In either hand the hastening Angel caughtOur lingering parents--
In either hand the hastening Angel caught
Our lingering parents--
were perhaps suggested by the Scripture narrative--"And while he lingered, the men laid hold upon his hand, and upon the hand of his wife,... and they brought him forth, and set him without the city" (Genesis xix. 16).
The gravity and density of the style ofParadise Lostwould have been beyond the power of youth, even of the youth of Milton; but the action of the poem, with all its vividness and vigour, could perhaps hardly have been first conceived in mature age. The composition was long deferred, so that in the decade which witnessed the production of all three great poems we see a strangely rapid development, or change rather, of manner. InParadise LostMilton at last deliveredhimself of the work that had been brooding over him "with mighty wings outspread" during all the years of his manhood. But his imagination could not easily emancipate itself from that overmastering presence; and when he took up with a fresh task he gladly chose a theme closely related to the theme ofParadise Lost, and an opportunity of re-introducing some of the ancient figures. A kind-hearted, simple-minded, pig-headed young Quaker, called Thomas Ellwood, takes to himself credit for having suggested a sequel to the story of the Fall. "Thou hast said much here," he remarked to Milton, "ofParadise Lost; but what hast thou to say ofParadise Found?" The words, as it seemed to Ellwood, sank deep, and did their work. "He made me no answer, but sate some time in a muse, then brake off that discourse and fell upon another subject." Perhaps while he sat in a muse Milton was attempting to sound, with the plummet of conjecture, the abyss of human folly, "dark, wasteful, wild." So early as in the fourth line ofParadise Lost, and already very fully in the Third Book, he had treated ofParadise Foundas an integral part of his subject. The episode of the Eleventh and Twelfth Books was wholly concerned with it. It seems not unlikely, however, that he caught at the suggestion as an excuse for a new and independent work. One of the commonest kinds of critical stupidityis the kind that discovers something "unfinished" in a great work of art, and suggests desirable trimmings and additions. Milton knew thatParadise Lostwas finished, in every sense. But room had not been found in it for all that now held the chief place in his matured thought. When he chose the theme of his great work, the actual temptation of man probably bulked much larger in his design than it does in the completed poem. His epic creatures, from being the machinery of the poem, usurped a share of the control. With all Milton's care and skill, there is very little interest in the actual plucking of the apple; Eve was too simple a pleader to make much of the case for the defence. Yet human life presented itself to Milton chiefly under the guise of a series of temptations. The title of one of Andrew Marvell's pieces might well be used to describe the whole canon of his poetry, fromL' AllegrotoSamson Agonistes--all are parts ofA Dialogue between the Resolved Soul and Created Pleasure. To his youthful fancy Mirth and Melancholy present themselves in the likeness of rival goddesses, claiming allegiance, and offering gifts. The story of Samson is a story of temptation, yielded to through weakness, punished by ignominy, and, in the end, magnificently expiated. InComusis shown how the temptations of created pleasure may be resisted by the chastity of the"resolved soul." InParadise Lost, however, the resolved soul had somehow, failing Man, found for itself a congenial habitation in the Devil. The high and pure philosophy of the Lady and her brothers has no counterpart in the later and greater poem. Milton, therefore, willingly seized on the suggestion made by Ellwood; and inParadise Regainedexhibited at length, with every variety of form and argument, the spectacle of--
one man's firm obedience fully triedThrough all temptation, and the Tempter foiledIn all his wiles, defeated and repulsed
one man's firm obedience fully tried
Through all temptation, and the Tempter foiled
In all his wiles, defeated and repulsed
The subject ofComusis repeated; but in place of the dazzling allurement of the senses which is the temptation of the earlier poem, there is the temptation of the will, the appeal made in vain by Satan to those more strenuous and maturer passions of pride, ambition, love of wealth, and love of power. Instead of the innocent and instinctive purity of the Lady, which unmasks the fallacies of Comus, there is heard inParadise Regainedthe voice of a high Stoical philosophy, strong in self-sufficiency, rich in illustrations drawn from the experience of the ages, and attributed, by this singular poet, to the Christ.
If his only purpose had been to make a worthy epical counterpart toParadise Lost, those critics are doubtless right who think his chosen subjectnot altogether adequate to the occasion. The Fall of Man is best matched by the Redemption of Man--a subject which Milton, whether he knew it or not, was particularly ill-qualified to treat. It is sketched, hastily and prosaically, in the Twelfth Book ofParadise Lost; but there is no escaping from the conclusion that the central mystery of the Christian religion occupied very little space in Milton's scheme of religion and thought. Had he chosen this subject, the account given, in the apocryphal Gospel of Nicodemus, of the Descent into Hell might have furnished him with rich material for one part of his theme. The conquest of the upper world by Satan, narrated inParadise Lost, might have had for natural sequel the triumphant descent into Hell of the King of Glory, and the liberation of the captives. For Milton's grandiose epical vein the theme has great opportunities, as a brief summary of the Gospel of Nicodemus will show:--
Karinus and Leucius, sons of Simeon, being raised from the dead, write what occurred during their sojourn in the realm of Hades: "While we were lying, along with our fathers, in the depth of the pit and in the uttermost darkness, suddenly there appeared the golden hue of the sun, and a purple royal light shining in upon us. Then the father of all mankind and all the patriarchs and prophets rejoiced, saying: 'Thatlight is the author of everlasting light, who hath promised to translate us to everlasting light.' And Isaiah cried out, and said: 'This is the Light of the Father, the Son of God, according to my prophecy that I prophesied when I was alive upon the earth, "The land of Zabulon, and the land of Nephthalim, beyond Jordan; the people which sat in darkness saw a great light, and to them which sat in the region and shadow of death light is sprung up." And now he has come, and has shone upon us who are sitting in death.'
