everything, in short, is as plain as a pikestaff. So he came to picture scenes which criticism is reluctant to traverse, and to make statements which it is equally irreverent either to affirm or to deny.
Dr. Johnson, with a fearful and sincere piety, refused to follow Milton into Heaven. "Of the agents in the poem," he says, "the chief are such as it is irreverence to name on slight occasions." And again:--"The characters in theParadise Lostwhich admit of examination are those of angels and of man." It is impossible not to respect Johnson's attitude, but later critics have found it difficult to follow his example, and Milton himself would have been the last to claim sanctuary in Heaven for the imaginations on which the whole fabric of the poem depends.
Coleridge is one of the very few critics who have praised the conduct of the celestial part of the story:--"Wherever God is represented as acting directly as Creator, without any exhibition of his own essence, Milton adopts the simplest and sternest language of the Scriptures.... But, as some personal interest was demanded for the purposes of poetry, Milton takes advantage of the dramatic representation of God's address to theSon, the Filial Alterity, and inthose addressesslips in, as it were by stealth, language of affection, or thought, or sentiment.... He was very wise in adopting the strong anthropomorphism of the Hebrew Scriptures at once." Yet this is hardly an answer to the chief objections that have been urged against Milton's conduct of the poem. These are grounded, not on his adoption of the strong anthropomorphism of the Hebrew Scriptures, but on the nature of the matter that he slips in, "as if by stealth," and the character that he attributes to his Divine persons. Had he been a pagan, pure and simple, he might have been frankly and explicitly materialistic in his conceptions. Had he been touched by the spirit of the greatest of Christian poets, he might have shrouded the Godhead in a mystery of silence and light. But he had something to prove to the men of his own time, and neither course served him.
Milton's theodicy is of his own devising, and is neither Catholic nor Calvinist. His heresies may be reduced to a single point; the ultimate basis on which he rests the universe is political, not religious. The fierce simplicity of his processes of thought here led him straight into a trap. Law to him is an expression of Will, enforced by due penalties. As promulgated by human authority, laws are to be obeyed only if they do not clash with the dictates of a higher Power.The laws of God are subject to no such restraint. They are; and, save by faith, there is no further word to be said. But Milton had set himself to justify these laws by reason. Destitute as he was of speculative power, he attempted no transcendental amalgam of diverse conceptions, of Love and Law, of Mercy and Justice. He fell back on Law as the naked assertion of Will, and helped out the ancient argument of the pot and the potter with a utilitarian appeal, which he puts into the mouth of a Seraph, to the happy working of the Divine laws in practice.
So it comes about that the main argument of the poem is founded on an outrage done to religion. In the place and under the name of Him "with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning," Milton set up in Heaven a whimsical Tyrant, all of whose laws are arbitrary and occasional, and who exacts from his creatures an obedience that differs from brute submission in one point only, that by the gift of free-will it is put within their power to disobey. His commands, like his laws, are issued from time to time. Sometimes they enjoin the impossible on his subjects; as when Michael and Gabriel, at the head of the heavenly host, are ordered to drive Satan and his crew out of Heaven into the abyss--a task they prove wholly unable to accomplish. Sometimes orders are given merely as an assertion ofpower, and to test submission; as when Raphael is sent to keep the rebels confined in Hell, and explains subsequently to Adam:--