Then Simeon spoke in a like strain of exultation. John the Baptist arrived, a herald of the King of Glory; and Seth, at the bidding of Adam, told how Michael the Archangel had refused him oil from the tree of mercy for the anointing of the body of Adam when he was sick, and had comforted him with the assurance that when the years should be fulfilled Adam would be raised up again, and led into Paradise.
And even while the saints were rejoicing there broke out dissension among the lords of Hell. Satan, boasting of his latest exploit, told Hades, the prince of Hell, how he had led Jesus of Nazareth captive to death. But Hades was ill satisfied and asked, 'Perchance this is the same Jesus who by the word of his command took away Lazarus after he had been four days in corruption, whom I kept as dead?' And Satan answered andsaid, 'It is the same.' And when Hades heard this he said to him, 'I adjure thee by thy powers and mine, bring him not to me. For when I heard the power of his word I trembled for fear, and all my officers were struck with amazement.' And while they were thus disputing, suddenly there was a voice as of thunder, and a shouting as of a multitude of spirits, saying, 'Lift up your gates, O ye princes, and be ye lifted up, ye everlasting gates, and the King of Glory shall come in.' Then Hades, hearing this, said to Satan, 'Depart from me, and get thee out of my realm; if thou art a powerful warrior, fight against the King of Glory.' And he cast him forth from his habitations.
And while David and Isaiah were speaking, recalling the words of their prophecy, there came to Hell, in the form of a man, the Lord of Majesty, and lighted up the eternal darkness, and burst asunder the indissoluble chains, and seizing Satan delivered him over to the power of Hades, but Adam he drew with him to his brightness.
Then Hades receiving Satan reviled him vehemently and said, 'O Prince of perdition, and author of extermination, derision of angels and scorn of the just, why didst thou do this thing? All thy riches which thou hast acquired by the tree of transgression and the loss of Paradise, thou hast now lost by the tree of the cross, and all thy joy has perished.'
But the Lord, holding Adam by the hand, delivered him to Michael the Archangel, and all the saints followed Michael the Archangel, and he led them into Paradise, filled with mercy and glory."
Milton would hardly have entertained for a moment the idea of a subject taken from one of the apocryphal gospels. And even if he had felt no scruples on this point, the theme of the Harrying of Hell would hardly have commended itself to him in his later years, least of all its triumphant close. His interest was now centred rather in the sayings of the wise than in the deeds of the mighty. The "crude apple that diverted Eve" was indeed a simple theme compared with the profound topics that are treated inSamson Agonistes. The dark tangle of human life; the inscrutable course of Divine providence; the punishment so unwittingly and lightly incurred, yet lying on a whole nation "heavy as frost, and deep almost as life"; the temptation presenting itself in the guise neither of pleasure, nor of ambition, but of despair; and, through all, the recurring assertion of unyielding trust and unflinching acquiescence in the will of God; the song of the Chorus--
Just are the ways of GodAnd justifiable to men--
Just are the ways of God
And justifiable to men--
finding an echo in Samson's declaration--
Nothing of all these evils hath befallen meBut justly; I myself have brought them on;Sole author I, sole cause;
Nothing of all these evils hath befallen me
But justly; I myself have brought them on;
Sole author I, sole cause;
--these together make up a theme where there is no possible place for the gay theology ofParadise Lost. The academic proof of God's justice, contained in the earlier poem, if it were introduced intoSamson Agonistescould be met only with the irony of Job: "Am I a sea, or a sea-monster, that thou settest a watch over me?... What is man, that thou shouldest magnify him, and that thou shouldest set thine heart upon him, and that thou shouldest visit him every morning, and try him every moment?" The question has become a real one; not to be answered now by the dogmatism and dialectic of a system. Milton's bewilderment and distress of mind are voiced in the cry of the Chorus:--
Yet toward these thus dignified thou oftAmidst their height of noonChangest thy countenance, and thy hand with no regardOf highest favours pastFrom thee or them, or them to thee of service.
Yet toward these thus dignified thou oft
Amidst their height of noon
Changest thy countenance, and thy hand with no regard
Of highest favours past
From thee or them, or them to thee of service.
And there follows their humble prayer, heard and answered with Divine irony on the very day of their asking:--
So deal not with this once thy glorious champion,The image of thy strength and mighty minister.What do I beg? How hast thou dealt already?Behold him in this state calamitous, and turnHis labours, for thou canst, to peaceful end.
So deal not with this once thy glorious champion,
The image of thy strength and mighty minister.
What do I beg? How hast thou dealt already?
Behold him in this state calamitous, and turn
His labours, for thou canst, to peaceful end.
In the days that now, as he looked back on his youth and manhood, must have seemed to him both distant and barren, Milton had sought for triumph, in action and in argument. His seeking was denied him; but he found peace, and the grace to accept it.
To approach the question of Milton's poetic style thus late in the course of this treatise is to fall into the absurdity of the famous art-critic, who, lecturing on the Venus of Milo, devoted the last and briefest of his lectures to the shape of that noble work of art. In truth, since Milton died, his name is become the mark, not of a biography nor of a theme, but of a style--the most distinguished in our poetry. But the task of literary criticism is, at the best, a task of such disheartening difficulty, that those who attempt it should be humoured if they play long with the fringes of the subject, and wait for courageous moments to attack essentials.
In one sense, of course, and that not the least important, the great works of Milton were the product of the history and literatures of the world. Cycles ferried his cradle. Generations guided him. All forces were steadily employed to complete him.
But when we attempt to separate the single strands of his complex genealogy, to identify and arrange the influences that made him, the essential somehow escapes us. The genealogical method in literary history is both interesting and valuable, but we are too apt, in our admiration for its lucid procedure, to forget that there is one thing which it will never explain, and that thing is poetry. Books beget books; but the mystery of conception still evades us. We display, as if in a museum, all the bits of thought and fragments of expression that Milton may have borrowed from Homer and Virgil, from Ariosto and Shakespeare. Here is a far-fetched conceit, and there is an elaborately jointed comparison. But these choice fragments and samples were to be had by any one for the taking; what it baffles us to explain is how they came to be of so much more use to Milton than ever they were to us. In any dictionary of quotations you may find great thoughts and happy expressions as plentiful and as cheap as sand, and, for the most part, quite as useless. These are dead thoughts: to catalogue, compare, and arrange them is within the power of any competent literary workman; but to raise them to blood-heat again, to breathe upon them and vitalise them is the sign that proclaims a poet. The ledger school of criticism, which deals only with borrowings and lendings, ingeniously traced and accurately recorded,looks foolish enough in the presence of this miracle. There is a sort of critics who, in effect, decry poetry, by fixing their attention solely on the possessions that poetry inherits. They are like Mammon--
the least erected Spirit that fellFrom Heaven; for even in Heaven his looks and thoughtsWere always downward bent, admiring moreThe riches of Heaven's pavement, trodden gold,Than aught divine or holy else enjoyedIn vision beatific.
the least erected Spirit that fell
From Heaven; for even in Heaven his looks and thoughts
Were always downward bent, admiring more
The riches of Heaven's pavement, trodden gold,
Than aught divine or holy else enjoyed
In vision beatific.
With curious finger and thumb they pick holes in the mosaic; and wherever there is wealth they are always ready to cry "Thief!"
There is real interest in the enumeration of Milton's borrowings, and in the citation of parallel passages from the ancients to illustrate his work. But since style is the expression of a living organism, not a problem of cunning tesselation, it is permissible, in this place, to pass over what he borrowed from the ancients, in order to deal with a more intimate matter, and to attempt a valuation of that which he borrowed from no one, either ancient or modern.
His indomitable personality and irrepressible originality have left their stamp on all his work, and have moulded his treatment, his handling, his diction, his style. We, who have been inured for centuries to Miltonic mouthings and mannerisms,are too likely to underestimate the degree of his originality. Coleridge was probably wrong when he said that "Shakespeare's poetry is characterless; that is, it does not reflect the individual Shakespeare." But he was unquestionably right when he added that "John Milton himself is in every line ofParadise Lost." The more they are studied, the more do Milton's life and his art seem to cohere, and to express the pride and the power of his character.
Consider first his choice of subject. Ever since the Renaissance had swept modern poetry back to the pagan world, some voices of protest had been raised, some swimmers, rather bold than strong, had attempted to stem the tide. Among the earliest of these was Thomas Sternhold, Groom of the Chamber to King Henry the Eighth. Inspired perhaps by the example of a better poet, Clement Marot, Sternhold thrust some of the Psalms of David into a carterly metre, "thinking thereby," says Anthony à Wood, in his delightfully colloquial fashion, "that the courtiers would sing them instead of their sonnets, but did not, only some few excepted." In the reign of Elizabeth, when the classical mythology reigned and revelled in pageant and masque, in court and town, one Thomas Brice, a painful preacher, cried out against the pagan fancies that had caught the English imagination captive:--
We are not Ethnickes, we forsoth at least professe not so;Why range we then to Ethnickes' trade? Come back, where will ye go?Tel me, is Christe or Cupide lord? Doth God or Venus reign?
We are not Ethnickes, we forsoth at least professe not so;
Why range we then to Ethnickes' trade? Come back, where will ye go?
Tel me, is Christe or Cupide lord? Doth God or Venus reign?
But he cried to deaf ears, and the Elizabethan age produced no body of sacred poetry worth a record. The beautiful metrical version of the Psalms, made by Sir Philip Sidney and his sister, remained in manuscript for centuries. Drayton'sHarmonie of the Churchwas suppressed. Robert Southwell, whose lyrics on sacred subjects give him a unique place among the poets of his age, joins in the oft-repeated complaint:--
Stil finest wits are 'stilling Venus' rose,In Paynim toyes the sweetest vaines are spent;To Christian workes few have their talents lent.
Stil finest wits are 'stilling Venus' rose,
In Paynim toyes the sweetest vaines are spent;
To Christian workes few have their talents lent.
It was left for George Herbert and his contemporaries to take up the attempt once more--this time with better success--"to reprove the vanity of those many love poems that are daily writ and consecrated to Venus, and to bewail that so few are writ that look towards God and heaven."
Cannot thy doveOutstrip their Cupid easily in flight?Or, since thy ways are deep, and still the same,Will not a verse run smooth that bears thy name?
Cannot thy dove
Outstrip their Cupid easily in flight?
Or, since thy ways are deep, and still the same,
Will not a verse run smooth that bears thy name?
But although Herbert and his successors, in theirdevotional lyrics, gave a whole new province to English poetry, they left the idolatrous government of the older provinces undisturbed. Dramatic and narrative poetry went on in the old way, and drew their inspiration from the old founts. Year by year, as our native poetic wealth increased, it became more and more difficult to break with the past, and to lead poetry back to Zion. Nature and precedent seemed allied against the innovation. The worst of religious poetry, as Johnson more than once pointed out, is its poverty of subject, and its enforced chastity of treatment. You cannot make a picture out of light alone; there must be something to break it on. Then, too, there was Shakespeare to be reckoned with: he had written no hymns nor spiritual songs; among the works of God, he had found man to be deserving of his unremitting attention; yet, while a certain monotony of manner afflicted the singers of good and godly ballads, he had seemed never at a loss for a subject, never at the end of the copious inspiration that he drew from his unsanctified themes.
Nevertheless, the seventeenth century, which stirred so many questions in politics and criticism, stirred this also; the fitness of sacred subjects for heroic poetry was debated long and ardently both in France and England, and many experiments were made. These experiments belong, as might beexpected, mainly to the time of the civil troubles. It was then that the versifying of the Psalms became a desolating industry; and Mr. Zachary Boyd, an ornament of the University of Glasgow, having worked his will on King David, made bold rhyming raids on passages of the Bible that are usually allowed to rest in prose. The high places of scholarship felt the new infection. Early in 1648, Joseph Beaumont, afterwards Master of Peterhouse, and Regius Professor of Divinity at Cambridge, published his poem calledPsyche, or Love's Mystery, in twenty cantos. "My desire is," he says in the preface, "that this book may prompt better wits to believe that a divine theam is as capable and happy a subject of poetical ornament, as any pagan or humane device whatsoever." The poem is about four times as long asParadise Lost, and was written in eleven months, which circumstance, his admiring biographer allows, "may create some surprise in a reader unacquainted with the vigorous imagination, and fertile flow of fancy, which so remarkably distinguished our author from the common class of writers." A further explanation by the same eulogist, who edited Beaumont'sOriginal Poemsin 1749, makes all clear. "Our Author," it appears, "did not look upon poetry as the serious business of his life; for whilst he was thus amusing his leisure hours with the Muses, he wrote a fulland clear commentary upon the Book of Ecclesiastes, and large critical notes upon the Pentateuch." After this, the astonished reader will perhaps be disinclined to verify the statement, reluctantly made, that in the poems of our author "we sometimes meet with a vicious copiousness of style, at others, with an affectation of florid, gay, and tedious descriptions; nor did he always use the language of nature."
Next, Cowley "came in robustiously and put for it with a deal of violence" in his sacred poem entitledDavideis. In the exordium of the First Book he proclaims his mission:--
Too long theMuses-LandshaveHeathenbinTheirGodstoo long wereDevils, andVertues Sin;ButThou, Eternal World, hast call'd forthMe,Th'Apostle, to convert thatWorldtoThee:T' unbind the charms that in slightFableslie,And teach thatTruthistruest Poesie.
Too long theMuses-LandshaveHeathenbin
TheirGodstoo long wereDevils, andVertues Sin;
ButThou, Eternal World, hast call'd forthMe,
Th'Apostle, to convert thatWorldtoThee:
T' unbind the charms that in slightFableslie,
And teach thatTruthistruest Poesie.
But it was not to be. His "polishtPillarsof strongVerse" were destined never to carry a roof. The theme, so vigorously introduced, soon languished; and by the time he had completed a Fourth Book, it lay, for all his nursing skill, prematurely dead on his hands. The poem is not finished, and yet there is nothing to add.
After Cowley in date of composition, but before him in date of publication, Davenant in hisGondibertshows traces of the prevalent ambition.He rejects all supernatural fables, and makes it a point of sound doctrine to choose only Christians for his characters. But that poem, too, broke off in the middle.
In France the question had been as zealously discussed, and had been illustrated by experiments no less elaborate. In 1657, a year after the appearance of Cowley'sDavideis, Desmarets de Saint-Sorlin brought out his sacred poem ofClovis, with a great flourish of trumpets, and a long prose demonstration that its theme was the grandest a French poet could choose. The real supernatural of the Christian religion, so he argued, is a subject much nobler for poetry than the pagan mythology, as the sunlight is brighter than the shadow. The controversy dragged on till 1673, when Boileau, in the third book of hisPoetic, settled the question for the nonce, and fixed the opinion of the succeeding generation of critics. He casts an equal ridicule uponClovisand upon the theory which it was designed to illustrate:--
The arts of fiction give the air of liesEven to the most unquestioned verities;And what a pious entertainment, too,The yells of Satan and his damnèd crew,When, proud to assail your Hero's matchless might,With God himself they wage a doubtful fight.
The arts of fiction give the air of lies
Even to the most unquestioned verities;
And what a pious entertainment, too,
The yells of Satan and his damnèd crew,
When, proud to assail your Hero's matchless might,
With God himself they wage a doubtful fight.
So the burial ofCloviswas hastened by ridicule. Yet every one of the arguments brought againstthat poem by Boileau holds equally good againstParadise Lost, which Milton, knowing as little of Boileau as Boileau knew of him, had published some six years earlier.Paradise Lost, it might almost be said, is superior toClovisin nothing, except the style. By the force of his genius and the magic of his style, Milton succeeded in an attempt thought hopeless by the best critical judges of his century, and won his way through a ravine that was strewn with the corpses of his epic predecessors.
His courage and originality are witnessed also by the metre that he chose for his poem. To us blank verse seems the natural metre for a long serious poem. Before Milton's day, except in the drama, it had only once been so employed--in an Elizabethan poem of no mark or likelihood, calledA Tale of Two Swannes. While Milton was writingParadise Lostthe critics of his time were discussing whether the rhymed couplet or some form of stanza was fitter for narrative poetry, and whether the couplet or blank verse better suited the needs of drama. As no one, before Milton, had maintained in argument that blank verse was the best English measure for narrative poetry dealing with lofty themes, so no critic had ever been at the pains to refute that opinion. In the year of the publication ofParadise Lost, Dryden delivered his judgment, that the rhymed coupletwas best suited for tragic passages in the drama, and that blank verse should be employed chiefly for the lighter and more colloquial purposes of comedy. Some echo of the courtly dispute then in progress between Dryden and his brother-in-law, Sir Robert Howard, probably reached Milton's ear through his bookseller, Samuel Simmons; for it was at the request of his bookseller that he added the three Miltonic sentences on "The Verse," by way of preface. With his accustomed confidence and directness of attack he begs the question in his first words:--"The measure is English heroic verse without rime"; and in his closing words he takes credit to himself for his "example set, the first in English, of ancient liberty recovered to heroic poem from the troublesome and modern bondage of riming."
In these two cardinal points, then--the matter and the form of his poem--Milton was original. For the one there was no true precedent in English; for the other there was no precedent that might not rather have been called a warning. His matter was to be arranged and his verse handled by his own ingenuity and at his own peril. He left a highroad behind him, along which many a tuneful pauper has since limped; but before him he found nothing but the jungle and false fires. In considering his style, therefore, it is well to treat the problem as it presented itself to him, and to followhis achievement as he won step by step out of the void.
There were two great influences in English poetry, other than the drama, when Milton began to write: the influence of Spenser and the influence of Donne. Only the very slightest traces of either can be discerned in Milton's early verse. There are some Spenserian cadences in the poemOn the Death of a Fair Infant, written in his seventeenth year:--
Or wert thou of the golden-wingèd hostWho, having clad thyself in human weed,To earth from thy prefixed seat didst post,And after short abode fly back with speed,As if to show what creatures Heaven doth breed;Thereby to set the hearts of men on fireTo scorn the sordid world, and unto Heaven aspire?
Or wert thou of the golden-wingèd host
Who, having clad thyself in human weed,
To earth from thy prefixed seat didst post,
And after short abode fly back with speed,
As if to show what creatures Heaven doth breed;
Thereby to set the hearts of men on fire
To scorn the sordid world, and unto Heaven aspire?
The later verses onThe Passion, written in the same metre, are perhaps the last in which Milton echoes Spenser, however faintly. Meanwhile, in the hymnOn the Morning of Christ's Nativity, he had struck a note that was his own, and it is not surprising that he left the poem on the Passion unfinished, "nothing satisfied with what was begun."
As for the great Dean of St. Paul's, there is no evidence that Milton was touched by him, or, for that matter, that he had read any of his poems. In the verses writtenAt a Vacation Exercise, he expressly sets aside
Those new-fangled toys and trimming slightWhich takes our late fantastics with delight;
Those new-fangled toys and trimming slight
Which takes our late fantastics with delight;
and he very early came to dislike the fashionable conceits that ran riot in contemporary English verse. A certain number of conceits, few and poor enough, is to be found scattered here and there in his early poems. Bleak Winter, for instance, is represented in three cumbrous stanzas, as the slayer of the Fair Infant:--
For he, being amorous on that lovely dyeThat did thy cheek envermeil, thought to kiss,But killed, alas! and then bewailed his fatal bliss.
For he, being amorous on that lovely dye
That did thy cheek envermeil, thought to kiss,
But killed, alas! and then bewailed his fatal bliss.
In the lines on Shakespeare the monument promised to the dead poet is a marvel of architecture and sculpture, made up of all his readers, frozen to statues by the wonder and astonishment that they feel when they read the plays. But perhaps the nearest approach to a conceit of the metaphysical kind is to be found in that passage ofComus, where the Lady accuses Night of having stolen her brothers:--
O thievish Night,Why shouldst thou, but for some felonious end,In thy dark lantern thus close up the starsWhich Nature hung in heaven, and filled their lampsWith everlasting oil to give due lightTo the misled and lonely traveller?
O thievish Night,
Why shouldst thou, but for some felonious end,
In thy dark lantern thus close up the stars
Which Nature hung in heaven, and filled their lamps
With everlasting oil to give due light
To the misled and lonely traveller?
When Milton does fall into a vein of conceit, it is generally both trivial and obvious, with none ofthe saving quality of Donne's remoter extravagances. In Donne they are hardly extravagances; the vast overshadowing canopy of his imagination seems to bring the most wildly dissimilar things together with ease. To his unfettered and questioning thought the real seems unreal, the unreal real; he moves in a world of shadows, cast by the lurid light of his own emotions; they take grotesque shapes and beckon to him, or terrify him. All realities are immaterial and insubstantial; they shift their expressions, and lurk in many forms, leaping forth from the most unlikely disguises, and vanishing as suddenly as they came.
Sometime we see a cloud that's dragonish;A vapour sometime like a bear or lion,A tower'd citadel, a pendent rock,A forked mountain, or blue promontoryWith trees upon't that nod unto the world,And mock our eyes with air: thou hast seen these signs;They are black Vesper's pageants.
Sometime we see a cloud that's dragonish;
A vapour sometime like a bear or lion,
A tower'd citadel, a pendent rock,
A forked mountain, or blue promontory
With trees upon't that nod unto the world,
And mock our eyes with air: thou hast seen these signs;
They are black Vesper's pageants.
They are the poems of John Donne. Nothing could be further from the manner of Milton, or less likely to overcome his own positive imagination. Here are two examples of Donne's best poetic manner:--
But yet thou canst not die, I know;To leave this world behind, is death;But when thou from this world wilt go,The whole world vapours with thy breath.
But yet thou canst not die, I know;
To leave this world behind, is death;
But when thou from this world wilt go,
The whole world vapours with thy breath.
And again:--
Twice or thrice had I loved thee,Before I knew thy face or name;So in a voice, so in a shapeless flameAngels affect us oft, and worshipp'd be.
Twice or thrice had I loved thee,
Before I knew thy face or name;
So in a voice, so in a shapeless flame
Angels affect us oft, and worshipp'd be.
Let it be considered what Milton means by the terms "World" and "Angel," how clear an external reality each embodies for him. Any forced comparison used by him is not an attempt to express a subtlety, but merely a vicious trick of the intellect. The virtues of the metaphysical school were impossible virtues for one whose mind had no tincture of the metaphysic. Milton, as has been said already, had no deep sense of mystery. One passage ofIl Penseroso, which might be quoted against this statement, is susceptible of an easier explanation:--
And if aught else great bards besideIn sage and solemn tunes have sungOf turneys, and of trophies hung,Of forests, and enchantments drear,Where more is meant than meets the ear.
And if aught else great bards beside
In sage and solemn tunes have sung
Of turneys, and of trophies hung,
Of forests, and enchantments drear,
Where more is meant than meets the ear.
He alludes no doubt to Spenser, and by the last line intends only allegory--a definite moral signification affixed to certain characters and stories--not the mystic correspondences that Donne loves. The most mysterious lines inComusare these:--
A thousand fantasiesBegin to throng into my memory,Of calling shapes, and beckoning shadows dire,And airy tongues that syllable men's namesOn sands and shores and desert wildernesses.
A thousand fantasies
Begin to throng into my memory,
Of calling shapes, and beckoning shadows dire,
And airy tongues that syllable men's names
On sands and shores and desert wildernesses.
They are purely Elizabethan and reminiscent. But if the stranger beauties of the metaphysical school were beyond his reach, its vices touched him wonderfully little, so that his conceits are merely the rare flaws of his early work.
The dramatists were a much more potent influence than either Spenser or the metaphysical school. He learned his blank verse from the dramatists. Perhaps he took the subject ofComusfrom theOld Wives' Taleof George Peele; and when he set himself to write a masque he was doubtless well acquainted with the works of the chief master in that kind, Ben Jonson. William Godwin, in hisLives of Edward and John Phillips, expresses the opinion that Milton studied the works of Jonson more assiduously than those of any other Elizabethan. The specific evidence that he cites--a few passages of possible reminiscence--is not convincing. He has no more striking coincidence to show than the resemblance between a phrase inIl Penseroso:--
Come, but keep thy wonted state
Come, but keep thy wonted state
and two lines of Jonson'sHymn to Cynthia:--
Seated in thy silver chairState in wonted manner keep.
Seated in thy silver chair
State in wonted manner keep.
If the original genius of a poet is to be sworn away at this rate, there will soon come a time when no man is secure. Both words are common in Elizabethan English; if their occurrence in a single line is to warrant a charge of plagiarism, the next step will be to make them Jonson's property, and to forbid the use of either to all but the tribe of Ben. Milton doubtless studied Jonson's works; and, if specific resemblances are both weighed and counted, a good case can be made out for the influence of Jonson's prose on the author of theAreopagitica. But the fact is that criticism finds itself here in a region where this minute matching of phrase with phrase is useless or misleading. Milton's early poems grew on Elizabethan soil, and drank Elizabethan air. It matters little that there are few verbal coincidences; the influence is omnipresent, easy to feel, impossible to describe in detail. From whom but the Elizabethans could he have learned to write thus?--
Fly, envious Time, till thou run out thy race:Call on the lazy leaden-stepping Hours,Whose speed is but the heavy plummet's pace;And glut thyself with what thy womb devours.
Fly, envious Time, till thou run out thy race:
Call on the lazy leaden-stepping Hours,
Whose speed is but the heavy plummet's pace;
And glut thyself with what thy womb devours.
The Elizabethan style is not to be mistaken, the high-figured phrases, loosely welded together,lulling the imagination into acquiescence by the flow of the melody. Lines like these might well occur inRichard II. The same Shakespearian note is clearly audible in such a passage as this, where Comus describes the two brothers:--
Their port was more than human, as they stood.I took it for a faery visionOf some gay creatures of the element,That in the colours of the rainbow live,And play i' the plighted clouds. I was awe-strook,And, as I passed, I worshipped. If those you seek,It were a journey like the path to HeavenTo help you find them.
Their port was more than human, as they stood.
I took it for a faery vision
Of some gay creatures of the element,
That in the colours of the rainbow live,
And play i' the plighted clouds. I was awe-strook,
And, as I passed, I worshipped. If those you seek,
It were a journey like the path to Heaven
To help you find them.
This has all the technical marks of late Elizabethan dramatic blank verse: "vision" as a trisyllable; the redundant syllable in the middle of the line; the colloquial abbreviation of "in the"; not to mention the fanciful vein of the whole passage, which might lead any one unacquainted with Milton to look for this quotation among the dramas of the prime. The great hyperbolical strain of the Elizabethans, which so often broke into rant, is caught and nobly echoed in praise of virtue:--
If this fail,The pillared firmament is rottennessAnd earth's base built on stubble.
If this fail,
The pillared firmament is rottenness
And earth's base built on stubble.
Or, to take a last example of Milton's earlier style, this description of the Lady's singing is in marked contrast to the later matured manner:--
At last a soft and solemn-breathing soundRose like a steam of rich distilled perfumes,And stole upon the air, that even SilenceWas took ere she was ware, and wished she mightDeny her nature, and be never moreStill to be so displaced. I was all ear,And took in strains that might create a soulUnder the ribs of Death.
At last a soft and solemn-breathing sound
Rose like a steam of rich distilled perfumes,
And stole upon the air, that even Silence
Was took ere she was ware, and wished she might
Deny her nature, and be never more
Still to be so displaced. I was all ear,
And took in strains that might create a soul
Under the ribs of Death.
This has the happy audacity of Shakespeare, and his delight in playing with logic; it is almost witty. The Miltonic audacity of the later poems is far less diffuse and playful. When the nightingale sings, inParadise Lost, "Silence was pleased." When Adam begs the Angel to tell the story of the Creation, he adds, "Sleep, listening to thee, will watch." Either of these paradoxes would have been tormented and elaborated into a puzzle by a true Elizabethan.
Milton, then, began as a pupil of the dramatists. But his tendencies and ambitions were not dramatic, so he escaped the diseases that afflicted the drama in its decadence. When he began to write blank verse, the blank verse of the dramatists, his contemporaries, was fast degenerating into more or less rhythmical prose. Suckling and Davenant and their fellows not only used the utmost license of redundant syllables at the end of the line, but hustled and slurred the syllables in the middle till the line was a mere gabble, and interspersed broken lines so plentifully that it became impossibleeven for the most attentive ear to follow the metre. A brief description of a Puritan waiting-woman may be taken as an illustration from Jasper Mayne's comedy ofThe City Match(1639). As a sample of blank verse it is perhaps somewhat smoother and more regular than the average workmanship of that time:--
She works religious petticoats; for flowersShe'll make church-histories. Her needle dothSo sanctify my cushionets; besidesMy smock-sleeves have such holy embroideries,And are so learned, that I fear in timeAll my apparel will be quoted bySome pure instructor. Yesterday I wentTo see a lady that has a parrot: my womanWhile I was in discourse converted the fowl;And now it can speak nought but Knox's works;So there's a parrot lost.
She works religious petticoats; for flowers
She'll make church-histories. Her needle doth
So sanctify my cushionets; besides
My smock-sleeves have such holy embroideries,
And are so learned, that I fear in time
All my apparel will be quoted by
Some pure instructor. Yesterday I went
To see a lady that has a parrot: my woman
While I was in discourse converted the fowl;
And now it can speak nought but Knox's works;
So there's a parrot lost.
Blank verse that has learned to tolerate such lines as the two here set in italics can only end by becoming prose. And, indeed, that was the destined development of the drama, even had the theatres never been closed under the Commonwealth. The history of blank verse reflects with curious exactness the phases of the history of the drama. When the metre was first set on the stage, in the Senecan drama, it was stiff and slow-moving; each line was monotonously accented, and divided from the next by so heavy a stress that the absence of rhyme seemed a wilful injurydone to the ear. Such as it was, it suited the solemn moral platitudes that it was called upon to utter. Peele, Marlowe, and Shakespeare made the drama lyrical in theme and treatment; the measure, adapting itself to the change, became lyrical in their hands. As the drama grew in scope and power, addressing itself to a greater diversity of matter, and coming to closer grips with the realities of life, the lyrical strain was lost, and blank verse was stretched and loosened and made elastic. During the twenty years of Shakespeare's dramatic activity, from being lyrical it tended more and more to become conversational in Comedy, and in Tragedy to depend for its effects rather on the rhetorical rise and fall of the period than on the unit of the line. From the drama of Charles the First's time, when inferior workmen had carried these licenses to the verge of confusion, it is a perfectly natural transition to the heroic couplet for Tragedy and the well-bred prose of Etherege for Comedy. Blank verse had lost its character; it had to be made vertebrate to support the modish extravagances of the heroic plays; and this was done by the addition of rhyme. Comedy, on the other hand, was tending already, long before the civil troubles, to social satire and the life-like representation of contemporary character and manners, so that prose was its only effective instrument.
At the time when blank verse was yielding to decay, Milton took it up, and used it neither for conversational nor for rhetorical purposes. In the interests of pure poetry and melody he tightened its joints, stiffened its texture, and one by one gave up almost all the licenses that the dramatists had used. From the first he makes a sparing use of the double ending. The redundant syllable in the middle of the line, which he sometimes allows himself inComus, does not occur inParadise Lost. In the later poem he adopts strict practices with regard to elision, which, with some trifling exceptions, he permits only in the case of contiguous open vowels, and of short unstressed vowels separated by a liquid consonant, in such words, for instance, as "dissolute," or "amorous." By a variety of small observances, which, when fully stated, make up a formidable code, he mended the shambling gait of the loose dramatic blank verse, and made of it a worthy epic metre.
In a long poem variety is indispensable, and he preserved the utmost freedom in some respects. He continually varies the stresses in the line, their number, their weight, and their incidence, letting them fall, when it pleases his ear, on the odd as well as on the even syllables of the line. The pause or cæsura he permits to fall at any place in the line, usually towards the middle, but, on occasion, even after the first or ninth syllables.His chief study, it will be found, is to vary the word in relation to the foot, and the sentence in relation to the line. No other metre allows of anything like the variety of blank verse in this regard, and no other metrist makes so splendid a use of its freedom. He never forgets the pattern; yet he never stoops to teach it by the repetition of a monotonous tattoo. Hence there are, perhaps, fewer one-line quotations to be found in the works of Milton than in the works of any other master of blank verse. De Quincey speaks of the "slow planetary wheelings" of Milton's verse, and the metaphor is a happy one; the verse revolves on its axis at every line, but it always has another motion, and is related to a more distant centre.
It may well be doubted whether Milton could have given a clear exposition of his own prosody. In the only place where he attempts it he finds the elements of musical delight to consist in "apt numbers, fit quantity of syllables, and the sense variously drawn out from one verse into another." By "apt numbers" he probably meant the skilful handling of stress-variation in relation to the sense. But the last of the three is the essential of Miltonic blank verse. There lies the secret for whoso can divine it.
Every well-marked type of blank verse has a natural gait or movement of its own, which it falls into during its ordinary uninspired moods.Tennyson's blank verse, when it is not carefully guarded and varied, drops into a kind of fluent sing-song. Examples may be taken, almost at random, from theIdylls of the King. Here is one:--